Written by Dan Jolley

CHAPTER ONE

 

“I realize how hard this must be, Jacob,” said Claudia, the woman code-named Alex Prime. She adjusted her cell phone headset, kicked the man before her in the jaw, then continued, “but I really think we need to talk about your mother.”

            The man thudded limply to the floor. The remaining four gunrunners—who would go into the report as Huey, Louie, Stewie, and Screwy, and the Bureau could figure out their real names—edged closer to her.

            A voice wailed through the phone, “My mother? I’m not talking to you about my mother! I don’t even know you!”

Huey raised a crowbar. Claudia darted forward and punched the point of his chin. He dropped to the floor. The remaining three men glared at her, not moving. Not yet.

            She pivoted, watching them carefully. “That’s no problem, Jacob. My name is—” She caught herself, but covered for it smoothly. “Call me Claudia.”

The criminals, some unconscious, were alone with her in the laundry room of a fourth-rate hotel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Outside, the city bustled and hummed, alive with late-night energy. Everyone out there was completely unaware of the drama unfolding inside.

Well, almost everyone. The people in the windowless van parked down the street knew exactly what was going on.

            From the phone: “Claudia . . . ? That your real name?”

             “Yes, it is. And I’m serious about your mother, Jacob. You know full well she wouldn’t approve of what you’re doing.”

She narrowed her eyes at Stewie, who’d taken a step forward. He paused, thinking better of it.

            On the other side of several thick walls, an American named Jacob Lindsay crouched inside the hotel’s main office. He was a small, rodent-like man, with eyes that darted about nervously, rapidly blinking away sweat. He held a phone in one trembling hand and a gun in the other.

The hotel’s manager, a Brazilian woman in her early thirties, sat on the floor, frozen stiff. She stared down the barrel of Jacob’s gun.

            “You don’t know anything about my mother!” Jacob shouted into the phone. He sounded very close to snapping. “She doesn’t care what happens to me!”

            “I think she does,” Claudia answered. “I think she’d know that you didn’t really mean to get involved. Not this deeply. She would understand that you’re in over your head, and you’re afraid you’ll never be able to find your way out now.”

            Apparently still irritated that Claudia had forcibly disarmed them all within seconds of her arrival, Louie decided to rush her, screaming, “Grab her legs! If she can’t stand up, she can’t fight!”

            Claudia had no choice but to tag him a couple of times—once with a knee, once with an elbow. She eyed the two that remained standing. “You realize I’m trying not to hurt any of you, right?”

            In the office, his eyebrows squeezed together, Jacob said, “Huh? What’s going on? Are my guys still out there?”

            “Nothing’s going on,” Claudia answered quickly. “Tell me, Jacob . . . how could you say your mother doesn’t care? She gave birth to you, didn’t she? Raised you, all by herself?”

            A few seconds ticked by. Jacob’s breath grew more ragged . . . and then he made a tortured sound into the phone, something like a whimper. His voice came out small. “How’d you know she raised me on her own?”

“Just a guess,” Claudia said. “Jacob . . . don’t you think she’s at home right now, hoping, even praying, that you’re all right?” She raised a warning finger at Screwy. “Don’t you think it would break her heart to see you like this? Wouldn’t it just kill her to know you had the chance to make all this right, and didn’t take it?”

            Claudia heard Jacob start to sob. It took several more seconds, but he finally said, “Yeah. Yeah, it . . . I guess it would.”

            Two blocks down and across the street from the hotel (a distance determined to pose no threat), Alexandra Benno was in the back of the windowless gray van, sitting across from two armed men wearing boring gray suits. Claudia’s conversation with Jacob Lindsay played through earpieces they all wore; her voice was rich and soothing despite the circumstances.

            “She’s a real spitfire, isn’t she?” said one of the men in gray suits.

Alex slumped in her seat and rolled her eyes.

            Back in the laundry room, Claudia spoke into the phone. “I knew you’d realize it eventually, Jacob. You’re not alone. You’ve still got someone who loves you, who wants you to be safe.”

She took a moment while the last two men attempted to do what their cohorts couldn’t; charging in, they knocked her off balance and tried to dog pile on top of her. This resulted in a chaotic tangle of arms and legs, followed by several sharp cracking sounds.

            Claudia shoved the unconscious thugs off her and got back to her feet. With an extra note of understanding in the tone of her voice, she said, “I’d like to come back to the office and talk with you, Jacob. Do you think that’d be okay?” She paused for a carefully measured three seconds. “Don’t you think that’s what your mother would want?  So she could see you again?”

            In the office, Jacob Lindsay wavered, uncertain . . . and then carefully, deliberately, he set the gun on the floor.

            “Sure,” Jacob murmured, defeated. “Sure. Come on.”

The hotel manager practically collapsed with relief.

            In the van, one of the gray-suited men pulled out a satellite phone and hit a button. After a few moments, he said, “She’s done it, sir. We’ll have the location of that arms shipment in no time.” He listened briefly. “No, sir. No loss of life at all.”

            Alex watched as the two agents allowed themselves brief grins. She scowled and slumped down even farther.

 

* * *

 

The ride back to the airport was as excruciating as usual. The van rumbled along, all four heavily armored tons of it. Alex stared bitterly at the floor. Brazil was the twenty-third country she’d been to. Twenty-third. And the only sights she ever got to see were boring hotel rooms and the insides of vans just like this one.

            Muffled laughter reached her from the front seat, barely audible through the steel plating. Of course Claudia got to sit up there with the driver, enjoying the view, while she had to stay back where it was safe.

            Alex caught herself. Dammit, don’t be so childish. She conscientiously sat up straighter.

            “So, what do they do, give you a private tutor or something?” The question from the agent who’d referred to Claudia as a “spitfire” caught Alex off guard. She thought his name was Stimes; he was new. The other agent was on the phone again, not listening.

            “I’m not in school anymore,” Alex replied, then thought for a second about how strange those words still sounded.

            “Not in school?” Stimes frowned, uncomprehending. “You can’t be more than fourteen, can you? Fifteen, tops.”

            Ugh. Pained, Alex started fidgeting with her hair. “I turned eighteen two weeks ago.”

            Stimes said, “You’re serious? Well.”

            And then he gave her the quickest glance-over. A tenth of a second at most, but right from her head down to her feet—and even though he didn’t say anything else, Alex understood him perfectly: I’m sure you’ll start to blossom any day now.

            Alex didn’t look at or talk to Stimes for the rest of the trip. She didn’t trust herself to speak anyway; his appraisal had made her feel so rotten and hopeless. She did spend several hours during the drive entertaining a fantasy in which she complained to the right people, including the Bureau Chief himself, and got Stimes fired on the spot.

            She knew nothing like that would actually happen.

            But it was fun to think about it, at least.

 

* * *

 

The Bureau of General Operations had, ironically, only one specific mission: working with people like Alex Benno. The BGO occupied a massive, perfectly cube-shaped, red-brick building (commonly referred to as “the Square”) on an unremarkable street in Washington, D.C. From the outside it looked plain, even a little run-down; it was the kind of place that could house virtually any business, from a daily newspaper to an auto parts store.

            For sixteen of her eighteen years Alex Benno had called the Square home. Until two weeks ago, of course.

            Since they were back in the States and on what the Bureau considered secure ground, Alex was allowed to ride in a standard-issue car rather than the hulking armored vans where she sat during the field work. She was grateful to be able to sit in the back seat, gaze out the windows, and take in the world around her. She just wished it didn’t take so much effort to ignore the conversation inside the car, where Claudia-in-the-front-seat had Agent Stimes wrapped tightly around her little finger.

            God, how gross. Stimes had to be at least forty.

            Of course, Alex Prime looked to be in her late twenties this time. Maybe that wasn’t so bad.

            But still. Ecchh.

            “So you’re in, I mean to say, you actually work in Hollywood? In the movies?” Stimes was quite eager to continue chatting with Claudia.

            Claudia ran one hand over her hair—a more elegant version of the gesture Alex often unconsciously made—and smiled. “Consulting work, yes. I did some modeling before I went to med school, so I still had contacts in the entertainment industry. It wasn’t that difficult a transition.”

            “Huh . . . so you make sure the doctors in the movies get things right, then.”

            “Sometimes I do medical consulting, yes, but it’s mostly psychological material they want me for. That’s my specialty.”

            “Psychology?”

            “Mm-hmm. Primarily male psychology.”

            Claudia lowered her eyelids ever so slightly. The movement simultaneously accentuated her eyelashes and made Alex want to gag. There was shameless flirting, and then there was whatever this was.

Alex did her best to tune out the rest of what Stimes and Claudia had to say until the huge, familiar sight of the Square came into view.

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

As usual, the crowd thronged around Claudia as soon as she walked into the room. Several of the guys couldn’t stop applauding as they surrounded her; it made for some awkward attempts at handshakes, but Claudia was gracious about it.

She always was.

            “Oh my God, the way you disarmed those thugs, it was like watching a ballet!”

That was Bob from Research & Development. His eyes kept dancing between Claudia’s movie-star face and her perfect figure. She acted as if she didn’t notice.

            “Well, Bob,” Claudia gushed, “I couldn’t have done any of that if I hadn’t had you guys backing me up.”

Bob grinned an absurdly wide grin.

            The party was in the south conference room—the usual place, since it had the big set of double doors best suited for the Primes’ grand entrances. Alex slipped in through a side door, skirting the festivities in the center. She knew no one would pay her any attention, but she tried to force her messy curls back up into their bun anyway.

            Approaching the table with the punch bowl on it, Alex saw Matthew from Damage Control push through the crowd with his trademark cocky swagger, eager for some face-to-face time with Claudia.

“I just wanted to tell you how much we all enjoyed working with you,” Matthew said in that slick way he had. “We were patched in through the R&D’s button-cam, and man, that elbow you landed on the guy’s collarbone! What was that?”

            “Snow Tiger Kung-Fu,” Claudia purred.

Matthew looked smitten. “Well, like I was saying before, this has been great. I think you’re the best one we’ve ever had, honestly.”

            Claudia laughed a little at that—a small, perfect sound, like the chime created when two fine crystal goblets clinked together.

            Standing at the punch bowl with a sweating glass of ginger ale in her hand, Alex rolled her eyes. She’d been mouthing Matthew’s lines along with him.

But she focused mainly on Claudia.

            Alex hated these “going away” parties even more than she hated the invitations that got the whole thing started in the first place. Claudia, or whoever, was always mobbed by every guy in the BGO, always standing there like a darn supermodel, with her skin, and her hair, and did Claudia’s waist have to be that tiny?

            She knew what people saw when she and the Alex Prime du jour stood beside each other. Alex, short and scrawny, with hopeless hair and the figure of a twelve-year-old boy . . . next to an older woman (usually) who pretty much got it right in every way that Alex had it wrong.

When men described Alex Prime, the adjectives ran to the excessive. Genius. Stunning. Artistic, usually. Luscious, always.

Alex herself had to settle for a less impressive list. Average. Mediocre. Plain. Over and over again, every single time, you’d think that at least once Alex wouldn’t look and feel quite so bad by comparison.

It hadn’t happened yet.

            Before Alex’s train of catty thoughts gained any more momentum, she noticed Matthew break away from the crowd and head straight for her. He was really walking toward the punch bowl, of course, not her, and she knew that, but at this point it would look awkward if she just walked away. Plus, for those three or four seconds . . . she held onto the hope that he might actually be coming to talk to her.

Alex desperately ran a hand over her frizzy curls, then took a sip of the ginger ale. She prayed he wouldn’t notice her glass shaking.

            “Hey, Alex,” Matthew said, in the tone that she knew meant Hey, Alex. I’m being polite to you because it’s expected of me.

            “Matthew.” She winced as her voice did that nervous thing that made it go up an octave on the last syllable.

            He filled two glasses with punch. “She’s really something, isn’t she? Talking the guy into giving himself up like that?”

            Not trusting herself with any more actual words, Alex squeaked.

            “Well, anyway . . .” He turned to go. “You’re part of a great team, kid. You should be proud of her.”

            “Oh, I am,” Alex said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, but he was already swaggering away.

            Grimacing, Alex dumped the rest of her drink onto a ficus tree, glared at the mass of people congratulating and flirting with Claudia, and slunk out of the room.

            The hallway gave her some welcome quiet. She pressed her back against a wall and slid down to sit on the floor, her eyes closed.

            The peaceful respite didn’t last long.

            “You know, you’ll give yourself early wrinkles if you keep frowning that much.”

            Alex looked up at Second-in-Command, who had miraculously materialized a few feet away. For someone who talked as much as Sec did, she carried herself with annoying silence.

Second-in-Command, if rumors were to be believed, had yet to see her thirtieth birthday; no one would know it to look at her, though, since she dressed like the sternest of stern librarians. The very dark skin on her face was free of worry lines, but with the granny glasses and the utilitarian hairstyle, she could have easily passed for forty.

Sec had a briefcase tucked under one arm as she absently riffled through a stack of papers with both hands. Her glasses threatened to slide right off the tip of her nose.

Alex sighed. “Is it time to send her back yet?” she asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

            Sec made a mildly disapproving sound with her tongue. “It’s Prime’s moment of glory, Alex. No need to rush it.”

            Alex couldn’t help groaning. “Moment of glory? She’s had ten whole days of glory.”

            Sec looked up from her papers. “I’m sorry?”

            Alex stood and scowled at Sec. “Oh, are you kidding me? Alex Prime this, Alex Prime that. Why does she get to be ‘Alex Prime’ anyway? I’m the one that makes it all happen! If anybody should be Alex freaking Prime, it should be me. Shouldn’t it?”

            Sec’s eyes had widened; she was taken aback as Alex spoke. Now she tried to shift her papers around, covering for the sudden, awkward silence, but instead she accidentally scattered them all over the floor.

Alex looked at the heap of papers, wishing she could pull every word she’d just said back out of the air, knowing she’d acted in the exact ways she shouldn’t: whiny, immature, and selfish.

            “Um,” Sec began, crouching down, “could you give me a hand with these? Please?”

Alex mumbled an apology and kneeled to help Sec.

            They had just gathered up the last of the papers when the conference room’s side door opened. Claudia walked out, smiling and waving goodbye to someone still inside, then noticed Alex and Sec. She flashed them a friendly smile and said, “Need a hand?”

            Polite as always. Helpful as always. Alex often found herself wishing Code-Name Alex Prime could be completely evil and despicable, just once, so she could hate her with a clear conscience. That never happened, of course. Alex Prime (despite her scathing condescension, or unpredictable flares of temper, or pathological flirtatiousness, or whatever unpleasant trait she might show up with) was a good woman. That’s why she was summoned in the first place.

            “No, I think we’ve got it,” Sec answered. She glanced down the hallway. “Just about time to go, I believe. Are you ready?”

            “Sure.” Claudia’s smile widened. “This has been great, and of course I’m happy to help and all, but it will be nice to get home.”

            “Follow me, then.” Sec moved down the hallway, with Claudia in tow. Sec looked over her shoulder and said, “Alex? Coming too?”

            It wasn’t really a question.

            The three women made their way deep into the proverbial bowels of the building, taking an elevator to the sixth floor below street level.

            As the elevator’s machinery hummed, Claudia peered down at Alex. “We never really got a chance to talk, did we? Not after that first day.”

            Alex shrugged. “Sometimes that’s the way it happens.”

            “I’m sorry about that,” Claudia said. She sounded as if she might actually mean it. “I guess I got caught up in the whole . . . adventure of it, y’know?”

            Alex shrugged again. That was just lip service. She figured if Claudia had really wanted to talk to her, she’d had ample opportunity. Claudia might have said more, but the elevator came to a halt and the doors opened.

“Come along, please.” Sec led the way down a short corridor to a thick metal door. She punched a lengthy code into a keypad set in the wall; several locks thunked open, and the metal door slid aside. Sec led the way into a lab area, a sort of rabbit warren of sterile, interconnected rooms stocked with scientific equipment.

            “Do we need to go back into that first room for this?” Claudia asked, looking around calmly.

            “No,” Sec replied. “This area is secure enough. The return trip doesn’t need as much handling.”

            “All right, then.” Claudia turned to Alex and, surprisingly, reached out and took one of Alex’s hands in both of hers. “Maybe next time we can hang out a little more.”

            Alex hesitated. A few sarcastic remarks sprang to mind, but she decided against them. Suddenly she felt tired and just wanted to get it over with. “Sorry. I don’t think there’s going to be a next time.”

            Claudia let go of Alex’s hand and gave a little nod of understanding. “Well. Okay. Whenever you’re ready.”

            Alex nodded, then closed her eyes and bowed her head in concentration.

            The air around Claudia began to change, distort, like summer’s heat waves on  blacktop . . . and the woman code-named Alex Prime vanished in a sparkling, shimmering cloud of lights.

            Alex and Sec were left alone in the lab as the last of the sparkling motes faded out. “I’m pretty tired,” Alex said. “You need me for anything else?”

            All business, Sec said, “No, that’s it for today.”

            Alex nodded. “Cool. I’m going home.”

 

* * *

 

In his office on the second floor, Matthew Voltz, the object of Alex’s infatuation (and derision), closed his door and quietly locked it. When he walked to his desk the overconfident strut was gone. Instead, he moved like someone on the brink of exhaustion. He sat down heavily, tried to steady his breathing, then pulled a 35-millimeter film canister from his pants pocket and pried the rubberized lid off with one thumbnail.

            Matthew had picked up the canister from a dead drop—a pre-designated, inconspicuous place where someone else could leave messages for him to retrieve at a later time. That way the sender and receiver never had to be seen together; it was a classic espionage technique. Matthew stared down at the canister with undiluted hatred as he pulled out the tiny scroll from inside it.

            On the paper, printed on a kind of LaserJet that could be found in thousands of copy centers across the country, was a very simple note:

SAME DEAL AS BEFORE

YOU HAVE TWO DAYS

            Matthew crumpled up the paper and dropped it into the ashtray on the edge of his desk. He pulled a lighter out of another pocket and set the note on fire, watching with a stony expression as the message quickly turned to ash.

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

Alex drove her humble little car out of the BGO parking garage. The attendant hit the button to raise the gate, but as usual he didn’t speak. No reason why he should, Alex thought glumly.

            It was about 2:30 in the afternoon—a bright, warm, late-summer day with only a few wispy clouds in the sky. Traffic sucked, but that was nothing new, not in D.C. At least she didn’t have far to go: out of one parking garage, five blocks over, and into another garage at the Ash Tree Condominiums. She left her car in its reserved space and rode up to the ninth floor.

            Two weeks. That was how long Alex had been a legal adult. Two weeks ago she turned eighteen. Her friends Gail and Chuck threw her a pitifully tiny but very sweet party, and Sec gave her the keys to this place.

            “As long as you’re sure,” Sec had said.

Of course she was sure. She certainly didn’t want to live the rest of her life in the BGO dormitory where she and a couple dozen other children had been raised.

Walking into the condo, though, she didn’t feel much like an adult. Despite having her own kitchen, living room, bedroom, and even a second bedroom that she could call her “office” (all of it in spacious contrast to the cramped twin-bed dorm room), the only thing she felt was intense loneliness.

Well, she was alone but not alone, in a couple of different ways.

A brash voice croaked out, “Alex! Alex! Best friends! Alex!”

Perched in a cage near her balcony’s sliding doors was a large green parrot. She raised an eyebrow at the bird and walked over to it. “Hi, Worsel. Did you miss me?”

“Alex! Best friends! Alex!”

The parrot was the Bureau Chief’s idea, not Alex’s. He’d come with the condo, along with a pamphlet about his proper care and feeding.

Because she wanted a big, weird, loud bird to live with her.

She knew he’d been fed and tended to in her absence. That was the other “not alone” part. She went away? Someone took care of her things. She broke down on the side of the road? You’d better believe someone showed up with a tow truck in five minutes flat. Someone, someone, someone—there was always someone. Even on the drive from the Square to her condo, she knew someone had kept an eye on her the whole way.

She didn’t know any of them. Never really saw any of them. But she knew they were there. It was never in question.

Alex turned and surveyed the rest of her place: the tiny breakfast table, really only big enough for one person. The recliner in front of the TV—again, suited for one since there was no couch yet. Her bedroom held the place’s only real luxury: a big, comfortable four-poster queen-size bed . . . in which, of course, only one person had ever slept.

“Y’know, Worsel, when I asked for all this, I thought I’d enjoy it.”

The parrot said, “Dinner time! Dinner time!”

Alex chuckled humorlessly and went to get the bird food.

A few minutes later, after Alex had determined that there was nothing of interest on TV, that she had read every book and magazine there, and that it might be a little excessive to start over on her DVD box set of Quartz Princess for the nineteenth time, she picked up the phone and dialed a number that very few people knew. It rang twice, then a bright, highly energetic voice answered, “Hi!”

Gail Shikari. She always answered the phone like that—as if she already knew who it was, caller ID or not. She talked to everyone as if they were her dearest friend in the whole world. Of course, Alex liked to think she was Gail’s dearest friend in the whole world. One of two, anyway.

A photograph of Alex, Gail, and Chuck hung on the living room wall near the kitchen, the three of them posing in the dorm room that Alex and Gail used to share. In the photo, Gail’s chin came to just above Alex’s eyebrows, and her short, spiky black hair looked especially turbulent, highlighting her sparkling grin.

“Chuck” Houston—Chuck being short for Charlotte—came off a little more demure, as usual, with her long blonde hair partially covering one eye.

“It’s me,” Alex said into the receiver.

“Alex! Hi! Where are you?”

“Here at the new place. What’re you guys doing?”

 “Studying,” Gail replied, her energy dipping a bit. School was just now back in session. “Got our first round of tests coming up. God, I envy you, being out of all this!”

Alex glanced around the living room. Worsel squawked at her. “Yeah, I’m living the life. Is Chuck there?”

“Yeah, want to say hi?”

“Sure.”

The phone made that rustling sound that phones do when they get handed from one person to another, and then a different voice came through: “Benno! What’s goin’ on with ya?”

Alex couldn’t help giggling. She and Gail and Chuck had all been raised together in what amounted to an exceptionally high-quality state orphanage where they were nurtured and educated by painstakingly selected caregivers and teachers. They had received what most people would consider an extremely solid, perhaps even classical education.

But something the BGO did not do was provide its charges with street knowledge. Alex’s contemporaries were all intelligent, reasonably well-adjusted people, but they weren’t exactly cool.

Chuck heard Alex giggle and she said, “Hey, no mocking of the hip vernacular!”

That made Alex laugh even harder. “Hi, Chuck. They’ve already got you cramming, huh?”

“Ah, you know how it is, Benno. Same ol’ same ol’.” She dropped the affectation. “When are you going to have us over again?”

Alex kicked back in her recliner. “Funny you should ask. I was thinking tonight—I could pick you both up, maybe rent some movies, order a pizza.”

“Oh, hey, sorry, not tonight. This Anatomy & Physiology test is going to kill us unless we get all this s