by Cecilia Gray
I’ve never understood why classmates have to move in packs. To use the bathroom. Eat lunch. Do they spoon-feed each other? Wipe each other’s butts? What’s wrong with some self-sufficiency?
“We’re open campus,” Viviane says from behind me.
I turn to hide my jump at the sound of her voice. The Athleticas haven’t come with her, at least. Less Goose Fallout Potential. GFP—Code Red. That’s what Chelsea started calling it whenever we were in a crowded room. Don’t be all dramatic, now.
“I know,” I say and turn to finish my walk down the hall, although I have no idea where I’m going.
“I’ll show you where you can grab a sandwich.”
“I can find it.”
“God, she’s difficult.” She chokes on something as I ignore her Goose. “Slow down. I don’t mind showing you.” She grabs my arm hard enough to stop me in my tracks.
She scurries down the stairs to the main street. I rub my forearm beneath the gold cuff. It’s the first time I’ve been touched—voluntarily—by a classmate except for brushing against people in the hall. How crazy is that? She did it like it was nothing.
She glances over her shoulder and scowls at me. “Let’s go.”
May as well follow. I’m going to have to live with this girl and we need to be friendlies. Besides, why scout when someone already has intel?
I run up beside her. She points down the street to the right. “Two blocks that way is a candy shop. The kind with barrels so you can down taffy by the fistful. Next door is a Quick, which is like the Euro McDonalds if you absolutely must kill a cow today.”
Predictably, we veer left.
“A few blocks this way is a cute deli with a delicious eggplant sandwich. The owners are this adorable old Belgian couple. They bicker all the time. She doesn’t think he slices enough tomatoes. He thinks she cuts the cheese too thick. It’s like a free show with lunch. I love them.”
How easily she tosses that out, too. I love them. They aren’t her friends or family and she loves them? Although there’s no love lost between her and her family, looks like. She was pissed about her dad’s cover company’s dolphin rampage. Maybe pissed enough to organize a protest against Continental Fisheries. To unknowingly put her dad’s cover in jeopardy by putting his association with them under a microscope.
I could totally save his ass. “Why are you worried about the cops?”
“Cuz nobody likes prison.” She shakes herself in frustration. “That was a joke. Forget it, okay?”
I know better. “Are you looking for trouble? Or in trouble?”
She squirms, hoisting her backpack higher on her shoulders. Already, she’s learning to hold back. “I’ve got it handled. Besides, Sebastien has my back.”
He seemed more annoyed with her than supportive last night. “Are you sure?”
“Of Sebastien? Always.”
I feel a jolt of jealousy at the certainty in her voice, the fact that she said it within my voice’s range, so she knows it, believes it. That she has someone who won’t turn on her when she least expects it.
“This is it. Darling, right?” We stop in front of a small white store with a red awning. Cinnamon buns and flaky croissants line the display case in the front window. Warm spices and hot chocolate aromas wrap around us like a dense fog. What a cute little deli—but wait—
I blink. A graffiti tag, about half my size, is painted on the side of the store. Black graffiti contrasted against the white paint. Two stainless-steel military dog tags on a chain. The letter K embossed on one, A on the other.
K.A. What are the odds?
“Kid Aert,” I breathe. Graffiti art royalty—or propaganda leftist, according to most media sources—and he had been here. He had stood on this sidewalk, held out his can, and anointed this surface.
“You recognize this?” Viviane points to the wall, her brow furrowed.
Maybe it’s a weird thing to recognize. “Well…you recognized it.” The best defense is a good offense.
She leans against the wall and crosses her arms, and I feel like I’m the one handcuffed to the steel table. “Yeah, but he’s huge in Europe. Not so much in the United States.”
“I’m into drawing.” Covering a lie with a truth. Always the best way to go.
“Pretty fabulous, huh?” She leans into the wall and rests her forehead against it. The piece is bigger than I expected. The border lines thick and even, like he used a stencil instead of freehand. Simple but powerful, the tags. Even if I didn’t know Kid Aert was somebody, I’d know he was somebody from the dog tags. I wouldn’t even need to see the rest. The solders toting lollipops on their shoulders instead of rifles in Slovenia. A massacre with combatants in furry costumes in Egypt. The stuff that riles people up. Pisses off governments. He walks in secret, like a superhero. He could easily teach me a thing or two about evocative—if I could find out his real name.
I should focus my energies on lower hanging fruit, but there’s something that’s making it hard to shake him as a target. The overnight appearance of one of his pieces is enough to start any anti-government riot. If I could meet him, if I could get him to trust me, if I could convince him to take on my cause, then no one could ever joke about benching or reassignment ever again.
“Well, the piece isn’t going anywhere.” Viviane pushes off the wall. “We should check out some of his other pieces if you’re into him. He has one at this underpass not far from here. It might still be there.”
“Maybe…that would be—”
My pager goes off like a light switch, sending a thrill current through me.
“Sasha?” Viviane asks.
“Another time.” I stride away.
“Sasha, wait.”
“Rain check, really.” I don’t turn back and hear her footsteps stop abruptly. Good, no time for that. Not now. My heartbeat gongs in my ribcage. This is it. My first page. I round the corner, head halfway down the block, and pull out the pager.
Zrtepzeso7tegl3.
As I’m considering the cipher, another page comes in with a second code.
What was the protocol I researched when I got home last night? Oh yeah.
Three-row route with inward spiral.
The numbers probably belong together. With those markers and the z’s likely being box finishers, I decode the cipher as an address: 37 Ploegstreert. Hmm…Porter sent the Flemish street name. Guess I’ll add another language to my to-learn list.
The second cipher gives me a meet-up time of 13:18.
From behind me, I hear, “Hey.”
I spin around. Viviane has followed me around the block but she’s still at the corner, a few yards away. I pocket the pager.
“Do you want me to grab you a sandwich to go?”
“No, thanks.” Sorry, sister. Heroics are on the horizon and plebes need not apply.
~~~~~
37 Ploegstreert, Brussels, Belgium
I loiter on the sidewalk in front of a quaint café-bakery. The aroma of roasting coffee beans and crusty baguettes warms the air. My stomach growls again. I glance inside the store front, then back at the clusters of chairs crowding the sidewalk. The text said nothing about inside, outside, standing, sitting. I should have thought of these questions already. I don’t want to enter before his designated meet-up time in case he stays outside, but I also don’t want to stew on the street twiddling my thumbs. A woman gets up from her table, leaving a half-eaten apple tart. I could snatch it up. I’ve done it before, back in Baltimore. It’s not stealing. It’s someone else’s trash. But those days are behind me. Far behind…unless I screw up and get benched and have no job, no life, no friends. Despite the chill, a sheen of sweat breaks out on my forehead.
Don’t let ’em see you sweat, hon.
I’ve got this. I need to relax for the next eight minutes. The question is how.
I glance across the street. Piles of dusty hardback books nearly black out the front window of a bookstore. I check for traffic and dash across the road. The door op
ens with a jingle.
A man in a lime-green cardigan, spectacles perched on his nose, greets me from behind the counter. “Bonjour.” I wave hello and set off down an overstuffed aisle.
Exit—a door in the back marked Privat.
Weapons—hardcovers as thick as bricks. A section of Beaux Arts coffee-table books. A row of leather-bound classics in French. Okay, this is better. I’m a girl checking out some books. I walk down the next aisle and straight into Sebastien lugging a stack.
What the—? I zoom in on the white V-neck tee and his mop of dark curls. His eyes darken as they meet mine. Oh God. This is the only neighborhood bookstore. It’s not crazy he’s been doing stuff like errands when he’s not at work because he’s not in school. What if he sees me and Porter meeting across the street? Or what if there’s something else going on?
One way to find out. “What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I read.” He sets down his pile of books. “Salut, Sasha.” His fingers brush the patch of skin below my ear as he presses soft lips to my left cheek, my right, and my left again. My skin heats like I’m an incandescent bulb, lit from the inside.
I pull back, harder than I meant to, and glance at his books to distract myself.
Cuisine de la Mer.
Recettes des Grands-meres.
Brochettes et Barbecue.
Dude is into cooking. After I have looked at his books and the tips of my shoes and the tips of his shoes and the dustbunnies rolling across the linoleum floor like tumbleweed across the desert, after I have looked everywhere else possible, I look back at his face. Resting on his bemused lips quirked at the corners, his dark eyes wrinkled with amusement. How can someone so easy on the eyes be so hard to look at?
He jerks his thumb down the aisle. “Are you looking for the comics?”
Comics are safe territory, safe haven. My comics haven’t arrived yet and it’s been days without them. A peek, I tell myself. I tear off to the rickety table set against the back wall. I flip through three boxes of plastic-sleeved comics as though they’re vinyl records. I’ve never seen some of these before. French ones, too.
Sebastien leans his hip against the table and drapes his arm over the boxes.
“My favorites are the classic comedies,” he says. “Archie and Veronica. You like the superheroes, yes?”
“So do a lot of people.” Why am I being defensive?
He leans down, his face level with mine. “But why do you like them?”
“I guess…” I think back to my first comic—one of the Lab kids had smuggled in a Spiderman: Chapter One series. “Heroes symbolize so many things.” I run my finger over the tops of the comics. “You see a drawing, and it’s a normal guy in a leotard, but to you it becomes an idea. Inspiration.” I breathe out, that being the longest sentence I’ve said to a stranger, since this is the only time anyone’s ever asked me why I love superhero comics. Not even Chelsea, who has watched me draw them for years, has asked.
He lets out a low whistle and mumbles under his breath, “Chouette.”
Another word I don’t know—a Goose, judging by the way he glances away and clears his throat with a cough. Ten bucks says it means freak of nature.
He turns back to me, smiling now. “You are not in school.”
I rear back, defensive again. “Neither are you.”
“I have a job.”
Errant barkeep of Viviane’s secrets. “Two jobs, you mean.”
He raises a questioning brow.
“Bartending and keeping Viviane safe from the cops. Don’t you think the best way to keep her safe is to stop whatever she has planned?”
He cocks his head to the side, appraising me. “You are worried for her?”
A protest leaps to my lips. I’m not worried about her, I’m worried about whether she’ll blow Porter’s cover. But this icy sensation settles somewhere in me because I can’t say those words without lying. I am a little worried for her—some way, somehow—because she has no idea of the danger she’s in, no idea of what being her father’s daughter means. She’s so clueless and that…that must suck.
Sebastien comes to his own conclusions in my silence. “That is generous of you.” The way he looks, dark eyes all serious, sets shivers rising up my neck. I bow over the comics and run my fingers through the selection.
Oh, my Jezebel. Wonder Woman—Traitor. Issue 164 from the Silver Age in near mint condition. The cover blazes: “What makes the Amazonian turn against her own country?”
Sebastien taps his finger against the cover as I pull it out of the box. “You like this one?”
“It’s a classic.”
“Ah,” he says with a knowing tilt of his head. “You like her.” He glances down at the gold cuff around my wrist. His finger pulls against it so it spins around my wrist.
“Yeah, I guess. But…whatever.” I gently slip the comic back into the box. An old habit from the Lab, because if you let on you wanted something, they used it to get to you.
“It is strange how much you like comics.”
“Not really. There’s kind of a whole pop culture phenomenon based on them.” I hunch my shoulders, suddenly feeling self-conscious under his scrutiny.
“It is,” he says. “Or…” He cocks his head to the side and squints. “Pardon. Not strange. My English sometimes is not so good. I say strange but I think I mean curious. It makes me curious about you.”
What is it with this guy? Does he suspect? No—how could he? I’m being paranoid. Porter would tell me—Porter!
I glance at my watch: 1:17 p.m. How could I have let my attention wander? Okay, okay, it’s across the street. I have sixty seconds. I can make it.
“I gotta go.” Carefully, I place the comic back in the box.
“Go where?”
“Back to class.” I walk down the aisle, glancing back once over my shoulder to see him staring thoughtfully after me. Suspiciously. Curiously?
I run out to the street, checking to make sure Sebastien isn’t following. Through the sliver of visible window, I see him maneuvering his pile of books to the counter. I turn to the café.
When I feel the urge to turn back and see his profile one last time, I don’t.
~~~~~
Café Leopold, Brussels, Belgium
I navigate through a thicket of fold-out chairs. Light pours in through the front window and storefront. I spot him easily. Porter waves me over from the back. As I sit down, he pulls out the scrambling pen and clicks it to light the red bulb at its tip.
Weapons—the table’s butter knife. Pretty lame. Unlike James Bond, I do not know twenty ways to kill a man with a butter knife.
He doesn’t offer me a drink or something to eat. I’ve half a mind to down the shot of espresso remaining in his cup even though I don’t need it.
“Simmer down,” he says.
“Sorry.” He can obviously see eagerness pouring off me like a puppy.
He checks his watch. “Right on time. Nice work.”
I can’t help my beaming smile, but a part of me is still at the bookstore. What if Sebastien watched me walk in here?
He tosses me a manila envelope.
I straighten in my seat, imagining the rod of steel down my spine like Chelsea snapping to attention, and pull out a stack of papers as fat as the Bible.
I skim through—there are pictures of known local street artists. Muga, Obes, Smacker, and Defo, as well as their big hangouts—Neerpede Park, the Gare du Midi. I found most of them in my own research, but these files are more comprehensive. Home addresses, jobs, family details. A couple of the artists even teach art at the local university. Not all of them have Kid Aert’s cloak-and-dagger M.O. These are the people I need to meet, to befriend, and ultimately to win over and convince they should graffiti against whatever targets I set. These will be my assets.
Which brings me to the million-dollar question. “Who is our target?”
Porter motions for me to flip through to the last page.
The photo
and profile are not for a street artist. Halim Waled is an older man. Portly. The head of the Environment General Authority for a North African Arab monarchy named M——.
Seems like a lot of trouble to bring down a tree hugger. “He’s our target?”
“Another asset. He’s been supplying us with soil samples from his country that we test for radioactive elements. A few samples came in positive, but we can’t get his government’s cooperation to access the suspected sites. You know what they say. Government won’t cooperate? Install a new one.”
“Yeah, totally.” As if I know that saying at all. Halim is beaming in his picture—like he’s posing for a family reunion photo. “But if he’s not the target…?”
“The dictator—he’s our target. Halim’s intel has us almost positive he’s running a nuclear program.”
“Can we trust Halim Waled? Why would he give us samples from his own country?”
“I offered him something he cares about more than his country. His son has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s. Guess where the best treatment centers are?”
“Not North Africa.”
“Precisely.” Porter says. “The perfect vulnerability.” His eyes sweep the room, like Chelsea’s do when she assesses threats. Intensity simmers beneath his Clark Kent veneer. “I have a closing meet-up and want you to vet him so I can see you in action in the field. We don’t operate in interrogation rooms out here.”
Nappy head. “Don’t worry. My voice has been pretty reliable in the field.”
“Better be.” Porter taps the pile of street artists’ profiles. “These targets aren’t the office type. You don’t get to handcuff them. We’re not just after a killer. We’re trying to bring down a country’s entire nuclear program. You ready for this?”
“Yes, sir,” I say because mother-effing awesome is for my inside voice.
V
Jennings neighborhood, Brussels, Belgium
I sprint past the last block of townhouses. My ankles buckle against the uneven surface of cracked cobblestone, sharpening my focus on the terrain. I pick up the pace, the wind an icy sting on my face. When the knife in my side sharpens, I shove two fingers into the cramp and piston my legs harder. Past homes. Past dog walkers. Chelsea’s not here to yell, “Go go go go go,” but I hear her. Urging me faster, as if we were on side-by-side treadmills, arms pumping, sweat flying.
