by Orca Various
The cop cuffed me. The cuffs cut into my wrists. I glanced back over my shoulder at Angel, now standing by the Madison Square Garden entrance. She was talking to the other cop, likely giving him as much incriminating evidence as she could, to really put me away. She wouldn’t even look at me. I kept trying to fight back the tears. James Bond wouldn’t cry. But this was real life.
“Watch your head,” said the cop as he opened the back door, pushed down on my head and gently eased me into the car. It was tight in the backseat. It was separated from the front by a steel cage. I imagined who else had been cuffed and put in this squad car. Murderers? Rapists? Gang members? The tears were coming to my eyes. But I was determined to be tough. Relax, I told myself. Think this through. Find a way to get out of it. But there didn’t seem to be any way out. Angel had me. I never could have dreamed that this girl, so innocent on the outside, would have been the one who wrecked my life. She’s mousy, Bad Adam had said. I agreed!
But less than five minutes later, the cop received a phone call and everything changed again. He listened for a few minutes, then said, “Okay.” He glanced back at me. “We’re letting you go.” He was kind of shouting. Everything this guy said was loud, even the good things. He didn’t know how to be subtle.
“You are?”
I couldn’t believe it. I felt like shouting myself, even louder than him. But I tried to stay composed.
“You’re lucky. She ain’t pressing charges.”
“She isn’t?”
“No, she says she might have been mistaken. I’m guessing she knows you and you were getting rough with her and she loves you, you chump. Take my advice and clear out—stay away from her. And don’t touch a woman that way again. Don’t even think about it. You got me?”
“Yes, sir.” I moved sideways to get out of the car.
“Stay put.”
“Huh?”
“I’m taking you about twenty blocks south. Far away from her, in other words.” He didn’t say “words,” though; he said “woids.” Great New York accent, which I’d barely noticed in my fear. “And don’t try to find her. My partner’s taking her somewhere else too.”
We drove south. He broke every traffic law they had and ignored every light. He also started to chat.
“Knicks fan?”
I could be a woman beater and he was asking me about basketball?
“No, hockey.”
“Rangers?”
“No, Sabres.”
“Who are they?” he said, and he didn’t seem to be joking. “Tried the New York hamburgers? Check out a place on Thirty-Second and Fourth, name of Julio’s; talk to Big Julio. Heart attack burgers, we call them. They’re the best.”
Ah, New York.
Ten minutes later, he let me out in Greenwich Village, which is this cool, artsy area that seems almost like a little town inside the city and is full of very hip restaurants. Beatniks used to live here in the fifties, hippies in the sixties. I’d read that in social studies class.
I rubbed my sore wrists when I got out. I was alone in New York. What would I do now? It seemed to me that my best bet was to get on the subway and head straight back to the hotel. My clothes were still there. Luckily, I’d grabbed my wallet and passport and my hoard of money before I’d gone out the door. I hadn’t wanted to leave them behind in a hotel room, locked or not. The cop had checked all my ID in the cruiser and handed everything back before he let me out.
Then something hit me. It hit me hard. He hadn’t said anything about the huge amount of money that was in my wallet. In all the excitement, I hadn’t realized how light it felt. I pulled it out of my pocket and opened it. It was empty! I’d had a stash of about five thousand American dollars in there, what remained of what I’d taken out of the hole in the wall in the cottage. It had been in hundred-dollar bills. There was nothing left! The cop had stolen it! I stood stock-still on the street, my mouth wide-open, my stomach churning. “He couldn’t have,” I said out loud.
And I was right. He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t have. Even New York cops aren’t that corrupt. There was something odd about all the frisking he’d done though. There was a trend to it. He didn’t find the pistol because Angel had it, and he didn’t find the money because…it hadn’t been in my wallet when he looked!
I was at about Eleventh Street. I started running up Seventh Avenue toward midtown. I wasn’t sure why. How would I ever find Angel? Angel and the PPK and the five thousand she had stolen! I had given her lots of money in case she needed it. But she’d wanted all of it! I had thought I could trust her. Then I recalled Le Carré: spies weren’t to be trusted.
“What’s the deal with Angel Dahl?” I said out loud as I rushed uptown. Was everything about her fake? No, she was just a thief; that’s all she was. An abandoned child with a messed-up childhood and a grudge against everyone. She was using my money—Grandpa’s money—to do whatever she wanted in New York City. I’d never find her here! Or was she booting it back to Bermuda, back to a house I wouldn’t be able to get into again without being caught and killed?
But then I started really thinking about her. Would she really do this? I thought of her walking in front of me a few hours ago, when she didn’t know I was behind her, giving money to every street person she met. I thought of her quietly saying to me, “You are a good guy,” in that beautiful, soft Bermudian accent. I thought of her helping me out of the Dahl building. I thought of the way she had started looking at me, how she blushed when she saw me with my shirt off. And I also thought something else.
What a brilliant move it would have been if she had planned all of this! It would have been a stroke of genius. Here she was, being pursued by a man that she and her friend (a boy) could not get away from, so because she was the girl, she found a cop, causing the pursuer to make himself scarce. She pretended the boy had just assaulted her, then said she wouldn’t press charges and asked the cops to take her somewhere else in the city, far away from the pursuer, knowing that the cops would also take her boyfriend (uh, her friend, that is) far away too. And just before all this happened, just an instant before, she bumped into her friend, whom she knew the cops would frisk, lingered there with her arms around him and in his coat and relieved him of his gun and even his suspicious clip of a massive amount of money, and took it with her for safekeeping. Then she met up with her friend somewhere else, both of them free of their pursuer and ready to move on…together. It would indeed be genius, a perfect way to escape an inescapable situation.
But wasn’t that a fantasy, a movie plot? Would she actually do that, this outwardly unremarkable young woman with the Bond Girl name? And if she did do it, where would she go afterward to meet this boy? Where in this massive, crowd-filled city would she go? It would have to be somewhere that I knew about, some place she had mentioned to me. I thought of her in the cab coming into New York, her blue eyes staring up at the buildings in awe. I thought of her talking about the city as if it were the place of her dreams. Then it came to me. She’d said something about a particular place she wanted to see the most.
30 Rock!
I started to really run. I didn’t care about the subway anymore, I was booking it north on my own two feet at a million miles an hour, heading for Forty-Ninth Street near the Avenue of Americas and the Rockefeller Center.
On the way, I kept telling myself not to get my hopes up. Why would this girl care about me and my need to know the truth about my grandfather? It was my life, my world, and it couldn’t possibly matter to her. She’d been abandoned at birth; she was likely hardened inside. My view of her as kind, despite what had been done to her, seemed awfully naïve. She wouldn’t be there.
It took me about twenty minutes to get up to Forty-Ninth Street. I’m guessing it would take most people about an hour and a half. I was sweating bullets. It was hard not to stare up at 30 Rock when I turned the corner to the side of the building where the skating rink was—it was so famous. And there was the rink. That was what she said she dreamed of—not
the TV show. She dreamed of the ice rink where people in love came to skate.
But she wouldn’t be there. It was a long shot beyond long shots.
The rink wasn’t visible from the sidewalk or even from the plaza beside the building. It had been built below the surface, about twenty feet or so below ground level. Even though it was about three in the morning, I could see people standing around the gray concrete walls, looking down at the skaters. There were American flags above us, of course, lining the concourse—you’ve got to wave the old red, white and blue. But there were flags of other countries too. Good for you, New York. I spotted the Canadian one and smiled.
But I couldn’t spot Angel. She wasn’t up here anywhere. I felt like collapsing. I could barely hold myself upright against the wall. I had lost all the money, the gun, the chance to redeem my grandfather. All I had now was the fact that he had tried to kill me. What would I tell my cousins? What would I say to DJ? I looked up at the top of the giant Christmas tree and the star that meant hope to so many people. I gazed down along the big green branches, all the way to the skaters. Then I saw something I could barely believe. Down there, looking out at them, leaning over a gate near the bottom of the tree so she would be easy to find, looking as if she wanted to be out there on the ice, skating with someone special, her face red from the cold, was Angel Dahl.
I just stared at her. I almost felt like crying again. But this was a different sort of emotion. And it wasn’t only because my money was safe. It was something deeper. And it took me by surprise. I was overjoyed to see her, to see Angel. She’s mousy, said Bad Adam. “No, she’s not,” I said out loud. “She’s a good person—a great person.” When I said that, I thought of Shirley. She’s even better, I told myself quickly. I can’t wait to see her again. But the feeling I put into it faded a bit when Angel turned her face directly to me, some fifty yards away, and found me in the crowd, first glance. Then she opened up her big gray coat—sort of secretively, like a spy—and barely revealed something inside. Even from where I stood, I could see that it was the Walther PPK, tucked into the waistband of her pants. She patted a pocket with the other hand, where the stack of money must be. I smiled at her. She smiled back and motioned for me to come to her.
ELEVEN
THE MEANING OF THE EYE
She looked like she wanted a hug, but I shook her hand and gave her a pat on the back instead.
“Good thinking, excellent thinking,” I said. She gave me a weak smile.
Up close to Angel, I realized how silly I was being about her. Sure, she was a nice girl, but I had actually been imagining that I was starting to like her. She wasn’t Shirley, who had stood by me through all the times I hadn’t been so nice. My girl was one in a million. She was at home, looking out for Leon, waiting for me. I told Angel we needed to take a deep breath and think about what we had to do next. I pulled out my phone and texted Shirley, telling her I was in New York, checking out something about Grandpa.
I know that sounds weird. It’s a bit complicated. I’ll fill you in later.
I expected her to text right back. But she didn’t. Of course, I thought, she’s asleep.
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” I said. “We can talk on the way.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Why? John doesn’t know where we’re staying.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.”
“Really? How would he know? I used assumed names.”
“If he’s got anything to do with the CIA or MI6, he’ll know. They can find anyone, anywhere.”
“CIA? Surely you don’t think he’s—”
“I don’t know what he is—that’s my point. I don’t think we should take any chances.”
She was right. But all our clothes were back there. And we both had to get some shut-eye. Or did we?
“We don’t need any sleep, do we, Angel Dahl?”
Even though she didn’t like that name, she smiled at me. “No, Mr. McLean, we don’t. We’re in New York. And we have a mission to accomplish.” She gazed up at the magnificent Rockefeller Center. We’d head out when the stores opened and buy some clothes. I’d get her whatever she wanted, though I knew that wouldn’t be much.
We leaned over the gate. Happy couples swirled past in front of us, the sound of their blades cutting the ice and a recorded Christmas carol all we could hear. Angel stood very close to me. As we talked, we tried to take the information we had and make something out of it, make some decisions. We really couldn’t go back to the hotel. John was still after us, and I had only a few days left to get my task done. We had to make some progress, now. But try as we might, we still couldn’t figure anything out.
Then I thought of Leon. I didn’t know why I hadn’t considered contacting him before. Sure, it was about four in the morning, but he’d respond. I knew he would. He had a voice-activated iPhone with a touch screen that he could operate with a stylus he held in his mouth. He always kept his phone plugged in and by his bed. He’d answer, especially if he knew it was me.
“I have this friend,” I told Angel. “He’s got this muscle disease and he’s in a wheelchair. He can’t use his limbs much and…this disease, this IBM thing, it’s going to kill him. But he’s really smart. Really, really smart. I think he’s a genius.”
She smiled. “He’s your friend?”
“Yeah, I help him out.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, it’s no big deal. My point is, he might be able to make something out of our clues. I’ll text him.”
“But it’s the middle of the night.”
“I know.”
Q! I texted. We have a problem here in New York.
Ten seconds later, my phone pinged. NYC? Wow. Been talking to your boy Webb, helping him out. He’s getting around too. Hey, you said “we”! Got a chick with u? Better not! Shirley is the best!
I know. Angel’s just a friend.
Angel? Friend? Is that Bad Adam texting me or u?
He’s the only person I’ve ever told about Bad Adam. Shirley doesn’t even know. I especially don’t want to tell her. It would scare her, and she might think I’m nuts.
Never mind that, Q. We have a problem for u to solve.
Shoot.
I imagined him in his room, lights out, lying there in his bed, unable to move much, the stylus in his mouth, happy to be talking with me. I often wondered what he thought about at night when the lights went out. I didn’t have time to tell him everything that had happened in Bermuda. The whole Grandpa thing would blow him away. So I simply told him that we were searching for someone or something, we weren’t sure which, but we were pretty sure it had something to do with spies, and all we had for clues were the letter W, which kept turning up, and a glass eye on a desk.
What kind of glass eye?
What did he mean by what kind? It was a glass eyeball! But then I remembered something strange about it. I thought of that first riveting moment in Grandpa’s office in Paget. The iris on the eye…it was gold.
Had some gold on it, I texted.
Goldeneye! he immediately answered.
All I knew about Goldeneye was that it was the name of a James Bond movie, one with Pierce Brosnan as 007. It wasn’t a particularly good one, done ages ago, in 1995. I’d only seen it once. I couldn’t even remember much about it. Bad Adam recalled the Bond Girls, of course, especially Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp, who liked to kill men with her thighs during, shall we say, romantic moments. It was the first James Bond movie Brosnan did and the first one not taken directly from an Ian Fleming novel.
Thanks, Q. I think. I signed off.
As we walked away from 30 Rock, I was talking out loud about Goldeneye. Angel was kind of quiet, just letting me ramble on.
“Why would Grandpa be so into Goldeneye?”
“Mr. Know.”
“Right, Mr. Know. Why would Mr. Know be so into it? It’s just a Pierce Brosnan Bond flick.”
“He was all right—better than
Timothy Dalton.”
“But why does Know have nothing on his desk but a golden eye?”
“Because it must mean a lot to him, a whole lot.”
“Goldeneye? A lame Bond movie? It isn’t even from a Fleming novel.”
Angel stopped in her tracks. “It’s more than that,” she said.
I turned around.
“More than that?”
“I remember now. That movie was given that name for a specific reason.”
“And that was?”
“Goldeneye is a place, a very important place.”
“A place?”
“It’s Ian Fleming’s home in Jamaica. It’s where he wrote all the Bond novels.”
My heart leaped. “Really?”
“They filmed scenes for Dr. No around there. I read somewhere that it’s a resort now.”
I stood there thinking. Grandpa or Mr. Know knew Fleming. Angel had said that he talked about him all the time. He hated William Stephenson and loved Ian Fleming. I was willing to bet that something had happened down there in Jamaica, something traumatic, something that Grandpa was involved in. Or, at the very least, there was some secret there that might unravel all of this. I could just feel it. Goldeneye. He kept that eye to remember it by. Maybe the answers were there in the Caribbean? W knows. W marked the spot. That’s what he often said into the mirror. Was the spot somewhere in that resort? I thought of our third clue—the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cuba was in the Caribbean too. I thought of Dr. No, of the scenes on the beach there, of the blue tropical waters and the heat. Then I thought of Mr. Know. We had the money and a couple of days. Jamaica.
“Ready for another plane ride?” I asked Angel Dahl.
TWELVE
ROADBLOCK
We had to get something to wear. As soon as the stores opened, we’d be in them. We walked around the city for a few hours, killing time, getting a bite to eat at a falafel stand, staring at everything. It was pretty cool. Angel told me a bit more about her life in Bermuda. She had tried to run away a few times, but really, where could she go? They looked after her needs at home. She had everything, materially, that her peers had, and sometimes more. But I wondered if she’d ever received a hug or much encouragement. She did fine in school and it was a good school, but she had few friends. She’d never had a boyfriend. She claimed she didn’t want one. Mr. Know didn’t talk to her often. When he did, he was usually critical. She knew she was a bit clumsy, but he would laugh at her anytime she bumped into anything. She liked to exercise in their basement fitness room. Whenever Know saw her in shorts, though, he’d say that her legs looked huge and laugh. So she worked out in sweats. She blurted that last bit out kind of angrily, then stopped talking, as if she’d revealed too much. It was hard to believe that Grandpa would say something like that. I turned the subject to shopping.
