She shrugged, trying to seem relaxed. “It just has this cozy quirkiness... it’s super cool. And the coffee is phenomenal.”
If I do say so myself.
She imagined Brent laughing and saying how humble she was, like she’d said to him earlier.
Probably not laughing right now though. He sounded kinda stressed.
“Well...” Mrs. Malachi began.
“Your husband, though—will he still be able to join us if we change locations?” Nadia interjected.
“It’s right here in downtown,” Emily said quickly. “Where does he work?” She cocked her head inquisitively and widened her eyes a little, thinking of how cute and innocent puppies and kittens looked when they did the same thing.
And that right there is proof I’m so not trained for this. Why am I thinking about puppies and kittens right now? If Brent knew, I’d never hear the end of it!
Instead of answering her question, Mrs. Malachi brought out her phone and said soothingly, “Let me text Gregory and make sure it will work for him.”
Emily was unsure if the Gremlin would receive his wife’s text since apparently the R&D lab he worked in was shielded against signals. But a short moment later, Mrs. Malachi’s phone chimed and she beamed.
“He said he wouldn’t miss it and just to text him the address.”
Brent’s voice murmured in Emily’s earpiece. “He must have an internet-based workaround so his wife can still text him. Good work, Sweetheart. We’ll have the whole situation under control. You just work on maintaining your cover.”
“I’m glad!” Emily said aloud, both in answer to Mrs. Malachi and Brent. “I’m ready whenever you are!”
At least, I sure hope I am.
Chapter 13
AS IT TURNED OUT, MRS. Malachi thought of one more exhibit she especially wanted to share with Nadia, so they remained at the museum a bit longer.
Emily asked Mrs. Malachi multiple questions about the southwestern-themed exhibit, encouraging her natural talkativeness. She wanted to give ICS as much time as possible to get into position. She could tell Nadia was again impatient, but she suspected she only noticed this because she was looking for it.
She’s very good at this undercover business.
When they left, Emily drove her smart car, and Mrs. Malachi gave Nadia a ride. They coordinated by phone to meet up on the street corner near the coffee shop. Emily was able to talk to North Pole and Brent during her drive, which was a great relief. Brent said they were ready and monitoring her location via her cell phone.
“I won’t tell you the whole plan because, Emily, I just want you focused on being Amelia Rosenberg. We’ll do what we do best, and everything will be fine.”
If only he hadn’t sounded so worried.
But then again, if he’d had his way, I wouldn’t even be in this situation.
Knowing the route, traffic patterns, and best place to park, Emily was the first one to the street corner where they planned to meet. Mrs. Malachi and Nadia were not far behind.
“It is so hot here, Mrs. Malachi! I don’t know how you survive it all the time!” she exclaimed as the two women approached, reminding herself to play the part of New Yorker rather than Phoenix native.
The older woman chuckled. “I already have a small lake-front cabin picked out in Oregon for when Gregory retires. We’ll become snowbirds and then I won’t have to experience an Arizona summer ever again.”
Emily felt a twinge of sadness. The woman’s life was about to change immensely and she didn’t even know it.
I hadn’t thought of that part. This is going to feel dreadful.
But all she said was, “That sounds like a smart plan!”
“So—coffee?” Nadia asked.
“Right this way,” Emily said, guiding them around the corner and to the glass front of the place she worked.
Taking a steadying breath and trusting that ICS had the sense to make sure Terry wouldn’t be there to recognize her, she opened the door and ushered the other two women into the inviting coolness inside.
The same sounds and smells that normally filled her working hours filled her senses, but everything seemed slightly different. At first, she thought it was just because she was entering the shop as a customer instead of from the other side of the counter, but then she realized it was because she recognized several of the patrons.
And they worked for ICS.
Surreptitiously glancing around, she guessed that every person in the room worked for ICS or some government agency: the business men typing on their phones, the young women chattering near the front window, the college students bobbing their heads to ear-bud music while taking notes from massive textbooks.
Pretending like she hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary, Emily stepped to the counter with the others.
Someone tall turned from fiddling with the espresso machine and said in a lackadaisical, but friendly voice, “Hey, welcome to Sunrise Coffee! I’m Josh and, like, what can I get going for you guys today?”
Emily had to pinch the back of her own hand to keep her reaction in line.
Brent had a large quantity of bleached blond hair sticking out shaggily from under a brightly striped beanie
Looks warm. He must not be from around here, originally. His disguises are all winter-wear!
He wore enormous, black-rimmed nerd glasses, ratty jeans, and a faded black t-shirt with the name of some band Emily had never heard of.
She bit her lip, realizing this was a gamble since Mrs. Malachi had seen him the day before at the gala.
It’s also a huge risk because BRENT HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE’S DOING WHEN IT COMES TO COFFEE!
She stuffed down her nervousness, and told herself she would just have to look away when he started trying to use her beloved espresso machine. Luckily, Mrs. Malachi never looked Brent/Josh in the face long enough to identify him. She seemed a little disconcerted by his grungy aesthetic.
He joked and chatted with the three of them in a very Brent-like fashion while still keeping the voice and persona of Josh. He even acted slightly enamored with Nadia.
What guy wouldn’t? As long as they didn’t know she was a super scary Russian spy, that is!
“So I, like, have this little tradition of drawing custom napkin art for customers. Can I do some for you guys?” Brent/Josh asked.
Emily agreed enthusiastically on their behalf, guessing Brent had a reason.
He juggled making their drinks and the napkin art, his work hidden by the baked goods display case. After a few minutes, the door of the coffee shop opened again and Emily turned to see Gregory Malachi enter.
“Be right with you!” Brent/Josh called cheerfully.
“Oh, he’s with us,” Mrs. Malachi said, accepting her drink from him. Brent added the Gremlin’s drink to the order and bustled around finishing it and the napkin art. With a flourish, he handed a napkin to each person.
Mrs. Malachi’s napkin was decorated with a sunflower, Nadia’s with a heart filled with scrolling designs, the Gremlin’s with a sailboat, and Emily’s with something that made her heart start to thud.
It was a cabin with smoke curling out of the chimney.
That was what he drew when making contact with Dr. Novak.
She met his gaze briefly as they made their way to a nearby table.
He winked.
Emily sat across from Nadia and scooted her chair in close. Placing her napkin in her lap and feeling grateful it was good manners to do so, she unfolded it with as little movement as possible. A quick glance at her lap showed Brent had written a message in an inner fold of the paper napkin and included a thin, plastic rectangle—some kind of device.
Chapter 14
THE NOTE IN HER LAP read: Sweetheart, ask the ladies if they want to come with you to the restroom. We need M out of the picture. Bump into G and transfer this device to suit jacket outer pocket.
If she hadn’t had a cover to maintain, she would have grinned at Brent’s understanding of the way
women and girls tended to visit restrooms in social flocks.
Looking up, she found everyone had just taken their first drinks of their coffees. Nadia studied her cup with a perplexed look, the Gremlin appeared resigned and maybe a little grumpy, and Mrs. Malachi looked thoughtful.
Emily groaned inwardly.
Brent! Why couldn’t someone else have been the barista? Someone who knows the difference between espresso and chai.
“This is very unusual,” Mrs. Malachi said. “But... I like it.”
“Oh—well, that’s great!” Emily said, trying not to sound as surprised and relieved as she felt. “Do either of you two ladies want to take a bathroom break?”
Nadia immediately shook her head, still staring at her alleged iced coffee. Mrs. Malachi scooted her chair back and said, “I’ll come along.”
Emily balled the napkin in one fist and palmed the small plastic device in the other. Jumping to her feet, she said, “Great!” far too cheerfully and then whirled, sending her chair tipping over backwards. Pretending her feet had tangled in the legs of the chair, she took a big, stumbling step and knocked against the Gremlin.
In the chaos, she slipped the device under the flap of his right jacket pocket and dropped it inside.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she shrieked over the flurry of movement and exclamations she’d caused around their little table. “Here I go again! I’m just—so—dreadfully—”
Gregory Malachi gave her a disgusted look and scooted his chair as far from her place at the table as possible, muttering unintelligible things the whole time. Nadia had steadied his coffee, her quick reflexes preventing it from spilling and soaking him. She now looked on with a superior expression.
She’s no doubt thinking something about all Americans being obnoxious klutzes.
Continuing to act flustered, Emily let Mrs. Malachi whisk her back to the restrooms.
“I’m so sorry,” she said to the woman, allowing herself to tear up. That part wasn’t much of an act.
I kind of hate my life as Amelia Rosenberg.
“I’m just ruining everything, aren’t I!” she sniffled. “I can’t believe that’s the second time I’ve crashed into your poor husband. Ugh. I just have the worst luck. I’m so embarrassed right now.” She put a hand to her head.
“Shh,” Mrs. Malachi said soothingly, patting her back.
Different voices began flowing through Emily’s earpiece, and she listened as hard as she could while keeping up the sniffling. She had to keep Mrs. Malachi occupied.
“Thumb-drive hacking underway,” said a young-sounding voice.
A few seconds later another voice reported in a whisper: “Kubarev has just shown Gremlin a wire transfer confirmation on her phone screen. The buy is going down.”
“How are we coming on that hacking, Sudo?” asked a voice Emily recognized as Santa.
“Nearly done, sir,” the young voice answered.
“Gremlin is reaching into his inner jacket pocket.”
“Steady.” Santa again.
Emily took a deep breath. Mrs. Malachi said something soothing, but she didn’t hear.
“Are we done with the hack?”
“It’s done, sir! All good!” The young hacker sounded excited.
“Gremlin has removed the thumb drive from his jacket pocket. He’s handing it to Kubarev.”
Emily waited, tense, expecting someone to give the order to swoop in and start making arrests, but the order never came.
“Kubarev is exiting the building.”
“This is Eagle. I have eyes on Kubarev.”
“Thank you Eagle; please report if she deviates course or doubles back.”
“Roger that, sir.”
Emily couldn’t believe what she was hearing. They were letting Nadia Kubarev just walk away with the top-secret plans they had been tasked with protecting?
She suddenly felt sick to her stomach.
What is going on?
“It’s all right, dear,” Mrs. Malachi was saying. “My husband may grumble and growl when he’s startled, but don’t worry about him.”
Emily pulled herself out of her focus on the earpiece transmissions and focused again on the kind woman in front of her and the fact she had a cover to maintain until told otherwise. “Thank you,” she gulped. “You’re ever so patient with me. Why have you friendship-adopted me even though I’ve been nothing but awkward and nearly knocked your husband to the ground twice now?”
Mrs. Malachi sighed and regarded herself in the mirror over the sink for a moment before turning back to Emily. “You remind me of myself at your age,” she said. “Fascinated by just about everything in the world around you, and looking to do something worthwhile and impactful. I lost that for a while due to lack of a support structure around me—friends who’d cheer me on—, but I feel as if Literary Starts is me getting back to my roots. I love that you’ve found your calling already and seem to be pursuing it with vigor. I know supportive friends would have made all the difference for me. Perhaps Literary Starts or something like it would have been founded much sooner.”
For a moment, Emily wished it was all true: that she really was Amelia Rosenberg, slightly pushy, klutzy children’s book reviewer from New York. That she was in need of supportive friends to propel her into making a difference in the world.
That Mrs. Malachi wasn’t about to find out very differently.
Her earpiece sprang to life again.
“North Pole, this is Eagle. Kubarev has not deviated course. You are in the clear.”
“Thank you Eagle,” Santa said. “Alpha team, report.”
Brent’s voice answered in a murmur. “Alpha team is go.”
“Beta team, report.”
“Beta team is go.”
“All teams, this is North Pole, you have the green light. Move in. Go, go, go!”
Chapter 15
EMILY HEARD RAISED voices both through the earpiece and—more muffled—through the door of the bathroom.
“Gracious! What’s going on?” Mrs. Malachi hurried toward the door and pulled it open before Emily could stop her.
Brent blocked the entrance to the short hallway leading to the restrooms. His back was to them, but his stance told Emily he held a gun—probably trained on the Gremlin.
At Mrs. Malachi’s gasp, he half-turned his head and made brief, warning eye-contact with Emily.
“Come on,” she whispered, pulling Mrs. Malachi against the wall.
Tension was thick in the air. A man whose voice she didn’t recognize shouted, “Interlace your fingers behind your head!”
“What’s going on?” Mrs. Malachi whispered, her face pale.
Emily hesitated, unsure what she should say.
But she ended up not having to explain anything. Gregory Malachi swore loudly. “You can’t do this to me! This is entrapment!”
“It would be if Nadia Kubarev was working for one of these fine agencies rather than the FSB,” Brent said, tight-lipped. “As it stands, you’ve just sold classified plans to a Russian spy of your own volition.”
“N—Nadia—Kubarev? But her last name is—” Mrs. Malachi whispered in confusion, and then blanched even further. “Oh my. He did what?”
Emily heard the distinct sound of handcuffs tightening as Mrs. Malachi pushed past Brent and stormed toward her husband.
“Gregory! What have you done?” she cried.
Emily tried to follow, thinking she should recall the woman into the hallway, but Brent put out a warning hand and stopped her.
The table at which they’d been sitting was pushed back, askew, and two of the chairs had been knocked over. The Gremlin knelt in a splatter of coffee, an angry grimace twisting his face, his hands cuffed behind his back.
“How could you?” Mrs. Malachi was both crying and shouting at her husband, seeming to alternate between disbelief and betrayal. “You didn’t care about the books at all—you set up a meeting with a Russian spy under the pretense of finally showing interest in Literar
y Starts—? And all so you could commit treason! Gregory Malachi—!” she railed on and on.
“Ouch,” Brent whispered.
One of the undercover agents guided her a step back as they hauled the man to his feet.
“Beta team, we’re coming to you,” one of the female undercovers said. The coffee shop quickly emptied out as the agents escorted Gremlin behind the counter and through the back.
“There’s an FBI van waiting out in the alley,” Brent told Emily, tucking his handgun into a holster hidden under the back of his t-shirt. He looked down at her and added. “You did really good.”
Two remaining agents stood nearby, speaking with Mrs. Malachi in low voices. She looked like she might be in shock, barely taking in what they were saying.
“And even the barista...” Mrs. Malachi said slowly, almost in wonder. “And—Amelia. Oh, you’re not really—”
Emily felt sadness creep through her despite Brent’s words of praise.
“Are you ready to come with us, Mrs. Malachi? We need to ask you a few questions and take a statement.”
The woman nodded distractedly.
When they’d gone, Brent pulled off his beanie with its fringe of fake hair. After a moment of silence, he rested a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “It’s not easy, I know.”
“She trusted me. She said I reminded her of herself. But it wasn’t true since Amelia isn’t real.”
“I heard the whole thing,” Brent said. “She wasn’t wrong about you, though, Emily. She thought she was talking to the book reviewer from New York, but I’d say everything she said was true about the real you.”
“That I’m fascinated by the world around me and looking to do something worthwhile and impactful?” Emily stared at the coffee splatter on the floor and frowned, doubtful.
“I’d say that describes you pretty well.”
Perhaps that’s why I’m so drawn to the crazy stuff Brent and ICS get me into.
She sighed. “Well, maybe you’re right. But this is still hard.”
“I know it is. To be honest, this is probably where I’m supposed to give you the speech about never getting emotionally invested in the people you encounter as a spy. I’m not going to give you that speech for two reasons. One, you’re not actually a spy and I doubt you’ll ever find yourself undercover again unless you plan to join Phoenix PD and work a task force. And two, I don’t think it’s realistic advice. Some missions, it’s easy to keep from getting invested, but there will always be one or two where it’s impossible not to. Believing that’s a failure only makes it harder to deal with the aftermath.”
Plan to Fail Page 6
