hacked in and opened it back up a wee smidge ahead of time. And a tad faster than usual. Oh c’mon. Over-sensitive much?” Leo lifted his wings in frustration and waddled away. “The rest was math. Spring tide plus full moon times cubic meters.”
“Are you saying -“ Jane was thinking back, rapidly. “This whole thing was fake?”
“Fake, no,” Jen said. “Hollywood?” She nodded vigorously. “But then the war on terror is Hollywood, the war on drugs, the financial crisis. All carefully scripted and stage-managed. This whole day is pure Hollywood. Prince meets peasant girl and so forth. We just hitched a ride. And speaking of hitching a ride -” She looked over their heads.
Everybody turned around. Behind them a Silver Birch DB5 Aston Martin had just purred to a halt. The Bond of the moment stepped out and eyed Jane and Angela with wolfish charm. “Who’s driving?”
When nobody moved, Vinnie raised his hand. Bond guy tossed him the keys, put his hands in his tuxedo pockets, and strolled rakishly away.
“So that’s your getaway, Big Guy,” Jen said. “They need the car in the Scottish Highlands by Monday. There’s a castle along the way that’s got your name on it. Happy honeymoon from all of us.”
The door on one of the airstream trailers flew open and all of Jane’s old crew bubbled out - Wallis, Wendy, Wanda, Willa, and of course Whitney. For one surreal moment it seemed as though the world had been bombed with party supplies. Mostly pink and white. Balloons, confetti, a fluffy stuffed lamb, a banner, a cake.
“Oh. No.” Jane’s tone was one of foreboding.
Angela put an apologetic arm around her. “Oh, yes.”
Whitney stuck a bright fuchsia bow on Jane’s head. “We expect you to take it like a man, Marine. And, in case you didn’t know, Louis Vuitton does make a diaper bag.” Jane groaned in resignation and allowed herself to be led away. In cultural chains.
Leo reappeared, in his chauffer’s uniform again, having returned the duck suit to wardrobe. Wordlessly, he passed a cigar case to those who remained - John, Vinnie, Jen. Took the last stogie for himself. They settled back, lounging against the Aston Martin in a rag-tag row, listening as the ritual babble of the baby shower drifted out the open trailer door to mingle with the methodical sounds of the movie being made behind them - “Quiet on the set! Scene 42, take 2. Action!”
“So - how goes the hunt for Red October? Where are we with the sub?” Jen asked, rolling the cigar between thumb and forefinger.
“They’ll be done filming the underwater scenes in about an hour,” Leo said. “Then it’s back to Syria by way of Cyprus. We can drop you in Piraeus,” he told John, extending a cigar cutter. “Guillotine?”
“Much obliged,” John said. He clipped the head off his cigar and passed the cutter to Vinnie. “Somebody punch me. I just realized, I’m going to be my father.”
“Props man, and congrats,” Vinnie said, handing the cutter off to Jen. “You got one past the goalie!”
A company of Ghurkas came marching around the corner, marched past the Aston Martin, marched down the incline to the boat ramp. Upon reaching the duck boat, the phalanx split into two, separating to right and left, and fanned out in both directions along the riverbank. About this time Jane appeared in the airstream doorway, wearing a pink bib and mouthing the word, “Help!” Ruthless feminine hands dragged her back into baby shower hell. John, Vinnie, Leo, and Jen stood motionless, taking it all in.
“You know,” John mused, after it was clear the soldiers were going to ignore the boat - and those standing near it - and continue on their goose-stepping way, “I have no fucking idea how this is going to turn out.”
Jen peered at John through the round hole of the ‘guillotine’. “Stupid kills. Evil kills. A lot of innocent people are going to suffer and die.” She grinned mirthlessly. “Same old, same old. See Greece.”
“You get married and you think ‘we’ll buy a house, we’ll get a dog, we’ll have children’,” John continued, speaking around the cigar he was trying to light.
“Greece, Russia,” Leo pocketed the ‘guillotine.’ “Things are pretty much the same all over. Corruption, inequality. In Russia we are nostalgic for Stalin, which should tell you something. We quote Chekov so much, is a bad joke.” He paused to light and draw on his cigar, “’All we can do is live.’”
“Dum vivimus vivamus,” John nodded. “While we live, let us live.”
“Hold that thought,” Vinnie interrupted, holding out his phone, which had just stopped beeping. “John and Jane Brown, alias John and Jane Doe, alias John and Jane Smith, alive and well, and now playing at number one on the President’s personal kill list. Check it,” he insisted. “Top of the Pops, ahead of Julian Assange AND Osama bin Laden.”
Leo whistled noiselessly. “Go big or go home.”
Into the thoughtful silence that ensued came Jane. She slipped out of the trailer, shutting the door stealthily behind her. She vaulted down the stairs and ran for cover behind the Aston Martin, peering back at the airstream chamber of horrors with revulsion.
“We’re playing hide-and-seek.” She narrowed her grey-green eyes like a cat watching birds through a window. “I hate hide-and-seek.”
“They’ve been looking for him for ten years, right?” John said to Vinnie. “And the price on his head is fifty million?”
“With or without turban,” Vinnie agreed.
“And they got bupkis,” John shrugged.
“Looking for - ?“ Jane searched from face to face.
Jen mumbled something about getting the duck boat back to the props department safe and sound. She started backing toward the vehicle, talking fast.
“I mean, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack, right? I mean, yeah, they have the tools to do that, but we’ll be running up their asses any minute now. We’re in like Flynn at MI6 already. Talk about totally pwned. We’ve already got” - she checked her phone - “three servers, four logins, and a partridge in a pear tree. And if things get too dicey,” she said, from the back of the boat, “you know what? We’ll get a bunch of the old gang together - SEALS and shit? And we’ll fake a raid. Pretend to kill you all over again. Film the whole thing, tell everybody we threw you into the ocean for - I dunno - some fucking reason or other, and bingo! You’re home free.” She disappeared into the duck boat and started the engine. The boat began to roll backward, away from the river, past the Aston Martin, up the cobblestone road toward St. Paul’s.
“Oh yeah, that’ll work,” John said.
“About like faking a moon landing,” Vinnie agreed.
“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Demille,” Leo mocked.
Jane was a little more thoughtful. “To be fair, we usually pretend we don’t kill people. Would it be that much of a stretch to pretend we did?”
That was the moment Angela chose to flutter trippingly down the trailer steps - one hand holding her billowing skirt aloft, the other crooked around a pink cardboard barrel of the sort found at cinema concession stands - trilling as she came, “Popcorn! Fresh-popped, buttered popcorn! Get it while it’s hot!”
After - If I Didn’t Care
June 2011. Exarchia, Greece. The bar was closed again - the Kypos Tis Kalashnikof. A noticeably pregnant Jane was seated at the same table as before with a cup of coffee procured from the enterprising Nigerian again. Shades on. Booted feet stuck out in front of her, ankles crossed again. The Peroxide Kid was also there, sitting beside her. And the tatted couple was still dancing on the balcony across the street. This time to “If I Didn’t Care.”
“Another day, another riot,” the Kid said. His face was chalk white with Maalox, a tear gas antidote.
“This one seems to be going well,” Jane observed. Her face was slathered with Maalox too. Another difference was that the police were keeping their distance this time. Whereas the people were holding their ground and giving as good as they got.
“Mmm,?
?? the Kid agreed. “We got lucky in the draft this round. Look who we signed.” He glanced toward the edge of the neighborhood where John, in swimmer’s goggles and a bandana, and the Riot Dog, in bandana only, were chasing down tear gas canisters and returning them to their point of origin with a cricket bat.
“Who’s a good dog?” John could be heard saying, above the singing and chanting of the protesters. Crack! went the cricket bat. “Attaboy!” Loukanikos raced to corner another canister, which John picked up with a fireproof kitchen mitt and popped right back toward the police line. The crowd went wild.
“Yeah, but we’re kinda out of our league?” Jane retorted. She began to count the ways. “They’ve got IMF guy in the slammer on rape charges, the banksters are passing off the heist of the century as sovereign debt, Bin Laden and the war against the war on terror are dead, and I’m not feeling so good myself.”
“Moneyball,” the Kid demurred, flatly.
“Moneyball,” Jane repeated, with zero comprehension.
“Rich teams vs. poor teams. It’s an unfair game and we’re going to change it. Thanks to whistleblowers and hackers and Wikileaks and crusading journalists and insiders like you who are willing to take a chance and make a stand.” Jane rolled her eyes, but the Kid persisted. “Even if we didn’t have a back door into all the evil they plan to do - think about it. They may be loaded, but we’ve got