“Hey, can’t blame me for asking. So I think the first thing we need to do is make sure Duncan is okay with the two bad guys he’s guarding,” I say. “Do you have any more of those needles? We could give Duncan some help by drugging the hostiles.”
I’m talking to her like I trust her, but the only thing I trust completely about her is that she’s an agent of some government. Only an operative could calmly eat M&Ms—a handful of which she just grabbed from a bowl on the registrar’s desk—while discussing how to neutralize possible Ukrainian rebels/terrorists/arms dealers.
“I told you I’m already running low,” she says, “and with two more to take out, we probably should conserve it. How did you take them down in the first place?”
“With a sleeper hold.”
“Well, we’ll just run down there and you can put another one on them. That should tide Duncan over awhile.”
Is it just wrong that it makes me all kinds of happy to hear Katie talk about applying choke holds to bad guys as though she’s listing errands we need to run? Like, Oh, and let’s grab a bag of Funyuns from the 7-Eleven. At least until I remember why I’ve heard of the drug she used to knock out Marchuk.
“Wait a second. Isn’t carfentanil the stuff the Russian police used back in the day, to smoke out some Chechen rebels when—”
“Someone paid attention during hostage-crisis mitigation class at Langley, I see. Want some?” she asks, holding the bowl of M&Ms out toward me before grabbing another handful for herself. “I am so hungry. And we just had lunch, too. Dealing with that groundskeeper really took it out of me.”
She’s noshing while I’m over here worried the government she works for is enemy number one. “Uh, no thanks. About the carfentanil?”
“Don’t worry, Peter. I didn’t use that much of the drug. And I’m not KGB.”
I’m glad she didn’t call it by the current name—FSB. Probably everyone but actual Russian agents still call it KGB, so that’s a good sign. Still, Katie may not be Russian, but Ukraine is just next door.
She polishes off the M&Ms while I help myself to a Sharpie from Jonesy’s pencil cup because I can always find a use for a Sharpie and duct tape. He had a roll of it on his desk before lunch, but now it’s gone. I grab the switchblade off the desk and follow her. As we make our way toward my chem class, I remember what Koval said about the girl with all the accents. I know now that he meant the hacker, but it does raise a question.
“So is that really a British accent you’re working, or just a cover?”
“It’s an English accent.”
“Same thing.”
“How very American of you. British means I could be from Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland. I’d think a CIA operative would know that. And yes, my English accent is real,” she says as we pause at the end of Corridor A so I can use my periscope to check around the corner. Koval may be roaming around, moving those packages Katie claims to know nothing about. She adds, “I suppose I can tell you who I work for, since you told me.”
I don’t mention that I didn’t tell her I work for the CIA. Marchuk did. I mean, she’s Katie and everything, but I wouldn’t have given up that information so quickly. Well, I was going to before, but that was when I thought I was about to die.
“If you’re English, I’m guessing you work for MI5?”
“That’s our version of the FBI,” she explains without missing a beat. “I work for the Secret Intelligence Service. MI6.”
“I always get those two mixed up. You guys could stand to add a little creativity to your agency naming. No one’s mixing up CIA and FBI,” I say, but in truth, I know the difference.
I’m just glad she does, too.
“So, what’s an MI6 operative doing at Carlisle?”
“You know how it works, Peter. Tit for tat. You told me who you work for, I told you, and that’s all you get. Unless…”
“No way am I telling you why I’m here. For all I know, you still haven’t told me the truth about which government you’re from,” I say as we reach the chem lab.
I knock lightly on the door and look through the window. For the second time today, or the second time ever, Duncan looks relieved to see me. When he comes over to unlock the door, his look of relief turns to surprise.
“Why is she with you?” he asks when he lets us in. Even under these circumstances, I can tell Duncan is miffed. He, like practically every other guy at Carlisle, has a crush on Katie. Unlike every other guy at Carlisle, he actually had the nerve to ask her out and got rejected. It was probably the funniest of the many funny stories Katie told me on our one date. Now it makes me wonder if she’s funny for real, or just as a cover.
“Oh, Peter rescued me,” she says before I can respond.
She wants to keep her cover, so that was probably the hardest lie she had to tell. I’m pretty sure Katie doesn’t need any rescuing, and would hate admitting it if she ever did.
“He didn’t do the greatest job of it. What happened to your face?”
“Oh, but he did, and it’s an amazing story. I’ll have to tell everyone about it one day when we have more time, but that isn’t today. Right, Peter? Tell Duke how we have to go, now that we know everything is okay in here.”
“Go? Go where?” Duncan asks. “The whole time I’ve been terrif—terrifically concerned that these guys would wake up any minute.”
“The way Bunk and I tied them up, they’re no threat even if they come to,” I tell him, but I see it’s no help. Though he didn’t quite admit it, I can see in his face that he really is terrified. I try to boost his confidence. “Great job on the New York accent, by the way. I was actually worried it was the hostile.”
Duncan still looks “concerned.” Rather than try to convince him otherwise, I kneel down next to the hostile who’d gotten the choke hold earlier and land a hard blow to his head. That gets a gasp out of Katie, who is really selling the damsel-in-distress bit. It’s quite the performance, which means I shouldn’t trust her farther than I can throw her. That will be hard to do when every night she’s been the last thing I think about before I fall asleep, ever since the day I met her.
She hears a sound in the corner and turns to find Maitland, still tied up but conscious.
“Our World Geo teacher is one of them?” she asks.
“No, he’s just collateral damage,” Duncan says, mimicking what I told him earlier, I guess in an attempt to impress Katie. “But just in case, I taped his mouth when he came to. I wasn’t sure if I should knock him out like Peter just did to that guy. I mean, he is our teacher, as far as we know.” This last sentence sounds more like a question than a statement.
“That’s right, Duncan. As far as we know,” I assure him.
Though I didn’t confirm it when he asked who I really am, Duncan is by now convinced I’m not just the nerd-boy he got a kick out of tormenting for the last eight weeks, and he’s acting like we’re now on the same team. And I guess we are. We all are, really. Everyone in the school.
“But now we have to go,” Katie says, a little too urgently. Apparently she’s forgotten the role she’s been playing.
“Go where? You can’t stay, Smith?” Duncan says, also forgetting his big-man act and sounding a little scared.
“We’ve—I took down two other hostiles, which I think leaves two more,” I explain. “I need to find and neutralize them before we can figure out how to get out of here.”
“Shouldn’t Katie stay here, where it’s safer?” Duncan says, turning to Katie. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”
Uh oh. He probably shouldn’t have said that. I step in before Katie can go ballistic.
“Duncan, I think she’ll just feel more comfortable staying with me. Isn’t that right, Katie?”
Fortunately for Duncan, I’m able to keep her response limited to a serious eye-roll.
As we head for the door, Duncan says, “Wait. What about the other one? Aren’t you going to punch him, too?”
“The first hit I gave that guy will keep him out for hours. Another one might kill him.”
Duncan looks satisfied, or as satisfied as a kid can be whose biggest worry this morning was not failing the German midterm. He wishes us luck before he locks the door behind us.
CHAPTER 21