No Rest for the Wicked

Beneath the sea’s surface, I am at peace and everything is quiet. I wish I could stay down here forever where the hardest problems I have is telling the difference between the fish that swim near me and pruny skin. But my lungs need oxygen and it isn’t long before I swim up to the surface and breathe in sweet, fresh air. Above water, I’m greeted by the sounds of seagulls shrieking and children playing at the beach with their families. As I step out of the water, every noise comforts me as it means I’m on my first vacation in a very long time and not on some mission in a classified corner of the world.

I stretch out on my beach towel just as my phone rings. No image pops up. Only the words SECURE CALL appear. I groan as I click answer. So much for my vacation.

“Verification?” A robot voice on the other line asks.

“Beta Echo Niner 5736,” I reply with my verification code.

“Identity Verified,” the robot responds. “Patching you in.”

A moment later, “Benjamin, darling! How’s my favorite agent?” Octavia Grey’s voice comes to life on the other end. She’s using her sweet tone which no doubt means she needs a favor.

 “I’m on vacation,” I say, as if that’ll make a difference.

“There’s no rest for the wicked,” she says, by way of a reply.

“Isn’t the phrase, ‘There’s no rest for the weary’?” I interrupt her.

I can almost hear her shrug. “I’ve heard it both ways. I’ve got a job for you.”

“I’m on vacation,” I repeat. “Is a little rest and relaxation once in a while too much to ask for?”

Octavia continues speaking as if I haven’t said anything. “Some genius in admin assigned Brian Singer to the Medusa Eye case. Brian!” She repeats his name to punctuate her shock. “I am not about to lose sleep trying to clean up his mess when things inevitably go sideways because they always do if he’s on lead. We need you on the case.” There had been whispers about the Medusa Eye resurfacing before I’d went on vacation and I assumed it would stay just a whisper. I guessed wrong. The Medusa Eye is a portable computer virus a little bigger than a common usb. When connected, it’s capable of turning any technological device into stone much like the Medusa it’s named after. Well, not exactly stone, but close enough. I don’t know all of the specifics, but apparently it can wipe hard drives and fry a system so bad that it can never be used again. Our agency has been chomping at the bit to get word of the Medusa Eye’s whereabouts, retrieve it from whichever underworld scum has it, and put it in a vault where it can do no harm. If Brian’s on the case, I don’t doubt that he and who ever his partner is will eventually gain possession of the Eye but not before a few casualties and causing at least one world war in the process. Even so, that doesn’t mean it has to be my problem.

“You could send Cherish,” I offer.

“That’s a brilliant idea, Ben,” she says sarcastically. “Why didn’t I think of that?” She pauses to let the sarcasm sink in, before she continues, “Cherish is in Italy and before you ask, Michael is in Jakarta.” They were two of the best retrieval specialists we had. I hope she wasn’t expecting me to do this on my own.

“Before you say anything,” Octavia continued. “You won’t be in it alone. I’ve got a friend that’s come out of retirement to partner with you. Her name’s Jacqueline McKinley.”

I roll my eyes. “Not only are you disrupting my vacation, but you’re sending me a retiree to deal with. Do you hate me? Did I do something to offend you?”

“How quickly you’ve forgotten Reykjavík,” she adds pointedly.

“I had conveniently forgotten Reykjavík,” I say. “In fact, I thought we promised that we would never bring it up.”

She scoffed in response. “You owe me big time and now it’s time to pay up.” Though I haven’t actually agreed to the job, in her eyes, I’m as good as signed on. I hear a notification in my ear letting me know I’ve received an email. I only need one guess to know who it’s from.  

I pull the phone from my ear and scan the email quickly. The target is a Vincent Ford, 29, no picture. He’s a tech aficionado by the look of his file. He has multiple degrees in computer science and currently holds a position at a tech company. He’s going to sell the Eye at a nearby auction tomorrow night. That is, if we don’t take it from him first. I read through more of his file. I should be more worried about what will happen if the Eye gets in the wrong hands, but this is almost going to be too easy.

I tell Octavia, “I could do this in my sleep with one arm tied behind my back,” and she scoffs in response.

“Don’t be too cocky,” she warns. “Talk to your partner first and then get back to me.” I hear the clicking of her keyboard as she types something.

She chuckles to herself, and then says, “Speaking of your partner, she just messaged me. ‘Goodness gracious, O! This guy can’t be real. Dude came out the water looking like a god.’”

I scan the crowd around me, two things abundantly clear. One, my partner is within my vicinity. And two, Octavia sent her here without waiting for me to agree. I shouldn’t be surprised. “Where is she?” I ask, still assessing my surroundings

“Behind you,” a voice from right behind me says and I just about jump out of my skin. I turn around and there she is. How she managed to get so close to me without my noticing, I’ll never know. Sure, I’m on vacation and might be a little rusty, but dang, it’s a little embarrassing. She seems amused by my reaction and how many years she took off my life by scaring me. She’s wearing a floral one-piece with a matching sarong covering her lower half. Her hair is in Senegalese twists that reach down her back and she has a well-loved paperback book tucked under her arm. If I didn’t know any better I’d think she was on vacation, too.

“Call you back,” I tell Octavia and then hang up.

“You must be Jacqueline,” I say, holding my hand out to her. We’re going to be partners on this and even though she scared the life out of me, I want to start off on the right foot.

She looks at my hand, but instead of taking it, says, “Be honest. How many times did you rehearse that walk out of the water? You had to have tripped at least once. You’re lying if you haven’t tripped at least once.”

I stare at her wide-eyed, my hand still outstretched. “What?” is all I can muster out.

She chuckles and finally takes my hand and shakes it, “Don’t worry, I won’t judge. And the name’s Quinn, by the way. Octavia only calls me Jacqueline because she knows it annoys me. Now, is it Ben or Benji? I’m partial to Benji, but I’m not about tell a guy what he should call himself.” The words gush out of her and I stand there, trying to keep up with what she’s saying. When she pauses and looks at me expectantly, I realize she wants me to answer her.

“Ben’s fine,” I say.

 She nods, “Cool.” Then, she smiles and it’s so bright, it’s almost like looking into the sun. “You look like a Ben,” she says. “You exude a lot of Ben energy.” I don’t even know what that means. Who is this ball of energy in front of me and why did Octavia assign her as my partner? She knows I have high expectations for who I work with. Maybe she’s punishing me for something. “I like a day at the beach as much as the next person,” Quinn continues, looking around her, “but I have been waiting for you come of the water for a while. I even finished my book while I waited. ” She holds up her book as evidence. “But we have less than 48 hours and we should really get to work.” I follow her stream of consciousness until she gets to her point. She’s right. We’re going to need all of the time we’ve got.

Though Quinn definitely said we didn’t have much time, that doesn’t stop her from taking a nap as soon as we get to the beach house the agency rented for us. I fight the impulse to be annoyed. I can carry this mission on my own if I have to.

I take a seat at the island in the kitchen and pull up Octavia’s email on my laptop so I can read over it again. Looks like Vincent is staying at the Prince Hotel, a stone’s throw from the beach and the beach house where we’re staying. He’s not going to want go far with the Medusa Eye in his hands, so it’s likely that the auction will also take place at the Hotel. The best bet is to steal it from his room long before the auction happens. That is, of course, assuming that he is holding the Eye in his room. I groan, this would be a lot easier if I had someone to bounce ideas off of.

Again, I wonder why I was paired with Quinn in the first place. There has to be something in her file that will explain why Octavia chose her of all people.

Octavia didn’t attach Quinn’s file to the mission email. It would be the first time she’s forgotten to, but it’s not completely unheard of.

I call Octavia back. “Where’s Quinn’s file?” I ask as soon as she answers.

“Why do you need her file?” Octavia asks. “She under your skin already?”

“I just need to know who I’m working with,” I say and I leave it at that. She doesn’t need to know that I’m questioning the partnering and am hoping to find something in her file that justifies our being paired together.

Octavia is silent for a long while. Then she says, “Quinn has ghost status. Opening her files requires a level 14 security clearance which neither of us have, so whatever you want to know you’re going to need to ask her yourself.”

“W-what,” I stammer. “What’s a ghost doing on a mission like this?” I almost scream into the phone, but I do my best to keep my voice down since Quinn’s still napping.

Octavia’s voice is uncharacteristically patient. “It’s what she wanted. And I owe her one. So any of your burning questions, you got to go to her. You won’t hear it from me.” Then, she hangs up without any further explanation.

“Did you find out what you wanted to know about me?”

I almost leap out of my skin at her sudden appearance. God, she really is a ghost.

“You know I didn’t,” I say, turning to her. Her twists are in a low ponytail and she’s replaced her bathing suit for a Howl’s Moving Castle t-shirt and jeans. She is nothing I imagined when I think of someone with that type of clearance. I can hear the disbelief in my voice when I say, “Your file has a level 14 security clearance. Only presidents and foreign leaders can open it. Do you know the type of top level stuff you’ve got to do to get one of those?”

She shrugs her shoulders as she reaches for an apple on the counter. “Are you going to mansplain it to me?”

I had walked right into that one with that question. But still, none of this makes sense. “Level 14s don’t come out of retirement to go on a mission like this,” I say. “They don’t retire at all. Anyone that has one is still active. To have one and not be in the field, you’d have to be dead or dying.” I look at her, waiting for her to respond as she bites into her apple and doesn’t look at me. Then it hits me, the realization of what I just said. I am officially a terrible person that has just succeeded in sticking my entire foot in my mouth.  “Sorry,” I say, quickly. “I didn’t… Ignore me. I’m an idiot.”

She laughs as she takes another bite. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. And we both know you’re not an idiot, Mr. Top of Your Class.” Well, at least one of us was able to read the other’s file. “If you had just asked,” she said pointedly. “I would’ve told you. What do you want to know?”

I asked the first question I could think of. “Are you dying?”

“We’re all dying. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Why are you retired? Why did you come back for this mission? Octavia said it’s what you wanted.”

She considers me, setting her half-eaten apple on the table in front of her. “As an agent, if you’re anything, but at your very best, you get benched. That’s why I’m retired. I won’t bore you with the details, but yes, I’m sick and yes, I’m dying, but lucky for us and this mission, I’m not dead yet. As far as why this mission,” she shrugged her shoulders, searching for the words. “When you’ve been working as long as I have, you want one last mission, one last hurrah so you can end it in a blaze of glory. That’s why I’m here.” She looks at me expectantly, but I don’t know what she wants me to say. She clarifies by asking, “So what’s your story, Mr. Top of Your Class?”

I don’t know what more she wants me to tell her since she’s read my file. “I’m an open book,” I say. “There’s nothing more to the story than that.”

“You sure about that?” she asks and there’s something in her expression that I can’t read. I think nothing more about it as she picks up her apple again and continues eating it. She points at my open laptop, “You’ve got a plan for how we’re going to do this.”

I shake my head, “Not a one.”

“We could do ‘The Damsel,’” she suggests.

The Damsel is one of the most popular retrieval techniques in our playbook. It’s complicated and involves a blowtorch, pantyhose and a dozen reusable straws, but it’s effective and it’s probably our best bet to get the Medusa Eye.

We talk over the plan, looking at all the angles and everything that can go wrong. It’s mostly Quinn who is a fountain of ideas that spring forth from her unbidden and unhindered. It’s almost midnight before we finally iron out all the details. We say good night to each other, confident that our plan will go off without a hitch.

I’m back on the beach sitting on a towel looking up into a sky full of stars. It’s quiet and there’s a soft breeze that’s refreshing, but not too chilly.

Quinn fell asleep hours ago, but unsurprisingly, I’m still awake. Tonight’s the night. It’ll all come to an end tonight.

My phone rings and when I see who it is, I answer it. The male voice on the other end is strained. “Sir, where are you?”

I smile to myself. With as long as I’d been gone, I expected him to call much sooner. “I’m at the beach,” I say.

He lets out a choked sound that reminds me of a dog getting its tail stepped on. I hear him take a deep breath and his voice is steady when he says, “I don’t need to remind you how important this auction is. We have buyers coming in from all over the world, Vincent.”

I know he’s annoyed with me if he’s using my first name. “I’m well aware,” I say. “But I’ve hit a bit of snag.” My voice is light as I look up at the stars and trace the constellations with my finger.

“What kind of snag?”

“I’ve been put on the Medusa Eye case.”

He makes a sound that’s somewhere between a groan and a whimper. “I thought you were on vacation.”

“So did I.”

“Last time I checked, you can’t be in two places at once. You’ll never be able to auction the Eye off and play your agent role at the same time. Maybe we should call it off.”

“It’s too late for that. The only option is forward. Besides, Quinn McKinley needs her blaze of glory.”

“What?” His voice is strained once again. I bet he’s fighting every urge to track me down, so he can smack some sense into me.

“Nothing,” I say. “We move forward as planned. “Don’t worry, it’s going to be fun.”

I think I hear crying just as I hang up.

The stars wink at me as I lean back into the sand. I’m not a fool. While I’m confident in my talents, a few hours with Quinn and I know I’m no match for her. That doesn’t mean I won’t put up a fight, though. That doesn’t mean I won’t give it everything I’ve got. For the first time, there’s a challenge in front of me, an opponent I won’t be able to easily beat and the prospect invigorates me in ways that I did not think possible. Vacation time is over. No rest for the wicked. It’s time to get to work.