13. Trash Talk
CHAPTER 13
TRASH TALK
ZOE
“ Y
ou should see the CSA safe house in Zurich ,” Ledger says. “ It has a wine cellar. There isn’t actually wine in it, but it’s there.”
“ Oh yeah?” I say. “ We’ve got a rooftop garden at the CIA’s safe house in Paris . Well , it’s mostly roof access with a couple of potted plants, but a garden nonetheless.”
“ How is that ‘safe’?”
We are still comparing safe houses when we get to the fudbal field to stake out Mila’s dead drop. Which is worlds better than discussing the one bed back at our hotel room.
“ Our safe house in Sydney might as well be a vacation home,” Ledger says. “ It even has an ocean view.”
“ It wouldn’t stand up to the CIA’s in Tokyo . That place has a jetted tub big enough for two.”
We are sitting in our car that’s in the parking lot of a restaurant next to the fudbal field. The lot is mostly bordered by trees, but there’s a gap in the trees that gives us a view of the side of the field’s restrooms with the doors.
Even if the hotel manager hadn’t told us that the festival started today, we’d know it, even though we aren’t even near the Waterfront . The streets are so much busier, and there’s a celebratory vibe running through the city itself. Yesterday , there weren’t many people at the fudbal field, but today, they barely all fit on the sidelines.
“ She’s going in,” I say, and we watch as Mila walks into the restroom holding her niece’s hand, a bag slung over one shoulder. Two other people go in after her and then come back out before Mila and her niece exit. When she walks back through the door, she glances around, trying to act like she’s not being suspicious and failing miserably, but she never even looks in our direction. She does give a subtle thumbs-up, though, even though it’s obvious she doesn’t know which direction to aim it for us to see.
One of the hardest parts of intelligence gathering is the waiting. Especially when what you need is so close. But if any of the parents of Mila’s nephew’s teammates saw us talking with Mila on the sidelines yesterday, and then saw us go into the restrooms right after she went in, it would look mighty suspect. So we wait.
Fifteen minutes go by, and we are both itching to get out of the car and go retrieve the list when a guy who had walked into the men’s restroom comes out carrying a big garbage bag tied at the top. He sets it against the wall of the building and heads for the women’s restroom.
Ledger and I both hurry out of the car and race over to catch the man before he goes into the women’ s restroom and also removes the garbage bag containing our list. As we near him, Ledger calls out, “ Wait !” The man stops in his tracks and turns to look at us.
“ Will you give us a minute before emptying the garbage in the women’s restroom?” I ask him. “ I think I threw away my retainer in that garbage.” My retainer? I’m an intelligence operative highly trained in the art of deception and very practiced in coming up with lies on the fly, and I say that I lost my retainer?
Maybe it was because when I was in ninth grade, my friend Naty and I raced after the school janitor when she’d taken out her retainer to eat lunch, then left it on her lunch tray when she dumped its contents in the trash. But I’m not a teenager and this is a restroom, not a lunchroom.
The man says something to us in Serbian that I’m pretty sure means “ I have no idea what in the world you are saying,” which, in this instance, I’m grateful for.
Ledger pulls out his phone, I’m sure to bring up a translation app so he can explain to the man that he can take the garbage from the men’s side, but we need to search the garbage on the women’s side first. I don’t waste any time going inside the women’s restroom to find that list while the two of them chat outside of it.
The place has a vague prison cell feel to it with its cinderblock walls, cracked cement floors, a single fluorescent bulb, and a questionable-looking puddle of water near one corner. The stall partitions have seen better days, too.
The mostly-full garbage bin is three feet tall and stands next to one of two cracked sinks. Knowing that Mila would be leaving the list in the garbage, we thankfully brought disposable gloves. I put mine on and start moving the top few used tissues and paper towels aside, looking for a paper that might have a list. I assume she would’ve crumpled it up.
Ninety seconds later, Ledger walks in, holding a garbage liner, and looks around. “ I’ve been in prison cells cozier than this.”
I smile.
“ The man outside says he’s got other things to do. If we want to search the garbage, we’ll need to take it out when we’re done.” Then he starts helping me search. “ Find any lost retainers yet?”
I throw him a look, and he says, “ What ? You might not be the only one who accidentally threw theirs away.”
We search for a minute, but the bin isn’t too wide, so we can’t search deep down very easily. We pour the bin’s contents onto the floor, sorting through everything quickly because we’ve seen how often this restroom is used.
We are both crouched on the floor, grabbing pieces of trash and moving them aside as we confirm each item is not the list, when an older woman walks in with a young child. I am opening my mouth to explain what we are doing and why Ledger is in the women’s restroom with me. Lost contact lens? Research project? Public health study? Environmental audit? Something way better than my retainer story. But the woman already has her hands on the kid’s shoulders, steering him in a wide arc around us, looking like she very much does not want to know the details. So we just keep working.
We’ve found plenty of used paper towels, some empty plastic bottles, wrappers from snacks, soda cans, wet wipes, a dozen bandages, which feels like a lot but I’m guessing is par for a restroom at a sports field, a couple of receipts, three dirty diapers, and four empty coffee cups. But zero lists. Zero writing of any kind that isn’t on a printed package.
The woman comes out of the stall with the child, looks toward the sinks, then must decide that going around us to get to them is a more questionable action than walking out with dirty hands, and they scurry to the door.
“ Mila came in,” I say. “ She gave us the thumbs-up when she left. It has to be here.” Ledger and I look at each other without saying a word for a long moment. Then , almost simultaneously, both of our eyes go to the diapers.
“ No ,” Ledger says. “ It can’t be in one of those.”
“ Well , you did tell her to hide it well so no one else would see it.”
He groans.
We scoop all the garbage except for the three diapers back into the bin and stand it back upright. Then we take the diapers to the pull-down changing station on the wall.
“ Which one should we start with?”
Ledger bites his lip, looking less comfortable with opening used diapers than he was with cradling a baby doll. Understandable , yet still makes my mind go right back to picturing him acting all dad-like. Then he points at one. “ That one’s it.”
“ All right. Let’s do this.” I open the first one, and we immediately turn away, gagging. How can opening the diaper release so much more smell? It is a very foul diaper, but there is no hint of a list.
A woman in her thirties walks in and her eyes immediately land on me and Ledger as we stand at a changing station with no kid to change in sight, looking at a dirty diaper. Her steps halt a bit.
“ I’m sorry I’m in the women’s restroom,” Ledger says. “ But our toddler swallowed my wife’s wedding ring. We forgot to tell the sitter, and she said she changed his diaper here.”
That’s a decent story. Way better than a retainer. Whether the woman speaks English or not, we had to give an explanation and hope for the best. Luckily , she both speaks English and has kids and therefore apparently understands.
“ Oh , I know that feeling all too well,” the woman says, her accent thick. “ My son swallowed one of those little Lego people once. Doc told me to watch his poop for it. It took a week of searching through every dirty diaper before it showed up!”
She goes into one of the stalls, and Ledger and I look at each other with wide eyes. In a quiet voice, he says, “ I’m glad we aren’t looking for something that small,” and wraps the diaper back up. “ You pick next.”
So I do, and he opens this one. It’s just wet, thank heavens, but it also doesn’t contain a list. I grab the last one and open it. Unfortunately , it is not just wet. And it packs its own pungent smell. But sitting right on top of the poop is a list inside a sandwich-sized Ziploc bag. We both let out a breath that is half relief, half shuddering.
Ledger carefully pulls apart the bag’s seal. I pull off one of my latex gloves, turning it inside out as I do, and reach with two clean fingers inside the bag to pull out the list just as we hear a toilet flush. I push it into my pocket without looking at it first, and Ledger is wrapping the diaper back up when the woman comes out of her stall.
“ Did you find it?”
“ No ,” Ledger says with a sigh. “ I guess we have more searching in our future.”
“ Good luck! There’s nothing quite like parenting, is there?”
I have no idea how parents do it.
We both throw our gloves and the diapers into the trash, tie it up, put in the new liner, and wash our hands. Ledger grabs the trash bag and we both head outside, him heading straight toward the Dumpster at the opposite edge of the field. He passes by a group of kids who all look about ten or so and probably have younger siblings on the field. They are playing something that looks like hacky sack, but with a soccer ball.
I want to pull the list out of my pocket and see if any of the names on it are familiar to me. I won’t do that out here, in the open, but I am dying to get somewhere secure so that we can get this list to our tech ops and start researching the names. Then we can come up with a plan of who to impersonate and how to keep them from coming into town early. I glance toward the area where we met Mila yesterday, curious to see if I can spot her. But there are too many people to see.
I glance back in the direction of the Dumpster , since Ledger should’ve made it back to me by now, and see that he’s playing with the kids! He’s bouncing a ball on his knees, his ankles, and his head, and bouncing it back and forth between him and them. I am instantly fuming. We don’t have time for this!
We are in the middle of a mission, and I , for one, care about that mission. For a lot of reasons. Not only is it important in the grand scheme of things, but I want to report good things back to Sully . Not only is he my director, but since I’m the top operative, he’s quite often my case officer. He’s also the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father. So it matters to me that I impress him. And that I keep being the top operative.
I walk halfway over to Ledger and stand with my hands on my hips in a place where he has to see me. It takes a full minute of him bouncing the ball from his knee to his opposite ankle to his other knee to his head then to another kid before his eyes fall on me. He gives each of the half-dozen or so kids a high-five before he walks over to me.
We turn and start walking back toward the restrooms. When we get around to the backside, where there are no people, I hiss, “ What are you doing?”
“ Hey ,” he says, stopping, so I stop, too. “ I didn’t get to play hurling in Ireland , yet you got cheese in both locations. Let me connect with Belgrade !”
“ Focus ,” I say. “ We’ve got a mission going on here! And not just a mission in general— we’ve got a specific piece of intel that we need to get passed along ASAP .”
“ It doesn’t need to get passed along so urgently that I can’t take five minutes to play with some kids.”
“ If we don’t place that tracker, we won’t find that team, so they’ll get the fortune, and they’ll do very bad things with it. Lives are at stake. I know you don’t take your job seriously, Ledger , but I do. ”
The muscles in his jaw flex. He does not like me insinuating that he’s slacking in any way. “ I know you do. You’d sell out your own child for a successful mission.”
I narrow my eyes at him and study him for a moment. “ You aren’t still mad about that mission in Moldova , are you?”
“ Oh , you mean the one where you sold me out?”
“ I didn’t ‘sell you out.’ I just took the win. You would’ve done the same thing if I had been the one sleeping when the scientist showed up with that case.”
His gaze burns into me for a painfully long moment. I’m waiting for him to fight back. To argue. But then, he simply asks, “ Would I have?”
Then he turns and walks back to the car, leaving me rooted to the ground, completely bewildered. His question, the way he asked it, that look on his face— it all feels enormous. Too much to process.
He would have done the same thing I did, right? That had been his entire goal and what he’d been working toward while we’d been in that hovel in the forest. The reason why he got close to me. The reason we cozied up together for three days, swapping stories about our pasts.
Right ?
I watch his backside until it disappears behind the trees and shrubs, then I hear a car door open and close. I can’t seem to get my feet to move. I don’t know what to do with this information. Is it possible that I’ve been so wrong about him all this time?
This is too big. It’s more than I can take in.