My Dad is a Secret Agent

By James Comins

Behind a hidden door in the principal's office lies a hidden training facility for secret agents. Today, grumpy old Mr. Nickers calls eighth grader Johnny Clue down to the principal's office. But Johnny's not in trouble--yet. Through the secret door, Johnny meets Jericha White, the top secret agent-in-training in Bethesda. She doesn't work for the CIA, though, nor the FBI. Jericha and Johnny begin a mission: rescuing Johnny's father from Russia. But as they start seeing the true purpose of the black ops facility, the darkness of having to do what you're told starts to overtake them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Comins
• Release date: Jan 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311098726

James Comins

James Comins is the author of Fool School and Fool Askew, formerly available from Wayward Ink, "Notes Found Inside the Body of the Convict Clarence Skaggs," published in CrimeSpree Magazine #48, and other stories. He currently lives in New Orleans.

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MY DAD IS A SECRET AGENT

by James Comins

Published on Smashwords

Copyright 2014 James Comins

Cover image public domain by Karen Arnold and 4vector

Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book is the sole property of the author. It may be excerpted or reproduced for non-commercial purposes. Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, places, events or locales is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Epilogue

Acknowlogies and Apoledgements

About the Author

Part I

Chapter One

It started like this. I was in bio class at Edward Teller Middle School when Mr. Stackpole got a call on the chunky wall phone and told me I'd been called down to the principal's office. I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, because I'm not that kind of kid. So what was going on? Had something happened to my brother, who was going weird? Or were my parents in the hospital? That's the kind of thing that honor roll kids like me get called down to the principal's office for.

I leaned my knapsack against the leg of my desk and hoofed it to the front hall.

Ahead of me, the principal's door was shut. Standing on tiptoe, I could see the bald fat head of Mr. Nickers as a pink smudge through the narrow frosted window. He's a lumpy crabby old man, but the guys I know who do get in trouble say he's usually fair and doesn't hand out too many detentions. Everyone has at least one friend who gets into trouble. I knocked.

Come in.

I'm always afraid to open the principal's door, even if he says it's okay. There's never anything good in there.

Ah, John, Mr. Nickers said.

Johnny, I replied. That's my name. Not John, Johnny.

Sit down, Johnny.

I sat. A Felix the Cat clock wagged its tail and eyes.

Johnny, do you know what your dad does for a living? the principal asked.

That was actually a tough question. My dad's an odd duck. I'm never really sure about him. Whenever I ask my dad how his day at work was, he checks the windows, looks over each shoulder, and says, Who put you up to this? like I'd done something wrong just by asking. Totally paranoid. He never tells me anything.

Dunno, I said finally, swinging my legs under the chair in time with the clock. Did something happen to him?

Mr. Nickers rose and shut the door, glanced through the frosted window, and sat back down. The room was a few degrees colder than I like, and it smelled of stinky old man.

Johnny, normally I wouldn't tell you this, the principal said, steepling his fingers on the desk beside a plastic pencil sharpener and a vase with a tuft of plastic flowers sticking out, "but your father's in a situation. I'm not really equipped to tell you about it, but there's someone I need you to meet. Rocketry thinks it's important."

Rocketry thinks it's important? What did that mean?

In back of Mr. Nickers' office was a steel cabinet, the flat kind they have in the school metal shop. It was pale textured green, with steel handles and a round lock and a red logo. Mr. Nickers took out a cylindrical key and unlocked it.

I was expecting stacks of paper, or maybe a tablet computer locked away so scrubby kids didn't steal it when the principal went to the bathroom, but there was nothing inside the cabinet at all. Instead, when the two squeaking green doors opened, I saw a low passageway leading to another room. A faint humming came from within, but you couldn't hear it until the doors were open.

Follow me.

The principal ducked and stepped through the low portal. I followed.

Dark. Inside, a single triangle of light came through from the principal's office behind me. I stepped aside, so more light would come through. As my eyes adjusted, banks of really old computers revealed themselves; they were the source of the humming. Metal wheels like old movie cameras spun. Rolls of ticker tape spat out numbers, making chik-chik-chik sounds as the paper unrolled into huge white rats' nests on the floor. Panels of faint lights switched off and on in four plasticky colors. It looked like the bridge of Captain Kirk's old-fashioned Enterprise.

Johnny, this facility was built in the seventies to be a training facility for the children of secret agents. We've been monitoring you and your classmates, looking for signs of exceptional skill in languages, physical abilities and, above all, the capacity for keeping secrets, the principal said.

You've been monitoring me? I replied, feeling cautiously excited. Do I have exceptional skills?

The children of secret agents--was my dad a spy? Were they really going to make me a spy, too? Is that what he was saying?

No, you're at the bottom of your class, I'm afraid, said Mr. Nickers, digging through his keyring for a key to match a gray door on the far side of the room. No, the problem is that your father's DNA is needed to unlock a whole host of secret information we need, and as I'm sure you know, your old man has no living blood relatives except you and your brother. Here it is. He held up a key and unlocked the gray door.

The gray door swung open.

Into the ticker-tape mess strode a black girl in a skintight, high-collared, bright white suit. She was dressed like a gangster and an astronaut put together, a gangstronaut I guess, like a video game sci-fi character. I realized I knew her; her name was Jericha White, and she was always the smart one in class. She'd vanished at the end of seventh grade. I thought she had moved away, but here she was.

You were asking who the top of your class was, Mr. Nickers said. I really wasn't. I hate it when people put words in my mouth. Allow me to introduce--

Jericha White, secret agent, she interrupted, stepping forward and offering her hand.

Johnny Clue, I said politely, shaking her hand. I'm always way too polite. I rolled my eyes, because we totally kind of knew each other already, from seventh grade. We weren't friends or anything.

We need you to show him around, get him up to speed, the principal told her. Brief him on the work you've been doing. Show him the facilities, get him started on self-defense and the equipment, and tell him his father's situation. And introduce him to rocketry. You have one week to get him ready. After that we'll need to begin The Mission.

Rocketry?

Mr. Nickers turned and ducked back through his cabinet, shutting and locking it.

Now it was just me and this Jericha White girl, locked in a room full of computers. I thought about asking to go get my backpack, but decided not to worry about it. They seemed to take care of things here. My eyes adjusted to the dim room. The faint lights (rust red, tan, yellow and white) flicked on and off in pre-determined patterns.

Follow me.

Jericha led the way through the gray door and beyond.

There was a metal staircase leading down. Looked like it hadn't been used since Nixon was president. Steel cylinders for handrails, dust built up in all the corners, and a metallic odor that made it seem like an abandoned elevator shaft. It was lit by a few incandescent bulbs. On the wall beside me was a big yellow radioactivity symbol. The school fallout shelter.

This is just part of the cover, she told me. They actually add the smell once a week, out of a test tube.

It did smell pretty raunchy in here, like the ripe stanky smell of the guy's bathroom plus the oily funk of the greasy vocational ed room.

At the bottom of the flights of stairs was a steel-handled door. An old layer of oil coated the doorknob.

Open that for me, would you? she said. I don't really want to touch it. She held up her clean hands at the end of white sleeves.

It was gooey. I turned the handle and pulled. Nothing happened.

"Push," she said, sounding annoyed.

I pushed. Inside was a broom closet. One of those yellow wheeled janitor's buckets had a mop sticking out.

Why do they have a janitor's bucket down here? They'd have to carry it up the stairs to use it.

Jericha pulled out a sleek cellphone and dialed a four-digit combination. Behind the yellow bucket, the dusty back of the closet detached with a hydraulic sound and slid smoothly down into the floor. Bright bluish fluorescent light poured through. I wiped motor oil on my pants.

C'mon.

She took my hand and stepped into the open doorway. I managed to snag my shoelace loop on the janitor's bucket and soaked my sock and shoe with dirty slopping water.

You, said Jericha, "are hopeless." She unhooked my shoelace from the bucket. I felt like someone who had just stepped in dog doo that everyone else had noticed and stepped around. I feel that way most of the time, honestly.

We stepped through.

Banks of powerful lights lit up a space so big you could've hidden a hundred Space Shuttles inside. All the shadows were banished in here, total illumination. It was a Stanley Kubrick galaxy of white science machines purring like industrial kittens. Every surface was as sterile as a research hospital. There were a few people in white lab coats carrying beakers and clipboards and riding golf carts around the floor below us. Roombas spun, leaving even cleaner streaks across the already pristine floor. Neither the scientists nor the Roombas paid us any attention.

We were tiny, on a tiny platform overlooking a lab floor a hundred feet below. The middle school must be just a speck on top of this giant underground facility. I didn't remember any suspicious humming when I was in class, couldn't hear anything until the principal unlocked the cabinet door. But the machines above us were throbbing with . . . well, whatever they were doing. I didn't know.

So I asked: "What are these people even doing?"

Jericha pressed a green arrow button on a control box strung off a yellow cable, sending us gradually down toward the floor. She turned to me and pinched my chin between a thumb and finger. Don't. Ask. Questions, she said. I stuck my tongue out at her.

At the bottom, we pushed past a steel safety gate and out onto the laboratory floor. I tracked in splots of janitor water, and a team of attack Roombas emerged from nowhere to clean up after me until the floor was spotless again.

Now look. She was talking under her breath as we walked. "All that stuff about training you up for the job? Don't get me wrong, you desperately need it. But we don't have time."

We? I said.

You and I, she said, "are on a Mission. As of now. I don't want to wait a week to get handed some dumb Mission from the bosses up on high. This is my project. I needed a partner for this, but they told me I was too young for a real partner. Instead they handed me off to one old grouch guy after another, and told me I should learn from him. I, she said, do not need to learn about spying from some creaky old geriatric named Oscar. Or Roscoe. Or Roscar," she added.

Or Oscoe, I said.

I said don't talk. So. You and I are partners, got it? Let's go somewhere and I'll tell you the situation.

Crossing the space, we found a white foyer with blue plastic chairs shaped like squashed kidney beans. A clear glass door slid closed behind me; we could see tech-looking people wandering past in white uniforms.

This room isn't totally secure, but we can talk pretty freely here, she began.

What exactly happened to my dad? I asked.

That's next. But first I need to tell you about what I'm working on.

I shrugged and let her talk. I didn't really have anything else going on. What was Mom going to say when she found out I was being inducted into this secret society of secret agents? She'll probably say, That's nice, dear. That's what she usually says. I hoped someone put my backpack somewhere safe. My computer was in there.

So you know Russia and China? Jericha said.

Yeah.

It's a cover. They don't really exist. They never did. What really DOES exist is an organization called the Illuminus. They own about half the world. They even owned the United States presidency for awhile, until we broke their grip.

We? I said again.

She rolled her eyes. "We're the good guys. That's all you need to know. Everybody in the world is on one side or another, even if they don't know it. Our side works to protect the secrets of how the world works. Their side, the Illuminus, well, they also keep secrets. Hm. No, the point is, they want to control people's lives, whereas we try to prevent people from getting controlled. By the Illuminus."

But isn't that just another way of controlling people? I said.

Jericha scowled at me. I can pinch you so hard that you die, she said. Really.

So where's my dad?

Oh, the case! So I've been tracking an enemy agent in Russia with a microscopic tracking device I put in her breakfast cereal with a robot drone shaped like a spider. She sat back in the blue plastic chair and crossed her arms smugly. And she swallowed it whole. I made her swallow a spider. She looked really satisfied. I hate spiders.

But I thought Russia didn't exist, I said.

"You're so stupid. You don't understand anything. Of course there's PEOPLE living on LAND in ASIA. Haven't you seen Google Maps? But there aren't any countries in Asia. Russia, China . . . they're just fronts for the Illuminus. The Illuminus own all the land and control all the people. Except our people. Anyway, the point is we're going to Russia. Not in person. Don't ask questions."

I didn't even try. I had my thing to focus on, she had hers.

We're going to find my dad. I phrased it like a statement, decisive, declarative. Partner, I added.

She smooshed her mouth to one side. Yes. You need to change out of those clothes, and then you need to help me pilot the microbots. Your dad will turn up along the way, I'm sure. Come on.

Chapter Two

So here I was, wearing the guy version of Jericha's gangster space suit. It didn't feel right over my boxer shorts, it had a built-in . . . cup, but I wasn't about to go without underpants. The shirt part was tight around my shoulders, but maybe that means I'll grow into a wide-shouldered guy, like an MMA fighter. That would be cool. Normally I think of myself as a video game wimp, but I bet I could be tough if I had someone to defend.

I stood at an ergonomic stand-up computer station set in a shadowed alcove along the main wall of the lab, holding a black remote control that seemed pretty much the same as a video game controller. The whole place smelled like new computer.

"First we need to pick a destination for the rocket. It'll launch from one of our bases--it's only about as big as a model rocket--and it'll get into space undetected, drop the payload into the atmosphere above Illuminus territory, the