"Oh, there you are."
Okay, I don't know about regular schools, but let's just say that at the world's premiere spy school, tardiness isn't exactly typical. And when it does happen, it's almost always met with questions like "Was there explosion in the chemistry lab?" or "Do you have another concussion?" It is most certainly never met with "Oh, there you are."
But those were the words Agent Townsend chose, and for someone who had questioned me in top secret facility just hours after one of the world's most wanted men had pseudo kidnapped me, he certainly didn't seem concerned with where I'd been.
"I'm sorry, I -"
"Just . . . sit," he said with barely a glance in our direction.
I took the desk next to Bex, and without looking at the clock, I knew I was three and a half minutes late. Three and a half minutes in which my classmates had been sitting in silence waiting. And as I joined them, I realized our teacher wasn't waiting for me.
Four minutes.
Five minutes.
Ten minutes, we waited. The only noise was the sound of Agent Townsend turning the pages of his newspaper.
It was a test, I told myself. He wanted to see if we were memorizing the front page of the paper he held; he was gauging how still we could be, how silently we could sit. Great operatives are naturally patient, I thought. He wanted to see if we could wait.
Little did he know, Tina Walters doesn't wait for anyone. (Or, well, she does, but evidently she draws the line at ten minutes.)
"Mr. Townsend?"
Our teacher didn't glance up, didn't say a single word.
"Sir," Tina went on, "is there something we could do to help you get started with your lecture?" She sounded very much like Madame Dabney, but Mr. Townsend wasn't impressed.
"No," he said flatly, then raised his newspaper higher, threw his feet to the desktop, and leaned back in his chiar. "Who can tell me about Joe Solomon?"
It sounded like a pop quiz. It looked like a pop quiz. But I couldn't shake the feeling that the entire junior class had just been picked up and hauled across the Atlantic - plopped down inside Baring Cross Station.
Townsend moved the paper aside for a split second and pointed to Tina Walters, who was about to pull her arm out of her socket, she was raising her hand so wildly. "You," he said.
"Agent Joseph Solomon. CIA operative. Faculty member of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Woman -"
"Know all that," our new teacher interrupted. "Next."
"He said that after break we would probably start with secret writing techniques," Anna told him. "And if that went well, he promised we could -"
"Boring," Townsend countered.
I could feel my classmates watching closer, sitting up straighter - literally rising to the challenge. But I knew this was no test - it was an interrogation. We weren't students in that moment; we were witnesses who'd been locked in a room with a double agent almost every day for a year and a half.
"Where did he go?" Agent Townsend slowly turned the page of his paper. "How did he fill his days? What did he want . . . here?"
"He's a teacher," Eva Alvarez said. "He wanted to teach."
Agent Townsend laughed, quickly and softly, but there was no joy in his voice as he said,
"I'm sure he did."
"I'm sorry, sir?" Anna said. "I don't understand."
"I'm sure you don't," muttered.
The operatives were able to ascertain that whatever brought Agent Townsend to the Gallagher Academy, it was NOT a love of teaching.
Then the feet came off the desk and the paper went down and I got a good look at his swollen nose (note to self: even soft-sided luggage can make an excellent weapon).
"Where does he spend his time?"
"Well, usually we see him in Sublevel Two," Tina admitted, and an odd look crossed Agent Townsend's face.
"Nowhere else?"
"Everywhere else," Anna replied.
It occurred to me that it would have been a good lesson - attest of our memories, of our powers of observation. But Agent Townsend didn't know that. Agent Townsend didn't care.
"Known associates?" he asked, then shook his head as if for a second he'd forgotten that he thought we were idiots. "I mean, who were his friends? Did he have any allies?
Anyone he was especially close to?"
"Sometimes he lets Mr. Mosckowitz go with us on missions," Anna said.
"He used to work out in the P&E barn with Mr. Smith," Kim Lee added.
"I think he might be really close to Headmistress Morgan." Tina giggled, but then he glanced at me and stopped.
"Is that so?" Townsend crossed his arms and looked at me. "What about you, Ms.
Morgan? What do you know about Joseph Solomon?"
Freezing rain hit against the windows. I shivered, remembering the cold wind and look in Mr. Solomon's eyes as we stood on the bridge, and the fact that I believed him. For a year and a half, I'd believed everything.
The operatives hated Joe Solomon.
"Sir." I heard Bex's voice. "Mr. Solomon used to say that and operative's best weapon is her memory, and that -"
Agent Townsend finally stopped staring at me. "You're the Baxter."
"yes, sir." Bex beamed.
"I know your parents' work," he said.
Bex smiled. "Thank you, sir."
"That wasn't a compliment."
The operatives missed Joe Solomon.
Townsend stood and walked around his desk, settled back in his chair. "I've known about the Gallagher Academy and its girl for most of my career." He leveled us with a gaze.