Doin Plan B

Mom Says:

Even the short flight between Marrakech and Malaga made Agent Octavian’s ears unhappy ears, so when he and Alek landed in Spain, Octavian was seriously cranky.

Fortunately, Alek had understood from early on—back when they checked into the hotel in Lichtenstein—that Octavian was likely to be a major player on the world espionage stage, and that he, as Octavian’s “thumbs” (as his role was known in Mysiz), would probably only rise in the ranks inasmuch as he aided Octavian in his missions. Also, it was hard not to have a soft spot for the big black kittee, with his (generally) sweet disposition and his (mostly) innocent way of looking at the world.

So Alek was patient.

Which was, Alek reflected, a very good thing, given that dealing with a young cat with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was only one level better than dealing with a squirrel with a caffeine addiction. Okay, maybe two levels. Three, at most.

It certainly required skills in diplomacy that he wasn’t sure he had (otherwise he might have gone into a less covert type of civil service). They managed deplaning and customs with no trouble, but as they waited at the baggage carousel, Octavian was scratching his ears and looking like he might bolt at any moment. Alek gave him a tiny piece of chewing gum to ease the pain in his ears, but it didn’t last long (“It not tayst gud. Don’t yu got som that got toona flayvr?”). He folded the tinfoil into a crane and teased Octavian with it for a while, but then their luggage came and Octavian’s lashing tail signaled that he was struggling catfully in order not to leap! on the carousel. Piling their bags on a cart and scooping Octavian up and setting him on top, Alek trundled them out to the front of the airport, scanning the ranks of cabs and other cars for the one sent by Mysiz.

Finally, a small silver sedan pulled up in front of them, and a young man in a tweed slouch cap popped the back trunk open and jumped out. “’allo! Eer y’go, guv! All set to go. Mind the ‘fifth gear,’ as it does somethin’ wikkid in the naytchur of flare-back! Alright?”

Diffikult Ordrz

Mom Sez:

Agent Octavian spent the next few days studying maps of Spain, Europe, and the World with Ibrahim and Alek. And although he found it hard to concentrate for more than a half-hour at a time, still, eventually he did manage to absorb the core information that seemed to be most important to them and to M. They sat on the floor to make it easier for Octavian, and Alek patiently repeated M’s briefing several times, so that even though the spy kittee kept leaping! up and running off, or sometimes falling asleep on the maps, in the end he could recite their tasks from memory.

“Have you got it now, Eight?” asked Alek.

“Shur,” said Octavian. “We flyz to Spayn an yu dryvs from Malaga to Grrnada, wher we goin to mayk contact wift the ol Rushn spy whu liv ther now. His naym Ivan. He left spyin fer Rusha aftr the chilly war endid. He still keep in tutch wift his old buddeez an he migt noe whut’s goin on. We needz haffa bottul of wodka an I has to promis, promis, promis to be a reellee gud kittee an not do aneethin to jepperdyz the mishun. Huh. As if I wud.”

Alek nodded (again) and said consolingly (again), “Yes, Eight, I know, but this mission is highly sensitive. If anything, even the slightest thing, should go wrong—“

“Yah, I noe. Fayt of sivilyzd werld, hangin in the balans. I got it.”

“And then, after we contact Ivan?” prompted Alek (again).

In another room, the phone rang.

Octavian said, “We keeps in clos contak wift M in Londin.”

Ibrahim’s wife came into the room. “Excuse me, gentlemen.” Ibrahim began to rise. “No, it is not for you, but for Monsieur Octavvyon…”

Vizhun? or Mebbe Mirazh?

Mom Says:

The sun sizzled on Agent Octavian’s black furry head as he lay trapped at the top of the date palm tree in Marrakech. The water in his mouth from Q’s MHDO tablet was shear bliss. He squinted in joy and when he opened his eyes he saw a strange sight:

A great, round boat, sat on a high hill, with a long queue of animals patiently waiting their turn to enter. There were zebras, giraffes, goats, lions, horses and sheep. There were even lelephunts. Storm clouds were amassing in the distance, but as he watched, Octavian saw a break in the clouds, and a great white cat poked his head out and called, “Musashi! Musashi! Run! Come with us before it’s too late! Musashi!”

Part of Octavian wanted to run and join the animals on their funny boat. Another part thought that if he couldn’t get down from the tree for normal life, he probably couldn’t get down for some freaky maritime exercise.

And the last part thought, “Wooohooo! Whut that Q put in theez tablits?”

Deep Reflekshuns

Musashi Sez:

This partiklr blog wuzn’t spos’d to tayk so long. Then it did. Sorree. Go to yer littrboks befor yu reeds it. Kthxbai. M/8

Mom Says:

For Agent Octavian, stuck in the green, long-leaved top of a Moroccan date palm, the heat seemed intense. Back in Boston, such temperatures only trouble the natives at the height of summer, in August. With a fan here and there, and ice cubes in the water bowl, one can withstand the furnace-like blast, knowing that it won’t last more than a week, two at most. But now here he was, wrapped up in leaves and roasting like a pig at a luau. And there was nothing he could do. Cats are very good at UP, when it comes to trees; DOWN is quite another matter. And that’s when you are talking about NORMAL trees with NORMAL branches stuck out every so often, as opposed to this, this telephone pole with a hat on it!!!

Octavian panted. Then he thought, “Did M noe that somthin lik this migt happin to me? Is that whut she was figtin about wift Mom? So wher ar them egstra resorsis she promist?” Then he remembered the neat pack that Q had attached to his collar. What had Q said to him?

“In this small case that can hook to your harness, you’ll find a micro-fiber rope ladder and MHDO tablets for emergencies.”

Oh! thought Octavian, so as long as I got spit, I got water, even if I can’t climb his ladder.

Q had also said, “The spikey-looking thing is a Spaw: part spike, part straw. If you stick it into something that contains a liquid, you can suck the liquid out through it. Since you’ll be near the desert, it helps to be prepared.”

And Musashi, er Octavian (it was hard to concentrate in such heat) thought, “Well, palm treez has coconuts, an them hav lotsa liqwid! So Q’s not such a Fail! gy afteral. I jus pul out the Spaw an stik it in a coconut.”

Octavian fumbled with the pack, then pulled out the Spaw, which had a string attached to ease the grabbing of it. Then he looked around his very small green sanctuary. He had an idea that coconuts were almost as big as him, or at least about as big as his head, and sort of brown and furry. But the only brown—or for that matter non-green—thing around him was much smaller, and sort of sticky looking, with no fur at all.

Still Octavian was game. He pushed the Spaw into the first of the little, shriveled brown things. And sipped. What he got from it was goo, not, he reminded himself hurriedly, entirely unlike the Petromalt® that his mom made him eat to keep him from hacking up hairballs. He quite liked Petromalt®. This other stuff was…semi-liquid. That would have to be enough. He moved, slowly, cautiously among the leaves, sucking out the sap of one of these strange brown things, waiting as long as he could, and then attacking the next.

The sun, far too slowly, moved past the place directly above him, to strike him instead at an angle. On the one hand he liked the heat; he was, after all, a solar-powered kittee, as all cats are. But on the other hand, his inability to drink was becoming a greater and greater burden. He faced the quandary of all those who wander in the wilderness: where is the line between squandering what you have too soon, and waiting so long that it cannot help you? He needed to still have some spit left for Q’s tablets to work for him.

Octavian waited. And waited.

Then he waited some more.

Finally, he thought that he had about as little spit as he had ever had in his life, so tremblingly he opened the first MHDO tablet and lipped it into his mouth. What happened next, he never described to anyone: not Jimbond or M, not even his mom, although we in the Narrator’s Guild must assume that he muttered in his sleep, or, presumably, we would not know about this at all. For Octavian had a vision, and his vision was this—

Musashi Sez:

Hey! I’m gettin the hang of this cliff-hangin thin! Huh!

Spyin is Waitin

Musashi Sez:

So ther we wer: waitin. Ibrahim havd a cigaret. I cogfd an wisht I hadzd a bad habit to yooz whil I wuz waitin. But I hasn't got bad habits, as long as yu don't count scratchin mom's ankuls in the mornin (which she do an I don't), but aneewae, Mom wuz not in Marrakech that mornin, so I wuz plum outa luk. Huh. O well.

“Speshul Ajint Octavian Smift”

Musashi Sez:

This yer littrbox warnin. Anothr long blog. Sorree.

Mom Says:

Agent Octavian received his Catnip Royale (stirrd, not shaykin) with the aplomb that Jimbond had studied long to achieve, but the drinking of it was another matter. The waiter had conveniently included a straw, but Octavian had nowhere near the automatic resistance to alcohol that Jimbond had built up over many years. So Octavian wisely drank only in very small sips. Gatto watched him closely.

“What? Yu not lik yor drink?” murmured the strange cat.

Octavian huffed. “This a Islamic contree. I can’t egzaklee get drungk heer, now kin I?”

The dog’s eyes opened and blinked. He said something in Spanish, and Gatto answered him in English. “This eez ourrr nu frrend, I’m soree, I deed not catch yorr naym, Senor….”

Octavian sat up straight and curled his tail over his front feet. “Smift. Octavian Smift. At yer servis.”

The dog said, “Smeeth? Inglés? Americano?”

Octavian said, “Yes, I am. So I unnerstan that yu ar consernd that we may not hav mutch tim to figgr out whut yer ‘Northern Contact’ is sayin about…the werld an its leedrz… How kin I halp?”

There followed a muttered dialogue between the dog and his friend, but Octavian dare not turn on his LingwaTron 9001K. However, his gut instinct told him that they were speaking in some tough-guy dialect anyway, which his LT wouldn’t even begin to translate correctly. What had Jimbond said about moments like this? “When in doubt, sip your drink very slowly and pretend to be supremely confident.”

Well, thought Octavian, cats are very good at that.

Musashi Sez:

Is verree tru. In Merika, they sez, “Fayk it til yu mayk it.” Also, is verree halpfl to noe that the peeples yu’r talkin to can’t yooz gunz an lik that. (Not havin thumz an all.) I’m jus sayin.

Mom Continues as if No One Had Interrupted:

The dog rose from his side of the table, and he was bigger and heavier than Agent Octavian, and when he smiled, his teeth were considerably longer and somewhat… pointier. Octavian flicked his tail nervously, ready to jump, but kept himself from trembling by a tremendous act of self-control.

“Yeah?” he said to the dog. “Watchu want?”

And the dog laughed. Octavian nearly leaped away after all, but part of his brain told him to stay, so he sank his claws into the cloth of the couch.

Perro said, “Yu arr OK, littul kitteee. I likes yuu. Yu has the cajones.”

“Um, what that?”

Gatto said, “Ees lik catnip mousseez, egsept they roll around thee florr. Ees conseedrd a verreeee guuud thin wher we com from.”

“Um. Oh. Grayt! So….?”

Perro barked imperiously at Gatto, who sighed and said, “Yu meet us on the west syd of the prizn tomorro, yes? Jus befor dawn. Then we see whut we see, eh?”

Octavian sipped deeply from his drink and blinked rapidly. When he had recovered, he said, “Jus befor dawn. Urf, urf. Yah. OK!” And he leaped down from his couch and trotted out the door to Ibrahim.

Maykin Contakt

Musashi Sez:

OK, this yer littrboks warnin, cuz this 1 is kinda long…

Mom Says:

The little Citroen puttered down the streets of Marrakech, past the tall pinkish buildings and then through the maze of souks in the marketplace, dodging other small cars, pedestrians, and feral cats and dogs. Agent Octavian looked out the car window on the scruffy and underfed fur peeples, so many more than he had seen even at the animal hospital so long ago.

At one point when traffic was congested, Ibrahim followed Agent Eight’s instructions on how to change his travel collar for his mission collar and then initiate Ibrahim’s paw-sized receiver. When traffic finally shifted, they moved on. Finally, Ibrahim pulled over and parked.

Ibrahim carried Agent Octavian on one broad shoulder as he moved confidently through the crowds, moving in a much slinkier way than any cat would have expected from such a large human. As they came to a small café with a colorful parrot squawking from its perch near the door, Ibrahim suddenly turned left into a dark narrow alley. Octavian sank his claws deep into Ibrahim’s shirt.

Ibrahim murmured, “Be calme, Octavvyon. We are going tuu L’Arche de Noé, le café for the animalz like yourself and your contactes. Mm?”

“Is it sayf?”

“Pour vous? Mais oui. Pour moi? Ah bien. Octavvyon, simplee promees me yu weel not start a bar fight, OK? The las time I had a raybeez shot was not so fun. OK. Yu go now. Bon chance!”

He set Octavian down just outside a narrow restaurant with red curtains hanging in the glass windows. Octavian flicked his tail nervously, then pulled his head up and strode inside. On the left side stood tables and chairs of curly metal, with here and there a pair of humans drinking mint tea and talking in an undertone in French or Arabic. Off to the right, however, was a series of red-cushioned couches with low wooden tables between them. Sprawled on the couches were dogs and cats, most of them much sleeker than the fur people Octavian had seen wandering the crowded streets. In general, dogs were spending time with dogs, and cats with cats. None of them looked like what he had been told of PyG.

He paused, unsure how to proceed, when a man shorter than Ibrahim and with less hair on his head, leaned down and said, “Bien venue, Monsieur.”

Octavian went for broke, praying to Ceiling Cat that his phrasebook would not fail him. “Merci. Est-ce-que Perro et Gatto ici ce soir?”

“Mais oui.”

That wasn’t particularly helpful. “Parlez-vous anglais?”

“Ah, yes. Ar they expecting yuuu?”

“Oui, je crois. Je m’appelle Octavvyon.”

“Un moment, s’il vous plait.”

The man disappeared behind more crimson curtains. Octavian was in the middle of what seemed like two totally different places inside one set of walls. On one side the humans murmured in his direction. On the other, the animals fell silent and sniffed at him. He sat and licked his paw reflectively, thinking that practicing your leaping and pouncing! on catnip mice was not quite the same as fighting a room full of strangers larger than you. If/when he got through this mission, he would have to ask Jimbond to help him fix this rather considerable gap in his training.

The man reappeared, bowing. “Monsieur, thees way.”

Royal Ayr Maroc an Me

Musashi Sez:

Yu kin looks at flyin 2 waes. On the 1 paw, it mayks yer eerz crankee. On the othr paw, ther is the pertee stooardessis, whu smylz at yu an givs yu fud, an somtims a blankee. OK. More than 2 waes. On the 3th paw, ther is all that annoyin noiz, an the hoomin peeples whu givs yu the eevl ey or mayks snottee remarks about yer aminal “naytchr.” Huh. But, on yer lastest paw, yu sertenlee get to playsiz reellee, reellee fast!

Mom Says:

Agent Octavian curled up on his Air Maroc blanket, stretched, curled, stood, shook himself, and curled up again, but in vain. His mind racing in anticipation, he could not sleep. The businessman in the seat next to him sighed dramatically, and since he had otherwise been fairly nice to Octavian, the nouveau spy felt guilty. (But t least he had learned some French from sleeping on the phrasebook.)

Almost ready to give up, Octavian pulled out the big guns. He had counted sheepdogs and he had tried to meditate on the oneness of tuna. Now he went for broke. Where a human people would have pulled out a battered copy of a William James novel, or a Henry James psychological treatise (because the whole family has soporific effects on most humans), Octavian turned his mind to home, imagined himself once again as “Musashi, house cat,” and asked his mom what she was reading about. “Well!” she said in his head, “You know how I’ve been reading Genesis at school? Well, it turns out it was written by a whole bunch of different men, with all these different biases and agendas, and then, like a few hundred years later, was redacted by—” It worked every time. Octavian was out like a light, and didn’t wake up until the stewardess roused him to get his seatbelt on as they descended toward Marrakech.

The airport at Marrakech was bright white and ultra modern, so modern in fact, that it prefigured the future, and reminded Agent Octavian ominously of the Death Star. Luckily, being himself a black cat, Octavian had never taken omens too seriously; if he did, he’d be able to do nothing else all day. So he licked his paw, let the feeling pass, and proceeded through Customs.

QRS: Q Reellee Somthin…

Mom Says:

After sleeping as fast as he could on maps of Marrakesh, Morocco, North Africa and Spain, a French phrasebook and a narrow pamphlet entitled, “Things Cats Should Avoid Doing in an Islamic Country,” Agent Octavian was hurried into Q’s London lab.

“Mistr Q,” he said. “I gots a bon to pik wift yu about that LingwaTron—“

“Oh, yes, dear boy! A thousand apologies! We’re working on that. In fact, you get to try out the prototype LT 9001-K, and we’re including an extra battery for good measure.” Q gripped the lapels of his tweed jacket proudly while one white-coated young subordinate set a small pile of gadgets on the table where Octavian sat, and another slipped a black matte collar around his neck.

Despite himself, Musashi began to purr. “This mai nu camra collr?” (And you can tell he was distracted because he forgot to think of himself as Agent Octavian. As Jimbond would say, "It can happen to the best of us.")

“Indeed. We disabled the GPS function for you. In an emergency, you can re-enable it by typing in ‘Schroedinger’ on the keypad, but mind you spell it correctly. The paw-sized piece is the receiver for your human partner. With that you’ll be able to communicate, and you can send him the data you’ve downloaded.”

“Whut’s dada? Is that like som weerd old paintin styl? I thingk ther wuz somthin on that in the frayzbook I slept on.”

“Er, no. Data, with a T. Information, in this case, photographs.”

“O, rigt. Cors.”

In the wide space behind Q, several of these serious young men and women in white coats were running a projector that projected pictures of waterfalls, forests and beaches on the far white wall. Off to one side, a young woman looked at her clipboard and then at her watch.

“In this small case that can hook to your harness, you’ll find a micro-fiber rope ladder and MHDO tablets for emergencies.”

“Um, Q, mebbe yu din’t reeliz, but I am a kittee peeples. We don’t do ladders. An whut’s emaitchdeeo?”

“MonoHydroDiOxide. As long as you have the least bit of spit in your mouth, taking one of these tablets will give you a mouthful of water. It’s taken us decades to achieve.”

Octavian noticed that he said nothing about ladders, and assumed that poor Q was embarrassed, so he said nothing more about it. “What these othr thins?”

“The spikey-looking thing is a Spaw: part spike, part straw. If you stick it into something that contains a liquid, you can suck the liquid out through it. Since you’ll be near the desert, it helps to be prepared. The round black one—I’m particularly proud of this—is a TRUST-R, a Titanium-Reinforced, Ultra-thermal Sleeping Tire, with Rubber coating on the outside, to give it that abandoned, bald tire look. We figured that a sleeping-bag shaped object would be noticeable, but an old tire? Hardly.”

“OK! Collr, rope, tablits, paw and trustee. Got it!”

“Er, yes. Quite. Thank heavens I don’t have provide a sports car for you every time you go on a mission. I must say that 007 has no respect whatsoever for—“

Then the world exploded. Musashi leaped!

At least that’s what it felt like. Dizzy and terrified, Musashi opened one eye, and found himself clinging by his claws to the soft material that made up the ceiling. As the dust subsided, he saw that the white-coated woman was writing things down on her clipboard even as Q was yelling at her colleagues.

“Of all the ridiculous, irresponsible—“

“It’s just the timing mechanism—“

“Um, Q?”

“Next time you do such a—“

“Um, Q? Halp? Halp! HALP! MMMRRROW!”

Q and his helpers looked up.

“Oh, my dear boy. I am mortified. A thousan—“

“Jus getz me down, Q, an mebbe I won’t tell Jimbond to trash yer nex 7 cars. K?”

Mai Breefin Continyooz (A Lot)

Musashi Sez:

I doesn’t noe why they callz it a breefin, cuz it almost nevr partiklr breef. I thingk it ogt to be calld a longin. So this is yer littr boks warnin. Kthxbai.

Mom Says:

When Musashi finally awoke, it was Jimbond who continued his briefing. Jimbond had a big white cast on his shooting arm and looked tired and annoyed.

“Well, you’re a heavy sleeper, Eight. Didn’t you nap on the plane?”

“I wuz wae too egsytid about comin bak.”

“Just what you get for ignoring martinis. How far did M get with you before you swooned from exhaustion?”

“Huh. Yu ar so amyoozin. M said that this Spannish piggee in Morocco had found out som stuff an so she wants to send me to a prizzin. That don’t sound gud!”

“I think M has forgotten how little experience you have. Oh well. Necessity is a mother! First of all, PyG stands for Perro y Gatto, Dog and Cat, their highly unoriginal code names. They are informers. They are not spies, simply information gatherers. And this time they may have gathered a piece of information that could have world-shattering consequences.”

“Mor shattrin than that monee-washin in Licktenshtyn?”

“Much. You see, they have a business, bringing food and medicine from the prisoners’ friends and families to the prisoners. Moroccan prisons are horrible, overcrowded and dirty, without much food. So the prisoners depend on outsiders to help them get the basics.”

“But if they’r in prizzin, then they’r bad gyz, rigt?”

“Some are the worst of humanity. Some were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most are in between. You’ve never been imprisoned, so you can’t—“

“I livd in a caje at the aminal hospittul fer a monft, aftr the hoomin peeples found me an Larree and Curlee in a box in Roxberree.”

Jimbond blinked. “Ah, yes. Well, the situation in America is much better than in other places, particularly if you are a cat, I suspect. Anyway, these prisoners tell Perro and Gatto their relatives’ addresses and the relatives feed Perro and Gatto in return for their sneaking food and other things into the prison. There and in the homes, PyG hear things that they pass on to us here in London.”

“Did M tell yu she had som laydee giv me pointee shotz?”

“Eight, focus! Most of the time, PyG only talk to humans, but last week they met a dog who sneaks in to see his human, a Russian national imprisoned on a minor drug charge. The Russian dog, Sabaka, thinks his human is dying. He also seems to believe that his human was part of an international conspiracy of some proportions.”

“Lik a spy?”

“Er, similar. We don’t know. Sabaka spoke to PyG because he assumed that they were Spanish. He doesn’t trust the British—which makes M think the conspiracy may be aimed at the United Kingdom instead of the United States. He asked them if they could find a CIA agent. Sabaka hopes to trade the information on the conspiracy for diplomatic pressure to get his human out of the prison. If his human is indeed dying, and he may well be, we may not have much time.”

“Rigt! We gots to find the CIA!”

“Er, no. There are questions about the Moroccan CIA operatives. And as for the CIA in the rest of North Africa and through the Middle East, they are far too busy worrying about terrorism to consider a possibly nonexistent conspiracy. And in any case, the Americans tend to ignore the four-legged operatives. A few years ago, we had a squirrel liasing with them—they fed him espresso, as a joke. The poor bloke had a heart attack, nearly didn’t make it. M has been cautious letting Mysiz work with them ever since then.”

“I see sqwirls somtimz, at hom, out the windo.”

“Er, yes, well done. Eight, you are going to meet Sabaka. You will pretend to be CIA, promise diplomatic action, up to a point, and try to get the information from him and pass it on to us.”

“An yu’ll halp his hoomin?”

“We will extract him from prison, yes. Your job should be very simple. You will have a human contact in Marrakech, the city you are heading to. His name is Ibrahim. He will meet you at the airport and facilitate your meeting with PyG. You will report back to him and he will send your reports on to us. Questions?”

“Yah. Yu got anee toona? I hasn’t eaten sins about mebbe jus befor Ireland.”

Musashi Sez:

Whut? I wus hongree! This spyin is hard werk!

Mai Briefin

Musashi Sez:

Natchuralee, mai playn wuz layt getting to Londin, so bai the tim I got to M’s offis, I wuz out of breft. She greetd me all distraktd an then led me down the hall, moovin so fas, I was trottin to keep up. Whyl Q wuz fittin me wift a new camra collar and harness, an this dark laydee wift whit teeft an a whit coat wuz givin me annoyin shotz, M egsplaynd the sitchooayshun.

“Musashi, I’m sending you to Morocco, in North Africa. We got an earnest message from PyG there—“

“Yu got piggeez workin fer yu?”

“Yes, of course, but not in an Islamic country. No, PyG is a team of informers, Perro and Gatto, who work in the city of Marrakech. They’re from Spain, originally, just across the Strait of Gibraltar, and they’re rather good at sniffing out problems.”

“An sitchooayshunz?”

“Quite.”

“OUCH!” I leaped awae from the laydee wift the shotz. “Mayk her stop doin that!”

“All done, sah,” sed the laydee, an she left.

I likkt mai flank whyl M egsplaynd som mor. “I’m afraid the immunizations are necessary. There are many stray cats in the streets in Morocco, carrying God knows what. And you’ll be going to a prison—“

“But I not don aneethin wrong!”

“Of course not. Let me back up. You see, PyG’s human worked for us back in the late 90s, right before she died and left them her pension. Musashi? Musashi!”

But I had curld up an gon to sleep. Dang that jet lag aneewae.