*** The zippers ***
* Sometimes bought, sometimes unstitched from an old garment... there is always a zipper. And, if you don't know which garment to sew it to... you can always tell someone that, either they shut up, or zip it (saying, not doing). *
.
It was a simple mission.
And, however, there were the three: attached with karabiners to the lower part of a four-by-four. Fleeing from Denmark in the middle of the night. That was not how simple missions used to end. They didn't either use to end with a diplomatic conflict about to explode or with explosions and a 5-level anti-terrorist alert. And not with the photos of three penguins on newspapers and news programs.
The wind was whistling at the sides of the vehicle, which was traveling at 80 miles per hour after having left the airport. Sneaking in a plane would have been so easy... but Skipper had a presentiment: having the Danish security forces at a maximum alert level, they couldn't risk it. The train was discarded for the same reason. That was why they jumped on a moving automobile and slipped towards its lower part, where nobody would look.
Speed dropped, the lights seemed to crowd in and an incessant humming went with them: they had entered a tunnel. On top of the heads and the vehicle, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea were kissing. The three penguins were keeping their bodies tense for going on stuck to the four-by-four chassis and not grazing the pavement, which was a dangerous moving sandpaper.
"Remember the message orders," Skipper said, between Manfredi and Johnson. "When we leave the tunnel we'll cross an artificial island. We won't get off there! That is still Denmark. When we have crossed the bridge, at the tolls, we'll climb up to the spare wheel and we'll jump from there. Not before."
The tunnel was endless, the artificial island was endless and the bridge was endless. The effort they were making for their things not to drop from their tense flippers made each yard to look like a mile. How good it would have been having Rico for that mission! But they were who they were: penguins chosen due to abilities very different from that.
The vehicle was slowing down. The predominant lights were blue and intermittent.
"A police control?" Manfredi asked. "Hadn't we been told by mister Schengen -"
"Manfredi, idiot: Schengen is a place, not a person!" Johnson replied to him.
"They shouldn't be here, that's true... but they're looking for us," Skipper said.
"I feel important," Manfredi said, letting out a mocking snickering. He couldn't see the glacial stares that the other two were giving him.
Little by little and with no brusqueness, the vehicle slowed down enough for the penguins to get loose not harming themselves. Manfredi started to unscrew his karabiner.
"Not yet," Skipper warned him.
The three saw the feet of two agents standing next to the driver's door. They heard a "pingviner" and an "ingen". One of the agents opened the four-by-four doors one by one, lighting the interior with a flashlight. He did the same with the trunk. Soon later, the vehicle started. Luckily.
Some minutes later, they arrived on solid ground.
"Now," Skipper said.
The three penguins loosened their karabiners and one by one, always grabbing the metal very carefully, reached the back bumper. From there, the three climbed up to the compartment for the spare wheel. The four-by-four stopped at the toll.
Skipper gave the order. The three jumped at once and fell on the pavement amidst darkness. Skipper slid on his belly towards a glazed building. Manfredi and Johnson followed him. The three skirted it until being out of the cameras reach. Skipper took the phone and pressed the asterisk key. That was the signal.
Some minutes later, a spotlight lit them up and a deafening noise took over the place. It was a helicopter from a carousel repurposed as a true one. The three penguins ran towards it and jumped to grab a rope ladder. The helicopter was gaining height again with them three inside. At least, that part of the mission had gone as they expected.
Skipper's heart was beating at full gallop, and not due to the escape from Denmark. He hope he'd see Madeleine for the first time since that call not remembering that she wasn't his superior anymore. He was fifty-fifty scared to death and happy.
"Hi, Ma-"
"Madeleine's not here," a curt voice interrupted him. "Remember that she is not your superior, now I am. And what's that effusiveness? Stand still, soldier, or you'll regret it!"
.
Most of the journey went by in absolute silence: a silence uncomfortable for Skipper, boring for Manfredi and suspicious for Johnson. Why suddenly, in the middle of a mission and without a warning, their boss had been changed? Was that normal?
The three were sitting whispering in a small ring far from Shearer and another penguin as serious and curt as him, with whom he was making shifts to pilot the helicopter.
"I don't care if he hears me, but it's very strange that they had put this guy telling us nothing," Johnson said. "I'm not been here for long, but I've never seen or heard something like this."
"I think it's a punishment for what has happened in Denmark. Everything has been so strange, though," Skipper said, flippering the cell phone. "During the last days we haven't received any call from Madeleine. Madeleine used to call once a day, some time after lunch."
"We only had a spare while everyday... and she had to call always at that time. With the time difference, it had to be the first thing she used to do when she arrived at the base. Wait..." Johnson was looking at the cell phone over Skipper's shoulder, "her last call was at night."
"What are you looking at if you don't care?" Skipper barked, covering the cell phone screen.
Johnson was staring at him, intimidating. "What did you talk about that day? What happened?"
"It's classified."
"Bollocks, that can't be classified!" Johnson hated secrets. "Look, you are my boss... but I don't care, because as soon as the helicopter takes me home, then fuck you all. You know what? I think that the mission's failure has to do with that call."
"Come on!" Manfredi intervened. "These two are an item. I'm sure she called him to say that she missed him and both started to say silly things."
"Don't say that crock, Manfredi," Johnson told him, and grabbed Skipper by his neck. "You're hiding something and you're going to tell us. We've risked our asses in Denmark and I want to know why."
"When we arrive at Seattle we'll solve this between you and me, Johnson," Skipper said very seriously.
"Are you threatening me?"
"I don't need to threaten you."
Manfredi, meanwhile, had seen that the cell phone was in a corner and he took it. He started to press keys and noticed that there was a cassette icon next to each call. He placed the phone on his earhole and went pale with what he heard. He tapped Johnson's shoulder, and he loosed Skipper.
"That call had nothing to do with the mission, listen to this."
Skipper managed to take the cell phone from Manfredi.
"It has no use, Skipper. You know he will tell me, right?" Johnson said.
Skipper nodded, grabbing the cell phone with more strength.
"You know if you prefer his version or reality."
Knowing Manfredi, Skipper had no other option. He gave him the cell phone saying nothing. Johnson placed it on his earhole. He listened to the whole recording, pressed several keys and gave it back to him.
"I've deleted the register and the recording, you should learn to do it. And I hope she has done her part. Though there is more incriminatory evidence of what you both did. Next time take measures, as we all do."
Skipper said nothing. He had asked for it.
"The deal is: I won't say anything to anyone and, if my cousin lets it slip, I will kill him. In exchange, nothing has happened between us."
"Done," Skipper said reluctantly.
The rest of the journey went by in silence: a silence incredibly uncomfortable for Skipper, not as boring for Manfredi and his powerful imagination... and equally suspicious and with many loose ends for Johnson.
.
The helicopter traveled approximately 4.600 miles refueling in Aberdeen, Reykjavik, Nuuk (where the three passengers were explicitly ordered not to leave the helicopter even if the world ended because it was Danish territory) and Saint John's in Newfoundland. After thirty hours of journey, they arrived at New York on Friday, March 11th. It was at night there, the same as when they left Copenhagen due to the time difference.
Shearer told his colleague something and he placed the helicopter at the vertical above the concrete island in Central Park Zoo. Shearer loosened the rope ladder and addressed Skipper.
"Down, quick."
"Aren't we going to Seattle?" Skipper asked.
"No."
"And we?" Manfredi asked. "I left something in the fridge."
"No. We won't waste the agency budget with useless journeys."
"But I have to go and see -" Skipper noticed that Johnson was making gestures so he didn't go on speaking. "Oh, well," he said, disappointed.
"And don't do silly things, I will be watching you," Shearer added while Skipper was climbing the ladder down.
Skipper placed his feet on the concrete island. It had been two weeks since he had left from there. He felt weird when going back, he felt he wasn't the same. He looked up and saw Manfredi and Johnson leaning at the helicopter door, devoting him a military salute. He returned them the gesture, knowing that they would keep his secret.
.
Two weeks outside. It was as if it had been a whole lifetime. The sensation of going back home after all what had happened in Copenhagen was weird. But what was really disturbing his mind was all the issue about Madeleine. What had happened in the agency? What had happened with the egg?
What if he called her? At the end he had kept the cell phone, so he looked for her among the contacts. There were two numbers: the official one (the one that she had used for calling him every day and that Shearer had used later) and a personal one, which was the one from which she called after laying the egg. He dialed. The voicemail sounded.
"Madeleine, I'm... so sorry. We've come back from Denmark and I haven't been allowed to go there. Please, call me so I know that you are okay, and the egg... Please, call me."
He went into the HQ imagining that Kowalski and Rico were sleeping. However, he found them awake.
"Skipper!" Rico shouted when he saw him, and he almost laid him down to the floor when he went to hug him.
"Ah, hi, Skipper," Kowalski just said from his bunk with a very apathetic tone.
Skipper approached him. He saw that Kowalski was keeping in his bunk a box with handkerchiefs and a big ice cream cup.
"What does this mean?"
"The other day... we went to the dock, and Doris was there, and..." Kowalski started sobbing. "She only likes me as a friend. It's unfair!"
Skipper patted his back. "I wish Private was here... he would know what to tell you. I don't. I'm sorry, my friend. This... is complicated for me too."
.
Three weeks had passed by since Skipper had come back from Denmark and he had spent all the time trying to comfort Kowalski, who didn't move ahead. Luckily, they hadn't been called for going on any mission, surely due to the Copenhagen scandal. Kowalski was hypersensitive... and he felt that his emotions were cushioned.
And then he saw the message and understood the pictogram: "call me".
Skipper at one end of the country, listening to that voice that he yearned for hearing. Madeleine at the other end, talking with difficulty and distress. Flint next to her, obvioulsy invisible for Skipper, with a newspaper cutting.
"Skipper... I'm so so sorry. The hatchling... it couldn't be."
Skipper hanged up. Reality, as with a broken parachute, had fallen with all its weight on him. No matter how much he chewed on the message, he only found one reading. None of them would ever see their hatchling. Some thousand miles away Madeleine was staring at the photo of their little hatchling, accompanied by words that she could not read, and regretting to have lied to Skipper, waiting for him to read between lines and afraid precisely of the same.
Skipper left the cell phone on the lab door and went out from there. He dragged his feet heading to the ladder. His teammates were already sleeping. He went to the concrete island and then he let the tears out. He had to be strong for his teammates, no matter he felt dead inside. During the day he lived for them, at night he died locked in his thoughts.
Little by little he accepted it. The hatchling wouldn't suffer due to the lack of a father, due to the cruelties of life. More than a consolation it was a lie he was telling himself: he knew that he couldn't minimize grief. But little by little, against all odds by means of not talking to anyone or even to himself about the true secret of that mission in Denmark, grief faded like a white dwarf in the forgotten bottom of Universe.