The Shadow Mission

many agendas, anticipates her requests, arranges her meetings and travel—and yet to call him an assistant feels like it misses the point. It’s more like he’s an extension of Li’s brain; at least the part that organizes the insane schedule she keeps.
“Good workout?” Thomas asks by way of greeting.
“Workout?” I sniff. “It was a bit tougher than your usual jog around the park.”
Thomas smiles, unfazed by my sarcasm. His hair is swept back and perfectly styled; his three-piece suit and shirt are crisp and wrinkle-free. He sports a pink tie and delicate silver cuff links. I’m quite sure that when Thomas slipped out of the womb, his parents asked, “Boy or girl?” and the midwife said, “Neither. You have a beautiful, healthy men’s fashion ad.”
The door of the situation room clicks open at the touch of Thomas’s pass card and he holds it for us to enter, reserving a special smile for Hala as she passes him. Thomas has a crush on her. It’s become apparent to all of us over the past months, from the longing looks he throws her, not to mention the way he always manages to stock the situation room with Hala’s favorite bran muffins, green apples, and mint tea. It’s crossed my mind that maybe it’s more than an unrequited attraction, that maybe they’re seeing each other—but since Thomas is the soul of discretion, and Hala would rather eat dirt than reveal much in the way of feelings, I haven’t been sure.
Thomas sits beside Amber, who has staked out her usual spot at the long table, surrounding herself with multiple laptops and tablets. Across from us are all three of the Athena founders. Li Chen taps on her phone, which sports a very cool red leather case that matches her crimson tailored suit. As the head of one of the world’s largest privately owned technology companies, Li projects the kind of self-assurance that gives everyone the impression that she is definitely in charge. And not just of Chen Technologies, but of the entire universe.
Kit Love, another cofounder, also happens to be my mother. In stark contrast to Li, she wears faded blue jeans, a printed silk shirt, and cowboy boots. My mother is a music star—or used to be—and wherever she goes, she always just feels like someone you need to pay attention to.
Between Kit and Li sits Peggy Delaney. One of the first African American women to be a US ambassador to the UK, Peggy is also a trained lawyer, and a woman whose global connections always manage to surprise us. Nobody wears a Chanel suit or a string of pearls better than Peggy, and on top of that, she’s just one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. Of everyone in this room, it’s usually Peggy who will get up to greet us all with hugs. But today, even she makes do with brief smiles of welcome. There’s a nervous tension hanging in the air and we all settle in quickly.
“Let’s begin,” says Li. “Time is of the essence.”
Briskly, Amber flicks a picture onto the screen. A sixty-year-old man with a thick beard flecked with gray, heavy eyebrows, and small, sharp eyes. It’s a face we have become familiar with. Imran is from Pakistan. He is the tribal leader in the village where Peggy, Li, and Kit opened a school for girls two years ago under the auspices of the United Nations. And he took it upon himself to burn down that school, while the girls and their teachers were still in it, because he believed that girls should be married off by the age of fourteen. Li, Kit, and Peggy lobbied and fought for justice and got absolutely nowhere. It was a dark few months, but something did change in the end. When no government would help and the UN seemed tied up in political knots, all three women took a stand—a deeply secret stand—and our agency, Athena, was born.
“As you know, Imran escaped any consequences for . . . what he did,” Li says. Unusually, she seems emotional, and tries to cover it by talking more quickly. “And as you also know, we’ve done our best to track his movements ever since. It hasn’t always been easy, but we’ve had help from this man, Asif. His twin daughters died in Imran’s attack.”
A new photo pops onto the screen: a young man with high cheekbones, a light growth of beard, and eyes that look older than the rest of his face. Kit’s eyes flicker away from the photo, a tiny muscle in her jaw clenched. It was Kit who convinced Asif to put his daughters back in school when he was afraid of what Imran and his Taliban backers might do. To say it still haunts her would be an understatement. But at least now she deals with it through her work with Athena rather than by staring at the bottom of an empty vodka bottle.
“Asif gets information from Imran’s housekeeper and passes it to us. The housekeeper is a man who’s worked with Imran for years. He’s been very helpful.”
“How?” Hala asks.
Amber chips in: “He’s helped us keep tabs on which phones Imran uses so we can always monitor him. He switches handsets and SIM cards like he’s changing underwear—rather frequently. And now, something’s come up through the phones.” She pulls at the ends of her spiky, purple-highlighted hair, tense.
“Imran is planning a terror attack in India,” says Li.
“What kind of attack?” I ask, sitting up.
“We don’t know.”
“What’s the target?” I try.
“We don’t know that either.” Li looks pained at the admission.
“What do we know?” asks Hala, biting into a muffin.
“We know it’s happening tomorrow at four thirty a.m. Indian time.”
The three of us start to look at our watches and phones, but Amber spares us the math. “That’s in just over thirteen hours from now,” she announces, her voice serious.
“Where?” Caitlin asks.
“Somewhere in Mumbai, we think.”
“Somewhere in Mumbai? A city of, what, twenty million people?” I ask, stressed. “How are we supposed to