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Nick stopped on the fifth floor landing to wipe the sweat out of his eyes and from his upper lip, gone itchy with a mustache he regretted more with each passing day. He could take the stairs at a run if he had to, but he’d be damned if he did that sort of thing on his day off. Bad enough to be baking to death in an apartment building stairwell. He tugged his tie a little looser and began the slog up the next flight. As was becoming an unfortunate habit, he spent his free time reflecting on the fundamental injustices of life. To wit:
Nick served as a highly trained CIA agent on missions of international import; yet he was currently walking up the sixth flight of stairs in search for a lost bird. One day, he’s in Russia trying to preserve the cover of a dozen agents who don’t know what’s coming for them. The next, he’s getting sent across town to pick up a pigeon, because God forbid his boss’s boss find out their latest attempt at stealth aerials had literally flown the coop. Fucking disgraceful.
The roof access door squealed when he pushed it open. Two sounds emerged out of that: the burble and coo of a pigeon, and the chatter of a small boy talking to it.
“You can’t have popcorn every day,” the boy said sternly, obviously mimicking a parent’s lecture. “The book in the library said you gots to eat fruit and vegetables just like me. ’Sides, I need your help finishing off these green beans or Nana’s gonna tan my hide. Yeah, that’s a good girl.”
Nick came around the corner. The boy had an aviary cobbled together from a cardboard box sized for a refrigerator, some paper tubes slipped onto straightened out wire coat hangers, and plenty of newspaper. Resourceful, Nick thought, if not exactly made to last in this humidity. A sack of packaged bird feed slumped against the side. The boy knelt on the rooftop, his bare knees saved from the hot bitumen by the shade cast by his bird shanty.
Nick cleared his throat. The boy turned to look at him and then scooped up the pigeon. The bird went along with that placidly, a short length of green bean clutched in its beak.
“I’m gonna need that bird back.” The boy automatically pulled the bird closer to his chest. Nick could see the camera and radio transceiver module still strapped around its chest, tool marks showing where the boy–or someone–had unsuccessfully attempted to remove it.
“You put this on her?” The boy’s chin jutted out. Nick had a feeling he was in for a few kicks to the shins if he said yes. “Because I’m not giving her back. You don’t take good care of her.”
Nick raised his eyebrows and said, “Well, my boss is going to have a problem with that, seeing as it’s his bird. And his camera.” The boy tilted the bird onto its back to stare down into the lens. The bird craned its head and stared up at him in turn.
“So it is a camera. Bobby-down-the-hall didn’t believe me when I told him.” He righted the bird and added, “Your boss is dumb. This is too heavy for her to fly.”
Privately, Nick rather agreed with that assessment of his current boss. Poor decisions about pigeon accessories were the least of his problems. All Nick could hope for just then was a better offer to come along. Preferably outside of CIA entirely. Still, he wasn’t in the habit of taking sass from seven-year-olds.
“So you’re planning to steal them both?” The boy shrugged, like he would do what he had to if it came to it.
“You can have the camera back, if you can get it off,” he offered. Nick dropped to one knee and pulled the knife at his ankle. The kid took a step back. “Only if you don’t hurt her.”
Nick grumbled, “I ain’t gonna hurt the dang bird.” With the kid holding the bird steady, Nick slipped the blade along the catches of the harness until the camera dropped into his waiting palm. “See?”
The boy opened his hands around the bird so it could stand on his palms. Looking forlorn, he waited for her to fly off. The bird just wobbled a little and started pecking lightly at his hands like there might be some invisible food there. The boy’s pleased smile quirked one side of his mouth, and Nick could see just a little streak of hell under there, just waiting to come out.
Turning a far more suspicious look on Nick, he said, “You’re not from the building. I don’t know you.”
“Well, I know you, Samuel Thomas Wilson.” The kid gulped, wearing the caught-out expression of children everywhere when faced with their full name. The recon on the building, when the techs figured out where the bird had ended up, had been to ensure no potential threats lived there. That Nick could now recognize any of the residents and pull his “I see everything” mind games was just a perk of being well-informed.
Worried, but far from cowed, the boy asked, “How come you put a camera on a pigeon anyways?” Nick resisted the urge to point out, again, that the idea was not his fault.
“She’s a covert agent,” Nick answered glibly. If there was one thing he had figured out with kids, it was that they could see a lie a mile away but never believed him if he told his particular brand of truth. “Tasked with spying on Russian operatives on American soil.”
God help him, the boy gave Nick the most penetrating look he’d ever gotten outside of an interrogation room, then he nodded. Like this seemed perfectly reasonable. “When’s she get to retire?”
“Retire?” Nick bit his tongue. He was either going to laugh at the kid–a mistake if ever Nick had heard of one–or spout off any one of the jokes he’d heard from fellow spies regarding their presumed retirement plans. Comments about retiring to the river bottom, or to an apartment six feet under, or anything else along those lines, would not find a sympathetic audience right then.
Unaware of Nick’s current struggle, the boy continued, “Yeah. My Uncle Eddie went to Vietnam. Momma said it was a real hard job, and Uncle Eddie couldn’t work anymore, so he’s retired and living with Nana.” While he spoke, he idly stroked a thumb down the pigeon’s neck and back.
From some open window below them, Tears for Fears sang about wanting to rule the world over an ill-tuned radio. Nick cast his eyes heavenward and asked for strength in the face of stubborn-ass kids. “Oh, we take good care of our own. Very strict rules about who can take care of operatives when they’re finished in the field.” After a pause, he added, “You probably couldn’t qualify.”
Nettled, the boy snapped, “Could so! I’m saving up my money to buy her a real aviatiary and everything. Mr. Brown said he’d help me build it if I bought the wood and everything.”
Nick made a show of considering this carefully. Hell, the damn bird liked the kid well enough. If Nick didn’t have to walk back to the office with the thing stuffed in his coat or something, that suited him just fine. On the other hand…
“My boss really wanted that bird back.” He got the distinct impression the boy would be willing to come to blows over the bird, either with Nick or his boss. “Sure is a good thing I found this camera then, since the bird is long gone.”
Scandalized, the boy said, “You’re gonna lie to your boss?” Nick gave him a disapproving look and leaned forward.
“Do you want the job or not, Wilson?” The boy snapped to attention at that.
“Yessir.” Nick nodded and turned for the door to the stairwell. On impulse, he turned back to see the kid already pouring out a helping of feed for the bird.
“You tell me that again in ten years or so, Wilson,” he said, “and I’ll see what I can do about getting you a job.”
30 YEARS LATER, ACTUALLY…
Nick pushed up the sleeves of his sweatshirt, rapidly becoming too warm for the day, as he crossed the park. Damp heat radiated off the grass. He slipped a finger and thumb under the edge of his dark glasses to wipe at the sweat there. The mustache he had grown for covert purposes when he arrived in Germany itched, as did the still-healing bullet graze on his thigh from when he left the country.
He approached a bench and the man sitting on it, currently engaged in a conversation. Alone and without any phone visible, the man appeared to be addressing the half dozen pigeons strutting around his feet.
“Now look. I know damn well you’re not hungry. I saw you over by those girls, mooching fries off them. Seriously. I got no sympathy for you.” At Nick’s approach, the birds scurried off, just far enough to be out of kicking range in case Nick proved to be a threat.
“Wilson.” Nick sat down heavily on the bench, feeling every mile it took to get him back to DC. “I ever tell you about the last weird kid I met who talked to pigeons?”
Wilson grinned over at him and leaned back. Six months of searching with Rogers and on his own had put a little hollow in Wilson’s cheeks, a little shadow under his eyes. But he was still alive and uninjured, which was impressive considering how close he had gotten to his target the last few times. The birds inched back in when nothing bad happened and went back to circling around Wilson’s feet.
“I don’t know, sir. I ever tell you about the spook who gave me a spy pigeon to raise? Who lived the high life for years on my pay from odd jobs, in case you’re wondering.”
Nick threw his head back and laughed. “That’s what I like to hear.”
“Uh-huh. Mustache still not a great look on you, by the way,” Wilson said, shaking his head. “So. Looks like you’ve got another asset MIA. What did you bring me?” Nick, feeling a little more déjà vu, refrained from pointing out neither Barnes nor the Winter Soldier had ever been his asset. Just another case of cleaning up after his boss. He pulled an unmarked folder from inside his sweatshirt and handed it over.
“What else? Breadcrumbs.”