Oscar Rat's Secret Missions Read online

  ***

  The first part of my way back was easy. Raena somehow got us onto a merchant river steamer making its way up the Euphrates to the town of Ar Raqqah in Syria. We had a layover of a day and night at the border, where the boat and humans were searched and checked. Nobody bothered with us or the ship's rats.

  Ever since a ratlet, I'd heard of female spies and how they traditionally slept with their prey. It was beautiful. Between her orders and my personality, it was like a second honeymoon. Raena and I would spend half the night sitting on the cold deck, feeling warm breezes from an air-conditioning outlet and huddling together as we watched lights from myriad small towns reflecting off the water. I could feel gentle vibrations from struggling engines below flow through me; even as our bodies shivered in an equally vibrant embrace.

  The rest of those nights were spent entwining ourselves on a soft nest below deck; sometimes interrupted by her trying to entice the microfilm from me. It was a wonderful game on my part, frustration on hers.

  On several occasions, I'd find my personal property strewn around the room, toothpaste tube ripped apart and Scotch-taped together again. To be safe, I threw the spy camera overboard. Dickie had a box of them in his desk drawer. It didn't work, anyway, since she'd torn it apart and put it together so often -- searching for that little square.

  The time finally came when we had to leave the boat to join a caravan of Syrian aardvarks making their way up to Turkey. That wasn't so much fun. Did you ever try to ride an aardvark? Those nasty critters kept trying to bite my legs.

  Raena was getting more and more frustrated. I don't think she was supposed to go that far with me, but she refused to give up. The girl must have felt certain I had the film hidden somewhere. One night, I woke to find her claw down my throat, still trying. She made some sort of silly excuse, but I'd grown used to it.

  The caravan ride ended at the outskirts of Kiziltepe, Turkey. Coming over the desert, we'd avoided both Syrian and Turkish customs. By that time, Raena was nervous. She still hadn't found the microfilm.

  We rented a nest for the night at a rodent hotel in Kiziltepe. Since the Turks didn't get along too well with Saddam and she'd already overextended her time with me, Raena planned to go back the next day.

  I was tired and took a nap alone. When I woke, I found myself tied tightly to one corner of the rented nest. Raena was sitting on another corner with my pistol in her paw.

  "What's going on, honey?" I asked. I thought it a reasonable question under the circumstances.

  "You know what I want. The microfilm. Either you give it to me, right now, or I'll kill you and dismember your worthless body. I know you have it, you bastard."

  "Now, be reasonable, baby."

  "Reasonable, hell. Give it to me."

  I had to think of something, and quick. I could see the romance was over. "I'm disappointed in you, Raena, honey." I sighed. "It's in my whisker-trimmer," I told her.

  "It'd better be." I watched her perfect butt and tail switching as she went over to my backpack, retrieving the battery-operated trimmer.

  "Hold on. I don't want to be blown up," I said, shivering while trying to put a shocked look on my muzzle.

  She looked the trimmer over carefully, though I noticed she didn't touch the "on" switch.

  "Nothing wrong with this ... is there?"

  "Nothing except an eighth-ounce of plastic explosive," I told her. "If you want to try it out, please go out into the hall ... please." I looked away, squirming over to the far edge of the nest. "Or untie me so I can open it safely."

  I could see she was undecided. Finally, she took a knife out of her belly pouch. Then she cut me loose and laid the blade on a table.

  "Don't try anything," she said. "I still have this gun and I'd love to use it. You've worn me out with your screwing, and all for nothing."

  She handed me the whisker-trimmer. I pretended to be clumsy, not hard to do, dropping it and diving away. Seeing my action, Raena, thinking the trimmer was about to explode, also hit the floor.

  I bounced up first. Grabbing the knife, I fell on top of her, one paw keeping the pistol pointed at a wall while the other cut her pretty throat. I like to think I saw hesitation in her lovely eyes, that she wouldn't have really shot me ... but I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know.

  She was to be only my first kill as a spy. And that was my first assignment, learning the trade the hard way. There can't be a harder way than trial by fire, so to speak.

  Anyway, since the cargo on that aardvark caravan turned out to be heroin to be smuggled into the US, I simply went along with it to the Ankara embassy -- and from there to America. Sometimes, though, I still miss my former ratty naivety ... and Raena Al-Ratwan.

  The kicker was that, like in many of those secret spy missions, mine was a failure.

  "Sorry, Oscar," Dickie told me, later, "but Georgie refused to take the unsupported word of a rat. Even yours. The microfilm never made it here and, without it, he still intends to invade Iraq."