Inescapable History, Inescapable Fates

Glock

"Henry, you are killing me!" Pez shouted, "That was our one lead!"

"I wasn't going to interrogate him! These are real people's lives."

Pez sighed and started drawing up a timeline on the whiteboard, which he had procured from... somewhere.

"We might have to call him back." Pez said, "How are we supposed to fill in the timeline?"

"You just drew the timeline. And the spy can't know we are spying on the spy. That defeats the point. What if Alex finds out."

"Fine," Pez said, adding as much detail as possible to the timeline.

Henry turned his attention to the photo. If he looked closely he could see the girl, who appeared to be sitting on the cannon next to her brother and smiling angelically to the camera, was actually pinching him. It made Henry think of Bea. The building in the background... he felt like he had seen it before. Henry flipped over the photo and found a note scrawled on the back in Spanish. The handwriting was large and bad, like a child's. He google translated it.

Little Brother,

I will buy you ice cream when you come home. Kisses.

CJ

August 2005

He read it out loud to Pez.

"Well, that's ridiculously adorable," Pez said, taking the photo. He tapped the top of the building in the photo. "That is a flag."

Henry looked. There was indeed a flag on top of the building, but the wind was blowing so only a sliver of navy blue was showing. He pulled up google images and looked at the flags of every former British colony in Latin America until-

"Belize!"

"Are you sure?" Pez asked

"No, but the colors match."

"Good enough for me," Pez said, adding a pin to the pinboard map and presenting it to Henry with a dramatic flourish.

"Belize, Texas, the East Coast, Sandhurst," Henry said, tracing a trail across the pinboard. He was becoming quite proud of his grasp of North American geography. Henry turned to the timeline. "Born between 1995 and 2000, stepfather and mother British, or she at least holds British citizenship. She died." Henry shook his head, "We are nowhere. Belize gets us nowhere."

"We are not nowhere! We are so much less nowhere than we were a few hours ago." Pez said.

Henry checked his watch. "We are nowhere and ten minutes late to afternoon exercises already."

They sprinted out to the sports field, Pez in the lead though Henry could run faster. Henry spotted Alex lining up with the first years in front of the shooting range. He deviated from course to tap Alex on the shoulder,

"Pleasure to see you remain in the land of the living."

Alex blinked at him, looking horribly hungover, "Did you leave the Advil and note?"

Who do you think left the Advil and note? The weed angel? The patron Saint of hungover college student spies? Henry thought, but he wasn't willing to say it out loud. Instead, he hummed non-committally and walked to where the Sophomores were stretching. Pez was watching him with a grin.

"You are supposed to be with the Juniors," Henry told him,

"They won't notice." Pez motioned to the first years, who were taking apart and putting together handguns, "The first-years are being tested for marksmanship. Alex certainly knows his way around a... Glock ." Pez winked. Henry nearly died.

"Stop it. You are incorrigible."