Lost Angel

02

Two days before being in the Alpha Agency room watching a video from 1982 Tony was sitting in the park, at a table on which there was a chessboard. There were several of the same tables in that area of the park. Only two were occupied by chess players.

Tony waited there for a few minutes. Then he could make out the figure of Hilda appearing on a bicycle along one of the paths in the park. He was glad to see her.

Hilda LaFeubrer was a fashion designer, the heiress of the maison LaFeubrer, which her grandmother had founded. Tony had met her under peculiar circumstances. A few weeks earlier Tony had been kidnapped by IBC, the International Brotherhood of Clowns, and taken prisoner to a rabbit farm. Also imprisoned at the farm was Hilda, who had refused to wear rabbit fur in her new fashion collection. They had finally been able to escape from there. Tony was a little in love with her.

Hilda arrived at Tony's side. They greeted each other with a kiss on the cheek. Tony looked at her. Hilda was wearing black tights, a light orange muscle shirt, and her silver medallion around her neck. She took off her white helmet. Her hair was light and short. Hilda tied the bike to a post and sat down in front of Tony.

"Too bad I forgot my chess pieces," Tony joked.

"I'm not very good at chess. My brother is."

Hilda's brother was JK, also known as The Big Brain. He was 12 years old and a bit of a strange kid, but he was a computer whiz.

"I have no doubts that JK must play chess well," said Tony. "How was the ride? I've never seen you ride a bike before."

"I like riding my bike. It's just that I've been so busy with the presentation of the collection. I hope to be able to ride a little more these days."

"That's good, it's good to exercise."

Hilda took her medallion.

"Any news, Tony?" she said. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

"Oh," said Tony. "Nothing new, so far. I mean... I had promised to tell you about my family. Remember? You said I knew a lot about yours but you knew nothing about mine."

"Sure, I remember."

"Well, you see... My immediate family is my parents, my sister, and me. But they live abroad. I live here alone."

"Oh..." said Hilda, "But are they foreigners?"

"No, we were all born here. I mean, my mother is a foreigner, she moved here to marry my father. I haven't met her side of the family. But my father is a mining engineer, and he was hired by a company to work abroad. This was about four years ago. We were all going to move, but we had to live in a mining area, away from the city, and I wanted to go into vegan cooking. It didn't make much sense for me to go live there."

Tony's main profession was being a vegan cook. His job as a secret agent was only temporary.

"Oh, I understand. They left and you stayed."

"Well, I lived there for a few months, but I finally came back. The region where my parents live is pretty rough, they don't even have a good internet signal. I can communicate with them when they go to town to buy supplies, but I'm not in permanent contact with them."

"What about your sister, is she older than you?"

"A year younger," said Tony. "She's going to be twenty."

"And she doesn't mind living in a remote area?"

"She goes to college, she lives there. Anyway, she's studying for the same career as my father. I guess she's going to end up living in some mining town soon."

"Wow," said Hilda.

They paused. Two men in their eighties had arrived at one of the nearby tables and were beginning to place the chess pieces on their corresponding squares. Both were well dressed. One of them was wearing a brown suit with a brown and light blue striped tie. The second wore a light blue shirt with white stripes.

"My sister studies very hard, she barely has time to send a message now and then," explained Tony.

"Sure. And you don't have any other relatives around here? Uncles? Cousins?"

"No. Well, on my mother's side I think so, but they live abroad and I never met them. My father was an only child. I have some more distant relatives, children of my father's cousins, but I'm not too much in touch with them."

"I understand," said Hilda. "Well, you're on your own. I know how it feels."

Hilda was an orphan. Her closest relative was her uncle Gustav, but he was in prison for having wanted to destroy the Internet through a cyber attack carried out by clowns, organized by his partner Dmitri Kustralov.

"I actually have a relative who lives nearby," said Tony. "I just don't see her much. That's why I called you here today, because now..."

Tony paused.

"What now?" asked Hilda.

Just then they could see a woman approaching them, smiling. She looked like she was in her seventies. She was dressed elegantly, if a bit gaudy. She wore a gray skirt, a light yellow blouse, and an orange hat with a white flower. Her hair was blonde, though it was noticeably dyed. Her face was a bit stretched, as if she had had some touch-up in a plastic surgeon's operating room. She wore necklaces and bracelets, and a gold watch on her wrist. Her shoes were also orange, with a low heel, and she carried a small purse of the same color. She was wearing sunglasses, with a somewhat oval design.

The woman opened her arms when she saw Tony.

"Tony dear!" she said. "Oh, how grown-up you are! I can't believe it! Come kiss your Aunt Mecha!"

The meeting between Tony and Hilda is narrated in the novel Tony, Temporary Agent 48b: The Clown Cyber Attack.