Michael was startled. “No, how could I?” He thought of the condor, but suddenly doubted if it had even been his father. And what—he was going to come out and tell Daley that yes, his dad was about to be killed and might be a bird? He was suddenly angry again. “And even if I did hear from them, why should I believe anything they say? My parents are liars.”
Daley chuckled softly. “Actually, you’re right about that.”
Michael was shocked. “You know what I’m talking about?”
“It would be hard not to. You’re still front-page news here, kid. Suspected spies children on the run for their lives, go the headlines. Actually, you might be interested to hear the FBI just released new information about this case. It’s now a felony for any American, policeman, or civilian, to profit by turning you and your brother over to Hi-Core Industries instead of someone from the government. Because of the kidnapping of your parents, the attack at the Plaza, the bombing of your house, and the subsequent killings of American citizens, this is now an internal matter and Homeland Security has gotten involved to investigate.” He paused. “The most important thing though, Michael, is that, incredibly, your parents have been cleared. The United States government no longer thinks they’re spies for Herrington. Let’s give this one to the president for doing the right thing.”
Michael sat up straight in the seat. “How can that be? All the evidence clearly indicates they had dealings with him the entire time. What about them supposedly disappearing for five years, the money they came back with? Selling drugs and hiding information?”
“Michael, as far as the public is now concerned, they’re being told your parents were working on some secret government contra-terrorism experiments. Things which would help us in case of a global bio-agent attack. That we made them disappear, and they were paid well for their participation. People will believe what they read and hear and if the journalists do their job right, your parents are going to come out as heroes. And I’m sure soon you’ll be cleared as well from all the charges against you.”
“Heroes? Are you sure?”
“It’s true, Michael. The government actually found all the documents supposedly sent to Herrington, and it was all false information.”
“I heard about those documents before,” Michael said. “This guy who works with my parents, named Dobber, called me at home, the morning after the attack at the Plaza, and then again when we were at a motel. I’ve known this man my entire life and he told me he could help me, but he lied. He was the one who turned us in, set Herrington’s agents on us and I barely escaped. I can’t trust anyone, Mr. Daley. I bet this line is even tapped. I have to look out for my brother and everyone we’ve put our trust into has turned on us or been killed.”
“I know it’s been hard for you, but there’s going to be a time, very soon, when you’ll have to put your trust in someone, and I’m glad you put it in me to get you out of Rockland,” he said. “You can’t do this all alone. You don’t have the resources to stay out of sight indefinitely. You need to get into the right hands, fast.”
“Well, how am I going to do that?” Michael asked. “Every time we try, everything falls apart. Please, Mr. Daley, is there anything you can do for us? Can you call someone for me? Get your friend to come to me? Get police who don’t want to lock me up? I just don’t know who to turn to anymore.”
Mr. Daley paused for a moment, then spoke quickly. “Michael, I want you to listen to me very carefully, because what I’m going to say next will change the way you look at everything. That guy, Dobber? He didn’t turn you in. The agents in the sedans found you on their own using the tracking device that was in Danny’s ear. Dobber really was trying to help you. He actually works for the FBI.”
Michael was stunned and couldn’t find his voice. “How could you possibly know that?” he asked, hushed. “And, how do you know about the tracking device?” Fear flooded Michael. No, not Daley, too.
“I just know.” Daley’s voice took on a different tone. “Michael, hang on a sec.”
Michael heard a muffled conversation and Daley came back on. “Listen, I need you to call me at a different number in half an hour at a different location. Will you do that? Just reverse the charges and I’ll accept.”
What he said next chilled Michael to the bone. “More importantly, I want you and Danny out of that car as soon as possible. If we could track you there from this phone call, then I’m sure Herrington’s people will be on to you soon.”
Michael felt like the world had just been pulled out from under his feet. He looked over at Danny, scared to death. “How did you know where I was?” he whispered. “I never told you. Are you one of them too, Mr. Daley?” No, this couldn’t be happening.
“Kid, I said you were going to have to trust someone and that someone is me. What’s going on is that I work for the FBI, have for the past twenty years,” he declared. “I’ll explain everything to you later. Now, once I give you the number I want you to get out of that car and get someplace where you can get a phone call out to me. Here’s the number, do you have a pen and paper?”
“I think so,” Michael said shakily. He felt numb. Daley worked for the FBI? This was more than he could take. It all had to be a mistake. He heard Daley talking to him, but it was as if it was from far away. Suddenly, he didn’t want to listen to him anymore, didn’t want to listen to anyone. Everything he knew to be true was being twisted in a horrible, cruel way. He closed his eyes and heard a strange buzzing in his ears, as if a bee was continuously flying around his head in circles. He almost laughed, thinking this was what it must feel like to have a stroke.
He heard Daley yelling at him through the phone lines, forcing him back to reality. “Michael, are you listening to me? Come on, kid, answer me already.”
He shook his head, trying to clear it. God, he was so tired. “I’m here, I’m here, I hear you,” he mumbled.
“Thank, God. Look, I know this is a lot for you to handle, but you don’t have a choice right now. There’s too much depending on your getting through this, so don’t flake out on me. Now, get your pen and paper and write this down. I’m pretty sure this line is secure, but there are too many other prying ears around here and I don’t want them to know this number. Now, the first three digits in the phone number are the numbers for the second animal we dissected this year in class. Got that?”
No, he didn’t. Again, he felt like he was on stage where everyone knew the joke except him. “Mr. Daley, what are you talking about? I don’t understand what this has to do with my biology class. I don’t understand what this has to do with anything.”
“It’s a code, kid. You’re smart, figure it out,” he said. “Now, the next three numbers are all for the amount of fish in the aquarium. The next number is for the total amount of girls in your biology class and the last three numbers are for the amount of money I gave you in the envelope. Now, ditch the car and go. When you leave the parking lot, walk north. There’s a bowling alley about a quarter mile away. Go inside and call me from a pay phone there. Half an hour, got that?”
“No, I don’t got that,” he yelled, but the line had gone dead.
Michael stared at the phone in his hand. Slowly, the implications of what he had just learned hit him hard. Daley had known they were in the car because he had traced him through the cellphone lines. If what Miss Scribbner said was true, then the FBI really was all over the school and had put taps on the phone lines. Michael was stunned to think they knew him well enough to know he would eventually call the school. A school where Mr. Daley apparently was more than a plain old biology teacher. If that was true, then it meant Mr. Daley had been in on everything from the moment he first met him. Maybe even sending him on a phony goose chase to California, anything to get him on the run. The thought made his skin crawl. It also meant if the FBI could track them, then he was sure Herrington’s people could, too. This was their car, after all. He sprang into action.
“Danny, we’ve got to leave, right now.”
/> “Can I take some of the pictures with me?”
“Sure, grab a few and let’s go.”
Danny shuffled through them, considering, and then picked up three photos, folded them up and put them in his jacket pocket.
As Michael opened the back door of the car and helped Danny out, the cell phone rang. Curiously, he went over to it. Instinct told him not to pick it up, but the urge of the ringing phone was too strong. It might be Daley, calling him back to tell him something else. He picked up the receiver.
It wasn’t Daley.
“Hello, Michael.” He didn’t recognize the cold, dead voice on the line. “You’re more resilient than I thought. You keep eluding my men, though after doing a psychological profile run on you, it appears people around you have never given you the respect you deserve, have they? I could use someone like you on my team.”
“Mr. Herrington?” Michael asked, his voice hushed.
“Yes, it’s me. Now listen, I want to make you a deal. I have your parents, they’re alive and well, but I need information from you only your brother can supply. Bring him to me and I promise I’ll release all of you. Get you set up somewhere safe, new names, new identities and we can all start over. I did this once for your parents, and I promise to do it again.”
Suddenly, Michael heard someone scream out in the background and his heart leapt into his chest. It was his mother. “Don’t listen to him, Michael. He’s a liar. Run away with Danny. Protect yourselves.” He heard a loud commotion, chairs being overturned, and then silence.
Michael started screaming hysterically. “Don’t you hurt my mother. Leave her alone.”
Herrington shrieked, “Danny is my property. I have invested millions into this research, and I am going to get results with or without your parents. Bring him to me or I’ll kill your parents!”
“I will never give you my brother.”
“Then your parents will die.”
Michael screamed in frustration and slammed down the cellphone, his anger and rage maxed to the ultimate limit. Crazed, he picked up a laptop from the floor well and threw it against the car door, shattering the window. He couldn’t get his mother’s cries out of his head, knowing she was trapped and there was nothing he could do for her. Suddenly, he heard a piece of metal fall to the floor outside the car. Michael grabbed the paper with the phone number code words and jumped out. There on the ground was the smallest satellite dish he’d ever seen. It fit into the palm of his hand and had been attached to the side of the car. Now he knew how everyone had tracked him. He started stomping on it with his foot until it was nothing but a small broken heap of metal pieces. He turned to Danny who was cringing.
“Danny, c’mon,” he signed, the anger from his tantrum not abating for an instant.
They took off across the parking lot, while Michael got his bearings. The sun was to his right and rising. Right in front of him was a road. It was heading north. “This way.”
They reached the bowling alley in five minutes. Michael ushered Danny inside, got change for a dollar and sent Danny to the game room to play pinball. Going to a pay phone nearby, where he still had a good view of his brother, he took out the code sheet. He had calmed down enough to think rationally again, but it was hard. His mother’s screaming voice kept echoing through his head. He was thankful she was still alive, but he knew she was in deep trouble. Michael tried not to imagine the face of the horrible man who held her hostage and instead, started imagining the multiple ways he’d make them pay for hurting his parents.
He shook his head and took out the paper with Daley’s directions, staring dumbly at the first question. It made no sense to him. “The second animal we dissected in class was a pig,” Michael mused. Could he have meant that there are three letters in the word pig? He wrote down the numbers 3-3-3. He thought about it for a while and realized he’d never heard of an area code starting with three of the same digit. Suddenly he understood. He took a closer look at the phone and matched up the numbers to the letters on the dial spelling the word pig. The first three numbers were 7, which corresponded to the letter P, 4 for I and 4 for G.
The next three numbers represented the amount of fish in the aquarium. As of two weeks ago there had been three but one of them had died after getting sucked into the filter after someone didn’t set it back up properly after cleaning it. That left two. Michael glanced again at the phone. He spelled out the word two and matched the numbers. 8-9-6. The next number was for the number of girls in his class, which were nine and Mr. Daley had given Michael exactly four hundred dollars in the envelope. Did that mean he should spell out the number nine? That would have been four letters right there, but it didn’t make sense because he wouldn’t have to use the last question Daley posed. Sitting back he thought about it some more and tried the number nine and then added 400 from the next question. That meant the number was 744-896-9400.
Satisfied, he went over to the game room and watched Danny playing an old Addams Family pinball machine. Though he couldn’t hear anything, he seemed to sense what to do and laughed happily when Thing came out and gave him an extra ball. Michael waited until Danny’s game was over and then took him to the commissary where he bought them each a hot dog, some fries, and a coke.
Danny suddenly stopped eating and stared at his brother. “Will we ever see Mommy and Daddy again?”
It was a question he had asked himself many times over the past few days. “I hope so, Danny. I really do.”
“But why can’t I go see them? Is it because of me? Did I do something wrong?”
“No, you didn’t do anything wrong. None of this is your fault.” He tilted his brother’s chin up to face him. “Danny, what you can do with the birds is a wonderful and incredible thing. You have a special power, and there are bad people who want to know how you do it.”
“But I can tell them how to do it,” he answered. “Maybe they’ll let Mommy and Daddy come home then.”
“I don’t think it’ll be that easy,” he signed, wincing as he thought again of his mother screaming on the other end of the line, wondering what Herrington was going to do to her. “Listen, I need to make a phone call to Mr. Daley, the nice teacher who helped us out and gave us his car.” Teacher, yeah right. “You want to come with me?”
Danny nodded, and they both went over to the phone booth. Michael took out the number from his pocket, dialed and had the operator reverse the charges. Immediately, Daley picked up.
“Hey, kid, how ya doing?”
Michael involuntarily started laughing. “Oh, just fine, great, super, in fact. Um, I’m sorry about your car. The police that nabbed us took it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he chuckled. “It wasn’t mine anyway. Listen, now that we’re on an untapped line we can talk more freely. Too many ears over at the high school. I know this is a shock for you to hear I’m actually from the FBI, but you’ve had so many shocks the past few days, I can’t imagine this one will throw you any worse than the others.
“What I need is for you to get me up to speed on what you know. When you came to me back at the school I had no choice but to give you my car and send you as far away as possible. I didn’t have the resources at the time to help you. Especially with that mob on your tail.
“We thought we’d be able to track you through the device implanted in Danny’s ear, but it seems you got rid of that a few days ago. Not bad, kid, not bad.”
Michael interrupted him. “Mr. Daley, before we talk about anything, you have to clear up something for me. I don’t understand what’s going on. I mean, you’re my biology teacher. How can you be involved in the government? How can you even know about the microchip in Danny’s ear? It doesn’t make sense.”
“It actually makes a lot of sense. I work for the government and years ago I was assigned to monitor you.”
Michael was stunned. “Monitor me? Why?”
“For safety reasons, mostly. Sit back, because what I’m going to tell you next is going to be a big surprise. You
r family doesn’t work for Herrington. They work for us, the FBI. When they were growing up, both of your parents proved to be brilliant mathematicians, scoring the highest grades in their schools each and every time they took a standardized test. They were just teenagers and were sought out by the government to assist them with a top-secret investigation. They were perfect moles. Both of their parents had died very young, and they each had no brothers or sisters. Your mother was actually living with a foster family in Queens when the government first came to her with their proposal.”
Michael was shocked. “My mother was an orphan?” He had never heard this before. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. I’ve reviewed your parent’s files and have known both of them for many, many years. When your father was growing up, he lived in Florida with an old friend of his mother’s. Unfortunately, she passed away almost eight years ago.”
“Unbelievable,” Michael whispered.
Mr. Daley continued. “When your mother was thirteen and your father was fourteen, the government approached your parents and proposed a wonderful opportunity. The chance to work for the United States Government and serve their country. All their schooling would be paid for and they would be economically sound for the rest of their lives.
“It was an offer they couldn’t refuse. It was the chance of a lifetime, a chance for them both to truly belong to a family of people who all believed in the same thing. The safety and security of the United States.
“Your parents were sent to live in D.C. where they started school studying bio-physics, pathological warfare, toxicology, you name it. They became excellent neurophysicists and all of this was to get them to infiltrate Samuel Herrington’s organization where we could find out what this man was really doing. He’s one of the most lethal men in the world and while the government does a good spin on him, trying to play down his deadliness to the public, this man can destroy the human race a thousand times over with any of the strains of viruses he has at his disposal. His influence has become global and he has heads of states in various countries answering to him.
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