by Derek Milman
But I don’t feel anything. I have no sympathy for them at all.
“Why would I ever do anything to help you?”
They know I don’t care. And they have their responses ready.
“We’re the only ones who can end this,” says Schwartz.
“We’re your only option,” says Hernandez, even though we all know she’s not entirely correct about that. Digital Dust knows that, too.
But of course these bastards have a point.
I don’t want to get mixed up even deeper with the Swans. I want to stay alive. I want my family safe. These agents are immoral, but at least they’re sane, and on the right side of the law. They’re my best shot.
And they know it.
“Can we count on your cooperation?” says Schwartz.
My mouth morphs into a leer. “After these amazing pancakes, are you kidding? Anything.”
CHAPTER 12
The Debrief
Schwartz and Hernandez drive me to an FBI field office about twenty-five miles away. There’s some weirdness at first because it feels like I’m being arrested and booked, but they tell me that’s not what this is. They just want to “verify me,” which takes longer than everyone expected because I have no ID. I give them my Social Security number and my parents’ address.
I’m photographed—against a white wall with a height chart—and fingerprinted.
I agree to be polygraphed. The questions mainly concern drug usage, if I have a criminal history, my identity, that sort of thing.
Then I’m debriefed by a bunch of agents with crude buzz cuts, wearing white dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up. I sit in an uncomfortable swivel chair in an office with low maze-like cubicles. They sit on the edges of desks, surrounding me, raining questions down.
I tell them everything I can about my interaction with Benoît and what happened after, with a heavy concentration on my time in the Merrick Gables. They show me a few photos. I identify Hardy Boy Joe, Hardy Boy Frank, and the bellhop I killed in that pool with a paper clip. They actually get a kick out of that. One of the agents jokes he never learned anything like that at Quantico.
When I ask him if he’s ever been strangled to within an inch of his life as a child because a secret and probably illegal but definitely unethical government program picked him unknowingly to take part in a dangerous operation that would bring him face-to-face with psychotic terrorists, he shuts up real quick.
Someone goes over to a whiteboard with those same photos pasted on it. With a red marker, he writes DECEASED over Blond Bellhop’s face. I guess his name was Vincent Davvio. They’re all drifters, petty criminals, with a long string of convictions.
Troubled people, man.
I never saw the entire face of my dear friend who loves Martha and the Vandellas as much as me, and appreciates my tornado dreams, but they have a pretty good idea who he is.
“He goes by Scotty,” says Schwartz. I’m waiting for some kind of punch line. But he’s not joking. “Did you hear anyone call him that?”
I shift in my seat. “No. Are you, uh, sure that’s his name?”
“Why?”
“It just… sounds like someone I would have a play date with in third grade. It doesn’t sound like the head of a terrorist organization.”
“Maybe that’s on purpose,” says Schwartz, consulting some notes.
“Okay.”
“Take us forward,” says Schwartz.
“You should all quit the FBI, start on macrobiotic diets, and become Pilates instructors.”
“I meant in time. After you escaped the house.”
“I got on a train.”
“And then?”
“And then I met Shiloh.”
“Shiloh,” Schwartz repeats, nodding.
After another round of questions, where we go through every word that was said during every conversation with Scotty (that name! srsly?), we just begin to repeat ourselves, and my exhaustion mounts.
Sensing my patience wearing thin, Schwartz hustles me into a bare-bones conference room: foldout chairs, empty Starbucks coffee cups; it’s just the two of us now.
“We let your parents know you’re safe.”
“I want to talk to them.”
“We’ll arrange that.”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“You’re not in any kind of trouble.”
“I meant to sue your ass. You know the Swans threatened my family? You got them involved in this shit, too.”
Schwartz holds up his hands. “I promise they’ll be safe. We’re watching your whole family, keeping very close tabs. “We had good intentions, but the Digital Dust project went too far.”
I look him in the eye. “Were you cool with your son… when he told you he was gay?”
He hesitates. “Yes, family counseling and everything so my wife and I would know how to best support him. And he’s doing well.”
“What’s his name?”
“Eli.”
Of course, this could all be bullshit. I almost ask to see a photo, but I don’t, even though I’m curious.
“Well,” I say, “I’m standing alone with you in this room, at this field office, I still don’t have my phone, and you’re going to tell me I need to keep pretending to be Mr. Preston. That’s the favor you want, right?”
“Yes. And we’ll get you your phone. It’s being located. We’ll announce you’re not our man. In time.”
“How much time?”
“Very soon. No one’s released your name. Yet.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“If the Swans figure out you’re not real—if they know we’re onto them—they’ll do a whole purge of their ranks, and our agent risks exposure.”
“Well, I’m supposed to be on spring break. So really… screw you all.
“You might feel differently when I tell you about our agent inside.”
“Doubt it.”
“It’s Shiloh.”
I sit at the table, push a paper cup away, and put my head in my hands.
Nothing was ever quite normal with Shiloh, and the way we met, but for some reason I never made that connection. Of course he’s their stupid agent. Otherwise he would have just killed me in that cottage instead of calling 911, since the Swans obviously want me dead.
Of course he’s not a handsome, well-dressed tennis player from Duke who materialized out of thin air to save me on a train. Life isn’t like that; it’s not a fairy tale. I think it would have been easier for me if Shiloh had turned out to be a backstabbing terrorist. Now it’s more confusing. I don’t know how much of him is real (or how real our chemistry was), and I can’t even hate him—because he’s risking his life to fight evil.
But I’m going to let myself be pissed that he lied to me. He steered me away from my justified doubts, my own instincts regarding his sudden entrance into my life. There was a little bit of gaslighting going on.
Agent Schwartz is watching me. “Shiloh broke his cover, risked the whole operation to go up to the Adirondacks to try to pull you out.”
“He was the one who sent me there!”
“Those were his orders, and he was undercover. I don’t think he knew they were going to try to kill you.”
“Why did they? Scotty offered me a choice. He wanted me to get them the source code or join their cause. It was pretty clear.”
“Because they’re psychotic terrorists, Aidan.”
“Or they already know I’m a decoy. And if they know I’m a decoy, they might already know Shiloh is an FBI mole. Have you considered all that?”
“We’ve considered everything. We’re the FBI.”
I wiggle my hands around in the air. “Ooooooh.”
Schwartz sighs.
“Why was Shiloh taking photos of me at the Mandarin Oriental?” I ask.
“For our purposes, to keep tabs on you.”
“But also to feed my image to the Swans, right?”
Schwartz looks solemn. “After Shiloh returned
from the Adirondacks, we lost tabs on him.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s supposed to check in with us at specified times, and he’s gone dark. It’s a very recent development, but… it hasn’t happened before.”
I sit up a little. “Is he okay?”
Schwartz notes my reaction. “You care about him?”
I don’t know what I feel. I’m just dizzy.
No one ever risked so much to save me before.
But no one I know ever led me into a death trap, either.
That kiss, though. It was so soft…
“I think he cares about you,” says Schwartz.
“Sweet.” I’m trying to feel nothing. That would be easier.
“We’re close to ending this. The best way to ensure your family remains safe—the best way to help us move in and save lives—is to cooperate. I’m glad you’re on our side.”
I wonder which specific lives we’re saving here: homophobic senators who don’t see my human worth and will try everything to stop me from getting married or adopting children? People who are so low they’d picket the funeral of a gay teen?
“What does it mean that I’m on your side?” I ask. “What is it that you’re asking me to do exactly?”
“We’re working that out now.” Schwartz looks at his watch, then flips on a TV mounted on the wall. On the news, the FBI director is giving a press conference about all the recent attacks. He’s being peppered with questions, his face alight from camera flashes.
“All we know at this time… yes… just a person of interest. There is no name to be released. He’s not an official suspect, more a witness on the periphery of events, who we’d like to talk to in regard to our ongoing investigation…”
The reporters shout more questions at him, drowning each other out.
“Turn it off, please.”
Schwartz flips off the TV. “I wanted you to see where we’re at with the media.”
“Eventually you’re going to announce publicly that this was all a mistake, right? So my future isn’t totally fucked?”
“Yes.”
But I don’t trust this chaos to unwind itself.
“Why even give my picture out to the media in the first place?”
“The Swans would have expected that. We have to keep this operation looking legit.”
Sure, at the continued expense of me, my life, my future.
Another agent comes to the door. Schwartz has a conversation with this person, sticking his head out of the doorway, so I can’t hear what they’re saying. Then he says “Okay,” leans back in, and tosses me my phone, which I catch.
“Can I trust you not to make any calls or anything just yet?”
The phone is dead anyway. And no one’s giving me a charger.
The feds place me in protective custody for my return to New York City.
At least I get to fly on a private jet.
That’s kind of cool, and it sure beats the bus ride up here. I get a police escort onto the tarmac of a small airport, and then a bunch of government agents—they’re not all FBI; I see NSA jackets, Homeland Security, Secret Service—escort me onto the small plane, with Schwartz taking the lead.
The plane is pretty sweet. My leather seat, resembling a comfy recliner, rises from a cushioned panel. The seats are in groups of four, two of them facing the other two across a high-finish wooden table. Laptops litter a conference table with leather chairs in the back of the plane. Across the aisle, Hernandez sits with three of her colleagues, chatting, consulting files. Schwartz sits across from me. The other FBI dudes who were questioning me earlier occupy the remaining seats around me.
We take off right away. There are no seat-belt or phone restrictions, although my phone is still dead, so who cares? They serve me Coke over ice in an actual glass, a really good chicken-salad sandwich with fancy potato chips, and I get a fleece blanket, which I snuggle under. TV screens display the route map. It’ll be a short flight.
“Do you want to take a nap?” Schwartz asks me.
“I can’t sleep on planes.”
He leans forward, an iPad displayed on his lap. “This is our guy.” There’s an image of a good-looking sandy-haired man around his mid-thirties, wearing a black leather jacket, standing at a podium, pointing, with a wry grin on his face. I can’t see his eyes, and I remember his eyes.
“That’s him?”
“Scott Hewcott McAndriss III. Or Scotty. Has a master’s degree in English from Columbia University. He’s an academic, a professor. Untenured. Sarah Lawrence. UCLA. UConn. Brandeis. He bounced around, lots of affairs with students, apparently. Erratic behavior. Comes from money… a lot of money, actually. Family owned a supermarket chain. Grew up in New York City, but his family owned a summer home in Kattskill Bay, New York. That’s near Mohawk State Park and Lake George, Aidan. Where he lured you.”
“Oh,” I mutter, hating the idea of being lured anywhere. I’m not some credulous kid. And Schwartz could be making this shit up for all I know. All of it.
“We think the Swans have a secret training facility nearby.”
I sigh. “You think?”
“Aerial surveillance hasn’t confirmed anything. Property records show nothing. And…”
I steel myself. “What?”
“The Warren County Clerk’s office was hacked a few months ago.”
Of course it was. “By them?”
Schwartz shrugs.
Everything is unsubstantiated. “Why did they pick that visitor center to hit?”
“We don’t know.”
I nod, unimpressed.
He goes on. “Parents are dead. No siblings. Had a partner for many years. The partner, Kenneth Swann, an accountant from Denver, apparently committed suicide.”
I sit up, shook. “He did?”
“Swann had no immediate family that we could find, so we’re a little hazy on those details. Our profilers are determining that’s probably the turnaround point, though, where Scotty became radicalized.”
“What did Scotty teach?”
“Queer theory. Gender studies.”
Schwartz fiddles with the iPad, then plays me a TED Talk from 2009.
Scotty wears a conservative-looking black V-neck sweater with a light-blue shirt underneath and gray wool pants. I recognize his voice right away, though it sounds a little younger, warmer, less acerbic. He’s striking to look at, but he tends to drone, in a heady way, about sexuality being a social construct and gender being fluid. At times he’s hard to follow; he makes odd segues and is prone to dizzying tangents.
I guess that’s a habit of mine as well, although I like to think I’m somewhat charming when I need to be.
Scotty is not a great public speaker—stiff, awkward, insular. He calls himself a disciple of Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Larry Kramer, Harvey Milk, and Queer Nation.
Schwartz tells me they’re all philosophers, theorists, gay activists.
At some point, Scotty transformed from a boring, buttoned-up academic into a motorcycle-riding terrorist able to recruit followers with a virulently pro-LGBTQ agenda, all of them fearlessly willing to take on the government and kill anyone who gets in their way. It’s almost too crazy to believe.
Maybe Scotty changed, like a comic-book villain, when he lost his partner. Maybe that’s when the Swans were born. I know grief. I know how it can rip you apart. There’s a fragile threshold. You can waltz into the darkness pretty easily. Or you can try to negotiate a way back into the light. Sometimes you get lost trying. And sometimes you even think you’re in the light, but you’re still stuck on the other side.
CHAPTER 13
Capture the Flag
We land at Teterboro Airport less than an hour later during a storm.
There’s another police escort back to Manhattan. I’m taken to a penthouse suite in a midtown hotel. The suite is huge, bustling with agents murmuring into phones and staring into laptops, typing. I have no idea what’s coming nex
t. I sit in a comfy chair and watch the city, lit up in the wet hot night, get battered by rain. I see tiny twinkling lights for miles.
“We need you to sit tight for a bit,” says Schwartz, coming over to me, his FBI jacket on, chugging a bottle of Poland Spring.
“How long am I going to be here?”
“Hopefully, not too long. Is there anything we can get you in the meantime?”
“An iPhone charger.”
“Sure. Coming right up. But I’m going to ask you not to text anyone or make any calls. No social media posts, either.”
Then what’s the point of having the phone? “Why?”
“For your own safety. We need you to be mum right now.”
A bulky agent with a shaved head, cell phone pressed to his ear, dangles a charger in front of me. I snatch it from him and plug it into the nearest wall outlet. When the phone turns on, there’s a smattering of texts, but I don’t read them because then I’ll be tempted to respond. I want to play along, so this ends sooner.
My unlocked phone was in Shiloh’s possession for a while. I wonder if…
Then I find it.
It’s in the Notes app, dated yesterday evening, while I was in the hospital:
ATTACK ON VISITOR CENTER WAS US.
That’s all it says.
Before I even have a chance to process this, my phone starts ringing.
I remember Scotty’s fake area code quite well. Thankfully, the ringer is off. I hold the phone under my shirt and ask an agent where the nearest bathroom is. He points, distracted. I run in and lock the door, turning the sink on.
“I thought we had a deal,” I say, through my teeth.
“We did. We’re not the ones who tried to kill you at Mohawk.”
“So the US government staged a terror attack on innocent civilians and got a state trooper killed in order to take me out? I’m supposed to believe that? There were kids there…”