by Roland Smith
“You have to give her points for endurance,” Vanessa said, shaking her head in admiration. “I bet she hasn’t slept, eaten, or peed in twenty-four hours.”
Boone looked at me. “This is where you get out.”
“What are you going to do?”
He pointed to the monitor. “Vanessa and X are going to catch up with Eben and make sure he’s alone in the car. Everett and I are going to give Felix a hand trying to find Angela.”
“I’ll help you look for Angela,” I said.
“Did she tell you she was going to leave the hotel?”
“No.”
He fixed those pale blues on me, which I figured were probably pretty good lie detectors after all the years of deceiving people. And the truth was Angela hadn’t said anything about ditching Felix. After about a five-second stare he nodded.
“You said you wanted to be on the team,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “That’s why I want to—”
Boone shook his head and pointed out the windshield. “You heard X. Right about now Devorah’s beginning to have serious doubts that Angela and Felix are in the coach. The fact that she’s still here means that Eben doesn’t have Angela…yet. If he had her he’d call her off the warehouse to help him. We need to keep Devorah right where she is. That way we only have to keep an eye on Eben while we look for Angela. And this is where you come in. I need you to use the bugs to convince Devorah that Angela and Felix are in the coach.”
“I’m an amateur magician,” I said. “Not a mimic. I can’t imitate their voices.”
“You don’t have to,” Boone said. “All you have to do is whisper something about how surprised you are that they’re still asleep.”
“So you want me to talk to myself,” I said.
“I’d send Croc with you as a sounding board,” Boone said. “But we’re going to need him to track Angela.”
At that moment Croc was as sound asleep as Everett. His tongue was hanging out, and he was drooling on the passenger armrest. He did not look like a dog that could find anything.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”
I glanced at the monitors again. Eben was still driving. The monitor next to it was flashing through surveillance cameras around the city. Malak’s (or Anmar’s) face was paused on the third monitor.
“How much video is there of her?” I asked.
“Two or three seconds,” X said. “You know how it works on The Today Show. They pan their cameras across the crowd so the gawkers can wave to their friends. I’m sure there’s more video of her that they didn’t use on the show. I might try to get a hold of the unused footage, but that could be risky. They’re going to ask why I want it and I can’t tell them the truth. We don’t want a major television network investigating who we are.”
“Can I get a copy of those two or three seconds?”
At that point I didn’t know why I asked. I had a feeling that the coach duty was their way of getting me out of their hair. Maybe I wanted to throw another IQ test at them to see what they would say. Or maybe it was because I still couldn’t believe the woman was Angela’s mom. Something bothered me about it. I wanted to take another look at the video on my laptop.
X looked at Boone.
“It’s fine with me,” Boone said. “As long as it doesn’t take long. We really need to catch up with Eben.”
“I’ll E-mail it to you while we’re driving,” X said.
They passed the test.
I slid the door open and started to step out. Boone put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Obviously, if Angela shows up at the warehouse you need to call me immediately.”
“Obviously,” I said
Everett raised his head. “Take it easy, kid,” he said.
I slid the door closed.
Two Little Angels
Devorah snapped my photo as I headed into the warehouse. I didn’t taunt her by smiling or waving. I actually felt a little sorry for her sitting in that car all that time with her bum shoulder and nothing to do but stare at an empty warehouse. Being a spy was nothing like the James Bond novel I’d read. I felt sorry for the security guards too. There was only one standing at the entrance now. He gave me a sleepy nod as I walked past him. The other two guards were at the desk playing cards. I was tempted to ask if I could get in on the game or show them a card trick. But I didn’t have the time. I had an important secret mission. I had to go talk to myself.
I unlocked the coach, stepped inside, and quietly closed the door behind me so I didn’t wake up anybody in the empty coach. I waited a few seconds, then whispered (feeling ridiculous): “I can’t believe they’re still asleep.” Which I guess completed my assignment. Now what was I going to do?
Eat.
I opened the fridge. The contents had not changed since the last time I looked. I found a loaf of something called 16 Grain Organically Milled Bread. (I didn’t know there were 16 different kinds of grain on earth). I pulled a slice out of the bag. It had the texture and weight of a chunk of wood, and from previous experience I knew that’s exactly what it would taste like. Way in the back was a jar of almond butter, which had the consistency and taste of wood glue. If I didn’t like the combination of the two I decided I’d pass the time constructing a sturdy organic breadbox and give it to Mom as a hint that our food was actually construction material, not food.
“What’s to eat?” Angela whispered.
The bread went flying across the kitchen. I’d had just about enough of people sneaking up behind me. I whipped around and was about to shout something obscene, but Angela was holding up a stop sign that read: Bugs! At that moment she was bugging me a lot more than the bugs. At least now Devorah would think Angela was in the coach because Angela was in the coach!
“I was about to make a delicious almond butter sandwich,” I said. I picked up a slice of bread off the floor with Croc hair stuck all over it. “I’ll make you one.”
“No thanks,” Angela whispered. “And keep your voice down so you don’t wake Felix. I’m going to take a shower.” She waggled her index finger for me to follow her.
When we got into the bathroom she slid the door closed and turned on the shower.
“X said it was safe to talk in here,” she said. “The bugs are under the dashboard, above the dining room table, and in Dad and Blaze’s bedroom.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “How did you get in here without the security guards seeing you?”
“Those guards wouldn’t notice the Israeli army storming the warehouse. I came back the same way I left…over the roof and down a ladder. They didn’t even glance in my direction. Did you see The Today Show?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Both performances. You skipped out on the second one.”
“Weren’t they great!”
Angela bit her lower lip. Uh-oh.
“They were great,” I agreed. “Especially your dad, but you were supposed to stay in the hotel. Boone’s going crazy trying to find you.” I pulled out my phone. “I better call and tell him you’re here.”
Angela bit her lower lip again. Here it comes, I thought.
“Let’s wait a bit before we call him,” she said.
“Why?” I said. “So Boone and the other old spooks can keel over from heart attacks from worry?”
My phone rang.
“Please!” Angela begged. “Don’t answer it.”
I looked down at the screen. It wasn’t a call, it was the download from X of The Today Show. I slipped the phone back into my pocket.
“All right I didn’t answer it. Now tell me what’s going on.”
Another lower lip bite.
“Come on!” I urged her. “Why are you hiding from Boone? Why did you pull your battery out of your cell phone?”
“I just needed some privacy.”
I thought she might bite her lower lip off.
“Really? Then why did you come back here? The coach isn’t exactly private. It’s crawling with bugs.”
Angela released her lip and reached into her pocket. She held up a gold chain. Hanging from the chain was a gold angel.
“This,” she said.
It looked familiar, but I knew I’d never seen Angela wearing it. I stared at the little angel dancing on the necklace.
“It belonged to your mother,” I said.
Angela shook her head and put the necklace around her neck. That’s when I remembered where I had seen it before. I took my phone out.
“Who are you calling?” Angela asked.
“No one.” I opened X’s download and played it. Then I played it again to make sure.
“What are you doing?” Angela tried to get a look at the screen.
I hid the phone from her. “The first thing you asked me to do this morning was to persuade Boone to make us a part of his team.” I opened her text message. “Here it is…at the end you said, Tell him: NO MORE SECRETS! Seems to me that Boone isn’t the only one keeping secrets.”
“I’m not keeping any secrets from you,” Angela said.
“Well, you’re not volunteering information, which is the same thing as keeping a secret. And this is exactly the same thing that you accused Boone of doing.”
“Sorry,” Angela said.
And she did look sorry so I paused the video and showed her the picture of the woman with the spiky blond hair. She gasped and grabbed the phone out of my hand.
“Where did you get this?” Her voice was choked with emotion and her eyes started to well with tears.
“X-Ray,” I said.
“Boone and the others know?”
“Yeah. X used some kind of facial recognition software to pick her out of the crowd.” I pointed to the picture on the BlackBerry. “This woman doesn’t look anything like your mother.” I reached over and zoomed in on the still. “You saw the necklace.”
“I thought I saw the necklace,” she said. “She was only on camera for a second and the hotel TV wasn’t recording so I couldn’t replay it.” She looked at the little angel hanging around her neck in the mirror. “When I was little Dad wrote a song called ‘Two Angels’.”
“I know that song,” I said. Mom used to play it all the time.
“It was a big hit,” Angela continued. “He had these necklaces made for us with the first royalty check. We wore them every day. I took mine off when Mom died. I didn’t wanted to be reminded of her every time I looked in the mirror. And I didn’t want to remind Dad either.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks. It was bad enough to hear her crying in the dark produce truck, but seeing it up close in the tiny bathroom was worse. I started to leave to give her some privacy.
Angela turned around. “Don’t go.” She handed my phone back and wiped her face with a towel. “I have a lot more to tell you. But first, why did you ask X to download the video clip?”
Before answering I used the towel to wipe the tears off my phone.
“At first I thought it was a test to see if Boone would let X give it to me with no questions asked,” I said. “He did. But then when we got in here and you showed me your necklace I realized why I had really asked. The photo of your mom at the firing range. She was wearing the same necklace, but it only had one charm.” I held up the BlackBerry so she could see the screen. “Now there are two.”
Angela nodded.
“It’s kind of hard to see,” I said, “but the second one looks like some kind of cat.”
“A crouching leopard,” Angela said, then turned off the shower.
Ziv made two calls as he drove Eben’s rental. One to Carma. One to Devorah. Neither was happy to hear from him and they were less happy with the news he conveyed. He told them that the mission had been scrapped and was officially over. They were to fly home immediately and report back into the Institute.
Both of them refused.
Carma said, “My orders come from Eben, not his driver,” then she hung up.
Devorah asked him where Eben was. When he told her that he didn’t know she hung up on him too.
Ziv wasn’t surprised. Mossad agents were notoriously stubborn about aborting a mission before it was completed. But Ziv had accomplished his mission. Tyrone Boone would continue to be able to track them. Carma and Devorah would keep their current cell phones until they got in touch with Eben. What Boone didn’t know was that Eben’s cell phone was sitting on the seat next to him. Eben’s cell phone rang. Ziv smiled and let it go to voice mail. It was either Carma or Devorah. He was certain that none of them would call the Institute to confirm his authority to abort the mission for fear that his authority was legitimate. If the Institute confirmed it they would all be on the next flight to Tel Aviv. Unconfirmed, they could remain in the field and claim ignorance if there were questions later—and there were always questions later.
For the time being, Ziv would have three rogue agents on his hands, but he wasn’t worried. They were exhausted, injured, confused, and out of communication with each other. He also knew that the phone conversations he’d just had would confuse Tyrone Boone as well.
SOS was very confused.
Uly had just called and said that Ziv was not at the hospital and no one had seen him leave.
“Talked to a nurse,” he told Boone. “Sprained ankle, not broken. I found a gray wig and a pair of glasses in the bathroom. Checked the surveillance camera tapes and I think I might have caught him a couple of times in the hallway, but I’m not one hundred percent sure. Whoever it was, was wise to the cameras. Never caught his face. In one of the vids he was pulling something out of a trash can. Couldn’t see what it was, but I’ll tell you this… If the guy was Ziv he didn’t look like Ziv…but he knew exactly what he was doing. He was in complete control.”
“How was he dressed?”
Uly told him.
“Oh that’s just perfect,” Boone said irritably. “Where did he get that?”
“Don’t know,” Uly said. “I searched his room and found his suitcase and a couple of other interesting items. What do you want me to do?”
“Hook up with Felix and help him search for Angela,” Boone answered. “We have to find her before Eben does.”
As soon as he ended the call with Uly, Ziv’s calls to Carma and Devorah came in. Boone, X, Everett, and Vanessa listened carefully to the brief calls. When the second call ended a look of deep concern was etched into Boone’s tired face.
“I guess Ziv isn’t out of commission,” he said. “Did you get a lock on his phone?”
“Negative,”X said. “The ladies weren’t on long enough for the computer to snag it. Something’s not right about this. We didn’t have any trouble pulling up Eben, Carma, and Devorah from the database, but we drew a blank on Ziv. We wrote him off as a low level Mossad functionary…a driver. Either we were wrong about him or they’re running some kind of scam. I think there’s a good chance we’re going to lose all four of them.”
“Drop me and Everett off here,” Boone said. “The hotel’s only a few blocks away.” He pointed to the monitor tracking Eben’s car. “You need to catch the car before it’s dumped. We need to know who’s in it.”
Boone, Everett, and Croc jumped out of the van. Vanessa peeled out with the sliding door still open.
The E-mail
Angela walked over to our berths and whispered to no one: “Put that book down, Q. We might as well work on our homework while Felix is sleeping. Bring your laptop. We’ll work in Mom and Dad’s room so we don’t wake him.”
She was obviously more fluent in “bug talk” than I was. I followed her into the master suite and saw her open her laptop on the bed. This must have been where she was hiding out when I came into the coach.
“I guess we should finish up our Philadelphia section since we’ll be leaving here tomorrow,” she said. “We’ll take turns inputting things onto the Web page.” She typed for a minute or two, then turned her laptop around so I could read it…
My mother sent me a TM right after I saw her on the Today Show. It read: Check o
ur E-mail. “Our E-mail” was a Yahoo E-mail account that only she and I knew about. I haven’t used, or even thought about it, since I thought she died. In their hurry to get me out of here last night I forgot my backpack. I couldn’t remember the E-mail address and I didn’t think it was a good idea to use my BB anyway in case Boone or X were monitoring our E-mail as well as our calls. I came back here to get the E-mail address from my journal and to use the computer.
I read this over twice and had about two hundred questions like: How does your mother know your phone number? But instead I typed:
What did the E-mail say?
Angela typed:
Wait outside Independence Hall @ 2:15. Come alone. Do not tell Boone or SOS. Q can come too if you can’t slip away from SOS without him. Be patient. I’ll be watching and someone will make contact when we know it’s safe.
X had been right. Malak or Anmar had somehow tapped into Eben’s bugs. This was the only way that she could have known about Boone and SOS. And it was clear she wasn’t in this alone.
I typed:
Who is someone?
Angela shrugged.
I typed:
You don’t know if the E-mail is from your mom or Anmar!!! What if Anmar took your mother’s necklace after the explosion? Why would your mother add the leopard charm to her necklace?
Angela took the computer and typed:
I’m going to be there @ 2:15 to get the answers to those questions and many others. You don’t have to come with me, but you can’t tell Boone that I was here or where I’ve gone.
I could tell Boone anything I wanted to and I’d probably be doing Angela a favor by ratting her out, but I typed:
I’m going with you.
Angela looked relieved.
I didn’t want to go, but I wanted her to go by herself even less. Also, I thought I might be more successful at talking her out of this if I could actually talk to her instead of typing my argument.
Angela typed:
You’ll have to leave your BB here. But before you do, find out where everyone is.
I punched the tracking icon and went down the list showing Angela the screen each time I clicked a name. X and Vanessa were together, and by the speeds their icons were moving, they were still in the intellimobile. Uly, Felix, Everett, and Boone were within blocks of each other near the hotel and moving much slower, on foot no doubt, searching for Angela. I wondered if Croc had picked up her scent. I noticed that there were two new names: Blaze and Roger. I clicked their names. It took awhile for their dots to appear on the little screen. They were in Chicago, moving fast. Art and Marie were with them–probably in a limo on their way to Harpo Studios where Oprah was taped.