Independence Hall

by Roland Smith

  “Why?” Angela asked

  Instead of answering, Eben dug the tip into my neck.

  “Ouch!” I tried to pull away.

  He held me fast and said, “I wouldn’t make any sudden moves. This knife is very sharp.”

  I froze.

  Angela turned her back to us, but not before I felt a trickle of blood roll down my neck. Eben reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out a coil of rope.

  “Tie her wrists,” he said. “Tightly. I’m watching.”

  Angela turned her head and looked at me. I winked and gave her a nervous grin, hoping she got the message. I knew dozens of interesting knots. I tied her wrists.

  Eben inspected my handiwork. Angela really had him spooked. He was treating her like he thought she was the leopard, not her mother.

  “Sit back down,” he said, then (to my relief) he shoved me onto the bench across from her. He wiped my blood off the tip of the knife onto his pants.

  “I am going to ask you some questions and if you don’t answer them to my satisfaction I will kill the boy.”

  “Have you ever killed a boy?” Angela asked.

  “Yes,” Eben said. “Young girls too. And you’ll be next if I don’t get the answers I want.”

  I was about ready to murder Angela myself. She needed to drop the ’tude. Had she forgotten that Eben was an assassin?

  Eben yanked her sunglasses off and tossed them on the dusty table.

  “What did the policeman at Independence Hall say to you?” he asked.

  I was right. Eben had been following us and had set a trap. I hoped Carma and Devorah weren’t nearby.

  “Ziv said that you were off the grid,” Angela answered calmly.

  “He told you his name was Ziv?” Eben seemed surprised.

  Angela nodded. “He said that you were a rogue agent and that we should go back to the warehouse where we would be safe.”

  “Did he tell you who he was working for?”

  Angela looked confused, and I have to say the look was pretty convincing. “He’s working for the Mossad just like you were. He told us that you went off the deep end.”

  “Why was he wearing a police uniform?”

  “He knew he wouldn’t be able to approach us otherwise,” Angela answered without the slightest hesitation. She must have a black belt in lying as well as taekwondo. She was better at it than Boone was.

  “Why did he take your phone?”

  Uh-oh…

  “He wanted to make contact with Tyron Boone and tell him–”

  The knife came down with a bang stabbing the ten of hearts dead center. “I warned you about lying.” He pulled the knife out of the card. “If you lie again I will put this knife in your brother’s heart.”

  Angela went pale and bit her lower lip.

  “Why did he take your phone?” Eben repeated, taking a step closer to me.

  Now would be a good time to tell the truth, I thought, or surprise him by jumping up and breaking his neck with her hands that weren’t really tied.

  “He wanted to lead Boone away from us,” Angela answered.

  “Why?”

  I thought Angela might bite off her lower lip. Eben was in easy range of Angela’s lightning foot. I willed her to remember my wink and smile, but she just sat there. She hadn’t gotten the message.

  “Angela’s mom didn’t kill your brother,” I blurted out. “He was killed by two terrorists named Salim Kazi and Amun Massri. Ziv killed Salim Kazi a few weeks ago in Mexico.”

  Eben stared at me for a second, then closed his good eye and nodded as if this somehow made sense.

  “Ziv told me he had been pulled off an assignment in Mexico to join us,” he said almost to himself, then looked back at me. “Did he say where Amun was?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m going to ask you again,” Eben said slowly. “Who is he working for?”

  “The good of mankind,” Angela answered.

  He took a step toward me. “I warned you.”

  “It’s the truth!” I said. “That’s what he told us.” I didn’t mention the monkey and leopard tail thing.

  “Is the leopard in Philadelphia?” Eben asked.

  “Huh?” I said

  “What are you talking about?” Angela said.

  “Your mother,” Eben said impatiently. “Malak. Also known as Anmar, or the leopard.”

  “My mother is dead!” Angela said indignantly. “She was killed four years ago in the line of duty. She was a Secret Service agent.”

  “Was is the key word,” Eben said. “Now she’s a terrorist.”

  “My mother died on November 30, 2004 right here in Philadelphia at Independence Hall. She is not a terrorist. She was killed by a terrorist bomb.”

  Eben shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I do,” Boone said.

  This time I was happy to be startled. Boone had slipped in like a ghost through the swinging door in the back of the restaurant. The automatic pistol he held looked out of place, but the old hand holding it was as steady as a rock. Croc stood next to Boone drilling his weird blue eye into Eben’s head.

  Eben was about three feet away from me and appeared to be considering his options. The front door opened and in stepped Felix, also holding an automatic pistol, eliminating all of Eben’s options. Apparently Ziv’s BlackBerry ruse hadn’t worked. Boone must have followed us from Independence Hall, or else he had tapped into Eben’s cell phone signal totally ignoring Angela’s BlackBerry signal.

  “Drop the knife,” Felix said.

  Eben hesitated, then dropped the knife.

  “Give the photo back to Angela,” Boone said.

  Slowly, Eben pulled the photo out of his pocket and tossed it onto the dusty table.

  Angela stood up. “Untie me,” she said.

  “Just pull your wrists apart,” I told her.

  She did and the cord fell to the ground.

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I tried to,” I said, giving her an exaggerated wink, which she totally ignored…again.

  Boone noticed the blood on my neck and the collar of my shirt. A look came over his face I hadn’t seen before…rage. He raised his pistol and pointed it at Eben’s head.

  “I guess you win this round,” Eben said, relatively calmly under the circumstances.

  “We have won all the rounds,” Boone said. “And now the fight is over. You lost.”

  For a second I thought Boone was going to pull the trigger. Instead, he let out a long breath and looked at us. “Vanessa is waiting for you in the van in back of the restaurant. You can cut through the kitchen. She’ll drive you to the warehouse.”

  “What are you going to do?” Angela asked.

  “We’re going to have a private conversation with our Mossad friend here and we’ll join you later.”

  Angela and I hesitated.

  “Go!” Boone said. “Now!”

  Angela pushed her stuff into her backpack and slung it over her shoulder.

  I followed her into a gutted kitchen with Croc at my heels.

  “I can’t believe I wasn’t really tied,” Angela said as we walked through the kitchen to the back door. “If I’d known that I could have done something about Eben before Boone showed up.”

  “I winked at you when I tied your hands,” I protested. “I don’t know how you could have missed it.”

  Angela stopped and looked at me. “You are wearing dark sunglasses, Q.”

  “Oh.” I guess I was so scared I forgot I had them on.

  “What do you think they’re going to do to Eben?” Angela asked.

  “I don’t know.” I touched the side of my neck where he had stuck me. “And I’m not sure I care.”

  She looked at the cut. “It’s not deep. He knew exactly where to stick you without severing an artery. I think he was just trying to scare me.”

  “Scare you?” I said.

  Angela was biting her lower lip again.
<
br />   “Okay,” I said. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m not going back to the warehouse,” she said.

  “I figured that.”

  “I have to follow this through. It’s my only chance.”

  I nodded and peeked out the back window. “Here’s something interesting,” I said.

  She joined me at the window.

  The van was nowhere to be seen.

  “Nice weapon,” Eben said, nodding at Boone’s automatic.

  “Found it in a car in the desert,” Boone said. “Sit down and keep your hands on the table where we can see them.”

  Eben took a seat. “You have no legal authority to hold me. I have diplomatic immunity.”

  “We’re not exactly sticklers for legality,” Felix said. “And nobody is immune. We operate off the books and have our own rules.”

  “And you broke one of those rules when you drew blood on a thirteen-year-old boy,” Boone added tightly.

  “For what it’s worth,” Eben said. “It was just a small nick. I wouldn’t have taken it any further. I don’t kill children. I was trying to get them to talk. If I were you I’d be more concerned about my two female team members.”

  “We were concerned about them,” Boone said. “That’s why two of our men have them under guard right now in Carma’s hotel room. Your partners are not happy. What we do with them depends on what happens here in the next few minutes. Their fate is in your hands.”

  Eben didn’t particularly care about Carma and Devorah’s fate, but as fellow Mossad agents–as horrible as they were–he was obligated to help them if he could.

  “Who are you?” Eben asked.

  Boone told him.

  When he finished, Eben gave him a small smile and said, “I doubt you’ll answer this, but were you able to find out anything about my former driver?”

  “Ziv?” Boone said. “Not a lot, but we were able to pick up some of his conversation in Independence Park with Angela and Q, using parabolic microphones.”

  “Ancient technology,” Eben said.

  “Our new technology was sabotaged, but the old stuff worked fine. For instance we learned that Ziv infiltrated your team and that he works for Malak Turner.”

  “You mean the leopard,”Eben said. “Do you know where Ziv is?”

  “Yes,” Boone said. “We have him under surveillance.” He stared at Eben for a few moments, deciding how much more to tell him. “What is your status with the Mossad?”

  Eben laughed. “I thought I officially resigned this afternoon, but it appears that I gave the resignation letter I’ve been carrying around for months to my enemy. That blunder by itself is enough for the Mossad to terminate me even if I didn’t want to resign. So, one way or the other, I am no longer working for the Mossad. They just don’t know it yet.”

  Felix stepped forward and tossed Eben’s resignation letter on the table next to the ten of hearts. “One of our guys found it in Ziv’s hospital room.”

  “What are you going to do?” Boone asked.

  Eben picked up the envelope. “I guess my fate is in your hands too,” he said. “I want to eliminate the people responsible for my brother’s death, then I want to send this in.”

  “I have a different scenario in mind,” Boone said. “One of the men responsible for Aaron’s death has already been eliminated. Malak Turner, or Anmar, did not kill your brother.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Eben said. “But I’m not convinced.”

  “If I can convince you,” Boone said. “Would you be willing to get Carma and Devorah to back off?”

  Eben thought about it for a moment, then said, “I’d try.”

  Boone tucked the automatic into the waistband of his jeans. Felix kept his gun in his beefy hand.

  “I want you to listen to something,” Boone said. “First I’m going to play an interview I conducted with Angela. When it’s over I’ll play the conversation we picked up at Independence Hall between the kids and your old teammate, Ziv.

  Boone pulled his digital tape recorder out of his backpack and set it on the table, then pushed the play button…

  “If you don’t mind I’m going to refer to your mother by her given name.”

  “All right,” Angela said.

  “What did the Secret Service tell you about Malak’s death…”

  Door #3

  “Why do you think Boone lied about the van?” Angela asked.

  We were walking down the street toward the restaurant with Croc in between us.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Do you think SOS is following us?” she asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Boone must have followed us from Independence Hall. He wasn’t fooled by Ziv’s BlackBerry trick.”

  “I never saw them,” Angela said. “And we know what they look like. It’s incredible.”

  “Yeah, I think Boone and his old spy buddies are better at this than we thought.”

  “So, we’re leading them right to my mom,” Angela said.

  “That would be my guess. I just hope we aren’t leading Carma and Devorah to her. We can always head back to the warehouse.”

  “I can’t,” Angela said. “Not now. But if we catch anyone following us we’ll go back to the coach.”

  I looked at my watch. It was already after five. Roger and Mom were probably already back at the coach wondering where we were. There was a good chance that Malak would no longer be waiting for us behind door #3. We were late and that could only mean that we’d had trouble. She wasn’t going to stick around and wait for us to bring the trouble to her.

  We stopped outside the restaurant. To the right of the entrance was a door that looked like it led to apartments above.

  “Wait here,” Angela said.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to check out the people in the restaurant and make sure there isn’t anyone I recognize. I’ll be right back.”

  Croc sat down next to me. I looked up and down the street and didn’t see anything unusual, but there were dozens of apartments above old storefronts. A hundred pairs of eyes could be watching us beyond the dark windows, I thought.

  Angela came back out. “I think we’re clear. There were only a few people eating and I didn’t see anyone I recognized.”

  “Probably getting a bite to eat before the Match concert,” I said. “Which starts in about an hour and forty-five minutes.”

  “Let’s go up,” Angela said nervously.

  We walked up a narrow flight of creaky stairs. At the top was a long hallway with rows of doors on either side. The smells of the restaurant kitchen filled the hallway, but it didn’t make me hungry. Food was the last thing I was concerned about.

  Angela and I walked slowly down the hallway with Croc following.

  13…12…11…

  “It’s not too late to change your mind,” I whispered.

  10…9…8…7…

  “We’ve come this far,” she whispered back.

  6…5…4…

  We stopped in front of door #3.

  It was ajar.

  I looked at Angela. She was biting her lower lip. She nodded. I pushed the door open. The old apartment was completely empty except for a single chair facing the door. Sitting in the chair was…

  “What are you doing here!” Angela shouted.

  I was too shocked to speak.

  “What took you so long?” Dirk Peski asked.

  He was holding Angela’s phone in one hand and the battery to it in the other.

  Croc growled.

  Dirk

  “Were you followed?” Dirk asked.

  “I don’t understand,” Angela said.

  “It’s a pretty simple question,” Dirk said.

  “What Angela means,” I said, “is that we don’t understand what you have to do with all this.”

  “That should be obvious,” Dirk said. “I work with Malak–better known in anti-terrorists circles as the leopard-and Ziv…altho
ugh that’s not his real name, which you’ve probably already figured out.”

  “Where’s my mother?” Angela asked.

  “She’s waiting for you. But before I tell you where, you need to tell me what took you so long to get here.”

  I told him.

  When I finished Dirk looked at Croc and grinned. Croc did not grin back. “I told them that Boone was a pro,” he said. “So, when you got to the back of the restaurant the van wasn’t there.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Then you were followed,” Dirk said. “But Ziv didn’t pick them up and he’s pretty good. Boone has almost passed the last test.”

  “What test?” Angela asked.

  “You’ll see,” Dirk said. He stood up and handed her the phone. “I’d better hang onto the battery for awhile. Don’t want to make it too easy for Boone.”

  “We don’t know where Carma and Devorah are,” I said, thinking he should know just in case they were lurking around.

  “I know where they are and so does Boone,” Dirk said. “Everett and Uly are holding them hostage in Carma’s room. They caught up with Devorah on her way to the hotel. That only leaves Vanessa and Ray unaccounted for. But I suspect they’re nearby. Which reminds me…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flash drive. “When you see Ray tell him all he has to do is stick this thing into the computer’s USB port and everything will come back online.” He gave me the flash drive.

  “You took out the intellimobile?” I said.

  Dirk laughed. “Is that what they call it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “We took it out, but just temporarily. We wanted to know how SOS would do with the electronic rug pulled out from under them. You can also tell Ray that most of the information that we swiped we already knew. The flash drive will restore the data plus a couple of bits of information he might find interesting.”

  Dirk looked at his watch. “There isn’t much time. Go down to room thirteen. And don’t let the number spook you. The leopard has more luck than she knows what do with. Nine lives and all that.”

  As Dirk walked past us he stopped and patted the still growling Croc on his broad head, then gave us another grin. “Yep, old Boone’s pretty good. See you kids down the road.”