by Roland Smith
We watched him walk down the hallway. He paused outside the last room, slipped something under the door, then we heard him trot down the stairs.
“Thirteen,” Angela said.
Door #13
The woman with the spiky blond hair was standing in the empty apartment. She was on her cell phone when we walked in. She snapped it closed. Angela and she stared at each other frozen for several seconds. The gold angel leopard necklace hung around the woman’s neck. Her hand began tapping her right thigh. Then the tears came.
They met in the middle of the room and threw their arms around each other. There was no doubt in my mind that this was Malak, the angel, Angela’s mother. I picked up the BlackBerry battery Dirk had slipped under the door and waited.
Malak finally let her daughter go and walked over to me. “I’m Malak Turner.” She gave me a hug too, but not nearly as intense as the one she gave Angela. “It’s good to meet you, Q.”
She certainly didn’t act like a terrorist, or a Secret Service agent (although I hadn’t met anyone with either of those occupations). There was a genuine warmth to her that wasn’t reflected in the photo Angela carried in her backpack.
She looked at her watch. “I’m afraid we have very little time, Angela. If I don’t leave here soon things could go very bad for me.”
“I’ll wait out in the hallway and let you talk,” I said, starting toward the door.
“No,” Malak said. “This concerns you too.” She looked at Angela. “First, I am so sorry for what I did to you and your dad. But I’ll be honest…If I had to do it all over again I would make the same decision. I had no choice. I hope you’ll understand someday and forgive me.”
Angela was too choked up to respond.
“Before I leave I need some questions answered.” Malak looked at me. “Who does Boone and his SOS team work for?”
I told her what Boone had told me.
“And this man he said he was working for,” she said. “Did Boone mention his name?”
“He said his name is Mr. Potus,” I answered. “But I’m sure that wasn’t his real name.”
“Of course!” Malak said, smiling. “And that’s where I remember Boone from. I remembered his face, but I couldn’t place him. Do you know who Mr. Potus is?”
I shook my head.
“Potus stands for ‘president of the United States’.”
“You mean J.R. Culpepper?” I thought back to Boone passing his cell phone to Mr. Little at Independence Hall. No wonder Mr. Little changed his attitude so quickly.
“When I was on presidential duty,” Malak continued, “J.R. was the vice president. Boone came to the White House for an intelligence briefing. Because of the way he looked I was pretty hard on him before we let him into the oval office to meet with the president and J.R.”
“He mentioned that,” I said.
Malak smiled again. “I bet he did.”
“Before J.R. became a senator, then VP and president,” she explained, “he was the director of the CIA. I got the impression that he and Boone were pretty tight. I spent a lot of time with J.R. before he became president. I liked him. He had very few illusions about how our government actually works. It’s all making sense now. Did Boone mention if anyone else knows about me?”
Angela found her voice. “I got the impression this was just between them,” she said. “And that they were going to keep it that way until they figured out what was going on.”
“Good,” Malak said. “But even if they think they know what’s going on they need to keep it between themselves. Tell Boone that this goes deeper than he and President Culpepper can imagine. Virtually every intelligence agency in every country has been compromised. There are terrorists working in every one of them and some of them are in very high positions.”
“How did that happen?” I asked.
“Billions of dollars and thirty years of intrigue is how it happened,” Malak answered. “My twin sister, Anmar, was part of it…and I was supposed to be too.”
“What do you mean?” Angela asked.
“A few years before the explosion at Independence Hall, Anmar was sent to a rally for the president when I was agent in charge. You can imagine her shock when she saw a Secret Service agent who was a mirror image of herself. She didn’t tell her then-husband…her handler, or anyone else. Two years before the explosion at Independence Hall she contacted me and told me that she had been adopted and brought to the U.S. just like I had.
“Our real mother died during childbirth. Our real father was told that we died as well. We were put with families that immigrated to the U.S. legally. When I turned eighteen my adoptive parents arranged a marriage for me. I would have none of it and left home. Anmar made a different decision. She married the man her adoptive parents had picked for her and this is when her terrorist training began.”
“So, she was a terrorist,” I said.
“A very good one,” Malak said. “But she had a change of heart and wanted out. That’s why she approached me. She couldn’t leave on her own. Once a terrorist always a terrorist. They don’t let you go. She needed protection, a new identity…” Malak paused. “I talked her out of leaving.” She looked at Angela. “That is my second biggest regret.”
Malak went on to tell us that it was Anmar who had given her the information about the bombings in the U.S. and abroad. She couldn’t give up her source without endangering her twin sister. When she rushed to Independence Hall on November 30, 2004 Malak was about to be fired and Anmar was on the verge of being exposed and murdered.
“I drove to Philadelphia to stop the bombing and take my sister into protective custody,” Malak said. “But I arrived too late.” Tears welled in her eyes. “When I walked into the hall she was trying to defuse the bomb. If I had brought her in sooner she would be alive today. I decided the only way to honor Anmar was to take her place. I knew everything about her. All the people she knew, who her handlers were and how they contacted her–”
“What about her husband?” Angela asked.
Malak hesitated before answering. “He was killed before I met him. I got to play the grieving widow, which was a great cover for why I wasn’t quite myself that first year I became Anmar.”
I looked at Angela. She was biting her lower lip, but I knew she wasn’t going to ask: Who killed Anmar’s husband? And neither was I. Some questions are best left unasked. I was certain that Malak had done some terrible things in the past several years to convince her fellow terrorists that she was who she said she was and to maintain her cover.
The door opened and Boone stepped inside.
Malak did not act at all surprised to see him. “Mr. Boone,” she said, but the warmth from the moment before was completely gone. She had instantly turned into the photo of the woman at the firing range.
“It’s a pleasure to see you again,” Boone said.
Malak looked at him for a moment then said, “You passed the test.”
“What test?” Boone asked.
“We’ll call it a security test,” Malak answered. “I had to be sure you were good before I brought you into this.”
“And what have you brought me into?”
“Armageddon, unless we’re able to stop it.”
Armageddon
“They’re about to unleash everything they’ve been setting up here in the U.S. for the past thirty years,” Malak explained. “It’s scheduled to start in the Capital the day after tomorrow.”
“The ghost cell,” Boone said.
Malak nodded. “And these are really scary ghosts.” She looked at her watch. “In three minutes I’m leaving here. Where’s Eben?”
“He’s on his way over to the hotel to strike a deal with Carma and Devorah. Your identity is safe. And I’ve convinced him to come work for me.”
“You trust him?”
“I do.”
“Tell him that under no circumstances is he to harm, or even approach Amun Massri if he runs across him. The same goes for you and all
of your people. Amun is the key to this whole thing. For the moment he’s an untouchable.”
“Got it,” Boone said. “But Amun isn’t very good at this. There are three photos of him now. One when he was young at Independence Hall, one at the Paris café, and one at Fisherman’s Wharf.”
“He’s young, careless, and very dangerous, but I think he has the ear of the head of this cell.” She held up her hand. “Before you ask, I don’t know who that is…yet. But I’m getting close to finding out.”
Malak looked at her watch again. “Here are the rules and they are non-negotiable. Any information I have I will pass through either Angela or Q. You and I, Boone, will rarely meet.”
“Why bring the kids into this?” Boone asked.
“Because that’s the only way you’ll stay on to protect them, Roger, and Blaze.” She turned to Angela. “And just so you know…I couldn’t be happier for your dad. He’s found a wonderful woman in Blaze and she’s found a wonderful man. Malak Turner is dead and we are going to have to leave it that way for your sake and theirs. I know it’s a huge burden for you to carry, but there’s no choice.”
She turned back to Boone. “I won’t entrust the safety of my family to the Secret Service, CIA, U.S. Marshals, or anyone else. I’ve sacrificed myself, but I will not sacrifice my family. You managed to protect them from a highly motivated, skilled, and vengeful Mossad agent, and his two crazy team members.”
“Ziv was of considerable help,” Boone said.
“Yes he was,” Malak said. “But you did well too. We coopted your surveillance and you still managed to follow Angela and Q, intercept Eben, and find me.” She looked down at Croc. “I assume the tracking device is in his collar.”
Boone nodded.
“Clever.” She looked at her watch one last time. “I have to go. Give me your word that you’ll protect my family with your life.”
“You have my word,” Boone said.
“And that you and your team won’t pass any of the intelligence I give you to any other agency unless I say it’s okay.”
“Done,” Boone said.
“Can you arrange to have Angela and Q in D.C. tomorrow?”
“It’s a little short notice,” Boone said. “And Match is on a national tour.”
“It’s important,” Malak said.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good enough. Are your phones encrypted?”
“Yes,” Boone answered. “With the latest technology. They’re bullet proof.”
“Nothing is bullet proof, Mr. Boone. Does anyone in the government have access to the numbers?”
“Just one person,” Boone said. “And just my number.”
“Potus,” Malak said.
Boone nodded.
“Him we’ll have to trust.”
She pulled Angela into her and gave her another hug.
“I’m sorry for everything, Angela, and I wish I had more time to explain.” She let Angela go and said, “I’ll be in touch in a few days.”
Malak Turner, aka the Leopard, walked out of the apartment without looking back.
The three of us (four counting Croc) stood there for a few seconds staring at the empty doorway. When Dirk had left I heard every footfall on every step. Malak went down the stairs without a sound. Like a cat.
Eben walked into Carma’s hotel room and found his two former team members gagged and bound together like Siamese twins. No trick knots like the boy had used on his sister.
Twins, he thought again with amazement. The idea that Malak had an identical twin had never entered Eben’s mind. And he would have never believed it if he hadn’t heard the girl’s interview and Tyrone Boone’s lengthy explanation of what he thought had happened at Independence Hall on November 30, 2004. Even after the explanation he was a little suspicious, but Boone had erased his last seeds of doubt by making a call and handing the cell phone to him. On the other end was none other than J.R. Culpepper, the president of the United States…a man not always popular in the country where he was commander-in-chief, but in the intelligence community he was greatly respected and known as someone with a deep understanding about what was “really” going on in the world.
He cut Carma and Devorah loose. They tore their gags off and it was a good ten minutes before their outrage subsided enough for him to talk to them.
“The leopard is dead,” he began.
“How?” Carma asked.
Eben put his index finger to his temple. “A single silenced bullet.”
“Where?” Devorah ask.
“At an old farmhouse outside the city.”
“Why didn’t you come and get us?” Carma asked.
“No time,” Eben said. “When I went to the hospital I discovered that Ziv wasn’t there and that his injury was greatly exaggerated. He had just left in a taxi. They told me he’d been dropped off at a car rental agency. I picked him up just as he pulled out of the parking lot and followed him to the farmhouse.”
“Ziv called and said that the mission had been scrapped and we were to go home,” Carma said.
“He probably made the call while I was following him,” Eben said. “He infiltrated us. He worked for the leopard.”
Carma and Devorah stared at him in silence. A breech of security like this was unforgivable within the Mossad.
“He could have killed any one of us anytime,” Carma said.
“He could have killed all of us,” Devorah said. “Why didn’t he?”
“He would have gotten around to it,” Eben answered. “But I think he was waiting to find out what we knew. It was my fault. I should have checked his credentials with the Institute more carefully.” Eben paused. “But the point is moot. I killed him too. He and the leopard are in the same hole in the Pennsylvania woods. There’s no need to put him in the report unless you want to.”
Devorah and Carma shook their heads vigorously. Eben was primarily responsible for the breech, but they would be blamed as well. Their handlers would want to know how they had missed this.
“Thank you,” Eben said. “I would like to leave the Institute with a clean record.”
“What do you mean ‘leave?’”Devorah asked.
Eben pulled the crumpled resignation letter out of his pocket. The only change he had made to it was the date. He handed it to Devorah. “This is it for me,” he said. “Last mission. Not my best, but we accomplished the goal. When you get back to Tel Aviv give this to them and tell them to leave me alone.” He paused. “And I’m giving the kill to you two.”
“What?” Devorah and Carma asked simultaneously.
“My final report will say that the three of us followed the leopard and her male accomplice to the farm and that you took them out. There is no need to mention that the SOS team tied you up in your hotel room while I completed the mission. Since I’m leaving the Institute another successful terrorist kill will do me little good.”
Devorah and Carma were visibly relieved and delighted with the scenario, as Eben knew they would be. He stood up. “I will E-mail you the final report so when you arrive in Tel Aviv tomorrow you’ll be able to corroborate the story during your debriefing.”
“You’re not coming to Tel Aviv?” Devorah asked.
Eben shook his head. “I have friends here that I want to visit. After that I don’t know what I’ll do. Head off to a tropical beach, I hope.”
“What about the SOS team?” Carma asked. “We have a score to even with them.”
“Forget them,” Eben said. “They’re former intelligence agents working under private contract. Headhunters. Commission only. They were trying to beat us to the leopard.” He smiled. “No payday for them this time.”
Eben shook their hands solemnly, then left the hotel room. He walked two blocks down the street and climbed into an old van. X was typing on one of the keyboards, pausing only long enough to give him a nod.
“How’d it go?” Vanessa asked.
“Perfectly,” Eben replied.
“I fou
nd a dentist that’s willing to come in after hours and look at that cracked tooth of yours.”
“Vanessa,” Eben said. “You’re an angel.”
X let out a groan.
Backstage
We got to the Electric Factory just before Roger and Mom were ready to go on. We would have been there sooner, but Boone insisted that we stop at the motor coach for a quick shower and change of clothes. He said we looked like we’d been through a war. And he was right.
Mom threw her arms around me and Roger did the same to Angela.
“We were so worried when we couldn’t get in touch with you,” Mom said. “And then the airplane had a mechanical problem. We barely made it here in time for the concert. They were putting our makeup on in the limo. What did you do while we were gone?”
“Took in the sights, did our homework,” I said. “Philadelphia is a very historic city. A lot of important things happened here.”
“Two minutes!” Buddy shouted.
“Did you see The Today Show?” Mom asked.
“Yeah. You and Roger were great.”
I looked over at Roger and Angela. They were talking while a woman was fussing with Roger’s hair. I couldn’t hear what they were saying above the roar of the crowd, but I was certain that Angela was giving him the same bland story that I had just given Mom. I peeked out and saw Dr. Rask and Dr. Wilson. They had center stage seats, second row.
Boone was talking to Art and Marie over in a corner…no doubt filling them in on what they had missed.
Heather Hughes was talking to the drummer and laughing.
“One minute!” Buddy shouted.
Buddy’s cell phone vibrated. He whipped it out and glanced at the screen. I thought he would ignore the call this close to show time, but he put the phone to his ear.
“Is this joke?” he asked, then listened, and looked rattled. “Yes sir… Of course… We would be happy to… Yes… We’ll leave tonight after the concert… Thank you…” He flipped the phone closed and turned to Mom. “You won’t believe who that was.”
“Who?” Mom asked.
“The president of the United States. He’s a big fan. So are his kids. Wants us to do a show at the White House on Sunday.”