I Am the Mission

by Allen Zadoff

  The memory makes me smile.

  “How could I forget?” I say.

  It was during my last mission that Howard used his hacking skills to help me research my target, the mayor of New York, and sort truth from fiction. In the process we became friends. I told him things about who I am and what I do. Things that put his life in danger.

  When I left the city, I told Howard that I might call on him someday. I didn’t know that day would be so soon. Or how much trouble I would be in.

  “What’s going on, Ben?” he says.

  Benjamin. That’s the name he knows me by from my last mission.

  I have to be very careful what I say to him on an open line. Even with his using a throwaway phone and our call bouncing through the crowded digital traffic of the Northeast.

  “It’s good to hear your voice,” I say.

  “Where are you?” he says, then interrupts before I can dismiss the question. “Wait, that’s a stupid thing to say. I can’t ask a question like that, can I? Let me think of a better question.”

  “Howard—”

  “I’m going to think of one. Just give me a second. This is much harder than I thought it would be.”

  “Please, Howard—”

  There’s silence on the line.

  “You sound strange,” he says.

  “I’m going through some things.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  I think about what it might mean if I tell Howard what’s happening. The risks he’ll take without fully understanding them, the risks I’ll take by opening myself up to him again.

  It’s one thing for me to take risks. I’m trained for it, but Howard’s innocent, a high school hacker with a Japanese girlfriend he’s only met in avatar form online.

  “Ben?” he says.

  “What?”

  “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

  The lessons of The Program ring in my head. I am a solo act. I can handle things on my own, without assistance from anyone or anything. When in doubt, I am to trust my instincts and intuition.

  But what if The Program has been breached? What if Mother or Father need my help?

  The freelance team revealed that I am in danger. My mission may even be compromised.

  I am trained to work alone, but I can’t figure out this situation on my own. With Howard’s skills, I might be able to determine what’s happened to The Program, the reason for the communication blackout and disappearance of the safe house. I can’t tell him the story on an open line, but in person—

  “I need your help, Howard,” I say.

  “What can I do?”

  “Come to New Hampshire.”

  I TELL HIM TO TAKE THE TRAIN TO EXETER.

  A fourteen-year-old boy traveling by train to Exeter on a Sunday afternoon won’t attract any notice whatsoever. I make arrangements to pick him up there in several hours. Then I hang up the phone.

  It’s done.

  I’ve broken from Program doctrine for the second time in my life.

  I have hours to kill before Howard arrives, and I need to stay in public. Luckily, I have the perfect cover. I am a boy at the mall on a Sunday.

  I start by walking the mall, doubling back on myself, watching for reflections in storefront glass, popping into several stores then out again, scanning all the time for unusual movement around me.

  There is none.

  Instead I see something else.

  A couple holding hands on a date. A family arguing about which store they will go into first. A group of teenagers laughing at some inside joke.

  I see normal life, a life that I do not live.

  When in doubt, emulate.

  I’ve been trained to fit in anywhere, matching the patterns and the energy of the people around me. That’s what I do now. I move through the mall like the teens I see around me. Unlike them, I use the time to recuperate from killing four men.

  I get a haircut. I order a small pizza in the food court. I sit in a massage chair at an electronics store. Then I go to Barnes & Noble, and I find a corner of the magazine section and comb through the news and culture magazines.

  Because I do not live in one place, I have to work hard to stay up on current events. Without the daily pattern of attending school, talking with friends, and watching television, it’s easy to fall out of sync with the world. I have to feed myself a stream of information so I can understand and stay connected to current events and be able to converse with those around me without seeming like a visitor from a foreign country.

  I pick up a New York Times and read a follow-up article about the death of Mayor Goldberg’s daughter in New York City, a death I know more than a little about. The article reflects on the incidence of rare and unexplained mortality in young people due to natural causes.

  Natural causes. My specialty.

  According to the article, Mayor Goldberg has gone into a media blackout while he grieves for his daughter. Something about the image of this lonely billionaire losing both his wife and daughter has caught the imagination of the world, raising his profile everywhere and bringing him attention on an international level. There is talk of him running for president in the next election.

  I think back to my time in New York. The memory is painful, like pressing a bruise that has not fully healed.

  I questioned The Program, and a girl is dead because of me. She was not innocent, but she was special to me, even if only for a brief time.

  But that was before. And I’ve been taught how to handle before.

  You put it away and replace it with now.

  I toss the Times back into the rack.

  I check my watch. The entire afternoon has passed, and the mall is beginning to close.

  It’s time to get Howard.

  I make one last stop at GAP to buy some new clothes and a duffel bag to carry them in.

  I pull the tags from the clothes, crumple them into a ball and stuff them into the duffel so they’ll wrinkle and look more worn. I change into a fresh T-shirt and pants in the bathroom, slipping my old clothes into the GAP bag and dropping it in the large covered trash bin as I leave the mall.

  HOWARD IS STANDING ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD BY THE EXETER TRAIN STATION.

  I pull up in the Chevy Silverado and beep the horn to draw his attention. He sees me and his face lights up. He grabs a small duffel from the ground, swings a large computer bag over his shoulder, and hops into the truck.

  “Hey,” I say, and he quickly puts a finger up to his lips to silence me.

  He reaches into his duffel and pulls out a small electronic device with three small antennas coming out one side.

  He flips a switch on the side of the device and holds it up. A series of red lights flash. He waves it around the inside of the truck. There’s nothing for a few moments, and then a single chirp sounds from the device.

  Howard’s face scrunches up in concentration. He moves the device around, trying to pick up the source of the beep. He crawls over the seat, nearly kicking me in the head in the process. He moves the device around the backseat but finds nothing. Then he comes back into the front and the device chirps again. when he brings it closer to me. He looks at me, concerned. He starts at my feet and moves the device up my body, the chirps increasing until he gets to chest level, when the device hits a solid tone.

  He points to my right pec, one finger up at his mouth to warn me not to speak.

  I reach into my right pocket and take out my phone and hand it to him.

  He scans the phone, but the device does not register anything on the phone.

  If it’s not the phone, what is it?

  He holds the device to my chest again, and again the chirping becomes a steady tone.

  He points toward my chest, indicating that the signal is emanating from there. We look at each other, both concerned.

  He reaches slowly toward my chest, touching the pocket there. He reaches into the pocket and comes out with the micro SDHC card I took off the leader of the freelance te
am at the safe house. I forgot I’d transferred it to the pocket of my new shirt.

  He examines the micro SDHC card, then exhales. He turns off the device with the antennas.

  “It’s safe to talk?”

  “Nothing is transmitting,” he says.

  “What’s that device you have?”

  “A little something I brought along. I knew you were in trouble, so I came prepared.”

  He holds up the micro SDHC card, flipping it between his fingers like it’s a poker chip.

  “Do you know what this is?” he says.

  “I know it’s some sort of data card. I took it off a bad guy.”

  “It looks like a normal data card, but it’s not. I can see that the contact points are different. You need some kind of a special reader, or the card is useless.”

  “I don’t have the reader,” I say.

  “You don’t need the reader,” he says. “You have me.” He smiles. “Now aren’t you glad you called me? Because I am fucking awesome.”

  I laugh and slip the truck into gear. “It’s good to see you, Howard.”

  “I missed you,” he says.

  “I missed you, too, buddy.”

  More than I realized. Having Howard around was the highlight of my last mission. It was my first experience having someone to rely on, someone I could trust who had no agenda but to help me.

  “You don’t look good,” Howard says.

  “I haven’t slept for a while.”

  “Is it because of a mission? I know you couldn’t talk about it on the phone.”

  “We’ll get to that,” I say, wanting to hear more about Howard first. “How have things been at school?”

  His face darkens.

  “You want a lie or the truth?”

  “The truth is always better.”

  “It sucks,” he says. “People were mellow for a while after—it—happened. Then I went back to being Hard-On Howard and they started beating the crap out of me again. And Sam isn’t around to protect me.”

  Samara. The girl I loved. The girl I killed.

  “She was my only friend,” Howard says.

  “Not your only one,” I say. “Not anymore.”

  He smiles. “Thanks, Ben.”

  “My name is Daniel now,” I say.

  “You have a different name?”

  “Different mission, different name. I’m trained to switch identities. I was only Benjamin for a short time.”

  “How do you keep the identities straight?”

  “I don’t attach.”

  “To the name?”

  “The name, the place, the circumstances of the assignment. None of it.”

  “What about the people?” Howard says.

  I shake my head. “Especially not the people,” I say.

  He bites at his lip, troubled by the idea.

  “So what about me?” he says.

  “You’re special,” I say.

  “I knew it!” he says, beaming. “But wait, what should I call you?”

  “Call me Daniel. It will help to keep us both on the same page.”

  “Will you tell me your real name sometime?”

  There are only three living people who know my real name.

  Father and Mother. And Mike.

  “Sometime I will,” I say. “I promise.”

  “Daniel,” he says. “That works for now.”

  “For now.”

  “You sounded bad on the phone,” Howard says. “So tell me what’s going on.”

  I hesitate, wondering how much I should reveal to Howard. But he’s already here, already exposed. He’s risked everything to come here and help me.

  “I’m in trouble, Howard.”

  “Does it have something to do with this card?”

  “That’s just a part of it.”

  “I’d like to hear it all of it,” he says.

  I take a breath, hovering between talking and putting Howard back on the train and asking him to forget everything.

  It takes me less than a second to make a decision.

  I pull away from the station.

  As I drive back to Manchester, I tell Howard about the camp, about Moore inviting me in, about Father and The Program disappearing, about my attack at what was supposed to be a safe house. He listens, his head bobbing, not freaking out even as I share details about The Program and some of what I do for them.

  I don’t tell him about previous missions or targets, but I give him enough information to endanger him forever, to threaten the lives of his family and anyone he’s ever known or cared about in the world.

  To his credit, he listens closely, occasionally asking questions or inquiring about details, but respecting when I set a boundary.

  I finish as we pull into a Holiday Inn near the Manchester airport.

  We sit in the parking lot while he considers all of it. He leans forward and rubs his fingers through his curly hair over and over again.

  “I see why you called me,” he says. “It’s a confusing situation.”

  “I’ve been running scenarios, but I don’t have the answers. Not yet.”

  He leans back in his seat, still pulling at his hair.

  “I think we should start with the SDHC card and see what we find. If I can crack the card, you’ll know a lot more about this—what did you call them?”

  “A freelance team.”

  “Right. This freelance team and the people who hired them. That will tell us some of what we need to know.”

  “That sounds like a good starting point,” I say. “What do you need from me?”

  “Power,” he says. “And Cheetos. Lots of them.”

  “We can get those,” I say.

  I RENT A SUITE AT THE HOLIDAY INN.

  I politely ask the desk clerk for a suite in a quiet part of the hotel with nobody next door. With vacancy rates high, they are more than happy to comply.

  The minute we get into the room, I jimmy the lock to the adjoining suite and open the door. Now we have two connected suites, one under a false name on the hotel’s computer system, the other not on the system at all.

  I go back into the first suite and I see Howard emptying his duffel, removing power cords, multiplug outlets, surge protectors, coaxial cables. A miniature electronics store comes out of the bag.

  “Did you bring any clothes?” I say.

  “Why?” he says.

  “To change. You might be here a few days.”

  “Hackers don’t change,” Howard says, like it’s a crazy question. “We have priorities.”

  He runs extension cords from the outlets in both rooms, then he sets up double laptops, an iPad and iPhone, a power unit, Wi-Fi cards, and various other small machines that I haven’t seen before.

  “All right. Let’s take a look at the card.”

  I pass him the micro SDHC card pinched between two fingers.

  “This is an SD card reader right here,” he says, showing me a small device attached to one of his laptops. “But I’m not going to put it in there.”

  He flips the card around in his hand, examining it from every angle. Then he places the card on piece of white frosted glass, and a schematic registers on the laptop screen behind him. I see a printed circuit board and assorted electronics, all miniaturized inside the confines of the card casing.

  “Just what I thought,” he says. “It’s not really an SDHC card at all, more like a secure communications device posing as an SDHC card.”

  “That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s very sophisticated. What do you know about the guys you took it away from?”

  “Not very sophisticated,” I say.

  “Which means they were given the card along with some kind of special reader at the same time. That would allow them to access the data, but if they lost the card or it got taken away from them, nobody else could read it. I’m guessing if you put this in a regular SD reader, it destroys itself.”

  “Can you get into
the card, Howard?”

  Howard examines the schematic, whistling softly under his breath.

  “It’s going to take a while,” he says.

  “Stay at it, as long as it takes.”

  He brings up some application on his laptop. I see numbers flying by as a cursor scans the schematic on the screen.

  “Tell me about Moore’s camp,” Howard says. “What’s it all about?”

  “They think the government is weak, and they’re trying to do something about it.”

  “They’re right, don’t you think?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The government is weak. I mean, I could hack the banking system right now if I wanted to. I could probably even get inside the Homeland Security network if I had a few days, and there are only like a dozen guys who could even begin to try and stop me. A dozen guys protecting the entire government.”

  “There’s got to be more than that.”

  “Okay, a hundred guys. Two hundred. I guarantee the IT department at Google is bigger than the cybersecurity core of the U.S. government right now, and Google pays a hell of a lot better, too.”

  “You could hack all that stuff, but you don’t do it,” I say. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not a dick.”

  “But other people do it.”

  “They are Phalli giganticus. I can’t speak for them.”

  “But you understand them.”

  Howard groans, like he’s having to explain something boring to a child.

  “Why do people do it?” Howard says. “Because they can. Because it’s fun. It makes them feel like hotshots to get behind the infrastructure and see what’s in there. I understand the impulse. You know in those old movies where kids break into school on the weekend, get into the gym and play some hoops, or rifle through a teacher’s desk to see if they can find the test key for a quiz?”

  “I’ve seen those movies. But there’s a big difference between that and hacking the U.S. banking system.”

  “Sure. Hacking is easier. You do it from home in your underwear while you’re eating trail mix. And then you announce it to the online community, so a few thousand friends are applauding you and watching your every move. Then they try to top you by going further, doing a little more. It’s a big competition. You can see the attraction to that.”