by Allen Zadoff
“You may find an assassination attempt funny,” Flannel says, “but it’s not funny to us. Not by a long shot.”
I let shame bleed into my voice.
“You’re right. Sorry. That was a dumb thing to say.”
Someone knocks on the front window, a signal to Flannel. He grunts and puts the truck in gear. He pauses briefly at the exit from the driveway, then, with a squeal of tires, he pulls out behind another truck. I note a third truck behind us, filling out the motorcade that will take us to Camp Liberty.
“Everyone’s a little tense,” Lee says by way of explanation. “Don’t take it personally.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” I say.
“You weren’t thinking,” Miranda says under her breath.
“Not unusual for me,” I say.
I note her energy soften after I take a dig at myself.
Flannel drives quickly on the winding road, and I keep bumping into Miranda, our bodies touching in the darkness.
“Sorry. It’s a little tight back here,” I say.
“So you’re not trying to feel me up?” she says.
“I move fast, but not that fast,” I say.
She doesn’t respond, just shifts her torso and brings her hands into her lap.
I have to be careful about flirting with Miranda. I want to win her over, but not at the expense of my relationship with Lee.
This mission is shifting with each moment. What was a direct assassination attempt has become something more like a standard assignment, in that I need to consider Lee and Miranda as marks that I can use to bring me closer to Moore. I will have to study them, quickly assessing how they interact with each other and with their father so I can keep myself safe as I make inroads toward Moore.
“We’re clear of the signal blocking now,” Lee says. “You can call your dad.”
“Good idea,” I say.
I pull out my iPhone. Miranda glances at it.
“Is that the new one?” she says.
“Yeah. Are you into tech?”
“We all are,” she says.
“We?”
“At Liberty. It’s part of what we do.”
“We’re a tech-heavy organization,” Lee says, explaining. “My father believes if you don’t stay on the cutting edge, you fall behind.”
“I saw that he was using an iPad onstage,” I say.
“Right. He’s in love with that thing.”
“It’s cool when old people try to use tech,” I say.
Miranda laughs. Flannel clears his throat in the front of the truck. A warning?
“No offense to anyone,” I add quickly.
“I’m not offended,” Lee says. “But if you say something like that at camp, you won’t be around for long.”
“Your father doesn’t have much of a sense of humor,” I say.
“It comes and goes,” Lee says. “But when it goes, it’s really gone.”
“I’ll be careful,” I say.
“The camp is organized on a military model,” Lee says. “That means you respect your superiors or you’re out.”
“Lighten up,” Miranda says. “He’s just coming for a tour.”
“It’s better he know now,” Lee says.
Flannel interrupts from the front seat: “Daniel was about to call his dad.”
Strange that he wants me to make the call.
“I’ll give him a try right now,” I announce to the truck.
I look at my iPhone. I can’t risk putting it in secure mode with them watching me, but Father and I have protocols for that. I have a public number I can call, one that will pass the signal through a relay and connect me live to Father on a phone used only for this purpose.
The truck is silent as the number dials through.
Three rings, that’s all it takes. I’ve used a public number on two occasions before, once on assignment in Ann Arbor, another during a mission in Austin, both in public circumstances where I was being monitored. Three rings and Father picks up. That’s how it works.
I wait three rings now, but there is no pickup.
Four rings with no response.
Strange.
Five rings. Then six.
I let it ring ten times, but Father doesn’t answer.
“What’s up?” Lee says.
“He’s not answering.”
“Maybe it’s the mountains,” Lee says. “Signals have a way of getting distorted up here.”
“But it’s ringing,” I say.
“Maybe he’s ignoring you,” Miranda says, her voice teasing.
“Yeah, you might have been abandoned,” Lee says, picking up on Miranda’s energy. The image of hyenas comes to mind, the way they can be in competition with each other one minute, then working as a pack the next.
I’ll need to be cautious about this.
“Whatever it is, it’s fucking weird,” I say, letting them hear anxiety in my voice.
I dial again, and again it rings without Father answering.
“Nothing?” Miranda says.
I put the phone away.
“I’ll try him in a few minutes. I have to let him know where I am or he gets pissed. Then you don’t want to live in my world, you know?”
Suddenly the truck shudders and there’s a loud flapping noise beneath us.
“Shit,” Flannel says, managing to keep the truck under control as he brings us to a stop along the side of the road.
“Sounds like we got a flat,” Lee says.
“Damn back roads,” Flannel says, but there’s something in his tone that sets me on edge. I replay his sentence in my mind, listening for variations in the speech pattern. That’s when I know what it is:
He’s not surprised.
The motorcade comes to a halt around us.
“Time for triple A,” I say.
“Time for triple me,” Flannel says.
“You need a hand?” Lee asks him.
Flannel looks from Lee back to me.
“That’s a good idea,” he says.
Lee slips out of the car, then Flannel pauses.
“You okay in here?” he says to Miranda.
“I’ve got my pepper spray,” she says.
“No doubt,” he says.
He turns off the truck and takes the keys out of the ignition, slipping them into his pocket as he goes. It’s a smart security measure. You don’t leave a running car in the hands of a stranger, even a car with a flat tire.
The door closes, and I’m alone with Miranda. I hear muffled voices outside the truck as Flannel and Lee determine the safest way to change a tire on a back road with no breakdown lane. It takes less than a minute for the air in the truck to go from ice-cold to the inside of an oven.
“Hot as hell,” I say.
Miranda doesn’t say anything.
“Are you going to pepper spray me if I unbutton the top button on my shirt?”
“You seem like a nice enough guy.…” she says.
“Crap, here comes the let’s-be-friends speech. Let me just get my seat belt buckled before I crash and burn.”
The side of the truck tilts up several degrees as Flannel jacks up the car.
“Listen to me,” she says. “I don’t know why you want to come to Camp Liberty, but now is not the time.”
“Why not?” I say.
I hear the sound of metal on metal as Flannel starts to twist off the wheel lugs. Miranda glances toward the back of the truck.
“I can’t explain it to you,” she says. “But trust me when I tell you you’re in over your head.”
“Maybe I like being in over my head. It’s a challenge.”
“You don’t need this kind of challenge.”
She reaches toward me suddenly and grasps my arm. Her hand is warm where it makes contact with my bare skin.
“It’s not safe right now,” she says more urgently. “The camp isn’t safe.”
Suddenly her door opens. She lets go of me, quickly letting her hand fall out of sigh
t.
Flannel stands there, sweat soaking through his heavy shirt.
“Miranda, the other truck is going to take you in,” he says.
“Finally,” Miranda says, like she’s had enough. Of the truck or me, I can’t be sure.
She gets out, and I start to slide out after her.
“Not you,” Flannel says. “Just Miranda and Lee.”
“What about me?”
“You’re waiting,” he says.
“I’m sweating,” I say with a whine. An annoyed kid used to getting his way.
“I’m betting you’ll survive,” Flannel says, and he closes the door.
The truck in front of us backs up until it’s parallel to our own. Miranda glances at me, her eyes drilling into me one last time before she climbs in and disappears behind blacked-out windows.
I see Lee get in the other side of the truck, and two-thirds of the motorcade pulls away.
That leaves me alone on the side of the road with Flannel.
I hear the lug nuts going on one at a time with an electric drill. It doesn’t take more than ninety seconds before I hear Flannel toss the flat tire into the trunk bed.
My internal alarm goes off.
If it was only going to take ninety seconds, why transfer Lee and Miranda to a different vehicle?
I look around the truck, searching out things I might use to defend myself. Loose tools on the floor, maps, even a tightly rolled newspaper is a weapon in the right hands.
My hands.
Flannel opens the back door.
“What’s up?” I say. “Do you need a hand?”
“All done,” he says. “You ride in the front now.”
“Why now?”
“So I can see you.”
“Girls tell me I’m easy on the eyes,” I say.
He looks at me, not amused. He holds the door, waiting for me to get out.
“So much for limo service,” I say, keeping my tone light and arrogant, consistent with the Daniel Martin I’m building on the fly.
I had one afternoon to prepare this identity. It was only deep enough to get me through a two-hour event at the community center until I could complete my mission. I did not anticipate having to be Daniel Martin in multiple conversations with people of varying agendas, all probing to know more.
“Out,” Flannel says.
He waits for me to get out of the truck and into the front passenger seat. Then he closes the door behind me.
It would be fastest for him to walk around the front, but instead he heads toward the back, walking extremely slowly and disappearing from my vision.
He’s keeping me waiting, building suspense. It’s a classic interrogation move, designed to invoke fear.
He doesn’t know that I don’t feel fear.
His tactic buys me extra planning time, and I use it to recalibrate myself to the front seat, its angles and eccentricities, its dangers and possibilities.
When Flannel finally climbs into the driver’s seat, he sits there for a moment, but he never starts the truck. He rolls down his window halfway and lights a cigarette.
I roll down my own window.
“My name is Francisco,” he says, finally breaking the silence.
“I was calling you Flannel in my head.”
He looks down at his shirt and nods. “Makes sense,” he says.
No smile.
“I’m Daniel,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”
“I know who you are. Who you say you are.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re a liar.”
“What the hell? Now you’re calling me a liar,” I say, letting Daniel get offended by this challenge.
I glance at the visor. Yanked from the roof at the correct angle, it would twist off a piece of metal piping that I could use to strike.
The throat. That’s where I would aim first.
Francisco doesn’t react to my mini-outburst. He simply says, “Everyone’s a liar when they fill out an application.”
“Not me.”
“Everyone,” he repeats. “People want to get into Camp Liberty. They don’t tell the truth, because they don’t think the truth will be good enough. And the funny thing, Daniel? The truth is the only way to get in. You have to tell the truth.”
“Then I’m practically in already.”
“I’ll be the one to determine that.”
“I thought it was already determined.”
By Moore. In the parking lot a few minutes ago.
“You thought wrong,” Francisco says, pinching the cigarette between two fingers and inhaling slowly.
It occurs to me that our truck didn’t actually have a flat tire. I’m wondering if the whole thing was staged. To bring this journey to a standstill. To bring me face-to-face with Francisco.
“The question is not whether you lied,” Francisco says, “because I already know you did. It’s why you lied that I’m interested in.”
“You already told me why. I wanted to get into camp.”
“You haven’t admitted that you lied yet. I want to hear it from you.”
I could play dumb, but I don’t think that’s what he’s looking for. Better to agree with him but add a twist.
“I didn’t lie,” I say.
I see his shoulders tighten, ready to attack again.
“I embellished,” I say, giving the word the hint of an accent.
His shoulders relax a bit.
“About what?” he asks.
“I don’t have a four-point-oh grade point average. I did last semester, but not anymore.”
“What happened?”
I sigh like I’ve been caught.
“I fucked up in AP Physics and ended up with a B-minus for the semester. There was this girl in class, and maybe I got a little distracted. Whatever. No excuses. I went down in flames. It won’t show on my GPA until next fall. I haven’t even told my father yet.”
Francisco nods, considering this. I’ve made it up on the spot, but I can always call it in to Father and ask him to doctor my school records. It’s standard procedure for the hackers at The Program to get into the high school mainframe and insert a false student record there to support my cover story. I make a mental note to remind Father when I speak to him.
“You really want to get into Camp Liberty,” Francisco says.
“Totally,” I say.
“So much so that you’re willing to lie.”
“Embellish.”
He nods.
“So be it,” he says. “Now tell me something: Why Camp Liberty?”
“Because Weight Watchers camp rejected me.”
“Humor works on Moore. Not on me.”
“What works on you?”
He considers the question for a moment. He takes a drag of his cigarette and blows the smoke out the window. I can see him contemplating something, then he makes a decision.
“I’ll tell you what,” he says. “No more questions right now.”
“Good, because I was starting to sweat through my shirt.”
“I want you to call your father instead,” he says.
It’s the second time he’s asked me to call. Why does he care about that?
I angle my body slightly, improving my defensive position if things get physical.
“You want me to call my dad?” I say casually.
“You said you needed to call. So call now.”
“I tried him a few minutes ago.”
“Try again.”
“Good idea,” I say.
He waits as I take out my phone. He holds the cigarette in his lips, his hands free somewhere in the darkness below the wheel.
I turn on my iPhone. He watches me as I access the home screen and dial Father’s public number again.
“Put it on speaker,” Francisco says.
“Why?”
“I want to know who you’re calling.”
“You ever hear of the Fourth Amendment right to privacy?”
“I know all about it,” he says. “We don’t have that at Camp Liberty.”
“What do you have?”
“Transparency. That’s how we know we can trust one another. If you want to be one of us, that’s how you roll.”
“Fine,” I say. “Maybe you can talk to my father. Save me the trouble.”
I put the phone on speaker.
It rings three times, the rings loud in the silence of the truck cabin. I wait for the pickup, knowing Father will stay in character on a public line, and hoping that will be enough to convince Francisco.
The phone continues to ring, but the familiar sound of Father’s voice never comes.
There’s no answer.
“Where is your father?” Francisco says, menace in his voice.
“I don’t know,” I say. And I mean it.
“No voice mail?”
We don’t leave voice mail messages. Calls are securely logged and always picked up. There’s no need for messages. But I don’t tell Francisco that.
“There’s no voice mail on his personal line,” I say. “He doesn’t believe in it. He’s old school. You either get him or you don’t.”
“Unusual.”
“He’s an unusual man, no doubt about it,” I say. “But he does read his texts. I’ll send him one so he doesn’t worry. He dropped me off tonight, so he knows I’m here. It shouldn’t be an issue if I stay over at camp.”
“You sure?” Francisco says. “I can still take you home.”
“I’m sure,” I say.
I type out a text to the public number, something that Daniel Martin might say to his father. Then I send it.
“All set,” I say. “Are we going now?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no.”
I’ve been playing chess with this guy, trying to satisfy his curiosity. But I’m tired of being on the defense. I decide to switch to offense and let Daniel Martin get pissed off.
“Hey, it’s been a while since the others left,” I say. “You needed a smoke, you had some questions. I get it.”
“Do you?” he says, amused.
“But it’s Moore who invited me to camp. So why don’t you give him a call. You can tell him I answered all your questions, but now you’re overruling his decision.”
I watch his face closely to gauge the reaction. Does Francisco have the power to keep me out of camp? I note tension at the corner of his lip—just the tiniest amount—and I have my answer. This guy is reaching.