“Fifty years?” Steel said.
“The modern program, yes. The Program itself is nearly as old as Wynncliff. It’s compartmentalized, meaning no one really knows what anyone else is doing. It was ramped up in the 1960s, but it was going strong back during the Second World War, and possibly before that. No one knows exactly how long.”
“Some of us,” Penny said, “like me, are analysts.”
“Some are operatives,” Benny said.
Nell Campbell turned to look in their direction.
“And of course,” Benny said, “some of the faculty are training instructors.”
“Like Randolph,” Steel supplied.
Benny grimaced. “Not exactly. We’ve suspected for some time that Mr. Randolph was running a rogue operation—training students to work for him while telling them they were working for the Program. He suffered a great loss when his wife died, and I’m afraid the temptation of money, or maybe some combination of grief and regret, along with greed, overcame him.”
“We suspected that Mr. DesConte, Mr. Long, and certain other students had been unwittingly recruited,” Mr. Morgan said. “That is, believed they were working for the good of the country and all, until—”
“We came along,” Kaileigh said.
“Just so,” Mr. Morgan said. “When you discovered their use of the tunnels, and reported to Mr. Cardwell, we thought we had our proof. From then on your actions were monitored closely.”
“And Lyle?” Steel asked.
“Lyle’s an independent contractor,” Benny said. “He works for me, in recruitment. More on that later, or not, depending where we all end up.”
Steel said, “The woman we were told to follow. She’s part of the recruitment? Lyle spots kids arriving at the shelter, and the woman’s called. She scouts them, maybe makes friends and offers them a place to stay at the boathouse.”
“Mrs. DeWulf?” Benny said. “A little more complicated than that, but you’ve got the general idea.”
“Those boys are operatives,” Kaileigh said. “The big guy in the hockey mask…”
“You might call us allies,” Mr. Morgan said. “The way France and England work together, or the U.S. and Israel. Mrs. D.’s recruits are of age. If they are runaways, we attempt to reunite them with their families. If the situation is abusive, we take countermeasures.”
“But they’re operatives,” Kaileigh said, pushing him.
Mr. Morgan appraised her. “Let me just say that her boys can take certain risks that ours cannot, and never will. They provide a necessary function. Fill a missing gap.”
“Are you telling me,” Steel said, “that we were all on the same side down there?”
“When we determined your operation, thanks in no small part to Mr. Cardwell, I should add, we determined support was needed. Ms. Campbell and Mr. Cardwell were part of that support. I knew Mrs. D. had operatives at the function. I had hoped to allow them to do what it is they do so well, but Mr. Randolph had other ideas, and you interfered. He apparently discovered that Mrs. D. intended to visit the shelter earlier tonight—the shelter had a function in the conveyance of the recovered thumb drive…had it been recovered. That’s as much as I can tell you. I imagine Mr. Randolph sent Mr. DesConte and Mr. Long to the fund-raiser as backup for you, for surely he suspected Mrs. D. would have her own people on the ground. We may never know everything about Mr. Randolph’s intentions.” He sounded gravely disappointed.
Steel felt a tightness in his chest. He’d been lied to repeatedly. He had a hard time knowing who was on his side.
“And now, if you will, Mr. Steel…or you, Ms. Augustine…” Mr. Morgan held out his hand. “The thumb drive.”
Kaileigh and Steel looked at each other blankly.
Mr. Morgan shook his hand. “I assure you, you want to turn it over to me. Possession of that drive is a federal offense.”
“We destroyed it,” Steel said.
Mr. Morgan’s lower lip twitched. “He told you to say that. Am I correct? This is something Mr. Randolph prepared you for—a debriefing like this—and you’re having second thoughts? I promise you I—”
“Steel stepped on it,” Kaileigh said, “and he flushed it down the toilet.”
“Good…God.” If a man could have died from being told something, Mr. Morgan just had.
Steel and Kaileigh met eyes. Hers pushed him. His refused.
Mr. Morgan caught the exchange. “What’s going on here?” His voice had lost its friendly tone, turning hard and critical.
“I think I know,” Penny said.
Mr. Morgan never took his eyes off Steel. “Very well, Mr. Cardwell?”
“Steel memorized it.”
“Say again?”
“He memorized it. The contents of the thumb drive.”
“Nice try. That thumb drive,” Mr. Morgan said, “is believed to contain specific scientific information—equations mostly, some comparisons, and fifty to a hundred pages of diagrams—”
“Eighty-seven,” Steel said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“There were eighty-seven pages of diagrams. A hundred and sixteen pages of equations in the first file. There’s a nine-page letter addressed to someone named Illavich Vladikovski, and some kind of essay, forty-three pages, like from college or something.”
“And you destroyed it!” Mr. Morgan’s face shone redder than a sunset.
“The drive, yes,” Steel said.
“But he memorized the contents,” Kaileigh said. “The safest thing to do is get him to that computer Nell’s on and have him start typing. It’s a lot of information. It’s going to take a while.”
It took three days. Men and women, most wearing uniforms, some in dark suits, came and supervised Steel’s “downloading,” as Mr. Morgan called it. Steel typed some of it, read back a great deal of it into a voice recorder, and delivered some of it into the waiting lens of a video camera. Nell and Kaileigh and Mr. Morgan remained with him for the three days, taking wonderful room service meals at the suite’s dining table, writing reports, talking to people, and signing dozens of forms.
At night the girls watched DVDs while Steel continued to pour out the information. He noted more than once that it took a lot longer to get it out than it had to get in, and said how he wasn’t sure he liked this part of the Program.
Mr. Morgan didn’t miss a second of the procedure, clearly astonished at the depth of Steel’s memory. He took meetings with some military types, and Steel was pretty sure they were discussing him. They were behaving as if they’d discovered a secret weapon, and he was it.
Kaileigh spent time in one of the bedrooms, also being recorded on video. Steel heard her speaking in Farsi several times during the process, and again the military people were involved—this time women.
More than once, Mr. Morgan mumbled something about “a bright future,” but kept it shrouded in so much mystery, Steel didn’t know what to make of it.
Finally it all came to an end. Steel and Kaileigh, Mr. Morgan, Nell, and Penny rode in a stretch limousine—Steel’s first time in such a vehicle—from Boston back to Wynncliff Academy. Steel and Kaileigh had signed a dozen papers promising to keep everything secret. The “cover story” for their Halloween weekend was a visit to Penny’s house, with a trip down to Cape Cod. The details of that make-believe weekend had been carefully spelled out; Steel only had to hear them once.
Returning back to the school proved a bit of a letdown. Steel and Kaileigh stood on the lawn outside the dorms, realizing—or so it felt to him—that they had to split up now.
“So,” he said.
“Yeah, I know,” Kaileigh answered.
“Well it’s kind of cool we’re both thinking the same thing.”
“Yes, it is,” she agreed. “Should I thank you? Because I want to.”
“Other way around,” he said. “I know this sounds ridiculous coming from me, but I’m never going to forget this weekend.”
She laughed, reached down, and her fingers
brushed his. He left his hand there, hoping she might take it, but she didn’t.
“All I can say,” she said in a voice so soft that it was barely audible, “is that if I’m ever asked to do something like this again, I hope it’s with you.”
“Ditto.”
“Well…later, I guess.”
“Yeah,” he said, flexing his fingers and trying to touch hers. But he missed.
He walked to his dorm with a knot in his throat and a sick feeling in his gut, and he thought maybe he felt better than he had in his whole life. If this was growing up, he wanted more of it. If this was school, he never wanted to leave.
On a crisp autumn day in the first week of November, the air was so pure it tasted like snow. It smelled of fallen leaves and pine. Winter hid around the corner like an unwelcome guest. The school—the entire school, it seemed—was gathered around the ga-ga pit for the final outdoor competition of the term. The contest pitted the Spartans against the Argives, and there was a definite buzz in the air.
Currently, the play had gone for nearly an hour—an impossibly long and equal game where, due mainly to exhaustion, attrition had finally begun to claim players. First one, then another, and now, impossible as it seemed, it was down to just DesConte and Steel, face-to-face, sweat dripping off their faces.
Chants carried out through the stands and beyond, some for the champion Argives, some for the upstart Spartans. The ball rebounded off the octagon. Steel jumped, landed, and deflected it. DesConte was too fast to be caught. He slid out of the way and made a miraculous one-handed strike in the process.
The crowd cheered.
Steel sensed a person’s presence. It wasn’t Kaileigh, as he’d expected; he knew where she was sitting—next to Nell Campbell—and he heard her voice carry through all others. Penny sat to her left, their cheers for him rising together.
But this other sensation felt both foreign and familiar.
He caught an image out of the corner of his eye, and his curiosity was satisfied.
His father stood alongside the bleachers, Mr. Morgan at his side.
They had talked by phone the past week in a roundabout way, where Steel never violated his vow of secrecy, nor had his father asked him to. But his father knew, in the way a father knows. They shared something now that they’d never shared before.
He wasn’t there to push for details, he was there to watch the ga-ga tournament. After years of Steel not knowing much about his father, of not seeing him much, he suddenly felt as if he knew him a whole lot better.
DesConte’s next shot almost struck the thoughtful Steel, nearly ending the game, but Steel leaped at the last possible second, spun, and slapped the ball for the near wall. It was a brilliant use of angles, and might have hit DesConte, but the boy slipped and fell, and the ball passed within a fraction of an inch of him, but missed.
The crowd released a collective sigh.
Steel got out of the way of his own rebound. DesConte sent the ball flying, and Steel dodged it yet again. He slapped it back, and DesConte artfully moved out of the way.
It was a chess match. A stalemate. No simple move was going to win the game; neither would be caught by a standard attack.
DesConte bent down and struck the ball backward between his legs—the same shot that had ended their previous one-on-one. But Steel had seen it before, and wasn’t going to be caught.
He jumped high, landed hard, and lay flat on his back, so the rebounding ball flew directly over him—feet to head. The crowd oohed and groaned. Some thought he had been hit, but the referee’s flag remained at his side.
As the ball flew past his head, Steel diverted it, slapping it with a hard spin so that as it struck the near wall, it bounced off in a reverse angle.
DesConte saw it coming—and was well prepared to strike, but he never predicted that Steel would do a back somersault, spin, and hit the ball with both hands, directly at him.
The spud didn’t merely graze DesConte. It struck him so hard in the legs he went over backward.
The crowd exploded into cheers.
It took Steel a second to comprehend that he’d won. He stepped forward and offered DesConte a hand, and the boy took it and allowed Steel to pull him up, and the crowd cheered even louder. The boys threw an arm around one another and made a slight bow.
DesConte spoke into Steel’s ear above another roar.
“Welcome to Wynncliff, Trapp. Next time, you lose.”
DesConte trundled off, greeted by Reddie Long and others.
Steel, left alone in the pit, caught sight of Hinchman, who gave Steel an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
He rose on his toes, searching for his father, but he was nowhere to be seen. Checking left and right, into the bleachers and in the crowds around them, he searched, his confidence in his memory skills challenged—had he imagined him there? Invented him out of thin air?
A hand landed firmly on his shoulder, and Steel knew. He pivoted to see his father wearing a broad smile.
That evening Mr. Trapp took Steel and Kaileigh out to dinner at a roadside tavern, The Ale House, which had been in operation since 1796. It was dark and smelled sweetly of smoke.
They ate a fine meal—Steel consumed two entrees. They talked about ordinary things, and his father replayed the ga-ga game nearly shot for shot.
Then dessert came around, and in the middle of apple pie, his father lowered his voice and addressed them both. “I’ve been caught up by Ben…Mr. Morgan…on your Boston trip.”
“DesConte and Reddie Long?”
“Will be…fraternity brothers of yours…by Christmas break. Yes,” his father said. He meant the Program.
“Mr. Randolph?”
“Some things you can’t be told.”
Steel nodded, accepting his new role.
“There will be overseas travel involved,” his father said.
“No way!” Steel said.
“Your particular skill sets—both of you,” he added for Kaileigh’s benefit, “are of particular use in these interesting times. There are places you can help, and though you are incredibly young, I sense not so young as I might think.”
“Help how?” Steel said.
“That kind of detail is better left to Ben.”
“And you’d let me do this?” Steel asked. “I mean, I’m not complaining…”
“With certain safeguards and covers. There’s much to be discussed at many levels.”
“Overseas, where?” Kaileigh asked. “When?”
“There’s talk of something before Fifth Form—your junior year—which is unusual.”
“That’s next year,” Steel said.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“Any place in particular?” Kaileigh pressed.
“China was mentioned.”
For a moment, all Steel heard was the pounding of blood in his ears.
“Awe…some,” Kaileigh said, drawing it out.
“Nothing’s definite.”
Steel beamed.
“And there’s something else.” Steel’s dad eyed them both thoughtfully. “The woman you followed?”
“Yes?”
“You were told about her.”
“Yes.”
“Well, following Thanksgiving break there will be two new students attending Wynncliff. I want you to be civil to them, to welcome them, and show them the way. Treat them right. It’s not easy coming into a school midsemester. With any luck, by Easter they may be part of the Program.”
He removed two photographs from his pocket and laid them on the table.
Kaileigh gasped.
Steel reeled. “No way!” he said.
“These are the boys. Yes. Do you know them?”
Kaileigh laughed so hard she nearly tipped over her chair.
Steel joined in.
The pictures were of Jason Voorhees and Malfoy from the fund-raiser.
Not understanding, Mr. Trapp continued being Mr. Trapp. “Well, if you know them, I suppose it’s all t
he better. Easier to make them both feel at home. You must understand the undue hardship such boys have suffered. They have lived on the street. They are without families. It hasn’t been easy—far, far from it. The transition will be difficult. Such attempts have failed as often as succeeded. They will need support. Friends. People to treat them decently and help them along. Wynncliff will be their home.”
“Home,” whispered Kaileigh, regaining her composure. She seemed to be savoring the word as if carefully sucking on a sweet.
Steel reached under the table and touched hands with her, the warmth of her like touching a live wire.
That sensation remained for the duration of the drive back to school, like some kind of burn; it lingered there like memories boiling inside him.
Like the kiss, impossible to forget.
The Academy Page 24