by Allen Zadoff
“You want to see us?” she says.
“Is it so strange to want to see my parents?”
“You’ve never asked before.”
I look at the burning landscape around me.
Empty. All of it empty.
“Maybe things are different now,” I say.
There’s a long pause. A shutter slaps against the window of a deserted house.
“I’m worried about you,” Mother says. “You’re getting confused. You might be in over your head. Perhaps we should take you out of school.”
I’ve pushed too far. This line of questioning, this unprofessional request.
I’m exposed and in danger. I can sense it.
“No,” I say, too quickly.
I slow my breathing, make my voice strong.
“I want to finish the assignment,” I say. “Like I always do.”
“I see,” Mother says.
“You said it before—you know me. You know what I’m capable of.”
A pause.
“The assignment has changed,” Mother says. “Your target is being adjusted.”
“Adjusted in what way?”
A target adjustment in midassignment. This has never happened before.
“The daughter. She is your new target.”
“Sam?”
“Yes.”
“What about the mayor?”
“Off the field.”
A flash of anger hits behind my eyes. No more running. I switch weapons to the M40A5 sniper rifle.
“Can you handle that?” Mother says.
My mind is racing. I bite the inside of my lip until I taste blood. I use the pain to focus my thoughts down to a single laser point.
“I can handle anything,” I say.
There. Up in the hills behind the abandoned hospital. A flash of something.
Glowing green eyes like a cat at night.
“Put aside your doubts,” Mother says. “Whatever questions have been holding you up.”
I switch to the sniper scope.
“You’re out of time now,” Mother says. “Pick up the phone and call the girl.”
“Mother—” I say, and then I stop. I’ve already said too much.
Instead I look for her through the lens of the sniper scope.
“Finish, and then we can talk about you coming home for a visit,” Mother says.
There’s a clicking sound.
“I believe in you,” she says, her voice fading away.
I swing the rifle around, bring it to bear where the eyes were.
They’re gone.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
I TRY REACHING SAM.
It goes to voice mail. Twice. Three times.
A test. That’s what Father called this assignment.
I thought he meant it was a test of my skill level, but now I’m wondering if it’s something else.
A test of my loyalty.
But that doesn’t make sense. I have proven myself loyal in training and across six missions.
Unless—
Unless there are doubts about me.
Is that what Mother is doing—changing the assignment as a test of my allegiance?
I’ve never known her to act out of malice. The cruelest things she has done have only been to make me stronger. To teach me lessons I needed to learn.
Occam’s razor. The simplest solution is the most probable.
The simplest solution: This is not about allegiance.
It’s an assignment. Pure and simple.
Which would mean that Sam is guilty.
But that can’t be true. What could Sam be guilty of that would make her the focus of The Program? The Program is about finding and removing enemies of the U.S. Not about girls with dead mothers, girls caught up in political turmoil because of decisions by their fathers.
The mayor. He was the original target.
If I can prove he’s guilty, that would mean Sam is innocent. And my target would revert back to the mayor.
I dial Sam’s number again, and for the fourth time the phone goes to voice mail. This time I leave a message: “We need to talk. Call as soon as you get this.”
Eleven PM.
I pace the living room, struggling to get perspective on the chessboard of this assignment. How am I going to prove who is guilty when I don’t know what they’re guilty of?
Sam said she’s helping her father with something tomorrow.
Tomorrow. The final day.
That’s the key. Whatever’s happening has caused my timeline to speed up.
How can I find out what it is?
It’s eleven PM on a Friday night. I can’t go back to the mayor’s. Sam isn’t answering my calls. And I can’t talk to Father about this.
I’m stuck.
That’s when I remember.
I’m not stuck. I have Howard.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
“I NEED YOUR HELP.”
That’s what I tell Howard when I call him from the Korean grocery on the corner. I buy two throwaway phones and use one to make the call to Howard. I can’t risk using my iPhone, because The Program is likely able to log the call.
If Mother knew I was breaking protocol to get help with the assignment—
We would all be in danger.
In any case, Howard is more than happy to hear from me.
Ten minutes later I’m standing in his bedroom. Computer cables snake across the floor. Lights twinkle and fans whir. His bedroom smells like sweat and electricity.
He wasn’t kidding about being a hacker.
“What’s going on?” he says.
“I have to tell you something, and I need you to listen and consider it carefully. Can you do that?”
His face turns serious.
“Of course.”
I pause, thinking over what I’m about to do. I’ve been pushing the boundaries during this assignment, but I’ve never done anything like this.
A direct breach of protocol.
It is unprecedented. And there’s no turning back.
I hesitate, wondering if there’s some other way that I might have overlooked.
Then I think of Sam. And of my timeline.
“Today at school,” I say, “you told me you thought I was different. You were right.”
“I knew it,” Howard says.
“I have a special job. Nobody in the world knows about it.”
“What kind of job?”
How can I put this?
“I’m a soldier,” I say.
“Like in the army?”
“No army. Just me.”
“An army of one,” he says. “I want to help.”
I take a step toward him.
“If you help me, Howard, it will be very dangerous for you.”
“Walking down the hall in school is dangerous for me.”
He’s got a point.
“But this is dangerous on another level,” I say. “Whatever you do for me has to stay secret. Nobody can know. Not Sam, not Goji.”
“It sounds exciting,” he says, a big smile on his face.
I think about myself training with The Program early on. My first weapons class. My first martial arts class.
It seemed exciting.
Then it got real.
I say, “There are lives at stake.”
“Whose life?”
“Sam’s.”
His smile fades. A siren wails as a police car goes by outside.
“What do you want me to do?” he says.
“I need to know the mayor’s schedule tomorrow.”
“I can do that.”
The siren continues on, the sound fading into the night.
Howard grabs a keyboard and starts typing.
“How do you know what to look for?” I say.
“I’ve looked around City Hall stuff before,” he says.
I stare at him.
“I had a little crush on Sam,” he says. “But it was before I met Goji. I swear.”
>
“I believe you.”
He types some more.
“This isn’t as straightforward as it should be,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I checked public records, now I’m going internal—but there’s a security blackout on the schedule.”
“Why would that be?”
“I just have to crack—ah, this explains it,” he says. “The Israeli prime minister is in town. He’s in Washington talking about the new peace initiative—and then he’s coming up here for a private meeting with the mayor. That’s a little strange, isn’t it?”
It would be, except he’s not meeting the mayor. He’s meeting the next special envoy. Or maybe he’s trying to persuade the mayor to take the position.
But Howard doesn’t need to know that.
“It looks like it was originally scheduled for Sunday,” Howard says, “but it was moved up a day at the last minute.”
Bingo.
“Why was it moved?”
“It’s not clear. But the reception was moved, too,” Howard says.
“Reception?”
“Invitation only. At Gracie Mansion tomorrow night.”
My assignment was obviously shifted to reflect the change in schedule.
But why?
Why would The Program need to stop the mayor from meeting with the PM?
“Is that the information you needed?” Howard says.
I nod. “Good job,” I say.
Howard looks proud.
“That wasn’t so bad,” he says.
“I may need you for other, more difficult things.”
“Deal,” he says.
I take out the second throwaway phone.
“We’ll use these if we need to communicate.”
I head for the door, but then I stop.
“One more thing,” I say.
I type the mayor’s name into a search engine and follow the links until I arrive at the archived news article about his wife’s death. I find the photo I saw in the library, the one from the funeral for Sam’s mother.
“I remember that photo,” Howard says with a sigh.
“Look behind Sam,” I say.
I point to the soldier, the one whose eyes are looking toward Sam while everyone else looks straight ahead. The same soldier I saw in the picture in her bedroom.
“I want to know who the soldier is. Can you find out?”
“You don’t need a hacker for that,” Howard says.
“What do you mean?”
“I know who it is. That’s Sam’s boyfriend, Gideon. He was a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
I DO NOT SLEEP.
I lie in bed for hours, trying to work the angles on the assignment. Every one leads to a dead end.
I’ve been trained to get close to my mark and gain access. But I’m not an investigator. This is a different skill set.
Then again, maybe not. Maybe there’s a way to apply my skills to the problem.
Instead of trying to solve the equation, I relax and give my intuition a chance to work.
I do what I do in a normal assignment. I project my attention through the data set, and I open myself to cracks in the story, things that seem out of place.
The mayor’s blog.
Something about it doesn’t feel right.
It’s nearly two AM, but I get out of bed and call Howard. He answers on the first ring.
“You’re awake,” I say.
“Are you kidding? I can’t sleep after—after the things you told me.”
Howard’s hesitation is a good thing. He knows not to say too much on the phone, even on a throwaway phone.
“The mayor has a new blog,” I say.
“Sam told me about it when it launched. Not so interesting.”
“I saw him taking pictures for it the other night. Can you bring it up on your computer?”
I hear keys clicking, and a second later Howard says, “I’m looking at a birthday cake.”
“Anything seem strange about it?”
“Pink frosting. You’d expect the mayor to have something a little more masculine.”
“The frosting was white,” I say. “I was there.”
“There’s some distortion in the color range. Might be my monitor.”
There’s a pause as he adjusts something.
“It’s still off,” he says.
“Take a closer look, would you? Something feels wrong about the blog.”
“I’ll check it out,” he says.
“Call me if you find anything,” I say.
I get back into bed and watch the clock pass three, then four. Each hour brings me closer to my final day.
And with it, my new assignment.
Sam.
It doesn’t seem like I fall asleep, but it must happen eventually because I’m awakened by banging at my door.
At first I think it’s a dream, but when I open my eyes, there is sunlight pouring through the blinds.
And the banging continues.
I immediately roll out of bed and hit the floor, prepared to defend myself. My body does it reflexively. Rapid change of position, deflect focus, gain initiative.
The knocking again. Urgent.
Only one person knows where I live. One person and The Program.
And The Program doesn’t knock.
I move toward the door, expecting to find Sam.
“Ben!” a voice shouts.
Darius.
I open the door. Darius is standing there, breathing heavily.
“How did you get up here?”
“Your neighbor let me in. Sam’s in trouble. She needs to see you right away.”
“She sent you?”
“How the hell else would I know where you lived?”
“Why didn’t she call me?”
“I don’t know. She said I’m the only one she could trust and she sent me to get you.”
“Where is she now?” I say.
“Around the corner. The playground at Riverside Park.”
I look at Darius, at his facial expression, at the way he holds his body, clutching his fingers until they turn white.
He’s worried.
I grab my iPhone and the throwaway, toss the rest of my tools in a backpack. I slide my ballpoint pen into my jacket pocket.
“Let’s go,” I say.
I glance at the apartment one final time. My location has been revealed, the apartment burned. I’ll have to send a weather advisory to have it sanitized.
The things I shared with Sam here. They are just memories now.
I close the door, hear the lock click in place.
When we get outside the building, Darius turns away from the park.
“I’m not coming with you,” Darius says.
“Why not?”
“Sam said not to.”
He starts to go, then turns back. He touches my arm.
“Take care of her, Ben.”
He means it.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHILDREN SCREAM.
They run through the playground, laughing, and fighting, and falling over one another.
Saturday morning. The final day.
I walk around the playground, scanning for Sam. Parents look up briefly as I walk by, scouting for members of their tribe. When they see I do not belong, they dismiss me.
Sam arrives in a hurry a minute later. She’s wearing running tights and a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. Her ponytail is stuck through the hole in the back. A simple look that is an instant disguise. Two clothing items and she appears no different from forty percent of the women in New York.
Sam looks around cautiously. She spots me and comes over.
“What’s going on?” I say.
Her eyes dart around the park. She starts to walk, beckons me to follow. She circles the playground and stops at a spot off the main path behind some bushes.
“Why did you send Darius to my place?”
/> “I didn’t know what else to do,” Sam says. “I couldn’t go myself.”
There’s something on the edge of my awareness. Hovering just outside my range of perception.
“Remember I told you about my ex?” she says.
“I remember.”
I feel it now. The Presence.
“He’s back,” Sam says.
I think of the picture of Sam with the Israeli soldier.
Gideon. That’s what Howard said his name was.
“Your ex is in New York?”
“He’s been here for a while. I didn’t tell you about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was trying to figure out how to handle things.”
“What is there to handle?”
“Don’t yell at me, Ben.”
“I’m not yelling.”
But my voice is too loud. I speak quickly, the words clipped. I listen to myself as I do it. I try to focus on what Sam is saying and track the Presence at the same time, but I cannot. Instead of listening to Sam, I project my energy into the park, trying to locate the Presence. He’s here somewhere, moving through the trees that border the park.
Sam is still talking. The words are coming out of her, but they have no meaning.
I focus back on her.
“There’s too much history between us,” she says. “I owe him a lot, and I’m confused.”
“You weren’t confused last night.”
I bite the inside of my mouth. The soft part, a little below the lip.
“Last night was perfect,” she says.
“So perfect that you’re going back to your ex?”
“You’re not understanding me, Ben. He knows about you.”
“How does he know?”
“I told him. This was before—before I had feelings for you.”
“So he knows about me. What’s the big deal?”
“He’s not a normal person.”
I laugh. I lick the inside of my lip. The familiar taste of blood hits my tongue.
“I’m not afraid of your jealous boyfriend,” I say.
“He’s not jealous,” she says.
“What is he?”
“There’s a bigger picture. Something you can’t see.”
“Help me to see it.”
She looks around the park.
“I can’t,” she says.
“You mean you won’t.”
“Don’t make this hard on me.”
I’ve heard these words before. Not from a person. I have to think about where I have heard them.