by Allen Zadoff
In a movie.
Yes. These are things girls say in movies.
Things they say when they break up.
Sam looks at me, but something is different. She does not look at me the way she did last night.
I try to focus on my assignment.
The questions I had. The reasons for the questions.
All far away.
I reach to my pocket. I feel the hard outline of the pen through the leather.
You have a new target. That’s what Mother told me.
My target is standing in front of me.
A sensation comes over me. Pressure behind my eyes and in my throat.
This sensation. What is it?
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
IT CAME WHEN I WAS TWELVE.
The sensation.
Mike led me into the special house for the first time, up a long staircase with wooden steps that did not creak and a railing that did not sway. I walked across a floor that had no give in it.
Real houses are alive with sound. They shift with the wind and creak when you walk. They bend to the people who live in them.
Not this house.
It looked like a house inside and out, but it was something else.
Something dead.
Mike led me to a door, but he did not open it for me.
I had to do that on my own. The first of many choices I would be asked to make in the coming days.
The door swung open without a sound.
It was a home office. Dark wood, books, silver picture frames on a shelf. A big window looked out on a distant bank of trees. Sunlight streamed in, falling in patches across a large mahogany desk.
Behind the desk sat a woman.
Mother.
“Welcome,” she said.
And she smiled.
I was twelve years old. My father was dead. My mother was gone.
I was in a strange place, a strange house, with a strange woman smiling at me.
I knew I was trapped and in danger, but my mind would not believe it. So I smiled at the woman smiling at me. At the woman I would come to know as Mother.
I remember that day. That moment. The smile.
I felt it then.
This sensation.
Not a sensation, I realize now.
A feeling.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
FEAR.
I feel it as Sam looks through me in the park.
“Please stay away from me,” she says. “You’re in danger.”
She reaches out and touches my arm.
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I mean that.”
She turns and walks away.
My heart races even though I am not moving.
I am in Riverside Park. Children run through the playground, change direction, then run the opposite way. They clump and separate like a flock of birds.
The birds scream.
Am I in danger?
The mothers do not react to the screams. Their expressions remain unchanged, tired eyes and fake smiles.
The children scream.
I am walking. When did I start walking?
The ground feels strange beneath my feet. Wind cool on my forehead.
Why cool?
I am sweating. That is why the wind feels cool.
Be careful.
Footsteps behind me.
The Presence.
I turn to face him.
But it’s not the Presence. The energy is coming from another direction.
I turn again.
It’s Sam, I think. She’s come back to talk. She’s changed her mind, and we’re going to find a way to make this work.
But I don’t see Sam, either.
“Zach,” a voice says.
It’s a voice I know well.
My best friend is calling me. He is calling me with a name I have not heard spoken in years. A name I put away a long time ago.
My name.
“Zach,” the voice says again.
It’s Mike.
I turn toward him.
It is a mistake.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
A LIGHT SHINES IN MY EYES.
I awaken from unconsciousness bound to a chair, my arms on its arms, my legs on its legs. A lover’s embrace, sealed in duct tape.
How long have I been out? There’s no way to know, no windows for me to judge time of day.
I try to move my head to look around, but that, too, has been immobilized.
A figure appears in front of me, coming into focus in the bright lights.
I was right.
It’s Mike.
He is older. His hair is different and the angles in his face are deeper. But there’s no question that it’s him.
“Are you with me, buddy?” he says.
He snaps his fingers until my eyes focus.
“Zach-arach. Wake up.”
That voice. For a moment it feels as though we’re sitting in a burger place after school in Rochester. I’m back in my first life, and no time has passed at all.
But this is not the past. It’s now. I’m watching Mike walk back and forth, eyeing me.
“You let the daughter go,” he says.
I cannot say anything. My mouth is gagged.
“I want to think you have a plan,” Mike says, “that you couldn’t finish in the park just now, because you have a better plan. Am I right?”
This seems absurd, this asking of questions to a person who cannot answer. It is an interrogation technique designed to drive the mind to frenzy. You cannot speak, cannot protest or defend yourself. The questions bounce around in your head until your defenses break down and you tell the truth just to make it stop.
I’ve been trained in the same technique. I can defend myself against it.
Mike says, “Truth be known, I don’t believe you have a plan. I think you’re down the rabbit hole.”
I stare at him.
“Do you love her, Zach? Is that what’s going on?”
I don’t move, don’t blink. I give him nothing.
He shakes his head. “There’s no such thing. I thought we taught you that.”
I test the tape on my wrists. Heavy-duty duct tape. You can’t fight your way out of that kind of tape.
“Whatever’s driving you, you’ve pissed off a lot of people. Not me, of course. I don’t get angry. But she does.”
Mother.
“I can barely sleep at night. That’s what she said when we talked about you. I’ll be honest—I’m not sure that woman ever sleeps.”
Mike laughs. Then he stretches, pacing back and forth in a short pattern.
A pattern.
I file this in my memory. Mike moves in a pattern when he’s thinking. It’s unconscious. It’s a weakness.
I might need this information later.
If there is a later.
“They sent me here,” he says. “I argued against it, against it being me, but they said I was the one. We have history, they said. They thought that would be important.”
He nods like he knows what they meant.
“FYI, I went to bat for you. Not that it makes any difference now. But I think you should know. Certain parties lobbied for pulling you out altogether.”
He separates the words when he says them. Pulling. You. Out.
Does Mother pull people out of jobs?
How many of us are there? How many more like me?
“I argued against it, Zach. I said they should allow you to finish the job. We all stumble. It even happened to me once.”
He takes a deep breath.
“Once.”
He reaches into his pocket, removes an eyeglass case. He takes out a tiny screwdriver, the kind used to adjust the screws on eyeglass frames. He turns the end of the screwdriver.
I have not seen this particular variation. But I know what it is.
An injection device.
“This argument went on for a good, long while, Zach. It got heated. There were even q
uestions about your loyalty. Your family history was mentioned. Not by me, of course.”
A brief swell of something inside me. I think of Mother in a room surrounded by faceless people, discussing my behavior. Is this what happened to my father? Was there a meeting to discuss his behavior? A decision was made.
And then Mike came.
“Mother listened to all sides,” Mike said. “And then she decided you would be allowed to complete the assignment, albeit with certain fail-safes in place.”
He steps toward me, the plunger held close to his body. This is good on his part. If for some reason I got free, I couldn’t knock it out of his hands.
“Fail-safe. That’s me. You fail, I make sure The Program stays safe.”
He examines the tape on my feet and arms. Examines them from a distance.
“And you failed. The great Zach Abram failed. There’s no other way to say it.”
I shiver at hearing my name. It makes me think of my father’s name. Joseph Abram.
Professor Abram.
Mike circles around behind me.
This is how it will end. Silently and from behind.
“Have you thought about this moment?” he says.
The end.
I didn’t know there would be an end. Not for me.
I’ve thought of another moment. The moment of meeting Mike again. This was not how I imagined it would go.
“I’ve thought about it myself,” Mike says. “What it would feel like to be in that chair. I didn’t know if it would suck, or—”
He exhales slowly.
“Or maybe it would be a relief. To be done with it all.”
He rubs his face.
“You probably haven’t thought about things like that yet. This is still exciting to you, isn’t it? Running around and playing soldier. But then, I’m a little older than you.”
How old is Mike now? Early twenties maybe. It’s hard to tell. His face looks different from different angles. One minute he looks like a boy, the next like an old man.
“Ah, shit,” he says. “I’m sorry to have to do it.”
He takes a breath, just like I’ve been trained to do.
There is a moment of not knowing, followed by the pressure of Mike’s knuckles against the soft skin of my neck.
It is intimate, his warm fingers in that sensitive place. I know that they hold the plunger. When he depresses it, I will be gone in a few breaths.
I will not beg. I will not cry. I will not give him the satisfaction of shouting out to him or to a God I barely know. I will not reach for the places terrified people reach to.
I inhale and exhale, slowing my breathing.
My last thought.
Will it be hatred for Mike? For Mother?
No. I will choose something else.
A memory of my parents. My birth parents.
I see them now. Not on the last day, or even those last months when things turned dark in our house.
I remember a time before that.
My father is smiling; his arms are around my mother. They are standing in the kitchen of our house in Rochester and laughing.
I walk into the room. They notice me, and their arms extend, welcoming me into the circle.
An embrace of three.
This will be my last thought.
Mike says, “Mother doesn’t know what happened in the park just now.”
He whispers in my ear.
“She doesn’t know, because I haven’t told her.”
The knuckles of one hand stay against my neck, while his other hand touches my own. He puts something cold and flat on my thumb, then he closes my index finger so whatever it is gets pinched in place there.
His hand moves away from my neck.
“I figure I owe you one, Zach.”
He comes back around so he’s standing in front of me. We look at each other.
“Finish the assignment and everything goes back to the way it was.”
I don’t move, don’t so much as blink. I give him nothing at all.
“If you don’t do it for The Program,” he says, “then do it for your father.”
What does he mean? My father is dead.
This is a lie. A trick.
I follow Mike with my eyes. I watch him for signs of the tell, but I don’t see any.
He steps out of my peripheral vision, just a voice now.
“You remind me a lot of him. Certain aspects.”
His footsteps recede into the darkness.
“He’s alive, Zach. Your father. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I hear a door open somewhere out of view.
“Finish,” he says.
And then he’s gone.
I pinch my fingers to feel what he put down there. It’s a piece of metal the size of a postage stamp. It is nearly dull, but there is the tiniest bit of edge on it.
Just enough edge to cut through tape.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
IT’S DARK WHEN I HIT THE STREET.
A warehouse district, someplace I don’t recognize. Empty loading docks and bricks covered with graffiti. MESEROLE STREET, the sign says.
My father.
He’s all I can think about.
I follow the sound of beeping horns until I hit a main thoroughfare. Bushwick Avenue. I’m in Brooklyn. I follow the road north to Grand Street, and I get on an L train headed into the city.
I find an empty seat and let my thoughts drift as the train car rocks.
My father.
I see him taped to a chair in the living room, his head bowed, chin nearly on his chest. His shirt was covered in blood. I feel Mike’s arm around me like it was that day. I was drugged, barely able to stand on my own. He led me into the room and showed me to my father.
My father was still alive then.
And after?
I never saw him again.
My father has been dead for years. That is what I’ve believed.
But I did not see him die.
I saw him in that chair, I saw him taped and hurting and covered in blood, but I did not see what happened after.
I was told that he was dead. That’s different from having evidence.
But he must be dead.
Time is proof. How long has it been? Nearly five years now. If my father were alive, he would have come for me.
Unless he doesn’t know I’m alive.
Mike has given me a second chance. A final chance.
If I’m going to find out what happened to my father, I have to complete this assignment.
The train crosses into Manhattan and pulls into the station.
Eight PM. My final night. I have to get to Gracie Mansion.
But first I have to check with Howard. I race to the surface so I can get a signal.
The screen of the throwaway lights up with texts from Howard. Eight of them, all the same.
Call me 911, they say.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
“I’VE TRIED YOU A THOUSAND TIMES,” HOWARD SAYS.
“I ran into some trouble,” I say.
“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if something had happened—”
Mike was right. I’m down the rabbit hole. I broke protocol out of desperation, and now I’ve got someone working for me with no emergency procedures in place and no contingencies. I am exposed. So is Howard.
It’s time to end it.
“Forget about all of this, Howard. Shut it down.”
“But you were right about the mayor’s blog,” he says.
“How was I right?”
“The photos on the blog were tampered with. It’s so subtle that I missed it at first. The photos look strange because someone has changed the color value of each red pixel in the JPEG to match a byte of an rtf document.”
“You’re saying there are documents hidden inside the pictures on the blog?”
“Not just any documents. High-level stuff. Homeland Security memos sent to the mayor’s office. Surveillance reports of
suspected terror cells in the New York area.”
I set out to get proof of the mayor’s guilt. Now I have it.
But if the mayor is guilty, why did Mother change my target to Sam?
“Why does the mayor have secret documents on his blog?” Howard says.
“Because he’s transmitting them to someone. Can you tell who is receiving them?”
“That’s the genius of it,” Howard says. “There’s no way to know. The data is public, but it’s broken down into a million pixels. You can’t read it unless you’re on the other end with a filter program that pieces it back together.”
I run the facts through my head again.
The mayor is revealing Homeland Security secrets to someone. Maybe it doesn’t matter why. I’m trying to save Sam, and now I have proof that her father is guilty.
“I have to get to Gracie Mansion,” I say to Howard.
“Wait, Ben. There’s something else you need to know. The last post. It contains the plans for the meeting tonight. All the security protocols. Everything.”
“That means someone knows the mayor is meeting with the Israeli prime minister.”
“But who?” Howard says.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
I TAKE THE EXPRESS TRAIN TO 86TH STREET.
I get out of the station, and I run.
I turn onto East End Avenue, and I’m immediately stopped by flashing lights. There’s a two-block NYPD security cordon around Gracie, a sea of blue uniforms liberally sprinkled with dark suits.
Concentric circles. That’s what I’m imagining in my mind.
NYPD doing the grunt work around the edges. Israeli security and agents from the Diplomatic Service in the center.
Guests are already entering, ferried down a single access path. This is no high school party. There’s no walking up to the door and talking your way in, and I don’t have Erica to use as an excuse.
In almost every circumstance, I could slip into an event undetected. But not here, not where professionals are on duty, actively looking for anything unusual in the environment.
They are looking for the unusual, so I must be something familiar.
I’m wearing a button-down shirt over a T-shirt. I untuck the button-down, let it hang loosely around me. I take my wallet out and slip it into my waistband under the shirt. Now I have the telltale bulge of a weapon worn by an undercover cop.