by Allen Zadoff
This is what I’ve been taught:
If you want to know if someone is lying, turn down the volume. In real life that means stop listening to what they’re saying and watch their actions.
People will say anything. But the things they do—that’s the real tell.
I turn down the volume on the television.
I look at the teens on the show, all smiles and white teeth, mouths opening and closing in a pantomime of love.
I think about my father. Not the man whose e-mail I wait for. My real father.
I think of him coming home from work when I was a boy. What he wore, the briefcase he carried. I think of the day he brought me to work at the University of Rochester and introduced me to his colleagues.
I was young then. I trusted. I believed.
No more.
Questionable loyalty. That’s what Mother told me when I got to The Program. I asked her why I had been brought there, and she said, “Your father had questionable loyalty.”
She said it like it was damning, like my father had wavered in his allegiance. To what or whom, I don’t know.
In my memory, I turn down the volume and I watch my father at the university. I see him speaking to his colleagues, his mouth moving, no sound coming. I watch as he introduces me. I look into his eyes. I watch as he passes a security card through a locked door and brings me into the research lab. I remember how important I felt, how lucky to be in this place where no guests are allowed. My father was special. He had privileges.
I scan his office. I try to understand who he was and what he was doing.
If not a professor, then what?
If not a research scientist, then what?
If not a good man, then what?
I run the scene again and again in my mind, but I don’t find anything questionable.
Only my father, telling the truth in the month before he died.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THREE DAYS PASS.
Three long days in Providence. I sleep, I work out, I go to the movies alone.
Mostly, I wait.
I do not establish patterns, and I make no friends.
It’s Tuesday morning when a chime wakes me from a restless sleep.
I roll over and check my phone.
An e-mail from The Program.
Check out this video. Funny!!!
Dad
Funny. Three exclamation marks.
That’s code for an urgent communication. I remember this from my operational training, but it’s never been used before.
Something critical needs my attention. A new assignment.
It is beginning again.
At last.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I ORDER A LARGE COFFEE AT THE LOCAL STARBUCKS.
“You want to add a shot to that?” the barista says.
“Why do you ask?”
“You look like a man on a mission. A little pick-me-up couldn’t hurt.”
I look at the barista, monitoring his face for anything out of the ordinary that would suggest he knows who I am. If need be, I could leap over the counter and be on him in an instant.
“It’s just a shot,” he says. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
He smiles. I smile.
I can see now that he’s harmless. I’m misreading the situation. Maybe the Chinese spies shook me up a little. Or maybe it’s the waiting. No matter. I’ve got business to attend to.
“Make it two shots,” I say to the barista.
“My man,” he says.
I find an empty chair in the very rear of the store, and I log on to the free Wi-Fi.
I can make my phone secure, but for assignment instructions, it’s safer to have another layer of anonymity between me and the world. Nothing more anonymous than a local Starbucks.
I’ve been taught a few simple tricks, all of them the same trick.
Hide in plain sight.
It’s the best way to make yourself invisible.
My phone logs on with a fake Mac ID, the phone’s version of a social security number. I settle in and open Father’s e-mail again.
Check out this video. Funny!!!
Dad
The e-mail is followed by a link to YouTube. There’s also an image to download. A tiny image. Barely 5K in size. The image is nothing special—a picture of a mountain lake. As if my father had been on vacation and uploaded a snapshot at extremely low quality.
The photo means nothing at all, but the size means everything.
5K. Five days.
That is the operational window for my next assignment.
It can’t be right.
I check the photo again to make sure I read the number correctly.
5K. No mistake.
My job is always the same: Enter, gain trust, integrate, and complete my assignment. All without being noticed.
This is not a quick process. It takes one to three months, depending on a whole number of factors.
Five days. What is that?
I look around the Starbucks. Lots of people on laptops. An old couple chatting. Two cute girls in workout clothes laughing.
Nobody paying attention to me.
I click on the YouTube link. The video is nothing at all. A famous band, the lead singer of which falls off the stage mid-ballad. Maybe it’s funny, but that’s beside the point. I scan down until I get to the sixteenth comment.
First word=Sucks.
Last word=Go.
SG. The initials of the Facebook profile for me to locate.
When I log into Facebook, I find over a dozen new friend requests, but only one of them from a guy named EssGee in New York City.
SG. That is the one that requires my attention.
This is not a real profile, of course. It has not been created by EssGee, and when it is removed after I’m done, it will not be removed by him.
It’s not a profile at all, but a dossier.
I accept the friend request and click on the link to his profile.
The real name of the person is at the top.
SG. Sam Goldberg.
First surprise: Sam is a girl.
I do not like dealing with girls. They are complicated.
I am equally effective with girls and guys, but girls create another level of difficulty. More emotion, more problems.
Second surprise: Sam is pretty. More than pretty. Beautiful.
She looks vaguely Middle Eastern, shoulder-length curly hair, long and thin with high cheekbones, ample in her chest.
I don’t care about beauty itself. But beauty means boys. Suitors. Jealousy. Competition. Beauty can make my job more difficult.
I look at Sam’s photo.
There is something familiar about her. A distant alarm goes off in my head.
At a nearby table, the girls in workout clothes laugh. Their teeth are very white.
I breathe. I focus. The alarm in my head gets quiet.
Back to the profile.
Two photo albums. The first is my mark.
I click on it.
Photos of Sam.
Jumping in the air on a trampoline, her face frozen in joy.
Sam at a Model UN conference, her face intense as she argues at a podium.
Sam and three friends messing around at a dance, each of them putting a leg in the arm of another.
The intimacies of this girl’s life spread out in front of me like a deck of cards.
I feel a vague sense of discomfort, spying on an innocent girl.
Then I remember: Nobody is innocent.
Still, there is something familiar about this girl. What is it?
I click the next photo. Sam and friends posed in front of the facade of an unusual building in Manhattan. The shape is something like a giant television screen. I recognize the name of an exclusive private school on the Upper West Side.
I move to photo album two. The critical album.
First photo. Sam dressed for a formal event of some kind. A black-tie dinner. Unus
ual for a teen to be attending. But maybe not for a wealthy teen in Manhattan.
Sam is elegant in black. Younger than in the previous photos. This is from a few years ago.
Next photo. Sam posed with her parents at that same event.
My eyes widen. My breathing quickens.
I double-click to enlarge the photo. I have to be sure I’m seeing it correctly.
Sam is in the same black dress between her father and mother, their arms around one another. Her father looks delighted, completely at ease in front of the camera.
He should be. He’s the mayor of New York.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
NOW I KNOW WHERE I’VE SEEN HER BEFORE.
Samara Goldberg, daughter of Mayor Goldberg.
They call him the West Side Mayor. A mayor of the people. A mayor both elevated and grounded, still connected to his roots.
Jonathan Goldberg is a former mathematical statistician and professor. His analytical theories made him a fortune as owner of a global security research firm. Pulled into politics somewhat against his will. Rose quickly after that.
The mayor is tall and skinny in the photo, stretched long like his daughter. Older than Sam’s mother by quite a few years. Her mother is a beauty. I can see where Sam gets her looks.
I remember the story now. Sam’s mother died several years ago—an accident while she was visiting family in Israel. A freak accident. Wrong place, wrong time.
Afterward the mayor went into mourning, along with the city that loves him.
My heart is beating too fast. One hundred forty bpm. High for me.
I stand and stretch. The girls look over at me. Why is a guy stretching out in the middle of Starbucks?
“Still hurting from my workout,” I say.
One of the girls giggles and whispers to her friend.
I’m attracting too much attention. I sit back down, pull in my energy. I breathe deeply, slow the rate of my pulse.
I click the photo so it becomes small again. I count back in the order.
I’ve looked at two photos, but it’s the third photo that is important.
Second album, third photo. That is always the target.
It could be anyone. An uncle or aunt. Even a nanny. Anyone close to the family.
I click on photo three.
It’s a picture of Mayor Goldberg. Alone.
He is the target.
Sam is the mark, the mayor of New York is the target, and five days is my timeline.
That is my new assignment.
I check on the barista again. He’s working the bar now, his face obscured behind a layer of steam.
It’s time to go.
I grasp the phone in one palm and slam the left corner down on the table. One time, sharply and at a particular angle.
The girls look in my direction and frown. I must look like an angry kid, making a bad choice with his phone. But that’s not what’s happening. It’s a built-in fail-safe.
When I hit the phone, the accelerometer measures the exact angle and force of the blow and sends a signal to the battery that causes it to overheat, destroying the interior of the phone.
A block away I drop the dead phone into a covered trash can, and I get on a train bound for New York.
As the wheels sing beneath me, I think about the difficult assignment ahead. I wonder how I will do it in five days.
It will be a challenge, no doubt.
But challenges are what I’m best at.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WEDNESDAY. DAY 1.
It begins.
I appear at a famous private school on the Upper West Side.
Sam’s school.
The Program has inserted me into the system overnight. I am in the school’s computer—my name and a false academic history along with a letter of acceptance and a transfer order. As of this morning, my paperwork is in place and I will appear on the teachers’ rosters.
The rest is up to me.
I’m sitting in a cluster group, what other schools would call a homeroom. There are mixed ages in the same room, students from grades nine through twelve, all forced together.
Sam is in a nearby room, but I am here. By design.
First impressions are everything in high school, but without knowing Sam, I don’t know what my first impression should be. I could come in guns blazing, an ironclad identity in place. But that would be too much of a risk. First I have to find out where she is in the pecking order. The daughter of the mayor could be many things. To determine what exactly, I must see her in action. I need to know where she is in the social order, and just as importantly, where she perceives herself to be.
Father and I discussed this via a secure e-mail exchange. He agreed that it’s better for me to slip in, work the angles until I’m on the inside. We decided to place me in a different cluster group so I could get my bearings before I begin.
“Are you new?” a girl in the cluster group says. She’s in the seat next to mine, a mass of bangs with two overly done eyes staring out at me from beneath. A junior by the looks of it.
“Newish,” I say.
“Why haven’t I seen you before?”
I glance over her shoulder at a boy. Athletic, a tight chest. She’s been sneaking glances at him for the last ten minutes.
“Because you’re obsessed with him,” I say, pointing to the guy.
She turns bright red.
“That’s not funny,” she says.
I shrug.
Conversation over.
I hear a soft chuckle from two rows behind me.
It’s a younger guy, maybe fourteen years old, pale with uncombed hair. Definition of dork. Watching.
“Good one,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say.
“You transferred to a new school in April,” he says. “Who did you piss off?”
“I got kicked out of Choate.”
“You must have really screwed up.”
I shrug and go back to reading a book.
Let the rumors commence. It’s a good way to start, inject some mystery into my story. Later I can spin it in a hundred different ways, turn myself into a troubled kid, a victim, or a rebel—whatever is most effective.
For now, I trust this pale kid will let it slip. And I mark him as someone to monitor. I have to be careful with guys who are outsiders. They watch. There’s nothing much else for them to do.
Ten minutes go by as I study the cluster group. I watch the patterns, the behavior, the styles of dress. I listen to the rhythm of the language in this new place. I learn the school procedures. I soak it all in.
At five past eight, three soft tones sound a few seconds apart, and the students stand up.
It’s time to meet Sam.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IT IS JUST ANOTHER DAY TO THEM.
That’s why it’s preferable to start midweek. No excitement. Expectations are low.
Today happens to be Wednesday. I like Wednesday. It’s the day I might have chosen anyway if there had been more time.
I look at people in the halls. Yawning, rubbing their eyes, still waking up.
Unaware.
In a big public school I might stay below the radar for days, making myself invisible until I choose to emerge. Not here. Private school classes are too small, and the time frame of my assignment doesn’t allow for much subtlety.
So it is first period on Wednesday when I enter Sam’s AP European History class. I come in two minutes before the bell. Late enough not to be early. Early enough not to be late.
A few pairs of eyes rise upon my entrance. I am acknowledged and dismissed.
Exactly what I want.
I sit in the back row and I wait.
Sam comes in.
She is tall and athletic, the hardness of her body contrasted by the soft curls that spill down her cheeks and pool around her shoulders.
The photos did not do her justice. She is stunning.
She enters with confidence and sits near the front of t
he room. She is surrounded by friends, a beautiful girl with black hair to her right, a huge boy with a sloppy shag cut to her left. This Shaggy Giant is making a great effort to look casual.
The door swings open and the teacher comes in, a thin man with a beard, time pulling on the corners of his eyes. His face betrays his age, but his energy does not. In most schools teachers are tired, but not here. Here they are passionate.
This teacher enters the room in midlecture, as if he can’t wait to begin, so much so that he started his lecture in the hall outside class. Hell, he probably started in the parking lot this morning.
“Roosevelt and the Lend-Lease Act,” he says.
The class goes silent. He glances at me briefly. His brain has registered a discrepancy. I see it on his face.
He looks down at his roster, finds my name.
“New,” he says.
“Lucky me,” I say.
A few kids chuckle.
“Welcome. We’ll get you up to speed quickly,” he says, and he dives back into his lecture. “America lends arms to Britain during World War Two, ending American neutrality without officially entering the war. Tell me, was it an act of cowardice or simply good diplomacy?”
I know this question. I know where it is near the end of the AP European syllabus. Unit ten. The Rise of Dictators and World War II.
I know the entire high school syllabus. I’ve studied all of it; it’s just a matter of brushing up enough to remember these particular lessons.
If I wanted to, I could jump into the debate, fight my way to the top of the intellectual heap. But it would not serve me. Today I will hang back, listen, and learn.
And watch.
It seems I’m not the only one.
Sam monitors the debate, or what passes for a debate with this group. It’s more like a discussion of the motivation behind U.S. diplomatic initiatives. At least until Sam jumps in.
“We should have been involved in the war years before we were,” she says. “The Lend-Lease Act was passed by a single vote in Congress. Nobody wanted to be involved. We refused to choose a side.”