Boy Nobody bn-1

by Allen Zadoff

  It could mean I missed it, or it could mean they were let in by someone with access.

  Someone like Sam.

  The Presence is close now. I can sense him. I use the darkness and smoke to make my way through the basement hallway. I creep forward until I hear voices up ahead, arguing.

  I peek into the room. A custodial office and changing area.

  Men in shiny nylon jackets, all of them in masks, all of them speaking Hebrew.

  The Presence is here.

  He’s standing across the room wearing a mask, but I recognize his posture immediately.

  He shouts at the other men, and they nod the way soldiers do when they’re taking orders.

  Suddenly the men race out of the room. I slam my body back against the wall. They turn as they come out, running away from me without looking back.

  Only the Presence is left inside.

  I step into the room.

  The Presence freezes. He stands still, watching me. The fabric around his mouth moves. Is it a smile?

  “Your friends are gone,” I say.

  “And you are alone,” he says in heavily accented English.

  There’s a gun in his waistband. He reaches for it.

  I’m too far away to jump him, and I don’t have a weapon of my own.

  My best bet is to wait for the shot. If I move at the moment he pulls the trigger, it will reduce his effectiveness. How much will depend on how well trained he is.

  He lifts his pistol, extending it toward me—

  “Gideon,” I say.

  He hesitates for a moment.

  “You know me?” he says.

  “I’ve seen your photo,” I say. “In Sam’s bedroom.”

  The muscles in his jaw tense through the mask.

  “And I’ve seen yours,” he says. “Sam sent it to me. So I could kill you.”

  He pulls off his mask.

  I see his face up close for the first time. Curly hair, dark eyes, and a beard.

  I saw him in the Apple Store the first day, again in the subway the other night.

  The Presence.

  Now I understand why he looked familiar to me.

  The Presence is Gideon.

  He’s older now and he has a beard. That’s why I couldn’t immediately connect him to the soldier in the photos with Sam. Only his eyes are the same, cold and dead, the eyes of a soldier.

  “You are the famous Ben,” he says.

  He puts the pistol down on the table next to him.

  “This will be for my men who you killed,” he says.

  “Not for Sam?”

  “Sam can take care of herself,” he says.

  And he leaps at me.

  He is shockingly fast, crossing the room in two large hops and attacking with vicious, well-aimed punches to my chest and head.

  I knock the first few away, take the last in the chest. Hard.

  He backs up, snorting, excited by the fight.

  “I saw you in the Apple Store,” I say. “You’ve been after me from the very beginning.”

  “I’ve been after you since Sam called me.”

  “How did she know?”

  “A strange man appears in her class days before a mission. That wouldn’t set off alarm bells for you?”

  “It would. But I’m trained to see things like that.”

  “So is Sam. By me.”

  He shouts and comes fast with a series of kicks. Again, he’s on top of me before I can adjust. I manage to knock the first kick away with my forearm, but the second catches me on the side and sends me flying into the wall.

  He fights emotionally, each attack a highly focused wave of anger and violence.

  I’m not familiar with this style. Training and emotion tend to cancel each other out. I’ve fought disciplined men, their moves calculated and deadly. I’ve fought emotional ones who rush in and try to overwhelm.

  I know how to handle both kinds.

  But this is something else.

  I need to keep him talking, distract him long enough to get my bearings.

  “You recruited Sam in Israel after her mother’s death,” I say.

  “It was not so difficult. A girl whose mother was killed in a bombing attack. A girl as emotional as Sam. And so very useful because of her father.”

  Without warning he comes again. He rushes directly toward me, jinking away at the last second, running halfway up the wall and using it to propel him sideways in a flying kick that sends me crashing through a table.

  “She thinks you love her,” I say.

  “I do love her,” he says.

  I turn just in time to see him swinging a table leg down at my head like a club.

  Boom. He misses by an inch.

  “You used her,” I say.

  Boom. I jerk at the last second and he misses again.

  “And what did you do to her?” he says.

  Boom. A third time.

  I’ve had enough. I torque backward, spring off my hands, and kick him in the chest with both legs. He goes flying into a metal locker.

  “So you do know how to fight,” he says.

  We rush each other, meeting in the center of the room. I attack high and low at the same time, testing for weaknesses in his defense. No matter how well trained, most people will favor one side or another, one zone more than the next. If I can find his weak point—

  A hand closes around my neck.

  Gideon. He’s somehow reached through my attack and grasped me by the throat.

  “You’re thinking when you should be fighting,” he says. “That is a problem.”

  “I don’t need a lesson from you.”

  I clench the muscles in my neck, fighting the pincer grip.

  “A final lesson,” he says.

  The grip tightens, cutting off the blood flow to my brain.

  I have seconds before losing consciousness—

  “Gideon!” Sam shouts.

  His grip loosens for a millisecond, and I thrash out at him, an open palm to the chin followed by an elbow that connects to his nose with an ugly crunch. He goes sprawling across the room, nearly crashing into Sam.

  Sam.

  In the doorway now. Watching.

  “Samara, get out of here,” Gideon says.

  He says her name with a Hebrew pronunciation.

  “What are you going to do, Gideon?” she says.

  He steps toward me, but Sam stops him with a hand on his chest.

  “Tell me,” she says.

  His body softens. I see the intimacy in the gesture between them.

  I say, “Does she know that you’re going to kill her father?”

  “What?” Sam says.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Gideon says. “Your father is not our objective.”

  The prime minister. He’s the target.

  Sam didn’t know this, which means she didn’t know about tonight. Not the details, at least. But she knew what she was doing when she put the plans on the blog.

  And when she gave them my photo.

  “I thought you were Israeli,” I say.

  “Proudly,” he says.

  “Why are you attacking your own man?”

  “I’m following instructions,” he says. “Just as I believe you are.”

  “Whose instructions?”

  “A group within a group within a group. You know how these things work.” He looks at Sam. “You told me he was smart,” Gideon says.

  Sam stares at the ground.

  “But your men are wearing masks and speaking Arabic,” I say.

  “That’s the brilliance of it. Somewhere in Queens, the police are kicking down a doorway right now, finding evidence of a homegrown terror cell. They are the ones who are responsible for tonight.”

  “That’s why you’re playing Halloween down here. You want it to look like terrorism.”

  “You have to admit it’s a nice twist,” he says.

  He turns to Sam. He puts a hand on her cheek.

  “You do not need to
be here now,” he says. “This man is not your friend. He was sent to hurt you.”

  She looks at me.

  “Is that true, Ben?”

  Is it true?

  Yes. But I deviated from the plan.

  I can’t explain that to her now, so I say nothing at all.

  “You see?” Gideon says.

  He steps away so that Sam and I are facing each other across the room.

  “I didn’t want it to come to this,” Sam says. “I tried to warn you to stay away.”

  “You can still stop it,” I say.

  “I can’t.”

  “I don’t think you knew about the plot tonight.”

  I reach for her, but she doesn’t move.

  “I may not have known, but I knew other things. I’m in too deep, Ben. There’s no turning back.”

  “Why did you do it?” I say.

  “For my mother. For the country she loved.”

  She gives me a sad half smile.

  And then she goes out the door.

  A flash of movement to my left.

  Gideon is darting out of the room through an opening to a utility tunnel hidden in the darkness behind him.

  I’m guessing that he’s heading for the safe room. The prime minister will be there by now, along with the mayor.

  I look to the hallway door, toward Sam.

  I lied to her. My assignment is not to stop this.

  My assignment is to stop her.

  But for some reason, I’m thinking about the mayor, about our time together, the way he put his trust in me and invited me into his life.

  I should not care about this. Or about him. He is neither the target of my assignment nor my responsibility.

  But he is in danger. And the prime minister with him.

  If my primary assignment was meant to prevent the attack at Gracie tonight, is it possible I should intercede now?

  Without instructions from The Program, I have no way to know.

  No way but to follow my intuition.

  Sam in the hallway. Gideon in the opposite direction through the utility tunnel, heading for the mayor and the prime minister.

  Me in the middle of it all.

  I make a choice.

  I follow Gideon into the tunnel.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  THE SOUND IS NEARLY IMPERCEPTIBLE.

  A single strand of fishing line stretched almost to breaking, followed by the click of a mechanical switch.

  Nearly imperceptible, but not entirely. Because when my foot hits the trip wire at the entrance to the utility tunnel, I hear it.

  Too late to undo what I’ve done, but quick enough to throw myself forward and down, jamming my body between the floor and the wall as an explosion turns the air to fire behind me. Fragments of shrapnel ping off the concrete wall inches above my head.

  I avoid the deadliest effects of the blast, but not all of it. The pressure wave slaps me against the ground, stunning me. The roar turns to silence as my ears stop working.

  My father. His image appears in my head. Not the image of him in his office when he was alive, or the final time I saw him tied to the chair. A different image, one I’ve never actually seen.

  My father alive in a room somewhere, standing at a window, thinking about me. Wondering if I’m alive or dead.

  The smell of smoke brings me back.

  I am on the ground in the blackness of the utility tunnel. I check my limbs, and they are functional. I check my flesh for wounds, but there are none.

  I look back to a small stream of light coming from the entrance to the custodian’s office. The tunnel is still open. I can escape.

  But I don’t.

  I crawl deeper into the darkness.

  Gideon is somewhere up ahead. I must stop him.

  After a few yards, the smoke begins to clear, and I can see a string of LED lights lining the floor. The light is dim, just enough to navigate.

  I stay low, crawling beneath the layer of smoke. My guess is that there is one more booby trap at the exit. Entrance and exit. That’s how I’d rig the tunnel if it were me. I’m betting that’s what Gideon has done, too.

  I accelerate, moving through the darkness faster and faster, turning corners quickly, projecting my attention forward toward Gideon.

  Four rapid turns and I sense him.

  Then I see him.

  Around the next corner. The light of the exit behind him, his shadow moving in front of me. Moving quickly. Moving carelessly.

  He’s not watching his back, probably because he thinks the explosion took me down. All his focus is on finishing the mission in front of him. I’ve had the same blinders on, so I know what it feels like. I also know it’s a mistake.

  Especially right now.

  I rush forward and grab him from behind, my arm hooking around his neck. He’s startled, but he adjusts quickly. It’s a narrow tunnel, so he keeps driving his way forward, kicking at me and trying to get me to release.

  I don’t let go, so he adjusts his strategy, twisting around quickly and catching me with a head butt that sends me flying backward.

  “You will not give up,” Gideon says.

  “No.”

  “Well, then. I found something I like about you.”

  He pulls an object from a hidden sheath beneath his jacket.

  It’s a knife.

  The blade is dark carbon steel, designed for fighting in darkness without giving away its position. It swishes through the air, the sound the only indication of its deadly trajectory.

  I remember a knife like this. It was in Mike’s hands. I remember the shock as it pierced my shoulder, and the pain that followed as my nerves registered the assault.

  I made a mistake that day long ago with Mike. I fought the knife instead of fighting Mike. And I lost.

  I will not make the same mistake again.

  Gideon attacks with a lunge, and I take a double step backward in the narrow tunnel. The blade passes in front of me without making contact.

  Gideon moves toward me, and I allow it. There is a turn in the tunnel a few steps behind me. I want to keep him talking, keep him moving forward.

  “The prime minister is a great man,” I say. “What will killing him gain you?”

  “Great men make mistakes, too. His particular mistakes are not for me to know. I have orders. I follow them. It’s easier that way.”

  He’s right about that. It’s easier when you don’t think, don’t challenge what you’ve been told. Maybe you don’t end up in tunnels fighting for your life. Or maybe you do. But it’s not because you made the decision—it’s because that’s what you’ve been sent to do.

  Soldiers like Gideon and me are trained not to make decisions on our own.

  So why am I here?

  I’m here to save the mayor’s life.

  Gideon steps forward, slashing as he comes; I leap back and around the corner, and he follows. He’s entirely focused on me as the target. He doesn’t realize there’s a wall behind him now.

  “I think your mission has failed,” I say.

  “You’re thinking again,” he says. “I guess you didn’t learn your lesson.”

  I shout and rush at him like an emotional fighter enraged. I open my arms like I’m going to trap him in a bear hug.

  He is surprised by my gambit, but pleased, too. I know because I can feel him relax the slightest bit. He’s goaded me into making a mistake and fighting outside my style. I’m fighting like him—that’s what he believes.

  There’s even a hint of a smile on his lips.

  It’s easy to fight a maniac. You just stay out of range of his anger and then you take him down.

  This is what he tries.

  He drops back to avoid my wild parry, not realizing he’s fallen out of position and the turn in the tunnel is behind him. He bumps into the wall.

  There’s a moment of shock as he discovers he’s trapped.

  A moment. That’s all it takes to convert my mad rush into something else. Somethi
ng much more deliberate. Instead of grabbing for a bear hug, I strike out with a leg, so quickly he doesn’t see it coming.

  A single kick folds him at the waist. He clutches his stomach as the knife clatters to the floor.

  I grab him then, and I use the inertia to turn the corner and throw him as hard as I can toward the exit of the tunnel.

  He falls backward, his body spinning out of control, tumbling until his upper body crosses past the exit of the tunnel and into the light on the other side.

  He sits up quickly, and he smiles back at me.

  He’s thinking that I blew it, and he’s won.

  He didn’t hear the click of the fishing line triggering the explosives at the exit, where he’d wired them.

  But I did.

  Gideon is emotional, but he is predictable, too. This is a mistake for people in our business.

  I fling myself around the corner to safety, and a second later an explosion rocks the tunnel, tearing him apart and sealing the exit forever.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  I RACE AFTER SAM.

  I double back through the tunnel to the custodian closet, then through the hallway to an outer door that’s propped open.

  I pop out onto a hidden corner of the estate. Bent blades of grass leading away from the mansion.

  I think as Sam would think, move as she would move.

  Where would she go now? Would she stay in Carl Schurz Park?

  She could walk up to any law enforcement official, say she’s the mayor’s daughter, and ask for help. She would be safe then, outside the zone of suspicion.

  But I think there is a different plan.

  A plan with Gideon. A meeting place for after. It has to be someplace safe, someplace she feels comfortable and where she will not be recognized. Someplace that gives them access to different avenues of escape.

  Someplace like Cleopatra’s Needle.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  SHE STANDS IN SHADOW BEHIND THE STATUE.

  I step into the plaza, into the moonlight.

  “Ben?”

  “Who did you expect?”

  She doesn’t answer. She watches me, her expression unchanged.

  “I know about the blog,” I say. “The secrets you were passing to Gideon and his people. All of it.”

  “I owe him my life,” Sam says. “He was there for me after my mother died.”