by Roland Smith
J. R. Culpepper. She didn’t trust him as much as she did Pat and Charlie, but he was the only politician she’d ever known that hadn’t been corrupted by power. Becoming the president didn’t seemed to have changed this. He’d gone way out on a limb for her. Malak hoped the limb didn’t break and crush them all.
She activated the disposable phone.
Malak couldn’t use her laptop, even though it was in her pack. There were strict procedures to follow if you were wounded. The assumption was that you were on the run without access to a computer and e-mail.
It had been a little over an hour since she’d left the apartment. If Ziv’s theatrics had worked, the cell’s leadership knew that Amun, Elise, and Sean had been executed by Eben Lavi and that the Leopard was wounded. A dozen cryptic calls and e-mails had been sent, but only one or perhaps two people had all of the pieces. These were the people the Leopard was hunting. The only way to find them was to stay on the prowl.
She punched in a number.
“Hey, girl!” a cheerful woman answered. “Can I put you on hold? I’m right in the middle of something. Don’t hang up. We need to talk.”
A couple of seconds later a text message popped up on the display with an address.
The woman came back on. “Sorry. Are you able to make it to the party?”
“Yes,” Malak answered.
“Do you have wheels?”
“Yes.”
“Not too far to drive?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yes.”
“Cool! Expect you in fifteen. Ciao.”
Malak shook her head in wonder at the cell’s brilliant organization. The hip-sounding woman could have been down the street or in Italy. She had no idea who Malak was or what the problem was. If Malak had answered no to any of the questions the woman would have asked another set of cheerful questions and texted her another phone number to call. If Homeland Security had been monitoring the call, which was highly unlikely, they would have completely ignored it.
Malak turned off the phone, then took it outside to the concrete patio and stomped on it several times. She put the pieces into a heavy-duty garbage bag she’d found in the cabinet under the sink, along with her bullet-grazed blouse and jacket. She took her pack and the bag into the garage and tossed them into the van.
On the way to the address she stopped at a Starbucks, threw the garbage bag into a trash can, then walked in and ordered a latte.
Five minutes later Malak was parked outside a doctor’s office in Langley, Virginia. She wondered how the CIA would feel if they knew there was a terrorist physician almost within spitting distance of their headquarters. The cell was not only brilliantly organized, they were bold, or in this case maybe even a little reckless.
Malak sat in the van for several minutes, sipping her latte as she scanned the streets, cars, and buildings. If someone had followed her or was watching the doctor’s office, she didn’t see them, which meant they were either very good or they weren’t there.
She got out of the van and walked into the office. No patients, no receptionist, no nurse—just a saltwater tank filled with brightly colored fish. A young doctor wearing blue scrubs opened a door near the reception area. The name tag pinned to his scrubs said “Dr. Lennox.” When he saw her he looked confused, then worried.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “If you need an appointment, you can call during—”
“I have an appointment,” Malak said. “You were told to expect me.”
“But I was told the patient was seriously—”
“Looks can be deceiving. And I’m tougher than I look. Let’s get this over with. It’s dangerous for me to stay in one place too long. Dangerous for you too.”
Dr. Lennox started sweating. It could mean that this was the first time he’d been called upon to stitch up a terrorist. Or it could mean something else. Like the young doctor in the blue scrubs was setting her up with the bad guys or the good guys down the street at the CIA. Neither of which would be good. Malak put her right hand in Elise’s jacket pocket and wrapped it around her pistol grip.
“Follow me,” Dr. Lennox said.
He led her into a sterile room in back with an examination table.
“Take your jacket off and lie down on the table.”
“I’ll sit on the table,” Malak said.
She pulled out her gun and put it on the paper-covered table, then took off the jacket, wincing in pain as she pulled her left arm out of the sleeve.
Dr. Lennox stared at the gun. “That makes me nervous.”
“Good,” Malak said. “You make me nervous.”
“I’d be a lot more comfortable if—”
“Your comfort isn’t my concern. Is this the first time you’ve done this?”
“Yes,” Dr. Lennox admitted.
“It’s pretty simple,” Malak said. “Patch me up and don’t ask any questions. And do it quickly. I’m in a hurry.” She pushed herself up onto the table with one arm, the gun next to her right hand.
Dr. Lennox pulled a bright light over and then unwound the bloody bandage around her left triceps. As he examined the gash he dabbed the blood away.
“It’s pretty deep,” he said. “And there are pieces of cloth embedded in it. I can irrigate and disinfect the wound, and put in some sutures, but I’m going to have to numb the area first.”
“Fine.”
Dr. Lennox walked over to a counter and filled a large syringe, then came back. “I’m going to administer several small injections around the wound with a local anesthetic called lidocaine.”
“Go ahead,” Malak said. “But if there’s something in that syringe besides lidocaine that starts to makes me dizzy like a sedative, they’ll find both of us on the floor and you won’t be getting up.”
Dr. Lennox’s hand trembled. “It’s lidocaine.”
Malak picked up her gun. “It’s a nine millimeter.” Her hand was steady as a rock.
Dr. Lennox took a deep breath and began numbing the flesh around the Leopard’s wound.
Make It Look Good
We headed down to the East Room, allegedly to see how the preparations were going for the concert, but the real reason was that Angela wanted to find out from Boone how her mother was. This was not going to be easy with P.K. sticking to us like the stars on Old Glory. He was growing more suspicious by the minute. He’d asked us three times if Charlie Norton had really taken us to the National Museum of Natural History. When we swore that he had, P.K. rolled his green eyes like we were the biggest liars on the planet. The kid had good instincts, just like his dad.
When we got to the East Room so many people were there that I thought my new watch was broken and the concert had already started, but of course it hadn’t. Most of the people running around worked for the White House. The others worked for our parents’ band, Match.
“Looks like the Secret Service let the roadies in,” I said, doing a quick head count. “They’re all here except for one.”
“Yeah,” Angela said. “He’s probably still in jail.”
Buddy T. spotted us and stomped over like he was going to knock us down.
“Where’s Boone? What are you doing here?”
Angela and I took a half step backward and said we had no idea where Boone was.
P.K. took a half step forward and said, “I live here. This is my house.”
“That right?” Buddy T. said. “For your information, this house belongs to the people of the United States. You’re just a renter.”
P.K. thought about this for a moment, then gave Buddy T. a small smile and looked at us. “I thought you said your parents’ manager was a pain in the butt?”
“We didn’t say that,” Angela said.
Actually we hadn’t even mentioned Buddy T. to P.K., but if we had we would have described him exactly like that.
“He seems okay to me,” P.K. said. “In fact, I like him. So would my dad.”
I saw somethin
g I never thought I’d see. Buddy T. actually blushed. And that’s when I knew that Willingham Culpepper could one day become the president of the United States if he wanted to. He had the charm and the guile for the job.
“I think your dad does like me,” Buddy T. said, recovering some of his normal bluster. “He caved and let my roadies in.”
J.R. did not cave—at least not to Buddy T.
“What’s the T stand for?” P.K. asked.
“That’s above your security clearance, kid,” Buddy T. said with a smile, then walked off to yell at someone else.
Heather Hughes—tall, blonde, already dressed for the concert, and the president of our parents’ record company—walked over to us. We introduced her to P.K.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Will,” she said, and then looked around the room. “It took me an hour to get through the gate. Soldiers and police everywhere.”
“It’s just a precaution because of the car bomb,” P.K. said.
“Scary,” Heather said. “I was in the air when it went off. They closed the airport. I didn’t know if they’d reopen it in time for me to get here.” She looked around the chaotic room. “Where’s Boone?”
“Seems like a president of a record company would be more concerned about her musicians than she would about an old roadie with a gray braid,” P.K. said.
Heather smiled. “You have a point, Will. But I’ve known Boone for more than thirty years. He’s one of my dearest friends. The Secret Service said Blaze and Roger were up in the Residence. I checked the motor coach on my way in for Boone, and he wasn’t there. One of the agents said that he and Croc had gone downtown. I called his cell. He didn’t answer. I want to make sure he’s okay.”
P.K. was about to say something else when Boone and Croc entered the East Room. They walked over to us.
“How y’all doin’?”
Boone’s drawl was back.
“I was worried,” Heather said.
“’Bout what? The bomb? I wasn’t anywhere near it when it went off. Bet you’re hungry after that long flight from the West Coast.” He looked at P.K. “You think you can escort this poor starvin’ woman to the kitchen and talk them into gettin’ her something to eat?”
“I guess so,” P.K. said. It was obvious that he wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but he was too polite to say no. “What kind of dog is that?”
“A very old dog,” Boone said.
“A blue heeler–border collie cross,” I said.
“He’s missing some teeth,” P.K. said.
“Yep, quite a pile of ‘em in fact,” Boone said.
“Let’s get some food,’ Heather said.
“Try the fried cheese curds,” I suggested as they walked out of the East Room.
Boone motioned us over to the only corner that wasn’t swarming with people.
“Malak is fine,” Boone said quietly. “She’s inside a doctor’s office right now, getting her arm stitched up. I’m not saying she isn’t hurting, but it was only a graze. We had to make it look good.”
“Are you sure it’s going to work?” Angela asked. Charlie had told us about the charade they had put on at the apartment.
Boone sighed. “If they believe her, she’ll be fine. If they don’t…”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. The rest of it was written all over Angela’s face.
“Why didn’t she just give it up?” Angela asked. “Her cover’s blown.”
“Not quite,” Boone said. “But I agree with you. The game she’s playing now is more dangerous than the one she was playing this morning. It’s a gamble. But everyone who suspected she wasn’t the Leopard is dead. The alternative is to be on the run for the rest of her life. And this includes you and Q and your parents. If the ghost cell finds out that your mother is an imposter, it won’t take them long to discover that she’s Malak Tucker, former Secret Service agent, mother to Angela Tucker, the allegedly deceased wife of Roger Tucker,” and—he looked at me—“the stepmother to Quest Munoz. They’ll come after all of you.”
They’d probably come after Boone and the SOS team as well.
“Who made it look good?” I asked.
“What?” Boone said.
“Who shot Malak in the arm?” I’d been thinking about this ever since Charlie told us about it. It seemed incredible to me that someone would shoot Malak to “make it look good.” And how do you just stand there and say, “Okay, shoot me in the arm. I’m ready.”
“Ziv,” Boone said. “And there’s something else you need to know that I didn’t tell Charlie. I thought I should tell you personally.” He looked at Angela. “Let’s go out to the motor coach.”
That didn’t sound good.
Halfway across the East Room we were intercepted by a shouting Buddy T.
“Where have you been, Boone?”
“Takin’ care of business,” Boone answered calmly.
“In case you didn’t notice, we’re putting a benefit concert together for the president of the United States and some of his friends.”
Boone smiled. “Looks like you got plenty of help. You’re only missin’ one roadie, and he was a complete slacker. No one was sorry to see him hauled off to the can. I signed on as the driver and to ride herd over security.”
“The motor coach isn’t going anywhere until after the concert. About a third of the people in here are Secret Service Agents with guns. I doubt they need your assistance with security. I feel pretty safe. How about you?”
Boone and Croc locked eyes with Buddy T. “I always feel pretty safe,” Boone said.
Croc growled. Buddy T. took a step backward. “Did they give you permission to bring that mutt in here?”
Boone nodded. “Right after I gave J. R. Culpepper a tour of the motor coach and asked him to let the roadies into the White House.”
“Oh,” Buddy T. said, obviously disappointed, but he didn’t let that bother him for more than a second. “You need to give these guys a hand. The concert was on, then it was off, and now it’s back on. We’re way behind, and it’s going to be televised. It’ll be embarrassing if we don’t pull this off perfectly.”
“Can’t have that,” Boone said. “Tell you what. I’ll take these two to the coach to change their clothes. Can’t have them dressed like they are now. Might embarrass people. Then I’ll come back in and lend a hand.”
Grandpa
Boone started brewing a pot of coffee while Angela and I changed into concert-at-the-White-House clothes. Mine looked pretty much like what I had taken off—cargo pants, shirt, running shoes. But they were clean. Angela’s looked pretty much the same as well: black jeans, black sweater, gold necklace with an angel on it exactly like the one her mother wore, except Malak had a gold leopard strung on hers next to the angel.
We sat down in the plush leather chairs around the coach’s rosewood dining table. Croc crawled under the table and started snorting around for complex protein, but he was destined for disappointment. The coach was a no-meat zone except for the odd burger Angela and I managed to smuggle in when Mom and Roger were conked out in the master bedroom in the back. If a little crumb was to drop from the illicit toxic burger, we would have dived to the floor and fought over it like hungry hyenas.
“Tell us what’s going on,” Angela said.
“You know your mother was adopted?” Boone said.
“Of course,” Angela said. “They disowned her, or she disowned them, when she refused the arranged marriage they set up for her.” She bit her lower lip.
I was nervous too, but taking a deck of cards out and messing around with them was more annoying than lower-lip biting. The deck stayed in my pocket.
“I met her real father today,” Boone said. “You know him as Ziv.”
The monkey that watches the leopard’s tail, the Philadelphia cop in Independence Park. Warren Parker, aka Grandpa.
Angela said nothing, but I thought she might chew her lower lip off.
“So,” I said. “Malak’s dad shot her i
n the arm.”
Boone nodded.
“What kind of father would shoot his daughter?”
“Once Malak decided to stay in play, he really didn’t have much of a choice,” Boone answered. “He winged her to keep her alive.”
Angela was still silent, but I’m sure her mind was traveling at Mach 10, trying to wrap itself around this new revelation… or new relation. We knew for a fact that Grandpa Ziv had murdered at least four people, counting the terrorist in Tijuana, Mexico, who had murdered Eben’s brother. I wondered if Eben had thanked Ziv for this. Probably not.
“Would you have winged her?” I asked.
Boone hesitated a second, then said, “Yes.”
I shook my head in wonder.
“How long has Ziv known?” Angela asked. “How long has she known?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t have much time to talk after he”—Boone glanced at me—“winged her. But he did tell us how he met Elise.”
The details were a little sketchy, but Ziv (no last name, not his real first name) met the now-deceased Elise in Lebanon when he was a university student. They had both been recruited by the same organization.
“What organization?” I asked.
“He didn’t say,” Boone answered. “But there’s no doubt it was a radical Islamic group. Probably a splinter group of Hezbollah—party of God. He was at a training camp in Iran when his wife died during childbirth. Ziv didn’t find out about her death until he returned to Lebanon. By then she’d been dead nearly a year. They didn’t tell him there had been twins. They told him that a girl had been born, but that she had died too. Ziv believed them and spent the next decade coordinating terrorist activities around the world with great success.”
Boone reached down and scratched Croc on the head as the motor coach began to fill with the aroma of strong coffee.
“Let me tell you how I define success,” he continued. “And this applies to both the good guys and bad guys. A successful mission is one that causes the most amount of damage to your enemy, and when it’s over no one has the slightest suspicion that you had anything to do with it.”
“Like when you were a NOC agent for the CIA,” Angela said.
“Right.”
NOC stands for “nonofficial cover.” Before he retired from the CIA Boone was a NOC agent posing as a roadie. If he’d been caught spying, the CIA would have denied ever knowing him. Whatever jam he was in he would have to get out of on his own.
