That Which Binds Us

by Amanda Richardson

  In an instant, I see him raise it just as I duck my head and rush forward, pushing him hard against his chest. He wasn’t expecting that. A shot fires, and I hear the bullet explode on the opposite wall, just as he falls backwards. In slow motion, I see him hit his head on the stairs, drop the gun, and roll over to one side, unconscious. I wonder briefly if he’s dead.

  I sprint up the stairs quickly, throwing my boots and jacket on. I glance out the window. It’s snowing. I’ll have to run to Mr. Cosway’s house. Unless…

  I grab my father’s car keys. It’s the SUV, the only automatic transmission he owns. I’ve never driven a car, but it can’t be that hard. I know the basics—steering wheel, brakes, gas pedal. Applying my knowledge into action won’t be too difficult. I run outside and close the door behind me. It’s still snowing. I don’t have time to stick my tongue out tonight—something Nina and I love to do in the winter. I unlock the car with the key fob. It makes a loud beeping sound. Cringing, I get in quickly. I have to leave before he wakes up.

  I adjust the seat, making it as tall as I can. I turn the key and the engine purrs to life. I stare down at the transmission. Which one to I move it to? I try R, but it gets stuck.

  Think, Ben.

  Putting my foot on the brake, I try again. The car jumps backward, and a cold sweat breaks out along my forehead. Somehow, I inch out of the driveway. From there, I put it in D. The car jumps forward. Now all I need to do is get to the Cosway house. I’ve run there before, but tonight, everything feels urgent. Mr. Cosway will help me, just like he’s always promising to do.

  I don’t know how to use the windshield wipers or the headlights. The snow is pelting down against the windshield. It’s very distracting. I drive slowly. We live at the top of a hill just outside of Denver. Nina and her father live lower down the hill. The road is twisty. It’s late, so I know my chances of seeing another car are slim.

  I make an extremely sharp right turn. The sweat drips into my eyes, and I have to blink rapidly to see. I don’t see the edge of the cliff ahead, and by the time I think to turn, the car has too much momentum and I fly off.

  I don’t know what’s happened at first. I feel weightless. It’s almost peaceful. But then the bottom of the car meets the side of the hill, and I roll. Screaming, all I hear is glass breaking, and metal crunching. Something hurts on my forehead. The seatbelt cuts into my neck.

  Rolling, rolling, rolling…

  All I hear is my own screaming. The car has slowed, and I’m upside down. I smell gasoline. Instinct overtakes me. Fumbling, I release the seatbelt. I fall onto the roof of the car. The windows are broken already, so I climb out and stumble onto the stark white of the forest ground. I crawl away as fast as I can. Mr. Zegers, my science teacher, once told me that gasoline and flames are a deadly combination. I am a few feet away when a booming explosion sends me flying.

  It knocks me out, and shortly after, I wake up. I look to my right, and all I see is the dense forest. To my left is the charred outline of a car. The flames are still very tall. Someone is going to see it soon.

  What do I do?

  What do I do?

  Thinking quickly, I shrug out of my jacket. I stand and run over to the driver’s seat. I hurl the jacket through the window, and it catches fire instantly. I take my watch and do the same, watching as it falls onto the seat. It hurts to be throwing it away—to part with something that Nina gave me. I still remember how good it felt when my best friend bought me something that meant so much to me. Then again, she’d always known me better than anyone. The wax begins to melt. I throw my shoes in.

  Does rubber melt?

  I don’t know why I’m doing this. I don’t even know if it’ll work. I’ll probably freeze out here. But if I can make my dad believe that I’m dead, it might be my ticket out. Freezing, I climb up the hill slowly. Adrenaline fuels me, even though I’m so cold. Luckily, I’m only about a quarter mile away from the Cosway’s house. Even more lucky, I seem to have crashed in a remote area of this neighborhood. Even so, I have to get away. Quickly.

  The sun is starting to rise.

  Run, Benjamin. Run.

  I make it to Nina’s front door, panting and numb. I knock quietly.

  Henry Cosway opens the door. He takes my appearance in, his expression shocked.

  “My God, Ben. What happened? Come in, get out of the cold,” he says quickly, ushering me inside.

  I tell him everything. He gets me a pair of sweatpants and a wool sweater. At one point, I hear sirens. Henry stays silent. He’s always quietly observing. I wonder when Nina will be awake. I wonder what will happen to me.

  “Ben…” he sighs and rubs his forehead with his hand. “I think I can help you.” Those six words engulf my heart in warmth. I will finally have a way out. “Listen to me. Here’s what we need to do.”

  Even at barely twelve, I know his plan has holes. Henry has connections—Nina once said he works for the CIA. Someday, I want to work for the CIA. He’s never admitted it to me before, but I can see now how it might be true. One time, Nina showed me an underground office that her dad kept for emergencies. But, as I said, our plan had holes. My dad would dig around those holes until he exposed any weakness. We had to try and create a seamless timeline.

  The first order of action was dealing with Nina. We decided it would be best to tell her I’d perished in the car accident. The only person to know I was alive would be Henry. He hid me in his closet as he told her. He had to wake her up—we couldn’t chance her walking in on our conversation.

  I stayed in his closet for hours. I heard her screaming for me. It broke my heart, and I had to sit on my hands in order to stay put. I just wanted to tell her everything. I always told her everything. But Henry was right. This is for the best, and one day when it’s safe, I’ll find her and explain everything. Finally, Henry let me out and took me to his car. We drove quickly to an old warehouse. I was introduced to a few people. Henry kept saying, “This is the kid I was telling you about.”

  They didn’t ask questions. It was quick. In a matter of an hour, according to the clock, they’d handed me a folder with a fake paperwork. Henry arranged a private jet to fly me to a friend of his in Montana. My new name was Frederick Graves. I was twelve and I was going to Montana to live with my great aunt because both of my parents had just died. That was the story I was supposed to tell anyone who asked.

  I begged Henry to let me say goodbye to Nina. He wouldn’t budge. He said the only way our plan would work is if everyone thought I was dead. It was safer this way.

  So I boarded the small plane. I waved goodbye to my home. Henry told me he’d already sent the police to my father’s house, and he was alive—stupefied, but alive. They said he cried, but I don’t believe it. My funeral is in two days.

  Yesterday, I turned twelve. Today, I died.

  N I N E

  Ben—Thirteen Years Ago

  Montana

  I WALK INTO my house and shut the door behind me. Every day I do this. Every day I take the bus to the end of our driveway and walk up our tree-lined path. Every day I smile when I walk inside, because every day Rhonda makes chocolate-chip cookies and sets out a cold glass of milk. She lets me watch a TV show or browse MySpace before I do my homework. I don’t even have to hide my candy—she keeps a candy jar right on the counter.

  “Hi, Rhonda,” I say, swinging my backpack onto the spare chair and bending down to kiss her on the cheek. She’s aging. I know she won’t be able to take care of me for very much longer. She says she’s seventy, but I think she stopped counting at least fifteen years ago.

  “Sweetheart... how was your day?” she asks, her voice trembling. It trembles a lot now. I reach over and grab a stack of cookies.

  “Fine. I have a big math test tomorrow. And the team wants me to try out for quarterback next year. I’m still not sure if I want to do it. I just don’t enjoy it that much.”

  She nods and pushes the plate of cookies toward me. “Well, that’s exciting.”
<
br />   “Yeah.” I take a sip of milk. “We’ll see.”

  I eat in silence for a few minutes. I shovel down at least seven cookies, and I can see the smirk on Rhonda’s lips.

  “You’re almost a man, Frederick,” she says quietly. “Henry would have been so proud of you.”

  Would have? Why is she speaking in past tense? I stiffen. In all of the years I’ve been here with Rhonda, helping her with her farm and looking after her, she’s never mentioned Henry. Some days I even wonder if I managed to find the right house, because when I showed up four years ago with a fake passport, she opened her door, let me in, and didn’t ask any questions. I assumed Henry knew her deceased husband—there were pictures of him everywhere. He was in the Navy, and I suspected the CIA like Henry. We never talked about it, or Henry, or my past. Rhonda just welcomed me in, gave me the bus information for school, and began to bake cookies for me every single day. I wonder if she even knows my real name?

  I was sometimes tempted to search for Nina on MySpace, but I knew it would only lead to pain. She was better off thinking I was gone. Besides, maybe Henry would tell her when the time was right.

  “I—yeah,” I mumble, taking another large sip of milk.

  “We… we never really discussed Henry or Nina.”

  Hearing Nina’s name sends a sliver of pain right through my chest. I miss her in a visceral way—even today, I still wake up clutching the covers and wishing it were her. I can still remember the way her hand felt in mine. We were always just friends, but the comfort of her friendship was everything to me back then. She was the sun in my bleak, troubled life.

  “Nina,” I repeat. Her name on my lips causes unexplained joy to shoot through my limbs.

  “Henry was my last recruit,” she continues, lost in the past. My eyes flick to hers.

  “You were in the CIA?” I ask, my voice high and surprised.

  “Shh,” she shushes, smiling. “I can neither confirm nor deny it. But we were both a part of an international spy organization—”

  “So… the CIA,” I interrupt.

  “You shush.” She’s smiling, but I see a glint of fear in her glassy, dark brown eyes. “You never know about the bugs.”

  I cough on the piece of cookie I just crammed into my mouth. “I’m sorry… the bugs?”

  “Fred! Oh Lord, we thank you for the gifts of your bounty which we enjoy at this table…” She continues to mumble her usual dinner prayer. I wonder if she’s going senile, since we’re not eating dinner. Usually when I’m being particularly wayward, she’ll repeat this prayer: O Sacred Heart, through Thy powerful grace, may we become Thy apostles in the midst of a corrupted world, and be Thy crown in the kingdom of Heaven. Amen. I shake my head and laugh. I was always curious about her religion, because although she attends church every week, she never really pays attention. More times than not, she’s asleep in the pew, and she doesn’t talk to anyone there.

  Everything is starting to make more sense now. It was never her husband who was in the CIA. It was her. The church and Montana are a cover. I doubt Rhonda is her real name. I wonder if her husband was a fabricated story as well. I stifle a laugh.

  “Okay, go on,” I say, propping myself up on the table.

  She clears her throat loudly. “As I was saying, Henry Cosway was my last recruit before I retired. He had a lovely wife. She was so supportive, and beautiful. Shortly after they moved him from Langley to Denver to help with the airport project, Nina was born. Oh, it was such a happy day for them. But then Caitlyn, his wife, got really sick. She died two days after Nina was born. She never even left the hospital. Blood clot.”

  I process the information. Nina once told me that her mom had died, but I never knew the details. “What was the airport project?” I whisper.

  “The Denver Airport,” she states matter-of-factly. I stare at her blankly. She sighs and throws her hands up. “The airport is a cover for one of the world’s biggest underground bunkers. You didn’t hear that from me,” she adds, winking and pointing a finger at my chest.

  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I’d been to that airport a few times. I remembered the creepy horse statue and the odd artwork. One of the kids at my old school use to spout lies about the ties between the Freemasons and the airport, but I never believed it.

  “That’s neither here nor there, sweetheart. My point is, he was in charge of that project, and after completion, they kept him on in a similar capacity. They knew he had a family. He couldn’t just up and fly to Russia for a job! So, they gave him a job in Denver.”

  I nod, taking in her words. Gripping my glass, I take a steady breath. This is a lot of information to take in.

  “Why are you telling me this now?” I ask, my voice timid. I’m scared—no, petrified—that all of this is going to go away. Somehow, from somewhere deep inside of me, I know there’s a reason Rhonda is telling me all of this today, three weeks short of my seventeenth birthday. This life has become everything to me. Rhonda, our farmhouse, my friends at school, football… I don’t want any of it to disappear.

  She clears her throat and reaches out for my hand. “You know that super-secret international spy agency? They contacted me this morning. They want to talk to you.”

  I set my glass down roughly. “I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to leave this place. I like it here.”

  I know I’m being unreasonable. The CIA is the reason I have all of this. They expedited a new passport, arranged the private jet to Montana, and covered up my messy tracks back in Colorado. I literally owe them my life.

  “They just want to talk, Benjamin.”

  I’m stunned to hear her use my real name. “My name is Frederick Graves. Benjamin Adler died four years ago.” I haven’t cried since that night, but right now I can feel the tears burning the corners of my eyes.

  “They’re coming to talk to you today,” she says quietly, squeezing my hands. “Give them a chance. Just talk to them. For me.”

  I swallow thickly as a single tear drips down my cheek. I wipe it away quickly. If Rhonda dedicated her life to them—if Henry Cosway can dedicate his life to them—then I owe it to myself to talk to them. After all, Rhonda and Henry are the strongest people I know.

  I’d give anything to be just like them.

  T E N

  Ben—Two Years Ago

  Langley, Virginia

  “SIR, A MINUTE please?” one of the interns asks, jogging along behind me. “I just have some questions about the Black Operat—”

  “I’m going to stop you there,” I say quickly, turning to face him. “As far as you or I know, that program doesn’t exist. It’s merely a rumor; the fabrication of a console gaming company. Do you understand what I’m saying? Never say those two words in this building again.”

  The intern, a short guy with a freakishly long beard, gulps visibly and nods. I wonder what department they have him working in. Cairo has a few openings. I can’t help but chuckle. Scaring the interns is so much fun sometimes.

  “Mr. Adler—how long have you been working with the CIA?”

  We continue walking down the hallway. “Eleven years unofficially. They recruited me officially on my seventeenth birthday, nine years ago.”

  “So you were seventeen when—”

  “Yep,” I answer quickly.

  “And what’s your opinion of the takedown of Osama Bin—”

  “Alright,” I say loudly. “I’m sorry, but I have a meeting to go to. We’ll continue this conversation another day.”

  He nods and types something into his iPad. I smile. I was that guy once, diligently taking notes. Sandler quickly got me out of that habit by tossing the pages from one of our meetings into the underground incinerator. “No physical records of our meetings, ever. It’s bad enough we can’t erase certain information from our brains. Always think like a prisoner about to be tortured,” he used to say in the beginning.

  I push the door of room 113 open and take a seat at the rectangular table. I prefer this
room—it’s the sunniest. Some of our topics aren’t very happy, but discussing them in this room somehow makes things a little better. Part of my training was getting rid of every ounce of my humanity. Grief, empathy, love… they were all extracted, beaten, and pounded out of me. It’s part of the job. It trips people up—the torture, the murder, the details, ignoring the humanity… I’ve done a pretty good job eradicating all of that.

  Everyone is here already. I’m late, as per usual. No one acknowledges my presence. Sandler begins talking once I settle in and lean back in the black, leather chair.

  “Like I was saying, we have a two-day window to get these guys. They’re hiding in a non-disclosed location in Kandahar. Adler, what’s the status of the drone in that area?”

  Hearing my name, I perk up and clear my throat. “We actually have two in that area, sir.”

  He nods and continues discussing the plan to nuke the terrorist living there. We finally have a contact in that area who has promised to give us the location of that fucker. Promised. More like the promise had been tortured out of him…

  I’m not normally a part of this type of meeting. I work on the ground, in disguise. Black Operation appealed to me right away. To me, they’re the real spies. Almost no one knows who we are, aside from Sandler and a few others in various departments. We know how to fly under the radar. We travel to a different location week after week, assassinating enemies one by one. It’s hardcore. We travel with a cyanide tablet, and we’ve been directed to ingest it if we’re ever captured. Today though, I am a part of this meeting, because Kandahar is my territory. I’ve been stationed there for three years, and I know more about every single suspected terrorist there than anywhere else.

  When the meeting is finished, Sandler gestures for me to stay behind. As everyone trickles out, I try to quell my nerves. I’ve never been good with change, and if Sandler is keeping me behind, it’s for one reason and one reason only—he’s sending me somewhere else for a new job. I’ve been in Kandahar, Afghanistan for three years. I like it there. I like my co-workers, I like the city, as crazy and fucked up as it can be sometimes. I like the desert, the culture, and the food. I don’t want to leave. I sit down at the table, expecting a long meeting.