by Allen Zadoff
“I missed you,” he says.
“I missed you, too, buddy.”
More than I realized. Having Howard around was the highlight of my last mission. It was my first experience having someone to rely on, someone I could trust who had no agenda but to help me.
“You don’t look good,” Howard says.
“I haven’t slept for a while.”
“Is it because of a mission? I know you couldn’t talk about it on the phone.”
“We’ll get to that,” I say, wanting to hear more about Howard first. “How have things been at school?”
His face darkens.
“You want a lie or the truth?”
“The truth is always better.”
“It sucks,” he says. “People were mellow for a while after—it—happened. Then I went back to being Hard-On Howard and they started beating the crap out of me again. And Sam isn’t around to protect me.”
Samara. The girl I loved. The girl I killed.
“She was my only friend,” Howard says.
“Not your only one,” I say. “Not anymore.”
He smiles. “Thanks, Ben.”
“My name is Daniel now,” I say.
“You have a different name?”
“Different mission, different name. I’m trained to switch identities. I was only Benjamin for a short time.”
“How do you keep the identities straight?”
“I don’t attach.”
“To the name?”
“The name, the place, the circumstances of the assignment. None of it.”
“What about the people?” Howard says.
I shake my head. “Especially not the people,” I say.
He bites at his lip, troubled by the idea.
“So what about me?” he says.
“You’re special,” I say.
“I knew it!” he says, beaming. “But wait, what should I call you?”
“Call me Daniel. It will help to keep us both on the same page.”
“Will you tell me your real name sometime?”
There are only three living people who know my real name.
Father and Mother. And Mike.
“Sometime I will,” I say. “I promise.”
“Daniel,” he says. “That works for now.”
“For now.”
“You sounded bad on the phone,” Howard says. “So tell me what’s going on.”
I hesitate, wondering how much I should reveal to Howard. But he’s already here, already exposed. He’s risked everything to come here and help me.
“I’m in trouble, Howard.”
“Does it have something to do with this card?”
“That’s just a part of it.”
“I’d like to hear all of it,” he says.
I take a breath, hovering between talking and putting Howard back on the train and asking him to forget everything.
It takes me less than a second to make a decision.
I pull away from the station.
As I drive back to Manchester, I tell Howard about the camp, about Moore inviting me in, about Father and The Program disappearing, about my attack at what was supposed to be a safe house. He listens, his head bobbing, not freaking out even as I share details about The Program and some of what I do for them.
I don’t tell him about previous missions or targets, but I give him enough information to endanger him forever, to threaten the lives of his family and anyone he’s ever known or cared about in the world.
To his credit, he listens closely, occasionally asking questions or inquiring about details, but respecting when I set a boundary.
I finish as we pull into a Holiday Inn near the Manchester airport.
We sit in the parking lot while he considers all of it. He leans forward and rubs his fingers through his curly hair over and over again.
“I see why you called me,” he says. “It’s a confusing situation.”
“I’ve been running scenarios, but I don’t have the answers. Not yet.”
He leans back in his seat, still pulling at his hair.
“I think we should start with the SDHC card and see what we find. If I can crack the card, you’ll know a lot more about this—what did you call them?”
“A freelance team.”
“Right. This freelance team and the people who hired them. That will tell us some of what we need to know.”
“That sounds like a good starting point,” I say. “What do you need from me?”
“Power,” he says. “And Cheetos. Lots of them.”
“We can get those,” I say.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
I RENT A SUITE AT THE HOLIDAY INN.
I politely ask the desk clerk for a suite in a quiet part of the hotel with nobody next door. With vacancy rates high, they are more than happy to comply.
The minute we get into the room, I jimmy the lock to the adjoining suite and open the door. Now we have two connected suites, one under a false name in the hotel’s computer system, the other not in the system at all.
I go back into the first suite and I see Howard emptying his duffel, removing power cords, multiplug outlets, surge protectors, coaxial cables. A miniature electronics store comes out of the bag.
“Did you bring any clothes?” I say.
“Why?” he says.
“To change. You might be here a few days.”
“Hackers don’t change,” Howard says, like it’s a crazy question. “We have priorities.”
He runs extension cords from the outlets in both rooms, then he sets up double laptops, an iPad and iPhone, a power unit, Wi-Fi cards, and various other small machines that I haven’t seen before.
“All right. Let’s take a look at the card.”
I pass him the micro SDHC card pinched between two fingers.
“This is an SD card reader right here,” he says, showing me a small device attached to one of his laptops. “But I’m not going to put it in there.”
He flips the card around in his hand, examining it from every angle. Then he places the card on a piece of white frosted glass, and a schematic registers on the laptop screen behind him. I see a printed circuit board and assorted electronics, all miniaturized inside the confines of the card casing.
“Just what I thought,” he says. “It’s not really an SDHC card at all, more like a secure communications device posing as an SDHC card.”
“That’s unusual, isn’t it?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s very sophisticated. What do you know about the guys you took it away from?”
“Not very sophisticated,” I say.
“Which means they were given the card along with some kind of special reader at the same time. That would allow them to access the data, but if they lost the card or it got taken away from them, nobody else could read it. I’m guessing if you put this in a regular SD reader, it destroys itself.”
“Can you get into the card, Howard?”
Howard examines the schematic, whistling softly under his breath.
“It’s going to take a while,” he says.
“Stay at it, as long as it takes.”
He brings up some application on his laptop. I see numbers flying by as a cursor scans the schematic on the screen.
“Tell me about Moore’s camp,” Howard says. “What’s it all about?”
“They think the government is weak, and they’re trying to do something about it.”
“They’re right, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“The government is weak. I mean, I could hack the banking system right now if I wanted to. I could probably even get inside the Homeland Security network if I had a few days, and there are only, like, a dozen guys who could even begin to try to stop me. A dozen guys protecting the entire government.”
“There’s got to be more than that.”
“Okay, a hundred guys. Two hundred. I guarantee the IT department at Google is bigger than the cybersecurity co
re of the U.S. government right now, and Google pays a hell of a lot better, too.”
“You could hack all that stuff, but you don’t do it,” I say. “Why not?”
“Because I’m not a dick.”
“But other people do it.”
“They are Phalli giganticus. I can’t speak for them.”
“But you understand them.”
Howard groans, like he’s having to explain something boring to a child.
“Why do people do it?” Howard says. “Because they can. Because it’s fun. It makes them feel like hotshots to get behind the infrastructure and see what’s in there. I understand the impulse. You know in those old movies where kids break into school on the weekend, get into the gym and play some hoops, or rifle through a teacher’s desk to see if they can find the answer key for a quiz?”
“I’ve seen those movies. But there’s a big difference between that and hacking the U.S. banking system.”
“Sure. Hacking is easier. You do it from home in your underwear while you’re eating trail mix. And then you announce it to the online community, so a few thousand friends are applauding you and watching your every move. Then they try to top you by going further, doing a little more. It’s a big competition. You can see the attraction to that.”
“I can see it, and I know it’s fun to break the rules. But the U.S. is already under attack from foreign powers. You’d think kids would want to defend against that rather than contributing to it.”
“I don’t think they see it like that,” he says. “Some people think of it more like a global government. Hackers versus the establishment, us versus them.”
“Us versus them. That’s how Moore thinks of it.”
“That’s why you’ve been sent after him?”
“I never know why I’m sent. I don’t need to know. I’m a weapon.”
I think about the things I’ve seen in Moore’s camp over the last two days.
“But in this case,” I say, “I think I figured out why. It’s critical that I stop him.”
I glance at my iPhone, checking the time. If I’m going to get back, I should try to get there before morning.
“So you’re going back to the camp?” Howard says.
“I have a mission to complete.”
Howard pulls an iPhone out of his bag. “I bought this before I left New York,” he says. “We can stay in contact.”
“I can’t call you on a number that can be traced—”
“I know that,” he says, interrupting me. “I used a credit card number I snagged from Verizon corporate. It gets billed back to them as an internal department expense. It will take them months to figure it out. By then I’ll have wiped the data.”
“I’ll keep my phone on,” I say. “The same number I called you from the first time. There’s signal blocking throughout the camp, but if you need me, send a text and I’ll check for it when I can.”
“Can I have your special iPhone number, too?”
“My Program phone? Why do you need that?”
“If we lose contact. If it’s an emergency.”
I hesitate, wondering if I should trust Howard with my phone number.
Which, of course, is ridiculous, because I’ve already trusted him with my life.
I pass him the phone.
He handles it delicately, cradling it in two hands.
“It’s an iPhone, Howard, not a baby.”
“I’ve never held a baby,” Howard says, “but I know how to respect other people’s digital property.”
He gently taps open the Settings folder and takes a snapshot of the information with his own phone. Then he hands my Program phone back to me.
“I’ll let you know the second I’ve decoded the SDHC card.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Howard.”
“Your life would be considerably less awesome,” he says.
“That’s true.”
“Really?” he says, delighted that I’m agreeing with him.
“You risked everything coming up here. ”
“I know,” he says softly.
“It means a lot to me.”
Before I can stop him, Howard rushes forward, squashing me in a bear hug.
I say, “I’ve got to be honest. It makes me uncomfortable when you do that.”
“Just once,” he says. “Then you can go back to being a tough guy.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
I LEAVE THE SILVERADO IN THE LONG-TERM PARKING LOT AT THE AIRPORT.
I don’t want to bring it into Camp Liberty on the outside chance it might be recognized because the freelance team was hired and equipped by Moore. After considering what Howard told me about the SDHC card, I have to ask myself who has the sophistication to place their own electronics inside a storage card.
Moore’s people might be able to do it, but why would they invite me to stay, then try to take me out the moment I left camp?
Still, it’s a risk I cannot take.
So I leave the truck in the long-term parking lot, where it will not be scrutinized for days, and I look for a replacement vehicle, something with the engine still warm. If someone just dropped off their car in long-term parking, I can get at least forty-eight hours of use out of it before it’s reported missing.
I walk the parking lot in the middle of the night, making myself appear like a weary traveler who just got off a plane and can’t remember where he left his car. It’s not much of a stretch. I actually stumble going up the ramp, a reminder of how tired I am and the fact that even trained muscles will start to misfire at some point.
I find a new-model Honda Accord, open the Travel Channel app on my iPhone. It’s an app with a built-in database, and it should work without needing to connect to a Program server.
I click on SELECT A DESTINATION. I find JAPAN on the scroll wheel, then wait as the app searches its database for the master key code for the Accord. When it finds the right code, it transmits a remote signal.
I hear the familiar click of the locks being disengaged, followed by the engine starting up. I get in and drive out of the parking lot. I use the ticket I got a few minutes ago, explaining to the girl at the pay gate that I messed up and drove into long-term when I only needed short-term.
“You can charge me for five minutes if you need to,” I say with a smile.
She winks at me and opens the gate.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
THE SUN IS COMING UP BY THE TIME I GET BACK TO CAMP LIBERTY.
I pull up to the roadblock outside camp in the Accord.
Rifles come up. A girl with a gun walks to my window. She stares at me for a moment, and then her expression lightens.
“I know you,” she says. “I saw you at the community center the other night. You’re a legend.”
“I don’t feel like a legend. I feel like a guy who needs to go to the bathroom and get some breakfast. No offense.”
“Girls go to the bathroom, too,” she says.
“I don’t have a sister,” I say, “so I never learned these important details.”
She laughs. “They told us we might see you today. I’m glad you’re back.”
“Me, too,” I say.
“Always nice to have a new brother.”
I allow myself to feel what Daniel Martin might feel: proud for persuading his parents to let him come back, nervous about returning here, excited about being a part of something new.
The girl signals to her partner at the roadblock to lower his weapon.
“By the way, you timed it perfectly,” she says.
“For what?”
“Breakfast,” she says.
She motions to the boy, and he opens the security gate and pulls the tire strip from the road, clearing a path for me.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
I PARK THE ACCORD AND JOIN A GROUP OF KIDS HEADING INTO THE MAIN HOUSE FOR BREAKFAST.
There is a large dining area off the main hall where Moore stopped me yesterday.
I follow the grou
p through the double doors and I’m met by loud conversation and laughter. Members of the community sit at long tables with large shared platters of food running down the center.
Family style.
I look around the room for a free place to sit.
On most missions where I sit, when I sit, how I enter a room like this is vitally important. If I were in a high school setting, I’d be concerned with status, social proof, defining myself through the hundreds of cues that create ranking. But a community like this has different standards of evaluation, and I have to recalibrate my thinking.
I am a guest here. A guest does not have to fit in or look comfortable. The opposite, in fact. I allow myself to appear uncertain, not knowing where I should go or what I should do. I let my body reflect that, tensing my shoulders and breathing in a shallow way that is unnatural to me.
I use the opportunity to scan the room as if I’m looking for a place to sit.
But I don’t care where I sit. I’m looking for Moore.
I need to know his patterns. Where he eats, where he takes meetings, when he goes to the bathroom, anything and everything.
Because I need this to be done.
“Daniel!” Lee shouts.
He’s sitting at a table across the room with Miranda next to him. I raise my hand in greeting and move toward him.
“Good morning,” I say.
“Look who’s back!” Lee says.
Miranda nods to me briefly, then returns her attention to a half-eaten bowl of oatmeal.
“Join us,” Lee says. “Grab some food. You know how it works here?”
“No. It’s my first meal with the group,” I say.
“It’s every man for himself,” he says. “Especially at breakfast.”
“Sounds rough,” I say.
“It’s only rough if they run out of bacon,” Lee says, and that earns him a laugh from the table.
I take an empty spot across from him at the table, look down the row of faces at kids who greet me.
“I’d introduce you to everyone,” Lee says, “but you’ve met a hundred people in the last couple days. I’m sure you won’t remember anyone’s name.”
“I barely remember my own name at this point,” I say, and the group laughs.
