by Allen Zadoff
“The Program… has… disappeared,” I say.
He looks at me strangely.
“I received my mission brief just like always. Actually, this particular brief had an ‘urgent’ code attached to it.”
“What’s urgent?”
“You. Your status here.”
He glances around the room. I know he’s scanning for threats, evidence of other people in the space, hidden dangers, potential weapons.
I say, “I lost communication with The Program four days ago. Even the safe house was sanitized when I got there.”
I don’t tell him about the freelance team. I decide to hold back that information, at least for now.
“What do you think happened?” Mike says.
“I thought The Program had been breached.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know.”
He shakes his head.
“They cut you off,” he says.
“What the hell—?”
I’ve been worried about The Program for days, confused and upset as I’ve tried to figure out how to move forward without their support and direction.
“Why would they cut me off?” I say. “I was on a mission.”
“You already know the answer,” Mike says.
“I don’t.”
He sighs. “They cut you off because you went into the camp.”
“I had no other choice.”
“That’s not what it looked like. Not from their standpoint.”
“What did it look like?”
“I don’t know all the details,” Mike says. “But I’m guessing it looked a lot like what happened before.”
“You mean with the dead soldier?”
I see a flicker of tension at Mike’s forehead. If what Francisco said is true, it was Mike who recruited him into The Program, and Mike who bears some responsibility for him.
Mike says, “The soldier before you was sent in and disappeared. That’s why you were told not to go in, but you ignored orders.”
“I didn’t ignore them. It was a calculation on my part. A matter of mission dynamics.”
“Calculated or not, when you went in there, you tied their hands. They had no choice but to distance themselves from you.”
“It’s not like I disappeared,” I said. “I’ve been trying to contact them all along.”
“How could they know it was you?”
“I was using security protocols!”
Mike squats, his hands resting on his thighs. His voice gets quiet.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you about this at any level of detail.”
I don’t say anything, waiting him out. There’s no way to trick Mike. He’ll tell me or he won’t, but it will be his own decision.
“Moore is the Pied Piper,” he says. “They’re scared of him, scared of what he can do. One operative goes in and disappears. The next goes in against orders. They weren’t taking any chances. It became a burn operation.”
“Is that why you’re here?” I say. “To complete the burn?”
He stands, chewing his bottom lip as he considers the question.
I make no outward change in my posture. But I am ready for him, ready for imminent attack.
I evaluate the odds. I am coming off a mission, and Mike looks fresh and well rested. That’s a factor in his favor. On the other hand, we are in a small interior space, and his physical advantage is diminished by lack of maneuvering room. Besides, I’m more familiar with the space than he is. That’s a factor in my favor.
But I can feel my heart beating faster than it should be before a fight. Without the chip, I have less control of my reactions.
I calculate Mike’s advantage to be 60 percent to my 40.
“Let’s calm down here,” Mike says. “I can sense you getting overheated, and there’s no need for it. It’s not a burn operation. I’m here to get a status report. And deliver a message.”
“What message?”
“Status first,” he says.
I clear my throat. I’m not used to reporting to Mike, and I’m not comfortable with the idea. But at this point, I don’t have a lot of options.
“Moore is dead,” I say. “I completed the mission.”
“Is that right?” Mike says, his face relaxing into a grin.
“You knew already,” I say, not believing his reaction for a second.
“I knew,” he says, by way of admission. “Incidentally I had no doubt that you would do it. This despite what some—uh—others may have thought.”
The subtext is clear. Mother and Father doubted.
“You said you had a message for me?”
“That’s where it gets interesting,” Mike says. “The fact is you started the mission. You haven’t finished. Not yet.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You cut off the head of the serpent, but you were dealing with a Hydra.”
Hydra, the multiheaded serpent of Greek mythology.
“Even as we sit here,” Mike says, “things are progressing at the camp.”
“Liberty is falling apart. I saw it happening before I left.”
“You’re wrong. You assumed it would disassemble. In fact the opposite is occurring.”
I think about Lee, his anger at his father, his desperation to prove himself worthy.
“It’s Lee,” I say. “He’s taken over.”
“That’s right. Along with his sister,” Mike says.
I think about Miranda the first night I was at the camp. Would she be helping Lee after her father’s death? Or would she use the opportunity to get free?
“I thought the camp was blacked out. How does The Program know what’s happening there?”
“Someone is feeding information to the FBI. We got it on intercept,” Mike says.
“An agent?” I say.
“Not likely. It’s someone at the camp. He got cold feet and he’s been e-mailing from the forest.”
I think of Sergeant Burch slipping out of the woods after I killed Moore, the way we passed each other without a word. Burch, who served loyally by Moore’s side for so long. I imagine him seeing Moore radicalize, watching the camp change into something it was never intended to be. I imagine what he went through before deciding to take action against his friend, the torture he must have put himself through.
Mike says, “We got the news, and we saw the truck leaving the encampment earlier. I was sent here to see if it was you who left—”
“And?”
“I was told to send you back in to neutralize the situation. Do you remember the first thing the U.S. government did during the Iraq War way back in 2003? It wasn’t Saddam Hussein they killed.”
I think back to my military history lessons when I was in training.
“It was his sons,” I say.
“That’s right. Because if Saddam died and his sons lived, nothing would have changed. You know where this is going, don’t you?”
“Moore’s children.”
“You have to take care of them,” Mike says. “Quickly and efficiently.”
“Why don’t we send the FBI in now?” I say.
“The FBI is well meaning, but it moves at the speed of bureaucracy. This has become an imminent-threat situation. By the time the FBI realizes the true nature of the threat, it will be too late.”
“You’re not my handler. You can’t send me on assignment.”
“I’m not sending you,” Mike says. “The Program is sending you.”
“If they’re so unsure about me, why would they send me back in now?”
“I can’t be certain,” Mike says, “but from where I’m standing, it looks like a test.”
“A test of what?”
“Your loyalty.”
Sweat breaks out under my arms.
“My loyalty is intact,” I say, my voice rising.
“Is that so?” he says.
I think of Francisco in the woods, his body crisscrossed in cut marks.
I ki
lled him to protect The Program, and now I’ve found the same chip in me that caused him to go crazy.
I don’t say any of this to Mike, but I’m unable to control the anger in my face.
Mike watches me and remains silent.
It’s a classic interrogation technique. Don’t incriminate the suspect. Let guilt and silence work on him until he incriminates himself.
It’s not going to work on me.
I match Mike’s silence with my own.
I use the time to think through the various scenarios. Is Mike simply carrying out instructions from Mother and Father?
Or does he have his own doubts about me, doubts not shared by Mother and Father?
At the end of my last mission, Mike knew I had balked when it came to killing the mayor’s daughter, Samara. He treated me like a friend, saying he would withhold the information from The Program.
But maybe he lied. Maybe he told them everything, thereby creating a jigsaw puzzle of doubt with me as the center piece.
Mike sighs. Then he stands and starts to pace in the room. He moves in an unconscious pattern when he’s thinking. I’ve seen this before from him. The only sign of weakness I can detect in him.
“Loyalty,” he says, picking up the thread of the conversation. “We’re taught that it’s a fixed thing, a point in space that never changes. But that’s not my experience. To me it’s like a river. It ebbs and flows. If you’re lucky, it continues to flow powerfully from the source. If you’re not, the source gets choked off and the river dries up.”
Mike licks his lips. He watches me.
“What’s it like for you now?” he says. “The river, I mean.”
“It’s not a river for me,” I say.
“I see,” he says, like he doesn’t believe me. “So what is it?”
“Why are you here, Mike?” I say.
“I told you, I’m the messenger.”
“And the message is coming from the top?” I say.
“Where else would it be coming from?”
I look at Mike, trying to determine if he’s telling the truth.
Truth and lies. Loyalty and deception. It’s not easy to determine now. Not after doing what I did to Francisco. Not after the last three days.
“The measure of a soldier is not what you do when you’re being watched,” Mike says. “It’s what you do when no one is looking. When you don’t know where you are and your mission gets cloudy.”
“The mission is everything,” I say.
“The new mission,” he says. “What story do you want to tell when it’s all over? Is this the story of the time you had doubt and proved yourself, or is it a different story—the story of you betraying your country?”
“I know what the story will be,” I say.
“That’s what I like to hear,” Mike says.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
MIKE WALKS ME DOWNSTAIRS, THEN FOLLOWS ME AS I DRIVE AWAY IN THE TRUCK.
He tails me for miles, following several car lengths back as we head east out of Manchester. I take a left at the Nottingham Road turnoff, and I see Mike wave in my rearview mirror as he continues on in a different direction.
I think about Howard in the adjoining suite while I was talking to Mike. More than fifteen minutes passed while I was with Mike, long enough for Howard to get away.
I imagine him at the train station in Manchester, waiting to get on a train to New York.
Suddenly a voice in the truck whispers, “Is it safe?”
I jam the brakes, the truck skidding to a stop.
Howard pops up in the backseat.
“What are you doing here? You scared the crap out of me,” I say. I’m breathing hard, surprised to see him.
“You don’t get scared—” Howard starts to say, and then he stops in midsentence, his mouth dropping open. “The chip,” he says. “It works.”
I put my hand on my chest, feel my heart beating too strongly.
I take a breath, attempting to slow my heart rate, but it doesn’t work.
This is why I was sweating with Mike in the room, why I had the strange feelings I was having around him.
“You’re right,” I say.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” Howard says. “I had to find someplace to hide.”
“In my truck?”
“If they thought you were inside, why would they search an empty truck? There was a blanket in the back, so I lay down and covered myself. I didn’t think you’d jump in and drive away with me.”
There’s a certain logic to Howard’s approach. I have to give him credit.
I put the truck in gear and get it back on the road.
“Are we going home?” Howard says.
“I’m not. Not yet. I have an assignment.”
“From that guy?”
“You saw the guy?”
Howard nods.
“Did he see you?”
“No,” Howard says. “I saw him out the window as he passed by. I’m sure he didn’t see me.”
I breathe out, relieved.
I’m trying to think of what I can do with Howard, how I can get him to safety. I can’t leave him by the side of the road. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, and Mike could be watching us remotely.
“For now, stay out of sight back there,” I say.
He lies down across the backseat.
The road only narrows from this point on. I have to make a decision about Howard. Leave him hidden in the back of the truck while I drive into Camp Liberty and hope he’s not discovered, or leave him on the side of the road where I can pick him up later.
“I’m going into Camp Liberty on a mission, and I can’t bring you, Howard. It’s too dangerous.”
“Can I pretend I’m your assistant?”
I smile. “It’s not that kind of mission.”
We’re half a mile from the encampment now. One more bend in the road, and it will be in sight.
“I’m going to pull to the side of the road,” I say. “I want you to hop out and hide in the woods until I come for you.”
“How long will that be?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’m not really a woods kind of guy,” he says. “I’ve lived in Manhattan my whole life. I don’t even like Central Park.”
“Do you have a phone with you?”
“I’ve got the iPhone,” he says.
“If you don’t see me by nightfall, walk back down the road until you get a signal. Call the police and tell them you were hiking and you got lost. There’s only one road in and out, so they should be able to find you without a problem.”
“I can do that,” he says, obviously nervous about it.
I pull to the side of the road. I shut off the truck, and I sit there for a moment breathing in the fresh air and pine scent of the woods.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” I say.
“I volunteered, remember? I wanted to work with you.”
“Still, it was selfish of me, and I regret it.”
Howard reaches over the seat and pats me on the shoulder.
He says, “You said something before you fell asleep last night. I wanted to ask you about it.”
“What did I say?”
“About your father. You said he was alive and you wanted me to help you find him.”
“I said that? I don’t remember.”
“You said someone named Mike told you.”
I exhale slowly. I’ve given Howard a lot of information, more even than I realized.
“The guy you saw walk by the truck earlier. That was Mike. He told me my father might be alive when I saw him in New York last month. But he could be lying.”
“We should find out,” Howard says.
“It will be dangerous,” I say.
“I can take care of myself,” Howard says. “Especially online.”
“What about Goji?” I say. That’s Howard’s girlfriend, the Japanese girl in Osaka with whom he’s been carrying on a long-distance romance.
“She doesn’t know anything about what I do for you,” he says.
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” I say. “I want you two to meet someday. I don’t want you to do anything else for me that might risk your life.”
“But we’re friends,” Howard says. “If friends don’t help each other, who will?”
Howard’s code of friendship. It’s so simple. Unlike The Program, with its games and tests.
“If Mike said your father was alive, that means you thought he was dead?” Howard says.
“I saw him die. Or I thought I did.”
“How?”
“Mike killed him. On orders from The Program,” I say.
“Those orders,” Howard says. “That’s how we can find your father.”
“I’m not following you.”
“The Program lives on the Web, right?”
The Program exists online—that’s what Howard discovered on my last mission. He found a network of young hackers, some as young as twelve years old, gathering data, uncovering the bytes of information that lead to the targets to which I am assigned.
“Once something is online, it can be found,” Howard says. “Even after it’s erased. If they gave the order, we can find that order. Or some evidence of it.”
“Ghosts in the machine,” I say.
“And I am a ghost hunter,” Howard says.
“What do you need to know?”
“We can start with his name.”
My father’s name is buried inside with the rest of my past, kept out of my consciousness, where it cannot harm me. If I tell Howard, I set him on a course of investigating The Program. That is tantamount to treason.
But what is a chip inserted into me against my will? What is sending me on a mission, then withdrawing support, protecting The Program’s interests at the expense of its own soldier?
I take a breath, and I pull my father’s name up from the depths of my memory.
“Dr. Joseph Abram,” I say.
I haven’t said his name aloud in a long time. It feels strange in my mouth, like a foreign language.
“A medical doctor?” Howard says.
“No. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester five years ago.”
“I’ll find out everything I can,” Howard says.
“Thank you.”
“That’s assuming I get out of these woods tonight without being eaten by something.”
