Agents of the Glass (12 page)

An afternoon rainstorm gave him an excuse to stay in his room, bonding with Penny, attempting to decipher the sixty-page instruction manual (written in Italian!) for his
Indefatigable
model, and doing his assigned reading for English class. He would read a few pages of George Orwell's
1984,
maybe even an entire chapter, and then set it down with a sigh and return to the dog or the ship.

But try as he might, he couldn't get the story he'd heard at the Mission out of his mind. Finally, he did what every new recruit does: an online search. He was looking for information on the mysterious Agents of the Glass, NTRP, Brother Lucian, Winter Neale's family, and just about everything else that had been discussed at the Mission. He wanted evidence that what he'd been told was
real,
but the results of his search were disappointing. Both the Agents and NTRP are
very
good at maintaining secrecy, and information—the kind Andy was looking for, anyway—has a way of disappearing before it has a chance to spread. The public face of National Television and Radio Productions is quite different from the organization that had been described to Andy. According to its website, NTRP was “dedicated to the return to a better world through quality programming,” which made Andy wonder what kind of world they wanted to go back to. Not surprisingly, the site was strangely silent about the activities that Silas insisted were their favorites: celebrating and rewarding the very
worst
in human behavior.

He was about to give up when his phone buzzed. Seeing that it was Jensen, he felt himself tense up, and he wondered if she did that to everyone.

“Why didn't you call me back? I left you a message earlier.”

“What? Oh. Hi, Jensen. Sorry. I got it. I just forgot. You didn't say what it was about, so I figured it wasn't important.”

“Do me a favor, okay, Sandy? Don't think. Don't ‘figure.' If I tell you to call me, call me.”

Andy rolled his eyes, happy that she couldn't see his face. “Okay, okay.”

“I've been doing some research about 233dotcom, the company that wrecked our perfectly good library. They call themselves ‘a portal to the digital future'—what a joke. They want to eliminate paper books completely by 2020.”

“That doesn't sound so bad,” said Andy. “Especially if you're a tree.”

“I don't trust them,” said Jensen. “All the books being controlled by one company and a computer? I mean, gee, what could possibly go wrong? It's all just a little too Big Brother–y for me.”

“Hey, that's from
1984,
right? I'm reading that book right now.”

“My, my. Quite the little intellectual, aren't you? I didn't read that book until I was a freshman. And I hated it the first time. You know what, Sandy? I'm going to go out on a skinny branch here and give you a little present. I don't know why I trust you. I shouldn't; I just met you, and you're, like, ten, besides.”

“First of all, it's
Andy.
Second, I'm almost thirteen.
And
for your information, a lot of people trust me.” He felt the sea glass pressing against his skin.

“Like who?”

“People. A lot of them.”

“Yeah, you said that. Like I was saying, you're a kid. Look, not many people know about this, but I have a private website. Normally, I'm pretty picky about who I give the password to, but you'd probably hack your way in, anyway. You'd better not give it to your little girlfriend, Winter, either.”

“I'm not a hacker. And she's not my girlfriend. What kind of website?”

“It's all about information.
Serious
information. There's no pictures of cute boys or stories about your favorite bands. Real news. What's really going on in the world. Stuff that they don't want you to know.”

“Who's
they
?”

“Read it and figure it out for yourself.”

Andy went back to his computer and logged on to Jensen's website. When he got to the bottom of her latest review of one of NTRP's reality programs, he followed a link to other stories that she had written about NTRP. There were more than twenty, and not one had a single positive word about anything that the network produced. He skimmed through them, laughing aloud occasionally as her stories became more and more critical.

Then he clicked his way into the picture files, and things got really interesting.

For the past three months, Jensen had staked out the NTRP headquarters at Park and Forty-Fifth and followed the network executives all over the city, snapping pictures by the hundreds wherever they went—office buildings, restaurants, parks, you name it. Most of the photo files were organized by subjects' names, but there was also a large file labeled
UNKNOWNS.
Andy skimmed through the list of names and clicked on the only one he recognized: Deanna Decameron. There she was on the steps in front of the New York Public Library, and then at a coffee shop, sitting across from Carl Quimby, host of NTRP's
The Family in Penthouse A,
a reality show about a dysfunctional but fabulously wealthy Park Avenue family. In a third, she was standing outside an office building with an unidentified, strikingly handsome man somewhere in his forties, impeccably dressed in a shark-gray suit and wearing dark sunglasses. His hair—the same color as his suit—was pulled back from his face in a ponytail that hung down the middle of his back.

Andy opened the UNKNOWNS file next and began to scroll through the contents. The man with the ponytail from the picture with Deanna Decameron appeared with a number of on-air personalities from NTRP and in a dozen or more photos with others, some of whose names and faces were vaguely familiar to Andy, from the worlds of politics, business, and entertainment.

It was getting late, and Andy was about to shut his computer down for the night when he aimed the cursor and clicked on one last photo in the UNKNOWNS file.

“What?” he said out loud, immediately zooming in on the two men in the center of the picture, who were sitting on a park bench and engaged in what appeared to be a serious discussion. On the left was the man with the ponytail, on the right was Howard Llewellyn.

But that wasn't all. Partially cut off on the far left side of the photograph, a few benches away, sat another man, his face partially obscured by the newspaper he held.

Silas's
newspaper.
Silas's
face.

There was more—a second photo of the same two men standing outside the entrance to the NTRP building. And in the background, pretending to be in the midst of an important conversation on his phone—guess who. Silas again.

When the time comes, you and I will meet face to face, but until then don't expect to find any more pictures of me. And don't bother looking for the ones that Andy found—they're long gone.

Silas had, of course, heard about the incident in the park. What Andy didn't know was that Penny's collar had a GPS tracking device on it, and the second they were out of sight, Billy Newcomb hopped out of the van and set off after them. While Andy was spying on the joggers, Billy was spying on him, and when the chase began, he was ready to step in if necessary. He had smiled when Andy turned off the path just after the bend—it was a classic method for “shaking a tail,” and Andy seemed to know it instinctively.

“The kid is a natural. He's going to be just fine,” he told Silas after making sure Andy and Penny made it home without any further trouble.

“Maybe. Or maybe he got lucky. Do we know who the guy was?”

“I ran his picture through the database, and he didn't turn up. We're looking into it.”

“Keep me posted. And keep a close eye on Mr. Llewellyn. He appears to have a rebellious streak. Let's hope there's no more surprises.”

Later that afternoon, Silas checked in with Andy by phone.

“How's everything going so far? How's Penny?”

“Great. Great.”

“You okay? That was a lot to absorb in one day. You have any questions?”

“Uh…no. Not right now. I'll let you know.”

“I just want to say…everybody was
really
impressed with you, Andy. They—we, that is—have a tremendous amount of confidence in you. But I need you to promise me something. You're important to the Agency; you're a valuable resource, and we want to take care of you, make sure you're happy and safe. So, if you need anything, or have any questions, don't hesitate to call me. Enter this number in your contacts, but don't use my name. Make something up. And, Andy, it doesn't matter what time you call or where you are. I'll be there. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good night, Andy. If I don't hear from you, I'll give you a call in a couple of days.”

When Andy hung up, he was ninety percent sure that Silas knew about the guy in the park, and he couldn't decide if he was pleased or annoyed that he hadn't mentioned it.

Silas spent two hours that evening staring at the canvas that stretched across his living room. Once, he picked up a charcoal pencil and leaned toward the surface, his eyes narrowed and focused on a blank space. But as the point of the pencil touched it, the moment was lost. Sighing loudly, he sat back in his seat and closed his eyes in an unsuccessful attempt to recapture what had been so close, but after a few seconds, he shook his head. It was gone. He consulted the notebook he kept near his bed for jotting down the events and images of his dreams, hoping it might trigger a memory, but it was no use: Whatever he had been close to realizing had slipped away.

For Silas, the one night's failure was nothing new. Three years of waiting had taught him patience. He thought of Andy and his model of the
Indefatigable,
with its thousands of pieces and instructions written in Italian. It was a difficult model—a challenge, for sure—but no one would call it impossible. Silas's task, trying to piece together his past from brief flashes of memories and dreams filled with faces and places he didn't recognize, had less certainty. He believed it to be possible, though he had his doubts. He was building a ship model without instructions—no, it was worse than that: He didn't even know what the ship looked like.

He pushed his chair back and went to the kitchen, where he filled his mug with tea and turned on the radio to catch Howard Twopenny in mid-rant:

“…and that's not the half of it. If you just joined us, you're listening to Howard Twopenny tellin' it like it is, and, folks, I've got another crazy story for you. As if you needed any more proof that this country is in trouble. Some genius, no doubt from the People's Republic of Massachusetts, has decided that readin', writin', and 'rithmetic ain't enough for kids today—they now need to take part in this Commie plot they like to call community service. Before the kids can graduate, they have to help people, whether they want to or not. And they have to do it for nothing. You heard me right. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Some of these kids are working ten or twelve hours a week for these do-gooder organizations and not taking home a cent. It's not only unpaid, it's downright un-American.

“Hakuna matata
, slackers. We've got your back. No matter how big a mess you make of your life, there's always going to be a bunch of
unpaid
goody-goody high school kids to bail you out. I'm Howard Twopenny, and that's my two cents' worth. What do you think? Call me.”