Children of the Underground (29 page)

“Jared,” I said, loud enough for him to hear me. I wondered if he would recognize my voice. He stopped and turned toward me. I lifted my gun and aimed it at his head. I was face-to-face with the man who had taken you from me and killed your father. For one brief moment, I would make sure he got a clear look at my face in the moonlight. For that moment, I regretted the wig and the makeup. I wanted Jared to know it was me.

I squeezed the trigger.

Before the gun fired, something like a train hit me from behind. The gun slipped out of my hand and fell to the ground. I heard a shout. “Run, Jared!” I was confused, trying to piece together what was going on. I could barely see. Jared must have had people protecting him. He hadn't trusted Michael after all. Maybe it was one of those thugs that helped him take you from me. I tried to remember what I'd learned at Clara's about hand-to-hand combat. I wheeled around to orient myself. Before I could get my bearings, someone leapt on top of me, pinning me to the ground with his knees. I slipped an arm out from under one of the legs pressing down on top of me and punched up at my attacker. My fist connected with a nose. I heard a crunching noise and felt the gush of blood on my hand. “Run,” the man said again, this time his voice muted by his own blood. “I'll take care of her.” I didn't know what that meant. I didn't want to find out.

I heard footsteps running away from me in the darkness. Jared was getting away. I could see the gun shimmering in the moonlight to my right. The body lifted off of me for a moment, and I rolled to the side as quickly as I could to grab the gun. My survival instincts had kicked in. Still, as soon as my hand felt the handle of the gun, a foot came down on top of it, pressing my wrist into the ground. I rolled over again, remembering my training, preparing to kick into the person's groin.

“Fuck,” the voice said, “I think you broke my nose.” I stopped. I recognized the voice now. I didn't recognize it earlier because I'd never heard Michael yell before. I held my foot in the air above me for a second, trying to decide whether or not I should still kick him in the balls. I didn't. “What the hell are you doing here?” Michael asked me. I could see him reaching up, trying to slow the stream of blood coming from his nose by pinching its bridge with his fingers. I hesitated, caught between answering his question and asking a million questions of my own, the most immediate being,
Why did you stop me?
Michael didn't wait for me to answer. “We've got to get out of here in case he comes back.” Michael looked around us, searching for the best escape route.

He reached down and helped me to my feet. Once I got up, we started running together. I knew where we could go. I'd run there before—the C&O towpath. It ran for miles through the woods and would be empty at night. We ran the first mile and stopped. The lights of the city were already lost behind us. Michael was breathing heavily. He was out of shape, his injured leg clearly impacting his training. I let him catch his breath. He had to suck in air through his mouth since his nose was clogged with blood. He wheezed as he breathed.

While he caught his breath, I reached up and pulled the wig off of my head and put it in my backpack. I was embarrassed for him to see me in it. Then I reached for the makeup around my eyes and on my cheeks. I felt it with my fingertips and smeared it across my face. I knew I couldn't take off the makeup yet, but I could change it. I could distort it. I had that power. I didn't want to look pretty.

Once Michael caught his breath, he told me that he saw me at the bar the moment he walked in. He recognized me through my disguise. He always recognized me. He'd known that I was standing behind the curtain listening to them. He'd known how close Jared had been to finding me.

“I wanted to shoot him,” I said to Michael.

“I know, but we still need him. We still need his help to get inside.”

“We don't need his help. I can get us inside,” I told Michael. He looked at me with a mixture of confusion and doubt. “I'll explain later.” I wondered if Michael would have saved Jared even if he knew the deal I'd cut with Clara. I tried not to dwell on it. We had too much to do.

I was worried that Jared might have recognized me. “No chance,” Michael assured me. “Not the way you looked tonight.”

“How did I look?” I asked, expecting him to say something snide about my disguise or the makeup smeared on my face.

“You look like a fighter. That's not the way you looked the last time Jared met you.” Even so, we agreed that we needed a new place to stay until Michael could call Jared and get his next assignment. We were getting too close to take any chances.

On our way back toward the city, I asked Michael what he would say when Jared asked about the woman who attacked him. “That you were one of Them,” Michael said, “and that I took care of it.” After Michael talked to Jared, it would be my turn to reach out to Clara with the information Jared had given us.

Forty-two

Addy and Evan stopped in Georgia, about two hours outside of Atlanta, for the night. They could have kept driving. It would have only been another ten hours or so from where they stopped to their destination in Florida. After all they'd been through, it would have been an easy ten hours. Addy wanted to wait one more night, though. It was Sunday. She said that she didn't want to get to the compound on a Sunday, that she was worried that too many people would be off. She told Evan that she wanted to make sure she would recognize a lot of people when she and Evan arrived. Evan didn't doubt any of what Addy said, but he knew that Addy had other reasons for wanting to stop, for wanting to wait one more day. She was afraid. Evan could tell. She could hide her fear from most people, but she couldn't hide it from Evan anymore. He could see it in her. Evan had spent the better part of the past two weeks amazed by Addy's utter lack of fear. Fire didn't scare her. Guns didn't scare her. Being chased by the entire world didn't scare her. She was afraid now, though.

Evan figured out part of the reason why Addy was afraid. He figured out that she was afraid that her old friends wouldn't take her back. She was afraid that they wouldn't accept her after she'd run off on them, and that she and Evan would have nowhere to go. She was afraid that she'd dragged Evan all the way across the country only to get them stranded on the wrong side of a burned bridge. Evan wanted to tell her that he didn't care. He didn't care if people he'd never met refused to accept him. What was the Underground good for anyway? It seemed to Evan that all they could do was help them run and hide. He and Addy seemed to be doing a pretty good job of that themselves. He didn't say any of this to Addy, though. Being accepted back by her old friends seemed important to her. Evan didn't want to ruin that. Instead, he memorized what he was going to say to Addy if it all went badly—how they were better off alone, how her old friends didn't deserve her, how she was too strong and too brave for them anyway. In many ways, Evan was more prepared for rejection than acceptance.

Evan figured out only part of what Addy was afraid of, though. He didn't realize that her fear of rejection paled in comparison to her fear that her old friends would simply be gone. What if they'd been smoked out and hunted down too? What if she and the other rebels had pushed too hard too quickly and had destroyed everything in the process, including the Underground? Addy could live with being shunned. She was ready for that. She'd prepared herself for that possibility before she ran off to join the rebels in the first place. Addy had never been afraid of being an outsider. On the contrary, nearly every decision she'd made throughout her entire life pushed her in that direction. But after what happened in Los Angeles, Addy felt a need to know that her old friends were still there struggling, even if she didn't think they were struggling hard enough, even if she wished that they'd stop running and start fighting. It was the struggle—any struggle—that would at least give Addy some hope that the world could still be changed. More than anything else, Addy wanted to feel that hope that Christopher had once given her. As much as Evan could give her, he couldn't give her that.

“Why do you think Christopher left us?” Addy asked Evan as they waited together for the time to pass.

Evan shrugged. He didn't feel like Christopher had deserted him. In Evan's mind, Christopher merely deserted the War and this absurd fight against the War. Evan couldn't blame him for that. “This isn't his fight. Maybe you guys expected too much from him. Maybe he felt like he was being used.”

Addy shook her head. “He knew that he wasn't being used. We gave him a chance to run in the beginning. We gave him a chance to get away. He said that he wanted to fight.”

“Yeah, but how could he understand what it meant to fight? He didn't know about any of this growing up. I know. I was there.” Evan's voice didn't sound as certain as he wanted it to. “He was paranoid, but he would have told me if he knew about all this, right?”

“Christopher didn't know about any of this growing up,” Addy assured Evan. “But we told him everything as soon as we found him.”

“How? How can you possibly tell someone all of this and have it make any sense?”

“His parents kept journals.” The words came out of Addy as if she were making a confession. Evan had no idea how much Addy knew. “His mother put them in a safe-deposit box, hoping that Christopher would never need them. Before she died, she arranged to have the key to the safe-deposit box sent to Christopher when he turned sixteen.”

“So, he's known about the War since he was sixteen?” Evan asked, still trying to fit all the pieces together.

Addy's shook her head. “No. He ignored the letter his mother had sent to him. He put the key to the safe-deposit box in a desk drawer and pretended he never got it. By that time, Christopher was already so paranoid that he was more afraid of the truth than the paranoia.”

“What was the truth?”

“The truth was that the whole time the two of you were growing up together, people were following Christopher. The truth was that he had a reason to be afraid. People had been following him since he was eleven years old. His mother had done everything she could to hide him before she was killed, but it didn't work. He'd become too important to stay hidden. That's why he was paranoid.”

“So, when did you guys finally tell him about all of this?”

“As soon as we found him, we made sure he read his parents' journals, and we told him everything. We gave him a chance to run then too. I swear. He told me that he didn't want to run.”

“When did you tell him about the War?” Evan asked again. He needed to know that Christopher had never kept anything from him. He needed to know that his friend was true.

“As soon as we could.”

“When was that?” Evan pressed.

“We found him right after he turned eighteen.” Addy paused for a moment, almost too ashamed to continue. “We found him right after the people who had been following him tried to kill him for the first time.”

The men in the woods, Evan thought. “That was only four weeks ago,” Evan said. “Christopher turned eighteen four weeks ago. Can you blame him for running away? How did you expect him to become a war hero in four weeks?”

“Somebody has to be the leader,” Addy said to him. “He was the only one that could bring everyone together. He understood that.”

“And if he died for your cause, would anybody remember who he was? Would anybody care? Or would his death be just another symbol?”

Addy's voice softened. “If I die, is anyone going to remember who I was? If you die, will anyone remember you? At least Christopher has the chance to be a symbol.”

Evan stopped. He didn't agree with Addy, but he didn't want to hurt her either. He could let her have her symbols, and he could keep his friend. He knew that there would be enough fights for them in the future without them fighting each other. Evan sensed Addy's need for something, even if it was something that he knew he couldn't give her, and walked over to her. He took a stray lock of Addy's dark red hair and tucked it behind her ear. Then he kissed her. He didn't hesitate anymore. Evan's fear of Addy had deserted him somewhere along the road, hundreds of miles ago.

Addy felt the rough hair on Evan's face brush against her skin when he placed his lips on hers. She kissed him back, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him closer into her. As they kissed, she reached up and began unbuttoning her blouse. Evan and Addy didn't say another word to each other that night. Neither wanted any more words. They enjoyed the silence. They both knew that after tomorrow, they either wouldn't be alone anymore or they'd likely be alone together forever. Secretly, neither one of them was sure which one they were hoping for.

Forty-three

It's been days since I last wrote to you, Christopher. I'm sorry. Things are moving so quickly now. Everything seems to go either too slow or too fast. I haven't had any time to write. I've barely had any time to think other than about the plan. Michael and I are breaking into the information cell tomorrow. Your information is inside. We're in Tribeca, not far from the building. Your file is on the third floor. It has the names of the people who have been raising you and their address. I think we're ready. I hope we're ready.

Clara was true to her word. I sent her all the information that Jared had given Michael, hoping it would be enough. I told Clara where they were keeping your information. Then I wrote,
According to our agreement, it's your turn.
She responded three hours later. Michael and I were holed up in a dingy hotel in northeast D.C. when she responded. The hotel was cheap and felt safe. It's amazing what feels safe to me now. I read her answer in a nearby Kinko's a few hours after she sent it. My fingers trembled on the keyboard.
We have a mole in an intelligence cell in Tribeca. I want to cross-reference it first to make sure we're talking about the same place. I only know of one cell in that area. I will write again in the next twenty-four hours with details if possible.

Clara wrote again twelve hours later. Michael and I found an all-night Internet café and I sat there for almost the entire twelve hours, hitting Refresh, waiting for Clara to respond. Jared told Michael that his next job was in Cleveland. Michael had four days to rest and then he was supposed to check in with his safe house. They were letting Michael stay in a safe house again. Michael was supposed to have checked in yesterday. He didn't. I don't suppose they'll give him another chance. When we're finished, maybe I can still convince Michael to go work with Clara.

The second e-mail I received from Clara said,
Can confirm that they have only one intelligence cell in Tribeca.
She confirmed the address. Even that was enough for me. Knowing that the key to finding you was in an actual place was enough. I would have stormed in by myself. I don't think anyone could have stopped me. The problem is that I need to get out too. After the address, Clara wrote,
Will set up meeting between you and the mole. Be careful. I don't want him getting hurt or blowing his cover. He can help with information, but then you're on your own. Go to New York. Check your e-mail again in two days.

We took the train to New York. Michael used his ATM card to take out as much cash as he could without immediately arousing suspicion. It was enough to last us a week or two on cash alone. He gave me most of it, telling me that he still had the credit cards that he could use. I didn't argue. I took the cash. We were on the same team. He wasn't being gallant or noble. He was being practical.

We got to New York a day after I'd received the second e-mail from Clara. I wanted to go right to the building in Tribeca. I wanted to see it, to scope it out. I thought that if I was closer to that information, closer to the truth, I'd be closer to you. Michael wouldn't let me go. “Let's talk to the mole first,” he said. “There's nothing to see now that we can't see after we know what we're dealing with.” I remembered his lecture to me about recklessness versus carelessness. When Michael first gave me the lecture, I thought that carelessness was akin to not caring. I was wrong. It's not being able to control how much you care.

We were in New York for less than twenty-four hours when I got the third and final e-mail from Clara. It was short and simple.
Tomorrow (Sunday) at noon. Brighton Beach. Second Street gazebo on the boardwalk by the chessboards. He'll answer to the name Palti. This will be my last e-mail. I am shutting down this account. Godspeed, Maria. We're rooting for you.
That was it. My only connection to the Underground was burned again. At least I had gotten something this time before the bridges were razed.

Michael and I decided to take the subway from Tribeca to Coney Island. From there it was a short walk to Brighton Beach. It was a cool, foggy morning. It felt more like autumn than summer. The air was thick and heavy with moisture that snuck into your clothing if you didn't hold it close against your skin. It was a long train ride to Coney Island, over an hour. Once we were out of Manhattan and in Brooklyn, the subway emerged from beneath the ground and we rode the rest of the way on elevated tracks above the surrounding neighborhoods. Michael and I didn't speak much. We listened to the sound of the subway rumbling over the city. For the most part, our subway car was empty. Every few stops someone would get on or someone would get off, but only the two of us made the trip from start to finish. Coney Island was the train's last stop.

The low fog hung over the city streets as we sped over them. Close up, I could see the endless rows of buildings, row after row, stretching out until they disappeared into the fog. The last time I had been in Brooklyn, I was with Reggie. Reggie was okay. Looking out over the fog-covered buildings brimming with quiet, endless humanity, I wondered why I even doubted that he'd survive. He had all this to hide in, all of this to melt into and disappear. It's there for you too, Christopher. It's there for us. We can be safe. I know it. The subway car lurched forward.

Our train ride stopped a block from the ocean. We got off the subway and walked to the boardwalk. A cold wind blew in from over the water. The beach was wide and flat. I could see the waves churning in the sea. The sky was gray. I looked to our right. A motionless Ferris wheel, its gondolas blowing in the wind, dominated the skyline. The beach was empty except for a straggler or two walking near the water. Even they wore pants and jackets. “This way,” Michael said, motioning down the boardwalk, away from the still-empty Ferris wheel.

Our footsteps echoed on the wooden slabs of the boardwalk as we walked. In my head, each echo announced to everyone around us that we didn't belong there. Only a few people walked past us on the boardwalk. Those that did pulled their collars up around their chins, battling the wind. The people we passed looked old and hard, like they'd survived something. Some people eyed us suspiciously. Others walked by us without giving us a second glance. I'd learned to be more worried about those that didn't look at us than those that did. Paranoia is your friend. Your father taught me that.

We were walking for about fifteen minutes before we could see the Second Street gazebo. It jutted out onto the beach in front of us. Under the gazebo, I could see the old men staring down at chessboards on tables built into the boardwalk. Most of the tables were empty. Three were occupied. The two tables closest to the boardwalk, farthest from the water, had men sitting at either side of the table, facing each other. They were all old men with white hair and deep wrinkles in their faces. They hunched over the chessboards, contemplating their next moves.

As we got closer, I could see the tiny chess pieces, like little black and white toy soldiers, standing on the tables between the men. Farther from the boardwalk, closer to the ocean, sat a solitary man at one of the tables, his back to us, facing the sea. We stepped into the gazebo and began walking toward him. If he wasn't alone, he would have looked like all the other old, hunched men Michael nodded to as we passed them. Michael didn't like walking past them and leaving our backs open to an ambush. Michael didn't trust the old men. Michael didn't trust anyone. “We must be mad,” he whispered under his breath to me as we stepped closer to the man sitting alone at the end of the gazebo.

When we neared the lone man, he stood up with a jerk. He hadn't even looked back at us. For a moment, I thought Michael was right. The whole thing was a trap. My heart pounded and my hand reached down toward my knife. It was reflex now. Fight or flight weren't mutually exclusive anymore. Luckily, the lone man simply stood up, turned, and walked around to the other side of the table. He looked up at us for a second and then, without even acknowledging our presence, sat down facing us this time, his back to the ocean. He immediately began studying the pieces again. He was playing both sides of the game, first black, then white. Michael and I slowed our walk. I took a glance behind us. The four other old men were still engrossed in their games. The lone figure's hair was dark and curly. His eyebrows were unruly and wild. He could have passed for the son of any of the other four men at the tables. Michael and I stepped up to him. We were early. It wasn't even eleven thirty yet. The man didn't look up at us. Michael glanced at me. “Palti?” I asked.

Without answering me, the man continued to stare down at the pieces on the chessboard. I looked down at the game. If someone who knew nothing about chess looked at this board, they would never be able to guess the positions of the pieces when the game started. Each side had lost about a third of its pieces. From what I could tell, however, the game looked even. After a few minutes of silence, the man reached down. He pushed one of the remaining white pawns farther into black's territory. “You're Maria,” he said to us, looking up at me after making his move. “You're early.” He didn't sound excited to see me.

“We're sorry,” I said. “We can come back if you'd like.”

“No,” the man said, “we might as well get this over with.” He looked down at the board again, as if trying to remember the position of all the pieces in case the wind blew them away. “We can sit at one of the empty tables.” I could hear the waves crashing on the beach behind us. “I didn't know that there would be two of you,” he said, sitting down on the bench at the empty table next to his.

“This is Michael,” I said. “He's working with me. I hope it's okay that he's here.”

Palti looked Michael up and down. “It's fine. I was actually nervous that you were going to try to pull this craziness off by yourself. Are you one of Clara's people?” Palti asked Michael.

Michael shook his head. “No.”

“Michael was friends with the boy's father,” I said to Palti, filling in the blanks that Michael did not, “the boy we are trying to find. I thought Clara would have told you about him.”

“Clara doesn't tell me much,” Palti said, taking a loose cigarette out of his jacket pocket and lighting it. “I don't think she trusts me.” He smiled a humorless smile. “Smoke?” he asked, pulling another loose butt out of his jacket.

“No, thank you,” I answered. Michael shook his head. Palti put the cigarette back in his pocket. “What did Clara tell you?” I asked.

“She told me who you were. She didn't need to go into too many details. I already knew all about you—the legendary Maria.” The way he said it made me uncomfortable, but I tried not to show it. “She asked if we had information about your son. I told her that we did.” My heart sped up. “She asked if I could help you get into the building, if I could tell you where the information was.” He flicked the ash of his cigarette down onto the wooden floorboards beneath us. “And I said no. I told her that I had no interest in getting you killed, that you'd been through enough already.” He stopped speaking then, as if that was the end of the story.

“What made you change your mind?” I asked, prodding him to continue, hoping that the story didn't actually end there.

“Clara told me not to underestimate you, that she'd made that mistake.” I heard Michael chuckle under his breath. “Clara never told me exactly what you want, though.”

“I want to find out where my son is so that I can find him and save him,” I said. I had practiced being as concise as possible.

“Save him from what?” Palti asked.

“The War,” I answered quickly.

Palti laughed. “I was afraid of that,” he said without elaborating. “I can tell you where the information about your son is. I can help you get into the building. I can disarm the back-door alarm. I can get you a key to the door and tell you the guards' schedules. But I can't be there when you go in. I give you the information. I give you the key, and then you forget I exist.”

“Why?” Michael asked, sounding more curious than confrontational.

“Clara gave me strict orders.” Palti smashed the end of his cigarette butt into the empty stone table between us.

“And why do you listen to Clara's orders?” Michael asked.

“I've given up on the War,” Palti said to Michael, not insulted by his question. “I haven't given up on order. I'm not an anarchist.”

“Just a spy,” Michael said, finishing Palti's sentence.

Palti smiled again, showing his crooked teeth. “Just a spy,” he echoed.

“Okay,” I said to Palti, interrupting the back-and-forth. “What can you tell us?”

Palti looked away from Michael and back at me. “The building has five stories,” he said. “Each one is guarded separately. The first floor is primarily storage. It's full of office supplies, computers, and furniture. There's nothing of interest. It's designed that way on purpose. If anyone accidentally comes inside the building, they'll see nothing of value. The second floor has the nonproprietary information,” Palti said.

“What does that mean?” Michael asked.

“It has the information that we've collected about the other side,” Palti said. “Information from spies, information that we've stolen, information that we've been given through negotiation, information that we've gotten from our own research—it's all there on paper, at least the piece of it that's stored in our building. We keep only paper files. Nothing gets stored electronically. No matter how good your security is, once you put things on networks, you're begging to be hacked.” I could almost feel Michael's muscles tighten as Palti spoke. The information on floor two might have been the information that got Michael's family killed. It was all there, blandly, coolly, on paper.

“What about backups?” Michael asked out of the blue.