Disruption (33 page)

Butler looked at me and sneered and then relented. Both shins were skinned, right where the trolley had hit him.

“This proves nothing,” Butler said. He pointed at Agent Knox and was about to say something else. Probably another threat, or maybe he was going to tell her how he’d skinned his knees playing a pick-up game of basketball or something, but Agent French grabbed Butler’s outstretched hand, spun him around, and pressed him into the door before twisting his arm behind his back and handcuffing his wrists.

Then French opened the door and led Butler away. Agent Knox and Agent Chen followed, leaving me in the room, alone.

*****

Over the next several hours, Agent Knox and Agent Chen came into my hospital room repeatedly and asked me one question after the next. They brought in printed pictures of the images I’d sent to Jason. I identified everyone I could, including my teammates. After all was said and done, I must’ve told the entire story of my time at Camp Friendship a dozen times, frontward and backward. It was exhausting. And the more I told it, the more obvious it became that the CIA had nothing to do with the camp, and the more embarrassed I became at having misread the situation so badly.

Each time I thought it was the last time, and then they’d come back and ask more questions. When they returned for what must’ve been the hundredth time, Agent Chen took his position behind his computer again. Then Agent Knox removed my handcuffs, pulled up a chair to the edge of the bed, and took a seat.

That was different. They’d never taken my cuffs off before.

“It’s been hours!” I said. “How much longer are you guys going to make me do this?”

“We’re almost done, Matt,” she said. Her voice was softer than it had been before, and the muscles in her face flexed like she was worried about something. “I think you’re telling the truth. I think you saved a lot of people today. That was a brave thing.”

I sighed, but didn’t really feel any better. I rubbed my wrists. “Thank you for believing me. Did Butler admit it? Did he tell you what kind of camp I was in?”

Agent Knox pulled out the yellow folder of pictures again and tossed Mr. Dalson’s photo on my lap.

“Mr. Dalson,” I said again.

“His name is Robert Hader. He worked for the CIA up until about a decade ago, when he quit and dropped off the grid. He suddenly popped back up about five years ago, working for a multinational communications corporation. His passport would be flagged every now and again, but it wasn’t until your friend Jason Cole uploaded his picture, along with a dozen other high-interest targets, that the pieces fell into place.”

“What pieces?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

“We suspected that Hader had met with some pretty bad people over the last decade. There’s some bad blood between him and the Company, and it was suggested he might take his skills and switch sides.”

“Switch sides, how?” I asked.

“We thought he was visiting terrorist training camps and offering consulting
services to some of the major criminal types around the globe. He had inside information on how to avoid law-enforcement and intelligence-gathering organizations like the CIA.”

“So,” I began, “he was helping the people you guys were trying to stop.”

“That’s what we thought,” Agent Knox said. “But now that we know a bit more, it seems he was more cunning than we gave him credit for.”

She stared at me for several awkward seconds. It was as if she expected me to understand something now that she’d explained that much, and there was a part of me that did know what she was going to say, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud first.

She pulled out a picture of Alexander Bratersky and put it on the bed. “This is Mikhail Sokolovsky, son of Boris Sokolovsky, a member of the ROC.”

ROC. I’d heard that before. Juno had said that Bratersky was a member of the ROC, but I hadn’t figured out what that meant yet.

“Russian Organized Crime,” Knox said. I swore. “The Russian mafia,” she added. “Not a nice man.” She took out a picture of Juno. “Junosuke Tagai. I’m not surprised he used his real name. I’m sure he’s proud of it because he’s the son of Kenji Tagai, a top-level yakuza.” Amara’s picture was next. “This is the son of Nkoyo Okereke; she’s a South African freedom fighter.” She took out Yaakov’s picture next. “This is Haim Eldad. He’s the son of the Israeli telecommunications mogul, Alex Eldad. There’s long been suspicion that Eldad had ties to various organized crime rings in that region.” She flipped Angie’s picture over next, followed by Rylee. “These two,” she said, “we’re still looking into. Their pictures don’t come up on the regular sources, but it’s just a matter of time.”

“Are you saying they’re all terrorists?” I asked. “It’s a camp for training terrorists? Not CIA?”

She shook her head. “Not terrorists, Matt. Well, not only terrorists. There are a number of campers and counselors in those pictures who have ties to terrorist organizations, but most are just tied to the criminal underworld. From what Butler said, they run these camps as training zones to give the kids of top-level criminals an education. Then they go even further. The best teams from each camp are used as criminals for hire. It’s an opportunity to build a reputation while aligning yourself with one of the most secret and well-funded criminal organizations we’ve ever encountered.”

I leaned forward. “Who would want to hire a bunch of kids?”

Agent Knox’s eyebrows lifted. “Imagine all the places a kid could get into that an adult might not. Or imagine the kind of information a kid would get access to that an adult would never be able to. Plus, it would be easy for a kid to be overlooked during a major crime spree.”

“Like today,” I said.

Knox nodded. “Like today.”

“So if I had won, I’d have had to do other missions,” I said. “They’d have used me to commit crimes?”

“And you’d have been paid for it,” Knox said. “At least that’s what Butler said.”

She hesitated, and I could tell there was something else she wanted to say.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“Well, Matt, it turns out your team
did
win. I know you said you tried to stop Chase, but by throwing that pylon onto the tracks, you, apparently, got credit for the bombing. Butler was here to try to get you
out
of trouble. They want you back at the camp.”

I laughed. “That’s not going to happen.”

Agent Knox didn’t smile.

“Wait,” I continued. “It’s not going to happen, right? You can’t make me go back in there now that I know they’re all a bunch of criminals.” I tried my best to steady my breath. “Can you?”

Chapter 50

“My parents will never go for it. The whole reason my dad put me in that camp in the first place was to get me away from bad influences.” I shook my head at the irony.

Yeah, great job, Dad. You kept me away from friends who liked to play harmless pranks and threw me in with a bunch of criminals.

“Speaking of my parents, you guys have known who I really am for a while. How in the world have you managed to keep my dad out of here?” I glanced at the door. “I bet he’s dying to tell me how disappointed he is.”

“We haven’t called your parents yet,” Agent Knox said.

I looked at her and felt my mouth gape. “What do you mean? They know about today, don’t they?”

Agent Knox shook her head.

“Why not?”

“We’re just waiting until we have a better picture of the whole event.”

A better picture. I quickly went over everything I’d told the agents about my experiences at Camp Friendship. The one part they’d kept going back to was how I’d managed to get into the camp in the first place. That’s it. “You think my dad’s one of them.”

Agent Chen glanced up from his computer but didn’t speak.

“Look, if you knew my dad, you’d know he wouldn’t do anything criminal. No way. He’s as straight and boring as a piece of lumber.”

“And yet he’s the reason you were at that camp in the first place.” Agent Knox straightened in her chair. “Butler doesn’t have an answer to that question either, Matt. He has no idea how you managed to get onto the roster.”

“My dad’s not—”

Agent Knox held up her hand. “I believe you, Matt. We’ve done a pretty extensive background check on your whole family, and boring is about right. But we’re doing a check on the company he works for. Sledge Industries
is
part of the organization, and if we spoke to your dad, and he suddenly started acting differently at work, well, it might shine a spotlight on you, and that might not be very good for anyone.”

“So, no one at Camp Friendship knows I wasn’t supposed to be there?”

“That’s what Butler’s told us,” Agent Knox said, “and I’m inclined to believe him.”

“You’re inclined to believe the guy who has basically been a double agent for who knows how many years?” I flopped back onto the bed. “He’s like a genius manipulator. He’s probably lying to you.”

“He’s one of the best interrogators, Matt.” She shook her head. “And, yes, he managed to keep his affiliation with your Dalson a secret, but he’s not an operative, Matt. He’s an academic, an expert in psychology. Believe it or not, guys like him don’t do well when facing down treason charges or public vilification. He has a family. He did what he did for money and because he thought he’d get away with it. He has a lot to lose right now, and his only option is to cooperate. He knows this. Believe it or not, we
can
trust him.”

Butler has a family? I tried to picture it and couldn’t. What would his kids be like? They’d probably make Chase look like an angel.

“Look, Matt, if you don’t want to go back to the camp, you don’t have to.”

“Great,” I said. “I don’t want to.”

Agent Knox took a breath. “Hear me out. Butler said your team won. He said that now you and your team will get real missions. You’ll be dealing with actual coordinating members of this organization. Dalson’s organization.”

“You mean Hader,” I said. “Not Dalson. You keep calling him that, but that’s not his real name, right?”

“Keep thinking of him as Dalson,” Agent Knox said. “Less likely you’ll slip up if you only think of him as Dalson.”

“I won’t slip up,” I said, “because I’m never going to see him again. I’m not going back.”

“But if you did go back,” Agent Knox said, “you’d be able to learn how communications are made. We’d be able to follow those communications back to the source and get real intelligence. Intelligence that would bring Dalson and the whole organization down.”

I shook my head. “I’m just a kid.”

“You were just a kid today, too, Matt. But you saved dozens of lives.” She licked her lips. “You’d be one of us,” she said. “If you did this, you’d be a real CIA operative. It’s what you said you wanted all along, right?”

“I’d be a spy?” I asked. That’s exactly what I wanted, wasn’t it? It didn’t feel quite the same now that it meant doing something actually dangerous.

She nodded.

“And I’d just be going back for the last two days of the camp?”

“That’s it, Matt. Two days. Give or take.”

“Give or take what?” I asked.

She shook her head. “We’re not asking you to stay there any longer than the next two days. But we need to know who the people are who coordinate the missions they’re sending kids on. That means that
technically
you’d be staying undercover until you get your first mission. I don’t know when that would happen, or
how
it would happen for that matter. It could come via phone, or by email, or by some other code we haven’t thought of.”

“And that’ll be it?” I asked. “Nothing else?” I pointed at her. “And I’ll really be a CIA spy?”

She nodded. “Yeah, Matt, you’ll be one of the youngest in recent history. Besides,” she continued, “if you don’t do this, there’s a good chance the only option for you and your family is witness relocation. That means leaving your whole life behind. It would mean your parents would have to leave their lives behind too.”

“And just doing two more days means we wouldn’t have to do that?”

She nodded.

It’s two days, I thought. Just two days. I spent three weeks there already, so what’s two more days? Besides, I kind of wanted to see Chase’s face when he found out I’d won.

I contemplated what going back would mean. I don’t think I spoke for the better part of half an hour. It was a lot to take in. My teammates were all criminals, or at least their families were all criminals. It explained a lot. But I still didn’t see them as criminals. They were friends.

Agent Knox didn’t pressure me for an answer. She waited until I was ready to speak, and when I’d finally reached a decision, she genuinely looked like she’d accept any answer I gave her.

I nodded. “I’ll do it.”

Agent Chen tapped a key on the laptop, closed the screen, and then left the room without a word.

“Chen is the agent in charge of logistics,” Agent Knox said. “We needed to hear you were on board, but now he’s got to make some magic happen. You need a story for why you’re being released. He’ll be the one who comes up with that.” She gathered up her papers. “You made a brave decision, Matt. Don’t worry. We’ll be right beside you the whole time. You won’t see us, but we’ll be there.”

“I want training,” I said as the agent took a step for the door. She stopped and turned around. One eyebrow rose. “Training,” I said again. “You know how stupid I looked out there this summer?” I blew out a breath. “I want real spy training. I know this might not last long, but that’s one of my conditions.”

Agent Knox smiled. “Done, kid. No problem. When you get back home, I’ll arrange some private tutors for some of the courses you’ll need to be a quality spy. I’ll set that up for you personally.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

Chapter 51

Everything happened in the morning.

I’d only been asleep for about twenty minutes when Agent Knox woke me up. It didn’t matter; I was overtired by that point, and my stomach was in knots over what I was about to do. Still, there was a plan, and I needed to hear it.