She clenched her jaw but said, “Clear, sir.”

  “Good. Handle it. Now.” He hung up.

  He needs my best judgment? Okay. I can do that.

  “So?” Zero asked behind her. He held two plastic-wrapped syringes in his fist.

  “We’ve just been authorized to operate independent of the DNI and federal government due to emergency protocol,” she told him.

  “Really,” he said flatly, clearly not believing it for a second.

  She shrugged. “That was my interpretation. We have the Gulfstream, but we need another jet. Any ideas?”

  “This might be a bad time,” the phone said.

  “Penny!” Maria exclaimed. “You’re still on the line?”

  “I am. And a certain Mossad agent has just arrived on the scene.”

  Maria frowned. “A certain Mossad agent…?” She spun to face Zero, who shrugged once sheepishly.

  Of course, she thought peevishly. Mendel.

  *

  “You want an airplane?” Talia Mendel’s English was flawless and only lightly accented. It was, annoyingly, only one of several things about her that seemed flawless.

  “Yes,” Maria told her. They stood two blocks behind the Generali Building, where she had found Mendel examining the veritable fault line in the broken street that had been caused by the collapsed tunnel. “If you can.”

  “Oh, I can.” Mendel had sharp features, a strong jaw, black hair cut short that swept across her forehead. She was fiercely intelligent, good in a fight, and had, on more than one occasion, made passes at Maria’s now-fiancé. “Where will you go?”

  “We have a lead,” Maria said simply. The rest of the team stood behind them, at a short distance, as Maria negotiated with the Israeli spy.

  “And will you take your Secret Service friends with you?”

  “I think they’re going to miss the flight,” Maria said simply. “They’ll know what we know soon enough. And too many cooks in the kitchen can spoil the broth.”

  Talia Mendel grinned at that, but it faded quickly. “My country is furious. Already speaking of war. They are being emotional; declaring war would give cause for the American president to be executed early, and would put Israel at odds with America.”

  Maria nodded, but in her head she was dismayed that she hadn’t yet worked that out for herself. Dawoud wasn’t just out for Israel; he was actively trying to undo what Rutledge had accomplished thus far.

  Is that what the countdown is actually for? she wondered. To give just enough time for someone to get desperate, make a brash decision?

  “All the more reason to help us,” Maria offered. “We can get him back. You’ve worked with us before; you know we can do this.”

  Mendel nodded. “But you forget, Ms. Johansson, that the times I’ve worked with you before, I was there too.”

  Maria’s nostrils flared. She knew what was coming next.

  “I will provide you your plane. And weapons. Equipment. But I am coming.”

  “No,” Maria said instantly. Chubb was an ass; if she let him in, he’d try to take over and there’d be infighting. She’d worked with enough men like him to know that she and her team would be better off on their own. The Secret Service would likely soon know what Penny had already discovered anyway.

  Mendel, on the other hand, would be an asset. Maria just didn’t like her very much.

  “That is the deal,” Talia said. “I do not want war. I will help you find your president. Either I come, or you get no aid from me.”

  “Fine,” Maria said tightly. They needed a plane. They needed weapons. And they were on a literal ticking clock.

  “Ben Gurion, one hour. That is the best I can do.” Mendel turned to leave, but not before flashing Zero a coy smile. “It will be a pleasure to work with you again, Agent Zero.”

  “Oh no.” Maria flashed a vindictive smile of her own. She brought up one hand and pretended to smooth her hair, making sure that Talia Mendel saw the diamond ring on her finger. “Agent Mendel, you’ll be coming with me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  “So, you go to the academy?” the Uber driver asked. He was a stout man, likely thirties, wearing a New York Giants ball cap and cursing under his breath every couple of minutes as he headed toward Poughkeepsie.

  “That’s right,” Maya told him from the backseat. She wasn’t in uniform, but she’d had him pick her up just outside of campus.

  “Didn’t think they let you cadets leave whenever you wanted. You’re not… what do they call it… going AWOL, are you?” He chuckled to himself.

  “No. I was suspended.” Dean Hunt had agreed to the two-day suspension that Maya had suggested, allowing her to get off of campus for a bit—but not back onto it, if she needed.

  “Huh,” said the driver. “What’d you do?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” Maya said curtly.

  “Sure, sure.”

  817 Butler Street. That was the address that Jimmy Bradley had given her. After Hunt had declared her suspension, Maya packed a backpack, retrieved her phone (cadets weren’t allowed to keep their phones while on campus), and called an Uber. According to Google Maps, the address was two blocks from a pizza joint, so she gave that as her destination to the driver.

  “So, you seen the news lately?” he asked. “Crazy, right?”

  “I haven’t been paying attention to the news. Been busy.”

  He let out a low whistle. “Well, you’ve missed some stuff, let me tell you—”

  Maya leaned forward in her seat. “Look, I’m not one of those passengers you need to talk to. Silence is just fine. Preferable, even.”

  The guy shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  They drove on in silence. Outside the window it was already dark, but it wouldn’t be a very long ride. The lights of Poughkeepsie soon came into view, the city itself relatively small but sprawling. Despite its relative proximity to the New York metropolitan area, it was a rather rural-looking place, favoring trees and colorful facades over skyscrapers and cement.

  “Here we are,” said the driver as he pulled into a small parking lot behind a one-story beige building. “Fiesta Pizza.”

  “Thanks.” Maya got out of the car and took her time meandering around to the front of the building, where wide, bright windows showcased a number of people inside eating. The smell made her mouth water, and reminded her of home, oddly. Pizza was always her dad’s go-to when he was stressed out.

  She waited until the Uber driver had pulled away before turning away from the small restaurant and heading west for two blocks down Butler Street.

  Then she arrived at her destination, the house numbered 817, and cursed aloud at Jimmy Bradley.

  It was a house, or had been at one point, a narrow two-story structure squeezed in between larger homes. But it had been renovated at some point into two separate apartments. The bottom level appeared to be 817A, and the upper level, 817B.

  Jimmy Bradley had gotten his five hundred bucks, Maya had gotten suspended, and it wasn’t like she had his number or he even had his phone on him at the academy.

  Great. Guess I’ll have to do some spying.

  She hid in the shadows alongside the house, where a concrete walkway led to a tiny backyard, spanning only a few feet between the two buildings. There were no outside lights on, thankfully, so she crept window to window until she found one with the curtains drawn.

  She peered inside. It was a small dining room, the lights off. But from her angle she could see partially into the adjacent room, a living room it seemed, where a woman who must have been pushing sixty was seated on a sofa, a television screen flickering colors across her face.

  Maya frowned, immediately doubtful that this old woman was the forger, yet not entirely willing to discount it. Whoever it was had gotten this far, hadn’t they? It would make sense if it was someone who seemed beyond suspicion.

  A man entered the dark dining room and Maya ducked quickly. He hadn’t seen her. When she dared to look again, he had passed through the dining room and into the next—a kitchen, she guessed—and then she heard the telltale popping of microwave popcorn.

  Maya maneuvered to the rear of the house. The curtain over the back door’s window was sheer, and through it she could see that the man was older as well, likely the woman’s husband, and was watching the popcorn bag inflate inside the microwave.

  Him, maybe? A forger of this caliber would have to be experienced.

  She thought about knocking on the door—after all, Jimmy had sent her here—but first decided to see what was behind door number two. Behind the house was a set of wooden stairs that led to a back door on the upper level. She took them carefully, holding her breath each time one of them creaked under her weight.

  She found a window with the blinds slightly open and peered inside. There was a young man in there—a boy, practically, no older than her, sitting in a bean bag chair in a sparsely furnished apartment and fiddling with a video game controller. He kept his hair short but had a wispy beard on his chin. He wore gym shorts and a tank top over his skinny frame and had a tattoo on his left shoulder, some sort of tribal design, and—

  And he glanced up, just for a moment, right at the window.

  Maya ducked down quickly. Had he seen her? No. Of course not. The lights were on inside and it was dark out. He would have seen a reflection off the glass, nothing more. At least she told herself.

  She counted to thirty, crouched under the window and shivering despite her jacket, and then took another look. The young guy had gone back to his video game.

  He didn’t see me.

  This kid did not look like the forger to her either. In fact, she would have put her money on the older man downstairs well before this boy. Her best bet would be to go knock on the door to 817A and tell them, “JB sent me.”

  But if they reacted with confusion, what then? Not only would she have picked the wrong door, but then the forger’s downstairs neighbors might think their upstairs neighbor was up to something. Dealing drugs or whatever it was that older people usually suspected of younger people.

  Inside the apartment, the young guy stood slowly from his beanbag chair and stretched. He padded in socks across the room and flicked on a light. A bathroom. Then he closed the door behind him.

  I’ll just wait here a little longer, she resolved. Watch for a bit. Maybe the boy would get a phone call that would tip her off, or something…

  Click-click.

  Maya froze. She knew that sound all too well. The cocking of a pistol, behind her and to the left. It wasn’t the first time, but still an electric tingle of fear ran up her spine.

  “Don’t move,” he warned quietly.

  She obliged, remaining frozen. She really did not want her life to end at the hands of someone in gym shorts.

  The outdoor landing, she realized, wrapped most of the way around the house. He’d slipped right out the bathroom window and around to her.

  “JB sent me,” she said quickly, her voice an octave higher than she would’ve liked.

  “That so? Then why are you sneaking around, spying on me?”

  “I was trying to make sure,” she started to explain, but realized how lame it was going to sound. And what was this boy going to do—shoot her just outside his own apartment? No.

  Instead she raised her hands and slowly turned to face him. His eyes were narrowed at her, and he was still wearing just the tank top, shorts, and socks she’d seen him in.

  “Must be cold,” she said.

  “I don’t mind. What do you want?”

  She kept her cool despite the gun. “I need a letter. Signed, from my doctor. One that claims I’m on antipsychotics and ran out.”

  He looked her up and down, and then shook his head. “I don’t think so. Get out of here.”

  “Please,” she said adamantly. “I need that letter—”

  “Get!” He shook the gun in her face and she winced.

  But she also noticed something. The guy’s finger was on the trigger. She remembered something her dad once told her: Never, ever put your finger on the trigger unless you plan on pulling it.

  This young guy, he knew he could pull it. And Maya understood.

  She threw herself to the right, a quick sidestep, while at the same time bringing up her left hand and forcing his arm, and the gun, with it. With the barrel pointed away she stepped in, toward him, and drove a knee into his sternum—not hard, not to injure, but to knock the breath from him. He grunted and doubled over, and Maya fell with him, all the way to the deck, bringing his shoulder along for the ride. He bent at the waist and didn’t stop as she forced his own momentum into a head-over-heels throw.

  The guy landed on his back with a heavy thud, and she quickly relieved him of the gun. It was a hammerless .38, snub-nosed and silver, and—she checked the cylinder—not loaded.

  She tossed the gun aside. “I’m not going anywhere. I need that letter, or I’m going to be expelled.”

  The boy sat up with a grunt and rubbed his shoulder. “Yeah. I guess you do.” He looked up at her and grinned. “You want a beer?”

  “Water is fine.”

  The inside of the guy’s apartment smelled like cheap body spray and gym socks. He led her into the small kitchen and gave her a bottle of water from the fridge.

  “Name’s Max,” he told her. “But my friends call me Busboy.”

  She frowned. “Why do they call you Busboy?”

  “Because I’m the busboy down at Fiesta Pizza.”

  “…Oh.” She glanced around the narrow kitchen. There was a bulletin board on the wall, a slab of cork with a cracked wooden frame. On it were various stickers, pins, a calendar, and a couple of photos.

  One of which showed that same boy, without the wispy beard, in a cadet uniform.

  Dammit.

  “You’re not the guy I’m looking for,” she said aloud.

  Busboy bristled. “I could be.”

  She shook her head. “No, you’re not. You’re a former cadet.” She gestured to the photograph. “I’m guessing the real guy uses more than one layer of protection. He’s got Jimmy Bradley on the inside, giving desperate cadets this address. Then they come see you, they tell you what they need. But you’re not the guy. You go to the guy, he makes what they need, and you pass it off like you did it.” She stared Busboy right in the eye. “How am I doing?”

  He blinked first. “What are they trying to expel you for? Being a smartass?”

  “No. I like to beat up boys. And I spat in a lieutenant’s face.”

  Busboy grinned at that. “Yeah. That’ll do it. I wasn’t even there for a whole year, myself. I was a perfect cadet. Almost top of my class. Except that my high school transcript was fake.” He shook his head. “You know, nine times out of ten they don’t even follow up on things like that. And the one freakin’ time they do…”

  “I’m not worried about that,” Maya said candidly. “They’re going to give me the boot anyway. This is a Hail Mary on my part.”

  “It’s not cheap,” he warned.

  “I have money. But I don’t deal with middlemen. I can’t get any assurances of quality or delivery from you if you’re not the one doing it. This is my life we’re talking about. I want to see the guy, the real deal, or there’s no deal.”

  “Then there’s no deal,” Busboy said simply.

  Maya’s throat flexed. She resisted the urge to grab the skinny boy by the throat and force her to tell him where the forger was.

  No. Be smart about this.

  “Fine,” she said instead. She took two steps out of the kitchen, into the shabby living room, and glanced around meaningfully. “Might be nice if you could afford some bullets for that gun, though. Among other things.”

  She headed toward the door, intentionally taking her time.

  Come on. Take the bait…

  “Wait.” Busboy’s voice was strained behind her. “Wait a sec.”

  She paused and turned, but said nothing.

  “I… you’re right. I could use the money.” He sighed. “I’m gonna have to talk to him first, okay? You got somewhere to lay low for a bit?”

  “I’ll find a place.”

  He handed her a pen. “Leave me your number. I’ll contact you. If he’s okay with meeting up, we’ll do it. If not, you don’t come around here again. Yeah?”

  Maya nodded as she wrote down her cell number.

  “And it’s going to cost extra,” he added. “A premium on my end for sticking my neck out like this.”

  “Fine.” Maya dropped the pen and headed toward the door again. “Just make it happen and we’ll both be happy.”

  She headed out of the apartment and back down the wooden steps without looking back. She was going to have to find a place to kill some time. Maybe a motel nearby. And money could quickly become a problem, especially if cash was expected to trade hands tomorrow. The credit card her dad had given her had a two-thousand-dollar cash advance limit, and she’d already given Jimmy Bradley five hundred.

  But she was closer. A step closer, another piece of the puzzle in place.

  Her cell phone chimed from the front pouch of her backpack. It was a private number. Her dad, maybe, calling from some burner?

  “Hello,” she answered cautiously.

  “Lawson. It’s Dean Hunt. I’m looking for an update.”

  Maya almost groaned aloud. It had been mere hours since her suspension; what did Hunt expect of her? “I’m closer. I should have this wrapped by tomorrow—”

  “See that you do,” Hunt warned. “Many on my staff are unhappy with the suspension and are calling for your expulsion. The only remedy I can see is you finding the forger so that I can reveal it was me who put you up to all this. If you don’t find them, I can’t do that, or we risk losing the perpetrator.”

  Maya’s face flushed. “I’ll find them,” she promised.

  “Good. Because otherwise my hands will be tied. And I don’t think I need to remind you that an official expulsion from West Point is viewed the same as a dishonorable discharge. The CIA will never accept you on those grounds.”

 

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