Allen Zadoff - Boy Nobody

“Make it two shots,” I say to the barista.

“My man,” he says.

I find an empty chair in the very rear of the store, and I log on to the free Wi-Fi.

I can make my phone secure, but for assignment instructions, it’s safer to have another layer of anonymity between me and the world. Nothing more anonymous than a local Starbucks.

I’ve been taught a few simple tricks, all of them the same trick.

Hide in plain sight.

It’s the best way to make yourself invisible.

My phone logs on with a fake Mac ID, the phone’s version of a social security number. I settle in and open Father’s e-mail again.

Check out this video. Funny!!!

The e-mail is followed by a link to YouTube. There’s also an image to download. A tiny image. Barely 5K in size. The image is nothing special—a picture of a mountain lake. As if my father had been on vacation and uploaded a snapshot at extremely low quality.

The photo means nothing at all, but the size means everything.

5K. Five days.

That is the operational window for my next assignment.

It can’t be right.

I check the photo again to make sure I read the number correctly.

5K. No mistake.

My job is always the same: Enter, gain trust, integrate, and complete my assignment. All without being noticed.

This is not a quick process. It takes one to three months, depending on a whole number of factors.

Five days. What is that?

I look around the Starbucks. Lots of people on laptops. An old couple chatting. Two cute girls in workout clothes laughing.

Nobody paying attention to me.

I click on the YouTube link. The video is nothing at all. A famous band, the lead singer of which falls off the stage mid-ballad. Maybe it’s funny, but that’s beside the point. I scan down until I get to the sixteenth comment.

First word= Sucks.

Last word= Go.

SG. The initials of the Facebook profile for me to locate.

When I log into Facebook, I find over a dozen new friend requests, but only one of them from a guy named EssGee in New York City.

SG. That is the one that requires my attention.

This is not a real profile, of course. It has not been created by EssGee, and when it is removed after I’m done, it will not be removed by him.

It’s not a profile at all, but a dossier.

I accept the friend request and click on the link to his profile.

The real name of the person is at the top.

SG. Sam Goldberg.

First surprise: Sam is a girl.

I do not like dealing with girls. They are complicated.

I am equally effective with girls and guys, but girls create another level of difficulty. More emotion, more problems.

Second surprise: Sam is pretty. More than pretty. Beautiful.

She looks vaguely Middle Eastern, shoulder-length curly hair, long and thin with high cheekbones, ample in her chest.

I don’t care about beauty itself. But beauty means boys. Suitors. Jealousy. Competition. Beauty can make my job more difficult.

I look at Sam’s photo.

There is something familiar about her. A distant alarm goes off in my head.

At a nearby table, the girls in workout clothes laugh. Their teeth are very white.

I breathe. I focus. The alarm in my head gets quiet.

Back to the profile.

Two photo albums. The first is my mark.

I click on it.

Photos of Sam.

Jumping in the air on a trampoline, her face frozen in joy.

Sam at a Model UN conference, her face intense as she argues at a podium.

Sam and three friends messing around at a dance, each of them putting a leg in the arm of another.

The intimacies of this girl’s life spread out in front of me like a deck of cards.

I feel a vague sense of discomfort, spying on an innocent girl.

Then I remember: Nobody is innocent.

Still, there is something familiar about this girl. What is it?

I click the next photo. Sam and friends posed in front of the facade of an unusual building in Manhattan. The shape is something like a giant television screen. I recognize the name of an exclusive private school on the Upper West Side.

I move to photo album two. The critical album.

First photo. Sam dressed for a formal event of some kind. A black-tie dinner. Unusual for a teen to be attending. But maybe not for a wealthy teen in Manhattan.

Sam is elegant in black. Younger than in the previous photos. This is from a few years ago.

Next photo. Sam posed with her parents at that same event.

My eyes widen. My breathing quickens.

I double-click to enlarge the photo. I have to be sure I’m seeing it correctly.

Sam is in the same black dress between her father and mother, their arms around one another. Her father looks delighted, completely at ease in front of the camera.

He should be. He’s the mayor of New York.

NOW I KNOW WHERE I’VE SEEN HER BEFORE.

Samara Goldberg, daughter of Mayor Goldberg.

They call him the West Side Mayor. A mayor of the people. A mayor both elevated and grounded, still connected to his roots.

Jonathan Goldberg is a former mathematical statistician and professor. His analytical theories made him a fortune as owner of a global security research firm. Pulled into politics somewhat against his will. Rose quickly after that.

The mayor is tall and skinny in the photo, stretched long like his daughter. Older than Sam’s mother by quite a few years. Her mother is a beauty. I can see where Sam gets her looks.

I remember the story now. Sam’s mother died several years ago—an accident while she was visiting family in Israel. A freak accident. Wrong place, wrong time.

Afterward the mayor went into mourning, along with the city that loves him.

My heart is beating too fast. One hundred forty bpm. High for me.

I stand and stretch. The girls look over at me. Why is a guy stretching out in the middle of Starbucks?

“Still hurting from my workout,” I say.

One of the girls giggles and whispers to her friend.

I’m attracting too much attention. I sit back down, pull in my energy. I breathe deeply, slow the rate of my pulse.

I click the photo so it becomes small again. I count back in the order.

I’ve looked at two photos, but it’s the third photo that is important.

Second album, third photo. That is always the target.

It could be anyone. An uncle or aunt. Even a nanny. Anyone close to the family.

I click on photo three.

It’s a picture of Mayor Goldberg. Alone.

He is the target.

Sam is the mark, the mayor of New York is the target, and five days is my timeline.

That is my new assignment.

I check on the barista again. He’s working the bar now, his face obscured behind a layer of steam.

It’s time to go.

I grasp the phone in one palm and slam the left corner down on the table. One time, sharply and at a particular angle.

The girls look in my direction and frown. I must look like an angry kid, making a bad choice with his phone. But that’s not what’s happening. It’s a built-in fail-safe.

When I hit the phone, the accelerometer measures the exact angle and force of the blow and sends a signal to the battery that causes it to overheat, destroying the interior of the phone.

A block away I drop the dead phone into a covered trash can, and I get on a train bound for New York.

As the wheels sing beneath me, I think about the difficult assignment ahead. I wonder how I will do it in five days.

It will be a challenge, no doubt.

But challenges are what I’m best at.

WEDNESDAY. DAY 1.

It begins.