I stop when I am two feet away. It’s known as the privacy zone. In the western world, strangers naturally stand about twenty-four inches from one another. Closer in Asian countries. Farther away in Britain.
But it’s twenty-four inches in the United States. Farther than that and you send the message that you are afraid. Closer and it feels rude, antisocial. Or dangerous.
I stop at twenty-four inches, communicating to Moore that I am neither afraid nor a threat.
I can’t see his eyes, but I can sense him looking at me. There are people all around us, just outside the range of the headlights, watching my every move.
I consider reaching for my glasses, a seemingly innocuous gesture that would put a weapon in my hands, but when I glance left, I note a trace of red-and-gray plaid in the shadows.
Flannel.
He is here on the periphery, circling like a shark. I choose to keep my hands by my sides.
“Are you a hero?” Moore asks.
His voice is more powerful up close, clear and confident.
“I don’t think so,” I say, my voice uncertain.
“You acted in a heroic way.”
“It happened so fast. I’m not even sure what I did.”
“You stopped an assassination attempt.”
“I just reacted,” I say.
“People who react are heroes.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Moore says, and he reaches out and puts his hand on my shoulder as if to steady me.
Physical contact. Moore is inside my kill zone, but I’m pinned in the light, surrounded by people. I can’t move in any way that might appear threatening.
“So you’re calling me a hero?” I say, like I can’t believe it.
Moore’s grip suddenly tightens on my shoulder. I squirm beneath it, acting as if I’m surprised and in pain because of the pressure he’s exerting there.
A normal person would be both.
I am neither. I am curious.
“You’re hurting me,” I say.
“You know what bothers me about what you did?” Moore says.
I try to get out from his grip, but I cannot, not without taking serious defensive action.
“The difference between a hero and a villain is a very thin line,” Moore says.
I look up at him like I’m scared.
“I don’t think I’m either of those things.”
He bears down even more on my shoulder. I let my face wince in pain.
“You’re wrong,” Moore says. “I think you’re one of those things.”
I sense Flannel moving closer just outside my view. I crane my neck like a kid who is scared and trying to see what’s going on around him. I use the gesture to map the profiles of bodies just outside the headlights. It’s possible I’m going to have to defend myself in this situation, and if I do, I want to know what I’m up against.
Moore’s intensity grows as he stares at me.
“Which are you?” Moore says. “A hero or a villain?”
He waits for me to respond.
I exhale slowly. I’m trying to get a line on Moore so I know the right thing to say, but it’s nearly impossible. His energy fluctuates in a way that makes it hard to follow him.
Still, I have to respond. He’s on the cusp of deciding something about me.
Suddenly, I have an intuition about him. He’s a gruff ex-military man. I should appeal to that energy in a way he will recognize.
“I didn’t come here for this shit,” I say, and I wrench my shoulder hard enough to surprise him and break his grip.
Bodies leap toward us from outside the light, but Moore puts up a hand to stop them.
“I thought you were a great man,” I say, talking fast. “At least that’s what my father said, and I wanted to see if it was true. But I didn’t come here to get shot or to be interrogated afterward. Seriously, fuck this.”
I stiffen my back and raise my face to him, challenging his power.
“You’re not being interrogated,” Moore says, momentarily on the defensive.
“I risked my neck to protect you from some crazy person. And you don’t even thank me. You accuse me of—I don’t even know what. I just know I’m out of here.”
I slump my shoulders and look at the ground, spent from my outburst.
“You misunderstand,” Moore says. “We’re simply having a dialogue.”
“I want to go home and take a shower and forget I came here.”
Then I do something Moore probably hasn’t seen in a long time.
I turn my back to him and start to walk away.
“Just a minute,” he says forcefully.
I stop, but I don’t around.
“Maybe I was wrong about you,” he says.
Moore comes forward, breaking the two-foot rule.
He is close. Close enough for me to finish my mission.
My assignment is always to assassinate in a way that will appear to be from natural causes. I must complete the assignment without revealing myself or threatening The Program.
In a situation like this with a high likelihood of being detected, protocol dictates that I back away until another opportunity presents itself. But on every other mission, I’ve had the time to properly acquire my target, and multiple opportunities to act. My job is simply to set the stage and choose one.
It’s never been like tonight.
One event. One shot. One moment with Moore.
I may not get another.
“Can I trust you, Daniel?” Moore asks.
“I guess my saving your life wasn’t enough to earn your trust?”
Moore looks toward the sky, subtly craning his neck. Crickets sing in the tall grass around us.
“You’re a wiseass,” Moore says.
“A little bit,” I say.
Moore smiles.
“You remind me of myself,” he says.
He nods once, and then he’s gone, backing away from me quickly and disappearing into the night.
I stand alone, pinned in the headlights.
I’ve lost the mission.
I think about Father waiting for me half a mile away. I imagine going to him and telling him what happened here tonight.
The mission was lost once before. What will it mean that I can’t complete it now? This on top of the concerns The Program already has about me, my disappearing to Vermont, the issues with my last assignment—
Brakes squeal behind me. I turn to find Moore standing next to an SUV, leaning in and whispering to Lee. A moment later Moore climbs into the SUV and it immediately peels out, one truck in front and one behind in a motorcade formation.
Moore is gone, and with him, my mission.
Lee comes over to me, an expression of surprise on his face.
“Unbelievable,” he says.
“What?”
“My father invited you to tour Liberty.”
“Really?” I say.
This is the moment I’ve been trained for, the junction of fate and opportunity that separates the experienced operative from the amateur. The amateur hesitates, while the experienced soldier acts.
The problem is Camp Liberty. I’ve been forbidden to go there.
“What do you think?” Lee says.
“A tour? That’s great news,” I tell him.
I can go back to Father now, not with a lost mission, but with an alternative. I will go into Camp Liberty and get Moore. It’s not the mission I prepped for—it’s more complex and difficult—but it can be planned, mapped out, then executed.
I will finish my mission. I’ll just have to persuade Father to let me do it from the inside.
“When can I come for the tour?” I ask Lee.
“Right now,” he says.
“That’s not possible,” I say.
“Why not?”
“It’s late,” I say, struggling for a viable excuse that will keep me out of the camp.
I can’t go in now. I’ve got no backup and no contingency plan. Father doesn’t have any information about what’s gone on tonight.
“You can stay over tonight,” Lee says. “There’s plenty of room. We’ll show you around in the morning.”