We were a family. And when our father was murdered, we had to leave everything behind us—including our gender …

On The Run, by Karin Bishop

Part 1

Chapter 1: The Call

We were sitting down to a late dinner. My brother Mike was telling me about a Mozart piece he was learning and how there were parts of it that sounded like a new song on the charts. I was kind of interested, but being two years younger, I wasn’t into quite the same music as Mike. Mozart I knew about, but didn’t really like the new band.

Mike is fourteen and although he’s small for his age, I’m two years younger and really small. Stand us next to each other and our heights are about right, but next to other kids our age we look a grade or two younger. Mike didn’t make any of his school’s sports teams because of his size but was okay with that; he really liked his music. I had hoped to play Little League but was considered too small even for the farm league. Other Los Angeles kids hung out at the beach; we lived too far inland and never got invited anyway. So we were basically loners, without any real friends besides each other. We didn’t fit in too much with the other kids at school. I’d grown my hair longer hoping that I’d look like a cool kid, but it didn’t work. Even now my hair almost reached my shoulders; I kept it in a ponytail all the time but Mike didn’t learn from my example. His hair was curlier but he started growing it longer like Chopin and other musicians he worshipped—even though I pointed out that some of them wore wigs!

But we usually came home from school, often walking together, and Mike would sit at the piano for hours and I’d read. I mean, we did our homework, of course, but after that, it was music and books for us. Not much of a social life …

Other than that, there was nothing to make us any different from any other family on our block. In fact, there were probably other families that had delayed dinner for late parents and were sitting down as we were. Other families, though, didn’t get that phone call.

Mom answered it in the kitchen and made a strangled kind of sound. Mike and I looked at each other. I started to get up, but Mike told me to stay put and let her take her time telling us. Mom came out in five minutes, and she was pale. She had a towel and was dabbing her eyes. We both watched her walk to the table and sit down. She straightened the towel and folded it in front of her and put her hands on it.

“Your father has just been killed,” she said quietly. “The police think he was mugged …his briefcase and watch and wallet are missing, but one of the officers recognized him from your piano recital, Michael.”

We stared in shock, bodies rigid, our eyes watering. Mom went on. “Um …I still have to formally identify the body …” her face broke up. She took a breath and struggled. “You …stay here. Wait for me. I’ve got to …I’ve got to go.”

Our world changed that instant. Our family of four was shattered. We were now a family of three; Mom was a single mother, we had no father …it was unbelievable. We couldn’t eat; Mike gathered up the food and I helped put things away as Mom got her things and left.

There was nothing to do, nothing to say; we sat in the living room. I flipped through TV stations and Mike flipped through magazines; neither of us settled on anything for long. Nearly two hours later, we heard Mom’s car. Mike looked at me and without a word, I turned off the TV and we both went to stand by the door. When Mom came in, we both hugged her. Mom gulped a sob and told Mike to start a pot of tea and then join us to sit on the couch. She hung up her things and we sat in silence until Mike returned.

I wrote that our world had changed; now Mom completely changed our world again.

It took her some time to get started. She frowned several times as she seemed to discard what she was going to say. Finally, after a deep, ragged breath, she began.

“The police are treating it as a random mugging, but that’s not the truth. Your father was murdered, but not by some local thug. This was …this was an assassination. We’ve never told you about this; we were going to wait until you were both older but now you have to know. Your father worked a for government agency. He was an operative …you might say that he was a spy.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say but, “No way, Mom! He sold insurance!” Mike gave me a look that I took to mean that he thought Mom was in denial …or flipping out.

“No, Danny; insurance was his cover. Before we were married, I worked for the same agency, but in a different department. I quit when I became pregnant with Mike. Your dad and I …we planned for him to get out of covert work as soon as possible, but he was so good at his job that they talked him into staying. He was working on American companies that are selling secrets to terrorist organizations. It doesn’t have to be nuclear weapons; even a microchip can be contraband technology. Your father was looking into a firm with a new GPS transponder that can be reverse-engineered and reconfigured to emulate satellite uplink codes.”

It was disorienting to hear Mom use this kind of speech so casually and knowledgably; she was an administrator at our local hospital—as far as we knew. The way she handled the technical details instantly validated what she was telling us.

Mom went on. “There were certain …indicators about the circumstances of his death that immediately alerted me that this was a professional job. But my suspicions were confirmed when I got back to my car. One of our agency men was there to meet me. When your father was first brought in as a John Doe, his statistics were posted on-line and then the notice went out that he’d been IDed. The agency routinely monitors police transmissions and flagged it, so they dispatched Ron to meet me. I knew him from my days at the agency, and we’ve met a couple of times over the years.”

As unbelievable as it seemed, it was becoming more and more real as Mom went on, filling in details in a matter-of-fact tone. My father was a murdered spy? As cool as that might sound on a playground, it was not at all cool to sit there knowing he was never coming home. My dad …our dad …was dead.

I was jolted by the next thing that Mom said. “Since your father’s cover was compromised, our lives are possibly in danger. Ron has a team staking out our house right now so we’re okay for the time being. But we have to disappear. Tonight.”

“Disappear? How? What about …” Mike gulped.

Mom squeezed his forearm. “We never, ever wanted this to happen, but it has. This is the Worst-Case Scenario …well, almost. The Worst-Case is if we three were all killed by a second hit team. So we have to avoid that. Ron’s placed us under government protection …”

Her voice trailed off, as she sat up and stared into space for a moment. I butted in with, “You mean like the Witness Protection Program?” I’d read about that and seen it in movies. Of course, in the movies it never really worked very well.

Mom must have been reading my thoughts. “Yes …they’re going to place us in WitSec, but …Let me make a call …” Again she trailed off and went to her bedroom.

Mike and I just stared at each other for a moment when Mom returned with a cell phone we’d never seen before. “I was going to call in my bedroom, but this family has had enough secrets from each other. I’m going to make this call so you can hear.”

The phone call was amazing. Mom dialed and when it was answered, she began reciting numbers. She listened, and said more numbers. There was a longer pause, and then she began speaking to someone she called ‘Sir’. Mostly she listened, but gave our full names and ages, nodding at what she heard. She hung up the phone and then surprised us by opening it, pulling the SIM card and then going to our television unit. She pulled out our old VHS degausser and demagnetized the SIM card. Then she went to the kitchen and tossed the card down the garbage disposal and turned it on. She returned to us on the couch with the disposal winding down.

She smiled weakly. “SOP. Standard Operating Procedure. Or, as John LeCarre calls it, ‘Moscow Rules’. Okay …First Rule: The only people you can trust with your life are in this room right now. There are a few others that might be able to help us, but they will very quickly become suspect if they’re not already turned. I’m going to call one of them and try to get a better take on things.”

She smiled sadly at us. “My wonderful boys …Oh, God; I’m so sorry. Your life as you’ve known it is over.”

“Over?” I gasped.

“We are leaving tonight. We will be ‘disappeared’ by the team outside. They will relocate us. Right now, grab your suitcases from the hall closet. Grab underwear, socks, PJs, toiletries. As many jeans and shirts as you can stuff in the suitcase. You will have another bag of your most personal effects, only what you can carry, like an airplane. Mike, I’m afraid that means your piano medals and ribbons will have to stay. Danny, no books other than a paperback. We’ll get replacement things later. Oh, do bring your laptops and any address books you might have—anything that might connect us to people we know. Your laptops will eventually be surrendered and scrubbed and you’ll get new ones. Take any backup disks to turn over, too.”

“Mom, what’s going to happen?” Mike asked. “I mean, tonight, step by step.”

“Good question, Mike. In a half-hour, we will leave this wonderful home and never return. We will only have what we carry—and some families don’t even get that luxury. We will be taken either to a safe house or a hotel for the night, most likely. In the morning—or tonight, depending—we’ll be taken to …our new home. We might be driven or flown. I don’t know. But …oh, God …” she sobbed as she looked around the living room, at her life. “This is our last night here …”

Chapter 2: Moving

It went very smoothly and very quickly. The team was practiced and efficient and impersonal. No names were used, and we began to feel almost like FedEx packages being routed. We spent the night in our local Hilton, entering through the garage, and mourned our loss instead of sleeping. The next morning, bleary-eyed and groggy, we had a room-service breakfast and then left the hotel in a laundry van we boarded in the loading dock. In a downtown garage, we changed to a beat-up Winnebago driven by another nameless agent.

We had a four-hour drive and then found ourselves at a dock in Oceanside. We boarded a cabin cruiser and went out for an hour. We put in somewhere up or down the coast, were given a sort of box lunch, and boarded a tour boat. Our things had been left in the Winnebago. We did a stupid two-hour cruise around the harbor, and when we docked, Mom led us to a minivan with Arizona plates. We took off and drove to a Motel 6 somewhere for the night.

Exhausted, we slept for almost twelve hours. When we woke up, we got into another van parked at the motel. Our previous van was left there. In this new van were all new documents for us; we were the Wallingfords, Denise, David, and Trevor. Yucks all around; nobody liked their new names. There was a map and information on the town we were to ‘move’ to in Colorado, and we set off.

We never really talked much during any of the driving, or on the boats, or anything. We were alone with our thoughts. I’d picked up some paperbacks in the hotel gift shop and read. Mike (Dave) listened to his iPod, his eyes closed, his fingers twitching in the air, and Mom quietly mourned Dad and our old life—and dealt with the various agency types we’d come into contact with.

After several hours of driving through country that was alternately boring and fascinating, we stopped for gas and pulled into a diner next door. Mom excused herself after we ordered. Mike and I stared out the window. I idly spun my water glass.

“What do you think, Dan?” Mike asked.

“Trevor, damn it,” I said, using my new name.

“Okay, what do you think, Trevor Dammit?”

I flicked some water at him and got his first smile in days. It went away as quickly as my gladness. I sighed deeply. “Dad’s gone. Totally …gone. I still can’t wrap my head around that. I mean, disappearing in the night and those boat rides and this thing to Colorado …I can actually accept all that because it still seems like Dad will be waiting for us when we get there. But he won’t be.”

“I know,” Mike said. “And you’re more right than you know—you said ‘totally gone’ and that’s the reality. The father we knew never existed; he was really some spy. And we don’t even have the names he gave us anymore.”

“Mike, David, whatever …I gotta disagree. The father we knew was our father. It’s the only real thing about him; who he worked for didn’t matter. I mean, when you were five, did you even know where Dad worked?”

“Man, you were two, so what are you talking about?” He smiled to show he was kidding. “But you’re right. Yeah, the only real place he exists now is our memories.”

“Yeah, but they’re real,” I said. “And he’ll always be there.”

We’d left it at that as Mom returned. She sat down with us, waited as the waitress freshened her coffee, and then leaned in.

“Okay, I just talked to an old friend at the agency. I got the name of somebody who can help us.”

“Aren’t we being helped enough already?” I asked, raising my hands theatrically to indicate the diner.

“Cute, Trevor,” she grinned without humor. “They just might bring back vaudeville. So here’s the situation in a nutshell: Dad was killed because of a leak. There’s nothing he could have done to prevent that; it’s just part of the job, knowing that at any minute your identity could be sold or traded. It’s what we’ve lived with all these years.”

“Mom, I …never mind,” Mike said, shaking his head.

Mom gave him a tight smile. “Yes, you never imagined it like this. I can trust no one—no one—except you two. I’m not sure I can trust my old friend, either, but we could be sunk if she’s been turned. So here it is, again, in that nutshell. I don’t trust that the leak isn’t still there, and if that’s the case and things are done the way they used to be, we’re on a hit list. Right now, we have no choice but to follow the WitSec program. We’ve got no documentation, I can’t get at our bank accounts, nothing. They gave me a gas card and this Visa but they’re only good to get us to Colorado where we’ll get more permanent identities. I’ll be getting a new job somewhere, you’ll be going to a new school—”

“Piano lessons? Please?” Mike asked with just a touch of whine.

“I don’t see why not,” Mom smiled. “But here’s the tricky part, so pay attention.” She sat up as the waitress brought our food. We all smiled and nodded and off she went, and Mom started on her salad and her story. “As I said, I don’t trust that WitSec hasn’t been compromised. That means—”

“We know what it means, Mom,” I chuckled. “Go on.”

“Okay. So I’m going to run a counter program. A covert operation of our own, to backstop our security. First, I’m talking to you now where I’m sure there are no listeners. We won’t have that luxury at the new house; I’m sure the phones will be tapped and probably the rooms. Bear that in mind and keep everything to ourselves at first, okay?”

At our wide-eyed nods, she went on. “Once we’re there, don’t say anything about what we’re talking about right now. You can talk about our old home and lives, you can talk about the hotel and the driving and the boats but not about this conversation we’re having. Clear?”

“Yeah, sure,” Mike said.

“Geez, Mike, we’re not going to Minnesota,” I joked.

“Danny, are we clear?” Mom asked, very serious.

“Crystal,” I said, like in A Few Good Men. My direct look let her know I wasn’t kidding.

“When I have to update you or discuss things with you, we’ll be at a mall or a movie or someplace public and without listeners. At home, in a hurry, I’ll write things out on a notepad. For God’s sake, don’t read the pad out loud or criticize my handwriting, Danny! We’ll try to have a simple conversation about school or TV or something but the real stuff is what we write back and forth, and then I’ll destroy the pages. Got it?”

We nodded again.

“And we’ll need a code word, an expression or something that only the three of us know but could sound innocent. It will mean we have to immediately drop everything and run. Once we get to where we’re going, I’ll work out a safe meeting place for us. A certain spot at the mall, the library, or a storefront somewhere. We’ll have a primary and a secondary, and get to them in that order as soon as you hear the code word.”

I said, “You mean, let’s say the word is, I don’t know …Birmingham.”

“Birmingham? Like Alabama?” Mike asked.

“Yeah. We’ve never been there, we’re not going there, we don’t know anybody from there. We just hope there’s no news story out of there. So we’re settled in, everything’s as normal as it’s every going to be, and Mom discovers bad guys are on to us. Let’s say I’m at school and you’re at a piano practice. She calls us and says something like, ‘I just got a letter from our old friends in Birmingham; they loved the pictures of you and said how much you’ve grown.’ Sounds innocent enough, but she said the ‘B’ word, so I pack my books, you close the piano lid, and we immediately go to the Primary rendezvous spot she’s going to find. Let’s say it’s the library. As soon as all three of us are there, we’re gone. Or we’re getting close to the library but something seems wrong, just …off somehow. Fall back and go to the Secondary, maybe the entrance to Macy’s at the mall. We meet up and we’re gone. Goodbye, Colorado. Goodbye, Denise, David and stupid Trevor.”

Mom stared at me. “My God; maybe there is something to genetics! Your father would be so proud of you, Danny! Yes, that’s exactly how it will work. And the library is a very good example; it’s central, public, accessible by public transportation …yes, a good choice for us to meet. I will already have secured transportation and clothing. Which leads me to the second item of our discussion. The call I made got me the name of a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy …and so on. Anyway, it leads to a guy that can get us documentation, new identities, the works. If I’m right and we’re blown, then it’s a race against time. If I’m wrong and we’re secure, then life goes on in Colorado. With me so far?”

Mike thoughtfully said, “The government agency is giving us new identities. You’re getting another set of identities that the government doesn’t know about, from some independent guy. If the bad guys track us down, we can get away and use the new identities so even the agency doesn’t know where we are?”

“Exactly. If we have to run a second time, we might have even less notice than we had before. I suspect that we’ll be watched for the first few weeks as we settle in, and then the agency will figure we’re doing fine and pull out. After that, we’re open to the bad guys.”

“So we have a couple of weeks to get settled in and plan to leave?” I asked.

“Exactly,” she said again. “It’s all we can do; we truly don’t have any other options. Once we left our house with the agency, we had the protection of the agency but at the price of our freedom. To be under control of the agency at this point eventually means death, if I’m right about the program being compromised. So to be free and live, we’ll have to take off again. I will contact the agency once we’re away and periodically update them that we’re alive but not who we are or where we are.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I sighed.

Mike grumbled, “Yeah. Will the new house have a piano?”

“Mike, honey; I don’t know. We’ll figure out something for you; I know how much it means to you.”

“In the meantime, then,” Mike smiled, “can we have dessert?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Mom grinned.

Chapter 3: Settling In

Finally we arrived at our new address in a Denver suburb. It was very similar to our old neighborhood; Mom said we’d cruise schools tomorrow but right now it was time to stop running. The house had a key-code front door lock and she had the code, and we stepped into a fully-furnished house that was oddly like our own but still different, because nothing was ours. The only thing that was ours were on our bodies.

Our suitcases were sitting in the middle of the living room. It was kind of distasteful to think that somebody most likely had gone through every inch of our things. With a shrug, Mike and I grabbed our bags and then picked out our rooms. It was strange to be self-consciously not talking about things. We got to double-checking everything we said. If there were listeners, they must have been bored out of their skulls by our dialogues.

‘Would you like Kix or Wheaties?’

‘Wheaties, please.’

‘Sure is a pretty day.’

‘Sure is.’

And so on.

On the surface, this is what we did for three weeks. We explored the mall, the downtown area, went to two movies, visited the library and interviewed piano teachers. Mom went on some job interviews and spent a lot of time at the bank and at the library.

What we really did was this: We designated the library as our primary meeting point with a comic book store downtown as the secondary. It would be normal for us to visit them, and normal for teen boys to hang around them. Mike did get started with a new teacher who loved his ability and attitude. The new house had an upright piano and the familiar sounds of his practicing were used while Mom continued briefing us by writing notes while Mike pounded away.

Mom was being busy learning things on the internet at the library, spending time at banks, making calls from pay phones, and going on mysterious shopping trips. She brought home new clothes for us, but we knew she was also getting our ‘secondary’ identity clothing and things and storing them in a safe place. She also told us she was moving funds around. The family money had been transferred and a ‘Wallingford’ account opened at a local bank, but she was making various withdrawals and opening other accounts in some way to ‘muddy the waters’, as she put it. She told us that she’d brokered deals with Dad’s insurance company for a reduced lump sum payment quickly, and—if she’d done it right—also managed to get Dad’s government pension paid to an offshore account.

I sort of understood what she was saying, because I’d heard about these sort of things in movies. With my new library card I got a book out on international banking and one on industrial espionage, and a couple of pulp spy novels to throw off anybody checking up on my reading habits. Other books hit too close to home and I photocopied large chunks to take home and study; I’d do anything to help out Mom. Mike buried himself in his piano and staring at the TV. We talked a little bit, but always innocently when we were inside the house, which is where I usually saw him.

We went for an interview at the local high school and middle school, but they had to take us, right? It was agreed we’d start at the next semester, a few weeks away. Our cover story was a recent California earthquake—which really had happened—flattened our apartment and condemned our school.

Then the cable guy came to install our cable …

Mike let him in and went back to the piano. When I got home the guy’s van was still there, and he had the TV pulled out and was tinkering behind it. I gave him a ‘hi’ and went to get something to drink. The cable guy finished up and left and I flopped on the couch. I picked up the remote but Mike said, “Please don’t turn it on yet. I’m really crunching this piece and I don’t want the competition.”

“We ought to get those wireless headphones.”

“Good idea. Now don’t talk to me.”

Mike got like that when he was wrestling with a piece. I was looking at my library books when Mom came home with groceries.

“Hey, guys, what’s new?”

“Nothing,” Mike said. “Working.”

“Please excuse him. He’s not totally human right now,” I said to Mom.

“I heard that,” Mike said.

“Shut up, you’re practicing,” I hurled back.

“Don’t say shut up,” Mom said automatically. “So everything’s cool?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Got a book on offshore banking; looks pretty good.”

“Honey, thanks, but you really don’t need to worry about that; let me do it.”

“But I want to help.”

“I appreciate that, but …oh, all right; more knowledge can’t hurt you.”

“And I covered my tracks at the library by checking out all sorts of books and then returning them before I leave.”

“Smart. Well, sounds like a good day.”

“Oh, and the cable guy came,” I said, thumbing through my book.

“What?”

Something in Mom’s tone made me look up.

“I said, the cable guy came. He was here when I got home …Mike, sorry to interrupt, but when did the guy get here? Mike?”

He turned and gave me an annoyed look. “Um …twoish.”

Mom said, “Mike, tell me what he said.”

“Just a sec …” he stopped playing and turned to her. “Um …he said he was here to install the cable.”

“He said ‘install’?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Nothing; I just thought they’d call first; they’re supposed to do that. Ah well.” She paused and said, “That’s a pretty piece you were playing. Is it Mozart?”

“Yeah,” Mike said as he began it again.

I saw Mom pick up her notepad. I looked over her shoulder as she wrote, ‘Did you enjoy that HBO movie last night?’

Mike kept playing but nodded.

Mom quickly wrote, ‘How could you have seen it if the cable guy installed cable today?’

I got a chill. Mike and I looked at each other, our mouths open. His playing faltered, but Mom waved her hand in circles, indicating he should keep playing. For some idiot reason I picked up the remote control, as if I was on autopilot. Mom took two fast strides to me and grabbed my wrist and said, “Danny, you want to come help me with the groceries?”

I put down the remote and went to the kitchen. We really did put groceries away, but Mom went into her bedroom and came out with something that looked like a large remote control. She went to the TV and began waving the gadget slowly around the cabinet and wall. It gave off soft beeps; I saw her fiddle with controls and it went silent but lights flashed. Her shoulders slumped and she kneeled on the floor, almost as if she was bowing to the television.

She got off the floor and wrote something on her notepad. She called out, “Mike, can you stop for a bit? I’ve got something I want to show you.”

Grudgingly he got off the piano bench and came to where we were by the kitchen. She showed us the note. She’d written, ‘I have bomb detector. TV set has C4 explosive—probably will detonate with remote. Time to go.’

To make it plain to us, she said, “I picked up this brochure about a music camp for the summer. Sounds like you’d love it; they specialize in classical piano. It’s in Birmingham, Alabama, which I wouldn’t think is the classical piano center of the world, but there’s hiking and boating and swimming and stuff. Have you ever heard of this place?”

Mike got out, “No” but I didn’t think I could speak. I felt electrified, my nerves tingling and my stomach in a knot. If not for Mike’s piano, I would have turned on the TV earlier …

Amazingly, Mom kept a natural tone of voice. “Guys, I don’t feel like cooking tonight; too much grocery shopping, maybe. What do you say to KFC? Maybe Friday’s? Then we’ll come back in time for American Idol.”

I managed a ‘sure’ and Mike said ‘cool’ and we went into high gear without another word. We grabbed coats and I stuffed a paperback in my pocket and we got in the car. Mom put her finger to her lips and pointed at the dash, indicating that the car might be bugged. The only thing she said was ‘Let’s try Friday’s’. TGIFriday’s restaurant occupied a corner of a large mall’s parking lot. We parked in front but walked past the entrance, following Mom to a local transit stop. Ten minutes later a bus pulled up and we boarded.

During that ten minutes we were outdoors, in public, and bad guys—as well as good guys monitoring us—would think we were in the restaurant. Mom took the opportunity to tell us that we were ‘going off the map’, leaving the Witness Protection Program as of that afternoon. It was obvious our identities and location had been discovered, and it could only have come from within the program. There still was a leak, and we were alive only because Mike wanted to work on his Mozart.

Now we were truly on the run, and Mom was in control. For some reason, I immediately felt safer and more sure of our destinies. Things would get weird, but we’d already experienced weirdness. We could take it.

End of Part 1