A woman in a trench coat stood across the street, seemingly watching the school. There was something about her stance, alert, vigilant, that reminded him of his father. "Who's that?" He asked, pointing. Ethan squinted through the glass.
"Doing for someone, but as Malik continued to watch, the woman raised what looked like a small camera and took several photos of the school building. Before walking away with purposeful strides." That afternoon, as Jonathan drove him home from school, Malik found himself studying his father with new curiosity. There were things about Jonathan that had always seemed ordinary. His modest clothes, his quiet demeanor, the way he never boasted about himself.
But other things suddenly stood out as unusual. The late night phone calls, the black SUVs, the way he carefully checked their surroundings when they were in public places. Dad," Malik ventured. "What exactly do you do at the Pentagon?" Jonathan's eyes remained fixed on the road.
"You know, I work in security operations, but what does that mean? What do you actually do every day?" A slight smile crossed Jonathan's face. "Lots of meetings, lots of reports, not very exciting stuff." "Then why are there people watching our house sometimes?"
Malik pressed. Jonathan's smile faded. What makes you think someone's watching our house? I saw them last night and sometimes there are cars parked across the street with people just sitting in them. They never get out.
After a long pause, Jonathan said, "Some things are safer if you don't know too much about them." Malik, that's not just me trying to avoid your questions. It's the truth. But why would it be dangerous for me to know what you do? Malik persisted.
I didn't say dangerous, Jonathan corrected gently. I said safer. There's a difference. Before Malik could ask another question, his school tablet sitting on his lap suddenly lit up with an alert. A string of random characters flashed across the screen, then disappeared as quickly as it had come.
What was that? Jonathan asked sharply, having glimpsed the strange text. I don't know, Malik said bewildered. Some weird message just popped up and then vanished. Jonathan's hand tightened on the steering wheel.
Let me see your tablet when we get home. Once they arrived, Jonathan spent nearly an hour examining Malik's tablet, running what looked like diagnostic programs from his own laptop. Finally, he handed the device back. "Everything seems normal now," he said, though the crease between his eyebrows suggested otherwise. "But Malik, listened to me carefully.
If anything unusual happens at school, anything at all, I want you to call me immediately. Understand? Malik nodded, increasingly confused by his father's intensity. Is something wrong, Dad? Jonathan rested, his hands on Malik's shoulders, looking him directly in the eyes.
Probably not, but I'd rather be overly cautious than not cautious enough. The next day at school, Miss Anderson seemed determined to continue Malik's humiliation. "As they discussed famous government buildings in Washington, DC," she pointedly called on him when they reached the Pentagon. "Malik, since your father supposedly works there," she said with a smirk, "Perhaps you can tell us something about the Pentagon that isn't in our textbooks." The class went quiet, most students grinning in anticipation of another embarrassing moment, but Malik had spent the evening reading everything he could find about the Pentagon, determined not to be caught off guard.