Among the Enemy

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Three days passed before Matthias got any sort of answer to his note. He spent the time figuring out the brand-new headphones and shiny, state'of-the'art tape recorder the commander had given him. All the electronic equipment Matthias had ever used before had been salvaged from trash piles — battered, dented, and just one frayed wire away from not working at all. In fact, none of the equipment had been anything but trash until Percy worked his magic on it, splicing wires, taping cracks.

Matthias wished for just a fraction of Percy's skill. He was going to need it.

When Nina finally palmed a tiny coinlike disk into his hand one night at dinner, he wondered that it came with no directions, no explanations.

"I—," he began.

Nina glared at him.

"That's the best soup we have tonight," she said. "Surely you're not going to complain?"

Matthias got her meaning.

Late that night he sat fiddling with the bug and his tape recorder. The recorder had a radio with it, and if he found the right frequency, he could set the radio to pick up transmissions from the listening device. Couldn't he?

He put the headphones on and began turning the dial of the radio.

"I'm alone," he said aloud, to test the bug. "I miss. . everybody."

Only static crackled in his headphones.

"I miss you," he said again, turning the dial slowly. "I miss you, I miss you, I miss you…."

His headphones still weren't picking up any sound, but he found the soft litany comforting anyhow. He missed Percy and Alia and Samuel. He missed being an innocent little kid looking up to a wise old man who seemed to know everything. He missed playing games with Percy and Alia and curling up with them at night like a litter of puppies. He missed Samuel's kind eyes and Alia's shy grin and Percy's mussed^up hair falling down into his eyes.

"I miss you," he said again, his voice nearly a sob.

Wait — had the sound come out of his headphones this time?

Just then, his door opened. Matthias quickly slid the bug into his pocket. The motion set off a racket in his headphones. He flipped the switch to turn off his radio.

"Are you all right?" the commander asked, poking his head in the door.

"Uh, fine," Matthias lied. "Just listening to my tapes."

He hoped the commander didn't look too closely. The tape recorder was empty.

"I was afraid you might be lonely," the commander said gently.

"I was thinking about. . Tiddy," Matthias said. It was such a struggle to keep an innocent expression on his face as he stared back at the commander. Because he under' stood suddenly: Somehow the commander had heard him saying, "I'm alone… I miss you." But he'd been speaking so softly, and if the walls and doors were too thick for Matthias to hear distinct words from the commander's office, then they were too thick for the commander to hear distinct words from Matthias's room.

Unless Matthias's room was bugged, just as he'd angrily suggested to Nina.

Just as he was planning to do to the commander's room.

Matthias's head fell forward, and he buried his face in his hands. He thought maybe he'd given himself away, but when he peeked out through the cracks between his fingers, the commander was still peering at him sympathetically.

The commander thought he was just in despair over Tiddy.

"Do you want to talk about it?" the commander asked, and he did sound like some kindly old grandfather.

Some kindly old grandfather who sends soldiers out to kill innocent children. Some kindly old grandfather who lets food rot while people starve, Matthias thought.

"I… can't," Matthias murmured. "You tell me… about Tiddy before I met him."

The commander settled into an armchair beside Matthias's bed. He leaned forward, just the way Samuel used to when he told bedtime stories to Matthias, Percy, and Alia. The memory made Matthias ache, and he almost missed the commander's first words.

"Tiddy joined the Population Police when he was just a teenager," the commander said. "Right after the Population Police were formed. Those first few years were. . chaotic. Some doubted we could ever succeed. But Tiddy was always so optimistic, so eager, so loyal. He was assigned to my detail, and we'd be out making our rounds, looking for criminals, and it'd be tense, stressful work, and Tiddy would be cracking jokes, keeping all of our spirits up. . "

Those "criminals," Matthias reminded himself, were children like him. Tiddy had been cracking jokes on the way to killing people.

The commander leaned his head back and stared off dreamily.

"When I was put in charge of our identification pro" gram — did you know that's what I do? — I requested that Tiddy be transferred to my unit. Just because I liked him. I never thought he'd come up with the most brilliant plan of all."

Could Matthias get away with asking what the plan was? Would the commander just tell him, flat out, without Matthias having to eavesdrop at all? Could Matthias believe whatever the commander chose to tell?

Matthias was so busy wondering, he missed his chance. The commander was standing up.

"Here," he said. "I'll show you pictures of Tiddy in the early years."

Matthias slipped out of bed and followed the com' mander into his office. The commander flipped on his desk light, and it made a small oasis of light in the dark, cavernous room. Matthias shivered and leaned in close, looking over the commander's shoulder. Matthias was near enough to count each individual gray hair springing from the commander's scalp.

I could hurt him, Matthias thought, strangely. Even kill him. Now, when he's not looking. When he trusts me. . Would Nina want me to do that?

Matthias trembled at the thought, at the evilness that seemed to lurk all around him in the dark of the commander's office.

'Are you cold?" the commander asked. "Here."

He got up, went into Matthias's bedroom, and returned with the blanket from Matthias's bed. He tucked it around Matthias's shoulders, then sat back down and pulled an envelope from his desk.

"This is Tiddy at his commissioning ceremony," the commander said, holding out a picture of a very young Tiddy looking very formal. 'And afterward," he added. The next photo showed Tiddy in the center of a group of laughing young men, all tossing their caps into the sky. They didn't look like soldiers preparing to go out and kill babies. They looked like young men laughing uproariously, without a single care in the world.

Almost against his will, Matthias drew in closer, hyp-notized by each successive photo of the life of Population Police Officer Tidwell. But, while he looked, he angled his right side out of the commander's view. He plunged his hand into his pocket, then groped along the underside of the edge of the commander's desk. A tiny lip of wood jutted out over the base of the desk. Would the bug stick there without being spotted?

Matthias couldn't be sure of anything, but he held the bug behind his back and, under the cover of the blanket, peeled off an adhesive strip. Then he stuck the bug under the desk.

Oh, please, Matthias thought, and it was pretty much his first prayer since witnessing Tiddy's death. But those two small words carried so many hopes: He was praying that the bug would stick, that it'd work, that no one would find it, that he'd hear something that would help him and Nina and Trey.

And maybe he was even praying that the laughing Population Police Officer Tidwell somehow now understood the evil he'd done.