“Sometimes those are the same people,” said Flynn.
Gorski slapped his back and gestured him back to the house.
Dusk was upon them when the got back to the house and the sun was coloring the mountains pinks and purples. Gorski made more coffee and then ushered Flynn into the living room. It was a quaint space, room for two reading chairs facing the stove. Gorski wheeled out an ancient radiant oil heater and plugged it in, leaving the stove alone.
Gorski remembered his Legion days as if they were yesterday, and his unit brothers as if they wore his own skin. His unit leader, Jacques Fontaine, had led them to search for the worst of the worst, the terrorists that no one else could find. They hunted unspeakable men and did unspeakable things. He would have followed Jacques Fontaine into the fires of hell. Perhaps he had. But Fontaine had led them out again, and carried his own demons as a result.
Like all of them, Fontaine had something to fear. For him, it was fire. As a unit they never spoke of it, but they always made fires away from their main campsites. They spent so much time in hot places it rarely mattered. He didn’t expect a change of name had changed the man. Or his demons. They certainly hadn’t for Gorski. He left the fire unlit and pulled two blankets from a chest and offered one to Flynn. Then he sat and placed the other blanket across his lap.
“Like a pair of old women,” he said.
Flynn nodded and followed suit. They chatted about old times, and new. About old friends. Gorski told Flynn about the woman in Zakopane that he occasionally saw. They enjoyed some good times, but ultimately he preferred the company of the mountains, and she other humans.
When darkness fell Gorski warmed a pot of soup and some homemade pierogis. They ate at the kitchen table with glasses of water.
“The soup is excellent,” said Flynn. “What do you call it?”
“Czernina,” said Gorski. “Duck blood soup.”
“The Polish name sounds better.”
After dinner Gorski poured himself a vodka. He didn’t offer one to Flynn.
“I think I have Coke around here somewhere,” he said.
Flynn waved him off. “Water’s fine, thanks.”
They returned to the living room and got cozy. It was a long way from sleeping rough in Afghanistan.
“Are you in contact with the others?” asked Flynn.
Gorski shook his head. “Just one. Thorn. And not regularly, and not for some time.”
“I thought you’d all stay in touch.”
“We do. But like the enemy, we felt it safer to build vacuums between us. Colonel Laporte told us nothing about you until months after we left Iraq. The story was you were dead. We didn’t know different so we couldn’t say different.”
“Who asked?”
“People. Here and there. We told them what we knew. Nothing. But we didn’t believe it.”
“You didn’t think I was dead?”
Gorski shook his head. “No. We knew. If you were, the colonel would have told us. The fact he told us nothing said everything. So after the interviews and interrogations, later on, he told us. But he said he would not reveal your whereabouts, even if he knew. That it was best that when we each left, we only knew the location of one other. Cells, like our enemies.”
“And you left the Legion soon after?”
“All of us. Our second five years was up, and the higher ups didn’t really want us there.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You were not responsible. Besides, we were done. They took the fun out of it.”
“They took the fun out of hundred kilometer marches and dehydrated rations?”
“Exactly.”
Gorski moved his feet in circles in front of the radiant heater.
“I meant to ask,” said Flynn. “How did you know I was coming today.”
“Yesterday. You were late. And I heard about General Thoreaux.”
Flynn nodded. “What did you hear?”
“He died in a car accident, possibly a roadside IED.”
“Is that what they called it. How did hear that?”
“I keep up on such things,” said Gorski.
“But you suspected me?”
“It wasn’t an accident. If it was, they would have said so. But they added the maybe an IED bit. If we ever suspected an IED we didn’t fudge it and say it might have been an accident. IED attacks get called terrorism. Unless you’re making the whole thing up.”
They sat in silence again, warming their sock feet against the heater.
“So, my friend,” said Gorski. “Why did you decide to find me now?”
“You didn’t want me to?”
“You’re not my wife. Don’t do semantics with me.”
It wasn’t semantics. What it turned out to be was indecision. Flynn had found Gorski because Colonel Laporte had only shared the location of one other of the team. Alex Gorecki, now Aleksy Gorski, again. And Flynn needed help. Specifically he needed help from Peter Thorn. It wasn’t a question of hierarchy. Theirs had been a flat chain of command. Flynn had been the unit leader, but they made decisions as a team. And if anyone had been second in command, it had been the Pole with whom he was sitting now. If they had met in a bar they probably wouldn’t have even gotten along, let alone become friends. But after they had both been stripped down and built back up by the French Foreign Legion, they were not just friends, but brothers.
And now that Flynn had found his brother he could see that Gorski had found peace. A peace that Flynn himself thought he had found, before it was taken from him. Now he had no choice. His enemies were committed, so must be too. A life of peace was not for him. But it was so for Gorski. He was miles from care, literally and figuratively. Now that Flynn could see his brother he knew that he could not ask Gorski to join him. And if Gorski had found some version of peace, then perhaps Thorn had as well. Perhaps after all, this was Flynn’s burden to carry and not to share.
“I guess I wanted to make sure things were good for you. And I can see they are. I like what you have here.”
“I do, too.”
“So I should leave you to it.” Flynn edged forward in his chair.
“You planning on marching out into the snow in the dark?” Gorski stood and warmed by the radiant heater for a moment. “You’ll stay tonight. I won’t take no for an answer.” He held up his glass. “I’m getting another. Would you like tea?”
Gorski returned with hot tea and another vodka. Both were warming, in their own way.
“I wished it had turned out different,” said Flynn.
“Iraq?” asked Gorski, licking vodka from his lips. “I would have liked to have caught the bad guys. But there are always more bad guys, right?”
Flynn nodded. “Do you miss it? The old days?”
Gorski shook his head. “Not the heat. France didn’t colonize anywhere cold, did you notice that?”
“I don’t think they ever colonized Afghanistan.”
“No one owns that country. Not even the people that live there. If anything, it owns them. I don’t think mankind is welcome there, just tolerated. I don’t miss that at all.” He sipped his vodka rather than taking it in one shot. Flynn wondered if that was the difference between a young buck and a man with plenty of miles under his belt.
“They were goods times, though. I miss the brothers.”
“Me, too,” said Flynn. “Do you have any brothers? Biological, I mean.”
“No. It was just me. You?”
“I had a brother. He died, just before I joined the Legion.”
“Is that why you joined?”
“Part of it, yes. I had planned on joining up in the States, but the chips didn’t fall that way.”
“I wanted to be a cop.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. As it turned out I kind of went the other way. Got in a little trouble. Nothing major. Then another guy I knew said he was going to join the French Foreign Legion. I thought it sounded like an adventure.”
“Do I know the guy?
”
Gorski shook his head. “Only if you have a eidetic memory. He dropped out within the first week.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Basic training at Castelnaudary became like a challenge. I wasn’t going to let those bastards beat me. After that, once we’d done our four months, then I knew I could make it, whatever they threw at me.”
“It was hard, that’s for sure,” said Flynn.
“Hardest thing I ever did. I can say that now.”
Flynn drank his tea and reclined back in the big chair and felt the warmth inside and out. He was tired suddenly. He had been on the move for a couple of months, and this was the most relaxed he has felt since before he had left California.
Gorski saw Flynn sink into his chair and stood.
“You want to bunk there, be my guest, but there is a spare cot. You still rise early?”
“Every day.”
“Me, too. And you haven’t seen a sunrise until you’ve seen one here.”
Chapter Three
The morning was clear and glorious as the dawn lit the peak of Kasprowy Wierch. The valley was a ghostly blue, like looking through tinted glasses. Gorski and Flynn stood on the front porch with coffee and watched the sun come. Flynn’s breath clumped in thick clouds before his face.
Gorski made more coffee and cooked up sausages and eggs. They fell into a comfortable silence. Neither man had ever felt the need to talk unless they had something to say. They washed the breakfast dishes and then returned to sit on the porch and watch the valley awaken. Finally, Gorski spoke.
“So, are you going to tell me, before you go?”
“Tell you what?”
“Why you came.”
“I thought I did.”
“You know you didn’t. You said you wanted to see if I was okay. You could have done that years ago. So why now?”
Flynn watched the mountains do nothing and breathed long and slow.
“What happened?” asked Gorski.
“I thought it was done. The past. But they came back. After all these years, they found me. And they messed with people I cared about.”
Gorski nodded but said nothing.
“I took care of the immediate threat but I knew that it wasn’t over. It would never be over. If they came once, after all this time, they would come again. And I couldn’t sit around and wait for them. If I did that I would lose. Like in the old days. If we let the terrorists come, they win. They do what they do and they win. The only way we ever beat them was by going on the offense. Hunting them down and taking them out. I realized that whoever it was behind this thing now, I had to do the same. Take the battle to them.”
“And you want my help to do that?”
Flynn clasped his hands together between his knees.
“No. I thought I needed to talk to Thorn.”
“And I know where he is.”
“I didn’t know that. But you were the only one I knew how to find.”
So why do you need Thorn?”
“I don’t know, Alex—sorry, Aleksy. I’ve been thinking about the shipment.”
“From Iraq?”
“Yes.”
“You know where it is?”
“No. And the leads I had to find it are gone. But Thorn was the one who got a look inside.”
“He didn’t see anything. I was there. Just booby traps. Radio beacons, lasers, stuff like that. He never had time to check it out properly.”
“Right. So I figured before I even bothered to find it, I needed to know what I was dealing with, as much as I could. But now, I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
Flynn gestured across the valley. “I had peace, of a sort. They took it, and that’s just how it went. But they haven’t done that to you, and I have no reason to believe they have done it to Thorn. So I made a mistake coming here, Aleksy. I mean, I’m glad to see you old friend, but this is not your fight. It’s not Thorn’s and it’s not Manu’s and it’s not Colonel Laporte’s. It’s mine. I’m the one they found and I’m the one they came for, and they made it my fight. But not yours. You’ve done your time and you did your part. Ten years in the Legion is enough for any man.”
“So you’re going after them.”
“I am. There are people I care about, and they will never be safe again. Not until I find who these people are. Not until they know they should have just left me alone.”
“Perhaps I can help,” said Gorski.
“No, my friend. This is not your mission. I have no choice. If I could let it be, I would. I don’t want this fight. But they made it clear, they’re not going to stop. So I have to do this. But they haven’t come for you. You should leave it that way.”
Gorski nodded and stood from his chair. He took a long look across the valley and then turned to Flynn.
“I’ve got something to show you.”
Flynn followed his old comrade back inside the house. Gorski led him into the kitchen and opened a door near the oven. It was a small walk-in pantry: canned goods, flour, pasta. Gorski stepped inside. There was room for only him. Then he bent down and moved a large jar of pickles and pushed something and the rear wall of the pantry cracked open. Gorski pushed the wall open like a door, and then gestured for Flynn to follow.
Gorski stepped down wooden steps into an unfinished basement. It was cold and damp and dark, and Gorski felt for the switch to hit the lights.
The room was somewhere between a forward operating military base and a police investigation room. One stone wall had been covered in cork board, upon which were pinned photographs, maps and index cards with people and place names linked together by red wool. There was a desk with a computer beside which stood a rack of computer servers that were putting out the only warmth in the room. On the other side of the room from the servers were metal shelves that housed large plastic tubs and a rack that held a range of weapons.
“What the hell is this, Aleksy?”
“This is my play room,” he smiled. Then he dropped the smile. He stepped to another radiant heater and flicked it on. “You said there are people you cared about in danger. Tell me what happened.”
Flynn looked around the room. It was familiar to him despite having never seen it before. He had a similar room. In a purpose built bunker, under an outbuilding on a farmstead in the foothills of the Rockies in Colorado. The existence of the room told him a lot.
“The woman I was living with, in San Francisco.” Flynn leaned on the desk. “They tracked me through her. Through something I used to say. A key phrase.”
“What phrase?”
“Même le croque-mitaine ne peut pas cacher éternellement.”
“I remember that. You know that isn’t really a French phrase.”
“I know. It’s more a literal translation of something my father used to say. Even the bogeyman can’t hide forever. She used it in a meeting with some prospective clients, and somehow they used it to link her to me. Then they threatened her.”
“Who threatened her?”
“You remember how in Iraq we thought there we two parties working independently? Well they both came at her. Separately, just like before.”
“And what happened?”
“I finished it. But they weren’t the top of the tree. Nowhere near it. They were like the leaves. The outer reaches. I need to get down into the roots, into wherever this thing lives. Because if I don’t, then no one I knew, know now or ever meet will be safe.”
Flynn looked around the room once more. “But you didn’t tell me everything, either. What happened to you?”
“Let me tell you a story,” Gorski said.
Chapter Four
Three Years Earlier, Lublin, Poland
It was the third letter to his mother that alarmed Aleksy Gorski.
Alex Gorecki had died in a car accident in Russia years before. It wasn’t neat but it was effective, for a time. The end of his French Foreign Legion tenure had been like dying a slow death. The interrogations were nothing to
him. The intelligence guys who were brought in were never allowed to use their full bag of tricks. The military elite in Paris were paranoid about the bad press, even though the Legion troops were usually seen as dispensable. But the final months, when Gorecki, Thorn and Manu were separated and given make-work, were close to unbearable. Gorecki cleaned more latrines than a janitor, and cut more grass than a teenage boy. But they served out their time and got discharged.
It was after that the fun began. There were the two guys in the bar in Bordeaux who tried to resort to unsanctioned interrogation tactics, and the five guys who tracked him to a bedsit in Hamburg. None of those guys came out with any information. Or breath. Colonel Laporte had warned him that using his Legion name was dangerous, but it was who he had been for a decade and it was who he had become. But when a team in St. Petersburg tried to capture him, he decided Alex’s time was up. He stole the team’s Mercedes Benz and died when he crashed into the Zhdanovka River, near the Yubileyny Sports Palace.
Colonel Laporte had prepared his special unit for events such as those that transpired in Iraq. When the hunter is so successful, said Laporte, it is inevitable he becomes the prey. The colonel had provided them each with an introduction to a private bank, and when they found, caught and dispatched terrorists around the world, some of the proceeds found their way into an emergency fund at such a bank.
He had been born Alexsy Gorski, and he took his old name. It was a common enough name in his native Poland. Gorski wasn’t rich, not by the standards of those he suspected were interested in what they thought he knew, and he had no material desires. He roamed for a few years, seeing the world through a different set of eyes.
He didn’t return home but he let his parents know that he was alive and well. After his run-ins with the law as a young man, that was as much as they dared to hope for him. They knew he had served in the military, and that his unit was classified. They didn’t know what that really meant, other than he didn’t want to talk about it when he called.
One for One (John Flynn Thrillers Book 3) Page 4