by Jeff Gunhus
“I’ll drive. All I want you to do is start filling in the gaps. I want to know everything.”
She expected him to protest, but instead he looked resigned. “I’ll tell you. I promise. We’re an hour out from the farm. Let me tell you there.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think either of us want you driving when you hear what I have to say.”
She wanted to argue the point, but she figured she wouldn’t get anywhere with him. He was going to make his case that he was innocent of killing her mom and betraying his country. She decided if he needed some time to lay it all out, she could wait another hour.
But there was something else bothering her. Something that couldn’t be explained away even if he were able to convince her of his innocence.
“Lucy,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Did you know? You were on the run, but did you know she was sick?”
He looked out the window. “I knew.”
“Your guy on the inside?”
“Yeah, he knew how to reach me.”
Mara fumbled for the bottle of water in the cupholder, her throat suddenly constricted. It was empty, but she still tilted the bottle back anyway, getting a few drops out of it.
“Let’s do this when we get to the farm.”
“She asked for you,” she said. “Toward the end, she asked for you a lot. And Mom. She asked for her, too. Sometimes she was so out of her head from the pain meds that she was sure she’d talked to you.”
“Mara, please.”
“She’d tell me whole conversations. How you’d held her hand. Sang her a song. Told her a story about me and her on adventures together.” She gripped the steering wheel so hard she thought she might crush it. “I played along with it. Why not, right? It was only a matter of time. What was the harm in pretending, right? If it made her feel better?”
“What are you asking?”
“If you were out in the world and you knew, why didn’t you come see her? Why didn’t you come and actually hold her hand? Actually sing to her? Tell her one of your shitty stories? How could you stay away when she needed you?”
“I couldn’t,” he whispered.
Mara’s heart skipped a beat. She hammered the brakes and the truck skidded to a stop on the side of the road. She faced forward, unable to look at him. “What did you say?”
“I was there, Mara. I visited her when I could. When you weren’t there.”
“Bullshit.”
“You decorated the room. Photos of your mom and you. Lots of pictures of Joey. His crayon drawings. The big one from his school that said: Get Well Joey’s Mom.”
“You son of a bitch,” she said, tears streaming now. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“Lucy needed me. I had to be there.”
“I needed you!” she wailed. “Joey needed you. How could you do that?”
He reached out to take her hand, but she batted him away. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare.”
“It was for your own protection,” he said. “If you knew I was there, you’d have either had me arrested or killed me.”
“If you were innocent, you could have told me what was going on.”
“I didn’t know then who was involved. Shit, I still don’t know for sure. It was too dangerous. I wore a disguise. Cleaning crew mostly. You said hi to me a few times. You were always nice to me, even when you were at your saddest.”
She tried to recall any of the cleaning staff, but that whole time was a blur. “You were there?”
“I was. Saw her the day before she passed away. God, I loved her so much, Mara. The both of you.”
Mara wiped her tears and took a breath. “You should have told me.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But the explanation for this, all of this, isn’t easy. And things were already hard enough. You see that, right? I couldn’t . . .”
He faced the window, his shoulders jerking as he tried to contain his emotion. She knew her pain at losing a sister. She realized she’d never stopped to wonder at the pain of losing a daughter. Her worry about Joey gave her a glimpse, and it was terrible.
“I’m glad you were there,” she said. “It meant a lot to her. It’s why I played along when she told me. It made her so happy.”
“Can we drive? Please?” he asked, barely getting the words out. “Can we move on from here?”
Mara pulled back onto the road and considered the question. She thought, for the first time, that it was a real possibility.
* * *
The farmhouse was right out of a movie. A long, gravel road bordered by tall, swaying stalks of corn. Several outbuildings came into view first. A red barn, trimmed with white boards so it looked like a little kid’s version of what a barn ought to look like. Two metal grain silos with a rust patina that matched the scattering of farm equipment beside them. A couple of old plows. A horse trailer. A rusted, vintage John Deere tractor covered with so many weeds that it looked like the fields were strangling it as payback for all the times it’d gone to work on them.
The homestead was a squat two-story house. There was a central door flanked by two windows on either side and matching windows on the top floor, giving the place a sensible symmetry preferred by Midwesterners. A wing extended off the back of the house, probably the kitchen, Mara guessed. The most welcoming feature of the entire property was the wide, covered porch that stretched across the front of the house. A bench and two rocking chairs stood ready for hours of sitting and rumination about the nature of the world and the quirky species that inherited it.
There were livestock pens and a chicken house, but no sign of any animals. It made sense if there was no one to tend the farm, but it gave the place a barren, lifeless feel. Instead of feeling like a home, it felt like visiting a graveyard.
“Who farms this place?” she asked, nodding toward the corn.
“I lease the fields out to a local guy. Corn mostly. Some soybeans. He looks in on the place.”
“Does he know we’re here?” She didn’t like the idea of some old-timer coming around and accidentally getting himself shot for the trouble.
“He knows to stay away for a few days. Thinks I’m a writer who uses this place as a getaway. I’ve been here a bit over the last few years. Never a problem.”
She parked the truck inside the barn, nudged up against some old, moldering hay bales. When she got out she heard movement in the loft above them, dozens of tiny feet. A fat cat looked up from its perch nearby and regarded them with suspicious, disdainful eyes, as if to say, Yeah, I hear ’em. What of it?
“Lazy ass,” she said to it. The cat looked away and went back to sleep.
They took what little gear they had—groceries from a truck stop on the highway, a cooler of beer, a change of clothes, and a bag of guns, explosives, and other toys from Harry Walker—and carried them inside.
There was a room on either side of the entrance and a center staircase that led upstairs. Around the stairs, Mara saw the kitchen in the back. The furniture was sparse and broken in, perhaps left by the previous owners, or picked up from the nearest Goodwill.
“Place gets a nice breeze in the summer,” her dad said. “Bathroom’s over there, one upstairs, too, by the bedrooms.”
Mara dropped her bag on the floor. “This isn’t summer camp. You told me to wait until we got here and I have. Now it’s time to tell me what’s going on. Tell me what really happened with Mom.”
He flipped open the cooler, took out a beer, and cracked it open. She was about to refuse it when he took several gulps of it for himself. He picked up the cooler and headed back to the front door. “Let’s sit down. I’ll tell you what happened. Starting with the meeting the first time I punched Townsend in the face.”
CHAPTER 20
Four years ago
The Oval Office didn’t disappoint.
Scott felt every muscle tighten as he stepped through the French doors leading from the colonnade. The bravado he’d felt seconds before as
he picked up the president’s cigarette butt and shared a look with the Secret Service agent on duty was gone. The immensity of the office of the president hit him over the head like a shovel.
He’d heard the Oval Office referred to as the greatest home court advantage in the world, and he finally understood what that meant. Although he’d seen the room so often from live shots in the White House, not to mention in TV and movies, stepping into that hallowed space impacted him more than he imagined it would.
He walked past the Resolute desk, a gift from Queen Victoria, made from wood from the Arctic exploration ship of the same name. Unable to help himself, he reached out and touched the carved surface, hesitating slightly to sense the weight of history in the room.
“Have a seat,” Hawthorn said.
Scott refocused and collected himself. “Thank you.” He crossed to one of the twin couches that faced each other by the fireplace. He waited for the president to sit on one of the wing-backed chairs first and then followed suit.
“Scott, the president wanted to be here when we discussed what I have to tell you. I would have preferred to do this just between the two of us . . .” He paused and looked at Townsend. The president was stone-faced, staring at Scott, sizing him up.
“It’s not like you to dance around something,” Scott said, feeling a pit open in his stomach. Whatever was coming couldn’t be good.
“No, it’s not,” the president grumbled.
Hawthorn wrung his hands. Scott watched them closely. They had a basic sign language worked out, for use if an agent was captured and held hostage. If the operative was filmed for ransom or propaganda, they could signal messages without their captors knowing.
But there was no message. Besides the obvious one that Hawthorn was nervous.
“Nearly a year ago, we began working a path through Kahlil Al-Saib.”
“I think you had an interaction with Al-Saib recently,” the president said. “At the Four Seasons in Georgetown, if I remember correctly.”
“Yes, sir,” Scott said. He addressed Hawthorn. “I was on Al-Saib for years. Are you saying there was intel about him that wasn’t shared with me?”
“There was something we came across in an intercept, something that we assumed was misinformation. But when a second source corroborated, someone we trusted, we had to look into it.”
“Jesus, Jim. Get to the point, will you?” Townsend said.
A flash of anger crossed Hawthorn’s face. “You said you’d let me do this.”
Townsend waved his hand, a king waving his subject to continue.
“I have to say I agree with the president,” Scott said. “What are you getting at here?”
The hand-wringing again. “We followed the evidence. I did it myself. A small team that I picked personally. I should have recused myself, but I didn’t trust that it wouldn’t leak if I didn’t control the process.”
“Jim, what in the hell are we talking about here?”
“Your wife,” Townsend said, unable to contain himself anymore. “There was a problem with your wife.”
* * *
“I don’t understand,” Scott said.
Hawthorn glared at Townsend, but softened as he turned to face Scott. He placed a hand on a folder on the table between them. “Wendy was implicated in a series of communiqués. High-level Russian intelligence.”
Scott laughed, incredulous and bitter. “You think Wendy’s a Russian spy? That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s worse than that. The Russians were hunting her,” Hawthorn explained.
“If they were after her it was because of her work for us.”
“That’s what I was hoping,” Hawthorn said. “But it was soon clear that they knew about her activity for us, and that wasn’t what had them in an uproar. She was working for someone else.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know,” Hawthorn said, sliding the files toward Scott. “But we’re working on it.”
Scott reached for the file, only then noticing that his hands were shaking. He opened the dossier and leafed through it. Phone transcripts. Photos of Wendy meeting with men in parks. Computer screenshots. It was impossible to distill the information into anything usable at a glance, but the sheer abundance of it told him what he needed to know. This was no casual accusation. But it didn’t matter. They were talking about his wife.
“You’re wrong,” he said.
“I wish we were,” Hawthorn said. “At every point, I tried to twist the information to excuse her behavior. But it’s all there. Off-book meetings with known operatives from China, Russia, France. Lies in her official record of her movements to cover them up. A virus inserted into her phone captured encrypted transmissions that our techs can’t break. The encryption signature is unlike anything we’ve seen from any intelligence group we’ve run up against.”
“Show him the readout,” Townsend said.
Hawthorn hesitated. He pulled the second file toward him and opened it up. “This is from six days ago.”
Scott took a paper from him.
Scott stood up, smashed the paper in his fist, and threw it on the floor. “This is bullshit. It’s a setup. Russians have tried to do this before to us.”
“It’s not that,” Hawthorn said.
“I want to see the raw intelligence. I want to talk to the analysts myself. Get them over here.”
“Where’s your wife?” Townsend asked. “Right now, where is she?”
“At a conference. In Boston. World Affairs Council, I think. Left yesterday.”
Townsend snorted a short laugh. Dismissive and smug. Almost enough to make Scott want to take a swing at him. But it was what Hawthorn said next that rocked him.
“I’m sorry, Scott. She boarded a flight at Dulles two hours ago,” Hawthorn said, the sadness clear in voice. “Destination Prague.”
Townsend stood and Hawthorn followed suit. Scott wished he could sit back down. His legs suddenly felt a lot less stable than they had seconds before. He couldn’t think straight. The room’s walls seemed suddenly taller, like the room was stretching higher. The walls throbbed in time with the piercing headache that had started behind his right eye.
None of this could be true. Out of all the things that were wrong in the world, Wendy was the one good thing. Her and the kids, but they’d come from her, too. Everything he believed in, everything he valued, was wrapped around her. Hawthorn had to have it wrong. There had to be an explanation.
“I know this is a lot to take in,” Hawthorn said. “But we don’t have much time to make our next move here.”
Scott looked at him and the movement sent him a little off-balance. He reached out to the sofa to steady himself.
Townsend was right in front of him when he said exactly the wrong thing. He let out another of his smug, snorting laughs and said, “You look like a man who just found out his wife is a treasonous, lying whore who sold out her country. I just wonder whether you’re just as dirty as she is.”
Scott’s fist flew without even the barest hint of hesitation.
It connected with Townsend’s face right under his left eye.
The man dropped to the floor. A result that saved the right side of his face from a punishing left hook that glanced harmlessly off the top of his head as he fell.
“Enough!” Hawthorn yelled, jumping in between the two men. He shoved Scott in the chest. “Out, now.”
Scott towered over the president as he crawled back to his feet. “How dare you?”
Townsend stammered. “I could have you locked up for the rest of your life for that.”
“On what charge? Hitting an asshole? Three-fourths of the country would throw me a parade.”
Hawthorn held him by the arm and neck, steering him toward the door like a perp being put into a squad car. He allowed himself to be pushed along and through the door into the small office where the president’s secretary sat.
Townsend shouted behind them, “Get him out of here!”
But Scot
t barely heard him. All he could think about was his wife. And how fast he could get on a plane to Prague.
CHAPTER 21
“This isn’t true,” she said. “This is some kind of sick manipulation.”
Her dad didn’t argue. He didn’t say a word. With a beer in his hand, he scanned the cornfield like he was searching for something hidden there that he’d once lost. Not the steely-eyed look of an operative seeking out danger, more the distant gaze of an old man seeing memories mixed in with the landscape. A home movie reel playing inside his mind’s eye while the real world passed by unnoticed.
“Tell me it’s not true,” she whispered. “That that’s why you were in Prague with her the night she died. To prove that what they said was a lie.” She pulled in a shuddering breath, wrapping her arms around herself. “Or did you go there and find out it was true? And that’s why . . . that’s why you killed her? Because you found out Hawthorn was right.”
“I didn’t kill her,” he whispered, taking a long drink of his beer. “Not the way you think anyway.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean? What happened in Prague?”
He didn’t respond, lost again somewhere in his own head.
“Hawthorn’s in on this,” she said, finding an edge to hold on to. “He’s the one who recruited me to kill you. He abducted Joey. If he’s in on it, he must have steered you wrong with the information on Mom. He was the mole on the inside, not her.”
“It’s not that easy, Mara,” he said. “I wish it was.”
“You know more than you’re telling me. I can see it in your eyes,” she said. “You can’t do this to me. Not after everything else. You can’t tell me only that much about Mom and then just . . . just . . .”
She wiped away tears, her memory flooding with images of her mom. Kind, gentle. Her comforting fingers stroking her hair. Soft words of encouragement that were always on the edge of her mind, whispering to her whenever she was scared or nervous. Even when she was mad at her, there was always an undercurrent of wanting her to be better, wanting her to learn from whatever mistake she’d made so she could be stronger.