by David Pepper
It was time to drop any airs.
“Truth is, I’m from a small town myself. Lived in Ohio most of my life. I feel a lot more at home in a real place like this than in the big city. So, whatever the reason, it’s damn nice to be here.”
She nodded. “I moved back for the same reason. It’s slower going for sure, but I’m good with that. And it’s been a much better place to raise my son.”
She was getting to me. Her ring finger, I saw, was empty. Like me, she’d likely toiled through the challenge of single parenthood.
“I know the feeling. My son, Scott, is out in California kicking ass, and I’m convinced our days back in Youngstown are the main reason why.”
She leaned toward me, brushing her wavy, thick locks away from her olive eyes. “I’m sure his dad had something to do with his success.” Her tone had lightened.
“Hardly. I’m impressed he overcame my deeply flawed genes.”
“Ha! That’s how I always felt. And now my Hank is about to graduate from med school.”
“Now, that’s impressive. Well done, Mom.” I lifted my almost empty bottle in front of me. “Here’s to overachieving kids making their parents look good.”
We talked a while longer. Turned out Rhonda and I had a lot in common. Varsity athletes in college. Dysfunctional early marriages that had produced messy divorces but impressive sons. If single fatherhood had added speed bumps to my path as a journalist, single motherhood had cut short her sports medicine career. And we’d both endured the doldrums of post-divorce dating life. Of course, I left out a lot, especially my recent career implosion.
“You know something?” Rhonda asked as I closed out my tab.
“What’s that?”
“A lot of assholes come through here.”
“I bet they do.” I’d seen it all as a bouncer in college, but no one got it worse than the women behind the bar. “Must be a daily occurrence.”
She nodded, a smile lifting the corner of her lips. “And I figured you’d be the biggest asshole of all.”
I feigned a frown but knew enough TV personalities to understand why she’d assume that.
“But you weren’t even close!”
I couldn’t help but laugh with her. “That’s a real ego boost. Thank you.”
An awkward silence passed. She smiled again. “I get off in an hour. Any interest in meeting up?”
If I’d stopped at two beers, maybe I would’ve declined. But I was well past that, enjoying our rapport, feeling liberated. So why not keep it going?
“Can I borrow that pen?”
She tossed a black plastic pen across the bar’s worn countertop. I removed a business card from my wallet, crossed out the official email and work number, and scrawled my personal cell phone number on the top. As Rhonda watched out of the corner of her eye, I laid the card back on the bar, next to the unsigned credit card receipt.
As seconds passed, my stomach muscles fluttered. My body tensed.
I stared back down at the card. The Republic News logo, my name, my scrawled number. I lifted the card back up, squeezing it by its edges. I’d purposely left the impression that I still worked there, something she’d probably already seen through. If not, she’d figure it out quickly.
I thought about Alex. Weeks ago I’d been on the verge of proposing. Now here I was, scribbling my number on a business card for a complete stranger.
I put the card back in my wallet. I reached for the black pen again, signed the credit card slip, and walked out of the bar.
* * *
• • •
The chimes on my iPhone rang for what seemed like an hour. I’d slept for some fraction of the night, but it didn’t feel like it now. In fact, this was one of those rough mornings that had prompted me to switch my ringer to chimes to begin with—far easier on hangovers than the blaring truck horn I’d used for years. But the pain would be coming soon.
I opened my eyes.
The light in the room bored into my head like a drill bit. Staring straight up, flat on my back, I squinted to bring into focus the blurry patterns of the stucco ceiling.
Concentrating, I reconstructed my bearings. Days Inn. First stop in Wisconsin. Pleasant Field—no . . . Pleasant Prairie. Two and a half hours from Appleton.
Moments of the night came back to me. The Yuenglings. Bridget Turner. The bar talk. The smile. More Yuenglings. The card.
Using my elbows as crutches, I lifted myself to a seated position, then pivoted to my left, tossing my legs over the side of the bare mattress. Even small movements amped up the throbbing in the front half of my skull, a hammer pounding against my temples from the inside. My mouth was dry, the back of my throat pinched terribly tight. I labored just to swallow. When I did, I tasted stale beer. I nearly gagged, but a quick cough headed it off. Recent practice made perfect.
I must’ve jumped in bed quickly, because my clothes were strewn across the floor. But it was only when I picked up my phone that I discovered the one other thing I’d done before falling asleep.
I’d texted her at 11:40 p.m.
Alex, you there?
Alex Fischer was still back in Washington. Still at Republic. Seeing Bridget Turner, or the near miss with Rhonda, or both, must’ve triggered my outreach to the woman whose ring I had sized only eight weeks ago.
Alex, I’d written again at 11:48 p.m. I miss you.
Eleven fifty-four p.m. My final text. No response.
“Way to go, Romeo,” I muttered to myself, shaking my head. “Move the hell on.”
My temples flared again as I stood up and walked into the small bathroom. I downed a glass of water, chased it with a second, then stepped into the shower for ten ice-cold minutes.
* * *
• • •
Heading north from Pleasant Prairie, my hopes for a bucolic Wisconsin drive faded fast: Milwaukee-area construction proved as aggravating as Chicago’s, mountains of gravel stacked along the highway for miles. Past Milwaukee the road finally opened up, but fireworks, adult stores, and billboards promoting both of those things dotted the route. And despite three Tylenols, two cups of Bob Evans black coffee, and four bottles of water, it wasn’t until I hit Fond du Lac, on the southern tip of Lake Winnebago, that my headache eased.
Like the texts to Alex, every mile I traveled provided an unwelcome reminder of how far I’d fallen. A desperate drive—from the cobblestone streets of Georgetown to the tree-lined boulevards of Appleton by way of Youngstown—for a long shot of a story.
But as I passed Oshkosh, I reminded myself that it was my only lead left. And in the news business, once you’re out of a job, the leads quickly run dry.
If I was going to claw myself back to professional relevance, this Hail Mary was all I had.
CHAPTER 2
APPLETON, WISCONSIN
Tori Justice groaned through every minute of her shower.
The warm water wasn’t able to assuage the fresh bruises forming on her body. Concentric circles of dark purple, blue, and yellow were settling in on her right thigh, right triceps, and left ankle, near where last week’s bruises were fading. Although not discolored, the ribs on her right side also ached, making every movement hurt, coughs especially. And the hair-thin green and red scrape marks slicing up and down her knees stung as soapy water streamed across them.
The morning’s damage to her tall, wiry body was the usual. Still, the club rugby matches were worth it, her one physical rush of the week. Today she’d burst free for three tries, the last one the clincher, making it her best match of the year.
After rugby, Tori’s Saturdays would typically unfold slowly. She’d nurse her sore spots by floating in the fitness complex’s Jacuzzi. Donning sweatpants and a sweatshirt, she’d then grab a donut and coffee before spending hours reading for pleasure or for class. When it was nice out, Lawrence University’s main green or the
banks of the Fox River offered the perfect places to curl up with a book. The brief respite would end at four, when she drove out near the highway to start her evening shift at Cruisers Diner. Serving locals getting off work, Cruisers was a rougher place than the on-campus bars and restaurants, but it paid a good deal more.
This morning, though, she’d skipped her usual routine, limped home, and raced through her shower.
The added pain was worth it. The meeting she’d begged for—begged so many people for—was happening at last. Despite having been told to keep quiet, she’d finally get to tell her story, and to someone who mattered. Someone who could retell it to a far wider audience.
At first she’d had no one to tell. Her lives as student and political aide occupied two separate worlds, so no friends at school would have even gotten it. As for the political side, the small campaign crew had quickly disbanded. And, still gloating from their big win, they wouldn’t welcome her skepticism. She’d be a turncoat, recklessly risking their new jobs.
“Let it go, Tori,” cautioned her closest friend from the campaign, now working a finance post in Milwaukee. “People are going to think you’re nuts. You’ve got a great job lined up if you leave it alone. Why kill that?”
“Because this is a huge deal,” Tori had insisted. “There is no way to explain what happened.”
She’d ignored the advice and gone to the press. She’d first called the political beat writer of every major paper in Wisconsin. She’d also tracked down the handful of columnists who still covered politics and reached out to the television reporters who handled campaigns for their stations. Few had returned her repeated calls, and those who had called hadn’t bitten. At her only in-person meeting, over coffee, the columnist had worked harder at scoring a date than hearing her theory. The biggest problem was that the election had never felt important to them in the first place. And as a student and part-time campaign worker, she certainly didn’t matter.
When the new semester began, she returned to the routine of a full-time, debt-ridden grad student with two part-time jobs. But it continued to nag her. And when her former boss took his oath of office, guilt got the best of her.
And then she’d seen him on TV. Took note of his no-bullshit manner. As she did with everything in life, she’d Googled him. A former newspaper reporter with Midwestern sensibilities, he had single-handedly uncovered a plot to rig American congressional elections, digging into details everyone else had overlooked. They’d dismissed him, then attacked him, yet he’d persisted. And he’d ultimately proven them wrong.
He would get it.
So she’d called. She’d left him the first message less than two months earlier and had called once a week since. She’d also sent a bunch of emails and dropped some messages over Facebook. But he’d never responded. Not a surprise, given how busy he had to be, but still a disappointment.
And then a week ago he’d called her back. Jack Sharpe.
She hopped out of the shower, wrapped herself in a towel, and scrubbed her hands in the sink with a fresh bar of soap.
In less than an hour she’d finally get to tell her story.
CHAPTER 3
ORVIETO, ITALY
The black Mercedes sedan wound its way up the steep road into Orvieto, a town perched high atop the remnant of an ancient volcanic explosion. Sitting in the passenger seat, lost in thought, Aleksandr Sanadze stared through the tinted window and up at the ornate duomo soaring far above. Each bend of the curved road offered a different view of the magnificent cathedral, from the white pillars stretching into the sky to the three triangular gables glimmering in gold.
Sanadze kept replaying the decision in his mind. And the final conversation confirming it.
“Oleg,” he’d said on the phone yesterday afternoon, principal to principal, after days of stewing. “I am honored by your invitation, but I cannot participate. And I will not change my mind.”
No argument had followed. Only a dial tone.
He was rejecting an enormous opportunity. A chance to enter the largest market in the world, one he’d been unable to penetrate, and one in desperate need of his cheap copper. It would take a few years, but ultimately the payoff would be there. And the new syndicate’s strategy was brilliant: if the politics of America made its marketplace impenetrable, fix the politics and the opportunity would follow.
Declining the offer and pulling out of the long-planned Portofino meeting would cost him dearly. Which was why today he’d driven here instead, to a place that would fortify his decision.
The hill towns of Umbria always brought Sanadze home. The occasional rocky hilltop jutting up from vast plains below. The gray vestiges of antiquity dotting the landscape. The fortresses and cathedrals, giant sentries keeping watch. As a child, as Sanadze ran the streets of Gori, in central Georgia, a similar fortress had towered over him and his family. He’d always felt secure in its shadow.
He hadn’t been back to his hometown in years, and he longed to erase the last visit from his memory. He’d driven in under the cover of darkness only days after a cluster bomb had exploded in the town’s central square, creating international news by blowing several journalists and two dozen civilians to bits. One of the bomblets exploded only feet from his seventy-two-year-old mother as she was buying bread and vegetables at the market. He buried her in a closed casket—her fragments no longer recognizable as human flesh. Still, with his wealth, he provided the most ostentatious send-off in Gori since the funeral of its native son Joseph Stalin.
As a kid, Sanadze had never understood the tensions between Russians and Georgians, so he’d ignored them. Yes, Russians made jokes about them: they considered Georgians inferior, his mother had always warned him. But Russians had allowed Stalin to rule over their empire for decades, so things couldn’t be that bad. He’d befriended Georgians and Russians alike in his teens and twenties, and those relationships, hard work, and good timing had allowed him to build his copper mining empire. Close contacts with the Russian government had even allowed him to organize Mother’s funeral despite the hostilities.
But her murder had changed him. Russian troops had detonated the bomb during a short but brutal occupation of his hometown. Such a pointless battle—nothing but Russia exerting its muscle. And his mother, who’d raised five children alone and wouldn’t have harmed a soul unless it was to protect those children, had perished because of it. Looking over her grave at the end of the funeral, Aleksandr Sanadze made a simple vow. He would never work with a Russian again.
He took a deep breath, the tension easing. Seeing Orvieto again, so much like Gori, confirmed he had made the right decision. Yes, what was being offered today at Portofino was lucrative. But it had become clear that taking part meant he’d be beholden to a Russian for the rest of his life. And that he could not do. Not with the vow he’d sworn over his mother’s grave.
A sharp jerk and sudden acceleration jolted him back to the hilly climb.
“Mr. Sanadze, I fear that car is following us.” His driver sounded uncharacteristically worried as he looked in the rearview mirror. Sanadze’s side mirror reflected a large SUV trailing a few feet behind them.
“For how long?”
“He appeared five minutes ago but has come closer in the last minute.”
Sanadze gathered his bearings. They were on the steepest portion of the final hill into Orvieto, at their most vulnerable. Worse, he sat only feet from the edge of a high cliff.
The deep growl of a large engine, followed by the high-pitched squealing of tires, affirmed his driver’s hunch. Within seconds the SUV shot forward and to their left, pulling even with them.
The unflappable Red Army veteran at the wheel responded coolly, jamming his right foot down. The Mercedes accelerated, pulling a car length ahead of the SUV. But seconds later a loud, metallic crunch drowned out all other sound, and the forceful collision twisted the Mercedes counterclockwise. S
anadze glanced to his left to see the SUV bulldozing into their rear left bumper. Moments later the Mercedes stopped perpendicular to the road, tilted sideways.
As his driver struggled to maneuver the damaged car forward, the SUV’s tires squealed once more. The far larger vehicle reversed, then shot forward again, this time smashing into the left front of the Mercedes. The car jolted violently into the air, then back down, spinning clockwise while glass shattered all around them. Sanadze now hung over the cliff’s edge; the car still sat partially on the road, but his seat did not.
Blood pouring from his bald head, his driver pounded on the accelerator. The car shook violently as a loud grating sound came from under the hood, but it didn’t budge.
“Reverse!” Sanadze yelled out, his heart thumping.
As his driver reached for the transmission, the SUV’s engine revved again and its tire treads clawed against the road, nudging the heavy Mercedes farther off the hill’s edge. The driver’s side of the car rose as Sanadze’s side tilted downward. Then the entire car started to slide sideways and down.
The craggy rocks hundreds of feet below portended his fate. His muscles weakened as he glanced up one last time, through a large opening in the shattered front windshield. The grand rose window of Orvieto’s cathedral stared back, offering him a moment to trace a cross from his forehead to his belly, then from his right shoulder to his left.
Seconds later, with the Mercedes sliding off the cliff completely, he saw only blue sky. While his driver screamed out, Sanadze closed his eyes, a numbness overcoming him as his body spiraled down.
Mother had been right. A Georgian should never trust a Russian.
CHAPTER 4
APPLETON, WISCONSIN
Three hours of air-conditioning had fooled me into thinking I’d recovered. But stepping out into the bright sun, in a parking lot less than a mile from the highway, proved me wrong.