by Shane Kuhn
While they stabilize him, I go out to the street, looking for people who might be looking for us. If anyone survived the blast at Marcus’s house, they will come here to the only real hospital in a hundred miles. After scanning the streets on each side of the hospital, I see nothing and go back to Marcus’s room. He’s asleep at first but wakes up when I turn on the TV to see if we’re all over the six o’clock news. Nothing. I guess gun battles are considered family entertainment in this part of the world. I can tell Marcus is in a lot of pain, so I try to keep him talking.
“Tell me more about my mother.”
“What, now that you know she was a spy?” He laughs. “Wasn’t good enough when she was a junkie?”
We both laugh.
“What can I say? I’m a fucking snob.”
“Yeah, I hated playing all that junkie crap. I’m just glad, and lucky, that you didn’t go ballistic and tell me to fuck off and die.”
“Who am I to judge?”
We both break up laughing like crazy. Marcus starts coughing, and we need to take it down a notch. I am watching his blood pressure. It’s getting low. I need for him to stay awake a little longer, at least until the transfusion is done.
“She was pretty incredible. No offense, but I never wanted kids. I didn’t think it was the best environment to bring them up in. . . .”
More laughter. You can’t help it.
“She told me if we didn’t have children our lives would be totally meaningless. Otherwise, why would she want to be married to such a disagreeable old bastard?”
“She makes a good point.”
“Yeah. As soon as she got pregnant, it all just clicked in my head. And in my . . . heart.”
He fights back the tears and wins but not before I see the depth of emotion he has always felt for her and, as weird as it is to say, for me.
“Had you picked a name?”
Here come the tears again.
“We can talk about something else. It’s okay.”
“No. Give me a minute.”
He takes a beat to gather himself. Then he laughs.
“We didn’t start well. Your mom suggested Homer.”
“What? Good Lord.”
“Then I made it worse and suggested Titus.”
“Jesus, humanities nerds.”
“Yeah. We met at Yale. So I guess we were a couple of nerds.”
“Yale, huh? Think they would take me as legacy?”
“Sure, if my identity hadn’t been erased by the NSA.”
Laughter again.
“Then we finally settled. We both agreed that we were not creative types and naming a person for the rest of his or her life was fairly important. So, we decided to use a family name.”
Pause for Marcus to collect himself again.
“Marcus?”
He nods.
“That’s not a cover name?”
“No. It’s my real name. The irony is that after I was disavowed, I realized the best possible identity for me to hide under was my given name. Marcus Hunter had been deleted from all government databases when they gave me my cover name, so it was totally clean.”
“It’s a good name.”
“Damn right. My great-grandfather—your great-great-grandfather—was a World War I hero, and his name was Marcus. He was a blood-and-guts son of a bitch, and that’s why my dad gave me the name.”
“I like it. John is officially dead. Nice to meet you. My name is Marcus.”
I offer him my hand. We shake. I can see that this makes him proud and very happy.
“It’s a good name. You wear it well,” he says, beaming.
“I look just like you. Got gypped on the height though.”
“Being tall in your line of work is not such a good thing anyway.”
“My line of work. That’s all over now.”
“You got money?”
“Lots.”
“Then you can do whatever you want. The world is your oyster.”
“True. I just don’t know what I want, you know?”
“You’ll figure it out. Shit, compared to what you’ve been doing, the outside world is a piece of cake. It’s like Keith David says to Charlie Sheen in Platoon, ‘All you got to do is make it out of here. It’s all gravy, every day the rest of your life, gravy.’ ”
“You like movies?”
“Obsessed with them.”
“Sounds familiar.”
We both laugh.
“What about her?” he asks.
“Who?”
“You know who I’m talking about. The blond nightmare with the machine gun. She couldn’t decide if she came all this way to kill you or have your kids.”
“Alice? She’s dead. At least to me.”
“Seems like a loose end for you, then. Might want to snip it.”
“Yeah. Now that Bob’s gone, she might go dark.”
“You never know. Better safe than sorry.”
I don’t want to talk about her. Not now. Not ever. I choose to remember her as the bloated murder doll I grieved in New York.
“Tell me more about Mom.”
We talk for a few hours about my mother, Penny. Like Marcus, she was a classic overachiever with many degrees and a very high IQ. But what strikes me most about her is her empathy, the exact thing I was lacking to the point where I became a good candidate to be a cold-blooded assassin. Whenever they were stationed in some godforsaken shit hole somewhere in the world, she would always take the time to help out its poverty-stricken people. Marcus thought it was ironic that the more she saw disadvantaged children and the horrors they endured, the more she wanted children of her own. I wonder if she would think it was ironic that I became one of those disadvantaged children. Marcus says it would have broken her heart. He gives me a photo of her, stained with blood, of course. She’s standing by the ocean with a bump in her belly, looking like she doesn’t have a care in the world. She’s holding someone’s hand, but that person is covered in blood. It’s the photo the social worker had told me about years ago. And, of course, the person holding her hand is Marcus.
43
* * *
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY IT.”
I doze off midsentence sometime around 3:00 A.M. and dream about my mother. The beach photo animates to life, and she and Marcus are walking, talking to her belly, telling me how good it’s going to be, and calling me Marcus. When I wake up, Marcus is sitting up in bed, staring intently at the full moon outside. He looks very pale but his heart monitor looks good and his pulse is strong. Then I notice that he has put his pulse and pressure monitors on my fingers.
“Marcus. What’s going on?”
“That’s my last moon, kid. It’s a good one.”
“No. Let me get the doctors.”
I start to get up, but he puts his hand gently on my arm.
“I’ll be gone by the time you get back.”
“I’m not going to let you die.”
“You’re not letting me die, son. I’m just dying. And it’s okay.”
“No.”
I can’t speak. The words won’t come. It’s like I’m still in the dream and I’m walking underwater. I can barely see, my eyes are so swollen with tears and agony. I am back in that moment when I killed Mickey and Mallory. I am the jumper, falling but wanting to stop myself, to defy gravity, to go back to the ledge, run home, and tell my father, whom I have never known, that I love him.
“I know.”
“What?” I choke.
“I know how you feel about me. You don’t have to say it. From the first time I saw you yesterday, as the man you are, I knew that nothing, not even time, ever really came between us.”
“This was the only thing I’ve ever wanted. I’ve waited . . .”
“And it was worth the wait.”
“But now I have nothing.”
“That isn’t true. I want you to know something. Everything you’ve done. None of it is you. You did what was necessary to survive. Not just to save yo
ur body, but to save your mind.”
He lies down on his pillow, the full moon still reflected in his tear-filled eyes, a smile on his kind, paternal face. Seeing that smile brings about the first feeling of peace I have ever known. He takes my hand.
“Everything that came with that survival, the violence and ultimately the betrayal, it all brought you right here. It brought you to me. Even Bob and all of his bullshit brought you to me. And now you can be who you really are.”
“I won’t . . . let go.”
“Never. We will never . . .”
He is gone. His last breath sounds like a gentle sigh. The full moon outside is shrouded in clouds, and his room goes dark.
44
* * *
THE LEDGE
Five weeks later. This is my last entry. I am not in Europe, basking in the glow of my retirement. I was there for a month. I had settled on Prague and was about to go under for my facial reconstruction surgery when I pulled the IVs out of my arm and walked out of the hospital with my ass sticking out of the back of my gown. As I walked, feeling the smooth cobblestones on my feet, my mind never felt clearer. Over and over again, I could hear my own voice saying, out loud and in my head—
“I am Marcus.”
Not John. Not the man that playing-it-safe was about to make me become. I am Marcus. And I will not destroy the only thing that reminds me of where I came from. I want to look at it in the mirror every day.
Now I am in New Hampshire in the middle of winter, driving through one of the worst blizzards on record. I feel like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man as my car slides all over the road. I know that I can trust no one. I know that death is around every corner, the smiling friend that invites me in for a hot cup of coffee to get out of the cold.
Is it safe?
The answer to that question doesn’t matter to me. Not anymore. In fact, there is only one thing left in this world that matters to me and I am looking for it in a whiteout, a frozen landscape that is waiting to devour me if it can get its icy fingers under my skin. In the distance, through the four-inch circle on my windshield that is not covered in frost, I see it. It’s a cabin in the middle of nowhere. The perfect place to disappear.
When I get close, I hide the car in a grove of trees and walk up. I make certain not to make any fresh footprints in the snow in the front of the cabin. Instead I approach from the back, concealing my tracks in the powdery snow with a pine bough. It’s so cold I can feel the moisture in my nose and eyes freeze every time the wind blows.
I enter through the back door. It’s dark and bitter cold inside. I sit in a chair, cover myself with a blanket, and wait. After an hour or so, I hear tires crunching in the snow out front, followed by the tread of boots coming up the steps. The door opens.
Alice walks in.
She’s carrying a bag of groceries. I say hello by shooting her in the shoulder with my Walther P22. The groceries go flying and she falls back onto her butt, clutching the wound. She goes for her gun but then sees it’s me and thinks better of it. Now I have her full attention.
“John? What the fuck are you doing here?”
“It’s Marcus now. After my father. Actually he suggested I come. Take care of a loose end.”
“Do you think I’d be up here if I was still after you?”
“You’re up here because you’re working a target. Based on the surroundings, my guess is it’s someone in intelligence. CIA. Rogue. About five foot ten, a hundred and forty-five pounds. Josef Ricard. Am I getting warmer?”
“What have you done?”
“I told him to get the fuck out of Dodge before he gets his brains splattered all over Robert Frost country. I told him that his lovely assistant is really a cold-blooded killer who is using him to get close to his boss so that she can cut his throat with a Tanto knife—Yakuza style, of course.”
“Congratulations. Now that you’ve destroyed my career, please say something cryptic about tying up loose ends and put me out of my misery.”
“You’re not a loose end, Alice. I am.”
“Now you’re making no sense.”
“Neither did my father when he suggested I come here. But then I started thinking about it, and it made perfect sense. He knew that I could never go on with my life if I didn’t know.”
“Know what?”
I set my gun on the floor.
“I love you, Alice.”
I kick my gun across the floor, well out of my reach.
“All I need to know is if you love me.”
I roll the box with the Harry Winston ring across the floor, within her reach. She just looks at me, waiting for the punch line.
“You’re fucking crazy. You know that?”
“Not anymore.”
She pulls her gun and levels it at me.
“I don’t love you,” she says defiantly. “And I don’t see how you could possibly love me.”
“Believe me, if I could walk away from this, or better yet, put a fucking bullet in your head, I would. But I know who I am now. And I know that you’re part of that.”
“No, John. I’m not.”
“Then pull the trigger,” I say, ready for anything. I can hit the water now. And all of me can disintegrate into the depths.
She is frozen in this moment, completely torn between her true self and the put-on persona that fell in love with me.
“I can’t do it.”
“Just squeeze.”
“I’m not talking about killing you. I’m talking about what happens if I don’t kill you. What you want. I can’t do it.” She fights the tears that are now rolling down her cheeks, mocking her bravado.
“Neither can I. But I’m willing to die trying.”
As we sit there staring at each other, wondering what to do next and thinking for ourselves for the first time, I think back to my first week of training. After Bob got me out of juvie, he took me to a cabin in the woods that was a lot like this one, made me a hot meal, and sent me to bed. It was the best night’s sleep I’d had in years. But when I woke up in the morning, he was gone. At first I thought he had just gone out for supplies. Then the bullets came smashing through the windows, obliterating everything in the cabin. I spent the next three days doing everything I could to survive. When I tried to hide in the cabin, Bob burned it to the ground. When I tried to run, he sent dogs to hunt me down. When I tried to fight, he scorched the earth around me with bullets and explosives.
On the third day, as I cowered behind a rock, half-starved, frostbitten, burned, bloody, and dehydrated, I screamed that I gave up, that he could kill me if he wanted. In fact, I begged for death. That’s when Bob walked up and sat me up against the rock. Instead of killing me, he gave me a drink of water, covered me with his jacket, and told me I was ready. He saw the state of complete confusion on my face and explained that, until I was fully prepared to die, I would never be a true predator.
It was this statement that made me what I was at HR. And it’s this statement that has made me what I am now. I’m not a predator. I’m Marcus Hunter. Who are you?
Acknowledgments
This book exists because of the guts and genius of Sarah Knight; the rock-and-roll soul of Hannah Brown Gordon; the help-you-hide-a-body guidance of Brad Mendelsohn; the Shaolin white eyebrow–style kung fu leadership of Marysue Rucci and Jonathan Karp; the earth-shattering love and support of Amanda D. M. Kuhn, Skoogy D, K Bear, Jo Mama Kuhn (best mum ever), Ky, Mary B, Big Bri (Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam), Cherry, G. Vance, Suzie, Brad, Silver, and Nixon and Kennedy (canines representing political duality); the Boy Named Sue love and fearless support of my late father, Kenneth Kuhn (the tough got going, Pop); the heartbreaking love and redemption of my beautiful late sisters, Tina and Kara Kuhn (thank you both for making me the twisted maniac I am today); the professional support, dedication, and karaoke skills of Ed Wood, Stéphanie Abou, Kirsten Neuhaus, Rachel Hecht, Molly Lindley, Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich, Elina Vaysbeyn, Kate Gales, and Brad Pearson; and the ink, wood, metal, an
d muscle of Simon & Schuster in the United States, Sphere/Little, Brown in the UK, Dumont in Germany, Sonatine in France, Pantagruel in Norway, and Alnari in Serbia. A true disciple of life has many deities. These are mine.
About the Author
Shane Kuhn is a writer and filmmaker with twenty years of experience working in the entertainment business and the ad world. In feature film, he has written screenplays for Universal, Paramount, Sony, Fox, and Lionsgate. In the world of independent film, he is one of the original founders of the Slamdance Film Festival and currently serves as an Executive Board member of Slamdance, Inc. A shameless product pusher in the ad world, he has worked as a copywriter, creative director, and broadcast video director and producer for several notable brands and charitable organizations. As a college baseball player, he threw a fastball in the low 90s, but his career was cut short by a Bull Durham strike zone. The Intern’s Handbook is his first novel. He lives with his wife and family in a bi-coastal/mountain migration pattern that includes Massachusetts, Colorado, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.