Liberation Song

by Raelee May Carpenter

  Then one night, she knew it was over. After they’d tucked Aglaya in bed, he settled deep into the sofa and lingered there, still and silent. She knew he was done with whatever it was. And she knew he was ready to talk about it too, because for the first time since they’d met, he was having trouble starting the conversation.

  Finally, she said, “Are you ready to tell me what’s going on with you? What’s wrong with you, with us? I mean, are you trying to dump me?”

  He shook his head. Finally, he opened his mouth to speak. “I read The Idiot.”

  Alex took the words like a hundred-mile slapshot to the solar plexus. And she knew that some part of her deep down always had wanted to be found out, or she never would’ve been so obvious with the names.

  Matt watched her reaction, but he didn’t really seem to know what to do with it, so he just went on with his explanation. “I thought it would be cool, you know. I thought the book you took your daughter’s name from might give me some insight into your feelings for her, so one night, I Googled her name ‘Aglaya’ along with ‘Dostoevsky,’ and I found out which book you had gotten it from. So I ordered it, and it came, and I started reading. It’s a book, so what else would I do with it, right? And I did get insight, a lot more than I thought I would. It was funny because I quickly realized that not only was your daughter’s first name in the book, but also her surname. Weird, right? And the two sisters who were willing to sacrifice their own happiness to make young Aglaya happy? Alexandra and Adelaida. What a coincidence!” He gave Alex more of that uncharacteristic sarcasm, and it was hard for her to take.

  “Matthew, you’ve got to understand—” she started, but he shook his head, and she fell silent immediately.

  “So I figured, well, I’ll finish it. Maybe somewhere along the way it will start to make sense, maybe something will explain the whole confusing mess with you and me. So I read the whole thing, all six hundred plus pages, and you know what? It never did get better. In fact, at the end, it just got a whole lot worse.”

  “I’m sorry, Matthew.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Alexandra Adelaide.”

  “What is your real name?”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Why can’t you just tell me? Two little words that mean nothing, but would change everything for me right now. Because I’m a bit, I don’t know, ‘freaked out’ I think is the technical term, at this moment, Alexandra Adelaide. You know? Because I realized that I don’t know what’s going on here. I’ve fallen in love with you, and I don’t even know who you are!”

  Tears filled Alex’s eyes, but she was strangely hopeful. “You still love me?”

  He sighed, nodded, muttered, “Yeah. Of course. I can’t just turn that off like a light switch. You know that.”

  “Matt, I love you too. I do. It’s just…there are some things I’m not ready to explain right now. Can you understand that?”

  He couldn’t. But he wiped away a tear and shrugged. “I actually really enjoyed the book, though.”

  Alex gave an awkward laugh. “It’s a pretty good book. Too bad he didn’t give it a better ending.”

  “His ending was perfect. Because life isn’t about the end. It’s about the decisions we make beforehand, the way we choose to treat people, hopefully with dignity and compassion. And the way we treat ourselves, how much Grace we choose to accept. That’s real life, right there. ‘The End’ isn’t life. Death’s not life. Grace is life.”

  “Matt, I’m not allowed to share too many of the details, of course, because it is an ongoing case.”

  “I’m not asking for the details; I’m just asking for your name. Your ‘bad guys’ didn’t know what it was, did they?”

  “Of course not; they only knew my cover.”

  He held her eyes. “And I wouldn’t tell anyone anyway. You know that, right?”

  She nodded. “I trust you, Matthew.”

  He threw up his hands. “Then why are you acting like you don’t?”

  “There are other reasons the whole situation is hard for me to discuss. You’ve got to understand that what happened was my fault. I went in there so confident, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I made a mistake, a stupid mistake. And I gave us away. Did you know, have you figured out it was Aggie’s mother that I got killed? Now I’m the one raising that poor girl’s beautiful daughter. And there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wonder what exactly I’d had to prove that I swam out so far over my head.”

  “But that’s what I’m saying. Only you keep changing the subject. You rewrote Dostoevsky’s whole book, his perfect ending, just to change the subject! Because you will only believe that Grace is good if it doesn’t cost itself anything. But that entirely misses the point of it, the essence of what it is, of everything it exists to be. The whole point of Grace is that you don’t deserve it!”

  Alex didn’t understand but only because she didn’t want to. “What are you talking about?” Her tone exploded with frustration—and with fear.

  He frowned and shook his head, looking defeated. For a moment, silence reigned. “What is your real name, sweetheart?”

  “Alexandra Adelaide. It’s my real, legal name, and anyone I was before is dead.”

  “Not to me. And not to you either, I’m guessing, or you wouldn’t be so thoroughly terrified to tell me.”

  “You know, Katya never knew my real name either.”

  “Katya was Aglaya’s mother? That was her name?”

  Alex nodded. “Katya called her daughter ‘Anya’ though. I took her daughter’s name away too.”

  “She’d have wanted her daughter to be safe.”

  “I was a stranger to her. She knew me as Alice Carroll. Through the looking glass. Funny, right? But she opened her soul to me. I knew her. She taught me what hope was. And peace. And Grace. And I thanked her by getting her killed.”

  He shook his head. “Sweetie, things happen, and—”

  He was cut off when her phone rang. Not the phone he’d seen a million times before, with the phone number he and all of Alex’s friends in Los Angeles had. The other phone, with the number only “they” had. There wasn’t any scheduled well-being call with her handler, and they didn’t have any issues to resolve that Alex knew about. She wasn’t waiting for any information at all, so this had to be it. The call.

  The call she’d been waiting for for over four years. “I’m sorry, baby. I need to take this.”

  He nodded and stood up from the couch. “If you want to talk more later, come over. It doesn’t matter what time.”

  Alex turned around to answer the phone. When she turned back, he was gone.

  * * *

  Benedict Beck.

  The caller ID had said “Restricted,” but the voice catapulted back into her memory from years gone by. From another life.

  “Ms. MacIntire, we found Ivanovich.”

  Just that. No “hello.” No “how are ya?”

  After the botched operation in the Shangku jungle, Ivanovich had disappeared too. But not in the same way he had done for over twenty years. Before, whenever the authorities (the ones he couldn’t pay off, anyway) got close, the girls and all the men would disappear. And all their stuff too. They’d leave nothing behind but an empty brothel or compound, one that often burned as they left, sometimes to the ground.

  This time, Ivanovich had left on his own, by himself, in the dark. He took with him nothing but some sort of bag that he probably always had packed for such a contingency. From the looks of it, he might have even left while his men still pursued the young FBI agent and the two little girls through the jungle.

  This time, Ivanovich hadn’t “moved operations” like he always had before.

  This time, he’d gone to ground.

  This time, he was afraid.

  “Where was he?” Aili asked Agent Beck.

  “Some dirty rat hole in St. Petersburg. He was running a subsistence operation out of the back of an unregistered tattoo par
lor. Seriously! His front is a place only patronized by gang members and convicts! ‘How the mighty have fallen,’ right?”

  “And he’s rolling over on Tokan?”

  “No canary has ever sung so sweetly or willingly.”

  “So if Tokan is going to move on his daughter, it will happen now.”

  “That’s why we’re here. Listen, we have to run down—”

  For some reason that surprised Alex. It shouldn’t have. She’d known for over four years how things would play out when it came to it. Maybe she should break it off with Matt; he just got her feeling too… safe. She had to stop Beck’s instructions, make him go back. “Wait. Where are you?”

  “We landed at LAX a few minutes ago, and they brought us a car and some supplies from your local field office. We’re headed your way right now.”Beck sat silently and stared numbly at Aili across the battered table in the tiny, musty room. He had been trying to grasp the importance of what she’d revealed for several minutes now. Finally, he said, “This is big.”

  She nodded.

  “Really…extremely…big.”

  She nodded again.

  “So you think we need to get the baby and the mother out of the brothel? They definitely will help us prove the case.”

  She could only nod. What else?

  “How do you want to do it then? We could get reinforcements, probably, in a couple days, organize a strike force, and—”

  She shook her head adamantly. “No, we can’t. Ivanovich’s men have guns too, and about two dozen child slaves to use as human shields. Don’t think for a second that they’re not above that.”

  “Oh, I know they’re not.”

  “If we go that route, not only will we sustain casualties, probably heavy ones, but we are likely to cause the deaths of many unarmed, innocent kids.”

  “If we got Big Fish, we’d save a lot more kids than are in this one brothel alone.”

  Such pragmatism! Aili had to fight tears. She was being such a girl, and this was the wrong time, place, and situation to be a girl, but she just couldn’t think that way about it. “That can be Plan B, then. But we have to try something else first.”

  Beck watched her for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, Agent, I’m all ears. What’s your Plan A?”

  “We rent them.”

  “Rent them?”

  “The mother, she’s a prostitute, right? We hire her.”

  “But we really need the baby. That’s the important thing. That baby’s DNA.”

  “Ivanovich isn’t a nanny, and it sounds like he pretty much leaves the care of this child up to her. We learned about the existence of the child from a john, remember? She hid the baby in the satchel she took out with her because the child was sick, and she didn’t want to leave her sick baby alone in the compound.”

  “Yeah. For a messed-up kid, she’s a pretty good mom.”

  “Well, if we buy her for an out date, overnight, maybe she can somehow hide the infant in her luggage. Then we swoop in and get them both as far away as we can before he realizes that the infant is gone.”

  She could tell Beck was skeptical of her plan, and that made her nervous. He wasn’t the biggest gambler in the world. “It’s risky. It’s really risky. Forget Ivanovich. How would you talk her into taking such a chance? She’d be terrified.”

  “This girl would risk anything to save her child.”

  “I don’t know, Aili.”

  “It’s worth a try, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we at least ask her?”

  He watched her silently for a moment, propped his elbow on his belly, and leaned his chin into his hand. Finally, “You can have one try. But we’ll stand by with guns in case something goes wrong.”

  “It’s a deal.” Aili slammed her folder shut, gathered her stuff with one swoop of her arm, and stood up from her chair. She had some serious work to do.

  Behind her, Beck said, “Well, then, let Operation Free Bird begin.”

  Aili stopped, turned back, and stared at him, incredulous. “‘Free Bird’?”

  Beck gave her an innocent look and nodded.

  “You are such a freak.”

  “Hey, now,” he said, but he was smiling.

  Chapter Eight

  Alex watched for the dark, nondescript SUV—because it was always a dark, nondescript SUV—from her bedroom window and made them the second they turned onto Orange Grove Avenue. She met them in the yard and instructed them to park the low-riding (which meant armored) Chevy in the garage where it couldn’t be seen from the street. Benedict Beck strode into the dining room while Melinda White, Alex’s handler from D.C., stood by the sink and gestured at the blue-eyed young man who’d accompanied them. “Ms. MacIntire, this is Agent Caplin.”

  Caplin nodded his Mighty Ducks ball cap. “Ms. MacIntire.”

  “Please,” Alex said. “It’s Alexandra Adelaide.”

  All three agents wore street clothes, and they carried suitcases into Alex and Aggie’s house, suitcases that, in addition to their clothes and personal things, probably held stuff like semi-automatic rifles, emergency medical supplies, and night vision goggles.

  Alex led White and Caplin through her kitchen into her open living-dining room area, and Beck looked around the place with a wrinkled brow and a frown.

  “The floor plans haven’t changed since Agent White approved them.” Alex let the sarcasm ooze from her tone into the air. She wasn’t in a good mood, and it wasn’t just the fear.

  “No, I only was wondering where your fella is. Is he hiding in the bedroom or something? Seems he’d want to meet the undercover coppers that showed up at the door.”

  Alex raised her eyebrows at the Interpol man. “He’s at his house. Where else would he be at this hour of the night?”

  “If my wife and daughter were in danger, I would be with them.”

  “Well, I’m not his wife.”

  “Fiancée, then.”

  Alex glanced from Beck to Agent White, who was giving a Beck a dirty look. Beck didn’t notice, and the handler tried to act natural again when she noticed Alex looking at her.

  Alex locked gazes with Beck. “What makes you think I’m that either?”

  “Don’t be all secretive. I’m supposed to know these things, because I’m part of the team looking after you. Melinda told me all about how he bought that engagement ring a couple weeks ago now.”

  “Did he, now?” Alex worked hard to hide her shock at Agent Beck’s careless revelation. And she thought she pulled it off well, but she was stunned. She was too shocked even to wonder if Matthew cared how little privacy he had since he’d chosen to be with Alex Adelaide… though those worries would come later, for sure.

  Meanwhile, Melinda punched Agent Beck in the shoulder. “You idiot!”

  “What was that for?!”

  “She didn’t know yet, Benedict.”

  Beck looked surprised, then for a moment, abashed. But then he pinned her with a glare. “You do know he loves you, though?”

  Alex heaved a sigh, making her annoyance clear. “What of it?”

  “Does he even know what’s going on right now? Does he know you’re in danger? Does he know we’re here?”

  “We just had a fight, okay? So the ring is probably going back to the store, and, Benedict, you can be sure to let me know the second that happens. We were right in the middle of the argument, and when you called, he left.”

  “Does he even know who called?”

  “Just that it was a call I had to take.”

  “He probably thought you were only blowing him off; after being with you for over a year, I’m sure he’s noticed your avoidance tendencies.”

  “Don’t profile me, okay, Beck. I really don’t need that right now.”

  “But you do need to tell him what’s going on.”

  “I don’t want him here.”

  “But now that you’ve let him into your life and made him such a big part of it, that decision might not be entirely up to you. He deserves the chance to be here for you
now if he wants it.”

  “He’s not your ‘fella,’ and you don’t know him, okay? So why don’t you get off what he deserves right now?”

  “I know he bought a ring.”

  She wanted to slap that self-righteous smirk off his face. “It’s my life. My relationship, okay? And I want him to be safe!”

  “Don’t you think he wants the same for you? And does he get a choice about that? Or is your opinion the only Gospel on everything in this ‘relationship’?” He even used the finger quotes. Of all the times she had wanted to slap Benedict Beck, the urge never had been stronger than at that moment.

  “Guys?” Agent Caplin stood in the entry hall, his cheeks and neck flushed red and his entire aspect tense and fidgety. The young agent probably was not accustomed to such unprofessional behavior between colleagues. Alex’s face burned as she looked at him. Beck returned his gaze mildly, business as usual; that man had no shame. “Can we, kinda, like, I don’t know, make a plan or something? I need to do a walk-through, at least, to get a 3-D idea of how to defend the place in the event of perimeter breach.”

  “Yeah, of course, Caplin,” Agent White responded. “Why don’t we start in the backyard?”

  Alex and Beck stood silently in place while White and Caplin exited out the patio door. When the slider closed behind them, Beck caught Alex’s eyes again. “You should at least tell him what’s going on. Even if you don’t want to let him come over, at least let him know what you’re going through.”

  Alex rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay. I’ll just go ahead and buzz him on the phone right now and tell him all about the top secret Interpol slash Fibbie operation going down right here in my living room.”

  “Doesn’t he live close? We can stay with the baby while you—”

  Alex laughed. “Baby? Dude, she’s five years old now. Almost five and a half, and she won’t let you forget it, I promise you.”

  “You should probably introduce me.”