A World I Never Made

by James Lepore

  “How?”

  “Poison. It didn’t work:”

  Corozzo had told Doro that the meeting could last no more than thirty minutes. Pat paused to absorb this amazing piece of news. She tried to kill this asshole. She fought back. Then he pressed on.

  “Who was the girl at the morgue?” he asked.

  “A gypsy named Little Pia. She was dying of ovarian cancer. I gave her ten thousand euros. It must have been a shock. I’m sorry.”

  “I was happy you were alive, Meg. I’ve never been so happy in my life:”

  “What made you lie to the police?”

  “The note was weird. The cremation. You weren’t wearing Lorrie’s ring. That is, the other woman wasn’t, Little Pia. My instincts told me you wanted the police—the world—to believe you were dead. You needed me to help you ...”

  “We finally communicated:”

  “It”s a hell of a thing, the way you went about it:”

  “I knew you could handle it:”

  “When was the baby born?”

  Pat had hesitated before asking this question, but only for a second, a second in which he took in the silence inside the lodge and the winter stillness outside. Despite the quiet, or because of it, he could sense the storm surrounding them. In the calm of its eye his heart drummed, its beat both driving him to pull Megan away from all this danger and riveting him to his chair, to hold on as long as possible to this moment with his daughter, to make it last a lifetime if he could.

  “December 21,” she answered.

  “That’s Lorrie”s birthday.”

  “I know.”

  Pat’s mind went back to his meeting with the prioress at the convent in Lisieux, to the sadness in her eyes as she told him of the death of his grandchild. And to the question he had been wanting to ask ever since, the question he promised himself he would not ask, the one that now came to his lips as if on its own.

  “It was bitter cold that night, Megan. What were you thinking?”

  “The baby was already dead. It was stillborn:”

  It was Pat’s turn to look down. Stillborn. Megan reached across the table and took his hand. Pat Nolan stared at his daughter’s beautifully formed hand caressing his fingers. Then he remembered the round-trip train ticket to Lisieux he had found in Megan’s wallet, dated December 24.

  “But you went to Lisieux on December ...”

  “My baby’s still alive, Dad,” Megan said, interrupting.

  “Alive?”

  “The baby I brought to Lisieux I bought from a gypsy family for another ten thousand euros. My midwife was Little Pia’s mother. One of her patients delivered a stillborn boy on December 24. She persuaded them to give it up. She was part witch and gypsies are very superstitious. Or maybe she stole it. I don’t know. I needed a substitute and she was greedy and got one for me:”

  “Your baby’s alive?”

  “Yes, and healthy.”

  Pat leaned back in his chair and stared at Megan, shaking his head.

  “I know,” she said, a rueful smile on her face. “I’m sorry for all these shocks:”

  “Where is he?” Pat asked, collecting himself.

  “Back at the camp:”

  “You faked your own death and the baby’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Lahani is the father. He is Saudi royalty, very rich and very powerful. He wants to kill me, but he also wants his son, to raise as a terrorist. If he went to Lisieux, he will think his son is dead. The same as you did:”

  “I think he did:”

  “Good, then you can take Patrick home with you:”

  “Patrick?”

  “Your grandson. He’s back at the mining camp:”

  Pat put his hands to his forehead, as if to press all of this information into his brain. He rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers. When he took them away, Megan was still there and his grandson was still alive and would live with him in Connecticut, far far from this place and time.

  “What about you?” he said finally.

  “I’ll stay with Corozzo. We’re leaving today. With him I’ll be safe. Until I can figure out a way to change my identity.”

  “Change your identity? Just come home.”

  “No. I would be unguarded, totally exposed. Lahani could reach me and kill me with ease. I tried to poison him and now he thinks I killed his son. I have to go off alone, so that Patrick will be safe. Lahani will never know he exists. Do you understand?”

  Pat shook his head. He was not ready to accept that he had found and lost his daughter at the same moment. He would change her mind; he knew he could. They could all change their identities, move to someplace remote. Canada. Arizona. Christ, how small the world was.

  “What was that fight all about yesterday when Doro showed up,” he asked, changing the subject as a tactic. In a moment he would begin to convince her to come home with him. “I was watching from the fire road:”

  “That was Corozzo and his son, Sebastian. Sebastian has been dying to fuck me:”

  “Oh ... I see:”

  “No, Dad. It’s not what you think. I’m paying Corozzo for his protection. There’s nothing else. The night before, Sebastian came home drunk and got into my bed, like an animal. Corozzo heard me scream. When he got to my room, Sebastian had passed out. The next morning he went after him.”

  Corozzo is taking better care of you than I ever did, Pat thought, and then he said, “When will I see you again?”

  “Maybe never.”

  “Megan ...”

  “Dad, do you remember the night we spent at Annabella’s a couple of years ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember her reading of you?”

  “A bit:”

  “She saw marriage in your future, and children. Remember? You laughed at her.”

  “I remember.”

  “Go ahead and marry Detective Laurence. Raise Patrick together:”

  “Megan ...”

  “She also did a reading of Patrick. On the day he was born. She said he would be an architect and builder, that he would build great structures all over the world and become famous for his work. Who better to raise him than you, Dad. You can start teaching him young:”

  “Megan ...”

  “Dad, I’m not coming home. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I didn’t know I was testing you, but I was. Running off to Europe, living off rich men. You never quit on me. I see that now. I think I wanted you to, but you never did. And now this. I made your life miserable, but you tracked me down, did not quit. Despite all the danger and death:”

  Pat looked into Megan’s eyes as she paused for a moment, thankful that they contained none of the cynicism that had hurt him so much in the past. What he saw in them he could not quite define. It was too new and exotic.

  “I love you, Dad,” Megan said finally, her eyes meeeting his.“I may never see you again, but at least I’ve told you. I love you:”

  “No, Megan,” Pat replied. “I made your life miserable when you were a girl. I blamed you for Lorrie. I ran off whenever I could, to wallow in self-pity. I’m the one who should apologize. Megan, I love you, too. Just come home:”

  “I can’t. I want my son to be an American, not a terrorist, not an oil pig, not a Wahabi jihadist ... an American, the country I abandoned. And you’re the one to do it. I know you can:”

  For a long drawn out moment, Max could not take his eyes off of Megan and Pat, especially Megan, who was much more beautiful than her picture. The mysterious Megan Nolan come to life. To extraordinary life. Then he pulled his head down and was about to buzz Orlofsky when he heard the staccato report of an assault rifle on automatic. Two assault rifles. He heard the two boys in back scampering around to the front, and then heard return fire from the veranda. He pulled his Glock from its shoulder holster and, from a crouching position, leaped through the broken window into the wreck of the kitchen. He had his Glock out when he landed and was screaming, “FBI! Get
down! Get down! I’m American, don’t shoot!”

  Pat and Megan were now crouching next to the table. As more shots were fired outside, Pat began to reach into his jacket pocket.

  “Leave it!” French said, his voice a bit quieter but very forceful. He was on one knee now, his pistol aimed at Pat’s heart. Pat complied.

  “I’m going to the window,” Max said. “Stay put.”

  “I’m going, too,” Pat said. “Get back against the wall, Megan:”

  Max did not argue. There was no time. It was quiet outside for the moment. Running low, he went to the window to the left of the front door and Pat went to the one on the right. They peered carefully out from the windows” corners and then sat quickly down, their backs against the wall. A young man, a gypsy by his dark complection and black hair, was slumped over the veranda’s wooden railing, his right arm hanging down as if reaching for something on the ground below. Catherine Laurence was sitting with her back against one of the massive posts that held up the verandah’s sloped roof. She was holding her left hand against her right shoulder. Her pistol was in her right hand on her lap. She looked dazed, but when she saw Pat, she lifted her hand away from her shoulder and waved it at him slowly. It was covered with blood.

  “She’s saying not to come out,” Max said.

  “I’m going to get her,” Pat said.

  “Nolan, no!”

  But Pat was already at the front door, crouching, swinging it open. Max rose and flattened himself against the wall next to his window. When Pat crawled out, Max emptied his clip across the front yard, giving him cover, not knowing what or who he was firing at. In a few long seconds, Pat was back at the door, dragging Catherine by her armpits into the lodge. He sat her against a wall in the alcove next to Megan.

  “What happened?” he asked her.

  “Shots from the woods. Automatic rifles. Several of them:”

  “You’re shot.”

  “Yes, my shoulder. I’m okay.”

  Pat brushed a strand of Catherine’s hair away from her sweating forehead, but could do no more. He hurried back to his window.

  “The other two boys are down,” Pat said to Max. “They’re lying in the yard on the left:”

  “Somebody has a rifle with a scope,” said Max as he snapped a new clip into his Glock.

  “Are you alone?” Pat asked.

  “No. There are three other agents at the tree line and some backup. They’ve probably called in more. It won’t take long. Just stay down:”

  “What about the back door?”

  “You’re right. One of us ...”

  “No,” said Catherine. “I can do it. I’m okay. It’s a flesh wound I have.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Megan said.

  “Here,” said Max, taking an old-fashioned police revolver from his ankle holster and sliding it across the floor to Megan. “You just have to pull the trigger. There are six rounds in the barrel:”

  Megan and Catherine crawled through the kitchen, over Max’s shattered glass, to take up positions at the windows facing the backyard.

  “Stay low, but keep a lookout;” Max said to Pat. ”If they rush us, we’ll have them in a crossfire with my guys in the trees:”

  Pat did as Max said, showing as little of his head as possible. It occurred to him that with the veranda and its overhanging roof in the way, whoever was out there—presumably Lahani and/or his men—could not get a shot into the cabin. They would have to rush them. Some of the shots they heard must have come from the other cops. Their presence would make a rush very risky. Maybe the American FBI agent was right. Maybe they just had to wait. He turned to take a quick look at Megan and Catherine, who were looking out of the corners of their respective windows but appeared to be talking.

  “What’s your name?” he said to Max.

  “Max French:”

  “How did you get here?”

  “We’ve been following you. Your daughter started a mess of trouble:”

  “Those guys out there want her dead:”

  “I’m here to keep her alive:”

  They were looking as they were talking, but all was quiet in the yard and at the tree line. Overhead, Max heard a hum that he soon realized was a helicopter.

  “The Czech cavalry,” said Max, smiling. But his smile vanished as he saw a man—dark, tall, and strikingly handsome even at this distance—appear out of the woods on the far right side of the cleared yard, about fifty yards away.

  “Fuck,” Max said, again emptying his clip, but missing the man, who was out of range of the Glock. The man, who had been crouching, rose quickly to his feet and tossed something toward the trees that were shielding Orlofsky, Dionne, and Ruzika. “It’s a grenade,” Max said.“Get down!” Pat hit the floor and Max heard the explosion at the same time.

  When they knelt to look again, three men were racing at them across the yard. The tall dark man was tossing a second grenade at the Orlofsky group. Max, who had reloaded, waited for the three to get into range and then began firing. Pat did the same. Max’s first shot hit the lead runner square in the chest and he went down like a shot horse. The second started to veer to the right, toward Pat. Both Pat and Max fired at him and hit him, but he did not go right down. He stumbled forward toward the far corner of the veranda. When he was about twenty yards away he exploded.

  Max had turned his gun on the third man, who he could see now was older and much stockier than the other two. He managed to get off one shot when the explosion occurred. And then all was black.

  “My father told me you were helping him,” Megan said to Catherine.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  They kept their eyes front as they talked, scanning as much of the truncated backyard and the rear tree line as they could. Catherine had taken off her coat and sweater and was holding the sweater against her bleeding right shoulder with her left hand. Her gun was on the floor next to her. She had managed to cut her right hand on the glass on the kitchen floor as she crawled to the window. It was bleeding as well. She would be next to useless in a gunfight, a fact which she kept to herself.

  “Saudi Secret Police tried to abduct your father,” she answered. “One of them was a known terrorist. Then they killed my uncle, who was trying to help us. My government appeared to be helping the Saudis.”

  “I don’t know about your government,” said Megan, “but the Saudis are working for a man named Abdel al-Lahani. He’s a terrorist. He did the Casa bombings. He’s after me:”

  “Why?”

  “I tried to kill him.”

  “Did you say the Casablanca bombings? In May?”

  “Yes.”

  “My husband died in them. He was staying at the Farah Hotel:”

  Catherine took a second to steal a sideways glance at Megan as she said this. Her face was flushed, her blood up, her green eyes sharp and intelligent. Yes, she was Pat’s daughter, and yes, she was capable of many things, ncluding trying to kill a terrorist.

  “I’m sorry,” Megan said.

  “I wasn’t, you see. And then there’s your father.”

  “Are you lovers?”

  “We are betrothed:”

  They were silent for a moment, and then Catherine started laughing. At the solemnity with which she made this statement, at its surreal context. Megan laughed, too, her eyes flashing with delight as they met Catherine’s for one deliciously absurd second.

  “Do you have children?” Megan asked when her laughter subsided.

  “Do I have children? Did your father tell you ... ?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “No, I have no children:”

  “Will you take care of him? My baby?”

  “We both will:”

  Then Pat and Max were firing their pistols and there were two explosions in the front yard, and then a third much nearer the lodge. Debris, timber, glass, smoke. Catherine was stunned senseless for a moment, but not knocked out. Through the smoke she could see a stocky Arab, dreamlike, in slow mo
tion, aiming a handgun at Megan and firing: once, twice. Before he could fire again, Catherine found her gun, raised it, and shot the man twice in the chest. He fell on top of Megan. Catherine crawled over and pushed him off, using the last of her strength.

  She put her ear to Megan’s chest, but heard nothing. Then she passed out, as if Megan were her lover and she had fallen asleep in her arms.