“Yes?”
“You’re a survivor, I’ll give you that.” the quiet voice, almost a whisper.
Cilla froze. It was the voice of the man in the library. And the one she’d hung up on, asking for her father. Hang up now? He’d just call back and wake those who needed sleep. She waited.
“I mean what I say.”
She saw no point in response.
“Kitty got your tongue?”
She waited.
“I know he’s not your father. So give me Sturgis, Slim, and I’ll go away.”
“Sturgis is...” Damn you John Krestinski!
“Is where? Come on, you’ll tell me sooner or later.”
“Sturgis is gone. He didn’t tell us where. Massachusetts.”
“Then why do I see armed guards on Swallow Hill Road?”
He can see down this dead end road? From where? “You blew up my house. You expect we won’t defend ourselves?”
“Homo sapiens is an impermanent creature, Slim, who requires very little help to cease existence.” The quiet voice took on a lilt. “Even rose-lipt maidens like you are regularly laid by brooks too broad for leaping, as Housman might say.”
“What good will it do you to kill me?”
“Not you, Slim. Oh no. I learned long ago it was more effective, more...stimulating to take away the one sharing the bed.”
The cold spread from inside to the tips of her fingers and toes.
“I call it Empty Bed Syndrome. You can be protected by an army, but when the snow begins in the gloaming and busily all through the night to misquote Lowell, and there’s no one cuddling next to you on the cold winter’s night, it encourages…dialogue during the day.”
“And suppose Sturgis is dead.”
“The question then becomes who did he talk to before he slipped the mortal coil.”
“No one! He spoke to no one before he died!”
There was silence for a moment. “Slim, I’d like to believe you. I’ve learned one thing though: never trust anything anyone says until you’ve cut off one of their balls and have a knife over the other. In your case...”
The phone went dead.
There was a rustling behind her. Cilla swung around. Frances.
“How long have you been there?”
“Since you got up. That’s my job, remember?”
“You heard.”
The FBI woman nodded. “Who were you talking to?”
“A man.”
“You told someone about Sturgis. Why?”
“I couldn’t help it, Frances. He’s going after Hudson!”
“Tell me.”
Cilla related the strange phone call demanding to speak to “her father”, who’d died the previous May. She hadn’t known about Sturgis and thought it was just a crank, but realized where else she’d heard that whispering voice. She was starting on her conversation with Florrie Stone when Frances stopped her.
“John will be in his office in a while. Let’s call from the ski area so we don’t wake people. I think he should hear the rest of it fresh from you.”
Krestinski listened quietly, making no comment about the collapse of his Sturgis ruse. He repeated the words heard by the librarian. “Three wise men bearing gifts to a field in Bethlehem.’ And then `change one word.’”
“One `little’ word. And I don’t think they mentioned the wise men.”
“But they pointed to them. And this was before Sturgis had his apartment blown!”
“John, this man is now after Hudson.”
“I’m giving instructions to have two men assigned specifically to him around the clock. He’ll be their only job until we get through this.”
“He’ll never put up with a bodyguard, John. You know how he is nowadays.”
“He’ll never know it unless you tell him. They’ll just appear to part of the team we’ve already got there. What do you mean `nowadays’. Hasn’t he always been… independent?”
“You mean pig-headed. Probably, though he’s not far from the emotional stew he was in last summer.”
“He had a lot to handle then.”
“And us now?”
“I won’t hide it from you. You’re all in the line of fire. I’ll be up there tomorrow afternoon.”
Jim Evans had made his point forcefully. As a condition of leaving the care of the hospital, Hudson was to be off his feet the first day and have no skis on them for at least a week. He grumbled, but spent most of Tuesday on his stomach with a book held over the bed’s edge in the upstairs bedroom Carver had assigned them. Outside the windows he could see Krestinski’s people sifting through the woods that closely ringed the Carver house. Wally liked trees and in building the house had removed only those absolutely necessary for house foundation and view.
It was an even more familiar home to him than the house he and Cilla had lived in until explosions ripped it apart the night before. He’d spent six months here the previous year; spirits drained by the crash that killed Sylvia. He’d tried to lose himself in books taken from the shelves where Carver had stationed them in tight, military ranks, gazed into the glowing, flickering light from the huge fieldstone fireplace at a well-loved face his eyes would never again behold, and senselessly climbed and descended the hardwood stairs when other diversions let him down. It was also where, from unpromising beginnings, the seed that became his love for Cilla had grown and blossomed. Now someone was threatening the flower.
She’d been gone when he’d wakened and at Great Haystack until far into the evening. Finally, crawling into bed, she pleaded fatigue and turned on her side away from him. The attack had taken a lot out of her. She needs time and patience he told himself.
It wasn’t until the next day he found out how wrong he was.
Chapter 18
Wednesday afternoon. Hudson, who’d been making out reports in an insurance office most of the day, stood looking at the note he’d found on the bed they shared in the Carver house:
Hudson
Call me a coward, but I didn’t marry you to get kidnapped and bombed. After much thought I’ve had my things taken to my house. You were right; Mooney’s house was never ours.
Her house was on Bear Notch Road, where she’d grown up and where he’d first seen her. Jeans and woodsman’s shirt, an old fashioned bun held together by a clothespin, head looking insecure on a scrawny neck. Other clothespins being used to hang laundry. He’d gotten a cold reception barging in on her looking for information. Information that put both their lives in peril. As they were now. It had taken him months to pierce the hard shell she’d drawn around the warm, exciting woman that few would ever guess was within.
He picked up the phone and dialed Great Haystack. Frances was apologetic but businesslike.
“Yes, she’s here, but she won’t speak with you. I’m sorry.”
The hell. He was at the mountain in eight minutes, striding by Frances, who’d taken a desk just outside the general manager’s office, tearing open Cilla’s door. She looked up.
“I left you a note.”
“One question. Why?”
“Where was my home when we first met?”
“Bear Notch Road.”
“That’s my family house.”
“You were living at an ashram in New York State. You call that home?”
“Home is where you feel comfortable. I was comfortable there.”
“You’re going back?”
“I made a commitment to my cousin, Kabir, and the rest of the Abenakis to run Great Haystack for them. I’m going to keep that commitment.”
“Then why are you bringing up the ashram?”
“Hudson, have you ever thought about why I was there? It wasn’t just an isolated incident in my life. It was where I chose to be.”
“Escaping from a world that had treated you badly.”
“Seeking a life that had more meaning.”
“Because you’d been raped.”
“Because a lot of people are being raped. And murdere
d, like my mother. You can’t understand someone wanting to remove themselves from this `best of all possible worlds?’ I saw it through Candida’s eyes, cruel, brutal and uncaring. I thought life here with you would be different. The peace and quiet of the White Mountains. Hah. Hudson, you’re a good and gentle person, but you attract violence like bees to honey.”
“Bees make honey. They’re attracted to flowers.”
“You know what I mean, and making light of it won’t change the facts.”
“What are the facts?” Hudson asked softly.
“The facts are I’ve had it with your world. I can’t take it any more. I want you out of my life. Perhaps I’m the one that’s strange, but I’m tired of waiting for the next bomb to drop, having the FBI sitting outside my office door. I’ve been burned out of your house, now I want you out of mine.”
“Great Haystack?”
“Yes. You’re only playing at ski patrol. You’ve plenty of money, you don’t need to work. I’m asking you to please clean out your locker here and leave. And take your violent world with you.”
“Tell me you no longer love me.”
“I no longer love living with you.”
For nearly twenty seconds he stared at her silently. She returned his look with calm, disinterested eyes that never wavered. He nodded.
“Goodbye, Cilla.”
The door closed quietly behind him. Great Haystack’s General Manager gripped the sides of her desk with whitening fingers, her eyes unseeing gray pools.
Back at Wally’s house he read the note again. Can she be serious? She seemed so in the ski area office. If true, was their love really so ephemeral? To me it means one man period. Her clear gray eyes looking into his very soul that cold October evening. They’d camped at the edge of Sawyer Pond, feeling the warmth of the fire. And something else, somewhere in a relationship that wasn’t even that, a tiny candle had found life and its survival hung on the next words he spoke. The mountains had thrown off their summer clothing, ready to pull up white blankets for the long winter’s sleep. Cilla, trying to shrug out of a ten-year growth of protective shell, her insides trembling from exposure, waited his response. And when it came, a sigh, and the candle was allowed to flame: that’s good, because you’re the one man.
Coward? She’d fought a man many pounds and several inches bigger than him when Hudson was wounded and unable to defend himself. Fought and held him off until Hudson had recovered enough to step in. Cilla was afraid of nothing on earth. Except emotions. Hers had been battered at age fifteen, as had her body, by the man who’d killed her mother. Tae quon do and the impenetrable shell had been her answer. And the shell was back.
He mounted Wally’s stairs to their bedroom. The few things left from the fire were gone. The recent violence had triggered a defense mechanism, Kevlar-cloaking still unfamiliarly exposed emotions, protecting them from further damage. Because he, Hudson, hadn’t done his job.
Or had she really just gotten tired of the turmoil. Part of her had indeed loved the peace and solitude of the ashram. Part of her? Was it only ego that convinced him she had to be happier as his wife than buried in the ashram’s catacombs? Perhaps he was the misfit, their life together the aberration. He sat on the guest room bed. No. That’s bullshit.
Could he be seeing this wrong? Might it be a bluff, a way to uninvolve him? Why? She was the one in harm’s way, and had he half a brain he would have seen the result coming. At the house after the attack, instead of being angry - her home had just been destroyed! - she’d gone quiet, was already starting to withdraw. And yesterday, almost no communication. Might she have been more hurt in the explosions than she’d admit? Like her head? Yes, that could be an answer. Would she get over it? Who knows. But for now, she needs time. More, he felt a growing conviction that Cilla might be right; that he, Hudson, had brought the bear to the door. Though she didn’t know any of it, the men who’d invaded their house were Russian, and only days before their appearance he’d been nursing his head in a Russian hospital, the likely result of too many questions asked in a place where none were welcome. Maybe the very best thing he could do for Cilla was to get far away from her. Give her time to recover.
He went back downstairs and stood at the French doors looking out over Wally’s deck. Out there were men preparing defenses against unknown assailants. And he could care less. He almost wished for a fight. He’d have someplace for the anger.
Bartlett Police Chief Solomon had merely been told there’d been an accident at the Rogers’ home. It was being handled, thank you, and no help needed from the police. He didn’t like it, but wasn’t prepared to take on the FBI. Hudson thought he might like it considerably less before this thing was over. Remarkably, Wally had escaped with minor cuts and bruises. Cilla hadn’t, though her wounds weren’t visible. Cilla.
Frances had told him Gold’s theory of protection from the chimney. Poor Bob. Aswim in his own emotional stew, Hudson felt the unease of guilt; he had brought him into it.
The kitchen door opened, and Krestinski came through to the living room taking off his overcoat. “That trip doesn’t get any shorter. Got any coffee?”
“If I get you some will you do a little analysis with me?”
“Got something?”
“No. I need to.” He’d told no one of Cilla’s departure, but he knew Frances must have briefed Krestinski, and the look in the agent’s eyes sickened him. He bruskly thrust him the mug of fresh coffee. “Anything new?”
“We announced the death yesterday. Autopsy showed nothing. He died the same as Evans’ others. We’re working with CDC.”
“Is this a plague?”
“Not yet, at least not officially.”
“But you think it is?”
“It’s something we don’t understand.”
“But it’s connected to the drug people.”
Krestinski looked at him silently.
“Oh for Christ’s sake! Don’t go all Fibbi on me. It’s our tails they’re after.”
“I know.”
“Well? They’re trying to silence us because they think we know something. We don’t. If you do, tell me.”
Krestinski sighed. “In Stewart…”
“You saying that that was a criminal act?”
“It’s why I got involved.”
“Is this the case that held you up getting to St. Petersburg?”
“Yes.” Krestinski studied the floor. “The Bureau isn’t sure it’s any of our business, but they’ve let me stay on it.”
“And you still are.”
“For the present.”
“What does that mean?”
The FBI agent looked up. “Until I tell my boss that my parents have been taken in Russia and may be being held to make me get the FBI off the case.”
“You’ve heard from them?”
“Yesterday. Dressed up in more diplomatic language, it basically told me that I needed to get the Bureau out of the Stewart incident to have my parents released. A sick traveler was to blame, they said, and there is concern that if the source of the virus were known it would create an international incident. The danger being now over, let sleeping hounds lie. I haven’t brought our people into it, or I’ll be pulled off the case. You’re the first person I’ve told.”
“John, let yourself be taken off. It can’t be worth your parents’ lives. Once they see you can’t…”
“Once they see my parents are no longer of use to them, they’ll dispose of them. Don’t you see, it really doesn’t make any difference what I do. My parents were as good as dead as soon as they were taken.”
“You don’t believe the story of a sick Russian traveler.”
“I might have before I found out what’s happening here.”
“What’s the purpose, John? Russians kill off Americans in Stewart, Massachusetts and Bartlett, New Hampshire? What on earth for. And isn’t that an act of war?”
“Not the Russian government, Russian mafia.”
“Is there a differen
ce nowadays?”
“Politically, yes. The US can’t just go drop bugs on a St. Petersburg suburb in retaliation, even if we could prove what’s happening has a Russian source.”
“Sturgis knew.”
“And they silenced him. Now you’ve got to keep your heads down.”
“Because they think he told us. So what do we do?”
“You don’t do anything. You stay here, and let us do our work.”
“What work is that, John? What is it your herd of agents is doing besides scaring off the deer? We’re completely on the defensive here. Whether or not the United States is in a war, we sure are here. And Cilla is in the front lines.”
“Not just Cilla.”
“Think I’m a danger to her?” Krestinski gave his head a small shake, which Hudson took to mean he hadn’t really made up his mind, but it was a possibility. “We need information. From what I can see, the only one left is Loni Sturgis. I’d like to talk to her.”
“You can’t. She’s under protection. Even I don’t know where she is. And if I did I couldn’t tell you. Hudson, she was thoroughly interrogated by experts before they hid her.”
“On the basis of what was known then. Things have happened since.”
Krestinski shook his head. “Out of my hands. Try another subject.”
Hudson looked out the doors. Two birds were enthusiastically attacking Wally’s feeder, spilling more on the snow than they got in their beaks. “What do they do with someone like Sturgis who may have had a contagious disease? Just bury him?”
“He’s being cremated today.”
An FBI man beckoned from the kitchen. Krestinski went to talk with him. The two then went out the back door. Hudson stood at the window for several moments, looking out but seeing nothing in front of him. The situation here was absurd; the complete advantage with the enemy to attack at the time and place of their choosing. Next time Cilla might not be so lucky. He caught himself about to slap his arms to his sides. That’s it, he thought, it was his queen in danger, whatever their relationship. Time to bring out the knight. And in attacking, get whatever trouble he’d caused well away from her.
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