Eden in Winter

by Richard North Patterson

  Adam chose to laugh. ‘You really don’t trust anyone, do you?’

  ‘I’ve already admitted to that,’ she replied in an unimpressed tone. ‘As for Ben, he thought you were C.I.A.’

  ‘Then he was wrong.’ More easily, he added, ‘Anyhow, you played a spy on television. So you know that if I tell you the truth, they’ll have to kill us both.’

  Carla hesitated. ‘Does it matter that I worry for you, too?’

  ‘Only that you’re wasting your time. I have a foolish job, not a lethal one. I may be leaving in two weeks, but I’ll be coming back.’

  ‘And then they’ll send you someplace else?’

  ‘Somewhere nicer, I hope. But my company is under contract to U.S.A.I.D. and they don’t give foreign aid to farmers in Tuscany or Bordeaux. Which explains the pattern of travel Ben seemed to find so sinister.’ He paused, searching for a change of subject. ‘Anyhow, I’ll let you know how to reach me. Just so I can hear if you’re getting along okay.’

  She looked into his eyes again. ‘I’ll stay in touch,’ she answered. ‘But we’ll be fine. If we need help, there are people in A.A. I can call.’

  ‘Then you’re having the baby on the island?’

  Carla nodded. ‘Whitney has told me I can stay, and I like my doctor here. So, yes, unless there are complications.’

  For a moment, Adam sensed she wanted to say more about her pregnancy. But there was no easy way to probe this, and their conversation about his job was one he did not care to revisit. Glancing at his watch, he said, ‘This has been nice, Carla. I didn’t realize how late it is. You must be tired.’

  ‘And no doubt they’re waiting up for you at home. But I hope this won’t be the last time I see you.’ She paused, as though hearing herself. ‘In the next two weeks, I mean.’

  ‘I know what you meant,’ Adam assured her. ‘Do you know another Italian dish?’

  ‘Several.’ Briefly Carla touched his hand. ‘You can bring wine, Adam – for yourself. As long as you take it with you, I won’t mind.’

  THREE

  That night, Adam Blaine awoke from the recurring nightmare of his own murder.

  The bedroom of his youth was pitch black, the thin silver light at the edges of his window blinds cast by a crescent moon. He could feel the sweat on his forehead. In this dream, like the other, at the moment of his death he became Benjamin Blaine.

  Turning on the light, he looked at the framed photographs that had remained there since he had left the island a decade before: a picture of the man he had thought his father; another of Jenny Leigh, the young woman he had loved until his break with Ben. Opening the drawer of his nightstand, he slid them inside, and closed it.

  Enough, he thought. He could not kill these dreams alone, nor did he wish to take them back to Afghanistan. In the morning, he would call Charlie Glazer.

  *

  At 10 a.m., as agreed, Adam found Dr Charlie Glazer sitting on the porch of his home overlooking Menemsha Harbour.

  A family friend from Adam’s youth, Glazer was an eminent psychiatrist who for years had taught at Harvard. On Adam’s return to the Vineyard, faced with the complexities of Ben’s death, he had turned to Charlie for advice on how to navigate the labyrinth of his family – a group Charlie himself had given considerable thought to over forty summers spent there. A bright-eyed man in his late sixties, with white hair and mustache, Charlie did not affect the walled-off gravity often associated with his profession, instead combining a sweet-natured good humour with the tough-mindedness of the skilled psychoanalyst beneath. Adam had always liked him; now, Charlie was the only person he could trust with a semblance of the truth.

  ‘So,’ Charlie said without preface. ‘It sounds like you need to talk a little more. No surprise – even viewed from the outside, your family is an inexhaustible subject.’

  Adam sat in the canvas chair across from him. ‘This isn’t just about them,’ he responded, and felt the tug of his own reluctance. ‘It’s about what’s going on with me.’

  For a moment, Charlie appraised him in silence. Dryly, he said, ‘That sounds dangerously close to actual psychotherapy.’

  ‘I guess it does.’

  ‘Then, as a friend and a professional, I should refer you to someone else. I know far too much about your family to be a neutral therapist, and I formed too many opinions about its members too long ago. One of which is that untangling all of that requires a serious commitment to a rigorous analytic process.’

  Adam felt a sliver of despair. ‘No time, Charlie. I’m going back to Afghanistan in two weeks. Explaining my family to a stranger would take a year.’ He hesitated, then finished, ‘Whatever happens to me over there, I need more peace of mind than I’ve got.’

  Charlie frowned. ‘A tall order in two weeks’ time. Especially – and I hope you’ll forgive me – for someone as locked up tight as I perceive you to be.’

  ‘I know that. But I’m not hacking it alone.’

  Charlie’s probing gaze softened. ‘You really are alone, aren’t you?’

  For a moment, the words stuck in Adam’s throat. ‘I can’t tell anyone the truth. You’re the only person on this island I can trust, and who it’s safe to trust; in fact, the only person in my life. By profession, and I guess for deeper reasons, I’m not a very trusting person. And there are other lives at stake than mine.’

  Charlie cupped his chin in the palm of his hand, staring fixedly at the water. Finally, he said, ‘The circumstances are hardly ideal. But I’ll help you to the extent I can. What I need from you is an absolute commitment to honesty. You can’t hide the ball from me – or yourself.’

  Adam grimaced. ‘I understand. The one thing I ask is that we meet here, or someplace else with a view. In the last ten years, whenever I’m in an office I feel cooped up.’

  ‘Fair enough. Three meetings then, at least two hours at a whack. No bullshit. Are you prepared for that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Charlie nodded briskly. ‘All right then. I’ll get us some coffee, and we can start. You take yours black, right?’

  *

  Handing Adam a steaming cup of coffee, Charlie sat back across from him. ‘What brought you back to the island?’ he asked. ‘The last time I saw you, maybe a month ago, you were leaving for Afghanistan.’

  ‘I was. The medical examiner’s inquest got in the way.’

  ‘And I suppose you felt responsible to look out for your mother, brother, and uncle. Or, or should I say, your father.’

  The conversation was barely started, Adam reflected, and there was already something he could not say, even to Charlie – that, whatever the justice in it, Adam was covering up his real father’s murder of Adam’s father figure. ‘There’s a lot to worry about,’ he answered. ‘Especially Teddy, who I know to be innocent of murder. There’s also Carla, and what happens to her and the boy. Nothing good can come from further conflict between her and my mother, whether it concerns the estate or the circumstances of Ben’s death.’

  Charlie gave him a shrewd look. ‘I’ll let that answer pass, Adam – at least in part. As to Carla and your family, I certainly credit your concern – and the reasons for it. But you and I both know that your feelings about Carla, however complicated, transcend merely looking out after everyone’s interests. Though I can’t imagine you’re anywhere close to sorting them out.’

  ‘True enough,’ Adam acknowledged. ‘But then it hardly matters, does it? I’m going back to Afghanistan. That’s what brought me here this morning – my work.’

  ‘Which you admitted to me is dangerous, and nothing like the story you tell your family – and everyone else. But it would help if I knew a little more.’ Reading Adam’s expression, Charlie added, ‘Unless you plan to kill someone before you leave here, anything you tell me is confidential. Including about what you’re really doing in the world.’

  Adam smiled without humour. ‘I may kill someone pretty soon, Charlie. But I don’t yet know who. And unless it’s a certain tabloid reporte
r, no one on this island.’ He drew a breath, fighting the habits of a decade. ‘I’m a C.I.A. officer. Ben and Carla guessed as much, and I imagine you have, too.’

  Charlie nodded. ‘That much, yes. But tell me more about what you do.’

  Adam sat back, marshalling the answer he forced himself to give. ‘I’m on the paramilitary side of the agency – the special activities division. I’m fluent in Arabic, Pashto, and Dari, the principal languages of Afghanistan and Pakistan. I’m also schooled in running agents, avoiding surveillance, and using pretty much any weapon you can imagine. Part of that training involves the quarter-of-a-second rule – the time within which human beings can respond to danger. I’m conditioned to kill someone just a little quicker.’

  Charlie showed no discernable reaction. ‘How does that work in Afghanistan?’

  ‘Mostly self-protection. My assignment is to operate against the Taliban and Al Qaeda by recruiting agents, getting information, and targeting their leaders for assassination. If I get caught at it, my best hope is to die quickly.’

  ‘Sounds challenging enough,’ Charlie observed phleg-matically.

  ‘Yep. One of the hardest parts is sorting out the people I recruit – who’s a double agent, or when might they become one? My life depends on getting it right.’ He paused a moment. ‘Even harder, at least for me, is that I’m responsible for their lives. So far I haven’t lost one. I never want to.’

  Suddenly it struck Adam that he had deployed Jack like a double agent, placing him at risk to save Teddy: another thing he could not say.

  ‘And so,’ Charlie was observing in measured tones, ‘your survival, and that of others, depends on a very complicated series of calculations and deceptions.’

  The statement gave Adam a leaden feeling. ‘I’ve arranged my life into boxes,’ he acknowledged. ‘Each box contains certain people, situations, experiences, and emotions, carefully arranged so that no box touches any other box, placing me or others in danger. I’ve even got boxes for Martha’s Vineyard: for Carla; for each member of my family; for the D.A.; for this tarantula of a tabloid reporter. For what I believe are good reasons, I’m deceiving every one of them in different ways – letting them believe things that aren’t true, and withholding things that are – all because I’m trying to protect my brother, mother, father, and Carla from each other, as well as to protect myself. But Afghanistan is worse – betrayal comes in many guises, any one of which can kill you.’

  Charlie frowned. ‘A hard life to lead, Adam. It seems you’ve lost the habit of feeling safe, or even the ability to know who you’re safe with.’

  ‘Also true,’ Adam replied with a trace of irony. ‘Though I seem to be suited for the work. When I went into special ops, they put me through a battery of psychological tests. To everyone’s great pleasure, I came out as able to tolerate a high degree of risk and stress without cracking up, and being unusually unconcerned with my own safety.’

  Charlie considered him over the rim of his coffee cup. ‘In psychological terms, what do you suppose that means?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just know that’s who I became once I left this island.’ He paused, disconcerted by the admission he was about to make. ‘In the last three years, I’d thought I’d proved to myself I can live with pretty much anything. But since Ben died, and I came back here, I’ve been having these nightmares. That’s why I called you.’

  Charlie smiled a little. ‘I think there are many reasons why you called me, all of which are closing in on you. But tell me about these nightmares.’

  For a time, Adam gazed out a Menemsha Pond on a perfect August day, the sky clear blue, a steady breeze propelling trim sailing crafts across spacious waters bounded by woods and meadows. It seemed so alien from the life he led that the scene, once so evocative of his youth on the water, now struck him as surreal. The coffee felt sour in his empty stomach. ‘Both dreams take place in Afghanistan,’ he said at length. ‘In one, I’m next to a cliff, surrounded by Taliban fighters who are about to execute me. My only escape is to jump off the edge. But when I do that, I realize I’m falling toward the beach behind our house, where Ben died on the rocks.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘I’m driving my truck when I hit an I.E.D. concealed in a dirt road near the Pakistani border. Suddenly, I’m outside myself, looking at my own dead body by the side of the road. I know that my life is over, cut short in a way that lacks any meaning. But my head is that of Benjamin Blaine the last time I ever saw him.’

  Charlie looked at him keenly. ‘So, in both of them, at the moment of your death you become the man you believed to be your father. What does that raise for you?’

  Adam shrugged. ‘You’re the shrink, Charlie. You tell me.’

  Charlie shook his head in demurral. ‘I don’t know enough to do that. So anything I’d say is a guess. Obviously, Ben Blaine is central to both dreams. For reasons we’ve yet to fully explore, your break with him was traumatic. I could posit that you couldn’t overcome that trauma simply by leaving. If so, I suppose the dream could imply a visceral need to kill him – not only literally, but in your heart and mind.

  ‘But there are other ways to look at this. The dream could symbolize your deep entwinement with your supposed father, and your fear that you’ve become like him. Or even that something about his death makes you feel guilty.’ Charlie gave him a searching look. ‘As I said, I don’t think you’ve told me everything you know, which leaves me more than a little in the dark. But all in its own time.’

  By training and habit, Adam avoided the implicit question. ‘So it’s all about Benjamin Blaine. Like everything else.’

  ‘Not necessarily. Another way of analysing a dream is to imagine that everyone appearing in it is some element of yourself. So part of you in the first dream may identify with the Taliban who are about to kill you.’ Charlie hesitated. ‘There’s an aspect of our last conversation, a month or so ago, that I recall quite vividly.’

  Adam put down his coffee cup, responding in clipped tones. ‘You mean that, just before returning here, I’d shot a double agent for the Taliban who was about to kill me, drove fifty miles at night with his corpse in the passenger seat, then dumped his body by the road where I thought no one would know him. It’s funny, Charlie, what sticks in your mind.’

  Charlie laughed softly, his eyes still fixed on Adam. ‘What stuck in my mind is that an hour or so later you learned that Ben was dead. One can be forgiven for thinking that one experience might relate to the other. Was that the first time you’d killed a man?’

  ‘The third,’ Adam responded evenly. ‘The first was shooting a Russian arms dealer in his suite at the nicest hotel in Eilat, Israel – the Queen of Sheba Hilton – terminating his business of selling sophisticated explosives to Al Qaeda in Iraq. The second was cutting the throat of a key Al Qaeda operative in Croatia, who’d been enjoying a small bed-and-breakfast on the shore. For that one, I pretended to be an international tax attorney. No one can say my superiors lack a sense of humour.’

  Charlie cocked his head. ‘What did you feel about killing these two men?’

  ‘Not much. They’d been responsible for too many deaths already, and would’ve facilitated many more. When it’s trading one vicious life for many innocent ones, it’s not that hard to do the moral math.’

  ‘And the last guy?’

  ‘Was a reflex – I’d killed him before I’d even had time to think.’

  ‘So this time, the life you were saving was your own.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As I calculate it, that was about six weeks ago. Then, in swift succession, you learned your father was dead; came home to a place you’d left for unknown but painful reasons; found out that Ben had disinherited your mother and brother, exposing them to financial ruin; learned that the police suspected a member of your family of murdering the father you despised; proceeded to steal or illicitly acquire evidence that enabled you to arrange for Jack to exonerate Teddy; discovered that your mother had lied
to you about critical facts of your life, including that your uncle was actually your father; and forced her to agree to a settlement with Ben’s pregnant lover. When you first explained what you’d learned, I could barely take it in myself.’ Charlie’s tone became rueful. ‘A rich and full two weeks, Adam, which still leaves you on the hook for obstruction of justice, should the police and D.A. ever figure out what you’ve been up to.’ He paused, then enquired gently, ‘Does that about cover it, or are things even worse for you? Which I somehow suspect they are.’

  ‘Let’s say it’s close enough.’

  Charlie shook his head, a gesture of sympathy. ‘And you wonder why you’re feeling a bit troubled. The average person would get his very own wing in Bellevue.’

  ‘Sounds nice,’ Adam replied. ‘But I have a prior engagement in a war zone.’

  ‘So let’s look at what you’re taking back with you. Have you had nightmares like this before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then let me suggest that your life – not just the C.I.A., but its entirety – is catching up with you. True, your tenure at the agency has enabled, even required that you avoid confronting your own emotions. You’ve developed all sorts of defences exacerbated by stress: compartmentalizing, vigilance, extreme caution in relationships, emotional distance, and serious levels of distrust. But you haven’t stopped being human.’ Charlie leaned forward, looking at Adam intently. ‘What those nightmares call up for me is the part of you that is connected to your deeper feelings, many of which precede your work with the agency – including your fear of death. Or, as troubling, your expectation of dying.’

  Adam found himself without words. Watching his face, Charlie prodded. ‘You expect to die young, don’t you?’

  Adam stared at the deck, unsure of how to answer. ‘It’s crossed my mind.’

  ‘Do you think that’s all about your job? Or is there something more to it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’