The air-conditioner clicked on. Cooler air stirred in the room.
“Now do you see why I won’t marry you?” Bronwyn asked, calmer now. “I won’t plan a life with you. Been there done that.”
“But you admit part of the problem was your work schedule. It wouldn’t be that way. You won’t have to work in the ER if you marry me. You can have your practice and work sane hours. I’ll take care of you, Bronny. I’ll take care in every way I can.”
Bronwyn wished he weren’t such a good man. She wished she didn’t know how much his heart was in exactly the right place. With a gentle sigh, she said, “Your integrity is always about the work, the mission, the operation. Look at how often you’ve already lied to me, and even when you didn’t tell a lie, you misled me.
“And then there are all the things you have to withhold. Whole huge chunks of your life I can’t know about. I’d get maybe half of you. Or would it even be that much? Because part of the time when you were with me, you’d be thinking about things you couldn’t share.
“And when you were away, things would happen to you—” Hot tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “Things that hurt you or changed you, and you wouldn’t be able to give me a heads-up, and I’d be confused and thinking, ‘What the heck is going on?’”
“The things that happen—oh God, Bronwyn—there are things I don’t want you to know.”
“Those would keep us apart, too,” she acknowledged sadly. “I can’t ask you to give it up for me. I won’t. It’s your life. I don’t want you to give up your passion. But I don’t think it is your passion.
“You are not who you think you are. You’re smart enough to rise as high as you want to, and you’re a strategic thinker. But it doesn’t occur to you to play the game. You’re not ruthless enough. You notice the collateral damage. You’re not going to put the welfare of the navy first. Anytime you do, it’s going to hurt you. You’ll start looking again like you did when I first met you—like you were carved from a piece of wood.”
“Is this because he died? Anybody could die, anytime. Life doesn’t come with any guarantees.”
“You’re not listening to me—you’re just trying to win.” Bronwyn chuckled sadly.
He smiled a tad sheepishly. “I really, really want to win.”
“I know you do. But try to listen to what I’m saying. I’m not afraid that you or someone I love will die. Everyone dies. But because he died, I did cross a bridge sooner than I would have. A one-way bridge. I didn’t tell him who I really was. I used all he hid to hide me from myself. There was never time or space to go deeper. I don’t blame him. I know now I had as much in that relationship as I was really looking for.”
Bronwyn looked deep into Garth’s beautiful eyes, willing him to understand that what he was offering was not enough. “But it’s not what I’m looking for now. And it’s partly your fault. You kept telling me to dig deep, not accept my limits but push beyond them, not let ‘impossible’ stop me.”
***
Garth took his coffee onto the porch the next morning and stood looking down at the river shining through the trees in the morning light. With the brush cleared, the river could be seen from the porch now. They had talked about removing a few of the pines.
Bronwyn came out to stand beside him. She didn’t offer a kiss. They’d gone to bed last night, even made love, but when it was over, they hadn’t talked more. They had each rolled to their own side of the bed, as if living apart had already started.
This morning she wore lightweight slacks and a short-sleeved pink sweater that dipped down really low but was kept decent by a lacy thing underneath that covered her breasts. “You look nice,” he told her.
“Look,” she said, all business, “JJ wants me to get into Wilmington early so that I can go with her to check the decorations, make sure everything is in place. So I’m going to load up Julia now.”
He tried to draw her out. “Check the decorations? Isn’t it a little late for that? The wedding is tonight.”
“She doesn’t really need my input. She wants me to share it with her. It’s a girlfriend thing.”
He tried again. “I thought the sitter wasn’t going to be at JJ’s grandfather’s house until six.”
“She’s not. But the housekeeper is there. And we won’t be out long.”
Was this the way it would be? Giving facts but sharing nothing. He gave in. “Well, I guess I won’t see you until the party then. I have a delivery to pick up at the coast.”
“You’ll be gone all day, too?”
“Probably.”
“In that case, I think I’ll take Mildred, too.”
“Will she be okay there?”
“She and JJ’s dog get along well, and there’s a fenced-in run. She won’t have to stay in the house.”
“Okay. Then I’ll see you.”
“All right. See you.”
“Bronwyn?”
“What?” Her face was a study in respectful disinterest.
It’s not supposed to be this way, he wanted to say. When you found the one, she was supposed to know you were the one. She was not supposed to say, “No way.” He would make her change her mind.
But he couldn’t refute anything she said. What she said was the way it was. The way it had to be. Since becoming a SEAL, he had drifted further and further into a world that regular people couldn’t imagine, much less share. If he hadn’t had these few weeks of living almost like other people did, like his parents did, he might not have really understood what she was saying.
He felt like something in his chest was breaking, and now he told himself the real story of what had happened after they had argued to a standstill. They had gone to bed and made slow, sad love. She hadn’t been able to come. He had used all his skill, but finally she had said it was all right, and would he just hold her, that would be just as good, so he had. But in a few minutes they had rolled apart.
This morning they were perfectly polite. Quietly taking care of business. Two people who were going to go on, but not together.
It was not supposed to be this way.
Where had he gone wrong? Why did he keep encountering situations that were not the way they were supposed to be? It had been happening since Afghanistan, and nothing he did seemed to fix it.
Was it the situation that didn’t fit, or was it him?
She was looking at him, waiting for him to say something. “Um, nothing. See you.”
Chapter 39
Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
—The Moscow Rules
Garth activated the garage door opener clipped to the visor. He drove into the hot, stuffy shade of the metal building and wondered how he could engineer it to cool passively the way Bronwyn’s house did. What made the house stay cool wasn’t only that the house was built to breathe. It also had strategically placed trees. Shade trees would be a bad idea at an airport. The temperature gradient between trees and grass could cause turbulence that could crash a small plane. Oh well.
He knew what he was doing. Trying to think about anything so he wouldn’t think about why nothing was the way it was supposed to be. Trying not to think about how he’d screwed up so badly that having found the one woman for him, he had picked one who didn’t want what he was. Was that screwed up or what?
He unlocked the storage compartment in the pickup’s bed and took out his diving gear. He’d washed and dried it as soon as he was finished with it. Now, before putting it in the storage room in the garage, he took the time to examine every fastening, every gasket, every hose and connector. The habit had become so ingrained, no matter how tired he was, that he wouldn’t be able to rest if he didn’t. If you take care of your equipment, it will take care of you. He no longer did it because it was part of being a SEAL. At some point, it had become part of him.
He’d had a lot of t
houghts like that in the past couple of days. Imagining what it would be like to be a SEAL, operating again. He’d come to realize that, no matter what he did, he’d be a SEAL the rest of his life.
Equipment checked and properly stored, he turned out the light, turned on the alarm, and left the garage. Outside, the long twilight of late spring turned everything blue, making distance deceptive. In the few minutes he’d been inside the garage, a Tahoe had pulled up to his trailer. The big, glowing taillights of the Tahoe punched red holes in the air.
The timing was too perfect. Garth would be willing to bet the car had been hidden on a logging road nearby until he returned, because the driver didn’t want Garth to know someone was waiting for him. Garth shook his head at such sloppiness. If his visitor wanted the element of surprise, he should have given it fifteen minutes more.
A man—five-nine, one-sixty, athletic build, short-sleeved white dress shirt, black slacks—emerged and stood in the open door, letting the light from the car’s interior illuminate him. His right hand looked stiff. He rested it on the SUV’s top.
He was an operator. He was using his casual stance and absent-minded air to give Garth a long time to see who he was and ascertain that he carried no weapons in his hands.
“Evenin’,” Garth called in his best North Carolina drawl. “What brings you out here?”
“I’m Dan Renfro.” Garth’s visitor offered his left hand, holding the right aloft. “Sorry I can’t shake. Hand got busted. It’s still healing.”
So this was Renfro, the independent contractor who had missed the plane Julia had been on. From the looks of his hand, every finger had been broken. Several red scars crossed his eyebrows and cheeks, and his nose looked swollen. Renfro hadn’t just been in a fight; he’d been beaten scientifically and thoroughly.
“Garth Vale,” he supplied. “What can I do for you?”
“Wanted to talk to you about a shipment.”
“What kind of shipment?”
“Perishables. Bananas.”
***
Renfro was the missing piece, and he had said two of the words on the box. He knew about Julia.
Happy as he was to think he would finally get some answers, Garth was conscious of a deep anger. If Renfro had any part in the debacle that had almost cost Julia her life, then whoever had worked him over had done the world a service, as far as Garth was concerned. The only thing they’d done wrong was that they hadn’t finished the job. For the first time in a long time, he could feel that his Darth Vader mask had reappeared. His face was hard, his eyes hard. Garth kept his face impassive, giving nothing away. “Let’s go inside.”
He unlocked the trailer and gestured for Renfro to enter ahead of him. Garth flipped on the overhead switch, lighting the utilitarian metal desk and filing cabinet.
Renfro glanced at the fake-oak-paneled walls pinned with aviation maps. In the fluorescent glare, more healing cuts and scrapes were visible. The skin around his eyes was yellowish with fading bruises. One eye was badly bloodshot. He swayed slightly. He looked exhausted, shaky.
Garth said nothing, waiting for Renfro to make the next move.
“Look, I’m not going to play spy verse spy games.” Renfro’s face was the mask of a man who has been struck blind with fear and grief. To Garth’s surprise, Renfro’s eyes filled. “Please tell me you found the baby on the plane! I’ve already talked to everyone else on the flight. They couldn’t tell me anything. Did you… was there…?” He choked and swallowed.
“She’s safe.”
Renfro’s knees buckled. He blindly felt for the desk.
The man was in a bad way. Thinking he looked about to faint, Garth shoved the straight chair under him. “Sit.”
“You found her? Alive?”
“Yes, alive. No thanks to whoever was responsible.”
“Thank God… I had to come. I had to know. I was responsible—at least for getting her into the right hands—and I failed. If she hadn’t been found in time, then I was looking for a dead child, but I couldn’t stop until I knew what became of her.”
Garth respected a man who didn’t think his responsibility for a mission ended if the mission failed, and he might have compassion for the man’s mental suffering, but it wasn’t in his nature to comfort a man over a screwup as big as this. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“The plan stank from the beginning. I told my client so and told him to let me get her out of San Feliz and into the U.S.—my way. He was absolutely adamant that there could be no record of her entering the country.” That fit with what Garth had already surmised.
“With a little lead time, I still could have managed it, but no. It had to be right then, that day. I was stuck with someone else’s plan.” Renfro passed a shaky hand over his forehead. “I could have turned it down, but the money was good, and hey, it would get me into the country without a passport stamp, too. It was easy money, and I was doing no harm.”
That deserved no comment.
Renfro gave him a knowing look. “You know what I mean. You know how it is when you operate—you do what you need to do. As much as possible you try to work for our team, but there’s not always a lot of difference between the good guys and the bad guys. It’s not that often that your conscience is completely clear, you know?”
Renfro gave a distinctly unmirthful laugh. “I’ll say this for the admiral, he knew which buttons to push. It was a half-assed plan with no redundancy built in. I wouldn’t have done it just for the money. But they convinced me the baby would die if she wasn’t gotten out.”
“Why the big rush?”
“The baby’s mother—”
“Wait. Was that Christine Freytag?”
“That was the word on the street. I knew her as Sonya. Apparently, in her former life she had operated in Europe and pissed a lot of people off. She got pregnant, so she faked her death—with a lot of help from some highly placed sources, went to San Feliz as Sonya Everhart, and had a baby. She started operating again a few months ago. Said she needed the money, but you know, some people can’t quit. They need the rush.”
“So she’s not dead?”
“Oh, she’s dead all right. She died on the way back to her car after putting the package on the plane. I saw it. Execution style. Three shots to the head. Somebody knew exactly where she would be.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“And you?”
“They knew about me, too. Me, they just beat to a pulp. I woke up a couple of days later in a hospital.”
“You said earlier, ‘The admiral knew which buttons to push.’ What admiral was that?”
“Did I? Shouldn’t have said that. It’s the pain medication.”
“What admiral?” Garth persisted.
Renfro ignored him. His bloodshot eyes pleading, as if he couldn’t be sure he’d understood before, he asked again, “The baby? She’s really safe? She was okay when she got here? They said the mother knew how much sleeping medication to give her, but the thought of drugging a baby that small scared the hell out of me.”
“She’s okay.”
“I went to see… the party that hired me to get the box off the plane and make sure she was passed into the right hands. I had to know—you know? I had to know if she made it. He said he didn’t know where she was.”
Renfro covered his eyes. His shoulders shook. Garth waited him out.
After a while Renfro raised a tear-streaked face. “The cold son of a bitch. When he learned Christine, aka Sonya, was dead, he assumed the baby had never been put aboard the plane. I told him I knew she had been… and he told me to forget it. Keep the money and forget it.”
“Who were you supposed to take her to?”
Renfro fingered a scar on his forehead. “I didn’t have a name. Just a woman who would meet me at the rest stop on I-40 at Clinton.”
“Did MacMurtry know what you were bringing into the country?”
“Henry MacMurtry?” Renfro looked puzzled. “What does he have to do with it?”
“He was waiting for the plane. When you didn’t get off, he made a call and left.”
Renfro looked like he couldn’t make sense of anything. “It’s all so crazy. He went to all the trouble to get the baby into the country—”
“You mean the man who hired you?” Garth put in.
“Right. But I had the feeling he was relieved the operation went south. Does that make any sense to you? It didn’t to me. He hadn’t even looked for her!”
“You know what the Moscow Rules say, ‘Any operation can be aborted. If it feels wrong, it is wrong.’”
Renfro gave a pained snort. “I shoulda remembered that. The whole damn thing felt wrong from the git-go to me. I guess he decided to cut his losses and move on. But, my God, it wasn’t a stolen piece of technology. It was a baby!”
Garth’s Darth Vader mask split right down the middle. Like a hunk of warm chocolate cake dropped on the floor, it scattered into dark crumbs. Renfro had lived for weeks with the awful possibility that Julia might not have been found in time and, if found by the wrong people, would almost certainly have been made to disappear without a trace. He had lived with the fact that he had compromised his values and, instead of saving a child, might have been complicit in her death.
A compassionate, forgiving smile spread over Garth’s cheeks, pulling and shaping muscles that being a SEAL hadn’t caused him to use in years. “It’s okay, man. She’s fine.”
“Where is she?”
“You know I’m not going to tell you. I don’t know you. The hardest part about this whole thing has been not knowing who I could trust—who wanted to keep her safe as much as I did.”
“Yeah. It’s a hell of a note when you find out you want an operation to go off without any hitches more than your bosses do.”
“Tell me about it!” Garth got a cup of water from the cooler and handed it to Renfro. “This isn’t over, you know. I’m not going to do anything to put the baby in danger, but somebody needs to be held accountable. I had already figured out it was someone with navy connections. Who hired you?”
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