by RD Gupta
But after a couple of days, it finally dawned on her. There was really no reason for her parents to move. It was their way of finally coming to closure with Alison’s death. On her rare trips home before, Alison’s room and Sarah’s room were always just as they’d left it. Not a speck of dust anywhere, as her mother cleaned it every day. Now the shrines were gone.
And with that realization, while sitting on a park bench holding the leash of a dog named Cornwallis, Sarah Kashvilli’s life seemed to implode in on her, as if the compass that had been guiding her was crushed and obliterated. She began to shake uncontrollably, and tears started rolling down her face as though some demon had been exorcised from her soul.
The Sheltie pricked his ears up looked at her questioningly, and she found herself asking the dog, “What’s wrong with me?” But in her heart, she knew. It was simple grief. After eleven years of being fueled by rage, hatred, and revenge, the reality of the loss of her sister finally caught up with Sarah. Alison was dead. No matter how many scalps she collected to even the scales, nothing would ever bring her back.
Sarah and Alison had been “Irish twins,” born eleven months apart, with Sarah the elder. Growing up, they’d had a kind of Jekyll and Hyde relationship that drove their parents nuts. One minute they would be playing and hugging each other, and the next moment one of them would say, “Hey! That’s my teddy!” And a furball of a catfight would ensue. They didn’t see much of their biological father, and unfortunately, their mother shared the same complaint. The girls had to deal with a messy divorce that brought them even closer. They stayed with their mother, while their father left to focus on his deal-making in Manhattan. Luckily, their mother found love again, and they were fortunate to find a stable household in which to grow up.
In their teenage years when one had a boyfriend, the other would plot and scheme to torpedo the relationship because they were jealous of any usurper who would steal the other sister’s attention. They were inseparable, with a bond that went deeper than any common sisterhood.
Then Sarah had left home and gone to Georgetown. Alison left the nest the next year for Columbia. Sarah went on to graduate in political science and snagged a job on a senator’s staff who was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Alison took her degree in economics and went to work for an Internet startup in the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
For a few years, Sarah’s life was sprinkled with liberal doses of happiness. Alison would take the shuttle to DC, and they’d explore the Capitol and its environs. Or Sarah would ride the train to New York, and they’d take in a show. And sometimes they’d reinvade Boston, to their mother’s delight.
Then came the eleventh of September.
Sarah had arrived at work early that morning, eager to embrace her new duties in the wake of her promotion on the senator’s staff. She’d been accepted at Stanford law school but had pushed her matriculation back a year because of her promotion. She was in the chief of staff’s office planning the day when somebody barged in and yelled, “Turn on CNN!”
What happened next was like an out-of-body experience as she watched in horror when the second plane slammed into the South Tower. Her attempts to call through the clogged cellular circuits were fruitless, and she didn’t remember being physically dragged out of the senator’s office as the Capitol building was evacuated. Her only hazy memory of the rest of that day was of a black plume of smoke rising over the Pentagon.
The shock was paralytic in its severity. She was numb for weeks, going into months, and she did not shed a single tear. For when the shock wore off, the rage and anger welled up within her with a laserlike intensity, and she vowed that whoever had taken her sister would share Sarah Kashvilli’s pain.
She went to the senator and asked—demanded, really—that he sponsor her application into the Central Intelligence Agency. Langley had been flooded with applications in the wake of 9/11, but with some juice from a senator sitting on the Intelligence Committee, her app was plucked out of the pile.
From that moment onward, she resolutely focused on her search-and-destroy mission to execute the brothers of the hijackers of United Flight 175.
The only chink in her armor—where her humanity was reclaimed, if only briefly—came one night on a field exercise at Camp Peary, or “The Farm,” which was the CIA’s training facility near Williamsburg, Virginia. She’d been paired off with a Rhodes Scholar named Jarrod Stryker on an escape and evasion exercise. The rules were that after a simulated breakout from a prison facility, they had to evade capture while staying within the designated confines of the nine-thousand-acre Farm. If caught, they would spend the balance of the night in a nasty simulated interrogation, and the instructors bragged they rolled up 98 percent of all escapees. Had the exercise taken place earlier in the training regimen, they might have actually obeyed the rules. But since it was the last exercise prior to graduation, they’d learned the CIA was all about breaking rules.
Taking a variation on a theme that the best place to hide from the police is inside a police station, after the breakout, Jarrod led her toward their pursuers under the moonlight—stopping a few times along the way so he could pee at the base of separate trees.
“What the hell are you doing?” she enquired, as he zipped up his fly for the third time.
“Laying a false trail. Now just follow me,” he whispered as he grabbed her hand.
He led her to another oak tree where they took refuge in its old hollowed-out trunk. The space was confining, and Jarrod had to wrap Sarah up in his arms.
“Oh, terrific,” he whispered. “You wore some perfume?”
“You got a problem with that?” she countered.
“I don’t, but the dogs might.”
“Dogs?”
“How the hell do you think they find us at night?”
Just then, she heard the baying of hounds and peeked out of the hollow. Flashlights were approaching. “They’re coming,” she said.
“Well, let’s just hope my urine will be stronger than your eau de whatever.”
“Oh, Jarrod, you’re so romantic.”
And for the first time since she could remember, Sarah laughed. Severely suppressed, of course, but she laughed. And he did, too.
The hounds caught the scent of Jarrod’s bodily fluids and bayed loudly, jerking their handlers from tree to tree away from them. The pursuers flicked their lights up into the branches, thinking they’d treed their students, but they found nothing. The fugitives suppressed more laughter as they heard the handlers cursing the animals and jerking them further in the other direction.
Once clear, Jarrod reluctantly released Sarah from his grasp and led her by the hand toward the Camp Peary HQ. He took great stock in the fact she didn’t pull her hand away.
“Where are we going?” she whispered.
“Off to a warm bed and a cold beer. Not necessarily in that order.”
At the periphery of the headquarters was a small two-story structure made of brick, with a wooden veneer and gables on the second floor. He led her up the rickety entry steps and then pulled up his pant leg to untape a small felt case of tools from his ankle. He held it open for her and said, “Why don’t you do it? I believe you outscored me in that class.”
It was an array of lock picking tools. She chose one and went to work, asking, “What is this place, anyway?”
“It’s called Porto Bello. It was the hunting lodge of the last royal governor of Virginia. The camp brass will sometimes host visiting VIP receptions here. And sometimes the guests stay overnight.”
“You seem remarkably well informed.”
“Well, we’re in the intel business now, are we not?”
She sprung the lock and replied, “After you.”
They entered and felt their way to the kitchen where they opened a refrigerator for some subdued illumination.
“Hoowee! Hit the jackpot!” howled Jarrod. “Must be some leftovers from a reception.” Shrink-wrapped sandwiches, iced beer, and s
everal bottles of wine were sitting on the shelf. “Hungry?”
“Famished.”
“Say no more.”
The sandwiches were zapped in the microwave and tops were popped as he chatted her up about lacrosse at Auburn and living at Oxford.
She found herself opening up, too, a little bit anyway, about Georgetown and the craziness that was Capitol Hill.
Neither probed too deeply, but after the rigors of Camp Peary, the release of tension came out of them like a gusher. Sarah rummaged around a kitchen drawer and came up with a corkscrew, and the liberation of the wine began.
About two in the morning, Jarrod said, “Well, I could use a shower.”
“Me, too.”
He led her upstairs, feeling their way along as they couldn’t turn on the lights to arouse suspicion. “I’ll go first,” he said, and he did.
While the water was running, she pulled the curtains back and let the moonlight stream into the bedroom. When he emerged from the bathroom, he wore a towel, and she was more than a little awestruck by his lacrosse washboard abs.
Without a word, she entered the bathroom and took her turn under the shower, and when she emerged her hair was swept up in a towel and another was around her torso. He was sitting on the edge of the bed. Their eyes locked, and she realized it was her decision. Go the opposite way into the other bedroom, or…
She dropped her towel, and he rose from the bed to take her into his arms.
She never saw him again until Beirut, five years later.
She never anticipated he would shield her and take the fall for her assassination of the 9/11 hijacker’s brother. It was an act of distilled chivalry, the likes of which she’d never seen before or since.
And now here she was. Thirty-something. Alone. Years deep in a quest of virulent revenge. Off for a few days and back at home, she was trying desperately to create the façade of a normal life
But then she bumped into a high school classmate of hers on a trip to the grocery store. The classmate droned on about her son in Little League, her daughter’s ballet lessons, and her husband the dentist. Sarah felt she might have been talking to a Martian for all they had in common. The CIA agent gave the dentist’s wife a bull cover story about her desk job in the State Department and left with a frightening realization of how far she’d left the rest of the world behind. And ironically, through it all—for more than the last decade—the only person who’d known her true motivation and purpose was Jarrod Stryker, the man who’d fallen on his sword to protect her to enable her blood quest to continue.
And now, as the tears rolled down her cheeks, she knew it was over. She couldn’t be sustained by hate and rage any longer. She could go for eleven years, but not eleven years and a day.
She managed to stumble back to the condo. She quickly went into the bathroom where she splashed her face with water and got her breathing under control. Then she realized the tears were blissfully cathartic—that the ability to finally grieve and let go of Alison enabled her to feel human again.
Somewhat in a daze, she went into her study and decided to check her work e-mail. But if her presence was required at Langley, she’d get a “call home” notice anyway, and there was none. Just an e-mail from personnel that she was behind on her continuing education credits for the Agency’s internal professional designation. That, and another e-mail that said her subscription to Congressional Quarterly had expired.
With time on her hands, she went to a personal e-mail account she checked infrequently, and when she spied the name on an incoming message, it caused her to take in a little gasp.
With a tremble to her hand, she clicked on the message, which read:
I NEED TO SEE YOU. URGENT.
JARROD
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
New York City
Six Days Until Options Expiration
The Russian was totally slack-jawed as he stared at Jarrod. “I still in shock. You cannot serious be?”
Stryker stood to pull on his jacket. “It’s our only hope, really. Granted, it’s the longest of long shots, but it beats sitting on our hands and hoping things will get better. I have to become a ghost for the next few days. You and Gwen mind the fort. Keep me apprised of William’s condition, and I’ll let you know how things are going. Now I have to head out for Teterboro.”
Sergei sighed. “Very well. Caution, that part of the world—”
“He knows,” injected Gwen.
Just then, Donald Pippin, the firm’s administrative partner, appeared at the door with a rather large security guard standing behind him.
Jarrod looked up and with a quizzical tone said, “Oh, hello, Don. What do you need? I’m kind of—”
Pippin cleared his throat and his eyes seemed ablaze with excitement as he held a document in his hands. “Jarrod Stryker,” he began in his high-pitched voice, “as chief of the firm’s energy trading desk, I have been informed you have engaged in actions that may have resulted in significant losses to client accounts. These trades were reckless and foolhardy and have put the firm in a desperate position. Therefore, in my capacity as acting general partner, I am suspending you without pay from Blackenford Capital effective immediately. As I don’t have access to your trading book, you or someone on your team needs to provide me access immediately. Then, you are to be escorted from the premises.”
Jarrod, Gwen, and Sergei regarded Pippin as they would an unwelcome horsefly that had just flown into the office.
Finally, Jarrod said, “Don, the trade is not over. Also it does appear you are into hallucinogenic drugs. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got important work to—”
“This is no hallucination!” he yelled with a twisted intensity, as heads turned in the trading room. He slapped the document in his hand and said, “Under paragraph twenty-seven D, subparagraph four, of the partnership agreement, the section on the incapacitation of the general partner reads, and I quote, ‘In the event the general partner is incapacitated for any reason, the firm’s administrative partner shall assume the position of emergency interim acting general partner, with all powers and responsibilities pertaining thereto, for a period of 72 hours, or until the limited partners convene to elect and appoint a permanent interim acting partner unless the general partner has pre-appointed a successor.’”
Jarrod stared at him as if he was a cockroach he had to deal with. “Don, I never liked you either. But I know that William likes you even less than I do, and the minute he wakes up and finds out what kind of stunt you’re trying to pull here, he will send you to the ground floor without an elevator. This trade is not over.”
Pippin’s face was flushed and red as he unleashed a pent-up geyser of distilled jealousy. “We’ll see about that, Mister Golden Boy! William called you his crown prince. Well, you’re not so princely now. You’ve ruined the firm, and I’m not going to tolerate your presence a moment longer. Guard, remove him from the premises!”
Jarrod cracked a wry smile as he said, “What’s wrong, Don. Can’t do it yourself?”
Pippin’s eyes grew wide as he backpedalled, and the security guard filled the doorway. He was big and beefy, but soft, not muscle. He had a goatee that was dot on a flabby chin and neck. Jarrod put him at 270 pounds. Probably played defensive tackle at some junior college before he flunked out and discovered beer.
“Sir,” he intoned in his best Darth Vader imitation, “I must ask you to come along with me.”
Jarrod smiled charmingly and replied, “Of course.”
Walking past Sergei and Gwen, he winked at them as he recalled the pointer from his instructor at the Farm. “If you can connect your elbow to their solar plexus before they have a chance to tighten their ab muscles, well, it’s sort of like cutting off their oxygen supply.” Jarrod knew it was true, because he’d done it a couple of times—accidentally on purpose—with a lacrosse stick as payback for some cheap shots on the playing field.
It defied all logic. Jarrod felt he couldn’t just be led off by Pippin and
the gorilla with his entire team looking on after all the upheaval he’d endured. So, as he walked through the doorway in meek submission, the guard turned sideways, seemingly allowing him to pass. As Jarrod brushed against the guard, the guard took a moment to overstep his bounds by unnecessarily shoving Jarrod in the back. Jarrod immediately grabbed his left fist with his right hand, and at the perfect moment whipped his left elbow into the gorilla’s soft solar plexus. Then he stepped out of the way.
Pippin gaped in horror as the guard wheezed, went down on one knee, and then fell over, his diaphragm paralyzed. As the face of the lummox migrated from red to purple, the controller gaped at Stryker. Jarrod stepped forward menacingly and uttered a “Grrrrrr!”
The accountant dropped the partnership document and ran like hell down the hall, triggering a chorus of hoots and catcalls from the trading desk.
Jarrod smiled and nodded an acknowledgement, and then he squatted down to speak softly to the gorilla with the purple face.
“I’m sorry, my friend, but it was necessary. Very soon, you’ll be escorting Mr. Pippin from the building. In the meantime, should you entertain any thoughts of a lawsuit or some such fantasy, my Russian friend here and the lady will testify you tried to assault me, and I defended myself. Besides, in your line of work, you don’t want it to get around that you were taken down. Bad for the reputation. That said, have a nice day.” He rose and waved good-bye to Sergei and Gwen, then he was gone.
Slowly, the guard’s breathing returned to normal, and Sergei turned to Gwen, saying, “You know, he joost might pull it off.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Tbilisi, Georgia
Laughter.
It filled the warehouse with a raucous, biting resonance as Shamil Basayev himself bent double and fell to the floor. He pointed to the satellite news image on the screen and stammered “D-d-did you see thaaaaat? Ha-ha-ha-ha!” He tried to speak through the paroxysms of laughter.