Eye for an Eye: A Dewey Andreas Novel

by Ben Coes

  As they reached the front row, Dellenbaugh stepped to the couple seated in the first two seats.

  “Don’t get up,” said Dellenbaugh. “Mr. and Mrs. Tanzer, I would like to introduce you to Premier Li of the People’s Republic of China.”

  Li reached his hand out.

  “I am deeply sorry for what happened,” said Li. “The death of your daughter was the fault of people within my own government. Even though I abhor what these criminals did to Jessica, I cannot change what happened. What I can do is accept responsibility for it and apologize to you sincerely from the deepest springs of humility and sadness that, today and always, shall flow from my heart.”

  * * *

  Three rows back, Katie sat next to Tacoma. He was dressed in a gray Brooks Brothers suit, and was wearing a blue tie. It was the first time she’d ever seen the former UVA middie and Navy SEAL ever wear one. He pulled at his collar, which was too tight. Katie was dressed in a simple black sleeveless dress, her tan arms clutching a small bag of tissues, her blond hair parted neatly in the middle.

  They were, like everyone else in the large crowd, silent, reverent, listening to the soft strains from the violin.

  Down the row from Katie and Tacoma sat Calibrisi. His eyes were red and sad. Next to him was an older couple who’d traveled from Castine for the funeral of the woman who would have been their daughter-in-law. John Andreas looked distinguished, dressed in a new gray suit. Margaret was in a simple, pretty green dress. Beside her sat Reagan Andreas, then, to her right, her mother, Hobey’s wife, Barrett. Three seats sat empty at the end of the row.

  At half past eleven, the minister gave an almost imperceptible nod to the woman playing the violin. He stepped slowly to the dais.

  “Welcome to Princeton, and to a celebration of the remarkable life of a unique and special American, a daughter of Princeton, and someone I had the pleasure, some thirty-eight years ago, of baptizing. Today we cry, we mourn, and we rejoice the life of Jessica Cavendish Tanzer.”

  * * *

  Hobey and Sam stood just inside the gates to the cemetery. Despite the fact that the memorial service had begun, they remained at the gates, waiting for Dewey.

  “Maybe it was just too hard,” said Hobey. “I don’t blame him.”

  “He’s coming,” said Sam.

  A few minutes later, Sam saw him first, walking down the road toward the gates. Dewey’s head was shaved. As he approached the gates, he pulled out his wallet to show ID.

  “Please put it away,” said the agent. “I’m sorry for your loss, sir.”

  Dewey walked through the gates. He looked at Hobey, who stepped to Dewey and hugged him. Then Dewey looked at Sam, who could only stare up at Dewey. Dewey’s eyes were bloodshot, red with tears. He eyed his nephew’s mop of curly blond hair and grinned through his grief.

  “What, they don’t have barbers in Castine anymore?” said Dewey. He stepped toward Sam and hugged him.

  “I know,” said Sam. “It’s a little long.”

  “I heard what you did, Sammy,” Dewey whispered into Sam’s ear. “Pretty fuckin’ ballsy, if you ask me.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Dewey.”

  They walked down the cemetery road together, Sam in the middle. They passed a long line of limousines, SUVs, and government vehicles.

  Dewey was dressed in a navy blue suit, a blue button-down shirt, a gray-and-white houndstooth tie. It was a tie that Jessica had given him; a tie she had picked out for him to wear to their wedding.

  “You go ahead,” said Dewey, looking at his brother, then at Sam.

  “You okay?” asked his brother.

  “No,” said Dewey. “But seeing you two guys sure helps.”

  Dewey went left, off the road, into the field of gravestones. He walked down a long line of headstones toward the funeral. He walked until he was just a few feet from a woman who was seated in the chair at the end of the last row. She glanced at Dewey; he didn’t recognize her. She looked at him for several moments, then turned back to the front.

  Jessica’s sister, Percy, had asked Dewey to speak, but he said no.

  Dewey shut his eyes, listening to Calibrisi’s normally loud, authoritative voice, softened by emotion, as he talked about Jessica.

  There were times, minutes, moments that etched themselves into your memory, Dewey thought, like letters carved into an old maple tree. They were carved there, and there they would remain. Sometimes, those memories could be obscure and trivial. For whatever reason, at that moment, he thought of the color of a girl’s socks, a girl whose name he couldn’t even remember, on the first day of elementary school back in Castine, so many years ago. And yet that memory was a permanent marker that would never disappear. Other memories were like letters written into sand, there for only brief, fleeting moments, then gone, washed away forever by the water and the wind.

  As Dewey listened, with eyes shut, to Hector speak, as he felt the warm breeze across his face, as he smelled the fresh-cut grass beneath his feet, as he fought back tears, anger, and frustration, he finally understood that his entire life had amounted to nothing; Jessica was but a set of letters, a word, now gone. And that as much as he fought to carve his life into the thickest of maples, he was little more than a boat, helpless on the incoming tide, watching the water wash away his dreams; an eyewitness to the tragedy that was the life of a warrior.

  EPILOGUE

  BIRCH HILL

  MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

  Dewey parked his pickup truck in front of a large, rambling, white-brick, three-story 1885 colonial, the home of Hector and Vivian Calibrisi.

  Dewey’s hair had grown out a bit, perhaps a quarter inch, and he’d let his beard and mustache grow out. He looked like a spot-on twin for the young man who, more than a decade before, had been the first-ever Ranger to make it through Gauntlet; big, tough, and plain-out mean. That wasn’t his intent when he got up, but it’s the way it was.

  He knocked on the front door, and a young woman with long brown hair, dressed in plaid pajama bottoms and a Northwestern sweatshirt, appeared, then opened the door. She had a cup of coffee in her hand. She looked like a young Sophia Loren. She scanned Dewey from head to toe.

  “You must be Dewey.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Daisy.”

  “Hi.”

  “Come in.”

  Dewey followed her inside. He smelled wood burning in a fireplace somewhere off inside the big house.

  “Your dad talks about you a lot.”

  “He does, huh?” she said. “My background is supposed to be kept classified.”

  “Seriously?” Dewey asked, believing her.

  She glanced around.

  “I’m a secret agent,” she whispered. “Russian. Deep cover. My real name is Svetlana.”

  Daisy looked up at Dewey and smiled; he couldn’t help smiling back.

  “I know,” said Dewey, whispering back. “That’s why I’m here. Moscow sent me. They have a job they want you to do.”

  Daisy giggled.

  “Really?” she asked conspiratorially. “What is it?”

  “It has to do with the truck out front,” said Dewey, glancing around suspiciously.

  “The truck?” she asked, leaning closer to Dewey. He could smell her shampoo. She put her hand on his forearm and stood up on her tiptoes to be closer to his ear, then whispered, “Do they want me to blow it up?”

  “No,” he whispered back. “They want you to clean it, then wax it.”

  Daisy started laughing, and soon Dewey joined her.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Vivian Calibrisi, who heard the commotion and walked out from the kitchen.

  “Dewey,” said Daisy, smiling at him, then turning and walking toward the stairs. “This is going to be a fun Thanksgiving!”

  “Come on in, Dewey,” Vivian said, walking to him.

  Dewey hugged Vivian, then followed her into the kitchen.

  “It’s great to see you.”

  “You too. Thanks a lot for havin
g me. I hope I’m not intruding or anything.”

  “Are you kidding? We’re going to have a blast. Hector said he wants you to carve the turkey. He said he thinks you’ll do a good job.”

  Dewey smiled. He looked around the big kitchen. A racing green AGA stove was covered in various shiny pots and dishes. A fire roared in the fireplace. In the middle of the kitchen, a long harvest table had flowers on it. A beautiful chandelier dangled overhead.

  “Where is the old geezer?” Dewey asked.

  “He’s in back. Just look for the forest fire.”

  Dewey walked across the back lawn, toward a pond that sat in the middle of a field, beyond which were trees. Next to the trees, a chimney of smoke swirled into the late-autumn air. He came to the source of the smoke: a brick fire pit at the edge of the forest. Standing there was Calibrisi. His back was turned, oblivious to the outside world. He was singing a song to himself, “Feed the World,” in a jarringly off-key tone. He had on boots, a flannel shirt, and jeans and was stirring a large pool of brown liquid which was in a steel pan simmering on the fire.

  “First of all,” said Dewey, “you are the worst goddam singer I have ever heard.”

  Calibrisi turned, stopped singing, and smiled.

  “Second, what the fuck are you doing?”

  “You guys never made maple syrup?” asked Calibrisi. “I thought you were raised in Maine.”

  “We just bought it from the idiots who spent all day making it,” said Dewey.

  Calibrisi laughed, then reached down with a spoon and took a small amount of the piping hot liquid, blew on it then slurped it up.

  “Getting there,” he said. “You wanna try?”

  “Tempting, but no thanks.”

  Calibrisi put the large wooden spoon down and gave Dewey a hug.

  “How you doing?” asked Calibrisi.

  “Good,” said Dewey. “Good to see you. Your daughter is hilarious.”

  “We’re all glad you’re here,” said Calibrisi.

  “I am too,” said Dewey, reaching for the wooden spoon. “Let me stir a while. You rest that pretty head of yours.”

  Dewey took the wooden spoon and stirred as they both stood next to the fire.

  “So you going to stay the night? Vivian made up a bed for you.”

  “Sure,” said Dewey. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “So have you thought about things?” asked Calibrisi.

  “No.”

  “You want to know what your options are?” asked Calibrisi.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No,” said Calibrisi. “I spoke to Giles Smith down at Fort Bragg. You’d be welcomed back with open arms. You could be part of the training team, new Deltas. He said they could really use you.”

  Dewey nodded.

  “Don’t get too excited,” said Calibrisi.

  “I’m honored.”

  “Then there’s Katie and Rob. They’d make you a partner. If you ask me, that would be a lot of fun. You’d make a shitload of money, travel all over the place.”

  Dewey nodded.

  “Okay,” continued Calibrisi, shaking his head. “Jesus Christ, you’re a hard man to please. Third, finally, there’s Langley. You can come and work for me. We could send you into the field, you can train guys at the farm, whatever you want. The money isn’t great, but I think you’d enjoy it.”

  Dewey said nothing.

  “To be honest,” continued Calibrisi, “that’s what I think you should do. I think you should work in an environment where the guy you’re reporting to understands what you’ve been through.”

  Calibrisi paused.

  “Dewey, I think you need to talk to someone. I’m talking about lying down on a couch somewhere and reflecting, rebuilding a little. I’ve done it. You’d be an incredibly valuable CIA asset, but on a personal level, I’m worried about you. I think you need to talk to someone. No one person can go through what you just went through and be fine. I hope you don’t take that the wrong way.”

  Dewey smiled.

  “Not at all.”

  Just then, Daisy approached from across the field. She was carrying two beers, which she handed to Dewey and her father.

  “Mom made me bring these out to you,” she said, smiling at Dewey, then her dad.

  “Thanks, kiddo,” said Calibrisi.

  “Yeah, thanks, kiddo,” said Dewey.

  Daisy had showered and was now dressed in a tight brown sweater and white jeans which may have been a size too small but were unlikely to garner any criticism, except perhaps from her parents.

  “You look nice,” said Calibrisi, looking at his daughter, then at Dewey, who was trying not to look. “What’s the big occasion?”

  “It’s Thanksgiving, Dad,” she said, smiling at Dewey. “Can’t I put on something nice?”

  Daisy stuck out her tongue at her father, then turned.

  “By the way, Mom wants to know what time you two idiots are coming inside.”

  “Soon,” said Calibrisi. “Give us a few more minutes.”

  “Okay,” she said. She glanced at Dewey, then turned and headed back inside.

  Dewey watched her walk away, then looked at Calibrisi.

  “She’s too young for you,” said Calibrisi.

  “Please,” said Dewey, “give me a little credit, will you? The last thing I’m looking for is a twenty-one-year-old girlfriend.”

  “She’s twenty-three,” said Calibrisi.

  “She is?”

  Calibrisi smiled.

  “Anyway, back to reality. Those are your choices, at least the ones I can help you out with. But I want you to know I’ll do anything for you. At the end of the day, you deserve to be happy.”

  Dewey said nothing. He picked a log and tossed it on the fire.

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “I’m not thinking anything.”

  “Nothing? Trust me, I’ve heard some weird shit over the years.”

  “Okay, you want to know what I’m thinking?” asked Dewey.

  Dewey leaned down, grabbed another large piece of wood, and threw it into the fire. He crouched down and held his hands up toward the warmth of the burning wood.

  “I think I only have two choices, Hector,” said Dewey. “And to be honest, I’m not sure which one I should go with.”

  “Well, talk to me,” said Calibrisi.

  “I’m just not sure you’re the right one to talk to.”

  “Dewey, trust me. You can tell me anything. You’re not going to upset me.”

  “I know I’m not. I just think it’s a very personal decision.”

  “Let me guess. Langley or Katie and Rob? Let’s go though the pros and cons.”

  “That’s not the choice, Hector,” said Dewey.

  “Bragg or Langley? Bragg or Katie and Rob?”

  “No. I hate to break it to you, but I’m not thinking about any of those things you talked about.”

  Calibrisi said nothing. For a brief moment, he appeared crestfallen. He stirred the syrup. Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Okay,” said Calibrisi. “What’s the choice?”

  “I think the choice is, white or dark meat,” said Dewey. “Which one should I eat first? I like ’em both. What are you going to go with?”

  Dewey glanced at Calibrisi, a shit-eating grin on his face.

  “Asshole,” said Calibrisi.

  BEIJING

  General Qingchen sat in his normal position, on the wooden bench, alone, atop the Ministry of Defense building. It was a rare day in Beijing, clear, without smog or clouds. Qingchen could see the roof of the Forbidden Palace in the distance. He made eye contact with the white pigeon who sat on the far arm of the bench, staring politely at Qingchen’s sandwich, waiting for his usual reward. After an hour, Qingchen still had not taken a bite. Finally, he took the sandwich and ripped it into small pieces, then placed the plate on the ground. The pigeon hopped down, picked up a small piece of bread, and began eating what would undoubtedl
y be the biggest feast of his life.

  He looked around the rooftop. The grass had been his late wife’s idea. Qingchen had been to many places in his life, all over the world, but this was his favorite.

  It had been a long month, a month whose repercussions inside Beijing, and in particular the Ministry of Defense, were still being felt. Li had begun his purges within a day of Fao Bhang’s death, and the upper ranks of the military, Chinese intelligence, the Communist Party, and the State Council, were but shadows of their former selves. Dozens of officers had been rounded up and now awaited military tribunal. It had all come crashing down, as violently, as suddenly, as the dagger that tore through Bhang himself, though far more blood would be spilled in the days and weeks to come than anything Bhang left on the white marble floor at Beijing Hospital.

  Qingchen had yet to be touched. Part of him believed it was because they hadn’t gotten to him yet. But he knew that wasn’t the case. The truth is, as much as Li might have suspected him, he didn’t have proof. How, after all, can you prove a man guilty when the only witnesses—Bhang, and Kai-wen, Qingchen’s deputy—were both dead; Bhang by the American, and Kai-wen by Qingchen himself, with poison, less than fifteen minutes after Bhang was killed and the wily general figured out that unless he killed his loyal deputy, he himself would swing from the gallows.

  The pigeon chomped away at the sandwich, and then heard a noise. The bird abruptly flew off into the clear sky as, at the far side of the rooftop, the door opened.

  One man stepped onto the rooftop and started to walk toward Qingchen. He kept walking until he came face-to-face with Qingchen.

  “Good afternoon, General.”

  “Premier Li. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? I would have been more than happy to make the trip to Zhongnanhai.”

  “On such a beautiful day, I thought it would be nice to visit you here. I would like to speak candidly with you, General. May I do that?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Li and Qingchen began a stroll across the lawn, toward the edge of the roof, where boxes of white lilacs were growing.

  “I believe it’s time to announce your retirement, General Qingchen,” said Li, as they arrived at roof’s edge. Ten stories below, the city traffic teemed.