It was as his uncles had said. It was the Corsican blood that had somehow been infused in him. But when? And how? Somewhere in his childhood, he thought. And again as a young man. It had come from the affection, the love he had so desperately needed and had found only in two old men who had discovered something in him worthy of endearment. Something his own father had never discovered, or perhaps had never even sought out.
But that was past, he told himself. He smiled as the car turned into the airport. But the past is prologue. And perhaps even doomed to repeat itself. Very trite, he thought. Especially for a professor of English. But also apt. And if that was the way it was to be, so be it.
“So be it,” he whispered to himself.
Palm Beach, Florida
Piers Moran’s house sat across the narrow coastal highway that hugged the shoreline. There was a tunnel that led under the road to the beach, but Piers seldom used it. The beach and ocean view were a status symbol, an investment. It was not something he personally valued.
Alex had come to see his father before heading for North Carolina and Fort Bragg. He needed information; he needed insight. He hoped his father could and would provide it.
Alex stopped the rental car before the front door and pulled an overnight bag from the trunk. As he mounted the steps the door opened to reveal his mother and an uncertain smile. She was a fragile woman in her late sixties, wearing a flowered print dress that was too young, and her hair was still its old shade of blond, though formulated now by a hairdresser.
“Alex, dear,” she said, turning a cheek for him to kiss. She squeezed his arm as he kissed her. “You are going to be a good boy, now, aren’t you?” she whispered. “Richard’s here. I think he’s expecting an apology.”
“Of course, Mother,” he said. He could live with her choreography. He had never written or called Richbird to offer regrets for the minor battering, probably because he had never felt any. But he could do it now. If a happy family gathering was what she wanted, he could provide it.
“Your father and brother are out by the pool, dear,” she said. “Why don’t you join them?” She looked at him closely, almost as though inspecting him. “I expect you’re off on one of your secret things again. Even after all this time.”
Alex stared at her, incredulous at her perception.
“Why do you say that, Mother?”
“Oh, I can always tell when your father’s up to something in that vein. He thinks I can’t, but it’s always rather obvious.” She fluttered a hand. “But I don’t want to know about it. I learned long ago it was better not to know.” She smiled. It was the vacant, practiced smile she had also learned to use, he realized. “And besides, I have to supervise Meloxie’s dinner.”
Meloxie was the black woman who came to cook and clean for his parents. His mother did neither, had never done in his memory, but on his infrequent visits he had heard her give the woman endless instructions about what she wanted and how she wanted it. He had wondered if Meloxie spat in the soup when his mother left her. Now he wondered if it was just part of his mother’s way of hiding. Hiding from the things that had always gone on around her.
He found his father and brother seated by the pool, just as his mother had promised. He had often wondered about pools so close to the ocean. It was as if those who owned them had rejected what nature had provided, convinced they could do it better.
His father and brother were dressed in lightweight suits. He had never seen either without a tie in more than twenty years, and he had never seen his father anywhere near his pool without being fully clothed.
His father came to him as he crossed the patio. He took his hand, then his arm. “Richard’s here,” he said.
“I see that,” Alex answered.
“His wife is not,” his father added. “The last time was too much for her, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll miss seeing her,” Alex said.
His father gave him a hard look, but he ignored it and walked over to his brother, who stood as he approached.
He had a sudden impulse to throw him into the pool. He smiled at the thought. “Good to see you, Richard,” he said. “I want to apologize about the last time. Blame it on the booze.”
Richard was tall and slender, a clone of their father, and he carried his forty-six years well, the touch of gray at his temples providing a perfect banker’s look. But then, Richard would have had it no other way, he knew.
He raised his chin slightly with Alex’s apology, and nodded. “It’s forgotten,” he said. “How have you been?”
“Enjoying myself,” Alex said. “And how’s your wife and children?” For the life of him he could not remember their names. Then he remembered. “Emily, and little Susan and Richard, three,” he added.
“Excellent. The kids had an event today, and Emily shepherded them,” he lied.
“I’ll miss seeing them,” Alex lied in return.
They took chairs beside the pool and exchanged family news, of rather, Alex listened to family news. He had none of his own.
His mother joined them, briefly complained about Meloxie’s dinner—Alex decided to skip the soup—and launched into the latest gossip about Donald Trump’s need to sell the old Post estate up the road, making it clear none of the neighbors would miss him. Alex was certain The Donald would be horrified to learn this.
His mother began talking about some of her friends—they all seemed to be named Muffy or Buffy, or Winky or Twinky—and Alex tuned her out, satisfying her with smiles or nods at appropriate moments. He loved her, but had never understood her, and he thought it was because they had been having superficial conversations for forty-three years.
Richard took over with talk of the bank, and told him of their father’s “particularly clever handling” of a “delicate matter” at a board meeting the previous week. Alex listened. His mother beamed approval. And his father smiled in a self-deprecating way.
An hour before dinner, Piers suggested a walk along the beach, explaining to Richard that he and Alex had some old business to discuss. Richard seemed relieved, Alex thought.
They came out of the tunnel and began walking north. To their right, the ocean was green and flat, and lapped softly at the beach. Fifty yards out Alex could see the occasional shadow of the old coastal highway that had surrendered to a hurricane years earlier. Parts of it were still there beneath the water, as if expecting a car to come rolling along at any moment. They had built good roads in those days, he thought. They simply built them too close to the sea.
“Your brother is a bit of a twit,” his father said, surprising him. “But he’s good at what he does. And I’m glad you’re in a more tolerant mood this time.”
“It was four years ago,” Alex said. “Perhaps I’ve mellowed.”
His father glanced at him, taking in the sarcasm, choosing to ignore it.
“I hope not,” he said. “You’re in for a rough time. I hope you’re ready for it.”
They walked on in silence. Out over the ocean Alex could see a frigate bird soar and dive, its split tail and long, narrow wings cutting the air like a sleek black jet.
“I need you to tell me what you can about it,” Alex said at length. He knew his father was awaiting questions, would offer nothing unless asked. It was the training, he told himself. The years of living a covert life, where nothing was offered up on its own. “I don’t trust I’ll get the whole picture from CIA,” he added unnecessarily.
“You probably won’t,” Piers agreed. “But that’s only because it’s the nature of the beast.”
Piers recapitulated what Cisco had already explained, adding little that was new other than the Pisanis’ desperate situation.
“Ludwig’s running circles around them,” Piers said. “I don’t know if they’ve just gotten old, or if Ludwig’s that much better.”
“Someone must be helping him,” Alex said, unable to speak the man’s name.
“Francisci, we think,” Piers said. “But no one can prove it. He’s
the next power in the milieu, just waiting to don the mantle. He could have held back and simply outlived them—although he is fairly close in age—but I think the years of subservience made him want a chance to savor the victory while he still had time.”
“Why haven’t Antoine and Meme simply hit him?” Alex asked.
“Just not done that way. They have their own rules in the milieu, although no one short of God can understand them. But once Ludwig is gone, they can handle Francisci. They’re just getting hit from too many sides now, and their political protection is at an all-time low.” He seemed to think about that a moment, then added: “It’s all just come together at once, and it’s left them vulnerable.”
“That’s too much coincidence,” Alex said.
“Yes, it is,” Piers agreed. “But I can’t enlighten you on that. I’m too far out of the loop. I had to satisfy myself with keeping a long-overdue promise.”
They turned and started back toward the tunnel and the house beyond. Before they reached it, Piers stopped and turned to face his son. The sun was behind Piers, and it cast a glow about his head. It was almost saintly, Alex thought.
“Between the Pisanis and the agency, you’ll find the bastard,” he said. “There’s a man named Wheelwright in Marseilles. He’s CIA’s station chief there, and he’ll help you. He’ll be ordered to. They’ve promised me that. And Antoine and Meme know you’re coming.” He laughed. “When I spoke to him on the phone, Antoine told me he was going to take you boar hunting. He said to tell the pants pisser to bring an extra pair.” He shook his head. “The man’s bravado knows no bounds. He’s up to his ass in bullets and blood, and he makes jokes.”
Alex smiled and looked away from the sun. His father’s voice brought him back.
“Kill the bastard at distance, Alex,” he said. “I know you’ll want him close. You’ll want to look in his eyes when you do it. But that won’t help Stephanie, and it won’t make it any better for you.” He took Alex’s arm and squeezed it. “Get him and get out of there alive. The people with him aren’t professionals, but they’re good at killing. So don’t underestimate them.” He squeezed Alex’s arm again. “Kill him at distance,” he said.
CHAPTER
34
Alex spent the night in the guest room, window open, listening to the sound of the ocean. It felt strange, almost hostile, sleeping in his father’s home. It had felt that way ever since he had become an adult.
He always thought of it as his father’s home, not his mother’s, not theirs together. He wasn’t certain why. Perhaps it was because his mother just seemed to flit about the place, never doing anything but making sure things were as she thought his father would like them. His father was the presence about which everything revolved, and his mother had always concentrated on him and his needs, leaving her children to the care of a string of nurses and nannies from Aix-en-Provence to Paris to Chevy Chase.
Alex had not thought about it until years later, when he had seen how “families” lived. And he had realized then, he had never been part of a family, but simply a part of his father’s household. But he had been an adult by then, with the opportunity to have a family of his own. Now, at forty-three, he had never achieved that goal, and he was back again, a stranger in his father’s house.
He breakfasted with his mother—his father had a breakfast meeting at the Everglades Club, and had said he would see him in Washington in three weeks. His mother talked about everything, except where he was going and what he was about to do. She knew something was up, and knew that something—with both him and his father—had always involved the intelligence work she had always despised.
But perhaps despised was too strong a word. She had never understood it, had not wanted to because of the danger involved. It had upset the order that had always been so necessary to her life. So she had ignored it.
She bade him farewell at the door, offering her cheek again, and he left without ever telling her what he was about to do, or why. And he wondered if she would think about it, if she would worry about his safety. He wanted to believe that she would.
He drove north toward the Florida-Georgia line. It would be a long drive to Bragg, which was in south-central North Carolina, northwest of Fayetteville. But he had two days before he was due, so the pace could be leisurely.
Special Forces had changed since his initial DIA training in 1969. Congress had put it under a Special Operations Command three years before. Now headquartered at McDill Air Force Base in Florida, it included the Green Berets, Navy SEALS, Delta Force, and other elite units, all trained to combat terrorism and Third World insurgencies and to conduct drug interdictions and hostage rescues. And in its wisdom Congress had given oversight for these clandestine activities, at least in part, to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Alex had thought it madness when he read about it. Already the new command was embroiled in a running battle, claiming it was being hamstrung by CIA, while Congress insisted it was merely trying to avoid oversight by Defense, CIA, and Capitol Hill, and threatened to withhold appointment of its new commanding general.
The retiring general had testified before Congress that the elite unit simply wanted to escape CIA’s natural tendency to withhold needed intelligence, along with the morass of interagency bureaucracy that had caused delays of up to seventy days in ongoing operations. He pointed out that during its recent invasion of Panama, U.S. forces had been denied intelligence by CIA that would have allowed the capture of Manuel Noriega during the early hours of the strike. Congress, incredibly, took umbrage with the suggestion, with one particularly moronic senator insisting the Central Intelligence Agency would never take such a position.
Alex had laughed when he read accounts of the hearings in the Washington Post. But he wasn’t laughing now. Here he was, headed for the Green Beret training camp at the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg—a DIA agent seconded to CIA. And you’ll be about as welcome as a hooker at a Fundamentalist church service, he told himself.
But at least it would only be a three-week reindoctrination, not the three-month course he had endured in 1969. He still shuddered at the memory of that training. It had begun with jump school at Fort Benning, then on to night drops into the snake-infested Green Beret camps in the swamps of South Carolina. But now, he had read, they had even added some new wrinkles. There was something called HALO-SCUBA infiltration. High Altitude, Low Opening parachute jumps, where the jumper exited a plane at twenty thousand feet, over water, executed a horizontal, vertical freefall to fifteen hundred feet or less, then splashed down, sank, and continued his infiltration using breathing apparatus. The mere thought of his forty-three-year-old body attempting that sent a shiver up his spine.
But what he was in for would be bad enough. He had exercised, kept reasonably fit, but nothing like the level required of these troops. And the booze and the good food had taken its toll, and he knew if they didn’t like him—which they would not—he’d be in for three weeks of hell on earth. He thought about that and decided if he found himself faced with the same instructor he had had in 1969—even if the sonofabitch was now gray-haired, toothless, and in a wheelchair—he’d head straight for Marseilles and take his chances at survival there.
Alex arrived at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at 8:00 A.M. as ordered, and was ushered into the office of a light colonel, who regarded him like a snake that had just crawled under his door. He was a lean, hard, unpleasant-looking man about Alex’s size and age. But all similarity ended there, and Alex knew he would never want to meet the man in a dark alley, or even a very bright one.
The colonel, whose name was Hugh Donlon, directed him to sit, then opened a red CIA folder stamped “EYES ONLY,” the highest classification used in the military. Donlon read it, then sat back and stared across his desk.
“You know, Moran, we get people your age”—he smiled—“our age, who come in here from time to time. But they’re usually officers from first-class line units. Rangers, Airborne, Pathfi
nders, guys like that. And they’re not desk jockeys. They’ve been out in the field, facedown in the mud with the grunts.” He nodded toward Alex’s folder. “I’ve got a ten-year gap on you in here. And twenty-one years since you had our kind of training. You mind telling me what you’ve been doing?”
Alex swallowed. “Teaching English at a college in Vermont,” he said.
Donlon stared at him, his hard blue eyes losing their edge. He almost smiled. “Anything physical, besides fucking coeds?” he asked.
“Some of those coeds were pretty athletic,” Alex said. He shrugged. “Look, Donlon—”
“Colonel Donlon, asshole!” Donlon snapped. “You forget it again, and I’ll kick your ass from here to Fayetteville, CIA or no CIA.”
Alex’s left eye narrowed, and he leaned forward in his chair. “You call me asshole again, and you’re going to have to, Colonel,” he said.
Corsican Honor Page 30