“Is he?” Blackford asks. “You know what they say about the apple not falling far from the tree.”
“Will is completely sane.”
“Except he married you.”
“What do you want?”
Blackford pulls out a chair and sits down. Reaching across the table, he helps himself to what is left of my pasta.
“Could use a little flavor, Sal,” he says. “Maybe some sauce? Salt and pepper?”
I lean against the sink because sitting down with him would be an act of treason. Blackford scoops out the last bite of pasta and wipes his mouth with my napkin.
“Thanks,” he says as if this is a casual dinner among friends, “I was hungry.”
“It’s been really fun for me too,” I say. “Can you go now?”
“You don’t understand what you did, do you?” he says, a hint of something not so friendly in his tone. “My reputation. What happened after I couldn’t deliver the Death Lily to my customers who were waiting on it.”
I remember, two years ago, the look on Blackford’s face as I threw the resin from the last remaining Death Lily into the ocean. It was not a happy face. In one swift move, I’d ruined years of work on a new sort of WMD that would have turned all us humans into zombies, making the science fiction of mind control a reality.
I didn’t care that Blackford would then have to go off and explain to his clients—North Korea, Iran, those sorts of calm and understanding types—why he’d failed to keep his end of the bargain. I didn’t care about anything but getting my son as far away from Blackford and Simon Still and the Blind Monk as possible.
“I lost credibility, Sally,” he says. “Do you know what that means to a man in my position?”
I shrug.
“It means everything goes to shit. Your competitors start to move in on your territory. Deals go bad. People don’t call you back. Work becomes hard.”
I throw back the rest of the wine. I’m dizzy but it’s comforting in a way.
“I’m sorry I rained on your parade,” I say.
“I could have killed you,” he said. “I wanted to kill you. It took a great deal of willpower on my part not to kill you.”
“Is this the part where I say thank you?”
“You?” he scoffs. “Not likely.” Well, at least he knows that much about me.
“Why are you here?” I ask. “Other than wanting dinner.”
“I’m here to help you,” Blackford says in all seriousness. The only thing scarier than Blackford wanting to hurt me might be Blackford wanting to help me. I’m confident our definitions of help vary widely.
“Just so I’m clear,” I say, “what exactly are you going to help me with?”
Clean the house? Kill my neighbors? Haven’t you done enough already with your photographs and your refusal to stay dead? What more can a girl reasonably ask for?
“Clawing my way back to the top has required some sacrifices,” Blackford says. “I’ve had to do favors that in the past would not have been necessary.”
The phoenix rising from the ashes. I am filled with a sense of dread.
“What sort of favors?” I ask.
“Well, for example, I tipped Claude Chevalier and Righteous Liberty off about your relationship with Gray,” he says “They were pleased to confirm that the stories of your demise were fabricated. I said I thought you could be motivated to help uncover Yoder’s whereabouts. They had tried a number of times to find him but one thing the U.S. does very well is hide people. I knew if Claude shook the family tree, you’d step up. And I was right. As I usually am.”
My face goes slack. I stop my jaw just before it drops. A phoenix rising from the ashes, while standing on my head, is more like it.
“Sacrifices, Sally,” Blackford says defensively. “Getting back on top requires sacrifices.”
That’s it. The wineglass disintegrates in my hand, the tiny pieces of glass covering the kitchen floor like yesterday’s confetti. A shard sticks right in the meaty part of my palm but I refuse to look at it.
“Why didn’t you just do it yourself?” I hiss. My chances of actually being able to stab him with the carving knife are slim to none, but right now I love the idea.
“That’s not the sort of work I do,” Blackford says and he is completely serious. The last time I saw him there was a moment when I thought it could be over, that he might go and spend his free time wrecking someone else’s life. But that would be an act of kindness from a man who does not acknowledge the difference between love and control. I’m speechless at his betrayal but I don’t know why. He is, after all, the enemy.
“Oh, don’t take it all so personally,” Blackford says. “I will admit things got unexpectedly complicated when Claude called Simon Still. I thought I made it clear to him that he should call you directly and not the Agency but you never can tell if a terrorist is paying attention, now can you? And I thought you’d come up with a better plan for holding on to Yoder until the scheduled trade tomorrow. But I suppose I should have expected that, too. You’ve been out of the game a good long time now. Hard not to get rusty.” He relays all of this as if he’s having just the nicest time hanging out in my kitchen chatting.
“You’re a bad person,” I say.
“Remember,” Blackford says, pointing after Theo. “You owe me for saving that kid. Don’t forget it.”
I couldn’t forget it even if I tried. Which I do. Often.
Blackford pulls the half-full bowl of sliced plums toward himself with the end of the fork.
“You’re sitting in my house eating plums,” I say, sounding daft even to my own ears.
“They’re out of season here, you know. Does Will know you bought them?”
“Don’t say his name. Not now. Not ever.”
“Touchy,” Blackford says.
“You said you’re here to help me,” I say, now only wanting to end this meeting as quickly as possible.
Blackford takes a drink of Theo’s milk. “Yes. As I said, I have a certain stake in seeing you complete this task. Right now, Simon has Yoder. Chances are if Yoder doesn’t give Simon what he wants, Yoder will end up dead. And when you fail to live up to your end of the deal with Righteous Liberty, Gray will end up dead. A lot of dead bodies by nightfall.”
It’s very quiet in my kitchen. The muffled sounds of Theo talking to his LEGO men down the hall seem far, far away.
“But what if I told you where you could find Yoder?” Blackford says, licking his fingers. “Alive.”
There are moments when being a modern-day mother feels a little bit like being a piece of Silly Putty. Your child is demanding something, your husband is demanding something, your boss is demanding something, and your cat wants food. You’re stretched in so many directions that your center, the very core of your being, becomes so thin you can almost see through it. Right now, my center is very thin. I’m a mom with a sink full of dishes, a floor covered in glass and red wine, and a man whose face is on the most wanted posters at the post office sitting at my kitchen table snacking on leftovers. I’m not Clint Eastwood. I don’t know how to do this. I take a swig from the mostly empty wine bottle. Blackford looks horrified.
“Where is he?” I say, wiping my mouth on the back of my sleeve.
“There’s a safe house in the Presidio,” Blackford says. “Simon’s reasoning is, if Righteous Liberty is going through all this trouble to get Yoder back, then Yoder must know something. And Simon will not be fooled twice. He won’t stop this time until he gets what he wants. You know Simon. Anything for the safety of the United States. Anything at all.”
“So this is what we’ve come to? We torture people here?”
“Interrogate, Sally,” he says. “There’s a difference.”
“Only in how they’re spelled,” I say.
“Save your disillusionment for later. Yoder will be there. You still have time. Go and get him.”
If given a choice, I would not willingly help Blackford smooth the way back to his forme
r glory and domination of the illegal arms trade. But Gray’s life hangs in the balance and I don’t see that I have any option other than to do as Blackford says.
“You do want a chance to get back in the game, don’t you?” he asks, smiling as his question settles over me.
Of all the people in my life, past and present, it’s rather unsettling to consider that Ian Blackford may be the one who knows me best.
29
The house is quiet, not even the sound of a Muni street car rumbling by to interrupt the peace. Theo is asleep upstairs and the seat Blackford occupied not an hour ago has cooled. There is no evidence he was here other than in my own memory, which is a bit fuzzy on account of the completely empty bottle of wine.
I scribble a “to do” list on the back side of a preschool glitter-glue masterpiece of what I think is a cat. Call about new glass for the back door, get milk, wash Theo’s soccer uniform, go to the Presidio and kidnap Richard Yoder back from Simon Still, who kidnapped him from me, stop taking orders from Blackford when I am pretty sure his intentions are less than wholesome. Regular people never have kidnapping on their “to do” lists. It’s just not done. But the fact remains that at some point tomorrow, possibly following Theo’s interview at the very proper San Francisco Country Day or maybe after lunch, I have to get Yoder back. If I fail, Gray dies.
I put my head down on the table. It’s cold against my burning skin. From the beginning, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, living as if the past never happened. All it took was a long weekend in Paris, almost exactly six years ago, to wipe away those delusions for good.
It was our first trip together as a couple and I desperately wanted to believe I could start anew, that we could be just like any other couple heading off to Paris for a romantic interlude. And there are few things more romantic than autumn in Paris. The air is crisp and cool and most of the tourists have gone home. It’s perfectly acceptable to throw on some Jackie O. sunglasses and spend the afternoon cruising up and down the Champs-Élysées, feeling fashionable and stopping for fluffy little pastries every twenty-five feet. However, for me, Paris was a mental war zone. I’d been there many times but never as a wife. Only as a spy.
One afternoon soon after I’d moved to San Francisco, Will came home waving an itinerary for a surprise long weekend in Paris.
“I want to see you there,” he said.
Just the mention of Paris was enough to turn my brain to the spin cycle, with French as the laundry. The words and phrases and mechanics raced around in there with abandon, so much so I was afraid to open my mouth.
“Say something,” Will said. “Aren’t you excited?”
“Thrilled,” I said, concentrating on the English.
As we boarded our plane and settled into our enormous first-class seats, I felt almost relaxed. When I worked for the government, I never got to travel in luxury. If they could have gotten away with it, they would have stuck me in the cargo hold with only the dogs and the suitcases for company. Sometimes I’d buy a first-class ticket on Simon Still’s personal account but that usually ended up with me back in economy the very next day, on my way to someplace like Yemen. And I’ll be honest, I never much liked Yemen. Too much sand.
As I handed my passport over to the French Immigration officer, my hand trembled. I continued to remind myself I was a regular old person now and the name on my passport was the name on my life. As the officer returned my passport, he wished me a pleasant stay and, although he spoke English, my answer came out in flawless French. It must have been something in the air; I was powerless to stop it.
Will, standing beside me, took a step back as if I had shoved him.
“I didn’t know you spoke French,” he said.
That’s the cherry on top of the things you don’t know.
“College,” I said dismissively.
“It sounded good,” he said. “Really good. Say something else.”
Ever obliging, I launched into a description of how good-looking he was despite the fifteen hours of travel time he wore on his face.
“Keep talking,” he whispered, nuzzling my ear as we slid into a cab. The cabby rolled his eyes in disgust but I just laughed like a debutante with the bass player’s hand up her skirt.
On our first day, we wandered through the Tuileries and I complimented a painter on his watercolor landscape, which was really quite awful. As the French flowed out of me, Will’s eyes glazed over with lust. Who knew foreign language could be an aphrodisiac? I started to consider what sort of sexual bonuses I could expect when I finally got around to whispering sweet nothings in his ear in Urdu.
After about twenty-four blissful hours in Paris I had the strange sensation I was having a good time. Of course, I didn’t heed that as the warning it was and things immediately began to go to shit.
She was vaguely familiar, like someone you met in a dream. I recognized the idea of her before the rest came into focus. We were in the Louvre with a million other sweaty tourists trying to catch a glimpse of Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile, when I knew I was being watched. It was hard to turn around and I took a few elbows to the ribs as I scanned the crowd. She was tall and French, with black hair piled elegantly on her head in a way I could never pull off. She stared at me intently as if she were the eagle and I the mouse. But I didn’t want to be a mouse, in Paris or anywhere else for that matter. When I met her eyes, I expected her to look away, to show some sign she’d been made. But no. Instead, she began to push her way through the crowd right toward me.
“I heard they have a room with a handful of Monets and Degas and things up on the second floor,” I said to Will, pulling him by the hand. “Might be less crowded.” Will was still lost in Mona Lisa’s smile.
“What do you suppose she was thinking about?” he asked as I attempted to part the crowd, a tourist version of Moses and the Red Sea. “Lunch?”
“Maybe the perfect meatball sub,” I said, trying to find a balance between dragging him by the hair caveman-style and being overtaken by the eagle lady. “You had to sit for a long time in one position for those portraits. They had a lot of patience.”
“Lucy, why are you in such a rush? Slow down.”
“I’m positively desperate to see those Degas,” I said. “Desperate.” Over Will’s shoulder I saw a flash of the woman drawing closer. “Let’s take the stairs.”
I pulled Will into the stairwell and gave him a shove to get him started going up. In a moment, he was going to accuse me of being deranged and I was going to be forced to concur. As we rounded the top of the stairs, I heard the door slam one floor below us.
“I think this is it,” I said, pushing open the door to the second floor. “Come on.”
“Lucy, you’re acting a little strange,” Will said, a puzzled look on his face. “Is this really about Degas?”
“Yes!” I said. “I worship him. He was a genius. Those ballet dancers? My god!” I had us at practically a run down the corridor, the whole time babbling about my love affair with the master Degas. I needed to get Will away from me.
“I’m going to make a quick stop in the bathroom,” I said, propelling him with a push toward Room C. “Meet you in there.”
The bathroom was mercilessly empty. I tucked myself behind the door and waited. Sixty seconds later it opened. In the mirror I could see her reflection. She wore an expression of determination that went very nicely with her chic hair. Before the door closed again, I had her around the neck. I dragged her, struggling and kicking, into a cramped stall and locked the door.
“Why are you following me?” I whispered into her ear. “Who do you work for?” She grunted and squirmed. I squeezed tighter and she went still.
“Who sent you?” I asked again.
“Serendipity,” she gurgled. Which was not exactly the answer I expected from her. In the pocket of her coat was a small vial of what I assumed must be chloroform. She wanted me alive.
“‘Serendipity’ implies a random occurrence that’s happy in nature,”
I said, dangling the vial in front of her. “Are you happy? Because right now I’m not feeling that happy.”
She laughed, digging her fingernails into the sleeve of my coat. “There’s not enough in there to kill you,” she said. “Just enough to make you sleep.”
“It doesn’t take much, you know,” I said. “People miscalculate all the time and then you’ve got all sorts of problems. I’ll ask you one more time, who sent you?”
“No one,” she said. “But that same no one will be infinitely grateful I stumbled upon you in the Louvre. Sally Sin is supposed to be dead, after all.”
“She is dead,” I said. “Who are you?”
Now that the woman had stopped struggling, she was simply heavy. I leaned against the wall to prevent us both from falling into the toilet.
“I accept death first,” she said, almost with relish.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “You’re not a guy. No need for the macho bullshit. Can’t we just have a conversation? Aren’t women supposed to be good at that?”
In response, she pressed her lips into a stubborn thin line and I knew I would get nothing from her, especially tucked away in a bathroom stall at the Louvre.
“I was having a pretty nice day,” I said, taking a wad of toilet paper and the chloroform vial in a single hand. With a quick tap on the bathroom wall, the vial cracked and the chloroform leaked onto the tissue.
“Hope you got the measurements right,” I said as I held it over her mouth and nose. Her feet kicked frantically for a few seconds and finally went still. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she went completely limp. Not without effort, I propped her up on the closed toilet seat, leaning against the wall, hands folded neatly in her lap. She would wake up in about thirty minutes with the headache of a lifetime and no memory of where she was. If anyone happened upon her in the meantime, she’d be dismissed as a young woman who’d had one too many over lunch and was passing the hours in a warm museum bathroom.
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