The maid interrupted them. “The Yugoslavian ambassador is on the telephone, sir.”
“I’ll take it in my study. When you finish your drinks, gentlemen, please find your own way out. I expect I will be on the telephone a long time.”
The ambassador left and Kurt retrieved the bottle of scotch. “A short one for the road.”
Jay held out his glass.
“How much longer are you staying?” Kurt asked.
“I’m assuming three days. I need to make an official police statement and wrap up some other things.”
“Rypinska?”
“She’s included in other things.”
They knocked back their drinks and collected their coats.
“You did all right for the FBI,” Kurt said.
“And you? Better than expected for Langley. That’s good, if we end up working together on another case.”
◆ ◆ ◆
ALL THE WAY BACK TO the hotel, Jay debated when to call Lilka. The message light on the telephone in his room was flashing, and he eagerly pressed the playback button. It was Ann Rewls haranguing him for not returning her calls. Where the hell had he been? He should call her immediately. The telephone rang, and Ann Rewls in person started boxing his other ear.
“This is unfair,” he moaned. “I don’t need you in stereo.” He turned off the answering machine. “I assume this isn’t a social call. Do you want to go first?”
“I’m only checking in with you.”
“Why? Is Ned snoring?”
“That too.”
Jay recounted his last twenty-four hours as if they belonged to somebody else. He knew they didn’t when Ann reminded him, “Don’t forget you need rabies shots. You should start those today.”
“You know how to cheer a guy up.”
“It’s because I’m concerned.”
He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face, careful not to wet his bandage. The ringing telephone called him back into the bedroom.
“Hello.”
“I left a message to call me. Didn’t you get it?” It was his father.
“I thought I should wait until you were awake. Has something happened?” Jay asked, dreading bad news.
“Yes, something has happened. Cynthia’s not going to fight you on custody. I faxed my photos to your lawyer, who faxed them to her lawyer, who saw the marijuana and apparently advised her not to fight for full custody or she might lose altogether. Apparently courts are pretty strict about things like that, and in this case, it turns your working for the FBI from a liability to an asset.”
“So your photos are legal evidence?”
“They’re pictures I took of my grandsons. When I got home, I noticed all the other stuff. Or so that’s what I said.”
“That’s very clever, Dad.”
“I didn’t study rocket science for nothing. Your lawyer says you might win full custody, if you ask for it.”
“I don’t want to do that to Cynthia. I’m not trying to punish her, and the boys need a mother as much as they need a father.”
“You could remarry.”
Jay laughed. “Let’s not rush the courses, Dad. I’m wrapping things up here. I’ll be home next week for Martin’s Little League game.”
“Good.”
“Give Mom my love.”
Jay hung up and sat on the edge of the bed pondering the new reality that soon he’d be spending time with his sons. A father again. He had almost resigned himself to rare sightings as his boys grew up, and even to the possibility that his ex-wife might steal them away to California, wedging a whole continent between them. Apparently neither bleak prospect was going to come to pass. He took a deep breath and felt a lot of sadness leave him.
He returned to the room and drew the curtains to block the last of the day’s light. He kicked off his shoes, sat on the bed, and pulled out the telephone number Kulski had given him. He dialed the telephone, hoping Lilka would answer.
She did, in a voice so filled with tears that he choked up, too.
“When can I see you?” he asked.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
SPRING ARRIVED OVERNIGHT. BULBS HAD sprouted in the dark earth, trees had new leaves, and the sky cleared to pale blue. Even flowers had miraculously bloomed. Or had Jay simply not noticed the spring’s colorful onslaught through the miasmic haze of his investigation?
Lilka had asked for a normal day, not one filled with tears, though she knew she’d cry when they finally said goodbye. They met at the park near the embassy, and after a couple of long hugs and sniffles, she wanted to show Jay the palace. Lilka took delight in its ornate rooms filled with furniture fit for a king, for indeed Lazienki Palace had been a royal summer residence. Though badly damaged by fire, the building had survived the war, not for reason of German benevolence but in a rare moment of Teutonic inefficiency: the Nazis had completed the task of drilling holes to place explosives in the marble walls, but too late to set the charges before the advancing Russians overran them. Lilka knew her history, and she told Jay popular anecdotes of the people whose portraits lined the walls: the prince who had a penchant for prostitutes, the prostitute who had a penchant for kings, and the king who had a penchant for the prince. Jay laughed at every story.
Outside, the sun reflected on the palace moat. They watched two boys chase ducks down its bank, making them waddle faster, while the boys’ mothers smoked and gossiped at a nearby table.
Lilka took his arm. “You miss your sons, yes?”
“Yes, I miss my sons. Those boys are about their ages.”
“Aleks came home last night.”
He squeezed her hand. “Good.”
“I am very happy.”
“Me too.”
“We will take tea, yes?”
He smiled. “We will take tea, yes.”
They followed paths through the palace’s gardens. Peacocks pecked at the hard ground. Twice Jay acted the fool by cavorting in front of them to try to make them display their tail feathers, but apparently he was the only male prepared to display himself that afternoon.
Soon they came to a café, squat and prefabricated, out of place in the park’s woods with its bold yellow-and-red strips of plastic siding. The interior was surprisingly pleasant. The cheerful proprietress waved them to a table by the window. Without being asked, she carried over a large kettle and poured tea for both of them.
Lilka wrapped her hands around the cup. “The tea is very special here,” she said. “You can smell the earth in it.”
Having earth in his tea wasn’t exactly appealing to Jay, and he gave the dark brew a more discerning look. Indeed there were a few specks of something floating in it, but he trusted that the water had boiled long enough to sterilize almost anything. He took his first tentative sip, and couldn’t wait to take a second. It was like a hot mulled wine, only better.
“I am glad to meet you, Jay.”
“Me too.”
“My life is different because of you.”
“Mine too.”
“I was afraid to lose Aleks forever. Now, with Jacek gone, I think there is a chance for him. I left Aleks alone with Jacek too many times. He was a bad influence.”
“I’m worried Cynthia is becoming a bad influence on my boys, too.”
“You must convince your wife—”
“Ex-wife.”
“—that you need to spend more time with them.”
“Supposedly she’s agreed to let them live with me half the time.”
“Oh, Jay! I am happy for you!”
“It hasn’t happened yet. We still need to finalize it in court.”
“Tell the judge you want your sons to grow up to be like you, not Jacek.”
Jay chuckled. “She won’t know who Jacek is.”
“Every judge knows a Jacek. More than one.” Lilka reached for his hand. “If you come back to Poland, you will come back to me?”
“That’s an easy promise to keep.”
They kissed
across the table, paid their check, and left.
“Alina is waiting for me to help prepare things for the funeral.”
“I wish I could have saved Tolek,” Jay said.
“It’s the saddest for Tadzu.” Lilka nodded. “His father loved him so much, and now he’s gone. Oh, look.” Lilka stooped at a rose bush that already had buds. A couple had opened, and she plucked one and gave it to Jay. “The first rose of the spring. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Like you,” he said.
Arms around each other, they walked to the main road. Jay waved down a taxi.
Lilka turned and asked, “Tell me, Jay, if things were different, would you love me?”
“I do love you,” he said, and they kissed a last time.
Then she was gone, in the backseat of the taxi, tears streaming down her cheeks as she waved goodbye.
EPILOGUE
NATALYA’S STOUT LEGS STRUGGLED UP the last flight of stairs. She stopped on the landing, lowered her travel bag, and pulled up her stockings. She fluffed her hair. Her sister, three years older, had always been the smarter of the two, with her Moscow friends and newer fashions, and Natalya didn’t want to appear frumpy when she first arrived. How many years had it been since she had seen Olivia? Five? The stairs still smelled of the same stale cabbage. She wondered again at her sister’s urgent summons. Olivia had refused to say anything over the telephone, only that she must come to Moscow.
As Natalya knocked on the door, she half-imagined Sergej opening it, thinking that to be a trick he might pull. Since his disappearance, she had thought she had seen him so many times. She had never realized how many men resembled him in Kosmonovo. But it was only Olivia, her hair bundled into a netted bun, who answered the door. Her skin smelled papery when they embraced. She sniffed the hallway as if ferreting out spies and hustled Natalya inside.
“What is it, Olivia? What is so secret?”
Her sister withdrew a book from a shelf and removed a letter she had concealed in it. She handed it to Natalya. “It’s from Sergej.”
Natalya sat heavily in a chair and turned the envelope in her hand.
“It’s must be very important to have so many stamps,” remarked Olivia.
“He sent it from Warsaw.”
“Open it, Natalya.”
She did, and when she shook out the letter, a claim check came with it. She unfolded the single page:
My loving Natalya,
You are surprised to hear from me, ha! You think I am in the grave.
I am not, I am with my sons, three of them. Or I shall be. I have sent them ahead of me. Does that surprise you? All those years they bred me, never telling me that I had conceived children, but I learned. I learned! My sixth finger, that harmless nub, was the giveaway. They bred for recessive genes, thinking in them lay genius, can you imagine such stupidity? But you cannot, you are too smart, that is why we were paired. I have come to love you, if too late. Like a bird in a cage left open, I took my chance to escape. I have joined the birds in the forest, ha! Our baby, our little Davy Crockett, I have left for you. I have carried it to safety and hidden it. I know what they will do, how they will hound you until you are no longer. Use this, Natalya, to save yourself. It is worth the whole world to them. Ha!
Your Sergej
Natalya examined the claim check. It had a number. Nothing else to identify its origin. “My Sergej,” she sighed, “he was always so crazy.”
Timothy Jay Smith is a writer of fiction and plays. His ceaseless wanderlust has taken him around the world many times. En route, he’s found the characters that people his work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists, Indian chiefs and Indian tailors: he hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that saw him smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through occupied territories, represent the US at the highest levels of foreign governments, and stow away aboard a “devil’s barge” for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed him in an African jail.
His novel Fire on the Island took the Gold Medal in the 2017 Faulkner– Wisdom Competition for the Novel. He won the Paris Prize for Fiction (now the Paris Literary Prize) for his novel A Vision of Angels. His novel Cooper’s Promise was called “literary dynamite” by Kirkus, which selected it as one of the Best Books of 2012. His stage play, How High the Moon, won the prestigious Stanley Drama Award, and his screenplays have won competitions sponsored by the American Screenwriters Association, WriteMovies, Houston WorldFest, Rhode Island International Film Festival, Fresh Voices, StoryPros, and the Hollywood Screenwriting Institute. He is the founder of the Smith Prize for Political Theater. He lives in Nice, France.
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