State of Lies

by Siri Mitchell

  Sam’s toys were always “broken”; my father always “fixed” them.

  That bridge between my father and the Russians?

  Was it me?

  The truth hit me with the force of a fist.

  Was it—could it be—me?

  I tried to view the problem analytically. Tried to insert myself—scientifically, objectively—into the equation. But even as I tried, I knew I couldn’t really do it. It was a physics problem as much as it was a problem of perspective. The very act of measuring or even just observing something changed its very reality. Inserting myself into an equation would change it.

  But what if I had always been a part of the equation?

  I reined in my thoughts, stopping them from galloping away in panic and fury. I had already assumed the bridge between my father and his handler was a person. I had known the communication had to have been going on for years. One of them would have to contact someone, leave that person with some piece of information, and then that person—the intermediary—would pass it on to the other.

  When had I started buying toys from Mr. Hoffman’s? It was four years ago. Sam had been two. My father hadn’t been around very often—he was working a job out of California—and Sean had been deployed with his reserve unit. I’d asked my father where he’d gotten the toys and he’d told me.

  My father and Mr. Hoffman. That was the network.

  I was the link to Mr. Hoffman. At least in one direction. I still didn’t know how my father got information back to him. But that’s why it hadn’t mattered that I had seen Jenn’s killer. I was one of them just as much as my father was. Just as much as the killer was.

  The realization shattered my world—past, present, and future.

  That bridge was me. More than me. It was my son too.

  I put a hand to the floor and lowered myself to my knees.

  Me.

  I’d never known my father liked trains because the truth was, he didn’t. Not especially. He’d just needed a way to get information from his contact. He’d used me, used his grandson too, as pawns in his scheme. What could be more innocent than buying a toy for a little boy? And those trains? They were perfect. The iterations of playset add-ons were infinite. And they were all made of solid wood that could easily be drilled to make a hiding place just the right size for a thumb drive.

  My father and Mr. Hoffman.

  And me.

  There really were parallel universes. I’d been living in one. It was a place where enemies were friends and lies were the truth.

  How many times had my father told me he’d ordered a new train set for Sam and wondered if I could pick it up for him so it would be there when he came to visit? I remembered all the times I’d brought thumb drives back to my house at his request.

  My father had sucked me into his black hole right along with him.

  No one really knows what happens inside a black hole. Its gravitational force pulls in everything without discrimination. Escape is impossible. Surrender is inexorable.

  In that moment everything I was, everything I’d had, all of it disappeared into the vortex of my father’s betrayal.

  It had swallowed me whole.

  * * *

  On automatic pilot, I helped June with dinner. Like a robot, I moved through space and time, but I found myself curiously detached from reality.

  My father was a traitor.

  I was his accomplice.

  That meant I was a traitor.

  No wonder Jenn’s assassin hadn’t cared about me seeing him. He had nothing to fear from me. If I told anyone about him, tried to identify him, the trail of investigation would eventually lead to me. In the eyes of the law, I was just as guilty as he was.

  It was a disorienting feeling, to know that you were absolutely Other. That you were completely different than you’d always thought you were. I felt like I was trapped in a body that was not my own.

  After Sam was asleep I went for a drive. I ended up at Sean’s restaurant. Once there, I parked, got out, and waited in the alley, hoping my husband would eventually appear.

  Twenty, thirty, forty minutes later, once the cold had driven my hands deep into my pockets, he finally did.

  The door scraped open. His form appeared on the stoop.

  “Sean.” I could hardly say his name without my voice breaking.

  He squinted into the night. “Georgie?”

  I moved into the light.

  He nodded toward the shadows from which I’d emerged and I retreated back into the dark, where he joined me.

  Looking down into my eyes, he put a hand to my cheek and smoothed back a lock of hair that had escaped my ponytail. “What happened?”

  I reached out and grabbed hold of him, pulling him close, pressing my cheek to his jaw. “I need to know that you know me.” I released him, raking my hands through his hair, and met his lips with mine.

  He tried to step back. “Georgie, look, I don’t think—”

  But I didn’t want to think anymore. I let my hands drop to his shoulders. From his shoulders, down his arms, to his belt loops.

  His hands seized mine.

  “Please.” I turned my hands, meeting his palm to palm. I threaded my fingers through his. “Sean.” I needed him to love me. No matter who I was, no matter what I’d done.

  He took one last, long look at me and then gave in.

  In a crush of lips and bodies, my arms around his neck, his weight pinning me to the wall, I found my redemption. But even as we rediscovered a long-dormant rhythm, as I arched against the wall, I wept. I wept without dignity, without restraint. And as we buried ourselves in each other, I let the old Georgie go. I would never be that person again.

  71

  The next morning I walked Sam to school. He wasn’t in any mortal danger. And neither was I. He skipped along beside me in his Super Sam cape, oblivious to the world having turned inside out. He couldn’t wait for his class Halloween party.

  Chris was there with his Maltipoo just the same as always; he must have still been assigned to me. I hadn’t told him I knew he didn’t have a son.

  But I’d been hoping to see him. I unfastened Alice’s leash, took a deep breath, and then made my move. “I want to turn myself in.”

  He blinked. “What?” He took me by the elbow and moved us away from the other parents. “Turn yourself in for what?”

  “Espionage.”

  He dropped my elbow. Stepped back, one hand up, fingers splayed. “I am not taking you in.”

  “I want to turn myself in for esp—”

  “Shut. Up. As your friend, I’m telling you to shut up.”

  “But—”

  “Right now.”

  “But—”

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you, okay?”

  “But I—”

  “We haven’t been watching you. I mean, we have, but not— You’re not the one we’re after. So just—” He put his hand up again. A warning. Then he glanced down the street, put his arm through mine, and dragged Alice and me off down the road. “Let’s just turn this into a nice, normal walk, okay?”

  “I am in this up to my ears. Over my ears.” I tried to swallow the fear that had lodged itself in my throat. “Over my head. And I can prove it. I want to turn myself in so you can wire me.”

  * * *

  I spent the day in DC with Chris as I was questioned by the FBI. I gave them the thumb drive, then I sketched out the broad outline of my father’s career and associations with the Russians. I explained Mr. Hoffman’s role in it. I told of finding Sean’s notes after he’d died and following up with the names he’d left.

  I gave them the names of the men the Russians had killed.

  I did not tell them I knew Sean wasn’t dead. If things somehow went wrong for me, I wanted to keep him out there, free of surveillance, and able to care for Sam. I also didn’t tell them about Jenn’s dad or Senator Rydel. One thing at a time. The most immediate goal was stopping my father’s confirmation hearing. />
  In exchange for cooperating with the FBI’s investigation and providing names and details, they agreed to give me immunity from prosecution. That didn’t mean, however, that I wouldn’t have to testify about what I’d discovered. I agreed to it all. I agreed to everything.

  I asked the agent who was questioning me, “Can you tell me—how long have you known about my father?”

  “First learned of it from your husband. But the Department of Defense took it.”

  I wasn’t supposed to know. “Then why haven’t they stopped this before now?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  He didn’t know the half of it.

  “Your husband didn’t trust them, so he came to us with the story.”

  “And you what? Sat on it?”

  Chris was in the chair beside me. He put a hand on my arm. “We’ve been trying to corroborate it. You have to have grounds to arrest someone. You have to make sure a crime’s actually been committed.”

  “Were you going to let my father be confirmed?”

  He said nothing.

  “You were?”

  They said nothing.

  “So why have you been watching me?”

  They exchanged a glance. Chris answered me. “Because things weren’t adding up.” Which I interpreted to mean that, once again, Sean had been right. They suspected he wasn’t really dead. “And we didn’t have enough to put it together until now, okay? At this point all of this is still conjecture. But with you agreeing to be wired . . .” He left the possibilities open.

  The other agent was sitting across from me. “You ready?”

  I nodded.

  “Here’s the plan.”

  72

  My parents came over that evening. Sam immediately took my father’s hand and dragged him over toward the trains. My mother started talking about Halloween. “We just stopped by to confirm the plan for tomorrow night.”

  “Plan? For tomorrow?” What plan?

  “Georgia Ann—it’s Halloween! You can’t tell me you’ve forgotten. So what time should we come over? For trick-or-treating?”

  My father was surreptitiously picking up pieces of the new playset and shaking them.

  “Georgia Ann?”

  “Oh. Right! Um.” I focused my attention back on her. “You guys don’t need to come. We’re not really going far.”

  “But I want to take pictures. And we thought we could take Sam to Fort Myer.”

  “Fort Myer?” I wasn’t letting my father take Sam anywhere.

  “Peach?” My father was trying to get my attention. He already had it. “Do you have the instructions that came with the set?”

  I shook my head. “Sam tore into the box as soon as he found it. I threw it out. Sorry.”

  “I think there’s a part missing.”

  My mother was still talking. “Military kids trick-or-treat too. Fort Myer can’t be nearly as crowded. And your father has some friends on post there.”

  “Sounds like a great idea. Maybe we can do it next year.”

  My father stood up. “I’m going to take this set back to Hoffman’s. There’s something missing.”

  “But, Grandpa!”

  He put his hand on Sam’s head. “Don’t worry, buddy. I’ll bring it all back.”

  “Hey—Dad.”

  He turned.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something.” I was hoping to take him aside and confront him. They’d wired me. If I could get him to admit to what he’d been doing, then they’d have the proof we needed.

  But he glanced at his watch. “Can it wait? We’ve got to get back downtown. We’re meeting someone.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He handed my mother her purse and they left.

  * * *

  Chris came by Jim and June’s midmorning on Saturday. “You were right. We picked up Hoffman. He was in possession of classified information.”

  “Has he told you anything yet?”

  “No.”

  “Did you get my father?”

  He shook his head. “Have you heard from him?”

  “Not today.”

  “We have agents waiting. They can take him in when he shows up.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “You do what you planned. Wear the wire just in case. Go out trick-or-treating. I’ll follow you and I’ll get someone else assigned to you too.”

  “What if you lose me?”

  “We won’t lose you. Just take your phone with you. Keep it on. We’ll track it.”

  “I don’t know. Is this really a good idea?”

  “There’s no reason to skip going out. We have Hoffman. We’ll bring in your father when he gets back to the hotel. And then it will all be over.”

  “But there’s got to be more of them than just Hoffman. They knocked Sam down at the rink. They ransacked the house. And then they blew it up. Hoffman didn’t do all of that. I don’t think he did any of it.” But the fact that he might have ordered it done? That chilled me. A man whom I’d considered a dear, sweet person—a friend even—had placed my family in danger.

  “He’s in custody now. We think we’ve identified the operatives. At this point they wouldn’t dare do anything that might connect themselves to him.”

  * * *

  If I had thought it would help to tell Sam we were skipping Halloween, I would have, but what Chris said made sense. I chalked up my reluctance to residual uneasiness from being constantly on edge for the past few weeks. I tried to talk myself into being excited about Gilman. It was almost working until June dug up some costumes for Alice and me.

  “We had these way back in the day.” She beamed as she held them up.

  Jim walked past.

  She turned toward him. “Remember these?”

  “Hey. Yeah. Sure! Underdog. Geez. How long ago was that on TV?”

  “Wasn’t that long ago. And look: Wonder Woman.” She said it with a smile.

  “Would you look at that! That one, I remember.” He said it with a gleam in his eye.

  Sam thought the costumes were terrific. He knelt and coaxed Alice into the red sweater with its blue cape.

  “We used to have a Doberman.” Jim winked in my direction as he helped Sam.

  “So what do you think?” June asked the question with a raised brow as she held up the costume for me.

  I was thinking that there was no way my wire wouldn’t show if I wore that costume. It was a Wonder Woman outfit from the Lynda Carter era. The blue hot pants had white stars on them. The top was a plastic breastplate piece that looked like it was molded to fit a Barbie doll. There were even gold-colored wristbands. “I don’t think it will fit. But that’s okay. I was just planning to go as I am.”

  June turned the costume around with a flourish. “It’s adjustable. Look!” She pointed out the ties at the back of the breastplate.

  “I have no idea what I’d wear underneath.”

  “But if you wear it you can do the pose!” She put her hands to her hips. “Remember?”

  “I really don’t think it will fit.”

  “But, Mo-om!” Sam wailed the word. “I’m Super Sam. You have to be Wonder Woman. You’re my mom.”

  If he only knew how wonderful I’d turned out not to be. “I can’t be Wonder Woman. I have to be Super Sam’s Mom. I’ll wear a sign that says SSM. You can help me make it.” I held my breath, hoping that would sound like a good idea.

  His face went stormy for a moment and then it cleared. “And you can walk Underdog just like you walk Alice!”

  “Yes. Right!” Thank goodness he’d bought it.

  73

  It didn’t take long that evening to visit our immediate neighbors. Sam, holding on to the plastic handle of the pumpkin June had bought for him, ran back and forth so that his Super Sam cape flew out behind him. I could tell he’d been practicing. A lot.

  The blackened shell of our house was a blot on an otherwise picture-perfect block. The street past ours was mostly dark and the one after that too. I hurried us past th
em. It was only after we crossed the neighborhood’s main artery that the party really started.

  We heard a pulsing bass from three blocks away and could see flashes of light now and then above roofs as we walked. We hit the couple of houses that had lights on, then headed toward the end of the block where police had been posted. Joining the flow of people, we entered the throngs. I’d never been to Gilman Street on Halloween, but I’d heard about it.

  Gilman Street was legendary.

  If you lived there, you had to decorate. And not with cornstalks and harvest-colored ribbons. One of the houses turned its front lawn into a cemetery, complete with a vintage hearse and a skeleton on a motorcycle. Another house put up a false front shaped like the prow of a ship and outfitted it with pirate-themed decorations. The owners of a third house carved several dozen pumpkins and made a candlelit, glowing arch out of them.

  In a region populated by type A personalities, if you couldn’t keep up with hearses and skeletons, then it was just better to buy somewhere else.

  It was to Gilman that Sam insisted he wanted to go. Breathing a prayer that Chris was right, that we weren’t in any danger, I grabbed hold of Sam’s hand with my superglue grip.

  At least I knew the FBI was following me. And my phone was stashed away at the bottom of Sam’s pumpkin. If anything happened, it was more important that Sam stay safe than me.

  As we joined the line of kids and parents moving at a snail’s pace down the sidewalk, an unearthly shriek echoed through the night.

  Sam’s eyes widened. “Look!”

  He was pointing to the roof of a house. A woman with long, stringy hair and a gown made of ghostly rags was wailing. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles. Her teeth had been blacked out.

  “That’s so cool.” Sam breathed the words.

  It was hideous.

  “Do you think I can stand on the roof when I get big?”

  “No.”

  Disappointment dimmed the glow in his eyes. “Why not?”

  “There’s a law.”

  He seemed satisfied with that answer. And as far as he knew, there were also laws about riding skateboards, staying up past nine p.m. on a school night, and stepping on worms that had stranded themselves on sidewalks.