In the next few minutes, Margaret called the clinic, told them she had a patient in crisis and to cancel or reassign her appointments. She asked the unit secretary to call Dana Armstrong to arrange the use of her cottage near Higgins Beach for the remainder of the summer, and to please lay in basic groceries.
She kept a small pre-packed travel bag in her front hall closet for emergencies. After tossing it in the car trunk, she speed-dialed Alden. He was in surgery, as she expected, but she left a message on his cell phone. “Darling, it’s me. Something’s come up. I’m on my way to Logan to pick someone up, and go to the cottage. I don’t know how long I’ll have to be away, but I’ll call you when I’m safely back from Boston. I love you.”
She clicked the seatbelt, turned the ignition key, and pulled out.
Merging onto Interstate 95, she settled into the travel lane and turned her thoughts to the modalities she might use in helping Brenna. A mix. Whatever worked.
The therapeutic process was less of an issue to her than the fact that she’d just stepped into treacherous waters with powerful undertows. Brenna was right. Margaret was Daniel’s mother. She herself had benefited from Brenna’s awful choice. It couldn’t help but paint her outlook. It was an unstable place to be. Also, she was opening herself to receive grief beyond measure, the sorrow that Brenna bore because she chose to save Daniel.
Margaret’s strategy had to include a way of keeping herself grounded—distant enough to provide perspective, attached enough to give Brenna the unconditional human connection she desperately needed.
Through all this, Daniel needed her too, unequivocally on his side, his ally.
Daniel. Five hundred fifty miles away, she could sense him, a devastated man looking for solid footing, throwing himself into his work, trying to at least salvage his career. Bowed, trying to stand again.
How woebegone he’d sounded when he told her: “Ma. She left me.”
She had pictured him seated on his couch, elbows on his knees, raking at his hair, clinging to the phone. He’d been reluctant at first to tell her what he had learned, as if he were guilty for having been knocked unconscious, or responsible for the events that unfolded at the hands of another man. He berated himself. He wanted to have fought off those armed soldiers, to have rescued Brenna and the infants. He felt it was a man’s duty to protect his loved ones, and that he had failed.
The theme recurred in subsequent conversations. They’re lost because of me. What kind of life can I possibly lead to compensate for that? How could she possibly love me, after that?
What a mess, she thought, crossing the Massachusetts state line. The two people who needed each other most had to heal separately, without each other’s help. Of itself, that was all right. A relationship was only as healthful as the individuals in it. What wasn’t clear to her was whether the rift could be repaired once Daniel and Brenna were restored.
At Logan Airport, Margaret found a short-term parking spot and went into Terminal E. It was four-thirty. Brenna’s flight would be in the final stages of boarding. She would be in the secure area now if she had changed her mind and decided to leave after all. She trusted Brenna, but not her mental state. She was too volatile, made prone to impulse by PTSD, inclined to self-destruction because of her depression.
She hastened forward, her leather heels urgently clicking over the hard floor, her handbag banging against her hip. She scanned the busy terminal—its gleaming metal, glass, and hard tile warmed by the golden glow of the ceiling high above—looking for the familiar figure. At the far end, away from the throngs, she spied her, sitting on the floor, knees up, back against the wall. There was a camera on the floor beside her, but no bags.
She looked dull, listless. The gloss she had acquired at Daniel’s was gone.
Margaret hesitated. She would be acting as mother, friend, and clinical professional all in one. The potential for error was great. She was breaking all the rules of her profession—rules that set boundaries, and for good reason.
Well, real life didn’t follow man-made rules. She went to get her.
Her head propped against the window glass, Brenna slept for most of the drive to Higgins Beach. At dusk, feeling the car slowing, she opened her eyes and sat up, groggy and disoriented. Residual bourbon. Splitting headache. Body-wide pollution.
They were on a country road, paved with gravel and tar, not macadam. Not a busy place, this. Brenna rolled down the window, rested her temple in the palm of her hand, looking out. The scent of pine and ocean wafted into the car. She could hear birdsong and the chirp of crickets.
Margaret turned right onto a narrow two-track path that cut through a stand of Eastern White Pine trees and eased up a gentle incline. “We’re here.”
The nose of the car came out to a gently sloped meadow, and there lay the ocean, the broad expanse of horizon subsiding gradations of color that would soon end in midnight blue. A cozy cottage, nestled partly by an outcropping of rock and surrounded by a lush garden, contemplated the water.
If ever a place proclaimed itself to be a center of peace, this was it.
Margaret parked in the mown clearing, cut the engine, and sat there, hands on the steering wheel, visibly relieved to have arrived from their long drive. Brenna studied her—the softness of her aged features, the habitual kindness in her eyes. This old woman, her last-ditch hope for salvation.
“You’re a brave woman,” she said, “to take me on.”
Margaret blinked, surprised by her candor. She patted Brenna’s elbow. “You’re not as fearsome as you make yourself out to be, dear. Merely a mortal, with a mortal’s woes.”
“Put me in my place,” Brenna mocked gently.
Margaret’s eyes twinkled. “You’ll like that place when we get to it. Now—” she pressed the button to release the trunk latch “—unlike you, I have a travel bag. Would you—”
Brenna pulled her door handle. “I’ll get it.” The door swung open. She turned to get out, saw the bare ground, and balked. Not paved. Land mines.
“Don’t forget your camera.”
“I don’t need it.” Brenna forced herself to step out.
On the stone path that wove between the flower beds and the front of the cottage, Margaret caught up to her, walking a little stiffly after so long in the car. She had the camera in her hand.
Brenna glanced at it and raised her eyes to meet Margaret’s imperturbable gaze.
“This is your talent,” she said. “I told you. I’m holding faith on your behalf.”
For three solid days, rain drenched the city of Vienna. Unrelenting sheets of water poured out of the skies. Rivers ran down the streets. Special Envoy Brendan Rease paced in front of the window of his hotel suite, glaring at the deluge in a vile mood.
That morning, the Nationalist delegation had refused to convene for the scheduled negotiations. The head of the delegation—representing General Goran Cavic, who now risked arrest on war crime charges related to Brenna’s market footage if he came to Vienna—had showed up at his door, demanding a private meeting, peremptorily naming the time and place.
Everything in diplomacy had significance, from the merest dinner fork to the most exhaustive accord. If he acceded to the demand, he would be seen as having been manipulated. If he refused, he could be deemed intransigent and uncooperative. That morning, he had agreed, keeping the time but changing the location to one his people could secure.
He had attended because Brenna was missing, unaccounted for since her quarrel with James. FBI agents had turned up her name on airline passenger manifests. She had booked a flight from Logan to Rome to Ancona but never boarded. Her intent, however, was clear. She was returning to Kavsak. For all he knew, she was there already. If anyone could travel clandestinely, it was Brenna.
If she had gone, she could have been captured. Equally possible, if she had stayed on American soil, she could have been kidnapped.
Security cameras at Logan Airport showed her getting into a late model silver sedan in the shor
t-term parking lot in the company of an older woman. No appearance of coercion, but no luggage, either. Unfortunately, the camera angles precluded visualization of the car’s license plates. Had Brenna been lured away on some pretense? An urgent message that Daniel Ellsworth was in trouble and needed her would have sufficed, estrangement or not. Brenna loved that man. James’ description of what she had done for him in Kavsak made that clear.
Either way, Brenna had disappeared into thin air and, if General Cavic was holding her, this was how he would hear about it, in an off-the-record meeting.
So he went.
And when he walked into the room—another suite in the Hotel Imperial, no less—he had found Lucifer himself. General Cavic, spirited into Vienna by Lord knew what means.
Disdainfully remaining seated, he blew cigar smoke in the Envoy’s direction. “Ambassador,” he said. “My sympathies. Your daughter has gone missing.”
Brenna. His blood ran cold. His knees momentarily threatened to wobble. For the first time in his career, he flinched. How could this man know? Had there been an informant at Logan? Good Lord—within the FBI?
Cavic gave him an understanding smile, a graceful wave of the hand. “A terrible position for a father to find himself in. What wouldn’t he give to get his child safely back?”
“What do you want, Cavic?”
“Kavsak.”
“You’ve come all this way—risked arrest for war crimes—to tell me what I already know?”
The General’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. He leaned casually back in his chair. “War crimes? No. A misunderstanding, easily clarified. Your daughter’s so-called tape was digitally manufactured. Experts can testify to this. You see movies? CGI. So realistic.” He shook his head. “A sad situation. A journalist fabricating news. But why, one asks? To boost her career? To spite her father? Or, perhaps—? No, no. An eminent diplomat conspiring with his daughter to paint me a criminal in order to disclaim my peoples’ right to their own city?”
The mere suggestion of impropriety made the Envoy seethe. But he refused to be goaded. “I appreciate your concern for my daughter,” he said, “especially as she is the sole surviving witness to your murders.” She wasn’t, of course. Daniel Ellsworth had been there too, but the Envoy wasn’t about to reveal that.
“Murders? Where are the so-called dead she claims to have photographed? What we have,” the General said, dismissively waving his hand in the air, “are missing persons.”
The Envoy dropped his gaze to the tips of his polished shoes to hide the relief spinning through him.
“In a city with hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and refugees scattered to the four points of the compass—”
The Envoy turned on his heel and walked to the door.
Claims, Cavic had said. Not ‘claimed’. If he’d had her killed, he wouldn’t be building arguments for a legal defense at a war tribunal. And if he had her abducted and was torturing her, he would not be able to resist turning his sadistic screws in the Envoy’s face. This was psychological warfare, an effort to unnerve him. At the door, he turned, smiled graciously. “Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to express your concern about my daughter. Enjoy your stay in Vienna.”
You son of a bitch.
Now, gazing out at the rain, the Envoy called his aide. “Martindale!”
Four minutes later his aide had FBI Special Agent Tait Starke, who was leading the task force in charge of finding Brenna, on a secure phone line from Washington, D.C. Her voice was soft—not authoritative enough for a leader. The Envoy filled her in on his meeting with General Cavic, barely reining in his ire that Brenna had yet to be located.
“If we don’t find her, Agent Starke, Cavic will. And make no mistake. He’ll use her to full advantage. Torture her. He’s not a squeamish man.” Damn it, if he had to recuse himself, it would set the accord back by weeks, playing right into the General’s plan to capture Kavsak and claim it as Nationalist territory.
“We’re monitoring her accounts, Ambassador. There hasn’t been a single credit card transaction or ATM withdrawal after the ones at LaGuardia. As soon as she hits a machine, she’ll be on our radar.”
“What about the woman she drove off with?”
“We have two angles on her, sir, neither providing enough facial biometrics to yield unequivocal matches. We’re getting hundreds of hits on the partials—and that’s just Massachusetts drivers.”
“Well, broaden the search to nearby states,” he ordered. “How about the highway cameras? Any matches on silver sedans?”
“Thousands. Traveling in all directions. We have agents assessing the images for the right configuration of passengers.”
“Did you interview Daniel Ellsworth?”
“The last time he saw her was the day your son picked her up. He says he’s had no contact with her since then.” Agent Starke paused. “He strikes me as an honest man, Ambassador. Upset by her disappearance on a number of levels.”
“If she contacts him, I want to know.”
“I explained the situation to him, asked him to let us know if she calls him.”
“Brenna’s not big on phoning. She doesn’t own a cell phone, never mind a land line.”
“Sir, we’ve been thinking like law enforcers. Assuming foul play. Maybe she called someone and went willingly. I know if I were upset, first person I’d call would be my Mom, or—”
“My wife died when Brenna was a child, Agent Starke.”
“—or if not my Mom, then a friend,” Agent Starke persisted, thinking aloud.
“She’s been living abroad for years. There are no childhood or college friends she would call here.”
“Maybe she met someone recently.”
Deadline Day. High Noon.
And still, with Sam Chisolm due in the edit suite at any moment, the documentary was incomplete. Daniel sat back in his seat, stretching the stiffness out of his neck. Marga Velazquez, his senior video editor, as tired as he was after a long night, was sitting beside him, the bracelets on her wrist scraping the console as she cued up edits. She was an indisputable queen, her dark eyes and brown-skinned hands so adroit no one dared suggest she remove her jewelry to protect the expensive equipment.
Between six and eleven the night before—while Marga went home to have dinner with her husband Emilio and their three sons—he’d sat in the cramped voice-over booth, narrating completed segments of his script, timing his delivery to the silent images playing on the monitor while Eddie Cantor recorded the sound. It wasn’t typical to use a non-professional for narration, but since Daniel had opted to follow Brenna’s advice and tell the story in first person, he felt that using his own voice would also add immediacy to the work.
Now, working like a demon, Marga was inserting two-second fades to black to stand in for the missing segments.
“Sam’s due any second,” he said. “Finish this edit, and we’ll draw the line.” Incomplete was incomplete. Though he was pleased enough with what he had so far, no number of smooth transitions would change the fact that the work had not yet fully come together.
“Nuh-uh.” Marga’s eyes remained riveted to the monitor. “Every second counts.”
She punched a key, sat fractionally back while the software cued itself up and performed the edit. As soon as it was done, she aborted the playback, moved to the next gap, and cued up the fade, her hands moving with the deftness of a concert pianist’s.
“This work is fantastico,” she said, her English carrying the melody of Puerto Rican Spanish. She whirred past assembled footage to the next gap, and punched keys. “You can tell that pendejo I’m leaving EBS if he doesn’t let you finish it.”
The object of Marga’s curse, Sam, opened the edit suite door.
The last fade to black came to a rest. She closed the editing application, opened a viewer, patched the output to a large overhead screen, and left the cursor hovering over the ‘play’ icon.
Sam pinched the edge of his Stetson. “Daniel.
Mrs. Velazquez.”
“I mean it, Daniel. I’m tired of the nesting habits of blue-footed boobies. This work—” she looked pointedly at Sam “—is the best thing to come out of EBS in a long time.” She got up, snatched her purse off the hook by the door, and glared at Sam on her way home.
Sam turned to Daniel. His eyes narrowed. “You look like you’ve been rode hard.”
Daniel tipped his head. “Have a seat, Sam.”
Sam dropped his hat on the console and rolled Marga’s vacated chair over. “Is it finished?”
Daniel clicked the mouse and the documentary began.
Sam watched, arms crossed.
Daniel saw the compilation as all film-makers did, through critical eyes that noticed the flaws more than the achievement. The narration was poorly-timed in places; nothing had been done to smooth the location sound; it needed incidental music. When the playback ended, the run-time counter froze at fifty-two minutes, thirteen seconds, nine frames.
Sam rolled back his chair, swiveled to face him, his reaction unreadable.
“The deadline was impossible, Sam, and you know it.”
“EBS has too much sunk in this—and has too much corporate funding riding on it—for it to fail.”
“It won’t fail. There’s still weeks to go before the sponsors’ premiere.”
“What you have is good. But close don’t count.” Sam leaned forward, his gaze drilling through Daniel.
“You’re right, Sam. Close don’t count. But what makes this story work is honesty. Insight into the forces that shape people and their actions in times of war. These aren’t facts, this is about human response. Being able to appraise and understand takes time—not false deadlines because you want to test me.”
He looked Sam in the eye. “EBS owns these tapes. But this story is mine. Mine and Brenna’s. We’re the ones who walked through hell. This story is about how wounding war is. You hand this off to some upstart who’s never been there, Sam, and all you’ll have is ninety minutes of filler.”
Sam brought his hands up behind his head, leaned back in the chair, and propped a booted foot atop his knee. A long slow smile broke across his face. “Well,” he drawled. “You’re back. Nothing like a whip to make a pony run.”
Day Three Page 52
