He shook his head. “No. If we tell Bryce to go without us, he will do so and life will go on for us…“ He stopped, then finished more slowly. “Life will go on for us as it was before.”
“Oh, Paul,” she said, her voice suddenly catching. “Do I know you better than you know yourself? How can you say you haven’t decided?”
He turned and took her face in those gnarled, twisted hands and lifted it to him. When he spoke, his voice was deep with emotion. “Vera, if you know me as well as you say you do, then you know that if you ask me to stay, we will stay. I’ve put you through enough. I have no right to ask any more of you.”
Tears welled up and overflowed, and Bryce had to swallow hard as he saw the love that passed between these two aging and battle-scarred partners. “And you, Paul,” she answered in a whisper, “you know my heart is your heart, and if your heart says go, then I will go.” She wiped quickly at a tear-stained cheek and forced a smile. “Will there be something I can do this time? I so much hated the waiting last time.”
Leslie leaped to her feet. “No!” It was a stifled sob, a strangled sound of pain and agony. “You can’t!” And suddenly Leslie was standing in the middle of the room, as alone as she had ever been in her life.
With surprising alacrity, her father was up and had her in his arms, soothing her, stroking her hair gently. As she buried her head against his shoulder and began to shake with convulsive sobs, he spoke gently. “It looks like your mother and I have decided, Leslie.” She shook her head fiercely against him, but he smiled gently. “Yes, I think we have. And now the question is, what about you?”
She straightened slowly, looking up at her father, then over his shoulder at Bryce. Their eyes locked, hers red and swollen, his filled with anguish. But it was Vera Adams who spoke. She stood and turned to Bryce. “How much time do we have to pack?”
Bryce shrugged. “The sooner we leave, the better chance we have of getting away clear.”
Paul took his wife by the hand. “I don’t have much worth taking,” he said, “but I’ll help.” And smiling briefly at the two young people standing in the living room, they left and went down the hall.
For a long moment, Bryce and Leslie did not look at each other; then finally, Bryce held out his hand toward her. “Will you walk with me?” he asked softly.
He held his breath. He had some things he wanted to say. If he had to, he would say them here, beneath the microphones and into the tape recorders of Colonel Anthony Burkhart, but he much preferred to say them only to Leslie.
She searched his face for a long moment, brushed angrily at the wetness on her cheeks, then shrugged and turned, ignoring his outstretched hand. She walked slowly out the front door.
He caught up with her on the sidewalk and fell into step, and they walked for several moments in silence. Finally, Bryce stopped. She walked several steps more, then stopped, not turning around.
“Leslie…”
She waited.
He sighed, not sure where to start. Finally she turned, her face tear stained, her eyes filled with pain—and pleading.
“You know,” he said, in a low voice. “It’s more than love.”
Her chin came up, and he saw the questioning in her eyes.
“With your mother. It’s more than just standing by the man she loves. She believes it too.”
She finally spoke. “Believes what?”
“In what your father is doing. That the cause is worth the cost. That’s what she meant when she said, ‘Your heart is my heart.’”
Leslie turned then and began walking again slowly. As Bryce moved up beside her, she said, very softly, “I know.”
He reached over and took her hand and pulled her around to face him, and this time she didn’t pull away. But neither would she meet his gaze. “If somehow you could ever come to love me—”
Her head came up.
He had to stop, the sharp intensity of what he was feeling for this woman taking his breath away. He sighed and started again. “If somehow you could ever come to love me as deeply as I love you, there might be a day when we could have what your parents have.”
He saw the tears starting again.
“But even that wouldn’t change how we feel about this other thing.” Suddenly he shook his head, half muttering to himself. “I can’t believe this. Here I am, trying to convince you? If I ever go back, I’d like to have a video of this moment.”
“If you ever go back where?”
He brushed that aside and plunged in with renewed determination. “Leslie, I know what drives your father. For the first time in my life, I know what it’s like to be driven by that kind of commitment. Here at last is something to fight for, something to throw myself at with all the fury I can muster. If only you could feel that too, then…” He let it trail off. Then what? Then we can walk hand in hand into the jaws of hell singing love songs? Then you can join me in front of the firing squad? What, it suddenly hit him, was he offering this woman?
“Then what?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Then what!” she cried, grabbing his other hand and holding them both with a sudden fierceness.
“Then we can stand together in this.” He laughed bitterly at how empty that sounded. “I’ve heard better offers than that from used-car salesmen.”
Her eyes dropped. “I’ve always stood in awe of my father,” she said, barely whispering. “His commitment, the courage to go through what he has and never back down—it frightens me.”
“It frightens me too. He is a remarkable man.”
“I don’t think I have that kind of courage.”
“And I think you are one of the most courageous women I have ever met.” He laughed softly. “After all, you went to dinner with me that first night.”
She didn’t smile. “I’m terribly frightened, Bryce. For me. For my father and mother.” She suddenly threw her arms around him and gripped him tightly. “For you.”
He reached down and put a finger under her chin and lifted her head. “You don’t have to be frightened for me,” he said gravely. “I’ve already got that base covered very well.”
She swallowed and managed a tremulous smile. “And you’d take me under those conditions?”
He stared at her, then nearly threw back his head and shouted with joy, but again he forced a solemn look. “Will there be any kind of dowry?”
She slugged him hard against his chest, then instantly sobered again. “Can you really forgive me if I’m not all that my father is?”
It took a moment for what she was saying to sink in, then he swung her up and around once, laughing aloud. He put her down and took her face in his hands. “As long as you let me do this—” he kissed her eyes, “and this—” he kissed her nose, “and this—” and he kissed her full on the mouth, and she kissed him back hard, fiercely, with all the pent-up emotions that were welling up inside her.
He pulled back and looked at her in wonder. “As long as you let me do that,” he said, a little breathlessly, “I’ll forgive you if you’re not exactly all that your father is.”
Chapter 28
The next five or six days were some of the most glorious Bryce had ever spent. They had left the Washington area before noon on that first morning, driving leisurely, two couples in love, knowing that this idyllic time would be short-lived and ever too brief. That night, they made the contact in the general store of Quaid’s Crossing, a tiny village on the western slopes of the Allegheny Mountains. From there they were taken by a solemnfaced teenager deep into the hill country where an old logging camp had been converted into a temporary headquarters for the freedom movement.
Only Jessie Lambert and Neal were there to welcome them and introduce them around. Lewis had gotten the others settled, then headed immediately back for Washington. In the swiftness of the arrest at the safe house and the escape the next day, he had had no chance to warn his people. All of his networks were now vulnerable. Equally important, documents had to be retrie
ved or destroyed, hidden arms secured and moved to the mountains of West Virginia. Only a few of the most strategically placed people would remain. The rest would be told to make their way to the camp to join the rest.
Wes Quinn had also left immediately to meet with other AIS operatives somewhere out West near the demilitarized zone for a full briefing and to receive further instructions from their superiors.
Though Bryce was mentally ready to plunge immediately into the massive task at hand, he was not disappointed at the temporary lull. September closed out, and the first days of October dawned crisp and clear. The mountains were turning now, and as far as the eye could see it was a sea of brilliant color—oranges, yellows, reds, crimsons. He and Leslie would hike the hills for hours at a time, talking quietly, laughing, sometimes just holding hands, caught up in the total wonder of each other.
The only thing that marred life at all was when Bryce each night would go to the car, uncover the radio, and call in his report to Elliot Mannington. But he could say truthfully that little was happening at the moment, and so the reports were terse and the unpleasant reminders of the game he was playing were quickly put aside.
Coming to know the others in the camp was pleasant and revealing as well. There were nearly fifty people now, and each day a few more trickled in. Tents and makeshift shelters were scattered through the trees. The few old buildings left from before were given to the families with children. Although the camp had tried to persuade Paul Adams to take one of the nicer cabins, as a mark of their respect and honor for him, he had quietly but adamantly refused. He and Vera and Leslie slept in sleeping bags in a tent beneath some quaking aspen.
The majority of the people in the camp were younger and unmarried, with more men than women. But there were two widows, besides Jessie Lambert, and three people past sixty. There were also ten children under fifteen, and by the third day, Leslie and Vera had a school going for half a day, much to the parents’ delight and the children’s dismay. Often Bryce would sit in the back of the rough classroom just to watch Leslie as she worked with them. He got an equal amount of joy out of watching her with the other single girls in the camp. They would go down to the stream together to get water, or stand around the cook stoves, chattering like high-school girls about the various camp romances and other such things. It thrilled Bryce to see how alive and vibrant Leslie was becoming in this mountain setting.
Though the camp was in a state of waiting, the arrival of Paul Adams had infused everyone with a sense of excitement. Every night after dinner, bundled up in jackets and sweaters against the chill of the night air, they gathered around a huge fire pit to laugh and sing, or sometimes just to sit and talk quietly, sobered by what the future held for them.
The change from a mere state of mental shock to a deep, inner commitment to the cause of freedom had come for Bryce as he saw life in CONAS, life in an America without the Constitution. For Leslie, that change came during these sessions around the fire. For the most part, the people had come because they were fed up with the system—the constant oppression, the stultifying poverty, the incredible waste and inefficiency. But there were also the more dramatic stories of life in the Confederation of North American States. A young couple with three small children had had their food permit revoked for attending church. They had survived for six months by foraging at night and buying what meager supplies they could on the black market. A widower, a grizzled old farmer, had struck a police constable for trying to force sexual advances on his granddaughter, then had fled to the hills with her and her parents, one step ahead of a prison sentence. Three were university students, disillusioned with poor facilities and endless propagandizing. A sensitive young girl with sad brown eyes had watched her parents lose the farm that had been in the family for six generations to a collectivized factory and die within the year in abject poverty.
One night, after the others had gone to bed, Bryce and Leslie sat quietly in front of the glowing coals. He could tell she was pensive and lost in thought. He put his arm around her and pulled her close. With a murmur of contentment, she snuggled into his shoulder.
“Tell me what you are thinking,” he said, putting his face against her hair.
She stared into the coals for a long time before she spoke. “I was thinking,” she said softly, “that there are none so blind as those who will not see.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that I have been teaching history and government for over four years now. I taught those young people the official state dogma. I outlined the glories of our socialist system. I knew it wasn’t true, but I taught it so that I could keep my job, help our family survive since my father could no longer work. Occasionally some of the students, usually those with inquiring minds, those in whom the hunger for truth had not been totally crushed, would ask difficult questions. The contradictions between what they were taught and what they saw at every hand were too obvious. Life in their world—the real world—somehow didn’t quite match up to what the textbooks said. And I would answer their questions as I was supposed to. I would try to gloss problems over, brush them aside, look the other way.”
“You had little choice.”
“My father had a choice!” she retorted.
There was nothing to say to that, and so he just pulled her in more tightly.
“But now…” She paused, then sighed.
“What?”
She sat up, looking into his face. One hand came up and touched his cheek. “This has been a wonderful time, these past few days.” Her eyes softened. “I love you so much.”
He kissed her gently. “And I can’t believe how much I love you.”
She kissed him back, but then turned to gaze deeply into the coals again. “But now, now it’s more than loving you, and wanting to be with you. Now I’m coming to understand my father.”
“Yes,” Bryce agreed. “I know exactly what you mean.”
“I’m beginning to feel that same absolute determination that we cannot—must not!—simply sit back and accept cruelty and injustice. If we do, we become part of it.”
Bryce ran his hand gently across her hair, loving to touch her, loving this woman of grace and beauty and growing determination. “In the early history of this country,” he said quietly, “the history that has been suppressed by the government, there was a man who felt that same fire your father feels. His name was Patrick Henry. People were frightened, afraid that if they took a stand it might mean war. As a matter of fact, he lived in Virginia, at Richmond.”
“What did he do?”
He stopped, remembering. He had first memorized this speech for a high-school debate class. It had gone over so well he had used it again and again in his college debate meets. He had even quoted it once to a jury for dramatic effect. He looked at Leslie and took a quick breath. “One day a crowd had gathered at a church. They were vacillating, fearful to do anything.”
He looked into Leslie’s eyes. And then with emotions he had never before felt, he began to quote the words that he had not thought about for several years. “Henry got up on the steps of the church, and this is what he said: ‘We have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming. An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us! They tell us that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?’”
Suddenly Bryce was no longer thinking of the British and of colonialists standing in front of St. John’s Church in 1775. He was thinking of CONAS and Elliot Mannington and the deformed hands of Paul Adams.
His voice rose in intensity. “ ‘We are not weak, if we make proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. We shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of na
tions, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. Gentleman may cry, peace, peace!—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. Why stand we here idle? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!’”
Bryce Sherwood sat back, a little shaken by his own emotions. Finally he looked down again into the eyes of the woman he so loved. “‘I know not what course others may take,’” he finished softly, “‘but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!’”
The silence of the night closed in around them. Leslie’s eyes were glistening as she reached out and took his hand.
Suddenly a little embarrassed at his own passion, he shook his head. “I’m ashamed to say that for a while I used to think that speech was too corny, too passionate, a little too fanatic. Now…”
“When the time is right,” she said in a husky whisper, “you must share that with the others. Write it out so that it can be taught in the schools, preached in the churches, trumpeted from every pulpit and lecture hall in the land.”
He nodded soberly, then with the greatest of gentleness he put his hand over hers. “And you, Leslie Adams. What of you?”
She smiled up at him. “What would you have of me?”
“I would have you to be my wife.”
She leaned her head against him, suddenly crying. “And I would have Bryce Sherwood to be my husband,” she murmured happily.
But within the hour, the idyllic respite came to an end. After he had walked Leslie to her tent, Bryce reluctantly moved down the small dirt road and into the trees where the car was hidden. As he turned on the radio, gave the codes, and started his brief transmission, the gravel-voiced man who always took the call suddenly broke in. “Stand by for a message.” Surprised, Bryce grabbed the small notebook and then for the next two minutes copied the unintelligible set of numbers and letters that spewed forth. Puzzled and with a gnawing sense of dismay, he dug under the back seat of the car and retrieved the code book.
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