Finding North

by Christian, Claudia Hall

  “That’s weird,” Hector James said. “The air kind of sparkled.”

  Alex nodded.

  “What did he say?” Hector James asked.

  “He said it would make her really happy,” Alex said.

  “Why?” Hector James asked.

  “Because she loved you,” Alex said. “She wanted you to be happy in your life.”

  “Because she gave you life,” Jesse said. “She wants you to enjoy it, live it well.”

  “What did he say?” Hector James asked.

  “He said that your mother gave you life,” Alex said. “She wants you to live it, enjoy it, have fun, be happy.”

  “Like a present,” Hector James nodded. “If I’m sad all the time, I’m kinda not appreciating her present.”

  “Right,” Alex said. “I think that, by remembering your mom, missing her, you get to carry her with you.”

  “Like in my pocket?”

  “Exactly,” Alex said. “You get to spend your whole life with her because you love her. She’s a part of you, so she’s a part of your life.”

  Hector James hugged Alex.

  “Do you want to talk about Patrice?” Alex asked.

  Hector James’s eyes went wide, and he gave a fast shake of his head. He blushed bright red. He drank his cocoa to avoid looking at her.

  “When you’re ready,” Alex said. He nodded but didn’t look at her. “Do you want to see the pictures?”

  “Just the happy ones,” Hector James said. “The ones with mom.”

  Alex smiled. She leaned over Hermes to get her laptop. She started the slideshow and set the laptop on Hector James’s lap. She’d recently added some old photographs of Troy and Dahlia when they were in high school. Hector James grinned at his parents goofing around and smiled at the images of the happy times he’d spent with his mother. After a few minutes, he was asleep.

  Alex took the laptop from him. She was about to close it when she realized she could look at Hank Zutterberg’s reports. She wiggled her hand around in her pajama bottoms’ pocket trapped under Hermes’ head. She was able to grab the drive with the very tips of her fingers and not wake the child. She stuck it into her laptop.

  Like something out of a movie, a square box came up on the screen and said “scanning . . .” The dots extended for each second. The webcam on her laptop flashed on. Alex reached for the USB drive to pull it out when the box said, “Scanning complete. Viewer approved.”

  Alex blinked.

  “Welcome, Alexandra Hargreaves,” the square read. “Click here to see files.”

  Alex clicked. A directory opened with a list of thirty-three dated document files — one a week, with an extra file on October 8th. Alex clicked that file first.

  Zutterberg thought she was dead. Alex winced. The file included a series of images Zutterberg said he bought from the man who brokered the assault. Alex thought something was different in these photos from the photos Joseph had taken, but she wasn’t sure what. She leaned in to see if Paul was wearing those mysterious dress shoes. She couldn’t tell from the photo. She closed the file and went to the earliest file in his listing.

  One at a time, Alex opened Zutterberg’s files. She was pleasantly surprised that his notes were thorough and thoughtful. He had assigned a team of four men and one woman to help him track Alex. She noted their names so she could talk to them individually.

  Each report contained photos of Alex and the team. Although he’d documented her time with John or Max, he had kindly not included photos of their private time. Alex had to drag herself away from the laughing photos of the team.

  He and his team were there when she’d rescued Matthew and Colin. They’d locked down the entrances for the Fey Special Forces Team when everything went south. Alex winced. He noted that she had single-handedly killed almost every one of the captors. He guessed that the entire episode was a set-up from the beginning. At the end of that report, he’d noted that the team was so skilled that someone needed to catch them in a place where they felt safe to cause them “any real harm.”

  He had photos of Alex and Jesse in the CIA hospital in Costa Rica. Alex grimaced at the photos of each of the men who’d been captives. She’d forgotten how gaunt and sick Matthew had been. Her stomach turned over when she saw Colin. Upset, she closed the file.

  Looking across the office, she gathered her courage and opened the file again.

  She had assumed the next report would cover their rescue of Cee Cee Joiner, but the next report was about a trip to Serbia. They’d heard that Cee Cee was looking for oil leases from the Naftna Industrija Srbije, the Serbian national oil company. The Fey Special Forces Team had followed him to Kosovo. Because Alex and Jesse didn’t want to relive old memories of Kosovo, they’d taken off to see the oldest church in Serbia, the Church of the Saint Apostles Peter and Paul. The church was located in Stari Ras, the first capital of the medieval state of Raška, near modern Novi Pazar. According to Zutterberg’s report, the trip was about four hours one way by car. They’d had to travel through Montenegro and then return to Serbia to reach the mountainous Stari Ras.

  “Do you remember going to Stari Ras in Serbia?” Hoping not to wake the boys, Alex whispered to Jesse.

  “I remember the church,” Jesse nodded. “Uh . . . The Church of the Saint Apostles Peter and Paul. There are amazing frescoes there. It’s a part of the UNESCO Heritage site. Stari Ras, Petrova church, and a monastery . . .”

  “Zutterberg says it’s called ‘Sopoćani,’” she said. “It’s west of Novi Pazar by ten miles or so.”

  “Right,” Jesse said. “Deserted in the thirteenth century. The roof fell in or something like that. The monks were there when we visited. They’d come back to rebuild the monastery. You don’t remember?”

  Alex shook her head.

  “Both the church and the monastery were in that book.”

  “The one from the bookstore?” Alex asked.

  Jesse nodded.

  “Wow,” Alex said. She scowled. “I wonder what I did with the book.”

  “It should be here in a day or so,” Jesse said. “Dusty secure-shipped it and the beekeeping book from Paris.”

  “That’s right,” Alex nodded. “I gave it to Dusty to ship.”

  “You don’t remember Stari Ras?” Jesse asked again.

  Alex shook her head.

  “You’ll remember this,” Jesse said. “You have to hike up to Stari Ras from the road. It was an easy hike. We’d stopped on the road. We had gone about five minutes when we saw what we thought were cliff dwellings.”

  “Cliff dwellings . . .” Alex squinted as a vague image came back to her. “They weren’t cave dwellings, though.”

  “Right,” Jesse said. “I knew you would remember that part. It was the cave of the monastery of Archangel Michael.”

  “But it looked like cave dwellings,” Alex nodded. “I remember. But I feel scared . . . something happened. Not there, but . . . Do you remember anything?”

  “What does Zutterberg say?” Jesse asked. His head went up and down in a nod.

  Alex looked down at the laptop.

  “Let’s see — we left about midday and started back to Kosovo,” Alex said. “When we were in Montenegro the first time, we saw a honey stand. Beekeepers. We stopped on our way to Novi Pazar, but it was too early. They weren’t open yet. Do you remember that?”

  Jesse nodded.

  “I remember something . . .” Alex shook her head. “Zutterberg says I was looking into why our bees had died. I was checking with beekeepers around the world, wherever I was working, to see if they had any ideas.”

  “Sounds familiar,” Jesse said and then shrugged. “But I don’t really know.”

  Alex nodded and kept reading.

  “He said we’d stopped at the honey stand on our way back,” Alex said. “And . . . uh . . . ‘The targets ran into an identical situation as a month before. Targets entered, stayed for five minutes, and left visibly shaken.’ Any ideas?”

  �
�We saw . . .”

  “Bodies,” Alex said at the same time Jesse said, “Corpses.”

  “I remember blood,” Alex nodded. “The beekeepers had been murdered at their hives. There were sunflowers . . .”

  “The honey stand was in a sunflower field,” Jesse said. “And the beekeepers were dead.”

  Alex nodded. She scowled and looked off into the end of the room. Squinting, she looked up.

  “I think it happened before.” Alex rubbed her head. “I can’t remember.”

  “Sounds like Zutterberg thought it did,” Jesse said. “What does he say about this incident?”

  “He says that we went another mile and pulled over,” Alex said. “Zack came to get us, and the team left Serbia. He lost us, so he went back to the sunflower field.”

  Alex fell silent as she read. She closed her eyes for a moment and then squinted.

  “What?”

  “He said that, like the last time, he went back to the sunflower field and found nothing amiss,” Alex said. “The beekeepers were working their hives, and the honey-stand attendants were coming off break. He was confused as to what had spooked us. ‘Sergeant Hargreaves and Sergeant Abreu are trained, experienced soldiers. I saw no reason for their immediate extraction.’”

  “It was a set-up,” Jesse said.

  Alex nodded.

  “But why?” Jesse asked.

  “I don’t know,” Alex said. “Clearly, it freaked me out. Do you think it was a joke? You know, like the lighter?”

  “You mean, people we don’t know pretend to be dead to trick us?” Jesse asked. “No way.”

  “Then, why?”

  “I don’t think we ever knew,” Jesse said.

  “Creepy,” Alex nodded.

  “Totally creepy,” Jesse said. “What are you thinking?”

  “Right now?” Alex asked.

  Her voice was a little loud, and she glanced at the boys. They were still asleep. Jesse nodded.

  “I think I collected all of this sunflower stuff to remind me,” Alex said.

  “Of?”

  “Of the puzzle,” Alex said. “I don’t think I ever figured it out. I mean, I clearly got the sunflower and the compass rose, but . . .”

  Alex’s head bobbed up and down in an unconscious nod.

  “The tattoos. The graves,” Alex squinted and looked up at Jesse. “The sunflowers . . . whatever Charlie saw in all those cases that I . . . add that to Linear A, and you get . . .”

  “They thought you knew,” Jesse said. “They thought we were on track to uncover their plan.”

  “I . . .” Alex swallowed hard. Horrified, she couldn’t finish her statement. Her eyes stared straight ahead.

  “You realize that means the ugly bee must be a part of this,” Jesse said.

  “I . . .” Alex nodded. “ . . .killed everybody.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Jesse said. His tone was mocking, almost cruel. “They killed everyone . . .”

  “ . . . because they couldn’t risk anyone finding out,” Alex nodded.

  “Right,” Jesse said.

  “That’s why they killed Eniac, Zutterberg . . .” Alex said. “Philippe . . .”

  “It’s why they want to kill you,” Jesse said.

  “Human life means nothing to them,” Alex whispered.

  Jesse nodded.

  “Listen,” Jesse said. “Maria just woke up and is looking for me.”

  “Go,” Alex said.

  “You’ll read the rest of it? See if anything else comes back?” Jesse asked. “I’ll be back when the kids get to school.”

  Alex nodded.

  “Don’t you give up,” Jesse said.

  “I won’t,” she said, and he disappeared.

  Alex settled in to read about her own life. Some of the information came from Zutterberg himself. Some of it was collected off satellites and drones, or from his agents. There were pictures and audio files. With the sound off, she watched a video of a time she’d confronted Zutterberg. Alex smiled at her own arrogance. The girl on the video thought she was invincible.

  She touched the image of her own young face and sighed. In a few short weeks, lessons wrought by bullets from the AK-47 would shatter her life and age that girl beyond her years. In a few short weeks, she would change so radically as to be unrecognizable to herself only a few years later.

  But the girl on the video knew she was smart, strong, and extremely capable. She was unafraid and righteous in her indignation. Alex gave herself a sad smile and returned to the files.

  When she finished going through Zutterberg’s file, she compared his version of her life with the transcripts from the large team journal she’d saved. Zutterberg was able to fill in missing details in the team journal, and the team journal filled in missing information in Zutterberg’s file.

  “Hey,” Troy poked his head in the door. “Any idea where my sons are? They managed to disappear overnight.”

  Alex lifted her arms to show Hector James and Hermes sleeping on her lap.

  “God, I knew I shouldn’t let them sleep down here,” Troy said. “Sorry.”

  “They’re wonderful,” Alex said. “Don’t worry. Everything is fine.”

  “Come on, guys,” Troy said.

  He woke Hector James and then Hermes.

  “Call the bathroom!” Hermes said and ran out of the office.

  “Hey!” Troy ran after his son.

  Hector James looked at Alex for a moment.

  “I had this wonderful dream,” Hector James said.

  Alex smiled.

  “I dreamed of Mom,” Hector James said. “She was so beautiful. Even the photos don’t show how pretty she was. She kind of radiated beauty.”

  “She did,” Alex smiled. “What did she say?”

  “She told me that I was beautiful, perfect, and that she would always love me,” Hector James said. “She used to say: ‘Hector James, you are beautiful, perfect, and I love you.’ But this time she said, ‘Hector James, you are beautiful, perfect in every way, and I will always love you.’ She said I was perfect in every way, and she’d always love me. Always. No matter what.”

  The boy nodded.

  “Of course,” Alex said. “Me, too.”

  Hector James looked toward the door when Troy called his name.

  “She said to tell you . . .” Hector James looked at Alex’s face. He smiled, “She used to say this, too.”

  “What?”

  “She used to say, ‘You can’t be responsible for what you don’t know.’ She said I should tell you that.” Hector James smiled. “Then she said, ‘It only takes one person to stop a freight train, but only when they have help.’ Isn’t that weird?”

  Alex hugged the boy. Troy called Hector James again, and he got up.

  “Everything depends on you remembering,” Hector James said.

  “What did you say?”

  “It’s just something I remembered,” Hector James turned at the door. “Everything depends on you remembering, Alex.”

  Alex blinked.

  FF

  She was freezing cold. She saw the old one-by-eight joists supporting the first floor. She was lying in the doorway of her office, bleeding to death. Her right shoulder screamed with pain.

  Dahlia was standing over her. Jesse was standing beside her.

  “We’re here to remind you,” Jesse had said.

  “Everything depends on your remembering,” Dahlia had said. “Remember, Alex.”

  FF

  Alex gave a quick shake of her head, and the image vanished. Hector James was gone. She let out a breath.

  She was sitting on the loveseat at the end of her office. The gas fireplace was going. Her lap was warm from the computer and the boys who’d rested against it.

  After all this time, Alex finally understood.

  F

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Two days later

  Tuesday afternoon

  May 24 — 1:17 p.m. Cuba DT (11:17 a.m. MDT)

&nb
sp; Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

  Alex glanced at Neev, who was standing on her left. They were looking through a one-way mirror at Erin’s face. Her long red hair was brushed up into a French knot. She wore casual but elegant clothing that accentuated her early pregnancy. Her new diamond wedding ring was matched by her mother’s diamond earrings. Using a language he’d understand, she wanted Marcos to know that she’d moved on.

  Behind Alex and Neev, Helen and Samantha were whispering about something. Alex looked at them, and they blushed. Clearly, they were whispering about her. Raz came into the room and nodded to Alex.

  In order to record the interaction, they’d set up their own surveillance cameras. One would show Marcos’s face, while the other was outside the door. Alex planned to manage the interview and team, while everyone else was told to focus on taking care of Erin.

  “We’re ready,” Alex said into a microphone feed to Erin. “Are you?”

  Erin gave an almost-imperceptible nod.

  “You can back out at any time,” Alex repeated what she had said over and over again.

  Erin gave the same imperceptible nod.

  “Okay, Erin, love,” Neev said. “Let’s take a breath . . .”

  Erin’s chest rose with her deep breath.

  “Hold it,” Neev said. “One, two, three, four. Who are you?”

  “Erin Hargreaves-Mac Clenaghan,” Erin said. “Safe and protected.”

  “Safe and protected,” Helen and Samantha repeated. Neev nudged Alex. She joined the chorus, “Safe and protected.”

  Erin’s head moved in a nod. Alex looked up at the surveillance monitor.

  “He’s outside the door,” Alex said. “Remember, Royce and Vince are bringing him because they are Navy. You won’t recognize them, but it’s them. Trece and White Boy are at the door and can be inside in one second flat.”

  “Colin?” Erin asked.

  Because Matthew was too close to the situation, he’d agreed to stay in Florida. Colin was Erin’s key support person.

  “He’s . . .” Alex paused. Colin slipped into the room. “He’s right here beside me.”

  “Safe and protected,” Erin said.