Joshua's Hammer

by David Hagberg

  “A penny?” Gloria asked, contentedly. She’d been a CIA wife for seventeen years, and until recently had always gotten along wherever they were assigned. But Saudi Arabia had gotten to her. He could see that now. She’d taken the news that they were pulling out with a mixture of surprise, and relief, and finally some suspicion. Transfers weren’t done so suddenly unless something was wrong. But she’d not made a point of it so far. The only blot on their vacation was the kids. They had been at each other’s throats for five days. Nothing was right. There were too many people. It was too hot. They couldn’t do what they wanted to do. Julie wanted to spend money on clothes, and Danny wanted to do nothing other than play video games.

  He smiled. “A hot shower, clean clothes, one very cold martini, something fishy for dinner—maybe lobster—and two quiet children.”

  “They’ll be okay, Allen. This has been a big change for them. They dreamed about it for so long that now that they’re here they can’t take it all in.”

  “Maybe they’ll drown each other in the pool tonight and we can start all over again,” Trumble said. Gloria laughed at the back of her throat, like she did when she was happy. She hadn’t done that for a long time, and Trumble felt a stab of guilt.

  “I wouldn’t go through that again for all the oil in OPEC.”

  “Tea in China,” he corrected. “At any rate, twelve and sixteen, we’re almost home free.” He shrugged. “’Course there’ll be college bills, a couple of weddings, grandkids.”

  Gloria reached over and kissed her husband. “It’s going so fast, Allen. I’m glad we’re home.” She gave him a look that she wanted to be serious now. “Are you going to be okay with this move?”

  “It’s a promotion.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “Are you going to get wanderlust in a few months, reading reports from places we’ve been—where you think you still belong?”

  Trumble thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I probably will,” he admitted. “But it’s time for us to come home, sweetheart. And all kidding aside, being with you, Julie and Danny, and being back home like it used to be, beats Riyadh hands down.”

  Gloria was watching him closely. “You almost said safe. Back home and safe.”

  “That too.”

  A dark cloud came over her face. “Can you tell me what happened, Allen? Why they won’t let us go back even to pack our things?”

  “No.”

  “Were we in some danger over there?” she demanded sharply.

  Trumble had never been a very good liar, which was another reason, he knew in his heart of hearts, that he was never a very good spy. An expert, an administrator, an analyst, but not a spy.

  “There was a possibility, and I mean a remote possibility, that something might have happened, maybe a kidnapping or something like that. That’s why McGarvey pulled us out the way he did.”

  “How about here? Are we in any danger?”

  Trumble looked into his wife’s eyes, certain now that their troubles were finally behind them, and told her the absolute truth as he knew it. “Not unless Mickey Mouse turns out to be a rat and bites us.”

  “We’d have to go back to Magic Kingdom for that—maybe you could ride the roller coaster again,” she added coyly.

  “I get sick just thinking about it.” Rencke had been right; the coaster was red with your eyes closed. Amazing.

  He glanced over at the Spaceship Earth exit. The kids were coming down the walk, arguing about something like they’d done all week. The crowds had definitely thinned out since this morning, and most of them looked tired, even their whirlwind Daniel. He’d not raised any objections for a change when they’d headed for the exit. He just wanted to go up in the ball one last time, and had somehow talked his sister into going with him.

  “Okay, let’s get out of here,” Trumble said.

  “Sounds good,” Gloria agreed. She got up and handed him a couple of the plastic shopping bags. Danny’s was the heaviest because he’d bought four glycerine-filled glass globes that contained models of the castle at Magic Kingdom. When the globes were shaken snow seemed to fall all around the castle. He was sending them back to his Saudi friends in Riyadh who’d not only never been to Disney World, but who’d never seen snow. Danny had always been their giver, and Julie was their fashion expert. Until a year ago when their constant bickering had taken on a new, sharper tone, they argued almost constantly, but Danny had always been able to stop his sister short by giving her something out of the clear blue. He used to spend his allowance on her; pierced earrings, watches, and once a twenty-five dollar gift certificate for the big mall in Kuwait City.

  “Shut your mouth,” Julie was saying, angrily. She was tall and willowly like her mother at that age. “Just shut up.”

  “Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it,” Trumble told them. “We’re going back to the hotel now.”

  “This one you gotta hear, Dad,” Daniel said, grinning from ear to ear. He was tall, almost as big as his father. And at twelve he still had some of his baby fat, which his sister chided him unmercifully about.

  “Daniel,” Julie warned.

  Daniel couldn’t contain himself. “She’s got a bikini, Dad. And she wore it at the pool last night.” That was something just not possible in the Middle East.

  Julie’s lips compressed.

  Trumble laughed out loud. “Did she look sexy?”

  “Nah, she just looked gross.”

  “Am I going to get to see this swimsuit?”

  “I don’t think that would be such a good idea, dear,” Gloria intervened.

  Outside the gates they were just in time to catch one of the nearly empty shuttle trains. Daniel pulled a small package out of his pocket, and handed it to his sister. She shot him another dirty look, and although she didn’t want to open it, she couldn’t help herself.

  “What’d you spend your money on now?” Trumble asked.

  “There was this other girl at the pool. She had an ankle bracelet, which looked pretty cool, but Julie didn’t have one.” Daniel said it almost shyly.

  Julie held up the delicate gold-plated bracelet with a tiny gold Minnie Mouse charm. “What am I supposed to do now, Mother?” she asked plaintively.

  “You could try thanking your brother,” Gloria said.

  Julie looked at her brother, the expression on her face softening, and she shook her head. “Thank you, Daniel,” she said.

  Danny grinned. “Just don’t hang around me and my friends half naked like that. It’s embarrassing.”

  Trumble put his arm around his son’s shoulder and pulled him close. “Did I ever tell you that I love you?”

  “Ah, Dad.” Daniel squirmed.

  Julie was misty-eyed. “All the time, Father, and to all of us,” she said very seriously, back to her old self.

  The shuttle train stopped at the Kangaroo 57-61 rows. They got off with a few other passengers who headed off to their cars. Trumble had forgotten which row they were in.

  “Fifty-seven,” Gloria said.

  Trumble glanced at his watch. It was just six. Tomorrow they were going to Sea World and it was going to be a great day because the kids were finally beginning to settle down. Washington would be pretty good after all, he decided. He might even have time to get back into tennis. Once upon a time he and Gloria had been pretty good, but now he was so out of shape that he didn’t think he could last one set, let alone an entire match. Maybe they could get Julie interested in the game—of course, she’d want the best tennis outfits in Washington. And maybe he and Danny could go fishing, or maybe even sailing on the Chesapeake, he’d always wanted to try that.

  He heard a car coming up behind them, and he turned as a dark gray van headed way too fast directly at them.

  Trumble shoved Danny aside, between parked cars and he raised his hand for the driver to slow down as he tried to reach Gloria and Julie twenty feet back. The van was right on top of them as its side door came open, and he got the impression of a man c
rouched in the back with a large gun. It was a Kalashnikov, the thought registered on his brain, and an instant later he heard the distinctive clatter of the Russian assault rifle on full automatic.

  Gloria and Julie were shoved violently backward, blood spraying on the trunk lids and rear windows of several cars from a dozen wounds. He simply could not believe what he was witnessing. Not now. Not here. It was impossible!

  “No!” Trumble cried out. He spun around and threw Danny to the pavement, shielding his son’s body with his own. Some people in the next row stopped short, and a woman screamed. Bullets slammed into the cars, sending glass flying everywhere.

  The van screeched to a halt about twenty yards down the row and immediately started back, tires squealing.

  Trumble hauled Danny to his feet. “Get out of here, Danny! Run!” He shoved his son toward the next row, then scrambled around the front of the car, blocked for the moment from the direct line of fire. He was moving purely on instinct now, adrenalin pumping through his body, his mind numb by what was happening. This was America. Disney World, the safest place on earth. They were home.

  All he could think of were Gloria and Julie. He had to get to them now.

  He heard the van screech to a halt directly behind the car he was crouched in front of, and he moved to the left fender where he could see the front of the van. A man sat behind the wheel, looking around wildly as if he expected the police to show up at any moment. Another man ran past the car. Trumble could see him through the windows, a deep, black, sick anger welling up inside his gut. They had come after his family all the way from Saudi Arabia. The bastards! The fucking bastards!

  “Dad! Dad!” a little boy shouted in desperation, and in his present state it took Trumble a second before he realized that it was Daniel.

  He scrambled back around the front of the car to the other side just as a second man came down the row. He was dark, probably Arab, Trumble thought. The man suddenly crouched down and opened fire with the Kalashnikov, cutting Danny’s cries off. None of this was happening. It was all some sort of a terribly bad joke, yet he knew it wasn’t so.

  The gunman started to swivel around as Trumble leaped up and swung the heavy plastic shopping bag with Danny’s snow globes, connecting solidly with a satisfying thump on the side of the man’s head. The bag broke open sending the glass globes flying. The gunman’s head cracked open like a soft-boiled egg in a spray of blood, and he was slammed forcefully against the side of the other car, dropping his rifle and collapsing in a heap.

  Daniel was down on his back and not moving between the parked cars. The front of his tee shirt was bright red, and a shockingly large pool of blood was spreading out on the pavement. Up the row Trumble could see the bodies of his wife and daughter, and still it made no sense to him. For a heartbeat he was torn between going to them, who he knew without a doubt were dead, or picking up the Kalashnikov and going after the monsters who had done this to his family; now after they had finally begun to work things out.

  He turned to the downed gunman as another man ran up from the van, raising his rifle as he came. Trumble knew with utter finality that he had lost, but still he made a try for the rifle lying on the pavement. Something like a freight train slammed into his chest, and an instant later a billion stars burst inside his head as a 7.62mm standard Russian military round plowed through his forehead into his brain.

  THREE

  Georgetown

  Jake’s was a glittering restaurant that had just reopened after a terrorist bomb had destroyed it last year, and the al fresco dining area fronting busy Canal Street was even better than before with first-class food, an extensive wine list and French waiters. It was Kathleen who insisted that they have an early dinner here before the symphony at the Kennedy Center, and sitting across from her, McGarvey, ruggedly handsome in his tuxedo, could only marvel at his fantastic good fortune. They had divorced twenty years ago because she could not stand being married to a CIA case officer, but they had finally realized that they could no longer live apart because they loved each other. Being here tonight was going to be a closure, and he hoped a beginning, for both of them. He wanted this to work with everything in his being; and maybe he even needed it for his sanity.

  Watching her as the waiter poured their wine, his chest swelled. At fifty she was more beautiful in his eyes than she’d ever been. She wore a black, off-the-shoulder Givenchy evening dress, a string of pearls around her long, delicately formed neck, her blond hair up in back, and the cheap diamond tennis bracelet he’d given her for their first Christmas on her left wrist. On her it looked as if it had come from Tiffany’s. She was aristocratic, and when they’d come in everyone had looked at her.

  She smiled and raised her glass. “You look gorgeous tonight, Kirk. I think I like you dressed up like this.”

  He laughed and raised his glass. “That was supposed to be my line. You’re beautiful.”

  She sipped her pinot grigio, then looked at the traffic on the street. McGarvey’s car and bodyguard were parked down the block. It was just 6:00 P.M., and still light out, and warm, but she shivered. “I hope you don’t mind coming back here.”

  He put his glass down. “Are you okay, Katy?” He knew exactly what she was thinking, and why she’d wanted to come here. She was trying to erase at least a part of his violent past, which of course was impossible, but maybe being here with him, safe, secure, would help ease some of her fears.

  She turned back, a serious expression on her narrow, finely formed face. “You never told me the whole story. About Jacqueline, I mean. Were you in love with her?”

  The question hurt a little, but it was an honest one, and it was something he figured she had to know if they were to put this business behind them. “I thought I was, at least for a little while, but I was sending her back to Paris.”

  “Why?” she asked, studying his eyes.

  “Because I knew that it wasn’t going to work,” he said softly. “She wasn’t going to leave her home, her family, for me, and I wasn’t going to leave the Company. Not like that.” That drew an almost sympathetic look from her.

  “Elizabeth said that she was a good person.”

  McGarvey smiled sadly. “They got to be friends, but Liz had a tough time of it when we got back to the States.”

  “She wouldn’t talk to me about it, but I knew that the situation was bothering her.”

  “She wanted you and I to get back together.”

  Kathleen looked at her hands. She still wore their wedding ring. Even in the bad days, right after their divorce, when she hated him, she’d not taken it off. “I think that our daughter still feels a little guilty about that day, Kirk. But I can’t help her unless I know what happened.” She was frustrated.

  “It’s been a year.”

  “You’ve not forgotten. You never will. You never forget anything.” She’d almost said forgive, and McGarvey caught it.

  “Jacqueline wanted to get married. I was supposed to quit the CIA, and go back to teaching somewhere.”

  Kathleen’s chin raised a little. “But you were afraid that she was going to get hurt, being around you. That was it, wasn’t it? You did that thing for a long time.”

  “That I did,” McGarvey said. He’d been a CIA field officer for twenty-five years, and he’d killed people in the line of duty. A legion of them, whose faces he saw nearly every night in his dreams. There were a lot of grudges out there looking for a place to happen, so he’d pushed the people he cared about away from him; out of harm’s way, he’d always hoped. But it had never worked, and it certainly hadn’t worked with Jacqueline.

  They’d been sitting here almost at this exact spot, having drinks, when he told her that it was no good. That she might as well return to Paris, because it was never going to work out for them. She’d started to cry, and McGarvey clearly remembered holding himself back with everything in his power from reaching out for her hand, and apologizing for being such a bastard. It was for the best, her going home. There was
no future here for her. She was a French intelligence officer who’d been sent to keep an eye on McGarvey while he lived in Paris, and she’d fallen in love with him. Too bad for her, too bad for all of them, because she’d followed him back to the States and had gotten herself killed.

  McGarvey glanced out at the street. Jacqueline had been on the way out of the restaurant when the black Mercedes came barreling around the corner. Something, some sixth sense, had warned him just in time to hit the deck when the bomb had been tossed out the back window of the car, landing right at Jacqueline’s feet. He closed his eyes.

  Kathleen reached out and laid a hand on his, her touch gentle.

  “There was nothing left of her, Katy. Not a goddammed thing. Nothing even remotely recognizable as human.” Elizabeth had come up from the Farm with him, and they were all supposed to go out to dinner somewhere that night. She’d been returning from the bathroom when the bomb was tossed, and McGarvey had managed to pull her behind a table where she escaped the brunt of the massive explosion. Two dozen people had been killed, and twice that many hurt. The visions would not go away.

  Kathleen was watching the play of emotions on his face. “You saved our daughter’s life, my darling. And you got the people who did that horrible thing, and in the process you saved a lot of other lives. That counts for something, even if you don’t want to take the credit.”

  McGarvey couldn’t trust himself to speak. She hadn’t insisted on coming here for herself, she’d pushed him into coming back so that he could deal with it for himself.

  Kathleen straightened up. “Time to put it behind you. It’s over now.” She picked up her wine glass. “To us,” she said.