Secret Agent Sam

by Kathleen Creighton

  “You have children?” For some reason the notion both surprised and appalled Sam.

  “Oh, yes-two lovely boys. Teenagers.” Esther’s smile was back, brighter than ever. “I’m sure they’re home in Ottawa now, quite safe and sound.”

  “That must be so hard,” Sam said inadequately, shaking her head. She couldn’t even imagine it.

  Esther was still smiling, but with a shine of tears in her eyes-the first Sam had seen. “Oh, yes, of course it is. But Hal and I are both blessed with wonderful families. Our hearts are at ease, knowing our boys are being cared for and loved.”

  Sam stared at her feet; her throat felt clogged with wistfulness and longing. “It must be wonderful,” she said softly, barely aware she was saying it out loud, “to have so much in common. To have no secrets…”

  Esther made a scoffing noise and briskly dashed away a tear. “I don’t know about secrets-I haven’t really thought about that. But Hal and I have very little in common-well, there’s the way we feel about each other, I suppose.”

  “And religion, surely?”

  She made that same disparaging sound, almost a laugh. “Oh, goodness no-you should hear the arguments we have sometimes.”

  “So…the two of you do…I mean-”

  Esther’s eyebrows arched with amusement. “Married couples do argue, dear. So do friends, lovers, companions, partners…Hal is truly all those things to me, and I do try not to keep secrets from him, but really, we’re nothing at all alike. He’s a dour Swede-” she made a face to illustrate “-and I…well, I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’m something of a flibbertigibbet. I’m nauseatingly upbeat and optimistic. I guess you could say…oh dear, it’s such a cliché, but you really could say we complete each other.” Her lined cheeks were pink and her eyes bright, making her look slightly embarrassed, and years younger. “He keeps me grounded,” she finished softly, “and I suppose I keep him from becoming mired in melancholy.”

  “Yin and yang,” said Sam.

  Esther tilted her head, considering that. “Yes-although I prefer the imagery of the oak tree and the cypress.”

  “The oak tree…” Unfamiliar with the reference, Sam shook her head.

  “Kahlil Gibran? The poet? Oh dear-well, I won’t try to paraphrase it for you, the language is too lovely to be mangled the way I would surely manage to do. But someday when you can, find yourself a copy of The Prophet, dear, and read the chapter on marriage.”

  “I’m kind of amazed,” Sam said.

  “Why, dear?”

  She felt her cheeks burning, and wondered how she’d managed to talk herself into yet another corner it was going to be impossible to get out of without being rude-religion, along with politics, being one of those subjects Mama had always taught her weren’t to be discussed unless you knew for certain the other person held the same beliefs and opinions as you. “Gibran,” she said, squirming. “He’s Arab, right? Well, isn’t he…I mean, he’s not-um…”

  Esther’s smile and voice were uncharacteristically wry. “There are words of wisdom and beauty to be found in every culture, dear. And, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, being out here, it’s not to get too tangled up in dogma.”

  After a long and thoughtful silence, Sam put her hands on the root beside her and prepared to lever herself off it. “Well, I guess we’d better be getting on,” she said, “now that the rain’s stopped.”

  But for some reason it was hard to make herself move. She felt heavy, weighed down…tired out by all the emotional turmoil. She let her eyes slide again to Hal and Tony, and her heart gave a painful leap when she saw Cory had joined them. She drew an unsteady breath and slid down from her perch, overcome with sadness and an indefinable fear.

  She was turning when Esther caught at her arm, touching it briefly, just long enough to keep her there.

  “It is hard work,” she said gently. “Loving someone over the long haul.” Sam stared at the frail-looking woman, wondering if she had the gift of second sight. And saw a shadow-not sadness…weariness, maybe-in her faded blue eyes. “You know, I think even the happiest, most loving couples must wonder now and then if it’s all worth the effort.”

  “But,” Sam blurted out, anguish honing her voice, as it so often did, into a sound more like anger, “you’ve done it. You and Hal-obviously, you’ve made it work. So…so what’s the secret? How do you do it? Is it this…Gibran thing-the oak and the cypress? What?”

  Gentle humor returned to Esther’s eyes. “I suppose I do have a secret.” Her lips curved with a sly little smile. “A small one-just one word, actually. I didn’t get it from Gibran, though. This came from a book I’m considerably more familiar with.”

  “Yeah? What is it?” Sam held herself rigid, fighting back tears.

  Esther’s lined face blossomed. “Forgiveness, dear.”

  Sam gave a little huff of helpless laughter and turned away, disappointment leaving her with nothing at all to say. Forgiveness? How was that supposed to help her? Forgiveness pretty much had to be a two-way street, didn’t it?

  Forgive? Okay, I can do that, I think I already have. The question now is, is he ever going to forgive me?

  Cory was squatting, balanced on one heel, beside a patch of mossy ground on which Hal Lundquist had drawn a rough map of the island with a sharp stick.

  “So,” he said, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he stabbed the similar stick he held in his hand into a spot near the southern tip, “you figure we’re about here.” He moved the stick a couple of inches toward the center of the island and stabbed again. “And the village and airstrip are roughly here.” He looked up and pointed the stick at an imaginary point located halfway between Hal and Tony, who was, as usual, photographing the impromptu strategy meeting for posterity. “That is to say, there. No more than three or four miles that direction. That’s not too bad. We should be able to make it by dark.”

  “You’re forgetting,” Hal said as he used his stick to draw a wiggly line between Cory’s two points. “The river. We’ll have to cross it.”

  Cory squinted up at him over the tops of his glasses. “There must be ways. Fords…bridges.”

  Hal scratched his beard and looked doubtful. “Only two that I know of. Of course there’s the bridge back at the village…”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think we want to go back there. What’s the other?”

  “Farther upriver there’s a gorge-it’s not wide, but it is deep. There’s a rope bridge across it.”

  “A rope bridge,” Cory said heavily, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, envisioning the sort of swaying contraption popular in action-adventure movies. Behind him he could hear Tony blaspheming under his breath and felt sure he was on the same wavelength.

  “It’s not fun, but it is doable,” Hal said, though his dour expression suggested he hadn’t much optimism about their chances of success. “Esther and I used it several times during the last rainy season-during dry weather, of course, you can cross just about anywhere.”

  “I don’t see we have much choice,” Cory said, standing up and brushing at his wet and muddy knees. “If you and your wife-”

  “There’s just one thing…” Hal Lundquist was still scratching his whiskers, and looking more pessimistic than ever.

  “Yeah? What’s that?” Cory’s heartbeat slowed to a leaden thumping. Behind him, he felt Tony freeze in the act of putting his camera back in its case.

  “Well, as I said, there are only the two crossings. Al-Rami’s men use them, too, and they won’t be any more eager to backtrack through the village than we are. Which means-”

  “We may run into them at the crossing,” Cory said grimly. “Or worse, they could be set up to ambush us when we try to cross. Great.”

  “I doubt they’d waste their time and ammunition,” Sam said as she joined them. “Assuming al-Rami and his men managed to escape the raid on the village, they’ll most likely have crossed the river already and are heading for their nearest hideout as we speak.
”

  Silently, Cory watched her hunker down beside the crudely drawn map, and he was trying not to notice the fluid slide of muscles in her back and arms and thighs that not even men’s clothing could hide. Or the matter-of-fact way she’d taken charge, with a quiet authority that could only come from absolute confidence in her superior knowledge and expertise.

  Of course, she’d been doing that all along, he realized, in slightly more subtle ways. He’d noticed and wondered about it, even felt twinges of uneasiness…entertained vague suspicions. But then, he’d been distracted-to put it mildly-by the flood of conflicting emotions he’d had to deal with since finding her so unexpectedly back in his life, not to mention the reawakened desires rampaging through his system. And even more than that, he thought, he’d been blinded by the image he’d carried in his mind for so long. Sammi June…Sam…his Samantha…who he’d insisted on seeing still as the arrogant but vulnerable college girl he’d fallen in love with that day in the White House rose garden.

  Where was that cheeky golden girl now? Had she ever really existed, except in his fantasies? Certainly he could find no trace of her in this tanned and toned creature in camouflage cargo pants and T-shirt, reminding him of nothing so much as the swashbuckling heroine of some action-adventure film he pictured right at home raiding ancient Egyptian tombs or swinging one-handed on a vine while firing an AK-47 and vanquishing villains with the other. He had no doubt crossing a chasm on a swaying rope would be well within her capabilities.

  “Besides, they can’t even be sure we’d be coming along that way,” she went on, squinting up at Hal Lundquist-making a point, Cory noticed, to avoid meeting his eyes. “For all they know, we might have been killed in the raid, or managed to meet up with the government forces. Either way, I doubt they’d sit around waiting at some bridge crossing on the off chance we might happen along.”

  “That’s a very good point,” Hal said, though he looked no less dubious as he gazed down at the map.

  “Well, like I said, I don’t think we have much choice,” Cory said briskly. “How far is it to the crossing? Can we still make the village and airstrip before nightfall?”

  Hall shook his head. “In terms of miles it’s not that far, but the terrain and vegetation make for slow going. Then there’s the rain, which will make things more difficult. We might make it there by tomorrow morning, if we keep going all night, but I don’t think that’s such a good idea. The truth is-” he smiled dolefully at his wife as she joined them “-I’m not at all sure we can find the path in the dark. And with all the cloud cover there’ll be no moon.”

  “We’ll take it as it comes, then.” Cory glanced at Sam, assuming she’d want to weigh in on the subject. But she wasn’t looking his way, and what he could see of her expression was aloof and unreadable.

  He heard her asking Esther if she could carry her cooking pot and bundle for her, and heard Esther’s serene and cheerful, “I’m quite all right, dear, but thank you for asking.” And it occurred to him as he looked at the older woman’s gaunt face and frail body that both she and her husband, intrepid though they might be, weren’t superhuman. They had to be running low on reserves of strength.

  “Do you know if there’s someplace we can take shelter for the night?” he asked Hal. “Another nice big tree, maybe?”

  “Oh, we can do better than that,” Esther said, beaming at her husband. “Can’t we, Hal? There’s the hunter’s hut, remember?” She transferred the smile to Cory. “It’s on this side of the gorge, very near the crossing. It’s quite tiny, but it does have walls-bamboo, of course-and a roof, of sorts.”

  “It did,” Hal corrected her gently, with a dubious wag of his head. “We can’t be sure it’s still intact.”

  “Well, then, we’ll just have to put our trust in the Lord,” Esther said, and Cory saw her throw Sam a broad wink, and Sam smile wryly back at her. “After he sent these lovely people to bring us home I don’t think he’s going to let us down now, do you? After you, my love-lead on!”

  Still wagging his head, Hal shouldered the larger cooking-pot bundle his wife handed him and set off through the dripping undergrowth, following a trail that remained invisible, at least to Cory. Esther fell in behind him, looking much like a terrier dogging the heels of a Great Dane. After a quick, almost involuntary-seeming glance at Cory, Sam followed her.

  Tony moved up beside Cory and paused to rearrange the bags and cases that festooned the upper half of his body. “What is this, ‘After you, Alfonse’?” he said with a nod toward the others, who were already disappearing in the heavy undergrowth.

  Cory gave a dry laugh without much humor in it. “Something like that. Can I give you a hand with some of that stuff?”

  “Naw, that’s okay, I got it.” He took off the bandana that covered his head and mopped at his face and neck.

  Cory gave an exaggerated start. “Whoa-I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with hair before.” Tony’s normally shiny head was now sporting a furring of dark hair. “Looking a bit scruffy, there, buddy.”

  “Like you’ve got room to talk,” Tony scoffed, baring his teeth in a wide grin and pointedly rubbing the sparse black hairs adorning his chin and upper lip. “That’s the thing about us Injuns-no whiskers to worry about.”

  “Injun, hah,” Cory said as he ran a hand over the half inch or so of beard on his own face. “What are you, maybe a quarter? You just like an excuse because you can’t grow a beard.”

  “Excuse! What do I need an excuse for? Beards are a pain, man. Couple more days and you’re gonna start looking like the reverend, up there. Not me.”

  “Yeah,” Cory said ruefully, “I am starting to feel a little like Robinson Crusoe. Probably don’t smell too good, either.”

  Tony snorted. “Me, either.” But his eyes followed Sam as she ducked in and out of the banana trees up ahead. He lowered his voice and remarked, “Seems like some of us are holding up better than others.”

  Cory grunted a reply, not wanting to notice the way Sam’s hair curled dark and damp on the back of her neck, or how her wet T-shirt clung to the smooth, fluid muscles of her back. Not wanting to acknowledge the gnawing ache in his groin whenever he looked at her, or the bigger, less well-defined ache higher up, in the vicinity of his heart.

  “Something goin’ on between the two of you?” Tony asked in the same muttered undertone.

  Cory lifted a shoulder. “Don’t know what you mean. I already told you-”

  “Hey, I’m not deaf and blind, man.”

  “Look, I told you, that was in the past.” Cory paused, exhaled and muttered, “And I’m beginning to realize she’s not the same person I knew then.”

  Tony threw him a fierce bright glance. “Who the hell is? Look, man, you two have something beautiful going-sparks, some kind of connection. Don’t tell me you don’t-even an emotional doofus like me can see it. So, maybe you blew it once. You got a second chance now. Don’t blow this again, man.”

  “What are you, Dr. Phil all of a sudden? Since when are you such a big fan of monogamous happy-ever-after relationships? Anyway,” Cory said, stiffening himself against hope and a strange wild despair, “that’s not my call to make. She’s made her choices.”

  “Oh, right,” said Tony, “so it’s all her fault.” Cory threw him a dirty look and got one in return. “When I was a kid? Any time any of us kids got in an argument or a fight-and with eleven of us there were a lot of fights-Mama used to say it takes two to make a quarrel, and she’d take us by the scruff of the neck and she’d march us into a corner and make us sit there together until we’d ‘kissed and made up,’ was the way she put it.” He paused, and Cory felt the stab of his fierce golden eyes, all the sharper, maybe, for being those of his closest friend. When Tony went on, though, it was in a gentler tone. “All I’m sayin’, man, is you two need to get in a quiet place and talk this out.”

  Cory made a scoffing noise, but his heart wasn’t in it. He hoped he was still mature enough to acknowledge when someone was rig
ht.

  After a moment Tony shrugged and said, “Okay, so she did something that knocked you for a loop. Now maybe you know how she feels.”

  Again Cory snapped him an angry look, but this time the one Tony returned was somber, maybe even a little sad. “Just think about it, man,” he said softly, then quickened his step and moved on ahead of him.

  Left alone with his thoughts, Cory was in wretched company. Think about it? What is there to think about? The woman I love, the woman I wanted to marry and have children with, is a field agent-an undercover operative-a spy-for the CIA! At least he was pretty sure it would be the CIA. Or some agency even more secret he’d never heard of. How was he supposed to deal with that?

  “Now you know how she feels…”

  Wait a minute, he protested silently, this is different. It’s different. And anyway, I’ve told her everything. Everything I remember…

  Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled, gradually coming closer. Thunder rumbled now, too, inside his head…Thumping, pounding, banging, angry and insistent, growing louder…coming closer.

  He slammed shut the doors of memory, shuttered the windows and braced himself against them, breathing hard and shaking, his skin grown clammy and cold.

  Chapter 11

  There was still some daylight left when they came to the hunter’s hut, little more than a bamboo cave in a mountain of jungle greenery. While Esther and Sam banged on the bamboo walls with sticks to chase away any rats and mice already in residence, not to mention snakes that might have come to dine on them, Cory and Tony helped Hal cut banana leaves to fortify the roof, using the knife from Esther’s bundle. They managed to get settled in before the rain came again.