The 4 Phase Man

by Richard Steinberg

  For the moment, at least, all that existed was the problem.

  Twenty-four hours on the French freighter had left them in Norfolk Harbor, then on a hastily chartered jet (through a well-camouflaged Corsican front company) that touched down at a discreet airstrip outside of Toulon—after filing four false flight plans and touching down five times as diversions. In the almost forty-eight hours of packed-together, high-tension travel, the improvised party had barely spoken to each other, so involved were they in their own problems.

  Franco had been on the phone or radio constantly. Issuing orders, seeking advice, making arrangements, he was a flurry of nonstop activity until touchdown. In consultation with Xenos during the man’s rare moments of consciousness and lucidity.

  Valerie slept.

  She’d neither intended to have nor had any control over it. After so many days, nights, hours of bone-chilling tension, her body had just shut down like a car out of gas. It blessedly denied her worries about her children—whom she had already begun to mourn—as well as the dozens of other things that tormented her every waking.

  Understanding, somehow, that she was now safe and could be allowed this momentary respite.

  However guilty it might make her feel each time she woke up.

  Sarah Goldman and her son had both been enervated by the experience. Frightened but exhilarated by their glimpse into Xenos’s world. As she had told her son, “Know someone before you judge them.” And their knowledge was expanding daily. Bradley sat and studied his wounded uncle—whom he’d only heard alluded to in the past. Fascinated by the life that the man seemed to imply and angered by being cheated out of someone who might’ve replaced his long-absent father.

  But for Avidol—as he sat at his son’s side throughout the fevered chills, the pained moans, and the seemingly uncontrollable muscle spasms—the journey had been one of completion rather than flight.

  And although he couldn’t have known it, it was for Xenos as well.

  Seventeen years before—after a decade of bitter arguments and running resentments—the men had severed all ties to each other. The older declaring the younger dead because of his betrayals of the precepts the old man held so dearly.

  The younger denying existence to the older out of self-delusion and a naive belief that his starting-out life was meant to be lived alone and would be made stronger for it.

  So Avidol remained by his stricken future throughout the harrowing journey. Wiping his boy’s face with cool, damp cloths. Holding him still enough for the bandages to be changed. Brushing hairs out of his face or readjusting a blanket during those few peaceful moments.

  Remembering the pain of the past, even as he consigned it to the past.

  All the while praying for his, for their, soul.

  But all of this was secondary to Xenos at this moment. Bare flashes of memory or experience that mattered not at all in the face of the problem at hand. Instead, he concentrated on that problem, examining its contours, shapes, complications. Constantly turning it over and around and inside out to examine it as closely as a biologist his microbe. So that he might fathom its innermost secrets and possibilities.

  To stay ahead of Canvas.

  What would he do now? How would he continue the search? Would he continue? What were his resources, goals—immediate and long-term? Had he told the truth? Was Alvarez alone the object, or had it now become a scorched-earth operation to leave no witnesses to whatever was being planned?

  The questions were, by themselves, impossible to solve. All except one.

  Canvas would never stop.

  So contingencies must be made.

  As soon as he’d regained consciousness Xenos had reviewed their escape with Franco. It had been accomplished with typical Corsican thoroughness and skill. Unlikely to be followed or unraveled much beyond Norfolk. And they were now safely ensconced in either the clinic (Xenos and his family) or a Brotherhood safe haven (Valerie).

  Guards—trained, experienced men—had a low-key but deadly presence in both locales with orders to “protect our sheep no matter what.” The harbor, airport, airstrips, boat landings, and the narrow roads leading in and out of the smuggler’s paradise were being closely watched for strangers. Descriptions of Canvas and those of his men that Valerie could recall had been given to the local police along with a generous bounty.

  By all usual standards, the fugitives were as safe as they could possibly be.

  But Canvas was not usual, as Xenos well knew.

  So the wounded man had already begun making his plans to move them all again, this time to Corsica itself. To a friendly village in the interior where discovery was as impossible as life to a mannequin. A place where negotiations could be started to turn the whole thing off, once and for all.

  Until then, Xenos would never stop thinking, planning, predicting.

  Because Canvas wouldn’t.

  “Jerry?”

  The tiny, timid voice called him back from his black thoughts. And the small face at the foot of his bed reminded him of a world beyond red death and black destruction.

  So long as he didn’t look at the artificial arm.

  “]e entendre la petit souris?”

  The little girl crouched down, her eyes barely showing above the big man’s feet. “Cri. Cri. Cri,” she giggled. “There is a mouse here! Mon Dieu!” Gabi jumped up, laughing.

  “Oh,” Xenos gasped with a forced smile. “It’s the biggest mouse I’ve ever seen.” Then, after the blank look on her face, “Le gran souris!”

  The girl exploded in laughter and hurried around the bed. “Jerry! Jerry!” She stopped when she saw the edge of the cast under the blanket. But this girl had been born into worse and it affected her for only a moment. “Que apprit?” Her voice was matter-of-fact, calm.

  “I fell down.”

  “J’en suis faché.”

  Painfully—although he showed none of it—Xenos reached out and stroked the smiling face. “How are your English lessons going?”

  “Mervill—”

  “Dans anglais, si vous plaisez, mademoiselle.”

  “Jerry…”

  He frowned in an exaggerated way. “J’insiste.”

  Gabi took a deep breath—looked at the man she’d idolized since she’d first seen him come over a hill into her burning village and he’d pulled her from the rubble of her dead family’s house, like an angel from God—then slowly, laboriously, began.

  “Mois English is very good, merci.”

  “Thank you,” he corrected.

  “Thank you.”

  “And how is your brother?”

  “Mon frère, my brother is very well. Thank you.” She stuck out her tongue as she emphasized the last words.

  Jerry stuck his out back at her. “Superbe, Gabi!”

  For a moment the two wounded individuals were silent, each lost in their own thoughts of pain and recovery; savagery and tenderness.

  “Jerry?”

  “Oui?”

  The little girl frowned disapprovingly as she crossed her prosthetic arm over her real one. “Dans anglais, si vous plaisez, monsieur.!” she said in a mimicked grown-up tone.

  “Okay,” Xenos chuckled. “Yes? he said seriously.”

  Gabi seemed to look deep within him at that moment. “Why is the world so, eh, démenté?”

  “Crazy? he said after a moment of stunned silence.”

  “Oui, eh, yes. Crazy.” She seemed to like the word.“Why?”

  “I just don’t know, sweetie. I just don t…”

  “Have you forgotten everything I’ve taught you? Avidol asked from the other side of the bed.”

  Xenos looked over at him, locking eyes with the man he thought might never speak to him again. He felt a tug at his sleeve, then turned back to the puzzled little girl. “Mon père, Gabi.”

  “Ah!” she said with a mixture of surprise and amusement as she studied the man. She leaned over and quickly kissed Xenos on the cheek. “Au revoir.” She curtsied toward the older
man. “Excusez-moi, monsieur.”

  “Au revoir, ma minet.” Avidol smiled after her as she skipped away. “I didn’t expect this place,” he said as he watched her go.

  “I didn’t expect it either.”

  Avidol sat down next to the bed. “So?”

  Xenos winced as he turned toward the old man. “The Russians figured that the only way to win a war of attrition in Afghanistan was to eliminate future generations of enemies. So they dropped bombs disguised as dolls or toys for the children to find. Those that survived ended up like Gabi.”

  “So?”

  “The world still largely refuses to concede what happened there over ten years. The Taliban militia that took over hates the mountain people almost as much as the Russians did. So what little aid there is barely gets through to where it’s needed.”

  Avidol stared into his son’s eyes with fire and accusation. “So?”

  “I know these people,” Xenos said after a long silence. “Tried to help them then. Do what I can now.”

  Avidol breathed in the pure Mediterranean air. “Why is the world so crazy?” There was accusation in his voice.

  Jerry closed his eyes. “Beats the Hell out of me.”

  “Is the truth so foreign to you now?” Avidol’s gaze was changing from accusing to sheer astonishment. “Is there so little of my son left in you?”

  Xenos met that look, that indictment, with an equally steely glare of his own. “What do you want from me?”

  “Only the truth.”

  Xenos laughed bitterly. “Yeah. But whose truth?” Avidol shrugged. “God’s.”

  A deep sigh from the man in the bed. “God’s. God’s truth.” He seemed to drift with the thought. He shook his head. “For that, you’ll have to ask someone else. I only have my own.”

  His father seemed shocked. “You have completely forgotten your God?” He said the words as if he couldn’t quite make himself believe it. Although he’d expressed the same thought aloud many times about his “lost son.”

  “Oh, Papa. What’s the point? You are who you are and I’m something else entirely. Can’t we just leave it at that? Put it aside for a few days, at least, and enjoy being together again?”

  “No.” Avidol’s voice was rock-solid. “You were lost to me, I thought forever, because we ‘put it aside before. Not again.’”

  He reached out, turning his depressed son’s face back toward his. The physical contact sent an electric tremble through both men.

  “Gerald,” Avidol began in a soft voice, choked in emotion, “you are my son and I will always love you. We may, I may,” he said in a trembling voice, “not always be able to see that. But it remains nonetheless. A living bond between us.”

  Xenos looked up at him, anger and accusation flying from his eyes now. “You said I’d died! You said Kaddish, tore your clothes, and consigned me to eternity away from you! Away from my family! That’s not love!”

  Avidol shrugged. “A man sits on a stoop and watches his child playing catch. He misses a ball and it rolls into the street. The child runs after it as a truck which has lost its brakes rounds the corner.” He paused. “The man cannot sit by and allow his son to die.”

  He stood, looking out the window at the breathtaking Mediterranean view.

  “You were never an easy boy.” He laughed quietly. “From early on you sought your own way in the world. There was little I could do to stop you from your head-strongness.” He turned back to Xenos. “Do you remember the lake?”

  Xenos nodded. “Of course.”

  Avidol nodded. “So little a boy,” so large a lake, he whispered as he sat back down. “I told you that you couldn’t swim beyond the restraining rope. We argued, we fought that entire summer. Then, one day, you were gone.When we pulled you from the water you were half drowned, exhausted, using your last strength to fight me in order to finish that swim. It was like you were a little stranger, fighting your father like that. Amazing.”

  “I would’ve made it,” the man in the bed said softly.

  Avidol smiled. “Still?” He sighed. “Perhaps. But at what cost? As is, you came down with double pneumonia which was made all the worse by your complete exhaustion. The doctors all thought you would die.”

  “I refused to.”

  Avidol studied his son. “That’s right. That is exactly what you said to us. You were eleven years old and lecturing your father and the doctors about how you ‘control what happens to me. Not some god or force I can’t see or prove. I determine my own fate.’ An amazing sight.”

  The old man shook his head sadly. “When the angel of death came for you the next night, we called for the rabbi and he told us what to do. We must give you another name, he said. To fool the angel of death. So that night, for that night, you became—in the language of your ancestors—Xenos Filotimo.” Another laugh, this one more bitter than the last. “My little stranger with the iron self-respect and sense of honor.”

  Xenos busied himself sipping from his ice water. Anything but look into those sad eyes. “What does this have to do with—”

  “I knew then that I could never stop you with an argument. Not my little Xenos. Not my headstrong little boy with such a dangerous self-confidence. Then you became a man. And mere words seemed to become meaningless.”

  After a deep breath, Xenos turned to face his father. “I don’t recall your ever running out of them.”

  “Perhaps not,” Avidol said sadly. “But then you turned your back on me, on our people, on your God.”

  “I never…”

  Avidol held up a restraining hand. “We will not discuss what we have already exhausted. I didn’t understand your arguments then, I won’t now. I only knew, know, that if I allowed you to go your own way—to do these sinful things in the name of national glory—then I would be as guilty as you in the eyes of God.”

  “The eyes of God,” Xenos repeated wistfully. “I remember that phrase well enough.”

  “I know you do.” Avidol shrugged. “My words could not stop you, I could only pray that my actions would. So you became as dead to me.”

  “It didn’t work,” Xenos mumbled regretfully.

  Avidol suddenly smiled. “Didn’t it? Then why did you come back to me?”

  Xenos quickly recovered his anger. “You hypocritical sonofabitch! How many times did I come to you? How many times did I beg you to talk to me? To let me explain! Damn you and damn your God! You both left me alone and naked in a world that was trying to devour me! You never even once tried to see me through that bullshit piousness of yours!”

  The old man was strangely calm, almost smiling. “And in those times, all those terrible times, were you ready to start again? To see your life for the tragedy that it had become and start anew?”

  “Serving my country was no—”

  “Tragedy?” Of course not, Avidol said reasonably. “But did you serve it? Or did you just follow its orders? Further politics and personal agendas, or further ideals and principles? Serve your country or serve some men?”

  Xenos stiffened with the slap of truth. “I’ll never make you understand.”

  Avidol nodded. “Especially if you do not understand yourself.” His voice dropped low and seductive. “But you do understand now, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “You weren’t ready in the past to admit that the grand design of patriotism and national honor you were force-fed was pure tref. Crap. A thing unwholesome and corrupt.”

  “No,” Xenos finally said so softly that it might’ve been a thought.

  “No.” The old man looked triumphant. “Not until God sends faces to haunt you in your sleep. To drive you away from those who would mislead and betray you.”

  He smiled openly now. “To bring you back to his will. To me.” He leaned back with a self-satisfied grin on his ancient face.

  Laughter exploded from the tightened lips of the man in the bed. “This is God’s will? His plan? All of this pain and death and torment and anguish, God’s divine
insight? Shit! Even you can’t believe that, Papa!”

  “Chuni, my son.” Avidol moved closer to the bed. “Answer just one question. And you needn’t answer it aloud if you don’t want to.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If this is not all part of God’s plan for us—for humanity, for our people, for you and me—then”—he hesitated—“why did you create this place for the children?”

  Avidol leaned back, smiling a private smile that reeked of triumph and the universe being set right; as his son remained silenced, his emotions written across his damaged face.

  “The Talmud tells us, my son, that there is chaos in the world—craziness if you will—because God allows it to be. And this he allows because he has also created men of honor and self-respect, self-sacrifice and righteousness, who will stand up and defend the weak from that chaos. From the powerful, depraved corrupted men who would use them in wicked ways or destroy them entirely.

  “As I said,” he continued after a minute of intense emotional stillness, “I did not expect this place.” He stood, moving very close to his son: his dreams, his immortality regained. He tenderly leaned over, kissing Xenos on the forehead. “But I am overjoyed to see it.”

  Not far away from the clinic, truths of another kind were being brought out in front of a far different audience. It was in a house constructed of rocks and driftwood—even more of loyalty and tradition—that sat on the very edge of the Mediterranean. They had gathered—these men who lived by simple rules of honor, trust, and fidelity—to hear the story. And the listeners were intent that they alone would do the hearing.

  Of course the three-foot-thick rock walls prevented any casual listening from the outside, combined with the electronic “shadow” that Xenos had loaned them to prevent high-tech eavesdropping. But thoroughness—in the Corsi-can way—meant four men on constant armed patrol of the grounds surrounding the small house.

  Inside, the one large room was nearly full.

  In the front were five chairs, facing the rest, for the Council. In front of them sat eleven more chairs, one each for the heads of the eleven Corsican Unions—which formed the Brotherhood throughout Europe—that had been summoned to this tomba.