He meandered slowly down the street, stepping out of the way of lovers huddling together. They walked arm in arm or wrapped around each other in an indiscernible coil.
Mark pulled up the collar on his leather bomber jacket to ward off the wind. Alexandria would get its first frost tonight. That didn’t stop people from getting ice cream. The line at Sam’s spilled out the door and he had to step into the street to get around them. Sam was an old man with a wrinkled brow that spoke to years of hard work. Still, he had a pleasant smile and always a kind word for each customer, a fact that slowed his service as he pressed balls of frozen confection into cones. 'Sugar or cake?' he would ask, his eyes twinkling at the possibilities. He knew the regulars by name. He never failed to ask the high school kids about their classes, the grad students how their theses were coming along.
Mark’s parents had made it a tradition to take him and Susan there on warm Saturday nights. He’d only been inside once since his senior year of high school. Camille had insisted on a sundae. He’d had a simple vanilla cone – the coldest ice cream of his life.
Mark crossed the street, keeping steady his course and ultimate destination. The gun shop to his left had several reminders of its own. His Dad had taken him there as a young boy to buy his first piece. He’d taught Mark how to carefully load and clean the weapon. And then, to fire it at the range in Springfield. It was a Walther PP, compact enough for his small hand, steady enough to do the job. He’d hit a bull’s-eye his first time out.
Mark kept walking, pulling the zipper up under his collar until it met the end of its track. He’d been in every shop and restaurant along this quaint little stretch and, though a certain number of them had turned over, it was the stable places he preferred. He frequented the establishments where he’d gotten to know the maitre d’, the pubs where the bartenders knew he took his beer on tap and his coffee with a double dose of cream.
As Mark neared the bottom of the hill, he saw the low flat waters of the Potomac laid out like a rippling black rug. He crossed over at the base of the street and made his way to the little park snuggled up against the loading dock. The riverboat was embarking on its moonlight cruise. Candles blurred interior windows where couples sat face to face eating shrimp and drinking Virginia wine.
There was only one bench open to the water. Mark took it and sat watching the distant trill of the paddle wheel spin its way across the Potomac toward the flickering lights of the Wilson Bridge.
He leaned back and ran his fingers through his stubby hair, heaving a sigh. Tomorrow was his birthday. The big one. Halfway through his life. And Mark could think of only one thing he wanted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The plane ride from Miami to Washington was long and turbulent. Ana thought back to that interminable night in Santiago. Every day of her kidnapping she had hungered for freedom, yet once she had it, she’d never felt so utterly trapped.
Past is past, her father liked to say. But there were some things, Ana knew, that just couldn't be undone. Things like her mother's lymphoma that had come on shortly after her father's supposed demise.
The burden of shuttling her mother to and from the chemo sessions had fallen on Emi, the full-time mother of three. It had been hard on her, evoked some tough choices. Like the times when one of her children was sick and yet her mother still had to be driven to therapy. Emi had been steadfastly at her mother's side, helped get her back on her feet.
Isabel seemed to improve for a while. Ana and Emi were sure she'd lick this thing. But the scans showed that very little progress had been made, despite the weeks of treatment.
'I'm sorry, girls,' Dr. Krause told them, 'but when the will is weak, there's very little we can do, and your mother has stopped fighting.'
Stopped fighting. And yet she'd fought until the end of her horrific ordeal with those fascist bastards. For the first forty-eight hours they weren't sure if she’d make it, she'd been so weakened by the cancer. Her father had not left the bedside, had not let go of her hand, even though she'd remained unconscious.
Ana had been tempted to catapult him from the room, but she knew it wouldn't have been what her mother wanted. So she’d let him stay until they received word her mother was going to pull through, then had ejected him with her angry words. 'Look at her! Look what you've done!'
The acceptance of guilt was in her father's eyes.
'Costa Negra was one thing – but this – I'll never forgive you for this as long as I live.'
Her sister had been standing in the corner cradling the baby, trying to jostle her to sleep. She stepped forward and added her barbs like blunt stones.
'Ana's right, you know. If it weren’t for you...'
Their father shook his head in sad resignation. 'The two of you will never understand. I had no choice.'
'Oh, you had a choice, father,' Ana said, 'but you took the wrong fork in the road.'
Albert steered his blue government sedan down the quiet Delaware street and pulled into the drive of the large white house. Emalita had warned him not to come here. She and Ana had not forgiven him for his transgressions.
Ana's words stung like darts in the small fragile balloon of hope he had clung to for over four years. It was over. At last, it was over, and now, because he had sacrificed his loyalty to family for that of his country, he was destined to be alone.
Still, he owed them one last try. His daughters were young and bitter for now, but perhaps they would soften in time. For Isa, there was precious little time.
Albert turned his key in the weathered lock of the door. The deadbolt glided easily as he grasped the achingly familiar gold brass knob. Inside the foyer, nothing had changed.
He crossed to the back of the wide curved staircase and passed through the door to his office. He stopped cold at the sight of the brownish stain on the carpet where his chair had stood.
Albert paused a long moment, eyeing his desk and wiping his sweaty palms against the sides of his trousers. The ink blotter had been removed. Another reminder. How many more reminders would be in this house? Ana's words of a few months earlier came back like cymbals clanking against the paneled office walls. 'You're of no use to us here. Why don't you just go back to the grave you made for yourself?' He felt himself losing control. It started with a quivering in his fingertips and worked its way down to his increasingly unsteady knees. He bent low at the foot of his desk and fumbled for the smallest key on his ring. He unlocked the long drawer that sat at the base of the others and withdrew his old service revolver.
Albert steadied the grip in his hand, massaging the smooth underbelly of the barrel with a trembling forefinger. He slipped the finger around the steel trigger, remembering...
The young man had been on his knees, begging for his life, at once cursing and praying to his invisible god in broken Castilian. Albert caught him in the tunnels, drifting like a rat along the muddy floor ninety feet below the grounds of La Zarzuela, the Royals’ summer palace just outside Madrid. Albert knew at once he was Basque, knew at once who had sent him – this slimy rodent for the LPP. He had his orders. Shoot to kill. Take no prisoners, ask no questions. The only outsiders allowed legitimate passage here were the French and he knew every one of their powdery faces.
He was crying now, my God. Tears rushing down his bony cheeks, smearing the black coal of camouflage. He was a boy, his cracking voice still struggling for the resonance of manhood. Albert centered his pistol just between the young man’s eyes, eyes that cried out to him in desperation, in prayer. Albert Kane was God. The giver and taker of life. This one lousy snake for one hundred innocent children. He knew he should do it now. Now, before he lost his nerve. Now, as he already had more than a dozen times. But it was Christmas Eve, 1944.
'Feliz Navidad,' he said, lowering his pistol in the darkness.
The boy, whom Albert would later come to know as Fidel Carnova, master of the LPP, scampered into the darkness, the sound of his racing footfalls blending in with the high-pitched cries of the se
wer rats.
Albert straightened, checked the load and closed the cylinder. Six bullets. All he needed was one. One pellet of gold-tipped steel to end it all. Why were the single shots always the hardest? If he had been man enough, he would have shot that fourteen- year-old son-of-a-bitch when he had the chance. But he’d been a warrior, not an assassin. That had been his soul-absolving excuse. And look where his excuses had gotten him, had gotten Isa, and Ana. Albert straightened, fending off his racing pulse and the bulge of heat at his temples. It had all been too much. Too much pain. It never ended. Isa was dying. The stress of his parting had been the trigger. He had killed the one person he loved more than life itself just as surely as if he’d put a gun to her head. A single bullet. A hit man for the government. And what had been his payback from the DOS? The desolation of a family, the loss of a daughter, maybe two. There had to be a way to stop it now for all of them.
Albert opened his mouth and laid the cold, metal hollow of the pistol’s barrel against his vibrating tongue. He caught the image of an exquisite Spanish girl standing on a lone Georgetown bridge, waves of sleek, dark hair dancing over the water.
He laid his finger on the trigger, steadying the revolver with his other hand. It would be easier if he shut his eyes against the glare of mid-day light blazing in through the curtain that framed the ghostly form –
Wait!
Albert pulled the pistol from his mouth.
The soft shadow of a woman eased its way up the walk to the house. She floated, ethereal.
Isabel.
He uncocked his revolver, and laid it down on the desk. What a selfish bastard he was. Selfish to the end. What if she had found him here? Found him like that?
She was in the front hall now, her high-heeled footsteps approaching.
Her voice called out – fearless, demanding. 'Who's there?' Albert made his way to the threshold and paused, taking her in with his eyes like a dying man gasping for breath. She was his air, his life and for four asphyxiating years he'd gone without oxygen. How he’d longed to see her, draw her in like the fresh scent of rain after a storm.
She looked at him, no indecision in her eyes. 'It's true,' she said, rushing to him and taking him in her arms. She grabbed him fiercely around the neck and clung there, as if by letting go she’d lose him altogether. Water filled his eyes as he took in her acceptance of who he was and had been. Tears ran down her satiny cheeks, blessing his shoulders with their touch. Her touch. Albert held her, his tears mixing with hers, their eventual sobs filling the vacuum of the hall. There was nothing he’d ever wanted more than this moment.
She was without a doubt the bravest person he knew. He pulled back to dab her eyes, those brilliant black, invincible Spanish eyes.
'Yes, Isa, I'm home.'
The captain turned on the No Smoking sign as Ana's plane approached Washington National Airport. Back to DC, back to the grind. Although nothing would ever seem usual again.
She checked the time on the oversized gold watch that hung loosely around her wrist. Tunina, siempre. Daddy's little girl. How could she begin to understand her father's reasons? How could he expect her to? For all the things he was, her father wasn't a cruel man. What part of his twisted explanation was it that made sense? Something noble about democracy? Something about preserving its freedom for all fathers and their families, not just selfishly for his own? It had been for the greater good, a split-second choice of the lesser evil that would have ramifications lasting a lifetime. Her father's lifetime. None of them would ever see him the same way again. That was the price of her father's blind patriotism.
She told this to Neal when he gave her the watch. But she had a hunch he hadn't passed it on. No, this Mark Neal was a confidential man. Someone who could keep a secret. It bothered her at first that he’d known so many of her secrets, had examined her life with such exacting detail before the two of them had ever met. But she’d realized the value of that being she was still alive. And why did it matter to her anyway, if she'd never see him again, if it had been nothing more to him than routine business? It mattered because there seemed to be nothing at all routine about Mark Neal.
There was nothing routine in the way he’d taken her by the elbow to support her as she cried into that bubbling fountain in Santiago. He’d steadied her then and looked into her watery eyes with a knowing that at the same time alarmed her and called her to him.
They'd been walking back to the hotel when they passed the square. The sense of familiarity was there at once. But it wasn't until they approached the small gurgling fountain with the Saint Francis statuette that Ana remembered. Suddenly he was there – laughing, leaning back over the water, picking silly tunes on his elegant Spanish guitar, and she could no longer brush it off. She'd hoped to be able to hold it in until she was in the privacy of her room. But now, being here, seeing this, it was impossible. The emotion erupted like a torrent. It wasn't only Scott. It was everything.
He’d put his arms around her and held her then, because she needed to be held, and no one had to tell him why.
Mark paced the cold, polished floor of the airport lobby, a folded copy of the Post tucked under his arm. This was one foolhardy risk he was taking, and he was not a betting man. He had tried to talk himself out of it, right up until the moment he bought his farecard to the airport. But he had boarded the train anyway.
He was not the kind to live with regret. He’d had enough of that already. But that had not been of his choosing. If he failed to act now, he would look back for the rest of his life wondering what he’d missed. Wondering, if he’d had the courage, if things might have been different. So now here he was with no game plan, with nothing more than a feeling this was the right thing to do and the right place to be. He’d always heeded his gut, even when all rationale argued otherwise. She didn't even know he'd be here. But there was something in the way she'd fallen into his arms in Santiago that told him she'd be glad to see him. There was something in that moment, even though they’d not spoken all the way back to the hotel, as they walked, his arm around her. She had seemed to fit there, pressed up against the warmth of his body. And he had wanted her to stay. Not just for that evening but for the one after, and the one after that.
Ana straightened in her chair as the plane began its fast approach to the runway. It had been uncanny. The way they’d stayed there for hours, staring into the cascading water, neither one speaking, neither one having to. He’d pulled her to him and kept her safe, safe against the midnight air ripping its way across the mountain. She had wanted to crawl into him, become part of him, because she somehow knew that’s where she needed to be.
She’d tried to forget it, explain it away, but the memory wouldn’t budge. It clung to her like warm honey, coating her very existence. It had been with her in Costa Negra, denying her that last taste of Joe she’d so badly wanted. It was here with her now, skewing the flavor of her airline coffee. It would be with her always, damn it, if she didn’t finally do something about it.
The flight attendant retrieved Ana’s paper cup and strapped herself in just as the churning wheels of the plane kissed the tarmac.
Mark stood at the gate watching the metal steps spill from the belly of Ana’s plane. What would he say? How could he explain something that even he didn’t understand? He felt the slow burn at his Adam’s apple as he saw her descend the stairs. Mark had known from the start Ana was a woman with a story to tell. He knew now he was the right man to listen. The funny thing was, she’d already told him everything his heart needed to know.
The End
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Force of Fire (The Kane Legacy) Page 19
