Bobby closed his eyes. “Oh my God. I had no idea.”
Susan didn’t relent. “If Christina told you something—she told you the truth. That lady was so in love with you that she glowed every time you walked into a room. More than you deserved. You’re a damn fool.”
62
The heat of Bobby’s anger was burning through him. The more he thought about what had happened, the more livid he became. He dialed the phone number for CIA Headquarters in Langley. The operator’s voice that answered was as bland as if she worked at a clothing store. “Central Intelligence Agency, how may I help you?”
“Connect me to the director’s office, please.”
There was a minute’s delay and then a different voice said, “How may I help you?”
“Is this the director’s office?”
“This is the office in charge of general inquiries. How can I help you?”
“I’m not interested in general inquiries. My name is Doctor Robert James Austin and I need to be put through to the director’s office.”
“Did you say, Robert James Austin?”
“Yes.”
“The Robert James Austin?”
“Yes.”
“Hold on, please.”
After a brief pause, another voice said, “Director Varneys’ office. How may I help you?”
“This is Robert Austin. I need to make an appointment to see the director right away.”
“Hold on please.” Another delay. The voice returned. “I’m sorry—-your name was?”
“Austin. Doctor Robert James Austin.”
“Thank you, sir. Hold on please.” Another several minutes went by and then a different voice said, “The director will see you, Doctor. When would you like to meet with him?”
“Tomorrow.”
“The director suggested that we make transportation arrangements for you, for security reasons.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll make my own arrangements. Is two o’clock okay?” After several more minutes, the voice came back on the line.
“The director is busy at two but will see you at three. He insists that we take care of your travel arrangements.”
“I don’t care what the director insists on. I’ll be there at 3 PM. Thank you.” Bobby hung up the phone.
The next day, when Bobby walked into CIA headquarters at 2:45, he was escorted to the reception area of the director’s office. Varneys’ assistants asked him for his autograph, which he declined to give them. At precisely, 3 PM, he was shown into Varneys’ office, which was so large that, unlike Varneys’ previous office at the OSSIS, this one made the man look small. Varneys was seated behind his mammoth desk and stood when Bobby walked in.
“Well, well. Robert Austin. It’s been a long time. I was twenty years younger and much better looking the last time you saw me,” Varneys said as he smiled and stretched out his hand to Bobby.
Bobby’s body was stiff and tense, his face pale and deadpan, but his eyes were raging. He let the director’s hand languish in the air. He waited for the assistant to close the door and then, his voice hoarse with anger, said. “I want you out of my life forever, Varneys. What do I have to do to make that clear enough for you? What you did to me with Christina Moore was unconscionable. It was the cruelest thing that ever happened to me.”
Varneys smiled. “Oh, I don’t think that’s true at all. As I recall, there was a small incident with a newborn in a garbage bag.”
Bobby glared at Varneys with an intensity the likes of which Varneys hadn’t seen since his last confrontation with Bobby two decades earlier. “I see you’ve done pretty damn well for yourself off my back,” said Bobby as he looked around the palatial office. “I read the transcripts on your Senate confirmation hearings. Without me, you’d still be checking IQ tests at the OSSIS.”
Varneys’ eyes narrowed and a vein on his right temple bulged as he leaned forward. “So what of it. You did pretty damn well off of me. If it weren’t for me, you’d never have cured any of those diseases, gotten those Nobels or raised all that money for charity. At best, you’d be some geek working in the back room of a software company.”
“Drop dead,” Bobby snarled back. “You’ve re-written history so much for the Senate that you’ve forgotten what really happened. You drove me out and left me for dead. Remember that?”
Varneys took a moment to regain his composure. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “You’re right Robert. I did. But when I cut you off from the Institute, I expected you to come back and do it my way. I was surprised when you didn’t. You achieved what you said you would. I was wrong. I’ve been proud of you for a long time.”
“You knew how vulnerable I was. I had no one. You took everyone away from me.”
Varneys shook his head. “Robert—did you just come here to vent and tell me what an asshole I am? If so, then you’ve already done that and this meeting’s over. But if you calm down, we can have a real discussion. I’m trying to understand what my latest crime is.”
Bobby’s face was flushed and his voice had grown strained. “You’re that twisted! I can’t believe it. You planted a woman to seduce me so she could get pregnant and you think that’s okay. All in the course of a day’s work for Orin Varneys, the puppet master.”
Varneys came out from behind his desk and sat down at one of the guest chairs, and motioned Bobby to do likewise. He didn’t begin to speak until Bobby had taken a seat. “You may think that —but it’s not true. All I did was find the perfect woman for you, a woman who was worthy of you. Obviously, I chose right. Now I’m to blame because you fell in love with her—and she fell in love with you. I’m to blame for bringing two people together who both needed someone.”
“Who asked you to?” Bobby asked.
“Get real, Robert. You had nothing. All you did was screw strippers, hookers and coked-up bimbos.”
“And a relationship based on a lie is better? She made a deal with you.”
Varneys eyes widened. “A deal?”
“A deal to get pregnant.”
Varneys shook his head. “Wrong again. All she agreed to do was to allow us to put her in a situation where you two might meet— once. Just once. Nothing more. And to get her to do even that—we had to reduce her to tears by making her feel selfish if she didn’t. If you remember—she didn’t come up to you at that store in St. Thomas—you approached her—you came on to her. She didn’t chase you. You chased after her. She wasn’t even calling you back. You pursued her night and day. Have you forgotten all of that? Some deal she made with us!”
Bobby scowled. “You knew what you were doing.”
“You’re damn right I did. You have a gift. Maybe—just maybe—it can be passed to another generation. But you’ve been oblivious to that. You’re as pig-headed and stubborn as you were when I first met you twenty years ago. When the WHO and NHO asked you for sperm samples for artificial insemination—you refused—didn’t you?”
“I don’t believe in that,” Bobby replied.
“Exactly. So I decided you needed a match-maker. You sure as hell weren’t going to meet a girl like Christina on your own. And yes, on the off chance that you could ever pull your head out of your self-righteous ass long enough to have a kid—it was important to have a woman as intellectually potent as possible. Christina has a 160 IQ.”
Bobby was silent. He sat there looking down at the floor. Varneys continued to pummel him. “So now you’ve succeeded in driving away a fantastic woman who was crazy enough to fall in love with you and put up with your bullshit. You know, Robert—you need to stop thinking you’re the only good person in the world.”
Bobby’s eyes had lost their angry intensity. Shaking his head from side to side, he finally said softly, “The only two people who talk to me this way are Susan and you.” He t
hen muttered to himself, “Mom and Dad—what an unholy combination.”
Varneys looked exhausted. Highly charged emotional interchanges were not his thing. Walking slowly to his wall of built-in cabinets, he slapped the door on one of them and it opened to reveal a bar. He poured himself a large Scotch. Bobby saw what he was doing and said, “Is that Scotch?”
“Yes—would you like one?” asked Varneys.
“Please.”
Varneys poured Bobby a tall one and then added more to his. The two of them sat down on the guest chairs and sipped their amber elixir slowly, neither of them speaking. After awhile, Varneys said, “You know, it’s ironic. I give you advice and criticism. But I’ve been an unsuccessful father. I have two kids and they both hate me.”
Bobby nodded knowingly, like he could see why that would be the case. “How old are they?”
“My son is thirty-three. He’s a musician with a drug problem. Left home at seventeen and hasn’t spoken to me in twelve years. My daughter’s thirty-seven. She’s a lawyer with a big L.A. firm. I get a Christmas card and a birthday card. That’s it.”
“You know, you’re a pretty controlling guy. That can be hard to take.”
Varneys took another sip of his drink. The two of them were silent, sitting there—each lost in his own thoughts.
Finally, Varneys seemed to snap out of it and said, “So here’s where we are. You’ve broken her heart. You’ve thrown away the love of your life. We don’t even know where she’s run off to. And there are people out there who want to kill you. So now what are you going to do?”
63
When Susan tried to reach Christina on her cell phone, the automated message indicated that the number had been disconnected. Susan drove to Christina’s apartment in Marblehead, but she wasn’t there. The landlord said that she had seen Christina load suitcases into her car and drive off that past weekend.
Susan scrolled down the directory on her phone and clicked on another number. When her call was answered, she said, “It’s Susan Corwin. I’m too angry right now to tell you what I think of you, so I’ll just tell you what I need you to do. And it’s the least you can do after the train wreck you caused.” Susan listened to the voice on the other end of the line. Cutting the person off abruptly, she continued, “I’m not interested in talking about it. Just find Christina Moore for me. Her cell’s disconnected and she’s left her apartment. But I’m sure you have your ways.”
Perrone replied, “Don’t hang up. I know how upset you are and Varneys told me about his meeting with Austin, but I thought I was doing something really good. Everybody was supposed to win on this. When I discovered Moore, I knew she would be perfect for Austin. And from her records, I thought she deserved someone special after all she’d been through. I was doing a solid for them and at the same time, satisfying Varneys. And if they had a kid, maybe it would be a genius —so then the world gets Austin #2. I’ve done a lot of shit in this job—but this was supposed to be something I could be proud of. It was never supposed to backfire like this.”
“That’s your take on it, Perrone, and in the twisted world you live in, maybe that makes sense to you. But right now, it’s not important. Just find her for me.”
Perrone and his crew took four days to find Christina since she wasn’t using any credit cards that could be traced and she didn’t have a cell phone registered to her name that could pinpoint her location. What gave the clue to where she was, were cash withdrawals on her debit card. It took only one phone call for Perrone to get her bank to alter the program on her accounts so that no more than one withdrawal of only $20 could be made from any particular ATM. He figured this would ensure that she would need to make multiple withdrawals from a succession of ATMs, thereby leaving a geographically traceable trail. That led them to Ogunquit, a small coastal town in Maine, halfway between Portsmouth and Kennebunkport. Perrone dispatched four agents to scour the seaside village and find out where she was staying. They located her at a motel called “Peg Leg.”
Susan made the drive to Ogunquit in under two hours, arriving at nine in the evening. After scoping out Peg Leg, she checked into a roadside motel about a quarter mile away. By eight the next morning, Susan was in her car parked across the street from Peg Leg, sipping coffee and eating donuts. She waited and watched as she listened to an oldies radio station. Finally, just after 11 AM, she saw Christina exit a room on the second floor and walk down the stairs to her car. She followed Christina at a distance, along Route 1, an old road that hugged the dramatic coastline, until she pulled off and entered the parking lot for the Ogunquit Museum of Art. Susan waited for Christina to go into the museum, and followed a few minutes later.
Susan stood back and observed Christina in one of the galleries. She looked so different. The confident vivacious beauty who radiated energy and spirit wasn’t there anymore. In her place, was a pale young woman whose hair was pulled back severely and pinned down in as unbecoming a manner as possible. She looked gaunt and tired and wore no makeup. Formless clothes hung loosely on her thin frame and successfully obscured her figure. As Christina sat on a gallery bench staring vacantly at a painting on the wall, Susan came up behind her. “I never really got Rothko. I can look at his work, but I feel nothing coming back to me.”
Christina didn’t turn around. She kept staring at the painting. “He was a very troubled artist. Even after becoming famous, he killed himself.”
Susan sat down next to Christina and put her hand on top of hers. “Hello, sweetie. I tried to call you. I had to see you.”
Christina didn’t say anything or even look at Susan. She didn’t ask how Susan had found her. She bowed her head. Finally, she turned toward Susan and her green eyes were awash in tears. “I’m so ashamed. I feel so terrible. I wish I was dead.” As she burst into sobs that shook her entire body, Susan pulled her close, gently cradling her head against the crook of her neck and patting her.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of, honey. You’re a good person. And you’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing at all.” Susan held her and stroked her head and then, after a few minutes said, “Let’s get some air. I think there’s a beautiful view of the water from the back of this place.”
They climbed out over the glacial boulders that protected the museum from the pounding surf and sat down on one of the huge rocks facing the sea.
Her voice still shaky, Christina said, “I would never do what Bobby thinks I did.”
Susan put her arm around Christina’s shoulders. “Honey, there’s a lot that you don’t know about Bobby and a lot that he doesn’t know about you. Those things make a real difference. When I spoke to Bobby, I told him about your past because he needed to know that.”
Christina broke the embrace and sat up straight. “What did he say?”
“He was shocked. He felt horrible. But you also need to know things about Bobby so you can understand him better, and understand his reactions. You remember you told me that he was going to show you the secret storage trunk he had in his apartment? Did you ever get to see it?”
“No.”
“Unfortunately it got destroyed like everything else when that blast went off. But I spent the last few days doing research and I printed-out a bunch of stuff that was in that trunk. I want you to look at it now.” Susan handed Christina a thick packet.
Christina frowned as she felt the weight of the envelope. “Do I have to look at all this stuff now?”
“It’s important. Take your time and read it.”
A half hour later, Christina finished reading and said, “This is horrible, but what’s it got to do with what we’re talking about?”
“The baby in the garbage bag was Bobby,” Susan said softly.
Christina’s face paled.
“And no one would adopt him because everyone thought there’d be something wrong with him. So eventually, he wa
s put into foster care. Then from age four, he was in a special boarding school— ostracized from society at large, a misanthrope, a freak. His parents died at eleven, then Joe Manzini died when he was nineteen. Then Varneys threw him out of the Institute because Bobby wanted to devote himself to medical research. Again, he was all alone. He denied himself everything over the years, working like a slave. Do you get the picture?”
Christina stared at Susan, as Susan continued, “You were his entire world. His connection with life and some semblance of normalcy and happiness was you. When he thought that none of that was real because you were playing a role, it devastated him. That’s why he acted as badly as he did. Because that’s how much you mean to him.”
Christina looked down at the frothing sea. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He’s told no one. He didn’t even tell me. I found out by accident. The fact that he said he was going to tell you—-that says an incredible amount right there. But you’re no better. Why didn’t you tell him about yourself?”
“I was going to. But –I know this sounds terrible. I was ashamed. After all these years, I still was ashamed.”
Susan’s head wagged disapprovingly. “Just like Bobby. As crazy as that is for both of you—there you have it.”
Both women were silent and in their own thoughts.
Then Susan said, “Bobby went to see Varneys.”
Christina’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe he’d do that. He hates him so much.”
“That shows you, honey. The fact that after all these years, he would go see Varneys to confront him shows you how much you mean to him. Varneys will confirm what you told Bobby—right?”
Christina nodded, her voice now soft. “Unless he lies. But what difference does it make? It’s all ruined. It will never be the same again.”
Miracle Man Page 27
