The Clouds Roll Away

by Sibella Giorello

  On the floor, I felt footsteps running past. When I squinted, trying to get my position, the walls spun. The living room was already filled with smoke. And screaming.

  I scrambled for the open front door, falling across the threshold. Cold air stung my burning throat. I stood, but suddenly doubled over. My stomach convulsed with dry heaves, eyes watering. I pressed one hand against my solar plexus, trying to stop the spasms, and looked at the street. Green spots swam everywhere. I blinked.

  Two Raiders.

  I blinked again. They sat on the curb. More blinks revealed they were cuffed, headlights beaming into their faces. Pollard stood over them, holding a shotgun.

  I stumbled down the stairs.

  “Guns,” I gasped.

  “We took the kitchen first.”

  Pollard’s face swirled with colors. I tried to read his expression.

  “One more minute, that’s all I needed. I was coming out the door—”

  He kept his eyes on the Raiders. He said nothing.

  I turned, shielding my face and wiping away the tears.

  chapter thirty-three

  The following morning I sat by the carriage house window with a yellow legal pad and a pot of coffee.

  In the courtyard below, Madame sniffed the garden perimeter, inspecting the dormant foliage and leftover autumn leaves for intruders. Her paws melted the frost on the blue slate, leaving small dark prints until the courtyard looked like a connect-the-dots image.

  I glanced back at the yellow legal pad.

  My head still foggy from last night’s flash-bang grenades, I made my first list simple.

  Across the top of the page, I wrote Christmas Presents.

  I listed my mother, Aunt Charlotte, Wally, and DeMott, since he’d brought gifts for us. I left my sister Helen off the list because she preferred to ignore Christmas. I stared at the list. It didn’t seem possible. What happened to all my friends? My mother’s friends? So many people came to my father’s service, the overflow covered the sidewalk outside. Now I had four people to buy gifts for. Counting Madame, five. No wonder she wanted to return to St. John’s. We built a protective fortress in the aftermath, and it worked all too well. Suddenly I heard DeMott’s words, ringing in my ears that day on the croquet lawn. “I know you. If some purpose isn’t attached, you won’t come.”

  I made a second list. People to Call on Christmas Day. I was eleven names into it when Madame barked.

  I looked down. She stood at the garden wall, tail stiffened. A gray squirrel darted back and forth on the flat brick ledge. It gripped an acorn in its mouth.

  Madame barked again.

  I poured another cup of coffee and started my third list. It was based on my dad’s advice for dealing with worry. Face the worst. Look it in the eye. Write down every worst-case scenario you can think of, then plan your strategy.

  At the top of the page, I wrote What Will Phaup Do Now?

  Toxic memos in my personnel file.

  Formal reprimands.

  Suspension.

  Transfer.

  Under the word transfer, I made a sublist of field offices far away from Richmond, followed by resident agencies, the Bureau holes that didn’t even qualify as field offices, and when Madame barked again, sounding furious, I looked outside.

  The squirrel jumped from the wall to the bare maple, still clutching the acorn.

  Bismarck, North Dakota.

  Selma, Alabama.

  Provo, Utah.

  The next page began with How to Survive.

  But nothing came to mind.

  I looked out the window again. The squirrel realized Madame was out of reach. Standing on the branch, it removed the acorn from its mouth and nickered at the dog.

  Madame barked and barked and barked, losing her cool.

  The French door opened, my mother called her into the kitchen. Madame threw one last bark, letting the squirrel know the war wasn’t over.

  When the door closed, the squirrel put the acorn back in its mouth and dashed back across the garden wall.

  After autumn flamed red, orange, and yellow, one of the most beautiful sights in Virginia was the clear winter sky. An endless dome, it began the morning with a faint color, deepening throughout the day until by evening the luscious lapis ceiling brought thoughts of heaven.

  On Thursday morning, after the scouring Atlantic wind pushed the clouds west, I drove north to Hanover County under that winter sky, arriving at the town of Beaverdam with an icy halo still on my windshield. The 1840s train depot looked like an heirloom photograph. I followed back roads to a farmhouse that had witnessed two detonations of that train depot, both by Yankees, including one by General Custer. The air around the farmhouse was filled with incendiary smoke and the percussive boom of a rifle.

  I came around the side of the house calling, “Hold fire!”

  But the man with the rifle couldn’t hear me. He wore headset ear protection and pointed the gun downfield, toward a tin target shaped like a deer. I stuck my fingers in my ears. He fired. When the smoke cleared, the deer was down.

  “Hold fire!” I yelled, coming closer.

  Tolliver Lambert pointed the rifle at the ground, turned, and squirted tobacco juice into the tall grass.

  My father had other good advice besides worst-case scenario lists. He believed a woman should have certain skills. She should be able to drive in reverse with the same degree of skill that she drove forward. She should know how to sew on a button. Cook a steak, change a flat. Shoot a gun.

  The day after I turned thirteen, my dad drove me to Beaverdam for firearms lessons with Tolliver Lambert. Known as Tolly, he belonged to a long line of Lambert gunsmiths that stretched back to the Revolutionary War. One of those Lamberts got off a round at Custer when he blew up the train depot. A family hero.

  “It’s good to see you, Tolly.” I meant it. His was one of the names that came up on my list this morning.

  “Been awhile.” He lifted the rifle. “Look what I got. Winchester Yellow Boy.”

  Polished brass gleamed along the firing mechanism, so well tended it looked like gold.

  “Very nice,” I said.

  “And rare as good sense coming from a politician.” He squirted another stream of tobacco juice and launched into lesson mode, telling me how the Winchester gun company ran out of iron after the Civil War. For several years they used brass instead.

  “You want a shot?” He looked at me through his pale eyelashes.

  “Yes, badly. But right now I need your help.” I held up a clear plastic baggie with the blank cartridge case and bullet. “What is this?”

  Tolly’s white lashes fluttered. Cradling the uncocked gun in the crook of his arm, he took the baggie in his gun oil–stained fingers. He left fingerprints on the clear plastic.

  “Unmarked,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He walked to a small wooden bench, picked up a chamois cloth, and wrapped it around the gun’s gleaming brass, setting it on the bench. He turned, putting the sun over his shoulder, and held the baggie inches from his eyes.

  “Nine millimeter.” He squeezed the bag around the bullet. “And see this star?”

  I peered down. On the bullet’s brass bottom, a star. So small I felt cross-eyed looking at it.

  “I see it.”

  “That’s a five-pointed star at three o’clock,” he said.

  “Three o’clock?”

  “Think of a clock face. Noon, three o’clock, six o’clock, nine o’clock. Got it?”

  “Okay.”

  “Three o’clock.” He handed me the baggie. “Soviets.”

  “Soviets? You mean in Russia?”

  He batted the eyelashes. “You went to the fancy college, but the only Soviets I know of were in Russia.”

  “Sorry, Tolly. That’s not what I meant. Soviets are way, way out of the ballpark here. This isn’t some Cold War crime.”

  “You asked. I’m telling you. That is a five-pointed Communist star. Stamped on the bullet
at three o’clock. That mark means it’s Red Army ammo.”

  “What if I said this ammo came from the Chickahominy River?”

  He looked up, squinting into the sun. “Those dead guys hangin’ upside down?”

  “How—”

  “Guy who found ’em called the sheriff on his CB. Word got around, especially with the truckers.” He picked up the chamois, gently wiping the rifle’s brass. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Who’s selling Russian arms around here?”

  “That’s not the right question,” he said. “The question is, who wants to buy that junk? Go read Tent Life in Siberia. There’s a section on how to kill a bear with a Russian gun. You’ll laugh your head off.”

  “Tolly.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I. Tent Life in Siberia. By George Kennan. Just don’t get him confused with the second George Kennan. He was ambassador to Russia during the Cold War. Uncle and nephew. Actually, great-uncle. But they both wound up in—”

  “Tolly!” I held up the baggie.

  “There’s Commie stuff all over the black market,” he said. “When the USSR busted up—and by the way, it was the second George Kennan who came up with the idea of containment—”

  “Tolly . . .”

  “I’m getting to it. Listen. When that whole experiment in spreading the wealth around failed, like it always does, the Russians had tons of unmarked ammo from the Cold War. The Soviets did tons of covert operations. They didn’t put regular marks on their cartridges and bullets, thinking we wouldn’t be able to trace them. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and renegade KGB agents flooded the black market with stuff. I hear you can get an AK-47 for five cows in Somalia. And those Kalashnikovs can last fifty years. Not that the guy who invented the only decent Russian gun ever saw one dime. Or ruble. I guess that’s what he’d get, rubles.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “Tolly, focus. Please.”

  “Fine. How were these guys shot?”

  “What?”

  “Did it take the face off?”

  I shook my head.

  “That bullet looks to me like a nine millimeter. So possibly something like a Makarov.”

  “Makarov—that’s Russian?”

  “Russian, and let me tell you why I don’t like that gun . . .”

  The file on Phaup’s desk contained my FD-302, the factual account of the various ways I almost died last night. Pollard’s FD-302 covered his apprehension of the Raiders. SWAT laid out their siege on the crack house. Three reports. They presented the information in the most accurate terms. Three reports forming a triangulation of facts, and a hole for Phaup to throw me into.

  Sitting in her office, preparing for her lecture, I glanced out the window. There were no washboard clouds to count. Only that beautiful winter-blue sky. The color seemed to mock the worry that was cinching around my rib cage. To distract myself from panic, I tried to name all the planets in the solar system in order. Something simple, I thought, something I could repeat over and over while she berated me.

  But it wasn’t working. Maybe I was too tired, but I couldn’t remember the right order. I fell back on a mnemonic device learned as a girl. It began, My very excellent mother just served us . . .

  Phaup closed the file. “This is certainly not what I expected.”

  My very excellent mother, I thought.

  My stood for Mercury. Very for Venus, excellent for Earth, mother for Mars. Four planets down.

  “Raleigh, have you nothing to say?”

  “Everything’s in my report, ma’am.”

  “Yes, your report. Your report where you claim the problem last night was the time constraint.”

  My very excellent mother just served . . . Just stood for Jupiter. Served meant Saturn. Phaup stared at me, waiting. Her eyes were like scoured gray rocks. Waiting.

  “I was coming out the door when SWAT threw in the flash-bangs.”

  “You think you were coming out the door. I seriously doubt you would have gotten that far.”

  My very excellent mother just served us . . . us for Uranus. Seven down.

  She took a moment, shaking her head, showing her profound disappointment in me. “Once again you’re leaving me with no choice but to take formal action. You compulsively disobey my orders. You go out of your way to make a fool of me.”

  My very excellent mother just served us . . . I went blank.

  “What do you expect me to do?” she said.

  What did she serve us? I knew it started with N. Whatever my very excellent mother just served us was N for . . . “Nothing?” I said.

  “Nothing? You expect me to do nothing?” She looked appalled, the gray eyes enlarging.

  I shook my head. No, that wasn’t right. N was something else. Nine, that was it. Nine for Neptune. My very excellent mother just served us nine . . .

  “Expect to hear from OPM after the holiday,” she said.

  I went blank again. The Office of Professional Management. The Bureau people deciding who was right and who was wrong and what the consequences should be. I drew a deep breath. My very excellent mother just served us nine . . . It started with P. The last planet was Pluto. Or used to be. That meant P for . . . professionals? No, that wasn’t right.

  “As you probably know,” Phaup said, tugging at her blouse, “second offenses bring terrible consequences. Perhaps it’s time for you to consider another career.”

  Sure, I thought, I can deliver pizzas.

  Pizzas. That’s the word.

  My very excellent mother just served us nine pizzas. I felt a wave of relief.

  “Have you considered what you would do if you didn’t work for the Bureau?”

  “No, ma’am, I haven’t. And I won’t.”

  “You won’t?”

  “I won’t consider leaving until we hear from OPM. I respectfully defend my actions last night. You gave me a time limit that placed undue burden on—”

  “Undue burden?” she said. “I was trying to keep an agent alive.”

  “That might be true, ma’am. But the time limit made my work more dangerous. That was something both Pollard and I pointed out to you beforehand.”

  “You wouldn’t wear the wire, I had no choice,” she said. “And you admit that they took your weapon. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “It wasn’t luck.”

  “You claim credit for everything good.”

  “No, ma’am. I just don’t believe in luck.”

  “You shouldn’t. Your suspension will be effective after the first of the year. I don’t have time to write up the paperwork with this silly holiday bearing down on me. But if OPM allows you to return, expect another disciplinary transfer. I cannot tolerate rogue agents in this organization, and you—”

  She didn’t stop there, she kept going, steamrolling over my work, my life, my future. But I stopped listening. I went back to thinking about the planets, wondering why Pluto got dropped and what took its place and what my very excellent mother would serve now instead of pizza. And Phaup’s voice receded to hostile white noise.

  But suddenly she demanded: “Are you listening?”

  I didn’t want to lie. So I said, “I can hear you.”

  After my pleasant visit with Phaup, I walked down the hall and poked my head into Pollard’s office. His characteristically tidy desk was covered with paperwork. He held the phone in one hand, as if about to make a call.

  “I wanted to apologize, again,” I said. “I’m truly, deeply sorry.”

  He hung up the phone and motioned me inside. I closed the door but stayed there, leaning my back against it, feeling unworthy of taking a seat. I stared at all the paperwork on his desk. He was calling the task force team, letting them know the investigation had closed. I tried to imagine Detective Greene’s face when he heard.

  “Do you have anything to work with?” I asked.

  Shrugging wasn’t in Pollard’s DNA. He cleared his throat instead. “The crack house
is hard evidence,” he said. “There was plenty of product. But everybody denies making or selling. Everybody was just visiting. You’ll be called to testify. You’re our only credible witness.”

  “Where are they, downtown?”

  “They were, but everybody posted bail early this morning.”

  “What?”

  “Thirty grand apiece for the girls. Hundred grand for the guys.”

  I whistled.

  “Yes,” he said. “They’ve got money, and some hotshot defense attorney flew down from New York. They even sprang the girls, so we lost that angle.”

  Girls.

  I grabbed the doorknob. Zennie.

  “What’s wrong?” Pollard said.

  “My source. She called my cell, inside that house, they know—”

  chapter thirty-four

  Iraced down the stairwell, leaping over the steps.

  “Zennie, pick up!” I listened to her cell phone ring. And ring and ring. “Pick up!”

  At the third-floor landing, I threw open the steel door and ran to my desk. I ducked under the heat vent, wondering at my selfishness, and grabbed my briefcase. I was running back to the stairwell, considering a call to 911, when Zennie picked up.

  “We busted the house last night; they know I’m an agent—”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “Listen to me, Zennie. They posted bail. They’re out. They’ll come looking for you.”

  “And if I was born at night, it wasn’t last night,” she said. “When I called you last night, I was already packing up. Something was wrong with Moon; I could tell it was about to get ugly. I called to tell you and when I heard him on your cell phone, I hit the road.”

  I dropped my head. The relief I felt was visceral. “Zennie,” I said, “you did great. Where are you now?”

  “At Granny’s with my boy.”

  “Does Moon know how to find you?”

  “He’ll figure it out.”

  “What do you have for protection?”