Red, White, Blue

by Lea Carpenter

* * *

  —

  That night, under those stars in France, he had told her, When you walk away from the Agency, you walk away from that life. It is not a job, it is a way of life. He told her, The culture of the Agency is unique and bizarre. When you rejoin the world after you leave, the adjustment period is actually quite significant. When he identified the rocks by that sea as the “universal meeting place,” he knew she would return when the time came. She was easy to spot and assess, she was simply a girl who had lost her father. When they met, she was seeking a way back from that loss. He was seeking a way back, too. And what she said that night outside the restaurant showed him the way. She said, When you lose someone you love, you only want to be around the people who loved him, too.

  * * *

  *

  If he was alone on the mountain that day, Noel would have been ecstatic, and calm. He used to say there was no quiet like the one at last tracks, that near-end-of-the-day when the light changes. If he was alone and if he triggered the avalanche he would have responded with calm, perhaps even with amusement, he always had a sense things happen for a reason, that timing is a thing we can swat at but never quite catch, a butterfly. He would perhaps have had last thoughts about his legacy, about the one or two lives he had touched and altered, about a little girl and eggshells. He would have seen and heard lines from the poets he loved. As the snow came down he would have listened to the poets, not the fear.

  * * *

  *

  On the beach Anna shook the water from her hair and closed her eyes. When she opened them she looked up at the rocks. And there, looking back at her, was a woman she immediately recognized. The hard target, the girl in the flowered blue silk dress, up late in a safe house, the future, Veritas. This was her closure, her bell. This was the reason for the parole, the transcript of answers, the video, this was the reason Noel had stood up and torn off the wires and why a gifted young officer had disappeared. This was the end of a story of risks and choices. This, she. This was her turnover.

  * * *

  —

  Anna said nothing and didn’t move. As she looked up at those rocks though, the moat began to empty and the drawbridge prepared to descend. The terror of a loss receded, making room for something new in its place. In that moment, she believed. She finally believed.

  Oh, my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes.

  Look out at the things you made. All things shining.

  —TERRENCE MALICK

  Acknowledgments

  Sonny Mehta, Eric Simonoff, and Shelley Wanger. Carroll Carpenter. Elliot Ackerman, “standing on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” And Vail & Alexis, who listen to my stories every night and especially love ones with knights in shining armor.

  *

  Ed Victor

  (1939–2017)

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. No one I interviewed during the course of my research disclosed classified information.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lea Carpenter lives in New York with her two sons.

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