The Russian that they spoke was slow and halting, neither of them at ease in the language anymore, but both of them determined to use it now that they had it together. Rusty's eyes were glazed, but she was past pain and though her words came slowly, they were clear.
She was saying, "All those things I said up there . . . they were true, every word."
"I know that."
"The duty had nothing to do with the love."
"I know that too."
"Yes, now you know, but it doesn't matter anymore. Everything's wasted."
"Not wasted," he said "Not all those years."
"Yes, wasted. All the dreams and secrets we could have shared in our own language. All the words of love we could have said without translation. That was the waste. I never said 'I love you' in my mother's tongue."
"Yes. And I never knew your name. I still don't."
She tried to smile but it did not work. "How strange to think that. My name is Olga Alexandrovna Kuznishev."
"So." He murmured the name to himself. "I love you, Olga Alexandrovna. I always have, and nothing will change that."
"Even after this?"
"Even so."
"Then it wasn't wasted, none of it was."
"No."
She reached a hand to touch his cheek, but her strength was gone and she could not make it. "I wanted to go home. Do you understand that? No, you don't. You were always at home here and I never was."
"And I never knew it."
"That's all it was; I just wanted to go home. With you."
Her voice was faint now, and he bent close to hear the words. ". . . back to Orel in the summer . . . flowers in the meadows now ... on the banks along the Oka . . . but we never ..."
"Never what?" When she did not answer, he said in English, "Never what. Rusty?"
"Never got there," she murmured, and then she was gone. He closed her eyes gently and kissed her. He rose, came over to his daughter and took her hand.
"That's it," he said, and Ginger nodded. Vasily moved away from the group, separated but still a part of it. They stayed that way, silently, until Eddie said, "There it is, I can hear it."
They all heard it then, the faint putt-putting, and their eyes went down to the entrance of the bay. It loomed there as a darker part of the darkness, the thin silhouette of the launch nosing round the southern arm of the crescent and making for the beach.
"Time to get moving," said Eddie. "They'll probably just turn around and go back when nobody meets them, but I'd just as soon not be here. Let's go."
"Somebody will meet them," said Emerson. The lines that had marked his face for days were gone, and he was smiling faintly. "You three get going. I'm heading in a different direction."
Alarmed, Ginger got to her feet. "What do you mean? Where are you going?"
"I'm taking your mother home."
She started to protest, but he stopped her. "It's too late in the game for arguments," he said gently. "You're going one way and I'm going another, that's all. That was bound to happen eventually. It always does with parents and children. Go with Eddie and stay with him. It's an insane world that you're living in and he's one of the few who knows how to cope with it."
He fondled the back of her neck, and then rubbed it briskly with his knuckles the way he would do it to a child or a pet. He turned to Eddie, and said, "I want a minute with you alone."
He put out a hand and helped Eddie to his feet. They moved away from the others, and Emerson said softly, "I want a favor from you."
"No."
"I want some RDX."
"Yeah, I thought that's what you had in mind. No way."
"I'll say the same thing to you that I said to Ginger. It's too late for that kind of talk." His voice was suddenly angry. "For God's sake, Eddie, what kind of a life have I got left? I'm finished wherever I go, and Rusty's gone. She was gone a long time ago, but I didn't know it."
Eddie rubbed his eyes wearily. "You're talking about taking out a Russian sub with a hundred young sailors on board. What the hell did they ever do to you?"
Emerson did not answer. He was staring at the launch coming into the bay. After a moment, he said, "Not the sub, Eddie, just the launch. Petrovich is on that boat, I'll bet on it. Radichek and Kolodny too. The welcoming committee, they wouldn't miss it for the world. This is the high point of their careers. They're on that launch, I'm sure of it."
"And so are maybe half a dozen sailors."
Emerson conceded the point with a shrug.
"Does six make it any better than a hundred?" Eddie asked.
Emerson was silent.
"What if there was only one sailor on board? A bosun to steer, and three evil old men. Would that make it any better?"
Emerson still did not answer. He was thinking about two barns, one in Germany so many years ago and one in Albania just a few days past. Barns and blood, the cold and casual murder of the real James Emerson and the blood that had been spilled on a wedding-feast floor. He wanted to tell Eddie about those two barns and how they had twisted and re-shaped his life, but there was little time and he could not find the words. Instead, he said, "I have a debt to pay, and this is the only way I can do it."
"Maybe so," said Eddie, "but it's your debt, not mine. I won't help you."
Vasily rose from the grass and came over to them leaving Ginger sitting alone on the hill, her head down and her arms around her knees. He asked Eddie, "What is it? What does he want?"
Eddie told him, and Vasily smiled coldly. "It was predictable. He's more Russian than he thinks he is. He has that Slavic tilt toward self-destruction. Did you give him the stuff?"
Eddie shook his head firmly. "I don't want any part of it. I've got no feud with the Russian Navy."
"Yes, you always were the moralist on this team. It's a luxury I've never been able to afford." He reached into his pocket and came out with a plastic bag filled with a ball of the grayish, putty-like RDX explosive. From another pocket he took a detonator and slipped it into the bag.
Eddie stared at him in disbelief. "You're giving it to him?"
"He has a right to roll his own dice," said Vasily, and his voice took on an edge. "Stay out of this, Eddie. This is just between us Slavs."
He handed the package to Emerson who shoved it into his pocket. Eddie scowled, and looked away unhappily. Emerson put a hand on his shoulder and, mistaking the scowl for sadness, said, "Don't look so unhappy, you knew how it was going to end. We all knew, we just wouldn't admit it. I've been dead for weeks now. This is just a formality."
He squeezed Eddie's shoulder, then went over to his daughter who rose to meet him. He put his arm around her and she pressed her head into his chest, just once, then stepped back, giving him up. Emerson turned to Vasily and said several quick words in Russian. Vasily nodded in reply, and in English said, "You'd better hurry. Your boat is almost there."
Emerson scrambled along the steep pitch of the slope to where Rusty's body lay. He picked her up in his arms. It must have been difficult with his hand the way it was but he made it seem easy. Then, sometimes sliding, sometimes stumbling, sometimes at a run, he made his way down to the beach and was waiting there when the launch nosed in against the sand. He passed the body over the gunwale into waiting arms, and then clambered aboard. He did not look back as the launch circled around to head out to sea.
They drove along the cliff road beyond the Reynolds house heading south, Vasily doing the driving. Ginger beside him and Eddie resting in the back seat. The shoulder had started to throb again and he wanted to get to a doctor.
"I know a quack I can trust in Oakland," said Vasily. "If vou can hold out that long."
"I'll make it."
"And after that, what?"
"You still thinking about Bogota?"
"It seems like the next logical step. Coming along?"
Eddie nodded in the darkness, and said to Ginger, "That all right with you?"
"Whatever you say," she said absently. "Would we be able to see it
from here?"
"See what?" Vasily and Eddie said it at once.
"Stop it," she said impatiently. "He's my father, isn't he? I should know what my own father is going to do and I sure as hell know what RDX is after hanging around with you two. Would we see it?"
Vasily shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "No way of telling."
"Pull over." she said. "Over there, off the road."
Vasily looked at her sharply, and then did as she asked, swerving onto the grassy verge. He pulled the car close to the edge of the cliff and set the brake. Below them the ocean crashed against the base of the rocks and sent spume flying. The sea was as dark as the night and the stars were obscured by scudding clouds. An onshore breeze brought the acrid odors of kelp and seasalt as they waited.
"This is foolish," Vasily said after a while. "We don't even know. ..." "We'll wait," said Eddie. "It's all right."
"You need that doctor."
"We'll wait."
It came quickly, a greenish-white light that started as a pinpoint and rapidly expanded into a fireball that glowed on the horizon. It hung there, suspended, then collapsed again, green and gold fading into black. The glow was gone by the time they heard the roar come rushing over the water, and then the roaring faded and was gone as well. The night was dark again.
Vasily started the engine and maneuvered the car over the bumpy ground, back to the road. Ginger touched his arm lightly, and said, "Just before he left he said something to you in Russian. What was it?"
"He said that he forgave me."
"I'm glad." She was still for a moment, then asked, "When they were talking in Russian before she died. Could you hear them?"
"Yes."
"What did he say to her?"
Vasily considered that as he pulled the car onto the paved surface of the road. "Pretty much the same thing," he said finally. "He forgave her, too."
"That's all right then," she said in a tight, tough little voice as the car picked up speed and they headed south into the night.
"It isn't all right," said Eddie. "But it's as good as you're going to get."
***
(Please continue ...)
Dear Reader,
If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends about it. And if you have a few moments, you can post a review. Thoughtful and positive opinions encourage a writer.
And of course they help sales. Writers have to live and eat (just like real human beings).
Other good books by Clifford Irving are available. The titles follow, and they link to Kindle. Or you might want to visit the author's website at:
cliffordirving.com
TRIAL – A Legal Thriller
“The courtroom scenes are breathtaking . . . gripping suspense . . . riveting!” — Publishers Weekly
FINAL ARGUMENT – A Legal Thriller
“A courtroom thriller, a mean streets thriller, a Florida cracker thriller, a gritty prison thriller, and an Everyman study of good and evil all rolled into one. And every part of it is terrific. What a wonderful piece of storytelling!”— Donald Westlake, The New York Times
DADDY’S GIRL: A True Thriller of Texas Justice
“Irving builds suspense with skill and makes the people come to life . . . a fine book.” — Houston Chronicle
Clifford Irving’s PRISON JOURNAL (a/k/a JAILING)
“A tale of intelligent triumph under remarkable stress. It has the ring of truth and is highly recommended.” — Times of London
TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA – a Romance of Revolutionary Mexico and the 20th Century American West
“Fabulous, big, rawboned wild-blooded adventure tale that gives the sights and sounds and smells of a turn-of-the-century world real enough to touch. Clifford Irving has written a novel to make any writer proud and many readers grateful.” — Los Angeles Herald Examiner
Clifford Irving’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD HUGHES
“It’s almost impossible to know where fact leaves off and fiction begins, if indeed that distinction should be made. This is a hypnotizing narrative, a brilliant study of money’s power to corrupt absolutely.” — Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times
THE ANGEL OF ZIN – A Holocaust Mystery
“Exciting, dynamic, and marvelously written.”— Publishers Weekly
FAKE! – the Life of the Master Art Faker of the 20th Century
“The wild, true story of three men who raped the art world . . . one of the most sophisticated suspense sagas of our time . . . fantastic.” — Chicago Tribune
THE SPRING – A Legal Thriller
“An extraordinarily entertaining and thoughtful combination of Lost Horizons and Presumed Innocent. Not only is it a mystery--on at least two levels--but it poses troubling questions concerning prolonged life and its ultimate value.”— Booklist
STRANGER TO THE KINGDOM (formerly THE VALLEY) – a mythic novel of the Old West
"A superb novel that grips the reader from start to thrilling finish. Its solidity is that of a Greek myth." — Times Literary Supplement
PROJECT OCTAVIO – the Rise and Fall of the Howard Hughes Autobiography Hoax
“Brilliant.” – Newsday “A masterpiece.” – CBS Radio
THE DEATH FREAK – A CIA Thriller (an Eddie Mancuso and Vasily Borgneff novel)
“A suavely persuasive, anti-Establishment thriller with the bitter aftertaste of Campari and vodka. A clever, cynical, and compelling novel.” — Time Magazine
THE SLEEPING SPY – A CIA Thriller (an Eddie Mancuso and Vasily Borgneff novel)
"A dazzling combination of high suspense and hijinks, and some most unusual killings." — Los Angeles Times
THE 38TH FLOOR – A Thriller of International Politics
“Some smashing skullduggery, with shadowings, chases, and a marvelous climax.” — Sunday Telegraph
THE LOSERS – A New York Thriller
"A serious book built out of thriller elements." — London Sunday Times
CLASH BY NIGHT (formerly ON A DARKLING PLAIN) – A first novel
“A fine debut.” — New York Times
THE BATTLE OF JERUSALEM – A Personal History of the Six-Day War, 1967
“Clifford [Irving] was there, he saw what happened, and he tells it the way it happened.” – Irwin Shaw
BOY ON TRIAL – A Legal Thriller
not yet reviewed
(continued ...)
Author’s Bio:
(at the request of some readers)
Hello. I’m Clifford Irving, a man who’s had an eventful time on the planet. I was once on the cover of Time Magazine, and Hollywood made a movie about part of my life. Richard Gere played me.
I traveled twice around the world before most people living in it today were born; I stood guard in an Israeli kibbutz, crewed on a 56' three-masted schooner that sailed the Atlantic from Mexico to France, smuggled whisky from Tangier to Spain, and one spring I lived on a houseboat on Dal Lake in Kashmir from where I rode horseback intoTibet.
Growing up in Manhattan, I studied painting at the High School of Music & Art. At Cornell University I chased beautiful but unconquerable Ivy League coeds, rowed on the crew, and dreamed of becoming a great writer. I sailed to Europe, settled on the decadent Mediterranean island of Ibiza, and wrote my first novel. I sent it to a literary agent in New York. G. P. Putnam’s Sons published it.
Was it really as easy and as quick as that? Of course not. I was lucky. And determined.
I taught at UCLA graduate extension school, with Betsy Drake and Cary Grant among my pupils. I became a correspondent to the Middle East for NBC. And I kept writing books.
In 1970, I created a writing event which became the Howard Hughes Autobiography Hoax. Many believe that the threat of the book’s publication, with its revelations of the Hughes-Nixon bribes, caused Nixon to approve the Watergate break-in.
My reward in 1972 for these accusations (and lunacy) was 16 months in three federal prisons.
Over time I wrote write 20 books that were published to va
rying degrees of success in the USA by Putnam, McGraw-Hill, and Simon & Schuster, as well as translated into many languages.
All of my books are on Nook and Kindle at affordable prices: $2.99 to $5.99. That’s less expensive than a paperback and half the price of a movie. A good read is one of the amazing pleasures offered to us by civilization.
“Move over, Butch and Sundance, it’s not that I love you both less, just that I’ve come to love Pancho and Tom more”– said the New York Times Book Review about Tom Mix and Pancho Villa, which I believe is my best book. Trial, followed by Daddy’s Girl, and Final Argument – all legal thrillers – are the top sellers.
My manuscripts, notes, journals and correspondence are stored permanently at the Center for American History at the University of Texas (Austin), which acquired the archive in 2013.
(continued ...)
Further descriptions and reviews:
TRIAL
A Legal Thriller
“Terrific! Don’t begin this book at bedtime or you’ll be up all night . . . Trial is like a birchbark canoe or a seven-layer cake. You can go crazy trying to figure out how it’s made, and it’s made by a master.” — Caroline See, Los Angeles Times
“Riveting legal edge-of-the-seater, has Texas and American justice systems by the tail.” — Daily Telegraph (London)
“Jet-propelled . . . colorful, down-and-dirty characters . . . most readers will want to read this at one sitting.” — Library Journal
A thrilling adventure into the real world of criminal law, a powerful novel that deals with murder, the morality of justice and the perils of love, Clifford Irving’s book sets a new standard for courtroom fiction.
A Texas lawyer, Warren Blackburn, defends two accused murderers in two separate cases. One of his clients is a former beauty queen and brazen owner of a topless nightclub, who shot her multimillionaire doctor lover – she claims – in self-defense; the other is a homeless illegal alien accused of killing a man for his wallet.
The Sleeping Spy Page 34
