It was nearly dark when Callister dropped Dresden off at his place on South Road on the other side of the island from Hamilton. The house, which they rented from the British government, was on a slope of Cobbs Hill, overlooking the sea. He guessed that he would not find Maddy inside, and was correct. She was seated on their favorite rock, beside the path that led from their terrace to a little beach.
She had changed into shorts and a crisp white shirt, but still had on the hair ribbon. She was barefoot, and her long legs were dark in the twilight.
“Are you still angry?” he said, standing beside her.
“I wasn’t angry,” she replied, without looking up. “Things were getting unpleasant, that’s all. I wasn’t in much of a mood for a scene.”
Bermuda was essentially extinct volcano and coral reef, and there was a scarcity of pebbles. Dresden yearned for one to toss into the light surf below. He sat down on the rock, but kept his distance from her.
“Callister brought some news,” he said.
“Good news or bad?”
“You’ll have to tell me. The police in Santa Linda have arrested the people who murdered Charlene and Danny Hill. There were two of them, the brothers of Danny’s ex-wife. They’d gotten drunk and into some bad drugs and came down to beat him up. They followed him to my house and apparently went out of control. When Zack woke up and tried to fight them off they panicked and shot her. Anyway, that’s what the police are saying. They even held a press conference. The sister turned them in. They confessed. The case is closed.”
“Do you believe them?”
He waited until a wave had broken against the shoreline below before answering.
“Yes, though I’ve good reason for not wanting to.”
“You think that if you had called the police in the first place as an ordinary person would have, everything would have been cleared up and you would never have had to leave Tiburcio.”
“Yes.”
“And you would never have come to me in Washington and none of what came afterward would have happened.”
“Yes. And George Calendiari would still be alive. A lot of people would still be alive.”
She moved closer to him, their shoulders touching as she reached out and took his hand.
“You mustn’t think that, Charley. We don’t know what would have happened.”
“Callister gave me a number where I could reach Tracy Bakersfield. They made a point of finding her for me.”
“Why?”
“Ostensibly to show that all is forgiven. Also, I think, to remind me of the things they can do if they put their minds to it, if I give them cause.”
“Where is she?”
“In Canada. She took me at my word, like she always has. To her regret, sometimes. She took a leave from the college the day after I called and went up to British Columbia. She has a friend up there. She’s been there ever since, waiting for me to tell her it’s all right. Her husband must really hate my guts.”
“Did you call her?”
“Yes. We had a long talk.”
“And?”
“I told her how much she was loved and that she was foolish to ever listen to me about anything and to go home. At once.”
“Now you can go home.”
“I’m not sure. The British seem to consider us substantial diplomatic assets, what with all we could help them prove, if need be.” He put his arm around her, drawing her near. He could feel the warmth of her flesh beneath the thin material of her shirt. “Maddy, do you want to go home? Back to California? To Washington?”
“No. Not now. I’ve thought about it. I was scared to discover how much George meant to me. How much he still means. How much hatred and sadness I still feel, all mixed up together. No, I couldn’t go back there, to the surviving ruins, to the things we had together.”
There were the lights of a ship visible beyond the reef, riding high near the horizon. If it was the one from the quay, it had left the Great Sound and had rounded Commissioner’s Point and Ireland Island and now was making for the south, probably Puerto Rico.
“Charley?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to go back, back to your canyon and your saloon and your house on the mountainside?”
“I’ve thought about it too. I can’t travel through time, Maddy.”
She shifted herself so her head rested in his lap.
“You want to stay here then, on this little island?”
“Tiburcio was an island. The Washington you lived in was an island. I’m content here. In a way, it’s the sort of life I felt I might have had if all those miserable things hadn’t happened to my father.”
“You’re much at peace. It becomes you.”
“Anyway, we’re shortly to have company. Our friend Hyde-Milne is to be the new governor here. Callister told me. I think it has something to do with his being made American consul. Or vice versa. Nations send messages to each other this way. They speak in gestures. Words mean nothing.”
“I lie here, looking up at the stars, and wonder if there’s some satellite camera looking back. I hear the waves, and wonder if someone’s listening along with me, through some hidden microphone.”
“We’re just two little people, Maddy. If we’re careful, they’ll leave us alone, by and by.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Yes. I believe that.” He wondered if he really did.
“When I used to think back on our first times together,” she said, “I always remembered you driving off in a small, open car, alone in the night. Into mournful nights of mordant truths, you used to say. You used to write me about the bleak, stark beauty of our mortality. ‘Beauty is the scent of roses, and the death of roses.’”
“The mournful nights are all out there,” he said, nodding to the far, dark line of sea. “Not here.”
“I love you, Charles Dresden. That much has survived what we went through. Maybe it’s all that has.”
“Is that why you didn’t run away that night during the State of the Union address? You’ve never really told me.”
“I’m still not sure why. You were part of it. George was part. The country’s troubles were part. Mostly I wanted to move on to the rest of my life, my next life. It seemed the only way. I wasn’t being brave. I was just desperate.”
He stroked her cheek gently with his fingertips. Her heart was beating quite calmly. He would keep it so.
“I once sat on a little cliff like this one night in California with Tracy Bakersfield,” he said. “It was near Capitola. A warm night like this, with a breeze blowing. I fetched a wild flower for her from a crevice. I remember it all exactly.”
“But all you did was bring her a flower.”
“That’s all.”
“There should be more to such a night than a little flower.”
“I’ve thought that for many a night now.”
“I’m the marrying kind, Charley. If you’re to have your way with me again, it will have to be as man and wife.”
They gazed into each other’s eyes awhile, then he kissed her. When he looked out to sea again the ship was gone. She sat up, and leaned against his chest, her head on his shoulder.
“I don’t know how the British get married,” he said.
“I’m sure it’s quite romantic. A little piety, a little poetry.”
He cleared his throat, and recited:
She tenderly kissed me,
She fondly caressed,
And then I fell gently
To sleep on her breast—
From the heaven of her breast.
When the light was extinguished,
She covered me warm,
And she prayed to the angels
To keep me from harm—
To the queen of the angels
To shield me from harm.
“And what English poet is that?” she asked.
“Not English, but the best I know.”
“The gloomy Mr. Poe again.”
“Oh, not so gloomy.”
But my heart it is brighter,
Than all of the many
Stars of the sky,
For it sparkles with Annie—
It glows with the light
Of the love of my Annie—
She pulled away from him in mock anger, a sweet laughter in her eyes. “But my name isn’t Annie.”
It glows with the light
Of the love of my Maddy—
With the thought of the light
Of the eyes of my Maddy.
Maddy had been wrong. Happy endings were not all to be asked of life. He rose and pulled her up after him. Arm in arm, they started up to the house, and to all that was yet to be.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Television is a major theme of this book. I am very grateful to Jim Michael of NBC News in Washington and my very good friend David Elliott, editor of the “Today Show,” for augmenting my family and professional experience in television with their excellent tutorials on modern-day television technology and technique.
I am also very grateful for the help and advice I received from some other valued friends—James O. Jackson, Moscow bureau chief for Time magazine; Ray Coffey and George de Lama, veteran correspondents for the Chicago Tribune; Col. Robert Brown, publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine; and Tex Harris of the U.S. State Department. My thanks go also to Nigel Sheinwald and Andrew Burns of the British Embassy.
Tom Dunne and Pamela Hoenig are editors without peer and I’m extremely glad for their superior skills and friendship. Margaret Schwarzer, also of St. Martin’s, was a wonderful help too. The same is very true of a New York literary gentleman named Dominick Abel.
I am indebted to my wife, Pamela, and sons, Eric and Colin, as only they can know.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1986 by Michael Kilian
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1922-4
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MICHAEL KILIAN
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