by Gray Gardner
Out of the white capped water behind Wolinski and his captives came salvation. Payne obviously wasn’t the only one Connor had been radioing in his position to.
Green helmets, camouflage vests, long black rifles, and pretty little pony tails. Burton’s old unit slinked undetected out of the Potomac, up the bank, and onto the slab of concrete. She was shocked for only a split second. Why weren’t they deployed? But thank God they were there.
She carefully held up three fingers to her eyes, then made a fist. The girl in front, who looked like Nolan, stopped, and the rest of the unit silently fanned out behind her. Burton heard the men below her rumbling and lowering their weapons as she watched Wolinski unknowingly smile.
“I’m sorry it had to come to this,” he said, looking back down at Connor. The rain continued lightly.
Connor, who had read Burton’s hand signals, glanced down at the girl. He would have one second before bullets would fly, and if he didn’t shield her, she’d get hit. So would he.
“On my count,” Austin mumbled, not moving an inch. “Three, two…”
Burton leapt to her feet. Wolinski immediately threw his arm up and fired. Connor fell flat on the ground, curling the girl up in his arms, his face smashing into the cement. The unit of thirty-nine girls charged up behind Wolinski. He turned and, distracted by the sheer number and their hollering, didn’t notice when Ferguson barreled down on him and flew shoulders first into his body, taking him down in a classic tackle.
Payne stomped on his hand and disarmed him as he lay on the ground. Austin directed the troops to fire if Wolinski took one step out of line. Ferguson yanked his cuffs out of his pocket and jerked the man’s arms behind his back, gleefully restraining him and smiling up at his co-conspirators.
Wolinski was hollering and pleading his case as his captors triumphantly looked at one another. He would rather be dead than go to trial for this, but that wasn’t what the government had in mind.
“My girls,” Connor grinned, sitting up slowly, wiping blood off of his scraped chin. They all nodded and saluted, keeping their weapons trained on the prisoner, until O’Malley stepped forward.
“But sir, where’s Baylor?”
Everyone turned their heads to the containers behind them. No one was there. There was a momentary silence until Connor handed the girl off to Austin, who was reassuring her in Russian. He leapt to his feet, running and leaping for the cover of the storage container, pulling himself up and standing on top.
“She’s not up here!” he called, as his unit suddenly spread out and moved forward. Oh God, had he hit her? He knew Wolinski had gotten a shot off. He desperately ran to the other side and fell to his knees.
There she was. Her body twisted in a strange way on the hard ground, hair fanned out above her head. He lost his breath as he swung his legs around and flew to the ground, quickly kneeling next to her. She was warm. She was breathing. Thank God, he thought.
Thank you, God.
Baylor, Controller of the Universe
“There are those green eyes I love so much.”
Burton squinted in the glare of surrounding light and sucked in her breath at the sharp pain radiating from her shoulders. What was going on? Was she dead? Who else was dead?
“Hold still,” Connor calmly said. She felt his hand on her leg. Taking a breath, she let her eyes focus on the smile in front of her. She took the fact that she could feel her legs as a very good thing. The last thing she remembered was stumbling backwards and falling a long way.
“Why do I feel like this?” she wheezed, not recognizing her own voice and growing frustrated that her head felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.
“Sedation, by doctors this time,” he replied, gently rubbing her leg.
She breathed slowly and tried not to think about the pain as she let her eyes move right and left. His touch was something she wasn’t used to. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been used to it before, but now it felt strange. Endearing, but strange.
“Hospital?” she sighed.
“Yeah. You fell and broke both of your clavicles,” he sighed, moving closer so the lights were behind his head. It formed a kind of halo of light behind his face. She was just thinking that he was a little bit like an angel when he continued. “We’ve been keeping you under so that you could heal a little better.”
“Are we in The Basement?” she groaned, closing her eyes. She wanted out of the CIA’s underground facility. She wanted out of the CIA period.
“Best doctors around,” he nodded, bringing his hand up to her forehead. “I’m just glad that you’re awake. Everybody’s been asking about you.”
She suddenly remembered something. “The unit?”
“Saved our lives,” he grinned, rubbing his thumb around her face. He couldn’t stop touching her. “I’ve been communicating with them for months, and Jesus. They came through for us, didn’t they?”
That was an understatement. They’d saved everyone’s lives. She winced as she tried to shift around. She understood why they’d kept her sedated, the pain was practically unbearable. But how long had she been out?
“We would have let visitors in to see you if you hadn’t been talking so much in your sleep the past day and a half. Might have revealed something top secret.”
“Is that how long I’ve been out?”
“No, kid, you’ve been under for a week,” he whispered, like it hurt him to say it. He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I can’t even tell you how good it is to see you again. Awake.”
She sighed and closed her eyes, resting for a second. She was exhausted.
“The kids?” she suddenly asked, her eyes flying around the room as Connor stood by a counter and poured ice into a cup.
“All safe and accounted for, thanks to you,” he said, sitting back down next to her and placing a piece of ice on her lips.
She closed her eyes as it felt so good, then parted her lips and let him put in on her tongue. The cold running down her throat never felt so good. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was.
She opened her eyes again.
“Wolinski is in one of our holding cells,” he added, putting another piece of crushed ice in her mouth. “Awaiting his trial.”
She tried to speak again but he knew what she was going to say before she did.
“In a state with the death penalty,” he nodded.
She exhaled. Well, he’d thought of everything. Almost everything. She turned her eyes away from him and asked one last question.
“Um, when I was talking in my sleep, I wasn’t, uh, singing Justin Timberlake again, was I?”
He laughed and gave her another piece of ice. “No, no. You weren’t singing at all.”
Thankfully.
“You were just speaking in Latin,” he grunted, standing up and stretching. “How many languages can you speak?”
“I don’t know Latin,” she sighed, as the pain in her chest and shoulders seared through her body. She clenched her jaw as she tried to continue.
“Let me call for the nurse,” he said, pushing a button on her wide hospital bed. The nurse briskly walked in, checked a few monitors, pressed a few buttons, smiled and left.
“Efficient,” Burton grinned, as she felt her body relax.
“So, wait, if you don’t know Latin then how were you speaking it?” Connor asked, resting his head on his hand as he set it right next to her head. He just wanted to look at her and have her look right back at him. He loved nothing more than those bright green eyes.
“Hodie christus natus. Gloria in excelsis deo. Alleluia.”
He frowned and sat up. “That’s exactly what you were saying.”
She gave a slight grin as she thought of her dad. The one who pushed her to be better. To be the best. The one who never really told her he loved her. The only person she’d ever wanted to impress. And she still admired him.
“Call it a Burton Family Motto,” she mumbled, her head fogging a little.
“A Trotskyism?�
�� he asked lightly, eating something crunchy.
Her stomach growled. She took a breath and looked at the ceiling. “No, no, this was where my father and grandfather parted philosophically and spiritually.”
“Trotsky was a Jew and your father was a Christian.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Except neither of them practiced. They just believed in the doctrines each respective religion offered. My Aunt Nina sided with my dad on this point, too. He always said that God controlled us, everything…your destiny. My grandfather was more of the school that men controlled their own destiny.” She yawned.
Connor looked at her adoringly. He loved how smart she was and her perspective on everything. He was still so surprised Ferguson was the only other man in her life who had pursued her.
“What about you?” he asked.
She frowned and looked over at him. “Me? Well, I guess I’m a perfect mix. We control our own destinies by believing in God and living by his teachings or not believing in something bigger and living by our own credo.”
“I agree with that,” Connor nodded, drinking some bottled water. “So, what does it mean?”
“What?”
“Your father’s and Aunt Nina’s Latin phrase?”
“Oh. Uh, Christ is born this day. Glory to God in the highest. Yippee.”
“Alleluia means yippee?” he laughed, raising his brow.
“Maybe it just means alleluia,” she sighed, giving a half grin. She sat and thought for a moment. “I think he really hated him.”
“Who?” he asked, leaning in again.
“My dad. I think he really hated my grandfather. I mean, he respected him, but he was never around, he lived in Mexico and wanted to pal around with Diego Rivera instead of raising his son. Come to think of it, he hated Diego Rivera, too.”
“He told you that?” Connor grinned, thinking of the famous Mexican muralist.
“He didn’t have to,” she mumbled, closing her eyes and breathing a little deeper. “He got banned for life when he shouted at the mural.”
“What?” he asked, frowning as she relaxed her head and her breathing became steadier. He didn’t press the matter because she was filled with narcotics, but it definitely intrigued him. And who hated Diego Rivera?
Burton didn’t have nightmares half as frequently as before, but sometimes she still grew scared of closing her eyes to sleep. She never knew what she was going to see. Connor never left her side, even sleeping in the chair next to her every night, and she was allowed to shuffle to a room above The Basement to talk with O’Malley and Jennings. Like everyone else in their unit, they’d been assigned security detail for the Langley facility, a cushy job only awarded to the most worthy. And the pay was nice. They wouldn’t even have to worry about being deployed for another six months.
Physical therapy was grueling and always sent Burton into an exhausted nap for most of the afternoon. Shattered clavicles were a very debilitating and frustrating injury. Connor pushed her through it, though, and always got her back to her bed quickly so that she could rest.
The last week of her stay in the medical facility she was dreaming about a cemetery. Cheery. She had seen her own death, but for some reason this was different. It was like a memory. She was walking in and out of old marble gravestones, some with statues reaching high into the gray sky. She walked around a willow tree and found an old mausoleum.
She knew it. She knew the cemetery. She’d cut through it to get to school early and to rush home to start her homework before she’d gotten a car. When they’d built the baseball fields next to it she’d preferred the less creepy route, but this cemetery was very familiar.
The mausoleum was white marble, in a kind of Belles Artes, Italian style. There was a large, chained iron door. She’d never noticed it was iron before. Someone sure didn’t want anyone going in there. Above the door was an engraving, smudged in black soot from the city’s pollution. She squinted her eyes to read it when suddenly a hand grabbed her shoulder and wheeled her around.
Her dad. He was red in the face and yelling, so angry that she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him like that before. He was so tall; she was just a little girl. He grabbed the collar of her plaid wool coat and yanked her behind him. Why was he so angry? She stumbled but turned and looked back, reading the engraving as she was pulled away.
“Oh my God!” she hollered, sitting up in the hospital bed and trying to catch her breath. She winced as her healing collar bone objected but she still persisted in fighting the covers and trying to hop out of bed.
Poor Connor was tangled in a cheap white hospital blanket as he tried to stand up from his reclined chair and calm her down.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he huffed, finally freeing his hand and holding her leg as she tried to kick the covers off. He was very used to her nightmares. “I’m here. You’re okay.”
“No!” she swallowed, shaking her head and looking desperately up at him. “We need to get Austin and Ferguson and Chilton and Reddy and fucking Dustin in here.”
“Baylor,” he said, giving her a face which meant business. “You’re not eighteen anymore. You’re okay now.”
“Everyone was right,” she desperately said, grabbing at his bare chest and finally settling on his toned arms. She was staring right at him.
“About what?” he asked, liking the fact that she was initiating touching this time, instead of him always reaching out for her.
She swallowed and looked around, then leaned back and met his glance.
“There is a diary.”
“Technically, it’s a little black bank book,” she said, grimacing as she picked up a bottle of water and drank. Her shoulders ached but she needed to get this out.
Marty Austin stood in front of her, arms folded across his chest in a very presidential way, an untucked white button down and slacks on since he was rushed out to Langley with the promise of some answers. Ferguson was the same, and the other British agents were being conferenced in on a phone in the middle of the brown table.
Connor rubbed his chin as he leaned against the wall and watched her pace in front of a white board in the small room. This was her show, but if she got too excited she could hurt herself again. He’d make damn sure that wouldn’t happen.
“Look,” she smiled, getting as excited about history as Austin had ten years before. She passed around on an iPad and a projector turned on, the lights dimmed, and a picture of the Palacio de Bellas Artes appeared on the white board. “Mexico City, the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Famous for its stained-glass Tiffany curtain, and its art deco interior.”
“And a mural by Diego Rivera,” Austin said, standing up a little straighter. There was a cautious twinkle in his eye as he hesitantly added, “One of Leon Trotsky’s best friends.”
“Yes,” Burton grinned, pressing a button and pulling up the mural. It was beautiful, but jam packed with symbolism and colorful images of communists fighting for a revolution. She zoomed in a little bit right of center. “Lenin. The reason the originally commissioned mural, ‘Man at the Crossroads’ meant for Rockefeller Center, was destroyed. Rivera wouldn’t take Lenin out so he redid the mural here, calling it Man, Controller of the Universe. It was the big red scare, and the whole country, the whole world feared communism. He never budged. A communist through and through.”
Austin was nodding as Ferguson squinted his eyes to take in the painting a little better, wondering what she saw that he didn’t. She zoomed in a little further right.
“Leon Trotsky,” she grinned, as everyone nodded in agreement. “Also a communist through and through, ironically murdered by another communist and buried in Coyoacan. See what it says on the banner he’s holding?”
“Workers of the world unite,” Ferguson nodded.
“The Trotsky motto,” she smiled, glancing over at Connor as he grinned. “Also inscribed on his tombstone.” She clicked over to an image of his grave at his house in Mexico. The hammer and scythe were on the tombstone, a red flag flapping
in the wind above it.
“Is this why I got out of bed before six today?” Austin asked, arms still folded across his chest. “Your grandfather’s grave is well marked and well known to the world.”
“He’s not buried there,” she interrupted, clicking on the image of the cemetery by her house in Alexandria. No one even blinked. Trotsky’s grave was a Mexican landmark. Everyone knew that.
“Records show that he was buried next to his home where he was murdered,” Ferguson said, shifting his weight and shaking his head. “Where are you getting your information?”
“I was thinking,” she shrugged, wincing at the pain. “And you were both right. Austin, you thought there had to be a diary detailing some big secret. Ferguson, you thought that I was the secret.”
Austin glanced over at Ferguson. Obviously, it was a theory he hadn’t shared with the group. Burton took a breath and popped a pain pill, taking a sip of water before she continued.
“My father went to Mexico the year I was born. He visited the Palacio de Belles Artes and made such a big scene when he saw Rivera’s mural that he was kicked out and banned for life.” She pulled up an article in an old issue of a Mexico City newspaper. It was in Spanish. “It says that a man tried to desecrate a historical site and was kicked out. Anyway, I found this when I was younger and got curious. Who hates art? So I dug a little further, maybe sneaked around my dad’s office, and found his will and papers for when he died. Not of any consequence, he was older than dirt.”
Austin and Ferguson were standing very still, and Connor found himself leaning forward.
“He had a receipt for two plots at the cemetery. One for him, one for when my mom died, and then an older receipt for a mausoleum. A mausoleum, you ask?” she playfully said, clicking on a close-up image of the small marble building in the trimmed green grass. “Yes, a mausoleum with two inscriptions above the door. One in Latin. Hodie Christus Natus. Gloria in excelsis deo. Alleluia. It was something that was always said in my family. Kind of like grace.”
