by P A Duncan
His arm slung around Natalia’s shoulders, her arm around his waist, Alexei leaned on her, amazed by her strength. Good Ukrainian genes, he decided. The elevator chimed its arrival, and Alexei looked toward it. The doors split, and Mai emerged, clad in an ATF black utility uniform. Her eyes met his, shifted, became human.
He tried to communicate how pained, exhausted, and drained he was without alerting Natalia to his discomfort. Mai quickened her pace to his side and braced him against her.
“Mums,” Natalia said, “look what Popi can do. This is his second trip today.”
“Doctor’s orders?” Mai asked.
“Apparently, once they remove all the tubing, they expect you to run sprints in the hallways. At least, it feels that way,” Alexei said.
“He’s been good, Mums,” Natalia said, “but all the nurses keep flirting with him.”
“Are they now? I need to stick around.”
“I was offered a sponge bath,” Alexei said, “but I’d rather you do it.”
Mai wrinkled her nose. “How romantic.” She looked into his eyes and gave him a slight nod. “Natalia, do you have money?”
“Yes.”
“I’m dreadfully thirsty. Would you get me a Diet Coke from the snack bar in a cup with ice? I’ll walk Popi back to his room.”
“Sure, Mums.”
“How bad?” Mai asked when they were alone.
“Bad. I don’t want the pain meds so close together.” With Natalia gone, he didn’t bother to disguise his reaction to the pain.
“Can you make it back to the room?”
“Let’s not dawdle.”
By the time she eased him onto the bed, he knew he was dead weight. He sat, panting.
“I’ll get the nurse,” Mai said.
Alexei nodded; he knew if he tried to speak, he’d scream.
The nurses had become accustomed to Mai’s assertiveness where Alexei was concerned and responded with brisk efficiency when she asked for pain meds. Afterward, they helped her settle him in the bed.
“You know what they call you?” he asked.
“The nurses? I can only imagine.”
“Miss Pushy. They think I’m a saint for putting up with you.”
“Don’t think for a moment that’s becoming a nickname.”
He smiled. “Of course not.” His eyes moved to the end table by the bed. “A courier brought something to the hotel room. Olga dropped it off.”
Mai opened the drawer and took out an eyes-only envelope with her name on it and a broken seal.
“You looked at this?” she asked.
“Of course. Who is Taylor Cox?”
“Possibly Elijah. Carroll told me Elijah had been a POW during Desert Storm. Grace determined the Iraqis took twenty-three U.S. troops as POWs. All were back in the U.S. and accounted for, except one.” She scanned the paper she took from the envelope. “I wanted a brief profile.” She held the sheet of paper.
“Why?”
“When we get him, I want to interrogate him.” She slipped the paper back in the envelope.
Alexei’s frown deepened.
“Pain again?” she asked.
“No. Something about Elijah. Something I can’t remember. Never mind. The doctor said going home Friday is definite. I’ll fight the pain. I want to go home.”
“Me, too.”
“What happened?”
She tucked the covers around him. “Nothing. A long day.”
He grasped her hand, and she saw the scrapes and scratches from the explosion scabbed over, almost healed. She sat on the bed with him.
“It got bad at the end of today,” she said. “Walker and I found this little pair of legs jutting out from some debris. Legs and nothing else.”
His fingers tightened on her hand.
“Damn him,” she said. “The bastard. Why didn’t I listen to you?”
“You had no reason to think you wouldn’t succeed.”
“You knew.”
“He was at Patriot City. That said it all. Mai, let’s go home, lose this baggage, and prep the debrief, which we’ll deliver together.”
Home. To sleep in their own bed and live a placid, even bourgeois existence until the next mission.
Home. Where closure awaited.
57
Favors
Arlington, Virginia
Given his reputation and, on occasion, his actual behavior, people who knew Edwin Terrell would be surprised how often he slept alone. Alone, you slept in a bed; you shared it for sex.
Simple as that, but he was annoyed when the phone interrupted his solitary sleep.
The Caller ID showed an unfamiliar number, but only one or two people had the privilege of calling him any time.
He sat up, lit a cigarette, and picked up the receiver.
“Terrell,” he said, expelling a smoke-laden breath.
“Snake.”
“Yeah, Baby. What’s happening?”
“Nothing. Everything.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“A hospital in Kansas City.”
The thought she might be hurt made his heart race.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Alexei was touch and go, but he’s better.”
And I’d want to know that why, he thought.
He listened to her breathing from a thousand miles away. She wanted something but couldn’t ask, so he did.
“Wanna tell me what you need?” he said.
“I think you know.”
Terrell drew deep on the cigarette and exhaled, his thoughts going places he didn’t like. “Why?” he asked.
“He started this. I’ll finish it.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“No, that’s not what I want.”
Terrell stubbed the cigarette out and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d expected this. She wanted a reckoning. He wouldn’t stand in the way of that.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Is this official?”
“Would I ask for your help if it were?”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. If it’s not official, I have to take precautions. When?”
“I’m bringing Alexei home in a couple of days. Not for a few weeks, at least.”
Plenty of time for her to realize what she’d asked him for. “Call me when you’re home, and we’ll meet. I’ll give some thought to a plan.”
“I owe you, Snake.”
“Not for this.” He tugged another cigarette from his pack. “I’ll offer again to take care of it.”
“Justice is up to me.”
“Suspects are in custody. Justice will run its course.”
“Not for everyone.”
“Hey, I’m glad the old man is okay.”
“You’re not, but thanks.”
She hung up, and he listened to the carrier wave for a long time. He replaced the receiver in its cradle and resolved he was awake for the rest of the night now. You didn’t get asked for a favor like this and go back to sleep.
He lit the cigarette he held. Had he dreamed Mai Fisher had asked him to help her assassinate someone?
Mai didn’t leave missions unfinished, so no surprise she was present for the big blow. Who she blamed was the surprise.
In truth, he’d expected this call since the building in Missouri went sky high. Nor was he surprised at the object of her anger, or the only emotion she could access was vengeance.
He’d been in that place.
Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.
Only if you believed in God, and Terrell knew Mai Fisher believed only in herself. The vengeance was hers, as well it should be.
Kansas City, Missouri
Mai hung up the pay phone in the hallway and went back to Alexei’s room. He slept soundly, and she sat in the chair beside the bed. From the drawer, she took the courier’s envelope and read the profile inside, taking her time with it.
Grace Lydell had written, “Taylor Cox was a
POW for eleven days, but long enough he was almost tortured to death. He came out of a VA hospital addicted to painkillers and quickly moved on to heroin. The last his parents heard of him was summer 1991, when he called from Joplin, Missouri, asking for money, which they refused to send. When they heard nothing else from him, they assumed he was dead. Nothing in his Social Security record since before he joined the Army. No credit cards. No tax returns. No hits in the VA database. The Army gave him a medical discharge, but according to his DoD file, he protested that. He wanted an honorable discharge.”
Mai dredged what she could recall from Alexei’s debriefing. Elijah had told the Patriot City trainees Lewis had saved him from addiction.
Alexei had surmised Lewis started Patriot City in the late eighties, and he would have been looking for a young, dynamic leader he could manipulate. The 1991 timeframe worked. Lewis would have made Cox leave all of his old life behind.
And the disputed medical discharge… Perhaps that was one source of Elijah’s hatred of the government. She wouldn’t be surprised if he thought his capture by the enemy and his subsequent addiction were the government’s fault, too. That went to pattern. Other potential grievances might be part of his DoD file.
She continued to read.
“About six weeks after his parents turned down his request for money, they were killed in a home invasion. The worst West Warwick, Rhode Island, had ever seen. They were hacked to death in a fight that stretched throughout the whole house. The lead investigator said the place looked like a slaughterhouse. The police had no suspects, though some neighbors told them the couple had an addict son. The investigator found no trace of Cox at the crime scene. He came to the same conclusion as the parents—Taylor Cox was dead. The case remains unsolved. The house went to a cousin of Cox’s mother. She tore it down. Someone bought the lot from her and built a McMansion. Dead end—however, I’m sending someone to interview the cousin, posing as a journalist doing a story about POWs from Desert Storm. We might get something, but no promises.
“And I know what you’d say if you were here. We need to find Elijah. He won’t be satisfied with one federal building. Nelson thought perhaps you could work on Carroll again, but when he approached AG Vejar, he hit a stone wall.
“When you get home, I can give you more detail. Get some rest. That’s an order. Grace.”
“I follow those so well,” Mai murmured.
58
Indignities
Bukharin-Fisher Residence
Mount Vernon, Virginia
Two days past his fifty-second birthday, ten days after the bombing, two weeks after his and Mai’s seventeenth anniversary, one she’d spent obsessing over something they couldn’t prevent, Alexei Bukharin walked into his house.
Unlike when he’d returned from Patriot City, the house welcomed him. Here, he’d heal faster. Mai, Natalia, and Olga fluttered around him, like hens with a rooster.
The indignity came when he couldn’t climb the stairs to his bed, prompting Mai and Olga to make a seat of their arms to carry him. Your hens are strong, he thought, but kept himself from smiling, or he’d have to explain.
Stretched out on the bed, he dozed almost at once, though Mai’s and Natalia’s voices came to him.
“He’ll be fine, Natalia. Let him sleep.”
“He might need something, Mums. I’ll sit with him like before.”
“All right. Call your father later to tell him Popi is home.”
Alexei heard them discuss Mai’s going to school with Natalia on Monday to explain Natalia’s absence. Their voices faded. He slept.
With Alexei resting, Mai went into the office with her and Alexei’s guns. She cleaned them and put them away. In her laptop case, she found what Lucas Walker had given her: the stack of letters and the bag of used wet-wipes. She opened the fireplace doors, turned the fireplace on, and emptied the bag into the flames. As they burned, she sat at her desk and stared at the sealed letters.
What good would reading them do?
She slit each envelope open with a knife. Carroll had arranged them from oldest to most recent. She read them in that order. As she read, she heard his voice: excited, calm, angry, pleading. The manic nature of some letters bespoke meth use, though no drugs had been found on his person or in his car.
Drug use would be a mitigating factor, considering meth induced paranoia. The references in his letters to staying awake for days and nights to be alert for “them” were fodder for a defense forensic psychologist. He’d written about whether or not to cut the microchip out of himself. He’d raged about Lamar and Parker choosing their families over the mission. In the same letter, he expressed his envy of their “perfect families” and how he’d put his children above all else, too.
Of their last conversation in the Duvals’ trailer, he wrote, “I may not have shown it, but it was so good to hear your voice…. Sometimes I close my eyes, and I can hear you call me ‘Jay, lad.’”
The rationalizations about what he was going to do were shallow. Vengeance, justice, justice, vengeance, the dead children at Killeen.
She wanted to show him the half a baby she’d found. Did the images of the children he’d killed stalk his dreams as that one did hers?
The last letter read, “I miss letters from you. I should’ve kept one so I’d have something you’d touched. Sometimes I need to hear your voice so bad, I call your number to listen to your voice in the outgoing message. I know I shouldn’t have called so many times because that’ll show somewhere. I mean, if they came after you because of me, I’d never forgive myself.”
Mai hadn’t listened to any messages at the number set up for Irish Charities since she and Carroll had parted ways in December. She sent an email to Grace asking her to archive any messages at that number and to close the number down.
“But justice will at last be served,” she continued reading. “Once this is over, I can have a place of my own in Arizona, away from the conflicts my act will create. I’m excited because I made it happen, but I also want quiet and solitude, my own home, and you. I’d protect you, Siobhan. You’d never have to worry again. I keep that image in my head. You and me, somewhere safe. But I know what I’ll have to do if the fuses don’t work. Siobhan, if I have to do that, my only regret will be never seeing you again. I’m not sure about heaven, so I don’t know if we’ll find each other there. Even though that pains me, I know what I have to do.”
She’d done her job after all. The letters were full of his obsessive thoughts of her, but a good soldier didn’t let emotional encumbrances put him off a mission. She knew that too well. Whatever he’d come to feel for her, it hadn’t been enough.
The concluding paragraph of his last letter said it all: “That doesn’t mean I didn’t wish I could’ve gone away with you and left it all behind. I wish that had been an option… You meant everything to me… I don’t know how, but I’ll see you again.”
The letters held mitigating factors: his drug use, references to Elijah’s plan, his depression. The Directorate’s first protocol prohibited operatives from “engaging in any activity that would knowingly expose the organization and force the Secretary General to invoke plausible deniability.” Carroll’s lawyers could never see these letters.
Neither would Alexei. She wanted him well and whole. Reading how another man felt about her wouldn’t aid his recovery.
The letters and envelopes went into the fireplace, too.
All that remained to show her life had intersected with a disillusioned soldier was a photograph and a box of Black Talon bullets.
She picked up the phone, dialed Terrell’s number from memory, and left a message.
Alexei woke, unsure of the time, other than it was dark outside. He’d dreamt he was back in the hospital, and he looked around to convince himself otherwise. The lamp on his beside table was on, and Mai rose from the sofa to sit beside him on the bed, her hip at the indent of his waist. He felt the heat of her body and let it ease his aches. A shift of his hand an
d he clutched hers.
“Do you need some pain meds?” she asked.
“You’re all I need right now.”
“Bukharin, you hopeless romantic.”
“I have my moments.”
Her smile ebbed away. “You should know some things.”
“All right.”
She told him she’d read Taylor Cox’s profile. Alexei thought Taylor Cox was an uninspiring name. You needed a warrior’s name to make war. Elijah was all Alexei would ever call him, but he hoped never to hear the name again.
Again, something about Elijah tickled at his forebrain.
“No surprise that Brasseau has convinced Vejar to block your access to Carroll,” Alexei said, rubbing his face with his hands. “Tell Grace to go back over my mission notes. Recruits went by first names only at Patriot City, but when they introduced themselves at assembly, they gave their occupations and state of residence. She’ll probably shoot me after looking for Joe, a dentist from Oregon, but if we can find one or two, we might learn something. What else?”
Her expression grew more somber. “I waited until you were home to tell you this,” she said. “Karen Wolfe was a fatality.”
He remained silent and kept a reaction off his face.
“Don’t hold back because of me,” Mai said.
“That morning, I called the only number I knew in the building, the ATF office, to get an evacuation started. She answered. I told her about the truck in the parking lot, and she went to the window.”
The emotions and memories rushed in—the first time he and Karen had made love, when he’d needed to push away the faces of everyone he’d killed. Now, hers was one of them.
“Alexei, even if she hadn’t, it’s unlikely she would have survived. That whole section of the building was…gone. Lucas Walker and I went to her funeral. Walker had to say Kaddish, but I went because you couldn’t.”
“Mai, I wouldn’t—”
