The Ransom of Black Stealth One

EPILOGUE

The javelin’s tires hummed a song of gray slush and skittishness as Dar Weston wheeled from the beltway toward Potomac and a fireplace that needed only a match to make the afternoon absolutely perfect. That and hot chocolate with brandy, he amended. She had loved the stuff since the days when it was forbidden. Tires like these were definitely not for January weather, but Dar had not expected his retirement to feature many trips, certainly not a jaunt to and from Baltimore on a moment’s notice. A block from the house, he made a turn just a few degrees too tight and felt the Javelin’s rear end slip before straightening. He glanced at his passenger.

“Don’t mind me, I’ll just eat my knuckles,” Petra said brightly. Her tone said that a little fishtailing was of no concern. Then, looking ahead: “What on earth happened to the edge of your carport?”

Dar turned in at his driveway. “Don’t ask,” he said. “Been meaning to fix it, but somehow I never seem to get around to it. And don’t imagine I did it, Pets, I may be retired but I’m not senile enough yet to collide with my own carport.”

He would have taken her two small overnight bags inside but neither of them would be staying the night. When she had called, she’d given him choices: pick her up at the Greyhound station in Baltimore and take her to Dulles in hopes of a flight to Hartford, or spend the balance of the day with her at his home in Potomac and then drive her to Old Lyme that night. Or let her continue by bus. That, thought Dar, was never a likely choice and, bless her, she knows it. She also wants me to help her take some heat from Phil and Andrea when she gets home. And I will, and she knows that too.

“You’ll never be old, Uncle Dar,” said the young woman, sliding her arm around his waist in a hug too powerful for most women her size. The hug made him miss the keyhole in the kitchen door, but Dar did not complain.

She skipped up the three steps into the kitchen, snapping on the light without looking, as if she owned the place—which might as well be true, Dar thought. I need no higher compliment. In the light, Petra’s tanned features radiated health that seemed a reproach to other women. “Been skiing, have you?”

“No,” she said, touched her sun-bleached hair, and laughed. “Looks like it, huh? The truth is, I feel an awful slut for taking off like this over Christmas holidays when Mother and Dad expected me, but—I’ll be starting winter term knee-deep in snow, Uncle Dar! This is a beach tan, I’ll have you know.” She strolled with him to the living room, a place of lounge chairs and incongruously modern lamps, made untidy by the scatter of books. She returned his smile. As he knelt to light the crumpled paper beneath oak logs, she stood behind him, fingertips touching his shoulders. More seriously, now: “Tell me it’s okay with Mom and Dad—but tell me the truth.”

He laughed into the growing blaze, then stood up and hugged her to him. “The truth,” he said gently, “is that it’s not okay yet. But it will be, a half hour after you kiss Andrea hello.” He released her and pointed to one of his recliner chairs, taking the other. “The greater truth is that the right thing to do isn’t always the thing people recommend.”

She flopped into the chair like a child. “That sounds funny, coming from you. Tell me honestly: would you have said that before—you know.”

She doesn’t want to say, “before you were canned.” “Probably not, Pets. But I knew it, all the same.”

The blaze had caught nicely now, licking up through the smaller split pieces, searing into oak bark that hissed in protest. “If it bothers you to talk about it,” she said with some hesitation.

He waved her reticence away, staring at the flame as if mesmerized. “Truthfully? A little, Pets, but sometimes you have to talk to someone.” His voice lowered, the words falling from his reverie as if from a great height: “And there is no one I would rather talk with than you.”

“I feel the same way. Always did,” she said. “I wonder why, Uncle Dar.”

“You’re the daughter I never had,” he said. Ah, God, the day Andrea’s will is read, she will remember this moment. I hope she forgives us all when that day comes.

There was no irony in her murmured, “Yeah, I guess. You remember our truth game, back when my waist and hips and boobs were all the same measurement? No fudging, and tough questions, and promise to love each other no matter what the answers?”

“I seem to recall it,” he said. Could I forget? I lied to you in those days, reassuring you that the world was a nicer place than it is.

“I need to play it again.”

“Why?”

She grinned and stuck her tongue out. “Let that be your first question, then.”

He laughed outright. “Okay, then it is. Why?”

She held her grin, but Dar could see that beneath the surface lay fear. “Because I need to understand how much I owe you.”

She knows, he thought, holding her gaze. She is going to ask me about her real mother. And God help us both, I will tell her. “Good enough. Now your question.”

“Dad thinks you sacrificed your career to try and save my life last summer. How much truth is in that?”

“Some,” he nodded, feeling his heart leap because she could still retain a fragment of innocence in a world full of deceit and, worse yet, stupidity. She would not cry, he knew. He knew because he had seen her this way before, denying tears of regret. He went on quickly, to help her. “You have to understand, Pets, it was a thing that I did without regret. Not then; not now. It may have been the first entirely right thing I’d done for—oh—twenty years or so.

“And there were other factors involved, decisions that had nothing to do with you. Right is a hard thing to know, honey. You think you’ve done it, and you find out you were wrong. The utter and total truth is, I’m glad it all worked out this way. Now, for my next question,” he said, and cleared his throat importantly, earning her full attention. “I know you wouldn’t go hurtling off to some sunbaked hell by yourself.” She began to smile again. “So what’s he like? And if you tell me what they are like, or she is like, I intend to throw myself into the fireplace.”

Her turn to laugh, his to feel relief. “He’s— maybe more mature than the other guys I’ve known. In some ways he’s probably a little like you. He makes me laugh. He’s a gentle thug, a little overweight, and he loves me and no, I don’t intend to marry him yet. Maybe not ever. And God, do we have fun!”

“Any money?”

“Quite a bit,” she said. “International trade. That’s two questions, but I’m big-hearted. Now: I know who the people are who tell me to do things I think I shouldn’t do. Maybe you don’t want to name names, exactly; but what people told you what kinds of things that made you defy them? I didn’t put that very well, I know.”

He leaned back, eyes closed. “I think it started with Eisenhower,” he said.

“Jesus freeze us! I was thinking more like family stuff.”

“No, I did a lot of stupid things in the name of family; probably should have defied them. But I didn’t. I was raised with noblesse oblige in my pablum, Pets. This country is a lot of shitty things, but not as shitty as all the other countries. Anything that threatens the American way of life— with all its damnfoolishness—was something to fight against.”

Petra’s astonishment bordered on awe. “You fought President Eisenhower?”

“No. But I should have, when he did things I knew were dangerous to all of us.” He opened his eyes again, turned toward her. “It’s no secret that people like me are valued for something called ‘balance.’ But the same folks who value us for it, sometimes set courses that would upset that big, tippy balance we call peace. Our leaders think they’re right, of course. Usually they are. But what do you do when you know they aren’t? When they undermine that delicate balance, risk pulling down a nuclear curtain over us all to gain some little edge that isn’t worth that risk? The so-called correct answer is, you’re a warrior; you obey orders. And I did, generally.”

“That’s not defiance.”

“Not openly. Sometimes I raised hell, though.” And now I’m holding back with weaselwords like “generally.” God almighty, what else should I do in this child’s game? “Now, my question: where’d you go for your holiday?”

“Oh, shit,” she said, coloring under her tan. “That’s not fair. Would you believe Cabo San Lucas?”

He simply stared at her, a smile beginning to play around his mouth. “As in Baja?” She nodded. “You didn’t take a goddamn bus to the tip of Baja,” he said. “You must’ve flown.”

“He has his own plane,” she said, so offhandedly that he knew it was important to her.

“Must be a jet,” he said.

“No, just a single-engined something or other. Hey, what’re the chances of getting some—”

“Hot chocolate,” he finished for her. “I’ve already made it. In the fridge.”

She was already up, moving to the kitchen. “That’s not what I call hot.”

“It is after two minutes in the microwave. Nuke me a cup too; the brandy’s in here.”

“Ohh, great,” she said, rummaging unseen in the kitchen. He heard her cluttering among his old cups and relaxed in the simple joy of hearing his daughter amuse herself. “Well hello there, you old panhandler,” she said, still in the kitchen. “I suppose you want some too. Well, tough; but here’s some half-and-half. Been keeping out of trouble? Not if I know you, you old fart.” The microwave oven began to hum. Calling over it, she said, “Uncle Dar? I know this is way out of line, but are you really and truly retired? I mean, are you ever likely to go back?”

“That’s your last question. Yes, I am completely and irrevocably retired. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to drag me out of retirement and if they did, I wouldn’t.”

The ping of the microwave oven gave him an audible exclamation point. She bustled into the room carrying mugs, each with a marshmallow melting into foam atop pungent hot chocolate. “I’m glad you’re out of it. Oh-oh, look who’s followed me. I thought I’d bought him off with a saucer of cream.” She sat down carefully, patted her lap as Dar hauled the brandy bottle from behind a book. The cat jumped into her lap and fixed its fatuous gaze on her marshmallow.

Dar poured, replaced the bottle, claimed his seat. “So here’s my last question, Pets: when do I get to meet this man of yours?”

She sipped, he decided, to buy time. “He knows a little about you. I don’t know, I’ll ask him about it sometime.”

Dar sipped, watching her carefully. “Pets, through no fault of your own you are privy to some things that no young woman should know. I can’t express too strongly the fact that you must never—never—talk to anyone about the things you went through last summer. Just how much do you know about this man of yours?”

“Enough to know he’s not interested in pumping me for information,” she said evenly. “I know what you’re getting at. He’s not some Russian spy.”

I know he’s not. I know exactly who he is, the dirty, dirty son of a bitch. International trade, hm? Single-engined something, hm? Well, our people think the Sovs got Black Stealth One, and the Sovs think we snookered them, and the GRU is chasing its tail over lost money. And Corbett has my daughter; I wish I knew how it feels to have a cup that full I guess it is time to play the man, Master Weston, and know when you’re beaten. “However much you trust him, whoever he is, Pets, there are some things you must never discuss with anyone, just as sure as you love me.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, things Kyle Corbett told you. The mere mention of such things could still cause me”—he paused to compose an immense understatement— “a certain amount of discomfort.”

Her smile was warm, sympathetic. “Do you mean to say my uncle actually regrets a decision enough to deny it?”

He studied the fire for moments before he replied. “My country, or my best friend: regret is designed into decisions like that, Petra. I imagined that I could opt for my country with a clear conscience. Wrong; that decision haunted me for years.” And I will pay for it forever now, it seems. “I only knew that Kyle became curious about— something; someone. Something as silly as imitation shrubs, actually. Someone learned what was not to be learned, and Kyle was one of the people due to be interrogated about it. He would have answered honestly. And that would have been a disaster. He never underwent that interrogation.”

“What’s wrong with just answering honest,” she began, but stopped when she saw his expression, a look that combat troops call the thousand-yard stare.

“It would have taken a crucial player out of action. It would have certainly disturbed that balance I was talking about, a balance that two hundred and forty million Americans depend on whether they know it or not.” And I still believe that Sasha kept the balance! I must believe it, Kyle…

“If that was your reason, I should think you could live with it. Nobody’s right every time,” she said gently. “Except God. Were you playing God?”

“Somebody has to do it,” he said, “but not forever.”

“Well, the guy survived it. Ironic, huh?”

He tried to smile without showing the pain. “Ironies beyond measure. Pets, mine was an error you must never discuss, not even with me after this. Promise?”

“Cross my heart,” she said, gesturing to seal the oath. She took a dollop of marshmallow foam on a finger; offered it to the cat. “Better than mice, hm?”

The cat licked her finger, and Dar Weston’s smile broadened. “It won’t keep him from hunting them, though. Birds, too. I probably should get him fixed.”

“No-o,” said Petra, nuzzling the tiger-striped torn. “Then he’d just be plain Ivan, and not your Ivan the Terrible.”