Destiny

FIFTY-NINE

Sam Quincy could feel the prop blast from the choppers descending into the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. He lay on his back, his blood mixing with the rich mud from the swamps, a single round from an AK-47 through one leg, shattering his femur. Dead and dying men scattered all around him. They were boys mostly — some young as eighteen, talking to God, others crying for their mothers.

Sam opened his eyes, the delta of South Vietnam dissolved into the still grey of a dawn filling his family room. He looked at the oaks and pines through the bay window. He tried to sit from the near prone position in his recliner, blankets up to his chest. Sam could taste the morphine in his mouth, smell it in his pores along with the stench of rotting organs inside his body. He managed to adjust the chair to a sitting position.

He thought about his granddaughter held captive in Iran, his conversation with Alicia; and through the haze of drugs, he remembered an obscure detail of World War II that he’d discovered in his research years ago. It was mentioned to him by a veteran who had been a chief assistant to one of the U.S. lawyers who prosecuted members of the Third Reich in the Nuremberg Tribunals. The man had spent a few days in the liberated Dachau concentration camp in Germany, saw the bodies stacked like cordwood, the adult survivors resembling human skeletons, unable to stand or speak, eyes wide and welling with tears like warehoused, abused and abandoned children.

Sam closed his eyes for a moment, and then he looked across the family room where Helen slept in the fetal position under a quilt, her face traced with worry even under the illusion of rest. Sam wanted to get out of the damned chair and walk to her, to lie down with Helen and simply hold her. Just one more time. One more morning to wake up by her side in their bed. But he could no longer stand on his own.

He closed his eyes and concentrated. The WWII veteran, what the hell was his name? Better write it down for Alicia. He struggled to reach the pad of paper and pen on the table-lamp. “C’mon body…move again,” he mumbled, unable to get close enough. Sam found his cell phone on a small stand next to his chair. He called Alicia.

“Hi, Daddy,” came her voice through a vapor of awakened slumber. He knew she tried to sound alert.

“Hey, sweetheart…I know it’s early, but I remembered some information, something that might help, since you were asking about that spear.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m whispering because I don’t want to wake up your mom. Also, I wanted to share a sunrise with you.”

“That’s so sweet.”

“Alicia, a vet from the big war, Lawrence J. Foster — met him at a VFW in Charlottesville. Anyway, he worked as a prosecutor’s assistant in the Nuremberg Tribunals and later took a job with the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA. He told me a soldier by the name of Marcus…don’t know if that’s his first or last name…and another man had foiled an attempt by Stalin to find that spear you mentioned. Stalin wanted to bring it to Russia, and he’d handpicked his top assassin to bring it back. The story goes that this Marcus knew somebody even better than the man Stalin chose. The man was a spy in the French Resistance…last name of Fournier. Probably long since dead. I heard he was very good as an operative and a pain in the ass to Germany and Russia. He could have sold the Spear of Destiny to anyone with a big bank account.”

“If it’s true, this sounds like the accident involving Patton was anything but an accident. Maybe someone wanted him hurt or killed in order to find and steal the spear.”

“That’s a possibility. Most of the theories in this direction say if Patton was taken out, and that’s a big if, it was because someone wanted him silenced since a few people feared he was going to eventually drag the nation into a war with the Soviets.”

“Dad, the man named Marcus, was his first name David?”

“David, I think. Yes, that was his name.”

“Maybe Stalin never took possession of the spear. What happened to Foster, the man who shared his story with you?”

“That’s been at least twenty years ago. I haven’t seen him since.” Sam coughed, felt his heart flutter.

“Are you okay, Dad?”

There was long pause as Sam tried to regulate his breathing, his pulse erratic, blood pressure dropping. “Sweetheart…”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Look out that bedroom window of yours, Alicia. See this gorgeous new day greeting you?”

“Yes, Daddy, I see it.”

Sam stared though the bay window into his back yard, many of the trees now without leaves, a powdering of frost on the ground. He smiled when a chipmunk stood on the wooden deck banister, rocking back on its hindquarters and rotating a small acorn in its paws, nibbling through the shell.

“It’s a fine world, sweetheart. A world we should be proud of and protect.”

“It is a fine world, Dad, and it’s a splendid sunrise.”

The light from the dawn filled Sam’s face with a radiance he’d never seen in his life. He was young again, running through the fields and vineyards near his boyhood home in Northern California. Sam eased back in his chair and looked at his sleeping wife. “Tell your mother, sister and my granddaughter how much I love them,” he whispered, his eyes meeting the rising sun. “I love you, Alicia.”

“I love you too, Daddy.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“I’m home, in the vineyards of Napa Valley, and it’s a grand morning…as you said…it’s splendid…”

“Daddy…are you okay? Dad…please…don’t…”

“It’s a beautiful sunrise…you see it, Alicia?”

“Yes, Dad…it is…please, don’t go.” Tears streamed down Alicia’s cheeks.

Sam was smiling and walking through vineyards in the spring, the vines exploding with tiny blossoms, the herbal fragrance sweet. He inhaled the baby’s breath of a new season, his weak heart beating for a final moment, a moment he shared with his daughter.

“Daddy…we love you, too. We love you so much.” Alicia stared at the sunrise, tears streaming down her cheeks.