The Last Refuge

SEVENTEEN

‘Amy’s been sight-reading from a collection of songs somebody put together in 1779. I guess they got tired of ye olde songs like “The Twins of Latona” because they’re up there right now singing songs from Stephen Foster. I’m OK with “I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair,” but when they get to “All de darkeys am a-weeping, Massa’s in de cold, cold ground…” Well, I’m here to tell you that not everyone feels the same way about Ole Massa.’

Karen Gibbs, cook

‘You shouldn’t have tried to get out of bed, you know.’ Someone was swabbing my hands and arms with warm water. A cool compress lay over my eyes. ‘There’s a bell on the table. Next time, madam, you use it.’

‘I’m sorry, French, but I had to pee.’

‘It’s not French, it’s Amy.’

I whipped off the compress, instantly alert. ‘Amy! My God, I’ve been so worried!’

Amy dipped the flannel in water, calmly wrung it out. ‘I can see that. But you needn’t have made yourself sick over it.’

‘Where…? How…?’

‘All in good time. You need to rest now.’ She concentrated on my hands, working the cloth between each of my fingers. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you needed me, Hannah.’

‘How long have I been out of it? I’ve lost all track of time.’

‘Just two days.’

‘Two?’

‘Uh huh. French told me they sent for the doctor. You’re such a troublemaker.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You should be. If you hadn’t been such a damn fool, your fever might have broken earlier.’

‘I had to pee,’ I explained again. I didn’t mention her missing iPhone.

‘The doctor came to see you again last night,’ Amy said. ‘Your blood sample was normal, he said. Best guess, you’ve got a bad case of flu. Wait a minute, I wrote it down.’ She reached into her pocket for a slip of paper, squinted as if trying to decipher the handwriting. ‘CDC H3N3,’ she read. ‘Ah, the Center for Disease Control says you had the H3N2 virus that’s making the rounds.’

‘The doctor came again?’ I had no recollection of that. I remembered dreams, weird and disjointed. Amy. Alex. Paul and the Phantom of the Opera duking it out.

‘You don’t remember?’

‘I had a long discussion with René Descartes about the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.’ I raised the arm she had just washed and pointed. ‘He sat right there at the foot of the bed and explained it all to me. What’s more amazing, is that I understood every word.’

‘Ah, that explains the French.’ Amy said, dropping the flannel back into the basin. ‘Je pense donc je suis. How’s your head?’

‘Better.’ Amy looked skeptical, so I said, ‘Really.’

‘I’m going to fetch you some broth. Are you up for that?’

‘Only if you promise to sit down next to the bed and tell me what’s been going on.’

‘First you eat.’

When Amy returned a few minutes later holding a tray, I asked, worried, ‘Is Derek in the room? Chad?’

‘No,’ Amy said. ‘Everyone’s off to see a production of The Beggar’s Opera in the Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre building down by the docks.’ She fluffed up my pillows and propped me up against them. She handed me a cup of yellow liquid with specks of green floating on top.

I took a cautious sip, ‘Bleah! It’s cold!’

‘It’s supposed to be cold. Pretend it’s vichyssoise.’

‘That’s a stretch.’ I took another sip and swallowed. ‘But I think it’s going to stay down.’

‘Good.’ Amy scooted the straight back chair closer to my bed and sat down on it. ‘So, where to start?’

‘At the beginning,’ I said. ‘At St Anne’s. In the restroom.’

‘I never even got to the restroom,’ Amy told me. ‘When I entered the vestibule, Drew was already there, waiting, thumbing through the brochures on the tract rack. He saw me, literally scooped me up, and the next thing I know, we’re in the back seat of a cab speeding out of town on Rowe Boulevard, heading straight for the airport.’

‘Where was he taking you?’

‘To the Four Points Sheraton at first, and then South America. Argentina, to be exact, in Flores, which is a yuppyfied barrio in the heart of Buenos Aires, or so I gather. You can get lost among thirteen million people, he says. Drew had it all laid on. False passports. A private plane. A suitcase of clothes for me, all bought for cash at Macy’s.’ She blushed. ‘He even remembered my size.’

‘So how come you aren’t in Argentina?’

Amy gave me a look.

Oh, I got it. First things first. The hotel. Sex.

‘But thank God for that,’ Amy continued, ‘because it gave me time to negotiate.’

‘Successfully, apparently.’

She nodded. ‘But it wasn’t easy.’

‘So, what future is there in it for you, Amy? Some sort of Do-it-Yourself Witness Protection Program?’

‘You could say that. In a few months, the Navy will declare Drew officially dead. I’m to collect the $100,000 survivor benefit and cash in his $450,000 life insurance policy. Then I join him. He’s arranged passports, as I said. New identities. He had training as an accountant, so he even got somebody to dummy up a convincing work history for him. Low-level jobs at large corporations where nobody will ever bother to check.’ She smiled grimly. ‘I was once a teacher. Ditto on my new résumé.

‘Drew is fluent in five languages, but I don’t even speak Spanish, so what kind of work can I do in Argentina? “You can learn,” he said. Ha! Honestly, Hannah, I married the man for better or for worse, and this is definitely for worse. He probably wants to keep me at home, barefoot and pregnant.

‘He looked different,’ she rattled on. ‘Sunburned, bleached, brittle, so… hard.’

‘It was pitch dark the night he visited me in your room. I never saw him, Amy.’

‘His hair is long now, tied back in a ponytail. It was always kind of dirty blond, but it’s been bleached almost white by the sun. And he’s no longer Drew, by the way. His name is Donald. I hate the name Donald.’

I had to agree. ‘I had an evil boss once named Donald. We amused ourselves by inventing devious ways to kill him. And there’s always Donald Duck.’

Amy laughed mirthlessly.

‘Drew knew how much staying on the show meant to you because I told him. Why did he risk getting you kicked off the show by taking you away?’

‘In a way, it’s the show that saved me, Hannah. He was going on about living in luxury for the rest of our lives. I let him think I was on board with it, too, but dammit, I don’t want to live life on the run. I’m not particularly close to my mother, but I have a sister, and a niece and a nephew, and I don’t want never to see them again. Besides, it’s been ten months. I have new friends now.’

‘New friends,’ I repeated. ‘Like Alex.’

Amy fell back against the chair. ‘You noticed?’

‘I stumbled across the two of you in the service staircase one day.’

‘Shit.’

‘He’s been worried sick about you, Amy.’

‘Oh, Hannah, what am I going to do about Alex? I’m sweet on him, sure, but now that Drew’s back in the picture…’ She leaned forward, grabbed my hand. ‘Alex doesn’t know about Drew, and if Drew finds out about Alex, I hate to think what might happen!’

‘Maybe you need to let Alex down gently,’ I suggested.

‘Alex is such a sweet, gentle spirit,’ Amy said, ‘while Drew…’

‘Doesn’t Drew have family?’ I asked. ‘Other than you, I mean.’

‘His father was killed in Vietnam, in the final days during the fall of Saigon. His mother died of cancer when Drew was only twelve. Drew’s grandmother raised him, but when she died…’ Amy shrugged. ‘I’m the only family he has. Everything Drew loves goes away.’

‘If he wanted you to stay with him so badly, Amy, how on earth did you escape?’

Amy shrugged. ‘I gave him some of the best sex he’s ever had, and in the afterglow, I put him off. I pointed out something that should have occurred to him in the first place if he hadn’t been thinking with his… you know. It would only attract attention if I disappeared from the show in midstream. 60 Minutes and 48 Hours would be all over it.’ Amy held an imaginary microphone to her mouth, stared at me intently and said, ‘Why would the young widow of a Navy SEAL run away from the set of a major television show? Where is she hiding? And why? Stay tuned. We’ll be right back.

‘If I wait until the show is over, I pointed out to him, then I could leave without comment, not have to worry about a million-dollar lawsuit, collect his insurance money, shave my eyebrows, dye my hair black or whatever, join him in Argentina, and I’d even be $15,000 to the better.’

‘But, if you don’t intend to run away with Drew, what are you planning to do?’

Amy’s face clouded up. ‘I don’t know, Hannah. I’m just trying to buy a little time while I work it all out.’

‘I hate to sound like an old mother hen, but I’d give it some careful thought because it doesn’t sound like Drew is willing to leave without you.’

‘Oh, Hannah, I used to be so in love with that guy! But, now? I can’t go away with him, Hannah. Drew is not the same man I married. He’s changed. He’s hard, cynical. I don’t know whether it’s PTSD or what, but if I met him today, we’d never get past the first date.’

Drew had told me a little bit about the incident in Swosa, but I wanted to get details from Amy. ‘Did he ever fully explain to you why he’s on the run? I figure it has to be more than wanting the insurance money.’

‘If the Navy found out he was alive after all this time, he’d be subject to courts martial. In Swosa? Drew was the triggerman. The Swosians had closed-circuit TV in the bedroom at the palace, so they got it all on tape. If the Swosa loyalists knew Drew had escaped, they would be all over him, too. Alive, everyone would be out to get him. Dead.’ She shrugged. ‘Dead is better.’

‘There were tapes?’ Drew hadn’t mentioned that. Possibly he didn’t know.

‘You bet. When the Navy were shown the tapes, they were embarrassed, but at least they don’t have to parade Drew out before a congressional subcommittee to explain why he murdered a foreign national when he wasn’t authorized to do so. And the Swosians believe that the triggerman died with all the others when one of their brave boys shot down the helicopter after being fatally wounded himself. With Drew dead, no loose ends. On either side.’

‘As long as he stays dead.’ I set my empty broth cup back down on the tray.

‘Right.’ Amy took the tray from where it rested on my knees and set it on the floor outside the service entrance to my room. ‘Dex!’ she yelled down the service stairway. ‘Come fetch the tray!’

While she waited for Dex to appear, Amy said, ‘I don’t need the money, not desperately, but Drew does, and since he’s dead, he needs me to get it for him.’ She held the door open, occasionally checking for Dex over her shoulder. ‘He can move to Argentina as far as I’m concerned. Once the money comes to me, I’ll send it all to some bank account in Buenos Aires.’ She flashed a smile. ‘But don’t tell Drew that. He still thinks I’m coming with him.’

‘Amy, if the authorities find out you’ve done that, you could go to jail for fraud.’

‘Nobody will find Drew unless he wants them to. I’m convinced of that. Losing his parents at an early age made him tough.’

‘He’s AWOL, big time. Isn’t he worried that he’ll be caught?’

‘Not Drew. Remember that line in The Right Stuff where Dennis Quaid is driving a convertible and asks his wife who’s the best pilot she’s ever seen, and that she’s looking at him? Well, that’s Drew. He pumps up his abs and says, “I’m a U.S. Navy SEAL. I’m trained not to be caught.”’

‘I can believe that,’ I said. ‘He made it out of Swosa alive, and not many men would be able to accomplish that. Did he tell you the story? It’s been more than ten months. Why did it take him so long?’

‘Naturally, he had no money, no passport. He was on foot. It took him weeks to make his way out of Swosa and over the border into Tanzania. Eventually, he ended up in Dar es Salaam, where he hung out on the beach with all the other ex-pats until he hooked up with an American sailboat captain looking for crew. The guy was circumnavigating, and in no hurry, so Drew simply signed on. I gather the lack of a passport wasn’t a problem.’ She grinned. ‘Drew can be pretty convincing. When the boat finally made it to the U.S., Drew jumped ship and disappeared into a crowd of tourists in Charleston. That was a month ago. He’s been hiding out in that hotel by the airport ever since, keeping an eye on me, making plans.’

There’ll be a New York Times bestseller out of this, I thought, by Drew Cornell as told to whom? Tom Clancy? Or maybe it’d be the other way around: BY TOM CLANCY and drew cornell. A movie later, I’ll bet, produced by, directed by and starring Tom Cruise. An EA computer game. The possibilities were endless.

Watching Amy bustle about my bedroom, tending to my wrinkled gowns, straightening up, rather than being holed up in a hotel room with a sex-starved fugitive made me enormously happy. ‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ I said, as she helped me change into a clean, white shift that smelled like fresh soap and sunshine.

Since Amy had broken more clauses in her contract than a shady real-estate developer, I wondered why Jud Wilson had agreed to let her come back. Was Derek right? Was Amy too mediagenic a ‘product’ to let slip through their fingers?

‘What happened after you left Drew?’

‘He gave me some cash, put me in a cab, and the cab brought me here. I simply walked in through the kitchen door.’

‘Brazen hussy.’

‘Damn right! Karen gave me a big hug, but I must have set off an alarm somewhere because Jud Wilson appeared after about fifteen minutes and marched me into the conference room. You should see it, Hannah! Long walnut table, upholstered chairs. Very deluxe.’

‘I can imagine. So, what did you tell him?’

‘When he asked why I’d run away, I lied. Karen told me that Jack had once cornered her in the kitchen, so I said he’d made a pass at me, too. Said I freaked. I told Jud I didn’t think I could hack it, being recently widowed and all, so I took a few days off to think.’

I wasn’t exactly in love with Jack, but still, pinning a sexual harassment charge on the jerk seemed a little harsh. ‘Amy, you didn’t!’

Amy puffed air. ‘You know what Jud told me? They knew all about the incident between Jack and Karen, too. Seems Jack snuck down to the kitchen one night where Karen caught him red-handed eating a piece of pie with his fingers, right out of the pie plate. He was a little tipsy, and he backed Karen into the corner. Smeared cherry pie juice all over her breast before she clocked him with a rolling pin.’

I laughed out loud at the picture.

‘They caught it all on tape, Hannah. Jud said the viewers were going to love the way Karen told him off. If she’d been a real slave, he told me, she’d have been whipped after that. Probably ended up on the auction block, too.’

I cringed, thinking how glad I was to be living in the twenty-first century. ‘I can’t wait to see how the show comes out when it finally goes on the air.’

‘At least I won’t be watching it from Buenos Aires.’

‘Tell me something,’ I said later as Amy was brushing my hair. ‘You mentioned that Drew’s new name is Donald. What’s the name on your fake passport?’

‘Angela,’ she said. ‘Angela Clark. Do I look like an Angela to you?’

‘Probably to Drew you did.’

‘In his dreams.’