Eden in Winter (17 page)

‘It was a message about integrity and risk, the idea that a man should have of himself. It was how Ben strove to live, and drove me to live.’

Adam paused, caught in images he once had cherished. Then he decided to give them to her.

‘My own training started early,’ he went on. ‘When I was six, Ben began taking me to a baseball diamond in West Tisbury. At first, the bat felt almost too heavy to lift. But Ben pitched slowly, underarm, until I learned to time the contact of bat with ball. Every session got harder; each time, I got better, a little more confident. Finally, he deemed me fit for the ultimate challenge – facing his alter ego, Ace Blaine, the fearsome pitcher for the hated New York Yankees, the Red Sox’s bitter rival, the pin-striped scourge of Boston’s hope of winning a pennant after forty years of heartache.

‘In these imaginary – but, to a seven-year-old, very real – contests, it was always the last game of the season, and the Red Sox and Yankees were playing for the pennant Boston fans had craved for decades. Their hopes were all on me. I was the Red Sox’s entire line-up, all nine batters, faced with batting against the fearsome Ace, whose swagger and towering ego were a parody of Ben’s own. The game was always played at Fenway Park, in front of a rabid crowd; it was always the last of the ninth inning, with the Sox one run down, and the gloating Ace smelling another humiliation for the entire city. And the Sox – meaning me – had to get three hits to load the bases, then drive in two runs to win.

‘The fans were going crazy, the broadcaster – also Ben – building tension with each pitch. As for me, I was carrying
the burdens of an entire team, and my heart was in my throat.’

He could feel it still, Adam realized – heart beating, muscles taut, nerves jangling with apprehension and yet this strange adrenalized exhilaration, the nascent belief that he lived to face down challenges. In high school and college, his apparent nervelessness had awed his teammates. Now it kept him alive.

‘Remarkably, I later realized, at times both the broadcaster and the ferocious Ace lost track of the count, allowing four strikes before I hit the ball. For a great athlete, Ace was also an erratic fielder, who sometimes made inexplicable errors when I slapped a pitch right back at him. Every so often, with two outs, Ace would blow a third strike right by me – teaching me that I couldn’t always win, would sometimes have to bear up under defeat until the next time. But more often than not, I triumphed, and I learned to thrive on challenge and adversity. And I could see through the veneer of Ace’s disappointment and frustration how much that pleased the man I loved more than anyone in the world.

‘Later on, I understood that he was training me to be nerveless under pressure, the one who never folded. I still carry that, his gift to me.’

Gazing at these words on the screen, Adam felt a tightness in his throat. Before his breach with Ben, he had always cherished this memory; later, he had refused to remember it at all. Now it hurt.

Sitting back, he steepled his fingers. Ben, who was not his father, had nearly destroyed Adam’s life. His true father, Jack, had killed him. Now Adam concealed this from the world. From Carla.

Still, for her sake, he forced himself to go on.

‘There were other people in my family, of course. I knew my mother loved me, and she had a sense of fun then, the desire to do new things. She was at her best when Ben wasn’t around, and she could have life the way she wanted it. And Jack – my uncle, then – was a calming presence, much gentler than his brother. As for my own brother, I loved him; Teddy was always good to me, no matter what a nuisance I was, and I admired his talent even then. When it became apparent that he was gay, I was the one who confronted Ben on Ted’s behalf.

‘But that was later. It was Ben who taught me to love the outdoors, and gave me a model of success – determined, unsparing of himself, unwilling to accept anything less than the best. He showed me how to compete; when I was older, he gave no quarter, and expected none.’ Here Adam paused, caught by a brief, wrenching image of Jenny Leigh. ‘I’ve never forgotten what he told me about how to face the world. “Don’t make excuses for what you’ve already done, and don’t complain if people dislike you for it. Don’t whine, feel sorry for yourself, or hide from your mistakes. The past is dead; all you can change is the future. So learn, and move on.”

Easier to say
, Adam thought,
when you are the protagonist
 – although, in the end, it seemed that Ben himself had not quite outrun the damage he had done to Jenny. But Ben had also passed on his test for friendship, developed when, as a young man with no money and no prospects, he had observed the underside of the Chilmark social scene, which he had scathingly labelled, ‘high school for the rich and vapid’.

‘“If you want a friend,” he admonished me, “don’t choose the insecure, the envious, or the needy. They’re the ones who
will sell you out. Those you can trust are confident and secure, men and women who like their lives, and don’t have to meet their needs at your expense. So no gossips, back-stabbers, or celebrity fuckers. No one who has to tell you who they know, what they own, how important they are, or whose self-concept depends on the acceptance of others. The only people who can truly care about you are those who are sufficient unto themselves.”’

Here, Adam paused again. In his own experience, this last was largely true. But he wondered now whether Ben was also saying that he, himself, was too flawed to be trusted – or, perhaps, that his own resentments of Adam for existing were too great. Growing up, Adam had seen many of Ben’s flaws: too much drinking; Ben’s derisiveness and harshness; the whispers about women he never bothered to deny; his growing compulsion to compete with Adam – his own son, or so Adam had thought. But he had never expected Ben’s last brutal violation of his trust, because Adam had not known that he was at the heart of his family’s bitter secrets. Knowing this was no help now, except to explain what could not be helped. The past, as Ben had told him, was dead.

Except that it lived on in the woman he was reaching out for, if only through a letter.

The cell phone on his desk rang, the one he used for secure calls.

‘They agree with you,’ Hollis said without preface. ‘So far, your Afghan’s background checks out – what he told you about himself is true, at least as far as it goes. But they want you to test him, ask for more information. Who’s in charge of the village, a detailed description of the house
he claims our boy is being held in – walls; windows; whether the doors swing in or out. Tell him you want pictures, if possible.’

Adam tensed – the information they wanted was necessary to an assault plan. ‘All that’s fine,’ he answered. ‘But if this is a trap, they’ll be more than glad to give it to us.’

‘We know that. At the next meeting, you’ll give him a surveillance device disguised as a rock, which contains a box that picks up telephone calls or voices and relays them to N.S.A. in the States. You’ll have it by this afternoon. Make sure this guy knows the equipment is valuable, then ask him to plant it near where he says they’re keeping Bergdahl. If he sells it, then we know he’s slippery or a double. If he plants it, then we’ll see whether there are any voices we can match to known Al Qaeda people. We may even pick up clues as to whether they’re actually hiding someone.’

Adam gazed out the window in the direction of Pakistan, the no-man’s-land where any assault force would have to go. ‘But if he’s working for Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and not just a scammer, he might do that just to set us up.’ He hesitated, thinking as he spoke. ‘Of course, that would expose the colonel to a lot of danger. If
he’s
selling us to the Taliban, he’d have to think his own neck was on the chopping block. So either this Afghan is legitimate, or he’s doubling the colonel
and
us.’

Hollis laughed softly. ‘Yeah, that’s where we wound up. So get your new friend going, quickly. When he’s done, we’ll figure out what to do.’

Adam hung up, his own misgivings a knot in the pit of his stomach. He wondered how much of this was due to Carla
Pacelli, and whether his effectiveness was already compromised. Wanting to live could kill.

Typing a last cursory paragraph, he hit the Send button.

Head bent over her unfinished dinner, Carla lapsed into a half-conscious reverie, her thoughts like shadows in the candlelight.

Even in the dregs of her addiction, she had never felt this solitary. She had known in an instant that her spotting might precede a miscarriage – her mother’s accounts of the five heartbreaking losses preceding her own birth, a prelude to telling the teenaged Carla what a miracle she was, had darkened every day of her pregnancy. But the rushed visit to her doctor had confirmed her fears.

A trim, pleasant man in his forties, Dr Dan Stein had an easy way of talking, meant to mute his patients’ anxieties. But there was no changing his admonition. ‘You’re at risk of a miscarriage,’ he told her after closing his office door. ‘But there are things you can do to help – no sex, no strenuous activity, as little moving around as you can manage. If possible, I suggest you go someplace where all you do is loll in bed.’

Sitting across from him, Carla thought of her mother, and then her father. ‘Not possible. And a long plane flight would be risky, wouldn’t it?’

The doctor nodded. ‘Your job is to take this baby as close to term as you can. We’re pretty good at dealing with premature births – especially if we can get you to Boston before delivery. In the meanwhile, do you have someone who can do your shopping and drive you to appointments?’

Once again, Carla realized how isolated she was. She had come to Martha’s Vineyard to heal herself, not to seek the company of others; with the baby’s father dead, and Adam gone, the only people she saw with any frequency were fellow alcoholics at A.A. meetings. ‘I can find someone,’ she said at length.

The doctor considered her a moment. ‘There’s something else,’ he ventured. ‘I want to give you an ultrasound and send the results to a specialist.’

Carla sat straighter. ‘Is there some problem with the baby?’

He’s not a baby yet
, she imagined Stein thinking. ‘I’m certainly not saying that, Carla. This is a precaution.’

‘So what is it that worries you?’

The doctor tilted his head slightly – in his body language, Carla had discerned, a signal of unease. ‘Nothing, yet. Your spotting could simply reflect the difficulties your mother had, back when foetal care wasn’t nearly this advanced. But it could also suggest a potential anomaly. For your sake, I’d like to rule that out.’

Mute, Carla nodded. Unable to look at him now, she gazed at the tile floor.

‘Just take care of yourself,’ Stein said gently, then felt
compelled to add, ‘If you feel the baby isn’t moving, please call me right away.’

Carla had made it to the car before she felt tears in her eyes.
We’ll make it
, she had promised her son.
No matter what’s wrong, I’ll take care of you
.

*

Two mornings later, Adam and Hamid headed into the harsh terrain of Afghanistan’s south-eastern borderlands – parched, tan, and dusty – on a rock-strewn road Adam had chosen over a better one. With every jolt, Hamid grunted his disapproval.

‘You’re getting soft,’ Adam told him. ‘What would your forefathers say?’

Hamid shot him a sour look. ‘My forefathers,’ he rejoined, ‘cut the heads off British soldiers and used them to play polo. Consider yourself fortunate.’

Adam grinned at this. ‘I’m already an organ donor,’ he said. ‘But you can take the rest.’ Lapsing into silence, he acknowledged the bitter truth beneath his companion’s jibe: someday soon, like the foreigners before them, the Americans would leave, and those who helped them would be left to face their enemies alone.

They drove on like this for miles, braking to avoid jagged stones that could shred their tyres to ribbons. Now and then, Hamid spoke of his young son, a gifted athlete, or the baby daughter for whom, unlike many Afghans, he desired a decent education. But that, too, depended on a fate America was unlikely to affect. The thought made Adam pensive. Not for the first time, he reflected that Hamid was his only friend in this place – or, at least, the only person outside his case officer who knew what Adam did. Through his aviator
sunglasses, the film of dust on the windshield turned the undulating terrain a deeper brown. He could feel the Glock concealed beneath his Afghan shirt.

‘I assume someone is watching us,’ Hamid remarked. ‘Friends, for a change.’

‘Several of them. They’ll radio us when they spot our new friend’s truck.’

At last they saw the huge rock formation Adam had charted, and laboured toward it, up the side of a steep hill. Hamid pulled up behind it, concealing their S.U.V. from anyone on the road. ‘Now we wait,’ Adam said.

Shaded by the rock, Adam and Hamid leaned their backs against it, sharing lukewarm water from a canteen. They did not bother to watch the road; other men, concealed in the hills above, did that for them. ‘This is the life,’ Adam said. ‘Manly work in the great outdoors.’

Hamid did not smile. ‘Can we trust this man, I wonder?’

Adam shrugged. ‘Either way, it’ll be a surprise.’

The radio on his belt crackled. ‘Your man is coming,’ a voice said in Pashto. Leaving Hamid, Adam came out from behind the rock, backpack slung over his shoulder, and saw a white Toyota truck spewing dust on the tortuous road. Knees bent, he edged down the hillside, gun in hand, and stationed himself in the path of the truck. It stopped two feet in front of him.

As Adam had instructed, one of Hakeem’s sons was driving. Walking to the driver’s side, Adam told him, ‘Drive one kilometre down the road. Then stop and pull up the hood, like your truck is broken down. Wait there for your father.’

Hakeem got out, his seamed face and narrowed eyes betraying no emotion. ‘Come with me,’ Adam directed, and led him
away from the rock formation that concealed Hamid and their Jeep. They reached a ravine cut into the hillside, invisible from the road, but not to those who watched them from above. Scrambling to the bottom, the two men were alone.