Eden in Winter (18 page)

Adam put away his gun. ‘Thank you for this meeting,’ he said courteously. ‘Have you brought me what I need?’

Briefly, the Afghan glanced up at the hills beyond, as though aware they were being watched. Instead of answering, he drew a parcel from inside his shirt and placed it in Adam’s hand.

Opening it, Adam studied its contents: a precisely drawn map of a village, specifying the structure where Al Qaeda supposedly held the P.O.W; a credible sketch of the house from various angles, showing the windows and describing its features – apparently, the only door swung inwards. The last document, a photograph that appeared to have been taken surreptitiously, showed two men who looked less like Pakistanis than Saudis, standing in front of the nondescript hut.

Unslinging his backpack, Adam put the parcel inside. ‘You’ve done well.’

Still silent, the Afghan watched expectantly, waiting for payment. Instead, Adam took what appeared to be a rock from the backpack, and placed it in the Afghan’s hand.

Hakeem eyed it suspiciously, then spoke at last. ‘What is this?’

‘American magic,’ Adam responded. ‘This rock can hear voices. I want you to place it beside the house where they’re holding the American.’

The Afghan’s gaze flickered. ‘How will I do that?’

‘I leave that to you. But the deed is worth four times what I’m paying you today.’ He paused for effect. ‘This rock is also
a secret of our government, and extremely valuable. If our enemies knew such a device existed, they’d want it very badly. You cannot lose it.’

The Afghan simply stared at him, surveillance device in hand. Adam took a stack of American money from his backpack, bound by rubber bands. ‘Five thousand dollars,’ he said. ‘Count it if you like.’

Hakeem inclined his head, as though to acknowledge the size of his reward. ‘I will do my best,’ he said in the same laconic manner. Adam tried imagining him as a dinner-time companion.

There was nothing left to do. Hakeem departed first, beginning the long walk to meet his son. Adam waited for a time. Then he climbed out of the ravine, followed by his own misgivings.

With first light, Carla went to the deck with a cup of decaffeinated coffee.

At this hour, the world looked fresh and newly made, as awesome as Creation. Fall had long since come – the morning air was crisp and cool, and the light arrived at an angle. But the dewy grass glistened with green, and the ocean emerging from the dawn was a vast, shimmering aqua. Too long preoccupied with herself and the pressures of her career, Carla had become a noticer again, savouring the tranquil beauty that had been Adam’s birthright on this island, whatever else he had inherited.

She thought again of his email, a welcome distraction from her worries for the child she carried. Recalling his description of Ben, she imagined the boy he had been before time and circumstance had hardened him. Then her thoughts returned to the dangers facing her own son.

The waiting felt unbearable. She had never lived well with uncertainty – a residue, no doubt, of too many nights spent
in her darkened bedroom, fearing the sound of her father’s return. Since her visit to the doctor, she had not been to an A.A. meeting, and an ineradicable part of her craved the oblivion that alcohol could bring her, numbing her anxieties. At this moment, she felt that only her child, the source of these fears, stood between her and the reckless woman who had spiralled downward in a mindless, bottomless dark. It scared her to know how much she depended on a being who – should he live – was entitled to depend on her completely, the way she could never depend on her mother and father. Even now, she was everything to him. But without this child who would
she
be?

Instinctively, she fingered her mother’s rosary beads, as cool as sand pebbles in the chill sea air.

Her mother had visited her at Betty Ford, mystified by what Carla had no heart to explain. All Mary Margaret Pacelli could do was press these beads into her daughter’s hands – as though acknowledging, as she always had, her own limitations in the face of her husband’s rages, Carla’s self-destruction. Carla had found the gesture at once sad and pointless, a melancholy echo of a stunted past, a faith Carla had shed in her angry haste to leave it all behind. In her mind, women who prayed the rosary were gnarled old crones or, like her mother, had found their lives too overwhelming to cope. But now Carla was one of them. And this morning these beads, and the fragments of prayer they summoned, were all she seemed to have.

At once Carla rebuked herself – she had yet to ask for help. Her sponsor was recording a new album in Los Angeles, and she barely knew the others at A.A. Her food was running low, and someone should expect a call were she seized with new
contractions. But she could always call 911, she had rationalized – the reflex of a loner, who believed that to speak her fears to a stranger would make them come true.

She closed her eyes, aware that her prayers for Adam and her son were an inversion of her childhood hopes that her father would perish. Her prayers felt better now. The beads in her hand were somehow reassuring, the words more comforting.

‘Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb …’

Before her downfall, repeating this would have aroused something she still felt deeply – anger at the male hierarchy of the Church, the autocracy of men insulated from life, and the lives of women, by their own narrow holiness. Instead she focused now on the visit of the young, pregnant Mary to her older cousin Elizabeth, blessed with a surprising gift of her own pregnancy. These last weeks, Carla had experienced this same mystery, strange and secret and inexplicable to others, communing in silence with her invisible child, unknown to everyone else but so palpable to her, whose very existence seemed a miracle. Which was why her mother had named her miraculous daughter Carla Elizabeth Pacelli.

Lost in the rosary, she imagined the stirring of the baby inside her, still alive. It took a moment to recognize the hollow but very real sound echoing through the guesthouse: a fist knocking on her door. For an irrational moment, she imagined that it was Adam Blaine, returned in answer to her prayers.

Rising gingerly, she walked through the house and opened the door. Framed in the morning light was a tall, pale man in his late thirties, slender yet sinewy, with black curly
hair, a full mouth, and a thin, sensitive face. Though they were different in appearance, even had she not glimpsed him at the courthouse Carla would have known that he was Adam’s brother. In her surprise, she thought Teddy a more handsome version of Adam’s father, Jack. Then she reminded herself that Teddy still believed that Adam was Ben’s son.

In momentary silence, they studied each other. Then she said, ‘You’re Adam’s brother. The artist.’

The hint of a bleak smile touched one corner of Teddy’s mouth. ‘The “gay artist”, our father used to call me. The first word damned the second. Anyhow, Adam asked me to check in with you – to see if there’s anything you need.’

Even had Teddy not alluded to his bitter resentment of Benjamin Blaine, his tone captured the oddity of their circumstances. Carla hesitated, then said, ‘Why don’t you come in?’

Teddy’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You sure? If you’re like half the people on this island, which I expect you are, you still think I pushed him off the cliff. And, unlike a lot of them, no doubt you’re unhappy with me for it – enough to wish me a life in prison. When it comes to selecting good Samaritans, Adam has peculiar tastes.’

Nor for the first time, Carla suspected that Adam knew much more about Ben’s death than he was willing to say – perhaps that the man in front of her was guilty of murder. Tartly, she answered, ‘I’m willing to assume you’ve bagged your quota for the year. In any event, I’m sure I’m not your favourite person.’

‘You weren’t,’ he responded bluntly. ‘But Adam’s my brother, and I promised him. In his estimate, you did us all a good
turn when you didn’t need to. So I’m willing to leave hating you to my mother.’

Though his candour was unsettling, there was something about it Carla found bracing. ‘Come on in,’ she said, and waved him to the couch where, only weeks before, Adam had spent the night. The juxtaposition felt strange. As she settled back into a chair, Carla noticed him glancing at her stomach, swelling beneath her sweater.

He leaned forward a little, openly curious, his tone neutral. ‘It’s all pretty strange, I have to say. I get it about you and our father – no surprises there. But you and Adam is where my imagination begins to flag.’

Even his most acidic comments, Carla was noticing, had a trace of deflective humour – perhaps the weapon of a man who, though in different ways than Adam, had been hurt early in life. With a dryness of her own, she replied, ‘Don’t let your imagination run wild – I’m pregnant, after all. I think your brother just likes babies. Never too late to discover your inner Mr Rogers.’

To Carla, her own remark sounded cheap and tinny. Before Teddy could respond, she amended, ‘Truthfully, I think he identifies with this baby – as though he wants things to turn out better for him than he thinks it did for the two of you.’

‘Wouldn’t be hard,’ Teddy said more softly. ‘Even I can wish that much.’

In her tenuous emotional state, Carla found that even this modest kindness caused her eyes to dampen before she looked away.

‘What is it?’ Adam’s brother asked.

Some impulse she could not name caused Carla to respond, ‘The doctor tells me I may miscarry. I’m sure that doesn’t
strike you as a tragedy. It certainly wouldn’t disappoint your mother.’

Teddy simply studied her. ‘Then why are you telling me this?’

‘I really don’t know. Maybe because you’re Adam’s brother and there’s no one else to tell.’ She steadied her voice. ‘I’m not supposed to do very much, including shopping and errands.’

Teddy settled his lanky frame back into the couch, regarding her with a quizzical look. ‘If you’re asking me to shop for groceries, no worries. I shop for myself anyhow. Both you and I seem to have lost our partners.’

Despite the arid allusion to Ben’s death, Carla felt a rush of gratitude. ‘If you don’t mind, I can give you money and a shopping list.’

‘We can sort out the money later,’ Teddy responded. ‘Thanks to you, I’ll have money of my own – despite my father’s best intentions.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Just out of curiosity, how did you put up with him? Was there someone inside there I didn’t know?’

The sardonic question, Carla guessed, expressed the hurt of a child denied a father’s love – which even adulthood, she knew well, could never quite erase. But she could not give him a truthful answer: that Clarice Blaine’s infidelity had left Ben with grudges of his own, and Teddy with a brother who was also his cousin. ‘For me there was,’ she answered simply.

Teddy frowned, thwarted in any hope of understanding. ‘Anyhow, I’m happy enough to help you, for Adam’s sake. God knows he’s complicated, too, but I can’t imagine a better brother. So I’ll do whatever you need me to.’

Beneath this offhand gesture, Carla sensed, lurked the
decent man Adam had described. ‘Adam feels the same about you,’ she told him.

Teddy hesitated. ‘Do you hear from him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then maybe you know what he’s doing over there.’

Once again, Carla reflected that she had been drawn into the web of evasions among the Blaines. ‘Not really,’ she replied. ‘As you may have noticed, your brother can be remarkably uninformative. But he seems to think he’s running a fool’s errand. I find myself hoping that he’ll find another line of work.’

‘We both hope. He doesn’t need to keep retracing our father’s reckless footsteps. No offence meant.’

‘None taken,’ Carla said at once. But his careless remark was another reminder, if she needed one, of all that stood between her and Adam Blaine. ‘About my pregnancy,’ she added. ‘Please don’t tell Adam. He’s got enough to worry about as it is.’

Clearly uncomfortable, Teddy stood. ‘Fair enough. Make me a grocery list, and I’ll give you my phone number. In case you ever need me.’

In silence, Carla went to the kitchen and scribbled out a list. When she gave it to him, he turned and headed for the door.

Pausing there, he said, ‘I’ll drop these off this afternoon. If no one answers, I’ll leave them on the porch.’ On his way out, he turned again. ‘I’m serious about calling me. And good luck with the kid. He’s our brother, after all.’

And then he was gone, leaving Carla torn between relief and all the questions she could never erase.

Ten days later, Hamid and Adam were summoned to Kabul.

Sitting in the back of a noisy transport plane, the translator had asked Adam for an explanation. Adam told him less than he knew, which was little enough. ‘Your man planted the device,’ Brett Hollis had reported to him. ‘The voice of one of the Arabs guarding the house matches that of a known Al Qaeda operative, and his maps coincide with the area in western Pakistan where we think the rest of them are hiding. If this is a plant, whoever dreamed it up is taking a lot of chances with his people – and hanging Colonel Rehman and his Afghan friends out to dry. So we have to consider the probability that your new agent and his information are good. Or at least, as you say, that he believes it.’

Adam still felt edgy. ‘What should I do with the Afghan?’

‘Pay him. Then you and Hamid are meeting me in Kabul.’

Adam tried to imagine why, but did not ask. And so the last part of his account to Hamid had been truthful – he had no idea what Hollis wanted with either of them. Now they sat outside Hollis’s office in the American Embassy, waiting to find out.

Trying to keep his mind blank, Adam found himself imagining Carla. It was still early morning on Martha’s Vineyard – she would be sleeping now. Her emails had said little about her pregnancy, so perhaps her worries had come to nothing. Another month or two, he guessed, and the baby would be safe for delivery.

Interrupting his thoughts, Hollis emerged from his office. He shook hands with Hamid, at once warm and brisk, assuring him that he would be briefed shortly. And then he motioned Adam inside his office and closed the door behind them.