Firebird (37 page)

“Hey, I was no angel.  Got busted for shoplifting, smoked weed, fell in with a bad crowd.  So when my Pop died, Madre loaded me into the truck with my books and her recipes and headed as far north as the truck would take us.”

“A road that led all the way to an island in Maine.”  She smiled.  “I think I would like your mother very much.”

A light, deep in those serious eyes.  “I loved the wild water, the rocks, the thrill of being alone on the edge of the world.  And I wanted to see what was beyond that edge.  I was barely twenty when I joined the Marines.  It was the only time I remember my Madre angry with me.”  He smiled darkly and shook his head.  “She loves this country, you understand, but she was a mother.  She was proud, but scared.”

“I get that.  But she didn’t stop you.”

“No.  I can still see her standing alone on the platform when my train pulled out.”  His smile was soft, then faded.  “I posted in the Gulf, Eastern Europe, Asia.  Saw things no one should ever see, did things no kid should ever do.  When I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror anymore I came home.  But home wasn’t the same.”

“Because
you
weren’t the same.”

He shrugged, looked out to sea.  “Si.  Once you’ve seen death, once you’ve been forced to take a life, it becomes part of your marrow.  You can’t take that moment and lock it in a box and pretend it’s not there.  Just couldn’t shake the memories.  They never go away.”

Take a life
.  All that darkness in him.  “Post traumatic stress?” she murmured. 

He turned from the window, met her eyes, nodded.  She saw the bleakness, and the hurt.  “A fancy term for hell.  Nightmares, flashbacks.  I’d hear and see things that weren’t there.”  His gaze pulled away, rested on his guitar.  “We
all
have nightmares, Red.  Makes you afraid to go to sleep at night, you know?”

“I know,” she whispered.

“So I kissed my Madre, hit the road again, and woke up one morning in D.C.  That’s where I met Lily.  She was a nurse at Walter Reed.  So spontaneous, full of laughter.  A free spirit with the deepest blue eyes I’d ever seen.  She was my light, so easy to love.  She saved me.”  He looked at her.  “Her love saved me.”

Suddenly she could hear his words, spoken so softly at Club 1215. 
I don’t believe in redemptive love
anymore
. 

He moved to stand by the porthole, staring out at the pink morning.  “The bad dreams went away.  I was able to go to college, then grad school - the law, because of my mother.  Got my JD at Georgetown.  Good times.  Moved to Boston, summered in Maine.  Then Jack was born.”  His smile was suddenly gentle.  “By then I was one of my firm’s wonder boys, taking on the monsters.”

“Monsters need taking on.  Sounds as if you made a good life, Garcia.”

“Had everything I didn’t know I’d wanted.  A home, a family, good work, laughter.  Love.”  He looked at her, hesitated. 

“What happened?”

“Pride happened.  As a prosecutor you have all the power to do the right thing.  Or the wrong thing.  Somewhere along the line I became addicted to the fame, the glory.  I forgot my Madre’s advice, to always do right.”

“Down these mean streets a man must go,” she quoted, “who is not himself mean.”

“You read Raymond Chandler?”  He watched her, then shook his head.  ”No, he wasn’t writing about me.”

“We’re all tarnished, Garcia.”

“But there are moments that change your life forever.  You know that.”

Oh, yes, only too well
.

“I was offered a job at Justice.  Took on a huge drug case in D.C.  Finally got a break.  A witness to a drug-related murder in Anacostia - one of the toughest neighborhoods around here.  Only one problem.  The witness was a seven year old kid.  A little girl.  I had a choice, Alexandra.  To call the witness, or not to call.  I called.  Better headlines.  The murderer got off on a technicality.  Threatened all of us.  I didn’t take it seriously, hell, I was the hotshot prosecutor off to the next case.”

His breathing was harsh in the quiet cabin.  “Two nights later the girl was gunned down in front of a convenience store.  The candy was still in her hand.  When I looked into that mother’s eyes...  Christ!  And then – the unthinkable happened.”

His voice dropped, his eyes became too bright.  “It was Christmas Eve.  Snowing.  My wife and son drove off to buy a Christmas tree.  A
Christmas
tree!  I remember standing in the driveway, turning away to take a phonecall.  Witnesses said the truck came out of nowhere.  They never made it home.   When I got there… all I can remember is the blood-red snow.  Jesus!”

He was staring blindly at the photographs.  “Lily died at the scene.  Jack lived for two days.”

She closed her eyes, felt the tears burn behind her lids.
 You can’t breathe when you’re scared for your child
.

He shook his head back and forth in disbelief.  “Everything I believed in was suddenly just
gone
, blown away like a house of cards in that damned snowstorm.  The two people who mattered most in my life were dead.  Everything I thought I was - I wasn’t.  I wasn’t noble.  I’d made a fatal mistake, putting hubris and career glory ahead of the safety of my wife and my son – and that little girl.  Innocents died because of me, lives lost because of the choices
I
made.  I shattered the life I wanted.  And I became the man I was always meant to be.  Alone.”

“No!”  Her voice shook with horror as she took a step toward him.   Looking up into his eyes, she froze, sick, suddenly understanding.  “It wasn’t an accident.”

She watched the cold mask change his face as he waited a beat too long to answer.  “The truck that hit them?  No, Alexandra, it wasn’t an accident.  But it was taken care of.  He’ll never hurt anyone again.”

“I’m
glad
!” she said fiercely.

He pressed a hand hard to his forehead, as if he could somehow still the raging flood of memories.  “Christ, I’ve never talked about this to anyone.”

Her breath came out in a sharp exhale.  She hadn’t realized she’d been holding it.  “I’m so sorry, Jon.  For everything.  But somehow you found a way to keep going.  The work you do now is for good –”

The black look in his eyes stopped her.   “You think so?  Truth is, when I met you in Maine, Red, I was running.  All the light was gone.  I had no intention of coming back to the law, to Justice.  To hell with
all
my investigations!  These last years, everything changed.  I tossed out the ethics, lost my edge.  I learned how to distort and manipulate evidence to win.  To threaten witnesses, beat up on victims, bend the truth if it would put the monster behind bars.  The end justified the means.”  He raised his chin.  “Welcome to my dark side, Chica.”

She stared at him in silence.

He began to pace back and forth across the narrow cabin like a caged tiger.  “I found myself doing things I’d never thought I was capable of.  I crossed the line again and again.  Stayed there.  Worse, I didn’t care anymore.  Hey, blow a case and some killer goes free, I’d have another chance at him when he raped or murdered someone else.  After awhile, I didn’t know what I believed in.  All the lines blurred.  And this time, Lily couldn’t save me.”

“At some point, we have to do it ourselves, Garcia.”

“That’s a fact, Red.  I told my Chief I was done, I was going to get on the
Vaya con Dios
and sail away - just me and Hoover, and the stars to guide us.”  A beat of silence.  “The trick is to stay ahead of the darkness.”

He stopped mid stride, stood looking at her, his taut face caught by the light of the porthole.  And suddenly she understood.

“But you couldn’t.”

“No.  There’s no escaping the memory of midnight blue eyes.  Or the sound of my boy’s laugh.”

This is what haunts him, she thought.  “Is that so bad?” she whispered.  “Remembering the people you loved? 
Still
love?  The memory of love is a gift.  I think what you said to me last night, in the topiary garden, is true.  Love resonates.”

He was very still, eyes clouded with dark rain.

Blindsided by the look on his face, swept by a torrent of unaccustomed emotions, she moved without thought, reaching toward him, wanting only to hold him, comfort him.  Then stopped, shocked.

What are you doing
? 
It’s not you he needs
. 

She forced herself to stand still, arms locked like a gate across her chest. “But – you came back to D.C.  What brought you back?” she breathed, knowing that she was afraid of his answer.

He brushed a hand across his eyes and looked down at her with a ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ smile.  “You don’t know, Chica?  
You
showed up, like some damned Cassiopeia dropping out of the sky, and drew me back to port.”

Oh, God.  “Maybe because this port is where you belong.”

“But it’s not what I wanted,” he murmured, turning away from her.

CHAPTER 38

“...in wand’ring mazes lost...”

Milton

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Ivan had been walking the streets of Washington for an hour, waiting for the sunrise.  Today he wore a heavy jacket and a CIA baseball cap pulled low over his face.  Under his arm he carried the morning copy of The Washington Post, folded to the
Election Analysis
column.  The words replayed in his head.

“Five nights from now, Americans will know which leaders they have elected to take us forward into the next crucial decade.  On the domestic front, the issues of economy, education, health-care and the environment have been clear-cut along party lines.  Not surprisingly, it is foreign policy, so critical since the events of 9/11, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, and all the recent unease in the Middle East and Russia, that has dominated the debates and generated the most controversy during these past months.  As violence escalates in Syria, tensions are high with rumors that Russia will grant refuge to Syria’s autocratic President.  Vice Presidential candidate David Rossinski will meet - ”

“Enough!”  He stopped at a curb to rest.  The injury was throbbing today.  That meant that the weather was going to change.

It was going to be a long day.  Conference calls at his Washington office, then the late morning shuttle to New York.

He needed these few quiet hours to walk, to think.

It was a walk he knew well, his own secret tour of home.  He’d begun at the old icon-covered Nicholaev Church on Massachusetts Avenue, where services held in Old Slavonic reminded him of his village.  Then he’d walked past the flags of Russia House, and detoured to Misha’s deli, where thick sandwiches were named after Yeltsin and Gorbachev.  His favorite was the Pasternak.

Sometimes he would find himself on the campus of George Washington University, where he would rest by the statue of the poet Alexander Pushkin.  A poet who always had remained true to his words.

Ivan smiled as he turned onto R Street.   Long considered one of
the
‘spy streets’ in Washington, R Street at one time was home to Wild Bill Donovan, the father of the CIA.  Ivan sometimes walked past Dumbarton Oaks, the secret meeting place of the spy Jonathan Pollard, and continued as far as the blue mailbox ‘drop’ on 37th made famous by Aldrich Ames’ chalk signals.

If it was raining, he visited the International Spy Museum on F Street, which he’d found, in many ways, to be a monument to the Cold War.  He’d been greatly amused by the disguise and cryptology exhibits, and the spy related artifacts that included a KGB-issued lipstick pistol, a replica of James Bond’s Aston Martin, and Cher Ami - a camera-carrying pigeon.  And all
he’d
had in London were his ballet slippers and a firebird brooch.  He’d even chosen, with tongue-firmly-in-cheek, a spy “identity” for his visit.  The museum was part reality and part Hollywood, and it had been his secret pleasure to know the difference.

Now, as he headed toward Wisconsin Avenue, he glanced north toward Mount Alto, the hilltop where the Russian Embassy was located.  He nodded as he thought of the secret FBI tunnel that ran from the basement of the small townhouse on Fulton Street to the embassy.  For months, he’d helped the KGB send carefully chosen ‘dis-information’ through those buried fiber optic lines. 

On the corner of N Street, Ivan stopped.  Martin’s Tavern was just ahead, small windowpanes shining in the new day’s sun.  The old tavern on Wisconsin had been a meeting place for spies during the 30’s and 40’s - which was why he, too, with a delicious sense of irony, had used the rear booth as a dead drop for secrets more than once in the past decade.  He’d come to love the old stained glass lamps and dark booths with the scent of good whiskey and secrets soaked into the wood.

The light changed, but still he stood as if lost.  He looked up at the brightening sky, searching for any sign of snow.  After he saw Panov, he decided suddenly, he would disappear to the mountains for one last day.  There would be snow up north.

He couldn’t shake the heavy sense of foreboding that this could be his last time in the forest.

How very melancholy, he thought, how very Russian, to long for a last glimpse of a great forest in the falling snow.  Such a laughably
soulful
thing to want.  To prove, perhaps, that he still had a soul?

Standing alone on the corner, the aging spy shook his silver head.  All these years, he thought.  All these thoughts of home, hammering more insistently every day.  Yet peace of heart and mind was still as elusive as ever.

Suddenly time was rushing by.  He checked his watch once more.  He had to get home, shower and change.  His schedule was full.  There was much to be done.

In a few days, it would all be over.  And if he was very careful, Alexandra Marik would not be caught in the crossfire.

I can’t let her be hurt, too,
he thought. 
Let me do something good
.

One more step in the Firebird’s intricate
pas de deux
.  Except, he thought sadly, it isn’t a
pas de deux
at all.