From the Ashes (24 page)

“Well, what about him?” she demanded, her attention returning to her guests.

“What kind of work was he in?” Jon asked.

“Military. Espionage, infiltration, something like that. I don’t know exactly. My mother left him when he was in the Pacific in ‘42. Dear John letter and all that. I was just a girl at the time, but Mother always told me to avoid the man. So I did. Wouldn’t talk to him. And then he up and dies in Korea... the bastard.”

’Your father’s name was Roger Blumhurst, right?”

’Yeah, that’s him.”

“What
really
happened in 1957?”

Catherine’s distant gaze, staring through the coffee table as though it were some sort of time portal to reclaim opportunities lost, regained focus at Jon’s query. She turned her eyes to her inquisitor and frowned, the canyons time had etched into her face growing deeper, her loose jowls growing somehow tighter.

“You know about ‘57? Egh. Of course you do. You’re Michael’s brother. Egh. Alright, dammit. I’m too old to be keeping secrets anyways. You hear me, you bastards? Try and come get me if you want!” She shook her fist at the ceiling, scattering ashes from her cigarette upon her dress and the carpet. Then she turned her gaze back to toward her guests and fixed them with an intense stare. “Two conditions.”

“Name ‘em,” Mara said, finally finding her breath in the hazy room.

“No subpoenas to get me to testify. ‘Cause I won’t. You can’t make me, ya hear?”

“No subpoenas,” Mara nodded. “Got it. And the other?”

“No more of those damned newspapers. They quoted me back in ‘57, and my life’s been hell ever since. Reporters coming to ask questions early on, then the damn G-Men. Bastards give me nightmares. Still afraid to answer the door some days. The assholes can all go hang themselves for all I care.”

“Agreed,” Jon said quickly, trying to stave off another rant and get to the story they sought. “No subpoenas, no newspapers.”

“Alright, then.” She took another long drag, held it in for a moment, then sighed it out. “1957.
October 9
^th
,
1957. God, I’ll never forget that night. Knock on my door at two-in-the-stinkin’-morning. Real impatient-like. This is just after my husband, Jim, got himself killed, you see. Worked in the Empire State Building. Division Manager, on his way up in the world. Walking to his car one night and some asshole up and kills him. Just like that I’m a widow. Three months after I’m a blushing bride, and I’m a stinkin’ widow. God, that kills me. Well, I figure the knocking must be about him. They caught his killer, and the cops are out there to tell me about it. So I show up in my nightdress, a robe wrapped around me and all, but I didn’t change inta somethin’ more decent ‘cause the knocking was so darned urgent. I answer the door thinkin’ I’m gonna get some closure, but when I get there, it’s just another old wound, opened back up and smilin’ in my face. Well, he wasn’t exactly smilin’, but—”

“Your father?” Mara asked.

“Yeah.” Catherine took another long drag of her cigarette and blew it out the corner of her mouth. She coughed, breathed deeply, then coughed again before continuing. “Never really knew him as such, him being gone in the wars so much during my childhood, and then his ‘dying.’ Well, here he was, right out that door, same as you two were a few minutes ago. Alive in the flesh. I was shocked to say the least, but I invited him in anyway. I asked him what the hell was goin’ on, and he told me that he was really sorry about what had happened and that he hadn’t really died in Korea. Well, I told him I had eyes in my head to tell me that, and I asked him what in the world really happened. My first thought was that Mother had lied to me, that she just wanted him out of our life so she told me he had died, but he told me that wasn’t what happened.”

Jon swallowed, wondering where this flood of loquacity had come from, and where it was going. Catherine leaned forward in her rocking chair, as though she were imparting a secret. Despite the fact that her volume didn’t decrease correspondingly, her interviewers leaned forward on the sofa as well, if only to display their interest and to encourage her to keep talking.

“What
really
happened is the government set the whole damn thing up.” She was nodding now, giving them a knowing look as though the three of them were members of a secret society based upon this shared knowledge. “They made it
look
like he died in Korea, and then put him on some special assignment over here. In New York.”

“Did he say what kind of assignment it was?” Jon asked.

Catherine flicked her cigarette, sending some more ash to the carpet. “No, he didn’t. He seemed to be in an awful fright about something. Like he had to go do something real fast. Like someone was after him, maybe. He just apologized for all the hurt he’d caused me and said he’d done a real bad thing and made too many mistakes but he just wanted to come by and set things straight one last time. He told me he loved me and he was so sorry and if he could’ve done things differently, he would’ve.” What might have been tears were materializing in the corners of her eyes, but it was hard to tell through the smoke, and if her voice was choking up, her already raw vocal cords made it impossible to tell the difference.

“Then he gave me this sealed envelope. Said it was incredibly important it
not
get in the hands of the wrong people. He didn’t tell me who they were, but I figured it was the people he was hiding from. He said don’t give it to anybody from the government, either. He said someday it’d be the key to setting right everything that he’d done wrong. Kisses me goodbye, leaves, and the next I hear, he’s hung himself from the goddamn Brooklyn Bridge.” She shook her head solemnly, her gaze lost in the mists of time. “Hello, goodbye, I’m dead for real now. Gee-zus, I swear I’ll never understand men.”

“Ms. Sm— I mean,
Cat...
” Jon started.

“Yeah?” Catherine croaked, not turning her eyes from the empty patch of yellowed, peeling wallpaper behind the sofa she had focused on.

“Do you still have that envelope?”

“Yeah, I’ve kept it all this time. Never opened it, but kept it just the same. A last little way to hold on to him, I guess.”

“Can we see it?” Mara asked.

“Well, no, I don’t still have it how,” Catherine said, then turned to Jon, “but you can ask your brother about it.”

“My- my brother? You met with him before he—”

“Well, of course I met him. Don’t you guys talk? Gave him the envelope and all. I’m no spring chicken, son, and I’m gettin’ sick of lookin’ over my shoulder all the time. My father told me to keep it safe, that I would know the right time and person to pass it on to. Something in your brother’s emails told me that he was the right man.”

“When was this?” Mara asked. “When did you give him the envelope?”

“I dunno. An hour or so before you guys showed up, I guess.”

“An
hour
?” Jon and Mara exclaimed together.

Catherine started at their exclamation. “Well sure, give or take.”

“Ms. Smith, what did this guy look like?”

Catherine threw her hands toward the ceiling, letting them fall back to her lap. “Geez, son, he was your
brother,
for crissakes! You know what he looked like better than I can tell ya.”

“Ms. Smith, Cat,” Mara said, her voice beginning to quiver, “Michael has been dead since early Saturday morning.”

“I— He what... ? Well, the guy said he was Michael Rickner. Tall fella, ‘bout like you, son, dark hair, light blue eyes. Wore a suit. I dunno. He said he was Michael. How the hell should I know the difference?”

“It
couldn’t
have been Michael,” Jon said, his face etched with worry.

Catherine Smith stabbed her cigarette butt out in the ashtray, her scowl returning in full force. “Well, then who the hell did I give that envelope to?”

Langley, Virginia

Harrison Greer was restless. The moment he’d been waiting his entire life for was nearly upon him. The reclamation of the Dossiers. The demise of the only true threat to the Division. The redemption of his grandfather’s legacy. The fulfillment of his own.

His grandfather, Walton Greer, had decided not to kill Roger Blumhurst’s estranged daughter, Catherine Smith. Whether out of some misguided respect for her father’s years of service or in hopes of eventually gaining some lead on what had really happened during the last weeks of Blumhurst’s life – his special Dossiers-reclaiming mission for Walton, his later insistence that the mission was a dead-end, his flubbed elimination mission, and his symbolic public suicide – Harrison Greer couldn’t say. He liked to think that Walton knew that, one day, leaving Smith alive would result in an opportunity like the one Michael had created. Like the one his brother was now an integral, if unwitting, part of. How fitting that it would be Blumhurst’s own daughter who would be so unconsciously instrumental in the righting of all the errant agent’s wrongs.

The Director paced his office, waiting for the phone call from Wayne Wilkins that would ensure the last piece was in place. And then...

Greer had been out of the field for years, but his skill with a sniper rifle had never been sharper. There was a private range in rural Virginia an hour from his home that he frequented every week. Targets set up across a valley, where both wind and distance provided a constantly changing challenge for even the most able marksman. And he was about to take his deadly shooting skills to the most populous city in the nation.

For too long, the Dossiers and Rockefeller’s refusal to give them up had plagued the Division and Greer’s family. For too long, the Operation’s one Achilles’ Heel had haunted him and predecessors. But now, Greer was going to put them to rest. The unspeakable truth, finally buried once and for all. And Greer himself would be the one to destroy the Dossiers and eliminate the traitors Rickner and Ellison. Soon. Very soon, indeed.

He walked to the closet door, unlocked it, and withdrew a canvas bag from the shelf within. He moved back to his desk, shoved the chair out of the way, and opened the bag on the desktop. His fingers flew as they assembled the weapon from the parts from within the bag. They knew every step by heart, every motion practiced hundreds and thousands of times before. Greer had two true passions: the Division, and shooting. And, for the first time in far too long, he would be able to combine both of those loves in one life-defining moment. Considering the short time he had left on this earth, and considering the gravity of what he was about to do, he couldn’t think of a better time to step back into action.

His plan would work. It had been in the back of his mind – only as a hypothetical, of course – for some time. A way to finally beat the old Tycoon at his own game. To unearth his blackest secret and destroy the threat it presented to the country. But it was impossible. Too risky, too many ways it could go wrong. And then Jonathan Rickner had fallen into his lap. The missing piece that would make everything work out just right. Rickner was perfect. The circumstances were perfect. And with Greer’s own days numbered, the timing was perfect as well. Greer had never been one for religious beliefs or spiritual leanings, but as fortuitous as everything was turning out for him and the Division, it was almost tempting to think someone upstairs was giving him a hand. Almost.

The gun was now assembled. Greer hefted it in his hands, affixed the scope to the weapon, and chambered a round. Then he swung the barrel around to the filing cabinet, where the files on Jonathan Rickner and Mara Ellison were kept, pressed his eye to the sight, and envisioned the moment that was to come.

“Bang,” he whispered to the empty office. Everything he’d ever worked for was about to come true. With his plan and his sniper rifle, Harrison Greer would finally finish the secret mission that the United States had begun seventy years before. His legacy, and that of his family, would no longer be the betrayal of Roger Blumhurst, but of securing the Dossiers; not of killing countless overly inquisitive citizens but rather of saving the nation from the threat that the Dossiers held. It was almost too good to be true. And it was almost here.

Greer smiled as he ejected the unspent bullet and began to disassemble the weapon for transit. He was one phone call away from New York City. Where his plan would finally bear its glorious fruit.

He could hardly wait.

Manhattan

Still in Brooklyn,
Wayne thought to himself as he checked his GPS receiver again. Although there hadn’t been snow on the ground for weeks, the grass of Central Park was still much less green than it would be later in spring. A group of teenage boys played a game of baseball on the field across the way from Wayne’s bench. After reading the page from the envelope again, he would glance up from the sheet and watch a play or two of the game, smiling at the carefree innocence of youth. How we always think things will be easier, smoother when we get older, when we can finally strike out on our own, Wayne reflected. He knew, better than most, the folly of such arguments, propagated for generations by young people desirous for greater freedom, denied by adults who had lived through both phases of life, but never believed by the youth until they themselves had reached adulthood – and the stresses and sorrows it held.

For example, Jon and Mara, right now in Brooklyn, probably just finding out – or at least still reeling from the realization – that the prize they sought, the prize Michael had sought, was long gone. Go back a step further, even, with the death of Michael in the first place. The older you got, the more time began to devour the ones you loved. Wayne had been younger than Jon when the towers fell and his world crumbled into a burning ash heap along with them. But Jon was conducting himself, at least from the observations Wayne had made thus far, in a rather different manner from how Wayne had reacted. Though further disappointment, like the disappearance of the articles and the envelope, hadn’t made the guy’s loss any easier.

Wayne knew the importance of what he held in his hands. It was huge. And he knew enough Division lore – of which Blumhurst was legendary in the good-agent-gone-awry department – to put a few more pieces into place. Why the agent had chosen to kill himself before he completed the mission Greer’s grandfather had him working on the side was something Wayne couldn’t quite understand. No matter how dark Roger’s soul had gotten, this project, this sole loose end that hadn’t been tied up from the Operation certainly seemed like an engaging and worthwhile task. Wayne was captivated by it. It was exactly what he needed, exactly what he hoped he would find. The key to everything he hoped to accomplish, the pivot point of this silent war that both invisible factions – the Division, and the too-inquisitive dead-men-walking – would kill to get their hands on. That the Division
had
killed to try to find. And, in all likelihood, would kill again for before it was secured. He was a wily one, that Rockefeller, and how in the world Roger Blumhurst had managed to discover the magnate’s most carefully guarded secret, Wayne hadn’t the foggiest. Nothing short of breaking into one of Rockefeller’s residences and digging through his personal papers would uncover the page Wayne now held in his hands. But then, perhaps that was just what Roger had done.