The Remembering (11 page)

I shook my head and smiled. It had been over forty years since his death and my old friend Solomon was still surprising me.

“Is Dr. Birnbaum aware of the Meq?” Sailor asked.

Jack glanced once at all three of us. “Yes, he is. Solomon told Owen Bramley that Sangea Hiramura’s entire family knew of the Meq long before they came to St. Louis.”

“This is true,” I said, remembering what we’d learned from Sak.

“True indeed,” Sailor added.

Suddenly I recalled the brief incident on the way to Blaine Harrington’s office. The lieutenant had confiscated the film containing the snapshot of Sailor, then handed it over to the captain. I told Jack about it.

“Damn! I wanted Blaine to forget you three as soon as possible.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked. “Do you think he is a threat?”

“Possibly.”

“How could he be a threat to us, Jack?” Sailor asked.

“Because he’s like a ferret smelling a rat. He will gnaw and gnaw through anything until he finds that rat. He’s obsessive and paranoid, but that’s not what worries me most.” Jack’s eyes looked to the west again.

“Go on,” Sailor said.

“I don’t think Valery showing me the photograph of Ray and the others was coincidence. I think he suspects something. Exactly what he suspects, I’m not sure. The problem is that Valery is a double agent. He works for us and guess who his controller is?” Jack paused a moment. “Valery’s controller is Captain Blaine Harrington.”

“I have yet to see the threat in this, Jack,” Sailor said. “A photograph or two from two distant countries should not lead anyone anywhere, even if they find our presence there ‘unusual.’ But more important, how many more in the military or government have knowledge of us?”

“None.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I can’t, but Cardinal can. That is what he does, Sailor. He told me he is ‘home base’ in a plan Solomon had all along, a plan to prevent any government from ever learning about you … about the Meq. He called the plan his ‘Diamond plan.’ Basically, it was a vision of an independent intelligence organization with connections inside as many governments as possible. Solomon thought the world of men was not yet ready for the reality of the Meq. His assessment is, unfortunately, truer today than it ever was. The Russians, the Chinese, and especially the Americans would hunt you down like animals to gain your secrets and the power that’s in the blood flowing through your veins. They would exploit all of you like lab rats to get access to that power. Cardinal says we must never let this happen, and I agree.” Jack stopped and looked directly at me. “So does my mother.”

For the first time in a long time my thoughts went to Carolina. She would be a much older woman now. My eyes drifted out across Pearl Harbor and followed a passing ship for a moment or two. “How is she, Jack? Is she well?”

Jack smiled wide. “My mother is the smartest, prettiest, feistiest seventy-five-year-old woman in St. Louis, Z. Yeah, she’s doing just fine. She misses you. She told me if I ever saw you, I should tell you she wishes she was kicking leaves again, whatever that means.”

I laughed to myself and remembered. I was twelve years old in actual years and Carolina was only slightly younger. We became lifelong friends that fall, kicking leaves as we walked through Forest Park. “Don’t worry, Jack. I know what she means.”

Jack rubbed the stubble on his chin. “You know, Z, she never has told me how you two met in the first place.”

“I’ll tell you on the way home, Jack.”

“Is that where the three of you want to go? St. Louis?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“No,” Sailor interjected.

I turned to Sailor. I had made the assumption we were all going to the same destination. He saw the surprise in my eyes.

“I forgot to tell you, Zianno. While I was in the Fleur-du-Mal’s
shiro
, I may have found evidence of another one or two of your ‘stone spheres.’ It is only a name, but I feel we should investigate.” Sailor twirled the star sapphire on his forefinger and glanced once at Sheela. “You travel on to St. Louis, Z. It will be good for you. Wait there for word from Opari and the others. Should Jack be able to assist us, we are off to South America.”

“No problem,” Jack said. “That is, if you don’t mind starting in Mexico City. I’ve got a man there right now who handles all of Latin America … and you can trust him completely, Sailor.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Maybe you should ask Z,” Jack said, looking at me with a grin. “His name is Oliver ‘Biscuit’ Bookbinder.”

Sailor turned to me and raised one eyebrow.
“Oliver ‘Biscuit’ Bookbinder?”

“I know him well,” I said, then paused. “Biscuit was the orphan boy who witnessed Unai’s and Usoa’s murders. Opari and I found him, but Carolina saved him, named him, and raised him in her home as one of her own. He was a good boy and I’m sure he is a good man.”

“He is also a baseball legend throughout Latin America,” Jack said. “It’s the perfect cover for him. Biscuit is welcomed with open arms by everyone and given access to almost anything. He can get both of you into South America legally and without suspicion, but … uh … I wouldn’t advise wearing that little blue beauty on your finger, Sailor.”

Sailor laughed louder than I’d heard him laugh in weeks. He said, “Do not be alarmed, Jack. I shall keep it safely tucked away.”

We flew out of Hawaii in two similar but separate directions. Jack and I left for San Francisco, while Sheela and Sailor left for Los Angeles, along with a Navy lieutenant assigned by Jack. Once there they would transfer aircraft and the lieutenant himself would fly them to Mexico City, where Biscuit would meet them and take care of everything, including proper paperwork and money.

Shortly before we took off, Sailor pulled me aside. “Be vigilant,” he said. “The Remembering occurs in a mere seventy years, Zianno. We must not let the Giza detour us from being there.” He paused, looking around the terminal at passing faces. “I believe Jack could be right in his assessment of this new age.”

“What do you mean, ‘new age’?”

“I mean the one we now inhabit since the Americans have invented and used that godforsaken bomb. I am not so worried of anyone discovering our existence as I am of the newfound ability of the Giza to annihilate each other and poison the entire planet in the process. Do you understand the implications?”

I watched Sailor carefully. He gave nothing away, as usual. I know the Meq, particularly the old ones, are often nonchalant about comings and goings, arrivals and departures, but Sailor and I had spent the last eight years traveling together every day and I would miss him. I smiled when Sailor asked if I understood the implications. After a moment or two, he smiled back. “I understand,” I said.

His “ghost eye” was cloudless and bright. “
Egibizirik bilatu
, Zianno,” he said, then turned and disappeared in the crowd with Sheela and the lieutenant.

Ten minutes after landing and gathering our gear, Jack and I made a spur-of-the-moment decision. We had planned on taking the train to St. Louis, but Jack came up with another idea.

“How quick do you want to get home, Z?”

“I don’t know, Jack, what do you have in mind?”

“What if we drove?”

I laughed and said, “Why not?”

It took us half a day to find a vehicle Jack deemed appropriate for the journey. Eventually, he settled on a 1941 Ford Deluxe station wagon with wood paneling on the sides. The car was a beauty, and Jack paid cash for it. We headed east to Reno, then on through Nevada and Utah, crossing into Wyoming and Nebraska. It was wonderful to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel America again. I had missed it more than I thought. The weather was good the entire trip, and Jack drove at a leisurely pace. He talked most of the way about the war and what he’d seen and learned while leading refugees, spies, British and American pilots, Jewish artists, and others out of France and across the Pyrenees with Koldo and his Basque compatriots. Most of it sounded like one long, grand adventure, only filled with very real threats and dangers. Jack had been lucky to live on more than one occasion. Others had not been so lucky. Somewhere in northwestern Missouri, Jack finally got around to telling me about Emme Ya Ambala and Antoine Boutrain. His eyes darkened and his voice cracked slightly as he began. “It was a crazed act, Z … by a crazed Nazi … and completely unnecessary … the goddamn war was nearly over when it happened.”

As Jack told me the story, my heart felt pierced with every word and sentence. On March 22, 1945, a Gestapo agent who had been disgraced in Paris two years earlier in his pursuit of the Russian revolutionary Voline was trying to escape Europe through Marseille. His hatred and obsession with Voline had been well known among the underground in occupied France. Purely as a final, mad act of revenge, he decided to blow up the house where Voline had once held court, the same address where Antoine, Emme, and Antoinette now lived, along with Mitch Coates and Mercy Whitney. It was the second day of spring and the sky was a soft, light blue. Mitch and Mercy were out of town visiting friends in Paris. Antoinette was in her last year of school just a mile away. At ten after ten in the morning, she and each of her classmates heard the explosion and ran to the window. For a full thirty seconds, Antoinette and the other girls watched the smoke and huge fireball rise into the air, wondering what or who had blown up.

I closed my eyes and sat in silence. Jack drove the Ford on through Missouri toward St. Louis. Inside my mind I said farewells to Emme and Antoine by remembering every single second I had spent with each of them, in the desert and at sea and in Paris. They were much more than friends to me and to the Meq. They were two of the best people I have ever known. Geaxi warned me once about becoming too attached to any Giza. She told me they would break my heart. “Your feelings for them cannot and shall not sustain them,” she said. I disagreed with her then, but now I realized Geaxi was simply telling the truth. When I finally looked up, we were already in St. Louis, only one block from Carolina’s house. Ancient oaks and maples shaded the streets. A few were just beginning to show leaves of red, yellow, and burnt orange. I could smell Forest Park in the distance. I looked over at Jack. “Where is Antoinette?”

He drove another block, then slowed and pulled into the long private driveway, coming to a stop under the stone archway just outside two massive oak doors that used to serve as the entrance to the best whorehouse in St. Louis. “Right here,” Jack said with a grin. “Mitch and Mercy brought her back to the States with them and now they’re all staying with Carolina.” He turned off the engine and told me to be quiet. He grinned again. “We’ll sneak in on them. They don’t know we’re coming.”

Once we were inside the big house, we crept toward the kitchen. I could hear a man and woman talking, and a baseball game was on the radio. I had completely forgotten that the World Series was in progress. The Cubs were playing the Tigers. When Jack walked into the kitchen without a word, Mercy saw him first and broke into joyous laughter. She ran over to give him a hug and Mitch turned around in his chair. We locked eyes immediately.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Mitch said. On the radio the broadcaster announced Hank Greenberg had just doubled for the Tigers.

“Who’s winning?” I asked.

“Who cares?” Mitch said, pulling out a chair at the table and turning off the radio. “Come here and sit down, Z. You sure are a sight for sore eyes, man.”

Mercy let go of Jack and bent over at the waist, giving me a warm embrace. There were multicolored specks of paint on her shirt and jeans and she smelled of turpentine. “You’ve been working,” I said.

“Yes … finally.”

I looked at both of them. Mercy was in her early forties and Mitch in his early fifties. They seemed well and healthy; however, the strain of living, fighting, and surviving in wartime France showed on their faces. I told Mitch how often I had thought of him and how much I had worried about everyone during the war years. Mitch asked if Jack had mentioned Emme and Antoine. I said yes, I had heard the whole bloody, idiotic mess, then Jack changed the subject, going into a long, vivid account of our journey east in his Ford Deluxe station wagon. He sounded like a teenager describing his first trip in his first automobile. Before he got us out of California, I leaned over and asked Mercy, “Where is Carolina?” She pointed through the window in the direction of the carriage house. I excused myself and headed out the door toward the “Honeycircle.”

In the years since I’d been gone the honeysuckle, forsythia, and wisteria bushes had grown much taller and thicker. Everything inside the “Honeycircle” was completely hidden from view, but I could hear a woman singing an old Cole Porter song slightly off-key. I walked through the opening. She was kneeling in a small vegetable garden with her back to me, collecting a few puny tomatoes still left on the vines. She wore green slacks and a long plaid shirt with a sweater wrapped around her waist. She had her hair piled up and under a faded red baseball cap. I stayed silent and watched her work. Ten or fifteen seconds passed. Suddenly she stopped singing. She seemed suspended, frozen like a statue holding the tomato she’d just picked. In a soft, distant voice, and without turning around, she said, “It’s you, isn’t it, Z?”

Nicholas and Owen had said it time and time again, and they were right—she was remarkable. I smiled to myself and waited another heartbeat. “Those tomatoes,” I said, “I think they might be a lost cause.”

Carolina dropped her arm and let the tomato fall away. She was on her knees, but she turned slowly in a half circle until our eyes met. Hers were wet with tears. She shook her head back and forth once, then picked up the tomato and threw it at me. I caught it easily in one hand. “I think
you
are the lost cause, Z!” She wiped the tears from her eyes and shook her head again. “Why did I not hear from you, not once, not one word, during the entire war? I worried constantly about you, Z. There was no way to know if you were alive or dead.”

“It was difficult to correspond from Japan.”

“Japan? What? Is that a joke, Z?”