A Man Overboard Page 19

  “The books didn’t come from Vadim…”

  “You knew that already. The handwriting in the books was different than in the letters.”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t know what it meant until now. Who the books were from…”

  Rose Simon’s powerful voice belting out the words, “…BYYY THE DAWWWWN’S EARRRRLYYYY LIIIIIIGHT” lifted his eyes to the television. She smiled as the crowd cheered, waving—

  There was a flash, a broken, pixilated mess of colors splashed across the screen, and then big multi-colored bars standing alone in the sudden silence of the den.

  “…there may still be something in play…” Johnson was saying. “But not orchestrated from our end…”

  Jack’s hands were shaking, his eyes pulled into a trance by the colors, and he could vaguely make out Joseph’s voice inquiring about the TV being broken. The world tightened on him, squeezing him between the puzzle pieces that were just now finally falling into place. “I have to go,” he mumbled into the phone. He ended the call and let his arm swing limp to his side.

  The books.

  The House of Thunder. October’s Ghost. Seventeen Moments of Spring. Simple Simon. The Donzerly Light.

  As far as he knew, the last two had no Soviet plotlines. But it didn’t matter. The meaning was now clear enough. Bile rose in his throat, and he was falling from the ship all over again, his world inverted and upside down, everything uncertain.

  The House of Thunder: Waterfront Park, home of the Trenton Thunder.

  October’s Ghost and Seventeen Moments of Spring: October 17th.

  Simple Simon and The Donzerly Light: Rose Simon singing the National Anthem.

  Jack shouted an obscenity that set Joseph’s eyes wide with shock, the pizza frozen in space on its way to his mouth.

  “Daddy!” he cried out.

  Jack ignored him, walked to the TV. He flipped to a news station and waited.

  Five minutes later, the reports were pouring in.

  An explosion at Waterfront Park.

  So many thoughts rammed their way into Jack’s mind, and all of them seemed to make sense initially but fell away to nothing in the next moment. His suspicion was that Stacey was somehow involved. His fear was that she was not.

  He dialed her number.

  No answer.

  He tried again.

  “Hi.”

  “Stacey!” he yelled, overjoyed that she was alive.

  “Did you see it on TV?” Her voice sounded strangely detached. Shock, maybe.

  “The broadcast went down. I saw a flash of light. The news is reporting an explosion. Are you okay?”

  Joseph began whimpering in the background, and Jack turned to form the soundless words with his lips. “It’s okay.”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m coming home.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t really see…”

  “What do you mean you didn’t see?”

  “I’m on my way home now. I love you.”

  The call ended.

  Jack stared at the phone. The conversation didn’t make any sense to him. She must be in shock. And then he realized she could be wandering the streets, confused, a piece of home plate in her back.

  Or…

  No, he wouldn’t let himself think that. He couldn’t. She couldn’t.

  But there it was. The Donzerly Light. Sitting right on the countertop.

  29

  Jack was sitting in a chair beside the bed, rocking back and forth, waiting. A street lamp casting its light through an open window outlined the room’s contents with a faint yellowish glow.

  Sixty thousand people…

  That’s how many people could have been killed at Stacey’s event tonight, though the last report he’d seen estimated the casualties to be somewhere below fifty. They were attributing the low number to the work of an amateur.

  Staring into the darkness, he absentmindedly turned the Donzerly Light over in his hands again. Stacey had a lot of explaining to do. Whatever she was involved with, he would know tonight. No more secrets. And yet, he didn’t really want to know, did he? What if his love for her wasn’t strong enough to survive the truth? What would they do? What about Joseph? Would he do whatever was necessary to keep his home intact? Even if she had something to do with what happened tonight? Love believes all things, hopes all things… He moved his eyes to the invisible pictures hanging on their bedroom walls and to the spot he knew held a framed image of Grandmom. Then he moved on to the others, recalling every one of their details from memory. Some of the photos held pictures of Ivan and Donny, and three months later, they were still capable of stopping his heart in his chest. But right now it was the family pictures that were being analyzed in the headquarters of his mind. Their wedding, summer and winter vacations, Joseph’s birthdays… He wondered about the truth of them while trying to anticipate whatever else this night had up its sleeve.

  Johnson didn’t think this was an inside job orchestrated by a faction of the US government to instigate another war. He thought it was a genuine attack. But by…Russia? Why would Russia blow up an event aimed at supplying water to the waterless? If Russia wanted a war with the United States, wouldn’t they just shoot a few nukes over and get the whole thing rolling? Unless they were waving some Muslim terrorist group’s flag, intending to draw the US deeper into the Middle East so that they could sneak through the backdoor while everyone’s heads were stuck down the War on Terror toilet. That is, if it was Russia and not the CIA or Al-Qaida (or the C-I-Aida as some referred to it). But there were the books…

  The sound of a car pulling into the driveway brought a halt to his conjecture. Stacey was home. And after doors opened and closed, her padded steps could be heard ascending the stairs.

  His heart was beating faster now.

  She stepped into the doorway, and the dim light from the window painted her figure as a dark silhouette.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  She stepped into the bedroom and began undressing.

  Jack watched her shape dance beneath the shadows. “What’re you doing?” he asked softly.

  “Getting ready for bed.” She flung her shoes across the floor toward the closet.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  He reached over and turned the bedside lamp on. A soft glow washed over the room. “You look okay.” Her clothes didn’t even appear dirty.

  She unbuttoned her shirt but didn’t answer. Then she pulled it off.

  “The dawn’s early light?” he asked, holing the book up so that she could see it.

  Stacey looked at her husband, and for a second, feigned confusion. “What’s wrong, Jack?” The tone in her voice indicated an attempt to understand why he wasn’t embracing her, kissing her, glad she was okay. But only for a second.

  “Is it just a coincidence?”

  “Is what a coincidence?”

  “The House of Thunder, Seventeen Days of Spring, October’s Ghost, Simple Simon, The Donzerly Light? What is this, Stacey? Or Anna. Or whatever the hell your name is. I know the books weren’t from Vadim.”

  She sighed, shimmied out of her dress pants, and stood tall in her underwear. “Is Joseph asleep?”

  “Probably.”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, facing him.

  “You put the book there because you wanted me to find it, didn’t you? You wanted me to put it all together…”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t put the book there. It’s not mine.”

  “You said you liked the author, that you hadn’t started reading it yet…” He was growing impatient.

  “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Worry me?” he asked in disbelief.

  “I tried to stop him,” she whispered, her eyes suddenly far off.

  “Who?”

  She met his gaze, and a tear fell from one of her eyes. It caught the light and sparkled like a diamond down her cheek. “I shou
ld have told you before, but…” A hand went to her mouth. It was trembling.

  “Tell me now.”

  “I couldn’t before. He would’ve known, and…” She looked away. “…I thought I’d be able to stop him if he ever went through with it…”

  “I need answers, Stacey. Right now.”

  She looked hurt by the coldness in his voice but nodded her consent. “You’re right. The books were never from Vadim. I lied about that.”

  “What were they?”

  “Codes. Messages. His way of communicating.”

  Jack leaned forward. Codes? “The text you got on the boat that night…”

  She nodded. “He developed a number system to use for the books he chose. He got a kick out of finding titles that, when put together, would spell out his plan. I think he thought he was taunting the authorities, hiding the details of the mission right under their noses, as if they should’ve been able to piece it all together and prevent it. He was a lunatic, thriving in his own lunatic logic. He sent many books just in case someone was watching, but only the books with relevant titles were decipherable.”

  “Who’s ‘he’?”

  She sat up straight, summoning the strength to finally lay everything bare. After a deep breath, she began. “You know about my father and mother.”

  He nodded and leaned back, settling into the chair while trying to prepare himself for what was going to be another backhanded slap to everything he knew about their life. What did Jesus say about being struck on the cheek? Turn the other one also? Well, here it was. Round two. He’d gotten over the first, but as he watched the windup of the second, he knew that what was coming now may not be as salvageable.

  “I figured out that my mother was KGB when I was seventeen. I didn’t know anything about it other than the movies I’d seen, didn’t really know anything about Russia. But I decided that I wanted to follow in my parents’ footprints, to make them proud. I didn’t think my mother would allow it, though, so I kept my plans to myself. My sophomore year of college, I got a chance to go to Russia.” She moved her head toward the window.

  Jack didn’t know she’d been to Russia. If she knew Viki was KGB, then she had been pretending to be surprised by his telling her in the hospital.

  “That’s where I met Vadim,” she said.

  “You met him in Russia?”

  “Yeah.” She laughed, but it was mostly in disgust. “I was taken with him. He was an agent just like my father. He’d gone to school in the US, and he was about to be sent back as a plant. He said he wanted to stay in touch. We did.” Her eyes shifted back to her feet. “The excitement of being married to a spy wore off pretty quick. He was an angry, violent man. Like I told you before, I wanted out. I wanted what all my friends in college were striving for, a house, the loving husband, kids, a career…”

  Jack could see the truth on her face. Viktoriya had at least gotten that much right.

  “There was another guy in Russia. His name was Fedyenka Yevstigneyev.”

  “The books were from him?”

  She nodded. “He was infatuated with me, but I could tell right away that he was too fanatical. His ideas were…” She bit her lip. “He really scared me.” She stood and removed her bra. Then she walked to the closet, opened the doors, and pulled a nightgown off a hanger. She raised her arms and let it fall down over her head. It fell elegantly over her accented figure until snagging on her shapely bosom. She straightened it, and it fell against her skin like a coating of silk paint.

  “He resented that I chose Vadim over him,” she continued, “but he didn’t let it interfere with our work.”

  “Your work…” Jack was trying to work his attention off her body and back on the story.

  “We were working on a plot that would bring the US into a war with Russia.” She shook her head. “I never really thought it would go anywhere. I really didn’t want to see America destroyed, let alone play a part in it. I was just playing a game. But by the time I actually grew up and understood what I was into, I was in too deep to just say goodbye. It’s why they had me become an event planner, for god’s sake.” She looked him in the eyes. “I thought Vadim and I were just fooling around—”

  Jack sneered. “Yeah, I only met him once, but he did seem like the kind of guy who would joke around about stuff like that.”

  She ignored him. “Fedyenka was different. He was insane. He started making advances on me once he discovered my unhappiness with Vadim. He said he would have me, and that he wouldn’t take no for an answer this time, that I’d made a mistake in choosing Vadim over him before. From then on, he started setting Vadim up as his scapegoat, everything he planned leading back to him. And he finally gave him up to the CIA.”

  Jack felt like he should be taking notes.

  “I was overjoyed, though, when the CIA turned Vadim. It gave me a chance to finally get away.” More lip chewing. “I told you that part.”

  Jack couldn’t believe that the woman he’d shared the last five years with, and the most intimate experiences that could be had in life—marriage, the birth and raising of a child, family—had been carrying this secret past with her the entire time. But he tried to withhold complete sympathy until her timeline caught up with tonight. To the bomb.

  “I wanted a life with you, to bury all that stuff in some black hole somewhere. I didn’t want anything to do with the SVR, Russia, any of it. And for an entire year it seemed like I got my wish. I hadn’t heard from Vadim—he didn’t even know my new name or where I was—and I hadn’t gotten anything from Fedyenka.”

  “Until your mother was activated again.”

  She nodded. “I didn’t know she was supposed to kill him, that that’s why she told him where I was.”

  Jack held up a hand, pausing her story. “Is Joseph really my son?”

  A hint of disapproval crossed her face. “You don’t see it? He’s more you than me.”

  “But is he more Vadim than me?”

  “Oh, please.” She smiled sheepishly. “Jack, he’s our son. I told you I’d show you the test results.”

  He hated the fact that she’d needed a test to determine who Joseph’s father was, but he was learning to get over it, so…moving on. “Yeah, yeah, yeah…you had to pleasure your other husband for a while. I know that part, too. And then?”

  She frowned. “I was able to get out of that mess without telling him my new name or where I was. But a few months later, Fedyenka found me. I told him to stay the hell away from me, but he threatened to tell Vadim about you. I told him I’d tell Vadim that he sold him out to the CIA. And he said he’d kill you and cut the baby out of my stomach as he raped me.”

  That was actually a pretty disturbing image, and if Jack had the chance, he’d kill the psycho just for uttering it. “Did you…”

  “He didn’t want me like that anymore. I was the event planner. He needed me to help set up his event. That’s when the books started.”

  “The messages didn’t sound like some psycho who was ready to kill you for rejecting him.”

  “He was mocking me. I don’t know. I stopped trying to make sense of him a long time ago.”

  “And the books were to be translated according to his code?”

  “Yes. When the SVR got wind of Vadim being turned, and I guess after my mother failed to eliminate him, they began feeding him false information. But then, when it looked like the CIA was planning on using him as a patsy for some kind of false flag, the SVR activated my mother again, not giving her the option to fail this time. But Fedyenka saw the false flag as a golden opportunity and made sure everything he did could be covered beneath its umbrella. He had Vadim as a patsy twice over.”

  “But then your mom kills Vadim.”

  “No. Then you survive and get the FBI involved. Which makes the CIA eventually scrap the op. But Fedyenka had planned for that and was still proceeding with his own attack, still setting up Vadim as the fall guy.”

  “And then Vadim is killed.”

 
“And he needs another patsy.”

  He felt the realization run over his brain like melting ice, cold understanding dripping into his eyes and clearing his vision. “You.”

  “When you told me about the Donzerly book, I knew he’d been in our house. That he was setting me up.”

  “What was he trying to accomplish by blowing up an event about water?”

  “A war that would revive the Soviet Union and make Russia the world’s primary superpower.”

  “He thought Russia could win that war?”

  “With everything he was. He was a rogue agent, though. Nothing he was doing came down from the chain of command. He took it upon himself to instigate a war, to get the show on the road. Only it couldn’t be discovered that the attack came from some radical terrorist, which is why he preferred it to be covered by an inside job. He didn’t care who started the war, as long as there was one. There are parties on both sides, it seems, that want to get the whole thing over with.”

  “But why this event?”

  “I got him to believe that I was totally on board with his psychotic plan, and I suggested something that would really stir the American public into action. The kind of impulsive action that would make everyone too angry to think things through. The need to go kill someone. Anyone. Like after 9/ll. Like the first Gulf War. Just like Americans wouldn’t tolerate that ‘babies being thrown from incubators’ fiction, neither would they tolerate something like this.”

  Jack’s head spun. “This was your idea?”

  “I needed to stop him. And the best shot I had was letting him go through with it. It was risky, but it was the only way I could be sure he wouldn’t come after our family, or that he wouldn’t try blowing something else up later on.”

  He rubbed his forehead, trying to massage understanding into his brain, and watched as Stacey’s lower lip began trembling.

  “But I couldn’t get to the last two bombs in time,” she whispered.

  His wife racing around a stadium trying to deactivate bombs before they could detonate? Who the hell was this woman? Who had he married? “What about Fedyenka?”