All Through the Night (25 page)
T
hey sat there throughout the afternoon, sometimes talking, sometimes not, until Foster stumped up the front steps and called through the screen, “You folks about done in there?”
Tatyana smiled at Wayne. “No.”
“Well, you got to come anyway.”
They did not hold hands leaving the cottage. But there was considerable brushing against one another. Foster moved more slowly than usual. Wayne sensed something was behind the movement, something serious. He waved Tatyana forward and held back to match the old man’s pace. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” The old man gave Tatyana a small two-fingered wave. Go on. He said to Wayne, “I hear they been working their religion under your skin.”
Wayne recalled something his sister had said. It seemed like years ago. Another lifetime. “Their faith.”
Foster didn’t limp so much as test each step in careful turn. “When my wife got sick and then passed on, I pretty much fell apart. Not just emotionally either. Suffered a heart attack three months to the day after we put her in the ground. When I got back on my feet, nine months had passed and my nephew was running my company. Mine. Me and my wife, we sweated blood to make that thing work, and now it was gone. All of it. I hired a lawyer and I fought ’em and I lost. Not just money, either. When it was over, my family wouldn’t have anything to do with me. Barely had enough left to buy this place. And no place else to go. Or anybody who wanted to ever lay eyes on me again.”
Wayne saw the gathering up ahead, and understood when Foster stopped and took a step off the walk. He kicked at the pine needles spread on the ground and said, “Victoria won’t have anything to do with me unless I get with the game plan.”
“Not much of a surprise, given who she is.”
“After I was kidnapped, the whole time I was left alone there in that room, the only thing I thought about was seeing how my hard heart and my stubborn ways kept me from her. Different place, same old man.” Foster huffed a shaky breath. “I never thought I’d ever love another woman.”
“She’s as fine a lady as I’ve ever known,” Wayne agreed.
Foster pulled off his glasses and pressed hard on his eye-balls. “You think maybe you could help me find what it is she’s going on about?”
Wayne settled a hand on his bony shoulder. “What say we find it together.”
W
ith Foster on one side and Victoria on the other, they led him back down past Jerry’s house. On to the waterfront.
The strip of green was wall-to-wall food.
Every member of the community was there. Or so close to everyone that the few absentees weren’t missed. Certainly not by Wayne. He had never seen so much food, not even coming into base from duty out in the boonies, when the cafeteria staff went all out to make them feel welcome. Nothing compared to this spread. The food smothered a half-dozen trestle tables covered with flimsy paper that flapped noisily in the late afternoon breeze. And that was the only sound.
Nobody made a big deal about his arrival. But he could see they had all been waiting for him. His voice sounded as loud as a megaphone when he asked, “What is this?”
Victoria replied, “Just a crowd of old people saying thanks.”
A retired pastor said grace. They then made Wayne go first through the line. Ladies stepped forward and explained with quiet pride what they’d made. He tried to take a tiny bit of everything and still wound up with too much. They made him take a nice seat there by the dessert table and left him pretty much alone after that, stopping by now and then to ask him how he liked the food or see if he needed another drink or just say how grand the weather was. The soft voices almost shy, the smiles when he responded as warm as the setting sun.
Harry, the guy with the faulty hearing aid, seated himself next to Wayne and declared, “Always did like my grub. Got bits and pieces falling off every whichaway. But I managed to keep hold of my appetite. Leastwise, I have so far.”
His wife came over. “That chair is reserved for Wayne’s young lady.”
“She’s down yonder flirting with Jerry. And this young man needs some company.” Harry waved his fork. “Tell her, son, else she’ll make me move.”
“He’s fine where he is.”
“Hmph. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, a handsome young man doesn’t have enough sense to go tell a beauty like that to join him.”
Wayne waited until she had departed to say, “Any lady that pretty can pick and choose where she wants to sit.”
Harry harumphed what might have been a laugh. “Seeing what she drives, I figure she’s a prizewinner at the fast getaway.”
Wayne ate until his belly needed a break, and set his plate on the grass next to his cup. The sun was about five degrees above the horizon, a huge orange globe that had lost enough of its heat to give the day a guise of easy comfort. The water was molten and gold. The breeze gradually diminished to a final consoling breath. A flock of migrating waterfowl, so numerous they resembled a cloud with a million wings, circled the bay once, twice, then came in for a landing. The grass and the trees and the weather-beaten cottages all melded into one sunset hue.
Harry set his own plate aside. “I was a schoolteacher back before the last ice age. Taught Greek and Latin and French. You know what my favorite lecture was? The hero. I looked forward to that year in and year out. The question of what makes a hero occupied Greek art and literature for over two thousand years. But not us. Today, we’re
modern.
We’ve summed it all up in one flash-bang two-hour film. We say it’s simple. A hero is a guy who
wins.
You know what I say to that? Rubbish!”
“Harry,” his wife called over. “Pipe down.”
“Rubbish,” he repeated, only slightly softer. “A hero is somebody willing to risk all to gain all. It doesn’t
matter
whether he wins or not. What matters is he tries. What matters is what he tries
for.
” Harry pried himself free of the chair. “You want more lemonade, son?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
Easton Grey slipped into the chair Harry vacated and asked, “Did Tatyana tell you what security discovered?”
“We sort of got sidetracked.”
“Before we get into that, I need to tell you one other thing. The two senior partners in Eric’s firm, that is, the firm where he used to work. They are executors of my estate.”
Wayne felt the familiar tightening of his gut. “So if you’d been killed, they’d have taken total control.”
“They would have been responsible for the disposition of my corporate shares.” Easton’s smile was very tight. “They have spent hours trying to convince me they knew nothing of what Eric had been doing. Which brings us to point number two.”
“The angel.”
“It seems there has been an exchange student working in Eric’s firm the past month. From Nigeria. Son of a chief, who also happens to be a pastor. A brilliant young man, on a full scholarship to Harvard Law. He’s back in Boston now. I have not yet tracked down a photograph. But his description bears a remarkable resemblance to the man you and I confronted.”
Wayne had to struggle to fit what he was hearing inside his brain. “He worked for Eric, probably signed a confidentiality agreement that legally bound him not to divulge what he knew.”
“So he warned us without giving away anything,” Easton agreed.
“He ordered you to hide and find yourself a human shield,” Wayne said.
The company chief let that sink in a moment, then said, “Something else. Eric Stroud accessed your military file.”
“Which explains what the African said to me about my past.”
“If it was him.”
“You still think it might have been an angel?”
Grey smiled and gave a general’s shrug, one that could be easily missed. “I’m not so sure it matters anymore.”
Wayne tasted that thought for a time, then slowly drew out his words. “What do you know….”
“The truth is, I don’t know much of anything at all.” Easton fished in his pocket. “Except that I owe you an enormous debt.”
Wayne saw what he was offering and said, “No way.”
“It was Tatyana’s idea. She knew you wouldn’t accept money. So I bought this from her and now I’m offering it to you.” When Wayne refused to take it, Easton set the gold-plated Ferrari key in his lap. “Along with a job, if you’re interested.”
“I’ll give it some thought.” Wayne found himself unable to stay where he was. He struggled out of the folding chair and meandered down the line of people. Smiling people. People who made him feel he belonged. Down the line beside the waterfront to where Jerry sat with Tatyana on one side and Julio on the other. Victoria and Foster were an arm’s length away. Easton’s daughter was seated on the ground between Tatyana and Victoria.
Wayne said, “I was thinking.”
At that point, he found it necessary to stop and catch his breath. He tried again. “I was thinking maybe we should all take a run up to Disney World. Show Julio the sights.”
The kid went round-eyed. “No way.”
Clara, Easton’s daughter, hugged her coltish legs up tight to her chest and turned to Victoria. “Say you’ll come with us, Maliaka!”
Jerry asked, “What did you call her, girl?”
“Maliaka. It’s what the village children called her back before. In Africa.” Clara beamed at the older woman. “It’s Swahili for angel.”
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