Final Approach (14 page)

“Damn!” He sat down hard in the wingback chair in the living room, feeling numb. Cindy had meant far more to him than he had ever really admitted to himself, and now a deep hollowness filled him, as if all the bright promises and dreams that had seemed to be just ahead of him had suddenly been ripped away. Loving her had always been heavenly: the sex, the companionship, and even the feeling of playing out some fantasy role, as though they were clandestine operatives skulking around, beating the system, using code words and phrases, making certain they didn't compromise his political future. He was, after all, a married man. That would come to an end quite soon, but in the meantime, there were vast numbers of loyal voters and political enemies alike in the state of Kansas who would never understand or forgive—not even if they knew the agony he had gone through losing his wife to his career.

Julie had hated political life from the first, and moving to Washington had quickly eclipsed their earlier, happier years when he was a young lawyer in Wichita. She hated the constant public attention, but she claimed it was his priorities that had frozen her out, forcing her into an also-ran position when it came to his time and attention. What Julie and he had felt for each other had died with the second term, and the idea of a quiet divorce became a welcome coup de grace for an empty shell of a marriage. Finding Cindy had helped fill the void, not create it.

With surprise he realized he had a great urge to call Julie. The automatic need to have her hold him and help soothe the pain, as she used to do when the path became rough, was nothing but a learned response—a ghost of a memory of happier times. Yet Kell was acutely aware of how urgently he needed that sympathy.

“My God, Martinson, you're an idiot.” He shook his head in disbelief, sitting back in the chair a little deeper as if to guard against moving toward the phone. “That's right, boy,” he said, and snorted, “call your estranged wife for sympathy because you've lost your girlfriend. She'll be touched.”

Kell realized he was listening for the phone to ring. Sneadman had the number, and enough time had passed. Why hadn't he called? The waiting was intolerable. He realized he needed someone to grieve with him.

Kell had been ignoring the flashing message light on the phone answering machine since he'd arrived early that morning. It was always blinking when he came home. Absently he pressed the message replay button as he walked past, getting several feet away before the beautiful voice filled the downstairs of the house, the words merely incomprehensible music at first, and a music that filled him with great sadness.

It was Cindy's voice.

He covered the distance to the answering machine before her message had finished. Her voice had startled him, and he couldn't think of a single reason why she would have called the farm on Friday when she knew he would be in Wichita, and then on the road to pick her up in Kansas City. He fumbled for the right control, rewinding the tape and pushing the play button once more, listening intently for the words as her voice began again, quiet and subdued, devoid of her usual flair or enthusiasm.

“Hello there. I know you've just walked in from what was probably an angry trip back from Wichita, and I imagine you've spent the last few hours on the road quite upset over my message about the Kansas City situation, so I figured I'd better explain a bit more. I'm sorry I had to do it that way, leave it on your cellular voice mailbox rather than call you directly, but I guess I didn't want to be second-guessed or talked out of it. I just think things are too complicated with that issue to discuss it over the phone with you. It's confusing me, and I think what this assistant of yours needs is a little time. Therefore, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't do what I know you're thinking of doing—calling me at home the instant you get to the farm. I know you, Senator. Let's please give me enough time to get this issue in hand, and we can discuss it on Tuesday when you get back. Please. I'm just not prepared … with this brief, I mean.…”

What message? What brief? What on earth had she been talking about?

The answering machine sat with the telephone on a delicate mahogany campaign desk by the stairway. Kell steadied it now against the vibration of the rewinding message tape as he watched the strobe lights of a distant airplane blink across the night sky through the picture windows in the dining room. Focusing his thoughts was suddenly a task. A new possibility had begun fluttering around the edge of his consciousness, but he repressed it. Yet, why had she called Friday to say they would discuss things on Tuesday when they would be together that very evening in Kansas City? The message had to have been left Friday afternoon. And why would she call here to Salina? Their weekend hideaway was to have been in northern Missouri. She knew damn well he wasn't heading for Salina, unless this was some sort of contingency plan or smoke screen. And where was the message she was talking about? The questions cascaded in his mind, but the answers were not following.

There was a rueful irony in her leaving a mystery as a last act in her life. Or perhaps she had left the message to tease him—intending that he find it after their weekend together. That must be it. His cellular telephone number in Wichita had electronic voice mail, which worked like an answering machine. He had listened to his messages before leaving Wichita Friday afternoon, and there was nothing there.

Or was there?

Kell lifted the phone receiver, punching in his cellular phone number in Wichita. Suddenly the memory wouldn't come. Had he, in fact, listened to his messages on Friday? Getting away from the last political function, another rubber chicken dinner meeting in downtown Wichita Friday evening, had amounted to an escape. The people there were supporters as well as constituents, so he'd had to be gracious and feign interest, but all he could think about during the dinner, the rambling introduction, and his own speech, was Cindy and the coming weekend. He had left immediately afterward, heading his car toward Kansas City with just enough time to reach the airport before her flight arrived. Could he have forgotten to check?

On the other end of the line, he heard his own voice begin a familiar litany about being out of range and leaving a message, but he interrupted it summarily with a series of keystrokes, waiting then, impatiently, for the computer to cycle through several mundane calls. With the grandfather clock in the hallway loudly chiming 8
P.M.
, he had to strain to listen, jamming the receiver tighter against his ear. There were six messages, four of them left Friday during the day. One by one he listened to each recording, but it was the fourth message that contained her voice, and he stiffened with anticipation as it began.

“Senator, this is Cynthia. About the Kansas City project, the one involving North America. I'm sorry to just leave you a message, but I won't be available to discuss the project this evening. I'm going to cancel the planned conference. I'd rather not discuss the reasons over the phone, but I'll be available to meet with you on this subject next Tuesday. I just need some time to … work on this. I'm leaving the office now, and I'm, uh, sorry to change plans like this.”

Kell stood transfixed for a second before replacing the receiver. She had canceled Kansas City. She had canceled their weekend. That meant …

The ringing of the phone startled him, almost as much as the speed with which he grabbed the receiver. He was overreacting.

“Hello?”

“Senator?” The voice was cool and flat, but instantly recognizable, and the sound of it triggered a flood of thoughts and feelings, emotions and realizations crammed into a split second. She couldn't be alive! He had not dared to hope she might be alive. He had given up. But all his life, it seemed, the prerequisite for success was a final acceptance of failure—the price of gain, the realization of loss.

Kell realized he had been holding his breath.

“Cindy? My God, is that really you?” His left hand climbed to his forehead, as if to quiet the high-speed recalculations of his life raging within. “Lord, I don't believe it!”

“Well, you told Fred I was to call you immediately. So here I am. Who else were you expecting?”

“I … I didn't expect …” Kell fought to gain control. “Cindy, I just now, just this minute, listened to your message.”

There was silence from the other end for what seemed a long time before she began again, not seeming to understand.

“I really don't want us to talk right now.” Her voice was suddenly unsteady, shaky. “I need to sort things out … the issues, I mean, regarding the, uh, North America matter.”

“Screw the issues and screw our code words. You're alive, and I can't quite believe it. I thought I'd seen you die!”

A thousand miles to the east, Cindy Collins pulled the phone from her ear for a second and looked at it, as if her expression could be seen in Salina. It was a useless gesture for an absent audience, but it was cathartic. His words made no sense. He knew she was at home. The soft decor of her carefully furnished living room had been her refuge since she had stumbled into her small apartment near Dupont Circle on Friday night, consumed with uncertainty over whether she should have canceled their rendezvous in Kansas City. Even after her intended flight had crashed—even after she had realized that most of those aboard had died—she still caught herself feeling guilty. She had ignored the ringing phone most of the day, expecting the press reaction connecting her man with Wilkins but not wanting to deal with it and slightly afraid Kell might call before she was ready to talk. But the incessant ringing finally became too much. At last she had yanked the receiver from the hook to find Fred Sneadman on the other end.

“You mean the crash in Kansas City?” she began. “I know … I'm still shaking. If I hadn't canceled on you …”

“No, no, I don't mean that,” he replied hurriedly. “I mean, yes I
do
mean that it scared me to death, but, Cindy, honey … I didn't get your message from my phone in Wichita until just seconds before you called. I didn't know you weren't coming last night.” Kell paused and, hearing no sound from her end, continued, his heart pounding, breathing as if he had just run a three-minute mile. “Cindy, I went to Kansas City, to the airport, to meet your flight.”

The significance of what he was saying finally grabbed her, and Cindy sat forward on her sofa as if convulsed. He hadn't known. He had driven hundreds of miles to meet her for nothing. While she had sat on her overstuffed couch nursing a bottle of white wine and feeling sorry for herself, he was watching a real-life horror.

“Kell, I had no idea.”

“I was sitting there by the runway where I shouldn't have been, sitting there in the car waiting for your plane. I saw it crash, saw it torn apart. I thought I had seen you die. I didn't know you weren't on it, but thank God you weren't.”

“But you always check your messages. You never fail to check.”

“I was too eager to get away from Wichita … too eager to get to Kansas City to pick you up. I must have forgotten.”

“You were right there?”

“Yeah. I've been in agony. No one knew you were on—or were supposed to be on—that flight. They haven't released a passenger list. I was the only one who knew. That's why I told Fred to call you. I was hoping someone would find out besides me. Lord, I do not believe this!”

“I'm so sorry, Kell.”

“That's all right! I'm just so grateful to find out you're okay. Yes, I would have been upset had I heard your message. I probably would have called you when I got up here. But … well, I'm full of so many conflicting feelings right now. You know? Why didn't you come, but then thank God you didn't. Cindy, we have to talk.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean we have to really talk. Now I have a second chance to tell you everything I was wishing all day I had told you, things I had been putting off. I have a chance to tell you I need you, and I love you, and I don't give a damn who knows it.”

She did not answer for a few seconds, and Kell realized he was holding his breath for a second time, listening for any nuance, looking for any window to her feelings.

“I think I love you too,” she began, sounding more distant than before, “but I need to be sure. Things are going too fast. That's why I didn't come.”

“I would have lost you—I thought I had. But I guess that proves there was a purpose in all of this.”

“Maybe. But we
do
need to be careful what we say.”

“Not now.” He was emphatic. The game had changed. There was no longer a game.

“Yes, Senator, now. I'm not going to let you blow this. You are still attached.”

“Not for long.”

“But as long as you are, we stay underground. Especially until we find out if there really is a ‘we.'”

“Don't … please. Don't snatch you away from me again.”

There was a small laugh on her end. “That statement is a grammatical disaster.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you do, but I'm not going anywhere. I just want to be sure, and right now I'm very confused.”

“I'm coming back tonight.”

“No Kell, don't …” She felt the tears on her face, and that surprised her, but the image of him all alone at the farm, pacing around like a caged animal, so powerful yet so helpless, tugged at her.

“No, that's okay,” Kell was saying, “I won't see you until you're ready, but I'm in no mood to sit out here in a wheat field until Monday evening.”

Cindy smiled, unseen, as she ran her hand through her long, blond hair—a mannerism he loved. She knew how impatient he could be.

“I won't batter down your door. But I may sit outside it looking unbearably lonely if you won't let me in.”

“Now wouldn't that be a wonderful image for some future confirmation hearing—‘Lovesick senator wastes away outside bimbo's boudoir.' The
Miami Herald
could relate to that. They'd figure you were practicing for a presidential run.”