Force of Fire (The Kane Legacy) (27 page)

The young man had been on his
knees, begging for his life, at once cursing and praying to his invisible god
in broken Castilian. Albert caught him in the tunnels, drifting like a rat
along the muddy floor ninety feet below the grounds of La Zarzuela, the Royals’
summer palace just outside Madrid. Albert knew at once he was Basque, knew at
once who had sent him – this slimy rodent for the LPP. He had his orders.
Shoot to kill.
Take no prisoners
,
ask
no questions
. The only outsiders allowed legitimate passage here were
the French and he knew every one of their powdery faces.

He was crying now, my God.
Tears rushing down his bony cheeks, smearing the black coal of camouflage. He
was a boy, his cracking voice still struggling for the resonance of manhood.
Albert centered his pistol just between the young man’s eyes, eyes that cried
out to him in desperation, in prayer. Albert Kane was God.
The
giver and taker of life.
This one lousy snake for one
hundred innocent children.
He knew he should do it now. Now, before he
lost his nerve.
Now, as he already had more than a dozen
times.
But it was Christmas Eve, 1944.

'
Feliz
Navidad
,'
he said, lowering his pistol in the
darkness.

The boy, whom Albert would
later come to know as Fidel
Carnova
, master of the
LPP, scampered into the darkness, the sound of his racing footfalls blending in
with the high-pitched cries of the sewer rats.

Albert straightened, checked
the load and closed the cylinder. Six bullets. All he needed was one.
One pellet of gold-tipped steel to end it all.
Why were the
single shots always the hardest? If he had been man enough, he would have shot
that
fourteen- year-old son-of-a-bitch when he had the
chance. But he’d been a warrior, not an assassin. That had been his
soul-absolving excuse. And look where his excuses had gotten him, had gotten
Isa, and Ana
.

Albert straightened, fending off
his racing pulse and the bulge of heat at his temples. It had all been too
much.
Too much pain.
It never ended. Isa was dying.
The stress of his parting had been the trigger. He had killed the one person he
loved more than life itself just as surely as if he’d put a gun to her head.
A single bullet.
A hit man for the
government.
And what had been his payback from the DOS?
The desolation of a family, the loss of a daughter, maybe two.
There had to be a way to stop it now for all of them.

Albert opened his mouth and
laid the cold, metal hollow of the pistol’s barrel against his vibrating
tongue. He caught the image of an exquisite Spanish girl standing on a lone
Georgetown bridge, waves of sleek, dark hair dancing over the water.

He laid his finger on the
trigger, steadying the revolver with his other hand. It would be easier if he
shut his eyes against the glare of mid-day light blazing in through the curtain
that framed the ghostly form –

Wait!

Albert pulled the pistol from
his mouth.

The soft shadow of a woman
eased its way up the walk to the house. She floated, ethereal.

Isabel.

He
uncocked
his revolver, and laid it down on the desk. What a selfish bastard he was.
Selfish to the end.
What if she had found him here? Found
him like that?

She was in the front hall now,
her high-heeled footsteps approaching.

Her voice called out –
fearless, demanding
.

'Who's there?'
Albert
made his way to the threshold and paused, taking her in with his eyes like a
dying man gasping for breath. She was his air, his life and for four
asphyxiating years he'd gone without oxygen. How he’d longed to see her, draw
her in like the fresh scent of rain after a storm.

She looked at him, no
indecision in her eyes
.

'It's true,' she said,
rushing to him and taking him in her arms. She grabbed him fiercely around the
neck and clung there, as if by letting go she’d lose him altogether
.

Water filled his eyes as he took in her acceptance
of who he was and had been.
Tears ran down her satiny cheeks, blessing
his shoulders with their touch. Her touch. Albert held her, his tears mixing
with hers, their eventual sobs filling the vacuum of the hall
.

There
was nothing he’d ever wanted more than this moment.

She was without a doubt the
bravest person he knew
.

He pulled back to dab
her eyes, those brilliant black, invincible Spanish eyes.

'Yes, Isa, I'm home.'

The captain turned on the No
Smoking sign as Ana's plane approached Washington National Airport. Back to DC,
back to the grind.
Although nothing would ever seem usual
again.

She checked the time on the
oversized gold watch that hung loosely around her wrist.
Tu
nina
,
siempre
.
Daddy's little
girl.
How could she begin to understand her father's reasons? How could
he expect her to? For all the things he was, her father wasn't a cruel man.
What part of his twisted explanation was it that made sense?
Something
noble about democracy?
Something about preserving its freedom for all
fathers and their families, not just selfishly for his own? It had been for the
greater good, a split-second choice of the lesser evil that would have
ramifications lasting a lifetime.
Her father's lifetime.
None of them would ever see him the same way again. That was the price of her
father's blind patriotism.

She told this to Neal when he
gave her the watch. But she had a hunch he hadn't passed it on. No, this Mark
Neal was a confidential man.
Someone who could keep a secret.
It bothered her at first that he’d known so many of her secrets, had examined
her life with such exacting detail before the two of them had ever met. But
she’d realized the value of that being she was still alive. And why did it
matter to her anyway, if she'd never see him again, if it had been nothing more
to him than routine business? It mattered because there seemed to be nothing at
all routine about Mark Neal.

There was nothing routine in
the way he’d taken her by the elbow to support her as she cried into that
bubbling fountain in Santiago. He’d steadied her then and looked into her
watery eyes with a knowing that at the same time alarmed her and called her to
him.

They'd been walking back to the
hotel when they passed the square. The sense of familiarity was there at once.
But it wasn't until they approached the small gurgling fountain with the Saint
Francis statuette that Ana remembered. Suddenly he was there – laughing,
leaning back over the water, picking silly tunes on his elegant Spanish guitar,
and she could no longer brush it off. She'd hoped to be able to hold it in
until she was in the privacy of her room. But now, being here, seeing this, it
was impossible. The emotion erupted like a torrent. It wasn't only Scott. It
was everything.

He’d put his arms around her
and held her then, because she needed to be held, and no one had to tell him
why.

Mark paced the cold, polished
floor of the airport lobby, a folded copy of the Post tucked under his arm.
This was one foolhardy risk he was taking, and he was not a betting man. He had
tried to talk himself out of
it,
right up until the
moment he bought his
farecard
to the airport. But he
had boarded the train anyway.

He was not the kind to live
with regret. He’d had enough of that already. But that had not been of his
choosing. If he failed to act now, he would look back for the rest of his life
wondering what he’d missed. Wondering, if he’d had the courage, if things might
have been different
.

So now here he was with no
game plan, with nothing more than a feeling this was the right thing to do and
the right place to be. He’d always heeded his gut, even when all rationale
argued otherwise. She didn't even know he'd be here. But there was something in
the way she'd fallen into his arms in Santiago that told him she'd be glad to
see him. There was something in that
moment, even though
they’d not spoken all the way back
to the hotel, as they walked, his arm
around her. She had seemed to fit there, pressed up against the warmth of his
body. And he had wanted her to stay. Not just for that evening but for the one
after, and the one after that.

Ana
straightened in her chair as the plane began its fast approach to the runway.
It had been uncanny. The way they’d stayed there for hours, staring into the
cascading water, neither one speaking, neither one having to. He’d pulled her
to him and kept her safe, safe against the midnight air ripping its way across
the mountain. She had wanted to crawl into him, become part of him, because she
somehow knew that’s where she needed to be.

She’d tried to forget it,
explain it away, but the memory wouldn’t budge. It clung to her like warm
honey, coating her very existence. It had been with her in Costa
Negra
, denying her that last taste of Joe she’d so badly
wanted. It was here with her now, skewing the flavor of her airline coffee. It
would be with her always, damn it, if she didn’t finally do something about it.

The flight attendant retrieved
Ana’s paper cup and strapped herself in just as the churning wheels of the
plane kissed the tarmac.

Mark stood at the gate watching
the metal steps spill from the belly of Ana’s plane. What would he say? How
could he explain something that even he didn’t understand? He felt the slow
burn at his Adam’s apple as he saw her descend the stairs
.

Mark
had known from the start Ana was a woman with a story to tell. He knew now he
was the right man to listen. The funny thing was, she’d already told him
everything his heart needed to know.