Sea of Crises (10 page)

“No.” The man shook his head. “No, you didn’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. There was a tragic mix-up in Khe Sanh. Things were pretty hectic back then. The body that was shipped to you was one of the other men in our platoon. And, believe me, the visit to that young man’s family is not one I’m looking forward to making.”

He again reached out and patted her knee and her mother’s knee. She wanted to slap him. “But this message is a happy one. Your son,” he said, looking at her mother, “and your brother,” he said, turning his attention to her, “is alive.”

Patricia’s mother had found her voice. “Mason?” she asked, hopefully. “Mason is alive?”

“No he’s not, mother. These men are lying.”

The man’s dark eyes flashed momentarily. Then his easy smile returned. He snapped his fingers, and the man standing by the front door stepped forward and handed him a manila envelope. He opened it and extracted what appeared to be a color photograph. He looked at it briefly before turning it around and showing it to the two women.

Patricia experienced a moment of light-headedness. The photograph was a professional portrait. It depicted a man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties, seated on a stool in front of a neutral background. He was wearing a flight suit of some kind, with a large helmet sitting on his knee. The man was smiling casually, his eyes looking directly at the camera. The hair was thinner, and there were crags and creases that had never been there before. But there was no mistaking who it was.

“Mason!” her mother cried out.

The man called Johnson re-appeared. He had not brought anything from the kitchen for them to drink. Folding his arms, he again took up his stance.

“Can I see that picture again?” Patricia asked. The man named Spelling began to hand her the color portrait. “No,” she said, “the one with you and Mason.”

Surprised, the man hesitated for a moment. Then he shrugged, reached into his shirt pocket and extracted the black-and-white snapshot. He handed it to her, and she studied it. It was definitely Mason. She looked between the man sitting in front of her and the man standing next to her brother in the picture. “This really is you.”

He smiled. “Yes it is. I was a little younger then, of course.”

“May I keep this?”

Again, there was a hesitation. Then the man grinned, and there was something a little frightening about the expression. “By all means. Now,” he continued, his expression becoming serious, “I need to explain something very important to the two of you.” He leaned toward them. “It’s essential that our government not be embarrassed by the little mistake I just told you about. Mason has been given a very important assignment, one that is going to make him well known and draw a lot of attention. And it wouldn’t be appropriate for either of you to mention anything about Mason supposedly dying in Vietnam. Instead, your government expects you,” he paused and fixed them with his dark eyes, “
I
expect you, to go along with the story that I’m about to lay out for you.”

He reached his right hand up behind his neck, paused, then slowly drew the hand up and over his head. A long, gleaming metallic object followed, and, as he brought his hand down in front of him, Patricia realized that it was a knife. Light from the lamp in the corner glinted off the tip. He held the thing out in front of him, casually, paying it no attention. Patricia could not take her eyes off of it.

“So that we’re clear,” the man said slowly, “I want to impress upon you the utmost gravity with which I deliver this message.”

To Patricia’s horror, he reached out and brought the knife up to within a couple inches of her face, holding it there. Heart pounding in her chest, she stared at the thing. It was immense. Unlike any knife she’d ever seen before, both edges of the blade were sharp. Wickedly sharp. With a slow, deliberate motion, the man rotated the thing in front of her. She suddenly found it difficult to breath, the air catching in her chest as it shook uncontrollably.

“Now,” the man said, his voice low and ominous, “I don’t want you to have any misunderstandings about how serious I am.” And, with that, he brought the tip of the knife to within an inch of Patricia’s nose, then casually rotated the blade and lay one of the flat sides across her right cheek. When it touched her skin, it was as if she’d been jolted by electricity. Though her entire body was now quaking, she fought to keep her head as still as possible.

The man leaned forward and peered, unblinking, into her eyes. “Do you understand how serious I am?”

“Yes,” she said, immediately, the rattling of her chest causing the word to come out in multiple syllables.

The man turned to her mother. “Mrs. Gale?”

There was no response. With the knife still laying against her cheek, Patricia did not dare move her head. She turned her eyes sideways, straining. She couldn’t see her mother’s face, only her left hand on the arm of the recliner, fingers digging into the worn surface.

“Mother,” Patricia pleaded.

“I… I,” came a faint reply, “I understand.”

“Good,” the man said finally, and, to Patricia’s relief, he pulled the knife away from her face. “Now, here’s the story, and you will repeat this to anyone who asks. This, and nothing else. Got it?”

Patricia nodded quickly. The man turned his attention to her mother. “Mrs. Gale?”

Patricia again looked at her mother. The woman’s ashen face could have been chiseled from marble, it was so still. But, after a second, her head bobbed in a jerky fashion.

“Mason distinguished himself in Vietnam,” the man said, calmly. “When he returned from his tour of duty, he went back to school at the University of Minnesota, where he earned his masters degree and, eventually, a doctorate in geology. He’s been working for the last few years in California. You haven’t seen him much, because he travels a lot and tends to immerse himself in his work. But he’s a fine man, and you know he’ll make a wonderful astronaut.”

He was silent for several seconds, considering them. No one spoke. The room was still, the only movement the slow rotation of the knife in the man’s hands.

Finally, he said, in a quiet voice, “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Patricia said, her eyes on the blade, gleaming as it caught and reflected the lights in the room. “Yes,” her mother repeated weakly.

The man nodded. “Good, because if you deviate from that story or volunteer any information about Mason that does not square completely with what I’ve just told you, then I will come back here,” he raised the knife, “and I will start cutting pieces off of your bodies.”

With one last flourish, the man nonchalantly reached his hand up behind his head and returned the knife to wherever he normally kept it. Patricia slumped on the couch, as if all of the strength had been sucked out of her. The man slapped his thighs, raised his head and took a deep breath. He glanced over at the man named Johnson. “Have we done everything we came here to do?” The other nodded. He looked at the man by the front door, who also nodded.

“Ok,” he said, and he made as if to stand. But then he stopped and raised a hand, one finger extended. “You know,” he said, adopting a pensive look, “it might be a good idea if we really hammered this one home.” He looked back at the man named Johnson. “Don’t you think?” The other affected an exaggerated look of thoughtfulness and nodded his head.

“I think so too,” the man said. He again reached up behind his head and drew out the knife. Gripping it lightly, he casually flipped it in the air in front of him, catching the handle as it came around, this time with thumb and forefinger near the back, and, all in the same motion, he violently slammed the point of the blade down into the arm of the recliner, right at the spot where her mother gripped the leather.

Patricia screamed. Shaking, she stared in horror at the hideous thing, buried to the hilt in her mother’s hand, knowing the blood would follow. But, to her surprise, there was none. Through tears, she peered closer. The knife, she suddenly realized, had not gone through the hand. Somehow, the man had managed to drive the blade between her mother’s second and third fingers, missing flesh by millimeters. Relief battled with terror. She looked up at her mother. The woman had fainted.

With a grim smile, the man yanked the knife out of the chair. He lowered his chin and gave her one last look through dark eyes. “I’ll be watching you.”

#

Patricia Gale shuddered and sharply drew a quick breath. She fell silent and there was a sad distance to her eyes.

Nate looked at Matt and Peter. Neither of them seemed anxious to speak. He dropped his eyes to the table and studied his hands, which were wrapped around the coffee cup. After a long moment, he said, softly, “I’m sorry.”

It seemed to rouse her. She gave him a quick look and a slight nod.

“Did you hear from Mason after that?” Matt asked.

She snorted. “He never tried to contact us. We did see him though. I mean, other than on the television. Once. It was the same time I met your father. They invited us to the space center in Florida. It was a big to do. Lots of people were there. Including,” she said, with another shudder, “the man named Arthur Spelling. He was standing off to the side. There was no mistaking why he was there.

“It was the strangest thing,” she continued. “Mason acted like there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary going on. I’ve never known what to make of that. I’d like to believe they were forcing him to do things he didn’t want to do. That he was as much a victim as we were. But it sure didn’t seem like it.

“And the way he went on, as if he really was a doctor? Come on. He was always smart, but not doctor smart. He was the kind of guy who was just smart enough to get out of doing things. You know what I mean?”

She shook her head. “I loved my brother, sort of. But I’ve never been able to accept any of it.” She opened her mouth to say more, but then, apparently changing her mind, she remained silent.

After a moment, she laughed, but it was a bitter laugh. “How does that happen, anyway? One day, he’s dead. The next day he’s alive?”

Peter looked at Matt. “Yeah, how does that happen?”

Matt turned to Patricia. “Did you ever tell anyone this story before?”

She shook her head adamantly. “Never. We were so afraid.” She looked down at the table. “After the, you know, tragedy, we got a package in the mail. It was supposed to be perishable items. ‘Open immediately,’ it said. So we did.”

She paused, a bleak expression on her face. “Inside was a human finger. It was disgusting. And it was so frightening. We,” she hesitated, “we threw it away.” She looked embarrassed.

“So, no, we kept our mouths shut. The press tried to get us to talk, but we wouldn’t. They called us ‘very private.’ And, after a while, they just left us alone.

“I thought it was all over, and then,” she paused, looking between Matt and Peter. “And then you called,” she said to Peter. “Or you,” she said, looking at Matt.

Matt held up a finger, then pointed it at Peter.

Peter looked suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no idea.”

There was an awkward silence. Matt asked, “Do you still have that picture?”

For the first time since they’d met, Nate saw the fleeting hint of a smile on Patricia Gale’s face, though it did not reach her eyes. She nodded. “I do. Something told me I should hang on to it. Just in case. And I did. For all these years.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing that,” Matt said.

With the vestige of a humorless smile still playing on her face, Patricia reached around and pulled her handbag from the back of her chair, where she’d hung it when they sat down. She opened it, reached in and unsnapped an interior pocket. She pulled from the pocket an envelope that appeared to have at one time been white, but had yellowed with age.

“I haven’t looked at this in at least thirty years,” she said. “But, for reasons I don’t think I can explain, I’ve always had it with me.”

She handed the envelope to Matt. He lifted back the flap, slid out the small snapshot and scrutinized it carefully. After a moment, he said quietly, “I’ll be damned.” He looked up at Nate. “I know this guy.”

6

Ozaki pulled the car up in front of the Gale house, and Raen and Dacoff, wearing suits and carrying briefcases, emerged and walked to the front door. To anyone observing them, they would have appeared to be lawyers or accountants, likely visiting the Gale women to review their wills or estate plans.

They knew from the surveillance team that the older of the two women was home alone. Patricia Gale had taken the car and left an hour earlier.

At the front door, Raen set down his briefcase and made a show of knocking with his right hand. His left hand, shielded by his body from the view of anyone who might be watching, slipped the duplicate key into the lock. He pushed the door open and went through a pantomime of speaking to someone just inside, introducing his colleague. Then, looking to all the world as though the two had been asked to enter, Raen picked up his briefcase and walked in, followed by Dacoff. They closed the door and locked it behind them.

The old woman, Raen knew, was in her bedroom. She hadn’t left it for the past two days. He walked quietly down the hallway, slipping on a pair of silk gloves as he did. When he entered the room, he found the woman sitting in bed, propped up by a pair of pillows. It took her a moment to register the fact that he was there. Then her eyes, rheumy and heavily lidded, flew open.

He walked over to the bed and casually took a seat next to her. She began to shake. He reached his left hand across his body and placed it over her hands, which were folded in her lap on top of the blanket. In a soothing voice, he said, “Excuse me, but there’s something that I need to do.”

To his amusement, the woman actually relaxed.

He reached his right hand up, placed the palm over her mouth, and, with his thumb and forefinger, squeezed her nostrils shut, cutting off her air. Impossibly, her eyes opened even wider, and she began to thrash weakly. He roughly shoved her head back against the tall headboard pinning it in place, and he held her hands in her lap.