Sea of Crises (27 page)

The thought of the excruciating dilemma his father had faced was disturbing, and, as the others did, he spent the meal picking desultorily at the food on his plate, not even really focused on what it was. When everyone seemed to run out of the energy to do even that, Patricia rose quietly and began removing plates. Peter and Tim did likewise.

From across the table, Matt cleared his throat, gave Nate a direct look and said, “You and I need to take a drive in a little bit.”

Surprised, Nate nodded.

“I’ve got a couple things I need to do right now,” Matt said, and he stood. “We’ll leave in an hour.”

As his brother strode from the room, Nate followed him with his eyes until they abruptly and unexpectedly locked on Maggie’s. She was staring at him from the end of the table with an intense expression. After a moment, she leaned forward and said softly, “Can we talk?”

“Of course.”

“In the other room?”

“All right,” Nate said. He stood and followed her toward the living room. As soon as they’d rounded the corner, though, she suddenly halted and turned to face him. Taken by surprise, he almost ran her over, managing to stop just inches away. He looked down, and she stared back up at him, her eyes still imploring. He realized once again how incredible those eyes were. And, with the proximity, he detected a faint but pleasant scent. Perfume. Or maybe just the shampoo in her hair. Despite all the other things that were happening, his heart began beating faster, and he felt a pleasant sensation wash over him.

When she spoke, her words helped cut through the distraction.

“I’m so sorry about your Dad,” she said.

Nate took a steadying breath and gave a slight nod of appreciation. He was about to say something in response, but she continued urgently.

“Do you think my father is alive?”

The question caught Nate up short. It wasn’t one he’d really focused on, but, of course, it was a fair one. He considered it now.

By all accounts, the command service module had left lunar orbit as scheduled and had returned to Earth. There were details Nate had culled from his review of the documents that could only have made it into those documents if the capsule had come down in a condition sufficient to enable them to have been retrieved. Wouldn’t that suggest Dayton had survived? Nate did the quick math. If Dayton had lived, how old would he be now? Sixty-nine, seventy? No reason why he couldn’t still be alive. But, if he was, where was he? What happened to him?

He focused again on Maggie. Her extraordinary eyes bore into his, and in them he could see so many things, anxiety, confusion, hope. And, he realized with a start, he wanted to know everything else.

He blinked, forcing himself to concentrate.

“I guess,” he said, slowly, “it’s possible.”

As her eyes got wider, he added quickly, “But after all this time…” He didn’t know how to finish, and his voice trailed off.

“But it’s still possible,” she insisted.

After a moment, he nodded.

“Will you help me find him?”

She had such a look of desperation and need that Nate had the sudden impulse to reach out for her. He held back though. The two of them didn’t really know each other, and he was loathe to appear too forward or familiar.

Instead, he gave her a direct look and said softly, “I will.”

She continued staring up at him with those unbelievably expressive eyes. Then she abruptly stood on her toes, reached her face up and planted a soft kiss on his cheek. It caught him completely off guard.

“Thank you,” she said, stepping back and suddenly glancing down, perhaps, he thought, embarrassed. After a brief moment, she looked back up. Her eyes were as brilliant as ever, and there was something new in them, something that made his already rapidly beating heart start pounding furiously.

She pointed vaguely with one hand and said, “I better go help the others.” And, with that, she stepped past him and walked to the kitchen.

Nate unconsciously put a hand up to the cheek where she’d kissed him. The feeling of it still lingered. He didn’t mind.

#

As he slid into the passenger seat of the SUV and closed the door, Nate noticed again the pockmarked windshield.

“I’m not sure where we’re going, but I bet we’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”

Matt chuckled softly as he cranked the engine. “That’s one of the reasons we’re taking this little excursion.”

Matt backed out the SUV and turned it up the narrow lane that connected the cabin to the small two lane highway they’d last been on a day and a half earlier. The moon had yet to rise, and, with the exception of the pool of illumination cast by the headlights, the darkness around them was complete.

“I also promised you we’d talk,” Matt added.

It was what Nate had been thinking as well, and he wasted no time.

“Who is the man in Patricia’s picture? Don’t tell me it’s Raen.”

Matt shook his head. “He’s not old enough to have been around back then. No, the man who visited Patricia and her mother, the one who called himself Arthur Spelling, is named Krantz. He’s the director of The Organization.”

“He was your boss?”

“No,” Matt said. “Well, technically, I guess, he was for a short time. He took over after my boss died. But it was right when I was retiring, so I never really reported to him. When I started, though, he was working in the field. Pretty senior by then. I was assigned to a couple of action teams he headed. He knew his craft, but I never really cared for him personally.” He glanced over briefly. “I’ll tell you this: The Organization was his life. Still is, as far as I know.”

“Well, he was part of the operation that killed our father,” Nate pointed out. “And he knows who else was involved.”

“Yep,” Matt said. “He’s the key.”

“So, can we get to him?”

Matt grunted. “That’s going to be tricky.”

They reached the end of the lane and Matt turned the SUV onto the public road.

“We’ve got three problems,” Matt said. “First, this guy has resources that,” he paused, thinking. Finally, he said, “Let’s just say they’re unlimited. And that’s no exaggeration.”

Matt waved a hand indicating the dark nothingness around them. “If they wanted to land a 747 out here in the middle of nowhere, they could. They’d find a way. They have, essentially, an unrestricted budget. You can’t imagine what can be done when money is no object.”

“Ok,” Nate said. “So we just need to be a little more cost-effective, that’s all.”

Matt seemed to crack a brief smile. But his expression quickly became serious. “Second, we’re talking about a guy who knows more secrets than God. There’s no way they just let someone like that be exposed. He’s got a whole organization around him that knows the thousand ways you might try to get to someone like him. And it knows a thousand and one ways to prevent it.” After a second, he added, “They’ve been doing this for a long time.”

“Are you saying we can’t get to him?”

Matt shook his head. “I’m not saying that. I’m saying it’s not going to be easy.”

He fell silent, eyes focused on the winding road in front of them.

After a minute, Nate prompted, “You said there were three problems.”

Matt took a deep breath. “Yeah.” He glanced over briefly. “The third is the fact that this guy was in the field for a long time. He knows all the tricks. All the dodges. Hell, he came up with a lot of them. Even if we’re able to isolate him, he’ll be very dangerous. We’re going to need something new. Something different.”

“You got any ideas?”

Matt seemed to hesitate. Then he said, “Maybe.” There was a new reluctance in his voice. “I’m still working it through.”

“You’ll share it with me at some point?”

Another quick smile. “Of course.”

They drove in silence, the highway snaking through a dense forest, trees packed in on them from both sides. There was no other traffic. It was as if they were the only people on the planet, their world having been shrunk to the cabin of the SUV and the splash of light that preceded them in the darkness.

Nate wasn’t sure how to broach the next subject. He’d spent time trying to come up with a way to ease into it, to blunt the impact. He’d not succeeded. But he knew it couldn’t wait any longer.

“We need to talk about Peter,” he said abruptly. “And you.”

In the dim light, Nate saw Matt’s look tighten. His mouth turned down in a contemplative frown, and small creases appeared along his temple as he squinted his eyes.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Matt said after a moment.

“Like hell there isn’t.”

Matt didn’t respond.

“Look,” Nate said, reasonably, “I know it bothers you that Peter’s gay. But, the fact is, he’s…”

“No,” Matt interjected. “It doesn’t.”

Surprised, Nate sat back. “What…”

Matt raised a hand slightly, and Nate stopped. Matt returned his hand to the wheel, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. A long minute passed before he spoke.

“Not any more,” he said quietly. “At one point, sure. Thing is, I don’t have the first clue why. It was a long time ago. I was eighteen, for God’s sake. I’d like to think I’ve grown a little since then. But,” he added ruefully, “I realize there’s some basis for questioning that.”

“All right,” Nate said slowly, “so what’s the problem now?”

Matt laughed, but it was without humor. “Where do I start?”

“Excuse me?”

“Literally,” Matt said, “where do I start?”

The question was confusing. Nate opened his mouth to speak, but stopped, considering what his brother had said. Still uncertain, he asked tentatively, “Are you saying you don’t know where to start explaining the problem? Or you don’t know the first step to fix the problem?”

Matt shifted uncomfortably. “Both, I guess.”

Unable to hide the anger that suddenly flared, Nate said, “Are you kidding me? Seriously? You ran out on…” Nate paused, taking a breath. “Hell, you ran out on all of us. But mostly you ran out on Peter. He needed you, and what did you do? You gave him the finger. ‘Sorry, pal. You’re on your own.’ Right?”

Matt started to say something, but Nate was too busy getting worked up.

“Did you ever stop to think how the news of your death affected Peter? You know him as well as I do. Don’t you think he might have considered himself at least partly responsible? Let me answer that for you. Yeah, he did. He carried that guilt around with him for years. It didn’t matter what I said, or what anyone else said. He figured it would never have happened if he hadn’t come out of the closet. How do you think that played out while he was trying to deal with everything else?”

Again, Matt began to speak, and again Nate cut him off.

“And then, to top it all off, you suddenly reappear, and what’s the first thing you say? ‘I’m not going to have anything to do with Peter.’ Just perfect. You hadn’t crapped on him enough, huh? One more zinger, right between the eyes. Doesn’t that pretty much cover it?”

Nate hadn’t realized how loud his voice had become, and the awkward silence that suddenly filled the vehicle was startling in contrast. He turned to peer out the windshield, watching idly as the underbrush on his side of the road rushed by in the harsh illumination of the headlights.

“Well,” Matt said finally, “I’ve got to say that was a pretty good job of describing the problem.”

Nate looked back at his brother. Matt’s eyes were on the road. Nate couldn’t read the expression on his face.

“Yeah?” Nate asked quietly. “So what are you going to do about it?”

Matt shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Honestly. Look, I understand what I did was wrong. I’m becoming an expert at that. But how do you undo things when they’re,” he paused, then concluded softly, “really bad?”

“You don’t.”

Matt looked over at him, brow furrowed.

“You don’t,” Nate repeated. “You can’t just
undo
things. But what you
can
do is start making up for them. What’s the expression? Every journey begins with a first step. You owe Peter an apology. I’d start with that.”

“An apology’s not going to cut it.”

“Maybe not,” Nate said harshly, “but not apologizing is going to cut it even less.”

Matt was silent for a long time. Then, to Nate’s surprise, he laughed, and this time there was humor in it. It helped ease the tension.

“You know who you just sounded like?” Matt asked.

Nate shook his head. “Who?”

“Dad.”

The incongruity made Nate laugh as well. “Sorry,” he said after a moment.

Matt turned and looked at him, his face again serious. “I don’t mind.” He returned his attention to the road. “Really.”

A stop sign appeared ahead. At the intersection, Matt turned left onto another two-lane highway. After a short distance, he turned left again off the highway and onto another road that seemed to wind back in the direction they’d already traveled. Nate had no idea where they were. Matt, however, seemed to know exactly where he was going.

They crested a short rise, and, as they started down a relatively straight stretch, Nate noticed another vehicle pulled off on the opposite side of the road. As they passed, he saw that it was a large tractor-trailer rig painted in the ubiquitous colors of a popular moving and storage company. An odd place for a moving van, he thought. Matt slowed and, about thirty yards beyond the truck, pulled the SUV onto the left shoulder, facing in the wrong direction.

“This is it,” he said, shutting off the engine. He opened the door quickly and stepped out. Nate noticed that he left the key in the ignition. Nate climbed out as well.

A three-quarter moon had risen, so Nate was able to make out the truck clearly as he and Matt walked toward it, their feet crunching in the gravel.

“The man we’re about to meet is named Carson,” Matt said quietly. “We’re all friends. Do him a favor, though, and keep your hands where he can see them.”

“Ok,” Nate said, hoping his voice didn’t betray his surprise. “Is Carson his first name or last?”

“Just Carson.”

They reached the rear of the truck and stopped. Nate looked around but saw no one. Then, from behind, he heard a soft voice.

“Hello Marek.”