Strangers (32 page)

Once the propaganda film had been made, they were interviewed over closed-circuit television by foreign reporters gathered in another room. The camera never provided close-ups of them, and their answers were not heard by those who asked the questions; instead, once again, unseen
intelligence men, stationed at another microphone outside the camera’s range, answered for them.

At the start of their eleventh month in captivity, Jack and Oscar began making plans to escape the next time they were transported to that far less secure, less heavily guarded propaganda facility.

The once-formidable strength of their young bodies had been leached away, and their only weapons were shivs and needles made of rat bones, which they had painstakingly shaped and sharpened by rubbing them against the stone walls of the cells. Wickedly sharp, those instruments nevertheless made pathetic weapons; yet Jack and Oscar hoped to triumph over gun-toting guards.

Surprisingly, they
did
triumph. Once inside the People’s Center, they were remanded into the custody of a single guard who escorted them to the showers on the second floor. The guard kept his gun holstered, probably because the facility was a detention center inside the larger detention center of the capital city itself. The guard was certain Jack and Oscar were demoralized, weak, and unarmed, so he was surprised when they suddenly turned on him and, with shocking savagery, stabbed him with the bone shivs they had concealed in their clothes. Pierced twice in the throat, his right eye skewered, he succumbed without producing a scream that might have drawn other police or soldiers.

Before their break was discovered, Jack and Oscar confiscated the dead guard’s handgun and ammunition, then made bold use of the hallways, risking notice, alarm, and capture. But it was, after all, a minimum security “re-education” center, and they were able to make their way to a stairwell and down to a dimly lighted basement, where they progressed swiftly and stealthily through a series of musty storage rooms. At the end of the building, they found the loading docks and a way out.

Seven or eight large boxes had just been off-loaded from a delivery truck, which was backed up to the nearest of the two big bays, and the driver was engaged in an argument with another man; both of them were shaking clipboards at each other. Those two were the only men in sight, and as they turned and headed toward a glass-enclosed office, Jack and Oscar raced silently to the recently unloaded boxes and from there into the back of the delivery truck, where they made a nest for themselves behind the as-yet-undelivered packages. In a few minutes the driver returned, cursing, slammed the truck’s cargo-bay door, and drove away into the city before the alarm sounded.

Ten minutes and many blocks from the People’s Center, the truck stopped. The driver unbolted the rear doors, took out a single package without realizing Jack and Oscar were inches from him behind a wall of
boxes, and went into the building before which he’d parked. Extricating themselves from their burrow, Jack and Oscar fled.

Within a few blocks they found themselves in a district of muddy streets and dilapidated shanties, where the poverty-stricken residents were no fonder of the new tyrants than they had been of the old and were willing to hide two Yankees on the lam. After nightfall, supplied with what little food the slum-dwellers could spare, they departed for the outskirts. When they came to open farmland, they broke into a barn and stole a sharp sickle, several withered apples, a leather blacksmith’s apron and some burlap bags which could be used to fashion makeshift shoes when their shabby prison-issue eventually fell apart—and a horse. Before dawn, they had reached the edge of the true jungle, where they abandoned the horse and set out on foot once more.

Weak, poorly provisioned, armed only with the sickle—and the gun they had taken off the guard—without a compass and therefore required to plot a course by the sun and the stars, they headed north through the tropical forests toward the border, eighty miles away. Throughout that nightmare journey, Jack had one vital aid to survival: Jenny. He thought of her, dreamed of her, longed for her, and seven days later, when he and Oscar reached friendly territory, Jack knew that he had made it as much because of Jenny as because of his Ranger training.

At that point he thought the worst was behind him. He was wrong.

Now, sitting beside his wife’s bed, with Christmas music on the tape deck, Jack Twist was suddenly overcome with grief. Christmas was a bad time because he could not help but remember how dreams of her had sustained him through his Christmas in prison—when in fact she had already been in a coma and lost to him.

Happy holidays.

Chicago, Illinois

As Father Stefan Wycazik moved through the halls and wards of St. Joseph’s Hospital for Children, his spirits soared. That was no small thing, for he was already in a buoyant and elevated state.

The hospital was crowded with visitors, and Christmas music issued from the public address system. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, other relatives, and friends of the young patients were on hand with gifts, goodies, and good wishes, and there was more laughter in that usually grim place than one might ordinarily hear echoing through its chambers in an entire month. Even most of the seriously afflicted patients
were smiling broadly and talking animatedly, their suffering forgotten for the time being.

Nowhere in the hospital was there more hope or laughter than among those people gathered around the bed of ten-year-old Emmeline Halbourg. When Father Wycazik introduced himself, he was greeted warmly by Emmy Halbourg’s parents, two sisters, grandparents, one aunt, and one uncle, who assumed he was one of the hospital’s chaplains.

Because of what he’d learned from Brendan Cronin yesterday, Stefan expected to find a happily mending little girl; but he was unprepared for Emmy’s condition. She was positively
glowing.
Only two weeks ago, according to Brendan, she had been crippled and dying. But now her dark eyes were clear, and her former pallor was gone, replaced by a wholesome flush. Her knuckles and wrists were not swollen, and she seemed to be completely free of pain. She looked not like a sick child valiantly fighting her way back to health; rather, she seemed
already
cured.

Most startling of all, Emmy was not lying in bed but standing with the aid of crutches, moving among her delighted and admiring relatives. Her wheelchair was gone.

“Well,” Stefan said, after a brief visit, “I must be going, Emmy. I only stopped by to wish you a merry Christmas from a friend of yours. Brendan Cronin.”

“Pudge!” she said happily. “He’s wonderful, isn’t he? It was awful when he stopped working here. We miss him a lot.”

Emmy’s mother said, “I never met this Pudge, but from the way the kids talked about him, he must’ve been good medicine for them.”

“He only worked here one week,” Emmy said. “But he comes back—did you know? Every few days he comes back to visit. I was hoping he’d come today, so I could give him a big Christmas kiss.”

“He wanted to stop by, but he’s spending Christmas with his folks.”

“Oh, that’s good! That’s what Christmas is for—isn’t it, Father? Being together with your folks, having fun, and loving each other.”

“Yes, Emmy,” Stefan Wycazik said, thinking that no theologian or philosopher could have put it better. “That’s what Christmas is for.”

If Stefan had been alone with the girl, he would have asked her about the afternoon of December 11. That was the day Brendan had been brushing her hair while she sat in her wheelchair before this very window. Stefan wanted to know about the rings on Brendan’s hands, which had appeared for the first time that day, and which Emmeline had noticed before Brendan himself spotted them. He wanted to ask Emmy if she had felt anything unusual when Brendan had touched her. But there were too many adults around, and they would surely ask awkward questions. Stefan was not yet prepared to reveal the reasons for his curiosity.

Las Vegas, Nevada

After getting off to a rocky start, Christmas at the Monatella apartment improved dramatically. Mary and Pete stopped hammering Jorja with their well-meant but unwanted advice and criticism. They loosened up and involved themselves in Marcie’s play the way grandparents should, and Jorja was reminded of just why she loved them so much. The holiday dinner was on the table at twelve-fifty, only twenty minutes late, and it was delicious. By the time Marcie sat down to eat, she had worked off her all-consuming interest in Little Ms. Doctor, and she did not rush through her meal. It was a leisurely dinner with much chit-chat and laughter, the Christmas tree twinkling in the background. Those were golden hours until, during dessert, the trouble started with surprising suddenness. With frightening speed, it escalated to total disaster.

Teasing Marcie, Pete said, “Where does a little bitty thing like you put so much food? You’ve eaten more than the rest of us combined!”

“Oh, Grandpa.”

“It’s true! You’ve been really shoveling it in. One more bite of that pumpkin pie, and you’re going to
explode.
”

Marcie lifted another forkful, held it up for all to see, and with great theatricality, she moved it toward her mouth.

“No, don’t!” Pete said, putting his hands in front of his face as if to protect himself from the blast.

Marcie popped the morsel into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “See? I didn’t explode.”

“You will with the
next
bite,” Pete said. “I was just one bite too soon. You’ll explode…or else we’ll have to rush you to the hospital.”

Marcie frowned. “No hospital.”

“Oh, yes,” Pete said. “You’ll be all swollen up, ready to burst, and we’ll have to rush you to the hospital and have them deflate you.”

“No hospital,” Marcie repeated adamantly.

Jorja realized that her daughter’s voice had changed, that the girl was no longer participating in the game but was, instead, genuinely if inexplicably frightened. She was not scared of exploding, of course, but evidently the mere
thought
of a hospital had caused her to go pale.

“No hospital,” Marcie repeated, a haunted look in her eyes.

“Oh, yes,” Pete said, not yet aware of the change in the child.

Jorja tried to deflect him: “Dad, I think we—”

But Pete said, “Of course, they won’t take you in an ambulance ’cause you’ll be too big. We’ll have to rent a truck to haul you.”

The girl shook her head violently. “I won’t go to a h-h-hospital in a million years. I won’t ever let those doctors touch me.”

“Honey,” Jorja said, “Grandpa’s only
teasing.
He doesn’t really—”

Unplacated, the girl said, “Those hospital people will h-hurt me like they hurt me before. I won’t let them hurt me again.”

Mary looked at Jorja, baffled. “When was she in the hospital?”

“She wasn’t,” Jorja said. “I don’t know why she—”

“I was, I was, I was! They t-tied me down in bed, stuck me full of n-needles, and I was scared, and I won’t ever let them touch me again.”

Remembering the strange tantrum that Kara Persaghian had reported yesterday, Jorja moved swiftly to forestall a similar scene. She put one hand on Marcie’s shoulder and said, “Honey, you were never—”

“I
was!
” The girl’s anger and fear burgeoned into rage and terror. She threw her fork, and Pete ducked to avoid being hit by it.

“Marcie!” Jorja cried.

The girl slipped off her chair and backed away from the table, white-faced. “I’m going to grow up and be my own doctor, so nobody else’ll stick n-needles in me.” Words gave way to a pitiful moaning.

Jorja went after Marcie, reaching for her. “Honey, don’t.”

Marcie held her hands out in front of her, as if warding off an attack, although it was not her mother that she feared. She was looking
through
Jorja, perhaps seeing some imaginary threat, though her terror was real. She was not merely pale but translucent, as if the very substance of her was evaporating in the tremendous heat of her terror.

“Marcie, what is it?”

The girl stumbled backward into a corner, shuddering.

Jorja gripped her daughter’s defensively raised hands. “Marcie, talk to me.” But even as Jorja spoke, a sudden stench of urine filled the air, and she saw a dark stain spreading from the crotch down both legs of Marcie’s jeans. “Marcie!”

The girl was trying to scream, but could not.

“What’s happening?” Mary asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Jorja said. “God help me, I don’t know.”

With her eyes still focused on some figure or object that remained visible only to her, Marcie began a wordless keening.

New York, New York

The tape deck still played Christmas music, and Jenny Twist lay immobile and insensate, but Jack no longer engaged in the frustrating one-way communication with which he had filled the first few hours of his visit. Now he sat in silence, and inevitably his thoughts drifted back through the years to his homecoming from Central America….

Upon returning to the States, he had discovered that the rescue of the prisoners at the Institute of Brotherhood had been misrepresented, in some quarters, as a terrorist act, a mass kidnapping, a provocation meant to spark a war. He and every Ranger involved were painted as criminals in uniform, and those taken prisoner were for some reason the special focus of the opposition’s anger.

In a political panic, Congress had banned
all
covert activities in Central America, including a pending plan to rescue the four Rangers. Their release was to be arranged strictly through diplomatic channels.

That
was why they had waited in vain for rescue. Their country had abandoned them. At first Jack had trouble believing it. When at last he believed, it was the second worst shock of his life.

Having won his freedom, home again, Jack was relentlessly pursued by hostile journalists and subpoenaed to appear before a Congressional committee to testify about his involvement in the raid. He expected to have a chance to set the record straight, but he quickly discovered that they weren’t interested in his viewpoint, and that the televised hearing was merely an opportunity for politicians to do some grandstanding in the infamous tradition of Joe McCarthy.