A Man Overboard (20 page)

Silence settled between them.

“Is Joseph my son?”

His mother-in-law pressed her lips together as her eyes lit up with revelation. “Oh my god…” She quickly began shaking her head. “No. I mean, I don’t know. I guess it was about the same time that she must have conceived, but…I don’t know. She never told me about those two days. She has carried that shame all by herself. As have I.”

“Holy—” Jack leaned back, locking his fingers behind his head and trying to keep it from spinning off. His fingerhold on the ladder slipped, and he was falling into hell again. Joseph… All the traits he loved so much in him, all the idiosyncrasies, the gentle mannerisms, all the things that made him the apple of his eye…were from
Vadim
? He wanted to puke. He wanted to pick up the glass coffee table and throw it through the huge windows. Who needed windows that big anyway?

Tears of frustration began spilling from the corners of his eyes. His best buddy in the whole world, his little four-year-old boy, was a fraud. An imposter. A lie. His real father a Russian
spy
! His eyes clawed their way back up to hers. “Does she know I’m alive?”

“No.”

He smirked beneath the teardrops. “She looked pretty content just then, walking hand-in-hand with her
other
husband like some little—”

“She doesn’t have a choice.”

“What do you mean? He’ll kill her?”

“Joseph.”

He tried to navigate his brain around the swells of indignation. “Is he that dangerous?”

“He was always a little unstable. Like I said, she’s afraid of him. Afraid of the CIA and afraid of the SVR. She’s trapped, Jack. And all she can do is pretend that everything is okay now that she has been reunited with her husband.”

“What would he do if he found out about me?”

“Oh, he knows about you now. That was unavoidable. That’s why you were thrown off the ship. She had to make him believe that she never loved you, that she only married you for your last name and the new identity that came with it. He believes that she was using you. Again, for Joseph’s sake, as well as her own well-being, she doesn’t have a choice in this.”

“Why now?”

Viktoriya leaned forward, finished the remains of whatever was in her glass, and stood. She made her way to the fireplace, taking her time getting there and leaning heavily against it once she did. Her back was to him. “Once I failed to kill him, the SVR decided on another strategy, one they hoped would have the CIA chasing its own tail.”

He shifted on the couch so that he could see her. “Disinformation.”

“Recently, the CIA or some other intelligence department within the US government wanted him to help them carry out some kind of mission. He was happy to help them on one condition. He wanted Anna back. They were happy to oblige.”

Jack stood, his shaky legs doubtful in their support of him. “It was the CIA that threw me overboard?”

“CIA, NSA…I don’t know. The SVR suspected that Vadim was going to be the patsy for a false flag operation cooked up by some maniacs in the Pentagon.” She paused and turned to face him. As she turned, she pulled a silenced pistol from out of the white bathrobe.

Caught off guard, Jack quickly fumbled for the pistol tucked in his own pants.

Viktoriya didn’t seem to notice. “They activated me again. This time they said failure would not be an advisable option. When an intelligence agency says something like that, Jack, there is no missing the threat.”

Hand beneath his coat and resting on the butt of the Smith & Wesson at his back, Jack asked, “Why did you send us on the cruise?”

“They came to me one day…the CIA or whoever. They had this whole plan of how they were going to get Anna back to Vadim while at the same time erasing her past. It was a rather creative plan if not unnecessarily complicated. They switched her normal mammogram with one that revealed breast cancer, and then they gave me the money and story needed to get you out into the middle of the ocean. Where you could be made to disappear. The cruise line wouldn’t investigate, and all other jurisdiction was up in the air. They could do whatever they wanted, and no one would even bat an eye. I was to take Joseph and rendezvous with Anna and Vadim here.” She set the empty glass down on the fireplace and clutched the mantle for support. “I thought all of this was behind me,” she whispered. “I had moved on. I never thought they would contact me again…” She looked up at him, and there were actual tears in her eyes. “They made threats against Anna and Joseph if I didn’t cooperate.” A drop fell. “I am so sorry, Jack.”

This really is a spy story
. “Who was the one using the computer to look up plane tickets and driving directions—”

“Red herrings. Just in case.”

“They burnt down the house.”

“What?”

“And killed Ivan and Donny.”

“Dear God…” she muttered. “I…” She couldn’t seem to get anything out, her mind tripping over the reach of this thing she’d been coerced into starting.

“Did Stacey write the suicide note?”

She refocused. “The agents, if not Russian, were at least fluent in Russian, and she believed that they worked for Vadim, that they were bringing her back to him. At that point, her only concern was protecting Joseph.”

There were so many questions that Jack wanted to ask, but his head was spinning too crazily to get a handle on any one thought. Instead, he focused on the gun in her hand. “What are you gonna do?”

“If some crackpot in the US government,” she said stoically, “is planning a false flag attack in order to justify some kind of action against Russia, then I will do my part to prevent it.”

“If that’s the case, I think they might have bagged the operation after the FBI started nosing around.”

Viktoriya shook her head. “It’s not a chance Russia is willing to take.” She smiled. “It is ironic that you showed up today, Jack. Why don’t you go see Joseph.”

He hesitated, trying to get a feel for what her intentions were, and then movement from outside caught his attention. They were coming back.

“Go be with Joseph,” Viktoriya said. “And if something should happen to me…please be sure to always let him know how much I loved him.”

“Viktoriya…”

“Just go, Jack.”

He didn’t argue. He left the room and found the stairs, taking them two at a time. Finding a room packed with toys and children’s books, posters of Joseph’s favorite Disney characters decorating the walls, Jack stepped into it and closed the door behind him. Turning, he found the bed. And there he was, curled up with a thumb in his mouth, and his eyes closed.

Jack’s heart caught fire and forced more tears down his face. He sat on the edge of the bed and ran a gentle hand over Joseph’s head. Leaning down, he kissed him, a tear falling from the tip of his nose and splashing against Joseph’s cheek.
Thank you, God.
His boy was okay.

Your boy
? challenged a dark voice within.

But he knew now that none of that mattered. He had held Joseph in his arms when he was all bloody and covered in crap, squirming like an alien still attached to the mother ship. A spiritual bond that no words could define had formed between them in that moment, and it was a bond that Jack wasn’t about to walk away from. Genetics be damned, Joseph
was
his
son and would forever remain his son. “I love you, buddy,” he whispered.

There was a window in the room that overlooked the driveway, and Jack got up and moved to it. He could see Stacey and Vadim just twenty yards away, approaching the circle with coffee cups in hand. Stacey was wearing a thin sundress that the breeze was trying to pull from her body, the tightness accentuating her female features. Her blonde hair was sunlit and waved behind her like a comet’s tail of gold. Jack fought hard to breathe, unable to take his eyes off her, her beauty and spirit still holding the keys to his heart. He wasn’t going to leave this place without her.

As the two Russians walked past the fountain, Jack finally managed to pry his eyes off her and let them fall over the Soviet imposter. Who at the same time looked up at him.

Jack ducked below the frame. Had he been seen?

“Daddy?”

Joseph was sitting up in bed, staring at him through a mask of corked emotion. Jack ran to the bed and swept the boy into his arms. “I’m here, buddy,” he whispered. Joseph buried his head against his neck, and Jack could feel the tears running down his shirt, shattering his heart. He squeezed him tighter. “I’m here. Everything’s okay.”

“I missed you, Daddy,” Joseph cried.

Jack pulled out of the embrace and looked into the boy’s eyes. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.”

“Are you okay?”

He nodded and lunged forward, wrapping his tiny arms around his daddy’s neck again.

After laying an affectionate kiss on his cheek, Jack said, “I need you to do me a favor, okay?” He felt Joseph’s head move up and down. “I need you to climb back in bed and stay there for a few minutes, okay? I need to go downstairs and check on Mommy.” He set him back down on the bed. “Okay?”

Joseph looked up into his eyes, tears still streaming down his face. “I don’t want to pretend that man is you anymore, Daddy.”

Swallowing back the waves of sensitivity rising in his soul, Jack forced a smile. “You don’t have to, buddy. I’m here now, and we’re going home in a little bit.”

“We’re gonna miss the Yankees game, aren’t we?”

“We’ll go to another one, I promise. Now stay here until I come back for you, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy.”

Jack left the room, pulled the pistol out of his pants, and crept to the stairs. As he got closer, he could make out Stacey’s voice echoing up to him from somewhere below. She was speaking Russian, so he didn’t know what she was saying, but he could tell that she was agitated about something.

And then two more voices—a man and another woman’s—came chasing after Stacey’s. They were shouting at each other, and though Jack couldn’t make sense from any of it, an increasingly bad feeling ushered him down the steps.

Something crashed. Glass shattered. Stacey screamed.

Jack flew down the remaining stairs in pursuit of the commotion. He could tell it was coming from the kitchen, but whatever room he was in now only offered a glimpse into the sunny room, the huge island counter standing there in the middle of it. Suddenly, when he was just a dozen steps from the doorway, Viktoriya came flying into his line of sight, crashing into the island, feet flying up over her head, her whole body following after. She landed hard on the floor in front of him, her silenced pistol spinning across the tiled floor. She moaned as she struggled to move. Red freckles dotted her white robe, and it was torn where it had gotten caught on one of the burners.

From around the corner, Jack could still hear Stacey and Vadim shouting at each other. And then the unmistakable sound of a face being slapped silenced her side of whatever they were arguing about.

The floodgates of rage he’d been trying to keep closed over the past few days suddenly burst open wide, his wife being slapped the dynamite blowing them to pieces and allowing the surging tide to carry him into the kitchen. As he walked through the doorway, rounding the corner, he saw Stacey bent forward over the countertop, Vadim pressed up against her from behind and pulling her hair. Whatever he was saying, she obviously didn’t like, but she was pinned and powerless to do anything about it. Vadim had one hand in her hair and the other pressing tight against his side, blood seeping between his fingers and splashing onto the floor at their feet. Viktoriya had shot him.

“Hey!” Jack screamed with all the fury of a hurricane. He raised the gun.

The Russian turned his head toward him but didn’t release or move away from Stacey. “You must be
Jack
.” His accent was barely recognizable.

“Take your hands off her, or I’ll kill you.” He was so angry that his hands were shaking, and he wondered if he was more likely to put a bullet in the sink than in Vadim’s eye.

Stacey tried to turn her head his way, to see him, but Vadim slammed her head down into the counter. She cried out.

Jack pulled the trigger, the loud blast turning everyone quiet as drywall dust fell out of the ceiling and settled in Vadim’s hair.

Vadim started laughing. “You can’t do it, can you? Shoot me?”

Jack stepped forward. “I’m here, Stacey. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Jack…how did…” She reached for some degree of understanding, but under the present circumstances, her head being pressed into the marble countertop, she couldn’t seem to get a firm grip on anything.

“Shut up, whore!” Vadim yanked her head back by her hair before thrusting her face into the wooden cabinets hanging over the counter.

The first time, Jack had been aiming for Vadim’s head, but unsettled, he’d pulled instead of squeezed the trigger, causing the barrel to jump. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. He began squeezing…

And Vadim grabbed Stacey, flinging her in front of him as a shield, his free hand clasped like a vise around her neck.

Jack lowered the gun a little.

“You want this little tramp?” Vadim asked, smirking as he reached his bloody hand around and groped her left breast.

She struggled against him, but even with a bullet in him, he was too strong for her.

His hand fell away from her chest, leaving a red handprint, and reached down between her legs. He smiled as she squirmed. “What was she like for you, Jack?”

Jack stepped closer, rage bringing the pistol back up. But it was a ridiculous gesture. He was just as likely to kill Stacey as he was Vadim. And Vadim knew it. Which is why he was laughing more.

He lifted the back of her dress up to her shoulder blades. “Want to watch?”

Jack tried skirting right for a clearer shot, but they were in the corner of the kitchen, walls on either side protecting the Russian monster. But he had to do
something
. He couldn’t just stand there and watch as
this
…

Vadim tore her underwear off, and she screamed out as the fabric snapped against her hips.

“Listen,” she started to say. “Vadim, I’ll do whatever you want, baby. I love you. I don’t care about him! You want me to prove it?” She turned around so that she was facing him, her buttocks exposed to Jack. “Darling…” and she started speaking in Russian again.