Die for You (38 page)

I write about a boy who was abandoned by his mother to an orphanage in communist Europe. I imagine his frightening early days and lonely, miserable nights. I imagine his longing for the mother who left him, for the comfort of the bed to which he was accustomed. I know about abandonment, about loss, about fear. I know about longing to be anyone, anyplace else. This boy is not known to me. But his feelings are; I can manage compassion for him even if the man he grew into almost destroyed me, put a bullet in me, tried to end my life to save his own. It is on the page that I can answer the question: Why? And the answers I find here are enough. They have to be.

I hear Jack downstairs hammering. He is at work again on the house, building shelves for a room he calls my study. I tell him that we are not living together. That I am just staying with him until I can sell the apartment I shared with my husband and figure out how to move ahead with my life.
Of course
, he says.
I know
.

Kristof Ragan was never my husband, not legally, not in any way. Just someone I loved and thought I knew. I still hear his voice, the wisdom he had and shared with me. I have happy memories of him. I do.

The other morning I met Detective Grady Crowe for coffee in the East Village at Veselka’s on Second Avenue. I got there early and sat in the back watching the students, the goths and clubbers for whom it was late, not early, artist types, professionals—the typical New York City mix of people, not typical anywhere else.

He looked fresh, well and happy as he walked in, scanned the crowd, then made his way over to me.

“You look good,” he said, smiling, shaking my hand. “Don’t get up.”

He sat across from me. We’d been through all the professional stuff, the questioning, the accusations, the reprimands. I found I actually liked him in spite of what had passed between us when he thought we were on opposite sides.

“You look happy,” I said.

He held up his left hand, tapped his ring. “My wife. She came back. We’re having a baby.”

The information hurt more than it should, made my stomach bottom out with a powerful regret and sadness. He saw it.

“I’m sorry. I’m an insensitive jerk sometimes. A lot of the time.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “You deserve to be happy.”

“So do you.”

I thought of Jack. “I’m getting there.”

We ordered some coffee and potato pancakes.

“So what’s up? Or did you just miss me?” he asked with a smart smile. He was a handsome guy, I realized. Much better looking happy than bitter and angry—like everyone, I suppose.

“I don’t know. I guess I just wondered if there’s anything I don’t know. Something you held back from that news show, from me?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I was wondering about the FBI. When they started their investigation, how Kristof found out about it. Why they didn’t act sooner.”

“Camilla went to the FBI about a month before Ragan disappeared. They started their investigation right away, but the feds are all about collecting evidence for their case. They take their time.” He took a sip of his coffee. “They suspect that Camilla told Ragan at the last minute, giving him time to get away before their raid. She felt guilty about betraying him. Maybe she thought he would forgive her. He didn’t.”

“But who was Camilla meeting in the park? The man I watched die? Why was she bringing those pictures to him?”

“The man who died that night was identified as Vasco Berisha, an Albanian thug with ties to Ivan Ragan, among others.”

“Why would they want those pictures? What use would they be? And if they were surveillance shots, how did they come to be in her possession?”

“They weren’t technically surveillance shots. Camilla Novak took them. She was following Ragan, using information Charlie Shane gave her about his comings and goings, working for the FBI. We found them on her digital camera, too. She turned over a set to the FBI and was apparently bringing them to Berisha. My personal theory is that
after
she confessed her betrayal to Ragan, and
before
he killed her, she realized she’d misplayed her hand. She knew he wasn’t going to forgive her and take her away after all. I suspect she didn’t think the FBI would be able to find Kristof Ragan, but his brother’s associates would. He killed some of their men; they’d want revenge. She wanted them to have it.”

I shook my head.

“What?” Grady asked.

“Then Berisha couldn’t have known where Kristof Ragan had gone. He was just a lackey. He was the reason I went to Prague. I thought he said, ‘Praha.’ Prague in Czech. But maybe he didn’t say that.”

“But Ragan
was
in Prague. Maybe Berisha—whatever he said—just gave you an excuse to follow your instincts. Or maybe he did know. It’s possible.”

“I heard what I wanted to hear.”

“Maybe. You knew where he would go, but maybe you didn’t trust yourself anymore. You needed something else besides your gut to follow.”

I thought about that night in the park. I am sure that’s what he said. But Detective Crowe was right, I didn’t trust myself very much about these things.

“Do you have a contact at the FBI who might talk to me about all of this?”

“It doesn’t much matter now, does it?”

It matters. How the pieces fit together. It helps me to understand what happened to me. But that’s the problem with life, as opposed to fiction; sometimes the pieces don’t fit. The waitress brought our order and I poured some cream in my coffee.

“I’ve been guilty, as you know, of not asking enough questions. Of seeing what I wanted to see and editing out the rest. I don’t want to do that here.”

He nodded his understanding.

“There’s nothing I haven’t told you. I promise. But I’ll put you in touch with Agent Long. He’s a good guy.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He gave me a sly look. “You’re not writing a book about all this, are you?”

I smiled at that but didn’t answer.

We chatted a bit. He told me he’d read one of my books and liked it but mentioned that I’d gotten some procedure wrong. I asked him if I could call with questions in the future. He agreed, seemed to like the idea.

“So—
are
you going to write about what happened to you?” he asked, again not letting me off the hook.

“Probably. One way or another, it will turn up. It doesn’t work the way you think it does. It’s more elliptical, more organic.”

He nodded, looking thoughtful, but he didn’t say anything else about it.

We said our good-byes on the street, shook hands and parted. I was a half a block away when he called me back.

“Hey, something you said helped me,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Remember in your apartment that time? You said, ‘Love accepts. Maybe forgiveness comes in time.’ That helped me.”

“I’m glad.”

He lifted a hand and then turned to walk away. I watched as he climbed into an unmarked Caprice where Detective Breslow waited at the wheel. I wondered briefly what was next for them.

O
N MY WAY
back home from meeting the detective, I stopped at the post office box I maintained but which I hadn’t visited in months. I knew it would be packed with junk and fliers and maybe one or two important items, like invitations to conferences and maybe a fan letter or two. But I figured I should check it, get back into some of my old routines, let normalcy return.

Kristof Ragan set his sights on another woman after me. Her name was Martina Nevins. I heard it on the news, had seen her interviewed, a wealthy British heiress who’d lost her fiancé a few years earlier and had been despondent since then. She was celebrating the holidays with her family in Prague. She’d have been Kristof’s next mark. She had the look about her. The fragility of loss. The vulnerability of hope.

He might have given her the ring, said to her what he said to me, “This is my heart. I’m giving it to you. I’d die for you.”

Instead he sent it back to me. And I’ll keep it to remember that love is what we do, not what we say. That not everyone has the strength or the ability to love another, or even himself. And that some of us have a secret heart that cannot be shared.

I close the lid on my laptop and take the ring down to Jack. I want him to see it. I want him to know what it means to me and how it has helped me to understand Kristof Ragan, my father, and myself. Because I want Jack to share his heart with me. But I think that to ask him to do that, I have to share mine first.

He turns from the tall shelves he is building—an effort I recognize as his act of hope—when he hears me come into the room. I hold the ring in my palm and show it to him. He takes it with a frown and holds it up to the light, then looks back at me. There’s worry on his face.

“Where did this come from?”

I tell him.

“What are you going to do with it?

I tell him that, too. I think he understands. He puts his strong, thick arms carefully around me and leans down, brings his mouth gently, tentatively to mine. We share our first kiss since the night we spent together a lifetime ago.

There’s no why to Jack, no questions to answer, no curiosity to satisfy. He is not a mystery, not a stranger. He is my dearest, most beloved friend. My sister thinks that is enough for a start. And she is, as always, so right.

During my visit, I was fortunate enough to meet the acclaimed screenwriter and poet James Ragan. A Czech who returns every summer to teach at St. Charles University, James showed me his city, taking me places I never would have known to go without him, telling me about its evolution since the fall of communism. He and his lovely family embraced us and enriched our experience more than they might have guessed. His wonderful book of poetry
The Hunger Wall
continued to inspire me and feed my dreams of Prague long after we returned home.

I was also welcomed to Prague by the talented team at my Czech publisher, Euromedia Group. Denisa Novotna, the PR manager, was a smart, funny, and lovely woman who endured my many questions, while arranging a stunning lineup of media interviews. During my stay, I was on television and radio and had multiple newspaper interviews—which caused me to learn how to get around the city by taxi, subway, and on foot. There’s really no better way to get acquainted with a strange place (where you can hardly speak a word of the language!) than to insist that you can get yourself around without help—and then prove it.

Through one my law enforcement connections, I had the opportunity to share a few hours with a CIA agent who has spent many years in the Czech Republic and has an intimate knowledge of Prague since the Velvet Revolution and the fall of communism. His anecdotes and information heavily influenced my imaginings. I am not at liberty to reveal his name.

I also relied on
The Prague Post
online (
www.praguepost.com
) and the city’s tourist site
www.prague.cz
, as well as the BBC online (
www.bbc.com
) for all gaps in knowledge and experience.

All mistakes I have made, liberties I have taken, and geographic alterations committed in the name of narrative flow are my own.