Trifecta (41 page)

Alexander decided he would have to tell his father.  If
anyone could think of a way out of this situation, his dad could.

S
abrina was late getting to her shop on Melrose, but Bea
never got angry at Sabrina and was delighted that they both now had red hair.  The
shop was busy and Sabrina left Bea in charge later that afternoon to go to the modeling
interview.

The audition almost seemed to be preordained, even though
Sabrina was almost turned away at the door because of her red hair.  In the reception
area about twelve gaunt blonds stared at her arrogantly; the assistant director
officiously said that she would be wrong for the part; the gay writer swished angrily
and said, This is a California-Beach-Toothpaste-Commercial for God's sake.  But
the production assistants winked at Sabrina because they knew her.  The man filming
was no other than her first photographer and lover, Tracy Rieber. 

Tracy asked disgruntled executives, Who needs another blond,
anyway? Blonds are a dime a dozen with their feathered hair and birdbrain reputations. 
This commercial would be outstanding and fresh.  Look at her! She's perfect.  So
tall and thin, and besides, she would not only look beautiful, but exceptional. 

Tracy made Sabrina demonstrate how good she was at rubbing
her teeth with her tongue and saying, Um-mm, while smiling brilliantly.  Then he
had her change into her bathing suit and presented her as the epitome of the California
Look.  The fact that she had to repeat the rubbing of her teeth with her tongue,
and murmur Um-mm endless times while being paraded around in her bathing suit did
not bother Sabrina.  Modeling had inured her to the endless repetitions that were
done for the writer, the production manager, the art director and the casting executives. 
The whole process was so hysterical that Sabrina had to keep tight control or she
would have broken up at the silly seriousness the agency people took in casting
their commercial. 

In the end, Tracy triumphantly pulled it off, having been
given Creative Control in his contract.  Sabrina was cast as the lead model.

Annoyed, irritated-as-hell tall, thin blonds were turned
away.  Tracy finally took Sabrina aside for a moment and asked her how she could
have done such a thing? To him? To change her hair just before his first important
national job, breaking into film from print work photography. 

Sabrina finally burst out laughing.  She told him truthfully
that she had been called by her modeling agency for the job and had no idea that
he would be filming.  Then she spent an endless time thanking him for bucking against
all of the executives so she could get the job.  Sabrina really was grateful to
him, but mostly because he had never once suggested she change her hair back to
blond.  She really did appreciate the fact that he withstood all the studio flack
on his first important national film job for her.

Sabrina found she would have to be in Malibu at five in
the morning, tomorrow.  They would film before the beach was sullied by unnecessary
Looky-Loos.

T
he fresh, strong memory of leaving the Chadholm
family throbbed with emotional force through Eve.  She stumbled away from the stove
where she was cooking eggs, sobbing with shock and hurt.  She would never again
ride at dizzying heights on the swings in the back yard.  Eve remembered running
into her room after she had been told by Mommy that she would have to go back to
the orphanage.  She didn't even remember the orphanage, but they were taking her
back there today.  She looked around the bedroom and knew it was no longer her room. 
And the bed.  She would never sleep on it again.  She loved the light blue quilt
and she knelt on the floor in her bedroom, sobbing into the quilts and pillows and
hugged her Teddy Bear.  Would she have to give him up too? It finally occurred to
her that they really did not love her at all.  Not like their own children.  Then
she cried even more because she knew she was bad.  They were throwing her away because
they did not love her.  She was not a good little girl.

Eve came out of the memory slowly, like out of a dazed
dream state.  She found that she was kneeling beside Sabrina's bed, in Sabrina's
bedroom.  The coral bedspread was wet with tears she had shed for the little six-year-old
Sabrina had been.  During the strong remembrance of Sabrina's past, Eve had not
been aware that she was physically reliving the event by going, like a somnambulist,
into Sabrina's bedroom and kneeling down beside the bed, sobbing. 

Eve was furiously angry.  How could those foster parents
have been so cruel to Sabrina when she was only a child? To take a baby into their
own home, and then discard her because it was no longer practical to keep her was
inhumane and barbarous. 

Eve vowed she would put that old grief to rest some day. 
She would go visit that family and make things right for Sabrina.  Yes!

Eve knew she was feeling strong emotions of anger and indignation
and noticed that her breathing and heart rate had accelerated.  The fury was exhilarating
and filling her with energy, which she knew was from a hormone, nor-epinephrine,
or adrenalin.  So she was getting hormone reactions, she thought logically, but
her anger was not logical and she did not care.  She felt like striking out at something
and banged her head forcefully against the bedpost several times, feeling her head
bounce back from the hard wood.  She got up, reminding herself that even if she
could not feel her head strike the bedpost, she better not do it any more.  She
might damage the brain.  Ferd had told her never to hurt the computer or herself.

Eve walked back into the kitchen.  She turned on the television
to a game show, found the spatula and flipped the eggs.  She guessed it was nice
to have old memories of Sabrina's, in a way.  At least she knew how to cook eggs,
done just right, soft in the middle yellow part with the whites cooked so they were
solid, not runny.  She knew that.

Eve picked up the pan so that she could transfer the eggs
onto a plate, not noticing that she was burning the flesh on her palm until she
smelled the acrid odor of burned skin.  She would have to remember not to pick up
pans after they were heated.  The reddened and blackened skin changed to a pink
tone that gradually became flesh colored again. 

Then Eve noticed she was ravenous.  She was so hungry her
knees buckled.  She couldn't wait for the eggs.  She was going to faint.  Darkness
was already clouding her vision.  She quickly opened the refrigerator, grabbed the
syrup bottle, and sank to a sitting position in front of the open door, drinking
from the flip-top container.  She took large gulps until she felt strong again. 
She wondered if she would have to carry a bottle of syrup around with her in case
of an emergency.  Maybe she was just so new that her body was not yet used to the
abrupt metabolic changes required to heal.  If she had to carry syrup around it
would be a nuisance.

The cat was making a lot of noise and Eve looked at it
curiously.  It was a nice orange color and had beautiful liquid eyes, a luminous
yellow color with iris's shaped like black candle flames.  She was mesmerized, looking
into the cat's eyes.  Then she knew what to do and poured some of the dry cat food
she had reached for automatically in the cupboard.  She watched as the pretty animal
crunched the food and Eve craved something to crunch on with her own teeth.  A nice
bone.  She shook her head because she didn't think humans ate bones.  But she wanted
one.  She remembered that Sabrina asked her to cook a roast for tonight.  Maybe
she could eat the bone.  She could almost feel the hard bone scrunch in her mouth,
and then reaching the soft spongy good part in the middle. 

Eve was salivating and she wiped the dribbling from her
mouth and chin with her hand.  Good humans did not let go of their bodily fluids
like that.  She would have to keep her mouth shut when she thought of food.

She stood and watched the amazingly pink tongue of the
cat as it swiped the sides of its mouth.  A fragile creature.

Eve petted the cat and it arched in pleasure.  Eve did
not know she smiled.  She liked the cat.  Maybe because it was Sabrina's cat.  She
purred back at the cat.

Eve remembered when she found the kitten.  She had been
closing up shop.  The day had been raining, like today.  While double locking the
front door of Sabrina's Fashions she heard a small crying sound.  When she moved
back in surprise, she stepped on part of a tiny tail.  The wet baby had screamed
and run away.  She had followed it half a block, cornered it in a doorway and talked
to it for five minutes, until it stopped spitting at her and let her pick it up
and...

Eve shook her head.  It seemed so real and vivid.  Almost
like it was really happening in that moment.  The kitten's eyes had been blue then.

"The capital of Guam?"  the announcer on the
television was asking and Eve answered, "Agana."  She watched the people
standing behind the podium on the television frowning.

Eve put the egg pan into the sink and listened to the television.

"The capital of South Dakota?"

"Pierre,"  Eve said, as she began washing the
dishes.

"Capital of Canada?"  "Ottawa."

"Fourth president of the United States?"  "James
Madison." 

Television was too slow.  Eve got the cook book off the
top kitchen shelf and read about how to cook roasts. 

Eve found potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic in the refrigerator. 
But she needed parsley and would have to go to the store.  She received the information
that there was money in the bottom bureau drawer, under the socks. 

Eve knew that she should not leave the apartment.  It would
be disobeying.  But all the recipes for roasts said that parsley should be displayed
around it.  And if they all said parsley, and Sabrina wanted a roast, then she would
have to go out and get it.

Everything would be fine because she would remember to
blink and make expressions.  She had seen how Sabrina pulled her mouth up when she
talked to people, how her brows went together before she answered a question and
how her eyes rounded when she listened to people talk.

Eve went into the bathroom and practiced different expressions
in front of the mirror.  Then she went into the bedroom and got sixty dollars. 

She was detained from her errand by memories that came
to her so clearly that she lived them. 

As Eve left the apartment she started blinking.

I
var Cousin and Malcolm Stoner, both on the CIA surveillance
team from Burgess Whitcomb's office, had been sitting in their car across the street
from Sabrina's condominium for six continuous hours.  They watched the black haired
girl come out of the front of the building.  Their bored eyes followed her only
because she was startlingly beautiful.

"It's her!" Ivar grabbed the binoculars. 

"Naw.  She has dark hair."  Malcolm said, yawning
hugely.  He was near dozing in the warm car.

"I tell you, that's Sabrina Miller."

"First we see one blond.  Then there's two leaving
the Ferd's Tanning Salon.  Now you say she has black hair?"

"I know that face.  I took pictures of her when she
went into Ferd's place."

Ivar threw the binoculars at Malcolm and started the car. 
The woman was walking quickly and he dodged around until he could park strategically
a half block in front of her.  It was obvious Sabrina Miller had changed her hair
color when they got a close-up view of her face as she walked past.

Both Ivar and Malcolm noticed the large Japanese men who
had been hanging around the building trail behind the woman, surreptitiously taking
pictures.  They watched her go into a small Mom & Pop grocery store.

Ivar was worried about this investigation.  There were
requirements placed upon him that were serious enough to send him away from the
freedom and abundance he now enjoyed.  He would never again take for granted his
life here, now that it might be taken away. 

Years ago, it had been an immense relief when Glasnost
had proclaimed a truce between the two super powers because he felt he no longer
had to worry about divided loyalties and what he would do in the event of a physical
confrontation.  Coming from a police state, he had learned to love freedom and he
did not want to return to the creeping paralysis of paranoia that enormous bureaucracy
produced, with chilling cold, boredom, and remote parents and relatives he loved,
but now seemed part of another, lost life.

The network Ivar Cousin had come from had such a long history
that even with the warming of the cold war it had not been dismantled.  The network
consisted of people like himself, who had been placed in their respective cover
situations for many years and who would, in all probability, never do anything much
for their home country.  But it was also composed of those more highly placed who
did report back to Russia on a continuing schedule, as if the relationship between
the two countries had not changed in any respect.  The KGB is the one Soviet institution
that had been almost unchanged by Gorbachev's political reforms, the political coup
of 1991 and the regime of Boris Yeltsin.  Although it is much more covert than previously,
the KGB continues to have enormous power.

Ivar had watched in anguish and guilty relief that he was
not himself experiencing the cataclysmic changes in his country as it moved painfully
from Communism toward a sorrowful and stilting type of democracy.  Through all the
turmoil, he believed that he had been placed in America and forgotten.

Ivar had a nice apartment just a few blocks away from where
he was now sitting.  He had optimistically convinced himself that he had been overlooked,
when he got a message three days ago to be at a certain telephone booth at a particular
time. 

Ivar had taken the necessary precautions required and had
made the telephone rendezvous.  The man he talked to had spoken Russian, commanding
Ivar to learn as much as possible about the investigation headed by Burgess Whitcomb. 
Ivar had been given a telephone number to contact when he had the necessary information. 
He memorized it immediately, as physical evidence was incriminating and unprofessional. 
Now Ivar was alarmed because he had no idea why he was watching the beautiful Sabrina.

Ivar decided he would have to get nearer to the woman. 
She must be doing something very significant if his KGB contact had chosen this
moment to communicate with him. 

The fluke that had brought Ivar to America was that, as
a boy, Ivar had been precocious in the art of mimicry.  It seemed there was no sound
he could not imitate.  He could do all different kinds of birds, dogs, cats and
chickens.  Even cows, horses, cars and airplanes.  And this proficiency had adjusted
itself to foreign languages, especially English.

Upon graduation from school at seventeen, Ivar's special
gift was well known enough that he was invited to Leningrad State University.  It
was almost unheard of that someone not politically well positioned be taken there,
but he was talented, and it was there that he learned to speak really excellent
English.  He went through the mandatory two years of military service, and then
into the Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, where it was decided that placement
outside the country would be possible.  Then there was training in the KGB itself.

The KGB made Ivar expert in the use of all weapons and
in the most lethal and deadly arts.  But it was also very effective in indoctrinating
loyalty to his country and a disgust and hatred toward the nation where he was to
be assigned.

To be planted in a deep cover required that he first learn
French.  He lived outside Quebec for a few months, establishing himself, before
moving into the United States.  The proper identity had been found for him; parents
who had both died along with their infant son in an accident in Canada.  Ivar received
his identity papers and became the son of Gretchen and Joseph Cousin, with dual
citizenship in Canada and America.

Ivar had liked Canada.  The weather and rural situation
was close to what he had known in the Soviet Union.  However, when he moved to Washington,
the riches available to anyone astonished Ivar.  He had believed himself exempt
of any passion for the luxurious lifestyle of the people in the United States. 
But that was before he had a very profound experience in a grocery store.  He had
walked the crowded Washington streets to familiarize himself with his new neighborhood,
and finally found a grocery store that was brightly lit in the daytime.  He thought
it must have tuna and bread.  It looked as big as a barn.  He went inside and stood
looking at long, tall isles, disoriented by the size of the place.  Finally, he
saw a sign proclaiming Produce.  Produce, Ivar thought, must be something man-made. 
Maybe bread that way.  He turned a corner and stopped.

He was not aware his mouth had dropped open in astonishment. 
He believed he was looking at brightly colored, plastic fruit and vegetables because
the abundance could not be genuine.  He wanted everything and squeezed everything
in his large hands in a shock-happy daze, believing he had entered paradise. 

Having come from a country where he routinely and drearily
waited in long freezing lines in the snow to buy a few bruised beets to make borscht,
and then queued up in another for the wilted beet greens, he had indeed entered
paradise.

At the check-out counter it finally dawned on him that
the United States was a very dangerous place.

As Ivar mused about his past, he saw Sabrina Miller come
out of the grocery store with a small bag in her hand.  He watched with appreciation. 
She moved with amazing strength and energy back to the apartment building.