Authors: Kevin Wignall
Chapter Forty-four
Dan had expected to find Geneva similarly blanketed with snow, but though it was cold, the streets were dry and the sky was clear and blue. He called Tom Crossley first, speaking to a woman who told him he was expected, then headed over there.
It was a modern apartment building, in the middle of the city. The same woman answered the door, a woman who looked Southeast Asian, though he couldn’t be sure of the country. She smiled and showed him in to a sitting room where Crossley was playing with a very young child and a wooden train set on the floor.
It sent a wave of sadness through him, but he packed it away again and took in the view through the windows—despite being in the middle of quite a built-up area they had a great view over toward the lake and the mountains beyond. It was a nice place too, spacious, tidy, lots of clean lines.
Crossley glanced up, a guy in his fifties and looking it, his face lined, but also still looking incredibly fit, his arm and chest muscles still neatly defined under his T-shirt, his shaved head giving no indication of whether he was grey or bald. He smiled, and said, “Dan Hendricks?”
“That’s me. Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Crossley.”
“Tom, and I’m glad you came.” He jumped up in one fluid motion and said, “You’ve met Patty.” He looked at her then and said, “We’ll go in the study.”
“Drinks?”
He looked questioningly at Dan and Dan said, “I’m fine thanks.”
“We’ll be okay. Thanks, Patty.”
Patty nodded, and went and took Tom’s place with the child, talking in her own language—Vietnamese, he thought, now that he heard her speak.
As they walked through to the study, a more cluttered space, full of military and travel memorabilia, books and journals, cuttings from papers, Tom said, “So you saw Eliot Carter—who put you on to him?”
“Georges Florian, from DGSE.”
Tom gestured to a chair, but stopped short of sitting down himself, saying, “Georges Florian? Was he in the Foreign Legion years ago?”
“That’s the guy.”
“Jeez. I thought he was dead.” He sat down now, and said, “And how’s that old queen, Carter? Still shacked up with his Arab boys?”
“Yeah, his apartment was very much a Little Morocco.”
Tom laughed and said, “God love him. And let me tell you, in our line of work, that guy is worth his weight in gold.”
Dan wondered how much Tom knew about his own career, or if he was just assuming they were in the same kind of business.
“Are you still active, Tom?”
“Not really. But you know how it is.” He reached into a drawer and searched around for a few seconds before pulling out an aged-looking envelope.
He held it up then and said, “It’s funny, I was only looking at this the day before Eliot called to say you were coming. I was relieved when he told me. See, when he disappeared, Jack sent me this key for a safety deposit box in Paris—the details are in there with it. He said he’d pick it up himself one day or that someone would come for it. Well, I guess you’re that someone.”
He leaned over and put the envelope on the desk next to Dan.
Dan was about to object, to explain that he had no right to act as Redford’s representative, but he didn’t. At first he told himself that Patrick would probably make use of whatever was in that box, but he knew the real truth, that he just wanted all the details he could find about Jack Redford and why he’d run.
“Thanks. Do you want it back?” Tom shrugged, shaking his head as if to ask why he’d want it back when he’d only just managed to pass it on. “On the subject of letters, Eliot told me Jack had received a letter not long before he disappeared, someone from Beirut, that it had unsettled him.”
Tom looked doubtful and said, “Not a letter, not that I’m aware of, anyway. I sent him an email and I know that upset him. A friend of ours, someone who’d been in Beirut with us, he was killed in a hit and run.”
Dan immediately thought of Mike Naismith in Baltimore, and said, “Suspicious?”
“Who can tell? Jack thought it might be. It upset him, I know that much. So chances are that’s what Eliot meant when he talked about a letter.”
That was disappointing, and apart from the promise of the key to the box, Dan felt he’d slightly wasted Tom Crossley’s time by coming here.
Almost as a way of making up for that and giving the brief meeting some substance, he said, “What were you doing in Beirut?”
He smiled broadly and said, “Cutting loose. It just so happened we were all of us free. I had some friends out there and suggested to Jack he should come out for a while. Then a couple more guys got wind of it and showed up. We were there for about six months, I guess.” He got up and moved across the room to an oriental chest of drawers, searching through them before pulling out a fat brown envelope. “It was a good time to be in Beirut . . .”
“So this was after the hostage crisis and all that?”
“Long after, years after. Yeah, things were looking up for Beirut back then, talk of it returning to the way it was before the war. Doesn’t look like it’ll happen now, but those were good days.”
He pulled a bundle of photos out of the envelope and flicked through them. He pulled one out and handed it to Dan. It was of three guys standing with arms over each other’s shoulders. One was Tom, his hair cropped but not shaved as it was now, but otherwise not looking much different. The one in the middle was tall and blonde, with chiseled features.
The third guy looked smaller, though Dan guessed he was average size and only looked small because of the scale of the two guys he was with. He looked relaxed, his hair scruffy, his shirt tucked in on one side but hanging out on the other—the kind of good-looking traveler who turned up in places like that with a guitar.
As he looked, Tom said, “The guy in the middle is Jonny, the guy who was killed in the hit and run.”
“Jonny? He looks German or . . .”
Tom laughed and said, “Everyone always thought he was German. He was from San Diego, a real surf dude—slightly crazy but a good guy to be around.”
Dan nodded and said, “What about the guy on the right?”
As if it was obvious, Tom said, “That’s Jack.”
“Really?” Dan looked at it again. “It’s not like the pictures I’ve seen. Is this how he looked?”
Tom reached out and took the photo back, smiling as he looked at it, saying, “Yeah, that’s him alright. He was a charmer, could charm the leaves off the trees. Very unassuming guy, but, I don’t know, I guess that was part of his appeal. And I tell you, those were happy days.” He flicked through some more of the photos and handed another one to Dan. “That’s kind of a typical night out there, typical dinner.”
Dan looked at the picture, which showed half a dozen people sitting at a restaurant table which was laden with plates and wine bottles.
“You’re not in this.”
“I was probably taking the picture.”
Jonny, the blonde guy was there, his face slightly flushed from the heat and probably the drink. Jack Redford was there too, and Dan was reinforcing this new image of him in his mind—this was how he looked. Then he noticed the woman sitting next to him, and felt a strange, almost tectonic dislocation in his thoughts.
He held it closer, staring at her features as he said, “Who’s the woman with Jack? That’s if she is with Jack?”
“Oh she’s with Jack, alright. Maria. Beautiful, huh?” Dan nodded without speaking. “They were inseparable. Met at the end of the first month we were there, just stayed together. I think he seriously contemplated settling down with her.”
Dan still couldn’t take his eyes off her, because he recognized this woman, and his voice sounded distant even to himself, as he said, “Why didn’t he?”
“You know how it is, in our business. Settling down isn’t such an easy thing to do.”
Dan looked up and said, “You seem to be doing okay.”
Tom grinned and said, “Yeah, at my age. Never thought it would happen but, man, I’m blessed.”
“Can I keep this photo?”
“Sure. I’ve got plenty and I hardly look at them anymore. Very few buddies left to sit and reminisce with.”
Dan nodded, understanding that, but his own mind was reeling away from him. These past weeks, he’d thought one thing after another about Jack Redford, and yet the man had managed in some way to elude him, just as he’d eluded everyone else, until the bus crash, until now.
When Dan had first gone up to what had then been Jacques Fillon’s place, he’d pictured his life as so limited, tinkering with a bike, riding the bus every day, and he’d almost despised him for it. He hadn’t understood then, about the hidden shelter, the quest to bring down Brabham, to get justice for a girl he’d never known and had no connection with, Sabine Merel.
But even when he had learned those things, he’d still only understood half of the man. Jack Redford. He’d acted heroically on the day he died, but in truth, the whole of the last twelve years had been an act of heroism, one little act every day when he’d boarded that bus. That was what Dan only really understood for the first time now as he looked at this photograph—even in hiding, Jack Redford had never stopped being a hero.
Epilogue
He spent two days in Stockholm with Inger. She’d suggested at first that he stay at her place, but for some reason, he’d checked into a hotel not far away instead, not wanting to crowd her. He needn’t have worried because he spent the whole time in her apartment anyway.
Two days, most of it seemingly spent in bed. When they went out it wasn’t far, to the café where he’d met her that day a few weeks before, or to local stores, the streets clear but cold and the day punctuated with snow flurries.
And for all the time he was with her he was dreaming what this life might be like, imagining himself taking an apartment nearby, or forgetting caution and moving in with her right away. That was the kind of life he dreamed about, where being cautious only applied to not taking things too fast in a relationship.
They flew up to Luleå on the third day, and within twenty minutes of take-off, the landscape below them was already snow-covered, as if bedding down for winter. The last time he’d taken this flight, he’d been warned that the north would be a lot colder but had found it remarkably benign—only now, looking down, did he believe that it could be so different.
Inger had talked about arranging a car, but she’d spoken to Per and he’d been insistent, so he was there to meet them at the airport and talked animatedly about the weather for much of the onward drive north. The deep snow visible all around them was apparently unusual even for them at this time of year.
He drove them directly to Siri’s house; a big wooden place, bigger than the one Redford had lived in, but closer to the quiet road, with a few other houses within view. Dan looked at those other houses as they pulled up—they all looked blank and lifeless and he wondered if people lived in them all year round, wondered, too, if any of the kids who’d died in the crash had lived there.
Siri’s grandparents came out onto the porch even as Per pulled up. They were grey but trim and upright, reminding him in some way of Mr. Eklund, the same rugged healthiness. Like Mr. Eklund, too, they waved as the three of them got out of the car, though they were not many feet away.
They stepped through the gate and as they walked up the path, the man said, “Welcome Mr. Hendricks, Miss Bengtsson. Hello, Per.”
Inger spoke back in Swedish, and Dan said, “Thank you for agreeing to see us Mr. Nyström.”
Per said quietly, “Doctor Nyström.”
Nyström laughed and said, “Yes, I’m still the local doctor, though I should retire soon.”
His wife made some dismissive but good-humored response in Swedish to that suggestion, then said, “I hope we’ll be able to help with your inquiries.”
“I’m hoping we’ll be able to help you.”
They showed them into a warm and welcoming kitchen where they sat around a heavy table and Mrs. Nyström served them coffee and some sort of home-made cookies. They’d only been sitting a few minutes when Siri walked in.
Dan stood, and then realized the formality of it made her uncomfortable so he sat again and she sat down opposite him.
She looked shyly at Inger, then at Dan, and said, “Hello.”
She was in black again, but this time wearing a shapeless black sweater. Her skin was a little clearer than when they’d seen her a few weeks ago, and it reminded him once more that she would undoubtedly be a beautiful woman. Looking at her grandmother, he could see the same bone structure, the same lively eyes.
Dan took out the two letters he’d found in Redford’s safe-deposit box, which had disappointed him at first, until he’d actually looked at them, at what they said. One had also proved Eliot Carter right and Tom wrong, though that hardly mattered now.
He smiled then, and said, “Siri, the man who saved you was an American. His name wasn’t Jacques Fillon, it was Jack Redford. He did top-secret work, mainly for the US government.”
She smiled, the shyness falling away as she said, “So I was right, about him being a spy.”
Inger nodded and said, “We didn’t know for sure when we met you—we found out later.”
Dan continued, saying, “About fourteen years ago, something went wrong, his life was put in danger and he chose a new identity and disappeared. Two years or so later, he turned up here.”
Dr. Nyström said, “Is this connected with what we saw on the news, the congressman and the murder in Paris?”
His wife gestured to her husband and Siri, and said, “They both thought the same thing.”
“Because of the dates, that’s all,” said Doctor Nyström.
Siri nodded in agreement with her grandfather. It was interesting to see the dynamic between them, that they’d discussed this and somehow come to the right conclusion.
Dan said, “It is connected. Jack Redford knew the truth, and that knowledge put him in danger. But it was no accident that he came here. You see, he’d received a letter, from a woman he’d known in Beirut.”
The sudden shift in the story didn’t seem to be lost on the grandparents. With the mention of Beirut, Mrs. Nyström caught her breath, and put her hand over her mouth. Her husband’s eyes were fixed on Dan. Siri alone was looking confused, perhaps not knowing enough of the story to piece it together.
“The woman told Jack she’d had his baby. But because of this job that had gone wrong, he knew it wasn’t safe to be near her. I’m guessing that, somehow, he discovered two years later that she’d died, cancer, and that was when he did what he did.”
He reached into his jacket, and placed the photograph on the table in front of her. He pointed to the man in it.
“That’s Jack Redford, and that sitting next to him is your mother, Maria. She was beautiful, and even though I only saw you once, that day out at Jack’s house, I recognized her face immediately I saw this picture.”
Both of Siri’s grandparents had tears moistening their eyes now, though Siri only stared in wonder at the photo, studying it, apparently mesmerized by the long-lost evening captured there, and by the two key people she had never really known. “That was why he moved here, that was why he rode the bus every day, because it was the only way he had of seeing you. And that was why he saved you that day, not because you were the nearest person to him, but because you were the only person to him; you were his daughter, everything he had in the world.”
They were silent for a moment, and then Dr. Nyström said, “It’s incredible.”
Dan nodded agreement and said, “Here are two letters that he left in a safe-deposit box in Paris. One is the letter from Maria telling him about Siri. The other’s essentially his last will and testament, though it also explains why he had to disappear. It’s addressed to Maria, and he makes clear that everything he has is left to her and the baby.”
The enormity of it finally seemed to hit Siri, the fact that she had seen her father every day for years and never known it was him, the fact that he’d saved her, that she had found him only now, when it was too late.
“But he never even spoke to me. We never even said hello.”
“Because he couldn’t. Because he was Jacques Fillon.”
Dan’s mind flitted back to Luca. Many times in the early years he’d dreamed that it was a mistake, that Luca wasn’t dead but had been taken away and was being raised by a relative. And often after those dreams, he’d imagined how it would be to meet him again, years later, a stranger, the joy and the sorrow of such an impossible meeting. So he understood all too well the exquisite pain Jack Redford must have felt each day, to be so close, and yet as far away as ever.
Siri looked at her grandparents, then turned to Inger with a helpless smile, and said, “I’ve tried to remember what he was saying to me before the crash, but my music—I could see him speaking, but . . . I’ve tried many times.”
Mrs. Nyström added, “I’ve told her not to think about it, but now, with this, maybe I’m wrong.”
Inger smiled sympathetically and said, “I think you can imagine the things he might have said. There’s not much more you can do.”
Siri picked up the photograph to look at it more closely.
Mrs. Nyström glanced at her, but then breathed in deeply and was composed as she said, “This is very difficult to take in, but we’re so grateful to you, Mr. Hendricks, for finding out, and for coming to tell us.”
“It was my pleasure. I never knew Jack Redford, but everything I’ve found out about him suggests he was a remarkable man.”
Inger nodded in agreement, and though she looked conflicted in some way, he sensed she was thinking of Sabine Merel, and of Redford’s endless quest to bring her justice.
They didn’t stay for long afterwards, conscious that this family needed time to digest what they’d just learned, to understand what it meant for them, for Siri in particular. And it seemed strange to Dan, as they waved them off from the porch, that he would never see them again, that he would play no other part now in their journey or Jack Redford’s.
Per had hardly spoken, but as they drove away he said, “Would you like to visit the churchyard? It’s not much further.”
Inger looked bemused by the suggestion and said, “Any reason?”
Dan realized now that Per had also just heard the story for the first time, that he was moved by it, astounded, as anyone in that small community would be if they were to hear it in the coming weeks.
“It’s just a coincidence, and I thought you would like to see—Jack was actually buried very close to Maria Nyström.”
Dan said, “I’d like to see his grave, thanks, Per.”
So they drove on and he stopped near the wooden church and Per walked with them into the churchyard. The snow had gathered even more within the churchyard, covering it in a deep blanket, but Per knew it too well, and pointed to Maria’s grave, and to the newer plot, just a few yards away diagonally.
Maria’s had a stone, but Redford’s had only an unmarked wooden across, and as if embarrassed that the community might be seen to have sold his heroism short, he said, “This is just temporary, of course. There will be a stone, with his name, now that we know it.”
Dan nodded and both he and Inger looked down at it.
Per looked on, and perhaps sensing a different dynamic between them this time, he said, “Well, I’ll leave you for a moment. I’ll wait in the car.”
He walked off, his boots crunching softly through the snow.
Inger had been quiet since they’d left the Nyström house, but sensing his gaze, she looked up now and smiled a little, her cheeks flushed red with the cold, her beauty almost overwhelming.
“What are you thinking?”
She shrugged, but said, “I was just wondering, how he could have been here all this time and never even speak to her. He knew her mother had died, yet . . . it just seems selfish, not his final act, obviously, but all these years.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. I think it’s the most selfless behavior I’ve ever encountered. He thought they’d catch up with him sooner or later, that they’d find him, and he didn’t want her involved in that. Imagine the agony of being that close to her, yet never knowing her. He wanted desperately to be with her, in his own way, but he knew with the life he’d lived, there could never be any more than that. I’m just full of admiration for the guy—if you think about it, that bus ride every day must have been the happiest and most difficult thing imaginable.”
She continued to stare at him, nodding slightly, taking in what he’d said, but she’d taken even more meaning from it than he’d intended, and after a little while, she said, “You’re not moving to Stockholm, are you?”
She wasn’t angry, just resigned and sad, understanding the reasons too well.
“Would you want me to, until I know?”
“Will you ever know?”
He let out a sigh, acknowledging the truth of that. He tried to tell himself that he hardly knew her anyway, that they’d spent so little time together, but he was left feeling sick in the heart all the same. She made to say something else, but stopped herself, and then said more casually, “Okay, we should get back to the car.”
“Yeah, we should.”
He reached out and took her hand in his, but they didn’t move, only stood there, their feet static in the deep snow. It was time to get back to the car, and to everything that symbolized, but they stood silently in that quiet corner of a rural churchyard, an anonymous grave before them, and neither of them moved at all.