Eden in Winter (8 page)

Charlie nodded. ‘That much, yes. But tell me more about what you do.’

Adam sat back, marshalling the answer he forced himself to give. ‘I’m on the paramilitary side of the agency – the special activities division. I’m fluent in Arabic, Pashto, and Dari, the principal languages of Afghanistan and Pakistan. I’m also schooled in running agents, avoiding surveillance, and using pretty much any weapon you can imagine. Part of that training involves the quarter-of-a-second rule – the time within which human beings can respond to danger. I’m conditioned to kill someone just a little quicker.’

Charlie showed no discernable reaction. ‘How does that work in Afghanistan?’

‘Mostly self-protection. My assignment is to operate against the Taliban and Al Qaeda by recruiting agents, getting information, and targeting their leaders for assassination. If I get caught at it, my best hope is to die quickly.’

‘Sounds challenging enough,’ Charlie observed phleg-matically.

‘Yep. One of the hardest parts is sorting out the people I recruit – who’s a double agent, or when might they become one? My life depends on getting it right.’ He paused a moment. ‘Even harder, at least for me, is that I’m responsible for their lives. So far I haven’t lost one. I never want to.’

Suddenly it struck Adam that he had deployed Jack like a double agent, placing him at risk to save Teddy: another thing he could not say.

‘And so,’ Charlie was observing in measured tones, ‘your survival, and that of others, depends on a very complicated series of calculations and deceptions.’

The statement gave Adam a leaden feeling. ‘I’ve arranged my life into boxes,’ he acknowledged. ‘Each box contains certain people, situations, experiences, and emotions, carefully arranged so that no box touches any other box, placing me or others in danger. I’ve even got boxes for Martha’s Vineyard: for Carla; for each member of my family; for the D.A.; for this tarantula of a tabloid reporter. For what I believe are good reasons, I’m deceiving every one of them in different ways – letting them believe things that aren’t true, and withholding things that are – all because I’m trying to protect my brother, mother, father, and Carla from each other, as well as to protect myself. But Afghanistan is worse – betrayal comes in many guises, any one of which can kill you.’

Charlie frowned. ‘A hard life to lead, Adam. It seems you’ve lost the habit of feeling safe, or even the ability to know who you’re safe with.’

‘Also true,’ Adam replied with a trace of irony. ‘Though I seem to be suited for the work. When I went into special ops, they put me through a battery of psychological tests. To everyone’s great pleasure, I came out as able to tolerate a high degree of risk and stress without cracking up, and being unusually unconcerned with my own safety.’

Charlie considered him over the rim of his coffee cup. ‘In psychological terms, what do you suppose that means?’

‘I don’t know. I just know that’s who I became once I left
this island.’ He paused, disconcerted by the admission he was about to make. ‘In the last three years, I’d thought I’d proved to myself I can live with pretty much anything. But since Ben died, and I came back here, I’ve been having these nightmares. That’s why I called you.’

Charlie smiled a little. ‘I think there are many reasons why you called me, all of which are closing in on you. But tell me about these nightmares.’

For a time, Adam gazed out a Menemsha Pond on a perfect August day, the sky clear blue, a steady breeze propelling trim sailing crafts across spacious waters bounded by woods and meadows. It seemed so alien from the life he led that the scene, once so evocative of his youth on the water, now struck him as surreal. The coffee felt sour in his empty stomach. ‘Both dreams take place in Afghanistan,’ he said at length. ‘In one, I’m next to a cliff, surrounded by Taliban fighters who are about to execute me. My only escape is to jump off the edge. But when I do that, I realize I’m falling toward the beach behind our house, where Ben died on the rocks.’

‘And the other?’

‘I’m driving my truck when I hit an I.E.D. concealed in a dirt road near the Pakistani border. Suddenly, I’m outside myself, looking at my own dead body by the side of the road. I know that my life is over, cut short in a way that lacks any meaning. But my head is that of Benjamin Blaine the last time I ever saw him.’

Charlie looked at him keenly. ‘So, in both of them, at the moment of your death you become the man you believed to be your father. What does that raise for you?’

Adam shrugged. ‘You’re the shrink, Charlie. You tell me.’

Charlie shook his head in demurral. ‘I don’t know enough to do that. So anything I’d say is a guess. Obviously, Ben Blaine is central to both dreams. For reasons we’ve yet to fully explore, your break with him was traumatic. I could posit that you couldn’t overcome that trauma simply by leaving. If so, I suppose the dream could imply a visceral need to kill him – not only literally, but in your heart and mind.

‘But there are other ways to look at this. The dream could symbolize your deep entwinement with your supposed father, and your fear that you’ve become like him. Or even that something about his death makes you feel guilty.’ Charlie gave him a searching look. ‘As I said, I don’t think you’ve told me everything you know, which leaves me more than a little in the dark. But all in its own time.’

By training and habit, Adam avoided the implicit question. ‘So it’s all about Benjamin Blaine. Like everything else.’

‘Not necessarily. Another way of analysing a dream is to imagine that everyone appearing in it is some element of yourself. So part of you in the first dream may identify with the Taliban who are about to kill you.’ Charlie hesitated. ‘There’s an aspect of our last conversation, a month or so ago, that I recall quite vividly.’

Adam put down his coffee cup, responding in clipped tones. ‘You mean that, just before returning here, I’d shot a double agent for the Taliban who was about to kill me, drove fifty miles at night with his corpse in the passenger seat, then dumped his body by the road where I thought no one would know him. It’s funny, Charlie, what sticks in your mind.’

Charlie laughed softly, his eyes still fixed on Adam. ‘What
stuck in my mind is that an hour or so later you learned that Ben was dead. One can be forgiven for thinking that one experience might relate to the other. Was that the first time you’d killed a man?’

‘The third,’ Adam responded evenly. ‘The first was shooting a Russian arms dealer in his suite at the nicest hotel in Eilat, Israel – the Queen of Sheba Hilton – terminating his business of selling sophisticated explosives to Al Qaeda in Iraq. The second was cutting the throat of a key Al Qaeda operative in Croatia, who’d been enjoying a small bed-and-breakfast on the shore. For that one, I pretended to be an international tax attorney. No one can say my superiors lack a sense of humour.’

Charlie cocked his head. ‘What did you feel about killing these two men?’

‘Not much. They’d been responsible for too many deaths already, and would’ve facilitated many more. When it’s trading one vicious life for many innocent ones, it’s not that hard to do the moral math.’

‘And the last guy?’

‘Was a reflex – I’d killed him before I’d even had time to think.’

‘So this time, the life you were saving was your own.’

‘Yes.’

‘As I calculate it, that was about six weeks ago. Then, in swift succession, you learned your father was dead; came home to a place you’d left for unknown but painful reasons; found out that Ben had disinherited your mother and brother, exposing them to financial ruin; learned that the police suspected a member of your family of murdering the father you despised; proceeded to steal or illicitly acquire evidence
that enabled you to arrange for Jack to exonerate Teddy; discovered that your mother had lied to you about critical facts of your life, including that your uncle was actually your father; and forced her to agree to a settlement with Ben’s pregnant lover. When you first explained what you’d learned, I could barely take it in myself.’ Charlie’s tone became rueful. ‘A rich and full two weeks, Adam, which still leaves you on the hook for obstruction of justice, should the police and D.A. ever figure out what you’ve been up to.’ He paused, then enquired gently, ‘Does that about cover it, or are things even worse for you? Which I somehow suspect they are.’

‘Let’s say it’s close enough.’

Charlie shook his head, a gesture of sympathy. ‘And you wonder why you’re feeling a bit troubled. The average person would get his very own wing in Bellevue.’

‘Sounds nice,’ Adam replied. ‘But I have a prior engagement in a war zone.’

‘So let’s look at what you’re taking back with you. Have you had nightmares like this before?’

‘No.’

‘Then let me suggest that your life – not just the C.I.A., but its entirety – is catching up with you. True, your tenure at the agency has enabled, even required that you avoid confronting your own emotions. You’ve developed all sorts of defences exacerbated by stress: compartmentalizing, vigilance, extreme caution in relationships, emotional distance, and serious levels of distrust. But you haven’t stopped being human.’ Charlie leaned forward, looking at Adam intently. ‘What those nightmares call up for me is the part of you that is connected to your deeper feelings, many of which precede your work with the agency – including your fear of
death. Or, as troubling, your expectation of dying.’

Adam found himself without words. Watching his face, Charlie prodded. ‘You expect to die young, don’t you?’

Adam stared at the deck, unsure of how to answer. ‘It’s crossed my mind.’

‘Do you think that’s all about your job? Or is there something more to it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you do know when those feelings started. You didn’t have them when you were young, did you?’

Painfully, Adam tried to remember the boy he had been. ‘That’s like recalling another life, Charlie. But I don’t remember having those feelings then. At least not consciously.’

‘Yet at some point you started feeling disconnected from relationships – a loss of joy, of wanting to be fully in the world.’

Adam shrugged. ‘Sounds like a pretty good job description.’

‘So you say. But you sought out that job. I wonder if, at some earlier point, you began feeling expendable. Or were made to feel that way.’

Adam found that he could say nothing. Looking at him closely, Charlie asked, ‘If you look at it honestly, Adam, how do you cope with the risk of dying?’

For a moment, Adam closed his eyes. ‘I’d say I’ve become “familiar with the night”. If I die, I can accept that. I’ve come to believe that I won’t have long relationships, or children of my own. I try to imagine it, and I can’t anymore.’

Charlie bit his lip. ‘Actually, I’m not sure you
do
accept that – at least not quite. Beyond that, I’d say you just described a fairly typical response for someone with your profile.’

‘Which is?’

‘Damaged,’ Charlie said bluntly. ‘In your case, an attractive, smart, and inherently empathic man, with unusual abilities and the capacity to work your will on the world around you. But someone whose experience of family involved increasing levels of uncertainty, ambiguity, and dishonesty. Your “father” lied to you, competed with you and, I think, betrayed you in some terrible way. Your mother deceived you, and didn’t protect either of her sons when Benjamin Blaine demeaned Teddy for being gay and treated you as a rival. Even your supposed Uncle Jack, who was kind and consistent in that role, didn’t come to your defence. And he, too, was keeping a terrible secret from you. Then something even worse caused you to break off with Ben, leave this island, and change the entire course of your life. Take all that together, and the message I think you got is that your feelings don’t matter – that, on some subliminal level,
you
don’t matter.

‘Often such people become hedonists, losing themselves in drugs or sex. Instead, you put yourself in a dangerous situation with a high risk of death. One might suppose that the C.I.A. allowed you to try outrunning your own demons, while pursuing self-annihilation in a way that preserves your self-image as a capable, autonomous person …’

‘Actually,’ Adam cut in sharply, ‘I’d say my career choice was a pretty natural response to watching madmen from Al Qaeda blow up two high-rises and kill three thousand people. Call me sentimental.’

Charlie watched his face. ‘I understand that part, Adam. But when you’re back in Afghanistan, ask yourself whether you want to survive, and if you can imagine a life you can embrace on the other side.’ He paused for emphasis, then
finished slowly and succinctly. ‘I’d like to think that’s the truest meaning of your dream: that you’re afraid of dying, because the deepest part of you still hopes for something better.’

Roiled by memories, for the first time in ten years Adam drove to Quitsa Pond.

Benjamin Blaine’s classic wooden sailboat, a beautifully maintained Herreshoff built in the twenties, was still moored where it had been when he first set foot on it. Though less painful, the image was as vivid as the last day Adam had seen this boat, in the race where he had beaten Ben for the sailing cup they both coveted.

‘Well into this century,’ Ben had explained to the seven-year-old Adam, ‘the Herreshoff brothers designed eight consecutive defenders of the America’s Cup. They built boats like this for the richest, most sophisticated families of their times – the Vanderbilts, the Whitneys.’ His voice lowered, to impress on Adam the import of his next words. ‘To own one is a privilege, but to race one – as you someday will – is a joy. I mean for you to learn the primal joy of winning.’

Too late, Adam had discovered what it meant to surpass this man, on this boat, on these waters. Or where and how their competition would end.

Sitting at the end of the catwalk, he gazed out at the Herre-shoff, then heard the soft footfalls on wood. Instinctively, he was on his feet before he saw the young woman walking toward him.

There was something familiar about her, though he could not place where he had met someone so striking and distinctive – a tall, lean body, fuller where it should be; curly black hair that ended in a widow’s peak; olive skin; large brown eyes that suggested a touch of amusement and, he somehow sensed, a volatility of mood; chiselled but strong features that, taken together, lent her an off-beat and distinctly exotic appeal. The smile she gave him contained a hint of challenge and adventure, though Adam could not imagine what he had done to earn this. Then she said, ‘Hello, Adam Blaine.’