Chapter 3
Northern Ontario, Canada
It was still dark outside when the howling of wolves in the distance woke Bart from his restless sleep. He'd been tossing and turning on the old, paisley sofa that sat in the middle of the log cabin.
His every muscle ached as he stretched himself. 'You're not twenty anymore,' he reminded himself. 'Hell, who are you kidding,' he added with a chuckle, 'You're not even sixty anymore.'
He glanced towards Anna, still asleep on the floor, next to the fireplace. Her colour looked much better than last night, and when he got up to run his hand along her cheeks, he was surprised to see her temperature felt normal.
'Good girl,' he thought. Her resilience really shouldn't have surprised him anymore. It was typical Anna Scorpio.
'Maybe I over reacted last night,' he thought. 'After all, this is the first time she fainted outside. It may very well never happen again…'
Bart rubbed his hands together, realizing he was looking for excuses to reverse his decision.
Their idyllic existence was bound to come to an end. It was time he accepted that fact. He couldn't hold on to her forever.
He stared at her, lying asleep by the fire, and the image suddenly took him fourteen years back in time. To the day he first met Anna Scorpio.
The day that had nearly marked the end of her young life.
-
Fourteen years earlier
-
It had been a gorgeous day. The sky was such a clear, perfect blue, Bart could still envision it to this day.
It was to have been his final assignment with the WSB, before retiring, after more than three decades of service. Along with two other agents, he'd been assigned to trail a man named Robert Scorpio to South America. Scorpio wasn't just any man, he was the man many believed had an excellent chance of becoming the next Director of the WSB.
"He's going to lead us to his wife. She's the one we want," his dispatching agent informed him. "Anna Devane Scorpio is also a former agent of ours. Both her and Scorpio once worked under the supervision of Sean Donely. We now have reason to believe that during her early tenure with the Bureau she worked as a double agent, selling information to a notorious non-governmental agency, the DVX."
Bart listened with interest during his briefing.
"It appears that Mrs. Scorpio has again decided to betray us, as we have evidence indicating she's travelled to Venezuela with the current head of the DVX, a man named Cesar Faison. Her husband believes she's been kidnapped, but we have reason to suspect she went of her own free will. We've been trailing Robert Scorpio for over two weeks and now it appears he's gone after her." His superior chuckled, "Either to save her from her sordid fate or to kill her himself, for her betrayal, we're not sure yet. Either way, he's going to lead us to her." The man paused; knowing the effect his next words would have on Bart. "A Black Box order has been issued for Anna Scorpio."
Bart nodded in silence. It was a highly unusual order; whomever it was intended for presented a viable security risk for both the Bureau and the United States.
Once the agent was located, a Black Box order warranted immediate termination.
"If you find there are any reasons that she is being held against her will, you're to hold off on the order and arrest her," the dispatching agent told him. "She's to be brought back to the United States where she'll most likely be charged with treason. The rest is up to the Department of Justice. Following her tenure in the WSB, Anna Scorpio knows far too much. If she's selling or giving away classified information, it's at the risk of every man and woman who works for this organization. Whether she is offering this information willingly or through coercion on part of Cesar Faison is irrelevant. Her very existence poses a threat to this organization."
Bart nodded. The prospect of killing a fellow agent was always uncomfortable, but the assignment itself was simple enough. No matter how things turned out, Anna Scorpio was as good as dead. Even if the Black Box order wasn't carried through, he knew that once she was under arrest, her future as a free citizen was bleak. The maximum sentence for treason in the United States, both then and now, was the death penalty and Bart knew very well that if the Bureau decided to exert its influence, it would be her ultimate fate.
Truthfully, he didn't care.
He had no sympathy for traitors and the sooner he found her and could start his retirement, the better. The fact that she had a beautiful young daughter and a husband who insisted on her innocence, mattered little to him.
And so his mission led him to a rusty, decrepit tanker, anchored the coast of South America on that impossibly beautiful day. Bart and two other agents had tailed Robert Scorpio, right up the moment where he went up into the ship. As the senior agent on the assignment, Bart decided to coordinate the mission from the pier, while the two younger agents followed Scorpio onto the tanker.
"Stay in contact, but don't compromise your positions," he instructed them. "Even if it means letting them get off the boat."
"We have a visual," one of his agents, a young blonde woman, with a thick, Texan accent replied.
Bart raised his binoculars and spotted two people on the deck. A petite woman with long dark hair, and a man with a short ponytail. Anna Scorpio and Cesar Faison. "Good job," he told his agent.
Bart's eyes tracked the figures on the ship for less than a minute when suddenly his binoculars were flooded with a painfully bright light, blinding him.
A loud, crashing noise enveloped him, bursting his eardrums, rendering him not only temporarily blind but also deaf. Debris started to fall and Bart covered his head with his arms, trying to avoid pieces of metal that he could neither see nor hear. He fell to his knees from the aftershock of the explosion and only once his sight returned did he see that more than half of the huge ship in front of him was engulfed in flames.
A searing heat encompassed him and he did the only thing that made sense then. He jumped into the water, and dove under it. As soon as he did, a second explosion rocked the ship and a part of its control tower fell onto the pier, in the exact spot where had been standing.
Had he not jumped into the water, he would have died instantly, on that beautiful, sunny day.
He tried to stay underwater as long as his lungs would allow. After several minutes, just as he thought they were about to burst, he dove up for air.
It was in that instant that he met Anna Devane Scorpio.
She too was trying to stay afloat in the increasingly warm water. There was a steady flow of blood from the back of her head, turning the water around her a reddish-pink. It was obvious that she'd been hit by the debris, and as he took a closer look at her, he noticed that one of her arms too was bleeding, from the burns that ran along it.
Her eyes met his and he remembered reading her lips as she mouthed three words to him, before she closed her eyes and started to slip under the water.
"Help me…please!"
It didn't matter then how much he despised the traitor he believed she was. When he saw her about to drown, his first instinct was to save a life. Bart dove down after her, pulling her back to the surface.
Another piece of debris crashed down next to them, and thankfully, its ensuing wave pushed them away from the ship. Bart struggled to hold on to her limp body, made heavier by her wet clothes. Blood continued to stream from her head. He still couldn't hear and the silence that engulfed him was a stark contrast to the blazing chaos that surrounded them. Whenever he remembered the explosion that day, Bart wondered what horrible sounds must have filled the air. For him everything took place in absolute silence.
He swam away from the ship, holding on to Anna. He noticed a pair of street vendors on the pier, waving to him, throwing a life ring into the water.
Bart grabbed on to it, feeling his strength ebb away from him, as the heat of the fire surrounded him. The black, billowing smoke that followed the explosion suddenly made it impossible to breathe.
The men on the pier noticed that he hung on to the life ring with difficulty and jumped into the water to help him. To this day, Bart wasn't sure how both of them ended up out of the water, and on the pier. All he remembered was coughing; coughing so hard in the acrid black smoke that he saw drops of blood fall from his mouth.
Anna didn't appear to breathe at all anymore. Smoke covered them both and his eyes stung. The two men who had helped him out of the water had disappeared.
His world was still mercifully silent and Bart's gaze went from the lifeless body next to him, to the burning ship in the water. He wondered whether anyone else had survived the explosion.
'If my two agents are dead, there will be no trial for you,' he thought bitterly, staring at Anna. 'The WSB will make sure you're dead before you stand trial.'
He wanted to kill her himself, right then and there.
'If it wasn't for you, my agents wouldn't have been on that boat,' he thought. He wanted to pick her up and throw her back in the water. Yet when he looked at her all he saw was a woman, who looked much younger than she was. A severly injured woman whose life was ebbing away in front of his eyes.
Because that's all he could see in that instant, he picked her up and walked down the pier with her unconscious body in his arms, waving down the first taxi he saw.
"A hospital," he had told the driver in perfect Spanish, his deafness making him yell out the words. "You have to take us to a hospital!"
After they got to a hospital, Bart left her there. He told the doctors she was his daughter. Blood ran from his ears and the doctors insisted he stay there too, but Bart ignored them, taking the same taxi back to the site of the explosion.
A horde of curious, horrified onlookers now stood there, staring at the still-burning hull that was all that was left of the tanker. The flames had subsided but the thick acrid, black smoke still filled the air and Bart found himself gasping for air again as he neared the dying vessel.
He took out his WSB ID and asked a local policeman whether any injured persons were found.
"No, there was nobody on the ship," the policeman informed him, "It's been abandoned for months, waiting to be transported to a ship's graveyard. It's a lucky thing because nobody could have survived that explosion. Nobody."
Bart understood most of what the officer was telling him, making him realize that his hearing was slowly returning.
"Was no one taken away in an ambulance?"
"No…no ambulance. Some dock workers were almost hit by the debris but no one was taken to a hospital. Thank God, there was no one on the ship…" the officer repeated. He stared at Bart, " Senor, do you know that you're bleeding from your ears? Were you near the ship?"
Bart shook his head, "No."
He had to return to his hotel room. If his agents had made it out alive and weren't seriously injured they would try to contact him there.
Bart went there and waited. He waited all night for the phone call and the knock on the door that would never come.
By next morning, he knew with certainty that they were dead. No one here would ever know. The WSB would never admit to their presence on that tanker.
Although Bart knew little more about them than their names, he left the hotel room and walked to the nearest church to light a candle for his agents. 'It should have been me, on that ship,' was all he thought.
Still in shock, he walked the hot, noisy city streets for hours until he realized that the news of the explosion would have made his superiors think that he too had died.
He returned to his hotel room and called the Bureau. He told them everything that happened; his efforts to co-ordinate the mission from the pier, spotting both Faison and Anna on the deck, the explosion, the ensuing chaos, and his assumption that his agents had died during the explosion.
The WSB in turn had told him that an agent would be sent to retrieve him as soon as possible and that media knowledge of the Bureau's involvement had to be avoided at all costs.
It was only after he hung up the phone that Bart realized, that in his shock, he had completely forgotten to tell them about Anna.
He set down the receiver with shaking hands. 'Maybe it doesn't matter,' he thought, 'Maybe she's already dead.'
He wanted to go back to the hospital where he had left her, but his body was too drained to even stand up.
He slept for several hours and, long after sunset, he went back out and tried to find the hospital where he'd left Anna Scorpio. He could remember neither its name nor its location and he went to four other hospitals before he finally found her.
Once he got there, her attending physician was furious.
"Your daughter is in critical condition! You left us with no medical information about her…we could...charge you for criminal negligence! We don't even know how she obtained her injuries."
"My what?"
The physician glared at him, "The woman you brought here yesterday…although dumped really is a better word."
"Yes…?"
"You said she's your daughter…isn't she?"
Bart was starting to remember. "Yes…yeah, she is."
"You didn't even give us her name!"
Bart stared back blankly at the doctor. It was all coming back to him. "Anna. Her name is Anna."
The doctor had folded his arms now. "Well, I regret to inform you that it doesn't look good for Anna. She's in critical condition. Her head injuries are severe and her temperature has skyrocketed due to the infections caused by her burns. Her left side and arm may be permanently scarred, there is also a chance of lasting brain damage...to be honest, I would be surprised if she makes it through another night. Her condition has deteriorated since yesterday. You might want to spend some time by her side. It may be your last chance."
Bart stared at her, through the window of the ICU, lying unconscious on the hospital bed, surrounded by tubes and machines. Her entire head was swathed in thick, white bandages.
'She's going to die anyway…' he realized. Bart eyed at the physician, "I'll be back tomorrow."
The doctor's jaw dropped, in stunned disbelief. "I've just told you that your daughter is dying..."
"I heard you," Bart replied and turned around to walk away.
He could hear the doctor from a distance. "You can do it, Anna. Show that bastard that you don't need him by your side to survive."
The next day, two men from the WSB flew in to meet Bart at his hotel room.
He spent the entire day telling recounting the events as they happened so they could record it for the Bureau.
He told them everything except the part where he had pulled Anna out of the water.
'It doesn't matter,' he thought. 'She'll be dead by now anyway.'
The agents who questioned him were young, like Anna Scorpio, much younger than he'd been when he had started. 'Why the hell would they bring in kids to do this kind of work?'
"We're taking you back to Washington tonight," the agents told him.
Bart told them otherwise. "I can't. My eardrums suffered damage from the explosion. The hotel doctor said I shouldn't risk flying for at least two weeks. The altitude could burst them again."
And because the agents were young and clueless they didn't contradict him. Or even try to.
"I'll be there, for the memorial service, for my colleagues," he told them, at the same time letting them know their meeting was finished.
The following day, Bart returned to the hospital. He expected to sign a death certificate.
Instead, he found that Anna was not only alive but that she had been moved from the ICU.
"What?" he asked the doctor, stunned.
"Her condition's improved remarkably over the last 48 hours," the physician told him, and Bart thought he heard a trace of spite in the man's voice. The doctor made no effort to hide his hostility. 'Who can blame him?' Bart thought, 'He thinks I'm the worst father in the world.'
"That's great news," he managed to croak out.
The doctor frowned when he looked at him. "Anna regained consciousness this morning. She's merely asleep now."
"Did she...say anything when she woke up?"
"Not much. She asked me where she was. I asked her some basic questions, none of which she was able to answer."
"What kind of questions?" Bart asked him.
"Like her name and age."
"She couldn't answer those?"
"She doesn't remember…and quite frankly if amnesia is the only repercussion of her injuries, I think you should get down on your knees and thank God for the miracle you've been given."
Instead of getting down on his knees as the good doctor had suggested, Bart left the hospital that day and didn't return for another two weeks.
The fact that Anna Scorpio hadn't died, changed everything. How could he possibly tell the WSB that he had saved one of their most wanted? Granted he'd been in shock and under great duress, but still, his actions would compromise his pension, his reputation… his entire unblemished career would now be marred by that one foolish act. Followed by the even more foolish act of not telling anyone what he'd done.
'No one can know about her,' Bart decided.
He flew back to Washington to attend the memorial service of his two colleagues and found out that a similar service was being held at the same time in Port Charles for Robert and Anna Scorpio. He remembered seeing newspaper photographs of the little, dark haired girl attending the service. She looked like a mirror image of her mother in those photos.
Then he flew back to Venezuela and went back to the hospital where Anna was 'recovering splendidly', according to her physician.
"Except she remembers absolutely nothing about herself or her past."
Bart had a feeling that Anna had become a special patient for the doctor. His eyes lit up when he spoke about her and he seemed determined to make up for her father's neglect by lavishing his attention on her. 'That's because you have no idea what kind of a person she really is,' Bart thought. 'If you did, you wouldn't be so taken by her appearance.' Bart knew people well enough to know that appearances were usually deceptive.
As a result of the doctor's dedication, her burns had healed better than expected. Even the bandage on her head was only a small, white patch on the back now.
"She's going to need a lot of help coming to terms with the fact that she has no memory. Emotional and psychological help that I'm certain you're unable to give her. I beg of you, please make sure she keeps her neurological appointments. Her head injuries were severe. She may have chronic headaches for a long time, perhaps for the rest of her life. It's hard to gauge at this time what other repercussions they'll have for her future."
"What do I have to sign?" was all he said.
"I swear to God, if you don't look after her…" the doctor had hissed.
"Then what?" Bart snapped back. "Relax, I'm going to take her to her relatives in England. They're more sentimental than me. They just didn't have the necessary finances to come and see her here."
"You're a cold, heartless man, Mr. Milton. You don't deserve Anna."
"Spare me the sermon. You don't know my daughter."
"You're right, I don't. But I do know she's a fighter, and even you aren't going to be able to take that away from her."
When Anna came out of the patient room, she'd given her doctor a nervous glance. He proceeded to kiss her forehead, "Remember what I told you, Anna. Yesterday doesn't matter, tomorrow is what counts. You're starting your life with a clean slate. It'll be whatever you make of it."
Anna nodded and stared at Bart with even more apprehension.
Once they left the hospital, Bart handed her a forged passport and several forms of identification. "You'll need these, because we're leaving the country tonight."
She barely spoke two words to him as they flew from Venezuela to Minneapolis. It was a false shyness, borne out of sheer terror of being in a world that was completely foreign to her. Bart later found out that while she could be brooding and pensive, she was certainly not shy.
"Where are you taking me?" was one of the few questions she asked him.
"My mother was Canadian…half Native. Before she met my father, her family owned a log cabin in the woods of Northern Ontario. It's mine now and it's where I planned to retire, to spend the rest of my life fishing and hunting. You certainly didn't figure into that equation, Anna Scorpio."
"Why do you call me that?" she asked, on the plane, en route to the United States.
"Because that's your name. Don't worry your pretty little head off trying to remember me. I'm not your father."
"But at the hospital…?" she stared at him, more confused than ever.
"I had to get you out of there, didn't I?"
"If you're not my father, then who are you?"
"I was the man who was sent to kill you."
"What?" her dark, animated eyes were even more terrified now.
"I'll tell you everything once we arrive at our destination. Then you can decide for yourself what you want to do."
-
Present day
Anna stirred in her sleep and the sound brought Bart back to the present. The sun was starting to rise now.
'I was so cruel to you then and that was only the beginning…' he thought. ' I thought you were my worst nightmare.'
Seeing that she was still asleep, Bart closed his eyes again, and he remembered what happened after he brought her to the cabin.
