Chapter Seven
Digging Two Graves

"He who seeks vengeance must first dig two graves, one for his enemy and one for himself."

Chinese proverb

Jessica waited nervously on her couch with her burner phone on the coffee table in front of her. Only a single dim reading lamp on the end table lit the room as she sat with her legs curled under her and a copy of In A Hail of Bulletsin her hands. She dimly recalled liking the book, but she couldn't concentrate on the words on the page. She was both waiting for the phone to ring and at the same time dreading it.

Roy Montgomery had given her number to a man he knew could put her in touch with someone who could help her remain hidden from the forces arrayed against her. The haunted look in his eyes told her that he knew more than he was telling, but she also knew he had a family of his own to protect. She understood how that felt and was careful not to press him too hard on the topic.

When the phone finally rang, she nearly jumped out of her skin. When she picked it up and opened the line the gruff voice of an aging man spoke on the other end of the line.

"Roy Montgomery asked me to call you, he said that you needed me to make an introduction." said the voice on the other end of the line.

"Yes," Jessica replied, "I need to arrange a safe meet with a mutual acquaintance of ours."

"And who might that be?" the man's voice replied.

A name swam up from the depths of her memory, a man she once trusted, one who had saved her life decades ago. She remembered a kind face with gentle hands, the first man who had ever treated her care and respect since her father died. Even though she could not yet even picture what he looked like.

"Richard Webb, " she replied, "Tell him that Jessica Bennet would like to come in from the cold, and that she will be bringing an old friend of his along for the ride."

"Where would you like to arrange to meet?" Smith replied without any trace of emotion. He hung up after she gave him the address of a vacant office space in Washington Heights and he told her that he would get back to her.

He may have retired from active service a year ago, but he had handled these sorts of things many times over the years. In the old days, sometimes all it took to bring a rogue agent to heel, bring down a spy ring or turn them into double agents was for them to learn that Mr. Smith was sniffing around. Though he was a fearsome operator in his own right, it was widely known that "where Smith went, Nemesis was not far behind." As intimidating as he had been in his prime, and even in his later years, his old friend Richard Webb could be downright scary. He could carry on a casual conversation with his target, and just bolt out of the blue put two in their head without even skipping a beat.

The man had ice water in his veins.

Anything that involved his family was a sensitive subject. The last man who made even an idle threat in that particular direction had died before he could finish spitting the words out. Webb had killed him with a single two-knuckle jab in the throat, crushing his windpipe. Word got around. Bating Nemesis about his family was a very bad idea.

He certainly hoped this Jessica Bennet had gotten that particular memo.


Two days later
7:30 PM

Jessica Bennet was once again waiting in the vacant office space for the Justice Initiative. Though the place had seemed vaguely familiar when she had met Roy Montgomery here, she could now almost vividly remember working on cases here. Joseph Pulgotti's case in particular.

She remembered exactly where the whiteboard had been with the time line for the death of Robert Armen. Where Jennifer Stewart's desk was in the office, one of three people she killed with her own hands. She remembered decrypting the files that Jake Newstead had sent her in that odd code he insisted all of their correspondence be written in.

She remembered decrypting the message in which he told her she had been made, to take her family and flee. She remembered shredding and burning all of the unencrypted files and encrypting the letter she was going to place in the dead drop to the man she was about to meet in the next few minutes, just before she got the call from Sophia Turner, setting the trap that had sent her on this horrific journey.

She even remembered duct taping a manila envelope with copies of everything to the bottom of a drawer in her filing cabinet, in case he was mistaken and she could come back to the office the next day after dinner with Jim and Katie.

She errantly wondered what became of the furnishings for her office. She imagined that Jim and Katie probably cleaned them all out before the lease expired. Thankfully neither of them would be able to make heads or tails of the encrypted files even if they found them. Where she was going, they could not be allowed to follow.

The consequences if that happened were more than she could bear.

"Were you involved in the attempt on my son?"

A voice she found startlingly, achingly familiar rang in her ears, though much colder and angrier than she recalled. She hadn't even heard him come in. Forty three years had obviously not dulled any of his skills. She hadn't heard him coming when he unlocked the door of her basement prison to set her free all those many years ago, either.

"The...the what?" Jessica replied, "no, I wasn't aware of any plot against your son."

Only your granddaughter, the thought came to her unbidden, the guilt for her part in her murder, and her failure to prevent it still fresh in her mind.

Webb held out a photo to her. She still had still been standing mostly in shadow up until this moment. When she stepped closer and into the waning daylight to take the photo from his hand he finally got a good look at her face.

"Johanna?" he asked, just as shocked and disbelieving that she was standing there alive as Roy Montgomery had been.

His face softened for a moment, before the hard shell slammed back down.

"What the hell happened to you, Johanna?"

As crazy as her story sounded, as she explained what little of it she had been able to piece together over the last few weeks, he seemed to believe her.

"A former KGB agent with the skill-set to do precisely that was believed to have gained entry into the United States at just about that time, Irina Derevko, alias Laura Bristow. She was picked up in Los Angeles about two weeks ago, her ex-husband Jack Bristow took her into custody." Webb told her.

"That must be her, she went by the name Dr. Irene Bristow. She posed as my therapist." Jessica replied.

"She and whomever hired her to do this to you must have had a falling out, because by all reports she made it far to easy to track her movements, and she simply walked right into our hands like she had been waiting to be apprehended." Webb added.

Anger began to seep into her heart. Again she was being used as a pawn in someone else's power game. She didn't like it one bit.

"If we have any hope of finding this mystery man, I need to disappear." she finally stated after schooling her features.

"I agree, Jo, whomever set me that photo, obviously wanted me to clean up his mess for him and eliminate you. I think I can arrange a suitable erasure for you." Webb stated.

"I have some unfinished business with my husband first, Richard, once that's done I am all yours." Jessica replied.

"That's fine." Webb told her, "It will take some time to put together what I have in mind. Will two weeks be enough time?"

"That will be more than enough," Jessica replied, "if you could find him for me, that would save me some recon, allow me to keep out of sight."

"Done," Rick said, "Take this, I'll arrange that surveillance for you, let me know when you're ready to disappear."

He handed her a card with his number on it.

"And Johanna," he said, as he was on his way out, "It's good to see you again."

"The same to you Richard," she replied, for the first time finding comfort in being addressed by her real name "I just wish it was under better circumstances."


Five days later

Jessica Bennet's heart seemed to clench in her chest as she watched her husband slowly drink himself into a stupor. The man who had loved her, married her, and she had made a baby with, slowly losing himself into as he drank each successive glass of scotch. Watching him call for another round with slurred speech, knowing he likely had several bottles at home too.

A single tear rolled down her cheek at what her "death" had done to him and what the washed up drunk he was becoming was doing to their daughter. Slowly anger was rising in her heart at him. He was leaving their daughter to wallow in her grief alone as she drifted into a dangerous obsession while he crawled into a bottle of scotch, looking for his answers at the bottom.

"Okay, this has gone on just about long enough!" she whispered angrily to no one in particular, as she rose from her seat at the secluded table she had been sitting at, finishing the glass of wine she had been nursing most of the night. It was time to put her plan into action. A plan she had been working out in her head for days since Webb's people had found Jim's preferred watering hole, having colored her hair from blonde to her original shade, and bought clothes to suit a style that was no longer her own.

"James Beckett, what the hell has gotten into you!" she bellowed.

"Who're you..." Jim slurred, the scotch having long since dulled his once sharp mind.

When the bartender gave her a funny look and cleared his throat she silenced him with a glare that practically screamed "back off" as she paid his tab, and levered Jim to his feet.

"Wait-a-minnut!" Jim slurred, his voice almost a petulant whine as he was dragged unceremoniously to his feet, reaching for his unfinished glass of scotch, "nod-done-yet"

"Oh you are well past done, sweetheart." Jessica stated flatly.

It wasn't until she had manhandled him into the back seat of the taxi that a look of recognition suddenly crossed his features.

"Johanna?" he breathed in a voice though slurred with alcohol carried love and pain and heartbreak with it as the grown man promptly burst into tears. His uncontrolled sobbing broke her heart as she pulled his head to her chest and simply held him there, feeling his choking sobs through her jacket as tears of her own ran down her cheeks.

The following morning

Jessica pulled on her jacket as she prepared to leave the house she once had called her own. She had read Jim the riot act for the way he was treating himself and Katie. He needed to straighten up and fly right, start thinking about Katie now. She had made arrangements with a rehab center through Richard Webb, he would come out clean and sober in 90 days. Had him make the phone call for them to pick him up himself, and write a note on a post it on the bathroom mirror to call Katie and tell her where he was going.

Everything in the house was left almost exactly where if had been, so she had taken the opportunity to rummage through a few family albums for some mementos of a life she was not yet ready to rejoin. Copies of Katie's baby pictures, and school photos from kindergarten though her senior picture. Mostly little things that she herself had put away years ago and no one would miss. She would cherish them as only a mother could.

She had gone through the boxes from her home office and found the court file she had requested back then and removed that too. Judging by the level of dust on everything nobody had been in there in years. She knew eventually Kate would go in there looking for answers, answers she was better off not having.

What was behind this was bigger than she realized. It was better to have her running in circles chasing a case she couldn't solve than to have her find those answers and wind up dead. Or worse, as she knew now with absolute clarity.

She was out the door before Jim woke, leaving no trace she had been there since her death.


Two weeks later

The New York City Fire Marshal was investigating a fire at a brownstone in Manhattan of suspicious origin in which the body of a woman in her early fifties was found with two bullet holes in her head. From documents and identification found at the scene and from dental records the woman was tentatively identified as Captain Jessica Bennet, US Army (retired)

A careful examination of her credit history showed she had not existed before 1999. There were few, if any other leads and the case slowly went cold.

When the case file reached Senator Bracken's desk, he was quite pleased with his handiwork. "Uncle Rick" was predictable, and nothing if not thorough. Problem solved.

The same day Bracken was getting confirmation of her death from his man in the Fire Marshall's office, Jessica Bennet, her hair once again platinum blonde, was watching her husband and daughter get out of their rental car at the rehab facility she had selected through a pair of high powered binoculars.

She saw Jim take off his watch, and then remove a silver chain from around his neck with what looked like her wedding band hanging on a silver chain for her to to hold onto for "safekeeping" he said as she read his lips as he pressed them into her hands. He hugged her for what seemed like forever then kissed the top of her head and entered the facility under his own power.

Jessica Bennet didn't know it when she put the binoculars away, but it would be the last time she would see either one of them in the flesh for a decade.

With a sad, wistful expression on her face, she got in her car and headed back to her new safe house, and her new job with the CIA.

She had dug her two graves, now it was time to hunt for the man responsible so she could fill the other one.