Author's Note: Well, we are almost at the end of this book. Thanks, everyone who has read thus far. I love your comments, and the discussions we have been having, through the review list and by private message. Really, you all deserve a medal for coming down this road with David and an OC. To anyone who has found even one thing to like about Kim, bless you. Otherwise, thanks for checking in on this metamorphosing David: his past and his future.
Only three more chapters to go. Press on, Esteemed Reader.
The Osprey set down at Chennai International, and David, Father John and the Marine detail jumped out.
Kim, Indali, and Drächen stepped out of a hangar. The little girls ran, towing Kim behind by her two hands. They jumped into David's arms, instigating a giant, four-way hug. Kim let herself press her face against his chest for just a moment, looked up into his pained, smiling face. His eyes were closed, his cheeks framed by the silky hair of two little heads.
Turning away, Kim felt David slip something into the pocket of her hoodie, realized it was a full magazine for her Sig. Touch told her that the bullets were hollowpoints; if she needed to fire inside the aircraft, they would not breach the bulkheads and cause loss of cabin pressure. She saw Cronin approaching, removed her hand from her pocket. Noted his shock at seeing her and two small children; his face betraying him for only a moment before detachment was carefully re-assumed. A moment later, it was her turn to feel surprise: a USMC Honor Guard was with him, and snapped to attention. She searched Cronin's face: composed, neutral.
A USMC Officer emerged from a terminal building and approached. Intercepted briefly by Cronin, he nodded as the CIA man said a few words in his ear, and then approached them. David and Kim both involuntarily straightened up into attention with a salute, as did the honor guard. Indali clung to Kim's left hand, her shy eyes fearful of the uniformed men. Drächen, safe in David's left arm, peered around, then held her left hand up to her forehead in her own salute.
"Good afternoon. I'm Major General Dennis J. Hejlik, Commander of Marine Corps Special Operations Command. On behalf of the United States Marine Corps: Marines, stand down!" The Commander saluted, releasing them.
Kim and David responded automatically, barking, "Aye, aye, sir!" as they released the salute.
They took one long step back in unison, turned a crackling 180 degrees, held themselves at attention another moment, and then relaxed. They looked at each other, a little self-conscious. Once a Marine…
The Commander approached, hand held out to Kim. Indali, left behind when Kim stood down, ran to hide behind her, clinging to her leg.
"Welcome, Marine," he said to her, as they shook hands.
"Thank you, Sir!" Kim shouted in her best Basic Training voice.
"And who is this?" he asked, surprising her by kneeling on one knee to look Indali in the eye.
"My daughter, Sir: Indali Shanti Ramsey."
"I'm pleased to meet you, Young Lady," said the Commander, taking Indali's hand to shake it. She beamed at his gentle eyes before burying her face once again in Kim's leg.
The colonel rose and produced a manila envelope, tipping something out of it into the palm of his hand. "Hello, Little Bit," he said to Drächen.
"I believe these are yours, Marine," he addressed David, handing the something over. Dog tags. Webb, David. His social. O+. Catholic. David took them, blinking. "Sir. Thank you, Sir," he said, handing the tags to the little girl, accepting the Commander's handshake.
Cronin checked his watch, nodded at them.
"Did you get the phone?" David asked Kim.
She pulled a prepaid satellite phone out of her pack, powered it on. "Take a picture of us?" Kim requested of Father John. "Just line us up in the window, and press here."
David and Kim squeezed together with the children. Nobody said, "Cheese."
Taking the phone, Kim just barely glanced at the picture. They were each identifiable; that was enough. She dialed up the distribution list that she had already set up, typed in a message, attached the photo, and pressed send. "Now my friends and family can see my new daughter," she said, volubly, for Cronin's benefit, hugging Indali. Especially my cousin, John. And Aunt Pamela Landy. Uncle Charles Gibson...
Father John swung each child up in a hug and accepted a kiss on the cheek and a squeeze from Kim.
"Thank you, Father John," said David, shaking his hand. "For everything."
"Go in peace," said Father John.
The long leg of their commercial flight, Mumbai to Berlin, was packed. Kim and the girls nodded off, exhausted by a morning that had begun at 4:00 a.m. When Kim opened her eyes, she saw the back of Cronin's head across the aisle and one row up. He was talking on the in-flight phone; no doubt a dozen junior case officers were scurrying to pull every fact they had on her and cross-reference them with Jason Bourne's file. Were agents being deployed to Iowa to surveil her family? It was out of her control. And it might well be the most boring assignment of their careers...
David was awake next to her, the two girls slumbering together in a single seat on her other side. In his right hand, David was gripping something tightly.
"What do you have there?" she asked.
He hesitated, eyes searching her face, then held his hand open to display the medals. "They were Marie's."
Her face lit up in recognition. "St. Michael… And is that Quan Yin? Interesting combination. Marie was polytheistic."
"Polytheistic, omnivorous, vibrant, acute… She 'contained multitudes.'"
Kim nodded. "Walt Whitman. The subject of my 400-level English thesis." That was a long time ago…
"Marie loved Whitman. So alive…" He quoted:
" 'I am large; I contain multitudes.' (1)
"She used to always say that when she contradicted herself or changed her mind. Her poetic excuse." He retrieved the water-damaged book from his pack, held it out to Kim: The Complete Poems of Walt Whitman. "This was in her effects."
Very gently, Kim opened the baggie and took the brittle volume out, turned the book over in her hands. "It looks like there's a marker here," she said, gingerly opening it. The emery board that Marie had used as a bookmark fell out, and David picked it up, held it.
The print was still legible. "I know this one," said Kim beginning to read from the marked page:
"Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands,…
Here the poem continued onto the next page, the pages stuck together. Kim closed the book and finished from memory, looking down at the stained and friable book cover.
"Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true Soul and Body appear before me…(2)"
David batted at a tear rolling down his face.
"She truly believed in you," said Kim, her voice low and sandy. "She gave you so much…"
David's eyes flickered over Drächen, then down at the emery board in his hands. They sat for a moment in silence.
"She could eat anything?"
"Anything. The punkiest street food had no effect on her. Cast-iron stomach. One time, in Lisbon… "
His memories spilled forth, Kim witness to his eulogy. To the deep sorrow and broad smiles that the memories summoned. David was thinking that it might be worth getting through one to reach the other. Finding that maybe either one was fine, given the right company.
They sat silent again. Kim thought of something, said, "I always loved this one:
The answer: That you are here, that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse." (3)
He knew that one, too… From where? David's face was a mask of recognition and grief, his throat closing around yet unshed tears.
"It sounds like Marie lived every moment to the fullest," Kim went on.
"Yes."
"Wouldn't it be a fitting tribute to her, for you and Drächen to do the same?"
Tears were gliding down Kim's face now, and he wrapped his hand around her head to streak them away with his thumb, to pull her cheek to his shoulder. Eased an exhalation past the ache in his throat. Resting his hand on her head, he wondered, Could I?
When they touched down in Hanover, they were exhausted, naps notwithstanding. The little girls were hungry and cranky, tired of sitting still. They straggled out of the terminal and into the waiting Chrysler minivan, chilly in their India clothes, not equipped for the early spring temperatures so far north of the equator.
They were driven to a hotel near the church where the funeral was scheduled; Cronin made some adjustments to the reservation and they were shown into adjoining rooms. They opened the door between to allow Drächen and Indali the untrammeled joy of running back and forth between them.
Waiting for them were a black suit, plus tie, dress shirt, socks and shoes for David, black velvet dresses, tights and maryjanes for Indali and Drächen, and a black dress and accessories for Kim. The sizes were correct. Packages of new underwear, pajamas, toiletries. A note read Courtesy of Marine Corps Community Services.
"You mean you have to take those cargos off?" Kim teased, gently.
David looked at her vacantly. He had worn the same cargo shorts and khakis—one pair of each—and two shirts for four months. Maybe he should just burn them.
"Put your dirty clothes in here," Kim said, holding up a canvas bag. "The card says that they do laundry in four hours." She stuffed in one last article of her own clothing from her pack and pitched it to him. He saw an array of little girls' clothes inside, as well.
He nodded, dropped the bag on the floor. Sat down on the bed, fully dressed. He was all in, and he knew it; the events of the past two days had assailed him emotionally, whether he liked to admit it or not. Time to let the mind and body catch up. Rest is a weapon…
"You have your M11?" he asked Kim. "Swap the clip."
Kim nodded, touched the grip where it stuck up out of the back of her waistband under her shirt. Eyed him, said to the children, "Time for a bath, sweet girls."
"Don't worry about us," she said to David. "We're going to get settled." Kim got the girls started undressing and then took a circuit of the two rooms as she changed out the ammunition in her weapon, pulling all the windowshades and checking inside all the ear- and mouth-pieces of all the telephones before unplugging them. She checked on the children: half-undressed. She went and felt around and picked up the hanging art and the other decorative touches; they were device-free. All the screws on all the vents were painted over, but she ran a signals sensor over them nonetheless. The rooms were clean.
David closed his eyes and sank back, exhaustion and grief tugging at him. He was asleep when Kim looked in an hour later. She crept in, removed his shoes, turned off the lights, and went back to her own room, and the children. "How about some room service?" she asked them.
Marie in his arms in that dinghy hotel room where she began showing him how good it could feel to be alive. Her face when she turned to find him in the doorway of her shop on Mykonos, so joyous. Marie, nursing the baby, singing her to sleep. Always fresh flowers on the table, a flea market paint-by-numbers on the wall. A pinch on the butt, a warm kiss, her laugh lighting up the room. Holding him so tight, skin bare against his bare skin, whispering in his ear, "My love…"
"…sooner or later, you remember something good."
David sat up in bed to a pink and orange dawn. He was in a hotel in Hanover. It was the day of Marie's funeral.
He got up, padded over to squint through the door into the adjoining room. Kim, Indali, and Drächen were piled in the bed, asleep. He reached into his pockets, found Marie's medals in one and his dog tags in the other. He slid the tags off the ball chain and slipped them into an inner pocket of his pack, disposed of the necklace chains in the same way. Threaded the ball chain through St. Michael and Quan Yin, closed the loop and slipped it over his head. Went and checked out the new underwear. He could really use a shower.
(1)Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman
(2)To You, by Walt Whitman
(3)Oh Me! Oh Life!, by Walt Whitman