Ugh. I sincerely apologize for the very long wait for this next chapter. I can only offer two words as way of explanation: real life. I made this chapter a little extra long to make amends. Thank you to everyone still with this story!
"Hetty?!" Callen exclaimed, half surprised and half curious.
The small woman in the arm-chair nodded. "Mr. Callen."
He took a few steps closer to the informal sitting room. "What are you doing here?"
Hetty looked up and calmly replied, "The mission is hardly an appropriate place for the type of discourse in which you want to engage. Considering the circumstances, I assumed you would not be extending an invitation for tea at your home, either. Mr. Kolcheck and I are here together so you may begin to express your displeasure of our choices and actions at the same time."
Callen opened his mouth to say something, but changed his mind and closed it. He turned his head to the side and saw Arkady lying on the couch, propped up with pillows. There was a complete line-up of beverages on the coffee table in front of him, as well as a few prescription bottles.
"They released you already?" the seasoned agent asked with a touch of harshness in his voice. He knew the man had been released and would be home, but he wasn't sure what else to say in the way of a greeting. He tried not to sound concerned. He was upset and wasn't about to let himself sound like a doting son just yet. But he also didn't want the man to bleed out on the couch in front of him.
Arkady looked up from the newspaper in his lap and waved a hand in the air. "I got bored there. They don't serve vodka." He smiled at Callen, hoping to break some of the tension.
Callen ignored the remark and walked further into the room. He stared at the floor as he paced back and forth, trying to collect his thoughts and emotions into coherent sentences.
"OK. I want to know everything. Whether you think I should know it or not, I want a full explanation of why I was dealt an incredibly crappy childhood and led to believe my family was dead, when my father was just a few miles away the whole time. Why?" His words hung in the air as he stopped pacing and looked up at the two other people in the room.
"And I want to know what your part in all this was," Callen said, looking directly at Hetty. "I want to know why one of the few people I completely trust in this world would keep a secret like this from me – especially a secret you knew I was actively searching for answers!"
"Mr. Callen, I-" Hetty began to respond.
"No!" Callen cut her off. He pointed a finger directly at her. "You don't get to speak yet."
"Callen!" Arkady raised his voice at the agent. "You might be angry at us but you do not disrespect Henrietta."
Callen raised an eyebrow. "Or what? Are you going to send me to my room?" he asked sarcastically. Callen took a few steps to stand in front of the couch and looked down on the man lying there.
"Were you ever going to tell me the truth? How long have we known each other, huh? A long time. You've told me all about ex-wives and shady deals and business ventures, but not once did it ever occur to you to mention the fact that you're my father. No, I have to find the truth out during an investigation in which your blood was found at a crime scene. If that doesn't scream out 'touching family moment' I'm not sure what does."
He turned around and found an empty arm-chair opposite the coffee table from Arkady. Callen settled in and got comfortable before speaking again.
"You," he said, pointing to Arkady, "are going first. Tell me all about your honorable intentions and concerns for my well-being and why it was a good idea to abandon me as a child. I'm ready." He didn't even try to hide the cynicism in his voice, but let Arkady have the floor.
The older man sighed loudly and let his paper fall to the floor. "First I want to say I am sorry. I never mean for this to go on so long. You have to believe this is not some evil plan against you. We-" he waved between himself and Hetty, "are not bad people. We just make bad choices that hurt you. I am very sorry."
Callen said nothing. He folded his arms across his chest and nodded for the man to continue.
"If you want to know everything, then I have to go back to before there was a G. Callen," Arkady began. "I met your mother, Clara, in Romania in 1968. She was a beautiful woman and to this day, the only woman I have ever truly loved. Clara stole my heart the first time I saw her. It has been so many years and I still miss her terribly. She would be proud of the man you are." He lingered for a moment with unspoken thoughts of his first wife.
"In 1968, I was KGB. There was a lot going on between my country and Czechoslovakia at that time. I had to travel between the two countries often for my job. Sometimes we would stop in Romania for the night or for a meal. That is how I met your mother. She was waitress at a restaurant near the border where we would go. I didn't know then what her real job was, for the US and CIA, but it didn't matter. She took my breath away with her beauty, her smile, her laugh. She treated me like I was only man in the place, every time I came there.
"We started to talk more each time, and get to know each other. I really wanted to date her, take her home to Russia, but she said she couldn't go. Then I learned she is Roma and American and my heart broke. A KGB could never be with a gypsy or an American. Very dangerous for both of us. Neither Romania nor the Americans liked Russia much at that time." Arkady paused to catch up with his memories, and the hint of a smile appeared on his lips.
"But love had other plans for us. We started to see each other secretly outside of the restaurant. It went on for many years, and we even found a priest in a small village who agreed to marry us. We never tell anyone about marriage, and used fake names on all the papers. After a couple of years, you and your sister were born. I was so proud to be a papa, but of course I had to keep that a secret too. I try to see you children as many times as I can when I travel to deal with the Czechs, but never could have a home with your mother and you."
Arkady looked up at Callen's face, which refused to betray any emotion the younger man might have been feeling. He then looked over at Hetty, who just shrugged her shoulders but didn't say a word. Arkady reached for a glass of clear liquid and took a long drink before continuing.
"When you were young boy, the KGB tell me that my job with the Czechs is all done. I have to stay in Russia all the time. They moved me to St. Petersburg. I can't take Clara or the kids with me; it was too risky. It was a different time back then and many countries did not like each other. My wife stayed in Romania with our kids, and would write me letters in special code to let me know how you were doing. She even mailed me a few small pictures hidden inside other things so I could see you growing bigger. It was during this time that I met Henrietta."
Hetty took that as her cue to tell part of the story as Arkady took another drink and rested his head back on a pillow. She cleared her throat before speaking.
"I was with the CIA at the time, working all over Eastern Europe. Mr. Kolcheck was quite a charming young man at the time," she recalled with a small smile. "One of my tasks was to find a KGB officer that I could turn; someone who could play both sides, perhaps someone not as loyal to Mother Russia as he seemed. That someone was Mr. Kolcheck."
Callen sat up in his chair. "You? You turned Arkady from KGB to CIA informant? That's… that's quite a story."
"Mr. Callen, I do not create falsehoods for the sake of your history. I am telling you the truth," Hetty replied.
This time Arkady sat up a little more. "She didn't turn me all the way. I was already wanting out of KGB because of my family, which she didn't know about, but KGB always say they own you for your life. I was scared to trust this American woman, but she was very convincing and we came to have a good working relationship."
"I see. Continue," Callen requested.
Arkady's face became more somber as he recounted the next part of the story. "One day I get a letter from Clara. She sound worried. She said that she had many things to tell me about herself, but she needed to get her and the kids to safety in the US first. She begged me to leave Russia and join them; she even gave me the city and an address where we would meet. Her family would help us, she had written."
The older man stopped speaking, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back. It almost appeared that he had fallen asleep. Hetty reached over and gently laid a hand on his shoulder. Slowly, he reopened his eyes and brought his head back up.
"I didn't know what happened until it was too late. I failed her and you and Amy." Arkady's eyes were full of tears. "My Clara, my beautiful Clara, never made it back to the US."
Hetty handed him a box of tissues. Bittersweet memories took over and the Russian man could not go on.
"Mr. Kolcheck did not know at the time that I was also working with Clara or that she was CIA, and I did not know at that time of the relationship between the two of them. I only knew of the two children but not who the father was," Hetty explained. "Her cover had been blown in Romania, and she contacted me desperate to get herself and her children back to the US as quickly as possible. I told her I would contact an extraction team and get things arranged. She was desperate and begged me to come meet with her in person at a beach on the Black Sea. I contacted a team and then made plans to meet her at the beach. The agency told me there was no need for me to go; her situation was not that dire and not a high priority. Obviously we know they were wrong and that your mother did not make it off that beach. I never had a chance to contact her and let her know that I could not come."
She had to stop as a wave of emotions from the past – of mistakes, of failures, of buried guilt – surfaced and threatened to overwhelm her usually composed self. Henrietta Lange did not break down in front of others. She stood up, walked around behind the chair she had been sitting in, and stared out the window.
Callen stood up as well and began pacing in his corner of the room once again. The memories of what he had witnessed as a child were fresh in his mind. A part of him wanted to stop the stories from the past, stop the renewal of painful memories, but the other part of him still needed to know what he couldn't remember. He stopped pacing and gripped the back of his chair, looking across the room at the man who was his father. "Keep going. I need to know more."
"I never hear what happened to my wife until Henrietta tell me about her friend," Arkady began again. His accent became more distinct as he got more and more tired. "We put our minds together and figured out we were talking about the same woman, Clara. So I ask her to find out where my children are. What happened to them? Where are they? I ask her to get them to the US, since they are citizens there. I need them safe. Then I would come up with plan to come to the US so we can be family together."
Hetty nodded slowly. "He didn't know about the Comescu feud with his wife's family, and that they were the ones who figured out Clara's true identity. I knew their family would not rest until you and your sister were dead as well, so I agreed to find you both and get you safely to the US. It took a few days but I found you and made arrangements to relocate you in Los Angeles."
"So now I know how I got here. What happened next? When did you get to California?" Callen asked Arkady.
"It took me much longer than I wanted to get out of Russia. It is very hard to leave KGB… alive. I had to hide, change my clothes and hair color, shave or not shave so I look different. I had to change my name and get fake papers to leave country and get into US. Henrietta helped me as she could, and kept me informed about you. Because I took too long in coming, she had to put you with the other families. What do you call it again? Foster home I think?"
Callen nodded at the word. There had been so many of them in his childhood.
"I tried to handpick as many of the homes as I could, Mr. Callen. You and your sister had become very special to me, but there was no way I could keep you both at my home and take care of you with the jobs that I did at that stage of my life. Foster care was unfortunately the best option. I kept track of every home, every address where you lived. I stayed in touch with every one of the social workers, so that I could let your father know where to find you as soon as he reached American soil," Hetty said.
"That was your handwriting in the notebook? I thought it belonged to that other guy, Nikolai Resnikov, that had been watching us," Callen responded. He was surprised at this news.
Hetty slowly nodded. "Yes, that was me. I kept very careful records of you kids. I felt I owed your parents that much at least."
"Then who was Nikolai? And why was he watching us?" Callen wanted to know.
"Nikolai Resnikov was my brother," Arkady announced. "He came to the US a few years before I did. I wrote and asked him to get in touch with Henrietta and help her watch over my children until I could come. He was a wonderful brother and better man than me." Arkady grabbed a short bottle from the table, placed two pills in his mouth, and washed them down with one of the many beverages in front of him.
"So I finally come to Los Angeles. I find my brother and Henrietta. Then I have to find job and get money before I can get my kids. American courts are very strict with rules. You cannot have your own children if you are poor, they say." Arkady continued on, telling of his efforts to find a job, make enough money to get a house and get his children back in his custody. Having papers with a fake name that did not match the children in question did not help his chances, either. He was desperate to provide a good home for his kids, and took many jobs – some questionable – just to get the money he needed. Just as he thought he had everything in place to reunite his family, Nikolai informed him that the KGB was still looking for him and had traced him to somewhere in the United States. Arkady didn't want to put Callen and Amy in further danger, so they remained with foster families or in an orphanage.
"I had to lay low those days so KGB would not find me. I did many jobs off the books for people who wanted to stay off the books, if you understand. I had to keep making money but without my name attached. It was during this time…" Arkady's voice began to catch in his throat, "…it was during this time that I learned your sister had passed away," he finished barely above a whisper.
Callen looked down at the ground. He closed his eyes and remembered the headstone of the sister he never got to know. It wasn't fair, he thought. Both women in his family had been taken too soon.
"I'm so sorry Моя милая принцесса (moya milaya printsessa)," Arkady cried out as tears freely fell down his face. "I'm sorry."
Callen suddenly looked up at this tearful apology. "What did you call her?"
"M-moya milaya printsessa," his father replied as he wiped some tears away. "My sweet princess. That is what I called her when she was little, when I would come visit you."
A look of genuine surprise mixed with remembrance washed over Callen's face. "I remember that. I do – that name. As soon as you said it, I knew I had heard it before. We were in a small room, with a fireplace. I had a toy truck… and Amy was twirling around…" Callen spoke slowly as pieces of his past started to emerge. "You, you were there. I can hear your voice in that room."
At this revelation of a past happy family moment, a small portion of Callen's earlier anger dissipated. He sat down once again, eager now for the stories to continue. His anger was being replaced by curiosity.
"So I'm guessing the KGB never found you or you wouldn't be here today. What happened next? Why did you let all these years go by and never once try to find me? To bring me home with you?" Callen desperately tried to keep his voice steady, but a hint of the lost little boy he had once been snuck through.
Arkady had laid back down on the couch and placed one hand on his forehead. "I am very tired now. Can we talk more tomorrow? Doctors say I need plenty of rest to get strong again."
Callen looked over at Hetty, who had moved to help Arkady get comfortable. She nodded in agreement. "I think we all need a good night's sleep before we continue. Mr. Kolcheck has been through a lot physically and now emotionally as well. I think it best if we come back in the morning."
She tucked a blanket around the older man, picked up her purse and made her way out to the foyer with Callen. After giving some final care instructions to Arkady's bodyguard and right-hand man, Hetty and Callen walked outside to their respective cars.
"Oh, Mr. Callen? I know you still have many questions you want answers to, but please remember that you were never forgotten. Not by me, and certainly never by your father. He loves you too much to ever forget you."
Reviews, please? Obviously this explanation of Callen's past strays from the actual show, but I tried to use as many details from the show as I could. Let me know what you think... and there is more to G's story coming up in the next chapter.