The Perfect Weapon Ending 1 Chapter 1003: Part 2
Ending 1 Chapter 1003 Part 2
“Querencia?” Weiss asked as the truck drove through the open gates to the estate, pausing briefly while the sole local guard there indicated the way to the delivery entrance. Weiss pointed at the small bronze sign on the gate post. “Querencia. That’s Italian. What does it mean?”
Jack said shortly, “Safe haven.”
“Safe haven....?” Dixon said softly, shaking his head as the full import hit him. He looked over at Vaughn, who nodded and repeated, “Yes, safe haven.”
“In its strictest translation. But I always interpreted querencia for her as not only a safe haven, but rather more deeply, personally, as the heart’s home,” Jack said blandly in that soft voice that masked the deadliest of cuts. “Because, shouldn’t the place where your heart has found a home be the safest haven of all?”
Into the silence that had fallen at Jack’s words, Vaughn nodded again and said simply, ‘Symmetry. Of course.”
Jack said simply, “Symmetry has a certain elegance I appreciate. The mirror image is something she will appreciate. In all of the copious free time she will shortly have for contemplation.”
Dixon commented, “So, you’re going to rip from her the sense of safe---”
“Every weakness is exploitable,” Jack said coldly, although those watching him noted the gleam in his eyes. Then Nia’s com unit began transmitting the conversation in the bedroom Irina would have called burgundy, not red. Burgundy. Weiss would say later he thought it was blood red. Except that what had occurred in that room from the moment she had opened that box had been so very bloodless.
She wished she had never opened that box. Never. As long as she lived, she was sure, she would never eradicate that image from her mind’s eye, that sight of the twisted metal links, like the knots on a barbed wire fence, whose only goal was to hurt. But why? Who? Who had done this? She tried to evade the answer, but knew, knew with deep dread and an atavistic knowledge of danger that this was Jack’s handiwork. He was trying to tell her... By his very absence he was telling her something... But he had to be here. Somewhere. And there was some symmetry here. Somehow. Did he think....Did he think she had broken the connection between them? But how could he think that? How could he do this? Was this some very twisted joke that she could not understand? Or....
How had they gotten to this point, she was still wondering as she stared at the tall bearded man speaking to her. What had he just said? She shook her head, trying to pay attention, but her gaze kept returning to that box, seeing in her mind’s eye those twisted metal links, gaping open in their brokenness.
She took a breath, feeling as if the wind had been knocked from her, trying to find some anchor, any anchor as the world seemed to spin around her in swirling vortex, as all of her safe moorings began to fly loose at once... and she could only wonder where she would land in the end.
“Are you Memsahib Laura Bristow?” the senior officer, a captain in the region’s police force inquired. Again. How many times had he said it, she began to wonder as she noted the growing impatience on his face illuminated only by the natural light from the window to his right.
Then her attention went to the window as what appeared to be a large truck passed close by, temporarily shutting out the sun from the room. She glanced outside, but even though the shadow appeared to have passed the bright sun did nothing to make her feel warm. She looked into the mirror, saw the four of them enclosed within, lit by the blood red glow of the room as the warm sunlight turned the sheer draperies at the window into golden waterfalls, turned the metallic tracings on the walls into silver tears, turned the dust motes floating in the air into a fine mist that seemed to cloud her vision.
“Memsahib Bristow?” Nia asked softly, looking up at her from under her lashes.
“Nia, what are you doing here-“ Irina asked, feeling slightly dazed, looking for help.
“The maid, a family friend, is here, because it would be improper for us to be in a room with another man’s wife,” the corporal pointed out. “A violation of local laws, which given how many violations we will be discussing today, is not one we care to add to the list of charges.”
“Charges? Local laws?” Irina asked, shaking her head. She had been very careful, very careful indeed to adhere to local customs, to stay invisible. To use the robes that made women anonymous, featureless, to hide her own features, to stay hidden, to stay safe. When she left her home, her own safe haven, that was. Which was not often, she preferred to stay here, in this home with its bright colors, its memories, with....everything. Everything but a glider. And him. But surely, shortly she would have him too.
“Memsahib Bristow? Laura Bristow?” the senior officer, a captain asked again, impatiently shifting a file under his arm into his hand and tapping it on his palm.
“Why are you calling me that?“ she responded automatically trying to establish the rules of this game. Because, she thought with a sigh of relief, this must be a game of some kind. She had never used that name here since the day she had filed the quit claim deed in...she closed her eyes, in Jack’s name. Since the day she had forged his signature on the forms and every year, continued to forge his name on the tax payments, since this region was so damn backward, anonymous electronic fund transfers were not yet possible. But how would anyone have known her name? A married woman was invisible, legally, in this region. Who could have tipped them off? And...wait!
Her eyes opened with a snap. She was undoubtedly overreacting, still in shock after seeing the broken links in that box, to which her eyes inadvertently slid once again. After all, what difference did it make if they called her, knew her as Laura Bristow, Jack Bristow’s wife? She began to relax. It made no difference to them, if so much to her and-
“Your husband,” the captain began again, slowly, now patiently, as if she were sick or wounded in some way, she decided.
“My husband?” she parroted, deciding that indeed it was some game.
Before she could say anything more, he opened a file and pulled out a sheaf of papers, “Are these not your marriage papers? Your signature?”
“Yes, yes, those....but---”
“Yes. Are you not Laura Bristow? Who abandoned her husband and child more than twenty years ago and has been evading her responsibilities since then?” The captain asked. Referring to a paper in his file, he noted, “Memsahib Laura Bristow abandoned her family by pretending to die in a car accident.” He held up a photocopy of the newspaper clipping about the accident, her obituary, her - she gasped - a photograph of her gravestone. “When in fact, you were alive all this time.” The captain tsked, tsked. “Terrible. In his sworn complaint, Sahib Bristow asserts his right to exact personal justice on his runaway wife for the costs to him.”
“Personal justice?” she said softly, wondering just what form that might take. He would not hurt her, she knew, but....what game was this? But what if, this was no game? She stared, blinking rapidly. Stared at the three of them, all strangers, the two men and her maid Nia, her brain completely frozen with shock, still reeling from that broken chain, and now this? What game was this?
“Yes, but your husband is kind. American men,” he scoffed, “Can be too generous. Please answer my first question so that we may proceed. You are Laura Bristow, married to Jonathan Bristow of the United States? This man?“ The officer asked, showing a relatively recent photograph, an Agency head shot. Black and white, an unsmiling visage confronted her. This was the Jack she had seen when she had first returned to them, before she had found ‘her’ Jack again. “Is this your husband?” The captain asked as she stared, involuntarily, thinking of the black and white photographs of him she had taken, then hidden in her private portfolio in her mirrored closet doors. Then and now. When she refused to answer, he asked again, “Is this Sahib Bristow?” She shrugged. He sighed and held up a second photograph and she bit her lip, it was the photo Dave had taken that day, of the two of them in the doorway to the kitchen. Her favorite photo. Used against her? Irony. Jack. Damn him. What kind of game was this? “This is the two of you? In your home in the United States? I see wedding rings on you both in this photo. although I note you are not wearing your ring today. You were married to this man. Do you deny this?”
“No,” she decided to answer honestly. After all, that was so long ago and.... “Yes, he was my husband at the time of that photo, but...”
“And your marriage is still intact? You have not had it annulled?”
“Yes, yes of course, I have,” she said trying for a calmness she did not feel.
“You have papers to prove it? Such papers, Sahib Bristow’s estimable and---” The captain sighed heavily, “Tireless attorney informs us, would have to have been filed with the State of California in the United States and we have certification that no such papers have indeed been filed. Can you prove otherwise? Sahib Bristow’s attorney is waiting, willing to check into the matter if you can provide us with any information on filing such paperwork. He does not want and neither do we want, any miscarriage of justice. Although I must inform you that if you have such papers proving the dissolution of the marriage, you would be trespassing on his property without permission. In which case, also according to yet more paperwork his lawyer filed...” The captain sighed deeply again and rolled his eyes, as he pulled out yet another piece of paper and read from it. “In which case, Sahib Bristow notes that he wishes you escorted off immediately as a trespasser because---”
“What?” she asked in surprise. “Escort me off? Escort me out of my home as a trespasser?!” She bit her lip, feeling a circle, a cold icy rope, drop over her with a soft thud, almost imperceptible in the whine of the wind outside.
“So, if you have had the marriage annulled, we do need paperwork, because, as you know....lawyers, the law demands paperwork. Proof through endless paperwork, I assure you,” he said, holding up the files in his hand. “So?”
Damn it. This was happening too fast. If she had more time, she could forge paperwork, pay off some clerk somewhere to file and then find ‘lost’ records. If she had more time. If she had had an inkling of this...betrayal. This second betrayal, she thought, closing her eyes in pain. But maybe....Maybe this was just Jack’s quick temper at work again. Maybe this was just a particularly elaborate version of the chase game to prove that he could have her. That he could win. Because it must have made him insane with fury to have her best him not once, so long ago, but twice - in Panama. And then when that passive transmitter failed due to Sark....Yes, that quick temper of his.
“Dad, are you okay?” Sydney asked.
“I’m fine, sweetheart. How about you?” Jack responded. Then sighed as Sydney said she was okay too. Hopefully Sydney would never grow as cold as he was. Because he was more than fine, if the truth be told. This was a good game in play. Being the dealer had its advantages.
“No papers... So therefore, Mem, according to the laws of the United States of America, your marriage still stands? Yes or no?”
“But....I used a false name and that would---”
“According to the legal opinion expressed by the Attorney General of the State of California as noted in this document in my hand, an opinion requested by your husband’s attorney and the Circuit Court of the state of California, that fact, as regrettable as it is, does not invalidate the marriage contract.”
She felt frozen. Oh my god, he had closed off that avenue of escape as well, she thought, feeling a circle tighten. Was that why he had not annulled the marriage? She had thought he had not wanted to do so, had wanted to keep that connection but.... Remembering the mask he had worn that day when he had told her that news, she wondered suddenly, had he even then been thinking of using that connection against her? She had thought she had seen pain there, but had the pain been hiding calculation or was this a notion that had only occurred later? Did it matter? There was too much going on, she was buffeted, spun round and round by both too much emotion and by utter and complete shock. One made her heart pound, her muscles tense for flight, while the other made her breath catch in her chest and her legs tremble. The combination trapped her, immobilized her. Her eyes went again to the box, even as she registered that the captain was speaking again.
“Corporal, check for the items, Sahib Bristow said would be here, since the Mem is apparently incoherent,” the captain said.
“The box is on the bureau,” the corporal pointed. “Just as in this photograph of what Sahib Bristow testifies was their former home before she abandoned her family,” corporal said, holding up a photograph of the chain’s box on their bureau in an old photograph of their bedroom. She craned her neck, trying to see what the photograph had originally been, some photograph of Sydney she remembered suddenly. They had marked her growth against the doorjamb near the bureau. But no Sydney in the photograph.
The corporal held up another photograph. “And the necklace the sahib promised we would see is around her neck, as shown in this photo.”
She stared in shock at the photograph. How could this be? She reached out a trembling hand for the black and white picture of her and Jack in that bathroom in Panama with one hand and touched the center diamond with the index finger of the other. In this photo, Jack was clasping the necklace around her neck. Had that just been a circle of entrapment, that necklace? NO! She closed her eyes. Then opening them quickly, she looked again at the photo, noting with relief that it had clearly been cropped to show just their head and shoulders. But before her mind could formulate the question to ask where, how that photograph had been---
“Corporal, check for the package and---” the captain said.
“This is my property, you have no right to come in here and question me, search my property!” she finally protested, belatedly sensing a trap of some kind, although she could not imagine why Jack would do this....Maybe the CIA was using their relationship to capture her? Maybe they had taken, somehow, that photograph? That must be it. “My guards will escort you off---”
“No, this is not your property,” the captain pointed out. “This is Sahib Bristow’s property. It is his name on the deed.”
“It had to be his name on the deed! In this godforsaken country married women cannot hold property so I---” She felt another circle close ever more tightly around her. Damn Jack. He had covered every base, found every chink in the wall, exploited every weakness. How could he use his skills against her this way?
“I do love it, “Jack murmured, his eyes alight. “When all the pieces of a game come together.” Truly a thing of beauty.
“I hope you are not going to admit forging his signature. That would be yet another crime against your husband. I would have to interact with his attorney again, who has, I assure, you paperwork ready to charge you with fraud if you did indeed forge your husband’s signature. More paperwork, more work with that lawyer is a circumstance decidedly to be missed, I assure you. Lawyers,” the captain spat. ”Every i dotted, every t crossed as you Americans say. And so much paperwork that man produced. And then more today. Paper, paper, paper, endless reams of paper. When Sahib Bristow’s word would have been enough, being friends with our prefect’s brother. But no, the attorney had to do what attorneys do, file paperwork, making my life more and more difficult.”
“Wait a minute,” Weiss muttered, “I thought the prefect was Zamir’s father’s niece’s brother’s uncle’s son and his brother sold beer nuts.”
“I told you Zamir was his own grandpa,” Jack said irritably.
“Well, actually if you puzzle out the rel---Ow!” Marshall exclaimed as Carrie pinched the back of his arm. “Oh, yeah, no lab, no lab....” he chanted under his breath.
“Both of you can figure it out later. Shut up now,” Kendall snapped.
“So, I sincerely hope that you will not admit to forgery. I do not want to file additional paperwork to charge you with that crime. In any case, the initial charge of abandonment is serious enough, a serious offense to be a runaway wife under our laws.”
“Abandon...ment? Runaway? Laws?” she asked, her mind reeling. Then said no more, as her mind scrabbled to keep up with the rapidity of the charges.
Into the silence, Sydney asked, “Dad, how did you think of this, anyway?”
“It came to me in a dream,” Jack answered.
“As if it were not bad enough to abandon your husband, to also abandon your only child...Most unnatural,” the officer tsked, tsked. “Look upon this return to your family under the runaway wife statutes as an opportunity to right the wrongs you visited upon---”
Desperately grasping for any handhold on this slippery slope she could feel under her, she exclaimed, “I have ri---”
“No, Mrs. Bristow," the maid said in a clipped British accent. "Not in this region, you do not. You are thinking as an American. You apparently spent too much time in the States, grew accustomed to living as an American endowed with inalienable individual rights, which do not exist in this part of the world, not to women, anyway. Such a shame you appear to have forgotten that when you made your choices, so regrettable, so very avoidable.” Nia the voluminous folds of her enveloping robes mandated by law in this region. Nia, who was clearly no maid, Irina realized too late. “If you wished to avail yourself of the rights of an American citizen, you should have stayed in the United States with your husband. But then again, had you made that choice, none of this...unpleasantness would be happening, would it?”
“But...” she argued, mining her mind for knowledge of local law, “The laws state that after twenty years, either party may declare the marriage void.”
“But, you have spent time with your husband in the last twenty years, have you not?” the captain argued with a shrug of his shoulders.
Putting indignation into her voice, she asserted, “No, I have not-“
“Please do not bother to lie, Mem. We have proof.”
“Proof? What kind of proof?” she scoffed, feeling secure now. There was no proof they could have, she thought, willing herself to avoid looking at her closet doors.....Oh my god, she gasped, remembering that photo of her and him with the necklace as the captain produced yet more photographs from the file in his hand. Remembered Jack’s voice, saying relentlessly, endlessly in her head, “there is no substitute for exhaustive background research.” Or was it preparation?
“What have I been telling you all? There is no substitute for exhaustive background research and preparation,” Jack said. “And a good lawyer.”
“We have proof. As I said, that attorney of your husband’s is most thorough. He seemed to believe that we required proof beyond a reasonable doubt, when again, he was wasting my time with this paperwork. Sahib Bristow’s word would have been enough, the prefect is most anxious to put this matter to rest after all, but his attorney insisted that he have proof, proof that we show you.” He held the photos out but she merely stared at them, did not, could not move. He shook them at her, and said impatiently, “So...please take the photos, Mem, so that you may realize that this is all perfectly legal.”
She forced herself to stand upright and take the photos in cold hands. How could he....? The coldness was everywhere, she thought as she blinked again, seeing the images before her.
Photo after photo of the two of them in that bathroom, with the helpful addition of the date and time in the lower right hand corner, photos of them arguing, talking, kissing and thank god, the images stopped at that point. As it was only careful cropping had preserved her modesty. And that she knew, had to have been Jack’s work, only he would have protected her that way. She knew dimly that he had done it for her sake, he had no modesty, after all. But even still, she burned with embarrassment, and was that...shame?
What kind of shame, though? The shame of believing that encounter, that moment had been full of love and need and then finding out.... Looking up at the officer, his gaze carefully averted from even the modest amount of the skin of her neck and shoulders, she wondered suddenly how Jack had felt when the investigating team had found her portfolio behind the mirrored closet doors.
Then trying to shove the notion aside, she flipped over to yet another photograph and gasped. Jack had been looking straight into the mirror in this shot, and shot, she thought absently, was the correct word, for his gaze stung like a bullet grazing the skin. Not deadly but painful, so painful, that coldness in his eyes that masked only lightly the gleam of a gamesplayer. He had told her, told her, they had a camera. And when she’d asked about it in the bedroom of that hotel room, he had tossed that tiny digital camera at her and said, ‘Here’s a camera.’ He had not said, ‘Here’s the camera.’ Damn it, that damn pedantic precision of his language. He had not lied. Not...precisely. Just misdirected.
Where had the camera been, she thought with desperation. She closed her eyes again, seeing that room, wondering. Then she knew. The mirror. The damn mirror. The screwdriver in his pack. He had gone into the bathroom when they had arrived in that hotel room and she realized too late, had installed a camera. And later, while she had been remembering the night of the jewelry, that special night, he had been removing the camera with that damn screwdriver in that pack of his that was just like a game of Clue.
“Clue....” she whispered, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the silence of the room, the only other sound that of the wind whipping around outside. Bringing more dust, she thought absently, as she whispered again, “Clue.”
“Yes, Irina. Clue. Miss Scarlett felled by a camera in the bathroom,” Jack said softly. “How clever of you to guess. If a little late.”
Just as she had hidden her photographic portfolio behind the mirrors of her closet, he had hidden the camera behind the mirror of that bathroom. Damn symmetry. But as long as he had not realized the extent of her patterns, her nostalgia for the past that she now knew was a weakness...Then she shuddered, remembering that KGB profile on him more than thirty years before. ‘Cold, ruthless, brilliant, prefers multiple modes of attack, seeks and out exploits every weakness.’ Did she still have a chance to win the escape game?
“We have still photographs from the security camera at the hotel in Panama showing you walking through the lobby with your husband and---”
“One could alter those images from the security camera. One could change the date on these photographs to-“ she began to argue.
“Ah, but Mrs. Bristow,” Nia said in perfect English with a slight British accent, making Irina’s head jerk toward her in surprise, finally realizing the anamoly of that voice. Although, she wondered, why should anything surprise her at this point? “You have your own set of photos of that time with your husband, do you not? Which also shows the date in the lower right corner?”
“Who ARE you?” Irina demanded as Nia pulled a screwdriver out of the voluminous folds of the required female dress of the area.
“Who am I? A friend of the family, as the captain said moments ago. Were you inattentive? But to be specific, I am Amina. Zamir is my maiden name. You met my father, I believe, when you and your husband and daughter were in India last fall.”
“You are an agent? You work for-“
“I came out of retirement to do this favor for Jack. He is like family to us. I would do anything for my family. And this was an easy assignment, after all and very satisfying,” she said as she smiled coldly.
“Satisfying? In what way? What did I ever do to you?”
“To me? Nothing. To a good friend of my father’s? Too much. My father has spoken many times of the changes in Jack after your betrayal. How it pained him to see Jack’s pain. And I too saw this. And now...we will see this.” Handing the screwdriver to the junior officer, she indicated the screws which held the mirror in place on the closet doors. “If you will remove the mirror, you will find a cache of prints and a tiny digital camera. The prints show Mrs. Bristow, Mr. Bristow, and the two of them in a bedroom on the same date as those photos.”
Damn him! She ranted in her mind, he had encouraged her to take those photos. ‘No pictures?’ he had asked, ‘Color me astonished.’ He had told her that they had time for that. Time for those photos. Of course, she wanted to smack herself, of course they had time for the photos, of course they had time for him to set her up. Or worse, she knew feeling a sinking coldness within, for her to set herself up.
“Ah...” The senior officer said once he had the photos in hand. “The dates are the same. But more importantly, I am thinking, that you do not look unhappy to be with your husband.” He held up the image of her kissing Jack, the image of her laughing face that Jack had taken. “In fact, you look like he makes you happy. So...this will not be a bad thing, I am thinking. Reuniting you with your husband. Perhaps you are just confused about where you should be.”
Confused, she thought to herself, was one way to describe it, this feeling of entrapment as the circle, no circles, closed in. But for what purpose? What game?
“And as well, I am thinking that this package may also tell a tale,” the captain said, pointing toward the box on the floor, the pile of books stacked next to it. “This package that Sahib Bristow details in his documents. A very thorough man, your husband is, is he not?” he asked rhetorically. Good thing, too, she thought, for she was incapable of answering that question. He continued, “I am sure he will take care of you with this same thoroughness.”
Nia bit her lip as Kendall’s snort came through loud and clear in her ear. But Jack added, “Weiss, you do have the blankets in the truck, don’t you?” Weiss responded, “Yes, next to a bunch of boxes of beer nuts.”
“This---” the corporal noted, “Is the box your courier carried from Bangkok to your home today via helicopter. He is in the kitchen, I believe and can corroborate that fact. And too...” he noted as he walked toward the box and picked up the crumpled front page of the LA Times. “The date on this paper is today’s date. So, yes you have had contact with your husband as late as today. And when we knocked on your door and you answered, you were saying, ‘Jack.’ So you were expecting him. So. I am thinking that if we move this along, you may yet see him before today ends.”
“This...this is how this will end?” she asked softly.
“We are here to escort you back to your husband. As you know, in our country, we take seriously a husband’s charges of abandonment by his wife. We have fulfilled the burden of proof. So now. You will come with us.”
“Now?” she asked, still trying to process the events of the last few minutes, to understand, to feel something more than shivering coldness as she looked over at that box once again.
“Now. I believe the documents from your husband’s lawyer indicate that he has run out of patience with you. That he has waited long enough.”
“I.... I need-“
“You need nothing. Your husband will provide for you. That is his duty and his honor to care for the women of his family, to lead them back to righteousness. And you are lucky, Memsahib Bristow that he wishes you back. Even under our laws he could have merely divorced you. I do not know if I would have gone to this much trouble to recover such an errant wife. After all, women are so easily...replaceable.”
Why had she ever thought it so smart to lose herself in this benighted country? She had never imagined...She remembered Jack asking if she had had a failure of imagination. Damn it. Wait, she thought suddenly, said quickly, “He wants me back?”
“Yes. You will come now?”
“Yes,” she murmured softly and grabbed the box from the bureau before heading out, sandwiched between the guards, Nia following behind. Jack could have this fixed. After she killed him. This game had not been....fun. What had he been thinking?
“I have you now,” Jack said with satisfaction, smiling grimly, as he watched her, looking down at her figure. And felt a circle close.
TBC at