Frame 232 (42 page)

“Yes?”

“And to make a meaningful difference?”

“Yes?”

“Well, if you want it, there’s a job waiting for you in the Hammond Guiding Light Organization. I set it up three years ago to provide basic necessities and medicine for youngsters in the most impoverished areas of the world. We have twenty-two locations, but we’d like to have a few more. That said, we could use someone who knows how to get a business up and running.” He pulled into the hotel parking
lot and turned off the engine. “So what do you say? Do you think charity work would be your
 
—?”

As he turned to face her, she gave him a hug with such force it almost drove him against the door.

Laughing and hugging her back, he said, “I’ll take that as another yes.”

As they began walking toward the hotel, Hammond said, “You realize, of course, this means I’ll be your boss.”

Sheila made a face. “Dream on.”

“Mmm . . . I didn’t think so.”

“No.”

NOAH THOUGHT
David Weldon might just be the happiest man in the world. Hammond gave the reporter as many details as possible during the flight back to New Hampshire, avoiding only those topic areas that had been forbidden by Chip Frazier. “I might be called in to testify,” Hammond said. “At some point, though, I’ll fill in all the gaps for you.” Weldon said he was plenty satisfied with the information he already had. Every major journalist wanted the exclusive, after all, and he was having it handed to him.

Noah expected Hammond to have his customary emotional meltdown as soon as he got behind the controls of the plane, but it didn’t happen.
There’s something different this time,
Noah thought.
He’s more pensive, more meditative. He’s withdrawn, yes. But he doesn’t seem like a caged animal.
Noah wasn’t sure what to make of this. “We have some matters to tend to when we get back,” he said.

“I know,” Hammond replied with a nod. Before Noah even had time to register his shock at what sounded like willingness, Hammond continued with “And what’s the damage?”

“Damage?”

“For everything I’ve done. I’m sure I’ve got some trouble coming my way. I evaded the Coast Guard; I didn’t go to the police after Ben was shot; I went to Cuba without written permission from the Treasury Department. . . .”

“Are you sure you want to discuss it now?”

“Now, later, no real difference. Let me have it, minus any candy coating.”

“Well, the Dallas police are willing to forget about the issue with Ben since he wasn’t actually killed. You voluntarily left a crime scene, but I don’t think they’ll pursue that. I can talk to Chip to make s
 
—”

“No, don’t do that. If they decide to come after me, let them. I’m guilty. What else?”

“You’re going to have to appear in court concerning the Coast Guard evasion. It’s unlikely that incarceration will even be considered, mainly since they were looking for drug smugglers and not you. But you’re still going to get a fine for not stopping. That’s pretty much guaranteed.”

“And?”

“And you’ll probably lose your boating license for a year, maybe two.”

“I figured as much. What about the lawsuit Vallick was going to launch?”

“All things considered, Chip doesn’t think they’ll bother now. Not with Rydell in custody.”

“And what about Cuba?”

“Well, that’s pretty serious. That’s federal. You can count on a fine there, too. A big one, reaching into six figures. And if you ever want to go down there again, regardless of the reason, it’ll take a miracle for the government to give you the green light.”

“Is that all?”

Noah took a deep breath and let it out. “No. They’re going to review possible revocation of your company’s humanitarian license. Even if they don’t take it away, you just slid the company way down the list for early consideration when the Cuban market reopens to American businesses. Your father worked like mad to get a head start on those opportunities. In the long run, that’ll hit us pretty hard. And you’ll be lucky if they allow you to keep your passport too.”

Hammond sat quiet for a long time. The engines droned and the oxygen hissed. Then he nodded again. “Yeah, okay.”

They landed on the estate shortly after ten and took the Ford Expedition to the main house. Hammond made sandwiches for both of them, and they ate in silence. When Noah went back to the kitchen to set his plate in the sink, he considered opening the conversation that neither wanted to have
 
—once again, certain business matters were reaching a critical point and required decisions. He opted to wait until morning, as that was the time of day when Hammond seemed happiest. He said good night and left for his cottage.

Hammond took a quick shower and got into bed. The book he’d been reading before Sheila’s call,
Paris-London Connection: The Assassination of Princess Diana
, was still on the nightstand. He picked it up and continued where he’d left off, as if the events of the last few weeks hadn’t even occurred. A few pages in, however, he found he was having trouble concentrating. He set the book on his sheet-covered chest and stared aimlessly forward for a time. In this powered-down mental
mode, he heard a voice in his head
 
—Galeno Clemente, in a rewind of the conversation they’d had on the boat ride from Cuba. Bits and pieces had been echoing all along
 
—

“You cannot do the deed yourself, so you put yourself in danger in the hope of having someone else do it.”

“You have not yet destroyed yourself as I did, but you will in time.”

“Do not waste your opportunities. Do not waste
yourself
.”

And finally:

“God did not take my parents from me, Mr. Hammond. And he did not take your family from you.”

He looked to the little Bible on the bookshelf, and his gaze remained there for a while. He closed the Princess Diana book, set it aside, and got up. The Bible felt cool in his hand
 
—a comforting kind of cool that comes from a book for which one has genuine affection.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and began to read. This time, he found he had no trouble concentrating at all.

The hallway was soundless, the sconce lights dim. When he reached the door that led to his family’s suite of rooms, he opened it. It was like opening the door on a carnival scene, except these sights and sounds, vivid though they were, existed only in his mind.

There was Joanie in one of her long nightshirts, in this case the one with the black-and-white stripes that he thought of as her “burglar’s uniform.” And his mother, resplendent in her baby-blue robe and matching slippers, on her way to the sitting room to watch reruns of
Frasier
or
Designing Women
. And there was his father, shoeless and tieless but still in his wool trousers and dress shirt
 
—his definition of “casual”
 
—striding between his bedroom and his office as more ideas dropped into his tireless brain in a never-ending hailstorm of business wizardry. No matter how busy the man was, though, he found time every night to stop in and have a brief end-of-the-day chat with each of his children. He wanted them to know that they were important to him, that their
lives
were important to him. Hammond would have given anything to have just one more of those talks. And one more kiss on the cheek from his mother. And one more hug from Joanie. And to feel the warmth of simply knowing that they were there.

He moved forward until he came to the paired office doors. Every emotion was in play now. He reached for the knob as he had weeks earlier, sliding his fingers around its cool surface. The urge to let go was powerful, but he turned it and pushed the door open. Then another voice spoke up in his mind, this time his own from a verse he had memorized in his teenage years:
“For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”

There was no light inside the office, only formless shadows and the suggestion of things unseen. He came alongside his father’s desk and turned on the lamp. The shadows fled, and the shapes became things
 
—the antique furniture, the framed family photos, the telephone, the stacks of books and newspapers. He could still smell his father’s cologne and his beloved hazelnut coffee. One of his navy blazers hung from
the back of the chair, and a silver pen
 
—his favorite
 
—lay on the blotter exactly where he had left it. Hammond could see him there, doing paperwork with his sleeves rolled up. And his mother coming into the room to fill her cup at the water cooler. And he could hear Joanie’s radio going in her bedroom down the hall.

He took a deep breath, and all the ghost images vanished. Now only the reality remained.

NOAH WAS
lying on his side and snoring like a longshoreman when the phone on the nightstand rang. He jerked awake, confused, and waited to see if more would come; perhaps he had only dreamed it. The second ring dashed this notion, and he snatched the handset from its base. He checked the caller ID
 
—the main house
 
—and then the clock radio
 
—2:33 a.m.
This can’t be good,
he thought.

The anxious voice of Valeria, the housekeeper, chattered through the line. Noah became more awake with every word.

He dressed quickly and went out.

When he reached the hallway intersection, he found Val in the same outfit he was wearing
 
—a robe and slippers
 
—standing a few cautious paces back from the entrance to Alan Hammond’s office. The doors were open, and the light inside spilled across the pink carpeting.

As Noah came forward, he saw the fearful look on the woman’s face. His instinct was to be comforting, to tell her
not to panic, everything was going to be fine. But that might not be the truth here.

When he reached the open doors, he was confronted by a scene that he never, in a billion centuries, would have thought possible
 
—Jason sitting behind his father’s desk, going through paperwork. Two filing cabinet drawers were open, and folders were stacked around him in sloppy piles.

Noah could only stare, fascinated. He felt like a child watching a magic trick, seeing it clearly but still unable to believe it.

“Jason?”

There was no response. Hammond was reviewing a spreadsheet, working his way down the columns with his father’s silver pen.

Again
 
—“Jason?”

This time Hammond, shaken out of his concentration, looked up. “Huh? Oh, hi, Noah.”

“Hi. Er . . . are you all right?”

The question seemed to baffle him, and a few moments ticked away without a sound. Noah didn’t mind; he was willing to wait all night.

Hammond let out a breath that seemed to carry all the strength from his body. “No, not really,” he said. Then he did something else Noah would not have expected in an eternity
 
—he smiled.

“But I think it’s time I tried to be.”