Out of Control (57 page)
She laughed. “You’re never going to make it through the seminary if you don’t clean up your language.”
“I’m working on it.” He pulled back to look down at her. “Have you told him? Jones, I mean.”
“That I . . .” Love him. Molly shook her head. “No.”
“You should. He should know. Even if he thinks he doesn’t want anyone to love him—he wants it. Believe me. There’s not a man alive who doesn’t. And love is such a precious and enduring thing. Don’t forget that. Even if you tell him and he runs away, he’ll still carry it with him, always. He deserves that gift, don’t you think?”
“Thank you,” Molly said.
Billy smiled ruefully, picking up his coffee cup. “Lucky son of a bitch. I hate his fucking guts,” he said as he walked away.
“Language!” both Molly and Angie said in a near perfect unison.
Savannah heard them before she saw them. A snapped branch, the rustle of thick jungle foliage.
At first she thought it might be Ken, coming to check on her, and she quickly finished up and fastened her shorts.
But then she realized there was more than one person making that noise.
It was some kind of patrol, and they weren’t making much of an effort to be silent.
For a half a second, she stood there, frozen.
This was why Ken hadn’t wanted her to leave the blind. If she hadn’t left, she’d be in there right now. Safely hidden. Instead . . .
If they found her here, it wouldn’t take much for them to look around more carefully and find Ken. And if they found Ken and realized he was a Navy SEAL, they would kill him. Immediately.
Sheer terror flooded her and she ducked down, close to the ground.
She had to be far enough away from the blind when they found her. And then she had to make them believe that Ken had ditched her in the night.
Savannah didn’t want to move. She wanted to curl up right there, in the shadows beneath the fern and simply pray that she wouldn’t be spotted in the dense brush.
Instead, she began creeping, on her hands and knees on the jungle floor, as silently as possible, away from the blind and Kenny.
One more minute and he was going out there after her.
Jesus God, how could anyone take so long?
Ken looked at his watch again. And then he heard it.
Holy fuck.
Sounds of movement. Someone, no, lots of someones were out there in the jungle.
With Savannah.
Ken grabbed the Uzi and the pack with the extra ammunition and silently left the blind.
Alyssa sat with Jules in an outside café in Port Parwati, in heavy wait mode. They were here, they were visible, they were ready to evacuate Ken and Savannah immediately to Jakarta should they appear.
On the surface Parwati was far from the dangerous Wild West-type town that Max had described. It was a charming little mix of ecclectic architecture, with bright-colored signs and consistently terrific views of an ocean that was beyond gorgeous.
Clean and inviting, it sparkled enticingly in the sunlight, and as Alyssa gazed at it, she couldn’t help but think of Sam Starrett. He’d joined the Navy, choosing to join the SEALs over elite groups like Delta Force and the Rangers because of his love for the ocean.
“Shit,” she said and Jules glanced up from his crossword puzzle.
“If we’re frustrated,” he said, “think how Mrs. von Hopf must feel.”
“No,” she said. “I was . . .” Thinking about Sam. Again. Would she ever stop thinking about Sam? “You’re right, of course.”
She picked up Rose’s book. She was getting close to the end, and had slowed down—dreading finding out how it all turned out. When she’d last stopped reading, Rose was in London, heavily pregnant with twins, with no word as to whether Hank was dead or alive.
Victory in Europe! May 8, 1945. It was a day for celebrating, and I was as joyful as anyone in London at the news. More so, for it meant that finally Hank might be able to come home.
One week passed. Then two. Still no word, but I was undaunted. Reports told of the chaos in Berlin and the surrounding German countryside.
May became June became July and, seven months pregnant, I began making arrangements to go to Berlin, despite the trouble with the Soviets.
But health conditions in Germany were terrible. Disease was rampant. High blood pressure had already put me in the hospital once, and my doctors threatened to lock me up.
Then the news came. Ivan Schneider, another OSS operative, had seen Hank in Berlin just before the German surrender. Hank had been wounded, and Ivan believed mortally so. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it.
But several days later, I received a telegram from the War Office, notifying me that Hank had been officially presumed dead.
I spoke directly to Ivan, of course. I grilled the poor man, but he was unable to give me any hope at all that Hank might still be alive.
No, the hope was entirely mine.
Two weeks later, I was sent back to the United States—I think in the hopes that my mother and father would be able to prevent me from going to Berlin as soon as the babies were born, as I’d been stating I would do. I was given a seat in a military transport carrying General Eisenhower, but I remember little of the flight, even less of my first introduction to that great man.
The twins were born early, in late August, in my little farmhouse in New Jersey. My mother wanted me to name one of the boys after Heinrich, but I refused. It would be too confusing, I told her, to have two Hanks in the house. I named them Alexander and Karl—royal-sounding names for my little princes.
Months passed. Karl suffered a bout of pneumonia that kept him in the hospital for weeks and terrified me. It was nearly a year before he was declared well enough to travel and I began thinking, once again, of making my way to Berlin.
And then it happened. October 17, 1946. Over seventeen months after Germany’s surrender. I received a visit from Anson Faulkner, my former boss at the FBI. Heinrich von Hopf had been found in a prison hospital in the Soviet Union.
Oh, how I cried at the news. I knew it! I knew it! Hank was alive!
He’d been badly injured and taken east with German prisoners of war. He was still quite ill, and finally had been brought home to Vienna.
I was delirious with joy, and would have rushed off to begin packing up the babies, ready to leave for Vienna on the spot, but Anson stopped me.
“According to the report I read, Hank was found a month ago, Rose,” he told me.
“A month?” and I was being told about it only now? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We didn’t know,” he said. “Not until today.”
“But . . .” Why didn’t Hank try to get in touch with me? Surely he knew I would be nearly frantic with worry. It had been more than a year.
Solemnly, Anson took a newspaper clipping from his pocket and handed it to me.
It was from an English publication. A society type column, announcing the engagement between Elizabeth Barkham, the daughter of Lord Someone—I’ve forgotten his exact title—to war hero, Prince Heinrich von Hopf of Austria.
I had to read it three or four times before the words made any sense. And then they made too much sense.
The article went on to report that Heinrich von Hopf had recently returned home to Vienna. His parents were ecstatic at his safe return, and the entire city was giving him a hero’s welcome for his part in defeating the Nazi menace. Prince Heinrich was currently convalescing in his family’s summer home, but he was expected to come to London to claim his bride before the year’s end.
“I’m so sorry,” Anson said.
I couldn’t help myself. I started to cry again. “Thank God, he’s alive,” I said. It was all I could say. “Thank God, he’s alive.”
Hank had married me because he was so sure he was going to die in the war. I’d suspected that all along and now I knew it for sure. But now the war was over, he was still alive, and his regular life—with all its responsibilities—had returned.
I went to visit a lawyer that afternoon, and before the sun set, I signed the necessary paperwork for a divorce.
Savannah kept crawling. Every yard she was able to move farther out into the jungle meant that Kenny was that much more safe.
She’d already made it quite a distance, half crawling, half crouching, but it wasn’t far enough. Not yet.
She heard the sound of a low voice, calling out in a language she couldn’t understand. It came from back behind her, from the direction she’d just come, and she hit the dirt, burrowing more deeply into the brush.
Please God, go past her . . .
She could see the shape of a man through the branches and she held her breath. He was moving slowly, cautiously. And heading directly toward her.
He’d seen her. She could tell from the way he called out again, in that same low voice. She didn’t speak the language, but his meaning was obvious. “Hey, guys, over here! I need backup!”
Savannah’s ears were roaring as her heart pounded. Was she far enough from the blind? If they caught her here, would Kenny be safe?
She didn’t know.
So she bolted. She burst out from the underbrush.
The man who’d been tracking her screamed, startled, and fumbled his gun.
She screamed, too, and ran as fast as she could.
Ken heard Savannah scream and then heard shots fired, blasting through the stillness of the jungle.
He felt them with his entire body, as if he were taking the impact of the bullets himself.
Oh shit oh shit! He ran toward the sound, his fear for Savannah sharpening his senses. There were voices coming from the same direction and more movement—people running. Lots of people.
Please don’t let her be dead. Please God . . .
He silently crept as close as he could, aware as hell that there were guards in the jungle all around him. Uniforms. These were Beret’s men—General Badaruddin, according to the villagers and Jones.
Jesus, there were a lot of them. A full platoon, at least.
And there, in the middle, was Savannah.
He seriously compromised his position to get a better look at her.
She was on her stomach, on the ground, with her hands on top of her head, but as far as Ken could see she was unharmed. Alive. She was breathing hard as if she’d been running. Or as if she were scared to death.
No surprise there—right now, he was scared to death. She wasn’t dead, but all it would take was one asshole with a twitchy trigger finger and she would be.
“Does anyone here speak English? Or French? Parlez vous français?” Her voice rang out clearly over the din of male voices. She sounded cool and collected and completely in control, as if she weren’t a prisoner, but rather as if she’d called them all together for a meeting on her behalf.
This was the same woman who’d dealt so effectively with the bellhop in her hotel room. She’d been in the midst of an emotional crisis, yet she’d managed to communicate her needs and even smile.
Ken realized he was seeing her mother’s daughter in action. It might’ve been amusing if he hadn’t just had the crap scared out of him, and if he weren’t scared of a million different dangers. Someone in this bunch of Rambo wannabes could hit her in the head with the butt of their rifle to put her in her place. Or notice how great her ass looked in those shorts and decide to take advantage of the fact that she was female and helpless.
“Parlez vous français?” she called again.
Oh, fuck, Van. Not French. Don’t talk to them in French.
The crowd of soldiers argued among themselves. If there had been fewer of them, Ken would’ve silently taken out the guards around him, then used the Uzi on the rest to get her out of there. But there was no way he could win in a firefight against an entire freaking platoon.
A skinny man with a scarf around his throat approached, clearly, from his manner and attitude, the platoon’s CO.
“Where’s the money?” he asked Savannah in perfect English, as if he’d just stepped off a bus from Ohio.
“I don’t have it.” Savannah lifted her head to look up at him. “The man I was with—he took it and left me here last night.”
What?
“He’s long gone,” Savannah continued, and Ken realized what she was doing. She was protecting him—making sure they didn’t catch him, too. “I have no idea which way he went.”
Skinny and the other platoon leaders had a discussion.
“Excuse me,” Savannah said. “I have some questions for you, too. Who are you? And can you help me get to safety?”
Oh, shit, this was it. Skinny was going to give her a swift kick in the head with his boot.
“And may I please get up now?” she asked. “This is a little uncomfortable.”
“No,” Skinny said shortly, clearly irritated, then went back to his discussion.
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