The Hand of Christ (41 page)

“
Signora, please come with me,” the Detective put his arm gently around her and quickly took her inside the hotel. “Please, take a seat.”

She sat only looking at the detective; no words could come to her lips. Deep inside she knew what the detective was going to say; it would be something horrible, every shred of her being told her that her husband and nephew were dead.

“
Signora,”

“
Please, my name is Claretta,” she wanted her name to be known, and not to simply be the wife of a victim.

“
Of course, forgive me.” Detective Dante knelt next to her and touched her shoulder, “Claretta, there is no easy way for me to tell you this,” the Detective paused for a moment, watching as she sunk further into the chair, “Both men have been killed; your husband and nephew have been murdered.”

Outside of the hotel the two hardened Carabinieri flinched at the loud wail that suddenly pierced the air. Both men looked at one another knowingly: she had been told.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Returning Home

Denver, CO

The front room of Michael’s home was on the first floor of the three-level townhome. From the window that overlooked Cherry Creek, the glow from the front room’s light drifted slightly through the drawn, thick wooden slat shades. A small table lamp, next to which sat Sonia, was barely able to light one corner of the vaulted room but was enough to clearly demarcate the fear and confusion worn on her face.

Barely five minutes had passed since two men had crashed through her third floor bedroom window, one of which had killed himself with poison, and the other, still attached to a rope, she had shot dead before he was yanked out of the broken window by a silent black helicopter that had seemingly materialized from out of nowhere.

During that time she had done the opposite of what she was sworn to do. A man’s life was not saved but extinguished by her choice. Having broken her Hippocratic Oath, she had also learned that her husband was not the man she knew; he was a government agent for the CIA. At her chest, she closely cradled the MP5 urban assault rifle and was afraid of every creak and groan from the wind-whipped house that seemed to amplify around her. She rocked slightly, and let out an occasional whimper. Her face was void of any semblance of comfort.

Her mind drifted to the dead man lying upstairs in her bedroom. The man said that Michael killed the Ayatollah of Iran, and that he was in the attack in Syria that was all over the news. A war was being threatened because of the assassination. Her Michael, the one that she knew, would never have done such a horrific thing; this man was not her husband.

But who is he then?
The question circulated in her thoughts as if stuck in a revolving door.

Outside, the thunder and lightning was increasing in magnitude and frequency, Sonia stood and walked to the window overlooking the creek. Spreading apart the horizontal, wooden slats of the shades, she strained her eyes looking for Michael, but saw only the outline of the century old evergreens and blue spruce trees.

Staring intently, her concerned gaze was met with a brilliant unannounced flash followed by the sound of a massive explosion. Throwing up her free arm to shield her eyes from the brightness she saw the enormous fireball rise from the flowing waters of the creek.

“
Michael!” Sonia screamed for her husband and ran to the front door and scrambled outside. Looking toward the fire, she shouted, “Michael! MICHAEL! God damn it, answer me!”

The fear that her husband was gone forced Sonia to her knees. She wanted to run to the explosion, to find him, but all of her strength was gone. Sonia could not move, her body feeling exponentially heavier; she was frozen to her front yard. Her body simply gave away any remaining strength as she fell to the earth hunched over in uncontrollable sobs, “Michael.”

Then she heard him, “Sonia! Are you okay? Sonia!”

She raised her head and saw her naked husband, covered in mud, running to her, “Oh, thank god,” she whispered.

He ran to her side with his hand extended and helped her up, “What’s wrong, are you alright?”

She slowly pushed herself away from him her chin sinking toward her chest. She stood breathless for a moment and without lifting her gaze said, “The explosion, I thought you were dead.” Sonia looked at her husband, and asked, “Who are you?”

Michael had hoped that this day would never come. They had warned him to avoid it, but here it was.

“
It’s me, Sonia; I am the same man that you have always known.”

Before he could finish another sentence, Sonia slapped him so hard that he faltered backward a step. She screamed, “The same man! You think that you are the same man! You have got to be kidding; I have no idea who you are! You have lied to me the entire time I have known you!”

She slapped him again.

Holding his cheek he looked ashamed, “Sonia, wait. You don’t understand.”

“
Don’t understand, what is there to understand? You have told me that you work for an aerospace firm, in their treasury department. That was a lie. You told me that you are a finance-professional, which was a lie. Every time you go on a business trip you lie about why and where you are going. You weren’t hit by a car in San Francisco were you?”

He shook his head no.

“
Do you even have your MBA?”

Michael felt like he had been caught cheating on his wife, “No, I have a PhD.”

Sonia just stood there in complete disbelief and stammered, “You are a doctor?”

“
Yes.”

“
In what?”

“
Middle Eastern and Religious Studies.”

Sonia paused before saying, “You have got to be fucking kidding me, Michael! Just like your Dad? I can’t believe this. Does he know about you?”

“
Yes, he does but he didn’t agree with my choice. We’ve had problems for years and that is why we have been estranged. Listen to me please. Sonia, you have to believe me when I say that I have always wanted you to know, but I was advised not to tell you, it was for your protection.”

“
For my protection? Why would I need to be protected,” Sonia stopped for a moment and thought of what had just happened, “Michael, have I ever been in danger before?”

In the distance the sound of sirens could be heard as the police and fire department were racing to the site of the explosion. Michael looked around and could see that many of his neighbor’s lights were coming on. Standing outside covered in mud and without clothes on wasn’t his first fear. Michael was facing every married man’s nightmare: the wrath of a woman scorned.

“
Sonia, we have to get inside. I am naked and our neighbors are awake.” He grabbed her arm to lead her inside but she instantly snatched it away.

“
Don’t you touch me you son-of-a-bitch!”

“
Sonia! I know you are upset and confused but this isn’t the time or place to go through this. You are standing in front of an armed and naked, mud covered man while holding a machine gun, and our house has a dead man upstairs. We have to get inside now!”

There was something about Michael’s tone that forced her to comply without resistance. She sensed the need to be obedient.

The two were inside their home and Michael had taken control, “Sonia, get into the car. Do it now!”

“
What? Why, where are we going?”

“
We have to get out of here, its no longer safe for us, they will come back.”

“
What do you mean
they
, who the hell are you talking about, what’s going on, Michael?”

“
Listen, I will explain everything, just get into the car, take nothing and leave the weapon.”

Sonia somehow knew that she had to comply with her husband. She had never seen him like this; his orders spat out of him like a machine, his actions became robotic. She put down the MP5 and walked to their garage. A few minutes later Michael jumped in the car, his hair was wet and his body clean. He had taken a quick shower to get rid of the mud and thrown on a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

He said nothing as they sped away from their home.

“
Michael, you didn’t answer my question.”

“
Which one was that?”
“Have I ever been in danger before?”

Michael thought of the man whose life he had so angrily taken at the hospital. He could see the syringe of toxin that he had stuck into his chest. He felt the anger that he had felt then. He cringed and gripped the steering wheel harder. It was time to stop lying to her.

“
Yes, you have.”

“
When?”

Michael stared ahead he could feel the painful tears filling his lower eyelids as he remembered. He was trying to find the ability to answer her.

His teeth were clenched.

Sonia knew when, “It was that time at the hospital, the man that died in the basement hallway. There were rumors about it. Some say the man died violently and not from a heart attack and that his body vanished from the morgue. It was you, Michael, wasn’t it?”

Michael wanted so badly for his wife to understand. She had always loved him so deeply and puts up with all of his ridiculous quirks. He could see that he was a different man to her; this tore him up inside. He just wanted everything to be the way it was.

“
I don’t want to lose you, Sonia. I will quit if you ask me to.”

“
What happened to him, Michael; tell me what you did to that man at the hospital. I need to know.”

Michael sighed heavily; he knew that he couldn’t talk his way out of this. Sonia was too smart for that, besides, he loved her too much to continue lying, and she deserved the truth. He pulled over the car and turned off the ignition. It was time for her to learn everything. He would have to risk losing her by telling her every painful detail.

“
There was a double agent in the Company, in the CIA. The agent knew that I had uncovered him and that I was closing in on him. I had cornered his Handler, and used a certain amount of force on the Handler to get the double agent’s identity. His Handler, the person responsible for all of the double agent’s missions, was his lover and she took her own life while being held by us. He went to the hospital to take his revenge.”

“
So, he was coming to take from you what you took from him. How was he going to do it, how was he going to kill me?”

“
Sonia, are you sure that you want to hear this?”

“
Michael, before any of this I thought that I knew you, what kind of man you are, but,” she hesitated, “I don’t.”

“
Sonia, wait.”

“
No, Michael, you wait!” Sonia yelled and fiercely pointed her well-manicured finger just inches from Michael’s face, “A few hours ago I thought my husband was a standard middle-class, corporate working, football watching, and beer-drinking average American man. Now, I find out that my husband is nowhere close to being this man, that he is some government secret fucking super-agent with guns strapped behind the head board of my bed while trying to solve a problem nearly as old as Christ. I do not know you! There is nothing that you can say to convince me otherwise.”

Sonia was breathing hard and her chest heaving. Lowering her voice as if her energy was gone, she said, “But I do trust you, I probably shouldn’t, but something inside me tells me that I do. Even though you have lied to me excessively and for years, I can understand why. That stops now. I need to know everything. You are my husband; I love you and have already decided to forgive you, but I have to know you, all of you.”

Michael was immediately relieved, Sonia saw this. She reached up and gently wiped the tear that had fallen down his face, “Michael, I have forgiven you, but you have dug yourself into a deep hole. Promise me that you will never lie to me again, ever.”

“
Sonia, I feel like a heaviest weight has been lifted from my soul. Each day I know that I love you more than the day before, and it has been damn difficult living this way. Keeping this from you has always been a tremendous burden. It is the only thing that I have hated about myself. You have my promise that I will never lie to you ever again. If you ask me to quit the Company, to walk away from all of this, I will.”

Sonia knew that she was still as connected to him as she always had been. His core was what she loved and that was still there, she could feel it.

“
Michael, I had always felt that there was a piece of you that I could never penetrate, but I just ignored it as some sort of marital paranoia. Now I know that I wasn’t paranoid, I know what that piece was. Quitting is not what you want to do, and I will not ask you to stop being who you are. Now, finish your story. What happened at the hospital, how was that man going to kill me?”

Michael sighed slowly, partly in relief and partly in preparation for what he would say. “The agent had a fatal dose of the poison from the tree frog of Central America; he was going to inject it into you. I got to him first. I killed him.”

“
He was going to kill me with toxin from the Poison Dart Frog? Seriously? Isn’t that just a tad bit dramatic?”

The husband and wife looked at one another with blank stares. As if on cue, the two broke out into laughter.

Michael grabbed his wife by the back of her head and brought her closer to him, “I am so sorry, Sonia. I will never lie to you again, you have that promise.” He kissed her deeply and felt her reciprocation; the feeling was near to nirvana.