“It’s not that at all, nothing like that at all,” the bald man said.
“Oh, it isn’t?”
A stare-down in the warm noisy night. Mosquitoes buzzed about Stu’s head. He pointed the revolver out straight, its sights lined directly onto the bald man’s night-shadowed face.
“Let me give you some sound advise,” the man offered. His voice flowed like some smooth liquid. “Never point a deadly weapon at someone you aren’t fully prepared to kill.”
The man held his hands half-up. Stu was sweating but maintaining his bead.
Then—
The man’s hands moved in a blur, snapped the revolver out of Stu’s grasp.
“It’s nothing like you think,” the man said.
“I’ve got money, I’ve got two cars, credit cards, some jewelry,” Stu said. “I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“To spare your life?”
“No, to spare my daughter and my wife.”
The man wasn’t pointing the gun back at Stu, he was just holding it. “And if I say that’s not good enough?”
“Oh, a tough guy, huh?”
“I’m no tough guy,” Stu said. “Christ, you just took a gun out of my hands in less time than it takes me to blink. But let’s be real. I’ll give you everything I have to leave my family alone. But the only way you’re walking into my house is over my dead body.” He didn’t know where these words were coming from. In his terror he could barely think, and he was so scared he’d already pissed himself. “You got the gun. But if you miss, I’ll gouge your eyes out, I’ll bite your face off. I’ll do
“Right answer,” the man said. “Relax. Civilians don’t handle stress very well.” He handed the big pistol back to Stu.
“My name is Willard Farrington,” the man said.
“That’s right,” the man added. “I’m Melissa’s real father. That’s the reason I was looking in her window. I just wanted to see her.”
“But—”
“There’s no time for that,” the man said. “No time for explanations.” He passed Stu a pale-blue piece of paper. “That’s a routing number and an account index. I’ve deposited $500,000 in a trust for Melissa. You can’t ever touch it. She can’t touch it until she’s eighteen. I can only hope that, as her father, you’ll guide her to do the right thing with it. It’s for her future, college, things like that.”
Stu stared at the sheet.
“There’s no time for that,” the man repeated. Then he looked at his watch. “They’re on their way. I can’t be here when they arrive.” Then the man tossed Stu what looked to be a shoebox. “This is for you and your wife, to help out. Don’t be assholes with it. Take care of Melissa.”
Stu, now in total disbelief, opened the top of the box. It was stuffed with bands of $100 bills.
“I—wait,” Stu said.
“No time,” the man said again. He lifted up the cuff of his left pant leg. A metal band lay atop his ankle. “It’s a direction-finder. I’ve got to get out of here.” The bald man stared at him amid the cricket cheeps. “You’re a good man, I can tell.”
Stu stared back.
“Take care of my daughter,” the man said. “And don’t ever tell her about this.”
The pistol felt like dead weight in Stu’s hand. Crooked under his elbow was the box of money.
A reef of clouds drifted away from the moon. Suddenly white light filled the yard, spilling onto the intruder’s form. Stu noted the tears streaming down the strange man’s face. He also noticed—
The man seemed to be wearing mittens.
But that was it.
Stu couldn’t think of anything to say as the bald man disappeared across the yard into the darkness.
—
CHAPTER 1
From above the headboard, as if accusingly, the stiff faces stared down at him. Johann Steinhoff, Manfred Freiherr Von Richthofen, E.V.Rickenbacker, Adolf Galland.
General Willard Farrington lay back in the large, silk-draped bed. He hated the bed, by the way. He preferred a barracks rack any day of the week. Farrington was fifty-one years old now—when you got older, you were supposed to want nice things. But this place?
It was a palace. It could be likened to the Presidential Suite at the Mayflower Hotel. Genuine oil paintings hung on gilt-and-columbine-papered walls. Plush burnt-ocher carpets padded every footfall. Fine furniture, a twenty-four-hour attendant, even a hot tub, which he never used.
Recompense for his duty, his sacrifice.
But in all, the luxuriant suite proved little more than a well-appointed prison. His brief “escape” a week ago was something the mission staff should’ve anticipated…but what were they going to do? Fire him?
Farrington chuckled under his breath.
Oh, he understood the necessity of the quartering rules.
And he still, essentially, believed that.
He’d merely taken his unauthorized stroll because he needed to know that his daughter would be well-cared for. He needed to see her, this gift of his own creation that he’d willingly abandoned a decade ago for his duty.
Farrington still understood the duty. He just wasn’t quite sure if he measured up any more.
Maybe he was burned out…
Duty, it was all about duty, wasn’t it? The sacrifices of the few for the many. That’s why he kept those sterile portraits hanging above his four-poster bed. In the many moments of doubt, all he need do was look up into these faces of greatness and see himself. But the reassurance was dwindling of late.
There’s no going back, the portraits seemed to say. Don’t forsake your honor. Steinhoff sneered at him, Rickenbacker bristled.
Certainly, the men above his headboard would all have sold their souls to have Farrington’s privilege.
He lay back, his hands propped behind his head in the soft, goose-down pillow. He wondered what the
