The old man rubbed his thumbs and placed his hands in his lap.
“Call up your calendar.”
Kreeger put his bony hand over the mouse and did so. The screen lit up with the month of December.
“You’re shaking, Lloyd. You don’t have anything to be afraid of. I have no intention of hurting you. None whatsoever.”
“It’s a frightening thing to have your home invaded.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But it had to be done.” He squeezed the old man’s shoulder. Thin cord of muscle. “Relax. Really. I’m not a violent person. I wish I could convince you of that, but I understand you’re going to be skeptical. Who’s Greener and Greener, coming on Thursday?”
“Landscaping outfit.”
“Why would you have landscapers coming in December?”
“An estimate. Work they’re going to be doing in the spring.”
“Send them an e-mail and cancel.”
The old man called up his e-mail and addressed a message. Gentlemen, Something has come up and I have to cancel Thursday.
“Don’t just cancel. Make some arrangement to reschedule. Otherwise they’ll keep calling.”
The old man typed a little more. He was surprisingly good with the computer. I’ll give you a call early in the new year and we’ll arrange another time. I apologize for the inconvenience. Sincerely,
Lloyd Kreeger.
“Good. Hit Send. You’ve got two more appointments this week. Do the same with them. Then we’re going to set up an Out Of Office reply. Not that you get a lot of e-mail. Bit of a recluse, Lloyd?”
“Not a recluse. I’m retired. I stay in touch with my family, and if they don’t hear from me, they’re going to be worried and call the cops. My daughter’s a worrywart-she’s done it before.”
“Wrong approach, Lloyd. I don’t like lies.” Papa spoke softly. A little bit of fear was one thing, but he didn’t want the old man to panic. A couple of Papa’s former recruits had made that mistake in the past, terrifying their targets, and it had gone badly for everyone. “Your daughter lives in Colorado Springs, way down in the good old U.S. of A., and you hear from her once a month. So let’s not pretend she’s going to be any kind of factor.”
The old man looked up at Papa, his face hard. Old, yes, but not dumb, not a pushover. “If you’re so honest, why don’t you tell me what you did with Henry? You killed him, didn’t you?”
Papa gave him a look of worried sincerity. “Henry would be your Aboriginal friend? Henry is safe and sound in the bunkhouse. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill anybody.”
“I heard the shots.” Those watery eyes looking at him, eyes that had seen a lot, maybe, but not enough to understand the kind of man he was dealing with.
“Relax, Lloyd. You’re letting your imagination run wild. The truth is, I’ve never killed anybody in my life.”
“Maybe not you personally. Maybe one of your associates.”
“You’re referring to my boys. Lemur’s only sixteen and he’s a good-natured kid-hardly your natural-born killer. And wait’ll you meet Nikki, my youngest. She’ll be here tomorrow. Jack’s a bit of a commodity-I’ll admit Jack can be a handful-but it’s not his fault. He runs on adrenalin the way you and I run on oxygen, the way you and I run on food and water. But Jack is no berserker and he doesn’t go around shooting people, and I won’t hear him accused of it. So stop worrying about Henry, Lloyd. When this is all over, the two of you are going to be telling stories to your grandchildren. Now call up that Vacation Response and then we’ll move on to financial matters.”
–
The old geezer had a high-def seventy-incher in his living room, and Jack and Lemur were totally into an episode of 24 when Papa came upstairs and asked Lemur to turn it off. He and Jack would need some privacy. The kid didn’t say a word of protest, just switched the thing off and headed to his bedroom. “And don’t stay up all night,” Papa called after him. “You rendezvous with Nikki at the airfield at 07:00.”
Papa’s word choices amused Jack sometimes. The guy hadn’t been in the military for it must be thirty years, but airports were still “airfields” and train stations were still “railheads.” He had the bearing to carry it off, though, you had to admit.
Papa stood in silence for a few moments, his back to the living room, hands clasped behind his back, staring out the window. He had turned off the lights-turned them off on the entire ground floor. The fire burned low in the grate, casting long shadows across the floor and up the walls. Jack loved this place-all the wood, and the thick carpets and expensive furniture, and the peace and quiet of the forest. The past week they’d been bivouacked in the woods, and God knows Papa had trained them well for that sort of thing, but it sure made you appreciate a comfortable house. Part of Jack hoped they could stay there forever, and part of him knew that it would never happen.
The plate glass window, large as a movie screen, looked out across the lake, the black patches of open water. It was snowing hard now, and a high wind whipped the flakes across the window in wild swirls. Every few moments lightning detonated and lit up the blizzard with a flash that made the world leap then fade to mauve, then black.
Jack-his full name was Jackson Michael Till-had been with Papa for six years. Long enough that sometimes he thought he knew the man, understood him even. Sometimes he thought he never would.
Papa turned from the window, placed a hand on his chest. “Storms speak to me,” he said. And he said it in that confidential voice, that soft voice that implied he would never talk to anyone else in quite this way. Jack would never have admitted it, but he loved that voice. He waited for it with anticipation, even yearned for it, and having those feelings probably put him at some kind of disadvantage, but it didn’t stop him loving that voice.
“Lightning, thunder-especially in winter,” Papa said. “They get to me in here”-he patted his chest-“in a way that nothing else does.”
“Me too,” Jack said, realizing this was true only as he said it. Papa often got him to say things that were both true and yet surprising to him.
“Will you have a brandy with me? Mr. Kreeger has a bottle of Delamain in the sideboard.”
“Yeah, sure.” Jack’s voice and words sounded ugly and low-class to his own ears after Papa’s slightly formal manner of speech. Being around Papa made you want to improve everything about yourself, even the way you spoke. Jack had never in his life drunk a brandy except when he was with Papa, but he cleared his throat and said, “Brandy would be perfect.”
Papa went to the sideboard and poured out two glasses. Firelight glittering in pale amber. “I’d like to propose a toast.”
“Okay.”
“I feel a little formal about it, Jack. Could you stand up?”
“Sorry.” Jack got to his feet.
“No apology necessary,” the older man said. “The last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable. I propose a toast to Jack-a man who has his own code of behaviour and follows it to the letter. A man with a mind of his own, who nobody can tell what to do if he doesn’t want to do it. A true soldier-with a sharp, discerning intellect, who doesn’t just blindly follow orders but who fights for what he believes in. In short, to you, sir…” He clinked his glass against Jack’s. “In gratitude for everything you’ve done for this family. For being my right hand. I owe you more than I can say.”
Jack took a sip. The brandy had a bite to it that almost made him cough.
“Okay, enough of this formal stuff,” Papa said, and clapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “What say we sit by the fire and you tell me your damn war story!”
There was one leather wing chair close to the fireplace. Papa lifted up another and carried it across the room. He placed it at an angle to the other.
“Take your pick,” Papa said. “And tell me everything.”
Jack sat down. He stretched his feet out and looked at them. Then he looked at Papa. “You sure? I already told you everything.”
“I know you did. But I’m like a kid with this-I want to hear it over and over. Or not a kid. It’s like in the old days. The days of Viking warriors. They’d sit around the fire and try to outdo each other with wild tales. Well, son, I can’t hope to outdo you, I’m just here to listen. And let’s face it, it’s not the kind of thing you get to tell a lot of people, so let me have it. I’ve got my brandy, I’ve got my fireplace, and I’ve got a total man of action with a hell of a story. You can’t beat that.”
