The O’Connells Books 10 - 12

Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Raymond heard something.

As he opened his eyes, he sat up from where he must have fallen asleep in the easy chair. The sun was up, and Luke was walking his way, wearing a wrinkled orange T-shirt and blue jeans and holding two coffees.

“So you stayed up all night.” Luke offered the steaming mug, taking in the still folded blanket at the end of the sofa with a pillow on top. “Don’t know how you take it, so you’re getting it black.”

Raymond reached for the mug, unsure of what to make of the expression on his son’s face. He took a welcome swallow, feeling the ache from lack of sleep. “It’s fine. Appreciate it.”

“Heard you and Mom out here last night, arguing.”

“Sorry. Do you want me to say I didn’t plan on it? I didn’t expect to find myself here, camping out. Your mom is a little thrown, and of course she wants answers I can’t really give her…”

“Answers you don’t want to give her, is what you’re really saying.” Luke walked over to the window and moved the sheer curtains aside, glancing out, looking around, something he’d never expected one of his kids to do.

“So you decided to join the special forces,” Raymond said. “What’s your team again, the Wardogs?”

Luke didn’t pull his gaze from the window, taking a swallow of his coffee. Raymond knew his son’s special forces team didn’t exist on paper. The 77th Operational Delta did the kinds of things for their country that Raymond knew all too well. He wondered if his son had ever been asked to do the things he had done.

“Is this what you did with Mom?” Luke said. “It’s a wonder she didn’t want to kill you, figuratively speaking. She’d never let any of us get away with that, flipping a conversation by asking a question or changing the subject. I get that you don’t want to talk about Mom, but you want to drop hints that you know everything about me and what I do, knowing I can’t and won’t talk about it? That leaves us with what subject—Brady, or the fact that you messed around with another woman and left a posse of kids and a wife to fend for ourselves? You brought a whole shitload of trouble down on Mom, but not to worry, Pops: There’s not a chance in hell that we’re about to let you walk in here and mess with her. You had your fun, camping out for the night, keeping watch for the boogie man, but what’s the plan now? Let’s get into the nitty gritty of this s**t. It’s just you and me here. No one else is up. Let’s get real and down to it.”

Raymond realized that Luke understood who he was, and maybe he could also understand why he couldn’t stay in the place where his fantasy life had been snatched away. He was well aware of how carefully he’d have to tread.

“You think I chose this life?” he said. He didn’t pull his gaze at first, but then he did, staring into his mug of coffee before lifting it and taking another swallow. Luke didn’t do the normal things most people did. He knew his son had the kind of training that had made him see the dirty side of people, what went on behind the scenes, which the average person didn’t know. Lies, scandal, deceit.

“Didn’t you? So tell me, who was your contact in the CIA? You had to know I was looking for anything on you. How is it that someone could just disappear? You can’t, not unless you don’t really exist and are working for an agency that knows how to make it happen. I figured that out from all the dead ends.”

It seemed his son wanted to cut right to the heart of it.

“You keep sitting there, saying nothing,” Luke continued. “Come on, Pops. Who are you protecting? If not the CIA, who is it? Another country, agency? Which one? You’re not answering, but you have a lot to answer for, considering what happened to Mom. Let’s talk about the men who showed up. Mom killed one. I still remember what she said. Karen, Suzanne, Ryan, and Owen wouldn’t have any idea, but maybe Marcus has some. Jack definitely knows more than I’m comfortable with. I know that whatever brought them here, Mom said she knew they’d hurt us kids without a second thought. They’d have done so much worse because of whatever you were mixed up in. Maybe it’s not even government. Some crime syndicate, organization, corporation…?”

“You don’t stop, do you?” Raymond finally cut him off, seeing how Luke was digging and digging and would keep at him until he gave him something. “You may not want the answers I have to give.”

“Oh, I guarantee that part’s true, but you’re going to tell me anyhow. Why Mom?”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you know that Raymond O’Connell didn’t exist until he met Iris. You had suddenly shown up in Livingston and were working for the railroad, doing what, exactly? Some cover. That means you had an order from some government to set up a new life, to put yourself in a position that would give you a cover, but something went wrong. Am I close?”

He pulled in a breath, feeling his chest ache. He’d had to tell himself that falling in love was something he would never do, could never do. Boy, had he been wrong. Apparently, he was human after all.

“I was an agent for Mossad,” he said, “pulled from the streets when I was sixteen, in trouble. First, I was an informant, but then the Israelis wanted boots on the ground to keep tabs on their allies. I was only one of many. It would be easier to hide in the city, but a job was arranged with the railroad here in Livingston so I could blend in. I met your mother, married her, had weekends and overnight trips away for jobs. I was meeting a team that was already here, taking care of a problem, gathering intelligence, not much different than what you do, only when needed. You know, you’re following orders, but soon you find yourself on the dirty side of government business. Then something happened.” He stopped talking, because there were things he knew he couldn’t share and had never talked about, things that had changed the course of everything.

“So you were, what, a sleeper agent? I kind of figured it was something like that.”

“Then you know that I was to fit in and have a normal life until I was issued an order by my country. I was lulled into the dream here, barely hearing from them for five years. Then there were just one or two things to be taken care of here and there. The overnight trips that had been so infrequent in the beginning happened more and more often. The world stage had changed, and my country was reaching out. You would understand clearly from your side of things, because we’re not that different. You just have a different flag behind you.”

“Whoa, hang on there, Pops. If you’re trying to say we’re alike, then you’re way off target.”

“Oh, you’re very wrong there. I know what you do.” Raymond cut him off. “You just haven’t been forced to walk away from your family, this family.”

Luke said nothing else, but Raymond could see he’d hit a nerve.

“We were ordered to take care of someone who’d become a problem. With the rise in conflict on the world stage after the terrorist attacks, wars were breaking out, and alliances were being re-evaluated. My role had gone past gathering information and sending it back. We were ordered to take out an asset. Was that the first time?” He just shook his head, seeing faces that still haunted him. “I don’t need to explain to you that you don’t question orders, but I made that mistake. I started asking questions—who, and why? Why did this asset, who turned out to be a decorated war veteran, have to be taken out? He was a black man from rural Georgia, a man with a wife and a mentally challenged son. Orders were given to kill him and make it look as if the son had done it. You know how easy it is to manipulate and stage a crime scene, especially in a small rural town where the only evidence used is what the local law enforcement see in front of them. Well, I had a problem with it.”

Luke had gone quiet. “So what did you do?”

What the hell was he supposed to say to that? That was the first time he’d had any idea of the kind of monster he was. “It wasn’t exactly timely for me to suddenly choose to have a conscience, all because innocent people were getting caught in the crossfire, pissing off the wrong person in the wrong government.”

His team were the same men who had come looking for him after he walked away from the job and disobeyed orders. How could he have expected to go on and not suddenly find himself hunted?

“They killed him anyway, didn’t they?” Luke said.

He didn’t think he’d ever get the image out of his head, or the evidence they’d planted at the scene. He continued: “I found myself duct taped and tucked in a trunk, but I managed to get out, hearing the sirens and knowing the police would find prints on a gun lying in the bedroom of a severely mentally challenged young black man, with his parents both dead in their bed. He’d likely have been sitting on death row and wouldn’t understand how or what had happened. They were coming out the back, but I snuck in after them and took the gun from where it had been planted. I made a call to 911 on my burner as I was walking away, saying I heard shots fired and had spotted two white men sneaking out of the house. I gave the descriptions of the two from my team, Ivan Dobson and Saul Gusterson—not their real names, of course. Ivan was the man your mom killed. She stabbed him. Saul was the one who helped me drag his body out of there and bury it.

“At that point, their descriptions were in the system in relation to a murder that had gone unsolved. I’d screwed them, so I had a target on me. It wasn’t the kind of embarrassment my country wanted. My next call after the police was to a woman I knew, Nancy Baker, with the CIA. I had known her for years. She knew who I was, and I knew who she was and what she did. Did I cross over?” He shook his head, still remembering her eyes, the fun, the flirtation, right before she could turn into the same kind of person he was. “I was recruited. I was her recruit, but leaving Mossad wasn’t that easy, and she and I both knew it wouldn’t be. That last job was eighteen months before they showed up at the house when you all were in bed. There had been a change in director at Israel’s central intelligence agency, and his first order of business was cleaning up loose ends. I was very much the kind of problem he needed taken care of.”

Luke only shook his head, then leaned forward. “Well, the pieces are starting to fall into place. So, what, they showed up and tried to get you to go back?”

“They offered me a chance to start over, return to Israel, share everything, be debriefed, and rectify my wrongs, but what they were doing was rounding me up. I’d have been on a plane, and the minute I stepped off, I’d have been charged with treason. I’d be interrogated fully, and they’d drag from me every single thing I had learned since joining the CIA.”

“You mean you’d be tortured,” Luke cut in.

He knew his son would know all the intimate details of what really went on behind the scenes. “You can call it whatever you want, but they’d do whatever they had to do to make sure they got everything or that I was dead. They needed me to leave willingly, but your mother figured out how bad they were when she walked in. That was the kind of evil I had worked with. I’d never considered how a person could become so cold and remorseless. It hadn’t taken long for them to figure out that Iris and you all were my Achilles’ heel. I couldn’t hide that. Would they have taken you, all of you, and killed you? I think you know well what they’d have done, and we were fast slipping into that dangerous territory. They’d have made me watch, and your mother, too. They’d likely have started with one of you boys, then gone right to Suzanne, the youngest girl. What they’d have done to her, to each of you…” He stopped talking. He knew that the screams, the horror, would have made him agree to anything to get them to stop. He’d have made anything up, signed anything, begged and pleaded.

Luke shut his eyes and lifted his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, then glanced off to the side. Raymond knew he was trying to understand what he was saying, but he wondered whether Luke had ever been in the same position that Ivan and Saul had.

“So why leave?” Luke said. “I don’t understand.”

“Really, you don’t get that they weren’t taking no for an answer? The new director was still flexing his power, and the justifications he gave to the prime minister for taking me out would’ve been distorted. You know that’s how it works. The truth is the spin they put on it. Leaders of countries know when they’re being lied to, but maybe that’s how they sleep at night. Not knowing the truth is better for them. I knew I had to leave, because after we buried Ivan, I told Saul I was going right to the CIA, and if something happened to my family, to Iris, to any of you, I’d share everything I knew. I’d been smart enough to copy records for every job, the details of who, what, and why, everything that could embarrass a country if it got out in the world. I told him to pass that message on. I sent the director a copy of what I had, and I said the originals would go to the CIA if something were to happen to me. It would be automatic.”

Having his son staring back at him was like looking in a mirror. Luke had the same knowing, the same understanding, having seen the same darkness.

“So Nancy was Brady’s mother?” Luke said.

He only nodded. He’d never expected her to come to him where he’d been watching his family from afar.

“She mean anything to you, or was she just a cover, too? You said she died.”

What was he supposed to say? Nancy had saved his ass, but she didn’t know everything. He’d slept with her so she wouldn’t see everything he’d been hiding. She was too good at what she did. “I cared for her, but that’s it. The love of my life was someone I couldn’t have in my life anymore. You should know that Nancy and I were never together aside from a few times, and it was after I left you all. We never had a relationship other than business, s*x. I found out about Brady after she was killed.”

“She died in a car accident?” Luke said.

Raymond shook his head. “So they said…”

He heard a creak and turned quickly in his chair to see Brady standing there in the same clothes he had worn the day before, his hair sticking up. He didn’t have a clue how much his son had heard. Careless was something Raymond never was. He stood up from his chair. “You’re awake,” he said.

Brady stared at him long and hard, then turned and started to walk away.

“Brady, don’t walk away when I’m talking—”

“So my mother meant nothing to you?” Brady snapped. Evidently, he’d heard something.

“Look, I don’t know what you heard, but some things are complicated.”

Brady was clearly not ready to listen to anything he had to say. He was shaking his head, looking over to Luke and then back to him. “Well, that’s the thing, Dad: Everything always was complicated with you. ‘It’s complicated, Brady.’ Isn’t that what you always said? I guess now things are starting to make sense. I don’t understand, though. Why bother with me? You already had another family.”

Okay, so he hadn’t heard everything. Raymond sighed. “Because you are my family. It doesn’t matter what your mom and I were to each other. You’re my son.”

Brady said nothing, then slid his gaze over to Luke. “I’m going to take a shower,” he said.

Luke gestured toward the bathroom down the hall and stood up. “Go on, kid,” he said. “Just don’t use all the hot water.”

Then Brady walked away, and, not for the first time in his life, Raymond felt he was pedaling backwards up a hill, going nowhere.

“I’ll have him out of here after he showers,” he said.

An odd smile touched his son’s lips. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s happening anytime soon. You may want to go to Plan B, and when that doesn’t work, try telling him the truth, because maybe then you might get him to listen.”