Chương 11
“Do that now.”
After the call, Elena remained by the window.
Hayes entered without knocking, carrying two paper cups.
He placed one on the desk.
“Coffee,” he said.
“It’s eight-thirty.”
“It was coffee at four. Now it’s a chemical opinion.”
Elena picked up the cup and smelled it.
“Did Pike send you?”
“No. Pike would have brought a checklist.”
He sat in the chair across from her.
For several minutes, neither spoke.
Rain moved over the parking lot. A security vehicle passed below, tires hissing on wet pavement.
Hayes had served with Elena twice before. He had seen her furious, exhausted, seasick, and once so embarrassed after calling a visiting admiral by the wrong name that she hid in a supply room for three minutes.
He did not treat her silence as strength.
That was one reason she trusted him.
“My father may have given Derek the assignment information,” she said.
Hayes nodded. “Possible.”
“He knew Derek’s company was failing.”
“Did he?”
“He always knew when Derek was failing. It was the family weather.”
Hayes drank from his cup and grimaced.
“This is terrible.”
“The coffee?”
“Yes. Your family also.”
She looked at him.
He raised one shoulder. “I’m not chief of diplomacy.”
Elena sat.
“He asked me to look after them.”
“Your father?”
“Before he died.”
“And you said yes.”
“Yes.”
“Did he define the task?”
“No.”
“Convenient.”
She looked down at the brass compass on the desk.
“I thought he meant make sure they were financially safe. Answer the phone. Keep Derek from doing something irreversible.”
Hayes turned the cup between his hands.
“Maybe he meant stop doing all of that.”
Elena looked up.
“People near death are not automatically wise,” he said. “Sometimes they’re just tired and assigning work.”
Despite herself, she laughed.
It was brief and unattractive, closer to a cough.
Hayes smiled.
Then his expression sobered.
“You know the review may reach your father.”
“Yes.”
“If he disclosed protected information—”
“He’s dead.”
“Consequences can outlive people.”
Elena stared at the compass.
Thomas had carried it during his first deployment. As children, she and Derek were not allowed to touch it. When Thomas returned from sea, he placed it on his desk beside a framed photograph of his ship.
Elena had believed the needle pointed home.
At nineteen, she learned it only pointed north.
“What if he did it?” she asked. “What if he gave Derek my assignment because he wanted to help him raise money?”
“Then your father made a bad decision.”
“That sentence won’t fit in the program biography.”
“No.”
“He was admired.”
“Admired people make bad decisions more efficiently. Others clear the hallway.”
Elena rubbed her thumb over the cup’s paper seam.
“I built my career trying not to use his name.”
“I know.”
“What if everyone assumes I did?”
“Some will.”
“And the truth?”
“Will take longer and be less interesting.”
She nodded.
Hayes stood.
At the door, he said, “Go home before you start sleeping upright.”
“I have work.”
“You’ll still have it tomorrow. That’s command’s most reliable feature.”
Elena reached her quarters at ten.
The rooms were quiet, orderly, and mostly unpacked. She had been there four months but still kept books in two cardboard boxes near the dining table. Her kitchen contained three mugs, one pan, and six identical containers of soup.
She removed her uniform jacket and hung it carefully.
Her phone showed no messages from Derek.
There were fourteen from unknown numbers, two from reporters, one from a cousin she had not seen since 2008, and a photograph from Vivian.
It showed Derek at age nine, asleep on a couch with one sock missing. Elena, nineteen, sat on the floor beside him reading a paperback. Her hair was loose. She wore an Academy sweatshirt and looked irritated at whoever held the camera.
Vivian’s message beneath it read:
He used to wait for you to come home.
Elena sat on the edge of the couch.
She studied the photograph.
Memory did not return as a scene. It came in pieces. Derek’s feet against her hip. The smell of microwave popcorn. Thomas speaking too loudly on the phone in the next room. Vivian asking Elena to lower the television even though it was barely audible.
Derek had waited for her then.
Later, he learned not to.
Elena typed a reply, deleted it, typed another.
Finally she wrote:
I remember.
Vivian responded almost immediately.
I don’t think any of us remember the same family.
Elena held the phone for a long time.
Then she wrote:
That may be the first true thing we have said to each other this week.
No answer came.
At 2:07 a.m., Derek called.
Elena was awake before the second ring.
“Where are you?”
“Hello to you too.”
His voice sounded clear. No slurring. Road noise moved behind him.
“Are you driving?”
“Parked.”
“Where?”
“I’m not asking for rescue.”
“Then why did you call?”
A pause.
“Mom left six messages.”
“She is worried.”
“She gave you the documents.”
“Yes.”
“Of course she did.”
“You lied to her.”
“I showed confidence.”
“You fabricated my endorsement.”
“I wrote notes after conversations.”
“We did not have those conversations.”
“Not formally.”
“Not informally.”
“You said once that bases have terrible maintenance scheduling.”
“I said every large organization has scheduling problems.”
“There.”
Elena sat up against the headboard.
“You used a casual sentence spoken at our father’s funeral to obtain three hundred thousand dollars from our mother.”
“That is not what happened.”
“It is exactly what happened.”
Derek breathed into the phone.
In the background, a truck passed.
“I was going to pay her back.”
“With what?”
“The pilot would have changed everything.”
“You did not have a pilot.”
“I had a path.”
“Through me.”
“Through the fact that I know you.”
“That is not a business model.”
“It’s how business works.”
“No. It is how influence works when people are afraid to call it influence.”
Derek laughed, low and bitter.
May you like
“You sound like Dad.”
The accusation no longer struck where it once had.
