The afternoon had been filled with old friends and lovers sharing everything that had gone on for years between us and around us. Irina sat next to me, holding my hand on occasion and regaling me with stories of Pasha and their lives in Russia. The ups and downs of it all. The way they were treated when in favor and the hardships of being held accountable for those things she had no way of controlling.
Harv sent Morty to get some Chinese take out, since he didn’t think it was a good idea for all of us to be seen together in Barstow at The Bun Boy. He had Morty pick up two cold twelve packs to make sure he restored to my world that which was mine. But there was no way he was getting his hundred bucks back.
Irina would get up and wander around the house looking at everything. She opened medicine cabinets and looked in closets. She sat and cried looking at her own picture on my desk and that of our daughter, when she was really young.
During a lull in the conversation when everyone was just about talked out, she leaned over to me. "I have grown older. I don’t look like that picture any more. ”
"I can’t tell the difference myself. ” I hugged her.
"You are such a liar, but don’t stop! It does my vanity good to hear that someone thinks I am still pretty. ” She blushed and swept her long hair back from her face.
"I won’t ever lose you again. I will bring down the thunder from heaven before that happens. ” I said with conviction and absolute belief.
"You have never lost me. You know that. We all make mistakes in life. Let us see if we can correct some of them. I tell Pasha every night about her father. The man that stood beside me fighting for our lives under fire and in the Atlantic Ocean and never flinched. She thinks that you are ten feet tall and kill dragons. ” Her accent would still come out when she talked fast. "She is going to be an artist when she is grown. She does beautiful watercolors and pastels. She did a charcoal for you. She told me you would want it. ” Irina took a folded piece of paper from her purse and handed it to me.
I gently unfolded it and looked at the drawing of a man’s face on the paper. I sat transfixed like I had been pole axed. I looked up first at Irina and then Harv.
"We didn’t do it! ” Harv was off the mark quicker than I thought he could be. "We never gave her anything like that. ”
"She tells me this is her grandfather. I don’t remember the photo Kammler gave you at Mount Grace, but it has some of the same features. ” She tilted her head looking at it. I dug into my wallet and pulled out the old faded photograph and handed it to her. She sat looking at it and then looked up at me.
"She tells me he comes and talks to her at night sometimes in her dreams and tells her that her father is a great and wonderful man that she will be very proud of. ” She looked a little frightened.
It was a perfect likeness of my dad. I went over and took a frame out of the drawer of my desk I had been saving, placed the drawing in it and put it beside the picture of Irina and Pasha. I couldn’t speak, I was so choked up with emotion.
"Can I talk all of you into an experiment in my, tiny lab? ” I was sure, but I needed to know something to help me make a decision in my life.
"Of course. ” Irina answered and looked at Harv who shrugged and Jack who stood up.
"Do you have another picture of Pasha with you? ” I asked. She pulled out her wallet and handed me one that had been recently made in the photo studio in New York. We walked out to the lab and got everything set up. I gently placed the photo inside the chamber and slid the lead into place.
"This is going to hurt, isn’t it? ” Harv asked from the stool behind the lead shield.
"Not a bit, but keep your eyes closed, it gets bright in here. ” I started the generator and hit the relays. The flash was instantaneous and the room smelled of ozone. I shut everything down and waited five minutes before I popped the chamber open. In place of the studio photo, was now one of Irina and I with graying hair at the temples beaming proudly, posing in front of the circular 15th Century building called the Camera at the heart of Oxford University. Between us was Pasha in her Oxford college graduation gown. I flipped the picture over.
Teddy,
Your future is still my past!
Love,
I had tears in my eyes as I handed it to Irina and Harv got himself and Jack another beer. "We are not just talking about science here folks. We are talking about a whole different level of understanding of things. ” Harv: master of the understatement. Irina held the photo to her chest.
"Are you coming home to us, soon. ” She asked softly.
"Am I wanted there? ” I had to make sure this wasn’t just one of those funny dreams that plagued me for the course of my life where she would start kissing me and I would wake up with a dog licking my face.
"You have always been wanted there. I have been waiting for two years to be reunited with you, Doktor Ted Humphrey, meester beeg shot! I will show the world I am smarting than all of you. ” She was actually mad, I could tell, and we all smiled at her bad English. "We broke our backs in Russia and couldn’t get our device to work at all. When I come here, they are no better. They tell me to fix, but PIFFT! Is disaster! Bellamy gives me documents you gave him after Dulce. But I can’t even understand them, they are so complex. He blow up what, five machines, Meester Harvey? ” Her accent was getting worse the more beers she had.
"Six... but who’s counting the millions of dollars for each one of them. ” Harv added with sarcasm.
"And you! ” Irina slurred. "Out here in Bar-Stool. Playing at being scientist. You hand me this as proof of your genius. I know you are the smartest man alive. It just them, Harv and what’s-his-name. ” She was picking up Harvey’s lines as well. I was sure that went over really well with Bellamy. One Humphrey would be enough for anyone, but two was unthinkable. "And you here? Twenty rubles of wire and solder and you make impossible thing work? What a waste! Come work with me, dah-link! Be da Boss of me day and night! I don’t care! Show us how to do it, so this picture become reality and our child live, ” here eyes began to water as the Russian poet in her came to the surface, "in a free world... where no one fears the stars or the night sky and what comes in it! ”
Bam! The fish hit the bait and it was all over. Hook, line and sinker. I looked at Harv and he nodded. "I need a week to finish up some things here and then I will be wherever it is that you want me to be. ” I thought about the Coordinator and wanted to still work on it.
"You got it. But since you are back on my payroll, you get a new set of shadows. I ain’t losing you again, kiddo. ” Harv got up. "Well, it is time we three head back for that joke of a base called Twenty Nine Palms, outside Bar Stool, and get our backsides in da ocean and head back to Ja-kobs. ” Harv pulled on his coat and pulled out his radio. "Morty send the terrible twins in here. ”
Two tall blonde men in black suits and black sunglasses showed up at the door within seconds. "These here are the Bobsie Twins, Lincoln and Jefferson. They work directly for me and they are going to be smelling your arm pits until you are safe and secure at Jacob’s Center. No arguments now. ” Harv held up his hand. "They can sleep on the couch, such as it is. ”
I objected to the intrusion. "Harv, I have been out here for a year and half alone. I don’t think anyone is going to come in and drag me out in the middle of the night. ”
"Don’t tell me, tell him. ” He pointed at Jack.
"Ted. It has to be this way. I am responsible for all the security of the Group now and there is no way around it. What you showed me tonight here, is the proof I needed to see that we cannot let you fall into the wrong hands no matter how uncomfortable it may be. ” Jack said and then smiled at me.
"He always was better at being diplomatic. ” I acquiesced to the demand.
"Give him the stuff Lincoln. ” Harv barked at the first young man who pulled a portfolio from his pocket and handed it to me. A complete set of new identification cards and security passes. "Full run. Nothing off limits to you now. Boss Three is your call again. ”
"What happened to the last Boss Three that replaced me while I was gone? ” I asked.
"I shot him, for asking too many questions. BWAA-HA-HA! ” Harv broke out laughing, then regained control after seeing my face. "Oh, okay, I didn’t shoot him, he just went nuts, like everyone does in this outfit. Didn’t have the where-with-all for the long haul. He’s sitting on a beach in Mexico counting sand dollars or something like that. ”
I turned to Irina and held her hands against my chest. "Will you be at Jacob’s? ”
"I will be at home there, waiting for you to come home to us. ” She reached up and kissed the side of my face.
"Oh fer Christ’s sake cut the mushy stuff for right now. It is only going to be a week and then you two can play house for a couple of days and then get to work. Let’s get out of here. ” Harv started to leave and then stopped and looked at me.
"Thank you, Dr. Humphrey. Thank you very much. ”
I nodded and escorted them down the driveway where Morty was waiting in the car for them. Lincoln and Jefferson were standing around looking at the ground for snakes, I was sure of that.
"Oh, by the way, rattlers are attracted to shiny patent leather, and they’ll strike at anything the color black. ”
I grinned evilly and headed back inside.