Seventy

I was twelve. A thin gold strip demarcated the blue hallway rug from the rust-orange rug in my father’s office. My father’s shag was holy ground, not to be touched by twelve-year-old feet. I stood on the edge of that gold strip and looked in at my father’s desk, easy chair, and filing cabinet. My foot itched to touch the rusty carpet. I inched it forward.

“Aloysius, what are you doing?” my mother called out, poking her head out of the kitchen.

“Nothin’,” I said, drawing my foot back.

“Don’t you go in there. That’s your father’s office.”

“I know.”

“He’s got secrets in there. You can’t see them.”

I wondered at my father’s secrets.

“Ma,” I called to my mother. She was back in the kitchen. “Why does Dad have the secrets in his office?”

My mother called back, “It’s his work. He does work for the government.”

“Why do they tell him secrets?”

My mother’s head appeared from the kitchen, looking at me down the hall. “Because they trust him. They know he’s a good man. Come away from there and take out the trash.”

Now the adult me was standing next to C.C. expecting to find the golden border to my father’s office. There was none, just as there was no rust carpet. The floor was concrete, but the office was set up just as he had it: desk facing the door, his chair behind it opposite a Barcalounger. A two-drawer filing cabinet completed the triangle.

C.C. said, “You can go in.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I can.”

The taboo washed over me as I stepped into the office. C.C. switched on a lamp next to the easy chair. “Your mother didn’t like the overhead fluorescent.”

I edged around the desk and pulled my father’s chair out. The desktop was empty but for a green blotter with leather down the sides, a GDS mug filled with mechanical pencils, and an ashtray made out of a hunk of twisted metal, a souvenir of a missile test. I considered sitting in my dad’s chair but remained standing.

“What did she do in here?” I asked.

“When I saw her, she was sitting in the easy chair. I think she talked to your father when I wasn’t around.”

I remembered now. I’d find my parents in the office when I got home from school. My father sitting in the desk chair, and my mother in the Barcalounger. The desk chair stood as solid as ever, made of sturdy wood with leather on the seat and back. Dust grayed the brown leather. The chair beckoned, but I’d never sat on it before and I couldn’t now. It was my father’s.

I ran my hands over the desk, feeling the depth of the dust, and opened the top drawer. It held an engineering notebook dated from the November before my father’s death with a dash for the ending date. It was his last notebook.

My mother had never had the notebooks in her house. I could have saved her if I’d known about this room. I could have saved her if I’d been the kind of son she trusted. Too bad I wasn’t.

I opened the large desk file drawer and saw other notebooks lying flat in it. The top notebook had an ending date that matched the beginning date on the current notebook. Judging by the size of the pile, decades of notebooks were stacked in there.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” said C.C.

“Thanks. I’ll be clearing this place out soon.” I imagined taking the heavy desk home and replacing the Ikea thing I had today. That would have to wait. I moved to the filing cabinet. A small metal frame looked out from the top drawer. It held a slip of paper that said A-L. The bottom drawer said M-Z. The P’s would be in there.

I slid the drawer open. Ran my finger down to the P’s and pulled out a folder. My father’s precise lettering labeled the folder with Sharpie permanence. It said Paladin. I lifted the Paladin folder out, put it on the desk, and opened it. My old crayon drawing looked back at me: the secret plans to the original Paladin.

The old leather of the Barcalounger crunched as I sat in the big chair and laid the plans across my lap. The cover was the same one that JT must have pulled out of the archives. He had gotten to see my father’s secrets. Another win for him. I opened the front page and read the introduction. It was written in the stilted engineering-speak that was popular today on Wikipedia. It described the architecture of the Paladin missile.

Paladin had two pieces: a ground unit and a missile. The missile used a data downlink to send radar information to the ground computer; the ground computer sent instructions back to the missile. I flipped to the table of contents and found the downlink frequencies. These were the numbers that could save Lucy’s life. They’d be obsolete now, but Talevi wouldn’t know that until Lucy was safe.

I flipped open my cell phone and called Talevi.

“I have what you want,” I said.

“I doubt that,” said Talevi. “I heard that you failed completely.”

“Who told you that?”

“It does not matter.”

“Well, they were wrong. I’ve got your Paladin specs right here. I’m looking at the downlink information. I want to talk to Lucy.”

There was silence over the line. I wondered if the call had been dropped.

“You still there?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Talevi. “I will set up an email drop where you can send the file. Then I will tell you where to pick up your friend.”

“Bullshit. I’ve got a paper copy and I’m going to trade it for Lucy, assuming she’s still alive. I want to talk to her.”

Talevi sighed into the phone, then said, “Here.”

Lucy said, “Tucker?”

I said, “Yeah. It’s me. I’m going to get you out of there.”

“Oh God! Please listen to me, don’t trust—”

I heard a slapping sound, and the phone clattered in my ear. Lucy cried out. Then Talevi’s voice.

“You see. Your friend is still alive.”

“If you hurt her again, I will fucking kill you, Talevi.”

“Let us not be dramatic. How shall we trade?”

“Some place public. You give me her, I give you the plans.”

“Yes, I assumed you would want to meet in a place public. Go to Dalton Street in front of the red bar. We will make the exchange. You will give me the information, and I will give you Lucy.”

“Okay.” My mind was cranking on how to get Jael involved.

“You should know one thing before we meet,” said Talevi.

“What’s that?”

“If I see any sign of that Jew sniper or your fat FBI friend, I will kill you and your lover before I become a martyr. Meet me in one hour.”