Javier couldn't help feeling flattered, even as the "lie needle" scratched jagged lines across his brain.
Montenegro was on a roll. "Just think what the new improvements to our island economy might mean to the humble people you have served so faithfully all these years. Think what it would have meant to your father to have his son involved in so important a mission on behalf of his country." The president even threw in a not-too-veiled hint that a Church promotion might be in the works when Javier returned, mission accomplished.
You know all the buttons to push, Javier thought. In his heart, he knew that any opportunity to climb the clerical ladder would come a decade-and-a-half too late. Fresh out of the seminary, he'd have considered a promotion, such as, an appointment to the diocesan marriage tribunal, as a sign of God's will and a recognition of his many talents.
The remainder of the evening consisted mostly of after-dinner social conversation. The president reminisced about his soldiering adventures and off-duty misadventures with his buddy, Ernesto de Córdova. Javier observed and listened. Throughout the evening, Juana Santiago remained a mostly silent presence, playing a secondary role, never initiating a thought or leading the conversation. Javier wondered why she had been invited at all, unless her status was, as he suspected, much more than that of personal secretary.
Before Montenegro dismissed his guest, pleading the need to be fresh for an early meeting, he veered the conversation in a new direction. "His Honor, the mayor of Santa Teresita, tells me you are quite the preacher."
The comment blind-sided Javier. Has the mayor been bragging about my ability to proclaim the word of God, he wondered, or has he been spying and reporting my views to the authorities. Lacking a gracious way to respond to this introduction, he waited for the president to clarify the relevance of his remark.
"You have strong opinions about the use of force, I understand."
"I do," he said calmly, not wishing to stoke the president's fire.
"You don't have political aspirations, do you?" Montenegro laughed, as if he had just told a joke. Juana followed suit, laughing a little too loudly for Javier's comfort. "I hear about priests all over Latin America running for everything from dog catcher to president."
"I assure you, Excell--Raúl--I am my father's son." Javier was eager to punctuate an end to this conversation. "I have no political ambitions. None whatsoever."
"Thank you for the reassurance, Javier. Not that I was concerned." Montenegro wiped a mirthful tear from the corner of his eye. "Please, don't take offense. I've had a hard week and more wine than usual tonight."
"No offense taken." Javier, too, forced a smile. "Before we end this most enjoyable evening," the president said, doing a quick change from jovial host to head of state, "I have one final instruction for you. Instead of reporting back to me via the local Santo Sangrían embassies, I want you to await contact from one of my top diplomatic assistants."
Javier was curious. Why the embassy bypass? "What is his name?"
"There's no need for you to know his name," the president said. "And, don't look for him. He will find you and advise you what to do. Expect him to identify himself simply as 'Angel.' Brief him on the details of your meetings with Pontieri, Vander Hoorst, and Barton. He has my full authority and confidence." Javier's frown messaged his discomfort with this new twist in the plan. "I know it sounds like cloak-and-dagger stuff. I can't always trust my embassy people to keep confidences. When you return home at the end of November, I want you to come back here. We will have a full debriefing and evaluation of your mission."
By this time, Javier's head swam from the combination of unaccustomed amounts of alcohol and the murky world of big league politics and intrigue. Sleepy Santa Teresita was no match for the intellectual stimulation and excitement of these few days in the capital or the month of travel ahead of him.
Javier lay awake long into the pre-dawn hours, mulling over aspects of this new adventure in his life. In the morning, he would board a plane for Rome, his first destination. I'm not compromising my values, he assured himself. I'll present Montenegro's case to POCI's leadership and get the other side of the story from them.
On his return to Santo Sangre, he'd report the facts to the president; no more, no less. Overriding all other considerations, the trip provided a heaven-sent excuse to see Leah again. Javier struggled to pull a clear image of her from the past. When he did, it was a distant reflection of the vibrant young woman who had so captured his heart and taught him the meaning of human love. To his eternal shame, he had failed the final exam. I don't know who she has become, he reflected. She was here. We fell in love. Then, she was gone. She married a man named Walter Barton. Until two days ago, that's all I knew of her.
Now, Javier had a title to add to his limited database of knowledge about this pivotal woman in his life, USA Director, Prisoners of Conscience International. Why is it important to see her? So important that you'd accept a half-cocked, pseudo-diplomatic mission on behalf of a president you can barely tolerate and only minimally trust? What did he expect Leah to do or say when he got to San Francisco? She had a life. I had a life once. Then, he disputed the claim. At least, I thought I did.
At some point in the timeless night, another, darker side to Javier's musings set in. He could not dismiss his doubts about Montenegro's sincerity. The documents they had shown him could have been the fabrications of some frustrated novelist's creative skills.
As the hours passed, Javier admitted how involved his ego had become in this potential misadventure. Playing the persuasive diplomat presented a new and exciting challenge. He envisioned himself delivering President Montenegro's reform message and swaying the POCI leaders with his personal sincerity and charm. The vision seduced him.
And, then there was Leah Sinclair Barton. The more Javier sorted the contradictory messages scrambling inside his head and heart, the more confused he became.
7
Father Javier's letter arrived at Leah's office on a foggy November eleventh morning. It had been four weeks since her appearance on SFO in the AM, and over two weeks since her conversation with Janet Wishard. Carmen's and Janet's warnings continued to stir occasional concern in the back corridors of Leah's mind. Gradually, however, the thought that her position as POCI director had placed her and her children in danger took its place among the "normal" hazards of life. It fell in line behind urban violence, freeway traffic, and "The Big One," that long-predicted and inevitable quake destined one day to rip California from its moorings to the other forty-seven contiguous states.
Leah came across the letter while riffling through the day's stack of bills, advertising circulars, donations, correspondence from affiliates, and communiqués from Amsterdam. These last almost always contained Immediate Action notices concerning cases requiring urgent letter-writing action on the part of the local Cells. Leah's staff gave these alerts top priority above any and all other in-house business.
Immediate Action notices meant that someone, somewhere in the world, had been imprisoned for something as dangerous as advocating independent thinking or exercising a basic freedom guaranteed under the UN Charter and even, in many cases, the constitution of his or her own country. For this, the "criminal" suffered false imprisonment, torture, and deprivation of adequate diet, proper medical attention, and all access to family or legal representation.
The blue, red, and gold stamp and Santo Sangre postmark caught Leah's eye first, then the return address: Rev. Javier de Córdova, Parróquia de Santa Teresita, Santa Teresita, Santo Sangre. Her hand trembled with an excitement spawned by distant, yet still fresh, memories.
It had been fourteen years, during which time their lives had traveled in opposite directions. Leah's last communication from Javier had been a note wishing her and Walt well on the occasion of their marriage. A polite card, white and embossed with interlocking gold rings pierced by a simple cross. She remembered every word of the brief message.
Dear Leah and Walter
, I'm sorry this card is reaching you after the fact. I only recently learned of your marriage from Maggie Adams, your former boss here, Leah. I want to offer my congratulations and best wishes for a wonderful life together. I will pray for you daily at Mass. Sincerely, Javier.
That was it. Leah recalled being both pleased at his thoughtfulness and disappointed at the brevity and "priestliness" of the note. If Javier had regrets, second thoughts about a missed opportunity, forfeited happiness, none were expressed. But, what had she expected? I found happiness, she reflected, and fulfillment. I hope he found what he was looking for.
Leah shuffled the letter to the bottom of the stack, as she often did with personal correspondence delivered to her office. She would read it at home after the kids went to bed, the only time in the day that was totally her own.
Leah was leaving for the day, when she spotted the foreign stamp, peeking out from beneath the pile of mail on the top-right corner of her desk. She shoved the envelope deep into her coat pocket as if to bury again a part of her life she had tucked away in its appointed portion of her past.
* * *
The sudden daily shock of going from POCI director to being a single mom, barely keeping afloat in the turbulent sea of child-rearing, pushed the letter and its sender from Leah's thoughts. With her Volvo in the shop for a checkup, she headed toward the Muni bus stop. Monica's gymnastics practice was still in session, when she arrived. She was grateful for these few minutes during which she could just sit and watch her daughter flip, run, and tumble through her floor routine to the recorded music of the Beatles' "Hey, Jude." Ever since the 1984 Summer Olympics, the diminutive athlete had insisted on wearing her hair short in the style made popular by her idol, Mary Lou Retton.
Although most people thought Monica favored her father, Leah saw herself in her daughter at the same age. Except for the night-black hair that reminded Leah so much of Walt's, Monica had her mother's petite, slender frame and alabaster complexion. Her lagoon-blue eyes formed crystal pools of innocence. They revealed, or rather found it impossible to conceal, her every shift of mood and emotion.
Those eyes, Leah thought with a mother's concern, will weaken young men's knees in a few years.
When Leah was growing up in Sacramento, her father had been a mostly absent parent. Watching Monica go through her routine, Leah's mind drifted to summers on the Otters swim team. She recalled the many times she had stood poised on the starting block, searching in vain among the crowd of poolside parents. With every stroke that propelled her through the water, her heart had cried, "He promised! He promised!"
Flashbacks like this one drove her to attend as many of Teddy's and Monica's practices and games as she could. With the memories, a deep loneliness crept into her soul. Oh, Walt, if only you were here to share my joys and worries about the children.
"Hi, Mom!" Monica's clear voice jolted her out of her reverie. Leah waved with an encouraging smile. The distraction was just enough to throw Monica's timing off. She landed awkwardly at the end of her tumbling run.
"Concentrate, Mon! Concentrate!" shouted her coach, Yuri Basilov, a former Olympic champion who had made, as he said, just one too many trips to New York with the Soviet gymnastic team. Yuri threw up his hands and looked toward Leah with a what-am-I-gonna-do-with-that-kid? grin.
Leah shrugged and returned a smile that said, "She may not be the greatest gymnast in your book, coach, but she sure is in mine."
True, Monica was no Mary Lou Retton, but she was a treasure, part of Walt's priceless legacy. Leah didn't intend to push her daughter any harder or farther than she wanted to go. The exercise and healthy outside interest gymnastics gave Monica were ends in themselves. On the day her daughter said it wasn't fun any more, she could hang up her leotard, or whatever gymnasts hang up as symbols of retirement. So far, Monica showed no sign that her love affair with the balance beam was anything but enduring.
"You looked good out there," Leah said when Monica joined her in the bleachers.
"Coach says I might make the High Fliers A team this season, if I work hard." She zipped up the jacket of her navy blue sweat suit. The cotton/polyester material lay flat against her chest, which had just begun to hear puberty's call.
"And get good grades," Leah-the-parent added.
Monica's spirit sank. "I always do."
Leah kicked herself for being unsupportive of her daughter's excitement. "I know you do, honey. I hope you make the team."
Monica accepted her mother's olive branch and became her bouncing self again, all the way to the bus stop.
"Coach gets mad when I goof up."
"It's his job," Leah said, amazed at her daughter's resiliency. "He wants you to be the best you can."
"Sorta like you, huh?"
Leah pulled the pixyish child to her side and gave her a squeeze. "Yeah. Sorta like me."
The Barton home dominated a hilltop just off the
southeast edge of the Presidio. Built in 1895 by a dairyman whose farm had covered the acreage since the middle eighteen hundreds, the mansion was once again one of the finest Victorian specimens in the City. At the street corner, a five-sided tower rested upon a large square bay with Palladian windows. A steep witch's cap perched atop the solitary third floor bedroom.
As they approached the house, Leah felt the same rush through her body that she felt the day she and Walt signed papers and became the proud owners--with Bank of America--of the neglected Queen Anne tower house. She cherished the memory of the delight they took in restoring that wonderful building to its original splendor, tripling its market value in the process. The two of them had worked side by side in the spacious, unfurnished downstairs, scraping off old paint, wallpapering . . . making love on the floor amid paint buckets, brushes, and tarps. Leah recalled the thrill of carrying new life inside her, as they prepared, first Teddy's room, then Monica's.
Walt was the family philosopher, always probing life's mysteries. As Leah stepped onto the porch, she heard his spirit voice and felt the gentle press of his hand, warm and comforting, on her then-pregnant belly. "What will become of this new life we've started?" he'd ask rhetorically in the late-night darkness of their bedroom, during the months she carried Teddy. Then, he'd kiss their son through her rounded flesh and ask, "How will this child change our lives?" The only change had been a deepening of their commitment to be there for each other, always and no matter what.
Now, Walt lived on in the wallpaper, the paint, the hardwood floors. Most of all, he lived on in Leah's love. They had wanted a big family, and with the birth of their second child, the house's five bedrooms began to fill up. They were trying to get pregnant a third time, when the accident took Walt from her. In the months before his death their lovemaking had become more frequent and taken on a greater urgency, a wilder passion. Their surface reason was to conceive another child, but it was as if they knew they had only a short time left to share and delight in the intimacy of each other's bodies.
Back in the reality of her kitchen, Leah pulled dinner items from the freezer. Teddy bounded onto the porch and rang the doorbell. "Can you get it?" she called upstairs. "Must've forgotten his key again."
"I don't have any clothes on," Monica shouted back. "You told me never to answer the door without any clothes on."
"Smart kid," Leah muttered, wiping her hands on her apron. The doorbell chimed twice more. "Hold on, for criminee sakes!"
"Hi, Mom." Teddy skipped past his mother, turned, and threw his arms around her with a broad grin. "Thought I wasn't going to kiss you, didn't you?"
"Would've been a first."
Teddy could always make his mother laugh, even when he annoyed her. His face was broad and open, his smile winsome and almost constant. Though favoring Leah, he had his father's fine narrow lips and mouth, at the corner of which a devilish upturn gave warning not to take him for granted. As one of his teachers had put it at the last set of parent conferences, "Look out for that one, Mrs. Barton. He's Mr. Charm himself."
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"Sorry. Forgot my key."
"Again," Leah reminded him with a parental frown.
"At least, I didn't lose it." Teddy always found the proverbial pony in a room full of horse manure.
"You look cute in your little blue shorts," she teased.
"Ah, cut it out," he said, moving toward the refrigerator.
"How was practice?"
Teddy already had his head inside the refrigerator where he performed a ritual snack-hunt. "Bor-ring! Coach decided to work with the second team. Made the rest of us run laps."
It both delighted and dismayed Leah that her son had grown so quickly out of childhood and into adolescence. How could he have grown up so fast, right under my nose? she wondered as she continued preparing dinner.
* * *
It was nine-thirty by the time Leah got Teddy and Monica settled in their rooms. At ten she folded back the covers and slipped into the queen-sized bed she and Walt had shared for a brief lifetime. Often, she sat up, rimless glasses perched on the end of her nose, and read from Emily Dickinson, whom she loved. This night, with hands trembling, she read Javier de Córdova, whose memory now surfaced only occasionally. It had last resurrected the day of the "SFO in the AM" show, when the Salvadoran woman--Carmen--asked her about the possible dangers of her job.
That day she had thought of Jay, the name she had given Javier when they were together, wishing him safe and well. It wasn't the man who had just passed his fortieth birthday she pulled up, but an idealistic, handsome young curate in the dusty mountain village of Santa Teresita. Being her only available image, it had to serve.
Dear Leah:
I hope this letter finds you in good health and fine spirits. How long has it been? Almost fourteen years!
Leah conjured him penning the handwritten words with the forward-slanting script, lofty "h"s, "t"s and "l"s and plunging "g"s and "y"s. She had taken a course in handwriting analysis at Cal. While not a qualified graphologist, she read in Jay's scratchings on the thin onion-skin paper his lofty spirit and . . . strong sexual urges.
Believe it or not, I have kept my promise to remember you and your husband every day at my Mass. You must have children by now. How many?