That was interesting. She was asking who they were, rather than who he was. It suggested she trusted him a little. Perhaps not much, but enough to be starting with.
‘CIA. There’ll be more of them.’ When she drew in a breath, he said, ‘I won’t say “don’t worry”. But I’ll protect you. You can survive this.’
‘They killed my friends.’
‘Back in Charlottesville? What happened there?’
‘They started following me this afternoon. Maybe before, but that’s when I first noticed them. I went to my friends for help. They broke in, shot them dead. I jumped out the window.’
Pope watched the road in silence for a full ten seconds, then said: ‘You did well. If you’d stayed, they would have killed you.’
‘Why?’
He’d rehearsed several different scenarios, played them out to their possible conclusions, keeping in mind at all times that you could never fully predict how human beings would behave or how conversations would run. He was having to modify his approach now based on the information he was getting from her demeanour, her body language.
‘Nina, I’m going to ask you an odd question. Humour me. I want you to think back to when you were a child. Eleven years old. Tell me what you remember of that time.’
‘Who are you?’
She’d asked it, then, finally. And it had been the strangeness of his own question that had triggered it.
‘Just let’s focus on you at eleven — ’
‘Who are you.’
Sharper this time. He’d have to give her something.
‘I have a connection with your father.’
Twenty-Two
Interstate 95, Outside Washington D.C.
Tuesday 21 May, 12.15 am
The adrenaline had begun to drain from her limbs like fuel from an engine, leaving her feeling inert and immobile.
There’d been the terror of the advancing men, the shock of seeing the sprinting figure coming up behind them, then the awful physicality of the violence which had followed. Nina barely remembered picking up the rock and heaving it at the gunman’s head, but she remembered being utterly confused as to why he then dropped to his knees, shaking, until she understood that the newcomer had shot him.
The blasts had set up a high whine in her ears which hadn’t gone yet.
She watched the man beside her. Pope, he called himself. He sounded British, and educated, though she didn’t know much about distinguishing British accents. His profile was impossibly handsome, movie-star quality.
And, unbelievably, there was something familiar about him.
His phrases were like sharp jabs form a needle, one after the other so that she barely had time to register the shock of one before the next came.
CIA…
There’ll be more of them…
They would have killed you…
And then the one that stuck, lingering: I have a connection with your father.
Somewhere in the middle of it all he’d asked something about her childhood, but perhaps she’d imagined that; imagined she was undergoing therapy of some kind.
The highway droned by outside, the monotonous beat of the windshield wipers like a pendulum lulling her under.
‘What connection?’ she heard a thin, distant voice say. Her own. ‘Did he send you?’
‘No.’ Was there the trace of a smile in his voice? ‘Not exactly. Though indirectly I suppose he did.’
Their exchange was too elliptical, too many-sided, for Nina to find a clear way in. She sat in silence once more.
He said, softly, ‘When you were eleven, Nina, you lived on an island, didn’t you?’
She blurted, almost cutting him off: ‘I know you.’
This time he looked across at her, and did smile; though the smile was touched with sadness.
‘In a sense, you probably do.’
*
It’s an afternoon, clear and bright, mountains of cumulus (she’s learned about clouds this week; her mother’s taught her) towering overhead. This is a few weeks before that night when she heard the screams and went out to look under moonlight.
She’s playing alone on the lawn outside the house. Her mother’s inside, resting. Her father’s at work, his car gone. There are no other girls or boys on the island. When will they be going back to their real home, she wondered again this morning. Soon, honey, her mother whispered in her hair.
The gate’s closed but the wall’s easy to climb. Bored, she shins over it, dropping to the dirt. Across the road, the Box sits in the heat like the brownies her mom bakes.
In the daylight, when it’s silent, it doesn’t frighten her.
She crosses the road (looks both ways carefully first, as she’s been taught, though there are no cars) and approached the Box. She’s never been this close before. Her mom and dad have told her never to go near it.
A voice, loud and angry as an animal’s roar, makes her leap in the air and freeze at the same time. She turns, her heart like a drill. It’s the tall man, the one her father calls Taylor. She doesn’t like him. He’s always bad-tempered, even when he laughs. He’s not laughing now.
He’s running over to her from around the side of the Box, yelling. Using words her mom told her she should never say, words with F and Jesus’s name. He even calls her a little B. She’s too scared to run. He grabs her shoulders and shakes her.
‘Get away from her.’
She remembers the words, and the voice, clearly. The words because they’re so calm; the voice, because it sounds a little odd, like he’s not American or Spanish. He’s standing behind Taylor. She doesn’t know his name, but she sees him around sometimes. He doesn’t look angry.
Taylor turns round and starts using that sneering voice, asking the other man who the F does he think he is. He stands close to the other man (she thinks it’s called “getting in his face”). The other man says something so quietly she can’t hear. Taylor Fs and MFs some more and goes away.
The man whose name she doesn’t know comes over to her. She’s not tall yet, though she’ll grow in the next year. He hunkers down on his heels and asks her if she’s okay. She says yes. He helps her back to her home, saying a lot of other stuff which she doesn’t remember.
What she remembers is his eyes. She sees something there she’s never seen in anyone’s before. Not her mom’s, and certainly not her dad’s.
*
‘He was angry for me. Not at me, but for me.’
Pope hadn’t said a word. How long had she been talking for? She stared at him, his face again in profile. He was utterly unreadable.
It struck Nina suddenly that she had no idea where they were going. They weren’t on the Interstate any more.
Before she could ask, Pope said, ‘What are your feelings towards your father?’
It really is like a therapy session, she thought, and that crazy reckless giggle threatened to erupt again. She swallowed it, hoping to seem as if she was finding difficulty organising her thoughts.
‘He abandoned me when I was eleven. Gave me to my grandmother and never tried to make contact again. No birthday or Christmas cards, no letters or emails. So I feel betrayed by him. Betrayed, hurt, and confused. I want to know why he did it. More than almost anything else in the world.’ The words started rolling out, beyond her control. ‘I mean, if he wasn’t up to being a single dad, I can understand, you know? He was an incredibly busy man, wrapped up in his work. Awkward with kids, from what I recall. But even if he felt my gramma was the best person to look after me — and she probably was — he could at least have called or written me from time to time. Or now that I’m grown up, made contact to explain to me why he did what he did.’
As though sensing she was saying more than she’d intended and wanting to save her from embarrassment, Pope cut in: ‘How do you believe your mother died, Nina?’