Perhaps Dorsey had fallen in love with me… a little teeny tiny bit. Loved someone besides her mother, Zooey Sonnenberg. Maybe she cared.
That’s what love is, isn’t it? Caring.
I cared for a woman who was somewhere out there in the big wide world and might never return.
Was I capable of loving another person, one who was physically here?
The thing about Dorsey…
What if she called? She had my cell phone number. What would I say to her?
I thought about that, about the murders and Zooey and all that stuff. As I drove over the Bay Bridge, I threw the phone out the window into the Chesapeake.
On Saturday morning I was basting in the sun, reading a novel and enjoying a stiff breeze, when a shadow fell across my book. I looked up.
Sarah Houston. In a huge, floppy sun hat and a skimpy two-piece suit that didn’t hide anything. I don’t know why they even bother to wear those things. She spread a huge beach towel beside mine and handed me a tube of suntan lotion while the wind whipped at the brim of her hat. “Do me, will you?”
“Did you just happen by?”
“I hike the beach from Maine to Florida every summer. Saw you lying there and decided I could use a break.”
“Going to be here long?”
“As a matter of fact, Admiral Grafton called me. He said you were staying at his beach house and asked if I would like to use it, too. Said he had a couple of bedrooms and plenty of toilet paper.”
I turned on my side and looked her over while she settled herself on her towel and told me this tale. I wondered if Grafton really called her or she called him. I sat up and went to work with the lotion.
“So,” she continued as I slathered her, “I thought, I’m due for some vacation, and why not?”
“Indeed! Why not?”
“Give me a chance to get the real inside scoop on Zooey and Royston. Grafton said you were in the suite when they were arrested.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t discuss it. I’m saving it for my autobiography.”
“Darn. I’ll just have to wheedle it out of you. A project like that will help fill the long evenings.”
“Heck, yeah. As a matter of fact, I have a party invite for tonight. Want to go?”
“If we can leave the party early. There’s a certain man I’m looking forward to making love to.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather. Sarah Houston! Who would have ever suspected?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The very real defection of Vasili Mitrokhin, the retired archivist for the KGB, to Great Britain in 1992 was the inspiration for this tale. He left Russia with six suitcases full of notes that he had taken from classified KGB files over a period of twelve years. (See The Sword and The Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, Basic Books, 1999.) I have wanted to write this tale since I read that book. My editor, Charles Spicer, and his colleagues at St. Martin’s Press offered me the opportunity, for which I am extremely grateful.
My wife, Deborah Coonts, had a large creative input to the plot of the novel as it developed. Engineer and physicist Gilbert “Gil” Pascal read the manuscript and offered technical suggestions, as he has been kind enough to do many times in the past. A heartfelt Thank You to both of them.
This story is a work of fiction. As usual, the author is solely responsible for the plot, characters, incidents, and dialogue contained herein.