“I was wondering why we were going by the old station. Thought maybe you just wanted to see it.”
“I kind of did.”
Mark glanced at Rad, and then back at his childhood home. It seemed even smaller than he remembered. He thought of his mom sitting on the steps out front, waiting for him to come home from school, asking how his day had been when he showed up.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” asked Rad.
“Yeah, sorry for the mess up. So where are we going?”
They drove across town. Around Spring Street they passed a sign that read HISTORIC MIDTOWN and after that things got nicer. The century-old public library, where Mark used to read for hours in the summer — because the library had air-conditioning and his house didn’t — looked recently renovated. The sidewalks out front were paved with newly laid brick.
Mark allowed that things might have changed a bit more than he’d thought.
Five minutes later, they turned onto a street where decent-sized homes sat amid well-tended yards, tall old trees, and mulched flowerbeds. The ambulance stopped in front of a brick house that had an Audi Quattro parked in the driveway. It was one of the larger houses on the street, with wide front steps that led to a large double-door entryway, three front gables, and expansive bay windows on the first floor.
Rad lifted his head just enough so that he could see out the side window of the ambulance. “We’re here.” He sounded relieved.
As Mark was stepping out of the back of the ambulance, a pretty, blue-eyed woman with brown curly hair ran up. She wore a tight white blouse, tight jeans, and glittery flip-flops. Her teeth were white, and straight. And she smelled nice, Mark noted, as she pushed past him.
“Rad!”
“I’m OK.”
“Oh my God baby, oh my God, I can’t believe this happened to you.”
On the plane, Mark had been listening when Rad talked to his fiancée. He knew that his brother hadn’t told her much about what had happened. Just that he was hurt, and was coming home, and could she be there when he got there?
Mark extended his hand and gave her his first name. “Rad can explain how we know each other later. In the meantime, I think the best thing to do is to get him inside the house.”
An older woman appeared behind Rad’s fiancée. She had gray hair, a bit of a belly, wore big gold hoop earrings, a gold bracelet, and a velour tracksuit. Her eyes fixed on Rad. “Good lord! Did the monkeys do this to you?”
“It wasn’t the monkeys, Mom. I was attacked. Well, shot.”
Her hands went up to her mouth. She looked down at his leg, and then at the bandages on his shoulder. Blood had seeped out of one corner. “This happened in India?”
“Later, Mom.”
Mark recognized her. She was the woman his dad had married after the suicide.
“Shouldn’t you be going straight to the hospital?” she said. She cast a wary glance at Mark, not recognizing him.
“He’s stable,” said Mark.
“Oh baby,” said Rad’s fiancée. “This is crazy. If you think you need a hospital, we should get you there now.”
Mark added, “He should be looked at soon, but you have time to pick your doctor and decide on the right course of action.”
The ambulance driver and the orderly who’d accompanied him walked around to the back of the ambulance and started unfastening the clamps that held Rad’s gurney in place.
Then the front door of the house opened.
Mark recognized Petar Saveljic at once — recognized the slouch of the shoulders, the wide-set darting, reptilian eyes, the hard jawline. His father had gone bald on the top of his head, but he’d always worn his hair short; no hair didn’t look much different than short hair had.
The only difference was the way his father was dressed. In the seventeen years he’d lived with the man, Mark couldn’t remember ever seeing his father in shorts. Typically, it had just been the soiled blue work pants he wore at the gas station, or the worn-out gray dress slacks he’d put on at home after he’d washed up. But it was unseasonably warm for early November — in the upper sixties, Mark guessed — and he was wearing shorts now, pleated khakis that came down to his knees. His legs were spindly and he wore leather Docksiders with no socks. His golf shirt was a bright yellow.
Petar Saveljic walked down to the ambulance, his eyes fixed on the driver and the orderly who was sliding Rad out of the back of the ambulance. “The Indians do this to you?” he asked. Though his tone was hostile, he mostly looked worried.
“It wasn’t the Indians, Dad.”
“We’re going to need help getting him up the steps and into the house,” said the ambulance driver.
At that point, Petar Saveljic noticed Mark. He stared at his oldest son for a few seconds, looking confused, and maybe afraid, as though he wasn’t sure to believe what he was seeing. He took a step back, as if pushed by an invisible hand. “Marko?”
“I’ll help bring him inside,” said Mark. “Then I have to take off.”
“Marko?” He squinted, incredulous.
“It’s a long story. Rad can explain.”
“I don’t understand,” said Rad’s fiancée, looking from Mark’s father to Mark.
Rad said, “This is Mark. You know—”
“You mean—”
“Yeah. The one—”
“Oh my God.” Her hand went up to her mouth.
“Congratulations on your engagement, by the way,” said Mark.
“Two of us are going to need to be on each side of the gurney,” said the ambulance driver, taking a position near Rad’s head. “Grab the metal bar underneath securely. We’ll roll him to the steps, then lift.” He turned to Mark’s stepmother. “Ma’am, if you could get the front door for us?”
Petar Saveljic’s living room in the new house was nothing like the gloomy living room of Mark’s childhood, whose dark walls had been decorated with religious icons — medieval-style paintings of men long dead. This was a sunny space with cream-colored walls and glossy oak floors. Books with gilded spines, which looked as though they’d been bought for purely decorative purposes, lined built-in shelves that framed a gas fireplace with a marble mantel.
But then Mark saw the icon.
It was small, no more than six inches wide by maybe a foot tall, encased in a pine frame that had been painted black. Tucked into one of the corners in the bookshelf, it was the only thing in the entire living room that he recognized. The sight of it caused his heart rate to quicken.
There he was, Saint Sava, looking as dour and two-dimensional as ever.
Mark tried not to stare, but he couldn’t help himself.
It was an ugly painting, of a dead man who meant nothing to Mark. Saint Sava had been the founder of the Serbian branch of the Eastern Orthodox church. Although Mark didn’t care about the man himself, the painting meant something to him because his mother had viewed it as her own personal good-luck charm; she’d even taken to rubbing the old saint’s nose when she was in need of extra good luck — before Mark had a big exam, for instance, or when his father had been applying for a second mortgage on the house. Saint Sava’s nose had gotten a little smudged from his mother’s right index finger.
Even from a distance, Mark could see that the nose was still smudged, and it touched him.
He turned away.
His father didn’t know he’d taken the name Sava. No one outside the CIA knew. And no one inside the CIA knew why he’d taken the name — that he’d done so simply hoping that it would bring him some luck. That’s the way he’d thought back when he young. He’d been more superstitious then, more willing to believe in things like luck.
“All right then,” said the ambulance driver, turning to leave after Rad had been safely deposited in the middle of the living room.