Jack Bigelow put his arm around the young man's shoulders and said a few words the microphones could not catch. Something, probably, about sacrifice and sorrow. Peter Payne nodded and extended his hand.
Later, the pundits would say a torch of some kind had been passed.
But before all this occurred — before the motorcade to Arlington and the Newsu'cek cover of Caroline Carmichael, before the presidential letter of appreciation and the Bronze Intelligence Star — there was a different sort of homecoming, in a freight hangar at Washington Dulles, and Scottie Sorensen was the only person there.
He stood with his hands in his pockets while they wheeled the coffin forward on a gurney, a medical examiner at his side. “Are you ready, sir?” the attendant asked him. Sorensen nodded, his expression debonair as always. He was not required to make a formal identification of the body. It would probably be unpleasant. There had, after all, been an explosion. But Scottie thought he might sleep better, nights, if he knew for certain that Eric Carmichael was dead. Eric had possessed too many secrets.
They lifted open the casket's cover. Scottie stared down at the blond hair, the corpse riddled with shrapnel. Most of the facial features were missing. He studied one hand and an arm. Ugly red weals crisscrossed the wrist. Eric had, after all, been tortured; but these scars were old. These scars had healed years before. They were the marks of a razor blade inexpertly applied by a man who hadn't really wanted to die.
He took a step backward. He motioned that the casket should be closed. He drew a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it delicately against his nose.
“Can you identify this man as Michael O'Shaughnessy?” the medical examiner asked.
Scottie hesitated. There were so many possible answers.
“His name is Antonio Fioretto,” he said at last. “An Italian national, and a terrorist.”
And for a wild instant, he almost laughed.
About The Author
Francine Mathews spent four years as an intelligence analyst for the CIA, where she was trained in Operations and served a brief stint in the Counterterrorism Center assisting the investigation into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
The author often previous novels, she lives and writes in Colorado.
Visit Francine Mathews's website at www.francineinathews.com.