CHAPTER 84

THEY HAD PASSED ANOTHER DAY sitting in the cellar and now the darkness was settling in. Stone, Finn and Lesya had spent the time developing a plan of action. The next night Stone’s team would assemble and they could execute that plan.

Finn, who’d been pacing in increasing agitation suddenly said, “I have to see my family. Now.”

Lesya started to protest but Stone asked, “Where are they?” Finn told him.

Stone turned to Lesya. “You stay here. I’ll go with him.”

“You’re going to leave me here, alone?” the old woman said.

“Just for a little while,” Stone added. “You’ll be safe.”

The two men left the cellar.

“How bad is your wife?” Stone asked once they were outside.

“Bad! And who the hell can blame her?”

“We can get to them on the Metro and then it’s a bit of a walk.”

“You were Army Special Forces in Nam,” Finn said. “I looked it up.”

“And you?”

“How do you know I was anything?”

“I can just tell.”

“SEAL. Look, we need weapons. They’ll have searched my house by now. I have a storage unit with some stuff in it, but they’ll have found that too.”

“I have a place with guns,” Stone replied.

Thirty minutes later, Stone waited outside while Finn entered the motel room in a run-down area of south Alexandria.

His children immediately flew to him, nearly crushing him against the wall. Even George the Labradoodle got in the act, barking and jumping on his master. As Finn hugged his kids tightly, all their tears mixing together, he saw his wife through a tiny crevice between David and Susie. Mandy was sobbing too but made no move toward him.

After a few minutes of hugs and cries, Finn managed to get his kids to sit down on a bed. Susie clutched the bear her grandmother had given her, tears trickling down her plump cheeks. Patrick nervously chewed on his bloody, bitten-down nails. He did that before every test and every ball game, Finn knew. And it pained him that his son was now doing it because of something his father had done.

David eyed his dad nervously. “Pop? What’s going on?”

Finn took a deep breath. He could no more tell them the truth than he could jump to the moon. On the way over he had thought of the lie he would use, but it didn’t seem so plausible now. He could never say, “I’m a killer, kids, and the cops are after me.” No he could never say that, because these were his children. They and Mandy were all he had. Mere justice didn’t constitute an adequate defense of what he’d done.

“Something happened at work, Dave,” he began as Mandy looked on. In her eyes was stark fear, but also something else that devastated Finn: distrust. He put his hand out to her, but she drew back a little.

He decided to abandon his cover story. He rose and leaned against the wall. When he was finally ready to speak he looked directly at them.

“Everything you know about your grandparents, my mother and father, is a lie. Your grandfather didn’t come from Ireland and die in a car accident a long time ago. Your grandmother wasn’t from Canada. And she’s not in a nursing home because she belongs there.” He took another deep breath, trying not to focus on his family’s collective astonishment.

And he told them. Their grandfather’s real name was Rayfield Solomon. He’d been a spy for the Americans. Their grandmother’s name was Lesya, a Russian, who’d been a spy for her country until coming over to the American side with Solomon and also marrying him.

“They were framed by some people at the CIA,” he said. “Rayfield Solomon’s picture hangs on the wall at Langley, the ‘Wall of Shame’ they call it. But he doesn’t deserve to be there. He was killed by these same people so the truth would never come out. Your grandmother survived but has been in hiding ever since.”

To their credit and Finn’s relief, his children seemed to readily accept his explanation, even be excited by the revelations. “But what is the truth?” David asked. “What were they framed for doing?”

Finn shook his head. “I can’t tell you, son. I wish I could, but I can’t. I only found out a short time ago.”

“Where’s Grandma?” Patrick asked.

“I’m going back to her after I leave you.”

Susie flung herself around Finn’s leg. “Daddy, you can’t leave. You can’t leave us,” she wailed. The sounds were cracking Finn’s heart in half. He could barely breathe as the tears streamed down his daughter’s face. He lifted her up and held her. “I’m sorry, baby, but I promise you one thing. Are you listening? Can you listen to Daddy for just a minute? Please, baby, please?”

Susie finally stopped crying. She and her brothers stared at their father. They were so still, it didn’t seem like any of them were actually breathing.

“I promise you this: that Daddy will fix everything. And then I’m going to come and get all of you and we’re going to go back home and everything will be like it was. I promise you. I swear to you that it will.”

“How?”

Everyone looked at Mandy, who now moved toward her husband.

“How?” she said again, her voice rising. “How will you fix it all? How will you make everything like it was? How can you possibly fix this… nightmare?”

“Mandy, please?” Finn glanced at the kids.

“No, Harry. No! You’ve been deceiving me, the kids, for how long? How long, Harry?”

“Too long,” he said quietly. He added, “I’m sorry. If you just knew-”

“No, we don’t want to know.” She took a struggling Susie from his arms. “I called Doris, our next-door neighbor. She said men came to our house today and searched it. When she tried to ask them what was going on, they said they were looking for you, Harry. They said that you were a criminal.”

“No! NO!” Susie screamed. “Daddy is not a criminal. He’s not, he’s not!” She started hitting her mother. Finn grabbed Susie away and clutched her tightly. “Susie, you never do that, you never hit your mother. She loves you more than anyone in the whole world. You never do that. Promise me.”

A tearful Susie said, “But you’re not a bad man, are you?”

Finn looked desperately at Mandy and then at his sons, who stared at him, their faces pale, their eyes wide in fear.

“No, he’s not, Susie. Your father is not a bad man.”

They all turned to look at Oliver Stone, who had just come quietly in the door. George the dog hadn’t made a peep. He just sat next to Stone looking up at him.

“Who are you?” Mandy demanded fearfully.

“I’m working with your husband to try to right some wrongs. He’s a good man.”

“I told you, Mommy,” Susie said.

“What’s your name?” Mandy asked.

“That’s not important. What is important is that Harry has told you the truth, or as much of it as he can and still keep you safe. It was incredibly dangerous for him to come here tonight, but he insisted. He even left his mother, who is old and frail, to come and see you, because he was so worried. He had to see you.” He looked at Mandy. “He had to.” Mandy’s gaze went from Stone to her husband. Finn slowly put out his hand. She slowly took it. Their fingers instantly gripped like steel.

“Can you right these wrongs?” Mandy asked, looking at Stone anxiously.

“We’re going to try our best,” he said. “That’s all we can do.”

“And you can’t go to the police,” she said.

“I wish we could, but we can’t. Not yet.”

Finn put Susie down and picked up the bear she’d dropped. “I told Grandma how much you love your bear.” Susie clutched it with one hand and her father’s leg with the other.

After twenty minutes, Stone told Finn they had to leave. At the door Mandy slid her arms around her husband and they hugged while Stone and the children kept a respectful silence.

“I love you, Mandy, more than anything in the world,” Finn said into her ear.

“Just make things right, Harry. Make things right and come back to us. Please.”