Chapter 4: What He Almost Was
Her name was Director Pauline Marsh.
She sat at the head of the table, and the two pilots deferred to her the way you defer to someone who has never needed to raise her voice to be obeyed.
She folded her hands, looked at my father, and for a moment said nothing at all.
"You look well," she finally said.
"You look like you haven't slept in a week," Dad replied.
Something crossed her face that might have been a smile.
"Fair."
I looked between them.
"You know each other."
"Your father and I worked together for six years," Director Marsh said.
"He was the best operative this program ever produced.
And when the program was decommissioned, he disappeared so completely that we spent four years trying to confirm he was still alive."
"I was alive," Dad said.
"I was making pancakes."
"Dad."
"I'm serious.
I moved to Millbrook, I got a small house, I learned to make a decent pancake.
That was the plan."
"The plan," Director Marsh said, and now there was something harder underneath her voice, "was for you to come in for a formal debrief.
Not vanish."
"The plan changed."
"Why?"
Dad's hands were flat on the table.
He looked at them, then at her.
"Because I came home one night and found my daughter asleep on the couch waiting for me.
She was nine years old.
She'd made a sign that said 'Welcome Home Daddy' and fallen asleep holding it." He paused.
"I decided that was the only debrief that mattered."
The room was very quiet.
I remembered that night.
I didn't remember making the sign.
But I remembered waking up on the couch and he was there, sitting in the armchair across from me, watching me sleep.
I'd thought he just got home late from work.
"You were protecting her," Director Marsh said.
"I was choosing her," Dad said.
"There's a difference."
She studied him for a moment.
Then she opened the folder she'd brought in and slid a single photograph across the table toward him.
Dad looked at it.
His expression didn't change, but his hand moved — just slightly — toward his cane.
"When was this taken?" he asked.
"Eight days ago.
Dulles Airport."
I leaned over to look.
A man in a gray coat, caught mid-stride in what looked like a security camera still.
Heavyset.
Late sixties.
A carry-on bag over one shoulder.
"Who is he?" I asked.
"His name is Victor Hale," Director Marsh said.
"He was the program's logistics coordinator from 1983 to 1989.
He was the one who arranged safe passage for your father's family when there was a credible threat in 1987."
"I didn't know about any threat in 1987," I said.
"No," Dad said.
"You weren't supposed to."
"Dad—"
"You were four years old, sweetheart."
I sat back.
Director Marsh tapped the photograph.
"Three weeks ago, Victor Hale contacted our office.
He said he had documentation — physical records from the program that were never officially surrendered.
He said some of those records contained names.
Operatives who were listed as ground crew in the official files but whose real designations were never destroyed."
"Names like my father's."
"Yes."
"And where is Victor Hale now?"
Director Marsh looked at my father, not at me.
"That's why we need Thomas," she said.
Dad picked up the photograph.
He looked at it for a long time.
"Victor wouldn't contact you unless he was scared," he said.
"He spent thirty years being careful.
If he reached out, something changed."
"Something did," Director Marsh said.
"He reached out on a Tuesday.
By Thursday, he'd stopped answering his phone."
Dad set the photograph down.
"How long has he been missing?"
"Eleven days."
The younger pilot near the door shifted his weight.
Captain Reeves looked at the table.
I looked at my father — this man I had driven to the airport this morning, this man I had promised to stay beside, this man who made pancakes on Sundays and moved slowly with a cane — and I watched him sit up straighter than I had seen him sit in years.
"I need to make a phone call," he said.
"To whom?" Director Marsh asked.
"To my granddaughter," he said.
"To tell her I may be a day late to her wedding."
He looked at me then, and his eyes were steady and clear and asking me something he wouldn't say out loud.
I looked back at him.
May you like
"I'll call her," I said.
"You make your other call."
