“She’s giving you a choice”—my mother cuts her off with a cold glare—“I’d take it.”
“After all we’ve been through—”
“You can do it, Bev,” my mother’s voice rings clearly beside me, “or I can do it for you, but either way you are finished destroying my family.”
Andrews stares at us, suddenly expressionless. She straightens out her jacquard coat. She strides two meters across the platform to the jump chute. She pauses with her toes at the edge, looking out into the velvety night.
The wind ruffles the plastered hair around Andrew’s face.
It happens at once—Andrews reaches her hand inside her jacket and spins around. A double-edged dagger flies at us. Aksel pushes me behind him, backing us into the cargo net. My mother shifts in time for it to sail past her and land in the fuselage wall.
Andrews lunges at me. “I have worked too hard to be—”
Swirling in front of me, my mother grabs Andrews by her lapel, flings her around, and shoves.
Andrews tumbles backward out of the plane, sucked into the sky.
I walk over to the chute. Below I can see the cold sea and a stray iceberg.
I unclip my watch and drop it into the night. It will sink into the Atlantic and plummet to the ocean floor.
I will never be tracked again.
CHAPTER 65
My mother sits at the foot of my hospital bed, watching me.
Her face is puffy and red, but she remains entirely composed. She is wearing her black pearl earrings.
“Your father’s body was recovered in Austria,” she tells me. “There’ll be a service this morning. After decades of not existing, the president says your father must be recognized. For his military service and his years at the Central Intelligence Agency before he joined ON-YX, your father has been awarded an anonymous engraved star on the marble wall at Langley.”
By midmorning, the sky is white and overcast. I put on a black wool coatdress and a velvet fascinator with a net veil.
It has stopped snowing, and the air around us is still and quiet. Beside my mother and me, those present at Arlington National Cemetery are Aksel, two dozen Navy SEALs in full dress uniform, several men in suits I don’t recognize, and the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
During the brief service, I sense someone watching us. I glance up during the Lord’s Prayer and see a figure in a trim suit standing still against an oak tree, fifty meters away.
Across the white earth, David nods at me.
Smiling faintly, I nod back.
When I lift my eyes at the end of the prayer, David is gone.
After the benediction, each SEAL steps up to the coffin, removes his Navy SEAL trident, and pounds his pin into the wood with his fist. The sound echoes into the sky.
Once everyone has left the gravesite, my mother and I stand beside each other, staring at the mound of dirt in the middle of a blanket of snow.
I turn to my mother, admiring her beautiful clear blue eyes that wrinkle at the corners when she smiles. My eyes aren’t hers, Abramovich told me, and yet when I look into them, I see me. I love her so much it hurts.
“Mom, I’m so sorry,” I start. “It’s my fault he’s dead and—”
“Hush, Sophia.” She presses her cold hand against my lips. My tears melt into her fingers. “Don’t you ever utter those words again. Your father died protecting the person he loved most in the world. Do not blame yourself for any of this—”
“How can I not? Look at everything that happened because of me. I was so mad at him for taking me out of Waterford, and I told him I hated him and—” The words can no longer pass the strangled sobs escaping my throat.
Her arms tighten around me in a crushing embrace. Her voice is in my ear. “You must try.” Tears stream down her face, soaking my cheek, as she says, “You must know that this is not, and never will be, your burden to bear.”
After a few minutes, she lets go of me and readjusts the fur stole over her coat.
“Shirley Piper,” she says softly. “That was my name before I joined Intelligence.” My mother wipes her eyes. “Shirley. I haven’t said that name in thirty years.”
“And Dad?” I ask, knowing that for the first time in my life I am getting answers.
My mother smiles, and her whole face lights up. “Charles. His name was Charles MacDonaghue. And let me tell you, Sophia, from the moment Shirley met Chuck in