Jeffery Deaver: Ice Cold

“But I’m just a kid, Grandma. Where will I live? How will I find food to eat? What will happen to me?”

“First we have to find a safe place for you to stay,” I told her. “As to how you’ll live? Let Grandpa and me worry about that. We’ll take care of you, Alyse. I promise. Will you do it?”

Alyse squared her shoulders. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will.”

I went back downstairs. I was through the dining room and halfway through the living room on my way to the front door when a voice behind me inquired, “Mrs. Creswell?”

I froze, thinking Isabelle must have realized I was there and sent someone to eject me. When I turned around, however, a man in a suit was holding up an FBI badge for my scrutiny. “I’m Agent Holloway,” he said. “I believe you’re Gunnar’s mother, correct?”

It made sense that the FBI would be a presence there. If there were a conspiracy, they would be looking at all of Gunn’s connections to see who else might be involved. Still it spooked me that a complete stranger had successfully spotted me in a crowd when I had been making such an effort to remain invisible.

I nodded as cordially as I could manage. “I’m Isadora,” I said. “And yes, I’m Gunnar’s mother.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss.” Agent Holloway said mechanically. At the same time, however, I caught him surveying the room behind me. “Is Mr. Creswell here by any chance?”

“Our family has some estrangement issues,” I said, making a show of dabbing at my eyes. “Under the circumstances, Lloyd thought it best to stay away. I only came in hopes of seeing the children. In fact, I was just looking for Alyse. You haven’t happened to see her anywhere, have you?”

“No,” he said. “I haven’t.”

“I need to find her,” I said, “because I’m going to be heading home in a few minutes. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

I bustled off and spent the next little while making an obvious effort of searching for someone while continuing to stay out of Isabelle’s way.

When it seemed reasonable to do so, I made my exit. By the time I reached the car, Alyse was already huddled invisibly on the floorboard of the backseat. We left D.C. and drove for hours. Only after I had stowed Alyse safely with a friend who ran a parochial school in upstate New York, did I go home to face the music. I thought Lloyd would be furious. He wasn’t. In fact, he was the one who came up with the idea of creating an entirely new identity for her. I never asked him how he did it. Maybe he had a friend of his own in high places, one I knew nothing about. Then again, maybe he didn’t.

Strangely enough, Isabelle never questioned the idea that Lloyd and I might have had something to do with Alyse’s disappearance. As far as she was concerned, her stepdaughter was nothing but an ungrateful teenager who had run off in her family’s hour of need and good riddance to her besides. Within weeks of Gunn’s funeral, Isabelle and Jimmy moved back to Indiana. For a while I tried to stay in touch with my grandson, but eventually I gave up on that. My letters and gifts were all sent back marked RETURN TO SENDER.

Once Alyse became Debra Highsmith and left for Albuquerque, we never saw her again. By then I suppose I had convinced myself that what I had told her in her upstairs bedroom was true—that the Russians would never stop searching for her. I was wrong about that, of course. I know that now.

Lloyd died two years later. I know the loss of Gunnar and the humiliation surrounding our son’s death contributed to and hastened my husband’s death. I’ve accepted my responsibility for that. If I hadn’t sent someone chasing after Gunnar, maybe he would have gotten away with it. Maybe he could have been more like me and never been caught. Maybe things could have been different. Maybe my life could have been different.

But I doubt it.

For more about Isadora Creswell and her granddaughter, Alyse, read J. A. Jance’s Judgment Call .

They call us spooks.

You know—spies, agents, operatives—whatever.

Spooks.

But I’m here to tell you that it’s not just spooks that occupy the darker regions of the intelligence field. Ghosts reside there as well. Lost souls that somehow fell through the cracks and disappeared into a black pit of secrets and lies, as if they’d vanished into thin air.

Ghosts.

I know this firsthand. It’s the only justification for what happened, for I now believe it’s a mystery that will never be deciphered. For years I wanted to think there was a reasonable and logical solution to the puzzle. For a so-called easy diplomatic mission, it has haunted me ever since that bizarre night. And because I couldn’t properly explain it at the time, my career took a hit. I was removed from the field and brought home to the States. The pay was slightly better, surprisingly, but the new job was most definitely a demotion. Instead of working in an exotic European locale, such as the glorious city of Vienna, Austria, I found myself behind a desk at CIA headquarters.

What really happened on the night of November fourth, nineteen-fifty-six?

The crazy thing about it is that somehow it involves the Ferris wheel. The same one used in that spy movie, The Third Man , the one that starred Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. I love that picture. I was in Vienna during filming, and I saw it three times when it played in the city. It was amazingly true to what was going on then, except I never really heard much zither music playing in the streets. You might know the scene—Cotten and Welles meet in one of the gondola cars for a clandestine rendezvous in the sky. The gondolas have roofs; like little wood cabins with windows, and large enough for fifteen people. The Wiener Riesenrad , at the time the world’s largest Ferris wheel, already had a lot of mystique since it had been built before the turn of the last century. That movie gave it even more of an air of mystery, and subsequent films and stories added to it. Today the wheel is a major tourist attraction in Vienna.

I’m ninety-four years old now. I think I’ve outlived most of the guys I knew in the Agency. Hell, I can remember when our offices were spread around D.C., long before the Langley campus was built. I spent most of my life in the CIA and, before that, with military intelligence during the war. Getting into that was easy—I had an advantage. My grandmother was from Frankfurt and she lived with us in Texas when I was growing up in the thirties, so I learned to speak both English and German fluently. The Military Intelligence Service snatched me up when I was drafted and I was stationed first in France, then Belgium, and finally Germany. I didn’t see any action. I analyzed intelligence reports. When the war was over, I had the choice to become a citizen again at the age of twenty-six, or join the organization that would eventually evolve into the Central Intelligence Agency. With the state of Europe being what it was—everyone was scrambling for pieces of divided countries—I figured that at the very least the work would be interesting. So I became a political analyst for a living.

And lucky me—they sent me to Vienna. Lovely Vienna. What a fascinating, gorgeous, vibrant place. Full of spirit, history, and the arts. It was an ideal posting, and I loved it. Officially, my job title was “Ambassadorial Assistant.” I worked in Vienna’s American sector until Austria was granted sovereignty in nineteen-fifty-five. After the war, Austria, being on the losing side, was divvied up between the U.S., France, Britain, and the Soviet Union. The capital city itself was also split into four sectors. Surprisingly, the system actually worked during the years it took for Vienna to be rebuilt and repaired. Even the Russians displayed no desire to occupy Austria the way they had other Eastern European countries, like Hungary. That was admirable, given that the Iron Curtain already dissected Berlin and was laying foundation from north to south across Europe. When Austria became its own boss again and the four superpowers dissolved their pieces of that pie, I stayed in the city and worked at the U.S. Embassy.