Eric Lustbader - The Testament

Nevertheless, from the moment Bravo had met Muhlmann, the air had stunk of betrayal, but only to Shaw. While he never stopped loving Bravo, he had blamed his son, and, what's more, Bravo was smart enough to know it. But then again, Bravo didn't know the real reason Shaw had been so intent on him continuing his studies. How could he?

Tensely, Shaw watched the waiter navigating with a charming swing of her slim hips the narrow aisles between the round tables. She asked him if he wanted to order and he said not yet.

More than anything else Shaw wanted to mend the rift, more painful to him than he had ever allowed Bravo to know. Today had seemed to him to be the right time to start. The tradition of reuniting every July fourth that had been started by Dexter's late wife, Stefana, had been continued by their daughter, Bravo's older sister Emma, at the family townhouse in which she lived. Still, knowing his son as he did, he had been leery of rushing the rapprochement. But now, suddenly, he had run out of time. Circumstances not of his making had determined that he have the conversation he'd always imagined he'd have with Bravo, though not at this time and certainly not in this hurried manner.

Not that Shaw hadn't done his best to prepare Bravo for this moment. But then Jordan Muhlmann had stepped in and altered everything. Now he was not only Bravo's boss, he was his best friend. Never mind. Bravo was coming, and in a few moments both their lives would change forever. If Shaw had any doubts about his son, he had pushed them into the recesses of his exceptionally ordered mind.

He had faith that Bravo would be up to the task, no matter how daunting. He had to be. As the waiter moved out of his field of vision he saw a man crossing the street toward him. As he approached, Shaw felt his own muscles tense. The man picked up his pace and raised an arm. Then he was striding past Shaw, smiling, into the arms of a waiting woman, who embraced him with uncompromising passion. Just as Steffi had once embraced him.

Don't go there, he admonished himself. But there she was in his mind's eye in the hospital bed, little more than a skeleton, wasting away while he looked on helpless and enraged. What was life when you waited for death? Could it ever be more than that?

"I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, amen…"

The words came back at him with the force of a boomerang. If only Steffi hadn't died, if only… But it wasn't meant to be. As his wife lay dying, his heart had broken.

"The keys of hell and of death.…"

Then he saw Bravo coming toward him and his heart leapt. He was sure that what he had done, what he was about to do, was the right thing-the only answer to the only question that mattered to him.

"Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter! "

He had already done that in the way he and Bravo knew best.

From the moment he saw his father sitting in sunlight at French Roast, Braverman Shaw was filled with conflicting emotions. The small boy in him wanted to run down the block, his arms open wide; the teenager wanted to thank him for the designated path he'd insisted on for his son, for Bravo had forgotten nothing of his studies in medieval religion, had lost little of the excitement he'd felt from the first day his father had cracked open the thick, illustrated book he kept by his bedside, introducing the child to the mysteries that would consume him for years to come. But the adult, who felt that he had been manipulated, took on the very attributes he hated most in his father, so that they came together not as father and son but as unstoppable force and immovable object. That term-immovable object-was appropriate, Bravo thought, for the man whose life and motives he found ever more puzzling and opaque.

"Dad."

Dexter Shaw stood. "It's good to see you again, Bravo."

They shook hands, formally and rather awkwardly, and sat down.

Braverman Shaw was thirty, taller than his father by a head, slimmer, but with the wide shoulders and long, powerful legs of a swimmer. In his own way, he was just as handsome. His hair was dark and curling, his eyes a blazing blue. He had the singular look of a seeker after knowledge, not of a risk management consultant. Emma had nicknamed him Bravo when she was six and Braverman was four. The name had stuck.

Bravo, eyeing the virtually untouched cup of cafe' au lait, said, "Too much flavor for you, Dad?" He said it in a bantering tone-whether to break the stony silence or as a form of self-defense he couldn't say.

Either way, it rankled Shaw, ruffling feathers he'd prefer remained sleek and undisturbed, especially now. "Why must you do that?"

Bravo called a waiter over. "Do what?"

"Provoke me."

Bravo ordered a double espresso. When the waiter had gone, he said, "I was under the impression we provoked each other." He engaged his father's eyes with his. "Don't you enjoy it?"

"As a matter of fact, I don't."

The espresso came. It had been six months since the two had seen each other. An undercurrent of loss and a certain sorrow was passing between them, amplified by the prickly exchange. It was the particular friction that arises between two people who are too much alike. Without the buffer of his mother, who had died ten years ago, sparks often flew between them. This was true even before Jordan Muhlmann, whose mere presence seemed to have aggravated the problem, possibly because he was French and Dexter's dislike of the French was all too well-known to Bravo. We're both headstrong, Bravo thought. Not to mention opinionated, forceful and determined.

Dexter shifted in his seat. "I want to talk to you about your future."

No, Bravo thought at once, I simply can't do this again. "Dad, you're always wanting to talk to me about my future. I'm too old for lectures-"

"First of all, you're never too old to learn something new. Second of all, this isn't a lecture. I want to make you an offer."

"Does the State Department have you recruiting now?"

"This has nothing to do with State." Dexter Shaw leaned forward, his voice low, urgent. "Remember your old training?"

Again out of self-defense, Bravo glanced at his watch. "We're late, Dad. Emma must be wondering what's happened to us. Besides, I rushed in from the airport without any time to get her a present."

Dexter sat back and gave him a basilisk stare. "You know what I think? I think Muhlmann sent you to Brussels deliberately."

Bravo's head came up. He was like a dog on point. "Now don't start-"

"Muhlmann knows perfectly well about your annual family reunion."

Bravo laughed. "You're not implying that he set up an international conference just so-"

"Don't be absurd, but he could have sent someone else."

"Jordan trusts me, Dad."

A silence descended over them, thick with the implied accusation. Horns blared as a car lurched out into traffic, and with a metal clang the rear doors of a delivery truck opened.

Dexter Shaw sighed. "Bravo, can we call a truce? It is urgent that we talk. In the space of a week, the world has changed-"

"After dinner."

"I told you this was urgent."

"I heard you, Dad."

"I don't want Emma-"

"To overhear. Of course not. We'll go for a walk, just the two of us, and you can make your pitch."

Dexter shook his head. "Bravo, it's not a pitch. You have to understand-"

"It's late and getting later." Bravo stood, putting money on the table. "You go on to Emma's while I forage for a present."

"I'd like to go with you."

"So she'll be pissed at both of us?" Bravo shook his head. "You go on, Dad."

As Bravo turned away, Dexter Shaw took his son's arm. There was so much to say, so much that needed to be communicated and now, at the eleventh hour, with bells tolling in his head, he knew that he should feel closer to Bravo than he ever had. Instead, there was between them a kind of chilly chasm he recognized as being of his own manufacture. He had tried to shield his son from the terrible responsibility of what was to come for as long as he could, but what, in the end, had he accomplished except to make him feel as if he wasn't trusted, as if he'd been manipulated for an unknown reason. Secrets, lies and the truth, he thought now, sometimes there wasn't much to choose from between them.