Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

She had kept the blue quilted vest provided by the Foundation. Shaw’s jacket remained in the gym bag. He didn’t mind the fractional chill in the pungent air. His Eccos were on his feet; his soles still ached from the sprint to try to save John, while wearing those flimsy slippers, and he decided against the boots he’d worn here. Victoria, however, was in boots, stylish, low-topped, brown, with two-inch wooden heels.

They were subdued. The view was stunning but, after all that had happened, Shaw wasn’t able at the moment to appreciate the aesthetics. They had both gotten their phones from the AU unit and Shaw now called the local hospital. He got through to a doctor in the emergency room and asked about Anja’s condition.

“She’s stable. She’ll survive. Your relationship, sir?”

“An acquaintance.”

“There’s no next of kin in her personal belongings.”

“I can’t help you there.” Then Shaw had a thought. He gave the doctor Steve’s name and told him that he’d have the man call. “They work together.”

He relayed this news of her condition to Victoria. Then: “I don’t know legally how involved she was in his scams,” he continued. “She knew a fair amount about the operation. Didn’t report it. That won’t go well for her.” His head swiveled slowly. “I should have made sure she stayed in the residence. After she helped me break into the computer I should’ve known that he’d turn on her like that.”

“If she wasn’t onstage, it might’ve looked suspicious. Eli could have guessed something was going on.”

Still, Shaw said, “She didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

Victoria was quiet: she disagreed, he could tell. She would be a woman to whom very little happened if she didn’t want it to happen.

She asked, “Do you think... when she thought she was dying, do you think she believed she was going to advance to the Tomorrow?”

“Maybe.” It was possible. Though Shaw was also thinking: whatever comfort would be vastly overshadowed by the agony she felt realizing that the man she loved had just ordered her death.

“Oh, look.” Victoria touched his arm. Her eyes were skyward.

A golden eagle soared. Most likely it was the same one he’d seen earlier. They were territorial animals; they ruled over an area that might extend to sixty or seventy square miles, and woe to any plumed creatures that encroached. Golden eagles are the second fastest bird on earth, diving on prey at two hundred miles an hour. Only the peregrine falcon is faster.

This one, however, was in leisurely transit through the clear azure sky.

After a moment Victoria said, “Not revenge.”

“Hmm?”

Scooting slightly away, she turned to him. “You said I was taking a big risk for revenge, coming here to kill Eli. It wasn’t that. It was public service.”

Shaw waited.

“I was stationed overseas. I had a mentor there. You ever serve?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t know. There’re two enemies. There’s the enemy enemy, and then there’s the one you work with — and for. I’m not going to go where some women do and say that because you’re a man you don’t get it. There are lots of reasons people don’t get things and being a man might or might not be one of them. I don’t know. I’ll just tell you: we have to fight on both fronts. Women do. Gretta was my protector and friend. We took on the Taliban, and we took on Staff Sergeant George Watts and Chief Petty Officer Wayne DeVonne and Lieutenant Colonel Bradley J. Gibbons, who’d have a tantrum if you didn’t include the ‘J’ in his name when you introduced him.

“It wasn’t every day and it wasn’t full-on. Never attempted rape. It was flirting. Brushing up against you. Put-downs and bullying. It kept up until they felt you finally had the balls to do the job. Funny, that’s how everybody put it. Male genitalia. Women and men. Nobody ever said, you have the ovaries to do the job.”

She offered a mild smile. Shaw too.

“Gretta taught me to stand up... no, I should say, she taught me how to stand up. When to say, yes, sir, or ma’am. When to say no. When to ask why. When to call bullshit. When to know that you’re going to put up with bullshit because bullshit’s part of everybody’s job. This’s all pretty damn abstract, isn’t it?”

“I get it.”

She eyed him carefully.

“Then, yeah, the IED. That’s a—”

His nod told her he was familiar with the unfortunately sanitized name for bomb. Improvised explosive device. In fact one of his reward assignments had been to find one that had gone missing.

“What’s the difference between a cannon in World War One and a B-17 dropping a five-hundred-pound bomb in Germany? Probably none. But an IED? No cannon you hear on the horizon lobbing things at you. No air raid sirens. Just a stretch of asphalt, a trashcan, a phone card kiosk, children playing, goats. Those fucking IEDs could be anywhere. A baby buggy missing a wheel. That’s what got Gretta and her team. Three dead. She survived. She said it was like God punched her. Everything moved, the whole world moved. I’m getting boring now.”

“No.”

“Gretta came back. VA, private docs, therapy. The treatment did what it could. One of the things she tried was the Foundation. I was discharged and moved to where she was living.

“I had dinner with her maybe two months ago. She was in a great mood. She said everything was going to be fine. She’d be forgiven for fucking up, or getting careless, or whatever the hell she thought she’d done over there. Maybe looked away, missed the buggy, maybe texting. Who knows? I guarantee there’s nothing to be forgiven for. There’s no fucking handbook. There is only how to kill and not get killed, how to get intel, how to refuel vehicles, how to boil drinking water. But not on how to live that kind of life.

“At the end of the dinner, she hugged me and said, ‘Goodbye, until tomorrow’ and did that salute.”

Victoria’s eyes swung slowly from Shaw to the sky. Maybe looking for the eagle.

“She went home and shot herself. So happy, so content one minute. Then dead an hour later. I had to figure out what’d happened.” She looked his way. “Like you had to with Adam.”

She continued, “I helped her brother clean out her apartment and I found her notebooks from the Foundation. All her writing about the Minuses, Pluses. The regrets. The notes about how in the next life she’d be fine. She’d ‘advance.’ She’d be with her buddies who’d died. Her mother, her nephew. And me.”

Victoria was silent for a moment, the breeze hissing through the leaves, clicking branches. She pulled the vest closer around her.

“Annual suicides among civilian women is about five per hundred thousand. For women in active duty or veterans, it’s twenty-nine. You’re a mother and you go to the Whole Foods after soccer practice in Omaha and the newsstand next to the door blows up, killing four. You’re a businesswoman just shooting the shit with your buddy, having crabs at a restaurant in Baltimore, and your friend gets hit by a sniper shot you don’t even hear until he’s a pile of clothes on the ground.

“If that happens to you, you’re never the same again. Ever. But we put on a uniform and so people think we must be different, we must be immune. We’re not. It’s just as bad for us. And the worst thing that somebody can say to you is, oh, let it go. The next life, you’ll be fine. Eli had to be stopped.”

After a moment, she put the darkness away. Smiling, she said, “Do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

She handed him her phone. “Get a picture of me here.”

Victoria walked out onto the grassy field and turned to face him. He lifted the phone. He took several shots. The lighting was good and with the resplendent mountains as a backdrop, he thought she’d be pleased.