Tom Savage - Mrs. John Doe

Six days, she thought. Six days since that phone call on June 29. It had all happened in a mere six-

Something occurred to her at that moment, and she actually began to laugh.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Today is the Fourth of July!”

Nora had never been in an official plane before, and she admitted to herself that she could definitely get used to it. She’d slept most of the way, on a plush couch along one sleek wall. Jeff had stayed awake in his seat, reading his precious Hemingway, but she’d stretched out somewhere over the Brittany coast and was soon dreaming.

She dreamed of hospital rooms, several of them. First, there were the ones in the village in Norfolk, where Jeff and Josef had recuperated for a week after surgery while she stayed in a charming room above a local pub called the Three Crowns. She’d spent every day at their bedsides when they weren’t being debriefed by an international phalanx of officials: MI6, SDAT, Mossad, CIA. Nora had been questioned as well; she’d told her story several times. The Cowpers were to be given a new airfield in exchange for their silence.

The agencies had decided that Bill Howard’s deal with the terrorists should be kept top secret. As far as the world was concerned, the whole affair had never happened. The Howards, Maurice Dolin, Claudia Bellini, Solange Braure, and Craig Elder had been killed in an unfortunate accident in Norfolk while taking off for a pleasure trip to Monte Carlo. That was the official story, and Mme. Dolin suddenly announced to the French press that she’d found a note from her missing husband, confirming it. Trevor Markham had died in his nursing home of natural causes.

The stitches along the three-inch slice on Nora’s left arm just above her elbow didn’t itch as much as she’d expected. She decided she was going to like having the scar, a memento of her great adventure. She’d Skyped with Dana every day, promising to be home soon. Dana had been full of news about a new young man, someone named Phil, and Nora hoped he turned out to be a better prospect than the last one. Privately, she was simply grateful that she once again had something so routine and maternal to occupy her thoughts.

At the end of their week of recovery, Josef had been bundled into a car to London, to a waiting EL AL jetliner. Jeff had shaken his hand and Nora had kissed him, smiling at the thought of the delighted girl who’d greet him at the end of his journey. He’d sustained no permanent damage; he’d be in good shape in time for his wedding in December. He’d invited them to attend it in Tel Aviv, and they’d promised to make every effort to be there.

Then there had been the hospital room in London, where Andy Gilbert was a less-than-gracious patient. His ribs were mending and the concussion was gone. He was too big for his bed, too big for the room, and he just wanted to go home. He had a wife, Nora had been grateful to discover, a fellow Jamaican named Hope who had been surprisingly polite to the woman who’d struck and nearly killed her husband. Nora had taken Hope out to lunch while Jeff stayed at Andy’s bedside, where he soon learned never to play poker with the man.

Jeff had seen a famous specialist in London, who’d arranged for an equally famous colleague in New York to perform a second surgery on Jeff’s right knee. There would be some pins and a plastic part, but with practice, he’d be walking normally in a matter of months. He was told he’d have to take things more slowly, and he’d accepted this with grace. He’d made arrangements to transfer to a desk job at the CIA’s field office in New York City. Nora was secretly delighted.

They’d stayed at the Byron, in their usual room, and Lonny Tindall and his family had made a fuss over them. Nora had presented Lonny with a new laptop that his brothers had told her he’d been coveting, and he’d been endlessly grateful. He never asked for any more details of their shared exploits, and Nora never offered them.

One day in London, Nora had taken a cab to a house in the East End. She met a woman named Helen Belmont, the daughter of Trevor Markham, the dead man who’d posed as John Doe, and presented her with his ashes in a silver urn. Mrs. Belmont thanked her, admitting that she’d never known her father, the MI6 agent, very well-her late mother had thrown him out many years earlier, when his drinking had become too much. She promised to keep the urn in a place of pride on her mantel, and she was moved by the news of her estranged father’s final act for his country and the world. Nora told this woman every classified detail; it was the least she could do for the man.

After leaving Mrs. Belmont’s house, Nora had gone to a cemetery in another part of London and placed flowers on the grave of her friend, Vivian Howard. Her husband hadn’t been buried here, nor would he be; they hadn’t found enough of him to fill a coffin. Nora didn’t know where Craig Elder was buried, and she didn’t care. She’d sent flowers to Claudia Bellini’s husband and son.

The final hospital room had been in Paris, after she and Jeff had taken their leave of Andy and Hope Gilbert and the boisterous Tindall clan. They’d gone to France and spent the morning with Jacques Lanier before being flown home by the American military. Nora had met the wonderful Marianne and the son whose Renault had been retrieved from the woods by the autoroute. And she’d met grandsons, three of them, who’d fallen in love with Jeff and wanted to know all about his life as a spy.

Jacques’s chest wound had been serious, nearly fatal; his days as a field operative were over. He and Jeff had commiserated about that and swapped war stories while the grandsons had eagerly listened. His future would be at home, with his family, which he thought was fine. Marianne thought it was fine too-a sentiment Nora fully understood. As Jacques had confided to Nora, “At my age, one should break it easy.”

“ Take it easy,” Nora had corrected before kissing his cheek and handing over the gift she’d brought him, a dictionary of American slang.

Now, at last, the federal government plane touched down at an airfield on Long Island. Nora wasn’t surprised to find her car waiting on the tarmac at the foot of the stairway, a marine standing beside it with her keys. Two other marines helped Jeff descend the stairs with his crutches, and they got him into the passenger seat. Nora thanked them, smiling at their crisp salutes, and headed for the expressway.

They didn’t speak on the drive home; they merely sat together in comfortable silence, the silence that only comes from twenty-one years of unconditional love. She reached up to touch the gold locket: Always keep me close to your heart .

She thought about her strange journey, the lies and secrets, the disguises and the urgency and the violence. She thought of the people she’d killed, knowing that she’d grow used to the fact. This was what her husband did, and Jacques and Josef and all the others. They did what was necessary, then they moved on. Nora was determined to do that as well. She was a wife, a mother, an actor, and a teacher, but now she was also an honorary secret agent.

They’d spend a quiet August together, then he’d be off to the city for his new desk job and Nora would be back in her classroom. She was looking forward to it, a new group of bright young people who wanted to learn how to lie for a living. Well, she thought, they’re coming to the right place. I can teach them that.

She smiled over at her husband and broke the silence. “Welcome home, Mr. Doe.”

The July sun bore down on the car, and the scent of salt air from the Sound arrived as she left the highway for the beach road. In minutes, she was turning into their driveway. She grinned at the sight of the lone figure waving dramatically from the widow’s walk at the top of the house. While Nora parked and went around to help Jeff out of the car, their beautiful daughter raced down the stairs and threw open the front door to greet them.