Taylor Smith - Guilt By Silence

“It sounds kind of important,” Lindsay said, setting out plates and cutlery. “I mean, he seemed really anxious for you to call.”

“I hardly know the guy. And to be perfectly honest, I never thought much of him when we were in Vienna, even if he was your dad’s buddy. Anyhow, he’s probably just calling to be polite. Reporters,” she added scornfully, “they make everything sound like a national crisis. I’ll call if I get a minute, maybe.”

Lindsay shrugged and Mariah changed the subject as they moved to the table.

The evening, as always, passed in a weary blur of homework and piano practice, housework and laundry. It was nine-thirty when Mariah went into Lindsay’s room to encourage her to pack it in for the night. The lights were on but Lindsay was in bed under the covers, her eyes closed. In one hand she held David’s old harmonica. Mariah stood for a moment watching her, swallowing the lump she felt rising in her throat.

The radio was vibrating with an insistent beat, the bass turned up to the max. Mariah reached over to lower the volume and then moved around the room, picking up discarded clothes with a sigh and depositing them in the laundry hamper before turning back to the bed. Posters of rock stars and TV idols stared down at her, strangely juxtaposed with others of puppies and kittens. Old stuffed toys took up so much of the bed that Mariah always wondered how Lindsay managed to turn over at night. Despite regular urging that she cull the herd, however, Lindsay insisted that every one of the fuzzy creatures was indispensable.

Bending over the bed, Mariah tried to remove the harmonica without disturbing her, but Lindsay’s eyes opened, glistening, as soon as Mariah touched her hand. She sat down on the edge of the bed, reaching out to stroke her daughter’s cheek. “Is your leg bothering you?” Lindsay nodded miserably. “I’ll get you some Tylenol and the heating pad,” Mariah said, rising.

“Mom?”

Mariah had been moving toward the bathroom, but she stopped and looked at the girl.

“I miss Daddy so much,” Lindsay whispered, tears washing over her dark eyes.

Mariah sat back down and wrapped her daughter in her arms, rocking her gently and stroking her hair. As the child sobbed, her own chest and throat ached with the effort of holding back tears. “I know, Lins,” she whispered. “So do I.”

Lindsay buried her face in her mother’s shoulder. As her crying subsided, she caught her breath in great, shuddering sighs. Her voice, when it came, was muffled against Mariah’s body. “I have such awful thoughts sometimes. I know I should be thankful we weren’t killed. But when I think about Daddy—how he is now, in that place,” she said, pulling back and looking down guiltily, “I feel so angry. Sometimes I even hate him—and then I hate myself for feeling like that.”

Mariah stroked her hair. “It’s normal to feel angry, honey. What happened in Vienna isn’t fair. It’s horrible and not fair—to you, to me and especially to Daddy. Can you imagine how much he wants to be here with us?” Lindsay nodded. “But sometimes life isn’t fair—you just found that out sooner than most kids. It won’t always feel this bad, I promise. Just give it some time. And you know what?” she added, lifting her daughter’s chin. “I couldn’t have handled what happened to you and Daddy if you hadn’t been such a terrific kid. I’m proud of you, Lins—and I’m so glad you’re my daughter.”

Lindsay’s lip quivered even as she smiled, and she threw her arms around her mother’s shoulders. They held on to each other for a little while. Then Mariah tucked her securely under the covers. “You’d better get some sleep if you’re going to go back tomorrow to battle Megan the tyrant. Let me get your tablets and heating pad.”

When Mariah turned out the lights a few minutes later, her daughter was snuggled under the blankets, hugging a bald teddy bear and looking calmer. Mariah kissed her, then stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her.

Moving into the living room, she settled wearily onto the sofa and opened her briefcase, pulling out a stack of magazines and press clippings. The best part of highly classified work was that it wasn’t supposed to be brought home, however hectic things might be at the office. While Mariah could use her evenings to catch up on press speculations on her most recent area of study—the interwoven networks of international terrorism—the top-secret reports to which she had access at the Central Intelligence Agency weren’t something to be left lying around on coffee tables. Spot checks of briefcases at the agency’s exits ensured that overzealous employees didn’t attempt to carry out the crown jewels.

She started to read a few press clippings, but found it impossible to focus on the printed words. The feeling was rising in her again—the gut-wrenching anxiety that she tried to block out by concentrating on Lindsay and the daily effort to rebuild some normalcy in their lives. Why did Paul Chaney have to show up today, after all this time? What kind of game was he playing now? Why would he say it wasn’t an accident when she knew for a fact that it was?

She had told Chaney only part of the truth, of course. He had no idea of her CIA connections nor that the Company, and not just the embassy, had gone over David and Lindsay’s accident with a fine-tooth comb to rule out any possibility of foul play. And although Mariah had been too busy running between hospital rooms to take part herself, someone she trusted absolutely had seen to it that no stone was left unturned in the Company’s investigation of the disaster. No, Mariah thought, the bottom line is that Chaney doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

She leaned back and massaged her temples, then glanced at her watch. Propping her feet on the coffee table, she grabbed the television remote and flicked on the ten o’clock news. As the screen began to glow, two figures came into view—the “CBN Nightly News” anchors. They fit the standard TV-news format. The man, Bob Michaels, was in his mid-forties, telegenic, conservatively dressed, sober. Beverly Chin, by comparison, was younger, more brightly dressed and seated on the right side of the screen, where the eye is naturally drawn. She smiled a great deal, although her face became serious when she read from the TelePrompTer. Her Chinese features and the good looks of the African-American weatherman brought a politically correct racial balance to the news team.

The newscast opened with the latest on the aftermath of a terrorist triple-header that had occurred three days earlier. Forty-seven deaths and scores of injuries had resulted when bombs had exploded simultaneously in London’s Trafalgar Square, Paris’s Eiffel Tower and at the Statue of Liberty in New York. The horrifying brilliance of the attacks—their stunning coordination and the pointed symbolism of the three targets, all objects of intense national pride—was such that dozens of groups had jumped in to claim responsibility and threaten further action if their demands were not met. A coordinated intelligence effort had narrowed the field of probable attackers to one fundamentalist religious group and two “liberation fronts.”

Mariah watched the item closely. Now that the Soviet Union was defunct, she had been assigned a new focus of analysis. She was in the middle of drafting a paper on the arms market for interconnected terrorist groups and she thought she might have uncovered a new supplier with possible links to Libya. There was no evidence of a connection to this ghastly terrorist triple play—not yet, anyway—but she was determined to keep at it, knowing that a coordinated assault like this had to have had strong and experienced backing.

The news report, however, told her nothing she didn’t already know. When it ended, the screen shifted back to the grave features of anchorman Bob Michaels.