The Old Man

Alan had recorded a videodisc of himself sitting there at the table. When she first saw his face, there was a half second of pleasure, but then she saw that his expression was not happy.

“Hi, Marie. I’m aware that leaving a recording is a terrible way to tell you this. I can only promise you that there was no way that wasn’t terrible. I am on a plane right now, about ten hours into a fourteen-hour flight. I’m part of a mission to deliver aid and medical care to some people who need it and deserve to receive it. The work is real. There are forty-six of us, and I’m certain that none of the others have ulterior motives.

“As for my motives, I’m sure you know what they are. The morning when we had to get out of the cabin and try to escape through the snow, I realized we were about to move to our last option. We both knew by then that my giving the money to the government had not changed anybody’s mind. And we knew that they would never stop looking for us. But that morning, I realized that I couldn’t let things go on much longer. Beginning that day, I changed what I was doing.

“I apologize for the secrecy. I had to hide my plans from you. I knew that you would never agree. And I knew that if I told you in person even ten minutes before I was on the plane and in the air, you would try to stop me.

“I’ve now reached the point where if you called anyone or made any attempt to get the plane stopped, I would certainly be caught and killed. I don’t know how long this will take. This trip is supposed to last for six months, but where we’re going, plans have to be made day to day.

“I’ve left you the things you’ll need if you have to leave the apartment while I’m gone, even if it means leaving Canada too. You’ll find a pocketbook in a drawer in the bedroom with Canadian and American cash in it. There’s also a Vermont driver’s license and a bank card in the name Julia Larsen with your picture on it. There’s a balance in that bank account of a little over two million dollars. There’s also a safe-deposit box key in the purse for the box at that bank. The American passport is the last one I got with your picture in it, so don’t lose it.

“I hate to sound corny, but destroy this DVD. It could get us both killed. The only good way to do it is to burn it. Thank you for everything, and good luck. Good-bye.”

While the image dissolved into static emptiness, Marie cried. It wasn’t the sort of crying that made a small drop or two well up in a woman’s eyes that she blotted with a piece of Kleenex. She wept with deep, shuddering spasms, rocking back and forth.

She knew exactly where he was going, without having to look up the possible destinations of a fourteen-hour flight or the excursions of Toronto relief organizations. He was going back to that horrible place because he liked the odds. If he killed Faris Hamzah, then Faris Hamzah would stop demanding his death and sending killers, and she and his family would be safe. If Faris Hamzah killed him, then Hamzah would stop sending killers, and she and his family would be safe.

She loved him, but she hated him. He didn’t have to do this. They had been in a new country, safe and happy, for six months. He had manipulated her, fooled her again. He had never stopped manipulating her. And now he had left her totally alone in a foreign country, and she was scared and angry.

She ejected the DVD from the computer, broke it in her hands, and broke it again. She carried it to the kitchen, put the pieces in a small iron frying pan, slid the pan into the oven, and turned on the broiler to melt them. She turned on the stove-top fan to get rid of the smell. Then she began to search the apartment for guns.

She found herself annoyed at Alan for not having guns in the apartment. If he had any left, he must have taken them with him. He undoubtedly thought she would decide to kill herself, and so he would try to make it less likely that she could carry it off.

Her frustration and irritation grew as she searched. She looked in every drawer, every cabinet, and everyplace she had ever seen him hide a gun. She was at it for hours, and then realized it was nearly midnight. She was tired, and she was hungry. She went into the kitchen and ran water in the frying pan. She tried to scrape the charred mess out of the pan. She pried most of what was left of the plastic into the garbage, then conceded that the pan was now unusable, and threw that in the trash too.

She sat and thought about the relationship, from the moment he had called to ask about the room she’d advertised in Chicago until now. The big moment, the time when everything had changed, was when he had kidnapped her from the apartment and driven away. That was when her secret had begun to matter again.

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