Guilt By Silence

“Headstick?” she asked. One brown eye closed, opened, then closed—the signal for no. He seemed alert and Mariah berated herself again for having made him wait.

She put aside the headband with the attached stick that he used to tap the keyboard when his faltering right hand became exhausted. The left hand was useless, drawn into itself and held tightly against his chest by the constricted arm, perpetually reverted to a fetal position except when he was deeply asleep and his muscles finally relaxed.

Mariah removed the paper bag from his lap and pulled a rolling table over his thin legs. She lifted his right hand, bringing it to rest on the computer keyboard. His bony index finger reached out shakily and landed on a key. Mariah looked at the screen and saw the letter L—Lindsay.

“She’s at the swimming pool,” she said. “I’m picking her up on the way home.” Mariah leaned back against the windowsill and smiled. “She’s doing great in the water. The coach says she may even make the team next year. She’s such a fighter, David.”

His eyes regarded her intently.

“And the doctor says it’s doing wonders for her leg,” she went on. “It’s definitely growing and he thinks there’s a chance it might eventually catch up to the other one.” Mariah reached into the paper bag she had brought. “Lindsay couldn’t come, but she did bake cookies for you—chocolate chip.”

Slow, lopsided grin.

“She does this to irritate me, you know, just because I’m allergic to chocolate. I hope it gives you both zits.”

David watched her pull out one of the cookies. She put it in his hand and wrapped his fingers around it. The tendons on the back of his hand stretched taut like puppet strings as he lifted the cookie to his mouth with agonizing slowness. Mariah took some shirts out of the bag and walked over to the small wardrobe next to the bed. David’s eyes followed her every step as his jaw slowly worked on the cookie.

“I washed your flannel shirts for you. It’s getting frosty out there.” He didn’t go out much, of course, except when she and Lindsay took him for walks on the weekend or, once a month or so, home overnight. But it was a recognition that he was alive and the seasons were still turning.

Mariah came back and pulled up a chair next to him, wiping a line of chocolate drool that ran down from the corner of his mouth, then stroking his arm absently as she spoke to him. She talked about Lindsay and her new school, their evenings, office gossip, inconsequential stories of people, some of them old friends, some people he didn’t know. It didn’t matter, as long as she could make him feel that he was still part of their world.

As she rambled on, David’s eyes watched her and smiled. It was the only part of him that was recognizable anymore, Mariah thought. The orderlies always managed to do something peculiar with his curly black hair. Not their fault, really—they hadn’t spent years watching him step from the shower and give his head a distracted shake until each curl found its own equilibrium, had they? Now, the way they combed it, the curls were straightened and flattened, parted at the side, giving him a strangely organized air that he had never possessed when he was in charge of his own grooming. And he was getting grayer. In the ten months since the accident, he seemed to have aged a decade or more beyond his forty-one years. His frame, slight to begin with, had withered to a wispy frailty.

Only the eyes held the essence of the man David had once been. They were also the only part of him capable anymore of reflecting a familiar emotion. The emotions she saw there these days were fleeting and elemental—pleasure at her coming, sadness at her leaving, frustration during his rare attempts to communicate.

Once though, in Vienna, when he had fully emerged from the coma into which he had been plunged for several weeks after the accident, Mariah had seen in those eyes the terror of realization.

For several days previous, there had been times when he seemed to recognize her. In those moments of brief lucidity, he had struggled to reach out to her, but his body had become permanently contorted, twisted into an unnatural stiffness by the misfiring synapses in his brain. The effort exhausted him and he would lapse again into catatonia. One morning, however, Mariah had stepped off the hospital elevator to the sound of unearthly shrieks coming from the direction of his room. Heart pounding, she had raced down the corridor, the cries growing louder as she approached his door.

It was what she had most dreaded—the one thing she had prayed would never come. Multiple skull fractures from the accident had left irreversible brain damage. She had seen the X-rays and CAT scans herself, had had the damage explained in detail, and she knew that his life was over, even if his heart still beat and his lungs still drew breath. The only thing the Viennese doctors hadn’t been able to tell Mariah with any degree of certainty was what portion of his cognitive abilities would be left when—and if—he ever regained consciousness. She had found herself, incredibly, beginning to pray that he would die rather than understand what he had become.

But when she stepped into the room that morning, she knew that her worst fear had come true. David was screaming in inarticulate anguish, having awakened to discover that his body had become a tomb—and that he was buried alive.

Mariah shuddered now at the memory of his cries, guttural and incoherent, and of the terror in his eyes as he searched hers for a sign of hope that this was only a passing nightmare. She had sat next to him for hours, rubbing his back and stroking his hair and holding his twisted body until his screams had subsided to choking sobs and then faded altogether.

In that time, she had watched a light in those newly conscious eyes flicker and die. She never knew whether the calm that finally settled on him was madness or some kind of divinely inspired state of grace. It didn’t matter, she thought, as long as it gave him peace.

It gave her none, however. Most of what was left of her husband—Dr. David Tardiff, nuclear physicist and ex-boy wonder, harmonica player and Wayne Gretzky wannabe, love of her life and father of her only child—had died that day. All that remained now was this sad shell of a man—that, and a hard angry fist in the pit of her being that was perpetually raised in defiance of the God or the fates that had allowed such a thing to happen.

Mariah glanced at her watch. “I have to go soon, David. Lins will be almost done with her practice.”

His head lolled on the headrest as he turned his eyes to her, their expression sad, wistful as always. But he held her gaze fixedly and then his right hand reached out to hers, resting on the arm of his chair. He grappled for her wrist. Her hand followed his as he moved it shakily into his lap.

“Oh, David,” she said softly. She rested her head against his shoulder for a moment, then lifted it. “Just a minute,” she whispered. She rose and went to the door, closing it firmly, regretting the absence of a lock. The room was a private one, but institutional privacy was a contradiction in terms.

The first time this had happened was one Saturday when she and Lindsay had taken him home to their condo overnight. It had been late in the evening. Lindsay had gone up to bed after helping her get David settled on the sofa bed in the living room and Mariah had been lying beside him, outside the covers, reading to him while soft music played in the background. She wasn’t sure whether or not he followed the words, but her voice and the music seemed to relax him, and he’d looked almost like a gaunt version of his old self, lying there under the quilt.

Suddenly, Mariah had glanced up and seen him watching her with an expression of acute longing in his eyes and she had known what he was thinking about. It had taken her breath away. No one had ever mentioned it during his long hospital stays, even though she had discussed with the doctors every other conceivable aspect of the prognosis for his physical and mental recovery. But she had understood all at once that whatever else was to be denied him for the rest of his life, some basic needs had not disappeared.

That night, she had done what she had to do to give him the comfort that only a wife or lover can offer—she had made love to him as gently and delicately as she knew how. And although he was unable to reciprocate, she had comforted herself with the memory of the hundreds of times he had held her and loved her. Then she had crawled under the covers beside him, rocking him and crying silent tears, feeling in her arms the familiar and yet awkwardly unfamiliar outlines of his body.

Now, sitting close beside him in his nursing-home room, she gave him comfort again and then held him for a while before she had to go. His eyes were closed when she left him.

Mariah stood at the top of the steps outside the front door, inhaling deeply to clear her lungs of institutional air, forcing her mind to make the transition back to life beyond David’s world. She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again and started down the steps.

Preoccupied, she failed to notice the figure waiting under a tree next to the sidewalk. It was only when he said her name that she glanced up, startled out of her reverie. She narrowed her eyes to make him out in the shadows, then recoiled in surprise.

“Paul? Paul Chaney—what on earth are you doing here?” she asked, moving quickly from astonishment to instinctive wariness.

He came forward and they met at the bottom step. “Waiting for you.” He bent down and they exchanged busses on both cheeks, the European-style that transplanted Americans adopt awkwardly at first, then maintain as a lifelong habit as they come to appreciate the comfort of the ritual.

He pulled back and she studied him under the lamplight. He was tall, his lankiness emphasized by the soft, brown leather bomber jacket he habitually wore and was wearing now, the collar turned up. He had a full head of blond hair, graying at the temples, clear blue eyes and a photogenic face that could be earnest, penetrating or morally indignant as required in front of the television cameras. On air he dominated the screen, his presence imposing. Off camera, he also had what Mariah thought of as his helpless-but-comic puppy-dog shtick that he cultivated especially for the attractive and—preferably—rich and well-connected women that he seemed to attract like a magnet, all of whom seemed intent on nurturing him.

Based in Vienna, Chaney was senior foreign correspondent for CBN, the Cable Broadcast News network. In the three years she and David had known him there, Mariah had watched—appalled, amazed and ultimately amused—the succession of women he had trailed on his arm who had tried to sink their hooks into him. He had been too slippery for all of them, although an aggressive blonde who called herself Princess Elsa von Schleimann had looked for a while as if she might actually reel him in.

“What are you up to?” Mariah said. “I didn’t know you were back in the States.”

“Just got in yesterday. I’m working on a story.”

“What happened to the princess?” Mariah, anxious to mask her unease, hoped the question came across as mischievous.

Chaney seemed startled, then frowned. “Found herself a real prince, I guess.” They shuffled awkwardly, the old tension rising between them like a sudden fog. Finally, Chaney broke the silence. “How have you been, Mariah?”

She glanced away into the trees, her lips pressed tight. Then she sighed and turned back to him. “All right. My daughter’s doing better. She’s settled into a new school now, here in McLean, and she’s making a good recovery.”

“I’m glad.” Chaney glanced up at the front door of the nursing home. “And David? Is there any hope?”

Mariah shook her head slowly, watching the sidewalk as she crushed a dried leaf under the toe of her shoe. “If anything, he’s losing ground. He’s been having seizures from the scar tissue on his brain. For a while, he’d been able to type a few words on the computer, but now he seems to have lost even that.” She looked up as a sudden thought occurred to her. “Are you going in to see him, Paul? He’d like that—someone from the old days, from the team.”

Chaney smiled. He had been an honorary member of the Vienna Diplomats, the haphazard team of amateur foreign hockey players that played pickup games whenever they could find an opponent and get ice time on one of Vienna’s rinks.

“I already have. That’s how I knew you were coming—a nurse told me.” He moved closer, so close, she could smell the leather of his jacket. “Can we talk?”

How was it that Paul Chaney always managed to do this to her? Mariah wondered. Make her feel vulnerable and uneasy. On alert, her defenses aroused—against what, she was never quite sure. Something.

She mustered up an apologetic grimace. “Sorry, I can’t. I have to pick up Lindsay.” She glanced at her watch, half turning away already. “I’m late. She’s waiting for me. It’s been nice seeing you, and I’m grateful to you for visiting David, but—”

Chaney moved to block her path and put his hands on her shoulders. “Please. This is important. I need to talk to you about what really happened in Vienna. About the people who did this to David—and to your daughter.”

“What are you talking about? Nobody did this. It was an accident.”

“I don’t think it was. I think it was deliberate. I’m not sure about some of the details, but I’m trying to find out.”

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking herself free of his grip. “I know you. You’re trying to come up with some sensationalist news item—Chaney’s exposé of the week. Well, forget it. There’s no story here. What happened to David and Lindsay was nothing but a horrible, ugly traffic accident.”

“Give me a break, will you? David was my friend. I wouldn’t say something like this if I didn’t believe it was true.”

“Give me a break, Paul! Do you believe you’re the only person that this thought might have occurred to? I was working in the embassy. Don’t you think I insisted that every effort be made to find out exactly what happened? We had people breathing down the necks of the Vienna Police every step of the way during that investigation. But it was an accident—so drop it, please. We’ve been through enough.”

She started down the path to the parking lot. Chaney never actually raised his voice, but it seemed to ring through the night. “It wasn’t, Mariah. And I think you know it.”

Mariah turned her head slowly to look at him over her shoulder, fixing him coldly in her gaze. “Stay away from me, Chaney—and from my family. I’m warning you.”

Across the lot, Rollie Burton watched from his vehicle, his eyes narrowed. The woman drove off, tires squealing as she pulled out. Only then did the man walk over to another car—a new white Ford that looked like a rental—and disappear in the opposite direction.

Burton pocketed the ivory-handled blade, then drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. He knew who that guy was—couldn’t remember his name, but was sure he’d seen him on TV. The news, that was it. She obviously knew him, too, although she hadn’t looked thrilled to see him. Maybe there was more to this job than he’d thought. For sure, he wasn’t happy about doing his work under the nose of some media hack. He was going to have to tread carefully.

Burton flipped the key in the ignition and put the car in gear, turning his grungy Toyota right as he headed out of the parking lot, following in the direction she had taken.

3

Mariah spotted her daughter as soon as she pulled up in front of the school. Lindsay was sitting at the top of the wide staircase at the main entrance, her mass of hair a burning bush under the overhead lights. She was deep in conversation with another young girl, and the two of them were feigning indifference to the group of boys nearby. The boys, falling over themselves in their rush to impress the girls, were performing death-defying skateboard tricks up and down the staircase. Their only reward was, alas, two pairs of pretty thirteen-year-old eyes rolled heavenward each time one of them tripped over his own gangly legs. In spite of the dread that clung to her like soot, Mariah grinned. Some things never change.

When Lindsay spotted the Volvo, she stood and waved goodbye to her friend, then started carefully down the stairs. Her arms were laden with books, and her pace stopped and started as the damaged left leg followed the stronger right, one step at a time. Mariah gripped the wheel, suppressing the urge to jump out of the car and run to take the books and offer a supporting arm. But Lindsay had thrown away her crutches a few weeks earlier and reacted angrily on those rare occasions when Mariah forgot her determination not to hover and fret. The ache in her mothering heart was less easily suppressed, however.

She leaned over and opened the passenger door. Lindsay dropped heavily into the seat, weighted down by her books. Mariah took them from her and placed them on the back seat while the girl lifted her left leg with her hands and settled it into a comfortable position before pulling in the right and shutting the door. Mariah watched her buckle up, then passed her fingers gently over Lindsay’s damp red curls, pushing the perpetually unruly mass back over her shoulders. The color was a throwback to ancient Bolt and Tardiff ancestors, it seemed, but the curls were pure David.

“Hi, kiddo. Sorry I’m late. I got held up at the home.”

Lindsay’s head snapped toward her mother, her expression shifting instantly from adolescent lightheartedness to all-too-adult anxiety. “Is Daddy all right?”

Mariah was putting the car in gear, but she paused and patted her daughter’s arm. “He’s fine, Lins. He loved your cookies.” Lindsay settled back into her seat, a smile replacing the fear in her eyes. “I was running late, that’s all.”

Lindsay shrugged. “It’s okay. Our practice went a little over. I just got out.” Mariah pulled the Volvo into the road, turning right. “Mom? Where are we going?”

“Home, of course.”

“Why are we going this way?”

Mariah glanced around, noticing where she was and realizing with a start that she had made a wrong turn. “Oh, for—”

“Hello-o! Earth to Mom—come in, Mom. Are you with us?”

“All right, all right. Sorry. I’ll pull a U-turn at the next light.”

Lindsay shook her head and then promptly launched into a long and detailed report on recent developments in the ongoing drama of thirteen-year-old social politics. Today, it seemed, two girls had decided to ostracize a third for some perceived infraction of teenage standards of decorum.

Like anyone who read all the parenting books, Mariah knew that teenagers lived in a parallel universe of strange customs and even stranger preoccupations. Still, she hadn’t quite been prepared when Lindsay suddenly turned into one of those hormone-tossed creatures.

After observing her daughter’s friends, though, Mariah had concluded that Lindsay was different, old beyond her years, more given to sober reflection. Mariah put it down to the accident and its awful consequences. Most youngsters were certain that they were invulnerable. Lindsay had learned early—too early—what a fragile illusion that was. Under the circumstances, it was probably a good sign that Lindsay could get caught up in the same trivial issues as her friends.

“Isn’t that mean, Mom?”

Mariah had only been half listening, waiting for a break in the on-coming traffic so she could turn around, thrown off by meeting Chaney again.

“What? Oh—for sure,” Mariah said, snapping back into focus. “So what did you do about it?”

“I told Megan I thought she wasn’t being fair and that I didn’t care what she said, Jenna was still my friend. Boy! It makes me so mad!” Lindsay folded her arms across her chest, eyes flashing.

Mariah smiled. “Good for you, kiddo. You’re a loyal friend. Don’t let the mob mentality rule.”

“Yeah,” Lindsay said, her lower lip jutting out as she nodded. “Some people think they know it all—like the rest of us should just sit back and let them rule the world!”

Dieter Pflanz knew something about what it took to rule the world—or at least, manage good chunks of it. And he knew how easily that control could be lost if you didn’t pay attention to details.

He glanced at his watch, calculating the time back East. Ignoring the sleek designer telephone on his desk, Pflanz reached into a cabinet behind him and pulled out a sliding shelf on which sat a bulkier unit. He turned a key next to the number pad and punched in a series of digits. Spinning his chair to face a big plate-glass window, he leaned back and propped his feet on the sill. A digital click in his ear traced the signal of the long-distance call. Crooking the telephone receiver against his shoulder, Pflanz picked up an India rubber ball from his desk, powerful fingers compressing the dense sphere as he watched the scene below him.

The California sun was still well above the western horizon. From his eighteenth-story aerie in McCord Tower, at the heart of Newport Center, Pflanz could see the late-afternoon surfers heading toward the beach, the diehards braving the cold December surf in wet suits. He shook his head as he watched all the cars with surfboard-laden roof racks wending their way along the Coast Highway. Despite the fact that he’d been based here for a decade now, he had never gotten used to the southern California life-style. “Laid-back” was not in Dieter Pflanz’s vocabulary. The daily sight of beaches packed with strapping young surfers and volleyball players only filled him with contempt. It was symptomatic of a society gone soft.

The telephone at the other end of the line began to ring as the connection was completed. Halfway through the third ring, it was picked up. “Hello?”

“It’s me. Going to scramble.”

“Roger.”

Pflanz punched a button under the telephone keypad. After a brief delay, a light began to flash on the unit. At the other end of the line, he knew, a similar light would be flashing. A long beep following a series of short ones confirmed that the scrambler was operational. From here on in, anyone trying to monitor the call would hear nothing but a piercing whine. Only the synchronized software of the two machines was capable of decoding the electronic gobbledygook passing across the connection.

“Okay,” Pflanz said. “We’re set.”

“I’ve been expecting your call. How’s it going?”

“We’re coming in tomorrow. There’s one stop en route—a charity thing. We arrive in D.C. in the evening. McCord sees the President on Friday.”

“I heard. He’s up to speed.”

“Good.”

“What about New Mexico?”

“It’s on for tonight.”

“Tonight? Jesus, Dieter! So soon?”

“We have no choice. Everything’s in place. Either we do it tonight or we miss the window of opportunity.”

“Are you sure about this? If anything goes wrong, this could blow up in our faces.”

Pflanz squeezed the rubber ball tighter. “Nothing’s going to go wrong, George. Not,” he added pointedly, “like that mess in Vienna.”

There was a long sigh on the other end of the line. “Hell, don’t talk to me about that. We’re still cleaning up.”

“What about the woman? She’s back in operation now?”

“She’s nothing to worry about.”

“She hasn’t made the connection?”

“No. She’s off the file and preoccupied with her family. Trust me—Mariah Bolt poses no threat to us.”

“She’d better not,” Pflanz growled. “All right, look—I’ll call you when I get in tomorrow.”

“No. Call me tonight, when you hear from New Mexico.”

“It’ll be late.”

“You’ve got my home number. Call. I’ll be up till I hear.”

“Roger.”

Pflanz cradled the receiver and closed the cabinet housing the secure phone. Then he leaned back and watched the sun sinking lower toward the Pacific.

A big man, with a hawk’s beak for a nose and hands like bulldozer shovels, Pflanz still looked at forty-nine as if he belonged in jungle fatigues instead of the corporate uniform that he mostly wore these days. Despite the suit, though, no one would mistake him for anything but a security man—the ever-watchful, hooded eyes missed nothing. His massive shoulders hunched forward, giving him the appearance of a bird of prey poised for takeoff.