MARY
I don’t blame Ken for hating me. I’m literally the very thing he has spent his life fighting. He must think everything I ever said and did with him was a lie. I can’t stop crying, even though I know my tears are mostly ones of self-pity. I feel sorry for myself, sorry for what I’ve lost. Sorry that the past I never wanted has caught up with me and ruined absolutely everything.
What happened today is what I’ve been afraid of since I got back to California. I never reported back to my handlers after I got to Afghanistan. I wanted to drop off the grid. I wanted to die, in one way or another. But then Ken found me and then he sent me here and now I have something to live for.
It’s not the Russians who have come for me either. And it’s not actually the Germans. They look German, they sound German, but they are not affiliated in any real sense. They are a splinter from the gates of hell and they came here to reclaim me.
When they walked through that door, I felt as though my heart stopped. I recognized them instantly, not by their faces, but by their bearing. Those agents are cold, hard men with no souls whatsoever. It was like seeing the devil and his demons file in to take me away.
But Ken stood up for me in the short term, anyway, and I’ll forever be grateful for that. I’d rather serve my inevitable sentence in a US prison. As bad as things might get there, they’re nothing on what was done to me before and what would be done to me again.
“Don’t worry,” Tom says. He’s trying to be reassuring. It’s not working. I can feel his arms around me, but they don’t feel as real as they used to. My mind is already shifting from a mode where I can be safe and secure and feel affection, to one where the only thing that matters is being numb.
“Can you stop, please?”
“Can I stop what?” Tom quirks a brow at me.
“Stop trying to make this better. I’m a fucking Russian spy. You should be reacting like Ken is. You should hate me.”
“Why?”
“Because I lied to you.”
He looks at me steadily. “Did you?”
“I mean, I didn’t tell you who I really am. I didn’t tell you why I really ended up in that hospital, or why I was in Afghanistan.”
“I didn’t ask you any of those things.”
“So you don’t mind being lied to by omission?”
“I knew you were in trouble, Mary. It’s been written all over you from the moment we met. And you did try to warn me. You offered to leave a half-dozen times, always saying you were more trouble than you were worth. You told me what I needed to know, even if you think you didn’t.”
I can’t believe him. I can’t believe he doesn’t hate me. I almost can’t stand how good he is. It makes me want to ugly cry, but I have to try to compose myself. Just like Ken said. Now is not the time for crying.
“You should hate me,” I repeat.
“Nope,” he stays firm. “Not going to happen.
He wraps his arms around me, pulls me into his lap, and holds me. I don’t know how long we sit there like that, time ticking away. I feel like my world is ending one breath at a time. Whatever happens next cannot be good.
* * *
“Come on, Mary. It’s time to go.”
Ken is back. He is composed and calm. I hate that, because I know what it means. It means he doesn’t need me anymore. It means he’s prepared to let me go to my fate.
Tom lets me up and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Be good, little girl.”
“I will be,” I say, wrapping my arms around his neck to give him one last hug. He feels so good, so safe. I hope I get to see him again, though I know in all likelihood I never will. I can see that in his eyes too. This is goodbye, and it’s happening so quickly neither of us can properly process it.
“Where are we going? Am I going to jail?” I ask Ken the question as we get out to his car.
“I don’t know.”
It’s hardly a reassuring response, but then again, I hardly deserve reassurance.
“Put this on.”
He hands me a dark hood. A big black cloth bag. Usually this is the sort of thing that gets shoved over your face. He’s at least doing me the honor of letting me put it on myself.
I pull it over my head, breathe deep through the cloth that blacks out the world.
“I’m sorry, Ken.”
He grunts as he starts the car.
It’s too late for sorries. I just wish he could pretend that it wasn’t. But I guess we’re done with pretending now. He knows what I am. An enemy. A traitor. A spy.
It’s a relief, in a way, to no longer be hiding everything from him. I’ve known since we met that I don’t deserve him, and that the loving would end soon enough. Now that the end is here, I feel a kind of peace. If he were to put a bullet in the back of my head right now, I wouldn’t blame him for it. I’d consider it a mercy.
“You can shoot me,” I say. “It’s okay.”
He doesn’t even dignify that with a response. I guess execution isn’t on the menu tonight. Or at least, not in his car.
* * *
An hour or so later, I am taken from the car, ushered through some place I don’t know. It smells like bleach, rarely an encouraging scent. Could be an abattoir. Could be a gym. Could be a hospital. I’d rather the abattoir.
“Listen to me, Mary,” Ken says as he pushes me down into a hard chair. “You’re about to talk to someone. Someone very important. Tell her everything. And I do mean, everything. She will know if you’re lying.”
I hear him walk away. Then I hear high heels enter the room. The hood is removed from my head and I find myself looking into the steely gaze of a very stern looking lady in her fifties. Her silver streaked hair is pulled back from her face and she has a demeanor about her that I find even more frightening than Ken.
She doesn’t introduce herself. She sits down in front of me and starts asking questions in the sort of way people do when they have your life in their hands.
This is the end of the line. I am all out of chances. I am all out of hope. There’s no point in lying anymore. I have nothing left to protect.
So I talk to her. I tell her everything. I confess my sins and crimes and she listens to them all, neither overtly judging or giving any kind of sign which would let me know how this is being received. I’m sure Ken is listening too, learning every terrible thing about me.
It’s a real possibility that I’ll be spending the rest of my life behind walls like these. I may never see the light of day again. But I’ll always have the memory of Tom as he holds me over his knee and spanks me as if I’m still a girl who can be saved.