Chapter 5

Bolton

I boarded the plane at Standiford Field, and once it had leveled out, I allowed myself to put my head back and think about Lilly. She wasn’t like the girls I’d grown up around or known in business. Those girls had always been more consumed with my name and what it could mean for their future than with me as a person. I wasn’t naive, I understood that people were attracted to wealth and old-money names. I knew of many cases where someone’s name counted for more than what they had in their bank account. The South was like that. I’d made up my mind a long time earlier not to trade on anything that belonged to my father, and that included his last name.

The attendant approached, holding out a tray with coffee and a platter of small muffins. I took the coffee but shook my head at the pastries. I’d never had a sweet tooth, not even as a child. My mother always said that was a lucky thing, and she’d smooth her hands over her hips as she said it. She’d always been very conscious of her appearance, and I had picked up that habit.

I was headed to Los Angeles, and from there, to Asia. I tried to focus on my business objective, but those amethyst eyes kept blocking my mind. I remembered how she looked up at me, the rain having created a mass of sandy curls, like a halo about her head. I saw the war she battled inside—the desire to keep control of her life versus the feminine instinct to turn it over to me. All she needed to make that change was trust. She needed to trust in me, she wanted to trust in me. The question was, was it possible for anyone to trust in me again?

My younger life had been quite different from most of the boys with whom I went to boarding school, and later to college. They were raised at their father’s knees, one hand holding a riding crop and the other a stopwatch. Their lives had revolved around horses and all that stood for. Horses were just a rich man’s hobby. In the early days, breeding had been businesses—owners to trainers to jockeys to stable boys. It was an entire ecosystem that revolved around the unique qualities of bluegrass to make horses’ bones stronger so they could endure the pounding as they circled the track. Later, the tax laws changed, and horses did become hobbies, but they were still a coin of the realm.

People spoke of horses as they did their distant relatives. They tracked which mares were carrying and when they were due to foal. Every spring there was a sale at Keeneland in Lexington, and it was here that their racing lives began. My mother had socialized in that circle, although she only rode horses occasionally for pleasure. It was my father who had dragged us in, me with my knuckles fastened tightly around the handle of my mother’s suitcases.

My mother was cosmopolitan in her outlook. She didn’t have a single home in Kentucky but multiple homes around the world. Indeed, everywhere she went, a motel room, a friend’s château, even a small garret above a shop in Paris became our home. I always went with her, and it wasn’t until later in life that I suspected perhaps that had been my father’s condition for letting her go. She was entirely too beautiful for her own good. They had met through a mutual friend. I think she was attracted to his bravado before she learned it was control. As for him, who wouldn’t want her on his arm? She was everything a woman should be.

I picked up languages until I was fluent in more than a dozen, even down to regional dialects. My mother said it was a talent. I thought of it more as survival. I learned to adapt to my father’s demands in order to avoid his scorn and punishments. I learned to blend in with my surroundings, with reptilian abilities to change my personality accordingly. In France, I could be arrogant, humorous, and carefree. In Germany, I learned to be controlling and serious and to strive for perfection. Every part of the world had its own flavor, and I knew them all.

In my senior year of college, the government had come calling. They watched for people like me, those who had unique abilities or facets to their personality. They had a place for me, they said. They wanted me to travel the world, something I did on a regular basis. They wanted me to be a good American, to work in the service of my country. None of that had any great appeal to me. It wasn’t until they said that I could become anyone I wanted that it caught my attention. I lived mostly in my head, because that was where my father couldn’t go.

I agreed, although the terms of our relationship were unique. I had no need of a job and no desire to earn more money, and I certainly wasn’t looking for anyone to control me. I proposed a symbiotic relationship in which I would move around the globe in my professional guise as an importer/exporter. That business environment, when coupled with my personal contacts and my ability at languages, gave me entry into a world they could not otherwise touch.

Our deal was simple. From time to time they called me in and mentioned they had need of a certain bit of information, or to contact someone and pass along a message. Perhaps they wanted to know the source of a shipment, or how to avoid allowing it to reach its destination. All of this fell under my expertise. In return, they looked the other way as I conducted business for my own enterprise. My shipments were never held in customs. The holds of my ships were never inspected, nor were tariffs charged as long as goods traveled under my name. It was a mutually beneficial relationship, until that night when Carmella died.

I carried the events of that day with me, like a suitcase that was too heavy to lift and could only be dragged as though fastened to my ankle with a chain. It haunted my dreams, colored my view of the future and of the world as a whole. The next time they asked for me with an assignment, I shook my head and walked away. They tried several more times, and each time I refused. Finally, they sent one of my former team members to talk with me.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he told me as we sat in the corner booth at a lonely bar on the side of the highway. “You had a clean shot. It was just dumb luck that he turned at that moment. She didn’t blame you, Bolt. She knew what she was doing, and she knew the risks. You’re trying to trade places with her, and you know that won’t do any good. It won’t change a thing. Look, they don’t want you full-time. They know you won’t agree to that. They sent me to ask you if you would help on that rare occasion when only someone with your unique qualities would make the mission successful. It won’t involve weapons, just information. The conversation at a dinner party or taking a beautiful woman to dinner. That wouldn’t be so hard, would it?”

I was on the verge of refusing again, but my life had become boring, and I truly was a patriot. Not just of the United States, but every country where my mother had made us a home. It was for her that I agreed, only because it could mean that a violent act would never have to occur. I outlined my demands, and my team member nodded, shook my hand, and left. I hadn’t heard from them yet, but I knew it was inevitable. They would come for me, and when they did, I could tell no one that I was leaving or where I was going, much less when I would return. That sort of information jeopardized an entire team of people as well as the mission itself. This always lay in the back of my mind and was one of the reasons I couldn’t form lasting relationships. It hadn’t bothered me before. That was before Lilly. I had failed to take care of Carmella. I had failed to take care of my mother. I couldn’t fail again—Lilly had no one to fall back on but me.