Duplicity (19 page)

"I'll be leaving tomorrow."

She had been dreading this moment since the first of August. She had known the end was coming. Even so, her chest felt so constricted that she could hardly breathe. "So this is good-bye?"

"No. I don't like good-byes."

"Neither do I."

They held each other in silence and watched the moon track across the sky.

"It's been a beautiful interlude," he said finally. His tongue felt too thick for his mouth, and he wondered why the words were so hard to say.

He did hate good-byes, especially this one. He wanted to plunge into the dark forest and howl his loneliness like a wolf. He wanted to bang his fist against a tree and curse the Fates who had made their union impossible.

For the first time in his life he resented the element of danger in his job, a danger that precluded intimate relationships.
Life was full of twists of fate
, he thought. The thing he found most intriguing about his work—the danger, the excitement of pitting his own cunning against those who threatened his country, the freedom of others—was what stood between him and Ellen. There was too much risk. He couldn't endanger the woman he loved.

There
. He had finally admitted it.
Love
. That special something he had sought in his early life and run from in his adult life had finally caught up with him. He loved Dr. Ellen Stanford, and that made the parting all the more sorrowful.

"Yes," she said while her heart broke in two. "A beautiful interlude."

He kissed her damp forehead and thought how he would miss her. He wanted to say
I love you
, but he dared not. He clenched his jaw against the words.

"Did you say something?" she asked.

"No." He rubbed his cheek against hers. First there had been the parade of orphanages that had made permanent ties with friends and even pets impossible, and now this. His work. Was it possible, he wondered, that Ellen had the strength to deal with his job?

He quickly squelched the thought. It wouldn't be fair to ask someone else to share the danger. He held her tightly, and the agony of choice threatened to break him. He had never dreamed that once he found love it would be so hard to let go.

He wanted to say,
I can never let you go, Ellen
. Instead, he said, "Is it all right if I stop by the compound tomorrow to see Gigi before I go?"

"I think you should," she said. "I’ll let her know you're coming."

Gigi will vent her feelings
, she thought.
She won't hide her heartbreak under polite conversation and a brave smile.

Dirk turned to her and looked deep into her eyes. "Ellen." That's all he said, just her name. But his voice was haunted with all the loneliness of his past and all the lonesome times of his future.

They came together in a frenzy of passion that sought to hold back time. But nature kept her appointments, and when the last star was dimmed by the approaching sun. Dirk took Ellen back to the compound.

 o0o

Ellen stood outside the new fence, watching Dirk and Gigi say good-bye. The bright August sun beat down on them, wilting the goldenrod bouquet Gigi was clutching tightly in her hand. The gorilla's face was solemn as she watched Dirk sign and speak.

"I have to go, Gigi."

She put the bouquet on top of her head and asked with her hands,
Man go see brothers and sisters?

 "No," Dirk signed. "Go to work. Go to big city."

 
Where big city?

 "Far away."

 
Gigi come too
.

 "No. I'm sorry, Gigi. I must go alone."

 No. Gigi come
. Her face lit up with sudden inspiration.
Gigi drive!

 Ellen covered her mouth to keep from laughing. She noticed that Dirk was also struggling to suppress his mirth.

 He reached out and patted the gorilla's face. "Gigi must stay. Ellen needs Gigi."

 Gigi swung her massive head around to look at Ellen. Her bright eyes snapped with intelligence as she looked back at Dirk.

 
Ellen brave
, she signed.
Ellen stay alone. Gigi go
.

 "I'm sorry, Gigi. I must go alone. Work hard. No women can go."

 No fine animal gorillas?
Gigi stuck out her lower lip.

 "No fine animal gorillas."

 
Gigi have sad heart.

 Dirk touched Gigi's heart and then touched his own. "Man have sad heart too. Good-bye, Gigi."

 Ellen watched as Gigi accepted the farewell. The gorilla lifted her hand in a solemn wave as Dirk strode from the summer enclosure.

 Dirk hurried toward his car, bent on putting the mountain compound out of sight as quickly as possible. Out of sight, out of mind, he hoped. But his footsteps slowed when he saw Ellen standing beside the fence.

 He lifted his hand, intending a brief wave and a hasty departure, but he could no more have passed her by than he could have flown to the moon. He strode quickly to her. Without speaking, he pulled her into his arms for a fierce kiss.

A world of unspoken vows was in that kiss, and when it was over, he lifted his head and looked into her eyes.

"Take care, Ellen," he said gruffly.

"Be safe," she whispered.

And then he was gone.

 o0o

He waited until he was halfway down the mountain before giving vent to his feelings.

"Damn!" he exploded.

Instead of going back to his job with a renewed sense of purpose, he was going back reluctantly.
More than reluctantly
. For the first time since he had taken this job, he didn't feel a surge of excitement at pitting himself against the evils of the world. He didn't welcome danger as a means of keeping his world free.

His knuckles turned white as he gripped the steering wheel and negotiated the sharp mountain curves. Ellen's face was everywhere he looked—in the waving branches of pine, in the majestic sweep of the mountains, in the lonesome stretches of the road. And he knew, as surely as he knew his own name, that he could never escape her. Though he put thousands of miles between them, she was forever emblazoned on his heart.

Dirk unstrapped his gun and tossed it onto the bed. Rubbing his forehead wearily, he crossed to the window. Everything looked the same. The Washington Monument was still there. The pigeons searching for crumbs on his windowsill were still there. The difference was not in his surroundings but in himself. His body was in Washington, D.C., but his heart was still in the mountains of North Carolina.

He smacked his fist against the windowsill, then turned and headed for the shower. It had been a long, tiring day. And it wasn't over yet. The summer of indulgence had taken its toll. He still had a hundred push-ups to do before the day was over.

He was halfway to the shower when the buzzer announced a visitor. He switched on the intercom.

"Open the door, you handsome rascal," Anthony Salinger's voice boomed over the intercom. "I have a fish story to tell."

Dirk chuckled. "Come on up, you scruffy old vagabond."

Within minutes Tony was stepping out of the security elevator and into Dirk's apartment. The old friends clasped hands and shoulders and grinned at each other.

Dirk's gaze swept over Tony's shock of thick hair, prematurely white, his pale blue eyes, set in a network of suntanned wrinkles, and his trim frame. "You're looking fit as a fiddle," he said.

Tony's shrewd blue eyes studied Dirk as he released his friend's hand. "Fit as a fiddle? Seems I've heard that expression before, but not in Washington, D.C." He crossed the room and straddled a straight-backed chair. "As a matter of fact, Ellen's Tennessee relatives use it."

 He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pipe. Tamping tobacco into the bowl, he said casually, "I don't suppose you met Dr. Ellen Stanford?"

"I thought you came here to tell me a fish story." Dirk also straddled a chair, facing his longtime friend.

"Why don't you tell me a fish story?" Tony took a long draw on his pipe. "How was fishing in the mountains?"

"They weren't biting."

"Is that a fact?" Tony puffed contentedly on his pipe and looked around the room. His gaze focused on the tattered bear on the bedside table. It had been the first thing he had noticed when he walked into the room. "You must be losing your touch, friend, to spend all summer and not catch a thing." He swung his gaze back to Dirk.

Dirk chuckled. "You don't miss a thing, do you?"

"Never have. Never intend to." Tony took another draw on his pipe. "What the hell are you doing with Ellen's stuffed bear?"

"You've met him?" Dirk glanced at Ellen's childhood companion.

"Damn right. I met Ellen Stanford the day she moved to Beech Mountain. Helped her move. She's a hell of a woman."

"You'll get no argument from me on that point."

Dirk willed himself to remain relaxed in his chair. All this talk of Ellen was heightening his unrest. With Tony here, talking of Beech Mountain and Pooh Bear, her presence in the room was almost a palpable thing. He could hear her laughter, see the moonlight on her flaming hair, feel the warmth of her skin. It might have been only last night since he'd seen her, instead of last week.

Tony nodded toward the bear. "That's an important part of Ellen's past. She wouldn't have parted with it unless she had a good reason." His blue eyes seemed to pierce through Dirk's very soul.

"You always did have the tenacity of a bulldog," Dirk said.

"Where my friends are concerned," Tony agreed. "What happened on that mountain—besides you not catching any fish?"

"I met Ellen the first day. Rocinante's radiator went dry in front of the compound." Talking about it was easier than Dirk had imagined. As he looked at his friend he reflected that perhaps he needed to confide in someone. Perhaps talking about Ellen would make losing her easier to bear.

Tony laughed. "A convenient ploy, if I ever heard one. Are you sure you didn't already know about the gorgeous doctor and plan it that way?"

"If I had known about the gorgeous doctor and what she would do to me, I would have run down that mountain and never looked back. She's more dangerous than the Mafia."

"Ah-ha. She got to you, did she?"

"Damn right." Dirk gazed into the empty space behind Tony's head, his eyes focused backward in time. "Damn right," he repeated softly, almost to himself, although he didn't believe it for a minute. His affair with Ellen was an experience that he wouldn't trade for a lifetime of contented solitude. "I made the mistake of falling in love."

"Then where the hell is Ellen?" Tony exploded. "What are you doing in D.C. with nothing but a raggedy teddy bear?"

Dirk's jaw clenched. "Don't you think I'd give all the gold in Fort Knox to have her here with me? Dammit, Tony, you know why she's not here."

"No. Tell me."

"What kind of life would any woman have with me?" He sprang from his chair and began to pace the room restlessly. "Never knowing where I am and whether I'll return." He swung around and glared fiercely at his friend. "Not to mention her work. She's committed to her research on Beech Mountain."

"Did you ever think of becoming a lawyer?" Tony asked dryly. "You almost convinced me."

Dirk smiled, thinking of Uncle Vester and Aunt Lollie. "I was a lawyer once."

"What?"

"Never mind." He propped one leg on a chair and looked down at Tony. "There's too much risk, Tony."

"Love is always a risk, Dirk." Removing his pipe, Tony held the bowl and pointed the stem for emphasis. "You're afraid."

"I fear nothing."

"Nothing except forming a bond that may not last." He jabbed the pipe in the air as he talked. "You're afraid to love. Dirk; afraid it will be snatched away just as it was in your childhood. It's time to put orphanages behind you and put down roots."

"That's pretty heavy stuff for an old gadabout bachelor," Dirk said, grinning. But he felt a peculiar twinge, as if Tony had pinched a nerve of truth.

"We old gadabouts see more than you think we do." Tony blew a smoke ring into the air and squinted up at it. "Have you forgotten the story you told me?"

"In Spain?"

He smiled. "You do remember!"

Dirk's own smile grew thin at the edges. "I was about three sheets to the wind. Anyhow, that has nothing to do with Ellen."

But Tony had pried open the door to his past, and the childhood memory came flooding back. He had been eight years old and a foster home had finally been found for him. For the first time in his life he had parents—Sam Dryden, a logger from Maine, and his stalwart wife, Erma. During the six months he was with them, he had felt a growing sense of love and security.