Undercover (14 page)

And the aviator's box with all of Jorge's secrets and his love letters to her was going home with her. As she thought of them, she could see him in the candlelight, writing, with a cigar in one hand, and his handsome face as he bent over his journals and the piercing blue eyes that had convinced her everything he said was true. Maybe nothing he had said to her was true. Maybe he didn't even love her. But she knew it would take her a lifetime to make up for the three people she felt she had killed. All she could hope now was that God would forgive her. She couldn't forgive herself, but maybe He would.

Her father's three secretaries, still on salary while he was in Buenos Aires, helped Ariana with all the arrangements in New York. They took the largest “suite” at Frank Campbell's, the funeral parlor on Madison Avenue, where people came to pay their respects for two days. Ariana could be there only for a short time, and then would go back to her father's apartment, and try to sort everything out in her head. Nothing made sense. All she knew now was that her father was dead and she was alone. How it had happened, why they had gone to Buenos Aires, and everything that had happened there were all a blur, a jumble of people and parties and places that meant nothing to her now. The only voice in her head was Jorge's. The aviator's box she had brought home with her was hidden in her closet. She didn't have the courage to open it and read his journals and letters to her, but she wanted to keep them safe, to read one day. She had come back to New York to become everything he hated, the spoiled rich girl she had been before she left, and that he had accused her of being and told her she had to change. She felt as though she was betraying him just by being there, even though this was her home. The only thing clear to her was that she loathed herself for the destruction she had caused, and the lives that had been lost because of her. It never occurred to her that it was all because of Jorge, and what he had done to her, and most of all to her mind. He had emptied it and refilled it with his twisted philosophies and revolutionary ideas. She recognized nothing in her own head—it was like a closet in a hotel room that belonged to someone else. Only she had to live there now, with someone else's thoughts, none of which fit who she had been before. Now she felt like a ghost, with no future and no past.

Her father's funeral was exquisitely painful, and they laid him to rest in the family mausoleum with her mother. She left him there on a windy, chilly April day. Everyone he'd ever done business with came to the funeral, and many to the apartment afterward, his friends, associates, people who just liked and respected him, people he had grown up with, and her old friends out of sympathy for her. And as promised, President Armstrong came, which caused such a huge security problem and traffic jam outside, as the Secret Service stopped traffic and escorted him in, that Ariana was relieved that he wasn't coming to the apartment afterward. He kissed her cheek and hugged her, and told her how sorry he was about everything that had happened. He looked as guilty as she felt. And finally, when everyone left, she was alone, and felt lost.

Sam Adams had come to the funeral too, and he stopped in to see her the next day, to see how she was doing. She sat numbly in their living room with nothing to say. And as she looked at him, her eyes were blank. He could see that she still had a long rocky road ahead of her, and was not surprised. The CIA had recommended several therapists to her in New York, experienced with kidnapping victims.

“What are you going to do now, Ariana?” he asked with a look of deep concern. They had spent almost three months rescuing her, but he knew only too well that only part of her had returned, and a piece of her had died and would never be the same again, particularly now, without her father's help to reestablish who she was. Jorge had burned some of her history and essence to ashes, and there was nothing to replace that now with her father gone too. She felt as though parts of her had disappeared, lost forever. And all the empty places were filled to the brim with guilt. It was a hard way to live, and Sam was seriously worried she might take her own life.

“I don't know,” she said, staring into space. They had given up her apartment in Tribeca when they left ten months before, and her father's apartment felt tomblike to her now. His housekeeper fussed over her just as she had since she was a child and cried every time she saw her. She could tell that the young woman who had returned from Argentina was not the girl she had known and loved all her life. Ariana had become someone else, a stranger even to herself.

“You need to keep working with a therapist to heal from all this,” Sam said gently.

“I want to do some charity work,” she said vaguely, but she was in no condition to help anyone at the moment, he knew. She had to clear her own head first.

“You have time to do that later. Why don't you take the summer to relax and find your footing again?”

As he said it, a thought came to her mind, of a peaceful place she had once gone to with her father. She remembered his saying that if he ever needed to get away, it was where he would go. It was a safe haven where she could hide, where no one could see how guilty she was, and where no one would judge her. She had blood on her hands now, and she was sure that everyone could see it. And to demonstrate that, she had washed her hands constantly ever since she'd gotten home, and they were bright red.

He promised to keep in touch, and said he would come back to see her again. He only hoped that the disordered pieces of her mind would fall back into place in time, like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, where most of it was sky. But the only sky he saw in Ariana's eyes now was very dark, as she thanked him for the visit. He left wondering if he would ever see her again and desperately sad for her.

After Sam left, Ariana sat staring into space for a long time, thinking of her father and Jorge. She thought about the box of Jorge's love letters in her closet, but didn't feel strong enough to read his words. All she could think of was the night he died, and the camp in flames. She didn't even remember the Israeli rescue and being carried out of the camp with her fists flailing. The trauma of that night had swept it from her mind, and everything after she saw the burning tree fall on Jorge was now a blank. Sam and others had told her the rest. For them it was all over now that she was home. For Ariana, the agony was just beginning. She had a whole life to live without two men she had loved.

Ariana went for a walk after Sam left the apartment, and everything around her looked the same. The same houses, same doormen, same shops on Madison Avenue. It still looked like winter in Central Park in late April, and as bleak as she felt. And she kept thinking now of the quiet monastery in the Berkshires that had come to mind a few hours before. She was suddenly desperate to go there, although she could no longer remember the name, but she remembered the town it was near. And after a sleepless night, she got up early the next morning, called the garage to have her father's car ready, wrote the housekeeper a note that she had gone away for the weekend, packed a bag with a few simple clothes in it, and left. And at the last minute, she ran back to her room, and took the aviator's box with her. She stuck it in her suitcase, for safekeeping, afraid it would disappear. It was her link to everything that had just happened to her, and her only proof in her own mind that it had been real. And she needed to keep it with her.

She left the city and drove north for three hours, and more than once she felt breathless, particularly after she left New York. She was terrified she would look up and see a military vehicle blocking the road and she would be kidnapped again. The memory of it was still vivid. And more than once she had to stop, pull over, and catch her breath. It was the last memory of her recent life and who she had been then. And as she thought of it, she could see Felipe slumped over the steering wheel shot through the head. It brought into sharper focus that he had died for her sins too. According to Jorge, her greatest sin was that she was rich, and rich people were the cause of all the troubles in the world. Poor people died because of them, just like Felipe. It all made sense to her, and confirmed everything he had said. And the fact that he had wanted twenty million dollars of her father's money to help poor people made sense too. Poor people were the saints, and rich ones the sinners. And it only increased her hatred of herself, that he had instilled in her. But Jorge had promised to save her, and now he was dead.

She reached the small sleepy town in the Berkshires that she had entered into the GPS, and once there she stopped at a gas station and asked for the Carmelite convent that she remembered so well. She and her father had stopped there after a weekend with friends when she was younger. He had gone into the chapel and lit a candle, as he always did, and she remembered the nuns being very nice to them. Her mother had stayed in the city, and she had enjoyed the time with him. Her father had always had a soft spot for Carmelites and said they were a remarkable group of women. They had surprised her by how warm and chatty they were, and well informed, although he had told her they were a cloistered order and silent most of the time. The old nun who had led them around had been lively and fun and clearly enjoyed their visit, and it had stuck in Ariana's mind. They were exactly what she needed now. She drove into their parking lot around two in the afternoon, and could hear the nuns singing in the chapel. She heaved a sigh of relief and laid her head back against the seat. For the first time in the days since she'd been back, she felt as though she had come home. The sign at the entrance to the convent said it was St. Gertrude's, and once she saw it, she remembered the name. And just looking around her and listening to the nuns singing, she knew she was meant to be there.

She walked into the office of the convent, and a nun in their old-fashioned heavy wool habit, and open sandals, looked up with a warm smile.

“May I help you?” she asked, looking at Ariana with wise eyes. She was somewhere in her forties, and had the ageless smooth-faced look of many nuns. She was shielded from the stresses of the world.

“Yes,” Ariana said softly, sinking into the chair on the other side of the desk, “I think you can. I came here once a long time ago with my father…about four or five years ago.” The peaceful nun waited quietly to hear the rest. She heard remarkable stories from people who came to visit for a few minutes, or to stay for a while, or to become postulants and join the order. They were a resting place in the shifting sands and troubled times in the world.

“What can I do to help?” She could tell the beautiful blond girl in front of her hadn't come for a tour. She had the saddest eyes the nun had ever seen.

“I am responsible for the deaths of several men and a baby,” Ariana said solemnly, adding Felipe to the list, as she thought of him in the car, and the men who had died in the fire when she was rescued from Jorge's camp.

The nun looked unimpressed. She had heard worse. And she was certain the young girl had not killed them herself. “I don't hear confessions,” she said gently, “but we have a wonderful priest who will be here to say mass tonight. You could talk to him if you like.” Ariana shook her head—she wanted to talk to her now that she was here. She needed to unburden herself and tell her why she had come. And she knew as she sat looking at the Carmelite that she had done the right thing. She needed to seek refuge here, and find forgiveness for what she'd done, if she ever could.

“I just came back from Argentina.” Ariana stumbled through what she had to say. It was all so hard to explain. “My father died because of me…because he was so worried about me….I was kidnapped in January…on the way to our country house….They killed our driver, because of me…and Jorge saved me, he was a saint…but they killed him because of me….He was just trying to feed the poor, and he needed the ransom money to do that…but they killed them all…all his men, and they took me away from the camp. And then my father died the next day…and I lost the baby….” It all spewed out in a jumble, pouring out of her, as the Carmelite listened quietly, and nothing but compassion showed in her eyes. She could see how confused Ariana was, and could tell that her story was worse than most.

“You were kidnapped in Argentina?” the nun asked quietly, trying to get the details straight and untangle the story. Ariana nodded. “For ransom, I believe.” She nodded again. “How long have you been home?”

“About a week,” Ariana said with burning eyes. “We just buried my father a few days ago….” She tried not to think of the lonely mausoleum where she had left him. But at least he was with her mother, whom he had adored and missed so much since her death.

“And your mother? Was she in Argentina too?”

“No, she died almost two years ago, a year before we went to Buenos Aires.” And suddenly as the nun listened to her, she remembered reading the story of the American ambassador to Argentina, whose daughter had been kidnapped, and found only recently. Her rescue had been a much smaller news item than her disappearance. But the nuns read the papers carefully, keeping up with the world, and she was almost certain they had prayed for her in January, when it first happened.

“We read about it,” the nun said thoughtfully.

“Israeli commandos rescued me. That's when they killed Jorge and his men. They took me out of the camp and everything was burning. I lost the baby that night, and my father died the next day.” There were tears running down her cheeks as she said it. She was breathless as she told the story, and the nun stood up and came around the desk to fold her into her arms and hold her.

“You didn't kill anyone. They died because of the mistakes they made, not because of anything you did. Even your father. It's very sad, but it wasn't your fault.” She didn't mention the baby, and had no idea whose it was. All she wanted to do was comfort Ariana. “Would you like to stay for a few days and rest here? We'd be very happy to have you.” She looked as though she meant it, and Ariana nodded.

“I think that's why I came here. When we visited, my father said he would come here if he ever wanted to get away. I don't know where I live now, who I am, or what I should do. I want to help the poor, as Jorge said, but I don't know how.”

“There are many ways to do that. You have no sins to atone for. Others have sinned against you. The men who kidnapped you and kept you from your family.” She could tell that Ariana's mind was disordered and she was confused. “Tell me your name.” She couldn't remember it from the article she'd read, only that her father had been the ambassador to Argentina, and it seemed like Providence that she had come here. She wondered if their prayers had drawn her to them. And she wanted to tell the mother superior about her as quickly as she could.