"Building a complete person. That's the great adventure, sonny boy, and if you don't do it right, what the hell good are you?"
"Well, you guys've done okay."
"Thanks, Domingo," Sandy said from the stove. "We worked at it pretty hard."
"More her than me," John said. "I was away so damned much, playing field-spook. Missed three Christmases, goddamnit. You never forgive yourself for that,T-" he explained. "That's the magic morning, and you're supposed to be there."
"Doing what?"
"Russia twice, Iran once-getting assets out every time. Two worked, but one came apart on me. Lost that one, and he didn't make it. Russians have never been real forgiving on state treason. He bit the big one four months liter, poor bastard. Not a good Christmas," Clark concluded, remembering just how bleak that had been, seeing the KGB scoop the man up not fifty meters from where he'd been standing, seeing the face turned to him, the look of despair on the doomed face, having to turn away to make his own escape down the pipeline he'd set up for two, knowing there was nothing else he might have done, but feeling like shit about it anyway. Then, finally, he'd had to explain to Ed Foley what had happened-only to learn later that the agent had been burned-"shopped" was the euphemism-by a KGB mole inside CIA's own headquarters building. And that fuck was still alive in a federal prison, with cable TV and central heating.
"It's history, John," Chavez told him, understanding the look. They'd deployed on similar missions, but the Clark Chavez team had never failed, though some of their missions had been on the insane side of hairy. "You know the funny part about this?"
"What's that?" John asked, wondering if it would be the same feeling he'd had.
"I know I'm gonna die now. Someday, I mean. The little guy, he's gotta outlive me. If he doesn't, then I've screwed it up. Can't let that happen, can I? JC is my responsibility. While he grows up, I grow old, and by the time he's my age, hell, I'll be in my sixties. Jesus, I never planned to be old, y'know?"
Clark chuckled. "Yeah, neither did I. Relax, kid. Now I'm a"-he almost said "fucking," but Sandy didn't like that particular epithet "goddamned grandfather. I never planned on that, either."
"It's not so bad, John," Sandy observed, cracking open the eggs. "We can spoil him and hand him back. And we will." It hadn't happened that way with their kids, at least not on John's side of the family. His mother was long dead from cancer, and his father from a heart attack on the job, while rescuing some children from a dwelling fire in Indianapolis, back in the late 1960s. John wondered if they knew that their son had grown up, and then grown old. and was now a grandfather. There was no telling, was there? Mortality and its attendant issues were normal at times like this, he supposed. The great continuity of life. What would John Conor Chavez become? Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief? That was mainly Domingo and Patsy's job, and he had to trust them to do it properly, and they probably would. He knew his daughter and knew Ding almost as well. From the first time he'd seen the kid, in the mountains of Colorado, he'd known that this boy had something special in him, and the younger man had grown, blossoming like a flower in a particularly tough garden. Domingo Chavez was a younger version of himself, a man of honor and courage, Clark told himself, and therefore he'd be a worthy father, as he'd proven to be a worthy husband. The great continuity of life, John told himself again, sipping his coffee and puffing on the cigar, and if it was yet one more milestone on the road to death, then so be it. He'd had an interesting life, and a life that had mattered to others, as had Domingo, and as they all hoped would, John Conor. And what the hell, Clark thought, his life wasn't over yet, was it?
Getting a flight to New York had proven more difficult than expected. They were all fully booked, but finally Popov had managed to get himself a coach seat in the back of an old United 727. He disliked the tight fit, but the flight was short. At La Guardia, he headed for a cab, on the way out checking his inside coat pocket and finding the travel documents that had gotten him across the Atlantic. They had served him well, but they had to go. Emerging into the evening air, he surreptitiously dumped them into a trash container before walking to the cabstand. He was a weary man. His day had started just after midnight, American East Coast time, and he hadn't managed much sleep on the transatlantic flight, and his body was-how did the Americans put it?-running on empty. Maybe that explained the break with fieldcraft.
