Stone Cold

CHAPTER 84

THEY HAD PASSED ANOTHER DAY sitting in the cellar and now the darkness was settling in. Stone, Fi

Fi

Lesya started to protest but Stone asked, “Where are they?” Fi

Stone turned to Lesya. “You stay here. I’ll go with him.”

“You’re going to leave me here, alone?” the old woman said.

“Just for a little while,” Stone added. “You’ll be safe.”

The two men left the cellar.

“How bad is your wife?” Stone asked once they were outside.

“Bad! And who the hell can blame her?”

“We can get to them on the Metro and then it’s a bit of a walk.”

“You were Army Special Forces in Nam,” Fi

“And you?”

“How do you know I was anything?”

“I can just tell.”

“SEAL. Look, we need weapons. They’ll have searched my house by now. I have a storage unit with some stuff in it, but they’ll have found that too.”

“I have a place with guns,” Stone replied.

Thirty minutes later, Stone waited outside while Fi

His children immediately flew to him, nearly crushing him against the wall. Even George the Labradoodle got in the act, barking and jumping on his master. As Fi

After a few minutes of hugs and cries, Fi

David eyed his dad nervously. “Pop? What’s going on?”

Fi

“Something happened at work, Dave,” he began as Mandy looked on. In her eyes was stark fear, but also something else that devastated Fi

He decided to abandon his cover story. He rose and leaned against the wall. When he was finally ready to speak he looked directly at them.

“Everything you know about your grandparents, my mother and father, is a lie. Your grandfather didn’t come from Ireland and die in a car accident a long time ago. Your grandmother wasn’t from Canada. And she’s not in a nursing home because she belongs there.” He took another deep breath, trying not to focus on his family’s collective astonishment.

And he told them. Their grandfather’s real name was Rayfield Solomon. He’d been a spy for the Americans. Their grandmother’s name was Lesya, a Russian, who’d been a spy for her country until coming over to the American side with Solomon and also marrying him.

“They were framed by some people at the CIA,” he said. “Rayfield Solomon’s picture hangs on the wall at Langley, the ‘Wall of Shame’ they call it. But he doesn’t deserve to be there. He was killed by these same people so the truth would never come out. Your grandmother survived but has been in hiding ever since.”

To their credit and Fi

Fi

“Where’s Grandma?” Patrick asked.

“I’m going back to her after I leave you.”

Susie flung herself around Fi

Susie finally stopped crying. She and her brothers stared at their father. They were so still, it didn’t seem like any of them were actually breathing.

“I promise you this: that Daddy will fix everything. And then I’m going to come and get all of you and we’re going to go back home and everything will be like it was. I promise you. I swear to you that it will.”

“How?”

Everyone looked at Mandy, who now moved toward her husband.

“How?” she said again, her voice rising. “How will you fix it all? How will you make everything like it was? How can you possibly fix this… nightmare?”

“Mandy, please?” Fi

“No, Harry. No! You’ve been deceiving me, the kids, for how long? How long, Harry?”

“Too long,” he said quietly. He added, “I’m sorry. If you just knew-”

“No, we don’t want to know.” She took a struggling Susie from his arms. “I called Doris, our next-door neighbor. She said men came to our house today and searched it. When she tried to ask them what was going on, they said they were looking for you, Harry. They said that you were a criminal.”

“No! NO!” Susie screamed. “Daddy is not a criminal. He’s not, he’s not!” She started hitting her mother. Fi

A tearful Susie said, “But you’re not a bad man, are you?”

Fi

“No, he’s not, Susie. Your father is not a bad man.”

They all turned to look at Oliver Stone, who had just come quietly in the door. George the dog hadn’t made a peep. He just sat next to Stone looking up at him.

“Who are you?” Mandy demanded fearfully.

“I’m working with your husband to try to right some wrongs. He’s a good man.”

“I told you, Mommy,” Susie said.

“What’s your name?” Mandy asked.

“That’s not important. What is important is that Harry has told you the truth, or as much of it as he can and still keep you safe. It was incredibly dangerous for him to come here tonight, but he insisted. He even left his mother, who is old and frail, to come and see you, because he was so worried. He had to see you.” He looked at Mandy. “He had to.” Mandy’s gaze went from Stone to her husband. Fi

“Can you right these wrongs?” Mandy asked, looking at Stone anxiously.

“We’re going to try our best,” he said. “That’s all we can do.”

“And you can’t go to the police,” she said.

“I wish we could, but we can’t. Not yet.”

Fi

After twenty minutes, Stone told Fi

“I love you, Mandy, more than anything in the world,” Fi

“Just make things right, Harry. Make things right and come back to us. Please.”