Chapter 16
1949
It is an uncommonly quiet night in Park City, cloudless and serene, when the young man falls from the sky. He plunges like a comet toward the waiting earth, aglow in burning atmosphere—or is that strange vermilion light something else entirely?
“I love it,” said Charles, grabbing a pencil and beginning to sketch this new hero’s meteoric trajectory. Iris stood in the doorway, reading aloud from a sheaf of hastily typed pages, which she had already crisscrossed with notes and amendments.
Penny sees it through her telescope, all the way out at her father’s house in the country, and immediately telephones the one man she knows can be trusted to investigate this strange phenomenon. Richard Ranger, the pilot and war hero known to millions as Captain Kismet, jumps in his car and sets off in pursuit of the light, following its wake through the night sky. Whether this is a falling star or an invasion of some kind, he has vowed to keep the people of this city, of this country, of thisplanet,safe from harm. He tracks it all the way to a canyon just outside the city, where it plummets straight through a highway bridge and crash-lands fast and deep into the rock with a flash of blinding light.
“Are we sure this isn’t a little…Christlike?” Charles inquired. “He might as well be announced by a star.”
Iris shrugged. “This is America, Charles. People love Jesus. Not necessarily our people, but still. They’re mad for him.”
“True enough. Continue.”
Ranger approaches the crater with caution, and calls out:
“Greetings, stranger! If you be a friend, then welcome to Earth. If you be an enemy, allow me to introduce myself: I am the one they call Kismet. I am the protector of this world.”
“Trite, but dashing. I could positively swoon.”
“Will you just draw?”
“Fine. Go on.”
A head appears through the rubble and red smoke: a swoop of dark wavy hair, bright eyes, a broad smile, a strong jaw, and a mischievous chin—
“A mischievous chin?” Charles interjected. “How exactly do you propose I imbue a chin with a sense of mischief?”
Iris ignored him.
“Hello, friend!” the newcomer exclaims. “Forgive me so rude an entrance—your planet’s exosphere gave me a touch of trouble. I’m usually gentler on the way down.”
“Walter will never print that kind of innuendo.”
“He’s an alien, he doesn’t know it’s innuendo.”
“If you say so. Does our extraterrestrial friend have a name?”
“I’m getting to that part.”
“Allow me to reciprocate your introduction,” says the stranger, dusting himself off and holding out his hand in what is recognized across the universe as a symbol of friendship. “I am Prince Axilon P’Shar the Brave of Ko-Fon-Thet, Son of the Star King Vixus, Steward of the Lesser Worlds.” He pauses for a second, then adds: “That includes this charming place.”
“Lesser world?” Ranger sputters. “In all my days—”
“I mean no insult,” says the prince. “I only mean the planets with civilized societies that have not yet mastered intergalactic travel.”
“Well, there have been a few setbacks in that regard,” says Ranger, remembering his own adversity while traversing the wormhole, the war on Zalia, and the loss of his beloved Sura, all trials that stemmed directly from Man’s quest to the stars. “But what brings you to our world?”
“It is a tradition among my people,” the prince explains. “The second-born son of the Star King will travel out into the galaxy, offering assistance and friendship to any and all he encounters. It is my sworn and sacred duty.”
“Your offer of help is much appreciated,” says Ranger, “but unnecessary. This planet already has a bodyguard.” (He is unaware that even now, at this very moment, the man formerly known as Professor Oswald is undergoing a transformation that will place Earth in grave danger.)
The alien tilts his head.
“How curious,” he muses.
“What?” Ranger asks.
“That you believe yourself capable of guarding the front door as well as the back, at the same time.”
“What isthatsupposed to mean?”
“Only that a wise man takes the hand of friendship. Until I have aided this planet in some way, I am bound by the ancient code of my people to remain.”
“And…how long might that be?”
“You would have to consult the Seers at the great caves of Elsor,” the prince says, “for precognition is not one of my gifts.”
“Whatareyour gifts, exactly?”
At that moment, they both hear an engine approaching above them, nearing the bridge that Axilon destroyed on his descent. A moment later, Ranger’s enhanced eyesight can make out headlights.
“They must not be able to see the hole in the road!” he says, readying himself to scale the ravine should he need to catch the vehicle as it falls. Before he can move, the air around him begins to swirl with scarlet energy, and he watches in dumbstruck wonder as the ruined stones of the bridge float back up above them to form a new makeshift bridge. The car passes over it and vanishes into the trees on the other side of the valley. When Ranger turns to the prince, he is resplendent in a crimson glow.
“One of my gifts,” he says.
Ranger smiles and extends his hand.
“What did you say your name is again?”
“Prince Axilon,” he says. “But please. Call me Axel.”
Iris placed the final sheet of notepaper on the desk next to Charles and took a sip of his coffee, grimacing upon realizing it was cold and putting it down again.
“Iris.” Charles’s voice was low and careful. His wife rarely spoke of her family, had very few charitable words to spare for many of them. The sole person she had ever mentioned fondly, and even then only once or twice, was a younger brother who had died in the war. A brother named Axel.
“I know,” she said. “The prince is too earnest. I think a sidekick should have more of a sense of humor, don’t you agree?”
“I think he’s perfect,” said Charles, reaching out to place his hand on hers.
Iris did not meet his eye, but did not pull away immediately either.
“This coffee tastes dreadful,” she said eventually. “I’ll make some more, shall I?”
?????????
Later that evening, Charles crossed the river by train and took the subway to Washington Square. He slowly circled the park twice, making sure he hadn’t been followed, before proceeding to his destination. Old habits died hard, and tradecraft was the habit of a lifetime. He didn’t think he was under any kind of suspicion, and his record of service to his country afforded him a certain amount of favor, but this McCarthy was starting to get a little overzealous and Charles wore his caution like an undershirt.
He walked into Mona’s like it was any other gin joint in the world, and he was just here for a casual drink after a long day at the office. And as a matter of fact, he was, but none of the patrons of this establishment frequented it because of the quality of the liquor. They were all looking for something else, something far harder to find than a stiff Rob Roy—now there was a thought—and this was one of the safer places in the city you might stand a chance of finding it. Sure, cruising the pier had its thrills, an adult game of hide-and-seek, but it also wasn’t without its dangers. Not to mention it was nearly November, and it was hard to feel anything out there other than the chill coming in off the Hudson, like Lady Liberty herself could see what they were up to from her vantage point on the horizon and did not care for it one bit.
Charles ordered a whiskey and leaned with one elbow against the bar, surveying the rest of the room. He did so nonchalantly, although around the place he saw much more brazen stares, men young and old shooting lustful come-hithers through the air like Cupid’s arrows. One especially brave or stupid boy was en femme; Charles could tell with a single look that those were a woman’s silk blouse and slacks. If there was a raid tonight, the poor fairy was toast. And yet Charles couldn’t help but feel a pang of…what? Not envy. He’d never felt the slightest inclination toward women’s clothing, outside of trying on his mother’s shoes as a boy and nearly breaking an ankle. Admiration then, perhaps, for the sheer pigheaded gall. Charles knew a little about what it cost to be truly fearless. Plenty of young men he’d known had claimed to be just that. Then half of them got blown up, and the other half learned the value of fear. Fear kept you sharp. Fear kept you alive. Even now, four years and change since he’d come back, Charles kept his fear as close as an old friend. The war was over, but for men like him that just meant the danger was far closer to home.
“I say,” came a voice from right behind him. “That’s never Charles Ambrose.”
He recognized the voice instantly. It was rich and deep, as English as croquet and colonialism.
“Dickie,” he said, turning to shake the other man’s hand. I must have conjured you, he thought. “Dickie Oswin, as I live and breathe.”
“You could have fooled me,” said Dickie, a twitch of a smile on his lips. He looked exactly the same, right down to that impeccably kept mustache. Charles could still remember how it felt. “You don’t call, you don’t write…” Dickie laughed. “Only having you on. Join me for a drink, won’t you?”
Charles nodded and slid onto the barstool next to Dickie.
“It’s good to see you,” he said. “How long do you suppose it’s been?” He knew precisely how long it had been since their last encounter. Their one and only. It was a memory he returned to often, taking it out and turning it over and over in his hands, a miser with his most prized possession.
“Five years,” said Dickie. “Istanbul.”
Istanbul. A city that bridged continents and, crucially, transcended alliances. Officially, Charles had been an American working legally as a bank clerk in a neutral city. Truthfully, he had been stationed under MacFarland at the OSS. When the veracity of the intelligence they were mining from the Dogwood chain had come under question, he was partnered with a British liaison: Captain Dickie Oswin, dispatched to Istanbul by the SOE (and, rumor had it, Churchill himself).
They had worked together well, efficiently, if not particularly closely. Oswin, as Charles had called him then, was cordial but professional, focused entirely on the task at hand and forgoing any of the idle chatter that permeated some of the other desks at the OSS. If at times that came across as cold, well, Charles put it down to the man’s Englishness. And there was a war on.
Charles, too, liked to keep his head down and get on with the work, and it was only ever against his own will that he would occasionally find himself thinking that Oswin was a good-looking fellow, dashing like a young Errol Flynn. He had known, by then, that he was never going to desire women the way he did other men: The hands and mouth of a young GI on a boat from New York to Belfast had put paid to any lingering doubts Charles might have had. But strangely enough it was easier to maintain the lie here, where the other men were all separated from their sweethearts and far more eager to talk about their own girls back home than ask Charles about his. To carry on like he was not keenly aware of how Oswin smelled when he leaned over his shoulder (shaving foam, peppermint, something with spice) or how it felt to have those gray eyes on him (nervous as a schoolboy) wasn’t as easy.
He respected Oswin. Maybe even liked him, inasmuch as it was possible to befriend anyone with whom you spent hours deciphering and translating in silence. And the work they were doing mattered, so much more than any childish infatuation.
That was much how it continued, for weeks. Until one night when they had both stayed late poring over some scrap of information that was found later to be of absolutely no import, and Oswin did two things he had never done before. He loosened his tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt, although that evening was no warmer than any other, and he reached into his desk for a bottle of scotch and invited Charles to join him in a drink.
“You’ve been holding out on us,” said Charles. Oswin procured two glasses from the recesses of his desk and said, as if he hadn’t heard him, “We’ve earned it.”
They didn’t speak much more than that, just sipped their scotch, but Charles felt an easing between them, another loosening of the proverbial tie. When he stood and announced that he was going to retire for the night, Oswin surprised him by standing, too, and saying he would walk with him awhile.
“My lodgings are not that far from yours,” he said. Nothing in his choice of words or enunciation gave him away, or would have aroused suspicion in a bystander, but Charles instantly understood. Half the tongues of Europe were spoken under this roof, but this was a language precious few could interpret. Meaning conveyed not through speech but a look, a gesture, the slow intention with which a man unfastened his top button. An invitation, to those who knew enough to accept.
“All right,” said Charles, holding Oswin’s eye for just an instant longer than he would usually allow himself. “I don’t see why not.”
They walked in silence through the streets, unease dwarfed by the sounds and smells of a city that brimmed with life at any hour. A city that had stood for millennia and gone by more names than any spy, which had no interest in the idle fancies of two foreigners.
Oswin did not even pause at the door when Charles unlocked the entrance to his rooms. He walked right in with the air of a man who had been there a hundred times before. Charles locked the door behind them and then turned to Oswin, who had approached him from behind and now stood dangerously near.
Where did this boldness materialize from?Charles had time to think, before Oswin’s fingers circled around his wrists. His grip tightened until he was holding Charles’s arms firm by his sides, not painfully. Only then did he bring his face closer. It’s so I don’t strike him, Charles realized with remarkable clarity. Clever man.
When their lips touched, he thought momentarily that Oswin’s mustache tickled rather pleasantly, and then he didn’t have it in him to think at all.
“What brings you to New York?” Charles asked him now, surrounded by the jazz and fairies of West 3rd Street.
“It would be violating the Official Secrets Act if I were to tell you that,” said Dickie with a wry smile.
Charles scoffed. They had been through a war together, they each knew how the other tasted, any secret Dickie had to keep now felt absurd and insignificant. But that was the way of things for the likes of them. You gave yourself, and then you politely took it back, folded it up neatly, and hid it away again.
“What can you tell me?” he asked.
Dickie Oswin considered the question, his fingers tracing the rim of his glass, and said: “That I would be lying if I said I hadn’t hoped I might run into you.”
“A cute line,” said Charles once he had parsed the double negative. “How could you ever know I might be here?”
“Optimism,” said Dickie, with that smile again.
“You’re different from before,” said Charles. It was true; the proper Englishman he had met in Turkey had lost some of his impenetrable stiffness. He looked, Charles thought, like a man who had taken a long hot bath. “These last five years must have been interesting.”
Dickie placed some cash on the bar.
“Come for a walk with me,” he said, “and I’ll tell you all about it. Or what I can, at least.”
Charles almost said no. He tried to convince himself he had only come out tonight to drink watered-down bourbon and watch the boys go by, but he failed. And how often did the past reach out to you and beckon you back into its warm embrace?
“One moment,” he said. “I need to use the honeypot.”
Dickie smiled and rose from his stool when Charles did, like he might for a lady. It was not half as insulting a move as Charles might have thought.
“I’ll be right here,” Dickie said.
When Charles had pissed and washed his hands, he inspected his own reflection briefly. How different did he look now? How much had he changed since then? Five years might as well be an eternity, and he hadn’t been what you might call “dashing” to begin with. Too slight of build, an expansive forehead topped with what was clearly now a widow’s peak. He looked old, and suddenly he felt it, too. The weight of everything hidden and lost pulled on him now. No. He would go home. To the apartment. To Iris. No good could come from chasing a boy’s foolish dream.
He walked back out into the bar, and there Dickie was, standing, ready to leave. Charles walked over to him, breath faltering, grasping for the words to say this was not going to happen. Dickie picked up Charles’s coat from the barstool where he had left it, and held it out with both hands, again, like he might for a lady. Charles turned around, allowing Dickie to assist him in sliding his arms through the sleeves.
“What a gentleman,” he said. He had meant it to undercut the moment, but it came out almost a whisper. He was so aware of Dickie right behind him, hands heavy and warm on his shoulders, then his upper arms, then gliding down, grazing the backs of his hands, until their fingers were entangled.
“Come on then, darling,” Dickie whispered in his ear. Absurdly, a line from a film popped into Charles’s mind—something long and overwrought with Bette Davis.
No one ever called me darling before.
He followed Dickie out of the bar to the hotel where he was staying while he was in the city. It was not far, but they meandered and circled the streets of Greenwich Village to get there, arms crossed against the bracing autumn wind, that old craft seemingly rooted just as deeply in both of them. Finally, safe in the knowledge they were alone, Dickie led Charles in from the cold and locked the door behind them, one spy ready to share his secret with another.