Chapter 8 Beacon
BEACON
Iducked into the empty room at the top of the stairs instead of going to mine.
The crutch was too loud on the hardwood, so I leaned against the wall, held it off the floor, and listened. The house was quiet for maybe thirty seconds before his footsteps hit the staircase. He took the steps fast—two at a time, from the sound of it—and turned left at the top, toward my room.
My door was at the end of the hall. I heard him stop in front of it.
He stood there long enough that I pressed my hand over my mouth to keep my breathing quiet. Then his footsteps went in the other direction, past the room where I was standing in the dark. Seconds later, his bedroom door closed with enough force to rattle the frame.
Putain.
I stayed where I was until I was sure he wouldn’t come out again, then made it to my bedroom without the crutch touching the floor once.
I sat on the cold bed in the colder room. My knee and arm ached, and neither of those was the ache keeping me awake.
Every minute I lay there, I was aware of the distance between his room and this one. Thirty feet of hallway. Two doors. That was it. I could go to him. Knock on his door. He’d open it. What happened after that would be the kind of mistake I couldn’t undo in the morning.
I’d kissed him because I wanted to. Going to his room would be because I wanted to.
None of this was professional or strategic or defensible, and the woman who’d declared a war in a ballroom a week ago could not afford to spend the night in the bed of the man she was building that war with.
Not yet. Not until I understood what it meant and what it would cost.
I reached for the bottle of pain medication the doctor had given me that I’d been refusing to take.
I shook one into my hand, swallowed it dry, and rested my head on the pillow.
The pill took twenty minutes to take effect, and for every one of those minutes, I remained aware of the thirty-plus feet that separated his bed from mine.
The last thing I thought before the medication took me under was that I’d have to face him tomorrow, and I had no idea what I’d say or do.
The next morning, I returned to the site alone.
Kingston offered to drive me, but I needed the time on my own. The morning was cold and clear, November weather that turned the mountains above Lausanne sharp and close. I’d made this drive a thousand times, and I was making it for the last time.
My hands were steady on the wheel, and I was not going to think about last night. Not with the ruins ahead of me and an entire continent to leave behind before sixteen hundred.
The cantonal police tape was up, but the officers were gone. Fedpol had released the site. The building had finished collapsing on its own, and what had been the headquarters was a low mound of stone and timber and dust.
My knee had improved enough that I could walk short distances without the grinding that had made every step agony the first days. I got out and walked the perimeter.
I tried to find the place where I’d been pinned under the crossbeam. The east wall should have been to my left, the gallery entrance behind me, but the hall had no recognizable shape. There was no spot I could point to and say it happened here.
I’d driven out here for a farewell. There was nothing to say.
The west corridor was gone, buried under rubble that used to be a roof. Somewhere under there was the administrative office, the blown safe, and the desks where I’d spent years learning the work my family had died for. I’d gotten one thing out. Everything else had stayed.
A piece of carved molding lay near what had been the main entrance.
I recognized the pattern from the ceiling of the hall where the council met.
Lyra, Eleanor, and Edgar had helped fund the restoration when Minerva first came into being.
A craftsman in Bern had spent three months on the ceiling alone.
I closed my fist around it and held it there for a second before sticking it in my pocket. The entire ceiling of a hall where my family had worked for decades had come down, and this chunk was small enough to fit in my palm.
The turnoff for Morges came up twelve minutes south of the site. My parents were buried in the cemetery on the hill above the town.
My grip on the wheel tightened when the sign appeared. The exit came, and I stayed in my lane and didn’t slow down.
If I stopped, I was admitting I might not return to this country. My parents had been dead for twenty-four years. They would understand that the daughter who’d survived them had to keep moving, even when that meant driving past their graves without stopping.
I told myself that on the straightaway after the exit, and I told myself again at the next curve, and by the time the road climbed toward the estate, it almost felt true.
“Babushka,” I said when I returned to the estate and found my grandmother in her usual chair. I sat beside her, and she took my good hand in hers. Her fingers were cold, and her grip was strong.
“Where did you go this morning?”
“To the headquarters. There’s nothing left,” I said.
“The building was never what mattered, Katarina. It was a place where people worked. What they do and what you’re doing resides inside you, not in a structure or a particular country.”
“How are you feeling this morning?” I asked.
“This is not the first country I am leaving.”
“I know.”
“I was younger than you the first time. I had a suitcase that belonged to my mother, and the ring your grandfather had given me the week before they killed him. That was all.”
“You don’t speak about it.”
“There is a time to speak of it and a time to stay quiet. I will say one other thing to you. Leaving is the part you already know how to do. Arriving is the part you do not.” Her accent thickened on the word arriving.
“Did my parents ever take me to Onteora?”
It took her a while to answer. “Once. I think it was the summer before they died.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“You were four years old. Your father taught you to swim off the dock at the main camp. You screamed each time he put you in the water, and each time he lifted you out, you demanded that he do it again.”
She was quiet for a moment, then tightened her grip on my fingers.
“There is a place on the property I want to show you when we are there. Your grandfather and I used to walk to it. I’ve not been there in so long. I bet it’s hardly recognizable anymore.”
“What’s there?”
“Nothing that shows on the ground. Only what we intended to put on it. I will tell you when we are standing in the place, not before.”
“Henry says the plane leaves at four. I’ve packed what we need,” said Anna, joining us.
“Anna, you didn’t have to—”
“Katarina, this is not the first time I’ve packed a life and moved.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“There are many things I shouldn’t have to do. I’ve done most of them,” she said, walking over to a sideboard and opening a drawer. She took out a small leather case I’d never seen before and handed it to me.
“This was your father’s.”
I opened it. Inside was a brass compass.
The face was scratched from use, and the hinge was worn smooth.
My father’s initials, PS for Pavel Stepanov, were scratched into the reverse side.
The letters were uneven, as if he’d done it with a knife.
I ran my thumb across them and tried to imagine his hands making those marks.
“I remember so little of him,” I murmured.
“You told me once that you remembered him reading you stories.”
“He would be proud of what you’re doing,” my grandmother said.
Her English accent carried traces of years spent with a Russian husband and decades in Switzerland, but beneath it all, she was still unmistakably British.
“If he were here, he would tell you to stop worrying about leaving and start thinking about arriving.”
My throat was tight. I closed the case and held it against my chest, then put the compass in my jacket pocket next to the molding.
The estate filled with departure noise for the rest of the morning. Bags accumulated in the front hall, and voices carried between rooms.
Anna’s chair in the parlor was bare. Her blanket was folded on top of her suitcase near the front door, and that one detail made the leaving more real.
I found her in the dining room. She was alone at the table, with a small wooden box in front of her that I hadn’t seen before.
“What is that?”
“Come sit with me for a minute.”
When I took the seat beside her, she pushed the box across the table.
I lifted the lid, and inside was a photograph worn soft at the corners. A girl sat at the edge of a wooden dock with her legs in the water and her head tipped toward whoever was behind the camera.
“That’s your Amelia at Onteora. She was nine years old.” She brushed away a tear. “I carried this box in my hand luggage when we came to Switzerland. I’ll take it home the same way.”
“I should, um…”
She patted my hand. “Off with you, then. I’m sure you have lots to do.”
Lyra was in the study. When I passed the doorway, she looked up.
“Come here.”
“Yes?”
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I went to the site.”
“Was that the only place you went?”
“Yes.”
She stood and crossed to where I leaned on the crutch, put her hands on my shoulders, and her eyes held mine.
“I have never been prouder of anyone in my life.”
“I’m scared,” I whispered.
“Good. Scared means you understand what we’re doing.” She squeezed my shoulders and let go.
I was at the door when she spoke.
“I handed my father’s work to the person best suited to carry it. What I can’t reconcile is what it cost to get here.”
Her voice held. Her tears didn’t. They tracked down her cheeks, and she didn’t wipe them or look away.
I waited. My chest stayed tight and my eyes dry.
“I’ll protect it,” I said.
“I know.” She reached up and touched my cheek. “Now, go. We have a house to close.”
Mrs. Eggers was in the corridor when I opened the study door.
She had a small bag in her hands. Both fists were tight around the handles. She looked at me, then beyond me to Lyra.
“I didn’t want to interrupt,” she said.
“You’re not interrupting.” Lyra stepped around me into the corridor. “What is it?”
She hesitated, then squared her shoulders.
Mrs. Eggers had served this family for longer than I’d been alive. I’d never seen her at a loss for words before today.
“My daughter is in Syracuse, in New York, ma’am,” she began. “She and her husband both teach at the university. I have four grandchildren I’ve met twice. She’s been asking me to come for years, and I’ve always said no.” She pressed her lips together. “Because of the family.”
Lyra approached and took both her hands. “If this is what you want, you’ll come with us. Henry will take you to your daughter’s door himself.”
When Mrs. Eggers put one hand over her mouth and her shoulders shook, Lyra embraced her.
“You’ve been a gift to all of us,” I heard Lyra say as I walked away.
Blackjack was in the dining room when I crossed the hall on my way from the study.
I kept walking. Kingston was down the corridor, and I considered verifying his equipment list. I didn’t need to, and if I did, it would’ve been insulting.
The list was fine. What I needed was distance from the man I’d kissed last night, because the alternative was walking through that doorway and having a conversation I was not prepared for with four hours left on this continent.
I went outside to drop off more bags and saw Magnolia sitting on the low wall by the front steps with a suitcase at her feet. I sat down next to her.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I have an apartment in Geneva with books and furniture. Almost everything I own other than my clothes. I’m not returning to any of it. Henry’s people will arrange for what can be shipped, and the rest will be sold or given away.”
“I’m sorry.”
“When my family left Tirana, I was eleven years old. My mother packed for six hours. She cried when she told me she wasn’t bringing the teapot. I didn’t understand why a woman would cry over something so silly.” She looked at her bag. “I understand now.”
The convoy assembled at three. Henry helped Anna and my grandmother into the lead vehicle, offering his arm to each of them and making sure their bags were within reach.
These women had survived so much. Now, they were being packed into an SUV because the enemy had found us again.
My babushka faced the estate through the window. Anna faced forward.
Givre was being transported to the airfield separately. Her right tibia had been crushed under the slab, and she’d come out of surgery with a rod and pins holding the bone together. She was in a walking boot. Hornet and Delfino were with her.
Magnolia met my eyes when I climbed in the SUV Blackjack would drive. I’d managed to avoid him all day by making myself scarce, then continuing conversations with others far longer than they needed to go on.
When he climbed in, our eyes met for the first time since last night.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded rather than answer with words.
As the convoy pulled down the drive, I turned in my seat for one last look. The estate’s stone front was already half hidden by the trees that lined the road, and the shutters Anna had opened that morning still were. No one had thought to close them, and no one would.
The ridge above Lausanne was the last thing visible before the road curved south. I’d seen it from the windows of the estate for most of my life, and it held for another few seconds before the trees eclipsed it.
I put my hand in my jacket pocket and closed my fingers around the compass and the piece of molding. One from my father. One from the building where his work had continued after his death. Other than my clothes and a few other things, these were the only mementos I was taking from my home.
I turned around, closed my eyes, and silently bid it farewell.