CHAPTER 19
A windowless, prison-cell small room, Luc’s ‘quarters’ only had space for a clothing cabinet by the entrance, a hard cot pushed against the rough-poured concrete wall, and a narrow table and chair.
What marked the privilege of rank, however, was the door and the privacy it afforded.
Hearing she was on her way, Luc had spread out one of his white handkerchiefs as a makeshift placemat and set out a plate of rations and a fresh bottle of water for her.
Brenna entered and set her bags on the floor by the door.
“Hungry?” He always offered food, even if all he had were Canadian Forces IMPs, Individual Meal Packs.
“Oh, Luc,” she said, seeing what passed for a chicken casserole with rice. “Thank you.”
Her response was generous. His soldiers called the pre-packaged meals ‘I Must Pukes’.
She went to the table, pulled out the chair, and picked up the fork. In the field, Luc knew, she never turned down an offer for food, never complained about its quality. Food was a rare commodity.
Luc crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the wall, and studied her while she ate.
She had lost weight lately. She looked haggard, bruised by exhaustion.
Her beauty lay under siege. Soon, she would exceed her body’s ability to withstand abuse, and the lines and shadows would become permanent.
No one seeing her like this could imagine the woman he had met six-and-a-half years ago in Israel, nor imagine the emotional punishment she had endured to become the beleaguered spirit sitting in this dreary room.
But he still remembered her, snapshot-clear, posing for Ari on the Mount of Olives, her laughter like the sound of silver bells as she told her adored Ari how to work her camera.
Ari Rosen was a stocky little Jew, a good foot shorter than Brenna, and fifteen years her senior. Separated at a cocktail party, no one would have matched them. The pairing was too improbable—the Israeli career soldier and the American journalist who called herself a pacifist.
Luc himself had introduced them at the lavish wedding that Ari sponsored for Rachel, the kibbutz orphan he had taken under his wing.
Ari wore civilian clothes that day, and wept with unconcealed love as Rachel made the transition from being his foster ‘niece’ to being Lieutenant Solomon’s bride.
As a soldier, Luc found Ari’s open emotion embarrassing, but Brenna had been instantly drawn to it.
“It’s true I’m a short, balding Jew and you are the tallest, most astonishing gentile I ever saw—” Ari quipped when they were introduced “—but this I’m willing to overlook, if you are.”
The two of them flirted outrageously until Ari went to refill her drink and she asked Luc how he knew Ari. “We met during multi-force maneuvers in the desert,” he said. “Ari’s an Israeli Army Colonel.”
The humor in her eyes died, and when Ari returned, she coolly excused herself.
“I did something wrong?” Ari asked, unhappily watching her disappear into the crowd.
“She didn’t realize you’re military.”
“And she associates with you? You’re armed forces.”
“We’re Canadian,” Luc pointed out. “Peacekeepers.”
Ari started after Brenna, but Rachel claimed his arm. “Uncle Ari! Come play for me. The song you composed for our wedding.” Ari forced a smile and allowed himself to be led to the grand piano.
Without bothering to call the guests to attention, he began playing.
A hundred conversations ceased and everyone, including Brenna, turned to watch.
Bent over the keys, his fingers caressed them.
The music flowed out of his chest. The melody began slowly, hinting at longing and desire, building itself, note by haunting note, moving faster and deeper until the room was filled with the need and passion of his music.
From across the room, Luc watched Brenna become enthralled.
When the last chord vanished into the air, Ari slumped over the keys, eyes closed, exhausted hands fallen to his thighs. Had he ripped open his chest, he could not have exposed more of his heart.
The crowd rose, clapping, shouting, cheering deafeningly. Ari looked up. His eyes found Brenna’s and locked on them, challenging her: Don’t assume you know who I am.
From that look—and the complicated one Brenna returned—Luc knew his hopes with her were dashed.
She resisted Ari at first, declining his invitations to dinner, to dance, to sit by the sea, steadfastly refusing to fall in love with a soldier, no matter how charming. But one early Sunday, six weeks after they met, Ari knocked at her apartment door armed with the ultimate weapon in his arsenal.
“All my life, I have been looking for you,” he told her, standing at her threshold, unaware that Luc stood in the living room behind her. “This small thing, my career, shouldn’t stand in the way.” He extended a manila envelope to her.
She eyed it warily.
“Open! Open!”
Hesitantly, Brenna obeyed, and found three objects: A condom, a plain gold wedding band, and a stamped manila envelope, unsealed.
“The first two, you’ll recognize, I’m sure. The letter, you read.”
Brenna pulled it out. It held a sheaf of documents. She scanned them, not understanding their purpose until she saw the title of the form. Her eyes widened in astonishment. It was his signed resignation from the army.
“All you have to do is date the letter and mail it,” he told her. “You choose what order we use these three things.”
She gaped at him.
Luc stepped forward, wondering what had disarmed Brenna to the point of speechlessness, and for the first time, Ari saw him, clad like Brenna in his bathrobe, unshaven, unbathed, obviously having spent the night.
Ari’s face burned to the top of his thin hairline.
Looking from Luc to Brenna to his commission in her hands, he sputtered, his brazen strategy turned to ashes.
“A basic military concept, scouting ahead,” he was finally able to say, desperately striving for composure, stilling hands that wanted to grab the envelope and disappear. “So, a General I’ll never make.”
Her unwavering gaze burned through Ari, adding to his humiliation.
“I’m an ass,” Ari whispered, his eyes meeting hers, full of apology, confessing though he knew Luc would hear. “A stupid, middle-aged putz chasing a woman who can have her pick of men.” He held out his shaking hand to retrieve what now seemed like pathetic offerings. “I won’t bother you again.”
She pressed the papers against her chest. “This is really your resignation?” she said.
“Yes.”
She stared at him, transfixed.
“Please,” Ari said.
Not taking her eyes from Ari, she widened the door. “Luc is playing tourist and asked to borrow a room,” she explained, calling over her shoulder. “If you want to go ahead and shower, Luc, you’ll get that early start you wanted. There’s a coffee shop around the corner.”
The dismissal stung, but Luc hid it. With a military snap to his nod, he moved toward the guest room to pack, fully understanding he’d just been shipped out. Behind himself, he heard her ask Ari to enter, with a tenderness Luc had never before heard in her voice.
Brenna didn’t know when she opened her door that loving Ari would cause her the second grievous emotional loss of her life, that she would be left drifting like a raft in mid-ocean, trailing the ties that once moored her.
She had no way of predicting that all that came next would leave her in this awful city, locked in a deadly contest for her life.
Somehow righting herself after she lost Ari, she defined an existentialist core for herself.
She was here, so she would live. There was nothing beyond survival itself, she kept saying.
But a troubling detachment threaded itself through everything she did, and Luc suspected that Brenna unconsciously taunted death.
Drawing her double-edged sword of courage and commitment to public awareness, she walked into its jaws, flaunting herself, daring it to take her in a fair contest.
Deep-down, he believed, she didn’t care if she lived or died.
But Ari’s sheltering body had saved her life when the car bomb exploded, and on those grounds alone, she refused to surrender it without a fight.
Finished eating, Brenna set down her fork. “You’re quiet.”
Luc shook off his memories. “I have to write to Corporal Stanford’s family.” The task had weighed on him since the Ukrainian patrols had found the van. Luc pushed off the wall.
Brenna turned in her chair, tracking him.
He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees. “There were charred remains. How can I tell that to a mother and a father?”
“Michael was shot by a sniper,” she said. “He died instantly. Before we hit the wall, before the fire.”
Luc gratefully rested his forehead in his open palm. “Grace à dieu.” Thank God.
“He’d been telling me about his family’s ranch in Alberta and his plans to go back when this tour was over.” She gave him more details, an anecdote the Corporal had told her about his younger brother, and about his fondness for his parents.
Listening to her, he realized she had created as detailed an image of the youth as any she could photograph, giving him something he could relate back to the family about the boy’s final minutes.
She leaned forward, mirroring his pose, her fingers nearly brushing his knees.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.” He matched the tips of his fingers together several times before he laced them. “And you? I have never seen you this tired. This assignment with Grace Alcott is too much?”
“She knows squat about surviving here. But she has courage, and kindness. At one point she thought I’d been captured and—” her voice cracked “—well, I just want to get her safely home again.”
A terrible ache spread through Luc’s chest, as painful as any physical blow he could experience. He felt his chin slowly dropping to his chest. That tenderness was in her voice again.
He sprang to his feet, suddenly unable to bear her proximity, and turned his back.
He was the one she should feel affection for—not this Grace she hardly knew.
He was the one who’d stood by her through all the shit over the photograph.
After Ari’s funeral, everyone had fallen out—Rachel, Solomon, all her press corps buddies.