Chapter 7 #4
"No," Waters said. "Arrogance is believing one can avoid chaos by refusing to employ it."
Carly glanced at the unmarked map pinned on the wall.
The men who visited this room didn't need clarification.
They knew the necessary pressure points by heart: the cities, ports, substations, financial centers, and communication corridors.
They knew which places governments would defend and which they would mistakenly ignore.
This was the gift of the modern world: everything was so connected that no one could tell if a failure was an accident, an attack, or the start of something bigger.
"You think darkness will clarify things?" Carly asked.
Waters tilted his head. "No. Darkness confuses. That is its purpose."
"Then what do you hope to see in it?"
A smile edged onto his lips. "What cannot be seen in the daylight."
She shook her head.
These men spoke in riddles and rhymes, as though age had earned them the right to substitute obscurity for wisdom. It infuriated her. They seldom listened; worse, they only heard what served the conclusions they had reached decades ago.
They saw her as useful, not as an equal, and that bothered her more than she wanted to admit.
Waters watched the thought cross her face.
"You dislike being underestimated," he said.
Carly looked back at him. "Most people do."
"No. Most people dislike being dismissed. You dislike being seen."
Her jaw tensed.
"There's a difference," he said.
"You don't see me at all."
Waters smiled. "There it is."
"What?"
"The vanity of youth. You believe you see yourself clearly." He shook his head. "Why are you here, Carly?"
Carly stepped closer. "I chose this work because I'm good at it."
"Did you?" Waters challenged her.
"Careful," she said.
The warning amused him. "You want to be the best—the one spy who can cut away sentiment, attachment, appetite, loyalty—anything that might be used against her."
"And that's a flaw?"
"It's revealing."
Carly waited.
"You remind me of someone."
She remained still.
"You believe strength means proving you can live without anything or anyone that might make you hesitate." Waters leaned back. "That makes you useful. It does not make you strong."
"Spoken like a man who has spent his life using people."
"Yes," he said. "Which is why you should listen."
Carly looked at the map again, at the blank countries and thin border lines. From far away, they looked empty and clean—but it was just an illusion.
"What are you searching for?" Waters asked.
She did not look back at him. "Meaning."
The word escaped before she could stop it.
Waters smiled faintly.
"Meaning," he repeated. "How sentimental."
She turned. "You asked."
"I did."
"And what are you searching for?" she asked.
"Continuity."
"That sounds almost noble."
"It isn't," he said.
"At least you know that."
He smiled. "And you? Do you know what you are? Who you are?"
"Yes."
"No," Waters said. "Not yet."
She felt a chill run down her arms.
"You think the shadows will protect you," he said, "but shadows are not loyal. They hide what you fear, what you want, and what you're willing to become to avoid your truth."
Carly remained silent.
"Find that," Waters told her, “your truth, and perhaps you will become as dangerous as you imagine yourself to be."
Outside, snow began to fall again, thin and silent against the glass.
Carly saw her reflection in the glass: still, calm, and unyielding.
Behind her, partly hidden by the dim light, Donald Waters watched from his chair.
"We all come home, Carly," he said. "In time."
Westport, Connecticut
Saturday Evening
“Want to talk about it?” Claire asked Alex.
Alex looked up.
“Unless you’re quiet because my father beat you at eight-ball.”
Alex chuckled. “I’m used to being handed my ass by the McCullum’s.”
Claire nodded.
Alex sighed.
“What happened?” Claire asked.
“Nothing. That’s the problem, Claire.”
Claire waited.
“Nothing happens.”
Claire took a breath. “You mean nothing changes.”
“I don’t know. I feel like we’ve been running in place—I’ve been running in the same spot for the last fourteen years.”
Claire nodded.
“You don’t agree,” Alex said.
Claire took a breath, exhaled, and shrugged. “I don’t disagree.”
“But?”
“Maybe there aren’t the answers you’re looking for.”
Alex grumbled.
Claire stretched across the sofa. She knew Alex Toles better than most people realized and better than Alex likely wanted to admit.
What drove Alex to keep pressing forward in her desire to end the Collaborative differed from what motivated Claire.
At least, it did now. Claire had given up trying to understand the father who had raised her.
And she’d accepted that the father she was just getting to know would never be able to erase the questions she would always ask.
Sometimes, there weren’t any answers, or at least, there weren’t any that could satisfy someone. That was where she and Alex departed.
Alex still believed, or maybe she simply hoped, that she could learn something about her father that would make sense, that would put the puzzle she still struggled to complete together. Claire thought the piece Alex was missing was who had created the puzzle in the first place: Alex.
“What are we doing, Claire?”
“What we always do.”
“Which is?”
“Try to end a shitstorm before it starts.”
Alex chuckled. Then she leaned back in the chair and looked toward the window.
“Jim agreed to help,” Alex said.
“With Kapralov?”
Alex nodded. “He thinks we might be able to bring him in.”
Claire nodded.
“That’s it?”
“What were you hoping for? A dramatic gasp?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
Claire shrugged. “Nika Kapralov might help. He might want to help. That doesn’t mean he can.”
“He was head of the KGB.”
“And my father was an admiral. Your father was the Broker. Donald Waters is a ghost who apparently misplaced the part where dead men stay buried. Which is—to be fair—familiar.” Claire smiled, but the humor didn’t reach her eyes.
“I’m not saying Kapralov doesn’t have resources.
He probably has information that your father and mine…
that the admiral never discovered. Russia is a different landscape, Alex.
Trust me on that. Power collects differently there. Secrets do, too.”
“And?”
Claire sighed. “All I’m saying is being useful isn’t the same as being trustworthy.”
Alex huffed. “I know that.”
“Do you?”
Alex kneaded her temples.
Claire didn’t flinch. She rarely did anymore. Not with Alex.
“You want him to know something,” Claire said. “Something that makes all of this make sense.”
“He might be the person who can help us put an end to this.”
“Is that really what you hope he can offer?”
“What else would he offer?”
Claire took a breath, her voice softening. “Maybe something about your father.”
Alex looked away.
“You know he’s dead,” Claire said. “I know you know that.”
Alex looked back at her.
“But every time one of these men steps out of a shadow, some part of you wonders. I get it, Alex. Waters. Kapralov. My father. Men who were supposed to be gone. They keep returning, and you keep having to tell yourself your father won’t be one of them.”
Alex stayed silent.
The silence told Claire she was right.
“I would wonder, too,” Claire admitted.
Alex shook her head.
“If I hadn’t watched my father shoot the admiral,” Claire said. “If I hadn’t watched you feel for his pulse, I would wonder.”
Alex sighed.
“We live in an insane world, Alex. Some days I can’t believe it’s real, and I’ve been close to it my entire life.”
Alex looked down at the floor.
Claire let the words settle between them.
“I don’t want him to be alive,” Alex said finally.
Claire nodded.
“No. I mean it. I don’t.” Alex’s voice broke slightly. “I buried him. I spent years hating him. Then years trying not to hate him. Now I don’t even know what I feel half the time.”
“Welcome to the world we all live in.”
Alex chuckled.
“I think that’s the problem with all of us,” Claire said. “Cassidy. Dylan. You. Me. El. We keep trying to see our parents clearly. But I don’t know if that’s possible.”
Alex looked at her.
Claire shrugged. “Would we believe it if we saw something that made us doubt what we expected to find?”
Alex sighed.
“Cassidy wants to believe our father did the best he could because she needs that to be true. Dylan wants to believe John Merrow would have claimed him if the world had been different. You want your father to be a man whose choices can be explained by something larger than himself.”
“And you?”
Claire’s smile was small and sad. “I want to believe I’m finished wanting anything from Bill Brackett.”
“Claire.”
“I’m not,” Claire said.
The admission surprised even her.
She looked toward the hallway, where the low sounds of the house drifted in—pipes settling, a quiet footstep overhead, life continuing with irritating indifference to revelation.
“I don’t want him back,” Claire said. “But I still want to understand why he looked at me and saw a tool instead of a child. Why he could shape my life, hurt people I loved, and still believe he was building something that mattered. Something that mattered more than me.”
“Because he was a bastard.”
Claire laughed softly. “That’s the easy answer.”
“It’s also accurate.”
“It is,” Claire agreed. She looked at Alex. “But accurate isn’t always satisfying.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“That’s what I mean. Maybe Kapralov can tell us things. Maybe he can explain parts of this none of us can see. But he can’t give you your father back in any way that will satisfy you.”
Alex closed her eyes, willing her emotions into submission.
"I know," Alex said.
"Do you?"
Alex was quiet for a long moment. Then she nodded. "I do know."
"And I know that what we know doesn't always change what we feel."
Alex huffed a laugh. "You sound more and more like Cassidy every day."
"She's smarter than me, and better adjusted."
Alex laughed. "Don't feel bad, Claire. She's smarter and better adjusted than anyone I know."
A sound came from the front of the house. Then the front door opened.