Dreading what he was going to hear on the special phone but needing desperately to know who was on the other end, he flipped it open and brought it to his ear. He rather thought he said hello, but later on he simply couldn’t remember. What he did remember was the brisk voice that said, “Sir Malcolm,” by way of greeting.
It was already midmorning across the pond. For his special friend to call him at that hour had to mean something very serious was wrong somewhere, and somehow it affected either him or the Sisters. Somehow Charles managed to find his voice.
“Tell me straight off, Bess.” He took a second to wonder why he was calling his friend “Bess.” Normally he called her “Liz.” Bess was reserved for times of crisis. “Don’t blather on, I can take it, whatever it is.” Charles’s long years of friendship allowed him to speak with such familiarity to the most powerful person in all of England.
“Very well. But, please, sit down, Sir Malcolm.”
“Bloody hell, Bess, would you still tell me to sit down if I was in bed? Even the squirrels and birds aren’t awake yet. I woke about an hour ago, knowing something was wrong.” Then Charles’s voice changed, it grew softer, almost pleading when he said, “Just tell me, and I’ll deal with it.”
Charles listened, the color draining from his face. Now, he thought, I really am going to die. I really am. The voice nudged him for a response twice before he could make his tongue work. “I heard it all. Thank you for calling me. Yes. Yes, I will be ready.” The special phone went back into his pocket.
In a daze, Charles walked back to the main house on leaden feet to his bedroom, where he packed a bag in the dark. He looked down at Myra, who was still sleeping soundly. He wanted to touch her, wake her, to tell her…so many things. Things he didn’t understand. Instead, he left the room as quietly as he’d entered it.
Across the compound, Annie, on one of her nocturnal trips around the house she lived in, saw the lights go on in the main house. It wasn’t all that unusual to see the main house lit up in the wee hours of the morning. Charles was a notorious nonsleeper, often working through the night, especially if they were on a mission. He was a master at those ten-minute power naps the media touted. But something prickled at the back of her neck, right between her shoulder blades. She always referred to the feeling as her own personal warning system. She didn’t stop to think as she put on a robe and slippers and quietly left the house. She walked across the compound and up the steps to the main house.
Quietly opening the door, Annie walked out to the kitchen, where Charles was sitting on a kitchen stool, staring into space. To her mind’s eye, he looked terrible. She poured coffee and sat down on the opposite stool. That was when she saw the bulging duffel bag.
Annie’s stomach muscles crunched into a knot. She didn’t bother beating around the bush. “Where are you going, Charles? It’s not even light out yet. Were you going to leave us a note or just…disappear? Does Myra know you’re leaving? Of course she doesn’t, or she’d be here in the kitchen with us. You need to say something, Charles, and you need to say it now.”
“I…I have to go away, Annie. I’m not sure when I’ll be back or even if I will be back. I had some…Well, let’s just say I had some disturbing news that I have to act upon immediately, and there was no time…What I mean is…”
“You’re sitting here right now. I am sitting here right now. That means to me that you had time to wake Myra, wake all of us, to tell us whatever the hell is going on with you. What does that mean, you don’t know if you will come back? Exactly and precisely, what does that mean? What are you waiting for? Ah, a helicopter, right? Are you going to tell me or not?”
Charles looked down at his watch. He had eleven minutes until the British helicopter set down on the mountain. “Fetch the others, Annie, but be quick. I just have eleven minutes.”
Annie ran. She rang the bell on the front porch of the cabin she lived in with the girls. She shouted to them to meet her in the kitchen of the big house, then ran, stumbling to Myra’s room, where she literally pulled her from the bed.
“Get up and dress, quick, Myra. Charles is packed and ready to leave. A helicopter is coming, and he said he might never come back. Get with it, Myra, stop staring at me like a lunatic. Dress! That’s a goddamn order. Don’t forget your pearls,” she added as an afterthought as she raced out of the room. That was a stupid thing to say; Myra was never dressed until the pearls were around her neck.
Annie arrived back at the kitchen just as the others stumbled across the dining room in various modes of dress. Myra was the last one in, sloppily dressed in a sweat suit. She was trying to smooth down her hair as she looked around in a daze. Then both hands flew to the pearls around her neck.
“Eight minutes and counting,” Annie said breathlessly. “Go for it, Charles. The highlights, since time is short. We can fill in the blanks ourselves.”
“What’s going on?” Myra demanded, an edge to her voice as she eyed the bulging duffel bag at Charles’s feet. Her hands feathered the pearls at her neck, a sure sign that she was agitated.
“I had a disturbing phone call from…from a friend across the pond a little while ago. It seems my son was in a plane crash and is in extreme danger.”
“Son! What son?” Myra screeched at the top of her lungs.
The others chimed in, wanting to know why he’d never mentioned a son.
Charles stiffened. “You weren’t told because I didn’t know I had a son until two hours ago. A long time ago, when I was just a lad, there was a young lady…It’s a long story. I was a commoner, she wasn’t. I left to go on to other things, and I assumed she went back to her family in South Africa. Not only do I have a son and a daughter-in-law, I have three grandchildren. None of whom I knew about. It seems my son wanted it that way on orders from his mother, who is deceased.
“I have to go. I want you all to understand I have no other choice.”
Overhead, the solid whump-whump of the helicopter could be heard.
“And you expect me to believe that?” Myra shouted, tears rolling down her cheeks.
Charles’s tormented voice hung in the room like a death knell. “Yes, Myra, I do expect you to believe that. Because it’s true, and I’ve never lied to you. I have to say good-bye now. I’ll be in touch when I can.”
Speechless, the women just stared at Charles as he bent to pick up his duffel bag.
“Don’t bother getting in touch and don’t bother coming back,” Myra said coldly, the tears drying on her cheeks as she turned away to stare out the kitchen window at the darkness outside.
“Myra…please…try to understand…” When he realized Myra was not going to back down, Charles let his shoulders slump. He started toward the door. A second later he was gone, the door closing softly behind him. There was a sense of finality to the sound.
The women rushed to Myra, all of them babbling and jabbering, but it was Annie who grabbed hold of Myra’s shoulders and shook her like a rag doll. “Don’t be a fool, Myra. Are you out of your mind? That man needs you right now, the way you needed him when Barbara died. Hurry, you can fight with him on the flight. If you don’t go you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Go!”
The others pushed Myra toward the door. “But I’m not dressed…he