“What’s on your mind?” asked Jones as he tapped his pencil on the table. He’d known Payne long enough to recognize his moods. Especially his bad ones.
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
Payne sighed. “Sausage.”
Jones didn’t smile or laugh. It would only encourage Payne to joke around, as he was apt to do. “Seriously, what’s bothering you?”
Payne paused a few seconds before answering. “When I was growing up, I used to goof around with the same group of kids from my neighborhood. There were eight of us, all within two years of each other. A great bunch of guys. Every day after school we’d get together in this park near my house. Football, baseball, basketball, whatever. It didn’t really matter. If the weather was nice, you knew where to find us.”
Jones listened, unsure where this was going.
“Not surprisingly,” Payne continued, “I was the biggest kid on the block. Which, if you know anything about playground politics, meant I was the leader of the group. A real alpha dog.”
Payne laughed at the memory. It was a cherished part of his life.
“One day when I was nine, my best friend in the group-his name was Chad-couldn’t play because he had to rake his yard. We lived in this wooded stretch of Pittsburgh where the trees outnumbered the houses by about five hundred to one. I’m talking Sherwood Forest minus Robin Hood. Oak trees, maples, you name it. Everywhere you looked, nothing but falling leaves.”
Jones smiled in empathy. His town house was pretty close to where Payne grew up.
“Anyway, Chad was a clever kid. He tried to convince me to get all the guys to help him rake his yard so we’d have the same number of players for our afternoon game. Obviously, I laughed in his face. No way in hell I was going to rake someone else’s yard for free. I mean, I was nine years old. No one volunteers to do chores when they’re nine. That’s un-American.”
“Amen, brother.”
“So,” Payne said, “the seven of us go to the park to play football. I’m all-time quarterback, wearing my Steelers jersey, and we’re playing three on three. The sun goes down, the lights kick on, and we keep on playing well past dinnertime. This goes on for another hour or so. We’re covered in mud, having the time of our lives, laughing like there’s no tomorrow. Simply having a great day . . .”
Payne paused. “Until we heard the siren.”
Jones felt his stomach drop.
“We’re kids, right? And damn curious about life, so I grab the ball and run toward the noise. Soon another siren can be heard in the distance. And another. And another. We see the flashing lights and think it’s the coolest thing in the world. Something exciting is happening on our block! I’m leading the pack because I’m the fastest runner. The whole time I’ve got the ball under my arm, pretending I’m being chased by the Dallas Cowboys. I’m dodging mailboxes, jumping over curbs, acting like a total idiot. Without a care in the world. Until I saw Chad’s bike in the middle of the street. The damn thing was completely mangled.”
Payne cleared his throat, fighting back his emotions. “I skid to a stop and so do the other guys. There are seven of us, just standing there on the side of the road, growing up in the blink of an eye. None of us knew what to say or do. Finally, one of their parents-I can’t remember whose-ran over to us and made us turn away so we wouldn’t see the cops scrape Chad off the road. Sorry, too late. I had already seen more than I’d wanted to. . . . Lucky me, huh?”
Jones asked, “How did it happen?”
“My best guess is that he raked his yard until it was too dark to rake. After that, he knew we’d still be playing in the park under the lights, so he hopped on his bike and pedaled as fast as he could to join us. Some guy driving a truck didn’t see him, and, well, that was that.”
Payne paused before continuing. “That night, as you can probably imagine, I had trouble sleeping. My parents, who were still alive back then, came into my room in the middle of the night to make sure I was okay, but I wasn’t in there. They looked all over the house, but I was nowhere to be found. So now they start panicking. One kid had already died that night, now they’re worried about me. They call the cops. They call the neighbors. They call everyone they can think of. In less than an hour, a search party was formed and they’re out looking for me. I mean, my parents were freaking out. Totally sick with worry. Finally, after an hour or two, somebody spots me and tells my parents where I am.”
“Where were you hiding?”
“That’s the thing. I wasn’t hiding. I was in Chad’s yard, raking leaves.”
Jones smiled sadly. He had never heard this story before. “Do you remember why?”
Payne nodded. “I felt responsible for Chad’s death. In some ways, I still do. I mean, if I had helped him out with his chores, he’d still be alive today.”
“Jon-”
“I know! It’s completely irrational. But that’s the way I feel. That’s why I went to his yard in the middle of the night-to finish what he’d started. It’s the same reason I went back the next day and the day after that. I raked until that yard was clean. Until it was spotless.”
Payne shook his head and laughed at himself. “How messed up am I?”
Jones knew it was a rhetorical question. Instead of making an easy joke, he asked a question of his own. “What made you think of this? You rarely talk about your childhood.”
“Honestly? This mission reminds me of Chad.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Call me crazy, but if I had answered my damn phone, Richard Byrd would be alive today.”
“Jon-”
“Don’t even start with me,” Payne ordered. The tone of his voice suggested he wasn’t in the mood to argue. “I know it’s nuts, but that’s the way I feel. If I had answered my phone, if I had given him the help that he asked for, he’d still be alive today. . . . Pretty ironic, huh?”
“Ironic?”
“The reason I can’t sleep at night is because of Chad, and my parents, and all the bad shit we saw overseas. So what do I do? I take a sleeping pill to get some rest. Of course, in this case the sleeping pill is the reason I didn’t answer my phone to begin with, so a lot of good it did.”
“Wow,” Jones said, trying to lighten the mood. “You are fucked up.”
“For the record, I said messed up. But thanks for making me feel better about myself.”
“Hey! That’s what friends are for.”
Payne smiled, hoping to change the subject. “Anyway, enough about that crap. Let’s talk about the mission.”
“I thought that’s what we were doing.”
“No, we were talking about my demons.”
Jones shook his head. “No, we were talking about your motivation. That’s far more important than anything else.”
“How so?”
“Tell me, why are we going to Russia? Is it to rescue the girl, or is it to rake leaves?”
Payne grimaced. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb, Jon. You know damn well what I’m talking about. Is saving Allison enough for you, or do you need more from this trip?”
“Like?”
“Finding out why Byrd was killed and completing his mission. If that’s the case, I’m completely cool with it. I really am. I’m willing to do whatever I can to help you sleep at night. But you have to come clean and tell me now so I can adjust our itinerary.”