Without remorse - Tom Clancy [197]
'I think you're right.' Sarah Rosen sat down and rubbed her eyes. 'You never met Pam. Prettier than Doris, willowy, sort of, probably from an inadequate diet. It was much easier to wean her off the drugs. Not as badly abused, physically anyway, but just as much emotional hurt. We never got the whole story. Sam says that John did. But that's not the important part.' Sarah looked up, and the pain O'Toole saw there was real and deep. 'We had her saved, Sandy, and then something happened, and then something - something changed in John.'
Sandy turned to look out the window. It was quarter of seven in the morning. She could see people coming out in pajamas and bathrobes to get their morning papers and collect half-gallon bottles of milk. The early crowd was leaving for their cars, a process that in her neighborhood lasted until eight-thirty or so. She turned back. 'No, nothing changed. It was always there. Something - I don't know, released it, let it out? like opening the door of a cage. What sort of man - part of him's like Tim, but another part I just don't understand.'
'What about his family?'
'He doesn't have any. His mother and father are dead, no siblings. He was married -'
'Yes, I know about that, and then Pam.' Sarah shook her head. 'So lonely.'
'Part of me says he's a good man, but the other part .. .' Sandy's voice trailed off.
'My maiden name was Rabinowicz,' Sarah said, sipping her coffee. 'My family comes from Poland. Papa left when I was too young to remember; mother died when I was nine, peritonitis. I was eighteen when the war started,' she went on. For her generation 'the war' could mean only one thing. 'We had lots of relatives in Poland. I remember writing to them. Then they all just disappeared. All gone — even now it's hard to believe it really happened.'
'I'm sorry, Sarah, I didn't know.'
'It's not the sort of thing you talk a lot about.' Dr Rosen shrugged. 'People took something from me, though, and I couldn't do anything about it. My cousin Reva was a good pen pal. I suppose they killed her one way or another, but I never found out who or where. Back then I was too young to understand. I suppose I was more puzzled than anything else. Later, I got angry - but against whom? I didn't do anything. I couldn't. And there's this empty space where Reva was. I still have her picture, black-and-white of a girl with pigtails, twelve years old, I guess. She wanted to be a ballet dancer.' Sarah looked up. 'Kelly's got an empty place, too.'
'But revenge -'
'Yeah, revenge.' The doctor's expression was bleak. 'I know. We're supposed to think he's a bad person, aren't we? Call the police, even, turn him in for doing that.'
'I can't - I mean, yes, but I just —'
'Neither will I. Sandy, if he were a bad person, why did he bring Doris up here? He's risking his life two different ways.'
'But there's something very scary about him.'
'He could have just walked away from her,' Sarah went on, not really hearing. 'Maybe he's just the sort of person who thinks he has to fix everything himself. But now we have to help.'
That turned Sandy around, giving her a respite from her real thoughts. 'What are we going to do with her?'
'We're going to get her well, as far as we can, and after that it'll be up to her. What else can we do?' Sarah asked, watching Sandy's face change again, returning to her real dilemma. .
'But what about John?'
Sarah looked up. 'I have never seen him do anything illegal. Have you?'
It was a weapons-training day. A solid cloud cover meant that no reconnaissance satellites, American or Soviet, could see what was happening here. Cardboard targets were set up around the compound, and the lifeless eyes of mannequins watched from the sandbox and swing set as the Marines emerged from the woods, passing through the simulated gate, firing low-powered rounds from their carbines. The targets were shredded in seconds. Two M-60 machine guns poured fire into the open door of the 'barracks' - which would already have been wrecked by the two Huey Cobra gunships - while the snatch