“As much as anything. More than much.”
“I wanted him to be my son because that would have been my escape, my convenient out. An excuse, a rationale to let myself change, to make myself change.”
“But doing all you have done to save the boy made you realize you did not want to change, that you were only happy within the hellfire that is both place and feeling.”
“Not happy, so much as able to succeed. I tried to turn my back, to walk away, to withdraw — I really did. God, how much I’d love to be able to live alone in the woods like you.”
“And has that helped my withdrawal from the hellfire, Blainey?”
“No, because I keep drawing you back in.”
“You come because you must. I go with you because I must. Where is the distinction? We both do what we have to. Only the origins we emerge from are different, and in themselves those origins are meaningless. It is the destinations that matter, and ours are the same.”
Blaine looked at him reflectively. “We’ve been fighting the same war for twenty years, Indian. What kind of destination is that? The names and places keep changing, but I’ll be damned if they don’t seem interchangeable after awhile.”
“Because the journey is what matters. Moving is living. Motion is life. One cannot exist without the other.”
“I wanted that boy to be my son, Indian.”
“A passenger on the journey, Blainey, regardless of label.”
“Yeah, I get the point.”
Blaine arrived at the Reading School in the twilight between afternoon and night. The teacher who had replaced John Neville as housemaster directed him to a small pitch in the school’s rear where a number of boarders were kicking a soccer ball leisurely about before dinner. He approached without hesitation, his step purposeful and sure, but his thudding heart betraying the fear within.
Fear of acceptance.
Fear of truth.
The boy had been involved in this because of him. One way or another that made it his responsibility to do … something. So much to be said, so many explanations called for. Where to start?
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“Got to save some stuff for later.”
“And what about what you did in the Phoenix Project?”
“Also later.”
Their first meeting weighing heavily on his mind, he’d composed a dozen speeches en route there, and dismissed them all. None came even close to expressing what he felt, what he really wanted to say. His thoughts swam wildly as he approached the boys clad in sweat suits kicking the muddied ball about in the falling shadow of dusk. He couldn’t see Matthew and wondered if the housemaster might have been mistaken.
The boy turned and seemed to rush for him in the same motion. Blaine saw the smile beaming, thought perhaps it might have been the greatest sight ever, knew then that he didn’t need the words ready because they would come on their own.
The boy lunged the last of the way with long hair flapping in the breeze and threw his arms around Blaine, head buried against his chest. McCracken returned the grasp as tight as it came to him, and the embrace lingered for a time before he eased the boy away gently at the shoulders.
“It’s later.” Blaine smiled.
A Biography of Jon Land
Since his first book was published in 1983, Jon Land has written twenty-eight novels, seventeen of which have appeared on national bestseller lists. He wrote techno thrillers before Tom Clancy put them in vogue, and his strong prose, easy characterization, and commitment to technical accuracy have made him a pillar of the genre.
Land spent his college years at Brown University, where he convinced the faculty to let him attempt writing a thriller as his senior honors thesis. Four years later, his first novel, The Doomsday Spiral, appeared in print. In the last years of the Cold War, he found a place writing chilling portrayals of threats to the United States, and of the men and women who operated undercover and outside the law to maintain our security. His most successful of those novels were the nine starring Blaine McCracken, a rogue CIA agent and former Green Beret with the skills of James Bond but none of the Englishman’s tact.
In 1998 Land published the first novel in his Ben and Danielle series, comprised of fast-paced thrillers whose heroes, a Detroit cop and an Israeli detective, work together to protect the Holy Land, falling in love in the process. He has written seven of these so far. The most recent, The Last Prophecy, was released in 2004.
Recently, RT Book Reviews gave Land a special prize for pioneering genre fiction, and his short story “Killing Time” was shortlisted for the 2010 Dagger Award for best short fiction. Land is currently writing his fourth novel to feature Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong — a female hero in a genre which, Land has said, has too few of them. The first three books in the series—Strong Enough to Die (2009), Strong Justice (2010), and Strong at the Break (2011) — have all garnered critical praise with Strong Justice being named a Top Thriller of the Year by Library Journal and runner-up for Best Novel of the Year by the New England Book Festival. His first nonfiction book, Betrayal, tells the story of a deputy FBI chief attempting to bring down Boston crime lord Whitey Bulger, and will be released in 2011.
Land currently lives in Providence, not far from his alma mater.