Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

“Stay here.” Paula stomped toward the house. Her boots kicked up a cloud of dust. She had taken off her fingerless gloves, wiped the black charcoal from under her eyes. The back of her hair corkscrewed into a cowlick. The hem of her shift was filthy. Like the rest of them, she had slashes of blood on her clothes.

Jane looked past her to the farmhouse. She wasn’t going to think about the blood anymore. She was either with Nick or she wasn’t.

All or none; the Queller way.

The front door opened. A small woman stood with a shawl wrapped around her narrow shoulders. Beside her, a tall man with long hair and an elaborate, handlebar mustache held a shotgun in his hands. He saw Paula, but did not lower the gun until she placed a penny in the palm of the woman’s open hand.

This was Nick’s idea. Penny, nickel, quarter, dime—each representing a cell, each cell using the coins as a way of indicating to each other that it was safe to talk. Nick delighted in the play on their name, the Army of the Changing World. He’d made them all dress in black, even down to their underwear, and stand in a line like soldiers as he placed a coin in each of their hands to designate their code names.

The jackass didn’t know the word ‘symbiotic,’ so he made up the word ‘symbionese.’

Jane gritted her teeth as she banished Danberry’s words from her mind.

She had made her choice.

“I don’t know about you, troops, but I’m starving.” Nick looped his arm around Andrew’s shoulders. “Andy, what about you? Is it feed a cold and starve a fever, or the other way around?”

“I think it’s give them both whisky and sleep in a real bed.” Andrew trudged toward the house, Nick beside him. They were both noticeably exhausted, but Nick’s energy was carrying them through, just as it always did.

Jane did not follow them toward the house. She wanted to stretch her legs and look at the farm. The thought of a moment alone in the silence appealed to her. She had grown up in the city. The Hillsborough house was too close to the airport to be called the country. While other girls Jane’s age learned horseback riding and attended Girl Scout retreats, she was sitting in front of her piano for five and six hours at a time, trying to sharpen the fine motor movements of her fingers.

Her hand, as always, found its way to her stomach.

Would her daughter play the piano?

Jane wondered how she was so certain that the child was a girl. She wanted to name her something wonderful, not plain Jane or silly Jinx or the cartoony Janey that Nick sometimes called her. She wanted to give the girl all of her strengths and none of her weaknesses. To make sure that she did not pass on that sleeping ball of fear to her precious child.

She stopped at the wooden fence. Two white horses were grazing in the field. She smiled as they nuzzled each other.

Andrew and Jane would be here for at least a week, maybe more. When Nick got back from New York, they would lie low for another week before crossing into Canada. Switzerland was their dream, but what would it feel like to raise her baby on a farm like this one? To walk her to the end of the driveway and wait for the school bus? Hide Easter eggs in bales of hay? Take the horses out into the field and lay a picnic—Jane, her baby, and Nick.

Next time, Nick told her the last time. We’ll keep it next time.

“Hello.” The thin woman with the shawl called to Jane. She was making her way past the barn. “I’m sorry to bother you. They’re asking for you. Tucker can move the van into the barn. Spinner and Wyman are already inside.”

Jane gave a solemn nod. The lieutenants in each cell had all been assigned code names from past Secretaries of the United States Treasury. When Nick had first told Jane the idea, she had struggled not to laugh. Now, she could see that the cloak and dagger had been for a reason. The identities of the Stanford cell had died with Quarter.

“Oh,” the woman had stopped in her tracks, her mouth rounded in surprise.

Jane was just as shocked to see the familiar face. They had never met before, but she knew Clara Bellamy from magazines and newspapers and posters outside the State Theater at Lincoln Center. She was a prima ballerina, one of Balanchine’s last shining stars, until a debilitating knee injury had forced her into retirement.

“Well now.” Clara resumed walking toward Jane with a grin on her face. “You must be Dollar Bill.”

Another necessary part of spycraft. She told Clara, “We decided calling me ‘DB’ is easier than Dollar Bill. Penny thinks it stands for ‘Dumb Bitch.’”

“That’s Penny for you.” Clara had easily picked up on Paula’s prickliness. “Nice to meet you, DB. They call me Selden.”

Jane shook the woman’s hand. Then she laughed to let her know she recognized that the two of them meeting on a secluded farm outside of Chicago was wild.

“It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?” Clara looped her arm through Jane’s as they slowly headed toward the farmhouse. There was a slight limp to her walk. “I saw you at Carnegie three years ago. Brought me to tears. Mozart’s Concerto Number 24 in C Minor, I believe.”

Jane felt her lips curve into a smile. She loved it when people really loved music.

Clara said, “That green dress was amazing.”

“I thought the shoes were going to kill me.”

She smiled in commiseration. “I remember it was right after Horowitz’s Japan concert. To see a man who’s so accomplished fail so spectacularly—you must’ve been on pins and needles when you walked onto that stage.”