Page 79 of Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

July 31, 1986

FIVE DAYS AFTER THE OSLO SHOOTING

9

Jane Queller woke in a cold sweat. She had been crying in her sleep again. Her nose was raw. Her body ached. She started shaking uncontrollably. Panic made her heart shiver inside of her chest. In the semi-darkness, she thought she was back in Berlin, then in the Oslo hotel room, then she realized that she was in her childhood bedroom inside the Presidio Heights house. Pink wallpaper. Satin pink duvet and pillows. More pink in the rug, on the couch, the desk chair. Posters and stuffed animals and dolls.

Her mother had decorated the room because Jane did not have time to do it herself. From the age of six, almost every waking moment of Jane’s life had been spent in front of the piano. Tinkering. Practicing. Playing. Learning. Performing. Touring. Judging. Failing. Recovering. Coaxing. Succeeding. Mastering.

In the early days, Martin would stand behind Jane while she played, his eyes following the notes, his hands on her shoulders, gently pressing when she made a mistake. Pechenikov had requested Martin abandon his post as a condition of taking on Jane as a student, but the tension of Martin’s presence had shadowed her career. Her life. Her triumphs. Her failures. Whether she was in Tokyo or Sydney or New York, or even during her three months of isolation in Berlin, Jane could always feel an invisible Martin hovering behind her.

Jane shivered again. She glanced behind her, as if Martin might be there. She sat up and pressed her back against the headboard. She pulled the sheets around her.

What had they done?

Nick would argue that they hadn’t done anything. Laura Juneau was the one who’d pulled the trigger. The woman had been visibly at peace with the decision. She could’ve walked away at any time. That she had murdered Martin, then herself, was an act of bravery, and also an act that she had committed alone.

But for the first time in the six years that Jane had known Nicholas Harp, she found herself incapable of believing him.

They had all put Laura on that stage with Martin—Jane, Andrew, Nick, the other cells in the other cities. By Nick’s design, they were each a cog in a decentralized machine. A mysterious man on the inside had helped Chicago infiltrate the company that produced the red dye packs that were supposed to be inside the brown paper bag. New York had worked with the document forger in Toronto. San Francisco had paid for airline tickets, hotel rooms, taxi rides and meals. Like Martin’s shadow behind Jane, they had all stood invisible behind Laura Juneau as she pulled the revolver from her purse and twice squeezed the trigger.

Was this crazy?

Were they all insane?

Every morning for the last eighteen months Jane had found herself waking up with doubt on her mind. Her emotions would violently swing like the clapper inside a bell. One moment, she would think that they were acting like lunatics—running drills, practicing escapes and learning how to use weapons. Wasn’t that ridiculous? Why did Jane have to learn hand-to-hand combat? Why did she need to memorize safe house locations and understand diagrams of false panels and secret compartments? They were just a handful of people, all of them under the age of thirty, believing that they had the wherewithal, the power, to pull off extraordinary acts of opposition.

Wasn’t that the very definition of delusional?

But then the next moment, Nick would start speaking and Jane would be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything they were doing made perfect sense.

Jane put her head in her hands.

She had helped a woman murder her own father. She had planned for his death. She had known it was going to happen and said nothing.

Oslo had taken away the ridiculousness. The skepticism. Everything was real now. All of it was happening.

Jane was losing her mind.

“There you are.” Nick came into the room with a mug in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He was wearing his boxer shorts and nothing else. “Drink all of this.”

Jane took the mug. Hot tea and bourbon. The last time she’d had a drink was with Laura Juneau in the bar. Jane’s heart had been pounding then as it pounded now. Laura had called Jane a chameleon. And she had been right. The woman had no idea that Jane was part of the group. They had talked like strangers, then intimates, then Laura was gone.

You are a magnificent person, she had told Jane before leaving. You are magnificent because you are so uniquely you.

“More G-men just pulled up.” Nick was at the window looking down on the motorcourt. “I’m guessing FBI by the shitty car.” He flashed Jane a crooked grin, as if the presence of more feds on top of the CIA, NSA, Interpol, Revenue Agents and Secret Service men they’d already spoken to was a trifle. “You be Bonnie and I’ll be Clyde.”

Jane gulped the tea. She barely tasted the hot liquid as it scorched into her stomach. Martin had been murdered five days ago. His funeral was tomorrow. Nick seemed to be feeding off the stress, almost giddy during the interviews that more and more felt like interrogations. Jane wanted to scream at him that this was real, that they had murdered someone, that what they were planning next could land them all in prison for the rest of their lives—or worse.

Instead, she whispered, “I’m scared, Nicky.”

“Darling.” He was on the bed, holding her, before she could ask. His lips were at her ear. “You’ll be okay. Trust me. I’ve been through a hell of a lot worse than this. It makes you stronger. It reminds you why we’re doing this.”

Jane closed her eyes as she tried to absorb his words. She had lost the point of doing this. Why was she grieving her father? For so many years, she’d truly believed that any love she’d had for Martin had been beaten out of her. So why was Jane so racked with guilt? Why did it hurt every time she remembered that Martin was gone?

“Stop.” Nick could always tell when she was troubled. He told her, “Think of something else. Something good.”

Jane shook her head. She did not have Nick’s talent of compartmentalization. She couldn’t even close her eyes without seeing Martin’s head exploding. He’d been shot in the temple. Brain and tissue and bone had splattered Friedrich Richter like mud from a car wheel. Then Laura had pulled the trigger again and the top of her head had sprayed up into the ceiling.