Angie looked quickly over at Bastion but he was sleeping very soundly, his face now resting on a pillow in his seat with his feet now somewhat jumbled in her lap. She smiled and looked back at Rollie, grasping his hand then;
 
 

"Only if you want to tell me, Rol. I haven’t asked because I didn’t want to push you. Dingo warned me that you would be pretty shook up and after seeing you under the pier, well…"
 
 

"I was a bit unprepared for his truth, to speak," Rollie replied, trying to joke but he then leaned his head back and closed his eyes for a moment, "but I have to tell you Angie, it did shock me, more than anything else in my life.. I learned in one minute, a lifetime of total deception."
 
 

"Look, maybe now isn’t the right time…" Angie told him, watching him shudder slightly.
 
 

"No, that was just a chill, sweetie- I’ll get us a blanket and we can talk under wraps," he said, jokingly and she smiled. He really was okay, she told herself, even if the truth hurt considerably.
 
 

Grabbing a blanket from above their seats in the luggage compartment, Rollie encased himself and Angie in its warmth and they snuggled against each other. There was no one behind them or in front of them. Across the aisle, a businessman snored at a moderate pace.
 
 

"Here goes…" Rollie began, his lips close to Angie’s cheek, his hands under the blankets touching hers at times, at other times, tightening into clenched fists and then relaxing.
 
 

"Dingo was recruited by the CIA in 1960 when he was seventeen," Rollie said, then breathed in deeply.
 
 

"WHAT?" Angie’s voice rose in shocked exclamation and she put her hand over her mouth, quickly leaning back into Rollie’s shoulder. His warm, brown eyes hung on hers in a desperate lock of needed support. Her mind began to race ahead and started to put jagged pieces together in a very large, mosaic puzzle.
 
 

"Gets worse…trouble he was always in- family business was conning and that’s why he was chosen to begin with… he was picked up by an agent, he told me and ah, debriefed in some horrific manner- similar to my experience."
 
 

"Rollie, why doesn’t the government do something about this?"
 
 

"Don’t know, except to find out that there is this CIA that the public reads about and sees in Langley, Virginia and then there is this real faction that plays underneath the facade. Dingo played at being debriefed. Apparently, he never actually took to it- the brainwashing and the breakdown. He conned them and learned to survive that way."
 
 

"But, you said, you did the same thing- that they were interested in you because you couldn’t be brainwashed…right?"
 
 

"He told me that they- like Eckmiller and that bunch were very interested in seeing another genetic wonder like him…"
 
 

"But why Rollie? Did they think they could use you for some purpose?"
 
 

"Yep, and apparently, dear old dad lead them on many chases and escaped quite a bit from their control. He did keep in contact with this neo-network that he joined, some group of non-controlled agents and well, he said that it kept him sane in the midst of the controllers’ big thumbs on his back."
 
 

"Oh Rollie, this is insane. I can’t believe there are people like this that can just pick up a man and make him do their dirty work. It’s like some sadistic slavery ring."
 
 

"It gets worse, he finally told me the truth about mum. She didn’t die from natural causes or a virus she picked up by human contagion…she was infected with a bolus of contagion from them as a way to control him. They murdered her to get to him. He didn’t know where to turn so he put me with Mangela. Bloody hell! He drove me right into Mangela’s arms. He did it on purpose…put me back in the bush so far, even they didn’t try to come after me!"
 
 

Angie looked up at Rollie, touching his cheek softly; "that’s why he played the joker, the con- irresponsible and seemingly uncaring. The perfect image of the deadbeat father."
 
 

"He was a natural at it, alright! I hated him at times, so much! Now, I see why Mangela was always on my case about that and other things…" Rollie said with remorse and he sighed as his eyes grew misty.
 
 

"But you came here, to the U.S. with him? Why did he pull you out of the bush and bring you here? That was like putting you right in the lion’s den?" Angie wondered, aloud.
 
 

"He did say that he brought me here, while on some mission and conning was the game. I was so ashamed at times, with the way I had been taught and had learned to live with Mangela that I pulled out, away from him. His grifts made me nervous and feeling very unethical and little did I know, what he really was trying to do. He knew I needed to find my own way…" Rollie said, shaking his head as he touched his forehead to Angie’s. He swallowed hard and continued; "I met your father, sweetie…like kismet…my future, your future. Dingo told me that by that time, he had become so engrained in the life with these people, that they were satisfied he had maintained status quo and left me alone…for a while."
 
 

Angie’s memories of Rollie meeting her father and those days flashed by with a warming sensation of sweetness- that of youth and yearning- life with her favorite two men had been so comforting. But like her father dying and making that comfort suddenly shatter into a dizzying array of depression and darkness, Rollie too had come across his own nightmares.
 
 

"He told me it didn’t last, the status quo…the group he was secretly with, was heating things up…he told his section leader he wouldn’t do a mission where I was to be recruited as well and then, well- you know…all hell broke loose, the incident with him when we got married, and then Pollepel…"
 
 

"Yeah…they got to him…Pollepel was to keep him in permanent line, right?" Angie asked, not wanting to think about the horror of that time, her despair during that time had been overwhelming.
 
 

"What was it, what wouldn’t he do, Rollie?" Angie suddenly asked, sitting up, nervously.
 
 

"Uh, well…Ange, it had to do with Loubar."
 
 

"What?"
 
 

"He was told to bring Loubar into the fold…the section wanted Loubar so they hired him to hit the Chinese trade minister, remember that? He was to be absorbed and Dingo was to keep him happy and supply him with anything he needed. But he found out, quickly enough then, that Loubar had the definite grudge against me and ah, what he had done to you…He told me he couldn’t deal with that. He also told me that when he found out that Loubar planned to use me as his escape out of the country and that it had been planned by the section to pull me in then, he decided to act."
 
 

Angie was silent. Dingo also knew something that he hadn’t apparently told Rollie, even at the Pier…that Loubar had raped Taia over two years prior to her and that his grudge with Rollie had been acted upon even earlier than Rollie knew. She felt uneasy and restless now as she listened to him, his voice cracking at times.
 
 

"He acted on Loubar, Angie…in Spain…"
 
 

"What?" This was something that surprised her and she looked at him strangely, her thoughts about Taia’s secret from Rollie now on the back burner.
 
 

"He told me that he killed Loubar there, that day at the cliff, remember? That he shot him in the head with a silencer sniper rifle from fifty feet away."
 
 

"But he fell with me! I didn’t see anything like that!" Angie remarked, trying to remember even the smallest details from that day, the fall…but it was starting to make sense to her in the scheme of things. Dingo tracked Loubar down and killed him as he was about to kill her. She marveled at her father-in-law and his heroic actions suddenly.
 
 

"Loubar's head was badly damaged in the fall, remember? Dingo told me it was a clean shot through and through…but there is more, Ange. Apparently, the section found out that Dingo had killed Loubar and put Michael Lopez on Dingo’s tail. But Michael actually brought him in…that is, the Michael that resurfaced after his own death…there apparently was an inner circle to the splinter group that Dingo thought he knew, of counter agents."
 
 

"Whoa, I’m getting a headache, Rol. Splinters of splinters of what? Who is the atom here?" Angie asked, her mind spinning.
 
 

Rollie smiled and with his face next to hers, unrolled the small piece of paper that Taia had given him back at Lucinda’s bungalow. He showed her the opened paper and she frowned.
 
 

"Rol, this is the address to the safehouse that Taia wants us to take Bastion to… ‘B. Geste, apt. 101, West 56^th’, so?"
 
 

"I figure that since Taia told me that she and Dingo trusted this B. Geste with Bastion’s life and their own, that well…the atom is here, right here under our noses," Rollie whispered softly, tapping the paper with his finger.
 
 

"No, it couldn’t be like ‘Beau Geste’, that would be too far out, too corny, huh?"
 
 

"Maybe it’s a code name…after all- Beau Geste in French means what? beautiful gesture or gift…eh?"
 
 

"Yeah, something like that, but all that I can think about is Tony Curtis in a French legionnaires outfit fighting somewhere in Africa!"
 
 

"Was it Tony Curtis?" Rollie was smiling at her and she kissed him swiftly on his lips, smiling back.
 
 

"Have you ever thought about why Dingo knows Taia?" he added, curiously.
 
 

"Yes and well, we may never know the whole truth there…" Angie answered, biting her lip as she looked back at Bastion who had shifted in his sleep. He was digging for some answers still that Dingo had not answered for him. Taia had made her swear not to tell Rollie about Bastion’s true father.
 
 

"I think Dingo is the father…of Bastion. I think he took over caring for her after she went into witness protection. He was helping me out, in a way and who knows, they fell in love. Like son, like father…"
 
 

"Rollie, you’re crazy. I see Dingo like a father to her, not a lover. And I certainly think he would tell you if he was Bastion’s father. Why not let the whole issue of poor Bastion’s parentage rest?"
 
 

"I can’t…he looks like, us, like me…" Rollie continued, his eyes resting on Bastion as well, "maybe he is my son…maybe Taia is just trying to keep me out of the picture…doesn't want to rock the boat, you know- us?"
 
 

"NO!" Angie replied, the color draining from her cheeks as Rollie looked at her in a surprised manner.
 
 

"Okay, okay…I’ll drop it for now!" he told her, as she blinked and nodded in agreement.
 
 

"I’ve got a question for you, however," Angie told him then, adjusting the blanket around her throat, her leg draping over his as he held on to her knee and coyly smiled.
 
 

"Okay, go ahead…" he offered, knowing he was getting baited into a trap.
 
 

"Why does Taia’s father- this Alex Martel guy want Bastion so much? I mean, so what? The man is a cold-blooded killer, an assassin. Yeah, I could see him taking Bastion to draw Taia back into the family fold like before but something still is bothering me about all of this…"
 
 

Rollie frowned. He had thought Angie was really changing the subject but he sensed only a jealous streak here still and moved from her in a stiff, rapid motion, clearing his throat.
 
 

"Angie, let it be. Taia never wanted to do her father’s bidding! I mean, you helped her with me over 4 years ago get out from under him. Why don’t you trust her?"
 
 

"What? I do…I mean, I guess I mean that I am still having problems with why he would hurt his own daughter in Disneyland…why he would shoot at her and his grandson and risk hurting or killing them. I don’t understand what he really wants here!"
 
 

A sudden projection between their seat cushions separated them. The cold steel nose of a semiautomatic pistol was making its presence known.
 
 

"I think I can best answer your wife’s question," came the deep, sarcastic voice of Alex Martel from behind their seats.