Finding Patience

  Chapter 12

  Compassion

  Castiglion Fiorentino - June, 2012

  Brandt gazed out over the countryside stretching away from Castiglion Fiorentino. As he watched, the setting sun performed its daily duty, carefully painting the landscape in hues of blended pink, orange and purple. Though the time had finally arrived, he nonetheless hesitated, painfully aware that the next few minutes would decide his fate.

  Girding himself for the inevitable, he turned and slowly trudged up the hill toward the city gate. Entering the old city, he noticed two children playing in the street, busily practicing their soccer. Further along, an elderly couple strolled hand in hand, oblivious to the hastened pace of life beyond the ancient walls.

  A few paces further, the street curved slightly, the familiar neon sign coming into view - Gelato Capri - emblazoned in bold blue neon letters. There were tables placed outside the shop, one of them appropriated by a woman and two children busily devouring gelato cones of various flavors.

  Arriving at the parlor door, he discerned a line, several people patiently awaiting their turn. Behind the counter stood Patience, ergo Martina, smiling and conversing with the locals as she prepared their respective dolci.

  He stepped inside and, crouching as unobtrusively as possible, he secreted himself at the trailing end of the line. But to no avail - Patience spotted him immediately, her eyes flashing enigmatically. Aside from that, she betrayed no reaction whatsoever as, continuing her nightly duties, she patiently practiced her trade.

  The line inched forward interminably, constant patter emanating from the locals as they debated the all-important decision as to what flavor would satisfy their palettes. For her part, Patience took all of this in with practiced empathy, assisting as best she could with the challenging decision facing each and every patron.

  It being apparent that Patience had long since been accorded full membership within the community, Brandt found himself overwhelmed with compassion for the woman behind the counter in this, a modest gelato parlor. Indeed, in this small out-of-the-way locale, time seemed to stand still, the worries of the world pushed aside. He marveled to himself how this must have been the perfect place for Patience during all those years of exile.

  At length, he found himself at the head of the line and, glancing about, he was surprised to see that he was the last in line.

  “May I take your order?” Patience inquired unemotionally, her voice guardedly professional.

  Brandt replied sheepishly, “A few moments of your time?” but at her reproving frown, he relented, somehow understanding that the time-honored ritual must be observed to its completion. Accordingly, he conceded, “Oh, all right, a single dip stracciatela cone, per piaccere.”

  Patience glanced away, intent on the task of preparing his cone and, as she did so, she announced absently, “I’ve been wondering when you would come. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Waiting for me? Why?” he replied in confusion, “The last time I saw you right out there on the street, you commanded me to never darken your doorstep again.”

  A frown abruptly creasing her features, she added perfunctorily, “You idiot. You should know that a woman never means what she says, especially in matters of the heart. And surely you know that you ripped my heart out, Brandt MacCauley.”

  Embarrassed at her clairvoyance, he murmured, “Yes.”

  “And?” she shot back.

  His heart suddenly pounding uncontrollably within his chest, he asked, “And what?”

  “And what are you doing here!” she reproached, a determined look setting in.

  For his part, he rejoined evasively, “You know why I’m here.”

  Staring impassively at him, she handed him his cone.

  Suddenly withering beneath her silent stare, he became completely disoriented, his breath short and labored. His confusion now approaching abject terror, he reverted protectively to his carefully laid plan, “It’s closing time, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she replied, clearly aware of and nonetheless ignoring his obvious discomfort.

  “Could we go for a walk, perhaps talk for a few moments…after you’ve closed up, of course?”

  “Okay,” she replied and, removing her apron, she added, “I can go right now.”

  Following him out of the front door, she closed and locked it. As she did so, he could see that the sun had set, the rosy light now beginning to fade. Pointing toward the city gate, he suggested hopefully, “Could we walk this way?” and at her taciturn nod, they strolled silently down the narrow street, each maintaining a respectable distance in accordance with the local custom for two people who are clearly not insieme.

  At length, he could contain himself no longer. Summoning up the courage to enact his carefully prepared plan, he announced softly, “I brought you something, Patience.”

  “Oh, and what might that be?” she responded diffidently.

  “Well, it’s a long and complicated story, but I shall try to make it short, seeing as how you appear to be in a hurry.”

  Flashing her eyes at him in frustration, she responded, “There’s no hurry, Brandt. I have all the time in the world.”

  Taking her cue, he commenced with, “I assume you remember Bernice, right?”

  “Who could forget her! She was the author of the watusi.”

  “Right, so Bernice came to see me a couple of weeks ago, and she gave me something to give to you.”

  “Really, and what might that be?” she asked quizzically.

  Reaching forward, he placed an object within her hand. Glancing down and realizing immediately what it was, she abruptly glared at him, inquiring, “What the hell is this supposed to mean, Brandt?”

  “It means that the prior owner has no further need of it.”

  Glancing back downward, she pondered a moment, thenceforth muttering, “All I can say is, good riddance!” and so saying, she flung the offending orb as far as she possibly could.

  Momentarily buoyed by this action, he continued, “So you know that I found you by using pattern recognition.”

  “Yeeees,” she said, drawing out the single word, as if to say, “we’ve been over this before.”

  Undeterred, he continued, “As I am sure you are also aware, I wrote the algorithm.”

  “Yeeees,” she repeated, once again drawing out her reply.

  At this, his desperation becoming apparent, he nonetheless continued on his carefully planned course, intimating, “Well, I patented the algorithm. Actually, I have seven patents.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. Good for you,” she replied with little discernible interest.

  “It’s quite complex, you know – the algorithm,” he responded proudly.

  “I’m sure it is,” she replied distantly. “How many years did you work on it - ten?”

  “More than that,” he responded, not wanting to admit that he had worked on it almost continuously since that night fifteen years ago.

  “And your point is?” she replied indifferently.

  He stopped and turned to face her, and at his cue she did the same. Recognizing that there still remained a huge chasm between them, he stammered, “Patience…you are a co-holder of the patents.”

  “I’m what?” she blurted in obvious denial.

  He replied contritely, “There are two co-holders of the patents – you and me – and we share the royalties equally.”

  “What the…why?”

  “Surely you know that without you I never would have been able to write the algorithms. All those days and nights, year after year, searching and searching, I knew that there was only one way that I would ever find you. I simply had to write the algorithms. It was my destiny to do so, and without you, I couldn’t have done it.”

  She stared at him inscrutably for several moments, eventually responding, “What does co-holder mean, Brandt?”

  He scrutinized her and, searching for any sign of interest on her part, he disclosed, “It means th
at we are partners, Patience.”

  “Ha! Partners!” she exploded with indignation. “Partners!” she repeated, and so saying, she turned and continued down the street.

  Baffled and hurt by her response, he hurried to keep up with her, adding, “There is some money, Patience. The patents have been licensed, and we are equally entitled to the proceeds.”

  “Money! I don’t care about money, damn you!” she responded with growing outrage.

  “I was sure that you would say that, but it is your money, after all. So I have it for you.”

  “How much do I get?” she replied with little apparent curiosity.

  “Well, I thought you might ask that. There are ten million hits on the website, and each hit brings in a nickel, of which we split twenty percent.”

  Turning to face him yet again, she responded, “That doesn’t sound like much.”

  “It’s about fifty thousand dollars each,” he responded.

  “Fifty thousand! Fifty thousand dollars?” she exclaimed, her eyes suddenly growing wide in surprise.

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “Fifty thousand dollars! Wow! I can fix up the ice cream parlor.” She replied with sudden excitement. “Wow!” she repeated, a tiny smile growing at the edges of her mouth. And by this point they had reached the park, the view of the valley having turned to a rosy grey hue.

  Proceeding cautiously, Brandt now added, “Yes, and perhaps you will want to buy a second one, or maybe even a third.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” she countered, “Fifty thousand won’t go that far.”

  “Yes, I am quite certain that it will, Patience,” he rejoined.

  She turned and, staring piercingly at him, she inquired, “Am I missing something?”

  He moved a daring step closer to her and, seeing that she did not react negatively, he placed one hand on each of her arms, explaining, “Patience, it’s ten million hits a day! The algorithms are being used by law enforcement, medical professionals, scientists, educators, and business concerns worldwide.”

  “So, what does that mean?” she responded in confusion.

  “My dear Patience, it means that we are each earning fifty thousand dollars a day!”

  At this impossible revelation Patience jerked away from his grasp and, stumbling a few steps, she promptly slumped onto a nearby park bench. She paled visibly, unable to completely absorb the significance of his admission. At a complete loss as to how he should proceed, he simply seated himself quietly beside her.

  At length, she drew her hand through her hair, babbling, “Fifty thousand dollars a day. Just how much is that? I can’t even count that high, Brandt.”

  “It’s eighteen million dollars and change a year.” Halting momentarily to allow her to take in the enormity of his disclosure, he explained, “The website has been up for nearly two years, so we’ve made a fair amount already. I have a cashier’s check here for you in the amount of thirty million dollars. It’s just a first payment, of course…” and at this he drew an envelope from his pocket and handed it to her.

  Staring at it in revulsion, she flatly refused to accept it. The offensive item before her refusing to disappear, she sneered at it and exclaimed, “Eighteen million dollars and change per year…ha! This is going to change my life, isn’t it!”

  “Yes, perhaps so, Patience, perhaps so.”

  “But will it change it for the better?” she muttered, “What if I refuse to accept it?”

  Having anticipated this reaction, he posited, “I thought that you might say that. Patience, as you now know, you have touched the lives of thousands, if not millions. You, my dear, are a miracle. Everyone that you have touched in your life has benefitted positively from the miracle that is you. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that there is no better place on earth for this money to be than in your hands.”

  During this small but touching speech, Patience slowly turned to face him, and now, as he completed his monologue, he could see that her eyes were glistening. “What’s the matter?” he asked, restraining himself mightily from the compulsion to brush away her tears.

  “I’m so embarrassed! I treated you unfairly. I’m so sorry, Brandt.”

  At this he reached forward and, touching her face with his hand, he whispered, “Patience, you have absolutely nothing to apologize for.”

  There was a moment of silence during which both pondered. Finally, Patience looked up at Brandt and asked point blank, eyes glistening, “So, you didn’t think of me in a bad way when I set off that awful bomb?”

  “No, never! Even on the day we first met, when I knew something was amiss, I knew you were the lone beam of light shining within the room.”

  “What? What on earth are you talking about, Brandt?”

  “Surely you recall the day we met, Patience.”

  “Yes, on the campus at NSU. I was attempting to hide in the corner, hoping the famous professor from Cal Tech wouldn’t notice me.”

  “Oh, but I did. I assure you - I most certainly did.”

  “But what’s this about something amiss?” she blubbered.

  “My dear Patience, you were in the midst of the very first Al-Qaeda cell within the United States.”

  “What!” she cried, eyes bulging. “How do you know that?”

  “I know because we caught them, all of them.”

  “You mean, all five of the students were in Al-Qaeda?”

  “Yes, but there were actually six within the cell. Professor Rohani was the leader.”

  “You’re kidding!” she countered.

  “No, I assure you, I am not.”

  “But how did you know?”

  “Oh, I was suspicious when they introduced themselves.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, for one thing, they were all from the Middle East, except for Richard Goldman. That, in and of itself is nothing unusual for a group of graduate students in the United States. But when you turned up missing, it all began to fall into place. I couldn’t figure out why Al-Wadi would fly to Lincoln to kidnap you, when all he had to do was kidnap someone in Las Vegas, or anywhere else, for that matter. So I began doing some checking on each of them, and I was eventually able to link each one of them back to Al-Qaeda.”

  “What about Richard Goldman? He wasn’t Middle Eastern.”

  “Actually, he was. I checked up on him within a month of your disappearance. His father was Jewish, from Israel, but his mother was a Palestinian, and other members of her family were known extremists in the Gaza Strip. So you see, they were all in it together, and you were their pet dupe. And as it turned out, you had been recruited by Al-Qaeda from the very start.”

  “What! I did no such thing!”

  “Oh, you didn’t, Patience. Professor Rohani did it. He found out your father had died, and when he checked further, he discovered that your mother was your only living close relative. So he had her poisoned so that no one would miss you when you disappeared. But instead of killing her, the drug they used on her caused her heart to fail.”

  “Oh…my…God…” she stammered in absolute denial.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “They recruited you for the purpose of using you as a mule to deliver the bomb. But you outwitted them. First, you put the bomb in the wrong place within the hotel, and then you escaped.”

  “What else? Surely there must be something else. This is already beyond belief,” she posited.

  “Yes, of course. The students who were in the room that day have long since completed their studies, and all five moved on to positions at universities within the U.S. They then became the seeds for the germination of a host of subsequent Al-Qaeda cells within the United States.”

  “Oh, my, there must be twenty by now,” she contemplated.

  “More like a hundred,” he countered, “But here is the good news – as a result of Al-Wadi’s conviction, we now have sufficient evidence to arrest nearly all of them. We’ve already picked up Profes
sor Rohani and the other students who were in the room that day. And with Al-Wadi’s death the flow of money has been cut off to Al-Qaeda. It is estimated by the FBI that Al-Wadi transferred nearly two billion dollars to Osama Bin Laden’s operatives in the Middle East.”

  Shaking her head in denial, she murmured, “Boy, was I stupid…”

  “On the contrary, Patience, young and naïve though you were, your own brilliant actions saved you from detection by perhaps the most horrific terrorist organization on Earth for the better part of fifteen years. You may just be the single most successful deterrent to Al-Qaeda in the history of our country.”

  “This is all too much…” she stammered.

  “Yes, but give it time, Patience. It will all come right in the end. And now, there is one last item to impart,” and so saying, he opened his coat and pulled out a second envelope, which he handed to her.

  “What’s this?” she asked meekly.

  “That is the final installment of Restoring Patience.”

  Patience stared impassively at the envelope, then back towards Brandt, “How so?”

  “It’s two items. One is a photo. It’s THE photo. Actually, it’s the original negative. The other item is the original of the security film taken in the Lido Hotel. These are the only hard evidence that you were ever involved in the Lido Hotel bombing.”

  “Wow! How did you get them, Brandt?”

  Shrugging his shoulders dismissively, he admitted, “I bought them from the FBI.”

  “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “Pattern recognition. I eventually realized that Al-Wadi and his agents might figure out that you hadn’t died on 9/11. At that point my pattern recognition technology was getting close to going public, and I knew that if there was an extant high quality photo of you, they could use my technology to search for you worldwide, which is of course exactly how I found you. The pictures in the paper were far too grainy to be used for that purpose, so I knew that they would try to obtain the negative. So you see, I had to buy them in order to insure your safety.”

  “So how did you manage to get them to sell them to you?”

  Glancing downward in apparent guilt, he murmured, “Frank put in a good word for me.”

  Eyeing him dubiously, she exclaimed, “That’s a cock and bull story if I ever heard one, Brandt MacCauley! The FBI doesn’t sell evidence,” at which he could only shrug sheepishly.

  Twisting her head to one side in apparent accusation, she probed, “So, why didn’t you destroy the negative?”

  “Because I wanted it to be disposed of in the proper way,” he replied.

  “And what way is that?” she queried.

  “Why, by you, of course. They’re images of you, so it’s your right to do with them as you please.”

  “And so it is, and so it is,” she responded. “Do you perchance have a match?”

  At this Brandt grinned slyly and replied, “It just so happens that I do,” thereby producing the requested item.

  Patience lit the envelope and dropped it to the ground. The two watched it slowly catch aflame, quickly burning to ashes. She stared at the ground momentarily and, glancing upward to catch his eyes, she whispered, “I think you saved my life. In fact, I think you saved my life maybe more than once, Brandt MacCauley.”

  The story now having run its sinuous course, the pair sat pondering silently a further few moments. But then Brandt stood abruptly and announced, “And so, dear Patience, my mission is at an end, and I must bid you farewell,” at which he turned to depart.

  “Not so fast, Brandt,” she replied, rising to confront him. “There is one more tiny bit of business still to be conducted.”

  Confused, he replied, “Oh, to what are you referring?”

  “You know what I’m referring to – Restoring Patience,” at which he turned around to face her, whereas she drifted slowly closer to him, halting within arm’s reach.

  “What about it?” he asked.

  “You tell me,” she responded decisively, circling in for check mate. “You’re the only one who spent fifteen years of his life searching for me. You’re the only one who came after me. Why, Brandt?”

  His head dipping in apparent admission, he prevaricated, “I just wanted to protect you. I was afraid that Al-Wadi would find you.”

  “Bullshit!” she hissed vehemently. “That’s a boldfaced lie! I deserve better than that. You could have let the FBI or the CIA protect me.”

  Taken aback at this, Brandt shot back candidly, “Damn it, woman, what do I have to do, get down on my knees? I am in love with you! I am desperately, totally, eternally – yours. I can hardly breathe when I’m in your presence. You are the first thing that I think of in the morning, and the last thing at night. In between, you are the source that makes me breathe. Without you I am nothing. You, dear Patience, are not only the love of my life, you are the meaning of my life.”

  Placing her hands on her hips and narrowing her eyes in superiority, she responded, “It’s not easy exposing oneself completely to another human, is it Brandt MacCauley?”

  Brandt swallowed and, raising his eyes to gaze at her one last time, he whispered, “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done my life, but as long as I live, I shall be glad that I did! Goodbye, Patience,” and at this he turned to leave yet a second time.

  But catching his arm, she wheeled him roughly around to face her, proposing, “Do I get to say anything in reply?”

  Slumping in exhaustion, he could only shrug his acquiescence.

  She now posited, “Okay, here is my side of it. I would like to think that I have been true to myself in my life, that I practice what I preach, so what you have just said deserves an equally honest response. You are the single most amazing man that I have ever met in my entire life. You have saved my life, and you have made me wealthy…”

  “But you’re not in love with me,” he cut in forlornly.

  “Oh, shut up, you idiot! Just shut up! Now, I am only going to say this ONE time, so listen up, and if you understand what I’m telling you, not a word – I don’t want to hear a single word out of you! Just nod. Got it?” at which he simply nodded, wide eyed with terror.

  She pondered for a moment and, running her hand through her hair to help gather her thoughts, she continued sternly, “There is no point in making this more complicated than it needs to be, so here goes - from the first moment that you walked into my gelato shop, you began to get under my skin, Brandt MacCauley. It wasn’t long before I knew that my heart was meant to be yours. We are in this together, you and I. As deeply as your professed love is for me, I believe I have you beat. I am from this moment - and for the rest of my life - completely yours. I am not the Patience that the world adores. I am YOUR Patience.”

  Fifteen years of searching and doubt suddenly and unexpectedly crystallizing into certainty, Brandt uttered confoundedly, “Uhh…”

  But, placing a finger over his lips, Patience grasped his hand, crushing an object within it. Glancing down, he was astonished to find that he was holding the barrette. Wading into his arms, she whispered softly, “You idiot.”