Book Review: Mercy

Synopsis:

FBI Agent Atlee Pine’s harrowing search for her long-lost sister, Mercy, reaches a boiling point in the fourth installment in bestselling author David Baldacci’s Atlee Pine series.

Atlee has been searching for her twin sister, Mercy, her entire life. Mercy was abducted at the age of six and never seen again. Her disappearance left behind a damaged family that eventually shattered beyond repair when Atlee’s parents inexplicably abandoned her.

After a perilous investigation that has nearly proven fatal and jeopardized her career, Atlee has finally learned not only the reasons for her parents’ abandonment and Mercy’s kidnapping. She has also discovered proof that Mercy survived the abduction and escaped her captors.

Atlee is at last tantalizingly close to her sister. But the final leg of her long road to Mercy will be the most treacherous yet.

Mercy left at least one dead body behind when she fled her captors years ago. Atlee has no idea if her sister is still alive and, if so, how she has managed to survive all this time.

When the truth is finally revealed, Atlee Pine will face the greatest danger yet . . . and it may well cost her everything.

Review:

Readers who have followed Atlee Pine’s long road to Mercy, the sister she has never stopped searching for, will not be disappointed with bestselling author David Baldacci’s handling of the culmination of Atlee’s quest. He provides the answers to questions about Mercy, as well as the Pine sisters’ extended family, that have plagued Atlee and compelled her unrelenting search . . . and kept readers clamoring for the next installments in the series. The sisters’ reunion comes after additional suspense, near-misses, danger, and potential heartbreak. Their first meeting in thirty years is believably fraught with emotion, confusion, trepidation, and, eventually, relief. They are no longer six-year-old little girls. Mercy has not carried the same memories of events as Atlee — flashes of memory have always creeped into her consciousness from time to time, but she has never been able to piece together their meaning or significance — or experienced the same propulsive need for reconciliation that Atlee has experienced. The sisters have to learn about each other’s lives and to trust, which is not an easy proposition for Mercy. “In the Hollywood version it would be all smiles, hugs, and tears. In real life, it was far more nuanced. And complicated.”

Baldacci unsparingly reveals what Mercy’s life has been like since she was kidnapped from the bedroom in which she was sleeping with Atlee on that fateful night when the girls were only six years old. When he finally introduces Mercy to readers, he immediately endears her to them with his descriptions of how she was tortured and traumatized by the people to whom she was given by her kidnapper. “‘They don’t want you anymore,’ the man had said that night to the little girl she used to be with the name and history she no longer remembered. As they sat in his car he had said, ‘They sent me here to take one of you. Your mother and father told me to kill you. But I’m not going to do that. I’m taking you to another family that wants you. You’ll be safe there.'” She wasn’t. But, like Atlee, she proved to be resilient, intelligent, and determined to survive. She managed to escape but has never been able to settle down and lead what most people would deem a normal life. While Atlee continued her formal education and excelled as a competitive athlete before joining the FBI, Mercy educated herself, and learned to never rely upon or trust anyone but herself and her infallible instincts. She also developed her athletic prowess, competing as an amateur MMA fighter. She bears emotional and physical scars, “burn marks, lumps, painful knife cuts and other disfigurements . . . hand-tooled into her.” But she is clever, savvy, and able to outsmart anyone who tries to take advantage of her. “I survived it all,” she reminds herself. She has lived under the assumed name of Eloise Cain after escaping her imprisonment as Rebecca Atkins. Along the way, she has made enemies. One, in particular, wants to extract revenge. And when she realizes that the FBI is looking for her as a result of the fact that Atlee is closing in on locating her, she complicates matters by going on the run. She assumes the FBI wants her in connection with her escape, not realizing that her scattered recollections relate to a twin sister who has spent years looking for her.

Atlee, meanwhile, continues inching closer to her sister, aided by her assistant, Carol Blum, who has “become something of a surrogate mother to the federal agent, to some degree taking the place of the one who abandoned her.” Baldacci notes the partnership between a woman in her 30’s and a woman in her 60’s is a unique one in contemporary fiction that he was eager to portray. He sees Carol as exactly the assistant Atlee needed. She has six grown children, but is estranged from most of them. Atlee’s mother, as noted, disappeared from Atlee’s life when she was a young woman. So each of the women benefits from the relationship. Carol strives to reel Atlee back when she is tempted to make impulsive decisions or engage in rash behavior. With Atlee in her life, Carol has someone she can mother, showering affection and guidance upon Atlee.

Baldacci has deservedly received praise for believably writing the books from a female viewpoint, but he doesn’t find it particularly remarkable. He wryly notes that he has “never written about a damsel in distress” for one very specific reason: “I’ve never met one.” He insists that he is comfortable penning the story from the perspectives of Atlee, Mercy, and to a lesser degree, Carol, simply because he grew up surrounded by strong women. Both of his grandmothers resided in the family home and he describes his mother as “a force of nature.” His journalist sister and wife are also strong, independent women.

He relates that he always wanted to prominently feature a female FBI agent in his books and when he conceptualized Atlee, he knew she would have a sister. He didn’t initially know that it would require four books to tell the sisters’ story, but the title of the first volume, Long Road to Mercy, signalled that Atlee’s quest for answers would be an arduous, all-consuming, and lengthy journey. Over the course of the books, Baldacci illustrates the ways in which Atlee is transformed by the pilgrimage. Atlee loves her career as an FBI agent, but has no interest in or patience for bureaucracy. She has no desire to promote within the agency and assume a managerial position. She finds the ministerial tasks associated with her job insufferable, and is devoted to conducting solid investigations and solving crimes. Moreover, she has always been a loner who, according to Baldacci, has perpetually felt she had to “live two lives — her own and one for her sister.” But as the series progresses, Baldacci compassionately allows Atlee to become more vulnerable and uncertain about herself — even fragile, at times. Her efforts to find her sister cause her toughness to “fall by the wayside,” which is why, as noted, she is fortunate to have Carol at her side. Eventually, Baldacci permits her to find “closure” . . . if not peace.

In true Baldacci style, there are kidnappings, dead bodies, and pulse-pounding adventure, culminating in a forced showdown that could easily leave one or both of the sisters dead before they have a chance to spend time getting to know each other.

What does Baldacci want readers to take away from the series? In addition to being entertained, he wants them to recognize that some careers, including that of FBI agent, continue to be male-dominated, but “it doesn’t matter. I want readers to look at Atlee Pine as a possibility,” he says. He hopes that serving as an FBI agent or entering other professions traditionally pursued by men might be a challenge that some female readers opt to take on, too.

A prolific writer, Baldacci, a former trial attorney, published his first novel, Absolute Power, in 1996. He has now penned more than forty novels for adults, all of which have been national and international bestsellers published in over 45 languages and more than 80 countries, as well as seven novels for younger readers. But he continues challenging himself. “A writer in fear is probably a really good writer,” he says. “I like to scare myself to death,” sharing that he enjoys feeling like he’s drafting his first novel again.

Luckily for readers, the mystery surrounding Mercy may be solved, but Atlee Pine will return in future novels. Baldacci says he still has more stories featuring Atlee to tell. Hopefully, he’ll be busy scaring himself while penning those tales soon.

Excerpt from Mercy

Chapter One

Inch by solid inch, Atlee Pine watched the battered coffin being lifted to the surface from where it had rested six feet down for nearly two decades. Coffins and bodies were not supposed to be retrieved. They were supposed to stay right where they were planted, at least until a dying sun lashed out across space and bid farewell to all on earth.

But, for Pine, it was just that kind of day.

Just that kind of year, actually.

She gazed over at a black crow as it stridently cawed from its perch on the branch of a sickly pine overlooking the pierced grave. The bird seemed to think its meal was being delivered up as a boxed lunch, and the creature was getting impatient.

Well, I’m thirty years impatient, Pine thought.

Pine was an FBI special agent. Five eleven in bare feet, she possessed a muscular build from years of lifting massive amounts of weights, first for athletic glory, and currently to survive the rigorous demands of her occupation. Some agents spent careers mainly on their butts staring at computer screens or supervising agents on the streets. Pine was not one of them.

Her normal beat was in Arizona, near the Grand Canyon. It was a lot of ground to cover, and she was the only FBI agent out there. Pine preferred it that way. She hated bureaucracies and the paper pushers who lived and died by their stifling mountain of rules that got you nowhere fast. Certainly not with putting bad people away, which was really the whole point for her.

She was currently in Virginia working on something personal. This was her one shot to get things right in her life.

Next to Pine was her administrative assistant at the Bureau, Carol Blum.

Pine and Blum were searching for Pine’s twin sister, Mercy Pine, who had been abducted from their shared bedroom in Andersonville, Georgia, when the girls were just six years old. Pine had nearly been killed by the abductor, surviving by a combination of sheer luck and, Pine supposed, her absolute unwillingness to die. She hadn’t seen Mercy since. It was an incident that had destroyed the Pine family and stood as the one traumatically defining moment of her life.

They had tracked Mercy’s whereabouts to a place near Crawfordville, Georgia, in Taliaferro County, the most rural and least populated county in the state. She had been given the name Rebecca Atkins and had been kept as a prisoner until she’d escaped many years ago. Now the trail was as cold as a morgue freezer.

Joe Atkins, one of her captors, had been found murdered the day after Mercy had escaped. His wife, Desiree, had disappeared at the same time. Pine had unearthed that her sister’s kidnapper was a man named Ito Vincenzo. He was the brother of Bruno, a mobster who had held a grudge against Pine’s mother, Julia. She had acted as a mole for the government in its successful attempts to bring down several New York crime families back in the 1980s. Members of crime families did not like to be brought down. They held it against you. The Vincenzo family had certainly held it against the Pine family. At the urging of his murderous brother, Ito Vincenzo had tried to obliterate the Pines, and had largely succeeded.

The Bureau had recently put out a PSA using an image of Mercy captured at the exact moment she had broken free from her improvised prison cell. Pine had hoped that if Mercy was alive she would see the notice and come forward. That had not happened, so Pine had decided to work on a different lead.

Years ago, her mother had told Pine that her father, Tim Pine, had killed himself. Subsequently, she had learned that Tim was not her biological father. A man named Jack Lineberry was. Lineberry had been nearly killed in an attack aimed against Atlee Pine in an unrelated case. The revelation that he was her father had stunned Pine, but what she had found out recently had shocked her just as much, if not even more. That was why she was here.

I know all families are dysfunctional, but mine seems to be the undisputed world champ in that competition.

The coffin finally reached the surface and was shifted away from the hole and set on the grass. Its metal carcass was visibly damaged by water, and also by sitting in the earth all those years. She wondered how preserved the contents would be.

A forensics team hurried forward, quickly prized open the coffin, and placed the human remains in a body bag. They zipped it up and loaded it into the back of a black van, which was quickly driven away. Pine thought she knew who was in that grave. But thoughts weren’t enough, certainly not for an FBI agent, or a grieving daughter, hence the exhumation. DNA identification was as definite as it got. That would reveal who had been in the coffin, of that she was certain.

Pine had never been to this grave in rural Virginia, for the simple reason that her mother had lied to her about where her father’s supposed suicide had taken place. Her mother had also told her that her father had been cremated and his ashes scattered by her at some unknown place. All lies. But then again, it seemed everyone had lied to her about her past.

She now believed the man in the grave was none other than Ito Vincenzo. He had apparently discovered Tim Pine’s whereabouts and come to exact revenge on him. Only he had ended up being the one to die.

Pine had also been led to believe that her parents had divorced because of irreconcilable differences related to their guilt over Mercy’s disappearance. Now she knew that Tim had faked his death, and her mother had voluntarily left her remaining daughter shortly thereafter. Julia Pine had in fact joined her ex-husband, and they had vanished together.

And left me all by my lonesome. Thanks, guys. What great parents you turned out to be.

Chapter Two

Pine looked at Carol Blum. In her sixties, a mother of six grown children, and a longtime employee of the Bureau, Blum had become something of a surrogate mother to the federal agent, to some degree taking the place of the one who had abandoned her.

Blum stared resolutely at her boss, who had her hands shoved deep into her jeans pockets, and whose features held a frown that seemed to run out of room on her face.

“How soon will they know if it is Ito Vincenzo?” asked Blum.

“Hopefully a couple of days max. I gave them samples of his DNA.”

“How’d you get those?”

“From his son’s and grandson’s bodies. A familial match under these circumstances constitutes a slam dunk.”

“Yes, of course,” Blum said quickly. “There’s no other way a DNA connection to the Vincenzo family could be in that grave.”

They walked back to the car and drove off.

“So what now?” asked Blum.

“We have some time, since the Bureau has given us an official leave of absence.”

“It was the least they could do after you and Agent Puller solved that case in New York.”

John Puller was an Army investigator who had teamed with Pine to run to ground a blackmail operation that had reached into the highest levels of the country’s power structure. Puller had been shot in the process, but he was on his way to a full recovery.

“You were in on all that, too, Carol. And you almost lost your life because I screwed up.”

“You also saved my life.”

“After needlessly putting it in danger,” countered Pine. As she turned out of the cemetery she added, “If Mercy sees the PSA she might come in. That would be the ideal scenario.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Then it could be that she’s . . . no longer alive.” Pine shot a glance at Blum. “I’ve accepted that possibility, Carol. A long time ago. I know Mercy was alive when she got free from the Atkinses. But a lot could have happened in between.”

Blum said, “And it doesn’t seem like the Atkinses did anything to, well, to educate her or . . . ” Her voice trailed off and she looked uncertainly at her boss.

“Let’s just acknowledge it — she looked like a wild person,” said Pine slowly. “And I’m not sure how she could manage to function in society on her own, at least mainstream society. And people who live on the fringes with no support can be exploited.” Pine looked out the window and said dully, “The person I saw in that video . . . could be exploited.”

“But she was resilient and resourceful, Agent Pine. Look at how she survived the Atkinses and then outsmarted them and escaped.”

“And Joe Atkins ended up dead with a knife sticking in his back,” replied Pine.

“I already told you how I feel about that. He deserved what he got.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you, Carol. But I am saying that if Mercy did kill him, if she is violent, then the intervening years might not have been kind to her. She might have done other things.”

“You’re thinking that she could have hurt other people?”

“Or, more likely, had been a victim of violence,” Pine said. “Which brings me back to my original question: What do we do now?”

“Her last sighting was near Crawfordville, Georgia. She got away that night, or at least it appeared she did.”

“What do you mean ‘appeared’?” asked Blum.

“Desiree Atkins has never been found. There are at least three scenarios that I can see.” Pine counted them off on her fingers. “She killed her husband and fled. Mercy killed her and fled. Or Desiree killed Mercy and fled.”

“Why would Desiree kill her husband?”

“By all accounts, she was a sadistic nut. We heard a gunshot on the video and just assumed it was Joe firing at Mercy. But what if Desiree had the gun and was doing the shooting? What if Joe tried to stop her? He gets the gun away but she stabs him.”

“So you think Joe might have wanted Mercy to get away? I just don’t see that. When the truth came out they both would have been in a great deal of trouble.”

“I’m saying it’s possible, not probable. She might have managed to kill Mercy, then Joe got nervous and wanted to call the police, so she stabbed him and fled with Mercy’s body. Only it would have been a real chore for her to lift the body into Joe’s truck. Desiree was tiny, and Mercy looked to be over six feet and probably outweighed her by seventy pounds. And they brought cadaver dogs in after we found out what happened there. There are no bodies buried anywhere in that area. So that option is out. But what if Joe helped her get rid of Mercy’s body, then got cold feet or regrets? Then Desiree plunged the knife in his back.”

Blum mulled over this. “Or, like you said, Mercy could have killed both of them. She left Joe’s body and maybe took Desiree’s remains and buried them somewhere far away.”

“It’s possible. But that would mean Mercy would have had to drive the truck.”

Blum said, “Surely she could have figured that out.”

Pine shook her head. “The truck has a manual transmission. I don’t know anybody, particularly someone who has been kept in a hellhole for years and never attempted to drive anything, who could have figured out how a clutch works. Certainly not under such stressful conditions. And I can’t see the Atkinses having taught her.”

“So what are you saying then?”

“I’m saying, Carol, that I think it was Desiree who took off that night in the truck. But I think she went alone.”

“Because the jig was up, you mean?”

Pine nodded. “Yes. So, to answer your initial question of what to do now, I think we head back to Georgia and see if we can pick up a very, very cold trail.”

“And Jack Lineberry? Will you stop in to see him while we’re in Georgia?”

To that, Pine said nothing.

She had mixed feelings about her biological father. And their last encounter had been disastrous. She was not expecting anything better the second time around. But ultimately the fault lay with him, not her. That’s just what happened when every word out of your mouth was a lie.