Chapter 5

Surprisingly, it was only two weeks after Lana's placement in institutional care nearby that she was released to go home with us. She still had twice-a-week appointments with a therapist up in Riverdale who was on the list of those counselors and therapists approved by the Human Smuggling Trafficking Center (HSTC), an outfit created in July 2004 by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Attorney General.

Everyone involved in her treatment wanted to be assured that there were no lingering adverse 'ghost' effects in her psyche that could possibly lead to abnormal emotional responses or problems in her relationships with her family or friends following her ordeal. And they were finally assured; in fact, the reports indicated that Lana was surprisingly on the stronger side of their scale of measure, mentally and emotionally, compared to most of the victims they had treated.

Our family existed in a rather chaotic time for a while. I mean with Lana's eventual return, and with a toddler in tow. The FBI was remaining in contact with us through Special Agent Fife, since they needed to continue their debrief of Lana about things that they were uncovering through their methodical examination of all the evidence they had collected on Vasily Radkevich's operation.

We had seen the news, and learned from Special Agent Fife, that Vasily himself had indeed died shortly after the raid on the house where they were holding Lana that last time. Fife had given us the details of how Vasily was killed in a gunfight at New Castle Airport, just outside of Wilmington, Delaware, where he had been attempting to flee the country on a private jet, along with several of his principal lieutenants. Later, Special Agent Fife verified what he had told me earlier, that they had accounted for the death or capture of all the primary players in Vasily's organization except for the man who had evidently directed the child-breeding-and-selling and prostitution operations--Gennady Sokolski.

Alexei and Sonja Savin came down to Newnan to visit us, flying first to Atlanta and driving the relatively short distance out to us from there. They were overjoyed at the return of their daughter--from what they had been sure in their own minds was certain death at the time of her disappearance.

Alexei had been forced to return to Washington shortly after his arrival and a brief three-day visit, but Sonja remained with us for almost another two weeks in order to be with Lana while I was at work, so that Lana was not left alone, and so that Sonja could become acquainted with her new granddaughter. After that, Lana's therapist had said that she believed that it was okay for Lana to be at home alone for short periods (no longer than about 6 hours at first) for the following couple of weeks, and then okay for the whole day after that.

There was not a lot of room in the apartment while we awaited the move to the new house, but we made do. Then, after only a few more weeks, we were able to move into our new house. The GC satisfied me that the punch list items were finished, and Coweta County issued me a CO so that we could move in officially.

Contributing to the chaos of our lives now for a while were the details involved in the move from our apartment in Newnan to the newly-constructed house near Sharpsburg. We had arranged for the movers to deliver our furniture and that is when we realized that we were woefully short of furnishings to account for Lana's reunification with the family and the addition of a daughter. And now we also had to plan for the arrival of the baby that Lana was carrying.

When the level of activity finally began to subside to a manageable level, I was somewhat relieved. Lana and I were still getting used to the idea of being back together, although in separate bedrooms for a while. Steven was reestablishing his relationship with his mother. Steven and I BOTH were establishing our initial relationship with the new addition to our family, Lana's little daughter and Steven's new little sister, whose name was Angela. All the signs seemed to point to our being well on our way to better times together eventually.

Except that I would walk in at various times and find Lana crying quietly. When I asked her about it, she just kept saying that she would tell me later; just to hold her for a while. I eventually got Lana to tell me, when I went with her to her therapy appointment--the doctor had suggested that I come along for some of them--that she missed her son--OUR son; who had been taken from her--and us--the one I never knew about before her return and had never met.

You see, unbeknownst to either of us at the time Lana had been taken, she was pregnant with our second son. He had been born during Lana's captivity and had been taken from her--from us.

The Bureau had taken bodily samples from Lana and me, in order to put their huge computer database containing tons of DNA data on missing persons, especially children, to work in locating our missing son. After all, ever since the Lindbergh kidnapping way back in the last century, the FBI had been the pre-eminent law enforcement agency to handle kidnapping cases.

I got hold of Barney Fife and pleaded with him to use any and all reasonable and available means to locate Lana's and my missing son. He assured me that he already had that in motion--I mean, he already had the DNA data guys working on it as much as possible; but I had to understand that there were more than a hundred children that Federal assets were busily attempting to track down after review of documents they had collected in their investigation of Valisy's enterprise alone. And that was just a drop in the bucket with respect to the huge number of other unsolved kidnapping and child disappearance cases the Bureau had open.

Needless to say, Lana and I were not yet sexually intimate--nowhere near--but she was at least at a point where she would let me hug her for extended amounts of time, and we were kissing, at least.

We had gotten her lined up with a local OB/GYN and had advised that female doctor of the situation. Her doctor verified that Lana was approximately 4 months along in her current pregnancy; 18 weeks, according to some type of chart they go by. The primary focus, as far as the OB/GYN was concerned, was Lana's diet, prenatal vitamin supplements, and getting her own body into shape to ensure proper overall prenatal care for the unborn child.

Being included as an active part of the move of our family and our household goods into the new house had aided enormously in Lana's reintegration into 'civilization' and family life. She had gotten to be in on picking out the window treatments and all of the rugs to go on the hardwood floors that predominated in the house--except for the tile floors in the kitchen and bathrooms.

The sod for the front lawn and the areas next to the house arrived and the team from the nursery that delivered it got all of the pieces in place within two days. I had had irrigation lines buried for underground sprinklers in the front--but not too deep, thanks to that accursed underground rock formation--in order to make things easy for yard maintenance in the coming years.

When the well-drilling guy I had hired came out to drill through that damned rock layer to find water for a well for a potable water supply for my house, I had also had him drill another hole in the rock to provide for another well specifically for watering my yard, and possibly a garden or a vineyard--or both--out back of the house.

I had learned one of the hard lessons of life during our time in the DC area concerning the proximity of criminal activity throughout the country. I had joined a gun club in the area after our move to Georgia, and had purchased a Ruger Blackhawk .357 Magnum revolver. In back of the house, my land sloped gently to some woods, and then there was an earthen berm, where the builder had moved some of the rock and dirt from the construction. That was where I had established my make-shift personal firing range, where I plinked a couple of boxes of ammo every now and then to keep my hand in with the weapon.

I was not too worried about danger to the neighbors whenever I shot my revolver at my range out back, as there were none behind me for well over a mile. In addition to the earthen and rock berm, there also were woods and there was a creek, with its accompanying 'wetlands'--what we used to call 'swamps' before the crowd at the EPA began going to extreme lengths not only to correct our terminology, but also to correct our thinking about so-called private property ownership in America.

A good half acre of my six-acre land lot extended into the 'wetlands' and I could not do a damned thing with that land without having federal lawyers from the EPA going medieval on my ass. They were not too happy, as it was, about my slinging lead into the primitive region, but--thank God for the Second Amendment--the U.S. Constitution and the enlightened gun laws of the Great State of Georgia held sway on that aspect of my life and my land use, and I was allowed to shoot into the 'swamps' to my heart's content.

I kept the Ruger close by in the house, but out of Steven's reach. Lana did not object, since she was actually more familiar with handling handguns than I was, because of her previous training as a contractor for the Bureau.

Other aspects of the new place began to make themselves known to me in short order. We had Canada Geese landing in the wetlands behind the place--although a friend of mine, who was originally from Jasper, Alberta, had laughed and said those geese were not really from Canada. We also heard the screech of an owl in the pre-dawn mornings. And we saw signs of other wildlife that simply amazed us, since the encroachment of civilization--caused by the suburban sprawl supporting the rapid of the Atlanta region--would normally drive such wildlife away; but not here!

Shortly after purchasing my land, and my discovery of the abundance of wildlife in the area of where my new house would be--back well before construction had even begun, UPS had made a delivery that had left me with a big smile on my face. They had delivered a present that I had made to myself to celebrate the initial stage of clearing my land for what I hoped would be our dream house. That present had been my brand new Moultrie Panoramic 150 game camera that I had bought online from Amazon. It had a motion-sensor trigger to take pictures whenever anything moved within its field of view; and it was equipped with an infrared flash that allowed clear pictures at night, since many of the critters were nocturnal.

I had found a spot behind and below the site for the house, back when the only thing to indicate construction was the beginning stage of stakes in the ground to mark the limits of the foundation. The place I had selected for the gamecam was near what I suspected was an old deer trail leading to the creek. I had set up the gamecam, using small bungee cords to secure it to a tree, and soon I had begun to enjoy seeing pictures of birds, deer, raccoons, and even coyotes when I would periodically retrieve the gamecam and hook it up to my laptop back at the apartment via USB cable. I simply had to remember to retrieve it periodically so that I could dump or swap out the memory card, and keep track of the battery status.

I had shared the wildlife pictures with Steven, back before Lana's return, and he had been tickled to see animals that would be living just outside his own bedroom window once the house was completed and we moved it. With all the hubbub of Lana's return and Angela's entry into our family, along with the new schedule of seeing her doctors--both her therapist and the gynecologist--it simply slipped my mind to make Lana aware of the joy that Steven and I were experiencing with the gamecam. And I even overlooked the gamecam itself for a while, as it was attached to a tree down by the edge of my property, until well after we had move into the completed house.

Lana began to reconnect well now with Steven. We all would load up the car and go to the ball field to watch and cheer our son as he played Coach-Pitch baseball. Little Angela came along with us now, as she did everywhere. I had overcome my initial aversion to the idea of raising another man's baby. I mean that no one was going to take this child away from Lana, and that meant no one would ever separate her from me either (I had not said anything to Lana, but I had made a vow to myself that, when the time was right, I would legally adopt the little girl--and the baby still growing in Lana's belly as well).

One strange thing had happened the first time we went to one of Steven's ballgames. As we stood with Steven near the dugout, the coach had come out and announced, "It's game time!" to the kids and us parents.

Lana had gasped at hearing this, and had grabbed my arm. I had looked into her eyes and could see that 'Lana' had left the premises for a while, disappearing into another realm for a few seconds. I had just held her close and waited. Abruptly, Lana had sighed and pulled away from me and smiled at me with a hint of embarrassment.

"I--I am sorry, Maddux," Lana had said to me. "It--it is just something that Steven's coach said that caused me to return ... there ... in my mind." She had looked up at me and I had known immediately just where 'there' was.

"Maybe, one day, you will be able to tell me all about it," I had said with a reassuring smile and a kiss to her forehead.

"One day," Lana had replied, "maybe."

Lana and I finally got to the point of sexual intimacy about six weeks after we moved into the new house. She had allowed me to carry her over the threshold when we had finally moved in. Even being pregnant, she was not so heavy as to be a real burden for me to carry her into our new home. But that was the only close physical concession she would make to our being husband and wife in the early stages. But we progressed to hugs, kisses; then both; and--finally--to sex.

We were not nearly as adventurous initially as we had been in the days before Lana's abduction. We kept to simple missionary sex at first, and I did not broach the subject of oral sex for either of us. I also was concerned about harming the fetus, as this was the first time that I had been involved sexually with a pregnant partner since Lana had carried Steven. But we did take joy in the simple comforts of holding each other closely in bed, before and after our renewed sexual interactions.