The Best of Reader's Digest

by Editors of Reader's Digest

  Wade let the matter rest. He placed the note in a drawer and tied the balloon, still buoyant, to the railing of the balcony overlooking their living room. But the sight of the balloon made Donna uncomfortable. A few days later, she stuffed it in a closet.

  As the weeks went by, however, Donna found herself thinking more and more about the balloon. It had flown over the Rocky Mountains and the Great Lakes. Just a few more miles and it would have landed in the ocean. Instead it had stopped there, in Mermaid.

  Our three children are so lucky, she thought. They have two healthy parents. She imagined how their daughter, Hailey, almost two years old, would feel if Wade were to die.

  The next morning, Donna said to Wade: “You’re right. We have this balloon for a reason. We have to try to help Desiree.”

  * * *

  In a Charlottetown bookstore Donna MacKinnon bought an adaptation of The Little Mermaid. A few days later, just after Christmas, Wade brought home a birthday card that read “For a Dear Daughter, Loving Birthday Wishes.”

  Donna sat down one morning to write a letter to Desiree. When she finished, she tucked it into the birthday card, wrapped it up with the book and mailed the package on January 3, 1994.

  * * *

  Desiree’s fifth birthday came and went quietly with a small party on January 9. Every day since they’d released the balloon, Desiree had asked Rhonda, “Do you think Daddy has my balloon yet?” After her party she stopped asking.

  Late on the afternoon of January 19, the MacKinnons’ package arrived. Busy cooking dinner, Trish looked at the unfamiliar return address and assumed it was a birthday gift for her granddaughter from someone in Ken’s family. Rhonda and Desiree had moved back to Yuba City, so Trish decided to deliver it to Rhonda the next day.

  As Trish watched television that evening, a thought nagged at her. Why would someone send a parcel for Desiree to this address? Tearing the package open, she found the card. “For a Dear Daughter…” Her heart raced. Dear God! she thought, and reached for the telephone. It was after midnight, but she had to call Rhonda.

  * * *

  When Trish, eyes red from weeping, pulled into Rhonda’s driveway the next morning at 6:45, her daughter and granddaughter were already up. Rhonda and Trish sat Desiree between them on the couch. Trish said, “Desiree, this is for you,” and handed her the parcel. “It’s from your daddy.”

  “I know,” said Desiree matter-of-factly. “Grandma, read it to me.”

  “Happy birthday from your daddy,” Trish began. “I guess you must be wondering who we are. Well, it all started in November when my husband, Wade, went duck hunting. Guess what he found? A mermaid balloon that you sent your daddy…” Trish paused. A single tear began to trickle down Desiree’s cheek. “There are no stores in heaven, so your daddy wanted someone to do his shopping for him. I think he picked us because we live in a town called Mermaid.”

  Trish continued reading: “I know your daddy would want you to be happy and not sad. I know he loves you very much and will always be watching over you. Lots of love, the MacKinnons.”

  When Trish finished reading, she looked at Desiree. “I knew Daddy would find a way not to forget me,” the child said.

  Wiping the tears from her eyes, Trish put her arm around Desiree and began to read The Little Mermaid that the MacKinnons had sent. The story was different from the one Ken had so often read to the child. In that version, the Little Mermaid lives happily ever after with the handsome prince. But in the new one, she dies because a wicked witch has taken her tail. Three angels carry her away.

  As Trish finished reading, she worried that the ending would upset her granddaughter. But Desiree put her hands on her cheeks with delight. “She goes to heaven!” she cried. “That’s why Daddy sent me this book. Because the mermaid goes to heaven just like him!”

  * * *

  In mid-February the MacKinnons received a letter from Rhonda: “On January 19 my little girl’s dream came true when your parcel arrived.”

  “On January 19 my little girl’s dream came true when your parcel arrived.”

  During the next few weeks, the Mac-Kinnons and the Gills often telephoned each other. Then, in March, Rhonda, Trish and Desiree flew to Prince Edward Island to meet the MacKinnons. As the two families walked through the forest to see the spot beside the lake where Wade had found the balloon, Rhonda and Desiree fell silent. It seemed as though Ken was there with them.

  Today whenever Desiree wants to talk about her dad, she still calls the MacKinnons. A few minutes on the telephone soothes her as nothing else can.

  “People tell me, ‘What a coincidence that your mermaid balloon landed so far away at a place called Mermaid Lake,’ ” says Rhonda. “But we know Ken picked the MacKinnons as a way to send his love to Desiree. She understands now that her father is with her always.”

  Originally published in the September 1995 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.

  Humor Hall of Fame

  In a discussion about America in the ’60s, I asked if anyone had heard of LBJ. One of my students asked, “Do you mean LeBron James?”

  —ERIC BELL LEXINGTON, NEBRASKA

  Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.

  —JOHN F. KENNEDY

  Former senator Alan Simpson does not blame politicians for a dearth of upstanding congressmen. “About 15 percent of Americans are screwballs, lightweights, and boobs,” he says. “And you don’t want people like that NOT represented in Congress.”

  To me, political office should be like jury duty. You should just get a notice in the mail one day and be like, “I’m secretary of state next month!”

  —WANDA SYKES, COMEDIAN

  Cartoon by Teresa Parkhurst Burns

  “Congratulations. Looks like you are in office.”

  PHOTO OF LASTING INTEREST

  Earthrise

  Planet Earth rises above the moon’s surface in this breathtaking photo, taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders on Christmas Eve in 1968. Former Vice President Al Gore, chair of the Climate Reality Project, notes, “Earthrise showed for the first time the delicate balance between our planet’s beauty and the dark void in which it resides. This photo had a profound effect on our global consciousness and, in turn, gave birth to the modern environmental movement.” Photograph by William Anders/NASA

  I Captured Adolf Eichmann

  by Peter Z. Malkin and Harry Stein, condensed from Eichmann in My Hands

  The Mossad, Israel’s secret service, had spent months setting its trap, tracking its target with painstaking care.

  Which route would he take back from work? How likely was he to travel alone? Did he always arrive on time? Now, as night fell on Buenos Aires, agent Peter Malkin stood in the shadows, waiting.

  Soon he would face a man whose name was synonymous with Nazism and evil. Under that name millions had been transported to the gas chambers. And under that name Malkin’s own sister had gone to her death. Adolf Eichmann. For years the unrepentant killer had escaped justice. But the moment had come, Malkin promised himself, for Eichmann’s luck to run out. It was Judgment Day.

  * * *

  It had never been a secret that part of our mission at the Mossad was to hunt for Nazi war criminals. A thick file of names—administrators, camp guards, commanders of death squads—was kept constantly updated for our operations. But in 1960, 15 years after the war, I, like so many of my colleagues, forced myself to view the matter realistically.

  The trails of many of these killers had grown cold. And it was now the Arabs who threatened Israel’s security. We could not allow ourselves to be obsessed with the search for Hitler’s men; nor could we allocate too many resources to it.

  Then in April 1960 came news that would turn my world upside down. Intelligence operatives had confirmed that Adolf Eichmann, the man whose crimes set the standards of Nazi barbarism, was alive and living in Argentina. And I would be joining the team that wou
ld actually make the capture.

  I sat now in our Tel Aviv office with the three men I would work with most closely: Uzi, my pal; Meir, a mechanical genius; and Swiss-born Aharon, whose responsibility would be logistics and planning. Someone flipped out the lights, and on the screen before us appeared a slide. A head-and-shoulders shot of a man in his mid-30s in full SS regalia, with a sharp nose, thin lips and impassive eyes peering from beneath the shiny black visor. The face was the very image of a Nazi commander—cruel, decisive, utterly sure of himself.

  Uzi motioned for the next slide—also taken during the war, but this time unposed and from a distance. The man, wearing a greatcoat and jackboots and holding a riding crop, was looking off to the left.

  I knew these likenesses were hard to come by. Eichmann had refused to pose for any photos other than those essential for official purposes—seeing to it that the negatives were destroyed and keeping tabs on every print. Frustrated investigators found that even in group shots he had tried to obscure his face, positioning himself in the last row behind larger men. But he was unmistakable.

  Uzi moved on to the next slide: a man of later middle age, balding and hollow cheeked, a pair of spectacles perched on his nose above a thick mustache. The man who called himself Ricardo Klement stood near his home on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, wearing a neat but obviously cheap suit.

  “These shots have been examined by our best photo-ID people,” noted Aharon, “and they feel good about them.”

  “Obviously there’s a risk,” cut in Uzi. “We can’t be sure it’s Eichmann until we’ve got him.”

  There was a long silence. Except for Uzi, every one of us had lost immediate family in the concentration camps. “Once we’re certain,” Meir said, “why don’t we kill the bastard on the spot?”

  Uzi nodded. “We all share that feeling, I’m sure.”

  Meir shook his head bitterly. “What chance did he give those people?” he demanded. “I saw them, the ones that survived. What kind of consideration did he show them?”

  For a long moment, no one made any response.

  “Let’s never forget,” said Uzi finally, “that’s part of the difference between him and us.”

  * * *

  I studied the thick Eichmann file in the days that followed and found myself profoundly apprehensive. We would be attempting to kidnap a man on the soil of a friendly country and spirit him abroad without due process. While the morality of our mission was clear, the legality was not. One wrong move, one error in judgment, and there would be an international uproar. All that would be remembered by my colleagues, possibly by the entirety of the Jewish people, was that Adolf Eichmann had been in our grasp and we had let him get away. Never before in my career had I been frightened of an assignment. Now I was terrified.

  I reassured myself that the men selected for the capture were as capable a crew as could be assembled. Then, too, there was a final member of the team: the head of our country’s secret service, Isser Harel himself. In spite of the possibility of international repercussions, there was still no way Isser was going to miss this assignment.

  Dubbing the operation “Attila,” we put together a plan that was quite simple: we would seize Eichmann at night, in a deserted area, working with as small a crew as possible. He would then be driven to a safe house and kept in a camouflaged room until we could find some way to get him out of the country and back to Israel for trial.

  This last element would be especially tricky, and it had yet to be resolved. A return trip from Buenos Aires to Israel by boat would take as long as two months, with several potentially dangerous stops at foreign ports. Getting out by plane was risky since our country had no direct service to Argentina. But Isser reassured us that he was working on a plan.

  With so little time, every preparation was vital. I began a crash program in the gym, emphasizing strength and reaction time. I also started work on various disguises for members of the team. If an already wary Eichmann began spotting the same faces in his neighborhood, the operation would be fatally compromised.

  And I made my emotional preparation. An effective agent has to work up a powerful dislike for the target. This is not a parlor game he is engaged in. The dislike must be intense, and ideally it should be personal. In this case, it would hardly have seemed to be a problem. Adolf Eichmann was a monster.

  And yet, it proved to be not so simple. I’d learned to regard the Holocaust with dispassion, unspeakable horror though it was, refusing to acknowledge my own depth of loss and pain. For the first time I found myself asking, Why hadn’t I listened when my parents talked about my sister, her children, our village? Why hadn’t I been strong enough to stay in the room?

  * * *

  I arrived at my mother’s apartment late one Friday afternoon and told her that I would be leaving on assignment soon. As we spoke, my eyes strayed to the near wall of the living room and a display of family photographs. Though they had been there for years, I’d always avoided looking at them closely. Now I asked if there was an extra of my sister, Fruma, and her two children—all killed in the Holocaust.

  Where was I going that had me thinking about my sister, my mother asked. I said nothing. She knew I couldn’t tell her. But later, along with the photo I’d asked for, she brought a stack of Fruma’s letters, tied with a brown ribbon—“now that you’re suddenly so sentimental.”

  As I read the letters that night, the memories came in a jumble.

  I was only 4½ years old in 1933 when my parents took me and my older brothers, Jacob and Yechiel, and fled Poland for Palestine. My sister, Fruma, was left behind. Permission to settle in Palestine was difficult to obtain, and at 23 Fruma had a husband and children of her own. Somehow she would join us later.

  Agent Peter Malkin

  Our family settled with almost nothing in a small apartment in Haifa. None of us had anticipated how harsh this new world would be. My father and Yechiel put in backbreaking labor for 15 hours a day, under a brutal sun, hauling sand and breaking stones to make bricks. When I asked my father how we would survive, he said simply, “Don’t worry, Peter. You’re braver than you think.”

  I was vaguely aware that whenever my mother had a free hour, she spent it at some immigration office or refugee agency, but to a young boy that was just her routine. How could I know that Fruma’s situation was increasingly desperate? How could I begin to grasp my parents’ apprehension and crushing powerlessness? It was 1938. How could I have known the tragedy we were all about to live?

  The next year, as the Germans moved into Poland, we began to hear reports that Jews were being rounded up and sent to mass gathering places. We knew that under these terrible circumstances some were probably dying. But how could we fathom anything more?

  At war’s end, there was an eerie silence. All of us waited to hear from loved ones.

  Nothing.

  Then reports began to come in, followed by the first newsreels from the camps. The enormity of what had occurred began to register. They had been murdered. Not by the thousands or even hundreds but by the millions.

  In our house we avoided one another’s eyes. And yet even then my mother did not stop hoping. With so much confusion, there always remained the possibility: maybe one of them had escaped.

  Sometimes it happened. Miraculously, someone would appear. The daughter of a couple across the street turned out to have been hidden by Polish peasant neighbors. Letters came—a brother, a cousin, a friend had survived the camps.

  But it never happened for us.

  * * *

  It was during that time—as we struggled to come to terms with the loss of so many loved ones—that we first started hearing the name Eichmann. He was the one the survivors talked about, more than Himmler or Goring, more even than Hitler. Newspaper articles appeared. Eyewitness accounts were recorded. In the public mind, he soon took on mythic proportions of evil; a contemporary Satan, the one who had organized it all.

  Adolf Eichmann began his spectacular rise
to power during the early, heady days of the Third Reich, when anything was possible for an ambitious young man unburdened by conscience.

  In just three years’ time, he rose from the modest rank of sergeant to become head of the SS department charged with deporting Jews from recently annexed Austria, rendering it judenrein—Jew-free.

  After several months in Czechoslovakia, where he was responsible for Jewish “emigration,” he was moved to Berlin as head of the Jewish section in the Gestapo. By 1941 the files in Eichmann’s headquarters contained the order for the “Final Solution”: the Jewish population was to be physically exterminated.

  Shortly after the program began, Eichmann traveled east to witness the action. In Minsk, hundreds of Jews were marched from the city. As Eichmann watched, soldiers ordered them into a long trench, then began moving along the line, firing point-blank into the backs of their heads. “I can still see a woman with a child,” Eichmann would recall later. “She was shot and then the baby in her arms. His brains splattered all around, also over my leather overcoat. My driver helped me remove them.”

  The Nazis began to chart the results of the program closely, tabulating numbers in Berlin as the totals ran into the hundreds of thousands, and finally into the millions. But like other Nazi leaders, Eichmann recognized that shooting was inefficient, a frightful waste of ammunition. The process also had a negative impact on the morale of some of the German soldiers. The need for them to be spared all these bloodbaths led to the search for new killing techniques.