The Diaries - 01

by Chuck Driskell

  Abject poverty.

  Feeling his allergies kicking up, he eased his way back to the door, locking it and pulling it shut behind him. Gage walked back to the park, finding the woman still sitting there, out of seed, wringing her hands, staring into the distance. No television, no newspapers, no phone, and probably no friends. Surrounded by animals. Her only friends.

  Depression. Deep, clinical depression.

  Gage knew all about the many signs and symptoms, having lived many of them himself.

  He wondered if Liora’s condition was due to growing up parentless, with her initial years spent in the horrors of Buchenwald. Or, perhaps, her father had passed the gene on to her. Either way, as he stood there staring at the woman, Gage couldn’t envision telling her about the diaries.

  But he had to speak with her.

  Feeling a rush of melancholy for Monika, wishing she was by his side, squeezing his hand, he stepped across the strip of grass, resting his hand on the park bench.

  “Hello.”

  She twisted her stiff back, looking up at him neutrally before her brow lowered. She turned back, resuming her staring.

  “Do you speak English?”

  She turned again, her eyes narrowed. Again she turned away.

  She must not know English. But Gage didn’t know Hebrew. Perhaps she spoke German? He cleared his throat. “Sprechen sie Deutsche?”

  She stared straight ahead, pressing her lips together. In clear, faintly-accented English she finally spoke. “You’re just not going to leave me alone, are you?”

  Gage smiled, relieved to finally have bridged the gap. He moved in front of her, giving her space, standing at an angle. She rotated her eyes up to him.

  “What do you want?”

  “I…I wanted to speak with you. You’re Liora Morgenstern.”

  “Yes.” Her tone was crisp but curious.

  “You live here, in the building a few blocks away.”

  “And?”

  “And you’re a survivor of Buchenwald?”

  Like iron prison bars, the slight openness she had displayed slammed shut. Her gaze went back to the distance. “I do not ever talk about that.”

  Gage chewed on his lip, feeling intrusive but unable to contain himself. He scraped closer. “I understand, and I don’t want you to talk. I just want you to know…”

  Liora Morgenstern looked up at him again. In her eyes was not malice, as he thought it might be. It was pain. “Go on.”

  He touched the old woman’s cheek for just a second, quickly backing away so she wouldn’t feel threatened. “I just want you to know I am sorry, truly sorry, for all you’ve been through.” Gage forced a quick smile at the stunned looking woman. He nodded one final time, turned and walked away.

  His head was swimming. He walked toward the center of the bustling city, trying to collect his thoughts. As he approached a large square, he paused when a gaggle of Israeli soldiers passed before him, noisily arguing about where they would lunch.

  Israeli soldiers…

  Something occurred to Gage. The fountainhead of an idea.

  He rotated his head, seeing the official-looking building, the Ministry of Justice. His eyes moved upward, watching the Israeli flag snapping and popping in the pleasant breeze, framed by the cerulean sky. The idea began to take shape. Always one who knew direction by the position of the sun, Gage’s head turned to the west, back toward Greece, toward the location of the remainder of the diaries.

  He dug into his wallet, finding the same old phone card he’d last used in Germany. It took him fifteen minutes to locate a public phone, in the back corner of an American style pizza joint. Gage sipped a paper cup of icy Diet Coke as he went through the sequence of numbers. The polite, computer-generated lady informed him of thirty-eight remaining minutes.

  This would only take a few.

  He pressed the remaining digits.

  “Hunter here,” came the reply. It would be four in the morning at Bragg. Hunter was wide awake. Gage knew he should have called before now. But he’d waited, consciously, because he’d wanted to discover his personal catharsis before he reached out again.

  “Hello, sir.”

  “Sonofabitch,” Hunter muttered. “You made it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I assume you’re clear, or you wouldn’t be calling me.”

  “I am, sir. I want to catch you up on what happened, but before I do that, can I ask an urgent favor of you?”

  “You can always ask.”

  “We worked in Ireland once, with a friend of yours, an Israeli.”

  Hunter replied without a second’s hesitation. “Ben Galeena, Mossad, in the Metsada. One of my favorite people on this earth.”

  “Sir, could you set up a meeting between him and me, today?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Standing smack-dab in the center of Tel Aviv.”

  “Tel Aviv, huh? Well, I can always try.”

  ***

  Gage was scheduled to meet him at the port, at one of the many waterside seafood restaurants. The ferry was scheduled to leave in an hour and a half. He gripped the ticket in his left hand, a glass of brackish tap water in his right. It was just past four in the afternoon; the restaurant was nearly empty.

  Ben Galeena appeared from Gage’s right. Gage had watched the front door, seeing no other entrances. The career intel man must have entered from the rear.

  “I believe you wanted to meet with me,” Galeena said without smiling. He was short, with a barrel chest and a neatly trimmed beard. The Metsada operative wore white linen pants and a print silk shirt, looking like the many robust sixty-somethings in places like Fort Lauderdale or Naples, Florida.

  Gage stood, extending his hand. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me. We met once before.”

  “Oh yes, I remember all too well.” The two men shared a look that only two intelligence men can know and understand. Gage motioned for him to sit.

  Once Galeena had a decaf coffee, Gage ordered a seafood platter to be courteous to the restaurateur. “And we’ll be fine until the food arrives,” Gage told the waitress with a polite smile. When she was gone, he turned to Galeena, chewing on his bottom lip as he tried to decide how best to begin.

  “Sir, I need your help.”

  “In France, with the Glaives?” Galeena asked, his eyes narrowing as his full lips turned upward on one side, hinting at a smile.

  Gage dipped his head, offering a polite acknowledgement of Galeena’s gathering abilities. “No sir. That situation, unless you know something else, has passed.”

  Galeena’s silence was answer enough.

  “If you would be willing, I need you to set up a meeting for me and someone with great authority in your government.”

  Galeena’s face clouded. “What sort of authority?”

  “The authority to make an exchange for something of incredible value, of which the content is earth-shattering and history-altering.”

  A sip of the coffee. “I see. What else can you tell me?”

  Gage spoke for ten more minutes. The seemingly unflappable Ben Galeena listened riveted, bereft of speech for some time afterward. He sat there, arms crossed, chin to his neck, deep in thought. Eventually he made a call on his cell phone.

  Gage never used the ferry ticket.

  Two hours later Gage and Galeena were thirty-eight miles away, in Jerusalem, having been whisked there in a black government Yukon outfitted with bulletproof glass. That evening, Gage and several others flew on a Gulfstream G550 to Heraklion Airport, on Crete’s north coast. They taxied to a private hangar where another anonymous SUV sped them away. Gage spent the remainder of the night and the entire following morning in his modest Kallithea apartment, watching as two government officials and an elderly historian read every single word of the diaries in spellbound silence.

  Sometime around noon of the following day, the senior most government official closed the 1938 diary. He glanced at his associate and at the historian, uttering but
two words. “Well, gentlemen?”

  The men exchanged glances before the historian closed his eyes and nodded soberly.

  ***

  Crete, Greece

  The cell phone buzzed in Gage’s pocket. “Hello?”

  “Gage Hartline…Ben Galeena here.”

  Gage paused for a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s done.”

  “Tell me.”

  “They brought her in, telling her that an inheritance had been discovered from her family. They explained that it had grown in value and, she being the sole heir, was due to receive all of it.”

  “And what about going away for medical treatment?”

  “They broke that pretty gently, using her time in the death camp as the reasoning.”

  “She accepted it without reservation?”

  “Oh no, she certainly had reservations. In fact, I’m not yet certain if her negotiation skills came from her father or her mother. There were elements of shrewdness and outright bullying in the deal she cut.”

  Gage missed the joke. “What did she ask for?”

  “That her cats, forty-three of them to be exact, be allowed to go with her.”

  “Did you arrange it?”

  Galeena laughed. “Of course we did, are you nuts?”

  “And you’re certain she will live in anonymity?”

  “Gage, the people involved—a very tight group of only four—have no desire to harm this woman more than she’s already suffered. She will never be told. Ever.”

  Gage felt relief flood over him as he tilted his head back and smiled into the violet sky. It only took him a moment to tell Galeena where to find the diaries. He had taken no precautions against the Israelis. Had they wanted the diaries, they could have stormed in and taken them at any time.

  “Gage?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You should look at your own checking account. The one that had a few hundred bucks in it.”

  “Sir?”

  “C’mon Gage, give me some credit. It wasn’t hard to find. There’s now a quarter of a million in there, in dollars. It seemed the least I could negotiate for you. I’d advise you to move it someplace that pays you a little more interest, although that’s tough to find these days.”

  Gage was silent, the breaths from his mouth filling the receiver. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “A good intel man doesn’t say much, Gage, so you’re off to good start. Best of luck to you.”

  The line went dead.

  After hanging up, Gage stared at the Mediterranean for a moment as the noonday sun began its winter drop toward the horizon. He dialed another number.

  “Hunter here.”

  “Hello, sir.”

  The retired officer chuckled. “Well, I heard you met with Galeena. Now, can you please tell me how the hell you’re doing?”

  “I’m fine, sir. In more ways than one, too.”

  The two men were silent, both knowing exactly what the other was thinking. Finally, Gage broke the silence. “I’m here, sir, in Crete.” He let that fact sink in for a moment. “I now know, sir…I know it wasn’t my fault. Wasn’t yours either. Sometimes bad things happen in life, and all we can do is try to make up for them by doing something good. It won’t un-ring the bell, but at least it helps move things in the right direction.”

  Hunter cleared his throat. “Sounds like I could learn some things from you.”

  They spoke for a few more minutes, with Gage giving him cryptic detail on all that had happened. Afterward, the two men grew quiet.

  “Again, thank you, sir. Maybe we’ll speak again.”

  “See that we do.”

  “Roger out, sir.” Gage flipped the phone shut, staring at it for a moment before tossing it into the water. He then walked up the hill to the apartment building that had haunted his dreams for the past four years. Gage stared at the front window, now adorned with purple flowers in a flower box. He remembered the flash of the MK3A2 concussion grenade that had taken the lives of the two children in an instant. Somehow, over the past seven weeks, he had been able to come to grips with what had happened. There was no way he could have known, and somehow he knew, if the children were there, they would forgive him.

  Gage crossed the busy street, walking several blocks into the city center. He went into the bank, spending several hours there. When he left, he walked to his apartment building, taking his backpack and paying the woman in the office before giving her his key.

  He walked down his street, finally coming to a corner church that he had been eyeing each day as he would walk for exercise. From his pack, Gage removed an envelope adorned with the bank’s logo. He walked to the rear of the church, to the church’s small orphanage and, after passing through the gate and yard, went inside.

  The dilapidated orphanage was a zoo of noise and activity. Fifty or sixty brown-skinned children ate their evening meal in complete chaos. Two nuns were doing their best to keep the situation under control; they were clearly losing the battle, obviously understaffed. One nun caught his eye, looking disapprovingly at the tan-faced man with the heavy beard. Gage beckoned her from the door.

  When she hit him with rapid-fire Greek, Gage asked her if she could speak English. “Of course,” she responded. “Now what do you want?”

  “I would like to make a donation to the orphanage.”

  She jerked her head back slightly, undoubtedly misjudging this man’s intentions. Before she could respond, Gage handed her the envelope.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “I’d rather remain anonymous.” He pointed to the envelope. “It’s a cashier’s check. I hope it helps a little.”

  Gage nodded respectfully, turning and exiting. He watched through the window as the nun walked to the other nun, explaining the exchange, puzzlement on her face. The nun opened the envelope and removed the check. They peered at it together. Gage laughed aloud as he watched both of their mouths go slack.

  He walked from the yard of the orphanage, nearly penniless, happier than he had been in years. As he reached the bus stop, he dug into his pocket and retrieved two objects: a pendant in the shape of the Greek letter Mu, which looks like the standard alphabet letter: M

  He’d bought it at a silver shop in Crete and planned to carry it from now on in memory of Monika. He stared at the pendant a moment, remembering, finally raising it to his mouth and kissing it. Then Gage unfolded a photocopy of one of the final entries in Greta Morgenstern’s 1938 diary, hearing Monika’s voice as he read it…

  The situation here is unimaginable. Heinrich and I stayed up all night last night, discussing the atrocities, neither of us holding out much hope for the future. But diary, if I were to perish this very moment, I could do so knowing I met the man of my dreams. He is kind, he is tender, and I’m confident of his undying love for me and my child.

  No matter what happens, my life is complete.

  Gage refolded the photocopy, placing the silver M inside the folds. His eyes went skyward. He hoped Monika would be pleased with his decisions.

  The bus arrived; Gage boarded. In his hand was an airline ticket. His flight was due to leave in three hours, and he was certain he could find work at his destination.

  THE END

  Read more about Gage Hartline in TO THE LIONS, the follow-up to THE DIARIES that has already been optioned for film by Solipsist Films. TO THE LIONS is available at Amazon.

  NOTE – I hope you enjoyed this book. Whether you did or didn’t, would you mind writing a quick review at Amazon? It can be as short as a line or two. Doing so will assist with Amazon’s search feature and will help other customers decide if THE DIARIES is right for them. I appreciate your help and your support! Please read on for acknowledgments.

  Acknowledgements

  As you’re already aware, this book is a work of fiction. Sufficient license was taken with a number of subjects, and my approach to those subjects should not be taken seriously. Any errors or inaccuracies are entir
ely my own fault.

  Before I name those who helped me refine The Diaries, I feel compelled to thank the members of our armed forces. Not counting the challenging life of simply being a soldier, these brave men and women have volunteered to risk their lives in the name of our freedom. To our soldiers and veterans, I thank you.

  I’m extremely grateful to several authors. Don McKale, Hitler expert and esteemed author, gave me insight about Adolf Hitler I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. JT Ellison, novelist extraordinaire, has been my sounding board and biggest cheerleader since day one. Thanks to you both.

  I’m also indebted to my brilliant beta readers for being such willing test subjects: Stephen, Jerry, Gina, Herr Doktor (you know who you are), Frank & Linda, Fred & Jeanie, Ann, Curt, Phillip & Gayla, Mija, Arnold, Eileen, Pam, and the Compton Crew in Omaha. A special thanks is owed to Bob Thixton for his tireless efforts and advice.

  My wife Chrissy deserves an award for her patience. Patience with my obsessions. Patience with me. Perhaps, someday, I will write something that won’t immediately put her to sleep.

  And for my Army pal Mike, thanks for giving me the initial inspiration. Although we’ll never be able to capture the entire treasure trove of stories, I know we’ll keep trying.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to Jordana Megonigal for her wonderful editing and keen eye. Again, all mistakes are mine.

  Finally, I offer a loud shout-out to every dog-soldier I ever served with. You helped me create the lasting memories. Broke, tired, and dirty…those were some of my highest highs.

  A portion of every book I sell will be donated to the Wounded Warrior Project. Read more about the cause at woundedwarriorproject.org