“Marry me or I’m not leaving.”
Saba shut her eyes. She believed him, Eddie the American who believed in dreams. “Stay, then,” she said, and stepped out of the driver’s side into the merchants and street vendors.
Saba returned with two simple gold rings and a priest who spoke English. The priest knelt in the front seat facing them. He removed his hat, explained she must wear it, then asked, “He has a ring for you?”
Saba put her ring on Eddie’s finger. Eddie put the ring she gave him on hers.
“Hold the hands with the rings.”
They did. The priest spoke Italian and made motions with his hands. He finished with the Christian sign of the cross and pointed Eddie at Saba’s lips. “You must kiss your bride.”
Eddie grinned. The priest grinned.
Saba cried. The priest excused himself.
Eddie said, “C’mon, get on the boat. We’ll figure it out.”
Her hands were on his cheeks. She wished to climb inside his clothes, to feel Eddie’s heart against her skin, to begin their magical trip to the American desert in Ne-va-da. “You are my man, a man I never believed I could allow or have. For that there is no . . . loss.” Her thumbs caressed his cheeks. “But Palestine is my country, Eddie, as America is yours. To leave is to betray my people. They have little now and no leaders.”
“We get aboard, stay together.”
Saba acknowledged the two porters behind Eddie’s window. “The porters are here; you must go. Too much attention and I will be caught.”
Eddie coughed and shrank at the pain. “Get on the boat. I swear to God I’ll go back to Palestine with you as soon as we get the chance. I promise.”
Saba slid out the driver’s side and circled to the passenger door. She opened it and asked that the porters assist her husband. The porters helped Eddie out of the car. Pain he’d been hiding racked his face. He leaned against the fender, caught his breath, and told the porters, “Give me a minute. Un momento.”
“Sì, sì, but the ship . . .” The porters pointed at the SS Normandie.
Eddie turned to Saba. Her finger went to his lips. She didn’t argue or speak, just stayed in Eddie’s eyes, hoping hers said what she could not. She stepped to him, touched the wings hidden beneath her eye, and trailed the fingertip on his lips.
“Look to the stars each night, Eddie Owen. You and your wife who loves you very much will be in them.”
Eddie tried to stop the porters. “Wait. Wait a sec.” But it was their feet that propelled him. He turned his head—“Stay alive. I’m coming back. I promise.”
Saba nodded. Then dropped the coat in the car and melted into the working people dressed much the same as she. Uphill and away from the station, she found a place to await the SS Normandie’s departure. After an hour, Eddie appeared at the ship’s rail. Being the foolish romantic boy that he was, he propped himself into a tall chair and searched the shoreline that might hide his wife. At sunset the SS Normandie sounded her horns. Eddie waved at what he could not see. Saba squeezed her hand and Eddie’s ring as her husband and her dreams left the harbor. The grand ship turned for the sea. Saba waved small and whispered to her husband, “I am Saba Hassouneh al Saleh, the proud bride of Mr. Eddie Owen.”
Eddie’s last words to her had been, “Stay alive. I’m coming back.” And Saba decided it would be the one little girl’s fairy tale the Raven would believe.
EPILOGUE
The bloodiest, most profitable war in human history began five months after the SS Normandie sailed. The opening salvo was a radio broadcast in Upper Silesia orchestrated by Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. The war lasted six years. When it ended in 1945, there were 60 million dead, 6 million of them murdered in the extermination camps depicted by the “Mendelssohn papers.” Thousands of the world’s cities were rubble; 10 million more would die of famine and disease; fortunes had been made—most a direct result of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan’s ability to manufacture and deliver munitions.
Mr. President, I recommend Standard Oil and its board of directors be tried for treason.
—William E. Dodd
US Ambassador to Germany
The Appeal is denied. Standard Oil can be considered an enemy national . . .
—Charles E. Clark
Chief Judge, US Court of Appeals
Not one officer, stockholder, or banker of Standard Oil, Vacuum Oil, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Alcoa, or DuPont spent one day in jail. Nor did any member of the reigning Wall Street banking families.
On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was founded in Palestine. That same year, Benny Binion moved the last of his Texas gambling operations to Las Vegas. Some said Saba Hassouneh al-Saleh had survived the war, as had Eddie Owen and his little brother and sister. Many more said the Raven had not survived—how could she?
Or that she had never existed at all.
In the refugee camps, in the most desperate of times, black wings would appear on the walls and tents. Those who had no other hope but the Raven never quit believing. Eddie Owen made three trips to Palestine and found no trace, but at night, when the stars were out, he, like the others, refused to let her go. A promise was a promise, and sometimes, no matter what the odds, sometimes . . .
APRIL 7, 1952
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
Binion’s Horseshoe Casino was a huge hit—movie stars, torch singers, cowboys—and had been from day one. Ava Gardner and Robert Mitchum drank and gambled here. Eddie had taught Ava to shoot craps and a .38 Colt. Ava had her actress pals look Eddie up when they came to town for their four-day divorces. At Benny’s request, Eddie had driven Ida Lupino to the Douglas County seat in Minden for Ida’s second breakup. Hard to imagine that the Jacksboro Highway led to Fremont Street and Hollywood, but it had.
Tonight Eddie had the night off from making gamblers and movie stars happy, and leaned against the fender of his 1951 Nash-Healey two-seat breezer. On his radio, Patti Page sang her “Tennessee Waltz” to the desert stars while Eddie sipped red wine from a bottle Benny Binion gave him every April 7th.
The wind in Eddie’s face was hot, even at night, even hotter than it had been in Iran and Lebanon and Tenerife. Saba’s stars were always there, so she had to be, right? Some desert? Somewhere? Saba knew about Nevada and Benny Binion. It could happen. Eddie didn’t ask Benny and Floyd for the odds; they made odds for a living. Eddie just believed, because he said he would.
Eddie sipped again and held the bottle to the stars. “Hey, baby.” Reddish dust answered. Eddie was parked off Highway 95, a good thirty miles from the Proving Grounds that President Truman had renamed the “Nevada Test Site.” Six times in the last year, B-50 bombers from Nellis Air Force Base had dropped atomic bombs out there, the most recent earlier this week, the flashes so bright they were seen in San Francisco. The US Atomic Energy Commission assured everyone the area was “safe” but Highway 95’s new concrete now rippled like a washboard. Any wind at all and the top layer of desert on either side jumped into the sky like a carpet of flies.
Atomic bombs may have ended the war, but they were front and center to start a new one—an atomic Armageddon faceoff between the USA and Russia. Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy was on the rise, riding the “Red Scare” like a warhorse. McCarthy had ferreted out Russian Communist spies and American traitors in Washington, DC; Los Alamos; and Hollywood. According to the senator, America was again on the verge of destruction, assaulted from within by fellow travelers who would destroy democracy and pave the way for the Communists. Government-approved bomb shelters were being built in backyards across the nation. America had fought a second world war only to lose her mind in the peace.
Eddie toyed with the ring Saba had put on his finger thirteen years ago. Tonight was their wedding anniversary. He knew a great deal more about his wife now than he had before the war started. The Israelis in the USA who were snooping around anything “atomic” had privately told him the Raven was a ghost, a Robin Hood legend that every culture manuf
actured in their darkest hour. They said the woman Eddie had known was an imposter, one of many, all of them dead.
Eddie turned to the sound of a distant engine. No headlights fanned in the dark. His free hand trembled and that was unusual. His hand held a ten franc note that had been bet on a roulette table in Binion’s three hours ago at midnight. The bet won and no one collected. Pinned to the note was a hand-drawn map to this spot and Eddie’s name. The map smelled like tangerines.
AUTHOR NOTES
The novel covers the ten years between 1929 and 1939. Three events in the timeline have been juggled for clarity in the plot: the voyage of the MS Saint Louis, Hitler’s formal threat in the Reichstag against the Jews, and the German-American Bund rally in New York City.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
F.O.N., Simon the Lionhearted, Sharon and Doug, Easy Ed Stackler, Major McQuinn, Pack, Murad, Saudi, Miami Jon, Lt. Dennis, Maurice, BT, King Hamad, Abdul Lateef, Khaldoon, and Julio Rancel-Villamandos in Tenerife. The biggest thanks possible for the backstage passes, critiques, and support of every imaginable type.
For two years this novel traveled me from the Jacksboro Highway through Sitra, Beirut, Amman, Wadi Rum, Aqaba, Jerusalem, Haifa, Ramallah, Nablus, the Golan Heights, Damascus, Tenerife, Casablanca, Oran, Algiers, Bari, Naples, Bastia, and Marseilles. Lots of stops, some I’d made before; lots of people, many of them new; all of it the best part of the writer life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2012 Lisa Law
Charlie Newton is the author of two previous novels, Start Shooting and Calumet City. His work has been a finalist for the Edgar, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, the Macavity, and the International Thriller Writer’s Thriller Award. Born in Chicago, Charlie has built successful bars/restaurants and resort apartments, raced thoroughbreds that weren’t quite so successful, and brokered television and film in the Middle East. He lives on the road.
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