Circle Around the Sun

by M. D. Johnson

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Shallal asked as he took a cup from the tray she set on the coffee table.

  “Tell you what?” She replied nonchalantly

  “About your daughter,” he replied.

  Emily realized that he had not said “our daughter” or “my daughter”. It was therefore quite apparent that he hadn’t spotted the resemblance. Atiya on the other hand was frozen to the spot and couldn’t stop staring at the two of them now playing together quite happily.

  Mason, in his alarmingly intelligent way was looking from one to the other as if a great mystery had been solved.

  “Are you Haley’s daddy?” he asked curiously.

  “No. Sadly, I’m not,” came the response.

  “You’re not my daddy either. My daddy has a new body now.”

  “Yes, Mason, I knew your daddy.”

  “Tell me about my daddy. Do I look like him?”

  “I think you look like your grandfather in England.”

  “Mummy says that all the time. I love my grandfather Ibby and Nanna Lilibee”

  “Mason, I think it’s time for you to go into the nursery with Atiya and Haley. We’ll go for a walk in a few hours. But I have work to do with Mr. Shallal. Maybe he will stay for lunch or dinner with us and you can choose what we should eat.” The serious little boy agreed and along with his sister and Atiya left for the nursery down the hall.

  “When did this take place Amina?”

  “I had her thirteen months ago.”

  “And her father?”

  “I really don’t wish to discuss this. The whole affair is closed. I made a mistake. I was vulnerable, lonely and frankly took someone too seriously and as I can conceive on the strength of a romantic letter, here we are! I have a beautiful daughter. My son is a little odd, as you can see. Very cerebral though, well versed in three languages and is picking up Dari and Farsi as well. Together they both are wonderful. Mason adores his sister and that’s the way it should be.

  “I just don’t understand this,” Shallal said defiantly. “You got pregnant again? I mean, Good God woman, you’re single with two children!”

  “Is this an admonishment? It doesn’t bother me having two children and frankly, if it offends your bloody dignity to be in the house of a single mother of two then leave. I didn’t invite you.”

  “I mean, I‘m shocked, to say the least. I mean, we, er…I thought we had something going on. I didn’t know there was someone else.”

  Emily looked at him incredulously, and then she laughed. “We had something going on? I haven’t heard from you in almost two bloody years. This is unbelievable! Tony, just tell me what you want this time or what your office wants and leave. Please.” She couldn’t believe it. They had made love twenty-two months ago, he had fathered their child and he just didn’t make the connection. It was unreal. What was he thinking? Did he think at all? Couldn’t he count? Was he blind? Even Mason had figured this out and he wasn’t even three years old. How could this man be so damned stupid?

  Shallal, coughed, spluttered a little and got on with the reason he was in Germany. “For the past few years intelligence agencies all over Europe have been trying to end the financial support for, find and ultimately arrest the Red Army Faktion. There have been significant developments and great cooperation, which I might add is most unusual, between Interpol, international intelligence and the local German Police. Amina, we want you to rack your brain. Try to recall conversations with Meinhof and Ensslin. Try and remember names. Amina, there have been bank robberies which have financed these terrorists. There was a robbery committed in the Bavarian Mortgage and Exchange Bank in Kaiserslautern resulting in a young police officer being murdered. Herbert Schoner was only thirty-two years old, Amina. He had two small children, just like you. Allegedly, one of the robbers has been identified as Klaus Juenschke of the Socialists Patients Collective (SPK) of Heidelberg. This is the group of group-therapy patients that were organized by Dr. Wolfgang Huber at the Psychiatric Neurological Clinic in Heidelberg to protest the management techniques of the clinic. We know that they forced their way into the office of another doctor at the clinic and tried to force him to sign blank prescriptions which would be worth a fortune on the black market. They were also making explosives and constructing receivers to monitor police radios. They were actually jamming police transmissions, not to mention providing lightweight commando-style training. We have also been advised by insiders that there have been other deaths connected to the SPK but Amina; we have no concrete evidence definitely linking the group to the Red Army Faktion. Last year,” he went on, “two policemen were involved in a shootout in on the Freiburg-Basel motorway. One of the assailants was Holger Meins, a leading member of the RAF. The other was Margrit Schiller of the SPK. This is the only real tie we have, this association between these two! In their car police found several underground publications. “The Concept Urban Guerilla” which Andreas Baader considers the manifesto for the RAF and which we believe was authored by our friend Ulrike Meinhof and “Concerning the Armed Struggle for Western Europe”, probably written by Horst Mahler. You might remember him from the training camp; he’s the fellow who founded The Berlin Socialist Lawyer’s Collective. The point is Amina, we believe there is a connection and if we can follow the leads we can find these people before there’s anymore damage. With the Olympic Games being held in Munich this year we cannot take anymore chances. It’s collaborative intelligence at this point and we need all the help we can get.”

  He took out some photographs and spread them onto the coffee table. “Do you know any of these people? One of them was an artist and sculptor.”

  She had seen him many times at Ulla’s Boutique on the Hauptstrasse where she still bought her clothes and now he was listed as the “bomb maker” for the group. “This is unbelievable! I’ve met this chap many times. His dad’s a surgeon and the director of Frankfurt’s University Hospital. He can’t be involved!”

  “Amina,” Shallal began again, this time sounding pleased with himself, “this man is suspected of having made the explosive device that killed an American soldier yesterday. Lt. Paul Abel Bloomquist was only thirty-nine years old. He had two children. He survived Viet Nam only to be killed by a sculptor for Christ’s sake, who prides himself on designing unusually artistic bombs!” Shallal’s voice was getting louder, “Do you know how they did it Amina? Baader, Meins, Raspe and your little friend Gudrun Ensslin wrapped the bombs in gift-wrap with flowers. Flowers! Can you believe this? They completely destroyed the entrance and the Officer’s Club of the Fifth U.S. Army Corps. The man who was killed was hit by a bomb fragment as he was walked to his car. A Viet Nam veteran. A war hero and he bled to death, Amina, he bled to death!”

  “Another of their horror stories, Amina. The RAF also managed to concoct ‘the Baby Bomb’. Yes; these acquaintances of yours have invented a most evil method of damage. Want to know what that is? It’s an explosive placed in a half globe. Its detonators get fitted into hexagonal pip-terminating nuts and the connected on a circuit to a 50-volt dry-cell battery through an egg timer with a delay of sixty minutes. The globe is then placed under the dress of one of the female RAF members. It’s held in place by webbing on the shoulder straps of the dress. The girl looks pregnant, doesn’t arouse suspicion. Imagine it Amina? A bomber dressed to look like a healthy woman literally full of life and who then becomes the angel of death. Underneath the bomb, this sculptor has placed a flat balloon so that when the bomb is positioned in the place it should go off she can just walk to a ladies toilet, quickly blow up the balloon and reposition it under her dress. She then holds it down securely and resumes her disguise when she leaves the building. The woman who made the clothes for this was an American, she is his girlfriend. She works at the U.S. Army Headquarters in the I.G. Farben Building. We’ll have her soon and she’ll talk.”

  “As you know by now, just a few days ago, two women carrying suitcases walked into the Augsburg Police Headquarters. They found em
pty offices on the third and fourth floors where they left pipe bombs with timers on filing cabinets. It takes balls to do this, Amina. The bombs went off just after lunch wounding five policemen and demolishing the ceiling on the fourth floor. A few hours later a Ford vehicle blew up in the parking lot of the State Criminal Investigation Office in Munich. This one destroyed sixty cars and most of the windows. We’ve got no leads on this one.”

  “Has anyone taken responsibility for the military bombing, Tony?”

  “Yes. Earlier this morning the German Press Agency received a letter from someone named ‘Commando Petra Schelm’ who stated that the RAF had initiated the bombing of the I.G. Farben building in commemoration of the day when the bomb blockade against North Viet Nam was started by the U.S. Imperialists. Is there anyone else of interest? Think, Amina,” Shallal urged, looking intently at her.

  Emily told him about “Ulla’s Boutique”, the Russian Dr. Schulkin and his wife Vika. “I have no reason to believe they are involved, but I am curious why Schulkin was so friendly and so insistent on meeting me at ‘The Cave’ and why Ghulam was so angry at me for inviting them to our cheese and wine party. Could Ghulam have known more about them than I thought? Had he been briefed by Mustafa. What do you think Tony??”

  Shallal ignored her question, smiled knowingly and said “Amina, I want you to take me to ‘The Cave’ and introduce me as your friend Alego Panos. Tell them I’m Greek, an antique dealer. I’ll be here a couple of weeks and I’m staying down town in Heidelberg at the ‘Deutche Adler’. Your cover was not blown by the training camp. In fact your reputation was somewhat enhanced. It’s a sort of ‘No one knows for sure’ situation.”

  “OK. That’s fine with me, Tony but about the rest of these photographs. There are two others I have met. This fellow here is Axel Stadler,” she said, pointing to a bearded man in his mid-twenties, photographed getting out of his Karmen-Ghia parked outside a café.

  “Excellent. Tell me what you know.”

  “Tony this isn’t exactly new information. A lot may have changed in the past few years. As far as I know Stadler’s still a professional student, the kind who never finishes his doctoral thesis because he’s in so love with his life as a full time student. He lives in Eppelheim with his wife Ingeborg. She works for some American firm in Mannheim, I think. I think she’s in advertising. Her English is excellent. She’s been ot this apartment. So has he. I had a party and they came to it as guests of Mustafa. You probably know this already. Axel’s very angry, loathes Americans and he’s very close to Ulrike Meinhof. Absolute adoration! A real lap dog, hangs on to her every word, agrees with her all the time, follows her around. His wife seems very upset by it as well.”

  “Good! Where does the wife go socially?”

  “She swims at the Eppelheim public swimming pool. She was telling someone at the party about the place. I think she goes every morning at around six and she’s active in the local rowing club. Very outdoorsy type. I rather liked her. She was really lovely and speaks excellent English. Another thing is that they all go to a club named ‘The Catacombe’. It’s owned by a fellow from Camaroon named Julian, or another place named ‘Café Straub’ which is the lefty hang out across the street from Shepheards Lounge on the Haupstrasse. I’ve stopped by there for coffee. I go in there a lot when I’m in town. I don’t like the Café’s atmosphere but I love the food, very simple German stuff, you know the kind of place, Wurst salad and basic Schnitzel. The place is full of nutters. They all look like psychopaths,” she added somewhat vindictively.

  “Good. We’ll go there tonight. You said there were two photographs. Stadler and who else?

  ”Verena Stoltz. This one,” she replied, pointing to the photograph of a young, dark haired girl with penetrating dark eyes. “She hangs out at ‘Ulla’s Boutique’. Sometimes she works there. Her father was a G.I. She’s a ‘romantic’ in the Liverpool sense of the word. You know the type, the kind who tells outlandish stories. Very fanciful tales. They’re usually about her father, when it’s obvious to me they’ve never met. I think she said her father was a Seminole Indian. Which could be true as it’s not something a German would really know anything about, is it? Chief Osceola and the Seminole Indians?”

  “Don’t know really. Weren’t they very intermingled with runaway slaves in the Southern States around the time of the Civil War? Does she look like a half-caste to you? That could be a good conversation opener.”

  “Half-caste! What the hell do you mean by that? How fucking colonial! They really have you bloody brainwashed, don’t they? You’re a frigging half-caste Tony, and for that matter so am I!” she replied furiously. “You are such a tosser Shallal, honestly. Save it for MI6. I’m not one of your agents. You’re not running me, alright? I know how to handle it. I buy tons of clothes from her. She’s very likeable. I don’t think she’s anything but easily led. I don’t feel like she’s a social deviant. She’s just lost.”

  “Christ, Mina, are you so bloody gullible? Let me explain a little about Fraulein Stoltz. This young woman was brought up in a State Home. One of the same state homes that were selected intentionally by Ulrike Meinhof as a recruiting ground for their membership. What she has been doing for the gang is penetrating bars frequented by NSDAP Members, which as you know is the Nationalsozialistiche Deutscher Arbeiterpartei, short for the Nazi Party, which is still certainly in existence here. In fact she’s been bloody successful in arms purchasing as well. She goes in, picks up an older chap, listens to his war stories, swaps some anti-Jewish rhetoric then takes him home. He tells her everything she wants to know just before the blow job and then she drops the big one which is usually ‘Where can my friends buy guns on the cheap?’ She closes the deal a few days later, always successfully, I might add. We’ve got a fellow on the inside who’s keeping her under observation. But that can only work for so long. He may already be on their shit list. So we will need someone who knows her really well in case we lose him as a source. The Germans need to be able to move in on her soon and we will stand with them on this. We must rebuild our own credibility after the Khaled cock up.”

  “Yes, I do understand that Tony, but the Prime Minister, I believe acted in good faith and in the interests of the country as a whole.”

  “Amina, he capitulated to terrorists and we will never recover from it,” Shallal said tersely. “Anyway, let me get going as I’ve got to get to Frankfurt before 3 p.m. Oh Amina, before I go, I must say I really admire you for keeping your children. If there’s anything I can ever do for the three of you, all you need do is ask. The little girl is a beauty. She looks a lot like you, I think. Ever hear from her father after the camp thing?”

  She paused before answering. “He knew nothing abut it. That’s the way I wanted it. I can survive, thank you very much, without the complication of having yet another male in my life. Mason is actually enough for me.”

  “Yes, I can imagine. He’s a bright little chap. I can’t believe he’s just two and half. Rather precocious little fellow, isn’t he? Yes he would have been more than a match for his father, I think. Have you heard from him at all?”

  “Nothing, I’m glad to say. But I do keep in touch with his parents and I will visit them in France next spring as they’re getting a Paris assignment.”

  “You’re going to see them? Rather altruistic of you isn’t it?”

  “Tony, his family has not harmed me. But I have made it perfectly clear that if they contact Ghulam about the visit before or during my trip, they will never see their grandson again.”

  “And you trust them?” he asked in reply.

  “I have learned that I must accept things I cannot change. They do not want an international incident. He is a British subject and I have full custody of him. I am being very generous to them. I don’t have to let the Ansaris see Mason at all. Besides that, my Aunt Jack is coming with me and knowing her she’ll have Golda Meir’s private plane as transportation. Trust me; nothing is going to happen to us in Paris.”

&
nbsp; He left shortly afterwards, leaving Emily alone in her living room staring out of the window on to the Neckar valley below. This was, she thought to herself, one of the loveliest places in the world. “And here I am, like bloody Rapunzel, waiting. Why didn’t I tell him?” she asked out loud to herself, “Why didn’t I say, Tony Shallal, this is your daughter?”

  “Because, Miss Emily, you are very strong and very proud, I think!” Atiya replied, as she opened the door bringing in a tray of steaming mugs of Earl Grey tea with Greek honey and some warm baklava Emily favored that she had made earlier that morning. “Oh Miss Emily, I am so sorry. That man, I was so stupid. Our little girl looks just like him. It was obvious to me and I think to Mason as well.” She put her arms around Emily, who by now was sobbing in her shoulder. It was the first time she had ever seen a break in the invisible steel barrier surrounding Emily’s emotional self.

  “Oh Atiya. What have I done?”

  “Nothing wrong, Miss Emily. You kept your child and that was a good and brave thing to do.”

  ‘But Atiya, my children will have no father. They’ll never know who their fathers are. Never, really and they’ll wonder all their lives.”

  “Maybe,” she replied comfortingly, “having a wonderful mother is enough for them. You’re not alone. You have a good family and you have me. I will help you until I go back to Afghanistan to practice medicine. We will survive. You will see.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Tony Shallal took the Autobahn to Frankfurt and arrived at the British Embassy on Bockenheimer Landstrasse a few hours later. He was greeted by his Head of Section, Anthony Wallace-Terry.

  ”Well, well, dear boy. Can she be of any use?”

  “Actually sir, she can. She has been on the outside of this student underground for several years now. Our studies show that most of these Euro-terrorist groups are actually run by women. These women tend to be middle or upper-class in terms of their education and socio-economic background. Our Emily is actually quite wealthy, very naïve and very trusting. She has made a lot of contacts and acquaintances, many of whom are useful sources. For some reason, most of them are known to or are actually involved with terrorists. She is, sir, prepared to help. I don’t have to ask her. I know her. She will do whatever she is asked to do. She is, despite the duality of her heritage, the quintessential Brit, bound by private school ethics, Tennyson and William Blake melancholia.”