Way of Escape

by Ann Fillmore

  “You know, Monday may be a whore of the Satanists, but she’s damned good at her work,” Sadiq-Fath nodded to himself. He couldn’t resist taunting the hated American, “I believe she could sneak anyone she wanted out of your country.”

  “We’ll see about this,” snarled Tidewater. “Okay, Quddus, thanks for everything. Be sure to tell me if I can help you in any way. Talk at ya later, buddy!”

  “You too, Marion.” Quddus cut the connection, handed the phone to Ali Muhit who had to wipe the grease off his hands first before laying it on the floor nearby. “Time for you to leave,” said Sadiq-Fath to his assistant, “and take the phone with you.” Sadiq-Fath glanced back at the bath area. “I want privacy, for the entire rest of the night. Understood!”

  “Yessir,” Ali Muhit grabbed up the phone and saluting, left.

  As soon as the big door had closed tightly, Sadiq-Fath ordered loudly, “Come out, young one,” and the boy emerged, “have some dinner with me.”

  The boy bowed, knelt close. “Thank you, sir.”

  Russ Snow regarded his boss with perturbation. Tidewater’s chin was crunched onto his chest in what seemed to be immensely serious deliberation. “You okay, Mr. Tidewater?”

  The beady brown eyes shot up and focused on the young man.

  “Sure, son. Couldn’t be better.” Tidewater stretched and grinned broadly, dissembling. “Got more information out of that old bastard Quddus than I could ever have hoped. You pay attention, Snow. All you have to do with these Arab guys is start them bragging on themselves and bingo! they blab their heads off.” As he stood, he pushed his shirttail back into his pants. “I’m going to lunch. You,” he pointed at the young man, “find out where a Mrs. Bonnie Ixey lives. She’s in California somewhere. I want all the particulars on that woman by the time I get back. Family, kids, hobbies, everything. And look up who the operative closest to her is. I want to talk to him. Okay? See if we can have her under observation by dinner time.”

  Marion Tidewater went to the office door and opening it, regarded his secretary with appreciation. Maybe she’d like lunch at the Top Hat, he thought. Bet she never gets to eat such a fancy lunch. To Russ, he said, “Be back in a couple hours.”

  “Yessir,” said Russ Snow, deliberately not watching his boss walk over to the secretary’s desk.

  The barber brushed the trimmings of white-blond hair from Carl-Joran’s shoulders and onto the floor. Even with the chair at the lowest rung, the barber still had to stand on a stool for this tall fellow. With the kind of gratuity the baron gave though, the barber would have brought in a stepladder if he’d had to. He swung the Swedish man around and handed him a mirror.

  “Thanks,” said Carl-Joran, noting only that more of the blond had turned white.

  The barber took off the plastic cloak and pulled the tissue away from the big man’s neck. “I’m glad you’re satisfied so easily.”

  “You always do a good job,” the big man stood, pulled some bills from his wallet, and paid. “See you in a month or so.” As Carl-Joran stepped through the door, onto the busy street, Siddhu hurried up on his bicycle.

  “Ah, you look much handsomer now,” said Siddhu, “so are we ready then?”

  “Yes, let’s walk.” They went briskly together along the pavement with Siddhu pushing his bicycle. The breeze from the Mediterranean was warming the late winter’s afternoon, and as they arrived at the Bank of Switzerland, Carl-Joran said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to take a holiday for a couple weeks somewhere warm, like Southern California or Hawaii?”

  “It surely would,” responded Siddhu, parking his bike and following Hermelin into the entry and first security room of the quiet bank, “but you know Doctor Legesse would be very upset with you if you tried to leave.”

  “I know,” grumbled Carl-Joran, as they passed along the corridor and through the guard station before being allowed to go up to a counter, “that’s one part of this being dead business that I find extremely irritating. She hasn’t told me yet how long I have to be deceased.”

  The teller, a penguin-dressed Israeli man who knew the big Swede, hustled over. “What can I do for you today, Baron Hermelin?”

  “I need to move some money,” he explained.

  “Then we will do that,” said the teller smiling. After making out the correct forms, the teller bowed and walked back into the rear security area.

  What usually took only moments began to stretch into a considerable amount of time. Carl-Joran looked down at Siddhu and shrugged. He leaned his tall body around the corner and peered through the thick glass windows. Just barely, he could see the teller’s black-suited form rather animatedly talking to someone not visible to Carl-Joran, and the teller’s back was uncomfortably stiff and his arms intermittently jerked in some sort of pleading motion.

  “I don’t like this,” said Carl-Joran to Siddhu, “this is not good.”

  “What? What is happening?” Siddhu tried to lean around like his large counterpart, but was unsuccessful.

  Three more minutes and the teller and an expensively dressed young man came out of the security area. The young man, younger than the teller, introduced himself as the bank manager. He had probably been sent directly to Haifa from the main bank in Zurich.

  “‘Ello, yes,” said the manager, whose accent immediately confirmed Carl-Joran’s suspicions, “there is a very strange problem on your account, Baron.” He laid some computer printouts on the desk. “If you see it says from the main bank that you…that you are tot. I mean, obviously, you are not dead. You are standing right here alive. But, mein baron, we cannot get into your accounts. None of them. You see on the forms, they all say your accounts are all to be put in your inheritor’s name and until that has officially happened, they are frozen. I am very sorry, Baron. I am so sorry.” The young man was beside himself and the teller hovered like a distraught groom.

  Carl-Joran’s face had the appearance of a boxer who’s been hit one too many times and is about to go down for the count.

  Siddhu Singh Prakash, not much better, stared at the young manager, then at his friend and gently tugged at Carl-Joran’s sweatshirt sleeve. “Baron, is he saying you cannot put money in the EW account here in Israel? Is he?”

  “I guess that’s the upshot,” said Carl-Joran.

  “What will we do?” Siddhu almost screeched, “Nothing can happen.”

  “I’ll call my son,” Carl-Joran said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get this straightened out.” He smiled at the worried bank manager and the dancing penguin and nodded, “It’ll be dealt with. And, you don’t say anything about having seen me alive, here, correct?”

  The bank manager bowed again, “Naturally not, no. Of course, Baron, because we are here to help, Herr Hermelin.”

  They hurried out of the bank and along the street until Carl-Joran could whistle a taxi, which sped them, along with Siddhu’s bicycle, to the top of the steep hill and to the door of the Nof Hotel. Carl-Joran paid the driver and they were quickly up the elevator and into the big Swede’s room.

  The little red light on the phone was blinking madly. Messages—Carl-Joran called the desk. All of them were from Sture, the very person he was about to call, his son and the number was the castle’s. Sture was at home. Carl-Joran got hold of the international operator and was rung through to Sweden and to his castle.

  “Far!” Sture almost shouted into the phone when he heard his father’s voice. “Dad! What the hell is going on? I can’t get any money from our bank. I must go to Stockholm, I should have gone today, to the Karolinska Institute and see my professor…and, and…”

  “But, min son, the accounts should all have come directly to you, except for the one that goes to Emigrant Women. They weren’t to go into probate, they were in trust accounts.” Carl-Joran dropped heavily onto the bed. Siddhu sat quietly in a chair at the table and waited patiently while the man spoke in Swedish, which he didn’t understand. Carl-Joran went on, “There was to be no probate, none at all. I assure you. Everything was i
n trust funds and assigned accounts. It was all taken care of.”

  “Well, it’s not!” exclaimed Sture Nojd Hermelin. “All I got is what’s in the housekeeping account and in my own savings account. Everything is closed up!”

  “Damnation! The lawyer must have gotten confused,” said Carl-Joran. “Can you call Inge Person? Can you see what’s happened and call me right back?”

  “I already got a call in to whoever’s in the office,” said Sture. “As soon as they answer, I’ll ring you.”

  “Okay, I’ll be waiting right here in my hotel room.” He hung up and Siddhu jumped to his feet and waved his hands. He was about to speak when Carl-Joran said firmly, “It’ll be taken care of. Just…wait. Wait. Sture is getting hold of our attorney.”

  “But…but…but…,” Siddhu sputtered.

  “Don’t!” insisted Carl-Joran. “Here, I’ll order up some tea.” He grabbed the phone and did just that. Siddhu’s eyes were wide with anxiety and he began to pace, back and forth, back and forth.

  Fifteen very long minutes later, after the strong tea had been delivered and was about to be drunk, the phone in the hotel room rang and Carl-Joran grabbed it up.

  “It’s me, Far,” said Sture on the other end, “and the news is bad. It’s a terrible shock.”

  “What? Tell me,” Carl-Joran sat down again on the edge of the bed.

  “The Pastorkirche has found someone they say is your real wife, a woman you did not divorce. She is the person who has been given your accounts.” Sture, a youngster as tall and strong as his father, could be heard near tears. “Everything, except for my small private account has gone to her. Far, she even owns the castle!”

  “It can’t be. Your mother, min alskling Heda, was my wife. What do they mean my first wife?” Carl-Joran could see the lights coming on in the harbor and around the shiny dome of the Bab’s temple down in the Baha’i Gardens immediately below the hotel. He was completely unprepared for such a shock as this. “What name was it? Did they give you a name for this woman who is supposed to be a wife of mine?”

  “Mrs. Bonnie Ixey,” said Sture. “Now really, Dad, be honest, did you ever know her?”

  “Bonnie?” Carl-Joran’s lightly tanned face began to blush pink, “Bonnie…I knew a Bonnie once, long ago, but her name was Seastrand, not Ixey.”

  “Okay, then they’re the same,” Sture said with horrible resignation. “Here is what the Pastorkirche papers say, ‘Bonnie Mari Sjostrand Ixey of Morro Bay, California.’“

  “Aha…min…gud!” swore the big Swede, “I cannot believe such a thing. That was years and years ago. It is ancient history. Long before you were born, before I came home to Sweden and met your mother, so long ago! The marriage was not even real. It was…it was for…for protection!” and he stopped speaking for a moment. How could he explain all of this to a son who knew nothing of the Contras, of Nicaragua, of guns and drugs in Latin America, of rebellions and refugees, of the exigencies of war and soldiers and terrorists and intrigue? Finally, Carl-Joran took a ragged breath and asked, “You didn’t tell the lawyer I was alive, did you?”

  “No, that’s still a secret, Pappa.” Sture sighed on the other end with all the implications of not understanding his father at all or his father’s crazy friends and crazier business, but putting up with it.

  “Okay, then we’re safe.” The father shifted on the bed and noticed the very anxious Siddhu now pacing at warp speed back and forth, back and forth. “I’ll deal with it from here, Sture, I’ll take care of things as fast as I can.”

  “I hope so, Dad. Call me soon, I’ll want to be at the Karolinska by noon tomorrow. I’ll tell the professors something.” Sture rang off.

  Carl-Joran hung up the phone. Agonized, he turned to the Indian accountant and switched to English. “We’re in a whole bunch of trouble.” He said, “We don’t have any money.”

  Siddhu screeched, “Do not say such a thing!”

  CHAPTER 4: WEALTH IN AN INSTANT

  It was like waiting for a medium to look in her crystal ball, except that Mrs. Lena Falquist Reynolds bore no resemblance to a gypsy palm reader or spirit medium. She was in her late twenties, dressed in an old sweatshirt and jeans, her boyish-cut blonde hair pushed under a scarf, and her face had a minimum of makeup, leaving her gray eyes the most outstanding feature in her lightly tanned face. She peered at the letter though as if it were just such a magical instrument to divine the future.

  Bonnie, in the big armchair with the floral patterned cover, tried to be still. The large, comfortable house had that morning quiet only housewives or househusbands know, those moments when everything is suddenly peaceful. The cat, black with a white chin, having finished its morning’s wash job, purred in the sun on the windowsill, his little pink tongue absentmindedly left poking out from between sharp fangs. Lena’s daughter was in preschool class, her husband, an aeronautics engineer, had gone to work. The world seemed empty of strife. The chubby cat half closed its eyes, settled into encircling paws and with little pink tongue vibrating, began to snore gently.

  “I am very sorry,” said Lena abruptly, making Bonnie jump a bit, “to have you to sit and to wait a long time.” She poked a straying lock of hair back under the scarf. She was slender, with that willowyness found in the southern Swedes from Skona. With a nod, she went on, “You were right, it is a government form and it is complicated. It says this and it says that and then it repeats it and then you have to fill out this form on the back. Forbaskad byrakratism!” She shook her head, trying to translate with, “Darn it bureaucracisms!”

  “But generally, what does it say?” Bonnie begged.

  “Okay, we begin with the brev, the letter that is on top,” her accent was heavy and she was struggling with the words. “One moment, I get dictionary.” She jumped to her feet and hurried to the bookcase in the hall, pulled out two huge orange books, brought them back to the coffee table, and laid them there between her and Bonnie. “Nu, we work.”

  Bonnie was somewhat appalled at the seriousness with which Lena was suddenly taking all this. Perhaps appalled was not the word, perhaps it was fearful. When Bonnie had appeared that morning, Lena had been bright and cheery and had happily served up a tray of rich coffee and supremely delicious, and probably highly caloric, Swedish cookies. All was amiable until Bonnie handed her the envelope with the ominous window and the two sheets of airmail paper. Lena’s face had immediately clouded with tension and as she read through the papers, her whole demeanor underwent a transformation.

  “You do not know anything of what they write here?” Lena had asked. Bonnie had shaken her head no. It was then Lena had begun the divination of sorts.

  The big orange dictionaries looked as formidable as the expression on Lena’s face. “Do you see they have your name spelled correctly? That they have translated the name Seastrand to the Swedish Sjostrand?”

  “My father’s real name was Sjostrand,” explained Bonnie, “which makes this all the more mysterious that they should have gotten it right. That’s all I could figure out though, except for the blanks where they want the grandmother’s name, grandfather’s name, and children.”

  “Ah, yes, here on the back. That is for you to give the Pastorkirche official enough information to register you in the correct book.”

  “Why? What is a Pastorkirche? What book?”

  Lena sighed, struggled for more words. “The Pastorkirche is a very, very old institution. Each area in Sweden has one.” She thumbed through the big orange dictionaries. “Ah, you say parish, each parish has one, or county, yes, it can be county. It is like the chief church office of each county. In that office, for centuries, all the people are marked down in a giant book. Of course today everyone is put into a computer list in Stockholm central government as well. All the fodelsen, all the dodsfallen—that is, the births, the deaths, and you say, the marriage, the divorce, everything that happens to the people in that county.”

  “But…” Bonnie shook her head again, “why me? Why does this P
astorkirche office want me to fill out a form?” “ Ah,” Lena leaned back into the couch, “because the Swedes are fanatical people about making records. When you fill out the form, this person can put you in the correct book in the correct Pastorkirche. Do you know where your father was born?”

  “A place called Mora. I saw it once on some old papers.” Bonnie remembered the yellowed immigration forms hidden away in the trunk, which was now in her own attic, untouched, left as her parents had left it all those years.

  “Ah, you are officially going to be registered in Dalarna County. It is a wonderful place, Dalarna. It is where the red horses of wood come from and elfs…is that right? Elfs?”

  “Elves. Little fairy people?” Bonnie tried to help.

  “Yes, maybe, in Sweden these elfs are very big and not good.” Lena looked back at the letter and the form. “Your registration is the second thing. The first thing is this letter. You are being told that you arvade,” she leaned forward and flipped through the dictionary again. “Ah, you inherit a aga, a…a egendom. You inherit a…estate.”

  “An estate!” Bonnie exclaimed. “What estate? Whose estate? Where?”

  “Wait, slower, I try to explain,” Lena held up one hand. “Someone who is called Carl-Joran Hermelin died two weeks past and the Pastorkirche says you are his laglighet hustru. It means you are his legal wife.”

  Bonnie’s mouth dropped open. She could no longer speak.

  Lena, putting a finger on the names, held the letter so Bonnie could read them. “Do you know a person who is called Carl-Joran Hermelin?”

  Bonnie shook her head.

  “It say you are his wife! You must remember him if you did that,” said Lena, grinning. “And also, he was a baron.”

  “Baron?” Bonnie’s voice returned with a sharp squeak, “You mean, like a lord, he was royalty?”

  Lena nodded. “Yes, you inherit his slott—his castle and his land.” Lena laughed at the look on Bonnie’s face. “You never know this Baron Hermelin? Never?”

  Bonnie, completely perplexed, shrugged a big shrug and raised both her hands. “No, never.”