by Ann Fillmore
It was at that moment he saw Tidewater striding from the other end of the walkway. Did he know? Did he? Carl-Joran stopped behind a kiosk. The American Indian, Snow, came quickly along after Tidewater waving a photo. They paused to look at the photo and Valentine, calm and deliberate, strode right past them. Russ Snow glanced at her and returned his attention to Tidewater and the photo. Tidewater gazed around the long, long room full of people and shook his head. He pointed in the direction that Valentine had gone, although not at her. They started in that direction, Snow lagging behind.
Carl-Joran, quietly as a cat, pounced on Snow, grabbing him, muffling his cry. The very tall man pulled him into a men’s room, keeping his wrist locked in an ikkyo twist. Snow’s face was a mask of terror as Carl-Joran lifted an open palm hissing at him to be still.
Russ did not fight at all. He smiled all teeth as he managed to squeak, “Are you with EW?”
The broad smile on the tall man’s face said it all. “Like you are with the Agency.”
Russ shook his head emphatically. “No more, I want no more of this. I want out. Let me help you. Please,” he begged, “I believe in what you are doing.”
The expression on Carl-Joran’s face could hardly be more enigmatic. “Help?”
“Yes,” Russ tried to squirm and the wrist hold felt like an electric shock up his arm. He gave a soft moan. Carl-Joran let the hold up just slightly.
“How to help?”
Russ grunted with pain. “I know Tidewater’s contacts in Saudi and Iran. I know he wants to wipe out EW.”
The big man looked very skeptical.
“I have no idea why,” continued Russ, his words hurrying, “and he has at least one agent watching Hermelin’s castle in Norrkoping, Sweden.”
Carl-Joran released Russ’s wrist and Russ shook the blood back into his numb, tingling fingers. Slowly, warily, he stood up straight. “I want to join up with you guys.”
“With EW?”
“Yes.”
“You must prove this,” Carl-Joran looked around the edge of the door toward where Valentine, at the boarding gate, was presenting her ticket. Tidewater was nowhere in sight. “How can you prove this?”
“I can help you rescue the Thai girl, maybe.”
“You know very much!” Carl-Joran snarled.
“Just about everything,” said Russ and again, held up his hands in supplication, “but I haven’t told Tidewater much, not since I found out about Milind, the poor little Thai girl in prison. Look, I do want to help.”
“I must go find Mr. Tidewater,” said Carl-Joran. Towering over Russ, he said down to him, “I will have someone check you out. When he says you are okay, we will tell you.” Carl-Joran turned away and started out.
“You mean when Siddhu Singh Prakash says I’m okay?”
The giant man stopped, glanced back. “Yes.”
“And if I go to Israel or Kuwait before that?”
“You would end up in Haifa, again waiting, until we are sure.” Carl-Joran glared at the man. “You will lose your job here. You will have to pay for your own ticket!’
“Screw the job,” Russ insisted, “I’ve got Indian money out the gazoo. I don’t need a damned job with the Agency.”
“Okay. Get us all the information you can get, first, before you come to us. Prove your intentions and we will welcome you. Siddhu will be very relieved to have a computer expert on the team.”
“You got it.” Russ stood up straighter and suddenly laughed out loud. “So you know about me too?”
Carl-Joran merely snorted as he slipped out the door and down the long hall. The KLM plane bound for Cairo and Kampala was already pulling away from the ramp. Valentine was now safe. It was done. He turned back to see Russ Snow hurrying ahead of him, catching up to Tidewater and Tidewater fussing at him as he shrugged, obviously giving some excuse for not finding Polly Marie. Beyond them were Sherralyn and Tammy anxiously watching for Carl-Joran’s signal. With a grin, he gave them the okay sign. The two women turned around just ahead of the American agents and arm-in-arm walked away with a light skip in their step.
In an hour, Carl-Joran would be on another plane, destination Amsterdam, then Stockholm. He sighed as he walked toward the SAS gate. He did not want to think about how many hours he’d been airborne during the last week.
Russ Snow, oddly relieved and calm, walked casually behind Tidewater as the little man rampaged around the international departure gates, the HS offices, the check-in counters, and finally the security offices. Tidewater was not a happy man. Hours went by. The whole while, Russ’s mind click-clicked over one question, over and over. Who was the giant man with the black hair and beard who could so easily have killed him, or left him incapacitated like the other agents?
Very late, actually early the next morning when he finally stumbled into his apartment, he managed to extend enough energy to pull up the employee list for EW. No one matched. No one. Except, no! He was blonde, and more importantly, he was dead. Baron Carl-Joran Hermelin, the godfather of EW, whose death by car bomb in Cairo was the cause of all the problems now being faced by EW. Six foot six inches tall, forty-eight years old, blonde with bright blue eyes, trained in guerilla warfare in Central America, severely dyslexic, wife deceased, twenty-two-year old son named Sture Nojd Hermelin…
Damn, thought Russ, if this photo had some age lines around the eyes and the hair was dyed black and there was a beard: yes, by the gods, it was Carl-Joran Hermelin, the baron. He was alive. Why the charade? Why pretend to be dead? It seemed a complicated way to get rid of the fatwa that had hung over his head.
Maybe they didn’t expect the financial problems. Maybe the crisis with the Swiss banks was not part of the plan. If so, then the EW really was on the edge of disaster. Their agents were strung out on tightrope wires.
Russ fell into bed. He dreamed wild, escape-filled dreams. He dreamed about a land he had never seen. He dreamed about his mother’s brother racing a pinto horse across the prairie and as the wind whipped his braid, he said to Russ, who seemed to also be riding a horse, galloping alongside, he said, “The creatures know the way.”
Tahireh did the best she could with Zhara, who got frustrated easily. After dropping the third rope when a donkey nibbled at her arm, Zhara went stiff, fists clenched, teeth gritting, stifling a scream.
“Either you behave like a donkey boy or you will die,” Tahireh spoke harshly, “and many of us along with you.”
The donkey boys all nodded and began railing at the princess, slapping their thighs, pointing, and shaking their hands. Zhara’s eyes clouded up with tears.
“No!” said Tahireh and the boys chorused that.
With great effort, the slight girl, shaking with stress and fear, began doing her assigned chore again. Slowly, deliberately, she tied the third donkey’s rope to the second donkey’s tail. One or two tears started down her cheeks, but blew quickly away in the wind. She moved on to the fourth donkey and Tahireh and the boys nodded and smiled and went back to their own chores.
The tribe’s brief market visit had been a good one, profitable, and all the trade goods had to be sorted as to which beast would carry them. The tents had to be struck and personal belongings stowed. Yet, all this work was familiar to the group and it was done in a rhythm that made it go quickly. In less than an hour, the donkeys started out across the sand urged on by the boys, including Zhara. Not far behind, the camels followed.
Jani sat sidesaddle on Habib’s beast, her face wrapped as tightly as possible against the fine sand that, kicked up by the animals, was caught by the night wind and twirled around like small tornadoes.
The hours rolled by. Habib walked steadily on and Jani marveled at the strength in the old man. Well, he wasn’t that old, Jani mused, maybe in his late forties, but one ages faster out here in the desert, one truly does. The dunes, the brush, the stars wavering, shimmering in the wind…her eyes were so heavy. Abruptly, Habib was picking her up from the soft, warm sand, shaking her gently from a dream.
“Oh my God!” she laughed aloud. “I fell asleep. On a camel, I fell sound asleep!”
“If the camel had not jumped a little at that moment, I would not have known you’d left my company.” Habib brushed sand from the rags covering her head. “Will you walk for a while?”
Jani looked at the saddle and laughed again. “Lucky I landed where I did, in a heap of sand. Yes, I’ll walk with you.”
Habib took her hand and, his eyes smiling, said, “It is common to relax profoundly at this stage of the journey, of your journey to freedom. You could have landed on rocks and merely bounced. You must not let your guard down though. You must stay alert. Come along, it is time to hurry and catch up to the group.”
They moved on, falling into place in the long parade of camels and donkeys and Bedouins. Into the night they trekked, following an ancient trail, guided by the icy bright stars, on and on. Jani grew amazed at her own energy. She thought how she would probably be stiff and sore tomorrow. Yet there was no doubt she was now awake and striding along like Habib. What affection she had for this man, this haji. In her whole life, she had never met a truly brave man. She had doubted such men even existed and here one was rescuing her. Her life was in his hands.
A donkey brayed, reminding her that Zhara was somewhere near the front. Jani hoped her daughter was doing as well as she, that Tahireh was watching over her, urging her on, keeping her focused. Out of all this, perhaps her Princess daughter would be transformed. Perhaps this real danger, these real heroes, would give the spoiled child the shock of reality she had always needed. The troop was coming to a heavily graveled path between cliffs. She felt Habib’s gentle, rough-skinned hand slip out of hers. He took the camel rope with both hands to urge the beast along.
“A stream bed millennia ago,” he explained, “sometimes there are sharp stones and the beasts balk.”
She didn’t care. She knew she wouldn’t stumble. “How far?” she asked.
“Until we reach the Land Cruiser at the oasis.”
“Is that what awaits us?”
He nodded, “If we proceed as we are, I would say just after dawn.”
“And then?”
“To the American air base in Kuwait,” said Habib. “By tomorrow night you will be a lieutenant’s wife on her way to Switzerland.”
“Amazing,” whispered the woman covered in rags. “Amazing.”
The blackness outside was absolute. Only ice-bright stars and a pale, timid new moon gave any light and it seemed circumspect and selfish. Bonnie’s glance at the bedside clock told her she had napped for almost an hour and a half and in that time, the sun had slipped behind the world and night had returned. Five p.m. and her stomach was insisting it be fed breakfast. Really insisting.
She put on one of the pair of new wool slacks she’d bought in San Francisco, the brown pair and a soft yellow turtleneck pullover and a knitted vest. Time to search out the kitchen, she thought and wondered if she should wake Trisha. She opened Trish’s door a crack. No sign of her. Knowing her appetite, her stomach had probably already awakened her and sent her in search of food.
Down the big stairs, along the wide corridors, and suddenly delicious smells pointed Bonnie’s nose in the right direction. In a giant dining room, she found Trisha standing next to a long banquet table, looking forlorn and lost.
“Hey, Mom.” Her eyes moved to a big door that, by best guess, led to a kitchen. “I got this far. I don’t know if we’re supposed to knock, or shout or just go in there.”
“My extensive experience with servants says we just go in,” said Bonnie.
“Mom, the only servant you ever had in your life was a Mexican cleaning woman who made you help her move the furniture so she could vacuum.” Trisha leaned toward the big door.
Bonnie shrugged, “Yes. Well. Come on, I’m starving.” Bonnie opened the big door. The wonderful odors of dinner flooded out and Trisha groaned. Bonnie stepped in, followed closely by her daughter who hovered like a basketball guard. The kitchen was huge. The left side of the room was dominated by a fireplace obviously designed for cooking for large crowds. A small cow could have been spitted in there and there would be room left for the soup pot. Modernity was in evidence though with the lovely giant gas chef stove and oven taking up the center of the room. Around it, from a metal strip attached to the high ceiling, hung pots and pans and numerous utensils. On the stove were several pots, bubbling. The two women eased past the refrigerators and walk-in freezer toward the long prep table. Behind it was a nook table with bench seats. Standing at the prep table, lining up plates, was a sturdy woman, aproned, her white-blonde hair braided onto her head in two rings covered by a net.
“Ah, velkommen!” said the woman, “Sie ar den Amerikanishers, jo?” She waved a massive, callused hand at them.
“Ja,” said Bonnie.
“Ja, so.” The woman wiped her hands on her apron and held out the right one. “Jag heter Astrid.”
“Astrid, the cook.” Bonnie confirmed.
“Ja,” the woman pointed a plate at the nook. “Aten sie middag?”
“Ja!” exclaimed Trisha and sat promptly. Bonnie sat next to her and Astrid served up plates of steaming noodles with slices of meatloaf-looking stuff. The vegetable was Brussels sprouts, and to Bonnie’s amazement, Trisha devoured them, cleaning her plate in a flash and asking for seconds.
“Really good, Mom, really good,” she said between bites.
Astrid smiled, pleased and, reaching into the bigger refrigerator, pulled out a bowl of what looked like trifle. Bonnie, inwardly, groaned. She definitely was going to have to take up indoor tennis or cross-country skiing and both in the same day, anything that was very, very energetic.
The maid, Marie, came into the kitchen and told Astrid something, at which the large woman retrieved a serving tray and served up a meal for Marie to take away. Noticing Bonnie’s gaze, Astrid said, “Fur den ung herre.”
Trish looked at her mother. Bonnie translated, “For the young lord.” Trish said, “Ahhh.”
Astrid nodded and said in a level of Swedish meant perhaps for a child, “Han lasa bokker. Han studera den kvall. Han sager er vilyan television bevittna? Eh, television?” With a flourish, she grabbed out another serving tray and put two bowls of the trifle-like dessert onto it, with spoons and napkins. “Kaffee?” She held up a cup.
“Nej fur me, tack,” Bonnie responded. “Coffee, Trish?”
“No,” she shook her head. “Beer?”
“Be-er?” Astrid shook her head, shrugging. Trish went to the refrigerator and looked inside. Not there.
“Look in the pantry,” suggested Bonnie. “No one in Europe drinks cold beer.”
“Warm beer?” said Trish and went to the pantry. She held up a can. “Could this be it? It says ol.”
“Ahh,” nodded Astrid, “Jo! Ol.” She pronounced it like oil. She took the can from Trisha, found a glass beer mug and poured out the can of pale beer and handed it to Trish. “Ol.”
Trish sipped it. “Yep, beer. Not bad tasting either.”
“Television?” Astrid asked again, picking up the tray.
“Sure,” said Trish.
Bonnie said, “I really wanted to talk to Sture tonight, about the papers.” She got up and followed Trish and Astrid down the hall.
Astrid looked around at Sture’s name, “Den herre studera.”
“Studying?” Trish guessed and Bonnie nodded, “Yes, well, he is in medical school.”
They were led to a small room about halfway down the hall. Warm and comfortable, with a big cushy sofa and two reclining chairs, the room was strictly modern. The television was actually a small movie screen and, after setting down the dessert tray, Astrid indicated where the controls were and pointed to a shelf full of videotapes. “Film? Okay?”
“Sure,” Trish agreed, “thank you.”
“Tack so mycket,” said Bonnie and Astrid, bowing a couple times, backed out of the rooms. It took Trisha only moments to figure out how to get the
set on and where the channels were.
“Must be satellite,” she said and flipped through the offerings. Every conceivable language came at them. “Oh!” said Trish as the Finnish channel came through, “are they doing what I think they’re doing?”
“Looks like it, kiddo,” laughed Bonnie.
“Right at dinner time, with no warnings on the channel info.”
“The Scandinavian countries have a much more relaxed attitude about sex,” Bonnie explained.
Trisha clicked through a bunch more channels with the same activities. “Guess so. Boy, the moral right in the US would have kitten-conniptions and then some.”
Bonnie ate a few bites of her trifle, then made a decision. “I’m going to see if I can find den herre. You stay and enjoy.”
“Notice something, Mom? Notice that there isn’t one single violent movie on? Not one. It’s like Lassie reigns. Lassie on half the channels and fun and games in saunas on the others.”
“Interestingly enough,” said Bonnie as she headed for the door, “I read an article some months ago that quoted statistics on teenage pregnancy in relation to sexual attitudes and the teens in Scandinavia have, by far, the smallest percentage of teen pregnancy, the fewest abortions per girl, and the healthiest babies of those who are born to teen moms.”
Trish looked up at her, “Really? Early sex education does that?”
“Probably more than mere sex education,” said Bonnie, “the entire society itself has different expectations for their kids, for example, there has been equality for women, and men, insisted upon for over seventy years. Men take paid child-care leave as easily as a woman, for up to two years. Plus, well, a lot of things contribute, and underlying it all, an excellent health care system which insists on preventive medicine first.”
“If I even hinted to my high school health class that we were going to show porno, my butt would be fried and fired so fast! The powers-that-be wouldn’t give me time to clean my desk!” Trisha went back to channel surfing. “You’re off to find Sture?”