Way of Escape

by Ann Fillmore

  Bonnie nodded. Her original intention of getting Trisha and Sture together would not happen this evening, she was certain, and it was for the best. They should have an opportunity to at least get to know each other better, to come to more familiar terms. So, barring that goal being reached in one evening, the first evening, Bonnie thought it likely she could get into the den and use some of her expertise in information research. She was completely intrigued over Sture’s use of English verb tenses.

  “Actually, I’m going to look into the family history if I can.” She smiled, thinking, that was one way to put it, and closed the door behind her. First she would have to get a sweater. The castle was quite cold. As she ascended the grand stairs, the ancestors in the portraits looked down on her. These were not angry people, nor overly proud and arrogant people. The Hermelins had expressions, for the most part, of contentment and satisfaction. The dates on the plaques on the paintings ran oldest at the bottom of the stairs to most recent at the top. In the alcove on the top landing were two she hadn’t noticed her first time up the stairs, but then she was very jet lagged and wanting only a bath and a nap. The one was of Carl-Joran at about forty-five, tall and blond, with the slightly off-center features of his ancestors. His eyes held a sadness she would not have expected, like the grief of millennia had lodged in them. Next to him, and much younger when she was painted, was, Bonnie read the plaque: Heda Lind Hermelin, nee Bergshem, wife of Carl-Joran, Baron Hermelin, with the dates of birth and death. But Carl-Joran’s gave only the date of birth. Had Sture not got to this yet?

  Feeling the chill of the hallway, Bonnie moved on toward her room. The fleeting question of whether or not she should have her portrait put up was only momentary, more as a private joke. She truly felt an outsider. Sture was the natural inheritor here, and she did not want all of this on her conscience.

  As for Sture, she heard music coming from the first door on the left after the alcove and was assured that the young man was diligently memorizing medical terms or figuring out how to cut open a patient. She hurried on and retrieved the thick sweater she’d packed in the duffel and headed back down the grand stairway. As she had guessed, the door to the den was not only not locked, it was standing open and one of the soft, indirect lights above the giant bookcases was on. Sture was not a naturally suspicious person, nor was the castle staff accustomed to security needs. Bonnie slipped into the den, let her eyes adjust and set about learning the filing system of the room.

  It was what she, being a skilled librarian and researcher, generously called informal. No secretary had ever touched this collection of papers and bills and letters. One out box was labeled bokforare, and from what was stacked high there, she could assume was for an accountant. Another outbox read advokat, and she knew that meant attorney. Next to the telephone was a largish phone-memo-calendar book. In it were scribbled notations in various dates, plus phone numbers. She saw her and Trish’s arrival noted, she saw on previous dates appointments for Sture with advokat Person and with other people—his professors possibly? And her eye caught the notation for tomorrow: one p.m. Krister pa flygplats. Krister had to be at the airport at one p.m.? Why? Who for? She gently rifled through the other papers scattered on the big desk. Sture’s handwriting gave full evidence that he was to be a physician. It was barely legible. Stick-em notes to call Person, notes about Algbakdel, notes about the Ixeys with exclamation points after, notes about things that must be done in the castle and notes regarding the EW and…far. What about far, his father? The little she could interpret had to do with kronor and Swiss accounts. Not surprising, but not illuminating. She sighed. There was nothing that would explain the boy’s English language quirks that she could decipher anyway.

  Faintly, along the hallway, came the sound of footsteps. She slipped quickly to the door and peeked out. Her daughter, Trisha, was headed back to the kitchen. Bonnie smiled. She ducked out, leaving the light and the door as she had found them, and went back to watch the night’s offering of Swedish television. Trisha appeared to have settled on a satellite channel of English programs with Swedish subtitles. Hercule Poirot was busy solving a case that she, Bonnie, already had read the ending to years ago. Oh, well, she liked the actor, she enjoyed the British accents, and she decided it wouldn’t hurt to finish her bowl of trifle.

  The beautiful yellow owl from Belize had enjoyed its moments of comparative freedom. It had flown well in the cool of the late evening. Everyone had enjoyed the sight, including Vizier Rida. Later as he left his duties behind him and headed for his quarters and his wives, he had only a momentary glitch of conscience about the plight of a tropical owl in the heat of the desert. Rarely did these magnificent birds live longer than three months at most. Air-conditioned and luxuriant cage-mews merely postponed the inevitable.

  He paused at the back stairs, wondering if he had forgotten something. Whatever it was nagging at him would have to wait. He was hungry and he wanted to go home and he had had enough of the sultan’s demands and family squabbles.

  It was early morning, still dark, when Russ tossed a ring of duplicate keys onto the counter and Freddie, slowly, with deliberation as he did so, picked them up. Next, Russ pushed an addressed messenger delivery envelope across the counter. “At noon tomorrow exactly. That way it’ll be delivered minutes before five p.m.”

  “You really doing this? You really flying off to Israel?”

  “Yep.” Russ slid onto a seat at the counter, patted his pocket where his official papers and passport were hiding.

  Freddie took the ring of keys and put them in his pants pocket. He took the envelope and stuck it in the slot under the cash register. “Okay. I think you burning your bridges. One great conflagration. Whoom! All gone.” He poured Russ a cup of coffee. “The Agency don’t take kindly to guys trying to burn their bridges with them. I doubt you can do it, completely.”

  “How about some breakfast before my cab comes?” asked Russ, the butterflies in his stomach more obvious than he’d care to admit. He sipped his coffee.

  “Sure thing. What you want?”

  “Big bowl of oatmeal, toast.”

  Freddie hollered the order back to the lone breakfast cook, then sat across from Russ. “How’d you get onto an El Al flight so quick anyway? My cousin and his church group took them a month just to get reservations.”

  “Computer stuff,” smiled Russ. “Besides, I’m not going El Al. I’m taking another route that puts me in Geneva first. It’s okay, don’t worry. Israeli security will let me in. I got a high level passport.”

  “Yeah, until your boss reads your letter of resignation this evening.” Freddie reached around and got the bowl of oatmeal and the plate of toast and put it in front of Russ. “There gonna be fireworks in that office like you never saw! You gonna be lucky if the man doesn’t put a hit out on you.”

  “The Agency doesn’t do that sort of stuff anymore.” Russ made an effort to eat.

  “Yeah, sure.” Freddie poured himself some coffee. “An’ my Aunt Tillie still don’t smoke cigars.”

  “They don’t,” Russ insisted.

  “You watch, someone’ll catch up to you about when you land in Tel Aviv. More ‘an that, inside a month, the IRS’ll be auditing your Indian money accounts…”

  “They can’t. The accounts are in Canada and I got access with British banks as well as Canadian. Hey, my mom knew what she was doing both when the tribe was paid reparations and when they bought their land back with casino profits. Mom put almost every penny in long-term bonds and Canadian investments.”

  “Smart move.” Freddie nodded, “Maybe you’ll do all right, Injun. Maybe you’ll rescue the girl and do all right.”

  Russ pulled the picture of Tahireh out of his coat pocket. “Think she’s worth all this?” He slid the computer printout across the counter.

  The older man put the fingers of one hand delicately on the edge of the printout. “You going halfway round the world to rescue this lady? You either nuts or some crazed warrior on his vis
ion quest. That’s what I say.”

  “Didn’t think of it that way before,” said Russ, his stomach suddenly calming down. “Yeah, this is like a vision quest. Never been on one, really, maybe this is what it is.”

  “Seems like it to me,” said Freddie.

  A taxi horn beep-beeped out in front of the cafe and Freddie pointed with his jaw, “You gotta go.”

  “Yes,” Russ Snow-from-Night-Sky agreed, “I gotta go. Take care of my place and my jeep, okay?”

  “Sure, ‘course I will. You be careful. Send me a postcard. Or two.” The tall Cheyenne clasped Russ’s arm in a mutual farewell. “I envy you. I know inside here,” he clapped the palm of his right hand onto his left breast, “you’re doin’ the right thing.”

  “Thank you, Fred. You’re a good friend.” Russ pulled away and grabbing up his big suitcase and shoulder bag, dashed out the door to the waiting taxi.

  The night flight from Miami to Frankfurt passed uneventfully for the baron. He awoke as the tires screeched on the tarmac. He had only a two-hour wait until the connecting flight left for Stockholm, enough time for some breakfast and a good cup of German coffee. Before the seat belt sign turned off, he had his gear from the overhead and was ready to disembark. The attendants were too busy with some small children at the back of the plane to notice the big man who was leading the passengers to the airlock.

  As the gate extension clunked into place and the airlock opened, Carl-Joran wondered if he needed to call his son again and he decided it wasn’t necessary. The boy would be anxious enough and Krister certainly would not dream of being late arriving at the airport. Unless the car broke down or the snow closed the roads or…No, he thought, everything will go fine. Then he would be at the castle and he would face Bonnie.

  About the time Bonnie and Trisha were peeking out from under their snuggly duvets and facing an icy cold morning, and Russ’s first leg of his journey was landing him in Geneva, and Carl-Joran was pacing back and forth in the waiting area for the SAS flight out of Frankfurt, the vizier of Sheikh Sultan i-Shibl’s compound was adjusting his gold turban as he hurriedly strode toward the women’s dining area. He had been rudely awakened not twenty minutes before by a guard who had been told by the women’s matron that the first wife and oldest daughter had not appeared for breakfast and neither responded to knocks on their doors.

  Rida had brushed off the guard with a they-probably-went-riding-very-early.

  “Yessir,” the guard replied, not caring one way or another, and ambled back to his patrol duties. But deep inside, Rida knew he had slipped up. He had not looked in on those two last night. He felt that awful sinking feeling in his gut that prefaced something bad, very, very bad. He brushed some lint off his coat, the simple white one as he did not want to bother with all the buttons on the purple one, and composing himself into the strong ogre his role called on him to be, he went into the women’s dining area.

  The babble of women’s voices stilled instantly. Second wife held her breath and looked at the pillows where Jani and Zhara should be sitting at the long table, and weren’t. Rida did not say a word. As he turned to leave, he heard a couple of the women giggle. They had no pity, those women. It was as cruel in there as out on a battlefield, as cutthroat as politics. The women showed no gratitude at all for their luxury and protection. He shook his head in censure. What further proof could there be of the inferior personality of women? He hurried down the hall, past the many bedrooms, and to Jani’s room.

  He called out her name, as he was supposed to do, and when no answer came, he knocked and waited. Nothing. He pushed open the door. The bed had not been slept in, the room was a disaster—clothes and shoes pulled from the closet, tossed on chairs and the bed. At Zhara’s room, he didn’t bother to call out her name or even knock. He went directly in. Neither had her bed had been slept in. Most telling was the astounding chaos of clothes and tipped over potted plants and ripped rags and piles of shoes. For one fraction of a second, he had hopes that the women had been taken against their will. That idea was squashed quickly. They had been taken all right, but they had gone in disguise and they had gone most willingly. This would cost him his job, perhaps his life. He was doomed.

  Thinking on his feet, he decided that before awaking the sheikh, he would mobilize the guards to canvas the merchants and travelers outside the compound wall. Some mitigation in his punishment could come from obtaining every bit of information possible before laying his neck on the block. At the top of his lungs, he shouted for the guards, then he pulled the cell phone from his pocket and called his lieutenant of security.

  Within an hour, he knew who had come and gone from the compound yesterday and last night. No motor vehicles, except for the grocery transport, had entered and left the compound. Three caravans—two merchant groups with both jeeps and camels and one nomadic Bedouin group with a camel and donkey caravan had departed. None of the merchants and no Bedouin had entered the compound, or so yesterday’s gate guards reported. The last caravan to depart, as night was falling, was the nomadic Bedouin and they had struck out across the roughest terrain toward the northeast. He very much doubted that two very spoiled and pampered women would be riding camels into that territory with wild Bedouin. Thus it had to be one of the two merchant groups with jeeps.

  Back in the compound, he went to his office. For almost fifteen minutes he debated whether to tell the sheikh first or call Commander Yusef. Finally, the worried man raised his voice to Allah and begging forgiveness, he also cried, “Allah u abha!” (God the magnificent!) hoping such praise would save his butt. Then he called Commander Gurgin Yusef.

  Tidewater struggled out of a very intense dream that included powerful strobe lights, hovering helicopters whose rotors buffeted him in the backwash…

  “Wake up, Marion!” Arletta, his wife ordered in her most demanding tone of voice. “You have a call coming in.”

  “What the hell time is?” he mumbled, sitting up, running his hands across the bald top of his head. “Uhhhh.”

  “Quarter after midnight.” She pulled her old terry cloth robe around her with one hand while she pushed the phone into his face with the other. “Your secretary?”

  “Fuck. Why did she get a long distance call meant for me? At midnight?” Tidewater grabbed the phone, clicking the talk button as he walked into the bathroom. He took a long piss while Lily frantically explained that Commander Gurgin Yusef in Saudi Arabia was insisting on satellite surveillance now! “Wait, wait,” said Tidewater, stumbling back to sit on the edge of the bed.

  Lily did not wait, she went on, “Yusef connected to us by cell phone and radio transmission that always gets shunted to me. Yusef has mobilized an elite search team and they’re headed for the i-Shibl compound. He’s calling from his Humvee.”

  “i-Shibl. The sheikh with the daughter who was taken out of that school in Paris and brought back to Saudi. Okay. I’m with you. And?” Tidewater shook the recumbent form of his wife and, covering the mouthpiece of his phone, barked at her, “Get me a cup of coffee. Strong.”

  “Get your own damned coffee, I have to be at a Republican Women’s breakfast meeting at six a.m.” Arletta turned further away from her husband.

  “Damn it,” the man snarled and finding he was awake enough to walk without stumbling, he headed toward the kitchen as Lily continued, “Both the mother and daughter have disappeared. The vizier, the sultan’s vizier, believes they were taken away last night by a merchant caravan. Yusef is certain Emigrant Women had something to do with their kidnapping.”

  Uncovering the mouthpiece, calming his voice as he fumbled for a cup and the instant coffee, Tidewater interrupted her monologue and declared firmly, “Patch me through to the commander, Lily.”

  “Yessir. Shall I put it onto this phone or your cell phone, sir?”

  “My cell phone. As soon as I have clothes on, I’m headed for the office.”

  “What should I tell Commander Yusef, sir? About using satellite surveillance?” Lily inquired.
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  Tidewater punched minutes into the microwave control and pushed the start button. “Should be able to get a linkup. Tell him I’ll know more once I’m in the office. I’ll need the exact latitude and longitudinal coordinates. Oh, and call Snow. I want that Injun on the computers. He may be a heathen, but he’s damned smart. Right? Anything else?”

  Lily yawned over the phone, “No sir, ‘cept, do I get overtime for all this?”

  “Yes, Lily, yes.” He clicked off the phone and dropped it into its cradle. The microwave buzzer went off and Tidewater grabbed up the coffee and headed back to the bedroom to put on clothes. Jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and his black SWAT team jacket would be best. Without compunction, he flicked on the bedroom overhead light.

  “You pig,” muttered Arletta and pulled the covers over her head.

  Tidewater’s only consideration as he rummaged for his jeans was: should he call the Darughih of Iran yet? Or savor for a while longer the powerful man’s ignorance of what was transpiring there on the Saudi desert, almost under his nose? Nothing would make Marion Tidewater happier than to dangle some EW people in front of Sadiq-Fath and out of his reach. Why not? Tidewater put on deodorant, scrubbed his teeth, and brushed the friar’s ring of remaining hair. He pulled on a pair of thick socks. He found the SWAT jacket in the hallway, slipped it on, zipped it up. Found his tennis shoes by the back door, pulled them onto his feet and velcroed them shut. Leaving the coffee untouched on the bureau and the bedroom light on to deliberately provoke Arletta, Tidewater hastened out the front door to the Agency car parked in his driveway.

  Dr. Legesse had her hands full. Devi sat across from her desk griping the arms of the chair tightly. “It’s the same, Doc, we get them in here and then they freak out and want to go home. Fumilao is going nutso. She thinks her husband’s brothers are on their way here to kill her and take her daughters.”