Say Uncle

by Benjamin Laskin

  It was Lena’s turn to cook, and she prepared a feast of spicy lentil soup, sautéed vegetables, sweet corn on the cob, and a big pot of brown rice. The pungent smell of garlic swirled under our noses. Believing garlic to possess miraculous nutritional powers, Anya kept over a hundred recipes for using garlic, and she taught the girls that copious amounts of it must be included in every dinner.

  Among Anya’s many contradictions was her insistence on grace before dinner—this coming from an agnostic, and a woman who had never attended church in her life. Typically, she would alternate between us, and I or one of the girls would rattle off a hasty thanks to God, the word “amen” barely audible over the clatter of dive-bombing forks and spoons.

  “Millie,” Anya said. “Grace, please.”

  Millie nodded and glanced at the other girls. They each clasped their hands in supplication and bowed their heads, something they had never done before.

  “Dear God,” she began, “please bless this food that it may provide my family with the bountiful health necessary to put into deed our mind’s noblest moments.”

  “Very nice, Millie,” Anya said. “Thank you.”

  “I’m not done yet,” Millie said, head still bowed.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Go on.” Anya and I exchanged quizzical looks. I shrugged.

  “…That the love and wisdom You instilled into every bean and grain of rice, into every clove of garlic, kernel of corn, and even the lowliest speck of salt may infuse our souls with courage—”

  “My aren’t we feeling poesy this evening,” Anya said. “Thank—”

  “I’m not done yet,” Millie sang. Lena and Hiromi covered their mouths to suppress their giggles.

  Anya frowned, uncertain whether Millie’s magniloquence was at her expense. “Okay,” she said, “but let’s not let the food get cold. Lena worked hard preparing this fine meal.”

  Millie picked up where she left off. “…The courage to pursue our boldest dreams and our deepest passions. The courage to speak the raw truth, especially when we fear doing so the most. The courage to believe that what is true in our private hearts may well be mirrored in the hearts of others. The courage to wrestle and strip insecurity from our stubbornness, and from insecurity, the fears that gave insecurity its birth. And finally, may Anya and Ellery quit wasting precious time acting like a couple of goofy teenagers, and just admit that they have loved each other for years. Amen.”

  The girls giggled and began dishing out dinner. Anya and I exchanged embarrassed looks, dumbstruck.

  Anya cleared her throat. “May I remind you,” she scolded, “ladies don’t giggle. Millie, those were very, shall I say, inspired words you spoke.”

  “Thank you. But Hiromi wrote most of them.”

  “I see. Hiromi, aren’t you still a little young to be speculating on the nature of love?”

  Hiromi dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and looked up. “With all due respect,” she said, “it is courage that we speak of. Without courage, neither love nor any other fanciful ideal is possible.”

  Anya twirled her fork between her fingers, debating how best to respond to the precocious metaphysics of a girl barely in her teens.

  “Very well,” she said. “Courage is certainly a topic worthy of exploration. However, I think it best that in the future you each keep your spurious and unamusing conjectures on a shorter leash. And, may I add, ladies do not indulge in gossip, especially at a dinner table.”

  “Anya,” Lena said, “we just want you and Ellery to be happy. You both seem so sad lately.”

  “My…our, happiness is no concern of yours. Furthermore, it surely is not dependent on your girls’ vain, misbegotten wishes.”

  “You can’t deny it,” Millie said. “We know what we know.”

  “I certainly can deny—”

  “Tell her Ellery,” Millie said.

  “Huh?”

  “Ellery,” Hiromi said, “now’s your chance. The truth will set you free.”

  I let out a nervous chuckle. “Girls, you heard Anya—”

  “Yes,” Lena said, “but we want to hear it from you.”

  I looked over at Anya. Her eyes met mine and I saw in them an indifference that I found extremely annoying.

  “Girls,” I said, “you’re right. Anya is in love with me.”

  “What?” Anya said.

  “In fact, she’s been in love with me since the day we met.”

  “Grow up, Ellery,” Anya said, disgusted.

  “But, after all, can you blame her? You know how charming and irresistible I am. I really should apologize to her and to you for leading her on as I have.”

  “Oh please,” Anya said. “Thank you, thank you all very much for ruining what I’m sure would otherwise have been a delicious meal. If you’ll excuse me now…”

  “You see,” I said. “You see what madness I’ve brought to her. She’d rather go to her room and sulk than enjoy Lena’s tasty cooking and our fine company.”

  The girls’ giggles enraged Anya all the more, and she stormed out of the room.

  “Ellery,” Lena scolded, “you humiliated her.”

  “Did I?” I said, pleased.

  “Why didn’t you just tell her the truth?” Millie asked. “You made it worse.”

  “Maybe,” Hiromi said. She slid me a discerning eye. “Ellery, did you get the answer you were hoping for?”

  “We’ll see. We’ll see…”

  Gravid Details

  Excerpts from Journal Six, continued…

  …Later that night I walked out to the gazebo and sat on a swinging bench that hung from its rafters. I lit a cigar and sipped red wine. The Milky Way looked frothier than usual, and I stared into the foamy river in contemplation.

  Anya strolled up in front of me. She wore a red satin bathrobe, and her hands were laced behind her back in a gesture of good will. The manhood in me was quick to notice the shapely contours of her body.

  “That was quite a show you and the girls put on this evening,” she said, her tone genial.

  “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “I would,” she said, “if you put out that foul-smelling cigar.”

  I smiled, put out the cigar and scooted over to make room for her on the swing.

  “Listen, Ellery, I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you. My behavior of late, well…it’s not you. That’s all.”

  “If it’s not me, then I can help you, whatever it is. Is it the girls?”

  “No. They’re perfect.”

  “Then it must be Sharc. You haven’t been yourself since Washington. Is he riding you? I’ll talk to him. Just give me the word.”

  “Ellery, do you love the girls?”

  “You know that’s not a word we can use around here. We’re not a —.”

  “I do,” she said. “I love them.” She said it as if she were ashamed.

  I put my finger under her chin and gently turned her head to face me. Her moist eyes glistened in the moonlight. “You’re doing a great job. The girls couldn’t have a better—”

  “Mother?”

  “Teacher. Friend.”

  “That’s enough for you, maybe. I can’t pretend anymore. When Millie runs up and throws her arms around me, or Lena takes my hand as we walk, or Hiromi sneaks up and kisses me from behind… You have no idea how badly it hurts me not to return their affection.”

  “I do know.”

  “But you’re stronger than I am.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Anya said, “If someone were to suddenly cancel the project, take the girls away, split us up, what would you think? What would you do?”

  “But Sharc won’t do that. He’s more enthusiastic than ever. The reports we’ve turned in have surpassed even his expectations.”

  “I don’t mean Sharc,” she said.

  “His superiors? Highly unlikely. Sharc has never disappointed them. He delivers, and they know it. He’s old, yes, and may have to retire soon, but I’m sure he’s hand picked a worthy succes
sor.”

  “I mean me.”

  “You?” I said, caught completely off guard.

  “Would you report me?”

  “Anya, I wouldn’t have to report you. You’d be dead in less than a week.”

  “Not with your help I wouldn’t.”

  “Whoa, Anya, slow down. Say you did pull off such a thing, what of the girls? It’s not like you can just settle in suburbia and pack them off to school. Even though their pasts have been erased, Sharc has his ways, and he’ll find them. Besides, there’s no school that could hold them. With their training—”

  “Who said anything about school or suburbia. Listen… In Russia I have friends. They would help me. The girls and I would be safe with them.”

  “You’re not thinking of going back to Russian intelligence, are you?”

  “No. I don’t mean Moscow. I’ve got friends in places the Organization has never heard of.”

  “I don’t like it, Anya. You take the girls there and there’s nothing I can do for you. And there’s something else that you’re forgetting.”

  “What?”

  “If you and the girls leave, what do you think Sharc will have to say to me?”

  “Play dumb.”

  “Don’t be naive. The Organization didn’t get to where it is by taking people’s word for anything. He’ll know the only way you could have pulled off your plan is with my cooperation. I know how he thinks. He’d give me an ultimatum: I find and kill you, or he kills me.”

  Anya bowed her head in shame. “You should hate me,” she said.

  “Why? Because you’d be willing to see me die so that you and the girls could live? If it were only that simple! I’d trade my worthless life in a moment if I believed it would do you or the girls any good. Anya, look at me… Without you and the girls there’s nothing in this world that means a damn to me.”

  I never saw Anya wordless before, but the tear that raced down her cheek contained more poetry than any she had ever recited. I put my arm around her and pulled her close, resting her head on my shoulder.

  “I’m going to help you,” I said.

  She turned to face me. “No!”

  “Yes. But not in the way you think.”

  “But there is no other way.”

  “Darling Anya, there’s always another way.”

  “You’ll come with us!”

  “No. You’re coming with me.”

  “What? Where? You said there’s nowhere to go.”

  I smiled and cradled her in my arms. “At medaberet eevreet?”

  ···

  I revealed my plan to Anya. She was duly impressed, though not so much by all the groundwork I had laid as by the fact that I had done it right under her pretty, snoopy nose. She praised me. She called me, “a clever Fuckwit.” There was still work to be done, but with Anya on my side it would be much easier now. Not wanting to miss the tiniest detail, we gave ourselves one year to complete our plan.

  Meanwhile, it was business as usual. The instructors Sharc sent our way were no threat to us. Anya and I projected a strict, businesslike manner, and made it clear to them from the start that they were to instruct the girls and nothing more. They believed they were being handsomely paid by an eccentric rich couple and didn’t ask questions. But most weekends we were left alone, and then we were a family. The girls were thrilled by our warmer relations and intuited that they mustn’t mention a word to anyone about the changes that had evolved in our relationships. In fact, they applied themselves harder than ever to their work and studies, earning Sharc’s continued admiration.

  We overlooked one small, but developing detail, however, and were forced to push up our scheduled departure considerably because of it. Anya was pregnant. We had to make our move before she could no longer hide her expanding secret.

  It also meant that the time came to divulge our plan to the girls, as their cooperation was vital to pulling off our coup. Like the good soldiers we brought them up to be, they carried out our orders without asking extraneous questions. It was unnecessary to tell them of their ties with the Organization and what they meant to it. That would come later, if our plan succeeded. If it failed, it wouldn’t matter anyway. They’d be dead. Anya prepped the girls for their dangerous mission as I utilized my deepest channels to cash in on some old debts owed to me.

  Sharc Infested Waters

  Excerpts from Journal Six, continued…

  …It was during our last week at our Greek quarters when Anya and the three girls took off in a four-seater Cessna for what was to be routine flight practice. Lena piloted. An approaching storm front was forecast, and the girls were meant to become familiar with flying in poor weather conditions. Thirty minutes over the Aegean Sea they sent out a mayday reporting heavy lightening and engine trouble. Five minutes later, radio contact was lost. Fifteen minutes after that the plane exploded and disappeared off all radar tracking systems. Ships in the area were immediately informed to keep an eye out for wreckage and possible survivors. Search and Rescue teams set out from every base in the area. Some wreckage was spotted but no sign of survivors.

  If the girls were going to survive, everything had to come off flawlessly. There was no room for error. It could have been months, even longer, before I might know either way because I had to close down all my channels of communication with them. I knew that Sharc would be monitoring my every move.

  If all went as planned, after informing base that they had turned around and were headed back, Anya and the girls parachuted in full scuba gear. The plane, now on automatic pilot, continued flying for another ten minutes before a plastic explosive blew it into confetti. The four of them would have entered the water five miles off the coast of the island of Santorini.

  Next, they were to swim towards the island at thirty meters where, and at pre-specified coordinates, they were to be picked up by one of my own yachts, the Aurora Borealis, which I had ‘sold’ a year earlier, and now flew a Greek flag. The boat would be manned by a team of Israeli commandos.

  From there the four fugitives would have sailed to Lisbon where they would take an El Al flight to Israel. In Israel they were to be met at the airport by Mossad agents, old friends of mine, and spirited away to a kibbutz to remain indefinitely. The kibbutz was Jason’s, the lad whose life I saved more than once in the Polish woods, and who had traveled with Hennes to Sweden.

  The kibbutz and Israel held our best chance for evading Sharc and the Organization’s investigations. The kibbutz was small, so unlike a city or town, all strangers were conspicuous. Jason himself was the current kibbutz secretary, and nearly all the older members had been refugees from Eastern Europe who had helped Chaim to found the kibbutz. They knew of me and some of the work I had done in my youth. I could trust them.

  When I joined the Organization it was under the condition that I’d never spy on Israel. And although Sharc more than once asked me to perform some “duties” there, I never consented. I didn’t say, however, that I’d never do a little spying for Israel, and did so on certain rabidly anti-Israel groups and individuals in America. They were small, albeit delicate operations for which I took no reward, preferring my good will to accumulate in the event I’d ever need a big favor. That time had arrived.

  Sharc was no idiot and would certainly look into a possible Israeli connection. Fortunately for me his diplomatic skills had always been boorish. Because of his arrogant and often insulting way of doing business with the Israelis over the years, he had earned himself no favors. Sharc never learned that intimidation was the least effective way to deal with the small but proud and spunky nation. The harder he pushed them, the more rigid they’d become, and I was counting on that.

  I called Sharc as soon as I got word of the “accident.” I hadn’t underestimated his anger. Within an hour he was on a plane to meet me. His intelligence team set to immediately scour the area of the crash and my recent doings. They reported to him hourly.

  Organization agents confined me to our Greek ranch until fur
ther orders, and Sharc ordered soldiers posted all around the grounds. He also sent his top intelligence team to sift through every scrap of paper on the premises, every pocket in every closet, every hollow in every bottle, bin, and brick in the house. I had expected as much.

  ···

  Sharc was profoundly disappointed. The girls were meant to have been his magnum opus, the great work that he was going to leave behind for the country he loved. And Agent Fuckwit had “fucked it all up.” Sharc wanted to shoot me on the spot, and I half expected him to. If he learned the truth, I was a dead man.

  Sharc interrogated me for ten straight hours. He was quite shaken by what had happened and looked worse than usual—fatter, greasier, and grayer, both of hair and skin. His hands shook, his bloodshot eyes leaked, and he sweated profusely. The barrel that was once his proud chest had slipped to his hips and he waddled like a walrus. Sharc hadn’t seen the girls since he handpicked them. No one but Anya and I knew what they looked like. In his mind he still pictured them as little girls, not the young teens they had so quickly become. I’d have liked to have told him that his “tomatoes” were all taller than he was, but I didn’t.

  It wasn’t difficult for me to show my concern and grief because I truly didn’t know if they were alive, and the thought that they might not have made it triggered in me an excruciating feeling of loss and loneliness. After all, any number of things could have gone wrong—an ill-timed explosion, a lightning strike, overly strong winds or currents… Still, too much or too little sadness, anger, surprise, or indignation on my part would have increased his suspicions.

  Four days passed without any bodies or body parts having been found. For me, no news was good news. The longer they were missing the better the odds that their escape had succeeded. Sharc knew this too, and I saw that the stress was getting to him. Losing the girls and his dream was bad enough, but the thought that he could have been outsmarted was maddening.