Way of Escape (17 page)

“Either we will be exceptionally well taken care of,” said Bonnie with some sarcasm, “or this will be a veritable television shoot-'em-up drama all along the coast.”

“I hope not the latter, Mom,” said Trisha and headed for Highway 1.

Since she wasn't driving, Bonnie could take more notice of the passing scenery. Funny how it is that hills and coastline you've driven by hundreds, if not thousands of times suddenly develop spots you've never seen, consciously that is, when you were driving. A house there, an unusual tree. Or you notice how the winter storms have eaten away at the beach around the lighthouse, or how few tourists are waiting in San Simeon today to tour Hearst Castle. A squadron of pelicans, in as precisely straight formation as a marching band, dipped and skimmed the waves. Bonnie truly loved this part of California.

“Mom, you were right,” said Trish, glancing in the mirror, “we've got
both
secret agents on our tail.”

Bonnie turned around. There they were. “The Arab fellow doesn't know the road very well,” she commented.

Trish nodded. “But the black guy drives like he's got it memorized. Like us.” Trisha sighed, “Oh, well. I'm not going to try outrunning them or anything. Highway 1 is dangerous enough without this sort of thing.”

Bonnie smiled, nodded. She knew she was in very good hands with her daughter driving.

By the time they approached Big Sur, the winter sun touched the edge of the horizon. As the shadows lengthened, the stark cliffs, the black-green trees, and half-hidden resort buildings took on an unreal quality for Bonnie. Then suddenly, there was the little resort they had stayed at for those brief few days—she and Carl. The cabins were the same, the twinkling lights through the trees made her remember…things. Things as they were, emphasizing the
were
as she was coming to terms with Carl's death. How cruel fate could be, she thought, a red surge of anger slipping through to color her mind's flashing images. She wondered what the title of her life story would be:
The Sunset of Our Lives
or
How Many Roads Must a Woman Walk Down?
It certainly wasn't the
Casablanca
her parents' life had been.

“Want to stop, Mom? Want a snack or a cup of tea?”

“How's our time, kiddo?”

“We're fine.”

Bonnie considered, and then thought, if we stop here, I'll remember more. She shook her head. “No, let's get on into San Francisco. I'll save my appetite for dinner.”

“Okay,” Trish looked in the mirror, chuckled. “The black secret agent is in front of the Arab now.”

“Wonder if they'll have dinner with us?” Bonnie glanced back.

“We should pick a good restaurant.”

“Yes, we should,” laughed Bonnie. “And what is it Muslims can't eat?”

“Sorta like Jews, I think,” said Trisha, “no pork, no crabs, or shrimp.”

“Right, then may I tender the suggestion that we eat on the wharf?”

“Ha! Great!” Trisha laughed out loud.

Two-and-a-half hours later, they pulled into the parking area under the small hotel, the Franciscan, checked in, and gleefully, like a couple of wayward teenagers, took off walking to Ghirardelli Square. They picked the one restaurant that promised only fish dinners and took immense enjoyment at the fact that the Arab agent stayed out on the sidewalk in the chilly foggy night. The black agent took a seat at a distance furthest from them and seemed to appreciate their choice of restaurant.

After two glasses of wine, Trisha leaned over to her mother and whispered, “I wanna walk past him and just say hi.”

Bonnie giggled. She too had had some wine. “Tempting, isn't it?”

Trish sat up, looked directly at the agent, then back at her mom, “Better not. I mean, we really don't know how serious this all is.”

“True,” sighed Bonnie and at that moment, the black agent was joined by the woman agent they'd noticed arrive at the farm each night. The two chatted quietly to each other, then the black agent finished his dinner and discreetly slipped out the front door.

“Change of guard,” said Trisha.

Bonnie nodded. “What happens when we get on the plane, I wonder?”

“That will be interesting.” Trish cleaned her plate, deliberately staring at the woman agent. “Hey, I've got a super idea. Why don't we walk up to Ghirardelli Square and pig out on a chocolate sundae?”

Bonnie glanced at the woman agent who was built very solidly. “Bet she has to really watch her weight. Yes, let's do it.”

“Let me know the Ixey itinerary soon as you get it,” Tidewater said to Russ as the older man headed for his office.

Russ jumped to his feet, moving quickly after him. “They got to San Francisco last night, their plane leaves for New York this afternoon at 4:15. Arrives in New York at 7:35. At Kennedy.”

Tidewater, taking his cup of coffee from Lily, nodded as he sipped. “You're one hot son-uv-a-be-hive, young man. Okay, get us a chopper into Kennedy in time to be there. I want access into Passport Control. She'll have to move all the way from their national flight to the SAS International flight. Which national carrier are they on?”

“Delta, sir,” Russ replied.

“Okay. And pack your weapon.” Tidewater patted his waist where he kept his pistol tucked away.

Hoping that his knife would count, Russ nodded. He had decided, after carefully reading his transfer papers, that carrying the pistol he'd been assigned this morning was not part of his job description. “Are we interviewing Ixey? Or holding her? Or…what?”

Tidewater paused as he was putting his butt into the chair, “I'm gonna see if we can hold her up on some sort of passport violation thing. That should give the EW some fluttery heartbeats!”

“Yessir,” said Russ, being wise enough not to shake his head in frustration until he'd made it back into his cubby. He was having a very difficult time with this. What was it in Tidewater that made the man hate EW with such fervor that he would destroy it? Why did the rescue of terrified, endangered, battered women make him crazy? The Native American drew in a calming breath and ordered up the helicopter, sent an e-mail to Kennedy Airport Customs and Immigration Passport Control, and accessed SAS to see which gate the flight to Stockholm would be departing.

The tap on his door by Tidewater came as he scribbled down the latter number.

“Are we ready?” the older man asked.

Russ nodded, held up the slip of paper. “Everything online.” He grabbed up his leather jacket and bundled into it as he followed Tidewater to the elevator.

As the elevator shot to the roof, Tidewater smirked at Russ, “Ever ride in a chopper?”

Images, one upon another, stormed through Russ's mind: smoke, fire, leaping into the unknown, flames licking at his boots trying to pull him in, or so it seemed as he and his crew dropped into hell. This boss, thought Russ, must not have read his résumé very carefully.

“More times than I care to remember,” said Russ softly.

Almost disappointed, Tidewater mumbled, “Oh. Doing what?”

“Earned money for college as a smoke jumper, sir.”

“Well, I'll be damned.” Tidewater ducked off the elevator onto the roof ahead of him. “You're a man of many talents.”

“Yessir,” was all Russ said. More words would have been wasted in the drone of the chopper blades starting their warm-up. The pilot motioned them onboard.

“Kennedy?” he shouted. Tidewater nodded. The pilot pointed to their seat belts. “Make yourself comfortable. It'll take me a while to get clearance.”

Tidewater wrapped his belt tightly around himself. “Why? Just tell ‘em it's FBI business.”

“That won't go for squat,” said the pilot. “Sunday's their busiest travel day. Squeezing us into a landing area will be like doing it without K-Y, boss.” He chuckled and adjusted his radio headset.

Tidewater clenched a fist even while he laughed. Russ, too, had to smile. He put his belt on loosely, not comfortable with being locked in tightly. After all, when you'd jumped from these damned machines, what did seat belts mean? While the pilot negotiated with ground control, Russ watched the winter traffic far below, crawling along on the throughway. He was going to see Mrs. Ixey very soon, and her daughter, Trish. And what would he say? Probably nothing, probably he would be as still as his ancestors had drilled into him for dangerous situations…make no move, listen, put no words in, take no words out, always do your best to walk in peace. That was the crux of the dilemma on him, wasn't it? He was out of harmony. He was
koyaanisqatsi
as the Hopis put it.

“Got it,” said the pilot and started the check off on his engines. “You all belted in? Okay, here goes.”

The familiar whine and jerk of the rotors made Russ instantly sleepy. An old habit—if you were riding into danger, sleep while you could.

CHAPTER 8: TIDE COMES IN, THE TIDE GOES OUT

The bitter cold wind whipped Tahireh's black abba as she came demurely from the hotel lobby to the Land Cruiser. Habib held open the door. She pulled her hood tightly over her head as she stepped up and in. Habib got behind the wheel and they started off.

“I've got the heater on,” said Habib, “you can take the hood off.”

“Thank you,” she grumbled, pulling the hood back. She was dressed completely in Muslim mufti: black dress, black scarf, even the black face covering. “Stupid, stupid, stupid, making women dress this way. I hope that hell for Muslim men means mufti forever.”

“You are a spoiled young lady!” laughed Habib Mansur, teasing her.

“Yes!” she exclaimed, “And I intend to stay spoiled. How can I do adventures totally wrapped up in hideous coverings? Eh? Eh? Bah!”

He laughed, honked at a donkey cart, and swerved around it. Most of the slower conveyances had left the road, a wise precaution at night in Lebanon. The roads here made the Israeli roads seem like freeways. They were soon into the suburbs of Beirut, which consisted of miles and miles of plaster and daub houses, many only partially constructed. In good Mid-Eastern tradition, the houses were constructed as the money came in, a living room now, a kitchen tomorrow. Slowly, improvements were being made in the suburbs of Beirut. The shelled out buildings were piece by piece being replaced by these half-constructed homes. People were getting more animals. More cotton and orchards were being planted in the stony fields.

Slowly, slowly, Habib thought as he negotiated some tight turns to double back at a place where a shopkeeper still had a lantern out. He checked his mirror. As he'd suspected, a small jeep without lights quickly turned the same way.

“Who is it?” asked Tahireh.

Habib shrugged. “Hard to say. Could be anyone from the Hezbollah to the Iranian secret police.”

“It would be the ultimate irony,” she muttered, “if we were taken hostage before we even got out of Beirut.”

“No, no, whoever these people in the little jeep are, they will not bother us yet.”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked.

“Because I still have my haji robes on, they will not molest a haji in front of witnesses. My status counts for something!” he insisted.

“Optimist,” said Tahireh, reaching up under her mask and scratching her nose. “Damn this outfit.”

“But you will have to wait to take off your abba a little while longer.”

“Merde!” she swore again, only this time in vulgar French.

“I will do my best to lose these buggers,” said Habib and turned into, and promptly out of another alley. No luck. He flicked off his lights, drove through a small shop's tiny parking area, pulled around back, squeezed the Cruiser through someone's driveway, and slowly peeked the hood back onto the road. The jeep was nowhere to be seen. He let the Cruiser roll onto another alleyway, and taking some giant potholes with gusto, maneuvered back onto a road.

Tahireh looked around, and around again. “I think you've lost them.”

“I hope I have not lost us,” he moaned, “oh, my!”

“Great! Our mission gets stranded in the alleys of Beirut!” she laughed.

“Don't worry,” he assured her, “do not worry. I will find our way!” He stopped the Cruiser, got out, and looked at the stars, brilliant in the cleanly wind-swept night.

Tahireh also jumped out and jerked off the heavy wool cape. “Ahhh,” she sighed with relief, folded the thick garment and put it neatly into the back seat. With a light step, despite the thick layer of skirts, she walked over to Habib's side. “Okay, so you are now going to navigate by the stars?”

“They served many men well,” he said and pointed, “there is the North Star, there is Jupiter, we are merely turned slightly around. Yes, I know where to go.” He took her hand and lifted it toward the heavens. “Remember them, in case you need to find your way.”

She laughed a soft, gentle laugh, relaxing a bit, “What need have I of stars to guide me, old man, in Paris there are street signs and gendarmes to give directions.”

“For the next week,” he responded in a serious voice as he let her hand drop, “you will be on the desert, my child, and the desert's roads are better found by starlight.”

“On the desert, I have you.” She hugged him.

“That may not always be the case,” he admonished her.

Tahireh felt a chill go through her. She pulled her abba around her. “I'll remember your stars then. Come on, let's get out of this city and onto the desert.”

“Yes, my dear.” He too laughed and filled with the anticipation of more danger to come, they climbed into their respective sides of the Cruiser, and Habib set out through the small side roads until the big vehicle could get up onto the highway again. There was absolutely no sign of the little jeep, nor sign, really of anything on the long, empty road, except an occasional feral cat, slinking away into the blackness or a rabbit whisking its tail as it fled their approach.

“How long to the Jordanian border?” inquired Tahireh.

“Same as always, three hours. Sleep if you want.”

“Maybe,” she responded, “maybe I will.”

Habib settled into the drive.

Tahireh said as an afterthought, “You got the message off to Princess Zhara? It is okay?”

“Yes, she knows when to expect us,” he hesitated, “did I tell you she wants us to bring her mother out also?”

“Is that possible?”

She saw his head shake doubtfully. He shrugged. “I couldn't promise her anything. It's another whole set of logistics we hadn't counted on. We don't have the paperwork, the costumes, anything. Maxwell in Kuwait needs a lot more advance notice to help in this sort of rescue.”

“That's too bad,” said Tahireh, “I know the sheikh will use the daughter's escape to terrorize the mother.”

“Perhaps even condemn her to death.” Habib was silent a long while. Finally, as they crested the hills where the once famous Cedars of Lebanon groves stood, now mostly the cedar stumps of Lebanon, Habib whispered, “We can only do so much, just so much, no more.”

Another several kilometers went by before Tahireh asked, so softly she was barely audible, “I wonder if the baron has met his amour yet?”

“Probably not, my dear, he is so shy, that one.” Habib stole a glance at his companion. Her head was nodding with exhaustion. He would get his sleep once they reached the oasis. He would feel much, much safer in the company of the camel herders. These people would not betray him, or Tahireh. The nomad code still held and he, as a very young child, had been part of that tradition. But that was another era, another time. He breathed deeply of the cold wind that seeped into the vent and let the subtle smells of brush and sand bring back the memories, such memories…

His companion took her thick wooly abba and stuffed it between the seat and the window to make a pillow and her head was now nestled against it. Almost instantly, she began to snore lightly, oblivious to the dark desolation around them.

It was as if they had dropped off the face of the earth. Each hillcrest seemed to end in the star-filled sky, each rock seemed to be from another planet. A very familiar deja vu sensation enclosed him like a warm quilt. He was going home.

Baron Carl-Joran Hermelin had arrived at the Ixey farm just after dawn. He'd had to ask directions at a gas station in Morro Bay where a sleepy attendant at first shrugged and told him to look on their local map, on the office wall. Carl-Joran noticed the poor lad gulping down coffee and after a moment, the boy came into the office, much less grumpy, and said, “You mean the Ixey Posey Farm, right?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah,” said the lad, “well, they raise more ginseng than flowers now. The easiest way is…” The directions were then forthcoming.

But Bonnie had left the night before Carl-Joran discovered when he braved the barking dog enough to lower his window to ask the little Japanese lady working in a greenhouse.

She only glanced at him while mumbling, “Gone, she gone to San Flancisco.”

When he'd asked further, “San Francisco? Where in San Francisco?” she suddenly lost her ability to speak English at all. She waved at a young man coming quickly out of the house toward them. Carl-Joran had instantly decided it was time to leave. The big shaggy dog barked behind the car all the way down the drive. That was okay, he knew which plane Bonnie would be on. All he would have to do was wait.

Wait. Had Bonnie waited for him? Those months after he'd left her so suddenly, with no word coming from him? Had she tried to find him? The realization that she could have felt very lost and abandoned surged through him like a spurt of icy cold water. Toby had told him she was already dating someone else, that she had brushed off his leaving without much care. For the first time in all these many years, the shock of imagining that Toby may not have told the truth drove him mad. His teeth gritted shut.

Luckily, the wrinkles in the road gave his mind something to deal with as he wound through the San Simeon countryside. He stared with hard eyes at the golden hills and wondered with bitterness if any of Hearst's zebras still survived, or the buffalo? Hearst had had an entire free-ranging zoo on his vast property back when Carl Mink and Bonnie had driven by, but all that seemed to remain were boring cows and an occasional hawk or vulture soaring across the scrub. Almost unnoticed, the scenery began to grow strangely shaped pine trees, bent and twisted from the offshore wind. He was coming into the wilderness of Big Sur.

His stomach notified him that he needed breakfast. With an almost hallucinogenic sense of loss of time, his hands turned the steering wheel dragging the car into the parking lot of an isolated little coffee shop. Surrounded by trees, it was virtually invisible from the road. No change…no change at all, the same as the day he and Bonnie had come for breakfast, come out of the Big Sur woods to meet Toby. He stumbled as he got out of the little car and stumbled as he climbed the steps to the door. The smell of oiled table cloths, of smoky lamps, of old cigarette smoke…the same, the same, the same…he put a hand on the counter. They had sat in that far table.

He went to a table slowly, with the proprietor watching warily.

“Hey, bud, it's past breakfast serving, why don't you sit up here, at the counter?”

Carl-Joran shook his head. “Serve me here,” he insisted, “don't worry, I'll tip you enough.”

“Sure, whadda I care?” The man wiped his hands on his apron and came over, dropping a menu in front of the big patron. “You want a cuppa coffee?

“No. Iced tea?”

“Don't usually have that in the winter, but sure,” the man shuffled back to the counter area.

Carl-Joran looked intently at the menu, not seeing anything in it. His mind was counting the years; he held up fingers, ticked off the months in that year. Yes, it would have been September or October, no, earlier because he remembered the smell of the eucalyptus.

The iced tea plunked onto the table. “You ready to order?”

“Uh, yes,” Carl-Joran responded. “A sandwich, if you have turkey.”

“You don't wanna look in the menu, or what?” the man asked and then noted the big patron's confused expression, “Sure, yeah, turkey, and you wanna bowl of soup too? I got some great homemade mushroom soup.”

“Yes, that's fine,” said Carl-Joran, relieved, and as the man turned away, he added, “Do you have pie, that really good pie I had here a long time ago?”

“Got a couple different pies—apple, pumpkin, raisin-mince?”

“No peach?”

The man let a small smile flick over his face, “Not in the winter. Hey, got a new one, a cranberry pie. It's delicious a la mode.”

“I take that.” He sipped his tea and returned to counting off something with his fingers.

Somehow his memories were stuck on the frantic Toby shoving him into the VW bug, not even letting him give Bonnie a last kiss goodbye. Tires screeching along the cliff edge as they sped up Highway 1 into Monterey, winding through the back streets of the little fishing village to shake off their pursuers. Hiding behind some wealthy man's house until darkness when they dropped back down into the fishy stench of the warehouses along Cannery Row to a small dock and a motorboat that had ferried him to the tanker. His new life had begun. The terribly hard work on the evil-smelling old ship had mercifully left him no time for reflection. When he'd jumped ship in New Zealand, he had pushed much of that history out of his mind.

Here he was, back in the restaurant. But like a movie flashing before him, in reverse, there was Bonnie reading the menu, ordering for them. He could see the tears in her eyes, see her struggling not to let them show, her tiny hand reaching for him as he turned away when Toby drove into the gravel parking lot. “I must go,” the then Carl had said, “the CIA has found me, that is what Toby tells me. You will be in danger. I must go.”

“I don't care,” she'd insisted. “Stay! We'll fight it. You're married. We're married.”

“Toby says I must go because our marriage has no effect,” Carl had put his big hand over hers.

As if the years had suddenly evaporated, he suddenly saw the weeks before the moments in this coffee shop, before Toby had taken him away. It had been summer. The nights they had made love on the beach in front of the driftwood fires, the nights in the cabin, the days spent talking, designing a world where suffering did not exist, where children were loved, where these two young people could be in love without worry. This woman, this tiny woman had been only a few years older than him, but years and years more mature. He owed every sense of moral structure that guided his entire life to her. Bonnie Seastrand. Bonnie…Mink. He had given her the name Mink. And she had not known, until this last week that it was a real name, that she was and had always been, a baroness.