Windmills of the Gods (7 page)

“No, no. I insist.”

When the tank was filled, Mary drove down Washington Street and parked in front of the Shoe Box.

“Mornin’, Mrs. Ashley,” the clerk greeted her. “How’s the ambassador this mornin’?”

This is going to get tiresome,
Mary thought. Aloud, she said, “I’m not an ambassador, but I’m fine, thank you.” She handed him a pair of shoes. “I’d like to have Tim’s shoes resoled.”

The clerk examined them. “Ain’t these the ones we did last week?”

Mary sighed. “And the week before.”

Mary’s next stop was at Long’s Department Store. Mrs. Hacker, the manager of the dress department, said to her, “I jest heard your name on the radio. You’re puttin’ Junction City on the map. Yes, sir. I guess you and Eisenhower and Alf Landon are Kansas’s only political big shots, Mrs. Ambassador.”

“I’m not an ambassador,” Mary said patiently. “I turned it down.”

“That’s what I mean.”

It was no use. Mary said, “I need some jeans for Beth. Preferably something in iron.”

“How old is Beth now? About ten?”

“She’s twelve.”

“Land’s sake, they grow so fast these days, don’t they? She’ll be a teenager before you know it.”

“Beth was born a teenager, Mrs. Hacker.”

“How’s Tim?”

“He’s a lot like Beth.”

The shopping took Mary twice as long as usual. Everyone had some comment to make about the big news. She went into Dillon’s to buy some groceries, and was studying the shelves when Mrs. Dillon approached.

“Mornin’, Mrs. Ashley.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Dillon. Do you have a breakfast food that has nothing in it?”

“What?”

Mary consulted a list in her hand. “No artificial sweeteners,
no sodium, fats, carbohydrates, caffeine, caramel coloring, folic acid, or flavorites.”

Mrs. Dillon studied the paper. “Is this some kind of medical experiment?”

“In a sense. It’s for Beth. She’ll only eat natural foods.”

“Why don’t you just put her out to pasture and let her graze?”

Mary laughed. “That’s what my son suggested.” Mary picked up a package and studied the label. “It’s my fault. I never should have taught Beth how to read.”

Mary drove home carefully, climbing the winding hill toward Milford Lake. It was a few degrees above zero, but the windchill factor brought the temperature down to well below zero, for there was nothing to stop the winds from their biting sweep across the endless plains. The lawns were covered with snow, and Mary remembered the previous winter when an ice storm had swept the county and the ice snapped the power lines. They had no electricity for almost a week. She and Edward made love every night.
Maybe we’ll get lucky again this winter,
she grinned to herself.

When Mary arrived home, Edward was still at the hospital. Tim was in the study watching a science-fiction program. Mary put away the groceries and went in to confront her son.

“Aren’t you supposed to be doing your homework?”

“I can’t.”

“And why not?”

“Because I don’t understand it.”

“You’re not going to understand it any better by watching
Star Trek.
Let me see your lesson.”

Tim showed her his fifth-grade mathematics book. “These are dumb problems,” Tim said.

“There are no such things as dumb problems. There are only dumb students. Now let’s take a look at this.”

Mary read the problem aloud. “A train leaving Minneapolis had one hundred and forty-nine people on board. In Atlanta more people boarded the train. Then there were two hundred and twenty-three on the train. How many people boarded in Atlanta?” She looked up. “That’s simple, Tim. You just subtract one hundred forty-nine from two hundred twenty-three.”

“No, you don’t,” Tim said glumly. “It has to be an equation. One hundred forty-nine plus
N
equals two hundred twenty-three.
N
equals two hundred twenty-three minus one hundred forty-nine.
N
equals seventy-four.”

“That’s dumb,” Mary said.

As Mary passed Beth’s room, she heard noises. Mary went in. Beth was seated on the floor, cross-legged, watching television, listening to a rock record, and doing her homework.

“How can you concentrate with all this noise?” Mary shouted.

She walked over to the television set and turned it off and then turned off the record player.

Beth looked up in surprise. “What did you do that for? That was George Michael.”

Beth’s room was wallpapered with posters of musicians. There were Kiss and Van Halen, Motley Crue and Aldo Nova and David Lee Roth. The bed was covered with magazines:
Seventeen
and
Teen Idol
and half a dozen others. Beth’s clothes were scattered over the floor.

Mary looked around the messy room in despair. “Beth—how can you live like this?”

Beth looked up at her mother, puzzled. “Live like what?”

Mary gritted her teeth. “Nothing.” She looked at an envelope on her daughter’s desk. “You’re writing to Rick Springfield?”

“I’m in love with him.”

“I thought you were in love with George Michael.”

“I
burn
for George Michael. I’m in
love
with Rick Springfield. Mother, in your day didn’t you ever
burn
for anybody?”

“In my day we were too busy trying to get the covered wagons across the country.”

Beth sighed. “Did you know Rick Springfield had a rotten childhood?”

“To be perfectly honest, Beth, I was not aware of that.”

“It was awful. His father was in the military and they moved around a lot. He’s a vegetarian too. Like me. He’s awesome.”

So that’s what’s behind Beth’s crazy diet!

“Mother, may I go to a movie Saturday night with Virgil?”

“Virgil? What happened to Arnold?”

There was a pause. “Arnold wanted to fool around. He’s dorky.”

Mary forced herself to sound calm. “By ‘fooling around,’ you mean—?”

“Just because I’m starting to get breasts the boys think I’m easy. Mom, did you ever feel uncomfortable about your body?”

Mary moved up behind Beth and put her arms around her. “Yes, my darling. When I was about your age, I felt very uncomfortable.”

“I hate having my period and getting breasts and hair all over. Why?”

“It happens to every girl, and you’ll get used to it.”

“No, I won’t.” She pulled away and said fiercely, “I don’t mind being in love, but I’m never going to have sex. No one’s going to make me. Not Arnold or Virgil or Kevin Bacon.”

Mary said solemnly, “Well, if that’s your decision…”

“Definitely. Mom, what did President Ellison say when you told him you weren’t going to be his ambassador?”

“He was very brave about it,” Mary assured her. “I think I’d better get dinner started.”

Cooking was Mary Ashley’s secret bete noir. She hated to cook, and consequently was not very good at it, and because she liked to be good at everything she did, she hated it even more. It was a vicious circle that had partly been solved by having Lucinda come in three times a week to cook and clean the house. This was one of Lucinda’s days off.

When Edward came home from the hospital, Mary was in the kitchen, burning some peas. She turned off the stove and gave Edward a kiss. “Hello, darling. How was your day? Dorky?”

“You’ve been communicating with our daughter,” Edward said. “As a matter of fact, it
was
dorky. I treated a thirteen-year-old girl this afternoon who had genital herpes.”

“Oh, darling!” She threw out the peas and opened a can of tomatoes.

“You know, it makes me worry about Beth.”

“You don’t have to,” Mary assured him. “She’s planning to die a virgin.”

At dinner Tim asked, “Dad, can I have a surfboard for my birthday?”

“Tim—I don’t want to rain on your parade, but you happen to live in
Kansas.
”

“I know that. Johnny invited me to go to Hawaii with him next summer. His folks have a beach house in Maui.”

“Well,” Edward said reasonably, “if Johnny has a beach house, then he probably has a surfboard.”

Tim turned to his mother. “Can I go?”

“We’ll see. Please don’t eat so fast, Tim. Beth, you’re not eating anything.”

“There’s nothing here that’s fit for human consumption.”
She looked at her parents. “I have an announcement to make. I’m going to change my name.”

Edward asked carefully, “Any particular reason?”

“I’ve decided to go into show business.”

Mary and Edward exchanged a long, pained look.

Edward said, “Okay. Find out how much you can get for them.”

In 1965, in a scandal that rocked the international secret-service organizations, Mehdi ben Barka, an opponent of King Hassan II of Morocco, was lured to Paris from his exile in Geneva and murdered with the help of the French secret service. It was following this incident that President Charles de Gaulle took the secret service from the control of the premier’s office and placed it under the aegis of the Ministry of Defense. Thus it was that the current minister of defense, Roland Passy, was responsible for the safety of Marin Groza, who had been granted sanctuary by the French government. Gendarmes were stationed in front of the villa in Neuilly on twenty-four-hour shifts, but it was the knowledge that Lev Pasternak was in charge of the villa’s inner security that gave Passy confidence. He had seen the security arrangements himself and was firmly convinced that the house was impregnable.

In recent weeks, rumors had been sweeping the diplomatic world that a coup was imminent, that Marin Groza was planning
to return to Romania, and that Alexandras Ionescu was going to be deposed by his senior military officers.

Lev Pasternak knocked on the door and entered the book-crammed library that served as Marin Groza’s office. Groza was seated behind his desk, working. He looked up as Lev Pasternak came in.

“Everybody wants to know when the revolution is going to happen,” Pasternak said. “It’s the world’s worst-kept secret.”

“Tell them to be patient. Will you come to Bucharest with me, Lev?”

More than anything, Lev Pasternak yearned to return to Israel.
I’ll only take this job temporarily,
he had told Marin Groza.
Until you’re ready to make your move. Temporarily
had turned into weeks and months, and finally into three years. And now it was time to make another decision.

In a world peopled with pygmies,
Lev Pasternak thought,
I have been given the privilege of serving a giant.
Marin Groza was the most selfless and idealistic man Lev Pasternak had ever known.

When Pasternak had come to work for Groza, he had wondered about the man’s family. Groza would never speak of them, but the officer who had arranged for Pasternak to meet Groza told him the story.

“Groza was betrayed. The Securitate picked him up and tortured him for five days. They promised to free him if he would give them the names of his associates in the underground. He wouldn’t talk. They arrested his wife and his fourteen-year-old daughter and brought them to the interrogation room. Groza was given a choice: Talk or watch them die. It was the hardest decision any man ever had to make. It was the lives of his beloved wife and child against the lives of hundreds of people who believed in him.” The man paused, then went on more slowly. “I think in the end what made Groza decide the way he did was that he was convinced that
he and his family were going to be killed anyway. He refused to give them the names. The guards strapped him in a chair and forced him to watch his wife and daughter being gangraped until they died. But they weren’t through with Groza yet. When it was over and their bloody bodies were lying at his feet, they castrated him.”

“Oh, my God!”

The officer looked into Lev Pasternak’s eyes and said, “The most important thing for you to understand is that Marin Groza does not want to return to Romania to seek vengeance. He wants to go back to free his people. He wants to make certain that such things can never again happen.”

Lev Pasternak had been with Groza from that day on, and the more time he spent with the revolutionary, the more he came to love him. Now, he would have to decide whether to give up his return to Israel and go to Romania with Groza.

Pasternak was walking down the hallway that evening, and as he passed Marin Groza’s bedroom door, he heard the familiar screams of pain ring out.
So it’s Friday,
Pasternak thought. The day the prostitutes came. They were selected from England, North America, Brazil, Japan, Thailand, and half a dozen other countries, chosen at random. They had no idea what their destination was, or who they were going to see. They were met at Charles de Gaulle Airport, driven directly to the villa, and, after a few hours, taken back to the airport and put on a return flight. Every Friday night the halls resounded with Marin Groza’s screams. The staff assumed that kinky sex was going on. The only one who knew what was really happening behind the bedroom door was Lev Pasternak. For the visits with the prostitutes had nothing to do with sex. They were a penance. Once a week Groza stripped himself naked and had a woman tie him to a chair and whip him mercilessly, until his blood flowed, and each time he was whipped he would see his wife and daughter
being raped to death, screaming for help. And he would cry out, “I’m sorry! I’ll talk. Oh, God, please let me talk…”

The telephone call came ten days after Harry Lantz’s body was found. The Controller was in the middle of a staff meeting in the conference room when the intercom buzzer sounded.

“I know you asked not to be disturbed, sir, but there’s an overseas call for you. It sounds urgent. A Miss Neusa Munez is calling from Buenos Aires. I told her—”

“It’s all right.” He kept his emotions under tight control. “I’ll take the call in my private office.” He excused himself, went into his office, and locked the door. He picked up the telephone. “Hello. Is this Miss Muñez?”

“Yeah.” It was a voice with a South American accent, coarse and uneducated. “I got a message for you from Angel. He din’ like the nosy messenger you sent.”

He had to choose his words carefully. “I’m sorry. But we would still like Angel to go ahead with our arrangement. Would that be possible?”

“Yeah. He say he wanna do it.”

The man held back a sigh of relief. “Excellent. How shall I arrange his advance?”

The woman laughed. “Angel, he don’ need no advance. Nobody cheats Angel.” Somehow the words were chilling. “When the job is finished, he say you put the money in—wait a minute—I got it wrote down—here it is—the State Bank in Zurich. Thas someplace in Switzerland.” She sounded like a moron.

“I’ll need the account number.”

“Oh, yeah. The number is—Jesus. I forgot. Hol’ on. I got it here somewhere.” He heard the rustle of papers, and finally she was back on the telephone. “Here it is. J-three-four-nine-zero-seven-seven.”

He repeated the number. “How soon can he handle the matter?”

“When he’s ready,
señor.
Angel say you’ll know when ‘ees done. You’ll read ‘bout it in the newspapers.”

“Very well. I’m going to give you my private telephone number in case Angel needs to reach me.”

He gave it to her slowly.

The meeting was being held in an isolated dacha bordering on the River Kura.

The chairman said, “Two urgent matters have arisen. The first is good news. The Controller has had word from Angel. The contract is moving forward.”

“That’s
very
good news!” Freyr exclaimed. “What’s the bad news?”

“I’m afraid it concerns the President’s candidate for the ambassadorship to Romania, but the situation can be handled…”

It was difficult for Mary Ashley to keep her mind on the class. Something had changed. In the eyes of her students she had become a celebrity. It was a heady feeling. She could feel the class hanging on her words.

“As we know, 1956 was a watershed year for many of the Eastern European countries. With Gomulka’s return to power, national communism emerged in Poland. In Czechoslovakia Antonin Mavorony led the Communist party. There were no major political changes in Romania that year…”

Romania…Bucharest
…From the photographs Mary had seen, it had to be one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. She had not forgotten any of the stories her grandfather had told her about Romania. She remembered how terrified she had been as a little girl by his tales of the horrible Prince Vlad of Transylvania.
He was a vampire, Mary,
living in his huge castle high in the mountains of Brasov, sucking the blood of his innocent victims.

Mary was suddenly aware of a deep silence in the room. The class was staring at her.
How long have I been standing here daydreaming?
she wondered. She hurriedly continued her lecture. “In Romania, Gheorghiu-Dej was consolidating his power in the Workers’ Party…”

The class seemed to go on endlessly, but mercifully it was almost over.

“Your homework assignment will be to write an essay on the USSR’s economic planning and management, describing the basic organization of the government organs, and the CPSU control. I want you to analyze the internal and external dimensions of Soviet policy, with emphasis on its positions on Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania.”

Romania…Welcome to Romania, Madam Ambassador. Your limousine is here to drive you to your embassy. Her embassy.
She had been invited to live in one of the most exciting capitals of the world, reporting to the President, being in the center of his people-to-people concept.
I could have been a part of history.

She was roused from her reverie by the sound of the bell. Class was over. Time to go home and change. Edward would be back from the hospital early. He was taking her out to the country club for dinner.

As befitted an almost-ambassador.

“Code Blue! Code Blue!” the crackling voice sounded over the loudspeaker throughout the hospital corridors. Even as the emergency crew began to converge on the ambulance entrance, the sound of an approaching siren could be heard. The Geary Community Hospital is an austere-looking three-story brown building perched on a hill on St. Mary’s Road in the southwest section of Junction City. The hospital holds sixty-six beds, and has two modern operating rooms and a series of examining rooms and administrative offices.

It had been an unusually busy Friday, and the ward on the top floor was already filled with injured servicemen who had come to town from nearby Fort Riley, home of the 1
^st
Infantry Division, known as The Big Red One, for their weekend R and R.

Dr. Edward Ashley was sewing up the scalp of a soldier who had lost a bar fight. Edward Ashley had been a doctor at Geary Memorial Hospital for thirteen years, and before going into private practice he had been an air force flight surgeon with the rank of captain. Several prestigious hospitals in large cities had tried to lure him away, but he preferred to stay where he was.

He finished with the patient he was working on and looked around. There were at least a dozen soldiers waiting to be patched up. He heard the sound of the approaching ambulance siren. “They’re playing our song.”

Dr. Douglas Schiffer, who was tending a gunshot-wound victim, nodded. “It looks like
M*A*S*H
in here. You’d think we were in some kind of war.”

Edward Ashley said, “It’s the only war they have, Doug. That’s why they come into town every weekend and go a little nuts. They’re frustrated.” He finished the last stitch. “There you are, soldier. You’re as good as new.” He turned to Douglas Schiffer. “We’d better get down to emergency.”

The patient wore the uniform of a private, and he looked to be no more than eighteen years old. He was in shock. He was sweating profusely and his breathing was labored. Dr. Ashley felt his pulse. It was weak and thready. A splotch of blood stained the front of his uniform jacket. Edward Ashley turned to one of the paramedics who had brought in the patient.

“What do we have here?”

“A knife wound to the chest, Doctor.”

“Let’s see if his lung is collapsed.” He turned to a nurse. “I want a stat chest X ray. You’ve got three minutes.”

Dr. Douglas Schiffer was observing the jugular vein. It was raised. He looked over at Edward. “It’s distended. The pericardium’s probably been penetrated.” Which meant that the sac that protected the heart was filled with blood, pressing against the heart so that it could not beat properly.

The nurse who was taking the patient’s blood pressure said, “Blood pressure’s dropping fast.”

The monitor measuring the patient’s electrocardiogram began to slow. They were losing the patient.

Another nurse hurried in with the chest X ray. Edward scanned it. “Pericardial tamponade.”

The heart had a hole in it. The lung was collapsed.

“Get a tube in him and expand the lung.” His voice was quiet, but there was no mistaking the urgency in it. “Get an anesthesiologist. We’re going to open him up. Intubate him.”

A nurse handed Dr. Schiffer an endotracheal tube. Edward Ashley nodded at him. “Now.”

Douglas Schiffer carefully began to push the tube into the unconscious soldier’s windpipe. There was a bag at the end of the tube, and Schiffer began to squeeze it in a steady rhythm, ventilating the lungs. The monitor began to slow, and the curve on the monitor was completely flat. The smell of death was in the room.

“He’s gone.”

There was no time to wheel the patient up to the operating room. Dr. Ashley had to make an instant decision.

“We’re going to do a thoracotomy. Scalpel.”

The instant the knife was in his hand, Edward reached down and slashed it across the patient’s chest. There was almost no blood, because the heart was trapped in the pericardium.

“Retractor!”

The instrument was put in his hands, and he inserted it into the patient’s chest to spread the ribs apart.

“Scissors. Stand back!”

He moved closer so that he could reach the pericardial
sac. He snipped the scissors into it, and the blood released from the imprisonment of the heart sac spurted out, hitting the nurses and Dr. Ashley. Dr. Ashley reached in and began to massage the heart. The monitor began to beep, and the pulse became palpable. There was a small laceration at the apex of the left ventricle.

“Get him up to the operating room.”

Three minutes later the patient was on the operating table.

“Transfusion—a thousand cc’s.”

There was no time to match blood type, so O negative—the universal donor—was used.

As the blood transfusion began, Dr. Ashley said, “A thirty-two chest tube.”

A nurse handed it to him.

Dr. Schiffer said, “I’ll close, Ed. Why don’t you get cleaned up?”