Chapter Fifteen --

 

“I have good news and bad news,” said the voice on the other end of the phone two days later. Mavis was back at Langley. “Which do you want first?”

“Is Ben alive?” My heart hovered on the edge of despair as I waited for the answer. She quickly put me out of my misery.

“That would be the good news,” Mavis announced. “Alive and well, currently in Istanbul.”

“Then what is the bad news?”

“You’re probably not going to like it. Things didn’t go as well as we’d hoped.”

“You’re stalling, Mavis. Get to it.”

“Azeezah is in very rough shape, Bea. It’s touch-and-go at the moment. They tortured her to try and get Jamil to turn on the rebels. She has significant injuries. Even if she lives, she’ll need a good, long recovery time.”

“How terrible.” I thought about little Wardah.

“And the real Fatima was in the same prison. They subjected her to terrible treatment. Her injuries are more psychological than physical and she will need a lot of support to regain her mental equilibrium.”

“Send her to us.” Don’t ask me what compelled me to say that. It just seemed to pop out of my mouth.

“You want to take her on? Don’t you want to discuss it with Ben first?” Mavis was being cautious, and for a moment I hesitated. But then I thought about how Ben walked out that door without asking my permission. He didn’t even give me a chance to argue about the decision. Frankly, I owed him a kick in the seat of his pants, but I would settle for my own version of being noble. Let him bitch about it just once and I would remind him of all the times he put me through the wringer.

“I’m sure Ben will support me in this. After all, he risked his neck to get her and her mother out of a Syrian prison, so he’s obviously committed to the cause. Besides, Wardah’s here with us, learning English. The original plan was to reunite the sisters at the Bard’s, wasn’t it? Why shouldn’t we stick with the plan?” I could hear a snicker on the other end. I didn’t want to interrupt, since Mavis seemed to be enjoying the moment. “How can Ben possibly say no?”

“Indeed,” she drawled. “What about school?”

“I’ll register Wardah for Four Corners Elementary School. She’ll enjoy that. And Fatima can be tutored by Lorna and Uncle Edward. By the time she’s ready for her senior year of high school, she’ll be a brilliant scholar.”

“Well, she would certainly benefit from having a former professor and a research librarian teaching her.” As she spoke, I could hear the wheels spinning for Mavis. The CIA would approve it because it meant that Ben would keep the girls safe, I would make sure they had a good home, and she would have the best teachers possible -- not only were Uncle Edward and Lorna familiar with her world back in Syria, they could help her fit in here without disrespecting her culture or her beliefs. “You let me know if it’s a problem.”

“It will be fine,” I insisted. I was going to make it fine. I knew it meant Ben had to stick around the Bard’s as long as we all needed that much security. “Did you ever figure out who the dead girl was?”

“I’ll let Ben brief you on that.”

“When will I see him again?”

“Soon. Hard to say. I’ll be in touch.”

Uncle Edward and Lorna were delighted when they heard the news, applauding the decision to bring Fatima to the Bard’s Bed & Breakfast. I found them in the library, playing backgammon while Wardah was coloring at the table beside them.

“Fabulous,” Uncle Edward crowed, “what a coup for the CIA!”

“What?” I was caught off-guard. “What do you mean?”

“The CIA gets the whole family in a controlled setting. Normally, the kids would get parceled out to different foster homes, so as to protect them from discovery. But in this case, because Fatima can be tutored by us here at home, there won’t be any public school records. Wardah can take classes with other children her age. Thank heavens she’s not old enough to spill the beans about her family. We’ll change her name to Rosalind when we teach her English.”

“Will it be a problem for you to stay on a while?” I asked Lorna.

“Heavens, no. I’d be delighted. It’s nice to be needed.”

I was about to turn away, heading back to the kitchen to pull my banana nut bread out of the oven, when I caught a look between the two conspirators. They actually had the audacity to high-five each other behind my back. I caught the movement in the wall mirror as I passed by the reflection.

“You planned all this?” The hell with that banana nut bread. I was going to force these two senior citizens to spill the beans. “Dragging the girls here was part of a CIA plan?”

“No, Bea,” Uncle Edward insisted. “That’s not what....”

““I think you’ve misunderstood, Beatrice. It’s not what you think,” Lorna insisted. “You see....”

“I got conned again?”

“We had better tell her,” Lorna told Uncle Edward. He concurred.

“Tell me what?” I hissed. If I’d had a rattle on my tail, I’d have used it to warn them I was about to strike out.

“Bea...”

“We’re married,” Lorna blurted out in a rush of words.

“Excuse me?” Had they eloped? When did all that happen? How did I miss it?

“Husband and wife, Bea. Have been for quite a while.” Uncle Edward wrapped an arm around Lorna. As I looked at the pair of them, it suddenly dawned on me. They both spoke Arabic. They had worked at the same school for years, Uncle Edward as a professor, Lorna as a research librarian.

“You’re Hortense,” I decided. Fear flickered in their eyes before disappearing behind their cheerful smiles.

“Am I?” she laughed. “Whoever is that? Some Shakespearean character of whom I am unfamiliar?”

“You’re Uncle Edward’s long lost wife, the ones the Soviets tried to kill. You’re on your third life as a cat, six more to go.”

There was a long silence as they watched me, uncertain of what to do next, and even as I studied them in return.

“Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me. But now I think I understand this whole mess. Uncle Edward, how does Yuri figure into this mess with Hortense?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“This is a very ugly feud. Yuri had no problem screwing over the Americans, the Iranians, the Syrians, and even the Russians. For him, it’s very personal. I think he’s out to punish you and Ben. Why? What don’t I know about you two?” There was something that connected my husband to his adoptive uncle, and it had to do with the work Uncle Edward did in the OSS and later for the CIA. I wasn’t sure I needed to know all the details, but it was important that Uncle Edward and Ben did. Yuri was coming back to finish the job. I didn’t know when. I didn’t know how. I didn’t even know why, but I knew that was his intent. And even as I watched Uncle Edward squeeze Lorna’s shoulder confidently, I could see the doubt in his eyes that he wanted to hide from her. What if Yuri knew Hortense was still alive and she was his target? I found it hard to believe that the Russians cared so much about events that happened long ago. But if Yuri had a personal connection to someone in Soviet intelligence, maybe someone who was ruined as a result of Uncle Edward’s activities, he might never give up his quest for revenge.

“Let’s walk, Bea,” said Uncle Edward, slipping into a more cheerful voice. “I want to show you the changes I’ve made to the rose garden. Lorna, would you mind keeping an eye on the child?”

“Of course not,” she told him. But I could see she was worrying.

We left through the French doors, stepping out onto the patio and walking out of sight. I knew Uncle Edward had been dead-heading the rose bushes for the better part of the morning. He pointed out his favorite plants, from the “Mr. Lincoln” to the “Memorial Day” to the “4th of July”. The perfume was heady as we walked through the tribute to American. Finally he waved me to sit on the cement bench positioned to have the best view of the glorious blooms. Once I was seated, he parked his carcass next to me.

“You are right. This is a vendetta, and a very messy one at that. I know that Ben must have told you about Hortense. You know, then, that they abused her for the two years they held her after our success in Hungary. And you know that they returned for her again and again over the years. What you don’t know is that Ben’s father’s first assignment as a CIA officer involved tit-for-tat. You’re also right that Yuri is not Yuri. He is Grigoriy Demitrov, son of Colonel Anton Demitrov, the man who brutalized my Hortense in unspeakable ways.”

“What did you do to Colonel Demitrov that made him so bitter?” I wondered, studying Uncle Edward’s face for even the slightest movement, knowing he might not speak the whole truth. I considered what I knew of Uncle Edward as a man. Overall, he was gentle and kind, decent even. But I didn’t doubt he would kill without hesitation, to protect the country he loved and the people he loved. And yet, I didn’t think that as a CIA officer he was a cruel man. He was focused on results, on winning hearts and minds more than on murder. “You kidnapped Yuri’s mother!”

There it was, a little flinch, a slight flicker in the eyes. Yuri was looking to punish Uncle Edward, Ben, and the CIA for stealing his mama.

“We took her into protective custody, Bea. We had to have a bargaining chip. We planned to do a hostage exchange, only it turned out that we did our job too well. Marina turned out to be a fountain of information on her husband, and there was no way we could allow her to return to him. We needed him to believe she had died without telling tales about his exploits, so as soon as we began getting real intelligence gems from her, we blew her up in front of him, while Ben’s father launched the raid that freed Hortense.”

Ben’s father was a spy. Of course. That was the connection I missed. Yuri wanted the son to pay for the father’s sins.

“I’m afraid that Colonel Demitrov took out his rage on the boy. We tried to get him out in 1975, but Demitrov was expecting us. Marina was heartbroken when Stephen returned empty-handed. We tried again in 1978 and 1982, but each time, Demitrov knew we were coming for the boy.”

“He had an informant at the CIA,” I concluded sadly.

“Yes.”

“What happened to Marina?” I dreaded the answer. I imagined that once she was of no further use, she was cast into the ocean, dropped from the sky, right out the cargo door.

“Ben’s father married her. Yuri is Ben’s half-brother.”