Hilary’S Secret

By Michael Sandusky

Mike Barrier and Becki, while on a book-reading tour of I Rode the Wings of the Dawn to the Farthest Oceans in Eastern Europe, are contacted by the CIA to follow, as unsuspected tourists, a couple of suspicious interest. Their heart-pounding pursuit into Siberia finds them on the Trans-Siberian Express involved with murder. Apparently, Hilary died with a secret. A secret unbeknownst to Mike and the others that sailed on their yacht, Becki. A secret that could terrorize the entire world. An other-worldly secret. This is an intense thriller that threatens and challenges Mike and Beckis love for each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514484210

Michael Sandusky

Michael Sandusky is the quintessential story-telling romantic. His fifty years of writing novels, short stories, poetry, self-help books and newspaper columns have been read and enjoyed the world over. He loves deep-sea fishing, traveling to exotic locales, cooking and public speaking relating thrilling, funny and poignant stories about his adventures, narrow escapes and interpersonal relationships. He still believes that the best stories cannot be made up, but come from actual human experience. He can be reached at [e-mail]

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Legion Friends

I

H ILARY BARRIER, AGE 25, was buried at sea, after losing a fight with cancer. Born in South Africa, she spent the last two years of her life sailing around the world on a yacht named Becki. Hilary was soft-spoken and obsessive, but never looked the part of a hopeless romantic. She loved life and people, always giving everyone she met, the benefit of the doubt if the occasion called for it. She was philanthropic with her time and energy. Her heart and hands gave aid to the typhoon damage of the Philippines. She was especially sensitive to the needs of AIDS patients and gave help in South America and India, before her death. As she sailed around the world with her family on Becki, she came to the conclusion, and then clung tenaciously to the belief that life is not merely a series of meaningless accidents, but rather a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan. She realized that if we all are to live in harmony with each other, with God and with the universe, then we must all possess a powerful faith in what the ancients called, fatum, — our destiny. She believed strongly in her own destiny and passed that result on in the birth of her child at her death. She had underlined one of the passages in a Bible found on Becki’s shelves. Psalm 65:5 says, God is the hope of all the needs of the earth and of the farthest oceans. She loved deeply, served tirelessly, and believed strongly that there is a reason for everything. She leaves behind a son, Michael as well as the rest of her family — Boubakar Barrier, Dolph Barrier, Mike Barrier and friend Vicki Lewis. She was buried before she ever reached the shores of Greece, but had she walked on those ancient sands of time, then undoubtedly, the Greeks would have not written this obituary. For the ancient Greeks didn’t write obituaries. They asked only one question after a person had died — Did she have pas sion?

I laid the newspaper clipping down and looked out the window at the snow-covered marina next to my hotel. Marshmallow-sized snowflakes drifted down from the dark skies, settling on our window sill. I had read this clipping numerous times over the last two years and had lingered over Hilary’s photo that had been included in the half-page obituary. It had appeared in a large number of metropolitan newspapers all over the world. I gave her honor in submitting the piece and photo to the newspapers and paying handsomely for it. Shortly, after the first insertions, the Associated Press picked the obituary up and ran an article after contacting me. Then the phone began to ring. I got tired of that, quickly, and was glad that I was in Dubrovnik Croatia now, and unavailable to most of the calls.

I was severely hampered by the non-use of my legs after the explosion in Nice. After a time of self-pity, I was urged to re-channel my energies. At the family’s insistence, I wrote a book of our adventures on Becki. I called it Destiny but the publishers changed the name to I Rode the Wings of the Dawn to the Farthest Oceans. 1

I didn’t relish going out this evening. The concert hall was a mile away and the distance would be covered by taxi, but I would have rather stayed inside next to the fire in the fireplace with Doodles snuggled up close to me. I had not felt the curse of having so much money. I think I handled it relatively well. I had given more than half of Uncle Gene’s inheritance away, given some to my kids, still had all the secrets of all the treasures unfound as yet on the bottoms of the ocean… and resided in a hotel room. No, I had not felt the curse of money, but then it’s not really money that is the culprit. It’s the love of money that does a person in. I didn’t love it. I only loved the person next to me. While I had not succumbed to the curse of loving money, I had felt the curse of fame. I had naively written of such a dilemma in a previous work of mine called Wounded Wanderer,2 in which I stressed over those wishing the fame of Ernest Hemingway in Key West. Then, I had written by observation and not by experience. Now, with the fame brought on by I Rode the Wings of the Dawn to the Farthest Oceans, my public reading engagements were only adding fuel to the fire.

I seemed to have this ability to hold the audience in the palm of my hand. I tried to convince myself that it had to be the story itself, rather than my presentation of it. However, I guess the actual reading by the author, who knows how he felt when he wrote the narrative, seemed to emphasize the pathos and emotion that struck home with the audience. I read to them some of the funniest portions of the book until they were laughing so hard that some wet their pants, (I was told). Then I would take them to the hardest parts until they were crying at Hilary’s death. Those chapters always touched me and the audience seemed to sense that, to the point that they empathized with me over our anguish at having lost her. Each reading engagement taught me how to fine-tune the reading even further. Doodles would stand beside me after every reading as the audience made their way down to ask me questions. She would take notes of the comments that I felt might be of use some day in other works. I met with pregnant mothers, AIDS sufferers, attorneys, adventure seekers, even a few escaped slaves, boat owners and residents of many of the nations we had visited. They always asked me if I had met their uncle or aunt so and so. I was able to answer yes, a few times. Some had stories that could be used in future writings. Those were the ones that Doodles jotted down in her notebook.

Now, however, I was famous. It was one thing to speak before several dozen eager listeners on a Pacific isle. Now, they came by the thousands. I had them laughing… then I sent them home crying. Sometimes, I went back to my hotel room with the same emotion. I wanted some privacy. I wanted to be alone for a while. I guess, what I really desired was to be out on that big expanse of water… alone.

II

Juan and Vickie Morales were flying in this weekend to see us. I had found commonality with Juan during therapy in Paris. His legs were in the same condition as mine. He had suffered an injury while serving with the French Foreign Legion in Mali. He had been in the Legion for some time having served in Rwanda, Congo, Macedonia, Afghanistan, Cote d’Ivoire and Chad. As a result we entertained each other with our stories.

Boubakar, my black slave, turned chef, took the four of us to one of his favorite places in Paris at the end of the summer. It was a little place called La Brouette and was located on the Rue Descartes on the left bank. I’m sure that Ernest Hemingway ate here for he had lived only two doors down. Right next door was where Rimbaud, who wrote all of his poetry before the age of twenty, and Verlaine, his poet-muse, shacked up.

We had started our second bottle of a particularly potent Chateau de Beaucostel from the Chateauneuf du Pape region along with our truffarde au chocolat when my Doodles came up with, I thought the Foreign Legion was a haven for cut-throats, crooks, and fugitives from justice, as well as men who were escaping failed romances? I don’t know why she had to say this when I was sipping my drink, but it came spewing out on the red and white tablecloth.

Are you OK? asked Vickie.

Yes, I nodded. Now I know why they have red and white tablecloths.

Ha! laughed Juan. Yes, the Legion is an ideal repository for the scum of the earth.

Well… I didn’t mean it that way. I was thinking, like… like failed romance or something… Doodles added.

Ah! The sinner is always hardest on those sharing his own like sins, smiled Juan.

Doodles looked at me and I responded with, He knows.

Yes, he responded, we talked about your past when we were dealing with these legs of ours. I have to admit that it is true….

That you’re a cut-throat crook! I laughed.

…that I was running from a failed romance in Mexico City. Not with Vickie… but with some other woman. So… since the Legion takes foreign mercenaries, I joined up. Immediately I realized what I missed the most!

What? The woman in Mexico City?

No! Tortillas and jalapenos!

We all laughed at this remark from our Mexican friend.

Yes, the French think jalapenos are terribly gauche!

I had a hard time with them myself, said Vickie.

"I could have applied for French citizenship after three years, but I was so busy fighting that it was never of much importance to me. However, when I was wounded, my Capitaine came up to me and said that since I was wounded I could immediately apply for it… so I did. Now! Since you’ve unlocked one of my innermost secrets, I shall ask one of you. How in the world did you end up with a name like, Doodles?

I’m to blame for that! I responded.

Yes, she added, I was showing him my notes from Vicki’s trial….

Vicki? Like me?

Yes, this was Vicki Lewis. She was one of the women on the boat and she was accused of killing the other woman who loved Mike. Her name was Hilary….

It appeared as if our friendship might go over the cliff with the mention of a love triangle and murder on top of it. The old saying of a man is known by the company he avoids, appeared as though it was going to play out in front of us, seeing the size of their eyeballs.

I was not in love with either one of them, I interjected, matter-of-factly.

So he says. Doodles smiled at me and winked. Anyway, the Navy of India arrested her and charged her with the murder of Hilary. Unbeknownst to Mike, she wrote me a letter stating the dire straits she was in….

Dire straits?

Well, they had found her guilty and she had been sentenced to hang….

The Legion would have shot her, said Juan.

As a matter of fact she had the choice of that, or hanging. She never gave them an answer so they decided to hang her. She wrote me this letter, not knowing that I was an attorney and really just attempting to convince me what a great and noble and faithful man Mike had been during this two year odyssey. Her execution date was coming up, so I rushed to the library and checked out everything I could on Maritime Law. I didn’t really know what their arguments had been, so I was really going in blind. I flew to India…which, incidentally, was the first time I had ever been out of the country….

She was a domestic Harvardite, I added.

You went to Harvard?

She’s a graduate of their Law School.

I flew to Mumbai and met with Vicki and studied the arguments and decisions of the case. Her first appeal had been turned down, so she appointed me as her new attorney. The first thing I did was get a two month stay to study the case. They granted that. It was there that I learned of Mike’s plans to finish his cruise in Nice. However, she had heard nothing from him in almost a year so she didn’t know where he was. For all she knew, he was with Carmen Sandiego….

We all laughed at that remark.

"Then I turned detective. I searched a database of all ships’ whereabouts in the world and found that Becki II was in Nice. I flew to Nice and found the boat, but no one was there. I inquired at the Marina office and they said that Mike had not been there in four weeks and that only Dolph was living there. The office had been told to keep an eye out for Dolph while Mike was in India. They said he had gone to India the latter part of January. Well, I knew that wasn’t true so I searched another database and found his ticket on a flight to Mumbai on January twenty-eighth. I checked with the airline and found that he had not been on the flight, and in fact, there had been an explosion there that day that had delayed all flights. I read up on the explosion and learned that those injured had been sent to three different hospitals. Two were in Nice and one was in Paris. I visited every patient hurt in the explosion in the hospitals in Nice. She stopped here and appeared somber. I also checked the morgue, Mike."

She had never told me of that visit.

Not being successful…as if there is anything successful in a morgue, I flew to Paris, found the hospital where those victims had been taken and then visited every one of them. That’s when I found him…but he didn’t recognize me.

Well, said Vickie, the poor thing hadn’t seen you in two years!

Well, nothing! He had amnesia!

Oh…the old ‘don’t recognize you’ trick, huh? laughed Vickie.

I really did have amnesia! I exclaimed.

Uh-huh, she joked.

Well, I flew back to Nice and found Dolph and told him where Mike was, and he, lickety-split, was off the boat before I could say anything else. I went onto the boat and it looked like a teenager’s room so I cleaned it up and then flew back to Mumbai the next day. In any case, I was listening to the arguments and doodling on this piece of paper….

When she showed me her notes…along with them was this piece of paper with lots of doodles on it. So I started calling her ‘Doodles’ after that.

I felt a tug on my arm and opened my eyes again to the snow coming down. It’s about time to go, she said. I wearily arose and finished dressing. The reading would begin in an hour and as if by rote, I picked up my materials and we went out into the night.

CHAPTER 2

Life gets Interesting

I

J UAN AND VICKIE arrived on Saturday, dressed like Eskimos going to the winter carnival. He, being from Mexico, was not used to cold weather and had only experienced a small part of it when he was in Macedonia and then some in Paris. We hadn’t seen them in a year. He was using a cane, but his legs seemed to be doing well, although spasmodic at times. I had been fortunate in regaining the use of mine as Doodles settled in with me. Somehow, the psychology of loss, shock from the girls’ deaths, and Vicki’s release and rescue from the gallows had worn away, and freed my legs from the emotional prison in which I had kept them. I imagine the love of a good woman had more to do with it, than anything.

The next reading was to be in Moldova. How these people had ever gotten a hold of my book was beyond me. Apparently, it had been published in a number of different languages. In this case, as I was to learn, it had been translated into Russian. Chisinau was the city where we would be lodging for three days. When the four of us stepped off the plane, it was obvious that Juan was the only one with any sense. The Eskimo in the brown hooded fur coat was certainly warmer than the rest of us, who, while dressed for the cold, could have used a few more layers.

It was not snowing, but windy and cold. I expected to be chased off the tarmac by wolves, as we crossed from the plane to the terminal. Our representatives met us as usual and after greetings, took us to our hotel. The reading would be that night in the old commissar building. They expected two thousand people.

Juan and Vickie sat in the front row and listened to the part about rounding the horn and hanging on as Becki turned completely over. There were digital translators in the rows for those who didn’t know English. It was a normal reading and the people of this city were warm and friendly, but I had experienced this warmth in my earlier travels in the Ukraine. It seemed to be commonplace with the people of this part of the world. I wondered why it was so. At times I considered the hard circumstances that this population had suffered under German and Russian rule. Maybe it had tempered them to some extent.

The next day I was to speak to the cadets of the Moldavian Navy. Now, while the country is close to the Black Sea…it is still landlocked. It was hard to imagine that it had a navy, but then the state of Arizona has a naval academy, so why am I surprised? I spoke of nothing really technical, but rather told some of the adventures that had come along with Becki herself. When she went aground, was amusing, so was riding out the hurricane. However, they expressed shock at hearing her break in two as the sperm whale snapped her at mid-bow.

Juan was with me, while the girls were out shopping. We walked down the street to one of the college eateries after my talk and spent time warming up over a cup of coffee, stuffed cabbage rolls and sauerkraut. Fortunately, Romanian, their language, is a romance language so since I knew Spanish and French, we were able to communicate. Otherwise, I might have ordered pig entrails accompanied by brain.

The café was crowded so when a middle-aged man asked to sit at our table we were obliged to allow him to do so. He was short and portly, sporting a small dark mustache and wearing glasses that looked like the bottom of Coca Cola bottles. He took his overcoat off and hung it on the back of his chair, then sat down and proceeded to eat what looked like borscht. He ate quietly, saying nothing, while Juan and I discussed the morning class.

He surprised us when all of a sudden he interrupted us by saying, You’re Mike Barrier aren’t you?

Well…yes…were you at the book reading last night?

Yes, I was. His accent was heavy for Romanian. I bought the book and have been reading it. I was wondering if you would sign it?

Why sure! Do you have it with you?

No…are you reading tonight? I could bring it then.

No, we are leaving in the morning….

For Kiev?

I was surprised that he knew this, but perhaps he had read it in some schedule of cities and dates somewhere.

Why, yes, as a matter of fact….

If it is alright, I will send my daughter up to your hotel…the Park…am I not correct?

I was even more surprised at this bit of information for the publisher always kept my lodging quiet, even checking me in under assumed names. At times I was unaware of the name and had been embarrassed at not knowing my own name. We had discussions about this, but they seemed to always win. They said it was better this way.

Uh…that’s fine…we’ll be in later in the evening after dinner. Just have the front desk call up and I’ll come down.

II

I had forgotten our arrangement by the time the four of us had returned from dinner. It was late for we had been immersed in one of Juan’s stories about his time on the Cote d’Ivoire. It was one of those edge of your seat, but laughing all the way stories. We hadn’t been in the room five minutes, before there was a knock at the door.

I opened it to a statuesque woman with coal black hair cut short to her neck. Her bangs were full, her skin was translucent white and her lips were red. Except for the ring in the side of her nose and four rhinestone studs in each ear — she was a raving beauty. She appeared to be in her mid- thirties. She was not smiling, but I knew why she was at my door. She held a copy of my book.

Mr. Barrier, my father asked you to sign your book….

Ah, yes, come in….

She was polite and courteous, excusing her appearance at such a late hour.

Did they just send you up from the front desk?

No, I knew your room number….

Juan and Vickie watched as Doodles offered her something to drink. The woman declined. She handed me the book. Would you please sign it here? She opened the book to a center page where there appeared a sheet of paper with writing in cursive. She held it where I could read it easily.

May I please speak with you privately? I read the sentence and then looked up at her. Her eyes were ebony and all of a sudden she took on the appearance of some Cold War Russian spy. I looked over at Doodles who appeared to be nervous. If I went into some room and closed the door with this femme fatale, well, that would be the start of World War Three. I jotted down next to the sentence….

My wife needs to be in attendance also. She nodded approval and I gestured for Doodles to follow us into the bedroom. The three of us disappeared leaving Juan and Vickie thinking all kinds of thoughts.

Doodles was already suspicious and I suspect she thought the woman had a gun tucked inside her garter. For all I knew, Doodles had a knife planted inside hers.

The man you met, she whispered, is not my father. He is with the CIA and I am his liaison. We have been observing you since you entered Eastern Europe. We need your help if possible….

So that’s how you knew our hotel and our room number?

Yes…we pretty much know all about you. We even know that Mrs. Lewis killed Hilary Barrier. That was very smart of you to find that legal loophole. She looked at Doodles, who was not smiling.

We have an agent who has disappeared. He is vital to us and has information that is of the utmost importance. We think he is in Russia, maybe as remote as Siberia, but in any case, since your schedule calls for you to enter that country, we think you could help in an unobtrusive way. Her English was excellent. I could pick up no trace of an accent.

We don’t know how to be spies, offered Doodles.

The woman smiled. You won’t be spies. We will be with you all the way…just unseen. If you are agreeable to serving your country…all you have to do is continue on with your schedule and you will be contacted in Kiev.

It wasn’t that I wanted to be a spy. It was just adventurous enough and a break from our routine that I agreed, but only after getting a nod of approval from the woman with the knife in her garter.

Don’t mention a word of this to anyone.

We both nodded and then the three of us exited the bedroom with Juan and Vickie moving quickly away from the door and then pretending to be busy at doing something.

It was nice meeting you, she said as she passed them. Oh dear, I almost forgot…would you sign this please. I took the book and scribbled my name on the title page. She left as quickly as she had arrived, walking down the hall with her head down.

We turned around to face the other two, with Vickie having a look on her face of, Well?

Doodles was forthcoming immediately. She wants us to be spies!

I raised my hands in the air with a look of unbelievability. Hon!

What? Well, Vickie is not anyone. She can keep a secret!

You can’t even keep a secret! I exclaimed.

III

The girls sat together on the flight to Kiev. Juan and I could hear them talking and giggling in the row in back of us. With all the whisperings about secret codes, disguises, rendezvous points and saving the world it sounded like they were rehearsing their parts for Get Smart and The Spy Who Shagged Me movies. I kept rerunning Natasha’s conversation with us in my mind. She never mentioned her name, but she just looked like a Natasha to me. I guess spies don’t mention names, or at least real names, anyway. I began to think what kind of a pseudonym I could use. Then, I began to berate myself for falling into the same comedic sphere that the girls were giggling about behind us.

It did make sense, though. We were unassuming travelers just visiting cities reading a book that had been written a year earlier. We wouldn’t stand out like some shadowy figure in a trench coat lurking in a dark alley.

Take us to someplace that sells trench coats! I exclaimed when I had settled into the cab. Kiev was much colder than Chisinau. Juan sat smugly, up front, in his Eskimo suit. I expected him to offer us an Eskimo pie at any time. It was snowing and I looked back to see if we were being chased by wolves. The driver waited for us as we shopped in a large department store, where I found a nice black coat that was lined with rabbit fur and had a fur collar. I added, at the insistence of the salesman, a fur hat. It was mink. I decided to splurge just in case we did have to go on to Siberia. There I go again — daydreaming. I told you that money had not ruined me. I could have bought a mink coat, for I had a little over thirty-five million dollars in just the treasure I had sent back to the kids. I guess you could call me a billionaire if we ever retrieved that treasure on the bottom. When Doodles saw the other women dressed so fashionably, she asked if she could do the same. Sure, why not. Only there was nothing in this store that appealed to her so the driver took us to Romanov Yugarin. That’s Neiman Marcus spelled backwards. I have to admit she picked out a beautiful fur coat, fur hat and even fur boots. None of them were rabbit, either. I was told that I would bring an economic impact to each city I visited. Well, this was the economic impact for Kiev.

I had been to Kiev years ago teaching English as a volunteer and came to love the people. It became dear to my heart as I observed the friendliness and warmth of my students and then learned of the sad history of this city and even the Ukraine itself. I was watching for a particular monument and upon passing it, asked the driver to turn around and go back.

I think you all should see this, I said as I exited the cab. We walked through the snow, down the hill to a big stone memorial, close to the Dnieper River.

This country is the breadbasket of Eastern Europe. It’s rich with grain. The problem, though, is that it lay between Germany and Russia. Underneath this snow is a cobblestone street that was laid by the Nazis. Both Russia and Germany had dictators, who were paranoid, of course. They trusted no one. Stalin, especially, was notorious for his paranoia. He would move entire demographic groups far from their homeland to keep them from thinking anything about nationalization.

I think I read somewhere that he did that with Mongolians, said Juan.

That’s right, I responded. Well, Ukrainians are a fiercely nationalistic people and Stalin knew this. He was afraid that they would revolt and want to break away from the Soviet Union. So the first thing he did was arrest five thousand Ukrainian intellectuals and leaders. They were either murdered or sent to prison camps in Siberia….

Siberia? Where we’re going?

We don’t know that we’re going there, babe. I looked at my fashionista wife, who was smiling, even as the snowflakes pelted her face.

You’re just dying to go there, aren’t you? said Eskimo Boy.

That’s a horrible pun! commented Vickie.

I didn’t mean it as a pun…honestly.

Well, I continued, Stalin’s reasoning was that the masses would be left without any guidance or direction…and in a way he was correct, but he went a step further. He regarded the self-sufficient farms of the Ukrainian peasants as a threat to his ideals. So he began to eliminate the independent farm holdings and created collective farm units.

Those didn’t work, added Juan.

That’s right! Even those didn’t work, so he had the Soviet police confiscate the homes, livestock, wheat crops and all the valuable possessions of the Ukrainian farmers. Then, he imposed heavy grain taxes deliberately leaving families to starve.

Well, I wouldn’t have stood for that! exclaimed Doodles.

Well, they didn’t. They got out their guns, but when they resisted, they were either shot or deported to regions in Siberia. Those that were left, said, ‘If I can’t have it…you can’t have it.’ So they burned their homes to the ground and killed their livestock. Then, they hid their grain. It was found and their punishment was death.

We were now standing in front of the huge stone edifice.

So where did the grain go? asked Vickie.

It was exported to European countries and the money was used to fuel Stalin’s five year plan for the transformation of the Soviet Union. Only the animals needed to work on the farms were fed. The people were left to starve. The granaries were guarded to ensure that no one would steal grain supplies. So there was a famine in 1932-1933. Twenty-five thousand people a day died. They resorted to what others have done down over the centuries in China and even Jerusalem…they turned to cannibalism. In all, over ten million people starved to death.

And that’s what this monument is? asked Doodles. I nodded. I let the words sink in. We were all quiet as we stood looking at the figures on the wall. Even when we turned to go, we said nothing as we walked, somberly, back to the cab.

CHAPTER 3

St. Andrews Hill

I

I GUESS I wasn’t surprised at the number of people who came out to hear me read on such a cold night. Most had traveled by Metro and bus. This cold weather was foreign to me especially after having sailed in the South Pacific. Frankly, I was getting weary of reading and surely was tired of the cold weather. Such inclement weather was second nature to these hardy souls. The auditorium was cool, so much so that I had on an extra sweater to combat the chill. Doodles wore her new coat the entire evening as did many of those in attendance. I didn’t know what to read to this winter crowd so I asked those in the hotel what they would prefer to hear — cold weather stories or warm weather stories. The reaction was mixed. I decided to read about the outback Aborigines in Australia and then the cold Christmas in Rome.

As usual we spoke to many people afterwards and signed books as well. One older man gave me his hardback to sign. He didn’t say a word — just handed me the book and opened it to a page in the front. I smiled at him and then looked down at the book. There was already some writing on the page and I didn’t really pay too much attention to it, just signing my name below the sentences. I looked closer at it after signing.

Need Siberia postcards? Go up St. Andrews Hill on Saturday afternoon.

I handed the book back to him and smiled. He, apparently, was unsure if I had gotten the message, so he opened the book and with his finger laying on the sentences, said, thank you, in Russian. I smiled and nodded my head, as if getting the idea.

The day had been long with the flight and then the time at the Memorial. I went to bed and said nothing of the message in the book. Maybe I should keep this to myself, since everyone else, especially the two female spies, seemed to be so vocal about the opportunity.

I think I’ll take a walk up St. Andrew’s Hill tomorrow.

Oh, what’s that?

Doodles had gotten used to sleeping naked with me. The cold weather was not a deterrent to either one of us, and in fact made such evening rendezvous so much more pleasant with the warmth from each other’s bodies. It was cold outside the covers, but comfortably and sensually warm underneath. She eased herself on top of me.

It’s a street of vendors, kind of like a flea market and….

Uh-huh, she kissed me. Now why do you want to spend the morning doing that? Wouldn’t you rather lie here with me? She kissed me again, tugging at my lower lip.

I am going to lie here with you, because I’m not going until the afternoon…. With that, we rolled over, switching positions….

II

The day turned out to be sunny, but cold, leaving the ice on the streets no opportunity to melt. I had boots just for this kind of weather and had used them already in Croatia, Moldova and here. The girls decided to go with us at the last minute and while Juan and I were ready for the Arctic, I fretted about the girls’ footwear when I saw what they meant by St. Andrew’s Hill. It was a steep hill of about eight to ten blocks in length. I hadn’t seen a city street like this since my college days in San Francisco. It wasn’t that the girls’ boots were not warm enough…it’s just that, they were these raised-heel things. Added to that was their fashionable coats, hats and scarves. If there was any Russian mafia in the neighborhood…we would be prime targets. Maybe I had gotten a little paranoid over the years since our return from the sea. Then, we always had guns at our disposal. Now we carried nothing, but our wits.

The others thought it was a novel idea to spend the afternoon looking at tables of items set up along the curbs and on the sidewalks. There were a lot of nesting dolls. Those are the hand painted dolls that fit inside each other. I found one group of what looked like Eskimos and showed them to Juan. He was not amused. I guess he was getting tired of the Eskimo ribbing routine. The girls found scarves, while Juan and I looked at old Russian military badges. There were some new products, but mainly older collectible things.

There were tables of postcards, too. At each table I would ask for Siberia postcards, but was always met with a nyet. I was beginning to wonder if I was on the wrong side of the street. We passed the monastery and then I suggested we go down the other side. It would be easier going down hill. About half-way down I passed a post-card seller who inquired in English if I collected postcards. I have everything from Moldova to Siberia.

I’m interested in Siberia, I mentioned as a matter-of-fact.

I felt Doodle’s arm go through mine. Baby, I’m getting cold. Can we catch a cab home now? She hugged me tight, while the vendor reached under his table.

Yes, I just got a new selection in, yesterday, from Siberia. He handed me ten cards and I looked at each one, but there was nothing on any of them to signify any kind of spy activity or clues. I couldn’t read Russian anyway. I guess this was the wrong table.

No.

No? But can we hurry…maybe get something hot to drink?

No, I wasn’t talking to you, honey. I was talking to this man.

Oh, he spoke up, those are my expensive cards. I have some cheaper ones. In fact, if you buy two of these for ten each, I can throw in six of the less expensive ones, free. He looked at me without taking his stare away. It is a deal? Yes? Better than any cards you could find in Moldova! He continued to look at me in a way that seemed foreign to me. I know that sounds like a pun, but after sailing around the world, I had not had anyone look at me like that. Perhaps it was a signal. I decided to take a chance.

Alright…twenty for the two and six free ones!

Ah! You make good deal! Six for free. Enjoy them when you have time to look at them and also the stamps. Do you collect stamps?

‘Uh…no…."

I love stamps. They tell such interesting stories. Someday, you should take up that hobby!

Doodles was prancing up and down, in place, and if it hadn’t been so cold I would have thought that she needed a restroom. We made our way down the hill and hailed a cab. The four of us jumped into the back seat and huddled together for warmth.

Take us to someplace for a good meal and good coffee.

He took us to Navodnytsky Café. The view looked to be good so we exited the warm cab and went into the building, which immediately assaulted us with succulent smells as soon as the door was opened. There was a booth with a window view so we weary shoppers slid into it and looked out the window. The cafe sat on a hill and looked down on a monument. I recognized it immediately. It was a boat with four people in it. They were the founders of Kiev. It sat next to the river and in Navodnytsky Park. Thus the name for the café.

Orders for hot chocolate and coffee were the first words out of our mouths. I didn’t understand what the waiter meant when he muttered something about gorilka. I just nodded yes. I didn’t know if the view was similar to King Kong’s view off the Empire State Building, or what. He couldn’t have been talking about Juan. He may have resembled an Eskimo, but certainly not a gorilla.

Juan pulled out his military medals he had made deals on and was explaining them to us. They were early fifties Russian medals of service, wounding and one for valor. At least, that’s what he had been told. For all we knew…it could have been a good conduct medal. I pulled out my cards. The two expensive ones of Siberia were covered with some kind of glitter and were embossed. The other six were fairly ordinary and were scenes of Siberian towns. I guess they were Siberian. All the words were in Russian. I saw nothing on any of these cards to signify any code or clues or anything like that. I was disappointed and thought that surely, I had bungled things by not coming in contact with whoever was supposed to be on that hill. How could the CIA use a bungling spy? They must have thought that if I sailed all the way around the world, I at least had the intelligence to make it up a hill and come into contact with some postcard seller. I was turning out to be Lou Costello of Spy Inc. Here, I thought the girls were going to be giving us away and I was the one who had flubbed everything up. Maybe if I went up the hill again, tomorrow, I would be given a second chance. Yeah, that’s it. I just needed a second chance…well, OK, maybe a third chance, too.

Whew! That is strong! Juan startled all of us, as he winced, after taking a sip of his coffee.

Like Turkish, huh? I smiled.

No! It’s got vodka in it!

We all took a sip, pursed our lips, make a face and attempted to keep the tears from our eyes. It tasted so bad…that it was good. I called the waiter over. What is in the drink?

Gorilka!

You sure it’s not vodka, for it tastes like vodka, commented Juan.

No, not vodka, but Ukrainian gorilka…like vodka. Good, yes?

We all smiled and I think he took that as a yes. It was not so bad that we eschewed it. We drank the coffee and hot chocolate, which apparently had a shot of gorilka in each cup…and then ordered more. We were acquiring a taste for it.

It reminds me of the noni juice that I put in Vicki’s drinks….

Vicki Lewis? asked Doodles.

Yes, she had a drinking problem and the noni juice…I think it was Tonga where we picked it up, was supposed to be a cure-all for all kinds of ailments including alcoholism. Well, I had my doubts, thinking it was a quack medicine and…you have to understand that…Vicki was kind of a quack herself. Bless her heart. You just had to have known her from the beginning to understand what I’m saying. She’s nothing like that today. In any case, somehow, that noni juice made all liquor taste bad to her. She was always complaining that the liquor and beer she was drinking, all over the world, was just plain…no good. Finally she gave it up, except when she was shooting it up her veins….

She was shooting it up her veins? exclaimed Juan.

Yeah…trying to bypass her palate.

Where is she now? asked Vickie.

She’s in Florida, taking care of Michael….

Hilary’s son, interjected Doodles.

Yeah. He’s in kindergarten this year. I miss the little guy, but there’s no way we could bring him along on this tour.

Did you ever tell her about the noni juice? asked Vickie.

Nope.

I had to be crazy to order Zrazy, but I did anyway. It really was pretty good, considering that it was just potatoes, eggs and mushrooms. It was almost like Vickie’s Chicken Kiev, except there was no chicken in it. Doodles ordered borsch, primarily to warm her up. I could never develop a taste for it. I was urged to try it with vodka. Maybe the vodka was to knock you out so you would think you ate it. I don’t know. Juan ordered braised rabbit with vegetables, but only to the chagrin of the women. They could eat a dead cow, but somehow a dead Peter Cottontail was reprehensible. Stewed fruits were our dessert, along with one more shot of gorilka coffee.

III

A package was waiting for us when we returned to our hotel that evening. The desk clerk took the brown manila envelope out of the safe, instead of our room’s postal box. Perhaps it was too large for the box. In any case, he said that a man had brought it in during the afternoon. I asked for the man’s name, but he didn’t know. Once Doodles and I had unwrapped ourselves, like mummies going to a steam bath, I opened the envelope. Out dropped two passports. They had our pictures in them, along with our names, but they were Canadian issued. I looked for a letter or anything about their origin or what they were to be used for, but found nothing.

These passports have been used, she said. They have stamps and places going back to last year.

Mine has a visa for Russia that’s good for the next six months.

Mine too…what does that mean?

I don’t know. We weren’t going to Russia. Athens is our next stop. I laughed to myself, but she heard it. What’s so funny?

Well, I was just thinking of all the passports I had forged on that trip. I wonder if these are fakes too?

Ha! What goes around comes around?

I couldn’t sleep that night. Undoubtedly, the passports had something to do with the spying, but because of my ineptness on St. Andrews Hill, I had inadvertently missed my contact. I was behind in the espionage thread of events now, not knowing what to do with the documents. I had to make sure I made contact on Sunday afternoon.

Getting up in the night involves a quick trip, whether your Ukrainian hotel room is heated or not. The only good thing about such a jaunt was getting back into a warm bed. Doodles would flinch sometimes when I surprised her, but neither of us ever wanted to go back to wearing clothes to bed again. This was one night I was to make an exception. I couldn’t get my failure on St. Andrews Hill out of my mind. I got up again, but this time I donned a bathrobe and slippers. I made my way over to the desk, turned on the lamp and sat down with my postcards. I needed a Russian dictionary and found it in a program in my laptop. The postcards were of places. The Transfiguration Cathedral in Khabarovsk, downtown Tomsk, some kind of event in Omsk, the Koryaksky volcano, Lake Baikal, Novosibirsk, a fort in Yakutsk.

Even if these were the right postcards, none of this made any sense. Was there some kind of code here? Why did they have to pick a dumb spy? My only qualifications were finding passport forgers and illegal gun dealers and ferreting slaves out of bondage. Was I supposed to be some kind of underground railroad? Maybe these were places I was supposed to go to find whatever…I don’t know.

There was writing on the six free postcards, but it was in Russian and looked old. Postmarks ranged from 1908 to 1930. Some of the words I could translate were, family, miss you, cold, well, of course! Siberia has to be cold. The words all seemed innocuous and nothing out of the ordinary. The writing was faint and in cursive, almost calligraphic in appearance. It certainly was nothing that could be construed as modern. The stamps were interesting. The earlier ones were from the czarist time period. I was surprised that these had not been confiscated during the Communist era. I had collected stamps in my youth, encouraged by my great aunt and uncle, who incidentally, were Uncle Gene’s aunt and uncle. Hmm…someone must have used an old stamp to mail this card. It was a czarist stamp, but the date was 1930 on the card.

Enjoy them when you have time to look at them and also the stamps. Do you collect stamps?

Uh…no….

I love stamps. They tell such interesting stories. Someday you should take up that hobby!

I inspected each stamp, carefully. For what was I supposed to be looking? I was as confused as I was in my first year of algebra. Hmm…this stamp doesn’t have the cancellation ink on it, whereas the rest of the postmark is on the card. The cancellation ends at the stamp, as though it’s been cut off. I started to scrape the stamp off with my fingernail. Well, that was useless. I had just trimmed my nails a day earlier. I needed Doodles’ nails that she had just had done in Moldova.

Hon…Hon, wake up!

Huh?

I need your help…I need you to get up….

I’m not getting up in this cold…go back to sleep. A cold naked woman is no good to you…and you won’t be any good either in this cold…I know.

No really…It’s not that…it’s about the ‘spying’….

She pulled the cover from over her head and looked at me in the dimness of the desk light. This better not be a trick.

It’s not…get dressed and come over to the desk.

She slipped on her robe and slippers and squinted as she approached the desk.

There’s something unusual about these stamps. The postmark ends at the edge of the stamp, as though it was put on after the postmark. Some of these stamps are from a different era than the postmark dates, anyway. Can you peel this stamp off? My nails are too short.

She attempted to focus on the stamp and finally, began to try to peel it, but her nails were too thick. These are French nails. They won’t work.

French? You’ve had those since Paris?

No, it’s just the style.

I could see now that what we needed were tweezers. Six months ago she was plucking her eyebrows, but no longer since she had them tattooed. It was one of the smartest things that she had ever done, she told me. No longer did she have to stand with a magnifying glass and work at plucking her eyebrows. Tweezers were out of the question.

Maybe Vickie has some tweezers? I asked.

I have tweezers. We don’t need to wake her up.

I thought you quit carrying those, since you don’t pluck your eyebrows anymore?

Ha. I hate to throw anything away. Just kept up the habit. Always be prepared…you know.

She went to the bathroom and returned with not only the tweezers, but her magnifying glass.

She examined the stamp with the magnifying glass. It looks like there are two stamps here. She took the tweezers and began to lift the edge of the top stamp. Slowly, it peeled off. Underneath was another stamp and the rest of the postmark. Hmm…well what was that all about? My heart sank as I concluded that we were at another dead end.

Is there something on the back of this stamp…it looks dirty, I asked. She took the magnifying glass and looked closely. There’s writing…it’s in English. ‘Moscow contact Igor Zimskov…495-728-5577.

She peeled the next stamp off. Train contact…Vladimir Fradkov…499-621-7833. The next stamp yielded Novosibirsk contact…Akil Masimov…383-690-3267. The fourth stamp showed Driver contact…#5060 Vostochnaya Kukhnia after…6.

No phone number?

No.

Is that his name?

If it is…his mother must have had a hard time in delivery. The fifth stamp had an address, Krazny Prospect, 49.

That’s got to be an address, I muttered, but where?

She peeled the last stamp off. This one says, ‘Leo Tolstoy.’

Leo Tolstoy? The writer? He’s dead.

Well, she looked at me, maybe as spies we will find that he is alive.

Well, that would be something, seeing that he would be almost two hundred years old! I gathered the stamps and then noticed that the first stamp was blank. Hey! The writing on this stamp has disappeared! Quick! What did it say?

Something Zimskov, I think! We need to write all the rest of this stuff down, before the others disappear too! she exclaimed. She read the notes to me as I scribbled the information on the hotel notepad. The longer the ink was exposed to the air, the sooner it disappeared. Within an hour, all of the writings had vanished. I thought that the disappearing ink that I had made as a youngster playing with my Christmas chemistry set was just a trick. Now I realized that this whole game was real.

How will we find this ‘Zimskov?’ she asked.

Maybe he’s in the phonebook.

What? Under ‘Spies?’

I looked at her. This serious, Harvard trained attorney, and beauty of a woman with the messed up hair was gorgeous. I couldn’t help but love her. She was turning out to be a good spy.

Can we go back to bed now? she asked.

Are you warm?

I will be once I get next to you!

I turned the lamp off and we both shed our bathrobes and slippers and jumped into the bed.

Oh! Oh! Oh! Your feet are cold!

CHAPTER 4

The Troika Driver

I

I HAD NO idea how to get