Desperado Dale (Scenic Route to Paradise) (16 page)

After some minutes of shuffling chairs and
getting the children seated at the other table settled, Tina asked Dale to
bless the meal. It was a healthy dinner with potatoes and chicken and kale
salad with goats’ milk drilla on top. The fare being much better than the house
had been serving for many months. Bernie’s and Bean’s supplies from Avliotes
would keep the orphanage supplied for at least a month. Food on the island was
extremely expensive. After
Greece
began its economic tailspin, locals who hadn’t had a
personal garden for thirty years, planted one. There were groves and vineyards
and orchards all over the island but food was money. Bernie and Bean had lots
of the new currency thanks to the anonymous smuggler who had exchanged Bean’s
travel bag with his own and they traded jewelry, too.

Bethania who was seated next to Bean asked, “How
old are you?”

Jellybean said, “I’m eighty-eight and you?”

Anna overhearing their conversation smiled to
herself realizing that whenever elderly people got around each other, one of
the first questions asked and answered concerned age. Then she heard Adi Klein
asking the same question of the child just behind her. “I’m seven. How old are
you?” This brought a chuckle to Anna’s lips. Hearing her, Dale sitting next to
his wife, bent towards her giving her cheek a kiss.

It was quite dark and cool. The thick curtains
on the front room windows had been drawn. Bernie built a fire in the fireplace.
The children had been bathed and put to bed for the night. Bethania stayed with
the Klein girls in a back room which housed six other children but the other
adults sat around the fire talking. Jellybean with Dale’s help brought forth
coffee and freshly made baklava. Bean had provided the ingredients from
Avliotes and another cousin, Tina’s neighbor made up the sweet dessert.

Tina was exhausted. Her days normally busy had
become only more hectic when Anna arrived although she was overjoyed to see her
cousin and extremely grateful for the
Adams
’ providential gifts.

She repeated to Dale and Sam the information she
had gleaned from Zeff who crewed on the
Serendipity
before the internet
went down.

“I
got word from a friend of mine from D’Almata that Merry - your sister was on
the
Serendipity
. When I tried to contact her, the first mate, Zeff
replied instead…” she told them with a self-conscious laugh. “I never did talk
with Merry! Anyway, it’s been almost a week. Zeff said the D’Almatan captain
was coming to get you… All of you!” Tina poured a coffee for Bethania who came
from the darkened hallway. Bethania was a tea drinker but she accepted
politely.

“Zeff is a repository of news. Apparently the
reliable D’Almatan grapevine has been trading information about the
Merriweather children for months. I would guess your mother, Dale, is marrying
a very important personage from D’Almata,” Tina said with a twinkle in her eye.

Uncertain, Dale shrugged but Toni’s parents,
Bernie and Bean said “Of course,” simultaneously.

Bernie asked Tina about the sloop’s coordinates.
She didn’t know but she told them Zeff had mentioned that Mac was in a hurry.
Bernie wondered out loud about communication and how they would connect with
the boat. “Its not like we have a ticket and boarding time,” he said.

Bethania and Tina laughed, looking at each
other, as if a private joke was being shared.

With soft laughter lacing her words, Bethania
said, “Kerkyra and D’Almata are like brothers in love with the same damsel.
They spy on each other and banter across the Adriatic but often turns a blind
eye to the other’s exploits. This island has numerous D’Almatan citizens
spying, smuggling, bartering, wooing and all of them without genuine documents
but still moving freely about the isle. Since these
Ionian Islands
joined
Greece
, our brothers from
D’Almata have become cautious. Their island is fortified but as we know,
Kerkyra is porous… an open book to our neighbors from D’Almata.”

Tina nodded. She said, “It’s true. When the
sloop drops anchor, someone will come knocking and off you go.”

By
ten o’clock
, only Bernie, Jellybean and Bethania remained
huddled at the dying fire. Tina had taken the others to her neighbor’s, the
baklava cook since Tina’s house was full with 20 children, including the Klein
children.

Bethania assumed Dale’s grandparents were
genuine Christians, as he was and she spoke freely of her recent conversion.
They were silent for the most part as they had resisted Toni Merriweather’s
radical conversion and her message of salvation for more than 30 years. Their
youth, marriage and lifestyle of wealth and culture failed to bring the joy
advertised by those who they assumed should know these things. The couple
divorced when Toni and her four sisters were in elementary school – a long time
ago. Although Bernie and Bean had remained friends at arms length and a team
when family difficulties arose, now as they pressed towards their ninth decade
of life, both noticed a chasm of deficiency.

Bethania said with a gentle laugh, “I was such
an old fool. My way… my pride. And the entire time, God had his eye on me. He
was watching over me, setting me up to know Him… to understand eternal truth.
Ne!
I was such an old fool.” Bethania looked at the other two. “
Ne!
But not
anymore!” she finished with a smile; her gold fillings glittering in the
firelight. Then she excused herself to check on Liraz and Adi.

Bernie and Bean sat listening to the periodic
popping from the embers. Bernie said, “I think we missed something, way back
when.”

Blowing her nose, Bean didn’t respond.

“It’s too late to start over but you know, dear
we could start
again
,” he said tentatively. Reaching over, he patted
Jellybean’s hand.

The fire danced.
Sparks
shot up as the front door opened and
closed. Tina was back. The elderly couple looking tired turned to her. “This is
for you, Mrs Adams. My cousin, Christina asked me to give this to you.” Tina
handed her a folded sheet of lined notebook paper.

In pencil, a recipe for baklava was scrawled.

Christina’s
Famous Baklava

2 cp sugar

3 cp water

½ lemon (juice – squeezed)

2 or 3 pieces orange peel

1 tsp whole cloves

2 small pieces cinnamon sticks

1-2 tsp ground cinnamon

¼ cp walnuts

3 Tblsp melted butter

filo dough (average package)

Pre-heat the oven 375F

-Add sugar, water, orange peels, cloves and
cinnamon sticks; boil until it thickens like syrup. Add ground cinnamon and
walnuts.

-In a glass pan, grease with butter or spray w/
Pam like product.

-Layers 8 pieces of filo, brush w/ melted
butter. Sprinkle with walnut mixture.

-Add two pieces of filo and repeat process.

-Top layer; add 5 pieces of filo brush w/
butter.

-Cut into triangles and put a clove on each one.

-Pour the remaining syrup over baklava; sprinkle
with cinnamon.

-Bake 30 minutes at 375F

Chapter 27  Karlo’s Clue

Very early with only the village roosters
announcing the approaching dawn, Mr Adams pattered about Tina’s kitchen
preparing a pot of coffee. He found a small pitcher of thick goat’s milk in the
refrigerator. Goat’s milk had never been a favorite of Bernie’s but having to
use it to replace half ‘n half for the last week, he decided he liked it well
enough.

The morning air was cold but Bernie was
determined to “enjoy” the Greek experience. When Jellybean found him sitting on
a stone wall in the dawning sunlight, he was ready for the second cup of coffee
she brought out to him. As he watched her approach, Mr Adams thought his wife
had aged rather well. Her voice was strained and her balance wasn’t as stable
as it had been, he decided as he hopped up to steady her when she drew near. Still,
she was a class act he decided and beautiful, too.

Bean eyed him doubtfully as he took her elbow in
one hand and the extra mug of steaming coffee in his other. “I thought I might
find you out here,” she told him. She carried a cloth bag over her shoulder and
wore a heavy red sweater that she found lying on the bench by the front door.

“You know me so well, my dear,” Bernie said with
a smile as he helped her get seated on the wall. The stones were frigid and so
after emptying the canvas bag, Bean repositioned herself.

“That’s better,” she said now sitting on the
flattened bag.

Bernie sipped his coffee and nodded when he saw
the notebook emerge from the bag. “Are we back to reading the journal?” he
asked.

Jellybean handed it over to him. “You can read it
if you want but I think we have the gist of it and why perhaps, it was included
with all that money and the jewelry.”

Taking the notebook, Mr Adams did a thoughtful
examination of the cover and pages again. “Yes, I know but it is very
interesting and the notes here would be even more interesting to someone who
knew these
Ionian
Islands
well.”

“According to Tina, we should be expecting Merry
and her husband anytime now and then we’ll be gone from here… Such a shame that
we cannot put this document into the proper hands,” Bean commented. “We used
quite a bit of that jewelry for Tina’s orphanage. I don’t suppose we could give
the rest to her and just take the information with us for future purposes,”
added Bean.

Bernie peered at his ex-wife from the lip of his
coffee cup. He had spent a lot of thought on how to proceed with the expensive
baubles and new currency. The wealth was obviously donated by concerned people
for a specific and worthy reason.

If the cause was for something as frivolous as
saving an endangered island pinebush or restoring a religious monument, Bernie
would have taken the treasure without qualm, apportioning it as he or Bean saw
fit. In his short life of ninety years, he had seen that in the long run
conservatism only slowed the rot but like mold on a wedge of cheese, eventually
the moldering was complete. In theory, Mr Adams had known according to the laws
of physics that conservation was ultimately futile. Such physical laws as the
Second Law of Thermodynamics proved everything ended in chaos although any
given arrangement
began with
order. Harvard had taught him that. He had
explained to Bean after she overheard his recent discussion with Anna that the
order they spoke of was represented by the wedge of cheese and the decay symbolized
chaos. Having meditated and theorized and experienced his findings, Bernie
concluded that only eternal elements remained untouched by the laws of physics…
untouched by the moldering.

Eternal things included among other attributes
love, kindness, justice and according to Dale - God. Any of these are sound
investments...

“Bernie! Mr Adams, you are letting your mind
wander,” said Bean irritably. She had been talking but then realized
he
wasn’t listening.

“I was not letting my mind wander!” he retorted.

“Yes, uh-huh!”

“No… Not so!”

“Hmm-emh!”

“Well, I’m getting up there… In another decade,
my age will have three digits. So, I like to mull over my responses… To think
about priorities. Not be so hasty,” Bernie said.

Placated, Mrs Adams said, “Please, honey don’t
tune me out when I speak. I was saying that there might be another holocaust
just like the one we saw when we were young. If so, this journal and the hiding
places it details on these islands and the best routes of escape could be very
useful… to the Jews or anybody else trying to survive a pogrom.”

Bernie was agreeing by bobbing his head and yet,
his mind was relaying another message.

She said ‘honey!’ Bean hasn’t called me ‘honey’
in fifty years! She called me ‘honey!’

Forty-five minutes up the road,
Karlo and his number
two man sat at the tavern behind the more respectable Georgios having their
final drink before ambling off to bed. Kerkyra was quickly becoming a dead-end
for Karlo’s career aspirations. An old girlfriend had been from the island and
she had raved about it being like paradise. Remembering her promising
description, Karlo shook his head in disgust.

After two years, he was ready to move on. The
light at the end of the tunnel was the tip-off that there were some important
papers and a small fortune smuggled onto the island from
France
. Two parties were
looking for the package and both had asked him to locate it. He was on the
payroll of one and the other offered a sizeable sum in exchange for the sealed
papers.

“If the seal is broken, I will give you only
half but if the document remains sealed then I will give you what I promised,”
the woman had told him. When she had first contacted Karlo to arrange a
meeting, he had expected a tall blonde Russian or someone similar meeting him
on an isolated beach. Instead, they met in the city in the Jewish quarter. She
was a petite brunette; very young with beautiful eyes, he imagined – if only
she would have removed the oversized sunglasses. She gave him his instructions
and also, 1000 new Euros. “In good faith” she had said.