by Tom Corbett
“Oh, it is something we already touched upon. I vowed never to become complacent about the people I love. I will make sure they know how I feel, how much they mean to me, always. Karen knows, of course. But I cannot recall when I last told Kay or Amar or even Chris how much they mean to me. You assume people know but you should tell them.”
“Someone is missing from your list.” Azita looked a bit hurt.
“Who?” Deena looked perplexed.
“Me, you idiot.”
“Oh.” Deena looked thoughtful. “Let me see. I think you made the waiting list, but pretty close to the top in fact.” Deena started to walk faster, keeping just out of striking distance of her sibling. “But listen, I think we have talked way too much about serious stuff. Let us rather talk about funny and absurd things.”
“Like what?”
“As usual, your love life,” Deena responded. “That always makes me laugh, but you know that.” She giggled and ran ahead of her sister to where the peninsula came to an end. There was an arena-type facility built into an open area where picnics could easily be held. She found a place to sit while she waited for Azita to arrive.
When Azita arrived, she sat next to her sibling and said nothing. They both took in the serenity of their surroundings. An occasional boat added the breeze in disturbing the quiet surface of the waters. Deena became uneasy as Azita remained wordless. Finally, the younger sister spoke. “Did you ever learn to swim?”
“No.” Deena answered uncertainly.
“Good.” Azita looked at her mischievously. “But I will wait for these students now approaching to leave before I push you into the lake. There should be no witnesses.”
Deena ignored her humorous threat. “Really, I do want to know about Ahmad and Ben. I know you still are in contact with both, which surprises me. Have you become a wanton woman?”
Azita looked away as if ashamed at what she was about to say. “Hardly, I have not had sex in a year. Perhaps I should think about becoming a nun.”
“As if the church would take a Muslim nun.” Then, Deena absorbed what her sister had just said. “Wait? You have never slept with Ahmad and he still has not dumped you?”
“Why is that surprising? Don’t you think I am not worth the wait?” Azita asked cautiously.
“In truth, no. Alright, you are somewhat pretty now but any man that desires your body has to know that he will pay a big price.” Deena betrayed no humor in her words. “What do the Westerners say? You’re high maintenance.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, dear Zita.” Deena had picked up on the nickname Chris used. “You are willful, have no domestic skills, are absorbed by your profession, and have a terribly wicked wit. A man must endure much pain and suffering to put up with you. Ben was perfect. He was soft and followed you around like a puppy dog. He became trained. But Ahmad is so handsome and worldly. He must have many women wanting him. He is waiting for you to make up your mind. I cannot believe that, really.”
“Hmmm.” Azita looked out to the lake. “I wonder how long it will take them to find your body after I push you in.” Then she sighed. “The thing is that I know you’re right. I know it. So many times, my body cried out for him to take me, but my damn mind got in the way.”
“What in Allah’s name were you thinking?”
“Don’t laugh, okay.”
Deena looked sincere. “I won’t…unless I can’t help it.”
Azita glared at her but continued. “Ben has not made this easy. He kept showing up in Oxford, hoping I would take him back. I thought about it, a lot. He is devoted to me and we have much in common. It surely would be relationship that is…comfortable. And yet, I cannot get around the reality that his parents, his family, will never accept me. Perhaps they have arrived at the point where they will not oppose a marriage, not that I am certain of that, but they cannot fully embrace me and who I am. I am spoiled by the love of my original family and by Chris and Amar and Kay. I only know that kind of acceptance. Still, it is hard.”
“This is not my place, of course, but I am going to say something. You may be a great brain and are a science wizard, but you can be very extraordinarily dumb at times. If you had loved Ben you would have married him, nothing would have stood in your way. You are the girl that defied the Taliban, don’t you see? You took him in as you would a stray dog. He is the man that would make a great colleague in your lab. But that does not make him the man with whom to share your life, bear your children. A husband is someone you wake up next to every day, every damn day.” Deena struggled with where to go next, then decided. “Okay, here is the test. Did you orgasm when you made love to Ben?”
“Deena!” Azita exclaimed. “That’s personal.”
“Don’t be a child - did you?”
“Well…it was nice.”
“I thought not.” Deena grabbed her sister by the shoulders.
“I could have ended up in some arranged marriage to a man with whom I went through the motions. Now, I cannot even imagine that life. Never settle, do you hear me? Never. Go after Ahmad and throw yourself at him. Do you hear me? Rip off his clothes and violate him. I just hope it is not too late. And until then, I desperately hope you are gratifying yourself.”
Deena braced for a response of shock from her sister, but Azita merely looked out over the waters that surrounded them. Without comment, she reached into a cloth bag that had been slung over her shoulder and pulled out a book. “Deena. I have been carrying this around with me, waiting for the right time to hand it over.” She handed the journal to her sister who looked at the bullet hole in the binding. “You must work your way around the bullet hole but that is not hard. The message is clear enough, that cannot be obscured. Her lesson is all about love…you cannot miss that.”
This time, Deena was the one to embrace her sister.
The group now working with Chris settled on the deck of the Crawford’s temporary Madison home overlooking Lake Mendota. An expanse of green lawn flowed down to the water’s edge where a dock sat to permit one to sit and enjoy the sunsets. “Not bad, huh? I even have a boat which, of course, I don’t know how to use. This being a lake though, I suppose I could not get too lost,” Chris said.
“Let’s not put that hypothesis to the test,” Kat responded with a smile, enjoying any opportunity to tease her older sibling. “I want to thank you, Chris, for luring me away from the Windy City, even for a day or two. I believe I was the only one of the Crawford children not to be corrupted by spending time in Madtown as a wild youth, which I missed, the wild part that is. This place took on the aura of the mysterious Shangri-La for me. How come you never brought me here?”
Chris chuckled. “You can understand, Kat, can’t you? You were an innocent child, the pure one. We didn’t want you to be corrupted by this sinful place. That, and the fact that you were a bratty kid at the time.”
Kat took charge, it had become her character. “Thanks for nothing. But to business. This will be the core team as I understand it. Let me see if I have this straight. Obviously, I know April and Josef quite well. I recently met Atle Bergstrom who Chris has brought with him from London. Atle has been working as a top executive with your international service organization and before that was with the Center for Global and Comparative History of Ideas in Oslo. Is that as impressive as it sounds?” She looked directly at the middle-aged man with nice features, brilliant blue eyes that conveyed considerable intelligence, and a slightly receding hairline of blondish, but not quite blond, hair.
“It was a place with great pretense to cognitive superiority and I did enjoy it a lot, very stimulating. In the end, though, I wanted something with more practical effects. Besides, I ran across Chris’s writings and was impressed though I am a mere epigone of the master.”
When Kat momentarily looked uncertain, Chris explained. “Epigone means a pale imitator of the real thing. You know those Norwegians, always showing off their literary creds.” At this, Atle laughed heartily.
K
at smiled and turned to a woman whose pleasant face was framed with a cascade of brown, tightly curled hair. “But this young lady I know not at all. Tell me about yourself.”
The young woman broke into a broad smile and then evidenced a slight accent suggesting a youth spent in the southern hill country when she spoke. “My name is Pamela Stuart. Originally, I was born and raised in West Virginia, in a rural part of the state. My parents passed when I was young, and I was raised by relatives. We struggled, in truth I experienced tough times. In any case, I did my undergraduate at Harvard and…”
Chris interrupted. “Tell Kat, all of us, how you made it to Harvard from rural West Virginia.”
Pamela’s smile broadened even more. “I guess I was reasonably smart but pretty isolated and quite naïve. I did not know much about the Ivy League until I saw this Reece Witherspoon movie, Legally Blond. If you remember, she was also a naïve girl who somehow landed at Harvard. It seemed like a cool place in the movie, so I gave it a shot. I barely knew where Boston was located.”
“There is more, I believe,” Chris prompted her.
“Not too much more. The admissions process at most Ivy schools depends upon so-called candidate advocates who are assigned a region or group of applicants. They select the ones from their pool they like and push them in the final decision process. A lot depends on how much they like you and how aggressively they push. In retrospect, I suspect I profited from the right demographics…poor, rural, and southern, that is if you consider West Virginia southern, which I do at least. I met my advocate once after I had arrived at school, she told me that my essay won the day for me.”
“What did you compose that was so compelling?” Atle asked.
“I wrote about my upbringing and some of my struggles growing up, about losing my parents so young and the poverty and the hopelessness around me. I did leave out the part about the movie though. I lied and said Harvard was the aspiration that had driven me forward even as a child. It was that beacon on the hill that inspired me beyond my humble origins, though I did not go so far as to claim birth in a log cabin. I cannot reread that essay now without blushing. So disingenuous.”
Kat looked at Chris. “What would you have written to get into Harvard? Perhaps you could have summoned some sympathy from the stories about the limo getting stuck in Chicago traffic while bringing you to your posh private school or about the suffering you experienced on those days when the caviar had not been flown in fresh from Russia.”
“Bite me.” Chris smiled.
“Poor thing,” Kat continued. “had to settle for Princeton.”
“And then I only got in because I could play basketball. I didn’t exactly apply myself academically in my misspent youth, too many distractions like being a sex object. The girls just would not let me alone.” Chris then smiled more broadly in case anyone might take him seriously. “As you all can see, my dear sister is deathly jealous of my scholarly and professional success. All she has done is earn more money than God. I will give credit where credit is due, though, her filthy lucre does greatly help us sojourners for truth and justice who labor to create a better world. We don’t have to work for a living.”
Kat made a face. “Oh, bring me the family barf bag ASAP. Are we the only set of siblings with a community barf bag?”
Chris laughed aloud. “Welcome to the Crawford sibling-rivalry road show. We appear nightly in the Crown Room of the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas. Now, if Kay were here, ably assisted by my adoring wife, I would be toast by know. You can well see why I have no problem staying humble.” He paused long enough for the crowd to audibly groan, then continued. “Seriously, though, this is quite the international team…Norway, Poland, North Korea, and a southern state, the most backward place of all.”
“Now that we have bonded,” Kat interjected, “let me get back on track. Chris showed me the office set up he has put together. It seems nice, very close to the west end of the campus on Old University Road. It is perfectly situated in an innocuous looking office building, a fact of some importance. I have come to appreciate the need for remaining low key. It took me a while, but he convinced me that the analytics for our effort should run out of Madison, away from some prying eyes that would be way too interested in what we are doing. I don’t think any of you would be in danger, but we are delving into matters that involve powerful people who do not like to lose. For example, recently, we uncovered that one Konstantin Nikolaev, a Russian billionaire oligarch, has been engaging in some suspicious behaviors in the U.S. We are likely to push back against the agenda of these…gentlemen and they play rough, very rough. We delved into Konstantin’s background and found that he is a confidante of Putin which is quite necessary to get rich and stay free and, most importantly, remain alive. He has some major investments in the gas and oil industries both in Russia and around the world. That is, he is in with the Koch brothers.”
“How symmetrical,” Chris added. “the patriarch of the Koch dynasty made millions doing some work for Stalin. Now, the current generation of Kochs are radical libertarians while the once Russian bear is run by a kleptocracy of billionaires who want a strong government to regulate things for their own ends.”
“And the difference?” Atle asked.
“None, in the end, your average American libertarian only hates those regulations that benefit others and not him,” Chris answered after considering the question. “The point is that the people who threaten our democracy and world stability, such as it is, were enemies. Now, they are joined together, not in any fraternal sense but in a compact based on mutual greed and lust for power. They will do whatever it takes to keep their hegemony and their fortunes. The members of this loose oligarchy are drawn from around the world. The common denominator is a dislike for anything resembling democratic protocols, an obsession for personal control, and an unreasoned hate for anything touching upon the public good. In their world view, power is money and money is power. They are fungible commodities. Yet, this shadowy group are not totally united, not like some secret illuminati. There are distinct styles and interests among them, at least as far as we can detect with imperfect information. They may, however, be inching toward some form of cohesive group based on interim common interests.”
“What kind of cohesive group?” asked Pamela, “I am the newest member and feel behind the rest of you.”
“Probably no further behind than I,” added Chris. “But let me give it a try. If I get a failing grade, perhaps I will get fired, I hope, I hope.” He took silence to suggest he was free to continue. “A generation ago, many of these guys, and most are men but not all, were enemies. They were separated by ideology. But the fall of the Soviet Union, and the gradual softening of China economically, suggested areas where dialogue and cooperation would be preferable to confrontation. As the shackles of the old regimes fell away, a few oligarchs emerged with the spoils, usually the same who had won under the previous communist governments. Culture is a funny thing, though. I see major differences between East and West. Russia bridges the European and Asian cultures but looks west. They are seeking a working alliance with Republicans in America and the rising fascist parties in Europe like Marine Le Pen’s hard-right group in France, the National Front party. They see these groups as a strategy for breaking the hold of Western liberalism and globalism that kept Russia relatively isolated in the post-Soviet world. But ideology and culture always interfere with pure self-interest. For example, China is moving toward hegemony over renewable energy sources, looking toward the future. Russia and America are controlled by an elite wedded to old style energy concepts, fossil fuels and such. They have billions invested in those assets, what we term ‘stranded assets’, as most of you know. They will fight to the death anyone who threatens those resources, like the scientific community pointing to the reality of climate change. To date, some Americans and their Russian allies are working diligently to push this country to the right. Unbelievably, Donald Trump will be their hero.”
“Shoot me fi
rst,” Jules uttered as she and Beverly walked up onto the deck. “Sorry to be late. Getting out of Chicago is such a chore and I had to wait for the princess here to get ready, she waived toward Chris’s sister-in-law.
“Don’t blame me,” Beverly protested. “I have to be careful. I am always paranoid about meeting with Chris or Kat, afraid that Charles Senior will find out.”
As the two newcomers found seats and joined the group, Chris registered his surprise. “Wait, I thought visiting my young girls was a good excuse that Father had bought into?”
Beverly gave Chris that known female look that says, are you a cretin? “Not when I am traveling with Jules. He sees her on the news all the time and knows she is a pinko-leftist beyond redemption.”
“Worse,” Jules affirmed, “I am the wrong color to be a pinko, which makes him hate me even more. Hell, I am surprised he has not sued me for the silverware he thought Ricky and I stole when we visited you during our wild teen years.” She looked directly at Chris.
“You did, didn’t you?” Chris deadpanned.
“Steal the silverware? Hah. We may have been black and struggling financially, but I knew enough to walk off with the priceless art and jewelry, not the petty-ante stuff. Hell, the art work in the guest bathroom alone was worth more than I am now, and I am famous and rather well-off. Okay, who is new here?”
They went through the introduction ritual, got more drinks, and settled back to business. Jules asked what they had missed.
“Chris was just about to put the staff into a coma with one of his lectures,” Kat joked, “but we should discuss the risks involved now that you are here. You might add something on this, I want everyone involved to have full information.”
Jules and Beverly looked at one another but it was Beverly that spoke. “I sure hope you all can be trusted.”
“They can,” Kat responded.
“Okay, then. While you all know I am Chris’s sister-in-law, you may not know that I have kept close relations with his father, a key figure in this shadowy group of right-wing conspirators. Charles Senior still views me as his meek and inoffensive daughter-in-law. He keeps me close, I think, because he likes to rub me in the noses of his children, whom he sees as traitors. Either that, or he sees me as his one conduit into what they are up to. The point is, I really don’t know what goes on in his head, but I have access to him and his associates. I am like his substitute hostess since Chris’s mother left her sociopath of a husband after a lifetime of abuse. Let us just say he is a despicable human being. All that you might have heard about him is true.”
