Hostage Heart

by Renee Roszel

  He cocked his head to the side. “I just walked him to his office.”

  “Great, thanks, Pete.” Shrugging off the coat, she turned in the direction he had indicated, her low-heeled pumps echoing loudly across the tile floor as she circled the massive Tokamak toward her father’s office, or “sanctuary,” as she thought of it—his place of safety against the emotional onslaught of the outside world.

  Pushing the slightly ajar door wide, she breezed in. “Hi, Dad.” It was her plan to overwhelm him with her happy anticipation of the trip, of seeing Megan, and of being made godmother to the baby.

  He sat back in his leather chair, peering up at her from behind half-spectacles. “Why, Drew, I didn’t expect to see you today.” His gaunt, hawkish features clouded in a puzzled frown. “Am I late for something?”

  She laughed, shaking her head, “No, Daddy, I just need a ride home. Will you be leaving soon?”

  He heaved a long sigh, sliding his glasses up to his carrot-red hair. “No, dear, I’ll be here until at least six o’clock.”

  Biting the inside of her cheeks to hold back a smile she hung her coat on the rack by the door. Accustomed to her father’s single-minded concentration, she answered offhandedly, “Okay, I can wait.” Then, looking pointedly up at the round wall clock above the office door, she went on, “Since it’s nearly a quarter after that now.”

  His frown deepened as his eyes followed her gaze up. “You don’t mean it.” He pulled the wire-framed glasses carefully from his ears. “Why just a minute ago—”

  She took his overcoat from the rack and held it out, interrupting him. “I know, just a minute ago it was 1967.” She walked around his desk. “Now, let’s go. I’ll even fix your dinner.”

  Obediently, he pushed himself up. Dropping his glasses into his shirt pocket, he asked, “Dinner?”

  As he slipped his arms into the coat sleeves, she teased, “Yes, Daddy, you remember dinner. It’s the last time you have to be interrupted from your work to take in fuel.”

  He turned, smiling at her for the first time since she’d entered his office. “You’re a pushy woman. Drew. Why, just then you reminded me a great deal of Lenore.”

  She stopped short. “Mother? Why, Dad”—her voice went very soft—“was she pushy? You never said that before.”

  His smile faded and he turned away in what appeared to be embarrassment. “I didn’t mean it as a slight, Drew. Your mother was—”

  “I know, Daddy.” She slid her hand into his. A lump formed in her throat making words difficult. “Mother was a woman of quality.” It came out in a whisper. Knowing her father as she did, Drew realized that this comparison of her with her mother was the closest Dr. McKenna could come to praising her. Struggling to keep emotion out of her voice, she tugged at his hand. “Let’s go.”

  She was too preoccupied with how to break the Drew-McKenna-is-going-to-Berlin bomb to her father to worry with polite chatter on the ride home. And since he rarely spoke unless spoken to, the ride to Drew’s house was very quiet. As they drove, she looked up over the small business section of the town to enjoy the final flames of sunset framing peaks of the distant Sangre de Cristo mountains to the west.

  Ironically, Los Alamos was situated peacefully on a picturesque mesa within native piñon pines and scrub cedars and had once been known as the “Capital of the Atomic Age.” Originally, in 1942, what is now Los Alamos was a boys’ school, secluded in the New Mexican mountains. The school was taken over by the United States Government and turned into a facility for highly classified atomic bomb research, and the country’s most brilliant scientists were recruited to work there. On July 16, 1945, the laboratory scientists exploded the first atomic bomb at White Sands, New Mexico. Drew closed her eyes to the beautiful sunset, seeing in her mind’s eye the awful mushroom cloud, the violent product of the bomb, which had been necessarily nurtured at Los Alamos to help end the last world war. Though the installation there was still classified, and researchers still did some defense work, most of the areas of concentration now ranged over a broad spectrum of scientific and medical interest, such as fusion reactor energy research, her father’s area of expertise.

  She opened her eyes as the sunset flickered and died. Turning her gaze back down to look into the lighted shop windows along the main street of the intellectually oriented town of 17,000, she caught a muffled call and cheery greeting from the owner of Los Alamos’s bookstore as he closed up shop. Waving back Drew registered that it must be exactly six thirty. Bracing herself as Dr. McKenna turned off onto Arizona street toward the town’s outskirts, her thoughts returned to finding a way to tell him something that he would not want to hear.

  AFTER dinner, Drew cleared her mother’s Haviland from the oak table. “Go on into the living room, Dad. I’ll be right with you.” Pushing the ladder-back chairs into their places, she moved to the antique dry sink that stood before a wall that she had recently painted yellow beneath the wainscoting, having added a cheery, pink and yellow floral wallpaper above.

  Removing from the sink a large wooden planter made from an oak burl, she replaced her yellow dancing-lady orchid plant in its position as the table’s centerpiece.

  As she turned toward the kitchen with the last of the dishes, she noted that her father had gone into the living room and was now seated on the white cotton-duck couch, apparently oblivious to the fact that the walls had been freshly painted a pale buttercup yellow, and there were fluttery, feminine Priscillas at the windows. Previous renters had chosen a gray-blue brocade window covering and an equally drab color for the walls. She had lived with the unfortunate combination for as long as she could, while accumulating some nice pieces of furniture. But last week she had worked like a drudge painting and papering the small A-frame to make it seem more like a home.

  Smiling to herself, Drew shook her head. She should know by now that her father would not have reacted to the change in his surroundings, even if she had blown a gaping hole in the wall! She pushed through the louvered swinging doors into the kitchen. Hurriedly, she took two of her mother’s Haviland demitasse cups from one of the glossy white cabinets and placed them on the green tiled countertop. After filling the delicate cups with coffee, she sugared one for her father, and carefully pushed her way back through the doors into the living room. It was definitely time to broach the Berlin subject. She could put it off no longer. Determined not to bring Jim up as a reason for leaving, she began, “By the way, Dad, you remember Megan Roman.”

  He accepted the tiny gold-rimmed cup with a blank expression. “No.”

  She exhaled helplessly as she took a seat beside him on the couch and leaned heavily into the softness of a pink velvet throw pillow. Laying the cup on the glass-covered wicker chest that served as her coffee table, she tried again. “Megan Roman—my roommate in college.”

  The blank look remained unchanged, but he nodded. “Well, I’m sure you are right, dear.”

  Drew bit the inside of her lip and twisted uncomfortably. “Well, uh. . .yes.” As she forged ahead, she tried to seem nonchalant by making slight rearrangements of the three brass planters on her coffee table that contained her prized collection of lavender moth orchids. “I received a letter from her today. She’s had a baby and named her Drew. She wants me to go to the christening.” Pausing, she tried to judge his reaction. There didn’t seem to be one. “It’s this weekend.”

  He took a sip of the coffee, then looked down at the cup. “This is coffee.” Drew was accustomed to this type of remark, out of the blue. It hadn’t been a question, nor an exclamation of excitement over the superb brewing of the dark liquid. He had merely taken verbal note of the fact that there was a cup of coffee in his hand. She sat quietly as he turned his eyes back up to hers. “Actually, Drew, I really don’t have time for a cup. I must get back to the lab. We’re closing in on entering the reaction regime. Today we came very close to exceeding the necessary temperature for fusion.”

  His mind was on work, as usual. Drew knew that she wou
ld have to make this fast. “Okay, Dad. I’ll let you get back. It’s just that I’m planning to go to West Berlin on Wednesday to see Megan and Curt and their new baby, my godchild.” She rushed on, seeing his expression finally register some interest, however horror-stricken. “I know your opinion on the subject, Dad. But I’m going. So there’s no use discussing it. I just thought you ought to know.”

  There. She had said it. Her heart pounded anxiously against her ribs as she watched her father’s complexion go purple. Biting her lip, she pulled slightly back. She had never seen him become angry. For that matter, she could probably count on the fingers of one hand the times she had seen him become even mildly animated.

  His mouth worked for a long moment before he spoke. When he did, his voice was oddly quiet. “Well, Drew, since you already know the foolhardiness of that decision, I will not reiterate it.”

  She gulped. He appeared to be through. Setting his cup down with hardly a sound, he stood up slowly.

  “Dad?” She squeaked, darting to her feet. “It’s not that bad, honestly. Nine hundred and ninety-nine chances out of one thousand. . .”

  His head, moving slowly, maddeningly, from side to side, quieted her. “Don’t quote numbers to a physicist, Drew. Too many scientific breakthroughs have come regardless of the fact that their chances of happening were equally remote.” As he continued, the only betrayal of his emotion was the plunging of his hands deep into the pockets of his tweed trousers. “You are my child, Drew. In some areas of the world that fact alone would place you in a very precarious position.” He stopped, his eyes directed at hers. “Don’t delude yourself about that fact with vague discussions of probabilities.”

  “But, Dad, you don’t understand.” She put a pleading hand on his arm. “I’ll be flying over the East. It’s the safest possible way.”

  “Safest, Drew, is a very unsatisfactory word.” There was a sadness in his dull eyes that hurt her badly. But she couldn’t tell him the truth. She couldn’t tell him that Jim was coming here to get her in four days. She had never told him what Jim had done to her, and she couldn’t stand the idea of dredging it up now.

  Swallowing hard, she stiffened her resolve. Perhaps he saw the spark of determination in her eyes, for he finished abruptly, “I have never told you what to do. I won’t begin now.” Pulling away from her grasp, he walked with a rather awkward gait toward the entry hall. “I will see myself out.” Drew was heartsick to note that he did not turn to look back as he spoke.

  Chapter One

  Somewhere in the sky over East Germany, one week later...

  The Pan Am flight 807, West Berlin to Frankfurt, lurched violently, throwing Drew forward against the confining restraint of her seat belt. Her queasy stomach turned menacingly and she pulled one white-knuckled hand from her chair to cup her mouth until the nausea subsided.

  The “Fasten Seat Belt” sign flashed above their heads in German, French, and English, accompanied by a continual “ding, ding, ding.” Within the cabin there was little else to be heard but for an occasional groan or muffled crying.

  Drew tried to turn her attention away from the distress of her fellow passengers and found herself looking out of the window at her side.

  The double-glassed porthole was being heavily pelted with ice crystals from the angry storm. Yet it was a soundless anger, making this eruption of nature seem like a voiceless beast, incensed by his muteness, determined to rip the hapless plane apart in his effort to be heard.

  Drew peered at her watch. It was 10:10 now. Only eight minutes had passed. But eight minutes, when each minute is spit violently out as though it were the last grain of sand in life’s hourglass, can seem to last an aeon. She knew that the storm that raged about them must have been very sudden and intense to have hung about the jet so long. Suddenly, her frayed nerves grasped at the fact that the abusive buffeting had slackened. The minister on her right mirrored her thoughts as he said, “Well, praise the Lord! I believe we have come through the tempest.”

  Drew turned to look into his ruddy face. He was smiling weakly over at her.

  “It appears you fared the weather’s impulsiveness better than most, Mrs. Pollard.”

  Drew winced inwardly at the clergyman’s use of her married name, but matched his smile wearily and shook her head. “Not really, Rev—”

  Her words were interrupted by the crackle of the intercom announcing the “all clear” in three languages. Drew turned to the window to look outside at a sky showing promise of sun once again. Her thoughts turned inward. Mrs. Pollard. That name brought bitter memories crowding painfully to her mind, constricting her throat. It had been over a year since she had considered herself to be Mrs. Pollard, over a year since she had left Jim, ending their two-year marriage. And since the final decree, she did not consider herself to be Mrs. Pollard anymore. Now, at twenty-six, she was, in essence, starting over, choosing to use her maiden name—except for this trip, since her passport was still in her married name.

  She was drawn from her sober reverie by a light tap on her arm, “Mrs. Pollard?”

  She started, realizing that the pastor was speaking. “Dear me!” His voice had taken on an urgent tone, and Drew turned to look into his sober face, noting that his eyes were intent on something outside the porthole. “That small jet appears to be dangerously close to us.”

  Drew followed his gaze and squinted out into the brightness of a much-recovered sky. “Yes,” she breathed as she took in what looked like a fighter plane. She quickly scanned the blue expanse outside. “I see two more, one above and one below. They’re staying very close—almost like an escort.”

  The scratchy sound of the intercom interrupted her words as the voice of the captain began in clipped German that neither Drew nor the pastor could understand. As the captain spoke, the minister craned his neck toward the porthole for a better view of the planes. A buzz of alarm began to grow among the German-speaking passengers, prompting an odd feeling of apprehension to slither up Drew’s spine.

  The captain began again, repeating in heavily accented English: “Ladies and gentlemen, there is no cause for concern. However, it appears that during the turbulence, our directional instruments were affected, and we were thrown out of the required travel corridor for foreign aircraft. We are now over Soviet-controlled East Germany, and we have been intercepted by Soviet jet fighters for violating their air space. We have been ordered to accompany them to land for an investigation.”

  Drew and the minister exchanged nervous glances as the captain continued, “I regret the inconvenience. However, I repeat, there is no real cause for concern. This is merely a frontier formality of the Soviet military machine.”

  The big jet banked and Drew once again looked out at the smaller planes maneuvering about them. She realized that their altitude was now much lower as she watched their plane’s shadow pass over an expansive forested area of rolling hills. White crystalline snow covered the ground and lay like a punctured blanket across the thickly branched pines of the chaste, frozen landscape.

  “I don’t understand,” breathed Drew. “The East Germans have to make allowances for planes flying to and from West Berlin.”

  “Of course they do,” remarked the reverend thoughtfully. “However, I have heard of an ‘air tunnel’ that foreign planes have to fly through over East Germany when approaching or leaving Berlin.” The elderly gentleman was speaking more to himself than to Drew. But she turned her attention to his words as he continued, “I believe the required area is between thirty-five hundred and ten thousand feet of altitude and within a width of only twenty miles—a corridor in the sky, so to speak.” He was gesturing with his hands, shaping a square in the air above him.

  Drew interjected, turning her eyes back to the window, “And because we were forced to remain in this—this air tunnel, we couldn’t avoid that sudden storm? And now we’ve been literally thrown into the hands of the East German Communists?”

  The reverend nodded. “I would imagine we’re a good
ly distance away from the required air space by the Soviet’s radical reaction, making us land and all.”

  She rubbed a fist nervously across her tightly closed lips, an unquenchable panic raising her voice to a squeaky breathlessness. “I wonder if the captain told us the truth—if it really is only a formality?”

  The pastor shook his graying head and sighed heavily. “We can only hope so, Mrs. Pollard, and put our trust in a higher power than that of small-minded men.”

  Once again the “Fasten Seat Belt” sign flashed on and began its insistent dinging. Drew pulled her eyes from the frozen scene below and automatically reached for her belt, only to realize that she was still strapped in securely from the earlier turbulence.

  The pastor spoke wearily as he closed the harness over his large stomach. “Well, that certainly didn’t take long. I do hope that we can be off again with a minimum of fuss.”

  Drew could only nod. Her words caught behind the lump of fear wedged in her throat. Her mind tumbled to the argument that she had had with her father before she left. That had been the last time she had seen him before her trip. And with the visit almost successfully completed, she had relaxed with the knowledge that her father’s forgiveness would be automatic with her safe return. But, now, his final words stalked her memory: “Safest, Drew, is a very unsatisfactory word.” This simply must be a distressing coincidence. They couldn’t be diverting the plane to get her! Circling her dry lips with her tongue, Drew hooked her fingers mechanically around the buckle of her belt, squeezing her hands into tense fists as the intercom clicked back on. After a brief announcement in German, the captain spoke in the now familiar accented English, “I repeat. Do not be concerned in any way over our forced landing. However, I have been informed that the plane will be vacated so that it may be searched for photographic and other unauthorized equipment. Also, all luggage will be checked, and all camera film will be confiscated.” Her feeling of regret over the loss of precious baby pictures was short-lived as the captain continued, “This type of forced diversion is rare, but not unheard-of. We will, no doubt, be on our way—soon.”