A Deceit to Die For (18 page)

Gilbert and her father looked at each other askance; the same thought going through both of their minds.
Where did that come from?
They didn’t have to wait long to find out. After the waiter had taken their order, she cleared her throat and broke the news.

“I know this is going to sound crazy, and that you will try to talk me out of it. Please, don’t waste your time. I’m moving back to the States. Uncle Henry is selling his blueberry farm. Aunt Bonny told me last week. She said it was killing him to see it leave the family. I found out how much it was going for, did some research and have decided to make a go of it. We’re meeting this week to see if we can iron out the details. I’m going back to mother’s farm. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

Ian reached over and squeezed her hand. She loved nature and people.

“What about the start-up company you’re involved in? I thought you liked Cardiff and your group of friends there?”

“I love Cardiff, Dad, and my friends are awesome, but the startup is, well, it’s started and we have already gotten an offer. I’m selling my stake in it to buy Uncle Henry’s farm.”

Ian sat trying to process it all. Henry was Patricia’s brother. He had inherited the farm Patricia grew up on and every visit they made to the States was spent in their guest house.

“Ever since Mom passed away, I have wanted to go back and reconnect with family, slow down and explore my roots. More importantly, I want to breathe the air she did and find out what made her so special. I want to jump off the corporate ladder into a pond filled with catfish, work the earth, rediscover nature and maybe find some healing in the process . . .”

Her voice broke. No one spoke as she struggled to regain her composure.

“I really need this, Dad. I know Mom’s passing has been hard for all of us. For some reason, though, the pain and the emptiness just aren’t going away.”

“I think that is a terrific idea, darling,” interjected her father with the certainty that comes from knowing reason and logic would be unwelcome guests at this stage in the conversation.

“Work out the details and I’ll be your first guest, but what about Uncle Henry and Aunt Bonny? What will they do?”

“Well, I’m hoping they’ll stay on either in the guest house or the main house. They’re getting too old to do all of the work and with no children...” Her voice began to break again. She sat there for a moment forcing the tears back. “I can’t bear to see it leave the family. It is the most enduring memory I have of Mother and her roots. I would never forgive myself if I let them sell it.”

Ian looked at Gilbert, who simply smiled and nodded in an attempt to be agreeable.

“Gwyn, my dear, that is an excellent idea, but I’m afraid you may find the company a bit more, shall I say, rustic than what you are used to in Cardiff.”

The corners of her mouth upturned ever so briefly in acknowledgement of Gilbert’s well-known contempt for rural Texas culture. He was enthralled with the corporate world, and in his mind, their relatives in East Texas were little more than country bumpkins. This air of superiority had always irritated Gwyn.

“You wouldn’t know the difference between a human and a snake anyway,” she said sarcastically.

“Sure I do. Snakes are the ones that bite in self-defense; humans strike for no reason at all.”

Gwyn knew better than to let the discussion get side-tracked on this issue. Gilbert cared about investment schemes, productivity, maintaining America’s super-power status and national security; the price he paid was the corporate carnage she knew surrounded him. The waiter arrived with their food. After he left, she turned back to her brother.

“You’d better eat up. Your plane will be boarding in fifty-five minutes, and I don’t want to see anything left on that plate. It’s too bad Gary couldn’t be here with us.”

There was silence. Gilbert pretended to take an interest in his food. She looked at her father. His face remained unchanged, his thoughts imperceptible.

“What’s wrong with you guys?” The exasperation gave her voice a shrill quality. “He’s still part of the family.”

The silence continued as she looked from father to son, trying to detect some sign of compassion or feeling. Their faces were granite. A gray coldness settled over the table and she hung her head, grieved at and ashamed of their hardness. Gilbert finally broke the silence. She knew his impassive monotone was a mask meant to convey a sense of control and reason, yet his words lashed the air and stung not her ears, but her heart.

“A
family
, Gwyn, does what we are doing now. A
family
celebrates victory like they console each other in calamity. Desertion at a time of need, distance in sorrow, these are not what I understand family to mean. He is not part of the family right now. He has turned not only on us, but on our heritage, our culture and our values.”

Ian sighed. “I love him, Gwyn. You know that. No one has suffered as much as I have when it comes to your brother. We can only hope that he comes to his senses. Let’s talk about something else.”

The finality in his tone of voice made it clear that now was not the time for dissent. So, the short time they had was spent catching up on Gilbert’s kids and reminiscing about the fun times they had had with their mother travelling Europe and the Middle East. As always, it was too short.

“Dad, I have to go catch this plane. You and Gwyn stay here and keep talking.”

They all got up and hugs went round the small circle. Gilbert grabbed his bags and they waved to him through the glass walls of the restaurant until he was out of sight. When Ian turned back to Gwyn, she was staring at him intently, then she dropped her eyes.

“Were you going to say something, Gwyn?”

“Well, yes and no. I mean I don’t know. I want to, but...”

“Go ahead, dear. Is something bothering you?”

“That’s not the right word really. I mean, it’s just that I have been having these dreams of mother lately and . . . Well . . . I have been thinking of you a lot too. You were so busy with your career when we were teenagers and don’t get me wrong, you were a great dad, but always so busy and now that Mom is gone . . .”

She dropped her head again visibly flustered and obviously trying to say something, but unable to form the words. Ian waited patiently.

“Daddy, I’m not going to be single forever and once I start my own family, there will be even less time.”

She stopped again. Still, Ian waited. Then she blurted it out almost angrily.
 

“You could’ve retired last year. Why didn’t you? Why are you still working? Gilbert and Gary and I are all splitting into different directions. Our family is splintering. . . Oh Daddy, why don’t you retire and come back to Uncle Henry’s farm with me? You can continue researching and writing there, teach as a visiting professor at SMU, participate in all of the international conferences, but I really need to reconnect. It’s been years since we’ve really had much time together.”

Ian sat there more shocked by this request than he had been by her abrupt decision to move back to her mother’s home. He sat there wondering what to say. She came to his rescue.

“Don’t give me an answer now. Just think about it, will you?”

CHAPTER
16

Salih was getting apprehensive. The package had not been at the apartment or in Ian’s office, but even more disturbing was the fact that Ian had been absent from the conference meetings all afternoon. He had instructed the IT intercept team to find his location from his cell phone signal, but that too had failed.
Was he on to them? Impossible
.
The old fool just found the document. Why did he turn his cell phone off? Why?
He knew Ahmet wouldn’t sleep until he had received word that the mission had been accomplished, and if Ahmet was grumpy from lack of sleep, no one was going to get any.

><><><
 

Just think about it, will you?
That was all she had said and think he had. He had thought of nothing else all the way home.
Retirement?
He used to dream of retiring with Patricia in a small cottage with a garden surrounded by a rock wall and covered with begonias somewhere in the Mediterranean. Maybe Cyprus or Rhodes. The climate was perfect. It was relatively inexpensive, and it would put him just an hour away from Istanbul by plane. They would bask in the sun away from the cold, dreary climes of Northern Europe, spend lots of time playing Scrabble and reading books. There would be plenty of time to just enjoy one another, write poetry, take Gilbert’s children for the summers, crisscross Anatolia from Ephesus to Artvin, studying its rich history.

For him, retirement had meant breathing the air of Homer and the Iliad, hiking in the mountains that Alexander the Great had traversed in his quest for world dominion, sitting in Hittite temples as the sun sank behind Mt. Nemrut. Maybe he could even poke around Antalya. If he could find a few more bilingual stones with Lycian script, he might even help scholars decipher one of the few remaining mystery languages. But the crowning jewel of retirement would have been spending weeks on end wandering through the streets of Istanbul with Patricia. He had spent his entire professional life studying the eastern capital of the Roman Empire, but there was so much more to be learned, and he would get to do it leisurely with his lovely Patricia at his side.

That had been the plan, but now she was gone and the dream had died. This thought snapped him out of his mental meanderings and forced him to think of the other thing Gwyn had mentioned—her dreams of her mother. Ian was not a superstitious man. Still, it seemed odd that they should both have had a string of dreams about her. Or was it so strange after all? He had lost his wife and love; Gwyn had lost her mother.

His taxi stopped in front of his apartment. He leaned over the seat to pay the Indian driver his fare. He liked the Indians and, because their taxis always smelled of curry, he had often joked with Patricia that they took an exotic, oriental chariot home each evening. He got out of the taxi.
The presentation tomorrow could be considered the crowning event of a lifetime of work
.
Maybe it would be fitting to retire after the conference.

Two men watched Ian exit the taxi and ascend the steps to his apartment entrance. They were particularly focused on the briefcase in his hand.

><><><
 

Salih was tired, and he still had a long night ahead of him. It was almost ten o’clock. London was still bustling. The city never went to sleep.
The wicked never rest
, he told himself. He had heard that Taipei and Tokyo were even more notorious for never sleeping. He had never been to the Far East, and, after those reports, he had no desire to go. He looked at his watch. It would still be several hours before they moved in. He leaned back in his chair and let his mind wander.

The Dragon in the East was rising. It had happened before. As always the
mu’min
were pressed from both east and west by the infidel. In the days of Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes, the Muslim caliphs had grown lax in their application of jihad and the proclamation of freedom in Islam. They had become bloated with worldly pleasures derived from the taxes on non-Muslim minorities. They had forsaken
salat
and neglected
zakaat
. As a result, Allah had withheld his protection when the Mongol hordes swept out of Central Asia, sacked Baghdad and wreaked havoc in the Middle East for almost two hundred years. Yet, the Mongols had been the rod of discipline used to bring the faithful back to piety.

The Mongols had been an inexorable juggernaut. They had even taken Alamut, the impregnable fortress of Hassan Sabbah, the greatest assassin that the world had ever seen. The stories widely circulated in the West about Hassan Sabbah and his tactics were laughable. Marco Polo had said that young initiates to the secret Ismaili sect were drugged and then woke up in a beautiful garden with wine and virgins at their beck and call, after which they were drugged again and woke up in a dingy cell. They were then told that they had died and gone to Paradise, but had miraculously come back to life to complete one final mission. The story was obviously meant to help sell Marco Polo’s new book and maybe help the feeble western mind understand why people would kill and risk death in order to attain Paradise.