Avidol stared into his son’s eyes with fire and accusation. “So?”
“I know these people,” Xenos said after a long silence. “Tried to help them then. Do what I can now.”
Avidol breathed in the pure Mediterranean air. “Why is the world so crazy?” There was accusation in his voice.
Jerry closed his eyes. “Beats the Hell out of me.”
“Is the truth so foreign to you now?” Avidol’s gaze was changing from accusing to sheer astonishment. “Is there so little of my son left in you?”
Xenos met that look, that indictment, with an equally steely glare of his own. “What do you want from me?”
“Only the truth.”
Xenos laughed bitterly. “Yeah. But whose truth?” Avidol shrugged. “God’s.”
A deep sigh from the man in the bed. “God’s. God’s truth.” He seemed to drift with the thought. He shook his head. “For that, you’ll have to ask someone else. I only have my own.”
His father seemed shocked. “You have completely forgotten your God?” He said the words as if he couldn’t
quite make himself believe it. Although he’d expressed the same thought aloud many times about his “lost son.”
“Oh, Papa. What’s the point? You are who you are and I’m something else entirely. Can’t we just leave it at that? Put it aside for a few days, at least, and enjoy being together again?”
“No.” Avidol’s voice was rock-solid. “You were lost to me, I thought forever, because we ‘put it aside before. Not again.’”
He reached out, turning his depressed son’s face back toward his. The physical contact sent an electric tremble through both men.
“Gerald,” Avidol began in a soft voice, choked in emotion, “you are my son and I will always love you. We may,
I
may,” he said in a trembling voice, “not always be able to see that. But it remains nonetheless. A living bond between us.”
Xenos looked up at him, anger and accusation flying from
his
eyes now. “You said I’d died! You said Kaddish, tore your clothes, and consigned me to eternity away from you! Away from my family! That’s not love!”
Avidol shrugged. “A man sits on a stoop and watches his child playing catch. He misses a ball and it rolls into the street. The child runs after it as a truck which has lost its brakes rounds the corner.” He paused. “The man cannot sit by and allow his son to die.”
He stood, looking out the window at the breathtaking Mediterranean view.
“You were never an easy boy.” He laughed quietly. “From early on you sought your own way in the world. There was little I could do to stop you from your head-strongness.” He turned back to Xenos. “Do you remember the lake?”
Xenos nodded. “Of course.”
Avidol nodded. “So little a boy,” so large a lake, he whispered as he sat back down. “I told you that you couldn’t swim beyond the restraining rope. We argued, we fought that entire summer. Then, one day, you were gone.
When we pulled you from the water you were half drowned, exhausted, using your last strength to fight me in order to finish that swim. It was like you were a little stranger, fighting your father like that. Amazing.”
“I would’ve made it,” the man in the bed said softly.
Avidol smiled. “Still?” He sighed. “Perhaps. But at what cost? As is, you came down with double pneumonia which was made all the worse by your complete exhaustion. The doctors all thought you would die.”
“I refused to.”
Avidol studied his son. “That’s right. That is exactly what you said to us. You were eleven years old and lecturing your father and the doctors about how you ‘control what happens to me. Not some god or force I can’t see or prove. I determine my own fate.’ An amazing sight.”
The old man shook his head sadly. “When the angel of death came for you the next night, we called for the rabbi and he told us what to do. We must give you another name, he said. To fool the angel of death. So that night, for that night, you became—in the language of your ancestors—Xenos Filotimo.” Another laugh, this one more bitter than the last. “My little stranger with the iron self-respect and sense of honor.”
Xenos busied himself sipping from his ice water. Anything but look into those sad eyes. “What does this have to do with—”
“I knew then that I could never stop you with an argument. Not my little Xenos. Not my headstrong little boy with such a dangerous self-confidence. Then you became a man. And mere words seemed to become meaningless.”
After a deep breath, Xenos turned to face his father. “I don’t recall your ever running out of them.”
“Perhaps not,” Avidol said sadly. “But then you turned your back on me, on our people, on your God.”
“I never…”
Avidol held up a restraining hand. “We will not discuss what we have already exhausted. I didn’t understand your arguments then, I won’t now. I only knew, know, that if I
allowed you to go your own way—to do these sinful things in the name of national glory—then I would be as guilty as you in the eyes of God.”
“The eyes of God,” Xenos repeated wistfully. “I remember that phrase well enough.”
“I know you do.” Avidol shrugged. “My words could not stop you, I could only pray that my actions would. So you became as dead to me.”
“It didn’t work,” Xenos mumbled regretfully.
Avidol suddenly smiled. “Didn’t it? Then why did you come back to me?”
Xenos quickly recovered his anger. “You hypocritical sonofabitch! How
many
times did I come to you? How many times did I
beg
you to talk to me? To let me explain! Damn you and damn your God! You both left me alone and naked in a world that was trying to devour me! You never even once tried to see me through that bullshit piousness of yours!”
The old man was strangely calm, almost smiling. “And in those times, all those terrible times, were you ready to start again? To see your life for the tragedy that it had become and start anew?”
“Serving my country was no—”
“Tragedy?” Of course not, Avidol said reasonably. “But did you
serve
it? Or did you just follow its orders? Further politics and personal agendas, or further ideals and principles? Serve your country or serve some men?”
Xenos stiffened with the slap of truth. “I’ll never make you understand.”
Avidol nodded. “Especially if you do not understand yourself.” His voice dropped low and seductive. “But you
do
understand now, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You weren’t ready in the past to admit that the grand design of patriotism and national honor you were force-fed was pure
tref.
Crap. A thing unwholesome and corrupt.”
“No,” Xenos finally said so softly that it might’ve been a thought.
“No.” The old man looked triumphant. “Not until God sends faces to haunt you in your sleep. To drive you away from those who would mislead and betray you.”
He smiled openly now. “To bring you back to
his
will. To me.” He leaned back with a self-satisfied grin on his ancient face.
Laughter exploded from the tightened lips of the man in the bed. “This is God’s will? His plan? All of this pain and death and torment and anguish, God’s divine insight? Shit! Even
you
can’t believe that, Papa!”
“Chuni, my son.” Avidol moved closer to the bed. “Answer just one question. And you needn’t answer it aloud if you don’t want to.”
“What’s that?”
“If this is not all part of God’s plan for us—for humanity, for our people, for you and me—then”—he hesitated—“why did you create this place for the children?”
Avidol leaned back, smiling a private smile that reeked of triumph and the universe being set right; as his son remained silenced, his emotions written across his damaged face.
“The Talmud tells us, my son, that there is chaos in the world—craziness if you will—because God allows it to be. And this he allows because he has also created men of honor and self-respect, self-sacrifice and righteousness, who will stand up and defend the weak from that chaos. From the powerful, depraved corrupted men who would use them in wicked ways or destroy them entirely.
“As I said,” he continued after a minute of intense emotional stillness, “I did not expect this place.” He stood, moving very close to his son: his dreams, his immortality regained. He tenderly leaned over, kissing Xenos on the forehead. “But I am overjoyed to see it.”
Not far away from the clinic, truths of another kind were being brought out in front of a far different audience. It was in a house constructed of rocks and driftwood—even more of loyalty and tradition—that sat on the very edge of the Mediterranean. They had gathered—these men who
lived by simple rules of honor, trust, and fidelity—to hear the story. And the listeners were intent that they alone would do the hearing.
Of course the three-foot-thick rock walls prevented any casual listening from the outside, combined with the electronic “shadow” that Xenos had loaned them to prevent high-tech eavesdropping. But thoroughness—in the Corsi-can way—meant four men on constant armed patrol of the grounds surrounding the small house.
Inside, the one large room was nearly full.
In the front were five chairs, facing the rest, for the Council. In front of them sat eleven more chairs, one each for the heads of the eleven Corsican Unions—which formed the Brotherhood throughout Europe—that had been summoned to this
tomba.
This
dissection of the grave.
Finally, two standing desks—both facing the Council—one on each side. At one was Franco, leaning casually, speaking confidently to some of the Union heads as he waited. At the other, Valerie. She concentrated on the notes she’d made in the last week, tried to remember the protocols that had been explained to her by Franco.
Distractedly accepting yet another bizarre twist in her nightmare existence.
The room hushed as five old men entered from the rear. They made their way silently to the front, arranged themselves in the chairs, then each, when settled, nodded to Franco.
“Fratelli; genitori; coluiche che è senza genitori giurerà lealtà al fratello,”
he began in the centuries-old way.
“Non c’è maggior dolore che ricordarsi la felicità nel dolore.”
All sixteen men in the room nodded somberly as Valerie remembered the invocation as Franco had explained it to her: “There is no greater ache than to remember the happy times in misery.”
“O, Fratello,”
the old man in the center chair responded in the traditional way,
“quanto tormento è quello che v’offende?”
Although he knew well what torment was afflicting Franco at this moment. As did the rest, for it was
the reason for the first full gathering of Brotherhood leaders in nine years.
But form—tradition—must be adhered to.
“Fratelli, posso parlare in inglese?”
The room nodded as one.
“Grazie per la vostra indulgenza.”
He sighed deeply. “A grave injustice has been done to my family. A brother’s murder.” He raised his hands in a gesture of futility. “I would not inflict this on my brothers within, except… this injustice is also a slap in the face of every man here. And of all the men that they represent.”
“My brother Paolo—known to most of you in the past twenty years—was entrusted by the Council with a sacred trust. Six hundred thousand francs. He was to go to America, become a lawyer of merit and note, then return to us and serve the Brotherhood with honor and faith.”
Another deep breath. His head lowered, his hand trembled the very slightest bit. “But,
amici
, my friends and brothers, he was murdered before he could fulfill this sacred task. Crushed like an insect. Obliterated from this world, his body lost in some unmarked, unhonored place in America.”
The men looked appropriately impressed and sorrowful. But they still had not heard any reason for them to have been called together. The loss was a substantial one—but tolerable. And the death of his brother on only peripherally related Brotherhood business was Franco’s concern, not all the Brotherhood’s.
But they continued to listen.
“Brothers,” he continued after what he considered to be an adequate pause for effect, “hear now the reason for Paolo’s murder. The foul acts that bred such contempt and venom as I could heap upon the doers.”
He looked over at Valerie. “I present to the Council the Honorable Valerie Alvarez, a member of the United States House of Representatives and a witness to these crimes against us all.”
Valerie smiled (seriously), then began. “It is an honor to—”
“U
n momento,”
the man in the center chair interrupted.
“Lei ha accettato Gesé Cristo come il suo salva-tore?”
Franco immediately translated. “Are you a Christian?”
Valerie looked surprised. “Uh, yes. A Catholic.”
The man in the center chair nodded.
“Sappi questo. Se stai mentendo, sarai ucciso lentalmente ed in un periodo di settimane. Ti bestemmio nel nome di Gesé Cristo.”
He looked over at Franco, then nodded.
“He says,” Franco began slowly, “that you should know this one thing. If you lie to the Council, or are later found to be lying on any matter of import, you will be killed. Slowly, and over a period of weeks. This is his curse to your lies, in the name of God.” Franco shrugged. “And I assure you he means it.”
Valerie straightened, looking angrily into the eyes of the calm little old man in the center chair. “Does he understand English?”
“Si.”
“Good.” She paused to gather her thoughts. “Sir, in coming to you I am not only risking my career, my life, the security of my country, but the lives of my son and daughter. I have no reason not to tell you the full truth. Another pause, this one briefer and followed by a withering stare at all of the five men in the Council.”
“And if anything that
you
may do—any leak or gossip, carelessness or malignancy—threatens or endangers my children in any way”—she fixed the man in the center chair with a gunmetal look—“then I assure you, you’ll
pray
that I kill you over several weeks. That, sir, is
my
curse. By God.”
The old man regarded her for five silent, thoughtful minutes.
“Bene,”
he finally said. “You may begin.”