November 2009 Archives
I'm meeting with Robert today about publishing my memoirs, King Abdullah's Tomb as well as In The Shadow Of The Sphinx, Captive At The Berghof, and Hitler's Daughter. That's why I'm not writing to you about my experiences on the Lusitania.
SIncerely yours,
Dora Benley
That man who skulks in the shadows aboard the Lusitania, the one with the wide-brimmed hat whose face I can't really see, is playing with fuses. At least that is what Michael Byrne tells me. The first day I met him at the Veranda Cafe, he claimed to have seen him down in the hold of the ship near the engine room playing with explosives. We have tried to inform Captain Turner. But Captain Turner gets angry and says that he has arrested German Saboteurs and sent them to the brig as prisoners of war. There are no other saboteurs aboard, thank you, according to our dear captain.
Have you seen the man I'm talking about? You can't miss him. He is swarthy-complexioned and doesn't look like anybody else in First Class on the Boat Deck. He seems to be an all around mean type. He's the one who stole my handbag and shot at me, the one who stabbed Michael in the back. Who knows what else he has done?
Sincerely yours,
Dora Benley
This is a preview of King Abdullah's Tomb to be published by Cheops Books on February 1, 2010.
Michael Byrne and I have a lot in common. We seem to be the only passengers aboard the Lusitania who think that the man with the hat with the extra wide rim is dangerous. Everyone else trusts Captain Turner to take them to Liverpool by May 7, 1915. Michael and I are always having conferences and discussions about the dangers of this unknown person. Not only did he stare at me on the dock on Saturday, May 1, but he also asked me to meet him at midnight in the first class lounge. When I went there, he did not act well-bred to say the least! He stole my purse and rifled through it. I barely escaped with my life. He shot after me and pursued me. If Mr. Vanderbilt had not been having a late night party, I don't know what would have happened to me.
Sincerely yours,
Dora Benley
P.S. Don't go near him. He's armed and dangerous.
This is a preview of King Abdullah's Tomb to be published by Cheops Books on February 1, 2010.
I met a passenger named Michael Byrne on deck today. He was searching around the Lusitania looking for ammunition and guns. He claims he heard a rumor that they were being hidden somewhere in the hold of the ship. I invited him to sit with us in the Veranda Cafe on the Boat Deck. Still he looked very frightened no matter how much my father tried to talk him out of it. My father took him to join in a game of deck shuffleboard to cheer him up. But when I went to find him and talk to him he was lying on the deck with a knife in his back!
Sincerely yours,
Dora Benley
P.S. Did you see who did it?
My mother keeps on winkng at me every time Mr. Klein leads me out onto the dance floor in the main dining room on the Boat Deck. It's been like this ever since we boarded the Lusitania. She says she's going to retire for the evening but we don't have to. She keeps on reminding me how wealthy the playwright is. She even says when we get to London we will go shopping for a wedding gown.
"Mother!" I protest. "He hasn't even asked me yet."
"He will."
When I gaze across the table at Mr. Klein at dinner I don't get any premonitions that I will one day be styling myself Mrs. Klein.
Sincerely yours,
Dora Benley
P.S. I do have to marry somebody, though. I can't be an old maid all my life
This is a preview of King Abdullah's Tomb, to be published by Cheops Books on February 1, 2010.
Dear Readers,
I can tell you anything, I mean even things I would not tell my own mother. Mr. Klein, the playwright insisted I dine with him on the Lusitania. He started to keep company with my parents and give everybody the impression we were engaged. My mother liked the idea and encouraged it because he was so rich. But when he escorted me back to my room and then tried to kiss me, I had to shut the door in his face. Otherwise, I think he would have pushed his way into my cabin. He might have been my father's age, but I think he wanted to sleep with me.
I have been raised to think a girl should not go to bed with a man until she is married to him. And I certainly do not want to end up married to Mr. Klein whether he is rich or not and whether he writes hit Broadway plays or not.
Sincerely yours,
Dora Benley
P.S. Maybe I was not being polite, but I did not even let him kiss me.
As soon as I boarded the Lusitania I met Mr. Klein. He's a playwright in case you don't know. My mother says he is quite successful and rich. His plays have been produced on Broadway quite often, thank you. It's just that he is my father's age. And he is so, well . . . boring. He does nothing but talk of his characters. I mean he never talks about archaeology, something I might actually be interested in. And he likes to sit at dinner for hours! I would at least like to take a walk around the deck or dance.
Oh, well! My mother says I don't want to be an old maid. It's bad enough that I went to college. After all, everybody knows that men don't like intellectual women or smart girls.
Sincerely yours,
Dora Benley
P.S. I wonder if anyone will ever appreciate me for myself.
As I board the Lusitania, I'm glad I have with me the present that Sir Adolphus sent for my father's birthday. His birthday is Monday, May 3. Because I've been studying for my classics' exam, it slipped my mind. I have not bought him a present. Now that I am on the ship, it's too late. His birthday will occur when we are out on the Atlantic.
I will keep the present hidden away in my cabin. Then I will present it to my father. I hope he will be surprised whatever it is. It does seem mysterious. It has cuneiform script on the bottom of it just like we were studying in archaeology class in college. My father is not a great fan of archaeology. His business is tires for cars. But I'm sure he will think it a bit unusual anyway.
I wonder what it is. It is already wrapped. I dare not open it, especially when that dark stranger is staring at me.
Sincerely yours,
Dora Benley
I met my parents at the Cunard Pier in New York Harbor on Saturday, May 1, 1915. They were supposed to get there at 10:00AM from Pittburgh. I was coming up from Bryn Mawr after my last exam. I had to wait, listening to ladies gossip about the Lusitania and all sorts of rumors about it that were being printed in the newspapers.
Meanwhile there was a strange, dark man in the crowd who was staring at me the whole time. I ducked behind others to conceal myself. I don't know who could be so rude. I certainly don't know him. I could not really see his face. He wore a wide-brimmed hat that kept it in shadow.
I am certainly going to stay away from him on the voyage. Maybe he won't be boarding. Yes, that would be best.
Sincerely yours,
Dora Benley
P.S. This is a preview of volume I of my memoirs, King Abdullah's Tomb, to be published by Cheops Books on February 1, 2010.
My mother thinks I should never have attended Bryn Mawr College. She says only old maids do things like that. I've always been interested in archaeology, but naturally I would like to meet a young man, too. I haven't been out much. I've sailed a ilttle on the Delaware with young men from Haverford College. But my father insists that he wants me to meet someone whose father is in the auto business. You see, my father, Winthrop Benley, has made his fortune selling tires. He's the President of Benley Tire and Rubber, one of the largest companies in the United States, and it's headquartered here in Pittsburgh.
But who would I ever find like that? I've never met another young man whose father is in the same business. My father is dragging me to England to meet Sir Adolphus, but I hear he's already married. Besides, he's my father's age and much too old for me. After all, I"m only twenty years old. Besides, I wouldn't want to marry somebody who lived in England. Everybody I know is right here in Pennsylvania. And I'm an American through and through.
Sincerely yours,
Dora Benley
P.S. Maybe I will meet somebody on my transatlantic voyage on the Lusitania.
My father wants me to accompany my mother and him to England. He wants to visit a business client, Sir Adolphus Ware, to sell him tires. I think he owns a British auto company. Naturally I'm rather busy with exams during my junior year of college at Bryn Mawr. I would rather write my paper on Greek vases.
My reluctance has nothing to do with all this hyperbole in the news about the ship, the Lusitania. People think it's not safe to sail on her because of the war over some assassinated Arch Duke whose name I don't even remember. I don't read the newspapers. I'm not concerned much with current events. And I don't think whatever is going on far away in Europe has much to do with us Americans.
No, I just has a dream about a nameless, faceless person that I met when I arrived in England. As soon as I saw him, I got scared and wished I were back home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I know I should not place much store in nightmares, but still I'm a little superstitious.
I like my life the way it is now. I don't want to risk changing it for anything. And somehow I get the idea that if I sail to England my life will never be the same again.
Sincerely yours,
Dora Benley
P.S. I wonder who else would be sailing on the ship? I don't know of anybody. It could be a boring voyage.
In preparation for the publication of volume I of my memoirs, King Abdullah's Tomb, on February 1 we will return to 1915 at the point where I am about to board the Lusitania. After all, my story began there. Before that I was just an ordinary school girl. After that I became a woman whose story is interesting to you because it became the story of all of you who lived through the Great War or knew others who did.
Sincerely yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
If Edward was ever unfaithful to me, it had to be during the Great War when we were apart or during the fifteen years when I was married to Michael Byrne and lived in Pittsburgh. Now that I am married to him, he is not unfaithful. It is a matter of never giving your man a chance to stray or rather never allowing man-hunting women like Helga von Wessel to be around him alone. You have to patrol him the way you would patrol and guard any other valuable goods.
What do I do to make sure he stays faithful to me? You guessed it. I have frequent sexual intercourse with my husband.
Sincerely yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
P.S. It was very naive of me to let him ship off to Gallipoli and then ride with Lawrence of Arabia. I should have made him marry me before he left. And if I could not have arrange to accompany him somehow I should have gotten him transfer to a city such as London or even Cairo where I could live nearby the way I do now.
I have just finished writing Book IV of my memoir, Hitler's Daughter. But I can no longer share it with you. I have to keep its contents hush-hush. You see, it is a continuation of my third book of memoirs, Captive At the Berghof. And that book is strictly off limits and even more hush-hush. Robert will be angry with me if I say too much! Who is Robert? He is my new agent. So instead from now on we will talk about Books I and II of my memoirs, King Abdullah's Tomb and In The Shadow Of The Sphinx. They are being published by Cheops Books early next year --- KIng Abdullah's Tomb on February 1 and In The Shadow Of The Sphinx on March 1.
Sincerely yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
P.S. Captive At The Berghof is so secret that it is even being removed from the Cheops Books website as well as Amazon.com. It is doing a disappearing act.
Why does my husband, Major General Lord Edward Ware, want to associate with riff-raff like the Arab hag, Qabihah? His mother, the Dowager Lady Ware, would be appalled. He encourages her to hang around our house at Gezira. He meets with her in the Arab quarter of Cairo. She thinks she can assault me in our garden, and I cannot escape her. She has no education at all. She is merely a Bedouin woman of the the most ignorant, crudest sort. She laughs in my face, and I am supposed to put up with such impertinence. This is what it is like to be Lady Ware living in Egypt in 1942.
Sincerely yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
P.S. If you want to read more, read my memoir Hitler's Daughter.
Dear Readers,
Even in my dreams I see that tent in the Syrian Desert where Edward lived from 1916 to 1918 when he was riding with Lawrence of Arabia during the Great War. The flap is always part way open. I approach on silent feet. But it always closes before I get there, and I can never peer inside.
I am left to wonder what went on inside that tent between my husband and Helga von Wessel, then called Fatinah, Mohamed's wife. Is this where Leopold was really conceived? How often did Helga have to wriggle underneath Edward on his cot to accomplish that? Perhaps I shall never know. It shall haunt me always.
Sincerely yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
I vow to you that I won't let Helga von Wessel steal my husband from me right under my nose. She seems to be determined. She has made it a condition of getting our daughter back for Edward to divorce me and marry her. She wants my title. She wants my estate. She wants my money. She wants me dead. Above all, she wants my husband. My husband is off fighting in Germany. He has just crossed the Rhine and is headed toward Berlin against orders. Eisenhower wants to leave it to the Russians, but Edward wants to save our daughter who is with Hitler in the Fuhrer Bunker.
But do you think Helga will let him? I think she will insert herself between Edward and Berlin. That is why I am packing up and heading there from my French villa right at the German border.
Sincerely yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
That witch, the Arab Bedouin woman, Qabihah, has told me that Edward has bought a love potion from her and a very strong one at that. When I ask her why she gives me a photo of Helga von Wessel dressed in a skimpy outfit. There is a note on the back that says, "To my darling Edward February, 1930". I've always wondered if there was something going on between the two of them back before we were married in 1934. But I've never feared that something was going on right now under my very nose? How is such a thing possible? Helga is in Germany. Edward is in Italy with the Eighth Army fighting the Germans in Operation Husky. I don't see how their paths could cross. But Helga is too clever by half. I would not put anything past that vamp.
What should I do? What would you do if you were me, readers?
Sincerely yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
I was going to tell you tonight what I wrote to Lawrence and what he replied. But I must tell you first what I just saw. I was at the Gezira Country Club with Edward and Leopold. It was Edward's farewell dinner before returning to the Front at El Alamein. Edward got a message during dinner. He excused himself and I followed him. He went to the phone and was talking to somebody outside. Then he left the building and headed out to the gardens. He met with that Arab woman, Qabihah, the crone in the black abaya. They were exchanging large sums of money. Edward would not allow her to say aloud what it was for. What is my husband up to now?
Yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
P.S. This incident will be detailed in Book IV of my memoirs, Hitler's Daughter.
Dear Readers,
The other day I saw flamingoes flying at me. A crocodile was even disturbed in the big pond at the back of our property. I heard someone splashing about. Can you believe I found the dead body of a German Panzer floating face down in the pond?
The old crone, Qabihah, the woman in the black abaya, confronted me in my garden and boasted that my husband, Edward, would be pleased that the man was dead. When I questioned her closely about why he would be pleased, she would not answer me. She only cackled instead. When I threatened to report her to Mid-East Headquarters, she laughed even more loudly and claimed they would do nothing to her.
My husband takes umbrage by saying she has something to do with spying activities for the military. He won't explain any more than that. I think I will write to T. E. Lawrence and ask him. He knows all about the Bedouins and the Arabs. I will let you know what I find out.
Sincerely yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
Before we leave the subject behind us, take today to remember the sad fate of Berlin abandoned to the Russians in April and May of 1945. From what the soldiers on the ground told my husband, Major General Lord Edward Ware, the German soldiers even in their defeat were remarkably well-disciplined. Alas, we can't say so much for the Russians even in victory! Countless German women were raped. One nun was reportedly raped twenty-four times. All this could have been easily prevented if it had been occupied by the British and Americans.
Sincerely yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
Near the end of the war in 1945 my husband, Major General Lord Edward Ware and I heard the Prime Minister wonder if we hadn't stuck the wrong pig. Churchill devoted all his resources to defeating Hitler and the Third Reich in Germany. He even said that he would make an alliance with the Devil himself if that was what it took to defeat his arch enemy who was also the captor of our little girl, Thomasina Ware. But when it became clear after the Fall of Stalingrad in 1943 and especially after Hitler retreated into the Fuhrer Bunker in Berlin after January 15, 1945 that the Thousand Year Reich was falling apart, Winston Churchill had second thoughts. The Devil with whom he and the Americans had made an alliance, Stalin, was becoming a bigger Devil than the Prime Minister would ever have imagined, though he never trusted the man the way the Americans naively did. Although he never said so specifically, I wonder if he was not thinking that maybe he should not have gone to war against Hitler to begin with back in 1939 but should have formed an alliance with Hitler to defeat the Russians.
Certainly Winston Churchill disapproved of Eisenhower's decision not to take Berlin. It made the Prime Minister livid to leave the capital city to Stalin and the Russians. It was obvious that such a poor decision was going to cause problems in the future. I wonder what people will think of it fifty or sixty years hence.
Sincerely yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
Yet, the Obama Administration and President Barack Obama are loath to call this man a terrorist. First, as far as the Obama Administration is concerned, the war on terror is over: the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are simply overseas contingency operations. Second, to call Nidal a terrorist would mean that the Fort Hood attack was the first large-scale terrorist attack on United States soil since 9/11 and the first one on Obama's watch. Obama wants none of that, since it would distract attention from his overriding domestic agenda, including his health care obsession, and would raise very disturbing questions as to whether Obama's neglect, dithering and weakness on the Afghan campaign (and on foreign policy matters in general), encouraged this attack (and will encourage possible future attacks).
So the word has gone out that Nidal is to be labeled a deranged criminal, a guy who snapped at the prospect of being shipped to a war zone, not a terrorist. This is very dangerous. The security of the United States is at stake here. A terrorist attack must be recognized for what it actually is at the highest levels of Government, or the correct conclusions will not be drawn and the proper responsive measures will not be taken. Otherwise, the Nation will be open to future attacks that may be far more serious in their consequences, such as that forecast in Linda Cargill's novel, The Black Stone.
My husband, Major General Lord Edward Ware, has told me that Field Marshall Montgomery and Churchill could have prevented the Allies from losing Berlin. Montgomery had already crossed the Rhine River by April of 1945. It was logical that his next step would have been to march his army to the capital city where Hitler was hiding in the Fuhrer Bunker beneath the Old Reich Chancellory Building. Why didn't Montgomery do what even Churchill, the Prime Minister, had agreed he should do? General Eisenhower was supposed to be the millitary head of the whole operation, the Supreme Commander. He did not like Montgomery. He was trying to snub him. And Eisenhower put himself above even the Prime Minister. He insisted that Berlin was "just a geographical location" and of no particular importance. It seems a shame that he has allowed the Russians to overrun the place. I wonder if it won't cause more problems in the future beyond what I can see in 1945. Stalin and the Russians seem awfully untrustworthy to me! I shall have to discuss this situation at length in my memoir, Hitler's Daughter, the last of a four-volume series entitled Dreamers of the Day, in which I recount the effect both World Wars had on my life.
Sincerely yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
Author's Note:
Dora does not know in 1945 just how much trouble Eisenhower created for himself. He was to become President of the United States in the 1950's. The Cold War could have been either prevented or modified by what happened in 1945. If Eisenhower had allowed Montgomery to take Berlin, there would have been no Berlin Wall. There probably would have been no East Germany. Then Germany would not have to be re-unified in the 1990's. If Eisenhower had taken more decisive action to push the Russians back, he could have salvaged even more of Eastern Europe from the Communists. In the ultimate scenario, he could have prevented the Cold War all together. There might have been no Iron Curtain. Angela Merkel would not have had to grow up in East Germany. She would not have had to make a speech at the 20th Anniversary Commemoration of the End of the Berlin Wall.
Obama has no sense of history, no ability to tap into the flow of historical events and articulate a memorable phrase or observation, such as President John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" or President Ronald Reagan's "Tear down this wall." He may have felt out of his depth delivering a speech at the site of the fall of the Wall.
And just what is keeping Obama "too busy"? Trying to push the health care monstrosity unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi through the House, of course. What Obama fails to appreciate that long after everyone has forgotten about the upcoming House vote on the health care reform bill, or anything Obama did to push (or try to push) it through, people would remember a stirring speech given at the 20th anniversary of the breaching of the Iron Curtain and the reunification of not only Germany, but all of Europe.
Our President needs to reorder his priorities. He should never be "too busy" to commemorate a seminal event in the history of Europe, one in which the United States played a leading role.
Our daughter has been kidnapped by Helga. You would think that was bad enough. But now Edward is slipping away from Gezira and sometimes even his duty in the army to meet with a crone. How do I know? I've had his adjutant, Lieutenant Hoare, follow him to the Arab sector of Cairo. He has met her more than once. What can he possibly want with the oldest woman in existence? His adjutant claims that her cheeks sag and she has crow's marks on her face. Her cheeks are sunken, outlining the shape of her skull. And yet she has a wicked smile for him every time he comes to visit her. She kisses him on each cheek and admits him into her humble dwelling.
Now I know it's not the same as meeting a shapely young thing! He cannot possibly be carrying on with a woman that old. And when he comes home from visiting her he looks as if he is lost in a fog. He stares into space. He is pallid and has a stricken look on his face as if she is telling him something that does not please him.
Can you tell me who she is, this woman of the shadows who skulks about in the darkest corners of Cairo and what business she has with Major General Lord Edward Ware, a general in Montgomery's army as they fight back Rommel and Hitler.
Sincerely yours,
Lady Ware
P.S. This is all in the narrative I am writing called Hitler's Daughter, part IV of a series called Dreamers of the Day.
The last volume of this series, Dreamers of the Day, is truly ghastly. At times I could barely stand to write it. If you didn't get the idea already, the Two World Wars defined and shaped not only my life but my husband's. As the Second World War ground to a conclusion, it often seemed as if our lives were going to end, too.
Our little girl, Thomasina Ware, was lost to us. We strove every day to end that sad situation, but it seemed to go on as long as the war did. And when we finally saw her again after years of being parted . . . well, that is the story of Hitler's Daughter.
Sincerely yours,
Dora, Lady Ware
Captive At The Berghof
A
novel by Linda and Gary Cargill Part Two of a Series, Dreamers of the Day
Chapter 1:
When they put the baby on her belly that late spring morning on June 7, 1935, Dora reached for it and lifted it up. She held her breath in suspense as she turned it around.
It felt like a knife slicing through her vitals. It was only a girl.
Her mother-in-law, the silver-haired Dowager Lady Ware, dressed in a black chiffon dress with a white lace collar and a strand of pearls, tried to make the best of things.
“Well,” she reminisced, “she's the first baby born at Ware House since Edward arrived forty-two and a half years ago in 1892.”
“For a girl she really is big. Eight pounds! Just like a boy.” Edward, who had been headed out to a military meeting when his wife went into labor, was outfitted in his British Colonel's khakis. His Victoria Cross for service at Gallipoli during the Great War was pinned to his breast. He picked his daughter up and held her to the light streaming through the window as she gave her first lusty cry. The wail was so loud it echoed down the upstairs hallway and sent the servants running to peer through the partially open door.
The “just like a boy” part made Dora
clench her jaw to keep herself from crying. She could not get the image of a
chortling and triumphant Helga von Wessel out of her head. That lady's dark
eyes flashed as she seemed to whisper in Dora's ear, Just as I hoped!
“Lucy, George, look at her!” Edward hurried into the hallway to show the baby off to the servants. “Look at this red fuzz on her head,” he held her up cheek to cheek. “It matches my hair almost exactly, doesn't it? At least what hair I have left at forty-two!” he laughed.
“Yes, indeed, sir!” said Lucy. “Her eyes are blue now like all babies, but me thinks I see a hint of green,” the maid compared them to her master's own green ones.
“She's so fair!” exclaimed George, the cook. “You and m'lady have milky white skin, especially you if I may say so, sir. But this little miss, well, I can truthfully say I've never seen skin that looked so much like newly fallen snow.”
“She's like those pictures you see in calendars and postcards, sir, the ones of the Alps Mountains,” Lucy agreed. “Not that I've ever traveled there meself, but that's what this little one brings to mind, she does.”
Dressed for the occasion, Leopold, in a three-piece suit with a gold pocket watch and chain, entered the room and headed over to Dora. While everyone else gathered around the baby, the seventeen-year-old settled on the edge of his stepmother's bed.
“You've been crying,” the young man observed. His midnight black hair curled around his forehead.
“Yes, Leopold,” Dora sniffled. She met the penetrating blue eyes of Edward's bastard, half-Arab son, living proof of her husband's military service under Lawrence of Arabia during the Great War. But far from resenting him, Dora had come to depend upon him. Leopold had been her best friend for months now, ever since she had returned to England to marry Edward in fact. She did not know what she would do without him.
“I understand,” Leopold squeezed her hand. “Edward telephoned and told me you'd gone into labor. I hurried up from London. As soon as I got here, he showed me my little sister. He announced that you and he are going to adopt me. He said it was your decision. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” He kissed her hand. He wiped a tear from his eye. “You will never regret it. I promise you.”
“We both love you as if --- as if you were our own son.” She caressed his cheek.
“But you hoped you would give Edward a son of your own,” Leopold said.
Dora nodded and looked away, her eyes brimming with tears of disappointment. “Yes, Leopold, this was my one and only chance. I've failed.”
When Dora had found out last Christmas that Leopold was Edward’s bastard son, she had gone to Edward and persuaded him that they must adopt the boy. Her husband had not believed that she would do such a thing for him, but she had sensed how attached her husband and Leopold were to each other. Edward had to have an heir to his estate and title. She had known with almost dead certainty that she would not have another child. So now that they knew the sex of the baby, everything had fallen into place with an aura of inevitability.
She
thought, And now Helga's son will become my husband's legal heir. She will
have achieved her lifetime ambition --- to inherit a title and an estate in
England along with all my money. If they drew up a formal line of succession,
she would be in it and not me. I would be a footnote.
“Are you sure?” Leopold asked incredulously. “You just got married nine months ago, on September 30th.”
“I'm forty going on forty-one. After fifteen wasted years of being married to Michael Byrne, living on the other side of the Atlantic, I'm lucky to be able to give Edward a child at all.”
“But
you did.”
“Only a girl.”
“She looks to me like quite a remarkable little girl.”
“How remarkable can any girl be? Girls never amount to anything. It's a boy that a husband wants --- a boy like you. No matter where you came from. No matter who your mother was.”
Leopold took her hand and squeezed it. “Look, Dora,” he directed her attention to where Edward was standing at the door to the bedroom letting his daughter grasp his fingers while he held her up for all to see, “he's really taken with her. In fact, Edward looks smitten.”
Dora had to admit that Edward did seem to be talking non-stop to anyone who would listen about his new daughter.
“This little girl will be out of the ordinary,” Leopold predicted.
As if the little girl had heard her half-brother, the willful little vixen gave a loud cry of triumph and affirmation. Then she smiled.
First Chapter From In The Shadow Of The Sphinx, 2nd Novel in the Series Dreamers of the Day
1st Novel in Series: King Abdullah's Tomb, 2nd edition of Those Who Dream by Day
2nd Novel in the Series: In The Shadow Of The Sphinx
3rd Novel in the Series: Captive At The Berghof
4th Novel in the Series: Hitler's Daughter
Wearing a Paris-styled, Canton crepe evening frock with velvet shoulder bows, Dora sat peering out a porthole. She sipped her after dinner coffee on the upper level of the first-class lounge. At six in the evening it looked like night. Wind was stirring the waves into gray, frothy peaks. Lightning streaked across the sky. Thunder shook the ship, making her coffee spill all over its saucer. Rain pelted down over the whitecaps. Big swells lifted the Morro Castle and put her down on the return trip from Havana to New York.
“Mrs. Michael Byrne, I have an urgent message for you,” a Cuban waiter appeared at Dora's table. A white envelope lay on top of his silver tray.
She handed the man a tip and opened the envelope. The handwriting looked unfamiliar. Bold characters leaped off the paper and smacked her in the face.
September
7, 1934
Dear Mrs. Michael Byrne:
Leave
what my handlers and I must have on the table. I will retrieve it before the
waiter does. I'm nothing if not nimble and quick. To prove my point, glance to
your right. I'm seated only three tables away.
Your Doom
She turned to the right. A very young man, twenty at most, dressed impeccably in black tie evening wear with a white carnation in his lapel, raised his hand and waved. He was about five foot six with midnight black hair that curled around his milky white cheeks. His clear blue eyes stared back at her. He picked up his champagne glass, winked at her, and smiled.
Dora leaped up from her seat. Her shoulder bag slammed into her as she dashed downstairs to the main level. She nearly ran headlong into a waiter carrying a silver tray laden with crystal glasses. Gin sloshed over the white linen tray mat.
When she reached the dance floor, the room was so thick with passengers that Dora could not see the exit. Everyone around her was doing the jitterbug. Being married to Michael -- the dour, serious, and overworked Vice President of her father's company, Benley Tire and Rubber, who had come on this cruise to sell tires in Havana -- had not exactly provided her with many opportunities to try it. Methodists -- and Michael had always been a devout one -- did not approve of dancing.
Someone grabbed her around the waist. She found herself gazing into the startlingly blue eyes of the mysterious stranger from the balcony section of the first class lounge.
“I wondered when we would meet, Mrs. Byrne,” he spoke with a high-toned British accent.
They could not stand still in the midst of the surging, dancing crowd. The stranger forced her to dance the jitterbug.
“So you are Edward Ware's sweetheart,” he said with emphasis.
She hoped this young man did not notice her blush under the glaring yellow, overhead lights. She did not like discussing Edward with strangers.
“Colonel Ware writes to me like an old family friend. We knew each other during the war.”
“You have received many packages from him and his mother, Lady Ware, by Royal Mail --- in big, fat boxes.”
How could he have found out about those Royal Mail packages? Were spies hiding out near Ware House observing them being sent off or in Pittsburgh watching them being delivered?
“We are in a big hurry, my handlers and I. We have no time to waste. We want all of the very valuable documents he gave you.”
“Only business contracts were in those boxes. I --- I have been helping Lady Ware with the management of Adolphus Motors, while Edward is away in the army. His mother is a widow, you know. She's trying to carry on her late husband's auto business.”
“Likely story!”
“If you’ll excuse me.”
Dora broke away, throwing herself between two other couples, and ran smack into a third. She finally caught sight of the doorway.
Bang!
Bang! Bang!
Women screamed. The music stopped as a man cried out as if in pain. Hisses, whispers, and shouts erupted behind her. Dora kept on pushing through the crowd towards the exit.
“What happened?” one of the dancers yelled.
“That man over there . . . Look, he's wounded . . . “
“Somebody get a doctor! Is he dead?”
Dora speeded up.
A lady stepped out of the crowd right in front of Dora. “It's Captain Wilmott!”
Dora felt someone grab her arm. The young man with the carnation whispered in her ear, “Oops! I missed the wall above your head. I'm supposed to scare you. You're supposed to give me the papers. That's what my handlers told me. I don't know how the Captain got in the way.”
The black-haired young man was stuffing a handgun into his suit pocket while exiting the room in a big hurry.
The ships' officers pushed their way into the crowd. “Make way!” they called out. They grabbed hold of Captain Wilmott. Blood was oozing from his shoulder. They slung him between them and let the captain limp out on his own toward the boat deck.
Much news since August 31 when I posted my last statement of intent on this blog. Much has changed. After all, it is now November 2. I now have an agent for Captive of the Berghof and possibly the whole series. Publishers don't want me to post all the chapters from all my novels online. So instead of posting the last chapter of Those Who Dream By Day and all of In The Shadow Of The Sphinx as well as Captive At The Berghof and even Hitler's Daughter, I will post only the first chapters of those novels.
Also Cheops Books has decided to bring out a second editon of Those Who Dream By Day. The title has been changed to King Abdullah's Tomb. In this edition we emphasize not the Lusitania episode but the Lawrence of Arabia side of things. It will be evident from the cover art and the marketing style.
In addition we have come up with a title for the entire four-book series, The Dreamers Of The Day. The quote is of course taken from T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Tomorrow expect to see the first chapter of In The Shadow Of The Sphinx, Part II of the historical thriller series The Dreamers Of The Day. After that you will see chapter 1 of Captive At The Berghof, which is Part III and finally you will see chapter I of Hitler's Daughter, Part IV and concluding book in the series.
Chapter 63:
Michael whispered into Dora's ear, “If you need me, I'll be right here.”
“Thanks!” she squeezed his hand.
Michael insisted upon standing outside the door as she was ushered into an out-of-the-way room inside the French Foreign Ministry that was dead still and silent. It seemed to be as far away from the crowds as one could get. At first she didn't see anyone else in the darkened room. The shutters were fastened. The drapes were shut. Only bare glimpses of sunshine filtered through, just enough to illuminate her way so she did not run into a piece of furniture or a bookcase.
Gradually, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she became aware that there was a man sitting in the corner cross-legged on the floor. He was reading a book. She approached him slowly. He was the same one she'd seen at the photo session, the white man wearing an Arab headdress.
“Do you know who I am?” Dora asked, clutching her purse in both hands.
“Yes, Miss Benley, I do,” came the terse answer in a clipped British accent. He didn't so much as glance in her direction. He kept on reading.
“If you know who I am, you must know why I am here.”
She'd imagined what she would say to Lawrence for weeks now. She'd dreamed about it. But Dora hadn't counted on how hard it would be to address him once alone with the famous man.
“Sorry,” he put his book away and leaped up with the ghost of a smile, “but after years on a camel I find furniture uncomfortable. The British War Office told me you've been trying to meet me for months,” Colonel Lawrence said without offering to shake her hand or approach her more closely.
He wasn't going to make this easy for her. “Did --- did you hear what happened to Sir Adolphus Ware?” she asked after a few moments of awkward silence.
He nodded, frowning, and strode away toward a small window at the back of the room that didn't have shutters. She hadn't seen it at first. The drapes were closed, but he was peering out a crack.
“Do you have any idea why --- why he killed himself?” she followed the Colonel with her eyes.
He didn't answer. He just looked out at the passing throngs in Paris.
“I --- I figured if anyone alive knew, you would.”
“I'm amazed that Sir Adolphus, with his excitable disposition, lasted this long. He never could keep a secret. He always had to be prattling about something.”
Dora opened and shut her mouth in amazement. She hadn't expected such a confession. She'd always imagined that she'd have to force it out of him, that it wouldn't be this easy.
“I've had nothing else to think about for a whole year now, ever since I got Edward's last letter from Petra,” she tried to make Lawrence understand her situation. “I went through so much before that. I don't know if Edward told you, but I was --- “
“A survivor of the Lusitania, I know,” Lawrence acted all-seeing and all-knowing.
Dora wasn't sure how much time the busy man would allot to her. She had to get on with what she had to ask him. It appeared he knew everything she knew and a lot more, too.
She wanted to ask about Edward. Now that she was face to face with the man, for some reason she shied away from that topic. She kept putting it off. She thought to ask about everything else first. After coming this far, her nerve was failing her.
“Was it because of the humidor? Was this why Sir Adolphus killed himself and why his gardener, Ali, was after me? Was this why Asalah, died? You do know who she is, don't you?”
Lawrence nodded enigmatically, again while looking away from her.
“I overheard a conversation between Leonard Woolley and Sir Adolphus back in May of 1915 at Ware House. It was late at night. Sir Adolphus said he'd thought he was safe. It had been three years. Leonard Woolley reminded him that he would never be safe. They said something about how you, sir, had been the one to start it all,” she paused.
Lawrence broke out laughing so suddenly it made her jump. He was always acting unpredictable. He smiled at her, “You sound like the Ottoman Turkish press, miss.”
“Oh, I see,” she fumbled with her bag again.
He strode right up to her. Funny, but on the other side of the room he'd looked much taller, like someone with far more presence than a slim, five-foot-three man would have. “I owe you a full explanation for everything that's happened to you in the past . . . oh, four years,” he said.
She nodded.
“I was very young at the time, just out of Christ's College, Oxford. Woolley invited me to Carchemish. Sir Adolphus was an old chum of Woolley's. We traveled the whole Syrian Desert. We even visited Petra, 'the rose-red city half as old as time,'” Lawrence intoned the words like a poet. His eyes flashed with the memory of the place.
Dora stood spellbound. She'd hated and resented Colonel Lawrence for years. She had never thought to stand tongue-tied in front of him, hypnotized by his strange powers of elocution and persuasion. Was this what had drawn Edward to him, bound him by loyalty never to leave his side until the mission had been accomplished? It seemed that her whole life had led her to this minute.
“We stumbled upon King Abdullah's tomb by chance. I was curious. I lowered myself down into it. The others waited above. Then I called Sir Adolphus down since he had the better camera. I'd discovered some ancient texts next to the bier of the king himself. They dated to the time of Muhammad.”
She nodded, glad that Lawrence was doing all the talking.
“It turned out to my amazement that they were original texts of the Koran. What was even more interesting and significant, they didn't seem at first glance to correspond exactly to the one all Moslems use nowadays. I didn't have time to translate the scrolls on the spot. Neither did Woolley. So I had Sir Adolphus take photos of them for later examination.”
“I --- I see,” she remembered how handy Sir Adolphus had been with a camera.
“Just as we were finishing up in the tomb, one of the local residents discovered us and put out the call for warriors.”
“Why?”
“Nothing if you are rational thinking,” Lawrence explained. “The Shereef of Mecca, King Hussein, that I have the privilege to represent here in Paris, would understand. There are darker forces in the Arab world who don't --- such as Ib'n Saud.”
She shuddered, remembering Prince Ali, one of Ib'n Saud's sons.
“We wouldn't have made it out of Petra alive except that Asalah, a daughter of Ib'n Saud who happened to be visiting friends near Petra, helped us. We escaped dressed as women in long black abayas that she provided. After that she couldn't return to her father's house. Sir Adolphus agreed to spirit her away to safety in England.”
The Colonel got out the humidor. It seemed to appear from the shadows. The last time she'd glimpsed it she'd been saying her goodbyes to Edward while standing on the pier in Liverpool in late May of 1915. Now here it was in Paris. That elaborately carved wooden box seemed to have a thousand lives.
Lawrence was holding it out to her. He was trying to make her take it. She stepped back. It made her fearful.
“It won't bite, Miss Benley, I assure you,” he said with a note of sarcasm.
He pushed it into her hands. It burned her fingers. She wanted to drop it but didn't dare. Even in May of 1915, when she'd last seen this humidor in person, she'd never actually handled it.
“Tell me what you notice about it, Miss Benley.'
She held it up to her eyes, turning it in all directions. The Hittite script was still scrawled on the bottom. She looked up at Lawrence.
“We added that as a distraction, a trick if you will,” Lawrence explained. “It was supposed to mislead the curious, as it seems to have misled you.”
She blushed.
He reached out and removed the cigars from the box. “I don't want these to distract you,” he stuffed them into his pocket.
She kept looking at the humidor from different angles. “I'm sorry, but I don't get it,” she apologized.
He took the box back from her. “No one has yet guessed the trick of the humidor, not even Mohamed when he thought he'd cheated me out of it in the desert for ten new cigars.”
“What --- what is the trick?” Dora edged closer.
He reached down to the bottom of the box and pulled up a trap door. Standing next to a table, he poured out about twenty small cannisters with lids on them. They rolled around on the table top until he made them stop with his hand.
She stared at him in disbelief. “You --- you thought of that, didn't you?” It reminded her of Lawrence somehow --- all the trickery, the scheming. He had fooled the Turks at Akaba, too, and the Turks and Germans at Petra. He was a very cunning fellow.
“Most people don't associate anything with cigar boxes except cigars. But I've dug up ancient boxes built of elaborate materials such as gold, jade, and ebony --- all with false bottoms. Howard Carter wrote me about the most elaborate boxes of all found in Egyptian tombs in the Valley of the Kings. There's one from a royal's tomb that doubles as a sarcophagus for a pet bird at the same time it is also a backgammon board with all the pieces tucked neatly away. They are so tightly packed together that you can't hear them when you move the sarcophagus. You have to slide open the drawer of the sarcophagus and take the pieces out. Have you ever played backgammon, Miss Benley?” Lawrence slipped all the film cannisters back into the humidor and jiggled it to show her it had been built with the same idea.
She shook her head “no”, astonished at the way his nimble mind worked.
“I highly recommend it once you get back to America. It diverts the thoughts enormously. So we commissioned a woodsmith and told him the general idea of what we wanted. We didn't, of course, tell him what we wanted it for. I had the idea to build a decoy in case we needed it. That was the one that Sir Adolphus so foolishly sent to your father before you boarded the Lusitania.”
She nodded, thinking that Lawrence didn't allow for the human foibles of mere mortals like poor Sir Adolphus. He couldn't understand how scared Edward's father had been.
“After the followers of Ib'n Saud started tracking us, they suspected everything we did. Prince Ali was sent to the dig at Carchemish to watch us. We often smoked and carried the humidor with the film cannisters about. So Ali at once thought we were concealing something inside it. The tragedy for him was that he never discovered the trick about the false bottom. An iconoclast doesn't make for a very good archaeologist.”
Dora gazed at Lawrence. Her awe in his presence was beginning to thaw just a little. “You're --- you're a very clever person, Colonel.”
“I have to be, Miss Benley,” he strode across the room. “Don't you think?” he turned around and faced her. “Seriously, I mean?”
“You hide film inside a humidor the way you --- the way you lured the Germans and Turks into the Siq and then opened fire on them.”
He nodded.
“But --- but your cleverness has cost Sir Adolphus his life.” She wanted to add, And may have killed Edward, too! But she still couldn't get up the nerve to mention her fiance.
He sighed, “Miss Benley, I wish your eyes could have seen what my eyes have.” He paced away from her to the small window in the back of the room and looked out as he spoke to her. “I have seen towns that Turks have pillaged and plundered. They have left dead women and children on the ground. They have beheaded boys. They have fed corpses to dogs and left others to rot in the sun --- things that I shouldn't even talk about in front of an American or British lady.” He sighed. He gripped the window sill and shook it as if he wanted to bring the whole building down. “That's why I wanted to fight this war and win. I wanted to give twenty million Semites a chance to hold up their heads among nations. I thought it was worth a few lives.”
Her mouth fell open at the grandeur of what he was sketching for her.
“I thought I would succeed. We won the battles,” he started pacing again. “The Turks signed the Armistice. But this Treaty of Versailles that will be signed to end this Paris Peace Conference won't give either Hussein or Feisal a united Arab country to rule. I have failed. That has strengthened the forces of darkness in the Arab world --- and I mean Ib'n Saud. Now they will hunt us down worse than before.”
She thought of the curse of the Five Generations that Ali had told her about before he died.
“But we will prevail in the end, and that's where I want to ask you a favor, Miss Benley.”
“Me?” she was astonished. It was beyond imagination for Colonel Lawrence to ask a favor of her. “What --- what could I possibly do?”
“It's your chance to participate in something larger than yourself, larger than all of us.” He stopped in front of her and looked straight into her eyes, transfixing her with his stare. It was impossible to look away.
His voice echoed through her mind. It consumed it like a whirlwind out of the desert, leaving nothing else standing. She wasn't aware for some minutes that Lawrence had taken her hands. He was shaking them to make his point. He handed her the humidor. “I want you to keep it for me, along with its precious contents.”
“But aren't --- aren't you the one who can best defend it?”
“That's when I was the head of an army. Now I'm just a private citizen, or soon to become one,” he sighed and strode away from her again. “Since I've failed to establish a state for King Hussein and Prince Feisal in Paris, they can't defend me either. These valuable film cartridges won't be safe with me, I'm afraid. They'd be far safer in distant America hidden discreetly in your attic or perhaps in another box or container. If I think it's safe to study them in Europe someday, I'll send for them.”
She nodded.
“This sort of progress in the Arab world is what Edward gave his life for, you know. If someone can translate the Koran and show that it doesn't really justify jihad, and is instead a religion of peace, it could change the world,” Lawrence came about as close to her as he could get. “It could also explain why the old translation resulted in the wreck of the Ottoman Turkish Empire.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks. Edward gave his life . . .
“What's wrong, Miss Benley?” he asked, taken aback.
“So Edward's dead, isn't he?”
“Didn't I hint at that in my letter?” he headed off towards the window again.
“How did he die? I at least have the right to know that, don't I?” she dabbed her eyes.
“I was trying to soften the blow for you by saying that he'd been lost.”
“Yes --- yes, I sensed that,” she gulped to have her suspicions so quickly confirmed.
“He was found two days later in the desert. He'd been shot. It was an assassination style killing,” he said quickly as if it were very disagreeable to him to talk about it. “They took his money and ran. Very sad. Very tragic, if you must know.”
She tried to see the scene before her. “What about his body? Are you going to send it to his mother at Ware House?” It was tragic she'd come this far just to make Edward's funeral arrangements.
He threw his hands out to his sides. “Miss Benley, when a man dies in the desert, most frequently he's left lying there for the jackals. It's not pretty, but we have only camels. They carry the supplies for the living.”
She stood there holding the box weeping.
“Miss Benley, will you please take the humidor and go. I'm sure that the gentleman waiting for you outside, Mr. Byrne, if my assistant Abdul informs me correctly, will be perfectly happy to escort you back to your hotel.”
She put the box down on the nearest table. “I – I can't take the box that killed Edward. I --- I just can't.”
“Would it help to tell you that Edward would want you to do as I request?”
She shook her head “no” again.
“Would it help to tell you that he told me so himself before he died?”
“No.”
“You won't help me honor his memory?” Lawrence pressed.
Dora turned to go. She could barely see to walk she was weeping so. She could never remember later just how far she got.
“He's telling you the truth, you know, Dora. I do want you to help Lawrence,” came a voice out of the darkness that Dora thought she'd never hear again as long as she lived.
