know. He was my first love…my only love really.”
Bill sipped his port. “But what about Mr. Anderson?”
“Mistake. Serious.” Laura spoke with shuddering frankness, perhaps feeling more assured under the warm, age-old spell of the most opulent ruby wine from Portugal. “When Ben left Faslane for Israel after two years, I believed I would never see him again, whatever he said. And I thought I would die of a broken heart. I did not go out for eighteen months. My mother thought I was having a nervous breakdown. She hated Ben for what he had done to her darling daughter. But she was bloody glad when he left, and she would have died if I’d married him. But that was never going to happen, we never even discussed it.
“Anyway I used to go shooting with Dad from time to time, and I met Douglas up near Jedburgh on the borders. He was the son of a local landowner, and we used to have lunch together. Everyone else was much older. He made few demands on me, I had no interest in seeing anyone else, and after a couple of years I agreed to marry him. Everyone was delighted and my mother arranged a huge wedding.
“Then it happened. Ben phoned me the night before I was to marry. He told me he still loved me and wanted to see me. Of course I could not agree to that, and I told Ben so. But it nearly broke my heart all over again, and at the time I became Mrs. Douglas Anderson, I could not have cared less if I’d never seen my new husband again. He was very sweet and kind. And rich. But I should never have gone through with the wedding because I felt nothing for him.”
Laura Anderson did not have the slightest idea why she was pouring out her soul to this near-stranger from Kansas, and she could hardly justify it by telling herself it was probably in the national interest.
Bill Baldridge shook his head in bewilderment, and turned the subject back to Ben, which was not a great test of ingenuity. “Did you ever see the Israeli again?”
“Twice. Once I went to meet him in Cairo while Douglas was away at some financial conference. And once about a year ago when Ben came back to Faslane with three other Israeli officers to train on the Upholder Class submarine their Navy had purchased. He was a full commander by this time.
“It was strange, but the sheer overpowering nature of the deceit…we drove up to a hotel in the Highlands…It had a bad effect on both of us. I was worried stiff that either my mother, my father, or even my husband was going to walk right through the door and catch us.
“When we parted I had a funny feeling I really would not see him again. And so far I haven’t. He has called me a couple of times. But I don’t think either of us feels the same as we once did. The long, long separation, and the duplicity of the relationship, has proved a bit too much for both of us. He is serving in the Navy, God knows where, and I am left with poor Douglas, a good-looking, highly respected forty-year-old banker who leaves me stone cold. He knows it too, I am afraid. I wouldn’t blame him if he ran off with his secretary!”
“Do you have an address or phone number for Ben?”
“No. I have never had that since he left here after the Perisher. He was a bit secretive as a matter of fact. I asked him many times if there was anywhere I could just send him a letter, or even a postcard. But he always said it was a bit too complicated.”
“Laura, are you sure he was an Israeli?”
“It’s never occurred to me that he was anything else. He was here as an Israeli Naval Officer. How could he have been anything else?”
“Dunno,” said Bill. “But the Middle East is a strange place. A few days before the Gulf War began, Saddam Hussein swore to his fellow Arab, near neighbor and apparent friend and ally, President Mubarak of Egypt, that he would not attack Kuwait. The truth is an elusive commodity once you move east of the Greek islands.
“Was there ever anything, in all the time you knew Ben, that might suggest he could have been originally from another nation?”
“No. Not really. The only thing I ever wondered about was his sympathetic view of the Arabian nations, even over terrorism. You never would have described him as fanatically anti-Arab — and he was not at all religious.
“But now I look back, there is something else. I saw him only that one time in Cairo. But there were several other times when we discussed meeting, and he always wanted it to be Cairo. Never anywhere in Israel. Is that a bit odd? I don’t know. But I never thought he might be an Egyptian.”
“Did he ever tell you anything about his very early life?”
“Yes. He went to school here in England — a boarding school in Kent, so I suppose his parents must have had some money. But he did not go to university here — he went back to Israel at the age of eighteen, after his A- levels — they’re English exams — and from what I gathered, joined the Navy right away. He told me when he arrived in Faslane it was his first visit to the U.K. since he left school.”
“Was there anything else, other than being an Israeli, which set him apart from the rest of his Perisher class?”
“Not really. But he did bring over a nice new car. A small red BMW.”
“Was he popular, being cleverer than everyone else?”
“Not really. Ben had no interest in anything which he judged to be trivia. He had no polite small-talk — which my mother detested about him. If there was a birthday party, he would attend, and bring an expensive, thoughtful present. But he seemed always to be on the sidelines. Slightly preoccupied.”
“Why did you love him so much?”
“Because to my young eyes he looked like a God. I was only nineteen. He was twenty-seven, the outstanding young commander of his group, rich enough to take me to nice places, the only one with a new car, and a man who could fascinate me with stories of Middle Eastern countries I had never seen. He was charming. What he lacked was vulnerability. To a woman, I suspect that is deeply unattractive. But to a nineteen-year-old girl, just out of a London secretarial college, it was very, very special. I don’t suppose I would react in anything like that way if I met him for the first time now.”
“Could you imagine him being sufficiently ruthless to blow up an aircraft carrier with six thousand men on board?”
Laura hesitated. Then she said, “No, Bill. Not when you put it like that. But there was a coolness, an efficiency, a determination. There was a strength about Ben, if he thought it was his duty, to sink an American aircraft carrier…he’d do it.
“On the other hand, he had a very engaging smile. And he could be witty about things. You might even think he was a relaxed and confident man.
“But when I really got to know him I noticed his eyes were seldom still. There was a certain wariness there. And sometimes I would catch him casting his eyes around some fancy restaurant. And then he would smile his gleaming smile at me, and make some joke. I never really thought he was interested in other women, it was just that he was so watchful, of everything.
“I used to call it his Periscope habit, taking an all-round look every few minutes. Even a Naval genius like Ben had to keep practicing, I suppose.”
“Did he ever mention his parents?”
“Not really. Just that they lived in the country somewhere in Israel. I think they grew fruit, melons and things…but he sometimes mentioned that he had business with his family’s bank in London. He went there about once a month, usually on the train from Glasgow.”
“Did he have any other close friends in England, or Scotland?”
“No one here. He was not that popular. And he never mentioned anyone he even knew, in London or anywhere. I don’t think he ever introduced me to anyone.”
“When did you last hear from him?”
“I had one phone call about two months after he left the Upholder Class course. I was away, with Douglas and the girls, just for a weekend. When he got no reply from our house in Edinburgh, he phoned me here. Mummy was absolutely furious, but she said she was polite. Anyway I have not heard one word since — which is a bit unusual…the longest time he has ever been out of touch…Mummy probably told him he was the biggest bastard she had ever met, or something equally subtle. But she says not. I think Ben may finally have vanished from my life.”
“Will you tell me about Egypt?”
“That was after I had been married for about four years — about fourteen months before Flora was born. Douglas was going to a bankers’ seminar in Montreal. I had six days to myself. We planned it three months in advance. I flew all the way from Glasgow, changed planes at London Airport for Cairo. Ben arranged for me to pick
