Caroline slathered fresh butter on a roll and luxuriated in steady munching while examining the front page of the newspaper.
When he stepped from the steaming bathroom, Dwayne found Caroline holding the newspaper up to him with brows knitted.
“Look,” she commanded.
“Um...I don’t read French. Something about a banking scandal?” He squinted.
“The date, dummy. I already called the desk. It’s today’s paper. They sounded like they thought I was crazy.”
He squinted again.
The date was more than six months from when he and Jimbo first arrived on Nisos Anaxos.
They were in their own past. Their doppelgangers were even now aboard the Ocean Raj a thousand miles to the south/southwest, and unaware of all the shit they were about to go through.
“Our guardian angel got our return date wrong,” she said.
“Maybe he had his reasons.”
“How would we know? We don’t even know who he is. Or why he helped us.”
“Okay. So, we have to kill six months.” He shrugged.
“Just like that? You’re that complacent about this?”
“Caroline, I’m hurting, I’m tired and I just can’t think about all that right now. All I can deal with at this moment is going face down in those scrambled eggs.” He sat down on the bed and pulled the serving cart to him and began wolfing eggs with one hand and chugging glasses of OJ with the other.
By midmorning, after making love and showering again (together this time), they were adjusting. They decided that arriving home six months early was a pretty sweet deal.
“How often does anyone get the chance for a do-over? Never. It’s like Daylight Savings Time except we’re turning the calendar back. The ultimate getaway,” Dwayne said.
“No one knows we’re here.” She nodded. “Not even Sir Neal.”
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, Caroline.”
Caroline called down to the desk and gave a clerk there Dwayne’s shirt, pants, and shoe size. Within an hour, there were socks, two t-shirts, khakis, and a pair of Nikes delivered to the room. Dwayne dressed and left the room with a dozen of the ancient coins in his pocket and a list of Caroline’s clothing sizes.
The daytime registrar, who had been informed of the Canadian couple’s unique situation by the nighttime clerk, gave Dwayne the address of a reputable merchant down in the souk near the Fouad Chebab Stadium. The registrar said to use his name, Yusef, for the best deal as the dealer was his cousin.
Dwayne returned to the Beluzar with shopping bags of Donna Karan knockoffs and several pairs of Adidas in Caroline’s size. He also had five thousand Euros concealed inside the sneakers in their boxes. He had given away the coins at a sacrifice price, less than their intrinsic value in precious metal. But they had more, and could strike better deals once they were out of Lebanon.
For now, they needed some ID that would allow them to fly out of Beirut for the start of their six-month mulligan, as Caroline called it. She had been on the lady’s golf team at London University.
They decided to wait until the graveyard shift came back on to inquire as to useable passports and visas. Things just went so much easier at night.
As Nicolas May of Toronto and Marilynn Wagner of Calgary, they took a crowded and smelly bus north to Tripoli, where they boarded a ferry for the Turkish port of Mersin. In Istanbul, they found a dealer in rare coins who was willing to make a cash deal. They sold a few of the coins for enough to finance hotels and meals for a month or more. They’d sell the rest as they needed to.
Caroline called American Express, using one of the identities Lee Hammond had provided for her. She reported her card stolen, and requested a new one be delivered to a hotel at the next destination, Corfu.
With a credit line and ready cash, Dwayne and Caroline spent their vacation from time sailing, swimming, hiking, and bumming their way across the isles of the Aegean. There was no place they had to be. There wasn’t even any place they should be. They were as alone in the world as they had been aboard the Lion of Ba’al. This alone-time was of their own choosing, and they were free to allow the whole world to come down to just each other for a time they both knew was splendidly unique.
They lay back on blankets on a vast beach on Kylini listening to the gentle purr of the surf with toes in the warm golden sand.
“Happy?” Dwayne asked. It had become a daily ritual.
“Mm,” she murmured and took his hand in hers.
“Sure?” he said.
“I wouldn’t want to change a thing,” she said. “You say that now,” he said.
58
Rhodes Redux
“Tony and Tyrone?” The raven-haired girl grinned at the two men who had unexpectedly joined her.
“I guess so.” The black man shot a glance at the one who had introduced himself as Tony, the lottery winner. His eyes narrowed as he looked past his friend to the lobby opening across the pool patio.
“What is it?” Lee Hammond said, turning. “Someone we know,” Chaz Pierce said.
Two figures stepped from the shadows of the lobby into the clean Aegean sun.
Dwayne Roenbach and Caroline Tauber walked into the pool area, tanned and rested with broad smiles on both their faces at their friends’ open expressions of surprise—surprise at seeing the pair in the last
