FROM THE NOVELLA, 

TO LOVE AGAIN

A love story

by 

A. J. Kerns

 

Bend, Oregon—Late Spring

A stack of short stories lay on the left side of Alicia Redmond’s vintage oak desk. She’d found the antique desk a year ago at a local auction and bought it for a song. It had drawers on the right side, which in the first week she crammed to the brim with papers, notebooks, and writing paraphernalia.

As an assistant professor at the local community college, she had edited and made suggestions on nine of her student’s submissions. Eight to go and the class was tomorrow. Mike Monroe’s story sat on top of the pile. She debated placing it on the bottom, maybe to leave it for last so she could give it more attention later. 

Now, why was that?

Years back, in high school, when she was a freshman, and he was a senior and a star on the football team, she had carried a secret crush. However, the gap in their ages and the distance in circle of friends prevented any chance of friendship. Even making the cheerleading squad didn’t help a casual encounter with him. Then he graduated and went into the army. Why didn’t he go to college? She wondered. He was so smart.

She fingered the latest draft of the short story he had submitted and was still puzzled. A romance? A nostalgic looking back at a lost love. Was this the same man who wrote that grim war novel, full of violent energy? Oh well, she thought, we all have many sides, facets to our being.

Mike certainly was handsome; tall, with dark hair, blue eyes, and that curious smile of his. Rugged would be the descriptive characteristic she’d use if writing a story about him. Never married. No doubt he’d had a few love affairs and what about that fun glint in his eye and the way two of those women in class vied to sit next to him?

She leaned back and placed her pen marker on his story. Once again, the time back at that high school spring dance came to mind. Bright lights, loud music, and students laughing and dancing. She had stood alone, arms crossed, watching everyone having fun. Then she overheard the comment from her classmates aimed in her direction, “Look at little skinny over there.” Bad enough to be unaccepted in any of the groups, let alone having to put up with that. She had started for the door when then he was there, saying something like, “Hey, good-looking, you’re not leaving. Let’s dance before you go.” 

She hadn’t time to say no, and he took her onto the dance floor and twirled her around three times. The music changed to slow dance, and they were touching. In no time he drew her closer, awkwardly at first. The he told her dress was pretty and the rest of their dance she didn’t quite remember. Every spring when she smelled the orange blossoms, memories of the night returned. The evening was the high point of her social high school, even after returning home she’d found her grandmother’s locket was missing. 

The clock on the mantle chimed, three o’clock. No more time to work on Mike’s story. Time to pick up Zoe from junior high. She hoped her daughter’s day went well.

A single parent’s tasks never seemed to end. 

A J Kerns is a pen name for Arthur Kerns. Following his service as a U.S. Navy officer, Arthur Kerns joined the FBI with a career in counterintelligence and counterterrorism. On retirement, he became a consultant with the Director of Central Intelligence and the Department of State, which took him to over sixty-five countries. His short stories have appeared in several award-winning anthologies, recently in the Sisters in Crime, So West: Lady Killers. Diversion Books, Inc published his Hayden Stone thriller series, first, The Riviera Contract, and followed by The African Contract and The Yemen Contract. His latest thriller, Days of the Hunters, was published in March 2020. He has completed A Suitable Spy a WW II spy novel set in Latin Americat. He is working on a whimsical FBI novel taking place in Hollywood.He is represented by the Kimberley Cameron and Associates, Tiburon, California.

This excerpt from To Love Again was written with the Hallmark Channel in mind.

Website: www.arthurkerns.com

email: crick1938@aol.com  

FROM THE NOVEL A SUITABLE SPY.

THE FBI AGAINST THE NAZIS IN ARGENTINA

by

Arthur Kerns

 

On the Rio de la Plata off Buenos Aires—April 1941

Under a star-dotted, moonless sky the steel mass breached, pushing away the black water. The hum of diesel motors flushed the raucous sea gulls floating on the estuary. Hatches on the forward and aft decks of the U-boat popped open and dark-garbed seamen scrambled out onto the wet surface. They hurried to ready the two four-inch deck guns. Others manned the machine guns, balancing themselves as the submarine rolled in the gentle swells.

            The Italian U-boat captain, Filippo Archinto, pulled himself out of the conning tower’s hatch and welcomed the fresh air. Two officers followed him. The three raised their binoculars and scanned the horizon. On the starboard horizon, the long thin line of Buenos Aires city lights provided a backdrop to spot any nearby watercraft.

            Pascal, Archinto’s first officer, pointed to a small boat with running lights two hundred yards away. “That fishing boat. Is that the one?”

            “Signal it.” 

            Using a red-lens flashlight, Pascal blinked the prearranged signal to the boat. They waited for a response. A few moments later, recognition flashes, two shorts, three long, came from the boat. Archinto listened to the boat’s motor throttle down as it approached the submarine.

            “Any sign of a trap, shoot!” Archinto yelled down to his men.

            In the darkness, the outline of the fishing boat came into view the closer it neared. The fishermen aboard threw fenders out to prevent the boat from banging the sides of the submarine. Arid fumes from the fishing boat’s aging diesel drifted across the deck of the submarine.

            “Have you met this German, Herr Lauser?” Pascal asked.

            Archinto sighed. “I haven’t, but I suspect he’s the typical arrogant Gestapo asshole.”

            “Why are we doing this? Taking one of that shit’s prisoners aboard to deliver to our supply ship?”

            “Orders, Pascal. Orders.” Archinto shouted to the fishing boat’s captain to extinguish his running lights.

            A German-accented voice shouted from the boat in Italian, “Have your crew help us carry this man aboard.” A stocky man in a long black leather trench coat threw a fascist salute and then lost his balance in the pitching boat.

            “And a Buona Sera to you,” Pascal yelled back. “Who are you?”

            “Hauptsturmfuhrer Bruno Lauser.”

            “Let’s climb down and get this over with,” Archinto moaned.

            The boarders dumped the bound captive on the deck. Archinto shone a light on the man’s face. His mouth was taped, and from his bloody face it was apparent they had tortured him. He was unconscious but breathing. When Archinto touched the man’s chest he cried out.

            “Captain Archinto, how soon will you meet up with your supply ship?” Lauser asked, now standing next to him.

            Lauser had a pasty face with a mole on his chin. He was short on formalities. Archinto matched the Nazi’s attitude. “Not for two weeks. This man requires medical attention. We don’t have a doctor aboard my U-boat.”

            “No matter if he lives. For our records, he was sent back to Berlin.”

            “What’s his name?” Archinto asked.

            “You need not know that.”

            Archinto wanted to push the Gestapo man off into the sea but held back. “For the record, I must have his name for the logbook. My superiors will expect it. Who is he? A Jew?”

            The bound captive body lying on the deck convulsed. 

            “A renegade priest. A dangerous enemy of the Reich.”

            Pascal grasped Archinto’s arm. “My God! A priest dying on our boat.”

            “Lauser,” spat Archinto. “How could a priest be of danger to your Reich?”

            “This priest, a German national refused to tell us where two Jewish scientists were. The Jews are needed back in the homeland. That’s all you need to know.”

            Options raced through Archinto’s mind. He could take the priest aboard, possibly heal him, and have his superiors release the man. Somehow, he knew that wouldn’t happen. They would acquiesce to the German demands.

            “Take this unfortunate man off my boat and leave,” Archinto ordered. “Now.”

            “You are not serious.”

            “I won’t have a priest dying on my U-boat. My crew is superstitious. We have enough problems. On this Utalian submarine, we bury ships, not priests.” 

            Lauser did not move. 

            Archinto turned and made for the conning tower. He called back, “We dive in two minutes. Get off, or you will get wet.”

 

Buenos Aires—The Next Morning

In the windowed office of the port police headquarters overlooking the Plata, Sergeant Facundo Alvarez studied the prices of the American stocks listed in El Pampero. He chewed on his breakfast of three tostadas smeared with peach jam. He took a sip of his hot café con leche. The listed prices of his shares of the American company General Motors were doing well.

            Corporeal Ciano sauntered in, asked if he could borrow a cigarette, and flopped in a chair across from Alvarez. He jiggled a single page report. “This morning we pulled a floating body out of the water,” he said, “out beyond the breakwater.” He helped himself to one of his boss’s cigarettes, lit it, adding to the smell of nicotine in the room.

            Sergeant Alvarez shrugged and kept reading the stock quotes. “Male or female?”

            “A man. He had a rope tied around his neck. Face badly beaten up. We found no identification on him until we took off his shoes. This fell out.” He slid a silver medallion across the desk.

            Alvarez sighed, laid down his paper, and examined the coin-like object. One side had a cross; the opposite had engraved the name Frederick Schuler, SJ. 

            “Shit.” The initials SJ meant he was a Jesuit.

            “Who should we notify?” Pascal asked. “The archbishop or the Jesuits?”

            Alvarez held up his hand. “We do this delicately.” He thought a moment. “Photograph the body and give me the photos. I will handle this through proper channels.”

            When the corporeal left, he swung back and forth in his chair, rolling the medallion in his fingers. Probably the priest’s mother gave it to him. He sighed. If he handled this correctly with the Jesuits, he might befriend a very influential cleric or two who, in the future, would owe him. 

            He thought for a moment. His brother who went to a Jesuit school would be the first person he’d call. He had the right connections.

            Alvarez folded the newspaper and set it aside, then thought of the American Mr. Jones. The man was a stockbroker who favored him with General Motors stock shares for providing him with information on the mineral shipments to Portugal that everyone knew ended up in Germany. This might interest him, as this American was curious about many things. Who knew? This tidbit might be worth some Ford Motor shares. Diversify, Jones kept telling him.

            What about the diplomat from the German embassy? Commander von der Molk reminded Alvarez of the American. His way of asking probing questions about the marine traffic going to and from Montevideo. How like the American in his thinking. He paid in Deutschmarks, which were easy to exchange. Perhaps he would pay in stock shares of the German firm, Bayer. 

            Both men struck him as cut from the same cloth. Spies.

Following his U.S. Navy service, Arthur Kerns joined the FBI with a career in counterintelligence and counterterrorism. On retirement, he became a consultant with the Director of Central Intelligence and the Department of State, which took him to o      ver sixty-five countries. His short stories have appeared in several award-winning anthologies, recently in the Sisters in Crime, So West: Lady Killers. Diversion Books, Inc published his Hayden Stone thriller series, first, The Riviera Contract, and followed by The African Contract and The Yemen Contract. His latest thriller, Days of the Hunters, was published in March 2020. He has completed a WW II spy novel set in Latin Americat. He is working on a whimsical FBI novel taking place in Hollywood and a romantic novella.

Website: www.arthurkerns.com

email: crick1938@aol.com