Nobody Ever Dies

It took the repeater on Bastet's collar no more than a minute to ping Brettmann's router and establish a connection with my pineapple. I pushed a key that dropped the repeater off the collar and into the grass, I didn't want Bastet bringing it back out of range. Then I used my iPad to substitute the pineapple's SSID for the house's router.

Now, the evil twin was running the show and I had access to everything digital in Brettmann's house. I waited for a couple of minutes and Bastet came flying back over the wall. Naturally she had something struggling in her mouth. I said impatiently, "Put that down!!" She snarled, "You must wait," and disappeared into the shrubs.

She came out a minute later with a satisfied look and followed me around the perimeter of the compound until we got to the gate. It was controlled by the system that I'd just commandeered. I was certain Becks was in the house. I had been pinging her phone all night and the little dot was faithfully blinking at that location. Still, I needed to know exactly WHERE she was.

The house security cameras were state of the art. Becks was reading in a luxurious bedroom. She had on a tight pair of jeans and a simple peasant blouse that showcased her perfect oval face. She looked like she might be mildly sedated.

There were a number of domestic workers, all female and one burly guard who was sipping a cup of coffee in the kitchen. I needed to distract the guard, I'm a pretty big guy myself and reasonably strong but nerds are not instinctive fighters. They prefer subterfuge.

Once I'd gotten the guard out of the way, I planned to run the hundred yards or-so to the French-doors that opened out of Beck's bedroom and into the expansive ornamental garden. From there it would be back to the Zodiac and out into the Mediterranean.

I had the attack programmed into function keys. The first would set off the intruder alarm in the garage behind the mansion. It was several hundred yards up the hill. Once the guard had responded to the alarm, the second key would unlock the gate and the third would unlock Becks' room. I could see from the system that all of her doors were secured by digital locks.

Brettmann was literally keeping his wife under lock and key. It told me that Becks had informed him that she was my wife and in my mind that dishonorable act alone justified everything I was about to do. Even if I didn't also know that the good doctor had been banging my hot little friend Sophia on the side.

It was time for the nut cutting. I said, "stay here," to Bastet and pushed key one. A siren began to ominously hoot in the distance. I watched the guard jump to his feet and run out the door, accompanied by most of the staff. Then I pressed keys two and three. The gate unlocked and began to swing open.

I darted across the lawn with Bastet loping sinuously along next to me... CATS!! Her eager look said, "Who are we running to attack, brother?"

I got to the French doors to Becks' room. My wife had heard the warning siren and was standing in the doorway looking out concerned. The moment she spotted me an expression of sheer adoration washed across her beautiful face and I hesitated, overwhelmed by the depth of my feelings for her.

Bastet hissed, "Hurry, brother!!!"

I reached out, turned the knob and opened the door. Becks looked surprised. She obviously knew that she had been confined and was wondering why the door opened so easily. I grabbed her hand and said, "Quick," and we started back down the sloping lawn to the gate.

The minute we got outside the walls Becks said, "Wait!!" She turned and did something intricate with the keypad. The gate slowly closed. I didn't know what spell she'd used but my wife is a true Mage. She said, "I overrode it. It will take them forever to get out of the compound."

Anybody watching from a distance would see a tall nerd and his beautiful wife casually strolling hand-in- hand down to the water. Oddly enough, they were accompanied by a big grey spotted cat that was walking next to them like the family dog. The three of them climbed into a Zodiac and zipped off to a big blue sailboat and a new life together.

*****

The Palma authorities agreed to forget that Becks and I ever existed. That is, if I would please unlock their computers. It's amazing how governments everywhere have become so dependent on their information systems and how much leverage you can get if you happen to own them. Isn't ransomware fun??!

As far as Brettmann was concerned, I could prove that he was a horny old goat. I had the texts and emails documenting his tawdry affair with his assistant, Sophia Montez. And in the case of my wife, It turns out that the good doctor had kept Becks in strict psychotropic shackles during the whole time they were married. In my opinion it was just this side of criminal rape.

I had enough on the man, from the data dump I'd snarfed off his computer, to ruin his life and I'd sent him an anonymized message through TOR appraising him of that fact. Still, it appeared that the loss of his wife was sufficient punishment. Becks was the only thing he truly valued. Nevertheless, because I felt the same way about her I was in no mood to share.

Becks went to sleep as soon as we got on board. The Hylas has a very luxurious stateroom with a real bunk, and she staggered across the deck and straight down the companionway. As she disappeared, she muttered, "I have to sleep. He gave me something. I don't know what it was, but I have to sleep it off." I added one more indictment to Brettmann's account.

I said, with the relief that you would feel if you'd just had your life restored, "Stay down there as long as you need to. We have a lot of talking to do and you'll want to be rested and clear headed to do it." There was much more that could be said. But that was for later when the nightmare had passed.

I knew that we needed space and time to sort out the radical twists and turns of our lives. There were several places we could have gone. But there were conditions. The first was that we couldn't head for the closest land mass... Spain. I'd caused enough trouble in that Country. So it was France.

I might be richer than Croesus but that was a relatively new situation for me and prior to that, my experience hadn't extended much farther than Michigan, Pittsburg, Fort Benning, and the Beltway. So I did what any clueless nerd would do, headed for the only place that I had ever heard of and that I knew for sure was located in the south of France... Monaco.

The sat-nav said it was a little over 400 miles and about two days away. I set the self-steerer on oh-four-seven magnetic, north-northeast, and trimmed the sails to a steady eight knots. There were still strong westerly winds blowing, and we were laid over on a starboard tack. It was a beautiful day for sailing.

The Hylas is a wet boat in that it is designed to knife through waves rather than smack down on them. That design makes for a smoother ride, but it brings a lot of water over the freeboard. So the cockpit, which is situated just behind the mast, is enclosed. I was sitting near the wheel, admiring the late evening sunset, when my wife made her appearance along with Bastet.

Becks had exited her old life with absolutely nothing but the clothes on her back. But she had scrounged up one of my hooded sweatshirts. Since there is almost a foot difference between her height and mine it preserved her modesty. Bastet was winding herself around Beck's legs the way cats do with they are conveying love, which was astonishing because I had never known Bastet to love anybody but herself.

Becks had two glasses of the top-notch Beaujolais, which I keep below-decks as ballast. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. She looked sleepy as she handed me one and said, "I just slept 13 hours and I'm going back for more. But I wanted to sit up here for a minute to reassure myself that it's really you and that this is really happening.

She sat down on the bench next to the pilot's seat, curled her long and shapely legs under her, and sipped her wine, looking at me like she still thought I was a dream. Bastet was sitting beside her like a good little kitty-cat doing the head-bumping thing that cats do when they are scent marking something they consider theirs. What had my Mage wife done to my formerly ferocious feline??!!

Becks' thick raven hair was tousled, and her huge blue eyes were bleary with sleep. She looked gorgeous in the soft fading light of sunset on the Mediterranean. Her perfectly proportioned features, with those incredibly sensual lips and her long, graceful neck sticking out of my old Army sweatshirt, looked relaxed. She said, "It's true, isn't it? You still love me?"

That wasn't as off the wall as it might sound. I mean seriously... I WAS considering divorcing her when her plane went down, and she HAD been living as man and wife with Dr. Horndog for the past few years. That might be a deal breaker on several levels if you're an insecure enough weenie.

But I just wasn't feeling it. I said, "Of course I love you. I never stopped loving you, no matter what the situation was. However, the circumstances going forward are complicated and we need to spend whatever time it takes to sort them out."

I added matter-of-fact, I'm headed for Monaco." I stopped at that point to admit embarrassed, "It's the only place I've ever heard of in southern France. We can renew our marriage when we get there. Now go back to bed and Bastet and I will handle the boat."

Becks arose and Bastet jumped lightly to the deck to follow her below. I muttered under my breath, "Traitor!!" Still, my wife had always been like St. Francis of Assisi when it came to animals, and this was further proof of how little she'd changed.

You learn how to judiciously doze when you're solo sailing. The self-steerer will make sure you're on course but it would be nuts to leave the wheel unattended, because there are a lot of shipping lanes. I saw a number of container ships and other big vessels at various times in the night. But the ocean is vast, and they were merely distant points of light.

The truly moving sight was the incredible swatch of black velvet sky with the billions of brightly shining diamonds scattered over it. The vision humbled me as it always does. If you spend any time at sea in the Mediterranean, you will understand why most of the Western religions got their start in that neck of the woods.

The coast of France came into view shortly after sun-up. We were well out to sea. But you could sense the land over the distant horizon and the seabirds were circling to greet us. Becks appeared looking much more alert with a big mug of black coffee.

This time she was wearing nothing but my fisherman's sweater, with her gorgeous legs sticking out the bottom. It made her look like a model in a particularly erotic Ralph Lauren ad. I had been more-or-less awake, with a few mini-naps, for almost 48 hours and I was starting to hallucinate. So, I said, "Keep us out from underneath the keels of any passing cruise ships while I grab three hours."

Becks nodded and sat down behind the wheel with her new shadow lying adoringly at her feet. I wasn't concerned about leaving Becks in charge. She was a better helmsman than I was when we were sailing the Island Packet... was that only three eternal years ago? We had a lot to discuss.

*****

Port Hercules has been a deep-water haven for ships sailing along the Cote de Azur since the time of the Phoenicians. They were the folks who founded the colony of Monoikos. The Phoenicians came from the Greek end of the Mediterranean and their rock-star hero was Hercules, hence the name of the port.

Of course, I didn't know any of that since I'm a software guy, not a historian. But I could see the nearby Monte Carlo Casino from where we were docked at the Jetée Luccianna. The Casino was the reason why I knew that we were in Monaco. Maybe I could watch James Bond play chemin de fer with Le Chiffre up there later on.

At a mere 44 feet and a million dollars, the Hylas was squeezed into the outer dockage of the breakwater along with the rest of the riffraff. Only the oligarch's super-yachts got the good berths in that ancient port.

Becks had let me have a full five hours before she woke me up. Now, we were sitting together on the plush benches of the stern drinking a delicious Kona roast and looking with wonder at the City around us as it woke up.

My beautiful wife had led two separate highly insular lives, first as a happy Beltway nerdette and then as an isolated aristocrat on a small island. Hence, she was no more worldly than I was. She was dressed in the jeans and peasant blouse that she was wearing when we fled Majorca.

So, the first order of business was to get her outfitted in a manner appropriate to the wife of a fabulously wealthy geek. All of the high-end shops in Monaco are congregated around the Place du Casino which was a fifteen-minute walk from the Marina. So, we strolled hand-in-hand up to Golden Circle.

Balenciaga, Prada, Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Dior were all up there, but Becks headed straight for Zara which is Spanish and relatively inexpensive. Apparently, the three years that she'd spent as a Spaniard had rubbed off on her.

Twenty-eight thousand dollars later we had the stuff delivered while we stopped for lunch at Le Grill on the eighth floor of the Hotel de Paris. It had a panoramic view of the City, which was lying beneath us vibrant, and sun drenched. It was awe inspiring, especially for a couple of unsophisticated nerds from Sodom-and-Gomorrah-upon-the-Potomac.

Of course there was still this pachyderm sitting between us, and sooner or later we were going to have to wrestle with it. Up to that point we had just been trying to survive. And survival sorta narrows your vison down to the important things. Now that we were back to that comfortable groove that all married people nestle into, it was time to open that can of worms.

The first difference that I noted about Becks 2.0 was that she was no longer shy. This version was wearing one of her new acquisitions - her old stuff being consigned to the trash bin at Zara. It was a simple red long sleeve top over skin tight black activewear that showcased her superb hips, butt, and legs like it was painted on. Guys were surreptitiously craning their necks all over the restaurant.

We sat there in the bright sun picking at our Soufflé traditionnel and waiting for the other to open the bidding. Becks finally said puzzled, "How did you get so rich?" It was a reasonable question since I was living on a Captain's salary the last time, she had seen me.

I said, trying to sound matter of fact, "Remember that gadget that I was working on all those Saturdays. Well, I talked to your dad at your funeral."

Ouch!! That was maybe the stupidest thing I could have EVER said. I had managed to roll both my own, and her parents', profound grief into a monumental ball of guilt. She recoiled like I'd slapped her and then sat there staring out the window for a minute, She finally turned to me and said with tears in her eyes, "It must have been horrible for you."

There are times in your life when you have to think through the next thing you're going to say. She probably expected a load of resentment. After all, we both knew what the precipitating event was. But her "death" had put that all in perspective and her subsequent life as a different person had erased any sense that the woman across the table from me was the old Becks. I needed to tread carefully.

This one was somebody else and I'd matured a bit. Grief tends to do that to you. I said, "Of course it was horrible, I loved you. We all did. It made us remember the many good things and in the end that helped us handle our grief. Nobody ever dies, as long as somebody who's living remembers them with love. I had nothing but loving memories and so you were still very much alive in my universe."

Now she really teared up. She impulsively reached across, grabbed my hand in both of her little paws, raised it to her lips and kissed it. She said, "The part that hurts me the most is that for three years I was totally unaware of you and our life together."

She added sincerely, "I recently started having disturbing dreams. I didn't understand why I felt that way. Because for the most part I was coping with my life in a new and very strange land. Then you just appeared in front of me, and it was like waking up from a long sleep."

I could see that she was barely holding it together. So I paid the check and we hurried back to the boat. I made us some Oolong tea and we sat on the big leather sofa facing each other but not touching. This was the end-game. Her huge blue eyes were clouded with emotion and her beautiful hard body was almost vibrating, like a plucked guitar string.

I kicked it off by saying, "Look, I know you remember the reason why this all happened..."

She looked uneasy and said, "I've recovered most of my memories. But the details of the period just prior to my waking up in a hospital in Palma are hazy."

She added hesitantly, "It's like a scene in a movie when you see snippets of a cataclysmic event, enough to know that you were there. But you don't remember any of the details. I clearly recall recovering consciousness in a wrecked airplane and stepping into a raft from its wing. It was in the dark and in a driving rain."

She added ruefully, "But I don't know how I got there. I remember the sun and the thirst and the pain in my head and how frightened I was. I also recall the panic that I experienced the first time I realized that I didn't know who I was. But that's about it."

I said, "What's the last time you remember clearly?"

She thought for a second and said, "The last coherent memory I have of our life together is of you and me the week after Thanksgiving, with my parents in New York. We were so happy then." So, Becks had no actual memory of the period between then and her waking up at the beginning of January in Majorca with a totally blank slate.

That made medical sense. I knew from reading about it that it's a common phenomenon to lose all memory of the period surrounding a traumatic brain injury. Whether that's because the brain cells are actually destroyed, or the event is so distressing that the subconscious chooses to bury them is still a matter of medical speculation. The recent TBIs from Iraq had encouraged closer study.

So, Beck's memory of the three weeks preceding and shortly after the crash, including her fight to survive, were no doubt lost forever. Given that the events that followed, most pertinently her disappearance and reappearance in a new life, were orders of magnitude more significant than picking through the shit with Osborne, it seemed childish to even bring it up now.

I said incredulously, "Are you telling me that you don't know what caused you to be in Majorca in the first place?"

She said still looking anxious, "Yes... can you tell me?"

So I did. I did it dispassionately and without editorializing. I was an incredibly wealthy nerd now, and she was the former wife of a Spanish grandee. So in my mind, it would be infantile to waste time hanging onto a one-night grievance involving somebody else.

I told her that we would have probably parted ways because of it. But that was beside the point now, since we were basically two different people, as improbable as that might seem. Of course she cried. It was just such a sad situation. I assured her that I'd extracted several painful pounds of flesh from her seducer, and she told me that she wasn't crying because of that.

I hear you asking me, "Why, was Becks so dismissive of her slip with Osborne?" Well, think about it... She had just spent three years doing her wifely duty for another man. And rightly so, that was likely to be a slightly more significant problem than one drunken slip.