Ties That Bind Read online

  Marc nodded, tears filling his eyes. “Will you give me a blessing? Please, little brother, I need it.”

  André inclined his head, feeling oddly inadequate for what his brother needed. He took two steps closer to the bed and put his hands on his brother’s head. What if he didn’t have faith enough for this task? What if his new feelings for Rebekka got in the way?

  “Father in Heaven, by the power and authority of the Melchizedek priesthood which I hold . . . .” he began. Words that hadn’t been in his mind a moment before sprang to his lips as though from a prepared speech. Power coursed through his body and hands to Marc’s head. He felt how he imagined Captain Moroni in the scriptures must have felt when he blessed his generals before traveling to Zarahemla to free his people from the king-men: “and I will leave the strength and the blessings of God upon them, that none other power can operate against them.”

  “You will live to see my face,” André promised, hands trembling on his brother’s head. “No power on earth can take you until I return.”

  Shaking, he finished the blessing. Marc’s wondering eyes met André’s. “Thank you. I needed that.”

  “I know it’s been tough.” André forced his voice to become hard—a difficult thing with the love and power of the Spirit that had permeated his heart, mind, and soul. “But you know that this blessing is predicated upon your own faith and your desire to live. You will live to see my face again—if you fight!” He sat on the edge of the bed and added softly, “If you’re ever tempted to give up, just think of Rebekka.” His voice grew in volume. “Think of how desperately she wants to spend her life with you. She needs you, Marc, and you have to fight for her.”

  “I will.” Marc’s eyes flicked to the door.

  André followed his gaze and saw Rebekka watching them. How much had she heard? Then he decided that it didn’t matter. She needed to hear it as much as Marc.

  He strode to the door. “Good-bye, Rebekka.” He accepted the travel documents from her outstretched hand. “Take care of him.”

  “What about the girls? Don’t they get out of school soon?”

  “I was going to call Mom or Josette on the way to the airport.”

  “I’ll pick up the girls. I know where.”

  Her gray eyes pleaded for something to do, so he nodded. “I’ll let the school know you’re coming. Thank you.” He smiled and moved into the hall. Once he would have hugged her or kissed her cheek good-bye, but now he couldn’t trust himself to be near her. Only his determination succeeded in carrying him outside to his waiting taxi, where he sank thankfully to the seat. “To the airport,” he said.

  He checked his messages and saw that his secretary had called while he was in the transplant hospital with Marc. She’d scheduled his flight for four o’clock that afternoon, but instead of a direct three-hour flight to Kiev, he would have to first fly to Vienna, Austria, where he would have a two-hour layover before he picked up his next flight. That meant he would arrive in Kiev at about 10:40 PM, local time. Because of the hour time difference he would spend six hours in transit, four of which would be inside a plane. While this wasn’t the direct flight he had preferred, it was all the choice he had until the next day. That might be too late.

  Sitting back, he sighed deeply and began to make the promised call to the girls’ school and then another to Raoul to explain his absence.

  “Don’t worry,” Raoul assured him. “I’ll take care of everything.

  Lastly, André called the number his secretary had left for President Bradley in Ukraine, already practicing the arguments he would use if the president refused his help. President Bradley wasn’t at the mission office, but the missionary who picked up the phone gave him another number to call.

  When President Bradley picked up, André quickly explained who he was and how grave Marc’s situation had become. “I know you’re doing your best, but I can’t sit and watch my brother die. I need to see if I can hurry along Louis-Géralde’s release. I’m on my way there now.”

  The mission president was silent for a moment, and then spoke in a deep voice. His French accent was good, but his vocabulary limited. “You know, you just might be the answer to my prayers. There’s, uh, something you don’t know about. A . . . complication. But I will explain when you get here. It’s the reason the zone leaders haven’t . . . uh, been able to free him yet. I was on my way, but unfortunately another . . . crisis has shown up here, and I must take careful it—take care of it. But I have the idea that with your presence and a little . . . invention, we’ll be able to get your brother free much sooner than the usual two weeks.”

  “I’ll call you when I arrive then.”

  “Call me at this number,” the president replied. “It’s my mobile phone—I am not sure where I’ll be.”

  André disconnected and leaned back in his seat. So much had happened since that morning. I miss you, Claire, he thought. Staring out the window, he blinked the tears from his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Rebekka loaded the dishwasher as André’s daughters brought the dinner dishes from the table. She had enjoyed preparing the meal for them in their apartment and was looking forward to reading to them before bedtime.

  “Are we going to see Uncle Marc?” asked Ana, taking Rebekka’s hand.

  “No. It’s getting late and you two have school tomorrow. Besides, your grandma and grandpa are hanging out with him tonight.”

  While at first she been reluctant to leave Marc, Rebekka was grateful for the distraction the girls provided. Of course, Ana and Marée could have gone to their grandparents’ or to one of their aunts’, but everyone had agreed it would be best to keep the girls in their own home. Rebekka had found herself volunteering to stay with them there and to see that they went to school on time the next morning. Unlike the members of André’s family, she had no children or elderly parents to depend on her, and it wasn’t a problem to pack a small suitcase of her things for the night. She was like a nomad—no real home of her own except the apartment she and Marc were planning to share, and she could stay with the girls for as many days as it took André to complete his task in Ukraine.

  The terrible ache inside her had dulled to a sore throb. She had heard what André said after he gave Marc the blessing and believed that Marc would live—at least until André returned with Louis-Géralde. But what about after that? Would Marc survive another transplant?

  If her fears weren’t enough to already drive her insane, ever haunting her were the feelings she’d experienced toward André at the restaurant—the confusing emotions that didn’t fit within the established boundaries of their relationship. Rebekka bit the inside of her bottom lip. Why did an already difficult situation have to become more complicated?

  “All done,” Marée said brightly, handing Rebekka the last of the dinner dishes. Her turquoise eyes gleamed, reminding Rebekka so much of Claire that she sat down on a chair and drew the girl to her.

  How distressed Claire must have felt to leave them. Though André was a good father and would certainly do his best, small children needed a mother, too. Would he ever find a woman who could love them as Claire had?

  I could try to help André with them. She smiled in satisfaction at the thought. Yes, she would help André with the girls, and she would continue to befriend him. She would marry Marc, and set André up with that pretty secretary, Valerie or whatever her name was. It was decided. There was no reason to think about it further. Leading the girls from the kitchen, she pushed any lingering thoughts of André from her mind.

  * * *

  Upon arriving in Ukraine nearly a half hour later than expected, André spent a terrible night at the airport while officials checked out his paperwork. There seemed to be some sort of complication no one could explain to him. Their French-speaking translator kept talking in circles, saying nothing intelligible—at least nothing André could decipher. Finally they contacted the French Embassy, and to his great relief, Rebekka’s contacts in the American Embas
sy in France had forwarded requests and documentation.

  It was all very disconcerting to have the airport officials stand in the way of his goal of reaching his brother. André suspected that what at least a few of them wanted was a bribe from an obviously successful businessman in a hurry. He wondered if he should comply but worried that he would land himself into even more trouble. Finally, an important-looking man came into the little room where André had been placed. His short black hair was smooth except for a small part in the front that looked as though he had been pulling on it in exasperation.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you,” he said in heavily accented French. The lines on his face were deep and he looked as exhausted as André felt. “Your documents are now in order. There was some problem with the date only. Please forgive my men for holding you up.” He clicked his tongue, indicating that André should not have been detained at all. “Thanks to the French Embassy, all is under control and you are free to go.”

  “Thank you.” André tried to keep his anger from showing in his voice, knowing his delay was not directly this man’s fault. Instead he focused on his gratefulness to Rebekka for her prudence in sending his documents through bureaucratic channels. At least this terrible night was behind him.

  Once released, he searched for a pay phone, since his cell no longer worked now that he was out of France. Before he could use the phone he had to exchange the ample amount of euros he had brought for Ukrainian hryvnias.

  At last he placed the call to the mission president. “I’ve been worried,” President Bradley said. “I was just going to send someone to the airport to see if we could find you.”

  “I think they wanted a bribe,” André said.

  “Likely. Look, I’m about an hour’s drive away from where you are now. If you’ll, uh . . . jot down the address and grab a taxi to come to my . . . location. Ask the driver if he minds taking us on to the jail. That will be the fastest way. Are you ready to write the addresses of both . . . locations?”

  “Yes. Go ahead.” André wrote the information on the back of his used airline ticket.

  The Tuesday morning rush hour was already underway when he emerged from the darker confines of the Kiev airport, blinking in the bright sunlight. André was relieved to see a row of waiting taxicabs. There were also several children who approached him, asking for money. André eyed their mismatched, ragged clothes and gave them each a bill, pleased to see their happy grins as they dipped their dark heads in thanks.

  André searched the row of waiting cabs to find a driver who spoke French. The first two drivers glared at him blankly, but the third, a small, swarthy man with a long moustache, smiled. “I do speak but a bit of French. Where you need to go?” Unlike the mission president, both his accent and grammar were atrocious, but it was better than the one word André knew in Ukrainian.

  André showed him the unpronounceable names and addresses President Bradley had given him. The man smoothed his moustache. “Sure, I know where these are. I take you there. But both are far away. This one—” he tapped the address of the jail “—is half hour outside Chernihiv. We drive two and a half hours, maybe three. Cost a lot. Even if you don’t come back, you pay both the ways.”

  “That’s okay. But I want to come back. I’ll pay you a tip, too, if you get me there fast. The only stop is to pick up a friend.”

  “Get in, then. We go.”

  As André did, three more children showed up to ask for money, obviously alerted by the first children. The taxi driver shooed them away, yelling in what André assumed to be Ukrainian. The children answered back in high, angry voices, but they retreated.

  On the long drive André fought the urge to doze in the back seat. His teeth felt dirty, his clothes were rumpled, and he was decidedly irritable. To keep himself awake he explained his situation to the taxi driver. He wasn’t sure how much the driver understood, but the man kept smiling and nodding. He spoke French only brokenly, but André knew from his own experience with English that it was easier to understand than speak a foreign language.

  They arrived at the first address and found President Bradley waiting outside. He was shorter than André had expected from his deep voice but had a large chest and a full head of wavy black hair that added to his presence. His blue eyes twinkled as they shook hands.

  “We will talk on the way,” he said as he climbed inside the taxi.

  André reentered the car. “You speak French rather well.”

  President Bradley grinned. “My mother was French, and a schoolteacher. I learned from her.”

  “And your father?”

  “An American. He was in the military and we spent a lot of time overseas. My mother had school at home when we were younger. We found the gospel in Germany and shortly after returned to the States. I went to college there.” He grinned. “Funny thing is, I always thought I would go to France for my missionary service, but I ended up in New York. I spent most of my time there in two different areas—each of which had a large group of Ukrainian-Americans. When I received the call to come here, I finally understood why I needed that experience.”

  “So you could learn Ukrainian.”

  “So I could learn to love the Ukrainian people,” he corrected, “and bring them the gospel.”

  André let a moment pass before saying, “You said you had something to tell me. About why you couldn’t get my brother out of jail.”

  “Yes.” President Bradley glanced at their driver and lowered his voice. “Life is much different here than in France or in America. Bribery isn’t, uh, discouraged as in our countries. In fact, it really is a way of life. The average person does not make a great deal of money and they depend on bribes to make it through the month.”

  “How does this relate to Louis-Géralde?”

  “We’ve decided to create a no bribe policy for the mission. Our organization has a rather high profile with our—how do you say it?—ah, clean-cut missionaries walking around, and in the past they’ve been a real target for such things. I have found that while legal measures are much slower here without bribery, they do work. So we go through legal methods, and it is starting to pay off.”

  “You mean they realize you won’t pay, so they speed you through to get rid of you.”

  President Bradley nodded gravely. “Precisely. Except we have tried this with your brother’s situation to no . . . uh, luck. I mean, it will work eventually—I’ve made calls and set things in motion—but it will take time.”

  “Time that we don’t have.”

  “That is where you come in.”

  “Oh?” André was puzzled, but willing to hear the president out.

  “When the zone leaders were unsuccessful in . . . uh—what is the word?—extracting your brother, I was ready to go in and pay whatever it took. But I knew word would get out and this would set us back some, especially in that city. I didn’t want that. So I was praying for a way to free him and to maintain our policy. Then another situation came up—one of my missionaries received a letter from an ex-girlfriend who dropped him, and he disappeared. Don’t worry. We found him, and I think that after a bit of soul-searching he may just finally become the missionary his Father in Heaven knows he can be. Of course, you understand that while he was missing, I had to start a search for him. All this brought enough of a delay that you decided to come. See? The answer to prayer.”

  André still didn’t know where the president was going. “What can I do exactly?”

  “I’ve already placed a call to a good friend of mine who works for the government here. He promised to call the authorities who are holding your brother and mention that we never pay for the release of missionaries, that holding him will end up being a burden for them in the long run. Then I will show up in person, demand his release, and restate that claim. After I leave, you will come in, not connected to me, but to one of the missionaries.”

  A smile began to work its way across André’s face. “Ah-ha. I see. Then it won’t matter if I pay to get him
out. Because it’s not you.”

  “Theoretically.” President Bradley folded his arms across his chest.

  “And if it doesn’t work?”

  “I have confidence that it will. Did you bring enough money?”

  André pulled out his wallet and spread out the bills.

  “Looks like plenty.”

  For the rest of the drive, they chatted amicably. André noticed that President Bradley’s French was improving by the minute; apparently, he simply needed a bit of practice. When at last they arrived at the small jail where Louis-Géralde was being kept, President Bradley said, “Now give me a half hour. It’ll only take me a few minutes but give them some time to stew. I’ll meet you at your brother’s apartment afterward. Here’s the address in case you are not successful.” Smiling with determination, the president left the car and strode down the walk.

  “Let’s drive for a bit,” André directed his driver.

  “A half hour, yes? Isn’t that what the man say?”

  “Yes, please.”

  As the minutes passed, André tried to take in the sights, but he was too preoccupied to notice much. What was he going to do—walk into the jail waving around his money? What if no one understood that he needed Louis-Géralde to be freed today. They had already lost so much time. He prayed for guidance and in the midst of his prayer, he realized that the answer had been in front of him all along.

  “Hey, you wouldn’t want to earn an extra bit of money, would you?” he asked the driver casually, as the taxi finally headed back toward the jailhouse. He picked five of the largest bills— one hundred hryvnias each—out of his wallet and waved them in the air. “If you come with me and try to explain that I need to see my brother, I’ll give you this.”

  The hryvnias disappeared into the driver’s front pocket before André realized he’d taken them. “Sure. This I will do. I will help you . . . how do you say it? . . . rescue this brother you tell me about.”

  “Oh, and one more thing. Don’t mention the man who was with us. They can’t know that we’re together.” He was pretty certain the driver hadn’t heard much of their conversation, and it was unlikely he would know who the mission president was anyway, but André wanted to be sure.