LUCKY IN CYPRUS: Suicide Is Definitely Not Painless

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THE SUICIDE OF AJAX

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From his father’s reaction - and the reactions of his CIA colleagues - Lucky got the idea that a lot more was going on than electronic harassment. All the agents worked for days on end with few breaks. The men grew pale and their faces were uniformly marked with dark eye circles. They started calling each other "The Raccoon Gang" and the circles and paleness and weariness became badges of honor.

The few times Lucky’s father was home his nightmares were worse than ever. Once he heard his father shout from his sleep: "They got him! They got him!" Lucky didn’t know who his father was talking about. Whatever and whoever it was, nothing good had happened.

Years later Lucky learned that when the Russians had launched their jamming attack, they’d also gone after CIA agents within their borders – and beyond. Scores of men and women were swept up, tortured for information, then killed. They’d been betrayed from several directions: British traitors, French and, it was said, Americans as well. So in the end there was some truth buried amid all the political lies the HUAC boys in Congress were telling.

As it turned out, the Russian roundup wasn’t confined to agents working behind the Iron Curtain. Among others, the CIA’s chief of station in Athens was assassinated while making a mysterious visit to one of his "sources." Lucky wondered if it was one of the men who had rescued them in Athens.

When Lucky’s father was home, his drinking intensified to a frightening level, as did his strange behavior. He’d break light bulbs and chew and swallow the glass to show how tough he was. Or put out cigarettes on the back of his hand. Lucky knew it was only a matter of time before he exploded. He tried to plan against it, but didn’t know what to do.

Then, one day the phone rang and misfortune came to his temporary rescue.

He answered and heard a familiar voice say, "Hello, Lucky, dear." The boy was delighted. It was his Aunt Margie - his father’s sister - calling from Ohio. Margie was a warm, loving woman - a baker of extraordinary pies and full of fun and games and humorous stories when Lucky visited her. She was also quite protective of her younger brother. After all, the two of them had lived through years of their mother’s marital misadventures. Usually, Aunt Margie would have chatted with Lucky, before asking to speak to his mother or father. She’d quiz him about school, fill him in on the news from home, talk about his cousins and how fast they were growing and she’d finish up with one of her funny stories.

This time, however, she got right to the point. "Is your father there?" she asked. Lucky said he wasn’t, but was expected shortly. He thought her voice sounded strained. "Well, thank God for small favors!" she said. "I really wanted to talk to Helen first."

"Is something wrong, Aunt Margie?" the boy asked.

"Just let me talk to your mother," she said a bit sharply.

Feeling a little hurt, Lucky fetched his mother. Helen listened for a moment, turning quite pale. Tears started streaming down her face. Lucky was bewildered. He ran to her side, trying to comfort her. "What’s happened?" he asked.

She shook her head, to overcome to reply. Then, forcing control, she continued talking to Margie. Lucky was so upset seeing his mother cry that he didn’t really hear what they were talking about. He guessed that it involved his grandmother, who lived in Florida along with her fifth husband, Vern Sullivan. His father’s mother had suffered a stroke about a month before. Lucky wondered if maybe she’d died. And then he felt guilty, because he’d never liked the woman. She was so cold and unfeeling - and quite the miser. Totally unlike his Grandmom Guinan, his mother’s mother, who was full of warm Irish charm and love.

Finally, his mother hung up. She turned to Lucky and the tears started to flow again. "It’s your Grandfather Sullivan," she said. "He’s dead."

Lucky was stunned. How could that be? It was Grandmom Sullivan who’d suffered the stroke. It was inconceivable that his step grandfather could be dead. He was an immense man: six foot seven; well over three hundred pounds. Full of healthy cheer and constant unceasing energy. Lucky had seen him lift the back end of a truck during a tire emergency. At sixty-six he could dig a row of post holes faster than a man half his age, eat lunch, then do another row. He’d seen his grandfather literally take an angry bull by the horns and force it to the ground, whispering all the while in its ear to "calm down… calm down… daddy’s here."

Helen said, "The doctors told him your grandmother would never recover. That she was going to die soon. And he just couldn’t…" Sobs overtook her and she couldn’t go on. Lucky embraced his mother until the she regained control.

"He didn’t want to go on without her," she said. "So the poor, lovely man took his own life."

Lucky learned that late one late afternoon Grandpop Sullivan had got out his favorite rocking chair and shotgun. After he’d settled himself on the dock – Lucky supposed he was waiting to see the alligator’s evening appearance - he’d put the shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. An odd detail: he’d taken off his right shoe and placed a pencil through the trigger guard and triggered the shotgun with this toes. Lucky’s mom said he hadn’t left a note.

Lucky heard a car pull up out front. Helen hastily wiped her eyes. "It’s your father," she said, leaping up. "I’m going to have to tell him."

She looked wildly about, as if there might be something in the living room that would help her. Seeing nothing, she straightened her shoulders and turned to Lucky. "You’d better go to Larry and Tommy’s house," she said. "Tell Mrs. Johnson to call me, okay? This is going to be really hard on your father."

Lucky shivered. He knew exactly what she meant and was reluctant to leave her alone. "That’s okay, mom," he said. "I’ll stay with you."

"Just go, Lucky!" his mother said. "Go!"

He left. But he didn’t go to Larry and Tom’s. He didn’t want to talk to anybody. Instead, after warning Brosina that trouble might be brewing, he grabbed a couple of Cokes from the fridge in the cellar and stuffed a hunk of bread, a bit of cheese, a tomato and two handfuls of olives into a sack. He slipped up to Andreas’ hilltop hideout and sat on the boulder, watching the sun set over the distant mountain range that was known as "Five Fingers."

He shed some tears, missing his grandfather. Far off he heard the shrill whistle of a goat herder and the barking of a dog, followed by bleating protests from the goats as they milled about. Finally, the dog got them straightened out and he heard the lead goat’s bell begin its steady jingle as she set off for home.

As if that were a signal, the village church bell began to toll. It was a slow, mournful sound that floated up the hillside, awakening old ghosts who shadow danced across the meadow in a gentle breeze as day dissolved into night. The air became cool, and the cicadas stopped their incessant buzz.

From the Turkish police station at the bottom of the hill where the main road crossed with the village entrance, Lucky heard the faint sound of the station radio crackling into life. A muezzin’s voice called the faithful to final prayer: "Allah, illiah, Allah. Allah, illiah, Allah." Lucky saw the Turkish cops filing out of the station to unroll their prayer rugs. They knelt, bowing until their heads touched the rug as the radio mullah cried out the prayer.

Then there was a terrible howling sound as the Russian jammers struck again, overpowering the Turkish station.

The men’s heads shot up. Harsh voices floated up the hill from angry Muslim cops. Someone turned the radio off and now there was only the sad tolling of the church bells. One of the policemen – the tallest, so Lucky guessed it was Capt. Gulahmet, the commander of the station – put his rug in front of the line of men. Then he turned to face Mecca, knelt down, and led the men in prayer. When they were done, the men rolled up their prayer rugs and filed back into the station. A few moments later the church bells fell silent.

Grandpop Sullivan had been the fifth husband of Allan Cole Senior’s mother. A gentle giant of a lover for her old age - they’d never had children of their own. He treated Lucky as if he were his real grandson. Taking him along when he went hunting and fishing and telling him all kinds of wonderful outlandish tales of the old days on the fairground and carnival circuit. He was just as warm and gentle with Lucky’s father. So much so that most people thought he was Sullivan’s own son and they’d become confused when they heard the difference in last names: Cole and Sullivan.

Lucky’s mother said that Grandpop Sullivan was the only one of his grandmother’s husbands who had treated his father with any respect. Most of them, she said, had been awful men who had resented the boy and had beaten him brutally. Including, she said, his real father. And, if truth be known, his mother as well. This last bit of information didn’t surprise Lucky at all. When he was very small he’d always suspected that his grandmother strike him at slightest provocation.

Even so, it made Lucky wonder. It didn’t make sense to him that his father, a victim of brutal people, would treat his own the same way. But on that particular day sitting on Andreas’ rock, the boy didn’t think about those things. He just thought about Grandpop Sullivan - big and strong and bursting with life.

Suddenly the boy was ravenous. He slid off the boulder and gathered some fresh olive leaves, which he spread on the rock. Then with his pocket knife he cut up his dinner on top of the leaves. And he stuffed himself with bread and cheese and tomato and pungent Cypriot olives, all washed down with warm Coke.

When he was done he crept home, climbing up on the garage roof. Brosina had a light burning in the cellar and so he knew it was safe. When he entered the house he heard the sound of his father retching. Apparently, he taken a few stiff shots to settle his nerves, but instead of steadying him, the booze had made him deathly ill. A minute later the bathroom door opened and Lucky saw his mother helping his father out. She was holding a wash cloth against his forehead. She helped him into the bedroom, where he slept ten hours straight. Even then he would have slept on, but there was an urgent call from the base telling him to come in right away.

It was some time before Lucky’s father started drinking heavily again, although each day he grew paler, thinner and more tired. Fighting the electronic war with the Russians, combined with grief over his step-father’s death seemed to have the effect of making him temporarily sober and sane. Eventually, the CIA engineers overwhelmed the Russian jammers and that crisis passed.

But that was later. For the time being Lucky and his mother were left in an odd sort of peace.

Ironically, about six weeks later Lucky’s grandmother recovered - despite her doctors’ dire prediction of imminent death. So Grandpop Sullivan’s suicide was for naught. And although she was partially paralyzed, the mean old woman lived on for many years. She went to live with her daughter and was such an overbearing and demanding invalid that Aunt Margie - that warm and loving woman - grew so bitter and angry that she became the duplicate of her mother.

Hostilities at school resumed a few days after the end of the Christmas holidays. So much for peace on Cyprus and goodwill to boys.

Lucky was not prepared. Although Christmas at his house had been rather sad because of the death of his step-grandfather, it had been the first Christmas he could recall that hadn’t involved an ugly incident with his father. This had lulled him into complacency. Holidays were always a bad time for the Cole family and Christmas was the worst of all. His father tended to become… well… overexcited during the holidays. He’d be happy and laughing and joking and drinking. Spending money freely for gifts - whether he had it or not. Then everything would go literally to hell.

Lucky’s earliest memory of Christmas was when he was three years old. He’d been beaten so badly for an imagined slight that he’d ended up at the hospital getting stitches in his head. When the doctor asked what had happened, Lucky lied and said that he’d fallen off his trike.

Each of the Christmases that followed had its own sad tale not to tell. But Lucky’s thirteenth Christmas – because of the family tragedy - was spent peacefully. He received some lovely gifts, especially a fencing foil and a mask, with fencing lessons to go with it. He gave Athena a small pair of gold earring for her pierced ears. She gave him a blue scarf and a kiss.

And everything was as perfect as this imperfect world could be.

So when Simms and three others ambushed Lucky near the soccer field he was caught flat-footed.

NEXT: The Cold War Invades The Schoolyard

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THE SPYMASTER'S DAUGHTER:

A new novel by Allan and his daughter, Susan.

After laboring as a Doctors Without Borders physician in the teaming refugee camps and minefields of South Asia, Dr. Ann Donovan thought she'd seen Hell as close up as you can get. And as a fifth generation CIA brat, she thought she knew all there was to know about corruption and betrayal. But then her father - a legendary spymaster - shows up, with a ten-year-old boy in tow. A brother she never knew existed. Then in a few violent hours, her whole world is shattered, her father killed and she and her kid brother are one the run with hell hounds on their heels. They finally corner her in a clinic in Hawaii and then all the lies and treachery are revealed on one terrible, bloody storm ravaged night.

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LUCKY IN CYPRUS: IT'S A BOOK!

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"Bravo, Allan! When I finished Lucky In Cyprus I wept." - Julie Mitchell, Hot Springs, Texas
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"... (Reading) Lucky In Cyprus has been a humbling, haunting, sobering and enlightening experience..." - J.A. Locke, Bookloons.com

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NEW STEN SHORT STORY!!!!
STEN AND THE STAR WANDERERS

BASED ON THE CLASSIC STEN SERIES by Allan Cole & Chris Bunch: Fresh from their mission to pacify the Wolf Worlds, Sten and his Mantis Team encounter a mysterious ship that has been lost among the stars for thousands of years. At first, everyone aboard appears to be long dead. Then a strange Being beckons, pleading for help. More disturbing: the presence of AM2, a strategically vital fuel tightly controlled by their boss - The Eternal Emperor. They are ordered to retrieve the remaining AM2 "at all costs." But once Sten and his heavy worlder sidekick, Alex Kilgour, board the ship they must dare an out of control defense system that attacks without warning as they move through dark warrens filled with unimaginable horrors. When they reach their goal they find that in the midst of all that death are the "seeds" of a lost civilization.

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MY HOLLYWOOD MISADVENTURES

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TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE

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Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969

In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is "The Blue Meanie," a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself. Here's where to buy the book.

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STEN #1: NOW IN SPANISH!