Page 108 of Radar

“There was always something there.” Elyssa stalled. “And that should have been my clue.”

“Tell me that thought.”

“There was always something there at that GPS point, like a bench or a stairway. That way, the boxes could be attached with a chain, so they weren’t stolen, and they were out of easy view.” Elyssa said. “Orest told me that the mothers had put the game together but how would a mother in Slovakia know the location of a bench in a French garden? I thought Orest was just an old man out trying to make the babies happy.” She blinked at Xander. “What did I help him plant?”

“I don’t know. I’m guessing elements of his machine.”

“What does the machine do?” Elyssa asked.

Xander pressed his lips together to show that there were certain things they couldn’t talk about when others might hear. “You were telling me that you were putting the boxes somewhere.”

“Always something different. At the gardens in Étretat, for example, there was a trail that wound down the hill. There were various installations, so the garden appealed to all the senses. There were times when the garden flowered, for example, but in the seasons without blooms, there were perfume stations where you could breathe in an evocative scent. And there were sound installations. Sometimes you interacted with them, sometimes they were speakers making the sounds. It was at one of those installations, the smell or the sound, that we put the box.”

“And it just sat there. “

“I’m trying to see where there’s a pattern to the behavior. In each place it was easy to get to and on part of the path—no one had to rummage around or anything, but we chained them into place.” Her gaze drifted toward the water as she remembered.

“Yup, that’s what I’m looking for.” Xander squeezed her hand. “Tell me your thoughts.”

“We would call and make an appointment with the manager, explaining our plan. When we got to the site, we’dshow them the box and the chain and how sophisticated and lovely the game component was. I told them where we wanted to put the box and informed them that we would be advertising the Normandy scavenger hunt, which would entice families with children to participate. We showed them the insides, so they saw that it was filled to the brim with lovely little treats. We, and by we, I mean I. I showed them the scavenger hunt website.”

“Do you have the URL?” Xander reached for his notebook.

“No. It was on the flier I handed them so they could advertise it if they wanted to, and it was already queued up on Orest’s laptop.”

“And they let you put it in their garden or wherever?” Xander asked.

“Every last one of them did. But I was looking happy about a children’s project, and there was Orest with his round tummy and pink cheeks, looking like he was an off-season Santa Claus.”

"You’re not the first person to point out that resemblance to me.”

“Well, it’s true. Between the two of us, it looked like what I described, a happy pair that was creating a children’s experience for our family – and other people’s families – to enjoy and perhaps to create new traffic to their site.”

“And Orest didn’t speak?”

“I know why,” Elyssa said. “When Orest spoke in French, it was with a heavy Russian-sounding accent. I know it’s Slovak, but most people don’t have the exposure to distinguish it. With the war raging in Ukraine, a Russian-sounding accent would put people on the alert. And there was a significant disdain for that in Paris.”

“No one in their right mind would allow a Russian to put something in their garden,” Xander agreed.

“It wasn’t always a garden. There were different types of places. All of them were of cultural importance, though.”

“In Normandy? Was there anything put in the U.S. cemeteries?”

“No. Oh no. That would have been sacrilegious. I would have told Orest that. We did go to Sainte-Mère-Église. It’s famous because on D-Day, a parachutist caught his chute on the steeple of the church, and he dangled there alive until the villagers could rescue him. We stayed in a chateau just out of town that had been there since the days of the Vikings. From there, we toured the cemeteries. We visited Colleville-sur-Mer, overlooking Omaha Beach. What a moving experience. And because Orest thought it was important, we also visited La Cambe German Military Cemetery. It’s very near the D-Day landing sites.” Elyssa paused, looking at her lap.

“What happened in that cemetery?” Xander asked softly.

“We stood by the grave of this guy named Diekman. He was the highest-ranking officer at the Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre. In that massacre, the entire village was gathered up, women and babies, old people, men, and women. People from the village. People passing by the village. The men were put in barns, and they had their legs shot. Then they were doused with gas and set on fire.” Elyssa gave a whole-body shiver. “The women and children were taken to the church, and they too were set on fire.” She raised her gaze to look at the ceiling. “Can you imagine the screams that rode the wind? Over six hundred people who were just living their lives. Humans can be monsters.”

Elyssa sat with those images in her head. And she thought of Eddie. What was he going through? How cruel and horrible was that man that she had called uncle with such affection?

After a while, Xander squeezed her hand again. “That struck you. Why?”

“It was the one time that Orest told me about a specific person. And I remember him saying that had there not been Nazis, he would have had a father, a mother, and a brother.”

“Which is what was in the article about you that was in the paper, the father and son were separated. The mother and older child escaped to the USA.”

“Yes. So that was the story I knew. That made sense, that he sort of wanted to look the enemy in the eye. I remember I held his hand as he stared at Diekman’s grave. Someone had left flowers there. And he was looking at the flowers, and Orest said. ‘A man will do what he needs to do to support the cause he holds in his heart. And see there, the flowers? Somebody, all these decades later, believes that he did the right thing.’ And then we walked away. He was comparing his upcoming actions with those of that evil man, wasn’t he? He was feeling reassured. What will he suffer? He's old. He’ll die soon enough.”

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