Marina Merlot

Even her name was sexy. Marina Merlot. It was reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe, but this beautiful woman was so much more. She was elegant, refined, assured, and sophisticated. The stylish dark maroon dress she wore was a perfect fit with her lithe body, black hair and dark, knowing eyes that seemed to search out your most intimate secrets but hide her own. There was an intriguing sense of mystery about her that lit a fire in me. I had to be with her and learn everything about her.

Despite the crowded Hotel Frankfurter Hof restaurant, I immediately noticed her when the matre’d led her past my table shortly after I arrived. And I wasn’t the only appreciative onlooker. Dozens of eyes, male and female, followed the dark-haired beauty as she and her escort made their way across the room. She carried herself with a subtle touch of healthy athleticism as a trained martial arts expert might. Her demeanor was that of a confident, world-wise woman despite her youthful appearance. I had no doubt that she could take care of herself in any situation. I couldn’t force my eyes away from her. I was enchanted from the moment she entered the room and watched intently as she was guided to a table near mine where she sat alone. She exchanged a few words with the waiter, he left, then quickly returned with a glass of dark red wine which she nursed while viewing the menu.

She was so alluring and my mind so full of fantasies about the possible delights that begged to be revealed beneath that form clinging maroon dress, I was unaware I was rudely staring. And then, as if she could read my thoughts, she raised her eyes to meet mine. I averted my gaze but noticed her quick smile. I looked directly at her and grinned sheepishly. Her response was a suppressed chuckle. She found my embarrassment humorous. Returning her smile, I got up and walked over to her table. “It seems we’re both dining alone,” I said. “Would you like to join me at my table? I haven’t ordered yet, and, judging by your interest in that menu, I assume you haven’t either.”

“I prefer to remain here,” she said.

My heart sank. “Please forgive my intrusion,” I said and, sad with disappointment, turned to slink away to my table.

This time she chuckled out loud. “I hate to dine alone. Please join me at my table,” she said, looking up at me with eyes incredibly inviting and overwhelming with sincerity. I fought the urge to express my happiness with a noisy and exuberant teen-aged cheer. Instead, I greeted her words with the most casual and coolest smile I could summon which instantly morphed into a toothy grin betraying my extreme happiness.

She told me her name, Marina Merlot. I told her mine, Terry Palm. I accepted and thanked her for the invitation to dine with her, and awkwardly hurried to my table to retrieve my glass of water instead of leaving it there as a more experienced and suave man would do. Then I returned and sat facing her.

“Water?” She asked, smiling at my half-filled glass. “No!” She sounded like a reprimanding mother when said that, paused in silence for a moment and then smiled. "Wine. I insist we have wine and I will order for both of us.”

I nodded and smiled. “As you command, Madam,” I said, ignoring my handler’s command to not consume alcohol 48 hours prior to a mission. Then I looked at her to find myself still held captive by her promising dark eyes. God, how I wanted her! The glint of precious gold and yellow diamonds sparkled from her earrings and necklace. She wasn’t wearing a ring. Good. No jealous husband or lover to blow my brains out. Everything about her radiated high-class status and expensive taste. I couldn’t believe how fortunate I was to be making what I was convinced was remarkable progress with such a desirable and interesting woman. The boys back home would rank her as “movie star quality,” and here I was about to have dinner with her—and hopefully more! If she desired me half as much as I did her, we would explode in flames when we touched!

“Marina.” I blurted out, interrupting my body’s lustful response to her searching gaze. “That’s a beautiful name; I like it.”

“Thank you.”

Hoping she would answer in the negative, the mildly suspicious part of me forced a question. “It’s Russian, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it could be,” she said, “if your parents named you that when you were born in Russia. But Marina is the same as Marian, Marie, or dozens of other variations of Mary, and is found in most of the nations and cultures in the world.”

Of course she’s not KGB, I thought to myself. How stupid could anyone be to even dream that the USSR would employ such a classy woman to pick up on GI’s in a fancy and expensive Hotel such as the Frankfurter Hof?

“Mary,” I said. “Mother of Jesus.”

“Yes, the Madonna, that’s me,” she said, grinning.

“That just goes to show you that we can’t always discern a nationality by someone’s name.” I raised my right index finger. “But, a marina is also where your rich uncle parks his yacht.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Who says I have a rich uncle?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe it’s your yacht.”

She laughed. “For your information, I have a somewhat privileged father who doesn’t have a yacht only because he detests the ocean, and who invited me to spend some time with him in West Germany while he schmoozes with various muckety-mucks at I.G. Farben, Daimler, and Siemens. Unfortunately, we don’t really see much of each other on these business trips of his because he is always so preoccupied with business and other interests. If this visit goes to form, he’ll show me off at a few dinners with his pals and their wives. After that, we’ll be flying back home on his jet unless I beg him to allow me to stay here by myself for another week or so.”

“What about your mother? Why doesn’t she go on these trips with him?”

“She passed away when I was ten years old. Father said there will never be another woman like my mother, therefore he will never marry again.”

“So you fill in as hostess.”

She smiled. “From time to time.”

“What’s the chance of our running into him here at the Frankfurter Hof?”

“He always puts me up in some fancy, schmancy hotel like this even though he keeps a house in Koenigstein near I.G. Farben, and he has other properties in Bonames.” She laughed. “He also has homes in Berlin and Stuttgart. My bet is all those places are where he keeps some of the women he will never marry—his other interests.”

So, you’re staying here at the Frankfurter Hof?”

“Oh, yes. Every time he establishes headquarters in Frankfurt, he sticks me here, and I love it, although I prefer Berlin. And never once has he decided to drop in without warning. Whenever he wants me to attend some boring business meeting or shindig, he calls several days in advance and sends a car for me.”

“You look and act so sophisticated,” I said. “But you appear much younger than the role you fill for your father.

“I assure you that there is always a giggly teenaged girl peeking at you through my eyes. She’s happy to see another teenager all dressed up like a fully-fledged adult.” She smiled. “You’re an American, aren’t you?”

“It shows?”

She laughed. “It shouts. Like most German men around your age, you have longer hair than the Ami soldiers and businessmen. Your suit is Italian and passable, but your ugly black shoes are round-nosed and old-fashioned clumpy. You have apparently worked hard at polishing those clodhoppers, but they are work shoes, for God’s sake. Even American businessmen would not want to be caught dead wearing shoes like that! But you GI’s do. So, how do you get away with your long hair?”

“Wow!” I said, laughing. Inside, I was in a panic, desperately struggling to avoid her questions and find a way to change the subject from me to her. “I only hear Germans use the term, ‘Ami.’ But you’re not a Dubi, you speak perfect English. And I haven’t heard the term ‘clodhoppers’ since I left my home state of Colorado almost two years ago. If I were to guess, I’d say you’re from the states or Canada.”

“Are you here on business, or are you an Ami soldier?” She said, ignoring my question. “Your hair, shirt, tie, and suit are passable, but not the dumb shoes. Those shoes literally scream, ‘Hi, I’m a dorky, teenaged, Ami soldier.’”

I felt a flash of anger, feeling hurt that she would describe me as a dorky teenager, but I knew she was correct. How many times did our handlers tell us to never wear those stupid Army shoes while dressed in civilian clothes? Now here I am, an 18 year-old punk trying my best to impress a vastly more sophisticated girl/woman who couldn’t be more than a few years my senior. To be honest, she even looks a bit younger than me, but seems more mature than any American girl I’ve ever known. But then, most European women are more mature than their American counterparts.

The waiter interrupted us. She said something to him in German and waited while Marina quickly scanned the menu and placed our order for both of us, including a bottle of the same deep red wine in her glass.

“I am really impressed!” I said when the waiter left us. “Are you fluent in German as well as English? The few German words I know are barely enough to order a beer, but there is no way I could carry on a meaningful conversation.”

She laughed. “Well, then what do you call someone like me who is fluent in English, German, and French?”

“Wow!” I said. “You’re amazing. So what do we call you? Trilingual?”

“Bingo!” She said. “Yes, trilingual. Now what do you call someone who is fluent in only two languages?”

“Bilingual,” I said.

“Bingo! Another correct Answer! So, what do you call a person who is barely fluent in only one language?”

I thought for a moment. “I give up; I don’t know.”

“American!” She said, laughing.

I laughed with her, but I shook my head in the negative and forced a frown. “That’s a rather low blow, Miss Merlot, and I don’t agree that I am ‘barely fluent’ in English.”

“I wasn’t referring to all Americans, just to most of the lot,” she said. “Just as most Europeans are fluent in more than one language, as I am.” Marina said. “My father insisted I get a good education.”

“Marina Merlot,” I repeated her name, switching the subject back to her. Now at age 18, I was not yet an experienced world traveler and I hailed from the nothing of a flyover state of Colorado and the cow town of Denver. I also lacked a complete high school education. Even so, I was sure any word ending with an ‘ot,” was pronounced as, ‘Merlow’ and had to be French. I took a chance and gave voice to my conclusion. “French, right?”

Again, she laughed with a hint of mischievous in her voice. “Yes,” she said. “Of course Merlot is French and I was born and raised in Paris. The name Merlot, like the name Marina, is quite prevalent in most of the more sophisticated centers of the world. It can even be found in the bright cellars of the United States.”

We enjoyed a wonderful dinner of chateaubriand and a red wine mushroom sauce prepared by the Frankfurter Hof’s famous French chef Etienne Gluck, paired with a considerable quantity of the same delightfully dry, deep red wine Marina had introduced me to. I was feeling it by my third glass. Others call it, “Tipsy,” I call it, “falling down drunk.” Our conversation continued long after Marina demanded that she pay for our dinner and wine, plus an additional bottle she insisted on taking with her. Despite my strong objections, she paid for the food and wine simply by signing the check. That was something I had never heard of. The remainder of our night at the restaurant was punctuated with giggles, boisterous laughter, and gradually more lingering hand touching and finger interlocking until the wee hours when we noticed we were the only customers in the restaurant.

Both of us had a difficult time walking to the lobby, but we helped each other to successfully make the journey to the elevators with the assistance of lots of laughs and a few swear words. We fell to the floor three or four times, giggling, kissing, and touching. When we struggled to our feet for the final time, we found ourselves in front of room 420. “This is it,” she said, still laughing.

I finally asked several questions that were nagging me. Today, I can’t recall exactly what those urgent questions were, nor do I know if she ever gave me answers. All I remember is my quest for more intel was met with more laughs and a barrage of smoke-screening questions launched by her. Although I didn’t exactly remember doing so, I woke with the terrifying feeling that I had given her all the information she wanted. My apprehension of the possible consequences intensified the moment I became aware of the morning sun streaming through our window. We were both in her bed in her room together, both nude and both suffering from severe hangovers.

“Did we make love?” I asked.

At first, she pretended to be hurt. “You have to ask?” She said. “Am I that forgetful?”

I sat straight up and reached for her hand. “Oh, no!” I protested. “I’m sorry, I mean I was so drunk—”

She cut me off with a girlish giggle. “There’s no need to apologize, Specialist 4th Class, Terry S. Palm, RA17432783, May 23, 1942. I am the one who owes you a debt because I fell asleep, I think, before you did.”

“It seems you slept only after you learned everything about me.”

“Oh, not everything,” she said. “Just your name, rank, serial number and date of birth coupled with your claim that you, ‘crossed the border by mistake and wish to be returned to my unit.’” She laughed triumph fully. “No tease intended, but that’s what you said. You also told me that you arrived in West Germany from Fort Campbell, Kentucky two months ago to accept assignment to a special unit with main headquarters in Frankfurt am Main. Your unit commander reports directly to General Creighton W. Abrams at Drake-Edwards Kaserne in Bonames, you and your team reports to your civilian handler Mr. Robert Myrick, and will work closely with an agency operative who goes only by ‘Mr. Barris’ who handles ‘wet jobs’ and serve him in the functions of cover, security, and escape.”

I’m stunned,” I gasped. Did you write all that down or commit it to memory?

She laughed. “I suppose I’m not the average bear. I remember virtually everything a person says, which is one reason my father likes me to attend some of his business meetings. “You also said that your unit is one of several that will be considered in the creation of a new special operations force as directed by President Kennedy. Is that true or were you trying to impress me?”

I was so upset about the possibility that I had spilled my guts to a Russian spy, but—I asked my self—why would she tell me all these things instead of continuing to use me as a source or simply killing me since she apparently learned all she wanted to?

“So now we’re even,” she said, interrupting my thoughts. “I told you everything about me, and now I know everything I already suspected about you, although I thought that President Kennedy thing was a bit of an embellishment of your own invention. So, now we have true honesty between 22-year-old Miss Marina Merlot and Specialist Terry S. Palm, age 18.”

She seemed so sincere and direct, I thought. There was nothing spooky about her at all. She wasn’t a spy, she was simply super smart, innocent of the intrigue undergirding everything these days, and frankly honest with me without reservation. I felt that she, too, was in love although neither of us had yet to express our devotion to each other. But the day that would take place was sure to approach soon.

“So far,” she said, “I like everything about you. I especially appreciate that you refrained from taking advantage of me while I was drunk and asleep. I think you’re one of the few, ‘good guys’ in our sad world.” She suddenly reached out and pulled me down under the sheets with her, giggling like a playful little girl. “And now it’s time for us to finish what we started last night.”

We made wild, passionate love throughout the rest of the day; over and over again to complete exhaustion. I was totally addicted to her. That was the beginning of our short-lived, torrid, and destined to be tragic, love affair.

As it turned out, the mission scheduled for 48 hours after I decided to treat myself to dinner, wine, and Marina at the Frankerfurter Hof had been called off. The four-bedroom “safe house” where my three teammates and I were billited was nearby so I walked to it after my one-and-a-half-day absence. This was SOP in our unit. If you were missing when the mission was cancelled, everyone assumed that you got the word and chose to do whatever wonderful things you were doing than to return to an empty safe house while your teammates were away doing the same sort of things. But if the mission went as scheduled and you failed to show, you would be prosecuted for desertion. No trouble for me this time. I hoped my luck would hold because I desperately wanted to see Marina again. I was smitten, hopelessly in love, and doomed forever with thoughts of marriage, children, and a home of our own. How proud I would be to take her back home and show her off to my family and jealous friends. Mom and Dad would love her as would my three sisters, grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Marina would be a sensation in Colorado!

Two days later, as she suggested, I telephoned her at the hotel and the manager told me there was no such person by that name in room 420 nor anywhere else in the hotel. I ran the eight blocks to the Frankfurter Hof where the Front Desk confirmed the manager’s response. I asked if anyone by the name of Merlot had registered for a room one, two or three days earlier. They replied that they could not release such information. I threatened to get a court order. They invited me to do exactly that because otherwise, they would not disclose such information.

I was in a panic, I had to find her! When I turned to leave the hotel, I happened to spot the man who had been our waiter two days earlier. Luck was with me again! Happily, his English was much better than my German. When I asked if he remembered us, his eyes widened in amusement. “You, I do not recall, but her?” he said. “How could I ever forget a woman that beautiful?”

“Her name is Marina Merlot,” I said. “Could you possibly find out where she is?”

The waiter smiled. “If she told you that, she was joking. She has a delightful sense of humor. Her name is Marina Watson. Her father is a well-known medical doctor in London. Merlot is the name of the deep red wine she favored. I can’t forget her, her beauty overwhelmed and entranced me.”

“That’s two of us,” I said.

Investigating some of her lies, I quickly discovered that she told the truth about not having a rich uncle, but her “entitled” father didn’t exist either. She was a phony using fake names and a history supported by imaginary stories. She was quite good at it, though. Good enough to be a trained KGB agent. I shook my head when I recalled the waiter’s words, “…a delightlful sense of humor.” She must have had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing out loud when she told me her name was Marina Merlot, and I stupidly said her surname was French. “Of course it’s French, you bumbling, small town kid,” she was probably thinking. “Merlot is a wildly famous wine produced for generations in France and, today, they make it even in your backward country.” She must have had one heck of a laugh when she shared my ignorant response with her KGB comrades. “Dumbass Ami kid doesn’t even know his wines.” She’s probably enjoying an even bigger chuckle now if she’s learned my search for Dr. Watson in London exposed my ignorance of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels. Yes, I felt great hostility for this little bitch, but I couldn’t turn her in without getting thrown in prison myself. To underline the quandary I was trapped in, I was still in love with her.

The months whipped by as if racing past a picket fence, each blurred picket sporting the name of a month. Still, even with the passage of time, she stubbornly refused to leave my conscious thoughts. In fact, she dominated them and possessed my dreams. What the heck was wrong with me? After just one and a half days with her I felt as if I had known and loved her all my life. I felt as if I could not live another moment without her. I used to laugh and make fun of the farm boys, raw recruits fresh out of Kansas or some other nowhere place who fell in love with the first blonde prostitute who smiled at them and wanted to take her home to meet mama. That’s how I felt about me now.

We were supposed to report and vet anyone with whom we had more than a casual relationship, but I made a vow to myself that I would keep this fake Marina Merlot a secret. No one would ever learn about her even if she were a colleague of the KGB agents our unit helped Mr. Barris get away with murdering. Her name would never go on his list. Her sudden appearance and disappearance tore a gaping hole in my feelings. It was as if I found the love of my life and fate then ripped her out of my arms and heart. The agony of this constant torture would drag on and on over the next six months until that fateful day in Berlin when I saw her.

This time she had shorter shoulder-length hair dyed jet black from the roots fading to a deep burgundy red at the ends. She wore blue jeans, white tennis shoes, and a dark reddish-purple sweatshirt decorated in English with white silkscreened lettering, “If it’s worth playing, it’s worth playing LOUD.” She looked and acted like a typical German teenager. The sleek, sophisticated wealthy young woman was no longer present, but I recognized her. I was certain it was “Marina” or whatever name she now went under. She was by herself, walking towards the bombed-out memorial Kaiser Wilhem church on the Kurfurstendamm. I carefully followed her, avoiding detection by remaining within the groups of pedestrians hurrying to and from their jobs or shopping.

Marina suddenly darted from the sidewalk and slipped into the church through its opening into the Memorial Hall. Mingling with visitors, I followed her and watched her casually walk behind a man who tossed an empty red and white pack of Marlboro cigarettes at a trash container. The empty pack missed and fell to the floor. The man didn’t seem to notice or care because his eyes were on the beautifully decorated ceiling and walls of the hall, but that pretty civic-minded teenager in the maroon sweatshirt noticed, and quickly scooped the pack off the floor and dropped it into the trash. My trained eye noticed the girl’s clever split-second recovery of a small, folded piece of paper from inside the empty Marlboro pack as it left her hand. She slipped the note into a tight front pocket of her jeans, turned to leave the hall, and ran into me. “Pretty’ was not an accurate description of this fake teenager. Observed up close, she was as beautiful and desirable as ever. Beneath the counterfeit image she projected was a sophisticated and professional woman, a capable KGB agent who could pose great danger to her enemies.

Startled, her eyes widened initially with fear but filled with tears when I purposely stepped in front of her intended path. “Please don’t stop me, Terry,” she begged.

“We need to talk,” I said, taking her firmly by the arm.

“I can’t do this,” she said. “I can kill you if you don’t let me go.”

I smiled. “I know you can, and I can kill you, too. But the fact that neither one of us has killed the other during the few seconds since I stood in your way means we both don’t want to end us in such an obscene and horrible way. To be honest, I don’t want us to ever end,”

She began to cry. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “This is so awful; I don’t want us to end either.”

I gently took her by the arm and walked her away from the curious Memorial Hall visitors. We walked silently a few blocks to a quiet restaurant with outdoor seating and no nosey customers. “Let’s talk here,” I suggested.

She nodded her agreement and we sat at a table. When the waiter appeared, I ordered Zeller Schwarze Katz Mosel wine. She brushed away her tears and raised her glass in a toast. “To finally learning about wine and to the one night and day of debauchery we shared,” she said.

Time to be painfully honest, I told myself. I rang my glass against hers and looked into her eyes. “I think it more as sharing our love. It’s been torture since you left me by myself holding an empty bottle of Merlot. I am painfully, irredeemably in love with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, damnit!”

Her eyes filled with tears again. “Terry, you must know that I am your enemy, KGB. When I told my superiors that I thought I had fallen in love with you, they disappeared me to Berlin and swamped me with work. Tensions between your country and mine are becoming severe over East Germany’s blockade of U.S. access to Berlin. There is a real danger we might all end up vaporized in nuclear war. It is not a good time for a U.S. Special Operations Ami soldier and a KGB agent to fall in love.”

“No, you’re not my enemy and I’m not your enemy either,” I said. We are in love. I can take one good look at you and know our feelings for each other are mutual. We are meant to be together, and I won’t allow anything to come between us.”

She laughed despite her tears. “It seems insane, doesn’t it? Two nations both armed to the hilt ready to go to war over which one has the best bookkeeping system.”

That made me laugh. “Well, that’s a rather interesting way to describe the conflicts between the USSR and USA.”

“I’ve missed you too, Terry. Oh, God, it has hurt so badly not being with you. I think of you constantly. I keep telling myself that I think I’m in love with you only because of the contrast with that short and wonderful time we shared was such a powerful contrast against my everyday life as a cold, unfeeling spy in an extremely dangerous world filled with fear, hatred and murder. But I longed for a return for that time with you. I secretly hoped we would accidently run into each other, but at the same time, I wanted to run away from it all in fear because our love is forbidden by both our countries if not the entire world.”

“Screw the USA and the USSR,” I said. “We have a right to our love. But there is another obstacle in our way we have yet to resolve.”

“What obstacle?”

“I don’t think your real name is Marina Watson.”

She laughed. “It is Marina Prusakova. I was born in a small village near Moscow.”

We slept together that night and our love making continued over the next two days and nights in between the hours when we dedicated to working out a way our love affair could continue covertly. We both put in for 30-day vacations we intended to share at a Black Forest resort. She was allowed only twenty days but I got my full thirty.

Our stay at the Black Forest was wonderful and filled with wild sex and true, abiding love. By the last week of her vacation we decided she would defect to the U.S. and marry me. My job during my remaining 10 days of vacation was to work out a plan with Mr. Barris who was quite knowledgeable about such matters. After all, he was a hit man for the CIA, very intelligent, creative, well versed in the ways of the world when it came to foreign intrigue and espionage. He also had all kinds of business connections in the entertainment industry. Having served with him successfully on six missions since I arrived in West Germany, he and I had built a solid camaraderie.

In the morning of Marina’s twentieth day of vacation, I awoke to hear her quietly arguing with someone on the phone. She hung up and came into the bedroom.

“You’re crying,” I said.

“It’s over, Terry,” she said. “I’ve been ordered to immediately return to Moscow.” She began packing her things back into her suitcase.

“Well, forget them,” I said, standing up and pulling my pants on.

“Don’t do it, Terry; they’re outside waiting for me.”

I pulled the curtain open and looked out the window. Four men in black suits looking up at our window stood beside three new black Opel automobiles in the street in front of our resort hotel. I angrily jerked the curtains shut. “It’s usually two men to a car. I counted four men and three cars. Where are the other two?”

“Standing at both sides of our door waiting for it to open,” she said.

“It ain’t gonna happen,” I said.

“There’s no other way out,” she said. “When we arrived and checked in, I scoped the place out for another exit if we needed one later.”

“Me, too,” I chuckled. “We were both on the same wavelength. Now guess what’s going to happen when those two thugs kick our door open.”

You can’t stop them,” she said. “Those men are professionals. Up until now, they were my comrades…friends I could trust. Thinking we still had time to get away, I made them promise over the telephone to not harm you if they caught up with me. I had no idea they were already here and outside waiting for us.”

Finished with the suitcase, she picked it up and opened the door. Two tough looking Russian men barged in with drawn guns. My 9mm automatic was somewhere in the room, probably in the dresser the largest of the two men stood beside.

“We can still make our plans, Terry. Let me go with them and I’ll contact you from Moscow or wherever I end up. You talk to Mr. Barris and figure things out.”

I started toward the biggest man, but Marina stood between us. “Don’t do it, Terry; just freeze. Don’t move.” She looked directly at her comrades and firmly raised her voice to prevent any misunderstandings. “They promised not to harm you, but if you do make a move against them, they will kill you, and then I’ll have to kill them.”

I stood motionless while she went out with them and closed the door. I ran to the dresser and searched through the folded clothes, mostly mine, some belonging to Marina, but couldn’t find my gun. Then I remembered: it was in my suitcase in the closet. I grabbed the gun, an extra magazine, and went out the door in time to see the cars speed away and out of my sight around a corner of the twisting mountain road. I had no car. We had taken a taxi from the train station to the hotel. She was gone.

That was 61 years ago. I never heard from Marina again and gave up looking for her after many years of fruitless searches. I never forgot Marina and she was always somewhere in the back of my mind despite two marriages, one ending in divorce after 10 years, and the other in widowhood after 45 years and four children. I retired in 2014 from my position with the company (everyone thought it was with an aerospace manufacturer but my employer was actually CIA).

Three months ago, a woman with a Russian accent contacted me with the news that her lonely 83-year-old mother, the former Marina Prusakova, now Marina Montauk, requested her to search for me. She asked a few questions which I affirmed and she was elated that she had finally located her mother’s missing lover from six decades ago. Like me, Marina had married, divorced, married a second time, and was now a widow. She had four children from her first marriage.

Marina had asked her daughter to invite me to come to Germany in May, 2021 to join her in a toast of our friendship with a glass of Merlot at the Frankfurter Hof Hotel, now called the Steigenberger Frankfurter Hof in Frankfurt am Main. If I accepted, her mother would call to confirm the exact date and time and final travel arrangements. I could hardly wait to hear her lovely voice after so very many years.

And that explains why I am now, at 79 years old, sitting in the Frankfurter Hof dining room with a large bouquet of long-stem maroon roses, two crystal goblets, and a chilled bottle of Merlot waiting for…wait a moment…that must be her! Ahhh, she is still so incredibly beautiful! What they say about fine wines such as Merlot is as true about a woman such as Marina; age improves and refines beautiful things. We are together at last and always will be, thanks to love and Merlot.

“Chilled Merlot?” She said, looking at the iced wine on our table. She laughed. “Oh, Terry! Merlot is never served chilled.”