My partner, David, was likely fast asleep in the room we shared, a hundred and fifty feet up from where I played with and inside my ocean. I could not use the lobby, the elevators, or even the stairs to reach that room as the body lying on the far shore would bring an ever-expanding set of human-interest layers to the hotel when dawn opened and real life began all over again. I was not naked. I’d left nothing behind as I’d shed the shirt, the shorts, the shoes, and the socks as I’d made my way to the far point and my entry into the wildly loving ocean only minutes ago. No, I would have to climb when I was on wet land again. Our room was on the outer face of the hotel, and all those rooms had balconies. The balconies were made of heated and twisted black Spanish iron, the railings of teak with Spanish tiles for flooring.

The rain was a slick balm, and its cooling effect was holding my emotions in check, at least until a later time when survival might no longer be a pressing issue. The face of the hotel façade rose into the night, its many-storied balcony covered wall facing the wave-tossed inlet nearby, looking down upon the pool, which held the only unmoving water anywhere in the vicinity. I rose and made the small leap upward to grip the second-floor balcony railing firmly with both hands before vaulting and rolling my body so I could tumble in a controlled fall onto the balcony flooring. I’d learned years back that when hands are slightly damp, the water molecules can fill in the microscopic crevices on the skin, creating a better contact surface with another object. This increases the friction and allows for a better grip, although it can go the other way if there’s too much water between the surfaces. Good fortune in that the storm winds were blowing the rain away from the hotel fronts surface instead of onto it. I crouched down and rested before performing the same operation to reach the third floor. I didn’t bother to look down.

My brain wasn’t organized to the point where I could fail to feel like a fall would kill me by not looking down. I looked everywhere, but my intent was fully concentrated on leaping, grasping, pulling, and then rolling…the same procedure I’d use to conquer the Marine training over vertical obstacles in what the Marines called the confidence course. Only later would I learn that the course was not in the training to build confidence at all. It was invented as a selection tool to weed out those who would not or could not try. The rain pouring down had a second vital benefit. It assured that nobody in the very early morning hours would be out on any of the balcony patio areas. I climbed into the night.

It took only moments to reach the fifteenth floor and I knew right away that the glass doors to the room were open, as the drapes were being sucked out into the darkness over the balcony’s edge.

I pulled myself from the floor and entered the room. Dave wasn’t asleep as I’d thought. He sat up in the bed closest to the balcony, as if waiting for my strange arrival. I walked past the bed to the bathroom and pulled out a towel to wrap around myself before returning to stand facing him at the bottom of the bed.

“Something happened. Tell me everything, chronologically, as it went down until you came to be standing here naked in front of me,” Dave said, taking me by surprise at the usage of very accurate but rather ornate language, although his logic was unassailably as solid as the metamorphic rocks the big hotel was built on.

“I’m not naked,” I corrected, and waited while trying to dry myself.

Dave sighed, rubbing his head with both hands, reminding me that he’t tied one on the night before, which wasn’t exactly a sign of real mission professionalism as far as I was concerned.

“A man tried to kill me but was unsuccessful, obviously,” I said. “I had to kill him for my protection. I began my run…” I continued, but Dave held up his right hand, palm exposed, a universal sign to stop.

“From when you left the room,” he said, lying back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling instead of me.

“I went downstairs in my running gear,” I said, trying to think bout the smallest of details that he might want.

“I went to the concierge to talk to the man there about the conditions and my run.”

Dave nodded, a slight smirk appearing on his face.

“And then?” he said, his eyes finally staring into my own.

“I went out into the rain and began. I ran easily, loping along the circuitous route on the asphalt road, as there was no traffic at all.”

“Not surprised at that…and then?

I noted that Dave had turned the music down while I was in the bathroom. I thought the Milli Vanilli song was from a tape or disc, but the music was coming from a radio next to the bed. Old rock and roll, which surprised me as the island seemed so far off the beaten path from mainstream American or British cultures.

I detailed what had happened, from my stopping and beating the bushes along the rough growth located at the end of the promontory point, and being encountered by the baseball bat “

“The body, tell me about the body,” Dave whispered, his facial expression one of pure concentration. “Did you search it, strip it, or dispose of it in any way?”

Assembling my thoughts about the incident was quickly taking an analytical back seat to my thoughts about David White. His questions were so appropriately spot on, while his demeanor and conduct were anything but that. My initial disgust was rapidly turning to some sort of forced admiration.

“I searched him, but the only item on him, except his shoes, was his watch. I didn’t take any of his clothing off except for that watch. I pulled the man by his armpits over solid rock to the other side of the point and then rolled him into the breaking waves striking those rocks thirty feet down.”

“Okay, “Dave replied. “Good so far, the current coming out of the west will sweep it past the coast instead of onto the nearby beach just down the channel here. What race was he, and height and weight approximations would be nice, along with age.”

I was slightly embarrassed at my lack of experience. I hadn’t thought about the current, only not wanting to diver off the point and having the body floating around beneath me.

“Five six to eight, one fifty to sixty, and probably white male thirty-five to forty.”

“Where’s the watch?” Dave asked, glancing at my hands. “What happened to our hand?” he said before I could discuss the watch.

“I hit him hard,” I replied. “The rock had sharp edges, so I have a couple of cuts. I was able to scale the balconies to get up here, so I’m okay as far as movement is concerned.”

“I assumed that last part, but it’s having a damaged hand while a man is missing who’s going to be vitally and deeply sought after. The island is small, so there won’t be many suspects, and not that many visitors. You did to him what he was going to do to you. Murder that is made to look like a falling accident in the storm. That’s likely to fly with the Guardia not being the problem. When a man is sent to kill another man, by an organization of power, then that organization is going ot know that there was no accident, however.”

“Guardia being the cops here, I presume,” I said, sighing while putting my damaged hand into one of the robe’s pockets. White was right, I knew, about everything, and not having the hand examined at all was going to be important.

“The watch,” Dave said, holding out his hand, letting me know he hadn’t missed seeing it on my wrist when I’d come through the open glass door, no matter how out of it he’d seemed.

I worked to get the watch off so I could hand it to him.

“Deployment buckle, it’s called,” Dave said, stepping off the bed to help me, as the scaling of the hotel wall had been easy compared to using the damaged hand to work the simple but rather difficult clasp.

“Damn,” Dave whispered, as he examined the mechanical work of art. “Heavy. It’s real, not that anybody might bother trying to imitate such a piece. It’s of twenty to twenty-five caliber.”

“What does caliber have to do with it?” I asked, a bit mystified.

“Twenty to twenty-five thousand U.S. dollars buy-in is what I mean, if not more. I don’t know the exact model, but it’s some sort of offshore rig that goes for at least the amount I just said. And that’s a problem indeed.”

He handed the watch back. “If you want to keep it, then it goes into a diplomatic pouch at the American consulate here, although it’d be better to toss it off the pier into the roiling sea.”

“What’s upsetting you so much?” I asked, beginning to get the idea that my ‘knuckle dragger,’ although there seemed no question about his ability to handle the details of violent contact, wasn’t all interested in continuing the mission if it involved additional violence.

What I was experiencing in the Agency service was either not at the same level of fear-inducing terror as I’d felt during my whole tour in the valley, or I was becoming inured to such violence. That took me straight to the Gunny’s grim conclusion following my first night in contact with the enemy: “If you stay here too long doing this, then you’ll come to enjoy it, and there’s no coming back from that one.”

“Down, we’ve got to get some sleep for tomorrow,” I finally said, not knowing what else to conclude from what we’d covered about the death.

The fact that there was no murder rate to speak of on the island would be in our favor to continue. The additional fact that whoever was behind the mafia organization was not going to buy into any accidental death conclusion.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Dave said, getting up to pace on the floor next to the bed. “That this guy was wearing that kind of watch means he was somebody, not some lowly paid blue-collar flunky given the task to make sure you fell into the sea. There’s one guy who’ll know what we need to know without going to the school to interrogate that headmistress.”

“The concierge,” I said, and Dave nodded.

“That’s if you don’t choose to pickle the mission in the morning. This one has got all the characteristics of being a red herring, and these are the kind of missions where people get killed because they have no idea what they are walking into or among. Our briefing on this is the smallest I’ve ever worked on. There’d be no shame in reporting the accidental termination, the potential of an international incident, and maybe even the fact that the mission might simply not be worth the risk to either us or the Agency.”

I went into the bathroom and finally showered off the seawater, taking my time while I thought about what to do. I wasn’t scrubbing the mission unless I had instructions to do so from way higher up than me, and likely even Herbert. I needed to call in, but it would have to be a secure line as the situation had become dangerously complex with details needed for a decision that would have to cover areas not coverable without a dedicated and secure line. The consulate for the U.S., one of the three in all of Spain, was located right at the apex of the main harbor in downtown Mallorca. On the drive to Calvia, ten miles out by the only paved road that ran, basically, around the island, from the airport, I’d also noticed many old wooden windmills. Most were dilapidated and were still turning. I fell in love with them and wanted to know more. Perhaps there would be time for that if the mission could be turned in a better direction.

By the time I re-entered the room Dave was sound asleep, snoring gently, not unlike my wife, although she never admitted to snoring at all, even after I recorded her, which only gained me three days and nights of complete silence. I got dressed instead of tucking myself into the second bed. There was one thing that almost everything hinged upon. The concierge. Was he going to be in tomorrow, as there was no point in having such a specially trained person up all night in a hotel so distant from the downtown area? It took no time at all to visit the staffed front desk and find out that Richard, the same man I’d met and had to have turned me in, would arrive at eight in the morning for a full day’s work if I needed his services.

He hadn’t met Dave White yet, I presumed, so an arrangement to get him isolated and alone for questioning was a good bet.
I went back upstairs after going out into the free parking lot to make sure the Shelby was there. Dave had arrived at the hotel on his own. I was presuming he’d used a taxi or delivery vehicle, but it didn’t matter. The Shelby was the mission car as it was so small on roads that were tiny by American standards, and with cornering and acceleration performance that might be needed at some point.

Nothing had changed when I got to the room and settled in. I closed my eyes, but the only image I could conjure up was one of the rock jetting upward under my power and astoundingly driving itself right up into the man’s brainpan. Only it being dark at the time likely saved me from even worse images.

I was awakened at almost exactly four in the morning, after almost no sleep at all. I was glad I’d put the watch back on. It was Dave.

“Let’s pack up. Yes, we must see this guy at the hotel who gave you up or bail out on the mission, but even more important, and I’m sorry I overlooked it earlier because of my condition, they know where we’re staying, and their guy hasn’t come back. He’s the son or son-in-law of somebody important enough to wear a gift that expensive, so there’s going to be hell to pay, and they know everyone on this island, and we know, well, just you, the concierge, and the dead guy. Time to get out of Dodge and back into the land of friendlies.”

My body exploded into action, my thoughts recriminating because I hadn’t caught the connection either. We’d walked into a boring diplomatic mission and were still acting like our lives weren’t on the line. If we were captured, the questioning would be a whole lot grimmer than what Dave likely had in store for Richard.

We each had only one bag, which was convenient as they both were thrown into the back seat as the Omni’s trunk was almost non-existent. I pulled out of the parking lot slowly, avoiding any revealing takeoff in either noise or appearance. Just another rental car out at an early travel time on the way to the airport, kind of a thing. There was nobody on the road, so I opened the Shelby up, hitting a hundred and sixty kilometers per hour in third and three overdrive shifts in quick succession. I held the speed, which was a hundred in MPH, but the car didn’t have those numbers, although the steering wheel wasn’t on what agents called the ‘silly side’ of the car, as in many European countries. There were four small communities on the MA-1 main road that had to be slowed for, but never down to the 40 KPH that the round speed signs called for. Between Casta Catala, there was a mildly curving part of the road, which is where we picked up our tail. Nobody else was out there, and certainly not doing a hundred to at least stay with us. I dropped the idea of slowing for the communities and prayers, not for us but for civilians or dogs that might be out in the night. I went into fourth gear and overdrive right at six thousand RPM.

“What the hell is that thing, and why are there no seat belts or anything?” Dave yelled over at me.

“We’ve got company, which means you were correct about everything you said. This thing has legs in Euro trim, so let’s see what they have.

The car came screaming in, the engine whining like a turbojet, and hit the very short outskirts of Cas Catala at 210 KPH and didn’t bother to calculate the MPH in my head as I glanced in the rear-view mirror where there were no lights.

“Come on guys, this was just getting good,” I said with a laughing snarl over to where Dave, hit man and knuckle dragger, sat crouched as tightly into the corner of the passenger seat and the side of the door.

We came out of Cas Catala above 160 and then dived into the well-constructed and wide interchange to head down to the harbor and Cala Major. I drove my foot on the brake and hit the clutch pedal to the floor as we decelerated as fast as the Omni would let me without losing all adhesion to the road’s uncommon concrete surface. I slid half sideways into a narrow alley and stopped as quickly as the car would allow. I shut the engine down and turned off the lights.

No lights appeared at four minutes, using the stopwatch function of the Audemars complication. Dave was left gasping and then whispering.

“What in hell are we doing?”

“Escape and evasion, I replied. “Bondurant school of high-performance driving. I took the course three times when I was a cop in California.”

“What haven’t you been, and I’m not sure I want to be around for what you are going to become from here.”

Dave’s tone was broken, so I knew he was speaking from his heart. I also guessed he hadn’t been in armed combat, at least not now, where the other side was armed as well. He tried his door, but I stopped him.

“The alley’s too narrow, and the last thing you want is your white face sticking around a corner to see death coming right for you.”

“I’m not thinking quite straight,” Dave offered, his voice no longer holding at the level of hard, aggressive delivery he used when greeting me after the event, the swim, and the climb. He gently reclosed the door.

“What are we going to do from here?” Dave asked, looking for leadership for the first time since I’d met him.

“One hour here to nap, and then on to the consulate. Do we go for the head of the Mafia on this island? If we do, we don’t need Richard. That’s in the past. With an island that has only half a million people and a couple of hundred thousand in and around Palma, we’ve got a place and base much smaller than even Albuquerque. How many mafia chieftains do you suppose that small population can hold? We start asking people who and where he is, and then wait until he comes to find us, which is after we have firepower, of course.”

“We’re going after them, after this?” Dave asked, real surprise in his voice.

“Recline your seat and get some more sleep while you can,” I said, my mind racing with alternate plans.

“Guns? Where in hell do you think we’ll be able to get guns in this place? Spain here allows no personal weapons, and we don’t have time to get a diplomatic package shipped to the consulate. And what are you going to do while I nap, as your door won’t open either?”

“The consulate has Marines, and the Marines will have at least two serviceable .45 Colts. My favorite weapon for close-in delivery of life adjustment.”

“How?” was all Dave asked, shaking his head

I pulled out my wallet and a card from it. “Marine Officer active duty,” I said, holding it out for his examination.
Dave turned his head to look out into the blackness in front of us. Nobody had come out of any of the residences piled high atop one another, all built upon the most beautiful but hopelessly weak bricks and tiles that were cheap but could never stand the mildest earthquakes the island was known to experience. In my limited research, I’d found that the island had suffered fifty-five earthquakes of some significance over the past 400 years. I knew they knew we were parked where we were, but also that nobody would be coming out to encounter whatever we were in the night.

“What are you?” Dave breathed out.

“Just a guy getting by and trying to make up for a lot of mistakes I’ve made along the way,” I replied, trying to be as honest as I could.

I turned the radio on but kept the volume extremely low as there was no sense in disturbing the neighborhood any further.
I smiled when I found a Spanish song that had recently gone gold in the USA that I loved. The words were in Spanish, but they were all about dancing the Bamba, a dance that didn’t exist while also portraying the singer not as a sailor but as the captain, which, of course, he was neither. I sang along in Spanish but very quietly as we waited.”

“You speak Spanish too?” Dave asked, obviously unable to get an sleep.

“What it is you may need I am or will become,” I replied, knowing that I was being a bit of a prig but not wanting to go into the story of my life.

I needed the man next to me to do what I wanted him to do under the right circumstances, and I wasn’t going to achieve that by bringing him closer to the point where I might lose my credibility or he his respect. I didn’t have a believable story, and my personality and cherubic looks didn’t demand an alpha male kind of respect. I sang the repetitive words to La Bamba while I thought about the sailor and the captain. I was an alpha male but didn’t want to be. I was a predator, but didn’t want to be. I was a killer, but didn’t want to be. The sailor in the song wasn’t a sailor, and he sure as hell wasn’t the captain. He was like me. Just a guy trying to do the best he could while being handed one extreme circumstance after another. I knew this vision of myself was skewed, but it seemed to fit more situations and over time than any other I could come up with.

I turned the radio off and made a decision to leave our hiding place earlier than I planned. It was becoming very likely that our pursuers, if they were in truth pursuers instead of drunken Mallorcan (pronounced mayor keen) islanders, had taken the other, much more traveled, fork in the road.

I mentioned that to Dave about the fork in the road we’d passed.

“How did you know to take the right one?” he asked, sounding like he was making time with a mentally ill and dangerous patient until he could get to safety.
“It was Yogi Berra who said: ‘If you come to a fork in the road, then take it.’ I replied, laughing.

“What’s funny about that comment. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yogi’s house had a drive that went by the front of it, and then another that curved further out beyond a stand of trees. Both roads came together at the end of the house. The road off the highway forked when you got onto it to get to Yogi’s house. No matter what fork you took, you’d arrive at his front door.”

“If you get to a fork in the road, then take it,” Dave whispered, although he didn’t laugh.

I reached up while we were talking and twisted the clear plastic cover off the inner surface of the roof between Dave and me. Carefully, by feel in the dark, I twisted and pulled the two interior lighting bulbs out, putting them in my pocket. I pushed a button I’d seen on the dash earlier, and the hatch popped open. There was no light emitted. I leaned over the seat back and grabbed my bag.

“Get your bag,” I said to Dave. I heard him comply as I went through my own to find what I needed. “You got the mission plan and background in there?” I went on hopefully.

“Sure,” he replied.

“Count the pages,” I instructed. I heard him rifling through papers.

“About twenty, or so,” Dave said.

“Fine, give them to me,” I ordered.

“What the hell? Dave said, “Are you going to read in this non-existent light?

“Nah,” I replied. “I’m going out the hatch and taping half the papers over each brake, running, and backup light. I always carry tape, string, and glue when I travel. There’s no way we’re going to back out of this alley with lights blazing in this utterly black darkness.” I crawled through, dragging the papers and my roll of tape with me.

I worked my way back into the driver’s seat and tossed my bag into the rear. I started the Omni and then began gently backing up until I felt my door was clear of the brick wall on my side. I turned the car off and got back out. I still held a few sheets of paper and my tape, which I then used to go forward, tearing three-inch holes in the center of the papers, or so, and then taped them to the headlights.

I got into the Omni and started it, reversing onto the road until I was ready to turn on the lights.

“Here goes,” I said quietly to Dave and turned the headlights on. Two yellow cones of light shot out, but were very subdued compared to regular lights. I eased the Shelby into first and drove on the road toward Palma.

“I’ve got to keep it below 20 KPH for a bit until I’m sure, as the wind at higher speeds will simply rip the paper off. This is like the curfew lights of WWII.”

The consulate was located right near the harbor’s edge. I’d driven right by it on my way to Calvia. It was on the central road that the Catalina entertainment district ran inland from. We’d start with the consulate, and presuming that the mission was still a go, proceed into that area to begin our search, if no one at the consulate had the information we might need.

I pulled the car over just before turning in toward the guarded security gates to the consulate. Pulling the papers off the lights took no time at all. As I got into the car again, Dave finally had something to say.

“I’ve not done this kind of work before,” he said, and I could tell from the tone of his voice that he’d recovered himself emotionally.

“What kind of work do you normally do?” I asked, since the words hit man and knuckle dragger just didn’t seem to fit what I might have expected those phrases to imply about his capabilities.

“Mostly messenger stuff, or deliveries, and sometimes escort work.”

I was surprised, not that his duties with the Agency were not those things that needed to be done in the field, but that I’d been led to believe his work in violence might come in handy when dealing with a mafia organization operating inside its protected territory.

“Okay, we’ll work with that,” I said, not disappointed but not exactly feeling great about having Dave for my partner in such a potentially dangerous position when I might have been delayed in the operation until Nguyen and Kingsley could be available again. I knew, however, that my using those men, not agents and not operationally connected to the Agency in any formal way, could probably not go on indefinitely. “So, you don’t do wet work at all?”

“I didn’t say that, or if I did, I didn’t mean it,” Dave replied, his voice beginning to sound once again like it had when I’d come into the room earlier in the morning hours. “I’ve had my share, but nothing like what this mission has been like in the way of, well, adventure.”

I looked over at the strange but very capable man, but didn’t say anything. I started the car and pulled up to the gate. The Spanish Guardia outer perimeter security officer approached my door. I opened the manually operated window, not having had to wind a car window down that way since I was a kid.

“Identification,” the guard said, holding out his hand to wait.

I pulled out my military I.D. card once again.

The guard examined it, and then leaned down to look over at Dave, but didn’t say anything or demand Dave’s Identification.

“Ingresar,” he said, as the outer gates opened to allow us to reach the inner gates and the Marine on duty.

It was great to be inside the consulate. The Marines were Marines and therefore great. Hot coffee and a telephone were provided, as if we were receiving service at a five-star hotel.

Although it was midnight in Washington, and God could only know what time it was where Herbert was physically located, he came on the secure line almost immediately.

“See the Deputy Chief of Mission,” Herbert said, before I could say anything. “Your message was received, and they want a truce.”

I tried to make sense of what he was saying. Who was making a truce? He had to be talking about the mafia, the mission was all about, but he wasn’t being clear.

“Good morning,” was my reply.

“It’s midnight here. You’re recalled. Get home for Christmas and take some time off. Nobody was killed or died, which is to everyone’s good fortune, and make sure your partner understands that. If you have to return to that island, then it will be at a later time, which you can also share with your partner. The consulate limo will take you to the airport. Use the card to fly home, for both of you.”

I thought about the rental car return, the Audemars watch, the fact that we’d likely been pursued with terminal intent, and why a local diplomat was in our line of communications at all but decided to say nothing. Herbert hung up when all he got back was my silence.

“What was that?” Dave asked, drinking his coffee with small slurps between words.

“We’re going home,” I replied. “The mission’s over, at least for the time being.”

“Oh,” Dave murmured.

“I’m sorry about the violence part of everything and how close we came,” I said, meaning it.

Dave just looked at me for almost a minute, drinking his coffee slowly, but I knew he had something else to say, so I waited.

“I want to work with you again,” he finally said. “Is there anything I can do to make sure of that?”

I smiled as my morning brain reacted to the coffee and the coming of a dawn which could have come with much worse news.

“You can purchase a hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy since I’m going back to my insurance career.”

“Why don’t I believe that?” Dave said, smiling back at me.

The Beginning