Prologue

The mission on the island of Mallorca, located just off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, was concluded.  A lot of nothing had happened, at least from a perceived observational conclusion by both Dave White, my assigned partner, and I.  I’d killed a man, we’d been pursued, and we’d left the island in haste after heading into the consulate to hopefully get armed and go after the root cause of what had caused me to damn near get killed myself, and also finish the mission.  That didn’t happen. Langley control said ‘no,’ that we were done and headed back without providing much of any reasoning.  We’d been sent to the island to moderate or talk to some mafia chieftain threatening as a school director who was really an asset through which foreign agents of opposing countries could be sent to the States without revelation or complications.  Dave was purported to be an Agency ‘hit man,’ although he proved to be anything but that (the Agency didn’t have hit men, not that they were ever admitted anyway, as it would turn out).  Christmas was only days away, so both Dave and I were happy to comply with the orders, not that any decision on our part was asked for by Tony Herbert, our control officer.  As the team leader I was supposed to meet with Mrs. Higgins, the headmistress of the place, but had never made it that far in initiating contact, either with her or anyone else on the Island except for Dave, Richard the concierge who’d likely given me away for the ambush that almost cost me my life and the man who’d tried to take it.  Mallorca, the largest of the Balearic Islands, just offshore from the coast of Spain, was populated by more than half a million people but was only about twice the size of Maui in the Hawaiian chain.

         Both Hawaii, the island where I was raised, and Mallorca, the island I was sent to on a strangely ridiculous mission, had become dangerous in their different fashions and all I wanted to do was get back to New Mexico, to my wife, my friends Nguyen and Kingsley and get back to work on making money, opening the international insurance operation to do more of that and then somehow work with Allen Weh to get International S.O.S. off the ground.  How I was supposed to fit working on an anthropology Ph.D. while doing all of that, and then being ‘stolen’ here and there for special missions, was another matter entirely that would take some thought to accommodate or make happen.  The mission to Mallorca ends, but it doesn’t end at all the way it was purported to or intended to.

Volume Six, Chapter I

It was raining in Barcelona, the person behind the counter said, but it was the only connecting destination available to get Dave and I a flight back to New York and then get back to Albuquerque with any kind of expediency.  Dave was based in Scotsdale so he could fly right into Phoenix out of New York with only a slight delay.  We boarded an old 737, old because it still had the old narrow diameter bypass fans instead of the newer gaping ones.  I didn’t care and presumed Dave didn’t either as the old ‘dirtier’ engines provided the same performance parameters but had no chance to ask him. The 737 was pulling back from the gate for departure when it stopped dead in its tracks with an abrupt jerk.

One of the flight attendants, visible up the aisle as I’d chosen an aisle seat for access in case of any trouble, unbelted, hung up the wall phone and headed down the aisle.  Dave had been through the training at the ‘farm,’ or charm school, as the differential training centers located in Quantico for the physical and Camp Perry, Ohio for the mental, so informed me.  I didn’t mention to him that I was, as yet, untrained.  I had no idea why the training was broken into two parts or facilities but didn’t ask as there had been no real personal time to spend on discussing such things.

The flight attendant stopped, holding what appeared to be a flight manifest out in front of her, although I couldn’t really read anything on it.

“The flight is returning straight away to the gate where you will deplane before it departs,” the attendant said, her accent British, as well as the ‘straight away’ wording of her single sentence before she turned back and walked toward the front of the plane.

Dave stared into my eyes when I turned my head.

“Don’t like it,” he said.  “How’d she know it was you in that seat and not somebody else?  “Why didn’t she ask for I.D.?  And why all this very quiet but evident trouble to get one man off the flight without anyone acting like this might be a really big deal?  And what about me?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered across to him.  His voice was low in speaking to me, but I was still afraid someone would overhear what we were saying.

“Do I get off with you?” he asked, his voice cloning the whisper presenation of my own.

“The mission was terminated, so it’s your call on this one,” I said.  “You can go home or be stuck here with me to do whatever it is that’s wanted now as none of this is making enough sense to make predictions about.”

Dave climbed up out of his seat.  “The mission’s over when we decide it’s over. I’m not leaving another agent in the field on his own, even if ordered to do so.  You’re one weird duck, but you’re my weird duck, and besides,” he went on, getting his back out from under the seat in front of him, “this is the most entertaining, even if nonsensical mission I’ve ever been on, I mean aside from that accident.”

I pulled my bag out and headed up the aisle without asking Dase what his intentions were.  Whatever was wanted of me wasn’t likely to be good news and I began to prepare myself for whatever was coming.  The fuselage of the plane shuddered a bit and then slowly moved back to nose into the gate.  I got to where the two flight attendants were strapped in, the one who’d gotten up to come talk to me looking away as I approached and stood not more than six inches from her shoulder.  The co-pilot came out of the forward crew door, turned, and immediately pulled up on the big lever that operated the 737’s main operating and latching system, and rotated it.  The door itself was then pulled inward slightly before the man pushed it out and it fully opened.

The co-pilot retreated into the crew cabin, although he smiled up at me when he swung that door shut.

I stared out into the tube way.  There was nobody there.  I stepped through the door and out of the airplane, noting that Dave was close behind.  The tube was big enough for both of us to walk side by side.

“What the hell?”  I asked, but not really directing the comment toward Dave.

“Something happened,” Dave said as we cleared the tube and pushed through the thin plastic double doors to enger back into the airport proper.  The sound of the tube being electrically pulled back into its collapsed state came from behind us.

“Consulate,” I said, heading for the front doors.  The airport was classy and clean but had no second floor.  Parking was a lot across a road to the main entrance and exit.  I was about to wave down a Taxi, since we’d returned the Shelby when we thought we were leaving, which we evidently were not.

“I want the Shelby back,” I said out into the thin temperate air as I stood looking around.

“Please, can we like follow the book and first find out what we’re doing back here and why?” Dave asked, sincerity in the tone of his voice.  I felt that he was making, without really making it, a comment about my driving.  I normally drove hard and fast and complaints came at me from almost everyone who rode with me or was required to follow.

A black Lincoln drove up and stopped just ahead of us at the curb.  I looked at Dave, a question mark in my facial expression and a frown.

“What have we got to lose?” he said and walked to the passenger side.  The window went down at his approach.  Dave nodded.

“It’s our ride,” he said, opening the rear door for me to enter first.

I got in, tossed my bag behind the driver’s seat and slid over.

“I presume we’re headed for the consulate?” I asked, not really expecting a mere diplomatic vehicle driver to answer, as Dave joined me and slammed his own door shut.

The driver turned his head slightly and spoke, as if he was talking to the window on the front passenger side of the car.

“Higgins is dead,” he said, then pushed on the accelerator and moved through the sparse traffic as Dave and I sat in complete silence.

I looked across the wide space between Dave and I.  His expression was a mirror of my own.  A bit of shock and a whole load of questions neither of us was going to ask the drive.

The driver never said another word.

I presumed from his silence that he was taking us directly to the consulate, which was proven by the roads he chose to use to cover the short distance.  Dave was more seasoned than I, so I did wonder what had made him so willingly accept that the car was for us sent by our people and not any potential foe or enemy.  Maybe going to the farm was in my very near future simply to learn stuff that was seemingly so innocuous but could also be very terminal.

“Where did you learn to tape up the lights on the Shelby so we would not expose ourselves?” Dave asked, as the windmills passed on both sides of the road.

I knew Dave was making small talk while his own mind ran like mine did, at about a hundred and ninety miles per hour, give or take.  “World War Two,” I replied, honestly.

“You’re not that old,” he shot back, disappointment in his voice.

“A dozen years ago, or so, a movie came out called Three Days of the Condor, starring Robert Redford,” I added.  “In that movie, a great movie, Redford spoke a line that applies when answering your question more clearly.  When asked, since he’d been only an in office analyst for his years with the Agency, how he had done so well in the field without field experience.  He said these most memorable words: “I read a lot.  I read everything.  My job is to read everything.  Almost no one knows I remember most all of what I read.”

“As I said,” Dave replied, almost wistfully.

The driver inserted a disk into the dashboard and I wondered what was on it, as there had been no radio, music or chatter, since we’d begun the drive to the consulate.  I listened to the entry electronic piano strokes leading into the vocals u til they came:

“I know there′s something in the wake of your smile. I get a notion from the look in your eyes, yeah…You’ve built a love, but that love falls apart…Your little piece of heaven turns to dark…Listen to your heart…”

“Listen to the song, the lyrics, the cadence, the movement of the waves flowing at us through the air.  This is what we’re here for and the people who sent us will never have a clue because if we tell them it’s all about heart out here they’d never believe us anyway.”

“That you’re real world and my own are so different is what I’m hearing from listening to that group play.

The car eased up to first the outer and then the inner gate without stopping.  They knew we were coming, or at least that I was coming.  Who was going to meet with us?  Whom had told the driver that the school head mistress was dead?  Were we going to be rerouted back into what was supposedly a completed mission?  The car stopped, shut off the ignition and the Roxette song died before it was over.

I took a few deep breaths as the driver got out and closed the door behind him.  Dave and I were alone in the back seat.

“If she drowned, then I know where this is going,” I said to Dave.

“How could you know?” Dave asked.

I stared into his eyes, taking the ‘glint of intellect’ so apparent right into my mind before I spoke.

“If she drowned then it was because they found the body and assumed that after falling among the rocks my would-be assassin drowned.  If she drowned then her dying and in that manner means it’s all about listening to the heart of what’s going on here.”

I have no idea about where your coming from on this one,” Dave said, not getting what I was talking about at all.  I got out of my door with my bag and he got out of his with his own.  The Marine sergeant was there to greet and welcome us into the consulate proper.

The sergeant led us into the same office and up to the same desk I’d made my last call from.  The receiver of the phone, strung out and connected by a very long curly cord, was the only thing laying flat upon its surface.  There were no intermediaries present.  Once the sergeant silently understood that we were aware of the phone off the hook and waiting he back out of the room and closed the door softly behind him.

“You or me?” Dave whispered.

I wanted to laugh out loud but I showed no humor in my expression at all.  It didn’t matter which of us took the call, it was the message in the call that was going to effect us.  The Agency, using the consul staff, and probably even more horsepower, had pulled a commercial plane back to the gate and offloaded us before transporting us back to the consulate.   The ‘small time’ mission was small time no more.  Dave made no move to pick up the receiver so I walked around and sat in the wooden executive chair, not feeling anything like an executive at all.

“Tony,” I said into the receiver, and waited.

“You know, I’m a little lost here, and in fact we’re all a little lost here.  Do you create wild dramatic scenes all around you or does it just happen and you’re right there in the middle of them?

Thorkelson and Bartok came into my mind as I thought about what my control officer was saying so I made no reply.  There’d been a question but it hadn’t been one that was framed to be answered by me.  Tony would supply the answer if I could hang on long enough.  I felt a bit like I was laying in the Yokosuka hospital bed with the Naval Board of Inquiry questioning and recording what I might be forced to admit I’d done.  There was no Kathy, the Red Cross or morphine on hand, however, to protect me or deaden any pain.  But it was the silence those factors had come together to allow that survived me once and I was dead set on using that force again.

“Tony,” I said again.

“God damn it man, are you listening to me?” Tony Herbert screamed.  His voice was loud enough in coming through the receiver to be heard by Dave although I wasn’t holding the instrument out away from my head.

I put the receiver down on its side upon the polished hard wood surface and stared at it, my mind a chaotic mess of thoughts but unable to come to any conclusions without Tony’s help.  I was being vaguely accused of bringing about the death of the head mistress by somehow, however inadvertently, getting ambushed and almost killed by an assassin while I was on a run out in a rainy dark night.  I tried to focus.  Where was the core?  Where was the substance?  Where was the heart in this situation.  I cupped my forehead with my left hand, trying to penetrate to somewhere logic and rationality might be found.  I once again held up the receiver to my ear, pressing the old-fashioned Bakelite substance into the side of my head.

“Tony, how did she die?”  I asked.

There was a silence.  Nothing came from the phone, but the line was still live.

“Why does it matter?” Tony asked, pain seeping from him through the wire and all the way into my ear.  “She was a wonderful woman.  She was a Mother Teresa kind of person helping all those kids.”

I turned my head so I could look up into Dave’s eyes.

“How did she die?” I asked Tony again.

There was another long silence for me to wait through.

“You already know, don’t you?” Tony asked.

“Yes,” I said, very softly.  “This is personal, isn’t it.” I didn’t say the words as a question.  The question needed no answer for either of us.

The phone went dead in my hand.

I put the receiver back on its base, gently, and then leaned back in the chair, placing both hands behind my head.

“You know,” Tony began, “all I could hear after he yelled was what you said into the phone there so, would you mind telling me what’s going on here.  You didn’t ask about re-opening the mission, you never mentioned the mafia creeps who tried to kill you.  And then, what’s to be the reply to what that man did to that woman here who so many people revere? And finally, you might have asked him what were supposed to do, when and can we get home for Christmas or are we just stuck on this island?”

I leaned forward onto the top of the desk, slowly and carefully releasing the escapement lever on the wristband of the Audemars.  I gently peeled it off the end of my arm and set it alone in the center of the beautifully finished wooden desktop.

“Well, are you putting this thing together yet?” I asked, making as little church steeple with my hands and fingers.

“It’s about the watch?” Dave asked, shock in his voice.

“It’s the indicator, the direction this thing has taken, or the infamous fortk in the road Yogi Bera mentioned that time.”

“Can you be a bit more specific, so to speak?” Dave asked, rubbing his forehead.

“The assassin was the don’s son,” I replied, “he wasn’t likely a player or one of the don’s flunkies, so he was acting on his own to take care of a problem in the family on his own.  That’s why the effort was so amateurish.  No flunky of any mafia chieftain could afford, much less have the effrontery to wear when running with such a crowd.  The watch costs more than almost any car.  I killed the don’s son, although he may not have figured out exactly who I am or what my connection is, so he evened the score and took out the headmistress, it would seem.”

“Wow, so this probably has nothing at all to do with the mafia extortion plot, the repatriation of spies to the U.S. or any of that? You said it was personal at the end of the discussion, and you just used the word ‘seem’ in concluding what you’ve concluded.”  Dave stopped, as if not sure where to go with what he wanted to know.  That’s what you meant, and that, if true means we have absolutely no business being here or using CIA assets to settle personal disputes no matter how related.”

I smiled up at Dave before answering.  “I used the word seemed simply because of logic.  Once the mission orientation of why we’re here is eliminated then motivation comes into play.  What was the personal motivation for the attempt on my life and then the termination of hers?”

“Personal,” Dave breathed out, not really speaking to me.

“There’s a photo of Dr. Higgins in the file you carried.  She’s Puerto Rican and stunning in looks for her age.”

“Good God,” Dave suddenly said, his eyes growing in size.  “The Don was screwing the headmistress, the wife found out, Higgins made her play for possession of the Don, the son was informed or found out Higgins called in the big guns when threatened and we showed up.  The son thought we were brought in to take out his father and so tried to save his dad and his family.  Man, this isn’t espionage at all, it’s Agatha Christie stuff.”

“That’s pretty good,” I said, complimenting Dave, not surprised that the man had figured it all out, save one or two details.

“If the Don was sweet on Higgins, then why kill her off instead of simply ignoring her. Take his kids out of the school and ignore her since apparently whatever money he could squeeze out of the school couldn’t possibly be enough to truly interest a mafia operation. That part always sounded fishy to me.”

“The Don’s probably grieving right now over the loss of his girlfriend and also his son.  Think deeper.”

“Deeper,” Dave murmured. “There’s something wrong with the way your mind works.  Drowning and deeper go together. Weird, as I mentioned.  I can’t figure this thing out so help me.”

“Woman,” I said, smiling up into Dave’s surprised face.

“Good Christ,” Dave whispered, again mostly to himself.  “The wife, this is all about jealousy and family and sex and nothing to do with us.”

“Good thinking, however, we have to consider the fact that we were bought back here for a reason. The mission is over, but the job isn’t over.  Your skills may have to be brought to the forefront here.”

“What skills?” Dave asked, his tone one of innocence.

“You’re not a hitman, but you come with the moniker ‘wet worker’ informally attached to your record,”  I shut up and waited then, staring at the vey intelligent man.

“I told you I’m not a hitman,” Dave complained.

“You are good, there’s no question about that,” I said with a sly smile.  “You’re good enough to convince me, at least for a while. Can we now dispense with the phrase hit man and move into what’s called for here? Herbert was distraught which means his boss is the same, and maybe more of them on the seventh floor.

“There’s only six floors to the two main buildings at Langley, as you have to know,” Dave replied, weakly, and in avoidance of what I was really talking to him about.

“Never been there, at least not yet.  The old building, still standing, has seven floors and the top floor is supposedly not occupied…but, of course, it is.”

“Where do you get this crap from?” Dave asked, this time expressing exasperation.

“Herbert didn’t order us to do anything, including coming home for Christmas or any of that.  He hung up.”  I finished and looked down at the watch and the phone, and then waited and thought.  The watch would have to go home by diplomatic pouch.  I couldn’t wear it again without revealing too much but I wasn’t about to part with it.  It was the ‘spoils of war,’ and I wasn’t about to part with it.

“So, we can’t stay here but we can’t leave,” Dave finally concluded. “”We have no orders and we can’t just act on our own because there’s nothing left for us to do,” he finished before finally sitting down in one of the straight back chairs set in front of the desk.

“This is why you’re a team leader and I’m not and will never be,” he said, surprising me.  “Tell me what we’re going to do.”

“When I was deep down inside the A Shau Valley in Vietnam I was trapped.  I could not leave, and I could not stay and live.  I couldn’t move forward or back, or even side to side.  ‘What now lieutenant’ was a game we officers were required to play while training at the Basic School in Quantico.  We’re now playing that same game and in the same conditions without the jungle I faced in combat.”

“What happened?” Dave asked, obviously transfixed by what he was hearing.  “You’re alive.”

“True,” I responded immediately, and waited for his next question which I knew was coming.

“Tell me.” He said the single word in almost a begging tone.

“People are going to die,” I said, with no equivocation or doubt at all in my tone of voice.  “If you have a vendetta against the CIA then it’s like a vendetta against God Himself.  You will never truely know whom your vendetta is against and you’re going to lose.”