I could not talk to Paul, nor my wife, nor anyone else I could think of except one. Richard. He, Cobb, and Hunt had been intertwined in some fashion I didn’t understand, but intertwined they were, at least in my analysis of their proximity at the harbor, their special attachment, but at some sort of distance, from the White House staff and seemingly everyone else. My combined fear and grief over the passing of Hunt was haunting me. Her husband was being pursued by the legal authorities in D.C. for his role in the Watergate break-in and now coverup. There seemed no stopping any of that, and certainly no expressed sympathy for the man who’d just lost his wife. What kind of cold-blooded system was I dealing with, where I, at my great distance from it and unimportance to it all, was the only person who seemed to be hurt and giving a damn? I knew I wasn’t quite right. Lt. Jim Webb, the company commander of Echo Company, on my distant flank in Vietnam, had so accurately pointed that out one afternoon. Was my reaction to all I’d been through so far off that I couldn’t even understand the emotions of the people around me anymore?

I pulled into the harbor area. It was midday, so the workers were everywhere and work vehicles, as well. It was all I could do to guide my now dust-covered Volkswagen onto the part of the dirt road leading to where Richard’s and Cobb’s boats sat bobbing in their slips. Just before I made the turn to veer in that direction a figure appeared, waving me over. It was Butch. I didn’t have anything to say to him but couldn’t ignore his appearance before me.