I hope he can do it, Cunningham thought after Stansell had closed the door.
Stevens took Stansell into his office and placed a series of calls, getting him a room in the VOQ at Bolling AFB and a car. “A car should be waiting for you at the mall entrance. How’d it go with the general?”
“Well, he didn’t match his reputation. I expected fire and horns.” “That part of him tends to surface in public. And it’s usually for a reason.” Stevens changed the subject. “I’d suggest you get changed. If you need clothes, try this place.” Stevens handed him a business card. “Your contact at CIA is Allen Camm, Deputy Director for Intelligence. I’ll set up a meeting for Monday morning. Pass and ID is waiting for you and we’ll cut you a restricted area badge. I’d suggest you work out of the Watch Center this weekend. There’s always an analyst available. I’ll clear you in.”
The colonel handed Stansell a card with Brigadier General Melvin Eichler’s phone number and address. “I’ll let you contact ‘Messy’ Eichler. A real character.”
“The general told me to pay my respects to Mrs. Waters when I see Eichler.”
Stevens took the card back and spun his Rolladex, finding another address and phone number to write down. “Most people call Eichler ‘The Brigadier.’ Keep your visit short — the man’s dying. Leukemia.”
CHAPTER 4
Captain William G. Carroll, United States Air Force, shifted his weight, trying to find a comfortable position on the broken-down seat. Its padding rearranged itself and by leaning against the window the jolting, bouncing ride lost some of its harshness. He gazed out the window that was closed to keep out the dust kicked up by the front wheels of the bus as it careened down the road through the Zagros mountains of western Iran. The road and the bus were both in pitiful condition, worn out by overuse and little maintenance during the wars Iran had been fighting with its neighbors.
He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window. It amazed him how much he looked like an Iranian and how he blended in with the people. He thanked his mother’s Armenian parents for his dark complexion, brown eyes and black hair.
The heat of summer had broken but it was too early for the winter rains and snow. Carroll calculated that the road would be impassable once it started to rain. A sudden quiet followed by moans from the passengers enveloped the bus when the engine died. It was the third time that day the engine had quit. The driver guided the bus to a halt and got out to see if he could coax it back to life. Carroll decided the Iranian driver was a much better mechanic than driver.
“Will you ever get home?” the man sitting beside Carroll said. “As Allah wills,” he replied.
The man smiled, accepting Carroll as he appeared — a young veteran of the Revolutionary Guards, made wise by his experiences in battle and his belief as a Shi’ite. He is fortunate, the Iranian thought, so many of our best sacrificed. He liked and respected the sergeant who called himself Javad. He followed the other passengers out of the bus, leaving Carroll to stare out the window at the surrounding mountains.
So much like the mountains of Southern California, Carroll thought. And like Greece. He remembered the time he had landed at Athens in a C-130. It seemed so long ago.
The C-130 had landed at Athenai Airport after a five hour flight from the Persian Gulf carrying ninety men and women on their first Rest and Recuperation leave from Ras Assanya. Cheers and whistles greeted the hard squeal of the tires as they touched down. Carroll had sunk back into the webbing of the parachute jump-seat and let the tension of the past months in combat slip away. He had wanted to talk to Captain Mary Hauser, the radar controller from Ras Assanya’s radar control post who was sitting next to him. He had tried during the flight but the noise on the cargo deck had reduced them to screaming at each other.
“Cheated death again.” He smiled as the engines wound down, the noise dying away.
“You surprised?”
“No,” he said, “I was looking for a way to open a conversation.” “Why so?”
Why so aggressive? Carroll thought. He had no big-deal ulterior motive … On reflection he decided that wasn’t quite true, Mary intrigued him, he found her attractive. But he said, “Just being friendly, I guess.”
“Oh.”
Nothing to say to that but good-by. He climbed out of the Hercules and followed the passenger-services sergeant into the terminal.
Mary had watched him go, annoyed with herself for being so damn abrupt. But then … don’t be a fool, he’s probably like the others at Ras Assanya — any woman would do in a pinch, so to speak. Mary Hauser had looked at herself in mirrors for so long that all she saw was a tall gaunt figure crowned by an unruly mass of reddish brown hair.
What Bill Carroll had seen was a tall and slender body that moved with controlled grace. Unlike many of the pilots, he found her hard brand of professional competence easy to live with and did not feel threatened by her abilities and rank.
Mary, as penance, she told herself, had spent the next two days seeing the sights of Athens alone. A poster in a travel agency’s window off Omonia Square advertising the island of Mykonos caught her eye. Suddenly she was very tired of the city. She went in, booked a room on the island and got directions to the ferry. A traffic jam had delayed her taxi the next morning and the forward gangplank was already up when she got to the ferry. She just made the second gangplank before it too was raised. After buying a ticket from the purser she found a seat on the sundeck and did her best to enjoy the seven-hour voyage. When she got off one of the small boats that served as lighters, carrying passengers and cargo from the ferry into the dock at Mykonos, she discovered the travel agency had not made her room reservation. Her search for a room had turned up nothing, and Mary was eating a late dinner, resigned to finding a table at some taverna until they kicked her out and then finding somewhere to hole up until she could catch the ferry back to Athens the next day.
“Enjoying Mykonos?”
She turned to see Bill Carroll. This time she smiled, relieved to see him, and told him about the lost room reservation.
“Well, don’t take this all wrong,” he said, “but my room has twins and you’re welcome to one of them …”
Mary looked at the slender young captain, earnest brown eyes and all, and accepted. Next morning she woke up to find his bed empty. After a moment she saw a shadow move across the balcony at the end of the room. She kicked her long legs out of bed and padded across the room to join him at the railing, wearing only a tee shirt.
He was watching a magnificent sunrise, drinking coffee. “Something else, isn’t it?” They watched the morning hues paint the village as it came to life. “I’m going over to Delos today to see the ruins. Want to come?”
A comfortable feeling had replaced earlier skepticism she had felt on the C-130, and for the next four days the relaxed charm of the island had its way with them as it forced their world to, momentarily, yield its harsh demands and allow them to play and discover each other, in the end as lovers.
The bus’s engine coughed to life, bringing Carroll back to the present.
The Iranian sat down as the passengers crowded back onto the bus, chattering about getting under way again. He handed Carroll a pear. When Carroll at first refused he forced the fruit into his hand. The bus jerked into motion and Carroll ate the damn pear, an unintentional gift on his twenty-seventh birthday from a friendly Iranian, yet.
Mary, he thought, why didn’t you leave when Muddy Waters ordered you out? Mary … now a POW …