A nice independent lady. There seem to be fewer and fewer of those. Spirited and smart, too.
"Doctor Ford! It is so surprising to receive the call from you, yah! We don't even have the conversation here at the marina, now we are talking on the phone." Rasmussen's tone was jocular, but there was a goading edge to it. I didn't blame him. I didn't actually avoid him at Dinkin's Bay, but I'd never gone out of my way to sit down and have a talk with the guy. Everyone liked him. Everyone said he was a lot of fun; generous and brilliant, as well. But what everyone didn't know was that his boat had been named after the small, very select intelligence service that had once operated in Germany. I found that off-putting.
"We're both very busy guys. And Dieter? Call me Marion. Or Doc. Okay?"
"That we are busy, we both know that is not the reason we do not talk." He was laughing. "Even so, I am glad to finally have this opportunity to speak with a man who, I suspect, was once so famous in so many private ways."
There it was. Exactly why I'd dodged one-on-one conversations with the guy. Not that I was surprised. Sanibel is a very popular vacation and retirement island among the intelligence community worldwide.
I said, "Tell you what, Dieter. When I get back, we'll sit down and exchange stories. Right now, though, I could use your help. You really are a physician and psychiatrist?"
"Oh yah, yah! I was the foremost psychopharmacologist in Munich and am licensed to practice and do research even in this country. You are having emotional problems?"
I smiled at that, then laid it out. I told him about my conversation with Ted Bauerstock, trying to reduce my concerns to the simplest elements. I told him about Dorothy Copeland's grave. I asked about manic fixation; told him about the totem and the gold medallion.
He said, "You are asking me if it is possible for a very evil man to fool all the very best people? Yah, of course! I can tell you frightening stories, terrible stories, about some of my own patients. But I can do more than this for you. You say this man was institutionalized in North Dakota?"
"I was told he attended a very strict boarding school there. I was never told that he was institutionalized."
"That is easily enough found out. There is one very, very fine facility there if money is not a problem. It is full-time treatment and behavior modification, and I guess you could call it a boarding school in a way. Some people have spent years there. I will contact my colleagues. They will know my work and will talk to me."
"You can ask them about Ted Bauerstock?"
"No! That would be a breach of ethics; illegal as well. But I can ask for their case histories on certain manias. Part of my research, understand. If your suspicions are merited, I will find this person as easily as you would pick out his photo. The symptoms are as unmistakable as fingerprints. His name will never be mentioned."
"He's on the verge of being elected to a political office. So maybe it's about time someone dug into his background. We don't need psychopaths in the state senate."
Dieter laughed. "But why not! Psychopaths are the politicians of your country's future-and your recent past."
I didn't care for his flippant attitude. "Call me overly patriotic, Dieter, but I find it offensive when foreigners criticize my country while they're drinking our beer, sleeping with our women and getting rich."
"It is not a criticism! My dear Ford, at a time when our most personal behavior can be scrutinized instantaneously, only those who lie automatically and without remorse will rise in the political ranks. Why? Because only they have nothing to fear!" He chuckled at my discomfort. "I will get the information for you. A day, maybe two. That's all it will take. Do you have a fax number? An e-mail address?"
I gave Rasmussen the Mandalay's fax number, but when I started to thank him, he interrupted. "Wait! I want something in return."
"If you're talking about billing, I can pay you. That's not a problem."
"Not money. I have plenty of money. It is something else. An explanation."
I waited, feeling increasingly uneasy.
Listened to him say, "Nearly fifteen years ago, a member of the Communist organization, Students for a Democratic Society, disappeared from a bar in Aspen, Colorado. The night he disappeared, there were members of U.S. Naval Intelligence in that same bar. With them was a member of SEAL Team One, along with a representative from Studies and Operations Group, your top secret organization. The name of the bar was The Slope. That man's body was never found. Another SDS member was also targeted to be killed. This was in retribution for the bombing of a Naval facility in San Diego."
I said softly, "I'm familiar with this story, Dieter."
"I know that you are! I skied in Aspen last winter. The name of that bar has changed, but the picture is still on the wall of you and your SEAL colleagues. You were there that night because one of the men killed in that bombing was your close friend. I have two questions: Were you with Naval Intelligence? That is unclear. Or were you the SOG member?"
I spoke carefully. "I was never in the military, Dieter."
"Yah, I knew it! The SOG member in the bar that evening, he was very gifted. Very famous in the craft, a, how do you say, der Attentaeter. He was a man who sometimes went by the name of North. Did much work in Cuba. So my second question is this: Why haven't you? Why haven't you extinguished him?"
"Who?"
"You know him. Him."
I said, "I am completely lost. Is any of this supposed to make sense?"
"Of course you don't understand me. But please, answer."
"Did you sail all the way to Dinkin's Bay just to ask me strange questions?"
He thought this was hilarious. I listened to him roar. "Yah! It was a consideration! I knew it must be an interesting place, the two of you at one small marina. But your answer! Why was this second Communist subversive not extinguished?"
Looking through the apartment's sliding doors, out onto the boat basin, I could see Tomlinson aboard No Mas, sitting cross-legged on the cockpit locker. He was eating fish; had a glass of red wine balanced on the stern coaming. He appeared to be talking to the glass. Talking to his wine? Yes, no doubt about it. He looked like a stork with dreadlocks. He seemed to be really enjoying the fish.
He'd batked the entire snapper, yet hadn't invited me to dinner? I'd loaned him my fine Loomis rod to catch the damn thing. Come to think of it, he hadn't even thanked me.
I said, "Dieter, I have no idea what you're talking about.
But, if I did, I'd say the party in question, the Communist? If he doesn't start being a little more thoughtful, his days may be numbered."
It was nearly sunset. Because he knew I was still expecting more calls, Jack, the owner, told me I was welcome to carry around the restaurant's portable phone. "If you're down here to help Delia, we want to take care of you any way we can," he told me. "This place may be kind of strange and funky, but we're family."
Trouble is, they couldn't find the portable phone. Then Salina remembered that Tomlinson had carried it out to his boat and never brought it back.
I asked her, "Where is Tomlinson?"
She became evasive and amused. "Tommy-san? Oh… I think, but I'm not sure… it may be that Betty Lynn took him over to her trailer to, you know, show him around." Laughter. "Like Jack said, we're trying to take care of you boys."
Betty Lynn, the stocky deep-south blonde who couldn't fit safely into a tank top, so had to wear a jogging bra beneath her Mandalite waitress outfit.
Tomlinson. He had always been extremely selective about liaisons until the mother of his young daughter had married a Boston politico. It had put him in an emotional tailspin. Since then, he'd demonstrated the jaunty sexual abandon of a lovebug.
I walked out the dock to No Mas, stepped aboard, swung down the companionway steps and there, on the wooden door to the ice box, was the beige telephone handset.