The Rhythm of the Stone

by James H Bird

  Dean said his new name softly, “Dirk Thomas Wilson. I like it. Easy enough to remember.”

  “You must also memorize your social security number, passport number, address, place of birth all of that data.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Here,” Kline handed Dean another paper. “This is a chart of your fake family heritage. Memorize this too.”

  “You thought of everything.”

  “One final thing. Spain is crawling with extreme right wing Italians Gladio operatives. They may be attached to a group or secret army called Red Quantum. We don’t know much about this army either. Keep your eyes open for them,” Kline said and closed the file. He picked up the phone, “Ok, send him,” and hung up.

  “I am going to introduce you to someone.”

  “Is any of this going on in the states?” Dean asked.

  “Yes but let’s stick to Spain.”

  Kline removed Dean’s dossier and placed it in a side drawer. He folded his hands and rested his elbows on his desk, “Mr. Spalding I must stress again do not repeat what I have told and what you learn in training to anyone. Besides need-to-know level personnel in Washington and London, only two people in Bonn, me, gentleman standing by the door and you. This has been kept in the dark since the end of the war. If you’re not sure keep quiet. If you screw this up you will be eating your balls for breakfast.”

  “Yes sir I will,” Dean said. “Does Betts, the consul general know about these Jacobins?”

  “No,” the Colonel gave him a hard look. “This isn’t the French revolution and I don’t think they intend to behead the king.”

  Dean felt nervous. He might slip or drugged maybe held at gun point. He ran his moist palms down the side of his pants. A dull ache pounded in his forehead. He rubbed this too.

  “The gentleman I am going to introduce you to will help you better assimilate to Spanish culture. This will make it easier to blend in during future assignments. He has no knowledge about your role for us. He believes he will help on your pilgrimage in a support role.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Kline expression turned intense, “One final point. I cannot guarantee embassy support should something go wrong… You will be defenseless, we’re unable to attack to rescue you … Do I make myself clear?”

  Kline reached into a drawer and produced a form.

  “Yes sir… um are there others … I mean, you know, other operatives near the Camino?” His voice low, his eyes drifted off into middle distance. His mind racing at this odd turn and possibilities.

  Colonel Kline had a stern expression when he spoke, “If you needed to know that, I would have told you,” Kline said but then softened his voice. “We sent others with little success a few broke contact and disappeared. Two years ago we lost a man near Bilbao,” he said, in a monotone voice.

  “What happened?”

  “He was losing his mind. We tried to get him back but somebody got him first. We think he may have been turned.”

  “Who got him?”

  “We don’t know. He was an American journalist named Jeff Hill. If you hear of anything about Mr. Hill tells us. He might be extremely dangerous to you if he finds out what you are up to… Here sign this,” Kline said. He slid a form across his desk. “We have others in the field. They will contact you if necessary. But don’t rely on their assistance. You won’t even know where they are and we might pull them at any moment. They on an unrelated assignment.”

  Dean signed the form. He didn’t bother to read it. Kline’s warning flashed through his memory. Dean’s world is moving too fast. He looked down then behind him. His legs felt weak and an old knee injury began aching.

  Dean had wish to escape from the rigors of modern life, banal regularity and familiar trappings of the daily grind, but now it had turned into a treacherous hike while maintaining a persona he was not. Dean had looked forward to immerse himself in a far away and strange land without maddening noise from bustling commerce and marketing and societal obligations and moorings. This new strange twist put a different spin on his escape to paradise. Dean closes his eyes and let his shoulders droop.

  Colonel Kline looked over at mystery man by the door and nodded his head. He opened the door and in walked Raymundo Jesús María Ordóñez.

  A Premonition

  The night before lying in bed Dean Spalding considered his options. Quit his dull consulate job and go back and finish his degree. Quit government service and go back to construction and weekends racing dirt bikes. Trade everything and buy a big street bike head off across America. Play music on a cruise ship. Join the armed services. Dean had a bad itch in need of a ragged fingernail.

  Finally, morning comes. It will be the last normal morning for Dean. Before lunch, Dean will have a different name, a different objective and will teeter on the curvy beam that connects this world to the indefinite. Courage is not innate. Courage is desperation and Dean was living in desperate times of the Cold War.

  Dean Spalding walked out to the balcony, leaned his forearms on black wrought iron railing. He watched Munich come to life. Industrious West Germans scuttling off to work under the dull gray sky. The beans of the muscly German cars, filtered through the thin misty fog like prison search lights. Traffic formed a long string of white and red lights in migrant waves along Königinstraße a block from Dean’s third floor apartment. He checked his watch. Plenty time for the short walk to the US consulate compound.

  Dean H. Spalding is Black-Irish ancestry, tall, dark, long-limbed, and wiry with quick hands. Over six feet in stature, long-limbed and wiry. His intelligent sloe-eyed gaze with his gave him appearance of a thinker scheming a strategy or solving a complicated physics problem. He had a well-proportioned face a smile flashed straight off-white teeth. When he squinted crows-feet wrinkles creased the corners of his eyes. Through various scrapes with man and beast, he sports a faint scar down his right jaw in front of his ear one through his left brow and six or seven on his fingers and knuckles.

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  The High Water Mark

  Long Journey Home

  CHAP 1 BRIDGE TO NOWHERE

  A portion the F J Torras Causeway vanished into a veil of gray haze. The lift-span bridge that stretched over the Frederica and MacKay Rivers of the Intercostal Waterway sat empty. The nearest lift span, stuck and impassable, perched high above the river when the operator had raised the section to let a tall ship pass. Cars were parked along the causeway headed for the defective span, their occupants frustrated in their attempt to flee by decree of mandatory evacuation.

  The shrimp docks on the edge of the golden marsh bordered by smooth cord grass leaned in the breeze. Captains and mates prepare their fishing boats to get underway to a hurricane hole or safe harbor. Boats large and small, powered and not, jostled in the bluster and noise of the turbulent air and water at St. Simons and Epworth Marinas. They tugged at their moorings like a disobedient dog against the leash. The whole scene consumed by a slate-gray turbulent wash.

  “This is my seventh journey to this island. I didn’t realize it’d be my last.”

  “Now Jack, I’ve told you, don’t worry about it man.”

  “Beans, I swear if I ever get out of this alive, I’m going back to the mountains and take up basket weaving,” Jack said and sighed. “Hell, I can’t do anything about it now. I should’ve left when I had a chance. The crap you get me into Beans. I should have known better than to let you talk me into anything against my better judgement.”

  “Ah, it’s no big deal man. Remember, Rick and Steve were a part of that central planning committee. Listen, later we can go back to the village. The people still left on the island go down there in times like these. Then tomorrow we can go to Garth’s house, it will be a big ole time from what I’ve heard a group of my friends plan to go.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said rubbing the side of his face.

  The two young men huddled next to a black 1975 Chevrolet Monte Carlo in the pull out next to the confluence o
f Demere Road and Kings Way on Gascoigne Bluff. The great salt marsh lay between Brunswick and St. Simons Island, Georgia was shrouded by a dull gray mist. One of them sat on the four-year-old car’s hood, his feet perched on the front bumper, and elbows on knees, his hands supported his head. With pursed lips, he wiggled his mouth from side to side as if he pondered a strange piece of contemporary art. He was built like a running back, topped out at five eleven and a half. He projected the intensity of a firefighter or a commando about blow up half of Singapore Harbor.

  The other, the taller of the two stood at six feet two, his hands in his front pockets, the robust wind pressed his poncho against his body which outlined his wiry features. He was devilishly hansom, like a formula one racer who strolled down pit lane in Circuit de Monaco. Surrounded by the beautiful people, international models and tycoons, captains of magnificent luxury ships and fellow racers. He had an esprit that washed over his face and radiated from his eyes. Both looked across the Frederica River and the vast salt marsh toward the mainland. Their options limited. Their future uncertain.

  “Come on Jack. No use mulling over it. These troubles happen whether providential or natural depending how you look at things like this. I mean… choices result in positive or negative consequences. I think it best to go with it, believe in the reason Jack. It may turn out to be something far greater than you ever imagined.”

  “Easy for you to say, whatever you said. Ever since you came back from Europe you been going on like a weird mystic,” Jack massaged the back of his neck. “Besides you lived with these things all the time. After I saw those awful news reports, I’m skeptical of all this. We might have been better staying in Daytona,” Jack said.

  “They threw us out remember.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Jack wrinkled his brow, “How much time we have left?”

  “This time tomorrow might be exciting. Know this, after every tempest comes calms.”

  Beans was Dean Hunter Spalding III. His Savannah family has been connected to St. Simons since the 1930s while on vacation. His aunt bought a second home on the island about five years ago. Dean pursued a doctorate degree, but he left his career options open. The other young man was Jack Conroy a friend from college who spoke often about joining the Army to finance a master’s degree.

  “Well Jack, you can always swim. Unless you have developed the ability to walk on water. Too bad Moses is dead, he’s had the proper skill set for situations like this, raising his staff and parting the Red Sea and all. Except the island is low on Egyptians this time year.”

  Jack shook his head at Dean and shuffled back to the car.

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