Which it was, whatever the outcome. She’d stripped down to her swimsuit, bent on deepening her tan. Lying back on a cushion, with arms behind her neck and big sunglasses peering from the shadow of a broad-brimmed straw hat, she looked posed for a Club Med ad shoot. Scott and I sat up on the bridge with the skipper, who didn’t say much and asked no questions. “We’re going along here,” Scott said, pointing on the chart to a channel behind a narrow island that stretched about eight miles. “When we round this point here, our island should be visible on the horizon.”
Sure enough, when we passed the point I made out a little pimple poking above the horizon line. It seemed to be smoking. “You’re sure that’s the one?” I asked.
Scott checked Auntie’s map against the chart again. “Yeah, you see? There’s this island here … (he pointed to an island on the map and on the chart, and then to one off to port) … and there’s this one here … and off over there, there’s this one. So the one ahead, that’s the one marked on your map. I wonder what that smoke is…? I thought you said it was uninhabited.”
“Dana?” I called down to the cabin. “You want to come up and see our island?” She stirred from her cushion, adjusted her swimsuit, slipped on a loose cotton shirt and climbed the steps to the bridge.
“Can I use those binoculars?” she said. I handed them to her. She raised them to her face, adjusted the focus and peered ahead. “It’s shaped like a triangle,” she said, “doesn’t seem to be much of anything on it. There’s smoke coming out of the top.”
Scott took the binocs. “That smoke is picking up. When we get closer I’ll be better able to tell what’s going on. With that shape it’s gotta be volcanic. That checks out with your old gal’s story. Sometimes they smoke.”
We could see the island more clearly as we approached to three miles. It was about the size of Catalina Island on the north side of the Isthmus, a volcanic cone shape with a chopped-off peak. The smoke had increased drastically and was now gushing dirty clouds up into the blue sky above sprigs of flame. Dana took a look through the glass and exclaimed, “There’s stuff flowing over the edge and out of cracks in the sides! Is lava bright red?”
I grabbed the glass and looked for myself. True—lava flowed like crazy, smoke and flame spurted wildly. “This is not encouraging,” I muttered. Then we saw a big gout of stuff blasted skyward, accompanied by a huge cloud of smoke. Fifteen seconds later the sound of the explosion reached the boat.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Scott. “It’s a volcano eruption! I thought this one was supposed to be extinct.”
“Well, the map was in Japanese,” I said. “Maybe there was a problem with the translation.”
“Oh my god,” shrieked Dana. “This is awesome! This would make such a news bite! Where’s a camera crew when you need them?!” She scampered down to the deck, pulled out her mini-cam and brought it back to the bridge. Lava flows now touched the sea, sending up clouds of steam.
The skipper plowed on.
“You’re sure that’s our island?” I asked Scott. We laid out the map and the chart and checked again. There was no doubt. The little peak spewed out another volley of smoke and flame. The eruption’s roar reached us quicker than last time—10 seconds, two miles away. After a moment things splashed in the water around us. A pebble landed on the bridge. Scott and I looked at one another, then peered at our island. The skipper peered at the island too, then looked plaintively to me, to Scott.
We proceeded further, and our treasure island spewed another, bigger burst. “Take us back to port,” Scott told the skipper, and the man spun the wheel, much relieved. The boat followed a tight semi-circle and straightened out 180 degrees off the previous course. Seven seconds passed and we heard the latest explosion come from astern.
“Can’t we go in a little closer?” Dana pleaded as she captured the spectacle with her camera. “We’re too far away for my zoom to bring in any detail. This is like Saint Helen’s. We’ll never get to see anything like this again. I need more footage. I need more detail.” Then debris from that last explosion rained down all over the place and a chunk of still-molten lava the size of a grapefruit hurtled in and pulverized the cushion where she’d been catching rays a few minutes ago. She gasped, considered that for a moment and said, “Whoa, scratch that last request, guys!”
I told the skipper to put the throttles to the red lines, and he happily complied. Scott and I clambered down to stomp out the flames spreading on the cushion. Dana caught it all on tape. Back in Los Angeles 20/20 programming executives reviewed her volcano eruption footage, decided there was no story worth airing, and spiked her proposal.
THE END
Editor’s Afterword
You may have noticed the “Trigger Warning” preceding the text of this book. I regret having included it, but I had no choice in the matter. Following publication of Fonko in the Sun, one of my students, a winsome if highly strung young lady, approached me after class in an agitated state. It seems she’d read the book and was upset by Jake Fonko’s encounter with the assassins on Jamaica Island. “He shot three blind men!” she lamented.
“But they intended to kill him,” I reminded her. “It was self-defense.”
“They were blind! How did they know who it was? Maybe they meant to kill somebody else. Maybe it was all a mistake. What if they were innocent?”
“But they were pointing their guns at him. There was some reason to believe they were faking their blindness.”
“That doesn’t mean he should just kill them like that. Couldn’t he have shot the guns out of their hands?”
“But he didn’t have a gun until he subdued one of them,” I reminded her.
With that she burst into tears and fled the classroom. I thought that was the end of it, but the next day I got a stern phone call from Mellowdee Coxbawm, an Assistant Associate Dean in the Office of Student Succor and Solace, whom I would characterize as Nurse Ratchid wearing a smiley-face mask. I wound up spending a very uneasy two hours discussing the incident with Dean Coxbawm (she insists on the honorific, though she holds only an M.A. degree in Womyn’s Studies). She adamantly asserted that my student’s upset was not to be countenanced. My final justification was that that Jake Fonko may not have done the action in question at all, that Tinderboxed Press’s editors may have slipped in material from Ian Fleming’s James Bond adventure, Dr. No. (as explained in the afterword of Fonko in the Sun).
Dean Coxbawm was having none of it. “If that’s the case, in the future be more judicious in what you plagiarize,” she hissed. She insisted that all my future books contain Trigger Warnings. This is a recent practice some universities have adopted, intended to alert victimized students to material that might cause them emotional upset. So there you are. I would have posted a Trigger Warning about the Trigger Warning, but Dean Coxbawm seemed bereft of a sense of humor, and I dread spending more time in her presence.
Mr. Fonko fared far better in the Philippines than he did in India, which nearly cost him his life. Perhaps a future installment of his Saga will relate his foray in the Jewel in the Crown (as the British Raj fondly nicknamed it) in its entirety. But the editors attempting to compile that book from my notes were baffled by the complexity of the story and the incoherence of Mr. Fonko’s narrative. Deprivation, distress and desperation clouded his mind and his memory, at times to the point of hallucination. Perhaps at some later date…
Mr. Fonko’s only regret about his Philippine adventure was the outcome of his treasure hunt. The expedition never did reach the island, which in any case had been obliterated when the volcano awoke from its dormancy. “Between that Swiss bank account whose number I don’t know, and Yamashita’s hoard buried under a mountain of lava, I’d have been pretty well off,” he sighed.
Dr. Bertha Sikorski and I have obtained access to Mr. Edward Snowden’s recently disclosed voluminous cache of secret government materials. What a treasure trove of
contemporary history it is! Our diligent search so far has turned up not one single mention of Jake Fonko, which to my mind confirms the veracity of his stories. Obviously, his exploits were so top secret that the CIA successfully prevented any mention of them whatsoever from appearing even in the most closely held government documents. Thus I harbor no doubts that these books contain true and factual accounts.
B. Hesse Pflingger, Ph.D.
Professor of Contemporary History
California State University, Cucamonga
Book 6: The Mother of All Fonkos
Part 1: Hooray For HollyWood
Saturday, July 21 & Sunday, July 22, 1990
He who meddles
in a quarrel not his own
is like one who grabs
a passing dog by the ears
It was a sweet gesture by Dana Wehrli, my main squeeze. After seeing me return home from my gigs safe and sound, time after time (umm, except from India), she’d finally quit fretting and developed a sense of humor about my profession as a free-lance whatever. When I came back intact from my eight-month Kuwait debacle she presented me with that motto, done in the style of a needlepoint sampler, elegantly framed and nicely gift-wrapped, at a welcome home party she threw, and it drew a big laugh from the assembled.
She must have commissioned it custom-made, because I’ve never seen anything like it for sale or on display, and a beautiful piece of craftsmanship it is. Lord knows it applied to many of my past misadventures, and it was apt for what landed on me in Kuwait. I went there on what seemed to be an innocent-sounding intel assignment and wound up at both ends of that fracas, barely escaping with my life from the bloody “Highway of Death” during the Iraqi retreat.
If that’s what grabbing passing dogs by the ears is like, I’ll henceforth give peripatetic pooches a wide berth. However, a couple months in Saddam Hussein’s dungeons under the TLC of his psycho son, Uday, ultimately made Operation Desert Storm my own quarrel, up close and personal.
*
To recap: My Philippine assignment—helping Corazon Aquino steal the election from Ferdinand Marcos (see Fonko Bolo)—left me in good shape despite missing out on Yamashita’s hoard of stolen gold. Not only did it net a solid paycheck but that caper ratcheted my cred for international intrigues up several tiers. My second CIA “jockstrap award” just iced the cake. Those are supposed to be deeply hidden secrets, of course (you can wear the medal only on your jockstrap is The Company in-joke). But word leaks out to Those In The Know, a roster that includes Very Important People all around the world, some of whom need help of a certain nature from time to time.
Not that I hire out for wet work, nor do I do the bread-and-butter jobs that Hollywood P.I.s like Tony Pellicano thrive on—sanitizing crime scenes, retrieving drugged-out actors and wayward actresses, digging up dirt for divorce cases, breaking studio contracts, and so forth. Oh, I get my hands dirty enough, but after 1986 I could be pickier about jobs I took on and could ask top dollar for my services with a straight face.
Previously, I’d shepherded celebrities and executives through situations they feared posed danger. I’d made deliveries of valuable objects and questionable items. I’d sold advice on security to corporations and overseas concerns. I’d put my Ranger experience to good use for foreign military clients. And I was always happy to take on intel jobs, my old Army specialty, when they came up. Things like that. My foray in Colombia with the drug cartels that included a harrowing traverse of Panama’s Darien Jungle and culminated in my persuading Manny Noriega to give himself up got a little out of control (an interesting story for some other time). But the Philippines job elevated me to the lofty reaches of international consultant/advisor.
What kind of work is that? They say about consultants: He’ll borrow your watch, tell you what time it is, then keep the watch. They also say about consultants: A consultant is just an ordinary man 50 miles away from home. And another thing they say about consultants is: He’s smart enough to tell you how to run your business, but too smart to start a business of his own.
There’s some truth in those sayings.
For example, a corporate or government honcho may hire a consultant to endorse a decision he’s already made. The consultant’s task is not to conjure up a genius business plan. Rather, he’s supposed to figure out what the decision is, and then present an arrangement of the facts of the matter framed in such a way that naysayers in the picture accept that they’d be better off going along with it. Not to mention the added bonus that everybody gets if the decision turns out all wrong: “Don’t blame me. That’s what our highly-paid consultant advised.”
Or the consultant conducts an investigation on some delicate matter. He may not be any smarter or better informed than insiders, but coming from the outside he can present findings, ideas, conclusions and recommendations that insiders endorse but wouldn’t dare voice for fear of career immolation.
It’s nice work if you can get it, and I was getting more of it through 1987, ‘88 and ‘89. Don’t take me wrong. I wasn’t running some kind of con job on the world. I delivered as much value for money as anybody in my line of work. What had happened over the years was that, starting with my ill-starred stint for the Central Intelligence Agency—our beloved CIA—in the closing days of the Vietnam War, penumbras and emanations surrounding my adventures had created an impression of deep-cover involvements in international espionage intrigues at the very highest levels. I steadfastly denied it, but in that hall of mirrors my denials only bolstered the impression that the rumors and whisperings must be true. The fact that the Russian KGB had a section devoted to thwarting me boosted my legend further. Emil Grotesqcu, the KGB agent in charge of their Fonko Desk, had every reason to maintain the fiction, as his own job security depended on promoting me as a formidable foe. It worked just fine for me and only a fool would argue with it.
Meantime, life at my beach pad on the Malibu shore continued copacetic, a flow of balmy days, lush living and celeb parties. Our nearest brush with local excitement happened in 1989, when the Malibu Chamber of Commerce appointed Marty Sheen Honorary Mayor of Malibu, a ceremonial position. He surprised everyone by immediately issuing a unilateral proclamation: “I hereby declare Malibu a nuclear-free zone, a sanctuary for aliens and the homeless, and a protected environment for all life, wild and tame.” Then busloads of homeless bums arrived to take him up on the offer. It wasn’t long before The Malibu Inn marquee featured a counter-proclamation: “Dump Martin Sheen.” You can always count on outraged money to trump harebrained idealism, and the situation was soon straightened out. Was that political experience crucial to landing him the role of “President Bartlett” on The West Wing? I’m nobody to question anyone else’s cred.
Sad to say, 1989 didn’t go well for Dana Wehrli. She continued producing successful shows for ABC-TV, but clawing her way up the corporate ladder came with supersized stress. The docs discovered that her father, whom she loved dearly, had prostate cancer at a terminal stage. And she gave her lower back a painful and lingering wrench trying for a dig during a beach volleyball game at a surf rat reunion party in my front yard (alas, my old gang isn’t getting younger).
Her resulting menu of pain-killers, uppers and downers reached the extent that she knew every clerk at every pharmacy within twenty miles by their first names. Until she found herself hooked on Vicodin. Dana’s no fool. When she realized she had a drug problem she arranged a leave of absence from ABC and checked into a new clinic in town, Promises. A luxe rehab center up in the hills with an enviable ocean vista, it came to boast a distinguished alumni roster: Charlie Sheen, Robert Downey Jr., and Ben Affleck, among others. They did good work, but it took time.
With Dana at Promises and focused on getting straightened out, I was left temporarily on my lonesome. My workload hit a light patch, and with time on my hands one sunny afternoon I drove down Pacific Coast Highway to check out the action around Marina del Rey
. For those unfamiliar, it’s a seaside residential complex on the Los Angeles coast. Apartments, condos, townhouses, what have you, centered around the unifying theme of a sprawling marina stocked with big sailboats and cabin cruisers that rarely left their slips. Off-site party pads, most of them. I dropped into a beachside bar, not special enough to burden you with a detailed description—fishnet draped around the faux-distressed rafters, simulated hatch-covers for tables, mounted sailfish, the place where young up-and-comers and wannabes gather for TGIF Happy Hours. You’ve all been at that bar or one of its kin.
The ratio was better than the typical singles bar five-guys-for-every-gal and pretty soon I was chatting up a pert little California-tanned brunette. She looked lively and seemed welcoming. The mating ritual in those places was like contract bridge, bid and counter bid in breezy small-talk, play your hand and woe betide the dummy. After preliminaries I opened with “What’s your sign?”—one of the standards back in those days.
“Slippery when wet,” she said with a mischievous smile. I’ve used that one myself, but from her it suggested playfulness.
“Mine is ‘Danger—Animal Crossing,’” I countered with a stage-leer, and we took off from there. She was DeeDee, a stewardess with Pacific Southwest Airlines, and as the “Coffee, Tea or Me” era hadn’t entirely faded away, one job qualification was comeliness. She lived with another stewardess in one of those apartment blocks in the Marina. I suggested we go somewhere else, and she was for that.
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 4, 5 & 6 Page 43