by Dale Amidei
Table of Contents
Prologue:
Chapter 1: The Art of Condescension
Chapter 2: Familiar Faces
Chapter 3: Winter Kill
Chapter 4: Career Moves
Chapter 5: Friends Old and New
Chapter 6: New Beginnings
Chapter 7: So This Is Baghdad
Chapter 8: PsyOps
Chapter 9: Peace Unto You
Chapter 10: Human Resources
Chapter 11: Dead Man’s Switch
Chapter 12: Bad Publicity
Chapter 13: Off the Record
Chapter 14: Anbar 101
Chapter 15: Stage Fright
Chapter 16: The Last Lonely Road
Chapter 17: The House of Muhammad
Chapter 18: In or Out
Chapter 19: Questions and Answers
Chapter 20: My First Immortals
Chapter 21: Windage and Elevation
Chapter 22: Good-bye and Good Luck
Epilogue:
A note from the author:
And if I may:
The Anvil of the Craftsman
By Dale Amidei
Kindle Edition
Copyright 2011 Single Candle Press
License Notes
This e-book licensed for your personal use only. You may not re-sell or give it away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from Single Candle Press. Cover design by Dale Amidei copyright Single Candle Press November 2011.
Prologue:
“Oh! Good, Jon, you’re awake! Pardon me for calling so early, but I couldn’t escape the thought that you might have overslept or forgotten your alarm.”
He had slept last night but not enough. He was dreaming of questions and answers when his alarm chirped him back to consciousness at 6:00 AM. Up and dressed, he was for once having breakfast on a plate when his cell phone buzzed. Seeing the contact name on its display brought a smile. The voice on the other side of the connection had been his shepherd for nearly five years of postgraduate education. He recognized the blessing.
“Not to worry, sir. I appreciate the call. I’m actually ahead of schedule.”
“That’s good to hear. Forgive me—you know how Dr. Wainwright is.”
“Yes, sir. I haven’t been thinking of much else.”
“That’s two of us. I won’t keep you from your morning then. See you soon!”
He was still smiling as he stowed his cell. The date on the display caught his eye. A random morning thought struck Jon W. Anthony: as a child, he had never wondered what he would be doing at the end of the year 2005. While he ate, his mind started to spin as it did whenever he otherwise looked idle.
The year 2000 he had thought about, of course. The turn of a decade and a century and a millennium had always been a wondrous year to ponder. As he prepared to get his driver’s license, it was a mere decade in the future. Nevertheless, it was now—almost six years after what he thought as a teen would be a transformative time—that he would reach a true milestone.
It had started twenty-four years ago with Sister Millie’s first-grade class back home in Muncie. A succession of nuns elevated him through the ranks of St. Mary’s Elementary and High Schools and saw him graduate. He then had the temerity to apply for and win an academic scholarship to the Lutheran Valparaiso University and still felt indefinably guilty. His mother had not been as thrilled as Dad, who appreciated the economics of his decision.
Valparaiso held up its end of the bargain, though. He was preparing for his senior year there, with dual majors declared in Theology and Education, on a summer Friday in ’96. Mom and Dad had their accident that day on the 31 outside of Plymouth. They had been coming to see how he was settling into his first apartment.
An only child, he had to attend an avalanche of duties after that bad time; it was two years later when he finally finished his undergraduate degrees. Two semesters afterward, he gained admission into the graduate school at Britteridge College. The ivy-covered halls on the hill overlooking Sheffield, Maryland, had been his home for the last half-decade plus. Anthony winced at the thought of the campus being "home" as he loaded his briefcase and laptop bag into the far side of his battered, snow-frosted Civic. At Britteridge, graduate work was a sentence.
As an Ivy League private college founded by endowment in 1865, Britteridge was renowned as one of the elite institutions of higher education. Generous in its postgraduate stipends and lauded for the quality of its graduates, it also distinguished itself with the viciousness of its faculty politics.
Before coming here, he had little exposure to politics. Robert and Mary Anthony had not been political people. Both managers in the factories of Muncie—Dad for General Motors and Mom for Westinghouse—they had been far too busy for such things. They voted now and again and sometimes each for different candidates. Anthony had been much the same as he started work on his Master’s in Theological Studies. Well before he had handed in his thesis the realities of the place settled in. They were unavoidable now that he was pursuing a PhD.
Here, education and politics merged. They had ever since an unpopular war fought thirty years and more ago, one over before he was born. Students, some of them anyway, protested that conflict on this campus with notable enthusiasm. They burned their draft cards and anything else the college was willing to sacrifice. Those who never left ripened slowly from students to graduate students through staff and into tenured professorship. From there to even department head, the grim thought reminded him. He drove at the lower speed limit now, looking for tolerable parking in a space allowed by his sticker.
Only a block from Roberts Hall Anthony slipped the Civic into a slot between an orange Volkswagen and a four-door Ford the size of an aircraft carrier. His leftover office space, the plumbing from what had been a janitor’s closet still visible, awaited him on the third floor. Even that space was in contest when his adviser used a sharp elbow to get him into it. A graduate assistant, he taught two classes to undergrads concurrent to the work he put into his own program. If he were ever at his desk when an earthquake struck, at least there would be untold reams of paper to shield him from falling debris.
Checking the time on his phone before he retrieved his luggage through the passenger door, he could see that he was early enough. The protocol was inviolate: unless he was in an ambulance somewhere, he had better be in place in Dr. Wainwright’s outer office fifteen minutes ahead of time. If not, he might as well head home to Muncie. Today would be unlike any other he had yet experienced. His doctoral dissertation was about to stand for review.
Chapter 1: The Art of Condescension
In ten minutes, he had dropped the briefcase on his desk and taken the stairs up one more flight to the Admin offices. His attire was nicer than usual, but he still looked the part of a casual academic. His light brown hair and close beard set off his rounded, thin glasses and made him look the part of a student. A wool jacket and loosely knotted tie made him up as enough of an adult that his students called him "Mr. Anthony." He straightened up and paused for a breath as he opened t
he door to Dr. Wainwright’s outer office, at what he knew was precisely a quarter to eight in the morning.
Being Dr. Wainwright’s secretary meant that she inherited to a degree the power of the inner office she guarded, Anthony thought. Judy Spencer was by all appearances personable enough but had a smile that held little warmth for anyone not able to office here on the top floor of Roberts.
“Good morning, Jon. You’re running early. There is coffee on if you’d care for a cup.”
“Thanks—but I’m plenty awake this morning,” Anthony said, knowing that she understood why.
“Dr. Wainwright’s expecting you, of course,” she said and smiled again, seeming almost amicable this time. “Have a seat for a few minutes.”
Anthony nodded and picked a chair across from the double door where anyone coming through would see him. To appear nonchalant he placed his sweating right palm on the thigh of his trousers, preparing it for the handshake that he knew was coming; it needed to be warm and dry.
A few minutes passed until the hallway door swung open again, and he swiveled toward the entrance. It was his graduate adviser, Dr. Stephen Mills. The professor grinned and waved him back into his seat when he started up, giving him a wink out of Judy Spencer’s line of sight. She greeted Mills with an official air. “Good morning, Doctor. Dr. Wainwright asked me to have you go right in.”
“Thanks, Judes.” Mills opened the nearest of the double panels. Anthony glimpsed his department head inside. Already ensconced in the comfortable office was the man first in line to the throne of Theological Studies, Dr. Will Henderson. The door closed behind his adviser, and the wait resumed. The campus bell tower started ringing the top of the hour when Mrs. Spencer’s phone buzzed. Anthony knew that he was on.
She waved him in with the phone still to her ear as a beep from another line demanded her attention. Anthony nodded and moved to the door. He paused for a deep breath before he entered. Dr. Wainwright’s office was more spacious, and far better furnished, than the typical workspace at Britteridge. He sat behind a massive Civil War-era desk, cleared for the greater part. The necessities of the day, Anthony could see, included a preliminary copy of his dissertation. Wired into its faux lambskin cover, it rested in arm’s reach of Wainwright’s overstuffed, oversized leather chair.
Dr. D. (for Darby) Richard Wainwright MA, PhD, ThD was sixtyish and heavier than his physician would like. Poised atop his thick shock of unruly gray hair was a pair of reading glasses. Just to his right was Dr. Henderson, looking as dutiful as ever. Off at the left edge of the big desk, Dr. Mills seemed less comfortable than a few minutes ago. Anthony noticed the expression on his face but could not place it yet. Wainwright glanced up at him.
“Anthony! Good morning—grab a seat, son,” he intoned.
“Good morning, sir,” Anthony answered with deference. “Dr. Henderson, Dr. Mills.” Anthony settled into the visitor’s chair that someone had prepositioned at the focal point of the three men.
“Well, Jon, first of all I wanted to say that we’re pleased with what we’ve seen of you to date.” Wainwright reached forward, sliding the dissertation closer. “Dr. Mills, we know, speaks highly of your work—and we hear good things about you from your students as well.”
“Thank you, thank you very much. Dr. Mills has been everything that I could ask for in an adviser.” Dr. Mills shifted at that. A seed of worry sprouted in Anthony’s mind. He tried to concentrate on Wainwright instead. The worst thing that could happen now would be to lose concentration.
Wainwright shifted back in the big chair, placing both his hands on its arms before moving them to meet across his stomach. “That’s expected, Jon. Steve’s graduate students have done some impressive work here in the past.” Wainwright looked out the window at a sudden break of early morning sunshine in the gray winter sky. “That’s what we do here, Jon, and it’s something that we want you to understand today. Academe, as we see it here, is a calling. We have an obligation to keep it moving forward, this field of study, and all the other programs here on campus. We’re here for the students, of course, but we’re here for the academic ideal also.”
Wainwright’s gaze returned to Anthony and bored in this time. “We’re here for the future of Theological Studies, Mr. Anthony. Studies that build on past knowledge and bring new light for future research to build on. The scholastic objectivism that we need to maintain the standards we hold ourselves to is vital and central to that.”
Henderson reached forward and picked up Anthony’s work, paging through it. “You’ve, uh, put quite a lot of yourself into this, Jon. A unique perspective on so many topics you address.”
“I did want a touch of personality, and originality, sir. The themes I used, the ones I see binding the great faiths together ….” Anthony began, until Wainwright lifted a hand a few inches to cut him off. His department head then raised himself higher in his heavy chair.
“Jon, before we get too far into this I want to lay out our perspective. We frankly have some problems with the structure of this work of yours, though we found it very neatly put together, and I daresay that we all agree on that. Nevertheless, the themes that you’ve concentrated on are a departure for us, at least as far as the scholarly content that we’ve become used to expecting from someone at your level.”
Henderson transitioned to what Anthony could see was the point of the discussion. The questions and answers that he had been rehearsing in his mind for days now became background. A new reality forged by Wainwright and Henderson settled in place. “Mr. Anthony, we’re not comfortable with the personalization you’ve brought to this dissertation. The writing is good, your points well-considered, but you have submitted something that’s too far removed from the objectivity that scholarship on this scale demands.”
“With all due respect, sir, my work centers on what people of faith believe to be the essential questions of their lives. Beliefs that are powerful, life-shaping elements at the very core of what they become. My beliefs formed my conclusions, the evidence for which I ….”
“It’s idiom, Jon.” Wainwright’s brow furrowed. “We must guard against the idiomatic. It detracts from a necessary … erudition to the level of achievement that you pursue. We must be interested in fact here, not belief. We study, we do not preach. We present instead of judge.”
“You’re judging now, sir. We judge every time we decide.” Anthony regretted the words almost as he formed them, but for just a second they helped vent a pressure wave, the surge of emotion that he felt building up inside him.
“Yes, Jon, we’re judging now.” Wainwright motioned to Henderson, who returned the dissertation to the desk. “But you know that’s why you’re here, of course.” Wainwright slid the document back to center and spun it around to face Anthony. “Sorry that this can’t be the day you had expected. As we said, there are changes in your submission that we would like to see. That is to say, Dr. Henderson, Dr. Mills, I am recommending that pending extensive revision Mr. Anthony’s dissertation be withdrawn from consideration for defense.”
The floor seemed to drop away from Anthony. Wainwright had just pronounced him one degree removed from expulsion.
Mills’ emotion was genuine. “Doctor, I can’t—”
Wainwright again motioned with an outstretched hand and silenced him, as was his talent. “Mr. Anthony, we need a few moments as this is a mere suggestion at this point. I do need to confer with your board. Would you wait in your office downstairs? We will do everything we can to be brief.”
More than relieved to be excused, Anthony stood. “Of course I will, sir. Dr. Henderson, Dr. Mills.” Mills nodded, and Anthony could tell by the man’s pale complexion that his adviser had also been blindsided. Anthony moved to the big doors and through them, forgetting even a pleasantry for Mrs. Spencer. He was in a surreal fog; it did not fully settle until he was in the stairwell and opening the door to Third Floor. This was neither the day he had expected nor one he had been prepared for. He made it to his offic
e and stood at his desk, staring down at the sheaves of papers that covered it. He realized that he had no idea what to do next except wait.
Wainwright saw what was coming. It was everything Mills could do to wait until he heard Anthony go through the door leading to the outer hallway. “Dick, for God’s sake, this is bullshit.” Henderson’s right eyebrow rose at that.
Wainwright settled back into his chair. “Steve,” he intoned, “I know you like the boy. I know this isn’t sitting well with you. He changed tack a long time ago, and we’re not holding you responsible.”
Mills bounced in his seat, reaching out to plant a finger on the dissertation. “This is good writing. This could easily be publishable in any number of journals. It’s original, perceptive stuff, and just because we don’t see many like it doesn’t mean that he has—”
“We don’t see this type of submission because we’re an institution of higher learning and not a publishing house,” Wainwright cut in. “We don’t encourage opinion here, Steve, and you know that. We study. We describe. We compile, and we let society draw what it will from the results.”
Mills settled down. “He did all that, except he comes to conclusions he decided are evident. It is a dissertation in theology, for God’s sake, man. It’s understandable within the scope of his premise.”
Wainwright knew Mills was loyal to his candidate, and that this would play out as it already had. Moreover, he knew most of all that he was in complete control. “We’ll need your vote on this, Steve. I am recommending suspending consideration of the boy’s dissertation pending extensive revision.”
Mills shook his head. “I do not concur, Doctor. Ask him for a revision, if you insist, or a clarification. He could draw more on his research and less on his conclusions, but in my view it’s a solid piece of work.”
Wainwright swiveled toward his right. “Will, it’s going to be up to you. I think we’d both benefit from your perspective on this.” Mills looked as if his self-control was about to suffer catastrophic failure.