The American Pearl

by Peter Gilboy

  ©2017 Peter Gilboy. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  ISBN: 978-1-54391-437-5 (print)

  ISBN: 978-1-54391-438-2 (ebook)

  eISBN: 978-1-54392-630-9

  Praise for Peter Gilboy’s Novels

  THE AMERICAN PEARL

  “…engrossing, thought-provoking, and

  filled with action that makes it a different,

  highly recommended read”

  “…hard-hitting, absorbing,

  and hard to put down”

  The American Pearl “embraces politics,

  racism, war, redemption, betrayal,

  and even love, on many levels.

  MidWest Book Reviews

  D. Donavon, Senior Editor

  The Girl on Mill Street

  Annie Taylor knows the

  darkest lie of all.

  “I never saw it coming!”

  “Fascinating story, unique style, different….”

  “I recommend this book for anyone

  who enjoys a good plot twist.”

  Madeleine’s Kiss

  “Uniquely gripping”

  “Riveting and eye-opening”

  “This won’t be your usual thriller or mystery”

  – Midwest Book Reviews

  Operation Fantasy Plan

  “Richly written debut spy thriller, with delicious turns and quirks…Gilboy clearly knows of what he speaks. He has created an intense, philosophical novel.”

  --Kirkus Reviews

  See also:

  www.PeterGilboy.com

  Peter can be contacted at:

  Hello@PeterGilboy.com

  For Preston Dane

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1: Quintyn

  Chapter 2: Patricia

  Chapter 3: Quintyn

  Chapter 4: Patricia

  Chapter 5: Quintyn

  Chapter 6: Patricia

  Chapter 7: Quintyn

  Chapter 8: Patricia

  Part II

  Chapter 9: Quintyn

  Chapter 10: Patricia

  Chapter 11: Quintyn

  Chapter 12: Patricia

  Chapter 13: Quintyn

  Chapter 14: Patricia

  Chapter 15: Quintyn

  Chapter 16: Patricia

  Chapter 17: Quintyn

  Chapter 18: Patricia

  Chapter 19: Quintyn

  Chapter 20: Patricia

  Chapter 21: Quintyn

  Chapter 22: Patricia

  Chapter 23: Quintyn

  Chapter 24: Patricia

  Chapter 25: Quintyn

  Chapter 26: Patricia

  Chapter 27: Quintyn

  Chapter 28: Patricia

  Chapter 29: Quintyn

  Chapter 30: Patricia

  Chapter 31: Quintyn

  Chapter 32: Patricia

  Chapter 33: Quintyn

  Chapter 34: Patricia

  Chapter 35: Quintyn

  Chapter 36: Patricia

  Chapter 37: Quintyn

  Chapter 38: Patricia

  Chapter 39: Quintyn

  Chapter 40: Patricia

  Chapter 41: Quintyn

  Chapter 42: Patricia

  Chapter 43: Quintyn

  Chapter 44: Patricia

  Chapter 45: Quintyn

  Chapter 46: Patricia

  Chapter 47: Quintyn

  Chapter 48: Patricia

  Chapter 49: Quintyn

  Chapter 50: Patricia

  Part III

  Chapter 51: Quintyn

  Chapter 52: Quintyn

  Chapter 53: Quintyn

  Chapter 54: Quintyn

  Chapter 55: Quintyn

  Chapter 56: Quintyn

  Chapter 57: Quintyn

  Chapter 58: Quintyn

  Chapter 59: Quintyn

  Chapter 60: Quintyn

  Chapter 61: Quintyn

  Chapter 62: Quintyn

  Chapter 63: Quintyn

  Chapter 64: Quintyn

  Chapter 65: Quintyn

  Chapter 66: Quintyn

  Chapter 67: Quintyn

  Chapter 68: Quintyn

  Chapter 69: Quintyn

  Chapter 70: Quintyn

  Chapter 71: Quintyn

  Chapter 72: Quintyn

  Chapter 73: Quintyn

  Chapter 74: Quintyn

  Chapter 75: Quintyn

  Epilogue

  PART I

  Even if you forget your past,

  it remembers you.

  –Sarah Dessen

  1

  JANUARY 15, 2006

  SAN DIEGO, 9:15 A.M.

  CONSIDER THIS—THERE IS A man running on a beach. He is running hard but not particularly fast. He is grimacing and holding his side as if wounded, weaving left and right. The beach is in San Diego. It is January, still early in the day, but the mist has burned off and the air is crisp and already warming. The sky is clean and mostly blue with just a few brushstrokes of white. It’s San Diego, after all.

  There are others on the beach besides the man who is running hard. Some early strollers along the waterline. A girl in a bright blue bikini dancing along the sand with her earbuds and music. A boy with a tumbling kite. There’s a couple too, who are laughing as they swing their child toward the water’s edge. Colorful sailboats are already out, and yellow kayaks glide near a hulking Navy ship.

  Now let’s say that you are there on that beach too. You hear the seagulls. You taste the salt air. The waves are lapping gently. It is low tide. All is good. You turn your eyes to the man who is running. He is running in your direction. He is getting closer. A big man. A black man. The sailboats no longer have your attention, nor the kayaks. You see the man stumble. You see that his black-rimmed glasses are crooked on his face. He stumbles again. He straightens. He struggles to keep going. The man crosses paths with the girl in the blue bikini. She looks up and screams as she flees from him. The couple with the child see him too and rush into the water for safety.

  Follow me now: In a moment the man will be in front of you, still grimacing and holding his side. You’ll freeze then. Your world will shrink to the merest fraction. Just this man, looming even larger. The man notices you and seems to stagger toward you. He seems to scowl at you. Danger bells go off in your head—he’s violent, a gangbanger, has a gun, probably been shot.

  The man stops. He looks at you as if reading your thoughts. His eyes hold yours as he stands there gulping the air. His shadow is enormous. You see the shine of sweat on his cheeks and chin. You see that he is older than you thought, late fifties probably, with graying hair and gray patches on his day-old stubble. Then you think: That nose—what happened to that nose? The man reaches up and straightens his glasses. He squints. And smiles. Really smiles. You are relieved. Then you see that he’s not smiling at you, but rather, at nothing in particular. The man slides off his headband and wipes his forehead. He cleans his glasses on his shirt. He straightens and stares out over the bay. You follow his eyes to an old riverboat paddling in the distance, probably a restaurant now. You remember that he was gripping his side, and you understand that it’s not because he’s been shot. He’s tired is all. The man is exhausted.

  There are three things about this man. The first you can now see—that he’s not just big as you originally thought. He’s huge. Six-five or more. You guess three hundred pounds, and you are off by only a little.

  Second—he’s not just bl
ack. He’s African-black. Probably no mixture of races over the generations—his parents and their parents and their parents, all the way back through slavery to the sub-Saharan desert. Night black.

  Third—and this is what you can’t see but which is the most important—he will be betrayed. In six days. Not by his wife of two days. No, not by Julia. Nor by his mother, of course. He will be betrayed by the nation. His nation. Not just the government but the people as well. Just about all of them. He will be shunned. He will be laughed at. He will be disgraced.

  That will be his legacy.

  I can tell you more about the man who will be betrayed. As a kid he loved two things: baseball and old grainy photos of DC that he’d find at the library when his mother took him there on the weekends. He’d dig out photos of the old city and go over them again and again with a magnifying glass that he’d gotten for his birthday, and he’d find new details of the city each time. His idols back then were Jackie Robinson and Benjamin Banneker. Jackie Robinson was—well, you know who he was. Benjamin Banneker was the black man who, in 1791, helped survey the land that would become the District of Columbia. As a boy, the man who will be betrayed copied Benjamin Banneker’s sketches and notes and compared them to photographs he’d take from the same spots that day. He knew every inch of the capital, new and old, every street corner and alleyway. He knew where the horse-drawn trolleys used to be. He knew where Suter’s Tavern had been, there at Thirty-first and K. He knew where to find the home of John Stoddard, the tobacco man who was commissioned by George Washington to buy up the parcels of land that were to become the nation’s capital.

  What else about the man? I can tell you that he is mostly a good man. If you counted each of the days of his life, they balanced out pretty much in his favor. Moral lapses are behind him now, and the anger. He is a decent man these days, never callous or corrupt, always trustworthy and mostly truthful. And he still takes pictures as he did when he was a boy. But these are from cameras hundreds of miles deep into the sky; rolling cameras that sweep left to right, right to left, as they circle the earth—mowing the lawn, the man likes to call it. Searching. For as long as the man can remember he has been searching. With these cameras the man magnifies down to six inches, sees footprints through clouds and dark skies, reads name tags, reads lips, follows a leaf as it falls. But the cameras don’t exist. Neither does the agency that supplies them.

  How do I know so much about this man? You’ve guessed already. And you are right. I am that big man. That black man. The man who looks down from the sky.

  I am the man who will be betrayed. In six days.

  Good to know you.

  2

  MARCH 30, 1972

  QUI NHON CITY

  SOUTH VIETNAM, 11:40 A.M.

  PATRICIA ANNE PAVLIK WAS a first lieutenant in the United States Army. On this day, she was a short-timer, with just nineteen days left in country. Then, she’d be home again. Home was the world, with its shiny cars, fresh-cut lawns, and summer barbecues. This place wasn’t the world; it was Nam, or one of the ugly names that soldiers had for the country—Dinkland, Gooktown, or Slopeville.

  Not just Patricia, everyone was going home. Nam was over, done, finished, kaput. Nixon had kept his promise. The ARVNS—the Army of South Vietnam—would take over the fighting now and do it on their own; fight the fucking communists from the north. Back home, the families were relieved. The great nation had prevailed once more even though it had been at such terrible costs. The protests and riots were coming to an end. No more wasted money, wasted lives. Daily reports of body counts had turned to weekly reports and now were only monthly. Maybe five or ten bodies came home each month; that was certainly tolerable considering the tens of thousands who had been killed in the previous years.

  The country was pretty much pacified now, and everyone knew it. No sweat, the soldiers said. Take it easy. Count the days. I’m a short-timer. Goin’ back to the world.

  Lieutenant Patricia Pavlik was an officer in the Quartermaster Corps, which is a fancy way of saying she oversaw supplies. She was a bit taller than most women, five-ten or so, square-shouldered and erect in her uniform. She was pretty, not beautiful, with full cheeks and a light spray of freckles across her nose. She had a kind of understated attractiveness, with light green eyes and chestnut-colored hair that was longer than the Army liked. But this was Nam, and most rules didn’t apply.

  Some people might mistake Patricia for being boyish, but that was until she looked right at them. Her green eyes were feminine. Intense and yet tender. Curious and alive. On this day, March 30, 1972, she was just twenty-four.

  And on this day, Patricia Anne Pavlik became a pearl.

  It was almost noon when Patricia left her office by the side door. She glanced left and right, made sure no one was looking, then quickly made her way along the compound road toward T.R.’s jeep. As she approached, T.R. Fountain was just sliding back the canvas top and tucking it down.

  “And you’re sure it’s safe?” she asked him.

  “Safe as can be,” T.R. replied in his Louisiana drawl. “Not a shot in months,” he added.

  “Not that,” she said. “I mean, I can’t catch it, can I?”

  He laughed. “Hell, nobody catches it.”

  “Somebody did. They did.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he answered, pretending to just now realize it. He laughed. “Well, it’s just you and me, Patricia, and I’m fixin’ to keep us both safe.”

  Patricia slid into the passenger side of the jeep. T.R. pushed the starter button. The engine turned over, sputtered, and died. Patricia gave him a look. Another attempt and it roared to life with a sucking whoosh, no problems, and she and T.R. were off toward the compound gate.

  “You scared, Lieutenant?” he asked her.

  “No. Not at all.”

  But of course she was scared. And something else too, a deep unease that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. But mostly she was scared. Yet Patricia Pavlik’s father had taught her that it’s sometimes good to be scared. It brings focus and heightens the senses. Yes, sometimes it’s good to be scared.

  “We’ll be back faster than green grass through a goose,” T.R. assured her. “Brian won’t even know you’re gone.”

  “Who?”

  “Why, your dear husband.”

  “Oh,” she said, with a small laugh. “That Brian. Thanks a lot, T.R.”

  It was unusual but not unheard of for a woman to serve in a war zone. But Lieutenant Pavlik hadn’t seen the war. Not even close. She hadn’t even seen the countryside, though she’d caught a glimpse of the South China Sea as they brought her in on the little airstrip. It had been a long eleven months for her. All that time kept within MacArthur Compound with its narrow dirt roads, low-slung aluminum buildings, and brown Quonset huts. The Nam that Patricia knew was a gray metal desk. The Nam she knew was a squeaky chair. The Nam she knew was forms to be filled out in triplicate and a leaky water cooler in the corner.

  Patricia had only heard about the other Nam—the one with sand bunkers at each intersection and naked orphans running after American jeeps. She’d only heard about the sad but determined prostitutes and the “cowboys” on their cheap two-cycle motorbikes. She’d only heard about the colorful Buddhist cemeteries and the young schoolgirls marching alongside the road in their flowing white dresses. All this time she had been safe and sound behind chain link and barbed wire. Inside the wire was the world, with its imported burgers, Budweiser, American jokes and juke boxes. Outside the wire was Nam with its baffling language and inscrutable ways; its huge reflecting rice paddies and quaint villages, its astonishing beaches and dingy restaurants.

  Over the past months Patricia had watched as the First Cav departed. Then the final Special Forces remnant. Next were the engineers, commo people, and most of the MPs. Just a few guards remained to look after the ghost of MacArthur Compound, which now consisted mostly of her supply office, a motor pool, an intelligence team where her husband worked, and of all things, a sm
all dentist’s office. As head of the supply unit, Lieutenant Pavlik’s task was to oversee the counting of weapons, ship military materials back to the States, and requisition whatever food the mess hall and O’ Club needed. Leave the war to the locals, everyone said. They’ve had enough time to get their shit together. More than enough time. Fucking A.

  Now Patricia sat low in the jeep as she and T.R. roared down the deserted compound road past closed barracks and boarded-over Quonset huts. The sun was hard and bright. Not just hot; it was oven-in-your-face hot. Jesus, what was it? A hundred and twelve, she’d heard. Maybe only a hundred and four. Already her fatigue blouse was soaked, and sweat was pooling at her belt along her belly. She ignored it. She was getting out. She was getting away, at least for a time.

  Patricia mused to herself that T.R. was no Ranger or Green Beret. Not even your basic infantryman. Captain Theodore Roosevelt Fountain was the compound dentist and known to all ranks and nationalities as just plain T.R. He was recognized immediately by his long drooping mustache and his ludicrous yellow hat. And he was a wild card that the Army preferred not to play. Once T.R. had screamed at a general who stepped ahead of a corporal to get his teeth cleaned, and chased the general all the way to his chauffeur-driven Ford.

  “What was he going to do?” T.R. later said. “Send me to Nam?”

  And T.R. was the only game in town if Patricia was going to see any part of the country. At least he was handsome, yes. And funny, yes. Blond and skinny with that drooping mustache and his stupid yellow hat. T.R. even admitted that his hat was ludicrous, but always added that the other side recognized him right off and knew he was only trying to help people. They’d let him be, he told everyone.

  And T.R. was a bit of a playboy, she knew. But he was sweet, too. Sweet counted in Patricia’s book. Polite southern charm. And slouching a bit. Never be confused with John Wayne. Now he was getting her away from the other men; not leered at for a time, not conveniently bumped into, leaned over, and silently propositioned with their looks. The corporal and the sergeant didn’t want her in the office anyway, didn’t want to answer to a woman. Loo-tenant is what they called her to her face. Or rather, they liked having her there. Because she was a woman. And cute. She didn’t want to be cute. She wanted to be taken seriously, not treated like the only female round-eye left. She’d heard what they said about her, not quite out of earshot. Her body, good tits I’ll bet, like to see ’em, and what they’d like to do to her. Smiles and chuckles, even soft snorts. Take her. Have her. Bend her over a desk and all the rest of it. It was a man’s world. She wasn’t a soldier to them. She wasn’t imposing. She wasn’t big. She didn’t swagger and curse. She was a round-eye with hips and breasts. Someone to be conquered. Something to be conquered.