Mission Compromised

by Oliver North

  Goode had returned to the pier, stopping on the way to purchase some fresh fish, a loaf of good bread, some feta cheese, and several bright, red tomatoes. Back aboard, he grilled the fish over a small charcoal brazier attached to the transom of the boat, and while it was cooking, he sliced the tomatoes, drizzled some olive oil and tarragon vinegar over them, and added some crumbled feta cheese.

  Shortly after sunset, the breeze softened and backed around to blow offshore from east to west, making the night warmer. Goode ate on deck, from plates set on the foldaway table in the cockpit. By 11:30 he had finished his meal, cleaned up his dishes and utensils and was sitting on deck, listening to the Voice Of America news on the short-wave radio. He saw his Turkish friend walking toward his boat, along the pier.

  “Request permission to come aboard, sir” said his smiling friend, standing beside the Pescador with the manila envelope in hand.

  “Permission granted,” replied Goode, and helped his friend make the short leap from the pier to the deck of the boat that had lifted with the rising tide.

  The two of them sat on cushions in the cockpit, and as the Turk put the envelope on the table, Goode asked, “Any problems?”

  “No. I made them Irish, as you suggested. Are you still certain that's wise?

  “I think so,” replied Goode. “My supposition is that whoever did this to him wouldn't expect him to adopt the nationality of the poster. Hopefully, that will afford them a better chance of getting away, if that's what they want to do.”

  “I hope you are right,” said the Turkish intelligence officer. “He should be here shortly. I have confirmed that your man made it onto the midnight train from Elbeyli. My people didn't see anyone tailing him, but it is always possible. Even so, I would advise you to depart here as soon as he arrives. And in case he is tracked here, I have, as you requested, filed a sail plan for the Pescador from here, up the coast to Mersin. That is consistent with the word I let slip that you might be making an Easter pilgrimage to Saint Paul's hometown of Tarsus.”

  “As always, you do very good work, my friend,” said Goode, patting his ally on the arm.

  The Turk rose and headed for the narrow gangway that would take him to the pier. “I look forward to spending more time with you next time you visit and shall hold you in my prayers until I do.”

  “As do I.” Goode rose to embrace his former agent, now his friend.

  When he got to the rail and was about to descend to the pier, the Turk turned and said, “By the way, I am told that in Elbeyli, your Marine apparently had the help of an Assyrian Christian widow, her widowed daughter, and two grandchildren. I thought you told me that he didn't speak Arabic.”

  “I don't think he does,” replied Goode.

  The Turk shrugged and said, “Many, strange, and wondrous are the ways of the Lord.”

  “Amen.” Goode smiled.

  He spent the next three hours alternatively checking for the Marine he had come to rescue and watching the all-night activity in the busy port. Just a few hundred meters away from the Pescador, beneath huge banks of mercury vapor lights, husky stevedores used heavy transport equipment to load steel, grain, and ore into giant cargo ships. And at other piers, cargo from other parts of the world was being unloaded and placed aboard trucks to be shipped to cities throughout the Middle East. Goode watched as automobiles, giant Sea-Land containers and other crates, and all sorts of commodities were taken from the bowels of the huge ships. Just down the quay, fishermen were arriving with their catch, and seafood brokers, chefs, and wholesalers shouted out their bids.

  Then Goode spotted his man, walking unhurriedly past the open-air seafood auction.

  He was dressed in the rough linen trousers and cotton shirt of a backcountry peasant. He wore sandals and had a short, heavy beard. Over his shoulder he had a brown mishlah. All in all, Goode concluded, he looked like a man who might have come in from the mountains looking for work.

  Once he had him spotted, Goode paid less attention to the man and more to what was happening around and behind him. From his vantage point on the Pescador's deck, four or five feet higher than the pier, Goode looked carefully for anyone who might be following his intended passenger.

  Seeing no one following the tall man headed toward pier 10, Goode grabbed a large plastic bag of trash, descended to the pier and started walking toward the large trash container at the landward end of pier 10. He timed his pace to arrive at the same time as his man.

  As Goode passed within a few feet of him, he said in a quiet voice, “My name is William Goode. … Do I know you?”

  “Man, am I ever glad to see you! Yes, I'm Lieutenant Colonel Peter Newman.” The Marine never looked at Goode as he spoke.

  “Great. I'm going back to that sailboat with the blue hull behind me. You walk on back down the pier behind me like you're one of the dockhands. Throw off my lines and take off the gangplank as though you're helping me make ready to get underway. As soon as I engage the prop, jump aboard. Got it?” said Goode.

  “Got it,” replied Newman.

  Less than four minutes later, the big blue sloop was headed out to sea with the white-haired captain at the helm and his passenger below decks, watching the lights of the harbor falling behind them.

  Neither man noticed the heavyset European with the binoculars amidst the crates and boxes at the seaward end of pier 12 as he made a call on his satellite phone.

  Room 306

  ________________________________________

  Hotel Kophinou

  Larnaca, Cyprus

  Friday, 10 March 1995

  1525 Hours, Local

  “Radchenko, tell me what you have learned,” said UN Deputy Secretary General Dimitri Komulakov.

  “Immediately after arriving in Cyprus aboard the UN aircraft the day before,” Radchenko said, “I dispatched the four Palestinians to confirm some intel that a Marine general had arrived on the island with a mysterious woman. One of the maids who was assigned to her said that she is the wife of someone important.”

  “If I can find his wife, I can get him,” Komulakov said.

  Radchenko continued, “This is important. This U.S. Marine general is named Grisham. He landed last night aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 at Akrotiri and came here to Larnaca by motorcade provided by the British security service. He has with him six aides and the American woman. I found out that she is registered as Rachel Huffman. She is right now in room 204 at the Royal Officers' VIP quarters, inside the U.K. Sovereign Base Area. The general is in a suite of rooms in the next building.”

  This confirmed the information Komulakov had received from Harrod while still in Syria. “Huffman” was obviously an alias. From his next-of-kin data, he knew that Newman's wife's first name was Rachel. He asked, “What are they doing?”

  “Nothing,” said Radchenko. “They appear to be waiting for something or someone. Earlier today, the Huffman woman asked her maid for a good place to buy a dress. She also said something about her husband arriving tonight.”

  “Will we know if this Rachel woman leaves the base to go shopping?”

  “I can make it so,” said Radchenko.

  “See to it. Now, let me tell you what I have learned. While you were gone, I found the man we are seeking.”

  “Duncan? The terrorist? Where is he? What does this woman at the British base have to do with him?” exclaimed Radchenko, excitedly.

  “His real name is Newman,” replied Komulakov. “He is an American Marine. And I learned last night that he is right now headed here on a large blue sailboat from Iskenderun, Turkey. It took me all day to find out whose boat it is, but now I know: it belongs to a retired CIA clandestine services officer named William P. Goode.”

  “Goode … where have I heard that name before?”

  “My dear Radchenko, now I know why you are not a colonel. Don't you remember the operation in '86 when we had to take down those who stole our Soviet Army's munitions train from the siding in Poland?”

  “Ah, yes, Gene
ral Komulakov. You got promoted and I got sent to Afghanistan. I personally killed that Solidarity priest in Poland and then delivered the bomb to Lisbon. And it was my PFLP guys who liquidated the Frenchman. But what does that have to do with this person named Goode and his sailboat?”

  “The theft of the Soviet munitions train was his operation,” replied Komulakov. “Think back to when Moscow Centre gave us the mission. They told us that Goode was that Marine at the White House who was helping the reactionary Nicaraguan terrorists overthrow our Scientific Socialist friends in Managua. He was running around to places like Beirut and Tehran and making all kinds of mischief for Moscow.”

  “I remember—but his real name was North,” said Radchenko.

  “Yes, that's correct. Yet all along there was another ‘Goode.’ He was the one who really orchestrated the train robbery and the theft of those whole carloads of weapons and munitions. I knew it then, but Moscow Centre wouldn't buy it. They said that North was the key to bringing down Reagan, the American president. So they let the real Goode slip through their fingers. Now we have a chance to correct that.”

  “It was a long time ago, and I'm not sure I remember clearly, but didn't this Marine, North, have false documents in the name of ‘Goode,’ as well?” asked the major.

  “Of course, Radchenko, of course. That was all part of their plan. And it would have worked but for others we have planted in very important places in Washington. I was the resident there, remember? We have people very high up in their CIA, their FBI. I even have one of their very sensitive communications security devices.” Komulakov showed the EncryptionLok-3 to Radchenko.

  “So what do you want us to do?”

  “What I want to do is to finish the job we started in 1986, and eliminate the real William P. Goode. And, I want to be rid of this Newman person forever. Here's how we're going to accomplish both. …”

  U.K. Sovereign Base

  ________________________________________

  Larnaca, Cyprus

  Friday, 10 March 1995

  1745 Hours, Local

  General Grisham and Rachel Newman arrived at the little boat basin in the Royal Navy Yard just as the big blue sloop rounded the bar that protected the port from the Mediterranean's bitter winter storms. The general had called Rachel's room at 1730 hours and informed her, “I just got a call from the harbormaster. The Pescador is inbound and should be tied up at 1800. Do you want to go down to the pier and meet them?”

  “Oh, yes!” Rachel had exclaimed. “But … good grief, I look a sight. I was going to go out and get a pretty dress, and my hair is a mess.”

  The general chuckled at her response. “You sound just like my wife and daughters. I think Pete will be glad to see you whatever you're wearing. But if you want, the waterfront shops are open until eight or nine—I think just on the other side of the fence where Bill keeps his boat. After you greet each other, you can run out and get something and then join us for dinner at the Officer's Mess.”

  Early that morning, Goode had called on his satellite phone to both Grisham and Harris to inform them that he was on his way back to Larnaca and that “the fishing has been good.” And during the fifteen-hour sail from Iskenderun, he had debriefed the Marine, asking him detailed questions as he tape-recorded the interview on a little cassette tape recorder.

  When Newman's interrogation was finished, the captain fed the hungry Marine and taught him some basics of seamanship. And then, as the sun was rising behind them, he went below, emerging a minute or two later with two steaming hot cups of coffee and a manila envelope. He poured the contents of the envelope out on the table: two Irish passports, employment cards, drivers' licenses, and birth certificates. Newman looked at the documents and then at Goode.

  “I don't know if you're going to need these or not,” Goode said. “Nobody asked me to have them made for you, but they may come in handy.”

  Newman put the paperwork into a pocket of the linen trousers Samir had bought for him and asked Goode how it was that he had become his final rescuer. The old man explained how he came to know General Grisham as a Clandestine Services officer in Vietnam and how he and North had worked together in the '80s. But it was his answer to Newman's query about “family” that really grabbed the Marine's attention.

  In response to Newman's questions, Goode had explained how he had been orphaned as a baby, raised at the Hershey Home for Boys in Pennsylvania, and how he had joined the CIA's Clandestine Service after serving as a Marine in the Korean War. With gentle affection, he described how for fifteen years he and his wife had enjoyed the challenges of overseas postings—until 1969 in Africa. And then, in a near whisper, the white-haired man at the helm described how his wife and daughters had been caught in one of the terrible tribal uprisings fomented by Soviet agents in the Congo … how he had returned to Brazzaville when the French paratroopers finally arrived, only to find his family slaughtered.

  Newman finally asked, “Aren't you bitter?”

  “I was, for a long time afterward,” replied Goode. “But in 1975 I was posted to Rome as deputy station chief. While I was there I met a group of men—and some women, but mostly men—who met every Tuesday night at a little church just outside the city. One of the Italian security service people I worked with invited me to meet with them.

  “This little group has no denomination, it has no priests or ministers—they're all laymen. They meet at this church to pray for each other and to try to get to know their Lord better. They read from the Bible and pray for each other every day. Well, it sounded like it would be kind of boring, and I kept declining his invitation. But I saw some qualities in the man that I admired, and decided to take him up on his offer. I went … and came back again … and again. It was through them that I met Jesus.”

  He said it so matter-of-factly that Newman wondered if the old man was describing an actual vision. But Goode explained, “I got to the point where I could no longer deny that Jesus Christ had come to this earth two thousand years ago, lived a sinless life, was seized and tortured to death—and then arose from the dead. Intellectually, I had no reason to disbelieve those facts. They're the basics of Christianity, but I had never really given these facts much thought.

  “Once I accepted those events of Christ's coming to earth as fact, I asked, ‘Why?’ And the answer I got, every time I prayed about it, was, ‘to save you, William P. Goode, you miserable sinner.’

  “You see, Peter, I didn't think I was worthy of such sacrifice. My heart was still full of hatred toward those who had killed my wife and lovely daughters. And so, after I prayed about it some more, and talked about it more with my friends at this Tuesday evening gathering, I eventually concluded: No, I wasn't worthy of His sacrifice, but He had done it for me anyway—and that my hatred and anger were a repudiation of what He had done. It was that realization that changed my heart. It took me a long time to confess my rejection of Him and to ask His forgiveness. That's when I met Him. He was always with me. But now I'm with Him.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Peter Newman pondered all of this—deeply moved, but still uncertain of its full meaning. He asked about the group in Rome.

  Goode responded, “Most are professionals: businessmen, doctors, lawyers, government workers, even members of the military. They have all kinds of different backgrounds. The group has spread. There are members in almost every country, though there is no membership card—only this.” Goode held out his hand. In Goode's palm was an emblem of a little metal fish.

  Newman was stunned. “What does it mean? The old man who saved me in the desert, Habib, had one of those. And so did his son.”

  “It's an icthus, the ancient sign of the Christian believer. It even predates the cross as a sign of Christian faith, though few people recognize it as such today.” Goode and Newman were still talking about what faith really meant when they rounded the headland and sailed into the British base at Larnaca Bay.

  On the pier, Rachel and General Grisham watched as the main and jib were
furled on the fly and the big sloop, now looking somewhat naked without her big white sails aloft, nosed expertly into its slip. Just outside the fence, a group of youngsters watched the boat as it docked.

  Newman, on the foredeck, waved to Rachel, who was jumping up and down like a schoolgirl. Beside her, beaming from ear to ear, was Lieutenant General George Grisham—dressed in khaki trousers and a blue blazer.

  The lines weren't even made fast to the pier before Rachel had jumped aboard and flung herself into Peter's arms. Still on the pier, Grisham yelled out to Goode, “Hey sailor, there's an old Marine out here requesting permission to come aboard.”

  “Welcome aboard, sir,” called Goode as he lashed down the little gangway the dock boys had shoved across to the vessel's gunwale.

  The two old friends embraced while Newman and his wife were wrapped in a much tighter grip, both of them now crying and laughing at the same time.

  “Uh … listen,” Goode said quietly to Peter and Rachel, “the general and I will walk on ahead. We've got reservations for dinner at eight. I'm going to take the general with me to my room up at the Queen's billet, and we'll meet the two of you at the Officers' Mess. That way, you can have some privacy while you get reacquainted.” Newman and Rachel nodded from their embrace as the two men strolled down the pier.

  When Peter finally opened his eyes, he noticed that the sun was about to set. He grabbed his wife's hand and said, “Rache, quick, watch this.”

  “What,” she said, surprised at his sudden urgency. “What?”

  “Watch the horizon, right where the sun goes into the sea,” he said.” He held her as the sun's bright orb dropped into the sea and suddenly, just as the top of the red ball lowered itself into the Mediterranean, there was a bright green flash at the point where the sun had sunk into the water.