A Sound of Freedom

by Walter Grant

  He would have never, even in his wildest dreams, believed that having escaped the watchful eyes of the Communists, he would ever return to this city, at least not of his own free will. But he always kept his promises so here he was, once again, walking along the dimly lit streets of Moscow.

  He remembered the promise well, even if Tolinger under the influence of truth serum did not, and he fully intended to be true to his word.

  His life had changed considerably since the night of the first MX launch. He smiled again recalling the emotions that flooded through every fiber of his being as he stepped from the Roach Coach and gazed into the eyes of the woman he loved. They had stood looking at each other for what seemed like an eternity. He had taken only a single step toward her before she threw herself into his open arms. They embraced without talking, oblivious to the MX riding on a column of fire as it climbed into the California sky and headed southwest toward its target, 5,000 miles away, somewhere along the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

  With the Peacekeeper a faint speck in the nighttime sky the sound of the rocket motor had died away, the only thing Max could hear was the distant surf and the sound of his own heart. He opened his mouth to ask the obvious question when Sherry put her fingers gently to his lips. “Please, can it wait? I’ll tell you everything.”

  He hesitated only slightly before kissing the soft fingers pressed so delicately against his lips and nodded, his head moving up and down, just once, ever so slightly. With a slow deep breath she closed her eyes for a moment. Tears formed at the corners, but, when her sea-green eyes reopened the twinkling lights that had always shown so brightly, but extinguished since that fateful night in San Diego when he chose to lie rather than trust her, were once again alive and dancing.

  They stayed clear of the compound and the sensitive nose of any guard dog that might be patrolling the perimeter, upon reaching the railroad tracks Sherry, without an explanation, turned right toward the lights of Lompoc, Max followed without asking any questions. Three hours later they passed through the chain link fence marking the southern boundary of North Vandenberg. They continued along the tracks for another half hour before Sherry, still in the lead, turned right toward the ocean. When they intersected Surf Road, Sherry turned back toward North Vandenberg and the end of the road. It was obvious to Max, Sherry not only knew her way around Vandenberg she also knew where he lived.

  It was well after mid-night when they spotted the emergency equipment around what was left of Gilbird’s house, two California Highway Patrol cars, an ambulance, a fire engine, a coroner’s wagon, and a Lompoc police car, as well as vehicles from local television stations were parked along the road. The plastic explosive had certainly done the trick.

  With all the excitement and everyone’s attention focused on the house at the end of the road, no one noticed the two shadows cross the patio and disappear inside the house two hundred yards away. Neither did they notice the previously dark windows were now glowing ever so faintly.

  Max was, too, wound up to sleep, he sat alone on the patio in the predawn quiet drinking coffee, listening to the surf, contemplating the constellations, and reflecting on past events. He had slipped out of bed without waking Sherry, pulled on some sweats, and made himself breakfast. She, unlike him, had gone more than forty-eight hours without sleep; he had managed to sleep on the concrete floor of the abandoned launch facility while waiting for Linda Larkin. Even though exhausted, she had insisted on revealing to him every detail of her life, or so it seemed, from the day she was born to the present. So they talked and made love until, convinced there were no more questions to be answered, she fell asleep. Every word she had spoken, every act, every touch was imprinted permanently in his brain.

  “You don’t remember me at all, do you?” She spoke for the first time as they washed away the perspiration and grease paint, taking turns in front of the shower head as they shared soap and shampoo. Of course he remembered, he remembered everything about her, from that magic afternoon she escorted him to his new apartment in San Diego to the painful night he’d left her sleeping without any parting words or explanations. She continued before he could even gather his thoughts or formulate an answer.

  “Of course you don’t. Why should you? I was only sixteen years old and you had your groupies running after you all the time, not to mention that cheap little French tart Jeanne Jouve. That little hussy followed you everywhere and was always draping herself all over you like a cheap suit. I hated her.”

  Max had no idea what she was talking about or why she seemed to be upset with him. Obviously she was referring to a period in his life sometime prior to his disappearance behind the Iron Curtain. Before he could respond she kissed him and continued, her voice softer now, “I hated you, too, at first, when my father started dragging me away from my friends on weekends, chasing all over Europe just to watch you race that stupid little red car. But, after I started reading about you and seeing your picture in racing magazines, I found myself keeping all the race programs. Pretty soon I started a scrapbook which I shared with my girlfriends. They all thought you were cute, and wanted to come with me to the races. I persuaded my father to let me bring two friends each weekend. He would get us pit passes and we would hang around the garage watching the cars being readied for the race and fantasize about the drivers. I suppose by then I had a real crush on you even though you didn’t know I existed. Do you remember when you lost a wheel in the chicane at Spa-Francorchamps, shunted and hit the wall? Do you remember the candy striper that brought you cookies and flowers and magazines and the like, while you were in the hospital recuperating?”

  He did remember a skinny little freckle-faced girl with her hair in a ponytail who showed up everyday with all sorts of goodies, followed usually by two other little girls who kept whispering and giggling all the time. It seemed so long ago and in another world, a world mostly forgotten. How did she know about all these things? He was surprised he remembered so much about the little candy striper. Besides the cookies and magazines, she’d brought a get well card everyday and flowers twice a week. Also, there were more personal items, like stuffed animals, and he recalled some expensive slippers and a crocheted pillow. He recalled also the little girl in the red and white striped dress, who was almost a nuisance at times, had green eyes and the hair pulled back in a ponytail was flaming red. Could it possibly be the same girl? How else would she know all these things? He held her at arms length watching the water cascade over her breasts, her wet body glistened and her eyes sparkled even in the low intensity light. Well she certainly wasn’t skinny now; she had grown in all the right places and in perfect proportion.

  “Did you really crochet that pillow?” In less than a heartbeat her arms were around his neck and her body pressed against his, as her arms pulled his lips to hers, she whispered, “You do remember, you do, you really do.”

  A half hour passed, perhaps longer, before either spoke again. Max lay in bed with his head propped up with a couple of pillows, Sherry lay in his arms.

  “I cried for weeks after I learned you had defected to the Soviet Union. I tore up my scrapbook, even the programs and pictures you signed for me. I threw out everything and told myself I hated you, but I didn’t. I could never bring myself to believe you were a traitor. I kept telling myself it was all a mistake. Eight months ago my father called me in Berlin, insisting it was urgent that I come to Washington. I arrived late in the evening and my father picked me up at the airport and took me straight to his apartment. After dinner he became pensive, apprehensive, and a bit mysterious, and yet there was an air of excitement surrounding him as he handed me a very large manila envelope across the table. ‘You have every right to hate me. I hope you won’t. I hope you’ll understand I couldn’t tell you the truth. You were right all along.’

  It was so unlike my father, I knew he loved me as I loved him and I couldn’t imagine anything he could do that would make me feel otherwise. Although he had been a bit over protective at times
he was generous to a fault, and had never denied me anything within reason. Without responding I opened the envelope and then I understood. For a moment I did hate him, but within a second or two we were hugging each other and crying. Inside the envelope, everything carefully pasted back together, was the scrapbook I had torn up and thrown away. Every single thing I had collected was there. All the race programs, the pictures you autographed for me, even the posters I had ripped from my bedroom wall. Before I could ask any questions he pushed me away holding me by the shoulders and looking directly into my eyes, a broad smile on his face, stated, ’He’s going to need a Candy striper for a while. Are you interested?’

  Somewhere nearby a coyote yipped, breaking his concentration. Finding his coffee cup empty, Max returned to the kitchen, refilled his cup, and walked back outside. Standing by the wall at the rear of the patio he breathed in the cool salt air and listened to the restless ocean below. The moon had already slipped below the horizon and the stars were beginning to fade, dawn would soon be breaking. He lay back on the comfortable lounge chair, took a sip of coffee, and returned his thoughts to Sherry’s life story as she had revealed it to him over the last few hours. It read, in part, like a Harlequin Romance, with a “love-lost-love-found” theme, but the one thing tying it all together was the biggest surprise yet—her father.

  Fate can be cruel or kind and for Sherry it had been both on more than one occasion. Her father, twenty-year-old Corporal Andrew Lee Dale, had died when the car he was driving blew-up two weeks before she was born. Her mother, nineteen-year-old Sherry Lynn, died in the delivery room, leaving her without parents and without a name. Her biological father was the military driver for the man who adopted her, the only father she had ever known, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Paul Boaden. The car bomb, planted by terrorists, had been intended for Colonel Boaden.

  The kinder side of fate provided two loving and dedicated parents in Colonel and Mrs. Boaden, who adopted and christened her Sherry Lee. But, at age twelve tragedy struck again when Mrs. Boaden died of cancer. Her father, now a Brigadier General, devoted every minute of his spare time to her, and they became very close. By trying to spend as much time as possible with his daughter he unintentionally piqued her interest in Jack Johnson.

  According to Sherry, the General had always wanted a son, but he and Mrs. Boaden could not have children. When her father met with Henri Tosi and Jack Johnson he saw in the young marine the son he had always wanted, but could never have, and so gave into a fantasy, Jack Johnson became his make-believe son. This of course, Sherry made crystal clear, was only speculation on her part, but she attributed her father’s sudden fascination with auto racing, which led to her being dragged all over Europe on weekends and to the eventual meeting of Candy Striper and patient, to this presumed interest.

  After Jack Johnson’s well-contrived defection to the Soviet Union, Sherry had been sent to a private school in Geneva, Switzerland. She had attended college at the Sorbonne, and later studied at the Spanish University in Madrid. One advantage of growing up in several different countries is the exposure you have to their languages. Sherry was fascinated by the languages she encountered, she studied them at every opportunity, majoring in foreign languages. Her fluency in seven different languages helped land her a job with the U.S. Ambassador’s office at the United Nations. Two years later, after completing the FBI training course at Quantico, she applied for a position with the secret service and was accepted immediately.

  Her first assignment kept her in D.C. as part of a team responsible for the security of visiting Heads of State. Her job brought her in contact with Clarence Elmore Kennthly, a Washington dignitary living in Georgetown; over time they became romantically involved and were married.

  The highlight of entertainment at the wedding reception turned out to be an uninvited guest, a process server who surprised everyone by delivering a writ to the groom, naming him in a palimony suit. He had been living with a prominent Georgetown socialite who was not about to fade away graciously after being dumped for another woman. The incident somehow made the morning paper and was picked up by the wire service and found its way into newspapers across the country. The following evening, as they were about to depart on their honeymoon, two federal agents showed up with bigamy warrants for her husband’s arrest. He had conveniently forgotten to tell her about the wives in Dallas, Seattle, and Los Angeles.

  After the annulment she asked to be transferred to any available position abroad, a week later she arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, once again serving as an interpreter. As coincidence would have it, Henri Tosi was on assignment in Paris using the Embassy as a line of communication to Langley. During this time Henri, a long time friend of her father’s, persuaded her to join the company. When, almost a year later, problems with security in the U.S. Embassy in East Germany became apparent she was asked to transfer to the embassy in East Berlin. At the embassy, just off Unter den Linden, almost within the shadow of Brandenburg Gate and a couple of blocks from the Russian Embassy, she uncovered another sex-for-secrets exchange. A marine sergeant serving as an embassy guard had been caught in the KGB net by a young woman working for the East German secret police, STASI. It was a case with shades of Jack Johnson and Jeanne Jouve, and she could not help thinking perhaps the stories she had heard were true and he was a traitor after all. Still, she could not fully accept the notion that Jack had betrayed his country, or perhaps, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it because it would then become a personal betrayal and like her father, she had fantasies. Another six months passed before she received the telephone call from her father urging her to return to Washington.

  Sherry had arrived in D.C. a day after Maxwell Alexander Kayne checked into Siempre Primavera. Henri had arranged everything for Sherry in San Diego just as he had made all the arrangements for Max. Henri was ninety-nine percent certain his old friend had told him the truth about everything, in which case he would probably need someone to help him adjust to his new life, and who better than Sherry. There was also a one percent possibly the KGB had, with mind altering drugs and numerous other methods of brainwashing, turned Jack around and possibly through hypnosis and drugs sent him unknowingly on a suicide mission—another Manchurian Candidate—in which case she would also be nearby. Her mission was to get close to Max and observe and report, but while carrying out her mission she’d fallen in love.

  Jack had been unaware of the two microchips placed in his upper torso by Doctor Chekhov and his staff as they simulated injuries received by David Harte. The good doctor had taken care in placing the microchips underneath his left clavicle, while simulating injuries to the left side of his head, neck and shoulders with several jagged cuts, supposedly the result of flying glass. The hair cut very short all over his head and shaved around the injuries, most of which required stitches, would be the area given most attention, or so Doctor Chekhov surmised. He thought it highly unlikely anyone would make a detailed examination of other areas. Jack might possible have some discomfort in his left shoulder, but was unlikely to suspect anything amiss. Even if he did associate the pain and the slight budge protruding from the area underneath his collar bone with the implications, where could he go, what could he do, who could he ask for an explanation or assistance? He certainly could not take the chance he might be discovered as a fraud and traitor to his country. His only hope would be to continue with the plan outlined for him by the KGB.

  Doctor Chekhov, unaware of the sophisticated medical equipment available in the west, had not counted on the medical staff at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda ordering a CAT scan. The examination, even with a CAT scan, had Henri Tosi not intervened, might not have been thorough enough to detect Doctor Chekhov’s handiwork. The tiny devices, no thicker than a dime and half the size, with highly sophisticated amel chromel junctions for power had been removed by Surgery’s Chief of Staff under the watchful eye of Bethesda’s Commanding Officer. After an alternate power source had been attached to keep the microchips operat
ional, they were turned over to Henri, with no questions asked, no records kept; there would be no discussion of the surgery by anyone outside the operating room.

  The AC Junction is a device originally designed to detect temperature changes in remote and hazardous areas. When the ends of two wires, one made of amel the other chromel, are connected and heat is applied, electrons flow from one metal to the other and the flow increases or decreases as the temperature changes. By connecting the other ends of the wires to a device capable of detecting the amount of change in electron flow, the related change in temperature at the junction could be observed and recorded from a safe location. Experimental laboratories hidden deep within the confines of the KGB apparatus had made use of the AC junction and adopted it to their own devious needs. By using loops of amel chromel wire thinner than an eyelash they designed a power supply that used heat generated by the human body that was capable of powering a microchip. Once, successfully implanted, barring physical damage, the microchip would continue to operate as long as their host was alive.