Mission Compromised (75 page)

 

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.

Rachel was awestruck. “That was beautiful,” she said in a whisper.

Her husband explained, “That green flash is caused by the bending of light waves as they pass through the atmosphere. The air, at different density and temperature, acts for an instant like a giant prism. At the end of a clear day, when the cool and warm air conditions are just right, the blue and green wavelengths refract more than the red and yellow—and for an instant—the blue bands are made invisible by the nitrogen in the atmosphere.”

Rachel laughed. “You scientific types take all the romance out of everything.”

And her husband, almost as though he was a thousand miles away, quietly responded, “Yeah, you're right. It is beautiful. My dad showed that to Jim and me a long time ago when we were little boys, on a fishing
trip on the Oregon coast. Later that night, over a campfire, he told us of an old Irish—or was it Scottish?—legend, that God promised true love and happiness to all who are privileged to see the green flash.”

The two of them sat there, close together in the cockpit of the big boat, until it began to get dark. Rachel said, “Look, we've got to go to dinner with these two men. And you didn't even bother to introduce me to Mr. Goode. Is there a shower down below?”

“Yeah,” said Peter, “what do you have in mind?”

She punched him playfully on the shoulder and said, “Later, big boy. You go below and get cleaned up. I'll run over to one of those shops.” She pointed beyond the chain-link fence fifty meters from the bow of the boat. “I'll get you a shirt, a decent pair of trousers, some shoes, and socks.”

She pecked him on the cheek and ran down the gangway, headed for the gate about seventy-five yards up the quay from the slip. Peter watched the armed sentries salute as she presented her military ID card and saw her disappear into the traffic in the street. He then went below, found a razor and some shaving soap, and entered the head on the starboard side, just forward of the master cabin.

 

 

Rachel had quickly found a men's shop and in no time had a shopping bag full of new clothing for her husband. But on her way back to the gate, she noticed a cute little boutique with a lovely print dress on a mannequin in the window. She paused, made her decision, and went inside.

The very helpful English-speaking sales clerk found what she thought would be Rachel's size and suggested that she go in the back and try it on.

Rachel set her packages on a table in the back of the little store and entered the nicely-appointed changing room. She had just slipped the dress on and was admiring it in the full-length mirror when there was a knock on the door. Rachel turned the knob and started to say, “It fits just fine,” but the door flew open and a large man charged in, pinning her against the back wall. Her eyes widened in terror as she got her first glimpse of the attacker. He grabbed Rachel with an arm around her neck in a chokehold, and then in the mirror she could see he had a knife in his hand. He pressed the point against her throat.

“Don't scream or I'll kill you,” he growled, his breath foul and his voice heavily accented, as he put all his weight on Rachel to hold her down on the little seat inside the changing room. He reached outside the door with his right foot to pull the door closed behind him. But suddenly the man grunted as his leg was grabbed from outside. Rachel saw his foot twisted violently, then she heard the snapping of bone and sinew. Her attacker screamed.

As Rachel struggled to free herself from his dead weight, she looked over his shoulder and recognized, standing in the doorway, one of the Marines who had been aboard the C-17 with General Grisham. But he wasn't in uniform. The man who had attacked her was big—but her rescuer was even bigger; his build and appearance reminded her of George Foreman.

In what seemed to Rachel to be a single fluid motion, the civilian-clad Marine released the attacker's broken leg, reached into the little room, and grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the knife. There was a quick, twisting motion, and the knife tumbled from the attacker's now-useless hand.

The American then grabbed the man's hair, pulled his head back and slammed his left fist at the attacker's protruding Adam's apple. At
the same time he jerked the man to his feet, spun him around, and kneed him hard in the groin. As the attacker fell in a heap at Rachel's feet, the Marine sergeant reached down and removed the man's wallet from his back pocket, then slipped it into his own. He reached down to help Rachel to her feet. It all happened so quickly that she was disoriented, almost dizzy.

“Oh, thank God you were right there!” Though Rachel hugged him, her rescuer still eyed the inert attacker. The Marine kicked the knife across the floor and said, “Got your things?” Rachel, still somewhat in shock at the sudden violence, nodded and picked up the dress she had worn into the shop. On the way out, he asked, “Are these yours too?” Again she nodded, and the Marine picked up the shopping bags of clothing she had purchased for her husband. “We probably ought to see if there's a back way out of here,” he added. “I sent the store clerk to get the police. You can take care of the bill later. Let's go.”