Harry was on the floor of the senate until nearly ten Wednesday evening. His driver was on hand and waiting after eight. Harry didn’t want to waste any time getting out of there.
The limo moved along Pennsylvania Avenue into the Maryland suburbs. Traffic was moderate and it took a half hour to reach Hyde Field. Harry said goodnight to his driver as he got out of the car that stopped next to the plane.
The twin engine Beechcraft stood ready. Harry had his mechanic roll her out of the hangar late that afternoon. He’d have started her engines and let them run while he ran checks on the plane’s systems. It was the same mechanic who worked on the Apache after Harry first started flying into DC.
These days, Clay flew the Apache to speaking engagements. When he flew in to speak in DC, the same mechanic still checked the Apache for anything suspicious. Harry believed in preventive maintenance. No one wanted to run into trouble at ten thousand feet.
His driver waited for the plane to get into the air just to be sure. The engines fired fine and they warmed while Harry checked his gauges, listened to the sounds the engines made, and strapped himself in. He gave a final wave to his driver, giving him a thumbs up, before the Beechcraft started to roll toward the end of the runway.
Harry moved the plane to the top of the runway, held the brake and revved the engines before releasing the power. The plane picked up speed and slowly the Beechcraft lifted into the night sky. He leveled out at a thousand feet and set a southern heading.
He held the plane steady to be sure he didn’t accidentally stray into DC’s restricted air space. At a thousand feet, the Capitol, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial came into view off his starboard side. It was a view that never failed to thrill Harry. He never got tired of seeing the sight of one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
It was the city where Harry did business and he loved it.
Crossing the Potomac, the Beechcraft passed into Virginia. Harry checked his gauges one more time and he began his climb to eight thousand feet. In less than a half hour, he was passing Richmond on his port side. He set his heading for south southwest at 300mph before clicking on the automatic pilot.
This was when Harry leaned back in his seat. He couldn’t sleep while he was behind the controls of a plane, but he could enjoy the view, and after Richmond, there were no bright lights to dim the night sky. He’d climbed above the clouds and he could see forever.
A million stars lighted his way. It was Harry, the Beechcraft, and the universe stretched out before him. In less than two hours he’d begin seeing the lights of Atlanta. An hour and a half after that, he’d be out over the Gulf of Mexico and on his final approach to his house.
This was thinking time for Harry. Once he went on automatic pilot, he could allow his mind to wander. Harry’s mind wandered onto the problems he left behind him. They’d be waiting when he returned. After working out how he’d tackle those, his mind might go off on an unguided tangent of one kind or another.
Going home always excited Harry. Seeing the Gulf of Mexico, after weeks of being landlocked in DC, was invigorating. It was the people that most often came to mind. Clay and what a wonderful job he was doing. He would see Bill and that young filmmaker. He’d get to see what the summer’s research trip looked like.
He was going home and leaving the formality of government behind. Governing kept him too busy to think about what was going on at home. Leaving it behind was always a pleasure. The informality of the cove was a comfort.
He spent some time locating each constellation of stars he could identify, and, after that, his thoughts drifted out beyond the plane and into the unrestrained sky ahead.
Harry McCallister was a lucky guy. The life he had didn’t have anything to do with the life he was living when his father died. Harry had another twenty or thirty years to play before he planned to get serious about his life. The unexpected death of his father changed everything. Suddenly, Harry’s plate was full to overflowing. Harry didn’t know a thing about the Sanibel Island Conservancy. He hung out there as a kid, when he was off from school and he couldn’t think of anything else to do. He could walk there from the house.
His father rarely left his office. Harry didn’t go there unless he was in trouble again.
Harry liked the way everyone at the Conservancy treated him. He was treated like he was the boss’s son. No one told him to get lost, because his father was the boss, and then he died and Harry was in charge of the people who were intimidated by him being around.
In those days, even after finishing college, Harry couldn’t find his ass with both hands. He never was expected to do anything beyond pass his courses and stay out of the old man’s way. How was he going to run the Sanibel Island Conservancy?
His grandfather lived to be eighty. His father kicked him out of the head office to take over. He thought of all those big black cigars his father smoked and all the bourbon he’d seen him drink. Had they done his father in? His grandfather smoked big black cigars and he drank even more bourbon than his father drank.
One day Harry was hanging around. The next day he was in charge.
He would have been lost, except for Peg Ryan, his father’s secretary. Peg actually ran the Sanibel Island Conservancy for his father. Peg knew what needed to be done and she did it. His father signed papers she put in front of him and he talked to donors and friends of the Conservancy.
How’d Harry find this out? Peg told him.
The first day Harry took over, Peg walked into his office without knocking. He should have been outraged at the lack of courtesy, but he was still trying to figure out what he was doing there. Besides, of all the people at the Conservancy, Peg was the most intimidating.
She walked to the front of his father’s desk and stood over him.
“Here’s the deal, Harry. I’ll let you sit behind that big expensive desk, and I can do what needs doing, or I can teach you to do what needs to be done. If that doesn’t suit you, I can retire. I have a wonderful retirement fund your father set up for me. You want to play ball or do I quit?”
Harry remembered the panic that ran through him and that made him smile. Peg Ryan had been running the show for years. His father smoked his cigars and drank his bourbon back in his office, waiting to sign something.
As he got accustomed to sitting behind his father’s desk, Peg would bring his coffee first thing each morning. She sat down with her cup of coffee, and she began teaching him the business of the Conservancy. Peg was no spring chicken. She wasn’t going to be around forever, and Harry needed to learn the family business.
“It’s not as bad as you think it is, Harry. I can walk you through it, and if you really want to conserve something, we can start with the Gulf of Mexico. Your father believed we should keep a low profile, but the donors are waiting for us to do something. I can guide you to people who will help you put this Conservancy on the map if you aren’t afraid of a little work.”
Harry remembered how fast she got his attention. He could laugh now. Peg began showing him what his father did, what his father didn’t do, and how the Conservancy could make a difference to the Gulf of Mexico. It was why the Conservancy was created, only it had never lived up to its charter, because of who ran the show.
Peg never treated him like he was her boss’s son. Now, he knew why. She’d done everything but sign the checks. She kept the Conservancy and his father from being a failure. It seems the best thing the McCallisters did was get the Conservancy out of Broadmoore’s hands.
He was hardly out of college when he took over. Luckily, not being far from those college days, Harry wasn’t far from a class one of his favorite professors taught. It was a class in marine biology. Harry took the class because of the professor, and because he knew he’d take over the Conservancy for his father one day.
“Professor Payne, my father died recently and he left me in charge of the Sanibel Island Conservancy,” Harry told him.
“You’re that McCallister, Mr. McCallister,” Bill said.
“I am. I need help making the Conservancy conserve something. My secretary, Dad’s secretary, wants to conserve the Gulf of Mexico.”
“That would be a start. You want me to drop by and give you some pointers?” Bill Payne asked his former student.
“Yes, that’s why I called. I don’t know anything, and instead of calling me Mr. McCallister, can you call me Harry, Professor?”
Bill Payne could and did, and Harry would call him Bill. It was the beginning of one of Harry’s best friendships. Bill Payne had forgotten more marine biology than most people ever learned. He spent a lot of time in the cove from then on.
Harry was on his way home and he’d see Clay and Bill. They were responsible for the Conservancy’s success as much as he was.
Harry thought about one disaster he faced a few years after he took over. The wiring in the building was old, and he needed to do something to keep the lights on. Every week it seemed like there was another failure. Each problem needed professional attention. If he didn’t want to build a new Conservancy building, he needed to do something to head off more trouble.
Peg said, “Advertise for a fulltime handyman. This building is going to fall down around your shoulders. Hire a guy that can prevent such a thing from happening.”
Enter John Olson, his wife, and six kids. Harry smiled to himself. Best damn decision I ever made. At first John simply stopped the bleeding. He always had a project going when something else went wrong he needed to attend to. All his sons worked for the Conservancy. The trash was always picked up and the beaches had never been as clean as when John’s boys worked for him.
The one son, the youngest, didn’t work for him. At fifteen, he worked for Nick Aleksa. He went fishing with Nick Aleksa on the Vilnius II, with his best friend Ivan.
Clayton Olson, Harry thought to himself. Where would the Conservancy be without Clay?
Bored one afternoon and with nothing to sign, Harry remembered going back to John’s shop to see which project he was working on today.
When he walked in, John was on the phone, and didn’t come to meet him. Looking straight ahead of him, Harry noticed the jars for the first time. He went to pick one up. Inside, preserved in a clear liquid, was a sea creature Harry couldn’t identify.
“What are these?” Harry asked, when John came over.
“Clay’s collection of marine life specimens. They come out of Nick’s nets. Clay likes to collect them. He has a sketch book. He sketches the more unusual ones.”
“Your youngest?” Harry asked, picking up another bottle.
“No, Lucy’s the youngest. He’s the youngest boy.”
“John, I am going to call a marine biologist to come look at these. Would you mind?”
“No, I just let Clay store them here. He won’t mind.” The next day Bill Payne came to the Conservancy. He came to look at the bottles with the specimens Harry told him about.
Bill asked John for a marker pen and some sticky labels. As he picked up a bottle, he attached a label, and he wrote the name of the specimen on the label. He labeled 37 specimens. Three of the labels were blank.
“If I can take these back to the university with me, I’ll figure out what they are. I’ve never seen them before. They may be new species or a variation of an already discovered species,” he said.
Before he left, Bill Payne told Harry, “This kid is a natural marine biologist. Do yourself a favor and get him working for you. My bet is, he’ll jump at a chance to make his hobby his career.”
Clayton Olson was about to become a really big deal at the Conservancy. Little did Harry know how important Clay would be to him and his Conservancy. Harry shook his head at how fortunate he was. They’d all come such a long way. What an incredible journey it had been. Because of Clay, Harry was freed up to run for his father’s seat in congress while Clay was still in school. Clayton Olson had a lot to do with Harry’s success and the continued success of the Conservancy.
Harry was a real big deal in congress and Clay was Harry’s man in the Gulf of Mexico. Harry was a senator. He’d gone further than either his father or grandfather went. Not only that, he put the Conservancy on the map, only he didn’t do that. Peg taught him how to run a conservancy. Clayton Olson furnished the gusto that made the Sanibel Island Conservancy a force to be reckoned with. Clay’s voice was the voice that came from the Conservancy, not Harry’s, but it was Harry’s Conservancy.
That gave Harry more credibility than he’d ever known before.
Harry was a senator but Clay spoke for his Conservancy. Harry remembered when he talked to Nick Aleksa about Clay picking up specimens that came out of Nick’s nets.
“Quite a boy. I thought he was doing something important. My boy, Ivan, is Clay’s best friend. They couldn’t wait to go fishing. I wouldn’t allow it until they were fifteen.” Harry remembered it all right.
Ivan Aleksa, Harry thought to himself.
A shiver ran through him.
That boy took him as close to the edge as Harry ever wanted to go. If Clay was a force of nature, Ivan was the man who walked so close to the razor’s edge no one would bet he wasn’t about to plunge into the abyss.
With one foot suspended in air and the toes of his other foot hanging over the edge, Ivan pulled back and lived to tell the tale.
Harry shivered again when he remembered the phone ringing. That phone call was as vivid to him now as the night it entangled him in the mess Ivan Aleksa got himself into ten thousand miles away. He’d come into his private office and sat behind his desk. He reached for the bottle of bourbon, after pouring branch water into the glass. He leaned back to take in the rich aroma coming from the liquid inside the glass. He tossed it back before he began working on another drink.
It had already been a long day and he was glad it was over, and with a half-made drink in one hand, the phone rang as he reached for the bottle of bourbon.
There were two phones. One was the office line that would automatically pick up without him needing to take the call. The second phone was a private line. He knew right away which it was.
“Congressman Harry McCallister, how can I help you?”
Only a handful of people had the number to his private line. He expected to hear a voice he recognized. It was the number Harry gave to a select few people. It was to be called only in an emergency. Harry didn’t say anything else. He listened. After ten seconds or so, there was a foreboding click.
Harry ran the names through his mind. Each one who had his gold embossed congressman’s card with the private number on the back. These were the people closest to him. These were people who knew to call him if they needed help.
As he looked at the phone and hung it up, he was saying each name and he knew where each one was at that moment. One name, the name of the person closest to Clay, was given a card because he was with Clay when Clay got his card. Harry knew how close they were, and so Ivan Aleksa got the card and the private number.
Two kids in a cove fifty miles from anywhere; how could they be involved in any intrigue beyond kid’s stuff? Where was Ivan Aleksa? Harry knew the story about Ivan going to get his brother. He laughed when he heard it. What can a kid do?
“Operator, I’m Congressman Harry McCallister. Do you recognize my name? No, you don’t need to know who I am. I need to speak to your supervisor right away. Consider it an emergency if you will.”
“Ivan Aleksa,” Harry said to no one. “I know where everyone is, except for Ivan Aleksa. Why did I give him a card? Clayton Olson.”
Harry had another chill run through him as he described what had taken place to the supervisor who said she’d be right back.
It took fifteen minutes for the supervisor to get back to him. If Ma Bell did anything well, it was to keep records for billing purposes.
“The call originated in Southeast Asia. I got as far as Phnom Penh, and then I was blocked from learning the number it came from, Congressman. It doesn’t make any sense. I can trace any number in the world if it isn’t government protected or someone has an illegal connection of one kind or another. I’ll take this to my supervisor in the morning, if you like. She’ll get that number for you.”
“Thank you. No, don’t bother your supervisor. I think I know how that number was blocked.”
On the pad on Harry’s desk in front of him, he wrote in huge letters, CIA. He began crossing the letters out as soon as he wrote them. Harry knew nothing about the secret organization. He feared what his next move had to be.
Harry looked at the pad. The letters were completely obscured, but he knew what the letters were. He sat in the dark until he got up to look out the window toward the Mall. It was a view he loved.
“Ivan Aleksa, who has you?” Harry said to no one.
Harry knew he couldn’t let go of this. If it was anyone but Clay, maybe, but he needed to follow through, like it or not.
He knew where his next call would go. He’d stalled long enough. He switched on his lamp and he opened the bottom drawer in his desk. He took out the phone book he was given the day he was sworn in as a congressman. Listed were the numbers of every government agency.
“Yes, I’m Congressman Harry McCallister. I need to speak to the director as soon as possible. Tell him it concerns Ivan Aleksa.”
Harry kept his finger on the disconnect button for a long time. A can of worms had been opened now. Why was he doing this? Someone called his private number and he didn’t like it.
“I hope you aren’t leading me down the rabbit hole, Ivan.”
Harry knew about Clay and Ivan and he heard the reason why Ivan was no longer in the cove. He couldn’t believe anyone was that stupid, and Ivan was a clever lad. He’d been told that Ivan had gone to get his brother, Boris, who was lost in Southeast Asia. Twelve people had the card with his private number on the back. He knew where all twelve were right now. He knew where Ivan had gone and that call could only mean trouble.
Whoever had Ivan had Ivan’s wallet. In that wallet he’d found a congressman’s card. The man couldn’t resist calling the number handwritten on the back. What did it mean? Should he tell Clay?
He looked at the pad again. If it wasn’t for Clay, he would not be sticking his neck out. If Clay knew Ivan was in trouble, and Harry did nothing to help him, that wouldn’t end well for Clay, Ivan, or Harry.
Harry didn’t know what it meant for two men to love each other, but if it was like when a man loved a woman, heaven help them.
Heaven help him now that he’d called Langley.
Once the director at Langley met him, Harry wasn’t sure he’d live to tell the tale. Even walking back to his car, he kept looking over his shoulder. The director had appeared in front of congress one time when he was present. It was like trying to get information out of a turnip. Spooks were supposed to be spooky. It was part of their mystique. No one knew what the Company did. No one was supposed to know and you were better off not knowing.
Over the years when environmental entities wanted to meet with someone on Capitol Hill, Harry was the congressman they wanted to talk to most. When a senate seat came open in 1976, the environmental groups were fast to back the man who had his man in the Gulf of Mexico.
The years ticked by and Ivan Aleksa’s name was never mentioned. Whatever it was about, it hadn’t come back on Harry. Senator Harry McCallister was far better known as the environmental senator. With higher office came power. Harry didn’t mind the power. It got him wonderful tables at the best restaurants.
The environmental congressman was the environmental senator now. When the new president, Jimmy Carter, put solar panels on the roof at the White House, Harry was beside him in the picture.
Few folks in DC didn’t know who the environmental senator was.
Harry was ribbed a bit about that picture, but he could take it, because Jimmy Carter promised, “By the year 2000, 20% of America’s energy will come from renewable sources.”
Bill and Clay warned that drilling oil, drilling for oil under bodies of water like the Gulf of Mexico, would only lead to disaster. There was no good outcome while the huge rigs pumped and spilled oil as they drilled and pumped, drilled and pumped, drilled and pumped.
When Harry went looking for information on the new president, wanting a leg up on his fellows, he found a story about Jimmy Carter going to Canada in 1952 to lead an effort to stop a nuclear power plant that was in the process of melting down.
That took some gigantic balls, Harry thought as he read.
President Carter was depicted as a peanut farmer from hicksville. The opposition claimed, “Mr. Jimmy is in over his head.’
Jimmy Carter was one of the most intelligent men Harry had ever encountered. The man wasn’t into pretense or the reckless display of his immense power.
He made time for Harry anytime Harry called with a suggestion or an idea on the environment, a subject that concerned them both. What other president gave a damn about the environment in his lifetime? Not only cared but cared enough to do something about it. It was 1979 when Harry next heard anything about Ivan Aleksa. Actually, this communication didn’t come to his private number late at night. There was a message on his desk from the man he talked to at immigrations. The name was as cryptic to Harry as it probably was to the director at Langley, all those years ago.
“Call me,” was the man’s message.
“Aleksa,” was written on the subject line.
How long had it been? Harry thought, looking at the message.
Harry had one call to make before he made up his mind what to do about Ivan and his brother. He pulled out his old congressional phone book, because he didn’t want to ask his secretary for the number. This call was private and it was going to give him a great deal of satisfaction to touch base with the director.
“Mr. Director, Senator Harry McCallister. I want to know about Ivan Aleksa. I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. No telling which secret agency might be listening, you know. ASAP, Mr. Director. This afternoon at three would be fine. See you then.”
No, Harry wasn’t going to meet the director at his convenience.
The first time around Harry had been a piss ant congressman and he had to go to the director if he could get a meeting at all. Harry was a senator now. He didn’t go to anyone. They came to him, and this time the director could look over his shoulder for a while.
Harry had his secretary get the man at immigrations.
“Can you get Ivan a message for me?” Harry asked his source. “He needs to see me in DC before going to the cove. If he needs help getting that done, have him call me. Thanks. You’ve been a big help.”
Ivan did call Harry. He was very much alive. He was very much alive as was his brother Boris, the man he went to get. Boris was with Ivan. Boris and his family were with him and the DOD was frantic trying to figure out if Boris might be a Manchurian Candidate.
By April of 1979 Ivan, Boris and his family were cleared to enter the country without restriction. Because of how traumatic the flight out of Okinawa was for Boris, Ivan was going to buy a car and he’d drive home. First, before he could buy a car, he needed a California Driver’s License. Everything took time.
Harry booked them into the Mayflower Hotel and arranged to have Ivan picked up by his driver and delivered to his office once they made it to DC. It was important for Harry to hear what had happened to Ivan to keep him in Southeast Asia for all those years.
Harry was in a committee meeting when he was handed a note. “The package from California has arrived.”
When Harry walked into his private office, Ivan stood looking out of his window on the Mall. Ivan turned to shake hands with the senator. Ivan was in his teens the last time Harry saw him. Now he was a full grown man in his late twenties.
“It’s quite beautiful, you know,” Ivan said. “I was only here for war protest marches in 69 and 70,” he said.
“You were a boy the last time I saw you. You’re a grown man.”
“How’s Clay?” Ivan asked. “I haven’t called him. I wouldn’t know what to say. How is he?”
“Sit. That’s one of the reasons I wanted you here. I want to know where you’ve been and what you’ve done, Ivan. I do not want you upsetting Clayton. He didn’t take your departure well and as little as I know about it, I do not want him upset.”
“I don’t either, senator. I want to go home and get on with my life,” Ivan said.
“I assume the accommodations at Mayflower are satisfactory?”
“Yes, I taught them to use room service before I came over here. They were ordering snacks when I left,” Ivan said.
“Can’t wait for the bill,” Harry said. “I want the story from you Ivan. I don’t want to hear it from anyone else. I stuck my neck out for you, and I expect your cooperation in not upsetting Clay.”
“I’m there. No upsetting. I’m going home and starting my life over again. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to go home.”
“Tell me about it. Start at the beginning. Leave nothing out.”