“I hope so. Keep in touch, Nick.”
“Good luck, Kate,” Nick said, extending his hand.
Would she need luck? She wasn’t sure. What’s more, she didn’t care.
Three days before Labor Day, Gus called, his voice full of excitement. “Kate, how would you like to go to Costa Rica with me for a week? Can you get away? I won this crazy trip and the tickets just arrived. I took my mother to this senior citizen thing and they were raffling off this prize and I goddamn won. Of course I bought all the tickets, so it was only natural that I would win. Pack your duds. I’ll meet you at LAX.”
“You bought all the tickets!”
“No one else wanted to buy them. The raffle was my mother’s idea. I was with her when she was considering the prize. I had a feeling no one would want to buy them so I held out for Costa Rica. She wanted Disney World. Write this down. We’re going to live in the bush, so don’t bring any fancy clothes. You game, Kate?”
“I’ll be there,” she said breathlessly. “Did you really buy all the tickets? How much?”
“Ten grand’s worth. The group had to make a profit. They’re taking a bus trip to Atlantic City. I’m giving each of them twenty-five bucks for the slots and lunch and dinner at Resorts. ”I love you, Kate Starr, soon to be Kate Stewart.”
“I love you, too, Gus Stewart.”
“You have a passport, don’t you?”
“Yep.”
“Thank God. Now write.”
Kate stuck the paper in her purse, stood, straightened the hem of her tailored jacket, looked around the office and said, “I’ll be leaving now. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I have things to do and places to go. Carry on, ladies and gentleman.”
From home she called Ellie, who squealed in delight. “In the bush! I love it. Go for it, Mom. When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow.”
She was light-headed, giddy, as she packed her bag and searched for her passport. She was going to see Gus again. “I’m blessed, truly blessed. Thank you, God, for sending him to me.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Komsomolets Island, Russia
“Captain Starr, there is someone here who wishes to talk with you. Mr. Gorbachev himself has sent this visitor,” a Russian guard said in broken English.
Patrick’s heart leaped. He had a visitor. “What does it mean?” he said in Russian to his guard. They were friends now, teaching each other English and Russian.
“I do not know. Perhaps something to do with the American inspection of the missile sites. We are scheduled to destruct the launchers and ancillary equipment. The Americans are to supervise. Perhaps they want your opinion,” he said slyly.
“And your ass goes in a sling when they see me. How are you guys going to explain keeping me here all these years? The shit is going to hit the fan. Finally. Come on, Sergi, is my visitor an American or Russian?”
“Both,” Sergi said.
“You shittin’ me?”
“That means what?”
“That means are you lying to me, you asshole?”
“Ah, yes, asshole I understand. Two visitors, one American, one Russian. They look important. Maybe American Express.”
“You mean American embassy. You are stupid, Sergi. Well, let’s go.”
“First you shave, comb hair, wear clean shirt. Asshole!”
“Up yours,” Patrick said, excitement rushing through him. It must mean something. It had to mean something. He cried when he shaved and combed his hair. He wiped at his tears with the back of his hand when he put on a clean shirt. He was shaking so badly he could hardly button his shirt. “Please God, let this be what I want it to be.”
“It is time, asshole,” Sergi said from the open doorway.
“No, no, I call you ‘asshole,’ not the other way around. Say you’re sorry, Sergi.”
“I’m sorry, what do I call you?”
“Try Captain Patrick Starr. I like the way that sounds.”
The guard spit on the bare floor. “Move,” he said sharply.
Patrick squared his shoulders and followed Sergi to a cold room with a table and four chairs. Seated at the table was one obviously Russian-looking man and an American who was thirty or so years of age—a good-looking young man with sandy hair and warm brown eyes that were now filling with moisture. His voice was husky and filled with emotion when he said, “Captain Starr?”
“God, yes. Yes, I’m Patrick Starr, United States Air Force. You found me!”
“Yes sir, we did. You’re going to make your family very happy, sir.”
The Russian held up his hand. “We talk first.”
“I’m David Peterson, this is Vladimir Suidnetzy. Sit down, Captain Starr. We have things to discuss.”
Patrick sat down, his breathing shallow. Why weren’t they just taking him out of here? Now that they knew he was here, he should be walking away with this David Peterson, who was as old as he was when he bailed out over Vietnam twenty years ago. He felt frightened and tried not to huddle on his chair. He blanked everything out, moved himself to Westfield, New Jersey. He was a kid again, riding his bicycle up and down the street, waiting for the guys to come out and play stickball, one ear tuned to his father’s call. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Kate Anders carrying a bag of trash to the curb. He sidled down the street, his feet propelling the Schwinn bike. “Whatcha doin’, Kate? Need any help?”
God, she was pretty, probably the prettiest girl in school. He liked her smile and the thick blond braids that were always tied with colored ribbons to match her dress. She had on the same dress she’d worn at school, red-and-white checks with some kind of X-ing around the hem. “You going to the picnic on Saturday? They’re gonna have all kinds of food and races and stuff. Huh?”
Kate’s saddle shoes scuffed at the cracked concrete walk. He noticed they were polished, the white part real shiny and the laces just as white as the tips of her shoes. “If you go, I kind of thought we could walk around together. I have two dollars I’ve been saving. I bet I could win you something.”
Kate blushed and continued digging at the crack. If she didn’t watch it, she was going to scuff the leather off the tip of her shoe. “Maybe. If I get my chores done. I don’t have any money, though. What could you win for me?” she asked shyly.
Maybe was almost as good as a yes. “You know, one of those things on a stick. Maybe a monkey, maybe a bear. Something like that. Jack’s mother is working at the hot dog stand. He said she’ll give us all hot dogs.”
“For free?” Kate asked in amazement.
“Well, sure. Will you try to go? I can meet you by the gate. Maybe you can get up early and do all your chores. I could even come by and ride you out to the picnic on my handlebars.”
“What if my dress blows up?” Kate asked anxiously.
“Well heck, Kate, hold it down. I don’t think there’s going to be any wind. I’ve been paying attention to the weather reports. They always give ’em in advance when it gets close to the date of the picnic. There’s gonna be an air show late in the afternoon. You’re the prettiest girl in school,” he blurted.
Kate turned beet-red. “You’re good-looking, too. All the girls make goo-goo eyes at you. Janie Chalmers wants you to kiss her.”
“Well, I’m not going to kiss her or anyone else. I’d kiss you, though, if you’d let me. Will you let me?”
“On the lips? I don’t know about that. I’m only thirteen. My mother says I can’t date or kiss boys until I’m eighteen.”
“That’s five years from now. Don’t tell her. Kisses are nice.”
“How do you know?” Kate asked suspiciously. “Who else did you kiss? I didn’t think you were that type. You know, going around kissing girls. Who’d you kiss?”
“Swear you won’t tell.”
“I swear I won’t tell,” Kate said solemnly.
“Nancy Eggers.”
“Nancy Eggers! Nancy Eggers! She’s older than you and she has pimples. Why’d you kiss Nancy?�
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“ ’Cause she’s the only one would let me. I wanted to see what it was like. I liked it. You’ll like it, too. I’ll show you how to pucker up. Don’t wear lipstick.”
Kate inched closer to the curb. “I’m not allowed to wear lipstick. C’mere ...” She motioned him closer to the curb, leaned over, and planted a wet kiss on his lips. Then she jumped backward and ran into the house.
“Oooheeee, we saw that, Pat!” his friends hooted from across the street, where they’d been concealed behind the hedges. “Pat has a girl, Pat has a girl. Pat loves Kate. You love Kate, don’t you?”
“Shut up, Danny, or I’ll punch you in the mouth. Now, you want to play stickball or not?”
“Patrick . . .”
“Captain Starr, are you listening to me?”
“What?” Patrick said, returning from his youth to the room he was in and the two men sitting across the table from him.
“Listen to me very carefully,” David Peterson said.
“We should be walking out of here. Now. We shouldn’t be sitting here talking. I’m a United States citizen and an Air Force officer shot down in the line of duty, and you want to fucking talk to me. Get me the fuck out of here!” Patrick said belligerently.
“I’m going to get you out of here, but first we have to talk.”
“Why can’t we talk on the way out?” Patrick snarled.
“Because we can’t, and that’s the best answer you’re going to get at the moment. Now I want you to tell me what happened from 1971 until 1973 when you were brought here. We think you were sent here in ’seventy-four because that’s when we lost track of you.”
“How’s my family? Do they think I’m dead? Do you have pictures of them? I want to see my family.”
David Peterson opened his briefcase and withdrew several photographs. “Your daughter’s graduation picture. Their faces are circled. Your daughter Betsy has a doctorate degree. Your daughter Ellie is a CPA. This is a picture of your wife taken at your younger daughter’s graduation.”
Patrick’s eyes filled with tears as he brought the pictures up close to his eyes. “I need glasses,” he said. “My teeth are rotten and need to be fixed.”
“That will all be taken care of. Now, tell us what happened.”
“Do you know any of it?”
“No, Captain Starr, I don’t. I guess you could say I was sent here because I was in the U.S. embassy in Moscow when the call came in. I was the one who could get here the fastest. We don’t want you here one minute longer than necessary. Please, the sooner you get on with it, the sooner we can get you out.”
“During my first tour I was flying Thuds. You probably know them as F-105 Thunderchiefs. I shot down four North Vietnamese aircraft, one shy of making me an ace. On this tour I was flying an F-4E Phantom 11 fighter-bomber. I’d only been flying bombing and flak/ missile suppression missions, so I didn’t get a chance to get my fifth MiG to win ace status. That ate at me.
“The F-4E was a real honey of an aircraft—she could drop bombs on a dime in support of ground troops, and handle recon, radar/flak/missile suppression, and MiG hunting. I was carrying eight tons of ammunition, bombs, air-to-ground missiles, napalm, and a combination of fuel tanks. I also had a Vulcan—that’s a twenty-millimeter cannon to you—that fired six thousand rounds a minute. God, I loved that plane.
“I was flying out of Ubon Air Base, Thailand, on this tour, as a member of the 547th Tactical Fighter squadron, part of the Eighth Tactical Fighter Wing. It was December fifth, 1970, and we were fragged, that is, scheduled to hit targets in North Vietnam. My primary target was the Radio Hanoi AM transmitter site—the NVA main propaganda and communication network. We were never able to put it out of commission.
“I was the leader of Romeo Flight. There were four F-4s, each of us equipped with two ‘smart bombs’—two-thousand-pound laser-guided bombs. Our mission was to take out Radio Hanoi.
“The site was surrounded by a twenty-foot-high wall. I put every one of the fucking bombs right into the target area. At one P.M. Hanoi time, right in the middle of a vicious anti-American broadcast beamed in English to our troops in South Vietnam, I cut off their transmission.
“I zoom off at five hundred knots. My weapon-system office reports the bombs smacked in the middle of the transmitter compound . . . when suddenly a surface-to-air missile detonates very close by with a hell of a flash and bang. Exploding fragments killed my WSO. My aircraft had serious damage to the hydraulic system. Christ, I had holes in my wings. I tried for as much altitude as I could get. I knew I’d never make it back to Thailand. The best I could hope for was to get out over open water where the U.S. Navy could pick me up. The others in the squadron who dropped their bombs warned me I was on fire. My cockpit filled with smoke and the F-4 started to yaw to the right, wanting to go into a roll. I knew then I couldn’t control it. My wingman is yelling for me to punch out before the F-4 explodes.
“I knew my WSO was dead, he wasn’t answering my calls, so I released my canopy and fired the ejection charges. I was dazed with the force of the ejection explosion, but I was okay. I’m swinging underneath this parachute. I activated my survival radio in my vest in case any rescue aircraft can locate my position once I’m on the ground. I didn’t think there would be any rescue, but I hoped. I prayed all the way down. I landed in a rice paddy swarming with Vietnamese.
“Man, I literally fell into the arms of my captors. They immediately stripped me of everything but my flight suit. They didn’t hurt me then. The next thing I knew, I was in a truck and driven blindfolded into Hanoi.
“I guess I was treated to the standard North Vietnamese routine for the first three days. I was yanked into the commandant’s office at the end of the third day. He told me I was the lead aircraft that bombed the Hanoi transmitter site—” Patrick’s voice faltered and broke. “It seems his fiancee was the one doing the broadcasting when I pulverized her. He was in such a fucking rage I thought he was going to kill me. They threw me in isolation and beat me senseless. There wasn’t anything they didn’t do to me. They told me they broke me. I have to believe they did, but I have no memory of it. The commandant got a kick out of repeating the things I told him.
“There were other Americans there. I heard them talking, but I was so bad off, I couldn’t talk. They left me alone to rot in my cell for a week, maybe it was longer, I don’t remember. I tried to scratch my name in the wall, but I don’t know if I did. Maybe I thought I did it.
“More time passed. Maybe weeks. Maybe months.” Patrick shrugged. “Anyway, one morning—it was still dark outside—my guards took me to the commandant’s office, where he served me up this speech. He said he’d informed the Russians that I was a highly skilled pilot and someone they would like to talk to. It was his revenge, he said. He said I would never see my country again or my family. Then I was brought here to this missile base.
“At first the KGB was all over me, questioning and testing me, demanding long technical descriptions of various American fighter aircraft and aerial weapons and electronics gear. They wanted to know it all. I resisted at first, but they wore me down with drugs. One of the guards told me I was like a vegetable for a long time. I don’t know how long. That was the end of it. The guards told me that over the years they forgot about me. They’d go off on a furlough and come back, and after a while we almost became friends. Once or twice they even brought me a woman. I never had enough to eat, was never warm enough. Sometimes they gave me aspirin. Once, one of the guards took pity on me and pulled out a molar that was decayed. With pliers.
“I was passed from one commandant to another. I guess you could say I was their mascot. Life was tolerable. I was alive, but that was all. I never gave up hope I would be found.
“I learned Russian, and I tried to teach two of the guards English. We managed to communicate. Sergi told me about the Strategic Arms Treaty and said maybe I’d be sent home. I hung on to that. I’ve been counting the days, just waiting for the American inspecti
on of this missile site. I figured they’d hide me when that happened, so I’ve been working on Sergi, hoping he’d let something slip or outright tell the Americans I was here. I told him if I got out, I’d take him back to America with me. The jerk wants to meet Jane Fonda.
“That’s my story, Mr. Peterson. Now, how did you find me? Who told you I was here? There hasn’t been an inspection.”
“Gorbachev has taken over and he’s initiated glasnost,” Peterson said. “You know about START. They called. On the telephone. The White House. They offered to return you if you agree to keep your mouth shut until Gorbachev’s government reforms are securely in place. The question now is, will you keep your mouth shut? If you agree, sign on the dotted line, you walk. That means no parade. No interviews with the press. No nothing. We move you home, you join your family. We say, if necessary, you are a cousin of Patrick Starr. The government will compensate you. You have to understand you will not go home to a hero’s welcome. Unfair, I grant you, but that’s the way it is.”
He was back in Westfield at his high school graduation, decked out in his cap and gown. He was valedictorian of his graduating class, his speech firmly in mind. He was going to locate Kate and speak directly to her so he wouldn’t get nervous. She’d curled her hair and was wearing pink lipstick.
It was all planned; they were going to run away together after graduation. He had $700 and Kate had $290. They’d get other gifts of money at graduation, enough for them to pack up his clunker and head out to Texas, where he’d been accepted at Texas A&M. He was going for his B.S. in engineering. He was going to join ROTC and get his commission in the USAF. From there he’d go on to get his M.S. in aerospace engineering. If he was lucky, with Kate at his side, he’d try for the U.S. Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB, California.
Kate was confident she could make a home for them cheaply, baby-sit children for extra money. He’d work part-time. Kate said they could do it. He believed her.
Off we go, into the wild blue yonder ...
To Have and to Hold Page 24
