Was the financial crisis of 2008 caused by a small group of greedy Wall Street bankers-or was there something more sinister at work? Did it begin when free-market politicians gained control of Washington DC, or was it linked to a longer history, starti
Points on a Line
By D. L. GentschiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 D. L. Gentsch
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4759-2177-9Chapter One
Present Time
"COLONEL RINCON, WHERE are we headed?"
We were in a C-130 transport twenty minutes out from the city of Buenos Aires. Colonel Rincon had commandeered me at my apartment an hour earlier to take part in what he called "a little exercise." You didn't say "no" to the higher ups in the Argentine military—especially if you were an American advisor to the country's economic team.
"Señor Anders, tonight we are doing God's will ... and the will of your presidente. You will soon see." He smiled. "You will see how we in my country deal with our mutual problem."
I sat quietly in the cockpit pondering the possibilities of our "mutual problem" as we flew low to the ground headed eastward toward the dusk. In the far distance, I saw the last vestiges of sunlight glimmering on the Rio de la Plata. When we crossed the land boundary of Argentina and were surrounded by water, the plane banked sharply right and began a circling pattern, gradually descending until the force of the mighty engines whipped up waves across the giant river.
"Come with me, Jude Anders."
Obligingly, I unbuckled myself and moved toward Rincon, already at the cockpit door, and followed him and his heavy scent of old Spice cologne into the enormous cargo hold of the C-130. There were more than a dozen people sleeping on the floor fully clothed amidst green and blue plastic tarps strewn about the hold. Rincon nodded to a corporal standing about half-way down the length of the vast space. He and several soldiers began prodding the sleeping bodies awake, kicking them in their sides and, if that didn't work, in the head. The corporal slid open the mid-plane cargo door, and a loud rush of cool air quickly circled inside, flapping the plastic tarps.
"¡Tírenlos vivos al río!" Rincon commanded.
The corporal grabbed the nearest body by the arm, a half-asleep young man with dark stubble, and pulled him to a kneeling position, his sleepy face looking out the door of the plane. Rincon nodded his approval, and with the force of his large army boot on the man's butt the corporal shoved him overboard.
A dark haired man, older than the first and dressed in jeans and a black sweater, struggled to his feet in the middle of the cargo hold.
Rincon glared at him, hatred in his eyes. "¡El proximo!" Rincon pointed directly at him.
A soldier kept shoving the dark figure until they reached the open door. The man gazed outside, but suddenly turned to Rincon and me, his eyes glued on mine. I couldn't pull away from his cold, dark gaze.
"El cuervo," he said. It wasn't more than a whisper. But before another word could pass his lips, the corporal grabbed him by the back of his jacket and with one swift motion tossed him out of the plane.
The corporal nodded toward another body on the floor as the plane banked hard in a tight circle. This time, he'd selected a woman, probably late twenties, like the man before her. A soldier nudged her with his boot, and she slowly got to her feet. Her long, wavy brown hair slightly obscured her face as she was pushed toward the open door. Was it the hair or the sharply chiseled features of her profile that vaguely reminded me of someone? I strained my memory, but the corporal tossed her over the side of the plane before I could figure it out.
The corporal gazed around the hold at the remaining souls. A teenage boy near the door had gotten to his feet and looked wide-eyed around the plane as though desperately searching for someone. Rincon's man grabbed the boy by his arm and flung him out the door with a single hand. One after another I watched as each one—seven men and almost as many women, somewhat awake now but stunningly silent—was dragged to the door, only to disappear across that thin line that separated the inside from out. They were all so young. None complained. They were free.
Rincon smiled. "Young men and woman, in a nice little sleep, and now going for a swim on a warm spring day. See, Señor Anders, we solve our mutual problem!"
I looked around, but the cargo hold of the C-130 was empty. The sleepers had gone for their swim.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are making our initial approach ..."
I turned to see who was speaking, but only Rincon and three of his men were talking to each other.
"At this time we ask that you buckle your seatbelts, put away your tray tables, and return your seatbacks to their upright position."
Rincon's mouth was moving, but it was a woman's voice that I was hearing. I felt a hand on my shoulder.
"Mr. Anders ... Mr. Anders."
I awoke with a start; the flight attendant continued to jostle me before withdrawing. "We have begun our initial descent into Athens. Please bring your seatback to its upright position." She smiled, pausing a moment, then continued navigating the aisle with a trash bag in her hand.
I stared at the TV screen on the seatback in front of me, my mind moving sluggishly back to reality. It was explaining custom procedures to expect in Greece. I moved the lever to raise my seatback. The dream was over, but its horror lingered.
The wheels of the plane met the concrete runway with a shudder, and I quickly tucked the book I had tried to read before falling asleep into my backpack. After a long taxi to the gate and equally long disembarking of the crowded plane, I finally made my way up the jet way and through the terminal—a labyrinth of twists and turns that eventually led me to baggage claim. At customs, the line was shorter than I expected; almost immediately a customs agent beckoned me forward. Hurriedly I pulled my passport and declaration form from my backpack and waited while he looked them over for what seemed like forever. Was his thoroughness just an act?
"How long will you be staying in Greece, Mr. Anders?" he finally asked.
"I have a three month lease on a small house on Amorgos outside of Lagada."
"So, three months then. What is the purpose of your trip?"
"To get away from the U.S. for awhile. Relax. Maybe do some writing."
The agent gazed at me for along moment. He looked back at my passport. "Well, Mr. Anders, you will be far away from your country on Amorgos." he looked back to me square on. "How are things in the U.S. now?"
My first instinct was to ask which one, but decided against a flippant response. "Marginally better, I guess."
"It is not much better here. But I suspect you know that. Do you have the address of the house where you will be staying?"
I quickly pulled out the rental agreement from my backpack and handed it to him. He typed the address of my rental house into the computer, closed my passport, and handed it and the rental paper back to me.
"Have a nice visit," he said as he waved at the next person in line without another glance at me.
I picked up my luggage but tried not to rush as I exited customs. once inside the main terminal, I adjusted my watch to the local time and changed my cash into drachmas. The bills were worn and faded, and smelled as though they were just pulled out of storage. While I checked the information kiosk for ferry departure times, a cabby waved at me from the curb. A ferry to Amorgos was leaving in an hour and thirty minutes; the cab was my only option if I was to catch it.
The taxi driver approached me and took hold of my roller bag.
"Do you speak english?" I asked.
"Small," he responded.
"How long to get to the Port of Athens where the ferries leave?" I hoped he understood more english than he could speak.
"Take back road. Sea, then port."
"How long?" I asked again.
The cabby put up a single finger in the air, which I took to mean one hour. That would be cutting it close.
"Okay, let's go."
I hurriedly opened the door to the back seat of the green Fiat, presuming this route would bypass the historical sites and traffic of Athens. If I missed this ferry, there wasn't another leaving for Amorgos until morning. I could stay a couple of days in Athens to see the tourist attractions on my return home; right now, all I wanted was to get to my final destination.
The cabby squealed out of the parking lane and maneuvered southward toward the Aegean Sea on a two-lane road paralleling the hills in the near distance to the west. Athens and its famous ruins lay on the other side. on this side of the hills, the countryside was arid—covered with scrub pines and olive trees. It reminded me of the landscape of new Mexico; I had seen it once during a summer trip to Santa Fe with my mother when I was twelve.
I leaned back and lit a cigarette—my first smoke since departing from Dulles yesterday—hoping my cabby was right about the time to the Port of Athens. Besides the long plane trip from D.C. to Athens, this journey had been no less hectic and time-constrained than the rest of my life, an irony that was not lost on me. Even before leaving yesterday, I furiously finished loading several new albums on my iPod and put a change of clothes in my backpack just in case. After my cabby had honked his horn three times encouraging me to get a move on, I finally locked the door to my condo. Surely when I got to Amorgos the pace could do nothing else but slow down. How long would it take my mind to ease into a corresponding rhythm?
The car swerved in and out around slower traffic, sometimes scaring the hell out me when it barely missed an oncoming car. Was the whole world in a rush to go somewhere? I smiled. Of course it was, just like me on this journey. Still, I could tell we were making good time; it took less than half an hour for us to reach the sea and turn north on the road that hugged the coastline.
The driver downshifted and began navigating the curves that followed the rocky coastline, sometimes faster than I would have dared to take them even in my old Z. Shifting to the other side of the back seat to get a better view of the Aegean Sea, brilliantly blue, exactly as I had imagined it would be, I could see a few small islands in the distance. Before selecting Amorgos for my retreat, I had researched all of the Greek Islands, wanting one that was not overrun with tourists, but was large enough to provide reasonable accommodations. That was Amorgos—the Greek island farthest from its mainland. While I treasured its remoteness, I now questioned whether I should have picked an island nearer to Athens. Six and a half hours stood between the Port of Athens and my island of choice, and I was anxious to get there.
I gazed at the tiny islands off the coast. What would my life be like on Amorgos? For that matter, what would it be like to have an extended vacation—for more than a week or two? Even my honeymoon had been cut short by a crisis. Now, here I was, off for three months. I could have made it longer, but it was long enough to give me the time I needed to get away from the chaos, to clear my head, and most important, to find that sense of myself that used to hover with me like a shadow in the sunlight—a feeling that had gradually dimmed with age. Was that, whatever you name it, even a part of me anymore? If it was, how would I find it again? Maybe by reading, writing, or just listening to the waves of the sea collide endlessly with its rocky coastline as I drank my coffee in the morning and a glass of wine with the setting sun that gave way to the canopy of stars overhead. But most of all, by being far away from the United States and its politics.
After passing through several fishing villages, the car finally entered the southernmost part of Athens, filled with houses and commercial buildings. Traffic thickened, but we were ahead of schedule, and when the cab finally pulled up to the ferry terminal in the Port of Athens, I had forty minutes to spare. I smiled at my cabby and thanked him with a generous tip. He pointed to his watch with a wide grin. He had beaten his own estimate.
Inside the terminal it took me a minute to figure out where to buy tickets before inching my way forward in the long line and checking my watch often. I had to stand in line yet again before boarding the Albion, but finally settled into a window seat half way down the portside aisle of the boat five minutes before its scheduled departure. The ferry was only about half full, but there were two island stops along the way to pick up additional passengers.
When we finally maneuvered away from the dock and moved to open sea, I pulled the book I had been reading on the plane from my backpack, intending to finish it during the journey across the Aegean, and opened it to Part Three: From Food to Guns, Germs and Steel. I only managed a few pages before I was distracted by the dream of Colonel Rincon and his C-130. I understood where it came from. But why now after so many years?
The shoreline of the Greek mainland retreated from view; I could feel my mind begin to release its intense focus that had controlled it most of my adult life. Would this trip mark a new path? Was another path even possible at my age, or was this the end of a line that tapers off gradually without a clear demarcation? I reclined my seat and gazed out at the open sea. A kaleidoscope of memories flickered past like random thoughts—some brought a smile, others were sad, and too many were just painful, like the C-130. How many of those relics from my past had been so embellished over the years that I couldn't be certain whether they really happened the way I remembered? Even those memories surrounding Gillian, Anton, Fallon, and Lex. But I guess it didn't matter—they were real, as was my work, for good or bad, and its consequences.
I turned back to my book, determined to push the thoughts from my mind. After all these years, this was my time—my time to reclaim some peace of mind that I hadn't known since I was a teenager. But as I started to read the opening paragraph, another memory flashed into my head, an old one of a cool June day in Missouri. I was lying in the thick green rye grass of my backyard, staring into the powder blue sky and making faces out of the puffy cumulus clouds hovering overhead. I couldn't remember exactly how old I was then; still, on that day I felt that something had changed—profoundly. Up to then, life had been a big party that I enjoyed without any thought of duties to attend to the next day. But on that day, the party ended, and all the accoutrements of my youth lay around me like empty cups, cigarette butts, and disarranged chairs. I stared at the clean, sharp line of the roof of my house against the sky. As my mind walked that line I could feel myself stepping through a great gate that was closing behind me. What lay ahead took no visible form.
Chapter Two
April 1970 Columbia, Missouri
I ROLLED OVER to pull a cigarette from the pack of Marlboros on the end table next to the bed and lit it. Why did a smoke taste so good after sex?
"Got one for me?" Kathy asked.
"Sure thing."
I reached for another butt and lit it for her with the old Zippo lighter my grandfather had given me. I rolled back over and handed it to her.
Kathy took a deep drag and ran her fingers through her long blond hair. She let the cigarette dangle from her bottom lip. She took another puff as she laid back and exhaled toward the bedroom ceiling.
"That was good. Let's go again."
"You've got to be kidding. Give me some time, will you."
"You know me, Jude. When I get something I like, I want more."
"Is that just you or a female thing in general?" I took a drag on my cigarette and exhaled a gray cloud. "Tell me, Kath, what else do you like?"
"Besides fucking? eating, I guess, and some good dope."
I had worked up an appetite. Sex often had that effect, especially after smoking a joint, and I forgot we had escaped to the bedroom without any dinner, tensed out from a long afternoon of hitting the books.
"Then maybe we should try eating. I assume you can cook."
"Sorry, mama never taught me. Why do you think I still live in a dorm?"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Points on a Lineby D. L. Gentsch Copyright © 2012 by D. L. Gentsch. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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