The airline wasn’t in the business of recreation and it wasn’t carrying paying passengers… not in a conventional sense.
Harrington had gotten me on a SAT-FG (Security Air Transport, Federal Government) flight. The charter group was used by the State Department and all thirteen federal intelligence agencies. In certain code-oriented circles, SAT was known as Spook Airway Tours.
Depending on the classification, if your name was on the SAT roster, as mine now was, the charter company would get you to your destination, day or night, holidays included. It was an elite shuttle service for most. But if you were ASP-Authorized Security Principal-as I now was, you could check bags that would not be inspected and bring aboard unnamed associates, although prior notice was required.
Snow had changed to sleet when I climbed the boarding ladder at Fort Dix at six a.m. on a black New Jersey morning. Military personnel wore aircraft-carrier earmuffs and mittens, staring into cups of steaming coffee, as the copilot levered the hatch closed.
This civilian Learjet was reason enough to avert the eyes. The ground crew was Air Force personnel. They knew it was a Special Operations Flight, Destinations Classified. Presumably, so did my fellow passengers: a naval officer in dress whites sitting aft and a woman sitting amidships. There were no greetings as I seated myself at the forward bulkhead, no attempts to make conversation, no polite inquiries about personal interests or destinations while the plane deiced.
I spent the flight using my laptop, taking advantage of the plane’s communications perks. I traded instant messages with Barbara, who was exhausted, then contacted a relentless Harrington, using cloaking software that encoded and decoded our correspondence.
No news about the missing teen. Harrington believed that if a second photo wasn’t provided within twenty-four hours of the abduction, the boy was dead. “Unless subject has escaped,” Harrington added, “but improbable for a child that age.”
I wondered.
God help them, Ruth Guttersen had said to the FBI agent. A goat ever kicked your ass? the kid had snapped at me. The teen had fire. Some people are born old, others skip childhood to survive. Foster homes might have made Will Chaser tougher, shrewder. Could have added some protective armor.
Because I hoped it was true, I wanted to speak with the Guttersens myself. Maybe a former teacher or two. Barbara had provided me with phone numbers. She’d also provided a satellite cellular phone, a contact list and temporary credentials, all with an efficiency unexpected of a woman who was wine-tempered and very stoned. This performance, I decided, was not her debut.
Somewhere over the Carolinas, I received the senator’s e-mail about Tomlinson. A surprise not just because of the content but because I thought she was finally asleep.
I didn’t trouble her with a reply. Instead, I checked the time-7:10 a.m.-and decided to e-mail the psychic philosopher myself. Normally, e-mail is not the quickest way to contact Tomlinson. He has purged his sailboat of all electronics he considers worldly and intrusive, keeping only necessities: a VHF radio, a turntable and a complicated stereo system.
Every morning, though, he dinghied to the marina around seven, if he wasn’t too hungover. He checked messages, bought a paper, then pedaled to Baileys General Store for a scone.
The timing was about right.
Tomlinson and I have a convoluted history that goes way, way back. Years ago, before either of us had chosen Sanibel Island as home, a group of so-called political revolutionaries sent a letter bomb to a U.S. naval base. One of the men killed was a friend.
Tomlinson was a member of the group but had nothing to do with the bombing, although it was years before I was convinced. A government agency believed otherwise and declared that all members of his group were a clear and present danger to national security. Agents were sent to track them.
As Harrington told me at the time, “We’re not the CIA. We can operate inside the reservation.”
I have never admitted that I was sent after Tomlinson, although he suspects. The man has an uncanny knack for perceptual reasoning that he insists is clairvoyance. I credit his gift for observing nuances and minutiae that most people miss, myself included.
In that way, he is different. It’s impossible to say whether the ability is due to enlightenment, as he claims, or because his neural pathways have been oversensitized by years of chemical abuse.
Ninety minutes later, the jet banked southeast along the sun-bright beaches of Clearwater and Saint Pete, then landed at what I recognized as MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa. The Navy lieutenant got off, carrying a briefcase. I noticed there was no rating emblem on his uniform-meaningful to someone who has worked with naval intelligence. We were soon airborne again.
The Learjet made a short arc over Siesta Key and Englewood before it reduced speed, maneuvering to land. Below, I saw toy cars, coconut palms, seaside estates and the domino concretion that is Cape Coral.
Sanibel Island drifted into view, a green raft on a blue horizon. The island’s shape was impressionistic, like a totem on the Nazca desert of Peru, a giant shrimp petroglyph, tail curved. The totem’s belly was hollow, formed by Din-kin’s Bay, a brackish lake ringed by mangroves. Home.
After landing, I asked the pilot about the plane’s return schedule. “We have another stop or two after we refuel,” he told me vaguely, and handed me his card, his cell number on the back.
When I trotted down the steps onto the tarmac of the civic airport in Fort Myers, it was a little after nine, temperature already seventy-four degrees.
Page Field had been a gunnery school during the Second War. Now it was the namesake of an adjacent mall where six lanes of traffic filed as methodically as leaf-cutter ants, the driver of each anonymous car resigned.
I got a cab and joined the procession. Told the driver, “Dinkin’s Bay, Sanibel,” which was an hour away because of tourist season. After nearly freezing in a Central Park pond, I understood Florida’s allure better than ever.
My note to Tomlinson had read, “What is significance of term Tenth Man? Need all interpretations, derivatives, variations. MDF.”
He would assume I was still in New York. Surprise the man. That’s what I wanted to do. How, I hadn’t decided. I didn’t believe Tomlinson was involved with the abduction. The guy was not capable of hurting anyone. But he was also wildly complicated and prone to talking jags when intoxicated, which was often.
Because Tomlinson knew my schedule, he also knew Senator Hayes-Sorrento’s schedule. He would’ve had ample opportunity to talk. He had lectured in Manhattan after spending three days on nearby Long Island, where there was a Zen master he visited regularly. A little village near the Hamptons that statistically was the wealthiest enclave in America. Billionaire estates. Old money, Internet tycoons. International rock stars and actors.
Sag Harbor, I remembered, was the little village near the Hamptons.
It was possible Tomlinson had been used once again by one or more of his dilettante associates, the trust-fund revolutionaries who flirted with violence like children pulling wings off flies.
Ruthless, arrogant: the very definition of crimes I associated with the name Tinman.
Tomlinson was no dilettante. He didn’t use his spiritual convictions to manipulate or fly his counterculture lifestyle as a flag of contempt. That’s not true of the typical cast of New Age mystics, born-againers, crystal worshipers, alien advocates, astrology goofs, conspiracy saps or thought-Nazi elitists, along with their politically correct mimics.
Tomlinson has a stray-dog purity, without ego or malice. I have never met anyone, anywhere, who didn’t like and trust the guy.