DINO

Sanctuary.

It can be a place. If you're really lucky, it's a person.

Notice how when someone talks about sanctuary, it's never in the plural? By that I mean, you only hear someone say they had a sanctuary or they found sanctuary. It's never like they had multiple sanctuaries.

I think I know why this is. At least, I know why it is for me.

I only ever really had one sanctuary in my life. Mine was a person.

Since I lost my sanctuary, I've had places that I treated as a sanctuary. Like my home near San Francisco. It's the closest thing to a sanctuary I have anymore. It's more, frankly, than I thought I might ever find again. But it will never be a sanctuary; I think of it as a haven.

I looked at the captain's bars in my hands and rubbed the warm steel between my fingers. And thought about my haven. Maybe this home here, this place in the hills that were sacred and hushed, was the closest thing to a sanctuary for me only because these captain's bars rested atop my mantle in the bedroom.

This thought made me smile.

This piece I am writing is something of a Christmas present to Heather. I think she'll understand why. But the rest of you may not, so let me explain. Heather has this thing she does that fascinates me. She asks questions sometimes without really expecting an answer. Nah. That would be too simple for our Heather. No. Sometimes, she asks questions because she wants to make you answer yourself.

She asked me this one question a few months ago and it's the real reason I'm writing this even though I answered myself a long time ago. But I write this for her and post it on Christmas because I want to give her the gift of knowing that because of her, I am willing to share my answer with others. And I post it for you Sisters in the sincerest hope that you will see the parts of each of you that have led me to want to seek the path I should follow in this new place.

Here's what she asked me: "Why is it, Dean, that you love women so but you don't think there's still a special someone out there just for you? Why is it you don't seem so much sad as almost content with being resigned to be alone?"

Do you know what the answer is to that? I never told her. I'll tell her ... and you ... now. It's because I had that woman in my life but now she's gone. She's all I ever expected, all I ever really wanted, all I'll ever really have in that way. I may still love women ... I for sure love the Sisters ... but I had my shot. Maybe you'd understand if I say that having that shot has made my love affair with the female sex all that much sweeter because there is nothing better than women.

 

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Gen's the one who really taught me about women. 

I don't mean that to sound coy. For sure, I knew about women ... I knew the sweet enchantment of their feel and taste. I loved the way they look at life. I adored the softness that seemed to cling to them and which they imparted on me when they let me enter their realm. I even knew how to please them. In fact, I had a little black book that was the envy of just about every man I ever knew. There wasn't a town I ever went to that I couldn't have almost instinctively found my way to a place where women would be primed to offer a man like me all the things about them that captivate us poor wretched males so when we are cold and lonely and just waiting for the mission to be over so we can feel something warm and soft against our bare skin.

But until I met Gen, I had never really stopped long enough to savor a woman.

Before I met Gen, life was free. After I met her, I was free. Once she was gone, no one could ever really meet my price again.

Don't mean that to sound bleak, because it's not. I just have to say ... the greatest tragedy in my life was losing her; but even that pales in comparison to how it feels to know how close I came to not meeting her. If I'd never met her, I'd never have placed a value on the way love can make you a better person.

When Heather visited my home, my haven, that first time ... it was just a night and yet in this briefest moment, she discovered my keepsakes of women I've loved. Remember her talking about my mantle where I've got my silly collection of mementos of the Sisters? Of the items she ran her fingers over that night, there were a few that did not belong to any Sister. Did you notice? You've all got sharp eyes, so I imagine you did. One of them was those captain's bars. Another was a set of dog tags. The next time she came to my home, Heather carried around a small Japanese figurine of a horse. Remember that? Those items are direct ties to Gen.

Heather doesn't know that. I've never been one to be totally comfortable with baring my secrets. I rather like the cloak of mystery. But, if you've come to know Heather at all, then you must know that if you do decide to share a secret with her, she will ask you questions that make you think.

I mentioned to her one night that I was coming to know several of the Sisters well enough to be rather surprised to find elements of each of them that made me think about this one woman who'd been pretty important to me. Actually, that thought had come to me after this wonderful conversation I'd had with Darcy that had left me feeling both challenged and appreciated. But a few nights later, I blurted this out to Heather ... that I'd hung up the phone after talking to Darcy and thought about this woman I'd once loved named Gen. How that had been happening more and more lately as I got to know the Sisters better.

 

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I wonder why those particular things came first to my mind when I thought of describing Gen to Heather? That Gen challenged me, that I loved to watch her sleep, that she loved ice cream and dogs. Why does my memory work like that? It was perhaps that it would always be the little pieces of her that only belonged to me that were the details I most treasured.

You'd think instead of those rather odd pieces of information, I might have given her physical description. She had chestnut colored hair with these rim shots of cherry highlights that only shone when she'd toss her hair in the bright sun. Gen had a beauty that was healthy and honest ... these honey brown eyes that used to take me hours to wander around in until I was content to believe I'd seen each sparkle and fleck of gold and hazel. She was petite and rather short. Yet, she never once seemed delicate or fragile. She just had too much hidden fire in her to ever be someone I'd overlook. She was trim and finely muscled but ... oh Lord ... did she have a body that made men look her over. But it was her mind and spirit that made me take real notice of her.

She was in the military, like I was. Only problem was, she was in the Air Force while I was in the Marines. That was the source of some of our earliest scuffles but it was also the one thing that finally got her to go out with me.

That's right, hermanas. Me, Mr. Smooth. The one man who can charm any woman, right? Wrong. She didn't think much of my charms for a long time.

 

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~ ~ ~

 

Yeah. She heard. Gen always heard the shit I didn't think she'd hear. It was one of her charms. One of her many charms.

I was there with my team at this U.S. base in far north Japan, freezing my Marine Corps ass off, on this assignment to assist with an undercover operation to bring down a ring of Russian intelligence agents who were using members of the local yakuza to coerce classified information out of Navy and Air Force enlisted personnel who worked at this secure base's intercept facility. Back then, the kind of stuff done at this listening post was providing U.S. intelligence forces with the ability to track Russian military movements, troop strengths and weapons. But there was this one other element - at the time, we had a team of operatives who were within inches of getting a MIG pilot to defect from Mother Russia ... with his jet. It would be the first time we'd ever gotten our hands on what, at the time, was the most sophisticated fighter jet made. The concern, which is what made this such a special ops that someone like my team would be there, was that if any hint ever got out to the Russian agents that we were tracking this particular MIG pilot like we were, then it could be his death sentence. And not to be too cold, but it could also screw us from getting our hands on the jet to learn its secrets. Oh. And one other thing ... it could put our in-country operatives in peril.

So, yeah. This was one that really counted.

And I was really making a good impression so far on someone that I didn't yet know was going to be critical to the assignment.

There I was. Making the snide, rude comment out of the corner of my mouth.

There she was. Hearing it and not taking any shit off me. She never would. She gave me that look again, the one that had already leveled me once. And she says, with a voice so cold and proper and tough that it made me feel all of two inches: "The ugly jarhead strikes again. You're such a fucking loser."

 

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It couldn't have been a worse way to meet someone that you're just about to find out is going to not only be a member of your team, but who is actually going to be the key undercover operative on whom the entire operation depends.

She wasn't the first female undercover officer I'd ever worked with. She was, however, the first Air Force one I'd worked with. We worked on that operation for eleven weeks. We only succeeded because of Gen.

Gen had already been setting up her cover for two months before my team was brought in. She had an amazing knack for getting people to trust her even while they basically didn't pay much attention to her. It was one of her best undercover skills, that ability to become a chameleon. Some undercover officers make their mark by making people take notice of them, by getting members of whatever group they're infiltrating to trust them more and more ... and then before they know it, they're a member of the inside group and they got the goods. But Gen had another approach. She flew low and mean. She hid her strength and she hid her brains. She just almost became such a fly on the wall that people would just get so used to having her around and think she was so harmless. But they'd tell her things and she'd put the pieces together.

I am not sure I ever met anyone in her line of work that I admired and respected more than Gen.

During all this time we worked together, it was strictly business. Well, not that I wasn't thinking other thoughts about her body. Well ... yeah. I am a man, after all is said and done. Only problem was that Gen made it clear from the get-go that she not only wasn't interested, but she didn't intend on getting interested.

You know, of course, that this only intrigued me and made me more determined, right?

When the operation ended and it was successful, I will admit right up front that one of the things I intended to be doing was to get this woman to notice that I was a man, not just the Marine jarhead who'd come in to pull her fanny out of the fire when we lit the final torch to the operation.

But I never really got the chance. We'd evac'd her and the rest of our team to Tokyo where we were snug on this huge naval base. My team was awaiting our orders to get home to D.C., where we were based, and we had two days to tie on some uninterrupted hours of down time and partying. First thing I did was flit by the quarters where they put the visiting female officers. Fuck all if Gen wasn't already gone. She'd hopped on the first Air Force transport plane she could find.

I didn't really know how to find her, even if I'd wanted to ... which, okay, I did. Because of her job, I knew I'd never be able to find out where she was stationed, much less get a phone number. And, besides, it was obvious she didn't want to be pursued for romantic purposes. I decided I should let it go and chalk it up to 'what might have been.'

 

~ ~ ~

 

 

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It took so long. It took more than six months.

Next time I saw her was only two weeks after Japan. I was in the Pentagon. Charging into the CO's office and she was just coming out. I literally ran into her because I was focused on other things. Yeah, okay, so I was focused on the CO's new secretary's tight little ass that was bent over the file cabinet right by the door. I was ... well, I was pretty focused but I wasn't drooling. But then the woman had straightened up, turned to look at me and we both knew I'd be taking her out for drinks and more that night ... that as soon as I got done with the meeting with my CO, I'd be out there setting up the date she was offering.

So I had this shit-eating grin on my face and she said I could go in the CO's office now, that he was expecting me and ... I turned around to head in, on the double, when the door opened ...

Gen came striding out ... dressed in her best Class A uniform with this short skirt and high heels ... the last fucking person I expected to see ... only I didn't see her until I plowed right into her ...

Had to grab hold of her body before she crashed to the ground. Her eyes opened wide in shock and then flashed in anger at me. "You fucking jarhead," she hissed under her breath. "What is it with you? Have you absolutely no grace whatsoever?"

I took this quick glance around the room even as I felt myself ready with my answer. Just wanted to be sure the old man wasn't catching this. He wasn't. He was behind his desk, on the phone, not even really aware who was standing at his door.

"You have the answer to that question, sweetheart, or have you forgotten my abilities to come in and haul your pretty little ass out amidst that royal bum fuck of a firefight in Aamori?" Our eyes locked and I could see her flushing skin, knew I shouldn't do it but what the fuck? I was a kid then. So I finished by putting my mouth to her ear just as my hand on her hip was about to shove her out of the room. "But the answer to what you really want to know is ... I'd be at my most graceful making you come. Wanna give it a try?"

Before I could get her out and close the door in her face, she said, "You know your way around a gun, jarhead, not a woman. And at the rate you're going, about the only thing you'll ever stroke with any degree of success or appreciation is your own rifle."

I felt like she'd just handed me my balls. I actually was looking down to make sure she hadn't just taken them with her when she slammed the door in my face on her way out.

The ironic thing about that encounter was that the reason I'd been called to the CO's office was because Gen had written up a commendation recommendation for my team's work with her in Japan. In the write up, she'd cited "Captain O'Leary's leadership, courage and diplomacy" as being "worthy of recognition and being an exemplary reflection on the professionalism of the Marine Corps." So the old man wanted me in there to shake my hand and tell me that the day when an Air Force puke took the time and effort to try to make sure any Marine was cited as a professional was a red ribbon day in his book. It was, he said, the reason he was breaking protocol to tell me I'd be receiving word in a month that I was being promoted to major.

I raced out of the CO's office to try and find Gen. Went out so fast, in fact, that I blew right past that secretary without making the date. All I wanted to do was track down this officer who could, in one moment, be personally following up with my CO on the commendation she'd written for me, and then be handing me my balls a moment later. I just had to know more.

 

~ ~ ~

 

 

~ ~ ~

 

I didn't find Gen, not in the maze that is the Pentagon, but I did find one of the officers who'd been on the Air Force team with Gen in Japan. I told him I wanted to thank her for writing me up for the commendation and he told me the group of them was meeting that night at a bar in Alexandria. Forgive me for being such a child, but I was standing there in the corridor outside the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations section, talking to this guy, and in my mind I was picturing just exactly how I was going to buy Gen a drink and then maneuver her into a bit of one-on-one time. From there, I knew she'd be in my bed within the hour.

I was one cocky bastard.

A bit too cocky. A bit too much the bastard. 

She saw every move I made coming a mile away. Course, I think Gen had seen way too many cocky bastards by then. I didn't really stand a chance. Not that night. Not for a lot of nights. Not until I finally realized she wasn't going to be easy. Maybe that's why I never forgot her. For sure it's why I called her and asked her for a date every single time I was back in D.C.

 

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~ ~ ~

 

The first time I ever saw Gen smile was on our first date. Funniest thing was, after all this time, after months of calling her and asking her out ... it was Gen who finally asked me out.

I said, "Yes, Absolutely." Well ... yeah.

Heh. I did almost say no. Why? Because I knew she was just busting my chops again.

 

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~ ~ ~

That picture. I don't have it anymore. I wish to God that I did. I'd give about anything to have it.

She spent most of the evening trying to make me feel like the jarhead I was. I spent most of the evening trying to be smooth and suave. All I really wanted, besides in her panties, was the chance to make this the first date and not the only date.

In the course of that one evening, I wanted to know her. I wanted to make her smile.

Got my wish on the smile business. It happened right after she made us get that picture taken. I was standing proud and tall ... looking for everything I had in me like some tough, nasty, bad ass Marine. Just before they snapped the picture, she turned to look at me. I caught this instant grin.

As we were walking away, I asked her why she was smiling. She said it was just the first time in a while she'd seen someone goofy enough to laugh at.

 

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All those months of getting to know her ... well, getting to know a bit about the kind of person she was ... but it never really prepared me for the reality of Gen.

She was ... made just for me.

I spent every minute after that absorbed in trying to love her enough. The way she deserved. And it was so easy. I loved her. I just did. I loved her with every part of me. I loved her in a way that I never thought was possible to love someone else. She loved me back the same exact way.

After that first kiss, the barriers between us were gone. She accepted me into her life and I jumped in. Every time I was back in Washington, I'd try to see her. Sometimes, it didn't work out because she'd be off on some investigation she was involved in. But we did whatever we could to foster and grow this relationship we both wanted. When we were apart, we'd call and write. She used to say that in some ways, it was pretty good that we were separated as much as we were early on because it was the calls and letters that helped us get to know each other instead of letting only the passion between us be the thing that formed us early on.

We fit together. We had an adult love that was as deeply passionate and physical as it was resolutely emotional and spiritual. I don't know how to say it better than that. Inside her was my sanctuary.

We had similar goals in life, we were both products of the military system, we had similar beliefs, we had similar personal ethics. Our differences complimented each other. Where I was often wired and intense, she was calm and introverted. Where I was a cynic, she was a believer.

The fact that we had jobs that required us to hold in secrets and to face death with a realistic understanding ... well, I just think that somehow we knew something about each other's souls that other people could never have related to.

It was maybe a month after the Marine ball that we said we loved each other. It was the first night we were intimate. She had been slightly injured on this investigation she'd been doing in California and she'd called me about an hour after some doctor had stitched up this minor knife wound to her forearm.

I was in DC. My phone rang and she was telling me in this sedate voice about her injury. I just listened to her because I could hear the shock in her voice ... the way you feel when you wonder why you didn't really think it would happen to you, that you'd be hurt on the mission.

"Dean? I wish you were here. You're the one person I'd most like to be holding right now," she whispered to me.

"Hold on, Gen. I'm on my way."

I was on the next flight out I could find; hitched a ride with a friend of mine who was supposed to be taking his jet to a Navy base near Monterey. Instead, he landed it near San Jose. I was holding Gen less than an hour later.

 

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It maybe took us a month to realize that we wanted more. We moved in together because it was just silly pretending that we weren't wanting to spend every spare second together whenever we were both in DC.

About six months later, I met her in Hawaii where she was granted some R&R after an investigation that she'd concluded in Okinawa, Japan. I asked her to marry me the first night we were there. She said yes and I slipped on her finger the ring that was just right for her. It was an emerald. See, she was born in May and that was her birthstone, so that was part of the reason. But it was also because she was much too unique of a woman to give her a diamond engagement ring, right? So I happened to be talking to a friend who was leaving to go to Taiwan on a short trip to do a security check on the Marines guarding the Embassy there and he offered to find me the most perfect emerald he could while he was there. I told him perfection was great, just make sure it had depth and inner fire because that's what Gen was to me. He found me the perfect stone and then I found the perfect mounting about a month later.

The night I asked her to marry me, I went down on one knee and told her that if she married me, I'd spend the rest of my life making her smile.

The things you say when you're too young to know how rude life can be.

After that, we settled into our love. We spent too much time apart, but what could we do? We both had careers we loved and those careers meant we spent a lot of time away from home. But we never saw that. What we saw was that we had our whole lives ahead of us. We kept thinking we'd have plenty of time to settle down into more mundane careers. We didn't want to start a family until one of us was happy to leave their career and take on something that would keep that person home.

So we put off getting married. Every time we'd plan it, one of us would have to leave. I finally decided that the next time we were home, I was taking her off to Reno and we'd get a quickie marriage. I knew it wasn't really what she wanted, so I put it off. Then I got the jeweler who'd designed the mount for her engagement ring to design and make our wedding rings. I was planning to surprise her the very next time she started saying, 'let's figure out when and where we'll do the wedding.' Those words! They had become a joke between us. I was going to have the perfect punch line to that joke, though. Because the next time she said it, I was going to whip out those rings and say, 'it's now or never, baby' in my best Elvis voice. She'd have gotten the connection ... we'd both joked about how many Elvis impersonators were doing weddings at those drive in chapels in Reno and Vegas.

Did I mention that life is rude? Do you want to know how I finally learned that lesson?

 

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~ ~ ~

 

She left before me this time. She was heading back to Japan. Back to that same base in Misawa where we'd first met. She was very uneasy about the assignment. She felt like it was a real risk sending her back in someplace where she'd once blown apart a yakuza operation. But it had been a few years and the intel from the people on site showed that not only was the yakuza not involved, but the main individuals from that old mission were not even living in the area anymore. And of course, none of the military people we'd worked with were still stationed there as they'd all had their normal rotations back to the States.

I remember telling her to shake it off. I said something to the affect that they'd never take a chance and send her in if there was even the remotest chance she was hot or compromised. I asked her ... did she trust in the OSI command over there? Did she think they had their shit together? She gave me that look. The one that busted my chops.

My response was to strip her in five seconds and make love to her for a whole lot longer.

She was going to be gone a minimum of three months, we figured. It was going to be rough on us because we'd be incommunicado. When she was far undercover like she was going to be on this mission, we weren't allowed to get messages back and forth to each other. I already knew I was leaving on a mission to Iraq that would have me cut off from everyone but my team until I was back in a secure area.

And then she was gone. She called me from Alaska, where the plane refueled. Her last words to me were, "Keep your cute ass safe and out of trouble, you hear me?"

My last words to her were, "Don't take any wooden nickels."

God. I loved her.

I didn't hear about what happened until after I was home from my mission in Iraq.

 

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When I walked into our apartment building in DC, it had been two months since I'd been home. You have to remember the assignment I was returning home from ... all I wanted was to be in our place, surrounded by our things, feeling like life could start again for me. The first thing I saw when I opened the door to the apartment was ... sterility.

I stood there in the middle of the floor and just looked around, couldn't believe my eyes.

Every single piece of evidence that Gen had once lived there was gone. The only thing left was furniture, the television and kitchen appliances. I wandered around, just not understanding.

She was gone. Wiped out.

All her clothes, all her knick-knacks, all her personal items. Gone. Like she'd just packed up and disappeared.

There was no note from Gen. But there was a note from her dad. It just said, "Major: I expected better of you. I thought you were more of a man than to have deserted my daughter at a time like this. May God have mercy on your soul."

I'd never met her parents. Gen wasn't close to them. She just never seemed to think it was important that I meet them. And he's leaving me this note? I didn't even know how to get a hold of him to find out where Gen was and what the fuck was going on.

Five minutes after reading the note, I went tearing down to the super's office to find out if Gen had left a forwarding address. He's the one who told me.

Jesus.

What a fucking rude way to find out that the woman you love and planned to spend your life with had died.

She had been killed within two weeks of arriving in Japan. I figured it out later ... I would have been one day out of finding Terry and carrying his ass out of that prison. But here's the really bad thing about what I eventually found out: Gen had been held hostage for almost a week before she was killed. So all those last days I was gearing my team up to go into enemy territory to save someone else's life and to end up saving Terry's life in the bargain? Those were days when my Gen needed me and I never knew it.

Yeah. I know. Even if I hadn't been in Iraq, I doubt I'd have known about Gen being held hostage. Actually, I know I wouldn't have and that's one of the things I will never forgive. It's really the main reason I left the military. It was finding out why she died and that she could have been saved ... finding that out and not getting justice for her ... it forever skewed my ability to stay in a military system I no longer trusted.

I should probably back up a bit.

The super told me that Gen was dead and her parents had come there to pack out her stuff from the apartment. I couldn't make sense of what he was saying. I went back to the apartment and called Gen's office. They put me through to her commander. He told me her cover had been blown and she'd been killed. He said he'd tried to get word to me, because he knew we were serious even though Gen had never officially told him we were engaged. But because of how highly classified my mission was, no one would even acknowledge I was away on an assignment much less agree to get word to me.

You see, to the Marines, Gen wasn't my next of kin or any kind of relation to me. We weren't married and they didn't give a shit about us being in love. So they never tried to let me know. It didn't fit the easy rules.

Her commander came over to the apartment, took me out for a beer and told me what he could. Probably told me a hell of a lot more than he should have. But about all he really was able to tell me was the briefest bits about the mission she'd been on and how the inquiry they'd done into her death hadn't turned up a traitor. I remember looking up at him when he said that. It struck me as odd and I asked why they'd looked for one. He never gave me an answer at the time.

Instead, he handed me her dog tags and the captain's bars ... said he'd kept them for me because they were the last things she took off before going undercover ... her last link to her real identity, see? It's why I hang on to them. It's why they make my haven the closest thing to a sanctuary ... because they are my only concrete link back to who she really was.

He gave me her parent's phone number and I called them that evening. Told them I'd just returned and had just found out about her death. Her dad said, "Well, you missed her funeral. I hope she'll forgive you for that because I won't."

"Where did you scatter her ashes?" I asked him. It was all I could think of. I just wanted to picture where her spirit might have found it's last view of earth.

"Ashes? We didn't burn her, for God's sake, Major. We buried her good and proper. She's in the cemetery here, next to her grandmother."

God. For some reason, that was the thing that broke me.

Gen and I shared a spiritual belief that was partly based on our appreciation of the tenets of Zen Buddhism. We'd talked of many things in discussing our beliefs and the afterlife. I think it was because of that understanding we shared about the reality of death that we were not just able to talk about what we wanted to have happen to us after we died, but that we felt we needed to. We wanted the one left behind to find solace in granting the one who died their final wish on how they would enter eternity. And one thing I knew was that Gen did not want to be buried. She wanted to be cremated. She had told me she wanted to have her ashes tossed into the wind near Sausalito, California because it was there at a retreat that she had most felt at peace.

The knowledge that in the end, I'd failed to realize that all the time I was on this mission in Iraq, the woman I loved was dying and then her last wishes were being violated ... I felt like I'd failed her when it mattered most.

It broke me. I took leave from the Marines and tried to recover from this grief that was killing me.

I went to see her grave and when I was standing there on this cold, blue-grey day in a dingy cemetery in Terre Haute, Indiana, I heard myself pledging to her that I'd take whatever I could of hers that was left to me and I'd burn it and scatter the ashes in Sausalito. I told her I was sorry I'd let her down but that maybe this would be a symbolic way of showing her that I knew her better than anyone else ever would or could.

But what did I even have of hers anymore? Her parents had taken everything of hers from the apartment. They took every picture I had of her except the one I had in my office - it was the one we'd had taken of us at the Marine Corps Ball. They took my letters to her and her letters to me. They left me with nothing personal of hers but that picture in my office and dammit but I was never going to be able to let that go.

Back in DC, I searched everything in the apartment for some memento of our life. All I found were things like a few ticket stubs from movies we'd seen together, the menu from her favorite take out joint, matchbooks from some restaurants and bars we'd gone to; a paperback book she'd read and given me to read on the trip to Iraq. I'd forgotten it and had left it atop my bureau. Her folks must have figured it was mine. It's probably the only reason they didn't take it along with everything else they took.

Christ. To this day, I still cannot get over the way it made me feel to know that these strangers had violated our privacy that way.

I decided to have a little bonfire there in the kitchen sink and make these items into ashes I could sprinkle off Sausalito. While the fire was blazing, I got the bright idea to look in my wallet and see if there were any more ticket stubs.

That's when I found the receipt for the wedding rings. I called the jeweler and picked the rings up on my way out of town. It was when I was in Sausalito, watching her ashes flitter around in the air, that I thought about what I should do with the rings. I was going to take them with me to where she'd died and I was going to find out the truth about her death. When I did, I figured that I'd bury the rings somewhere that would symbolize how everything had begun and ended in Japan for us.

I booked a commercial flight to Tokyo and took the train up to Misawa. From there, I rented a car and began nosing around. I went on the air base there and interviewed everyone I could. Told them that I was from the Naval Investigative Service. That we were double checking Gen's operation to determine if reports that she'd been compromised by a naval officer were accurate. It was a wild stab of an excuse but I figured they'd all buy it because it was a joint service base with a pretty even mix of both Navy and Air Force ... so it would stand to reason that there might be some navy guy involved in Gen's operation.

Didn't seem to be getting anywhere. I decided that maybe I should trace her movements off the base, which is where her real work had been. Some sweet young thing in the commander's office wanted to believe that it was really okay for me to know that the investigation revolved around a certain club near the port town of Aamori, about an hour north of Misawa.

Found out later that this club was targeted because it's where the intel guys thought some classified material was being passed in exchange for drugs. It's where Gen had been leaving when she'd been taken.

Now, I knew this area pretty good. Had spent a lot of time there on that earlier operation. Had driven the road between Misawa and Aamori a lot. The last half hour of the trip took you right through this fantastic forested area known as the Aamori Preserve. It was a gorgeous place.

But that particular day, I was driving through and so frustrated and so in grief. I knew I was getting nowhere in the investigation yet so convinced there was foul play involved. Knew I was going to be leaving Japan and I would still not know what had really happened to Gen. I needed to know. I had to. I didn't see how I could go on if I didn't know the truth.

I wanted to solve the case, to find some resolution to her last mission that would maybe make her death have meaning. But the raw truth was that the case had been a bust and in the end, they'd simply arrested every U.S. military person they had a shred of evidence on and whatever operatives from the bad guys were there fled. I had this gut feeling that someone on our side had messed up ... most of all, I wanted to know how her cover was blown so easy. There was just something that told me that the intel was bad - that she really shouldn't have been there; that someone with that yakuza gang had been involved all along and she'd been fingered right away.

Next thing I knew, I was lost. I was on some small road that I didn't recognize and I was deep in the Preserve. I didn't care. I just kept driving and thinking about how the last time I'd been in this area, I'd been starting my life with Gen only I hadn't known it. I was thinking that if I'd known, I might have paid more attention. I was thinking that if I'd been paying more attention, we might have been married by then and we might have already found the way to have learned that life's much too precious to not do the things you really want to do for love. I was thinking that if we'd really done what we'd wanted for love, we would have already started a family by then.

 

~ ~ ~

 

 

~ ~ ~

 

The next day, I found answers ... but I also saw things I wish I hadn't. But it's like I told Heather ... I don't miss much.

Maybe it was because I let go of the need to know that I found the answers the next day. That would be a pretty Zen type thing to happen. But the next afternoon, I was back on that base in Misawa, having a beer at the officers' club and this young Air Force lieutenant sat next to me at the bar. We got to talking. Turned out he knew someone who could help me.

Now, it would be wrong of me to say who it was he knew. Just know this ... it was someone who worked as back up on the case to Gen. Someone in the position to know that not only was it a mistake to have sent her in, but that she was sacrificed in the end to make sure the mistake was buried along with her.

Here's what I learned: she was brought in too fast and only because they needed an agent like her with her background and skills who knew Japanese. But someone in intel at the Air Force's Office of Special Intelligence never cross checked the members of the terrorist cell they were investigating in this case with the members of the yakuza group that had featured in the case I worked on with Gen. And Gen had specifically asked about that before she left. Her commander remembered her asking it in the first mission briefing. They were lied to - they were told that crosscheck had been done but it hadn't. It still floors me; if there's one thing I'd never expected, it was that one of our own would have put her life in danger through stupidity.

But it got worse.

She was fingered almost right away; one of the terrorists knew she was an agent, a plant. 

Oh God. It's so hard to think about what happened to her. Kidnapped. Tortured for information. She never gave in. What they did to her. I saw the pictures. My Gen. I swear ... there are times I cannot bear the memories but I saw them and I can't forget. Or forgive.

What can't I forgive? I will never forgive the fact that they didn't go in to get her. They should never have even hesitated. Someone should have sent a team in with every bit of firepower needed to get her back. You just do not do that to people laying their lives on the line like that. It'd be like sending me and a team in somewhere, finding out we were surrounded by hostiles and someone making the decision not to come rescue us when they could have.

You just do not do that to us. Ever.

But I got the evidence I needed and turned it over to Gen's commander. I had the fucker who'd first of all made the initial intel mistake and then followed that up by refusing to allow anyone to go in and get her out. That's what made the contact in Japan give me the evidence. Because it was being covered up. The shit bastard responsible for Gen's death was getting away with it.

So I had the evidence and I gave it to Gen's commander and then I waited. I sat in my apartment and waited on them to arrest the fucker.

But nothing happened. Nothing. No, I take that back. A letter of reprimand for poor judgment in the field was put in the fucker's personnel jacket.

You have to understand what that's like for someone like me who's believed in the military. Not that I didn't think we screwed things up a lot, but there was always a code. You never leave a man behind. Ever.

It shook my faith in the military. If they could do that to her, they could do it to anyone. After that, I just got more and more cautious about putting any of my team in covert situations where we'd have to depend on some asshole in HQ to give the command to send someone in to save us. How could I know about what happened to her and not worry that something like that would happen to someone I'd sent into a dangerous situation?

But in what I was doing, playing it safe and being worried all the time will get your team killed. It can make you hesitate when you should move. That's what happened to me. I hesitated when I should have given an instant order to move to another location, a back up rendezvous point. But I waited; I wanted confirmation the bird would be there. I waited too long and we started taking on fire. I didn't get my team out in time and because I hesitated, I got one of my guys killed.

That's when I knew I had to get out. I was on the chopper, holding his body and knowing I was responsible. But the military was also responsible ... and I sure as fuck blamed them ... the fact that they never thought enough of Gen to bring justice in her case, it's why I lost the ability to trust they'd not screw me and my people over, too. I just didn't believe in the system anymore. I'd become a complete cynic. I resigned my commission when I got back; they sent me out to that training base to serve out the four months I had left on my commitment. That's where Terry found me.

 

~ ~ ~

 

 

~ ~ ~

 

This is my answer then, Heather: I think about all this enough.

Seems like an awfully simple answer to not have given it to you at the time you asked it, doesn't it? Thing is, I didn't answer at the time because I didn't know the way to give you the answer without telling you about why I am not sad to be alone.

How can I be sad? You know how many people never have a love like I did? I can't be greedy. Being alone isn't so tough when you had someone like her in your life once who showed you what it's like to belong.

So now you know the answers. Not that I think you really asked me either about why I am content to be alone nor about how often I think about what path I will choose to take in this place in order to have me give you an answer so much as you wanted me to know you've noticed I think about these things.

 

~ ~ ~

 

 

~ ~ ~

 

The rudeness of life, eh?

Everything changed for me after I really learned just how rude life can really be.

I appreciate the little things more. I mark them. It's why I take little things from each of the women I love to remember them with ... not those big things that might be of real monetary value; I prefer the little details that I think mean more in the long run because they're not fake or fancy ... they are simply the everyday, ordinary intimacies you find out about someone only after they let their guard down and let you see a real part of them.

 

~ ~ ~

 

 

~ ~ ~

 

That's how I really remember Gen.

I remember her as she was with me. I remember the way I could make her smile.

I remember how I was with her. I remember the way she made me love.

 

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