Matchmaker Bandit Novel Pt. 03

As he left the hospital that night, Bill couldn't get the image of his young son out of his head.

The next day he received a visit from his contact in The Company, Bob Russell. Bill new that there had to be something wrong or the man would never have come to visit him. Still, he tried to remain optimistic.

"What brings you down here Bob? Didn't I pay my taxes?" Bill said jokingly.

Bob said to him seriously, "Officially, I'm here to discuss export agreements with you."

"And unofficially?" Bill questioned.

Closing the door behind him, Bob sat in the chair opposite Bill and began talking, "Unofficially I'm here to talk to you about that last sales contract."

"What about it?" Bill asked.

Bob continued, "Well, it turns out one of those sale's representatives you negotiated with had a father who is very influential in the Chinese Government."

"I assume this is one the two that dropped out of the negations and retired early?" Bill queried.

Bob replied, "Yup."

"And what is daddy plan to do now that junior has retired?" Bill didn't like where this conversation was headed. He knew that Bob's next words would decide his future.

With a solemn look on his face, Bob replied, "He has decided to start contract negotiations with you and has offered ten million dollars to the first contractor to close the deal. But that's not all, a North Korean company had added five more million to ensure the deal goes though!"

"I don't think I can handle such high level negotiations any more Bob, Mary's about to have a baby and I don't need the stress anymore. Tell Sam that I'm going to retire in two weeks and not to send anyone looking for me. Will you do that for me buddy?" Bill said dispassionately.

"Sure pal, we're all gonna miss you. I'm sure Sam will understand." His friend said sadly.

That night, Bill told his wife what he had been doing in Korea after he had retired from the Army and the necessity for them all to disappear. She took the news unemotionally and simply responded with, "What are we going to do about it?"

From then on, Bill worked from home, keeping his wife and newborn son close by, never letting them out of his sight.

He had spent most of the week preparing reports for his supervisor and briefed his replacement. When word came a week later that Operation Damnit had been successful and that General Dam had defected, Bill knew his job was done.

That afternoon, Bill and his family were on an Air Force flight back to the states.

During the week he was in Washington D.C. debriefing his superiors, Bill had his brother, who lived in Baltimore, go to a bank there where Bill had been making regular deposits for the last few years and withdraw half the money from his account. Then he had is sibling wire it to another one Bill had already set up in a bank in D.C. under an alias.

At the end of the week, he withdrew half the money from the D.C. account, purchased a station wagon, loaded up his wife and son and started driving to Alabama.

Two days later when they arrived in Montgomery at about six in the morning. His first order of business was to pay cash for a second station wagon and, with Mary Bell following closely in the first car, he drove to a private lake he had learned from a buddy about while stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia.

The lake was isolated from the county road by thick woods, had a small but sturdy pier that was perfect for what he intended, and was deep enough for his needs. Because it was on private property, the lake didn't attract the attention of local fishermen.

When they got there, Bill and his wife transferred all their belongings and baby William Jr. into the car he had purchased in Montgomery.

After they ate, they broke out the sleeping bags and slept though the day in the back of the empty station wagon.

Upon awakening, they took care of the baby's needs and tended to matters of personal hygiene.

Bill had already given the new station wagon a through going over when he perched it but decided to double check it again to see if he could find anything mechanically wrong.

Once he was satisfied the car was safe, he tied off the steering wheel of the car he had purchased in Washington D.C. and put the car in neutral. Then, he used the other car to push it up onto the pier. Once the steering wheel was immobile, he and his wife pushed the car off the end of the pier. The car promptly sank in thirty feet of murky water. By the next morning, the flooded station wagon would not even be visible from the air.

Two days later, they all arrived in Columbus, New Mexico where they spent the night in a small hotel on the outskirts of town. The next day, after filling the car's gas tank they headed across the boarder into Mexico. He used one of his phony identities to buy a small used cargo ship, which he had re-registered under the name 'The Escape' from commercial vessel to private yacht status.

That eliminated the legal requirement for him to hold a captain's license.

It was lucky for Bill that he had grown up near the Great Lakes and had spent most of his boyhood around large commercial fishing boats. After High School, he had worked on one for two summers before he spent three years at the Merchant Marines Academy.

When World War II started, he asked to be transferred to West Point and was accepted.

Bill and his wife spent the next two months in Mexico familiarizing themselves with the ship, taking a crash course on piloting and navigation and buying the supplies they would need.

One afternoon, Bill came to his wife to ask her about the supplies. She had been in charge of purchasing and seeing to it that everything was loaded properly. "Honey, is everything ready?"

"The only thing left is the baby food and that will be here in the morning. I made arrangements with the bank to see to it that funds are transferred every sixty days to that contact you gave me. The supplies should be delivered to the island regularly within a week after he receives his money." She replied.

Thinking for a moment, he asked her, "How's Little Runner?" That was their name for the small motorboat they had lashed in the cargo compartment. It was actually a 35-foot sport fishing boat he had picked up dirt cheap from a smuggler in needed traveling money. Bill figured the man must have not bribed the right people when he had run afoul of the law.

"Fine, its shipshape and ready to go." She laughed.

The next morning, after the dock pilot had taken the ship out of harbor, Bill was sailing the small cargo ship towards the Marinas Islands.

When they got to the island they had chosen, Bill cautiously navigated "The Escape" into the lagoon away from prying eyes and dropped anchor.

Other than their son, Bill and Mary Bell Dixon were never seen again by another living soul again.

Chapter Three – "The New World"

When Willie had disembarked the ship to be greeted by the port authorities he had no idea what was in store for him.

As he told the port officials about his past, he was laughed at so scornfully that he quickly discovered an emotion he had never known before…humiliation.

Even with Captain Spalding there telling them that he was not lying, they refused to believe Willie's story and seemed convinced that he was something called a 'terrorist' or 'illegal trying to sneak into the country.' It just never seemed to occur to them that most people don't park a cargo ship in the harbor just so they can sneak into the country because it just attracts too much attention!

At the docks, they asked him for his passport and when he told them he didn't have one they refused to let him off the ship. Finally, when he showed them his birth certificate, the harbor officials told him to wait until they could consult with someone from the State Department.

At one point, he was taken into a room and forced to strip totally naked. As his clothes were being searched, he had no idea what for, a rather large man was putting on a rubber glove.

Willie was sure that, while he did not know what was going to happen next he was not going to like whatever it was, when a different man in a navy blue suit came in the room and called the man with the rubber glove over to him.

The man in the blue suit then showed something that looked kind of like a wallet to the other man and whispered into his ear. Next, the man with the rubber glove apologized to Willie and told him he could get dressed. Everyone was much nicer to him after that.

It would occur to Willie much later that, until the man in the blue suit showed up, Willie's ship had been surrounded by armed policemen and federal officers ready to shoot him if he tried to come ashore.

Willie was told that he would have to spend the next week in a hospital. He wasn't sick and didn't understand why they wanted him to go to a hospital. When Willie asked why? The Captain told Willie that it was just to make sure that he wasn't sick and didn't know it.

This confused Willie. 'How could he be sick and not know it?' he wondered. Willie wasn't going to go until Captain Spalding told him that it was required for him to stay in the country. He relented and did as he was asked and went to the hospital where he was greeted by an overly eager staff of doctors and nurses.

It was all too exciting for Willie and he had trouble falling asleep that night.

The following morning, the nurse had been surprised when she came into his room and found him already awake. He was dressed only in his underpants and doing push-ups on the floor when she walked in to the room.

She just stood there for several seconds watching him and taking him in with her eyes. He was five feet six inches tall, weight about 155 lbs and had a bronze tan everywhere she could see from his hairline all the way down to his feet. His curly black hair was somewhat longer than most men his age had and he had a full beard. Both his hair and beard, she could tell, were neatly and meticulously trimmed. His legs and arms were slightly larger than one would have expected for a man his height but that was probably do to his well developed muscles which she noticed, with approval, he had an ample share of.

As she looked at him, she was reminded of those old pictures she had seen of the Illusionist Harry Houdini bound in chains. When she went back to the nurse's station the woman spent several minutes describing, in a most unprofessional manner, Willie to her fellow nurses using words like, 'hottie', 'beefcake' and 'Wildman'.

When the people at the hospital took him to see a woman they said was a 'dentist', and she poked and prodded at his teeth, Willie found that he didn't particularly like that either.

For some reason Willie didn't understand, the female seemed surprised at how well kept they were. But then why shouldn't they be? He thought to himself. His father had drilled it into him every day since he was big enough to hold a toothbrush to make sure and take good care of them by brushing regularly and Willie had done so faithfully every day.

While there, he was poked, prodded, x-rayed and stuck with needles by people in white lab coats. He hated every minute of it and just when he was beginning to wonder if he should have stayed on the island, the 'white coats' seemed satisfied he was healthy and told him that he would be discharged from the hospital the next day.

The following day, as he was being discharged from the hospital, another man identifying himself simply as 'Jeff' came to see him.

The man said he was there to help Willie make the transition to life in the states and handed Willie a card. He seemed surprised when Willie asked him what it was for and found himself having to explain to Willie that it was his business card. Willie shocked the man further by asking what a business card was and the man told him that it had information on it that Willie could use to locate the man if Willie ever needed him. Then, 'Jeff' asked Willie what he wanted to do, to which Willie simply responded, "See everything! I want to see the New World!"

Willie had smiled when he said it. It was a proud smile and he was proud of himself that he had remembered the way the encyclopedia had described America and wondered if the man had been impressed.

Jeff started to laugh but stopped when he realized that Willie didn't understand what was so funny. He then handed Willie a package containing $275,000 and told Willie to keep it in a safe place at all times.

As Willie took the envelope, Jeff could tell he was confused and asked him, "Is there something you don't understand Willie?"

"What do I do with it?" Willie asked.

Jeff was taken aback! It just hadn't occurred to the man that Willie would not know what money was for. He thought about it for a second and then said, "Well, you use it to buy things."

"What kind of things?" Willie asked.

After Jeff figured out how to explain to Willie how money worked, he said, "Just about everything you want or need you have to pay money for here… food, a place to stay, clothes, almost everything."

"I think I understand that. But where did it come from?" Willie asked.

The man answered, "The government prints it."

"No, I mean where did it come from? I didn't bring any with me. So where did it come from?"

It just didn't make sense to Willie. He had read about money in the encyclopedia and if he understood what he had read about it, people just don't usually give it away.

A light went on in Jeff's brain and he understood what Willie was asking, "It was your father's Willie, and now that he is gone, it's yours."

Jeff went everywhere with Willie. He taught Willie as much as he could. From the simple things such as how to use the bus system to more complicated things like how to file for a social security card.

What Willie didn't realize at the time, was that he was being given V.I.P. treatment every time he went into a government office.

Such as when Jeff had taken Willie to the Social Security office, they had not had to wait like everyone else in the lobby for several hours but were seen immediately and were tended to by the office manager herself rather than by one of her underlings. They were in and out of the place in less than half an hour.

During that time period, Captain Spalding came by to see Willie one afternoon at his hotel room. Jeff was there; he and Willie had just gotten back from eating at the hotel's restaurant.

"Willie, 'The Escape' is in pretty bad shape! It needs to be dry-docked. It hasn't been dry-docked in quite a while. The hull's rusted badly and the engines are in desperate need of an overhaul. We're lucky it didn't spring a leak and leave us to the sharks." The old sea captain said somberly.

Willie didn't want to loose the ship, it had been his home for so long and he wanted to keep it. Most of his memories he had of his parents took place on that ship. "How much is it going to cost?" Willie asked with concern in his voice.

"Don't worry about that Willie; let me make a few phone calls and see what I can do." Jeff said before the Captain could answer.

Two days later 'The Escape' was placed in dry dock. When Jeff and Willie went to the dock facility, the manager there told Willie that it would take about ten months to completely overhaul the vessel. That was fine would Willie because it would give him plenty of time to see the New World.

After a few months, when Jeff was satisfied that Willie had learned enough to get by on his own, Jeff told Willie that he was leaving but would call him from time to time to see how he was doing. It was quite a while before Willie would see the man again. When he did, it caught them both by surprise.

Chapter Four – "Something To Do"

"That's a fascinating story Willie!" Andrea Marino said to William Bartholomew Dixon Jr.

They were in the one of the county's women's clinics cleaning a rest room.

Both Willie and Andrea had been working for the janitorial service for three months having been hired on the same day.

Willie was cleaning the toilet while she was cleaning the sink.

He was the strangest little man she had ever met. In the three months they had been working together, she had never taken the time to talk to him. Now that she thought of it, maybe it was because he never seemed to have anything to say, until now that is!

She had started the conversation innocently enough by asking him where he was from. But, when he told her a story where his father hand been a spy and he had been living on a deserted island in the South Pacific for the last forty-four years with such sincerity, she couldn't make up her mind whether he was delusional or actually telling the truth.

He seemed like such a nice man, well-mannered, polite, easy-going man, and he projected such an overwhelming desire to please that she wanted to believe his story. But it was so utterly fantastic! She decided to ask more questions, "So for the last forty-four years, you've been living on an island in the Marians with just your mother and your father? What about your education? Haven't you ever been to school?"

The odd man little man said to her earnestly, "No, never. There wasn't one on the island.

Father and mother had taken lumber, tools and welding supplies with them. They bought furniture in Mexico and took it with them as well. When the got to the island, they closed in about two-thirds of the cargo hold and converted it into living quarters. It's very comfortable.

They had planned to live there on the island until I was and adult; but mother died when I was fifteen and father decided he didn't want to return to the states. He told me he had seen enough of civilization, death and war and could do without it. With my mother gone, he had no desire to return. When I turned eighteen, he told me I could leave if I wanted to. I didn't have the heart to leave him alone so I stayed with him until he died about year ago.

After he died, I sailed the 'Little Runner' to one of the big islands. A friend of father's helped me find a retired captain to help me sail the 'The Escape' to Savannah. It took us a couple of months to get it ready to sail but we did it. After we did, we sailed it to Savannah.

It's in dry dock right now by the way.

As for my education, no, I have never been to school of any sort. Father and mother did a pretty good job educating me; and, father made me promise to take the G.E.D. if I ever left the island. In fact, after I got a Social Security Card and photo I.D. That was the first thing I did."

"So what are you doing here working for a janitorial service?" She asked.

He stopped to wring out the rag he was holding, and then continued, "Well, every time I tried to get a job, they kept telling me that I wasn't qualified to do anything. I guess there's not a lot of need for someone that can hunt, fish, and pilot a small cargo ship without a license. This is the only job I could find. I don't care though, I just want something to do until the ship comes out of dry dock anyway and I like being around other people. I especially like being around you Andrea. Oh," He said enthusiastically, "I just remembered, I have a picture of it. Would you like to see it?"

"Sure." Andrea said, as she thought to herself, 'Here's the moment of truth!'

Willie reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. Then he put the rag he was using into the bucket next to his feet so use both hands to go though his wallet. Presently, he handed her a photo to look at.

She stood there in shock for several minutes for the photograph was of a small old cargo ship raised in dry dock with Willie standing there smiling in the foreground. The name on the ship was plainly visible; it said 'The Escape'. There on the docks in front of the ship to one side, was a smaller boat about 35 feet long. Andrea could just make out the name on the smaller vessel. It read 'Little Runner'.