Synopsis
The Long Journey Home - A War Time Pilgrimage is a 105,500-word commercial fiction about a pilgrimage by twenty-eight-year-old Dean Spalding on the El Camino de Santiago del Norte. He is not on a religious journey. Dean had read, with overwhelming curiosity of a romantic pilgrimage across the barren but beautiful northern Basques country of Spain. His mind raced for weeks contemplating the endless possibilities and probabilities like some complicated calculous equation. Dean’s wanderlust heart and soul drew him to this dreamy endeavor like a bull to the matador’s cape. But behind the cape was the dangerous and deadly sword of the Cold War.
Spain, 1978, Franco has been dead three years and the country struggles with its new government. The Politburo and Washington angle for control of the fledgling democracy. Dean encounters Soviet spies and provocateurs, Basque ETA terrorists, bandits and other characters during his journey. From the hilarious Friar John to the homicidal Jaime Ramón Mercader who is responsible for the murder of Dean’s brother; the narrative is rich with unusual people.
Dean was working at the US Consulate in Munich as an analyst. His security clearance had recently been upgraded. The internal reports and memos from the codebreakers became interesting and from sources he never heard of before. The reports out of Madrid, Brussels, Rome, London, Moscow and Munich were now highly classified. Due to compartmentalization, Dean had no idea who used his deliverables and why.
He had received brief instructions, a one-line memo straight to the point: ‘Wait outside front entrance, 7:45 A.M. End.’ Signed by “L”. “L” was a shadowy figure in the consulate. Nobody knew the precise job description of “L” so speculation was rampant. Most assumed he was some spook, others, the paranoid types, thought he was with IG, that would be bad. Dean was with the latter group. If “L” was with the Inspector’s General office that meant somebody screwed up.
In a flash of khaki colored trench coats, Dean was abducted. His head covered with a black hood, bound and gagged, he bounced along the German countryside in the back of a olive drab Renault 16TX hatchback. Dean had read or heard about the frequent kidnappings all across Europe and he figured it was his turn. But why? Usually the victims were high placed politicos or the wealthy for ransom.
“Mr. Spalding, I am retired Army Colonel Ed Kline, Deputy Director of Information and Political Affairs.” Those words, introducing Dean’s new boss would change his pilgrimage through bucolic Spain in a Cold War nightmare. They would also turn him into a killer.
Now traveling as Dirk Thomas Wilson, Dean Spalding was in a world he’d never dreamed to find himself. Undercover, spying on spies, laying low from Interpol, and gathering intelligence on the new democracy. On top of all that, he was in Basque country, the home of an ancient people the predated the westward migration Indo-Eurasian peoples.
The story ramps up into a one desperate scene after another. Multiple foes hamper his mission and his journey. Readers will wonder, ‘what possibly can happen now”. The next chapter will investigate another external conflict and an internal conflict.
Dean meets a beautiful, leggy, strawberry blond graduate student. Dean struggles to keep her out of his real life but this struggle he losses. She, a widow of an operative, figures Dean out. Dean has to walk a beam to keep Mary Cavendish safe and continue his mission. Love and danger mix into a series of close calls. Dean reluctantly pulls himself away after a hostage situation with a group of Basque ETA use them as a shield.
He hops a train and shares a ride with an American hobo bumming around Europe. In a fun scene, Dean gets schooled in hobo philosophy. He spends the night in a hobo camp. One of my favorites scenes if forced to pick one.
Then a physical obstacle. Crossing a railroad track, Dean severely sprains an ankle. After much gnashing of teeth, he limps into a town and wraps up his ankle with a doctor that speaks of life under Franco. The brutal dictator that I explore throughout the manuscript.
I want to pause here and explain a few themes. Not only is this a Cold War story, I also explore post war Europe, the rise of communism, the uncertainty of the times and the awful decade of terrorism and much more. Many historians have lamented that the 70s are “the forgotten decade”. Not hardly but I’m not a historian. Sure, not terribly sexy but ripe with good material for a good yarn.
[To be continued.]