Nothing Lasts Forever

By Walt Lynch

During the anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s, a youthful indiscretion by a college student leads to a life on the run from the FBI, only to be identified years later by a computer hacker threatening blackmail. When the former firebrand seeks help from retired private investigator and Vietnam veteran Bill Quinn, he struggles with his decision whether to assist her. While weighing his options, he takes up the cause of a distraught friend whose daughter has gone missing, a search that will take Quinn into the heart of a white supremacist group. Unbeknownst to Quinn, a local narcotics agent and an undercover ATF officer are both closing in on the same group. A missing person and an FBI fugitive looking for help may be the least of his problems with a pair of mob hitmen tracking Quinn, out to settle an old score.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369400753

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Copyright © 2023 by Walt Lynch.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/19/2023

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1:     Sunset

Chapter 2:     Morning

Chapter 3:     Stardust

Chapter 4:     Patti

Chapter 5:     Missing

Chapter 6:     Jackpot

Chapter 7:     Unmasked

Chapter 8:     Roadblock

Chapter 9:     Decision

Chapter 10:   Beau

Chapter 11:   Missy

Chapter 12:   Opposite Sides

Chapter 13:   Informant

Chapter 14:   Mutt

Chapter 15:   Advice

Chapter 16:   Debriefing

Chapter 17:   Pirate’s Bay

Chapter 18:   Guns & Drugs

Chapter 19:   Prodigy

Chapter 20:   Travis

Chapter 21:   Slater

Chapter 22:   Corroboration

Chapter 23:   Bounty

Chapter 24:   Partners

Chapter 25:   Wheezer

Chapter 26:   Burner

Chapter 27:   Madison

Chapter 28:   Ocean Breeze

Chapter 29:   Meeting

Chapter 30:   Intimidation

Chapter 31:   Alternative

Chapter 32:   Kitchen

Chapter 33:   Rescue

Chapter 34:   Merchandise

Chapter 35:   Raid

Chapter 36:   Execution

Chapter 37:   Adios

For Marie. The best.

PROLOGUE

MAY 1969

The four radicals huddled in the basement of an apartment building just off campus. They had been planning to make some kind of statement before the semester ended and felt the time would never be better. The war raged on. John and Yoko were having a bed-in for peace in Amsterdam. Eighty armed African American students at Cornell had taken over Willard Straight Hall demanding a Black studies program.

None of the four had been radicalized when they started as freshmen in September of 1965. Johnson lying about the war, the assassinations of Bobby and Martin, the endless casualty reports from Vietnam of young Americans sent to fight in a futile Asian conflict, and the police battles in America’s inner cities against frustrated African Americans had drawn them to a revolutionary belief that the country needed to be brought to its knees before it could rise up and go forward.

The dank basement smelled of marijuana, although no one in the group was smoking. At least not then. A slight odor of mold was evident as well. Nearly two o’clock in the morning and a certain nervousness filled the room. While they waited, the four revolutionaries - that’s the way they thought of themselves - also felt a purposefulness. To honor the revolutionary spirit of Che Guevara, they had taken a Spanish name - El Grupo Contra Guerra, the Anti-War Group. One of the group, Larry Goldstein, had begun to wear a Che beret in admiration of the Argentine revolutionary.

Marie Alexander asked, Can we go over the plan again? She was tall, brown-eyed, slim and athletic, and had played club basketball her first two years at Pinchot State Teachers College. Then she became politically active, and basketball fell by the wayside. She was nervously smoking a Virginia Slims cigarette.

Larry Goldstein, the leader of El Grupo and a wild-eyed romantic revolutionary, answered, Sure. He stubbed out his nonfiltered Camel, wishing he could smoke a filtered cigarette like Marie, but knowing it wouldn’t be considered manly to smoke one, least of all a Virginia Slims -- a girl’s cigarette -- he was stuck with the old nonfiltered smoke. Fuck, he thought, I hate tobacco on my tongue, but I gotta maintain my image for the movement. Can’t be caught smoking one of those.

Goldstein was from New York, or the City as all the assholes from NYC referred to New York City, like there was no other city in the United States except for theirs. But the ones who came to Pinchot from the City brought a revolutionary fervor and intensity from places like Columbia and the Village.

Five-foot-five Larry Goldstein was a miniature version of his idol, Jerry Rubin - wild black curly hair and a tendency to long, exhaustive ramblings on the wrongness of American adventurism around the globe, particularly in Southeast Asia. Any given day on campus he could be found expounding on why we should have been out of Vietnam long ago.

Marie, what are you worried about? We went over this so many times. You thinking about bailing on this or what? asked Michael Walsh.

Walsh’s bona fides went back to family members in the Easter 1916 uprising, grandparents whose children and grandchildren went on to quiet careers in the IRA. You’d expect that, looking at his red hair and the map of Ireland spread across his face. Second generation Irish, you could still pick up a Gaelic lilt in his voice. He had burned his draft card in the college quadrangle, daring law enforcement to arrest him. The man never stepped forward.

When he had finished speaking to Marie, he pulled out a joint and a Zippo lighter and prepared to light up.

Hey, Mike, said Goldstein, maybe wait to get high later, ya think? He also thought, asshole, but kept it to himself.

Then, for Marie’s sake, and to calm his own nerves, he went over the plan one more time.

Goldstein said, My car is parked in the lot across the street from the target. I have the cocktails in the trunk, ready to go. We’ll each take two and move to the sides of the building we agreed on. You each have a Zippo. As soon as you’re in position, fire up and throw your Molotovs at the fascists’ building. Meet back at the car and we’re out of there.

The fourth El Grupo member, Mary Callahan, only a sophomore, sat off to the side, quietly chewing on a cuticle. She was blonde, lithe, blue-eyed, every boy’s dream, but she wouldn’t look twice at you unless your politics were left of Eldridge Cleaver. She sat wondering if they even remembered she was in the room.

*       *       *

As they moved toward their target, a Janis cut from Big Brother and the Holding Company – Summertime – drifted down to the four from an open dormitory window. Someone was tuned into the local FM station and the gentle strains of Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer followed Pearl’s rendition of the Gershwin classic.

It was 2:30 AM when they reached Goldstein’s nine-year-old Plymouth Valiant parked in the lot across from the Pinchot ROTC building, next to the Delta fraternity house. He popped the trunk and revealed eight Molotov cocktails in Coke bottles in a Sealtest milk crate. Larry distributed the bottles, two each, to the other three. Silently they took their potential firebombs and moved to the sides of the building.

There were no synchronized watches. They simply moved quickly to a pre-determined spot near the building, brought out their Zippos, lit the rags, and heaved their gasoline missiles at the four sides of the building.

Within minutes it was engulfed in flames! Marie and Mary had thrown their bottles through side windows and saw immediate effects as the gasoline spread quickly across furniture and papers left on desktops. Goldstein’s throws at the front door had started an inferno on the porch. Walsh torched the rear porch, then took off for the front, joining Alexander along the building’s side as she sprinted to the Plymouth.

As quickly as the attack had started, it was over. In less than three minutes they had set the building ablaze and raced back toward the car to make their exit. Goldstein paused by the open driver’s door and turned toward the burning structure. His face glowed from the flames. Raising his right arm he gave the building his middle finger.

Larry, for Chrissakes, get in the car and let’s get the fuck outta here, demanded Walsh.

Alexander had climbed into the backseat. Walsh was riding shotgun.

Where’s Mary? asked Goldstein.

Fuck if I know, replied Walsh. Let’s go!

Goldstein turned the key and the engine came to life. He pulled the gearshift into first and they left - tires squealing on the parking lot tarmac as he popped the clutch.

*       *       *

In the Delta fraternity house next to the ROTC building, sitting by an open window three stories above the action below, Roscoe Benjamin Bartlett - Arby to his friends and fraternity brothers - observed the attack and the retreat of the revolutionaries. He was smoking a Marlboro Red and trying to sober up after an interesting night that included a wild toga party.

He squinted at the figures below as they began to scramble back to the piece o’ shit Valiant.

Jesus, he mumbled, looking down at the burning building.

He recognized Goldstein, Walsh, and Alexander. He didn’t see Mary Callahan as she went in the opposite direction of her co-conspirators and disappeared into the campus darkness.

*       *       *

MAY 2019

From the moment the first Molotov cocktail hit the Pinchot College ROTC building, the world began to evolve in a way most would not have anticipated. The moon landing came first in July. The Amazing Mets won the World Series in the fall. Changes began to arrive, it seemed, at the speed of light.

Kent State in 1970. Watergate. The end of the war. Disco. Cocaine. AIDS. The Berlin Wall coming down as the Soviet Union collapsed. The stained blue dress. The first Gulf War. OJ. The internet. Cell phones. Unbelievable technological advances. The 9/11 terrorist attacks. The first African American US president. Legal same sex marriage. The changes were astounding, but one constant remained. Mary Callahan was in the wind. While her three colleagues had been arrested, incarcerated, and eventually released from prison, Mary was nowhere to be found.

Local newspapers, mostly online, and the national dailies all remarked on the fiftieth anniversary of the Pinchot College ROTC building bombing, if only because Mary was still at large. That is, at large if she was still alive. No one knew if she was a sixty-nine-year-old fugitive or had died quietly in her sleep years before.

CHAPTER 1

SUNSET

September 12, 2019

7:35 PM

At precisely seven thirty-five on an extremely pleasant fall evening, a man wearing a UNC jacket rose from his seat at a table near the Cloud 9’s overlook of the Cape Fear River and strode to the railing. A woman nursing a glass of wine at the bar casually stood and walked to the man’s side as he stared at the river and the wetlands beyond. The two watched from the Embassy Suites rooftop as the sun began its almost imperceptible descent beyond the horizon.

The man sipped what looked like a bourbon on the rocks. He ignored the woman’s arrival at his side. She, too, looked out across the vast marsh. Not turning in his direction she asked, Come here for the view?

The corners of his mouth twitched into what might have been a slight smile. Sunset. I come for the sunsets. He looked at his watch and added, And today the sun sets at seven thirty-five. Glancing her way, he smiled. His accent announced his good ol’ boy Carolina pedigree.

He was tall, about six three, wearing dressy jeans, tapered to his hand-tooled Tony Lama boots with a red-and-white checked shirt beneath the UNC jacket. His light brown hair was long and combed straight back. A ball cap with We the People embroidered above the bill rested on the table he had left to observe the sunset.

I see you’re a Tar Heel fan.

The man glanced down briefly at the UNC emblem on his jacket and then looked to the woman.

How can a person not be, livin’ in Carolina? He frowned a bit and asked, You’re not a Duke fan, are you?

She laughed and said, Not hardly. I’m a Pitt fan.

Still an ACC school. Well that’s sayin’ somethin’ he remarked. At that he offered his hand and said, You must be Miss Martin.

Please, call me Tricia. As they shook, she said, It’s good to meet you, Mister White.

Virgil is fine. Let’s find a quiet table. He took her elbow, retrieved his cap and guided her to a small table nestled in the corner of the bar. Tricia retrieved her purse hanging from her chair as they passed by.

As they moved across the virtually deserted room (only two solitary drinkers at the bar,) he noticed she was well dressed for a gun runner. Her baby blue vee-neck, cashmere sweater and black pants were clearly not from any thrift store. Nor were her black, low-heeled pumps. To complete the outfit, she wore a thin gold necklace and matching earrings. Her ruby red hair was cut just above her shoulders showing off her earrings and a neck as classic as a Greek sculpture.

A server approached as they sat and asked if they would like another. Virgil ordered a Jack Daniels on the rocks and Tricia demurred, with most of her wine still untouched.

Hope you didn’t mind the spy versus spy introduction stuff with the sunset time and ACC team references.

Tricia said, No problem. I’ve had all kinds of strange meetings in this business. Better safe than sorry.

Glad you see it that way, Virgil said with a quick smile.

They sat silently as Virgil’s empty glass was replaced by a fresh bourbon. As the server withdrew, he said, So Judd in New Bern set all this up when he found out what y’all are in the market for. You known Judd long? Virgil reached