A Tide in the Affairs of Men
by
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The sunken freighter was beyond the horizon, but Seaman Peter Quint couldn’t take his eyes off the sea astern, his mind fixed on the place where a ship had been and then, in that place, had vanished. It was a juxtaposition of the real and the unreal, and Quint struggled with that, trying to make out which was which. He had seen his grandfather die, and this reminded him of that. On that Thursday, his grandfather was there among them, sick, yes, dying one minute and the next minute dead; and there was a great difference between the two moments, the living moment and the dead. A vast gulf had opened, and mystery flowed into it. That had happened again, now. And the mystery remained.
Quint looked to Chief Jenkins to explain most things in his life — how to rig for replenishment at sea, how to get a razor edge on his Kabar, how to work within, and around, regulations, and how to defend himself against the pitfalls that lay waiting in port for those who were eighteen and disliked being eighteen. Quint looked to Chief Jenkins for these answers; he looked to the sea for the rest. He believed in eternity but he could not visualize it; so he looked to the sea — it was eternal, and it talked to him about these things that could not be seen. But the sea offered no explanation of this current mystery: how a thing can be real and not real within so short a time; how an instant can reverse what had been fact — his grandfather’s life had turned into death, presence had turned into distance, and now a ship had turned into nothingness. He wrestled with the pain of the fact that, even if there were someone he could ask, he could not form the questions.
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About the Book
After his stint in the U.S. Navy, Stan Olsson has made a comfortable life as an American literature teacher in Minneapolis. But that all changes when he gets a mysterious phone call and ends up meeting a man who will change the course of his life.
The Coast Guard and the DEA cannot control drug trafficking in the Caribbean, and an organization of zealous vigilantes has something stealthier to put into play. That something is a “ghost ship,” a vessel that has been surreptitiously acquired and armed with the specific intent to intercept vessels smuggling drugs in the Caribbean. Olsson has the chance to command it. Against his better judgment, he accepts.
Olsson is told that he’s not working for the CIA or the military, but for a small, undercover group that will take direct and forceful action against the drug trade. But how will Olsson and his crew respond when violent events force them to confront their innermost selves?
As the clandestine operation travels through the labyrinths of the federal bureaucracy and the whirlpools of power in Washington, the interwoven network of complicity, both active and unwitting, raises a chilling question: Are men molded by duty, or do they mold duty to their own will?
About the Author
Brian Alm served as an engineering officer in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam and for the recovery of Apollo 13; he later earned his graduate degree in English at the University of Chicago. A former university teacher and magazine editor, he is now retired and studies ancient Egypt. Alm lives in Rock Island, Illinois.