“I think desire is not such a bad thing.”
âMichael Peterson,
The Immortal Dragon,
1983
In June 1981, Michael's sister, Ann, and her husband, John Christensen, flew off to Gräfenhausen, Germany, for a fourteen-month stay with Michael and Patty. From there, they made excursions all over Europe.
Ann had an opportunity to bond with her oldest brother in a way that had not seemed possible with their age difference as children. She also met and built a nice friendship with Liz. Ann liked and admired Liz and it surprised her that her brother never said anything good about her. In fact, he said she was crazy. He also said Patty was crazy, so Ann just let it slide.
The Christensens noticed that Mike spent time writing and working out at the gym every day. They also realized that the only discernible source of family income was Patty's salary as a teacher. And yet, the Petersons drove a Mercedes, dined on fine china and drank fine wine. It didn't make a lot of sense. John asked Mike if he was in the CIA. Mike would not answer. When asked, Patty would not reply. On another occasion, Mike told them that he did consulting work for countries on behalf of the government.
But Michael had told Amybeth Berner, another DOD
teacher who worked with his wife, that he did work for the CIA. In fact, he said that, on their orders, he had killed a man who was causing trouble in Vietnam.
To add to his mystique, Michael claimed to others that he had been “the next-to-the-last white man out of Ethiopia after Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown” in 1974. He boasted that he drove through Yugoslavia, when it was a Soviet Bloc nation, twenty times and was in East Germany more times than he can remember.
With George and Liz Ratliff being friends to both the Durhams and the Petersons, Randy and Mike were often thrown together. Mike often implied in casual conversations that he was connected to the CIA, but never gave Randy any details he could use to pin him down. Where the truth ended and the fantasy began was never clear to anyone.
Pat Finn moved to Berlin and a strain developed in her relationship with Patty. The rift was caused by the difficulty that they had in communication. Pat never sent Patty a letter, because she knew it would be intercepted and read by Mike beforeâor ifâit was passed along to Patty.
She could not call Patty because the Petersons did not have a home telephoneâthey always used one at a friend's or neighbor's house. It irritated Pat that she always had to wait for Patty's call. When it came, Mike hovered in the background supervising Patty's communication.
When Pat attempted to talk to Patty about her
frustration, Patty did notâor would notâunderstand her point of view. Patty thought that Pat should understand
her
position.
In May of 1983, Mike and Patty paid a visit to Pat and her husband, Joseph, in Berlin. Mike took the opportunity to steal Pat Finn's bank card, but he needed a PIN number to use it. While Pat took a shower, Mike crept into her bedroom and rummaged through her drawers in search of her personal code. He found it, and over four days, withdrew the maximum each day for a total of $1,000.
The Finns went back to the States for summer break days after that visit. All the mail addressed to them in Germany was held until their return. They received a letter at their U.S. address from Michael. He claimed that the baby-sitter who watched the children at the Finns' house stole money from his wallet. Pat thought his accusation was absurdâshe knew the girl well. She was the daughter of the vice principal at the school where Pat worked.
Upon her return to Germany, Pat found a statement from her bank and noted that the balance was off by about $1,000. She assumed the bank had made an error and went to the office to straighten it out. They pointed to the four $250 drafts made in May. Pat insisted she never used that card. Someone had, they told her.
Then she realized that the dates of the transactions corresponded with the time that Patty and Mike visited. This revelation made her sick at heart. Yes, she had noticed that on every previous visit something had been missing from her home. It was never anything of
valueâa paperback book or small trinketâand she did not want to suspect her friends.
She even overlooked the time that German marks disappeared from her purse when she visited the Petersons in Durham. It wasn't a significant amount and it was not anything she could prove. This time was different.
On the advice of her bankers, she told Mike that since her card was stolen and he had lost money, too, there was going to be a thorough investigation of the theft. Mike, realizing the police would be involved, admitted what he had done and agreed to pay her back.
At first, neither of them shared this information with Patty. One day, Patty called Pat and said she would like to visit her.
Pat said, “Patty, you are always welcome in my home. But when you come, please leave your husband and children at home.”
A stunned Patty asked, “What is this all about?”
“You need to talk to your husband about it.”
Pat did not hear from Patty again for a long time. She received a payment from Michael and another from Patty, but they never paid the amount in full. More than the money, though, Pat was stung by the betrayal. It was the rudest awakening of her life.
Michael Peterson's dream of becoming a published writer had now come true. He longed to write about his experiences in the war, but his first published effort was set in nineteenth century France and Vietnam.
New American Library published
The Immortal Dragon,
a 527-page paperback, under their Signet imprint in July 1983. Mike dedicated the book to his wife Patty and his two sons, 9-year-old Clayton and 7-year-old Todd.
The novel traced the love and lust of three generations against the backdrop of the power struggle between France and Vietnam. Treachery abounded in the corrupt ruling court and the traders were bent on exploitation while priests labored to save the heathens' souls.
Sex played a major roleâfrom the bliss of the marital bed to the rampant promiscuity of a sorceress, from the homosexual advances of powerful men to the humiliation and degradation of women. It was a thread that bound the book together. It was a challenging and monumental project for a first-time author. Michael handled it well, producing a cohesive and captivating tale.
George and Liz Ratliff were thrilled by Michael's book. A decorated war hero
and
a novelist? They thumbed through the pages looking for themselvesâand they found characters who were loosely based on them.
Michael Peterson was borrowing from reality when he wrote of the birth of a child in
The Immortal Dragon.
The infant appeared to be dead and did not respond to normal stimuli. The grandmother “ ⦠held it by the feet and plunged it into a tub of cold water. She brought it out, then plunged it in again, and when she yanked it out the second time, the baby sucked in, filling its lungs. Then it screamed.”
This tale was a re-enactment of the birth of Michael's mother. The woman who'd plunged her into water was Michael's Italian grandmother.
Michael Peterson's writing career was born, but it would be seven long years before his hands again held a new book bearing his name.
“A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Breadâand Thou
Beside me singing in the Wildernessâ
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!”
âEdward FitzGerald
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Captain George Ratliff's new squadron was nicknamed “the Berlin for Lunch Bunch” because of their frequent flights to Templehof Air Force Base in Berlin, where they would have lunch and fly back. It was assumed that they flew to other locations as wellâbut no one knew where.
They departed from Frankfurt and returned seldom spending the night away. They were not hauling cargo, but no one outside of the squadron knew what they were doing. Their C-130s were segregated from the restâkept in a locked and heavily guarded hangar.
The men were assigned to a secret mission in October of 1983. Liz did not know where her husband was going. At first, she was comforted knowing that their friend, Bruce Berner, would be going, too. But when his wife Amybeth was rushed to the hospital with complications from her pregnancy, Bruce's plans changed. He was excused from participation and stayed in Germany.
According to rumor, George went to Panama, but no one outside of the squadron really knowsâthat information was still classified in 2004. It was oftrepeated that his group was part of Operation Urgent Fury, preparing to participate in the invasion of Grenada,
but that rumor was groundless. Regardless of where George was stationed on this mission, something went wrong.
George lived in comfortable quarters with his roommate, Captain Kent Klein. The main living space had a kitchenette and a sitting area with a television. A moveable partition marked off the sleeping area with its two single beds and a bath.
George and Kent went jogging early in the day. That night, Kent went to bed early, since he had a flight at dawn the next morning. George stayed up, popped open a beer and plopped down on the sofa. He started to write a letter to his friend, Randy Durham, who was now stationed at Scott Air Force Base and attending Airlift Operations School. Like a true Aggie, the salutation read, “Howdy, Good Buddy.” It was filled with cordial chit-chat: “I spent a week at home in Texas on leave. It was great. I really had a good time fishing and drinking Lone Star longnecks.” He wrote three pages in this vein before he grew tired and went to bed.
It was still dark when Kent got up and turned on the light in the bathroom. It washed over his roommate's bed, where George was tossing and turning in his sleep. Kent thought nothing of it as he cleaned up to face a new day.
When he was done, Kent stepped into the bedroom to pull on his flight suit. George had stopped moving. The blankets were not even rising and falling with his breath. Kent looked closer. He tried to locate a pulse, but found nothing. He ran for help.
A couple of days later, Randy Durham was seated in class in the middle of a lecture. The commandant of the school poked his head into the room and motioned to
Randy to come take a phone call. Colonel Ron Peoples, head of operations for George's mission, was on the line. Randy learned that George was dead and that Liz wanted him to escort the body back to Texas.
It took a little luck, some fancy footwork and a highranking officer to get the security clearance to allow Randy to fly to the mission location. But by Sunday he was on his way. When he arrived, he found the letter George was writing to him still attached to the writing pad in the middle of the desk.
Randy was not allowed to contact George's family until he landed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. There he called George Ratliff, Sr., and gave him an estimated time of arrival.
Randy escorted George's casket by land to Philadelphia, where he boarded a commercial flight bound for Hobby Airport in Houston. Randy followed the hearse to Bay City in a rented car and helped carry his friend into the mortuary.
Michael Peterson escorted the grieving widow and her small daughters to the States for the funeral. Many thought it odd that Patty PetersonâLiz's best friendâwas not there by her side. Again and again, Mike told anyone who would listen that George had died without a will. The finances were screwed up, and Liz couldn't handle it. He would have to straighten it all out for her.
George's casket was open for the viewing the night before the funeral. A distraught Liz refused to attend, claiming childhood trauma as her reason. When she was a young girl, she said, she was forced to kiss a dead grandmother in a coffin. She could not bear to see another dead person.
On October 27, 1983, the funeral began as an opencasket service, but when Liz arrived, that changed. Randy nodded to the honor guard from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio and they closed the coffin at his command. A devastated Liz went through the motions of the service with a numb mind and a shredded heart. Mourners accompanied the casket to Cedarvale Cemetery, a Bay City landmark since 1896.
Her mother and her sisters offered to join her in Texas for the funeral. Because of all the uncertainty about the timing of the arrival of George's body, the smallness of the rural Ratliff home and the lack of any nearby hotels, Liz discouraged them. She visited her family after the services and before her return to Germany.
At Margaret's house, Liz's sadness was so palpable, it weighed on everyone like a shroud of lead. Her sisters spent hours talking with her, comforting her and trying to bear some of her burden.
One evening, to distract her, they went out to a club for dinner. “If George were here tonight,” she said, “he would order a beer.” Then she ordered one and placed it by the empty space at the table.
After dinner, the group who was performing asked Liz to come up and play a song. Liz took Margaret with her and mounted the stage. Liz played the guitar and both women sang “Donna Donna,” an old Joan Baez song. For that brief interlude, the veil lifted from Liz. And she smiled.
At first, everyone suspected that heart failure was the cause of George's death. In the preliminary autopsy
report, however, the coronary workup did not indicate any blockage or other areas of concern.
Then, everyone was certain that the toxicology report would hold the answer to George's demise. When the final autopsy report was released, it contained the results of the toxicology testing. Every substance tested turned up negative. The military later told Liz that his death was caused when, in a condition similar to crib death, her husband's system shut down and he died in his sleep.
When Liz received the death certificate, it offered her no further information. Under “Location of death” was simply the word “Unknown.” And under “Cause of death,” there it was again, “Unknown.” She never learned the whole truth.