Chapter 162 Section 11

Good friends of the Ratleys and the Petersons - were supposed to go on a mission with George, but the pregnant Aimeebeth was suddenly taken to the hospital due to an abnormality, and Captain Burnen's voyage was cancelled. . On the night before leaving Laing May, George Ratley was said to have checked into the most luxurious and comfortable rooms of an Air Force guest house with a Captain-Pilot named Kent Klein.According to unwritten rules, in order to ensure enough sleep, these high-level suites are always reserved for pilots who perform special missions, and even high-ranking officers are not allowed to use them.Captain Kent Klein, who had to start at dawn the next day, went to bed first.Before he went to bed, Kent saw George grab a can of beer from the fridge and sit on the couch writing a letter to a friend, Randy Duran.

It was still dark when Captain Kent Klein awoke.Through the light from the bathroom, he saw George rolling around on the bed, as if he was having a nightmare.When Kent finished washing and came out of the bathroom, George had already calmed down, and it was so quiet that Kent couldn't see George's fat belly rising and falling under the blanket with his breath.Normally, George's breathing was quite dynamic.Kent tried to feel George's pulse, but he couldn't feel anything. Later, some people suspected that George Ratley died of a heart attack, and others suspected that alcohol or food poisoning, but the results of the autopsy refuted all these speculations.On the military death certificate received by Mrs. Ratley Liz, place of death: unknown, cause of death: unknown.

Liz Ratley died on November 25, 1985 after struggling with her two young daughters for two years.According to what Mike Peterson told the Ratley sisters when they were sensible, their mother died of depression after the death of her husband. Liz Ratley left her and George's two daughters to the Petersons in her will. In June of the following year, Mike Peterson led his family of six back to the United States and rented a house near Duke University in Durham, which he was familiar with, to settle down.A few doors down the same street lived Fred and Catherine Alvart. Their daughter Caitlin was about the same age as the Ratley sisters. The two families walked around each other.

At this time, Mike Peterson had completed the first draft of his Vietnam War novel War Hours, which he had been writing since he was stationed in Japan. He returned to China this time to find an agent in the publishing industry.Mike spent two years understanding the market, contacting and negotiating with various people.After the selection, it took another two years to polish and modify the work according to the agent's wishes, and even designed new characters and plots, reversing certain chapters and starting over. In 1990, Mike Peterson's 20-year-long masterpiece Time of War was finally published.According to its summary, the book "intercepts highlights from the Vietnam War, and describes in depth and detailed the high-level espionage activities of the warring parties, the individual heroic behavior of the officers and soldiers, as well as sex and homosexuality."The introduction article published on "Publishing Weekly" said: "Mike Peterson cleverly introduces descriptions of the diplomatic tricks of various interested countries in the book. The war scenes he created are extremely delicate, vivid and grand, but some Readers might be put off by his overly daring sexuality."

"War Time" is divided into hardcover and paperback. Mike wrote in the inscription: To Padisia, who went through all the pain I went through. To Clayton and Ted, may their pain only be in my nightmares. Dedicated to the dead. Also dedicated to those living who can never extricate themselves from the pain. Although Mike Peterson often says he considers sisters Margaret and Martha Ratley his own, he doesn't name them here. That fall, the Petersons returned to Germany, but soon Mike returned to Durham with the Ratley sisters, leaving his wife and sons in Europe.In the summer of the second year, when Paddy Xia's mother and son returned to the United States for the summer vacation, they found that Mike Peterson had moved in and lived in the home of Catherine Alvart.

Catherine was nearly 10 years younger than Mike Peterson, and was born in Greenboro, North Carolina on February 21, 1953, when her father, John Hunter, the owner of a small construction company, had already Over 50, her mother, Veronica Ann Hogan Hunter, was in her early 30s. The Hunters were not from North Carolina. They moved from New York, and soon moved back north to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.Catherine Morris Kath Hunter has been outstanding since she was a child, not only among the four siblings of the Hunter family, but also in the whole class and school.Catherine has also won many other honors, such as being elected as the school's "Girl of the Year", the local "Miss Lancaster", as well as being the president of some clubs at the school and the editor of the school newspaper.

In 1971, Catherine graduated from McCaskey Middle School with the first grade among 473 students in the whole grade, making her name listed in the "Who's Who of American High School Students" that year.She was soon followed by an even bigger honor, becoming the first ever female student in Duke's Faculty of Engineering.The Hunter family has always focused on education, and one of the ways they encourage their children to learn is by rewarding them with points.When Catherine's older brother, Steven Hunter, graduated from high school and entered the engineering department at the Virginia Army School two years ago, his parents gave him just enough to buy a slide rule.This time, Catherine received a bounty as high as $160, enough to buy a calculator that was considered a luxury at the time.

Students at Duke University still remember that Catherine once worked as an editor for the student publication "Duke Engineer" of the School of Engineering during her school days. She liked to wear wooden slippers in the dormitory building and swagger from upstairs to downstairs Down. In the summer of 1972, Catherine told her family that she had taken a physics class for the summer and was not going home.The parents were worried, and led the whole family to drive south, only to find out that their daughter fell in love with Fred Alvart, a Ph.D candidate in the Department of Physics, and also a teaching assistant in the summer physics class.