Closer To God
Diamonds and Rust
I carefully removed five more one thousand shilling notes and presented them to Wendy.
“That’s about one fifth the average wage in Kenya. It ought to get us dinner served in this cabin, and, unless my judgment about such things is sadly flawed, your natural allure ought to count for something.”
Wendy took the money. I saw a glint flash from her eye under raised eyebrow. I wondered how much of the five thousand would end up in the hands of the crew. She and Dingo headed out into the aisle.
“Who are you two?” I asked the remaining women.
“I’m Helen and this is Anice,” the blondest of the two blonds said, waving one hand toward her companion.
“Where you from?” I asked, making conversation while I thought about everything that had happened to us since stepping aboard the train.
“Troy,” she said, noting my lack of real attention.
“Helen of Troy…neat,” I responded with a smile.
“Why don’t you two join your friends at finding us all something to eat?” I said. I held the door open. Anice went by me, her short curly hair so thick and tight it resembled Velcro.
When they were out of the room I secured the one-sided deadbolt. I stood before Burt.
“Want to tell me about it?” I asked him, pointedly, my arms crossed. He watched the evening countryside go by for at least a full minute before answering.
“Ah, about what?”
I frowned. I was not accustomed to my team members withholding information pertinent to the mission, nor on acting independently.
“The three bad guys you forced to leap from the train. Take a close look at the window next to you. They’re safety latched, but you’d play hell at getting them open far enough to squeeze a full grown American through without using a lot of time and tools. Then there’s the terminal nature of what would have likely happened to guys. I don’t think you’d send three men to their deaths that way. I know something about you now. You didn’t force them from the window, so where are they?”
I watched Burt consider. I was determined not to be surprised at whatever he came up with. I didn’t know what had happened to our pursuers, but I knew Burt was lying about whatever had happened.
“I’m sorry, “ Burt apologized, But this isn’t a mission you know. Not anymore. I don’t have to report to you or do what you tell me. We’re on our own. I said I threw them off the train to impress the lassies. I haven’t been with a woman for awhile.” His eyes left mine to roam again across the moving Savannah.
In spite of myself, I was surprised. Burt was impressing young women while three guys, apparently still on the train somewhere, were trying to kill us for unknown reasons. I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to respond to that part of what he’d said, so I ignored it.
“Where are they?” I said instead, getting right to the point.
“Back in their cabin. Just like I left ‘em. One has a broken ankle and the other two broken wrists. They don’t have any guns. I threw their cell phones out the window.” Burt offered the last as if it made up for his earlier lie.
I glared at him, getting control of myself before speaking.
“This is a mission and I’m the mission commander, unless you don’t want to survive it. We’re not going to get through this by trying to impress young women. We won’t survive long doing stupid things like throwing their cell phones away either. Those phones had numbers and identities on them. Now you either accept that or you’re on your own. And, if you accept it, I don’t want any more of this crap. I make the decisions, on everything. That’s what I do. You implement those decisions in the manner I tell you to. That’s what you do. And you don’t keep anything from me. Got it?”
My voice had dropped in both tone and volume. Burt and I were in more trouble than I could calculate. I needed him, but I could reasonably survive without him. On his own, he wouldn’t last another day.
Helen of Troy’s voice could be heard through the solid wood door. She had one of those irritating nasal voices, but her looks were so great you tended not to notice when in front of her. I waited, my hand on the deadbolt, staring back at Burt.
“Alright. It’s a mission. I’ll do my part.”
I twisted the small brass knob. Four women filled the cabin, settling onto bunks and floor as if a gaggle of geese looking to forage.
“It’s done,” Wendy stated, proudly. “They’re bringing dinner in about an hour, between the early servings. I couldn’t understand their word for the meat.
I think its called Punda.”
“Punda milia,” I added, instantly sorry I’d spoken up. The words translated into striped ass or Zebra.
“Means beef, I think,” I recovered, looking over at Burt, who was staring at Dingo too intently to pay attention to me.
“About the sleeping arrangements,” I began, but got no further. Obviously, the Earth Mother’s had discussed more than dinner when they had gone to the dining car.
“You’re sleeping in my bunk. I’ll stay on the floor with Helen. Burt can have the padded bench, with Dingo on the floor next to him.” Wendy’s rapid delivery gave away the preparedness of her comments. There was silence in the room. The earlier arrangements discussed had seemed to include a whole lot more than just sleeping, but the amended plan suited me perfectly. The last thing any of us needed was more complexity, although I could not ignore the fact that the small room was going to occupied through the night by four attractive females and two men who had not known many women of late.
“The train is likely to stop soon,” I informed them. “While its stopped would be a good time to have dinner served. I’ll try to time it right,” I said, gesturing toward Burt to accompany me. Wendy frowned, but asked no questions.
“Wine, you have more wine. Might as well trot it out. We’ll be right back.”
I slipped out into the passageway with my last words hanging in the air. We didn’t need company with what we were about, and the Earth Mothers were just a bit too bright and adventurous. Keeping them from participating in anything would not be accomplished with force. Especially not since I’d allowed one of them to become armed. Our current and continuing presence in their lives was a risk to them, however, and I would not overlook it.
Burt led our passage through the dining car. I marveled at the old world charm of the décor. Red leather, deep brown wood and polished glass. It resembled some Hollywood director’s idea of what a dining car should look like, rather than what you would expect to find in a third world country. Eating in the cabin would be much less entertaining, but a whole lot more secure.
We made our way to the last car. We reached the last door, which Burt plunged right through, his weapon out and raised. I noted that the lock had been shot away, just like the one in our door.
Three men were in the room. Two sat on one lower bunk, opposing us, and the remaining man sitting on the floor, propped up against the wall. With the bunks down, there was not much floor space in a Fourth Class cabin. Burt moved deep enough into the space to allow me to sit on the lower bunk, across from the two men.
“Who are you gentlemen?” I asked, no threat in my voice. Burt’s gun was out and ready, but mine still in my pocket. They looked at me. The man on the floor had the broken angle. It was evident from off angle of the bones. The other two had wrapped wrists. One right wrist. One left wrist.
“Left handed?” I asked Burt, pointing at the appropriate man, but his attention was on the three men.
“Who are you people?” I inquired again. None of the three answered, each looking from one to the other.
I noted the very bottom of a tattoo sticking out from under the short sleeve of the one with the broken right wrist. I stepped carefully over the broken ankle of the floor positioned one. I pulled the sleeve gently upward. The tattoo was in blue. It was of the head of a water buffalo. Then I noted the age of the man. He was not young. Older than I, all three of them were, and I was old for the business.
“Thirty-two Battalion?” I asked. The man nodded once.
“Shit,” I mouthed to myself.
“What is it?” Burt asked, gauging the regret in my tone.
“Thirty-two Battalion is the old Boer Commando outfit, disbanded in 1993, I think. It was pretty hot shit. All three of you?” I pointed at the other two. I received no answer.
“Burt here will be glad to take your shirts off, and then break your remaining joints,” I offered. The one who had signaled before did so again.
“Who are you with now?” I inquired, not expecting an answer. I waited, but I knew I was wasting my time. The situation could only play out in one of two possible ways. Either the men were actually going to jump from the train, at high speed with their injuries, or they were going to see reason. I could only play the cards I had been dealt. I couldn’t change them.
“Okay. Have it your way. I don’t expect much. I know you guys. I was a United States Marine. I have a mission to perform. Either Burt here tosses you off the train or you tell me whom you’re working for. I’ll work something out. It’s not much that I’m asking. No names. Not even what this is all about. “ I waited, while once again they looked at each other. They had to be mercenaries. They worked for the money, so their loyalty was not to a cause. But their habit patterns where from the old school, and it would near impossible to break them down. I was not willing to resort to physical torture, and I didn’t really have the equipment for such an operation anyway. Physical torture always works. On everyone. No single human is immune, or tough enough to ‘gut it out,’ as that is the province of movies and television. But it comes with a high price, for the tortured and the torturers. I’d tortured. I knew the price, and I was no longer willing to pay it.
“Aegis,” the man said, his voice low. “Diamonds. It is about diamonds.”
I sat back stunned. Aegis didn’t bother me. It was one of the mercenary companies operating out of London. There were bunches of them. But his volunteering of ‘diamonds’ perplexed me. Tea, textiles, coffee and a few other things were exported from Kenya. There were no diamonds. Not that anybody had ever found or reported on.
“Where,” I asked, not sure what I expected to hear. And what I got I did not expect.
“Freetown.” We cannot tell you more. Our families will never be paid if we tell you.”
I liked the fact that the man was thinking about the money Aegis would pay out to their families following death. I had their full attention. There was no Freetown in Kenya. There was a Freetown in a place that had a ton of diamonds, however. Sierra Leone. A shit-hole of a place. The unadvertised, unclaimed, and nearly unknown, poorest country in Africa, which was saying something.
“We will talk no more. Do your will.” The man bowed his head. Without sharp instruments and a controlled environment I knew that I wasn’t going to get more.
“Lighten up, Francis,” I quoted from the movie Stripes. “You did what you were asked. Here’s the deal. I’m gonna pull the emergency stop.” I stood up and grabbed the single line running corner to corner near the top of the car. “The trains gonna stop. Only you three will be here. They’ll come in hordes once they figure out the cord was pulled in this room. Stopping the train is a First Class Felony in Kenya. You’ll be arrested, guarded, and taken to jail in Mombasa. When you get there one of you needs to confess that he did it. Claim drunkenness. The natives think all White Men are drunks. Or you can claim that you need medical care from the injuries you suffered fighting with one another. Once one of you confesses the others will be set loose. Strange Kenyan Justice. The two released can pay the fine for the felony, and then you can get some splints and treatment for your problems.” I stopped and looked at them carefully.
“If you don’t claim you did it, then there is going to be trouble. Burt here is going to take your going back on your word badly. You won’t survive this mission, I promise you. I want your word as an ‘Os Terriveis’” I stopped again. Portugal had contributed a lot of men to 32 Battalion, and had loaned it the name “Terrible Ones,” not without good cause.
“We agree,” the man said, this time without looking to the others for approval. I was giving them a rare gift, and the man seemed to understand. It would be safer to leave them for dead, strewn along the harsh landscape of the beautiful Savannah, then have them reaching their superiors to tell of their contact with us.
I pulled down hard on the cord. Squealing sounds came from the wheel brakes of our car. It was going to be a slow stop as the emergency cord only worked for the car it was pulled in. The train whistle blew long and loud. The crew had figured out that there was a problem.
I took out another ten thousand shillings and placed them firmly in the man’s good hand. “You’ll need this for the fine. They won’t take your cash when you’re in custody. Trust me, I know about custody in Kenya.” I then took my box of cigarettes out and offered one to each man. They sat there, each with a white tube sticking out of his mouth. Burt brought out a lighter and went slowly from man to man, keeping his suppressed automatic trained on each while he lit their smokes.
“Dankie,” the man said. Dankie is Afrikaans for thank you. He slipped the bills into his shirt pocket. Burt and I stepped out of the room, then made our way quickly back to the dining car, which was full. The non-stop train was slowing to a stop, which caused a lot of discussion from everyone around us as we made our way through.
“What if they try to lay it on us?” Burt asked, just before we reached the room.
“They’re screwed. Strange Kenyan Justice. They’re the ones in the room where the cord got pulled. The exact place is registered down by the side of the car, near the tracks. There’s no Crime Scene Investigation over here.”
“Will it work the way you told them?” Burt inquired, his voice evidencing skepticism.
“I lie when necessary Burt, but I’m not cruel. Those were brothers-in-arms, whatever path they’ve taken since, and, because of your ‘assistance’ they won’t be a problem for us anymore.” I didn’t mention any of the problems that might arise from they’re eventual report to higher ups.
Wendy welcomed us into the room, locking the door behind us. I noted another empty bottle of wine primly set against the far wall, where a partially filled one sat next to it.
“We’ve been wondering where you were. And the train is almost stopped, just like you said would happen. How did you do that? And, when are we going to get to Mombasa?”
I laughed at her tone and obvious gaiety rather than her comments.
“When is dinner served?” I asked. I was terribly hungry and so very tired. I looked up at Wendy’s upper bunk with longing.
“It’s coming. It’s coming, Wendy giggled, but first we want to sing you a song.
Dingo has a ukulele. It’s made from Koa wood carved in Hawaii.
I slunk down the wall between the bunks. I prayed that there were no more players aboard the Iron Snake. Our stopping had risk. Anyone paralleling the train on the Mombasa Road could use the opportunity to get aboard. We could only plan for so much, however. The Earth Mother’s started their song, the words brining an immediate rye smile to my face: “Well, I’ll be damned, here comes your ghost again…” The song was a Joan Baez thing from many years in the past. I knew that the final words were: “…and if your offering me diamonds and rust, I’ve already paid.” I hadn’t understood the words to that song any of the times I’d heard it. I could never figure out what diamonds had to do with rust, since diamonds are a crystal and rust is, well, rust. I listened to the words of the song flow over me, being sung from some of the toughest angels I’d ever come across, and I knew that diamonds and rust did indeed go together and that the amalgam was one of hardship and pain, just like the words of the song.
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copyright 2009
VI
Iron Snake
I grabbed the extended hand, going into a double wrist-lock for additional support. Burt’s arm retracted like a hydraulic ram coming up out of a ditch, and I was pulled straight to the top step of the car. I stuck my head out into the increasing wind as the train accelerated out of the sharp curve. I was the last aboard. A well-groomed conductor retracted the stairs, and then stood looking at us as if viewing zoo specimens. We were at the end of the last car. He blocked the aisle without seeming to do so. I produced our tickets, which he examined, clipped twice and pointed forward with, before returning them to my hand.
We’d waited an hour for the train under Ficus trees, called Mugumo locally, that lined the tracks, with an assortment of natives impatient to clamber aboard with us. Apparently, once aboard, the conductors charged a lower, negotiated price, than could be had at the ticket station.
Our First Class sleeping car was located just beyond the dining car. Most of the overnight train configuration was spent on Fourth Class Fare, which meant four bunks to a room. Burt and I had only two, the extra space taken up by a bench seat with a long private window.
We made our way down the aisle, situated along the left windowed wall of the car. The only cars with center aisles were the dining and day-seat cars. The creak of wood and clicking of wheels were comforting sounds of security. The room was a welcome haven from events of the day. At least it was until I looked at the door. I moved past it, raising one hand to stop Burt. We stood on each side of the door looking at the holes around the handle. Small bore bullet holes. The kind slow, sub-sonic silenced rounds make when they enter wood.
I looked at Burt. Neither of us brought out any weaponry, although there was nobody in the corridor with us. There would be no one inside the room, which I confirmed by pushing the now unlockable door open with my foot. It swung wide, allowing us to see every inch of the space. No one waited because they would have been waiting inside an inescapable trap, in the event of problems. We were up against pros, who wouldn’t expose themselves to the whimsy of chance unless they had to.
I went around the inside of the room, poking my finger into holes on the far side wall and then the frames of our bunk beds.
“Why’d they shoot out the lock? The doors don’t have keys. You can only lock them from the inside.” Burt asked, pulling the bottom bunk down from the wall with a thud, and then sitting atop the mattress.
“Not anymore,” I answered. “Kind of gives me the idea that we’re gonna have visitors later, and they don’t even care if we know ahead of time.”
“Cheeky bastards,” Burt sighed. “Why they treating us like citizens?”
Citizens are regular people. People who have no knowledge of intelligence work, guns, pyrotechnics, or real violence. We call ourselves, and others like us, players. Once you are a player you can never be a real citizen again. Most of us think we can, but in truth, it just can’t be done. “Paranoia bites deep….” the song goes.
“Maybe that’s all the intel they have. Maybe we’re just a hit to them. Maybe they don’t have a formal organization behind them,” I mused, taking a place on the bench seat. The scenery going by was the outskirts of Southern Nairobi. Broken blocks, tile and brick, mixed in with metal sheets in a state of angled falling rust everywhere. And dust. Tons of gray dust runneled through with dark rivulets of muddy water. And native peoples everywhere. Three stone fires sending up hundreds of single plum smoke signals wherever I looked.
Our door flew open. My left hand slipped straight into left front pocket, the forty-five bearing on the door open through the cloth of my trousers. A woman stood in the door.
“Evening mates,” she said, loudly and cheerfully, her rough but attractive face broken nearly in half by a huge smile.
“Hi,” Burt mumbled.
My hand relaxed out of my pocket. I was staring at an ‘Earth Mother,’ as we term them. Young women, mostly from England or Australia, some from America, who come over to Africa and then wander about the countries in their comfortable boots. They invariably wear shorts, long sleeve shirts and carry packs that have to weigh more than seventy pounds. Their lack of fear and sense of adventure has always impressed us.
“We got wine if you got an opener,” she stated, with a great laugh.
I was taken aback for a few seconds. An Earth Mother without a Swiss Army knife? I couldn’t picture it. Then I realized we were being invited over for social reasons. The bottle-opener was cover.
“Sure,” I responded, assuming that Burt had more tools behind the padding of his multi-purpose coat.
“Americans?” the woman asked.
We didn’t answer.
“I know from the accent,” she went on, turning to lead us to her room, as both of us had risen to our feet. “’Hi,’ like ‘Hey’ is strictly American. Then there’s the ‘sure’ comment. Another dead giveaway.”
She was Australian, I knew, from her own heavy accent, but I didn’t reply, only following her two berths down the aisle, where another door was open.
“Ever go see the Flamingos,” she inquired, but not waiting for an answer. “At that lake outside of town American tourists like to go to? Down there they always say the same thing when they see the birds: ‘Oh my God, they’re so pink.” She laughed heartily. I had to laugh too. Her impersonation of an American, totally over done, had been vividly descriptive and funny.
We filed into the room. The woman closed the door behind us, engaging the lock with a loud click. There were three other women in the room, all heavily tanned, all smiling broadly. I was humorously glad that I was armed. Burt produced his own Swiss knife, bottle-opener extended. He went to work on a bottle.
“Four of you in a two-bed First Class room?” I inquired.
“Sleeping bags,” the woman named Wendy, who’d invited us in, answered. “First Class room is two hundred shillings less than a four bed Fourth Class.” I marveled, as that amount of local currency was worth about three bucks, and then took a seat on the floor, my back to the outer wall so I could face the locked door. We’d already had a lesson in just how secure those were.
We drank two bottles of red wine. The label read ‘Terpenja Garnacha,” which I knew was Spanish, and surprisingly, not that cheap. Burt and I nursed ours in paper cups, knowing that there were other players aboard who’d have to be dealt with at some point in the night.
“They call this train the Lunatic Express, you know,” Wendy commented, her voice beginning to slur. “There was a lot of opposition to its being built by the British in the eighteen hundreds,” she slurred on.
“Iron snake,” Burt stated, speaking for the first times since we’d entered the cabin. We all looked at him. “Its what the natives call the train,” he followed, his expression showing surprise at our rapt attention. “Kikuyu. The natives are mostly Kikuyu, not Masai,” he finished, almost guiltily, eyeing the remaining wine in his cup.
I couldn’t believe that I had heard correctly. My formal education was in ethnology. Cultural Anthropology they used to call it, before they wanted everyone to think it was all about the study of fish or bugs. I understood the origins and interaction of the cultures in Kenya. I simply could not believe that a Knuckle-dragger, especially a huge dumb-looking one like Burt, would know anything about such things.
“Where the hell did you go to school?” I asked him, without thinking.
“Thornton Fractional,” he replied, proudly. I knew it to be a high school located somewhere in South Chicago. I didn’t know why I expected some center of higher education to come out of his mouth, but I had.
“You two don’t even know each other? Wendy inquired. “We thought you were companions.” The women all laughed, while Burt’s face grew red.
“I’m not gay,” he said, his voice small amid the raucous sounds filling the room around us.
“So, are you married?” Wendy asked me, directly, her first two words coming out as one.
I said I was.
“All the good ones…and all that,” she replied, then went on, “What’s her name?”
“Joan,” I answered, not having a clue as to why I lied, or used that name.
Burt almost laughed out load, held back only by the angry frown I sent across the room at him.
“Gotta use the loo,” Wendy said, unlocking the door. The other women paid full attention to Burt while she was gone, he having indicated that he was single. I presumed that they were merely practicing their skills, as Burt and I were a good fifteen years older than any of them.
Wendy re-entered the room. “Some Bogans down at your place,” she stated, offhandedly, before being surprised by Burt’s instant rise from the floor.
“What’s a Bogan?” he asked, opening the door a fraction, then drawing out his suppressed automatic. I joined him, the AMT Hardballer in my left hand, pointed down. The room went silent and still, the sounds of the train seeming to grow louder with each passing second.
“What have we got?” I whispered.
Burt held up one finger, then pointed aft, toward the dining car. His finger then tapped his own forehead.
“Okay, out you go. I’ll give you ten minutes.” I checked my wrist, but there was no Omega there. I cursed.
His gun disappeared. He was out the door and gone, seemingly more smoothly and quickly than a man his size could move. I slid the forty-five back into my pocket, then turned to face the women. They sat frozen, one with a cup of wine halfway to her lips. I slid down the door, sitting with my back to it.
“I wont stay long, just until Burt gets back. You’ll never see us again, once we hit Mombasa,” I said, my voice soft but flat.
“Mombasa,” Wendy replied, her voice no longer slurring. “It means ‘Battle City’ in Nandi,” she said, matter-of-factly. I didn’t reply, instead waiting for the inevitable question. It came, but not in the form I expected.
“Who are the others?” Wendy inquired.
“We don’t know,” I answered, truthfully. “They came at us in Nairobi because of something that happened in Mombasa. So we’re going there to find out. They don’t have good intentions.”
“That wasn’t a normal kind of gun, the one your friend has,” Wendy stated.
“We’ve seen a lot of guns on our Walkabout. That one’s not normal,” she repeated.
I had nothing to say. I didn’t care about lying to the Aussies, but I could see no reason to add anything I didn’t have to, other than about Joan being my wife, and I couldn’t understand what had made me say that in the first place.
“He’s the killer, so what does that make you?” Wendy asked, the other women opening a third bottle of the wine, as if they commonly spent time in enclosed spaces with gun-toting hitmen.
I again did not answer, setting my cup aside.
“You’ve drunk our wine. We’ve taken you in. You owe us something,” she said, slowly, with quiet expressive meaning.
I looked at all four of them, trying to decide what to say. If there was a code for such encounters, then Wendy was right. Our taking up with them had, at the least, saved a potentially violent confrontation, which might not have worked to our advantage. And she had warned us. I took out the wad of local currency and peeled off two bills.
“Two thousand shillings,” I intoned, putting the money in front of Wendy’s feet, since she made no move to accept it with her hand.
“More,” she said, with no smile on her face or in her voice.
I took another bill from the roll, but she held out her hand.
“Enough money. Tell us more.” She pulled her hand back, then filled her cup to the brim with red wine.
I sighed and put the roll back in my pocket. “We’re agents. It doesn’t matter what kind of agents. One of us got killed in Mombasa. Burt and I came to redress that loss, but nothing when right. When I inquired, these guys, who we don’t know, came at us. Shooting. We can’t go back and we can’t go forward until we know more, which is why were going down to where we lost that agent.” I finished, hoping that my explanation would be enough.
“Can’t exactly go back to your berth, now can you?” one of the other women said.
I had no answer. The woman was correct in her assumption. Unless I could be certain that none of our pursuers were on the train, it would be very risky to stay in the berth we’d booked. But it wouldn’t be any safer elsewhere on the train, unless it was in a berth nobody knew about. Like the one I was in.
“Since Burt isn’t married, he can stay with me, if he doesn’t mind the hard floor,” the woman went on.
“What’s your name,” I asked her.
“Ruthie,” she answered. “Ruthie Jorgensen,” she fluffed her bright blond hair, as if to indicate the obviousness of her Scandinavian heritage, then went on, “but they call me Dingo, because I don’t talk much.”
“Well, that’s more than kind of you Dingo, but Burt’s much older than you. Women don’t take to men like us, and they usually have better judgment than to marry us,” I warned her.
“Except for Joan, that is,” Wendy said, drinking her whole cup of wine down, before going for another.
“I’m not married, since we’re trying to talk truth here. I lied, to fit in better."
"Joan," I said, and then I paused. I could not minimize Joan, “Joan’s a real woman, but with somebody else. And yes, you’ve shared your wine, your room and your friendship with us. That deserves something, which is what I’m trying to give you. Our problems are not your problems, and our problems are very serious.”
“Than you can sleep in my bunk,” Wendy said. “I mean, since your not really married.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Far from rejecting us, the women were welcoming us into their lives, at least while we were all aboard the train.
“Listen to me. We lie for a living. Violence is our stock and trade. We’re not good men. We’re just tools, guided around out here by people who don’t necessarily have the best interests of humanity at heart.”
“Is that part the lying?” Dingo asked, her face serious. I massaged my face with both hands. I had never encountered Earth Mothers, except in passing, and I was finding the experience frustrating and difficult to deal with. I also noted, when I was done talking, that the two thousand shilling notes were no longer on the floor. Wendy smiled, as if in thanks. I wondered, by the time the train hit Mombasa, whether Burt or I would have any currency left between us.
There was a very soft single knock on the door. I felt it rather than heard it.
The bad guys would not be knocking, and there was also no way they could know which cabin we were in. I stood and opened the door. Burt slipped in, and then took his place near Dingo where he’d originally sat.
“What’d you find?” I asked him.
Burt looked at me, then at the women, then back at me, without speaking.
“They’re in,” I told him. “We’re staying with them. Don’t ask how or why. Talk to me.”
With an expression of reservation written across his face, Burt talked. “They had a Fourth Class room let. There were three of them, all Caucasian. They decided that it was in their best interest,” Burt stopped, looking around the silent room carefully, “to leave the train before we got to Mombasa.”
“This is a non-stop,” Wendy stated, analytically.
“Any blood? Clean-up? Disturbance?” I asked, ignoring her.
“No. They were in the last car. I popped the emergency latches on their window, and out they went. Had some duct tape, so the window won’t flap, or anything like that.”
“You made them jump from the train?” Wendy asked, obviously stunned. “But the train is going a hundred kilometers an hour.”
“Would have been nice to talk to them. You didn’t question them, did you?” I interrupted.
Burt looked at me, his expression showing guilt.
“No, but I did get these,” he said, laying two RAP automatics on the seat between he and Dingo. She immediately caressed the surface of both pieces.
“Parabellum?” I inquired of him. He said nothing, confirming my analysis. The guns were nine millimeter’s produced by a small company in South Africa. That company supplied the local police forces. The weapons were not normally available on the private market outside of that country.
“Boers. Shit. What the hell do the Boers have to do with this?” I said the words to myself, thinking. “You find the suppressor?”
A gray, powder-coated cylinder joined the two automatics. I stared at it for a moment. “SAI,” I asked. Again, Burt did not answer. “Shit,” I said. At every turn with these unknown assailants we were being confronted with an abundance of capability and quality material. SAI was a company out of Denmark. They produced a ‘carbon’ silencer superior even to an oil-filled device, but they were usually more expensive than the weapon they were fitted to.
“Get rid of them,” I said, concluding there was nothing more to be learned from the weapons.
“Can I have one?” Dingo asked.
“Me too,” Wendy followed, instantly.
“Alright, take them, but not the suppressor. That goes out the window.” I was unable to keep the exasperated tone from my voice. I was traveling from Nairobi to Mombasa in the middle of the night aboard the infamous Iron Snake, trapped in a room with people equally as crazy as I, if not more so. The thought did not give me comfort.
“Way cool,” the supposedly silent Dingo intoned, using her caricature of an American accent. “What about dinner. You can’t go to the dining car can you, I mean with those others having gotten off the train early?” She stroked here new acquisition while she talked. Burt smiled at her, and then produced a magazine filled with cartridges. I looked from one of them to the other, wondering which one of them was in more trouble.
I took out my wad of shillings. “These seem to work wonders here. I think we can manage dinner in the cabin.”
IV
“We’re Going To Mombasa”
We didn’t make it to the Railway Station, instead stopping the small van down around City Central near Kenyatta Avenue. The driver, conductor and two other teen passengers had remained silent during our trip, not that it would have made much difference with rock blasting from all the speakers. The conductor had rotated once to look at us, with attitude, but something about us had kept him from commenting, or doing anything else.
Burt and I were broke. We had to have cash, which meant we needed an ATM. A few businesses would take credit cards, but not many, even in a large developed city like Nairobi. Africa was third world, outside of a very few places. Our Teeny Matata plunged back into the ‘fishball’ of traffic as soon as we were out. I watched my Omega disappear with a glum expression.
“Got a cell phone?” I inquired of Burt, hoping that I had not been wrong about his over-supplied pack rat nature. I was not disappointed. He handed a small phone over to me.
“Will it work here?” I said, opening the Star Trek flip cover. I wasn’t sure why I’d asked the question, as I already knew the answer. Burt didn’t bother to reply.
I examined the phone. It gave the time of day in big numbers on the screen. I knew that young people did not even wear watches anymore. They got their time from cell phones. I wasn’t that young.
“Agency?” I went on.
“Safaricom chip,” Burt said back. That meant the phone was on a local system instead of any international. It was a relatively untraceable way to communicate, but I wasn’t thinking of calling anyone until we knew more of what we were involved with. Phone calls would give more information out than I was comfortable with. I wondered what other toys Burt had. The mission had been cadged together at the last minute. There had been no clearance meetings, or even initial planning sessions. Things like ingress, egress, communications, armament,
and even financing, had been thrust upon us instead of being homogeneously put together with forethought and design. I put the phone in my pocket. Now I had a bulge on each side, but high fashion was not something common to Eastern Africa.
“Braclays is over in Queensway House on Kuanda,” I pointed out.
I walked in that direction, looking around to see if any of our pursuers had picked us up. If they were Agency personnel we would not have much time on our own. The Agency was terrific at surveillance, and two white guys in downtown Nairobi would not be too hard to find no matter who was looking.
We walked into the lobby of the bank. There were private security guards stationed everywhere, including one on each side of a bank of ATMs. I inserted one of my Visa debit cards, punched in the four-digit code and hoped. Local shillings were all we were going to get from any ATM in the country, which was okay, except for the fact that the largest shilling note issued was for a thousand. With the exchange rate running at about seventy shillings to the dollar, that meant a
Thousand-shilling note was only worth about thirteen dollars.
I used four cards to get a total of sixty thousand shillings out of the machine. The stack of bills was over an inch thick. I shoved the folded wad into my back pocket and we headed for the door. Nine hundred bucks, or so, would have to do.
There was nobody noticeable on Kaunda Street, so we crossed to the Catholic Basilica. We went straight in through a huge gothic entrance. The place was straight out of the dark ages, with tourists gathered together in small guided clumps.
I took Burt all the way to the front of the huge old church and sat him in the front pew. Unconsciously, I genuflected before taking a seat next to him. The lighting was dim to the point of darkness. The place was perfect.
“Stay here. I’ve got to berth us aboard the train going east tonight.
I’m less noticeable alone. Whatever we ran into started down there, where Smith died, so we’re going back to the scene of the crime, if we live that long.”
I looked over at the big man, wondering what the hell he was doing. I was known for my rather unconventional behavior, which had gotten us into the mess we were in, but it was uncommon for wet workers like Burt to be anything but sticklers for following Agency directives and rules.
“What about the woman? You told her to meet us. You don’t think she’ll come?” Burt asked. I rubbed my forehead, thinking for a moment.
“I do think she’ll come, but I don’t want to take her to Mombasa on this, not that she would go. I wanted her to meet us so I could talk to her about what she knows. We can’t drive all night down to Mombasa. We’d be sitting ducks on that rough road. The Agency has drones. We have to hope that whoever is after us will calculate that we’ll run to Jomo and fly out as quickly as we can.”
“We’re going to Mombasa?” Burt asked.
“Yes, we’ve got to get out of Nairobi.
“We’re going to Mombasa,” Burt repeated, this time with a strange tone of enthusiasm. I had more questions about his involvement but they could wait until we were on the train.
I left him there, heading of across the downtown common area for the station. I realized that I should have asked to see if he had a second phone, when the cell phone in my pocket rang. It was Burt.
“I have another phone. The number’s on the dialer, titled King Kong.”
I thought about his self-derived nickname he had given himself. I tucked away a thought to examine his phone to see what he’d chosen for me.
“Thanks,” I responded, not knowing what to say. The man was proving to be an enigma, like maybe a bear with human intelligence would be. Burt hung up. I waited until I was tucked into a corner alcove of the Kenya Bank, right across Haile Selassie Avenue from the station, and then flipped the phone open again. I called Staff Sergeant Stevens, hoping he was still around. I was compromising the cell phone by calling the Embassy, but I had little choice. I had to have more data. I did not believe that the Agency had sent men to kill me. It was just not done. There was no need. They could just recall me and lock me up any time they wanted. They didn’t need to kill field agents. They had worse punishments. Imprisonment and loss of retirement were much more feared punishments, and very commonly applied. In the final analysis, when Burt had been instructed to shoot me, he had refused. Field agents did not kill field agents. There was no career left to an agent who participated in such action, and we all knew it. It was not even entirely believable that he had been ordered to do such a thing.
“I can’t tell you anything at this point,” Stevens said, without preamble. I held the phone out and stared at it for a second. Whether Burt’s phone was already target material, or whether Stevens had been waiting for an unknown call, I did not know, but there was no point asking. Stevens was a Marine, first and foremost, above wife, country and even God. It resonated through him.
“Is she coming?” I asked.
“Tower, in twenty,” he said, and then hung up. I turned to my right and looked up at the tallest building in East Africa. The Times Tower. That was the tower. Twenty, in Marine parlance meant twenty minutes. She was coming. I was relieved, and intrigued, by her conduct. I hadn’t been absolutely sure that she would come. Not nearly as certain as I’d led Burt to believe.
Seeing no one of any consequence over at the long cinder block construct of a railway station, I crossed the street and entered the facility. I was always surprised that it was clean. Even the bathrooms were clean. And the rain earlier in the day had helped, giving the place a fresh, although local, scent. I went to the line of booths under a sign that said “Kenya Railroad Berthing Allotment.’ I could not help looking around suspiciously as I approached the attendant behind his bars.
“Two, first class cabin for Mombasa.” The man looked at me, the black visor of his blue cap shined to a high luster. As a former Marine myself, I could tell that it was polished leather and not the fake Corfam junk. There was one train to Mombasa every night. It arrived there, from Nairobi, early in the morning. Tickets were booked in advance, and for cash.
“Papers,” the man said, primly, holding out one hand toward the slot
under the bars.
I took out my wad of shillings, peeled off four of them, then slid them through the slot. The 1st class fare to Mombasa was posted on the chalk board behind the man. It said nine hundred shillings. I waited. He stared down.
“For two,” he said. “Private room with clean bedding and first service in the dining car.” The money was gone when I looked down. I had not seen the man’s hands move. He took two tickets from a drawer, shoved them toward the slot, then looked behind him and made believe he was concentrating on something else. I let him, taking the tickets and walking back toward the platform, until I saw the woman.
A white woman stood out form the building, peering up and down the platform, as if looking for a train. But there was no train, nor would there be until the evening run was ready to be made at around seven. The events at the Safari Park had occurred so quickly and intently that I could not recall if the woman was the same as the one with the camera crew. But she was looking for something. And I knew I was being looked for. I went into the restroom without going out onto the platform. From a stall I called King Kong and filled him in, about the woman and about Joan’s pending arrival, now only fifteen minutes away. Burt’s analysis was better than mine. If the woman was there, then the others would be in the area. We decided that I would try for the Railroad Museum just north of the station.
Before leaving the bathroom stall I removed a full roll of toilet paper. I carried it with me in my right hand.
The station was not crowded, which was unfortunate for my purposes, although no one gave me the slightest glance as I went out to the street side, gained the far edge of the building, and then darted across a twenty yard concrete expanse. The Railroad Museum was right there, with an old engine and cars lined up next to it. I hid behind the cars, kneeling to look up from under them. I did not observe any extraordinary interest or pursuit. After a five-minute wait, I did see the woman. She stood at the outside lip of the wooden platform. She gestured with one hand toward someone who seemed to be in the direction of my position, but I couldn’t see who she might be waving at. Finally, I went through the door into the museum.
The object of the woman’s attention was obvious once I was through the door. A large white male stood in front of me, his arms extending up and outward, as if to engulf me. Without thinking of the potential of terrible repercussions, my left hand went down. I brought the small forty-five up out of my pocket, flicked off the double-sided safety and walked right into the arms of the huge man. His attempt to grasp me never reached conclusion. I jammed the AMT into the side of the toilet paper roll, pressed the arrangement hard into his belly and squeezed the trigger.
The sound was not nearly as loud as I thought it would be.
The toilet paper roll shredded, but the man, amazingly, did not go down. Instead he held both hands to his stomach, an awful expression of pain on his face and a mewling grown coming form his open mouth. I marveled. The man appeared to be made of something tougher than hide, gristle and hair.
I ran, using a casual lope, which covered ground quickly but made me look more like a jogger than someone running from something. The gun stayed clutched in my left hand, so small it was invisible to anyone who might have been looking my way. I could not have run with a two-pound chunk of metal in one front pocket.
One thick hand waved from around the far side of the bank building, as I approached.
“What happened?” Burt asked, when I pulled up next to him, reseating the gun out of view.
“What in God’s name are you using for ammo?” I shot back. I had never known a forty-five round, at close range, fired into a man’s torso, to leave him standing and complaining0.
“Shot-shell,” Burt said, rather ruefully. I waited, looking back around the corner for some sign of pursuit, but there was none. When my head swung back I spotted the Pajero across the side street, just pulling up to the steps of the Times Tower. Burt saw it to. We started out together while he talked.
“I load a cartridge of birdshot as the first round. In all my guns. I’ve had a few occasions where I shot the wrong guy. A few years back I decided that I’d rather apologize for causing pain and misery than live with the other result.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The man was demonstrating an application of intellect and good judgment that I had never seen from any gun or pyrotechnics expert I had ever met. His forethought had saved the day. There would be no unexplainable dead body at the museum. No Caucasian ‘tourist’ slain by terrorists or robbers. The man I had hit would be marginally injured and very likely ambulatory. No cordons. No investigations. Our train trip was still possible.
“What’s the second round, some sort of nuclear device?” I asked, not entirely kidding. Burt didn’t answer. We were upon the car, which was not driven by Joan.
A young blond male with short hair sat behind the wheel. I got in behind him, while Burt went around. The DCM was in the front passenger seat.
“Drive into the traffic,” I told the kid, assuming he was one of Steven’s Marines. Without a word he wedged us in among the Matatas, trucks, and other conveyances trying to get from Kenyatta onto Mombasa Road. I looked behind us, but could not make out anything, but realized we had been either followed to the Railway Station without our realizing it or our behavior had been predicted.
“Thanks for coming,” I said to Joan, “and who are you?” I followed, rapping the youngster on his right shoulder .
“Corporal Sam Hill, Sir,” he answered. “I got the week off for leave but nowhere to go. Sergeant said I might come with you guys, if that’s okay.”
He looked to be a teenager to me, but most Marines do, as I get older.
“A guy just got shot back at the museum, and we’re being hunted by people we don’t know. Are you sure you want a piece of this?” I retorted. I didn’t mention that I’d done the shooting.
“Yes, sir,” the boy-child replied, filled with enthusiasm.
“Why’d you come?” I asked Joan, noting that her medium cut brown hair was perfectly combed. It seemed to float around her head. When she turned to face me, it bounced on its own a few times. I felt a warm glow. She’d carefully prepared to see me again.
“I wasn’t doing anything else,” she said, then smiled for the first time since I’d encountered her. I had a million questions I wanted to ask her but none of them had anything to do with our current situation.
“Thank you,” I repeated, getting control of myself, enough to find out what we needed to know. “How did your husband get involved in a CIA operation?” I asked her, directly.
“He’s not my husband, and I don’t know, but I know he did. What was it all about?” she asked me, in return. I noted that the nails of her left hand, draped over the side of the seat, were manicured, and painted to a high gloss. I could not tell the color, as blue was the only color I really saw well at all. Her eyes were intensely blue, with thick brows over them. I could see those. She had a stunning presence.
“What happened to Smith, down in Mombasa?” I countered, ignoring her question.
“It didn’t’ start in Mombasa,” she replied. “It ended there, down in that prison outside of town.”
“Shimo la Tiwa?” I asked? I knew the prisons of Kenya. Not hellholes like the prison typified in the movie Midnight Express, put out in the seventies, but dirty bad places to try to survive in, especially for a Caucasian.
“G.K,” she said, shaking her head, “I think it was called, from what I heard.”
G.K. were the two letters mounted above the iron grate entrance to Shimo prison. I’d never found out what they stood for, but I said nothing to Joan. We had a location to work back from. It was also instructive that Smith had been in prison, not in jail. It spoke of an unlikely permanence.
“Where did it start?” I asked her.
“What?” Joan replied, not focused on the data I was trying to get from her.
“Smith. You said all of it started somewhere. Where?” I asked, patiently.
“Oh,” she answered, taking her time. I wondered if it was because of perplexity or evasion. “At the Embassy. Smith came to see Paul at the Embassy.
Neither of them were happy about the meeting, but I don’t know what they talked about.”
“Was your Communications Director present for the meeting?” I inquired, wanting to know if the local CIA ‘cowboy’ stationed at the Embassy was involved.
“That guy?” she came back. “Tyrell? No, why would he be there?”
I couldn’t believe that the DCM of a major embassy could remain unaware of the facility’s only CIA operative, however ceremonial his role was, but I let it pass.
I would deal with Tyrell later.
“We’re going down there, to Mombasa,” I told her, not really understanding why I was giving her any information whatsoever. I just felt that I had to trust somebody and, for some reason I could not fathom, I found the DCM to be imminently trustable.
“The train. You’re taking the train tonight, aren’t you?” she correctly assumed. “You’re going after Rafiq, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer. Rafiq Salim was the name of our Lebanese target from the mission. I tried to think of why Joan would think we would pursue him down in Mombasa. The Agency had informed me that he lived in Nairobi where he ran a jewelry business. Without prompting, she gave me the answer.
“He lives down there. His family runs one of the ferries.”
I almost groaned aloud. Whatever we were involved in just kept getting more and more complex. I couldn’t seem to find any truth in anything.
“What do you want me to do, sir?” the corporal asked.
“Well for one, Sam Hill, I want you to stop calling me sir. My name is Jack.” I didn’t make the obligatory joke about ‘Sam Hell’ as I presumed he had been living with that all of his life. “Then, when we’re done here, I want you to drive this vehicle down to Mombasa. You have a cell phone?” The boy handed me a white card, like the generic Marine Corps card Staff Sergeant Stevens had given me. There was a Kenyan number on it in pencil. A ton of numbers really, but they seemed to work.
I noted that he was attired in a worn canvas outfit, with lots of pockets. He looked like an assistant to a tour director for one of the tourist ‘safari’ adventures, or maybe one of the redemption-seeking workers for an aid agency. In Kenya to seek redemption from living a life of spoiled ease and meaninglessness.
Joan’s information, if it was valid, changed everything. Mombasa was revealing itself as the key to our mystery, or at least the place where the key might be found.
“When you get down there, and you should arrive hours before us, go to the Inter-Continental and hang out. I’ll call you. We need a car down there, and it might as well be this one.” I could not rent a car for cash in Kenya. Renting another car, no matter what the bribe, would take a host of paper and plastic backup I was not willing to give out. I no longer believed that the Agency was after us. But somebody with assets and motivation was. I was not going to give them anymore than I absolutely had to.
“The embassy is locked down,” Joan said.
“How’d you get out?” I asked, but then didn’t wait for an answer, already knowing that Stevens was at work. The Ambassador would be howling mad when he discovered his ex-wife, his DCM, was not there. “When you going back?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll catch a Matata home. I don’t understand any of this and I need to think, and maybe drink half a bottle of Grey Goose while I do it. Can we go somewhere and talk? Do you have time? Is there some place?”
I was surprised by her request. I was also surprised, however, that she had gotten out from under an embassy lockdown. The woman was starting to amaze me even more than Burt. We had several hours to kill before getting aboard the train, and we needed to be someplace where we could be off the streets. The bottle of Grey Goose sounded wonderful, but it was not to be.
“The Java House, on Argwings, just off Kenyatta, you know it?” I said to the corporal.
“Kinda,” he answered, biting the sir off before it came out of his mouth. He made me feel old and slow, totally unlike what I got from Joan.
“Make it so,” I said, emulating Jon Luke Piccard from Star Trek.
“Engage,” he laughed back, diving out of the traffic, across two medians and reversing our course of travel. I noted that another vehicle tried the same maneuver but only managed to create a massive traffic tie-up behind us. Whoever they were, they were persistent and good. Just not as good as a crazy teen-aged Marine driving a Pajero in downtown Nairobi.
“What changed?” I said to Joan, as the Pajero rocked back and forth, avoiding all manner of obstacles I tried not to pay attention to, only too happy to be taking the train instead of riding with Sam.
“What changed about what?” she retorted, holding fast to the sissy bar mounted above her window.
Communicating with the woman was maddening.
“We’re going to Mombasa,” Burt said, unaccountably.
http://from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com
What the hell, I'll put it on her anyway. What are they going to do, kick me off?
Closer to God
Hakuna Matata
III
The reinforced double-steel door of the underground parking lot slowly retracted sideways across our view. It was too impossibly heavy to rise vertically. We sat waiting in the Pajero, DCM next to me in the passenger seat and Burt just behind her. Staff Sergeant Stevens pushed another button and rock barriers at the top of the drive began to sink into pre-formed slots. He held up one hand, watching the stones, until they were gone, replaced by metal grates that snapped loudly into place. His hand moved and became a salute. The kind only a Marine is capable of making. I nodded at the man, putting the Nissan into gear. Mrs. Haggerty waved to him, as well, but I knew the salute was intended for me. I smiled my appreciation. His arm came down. He pointed at the windshield as I drove by. I looked at the small white card under the wiper, then reached my hand around through the open window and claimed it.
Bright afternoon sun had replaced the rain, and a cooling wind blew through the Pajero’s open windows, as we waited to take a left onto Limuru Road. Traffic was heavy, and Kenyan’s gave no quarter when it came to driving. We plunged into the melee but didn’t have far to go. Muthaig’s crowning feature was the Safari Park, Kenya’s only real five star hotel with any local flavor.
We waited to take the turn into the hotel.
“May I call you Joyce?” I asked.
“No, you may not,” the DCM shot back, not looking at me, instead examining the wedding band still located on the appropriate finger of her left hand. “You can call me Joan,” she relented. “I hate the name Joyce.”
“You look terrific, Joan,” I said, quite truthfully.
“Fuck off,” Joan stated, her voice evidencing disgust, “don’t try your smooth, urbane, man-of-the-world crap on me.”
I checked the rear view mirror, to see Burt trying to cover his smile with one hand. He avoided my eyes.
“Thank you,” she followed up, unaccountably. The woman was confounding me. I was afraid to speak, but felt somehow, that she wanted me to say something.
I was in a verbal minefield.
“How long have you been divorced?” I tried, figuring that almost every divorced person I had ever met loved to talk about the divorce, and how rotten the other person was.
“None of your God damned business,” she hissed, massaging her wedding band hand, but looking out the side window. I waited for more, but nothing came.
“Two years?” I offered.
“Two years?” she turned on me, speaking the words loud enough to make me raise my right shoulder and wince. “Two years? What kind of idiot are you? Oh, I almost forgot, you’re a spook. One of those Southern-Fried-Chicken-University types who populate Langley. What’d you major in, Bo Weevil Mating? If I’d been divorced for two years, do you think I’d still be the DCM for that idiot?” Spittle hit my cheek.
I heard a barely audible giggle from behind me, but I didn’t look in the mirror. I finally hustled the Pajero through the broken ‘tiger-teeth’ jam of the opposing traffic.
“Ah, no,” I blurted out to her series of questions, driving as fast as I could manage to get to the hotel as quickly as possible.
“No, what?” she yelled. “No, you have a degree is something else, like maybe Burro Husbandry, or ‘Poor-White-Trash’ farming?” I shook my head, in agony.
The huge pyramidal structure of the Safari Park main building appeared and I headed the car for it like it was a laser-guided smart bomb. Supposedly the willow reed thatched buildings had been designed with clues taken from native Kenyan hovels, but in truth, there was nothing in the country that looked like the place.
Without meaning to, I skidded the Pajero to a halt directly in front of the lobby, and jumped out. I moved around the vehicle to get Joan’s door, but one of the bellmen had already attended to that. She stood waiting. Burt was out and leaning against the back fender, as if ready to enjoy more of the show. The show being my complete humiliation.
Joan headed straight for the lobby. I followed closely behind her, noting how powerfully she strode, her black pumps clicking loudly across the tiled floor of the entrance. Burt ran into me, because I had run into Joan. She had stopped too suddenly for me to avoid her. The three of us grabbed one another and swayed.
“Oh great, slimed by a Halloween spook,” she exclaimed, pushing herself from my fumbling grasp.
“Would you stop that?” I said, as quietly as I could to her retreating back.
“Look what happened to the last guy who got outed on your watch?” I followed up. She flinched, but kept walking.
“Good one,” Burt whispered behind me, which made me frown.
We trailed behind the fast moving woman through the lobby and out the back, around a great blue pool surrounded with palm trees of all sizes, and on past the cascading series of wonderful waterfalls that gave all the interior rooms of the establishment a special serenity. The Hilton, and the Sarova hotels have better rooms than the Safari, but none can come close to matching its ambiance. I knew where we were headed. The Nyama Choma Ranch Restaurant was the only thing left between us and the Muthaiga jungle forest. It was simply the finest African food restaurant in Kenya. Nothing else was close. I yearned for an Ostrich steak covered in Monkey-brain gravy. No monkeys involved, of course. Its only a name.
Under one side branch of the falls I caught a flash of movement. Then it was gone. It had been part of a head, sticking out of the bushes, viewing our arrival. I slowed. Burt stumbled into me. I was a little shaken, as I came to a stop, while Joan disappeared into the opening of the restaurant.
“What?” Burt inquired, backing up a step.
“I wouldn’t take an oath on it, but I think the Lebanese just checked us out from beyond the falls.” The water pouring down upon the rocks made talking difficult, but Burt got my message. He turned automatically, putting a palm trunk between himself and the falls.
“You still got that hand cannon under your coat?” I asked, remaining in the open. If we had walked into an ambush no thin palm tree was going to save us.
Burt nodded, but did not make any moves to access it.
“Got anything else?” I asked, feeling a bit naked.
Burt showed me three fingers, held down at his side. Special Forces hand chatter. I always liked the one where the leader takes two fingers of one hand and aims them at his own eyes, so everyone will look at him. In practice, however, I’d found that the gesture, like so many, was all for show. Anybody who could see the gesture was already looking.
“Three?” I said, in amazement. “The Mau Mau’s were put down in 1960, for Christ’s sake. Give me anything small.”
Burt leaned down by genuflecting on right knee, hand sweeping back to flick the bottom of his pant leg upward. Quickly and smoothly, like an unfolding python, the thick muscular man rose up and delicately inserted a .45 Caliber AMT automatic into my open left hand. I stuck it immediately into my front trouser pocket. The five shot auto was small, yet as thick as a full blown Colt. The bulge was noticeable, but I had little choice. Klingon’s preferred to die fighting in combat, or so they said on Star Trek, and I was not going down unarmed.
“What does it mean?” Burt whispered, his eyes never leaving the area of the falls.
“I don’t know. Not good. What would he come here for? If Haggerty decided on Executive Action, then why would the man come where the man is? He’s a U.S. Ambassador, for God’s sake. And how would he know where he was? I haven’t been able to make sense out of anything since we were out there on the Serengeti.” Joan came back out of the restaurant, looking even more impatient then when she’d walked in.
“What the hell are you doing?” she hissed, clicking up to us.
“Admiring the falls,” I covered.
“Oh great, a gay spook and his cultured Troglodyte,” she complained, in exasperation. “Paul’s in there having lunch with one of his mysterious companions.
Should I announce you or do you want to make a grand entrance?”
“We’re coming. Please show us the way,” was all I could say. The woman did not elicit lengthy response, not without dealing out considerable pain.
“What’s a Troglodyte?” Burt asked, from behind. I was about to answer when I had another thought. I stopped again, this time with the four-top table, where the Ambassador sat with some unidentified white male, in sight. “Back out Burt, this could be a hit on Haggerty.” Why else would the Lebanese not take a taxi home, but instead head straight for his antagonist. Who was the Lebanese? He’d acted as prey, very convincingly, but he wasn’t acting that way anymore. Burt backed up to the restaurant entrance, and then disappeared into a hidden alcove. I moved to Joan’s side at the table.
“What’s this?” Paul said, slowly getting to his feet. He stared at me in surprise, and recognition. I stood stunned. The man could only have recognized me if he had a file photo. I relaxed a little as I realized that someone might have called him from the embassy. Cell phones worked amazingly well in Nairobi. I didn’t carry one but I was willing to bet that Burt had three or four under his “Q” designed safari rig.
“Sit,” I commanded the DCM, pulling out a chair for her. She hesitated.
“There’s danger here, sit and act like everyone else,” I continued. She took the chair. I sat at the one next to her, across from the two men. The Ambassador joined us.
“What,” he began, but I held up my right hand. I slid my left hand into the .45 pocket at the same time. The automatic was double action, I knew. In the silence over the table a distinct metallic click sounded. The automatic was off safety. All four of us sat frozen.
“You can worry about me later Paul,” I said, conversationally. “The same Lebanese, the subject of our attention a few hours ago, was out by the falls a few minutes ago. I let him off near the airport, where he was supposedly going to go into hiding. I might have erred and cost you your life, but I don’t want Joan here, or your friend, to go out with you. What do you think?” The waiter came over and placed water, without ice, in front of both Joan and I. We sat in silence.
“Ah, how sure are you,” Paul began to ask, but I cut him off.
“This is the Choma, and the waiter just brought us glasses of water, not bottled water like you have.” I smiled, wondering if the man would get it, as I prepared to go to the floor and attempt to crawl behind some nearby decorative rocks. If anybody opened up I could count on Burt to provide intense covering fire, but his ammo wouldn’t last long. The only safety might be found in staying less than a foot off the ground. An assassination at such a notable hotel and restaurant would have to be over in seconds. Surviving the first few seconds would be everything.
“The waiter’s not a waiter?” Joan said in a low tone, her voice shaking. “What have you done Paul? What are we in?”
“Alright,” the Ambassador said, ignoring his ex-wife and speaking directly to me. “Maybe I was wrong about you. I apologize. What do we do?”
I was amazed. The man was apologizing for attempting to kill me. I sighed.
Being an operational agent for the Agency could not be taught in schools or learned in books. It was too bizarre for that.
“We leave. Slowly, without fanfare, you move toward the kitchen over there Paul, while your friend heads for the washroom in back. Joan, you’re going out all the way to the street, where you’ll wait in the Pajero. You drive. I’m going to knock my silverware onto the floor, then lean down to pick it up. If there’s fire, then you all drop and stay where you are, without moving at all. If there’s fire, it‘ll probably be at me, here at the table, where they intended to shoot. The silverware hitting the floor is your cue. Got it?” Nobody said anything. “Tell me you got it?” I instructed.
Joan murmured something, while Paul and his companion said yes at the same time. I pushed my fork onto the floor. It hit with the sound of a ringing bell.
Everyone moved. I went to one knee, then leaned under the table and fell to my stomach, turning to bring the .45 out and up. I had no more time than that. The phony ‘waiter’ stepped out of the bushes holding an old-fashioned double barrel shotgun. The ends of the barrels looked huge, as he stood only two feet over me.
My AMT was only inches from his stomach. I laid there, looking up into his eyes while taking all the slack, and a little more, out of the .45’s trigger. Slowly, he moved the shotgun aside, cocking his head, as if in question. I gave him back the thinnest of smiles, wondering what Burt was thinking, since he wasn’t doing anything. The man stepped back into the bushes and was gone. I breathed for the first time since I’d hit the floor. I then crawled to the front of the restaurant, right past the host at the front desk. He looked down at me in amazement, until he saw the automatic in my hand. Then he dropped down and disappeared.
I got up and began loping back through the areas of the falls and pool. I saw nothing of anyone, save a few tourists laying near the water or taking pictures of everything around. At the main entrance I paused to observe some kind of film crew who were set up down near where cars circled to let people off. The Pajero idled near their large, tri-pod mounted, camera. Several large Caucasian men milled nearby, and one long-haired young woman. The passenger door snapped open. I saw Joan at the wheel and Burt’s hand sticking out from releasing the door. I jumped in.
“I think we’re gonna be famous,” I said, but nobody laughed.
Joan jerked the Pajero into gear and tore off back around the circle, headed for the traffic mess on Limuru Road. “What happened back there?” she asked.
I was about to answer her when Burt made a comment.
“The woman. I saw her. At the airport in Joburg. I think she was on my flight.”
I twisted around to face him, letting go of my seat belt.
“You flew direct from Johannesburg, and she was on the flight?”
Where where you flying to? You came down from Lake Victoria.”
I watched the big man closely. I had come to trust him, but I didn’t know just how far yet.
“Zurich. Then Zurich to down here. I met Walt up at the falls, to check it out. We had a couple days.”
“Shit,” I said, out loud, turning back to face Joan. “Pull down into the traffic, and then stop. Burt and I are getting out. You take the car to the embassy. You should be alright. I pulled Staff Sergeant Steven’s card from my shirt pocket.
Give me your cell phone number.” I took out my pen to write.
“Are you crazy? You’ll get killed out there. All this because somebody was on the same plane? And that whole restaurant thing? You’re looney and paranoid, and maybe dumb as a post.”
“The number,” I repeated, patiently. “There was a guy with a shotgun at the restaurant. I think he was there for your husband.”
“Double gun.” Burt added, from the back seat. I looked back to him in question.
“Looked like one of those Holland and Holland things. Big bore.
Elephant gun.”
I whistled. A gun like that would sell for a cool twenty-five thousand dollars, if not more. Whoever was involved in the mess we’d stepped into was very well heeled. And that was bad news indeed.
“He’s telling the truth?” Joan asked of Burt, her voice going up.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied. “Donner is the best there is. Not well liked, but the best there is.”
I would have commented but the back window of the Pajero blew out, along with the rear driver’s side glass. There had been no sound, except the whoosh and tinkle of breaking glass. Joan screamed, then drove recklessly right out into the middle of Limuru Road. Cars, vans and trucks careened and honked, but no contact was made. The SUV stalled out. I looked out the back, through the gaping hole, over the seat where Burt crouched down. The camera crew had scattered to cars and vans, now fighting one another to get out of the narrow driveway.
“The Railroad Station. We’ll wait there. When I call you, come get us.”
I flew between the seats and shot out the driver-side passenger door, Burt behind me.
“Like hell I will,” Joan yelled, “and you don’t have my number.”
I stood and put my hand up against the flow of traffic, which flowed around us like a thick school, of metallic fish. I liked the woman. She was tough as iron and she wouldn’t abandon us after we’d stood up for her. She’d figure it out.
A red mini-van, with a strange hand-painted poster of The Lion King splashed across its front, screeched to a halt, almost touching my hand. A gold stripe ran around the van’s body. I’d stopped a Matata, one of the thousands that constantly prowled the streets of Nairobi. They came in three kinds, regular, gospel and teeny. The regular one’s were for regular people, like most tourists. The gospel one’s blared reborn gospel music at impossibly volumes. The teeny ones were even worse, pumping out acid rock and rap. The latter two were mostly for locals.
Joan got the Pajero started. She joined the traffic flow. The side door of the Matata opened and a young hand waved. Burt and I crawled inside. There were already three teens inside, plus the driver and his ‘conductor,’ who collected the fare. Matatas had gotten their name from their original fare of three shillings. Now, the prices were variable, going all the way up to fifty shillings or more. Fifty shillings being about seventy-five cents American. The Matata didn’t move. Teeny conveyances were weird. They would carry people they liked, or thought were cool for free, or not let you in at all if they didn’t like your look. I could tell that the conductor didn’t like our look.
“You got any money?” I asked Burt. He shook his head. I stared at the evil looking teenager in front of me, trying to ignore the blast of horrid rap coming out of the Matata’s speakers. We had to get the hell out of there. I took off the Omega and held it up.
“Omega, Speedmaster, Astronauts took to the moon, four thousand U.S.” I said. The kid looked at the watch.
“Sare,” he said, then grabbed the watch. Sare, I knew, meant ‘free’ in the local street slang called Sheng. The kids spoke it, like pigeon in Hawaii.
“Sare, my ass,” I responded, angrily. “Railroad Station, right now.”
I tried to see out the windows of the mini van, to see if our new band of followers were there. They had to be. But I also knew they’d never be able to stay on us unless, somehow, they’d been able to attach a GPS unit to our specific Matata. Not likely. Not likely at all.
Matatas were the locusts of Nairobi streets, and they were nearly indistinguishable in outer appearance. We drove Limuru toward Mombasa Road in a veritable sea of them, our vast overpayment of fare overwhelming the driver’s natural tendency to stop for anyone else. Our teenage riders stayed with us to the station, without complaint or comment.
“Who were those guys, anyway?” Burt asked.
“Don’t know,” I answered. “They’re Caucasian, all of ‘em, and I don’t think they’re with the Lebanese. They look like Agency. And they fired on us.”
Ironically, a piece from the Lion King soundtrack blared out from the radio. Hakuna Matata played. I looked around at my fellow passengers. They didn’t seem to get the irony at all. Then the words of the song hit me. “Hakuna Matata! It’s a wonderful phrase. It means no worries for the rest of our days.”
I put my latest chapter of the espionage novel called "Closer to God," on the other blogsite I maintain: http://www.from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com, simply because some people have complained when I have put fiction on this site. Not that anybody seems to be reading much on the Obama site anymore. I never get comments at all. You could say that maybe my writing is just not good enough to elicit commentary, but I don't think that is it. The grassroots wonder of what was established by the initiation and continuation of this site before and right after the last election was quite something, and great fun to be a part of. But our population loses direction easily. Our culture bores even more easily. And being fickle today, at home and abroad, defines most Americans and most American policy.
We are making believe our money is worth something, and it is still working...marginally. We are making believe that there are actually jobs to perform in this country, instead of in China, India and Indonesia...where we sent them. Friedman stated, last week in the NY Times, that the fault for that is simply that Americans did not properly prepare and educate ourselves for the future, when they had the chance. The man is a liar and low-life cur, making millions while he laughs about why American's should quite justifiably be paid the same as Chinese peasants. And he golfs with the president, when he should more properly be water-tortured in Gitmo. But there is no real justice in the universe. There is only the eternal movement of information packets. Quantum mechanics. And there is no mercy, consideration, or even intellect at work in quantum activity. We are the merciful, the considerate and the intelligent part of this universe...when we choose to be. Right now, in this period of time, we are choosing to be dumb as hell, and reaping the benefits of that stupidity.
We are so busy admiring, and holding up to high exaltation, the phony 'stars' of our world, that our world is falling apart around us. In the Chicago Tribune, yesterday, the headline was all about people (including families, women and children) living in storage lockers, garden sheds and abandoned cars. The tragedy of it. Above that headline was a four inch column across the page, with a photo of a fifteen million dollar a year baseball player smiling out at us. The Sports section took that photo and made it the size of the whole page. How many people got the subtle distinction of the idiocy illustrated by that presentation? I wonder. Bret Favre is actually given tons of sympathy as he awaits the big Packers/Viking game on Sunday. Sympathy? How many million is he getting to play for two hours? I love his interviews, however. The man is a drooling idiot when it comes to discussing anything other than his 'game.' Its pretty funny, at least.
We are still in Afghanistan. We are fighting the Taliban. We are at war with the Taliban. What the hell happened to declarations of war and Congressional approval? Gone. We now go to war at a whim, or the opinion of a president. We actually are dumb enough to say that we are depending on our generals in the war theater to tell us whether we should increase or decrease our presence in the war! Now that is as dumb as asking Bret Favre! What general in his right mind is going to say "Oh, cut my troops in half please!!" What do generals do? They make war. How do they get advancement and more power? They make war. And they do it like Bret Favre, by being exposed to about as much danger as a taxi driver or deliveryman. Others are fighting and dying, or coming home with PTSD so bad they will never have any bliss in their lives. We are torturing the wrong people. We have a whole line of bankers, generals and even sports stars whole could profit us all mightily with just a few turns of the screw.
Maybe, one day, prior to the coming disaster in 2012 (Oh please God, bring it on), the common man can celebrate the common man again. They guy or gal working to actually make cars, the people building our roads, the nurses, baristas, waiters and cooks. And those people living in storage lockers (until they are outed and thrown in the streets, because you can't be allowed to live in a storage locker!) who are somehow trying to held life together instead of becoming insurgents.
And that is what is next if we do not make some changes. We will have insurgency here in this country, and we will be no more able to stop it here than we were able to in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. We have a fiction of stopping it in Iraq, and we are going to try applying that same fiction to Afghanistan. We fortify the main population centers, then construct armored conduits to connect them, travelled by heavily armored vehicles. Then we claim that our 'surge' has worked. The natives laugh at us, as they properly should. We are not at war with Iraq or the Taliban. We are at war with our own self-imposed ignorance, and our willingness to glorify the ephemeral stupidity of stardom.
CLOSER TO GOD
Sea of Heartbreak
II
The water has always meant a lot to me. Off the beaches of Oahu I made my mark, surfing Queens and body-surfing Sandy. Victoria Falls called me from the far Northern canyons of Upper Kenya. Its thunder only evident form reports spoken by people who’d been there. I was not one of them, but I was going to be. I just knew it. But I couldn’t go before I finished what I was about.
Jomo Kenatta Airport in Nairobi is a mess. But so is the whole country. I drove the Pajero there, following my drop of the Lebanese. I had dumped him on the edge of town, to be taken back to where ever the hell he was going to hide out, by local taxi. Burt, Tom and Walt were my concern. I needed them gone in order to consider and act upon what I had learned from the nearly dead Lebanese. I threaded my way through traffic in front of the airport, easily and fluidly, like a man piloting a vehicle in which he really did not care who he violated or struck. I was all of that.
I pulled over at the SAS sign. I waited for the three men, who had been my mission companions, to depart. They too could take cabs to wherever they were going, as they would not be getting rid of their armament in the airport proper. Tom and Walt got out without comment. Burt stayed in the font passenger seat, however. I motioned for him to go, but he simply shook his head. I shrugged. What could I do? The mission was over. The team dispersed independently following a mission. There was no precedent for the way the man was acting.
When the Pajero’s doors were closed I sat in silence, the car’s tiny six cylinder engine humming quietly.
"Well, what the hell is this? Where do you want me to deliver you?" My questions had merit and made sense. Burt chose not to interpret things that way.
"Take me wherever you're going," he said, nonsensically.
I massaged my forehead with my left hand. Some local in uniform pounded on the car’s curbside fender. I put the shift lever in first and pulled away into the sea of chaotic traffic I so much enjoyed swimming in. I did not drive with a purpose. Instead I eased along with the other ill-mannered drivers avoiding contact.
“I’m headed toward the embassy,” I said, not comprehending why Burt was still in my car.
“Figured…” he replied, “but that’s probably a bad idea.”
I was stunned by his response. I pulled the Pajero to the side of the road, running two wheels up over a cracked and broken curb. We sat there. Women walked by with stuff piled four feet high atop their heads. Passing cars beeped in anger at the slight blockage our vehicle left by the side of Outer Ring Road. They were not without complaint. Only Mombasa Road was busier.
“Is Burt your real name?” I asked, not looking at the man.
“Is Jack Donner yours?” he replied. I nodded.
“Bertram Lauren, like the clothing guy, Burt said. I gave him my hand and he took it.
“You want to tell me about it?” I began, hoping for anything, but not expecting the response I got.
“You have a reputation, with that big brain of yours,” he began, telling me without saying it that he had known my real name all along. Burt was removing himself from the realm of normal Knuckle-dragger stock very quickly. “Back there, out on the Serengeti, you missed something. I thought you’d catch it, but you didn’t.” He didn’t go on, although I waited.
I thought back to our operation.
“The suppressor,” I said, tentatively. I had caught it subliminally. We had been given an assignment out on the Veld of Africa. There was no need for a suppressor. Silencers were large, uncomfortable to carry and difficult to properly conceal. They also identified anybody who had one as a potential professional killer. Why had Burt carried one, then installed it with me by his side? I turned my head to look at the bigger man, for the first time since leaving the airport. I felt a slight taste of fear. I didn’t like where our conversation was going. At all. But I said nothing. There was nothing for me to do but wait. I was unarmed and trapped inside a vehicle with someone who was not only well armed but a coldly-capable professional killer.
“I don’t work for State. Whatever that guy said once about a warm bucket of spit, well he should have been talking about State.” Burt spoke the words in obvious frustration, not looking over at me. “And you’re an agent for Christ’s sake. We don’t do agents. Not ever.”
“John Garner, Vice-President under Roosevelt,” I replied, still uncertain of what might happen. “He was talking about the Vice-Presidency as a job, but I understand what you mean.” Burt’s comment about me being an agent, therefore not target material, had jarred me. I had responded from the analytical quadrant.
“Why’d you talk to the guy? The mission brief said that we were, under no circumstances, to question or listen to the man.” Burt made his comments as if under great duress. I hoped that he was not still making up his mind about what he would or would not do.
“I found our instructions to be questionable,” I replied, honestly. “The mission is mine once the operation begins. You know the rules. The dead agent was named Smith. Ex-Marine. Decorated. Class act. He had a wife and three kids. You?”
Burt looked over and met my eyes.
“No, I got nobody,” he stated, his voice flat.
“Me either,” I replied, my voice pitched to the same tone.
“For them, then,” I finished. Burt shook his head.
“Brain damage would be too light a phrase to use for this kind of thing. More like brain death. We don’t know anything. We have nothing. What the hell can we do?”
I breathed easier. It didn’t seem, for the moment, like I was going to die on the front seat of a rental Pajero in downtown Nairobi. The car’s air-conditioned interior was, again, cool enough.
“Haggerty. He’s who we have,” I said.
“Just what do you know?” Burt asked.
“The Lebanese was dead on Haggerty’s orders. He was the one sent in to out Smith. That’s what he said, and I believe him. But what the hell was Smith doing in that prison? And why did he get taken out for the revelation? By who? No, all we have is Haggerty. What were your instructions, and from who?” I waited for Burt to consider. The kind of thing we had become involved in was off the books. There was no Agency support or approval for what we were discussing.
“My Control Officer told me that there was a possibility that you might go rogue,” Burt said, his mouth twisted into a strange smile. “Its not unheard of you know, especially with…well… your track record.”
Somehow, Haggerty, probably with the support of one of the many Assistant Secretaries of State, had reached deep into Agency Operations. The violation was monumental. I reflected for a moment. Such things happened in movies, like ‘Three Days of the Condor,’ but not in real life. Not in my experience, or the experience of any of the senior agents I had ever known.
“I’m going to the embassy. You in or out?” I put my right hand on the knob of the center shift lever.
“I don’t know,” Burt answered, but his own hand did not grab for the door handle. I put the Pajero in gear and headed North on Outer Ring. I drove the car carefully, trying to think of every detail of what had happened.
“Why was the Lebanese out there in the game park? What was he doing with the Masai? They aren’t normally violent, but they had him pretty painfully tied,and in bad shape.”
I talked to myself, as Burt made no comments at all. The roads to the embassy took us through Muthaiga where the Safari Park Hotel was located. Once a retreat for British Army Officers it had grown to be my favorite hotel in all of Africa, when I could cheat the Agency out of enough money to stay there.
The embassy loomed up from one side of the road we took winding around the Kenya Teachers facility. The place was built like the concrete and steel blockhouse it had been intended to be. The previous embassy, taken out by terrorist bombs years before, had been downtown by the Railroad Station. The embassy was totally obvious in its American ugliness, even without the huge U.S. flag waving out front.
I drove around the side of the structure where a big driveway led to the underground garage. It was blocked near its entrance by huge movable chunks of stone. I stopped to wait. We didn’t wait long. A Marine Staff Sergeant walked up the ramp to our car. I sighed in relief. It was Stevens, the contingent commander. I’d known him in Hong Kong when he’d been a Buck Sergent. I wondered if he’d recognize me.
“You packing, sir?” he asked, making no motion to salute, instead moving up and down the side of the Pajero to see what he could of the vehicle. I said that we were.
“Get out and go down the driveway. They’ll see you on the camera and let you in. Leave the keys.” We did as instructed, my faith in the United States Marine Corps once more confirmed. Once inside we waited for the Staff Sergeant to return, while a PFC and a Corporal stood silently by, checking us out but not being invasive about it, or patting us down. The Staff Sergeant was buzzed through the steel door. He tossed the car keys to me, then walked past us through an open door.
“Better see the DCM about what to do. The Communications Director is out of embassy,” he threw over his shoulder. I moved to follow him, waving Burt to accompany me. The Deputy Chief of Mission was second only to Ambassador Haggerty himself. I understood the Staff Sergeant’s predicament. The Communications Director was code for Embassy CIA contact. Every embassy and consulate in the world had one. Without him to front for us, someone of upper management power would have to make decisions, which fit into my plans exactly.
Three flights of stairs up at a run brought us to a hallway inlaid with exotic woods, common to Eastern Africa. Burt and I stood catching our breath. Stevens saluted crisply, pointed at an open office doorway a few yards away, then departed back down the stairway. I walked into the office, its floor covered with a beautiful baby-blue rug so thick that my entrance was made in complete silence.
A middle-aged woman sat at a large desk facing the door, flanked by two smaller desks nearby, where two younger women sat. None of them paid immediate attention to our presence. I noted that atop the larger desk was a small nameplate with the word “Haggerty” carved across it, and presumed we were in the Ambassador’s outer office.
“Is Haggerty in?” I asked, deliberately failing to use the man’s title. I wasn’t in a formal mood. The woman looked up. A Bose Sound Machine behind here played some country tune as she appraised us. “How did I lose you, oh where did I fail…” came out of the expensive little device.
“Who’s asking?” she asked, “And what are you doing up here unannounced?”
“I’m Jack Donner and this is Burt,” I waved one hand back, as I spoke, my tone mildly respectful. I ignored her second question. I also noticed her color and expression change.
“Who let you in?” she asked, as if inquiring about pet animals, her voice becoming more demanding. The other two women stopped working and looked at us, reacting to her tone.
“Is Haggerty here or not?” I overrode her, raising my voice slightly.
“I’m Haggerty,” she shot back, standing. I noted that she was a beautiful well-formed woman.
“You’re Paul Haggerty?” I was shocked.
“No, I’m his ex-wife, Joyce. I’m the DCM.”
“They allow that?” I squeaked out.
“Who?” she said, leaning aggressively toward me, putting her hands down on the surface of the desk. I just shook my head, nonplussed, then decided to regroup. State was a weird place I hated and would never understand.
“I’m here about Smith, who died a few days back. You probably heard something about that.” I moved a step closer to her.
“Leave us,” she stood, sweeping her arm toward the two other women, who instantly filed out, closing the thick wooden door behind them. “I presume, for whatever misplaced reason, that you’re here to report the accomplishment of your mission?”
I stared at Joyce Haggerty in wonder. I had never been a part of any direct mission discussions with embassy staff before. It was unheard of in my experience.
“It would seem that just about everyone knows about that mission,” I countered, indicating my surprise, as I thought more deeply about it.
“Did you perform it successfully?” She said, crossing her arms, and looking back at me with a severe expression.
“Maybe you misunderstood something, either before, or right this minute,” I said. “I don’t report to you. I don’t take orders or mission assignments from you, and I sure as hell don’t discuss the results of such matters with you, or your husband, for that matter.”
“Ex-husband,” she said, raising her own voice. “So what are you doing here then?”
Her comment stopped me. What was I doing there? I was coming right back at a man who had somehow co-opted operations people at CIA to risk taking me out if I failed to perform to specification on a mission. But I wasn’t going to say that.
“The Lebanese told me Paul sent him in, to give the information about Smith.”
Slowly, Joyce returned to her seat, looking pensive.
“What are you going to do?” She asked, after a minute. I was surprised again. She was giving me nothing by her responses. Did she know? What did she know? How deep was she in? It was almost like being debriefed by an Agency Control Officer. You gave, you did not get. I liked her. She was bright, good-looking, enough miles on her to give her wisdom, and she didn’t take any shit.
“Paul and I are going to have a little talk,” I told her, truthfully.
“About what?” she came back.
“About what Smith was doing in that prison. About what the Lebanese was doing in that park. About why an experienced agent was killed in an allied country that couldn’t give a damn about his affiliations. And some other personal stuff.”
I didn’t tell her that I was going to have a possibly terminal discussion about someone who had ordered me dead.
“Don’t,” she stated. I saw honesty in her expression. “Go your way and leave it alone. It isn’t your job or your fight. Get on an airplane. You don’t want to be anywhere near this. You’re not that good, no matter what your reputation, otherwise you’d have just done your job.”
She knew I had not allowed the Lebanese to be killed. The longer I was in front of the woman the more she was getting out of me.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He’s not here,” she responded, shaking her head.
“That’s not what I asked, I pushed her. Burt moved to my side.
“I’m not telling you. I need him undamaged, for the moment, and I don’t like the look of your pet gorilla.” I marveled at the woman’s courage, even if she was in her own office inside a U.S. Embassy. She knew she wasn’t in front of regular diplomatic personnel. She also had let me know that she either knew, or had guessed, that I might have good reason to be violently disposed toward her ex-husband.
“You know this is going to resolution in some fashion. I can’t let it go, not and survive out here. Look at us. We have nowhere else to take this, and I think you know it.” I looked at the man standing next to me, to make sure Joyce had not reached him emotionally, but I need not have bothered. Burt had reverted to his Knuckle-dragger role. He stood impassive, as if there had been no insult intended by the woman’s harsh words. I looked back at her, and we waited.
The CD repeated its play, the same song coming up again; “…the lights in the harbor don’t shine for me…” played quietly through the room.
“What is that song?” I asked.
“Its called ‘Sea of Heartbreak,’ she answered.
“How very appropriate,” I said. She sniffed, but I saw a fracture in her visage when she did. Quickly, she turned her head, then leaned forward to take a call. Somewhere inside the hardened career woman was a heart.
Burt and I waited some more. Finally, she was done.
“I’ll take you to him,” Joyce relented. She stood, then walked around the desk. She wore a knee length blue dress. Classy. I liked the effect, but I gave no indication. I didn’t have to, as she read me anyway.
“I don’t like people who do what you do, or in your line of work, so don’t bother with the phony charm. You have no morals left, if you had any to start with.” I could not help smiling at that. Not that she was wrong, I hadn’t resolved such issues for myself yet, but that she would say it to my face made her more attractive still.
“Just tell us where he is and you can avoid being seen in our company,” I said, not being able to avoid smiling at her last insult.
“He’s at the Safari Park Hotel, not far from here, but you’ll never find him without me, and besides, I don’t trust you…and Brutus here,” she pointed at Burt. “Nobody else out there will know what you are. None of you people look like you should.”
I wondered how I should look. We followed her, as she opened the door and headed for the stairs. It was fun to follow her. For some unaccountable reason her company made me feel human for the first time since the mission had begun.
Blood might flow across the wooden floors of the Safari Park but I would endeavor to see that it wasn’t hers. She moved fast down the stairs, getting ahead of us.
“How did I lose you, oh where did I fail…” I sang, almost inaudibly.
“On the sea of heartbreak,” Burt whispered, coming down the stairs right behind me.
Copyright 2009
Give Me Strength
I
God is out there somewhere. I don’t know where. Once, when I was in an African prison I yelled back at some would-be reborn Christian preacher: “God has never come to my bunk.” He had been, as is the custom of reborn preachers, ministers or flock-leaders, indicating that God had spoken to him in the night, and instructed him regarding something I ought to do. For some reason God never instructs His acolytes in what they ought to do on their own, other than raise money and make members of the flock serve them.
It does not say, anywhere in the Bible, that God will not give you a burden too heavy to carry. That common saying is just pure bullshit. Think about the death camps in Germany, just for a second, and consider such idiotic God-driven nonsense. I do not believe you can ‘Trust in God,’ or even ‘Let go and let God.’ I think those are buzz-phrases created by reborn idiots. I do believe that if you pray to Him for strength, however, that He will definitely send you more problems so you can grow stronger in attempting to deal with them. My own life is proof of that little homily.
Nobody knows I smoke. Not one soul living on this planet. A couple of people used to know, but they died shortly after they discovered my secret. I don’t like to execute people without some ceremony. Instead of offering the intended victim a cigarette, however, I have one myself. They get the extra time while I finish the process of smoking it. That’s only fair. I smoke Marlboro cigarettes. The long ones with filters. Like the guy on the horse in those old ads. He died of lung cancer, I heard sometime back. I don’t think I’m going to die of lung cancer. I picked a career, or rather it picked me, that will likely preclude that.
It was raining just beyond my tucked-in corner of the railroad station. I smoked there because the station was filled only with members of the native population.
They knew I was nearby, back pressed firmly into the peeling wooden boards, but they made believe I didn’t exist. To me that was the same as not knowing anything.
About my smoking secret, I mean. The natives were like Knuckle-draggers, they didn’t count as living souls. They were just there, like the rocks, the trees or even the rain. I’m not prejudiced on the basis of color. I’m just prejudiced on the basis of the business I’m in.
When it rains in Nairobi, it rains for quite some time. The water coming down is clean, however, unlike the rest of the dusty dirty city. I love Nairobi, don’t get me wrong. And I love the rain in Nairobi because it drives everyone inside, then cleans the streets and universally broken sidewalks. I walk in the rain. I breathe it in. Plus its cool. Nairobi is pretty hot most of the time. I like it cool, but I don’t get many assignments up on the Bering Sea, or down in Tierra del Fuego. Africa is kind of my beat. And I’m not a Knuckle-dragger either. I don’t do the wet stuff at all. I’m one of the rather more rare guys who have guys who do that sort of thing. Maybe there are a few women who do what I do, I don’t know. I’ve never met one, or even heard of one, but these are changing times. Some of those guys, the Knuckle-draggers, were who I was standing near the rain waiting for. The train was overdue out of Lake Victoria, stopping in Nairobi, before making its way down to Mombasa.
Across the tracks I could see old rusting steam engines sitting on bare ground. Steam had given way to diesel ten years back. I remember riding the steam- powered train down to Mombasa, so long ago. The night had been filled with burning cinders, falling down and away past the dining car windows. It had not seemed romantic at the time, but in retrospect it was all of that, and more. I wistfully drew in the last of the Marlboro smoke, then pinched out the stub and replaced it in my red and white cardboard pack. I would leave no evidence of my secret behind, not that anyone around me cared. Kenyan natives are great. They pretty much respect and appreciate white folk, like me. They give deference and they don’t get in your face, as in some other cultures.
The train came in. Just like that. No whistle of warning. I was not in Europe or America. The rules were different. The old cars rocked slowly to a stop, compressed air hissing out from the brakes, resembling steam, up and down the line. I waited.
The natives crammed aboard the train as the passengers tried to get off. It was a mess of water-soaked bedlam, but it wasn’t noisy. The people of Kenya are a quiet lot. Another feature I like.
My guys climbed down just as the whistle of the engine finally sounded, indicating that the train was pulling out. Conductors in blue sweaters and black caps pushed and pulled stragglers aboard. The train creaked as it eased from the station. I turned and headed for the gray Nissan Pajero parked illegally in front. It was an old rental thing with a five speed, unlocked because there were no locks, only holes in all the doors. But I had left nothing inside. I carried nothing except my cigarettes, money and a passport. The rental papers for the car were not even there, as I wouldn’t return the vehicle, just call and tell the agency where to pick it up. My guys would have stuff. It was what they did. If they got caught with any of it, then they’d have to count on some other operatives to get them out of trouble. Or not.
I drove. Two of them in the back and one up front with me. We didn’t talk. They knew the mission. We were not, and were not going to be, friends. If there was to be violence I didn’t want to be grieving over the loss of any of them, or they of me.
Fucking New Guy Syndrome we’d called it, after the Nam. And it had its proper place in our work.
I drove fast. As fast as a three liter Pajero would go, which was not that fast at all.
One hundred and forty kilometers per hour was about max, which was about seventy miles an hour, or so. The roads out of Nairobi were built for about half that, however, so it was a rough scary ride. The guys gave no indication of discomfort or fear, however. It was that kind of business.
We were headed for a village just South of the big National Wildlife Park outside of Nairobi. I never could remember the park’s name. The village is a Masai place. The Masai are tall lanky natives who wear weird throw-back attire and carry long ugly spears. The men, anyway. And they stink to high heaven, as they never ever wash. Ever. I like them, but then, my former wife had once told me that I had no sense of smell. I guess didn’t have much taste in women either. I’d never found any who trusted me. And I couldn’t be around people who didn’t trust me. If they were ‘inside the wire’ kind of women, part of my tribe, then my trustworthiness should have been beyond question. I trusted them. But women don’t trust so easy, I discovered. So I was alone. I worked in a field that did not lend itself well to either trust or believability. Alone was not okay, but it simply had to do.
The village appeared next to the road about twenty clicks on the other side of the park. The inside of the Pajero was filled with dust, even though the rain had done a lot to cut it back. The park had been nothing but dirt roads and dust. Rain only sealed the top inch of the dust, and the dust went down a good four inches deeper than that. The village was a ram-shackle affair of branch constructed hovels, mud huts and half-thatched roofs behind flimsy fences. The fences were to keep animals in, not out. No self-respecting lion would ever allow itself the indignity of being speared full of holes on the interior open plaza of a Masai village.
I drove through a likely hole in the fence. Chickens and a few dogs scattered. I knocked down a few small pieces of stacked junk, and maybe a three-stone fireplace or two. I parked in the center of the village and shut off the engine. We sat. Nobody appeared. The Knuckle-dragger next to me spoke for the first time.
“I’m Burt, and these are Tom and Walt,” he said, as he pointed toward the back seat.
I didn't laugh when a cloud of dust formed near the end of his extended finger.
“Hey,” I responded, looking carefully at each of them. We would not be friends, but our mutual survival was now dependent upon the performance of each of us. Missions involving violence seldom ever went smoothly. Aberrantly strange things were always cropping up.
“The target is being held somewhere nearby. I don’t know where. Our contact is supposed to meet us here." I said the words with finality. We were not going to go social at this tense point of the mission.
I looked at my Omega. It was the same watch the astronauts had worn to the moon. Or so the salesman had told me when I’d purchased it. It was pretty damned accurate, I had to admit. Our source had twenty minutes to make contact or I’d scrub the mission. While we waited, we were targets ourselves. It was a risk that came with the territory. We waited in the vehicle. It wasn’t likely that any force was going to take out four white guys, armed to the teeth, sitting inside a rental four-wheel-drive in the middle of a pacified Masai village. Getting out could lead to booby-traps or other hidden hazards. We waited inside.
A tall Masai warrior appeared between two of the hovels to our front. He motioned with his characteristic spear. The four of us got out of the vehicle. I looked at my guys to assure myself that nobody was coming out locked and loaded. Violence escalates from the things you do before violence happens, I knew. We needed to be just four white guys walking, escorted, across the Serengeti. Everyone was cool.
We followed the nearly seven foot tall native through the saw grass just East of the village. It was a well-beaten path so we had no trouble. We could have followed the tribesman with blinders on, as his aroma was that overpowering, even twenty feet back. I do have a sense of smell I thought, sending a mental message to my ex-wife.
We came upon a clearing at the base of one of those huge Baobab trees, its trunk at least twenty feet thick. A man lay on his side next to the tree, his hands tied behind him with what appeared to be vines. The man was white, wearing the phony safari gear so common to visiting tourists. Even his canvas hat was there, on the ground next to him. I was surprised by that, as the Masai are known for stealing anything not tied, glued or welded down. The warrior stood next to the laying man, planting the base of his spear down on the man’s torso. He looked at me, but said nothing.
I pulled a two inch stack of Kenyan Shillings from my back pocket. I’d exchanged two hundred dollars worth of U.S. currency at the rail station. I handed the warrior the cash. He grabbed it, then walked away immediately, back toward the village. I waited until the five of us were the only humans evident out on the Savannah. Then I crouched.
“You alive?” I asked the downed man. His eyes opened. He nodded vigorously. I stepped back. Automatically, Tom and Walt grabbed the man by his shoulders and roughly seated him, back to the Baobab trunk. They backed away.
“Burt,” I whispered. Carefully, Burt took a medium sized automatic out from under his rain coat and handed it to me. Then he reached inside the coat a second time and came out with a polished black cylinder. I handed the automatic back. Burt finished assembling the silenced killing machine.
“We’re not supposed to talk to you, but what the hell, I never do exactly what they tell me to do anyway,” I offered to the man against the tree, by way of passing time, as I moved to get my pack of Marlboros out.
“I did it,” the man whispered out. “I know you’re his people. I did it. I went to that prison and told them about him. I admit it. But I had to do it. If I didn’t do it he’d have ruined my family. Our business would have been gone. We have nowhere to go. We’re Lebanese. We’re not welcome anywhere. We don’t even have passports.
I even dressed like a tourist, just like he told me.”
I sat on my haunches, no longer reaching for my box of cigarettes. The mission was to take out the man who had deliberately informed on one of our agents, getting that agent very dead, indeed. Payback was uncommon to the intelligence business, I knew, at least payback in violence, but there were certain circumstances. This had appeared to be one of them, as the dead agent had also been a highly decorated former Marine Officer and well connected politically. Unlike myself, he’d also been rumored to be well-liked. The fact that I’d been instructed not to talk to the target had not gone down well with me, although I had not remarked at the time. If I have to be involved in someone’s passing, I like to make certain that some sort of justice in the universe is being balanced.
“What have you got for me?” I asked. The Lebanese just looked back at me.
“If we are not to end this all right here, then you have to give me some reason why your passing should not take place.” I stared into the man’s black eyes, seeing nothing but truth. Everything thing he’d said so far had reeked of truth, and that made me very uncomfortable.
“I don’t have anything,” the man said, his chin sagging to his chest.
“Who was going to destroy your family?” I prompted him. He looked up. Then he looked from Burt to the other two Knuckle-draggers, then back at me. I stood, both knees and the small of my back in pain at the same time. I grunted.
“Take a hike out on the Serengeti for a bit,” I said to Burt. He grimaced, then handed the suppressed weapon to me. I took it. I knew the three of them probably had six more weapons among them, or more. Knuckledraggers were big on toys and equipment, cramming diplomatic sacks with all manner of pyrotechnics.
I waited for the guys to get a good thirty yards down the path, before I squatted back down.
“Paul Haggerty,” the Lebanese expelled with one soft breath. I said nothing back.
I didn’t have another question. I was too shocked. Paul Haggerty was the American
Ambassador to Kenya. Ambassadors never ever get involved in operational agency business, at least I had never heard of it happening before. For an Ambassador to be involved with the killing of a field agent was almost too impossible to consider.
“I understand that you have to kill me. But my family. They won’t be hurt, will they?
I have a wife and four children.” He tried to go on but I held up one hand in front of his face.
“Do you have any idea why Paul would want the agent dead?” The Lebanese shook his head violently. “Do you have any idea who killed our man?” I followed up, beginning to wonder exactly what had taken place in that prison outside of Nairobi.
Kenya was not exactly an enemy of the United States. The Soviets were long gone.
Terrorism was mostly a geographically limiting situation, excepting 9/11, of course.
Why the revelation that a man was an agent of the CIA would get him killed in a place like Kenya had no comforting answer that I could come up with.
The man shook his head again. I believed everything he’d told me. But I didn’t know what to do with it.
I rose to my feet once again with same groan. I stepped away from the Baobad and saw Burt pacing in the distance, nervously. If I got myself killed it would not look good in the after-action report, for him, or the other guys. They had to do what I said, but they also had to protect me. I waved him back.
“Cut him loose,” I said, when the three had shambled back. I handed the silenced weapon to Burt. “We won’t be needing that.”
Tom and Walt got the Lebanese to his feet and cut through the vines. The man glanced around him like he was some sort of hunted bird, looking for the next direction of attack.
“What do I do?” he asked, finally. I took the eighteen remaining hundred dollar bills of mission cash from my front pocket. I put the small stack into his hand.
“We’re taking you back to your family. Then you’re going to disappear for a few weeks while I get this all sorted out. And I mean disappear. Do you understand?”
“You did not know?” the Lebanese asked me, looking at my three guys, without going on. I shook my head.
“There will be trouble, I think,” he said, with an air of finality.
The village was as dead when we returned, as it had been when we’d arrived. It was obvious that no one had touched the Pajero. The villagers wanted nothing to do with us. As I drove madly toward Nairobi, the Lebanese wedged in between Tom and Walt in the back seat, I supposed that nobody in the U.S. Embassy was going to want anything to do with us either.
I keep thinking about the movie I saw recently regarding Julia Child. Julia Child was a 'regular' woman. A bit too tall, too broad, too heavy and filled with way too much hilarious intellectual insight. She would never get a television show again, and I don't care how great a cook she was. We are well into the 'pretty woman' culture, which has been served up to us by Hollywood and the mainstream media. We get Kelly Rippa, and her 'right in your face' sexual presentation. She is another human twig, trotted out as an example of what women should be, in order to appear attractive at a distance. That she is unhealthy in her thinness is never even discussed, except in rare tabloids. In other shows, and in movies, we get the same thing. five foot eight women who weigh a hundred pounds or less. They, of course, also serve in very macho roles. They kick butt on all manner of men, in spite of the obvious fact that they would break like twigs if ever faced with a real man in a real physical situation, and I don't care how much study and practice might be honed into the woman using martial arts techniques. the marital arts are subject to physics like everything else.
The internet is not helping either. Internet porn is about forty percent of the traffic out here I have read. The women who are used in the videos and still photos are all the same. They all look like Kelly Rippa in some way or another. How are real women to compete with these sick miniaturized Amazons? How is our species to continue, at least in this culture, if men find regular women unattractive? And how can regular women be treated with respect if they have to stack themselves up against the caricatures presented in all forms of this pervasive media? Hence the latest attacks on women's rights. These attacks are shunted off into the area of reborn Christian revival, but in reality, they are all over the place. Just like many of these protests about health care, which are not protests against health care at all, but attacks against Obama (in particular, about the race of Obama), attacks on Roe v. Wade are attacks against women. They have little to do with the life of the unborn. Any more than the health 'opponents' really care about health care. Look at the makeup of the audiences of those town hall meetings. Almost all the people there are well past the age where they depend upon private medical care at all. They are on medicare. So why are they at the meetings? One might think it is because fears have been built up about the aged losing their benefits because of the coming national plan. But that is not true at all. The old people are not really worried about that. No, they want that black guy out of the White House. And they are supported by armed idiots carrying assault rifles all around them. Why we do not have a national law that reads "no guns are to be carried or possessed by citizens within one mile of the president, unless he is just passing through the neighborhood," I have not a clue.
But back to women. Have you noticed that all the new newscasters coming aboard are lovely young women? Almost one and all. Older men are titillated. And what can anybody really say, without it seeming that the complainer is prejudiced against women having these high paying jobs with such grand visibility (at substantially lower wages than their male co-anchors, I might add)? But the move is more of the same we are having pushed at us. The women are all cut from the same cookie cutter template. Thin. Young. Beautiful. Examples of how all women should be. Without that ever being said.
I want regular women back on television and in the movies. I want people like Julia Child. I want women that I can look up to because they are smart and verbally adroit. I want to observe and think of women with intellect and style. I am sick of Hollywood plastic. Sick of flat foreheads with not a single line. Sick of bust lines that are just idiotic. The creatures of Hollywood are abnormal, unhealthy and do a disservice to all women in this country. And I am sick of them being shoved in front of me at every opportunity to be held up as some sort of goal for all to emulate.
It reminds me of what has happened to us with sports stardom. Bret Favre. Tiger Woods. And all the rest of our professional 'sports' players. They are among the highest paid beings on this planet and what do they do? They move a ball, whatever kind of ball, up and down a measured piece of turf in some controlled way. They have been doing that, and only that, all of their lives, since they were small children. They are nothing else. They are ball controllers and movers. And our culture goes nuts over them. They are our people of courage, our people of worth, integrity and honor. Which they are anything but. But the truth does not matter. There they are, with all that money and power, and the bully pulpit anytime they want to stand up and take hold of it.
Our culture is frozen in time. We have run into a barrier we could never have conceived of. We have run into the monster of creation we invented to entertain us, but which now is slowly and inexorably forcing us to accept mythology over science, lies above truth, and scripted fiction over reality. We are fast becoming a culture of entertainment where the word 'work' is applied to others, located just outside (having come up from Mexico) or much further away (think India and China). And the results of this rapid glacial shift are coming in. This economy is not coming back. Got that? It will only come back when the engine of work, reality and results that built it is restarted, and then run with renewed vigor at high rpm.
It was a common day. The Republicans gathered at community get-togethers to make sure everyone does not have a fair shake in this culture. Right now it is all about medical care. Like a country so rich and powerful that it can conduct two full scale wars at the same time while still bailing out some truly evil investment firms to the tune of seven trillion dollars cannot take care of the health of its citizenry. Please! And, oh yeah, lets get to those wild community sharing events armed to the teeth, as if there is anybody attending them that is dangerous or deranged, except for the armed idiots. But that just made it an average day in my Republic. Bret Favre continues to add his aging zest to the weirdness of professional football (he didn’t want to go to training camp, he’s too important for that kids stuff, so he waited til it was over to sign with Minnesota). Average stuff. The wind blows, the grass grows and the sun shines.
But I went to see the Julia Child movie. And I was quite surprised. I am in the entertainment business but had not been to a real theater for a few years. The first ten minutes was all ads. Bad, loud, blaring and rotten television ads transplanted into the theater. You cannot mute them, turn down the sound or anything. I looked around to see if anybody else was mildly disturbed, but nobody was. I realized that I was the only one who was out of sync. No wonder movie attendance is down. And then there was the other new thing, at least at the theater I went to, where the ticket has to be purchased from the same person who gets cokes and drinks, or whatever. You wait forever, just to get in. Which I almost did not, simply because of that. Movies are not dying, they are being killed off by idiotic businessmen who have no clue about humanity.
The movie itself was one neatly wrapped and pleasing chick-flick. Most of the chick-flick part was illustrated by the just wonderful men in the show. The husbands were all true, loving and totally supporting, no matter what. If there was a problem, well, it was resolved in no time at all. No drugs, no booze problems, other women or any of that. Nice and comforting, if not a long long way from any reality. I liked the blogging part of the movie. Of course, our heroine (not Julia, but the other one named Julie) rises in mere days to have hundreds of thousand of followers on Salon.com with her blog. Now that part was totally hilarious (most of the millions of blogs out here have less than five followers!), but it was passed off pleasingly enough. There were some really good shots at the publishing business. Those people, back in Julia’s time and in our’s, will steal the fillings out of your teeth, given any opportunity or sometimes simply out of some deeply driven need to torment. I liked those parts. A little truth in the vanilla pudding which swirled around most of the rest of the feature. But I liked it anyway. I laughed and loved Julia Child (in this case Meryl Streep, who I love almost as much) all over again.
I liked Julie’s blogs because they, the one’s they created for the movie anyway, were so nice and emotive. I don’t think I am capable of that kind of lightness of being. The blogs of that young woman were of gossamer cotton candy while mine are laden with acid and razor blades. But what can I do? Proceed on, hoping that I will be discovered too. That last sentence was a joke, as I have been discovered, and its not all so very good (I am missing some fillings).
http://www.jamesstrauss.com
Prologue
Joshua Boatwright sat patiently, sipping from his small espresso cup, unsure of how he had come to be where he was, tucked into the back corner lobby of the Sheraton hotel in Crystal City. He looked out a floor-to-ceiling window onto a well kept courtyard. No, it was not his place to be there. Analysis was what he did, not personal liaisons. His calling in life was to assemble the smallest shards of data and form sweeping mosaics of truth, in a world filled with lies. Joshua was proud of his nickname, "Tevie," a shortened version of the motto he lived by. "Triple Verfification" was that motto. Three sources to establish the veracity of each shard of data he added to his mosaics, to produce pictures of sanity in an insane world. His team of analysts, located four miles away, at CIA's Langley complex, had not conferred the nickname because of his work, however. Unknown to Joshua, they had given him the name because of their knowledge of his only recreation, which was watching television non-stop when not at the intelligence facility.
Diminutive and fidgeting, he sipped and fretted over the tops of his prescription glasses. They had jet black frames, for affect. He did not need them to read or drive. But they gave him a distinguished look, or so his ex-wife had told him, and they did help when examining the tiniest detail of photo intelligence. The Agency's electronic surveillance, although not legally allowable for personal use, such as tracking one's spouse, had proven ruthlessly effective, just after she'd commented on his spectacles.
A big man entered the lobby near its grand entrance. He wore an expensive blue suit. Its Italian cut did nothing, however, to disguise his morbid obesity. Joshua flicked his eyes towards the man, then grimaced. The man's florid complexion, bulbous nose and polished smile gave his identity away. The Senior Senator from Iowa stopped in the center of the large foyer, to take the place in. No assistants or attendants of any sort accompanied him, which did not surprise Joshua at all. The Senator noticed him sitting alone in the corner. Joshua glanced at him before looking down at a folder he had placed very exactly on his table. Noticing a slight tremor pass through his left wrist, he quickly tucked it down between his thigh and the arm of the chair. Never had he encountered anyone as an Agency representative, and certainly never a sitting senator, much less one who chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee.
"There's no shame to having a little bit of fear here," he whispered inaudibly to himself, breathing deeply inward as he heard the powerful senator's approaching footsteps. Joshua squared his shoulders imperceptibly, his back ramrod straight. He had the weight and reputation of the entire Central Intelligence Agency behind him. He would neither genuflect nor grovel before anyone.
"You'd be their man?" the senator inquired very calmly, stopping astride Joshua's chair. Joshua started to rise and raise his right hand. He quickly caught himself, however, putting it down and reseating himself. He was not there, at a clandestine meeting, to be social, or to even appear social.
"Stay seated," the senator said, paternalistically, his voice soft and silky. He lowered himself with visible difficulty into the narrow chair Joshua had purposely placed at right angles to his own before a low coffee table.
"Got something for me?" the senator asked into the silence between them. His tone this time flavored with a likability that the analyst instantly hated.
Before any reply could be made, the senator picked up an unmarked but highly classified file Joshua had placed on the table. Neither man said anything while he read its contents. Joshua noted that the lobby was completely empty, save for two clerks working registration near the entrance. The waiter, who had brought his expresso to him had never returned. Joshua hoped he wouldn't, for fear of having to touch the cup and allow the senator to see him shaking. Minutes passed. A bead of perspiration ran down his hairline behind his right ear. Fortunately, it was the ear opposite the senator's position.
"Says here that you boys are gonna go ahead and help me out," the big man in the blue suit intoned, before plopping the file back on the table.
"The usual Agency drivel," the senator commented, acidly.
"You gonna tell me what the plan is?" he inquired.
Joshua cleared his throat to steady himself, then followed his instructions.
"Your nephew is being justifiably imprisoned by a foreign government. His violations, meriting that imprisonment, are in keeping with what we normally associate with serious criminal behavior in our own country. The Agency does not normally involve itself in such matters, particularly where such deviant and anti-social behavior is involved." Joshua halted, having delivered his own righteous version of the background information he had been given during his briefing. After a few seconds of silence he realized that something was amiss. Without looking over, he felt the heat of tremendous anger flow toward him from the direction of the senator's chair. Instinctively, he dropped his left shoulder a millimeter or two in defense, before he caught himself.
"Just cut to the chase son. Don't make me come after your career." The senator's threat was issued in a low tone, more akin to that of an oversized cat purring than of a human voice. Joshua's throat froze, a tendril of fear coursing through him at the mention of his career. He finally cleared it by swallowing several times.
"We're sending our best man," Joshua gasped. "He's resourceful, violently equipped and experienced. No expense will be spared in this operation. But we're sending him in alone. We can't afford, no matter what measures you may or may not take, to have this operation rise to the level of an international incident. Not now." Joshua averted his gaze from the direction of the man from Capitol Hill as he finished his memorized message. He waited for a response, again trying to fathom why he had been selected for the role he was playing. He was in the dark, but Joshua sensed the reason. It was about the fact that his analysis group had provided the data which sanctioned the mess-of-a-mission the so-called 'best man' had pulled off, against all odds.
He heard the senator arise from his chair. He looked up, but the man was already walking away, his manufactured smile once more plastered to his politician's face. He had made no comment at all, not even in dismissal.
Joshua's shoulders pressed inward, and his head sank to the point that his jaw nearly touched his chest. His trembling fingers grasped the espresso cup handle. He took a shaky sip. He thought of the 'best man' the Agency was dispatching, then smiled weakly for the first time that day. That 'best man' had just come out of West Africa under the bloodiest of circumstances, having improbably accomplished his mission. The skewed manner in which his mission had been conducted would no doubt have the Agency looking like a stone cold, heartless and uncaring beast, and no one in analysis was taking that lightly. His grip steadied as he pondered over what he'd just done. He'd sent a low-life field agent off to save a drug-dealing nephew of a corrupt scumbag senator. This time not the remotest possibility of the mission's success existed.
Joshua Boatwright stood up straight, tucked the classified folder under his arm and strode across the lobby. His mind was already lost in formulation of the final mosaic, as it would appear, when the details of an illegal and doomed mission crossed his desk.
I work at this essay, writing from my heart, dealing from my brain, and taking everything I can find from all life experience around me. I listen, repeatedly, to the song that played on the Colbert Report only moments ago, and the words course through me over and over again. "When the night has come, and the land is dark, and the moon is the only light we'll see....no, I won't be afraid, no, I won't shed a tear, just as long as you stand by me..." I don't know what motivated Colbert to end his show with this tune, renditioned by Grandpa Elliot...one of those guys found on the streets of some Amercian City by the outfit that made 'Playing for Change,' sometime back. I don't care what motivated Colbert. The message is so vital and timely, and it is not coming from anywhere else.
The words of the song. The heartfelt meaningful way they are delivered. The message so poignantly driven deep into us, who listen and hear. There is real earthy philosophy in this powerful song. There is life and a future of hope and understanding. The message is us. Not me. Not you. But us. We must stand together. Whites, Blacks, Indians, Illegals, rich and poor. We must 'stand by me' if we are to advance what we know we are, and can be. We cannot do it alone, and we cannot do it by attacking one another over this deep chasm which has split this country down the middle. It is as if we are fighting to revisit and repair the same issues our Civil War was fought over. Economic slavery. Racial injustice. Exclusionary privilege. The Confederacy is back with a vengeance and, mostly, located just where it was before.
So, I am asking you to stand by me. All you will get in return is my own participation. I will stand by you. And together, denying no one who wants to stand by us, we will step into this future. We can do it spitting and arguing and carrying on all over the place, but we can do it. We cannot do what we have been doing for the last ten years, or so. We have been going nowhere except backwards. Our technology is in tatters, our economy in shambles, our manufacturing base nearly non-existent. We are surviving on a hope for the present, with no hope for a future. We are nearly to the point where we, of my generation, are waiting to die so that our problems will be over.
Stand by me, the moon is the only light we need....together.
We have just had another of those strange flight travel incidents, which nobody seems to be able to explain or resolve in any way. It seems that a Continental plane pulled into Rochester, Minnesota because of bad weather, then sat on the tarmac, about fifty feet from a gate, for twelve hours. Everyone involved has diligently and rationally absolved themselves of fault in this situation. Again. The passengers suffered pretty badly, with just one bathroom. That bathroom was clogged up and inoperable. No food and no drinks were served by the one flight attendant, while all this went on. The Airport says that the terminal was open and available, but the crew of the aircraft would have had to request clearance to dock. The Airline says it knows nothing at all about any of what went on. The crew of the plane says that the terminal was closed and they had no place to dock. That someone's lying here is being totally ignored.
But it is vitally interesting to listen to interviews of the passengers after they were finally deplaned. The succession of lies that they were told by the crew of that plane is unbelievable. It is almost of daytime soap opera caliber stuff. They were told that the terminal was closed. They were told, time after time, that they would be flying out very soon, until they started to be told that a bus was coming to take them back to Minneapolis (60 miles away). Then they were told that the bus had broken down. They were served nothing by the lone flight attendant, but a pack of self-serving lies. There was no bus. There was no flight clearance. The crew never contacted the terminal to ask for docking privileges. There could be only one motivation for all the lying and misrepresentations. Money. Why else would anyone perform like that crew performed?
Flight crews start getting paid as soon as they pull away from the gate. That crew was well into overtime pay while that plane sat there on the tarmac. Not only that, but the crew was using up hours of 'air' time which would give them time off in the weeks ahead, because of the way flight rules are structured within the industry. The passengers were 'gamed' by that crew. The media allows this to continue by not letting the public know about the true motivation behind this kind of miserable flight violation.
And you might think that the passengers kind of deserved what they got because they did not get violent or complain to the point of intolerance? Think again. Post 9/11. Yes, think TSA. Think about the expressions you yourself observe on many of the near-moronic faces of airport security 'officers.' You cannot, as a passenger, encounter flight personnel, or security personnel, with an 'attitude' anymore. You will be charged with a felony, and our ridiculously skewed court system will find you guilty. It happens more than three thousand times a year in this country. The passengers had to do what they did. They had to stay quiet and take the lies. They probably even knew that they were being lied to. And there is the cell phone issue I heard brought up this morning. Once you pull away from the gate you are not allowed to use your cell phone on the aircraft. Only the crew could give you permission to do that, and guess what. Yes, you guessed it. The crew said no cell phones.
The crew will not be fired or punished for their behavior. Anymore than Officer Crowley will be punished for his illegal harassment, humiliation and arrest of Professor Gates. In fact, they will all be rewarded. The flight crew will get the off time and overtime pay, while Crowley will get promoted and have some badly written book published. Some injustices that occur in our culture are actually rewarded. I am not sure why, exactly. Maybe it is just that Jupiter is in transit, or Venus is trining Mars. But, if the airlines do not stop supporting outrageous behavior committed by their flight crews, there will be an occurance of violence at some point. One of these days, or nights, an overheated and fully stuffed aluminum tube is going to explode like a bratwurst left too long on the grill. That coming event is so easily preventable, but, sadly, I don't think anything will be done. Our whole culture is sitting on the dock of the bay, watching .....
A few days ago the media was reporting in the news that our forces in Afghanistan had killed a Taliban leader by the name of Mehsud. The reports came with detailed descriptions of the actual terminal event. It seems that Mehsud was spotted on the top of a home, sitting next to his second wife, by one of our Predators, Reapers or White Doves. That last designation is my term for these robotic flyers who fire missiles from beneath their wings. Missiles were launched and the house, with Mehsud and wife, was obliterated.
Are we at war with the Taliban? I thought that we were at war with Al Qaeda. I thought that we went into Afghanistan to get the Al Qaeda cells who had launched 9/11, and, in particular, the cell which contained Osama Ben Ladin. I thought that we fought the elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan to get them out of our way, in order to allow us to reach the followers of Al Qaeda. But then I was also led to believe that, eventually, we were fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq, until we changed the name of the opponents there to "insurgents." Now I just don't know.
Let's assume that we have to be at war with the Taliban. That assumption safely put where we can get back to it, let's take a look at the morality of killing the woman that was with him. We can even marginally presume that the guy on the roof of that building (Mehsud) when the predator struck down with six missiles was the Taliban leader we sought (there are many conflicting reports about that). But I want to write about that woman. Whoever she was. Were we at war with her when we executed her with full, willing and aforeknowledged intent? Nobody seems to care about this poor woman, blown to smithereens. Why not? Why is it that we keep getting reports that our White Doves shower down these missiles on all manner of people living in Afghanistan, and it is okay that many are not combatants at all? Who will cry for this woman?
I went to a party the other night. High class party. Everyone was higher class than I. My attendance was based upon the fact that I can usually be depended upon to engage in interesting discourse. The hostess of the party, when I was at a table deep in discussion about the Iraq war, said these words: "It's a war. Kill them all. Men, women and children. That's what war is. Kill them all." I looked at her. I like her. I want to be invited back to her parties. But I could not help myself. Quite forcefully I encountered her verbally: "I can understand your feelings, but I would like you to understand that this war should then have your husband and children laying here, dead at your feet, for you to have any comprehension of the enormity of what you just said." Even the mildest intimation that violence might be considered to be visited upon her, there in her own home, stopped the place dead for a moment. I still like this woman. I know that she is so very proto-American, however. She has not lived in those cities out there, humped those jungles, slogged across those deserts and certainly not spent any time with any of those wondrous cultures out there all over this planet. Those people are not people to her. Not like her husband and children. They are not even existent enough in her consciousness to be human beings.
They are very human to me. That woman on that roof who was blown to smithereens. That woman probably had a husband and children too. Maybe the husband is dead. But the children? If they survived the huge blast are they not thinking about enrolling in flight officer training as I write this? Or will that come later? I am not sure about that, the survival part, but I am deadly certain about the 'flight school' device I use here to describe the awesome hurt and hatred which will out itself one year soon. Where do you suppose all that emotion is headed?
And now, today, we have Fox and CNN running the same video of a White Dove watching some insurgents somewhere planting a bomb on a highway. The White Dove does what American White Doves do. It blows the living crap out of the insurgent. And it is all so very justified. And it all attempts to cloak a little secret that leaked out earlier in the day. The secret that we have designated fifty drug dealers in Afghanistan to be destroyed by our White Doves, came out this morning. You see, it is the drug dealers who are the sole remaining financiers of the Taliban. This, we are told very forcefully, then shown the video of a I.E.D. placing insurgent being killed again.
And where did we get out list of Taliban-loving drug dealers? Well, from our intelligence. Which takes us right back to the Monterey language school in Monterey, California. That is the language school the military uses to train our people to speak the languages of other countries so we will understand them. Without speaking the language, and isolated in a guerilla environment, we must depend upon local translators to tell us what people are saying. And to tell us the truth about it. How many graduates of Monterey have we turned out over the past few years who speak the languages of Afghanistan? I am willing to bet that the classified number is around ten, maybe twenty. So what we end up with is intelligence based upon what the locals are telling us. Remember those clowns from Iraq who supposedly gave us all that intelligence before this latest Iraqi nightmare? They lied to us time and again, and got paid hundreds of millions for doing it. We didn't find out about the lying for quite some time though. Today, in spite of the payments and lying, the chief-liar-in-charge of that crew is the Oil Minister of the country.
So here we are, killing supposed drug dealers, from the Wings of our Snow White Doves, all over the place. Do those drug dealer's have wives and family living with them? Or traveling with them? And what is the basis for assigning someone to this terminal hit list? The word of some locals, and very probably locals who would like a bit of the power that the person they are reporting on might have. I experienced this in Vietnam, in the field as a combat commander. Only after I was in country long enough to acquire some of the local language was I able to figure out that my "Kit Carson" local scouts were lying to me. That was after, by the way, we had already 'taken out' my scout's political opponents in a nearby village. The interpreters had, of course, indicated that they were V.C. (Viet Cong enemy, for you young people).
Why are we at war with the 'insurgents' in Iraq? Why are we at war with the Taliban? Why are we now killing drug dealers without true accusation or trial? Why have we allowed our assassination teams (as reported by Hersh) to rend and kill people all over the world on the basis of information which is worse than suspect? Why, if America does not like you, do you get visited, then carried away on the wings of Snow White Dove? I damn well think so. The hostess who invited me to that party probably thinks that this result is just fine with her. And I do not expect to be invited back, no matter how witty my 'House-like' commentary might be. But I have a problem with killing people willy nilly across the face of the planet and then expecting that we are not gong to be hated, vilified, and eventually hunted down ourselves.
It is hard for a Marine to say these words: "We must retreat." But retreat we must. We need to get our head and act together again. We need to stop locking up our own homeless, believing our own lies, and blaming the world out there for the problems we have here. If we were mentally healthy, as a culture, we would merely have absorbed the hit we took on 9/11, then made sure we caught up with Osama and his small band. We'd have rebuilt the towers and thumbed our nose at Silverstein in New York, or anybody else who got in our way (but we would not have struck down upon them with one of our White Doves!). With just the two trillion the Iraq and Afghan wars have cost us, and the seven or so years we've wasted, we could have bases upon the Moon, Mars and be running back and forth almost without limit. Now how could would that have been? You think the world might just be going; "God, but those American's are something else!" instead of "Those Yanks are bunch of violent imperialist creeps." And, finally, we would not have a huge crop of our young people coming home to kill themselves, or live their lives homelessly, drunk, drug-addicted and unemployed.
They're back. Oh not those two chicks who did whatever the hell they were doing on the border of N. Korea. No, I mean Al Gore and Bill Clinton. Al arranged for the great swooping rescue by the great swooping rescuer (that would be Bill) so both of those two "whatever the hell they are now" guys are talking like crazy inside a private airline hanger to CNN and the world. Al has introduced Bill, telling us all what a heartfelt sacrificing individual the big galoot really is...to go over and save two young American women from the clutches of that horrid simian dictator. Al smiles that wonderfully vapid Gore smile (which certainly had something to do with his having his election as president stolen) and says great things about Bill. He then introduces the man, expecting, without a doubt, that the great rescuer will say great things back. And Bill does not fail in that department. With one minor exception. He says great things alright, but he says them about himself. Clinton, strange faux blue dog democrat that he is, will go down in history as the greatest credit taker of all time. Al Gore, if he could have maintained the "I'm the guy who invented the internet" phrase credibly, would have secured that title. But no. We get Bill instead. His white hair almost iridescent inside the well coifed hangar, his body thin and in good shape. Gore nearby, sweating, with used car salesman hair and the 'I really am losing weight' girth.
It was also stated, prior to the huge plane rolling in, that Bill was on a private mission (totally unsupported by the U.S. government) to save those girls. I don't know why they bother with such giant introductory lies at events like this staged Hollywood production. Look at the plane! Its a 767, flying all over the world. That alone is about a million bucks of expense. Then there is the protecting of the plane because a former president, with Secret Service protection, is aboard it. How about five million or more to make sure Bill gets to and returns from a hostile country like North Korea. Who is paying all that money? We know damn well it is not Bill or the families of those girls. You and I are paying. Once more. The girls have been 'bailed out.' Now they too can write their books. They do need to take a little time to come up with a story though. Wandering about the country side near the N. Korean border isn't really going to fly.
I am very happy to see that the democrats have done a better job of getting the news away from healthcare, however. That last story they stuck in the way worked wonderfully well, but it did carry some ugly baggage. The Gates affair. This one has more positive elan. Young beautiful ladies of asian extraction saved from the world's most notorious pint-sized dictator. What if the girls had been black? You can tell that I write for Hollywood. Black would have been over the top.
Diane Sawyer, playing her well rehearsed role as the idiot-reporting blond, had the best question though. She posed it to the television audience when the plane was very slowly and majestically rolling into the hanger: "Do you think that Bill Clinton had a chance to discuss succession with Kim Jong?" I did get a kick out of that. I can picture the meeting in my mind. The somber Bill (his affected role for the exchange) leaning to the brightly smiling Kim (his affected role for the exchange) and whispering: "...so,when you're dead, soon who's getting the nod?" I liked the mental image of that. Thank you Diane. Kim is a generous man. I know he will leave that rocky mess of a country to his son. Unlike Bill. Bill would just take it with him. And Bill is still talking as I finish writing this. Al Gore is smiling that silly smile and darting his eyes sideways, waiting for Bill to say something great about him. Bill Clinton is talking about Bill Clinton and Al Gore is waiting for somebody to say great things about Al Gore. It is indeed a wonderful life.
“USHUAIA”
El Prat was never really finished properly, following the twenty-fifth Olympiad in ninety-two. Not the last part of the last terminal, anyway, where the tattered and beaten Montenegro Airlines plane had dumped me from the flight in. Barcelona was supposed to be one grand city, but I was not going to see it, and that didn’t bother me in the least. As cold and rotten as the rain had been at Golubovci when I had shambled aboard that morning, Barcelona’s warmer overcast sky, visible just beyond the terminal windows, seemed to offer little better.
All the other passengers had filed dutifully toward baggage claim, somewhere else, probably a long ‘somewhere else’ inside the vast facility. Instead of following along I had taken a nearby seat and fallen into it. I had no baggage. No checked and no carryon. Going home in disgrace did not require luggage or belongings of any sort. Your body was required to make the journey, so you could stand and be told what a sad human being you had turned out to be, and, without it being directly said, how it was not their fault that you were such a miserable representative of species homo sapiens.
But I did have cigarettes. American, no less. The good stuff, not that cheap burning Balkan crap. If I’d had drugs…well hell, I didn’t, so, as with the remainder of my life, it didn’t much matter. The people from the plane were mostly gone. Stragglers here and there, straggling aimlessly, like so many people do at airports around the world. I observed them by habit, as I didn’t care at all about them. No players among them, I knew. Even deep covered operations specialists were not difficult to spot, if you had been in the business, and the field, for awhile. I’d been both.
9/11, back home and so many years back, had changed everything, I thought, as I began looking around for a place to smoke even the smallest part of a cigarette. Airports were hermetically sealed environments following 9/11, where smoking had gone the way of the pay phone, and the coin-metered parking out front. I watched a beautiful, but stressed out, woman head toward the opening to the washroom. Barcelona, not home, so it was one of those single unisex things I didn’t care for. Although the woman was dragging a seven or eight year old girl along with her, I mostly noticed her. Tall, elegant, and wearing a beautiful knee length black dress. I noted that she walked powerfully, moved strongly but gave the appearance of somehow being wounded at the same time. I was a predator, and she had the look of prey. I smiled, turning away. Fortunately, for both of us, I was neither a predator of women nor children. Unless it was required of the mission. And there would be no more missions.
I had a decision to make. The greatest decision of my life. The decision about my life. And I needed a cigarette to help me along. I looked back toward where the woman and her child had disappeared into the unisex bathroom opening. Just beyond that opening was a large metal door with yellow writing angled across it. Spanish was not one of my languages, not the writing of it anyway, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the message was a ‘keep out’ message. I could not see any lock on the door’s surface.
Looking around carefully first I arose from the chair and headed for the door. I took out my pack of Marlboros, to use as a cover in case I was encountered. Even so, just trying to use a door marked not to be opened might be a huge violation, not explainable by a person simply wanting to have a smoke.
“Screw it, like it makes any difference at all,” I said to myself in disgust, pushing down on the European-style door lever. I pulled. No alarm. I opened it all the way, stepped into another world, and looked around in surprise. I gently closed the door behind me, leaning down to make sure that there was no hidden device or lock along the height and depth of its edge. I took out a Marlboro and lit it. I leaned against the hard concrete wall opposite the door. I suddenly realized what I was in. I was in a long walled off corridor open to the sky. At one time the corridor must have led somewhere, but the vagaries of construction , and probably security, had caused both ends to be walled off. I looked up at the gray sky. The walls had to be over thirty feet high.
I heard the sound of deep sobbing. I walked a short distance down the long enclosed length of the concrete box. The sound was coming from a vent just above my head, as I stopped. I blew out a great puff of smoke and watched it swirl right into the vent. A child coughed lightly from inside the vent. The vent led into the bathroom I concluded. The woman was sobbing, with her child nearby.
“What are we doing, Mom?” I heard the child say. I listened intently. After a moment of more quiet sobbing, there was silence. Then the woman spoke in a whisper loud enough for me to hear.
“Get on your knees. We’re going to pray to God. We‘ve been deserted hereand have no money. If the authorities take us in it won’t be long before they have us back in that horrid country with those horrid people.”
The accent was American I concluded. The world was a hard place. I imagined one of the countries the woman must be talking about. Saudi, Iran, Jordon. Cultures that were implacable, with respect to their women and children. Rendition had been invented by them, and the Israelis, not by Americans. To be on the run from one of those countries was to be in terrible jeopardy. I drew in more smoke, then watched it snake back into the vent. I heard no more coughing. Instead I heard praying.
“Please Lord,” the woman intoned, followed by the little voice of her child, repeating the same words. “We are in deep trouble. Please send someone to help us. Anyone. We can’t make it on our own.” I heard all the words twice, but it was the little girl’s that went in toward what was left of my soul. Then I shook my head, threw the cigarette down and ground it out with my foot. It was a cold cruel world.It took its toll on all of us and I had my own problems. I tip-toe'd to the door, opened it noiselessly, then slipped back into the real world again. I moved away quickly, until I was well down the terminal corridor.
It seemed like a half-mile walk to the main building where the counters were located. I had an electronic connecting ticket to Washington but I had already made my decision about that. I wasn’t going back there, so I needed a ticket. I picked the United line, as it was fairly short and my original connect had been on it. Maybe they had a flight to South America that did not connect in the United States.
I felt someone behind me, but then, I was in line at an airline counter. Instinctively, I glanced back anyway. I almost groaned aloud. It was the elegant broken-down woman and her child. I quickly turned my head, but not quickly enough. The little girl spoke up at me.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” I grimaced down at her, in question.
“Huh?” I said, intelligently.
“You smell like him," she went on. I stared, having nothing to say to such a comment.
I looked at the woman, but her attention was on everything else around. Her eyes darted all over the place, like those of a cornered animal. The girl kept staring at me, waiting for something.
“I smell?” I finally asked, against my better judgment. She nodded, knowingly.
“My Mom and I prayed for help. I smelled you when we prayed. You’re him, the one God sent.” I stared, my expression one of total disbelief. The girl had coughed at the smoke from my cigarette while in that bathroom I realized, then picked up the same aroma from my clothes. My mind raced. A lot of people smoked, especially in Europe. The girl could not possibly know that the smoke was from me personally. I started to comment, then stopped, looking into the steady deep pools of her eyes. She knew. I knew that she knew. She knew that I knew that she knew. No words needed to be said.
“Por favor?” a woman’s impatient voice said, from the side. I jerked toward the sound. I was next. The counter clerk was motioning toward me. I looked up at her, then back at the child, who smiled, her knowledge and confidence in my role total and complete.
“Jesus Christ!” I whispered bitterly, taking my wallet from my pocket, and then approaching the counter. I took out my personal Visa, the only credit care I owned myself. The Agency cards were not going to work to get me anywhere, I knew, not anymore. My last ten thousand dollars was invested in the Visa card. Or at least my only ten thousand, and it was all credit. I shrugged. What did it matter?
“Here,” I said, shoving the card across the counter, “fly these two people anywhere they want to go.” I pulled back. The woman moved to the counter.
“What?” she asked. “What’s going on? What are you doing?” The woman looked from the clerk to me, than back again. The clerk shrugged like I had, but with more meaning.
“Here, you need tickets out of here. Use my card. Take care of your child.” I said the words in embarrassment, as the woman stood staring at me in silence. I watched conflicting expression flow across her face like the surface of a river’s white water rapids.
“We needed help Mom, and God sent him,” the small girl said, in her penetrating little voice. She pointed up at my chest. I could tell that the woman did not know what to do.
“Take the tickets. Get the hell out of here,” I said sharply. The woman’s face broke, then she caught herself, thankfully stifling a sob. I stepped away, to give her room. The little girl stepped with me.
“Where are you going?” she asked me, conversationally, as if what was happening was just a normal part of her everyday life. I sighed.
“Ushuaia,” I said, thinking that that would stop her, but it didn’t.
“Ushuaia?” she intoned, getting the pronunciation all-wrong. I didn’t correct her, preferring to wait until she and her Mom were out of my life.
“Why are you going there?” the girl went on, as I wondered that she had not even asked where Ushuaia was. I answered as if she had asked.
“Its in South America, down near the tip, in a place called Terra del Fuego. There’s a bar down there I’m going to drink at. I’m done. I’m all done. “ I finished saying the last words with my eyes closed, imagining the total relief I would find down, in that weird wind-swept place, as there was just no point in living on anymore. The bar in Ushuaia was as good a place to end it all as anywhere.
“Can I draw you?” The little girl brought me back with her odd question.
“Huh?” I said, returning to my earlier intellectual response. I noted that the girl had produced a small notepad and pencil from somewhere.
“I don’t care what you do,” I answered, truthfully. I moved to the side to wait. Until I had to sign something. I did not have to wait long. The clerk gestured, the woman stood aside, and I signed the credit card slip, then some other papers. I accepted my card back, but did not put it away.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” the woman began, as I tried to shake my head and stop her. “No, without you I don’t think we would have made it," she went on, "you saved our lives and I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I don’t need any thanks, just get your child back home, or wherever you’re going.”
The woman nodded. I knew she was aware of my discomfort. She took her papers, turned, then turned back and kissed me on the cheek. She smiled for the first time, as I shrank back in surprise, bringing my hand to my cheek. The woman grabbed the little girl by one hand and made to depart. The girl pulled back.
“Wait,” she yelled, then held up the other hand to me.
I took the piece of paper she pushed at me, then watched as both she and her Mom half-walked and half-ran out into the main terminal area. I watched until they were gone.
“Por favor?” the United clerk said, once again.
“Connect me all the way through to Ushuaia, Argentina,” I said, pushing the Visa back across the counter. The woman went to work. I waited for almost ten minutes. All at once she looked up.
“The card’s no good. You don’t have enough money for that trip.”
I stared.
“What?’ was all I could say for a moment. “But I had ten thousand of credit on that card,” I said, in a shaky voice.
“Oh,” the woman said. “Now I understand. That woman and her child used up nine thousand dollars of your credit.” I stared, my eyes going round.
“Where the hell did she buy tickets to, Timbuktu?” I could not believe what I was hearing.
“Washington D.C.” the woman said, flatly.
“D.C.” I almost yelled. “It doesn’t cost that kind of money to fly from Barcelona to D.C.!” I waited for a reply, fuming.
“It does in first class. You said fly them anywhere. They were going to D.C. At the last minute and with a full plane, first class is all that was available. Do you want to fly somewhere else?” I shook my head, still in total shock. I took out my electronically issued boarding pass the Agency had assigned me. I handed it across the counter.
“Are they on that same flight?” I asked, knowing the answer. The woman checked her computer. She nodded, as I knew she would.
“Please tell me that they don’t have seats next to mine,” I murmured, all the strength of my voice gone.
“Oh no,” the woman replied, brightly. They’re in first class. You’re back in economy.” I just looked at her, slowly taking my boarding pass back. “You better hurry, you’re flight leaves in twenty minutes,” she finished.
I nodded again, saying nothing. I stepped away, hearing “por favor” behind me.
I walked numbly toward the center of the terminal. I stopped under the flight display to find my gate. I remembered the piece of paper in my hand. I unfolded it. It was a wonderful little pencil piece of some expressed talent. It was a drawing of a smiling man bending over to talk to or accept something from a female child. Under the drawing were written the words “Not Done.”
I could not help smiling to myself. I didn’t believe in God. If I did believe in God I wouldn’t have liked Him. But I walked toward the United gate smiling, with a strange new purpose in my step. I talked to Him, whom I did not believe in, while I walked. Indeed, it appeared I was not done.
Everywhere I look, everything I read, and just about everything written' confirms that it is a wonderful money-saving thing that that the government has done by canceling production of the new F-22 'Raptor' fighter. I don't see it that way. It is a dumb luddite-based decision. Yes, anti-technology, head-in-the-sand, but seemingly fiscally responsible decision. In reality, it is canceling the future to make believe we are paying for the present. And the amount saved is nonsensical. We could have had the remaining raptors built and operational for years just on the money that was recently distributed to executives at the banks we gave bailout money to. So this aircraft cancellation is all about posturing.
The F-22, it is complained, was designed during the cold war. Somehow that means that the design is mired in that period of strange political unrest. That is like saying that the hammer you have in your basement workshop needs to be thrown out because it was designed at a time when most things were put together with hammer and nail, not nail guns. The F-22 is a tool. Its use capability is amazingly versatile. And God, does it send a message to the rest of the world and to the future. That message is that the United States will dominate the air in any conflict that anyone gets involved in that includes the United States. Anywhere, anytime, when fighting breaks out, you will face the Raptor in the air...and nobody, but nobody, argues that there is a plane, or mix of them, that can match that tool in the air. And oh, do you happen to recall that we have a bomber in the inventory, still very well used, called the B-52? It was designed before the cold war, then dedicated solely to that 'almost' conflict. Amazing the usage we have found for that old 'hammer!' The argument has also been raised that the F-22 costs too much in maintenance to fly. What hogwash. It costs, even at the ridiculous figures presented in the press, about eighteen times less, per plane, than a B-52 to keep in the air!
A lot of people are talking abut retreat today. A lot of people are talking about not planning for future. It seems that the discussions are all about today, even though the hard-clad, cold-bleeding Republicans have supposedly been vanquished, and not tomorrow. From the space program through weapons procurement and even scientific research, we have been in retreat from a proactive plan that takes on the future. Instead we are 'going green' and heading into some 'bong considered' idiocy of pastoral life. The idea that we are somehow going to change this planet into one vast garden of Eden-type delight would be laughable, like Creationism, if there was not a grand, vapidly drooling, segment of our culture buying into it. Our future is in technology. Technology is why you have heat in the winter and air-conditioning in the summer. It is why you can talk to one another all the time, anywhere and at anytime. It is why you have clothing and shoes, and yes, packaged and then cooked food. Technology is simply another word used to replace the word 'better.' Whenever technology is considered something bad, and not better, then you have to go to the additional word 'perspective.' Nuclear weapons are great, if you have them, but terrible if you do not. Great if you are one of the people (in the countries that do have them) who control them, and maybe not so great if you are one of the people who do not, or do not trust the people who do. It is perspective of technology.
We live in a time where people who benefit from the stunning technological gains of the last two thousand years understand, and strive to do better. And we also live in a time wherein people who do not much benefit from the advances, hate them. We have a lot of problems with negative belief systems in the underdeveloped countries of this world. We have radical religion, which, amazingly, thrives in areas where technology does not reach very well! A great advance, also part of this technology, that should be used to combat this, is education, and gifted benefits of other technology. Instead we have gone at this great rift in belief systems with more destructive technology (bombs, mines and combat planes and troops). Hammers can be used to remove nails, and take apart, as well as build.
Yet, here I am proposing that the cancellation of the F-22 raptor is a big mistake. Amazing. But the analytical points of my argument are well founded. The United States is something special. It arose from a nightmare of warring nations intent on supporting the wealth of a few and the deliberate (and forced) slavery of the masses (physical and economical). The United States has pulled itself through and up above that, dragging much of the world with it! And here we sit. "Top of the World, Ma!" A line from an old Jimmy Cagney movie. We are on top of the world and we are having a terrible time figuring out what to do with the position we are in, for ourselves and for everyone else. And, in truth, since the cold war, we have been acting like a horse's ass, to our own people, for the most part, and the people of the world. We have to change all that, for our own survival and for that of the world itself. But we cannot change it from a position of weakness.
We need a six hundred ship Navy. We need a strong well-equipped Army and Marine Corps. We need domination of the air (and that 'for sure' includes the F-22 Raptor). And, with those things in place, we need to then do the hardest thing of all. We need to do the right thing, for us and for everyone else not so blessed. So, yes, I am an Emersonian Imperialist...of the right thing. And how is the 'right thing' decided upon? Therein lies the rub. Bush and Cheney had all the power in the world, and the good will of the planet (following 9/11) and what did they choose to do? The wrong thing. We voted Bush in (arguably), and he delivered very poorly. But we did not vote him in to do the right thing. We just kinda slipped him on by another mediocre candidate...twice. I think, however, we voted Obama in to do the right thing. And I think we were correct in our choice, if he can work through the morass of our Congressional Houses he was handed to deal with.
Obama was at the top of the heap in the cancellation of the F-22. I believe he is trying to do the right thing, but I do not think, or expect, that he is always going to be correct. We may well rue the day, with respect to this cancellation of a fighter contract, and pay a price in that future I write about. I hope not, but, more than that, the cancellation is symptomatic of our flight from science and technological advance. I think about this and I worry.
I read the Sunday New York Times today. I was sorry to see that Maureen Dowd, brilliant as she can be, wrote near unprintable drivel. That didn't bother me. Most of the columnist's spend so much time doing everything else but writing that I expect to see their 'staff work' much of the time. What bothered me was the article in the middle of the front page, just under the photo from Afghanistan, which poignantly illustrated it. We just had our worst month over there, with a ton of kids having lost it all in our names. The article was well written. It was all about the problems that the 'living' returning veterans have in coming home. How difficult, or near impossible, that return can be, depending upon the horror of what the particular veteran whet through to get home. There was no fakery in any of that. PTSD is a killer, and when it is not killing directly, it is a destroyer of marriages, family relationships, friendships, sleep and all appetites. It causes drug addiction and acoholism. The worst part is that it is damned difficult to diagnose, very hard to treat, and embarrassing difficult for a combat 'hardened' veteran to admit. No fakery.
But read on in the same issue. Half way through the first section is a long article about this 'problem' that we have with people making up war stories, the places they did or did not serve, decorations or even units served with. We have a federal law that now attacks anyone who is caught even lying verbally about those things, or, and this is a grand bit of fakery, of not being able to prove what he or she said is true! Yes, said! Like in the first amendment freedom of speech 'said.' Wild times. That this article would be in the same section with the PTSD article from the front page is deeply droll. Gallows kind of humor. You see, most civilians do not make up any of that veteran junk! They usually don't even know enough to make credible stuff up. No, the preponderance of fibbers are veterans themselves, embellishing stories and maybe just demonstrating mental damage. Many many of them are veterans returning with PTSD, just like the kids pictured in that photo on page one! Do you know that there are even volunteer groups of other veterans who pursue these fibbers to catch them, label them on the internet and then turn them over to the feds for prosecution? The law is called the 'Stolen Valor' law, and it is one of the most deceptively damaging laws against veterans ever passed in this country.
Let's take a group of these woeful, and deeply hurt, returning veterans, and lets hold them to a standard which no civilian (except a complete idiot civilian, probably on drugs or alcohol) would be held. Where does stuff like this come from? Has the lead content in our water supply increased substantially? Or let's take a geriatric veteran who has PTSD stuff come out late in his life, and gets it all wrong. Are our Congressmen and Congresswomen completely out to lunch? And the veterans who go along and investigate, mostly their fellow veterans, who are these people? I was a Marine Officer in Vietnam, shot three times and brought home on a gurney, barely alive. I won't even tell anyone, ever, what decorations I received. "Let's have that fact-checked," somebody might say. Then I can allow beads of sweat to form as the report comes in. Is the report missing something I said I had? Did I give the proper unit and place? Yes, I know all that stuff by heart and I've got the medals in my closet. But, you know what, I don't want to go through the 'vetting' process. You know, in many ways, it is better for me to say that I did not serve at all. This 'Stolen Valor' law is all about that. I am not ashamed of my service on your behalf. I am just ashamed to admit it to you, or around you. PTSD has caused me to be 'hyper-vigilant,' and I am. I am hyper-vigilant of you. You can, and may, hurt me.
What fakery is up next? The new G.I. Bill! The one that gives vastly huge benefits to the guys and gals who served following 9/11? But not the veterans before? Yeah, that sure seems fair! Thanks again. And how about preferential treatment at V.A. medical facilities for returning Iraqi and Afghani veterans? A bit more thanks is due there, from those of us who bled our asses off in prior wars (and I was at Yokosuka Naval Hospital in Japan first, then Oaknoll over in Oakland, CA, and then the Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton, CA....go 'fact-check" it!)
But this new fakery is not just directed towards veterans. It is all around us. It is in the press portrayal of that black professor named Gates, and that police officer named Crowley. The media, with the governments support, changed the whole thing all around, into complete fakery. The black guy lipped off and the cop broke the law, numerous times. That the black guy gets to lip off to the police in his own home (except about any decorations or units he might have or served with!), nobody is much arguing about his right to do that. But nobody is talking about the simple fact that our police, across this entire land, and definitely including Officer Crowley, may not arrest people for that. Fakery. Crowley got to stand up to the President of the United States and thumb his beer foamed nose. I do so hope that Obama has a long long memory.
And the H.R. 3200 fakery. I wouldn't want to pass on that. We started out with everyone talking about health care for all Americans at affordable cost. The insurance companies, and the medical providers (yes, that is the hospital in your neighborhood, and your doctors and dentists in town) do not want this. And they have a ton of influence on those Congress people I was writing about earlier. So much so that the watered-down version of this bill we are hearing about now has just about one thing left, as a solid feature of it. 47 million uninsured Americans will be paying premiums to these rotten insurance companies, except those companies will have Federal Punishment built into the collection system. And the insurance companies will still decide on who gets real coverage, what coverage and when. This is the fakery that is descending upon us in health care. If you think those Federal Punishments for not paying your new medical premium are in any way humorous, then think again. How about no air travel if you are not up to date? How about no driver's license renewal? How about garnishment? Through fakery, lies and just pure bullshit we are being led along like the bovine, press-driven, creatures we are all beginning to resemble, physically and mentally!
A lot of the things I have discussed here are not going away. The bills have been passed. The procedures are in place. Even H.R. 3200 is just about a done (and rotten) deal, thanks to the Blue Dog Democrats and the usual assortment of Southern Fried Republicans, and the big health money people. But can we recognize what we have done? And what we are doing? Can we sit and think about the reality of these things, without just being sold on all of it by that melodious voice coming from the television? If we do not pay attention to the past we are not doomed to repeat it. We are doomed to having everything become a whole lot worse! Over the course of the last ten years have things really been getting any better, anywhere? Think about it.
When I toured Europe, some years back, I was kind of surprised by the size of the old churches, relative to the size of everything of age which surrounded them. I went inside many. Huge resounding open areas are common to all of them. And every one of them has, as an integrated part of its construct, a great high and elaborate podium. I realized something. For a long time there was only the spoken word for the passing of information. There was writing, but Guttenberg took some time to really get print off the ground. And people had to learn to read. So, where did people go to get the news of the day? Or of the week? To the church, where they sat or stood down below an 'announcer,' or News Anchor...although he was officially titled a minister or a priest. No wonder the power of religion is so strong, even extending to and through this very time. The 'anchor' of those times could reach hundreds of people, potentially thousands, at one setting. Nobody else could come close to that.
Here we are today. We have the same problems with reaching the people, although everything has dramatically changed in scale. Who has that podium, microphone, or television transmitter controls what is transmitted as the news. And messages beyond the news? Those are delivered in papers, books, the television and the internet, although they cross all over one another in content and kind of delivery.
So how do you get a message out to 'the people' if you do not already have possession of one of those 'podiums?' You beg. You cajole. You appeal. You attempt to cast yourself as an interesting enough voice to be of value to whoever and whatever it is that controls ascension to the podium. And it is unbelievably hard to do any of that. The myth is that only the best work gets to the top. The truth is that only those who have some sort of access, or can angle some sort of access, get their message heard at all. In fact, it is so very very hard that only a very tiny percentage of people ever get 'read' at all. To be 'read' is to be considered for publication or airing, not to be given the podium.
The internet is marginally changing things. You can get read by writing blogs. You can Twitter. You can comment on Facebook. You can get viewed by making a video for Youtube. Those things are advances which are new and most unusual. But those advances do not get you in front of 'the people.' You might get twenty or thirty 'hits' a day on your blog if you develop a following. You might get a few hundred views of your Youtube video. To really reach any of the public at all, you have to be 'touched by God.' I once talked to Jacqueline Mitchard, just after she had written Deep End of the Ocean. I told her that I believed that her book would become a bestseller. She responded with something completely prophetic: "...from your mouth to God's ears..." God touched her through Oprah. Oprah picked her novel to be her first book club selection. And that was it. Mitchard is the top speaker at the Hawaii conference I will be speaking at in September (I am a lowly entity compared to her, although I really like her so I don't mind). Somehow, I do not think Jackie is going to recognize or remember that guy who stopped to comment so long ago at Barnes and Noble in Madison. Fame is not especially complimentary to long term memory.
You can have a voice out here, true, but it is more like being a town crier on a soap box, compared to having the podium. People stop briefly, look at you funny, and then pass on by. Your only message, probably, is that you are a weird person standing atop a box as people pass you by. You have a message, and it might be the single most important message anyone could have, but it matters not at all if nobody hears or sees it.
Competition is extremely stiff. Everyone is shouting into that darkness. And you will note that the greatest stuff is not like the cream rising to the top. Note that every word that Sarah Palin says is duly reported, over and over again. It does not matter what she says. The same is true for Joe the Plumber. No matter how stupid, vapid or idiotic their strung together words are, they have the podium. How do you persevere through all this? How do you get a shot at the podium? I am not sure. I am still down here with you, the few, thinking about it and wondering myself. I reach many more than most who try, but my numbers are really small too. The message on House is influenced by a large writing staff and a bevy of producers, not to mention the director. It is not really mine, even if some people think it is. And I am constantly asking myself another valid question: "why is that I think my message is important enough to be considered by 'the people' anyway?" That is, indeed, a good and valid question of merit. I ponder that, day after day. I believe I do have a message. A message of compassion, concern, intellect, tribalism, work, thought, relationship, love, honor, integrity, and losing causes. I have traveled far. God did touch me with His finger when it came to that. But is it enough to get atop that podium and tell it all to you? As i said, I sit here, with my coffee and my laptop, and I ponder.
This week's news story of note, aside from whacked out coverage of the medical expenses issues set before the Congress, is all about a black Harvard professor who was accosted inside his home by a white police officer. Barack Obama has chimed in with some comments of his own (to the effect of labeling the police officer 'stupid' for taking on a citizen inside his own home), and the press has decided that this event, and all the stuff that surrounds it, is the story that should occupy our culture for two weeks, or so. It is what television is doing to us these days. They decide, and you sit here, with me, and get only what they vomit out over that screen. We get almost nothing international. We get no real substance on anything nationally, and the medical costs issue is a typical example of that. Has anybody really talked about what doctors, dentists, and hospitals are really making in actual take-home cash? Is anybody talking about why it is perfectly legal for medicine to use extortion (you pay or you die) to collect money, and make profits from such behavior? Is anybody talking about why these drug companies can charge whatever they want for any drug, even to the point of copyrighting our very genes as their own property, and selling them back to us in a tube? Nope. Nothing. Nada.
We get all this crap about a truly stupid-acting police officer (whatever his merit as a human being and intelligent person may be) who encounters a black professor in the professor's home, does not like the professor's attitude, so illegally and unethically violates him. This story should occupy small news slots locally, not occupy all of us, nationally. The police officer should be promptly indicted, arrested, and then relieved of his badge and gun after being released on bond. He, most probably, broke at least three laws. He entered a private home without the owner's permission (that is criminal trespass, even for a cop). The police officer placed the professor in handcuffs, against the professor's will. That is assault (yes, even for a police officer, as cops must act within the law at all times). The police officer removed the hand-cuffed professor from his home, forced him into a police car, then transported and held the man in a cell at the police station. That is called kidnapping. Yes, the big felony. Police officers are specifically denied the right to do just what this cop did, every step of the way. He should be charged and then prosecuted for his crimes. The onus of the legal system (called our system of justice) should fall with a terribly weight upon this man's shoulders, and life.
What will really happen? Nothing. Most probably, the professor will be awarded some sum of money for the embarrassment he went through. The only saving grace of the entire affair is that the professor is black and the police officer is white. Only race can keep this affair in the spotlight, not that that spotlight should be national. The spotlight is needed to illustrate that policemen, especially post 911, cannot be allowed to brutalize citizens. Ever. And this kind of behavior is going on all across the nation. Our citizenry is afraid of the police. How has this come to be? It has come to be because of a surrender of public trust. Our police have come to resemble skin-headed thugs, dressed up like Star Wars soldiers of the Imperium, and acting like out of control school yard bullies. Thank God nobody got shot at the professor's home. These school yard bullies have guns!
When a police officer deals with a citizen of this country, any citizen, he or she should do it with respect and full consideration. If that police officer wants to enter private property, then he or she should ask permission, and, if denied, consider getting a warrant if the situation merits it. The other officers who showed up, at the site of the Harvard professor's arrest and kidnapping, should also be taken in. They permitted a felony to be committed in their presence. They, the police standing around outside of the home, should have sprung into action to stop the illegal series of events from going any further. They did nothing. They acted just as actively stupid as the arresting officer. Now, the Chief of Police (behind this errant acting police office) is standing behind the man and stating that he was acting within the scope of his authority. The Chief of Police reduces himself to just another stupid acting cop.
It is regretful that our President has chosen to withdraw most of what he said about this series of illegal and unethical behaviors. I expect more of him. He now throws the professor into the same puddle as the dumb cop, by saying that both men 'over-reacted.' Bah! Humbug! The professor can say anything he wants to the cops...within the privacy of his own home. That is speech protected by our Constitution. You can call a cop a pig and not get arrested! I was a cop. I was actually trained to accept talk, directed my way, of this kind. But no cop can break into a residence, enter it against the will of the owner, cuff the man, drag him from his home in front of the entire neighborhood (and most of his fellow-idiot-acting police officers) and incarcerate him in a prison cell far from home. Those things are not 'over-reactions.' Those things are crimes. We are a nation of laws. If our enforcement officers do not act to support that then we do not have a nation (not as we know it) anymore. We have a police state.
Meanwhile, the health issue resolution (or, so it is hoped) languishes on the sidelines, almost ignored by the media. Will we ever be graced with a regular newscast that seriously takes apart our legislation and makes its provisions apparent and understandable to us? Before and after the voting? A long time ago, when a man I now despise (Rush Limbaugh), took a piece of legislation apart (it was called NAFTA) on the radio I was so very impressed. I had never had anyone go through a bill, page by page, and make me aware of what was in it...both good and bad. I did not even mind the man's obviously skewed opinion. I just enjoyed getting in on the front end of a coming vital piece of legislation. I have never had that experience again. Neither on television, nor on the radio, does anyone do this. Instead we get idiotic sound bites which usually have nothing at all to do with the bill's potential effect. The Medical mess is all about over-charging. It is not about uninsured Americans. It is about such things as the 'rent' for a surgery theater being fifty thousand dollars an hour. The surgeons, other doctors, tools, x-rays, chemicals, medications, and all other things are add on charges. An X-ray is five hundred dollars. The surgeon gets three thousand for ten minutes work. And so it goes, on and on. But nobody is talking about any of that. And all of that is outrageous.
I was a police officer myself, as I stated. I do not lack respect for the profession or for the problems endemic to doing that job. I understand it. I admire many of the people who wear the uniform. But, and especially since I am a former cop, I am very demanding of the requirements which must lay at the foundation of performing police services. We need the police to be friends of our citizenry, acting in partnership with the societal public. They cannot be the 'parents' or the 'guardians' of our cultural values. We, as citizens, must never surrender our position as purveyors of those values. We must create the rules by which we live. We must insist, from our servants (in this case, the police), on the manner of how those rules are enforced. The police do not get to decide. They get to follow up on the decisions we make
