Chapter 25: Visitors

SEVERAL PEOPLE from the embassy, led by Robert Brice, were waiting for us at the Southend-on-Sea airport. We were all taken into custody. The two pilots went to one car and Nancy to another. Ronda and I, with our luggage were taken to Robert’s car, and we left the airport.

“You’re not in custody,” Robert said. “Our bosses have requested a meeting as soon as I can get you to the chancery.”

“At this time of night?” I asked.

“It’s only two in the afternoon in Chicago. And I think Lincoln works in the embassy around the clock. You did good work in reporting the incident from Crete. It allowed us to check into the situation and have people prepared at the airport when you arrived. I doubt that your pilots were in collusion, but they should have been calling in from their plane. We’d have had someone on it in Egypt.”

“It would have cost them $10,000,” Ronda said.

“What?”

“The hijacker gave each of us a strap of $100 bills for having inconvenienced us. Nate’s and mine are in the garbage bag we’re hauling around as a courier bag. The major took mine.”

“You can probably keep it,” Robert said. “It’s unaccounted cash. It was given to you. You weren’t asked to deliver it someplace. Of course, if it’s linked to a bank robbery or something like that, it will have to be returned, but I have a feeling it’s been accumulating for a long time and your major was just using the plane as his personal bank.”

“You know, if he’d asked us to deliver him to Egypt because he had a personal emergency, we probably would have agreed. He didn’t need to pull a gun and hijack the plane. We often take people from one embassy or consulate to another. We aren’t usually being shot at, though,” I said.

“We have a crew that will scour the plane inside and out before you use it again. We want to make sure you weren’t hit by anything and that there is no other contraband on board,” Robert said. “The crew will also be reviewed. If they were placing loyalty to a former employer above their current work, we’ll have them removed.”

“I don’t think Nancy will be a problem,” Ronda said. “She was ready to tackle him one-on-one until he pulled the gun. And she worked in transporting us to Mexico and South America with a completely different crew.”

“I’m sure she’ll be back with you if you want her,” Robert said.

When we got to the embassy, we went straight to Lincoln Abbey’s office and he connected to our boss on his speaker phone.

“Any more adventures you two want to get involved in?” Mr. Martin asked.

“No, sir. Didn’t want this one.”

“Well, you handled it well. That plane will be grounded for three weeks, so you’ll have time to spend with your family over the holiday. Do you have dispatches from the offices in Greece?”

“Yes. We got a large package from the ambassador and a somewhat smaller one from the Consul General. We plan to transfer them to another courier as soon as one can be dispatched to Washington,” Ronda said. “But we also received a verbal report from both the ambassador and the consul general. They didn’t trust the information to be written down in Greece.”

“You know we were planning to meet with my friend, Hector Costas and his wife Helen Adams. Hector said he sometimes walks among the hills near the Bulgarian border, taking pictures. He gave me two rolls of film to pass on to my superiors because he no longer had a contact. I might just be guessing here, but I’d bet his contact was probably the major,” I said.

“That changes things a bit. Don’t hand off your package to another courier. I want you to bring the bag yourselves. I’ll have Josie make sure your tickets are waiting at check-in early Monday morning. She’ll be in touch. Come straight to the Truman Building. I’ll meet you there and we’ll deal with the packages and the verbal report.”

“Should we bring the money with us, too?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Money. Afraid so. They’ll want to check serial numbers to determine if any crimes were committed that are traceable. Unlikely, but we’ll want to check.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll see you Monday,” I said.

“The photos,” Martin jumped in before we hung up. “Process and print the film you got from your friend. It will save us time when you get to DC.”

“Yes, sir.”

He disconnected and we faced the Deputy Chief of Mission for the embassy.

“I don’t really have questions for you,” he said. “You did the right thing calling Robert. I wanted to know if you have plans for the holidays. Things get very quiet here at the embassy over Christmas and then pick up fast the following week. So, the next two weeks will be pretty quiet here. There’s no real reason for you to come in at all. The week of New Year’s, things will likely be so busy here that no one would have time for you. So, I’m affirming your boss’s assessment that you just take time off. But I don’t want to just cut you off from the community here if you are alone over Christmas.”

“Thank you, sir. Patricia’s parents are coming in next weekend and we’ve been invited to spend the week at Plympford. The following week, Ronda’s parents will be in town to see how the New Year is celebrated in London,” I said.

“With pickpockets, thieves, and idiocy, of course. Advise your guests to be sure their wallets and travel documents are secure. Have a good time in DC. That’s all we have to cover here.”

We went out and found our car was waiting to take us to the apartment and the loving embraces of our family.

The flight Monday was at eight in the morning. We were in Washington DC eight hours later at half past eleven in the morning. We caught a cab to the Truman building and were in the office by one.

“Welcome back stateside,” Mr. Martin said. “Brief visit, I know, but an important one. We have a conference room waiting.”

“Who are we meeting with, Mr. Martin?” Ronda asked.

“You met John Phillips, the representative of the courier service. Chief of Staff of the State Department is Ed Watson. And the Deputy Director of the CIA, Wallace Morgan. You have everything with you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m afraid I’m carrying it in a purse rather than a diplomatic courier bag,” Ronda laughed. “It was either that or a diaper bag.”

“That would have been entertaining,” Martin chuckled.

We got to the conference room before anyone except Mr. Phillips had arrived. I renewed our acquaintance and introduced him to Ronda. The other two men arrived together. I thought for a moment there would be an argument about who came into the room first, but they resolved it in the hall. Mr. Morgan walked in, followed by Mr. Watson. Watson wasted no time starting the meeting.

“We’re here because two of our State Department employees, on a critical mission, were hijacked by a CIA operative. That operative further emptied the contents of the courier bag they were carrying and replaced it with a garbage bag. The hijacker diverted the plane to a drop point over Egypt and bailed out, leaving the pilots to find their way back to friendly skies. Does that about summarize it?”

“The operative mentioned is no longer employed by the company. I call it a simple criminal act,” Mr. Morgan said. “There’s no real reason to call our department into the discussion.”

“None except that the hijacker had a panel removed from inside the plane and collected what we estimate as about $600,000, but not all in US currency. There were drachmas, franks, marks, pounds, and one or two currencies our courier could not readily identify,” Mr. Martin said. “He left $50,000 in $100 bills to be split among the other occupants of the plane for their inconvenience.”

“Lucky them,” Morgan said.

“Nate?” Martin turned to me.

“We were in contact with a friend in Thessaloniki who asked us to get two rolls of film to our department. He said he took the pictures near the border with Bulgaria, but his contact had disappeared,” I said.

“I’ll take those,” Morgan said, suddenly changing his attitude.

I handed the film and prints to Mr. Martin who shuffled through them and handed them to Mr. Phillips, then to Mr. Watson, while Morgan complained that we had no right to those photos. Watson handed the rolls of film on to Morgan, but kept the photos.

“The secretary will want to see these. Nate, who is the person circled in this photo?”

“I did an enlargement of that image and believe he is the person who hijacked our plane. It appears he is leaving a vehicle filled with arms and accepting an envelope of cash,” I said.

“You printed these? You made enlargements?” Morgan said in outrage. “I must protest, Watson. How can you claim this is anything other than espionage? Your people should have had no access to that film.”

“On the contrary,” Phillips said. “Nate and Ronda are diplomatic couriers with a high security clearance, and had every right to investigate what they were carrying. Your man, who you claim is no longer with the agency, put our people at double risk by not only hijacking their plane, but by causing them to carry material that could have them classified as spies if they were caught. We want this agency renegade brought to account for his actions.”

“Good luck with that. They dropped him ten miles from the border with Libya. Libya is actively training terrorists for battle with the United States and we no longer have even a diplomatic presence there. Any incursion into the country to capture a fugitive would be considered an act of war. You don’t want that, John.”

I noticed that when talking to the secretary, Morgan used last names, but in talking to my boss and Mr. Phillips, he called them by first names. I thought there was some internal hierarchy that was being held to, even though they were in different departments. I also noticed that he already knew where we’d dropped the major off. We hadn’t mentioned that.

“We still have issues,” Mr. Martin said. “We’ve detained the pilots in London on suspicion of collusion with the operative. They were previously pilots of the same plane before it was surplused by your agency, flying for Air America. The hijacker knew them and gave them orders which they obeyed. We have also confiscated an interesting bit of technology they called a GPS.”

“We’re a little ahead of the curve, but the GPS will be common in every plane in the sky within ten years. You have nothing.”

“Good. We’ll want our couriers here trained in how to use it. It seems useful,” Phillips said.

I started to lose focus on the conversation. It looked like these guys could go on for hours. As if dismissed by a school bell, though, the two hotshots stood up and left Mr. Phillips, Mr. Martin, Ronda, and me alone in the conference room.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“The meeting ended,” Mr. Martin said, nodding. “Around Washington, business is given an allotment of time. That is the time it uses. No more and no less.”

“They didn’t even say goodbye,” Ronda said.

“By the end of the meeting, they didn’t even know we were here,” Phillips said. “Let’s see what else you have in your courier purse to pass on.”

Ronda pulled everything out of the bag. It did not have any girly stuff in it other than her black passport, which she pulled aside. There were two large packets addressed to the Secretary of State, two rolls of film that I’d taken of the ambassador, the consul general, and the chanceries with the old Nikon, and two straps of $100 bills. We’d carefully separated out my film from the new Nikon. I got some great pictures inside the church we visited.

“Okay. Here’s a receipt for the documents and the film,” Phillips said. “I’ll leave the cash to you, Don. I’ll send a steno down to take your verbal report from the ambassador and it will be given directly to the Secretary of State.” He shook hands with all of us and left.

The stenographer was waiting outside the room, so for the next hour, Ronda and I managed to recount as much of the information as we could for the woman writing in shorthand. When we said we were finished, she said, “Thank you,” and left.

“Now, there’s a matter of ten thousand dollars,” Mr. Martin said. “We plan to run a serial number search on the cash from each of you. But a ten grand bonus is nothing to turn your nose up at. Unfortunately, no matter what you see in movies, using hundred-dollar bills or depositing a bunch of them, is a hassle, and you still have to account for it for your taxes. You don’t want the IRS on your back.”

“I think the IRS would have to deal with what was left of me when Anna was through,” I said.

“There’s a simple way to deal with it,” he said. “Tuck that away and we’ll go down to the Treasury. Considering the amount you are carrying, we’ll take a car, even though it’s only ten blocks. There, you can turn the money in to the Assistant Secretary of Intelligence and Analysis. I’ve already prepared a document regarding where the money came from. That office and the Office of Financial Crimes have access to a huge database of where currency is located. Most of their work is focused on drug trafficking and human trafficking. But since Muammar Gaddafi in Libya made his announcement that he would give training for armed combat to any Arab who wanted to volunteer for Palestinian armed groups, and after the events in Munich last year, the Treasury has been getting busier with terrorism financing.”

“It’s amazing how much of our government we don’t generally know about,” I said. “It’s like the whole thing of nabbing Al Capone for tax evasion when they couldn’t get him for anything else.”

We were driven over to the Treasury Building, just on the other side of the White House from the Truman Building. The Assistant Secretary was expecting us and had an agent with him. They quickly riffled through the bills and nodded. Then the Secretary signed a receipt from the courier and handed the bills off to the agent. We left.

“That has to be a bit of a disappointment,” Martin said. “It’s not often that mere mortals get to handle $10,000 or $20,000 in cash.”

“It wasn’t ours,” I said.

“No, but this is,” he said as we rode back to the State Department. He handed Ronda and me checks. “This is a bonus of ten thousand dollars for service above your expectations.”

I looked at the check for $6,500.

“Um...” I started.

Martin chuckled.

“It’s an official pay check. Taxes were automatically deducted. If you have a bank branch here in DC, I’d recommend we go straight there so you can deposit it without having to go through the British banking system.”

We went to our bank where our salary was automatically deposited. We transferred funds from it to our account in London so we could live there, but I’d been surprised at how quickly funds were accumulating in our home account. Anna would be surprised to see this deposit. Then Mr. Martin dropped us off at the Plaza Hotel with a wish for a good night and a good flight the next morning.

Ronda and I went to our room, exhausted. We’d been living on Europe and London time. It was already past ten in the evening at home. We called our family and talked to Anna and Patricia. We’d be home the next day, or night after the time change.

We debated ordering room service or going out for dinner, but Anna said she’d love to hear another report from the restaurant I went to on my first trip. My stomach was growling. We’d last eaten on the plane and hadn’t even had coffee during our meetings. I made a call and found that I could get a reservation at the Ebbitt Grill if I could be there within half an hour. It was still early for dinner in DC. We caught a cab and were there in fifteen minutes.

I’d last been here with Adrienne a year and some months ago, so I was surprised when the maître d’ greeted me by name and led us to the same table where Adrienne and I had our dinner. He presented us with a menu and me with a wine list.

“Nate, there are no prices on my menu,” Ronda whispered.

“We just got $13,000 in bonuses from our boss. Don’t worry about how much your meal costs,” I said. She frowned at me.

I don’t get that. My menu had prices on it and I knew Ronda wouldn’t have more than a salad if she saw them. I was feeling a little flush and even high, so I ordered a cheese tray for an appetizer and a bottle of the Cab/Franc wine from Saint-Émilion Adrienne and I had enjoyed. Then I ordered the filet mignon to signal Ronda that anything she wanted was okay. She took the hint and ordered half a dozen raw oysters and half an herbed chicken. We had enough food and drink to last us a long time and just enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Until we saw Wallace Morgan seated at the table next to us.

“Keep the cash?” he whispered across the gap between our tables.

“No. We turned it in at the Treasury Department,” I growled. He shook his head.

“That’s the difference between State Department and the Agency. With us, it’s finders keepers. You could have been rich.”

“You have a different definition of rich than I have,” I said.

“It would just have been a down payment, like the rest of the money Maurie Sanders had stashed. He worked hard in service to his country for twenty-five years at great risk to himself to accumulate that money.”

“Selling arms to the communists?” I asked.

“Bait. Why do you think they were chasing him all the way to the airport?”

“I don’t think you have any ethics in your department,” Ronda said.

“They’re flexible. We could use you. Both of you. We don’t have enough pairs working together.”

“Not just no,” I growled. “Hell no. I’m not participating in any of your clandestine operations to overthrow governments or to steal from illegal arms and drug deals or to spy on students at American universities. Take yourself and your entire agency, and go to hell.”

“Very unfriendly of you. Those stories are all made up by sensationalist liberal media.”

“Sure they are.”

“We’re patient. Here’s my card. Call in and ask for me if you have a change of mind for the better.”

He got up and left with his meal untouched on the table.

“I would offer you his meal at no charge, but personally, I don’t trust him not to have poisoned it,” our waiter said, setting down the cheese tray and the oysters.

“Please don’t pass it on. I’ll gladly pay his tab,” I said.

“No, sir. Miss Baudelaire would be unhappy if I did that.”

“Oh. Of course. Thank you,” I said.

“Do you ever get the feeling our mistress is looking over our shoulders?” Ronda asked me.

“I have begun to believe she is omniscient,” I laughed. We enjoyed the rest of our meal.

“We woke our pet yesterday morning,” Anna giggled when she picked us up at the airport in the embassy car. I was glad they let her ride along. None of us had really done any driving on this trip and I was just as happy not to.

“Why did you do that?” Ronda asked.

“I needed to tell her you were in Washington, DC. We knew she couldn’t join you, but thought she might have some suggestions for you. She said to tell you to dine at Ebbitt’s. Did she have a table waiting for you?”

“It’s possible. Though we were there fairly early. They certainly recognized us and took us to the same table where Adrienne and I ate,” I said.

“They even mentioned her when we offered to pay that scumbag’s bill,” Ronda added.

“I don’t think we take advantage of her nearly as much as she would like,” Anna said. “I’ll try to think up tasks and plans for her. She really does get off on being of service to you. To all of us.”

I was just glad that we’d be in town with our lovers for the next three weeks.

“Oh, my. This is such a lovely apartment,” Elise said after she’d been tackled by her first granddaughter. Of course, Toni wanted to immediately show her grandma and grandpa her ‘princess room.’ She loved her canopy bed and was just as excited to show her grandparents baby Alex’s room. We finally caught them in the guest room as Toni conducted them there.

“I don’t know,” Tor said. “I think she’s doing the wrong accent. She sounds like an Englishman and not a good Swede.” He laid on his own light accent a little thickly.

“Morfar, I can be a good Swede, ya know?” Toni shot back, mimicking his accent and using the Swedish word for Grandpa. He was surprised. “I can explain to Aunt Jane and Uncle Peter what you say in English.”

We all started laughing. Patricia’s Swedish was pretty basic, but she’d been teaching Toni what she knew. Our five-year-old was smarter than I was.

Old Auntie was delighted to serve us our first meal with parents that evening. Sunday, she was leaving for Keswick in what she called The Lake District. Her grandchildren lived in the small town and she would spend Christmas with them, but be back to cook Sunday dinner for Ronda’s parents when they arrived the following weekend.