Chapter 33: Foreign Service

WALKING INTO THE OFFICE Tuesday morning was almost like having never been gone. Josie met us as we carted our suitcases and camera equipment to our office, which was undisturbed, despite having been mostly vacant for a year or more.

“We have two units down,” Josie said as she launched into her report. “A mob attacked the US embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus and killed two people. The passport tech threw the kill switch on the device when the ambassador was shot. The Deputy Chief of Mission ordered all non-essential personnel evacuated after that. It was a real mess.”

“I can’t believe we were just there in January,” I sighed. “The ambassador hadn’t been appointed yet, so we never met.”

“Without the equipment, of course, the techs were non-essential and were evacuated to the British air base and then flown to Athens,” Josie concluded.

“Where’s the other malfunctioning unit?” Ronda asked.

“Damascus, Syria,” Josie said.

“We didn’t install equipment in Syria,” I said.

“When the embassy was established in June, there was a backlog of visa requests. Since you weren’t there, the techs in Amman, Jordan were flown to Damascus along with the equipment in July. Unfortunately, the equipment was damaged in transit. That will be one of your first stops this fall.”

“The equipment should have transported just fine,” I mused. “I’ll bet it wasn’t secured properly. Okay. Syria first.”

“No, Oman first. The embassy was formerly under the ambassador to Bahrain. This year, separate ambassadors have been assigned to each of those Gulf States. He arrived in July. Since you’ll be based in Oman, it is only appropriate that you install equipment and train people there first,” Josie said. “Though, I have to tell you, I think there are only eight or ten Americans working in the chancery. And a few Foreign Service Nationals for support. The chancery is an old building next to the British embassy and the ambassador lives on an upper floor of the same building.”

“Okay. What is on our schedule this week?” I asked.

“After a couple of general staff meetings today, and your initial briefing with Mr. Martin, you need to cross-check the shipment of equipment to your base to be sure everything has been properly included. Tomorrow, you fly to Washington DC for your mission briefing with the Foreign Service.”

“I’d almost forgotten that we were officially part of the Foreign Service,” I sighed.

We started the day’s work.

Wednesday, we headed for the airport with Mr. Martin and Josie to go to Washington DC. We met with everyone we interface with from diplomatic services, courier services, passport services, and visa services. They all had goals for the coming season and much of the meeting was negotiating a balance among the responsibilities. I was glad Mr. Martin was there to defend the primary mission. We had a lot of countries to deal with in the next eight months. Probably nine months. Even though my time in Alternative Service would officially end at the end of April, I’d probably stay on through May to wrap things up.

About three o’clock, just when I thought we were finished for the day, Robert Brice from the London embassy showed up. Turns out he’d just been promoted into the Bureau of Diplomatic Security as Regional Manager for the Facilities Security Division in the Middle East and Africa. It looked like we’d be seeing a lot of Robert and his wife, Joanne, this year. I liked the guy and Joanne had been a frequent companion of Anna and Patricia when we were in London.

He’d been promoted to the new position right after the attack on the chancery in Nicosia. His major interrelation with Ronda and me would be the ID badge program. However, he’d chosen to be stationed in Oman and was requesting inclusion on our missions and input into the order in which we served countries in the Middle East and Africa. There was a tough negotiation between him and Mr. Martin, with Ms. Clark in visa services, and with Mr. Phillips in the Courier Service, which was also now a part of Diplomatic Security.

“Anything else?” Martin asked Brice.

“Just one thing. We recognize that Nate and Ronda carry mission critical equipment and sensitive documents and materials. We’d like them to be trained and issued a personal protective device.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Robert?”

“I think you should be carrying a handgun for emergencies, like you had when you were hijacked.”

“No.”

“It should be a job requirement,” he insisted.

“Robert, I am serving alternative service in the State Department under Section 6(j) of the Military Selective Service Act of 1967. That section clearly states, ‘Nothing contained in this title ... shall be construed to require any person to be subject to combatant training and service in the armed forces of the United States who, by reason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form.’ I will carry documents, carry equipment, carry my lunch, carry on, carry out, and carry over, but I will not carry a gun.”

Robert looked to Mr. Martin, who just shook his head.

“There is nothing in either Nate’s or Ronda’s job description that requires them to carry a weapon,” he said. “We have to block that request, Mr. Brice.”

“I was just trying to make it safer for them,” Robert said, settling back in his chair. “I don’t have any further input or requests.”

Thursday, we received regional briefings on Africa, the Middle East, and Australasia. These were accompanied by detailed documents on each of the countries in that region and the type of diplomatic presence the US had there. Ronda and I agreed that we could share one set of documents rather than pack another entire bag with nothing but paper in it.

Friday morning, Assistant Secretary of Consular Affairs Johnson and a representative of the Bureau of Near East Affairs met with us, in the company of Mr. Martin.

“This meeting is just to wish you well on the next leg of your journey,” Johnson said. “Ms. Carmichael is here to show you various support lines that can be used. We do have some coordination among the embassies in this region.”

We shook hands all the way around and Josie settled beside us to keep notes. Most of the short meeting was spent with a view of existing channels of communication among the embassies and how we may be asked occasionally to step in for a courier or messenger if it was convenient.

“This is your official assignment to the Embassy in Muscat, Oman,” Johnson said, handing us each a folder with our assignment in it. “You will present this to the ambassador at the chancery. This next folder contains your diplomatic credentials, which the embassy will lodge with the Omani Foreign Ministry. They’re routinely accepted, but it might take a few days and you won’t be able to do official business in Oman until they’ve been accepted. You can use that time to settle in. You’ll have an office assigned and will be expected to show up in it periodically. A courier will meet you at the end of each trip to accept your packages for the State Department, and your continued deliveries of exposed film. We still want to get everyone with an official photograph on post. A courier will arrive before each of your trips to give you packages for your stops along the way. We are on good and improving terms with the Sultanate of Oman, though there continue to be human rights issues. Progress is being made. You’ve proven yourselves capable in all aspects of your job. Therefore, it is also my privilege to promote you both to Senior Foreign Service Specialist with an accompanying general schedule upgrade to FS2. Congratulations.”

“FS?”

“New ranking for senior foreign service employees. Equivalent to the old GS16.”

He shook hands with Ronda and me. All we could do is mutter our thanks. Then we joined Martin and Josie for the return flight to Chicago.

Anna met us at O’Hare and took us to Camp Otterbein where Patricia and the children were entertaining Mom and Dad. The last children of the camping season had just left. The camp was extremely quiet.

“Oh, it won’t stay quiet for long,” Mom said. “We have six long weekend adult retreats scheduled before Thanksgiving, and then there are holiday camps in December. We won’t be sitting around getting fat and lazy.”

“Not to mention that your mother is scheduled to speak someplace different in the conference almost every weekend,” Dad said. “We won’t be simply stuck in the wilderness all winter.”

“Well, Monday, we have to go back to the airport and catch our flight to Oman,” I said. “The meetings this week in Washington left me so exhausted that I am already dreading going back on the road.”

“Did it strike you as odd that they gave us something like ten times the briefing for this assignment than they did before sending us to India or Mexico?” Ronda asked. “Our only meetings in Washington were to drop off packages and your one week of training regional techs.”

“I guess having to cover so much of the world this winter merits the change,” I said.

“I’m just excited to be spending the winter someplace warm!” Anna said.

“I will speak Arabic language all the time,” Toni said. Then she translated what she’d just said. Ronda spoke back to her and they laughed.

“What did you say?” Patricia asked.

“That if she spoke Arabic in the British School, no one would understand her,” Ronda chuckled. “I think she’s just figuring out that school will be in English.”

“Why’d we learn Arabic?” Toni asked indignantly.

“Because everyone outside of school and the embassy speaks Arabic. We need to buy groceries and learn how to take a bus,” Patricia said. “And you speak the language much better than I do, so we’ll be depending on you to help us with shopping and finding where things are.”

“Mommy, I need to learn the alphabet. Arabic makes funny letters and they go backwards!”

“The letters will make sense to you very quickly,” Ronda said. “I’m sorry I didn’t share my book with you while we were learning to speak. I thought it would be too advanced. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Mom Ronna. I will learn.”

“She certainly will,” Mom said after watching the interchange. “I hope you have her in a good school in Oman.”

“We were going to send her to the British School because it was chartered by the Sultan,” Ronda said. “But we just found out from our briefing that there is also an American school at the airport. They call it the TWA school because a lot of the kids are children of staff at TWA and Pan Am. If you want us to check it out when we get there next week, just tell me, Patricia.”

“If it is decent as a school, I don’t have a preference. You should decide where we’re going to live and we’ll enroll in the school nearest,” Patricia said.

We really had a wonderful and relaxed weekend with Mom and Dad. We even had a campfire Saturday night and sat around singing songs and toasting marshmallows. I discovered Toni had already mastered the art of catching a little white pillow on fire and blowing it out to sandwich it between graham crackers and chocolate.

Monday, the family took us to O’Hare to start our trip to Oman. Anna, Patricia, and the children would be spending a few days in Tenbrook before returning to Camp Otterbein to await their summons to join us. Ronda and I were carrying more baggage than we were accustomed to. We each had two large suitcases, my camera cases, tripod bag, and our courier bags. I sincerely hoped that Josie had made the necessary arrangements for a pick up when we arrived in Muscat.

That would take a while. We had three connections on this trip. We were flying to New York, from there to London, then to Istanbul, and finally to Muscat. Total elapsed time would be some 30 hours, not including the time from when we left Camp to the airport, or from the airport to our hotel.

That would get us in between three-thirty and four in the morning on Wednesday.

The good part about this trip was flying first class all the way on some interesting airlines. And, our black passports made clearing customs at each stop-over a breeze, though we still had to collect our luggage in London and Istanbul to change airlines.

We quickly hired porters in each location to transport our bags.

Upon our eventual arrival at Seeb International Airport, we saw a familiar person waiting to meet us.

“Nate! Ronda! You’ve made it!”

“Nancy, we’re just as happy to see you here,” I said. Ronda hugged our stewardess. “We have to pick up a lot of luggage.”

“Not to worry. Jay is waiting at the luggage arrival. We weren’t sure if you’d manage to leave the area up here or down there. Come on. I’ll show you the way.”

“It’s good to see you, Nancy. When did you guys get in?”

“Just last week. We had the plane down for a full service check in London, and then flew from there to here. It was a long trip.”

“We’re going to have a lot of those, I’m afraid. Where are we staying?”

“The crew has taken three suites in an apartment hotel for as long as we’re here. We have a suite there for you until you find a place to live.”

“Great. All I want at the moment is a bed,” I said.

We located Jay and claimed all our bags. He had rented a van for us. We got loaded up and he drove into town. I didn’t really see much of the town because my eyes kept drifting closed. We were at the hotel by five and didn’t even need to check in. Nancy had the key to our apartment and led us straight to it.

We thanked our crew for getting us and saw them enter the same room, just down the hall from us.

“Looks like they’re saving money by rooming together,” Ronda laughed. That was all the clever conversation we had. We just stripped and fell into bed.

We pretty much just stayed in bed Wednesday. We didn’t need to present ourselves at the embassy until Friday, but I thought we’d probably stop in on Thursday, then try to get our bearings for the city. We had a lot of tasks to accomplish before we could send for our family. We met the crew for dinner and they showed us a restaurant they’d found. We had a good meal.

“The only thing is to not expect any pork or bacon or sausage here,” Luke said. “It’s going to be a miserable year.”

“I sympathize,” I said. “We’ll have to keep an eye out for countries where we can get bacon and eggs for breakfast.”

“And starting next week, don’t expect to eat anything before sundown. It’s Ramadan. The restaurants don’t even open until sundown. Except at the airport. It’s run by Pan Am and they hire European cooks,” Jay said.

“And really, what Europeans and Americans do is up to them. There’s no law that a non-Muslim has to fast,” Nancy said.

“It could be hard on the children,” Ronda said.

“Children are exempt anyway,” Nancy responded.

“So, Nance. Are you and Jay an item now?” Ronda asked.

“We’re trying it out,” she said, squeezing Jay’s hand. “Seems to work okay so far.”

“The summer schedule was pretty chaotic,” Jay said. “We were out as much as a month at a time, shuttling diplomats and couriers from one country to another.”

“We kind of leaned on each other for support,” Nancy said.

“Okay. I was wondering what you guys did all summer,” Ronda said.

“I’m guessing it’s not over yet,” Luke said. “We were given clear orders that you are our priority, but if you’re spending a week at the embassy, we might be called to go anywhere while you’re grounded.”

“Like next week,” Jay said. “You aren’t scheduled to fly anywhere, but we’ve got a run from here to Tehran to Ankara to Riyadh and back here.”

“You’ll be headed back almost the same direction the following week when we go to Damascus,” I said.

“Fine with me,” Luke said. “I’m not all that fond of the courier runs. They really aren’t very considerate passengers.”

“Speaking of which, you remember Robert Brice? He’ll be traveling with us a lot. At least on the Middle East trips. He got a promotion and will be stationed here, too,” I said. “I wonder if he’s arrived yet.”

“Guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” Ronda said. “Have you guys reported to the embassy yet?”

“Not formally,” Luke said.

“You should come with us tomorrow, then. From what I hear, the five of us represent a fifty percent increase in the staff based here.”

The ambassador was cordial and welcomed us to Oman. He was also significantly younger than most of the ambassadors we’d met. It seemed that getting to the level of career ambassador usually took until a guy was sixty, but Ambassador Wells was only in his mid-forties. He and his family lived on the floor above the offices in what was a rather plain building with a lot of steps out front.

“We’d like to start training your passport techs and get the equipment set up next week,” I said.

“Of course,” he said. “I think we’ll have a couple of our Omani staff train. They speak English.”

“Sir? Our directive indicates that the passport technicians must be American staff members. I don’t believe we can train people who are not American citizens,” I said. “It has to do with the level of security. They will have access to everything needed to create authentic passports and visas.”

“Ow. That is going to hurt. When I was in Kenya, we were using nationals, but the information and application were sent to a processing center to have the visa or passport manufactured. I see the problem. We’ll be able to produce a passport or visa locally. Hmm. That was an oversight in our instruction. I’ll have to review our staffing and decide who I can spare for the task. The good thing is that we don’t have that many requests at the moment, though requests for student visas are increasing.”

“I hope it doesn’t create too much of a problem,” I said.

“I understand you are bringing your family to live here,” he said.

“Yes, sir. As soon as we find a place for them to live.”

“What if we trained our wives to operate the equipment? Of course, the application would need to be processed just as we always do, but it wouldn’t really take a staff person to do this manufacturing and photography, would it?”

“Sir, I believe that if you have clearance from the State Department, you could appoint anyone with a black passport. I assume that your wife, as an embassy adjunct, is traveling on a black passport. Our wives are,” I said.

“Your wives? That sounds interesting. I had assumed it would be your wife and Ms. May’s husband. I detect that you have a family that might fit right in with life in a Muslim country,” he chuckled.

He also welcomed our crew and we had to clarify that their mission was to support us and not the embassy. The ambassador took it all in stride.

After having presented our credentials and getting a thorough tour of the chancery, we stopped in our new office and put a call through to our family. It was only seven in the morning in Tenbrook, but we connected with Patricia and Anna at Tor and Elise’s house where Toni was having a good time entertaining her grandparents and Alex was copying everything she did.

“Work at the embassy?” Anna said. “That sounds cool. As long as it isn’t so much that I can’t help Patricia with the kids. Half the time they are into something together and the other half they are running off in opposite directions.”

“I could take the training,” Patricia said, “but I don’t think I’d be available for even as much time as Anna. We’ll have to see how the schedule with the children goes.”

“It’s just something to keep in the back of your minds as you get ready to travel. You won’t have quite as extensive a support network here as you did in London. You might be looking for something to do,” Ronda said.

Ronda and I spent the next few days looking for housing. There was plenty available, but the European and English-speaking communities tended to be gathered near the airport or near the oil shipping. We managed to get a bank account set up at a bank at the airport that was specifically geared to meet the needs of foreign nationals. Like us. It had a link to our bank in London and so it was not difficult to get wire transfers of our salary changed to this bank. I wished Anna was here to review everything, but she assured me by phone over the weekend that it would be okay.

The problem with the housing available in the English-speaking neighborhoods was that it was all the cheapest and poorest housing quality that could be seen in Muscat. It looked like they had imported post-war cracker box houses from a suburb of Chicago.

Ronda went to work, starting with the concierge at our hotel who referred us to the owner. Once we got through to him that we did not wish to buy one of his apartment suites or to rent one long-term, he agreed that he could help us find something. There were times when I wished Toni was with us because Ronda and I both struggled with some of the language issues.

Eventually, we found a nice house that was fully furnished with five bedrooms. It was really the Omani equivalent of American cookie cutter homes, but they were more interesting cookies. There were ten homes on each side of the street that all looked identical. They were walled, had a square tower, and pleasant entry with a garage. This went on for half a dozen blocks in every direction. We’d need to be sure we were on the right street before we made any attempt to enter the house.