Chapter 31: Let’s Talk

I feared I would be required to follow the President to Reykjavik for a while, but things didn’t work out that way. I played an active part in the planning, but the negotiations could have ended in a total bust for a President who wanted to add to the negotiations. Our President wanted to add a discussion on human rights, emigration of Soviet Jews, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The Soviet General Secretary wanted to strictly limit the talks to arms control. It took a lot of pressure on the part of the President’s staff and daily reports from my number crunching to save those topics for another summit in the future. Another issue creating problems was the Star Wars Initiative. The Soviets feared that research done on the subject would give the US an unfair advantage. It would put the USA so far in the lead that anything agreed to on the treaty would be outdated. Both sides agreed to remove intermediate nuclear weapons from Europe and limit each side to just 100 intermediate nuclear warheads in the end. Neither side won a clear-cut victory for their side, nor was each able to get concessions from their opposition. All that was left to do was get the treaty signed and accept the language of the treaty, even though that wasn’t an overnight slam-dunk. There were even more linguistic changes made. Some of the finer points were too vague to suit the Soviets or the US. The negotiations would then start all over for any particular contested issue.

This process for each paragraph, each sentence, each word, and even the punctuation that was contested endured for months. Dr. Frisch, our expert on international law on treaties and negotiations, would pour over the changes, spending hours analyzing and making recommendations on the changes. Andi then would evaluate it from a Soviet perspective. Both of them would then score it as they perceived the Soviet acceptance to be. I would enter raw data scores and let the algorithm do its magic. The outcome would be a prediction of the Soviet acceptance of the changes. We were in the 70% reliability range again, not perfect, but better than tied to a Ouija board.

My team and our families got to spend our weekends and evenings touring the countryside while the negotiations dragged on. We had been here for almost a year, and the locals had accepted us as part of the community. They would stop and ask how the girls were doing. There were plenty of offers as babysitters from the local teen girls, hoping that we would pay them some outrageously high wages. I was sorry to disappoint the teens, but my daughters had numerous aunts and uncles on my treaty team willing to spend time with the twins. The ones who surprised me the most were the ‘Twin Mountains’. Those guys would have sat and held the twins for hours if we had let them. In addition, we could not forget our canine protectors. They shifted from sleeping in our room at night to sleeping outside the nursery. It would have been fatal for anyone who had tried to kidnap our infants. The dogs were protective, they would come in and check to make sure even with people they were familiar with.

Both sides were finally happy with both the content and wording of the negotiated treaty in September of 1987. We received this ingenious device called a fax machine the month before. It greatly sped up our communications. We got an interesting three-page fax the same day the news of the treaty’s acceptance by both sides. It was orders for our team to vacate the Manor and come home. We had become residents of the United Kingdom for a little over a year. I think that we were all getting a bit tired of the UK, and definitely looking forward to going home. I know that I wanted to go back to our home in Virginia.

My daughters hadn’t met their grandparents on my side of the family. Several things happened while we were in England. The biggest was that my parents had decided to end their marriage and go on about their lives. My mother got the house and my dad was able to get more of their savings in exchange. He had an apartment and seemed to be doing well on his own. He had played a lot of golf since retiring and had made some road trips. He said that he even had a new girlfriend in his letters. I had called to let them know when the twins were born. My brother had taken the call and then hung up on me. I later learned that he hadn’t even informed them about their births until my dad wrote me, telling me about the divorce. My mother didn’t seem very excited about being a grandmother after all her hype about wanting to be one. She sent Karen a get-well card and never mentioned hoping to see her grandchildren. I summed it up in two words, “Her loss.”

Moving back to the United States was the same as moving to the UK. We were assisted by the State Department, who packed up our office and shipped everything back to our old office suite in the State Department complex. Our personal items were boxed up and shipped in the containers as before. The car retailer from whom we had bought the Minis and the Ford Cortina came sniffing around when word had gotten out that we were leaving. He must have thought that he would make a large profit buying back the cars we had purchased from him at fire sale prices, then reselling them for top dollar. It didn’t work out that way for him. I arranged to take all three cars back to the US with us. I thought the poor man was going to cry when he found out that they weren’t for sale.

Karen and I took my green Mini for a drive to our favorite date spot that last weekend before we left to go back to the US, the pub where we felt welcomed and ate their delicious pub grub with relish. There were some sad faces when we informed them that we were leaving. We got a standing invitation to come back for a visit, as we were always friendly and polite with the locals. I think the local male crowd at the pub cried when they learned that my wife was going back to the USA.

The long-lost coordinator and concierge showed up with the moving crew and their vans two days before we were scheduled to fly back to Washington. We moved into a hotel outside of London for the two nights while the crews packed up our household and my toy cars and motorcycle,. We weren’t taking a government jet this time, but were going to fly commercial on a Boeing 747. We had seats reserved in the same section of the aircraft where our extended family could sit and visit for the almost nine-hour flight. We wouldn’t have to worry about upsetting an Air Force General, who considered an American Air Base as his own private domain. Another benefit was that our dogs would fly with us in the pressurized baggage compartment. It would make logistics so much easier. Everyone was eager to get home to friends and family.

Two vans were available to take us to the airport the morning we left. The dogs and our luggage went in one and the passengers in the other. The trip took most of the morning, and we pulled into the airport to unload man, luggage, and beasts. I left Karen and Dr. Frisch to get everyone situated with their boarding passes. Randy and I took the dogs over to the cargo acceptance area to get the boys ready for their rides in the kennels. Beast was definitely not happy about being in a kennel for so long. I had a little something else to put in his water bottle for the flight; the local chemist (pharmacist) had recommended it. The dogs would sleep for most of the trip and be only slightly groggy when we got to our final destination. We played Frisbee with them until the baggage handlers wanted to load them up. We got them in their kennels and made sure they were comfortable before we returned to the main terminal.

I got a chuckle when an older Indian man began chatting up Grandma Jorgenson while we were waiting for our flight in the passenger lounge. Both Karen and I found it amusing when the apparently well-off Indian executive was putting the full court press on, trying to impress her with his wealth and status in his homeland. I think that most of it went over her head, and she didn’t get what he was implying. Our boarding rows were finally, called, and our group rose together. It must have been impressive to see us, including the ‘Two Mountains’, stand.

I noticed the Indian man was still sitting in the same seat when we went to board the aircraft. I saw Grandma Jorgenson’s boyfriend shuffle by, heading for the cheap seats in the back of the plane while we were sitting in our business class seats. Either he was a cheap, miserly, business person, or was a poor man flying steerage. We wouldn’t know as we would be off of the plane before he could get off.

The aircraft backed away from the terminal shortly after we boarded, and made its way out to the queue of waiting departing flights to make its run down the runway. We landed at Dulles Airport almost nine hours later. Going through customs was interesting as we didn’t have the twins when we left, and when we went through immigration, the Agent who handled our turn through security asked if we had declared a value on the girls, as he thought they were precious. That made Karen all weepy and earned him one of her big smiles.

We made it through customs and headed for baggage claim. Randy and I were heading for the freight receiving area to get the mutts. The dogs were glad to see us and were in a hurry to find a nice grassy area. We rejoined our extended family for the ride to our home in Alexandria to drop off a few things and then on to stay at our favorite hotel. We would be there for a few days until Karen and Grandma got the house ready for us to move in. Robert, our ever-faithful friend and driver, was there as he had promised he would be. He got excited when I told him about the new ‘toys’ I had coming; my car collection had almost doubled. I was sure that we wouldn’t have enough floor space. He naturally volunteered to house and occasionally exercise them for me.

The trip from the airport was uneventful; the house looked as it had when we left it over a year ago when we pulled up. Our volunteer caretaker had done an excellent job of maintaining it while we were gone. The cut grass exterior of the house didn’t show any signs of vandalism, and the interior of the house looked like the day we left. The only thing left for us to do was to rake the leaves that had started to fall. I let Beast and the Dobermans out, and they went about reintroducing themselves to the tree and shrubs in the back of the house. I noticed a car in the driveway next door while we were unloading. The absent neighbor must be back from his travels. I made a mental note to introduce myself to him the next time I was in the yard.

We loaded back up and headed to our temporary residence when we were done unloading the bags that we hadn’t planned on taking with us to the hotel. Traffic was still light for the time of day, and Robert soon had us at the hotel. We were greeted by the staff of the hotel once again, with several asking us about our experiences in Europe. The clerk checking us in informed me that I had several messages there asking me to return their calls. I planned to do so once I had my family settled in and Karen was satisfied with our lodgings for the next couple of days. The hotel had given us one of their bigger suites for the price of one of their single-room suites. They also procured twin bassinets for our twin daughters for us. I would show my appreciation to the hotel and its staff when we checked out in a few days. Everyone had to stop Karen to see the twins, of course, which was everyone from guests to housekeeping. Everyone had to make mention that they could definitely see their mother’s features in them; I didn’t know exactly how I felt about that.