Happy to be Back on the Job

142.

It is 0845 on Friday. The waitress at Philz Coffee, an unofficial paid informant, provided me intel on the regular twice a week morning meetings between Bartowsky, the bagman for, allegedly, both MBI and Senator Jefferson Hartaugh (R) South Carolina. Hartaugh also the heads the Homeland Security Committee holding the user name and password to our charter and subsequently, our funding. Bartowssky is meeting an unnamed middleman whom I strongly suspect reports directly to Senator Slimeball. I am in full disguise mode, choosing for this gig a rock n roll look, somewhat of a cross between Leon Russell and Keith Richards. 

The black wig hangs like a dreadlock mop under my flat brimmed truckers cap advertising Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. The mirrored sunglasses allow one-way surveillance. A toothpick, a tattoo and several gaudy rings on eight of the ten adds what I trust will be enough distraction to dismiss any attempt at casual identification. Standard black leather jacket, Levis and my favorite Tony Lama alligator boots wrap up the costume. My arsenal today includes a mini video cam, the lens of which rests like a head lamp stealthily behind the o in ribbon and a shotgun mini microphone inside the middle finger ring on my left hand. With any luck I’ll be able to capture decent audio of their conversation and mid-level resolution video, with a still photo every five-seconds, of the two perps as they obliviously sip their hot coffee and exchange scolding news. Moves like Jagger, I snort. 

I chose a booth that will give me the best sightline and hope that the background chatter in the popular coffee house will allow minimum audio distraction. I do not want to hear a dialogue about poor little Annie’s dental care override the goods I am trying to get on the two potential terrorists, who have just walked in as if they were both related to Phil himself. It will be fun taking these greasy bastards for a long painful ride on the short road to Riders Island. 

As forwarded they make camp at their usual booth. I hit the remote record buttons in my shirt pocket and create the ‘hands tented in prayer against my lips’ position, the ‘tent’ twisted slightly to port for optimal recording direction.  I am pleased with the effect and watch closely as Bartowsky ‘once-overs’ those in the immediate vicinity, including a casual observational dismissal of the wannabe rock star in deep contemplation sitting fifteen feet away. 

I do not immediately recognize the other person. Forty-ish, balding, fifteen pounds over, thick black glasses and a cheap off the rack dark blue suit grossly paired with a solid scarlet tie. The stiff is a walking billboard for everything disgusting in American fashion. I ruffle the day’s edition of USA Today in front on me and let them take the stage. I am not live monitoring the surveillance recording so watch behind the lens as they are served and get to the business at hand.

Bartowsky is defensive, irritated and struggling to find the correct body language to both deflect blame and instill confidence. His efforts are falling like zeppelins from the sky, his partner intent on the flaming debris landing on anyone but himself. Such are the instincts of the rat shipwrecked at sea and clinging to the half-submerged hull of a criminal flotilla. Let the blimps melt into shark infested cups of coffee I hear myself rap. 

This goes on for twenty-five minutes and two refills. I can tell that the exchange will provide, technical issues notwithstanding, incriminating evidence on the two street-thugs and further up the chain the Senator himself and with an iota of good karma and a sympathetic god, maybe even MBI as well. Solid gold. 

They stand to leave, Bartowsky leaving the tip. I follow then visually as they walk to their cars, engage in what looks like reciprocal exchange of mild threats, and drive away, Bartowsky in his big Navigator and his 'soon to be named in a criminal conspiracy' partner, in a DC cab. 

Recording session completed, I hit the stop button, stand, stretch, and drop a fifty dollar tip, something I am sure all rock stars do. 

I am happy to be back on the job.

Little Do They Disappoint

141.

Much like the game clock ticking down the final few seconds of a football game, the rest and relaxation’s official designation of ‘over’ is when I switch my cell to back to normal operation. I have three modes:

1) I am unavailable (with certain exceptions).

2) Personal.

3) Professional. 

Since the dawn of satellite communications this has created problems. The line that was once a mile and a half wide is now finer than toad hair. What, or more accurately who, constitutes inclusion onto one list or the other? Sometimes it seems more important to provide accurate directions to the pizza delivery guy than bloviate with an ambitious state department aide. Or Julie. She is one of the handful of people that have earned the ‘prestige’ of ranking on all three. 

I switch back to ‘normal’ usage and immediately consider the early retirement package TOM has been pushing my way since the fall of the twin towers. In a day and a half there are 113 new messages, broken down by the following scorecard:

Hang ups or junk: 46.

Personal: 3

Professional: 64

It seems that I am more popular as a pro than a real person. But, I reason, emergencies don’t normally fix themselves while on hold. If you are knee deep in water from the suddenly incapacitated  washing machine, your first call probably isn’t to Aunt Rita. You call the plumber. If your main asset is behaving abnormally, you don’t call your tennis pro for her opinion on lob shots at love forty. And when there is nowhere to turn but us, well, you don’t call into a sports talk show to offer your opinion on Pete Rose. 

It is 0400 and the party is over. Reality has sounded the siren and it is a five-star, code-red, barn’s on fire alarm. 

It would have been a strategic error, or perhaps a tactical miscalculation, to assume anything but this. 

I am on the Interstate, blue toothed and wired, checking in on the messages left during my thirty-hour sabbatical. I roll through the professional first in order to get a feel for the chaos and disaster recently surfaced and circulating. They range from the supportive and cooperative to the antagonistic, bullying, threatening and altogether vicious. ‘Good to be back’ I muse while passing what appears to be a distracted driver in a Fiat Cinquecento. 

With fifteen minutes left in my commute, a plan of attack one percent from totaled, the professional calls given their diligence, due or otherwise, the three in the personal file are left. I check in. 

TOM, Julie and Davis. My boss, former girlfriend and her ex-husband who is also currently in charge of our squadron as I, what? Take a vacation? 

I delay the listen to conspire speculation on what these three could possible want to add to the tormenting, nightmarish circumstance that comprises the current situation. 

Little do they disappoint. 

Balance

140.

An old and intimately familiar feeling greets my transition from sleep. It is one of rejuvenation and hope. I feel like the dust, dirt and grime of a thousand hard miles has been washed away. A guy could get used this this. I recall another passage from my journal, sometimes I’ll open a random page and peruse a sentence or two just to transpose my thinking then as compared to now. Sometimes its like I was older and wiser then as compared to my current understandings now. 

The journal attests that one fine day I was noodling in flow of awareness rapture, the date covered on the page by a dried red substance that could have been wine or blood, but the era was one where the yin/yang ping pong was flipping and flopping about whether it is more important to satisfy one’s soul in the service of others, or simply create art for the sake of joining an advanced plane of experience. The common detonator in this intellectual charade was my observance that whatever one aspires to, one needs to balance it against all challengers. Because the trickster mind will spin anything a thousand ways to Sunday in order to satisfy a preconceived notion of ego. Balance, to me, the person I was twenty or thirty years prior, meant, and here I noticed the reference to the assignment, “describe in five hundred words or less, your idea of a perfect day,” was the first step of a thousand to follow. The practice had already begun, the journey at, maybe, midpoint. As is my way, I wallowed in exposition for four hundred and fifty of the allotted half a thousand words, eventually coming to the conclusion that ‘a perfect day’ needed a balancing of mind, body and spirit. 

One must work the body. 

One must stimulate the mind, and,

One must ponder the miraculous, the magical and the metaphysical. 

You can say all you want about instant gratification, bottom-line profits or blonds in bikinis, but them three is the essence of it. 

I have today. Tomorrow morning at oh-dawn-thirty I will be back on the road to DC and my appointment at Philz Coffee. The one night and one day vacation will be abruptly terminated with the return to the caffeinated spy game. 

I enjoy a leisurely cup of espresso on the deck listening to the morning birds discuss current events with each other. Although not my native tongue I know enough passerine slang to guess that they are both hungry and apprehensive about the new cat in the hood. After the joe I’ll get in a ten mile trail run, clean the cabin, write in my journal, fix the leaky propane line feeding the kitchen and take a nap in my favorite hammock. I need to make a run into town and pick up some pantry supplies and shop for fresh veggies and whatever main entree seems most appropriate for my last night in my temple of peace shack in the woods. Maybe tofu. 

I don’t know if that meets the description of a perfect day or not, but the fact that I don’t care puts it immediately into another category. What makes a day perfect isn’t what IS done, it’s HOW it’s done. 

Of course I am given poor grades by the judges as five miles into my run I am already thinking about the disguise I’ll wear tomorrow during the coffee shop surveillance. 

And then there is that ‘emergency’ meeting with TOM at 1000. 

Whoa! All that will be tomorrow, we are working on perfection today buster. 

With proprioceptors on high alert I feel the low hanging limb a second before I see it and twist a move to avoid a nasty confrontation. I hear a murder of crows in the pine tree cackle with glee at my nimble manoeuvre. 

Balance. 

I Could Be Wrong

139.

 It was either the magnificent mind of Kurt Vonnegut or the well spring of spiritual richness of Richard Bach from which the rapid eye movement session germinated. A dream so fertile that even I, as innocent bystander, stood awestruck by its depth of field and color palette.  I remember dream thinking that I my long tardy ship had finally come to port and I had been hired as cinematographer for Avatar III.  A second later I was a soaring butterfly looking for a Yes album cover to land on and take a thirty-three and a third spin. Stimulated by the splendor of my kaleidoscopic surroundings, I hear a melody, soft and pure calling my name. I recognize it as the song of my soul, fitting perfectly between the minor-key disappointments of the past and the eight bar anxiety blues of the soon to take place. A quarter note captures my attention with an unmistakable accent on the now. I did not exist in the opening, but now, this sudden shift in awareness and WHAMBO, we got a whole new variation. Listen to this CLOSELY, and with a little help from the cosmic philharmonic, you might see, hear and feel some not-so-subtle changes in tone, pitch, frequency and vibration. Please also take into consideration that it was forty years ago, four decades in the past, that you witnessed from thirty-three thousand feet the same powerful musical passage of boom, and a mountain named Helen’s top is gone, her lid blown sky high, ashes spread across the mountains, past the plains and into the imaginations of a million sleeping poets. 

I fully indulge in this deep restorative light show. I can feel the tension leave my tired body and wish it could last a half-hour past eternity. But I have been here too many times before to expect that by doing the same things the same way and wistfully expecting different results just because it suits my current needs or cravings, is, even in a vivid sexual dreamscape, a valid definition of an unhealthy relationship with reality. 

Such are the cards I have been dealt in this paradoxical game of existential solitaire. 

Just prior to my entrance into this modern alternative wonderland I took the notebook I have been faithfully making journal entries into since well before the memorable date in 1980 when I was transitioning from Los Angels to Seattle for the second time and sat in the belly of an aluminum bird at a height that put us ABOVE the plume, and read a few of the entries from the chapter, dated: MAY 1980. 

It is like yesterday. I am putting thoughts onto parchment much like I do today, and the thoughts are the same as those of yesterday. What is all this about? What is its meaning? Who am I? What am I? What is my connection, responsibility and duty? In one of the more interesting passages I recorded my tossing of the Chinese coins and the resulting textual hexagrams of divination. The book of changes, never failing to offer a solution to an issue - assuming one is dedicated to the relentless pursuit of becoming a superior man - answered thusly when I asked, wholeheartedly, “What is it that I should do, who will I become, and which career path will challenge and fulfill my desires to be among the superior men whose valor, wisdom and compassion is spoken of so often in these texts?” I cringed while reading the pompous, sophomoric rhetoric, but the intent, my fervent vocation to excel and be challenged by the masters, is, and remains to this day, sincere. 

It has been forty years. The practice continues. The challenge endures with relentless tension and dramatic implication. You might say that I have found my calling, or you might consider this all a neurotic and extreme fascination with the esoteric art of war amid a quest for peaceful mitigation. 

In this third-level relaxation body and mind are at rest, a peaceful and harmonious multi-dimensional opera of pure light and energy. Under these all too rare conditions, with the physical and the emotional in perfect sync, I am always amazed by how quickly the spirit asks permission to join the party. 

We are in full swing with the universal big band when I remember the line from Vonnegut (or Bach). Upon completion of an existential oratory that might cause Socrates to blush, Kurt, Richard, or perhaps even myself in a former REM lifetime, ended a brilliant meaning-of-life soliloquy with the caveat,

“But I could be wrong.”

An empathic pop of cosmic camaraderie

138.

Absolving myself of any presumptuous crime in thinking for one-second that I found the rock, and not other way around, I settle back into my favorite overstuffed chair, actually a small couch, and ceremoniously untie the packet’s sealed flap.

With a certainty bordering on arrogance, I set the parking brake on my ego for what should be more of the same ol’ same old. With clandestine stealth Mr Secret Agent get a crib of credible compost on the Senator and ensure that Her Majesty is returning quantifiable and actionable intel. La dee dah, la dee dah. The entertainment factor is always magnified when the complementary close routinely and delicately mentions my rapidly deteriorating adherence to standard operating protocols and roguish attitudes, usually something like, try not to break too many rules in the accomplishment of the assignment and have a nice day. What chaffs my butt is that I know that Julie plays a part in the crafting of this language. It offends me in the same way that my football coach used to ask me nicely to throw with a touch more accuracy, ending with the supposedly humorous advice of reminding me that the guys wearing different color uniforms are not on our team. Fucking hysterical coach, thanks.

But what the packet contains, in advance I advised myself to recall that we had both put our lives on the line for its safe return, shatters both my illusion of heaven and the threat of everlasting hell.

It contains only three words.

In the screaming font of forty-point bold impact, it simply says:

CONTINUE YOUR PRACTICE.

Resisting a knee-jerk response to puke, I consider the possibility that both TOM and Julie are being blackmailed by Satan. What the actual fuck is this? She KNEW all along? She was playing me in a cheap charade as I came as close as you can get to exchanging point-blank nines with a cornered felon? The fire spits an exploding ball of resin in agreement, sing it brother!

I am aghast, appalled, irritated, offended and embarrassed. I cannot believe what I am reading is the sum of our intelligence. This is what we know and represents our current strategy? Although the line of succinct spiritual wisdom has long been a ‘very serious running joke’ between the three of us, this is a bit much and the timing way off. Maybe it’s code, I rationalize. Perhaps I should drop lemon juice from an eye dropper and hold the page to the firelight. I stare into the fire seeking divine inspiration, rational translation and perhaps even a glimpse of enlightenment, but this time the flames are silent.

But then I get it. It is supposed to be funny. TOM’s instructions were basic and simple, follow my lead and take a few days of R&R to recharge. Revitalize and rejuvenate. We all know the plan and our individual responsibilities. What better way to ensure restorative success by sampling the most iconic of all inter-office memorandums? Continue Your Practice. That is all we do. It is woven into the very fabric of our mission statement like the leather patch on the back of a pair of Levi’s 501s. It is my calling card, my mantra and my middle name. TOM and Julie know this better than anyone. They are reminding me that the paths of forgiveness and redemption are the same two-way street. That despite the seriousness of our jobs, there needs to be offsetting measures of laughter and merriment to counter the overload of relentless stress. If you sleep every night with one eye open eventually you will either go blind or go insane. At this point we have too much invested in each other for loss of sight or sanity. It also occurs to me that the packets may have contained uniquely different messages for each of us, hence potentially answering the question of why Julie was so adamant about getting them back before they fell into the wrong hands. If true, what did Harlan’s contain? Obviously, sending inside jokes to your legal counsel is not the most professional approach, and certainly not the serious and staid style of TOM, or Julie for that matter. I applaud their creative effort but still wonder if my appreciation and laughter is in ‘getting it’ or ‘getting it wrong.’

I sip the Shiraz and silently toast the genius behind the communication.

“Well played you magnificent rascals,” I hail as the fire once again salutes the special occasion with an empathic pop of cosmic camaraderie, “nicely done.” 

Desperado

137.

The rock that safely conceals the spare cabin key offers its contents devoid of emotion. There is warmth and connectivity in very few things in my life, but this is one, however trivial and however small.  I have been using this rock - I know its shape, its texture, its weight, and how it changes hues slightly when held to moonlight - as a lucky charm of sorts. I stumbled across it on an epic training hike in Arizona some thirty years ago and decided it might be a talisman destined for magic. It has been an icon of grounding for me ever since. Like an anchor, it keeps me present, reminded of the fleeting nature of our species, that change is unending and that my path is the one of practice. The rock triggers this contemplation every time I return. 

I have tonight and tomorrow to shed a thousand emotional pounds. I start a fire with the bone-dry cedar kindling and in five minutes the dark, the chill and the emptiness are gone, escaping like sparks, torched embers of yesterday’s incompletion. I engage the battery storage system, captured and stored energy from the sun, to heat water for a shower and then twist on the propane to fire the stove. In my haste to escape the city and the distraction over the call from Julie and its downstream ramifications, I drove past the grocery store without the usual stop. It’ll have to be beans (black), rice (basmati) and albacore (canned). I slide open the pantry’s carved wood cabinet and select a bottle of South African Shiraz. I hear the fire crackle as I head to the shower, grabbing a huge terrycloth towel along the way. I am feeling better already. Practice is this. Chopping wood and carrying water. Let it all wash away. Relax, rest and recover. Be good to yourself. Smell the roses. 

At the last minute I add a can of spinach to the mix of earthly delights and rejoice in the discovery of a tin of jalapeños (fire roasted). The pairing of the wood smoke and spicy aroma flares my nostrils with appreciation. Truly it is the little things in life that provide the biggest rewards.  I pour a large glass of the deep-red wine, set the portable table in front of the fire and turn on the stereo, chuckling to myself at the decision to forgo the ceremonious lighting of candles since I am dining alone. 

I choose an album, it’ll be vinyl tonight, one that I have been thinking about recently. The quasi-concept album, not quite of rock opera standards, such as Tommy or Terrapin Station, but ground-breaking for its musical metaphor back in ’73. The Eagles Desperado, a harbinger of the country-rock to follow, softly opens with acoustic sensitivity playing against the decidedly violent aural image of the old west. Bang, bang, shoot, shoot. Six stringed guitars are itching to replace Colt six shooters in the transformation of brutality to harmony. One can almost hear the white-hatted protagonist plead for song and a dance at midnight instead of duels in the dusty streets at high noon. The metamorphosis asks for peace, forgiveness and growth. 

“Don’t you draw the Queen of Diamonds boy, she’ll beat you if she’s able,

You know the Queen of Hearts is always your best bet.

Now it seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table,

But you only want the ones that you can’t get.” 

I am engrossed in the magic of here and now, muscles minus fast twitching, breaths deep, restorative and pure. Music, sweet music. 

But my mellow indulgence is abruptly ended as I remember the packet. I run out the parked rental car and fetch it from the front seat. 

I sit and hold it unopened in my hands considering its contents. Fool’s gold? 

“Don’t your feet get cold in the wintertime?

The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine

It’s hard to tell the night time from the day.

And you’re losing all your highs and lows,

ain’t it funny how the feeling goes

away…..”

Desperado. 

So Much for Too Easy

136.

I decide to heed Julie’s advice and take a rare off day. It’ll be good to spend the day at the cabin, I rationalize, after all it is just an hour outside of DC. I rent a car and head south with the events of the day swirling around my mind like a lost dog looking for home. With the rented mid-sized Chevy on cruise control, I put the phone on speaker and call the S&L manager for an update on his progress with the surveillance tape review.

“Well, you were right, there was some suspicious activity taking place out front during those hours,” he informs me, his voice think with faux fatigue, “A white van with tinted windows, a satellite dish on top and no one getting in or out was parked in front of our facility nearly the entire time.”

I pose the million dollar question, “Any logo or identification on the van that you could see, or a license plate maybe?”

“Couldn’t read the plates because it was a broadside view, but in really cheap black and white lettering it said MBI Industries.”

“Can you get me a screen grab of the van showing the logo?” I ask.

“Sure, I’ll send it to this number in five minutes, is there anything else I can do?”

“No, that will be plenty for now, thanks for your assistance and cooperation, if we need anything additional I will call you. Thanks again.”

I am watching the last sliver of natural light morph into blinding oncoming headlights thinking that this is all too easy. First I get a positive ID from a waitress in a coffee joint and then video surveillance tape from a bank across the street potentially proving my hunch about our lunch conversation being illegally captured by whomever is considering us to be legitimate threats to their operation? Way too easy.

I am merging right to make my exit when my cell sounds a familiar ring tone.

“Hi.”

Julie returns my one-word salutation and says that her brief with TOM went as expected - he is cancelling his vacation and heading back to the office, and, adding indignity to insult, she tells me that we have a meeting scheduled for Friday at 1000 for a strategy session.

“He knows that we have a new front door to the office?” I risk.

“He knows everything. Including the dozen or so protocols we abandoned in the last five hours.” She confides.

“Does he know that I have a trap baited for Bartowsky’s handler? Does he know that I have video ID on the van that was monitoring our lunch conversation from across the street? Does he know…..” She cuts me off with a terse cease and desist.

“The Senator called him threatening to end our funding, eliminate our charter and file legal proceedings,” She tells me.

“Is there an ‘unless we’ condition coming next?”

“Unless we immediately terminate our dead-end, conspiracy theory, fake-news investigation into the hand that feeds.” She paraphrases.

“That is so incriminating, it basically admits to illegal surveillance,” I snort, “Anything else?”

“Yes, and the same with MBI.”

I exit the Interstate and open the rental up on the windy back-roads leading to the cabin.

So much for too easy.