Movement

Barcelona, Spain

The twenty minutes I spent sitting in a plaza in Barcelona were tense. Every person who walked by and every car that drove in had to be perceived as potential trouble. When your senses are peaked, you hear things differently. Every step one makes on cobblestones that have been in place for hundreds of years is loud and clear. You look at cars and feel their stops and accelerations, and your vision heightens as you do your best to judge "friend or foe."

My phone, a beacon that emits my location to anyone with the right technology, is now inert.  I pulled the brain out of it and bent it in two. I buried the two pieces of the SIM card in the bushes along the plaza wall.

My last transmission was to "Louise," which gave my location to my friends. I'll assume that the Russians know exactly where I am as well. Their embassy has all the goodies needed for a simple phone location.

My only concern is who will get to me first.

There is a fountain in the center of the plaza and four avenues a car can enter. So far, every car that passes through has come down the same road.

That's the one I'll watch, but from a distance.

The plaza's perimeter comprises shops and some beautiful old shade trees that have grown through ancient pavement. The night's weather has made this place quieter than usual.

The subdued lighting and the rain make the cobblestones shiny, and any headlight on them creates a glare.

When a person or persons are looking for you, the best two options are to go low or high. Don't be where they are expecting you to be.

Once, I was thrown into a Close-Quarters Combat situation, and I used this technique effectively in my trailer. One goon came in one door and did not look low to the deck where I was waiting. I dropped him with two shots. The second guy went through another door and saw where I was, but he was a lousy shot. I dropped him as well.

I am going to put my money on going high this time. On one side is a coffee kiosk made from a steel shipping container. It's closed. On top is a ventilation pipe raised about 4 feet from the top. It has one of those rotating aluminum things that circulates the air.

Shipping containers are easy to climb. I positioned myself low on the roof near the pipe and waited.

A few cars came and went. A few people strolled fast with umbrellas on their way home from work on a rainy night.

A small van entered the plaza and stopped. It was a rolling commercial for an energy drink owned by an American Conglomerate. The van stopped, and a passenger got out. He was holding a clipboard, as I was told. He opened the rear of the van and looked like he was counting something on the inside. A second man exited the van and looked around the perimeter for about thirty seconds. The first man dropped his clipboard.

I slid off the roof of the kiosk, walked toward the van, and hopped in the back.

It was nice to meet these two friends.  One of them, Tim, handed me an energy drink as we zipped through the streets of Barcelona for a half hour.  When it was clear we were not being followed, we drove through the guarded gate at The Consulado General de los Estados Unidos de America.

When I saw the Marines who pull embassy duty worldwide, I knew I was in safe hands.

Now I have to find out what happened.

FBI New England Regional Headquarters, Chelsea, Massachusetts

Wally and two agents involved with Confidential Informant handling were having dinner at a place famous for ribs "where the meat falls off the bone."

They were drinking large amounts of iced tea, and all three of them were sweating from the heat of the sauce on the ribs.

While discussing the events in Spain and waiting for the check, all three of their phones signaled simultaneously.

They were being called back to the office immediately.

CIA Embassy Station- Barcelona, Spain

The station chief met with me to speak about why the Russians wanted to kill me. Terrence Fiester was sort of in a snit about the whole thing because, as he stated, "The FBI did not dot all the I's and cross their T's about why this was happening. At great expense to his station, an extraction team had to go out and pull an F.B.I. agent out of an operation, and the FBI Boston Field Office had not supplied details.

All Fiester knew was that Langley said to jump, and he had to do what he was told.

I looked at this guy, perhaps a mid-career guy, above his head in Barcelona. He dressed like an Ivy Leaguer, and I sensed no military bearing.  Most people in this sort of posting carry experience in their toolkits, yet here is a guy trying to wrangle "Need To Know" stuff from me. 

If he were experienced, he would have laid back a bit and known that the truth of the operation would have trickled down to him in time, perhaps at a cocktail party deep in the Virginia suburbs.

I'm still not home yet, and my travel plans are in the hands of a putz with an axe to grind.

So who is he? I glanced at his walls; at least he was smart enough not to install a "Love Me" festival of diplomas on his wall. So, he sticks to some tradecraft. I didn't want to piss him off, and I don't know what he knows, and in my true form, I was not going to tell him.

He spoke a bit about me being armed in Spain.

"How did you pull that off?" "Does the FBI routinely send armed individuals to my backyard?"

"Why wasn't I informed?"

I countered, "We all have bosses, and I can count at least 50 of them."  "If they didn't tell you something you need to know, please have your boss tangle with my boss."

I casually asked Fiester, "Hey, you look familiar. Are you an Eli?" Elis are people who went to Yale, and the reference is to some clown who donated money to the school in the 1700s. It's all very clubby, seersucker and Thurston Howell III, in the Summer, and they were the core of the company in Virginia for many years. They like their kind.

My question was a massive foul ball because Fiester's ears and forehead turned bright red as he looked at me and sputtered, "I went to Princeton."

Fiester remains a bit of an anomaly to me because any asshole I have met that went to Princeton let me know that bit within two minutes of meeting. I spoke with Fiester for about four minutes, so that's two minutes of constipated withholding that crucial nugget. Did he learn self-control at The Farm?

I looked again at Fiester, and the redness was coupled with the bare-knuckled shakiness of a Chihuahua that was about to blurt and move to bite my ankle.

"We will book you on a flight out of El-Prat, which the Russians will focus on." "However, you will travel by rail to Germany with two escorts and then fly home."

"Get some sleep, Allston. We have guest quarters here." "The FBI has been notified that you are safe."

"We will send a meal to your room."

As I walked out the Station Chief's door, I heard him mutter, "White Trash."

What's wrong with Parris Island and Boston College? I thought.