09 July 2010
 
Cocktails at Willow


(Cocktail napkin note from intense discussion with the Admiral. Photo Socotra)
 
I don’t think Lizzie or Meghan knew the details about the spy swap. Didn’t matter; I was not privy to the nitty-gritty either, and certainly the Admiral didn’t know. He was just back from the Outer Banks and a week with his family at the beach.
 
The girls were more concerned with the growing anticipation about the final resolution of the Lebron James matter, which is much more important than the suddenly visible component of the secret world.
 
I mean, the continued existence of Cleveland as a city was at stake, you know? It was more serious than someone uprooting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and leaving town with it.
 
I was sitting at the corner of the Willow bar, just a few minutes early for my date with the Admiral. The girls were just getting settled at the end of the bar where old Jim normally holds court, pointedly drinking Bud in the upscale wine bar, and on the whole, I infinitely preferred the company.
 
Lizzie was a dark-haired beauty with an expectant look, no ring, and Meghan, ring, was a vivacious blonde.
 
The ladies arrived for a glass of wine, and a light snack from the neighborhood bar menu. As attractive as they were, I understood why Peter paid them special deference. Linen and pearls were the motif, and considering how sweltering hot it was outside, they looked cool and elegant.
 
It had been a busy day. The Russian spy ring had all plead guilty that morning in the Rocket Docket of Federal Court just down the Little River turnpike from Big Pink that morning, and the lot of them, ten spies, spouses and kids, and were boarding a Vision charter jet headed for Vienna by the time the Admiral drove from the Madison in his Jaguar and parked at the curb in front of Willow.
 
I forget what I was doing, except I seemed to be on the phone a lot trying to find the services of a hydrogropher with knowledge of the Empty Quarter of Arabia. I made a note on the office pad to see if Vision was a wholly-owed subsidiary of an agency where I used to work.
 
Four alleged intelligence operatives were being processed in Moscow, but they had a shorter flight to Austria, and there was a lesser sense of urgency about it. I thought of my pal Ed, who had been detained by the FSB in some trumped-up charges for nearly a year when the kleptocracy was reasserting itself in the Kremlin, and on the whole, decided I was much better off in the commercial side of the business.
 
Of course, in this screwy decade, who knows what that is anymore? Except for the Jihadis, I forget who the enemy is. And Sara, the dark-eyed knock-out waitress from a Lebansese family, could make you forget about the threat from the Middle East in a heartbeat.
 
Then the Admiral appeared beside me, looking tanned and ready after his time at the beach. As we settled in, the spies were getting on planes, and we were about to talk about the targeting issue for the 313th Bomb Wing against Japan.
 
But first I pulled a napkin off the stack to start taking notes, and borrowed a pen from the Admiral.
 
I told Meghan that she was sitting next to one of the people who made the victory in the Pacific possible, and that the Admiral had been part of code-breaking team that made the battle of Midway a winning proposition.
 
The Admiral leaned over and said that he didn’t think the ladies were old enough to know what the battle of Midway was, and Meghan sat up tall and took umbrage.
 
She certainly did know, and wanted to know precisely how the thing was done.
 
The Admiral told her, and she looked at him with wonder. “Have you ever told that story before?”
 
He smiled, and his eyes twinkled behind his glasses. “Only about 10,000 times,” he said.
 
We all laughed, and the ladies eventually moved on to do something else while the sun was still shining, and the Admiral and I got down to the business of targeting the Japanese petroleum reserves, and the matter of why he is not entombed with “Mush” Morton and the entire crew of the USS Wahoo at the bottom of the La Perouse Strait.
 

(USS Wahoo (SS-238) as she rested in July 2006 when discovered by a Russian dive team. photo courtesy Vladimir Kartashev)

This is going to take a minute, so you might want to go get a fresh drink.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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