23 March 2003

Alphabet Soup

Yesterday marked 26 years since I raised my right hand and swore an oath to the Constitution. It marks the last pay raise I will receive from the Department of the Navy I have served this quarter-century, and it is appropriate that my request for transfer to the retired list is at the Bureau for processing. It was a busy day.

I faded early last night. I was exhausted from the week, had to back in the office at nine am (I am trying to write civilian) to get things ready for the Boss, who was going to come in and take the ten o'clock secure video conference with the White House and the Interagency players. The interagency is comprised of the alphabet soup of FBI, CIA, TSA, USCG, FEMA, JCS, ONI, et al, and then go upstairs to participate in the 10:15 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) update with the CDC.

There was nothing new in the threat. We have troops pressing north along the Euphrates River and jets flying in anger and there is nothing happening here at home except a nationwide alert over an alarm sounded by a TSA baggage inspector who thought that a gas-mask contained in some checked luggage might have been anthrax. No kidding, we talked to the White House about that. So I guess the word is: "Watch what you pack."

Then the Boss slid onto his weekend. He is under a lot of stress. The Office was set up a year ago under a distinguished scientist who has the tact and forbearance of an ox-genius, should have got a Nobel, but not a political bone in his body. So he was out, the Boss was in, and they hired me to help an old FBI guy make sense out of the amalgam of the scientists, bureaucrats, technicians. And maybe we will. One of the first things I did was set up a Navy thing, a watch, by which we divided the weekend into quarters. The Boss was concerned with senior coverage in case something happened. I was pretty sure I knew what he meant. There was plenty of stuff happening out there that wasn't our business, and there is a big five-sided building across town that deals with the War. We were waiting for terror here.

So, during business hours I have arranged for senior people to be here to answer questions and help the watch apply judgment to situations as they occur. I took the nine-to-one section, our Army Colonel took the one-to-five, and two more dedicated professionals will split Sunday so that each of us has an entire weekend day to ourselves. The Boss can come in and look concerned if he wishes, but he can be serene in the knowledge that someone is "on duty."

I cleaned up my desk and the Colonel came in as scheduled. The Boss was long gone, and I walked out of the deserted building on the mall and into the first Spring Day of the year. There were people on the mall enjoying the sun. The first midriffs were out, soft flesh exposed for the first time and tourists and the Babel of languages that is our capital. I walked past the Grand Army of the Republic memorial at the foot of Capitol Hill and to the other side of the Mall. Then up Pennsylvania Avenue, past the USA Today "News of the World" wall of headlines and the Canadian Embassy, a white granite monument to open space and improbable structure. I munched a hot dog purchased from one of the ubiquitous carts, relish Kraut and mustard-decked, in front of the Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC is flanked by massive sculptures of horses being restrained by muscular men. They are done in a 1930s Heroic Realism style that seeks to convey the idea that the engine of Commerce was something greater than any human. I tried to imagine a bespeckled Alan Greenspan bringing the mighty steeds to heel and couldn't. Then I walked across the street to the National Gallery of Art. Entering from the north side there was no crowd. I divested myself of my cell phones, both of them, and my camera, and emptied my pockets of keys and change and cigarettes and lighter. I passed through the metal detector successfully.and asked the nice volunteer at the information desk where the Gainsborough and the Vuillard exhibitions were. He directed me upstairs and to the West galleries where the visiting shows were hosted.

Up the stairs is a soaring atrium circled by mighty black marble columns. A winged Mercury stands in a fountain in the middle. The tourists walked through the marble forest and down the light-drenched galleries. I followed along, drifting, until I saw the sign above a portal inviting me to share the life and work of Edouard Vuillard. I picked up a brochure and read about him, a man unknown to me. The text talked of him as an "intimist," a member of a mystic group of young artists called the Nabis. Crazy Paul Gauguin was a spiritual father to the group, so you know the sort of colors I am describing. The early Vuillard dates from the 1889 and is postimpressionist, I suppose, if I knew anything about it. I know that I liked it. Bold primary colors, the taste of Matisse morphing into something else. Walking through the first gallery I was gazing at an octagonal self-portrait in marvelous oranges and yellows painted in 1890. My office cell phone went off. I hurried out of the gallery to take the call and not disturb the other gallery goers, mostly women of a certain age and intellectual edge.

It was the Command Center on the line, and they were notifying me that a Defense Department crew had been unloading a shipment in Dayton, Ohio, and had found a white powder on the floor. Preliminary indications were that the substance had tested positive for a variety of awful things. The crew was in decontamination and the CDC had been notified to conduct follow-on tests. Results were expected in two hours, and if positive, the White House and the DHS, FBI, CIA, TSA, USCG, ONI and FEMA would be notified. If true, something awful was abroad in the land. But there is a high false-positive rate on the tests since the detectors are designed to cast a broad net and the components of the weapons of terror are found in many naturally occurring substances.

I thanked the watch officer and returned to the gallery. Vuillard developed slowly from proto-abstractionist to a unique style that was all his own. He never married, and his dear mother was his best subject. She was a seamstress, and his work reflects the intimacy of the work table and the home. His later works, marvelous subtle pieces, are as much about the homes as the people in them. I was better for having spent the time with Edouard, and later with the astonishing portraits of Thomas Gainesborough, 1727-1788.

As I walked and looked I thought that we have had a zero rate of actual detection of anthrax. The tests have been consistantly wrong. At least they have since the time they were right.

I'm glad the Colonel is on watch this afternoon. I suppose if the tests are positive they will call me back.