30 December 2003

The Watch

It is the very dregs of the year. It is unseasonably warm and it is raining in Washington. The Holiday continues to drag on. Work is eerie. Most of the office is gone, off doing something interesting, and I am building my vacation balance and occupying space. What I am doing cannot precisely be called work. I am making phone calls, trying to get some business going when the new year finally starts.

The news from overseas continues grim, though the deaths of our kids have finally made it to the inner pages of the Post and the Times. In a sidebar this morning the paper this morning says that the body armor out troops are using- some at their own expense- is so effective that the bad guys have learned to shoot for the only unprotected spot they can find. The face.

I wish I could contribute some magical new sensor or a Buck Rogers phase-history analyzer to detect the improvised explosive devices by the roadside and protect them. But I cannot, and the scientists I knew who might be able to build one are in the government and I am not.

But that is not to say that retired spooks in the commercial sector cannot contribute to the great war on terror. The downsizing of government means they laid off or retired the people who actually know how this works, and the contractor community is now a de facto branch of government, doing what the civil servants can no longer do for themselves. One of my little projects is to manage a twenty-four hour presence in the Operations Center at the Headquarters of the Department entrusted with our collective safety.

I got a call late last night as I was preparing to go down. My son's university was being humiliated by some other college and I needed to see no more of it. The disembodied voice said that the schedule for the Watch had come off the tracks. Someone necessary to the smooth running of the Desk had not read the latest iteration of the schedule and left town. The night shift was not going to have anyone to relieve them. Action needed to be taken to ensure continuity.

To remedy the problem I leaped, literally, from bed at 0445. There were several things that had to occur before I could head downtown and provide a bridge until one of the regular guys was able to come in.

It was otherwise one of those red letter days. I was scheduled for an installment of my fifteen minutes of fame. One of my stories was to be broadcast on the BBC at 0544. I wanted to hear it and the dog, bless his brown little furry head, needed to be walked before anything else could occur.

So there was that, stumbling around the building in the darkness and when I returned the computer crashed and there was no hope at all of creating anything. But the dog seemed happy.

My bit came as scheduled. I listened to my words, the careful matter-of-fact tone describing the place where I was about to go. When my words ceased to issue form the clock-radio I got in the shower and threw on a gray conservative suit and bade the dog farewell. He looked up at me with those liquid chocolate eyes, pleading. But I know his game. He was going to be right back in my bed, curled up into the pillow before I got the engine started down in the parking lot. I left the radio turned on for him, so he would be current on the day's events when I got back.

I drove rapidly but precisely through Arlington to the Key Bridge and into the District. I drove along the canal and up the hill, past the big compound of sleeping Germans and skirting the back of the Naval Observatory where the Vice President lives. I was pretty full of myself, not to say that isn't a fairly normal occurrence. But it did not last long.

I parked the car and placed the parking pass on the dash. Passing through the series of gates, waiting at each stage for my credentials to be scrutinized, I felt my glow begin to dim, and my status diminish with each step. At the ultimate gate I discovered that I had become a non-person. My name had been dropped from the daily list of those who were permitted access. I did not exist.

It was only with the determined intervention of the off-going shift, eager to sleep, that I managed to enter the Operations Center. The guards were apologetic. We actually knew each other, and perhaps it was that fact that turned the balance. But while I had succeeded in going to work, my glow was extinguished as thoroughly as if a troop of Boy Scouts had pissed on the campfire.

I listened to the events of the last twelve hours. I found I had to route some e-mails to the staff, and follow up on a shipment of medical isotopes that were deemed a potential threat if they fell into the wrong hands. I was settling into a rhythm, reading and forwarding, reading and deleting, and half in a dream world where the people around me did not have automatic pistols in their belts to read their e-mail.

There had been a calm in the air but as people arrived the noise level rose. A series of meetings began in the conference room across the hall. Shortly after nine, a most civilized hour I got a call from one of the Customers, a government guy of indeterminate grade. He advised me in a peremptory manner that I needed to send out a note to the States and Territories reminding the Emergency Managers and Homeland Security Advisors about the big video-teleconference with the 35-year-old political appointee who runs the office.

I know the States are dying for the chance. One lady in a state that shall remain nameless wrote an e-mail back, asking caustically, who the stuckee for this one was supposed to be.

Anyhow, the Customer dictated a bunch of requirements to me over the phone. I don't know where he was at the time, at home perhaps, taking the holiday. Anyhow, he finished dictating which distribution lists he wanted the reminder to be sent to, and the internal people who should also be invited. Then he gave me a couple tips on how to start the e-mail. He said I could start with something like "This is a gentle reminder..."

I thanked him for the tip and then he asked me to read the tasking back to him to make sure I understood what he had told me.

I blinked at the phone for a moment, thinking how much I would enjoy telling the pompous prick to go do something improbable to himself.

But hey, it wasn't his fault I had been on top of the world, was it? He was the customer, and regardless of how arrogant he was, he was by definition, right. I complied meekly. When I finished reading it back, he allowed as how I seemed to have copied everything down accurately and told me to get it out right away.

I thanked him for his clear guidance and bade him a good morning.

Ten hours to go.