Vic Socotra

04 January 2009

De Nile

(Ana Belen Montes, True Believer)

From the Urban Dictionary:

1. denile (noun) The next-best alternative when someone can't spell "denial".
2. denile (noun) Not a river in Egypt, e.g., When a person denies a proven fact, you just say to him: denile is not a river in Egypt!

I find myself having to climb out of the river this morning. It is clear and cold, though wisps of high cirrus clouds are drifting in high over Big Pink. I saw daylight when I woke up, unusual at this dark time of the year, and realized with groggy dread that I could go ahead and set the alarm, since this is it. The last morning I can rise when I want.

Denial is futile, and so is resistance. The slack time is about over, and the day is filled with poignant longing for the days behind when the holiday was a splendid excuse not to think. Now it is time to get focused, and expect the wave of activity to begin quickly and go on, unremitting, through the next couple months of weekends.

It has to be done, after all, if the bills are to be paid. My sons watch the shows on HBO, and since I subscribe to it, I have discovered how to operate the remote control to access the channel as well. Once they explained what the function of the tiny buttons were, anyway.

I cannot watch television and do anything else, except to take special precautions. With all the sports over the holidays, it has become my practice to put the games on with the sound on the home theater tuned to the radio. There are so many magazines and books piled up, accusing me, and this multi-tasking seemed to be the only way to get through them all.

Since there is no reasonable way to get out of Big Pink- not that I have any compelling need to do so- the matter of living must be addressed in the present tense. There is no reason to continue in denial, thinking that somehow I could sell out at a tidy profit and go off in some new direction.

It is not going to happen, and the fantasy island of the holidays is over. The inauguration is coming and this dream-like fugue state is about to be over.

Can’t deny reality. A lot of us are stuck until we can pay down our mortgages to what our homes are actually worth. It is a special tax imposed by the smart guys who let things go to hell, imposed only on those who chose to pay it back.

Jeeze. It is happening all over this region, and we are luckier than most here with all the Democrats looking to move here. Still, we can’t even rent our places out for what the mortgages cost, and you have to live somewhere, right?

It will take a bit of effort to re-insert choice into our lives. The new curse of the middle class. So, if they hand you a lemon, make lemonade, right?

With Schweppes tonic and vodka, that is a perfectly sensible alternative.

I made one of those as the light started to fail and took down the little wreath on the door and packed up the stained glass Christmas tree and balled up the holiday lights on the balcony. Then I picked up a couple books, one of which had quietly been gathering dust in the office and the other that came over the transom at Christmas.

It is Wild Card Weekend in the NFL, and I turned on the Falcons and Cards on the big screen television. It is not high definition, no denying it, but my vision is getting to the point that all women are starting to look good and the images on television are just big swirls of color anyway.

When I had done sufficient damage to the trappings of the holidays, I got comfortable in the brown chair and picked up the first book. The cover was in black and white. I think it was the face of the Cuban spy on the cover that grabbed my attention.

Her name was- and is, I suppose- Anna Belen Montes, and she had been a go-getter analyst at the Agency where I used to work. It is a small book called True Believer, and I doubt if you have heard about it. It is off the list of the Naval Institute Press, and not something you would see at Borders or Barnes and Nobel.

They busted Ana the same week of the 9/11 attacks, and most of us were paying attention to other things, denying all other problems in our haste to punish those who had punished us. I bought a while ago, since I know a lot of the people in the book, and that is the ultimate Washington Read. I must have seen Ana at one time or another, too, though I could not honestly recall those piercing dark eyes and severe haircut.

The story was mind boggling. Ana had been a dedicated agent of Cuban Intelligence for more than a decade when people started to wonder about her. They were in denial that the hard-working woman in the cubical next to them could have been negating everything they did for years. She had access to everything of interest about Cuba, and much more. Like how everything worked, all the sources and methods. Everything. More than that, she was well enough placed that she didn’t have to steal documents or the usual things that spies do. She was actually high up enough in the food chain of policy formation that she had everything she needed in her head.

It was a pretty sweet deal for the Cubans, since she betrayed our secrets for free. She was a true believer in Uncle Fidel, improbable as it sounds. She bought the good of the socialist program, and was able to deny the intrinsic evil of the other parts.

I have often wanted to travel in Cuba. I don't count any but the truest of believers as an enemy. My several trips to Guantanamo as a real visit, though taking a motor whaleboat across the channel between Mainside and the airfield is pretty authentic. I would like to see it before the socialist paradise collapses, but that is another improbability there is no use denying. It is easy enough to get there from Canada or Mexico, and pretty cheap, but it would cause problems on my next security review and it is better to avoid temptation.

Ana passed her polygraph, by the way, which caused a twinge. The longer you are in the business, the harder it is to get through those awful sessions, and it was a comfort to have my suspicion confirmed that the whole concept is voodoo. Still, it is not worth the risk of having to deny it on The Box until it is legal.

With the Obama Administration coming in, the drums are beginning to beat for the release of Jonathon Pollard, the analyst at the office of Naval Intelligence who passed thousands of documents to the Israelis. His altruism was tinged with material gain though, and the IDF invasion of Gaza this morning is going to make that problematic from a public relations standpoint, I would think.

I am happy that he rots where he is, and happy about Ana, too.

I finished the story about Ana long after the Cards had put away Atlanta, and the Chargers and Colts were about to go into overtime. I looked at the clock, not wanting to believe that it was nearing midnight and I need to get back on schedule for the coming work week.

I wondered where Ana was being held, and if someday, a new government in Cuba will call for her release on humanitarian grounds, denying the damage she did on the grounds of a greater good.

I was mildly surprised to see the Chargers win on the first drive of OT, and former Superbowl champ Payton Manning going into denial that he was not going to get a chance to win after all. I won’t deny that I like his commercials. He seems to be a likeable fellow.

We all have our rivers to climb out of, and the first dripping step onto the muddy bank is the hard one, you know?

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