06 March 2008

Corridors


I could have sworn it was the running dream back again, except I knew from the clicking of the heels of my dress shoes on the shiny composite floor that this was painfully real.

The taste of gin was on my lips. I had been scheduled to have dinner with some business people, but the Pentagon thing had come up as an opportunity to get something done and moved out of the in-basket. The magazine I edit is basically done, but if I don't get it somewhere it will eat another weekend, and I don't have it in me.

We met a Ted's for a drink and caught up as the sun departed Ballston, en route Ohio and Texas and points west. I made my regrets as the second round arrived and reluctantly headed toward the garage deep under the new Westin Hotel.

People were knotted up in the lobby of the hotel, wondering where to go to dinner; to P.F. Chang's perhaps, or to Ted's for a taste of real Bison meat. There are a lot of choices now at this end of the Metro corridor, and I envied them their leisure.

One more mission to accomplish and I could cook something back at Big Pink, and shut out the night.

It was cold as a meat locker down on level B2. It is going to retain the coolness right into the summer, I thought, and tried not to think of the vastness of the concrete above.   I fired up the big V-8, wondering what had happened with oil. It had been at $105 a barrel the last time I heard the radio in the afternoon, and I realized I was driving a relic of a by-gone age. Worse, worse, that machine and driver were of the past.

I headed down Glebe to 50 east and then south down Washington Boulevard corridor. I took the Pentagon exit where the geologic formation of the Piedmont of Virginia slopes down to the Tidewater of the Potomac.

One of the kids who subscribes to the magazine wrote in and said one of the articles had a lot of typos; not the ones that Word highlights in red, but the ones where one perfectly spelled wrong word is substituted for another. “Were” for “Where,” that sort of thing. Condom for Condominium. Embarrassing.

He offered to proofread the digital manuscript. The detail thing was never my strong point. Broad-brush, big-picture, that's me. He was working nights in the legendary center of Naval Intelligence, and he said he had time to look it over on the night shift.

Anything helps. I have to keep the digits moving.

I parked the car and got out, surveying the vast bulk of the building. The sandstone had turned to dark gray. Bright construction lights dotted the flanks, and new Jersey barriers channel foot traffic toward the big walkways that approach the south frontage.

They have been rebuilding the Pentagon for a decade now, five times longer than it took to build the place originally.

I used to park somewhere near this place, before they built the great causeways. Once upon a time the building was approached from street level, but dodging the cars and buses was a hazard. The causeways were built with a nod to the classic simplicity of the geometry, and the ring-road was placed under them.

It was a great solution, and the construction took the better part of my last tour in the building. Then the attack happened, just months after I left, and the great destruction was done to the west side.   I was there for a meeting the day after there were soldiers blocking the corridors to the area near the heliport where the airplane came in, and the smell of jet-fuel and ash hung over everything.

One weekend after the Mold was abated, I snuck in with a friend, while the reconstruction was in progress, and walked down the corridors to where they ended in the air. The new building was inserted in a way that you can barely tell the difference.

The security perimeter was moved outward, and the causeways and the ring road became useless appendages.

They were at it again, pushing outward, making it safer for foot traffic by eliminating more parking spaces. Eventually they will get rid of them all, and the train or the bus will be the only way to approach what is becoming a vast fortress. I took a chance and pulled into South Parking of the Pentagon. I put the car in one of the open slots left by the departing bureaucrats near the Third Corridor entrance.

It was never good here, what with the best and closest spots reserved for those with the most power. Without a parking pass I would never get this close, and I had to hope that they would not tow the car in the brief time I hoped to spend inside.

The chill outside was not painful, and the dark not yet complete.

I was swimming upstream against the tired gray people coming out of the building. Some of them consider this normal working hours; nearly seven at night, and just walking to their cars.

I produced the appropriate document to the contract guard behind the bulletproof glass at the outer checkpoint, and the magnetic signature on the badge worked on the Lockheed-Martin security turnstile inside the tall blonde wood doors. The guards did not look up.

Walking down the passageway I looked at the directions the kid had given me. Corridor Three entrance, to the NATO hall at the A Ring and down the escalator. Go the courtyard, take the entrance at the 6-7 Corridor. Cross the service drive, it is the Research and Situational Awareness Center on the way to the POAC.

“Is that near the Doc Cook Remote Delivery tunnel?” I asked.

“Yeah, that's right.” I was proud that I knew about that. When I worked there, Doc Cook was alive, and not a loading dock, and if I had gone to the old Pentagon Officer Athletic Club, the one where the "O" still meant something, I would have been lost in a construction site in North Parking.

At the escalator, a banner announced that the Concourse businesses had been relocated to accommodate the gutting of the last wedge of the building. Now I knew nothing; the CVS Drugstore no longer existed, or the Pentagon Federal Credit Union, or the barbershop.

All gone, jumped to someplace new. I walked out into the darkness of the courtyard around the Ground Zero coffee lounge. It had been a bare slab, and steel girders by turns on my last visits. It is complete now, and shiny.

Large signs announced that smoking was now restricted to tiny shelters along the inner ring road. I lit up a cigarette in protest, as I cut across the empty courtyard on my way to getting lost.

The service road inside has been sandblasted and painted cheery white, but the materiel coming and going has not changed. Big pieces of machinery were staged for disposal near the freight elevators, state of the art when they arrived and junk as they leave.

I got turned around, of course, and it took twenty minutes of walking to find the complex. The place I was looking for was dark-wood paneled, and had a crisp Marine on guard outside to great the Chief of the Secretary with their entourage of pilot Lieutenants and junior Flags.

That place exists only in my memory now.

The place I eventually found was behind   a security door with a card reader, a telephone and directories for several joint activities with joint sounding names. No “intelligence,” only “situational awareness.” Some tired-looking majors in mufti emerged, one by one, glancing at me with the phone in my hand, and my bow tie still clipped high on my collar.

I tried several numbers on the wall, feeling like an out-of-towner looking for a good time.

Eventually, the Petty Officer on watch deigned to answer, and appeared at the door to take the digital disk from me.

“This is the center of naval intelligence in the center of military control of the most powerful nation on earth?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said, peering at my double-breasted dark suit, wondering if this merited an entry in the watch log. “I'm the only one here right now.”

“Where is the dark wood?” I asked. “Where are the ship-models in the glass cases? Where are the grown-ups?”

“The Commander will be in around two,” said the Petty Officer. “Maybe he can help you out.”

“I know the way out,” I said, feeling badly about inflicting the past on him. “That is the only thing that doesn't change.”

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com