Vic Socotra

31 May 2008

Escorts

I was going to tell you about being summoned to the dark-paneled Senate office where John McCain first got the Congressional bug.

I’ll get to that eventually, but I have a meeting this busy Saturday, and was processing the daily mail when I received a note from a pal who is traveling west today, far west enough that it will be east again. He asked a technical question about who the officer who is Chief of Legislative Affairs for my old Service.

For a variety of reasons, I prefer a certain amount of ambiguity in the Daily Socotra; plausible deniability can be necessary in this town, even with something as pedestrian as this. The question was about one of my comrades in the Office, back in the day, and what had happened to him.

I was going to get to that story, since it was very similar to my experience being wire-brushed by an irate Navy Captain as to exactly what I thought I was doing in his Senate, and I had to explain, with great diffidence, that he was not cleared to know.

That was about the last straw in that paneled office. But that was not the point of my friend’s note. He had learned a painful lesson himself.

No matter how organized you are, or how important your party might be, you still need to confirm your departure airport before paying the limo-taxi driver $85 to haul your bags from the District to Dulles, before discovering that the place you are supposed to be is Ronald Reagan National right here in Arlington.

The second lesson he learned, a bonus if you will, is that no matter how much you throw business at someone, life is still a series of transactions, and the very same limo-taxi driver will charge you the EXACT same fare to haul you back from Dulles to Reagan….regardless if he was going that way anyway.

I wrote back and told him that the story of what happened to the Destroyerman was a separate and illustrative about how high the wire is above the Hill, and how few friends you have when you are walking on it.

But the travel tale got me to thinking. It is the travel that makes the relationships on the Hill, and the shared experiences in odd places enables you to take the measure of the great and near great. Particularly when part of your normal job, like John McCain’s, is to be travel agent to the powerful.

The article in the Times about Senator McCain contained dark hints about ambition, spawned by sitting with world leaders as he escorted Senate delegations around the world. The implication was that it was intoxicating, and somehow a little unseemly.

It is not that, but the relations you strike on the Hill through travel are profound and lasting. I know that, since I had my time as travel agent to the stars. Defense pays for a lot of the travel expenses, which keeps the money off the Congressional books so the constituents won’t be able to track how much is spent on the junkets that are so necessary for effective oversight.

Being responsible for the care and feeding of Senate Staff, much less the Members themselves, can be a little stressful.

I will never, ever, leave the house again for an airport in the DC metro area without checking the ticket- since I have done the exact same thing at least four times. Something about running out of time, airspeed and ideas all at the same time, accompanied by complete professional humiliation.

Washington is not the only great capital with issues in that regard. You can get screwed up in New York, with LaGuardia and JFK, of course, and even Chicago has Midway to distract you from mighty O'Hare.

But at least we are generally confused in the same language. It becomes more challenging elsewhere, and I am not talking about Heathrow and Gatwick, or whatever that other mystery field is near London.

We were on a Congressional trip and I was not the action officer, though all the adrenaline came on line quickly enough. It was like this:

We had been walking in Shanghai. The rest of the group, the staffers who had the special clearances, were talking to someone in a place where some other people were doing something special. We had no need to know, and we were thankful.

The Liaison officer and I were cut loose for the morning, and we took a stroll in the old town by the river.

We passed he Peace Hotel, where a jazz band of octogenarians, placed apparently in suspended animation during the Great Cultural Revolution, still plays the songs they played for the Colonials in 1935. Near that corner is an imposing but somewhat forlorn bronze lion in front of an equally imposing Greek Revival Building of commerce, left long behind by the Brits on whose Empire the sun finally set.

We arrived at the river's edge after about an hour's wander. Across the river rose Shanghai's equivalent of the Space Needle: the 468 meter Oriental Pearl TV Tower, tallest in Asia and third tallest in the world. It's graceful spire transitions to a great sphere about three quarters of the way down, just like a snake that had swallowed a basketball.

Silhouetted before it is the only public representation of Great Helmsman Mao I saw in town, aside from my cigarette lighter. His statue leans forward in heroic pose, wind sweeping his upward-turned and confident face. A line of children, cute as buttons in colorful sweaters and windbreakers moved along the street under the careful gaze of their caregivers.

"Look!" I said to the Liaison Officer. "It's the Emerging Threat!"

Later, we had collected the delegation from the Consulate, we approached, but eventually agreed with the PLA troopers at the visa gate that they did not want to be photographed with us.

We piled back into the van. We took a measured drive back to the southeast to Pudong Airport. I was a little concerned that we were inside the two-hour advance time I normally reserve for international flights, but traffic was light, and I wasn't responsible for this trip.

We arrived at the "Departing Flights" drop off point about an hour and ten minutes before the flight. In daylight, the heroic proportions radiated confidence. We piled the bags onto travel carts, bade farewell to the embassy driver, and rolled into the vast and eerily quiet hall.

We were looking for Asiana Airlines to wing us to some other Asian airport. I couldn't find the airline listed anywhere. I looked at the escort officer, horror beginning to show in her eyes as the worst event in a liaison officer’s career began to unfold. It was confirmed moments later by a perky Chinese girl at Information a few moments later. "Oh," she said in the most terrifying words it is possible to hear on international travel. "You are at Wrong Airport. So sorry." She smiled.

I won't tell of the asses and elbows that flew from that point, the broken Chinese, or the horror which dawned in the eyes of the Consulate driver, who we found still at the curb as we hurled bags two or three at a time into the back.

He burned rubber on the way out, and the skill and audacity of this Chinese hero and the ostensible forty-minute drive to Hongqiao National was a wonder to behold.

The intricate timing of trip hung in the balance, and we drove places most official vans will never see. At the airport we moved with deliberate speed through the chokepoints of airport tax, ticketing, Immigration and Passport Control, adrenaline coursing through our veins.

As it turned out, we were comfortably seated on the airplane with nearly three minutes to spare. Relaxed and refreshed, we pushed back from the gate for the next flight leg.

Wondering where in Asia the bags were going to go...I was just pleased that I was not the liaison officer, and responsible for their whereabouts. I had been there before, and had no interest in going back.

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