Vic Socotra

10 June 2009

Foot Traffic

(Entrance to Arlington Hall at right. Underpass entrance is dead ahead)

Strong (and unusual) morning thunderstorms shook of the day, big time. They snarled in crimson on the radar weather displayed on the computer, and the sound of them advancing through the open balcony door, chewing up the commute, helped me time their arrival with a fair amount of precison.

When flash-to-bang got down to a couple seconds it was time to crank down the windows and shut the door. One of the last I was able to time, before the lighting actually started to leap up from Big Pink’s roof and light and sound blended into one, hammered the proud corporate headquarters tower and instantaneously sent a a jolt of a bazzllion volts into the steel bones of the building.

Lights and air conditioning bubbled at the bus, and all those poor microcircuits in the server farm that powers the company IT network went in a whiff of acrid smoke. Zzzzzpppp!

I didn’t know that, since The Intern needed to get to work across the street. It is about eight minutes, door to door from Big Pink, and the commute cannot be beat. Unless the skies are alive with water and electricity, that is.

The only civilized thing to do was to take the Bluesmobile and drop her at Arlington Hall- er, The George Schultz Center for Foreign Service Training.

I still think of the whole thing as a sort of betrayal. I know the nei
ghborhood was on the skids at the time, but what a location to give up in exchange for an Air Force Base in the District!

One thing marks the distinct difference between the old and the new residents of Arlington Hall: as Secretary of State, they requested George Schultz take the polygraph as an example for his people. He agreed to be an example, and told them to shove their lie detectors where the sun don’t shine.

When the Army and DIA were done with the Arlington Hall campus, Federal regulation stipulated that the surplus property must be offered to other elements of the Government before the General Services Administration can offer it for sale or lease to the private sector. What a piece of property to offer! Rolling terrain on the highlands above the Four Mile Run, green and leafy, cooler than the surrounding neighborhoods.

All that had to be destroyed was the history contained in the wooden buildings that sprawled in back of the stately colonial girl’s school the Army seized at the outbreak of hostilities.

It was that history made in those ancient buildings that had made the place one of the pivot-points of the American effort in World War Two- literally, the American Bletchley Park of code-breaking.

State put up some very nice new brick buildings, and split off part of the property to be used by the National Guard Bureau, which likewise had expansion on its agenda.

Only two things remain on the prope rty, aside from the heroic HQ building. Two foot underpasses, one that connects Buckingham with the front gate under Route 50, and the other under George Mason Drive to the west.
That is the wider and shorter of the two things that remain, but the tunnel's adits are surrounded by tall barbed wire on both ends to prevent access to The Hall, and lead only to a County park to the west.

I wish I had archival materials to research what it looked like in the day, and how tings were organized over there. I have examined the aerial imagery from the 1930s of placid Arlington, but the earthworks of the War of Northern Aggression are hard to distinguish since the trees have grown back, and so much has changed that it is difficult to get oriented.

The Girl's school dates from the latter part of the 19th century and must have been an attractive campus for the Army- close to the Pentagon, and across the street from the sleek new garden apartments at Buckingham.

The rain blew against the windows of the car, and wondered if I could bluff my vehicle onto the campus with a badge from somewhere else.

I had penetrated the perimeter on foot already. It had been The Intern's first day at work, so I walked down with her to ensure no panic attacks occurred in her first contact with the Government as a prospective employee. Bluffed in through the gate with the pink Pentagon Badge; got her to the visitor's center and the armed guard,

which is where I thought I would finally come up short, but no. The renta-guard waved me through the turnstile and I was free to roam around as I chose.

Another intern hooked up with her along the way, and I got them to the module where they were to labor for the summer and bade them adieu.

Since I was o the compound anyway, I decided that security would be even more minimal on the way out, and bounded up some steps that lead from the new buildings to the old Colonial-style HQ.

It was a little surreal, looking at the tall white columns of the portico, walking up Ceremonial Drive with exactly the same vantage point as the pictures of Arlington Hall Station with the old OD-green Ford sedans in front.

I contemplated walking in the front door of the ceremonial entrance, but was starting to get late for work, so I kept moving. Sure enough, there was a subway-style comb gate that worked effortlessly on the outward journey, just as it had for the Myers spy team, and for the moles that the Soviets had planted in Arlington Hall Station back in the Venona days.

Kim Philby, the Soviet Master Spy, would not have taken the gate exit; I assume he would simply have driven out Ceremonial Drive in the Embassy car and head east on Route 50. Nothing to worry about, he was here to help The Cousins establish the new CIA.

That day, I walked down the long placid drive under the bright green trees. At the edge of the compound there is another tunnel, still open, since it does not penetrate the security perimeter.

In the rain, I just rolled to a stop in front of the visitor’s center, dropped off The Intern and rolled back to George Mason to go to work.

It is really the long way from Big Pink, and the front gate is much faster.

No one uses it to get to work, since the Buckingham neighborhood is now mostly foreign nationals who could not qualify to teach their native languages to the Foreign Service.

It is a dark tunnel, and based on the trash and smell of urine, used to provide improvised housing in the hours of darkness. It would have been busy, back in the glory days, with plenty of foot traffic to ease the concern of getting jumped in the darkness. Dark water stood in puddles from the recent rains and the musty acrid smell was strongest in the middle of the tunnel, under the median of the six traffic lanes above.

I popped back out into the sunlight on the north side of the boulevard across from the Red Cross building. As I turned up the hill I wondered what that place had been in its day. Looking back at the tunnel entrance, I saw that someone long ago had ensured that there was a handsome art deco inscription that marked the name of the highway, and a welcoming light with an antique green metal shade.

That day, when I headed back to Big Pink to pick up the car, I was swimming against a commuter tide composed entirely of ghosts.

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