Kris Anderson kept moving, looking around my office, which unaccountably had a wood fireplace set in one corner.

“Nice idea,” he said, pointing at it, “wish I’d thought that far when I was building the winery.”

I thanked him but didn’t inform him about Allen Weh being the guy who actually designed and built the place. Banker’s Life just took the over-priced lease and kept it for the Agency’s use. Who paid, or was paying for what, I‘d likely never know.

“See you in the early hours, the desert doesn’t warm up at the fiesta until after dawn,” was all he said before shaking my hand again and departing.

Pat closed the office door, leaving me alone for the first time in a while.

I picked up the phone and called my wife. She answered on the second ring like she was expecting the call.

“So, what do you really think?” I asked her, knowing our conversation about returning to the Nam wasn’t over.

“You’re still having problems with all that, I know,” she said.

“I know,” I replied, thinking about the incident in the hotel room, something I wasn’t going to tell her about.

“If you were fine you wouldn’t have had to use me as an excuse,” she went on, “you’d have simply told them no and left. But you didn’t because despite it all you still feel that you need to go, and you don’t. You’ve done your part, how many times? You’re still doing it right now? Who in hell goes through what you’ve been through, what we’ve been through, and joins the CIA to be out there doing God knows what?”

I inhaled and exhaled slowly and quietly, waiting for her to get it all out.

“Tell me that you won’t consider it no matter what they offer you. You’ve got to promise one of those weird Marine Corps oaths or I won’t get any sleep anymore.”

“I promise you on Smedley Butler’s grave that I won’t go or consider going over there again,” I murmured.

Smedley D. Butler was one of my greatest Marine heroes and she knew I did not take such oaths lightly.

“Thank you, and that person you are associating with is a leering moron,”

I waited for her to hang up but only silence came back to me.

“Well, did you like the leering?”

She hung up.

I called Herbert. He answered, which always surprised me because I knew he didn’t likely have a full-time desk at Langley. The analysts had all that. Tony was on the move from one place to another to monitor and be there for his field agents. He wouldn’t reveal how many were in his ‘corral.’
The story that I gave him about the agents was bothering me because what had happened just had too many inconsistencies in it.

“Who were they?” Herbert asked, as I finally ran down.

“FBI,” I repeated.

“Their I.D. names and badge numbers,” Tony asked, with a hint of impatience in his voice.

“Hell, Tony, I don’t know. They came out of and went into the FBI car following me.”

“So, you, CIA agent, and Colonel Weh season agent with the DIA just believed them? And exactly what did you sign? Could you have those forms faxed to me in D.C.?”

I said nothing, growing embarrassed for both myself and Weh.

“There’s no tail on you any longer from the FBI and there’s no renewal of top-secret clearances,” Herbert intoned like he was doing so to an idiot. “You either have it or you don’t and about the only validity at all in your story is that they are indeed very sensitive about being called special agents.”

I asked him about the flight and the call to my wife.

“I had one of our companies take care of that, and I had my assistant call your wife. Weh doesn’t care who’s on the flight or what it’s about. He’s all about the money and is an analyst for Marine Intelligence, not a field agent.”

I shook my head. Everything he said made perfect sense. I asked about the ballooning adventure ahead of me in the morning.

“You want to go ballooning so you get to go ballooning, and why Weh’s Charter Services flew you because I had to get you back in time for the flight.

Balloonists don’t keep very effective or dependable schedules.

“You know Kris Anderson?” I asked, truly surprised.

“No, his father, the ballooning hero who crossed the Atlantic with Ben Abruzzo and that Newman fellow.”

“You’re into ballooning?” I asked, as the surprises just kept coming.

“Not at all, he’s really a miner in New Mexico of some success and some people here know people there who got to him.”

“Who am I supposed to be when Kris asks me why he’s taking me up in the morning?

“That’s what you do, not me. Threaten his life and sell him a life insurance policy like you do with everyone else. How ironic a circumstance, considering what your background is.” The phone disconnected and I set the receiver back into its cradle.

It was the typical way Herbert ended phone calls, and I knew I was becoming sort of like him at that and didn’t like it.

I pushed the red button that buzzed on Pat’s desk. My phone rang and I answered.

“Do we have any Beta of the parking lot in the back?” I asked. I knew we had an a-bank of recorders, no doubt CIA installed that led me to believe that there were ten cameras, although I hadn’t seen any of the cambers except the one in the corner of my office next to the fireplace.

“I suppose,” she answered.

“I need a tape of the back where a black sedan has been parked for days, although it’s gone now. If we have a Beta then bring it in. I want the plate number from it.”

I hung up without saying goodbye, just like Herbert but paused afterward thinking about how to kick that habit. I needed the people with whom I worked to actually like me. I wondered if that was my PTSD, as everyone seemed to be calling it, or just endemic to my personality. Please, thank you and compliments for the smallest things would help but they took time, and my habits, like Herbert’s, were not well developed. I sold life insurance in amounts that had made me a star in Tom Thorkelson’s agency, but I’d done it and continued to do it all the wrong way, at least for building and holding long-term relationships.

I went through the mail and was astounded to see a bill from Charter Services. I tore it open. The plane trip was being invoiced to me personally for seven thousand six hundred dollars. I was shocked. Herbert was crazy or his humor was out of control. I sat fuming.

A few minutes passed before there was a knock at my door. I got up and opened it, not sure I wasn’t happier when the now well-bonused woman would just barge in without knocking and never close the door when she left.

She handed me a black Beta tape. Without any delay, I walked through the agency, out into the gallery that separated Banker’s Life and Charter Services.
I didn’t knock there, and no one was at the counter so I walked down the hall to Weh’s office. The door was open. He leaned back in his swivel chair and expansively clasped his hands behind his head, leaning back as he did so.

“You came to tell me the truth about everything,” he said with a big smile.

He had one gold tooth that sparkled, but only when he smiled, kind of like the Tony Curtis character in the movie Great Race. I wondered why he hadn’t had his dentist put in ceramic but it didn’t matter.

I tossed the Beta tape onto his desk. “You got a recorder?” I asked.

“For what” he asked, picking up the tape.

“Those clones weren’t FBI, we both bought it without thinking to check out their identification and my people don’t hold out much respect for me right now because of that. Run the tape, get the plate, and then run that with your DIA contacts. Let’s see what we can find.”

I tossed the bill onto his desk.

“And what the hell is this? I didn’t charter your plane.”

“And I didn’t call your wife, but someone’s got to pay so I’m starting with you since you intend to be the mystery man around here. I don’t believe anything I’ve come to know about you.

“Let me use your phone,” I said, holding out my right hand.

Weh shrugged and handed the receiver to me. I dialed Herbert’s secret number, and he answered.

“What am I supposed to do with the Charter bill for over seven grand?” I asked.

I listened for half a minute and then handed the phone back to Weh. He listened but said nothing, and then began writing before he held out the phone and looked at it.

“He hung up on you,” I laughed.

“I’m supposed to bill this insurance company in Washington,” he said. “I know that address,” he mused on, staring at the Blue Cross Blue Shield address.

“That’s the National Reconnaissance Organization building.”

“Was,” I said, still smiling,” It would appear that they will likely become quite a client of yours I would think since you don’t appear to have too many.”

“You put in cameras all around the building?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I reckon so,” I replied.

“With no permission from the management?”

“Aren’t we a little beyond that?” I said, shaking my head. “The DIA wouldn’t spring for the cameras and installation, I would presume.”

“I’ll look into the matter,” Weh finally said, pulling out a manila envelope and putting the tape inside. “I presume you want this back.”

“Nah, we have ten machines, and God knows how many tapes. I’m not with the DIA.”

“You don’t have an FN number, or even understood what it was when we talked in the men’s room that day.”

“I tend to forget conversations I have with attractive men in restrooms,” I replied.

“Very funny,” he replied, looking away, possibly a bit embarrassed.

“But I do have a number, and it’s a two oh two area code number that I’ll give you so you can call and ask about me and see what you might learn.”

I pulled out my pen and made believe I would need a piece of paper to write the number down, but Weh never moved to provide me with his notepad, instead turning his attention back to the envelope.

“Take me about a few hours.”

“That’s quite alright,” I replied, putting the pen back in my pocket. “I’ll need to see you later anyway, as you will probably need or want a life insurance policy.”

Weh’s head snapped up. “Why would I need life insurance at all?” he asked, sounding surprised for the first time since I’d walked into his office.

“Oh, I think life’s about to get a bit more interesting and risky for you and me both.”

I went home, ate dinner, and went to bed early, or tried to, almost too excited to sleep, wondering what it would be like to float up in the air inside the basket of Kris’ balloon. Julie, Michael, and Bozo plopped themselves down on the end of the bed. I could hear the strains of the music from Cosmos that my wife had started to play on the stereo in the living room, letting me know that I was ever on her mind and that my state of mind was of concern to her.
Bozo laid on her pillow, which Mary hated, and stared over at me, his aging eyes emitting rays of wisdom that only animals who’ve come to know you can project. Julie and Michael toyed with him a bit but not too much as his method of teaching them proper feline handling had been bloody and painful.
I sat up and enjoyed the attention, knowing that sleep would be a long time from coming. Getting out of bed I joined the trio in heading for the living room where Mary waited. I reflected upon the fact that despite the crazy horrendous places I’d been to and states I’d found myself in, I was gifted with a life that was quite stunningly wonderful.

I was up at three the next morning. Kris had been quite accurate in his comment about the desert air before dawn. It was cold enough outside that I had to come back inside to get a fleece jacket, which also made me wonder about how cold it would be up at higher altitudes. Albuquerque was already at over 5300 feet in elevation, higher than Denver, and the air above ground had to be colder than down below due to lower density, or so I thought.

The drive to the fiesta ground was uneventful and the directions to find the balloon had been short and specific. “Just follow the gas flares,” Kris had said, and the flares in front of me were rising up like gas flares from natural gas waste pipe outlets as gasoline manufacturing sites. I pulled up in the Rover to one balloon team and mentioned Anderson’s name.

Everyone knew him and half a dozen crew workers pointed toward the Rio Grande River, further west. I drove down and pulled up next to the biggest of the flaring but grounded balloons.

Kris was inside the basket, which was much larger than I would have ever imagined. I parked and approached, surprised and startled when he reached up and shot some more gas up into the massive envelope to keep it standing straight up in the air.

“Climb in,” he said, projecting his usual warm smile and friendly attitude. The man was impossible not to like.

“Big,” was all I could think to say as I crawled over the leather-covered top edge of the basket.

“AX eleven,” Kris responded, hitting the gas again, which now projected great heat downward as the millions of BTU energy seemed to almost literally explode up into the throat of the ballon’s nylon structure. I realized that staying warm would likely not be a problem as long as the gas was ignited regularly.

“This particular balloon will lift your Rover over there if we so choose to do that, but I like to fly with as few passengers and weight as possible. You need to toss your keys to the crew chief as that Range Rover is a most excellent chase vehicle and we need that with these arroyos and all.”

I nodded my head and pulled out my keys, surprised by the request. The Rover was a very expensive vehicle, but it was also insured and by requesting it Kris, I knew, was welcoming me into the group he’d assembled to launch, crew, chase, and then disassemble the monster balloon and all the stuff that went with it.

Three heavy ropes were being held by six crew members, as the balloon bobbed a bit and weaved, the envelope leaning first one way and then the other. I wondered how many times a gust of air might have lifted all six rope holders but then banished the thought from my mind. It was becoming evident that Kris Anderson was a master at being not just a pilot but a world record holder in his own right.

All of a sudden, the crew let go of their ropes all at once, probably from some invisible message from Kris, but the moment was so dramatically emotional for me that all I could do was look up, down, and all around in wonder. The experience was proving to me even more than I thought it would be…much more.

The balloon surged upward as Kris pulled the lever of the triple burner system that generated such massive amounts of gas pressure and then giant flames of blue, yellow, and white gas upward, turning the balloon envelope almost instantly into the largest gas lantern ever to be seen by anybody, or at least by me. The introductory meeting with the balloon that had struck the hotel we had stayed at out never the airport upon first coming into the state of New Mexico had been nothing compared to what I was experiencing.

The balloon rose much quicker than I thought, as the ground dropped away and dawn’s first light allowed me to see the Rio Grande River from above for the first time. The snaking line runs from one horizon to the other. Up and up we went until Kris, studying the instruments that I finally took enough time to look at, indicated that we were at ten thousand feet. I looked out and was stunned by the beauty of what was below, out and away, as the sun’s edged body of light was just beginning to peak up from the eastern horizon.
Kris backed off the gas and complete silence was the result.

“We’ll just float along for a while and catch the lower met so we can form a box and try to land where we took off from,” Kris related, smiling at my obvious reaction to my first balloon ride.

“Met,” I said, contemplatively, “like a layer of meteorological data. In artillery, we used balloons to gauge those because our shells were passing so high into the atmosphere.”

“Same here, although you probably didn’t notice them since this is your visit to any ballooning facility.”

“That’s true, and we don’t have to drop anything on anybody,” I added.

We both laughed.

“Not unless we have to go to the bathroom badly,” he said, causing me to look down with a slightly different perspective than I’d had before.

There was, indeed, no place to go to the bathroom at all in the basket.

“Now, I’m going to show you the ropes, quite literally, as the vent has to never be mistaken for the cord that pulls out the top when we land.” Kris laughed when he showed me the two different cords, the top pulling one braided with red material twisted inside it.

“Then, as we fly, as you fly, I’m going to teach you how to pilot this thing. From now until we land, in whatever condition that is, you will pilot and I’ll just be a talking passenger.” Kris put both hands up and clapped them together suddenly like I’d seen card players do in movies about gambling and Vegas. He was done and it was all on me.

My hands shook as I grasped the small brass lever located up on the bottom of the burners. He nodded his head. I realized at that moment that Kris Anderson was no ordinary balloonist or man. I’d wanted adventure and the man beside me was going to serve it up whether I was too frightened to go on or not.