Customs and Immigration at LAX were located in terminal two where the Flying Tiger plane taxied into. There was no jet bridge, as most airports were installing instead of the giant metal staircase that was set up to rest against the left front side of the 747’s fuselage. Before the front door was opened, I was able to give my young ‘escort’ back his Steyr and get him to promise that he’d never given it up. There’d been no incident that might require its use on the flight, and why someone at either end making such a decision had determined there might be was troublesome in several ways. Did the person making that decision have any clue about the inherent cabin safety of international travel? How had a weapon been allowed to pass through security? Why was I thought to be in danger once out of the country, since there’d been talk but no real physical threat to my life?

I went down the stairs. The kid traveling with me had little understanding that if he told his handler the truth about what had happened it would likely be career-ending for him and could even be problematic for me. The whole mission had been one of strange controversy and revealing positions and relationships.

I walked to the first bathroom I saw, the kid from the flight hanging right with me. Customs and Immigration were nearby, their counters filled with people from the flight who had no checked luggage, others waiting for the bigger bags and then people like me headed for a bathroom. All amenities were outside the Customs and Immigration area I noted, not used to the international terminal as my previous visits to other countries had been made without any need of documents or inspections.

Once in the bathroom, I headed for a stall, as did Tom. I went inside to check and make sure my few documents, papers, and money were in order before I went through the gauntlet outside. Tom closed the door to his stall so I waited outside once I was done. When he came out I turned him right back around and went into the stall he was vacating with him. I closed the door.

Tom had taken a blanket from the Flying Tiger flight, with the words of that airline scrolled all across it. I knew what he had wrapped inside. There was no way to go through security, as light as it might be, with the holster and the Steyr.

Tom stared at me strangely for a few seconds, not moving, like he was trying to decide about something important.

“This won’t work,” I said, ignoring his strange slight delay and expression before taking the ball of a blanket away from him.

“You wearing a “T” shirt?” I asked, holding the mass under my left arm and then waiting.

“Yes,” he replied, looking embarrassed.

“Strip it off. If anyone saw you putting this blanket in the trash then that would be it. You can’t steal the airline supplies and not expect trouble, not when they’re as noticeable as this, and there’s no trash can in this bathroom for obvious reasons. There’s that one slot in the wall there but it’s too narrow and likely alarmed for detecting exactly what you’d like to put in there.”

Tom got his coat and shirt off awkwardly in the small space. I was happy to see that his undershirt wasn’t one of those spaghetti ‘wife-beater’ things, as the holster and Steyr were fairly substantial in size when folded together.

Tom got into this clothing, retying his tie quickly and expertly. I pointed at the exit as men came and went.

“See you on the other side,” I said with a smile.

“Thanks for everything, he said, not with a smile but with an expression of disappointment I spotted but didn’t understand.

I waited for a few minutes, enough for him to get into the line and pass n through security.

Three men came through the door together, all talking and heading over to the porcelain latrines. They laughed talked and then went out through the door with me right behind them. Once out on the concourse, I walked to a trash can set against the far wall and gently dropped my “T” shirt wrapped package in through the levered side panel. No one seemed to notice but I didn’t make the mistake of looking around to see if anyone was paying attention…which I knew would be the easiest way to attract attention.

Passing through the line with nothing but the stuff in my hands, the black passport on top, was very fast. The passport got a slight hesitation from one of the uniformed men but he quickly handed it back and nodded. I moved on out into the corridor and turned toward where the main terminal concourse had to be.

Herbert walked casually out of the gated waiting area and joined me.

“We’ve got to talk,” I said.

“Sounds like one of those relationship things,” he replied.

I walked quickly, leading Herbert toward the big windows that lined the entire side of the main concourse, noting that we were on the second floor of the place.

“What are we doing?” Herbert asked.

“I’m hoping to catch a look at that kid you sent, to make sure he’s making it out of here.”

“What kid?” he replied, so much surprise in his voice that I knew he was telling me the truth. If Herbert hadn’t sent him then who had?

I got to a big section of the thick angled glass and leaned both hands onto it staring down toward the street below, which had less people on it and cars waiting than I expected.

“What kid?” Herbert asked again, his tone this time mystified.

I told him the story of meeting Tom onboard, and then all that ensued.

“There’s no way,” Herbert said, when I finished by telling him about how I’d gotten rid of the Steyr and the holster.

I scanned the people below, going from one to another, only concentrating on you men wearing suits, and there weren’t very many.

“It could never happen in the Agency,” Herbert said. “We would never send somebody like that. If danger was presumed to occur on a flight, then you’d be instantly off that flight, plus analysts never go to the field. Never. And the weapon wasn’t Agency either. No young kid is going to get a Steyr anyway. Where would he get it and why would such a young man pay a third of a year’s pay to have it?”

A bad feeling started to rise up from my stomach, but I said nothing.

Suddenly, I saw him below. He was heading straight out into the street where a big black limo sat waiting. The passenger door of the limo opened and a well-dressed oriental man got out, immediately opening the back door to allow Tom to get in. The doors both closed and the limo drove off.

I turned to Herbert.

“He’s mafia,” I breathed out. “He just got into a big limo with them and he knows I’m with the CIA.”

“How do you know that?” Herbert said, leaning to look out for the car that was already gone.

“Wow, I thought I was being so damned clever and clear-headed,” I said more to myself than Herbert, turning to lean with my back to the glass.

“He could have shot you on the plane,” Herbert offered.

“That was the only smart thing I did,” I replied, with a wry smile. “I took his automatic away right after we were aboard and didn’t give it back to him until we got off.”

“You gave it back to him?” Herbert said, in surprise.

I stood thinking. The expression I’d seen o his face in the men’s room and his hesitation when I’d asked for the package came rushing back at me. He was a baby-faced young kid, yet there we were, with him no doubt thinking that he might shoot me where I stood in the restroom.

“He was no more a kid than I was when I came out of that valley,” I finally said, realizing just how close I’d come without ever knowing it until now.

“Predators give no warning,” said to Herbert, using the expression I sometimes told others who thought that American television and movies filled with high-threat aggressive males were what life in the field, of either combat or intelligence was really like.

“What was it you wanted to talk about?” he asked, not going any further into what had become an FNG tale of the highest order.

“I can’t go to Cape May yet,” I said. “I need some time to get home, get the new companies off the ground, get my agency to the point where I can leave it, and also see my family. I can’t do this without my wife’s approval and participation.

“Don’t you think that you just proved just how badly you need some sort of training and as soon as possible?” Herbert asked.

“Give me a week?” I asked.

“It’s true that you probably don’t need a stint at Explosives Ordinance Disposal school, nor more work in cultural accommodation, but there is stuff, like what you just went through that might just save either a mission and/or your life.”

“I understand,” I replied, “But can it wait a week?”

“I’ll consult with your training officer,” Herbert replied, not sounding enthusiastic.

“Who’s my training officer?” I asked, not that I would recognize any name he gave me since my experience with Agency personnel was about as limited as it could get.

Herbert lit a cigarette, a Camel no less. I wondered if everyone in the Agency smoked the same brand of cigarettes, but that was saying the man on Okinawa was Agency which I had a real hard time believing. So far, other than Herbert, and likely Bob Mardian back at the Western White House, it seemed that everyone I was meeting who said they were with the company wasn’t really.

“I need the dip you’re carrying,” Herbert said, conversationally, not making anything about how humorous his introduction as my training officer was.

“I hope Hill never finds out about my using his name on an official document,” I said, handing over the black passport.

It’d been great to use it, almost like I was some person of import instead of what I was, which was someone or something I wasn’t at all sure about.

“Hill’s Agency,” Herbert replied in almost a whisper, “So there’ll be no problem. Might have been if something had gone wrong, which it almost did, but no harm no foul, as this gets destroyed and its use will be removed from the emigration database.

“I have to get another car, maybe one of those new Range Rovers or something like that to go with the hot air balloon,” I said, as Herbert was making no move to go anywhere. At some point, there had to be a plan made to get me aboard another flight out of LAX but the man who was in charge of that, standing next to me, said nothing about it.

“You’re not getting a hot air balloon,” Herbert replied, surprising me. Nothing I’d asked for so far had been denied to me.

“You’ll just get yourself killed and, besides, the time it takes to take care of those things you’re not going to have. There’s a guy you can tie up with who knows all about balloons and will be more than happy to take you on as a ‘friend,’ as long as he doesn’t know what you do, but you can get the Rover if that’ll make you happy.”

I hadn’t expected to lose the balloon but hadn’t expected the Rover to be instantly approved, not at a cost of around twenty-five thousand dollars either. The Volks and the Chevy had to go. Mary could drive the underpowered, although wonderful, Mercedes 240D while I could have something befitting someone chasing my hot air balloons across the desert. I felt relieved a bit from the inadequacy I’d demonstrated aboard the recent flight.

“And stop thinking like James Bond, which is another reason you need the training,” Herbert said. “You somehow gave yourself away in Korea and it almost cost you your life and the success of the mission. Your ideas are good enough that that the mission might have been recovered but its eventual success will be much more assured if you’re here to continue running it.”

“Thank you,” I replied, not believing the man had said what he said as a compliment.

“How many agents have you run like me?” I asked, finally, wanting to talk about getting back to Albuquerque as quickly as possible but not wanting Herbert to think I was pushing him.

“There are, and very probably have never been, any agents like you,” he said, stepping toward a nearby trash can to get rid of his cigarette butt. “It’s yet to be determined whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Your results from your first mission, so far, as pretty startling in almost every respect, both good and bad. You seem to be brilliant but damaged and I don’t know exactly how to work with those two readily revealed elements properly.”

Herbert walked away, but not to the airport’s exit, instead we moved together back toward the same concourse I’d walked out of when I’d still been so sincerely and mistakenly concerned about Tom’s safety.

“Where are we headed?’ I asked but Herbert didn’t reply, instead stopping at the first attended gate we came to.

He walked directly to the counter and motioned to the fight person turning to notice his approach.

“We need a baggage cart ride to the hanger,” he said, handing her a card he’d taken from his coat pocket.

“Sit,” he said to me.

We both sat in two seats right next to the opening out toward the tarmac. Only a couple of minutes passed before the woman was back from wherever she’d gone. She handed Herbert’s card back and then motioned for us to proceed through the door. Once through and down the stairs a baggage cart appeared but had no baggage in any of its attached bins.

“Where are we going?” I asked again but got the same reply I’d gotten earlier.

The baggage cart was surprisingly quick as we headed out across the vast expanse of concrete. It took only a few minutes to reach a big hanger with the two giant doors on the front of it slid open. The cart stopped and we got off. There was only one plane inside the hanger, and its front door gaped open with a small set of stairs levered down to the floor.

“Saberliner,” Herbert finally said. “We’ll be at Kirtland in New Mexico in an hour and a half. I’m going on to Washington. There’s a Land Rover dealership in Albuquerque. Go visit. A man named Kris Anderson is a balloonist, among other things. Find a way to meet him, like I know only you can do. Get all the other stuff you have to do to make this work. My reputation is on the line here so take ten days.”

“What about my reputation?” I asked, sitting in one of the plush seats.

“You don’t have a reputation,” Herbert replied, sitting down in a seat directly across the single narrow aisle from me.

The plane automatically closed and then taxied out of the hanger onto the runway, like it was being handled by robots, both hidden behind canvas drop-down cloths. The plane waited for nothing, as far as I could tell, immediately going to full power and getting into the air in less than a minute. It was a powerful little jet but nothing like that of the F-14 I’d ridden from Korea to Okinawa, but then no aircraft takeoff would likely ever be similar to that one again in my life.

I looked over at Herbert, but he was asleep, or making believe he was asleep so as not to answer any more of my questions. I had no watch, as my Seiko was back at the hotel in Seoul, the hotel I simply had to get to a telephone to ship my stuff or I’d lose everything I’d left with them. That worried me simply because I wasn’t quite sure a phone call and giving them shipping information with the card they had on file for payment would work. The plane started to descend from whatever high altitude it’d been flying at well before a single hour had passed, which was okay with me. I peered out one of the ‘ace of spades’ shaped small windows and was relieved to see the Sandia Mountains coming quickly at us. The plane was faster than Herbert knew, or at least said. The man was an enigma wrapped in a mystery, kind of person, however, so I was constantly left guessing.

The plane landed without orbiting or any of that. It just flew directly onto a runway and then began its taxi to wherever we were going.

“Wait until you see this hanger,” Herbert said, coming out of whatever rest state he’d been in.

The plane rolled straight into a huge building. I looked out my small window to see that the entire huge structure was about four to five feet above the concrete. Giant wheels on heavy thing pylons of steel supported the entire structure. I wasn’t surprised. I’d seen it in the distance from before but acted impressed for Herbert’s sake.

“Those wheels are all from B-36 Peacemaker bombers that used to be kept inside until their usefulness passed. They were cut up for scrap in Arizona and these wheels are all that’s left.”

I knew about the hanger and the wheels but the information about Kirtland having been a resting place for the giant intercontinental bombers was new and interesting data.

The crew did not deplane, in fact, they never came out of their seats as the door opened and the ladder went down.

“Okay, hot shot, you’re on your own,” Herbert said. “We’ll be in touch in a few days unless things change. Your son swims meet this afternoon so try to make it if you can. Keeping a family together with what we do is damn near impossible.”

I got up and smiled at my control officer, trainer, and God knew what else.

It wasn’t like what we did was ‘we’ at all. My work was like something living in another dimension to his, except for certain points along the way where our differential dimensions touched one another.

“How am I supposed to get home?” I asked, expecting him to let me know that some transportation was ready and waiting.

“Call your wife,” Herbert replied, laughing.

I went on the little steps and turned to watch them automatically disappear. The twin turbines, which had never stopped turning, spooled up. I backed away as the plane once more rolled out to the runway. The giant doors of the hanger slid shut faster than I would ever have calculated. Suddenly I was in the dark, or the near dark only broken by the space that ran around the back of the building.

The interior lights went on, as if automatically, but that wasn’t the case.

“Hey, stranger, what’s up?” a voice yelled out from a good distance away.

There was no missing the low gravelly tone.

“Matt?” I asked.

“In the flesh,” he replied, moving toward me with his right hand out. “I’m your ride.”

I let out a sigh, realizing why Herbert had laughed when he’d mentioned my wife having to be called. He was a strange man, I knew, but there was no questioning about how far thinking and efficient he was.

Matt pointed across the inside of the cavernous space and I spotted a small door next to one of the huge main doors.

I walked the distance to it, with Matt joining me when I got to the door. The bright high-altitude sun of New Mexico nearly blinded me when we stepped out. A tattered Jeep I hadn’t noticed from the plane sat near the door.

“It ain’t much, but it’s all we got,” Matt said, getting into the driver’s side. “No luggage, traveling light, like you real deal guys tend to do. Home James?”

The Jeep took off once I was aboard. The man knew my first name, where my home was, and probably that there was a swim meet in the afternoon. Was there anything these people didn’t know or weren’t learning about me? I didn’t know whether to be complimented, or worried, or both.

Matt made the underpowered vehicle move quicker than I thought possible as we traversed east up Central coming to Tramway and then headed the vehicle north toward Montgomery, not far from where my new home was.

He stopped the Jeep at the Montgomery light which was red, but he didn’t turn on red, even though there was no sign preventing it.

“We picked up a tail,” Matt said, staring into the Jeep’s rearview mirror.

“What?’ I asked, a shot of fear going through me.

“We’ll get you home and then let me look into it,” he said, still staring into the mirror, his earlier welcoming expressiveness voice turning into a professionally flattened tone. You do nothing, and I mean nothing, including looking behind us”, he finished.

All I could think of was Tom, the police/mafia in Seoul, and worse. Was everything I was doing for the country in my new career do nothing but risk the people I loved most in the world?

Matt turned the corner and drove the two blocks up the slope of the mountainside until we reached Magnolia. I had everything I could do not to look behind the Jeep. Once in my driveway, I climbed out of the Jeep but didn’t rush inside. I waited for what Matt might say next.

“Stay with the family until I reach out to you,” he instructed. “They’re in there and fine or I’d know by now.”

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