The Anvil of the Craftsman (Jon's Trilogy) Page 8

  Chapter 7: So This Is Baghdad

  Jon Anthony wearily swiped an access card to open the door of his room on the Amman Marriott's fifth floor. He thought that he was as tired as a human being could be while remaining marginally functional. Because of the late hour of the team’s check-in, he had drawn a room with two queen beds; drained, he parked his pair of bags in front of the nearest one. He briefly considered a shower or room service but ruled both out in favor of some very much overdue rest.

  The day had started seven time zones to the west. He and the rest of Colby’s team of twenty-three traveled on the same flights chosen by the State Department’s travel coordinators. Eighteen team members were, like Colby, State Department career employees. Five additions were contracted analysts. It was supposed to have been seven, but two told Colby that their plans had changed; they would find a contract with State elusive in the future. The remainder gathered in the late afternoon to begin their odyssey from Dulles International Airport, some twenty-six miles from the District of Columbia central business district.

  The day of the 6:58 PM flight came after half a week's preparation and began with bags packed; he had taken care of that well ahead of time. He wanted as good an imitation of a night’s sleep as possible before checking out of the Residence Inn. At least the cab ride had been straightforward due to the off-hour traffic.

  Dulles was the usual frenzied hub of activity, especially for weekday flights. They had dutifully shuffled through the post-9/11 security procedures as fast as the system now allowed, two and one-half hours before the scheduled departure.

  United had gotten them—and fortunately their luggage—to London’s Heathrow Airport in seven and a half hours. A six-hour daytime layover was long enough to have most of them trying to doze awhile in the waiting areas despite the sleep they had gotten on the plane, yet not long enough to leave the airport for a decent look at London.

  During the interim, fish and chips washed down with delicious pints of Guinness dry stout supplemented the in-flight airline fare. The extended connection had helped their bags again make it with them on the day’s last four-and-a-half-hour leg to Jordan’s Queen Alia International Airport.

  After many hours of travel, everyone's endurance had started to wane. Another hour was required to clear Jordanian Customs, which Colby’s State Department credentials had helped expedite, and get to their rooms on the Marriott shuttle. It was as much as any of them, even the indefatigable Thomas Marion Colby, could stand.

  Anthony had been traveling for nearly an entire day. He was finished. It took six minutes from the time the door locked behind him for his head to hit the pillow and forty-five seconds more to fall asleep to the pleasant sound of the room's climate-control fan. He stayed unconscious for the full nine hours that his schedule allowed and remembered no dream.

  It took a few seconds for Anthony to realize the chiming of his phone’s alarm was attempting to wake him. His hotel bed was almost the same as the one in his DC Residence Inn, and the similar room layout confused him for a moment. It was as though the previous day’s brutal travel schedule had all been the product of REM sleep.

  He rolled over and stared at the ceiling. His long, deep slumber had come and gone in what seemed an instant. In their travel prep advisers had told the first-timers to expect up to seven days of adjustment to cross-meridian travel; he thought that the odds of sleeping well again tonight would be good.

  Anthony’s hand drifted to the phone and shut off the insistent alarm. It was more a personal organizer now than a communication device. The CDMA technology, a memory-based US standard accessed through his Verizon contract, did not apply well to overseas travel. Most other locales would be using the SIM-card-based GSM standards, and he might have been able to buy a prepaid card here had his hardware supported one.

  He stumbled to the bathroom and began his morning routine. The shower was clean and the water hot and he began to feel alive by the time he was toweling himself dry. While he waited for the steam to clear from the mirror, wrapped in one of the Marriott’s thick robes, he heard his room’s phone buzz.

  “Good morning, Mr. Anthony, sir,” the British-accented voice greeted him. “Pardon us for the early call. There seems to be a problem with your credit card.”

  Anthony frowned. Colby’s expense check had arrived in time for him to pay his bill before the due date. “I don’t understand. The card should be in order.”

  He dug the Visa out of his wallet, which had been sitting on a chest of drawers near the bathroom. “Unfortunately my cell isn’t working in this location—could I be patched through to a toll-free number?”

  “The call may not go through from abroad, sir. Is there a regular number? Your room may be charged for the call.”

  “That’s fine, if you could connect me, please.”

  “Certainly we will, sir. It will be just a few moments.”

  When requested, he read off his bank card’s customer service line. The Marriott’s morning desk attendant promptly placed the call; Anthony then maneuvered through the usual robotic phone menu. Sixteen minutes later a human answered, asking how she could be of service to him.

  “My card doesn’t seem to be working. Can you help me with that?” Anthony lay back on the comfortable mattress. It felt better than sitting upright.

  The rep asked for his information as he was calling from a number other than the one listed with his account; she then checked a few items on her computer screen. She sounded as if she could have been one of the many flight attendants who had shepherded him yesterday across a third of the world. “Mr. Anthony, we suspended your account because of some unusual activity seen recently.”

  “Yes, ma’am, my life has been unusual lately, at least as hotel rentals and airfare goes. I’m calling from Amman, Jordan, today. My payment hopefully posted correctly on Friday?”

  “Yes, Mr. Anthony, it has. May I confirm your identity with the security questions listed in your account?”

  “Of course, thank you.” Anthony spent a minute reviewing his mother’s maiden name—Kelly—and reliving his history of high school, hometown and first pet’s name with the Visa customer service rep.

  Satisfied, she reactivated his account. “I apologize for any inconvenience, Mr. Anthony. Our actions were for your protection.” She sounded sincere in a trained and practiced way.

  “I understand completely, thank you. There will be more of this sort of thing coming; can you make a note in your system?”

  “I have already, sir. Unless I can help you with anything else, I wish you a good day on your trip.”

  “Thank you. This should take care of me today,” Anthony said, sighing after he disconnected. He placed a brief call to the Marriott’s desk person, who seemed happy after he reran the charge information.

  Recovered from the start of his morning, Anthony checked out with the cheerfully apologetic front desk crew. He deposited his bags with the rest of the team’s gear as their drivers loaded the luggage into a waiting row of Chevy Suburban SUVs in the Marriott parking lot. He even made it back inside in time to catch Tom Colby for breakfast at the hotel’s Villa Mediterrano breakfast buffet.

  “Jon. Sleep like the dead last night?” Colby still looked desynchronized.

  “Yeah, pretty much.” Anthony slid into the last chair at the table and wasted no time with his plate of eggs and toast. “Does it ever get easier?”

  Colby shrugged. “For some it does, or so they tell me. Your brain will be on East Coast time for a few days yet.”

  “Is it always the same itinerary?”

  One of the other State Department types at the table snickered. “Never fly the same route twice in a row. If the accountants can save a buck sending us through any godforsaken locale between here and the States, that’s how we go.”

  Anthony cocked his head in his characteristic way. Colby noticed the expression on his face. “Problem, Jon?”

  “Just the expression,” Anthony said, gently. “We should pr
obably be careful with saying similar things, especially once we land where we’re going. Muslim culture is much more sensitive to language that we use and hear all the time in the States.”

  Colby’s staffer nodded. “Yeah, good point. I wouldn’t want to be taken for a goddamned infidel or anything.”

  Colby winced. “Bob, Jon has a point. We aren’t just going to be schlepping around the Green Zone this time scheduling meetings. This trip is going to have a lot more local involvement. We’d better be on our best behavior. Maybe we could start now, if you catch my drift.”

  Colby’s man nodded. “Yeah, I know. Sorry, Tom. Thanks, Jon, that’s why we brought you along.”

  Anthony motioned dismissively with his table knife. “Culture equals perspective. If we’re here to make ourselves understood, misunderstandings ought to be the first things we try to avoid.”

  Colby nodded. Catching an approving look, Anthony thought he may have scored a point already this morning. If it kept paying his Visa bill, he would take it.

  The team assembled outside the Marriott to count noses and load themselves into the big Chevy SUVs for the drive south to the airport. It was roughly twenty miles, or thirty-two kilometers as Anthony reminded himself. The org chart applied to the order that they boarded the vehicles, with Colby and the higher-ups leading the way in the first truck. Contract employees took up the fifth vehicle while the last was hauling everyone’s luggage.

  The caravan of six wound its way through the city past Prince Talal bin Muhammad Square and to the highway that led south to the Amman Queen Alia International Airport. Anthony wished that they had more time here in one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in existence. It contained a wealth of sights and history reaching back to the Ptolemaic and Old Testament eras, even to the Neolithic beginning of civilization itself. Other business called him, however, and for now he could only look through the safety glass toward Amman’s seven hills and make a resolution to come back here one day.

  The airport lay beyond where the last of the city gave way to the desert, and the terrain allowed runways of modern length. AMM was the hub of Royal Jordanian Airlines that would run the US government contract flight ferrying them over the final hour-and-forty-minute leg into Baghdad. It was approaching two years since the military turned over the majority of Baghdad International to Iraqi control. Commercial air service was still limited. Besides the omnipresent cargo vendors, traffic consisted largely of military aircraft, with Iraqi Airways regional flights and a single route to the UK. Various airlines regularly announced plans to expand schedules, but they had a pattern of languishing or disappearing altogether depending on Baghdad’s varying fortune in achieving social stability.

  Their State Department contract spared them the usual airport hubbub, and they caravanned directly to their plane, an older Royal Jordanian Airbus A320. The flight was full, with Colby’s team and more than a hundred other US government employees and military personnel in the airplane’s hangar waiting to board.

  Some availed themselves of the complimentary coffee. Anthony thought better of it, electing instead to grab a bottle of water from the nearby cooler. Ground crew members were stowing luggage as the pilot tapped on the portable lectern’s microphone to get their attention.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he began in excellent English. “I am Captain Hassan, and I will be your pilot into Baghdad. I would like to welcome you if today is your first experience with Royal Jordanian Airlines. Our flight time today will be approximately two hours. We will do everything possible to make the trip in less time.”

  He turned and fired up an Arabic-language version of a PowerPoint presentation; it projected images of photographs from news stories involving the Baghdad airport. “As I have been told, for some of you this is your first trip into Baghdad. As many of us know already, there have been incidents since 2003 of aircraft coming under attack from ground fire.”

  The image changed again. “A DHL flight and two military aircraft were each hit in a period between 2003 and 2004 by a surface-to-air missile fired from outside the airport compound. God was with the crews and passengers of those airplanes, and they landed safely in all three of these cases. It seems military forces stationed near the airport for such purposes successfully dealt with the perpetrators shortly after the third incident. We have not had a similar attack since. Our landing approach to the runway, however, remains cautionary.”

  The PowerPoint slide changed again, showing an airliner in a tight spiral of descent over an airport not drawn to scale. “We will be announcing the approach sooner than usual, so you will have ample time to prepare. It is important for your safety and the safety of others that you securely belt yourself into your seat before the landing procedure begins. You will experience a number of turns that may prove uncomfortable. Believe me when I tell you that you will not want to experience them in the restroom enclosure.” General nervous laughter erupted.

  Anthony overheard one man in front of him, who shook his head in amazement, comment to another in a conspiratorial tone. “Not your usual commuter flight ….”

  The pilot ended the slide show and powered down the projector as he continued addressing the passengers. “As I said, we welcome you on behalf of Royal Jordanian. We will do everything possible to make your trip this morning a good one. Thank you for this time.”

  He left the lectern and headed for the stairs to his aircraft. The flight crew began to queue the passengers for boarding, there being little preferential seating on a government-contract shuttle. Anthony picked up his carry-on bag and hung it over his shoulder. It promised to be a stimulating flight.

  The members of the Royal Jordanian crew were gracious hosts for the trip as far as Anthony was concerned, and the cabin was comfortable enough—assuming one was a normally sized human being. Avoiding the Syrian border, their route took them to the northeast across Jordan’s panhandle and over the bleak landscape of Iraq’s Al Anbar Province. The pilot was on the intercom briefly to announce the border crossing, and Colby’s team craned to look out the windows at the desert, the land that constituted their reason for making this flight.

  Anthony reworked documents on his new Compaq Presario laptop; the clunker that had suffered through school with him was now wiped, reloaded and sitting in a Catholic thrift shop in Sheffield. The cabin crew came through with a beverage service, during which he stowed the machine lest it become a victim of someone’s lack of coordination. The flight was otherwise uneventful.

  The landscape started to green in the distance as they approached the alluvial plain of the Tigris-Euphrates ecosystem extending from well north and west of Baghdad across Iraq to the Persian Gulf. Lakes and irrigation canals became visible from the air as the ancient land, what some considered the home of civilization, drew closer.

  The pilot's promised announcement of his approach was given a higher than usual level of attention as people scrambled to return to their seats and strap in. They circled well outside the city, waiting as military flights cleared the Baghdad airspace. Their turn finally came, leading some Navy veterans aboard to relive memories of serving in carrier-based aircraft.

  The descent was ear-popping and abrupt, with turns banking more sharply than most of them had ever experienced on an airliner. Anthony found himself leaning well off-center in his seat, and in the overhead bins the contents were shifting noisily. He gripped the aisle-side armrest; his neighbor in the seat next to him had a white-knuckled grip on both of his. Anthony forced himself back against his headrest and tried to relax. It was just another day, one that had him strapped down inside a pressurized tube hurtling at high speed toward an unforgiving terrain below.

  The pilot leveled out above the airport and hit the air brakes, slowing their approach as the ground came ever closer. Captain Hassan met the tarmac gently enough to elicit applause from those passengers who could tear their hands away from their nearest solid support. Engine brakes screamed as the aircraft began to decelerate, and m
omentum tugged them all toward the nose of the Airbus. They had arrived. They were alive and on the ground.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain. We have arrived at Baghdad International Airport. The local time is 1100 hours, GMT plus three, and the temperature on the ground is twenty-two degrees Celsius. Please remain seated until the aircraft has reached the terminal. You may resume the use of your electronic devices. I and the crew thank you for flying with us, and wish you a good day.”

  The aircraft taxied past the main terminals to a hangar similar to the one in Amman. When forward motion ceased, Anthony joined the rest of the passengers in disengaging his seatbelt; standing in the aisle to flex his legs, he assisted others in retrieving their jostled carry-on bags from the overhead compartments. The usual bovine shuffle toward the exit followed, the crew wishing them well as they departed down the passenger stairs that had been rolled up to the fuselage.

  Their flight’s governmental status spared them the usual international customs procedures. Instead, Iraqi officials helped the various US government agencies and military branches—those that had people on this flight—in processing the passports and identification of the new arrivals. One by one Colby’s team reassembled in a corner of the hangar and conducted another head count while the Iraqi ground crew retrieved everyone’s luggage from the belly of the A320.

  Anthony finished his bottle of water and deposited it into the trash near the doorway. Vehicles were already transporting passengers in ones and twos away toward the main entrance of Baghdad International. The fortunate ones had individual transportation waiting. Larger groups like his had to wait for their turn as the hangar slowly emptied. After half an hour he finally heard Tom Colby rallying the team.