A ticket to ride
(Chapter from a novel: all feedback gratefully received)
As she stepped out of the elevator and crossed the lobby, the smartly uniformed doorman nodded a greeting and deferentially held the heavy brass-framed outer door open for her. He let the door sigh closed behind him and preceded her along the covered walkway to the kerb where, with a minimum of fuss, he hailed a cruising yellow cab.
'Where to, lady?'
'JFK. I'm catching the eight o'clock flight to Paris. There's an extra hundred if you get there real fast.'
'You're there, lady!'
She sank back in her seat and took in the early evening Manhattan traffic. It was raining and the city of lights decomposed into a kaleidoscope of primary colors on the beaded windows of the cab. Cocooned in the dark warmth, she allowed her mind to drift back to the events of the last hour.
It had all started with the 'phone call – like every other job. But the briefing had been brief, very brief: a flight to catch with barely enough time to get to the airport, a French cellphone number and a cover name under which she would be met at Charles de Gaulle airport. Nothing else. She had asked no further details, sensing they would not be available from the person she was talking to. She knew how that outfit worked. She would be on a need to know basis. All she needed to know was that they paid well – and she knew that. Very well, in fact. The rest she would find out on location. Par for the course. She only hoped it would all be over soon.
She was tired and realized she needed a long rest – preferably somewhere warm. Somewhere with no 'phones. Somewhere slow. Somewhere she could take stock of her life: at thirty-three she was at some kind of crossroads. In the last eight years her life had been one of constant movement and the stress levels had been high. For a time she had enjoyed it all, had been caught in the seductive whirlwind of exotic locations, travel and sheer raw thrill.
She was now a little jaded by it all. She had also made a great deal of money and had wisely invested it: her day to day living – and yes, her luxuries too – had all been taken care of by lavish expense allowances. The material side of her life had been seen to. But, she wondered wryly, what was the deeper meaning of her existence.
Could she see herself carrying on like this for another five years, another ten? No, she was at the crossroads and she needed to drop off the map and find a new driving force, new motivation. She smiled again to herself and figured she had been lucky and that the going had been good: she should get out while she was winning.
In her line of work one used up a disproportionate amount of luck just keeping ahead of the game. She reflected on luck itself: was it a finite sum not to overdraw. Should she use the same wisdom with it as she had used with money matters? She cast the thought aside for the time being. Time enough for all that when this job was over.
Helen Swann: thirty-three, ex Vassar and MIT, blonde, beautiful, very well-off if not actually rich. A gifted linguist, strong science background, well traveled, able to move in sophisticated circles and hold her own in the most demanding discussions... and what was she doing with all that? Bluntly she answered her own question with brutal intellectual honesty: she was a spy! Sure, that wasn't what they called themselves – but wasn't it precisely what she was?
Hell, at the beginning she had embraced the whole patriotic line and her youthful enthusiasm and idealism had allowed her to view things as simply black and white – the good guys defending themselves against a world peopled with arch-villains looming out of some fathomless empire of evil: comic book heroes fighting the good fight.
Time, experience and a growing awareness of the machiavellian machinations within the circles of power and big business had relentlessly eroded that original idealistic vision and left her with a bewildering and murky vision in unflattering shades of grey. In the chamber of mirrors of the intelligence community and of the vested interests it represented, she was no longer sure that she was even serving the true interests of her country; or of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Who were her real masters? She firmly believed in what her country stood for, but was increasingly confronted with a scenario in which so many of those who should be upholding those values, those who had been elected and appointed to do so, seemed so often tainted with unacceptable compromise and doubtful allegiances. Some, even in good faith and with the best ultimate intentions, seemed to have forfeited their courage and integrity and ended up engulfed in a system of values where cynicism passed for virtue. The ethos seemed to be against too much soul searching and just to get on with the fight and salute the flag. Were the bad guys really all standing up to be counted? Was the vision and the cautionary wisdom of the founding fathers of her nation really just dismissable as laudable but outdated and inappropriate?
Helen had an intimate conviction that they were in the process of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Increasingly, she felt, things were not what they seemed. Was there any limit to the lies, distortions and fabrications that made up official reality? Was there any policy, however sinister its potential, that the machine would baulk at? Were the basic values of the Constitution not being systematically betrayed in the name of some unimpeachable notion of national security: were they not at risk of trading everything it stood for in exchange for some paltry notion of safety? And if so, would that in itself not be the ultimate capitulation? Would the bad guys not then have won the final battle? Wasn't the real issue an ultimate test of their courage, their resolve and their loyalty to their ideals?
These uneasy thoughts claimed her attention throughout the daredevil run to the airport and before she knew it she was at her terminal.
'There you go, lady.' the cab driver beamed proudly at her.
He had been as good as his word and she was in plenty of time. She handed him his well-earned tip with a dazzling smile of thanks and made her way swiftly to the VIP check-in.
As usual she was traveling in style: count your blessings, she reminded herself, as she caught sight of the long queues of weary travelers slowly making their progress through the normal channels. The only part of air travel Helen disliked was the whole dreary airport routine: being herded like cattle and standing in interminable queues. She reflected that obsessive security measures had introduced new heights of discomfort and humiliation to the whole procedure. This brought to mind Benjamin Franklin's admonishment about those that, giving up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserved neither liberty nor safety.
All in the name of the goddess safety, she mused darkly. Were we trading our dignity to avoid some small measure of alleged risk? Wasn't this yet another symptom of what she had been mulling over on her ride to the airport?
Presently she was escorted to the departure gate and ushered into the first class cabin before the flight had even been called. A smiling hostess brought her slippers and made sure she was comfortably installed in her reclining seat with a complimentary glass of champagne and warm hors d'oeuvres on the silver tray beside her. She settled in and anticipated her favorite moment: takeoff.
That moment had never lost its magic for her. As a girl her father had taken her up into the sky countless times in his Beech Bonanza. Later he had taught her to fly and had been inordinately proud of her skills as a pilot. She had been a fast learner and had taken to flying with unbounded enthusiasm. She was a natural. Some of the best moments she had spent with her father, and there had been many, had been aloft under the vast canopy of the limitless sky.
Helen smiled to herself as she nurtured these fond memories and slowly came back to the present. The engines strained and the the lumbering aircraft gathered speed. Then, as the runway lights streaked past, the ultimate magic: shedding the sultry coils of earth and becoming airborne once again — free in the dark blue yonder, speeding to a new mission.