Another Springtime Ch 03

Chapter 3: A Pioneering Experience Together

Under the circumstances, keeping up with my mail and other correspondence was a serious challenge. Besides that, there were events in my own life that did not seem to fit in with the constant running of total mobility – being my daughter's father for one; continuing with my studies for another; just a couple of minor points, ha, ha, ha! Then came the wedding announcement from my one nephew and his fiancé... that fall in Los Angeles. Would I go? Our families had been close over the years; how could I not? Take Jennifer and Christine, both of them? Well, why not?

OK. I determined to do it. The deployment would also throw off any pursuer and I devised it so. I asked the Agency about their thoughts concerning Los Angeles and got a green light for the trip. I have not included anything like a detailed account of my contacts with them, but that really played very little role here.

The trip went just fine. Jenny and Christine were already good friends and the chatted about girl stuff it seemed like forever and as I listened as we drove I could detect, recalling my own language learning experiences, how quickly Christine was picking up Jennifer's expressions and mimicking back her vocabulary and little nuances as her English expanded. I realized I should have been more alert to that, but such an exposure was just what Christine needed, and she profited from the time together.

The entire experience was positive, the wedding delightful, and seeing family again was very pleasant. Having Christine with me was made easier to explain by Jennifer's intuition and initiative, and she introduced Christine as her girl friend. Quick and alert to things, my loving daughter looked at me and winked knowingly, as if now I owed her one big time. I just thanked her.

We had gathered a good bit of stuff on our somewhat leisurely trip south and back. There were several large boxes on the back now. Among the things we picked up were several maps and a three ring binder. Christine said she would like to write down some of her experiences and have me check her English. She wanted to remember the marriage and how sweet my family were with her, and how much she liked my... her voice trailed off there, I noticed, and thought that might have been significant, but she added after a moment that she was having a lot of fun with me and she enjoyed what all we did together.

How could I argue. I was happier than a clam myself.

Jennifer left us in San Francisco to visit a girl friend there, complete a research project for school, and then fly back to Seattle.

Later, as we were driving north after crossing the Golden Gate bridge and stopping to enjoy the view to our mutual delight, we discussed journals and we concluded that she could make a monumental contribution to our effort to keep her safe by recording notes and decisions that we made along the way to help us both keep track of what we were doing. We had already taken some convoluted twists in our various arrangement with the idea of making it difficult to track us... but I was not able to keep all that stuff in my head and it would be a huge assist, I told her honestly, for me to be able to talk to her about it and would she keep notes on our arrangements.

Like I often saw in her manner, once she perceived how she could be of assistance she was not only willing but also very diligent in doing so. Her English vocabulary was growing very quickly, and we often discussed word usage and shaded meanings at great length. Intellectually she was very active and keen.

]

Information on the techniques and the skill levels of the adversary were seldom forthcoming from the agency. Their own information was both sketchy and incomplete, or their confidence in passing it out to me, either for security reasons or some other, were such that they did not give me much to work with. On one occasion in November a short e-mail provided an insight of tremendous import that influenced my strategy thereafter.

Over a period of days thinking about how the information must fit into a broader picture, this composite came to be my basic scenario. This may be off in some details but the basic thrust is sound. [1] A consumer identifies the physical characteristics of a desirable subject, [2] a supplier scouts the market, identifies a match, and then moves the subject to the consumer, and [3] collects the fee. Nationality of consumer and supplier are transparent – the target's wants and wishes, of course, are of no concern to either.

Years previously I had been briefly conversant with some emerging computer technology that was then making the idea of mapping a visual image and codifying it in mathematical terms so that, for example, the face of a criminal could be identified using a large number – more than two hundred – discreet measurements of, for example, proportion of height to width of the bone structure of the skull, vertical location of the eye sockets, ears lobes, nose and mouth in the skull structure, lateral separation of the eye sockets, the prominence of the cheekbones, etc. These made it possible to see through disguises such as beard / no beard, dark glasses, changed hair styles, and such. Such a computer program capable of identifying a criminal would then also be able to focus on a girl selected from a catalog, school yearbook, suitable family photo, magazine or newspaper shot or identified from an earlier photograph by a monitoring scout. Augmented by details like hair color, build, body dimensions and age, etc., the resulting mathematical code identifier could be quite specific. There may be, speaking statistically, only a few individual girls worldwide that would match the code, perhaps only one.

The scout teams in the field – and these could be either syndicate owned and operated or free-lance "bounty hunter" teams – could function in any of several different ways. They could photograph, map and code suitably appearing girls encountered on an opportune basis, or they could be tasked to search for a few specific orders. Speed in communicating such data via the internet and e-mail, even via cellular internet connections, makes it possible to capture an image with a hand-held digital camera and download it to a PC at point "a" in the field, transmit it to point "b" located almost anywhere in the world for analysis and coding, comparison with a data base of outstanding orders, and respond back to point "a" in the field with a hit / no hit evaluation and all in the process of merely a few minutes... perhaps as few as two or three; certainly no more than half an hour.

Advised of a "hit" response, the matter devolves to a relatively simple kidnapping, with, however, a travel agenda coupled to the hit. With falsified ID the team with a victim in, say, Oregon, boards the next available flight in Portland for anywhere – the object first is to put distance and thus complexity between the kidnap scene and the victim – then onward to reach the delivery point, which, of course, could be anywhere in the world and would likely be changed frequently.

In other words, once the pick up has been made the trail left by the kidnappers grows cold very quickly, becomes so complex that tracking is almost impossible, and crosses international boundaries and jurisdictions at random and with impunity. Once in their hands the victim is essentially beyond help.

The image in my mind of Christine slipping into this quagmire was – how can I put this strongly enough? – about as, well,

distasteful

as I could imagine anything being.

Like years before in the Navy I was once again involved with countermeasures. Here again three basic tactics seemed to apply: in countering an opposition system one can either [1] penetrate the system and render it inoperable from within, [2] confuse it with deceptive or erroneous data input, [3] avoid contact. With my resources at hand I did not have a lot of choices here.

Nevertheless, avoiding contact for the person depending on dumb luck is an entirely different story line from the person studiously analyzing the tactical situation with insight and determination. Now, I may not be the brightest light around, but neither was I born yesterday. The young buck with a digital camera, a cell phone, a laptop and a bunch of gadgets may think himself a sharp operator... but skill and cunning born of age and experience are formidable opponents.

OK, good words and brave. Now, down at the working level after all the hoopla is over, how do we operate?

Mobility and freedom of movement would be absolutely key. Part and parcel with that is intimate knowledge of the geography and local resources. For me, I interpreted this to be basically western Washington and primarily the Seattle / Everett / Tacoma metropolitan area. Mobility had two primary elements: First, staying mobile broadened the target area for the searchers, multiplying their problems many fold. Second, if spotted, mobility meant the capacity to evade by blending into the local environment... loosing them in traffic, in a crowd, laying low in a safe house for a time, shifting our area of residence. The potential here was quite extensive, but there was no getting around the basics... lifestyle would be constrained by non-selection of some dangerous–type exposure-prone activities, and the need for continual vigilance.

And how much of this line of reasoning could I properly expect to share with Christine? None? That would be setting her up for disaster; at least part of my job was training her in the appropriate way to become self-aware of the dangers about her. All of it? Yes, and lay on her a guilt trip and a burden of fear that would cripple her emotionally. Somewhere in the middle was the proper balance... somewhere. Doesn't life ever get any simpler?

Yet, there were practical matters which we had to confront every day together: among them basic logistics, like where do we stay tonight, dining and basic supplies, shopping, activities, etc.

Two other things we decided between us. Since continuing her schooling at present was impossible in a formal class attendance, we would undertake together a series of correspondence courses and institute between us twenty hours a week of study time, ten together in discussion or such, and ten when each had time alone and, though we might be in the same room, we would consider that time not to disturb the other person. This soon led to two other refinements. We each got a calendar and we began to plan our days out several in advance, and things we wanted or felt we needed to do. Since I was doing the driving Christine suggested she start a journal of our activities and decisions together so we could keep things straight and avoid confusion. I thought this a marvelous idea on her part, and it soon evolved to where she was in this way making a very significant contribution to our combined success

Then, too, we needed some physical exercise on a regular basis. Here our ideas coalesced very quickly. She agreed to teach me what she knew about tennis if I would teach her to swim. We agreed that twice a week we would spend half a day at least working up a sweat. I suggested we use the excellent facilities at the Submarine Base at Bangor, where there were very nice courts and a great swimming facility, together with the BOQ and the officer's club, a nice library, the Navy Exchange, all available to us in a relatively risk-free environment. Noon time over and swimming in the pool in the afternoon, dinner and library or movie time, and tennis the next morning early and showers, and then back to Seattle on an early afternoon ferry. That was the plan.

She could readily see that I was deeply into my Germanics studies, and though she was quick to assist where she could in spoken German, she herself wanted to explore English, and after talking about options, she elected to sign up for a university extension class in American Literature. She was so very cute as she made that decision. She was anxious that she could not handle a university level course in the English language, with so much reading and writing and such. Only after she begged a promise from me to assist her with her readings and correct her writings for her did she smile with confidence and show her excitement. How a girl manages to be so very pleasant and attractive in her every little mannerism remains a mystery to me.

Mystery or not, it came naturally to Christine.

]

Late summer moved on quickly to Fall, and then winter was coming on. There was much to do, and we were busy almost all the time.

There were several good reasons for curtailing our movements during the winter months. Doing a lot of driving in less than ideal road conditions just increased the statistical probability that we would be involved in some kind of accident. I regarded any such occurrence as stripping us of our mobility, which was our only real defense. Should we be spotted by chance – and it appeared very likely at this point that such a random, chance encounter was the real danger – we had to be able to move quickly and slip away into the crowd, so to speak, in order to break the contact as quickly as we could devise.

Therefore, taking additional precautions to avoid compromising that mobility was critical. My e-mail contacts with the agency provided my only real intelligence on the other team, and that was almost nil. The agency said that the thinking was then that there were as many as four to six operative cells in the United States tasked with, among other things, searching for their targets. That "targets" was plural suggested that we were not the only ones on the run or that other young girls were being sought and kidnapped as well, but that was an assumption only, and in any case meaningless for us. It would have been good to know where these cells seemed to have their center of activity, but maybe the agency didn't know either. They suggested we stay clear of Las Vegas, which was no big surprise to me.

Looking at probabilities of random encounters led also to few solid conclusions. Every alternative was simply a trade off between competing sets of pros and cons. Picking a small town in which to spend longer periods offered a greatly reduced chance of any encounter, yet should one occur the chances of blending into the crowd were also very much reduced... dangerously so.

As I thought about options and our capabilities vs. the other team, it seemed very clear that unless we could drop out of sight by loosing them in traffic and slipping into a hotel or some other safe house that we created, we were hopelessly exposed. A car chase on the highway, for instance was almost surely going to end in tragedy and failure. It might make for excitement in a James Bond movie, but we were playing for real. My paycheck had to do with the safety of two... box office appeal meant absolutely nothing at all.

Therefore, I reasoned, we would stay in the cities where our flexibility could be maintained and a system of safe houses could be established. I knew Seattle best, then Salt Lake City, and then Los Angeles, although my knowledge of LA was years out of date and that city changes so continually that my familiarity was thus essentially nil. I liked the Bay area, but I had been there only a few times over the years and was much less familiar with it.

Our basic operating plan emerged from our putting our heads together during a four day stay at the Silver Cloud on Fairview on Lake Union. We collected our resources and roll played possibilities and options under certain circumstances and studied out what alternatives would be most useful. The results of our study and planning suggested four areas of the greater Seattle area where we ought to establish safe havens for ourselves, and then too the utility of having a second vehicle to which we could trade off periodically.

Then we tried to design what such a safe haven had to be. That was not too hard, and we soon determined that an apartment building with an enclosed garage with controlled access was crucial. A two-bedroom place was minimum, and an outside view was desirable.

We began thinking about furnishing apartments and then about stocking food supplies and such to allow us to drop out of sight for extended periods and how we might rotate between them to throw off any followers. It was a kind of chess game – or high-stakes charades with smoke and mirrors – and she took quite readily to the intellectual challenges of planning ahead. Her questions, she was always full of questions now, showed me the range and depth of her thinking. She was a very astute and perceptive young lady.

We scouted out a suitable apartment complex in each of the four areas we identified as suitable, mapped and reviewed the various approaches and alternative routes to and from, and by mid-November had established two safe houses.

Taking up residence in the one to start with, we then went to Ikea in Renton for furnishings. She knew of the Swedish firm since her mother had thought their branch store in Zurich was marvelous, but Christine herself had been there only once. I had become acquainted with Ikea during my years in Germany, where the Swedes had another outlet in Köln, not far from the Embassy in Bonn. Anyway, gradually we fitted out first one apartment and then the second.

It was loads of fun, actually. She was very artistic, as I said, and showed good sense as to spatial relations, and a very thoughtful and calming taste for color and texture and shape. As an example, she found in a shop one day a large terra cotta pot with some interesting design work around the edge. It surprised me, actually, that she was so sure about it. But at home in the apartment she had the place already picked out, a sort of empty, dead-end corner of the dining room that got afternoon sun. Within two weeks she had flowers sprouting and the entire character of the room and the apartment was tremendously enhanced by her selection. This happened regularly. Her creativity was truly astounding.

With her Swiss upbringing her tastes were, quite naturally, very European. She thought through ideas we discussed together, planned carefully and exploited the catalogs, and calculated in metrics, so Ikea was precisely her cup of tea. She showed a quite remarkable sensitivity in use of fabrics, ceramics and polished woods, and a nigh on professional technique in interior design. Her talents were impressive and, what's more, the results were, like the flowers and the terra cotta pot, just striking!

It surprised her at first when I said that we should not spend long periods in any one place. She picked up on the idea, though, and worked with that limitation very well. We looked at the catalog and selected major pieces and designs and basic concepts, and then she would work out detailed plans on paper on her own while I attended to other things, and then as agreed we would reconvene for a review of the plans together. She could think of a thousand and one little details and worked out answers or at least alternatives for my review, and I often had to remark to her that her talents and skill were just amazing.

She seemed to take special delight in my compliments, and always gave me the sweetest smile in response. It was then that I began to recognize it more often when she did it. It seemed never to be contrived but just her... she would tilt her head and drop her eyes daintily, and that smile of hers would curl the corners of her mouth. And when she did that my heart just soared!

It happened again when we were out shopping one Thursday. There was no particular buildup or anything, it just happened. We were in one of those warehouse stores for just some diversion and I was looking for a particular type of tool for one of our projects in 'Windy Chicago,' and she was right beside me.