That Best Western was a motel type with external entries to the rooms.
We got in the room OK and talked for a while. I know Jennifer was upset and scared.
I was upset and a little frightened as well. Still very worried about Rachel. I had no clue who really had her and how she was...being treated.
Jennifer and I slept together once again, and ended up making desperate love. It was an emotional "reinforcement" kind of love making. It allowed her to relax and fall asleep with the subconscious feeling of safety in a strong man's arms. At least for this one night.
It also drained some of the tension out of my own body, but afterwards I lay there physically relaxed but still thoughtful mentally. I didn't know what I would do if Rachel was harmed even more than she already had been. God forbid she might pay the ultimate price for my own failings.
Things seemed to be going so well for so many years. I had my own meaningful career "as part of something greater than myself" and I had my own personal love in a beautiful and loving wife.
But not for the first time lately, I began to question if I had my priorities straight, all along.
Somehow I had put "my country" ahead of my wife, and even God. And what was "my country"? The people of the United States of America? Just an idea embodied in the Constitution - and all it's complexities? If some parts of "my country" were now diametrically opposed to other parts - where did my own loyalties lie, and why? Hadn't this already occurred in one terrible Civil War? Maybe my priorities should have been: God, wife and family, trusted friends, and THEN "country"?
The natural state of human affairs is basically this kind of "tribalism". Most humans down through our entire species history have lived in small tribal village or wandering hunter-gatherer groupings - like for about 190,000 out of the 200,000 years science shows we have existed. This tribalism still pops up in modern man in all kinds of ways - from "gangbangers" in the 'hood - to the REAL reason modern American soldiers fight so hard and often die in battle. Not for "flag and country" but for one's brothers in arms on either side in the battle line - good and trusted brethren of any sex.
Many human organizations down through the ages have been structured this "tribal" way - from the "Godfather" concept of the Mafia gang which is much like the true "client-patron" (clientela patronage) polity of the pagan Roman Empire, to indeed the organization of "the Agency", made up of principled individuals who trusted friends and comrades more so than a shifting political "leadership" and/or just bureaucratic kiss-ass personal career enrichment types. Most of these personal relationships had been forged in fire and hardened by quenching disappointments in national trends and National Leadership gross failures. Half hearted warfare that needlessly caused wounding and loss of life to faithful men and women in uniform, and appeasement of enemies that certainly seemed to any sane person as "common sense" evil, were but two examples of these biting disappointments.
Augustine, not Jesus, first broached the concepts and ideas about "just war" - that good Christians COULD use violence in opposition to evil on Earth. But never for merely "personal gain." And only when "proper Earthly authorities" declared war for the proper reasons and proper goals - chiefly to objectively prevent even greater evil. Keeping the USA together as one political entity probably would not have qualified to most Catholic theologians. But ending racist slavery? Yes. That would have qualified. Not fully defeating an evil when war was deemed necessary hardly qualified, either.
Thomas Aquinas and then the Salamanca School of Catholic Scholastics fleshed out the thinking on "just war." But that was in the 13th century and later. By the 11th century AD about half the world of "Christendom" had already disappeared - basically the tens of millions of Christians in North Africa, the Middle East, Southern and even Far East Asia - including Japan - were no longer allowed to be Christians by totalitarian edict and draconian measures.
In China, first this was an edict of the Taoist Emperors. In North Africa and the Middle East it was the spreading of Islam, especially the much more virulent Islam of the newly converted Turkic peoples. It was these Turkic converts that really started the war on Christians in the Middle East - and then on the European Christian Pilgrimages to the Holy Land that Arab Muslims had until this point allowed quite peaceably, enjoying the taxes and "tourist" commerce the Pilgrims happily brought. The Crusades was the response of Catholic Europe to these increased attacks. Eventually the Crusades did totally fail, and Islam completed the conquest of Constantinople - the Eastern Roman Empire - and all the Balkans and continued advancing into Eastern Europe until the Battle of Vienna in 1683.
Was it a lack of implementation of "just war" principles that doomed Christianity in those other parts of the world? How far would Islam have extended in Europe if brave Christians had not fought them in mostly defensive battles time and again? Was it merely dilution of Christianity by "Eastern mysticism"? Certainly many pagan festival traditions were absorbed into Christianity in Northern and Western Europe, but the real negatives of paganism were kept out, especially human sacrifice and annual orgies surrounding the winter solstice. But also the pessimism of "the fickle Gods control all our destinies. Woe is us." What Judaism started and Christianity very much continued and improved on was merely the idea progress WAS possible here on Earth in the present and future.
One of the biggest turning points of history was Genghis Khan, whose hordes originally were a mixture of Animist pagans and Buddhists, religiously. Genghis received emissaries from Islam and Christianity and after due reflection, chose Islam. This is the major reason Islam became the religion of all those "-stan" countries and the "Mughals" ruled India, and then Kublai Khan and his Yuan (Islamic) dynasty ruled China for many decades. Neither Hinduism nor Taoism or Buddhism were totally wiped out in these Asian countries, but Christianity pretty much was until the English eventually brought a version of Christianity back - backed by English guns and some forms of "just warfare". But mostly "might makes right" gun boat diplomacy - not hardly the true message of Christ, after all.
Well, when you're hip deep in alligators it's a little late to remember the original plan was to drain the fucking swamp. And I was hip deep in a lot of personal alligators, right now. As well as the world at large hip deep in revived aggressive Islam.
I really hated the idea that I was going to have to be a "lone wolf" cowboy type and save the day. In real history successful human "lone wolves" were just about as successful as REAL "lone wolves" in nature - that is, not hardly at all. Humans and wolves were both social mammals and teamwork was absolutely essential to survival, much less any other greater kind of success. At a minimum I needed some form my own team back - Jennifer and Elaine and hopefully some other resources and members Elaine could identify.
I would need them for any hope of eventual success. Eventual success right now meant getting Rachel back and eliminating my now personal deadly enemies, apparently. I had not personally killed anyone else in my intelligence career, so far. I guess I always had that moral theological message of Gandalf to Frodo about Gollum in "Lord of the Rings". The one about death being final and the real one thing that can't be undone and every human should have a chance at personal redemption while alive on Earth. And any human may even play a much larger role in the world than any of us could imagine in our own present time. Ultimately Gollum's early death not happening DID prevent Sauron from acquiring the Ring and Frodo being totally corrupted by the Ring of power. Just a pleasant fiction? Or an important moral and philosophic point?
Maybe Grayson had a bigger - and ultimately positive role to play in the world? Hard to imagine what that might be now. He WAS a flop as a "turned" agent for "us" against Iran and just possibly a nuclear armageddon kicked off by Iran in the not too distant future...
It was these kinds of thoughts that eventually allowed me to get to sleep - just trying to stay "objectively rational' rather than "subjectively feeling" and just crying my heart out over Rachel's fate and that of her poor parents.
*************
Senator Charles Reyburn of Maine, conservative opposition majority party chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was in a meeting starting at 10AM the next morning.
The meeting was held at his own northern Virginia farm. The farmhouse was large and well appointed but in no way a mansion. After all, Senator Reyburn was a career public servant and was hardly "filthy rich." Filthy, perhaps a little, yes. And pretty rich, also yes. The filthy riches were really coming once he finally retired and wrote a book, started public speaking, and began lobbying and "consulting".
Also in attendance was Senator Chance Reade from Nevada, liberal minority party Senate leader; Congresswoman Elizabeth Carliosi from California, liberal minority House leader; Jeb Jameson, Secretary of DHS; Carolyn Nance, National Security Advisor to the President; and Grayson Peterson III.
Normally Grayson would easily have been the top dog in this meeting. After all, in his flush days only weeks ago, he had already donated a million or so in campaign funds - legal and maybe not quite so legal - to every single one of these politicians - and three times as much to the current POTUS, represented by his equally fanatical liberal advisors, Nance and Jameson.
But instead of resources of 1000 million dollars or so, to manage all things, Grayson was currently down to less than three million - and was a veritable pauper now.
