And that’s just the essentials. Well, try explaining the nuances of baseball to a foreigner (.” . . but if the catcher fails to catch the third strike…”).
Riley’s team had more than enough men show up, but seeing as how I was a guest, they put me in the starting line-up, in a position comparable to right field, where you always put the klutzes. I wasn’t much good on offense—you’d have to have played since you were six years old to master it. Agility, hand-eye and stamina were keys to offense. Some the older guys had been ranked amateurs, and amazing feats they could perform. I contributed what I could on defense, here and there blocking kicks, dislodging and deflecting balls, throwing strategic shoulders. The refs were good natured about my numerous technical fouls.
Mostly I ranged around mid-field, chasing over to the ball when an opponent brought it into my sector. When the action was elsewhere I could catch my breath. Families and friends lined both the sides of the field to cheer their sides. Passersby tarried to watch for a while, then moved on. One of them caught my eye, a man with a broad face and straw-colored hair under his tweed hat, about my size, a little stocky. He’d been strolling along, and glanced at the game, then stopped and was looking at me intently. No…it couldn’t be him. He adjusted his hat and resumed his stroll. No way could he be here.
The game ended, somebody having won it, the outcome not being of grave concern. It was a good workout, and my teammates assured me I’d done well for a first-timer. The sides and their galleries repaired to a nearby pub and, floating along on schooners of stout, ale and lager, boisterously reviewed the afternoon’s triumphs and gaffs, goings-on of people’s lives, the state of the world at large, and every other topic that might come up. Amidst the flowing suds and laughter a couple comely colleens, Clodagh and Roisin, took a shine to me, both worth following up. All in all, a grand way to spend a Saturday afternoon. It was like the touch football games they show in the TV beer ads, except that the fun and camaraderie here were genuine, not scripted, rehearsed, staged and shot with multiple retakes.
I retired that night with the feeling of healthy physical exhaustion that guarantees a night’s sound sleep. The next morning, a little stiff and sore in places but well-rested, I walked into the coffee shop to find the man who’d stopped to watch the football game seated at a table close to the entry with a cup of coffee and a scone and jam, greeting me as I came through the door.
“I couldn’t believe it at first,” said Emil Grotesqcu, KGB agent extraordinaire. “I was out for a little exercise, stopped to watch the local hooligans bash each other around, and what did I spy but Jake Fonko in the thick of it. Impossible! You blend into just about every crowd, so I couldn’t be sure, but I did a little ferreting and found you were registered here at the Conway, once again hiding in plain sight. So my eyes deceived me not. Fonko, what on earth are you doing in Belfast?”
“Isn’t that my line? Usually I go somewhere and you show up.”
“Nobody told me anything about you. I’m on assignment here. Maybe that’s it. Did the CIA get wind of it and dispatch you to cover me?”
“No, I’m working for John DeLorean at his car factory.”
“Well, there being no US Embassy here, they’d have to put you somewhere plausible, of course. Belfast has seen few CIA operatives. I’d think they could use the Consulate office, but they must have their reasons for inserting you in the factory…you’re not installing exhaust mufflers, surely?”
I excused myself to get breakfast—bangers, eggs, stewed tomatoes, muffins—and a mug of coffee. Grotesqcu likewise rounded up some chow. Returning to the table, I said, “If you weren’t sent because I’m here, then why are you here?”
“Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there,” he intoned solemnly. “Wherever there’s a cop beating up a guy, I’ll be there.”
“Is that something Lenin said?”
“No, Henry Fonda said it in The Grapes of Wrath. This is peculiar. Usually the KGB sends me into cover you. Looks like this time the CIA sent you in as the counterspy. The CIA has never had much interest in Northern Ireland before, the UK being an allied country. Their intelligence must be improving—I thought we were running this under their radar.”
“Emil, something I’ve long wondered about. How come you know so much about American movies?”
“I was in an advanced KGB training program. The Muslims are one threat on our docket, so some of my class studied the Koran to deduce their souls; they’re a relatively simple lot. The Indian group studied the Ramayana, the Upanishads and Vedic scriptures. The Chinese group studied Confucius and the Tao, and they never did figure the Chinese out: ‘follow the shortest path to the nearest dollar’ was the best they could come up with, but I’m sure there must be more to them than that. My group was charged with the American sphere of operations. What constitutes the American soul? Despite claims, custom and myth, not their Christian religion, and even if it did, Russia has had a Christian basis far longer than America—we’ve never been able to completely eradicate it. So the Holy Bible was no mystery. Your Constitution? That’s just laws. What was it Plato said, ‘Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who writes the laws.’ Of course they didn’t have TV and cinema in his day.
“No, we plumbed the American soul by delving into your popular entertainment—movies, rock and roll, TV and so forth. It influences your citizens far more profoundly than your schools or your Bible do. American morals come from sit-coms, soap operas and westerns. Your political views come from late-night comedians. You let Norman Lear, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg teach your children history, and they learn their science from George Lucas and, God forbid, the likes of Jane Fonda in The China Syndrome.”
“Hmmm. So what did your group deduce about the American soul from your studies?”
“A number of things. For one, you people can’t stand being bored, so you demand around-the-clock entertainment or at least distraction. You see the world in extreme black and white—good guys against bad guys always. Violence settles everything—your entertainment industry uses it for punctuation. You favor the underdog in any conflict. You make a blustering show of distrusting authority—government, business, intellectual—but then you accept what any celebrity tells you without question. You don’t take anything outside your own personal interests seriously, life’s a joke or a morality play. Don’t get me started on sex in your media—you’d think Americans have nothing better to do with themselves. But especially, your entertainment trains you in self-indulgence—consumption, sex, frivolity, gluttony. From their earliest years, even before they can talk, all those ads on your TV baby-sitter train your children to be consumers, not producers or thinkers or patriots. Sam Cooke’s ‘Don’t Know Much About History’ might as well be your national anthem.”
“Doesn’t paint a very promising picture.”
“We concluded that your society is headed for ruin. Think of it. Everyone expects to be a satisfied customer, every ending to be happy. Anyone who can claim underdog status and point to a bad guy bully pretty much gets his way. Anyone who objects becomes one of the bad guys. Your friend DeLorean, for example. A bigger crook you won’t find easily, but he declaims against the big Detroit automobile manufacturers, where he did just fine until they saw through his charisma. He claims they’re persecuting him because he, a little guy, wants to build ethical cars…whatever that is…so the well-heeled, well-meaning, but mentally lazy, line up to proffer him money and incidentally feel good about their moral superiority. Those expressing doubts are of course dream-destroyers in the corporations’ and polluters’ pockets.
“Unless something is dramatic, your public ignores it. Or your media do, which has the same effect, as few people will put in the effort to dig out or understand anything. So DeLorean springs his gull-winged stainless steel sports car on the world, the Next Great Thing. Forget that it’s an overpriced, underperforming pa
ckage of old ideas, soaking up vast amounts of other people’s money. A Saudi analyst dug into the prospects of the DMC-12 and issued a report proving beyond a doubt that it had no chance of success. Any American could have done the same, but none bothered, nor did your press report any of the negative assessments.
“No wonder our, er, friends there have made such inroads over the years—your schools and university faculties welcome them. The media use their story lines, though they don’t always realize it. We concluded that we champions of the people just have to be patient…provided we don’t collapse first, which is entirely possible. Unfortunately for us, your leadership doesn’t fall for the drivel they hand out to the public. No telling how long they can keep milking their system.
“Anyhow, the upshot was, our instructor commended us for our analysis and told us that the CPUSA had been shaping its agitprop tactics for the past 50 years along pretty much the same lines.”
Just goes to show you how wrong-headed the Commies were. “I take it you got out of Tehran all right. How did all that work out for you?”
“Jake, if you ever visit the Lubyanka in Moscow, you’ll be hounded for autographs. You’re Public Enemy Number One there now, since my report on Iran.”
“Oh, what did I do in Iran?”
“Spirited the Shah out from under our noses. Coordinated four American spy agencies with two foreign ones. Infiltrated the Islamic revolutionaries. Derailed the Marxist revolutionaries. Assassinated a SAVAK man whom I took the liberty of describing as a double agent in our Tehran network, as that helped explain the shortfall in numbers. Put the kibosh on numerous demonstrations and terrorist attacks. Exposed the clerk in the Semiranis Hotel as a Khomeini spy. If you hadn’t eluded me after your daring escape from Gasr Prison, we’d have had you in our clutches and we’d not have lost Iran.”
“All in a day’s work,” I said.
“You’re a menace to all that’s decent and true, Jake. But the CIA’s kept you dormant since then. Your various overseas assignments haven’t amounted to enough to justify sending me in. Good work with General Dozier, by the way. The Red Brigades really overstepped with that caper. But I can’t figure out CIA strategy. Nor can I crack their communications lines. They must be putting together something far-reaching, to keep you on the back burners for so long…”
“Their ways are dark and devious. Your bosses actually swallow these reports you submit?”
“Gratefully. If they didn’t, our bureaucrats would have to consider the possibility that they’re doing something wrong, and like as not they’d put the blame on us for giving them faulty intelligence. Much more palatable to blame setbacks on the enemy. That’s fine by me. There are certainly worse KGB jobs I could be doing than dogging the formidable Jake Fonko.”
“I don’t want to seem chickenshit or anything, but aren’t you putting me in danger? Guys get disappeared for less than these stories you make up about me.”
“Nobody’s going to dose your coffee with polonium. Following my recommendation that we keep you under close observation while I unravel the full scope of your sinister remit, my department promoted me and upped my budget. You’re my iron rice bowl. Don’t worry if you hear mysterious clicks or static on your phone lines. It all stops with me. You’d be doing me a favor if you occasionally dropped a hint or two, said something in code, needn’t be grounded in reality, just something for my staff to mull over, the more cryptic the better. Listen, I have things to do. I know where to find you. If you need to contact me, I’ll give you the phone number, and ask for Eammon Gahagan.” He wrote the number on a napkin (serviette, they call them there), passed it to me and excused himself.
The PINGs mentioned a Russian. Could they have meant Grotesqcu? He was not in Belfast on my behalf, but he seemed suspiciously well informed about DeLorean. On the chance that PING and the KGB were cooking up something having to do with the factory, I thought I’d better find out more about it. That evening I dropped in at the Duke’s Dalliance. I nursed a half-and-half for a time, but the PING group didn’t appear. As I put my money on the bar I said to the bartender, “Were the lads from PING to wander in here, you might inform them that Jack desires to meet with them.”
“I know of no one named Jack, nor have I knowledge of any institution or association answerin’ to the name of PING,” the bartender averred.
“I’ll check with you in a couple days,” I told him.
The next day a series of flights ferried me to Los Angeles: a commuter to Heathrow, a BOAC jet to JFK, and an afternoon United direct flight to LAX. I arrived in the evening at the Bonaventure Hotel, one of the classier hostelries in town, and found a single room reserved for me, where I slept soundly until morning. DeLorean had left a note that I was to meet him in the coffee shop at 9:30 sharp. It was a business meeting, he’d said, so I showed up in a suit and tie.
At 10:18 he appeared at the hostess’s counter, searched the room frantically, spotted me and bustled over. “Jake, Jake, Jake, good to see you,” he exclaimed heartily. He grabbed my hand and pumped it. “Let’s get out of here, we’re running late,” I looked around for the waiter so I could settle my bill. “Don’t bother with that,” DeLorean said and motioned me to follow him. He instructed the hostess as we breezed past to put my bill on his account and add a ten dollar tip. “Yes sir, Mr. DeLorean,” she replied.
We boarded the elevator and he punched a button with a high number. Then he looked me up and down. “What’s with the suit and tie?” he demanded.
“You said it was a business meeting. This is what I wear to business meetings.”
“This is California, and it’s not that kind of business meeting. Ditch the tie. Open your shirt collar. Relax a little.” I did so. “That’s better,” he continued. “Now, as Roy told you, you’re just here to show the flag. Stand up straight and tall, look like you know what you’re doing, and keep your mouth shut. I’ll do the talking.” The elevator stopped and we stepped out directly into a spacious suite complete with spiral staircase, wet bar and a view of the San Gabriel Mountains. Two men were sitting, sipping at coffee served by a waiter from a silver urn on a silver serving cart. They were expensively dressed, however sporting neither suit nor tie between them. They stayed seated when we entered.
DeLorean greeted them, then said, “Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet my operations man, Jake Fonko. Jake will handle the final stages of our transaction and the operation itself. Jake, this is Jim Hoffman and John Vincenza.” They rose up off their chairs, and I shook their hands in turn. “Jim’s an old neighbor of mine, lives next to my ranch in Pauma Valley, down by San Diego. Mr. Vincenza is one of the principals on the other side of the transaction.” Hoffman looked insouciantly California comfortable. Vincenza was swarthy, burly, threatening. DeLorean turned to the waiter and said, “That’s all we need you for right now. Come back after we leave and clean up.” He handed the waiter a bill. The waiter palmed it, thanked him and left.
“John tells me you had some experience in Vietnam,” Hoffman remarked.
“A year’s tour with 75th Rangers, Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols.”
“Any other service in Nam? Or Cambodia?” Vincenza asked.
“None I can tell you about,” I replied.
Vincenza nodded his head. “Good answer.”
“Hetrick couldn’t make it?” DeLorean asked.
“Morgan’s tied up with something at his strip in Mohave,” Hoffman said, “but he’s in all the way, you can count on that.”
“Too bad. I wanted Jake and him to get acquainted.” DeLorean turned to me and said, “Hetrick’s our pilot. You’ll be working with him on the transportation and delivery angles. We’ll catch him next time. OK, Jake. I can handle it from here. Meet me in the rooftop restaurant for an early dinner, let’s say 4:30. That’ll give us time to catch our flights out.”
So I killed the rest of the day around the Bonaventure, decided
not to complicate things by dropping in on friends in the area. Had a swim in the pool, walked around that section of town. I thought maybe we’d have an after-meeting debriefing and some clarification on what I was to do next. No such luck. At 5:13 DeLorean rolled into the restaurant with several other men whose names I forget. We took a table, ordered drinks (except DeLorean, who never drank), and DeLorean started spouting. In a loud voice he spouted out his deals, his problems, his wealth, his travels. He dropped names, he spun visions, he vilified enemies. I’d never seen him in public before. It was all too clear: I was working for a top-of-the-line obnoxious jerk.
Well, the food was good and the view was impressive, anyhow. DeLorean ordered healthy choices and didn’t eat much of them. Mostly, he was focused on John DeLorean and didn’t let anyone in the place forget it. I had a flight to catch so excused myself. He rose and said, “Jake, glad you came out. They wanted to see my people. You did good, helped me move the deal along. Things are progressing smartly. We’ll have this in the bag within the month. Tell Belfast that salvation is imminent. I’m leaving shortly for my snow-grooming business in Utah. I’ll be in touch when it’s time for the final phase, and that’s when you’ll go into action.”
And that was that. I took a cab to LAX and flew straight back to Belfast. DeLorean had rented a two-floor suite, complete with waiter, in one of Los Angeles’s most expensive hotels for a meeting with two other men. He’d flown me out (coach) from Belfast for five minutes of participation. “Hurry up and wait” was an old Army adage. There was another that, thinking back, I could have equally well applied: “Warfare is endless hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of abject terror.”
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3 Page 52