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10
Oh! Calcutta!
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The names and locations of embassies and consulates in this book and the descriptions of chanceries are as accurate as I could dig up for 1972-75. The names of ambassadors and government employees have all been made up because they are part of the fictional story. When the name of a historic personage is used, it is in context with the record of what that person actually said or did. This is historical FICTION, not history.
I found no evidence that Polaroid devices were installed in the embassies and consulates for the purpose of making passports, although the equipment described mostly existed. To my knowledge, the process has always involved sending the photo and the information to a service center for manufacture. The Polaroid controversy in South Africa is historic, though, and has been related as accurately as I could make it.
I DID NOT SCREW CC, though she made it pretty clear that she was available and willing. We did get some good pictures. We were each allowed to keep two of the 8x10 shots. I told her I’d send her a selection of the best black and whites when I got a chance to process and print them.
“I almost left without you,” Janet said as she drove me back to the hotel.
“You should have said something. I could have caught a cab,” I said. It was close to eleven at night and I didn’t realize the only reason she was hanging around was to take me back to the hotel.
“I thought you’d leave with CC.”
“Oh. Um…” How to be honest about this? “I won’t say it’s never happened, but I try to make a practice of not sleeping with models. Especially a model who used to be my girlfriend’s roommate. That kind of thing just gets messy.”
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t model for you.”
“Um…”
“Relax. I’m not suggesting anything. Having a relationship with an account rep from a vendor doing business with the government could get messier than getting it on with a model. Do you think you’re ready for the session tomorrow?”
“Having stepped through the process once and now trying to teach it to novices is going to be a challenge. I’m pretty sure I can stumble through the setup and creation, but I doubt I will be erudite. I should have spent this evening going over my notes,” I said.
My task for Thursday was to train three newcomers on the equipment, including setup, taking photos, and manufacturing a passport. Thankfully, I did not need to teach them to completely disassemble and reassemble everything, troubleshooting any problems along the way. I didn’t think I’d need to do that when I set things up in an embassy. From what Mr. Martin had said, there would be a space in each chancery or consulate building dedicated to the equipment. Polaroid had given a design for minimum space required. The equipment would all be set up once and that would be it.
Janet dropped me off and said she’d pick me up at eight in the morning, and not to forget that there was a dinner meeting Thursday evening. I guess that was the only reason I wasn’t leaving until Friday. This was the official dinner meeting that I was allowed to accept without paying for.
As soon as I reached my room, I called home and talked to my lovers. I had to answer questions from Ronda about CC, and was glad I’d cut the activities off where I did.
“Does Mr. Martin know that a whole bunch of supplies are being shipped to us? I don’t know how much is expected in the shipment, but I gathered it was a lot of equipment and material. The companies are geared up to start supplying as fast as we can install.”
“I’ll check. I know they keep passport supplies here in the building somewhere, because they put together passports to ship out. I’ll find out.”
She handed the phone over to Patricia.
“Toni is enrolled in preschool and she is so excited about it. There’s a Head Start program at the elementary school and she’s there half days. Then it shifts to daycare.”
“I hope they’ll let me come by and see how it runs,” I said. “All I have to do is get a morning off of work when she’s in school.”
“There will be an evening parents’ session coming up soon. In the meantime, I’ve put applications in at the Jewel Tea Store and at Piggly Wiggly. They’re both just a few blocks from the school. I don’t think I’ll have a problem getting a part time job and still be able to keep the house clean.”
“You are not relegated to being our housekeeper!” I said. “That house belongs to all of us and we will all do our share of cleaning and cooking.”
“Oh, don’t get upset,” Patricia said. “I know everyone will help, but it’s the part of our little family that I’ve taken on. And Anna is only working part time for Jordan, so depending on how busy your studio keeps her, she’ll be doing at least as much around the house as I do. But really, Nate, you and Ronda are going to be traveling just about every week. You can hardly wash the dishes if you’re eating off grape leaves in Greece. Speaking of which, Anna is bouncing beside me because she needs you to kiss her.”
She handed the phone to Anna.
“I’m afraid kissing will need to wait until Friday afternoon. Tomorrow, I have to conduct a training class.”
“I can wait until I see you at the gate. Ronda has given me your flight information and I’ll be there to pick you up,” Anna said.
“Better bring the bus. I think I’m going to have a whole bunch of equipment to transport. They’re sending it all with me.”
“Hmm. We’d better get a luggage cart. Who knows where I’ll have to park at O’Hare. I’m just missing you a lot right now.”
“What’s got you pining?” I asked.
“I think my period is due this weekend. I just want to be held and cuddled by my boyfriend.”
“Your lover will be all over that assignment,” I laughed. “Oh, I should probably go to the studio sometime this weekend and develop some photos. Do I still even have access over there?”
“Yes, but we’ve been putting together a space here where you can do some limited photoshoots and do printing and processing. You’ll like it.”
“Where do we have room for that?”
“In the boathouse. We hardly even looked in the back of the garage. We’ve all decided having a boat is unlikely in the near future, at least, so we’ll turn the back half of the garage where a boat would normally be stored into a miniature studio.”
“That’s cool. I suppose we can get enough equipment that I can do some work out there.”
“Don’t worry about it. Remember, you have a business manager.”
“Right. Okay. I love you.”
“And we all love you. Get some sleep so you can shine like a star tomorrow.”
Thursday morning, I was back at Polaroid for the first of my install practice runs. I would simply unpack and set up the equipment, talking through the setup for the person I was instructing. Then that person would set up all the equipment and we’d go through the process of creating an ID card and a passport.
As soon as the session was done, Ray and Lewis, my trainers, critiqued how I’d done and then I disassembled everything and went through it all again. The second session went until one o’clock and then we broke for lunch, served in the company cafeteria. I wasn’t sure how things were supposed to work as far as expenses went when I was eating in the company cafeteria and it seemed that everyone’s food was being provided. I’d find out if I did anything wrong soon enough.
At two, I had my next ‘trainee’ and went through the whole process again. I didn’t think the actual training I’d be conducting would go as fast as the practice sessions. In fact, this trainee had a ton of questions, which I answered to the best of my ability. After the session, I had to break everything down and, with the assistance of Ray and Lewis, prepare it for shipping. Except it wasn’t going to be shipped. I was checking it at the airport and carting it home with me, along with a couple of heavy boxes of supplies.
We wrapped up a little after five and all went out to eat at a nice steakhouse. By all, I mean Ray, Lewis, George Taylor, Janet, and me. This was definitely a celebratory dinner for all of us and I had a martini to toast with.
Friday morning, Janet picked me up one last time. We went to the office and loaded all the materials and equipment into her car with my bag, camera, props trunk, and new portfolio shots. Then she drove me to the airport. I definitely never wanted to drive in Boston. I managed to get a porter with a luggage cart to load all the equipment and boxes on and then headed to the check-in desk. There was quite a discussion about whether I would be allowed to check all the baggage until I presented my new black passport and informed them that I was on official State Department business and these items needed to get to Chicago with me.
The attitude behind the counter changed dramatically. The boxes and cases were all sealed with red security tape and I was promised they would be the first items off the aircraft in Chicago. Then I was told there was an open seat in first class if I would like to upgrade for twenty dollars. That sounded like a good deal to me and I took it, paying cash for the upgrade and not using my American Express credit card.
By one in the afternoon, I was comfortably seated in first class and headed for Chicago.
“We managed to locate the shipment and divert it to the warehouse where the other materials are stored. I think we have enough to keep us busy through the winter,” Ronda said when Anna and I picked her up at the train station.
“That’s good. We’ve got enough in the back of the bus to start a black market in fake passports,” I said. “Anna, honey, we’d better park the bus inside the garage if there’s room.”
“Just jump out and open the door. I’m not sure it locks, though. We might need to go get a padlock,” Anna said. Why on earth did they send a bunch of classified equipment home with me on the plane?
“Do we have to deal with any business over the weekend?” I asked.
“It’s one of the real benefits of working for the government,” Ronda said. “Unless we are traveling, we don’t work overtime. Yes, we have to be at the office promptly at eight o’clock, but we also leave promptly at four-thirty. We have no work on the weekend.”
“Well, the coming week will all be spent teaching you to use and install the equipment as my backup,” I sighed. “God, I missed being home with my family.”
We pulled into the drive and I opened the garage door. Patricia had parked between the house and garage in a sheltered area we had there. It wasn’t quite a carport, but it would be a lot more convenient to the house when we were carting groceries and such. Toni came running around the house to meet us as I carted my duffle bag and camera case from the garage.
“Daddy! I have a new school!”
“That’s wonderful, Toni. Have you made new friends?”
“Daddy, they don’t know numbers and letters. I help them.”
“Good for you!”
Patricia rounded the corner and gave me a hug and a kiss then picked up my luggage to take in the house.
“Love you, Babe. Come in and rub my tummy. Baby sister needs attention, too.”
“Is everything okay?”
“I got in to see an obstetrician, Dr. Randolph, this week and received a pronouncement of fit and healthy. I also received a sheaf of paper about how to prepare for a baby. I wish I’d had all that when I was pregnant with Little Miss.”
“I Little Miss,” Toni said proudly. “Mommy. Daddy. Mom Anna. Mom Ronna.” She really liked to identify each of us and confirm our relationship. “Baby sister,” she concluded, patting Patricia’s tummy.
“Well, Miss Toni, why don’t you bring Daddy into the house so we can have dinner?” Patricia said. We all headed inside.
Over dinner, we mostly heard about Toni’s first week in school and pretty Miss Thompson. It was eventually revealed—by Patricia—that Miss Thompson was a recent college grad in her first year of teaching. Toni had decided she was the same as Mommy and Daddy, so she should live with us. At my horrified expression, Anna and Ronda started laughing.
“No, we aren’t recruiting anyone and you should not take Miss Thompson’s photos. She’s at the beginning of her career, not the end, like Miss Sullivan. We might, however, invite her over for dinner one evening if it seems appropriate,” Patricia explained after Toni was in bed.
I had everything I wanted in the world in bed with me and loved each of my wives.
The rest of the weekend we spent learning more about what it meant to be homeowners. I had to go out and buy a lawnmower as soon as Ace Hardware opened, and I bought a variety of lawn implements at the same time. I spent most of the day mowing, trimming, edging, weeding, and scooping the leaves and weeds that had gathered around our dock out of the water to get rid of.
We started a list of projects we should do to improve the property and I was just hoping I lived a long enough life to get them all done. Sunday, however, Anna and I went to the boathouse where she’d done a good job of setting up a darkroom.
“Levi said the equipment from the darkroom downtown was yours and he was waiting for you to remove it so he could install new equipment for the studio he planned to rent as needed. He helped me break it all down and pack it with instructions on how it all went back together. Tell me if I didn’t get something right,” she said.
“As far as I can tell, there’s only one problem with this new darkroom,” I said.
“What?” she asked, near panic.
“You have clothes on.”
That situation was soon corrected. Anna and I spent a long time in the darkroom, processing and printing photos, and just playing with each other.
“Here’s the inventory of everything that was shipped in last week,” Mr. Martin said when he met with us Monday morning. Maybe nobody got started at Polaroid until nine or nine-thirty Mondays, but everyone in the State Department was at their desk promptly at eight o’clock. “The inventory was checked at the warehouse and everything confirmed. It’s your responsibility now. You should prepare the first shipment for your assignment next week and get it out right away.”
“We thought we’d start with the Canadian consulates,” Ronda said. “We can use the first couple of weeks to practice and smooth out the process.”
“I’d like to give you that luxury, but I can’t. You’re going to India,” Martin said. “You’ll need two complete setups shipped to Calcutta. You’ll also need setups in New Delhi, Bombay, Madras, and Hyderabad. Josie can generate all the shipping documents, but you need to tell her precisely what is needed.”
“Why two to Calcutta?” I asked.
“We have a new mission to Bangladesh, but we don’t yet have a chancery in Dacca. The Chief of Mission is running things, but I doubt the president will appoint an official ambassador until the chancery is up and running.”
“And all the others?” Ronda asked.
“The embassy is in New Delhi and that is your ingress and egress point to the west. The consulates are in the other three cities. We’re currently being flooded with requests for education visas. India is an emerging nation, the second most populous in the world. It’s likely to be a major sources of immigrants to the US, just as it was to the UK before Gandhi.”
“We’re going to try to do these all in a week?” I asked.
“I expect you will take ten to fourteen days once travel time is computed. I understand you’ve been to Australia. This is just as long a trip, but you’ll fly east instead of West. The good news is that on flights of longer than eight hours, you’re allowed to travel first class. Ronda, if you don’t have the details of how to book the travel yet, Josie can direct you.”
“And do you have other specific things we’re supposed to do this week?”
“I’d like you to start doing badges for the department. Some people will balk, but I’ll issue a notice that no one will be admitted to the office after this week without a badge.”
I nodded. Martin looked at the two of us.
“Ready, set, go!” he said. Then turned and walked out the door.
“Two weeks? I thought you were only going out for a few days!” Anna said when we broke the news.
“The good news is that we’ll have five days off when we return. Then we’ll have a couple of days in the office before we have to head out on the next assignment,” Ronda said. “I’m doing my best to coordinate these schedules so we don’t get blindsided by them all the time.”
“We need all the family time we can squeeze in this week. We’re not going to leave until Monday, but that means it will be Wednesday when we finally get to Calcutta. We’ll be traveling on Thursday to Madras and then after the weekend to Bombay, Hyderabad, and finally New Delhi. We’ll fly home from there, and hopefully be here by Friday. This is going to be a real test of how smoothly I can get the training to operate and how well Ronda can keep things organized,” I said.
The family was all kind of shocked at how soon we’d be leaving and how long we’d be gone. Toni pouted all evening until I danced with her for an hour and then put her to bed. She was very clingy.
So were Anna and Patricia. And they weren’t just clingy to me, but to Ronda, as well.
I practiced breaking down and setting up the equipment each day and had a corner of our office set up for people to sit in as I took their pictures. They were all pretty surprised that it only took a couple of minutes and went away a bit happier than they’d been when they arrived. Josie was kept busy checking the names and typing the info on the template. Ronda was on calls halfway around the world trying to set the training schedule with each of the consulates. The office officially opened at eight o’clock, but we found ourselves there at seven in order to catch the people in India before they went home for the day. Somehow, we ended up with tickets for our flights and all the equipment shipped ahead of us. At least I wouldn’t be carting the equipment with me on the plane.
“The equipment and supplies are being shipped on a military transport. It isn’t subject to customs or inspection, but is taken directly to the chancery. I guess we aren’t subject to customs or inspection either,” Ronda said. “We just need to remember we are traveling on our black passports and not our green ones.”
When we got to the airport Monday morning, Ronda called Josie and Josie confirmed that all the consulates had reported in that the equipment and materials had been received. Our appointments had been confirmed.
We settled in to comfortable first class seats for the first leg. The whole transport time would be some thirty-six hours and we’d have an eleven-hour time change.
I opened my travel folder to read the bios of the people I’d be training the next two weeks. Ronda had successfully managed a full setup on Friday, so I felt like I had a real partner in this stuff. Of course, she’d be responsible for training on how to fill out the template form that was to go in the camera and talking about that process. I looked twice, thinking our travel envelope was awfully thick and wondering how much I needed to read about these people. It turned out that there was only a page on each of them. The rest of the envelope was stuffed with cash. I pulled out a 200 rupee note and looked at it.
“Ronda, how much is a rupee worth? I seem to have an awful lot of them.”
“Roughly eight rupees per dollar.”
Okay, then a 200 rupee note was worth about $25. I guess I wasn’t as rich as I thought.
We had two good meals on the first flight and breezed through our arrival in Germany. We were led to a first class lounge where we spent the next six hours just talking and playing cribbage. Then we boarded the flight to New Delhi.
This flight was an overnight flight and we were served dinner soon after we took off. Then the cabin lights were turned down and we tried to get comfortable in our reclining seats. They had a big center divider between them and we couldn’t even comfortably hold hands over it. As the cabin quieted down, Ronda slipped out of her seat and came around to mine. She slipped under my blanket and used me as a mattress. I didn’t mind.
We did a lot of kissing and giggling, trying to stay quiet so we wouldn’t disturb other passengers or the flight attendants. Somehow or another, though, enough layers of clothes got shifted around a little that I found myself with the hot moist vagina of my lover wrapped securely around my erection. We scarcely moved, but we made love in that reclined seat. When we came, we nearly sucked the air out of each other’s lungs as we kissed to keep quiet.
Ronda stuffed a wad of tissue into her panties to keep from getting come on her suit. I got myself zipped up and we went to sleep. A stewardess roused us in plenty of time to get ourselves pulled together and in our own seats before she started serving breakfast.
“Now I’m a member of the mile-high club, too,” Ronda whispered to me. We had another six-hour layover in New Delhi before we caught the two hour flight to Calcutta.
By the time we got some breakfast and flew to Calcutta, then took a harried taxi to the consulate, we were hoping to simply survive our first trip out of the country. We had some initial difficulty getting into the consulate because the guard couldn’t believe that two kids with black passports, who stopped outside the consulate to take pictures, would possibly come to the consulate in a local taxi.
“Miss May and Mr. Hart! Please come with me,” a young woman said when she retrieved us from the waiting area. We had to show our passports and our State Department badges again before we were allowed through to the inner area of the consulate. Then everything seemed calm and settled.
“I’m Carolyn Danvers. We spoke on the phone. No one was expecting you to arrive at the public gate and in a taxi!”
“I’m sorry, Miss Danvers,” Ronda said. “This is our first trip out to a consulate and I’m afraid we don’t know all the secrets yet.”
“Oh, my God! And you came to our little hellhole first? Well, welcome to Calcutta. The consulate here is the oldest in India and second oldest of the US embassies. It was established under the presidency of George Washington in 1792. With luck, we’ll still be here in 1992, though it is not always certain. The locals gave us a bit of a slap in the face earlier this year when they renamed the street our address is on to Ho Chi Minh Sarani Road. Where are you staying? I see you still have your suitcases with you.”
“I think we are just across the street at the Royal Orchid Hotel. It was on the list of convenient locations,” Ronda said.
“It will do. I’ll get an escort to take you over there when we’re finished with training. All your equipment was delivered to this room, which I’m told will become our official passport creation center. It seems awfully crowded.”
“Half the equipment is going on to Bangladesh,” I said. “There is supposed to be someone here for training.”
“Oh! The Bangladesh mission chief is meeting with our consul general. I’ll make sure he knows you’re here. Our passport specialist is Rita McGowan. If you’d make yourselves comfortable here, I’ll gather the troops.” Carolyn was off to announce our presence and we were left alone in the little room designated as the passport facility.
“Wow! Can we breathe yet?” I asked.
“She did seem to have a lot to say. I don’t think I heard anything new from my phone conversations. She might have told me then that there was an expected entrance for the consulate. Things seemed a little frantic out there.”
“Here we are,” Carolyn said, returning to the room. “Rita McGowan, meet Nate Hart and Ronda May. Rita is our passport specialist and I guess I’ve been chosen to be her backup with this new stuff.”
“Happy to meet you, Mr. Hart. Miss May.” Rita was a bit older and world weary. “I understand you are here to make my job easier.”
“Let’s hope that’s true,” I said. “With what we have to show you, the actual process of creating a passport or immigration visa will be reduced to minutes. Unfortunately, we have nothing to do with all the things that happen before you’re ready to actually produce a passport, so references, applications, forms, and interviews still take time. The new passports and visas are easier to create and more secure. First, we’ll start with the equipment setup. Uh… Miss Danvers, are we expecting the delegation from Dacca to join us?”
“No, Mr. Hart. You’ll have them in a separate session tomorrow morning.”
“Okay, then let’s get started.”
I went through the whole process of opening the cases and setting up the equipment, explaining each step. Then I showed how it disassembled and could be stored and moved.
“Why disassemble it? This is the room we’ve been assigned. Can’t we leave it set up?”
“You can, once I’m confident you can put it together and take it apart,” I said. “The requirement from the State Department is that the local operator be able to disassemble and move the equipment in an emergency. I’m sure you have the same requirement with the blank passport pages and covers you currently have.”
“Yes. I don’t understand why we need it. This consulate has been here for nearly 200 years. It isn’t going anywhere.”
“We can all pray for that kind of stability throughout the world,” I said. “Now it’s your turn to assemble the equipment. You can work on it together, but I encourage you to talk it out loud. That really helps.”
The two women went through the process and in a matter of half an hour had succeeded in getting it all ready to take pictures and manufacture a passport.
“Now, we have two functions for the device,” I said. “The first has been mandated by the Secretary of State: that all employees of the State Department in every location shall be issued an identity badge and will be required to display it while on government premises. You can see that Ronda and I are wearing our badges and we have brought a stock of badge material with us. Let’s start by getting your badges created and then we can move on to passports.”
Ronda typed up the information on the ID template, I inserted it in the camera and then pulled it out and had Rita repeat the process. Then Carolyn seated herself in the portrait chair and Rita focused and snapped the picture. A minute later, the completed laminated photo and ID information dropped out of the slot and Carolyn became the first employee in Calcutta to have an official badge. She repeated the process and Rita soon joined her.
“This box contains enough material for you to get everyone employed here an ID badge. I encourage you to get them done as quickly as possible. We managed to get the 90 employees in Chicago badged last week. Now, I have a limited supply of completely blank sample passport books—meaning they don’t even have the background printing on them—so we can practice assembling a few passports. As soon as we’re finished, we’ll want to shred them, as you would any ID or passport with an error on it.”
We went through the process of typing up the template form and creating a blank passport for each of the women. They each practiced on Ronda and me. After I was reasonably certain they could execute the process, we fed the blanks into the shredder. I’d discovered that every consulate and embassy in the world had at least one heavy duty shredder.
The final step was going through the likely problems they could face. This focused on the possibility of a jam, either in the laminator or the bindery.
“Ladies, you have passed our first day of training. I’d like to say you can start producing IDs and passports tomorrow, but I guess we have another training session in the morning.”
“Miss May, why don’t you come with me and I’ll talk you through the process of getting transport and admittance to the other consulates and the embassy. Mr. Hart, please don’t wander from this room any farther than the men’s room just up the hall on your left.”
“I’ll wait quietly,” I said.
Ronda left with Carolyn and Rita went back to her former cubby where she said she had a couple of dozen old fashioned passports to get prepared. When they left, I got to thinking and pulled out my calendar/address book. This was a compact version of the book that Anna now maintained for appointments and contacts. I leafed through it and smiled when I came upon Rohan’s contact information. I picked up the phone and asked for an outside line. There was a bunch of clicking and a voice said, “Go ahead.”
I dialed the number and was rewarded in a few seconds with Rohan’s voice.
“Rohan, it’s Nate Hart from the session in England last winter.”
“Nate! How are you? Are you traveling with that gorgeous assistant you had in January?”
“No, I’m traveling with my girlfriend.”
“Where are you? You sound like you’re just around the corner. Usually, there’s lag time in our conversations out here.”
“Well, I am sort of around the corner. Want to get together for dinner tonight? I’m at the US Consulate on Ho Chi Minh Sarani.”
“You are practically around the corner. Where are you staying?”
“The Royal Orchid.”
“Excellent. I’ll meet you there at seven. If we don’t like the hotel restaurant, we can walk to one not far from there.”
“I’ll see you in the lobby at seven.”
Ronda and I were driven, with our luggage, over to the Royal Orchid by a guy in a black suit and dark glasses. He never spoke. I was glad he drove us, though. Even though you could see the hotel from the front of the embassy, the street didn’t go through and we had to drive around a couple of blocks in order to get to it.
After we were checked in and freshened up, we went to the lobby to meet Rohan.
He spotted us right away and held out his hand to shake.
“Rohan, this is my girlfriend and work partner, Ronda. Ronda, Rohan was in the Location Portraiture class in England last January,” I said.
The restaurant in the hotel looked fine, so we got a table there and started to get caught up on life.
“I’m out of school and working for a local newspaper as a photographer. It still allows me plenty of time to take portraits, though. I don’t have that good a nose for news,” Rohan said.
“Are you doing portraits in addition to the photojournalism?”
“When I can. It’s not easy to set up a studio here in Calcutta. Of course, I learned my lesson and always have a camera with me, but it is used more for taking pictures of traffic accidents and protests than for portraits,” Rohan said.
“I discovered some great portraits can be taken in protests and news events.”
“Well, if you are planning to take any here, you should know Indian women are stricter regarding what they will allow you to see or photograph. Unless you go to a brothel of sorts, you are unlikely to find someone who will pose nude for you,” Rohan said.
“He does have a way of talking women out of their clothes,” Ronda laughed.
“Did he tell you about his first model in London? The very first weekend we were in class, Sir Andrew sent us out on a weekend assignment to find someone to talk into having a portrait right where they were. He and Lady Jane went to the British Museum and inside of an hour had talked a tourist out of her clothes, right there in the museum! He’s a legend among the other photographers.”
“Do you hear from the others?” I asked.
“Gretchen touched base after that cockup at the Olympics. She was devastated. Had made appointments with two of the fellows to have their portraits made the next day. Never saw them again. Horrid. Skylar plans to emigrate from South Africa, but hasn’t decided where yet. Haven’t heard from Brother Hector or Loren since the session. How is Lady Jane?”
“We received an engagement announcement just before we left Stratford this summer. She’ll be married in the spring. Nice guy. I met him when we were there.”
We continued to compare stories of photos and what we were working on for more than an hour, and then he departed and we went to our hotel room to collapse. We’d flown for thirty-six hours, worked a full day, then had dinner with a friend. We were exhausted.
Thursday morning, we checked out of our hotel because we’d be making the hop to Madras after I finished training this morning. We found a consulate car and driver at the door when we went out to call a taxi. He loaded our things and said he’d be taking us to the airport later so not to bother removing them.
It was a lot easier getting into the consulate this time. We were taken through a private drive and deposited at the rear entrance. Caroline met us there and rushed us inside.
“What did you do?” she whispered after we’d passed security and were led down an unfamiliar hall.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Last night. Why are you being summoned to a meeting with the Bangladesh Chief of Mission and the Calcutta Consul General?”
“Why are we being summoned there?” Ronda asked.
“That’s what I just asked!” Caroline seemed quite agitated, but we reached the doors of the consul general and were ushered inside.
We were led directly into the inner office. Caroline was left in the outer office. Two men were seated at a small conversation grouping where we were motioned to have a seat. Two fellows in dark suits stood on either side.
“Nate Hart and Ronda May,” said the first. “Forgive my failure to greet you properly when you arrived yesterday. We were rather busy. What is your purpose here?”
I looked a question at Ronda. Surely these guys knew what we were doing here.
“The State Department has acquired some new technology to help consulates and embassies process and generate passports and visas. I’m the trainer and Ronda is my assistant and coordinator. We trained two women on your staff on the equipment yesterday and my understanding is that we are training two people from the Bangladesh mission this morning before we continue on to Madras.”
“Yes, yes. I know the surface assignment. What is your deep assignment? Who sent you?”
“Deputy Assistant Secretary Donald Martin of the Bureau of Consulate Affairs,” Ronda said. “Has there been some confusion?”
“I need to know why you are here.”
“I believe we were sent here because there was concern that the Bangladesh embassy would have immediate need for the passport and visa processing capability. But there is not a secure facility in Dacca yet, so we were to meet here. As long as we’re here, Mr. Martin decided we should install at all the consulates and the embassy in India.”
“This is getting us nowhere,” the other guy said. “Why were you meeting with a member of the West Bengali Separatist Movement last night?”
“We didn’t…”
“Rohan Das. We have a record of your call from the embassy and observed your meeting. He works at the West Bengali Journal, a separatist mouthpiece. You can’t simply come into a Consulate jurisdiction and meet with subversives without informing the Consul General.”
“Rohan mentioned the name of the newspaper he works for, but it didn’t mean anything to me. I don’t know anything about a separatist movement,” I said.
The two guys both sighed and looked blankly at the other two in the room.
“That’s enough,” a voice we recognized came from a speaker phone.
“Mr. Martin?” Ronda said.
“Yes, Ronda. Just tell us briefly why you met with Rohan Das and what the conversation was about.”
“That’s my fault,” I said. “Rohan is a friend. We both attended a Location Portraiture class in England in January. We all promised to check in with each other if we were ever in the area. When I discovered we were on our own for dinner, I called Rohan and we got together for dinner.”
“And talked about?”
“Photography. He told me he was working as a photojournalist but was getting a few opportunities to take portraits. We talked a bit about our time in England, what our other friends are doing these days, and what kind of pictures we’d managed recently. He was very interested in the stories of our work in Stratford, Ontario.”
“He never mentioned the movement or what he was doing at the West Bengali Journal?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s what I expected. Gentlemen, it is nearly one o’clock in the morning in Chicago. I don’t see any need for further discussion. Get your training done.” Martin loudly hung up his phone.
Our hosts stood and the one guy and one of the suits motioned for us to accompany him as he left. We went straight to the training room. Yesterday’s setup was missing.
“Would anyone care to tell us what the hell just happened?”
“I think you’ll get a better briefing on what’s happening in areas you are sent to on this innocuous mission of yours in the future,” the guy said. “The country of Bangladesh is less than a year old. It fought a bloody revolution for two years that drove over ten million refugees into India. Since the establishment of the new democracy, most have been repatriated, resulting in an influx of Bihari refugees, both here and stacked up waiting to get into Pakistan. Seeing the success of East Bengali in gaining its independence and creating its own country, there are those who have begun to make noises about the West Bengali province of India becoming similarly independent.”
“And my friend is involved in that?” I asked.
“Maybe. Maybe not. He works for the West Bengali Journal, which is an exponent of the separatist movement. That doesn’t mean every employee is part of it. But it is enough to have a phone call to a known employee from inside the consulate flagged and followed. You might want to check out the political situation in areas where you travel from now on.”
“Crap,” Ronda said as she sat at the typewriter. I started the demonstration and training. Both men were very attentive. They did the exercises without comment and proved to be proficient in the assembly and disassembly of the equipment. We finished about noon.
“Mr. Hart. Miss May. It has been a pleasure to work with you. Please pay us a visit one day in the future when Bangladesh will have returned to the land of beauty and peace it once was.” The men left the room and Caroline was there immediately to guide us to the car waiting for us. We were transported to the airport and were in the air by two-thirty.
When we arrived in Madras, a driver was waiting for us and drove us to a hotel where we checked in for two nights, and were informed our car would be waiting at eight o’clock in the morning.
We ordered food delivered to our room and collapsed for the night.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
