Back in the 1990s, my friend Susan and I stayed a few extra days in London after a business trip. One night, we ventured out to dinner at what we considered our regular neighborhood place near Kensington Palace. (We were not guests at Kensington Palace. I was staying around the corner on the top floor of a lovely but cheap hotel in a converted townhouse where I shared a bathroom with strangers I never saw. Susan must have still been on expenses. She was staying a tube ride away.)
I guess we were chatting about our trip to Russia a few years before when my friend heard the guy at the next table say, "I can't believe who they're letting into Black Ops these days." He meant us.
Susan was facing the table where two middle-aged Americans were finishing dinner and possibly their second, or third, bottle of wine. Somehow, we ended up in conversation with them during which we discovered:
They worked for some American intelligence agency, a fact that should not have been disclosed but was because of something else we learned.
They were very drunk. Although they should not have been because we learned one more thing.
Only one person in the party should drink while the other abstains.
We were a bit skeptical about their claims to be spies of some sort, so the one guy who did all the talking offered what he considered proof.
He knew a lot about the NSA headquarters building which was still relatively new. We figured anyone could get ahold of that information although later I learned it wasn’t that easy. But, we figured his knowledge didn’t prove his status. How could we even know his information was accurate?
So, he directed our attention to the table in the back corner of the restaurant where a male customer (middle-aged and a little tough looking) was having dinner alone. The alleged agent told us why the solo diner had chosen that seat with his back against the wall: he could observe the entire restaurant but specifically his colleague and him. He told us to watch. When that fellow finished, he would be replaced almost immediately by a similar diner. Okay, he got that right.
Still, we were not convinced. So, he pulled out his passport. (Did I mention that he was very drunk and the other guy appeared too drunk to care?) Anyway, the passport. The biggest, fattest passport I had ever seen. I no longer recall what the hotspots around the world were at that time but I do remember that there was a stamp for each of them. This was not a passport used for an Eurail tour. Most of the stamps were for countries savvy tourists never visited. Including Rwanda in 1994.
The Rwanda genocide was only a few months behind us. Watching this alleged agent talk about it convinced me he was there. He might not have been there for the NSA, but he was there. He felt the pain. He got specific. He may not have been sober in the usual sense but his thoughts were. I feel bad that I challenged him once. Intelligence agent or not, his memories were real—and painful.
I don’t remember what other proof he offered, but when I pulled out my credit card, he had a violent reaction. He threw a fifty-pound note on our bill and paid. “Never pay with a credit card.” Apparently, he still thought Susan and I were inept Black Ops operatives.
I didn’t quite believe the guy but I was still feeling a little creeped out by the experience. I insisted on walking Susan to the tube stop. We had just stepped inside when a young couple with Eastern European accents rushed up and thrust a map at us. A big map. I held one side. Susan held the other. I don’t recall what they asked about but I was convinced what they really wanted was a better look at us. And, our fingerprints.
I tried to convince Susan that within the hour our fingerprints would be zooming across whatever technology spies used in that era. Susan thought I had gone around the bend.
I thought maybe I had when I got back to my room on the top floor of my small hotel. I heard footsteps. Upstairs - but there was no upstairs. Perhaps an attic? Possibly, but by now it was pretty late. I could think of no reason anyone would be digging around in the attic at that hour. I stayed in that room several times - before and after that night - and never heard a sound from above. My fearful reaction seems ridiculous now - but not after a night out with alleged spies.
Susan thought my reaction was silly. Until . . . she got on her flight to Washington DC (I lived in New York by then) and ran into the chatty drunk, now sober, by the restrooms. (The other guy was asleep or passed out.) She wasn’t totally comfortable having them on her flight, so when she ran into the two alleged agents in the parking lot, she kept her distance.
I think it was a good decision. Just in case.
© 2023 Jane Kelly
