CHAPTER 2
“We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.” -H.L. Mencken
Tiffany Ashley Davenport- better known to family and friends as “Tad” since shortly after her maternal grandfather, Grandpa Johnson, had recognized how much his granddaughter disliked her “prissy” given names and began calling her by her initials when she was about eight years old- woke slowly out of a light, restless sleep. She surveyed her surroundings and attempted to figure out why a rather large head was lying on her right shoulder while a small boy with something wet and sticky on his hand was patting her left cheek with one of his gooey fingers.
Then she remembered. The gigantic man, whose real name she did not know, but whom she had nicknamed “Doublewide” for her internal conversations, was already well settled on the plane when she boarded in Frankfurt. He had apparently staked out his claim to the two adjacent seats at the flight’s origination in Istanbul. When a Frankfurt passenger showed him the ticket she had purchased for one of the two seats (an aisle seat), he refused to let her have it, claiming that his enormous size entitled him to two seats under a recent court settlement won by the National Association of Weight Challenged Americans (NAWCA). The flight attendant had been forced to move the unhappy woman to a seat in the middle of a center row in the back of the plane, promising her as compensation a free roundtrip ticket to any destination in the United States. Tad also remembered that the little boy’s real name was Steve and that, all things considered, he seemed like a nice little kid. Unfortunately, someone had given him a rather large supply of stick candy which he licked and handled constantly, creating sticky hands and a colorful sticky face surrounding his mouth.
“Oh gee, it’s ‘Doublewide’ and ‘Sticky Stevie,’” she thought to herself, as she looked again at her two neighbors in the middle aisle of the Boeing 787. Could I have possibly gotten a worse seat?” she wondered as she surveyed her surroundings from the vantage point of Seat 35-E, the one in the middle of the five-seat middle row in the center of the rear economy class section. “No doubt about it,” she concluded. “I win the prize. This is hands-down the worst possible seat on a plane with an abundance of bad seats. They call this plane a Dreamliner. It’s more like a nightmare than a dream. I have to escape from here for at least a few minutes.”
Tad, slowly and with some effort, gently pushed Doublewide’s head back over to one of the two seats that he occupied, unbuckled her seatbelt and, as gracefully as possible, slipped by Sticky Steve and his sleeping mother, finally reaching the aisle and space in which to exercise her cramped limbs. After stretching her legs and torso, she walked slowly to the rear of the plane and took her position behind two other disheveled Economy passengers waiting for their turn to use the miniature restroom. While waiting, her mind began to clear from the cloudy state that attempting to sleep on airlines always produced. She tried to sort out what had happened to her with breathtaking speed.
It was just yesterday. She had barely finished teaching an English class when a woman whom she had not previously met approached and handed her a book. Before Tad could say anything, the woman said in Arabic, “Page 125 is very interesting,” and walked away. Upon opening the book to the designated page, Tad found an envelope. Inside the envelope were a passport, an airline ticket and a piece of paper on which a brief note was written: “Your cover has been blown. Your apartment has probably been bugged. Carry only essential items with you and go to the airport very early in the morning. Your ticket, passport and other identification are enclosed. Buy a throwaway cell phone and contact Charlene McGill of Homeland Security. Good luck. Ringo 911.”
Ringo was the code name of her CIA contact, and 911 was a confirmation code that the message was legitimate. She knew she had to leave, and she wasted no time doing so, following her instructions to the letter. Now she was standing in line to use the restroom of a Boeing 787 that was taking her back to a new job and a lot of uncertainty in her native country- a country that had been experiencing a wave of terrorist attacks unlike any in nearly a decade.
“Pardon me, Miss, but are you waiting in line for the restroom?” Tad realized that she had been deep in thought and that the woman behind her was trying to get her attention.
“Oh yes, I’m sorry,” Tad responded before opening the accordion-style door and entering the small space that passed as a restroom.
After taking care of business, including a thorough washing of her hands and candy-coated face, Tad took a little stroll up and down the aisles of the plane before returning to her prized seat between Doublewide and Sticky. Fortunately, Doublewide was now awake, sitting upright and reading a book, and Sticky was asleep with his cute little gooey face and hands snuggled against his mother’s lap.
As she settled back in her seat and fastened her seat belt, Davenport began thinking about Toby Sullivan and how much she looked forward to seeing him. She and Toby had become extremely close after meeting at a national security gathering several years previous. Things were getting really hot and heavy between them when she was approached by her team leader at the CIA and offered a chance to work undercover in the Middle East. As much as she had hated to leave Toby, she had dreamed of working as an “espionage agent” since she was a young girl. The offer was too good to turn down. In the five years since leaving Washington, she had seen Toby on just a few occasions, but she was still in love with him and hoped that he felt the same way. She was excited that she would see him again- hopefully, in just a few hours..
Tad touched the small video screen on the seat in front of her, producing a map that showed her flight still about three hours from Washington, D.C. She then changed the video program to “movies” and watched an old Harrison Ford flick about the hijacking of Air Force One. After watching it until the president and his family were safely rescued and all the bad guys killed, she fell back into an uneasy sleep for about an hour before being awaken by a flight attendant saying something about starting the initial approach into Ronald Reagan Airport. Why, Tad wondered to herself, do they always say “initial” approach? Just how many times are they going to attempt to land, anyway?
Before Davenport could figure out a logical explanation for this illogical airline jingo, she had something far more serious to worry about. She noticed the plane was suddenly banking sharply to the right and increasing its altitude. Simultaneously, she saw a look of shock and terror on the faces of many of her fellow passengers, including Doublewide and little Stevie. Before she had an opportunity to ask anyone what was happening, she heard the intercom click on and the captain, in a rapid-fire voice, attempt to explain the plane’s unusual motion.
“This is the captain speaking. As you may have noticed, we just made a sharp right turn and have begun to gain altitude. The reason for these maneuvers is to get out of District of Columbia airspace as quickly as possible. We don’t know all of the details, but apparently a bomb exploded a few minutes ago in the National Cathedral and all air traffic is being directed away from the city. We are awaiting final instructions, but our tentative plan is to land at BWI – the Baltimore –Washington International Airport. As soon as we receive our destination, I will let you know our plans.”
“The National Cathedral- for Christ sake, that’s where Toby goes to church,” Tad said to herself as she tried to pull her thoughts together as quickly as possible. Relying on the CIA training that had helped her make it through five difficult years in the Middle East as an undercover operative, she composed herself as best she could and searched the channels on the in-flight television screen on the back of the seat in front of her. She quickly found a news report about the bombing of the church.
“Details are still sketchy, but we do know that several people have been killed and many more injured this morning when a bomb exploded during a religious service at the National Cathedral,” said the man with the perfectly blow-dried head of hair and non-descript accent. “We hope to have a reporter and camera crew on site shortly, but as you might imagine, firefighters, medical personnel, law enforcement officials and other emergency personnel are rushing to the scene and roads are being closed to ordinary traffic for miles around this landmark religious site which has served as an unofficial national church for more than 100 years.”
The news report left Tad clearly shaken. It was a strange feeling for someone who normally kept her emotions in check. Maybe her senses were heightened because things in her life were changing so rapidly. Everything had happened so fast that she had only been able to speak briefly to her sister and to an old friend with whom she would soon be working at the Office of Homeland Security. She hadn’t even had time to contact Toby, the one person she was most anxious to see, but also the one she was most nervous about seeing. And now, there was this news about the bombing. She knew that Sullivan had recently started attending the Cathedral because he loved organ music and because his boss expected his agents to attend church.
She wanted to find out if Toby was safe, but she felt completely helpless to do anything. For security purposes, she had nothing on her person or in her carry-on luggage that identified her as a CIA agent, and she had no way to contact anyone at the CIA, Homeland Security, or at the taskforce where she would soon be working. She could only wait until the plane landed so that she could make contact with someone who knew more about what had happened. She did know this, however: If Sullivan was injured because he was trying to “be a good Christian,” she was going to be more than a little mad. In fact, she was going to be damn pissed off- and not just at the ones who set off the bomb, but also at the ones who made going to church so important to a person’s career advancement. Just one more example of religious warfare and stupidity, she told herself while changing channels on the in-flight television, trying to find more information about the bombing at the Cathedral.