#Security guards for retired bureaucrats at home

[jenniferisacommonname]

Bonus Level Unlocked

This week marks the release of Jason Schreier’s Press Reset, an incredibly well-researched book on catastrophic business failure in the gaming industry. Jason’s a good dude, and there’s an excerpt here if you want to check it out. Sadly, game companies going belly-up is such a common occurrence that he couldn’t possibly include them all, and one of the stories left out due to space constraints is one that I happen to be personally familiar with. So, I figured I’d tell it here.

I began working at Acclaim Studios Austin as a sound designer in January of 2000. It was a tumultuous period for the company, including a recent rebranding from their former studio name, “Iguana Entertainment,” and a related, ongoing lawsuit from the ex-founder of Iguana. There were a fair number of ghosts hanging around—the creative director’s license plate read IGUANA, which he never changed, and one of the meeting rooms held a large, empty terrarium—but the studio had actually been owned on paper by Acclaim since 1995, and I didn’t notice any conflicting loyalties. Everyone acted as if we always had been, and always would be, Acclaim employees.

Over the next few years I worked on a respectable array of triple-A titles, including Quarterback Club 2002, Turok: Evolution, and All-Star Baseball 2002 through 2005. (Should it be “All-Stars Baseball,” like attorneys general? Or perhaps a term of venery, like “a zodiac of All-Star Baseball.”) At any rate, it was a fun place to work, and a platformer of hijinks ensued.

But let’s skip to the cutscene. The truth is that none of us in the trenches suspected the end was near until it was absolutely imminent. Yes, Turok: Evolution and Vexx had underperformed, especially when stacked against the cost of development, but games flop in the retail market all the time. And, yes, Showdown: Legends of Wrestling had been hustled out the door before it was ready for reasons no one would explain, and the New York studio’s release of a BMX game featuring unlockable live-action stripper footage had been an incredibly weird marketing ploy for what should have been a straightforward racing title. (Other desperate gimmicks around this time included a £6,000 prize for UK parents who would name their baby “Turok,” an offer to pay off speeding tickets to promote Burnout 2 that quickly proved illegal, and an attempt to buy advertising space on actual tombstones for a Shadow Man sequel.)

But the baseball franchise was an annual moneymaker, and our studio had teams well into development on two major new licenses, 100 Bullets and The Red Star. Enthusiasm was on the upswing. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention when voice actors started calling me to complain that they hadn’t been paid, but at the time it seemed more like a bureaucratic failure than an actual money shortage—and frankly, it was a little naïve of them to expect net-30 in the first place. Industry standard was, like, net-90 at best. So I was told.

Then one Friday afternoon, a few department managers got word that we’d kind of maybe been skipping out on the building lease for let’s-not-admit-how-many months. By Monday morning, everyone’s key cards had been deactivated.

It's a little odd to arrive at work and find a hundred-plus people milling around outside—even odder, I suppose, if your company is not the one being evicted. Acclaim folks mostly just rolled their eyes and debated whether to cut our losses and head to lunch now, while employees of other companies would look dumbfounded and fearful before being encouraged to push their way through the crowd and demonstrate their still-valid key card to the security guard. Finally, the General Manager (hired only a few months earlier, and with a hefty relocation bonus to accommodate his houseboat) announced that we should go home for the day and await news. Several of our coworkers were veterans of the layoff process—like I said, game companies go under a lot—and one of them had already created a Yahoo group to communicate with each other on the assumption that we’d lose access to our work email. A whisper of “get on the VPN and download while you can” rippled through the crowd.

But the real shift in tone came after someone asked about a quick trip inside for personal items, and the answer was a hard, universal “no.” We may have been too busy or ignorant to glance up at any wall-writing, but the building management had not been: they were anticipating a full bankruptcy of the entire company. In that situation, all creditors have equal standing to divide up a company's assets in lengthy court battles, and most get a fraction of what they’re owed. But if the landlords had seized our office contents in lieu of rent before the bankruptcy was declared, they reasoned, then a judge might rule that they had gotten to the treasure chest first, and could lay claim to everything inside as separate from the upcoming asset liquidation.

Ultimately, their gambit failed, but the ruling took a month to settle. In the meantime, knick knacks gathered dust, delivered packages piled up, food rotted on desks, and fish tanks became graveyards. Despite raucous protest from every angle—the office pets alone generated numerous threats of animal cruelty charges—only one employee managed to get in during this time, and only under police escort. He was a British citizen on a work visa, and his paperwork happened to be sitting on his desk, due to expire. Without it, he was facing literal deportation. Fortunately, a uniformed officer took his side (or perhaps just pre-responded to what was clearly a misdemeanor assault in ovo,) and after some tense discussion, the building manager relented, on the condition that the employee touch absolutely nothing beyond the paperwork in question. The forms could go, but the photos of his children would remain.

It’s also a little odd, by the way, to arrive at the unemployment office and find every plastic chair occupied by someone you know. Even odder, I suppose, if you’re actually a former employee of Acclaim Studios Salt Lake, which had shut down only a month or two earlier, and you just uprooted your wife and kids to a whole new city on the assurance that you were one of the lucky ones who got to stay employed. Some of them hadn’t even finished unpacking.

Eventually, we were allowed to enter the old office building one at a time and box up our things under the watchful eye of a court appointee, but by then our list of grievances made the landlords’ ploy seem almost quaint by comparison (except for the animals, which remains un-fucking-forgivable.) We had learned, for example, that in the weeks prior to the bankruptcy, our primary lender had made an offer of $15 million—enough to keep us solvent through our next batch of releases, two of which had already exited playtesting and were ready to be burned and shipped. The only catch was that the head of the board, company founder Greg Fischbach, would have to step down. This was apparently too much of an insult for him to stomach, and he decided that he'd rather see everything burn to the ground. The loan was refused.

Other “way worse than we thought” details included gratuitous self-dealing to vendors owned by board members, the disappearance of expensive art from the New York offices just before closure, and the theft of our last two paychecks. For UK employees, it was even more appalling: Acclaim had, for who knows how long, been withdrawing money from UK paychecks for their government-required pension funds, but never actually putting the money into the retirement accounts. They had stolen tens of thousands of dollars directly from each worker.

Though I generally reside somewhere between mellow and complete doormat on the emotional spectrum, I did get riled enough to send out one bitter email—not to anyone in corporate, but to the creators of a popular webcomic called Penny Arcade, who, in the wake of Acclaim’s bankruptcy announcement, published a milquetoast jibe about Midway’s upcoming Area 51. I told Jerry (a.k.a. “Tycho”) that I was frankly disappointed in their lack of cruelty, and aired as much dirty laundry as I was privy to at the time.

“Surely you can find a comedic gem hidden somewhere in all of this!” I wrote. “Our inevitable mocking on PA has been a small light at the end of a very dark, very long tunnel. Please at least allow us the dignity of having a smile on our faces while we wait in line for food stamps.”

Two days later, a suitably grim comic did appear, implying the existence of a new release from Acclaim whose objective was to run your game company into the ground. In the accompanying news post, Tycho wrote:

“We couldn’t let the Acclaim bankruptcy go without comment, though we initially let it slide thinking about the ordinary gamers who lost their jobs there. They don’t have anything to do with Acclaim’s malevolent Public Relations mongrels, and it wasn’t they who hatched the Titty Bike genre either. Then, we remembered that we have absolutely zero social conscience and love to say mean things.”

Another odd experience, by the way, is digging up a 16-year-old complaint to a webcomic creator for nostalgic reference when you offer that same creator a promotional copy of the gaming memoir you just co-wrote with Sid Meier. Even odder, I suppose, to realize that the original non-Acclaim comic had been about Area 51, which you actually were hired to work on yourself soon after the Acclaim debacle.*

As is often the case in complex bankruptcies, the asset liquidation took another six years to fully stagger its way through court—but in 2010, we did, surprisingly, get the ancient paychecks we were owed, plus an extra $1,700-ish for the company’s apparent violation of the WARN Act. By then, I had two kids and a very different life, for which the money was admittedly helpful. Sadly, Acclaim’s implosion probably isn’t even the most egregious one on record. Our sins were, to my knowledge, all money-related, and at least no one was ever sexually assaulted in our office building. Again, to my knowledge. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure we remain the only historical incident of corporate pet murder. The iguana got out just in time.

*Area 51’s main character was voiced by David Duchovny, and he actually got paid—which was lucky for him, because three years later, Midway also declared bankruptcy.

[michiganandback]

July 12- 22 AM

 We had a nice trip to Winston-Salem and spent the first couple of days working with Billy on some financial issues. Jerold's memorial service on Saturday was very nice. There was an overflow crowd at the church which held 200 per the fire code. My remembrance speech followed a pastor who Jerold had mentored at the Baptist Hospital as one of his security guards for his part time job to make ends meet. After Sam got finished I wasn't sure I could give any reasonable or meaningful presentation. I'm glad I was wrong. I used notes and made notes while I was waiting to speak and I made people laugh during the remembrance because our life before is funny even in death. That was not really my intention, but the way the stories came out they were funny. There are also some solemn and touching stories. At least no one booed me or through any tomatoes. I got through it without breaking down, I think in most part because of the humor associated with the solemn part. Anyway, everyone who talked to me afterwards thought I did a good job and they couldn't all be lying. I spent the next 5 days working on little projects for Billie and helping her sort through some more financial issues. Nothing was complicated, but dealing with bureaucrats at the power company and other places. I got a certain feel for what she had been telling me about dealing with people changing things from one name to another and having to carry a death certificate in your purse all the time. Luckily, we were able to do everything from the house except for the homeowners insurance. I left feeling that I've done her a good deed and she thought I hated her, not really, because we worked so hard and so fast. This is not her lifelong pattern to do things fast and not accept what people tell her over the phone. We got almost everything set up on auto pay. She wanted to sell a rental property and get that finished so we met with an investor at 11 a.m. at Starbucks and had an acceptable offer by 5:30 that afternoon. We counter-offered for a little bit more money and he accepted it 30 minutes later. So we sold the house in less than 12 hours for more than she thought she could get for it. Her daughter was shocked. That's how I roll when I get on a roll. She took the paperwork to her lawyer Friday morning and will close on the house July 31st.   We left morning of July 20th and drove to the mountains for our campsite. We just vegged out the rest of the afternoon, relieving the stress from the four days of non-stop business. A couple beside us came over and asked if we would mind if they practiced some Bluegrass and country music for a gig they have later in the week. The man played the guitar and banjo and she played a string bass. That can draw a crowd and it did. A couple from Raleigh, one if my home towns, came over and sat with us and another couple who lives in Florida came over and sat with us while we had a drink or two. We finally broke it up about 7 and had dinner before we settled in for the night around 10. It rained but not severely during the night and was supposed to rain most of the day today. We thought it might when we went for a walk, but by 10:30 clouds went away and the temperature jump to the 70s. We went to the scholarship pancake drive breakfast at the Baptist church in the morning. I saw a few people I knew and many more that knew me. We had a great breakfast of gravy, biscuits, eggs, grits and sausage with a little fruit thrown in for good measure. There was not a pancake I sight. I guess it used to be a pancake breakfast and morphed to a regular country style gravy and biscuit breakfast. I did not complain. There was a short-order cook cooking omelets or eggs to order. We went back to the campground until 2 when they have another informal get together at the church for a specific class and what is considered open house for any class at the town hall. They had a formal program at the gymnasium followed by some music and dancing. We started the dancing and a few people joined us during the evening. We've already met several nice couples and I'm sorry I forgot to bring any business cards. One guy who worked at several phone companies as an executive actually retired at 49 is now traveling around the country now and then with his wife in a Leisure Travel Serenity RV and a three-wheeled motorcycle. We will probably try to keep in touch with them  

[khalilhumam]

Stuck in the middle with you: Resourcing the Coast Guard for global competition

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/stuck-in-the-middle-with-you-resourcing-the-coast-guard-for-global-competition/

Stuck in the middle with you: Resourcing the Coast Guard for global competition

By Michael Sinclair, Lindsey W. Ford The 2017 National Security Strategy and 2018 National Defense Strategy laid down a marker in arguing that U.S. agencies should shift their focus toward great power competition, specifically with respect to China and Russia. Departments and agencies have done an admirable job in beginning to make needed adjustments to address this mandate. Yet in some cases, it is unclear which agency is best equipped to address the multi-layered challenges posed by Beijing, which often cross bureaucratic boundaries and the civilian-military divide. This is particularly true in the maritime domain, where the U.S. Navy is not always best positioned to deal with some of China’s worrisome actions, including excessive maritime claims, island-building escapades, aggressive illegal fishing, and general disregard for the maritime rules-based order. The U.S. Coast Guard is, however, uniquely positioned to address many of these problems. To do so, however, the Coast Guard will need to be resourced and postured to play a larger role in deterring maritime competition.

A broad mandate

Unlike the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force — which each have a single-mission focus — the Coast Guard has a sweeping mission set that includes defense readiness as well as maritime law enforcement, security, and governance operations. More Swiss-Army knife than Ka-Bar, what the Coast Guard lacks in “lethality” it more than compensates for in multi-mission flexibility. This makes the Coast Guard a critical tool of national power. The Coast Guard’s broad suite of operational authorities and decades of experience in working with partner nations make it perfectly positioned to slot quite neatly into an important space between diplomacy, largely led by the U.S. Department of State, and lethality, which is the clear purview of the Department of Defense (DoD) services and their supported regional combatant commanders. And it is precisely this space that can give the United States an important edge in countering Chinese military aspirations, especially in the Pacific region. Deterring Chinese coercion of U.S. partners, and checking its gray-zone tactics, is not simply about allied reassurance. Competing in the gray zone is also essential to push back on provocative Chinese behavior quickly and forcefully, before it escalates. This will require a persistent U.S. maritime presence, not only to deter coercion, but also to train partner nations on maritime security and sovereignty protection operations, as well as participate in joint defense and security exercises. Many of these Coast Guard-like operations — which comprise the vast majority of the competition continuum short of the use of armed force — are activities for which the DoD is neither particularly well equipped, nor particularly interested in doing. This will be increasingly true in a more budget-constrained environment, because these day-to-day activities pull resources, may diminish readiness, and can distract from DoD’s core mission: preparing to, and if necessary, delivering lethal force to convincingly respond to military aggression. Alternatively, the Coast Guard is not focused on delivering lethality. Instead, Coast Guard forces are focused on core competencies that include sovereignty enforcement, specifically with respect to exclusive economic zones; maritime law enforcement, including the interdiction of contraband; and as necessary, a defense-oriented maritime security posture. It is these very competencies that our allies in the Pacific are so interested in acquiring, because they are the very skills necessary to more effectively counter the vast majority of China’s aggressive, gray-zone regional maritime activities.

Show me the money

The real challenge, however, is the same one the Coast Guard always faces: money, money, money. How can the Coast Guard step up to help meet the challenges of a great power competition mandate when confronted with competing demands for Coast Guard services the world over, including importantly here at home in the United States? The Coast Guard’s organic budget is relatively small, about $12 billion annually for the last several years. It does, however, often receive some reimbursable funding from the DoD along with small apportionments of Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding. This OCO funding flows primarily to the Middle East to support the Coast Guard’s Patrol Forces Southwest Asia task group in the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) area of operations. This $12 billion budget, which flows through the Homeland Security Appropriations Committees in Congress and not the Defense Appropriations Committees, funds a staggeringly diverse set of Coast Guard operations and requirements: 11 statutory missions, Coast Guard personnel costs, military retirement pay, and shipbuilding and acquisitions. While the Coast Guard has had some long-needed success in building up its shipbuilding accounts over the last few years, it has not had similar success in obtaining enhanced funding for Coast Guard operations and maintenance, despite a requested increase of nearly $200 million identified for “defense readiness” in the president’s FY21 budget proposal. Indeed, the Coast Guard never enjoyed the budget growth that the DoD services received in the opening years of the Trump administration. As a result, it has experienced significantly diminished purchasing power as its flat budget has been eroded by inflation. Herein lies the rub for the Coast Guard. Increasing the operational tempo of the Coast Guard’s overseas operations, specifically in the Pacific, would require resources the service simply doesn’t have. This is unlikely to change for two reasons. First, the Coast Guard is housed within a cabinet department — the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — that is by definition focused on homeland threats rather than overseas missions. Second, the DoD has little incentive to see its own operations and maintenance funding diverted toward overseas Coast Guard missions it views as tangential to the department’s core priorities. And for the Coast Guard’s part, its need to recapitalize its aged fleet, address outdated information technology capabilities, and deal with shore infrastructure requirements, will all make it hard to shift precious resources towards new operations. None of this changes the fact that there is an increasing mission gap in the Pacific, which could foreseeably grow elsewhere in the world, as China’s operational reach and ambitions expand.

Increasing the operational tempo of the Coast Guard’s overseas operations, specifically in the Pacific, would require resources the service simply doesn’t have.

Committing to the long haul

The primary solution is relatively straightforward, so much so that it’s a bit cliché. As Tom Wolfe wrote in the great “The Right Stuff,” “No bucks. No Buck Rogers.” If countering China in the Pacific is truly an important component of the United States’ great power competition posture, the Coast Guard should be funded appropriately to help DoD execute that mission. Where those funds come from — whether the defense committees, through DHS, or some other source — is less important than wide acknowledgment that these Coast Guard-type operations serve as force multipliers in addressing the needs of our regional partners and deterring further gray-zone aggression. Simply put, for a relatively meager influx of operations and maintenance funds, at least in DoD terms (where the unit cost of a single Ford–class aircraft carrier is more than the Coast Guard’s entire annual budget), the Coast Guard could provide substantially more services in the Pacific. Enhanced funding in the range of $200-$500 million would translate to improved readiness and availability of its National Security Cutter (NSC) fleet and other Coast Guard assets capable of operating deep into the Pacific theater. Importantly, this funding might actually save money for DoD. Using the Coast Guard to conduct joint military exercises and patrols, capacity building, and international training is far cheaper than using a higher-end Navy ship to perform the same missions. Further, the Coast Guard should consider serious discussions with the United States Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) combatant commander as to whether the expeditionary patrol forces structure the Coast Guard has employed quite effectively in the Middle East could be incorporated in the Pacific theater. The Coast Guard has already shifted some of its focus to the Pacific theater, has recently deployed new cutters to the region, and is exploring new operational concepts to facilitate extended Pacific operations. Of course, the Pacific is not the Arabian Gulf, and the tyranny of distance is a serious factor to consider. But, as compared to Navy vessels, Coast Guard cutters tend to have long legs and their crews are used to operating independently. As former Navy officer Blake Herzinger has argued, a dedicated task group of Coast Guard cutters located in theater could be a powerful tool to check Chinese action as well as model responsible maritime behavior. As a corollary, as the Coast Guard plans for its Offshore Patrol Cutter acquisition, it should consider whether it could optimize a sub-class of these vessels for these types of defense-flavored operations in the Pacific. Finally, it may also be time for the Coast Guard to consider independent foreign basing options for the first time in recent memory, perhaps with America’s close ally and “Five Eyes” partner, Australia. A Coast Guard detachment in Australia would not only provide for an additional Pacific-centric staging area, besides existing Coast Guard locations in Hawaii and Guam, but would also assist with Coast Guard strategic icebreaking operations directed towards Antarctica, which is itself becoming more and more relevant in the era of great power competition. A relatively small influx of additional funds, coupled with a renewed focus on contemplating how and where the Coast Guard could offer added value in managing maritime competition, could play an important role in checking China’s regional maritime aspirations and deterring future conflict. But, this will take more than dabbling. It will require a real commitment in terms of budget prioritization, creative force posturing, and interoperability. As it is with most things, the Coast Guard should strive to be Semper Paratus in making this commitment. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Coast Guard, U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, or the U.S. Government.

[newstfionline]

Putin: Public Man Who Is Reserved Even by Russian Standards

AP, Dec. 20, 2017

MOSCOW--Vladimir Putin’s torso, which he sometimes bares during sporting pursuits, is a familiar part of his public image. How much Putin reveals of the man behind the buff exterior is another question.

After 18 years as Russia’s leader--and with another six-year term sure to follow a March election--Putin doesn’t show the appetites or vulnerabilities that can personalize Western politics, even when staged or spun. If he has moments of merriment or melancholy, they happen in private.

His air of shadow, distance and restraint also stands out in Russia’s more rigid political culture. Never has Putin burst into wild dancing a la Boris Yeltsin or confessed a boyish affection for arena rock like Dmitry Medvedev did as a self-described Deep Purple fan.

He may be chronically on guard, deliberately not exposing his inner life out of concern that opponents could exploit it. Or he might be exhibiting his essence: a man so focused on power that other interests blur. When U.S. President George W. Bush met Putin in 2001 and said he’d gotten “a sense of his soul,” some critics snorted that Putin had no soul.

“He doesn’t like people naturally,” Mikhail Zygar, a top editor at independent Dozhd TV and the author of “All The Kremlin’s Men,” said. “He considers those politicians who talk about values to be cheating him.”

Yet others see a strong strain of warmth in Putin. “Easy-going,” encouraging and even healing is the description offered by Yuri Tolstoy, who was one of Putin’s law professors in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.

“He is a charming and witty man. He is sincere and open in communication with anyone,” another of Putin’s former professors, Dzhenevra Lukovskaya, said. “Speaking globally, I’d say President Putin meets the challenges of the national self-identification of Russia.”

Russia appears to be the self-identification of Putin as well. If he lacks an overarching system of ethics and moral imperatives, he has an essential sense of being Russian, perhaps of embodying Russia itself.

“He’s not there because he’s believes he’s a dictator. No, he believes he’s the man who’s trying to save the country,” Zygar said.

At the same time, “Putin is not a strategical player as he is portrayed; he is a very tactical player, he is good at responding” in Zygar’s view.

He cited Russia’s military offensives in Syria as an example. Putin’s motivation in starting the Syria campaign was exasperation with the international criticism over Russia’s backing for separatist rebels in Ukraine’s war.

Putin was born Oct. 7, 1952, to factory-worker parents in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, a city pervaded by memories of a nearly 900-day Nazi siege during World War II. One of his older brothers died of diphtheria during the siege; the other died a few months after birth.

According to “First Person,” a book of interviews published after he became acting president in 1999, Putin and his parents lived in a dismal communal apartment with a wretched toilet down the hall.

Putin said he responded to the rough circumstances by becoming a childhood “hooligan,” one of the few in his school barred from joining the Communist Young Pioneers. In his early adolescence, Putin channeled his aggressive tendencies into the martial arts, a sport he practiced avidly into late middle-age.

In a moment of naive determination, he says he went to a local KGB office to ask about joining the spy service. He was told the agency was highly skeptical about the trustworthiness of prospective agents who walked in from the street.

Putin’s ultimate assignment with the KGB turned out to be Dresden, in the Soviet Union’s close ally, East Germany. When Putin later rose to prominence in Russia, many sniffed that being posted in a friendly country didn’t speak well of his acuity in the intelligence game.

“I would not exaggerate the importance of his KGB years,” where he was more of a bureaucrat than a spy, Zygar said. Instead, he sees Putin’s epiphany as something that happened after he left the KGB and became a deputy of Anatoly Sobchak, St. Petersburg’s reform-minded mayor.

Sobchak was such a democrat at heart that he allowed an open election and then accepted his defeat in it.

“That was a tragedy for Sobchak’s team and a tragedy for Putin personally and that was the lesson: how you should never repeat those mistakes: free and fair elections, open debates and really influential opposition,” Zygar said.

Putin’s dominance of Russia’s politics manifested itself with extraordinary speed.

Few, if any, politicians have stepped more quickly from the shadows to subject of rapt interest at home and abroad. Before being named Yeltsin’s prime minister in August 1999, he was head of the Federal Security Service, one of the KGB’s successor agencies, a post that inherently lacks visibility.

Yeltsin shuffled prime ministers at an alarming rate, and Putin might have become just another to go through the revolving door. But the next month, while commenting on the early days of the second war against Chechen rebels, he made an impression.

“If we capture them in the toilet, then we will waste them in the outhouse,” he said

Adamant, macho, and a touch of crude language--the remark seemed to reveal the essence of Vladimir Putin.

He’s rarely strayed from that public image since then. Occasionally, there’s a brief sweet moment of him cuddling one of the puppies foreign dignitaries have given him. He once amused, or shocked, his audience by kissing the belly of a boy whose cuteness had touched him.

But glimpses of the private man are few. He makes no appearances with his two adult daughters. The 2013 announcement that he and wife, Lyudmila, were divorcing was a piece of precise stagecraft. The couple appeared on national television at an opera intermission, praised the performance and then said they were separating.

Control appears so integral to Putin’s nature that it can be difficult to visualize how he would cope with not being Russia’s president. If he wins re-election, he would be termed out of office in 2024.

“I do not expect him to retire after the presidency. I think he is more likely to take some other position overseeing things in Russia from a different perch,” Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said.

[newscitygroup]

Impeachment fiasco is a Dem gift to Donald Trump

Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi have managed to pull off a miracle with their impeachment gambit.

They’ve united Republicans around Donald Trump, a feat once thought impossible, and for which the president owes a great deal to Schiff’s dogged Republican counterpart Devin Nunes.

“There has never been so much unity and spirit in the Republican Party, as there is right now!” trumpeted Trump on Twitter Friday.

As support for the president edges up nationally and, notably, in the battleground state of Wisconsin, where 94 percent of Republicans oppose impeachment, he has been gifted a remarkable campaign advantage by his opponents.

He ran as an outsider in 2016, and now he gets to run again as an outsider, despite three years in the White House.

The Beltway Brahmin class of bureaucrats and resistance journalists have provided him a new campaign pitch: “New hoax. Same swamp.”

After two weeks of public impeachment hearings, we are no closer to evidence that Trump committed an impeachable offense over Ukraine. Inappropriate, perhaps, but that’s his middle name.

The partisan audience — and media — sitting in the hearings each day, cheering along Schiff’s cunning narrative, has misled the Democrats into thinking it has popular backing.

Like the boy who cried wolf, if you spend long enough shrieking that Trump is the devil incarnate, eventually people switch off.

You only had to hear the laughter at the end of proceedings Thursday, when Schiff let down his guard and mocked Nunes, to recognize the anti-Trump mood infecting the public gallery in Room 1100.

“This is such a threat to democracy … more so than anything I’ve seen in my life,” said retired attorney Michael Lennie, 77, who had come from San Diego to watch the hearings.

When did he realize the gravity of the case? “November 2016.” Boom.

Nor did retiree Melissa Colbert, 71, and Susan Zengerle, 68, of Maryland, hide their antipathy to the president. They were there representing a grassroots political group, Indivisible Montgomery.

“It’s really an anti-Trump group,” said Zengerle. Naturally, she found the impeachment witnesses “very credible and nonpartisan” and the Republicans “obstructionist.”

Like the men and women who testified, the audience might be patriotic Americans doing their duty, but they also seem convinced that this elected president is an existential threat to the republic.

Once you’ve convinced yourself of that, it’s a small step to insist he must be removed, by fair means or foul, to save the nation.

But this is a dangerous delusion which, after three years of crying wolf, afflicts only a shrinking minority of Americans.

The Democrats’ all-smoke-no-fire game has turned off independent voters already disillusioned with the failed Russia collusion probe.

“You’ve seen the polls, I’m going through the roof,” Trump boasted on “Fox & Friends” on Friday morning. “In Wisconsin, in the swing states, I’m well up … because the people get it. It’s a witch hunt.”

He’s not wrong.

As Democrats head home for Thanksgiving to take the temperature of their districts, polls spell impending doom.

Among all-important independent voters, opposition to impeaching Trump leaped from 37 percent to 47 percent over the first week of the public hearings, according to a Politico-Morning Consult poll released Tuesday.

An Emerson poll released Wednesday similarly found a rise in opposition to impeachment among independents, from 39 percent last month to 49 percent.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, which Trump won by just 23,000 votes in 2016, a Marquette University poll published Wednesday found 53 percent of all registered voters opposed impeachment, up slightly from last month — and that includes opposition from a whopping 94 percent of Republicans.

The poll also showed Trump flipping the tables to lead every Democratic presidential candidate, including Joe Biden by three points.

Then there’s the Blexit metric. Two polls last week showed Trump’s approval among black voters up around 34 percent.

In the Emerson poll, Trump scored a 34.5 percent job approval rating, echoed in a 34 percent approval in Friday’s Rasmussen poll.

This is the Democrats’ worst nightmare since they need around 85 percent black support to win a presidential race.

Emerson also showed overall approval of Trump jumped to 48 percent from 43 percent last month, before hearings began.

No wonder Democrats in the 31 districts Trump won in 2016 are nervous.

Upstate, Anthony Brindisi, who has a narrow hold on the 22nd District, is trying valiantly to avoid talking about impeachment, as pro-Trump groups prepare to spend millions on TV ads in battleground areas.

“We have to look at what we can start to accomplish over the next few months that will help benefit the American people,” he told WPRI-TV Thursday, “health care, prescription drugs, election security, women’s equality.”

Good luck with that.

In his “Fox & Friends” interview, Trump also described the impeachment process as another “overthrow attempt at the presidency.”

“With no experience I come to Washington. I’ve defeated the Clinton dynasty, the Bush dynasty and the Obama whatever you want to call it … [and] the hatred is incredible.”

It really is. For better or worse, Trump was elected as the great disruptor to change “business as usual” in Washington, to drain the swamp.

The past two weeks, we’ve heard from the bureaucratic state just how much they hate Trump’s disruption.

Tough luck, says America.

Parenting is a job in itself

Andrew Yang got it right in Wednesday’s Democratic debate when he said not all parents want to work outside the home.

“We should not be pushing everyone to leave the home and go to the workforce,” he said. “Many parents … say if they leave the home and go to work, they’d be spending all that money on child care anyway. In many cases, it would we better if the parent stayed with the child.”

Amen. But with Rachel Maddow and MSNBC’s all-female team in charge of proceedings, Yang’s unorthodox honesty guaranteed he would be sidelined the rest of the night, continuing a snub so pointed that he is demanding an apology before he will return to the channel.

For some reason, it is an affront to feminism to point out that the upbringing of children is better done by their parents than outsourced to strangers.

The political party that recognizes parents’ true desires will have an electoral advantage.

Legal pot blows up in Boomers’ face

“OK, Boomer,” was Matt Gaetz’s puerile response to Kellyanne Conway’s concerns about marijuana legalization.

The 37-year-old Florida Republican congressman has it the wrong way around.

Boomers are the marijuana boosters who have caused the problems Conway rightly abhors.

The generation that inhaled still thinks weed is the benign, low-potency drug of their youth. Thus, boomer legislators have failed to understand the threat to mental health, especially for teens, of an easily accessible high-potency drug. Nor did they anticipate the expanding black market and associated environmental threat they now are powerless to control.

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[samwinchestersleftshoe]

things other than covid-19

Jan-Dec in chronological order

Jan: Australian wildfires. Qassem Suleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force is killed in a US airstrike. Prince Harry & Meghan Markle step back from royal duties. The US house of representatives vote to sent articles of impeachment(abuse of power and obstruction of Congress) against Trump to the US Senate. Kobe Bryant and his 13 yr old daughter Gianna as well as 7 others perish in a helicopter crash. the UK withdraws from the European Union, making Brexit official(actual separation will occur Dec 31st). 

citations

Feb: Impeachment shadows Trump’s State of the Union address; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tears up a copy of his speech. The Senate acquits Trump of abuse the power of his office+obstructing Congress’ investigation into his conduct. Actor Kirk Douglass dies at age 103. Trump Fires EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and National Security Council advisor LT. Col. Alexander Vindman, both whom testified against trump during the impeachment trial. Boy Scouts of America seeks bankruptcy protection under wave of child abuse claims. Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed by a white father and son while jogging in Georgia; the two men are arrested 2 1/2 months later and charged with felony murder+assault. Bob Iger steps down at Walt Disney Co. after 15 yrs on the job; Bob Capek is named new CEO. Former VP Joe Biden wins the South Carolina Democratic primary, reigniting his presidential campaign. 

citations

March: Pete Buttigieg drops out of the US presidential race. Joe Biden leads the primary with victories in 10 states on Super Tuesday. Former NY mayor Michael Bloomberg drops out of US pres race. MA Sen. Elizabeth Warren drops out of US pres race. Harvey Weinstein is sentenced to 23 yrs in prison for r*pe and sexual assault. Breonna Taylor is shot and killed in her home in Louisville, KY by police serving a narcotics warrant in search of suspected drug dealer. The Dow Jones industrial average falls by 2,997.10, the largest single-day drop ever. PG&E pleads guilty to 84 counts counts of involuntary manslaughter over the 2018 Camp Fire. 

citations

April: Bernie Sanders drops out of US pres race, paving the way for Joe Biden to win Democratic nomination. 

citation

May: The US faces invasion of murder hornets which threaten domestic bees. The US Justice Department drops charges against former national security advisor Michael Flynn. Gregory and Travis McMichael are charged with murder in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in GA. William Bryan, the man who filmed Ahmaud Arbery’s death is charged with murder as well. Minneapolis police officer is filmed while pressing his knee on the neck of George Floyd for 8 minutes, killing him, as three other officers stand by. Video of Floyd’s death go viral; 4 officers are fired the next day. Minneapolis-St. Paul protests over death of George Floyd and racial injustice spread nationwide. Fired Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is charged with third degree murder and manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd; the Minnesota attorney general increases the charge to second degree murder on June 3. Charges against the 3 other officers are filed. A state of emergency is declared in Los Angeles County and city of Los Angeles because of protests over the death of George Floyd and racial injustice. Curfews are declared in Philadelphia and Atlanta. 

June: Trump threatens to deploy US troops to quell protests across the country and subsequently stages a photo-op at St John’s Episcopal Church after federal officers and other lay enforcement personnel forcefully clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square in front of the White House. Washington D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser designated a section of 16th street NW as a Black Lives Matter Plaza. Protesters in Seattle declare an “autonomous zone” in the city’s Capitol Hill area. Protests in Atlanta start after the killing of Rayshard Brooks by a police officer in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. The US Supreme Court rules that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes it illegal for employers to discriminate because of a person’s sex, also covers sexual orientation. The Trump administration asks a federal judge to block publication of former national security adviser John Bolton’s memoir, “The Room Where It Happened.” The effort fails. Trump holds his first 2020 campaign rally in months in Tulsa, OK. A lower than expected attendance makes headlines. Following a vote by the state legislature, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signs a bill that retires the official state, flag - the last state flag incorporating the Confederate battle flag in its design.  

July: The FBI arrests Ghislaine Maxwell on charges she helped lure at least three girls to be sexually abused by the late financier Jeffrey Epstien. The Supreme Court rejects claims of presidential immunity and rules Trump must release his financial records to prosecutors in NY. CA officials announce that as many as 8k prisoners could be released ahead of schedule in an unprecedented attempt to stop the spread of Covid-19 inside state prisons. Trump commutes the 40-month sentence of his political advisor Roger Stone. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper issues a memorandum to the military on the appropriate display of flags - excluding the Confederate battle flag and essentially banning it. Oregon Atty. Gen. Ellen Rosenblum files suit against the federal government, accusing it of unlawfully detaining protesters in Portland. Trump announces a “surge” of federal officers into Democratic-run cities, following a crackdown on protests in Portland OR. TV personality Regis Philbin dies at 88. Trump suggests the 2020 presidential election be delayed, saying increased voting by mail could lead to fraud. 

Aug: Firefighters continue to battle the Apple fire that burned 20,000 acres in Cherry Valley and surrounding areas of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, destroying one home and prompting evacuations of thousands of others. Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar pleads not guilty to bribery, money laundering and an array f other charges, his first public response to the allegations in the corruption inquiry since prosecutors began, securing guilty pleas from others in the case. As California grapples with a barrage of requests for unemployment benefits amid the pandemic, some state workers processing claims say they are hampered by outdated technology, bureaucratic red tape and a shortage of trained, experienced staff. More than 400,000 people, most without face masks and who don’t follow social distancing guidelines, participate in activities related to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota. Joe Biden announces Sen. Kamala Harries of California as his VP running mate, the first WOC to appear on a major party’s presidential ticket. Plans are announced by the US Postal Service(USPS) to remove hundreds of high-volume mail-processing machines from postal facilities across the country. Thunderstorms trigger hundreds of wildfires in California, prompting evacs as a record-breaking heat wave taxes the state’s powergrid. The SCU Lighting Complex fires start, affecting several Bay Area counties. Almost 400, 000 acres are burned, making it the third largest wildfire in Cali history. The August Complex fire starts in Northern Cali; by Sept 9 it becomes the largest fire in Cali history, burning more than 1 million acres. Death Valley hits 130 degrees, thought to be the highest temperature on Earth in nearly a century.  Spurred by concerns that Trump is trying to get rid of the USPS to help him win the re-election, Speaker Nancy Pelosi summons House members back to Washington to pass a bill aimed at rolling back admin cutbacks that could cripple widespread mail-in-voting. The LNU Lightning Complex fires start and last for several weeks, scorching more than 350,000 acres in several wince country counties, including Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Lake and Yolo. NBCUniversal ousts longtime Universal studio executive Ron Meyer after learning he made hush-money payments to a woman to cover up an old affair - a secret that Meyer said snowballed into an extortion plot. Apple becomes first US company to be valued at more than $2 trillion. Former trump advisor Stephen K Bannon is arrested and charged with fraud over a private fundraising campaign to build a border wall. Wildfires ringing the Bay Area and other parts of the state kill at least five people, destroy more than 500 structures and scorch hundreds of square miles as evacs expand. A Sacramento County judge sentences the Golden State Killer, 74-yr-old Joseph James DeAngelo Jr to life without parole for killing 13 people and r*ping 50 in a series of break-ins that terrorized the state for decades. Protests break out in Kenosha, WI after the shooting of 29-yr-old Jacob Blake by a police officer. The RNC is held in Charlotte NC, and Wash. Trump and VP Mike Pence are formally nominated as the GOP’s 2020 pres ticket. Two people are shot and killed during unrest in Kenosha, I; a suspect is arrested. Soon after, prof. athletes start to boycott their sports to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake. Actor Chadwick Boseman dies at age 43 at previously undisclosed battle with colon cancer. 

Sept: Famiy members+activists demand that the LA County Sheriff’s Department release the names of the deputies who shot and killed Dijon Kizzee, a black man, in the South LA neighborhood of Westmont on Aug 31. The El Dorado fire erupts in San Bernardino Country, sparked by pyrotechnics that were part of a gender reveal party. CA sets new record for destruction by wildfires, with 2.1 million acres burning. The temp in Woodland Hills soars to 121 degrees, an all-time high in LA County. Ore. wildfires start amid severe drought and severe winds; by the end of Oct, more than 1 million acres will burn, more than 4,000 homes will be destroyed, and at least 10 people will be killed. More than .5 million people in Ore., more than 10% of the state’s population, are reported to be fleeing wildfires. 2 LA County sheriff’s deputies are shot and critically injured while sitting in their patrol car near the Compton Metro station; the agency’s response to the attack raises alarm among some activists, lawmakers and Sheriff’s Department watchdogs. The confirmed death toll from Cali’s unprecedented wildfires rises to 25 as crews work to stop two dozen major blazes still burning statewide. Long-serving Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87. Trump refuses to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the Nov. election. A Kentucky grand jury brings no charges against Louisville police in the killing of Breonna Taylor during a drug raid gone wrong. Trump chooses Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to fill Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat. Several attendees at the nomination ceremony at the White House Rose Garden will later test positive for COVID-19. The New York Times reports on more than 20 yrs worth of Trump’s personal and tax returns; among the revelations: He paid $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and again in 2017. The Glass fire in Northern CA ignites just before 4 a.m. and quickly balloons to 40,000 acres in two days. It burns in Napa and Sonoma counties and is the fourth major fire to hit the region since the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa in 2017. Deadly clashes break out in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces. Shouting, insults and misinformation, mostly by Trump, dominate the first presidential debate.

Oct: The Cali Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reports that state wildfires burned nearly 4 million acres, killed 31 people and destroyed more than 8,200 structures. For the first time in Cali history, a ballot will make its way in the mail this week to every registered Cali voter. Eddie Van Halen dies at age 65 after a long battle with cancer. FBI announces that 13 men have been charged in a plot to kidnap Mich Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Armenia and Azerbaijan agree on a cease-fire in the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Rick Jacobs, a top political advisor to LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, says he will “take a leave” from his work with Garcetti amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Less than seven months after Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman launched Quibi to remake the business of short-form video, the nascent streaming service announces it is shutting down.The Senate confirms Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court associate justice on a party-line vote, 52 to 48.

Nov: California largely breezes through election day; nationwide, it’s a different story. After midnight, Trump announces he has won the election and demands that all vote counting stop, alleging voter fraud, but with millions of votes still to be counted, no news organizations declare a presidential winner. Trump continues his attack on the voting system as he joins several lawsuits aiming at stopping vote counts in Pa, Ga and Mich. Cali ballot measure campaign season ends with voters granting companies such as Uber and Lyft the right to keep their drivers as independent contractors but rejecting a plan to expand rent control to more homes and communities.  LA voters upend the political status quo by backing a slate of progressive candidates and measures in the Nov. 3 election. Among the victors is George Gascón, former San Fran district attorney, who defeated L.A. County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey. After days of waiting, major news organizations declare that Joe Biden has secured enough electoral college votes to win the presidency. “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, 80, dies following a battle with pancreatic cancer. President Trump uses Twitter to announce that Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has been fired. Hurricane Lota makes landfall in Nicaragua as a Category 4 storm, just two weeks after Hurricane Eta hit, devastating the same areas. Trump escalates his attempts to overturn Biden’s election victory, pushing for judges and Republican state lawmakers and local officials in several battleground states to ignore voters’ verdicts and award him the electoral votes he needs for a second term. Ga Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certifies President-elect Biden’s win and the results of all the other races in the state. After 2-week standoff, Emily Murphy, General Services Admin head, reverses course and allows President-elect Biden’s team access to required federal resources to start the formal transition process. Trump pardons Michael Flynn, his first national security advisor. Trump says he will leave the White House once Biden is officially declared the winner of the electoral college. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi, Iran’s top nuclear scientist assassinated near Tehran. Raymond Chan, a former senior aide to LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, has been charged with conspiracy, bribery, fraud and lying to FBI agents in the ongoing federal probe into corruption at City Hall, according to court records made public. The pro bono law firm Public Counsel files a lawsuit against the state of Cali, saying it has failed during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide a free and equal education to all students, violating the state Constitution and discriminating against Black, Latino and low-income families.

Dec: Atty. Gen. William Barr says the U.S. Justice Department has uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election. The captain of the Conception, the dive boat that caught fire last year off the coast of Santa Barbara, is indicted by a federal grand jury on 34 counts of seaman’s manslaughter. Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson, who helped bring the Summer Games to Los Angeles, dies at 86. Universal Music Publishing Group announces it is acquiring Bob Dylan’s entire catalog of songs, which spans 60 years. The Supreme Court rejects a highly unusual lawsuit filed by Tex. that urged the justices to overturn the election result by nullifying President-elect Biden’s victory in four key states: Penn, Mich, Wis and Ga. John le Carre, the author of many bestselling Cold War thrillers, dies at 89. The electoral college confirms Biden’s victory over Trump. The availability of intensive care unit beds throughout Southern Cali hits 0%.

[mikemortgage]

‘You are cut off, in a lot of ways’: Could apathy be the end for Canadian lighthouse keepers?

On a splotch of land on the outermost edges of the B.C. coast, a lighthouse keeper is at a computer in the early morning hours, checking on his Air Miles balance while keeping tabs on the fog bank lurking just beyond the window.

Some fogs are fleeting, wispy events, rolling in and out on the ocean breeze. But others linger, gathering in intensity, blotting out landmarks and other navigational aids boaters and small aircraft often rely upon. It is the fog that sticks around that you need to “worry about,” said the lighthouse keeper, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggesting we use the pseudonym “Greg.”

Speaking publicly about the increasingly desperate plight of B.C. lighthouse keepers, Greg said, could provoke retribution from Canadian Coast Guard supervisory staff in Victoria, or from some far-away bureaucrat in Ottawa with an axe to grind, a budget to meet and a hate-on for a position the federal government has, episodically, been trying to kill off through automation for almost 50 years.

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“Everybody is doing a gritty, cold job out here,” he said. “On some days, we think it is glorious. But it isn’t a job for someone who wants to stick their head in a screen all day and whine about needing a cappuccino.”

Greg is in his 60s. He doesn’t mind cold or grit, and he especially enjoys puttering around in the garden beside the lighthouse. But he is part of a greying generation of keepers, a cohort that is swiftly passing into retirement and suspicious that, once they are gone, no one is going to be left or, worse, even interested in replacing them on a job that its detractors say was long ago rendered obsolete.

B.C. currently has 27 staffed lighthouses, stretching from the southern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan frontier. Most are home to two keepers, and all have been buffeted in recent years by a labour crunch.

Another lighthouse keeper, also speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested the B.C. contingent is short-staffed by at least 16 full-time lighthouse keepers. (There are also 23 staffed lighthouses in Newfoundland and Labrador, and one in New Brunswick).

It is a West Coast crisis in person power the Coast Guard has been looking to address by hiring new recruits, albeit via a ham-handed employment drive that has produced some interest, but no new lighthouse keepers.

On the surface, there is an old school romanticism attached to being on a rock, surrounded by the sea, beaming a light into the darkness and showing some poor souls the way home.

It is why lighthouse keepers — unlike, say, plumbers, estate lawyers or middle managers of middling firms in middling Canadian towns — have inspired a library’s worth of lighthouse-themed books: including The Light Between Oceans, To the Lighthouse and The Lightkeeper’s Wife, to name but a few.

But in a (relatively) new age of digital interconnectedness, where smartphones serve as a tether and friends are never more than a few clicks away, it isn’t all that romantic to imagine life on an island without Wi-Fi, or even reliable cellphone service.

Lighthouse keepers with MacGyver qualities are free to try to jerry-rig an internet connection, while the somewhat less handy would likely have to helicopter in a technician, at their own expense, to access Netflix.

More alarming: lighthouse keepers don’t actually turn on the lights. Instead, they issue marine weather reports, perform maintenance on outbuildings, scrub slimy lighthouse steps and keep steely watch for emergencies — and they do happen, occasionally — so they can offer/call for help.

It might not be the soundest rational for keeping a profession alive, but the lighthouse keepers, long afraid that automation or an unfavourable political climate would be the death of them, aren’t dead yet.

Still, they can’t help but wonder that the executioner of their livelihood will be apathy, not automation or strapped federal budgets. Put simply: What if nobody wants to do the job?

Former lighthouse keeper Jake Etzkorn and his son. Etzkorn, whose parents were lighthouse keepers, recently left the job finding it increasingly difficult to envision a bright future on the lights for himself and his young family.

Jake Etzkorn is an ex-lighthouse keeper and, at 36, a millennial belonging to that much-maligned tribe that has been scapegoated for everything from getting Chicago Cubs hitting coach Chili Davis fired to killing the sanctity of the Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five work week.

Working regular hours never appealed to Etzkorn. As a teenager looking to hang out with his friends, he would pack his tent, sleeping bag, a dry change of clothes and food for three days and hike into Bamfield, some 40 kilometres away from his home on Vancouver Island’s west coast.

Etzkorn didn’t consider this to be an unusual aspect of teenage social life. It was his normal, as normal as when his mother and father would warn him and his younger sister, Justine, to be on the lookout for bears and wolves while they were playing on the beach near the Carmanah Point lighthouse station, a middle-of-nowhere federal outpost where his parents worked as lighthouse keepers.

“Looking back, I had a pretty interesting childhood,” he said. “Of course, I had nothing else to compare it to.”

Etzkorn would tell his wife, Yvonne, stories of his life on the lights. When they started talking about having children they agreed it sounded like the life for them. Etzkorn had the necessary skills to be a lighthouse keeper: he is handy, dependable, knows his way around boats, isn’t troubled by isolation and hated the idea of being tied to a desk.

So, like his parents and his younger sister, he joined the Coast Guard as a lighthouse keeper, a position he reluctantly quit last spring after five years to work in the private sector as a maintenance technician.

“I really loved the lifestyle on the lights,” he said. “It was probably one of the best jobs I could ever imagine. It didn’t involve spending time away from the family or working nine to five, which wasn’t my idea of a good job. It was hard to leave it, but…”

But, unlike his childhood, lighthouse keepers with children — the Etzkorns have two — are practically excluded from living on any station more than a kilometre offshore, thus limiting their options. (The policy shift regarding transporting children to remote locations came in response to a fatal Coast Guard helicopter crash in the Arctic in 2013 that claimed three lives, but didn’t involve any children.)

The kid factor, Etzkorn said, coupled with an attractive job offer elsewhere — he was making $42,000 as a lighthouse keeper and walked into a $55,000 a year gig — were his chief reasons for leaving.

The main way to travel to lighthouses in B.C. is either by boat or helicopter. Here a chopper lands at Entrance Island.

He had additional concerns, including the federal government’s new pay system, Phoenix, and imagines others would, too. The colossal mess of a federal employee pay system can be acutely felt by anyone on a lighthouse station where sorting out missed paycheques, over-deposits and maxed-out credit cards with non-existent cellphone service triggers unnecessary stress headaches.

“They are really not making it easy for people to work out there,” Etzkorn said. “You are cut off in a lot of ways.”

There are other impediments to the job. Perhaps chief among them involves actually locating the posting for a job, which does not appear among the positions listed on the Canadian Coast Guard’s public “job opportunities” page, but does appear on the Fisheries and Oceans Canada site (the Coast Guard is a “special operating agency” within the department).

The job as advertised, once you find it, is for assistant lightkeepers, with a salary range between $38,979 and $52,304. By comparison, the Seafarers’ International Union of Canada, representing Canadian sailors working on commercial ships, is currently hiring high school graduates at a starting wage of $60,000-plus to work “on modern ships with Wi-Fi.”

The Coast Guard wants candidates who are willing to work shifts “in a 24/7 environment,” live in “isolated or semi-isolated crown-owned accommodations,” and to travel by “helicopter and/or boat.” Preference will be given to “veterans and Canadian citizens in that order.”

There is no mention anywhere of time off, whether spouses, children and/or pets are permitted, or if there is internet — which there isn’t. It is a puzzling posting for any employer hoping to attract the best and the brightest, said Jennifer Deal, a senior research scientist at the Centre for Creative Leadership in San Diego, Calif.

Deal has interviewed scores of millennials. Despite the many things they are accused of ruining or not doing, she said one thing they do is research any potential jobs, just as anyone else would.

A person of any age, with access to Google, is likely to unearth stories about lighthouse de-staffing, the push for automation that last ran aground in Canada around 2009, which would be a red flag for would-be applicants looking to plan long term. (Canada had 264 staffed lighthouses in 1970, a number that has been whittled down to 51).

Sunset at Trial Island, B.C.: The pay and the work hours for lighthouse keepers aren’t great but the lifestyle is unlike any other.

Deal had a good laugh when reviewing the job posting.

“They don’t even describe the concept of the job, so I don’t even know what this job looks like,” she said. “What is the time off? It says — 24/7 — does that mean I am working weekends? I am just expected to be present and the lights are automatic, or am I expected to turn the light on and off?”

Crown accommodations are provided, but Deal points out the ad doesn’t say whether that includes more than a cot, side table and night light, or whether that’s in a portable or a bungalow with room for four.

Michelle Imbeau, a communications adviser for the Canadian Coast Guard, provided some clarity in an email.

Lightkeepers work eight-hour days, seven days a week. In stations with two employees, there are two shifts — morning and night. They must provide local marine weather observations every three hours, between the hours of 3:40 a.m. and 9:40 p.m. Internet is not provided. Cellphone service is not guaranteed. Pets and partners are allowed and accommodation is free — although lightkeepers must provide their own furniture.

She said there have been 70 applicants for the job, representing a mix of young people looking for a start and older people looking for a second career.

“The core responsibility of lightkeepers is to ensure a functioning lightstation for the safety of marine vessel traffic,” Imbeau said, before signing off. “The Coast Guard has no plans to de-staff lightstations.”

Meanwhile, on a splotch of land, on the outermost edge of the B.C. coast, the fog has pulled back and dark clouds are gathering on the distant horizon. After a run of good weather, grittier days loom, a reality that doesn’t trouble Greg.

“I grew up in a very isolated, rural spot,” he said. “I knew I was going to love this life.”

The deadline to apply is Dec. 31.

• Email: joconnor@nationalpost.com | Twitter: oconnorwrites

from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2SowofY via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 10/23/2018

Good MORNING #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap fdayor Tues 23rdOctober 2018. Remember you can read full articles for FREE via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS) OR by purchasing by purchasing a Daily  Nation Newspaper (DN).

JOB CUTS FIRST PHASE OVER ‘BY WEDNESDAY’ – Government is pushing to wrap up its first wave of job cuts – 1,500 – by Wednesday in its bid to restructure the public service and slash spending, the head of the Civil Service said today. Workers are being given a package which includes an exit cheque for vacation leave, severance and any other entitlements at the time, according to the Head of the Civil Service Dr Louis Woodroffe in a Government statement. “Some categories of workers have already been given a package in line with the enunciated procedures, notably, security guards, who were informed last Friday, October 19, and given the package, including their cheques,” Dr Woodroffe said in a Barbados Government Information Service release. Retrenchment in other departmental posts continued today and is to be completed by Wednesday, he added. A further 1,000 jobs are expected to be released in the next fiscal year, which begins in April, mostly from statutory corporations. The Civil Service boss, who is also the Director-General of Foreign Trade, also revealed that agencies in this phase of job cuts included the Ministry of Transport, Works and Maintenance and the postal service. “With respect to general service posts, the termination process will commence today and is also expected to be completed by Wednesday. The layoff process is one of the most challenging in any restructuring process. “The Government is making every effort to ensure that these public officers are given the necessary support to assist them in going forward. This will include opportunities for retraining to allow them to provide services to Government, including, the digitizing of Government records, as was recently announced by Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley.” Woodroffe said it is also anticipated that some of the displaced workers will find employment in upcoming projects, also indicated by the Prime Minister in her national address two Sundays ago. “Every effort is being made to ensure that there is a smooth process according to established principle of last in, first out, and that these officers who have made a valuable contribution to the public service and Barbados are treated fairly,” she said. But the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW), which represents the majority of Government employees, is not at all happy with the manner in which the Mottley administration has gone about sending home public officers. Assistant General Secretary Wayne Walrond said this afternoon that the union is not only concerned about workers going home without their entitlements, but also that the required pre-termination notices had been cut short for monthly-paid workers in the School Meals Department – another agency earmarked for job cuts. “There is still a concern in the union now of persons getting termination letters and not getting their entitlements. The other thing we find shocking though, is that what we have to verify, why, in the case of a number of School Meals workers, who are monthly-paid, you terminate them as at Friday last week the 19th . . . . We thought they were going to go to the end of the month,” he told Barbados TODAY. “What Government seems to be doing to reduce that lieu notice period, so it doesn’t run to the end of this month, is to cut it by sending them off by the 19th  . . . 11 to 12 calendar days in the month you reduce it by, so that the month lieu notice starts from the 19 October and goes [to] 19 November,” Walrond contended, charging that workers would therefore not get a full salary. The NUPW Assistant General Secretary accused the Government of breaching best practice and best management practice in its “untidy” adoption of the layoff procedures. When Walrond was asked if the Government was adhering to the Employment Rights Act in the process of retrenching workers, he suggested that while the law does not cover civil servants in central Government, the state should apply the spirit of the legislation. “The Employment Rights Act does not bind the Crown. It binds statutory boards and private sector. But one would think that then tenets of best practices enunciated by that Act would also be upheld by the very Crown who would have passed legislation to ask the employers to act in a particular way,” he told Barbados TODAY. The union spokesman did not believe the Government was showing a human face even as he said it was crunching numbers to reach an IMF target. “I don’t think the IMF target would suggest that you remove the human face to meet the targets . . . that you have to remove the human face and be so spontaneous in a knee jerk reaction . . . do it properly,” he added. Contrary to the assertions made by the Head of the Civil Service, Walrond again expressed concern that some workers were being sent home by word of mouth rather than in “black and white”. “To me it is more the immorality and inhumane approach that is being adopted . . . the inhumane . . . . It is cruel . . . it is like, you are so entrenched in going after numbers you have reduced people to statistics,” he charged. But it was not all doom and gloom coming from the union official. He reported that some School Meals workers who were either listed to go home or were actually terminated, were recalled to their jobs based on their seniority or length of service. Walrond could not give numbers at this stage, nor could he say for certain, if workers elsewhere in the public service were also being recalled.  (BT)

NUPW WARNING – The National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) will take action if the “first-in, last-out” policy is not used in terminating Government workers. NUPW acting general secretary Delcia Burke on Monday urged its members who have been given their walking papers to come forward so the union could build a case if needed. “We have concerns. That is why we were asking for the names, because if we had names we would be able to compare the times persons came in and we would be able to monitor the situation,” Burke told the NATION. “Based on what this is, the Public Service Commission would be insufficient. So we would have to probably bring an injunction in court. When it comes to the statutory boards, we would be going to the tribunal if the decisions are not reversed,” she said.  (DN)

WORRELL: ‘TRY MY SEVEN-POINT ECONOMY RX’ – A seven-point prescription for the economy is the correct one to bring about three-per cent annual growth after a stalled decade, insists former Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados Dr Delisle Worrell. “I maintain that my seven recommendations taken together, are the correct prescription for addressing the ills of Government obesity and poor performance,” Worrell said in his October economic letter. If his strategy is followed, he argued, it would unlock a potential three per cent growth rate and set the country on the path to even greater future prosperity. Worrell, who was fired in late February last year by then Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler, recalled that in his January economic letter, he proposed the measures to eliminate bureaucratic delays, improve public services and reduce Government’s spending, to avoid over-burdening taxpayers. “The cornerstone is a makeover of the public sector to be implemented over three years to eliminate Government’s operating deficit and to achieve measurable improvements in public sector productivity. In May, I suggested the first steps should be to institute a functioning system of timely publication of annual reports by every Government agency, department, ministry and state corporation,” said Worrell. Last month, he called for new leadership in the public sector and a massive reduction in its workforce. “The required makeover will eliminate numerous obsolete processes and procedures, and the personnel that are associated with them. Higher levels of skills and expertise are required. To attract people of the right calibre, better salaries must be offered. All this must be achieved within a lower overall spending limit,” the former Central Bank boss said. It is his view that Barbadians are already paying too much for public services that are deteriorating. “To achieve the necessary reduction in a way that minimizes economic difficulty, I recommended that retrenchment be planned over three years with about 1,500 separations each year. No one would be left empty-handed. Retrenchment should be funded through negotiation with the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and other international agencies,” he stressed. Worrell is also recommending that cash grants should be used to reward public servants who volunteered for separation. He also contended that long-serving officers should be allowed to retire early without loss of pension. “In addition, there should be retraining programmes, family counselling and a safety net for exceptional cases. I also recommended divestment of carefully selected assets,” he added. The ex-central banker also identified the Bridgetown Port and the Grantley Adams International Airport as primary candidates for privatization. He suggested that the Government could provide a significant fillip to the economy by leasing these two entities to major international operators. “Such companies would have the finance and expertise to upgrade our port and airport to an international standard. They would fit Barbados into their global network, attracting business far beyond the reach of the Barbados Government,” Worrell said in his October economic letter. Turning his attention to a restructuring programme, he noted that the Government has been trying, unsuccessfully, to reform itself for more than two decades. He therefore recommended that the centrepiece of a structural adjustment programme, to be negotiated with the IMF, should be conditionalities on the implementation of fiscal reform. “There should be an agreed list of specific actions to be undertaken by Government and state-owned enterprises. They would include targets for the reduction of subsidies to state enterprises, targets for the publication of annual reports, targets for the privitization process and targets for the delivery of public services,” Worrell stated, adding that every quarter the targets should be reviewed and disbursement of funds should be approved only if the targets had been met. Worrell’s focus then switched to the “healthy” private sector, whose efforts, he contended, should be giving Barbados three per cent growth. “To unlock this growth, action should be taken to remove bureaucratic barriers and to reduce Government to a size our taxes can support,” he insisted. Much of Worrell’s recommendations seem to mirror a noticeable portion of the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) programme – except for his suggested 4,500 job cuts over three years. Government, in a deal with the IMF for US$290 million, has started to send home 1,500 workers this fiscal year with less than 1,000 more expected in the next financial year.   It has also announced a massive retraining programme, identified several state enterprises for restructuring or divestment and initiated a programme to modernize the public sector and improve the ease of doing business.   (BT)

TOO MUCH NHC EXPLOITATION – Minister of Housing George Payne has described wanton exploitation of public housing all while the National Housing Corporation (NHC) is swamped with a waiting list 30,000 applications long. His indictment was of units being occupied by tenants who owned other homes; housing units being rented out while the registered tenants lived elsewhere; tenants were moving out and allowing others to take over occupancy unknown to the NHC. He also complained of delinquent tenants who refused to pay anything more that the first month’s rent. Payne made the revelations during a courtesy call last week with the American ambassador, Linda Taglialatela, where he outlined the challenges facing the cash-strapped housing agency. “Government never thought when seeking to assist poor people, that the system would be exploited in this way. The housing programme is being sabotaged by some people Government sought to help. We will have to look at the legislative framework to see what can be done to bring a more disciplined approach to the transfer of government units,” he said. The minister also lamented the dwindling stock of Government-subsidized rental housing. He explained that the programme introduced by the previous Government which allowed occupants of NHC units for 20 years or more to but their homes had reduced the available rental stock to about 1,200 units.  As a result, a number of units, though unoccupied, are no longer in the system, he said. Payne stopped short of revealing just how the NHC plans to crack down on those who take advantage of the public housing system, especially in light of scarce resources. However, last month the NHC swooped down on delinquent tenants, beginning the process of evicting those owing large amounts in overdue rent. Several tenants at Country Park Towers, Country Road, St Michael, were served with notices to quit by an attorney acting on the NHC’s behalf. Some tenants reportedly owed as much $30,000 in arrears.  (BT)

‘TIME FOR COMPULSORY HOME INSURANCE’ – With as many as 40 people left homeless after a spate of fires this month alone, Minister of Home Affairs Edmund Hinkson is suggesting the time has come for homeowners’ insurance to be mandated by law. But the Minister acknowledged to reporters today that while the Mia Mottley administration was committed to addressing the issue, it may be some time before home insurance becomes compulsory. “We are committed if not in the short term but in the long term to facilitate this issue. Up to Friday the Prime Minister and other Members of Parliament had a brief discussion on how we can try to get this done in the long term,” he said noting that no risk was too small to negate the need for home insurance. Speaking at St Albans Primary School in his St James North riding, Hinkson lamented that successive governments have tried in vain to facilitate mandatory home insurance. “We want to please urge Barbadians to please insure their homes. One of the commitments of the Government of which I am a part of is to try to facilitate. This is something that governments over the last 40 years have been trying to address. How do we get compulsory home insurance and it is has defeated all previous governments,” Hinkson told journalists. “Even though you might think that risk of fire to your property or home may be small, it is still a risk and we urge those who can to insure their properties because your whole life acquisitions can go up in flames,” Hinkson warned. The Home Affairs Minister, under whose portfolio the fire service falls, also called upon homeowners to invest in fire safety measures which aid in the prevention or early detection of a fire. “We have to be mindful that people’s lives are in danger if they don’t get out in time. So we want to urge Barbadians to take precautions such as fire alarm systems. Persons need to make sure that their house treats against fires. By this I mean persons should ensure they don’t keep flammable materials in their house as well as other materials that can spread flames because it is not only your house that is that risk but your neighbour’s as well,” he stressed. In the latest fire on Saturday night at Silver Hill Landing Scheme, Christ Church, Judy Nurse, 59, and Kathy-Ann Proverbs-Gooding lost all they owned. Police reported the blaze began around 10:10 p.m. in Nurse’s wooden home and quickly spread to the wall house next door where Proverbs-Gooding was asleep. (BT)

CDB, UWI SIGN HISTORIC MOU – Formalising their longstanding relationship, which spans several decades, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and The University of the West Indies (UWI), signed a historic Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Friday, October 19. The MOU supports a stronger partnership between the bank and the university on programmes and projects, and is focused on promoting institutional strengthening and evidence-based decision making for economic and social policy issues relevant to the Caribbean region. Speaking at the signing ceremony at the Bank’s headquarters in Barbados, CDB President, Dr W. Warren Smith, hailed the agreement as a vital step, which will allow for deeper collaboration and cooperation on critical issues facing the region. “With the signing of this MOU, we are cementing almost 50 years of collaboration and cooperation, broadening the strategic focus of our collaboration, and creating new pathways for deepening our relationship. CDB is energised by the opportunities it presents for knowledge-sharing, research and innovation, and is pleased to partner with UWI in this enterprise. We look forward to strengthening our decades-long partnership and to taking our collaboration to even higher levels for the benefit of our Region,” he said. Vice Chancellor of UWI, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles described the CDB as a valued partner in advancing the development of the region, which is the primary mandate of the university. He said: “It is undeniable that this region is currently faced with fundamental issues of inequality, economic growth, technological advancements, democracy and social justice. At this moment the Caribbean region demands sustainable, regional solutions, birthed out of partnerships such as this one. In the conceptualisation and implementation of its current strategic plan, deemed The Triple A Strategy, UWI’s mandate focuses on Revitalising Caribbean Development. The MOU signed today re-emphasises our commitment and dedication to advancing the well-being of our Caribbean people.”  The agreement covers shared priorities such as promoting youth development and community inclusion through sport, improving implementation capacity and developing joint training and educational programmes. CDB and UWI have ongoing partnerships that support the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, including projects in areas such as climate adaptation and mitigation, gender equality, and education and training. In 2013, the Bank approved a USD13 million project to support the expansion and rehabilitation of UWI’s Open Campus locations in St Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines. It also invested in the development of UWItv and in 2018, approved funding to enhance UWI’s new Faculty of Sport. The MOU is also significant as the university celebrates its milestone 70th anniversary. Given its position as a global university rooted in the Caribbean with established centres in North America, Asia, and Africa, UWI is intent on fostering Caribbean-focused partnerships like this one with the CDB as it seeks to maintain its leadership role in supporting the development of competitive Caribbean economies. (DN)

AA GOES CASHLESS IN BARBADOS –American Airlines has announced that effective today, October 22, the airline will be going cashless at Grantley Adams International Airport (BGI). Passengers will be required to use a credit or debit card to make any transactions at the airport, including purchasing tickets and paying for checked baggage. “American has transitioned to a cashless airport environment at many locations around the world, allowing our team members to assist our customers in a faster and more efficient manner,” said Jennifer Carter, American’s general manager for Barbados. “Cashless transactions reduce the complexity of work for our agents who will no longer have to worry about finding exact change or closing out a cash drawer at the end of the day. This is positive news for our customers and for our team members at the airport.” American currently offers nonstop service to Barbados from its hub at Miami International Airport (MIA) operating two daily flights.  (DN)

INTEGRITY MEETING POSTPONED –The fifth meeting of the Joint Select Committee on the Integrity in Public Life Bill scheduled for the Senate Chamber today was postponed due to the absence of the Bill’s drafts person. Chairman of the Committee, Attorney General Dale Marshall, informed members he was not going to call the meeting to order “because the drafts person Mrs Eli is ill and this is only now coming to my attention”. Marshal informed the committee that he had intended “to start work on the draft itself” today, but said:  “I can’t see how we can proceed unless we have the drafts person here.” Members of the public representing various interests have appeared before the committee during the previous meetings and made their submissions, while others have done so online. The Integrity in Public Life Bill 2018 was in July committed by the House of Assembly to a Joint Select Committee made up of seven members of the House and four members of the Senate, for consideration. One of the terms of reference is: “To enquire and determine whether the Bill as drafted, effectively fulfils the expressed objects of promoting and maintaining the integrity of persons in public life and the prevention, detection and prosecution of acts of corruption.” The next meeting of the Joint Select Committee is scheduled for Friday.  (DN)

LATE BUS LEAVES COMMUTERS STRANDED –Tired St Andrew passengers waited hours for a bus this evening. By the time the St Andrew’s Church bus arrived, there were more commuters than it could carry in one trip. It meant that scores of others were left behind. The weary travellers said they were waiting for the 6 p.m. bus which never showed until about 8:30 p.m.  (DN)

DRIVE BY KILLNG – A St Michael youth was gunned down in a hail of bullets in a drive-by shooting on Sunday night. Shaquille Greenidge, 23, of 61 Kensington Lodge, was riding a motorcycle between Kings Street and Chapman Street around 7:20 p.m. when a car pulled up and a number of masked men opened fire on him, killing him on the spot. The young father of a baby girl had a history of trouble as he was arrested as he attempted to enter the Magistrates’ Court with a loaded gun. On June 16, 2016, Greenidge was stopped while entering the compound of the District “A” Magistrates’ Court because he was improperly dressed. After a scuffle with the guard and after the police were called, he was searched and a loaded gun was allegedly discovered on him. As word spread of Greenidge’s death, a photo of the youth began circulating on social media showing him posing with Dario Yearwood and Daniel Griffith, the two Barbadians killed in a gruesome murder in Jamaica last month. (DN)

CRIME OF PASSION –She pleaded guilty to damaging two windows and a room-divider belonging to her husband but 60-year-old June Barrett said her aim was not to destroy the property but the “$1,500 teeth” in her husband’s mouth that she had paid for. The 1A Phillips Road, St Stephens Hill, St Michael resident admitted to damaging Arley Barrett’s belongings on October 15. Station Sergeant Carrison Henry revealed that the couple had been married for 18 years and the accused recently went on a trip but returned to find the matrimonial home empty. She later found out where her spouse was staying and paid him a visit but found another woman there. Irritated with the situation she damaged the property and left. However, Mrs. Barrett, a Guyanese, told Magistrate Douglas Frederick her husband sent her home on a “half ticket so I wouldn’t come back . . . and he send me with 20 Bajan dollars.” She went on to reveal that while there she sold her jewellery including her rings at his request after he informed her that he had nothing to eat. Soon after he stopped calling her and she subsequently received a call from her neighbour in Barbados telling her that her husband had moved out. With the help of her son she returned to Barbados and “found the house empty. He left me on the street.” She has since been living with a friend but fell ill as a result of an asthma attack and had to be hospitalized in “isolation for 14 days”. “My husband never come and look for me, never!” she cried, adding “so I went and look for my husband”. “My husband take all my money that I save . . . all gone . . . left me with nothing . . . when I get to the house he at, a woman tell me that I am not coming in . . . but I went in,” she explained to the magistrate. However, instead of a warm reception the accused was apparently hoping for she claimed her husband “take a pot spoon and lash me on my leg . . . and in a matter of self defence, I bend down and pick up a stone. So when I pick it up . . . I ain’t see he . . . so I go outside on the road. “When I see he . . . he laughing and all I could see is me $1,500 Bajan dollar I lend he to put in he teeth . . . and at that time my eyes was so blind all I could see is he teeth and all I wanted to do is to mash in he teeth . . . not the window,” she explained adding that “I gone there and nothing, I so stressed. I stressed so much because my money buy everything.”. The magistrate then told the accused that although the complainant was her husband she “could not force a man to stay with you if he doesn’t want to . . .” He then asked that officials from the Family Conflict Unit of the Royal Barbados intervene in the matter in order to have it resolved. Fredrick also ordered that the accused receive counselling from doctors at the Psychiatric Hospital and a report to be sent to the No. 1 District ‘A’ Magistrate’s Court. The accused who returns to court on November 12 was then granted $1,000 bail with an undertaking from the surety that she will visit the Black Rock institution. In the meantime, she must stay away from the premises where her husband resides.  (BT)

MARSHALL ADMITS TO DRUG OFFENCE – A 30-year-old man on gun and drug charges is now on remand at HMP Dodds and will return to the District ‘A’ Magistrate’s Court on November 19. Shamar Jamal Kelvin Marshall, of Blackman’s Road, Carrington Village, St Michael is accused of having firearm and 15 rounds of ammunition in his possession on October 20 as well as having possession of cannabis. The accused, who will reappear before Magistrate Douglas Frederick in 28 days, pleaded guilty to the cannabis charge but was not required to plead to the other two indictable charges under the Firearms Act.  (BT)

MURRAY DENIES ROBBING HIS ‘FRIEND’ – Robbery accused Renico Dadrian Murray has been remanded to HMP Dodds until November 19. The Garden Land, Country Road, St Michael resident is accused of robbing Romario Cozier of a $6,000 chain and an $1,100 pendant on September 11. Station Sergeant Carrison Henry objected to bail based on the seriousness of the offence, the fact that the accused was already on bail for similar matters and allegations that he was armed with a firearm at the time of the offence. “He is alleged to have robbed a friend of his . . . who he was sitting with  . . . and there are fears that he will interfere with the complainant if the granted bail,” the prosecutor submitted. In her application for bail, attorney-at-law Kristen Turton admitted that her client was on bail for 2014 and 2015 charges that had yet to make any progress.  She further argued that the allegation that a firearm had been used was not a charge before the court and as such was an “irrelevant submission.” “The evidence against my client is weak . . . he has denied that the complainant is his friend  . . . he always attends court and respects the conditions imposed . . . and he is asserting that he is innocent. To remand him at this time is to front-load a sentence,” she added. However, Magistrate Douglas Frederick informed the accused that he had granted him bail on two prior occasions despite objections from the prosecution. “Should I go against them for a third time . . . I think not . . .” the magistrate said as he ruled in favour of the prosecution.  (BT)

SLOCOMBE FACING GUN CHARGE – A 44-year-old plumber was granted an automatic 28-day stay at HMP Dodds today on firearm charges. Shawn Nathaniel Slocombe, of Emmanuel Court, Tudor Bridge, St Michael is alleged to have had a firearm in his possession on October 19 without a valid licence as well as six rounds of ammunition. He was not required to plead to the indictable charges but said he was guilty of having a quantity of cannabis in his possession on the same date. Station Sergeant Carrison Henry said the illicit drug was found in a pair of pants belonging to Slocombe when police executed a search warrant at this residence. In mitigating on his client’s behalf attorney-at-law Romain Marshall urged the court to impose a fine that Slocombe’s family could pay on his behalf. He now has two weeks to pay the District ‘A’ Magistrate’s Court a $600 fine if he wants to avoid spending three months in prison. Slocombe is also accused of dishonestly receiving a firearm and assisting in its retention knowing or believing that it had been stolen. The accused was not required to plead to that indictable charge which allegedly occurred between June 3, 2004 and October 19, 2018. Slocombe returns before Magistrate Douglas Frederick on November 19.  (BT)

ALLEGED FORGER ASKS FOR REMAND – Fearful for his life a 62-year-old man today opted for time on remand instead of freedom. Edwin Edward Maughan, of Charles Rowe Bridge, St George is accused of uttering to Republic Bank (Barbados) Limited a cheque made payable to him for $90,000 knowing it to be forged. The accused was not required to plead to the indictable charge which allegedly occurred on October 15. And although there was no objection to bail from Station Sergeant Carrison Henry, Maughan told Magistrate Douglas Frederick “somebody trying to kill me . . . so I feel safer up there [HMP]. Them telling me they know my family and everything.” Maughan will next appear in the District ‘A’ Magistrate’s Court on November 19.  (BT)

FIFA LINK IN PLACE – Football’s member associations across the region will now join the rest of the world in having their registration process fully automated. This is because FIFA Connect was officially launched in the Caribbean on Monday, during a workshopat The Courtyard By Marriott, Hastings, Christ Church. The Caribbean’s 22-member associations have been broken into two groups for the purpose of the workshop. The Northern Caribbean began their process yesterday and will end today, while the Southern Caribbean, which includes Barbados, runs from tomorrow until Friday. FIFA regional office development manager Marlon Glean said the system would make player registration much simpler. (DN)

GREAT KNOCK- WHILE IT LASTED – West Indies captain Jason Holder has hailed the brilliance of century-maker Shimron Hetmyer but says he hopes the Guyanese left-hander can bat deeper into the innings in the future. The 21-year-old smashed a scintillating 106 to propel West Indies to a rare score in excess of 300, as they piled up 322 for eight off their 50 overs, in Sunday’s opening one-day international against India. “He’s obviously one of the young exciting players. I was really pleased for him, especially after the Test series which he had – a few tough dismissals obviously. The character he showed was outstanding,” Holder said. “He really backed himself – he was going at more than a run-a-ball – and it’s just a matter for him to [bat] a little deeper. Probably if he had batted another five, six overs it would have been the 340 that we’ve been looking for.  (DN)

IMMIGRATION DEPARTMENT CLOSED FOR TWO DAYS – The Barbados Immigration Department will be closed on Thursday, October 25, and Friday, October 26. This is to facilitate the finalization of the relocation process of its offices to the new Princess Alice Corporate Centre headquarters. The Department will resume operations on Monday, October 29, from 8:15 a.m. Any inconvenience this closure may cause is regretted.  (BGIS)

LOCAL CHEFS IN CHARGE – The days of local restaurants applying for work permits to source executive chefs from overseas for their establishments may well be a thing of the past. Chairman of the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. and the Barbados Tourism Product Authority, Sunil Chatrani made the point at the culmination of the Food And Rum Festival 2018 on Sunday. Speaking to the media at Taste The Spirits Of Polo at Holder’s Hill, St James, he said an event like Food And Rum, particularly this year with the introduction of the Gourmet Safari Series, was a catalyst to advance Barbados’ brand in food tourism. More importantly, it was an incredible platform to showcase the skill set of Barbadian chefs. (DN)

For daily or breaking news reports follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook. That’s all for today folks. There are 70 days left in the year. Shalom! #thechasefilesdailynewscap #thechasefiles# dailynewscapsbythechasefiles

[orsfri]

shutter hues (12/?)

11k, yall

Djadja - uncle Tjotja - aunt

*Both are not necessarily biological; for instance, it can refer to the kindly storekeeper down the street that always gives the kids extra candy that everyone affectionately calls uncle.

Read all here

-

There is a stiff lump on the slope of his shoulders, the part that Ivan vaguely recalls is called the trapezius muscle. It's sore and it hurts when Ivan rolls his shoulders, and Gilbert grimaces when he pokes it.

"Not that I don't like hard muscles," he comments, kneading it, "but what have you been doing for your muscles to get this tight?"

"Slouch, probably," Ivan manages, wincing as Gilbert struggles to work out the knot.

"Really? Because I think it's 'cause you're too stressed," Gilbert chides. He switches tactics and digs his elbow in instead; Ivan resists the urge to whimper. "You're lucky that I know how to do massages, or you're going to end up with back problems when you're older."

"Forgot older: I already have back problems now," Ivan grumbles, then hisses at a particularly rough kneading. 

There's also the headache that he doesn't tell Gilbert: his head pounding to the beat of his heart. It'll be nice if Gilbert can knead it away too, but such pains can only be alleviated, not eradicated; Ivan's learnt as much. He's already learnt to ignore such inevitablities as much as is possible. 

"How do you manage to destroy your body this much," Gilbert grouses, "what the heck have you been doing?"

Frankly? Nothing much, just that a few high-ranking officers decide to take a trip down over because apparently interest in Berlin's strategic importance is renewed again and Ivan has to work with Pap to coordinate with the personal bodyguards and the German security personnel, how fucking fun. He doesn't tell Gilbert as much, because that's just asking for trouble. "Guarding duties," he says instead, which is technically not a lie. "Many guarding duties."

"Is that why you come over right after your shift is over without even bothering to head home to take a nap?" Ivan protests that he is still too wired up to sleep. "I can tell; you need to relax. Your job is stressful and boring."

"It is," Ivan confirms, "there's not even a single assassination attempt." But the amount of bureaucratic coordination has assassinated his will to live. "I'm tired. I want a reassignment."

Gilbert laughs. "Then what will you do?"

"I'll be a superspy - I'll be fucking Stierlitz." He hopes whichever Stasi officer listening to this knows enough Russian pop culture to get a laugh out of this. 

Gilbert evidently does not. "Who's Sterlitz?"

"Never mind, I-" He's cut off as Gilbert finally works the knot out of his shoulder, a pained yelp before slumping over onto Gilbert's bed. "Ow."

"If you fall asleep like that, you'll wake up with a sore neck."

"I'm not sleeping," Ivan complains lazily, "who's sleeping? The sun is nice and bright today, I'm not wasting the day sleeping."

"You Russians and your sunshine," Gilbert mocks, "it's not a Siberian winter, you know."

"One: it's the British and their sunshine, and secondly," Ivan retorts, "what about you Germans and your nudity."

"Oh. You want to go to a nudist beach?"

"No."

"Prudes," Gilbert snorts, flopping down beside him. "You sure you don't want to nap? You can have the bed: I'm heading out."

Ivan immediately pushes himself up on his elbow. "Head out? Where?" 

"Down to the Weisser See."

"That lake?" Ivan wrinkles his nose. "What's there to do?"

Gilbert waves flippantly. "Parks," he begins, holding up a finger, "history and heritage, nature, people - tada!"

"Oh, you want to do landscape photos."

"That too," Gilbert agrees. "Have I ever told you? I want to document every single part of East Berlin. Can't believe it took me this long to get to this one."

That's a curious one. Gilbert has said many things about his love for photography, and this variation is the first of its kind. "Why?"

"I want to preserve a memory of all these before they are gone." He shrugs, dismissive, but there's longingness in his eyes - a strange melancholy uncharacteristic on a man as boisterous as Gilbert. "You know how it is: places develop and transform over time, and the old have to make way for the new. It's just... I thought of Mutti telling me about Dresden once being the Florence of the North, and I thought: I want my grandkids to see the beauty of the world that I'm looking at."

"That's poignant," Ivan replies, "write that down for the press release of your next exhibition."

"Don't mock me." Gilbert yanks the blanket sharply from under Ivan; Ivan stumbles off the bed and rolls to a crouch on the floor.

"I'm not mocking you - I'm serious. That was beautifully put. Write it down."

Gilbert snorts. "If it means so little to me that I would forget if I didn't write it down, then that's not the essence of the exhibition at all."

There is something in Gilbert's tone - something grim and too serious, that makes Ivan focus and watch Gilbert closely. Gilbert tenses his shoulders. "What?" he snaps.

"Nothing," says Ivan, "just - this project means a lot to you, doesn't it?"

"It means something," Gilbert answers, flippant, before making his way to the cupboard to fish out his equipment. Ivan gets up, and although what he wants to do is to draw Gilbert into a hug, to wrap his arms around Gilbert's waist and tucks Gilbert's back against his own chest, Ivan knows better. Instead, he helps Gilbert make the bed like a housewife with a propensity for orderliness, then kneads the pain at his own temples with his knuckles that quickly transforms into big sweeps at his fringe when Gilbert turns back around.

"So you're coming along?" Gilbert asks, adjusting his straps, his satchel filled and camera looped around his neck. 

Ivan shrugs. "As you said: I need a break," he answers, and that's that, then.

-

The park has only smatterings of visitors, and the skies are blue and bright and accompanied with a calm breeze, the gentleness of wind that ruffles their hair and kisses their cheeks. There are even birds chirping. 

The scene is so comfortable, so mundane, so, so edenic. Ivan hates it.

"Nice weather today," Ivan comments, watching Gilbert trots ahead.

"Bullshit: it's awesome weather," Gilbert corrects, "holy shit, did you see that?"

"See what?"

"That man walking five dogs," Gilbert replies, awed. "He's living the dream." He takes a hurried snap. "Wait, let me go talk to him."

Ivan walks down the trail of the most deserted side of the lake, toeing the edges of the coastline without getting his boots wet. There is a pier at the end; Ivan sits down on it, legs dangling above the water.

He rubs between his eyes before leaning back on his palms. It is a good day, the kind that spurs content in people's hearts and has them waxing poetics about nature's glory. It won't look out of place for some retired old man to bring his grandson fishing here, right at this very spot; he remembers Djadja Nikolai and their fishing trips down by the stream. It was boring, at first, just holding the rod straight; then Djadja switches tactic and takes off his shirt, smoothly netting up a herring.

(Of course, even in that triumphant afternoon, Djadja can't quite keep the grief from his sad eyes. Djadja has always been a sad man: too different to seek comfort in family, but too stubborn to roll over and die. Djadja lives melancholy like it is his ambrosia, lives life like it's a slow suicide, and in the end, when Djadja is found in a dingy motel room with a gun in his hand and blood splattered across the walls, Ivan only felt relief.)

But the point is not Djadja's tragic murmur of a life; the point is that memories of fishing are always accompanied with a rosy sheen for Ivan that speaks of youthful vivacity that matches Gilbert much more than it is ever associated with Djadja, fortunately.

But Weisser See has too many people swimming in it for it to be an ideal fishing location. The fish are probably scrawny. Maybe Ivan can suggest a trip back to Russia; Gilbert is always talking about wanting to travel.

He is broken from his reverie with the sound of a familiar click; look up, and it's Gilbert, grinning down over his camera.

"I thought you stopped doing that?"

"Me?" Gilbert places a hand mockingly on his chest. "Stop taking pictures of you?" His grin widens. "Never."

"That's not fair: I have never taken any pictures of you."

Gilbert laughs. "That's because you're not the photographer." He settles down, letting his feet swing over the water surface, and knocks their ankles together. The quiet that settles is nice and comfortable, and it is all very new for Ivan, a quiet this gentle.

Then Gilbert clears his throat. "Do you want to?" Gilbert dangles his camera. "You can play photographer for a day."

There is really nothing to lose here. Ivan shrugs. "Why not?" Gilbert grins, immediately clamouring to his feet. Ivan follows suit, taking Gilbert's hand to pull himself up. "Thanks."

Gilbert drops his satchel on the pier before looping the camera's strap over Ivan's neck. He briefly explains the basic controls, telling Ivan to aim at some trees and that fountain in the distance before deeming him capable enough of not accidentally destroying the camera with careless fiddling. Gilbert hangs back, now, the horizon of the lake stretching from his ribs a perfect parallel to his outstretched arms. "There you go," he announces, "amateur photographer at work."

Ivan holds the camera up, squinting into the viewfinder. It's a good picture: fair composition, big grin, the light is just right, and yet his fingers hesitate above the shutter. Gilbert starts to frown. "What's wrong-"

Ivan darts forward and shoves Gilbert into the water.

Gilbert squawks when he breaks the water with an embarrassingly huge splash. Ivan hurriedly snaps a few photographs. When Gilbert resurfaces, he's spluttering and his face is red as he shrieks, "Oh the hell with you!"

Ivan continues snapping.

"Hey, stop that!" Gilbert waddles towards the pier. This close to the shore, the water is only waist-high. "Come on, stop-" Ivan shoves Gilbert back into the water when Gilbert tries to get up, snorting when Gilbert slips at the third attempt to claw his way up. "Ivan, fucking stop. You're wasting my film!"

"I'll buy more for you," Ivan promises, still snapping away. 

"Stop snapping, asshole." Gilbert makes to lurch, but Ivan only leans away. And because he can be a little shit, Ivan tuts.

"Make me," Ivan retorts, not quite keeping the smug smile away from his face. "You can't drag me into the water with you because I am holding your camera."

"I can still get your pant legs wet," Gilbert retorts, splashing warningly. Ivan takes another step back. "No, I actually can't," Gilbert admits. "You little shit. Help me up."

Ivan stretches out a hand. Just as Gilbert is about to grab it, Ivan snatches his hand back, leaving Gilbert flailing as he tumbles down again with an even bigger splash. 

Ivan roars.

"Oh fuck you, Ivan!" Gilbert wipes his face furiously on his equally drenched sleeve. "No, stop - stop laughing, you-"

"I'm sorry," says Ivan, wiping at his eyes, "you make it so easy." Another picture.

"I helped you up, and this is how you treat me? Rude." Gilbert huffs, kicking the water disgruntedly.

"You know you love me regardless," Ivan teases. Gilbert rolls his eyes. "Please let me keep some pictures of this."

"And give you embarrassing materials to blackmail me with?" Gilbert retorts. When Ivan can't stop smiling at him, his glare softens. "Yeah sure, sure; it's your first work as a photographer after all - even if it is at my expense." He splashes water onto the pier. "I am really going to try to get your boots wet."

"I love how you constantly lower your standards for me," Ivan teases, ignoring Gilbert's scowl as he unloops the camera from his neck. Then, turning the camera towards himself and stretching out his arm as far as he can, he crouches at the edge of the pier. "Come on, Gilbert, smile into the camera."

"You bet," Gilbert mutters, waddling over. "I'm going to out-smile you."

"Sure you are." The click of the shutter once. Twice, thrice - and it's done. "In case you blinked."

"You are so full of shit." Ivan ignores him and lowers the camera gingerly onto the satchel. "Hey, don't worry, I never let any of my films get damaged," Gilbert says. There is a gentle tilt at the corners of his mouth that Ivan hesitates to call fondness. "But since you took three, you can pop by my office someday and I'll develop an extra copy of your favourite for you."

"That'll be nice," Ivan agrees. The sun refracts off the drops hanging off Gilbert's hair like dew, small glowing globs of white light condensed. "Come on, let's get you out of the water."

"You will not retract your hand at the last moment," Gilbert threatens, but takes Ivan's hand without hesitation. Gilbert's palms are wet and slimy and Ivan ends up having to grab Gilbert's elbow to pull him out, painfully aware of the water dripping all over. "Look at what you've done."

"I have performed a work of art," Ivan answers solemnly. "A hilarious work of art. It is a commentary on trust issues."

"Hardy ha ha, shut up, Ivan." Gilbert grunts as he wrings the water out of his shirt. It doesn't seem to help much. When he releases it, the shirt slaps wetly back against skin. 

"I'm sorry," says Ivan, earnest. "No wait, I'm not that sorry." 

"You-"

"Sir!" Ivan turns instinctively, and yup, it's for him. There is an unknown guard waving at them before turning around to yell something at... Roman. Huh.

Roman is flushed and flustered as he runs towards them. "Thank god you're here," he manages breathlessly. "I just got a call, and you need to come back to the office right now. There's-" He cuts himself off abruptly when he finally notices Gilbert. "Oh. Hi?"   

Gilbert waves vaguely.

"Give me a moment," Ivan instructs, "and for fuck's sake, someone get him a jacket."

The unknown guard salutes before running off. Roman takes a few steps back, angling his body away in the universal body language of 'don't mind me, just fading into the background right here'. Ivan faces Gilbert. "I'm sorry," he begins awkwardly, "but something urgent's cropped up and I need to-"

"You gotta go." Gilbert nods grimly. "Yeah, I get it."

"I am truly sorry."

"I said I know, Ivan," Gilbert snaps. "Just get to it."

The unnamed guard returns with a thick jacket, probably plucked off some bench somewhere while the owner is off for a swim. Ivan gives an apologetic nod, smiling weakly; he hasn't noticed it earlier, but now there's a forlorn lonesomeness about Gilbert, standing soaked and alone and confused as he stares after them. It's almost pathetic, watching the slight chills of Gilbert's body as water drips off him.

"I'll make it up to you," promises Ivan, and without a second glance backwards, hurries off.  

-

"How did Feliks escape?!" he shouts. Sasha winces and angles away. "How did he escape on our watch? On my watch!"

"I'm sorry, sir," says one of the uniformed guards that Ivan has never bothered learning the name of, "but the prison break was a highly-skilled job. When we-"

"Ivan Mikhailovich?" The officers that interrupt them with their approach are foreign and authoritative in a way that has Ivan squaring his shoulders. "Please follow us this way."

"Sasha, deal with this," Ivan commands before following the officers down the corridor, feeling an inmate on the death row marching his final steps. 

He is lucky to have an interrogation; most failures don't, and their own continued existence is the only proof of the brass's decision to tolerate mistakes. 

Even then, most interrogations go the same way: high-ranking men with their back to the window and the light haloing them, four looming shadows behind an oval table cataloguing your every answer.

Pap is among them. It doesn't seem to matter. Ivan swallows the pulsating heartbeats at the dip of his jugular, and salutes. "Sir."

His captaincy is mentioned (Dryly, "What impressive valour you must have exhibited to be captain at this age.") and his loyalties questioned, a push and forth that has Ivan dully reciting political opinions he can't remember where he heard them from. Pap, probably; Pap taught him most of his world the way Mama's ruthlessness can't. It's the same push and pull that Ivan is drilled to handle - always the same push and pull, and Ivan leaves the room with a final chance and a red cross painted over his heart.

He does not realise he's holding his breath until the door closes behind him. 

-

It takes him too long to notice Sasha waiting for him outside his office.

(Here's a thing that Ivan said that he doesn't remember:

Pap said it first, told this to him, to all of them, once upon a time. Told it to both him and Ira and Natasha, all of them young and huddled around Pap's feet after Pap just read them a story, Mama a shadow in the background watching over them through the corner of her eyes that are sharp as a hawk and sad like Djadja's.

"It is easier to sympathise with the enemy when you haven't seen their cruelty," he has said, Ivan will say in that little room with the oval table, and it will earn that crinkle at the corners of the eyes of the Polkovnik that hints of an ally.

And Ivan, then, a child - Ivan has blinked, wide-eyed and impressionable. "And that is bad?" he asks.

"It makes us complacent," Pap answers, "and we lower our guards too much."

"But what if it is this - this peace that takes away our enemy's cruelty?" Ira presses. She's always been precocious and more sensitive than everyone else. "Maybe we don't see their cruelty because there is no cause to be cruel. Won't that be better for everyone?"

In that dim orange light by the fire, Ivan remembers that Pap's eyes are strangely luminous, light dancing with shadows on Pap's pupils. "Darling," he says, "but peace doesn't last.")"I got us a warrant to rummage through Stasi archives," Ivan reveals, unlocking the door. "I also got myself voluntary work down at the public welfare sector, so it's time to steel myself against angry, hysterical civilians that I have to slough through ineffectual paperwork for."

Sasha grimaces. "And in the meantime," he replies, "I'll dig around and see what they'll try to hide before you waltz in and turn the place over."

"I'm jealous," Ivan retorts dryly. "Really. Your paperwork is so much more important than mine. Speaking of which, I just dug up some files on Feliks that you may want to look over. There can't be a paper trail so you'll have to memorise-"

"Just pass them to me; I'll filter out the details I need." Sasha halts Ivan by clutching on both his shoulders. "But you, sir, need to rest. You look like you hadn't slept in three days."

That's because Ivan hasn't. He's only managed a light doze between his shifts and bureaucratic management, and before that, there was the whole gruelling planning process to get to: sleep hasn't been on the top of Ivan's priorities in quite some while.

"I'll be fine," says Ivan, "back to the topic-"

Sasha grunts threateningly.

"Sasha, I can still mark you down for insubordination."

"Ivan," Sasha interrupts with an impression that can at best be described as disgruntled. "Sir. I'm saying this as a fellow human being, not as a concerned friend. You need to look in a mirror and then go to sleep."

Ivan winces. "That bad?"

"Worse," Sasha says. He clears his throat, all gruff and squared shoulders. "Trust me to look after the squad for you, sir."

"Don't say that - I may suspect a mutiny."

Sasha snorts. "I got my lone wolf reputation to uphold," he retorts, "can't go all mutinous and become a leader if I still want to allegedly hate everyone."

"My noble vassal, my gallant knight in shiny armour," Ivan teases, "guarding distant lands under my flag."

"Very funny," Sasha replies dryly. Then, sardonically, "My Liege."

Ivan laughs.

-

Ivan is not expecting Mama to look as though on the verge of collapse when he reaches home.

It seems Ivan is not getting his sleep after all.

"What happened?" He hurries to her, lets her clutch onto his arms. "Mama, mama, what's going on?"

"Natshechka is gone!" she wails. "She's run off!" Her eyes widen. "Do you think-"

"No, Mama," he answers too quickly. Both Pap and he have made sure that their work never follows them home, but now with Ira... he's not so sure anymore.

Mama seems to sense his distress, her nails digging deeper. Then, struggling to regain composure, she pulls herself up and flicks away the traces of hysteria off the edges of shining eyes. "Vanya, please find her."

"I will, Mama, I-" He helps her to a seat. "Have you called Pap?"

"Shortly, just before you arrived."

"Ok," says Ivan. "Ok, I'll need to go look for her now, Mama. I'll need to leave."

"Don't go," Mama beseeches helplessly. She's clawing onto his sleeves. "Stay with me."

"I need to leave to find her. I'll get-" Dima, but he's not here anymore, "-Tjotja Masha from next door to stay with you, alright? I think Pap will send some guards over too."

Mama's hands tighten before slowing folding onto her own lap. Ivan pours her a glass of water, first, before leaving the apartment, their own door left wide open, to knock on the neighbour's door. "Tjotja," he greets when Masha opens her door, and Masha is adequately shocked that Mama has been freaking out for the past hour without seeking help from the neighbours.

There is no way to explain trauma to a woman who has never suffered unadulterated desperation, but Masha is a sympathetic soul with a kindness never tested. "I will stay with her for however long she needs," Masha promises.

"Thank you, tjotja," says Ivan with more feeling than he thought himself capable.

He has contacts on the streets, petty delinquents and dangerous gangsters that owed Ivan favours for all the leeway he allowed them. ("You still owe me 37 favours, Kolyan," Ivan points out, earning him a scowl.)

He calls some of the off-duty guards that he can spare on the way to keep an eye out, and by the time he's gotten to the office, Roman has turned up in uniform. "Sir," he greets, a looseness in him that speaks of getting up too early too fast, "what do you need me to do?"

Find Natasha. "Is Sasha here?" 

Roman falters. "I can go get him."

"No, no: let him handle official business." Ivan pinches between his eyes. "Can you get the timetable and rearrange the shifts? Cover for me."

"Yeah, sir, of course." Roman chews on his lip, as though holding back words. When Ivan raises his eyebrows, Roman swallows. "I know now is not the time, sir," he says, "but this whole fiasco is making some of our newer members nervous." He wets his lips. "Especially Karl and Petto. They -" 

"You're right, now is not the time," Ivan interjects. "They'll be fine. See to the shifts."

He twists the key in before Roman can protest, and then the lock clicks and the mind swiftly processes and Ivan -

Ivan stops.

"My office is not locked," Ivan says, a strange calm settling over him. "Someone's been in. Who came to my office while I'm gone?"

"No one, sir," answers Roman, doubts colouring his voice, "maybe Sasha?"

"I really don't have time for this," Ivan murmurs, inching the door open carefully. When nothing happens, he pushes it further apart. "Wait here," he instructs Roman, and swiftly pulls out gloves from his pocket.

On his desk is a thick manila envelope.

Ivan holds his breath.

"Do you think it's a bomb," Ivan finally says, "or a message from Natasha?"

"What if it's from Feliks, sir?" Roman whispers.

Ivan stares at the envelope, then scans the room. He breathes deeply for one, two, ten seconds; then he goes to examine his drawers and cupboards. He's been searched, but the most important documents are still locked away. "Call for the forensics to take a look at it," he commands, mind forcibly blank, and Roman obeys.

-

"Goga," Ivan says, straightening up, and Goga with a Y enters the room with the missives.

"Sir," he salutes. 

(And here is the scene that no one sees: Ivan, slumped over his desk, just a while ago. He feels wrecked. He feels like shit, if said shit has been churned and pounded and then processed into fertiliser and sucked up by the greediest neediest plant to ever exist. 

Even if everything that matters is still kept under lock - even then, he knows that the brass now knows that there are some documents Ivan needs to turn up, secrets that Ivan has to account for. 

It could be worse: Ivan could have left personal pictures lying around, instead of only state-endorsed certificates and recognised achievements. That, then, is future leverage - damning, to let them know that he holds family so dear to his heart: Pap and sir being conflated. Ira actually meaning something to him.

His team and him being that close - especially the old fellows, those that plough through sludge and gritted through the hazing and backed Ivan through his brutal rise.

Gilbert, who's not just a friend, seen through every slight tilt of the head, the comfortable lean into each other's spaces, the unlying eyes that whisper subconsciously to one's instincts that it is something more.

Ivan's hands tremble, just a little. He clenches it.)

"Just leave these here," Ivan instructs. "I'll take a look at them later." After he finds Natasha. "I have a task for you, Goga: guard this office without letting anyone realise that you're watching. Can you do that?"

"Yessir," Goga Y answers stiffly.

There is something about Goga Y's tone that has Ivan looking twice. Ivan gives him a hard look; Goga Y barely reacts. Ivan is strangely reminded of a petulant child. "Goga," he begins, "take a seat."

Natasha will have to wait, Ivan decides anxiously, because above all he is also the leader, and a leader looks after his followers and takes note of jealousy within the ranks. "Goga," Ivan tries, "you've been with me for a long time: do you think Roman is ready for his promotion?"

"I don't see why not."

"Won't you think he needs more experience first?"

"Sir," Goga Y replies, testy, "if you are concerned about my feelings, then don't: I fully accept Roman's promotion."

And that's the opening Ivan needs. "You may accept it," says Ivan, "but that doesn't mean you're happy about it."

"I'm fine," Goga Y grits, "sir."

"No resentment?" Ivan baits. "No questions?"

"What will change if I say that I am upset, sir?" Goga Y snaps. "Will that get me a promotion?"

"No," Ivan answers slowly, "but it can get you an explanation."

"I don't need it. I know why you chose him. He's got the demeanour for it. I don't. I'm not, not charismatic enough." He pauses, suppressing a shudder, and Ivan waits. "You need someone to replace Dima, and Dima's best at people. I'm not someone like that - Roman is."

"I'm sorry," Ivan says, sincerely, "you're a very loyal man, Goga." The oldest friend that Ivan has, now that Dima is gone. Even Sasha, with his steadfast solidness, is someone he found in the latter half of national service, not the brother-in-arms that Dima have pulled into their circle from day one."But I have to think for the team, not just for myself."

"I know, and I don't fault you for it." Goga Y slaps both palms onto his knees. "If that is all, I'll be -"

"There is something else still bothering you," Ivan cuts in. "You're not leaving until you confess everything."

"There's nothing else, sir -"

"Goga."

"It's just -" Goga Y visibly swallows. "I just hate that everyone forgets I'm in the squad, first. Having two Gogas? Yeah, that's funny at first, because Dima makes everything funny, but he's gone now and I'm Goga Y. Fuck, what a mouthful." He makes to spit, until he recalls that he's in Ivan's office. 

Ivan hasn't thought about it like that, and he says so. "I didn't know," he admits. "I'm sorry that I hadn't notice. Hadn't notice it bothering you."

"I," Goga Y bites out uncomfortably, face flushed with humiliation, "I'm Goga first. I don't want to compromise. Egor -" Goga E, "- can pick another short name."

Ivan doesn't know what to say. "I'll talk to him."

"Yeah. Yeah, that'll be nice." Goga Y stands, clearing his throat. "Thank you, sir."

"It's the least I can do," says Ivan, and that's true, too, for a man like Goga Y.

-

The night is disgustingly chilly, and Ivan is even more disgustingly sweaty from all his running about. 

It is only the dramatic tendencies of fate, then, that Ivan will chance upon a glaring Natasha squatting at the doorsteps of a church while he is soaked in sweat, the church bells chiming the arrival of midnight, and Tolys staring up at Ivan with opaque eyes from beside Natasha.

"Fuck off," says Natasha.

"No will do," says Ivan, "you gave Mama a fright."

"Maybe she'll finally make an expression other than intense calm now," Natasha grumbles. Tolys frowns disapprovingly at her. "Well I'm sorry if I offend your virtuous sensibilities on filial piety."

"Natasha," says Ivan, tiredly, "is this about Ira?"

"Of course this is about Ira!" Natasha cries. "And how none of you fucking cares that she's gone."

"Don't be stupid - of course we do."

"It doesn't look like it!" Natasha yells. "The way you say it makes it sound like you're talking about the weather rather than my sister."

"Natasha-"

"No. I don't want to hear it."

"Natasha," Tolys soothes, "there is no point agitating yourself. Go inside and sit on the pews. I'll talk to him."

"And then you'll tell him to leave."

"I will," says Tolys, "now go inside."

Natasha stomping away will probably appear more effective if she hasn't done so with the grace of a ballerina; downsides of the sky-high heels she wears, Ivan thinks. With her gone, it is like the fall of the curtains - the scene has ended, the suspend-disbelief gone, and a strange chill settles over both of them.

"Tolys," Ivan greets.

Tolys ignores it. "Your own cousin," he accuses, eyes burning in the moonlight, shiny like the rosary he does not believe in that hangs around his neck.

Irony, Tolys is. Ivan never knows what to do with him.

"She broke the law," says Ivan simply, "and she got caught."

“But she's family, and yet you don't even appear the least upset." Tolys shakes his head. "I hate everything you stand for, do you know that?"

"You've said that before." 

"And I mean it each and every time," Tolys replies icily. "Is it any surprise that Natasha ran off?"

"No," Ivan admits, "but running off to a fake layman? That is a first." He runs his eyes up and down Tolys's attire. "So, is the church harbouring traitors now, or is this an infiltration?" He tilts his head in consideration. "Although I supposed this is an infiltration either way: a revolutionary into state-controlled institutions, and a pagan onto Christian grounds."

"What do you want?"

"I'm simply curious,"  says Ivan. "You weren't supposed to ever appear in front of me again. What are you trying to pull, befriending Natasha?"

"I'm not pulling anything; I just thought she needs a friend who isn't one of your crazy family."

"Ohh. So you like her." 

Tolys ignores that, too, the same way he ignores semantics in pursuit of his goals. It's a strength, Ivan thinks, a stubborn adaptability that makes Tolys so dangerous and Ivan so fond of him. "German churches are less susceptible to Soviet control," Tolys answers, almost a non-sequitur until Ivan remembers his earlier question. "I'm secure here. Will you take that away from me too?"

Ivan smiles. "You'll know soon enough." Then, quietly, "Will you let me pass?"

Because Ivan knows Tolys and Tolys knows Ivan, much as Ivan loathes to admit, he knows Tolys will relent. Family is family, for both of them, and Natasha's angry lashing out is not a solution to all the creaks in the system that Ivan stands for and Tolys seeks to tear down. Tolys will rather Natasha ignorant but safe, too, the same way Ivan shields her from the consequences of the world he knows.

"We both know Natasha needs to learn to move on," Ivan adds. Mutters, like an afterthought. "Ira never stood a chance the moment she's arrested, you know?"

There is a pregnant pause, something flickering in Tolys's eyes that Ivan doesn't want to examine. "Maybe," says Tolys, body language still stiff, but he's already moving aside. 

It's a truce, of sorts. "Thank you," Ivan whispers as he passes.

He's not sure, but he thinks he hears Tolys bites out, "I don't want your thanks."

Ivan ignores it; he's not sure anyway.

In the dim night, the moon glowing through the window, there is a curious solemnity about the night that makes even the lightest conversation more intimate and grave. The world slows to the milliseconds: quiet, precious.

Natasha sits facing the cross, visage turned towards the ceiling and eyes close, a pearly statue of a saint in repose. She shifts when Ivan approaches.

"I knew I shouldn't trust Tolys," Natasha grumbles. Ivan takes a seat on the pew right behind her, and Natasha shuffles so that her body is facing him, even though her eyes are cast determinedly away.

"You shouldn't," Ivan concurs cheerfully. "He's a revolutionary."

"What?"

"Don't worry, I won't arrest him," Ivan continues, "I let him live once, I can let him live again. But he owes me a life."

Natasha blinks. "Does Pap know?"

"Nope."

"He shouldn't know," she agrees, crossing both legs. The moment stews in quiet sanctitude, and then Natasha hugs both knees to her chest, ankles crossed. "Do you think he knows Ira?"

"Pretty sure they fight for different organisations."

"Oh." Natasha sounds almost disappointed. Ivan can't tell; she's getting so good at masking her emotions. She's becoming more and more like Mama. "But they have the same goals, don't they? They want the same ending."

"They want the system to fall," Ivan confirms, and Natasha flinches. "It's bold, isn't it? The system may have its fault, but it's better than the chaos during the wars. They are chancing anarchy in hopes of change."

"Is the present really that bad?" Natasha asks. "It's not ideal, but I thought Ira is content."

"Peace doesn't last," explains Ivan, and that's an answer, too.

"That's what Ira said." Natasha rests her forehead on her knees. "Do you ever think of Ira? Sometimes, it feels like you never do."

Ivan looks up, and the single cross hanging above the pulpit bears down on him as though it has a million eyes watching. This is why Ivan hates religion, he knows. It's the boogeyman that can't be quantified, surveillance taken to a transcendental level, unavoidable even with all his knowledge and tricks.

Is this why Tolys fight? Why Ira fight? Do they fear the boogeyman staring over their shoulders too? The thought is somewhat humbling, Ivan thinks, to have fear stem from something so childishly instinctive. "How do I not think of her," Ivan whispers. "She was like my sister."

"And yet you didn't save her."

"I couldn't," says Ivan.

"You didn't try," says Natasha. "In the end, she's just another sacrifice. I know you, Vanya. I know how you became captain - they tell me the stories." More quietly, with a tinge of shame, "Dima told me."

Of course he did. He's never good at lying to family, born or found. "It's not the same."

"How's it not?" Natasha counters. "How can the same man who rose three ranks within two years fail to do something?"

"I didn't say I didn't do anything, Natasha." Ivan rubs at his eyes with the heel of his palm. "But no matter what I did, Ira's still gone."

The implications of the words hang in the air and laugh like sirens after a feast; Natasha's pupils dilate. "Vanya," she says, "what did you do?"

"Whatever is necessary," he answers. Natasha throws her head and lets out a bark that is half hysteria and half relief. "There are many ways to make someone disappear."

"You will kill us all," she says, her voice trembling frightfully close to a sob. Natasha's face flushes with alarmed shame; Ivan pulls her close, arms around her head, and kisses her hair. "Oof."

"I won't forget her," Ivan whispers. "Trust me.

"Come home now."

-

(An interlude:

"I feel like I'm losing you, you know," Gilbert once muttered, during those long, quiet nights when the world doesn't exist and Ira looks at Ivan like she's just realised she's looking at a stranger, and words spoken dissipates into the cold the moment they are spoken, chasing those wispy tendrils of Gilbert's smoking. "You've been avoiding me. I thought you're second-guessing whatever this is again."

Is this a date, or just hanging out, or does Ivan want an out? Is this something or anything or nothing that matters after all? It's a relationship in flux, a small boat in a storm out at sea, always on the verge of capsizing. "I want this to last."

"It doesn't fucking look like it," Gilbert snarls. He takes another drag. "I never know where I stand with you."

"You are standing right beside," Ivan answers, and Gilbert's head snaps towards him. "I mean it." He clears his throat. "It's always a date."

Gilbert drops his cigarette to the ground and stomps it out. "It better be," he says.)

-

"Sir," Roman calls out, nervously hurrying along. "The results are back. They cleared the parcel: here." 

Ivan grabs the manila envelope. It's lost its ominous aura now that Natasha's back home and Ira's secret is out. "I'll look at it later," he assures, hurrying down. "Thanks Roma."

Roman blinks in confusion. "I'm German. I don't use short names."

"Sorry," Ivan replies without much thought and slips behind the corner.

He finds Pap's office and knocks on it with three sharp raps. "Sir," Ivan announces, and at Pap's assent, enters the room. 

Ivan grins. "Morning, Pap."

"Don't smile just yet," Pap says, and flicks a document across the table.

Ivan steps forward to pick it up, scanning through the pages. "Pap," he begins slowly, "are we having our budgets cut?"

Pap thins his lips. He is grim as he says, "We are preparing for other expenses."

"Won't I like to know." Ivan pushes the document back. "Should I start preparing a will and cherish every second I have left?"

"You'll know soon enough." Pap tucks the document away. "Viktor took a shine to you. He won't let you die."

"The Polkovnik?"

"Of course it's him. The other two - one is irrelevant, and the other is a snake." Pap frowns at him. "I'll invite Viktor over for dinner; don't waste the opportunity."

"Yessir."

"Now, about the heart of the matter." Pap pauses. "After Feliks and Natasha-" The phone rings. "Sorry, give me a moment."

Pap picks at the receiver. He nods, "Yes, certainly," and nods again. "I understand." Then, "Glory to the motherland, comrade," and he puts down the phone. "Your own personal surveillance is here,"  he informs gravely.

"What?" says Ivan, just as the door opens.

Pap stands up.

Ivan wisely turns and salutes, before stepping aside.

"Major Fyodor Pavlovich," Pap greets. Ivan's eye twitches. 

"Major Mikhail Sergeyevich," Fyodor Pavlovich returns. He looks at Ivan, and his scowl deepens with a certain ferocity that contradicts his literary namesake. "Is this the captain in-charge of the squad with the traitor?"

"Yes."

"Ivan Mikhailovich." The way Fyodor Pavlovich circles him makes Ivan think of a vulture. "How is progress? Have you checked with the Stasi?"

"Soon, sir." Ivan clears his throat. "It's currently under review -"

"What!" Fyodor Pavlovich's sneer of disgust can probably thicken permafrost. "What do you mean, it's not done yet?" 

"Um-"

"Sloppy. Don't think just because you keep your secrets out of sight, they'll be out of mind - I am here now." This is as explicit a threat without outright aggression. Ivan does not flinch. Ivan is also acutely aware that this is the same man who searched his office; another warning, a prelude. But now, that's not important. What's important is that Ivan's got to figure out who entered after him.

"Yes, I understand, sir."

"See to it as soon as possible," Fyodor Pavlovich commands. "You're dismissed, Ivan."

Fyodor Pavlovich says Ivan's name with a singular focus that confirms Ivan's suspicion; Ivan is doomed. He stoically salutes before exiting, and keeps his steps measured until he closes the door behind him.

He turns back forward only to come face-to-face with a passing Karl.

Karl startles.

Ivan smiles placidly.

"Sir," Karl says, eyes darting between the door and Ivan, "what's going on?"

"It is none of your concern," Ivan replies with a cheerfulness he does not feel, "get back to work."

Karl looks ready to bolt, but hesitates at the last moment. "Will," he begins haltingly, "will everything be alright, sir?"

(Roman, eager to step-up to his new role and yet still so green, so unsure, saying, "This is making our new members nervous, sir," says it with the kindness and sensitivity that Ivan always lacks when it comes to people.)

"It will be," Ivan promises. Karl blinks. "Don't worry. Now get to work."

Karl scurries off. Ivan turns back towards the door and makes a few faces at it, because Ivan is apparently not mature enough to skip the grimaces. That is, until he realises that this will be a perfect moment for Fyodor Pavlovich to stick his head out of that door and smugly accuse Ivan of misconduct.

He heads back to his office, dropping the unknown envelope beside some portfolios of new recruits and that one copy of Dostoyevsky. He'll have to keep that book off his desk; pity, it's one of his favourite books too. 

The tick of the clock is tediously loud. Ivan wonders if he can smash it and blame it on rusty nails. Maybe then he'll get one of those new digital prototypes. The world has changed: new technology and a new era, and even this decades-old system is changing to include new recruits for tech surveillance that Ivan can pick from.

He has narrowed it down to two - an Estonian and a Macedonian. It's weird, Ivan thinks, glancing at the two profiles staring mutely back at him. Everything's weird and everything's different: change, just the way that the party claims they like but in practice abhors. New, like Macedonia the nation, made from central planning and Soviet strategic decisions, a culture created from fragments and legalised with an outside hand. 

("It's not new new," Gilbert once said, about Germany. "The idea was already there centuries ago. The culture. The, the nationalism. You've heard of it."

"The 19th Century German Question?"

"Yeah, yeah that." Gilbert scratches his head. "I'm glad you know that; most don't bother. Germany as a united nation has existed for aeons: as the Fatherland, the German dualism between the Prussians and Austrians, as the Holy Roman Empire, or as the Germanies. But it's all fragmented until someone came along and gave everyone a shared cause through war.

“It's powerful, you know, having a common enemy. War is powerful. It makes those different groups think that they belong to the same side, 'handing-over of all power' to the small leading class as 'the condition of survival', and shit." Ivan side-eyes him, but lets it pass. "So that's unity enough for a nation. The rest of the identity-building part will work itself out. Tada, nations are made.")

Everything's new and everything's changed, and yet Ivan is here, in an old run-down office with a job that never changes, day after day after day, repetition at first comforting and now frustrating. 

Sure, he's captain, but then again, he is a man who's made captain within two years of being Lieutenant. Unheard of, ridiculously shady, and secretly, in the darkest of nights when Ivan can finally admit to himself, a mark of extreme restlessness. 

I hate my job, Ivan realises with a viciousness that startles himself. Fuck, I hate my job. And he's going to do this for the rest of his life, a trail of promotions and paperwork already laid out at his feet. He'll manage people, and he'll guard more important people, with all their bureaucracy and politicking that Ivan can debate about in his sleep - all the skills he's perfected. 

All the boring, tedious work he's perfected, for the rest of his life, where he will wait and wait and wait and stop things from happening. Fuck.

He needs to stop thinking, Ivan decides, because if he's going to do a career change, he won't be cleared for it now, so there's no point thinking. He makes an aborted motion for the files, hesitation making him grab the manila envelope instead. Tears it open carefully, in case he ever needs to reseal it.

Out tumbles certain classified documents and a single book.

Well, Ivan thinks, and perhaps this gift is a tip-off after all. 

The documents are a mix of folders that Ivan know are officially passed on by Feliks, and folders that he wasn't aware were lost. Both of these he put aside, mind rapidly rationalising implications. The book - a Zhukovsky verse translation of a novella titled Undine. This is interesting, if simply because it's a Romantic fairy tale, and that can only possibly imply an allegory, which means-

Three raps at the door. "Sir?" It's Sasha.

"Take a seat." Ivan pushes the book beside the folders. Sasha locks the door behind him. "Ah. So you found something from the Germans."

Sasha unfolds the papers tucked under his armpit. "A lot of things," he says, "look."

"So Feliks has notable activities with the Polish underground resistance," Ivan concludes slowly. "That's nothing new."

"No: it's this part." Sasha pulls the document back to circle out certain documents. "You remember Tolys?"

"No."

"Bullshit - of course you do. You used him to get that promotion," Sasha snaps. He moves on, tapping the paper. "Feliks is photographed together with someone who greatly resembles Tolys. That's case number one." That's also a new suspect to add to Ivan's list, but he doesn't voice it. Sasha shuffles the paper and lay out another. "Case two: before Feliks was caught, there were some worrying patterns with his routine - places he frequents. At first, I thought the street names were coded, but if you look at the big picture-"

"The streets connect to form a circle," Ivan finishes. "It's a zone."

"Yes. So I ran up the coordinates and try to figure out who's been following the same patterns. That was inconclusive. I also scouted out the center, but I only found a bus-stop. I checked the nearby buildings and bushes and the trash, but nothing. So I took down the bus numbers."

"That's good," Ivan allows, "go on."

"I relooked through my data again, and then decided to connect the locations in chronological order. And I found -" At this, Sasha pulls out a marked map. "Feliks has been repeatedly tracing the shape of a hexagram."

"Judaism?"

"...Maybe," Sasha decides, "but I'm thinking more of Balkan Orthodox churches."

"Fair point."

"So upon identifying it as a hexagram, things get more fun. Mathematically and algebraically, a few spots are signalled out." Sasha pauses, staring up at Ivan with a solemnity he does not expect. "Your little cousin is a regular at some of these spots, Ivan."

Ivan refuses to react. "What are you talking about?"

"This place, here." He taps on one of the blue crosses. "This is a café with a strong intelligentsia following. Natalya is a regular patron here too. Reports have her being 'sympathetic to their cause'." He points to another. "This place. A church - we all know German churches are problematic. And then this one. A sweets shop. She's said to be regularly buying chocolates for 'a friend', but based on what I do know about your family, you wouldn't be seeing six bags of chocolate and candies every week on your dining table."

"Look, Sasha." Ivan wets his lips. Sasha waits. "I know Natasha. No matter her personal feelings, she wouldn't dare do something like this. She's not a traitor."

"Even after Irina?"

"Especially after Ira."

"I won't normally take your word for it, but fortunately for her, she always had good conduct, and her school reports support it," Sasha assures, "so this is either a coincidence, or she's making some very poor friendship decisions, and you need to stop her."

"I'll keep that in mind. Thanks."

"It's nothing." Sasha thins his lips then, as though bracing himself. "Look, I know you would think I'm being paranoid-"

"Out with it, Sasha."

"There's another person I singled out." Sasha exhales, already looking tired. "It's Gilbert."

Ivan raises both eyebrows. "Are you sure it is not your own bias?"

Sasha's face hardens. "You chose me for this job for my professionalism," he snaps, "so you should know better." He continues without waiting for Ivan's response, "In southern Germany, the hexagram is also called the Bierstern or Brauerstern as a symbol of beer-tapping or the brewer's guild, and is commonly found as part of tavern anchors. Guess what is here -" A green mark this time, at the outermost range of the hexagram, "and who regularly visits it?"

"It can be another coincidence."

"You would think," Sasha replies, "but Gilbert apparently also regularly take all the bus numbers that branch out of the center. Always to the last stop, and always at least one bus route every week."

Ivan rubs at his own eyes. "He's a photographer and a journalist, Sasha. He's bound to frequent dubious places."

"Stop rationalising things away-"

"I am not-"

"You are being an apologist right now, your judgement is clouded, you -"

"Sasha, will you shut up!"

The yell is a surprise to even Ivan; the hush that follows seems too loud when the air is still reverberating. Somewhere outside, someone must be gossiping. Ivan inhales sharply. "We are talking about Feliks, aren't we?" Ivan reaches for the documents from the unnamed envelope, all the confidential information that is likely leaked. "I received what was possibly a tip-off two days ago. Inside was these documents and that book over there. I believe these are the information leaked, and-"

"A book? Is it that one? Do you think they hid a code in it or -" Sasha grabs it, frowning down at the cover. "Undine." He stares accusingly up at Ivan. "That dubious envelope contains Undine."

"I know what it looks like-"

"You call the envelope a tip-off yourself, Ivan," Sasha hisses, waving the novella. "And Undine? A book translated from German about a water sprite that transformed into a human? For fucking love? If this is not screaming the truth in your face, I don't know what else will."

"You're projecting."

"Projecting what?!" Sasha shouts. "Stop being stubborn, Ivan!"

"And you should stop overstepping your authority," Ivan replies coldly. "Undine is a very popular fairytale. Many people owned a copy of it."

"But this specific edition? I bet that if you search Gilbert's apartment," Sasha challenges, "you would find the exact same copy."

"He doesn't read Russian that well."

"Please, Ivan," Sasha says, "listen to yourself. Russian is a compulsory subject in schools, and Gilbert is good enough to go to university. Zhukovsky's translation?" He slams Undine down onto the table. "It won't be a problem for him." He straightens up. Salutes. "If that is all, I'll be dismissed."

Sasha slams the door after him. Ivan should really write him up for disrespect - he really should, at this point, but his head hurts and he's tired and his mind is bursting with so much thought that the only thing Ivan can do is to close his eyes and tilt his head back, and breathe in and out and in and out.

-

In the end, Ivan is not adamant without cause. He's not being unreasonable - he is not wilfully blind to Sasha's logic. He knows what it looks like, but Ivan, Ivan's captain. Ivan needs to consider beyond facts, sees the context, and what Ivan sees is a beautiful set-up.

It's obvious: only Sasha and he knows that Gilbert is codenamed Rusalka. Only two men - not any tip-off, not any other informant watching the Germans, much less one that knows that Sasha and Ivan know German files.

It's too easy; there has to be a troublemaker involved.

Who sent Undine? Who placed the parcel in his office, is the question - a man who is able to slip past security and into his office unnoticed. (But is it that hard? Ivan had slipped Gilbert among his guards before. Fyodor Petrovich has waltzed in and none of his guards paid attention, because everyone's so tired, everyone's so busy, it's so easy-) It must have been a series of fortunate coincidences, for the culprit to strike the same day that the brass searched Ivan's office during one of the busiest period of the year.

"Roman," Ivan begins when Roman is called over, "have you reviewed the surveillance footage?"

"Yessir. There was no one that stood out." There is a hesitation, then, a lapse that feels vaguely like shame at their negligence. "But there is this period of time when the footage's tampered."

Doubtlessly when Fyodor Petrovich decides to conduct his search. "Show them to me later." Ivan leans back in his chair. "What about tracing Feliks?"

"No sightings, sir. Whoever does it either slipped Feliks out already on the first night, or Feliks is in hiding somewhere."

Hopefully the latter, but Ivan will still review the security footage at the checkpoints later, just in case. "Thank you, Roman," Ivan dismisses. The clock strikes tik, tik, tik, almost accusing in their apathy, and Ivan catches himself. "Wait. Roman, can you cover for me again, today? I want the rest of the day off."

Roman looks like he painfully wants to groan. "Sir?"

"Do it yourself, or, or find someone who can do overtime today. I'll clear the tab of whoever takes over." Roman's face visibly lights up - oh money, the key to people’s heart. "Remember to assign someone to watch my office when I'm not around. And don't let Major Fyodor Petrovich pry."

Roman, predictably, snorts.

Ivan can't quite keep his lips from quirking. "Unfortunately, he's not a wastrel like his namesake, and will get me shipped off for re-education if he can help it, so make sure you do your job well." Ivan stands up. "Now then."

Roman salutes eagerly. "Trust me, sir," he says, "I won't betray your confidence in me."

Ivan smirks. "We'll see," he says, and is startled that he laughs when Roman puffs up his chest proudly like a frog.

-

There is a disconcerting moment of dysphoria as Ivan stands in Gilbert's room, the pervasive surveillance looped or tampered or awaiting future theft by (probably) Sasha from the archives, and Gilbert's lock brazenly picked without fear of curious eyes, now that Mdm Gras has moved away.

Maybe it's that it is the first time that he's alone here; maybe it's because it is the first time he visits uninvited and unwanted. Or maybe, it is that he is betraying Gilbert's trust just standing here, behaving like the party-state's favourite watchdog. 

(He remembers Ira, the fire burning in her eyes the way flames dance in Pap's.)

Ivan searches.

The Stasi has searched Gilbert before - Sasha has checked - and for them to not find anything means that anything conclusive must be hidden where they either dare not pry open or have not thought of searching.

Under the floorboards? Between the mattresses? In the walls? Tucked under the window sill? In all those locked drawers and cupboards that Ivan has never looked through? Where else is a good hiding spot in an apartment this bare, Ivan wonders, stepping warily across the floorboards, rolling his feet from heels to balls to toes. There is the sort of things that Gilbert may hide too to consider - this Ivan knows is true, that Gilbert must be hiding something. If not contraband, then banned books at least; he never watches his slips anymore after the first few times Ivan lets it slide.

Then Ivan catches sight of Gilbert's unlocked wardrobe, and he thinks, of course it's here, of course it's where it's hiding in plain sight. Opens it up, empties all of Gilbert's belongings onto the bed. Remove the board at the back to find another board. This, while dubious enough, is where the Stasi will stop - if they even go so far, but Ivan knows this trick. He digs his nails into the corners of the board - digs until the paper starts to peel - and Ivan tears the whole wallpaper down and off the board.

Carefully taped on the board, edges smoothed out, are documents and papers and photographs and letters - a whole wall of them. 

Ivan inhales deeply and removes all of them.

There will be more, Ivan thinks. Where are the books? There must be more than a single hiding spot, because Undine is innocuous but Orwell will get Gilbert arrested, yet Ivan sees none of them. At his office? Maybe? Ivan looks back across the room. There has to be more. 

He pushes the bed off the wall; pushes the bedstead away too. Tears the wallpaper down. Tears down the other one, and almost tried dragging the radiator off the walls by its nails before common sense got the better of him. He finds a cranny in the wall, a long crack in which Gilbert stuffs more letters and several books, one of which is Zhukovsky's Undine - specifically the 1912 A.F. Devriena edition - that seems newly shoved in. 

Ivan digs out a toolbox from one of Gilbert's drawers and finally removes the radiator from the wall. Hidden in the walls, behind the nails and amidst the wires, are Pasternak and Zamyatin and Grossman, with careful correspondence stuck between them. No Orwell nor Bulgakov, although what Ivan has already found is damning enough.

Ivan slumps onto the bed, staring at all the papers staring back at him, and begins to read.

-

Don’t ask, don’t think, don’t speak - keep the peace. That's the way of his parents, the lessons that Ivan learns to tuck into his heart for as long as he knows to speak; the values that his grandparents taught his parents, and his parents to him, so that they could become each other - they could be a family.

But now? Now Ivan does not know if he can turn back the time, keep mum about all these knowledge he doesn't know to ignore.

He can tidy up the room - he is tidying up the room, nailing back the radiator and sticking the papers back up, even if he hadn't been able to salvage the wallpaper, but - but the evidence is there, Sasha is right, the informant is right, the sun is setting and the streetlights glow like the stars above and don't they know that it's the end of the world?

La da dee da, la da dee da. Ivan closes his eyes and remembers to breathe. 

-

Gilbert startles when he sees Ivan sitting cross-legged on his bed, his wallpapers torn and his books (not all; Ivan replaced the books and their letters behind the radiator) scattered across the duvet.

"You searched me?!" Gilbert yells. His knuckles are white. 

Ivan puts down the letter he's reading. (R will be making a crossing on Thursday, one of the letters signed by L - no points for guessing who - says. Meet him at 3, at high noon.) "Do you want to tell me what are these?"

"Why are you asking the questions? You broke into my apartment and searched me."

Ivan ignores that. He places it down and holds out another document. It's an application to cross the border, half-filled. Gilbert tentatively takes it, face grim and pale as he scans through the paper. Is it fear? Panic? Rage? Ivan can't tell. "What else are you hiding?"

It's only a flicker, one that Gilbert catches, but Ivan sees the split-second glance at the lamp. Huh. An investigation for another day. "Nothing," Gilbert retorts. "What are you doing, searching me like a common fucking criminal?"

"Trying to prove myself wrong," Ivan answers. "You've been meeting illegals."

"It's part of my job," Gilbert defends. "We all need some contacts."

"Your contacts include meeting known traffickers?" 

"They're not traffickers!" Gilbert yells. When he realises what this implies, he takes a step back. "Is it wrong that I want to talk to my family without someone reading our correspondence or listening in to our conversation?"

"That depends." Ivan gets to his feet. Gilbert stands his ground, this time. "Does it include smuggling contraband to be spread in underground circles?" 

"I don't do that."

"Ah," Ivan guesses, "so it's only for personal use?"

"Ivan."

"Is that what it is?" Ivan says. He clears his throat. "You've been trying to emigrate all along?"

"No! I -" Gilbert wets his lips. He looks at Ivan like Ivan's holding a gun to his head. "I - no."

"Then what?" Ivan holds up another stack of papers. "Because none of these is suggesting anything good. Give me one good reason why I should still trust you after this."

"I did not use you-"

"It doesn't fucking look like it -"

"I took up the job, you idiot!" Gilbert tosses the paper back at him. He takes big strides across the room, until he's toe-to-toe with Ivan. He's heaving. "Fuck you, Ivan, you told me to stay. So I took up the offer. The permanent listing with the press." He inhales sharply. "I took it up."

"I thought you -"

"I thought so too," Gilbert confirms quietly. He deflates, all of a sudden, a gasp of air like a resigned soldier ready for the last hurrah. "But I promised you that I'll stay. So since I'm stuck here, I gotta think for myself too." He looks at Ivan. "I took up the job for you, asshole, so don't go throwing the blame on me. What else do you want from me?"

It is like the frantic weight of the last few days finally caught up with Ivan; the world spins, his lungs is suffocatingly compressed, and Ivan suddenly feels immeasurably tired. "A peace of mind," Ivan admits. "I don't know what you did, but what I have here, whether it's a meet between old friends or a courier between you and your family across the wall, or, or something more - these are too much, Gilbert," he continues quietly. "All I want to know is if I can trust you."  

Something too fast flashes across Gilbert's eyes. "I'm not using you, Ivan," he promises. "I'm not using us for anything."

Ivan rubs his temples. He walks away, around the room, and then back to the bed. "Ok," he says, sitting down, closing his eyes. "Ok. Just, give me a moment."

"I'm -" Gilbert swallows. "Fuck this. I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too." In and out, in and out, a dance a sequence a repetition, up and down of tides, the swell of pain, a drip of time, the thrum of his heart in his ears, past and future, in and out - "For searching you. Like this. Like a criminal."

"Hey." Gilbert awkwardly sits beside him, his satchel lowered gingerly at their feet. "You've got cause to be paranoid. And you're not wrong, although you're not right anyway. I just -" He nudges his shoulders against Ivan's. "Sorry." Ivan continues breathing. "Wait - shit, here. Let me -"

The satchel is tugged up again, the sound of rummaging, a quiet aha before Gilbert is elbowing him. "Here."

Ivan opens his eyes. It's a photograph of both of them; he barely remembers this one. "What's this," he says, and means, why now?

Gilbert seems to take it literally. "The picture of us at the Sanssouci, remember?" He scoots closer, flicking at the corners. "I made a copy but always forgot to pass one to you. So here." He traces Ivan's image then, a surprisingly tender motion that would have Ivan blushing if he isn't on the verge of throwing up. "You have sad eyes." Then, meeting Ivan's eyes so firmly that Ivan can't breathe, Ivan is choking, his whole life boiling down to Gilbert because this is the one good thing Ivan did, the one thing that Ivan hasn't torn apart like an entitled hatchling in selfish disregard for its shell, and yet Ivan just -

"Ivan," Gilbert mutters. "Are you ok?"

What a great question. Is Ivan ok? With his head killing him, pressure from the top, pressure from family, pressure from every other occurrence that threatens to sweep him off his feet and off a cliff - is Ivan ok? Beautiful question.

"Yes," he lies, "I'm ok, yes." Then, he realises Gilbert is waiting for his questions - playground etiquette, taking turns and all, and oh look, Ivan is maniacal. "You - are we ok?" 

"Yeah, I guess we are." Gilbert curls Ivan's fingers around the photograph. "As ok as we'll ever be." 

"That's good enough for me," says Ivan. 

-

Fyodor Petrovich's shadow looms over everyone when Ivan heads back to the office. 

"Dreary," Ivan comments, and Roman looks at him with a pained frown.

"I told him there was an emergency with your underground contacts," Roman whispers. "I'm not sure if he buys it." 

"Who knows." Ivan makes Roman stare him in the eye. "Do I look tired enough to you?" 

"Worse, sir: you look haunted."

"Then he'll buy it," Ivan decides. Beside them, Petto fidgets and pretends not to hear the conversation.

"Do you think everything's going to be fine, sir?" he asks. 

Anxiety is a modest but potent poison, and Ivan sees it, the fear tinting Petto's face green and his fingers cold, and Ivan says, "Don't concern yourself about it," and he says with confidence he doesn't feel, "I'll handle it," and then, just for a hint of normalcy, jokes, "Unless you have a guilty conscience?"

Petto's eyes widen comically. "No!"

"Then there is nothing to worry about," Ivan assures firmly. "Nothing will happen. Go do your assigned work."

"Sir," says Roman when Petto trots away. "Do you really think everything will be fine?"

"A little optimism never hurts anyone." Ivan turns away in clear dismissal. He takes a step. "Oh, and one more thing."

"Sir?"

"Is there anyone you can spare?" Ivan asks. Roman blinks. "Send them off to run some errands for me. I need to mail some films."

"Films?"

"Yes. Buy some new rolls, wrap them up, and mail them over - I'll write you the address in a while."

"Why - oh," Roman trails off, voice softened, and Ivan knows that he must be smiling.

"I made a promise," Ivan answers.

-

1) basically, ivan's reaction throughout this entire chapter was like holt from b99, except replace it with the word "GONE????!?!?!?!" 2) why goga y says that his name is a mouthful is because everyone is speaking in a mix of primarily german with a smattering of russian, and y in german is pronounced ypsilon. for more information, go here and here 3) i never want to write ever again. this chpt is unedited and will never be edited because i will probs rehaul like half of this and also i refuse to work through these 11k words again

[wbouldingblog-blog]

Once again, dear readers, I find myself at a lull in our adventures just long enough to entertain you with some of my ramblings about our experiences in the far east. This time, it’s from a nicer environment than the grim Bangkok bus station at 4 in the morning. I’m sitting on our balcony on the eighth floor of our hotel in Phnom Penh at the ticklingly self-deprecatingly named ‘Okay Boutique’, which is actually a bit of a stunner. Spacious rooms, rooftop pool and a bathtub big enough to fit a baby dolphin in, if you were so inclined.

I left you with the sneezing competition last time (the buddhist monk won a TKO), and after waiting for an hour or so more, we headed downstairs to our bus, which was waiting at stand 106 (of about 300 – and they all seemed to be in use). It wasn’t as large or as blingy as our previous buses, but nice enough and only about 2/3 full, so we had a decent amount of space to spread out in. Once en route, we were brought a carton with a cupcake and one of those mini refreshing towels you get at KFC. Then, 5 minutes later, we were brought some apple juice and a bottle of water followed 5 minutes after that. We certainly weren’t lacking refreshment, or were they lulling us into a false sense of security before the major hurdle the Cambodian border was bound to present? Only time would tell.

About half an hour before we arrived at the border, the crew member who had seen to our refreshment needs stood and announced the visa process at the border; $40 in cash (no idea why they wouldn’t accept card at the border – the Cambodian border police have a reputation for being upstanding moral citizens for a dollar or two) and 2 passport pictures for visa on arrival unless you had an e-visa (which we had cleverly done for $35 a couple of days before). A Spanish girl with unruly hair and dirty fingernails in the seat in front of us seemed surprised and asked whether there was a cash machine and if you could have pictures taken at the border. I had to wonder about the way she was able to cope with life; going from one country to another and not checking a) whether a visa was necessary or b) what you had to do to get into that country – her laissez-faire attitude was refreshing but seemed a little too reckless for the border of the ‘Wild West of the Far East’. I would have been climbing up the walls and over the sunroof of the bus if I’d been suddenly confronted with the fact that I didn’t have cash, 2 pictures or been prepared for the rigours of getting into a foreign country.

Naturally though, she got past security before me, despite my preparedness. Henny and I zoomed past the Thai exit, passports stamped, and continued the next 100 metres to the Cambodian immigration control building. We needn’t have had a visa – the population of the town were freely moving around the street, continuing to sell food, beg, and move trailerloads (the trailers were made of planks of wood hammered or gaffa-taped together) of Armini, Tommy Hilfinger and Pollo Ralph Laren-branded items from one side of the border to another without any visible controls. Nonetheless, we filled out an immigration form and took our passports to the window.

Henny went first, waited for about 5 minutes and then was given the all-clear, so I approached the window and handed my passport through the slot. With the speed and agility of a wounded sloth at death’s door, the border guard looked through and read the majority of my passport, including the message from her Majesty and the two Russian visas in there, which I’m sure he enjoyed greatly. Storytime over, he asked me where my visa was, having (in)conveniently passed over the copy attached to one of the pages in his rush to get to the main plot. I showed him in my passport and handed him the second copy I had printed out as instructed on the website. His eyes flicked sleepily from one to the other, checking that it was, in fact, me on both. Satisfied, he called a secondary member of the Cambodian Unit for National Thoroughness and Security (a group title I have here made up but imagine the bureaucrats involved would find fitting, especially its acronym), probably with the job title ‘Chief Assistant Scanning Officer’, as that’s all he did – press my second copy to the scanning machine before sitting himself exhaustedly back in his chair, his taxing duty complete for another 5 minutes or so.

Having given me the time to read War and Peace a couple of times through, he decided I was ok and waved me through the exit. I feel he could have been given a new lease of life for a dollar or two, but I was damned if I was going to give him the satisfaction. I’d rather wait an aeon than spend a couple of dollars to get someone to complete a process they do thousands of times per day and could finish in a heartbeat.

We found the rest of the group, jumped on the bus and headed off, now on the right-hand side of the road. Immediately, we felt a little less safe on the road. The bus (possibly with a new driver) kept making unnerving swerves to the other side of the road and honking his horn regularly to warn others of his presence. At one point, he even performed a failed emergency stop and hit a motorcyclist who evidently had failed to check the road before entering it and who was now leaking engine oil onto the dusty-red road. Eventually though, we made it to Siem Reap, which was only slightly more populated than the small villages we had been passing through on the ‘highway’ (more like a B-road). Once there, we were offered free transfer to our accommodation with the condition, we found out once we were on our way, of course, that we then use the tuk-tuk drivers to take us on a tour of Angkor Wat and the temples the following day.

We settled on a price of $25 ($5 more than the usual rate, but we were frazzled from the long day and were getting a trip to the lake as well) for the temple tour and were dropped off at our lovely hotel, Solitaire Damnak. From the beaming smile of the receptionist to the opal-blue swimming pool to our luggage being heaved up the spiral staircase to our modern and stylish room by a teenage lad, the experience was superb. Settled, showered and fresh again, we decided to go for food and a little explore of Siem Reap’s centre.

By this time, the sun was just setting and the lights were beginning to come on and, like the flies buzzing around the halogen lamps adorning the bridges, we were drawn to the flashing bright lights of Pub Street. Yes, there is really a street called pub street and yes, it is everything you’d imagine it to be. Tourist-heaving bars, pubs, restaurants with inflated prices and mediocre food. We, luckily, chose the one gem to go to – the Red Piano – and stuffed ourselves with Beef Loc Lac, Fish Amok and Pork and Ginger and washed it all down with 50 cent glasses of beer. The portions, however, were much larger than in Thailand and we both felt very overfull by the end of it (yes, dear readers, the great Human Dustbin was overfull).

As previously mentioned, my suitcase was cracked by some lovely groundstaff on the way from Berlin, so on the way back we passed through the night market and I negotiated (again, poorly) a lovely new blue suitcase. Home, I repacked my bag into the new one, tried it out and was so relieved, exhausted and full and so, needing to get up at 4am the next day, retired to bed, where even the excited whoops of travellers playing beer pong in the bar down the road and all the local dogs joining in a Howl at 2am couldn’t keep me awake.

In the groggy early-morning darkness, we rose and made ourselves ready for the mammoth day ahead – today was the day we were going to see Angkor Wat and the temples of the Khmer empire. Our breakfasts packed by the hotel staff, we jumped into the tuk-tuk and set off into the streetlit morning. After picking up our tickets at the desk, we sped off as fast as the little 50cc scooter could carry us and arranged to meet our driver under the big tree, next to the other big trees (so glad we cleared that one up). The main bridge was cordoned off for construction work, so we and another 100 visitors all stamped across a temporary floating plastic bridge to the sound of sloshing water underfoot. Ahead, we could just make out the outline of a building and a portal to pass through, so we followed the others and squeezed our way through the statue-filled passage. Again, following the crowd, we made our way to a large field with a lake at the end, not able to see anything past the yellow neon lights of the pathway in the pitch black behind.

Creeping through the early-morning mist, the silhouettes of the three famous turrets came into view. An eerie stillness came over the crowd, interrupted only by the local children asking if we wanted a coffee in their slightly shrill tones and other tourists of Asian origin (not naming any particular countries here) directing their two-fingered sun-hatted photography en masse. The sun continued to rise behind the building, bringing ever more clarity to my pictures and beauty to the surroundings. Our index fingers sore from button-mashing and me half blind from squinting through my viewfinder, we decided to go and explore the inner temple. Climbing up some steep steps, we found a young monk offering blessings for a donation, many sashed statues and masses of incredibly intricate carvings, naturally all documented on our over-stretched memory cards.

The time came to head back to the big tree next to the other big trees, so we said our goodbyes and sploshed back over the plastic bridge. Back on the tuk-tuk, we sped off to Angkor Thom, the ancient capital of the Khmer empire. We hopped out at the entrance gate and were greeted by a group of old men holding up the railing leading to it and by a monkey making his way back to his troop. We were then taken to the Bayon, the main temple full of carved stone faces and an interestingly-named ‘Leper King’s terrace’, where we also got very close to another troop of monkeys having their breakfast/morning grooming session. After that, we went past the Baphuon, the former palace, and on, briefly through Preah Khan, to Ta Prohm, a beautifully ruined and root-ridden temple, which was also, according to our guide, used in Tomb Raider (which was pronounced ‘rider’ by the locals – an entirely different film altogether, methinks).

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After having wandered for so long and wondered at the beauty of it all, we sank into our tuk-tuk and dozed as much as we could behind our sunglasses on the bumpy road to the river. Naturally, Henny was able to fall sound asleep on my shoulder, but I couldn’t sleep with the aggressive bumpiness of the road and took in some very interesting local sights (and smells) of the villages we passed through, where many of the houses were built on stilts to keep them at the same level as the road and above the damp of the rice-paddies below.

Having reached the river to take us to the lake and deciding the $30-per-person was a bit steep for a boat ride to the lake, we turned around and headed back. Not wanting to waste the trip, we stopped at an interesting group of huts and asked our driver what they were used for – apparently people just buy some street food, take some drinks and go and chill there for a while. Sounded ideal and just what we could have done with, were we not completely exhausted by this point. We pressed on and were asked if we’d like to go to a crocodile farm. Picturing a large, green, zoo-type affair, I pushed for the yes-campaign and we went in.

The sudden smell of crocodile dung and the presence of a crocodile bag and shoe shop should have tipped us off for what was to come next. An industrial-type crocodile where the poor beasts were stacked 2 or 3 on top of each other with so little space to move. Some of them were 3 or 4 metres in length and were quite fearsome to look at. I did my best to imagine these prehistoric lizards in their wild habitat and had to dig in to the depths of my imagination. When they moved it was just like hearing someone scraping an item of luggage across a concrete floor – it sounded rough and hollow, even when they were alive. Henny was slowly turning green at the thought and sight of the plight of the crocs, so we beat a hasty retreat and returned to our hotel.

Once there, we crashed into a deep sleep for a few hours, before rising and preparing for the next event – the Big Night Out for the rugby. On with the England 2015 RWC playing shirt and off we went to find a nice place for a drink before we headed to the bar for the first game – we found a lovely and brightly-coloured rooftop bar, ordered two cocktails, got some lovely fried corn, ordered two more beers and a bottle of water and speculated about the various groups of gradually-drunken revellers that were gathering there. The bill came and it turned out to be happy hour – $5 for the lot. Giddy and delighted at such a steal, we headed to Score sports bar and, after a quick enquiry as to the later location of the rugby, were given seats at the bar which we promptly swapped for some rather comfier ones on a sofa near the large, projected screen.

Another young couple (yes, we’re all still young) came and sat beside us and we got talking. Turns out it was Rosy Edwards, author of Confessions of a Tinderella, and her boyfriend, Phil. Phil and I were probably making too much of the football chat and so we decided to sit next to each other and force the ladies to chat together. Much lad-bants (totes) later, they decided to head off for a bite to eat while I stayed to watch the Ireland-Italy match and the start of the England-Wales match and enjoy our own shared meal of a club sandwich and chicken wings (we treated ourselves with western food for being so adventurous to that point). A number of solid $1.50 beers (relatively pricey for the area) later and I was having a great time, with the fact that England were winning, but the game was in anyone’s hands. Henny didn’t seem too bothered about the scoreline, just the viciousness of the tackles going in. I do wonder sometimes…

I awoke the next morning a little bleary and worse-for-wear. We had paid for breakfast already, so we stumbled to the hotel restaurant, where I ordered Goodgee (I think that was how it was spelt), which is a rice and starch-based broth and was very tasty. We had to check out by 12 and spent much of the morning lazing around and repacking our bags, then reading and chilling by the pool until we felt the need to go and eat something and have a little walk around the surrounding area, which was actually quite interesting; along the main road there were 3 or 4 schools, as well as a university, which would be very convenient for any family living nearby who could afford both.

Our pleasant experience with Solitaire Damnak continued with a free transfer to our bus station, or rather where our bus station should have been. We subsequently found out it was at a place 500 metres away through tourist-packed streets with no pavement and Cambodian motorcyclists threatening to run you and your luggage over. Surviving the frogger-like roads, we made it to the bus station and waited a few minutes before being led to our bus. From the outside, a normal, unassuming bus, but when we got nearer, I poked Henny in the ribs (taking her somewhat by surprise) and said, “There are bunk beds in there!”

Luggage below, shoes off and we were into our bunkbeds, which weren’t quite long enough to lie down in once you’d put your bag down. There was a pillow and a blanket though, however the ‘leather’ we were sleeping on stuck to our skin like a piece of sellotape sticks to your thumb when you’re trying to wrap a Christmas present really carefully but it just ALWAYS curls and sticks to everything and is really annoying. Again, we fell into a deep, but brief, sleep and arrived in Phnom Penh bleary-eyed and disoriented at 5 in the morning.

That’s where I’ll leave you this time – it’s getting late in the afternoon and we’ve got a sunset river cruise to get on, which has been laid on by our hotel. Hopefully there won’t be a stop at another crocodile farm on this journey – once was quite enough.

Reptilianly yours,

Boulders

  Siem Reap & Angkor Who? Once again, dear readers, I find myself at a lull in our adventures just long enough to entertain you with some of my ramblings about our experiences in the far east.