Frederick Reuss - A Geography of Secrets

a geography of secrets

ALSO BY FREDERICK REUSS

Mohr

The Wasties

Henry of Atlantic City

Horace Afoot

UNBRIDLED BOOKS

FREDERICK REUSS

Grateful acknowledgment to:

Kapuciski, Ryszard, The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat; translated from the Polish by
William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand. New York: Vintage Books, 1984.

Okara, Gabriel, The Voice. Introduction by Arthur Ravenscroft. New York:
Africana Pub. Corp., 1970.

Robinson, Tim, Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara & Other Writings. Dublin:
Lilliput Press, 1996.

This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the
authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Unbridled Books

Copyright 2010 Frederick Reuss
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,
may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reuss, Frederick, 1960
A geography of secrets / Frederick Reuss.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-60953-000-6
1. United States. Defense Intelligence AgencyOfficials and employeesFiction.
2. CartographersFiction. 3. War victimsFiction. 4. SecretsFiction. 5. Psychological
fiction. I. Title.
PS3568.E7818G46 2010
813.54dc22
2010023434

ISBN 978-1-60953-000-6

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Book Design by SH CV

First Printing

FOR SOPHIE AND AVA

A map is a sustained attempt upon an unattainable goal, the complete comprehension by an individual of a tract of space that will be individualized into a place by that attempt.

TIM ROBINSON, INTERIM REPORTS FROM FOLDING LANDSCAPES

465730.25N

72714.74E

Driving into work one day, I found myself in a different city. Geographically, it coincided with Washington, D.C., yet it was a completely new place. It happened as I was crossing the Fourteenth Street bridge. The sky, which was overcast, suddenly became brighter. Everything stood out crisply and distinctly, the way things look after a heavy thunderstorm, but the monuments and landmarks all seemed diminished, mere objects laid down on the landscape. Traffic on the bridge flowed like the surface of the river, emptying onto the flat estuary of the Mall and downtown. I got off at the next exit, parked on Ohio Drive, and sat in the car staring out at the unfamiliar landscape. I didnt know what to make of it.

After a while, I got out and walked to the waters edge. A cement walkway, littered with debris washed up from the river, runs the entire perimeter of East Potomac Park. An elderly black man wearing a desert camouflage cap was fishing over the railing. A veteran, I figured. It was hard not to think hed always been there. Just beyond him a group of teenagers was listening to hip-hop on a boom box. Farther down, a man in a suit stood smoking a cigarette. A Park Police cruiser pulled up, idled briefly at the curb, then slowly drove on.

I sat down on a bench and watched the old man work his reel. A large schooner was moored in the middle of Boundary Channel. Behind it were the Maine Avenue waterfront, the Southeast/Southwest Freeway, and the drab brown federal buildings of LEnfant Plaza. I felt as if I knew exactly what was happening behind every louvered window and ciphered door in every one of those buildings as well as downriver in the generals houses at Fort McNair, at the War College, the Anacostia Naval Air Station, Bolling Air Force Baseeven in the heart of the old veteran, who didnt seem bored or frustrated by his poor catch, just tired and lonely. I knew all this, and yet where I was had become unfamiliar.

It felt good. Not euphoriathats not in my nature. Just its-all-there-and-Im-all-here-and-its-all-okay good. For the first time, I was looking at the place as it really existed on the landscape, not as a complex of fixed coordinates and bundled meanings. I felt unburdened. A trio of blue air force Hueys came choppering up the channel and passed overhead, rotor wake trembling on the surface of the water. The man glanced up indifferently and began to reel in his line. I wondered if choppers roaring overhead could be felt by the fish, if they scared them away or caused them to bite.

Its easy to feel like a stranger in Washington, D.C. Even with a house inside the Beltway, a family and a career, its hard not to feel that youre merely holding down a place until someone else steps in to take over. The White House is the symbol of this permanent flux at the top, but its no less so in the middle and at the bottom rungs of governmentfrom Generals Row to highway planning, education programming, nutrition guidelines, or the threebedroom, two-bath brick colonial up the street that came on the market yesterday. When I was growing up, change came in the form of Allied Van Lines and huge wooden crates stenciled with an APO address. The mystery of where we were going was never made clear until the last minute, when my fathers travel orders were finalized. Until then, there was only guessing. Delhi? Athens? Perhaps. Cairo? Not sure. Ouagadougou? Then came the thrill of arriving in a new place and being a stranger all over again. American? Yes. From Washington. It was added only by way of explanation, not as one would invoke a hometown. People understood right away. As a Foreign Service brat, I grew up with vagueness and a fluidity of identity that made fitting in anywhere easy. I became a real pro. As an adult, separating where I am and where Im from, what I do from who I am comes naturally, even if the distance between them is never greater than my own self-delusion. I suppose I have my fathers example to thank for that. Its a gift I plan not to pass on.

Actually, I wasnt going to work that day. I wasnt going anywhere, in fact, but was just driving around aimlessly, looking for distraction. My father had died a few weeks earlier. Long retired, hed been living in Switzerland with his second wife. We were close but not really intimate. I hadnt seen him for several years and declined to view the body when I arrived in Bern for the funeral. I didnt want the sight of his corpse to become the coda of his memory. Waxy skin, blue lips. Ive never understood why people insist on viewing the dead. I wasnt even tempted.

The women had no such qualms. They all went to the morgue for a last look. They left the apartment together, and I couldnt help seeing some element of sexual revenge in it, a settling of accounts on some high archetypal plane. It was cozy inside the apartment. Outside, it had started to snow. I watched from the window as they waited at the tram stop, bundled against the cold. They returned an hour later, shook their overcoats and stamped their feet in that levity of mood that comes with new-fallen snow. A pot was put on for coffee. A bottle of kirsch appeared on the kitchen table. The doorbell rang, and people began arriving with things to eat.

The apartment soon filled with friends and neighbors. It was impossible not to feel warmly enveloped. There was little talk of him. I dont think there was much talk at all beyond who was arriving when from where. Jan, a saxophone player, was ferrying people from the airport and the train station. He had picked me up in Zurich early that morning. Wed never met before, but somehow the fact that he was driving my fathers car made it seem we were old friends. On the autobahn I broke down and cried. Everything seemed so familiar, even the highway signs. It was those drives to and from the Zurich airport that concretized what having an expat father meant. Zipping along a Swiss highway in a thrilling easiness of place. To be always at home and always far from home. Did it matter who was coming and who was going?