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    The Opening Is Closing
    The Opening Is Closing
    The Opening Is Closing
    Ebook230 pages3 hours

    The Opening Is Closing

    By William White-acre

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    About this ebook

    Dateline: 1978-1979. Two men, one a "stringer" journalist and the other a contract worker for the CIA, embark on a friendship in the midst of a racial war in Rhodesia, Africa.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam White-acre
    Release dateMar 31, 2018
    ISBN9781370415816
    The Opening Is Closing
    Author

    William White-acre

    Photographer first, scribbler second. Lived a long time. When your life resembles an epoch, well, it is scary. Just hope I can entertain.

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      Book preview

      The Opening Is Closing - William White-acre

      THE OPENING IS CLOSING

      William White-acre

      Copyright 2018 by William White-acre

      Smashwords Edition

      white-acre.wixsite.com/photography

      *other books by the author:

      (Novels)

      Surrounded By Mythology

      I, The Hero

      True For X

      Mysterious Logic

      Forgotten Faces

      Memory 2.0

      Heaven On Earth

      A Rush Of Silence

      Follow The Contrails

      Federal Folkways

      (Photo Books)

      Magic City

      Dance

      Flesh

      Human Condition

      Little Fists

      Sand People

      A2Z

      Table Of Contents:

      Chapter 1: Boys In The Bush

      Chapter 2: Salisbury Nights

      Chapter 3: Anthropological Byways

      Chapter 4: Vic Falls

      Chapter 5: Pfumo Re Vanhu

      Chapter 6: It's Raining In Nairobi

      Chapter 7: Without Warning

      Chapter 8: The Cold Sun

      Chapter 9: Where Have All The Pharaohs Gone?

      Chapter 10: Khartoum Departure

      Foreward:

      I was asked to write this bit of a preface or intro because I happen to know both Caleb Chase and Al Marshall. That was the extent of my bona fides, I'm afraid. Went to college with Caleb and knew Al from the writing scene. We were two guys trying to break into journalism at the same time. It was competitive but not exactly cut throat. Not always anyway. I liked Al. He maintained a good sense of himself, using those Mid-West values that had been instilled in him back in Ohio.

      Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, I had spoken with both of them before they left for Africa, just another traveling trip for them. If not anything else, that is what I remember about the two of them: always traveling. Caleb, off to often times destinations unknown simply because he was tight lipped about where he was going. Later, I would discover why all the secrecy. His job required it. Information suppressed. As to Al, well, he was often on a plane heading to the next war for the story in the news. Like your garden variety adrenaline junkie, I guess.

      That the three of us never connected at the same time is a small miracle when you think about it. Our slice of Manhattan didn't encompass much more than a dozen blocks or so. Still, never happened. Caleb and Al went about their lives not knowing the other existed until they encountered one another in some African country you couldn't find on a map. It was, in its way, some sort of warped kismet, where fate has been altered to fit the narrative.

      So Al was legit, if not unconventional, and Caleb wasn't, just another spook without papers, like a spy apprentice or something. Regardless, they were two Americans stuck within the confines of a war trying to manipulate the odds. As Al was fond of saying, war was nothing but how best to cheat the possibilities or work the probabilities angle. It was a calculus that enlivened chaos, giving it all the more vitality. You got to learn how to live with disequilibrium, he once told me. Sometimes he didn't make all that much sense, especially after a few glasses of brandy, but the man had done his time staring down what constituted mortality on most days. You had to give him that, begrudgingly or not. Had the scars, mental and physical, to show for his time out there reporting on just how much mankind could disturb any sense of what God--any God--might have had in mind when he went into creation mode.

      Sent off to do the government's bidding, I can only imagine how it must have gone for Caleb. Africa, Ben stated, grinning, waiting for a response. Ben, as I would learn later on (probably a pseudonym), was his handler, the conduit to all the madness around the world.

      Caleb would have eyed him for a moment, then replied, What for? That's how I imagine it would have unfolded, probably in mid-town somewhere.

      It was a simple question, but then again nothing was simple when dealing with Ben, the handler, the man that provided him with funds to keep his peripatetic lifestyle going. It was a relationship that dated back almost ten years, back to Washington, DC and an era of political unrest. Caleb had been all of eighteen years old and mostly naive, untested. Ben worked for the government as he liked to say, complete with notched eyebrow and a dash of arrogance. Like most around the nation's capital, Caleb knew what this meant. Caleb had told me about his teen years spent down around Washington, a time of unrest around the country to say the least. A revolution was in the works, or, realistically, what passed for one in America two hundred years after Independence.

      Got something brewing in the Dark Continent, Ben says, grimacing slightly, as if it might be hurting him personally what went on in foreign countries. Shouldn't take all that much time, he adds, smirking, looking around at the passing pedestrians walking down the Avenues of the Americas in New York.

      To date, Caleb had probably done some assignments around Europe, including behind the Iron Curtain in Russia. His apprenticeship had been taken up with doing extra-legal things on US soil, with only the barest of constitutional coverage, or so Ben would have most likely excused it in so many words. It was stretching the concept of a gray area to its limit and Caleb would complain about this but get no response. Then again, he was getting paid, in cash. Before the age of twenty-one, there were small scale espionage exploits completed. His work had been assessed and praised, with the one shining attribute being the capacity for expunging a conscience. Not in the job description, Ben had joked, probably the extent of his humor repertoire. He was all business, all the time. There was no time ever to let your guard down. There was a Cold War raging out there, always ready to undermine the American way of life.

      To Ben, it really was black and white. Communists were akin to zombies, able to come back to life at any given point in time. The Red Menace was forever. Another battle was just around the corner. Vigilance was its own reward. That made going off-book all the more necessary. Vital even. Congress was always prepared to reign in the effort, watchdogs for a more ethical approach to the spy business. This made no sense to Ben, and others. Self-defeating.

      Caleb was, all and all, a free lancer. His small time career in the trenches was negotiable. Not that he wasn't a patriot, but just maybe with a small P. He was also young. His youth permitted him to be skeptical of the geo-political machinations out there lurking. Caleb also instinctually knew that absolutes were a mirage for the most part, often facades that masked the opposite. Human nature ruled and that often precluded most levels of doctrine as applied. Greed, lust, etc., most of the ten commandments, they were the true dictums that dictated an outcome.

      When and where? Caleb would want to know, dodging a homeless person standing on the sidewalk, leaning against a shopping cart piled high with soiled junk, a motley collection of discarded small kitchen appliances, rusted tools, and assorted clothing.

      Did I ever tell you how much I love your attitude, Ben exclaims, forcing a laugh. Your country thanks you.

      Yeah, right, Caleb shoots back, rolling his eyes.

      Their relationship, now a decade old, was trapped in an almost burlesque rhythm, where the two of them managed to tamp down their mutual dislike of each other enough to complete the task at hand. By now, they had the transfer of information down pat. Make contact. Meet up. Brief. Task at hand. Debrief. Other than that they were two strangers. One man, mid-thirties, cheap suit, tall, lanky, was always late, undoubtedly taking time to survey his surroundings before committing to the situation. The other one, late twenties, average height, thin, jeans, tennis shoes, early, not wanting to miss out on another pay day.

      The spy business was never tidy. Mundane plenty of times yes, but seldom without a curve or two to maneuver through. It wasn't glamorous either. Just different or out of the norm. Rules and etiquette couldn't be readily applied because the circumstances were often turned inside out or on their head. You could be looking in or later looking out. Caleb knew this by now, having completed almost a dozen assignments around Washington and New York, enough time in to have to worry about the law, the one that barred him from doing what he was usually tasked with doing. Contract work was born of that wrinkle in Constitutional prohibitions. It made what he did all the more valuable to some. No connections. No strings. No paper trail, ideally. You had to be a phantom. Anchorless. Identity unknown.

      Caleb could do that. He was single. No home address. One friend, me, Tomas Soto, from the past still in the mix, a lifeline of sorts, the bridge that linked him with a personal history. Although I knew nothing of his underground career. I thought him mysterious, even from our college days together. Interesting. Okay, strange too. Rudderless and drifting. In fact, many times he kept his unsubstantial belongings in a locker at Penn Station. Always on the move. His family knew little about what he did or where he went. Contact had been severed a good two or three years before. His life was taken up with travel and being prepared to be ready.

      Of late, he had been living in Manhattan, holed up in a shabby hotel down in the Bowery. In 1970's New York it was possible to live on the cheap in the city. Stretches of the city hadn't yet been co-opted by big money and were left to rot, abandoned by commerce for the most part. It was neo-apocalyptic in scale. The most vibrant city in the world had an under belly that was neglected. Gaping spaces loomed down below Houston. You could film a dooms day movie there and not have to touch it up any during editing.

      This suited Caleb fine. After taking in the sights that a higher education had to offer, he knew his way around the city. It was his home as much as any other place. At the same time, Al was living in New York, in the East Village. Coincidentally, the two men lived not a few blocks away from each other but, as I said, never encountered one another. He had graduated college in Ohio and headed for the Big Apple to be a journalist. It was a simple plan that didn't pan out. He was relegated to freelance status quickly, scrambling to gain a foothold in the no holds barred world of New York City journalism circles. Working hard, he landed his work in print from everything from the Village Voice to New York Magazine. His venue included the gritty underworld of the city, taking him to almost every nook and cranny he could possibly dig up a story at.

      In time, Al took his craft overseas, becoming a stringer for the news services covering Viet Nam, Belfast, Beirut, and other hotspots around the world. It was a dizzying array of hostile environments, dangerous, but with a pay off of exposure not only to life threatening moments but career boosting stories. He also thrived on the adrenaline rushes that being in conflict zones always brought with them. It was addicting in its way. Most people didn't understand the impulses that went into inviting danger. Being in harm's way was a monster that became your friendly nemesis. Exploding ordinance. Sniper fire. Unfolding genocide. It was all one recipe for another cruel undertaking that was gripping a region, a city, a nation out there somewhere at any given time.

      He lived almost a hand to mouth existence, perpetually in debt. His unique stories had their place and were thought to be worthy of mention, but it didn't offer much recompense. Expense accounts were hard to come by. File a story. Look for the next idea. Move on. War presented problems of course, yet he was adept at manipulating the players in the newest drama playing out. Civil Wars, tribal, religious ones, good old fashioned nationalistic slugfests, he had seen them all. You had to have the sensibilities of a coroner or, at the very least, stomach of one. Seeing devastation up close came with the territory, built into the job description almost. Al kept moving, avoiding the mental instability ingrained in his brain that might be residing there on down the road. It was an occupational hazard that some of his colleagues had battled with, and lost. Returning home shaken, unable to come to grips with the visions, the memories residing in their minds, some would succumb and have to ease their way back into civilization.

      Reportage from the battle field picked up considerable speed during the Viet Nam war. Right into the viewer's living room, on TV, in color. Print media wasn't far behind. Along with ghastly photographs came descriptions, words that assembled a tableau of horror and man's part in it. Modern instruments of war brought efficiency. Diabolical precision, which separated life from the living, was on display. The aftermath was a tour de force of destruction that left an unholy blemish on the landscape. Sorrow was wholly inadequate. Bereft, as in bereft of sensibility, Al had seen and written it all after seeing carnage so near.

      There he was in Country, hopping rides on helicopters that took him into the teeth of skirmishes, right onto red hot LZ's in Viet Nam. Young, young as most of the grunts there competing against each other to come home alive. Filing stories that many times got kicked back as too graphic or at other times censored by the military as too revealing. Al wasn't one to sanitize war in any way. It brought him trouble with the brass, military officers there to burnish their careers and hope the perpetual stink of mayhem didn't wear off on them. Along with the daily body count came the medal count too. Right on the chest, gleaming, telling a story to all who cared to look.

      Al, unlike so many of the young men he saw out there in the field, had dodged the draft through deferments then lucked into a high lottery number. If not for chance he too would have been there humping the boonies, shouldering a rifle, staring down the next ambush from the VC. Now, as fate would have it, he was there in a totally different capacity, there to report on the unfolding madness that had stretched on for so long. Another President had taken the reigns to the galloping beast that was the conflict in Indochina. Still the same though. More dead. More sorrow. Just another month, another year.

      His period of covering the war was post Tet, a dividing point in history that detailed just how insane the war effort really was, through-the-looking-glass territory that would confuse even Lewis Carroll on a good day. It was abstract and it wasn't, leaving a sense of disorientation that could make you dizzy The Viet Cong had thrown everything they had at the American apparatus of war and gotten a draw for their troubles. South Vietnam, and the dazed American military machine, still stood, woozy but ready to reload and get back at it. Operas had less bathos, so Al heard a reporter from the London Times say one day over drinks at a dive bar in Saigon.

      Navy swift boats still cruised the Mekong, while the Marines kept vigilant up in I Corp, as the Army drew up almost imaginary plans on how to best use their mechanized divisions or standard operating regiments ensconced in maneuvers straight out of a West Point primer notebook. It was a super power that had overwhelming strength but no functioning brain stem. Bringing power to bear had to be oriented towards a recognizable goal. In Viet Nam, there wasn't one. Not a concrete one anyway.

      Back in the World, tucked thousands of miles away from the continuing madness, politicians avoided the mirror every single day because they didn't want to see what would be staring back at them. It was a craven disregard for humanity, in so many words. The war was about a hazy concept of combating encroaching ideologies. The architects of the blood letting had hung their rationale on that. Mix in some good old fashion capitalism, where Ike's industrial military complex gets to ring the cash registers, then you had unlimited momentum to keep the 3 ring killing circus in high gear.

      Al wrote about that angle too. It didn't make him many friends. HQ wasn't going to be doing him any favors. His baptism under fire eventually got him mentioned as a young writer with a future ahead of him. People noticed and he did land some assignments from the media players that mattered, but no position at the paper, the magazine, the quarterly even. Editors knew who he was but nothing concrete ever materialized.

      Didn't matter to him. He was hooked. When the last remaining troops of the Americal Division were pulled out he was already sniffing out other opportunities. The Arabs and the Israelis obliged when along came the Yom Kippur War. It broke out and completely took the Israelis by surprise. Happenstance had Al in the region so he was one of the first on scene. Although it was over in a short time he still got in and filed some well received stories from Tel Aviv. By now, Al was a veteran journalist. After the lunacy of Southeast Asia nothing would faze him any longer. His sensibilities had

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