It was October.  We were returning to Belarus after a weekend in Lithuania. We had just missed a thunderstorm and there was an after the rain stillness in the air.  The sky was balmy, dark and purple, but parts of the landscape were illuminated here and there.  The highway was wet, speckled with damp yellow and orange leaves blown by the wind.  Dirt roads leading off the highway were puddled.  There was a musty smell in the air.

To the right, looking west in the direction of the Baltic Coast, were flat fields of tall, straw-colored rye far as you could see. The sun was breaking through in the distance.  This terrain extended fifty miles, to where the forests of Kaunas began, followed by marshes, then the Lithuanian port of Kleipejeida, which used to be Memel in East Prussia.  To the east, in the opposite direction, the sky was still dark purple. Low rolling hills stretched off toward Smolensk and Russia, one hundred miles away.  There were spires in the distance, and some of the distant hillsides were forested. On this side were scattered Lithuanian farms, with dark brown barns and matching fences, and farmhouses painted white.

We finally arrived at the Lithuania-Belarus border crossing, the divide between the the newly free and democratic Lithuania and the authoritarian Belarus, where we were stationed at the U.S. Embassy.  We came first to a modern “BP” filling station, then took a small jog to the right, to Lithuanian customs.  The Lithuanian border guard, unarmed and wearing a sharply pressed light blue uniform and forage hat, smiled and waved once from the wrist, as if to say “go ahead, no problem.”

Next, we came to the Belarus side and their customs check. We pulled into a line of cars amid Belarusan Border Guards wearing camouflaged fatigue uniforms and field jackets. They had pistols hanging from their belts. The guard asked for our documents, passports and vehicle registration. There were soldiers with shouldered rifles milling around.  The border guard checked the documents, then took them around the corner into the customs building.  He was gone for about ten minutes.

From our car, we could see the empty strip separating the Belarusan and Lithuanian sides. In that area, towards the Lithuanian side, were a number of crosses memorializing Lithuanian border guards who lost their lives to Soviet special forces during Lithuania’s 1991 independence uprising.  I could remember the televised images of the black-clad, Soviet forces in Vilnius, wearing black berets and armed with snub nosed assault rifles, attacking the civilian protesters. What stuck with me was the violence of it, like when you saw your first school yard fight. The soldiers were smashing people with their rifle butts, bashing them repeatedly and strenuously, wanting to inflict hurt.  I couldn’t imagine western soldiers doing this to civilians. It showed how people could become brutal by being brutalized in a less humanistic system.

While we were waiting, a black Russian “Volga”, the type of car used by Belarusan government, pulled up with a driver and two men in the back seat wearing suits, probably Belarusan officials returning from business in Vilnius. The driver, wearing a suit also, walked into the hut with three passports on his own, and came out almost immediately, starting the car and roaring off with a cloud of white smoke from the exhaust pipe.  I didn’t see any families crossing at the border.  The traffic was mainly foreign businessmen and diplomats, and large trucks representing Finnish and German shipping companies. The trucks were lined up for a mile, with drivers standing around outside their cabs smoking cigarettes and talking to each other. No one seemed to be waiting on them. I had heard they could wait there two days.

After about ten minutes, the border guard came back, and handed back our passports with a suspicious but “resigned to dealing with foreigners” look, then pointed to the highway, meaning “move on.”

“Why are there so many trucks?” I asked.

He shrugged and said in an unfriendly voice, “you’ll have to ask them.”

As he was talking, a more senior Border Guard officer walked by and overhead this answer.  He walked to the car and looked with irritation at the junior Border Guard.

“Passports,” he said to us, holding out his hand?

I handed them to him without saying anything.

After thumbing through the pages, he looked up and said “I don’t see the original entry stamp into Belarus.”

“We came by Lufthansa in August of 1998. I think the stamp in on the last page.”

He flipped back, and nodded yes, “What is it you need to know about the trucks?,” he asked suspiciously.

“Just curious why there are so many,” I replied. He looked for s second at me and past me through the window at my wife, then handed back the passports, and walked away. The younger guard motioned us to leave.

As we proceeded down the highway to Minsk, I noticed that a military jeep had pulled out from border control and was following us at a respectable distance.

We were on a flat plain now inside Belarus. There were collective farms along the roadside, dilapidated houses and shacks, and some long chicken coops and pig stalls. No one was working. We passed a cart being pulled by a horse, with an old man holding the reigns, and then a couple of small, older gray buses of the type belonging to collective farms. Older men and women looking like peasants were the passengers, looking straight ahead, the women wearing scarves over their heads and the men various caps.

Along the way to Minsk, we came to a new “Tesoro” filling station, one of the first Western chains to open in Belarus, with twelve pumps. It was modern, with the glass and plastic look, and with a red and orange logo. There were a couple of cars parked in front of the office, but none at the pumps. We had half a tank, but I decided to gas up since gas was always hit and miss in Minsk, and there were lines. After pulling in, I noticed the jeep behind us do a U-turn and head back the opposite direction, back to the border.

I pulled up to a pump, but nothing happened when I lifted the nozzle and squeezed the handle. The digital numbers on the dial still read “000.” I walked inside and asked the person on duty if I could get gasoline. He told me there was no gas. “The truck hadn’t come.” With no apologies or further ado, he went back to his paperback.

Later, down the highway at the half way point to Minsk, we passed over the Berezhina River where Napoleon’s troops were defeated on their retreat from Moscow in 1812.

Further on, we passed a small village with onion domes and wooden houses off to the right.  Sheri had visited this village on an embassy tour and told me how the German army had surrounded the village one morning in early 1942, massacring all the Jewish inhabitants, herding them into the synagogue and setting it ablaze.  It had marked the beginning of the Holocaust in Belarus.  We had seen numerous  other “killing sites” in Belarus, usually a forest clearing or an enclosed cement factory yard where the Jewish villagers had been marched under guard, with the local Rabbi at their head.

After an hour more, we were approaching the outskirts of Minsk, starting to see clusters of high-rise buildings called “Micro-regions,” bedroom communities which combined everything you needed, kindergartens, schools, restaurants, grocery stores, and apartments– like LeCorbusier’s urban plans– all grouped together.  But it meant people had to travel 45 minutes to get to the factory in town on overcrowded city buses. You would see them bundled and hanging from the doors in winter.

We passed over the outer “ring road” which circled Minsk. Cars had pulled off onto sidings to purchase “shashlik,” or shish-kabob, from roadside stands.  In the forests around Minsk, were what used to be “Young Pioneer” summer camps.  There were small lakes all around the capital, with modern, white-stuccoed, high-rise hotels on them.  Built as vacation spots for the Soviet collectives, they seemed to be the preserve of the new business mafia.

Soon, we were entering the center of Minsk, the capital, on a broad, tree-lined avenue.  We were on time to pick up Natasha, a Belarusian friend, and take her to dinner.  We had told her we would be back in town around 5:00 or 5:30.

The main street was lined with the neo-classical, Soviet-era masonry buildings containing offices, stores, and prized apartments occupied by former high party officials and bureaucrats.  As we continued, interspersed with the Soviet era stores and factories, were some newer Western stores and businesses, a MacDonalds, a pizza parlor, and an Eve Arden cosmetic salon.  The older Belarusans on the street were dressed for the most part in Soviet-era suits and dresses, but you also saw a few Western track suits and sweatshirts. Veterans wore their World War II valor ribbons over the jacket pockets.

There was little individualistic behavior, no berets, baseball caps, backpacks, or dogs on leashes.  No clowning around among the teens walking together in groups.  The exception was the McDonalds restaurant, a western oasis, which was lively, with crowds of young people flirting and laughing. Even Belarusan mothers relaxed with their children there and took on Western demeanor.  It seemed that it didn’t take much to make a change in people, just a McDonalds. The restaurant was always full, despite the fact that President Lukashenko had complained about the prices and said that the counter help appeared to be “smiling all the time for no good reason.”

We pulled onto a side street and saw Natasha standing on the curb waiting for us. She was dressed nicely and wearing a Western style blue LL Bean overcoat. We got out of the car, Russian style, and exchanged formal greetings, hugs and kisses on the cheeks, then we all got into the car. Natasha was particularly happy to see Sheri, since most of the time I just saw Natasha for business lunches.  She was an artist and active in the human rights community. USIA had sent her on more than one exchange to the U.S., where she had obviously purchased the overcoat.

“Natasha, how are you doing? I asked in Russian as I started the car.”

“Oh relatively fine, Randall, but things are a bit difficult as you know. Since we organized the human rights watch group, there have been more unpleasantness.  My telephone has had many calls with no one on the other end. I am under observation.”  Seeing our concern, Natasha lightened the conversation and smiled.  “But,” she said, “there is nothing to worry about. We are accustomed in these things. Such is our life.  Plus, my brother-in-law is staying with me for now.”

I hadn’t said anything, but was getting a bit worried that Natasha was becoming too visible.  There was talk of her being recognized by Amnesty International in Europe, and that could create problems for her at home.  Belarusan opposition leaders had been beaten and their offices broken into and ransacked.  Some regime opponents had disappeared.  The last time Natasha and I had lunch downtown, we were followed by two watchers.

I steered the conversation away from business.  “So Natasha, where would you like to eat?  How about the cafe in the basement of the Labor Federation Building.  Would you prefer somewhere else?”

“Oh, that is good.” It was obvious she was more interested in getting together than the dinner.

We parked in front of the large Labor Federation building, which was empty except for a night club on the main floor. We walked down the empty stairs to the cafe, a small one-room affair with checkered tablecloths and six or seven small tables. There were two young couples sitting at tables engrossed in themselves. We took off our coats and handed them to the hostess, a middle aged, stylish woman, who was the owner and helped the two young waitresses.

While we were standing at the entrance and the the owner was hanging up our coats, eight young men in short black leather coats appeared in the doorway and rudely pushed past us, bumping our shoulders, quickly occupying the few empty tables, hanging their jackets over the chair backs. They sat at the tables looking at each other, not saying anything. The owner didn’t give any indication that anything was amiss, although she certainly understood the situation.  I had experienced this type of thing before in the former Soviet Union.

Sheri looked at me as if to say “don’t start anything.”  Natasha said “perhaps we should just go somewhere else.”  She didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of disturbing our outing.  “There is “Metropolitan Pizza” across the street,” she said cheerfully.

So we got our coats from the owner without any discussion, and left the cafe, walking across the street to the larger, new western style restaurant, one of only three or four in town, with its three large dining rooms and salad bar.  The men had not followed us, but I knew there would be others available if they wanted to continue to harass us. I was guessing they wouldn’t, especially at a major restaurant owned partially by an important Belarusan businessman and full of foreigners. They would probably send one or two followers to watch us.

Metropolitan Pizza’s decoration was modern, with Slavic touches, like the carved wooden trim and large wooden beer keg.  We avoided talking about what had just happened across the street, and spoke instead about artists in Belarus. Natasha actually seemed more relaxed than we were. She had dismissed it as more of the same.

The waitress handed us menus, and asked if we wanted something to drink. We ordered Cokes and Natasha ordered juice. We went to the salad bar, but I was unimpressed with the meager selection and returned to our table at the window, waiting for Sheri and Natasha to complete their salad bar excursion.  I looked around to see who was there and who might be watching. There was nothing unusual, just a few couples, a table of middle-aged men in suits and ties, and a couple of mafia types with their girlfriends. The waitresses were young girls and attractive, and dressed modestly in dark blue skirts and white peasant blouses. They were businesslike but cordial, but didn’t go in for small talk with customers.  The service seemed somehow out of place, an attempt to act the way they thought foreign waiters would, even smiling, but without the spontaneously. None of the staff talked to each other. They just stood quietly in front, waiting for customers to come in. They were constantly looking for signals from the manager, who was friendly with arriving patrons, but whose eyes were also always moving.

From our table, I looked out at the city square across the street. It was bordered on three sides by massive buildings. The first was the new, but uncompleted Parliament building, glass and marble, much like the Palace of Congresses in Moscow. It had been started before the Soviet Union fell apart as a showcase for the Supreme Soviet legislature and Party Congresses. Construction had been halted by Lukashenko, who had need for a legislative branch. The second massive building, which we had just come from, was the former communist labor federation headquarters, built in the 1950s by German prisoners of war, who had been held to rebuild the downtown areas which the Wehrmacht had destroyed a decade earlier. The style was neo-classical, with massive Doric columns. Independent unions were also something Lukashenko didn’t need, seeing how “Solidarity” had evolved in Poland.  The third building was the World War II museum, a massive concrete structure. Near it, on a mound in front, was a green Russian T-34 tank with Cyrallic lettering and white numbers painted on the side, the first tank to enter the city with the liberating Red Army in 1945. World War II was ever-present.

After our dinner, we dropped Natasha at her apartment, but we were worried about her. We told her to call us if she ran into any problems. As we left, we noticed a tan Volga automobile with two men in it across the street.  I saw that Natasha had also noticed it, but she gave no indication.  She smiled and said goodbye, walking quickly to her building.  Her brother-in-law, I observed, was looking out from her window above.

Because of the insurgency, about the only way to get around Mozambique was to take small planes. The roads were dangerous due to the threat of ambush by RENAMO guerrillas. Cars went in convoy, accompanied by soldiers in trucks. This applied to the highways to South Africa, upcountry, and along the coast from Maputo to Beira.  Outside the capital of Maputo and the major provincial capitals, nowhere was safe.  You never knew where the rebels would hit.  And, they were vicious, taking no prisoners or  torturing captives.  So, we flew. The views of Africa from above were always great.

Today, we were scheduled to fly a twin engine Cessna operated by the UN’s World Food Program to the small up-country city of Macaze in central Mozambique.   Like most of the countryside outside the capital, the area was controlled by FRELIMO government garrisons in the daylight.  But, at night, it was a different story.  Occasionally, RENAMO would dare to launch attacks against the smaller regional capitals, even in daylight.

I saw how unsafe it was on a previous trip upcountry. I had flown with the Ambassador to Tete Province in the north, near Malawi, and walked around the almost manicured small town, still looking Portuguese colonial, with white rocks marking the borders of lawns, trees painted white half way up the trunk, and small stucco houses whitewashed. Escorted by a local military convoy, we drove about twenty miles into the bush, moving along a dirt road in the heat of the day to visit a nearby village and talk to the market ladies there. It was an interesting picture, us in the Mayor’s vehicle and four green military trucks loaded with soldiers in the back trailing us. The Mayor had told us this was a safe area, but the soldiers’ faces told us otherwise. We stopped two times in route, because the soldiers thought they saw something. The visit to the village was shorter than expected, and one of the Mayor’s staff told us we were heading back early to be safe since they didn’t want to put the Ambassador in danger.

At the time, RENAMO was not happy with the U.S. government, which was viewed by them as pro-government. They were angry that we didn’t take them seriously as freedom fighters and that we had just published a detailed report cataloging their atrocities committed against civilians. It was no secret that we were increasing our aid to the FRELIMO government and listening to the Mozambican President’s claims that he was open to democratizing. This was before we started facilitating peace talks.

The purpose of the trip to Macaze was similar to that previous trip to Tete, for the Ambassador to see some U.N.-sponsored vegetable farms supported by USAID funds. She would show the flag and evaluate the project. Going with us was the American Embassy military attache, a Mozambican employee with the USAID office, and a former Mozambican Minister of Agriculture who had come over to the Embassy.  I was coming along to see the country and our programs as part of my orientation visit to the region. I was the Mozambique Desk Officer in the State Department.

I was used to flying in Africa, and had taken a lot of flights around southern Africa, most recently from Nkomati Port in South Africa just across the border from Mozambique, where locals sat on lawn chairs next to the small runway to watch small Cessnas and Pipers come and go.  A week before, I had flown in a twin engine Fokker from Lilongwe, Malawi to the refugee camps on the Mozambican border near Blantyre, clipping tops of trees on the edge of the dirt runway when we took off.  You never knew what to expect, but it would always be anything but routine.

The village of Macaze was said to have a population of about seven-thousand. It was in the central part of the country about 500 miles to the northwest of the capital. We would fly up the coast for about two hours, almost to Beira, over sugar cane fields, then turn west, inland, for another thirty minutes to the Zimbabwe border region, an area of rolling hills and grasslands bordered by the wide Zambezi river and mountains rising to the north. Further west, on the Zimbabwe border itself, were more forested regions. To the south was mainly scrub. There had been cashew groves, but these had been hit by the rebels to hurt the export economy. The skies were light blue and cloudless as we taxied out. In the far distance, to the West, there were a few high billowy cumulus cells, and these had a habit of forming into thunderstorms in the summer evenings.

The World Food Program pilot went through his checks with the Maputo airport tower as we turned onto the runway for takeoff. The engines began the high “whir” and off we rolled with a release of the brakes. As we were taking off, we could see the hulks of the faded red and white Antonov and Iluyshin passenger planes which were being cannibalized to keep the few newer planes of Mozambican Air Lines flying. We quickly gained altitude, being pushed upwards at times by the thermals. Quickly the land fell away and we could see the highways and buildings below, the cars and trucks barely visible moving along the side roads. The view to the right, on my side, was of the Indian Ocean, a mixture of turquoise and blue. The sun’s rays created a glare on the surface, but the feeling was one of peace as we flew smoothly north, the only sound the mild drone of the engines. Below me I could see we were following the coastal highway, a two lane concrete strip that ran straight north with few bends. There were no villages.

About two hours into the flight, we were bumping along, encountering what the pilot called clear air turbulence. We would be flying level, and suddenly be pushed up a few hundred feet or else have the bottom drop out for a few seconds, dropping, then climbing back up quickly. The pilot, looking at his notes on the control panel, and recognizing a landmark below where the railroad tracks went towards the interior, banked the plane gradually to the left, and we headed into the West. The sun was still pretty much straight above us, so we weren’t flying into it. The day was still clear and it made for great viewing below. We could now see the rail line making its straight line into the denser foliage and occasional small villages of maybe thirty or forty small houses. There was a dirt road off to the right, my side, to the north paralleling the tracks, and you could see a few specks on it, no doubt trucks heading inland.

We cruised along, everyone quiet, the Ambassador, a long time Africa hand, sleeping in the co-pilot seat, and after some time, the attache on my left asked me how long we had been flying. I said three hours. He raised his eyebrows and said he thought the flight was only two and one-half hours. I shrugged my shoulders, but noticed that the pilot reached over in the glove compartment in front of the co-pilot’s seat and took out a large plastic laminated map folded into eight inch squares. He unfolded it and laid it out on his lap and found the area he was looking for and looked at the map, marking a spot with his index finger on it, and looking down out his side window at the landscape below, trying obviously to get a fix. We were no longer following railroad tracks. I looked at the gas gauge, which was located on the floor between the pilot and co-pilot’s seats.  It said a bit over one half. We flew on for a while longer, and the pilot looked at his maps again and banked the plane slightly to the north, dropping a couple of thousand feet to follow the dirt road going inland. He asked the Mozambican passenger in back if he had ever flown to Macaze before, and if that was the road to it.

The Ambassador woke up for a minute and looked at the pilot and closed her eyes and dozed back off, unconcerned.  The Mozambican watched the road below for quite a while and said he thought the correct road was further to the north, in the direction of the rolling hills to the right. He seemed pretty sure. The pilot changed course, crossing the road and flying over what now appeared to be more scrub and bush. There were no rivers or other landmarks visible. I turned to the attache, and said maybe we should suggest that we turn back and start over from the coastal highway railroad intersection. The attache said quietly, leaning closer to me, that the pilot had enough on his mind right now, and it would probably be better not to bother him.

At this point, the pilot had the full fold out map laying on his lap, and was looking mainly at the map, his hands off the controls, letting the plane fly itself on a level course. He asked if anyone knew the region, since we appeared to be lost. His voice was matter of fact. No one had been to Macaze before. The Mozambican employee said he was now less sure of the course to the north since he didn’t see any familiar landmarks. The pilot then announced that we were going down to a lower altitude to get a better look, and down we went to about three thousand feet. Now, we could see terrain and forests and a few dried creeks, and we were beginning to fly over some low rolling vegetated hills. We should have been to Macaze at least forty-five minutes ago. The pilot went back up to our cruising altitude, but we were entering a thin cloud layer that obscured the terrain, like a blanket, but with occasional patches where you could see through wispy clouds to the ground below.

But, it was getting more cloudy and the cloud bank soon appeared to cover the entire horizon from north to south in our path. The gas gauge, I noticed was just over one third. After studying the map for a few minutes above the clouds, the pilot banked slightly to the right again, to the north, and said we should cross the east-west running wide Zambezi river at some point, and that would give us a bearing. I was thinking that if we had to emergency land, the territory between Beira and the Zambezi was RENAMOs heartland, including the headquarters in the forest of Gorongoza. I also knew there were mountains north of the Zambezi and foothills to the south.

We went down again, flying slower and lower and lower through the thin cloud layer and coming out above the low rolling hills. There was a second or two when we were all a bit nervous, whited out in the clouds and descending into the unknown. We went to the north, then northwest, then west, then north again, which should mean we would have to cross the Zambezi sooner or later. After about ten minutes, after studying the landscape and a small river that we crossed, the pilot went back up above the clouds to have more room to study the map again, to compare notes from what he had just seen. Again, we seemed to be on autopilot as he sat studying the maps closely.

Finally, he folded the map and put it between the seats and said to everyone that we seemed to have two choices, either to go back down through the clouds again to look for more landmarks, or to turn around and fly due east towards the coast, and once we met it, to turn south and follow it to Beira. There, we could decide what to do, whether to try again. He said he didn’t like going down through the clouds again since we didn’t know what we would meet on the way down. The coastal option had one drawback, that if the coastline was clouded over, we would pass over it, and would be over the Indian Ocean without knowing it.  the Amassador was awake again, and said she felt we should leave it up to the pilot, that the stop in Macaze was not crucial at this point. We could always do it another day. i wanted the coast option, but the choice was clearly hers and the pilots. The Mozambican was glued to the window, looking down for patches between the clouds, no doubt just wanting to be on the ground, like all of us. He would occasionally glance over at me, his eyes questioning mine on how serious our situation really was. I smiled as if this was routine.

I knew we were not in any real danger yet, but, nonetheless, said the Christian Science prayer, the Scientific Statement of Being, to myself, always feeling that prayer can do some good. Being a Christian Scientist, we feel that we are not ruled by the material world, and can influence events by putting our self in God’s power. My aunt, a Christian Science practitioner, who knew I feared flying a bit, taught me the mantra, “Divine Life, Truth, and Love”–in other words, God– “Goes Before Me.” That always seemed to help, knowing, as she put it, that the pilot was being guided by God to do the right things and that the science of flight, inspired by God, would prevail. We just had to know the truth, to put our faith in God.

I had always been “protected,” as Christian Scientists say. I had flown thousands of miles on Air Nigeria, Air Djibouti, Somali Air, Sudan Air, LIberian Air Lines, and Aeroflot. On one night flight to Europe out of Liberia, our Pan Am DC 10, had to suddenly go to full power and pull up over the mountains near Freetown, Sierra Leone, circling around again for a second try at landing. I had been on a Sabena Airbus from Brussels to Kinshasha that had been forced to turn back over the Mediterranean due to aileron malfunction; I had been on an unscheduled quick descent in a Tupolev 154 into Vanino in East Russia due to “technical problems;” and I had flown an Ilushyn 26 whose engine blew out on a night flight from Moscow to Vladivostok. I had been on an overloaded small Yak 40 that barely made it in the air leaving Vladivostok to Khabarovsk.

In the Foreign Service, you naturally expose yourself to dangers you don’t face in the United States. I had known touches of malaria in Africa, been stung by a school of jellyfish in the Eastern Mediterranean, and been jostled by the KGB in Leningrad. In Liberia, I had stepped over a black Mamba, unknowingly crossed a crocodile infested river by foot, and been accidentally shot at with live ammunition while observing a training exercise.  I had been at a Liberian polling station where gunfire erupted, and once briefly detained by a youth militia and accused of being a spy. I had been followed in the West Bank by a group of Palestinians in a Mercedes, and been on the Haifa Highway in Israel when a civilian bus had been hijacked by terrorists who were shooting at cars on the road.  This was life in the Foreign Service.

I was recalling other incidents as we were flying, now in an easterly direction towards the coast. I wasn’t too worried, feeling if worse came to worse, and fuel got short, we could most likely put down on a road or field somewhere. We certainly weren’t at the panic point. But, I wasn’t as cool as the Ambassador, who was asleep again. The military attache seemed absorbed in his own thoughts.

As we were flying back in the direction towards the coast for about twenty minutes, I noticed that the solid blanket of clouds below us began to thin out and we could almost see through at points. It appeared to be brown or green below the clouds, as best I could make out, which was good, meaning land. After another ten minutes, the clouds dispersed, and, at the same time, the coast became visible up ahead, stretching beautifully as far as you could see on my side of the plane. The pilot looked back at us and gave a thumbs up gesture. He banked the plane to the right, southerly, where we followed the coastline. The water was a beautiful dark blue next to the beautiful green and tan shore dunes. There was no highway, which meant we were north of Beira. Another ten minutes and Beira’s sparkling white skyscrapers came into view. We started our descent. We were now talking to each other and the Ambassador was awake. The pilot made radio contact with the tower and received landing instructions. We touched down, and the engines whirred again as they reversed. We taxied up near the hangars and gas pumps and cut the engines.

The Ambassador and pilot got out and walked over to the terminal. The pilot came back, and a fuel truck came out to refuel us as the pilot helped the ground crew and walked around the plane, making visual checks.  The Ambassador came out and said she had called the Embassy to inform it we had decided to fly back to Maputo. The Embassy was calling Macaze to explain that we would try to make the trip another weekend.

While waiting on the tarmac before heading back to Maputo, I overheard the pilot joking with the military attache about a “gut check,” saying we were lucky, that usually clouds build up along the coastline. He never really wanted to try to ditch in the ocean. He added quietly, with a knowing raise of the eyebrows, that an airport controller in Macaze had called Beira to report a small plane had been spotted on radar flying over the mountains to the north before turning east. It looks, the pilot said with understatement, like we made the right decision not to go back down through the clouds. The attache and pilot had a good laugh over this.

The Aeroflot plane from Vladivostok touched down at Moscow’s Domodyedovo Airport on a moonless, dark November evening. The pilot rolled up next to an outer arm of the main terminal building and put on the brakes, and everyone started unloading after the ten hour flight. As the passengers pressed through the lobby towards the terminal doors, we were met by Russian taxi drivers, mixed in with “gypsy cab” drivers, all holding up homemade signs and asking if anyone needed a ride to town. The “gypsy” cabs were private citizens using their personal cars as taxis. The practice was not officially sanctioned, but was tolerated by the authorities. Everyone had to do something in the new Russia to make money, now that communism had collapsed and many of the state jobs with it.

You couldn’t be sure from looking, which were the “gypsy” drivers and which were regular taxi drivers. The general policy was to take official taxis only, if they were available, waiting till you got outside to the taxi queue to be sure. But, with the crowds and the cold night, it looked like I’d better take a chance and grab a ride from one of the solicitors. There might not be enough cabs to go around. It was also late, the last flights in.  I had taken gypsy cabs before.

I nodded to one of the men soliciting fares in the lobby. He quickly asked where I was going, and we settled on a price, not too steep, and he took my suitcase. I followed him outside, and only then realized for sure that his was indeed a “gypsy” cab rather than regular taxi. We walked out to the vast parking lot, which was dark, with only a few lamp posts illuminating circles of asphalt here and there. There was an orange glow in the sky coming from the direction of Moscow, twenty minutes away.

The driver led me down to a row of cars on the right edge of the lot near the mesh fence, where his car, a small Fiat imitation “Zhiguli,” was parked. He opened the trunk and put my suitcase and attache case inside. It was rather dark in that area, and only after he closed the trunk did I realize there was another rider already sitting in the back seat. I didn’t feel particularly like sharing a taxi.

“Who is the other rider?” I asked.

“Brother in law, who works here. If okay, I can drop him of in Moscow after I take you to Leninsky Prospect.”

He acted as if it were a normal practice, although I knew it was a bit unusual to share a cab. On occasion, however, I had done so, and brothers-in-law were always needing help in Russia. Still, I didn’t like the idea of another passenger, since you never knew what kind of people were driving the gypsy cabs. The Embassy had warned us to be careful of taking these cabs, since there were reports of Asian businessmen whose bodies had been found stripped of their wallets, on side roads leading off the airport highway. I slipped into the passenger seat in front as the driver held the door for me. When the interior light came on, I said hello to the passenger in the back seat, noticing that he looked a bit tough. I began to doubt the wisdom of taking this “cab,” and thought about backing out, but by then the driver was in the car and we were speeding through the parking lot to the exit, the Russian muffler reverberating. At least, the passenger in back was not sitting directly behind me.

It was a rather silent ride into town at first as we pulled onto the main highway towards Moscow. I gave the driver a closer look, and he appeared normal, but there was an unusual silence in the cab. Usually, gypsy drivers like to talk. I decided to make conversation with the two, giving me the opportunity to turn around sideways to talk to the fellow in back as a way of keeping an eye on him. At least, I could face him partially. I would mention that I was an American diplomat. Criminals in Russia knew there would be ramifications if anything happened to me. There was probably nothing to worry about, but I had learned overseas to be alert and cautious in potentially dicey situations.

“What a flight. Nine hours,” I said.

“Where from?” the driver asked.  At least he seemed relaxed.

“Vladivostok.”

“On vacation?” he asked.

The question, for some reason, didn’t seem like an innocent inquiry. The guy in the back wasn’t saying anything. By this time, we were on the main four lane highway to Moscow, a dark road, lit only every mile of so. There wasn’t much traffic on the highway, which was unusual. We were passing through wooded countryside, with occasional exits to side roads. I knew that the distance to Moscow’s outskirts was about 12 miles, and that we would pass a highway police checkpoint about 10 miles down the road. For anything to happen, it would happen before then.  I noticed, while continuing to make small talk and keeping a partial eye on the fellow in back, that there was occasional eye communication between the two through the rear view mirror. The driver seemed a bit more fidgety.

“No, I’m the American Consul General there. Consultations.”

I noticed the driver glance up in the mirror at the passenger in the rear. The driver reached down and turned up the car heater a slight bit. It was winter and Russian cars sometimes could not keep up with the cold. I had not unbuttoned my coat.

“You’re diplomat?”, the driver asked.

“Yes, It’s a nice time to be an American diplomat, now that relations are good,” I chuckled. “We hope to make some improvements,” I added.

I regretted the last comment. It sounded phony to a Russian. Nor should I have said “consultations” earlier. To Russians, diplomats don’t talk about their work with strangers. Russians have a built in phony detector after living with lies for so long.  They might wonder if I was real.

“Would be good,” said the driver without enthusiasm after a pause.

His thoughts had obviously been elsewhere. I saw him glance in the mirror again, giving some kind of look, a bit anxious perhaps, to the man in back. The passenger in the back didn’t seem to be making any unusual moves and didn’t have his hands in his pockets. He looked out the window when I swiveled around to make small talk with him. I lightened the subject a bit, feeling I was overreacting.

“Have you been to Vladivostok?” I asked the driver.”

“No. Been to Irkutsk. Very nice. Lake Baikal. Taiga,” the driver answered. The man in back didn’t say anything.

“Irkutsk is a three hour flight from Vladivostok,” I said. “Alaska Airlines is flying tourists there. Vladivostok is also beautiful, seven hills.” I was going to add that the local Governor was a good friend, but decided against it.

The driver didn’t seem to notice what I had said.

“High level meetings?” he asked, responding to my earlier comment about “consultations” in Moscow. “Da,” I said, waving my hand away, as if something routine. The fellow in the back was not impressed. He was looking at me with those perceptive Russian eyes, pulling out a pack of cigarettes, and asking if I wanted one, as he lit his. I declined. Looking at those eyes, I decided I had been right to be concerned.

“Amazing thing,” I said, again turning to Vladivostok, “is that our best friend in Vladivostok is the Russian Pacific Fleet.” Lots of U.S. ship visits.” I gave an ironic laugh and an anecdote: “When I ask the Russian admirals how they can get along so well with the former enemy, they tell me with pride, ‘LeCocq, we and the Seventh Fleet were opponents, but professional opponents. Nothing ever got out of control.’ There is now real camaraderie between our navies.” I wanted them to think I was close to the admiral, and of the consequences of angering the Russian Defense Ministry on top of the Foreign Ministry.

The passenger in the back seat exhaled and stuffed out his cigarette. We sat in silence for a while. Then after a mile or so, he said to the driver up front in his husky voice, “it’s a bit cold, should we turn up the heat?” This came out as two words, “holodna,” for cold, and “tepleetsa,” to heat.

The driver quickly answered “no need.”

The passenger leaned back and took out another cigarette, relaxing back in the seat as he lit it. Maybe he really just wanted to turn up the heat, but maybe” turning up the heat” had been a signal for something else. The driver then asked quickly for directions to my apartment, perhaps making clear to the guy in back that they were going to deliver me home. Or, did he just want to clarify?

“Take Leninsky Prospect to No. 45, then turn right into the diplomatic compound parking lot please,” I said.

We drove in silence for five more minutes until we reached the Moscow suburbs and encountered normal city traffic. We had passed the police checkpoint, which meant that their car, like all others, would have been photographed. I relaxed a bit, and feeling a bit silly for perhaps over-dramatizing the situation, made some legitimate conversation, turning around fully to face the front. The fellow in the back even laughed at one of the driver’s jokes. The atmosphere was certainly a lot lighter, and we were all laughing. The passenger was beginning, in the city light, to look more like a worker than a gangster. When we got to my wife’s apartment building, the driver pulled through the archway into the back courtyard entrance, next to the parking lot, where there was a Russian border guard sentry box. The border guards were a branch of the KGB assigned to protect foreign diplomats. The driver didn’t’ try to avoid the sentry by letting me off outside, on the street.

I recognized the particular guard on duty this night. He was typical, young, tall and correct, wearing a light blue, heavy felt winter coat and matching fur hat, with brown leather Sam Brown Belt across the chest, and revolver holster at his side. His was part of a 24 hour watch on the diplomatic compound. I had paid the driver before we pulled up, since gypsy cabs were technically illegal.

The driver got out and lifted my suitcase out of the trunk, setting it down and shaking hands as we bid each other farewell. The sentry watched on, standing near his post, but giving a long hard look at the driver and passenger. The passenger in back gave a dismissive look at the guard. As the “cab” pulled out through the archway and drove off, I picked up the suitcase and started for the door to the building.

The sentry, who had gone back into his shack for a few seconds, perhaps to record the car license, stepped back out and called my name. It was interesting, but not surprising, that he remembered I was the husband of Mrs. Sprigg in Apartment 10, even though I was seldom in town. I had only exchanged greetings with him a couple times in the past.

“Its Sprigg, yes?” he said in Russian, polite and friendly, showing some glimmer of emotion, which was unusual.

“Yes, LeCocq, husband. Nice to meet you.”

He nodded his head in the direction of the cab which had departed.

“Gypsy Cab?” he asked.

“Yes” I said resignedly, shrugging the ‘what can one do’ gesture.

“From airport? I could see from his manner that he was being helpful, not interrogating?

“Yes, Domodyedova.”

He paused a moment, thinking, then said in English: “Mr. LeCocq, you should be careful. Not take gypsy cab, perhaps. Those men who drive you, I think they maybe not so good.”  I smiled and said “thank you” and gave him a grateful look. He saluted and I went upstairs.