Читать книгу Blaming No One - Dan Inc. Whitman - Страница 18

Lots of things happened in 1989. Berlin Wall down, Tiananmen Square, the birth of younger friends.

Not the least was the G-7 Economic Summit in Paris that year, also marking the Bicentennial of the French Revolution. President Mitterrand made a grand show of it, with a type of parade never seen, and which seemed the prototype for the fanciful Barcelona Olympics opening of 1992. Parodies, stilts, artfully unfurled banners, modernized medieval tunes, and, well, the fanfare that became the signature of Mitterrand and his culture minister, Jack Lang. Thirty heads of state flew in for the event.

My task was pretty simple: get the camera angle set up for President George HW Bush’s arrival at Orly. The press corps traveled on Air Force One, seated at the rear of the plane. They had to disembark from the aft door and get the cameras in place within about 90 seconds, to photograph the president as he emerged from the forward door.

Pretty simple stuff, it just meant having clear access to the tarmac, knowing where the cameras were to be set, and hustling the press off the rear of the plane. The consequences of failure were, well, unthinkable. Also very unlikely, with all the precautions built in.

I attended the countdown meetings of course. These were stressful for the organizers, but kids’ play for us supernumeraries. A couple hundred people crowded into the hotel conference room, coffeed up, and went through the paces in painstaking detail, even as tiny changes were introduced twice daily for the five-day prep. I was lucky to have a lengthy liberal education and a pressed suit. No other qualifications were needed except something like “nimbleness,” which is hard to measure until you need it.

As per tradition, untrusting youngsters sent out from Washington had to imagine anything that could go wrong. For them, success meant a possible stint as a White House political appointee someplace, failure meant oblivion. Oblivion is not all that bad, but it’s out of style with young people.

They changed my exact scenario a dozen times, I think intentionally for security purposes. You can’t have too many people knowing the exact time and location of a president’s appearance, so you keep changing it. Not only malfeasance, but also bumbling can introduce variables you don’t want. We would seek to control the weather as well for the photo color backdrop, but that part is pretty reliable in Paris in mid-July.

The day the heads of state flew in—one every twenty minutes—I got a taxi out to Orly. Like baseball, VIP work calls for a lot of waiting and then quick precision and actions that are over almost before you notice. I made it to the perimeter gate as planned, wearing my security lapel pin. The pin gave me access everywhere, of course for a limited time. Very sharp minds made up these systems.

I pulled out my sensitive-but-unclassified map of the landing square, to triple check my location. Then I went to the perimeter gate to get inside. For a 90-second period, the publicity for the President of the United States would be my exclusive domain.

I recognized the Secret Service at the gate, from the countdown meetings. Maybe they noticed me as well.

“Can’t come in,” one said. I thought he was joking, and took a step toward the gate.

“No, really, we can’t let you in,” he said, eyeballing my security lapel pin. “Your pin’s expired.” He pointed at his watch and showed how it was eight minutes past the hour of validity of my pin. They changed color and design every hour.

“Well let’s see,” I said. “I really have to position the White House press to photograph the president on arrival. The plane’s due in 45 minutes.”

SS wouldn’t budge. I understood his dilemma (“no exceptions”), maybe he understood mine. Someone hadn’t thought to give me the color pin that would work for the following hour.

“Any way around this?” I asked.

“Sorry, no,” he said.

My stomach tightened. I wondered what the Good Soldier Schweik would do.

Ugly scenarios came to mind. Aside from a prematurely snuffed out career, I imagined public humiliation, urban legends and jokes at my expense, an angered president, even a jinxed G-7. I walked outside the airport perimeter, considering the options. There were no good ones. Journalists are clever people, maybe they would position themselves without assistance, get their shot, and move on? Not likely. Everyone knew they follow the rules and limits when someone sets them. But without a pool corral, they would all scuffle for a close-up of the president. It wouldn’t take long for the post mortem to nail me as the moron who caused the debacle.

I was pretty rational in my despair, but was able to toggle only between two outcomes: my destruction or my self-destruction. I was pretty sure I’d go with the former, but I did consider the latter. I kept walking, which is the thing to do when you’ve hit a wall in a maze.

Absorbed with my fantasies and anxieties, I didn’t even notice there was another gap in the fence a few dozen meters ahead. I heard, “Vos papiers!” and looked up to see a French gendarme at the next entrance. He was solo, and had total authority over his gate. His words to me were an order, a challenge, but also an opportunity. Possibly he understood the situation, and wanted for us all to get through intact. His neck was the size of a Douglas fir. His massive shoulders and forearms might have killed Bedouins in late colonial wars, or could have.

When backed against a wall, never retreat; it serves no purpose. I dug into my wallet and pulled out my District of Columbia driver’s license. It all has to do with the wrist: I presented my DC license to the gendarme and looked straight into his beady eyes.

“Passez!” he said, and waved me through. He might have winked, but I didn’t dare look.

I found myself all alone in the Orly Salle d’Honneur, then exited the other side to the tarmac just as Air Force One was taxiing to its final position. With not another soul in sight, I advanced under the wing of the plane and suddenly saw the camera angle just as they’d described it at the countdowns. Checking my SBU map one last time, I got to the rear steps of the plane. I made myself visible to the photographers as they hurried down the steps to get into position for their angle for the arrival shot.

The gendarme, a rhinoceros of a man, stood proudly at attention at the gate, his turf.

The photographers got their shot, I survived, and highest bureaucratic achievement was realized: nothing noticeable, nothing out of place.

Anecdotes should have applications. There could be one here: when trapped, keep moving. When stumped, consider the worst options. If you plan to disrupt a VIP appearance, you might get in, but there can be a gendarme to block the exit, ready to break you like a toothpick. Keep a cool head, but be willing to have it ripped from your thorax if you try anything funny.