I kept rereading the news pieces after they caught the Russian spies wondering at the twenty years we followed them. Twenty years is a long time. A really long time. But I’m a believing American, and I still remember that all the grown up smart people in our neighborhood where I grew up built bomb shelters to protect their valuable children from the bombs that were surely arriving any day Fed Ex from east of Berlin. We were the only ones that didn’t have a shelter, and I remember wondering if our parents didn’t care if we lived or died. Anyway, I figured that maybe my government knows more than the NY Post, hence following these turkeys had a larger picture meaning beyond my comprehension.
Then I saw the following headline yesterday, “Rush to Arrest Russian Spies After Phone Call to Father.” Excuse me? Rush? Twenty years? You can’t make this stuff up. Talk about food for fodder. I’m a registered ADD girl, and I know my attention span is limited, but rushing after twenty years? Not so much.
I keep thinking of the poor schlub who got assigned this duty a few weeks out of the FBI academy. He – or she – thought they were going to be the next Jodi Foster, come in, solve the case in a few months, and then “rise all the way to the top of the F B I.” (Quote is from Silence of the Lambs. Jodi Foster is talking to Hannibal Lecter and he spits it at her.) Twenty years later, those poor people have watched their subjects age and know their every move and nothing, I mean nothing, has come from it. I want to interview one of the agents who spent their entire career following these dangerous spies?
Here is what I think. I think that those on the detail for these ‘spies’ got together and said, “Selves, enough of this ridiculous clandestine following of fools. Let’s ‘rush’ the pick up by making up a phone call between Spy Lady (“Old Lady” by now if you ask me) and her father, and we can get out of this.” Then poof, they would get reassigned to something important. Is it a conspiracy theory by Christine? Why, yes it is. Is it of the caliber of The Pelican Brief? Why, no it’s not, but never underestimate the desperation a person following another person for twenty years feels.
Either way, hail to those that followed this Eastern Block turkeys. Way to hang in there.
I’m just saying.
