than an extension of it. But I don’t make the rules.
So was I eager to get the Opus line that hot spring day? Not at all, but I knew there could be some value in taking up the gauntlet and trying.
I think we started with a tasty cold soup, but that’s not the point. I realized from the start that sleep and boredom would be my adversaries that day.
The Opus spokesman was a gentle man and avoided hyperboles in our almost three-hour conversation. I still don’t know what the point was of it all, but I did learn that the older an outlying sect becomes, the more soft spoken. Opus, mind you, openly seeks power, and got a big chunk of it in the Vatican when it rescued the Vatican Bank from bankruptcy and vague scandal in the 1980s. If you like these things, google the Banco Ambrosiano and Roberto Calvi, and his “acrobatic suicide” under a bridge in London in 1982.
Back to that day in Madrid. I’ve found that quoting others while distancing yourself from those quotes is a failsafe tool of publicists. “People say that Opus was friendly with the Franco regime,” I said as I poured my partner’s wine.
Taking no offense, the Opus man acknowledged those rumors, noted that a foreigner can be forgiven for picking up inaccuracies, then eagerly spent an hour and a quarter refuting them. Opus had suffered more than others under Franco, he insisted. And I hope he got rewards back home for driving the point. I remember my own inner processing of the new information: “I am blessed, I need only catch a few things he’s saying, and remember to stay awake. The Angel of Death has spared me once again.”
At the same time, I knew I’d need another couple of questions at hand for when the monologue ran out. Incredibly fortunately, I needed only one other: I asked why religions proselytize, since I’ve never understand why they do so. I still don’t, really. If you have a solidly held belief, would it not dilute, rather than strengthen it, to seek to draw in others? I’m not being perverse here, at worst, naïve. Home run. The Opus man loved the question, and spent another 75 minutes answering it. The argument went something like this: when I embrace a belief, I am comforted by having others around me who share it. Fair enough.
Thus I not only survived the experience, but really did learn something of value. Now, twenty years later, I share with you my coping mechanism and the relief I sense even to this day, in summoning the stamina and courage to stay conscious that whole afternoon. Fact check: of Franco’s 116 cabinet ministers in 1936-75, eight were Opus Dei prelates. Whether they were under his thumb or benefiting from the relationship, I will not seek to judge. Pope John Paul II beatified Opus founder Jose Maria Escriva in 1992, and canonized him in 2002. Escriva was politically neutral in public, but did say to a colleague, “Hitler against the Jews, Hitler against the Slavs, this means Hitler against communism.” You have to judge people in the context of their times.
Most importantly, if you are fighting sleep but have to order wine, sip slowly and go with the white.
Totentanz at Orly
June 6, 2011
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