Redoubled Read online

  Another thing about those restaurants is how they greet you. I was told by everyone who knew all about the South, but had never lived there, and all those who had made movies or television programs about the South without ever going there, that everyone calls everyone else “y’all.” So I expected to be called “y’all” a lot in Charleston. It never happened. When we sat down at the restaurant for our first encounter with other people in the world of the South, and the waitress brought us the gold-colored sugar water, she said to us,

  “Would ‘you guys’ like to order now?”

  I mean I know that’s what they say up North, but in Charleston? And I never could understand why people always asked us that anywhere at all as if Anya was a guy. I mean, if you ever saw Anya you would never mistake her for a guy. Sure, I’m a guy but the two of us are not guys and I don’t outnumber Anya. In fact, if the two of us are together, I am generally outnumbered based on the number of people who actually acknowledge that I am there also. They even called us ‘you guys’ when we went to a restaurant with Ben and Edy after they came to Charleston and there were two women and two men so the guys didn’t outnumber the women even then. Edy may be a little plump, but she has all the right equipment and curves in the right places so she would never be mistaken for a guy. We did finally have someone say “y’all” to us, but that was in Hollywood. South Carolina, not California.

  Getting back to iced tea. Drinking iced tea is so important to Charleston inhabitants that they have a tea plantation on one of the Sea Islands just south of Charleston. As I recall, the island is called Marshmallow Island, at least that’s the way I remember it. Anya and I took a tour of the plantation since it was one of the local tourist attractions and I wanted to see how this vile drink was made. It appears that tea plants grow fairly tall, but the only part they use for tea is the upper layer of leaves that they harvest periodically with a special harvest machine that only harvests the top layer.

  Well as we drove on a tour bus around the plantation, I first noticed that there were a lot of sea gulls flying around because we were on a sea island. To me, sea gulls are just like crows, only white, and given the opportunity, these white crows, just like their black cousins, will drop bird poop all over you. I wondered if the poop is all the same color no matter what the color of the bird, but I don’t want to know badly enough to find out if anyone has done a study on that, and I certainly wouldn’t want to do a study myself.

  I then noticed something very important was missing. Now farmers will put up scarecrows in their fields to keep the crows away, but I didn’t see a single scarecrow, or more accurately, a single scaregull in the entire plantation. And you know all those sea gulls we saw flying overhead were bound to be pooping on all those tea plants, and the sea gull poop would be landing on top of those plants, on the very part of the plant that would be harvested to make tea. How gross! And they all love their tea in Charleston. If they only knew! If I didn’t already dislike tea, I never would have drunk it again after that tour.

  Anyway, I asked the tour bus driver how the island got its name. I thought at first the name of the island was Marshmellow Island because it has a lot of marsh around it, which we saw driving over the bridge onto the island, and it’s a very mellow place with all sorts of oak trees lining all the roads with Spanish moss hanging on them. To make sure, I asked the tour driver.

  I said, “How did this island get its name?”

  He replied, “It’s an old Indian name. The Indians gave it that name.”

  Well that actually made just as much sense to me. The original Indians who lived there did all their cooking over campfires, and they must have named the island, Marshmallow Island, after their favorite campfire dessert.

  I also found out that Marshmallow Island had a place that made iced tea vodka. I mean, those people liked their iced tea so much they had to make their vodka look and taste just like iced tea so they didn’t have to change their drink when they wanted to get drunk, or so they could get drunk while everyone thought they were just drinking iced tea, or both. Or maybe they drank it because it disguised the taste of the sea gull poop in the tea, or after a few drinks they just didn’t care. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know.

  I learned even more about Charleston during our stay there. For example, I learned that Charleston sits on a peninsula. The river entering the harbor on the west side of the peninsula is called the Ashley River and was named after Lord Ashley, the first Earl of Shaftsbury. The river entering the harbor from the east side is called the Cooper River and was named for Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, a Baronet. Both these men were Lord Proprietors of the Province of Carolina and were given large tracts of land there by the Crown. It turns out that both of these men were the same person who appeared to be very fond of double dipping, so to speak. He couldn’t decide whether to be Sir Cooper or Lord Ashley so he spent part of his life being known as Sir Cooper and another part being known as Lord Ashley. He had a river named for each of himself, so he could always be near a river with his name on it in case he wanted to take a dip, and also so he could be awarded a double dip of land grants, one for each of himself or himselves, whichever is grammatically correct when referring to a split personality. He was a very resourceful man and a true politician. Now the local people are fond of saying that all Charlestonians believe that the Ashley River and the Cooper River flow together into Charleston Harbor to form the Atlantic Ocean. I mean, really. I was raised and educated in Boston after all, and I know that isn’t true. I know for a fact that it is the Charles River and the Mystic River in Boston that flow together into Boston Harbor to form the Atlantic Ocean.

  Another thing that Boston has over Charleston is that it was settled fifty years earlier. Now some say that settlement was an accident because the people who came to the new world and were called Pilgrims were really returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land but they got on the wrong boat because they couldn’t speak Italian and ended up in Plymouth, Massachusetts rather than Plymouth, England. The boat captain was probably not from Spoleto in Italy, because if he was, he certainly would have taken the Pilgrims directly to Charleston, as Mayor Riley would have wanted him to do, instead of to Massachusetts. Then maybe Charleston would have a better claim to having the Ashley River and Cooper River join to form the Atlantic Ocean. At least they would have an earlier claim to that notion than they do now.

  Still another thing when thinking about these two cities is the fact that Boston rejected the whole idea of drinking tea and feeling sick all the time. They dumped all the tea that the British sent them into Boston Harbor, while people in Charleston accepted the British tea rather than dump it into Charleston Harbor, even though they were part of the same tea dumping insurrection.

  When the Charlestonians didn’t dump the tea into the harbor, the British just kept sending the tea to Charleston because they knew a good market when they saw it. Charlestonians are still being fooled into drinking tea and aren’t even aware that iced coffee is a much better drink, as is iced coffee vodka. But to their credit, the Charlestonians weren’t completely taken in by the British. They don’t eat crumpets with their iced tea. I haven’t heard of anyone having crumpets in Charleston, although I don’t know if people would recognize them if they saw them. I know I wouldn’t. I’m not sure they even exist anymore.

  Chapter 5

  When Ben and Edy came to town about a week after we had arrived, we arranged to have breakfast the next day at the Sweetgrass Grill, one of those restaurants that became famous when it was written up in the New York Times and other magazines published in New York so that New Yorkers would know a properly reviewed restaurant at which to eat breakfast while they were renovating their downtown mansions. We went to the Sweetgrass Grill for a typical Charleston breakfast of bacon and eggs and biscuits and grits. Since the Sweetgrass Grill had been written up in the proper New York publications and was now famous, they decided to do what all the other restaurants with the New York imprimatur had done. They decid
ed to raise their prices and charge extra for things that had once been part of the meal without extra charge. They decided to charge extra for the bacon and for the biscuit, which used to be part of the meal, but they still didn’t charge for the grits that was now the only thing that came with the egg. If you wanted more than one egg, there was an extra charge. They do not charge extra for grits at any of the breakfast restaurants in Charleston, because it is my understanding that there is a movement afoot to spread the grits around.

  And they make it easy to do that because you can eat grits in a variety of forms. There are plain grits and cheese grits and shrimp and grits and True Grits, which were John Wayne’s favorite grits. I think they were also Jeff Bridges’ favorite grits as well. Actually I think Jeff Bridges may have preferred the new and improved version of True Grits called True Grits II. The thing about grits in Charleston, you can have them as a side dish with every meal, not just breakfast. Many of the upscale restaurants serve grits with many different other dishes throughout the day and will sneak them onto your plate as a side dish whenever you aren’t looking, in their effort to spread the grits around. And the New York critics all think this is swell and a sign of a restaurant serving authentic Southern cuisine. Everything else on the menu may be exactly the same as can be found at any restaurant in New York, but as long as they serve it with grits, it becomes an authentic Southern meal. They even opened a new restaurant called Corn Cob which won all sorts of awards for doing this very thing, serving grits with all their meals and calling themselves a restaurant serving authentic Southern cuisine. And of course calling it Southern cuisine is also wrong. In the South, they call that stuff you eat by the simple name of food.

  Ben and Edy told us that they had managed to get me a faculty position in the Cancer Institute. My appointment was as an Adjunct Assistant Research Professor or AARP. They also got me an AARP card from the American Association of Retired Persons that really had nothing to do with my position and everything to do with the fact that I was retired and under age. By that I mean I was retired from the CIA with a retirement account and everything, but I was not old enough to be a member of the AARP because I was under fifty years old. Having that card was important to me because it was my understanding that the AARP, which I believe is a subsidiary of the Federal Government, had helped to write the new health care law and was responsible for appointing people to the so-called death panel that some say would be solely responsible for the death of senior citizens. Apparently one of the main criteria for a retired person to stay alive was to pay dues to the AARP. Once the new law took full effect, the AARP anticipated having 100% enrollment. Now even though I was only thirty-one, I was retired, and I had heard that the so-called death panel would decide when people needed to go, and although they implied that only the very old would be “taken care of” by the so-called death panel, I didn’t want them to think that younger people like myself should also be “taken care of” if they failed to pay their dues and get an AARP card, and if they made the mistake of retiring without one no matter what their age. You never can tell when the Federal Government changes the rules on you, and I didn’t want to take a chance now that I was back in the United States and within their reach, and not in the Cayman Islands. So I received my AARP card to go along with my AARP position thanks to Ben and Edy.

  Ben and Edy also were able to get Anya an appointment as a research administrator in the Cancer Institute where I was to work, but she didn’t need an AARP card since she didn’t have a retirement account as yet. That was something she would receive if we successfully completed our current assignment alive. Like mine, it would be an Alpha Rho Alpha 50-3 account that is the CIA’s notation for an Agent Retirement Account of fifty years duration with three million of annual tax-free benefits. No one knew she and I were related because she and I had different last names, so she could get her own account.

  Anya and I began working the following week at the Cancer Institute that was part of the Medical University of South Carolina. Now the Medical University of South Carolina should not be confused with the Medical School at the University of South Carolina which is a very different place entirely being in Columbia, South Carolina and not in Charleston, South Carolina. It should also not be confused with the Medical School at Columbia University which is a very different place entirely and is even in a different city and state, New York and New York, and is certainly more familiar to many residents of Charleston than is the city of Columbia and its medical school that is actually in South Carolina. And none of these places should be confused with the Medical Schools in Colombia which is still an entirely other different place and is even a different country and is spelled differently anyway.

  One of the things I noticed, when I went to the Cancer Institute the first day, was a small street that was only a block long and was more like an alley way that ran between the Clinical Science building and the Cancer Institute building and was named Sabin Street. I asked one of the older faculty members if that name had anything to do with Albert Sabin who had created the oral polio vaccine. In fact it had been named after him, and it turned out that Dr. Sabin had been a faculty member at MUSC near the end of his career, or his dotage as that period is sometimes called. Now this was a strange finding for me because I had been working at the Salk Institute as a postdoctoral fellow when I first became involved with the CIA.

  The Salk Institute is a real tribute to Jonas Salk. It is a magnificent group of architecturally notable buildings on a beautiful setting north of San Diego in La Jolla on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It really is an impressive monument to the inventor of the first killed polio virus vaccine. And all they had given Sabin was an alley with his name on it and only a view of loading docks, since that was what mainly was in that alley. It was a real shame because everyone knew that Sabin’s oral live attenuated polio vaccine was more successful than Salk’s killed polio vaccine. I guess that just proves something I had already learned in my brief career with the CIA. You can make more money and have more notoriety by killing something than by letting something live, and that fact made me realize that Anya has a much better feel for what makes a good career than I do.

  To make matters worse, Sabin Alley ended at Jonathan Lucas Street where the front doors of both the Clinical Science and Cancer Institute buildings were located, and no one could tell me who Jonathan Lucas was. Wouldn’t it have been better to have those buildings on Albert Sabin Street and have the loading docks on Jonathan Lucas Alley? After I thought about that oddity for a while, I thought there was a possibility that Jonathan Lucas Street was named after someone more important than Albert Sabin. Perhaps it was named for two of the men who wrote the gospels or maybe one man who wrote two of the gospels just like Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper who had two rivers named for him. I think this is possible because both of those gospels are so similar. And maybe Jonathan Lucas’ middle name was Matthew or Mark and he had written three of the gospels, or maybe all four if he had two middle names and they were Matthew and Mark. I mean, all four gospels are really very similar and Jonathan Lucas couldn’t be accused of plagiarism if he did, in fact, write all four.

  Chapter 6

  I was looking forward to working at a southern university and comparing it to the northern university where I had received my education. I was interested in whether the North and South approached things differently and how Southerners viewed themselves vis-à-vis northern researchers. I also felt it would not be too difficult to ferret out the odd Pakistani who might be the source of the animal balloons that had shown up. Well I was disappointed on all counts. There are hardly any Southerners working at this southern medical school. There are, however, a lot of Pakistanis and Indians and Asians and Northerners, not only working in the laboratories as researchers but on the faculty as well. So I knew that my job would not be as easy as I thought, and finding the culprit I was looking for would be a challenge.

  The CIA arranged for me to be awarded a Department of Defense researc
h grant to develop anti-biological warfare treatments and that would be my cover, although the anti-biological warfare treatments I had in mind were the killing of those preparing the biological warfare weapons to be used against Americans. That counted because the terrorists doing so are considered biological beings despite whether you want to classify them as less than human or not.

  The reason the Medical University of South Carolina was willing to help was not entirely patriotic. Every federal grant they receive comes with an indirect cost rate that gives the university approximately fifty cents for every dollar the grantee spends. So if I buy a laboratory rat for ten dollars, ca-ching, five dollars goes into the University Tip Jar so to speak. If I get a paycheck, ca-ching. If I pay Anya a big salary, ca-ching. If I buy an iPhone or a Macbook Air or a new desk or a new AK-47, cha-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching and pow. It all goes into the Medical University’s coffers and yes, the AK-47 is a good weapon to combat bioterrorism and is a legitimate need in every laboratory in my opinion.

  Now under my cover as an AARP, I planned to learn about what other medical research professors were doing, especially those who were using the laboratory animals that had turned up as balloons in their studies. I was especially interested in any professors who might be Pakistanis or have ties to Pakistanis or to other Mid-Easterners who might be under the influence of Al Qaeda. In fact, Anya working there turned out to be a very good thing. She ended up getting more information than I did.

  For one thing, she is very attractive. She is about 5’7” tall, only a little shorter than my 5’10”, with a very good figure and blonde hair cut in a bob and blue eyes and a friendly smile. I have non-descript brown hair and hazel eyes that don’t sparkle like her blue eyes do, and I tend to have a more serious expression on my face, so she is a real asset to me since people seem to pay attention to her and ignore me, giving me a chance to appraise the situation. Anya is a very upbeat person with a good sense of humor and always seems to be in an upbeat mood. She always seems to be smiling and happy and is fun to be with, so people are naturally drawn to her and like to be with her and to do things with her. She can also slay you with a good joke or a 9mm Glock, whichever is appropriate, and do either with a little smile on her face when she delivers the punch line or the fatal bullet. And she never seems to get upset after she slays someone. It doesn’t seem to affect her attitude at all.