Low Flight of Angels in the Benelux Read online

  “What bother?”

  “Being away from you, silly boy. If it is addiction, I don’t want a cure.” Then she added, “Oh, and they seemed almost happy to see me go.”

  She insisted on a detour to a shop front near the center of the old city. It was a charity clothing place, and she left the larger bag. Preston wished he had known she was going to do that, but didn’t want to rifle through his belongings now to separate out what he could keep.

  It was a long ride and several train changes back to Wijlre. They had eaten dinner from the snack cart on the train, and it was still light out as the train pulled up to the platform. They decided to grab the bus that took them to Scheulder up on the ridge and much closer to the orchard. Angie pestered him until he gave her the smaller bag, but it was still work and they stopped twice on the way to rest.

  They were a bit surprised to encounter their hostess outside their door as they came into the courtyard. “Good news! Don’t unpack,” she announced.

  Chapter 22

  Sweating from the burdened hike, this was hardly what Preston was expecting.

  Their hostess opened the door for them. Patiently waiting until they unburdened themselves, she turned one of the chairs around from the table and faced where they sat in the two easy chairs.

  “Heerlen is one of the best places to hide. You can disappear so easily in such a busy town. When we got an offer of a computer, the same person mentioned they would love to have a house sitter.”

  Angie and Preston glanced at each other, eyebrows raised.

  “First, you can never meet this person. It’s best you never look into the details; this protects everyone, as you know. On one of the central walking promenades in Heerlen, there is a top floor apartment above one of the shops. You access it from either the front or from an alleyway in the back. There is a crazy legal status I can’t explain, but this person cannot use the property for business nor rent it out, yet are required to keep it up. It’s quite valuable so they want someone to occupy it for security reasons. They estimate it’s at least two years before anything changes.”

  She crossed her legs and smiled. “You can move in tomorrow morning. They left you a nice Mac system there. I was told you should simply rely on wifi, and I’m sure you can work that out. It’s not that we are eager to see you go, but this is so much better for you two.”

  Preston thought for a moment. “I rather like the idea it reduces your risks, too.”

  She smiled, but said nothing.

  Angie stood and walked over to the older lady. Bending a bit, she gave her a hug. “We kunnen niet genoeg bedanken.” We can’t thank you enough.

  The woman returned her warmth. “You two have opened many doors for us. It would all be worth it simply for what you’ve already done.”

  As she got up to leave, Preston stood and hugged her, too.

  “We’ve asked a friend to bring up a small truck to help you move. He’ll be here mid-morning, so you should have plenty of time to get ready.” She gently closed their door behind her. They never saw her again.

  Next morning, the small truck pulled up in the courtyard around nine. You would have thought with so few worldly possessions, they could have easily been ready. Somehow, it didn’t quite work out that way. They were still packing the last few items as the truck arrived.

  The ride into Heerlen was mercifully short in the cramped front seat of the little van. Their baggage and three bikes easily fit into the back. Only during the early morning hours could he have driven on any part of the walking plazas, so he had to park a ways off at the train station. However, he had a dolly and was able to help them with the baggage. They wheeled their bikes to the back of the building. There was a small steel rolling door with the obvious purpose of bicycle storage. The man spoke nary a word, simply pointing and smiling. He handed Preston a key for this door, then another key to Angie. The old fellow waited at the bottom of the stairs while they located the apartment. It took only a few trips and he disappeared when they last bag left his dolly.

  Something in the layout screamed at Preston that one small room had to be their office. Sure enough, in a corner under a small, simple table sat some boxes. He pulled the two aging but serviceable rolling office chairs back from the table and slid the boxes out across the hardwood floor.

  Inside was a complete Mac workstation of recent vintage with a large monitor. While Angie unpacked their clothing and other stuff, he fetched his computer tools and took a look inside the case. There was nothing suspicious, but he wanted to double check. He fired up his laptop. Sure enough, there were dozens of wifi nodes in the area. He picked at random one of the unsecured ones and looked up a site that offered complete tear-down instructions for Macs. He checked everything, including the cables.

  By matching the images, he decided there was nothing amiss and reassembled the case. That didn’t mean things were perfect. Among the parts in the box was a wifi router. After getting the system up and running, but before connecting the router, he pulled a disk from his collection and inserted it. Mac is Unix with a pretty face, and he had some scripts that took advantage of this to make it more secure. It included a very smart firewall and some other measures to lock down the system against unsafe changes.

  Angie walked in asking about how he wanted some of his clothing put away and stopped when she saw the system running. It was embarrassingly opulent. He quickly plugged in the wifi as she watched him get her online. Rolling back in his chair, he pointed to the system with his open hands. “There you go, Baby. It doesn’t get any better than this.”

  She was clearly impressed. She sat down and began playing with it. He left it to her and went to the bedroom so she could work without worrying about his stuff.

  With restaurants, cafes, snack-bars and grocery shops aplenty in easy walking distance, food was never an issue. The apartment was fully furnished, aside from linen. Again, shops within walking distance covered every need. Everything in the apartment was obviously well used, but certainly better than nothing. As they were working away on their photographs that evening, Preston looked over at Angie and said aloud, “I didn’t notice dying, so how did I get to heaven? The only thing missing are the wings on your back.”

  She turned with a big smile, leaned over and kissed him. “Don’t be silly. We still have a lot of work to do. I’m betting our bicycles will not rest much in that lock-up downstairs.”

  Preston grinned. “Well then, we’ll have to play angels on wheels while the real angels guarding us will never get much rest for their wings.”

  Part 3 – Of Children and Angels

  Chapter 23

  It was time for a bit more mundane work.

  Besides, Preston had not been this close to the old POMCUS site since coming back to the Netherlands. It was a short ride east across Heerlen, through Landgraaf and then Abdissenbosch. They turned left along the primary northerly route, which offered fine bike paths. The entrance to the golf course was just visible down the road where they turned off into the woods. This took them to a road running right along the Dutch-German border.

  Preston wanted to see the site from the backside first. While he never was sure what the company was doing digging into the old slag heap from the ancient coal mining days, he saw how a great mound had been reduced from his military days.

  They followed the route around to the north side of the complex, and then turned left along the main road. In large cities like this, bike paths were everywhere and very well maintained with their own traffic lights. The road curved around back south and they could see the large metal warehouses up on the high flat ground. From what he could tell, Preston realized this particular site had been expanded considerably, and reasoned some of the equipment from the sites that they closed had been brought here.

  They turned left again and climbed up to follow the street along the fence line. Preston had heard the entire operation throughout the Netherlands had been turned over to Dutch contractors. There was not an American unifo
rm anywhere, just armed Dutch guards and other functionaries.

  The administrative offices had been moved, but the main gate was in the same place. There was an old guard sitting there just outside the door of the shack enjoying the breeze. Preston rolled up as close as he dared.

  “Hallo!” He waved at the guard.

  The man waved back with the typical Dutch friendliness, but said nothing.

  “I used to work here!”

  The guard perked up and stood, moving to the corner of the gatehouse. His accent was very thick. “That would be a long time ago. The Americans left it to us ten years ago.”

  “So I heard. A lot of things have changed.” Preston agreed.

  “Ja. Do you know they finally closed the old Schinnen Camp?”

  Preston was a little surprised. “I knew they had reduced its status, but I wasn’t aware they were closing it. They had spent so very much money fixing the place up.” He pushed his bike a meter or two closer.

  “Ja. DSM is trying to find someone else to rent it. But the other NATO allies would not let the Americans just walk away from this area. So the made them keep a reduce section up at old Brüggen – Javelin Barracks, I think they call it now.” The old man was enjoying the conversation.

  “That would be just over on the German side. I remember we used to use a firing range up there in the woods near Herkenbosch.”

  The old man nodded. “Ja, I worked here long enough to remember that. Now the few American troops could almost walk there from the airbase. It’s just a few American MPs and some civilians. The Brits offered them some space when they deactivated some units. Pretty soon there won’t be nearly so many NATO folks around. Ah, we don’t worry about no Ruskies. We trade with them now.” The old man laughed heartily.

  “Thanks for your time, sir. We have some other places to visit.” Preston waved. The old man seemed just a bit disappointed it was over so soon.

  They rode back down the street to the main road and turned left. As they approached the high plateau, Preston noticed there was not a trace of the old mining buildings at the JHQ, formerly called AFCENT HQ. The old AFCENT International School, previously a collection of single-story prefab buildings strung together, was now a huge multi-story building and a sign said AFNORTH.

  They had been stopping to take photos all morning, but carefully avoided aiming the cameras at any of the military structures. There were plenty of other interesting shots. That included the ancient cable wheel removed from the top of the mineshaft and mounted as a monument in a small park right beside the main gate.

  Angie was curious. “I don’t remember what happened. Did the mines just play out?”

  Preston snorted. “No. The Americans and their ultra-cheap strip mining put the Dutch State Mines out of business. With the unions here and all those safety regulations against our terribly unsafe operations and hideous earth scars, we undercut you guys and put thousands of people out of work. Those were bad times in the Benelux.”

  She pursed her lips. “So that’s why DSM does no mining at all, just chemicals and stuff.”

  “Yeah. They still own all those mine camps and NATO was a good paying renter. Those days are about gone, it seems. We had a huge number of supporting operations all over the Netherlands, not just the POMCUS sites. It was extravagant for a long time – missile sites, life support services, all sorts of secret communications bunkers. I only heard about the places we had people. About all that’s left now are the places directly involved in NATO coordination activity itself.”

  Preston pointed out how the original coal train path was now a bike path. They decided to follow it around to Schinnen. It was a long quiet ride through Hoensbroek. At some places the route was simply gone, at other places it was an actual street, but there weren’t that many detours. It wound down around the picturesque village of Terschuren with its beautifully kept ancient stone cottages. They took lots of pictures there.

  Eventually they got back on the route that went through some woods, then alongside a sand and gravel operation used by Dutch Rail, very close to the tracks. Then the path turned and required they run alongside the built up highway where it bridged over the rail line, cross over the top, and dove through some foliage. It closely paralleled the railroad. On the other side, the trail continued. By that time, the landscape had been changed so much that the original route disappeared. However, a fine wooded path remained along much of it and they took what was available.

  Part of it was elevated above the surrounding terrain. The last section running along the backside of Schinnen Mine was inaccessible, thickly grown over with trees and shrubs. It had been just barely possible to crawl through it twenty years before, but was impassable altogether now. They turned and followed the main route toward what had been the one gate into the old complex. While a bike path on the left ran along between the fence and train tracks on the south side of the site, they stopped at the gate and gazed into the now abandoned facility.

  Except for the original headquarters building and one or two other structures, the place was all new buildings, now vacant. The duck pond was overgrown with weeds, but the ducks were still there. It was actually the first sediment pond from the water treatment system. The water passed from there back under the roadway to a wooded fish pond. Preston decided he’d seen enough and they turned to go back.

  Chapter 24

  At the crossing, they turned right and promptly dismounted their bikes. They climbed up on the tiny train platform. In due time, a small train arrived headed south to Heerlen.

  They arrived at the station just a couple hundred meters from their apartment. The train stopped next to the large open parking plaza on the south end of the station. Angie was walking her bike in the direction of their apartment.

  “Wait,” Preston caught her.

  She stopped and looked back. He motioned her to follow.

  “We aren’t going home yet. I wanna have lunch at a particular place.” She raised her eyebrows in a half smile and humored him. They rode about a half-kilometer back up the tracks on the south side to a busy traffic circle, following it around to cross under the autobahn. As they rode down the bike path, she saw up on a small hill to their right a large building with a toucan sign perched high up on a pole. She looked at it, then back at Preston. He was grinning broadly as the slowed to enter the drive on the right.

  The Van Der Valk Hotel had plenty of bicycle parking and was quite busy. As they climbed the stairs to the buffet lounge, Preston told her how often he and his coworkers had eaten there. Aside from redecorating and refurbishing, little had changed. It was still an opulent spread and not a bad price. They eventually found open seats at a table in one of the side dining areas opened to accommodate the crowd.

  After a few stories, he was silent a moment as he watched her.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “You’ve been pretty quiet today,” he observed.

  “This was your day to reminisce. It’s all fascinating, but so completely foreign to me. It’s part of what makes you so exotic and interesting.” She beamed at him.

  “Tell me about exotic, my chocolate redheaded lover, with the sexy little athletic body.”

  She blushed and that girlish giggle slipped past her lips, forcing her to cover her mouth in the middle of chewing.

  He went on, “I’m very glad you don’t flaunt it. Leave it to their imagination; it’s all mine.”

  She continued laughing, fanning herself with one hand and covering her mouth with the other. It took a moment for her to finally say, “No one has ever talked to me that way. I love it, but it’s hard to know what to say back.”

  “Just enjoy it, Babe; get used to it. I’m going back for some dessert. Need anything?”

  “No, I’ve already had too much. This place is wonderful.”

  Preston wandered off toward the buffet as her eyes followed him. She half wondered if she should have tried to follow him, remembering the words of Mr. Venkman. Were they still a
t risk?

  Suddenly her eyes focused on a woman’s face. She and Preston had been sitting back near the far corner of the little overflow dining area and the woman walked past the opening in the main area. Angie raised her hand to her face. She wasn’t sure why, but something about that face made her very nervous.

  As soon as the woman disappeared from her line of sight, Angie tried to act her most casual self as she rose and began looking for Preston. She spotted him among the desserts, apparently unable to make up his mind. As he reached out to pick up a piece of mixed fruit vlaai, one of the shallow flat Dutch pies, she walked up very close to him and spoke quietly.

  “Put it in a doggie bag. I think we have company.” She then placed a hand on his shoulder as she turned to scan the room again. She didn’t see the woman in the crowd.

  Preston kept his cool, noticed where she was looking and placed his slice of pie in a plastic container from the stack placed there for the purpose. Then he turned, took her hand with his free one, and walked out the front door. Outside he remained calm as they descended the stairs, then turned and walked around the building the opposite end of where Angie had been searching. He pulled from his pocket a thin plastic shopping bag and dropped the desert into it so he could sling it across the handlebars. They found their bikes and casually rolled back out the side entrance and disappeared rather quickly down an alternate route for bicycles only.

  When they were more or less alone, he asked, “So, tell me what you saw.”

  “I can’t be sure. I was just sitting there thinking about Mr. Venkman’s advice to stay together when she walked across my line of sight. The face was vaguely familiar, but not someone I actually recognized. I can’t place her, but it made me very nervous.”

  “I had almost forgotten about that.”

  The path turned into the woods. They rode a few more meters, and then he put up his hand. With is finger on his lips, he dismounted and stood to one side of the trail. She copied his action. They stood silently for a few minutes, looking through the trees back down the path across the open field. After a few minutes of not seeing anything unusual, he began examining their bikes closely. Eventually he was satisfied nothing had been added to them; he motioned her to remount and did the same. They rode off, crossing a small brook, winding through the trees to another main road. Crossing back under the autobahn, they headed home.