Part 2
The receptionist in the embassy lobby called to a male member of staff to help her with her bags. Ambassador Lambert wanted to see the new attaché as soon as she came in. He was not the Chief de Mission, referred to as the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in diplomatic terms, but a resident ambassador who she would assist. She arrived in his office with her luggage and the diplomatic packages in tow. He got up from behind his desk and extended a hand.
"Ms McDuff, welcome to Washington. Please sit down."
Feeling important she sat back in her chair and even crossed her legs. The senior diplomat leaned forward with his elbows on the desk. When he spoke, his deep voice was a cross between a schoolteacher who was annoyed with her for not doing her homework, and a construction worker who just received his pay and discovered that it was short a day’s pay.
"Let me be frank. You are the wrong person for this job; but because Harriet got herself pregnant and we are forced to give her maternity leave, Kingston send you over here to me."
Avril-Dawn stopped breathing as she absorbed his rudeness. Diplomats may be a lot of things, but never rude, that is why they were diplomats. She had heard embassy members refer to him as the spiteful John Crow but she now got a glimpse why. Ambassador Gladstone deCordova Lambert, "Gladdy" to his friends, was a Panamanian Jamaican. He was born and spent the first ten years of his life in the Isthmus before his father retired from the Canal Zone and returned with his family to Jamaica. Lambert was considered valuable as a diplomat as he understood the Latin American psyche. He had carved out a niche for himself in the U.S.A., and was forever shunting between Florida, New York and Washington D.C., sometimes at the invitation of the US government, to handle unnamed delicate issues. His secretary never knew how to schedule his diary, as he was prone to disappear for days at a time. The Ministry had to tolerate him because he really "knew" everyone and his negotiation skills had reaped lucrative deals for the country over the past 15 years. Although he was always impeccably dressed, the high life had taken a toll on his good looks and he was obese from too many city banquets and barbecue weekends on his friends' ranches. The ambassador started speaking again, and Avril-Dawn snapped out of her thoughts and gasped as she took a deep gulp of air. He did not seem to notice. Instead he was shaking his head perplexed as if a pickpocket had entered the High Commission and made off with his wallet, but no-one could tell him who.
"Those guys seem to be drinking too much rum down there and don't realise the delicate nature of these negotiations,” He said. “Ms McDuff, this is no rubber stamp protocol. The negotiations over the next week will influence our national security and economic earning ability for decades to come. The Americans have been sailing through the pacific hawking this deal. An advance team is already in Southern Africa sussing out the situation so they know how to approach the situation.”
He looked at Avril-Dawn as he rubbed his hands together. She felt uncomfortable in the silence where all she could hear is the faint sound of a radio talk show programme. She could almost feel the sensitive tentacles of his crafty brain searching her space, sussing her out. Lambert seemed to make a decision as his voice lost the disapproving tone, and became low and secret as if they were now conspirators.
"I been watching them…studying them and I believe that we can do a thing that will carry our agenda. We just need to think on our feet."
Avril-Dawn edged in a statement.
"But Ambassador Lambert, the Minister and the Permanent Secretary were very clear on how they wanted to proceed…I have all the documents prepared…." He dismissed her statement with a wave of his hand.
"Good! All that paper will look good when we arrive in the meeting room. What Kingston does not know is this."
He took up a photograph from his desk and passed it across the polished surface to her. Avril-Dawn picked it up and looked at it. It was some kind of satellite image of the island of Jamaica and the waters around it.
"It looks like a map, Sir." She said.
"Of course it is a map. But what does it show?"
Avril-Dawn looked a few seconds more and then defeated, shook her head. The ambassador seemed a bit disappointed.
"Well I guess it is not your fault. I could take copies of this photo and use it to wallpaper the embassy, even all over the Capitol, and 99.99 per cent of all the persons who saw it would not have a clue how to read this map. That is the rotten state of diplomacy today. The profession is not keeping up with technology."
He got up and walked to Avril-Dawn's side of the desk and pointed at the photo. "That is a satellite image of the state of the atmosphere above Jamaica on June 21, 1991. The water vapour content has been removed, that is why the sea area is white. Landmasses are in grey, and the atmosphere has been broken down to reveal the different levels. The troposphere, stratosphere, and ionosphere are blue, yellow and red respectively. The exosphere is negligible. Where the composition of all three is dense we get a brown colouration."
"So what is this purple area?" asked Avril-Dawn.
"I see that you are thinking. That represents the ionosphere and troposphere without a defining element in the stratosphere." Avril-Dawn still looked confused, so he continued.
"In other words, there is a hole in the ozone layer the size of the parish of Hanover right above the Pedro Cays."
Avril-Dawn snatched up the photo and turned it over. This information was too incredible for her to believe right away. The only ozone hole of any consequence that she heard of was somewhere over the Pacific. A rubber stamp marked FBI Classified, labelled the back of the photo and beside it was a smaller stamp that read, Humberto Labs, Tucson Arizona with the date June 21, 1991. She felt her chest tighten within her as she decided that it must be true. How did Lambert get this? She looked at him and spoke in a whisper.
"Sir, why isn't this news?"
He ran his tongue over his teeth and answered her in a toneless way, giving her a remarkable story as if she had asked him whether it had rained that morning.
"Ridley Humberto has no interest in today's ozone layer. He is a scientist who is intent on getting the Nobel Prize for finding out what air composition dinosaurs breathed. In experiments to reconfigure what the earth's atmosphere might have been 200 million years ago. This is something he discovered this quite by accident. He sent it over to the Meteorological Office where it was intercepted by guys from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who paid Ridley a little visit in Tucson. By the time the Pentagon got involved, the Fed had already found someone to offer Ridley a nice little funding package for his research if he allowed them to "borrow" some files that they were interested in. Remember now, back in 1991 the Republican Party was in the White House and "global warming" was just beginning to get mainstream notice. Then, as now, that administration was nearly alone against an international effort to accelerate cut backs on carbon dioxide emissions. This was dramatically demonstrated earlier this year when they rejected the Kyoto protocol on climate change."
Avril-Dawn's felt her head spinning.
“What are we going to do, Sir?" She asked. His answer was of no help.
"We use this information to our favour." He glanced at his watch; it was nearly six in the evening. "We have four days to negotiate and sign a treaty that will be favourable to us. I need you to be in peak condition, so the driver will take you to your hotel now to get some rest. Tomorrow I want you here at 8:00a.m. sharp. Listen to the driver well. He will give you directions and you are to find your own way here.
He stood up.
"You are in the big time now A.D; and I trust you to measure up to it."
The receptionist in the embassy lobby called to a male member of staff to help her with her bags. Ambassador Lambert wanted to see the new attaché as soon as she came in. He was not the Chief de Mission, referred to as the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in diplomatic terms, but a resident ambassador who she would assist. She arrived in his office with her luggage and the diplomatic packages in tow. He got up from behind his desk and extended a hand.
"Ms McDuff, welcome to Washington. Please sit down."
Feeling important she sat back in her chair and even crossed her legs. The senior diplomat leaned forward with his elbows on the desk. When he spoke, his deep voice was a cross between a schoolteacher who was annoyed with her for not doing her homework, and a construction worker who just received his pay and discovered that it was short a day’s pay.
"Let me be frank. You are the wrong person for this job; but because Harriet got herself pregnant and we are forced to give her maternity leave, Kingston send you over here to me."
Avril-Dawn stopped breathing as she absorbed his rudeness. Diplomats may be a lot of things, but never rude, that is why they were diplomats. She had heard embassy members refer to him as the spiteful John Crow but she now got a glimpse why. Ambassador Gladstone deCordova Lambert, "Gladdy" to his friends, was a Panamanian Jamaican. He was born and spent the first ten years of his life in the Isthmus before his father retired from the Canal Zone and returned with his family to Jamaica. Lambert was considered valuable as a diplomat as he understood the Latin American psyche. He had carved out a niche for himself in the U.S.A., and was forever shunting between Florida, New York and Washington D.C., sometimes at the invitation of the US government, to handle unnamed delicate issues. His secretary never knew how to schedule his diary, as he was prone to disappear for days at a time. The Ministry had to tolerate him because he really "knew" everyone and his negotiation skills had reaped lucrative deals for the country over the past 15 years. Although he was always impeccably dressed, the high life had taken a toll on his good looks and he was obese from too many city banquets and barbecue weekends on his friends' ranches. The ambassador started speaking again, and Avril-Dawn snapped out of her thoughts and gasped as she took a deep gulp of air. He did not seem to notice. Instead he was shaking his head perplexed as if a pickpocket had entered the High Commission and made off with his wallet, but no-one could tell him who.
"Those guys seem to be drinking too much rum down there and don't realise the delicate nature of these negotiations,” He said. “Ms McDuff, this is no rubber stamp protocol. The negotiations over the next week will influence our national security and economic earning ability for decades to come. The Americans have been sailing through the pacific hawking this deal. An advance team is already in Southern Africa sussing out the situation so they know how to approach the situation.”
He looked at Avril-Dawn as he rubbed his hands together. She felt uncomfortable in the silence where all she could hear is the faint sound of a radio talk show programme. She could almost feel the sensitive tentacles of his crafty brain searching her space, sussing her out. Lambert seemed to make a decision as his voice lost the disapproving tone, and became low and secret as if they were now conspirators.
"I been watching them…studying them and I believe that we can do a thing that will carry our agenda. We just need to think on our feet."
Avril-Dawn edged in a statement.
"But Ambassador Lambert, the Minister and the Permanent Secretary were very clear on how they wanted to proceed…I have all the documents prepared…." He dismissed her statement with a wave of his hand.
"Good! All that paper will look good when we arrive in the meeting room. What Kingston does not know is this."
He took up a photograph from his desk and passed it across the polished surface to her. Avril-Dawn picked it up and looked at it. It was some kind of satellite image of the island of Jamaica and the waters around it.
"It looks like a map, Sir." She said.
"Of course it is a map. But what does it show?"
Avril-Dawn looked a few seconds more and then defeated, shook her head. The ambassador seemed a bit disappointed.
"Well I guess it is not your fault. I could take copies of this photo and use it to wallpaper the embassy, even all over the Capitol, and 99.99 per cent of all the persons who saw it would not have a clue how to read this map. That is the rotten state of diplomacy today. The profession is not keeping up with technology."
He got up and walked to Avril-Dawn's side of the desk and pointed at the photo. "That is a satellite image of the state of the atmosphere above Jamaica on June 21, 1991. The water vapour content has been removed, that is why the sea area is white. Landmasses are in grey, and the atmosphere has been broken down to reveal the different levels. The troposphere, stratosphere, and ionosphere are blue, yellow and red respectively. The exosphere is negligible. Where the composition of all three is dense we get a brown colouration."
"So what is this purple area?" asked Avril-Dawn.
"I see that you are thinking. That represents the ionosphere and troposphere without a defining element in the stratosphere." Avril-Dawn still looked confused, so he continued.
"In other words, there is a hole in the ozone layer the size of the parish of Hanover right above the Pedro Cays."
Avril-Dawn snatched up the photo and turned it over. This information was too incredible for her to believe right away. The only ozone hole of any consequence that she heard of was somewhere over the Pacific. A rubber stamp marked FBI Classified, labelled the back of the photo and beside it was a smaller stamp that read, Humberto Labs, Tucson Arizona with the date June 21, 1991. She felt her chest tighten within her as she decided that it must be true. How did Lambert get this? She looked at him and spoke in a whisper.
"Sir, why isn't this news?"
He ran his tongue over his teeth and answered her in a toneless way, giving her a remarkable story as if she had asked him whether it had rained that morning.
"Ridley Humberto has no interest in today's ozone layer. He is a scientist who is intent on getting the Nobel Prize for finding out what air composition dinosaurs breathed. In experiments to reconfigure what the earth's atmosphere might have been 200 million years ago. This is something he discovered this quite by accident. He sent it over to the Meteorological Office where it was intercepted by guys from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who paid Ridley a little visit in Tucson. By the time the Pentagon got involved, the Fed had already found someone to offer Ridley a nice little funding package for his research if he allowed them to "borrow" some files that they were interested in. Remember now, back in 1991 the Republican Party was in the White House and "global warming" was just beginning to get mainstream notice. Then, as now, that administration was nearly alone against an international effort to accelerate cut backs on carbon dioxide emissions. This was dramatically demonstrated earlier this year when they rejected the Kyoto protocol on climate change."
Avril-Dawn's felt her head spinning.
“What are we going to do, Sir?" She asked. His answer was of no help.
"We use this information to our favour." He glanced at his watch; it was nearly six in the evening. "We have four days to negotiate and sign a treaty that will be favourable to us. I need you to be in peak condition, so the driver will take you to your hotel now to get some rest. Tomorrow I want you here at 8:00a.m. sharp. Listen to the driver well. He will give you directions and you are to find your own way here.
He stood up.
"You are in the big time now A.D; and I trust you to measure up to it."
