BMW 7 Series - a Spy Story.

Enter the assassins...

There was an anomaly in the system. Government action often produces unusual market reactions. In the case of the Northern VA commute to government jobs in DC and close environs it was all about HOV lanes on HWY 66 and Beltway 495.

The government said you could only travel in the HOV lanes if you had at least three in your vehicle, so spontaneously from whole cloth emerged a market in single passengers, bodies who made up the three who rode along to the Pentagon drop-off. The majority of the commute was completed in an expedited manner, and for the “third man” it was a free ride at rapid pace to the hub of all government jobs.

Pentagon Station.

At the other end of the equation were the endless “slug lines” at the Pentagon’s massive parking lot to return home to the suburbs at the end of the day, where the govt workers lined up according to destination - signs posted - for the cruising vehicles to pick up their third passenger. I’ve got a golden ticket. A drama played out every single day in the life of the commuting government worker. Cruising for action. Waiting in line. Placing your bets - time versus money. Going home.

Interestingly enough and contrary to opposing arguments that without government regulation there would be chaos, the opposite was the case. The HOV cruise commute was controlled not by legislation but by human action. By custom. And unless you were terminally stupid you understood the basic rules by the third ride. Or you became known as stupid and the driver always had right of refusal. Voluntary regulation according to property rights.

The free market did not cause chaos, it cured chaos.

Rule One: Never talk to your driver. You are a body in the car to expedite his/her commute to work. If he/she feels chatty, you have the option to respond. Otherwise, shut up.

Two: Never wear too much cologne or perfume. You are a guest getting a free ride. No one wants to smell you. Don’t dare eat anything or have a flatulent issue.

Three: Sit in the back and be invisible. Wait for your driver to engage you if he/she wants. Never turn up your music on your headphones (no earbuds those days). Be silent. No one wants to hear your “jams.”

Four: Get in quickly and only say “thank you” upon entering. You are not starting a friendship. You are getting a free ride to work.

I first observed this strange anomaly when I moved to Haverhill Drive in Springfield, VA, where there was a corner serviced by a DC Metrobus to the Pentagon that cost a few bucks every day, but whence you could observe a casual hierarchy of arrivals should one of the commuter cars pull up and show one or two fingers indicating how many passengers were required to make up the magic three for the HOV lane and a fast commute into town. We all stood at the stop…

(this is literally it)

…and without getting in a line we each knew who was next. No one would jump ahead of anyone else. It was unheard of. Human action. Based on reciprocity. If you were an ass, you would be shunned. A pariah. So everyone was much more finely tuned to the unwritten social custom because no one wanted to face ostracism for violation.

On a government salary you could save a good deal of money each month participating in this spontaneous human action while getting to work just as quickly.

Later when we moved to Eagle Rock Ln. near the Fairfax County Parkway there was a designated parking lot near Hooes Road by the Methodist Church and the last remaining 19th century schoolhouse in the area. You could park your car in the lot and join a line to be picked up in an orderly fashion by vehicles cruising for one or two passengers to satisfy the three person requirement for the HOV lane and a ten minute (free) ride to the Pentagon versus a 30-45 minute (paid) drive.

It was the same deal as Haverhill: Smile, wait to be accepted by the driver (notorious motor-mouths, perfume addicts, weirdos, farters, etc. were waved away). Get in and shut up. Wait to be engaged if the driver feels like it. Otherwise be thankful - at least in my case - to save three or so bucks each day. I had a young family and a small salary.

She drove me to the slug line parking lot each morning, dropped me off, and went back to the kids. I got in line, waiting for my ride. If it was a disaster of a day, with no one pulling up for bodies, there was the 18 bus line that would stop just at the edge of the parking lot. “That’ll be three bucks.”

Those were funny times: I worked as Dr. Paul’s foreign policy advisor. In those days - and the preceding days - big on the Hill was the early declaration of war on Russia called the “Magnitsky Act,” which was a fraudulent piece of legislation appealing to neocons and liberals purporting to “take Russia to task” on “human rights violations.” It was at the time the most blatant use of “human rights” as a weapon to attract the left-liberals to the neocon game of regime change. And it worked very well.

We were opposed to this early “Nuland-ite” regime-change operation against Russia and in the Constitutional course of my duties as an advisor to a Member of Congress - a co-equal branch of government - I performed the same tasks as those in the executive branch: I met with my counterparts in the Russian diplomatic corps to learn more about Magnitsky. We did not oppose it because Russia opposed it, but because it was horribly interventionist, confrontational, and bad for America, and at the time we could clearly see that it could lead to unnecessary direct conflict between Russia and the US (were we right or what?).

(There is another part of this story that I’ve since redacted. I am not ready to write on the clashes with the dark forces in the exec branch over this. Not yet.)

All this is to say that once upon a time: In the midst of the dangerous ferment, a SECRET WORLD where you do not know who is acting as who and how far the shadow world (that I understood) would go - I was slouching in the slug line waiting for a free ride to work when practically the most beautiful car I’d ever seen pulled up just as it was my turn. It was a 7 series BMW of very late model. These kinds of cars never condescend to share riders.

I opened the back door as was the custom and got inside.

In the front seats were two stunning women of darker Asiatic features speaking Russian to each other. Neither said a word to me or condescended to look back at me in the back seat. They were adorned from neck to toe in miraculous multi-thousand dollar sable coats and appeared each to be at least eight feet tall.

The seats were immaculate white leather as from the face of the moon. Riding on air. Not of this world.

They continued to speak Russian throughout the commute, without pause.

I do not speak Russian at all. But enveloped in the luxury back seat of the BMW Series 7 at the apex of my conflict with the deep state on Russia I could clearly understand that these were two Siberian Amazon assassins tasked perhaps by Russia itself to whisk me off amidst doubts to see whether I was “on their side” or on the “three letter agencies’” side.

I was sure they had machine guns under their seats, as was the case 16 years earlier in Albania.

So there I sat, Walter Mitty, with fantasies of assassination or Siberia. A secret airfield and a prop plane. Perhaps an island. To a fever pitch with each guttural Russian sentence delivered staccato as a machine gun from the front seat of the mother’s milk BMW Series 7 space ship.

Just as sweat was pouring from my brow and my clammy hands grasped my pathetic morning read-out for the day, my Amazon Russian assassins turned toward the slug line at the Pentagon. They stopped and I opened the door, as was custom.

I left without saying a word beyond, “thank you.”

They did not even pause their Russian conversation to look in the rear-view mirror as I alighted the glorious kocsi. I was nothing.