Friday 16 May 2008

Pentagon City – This Column Will Self Destruct in Five Seconds. . .

The call has come. It’s time for me to go into active duty. I’m going to Pentagon City in Washington DC and that can only mean one thing; it’s time to activate my secret agent status.

Of course, in telling you this I expect you to keep my secret. If you don’t, I may have to make you disappear to protect national security.

Peter’s mother ship for work is headquartered in Virginia, a couple of subway stops from downtown Washington DC. Every couple of years we go back to the mother ship for Peter to meet with his editors and check in while they treat us like royalty.

And while my poor man works all day, I wander the streets of DC, soaking up all the history, playing the corporate wife, and this time, in Pentagon City, probably to save the country from something dire.

Why else would we go to Pentagon City? Maybe they wanted to keep us safer on this visit. The last visit to DC turned into a White House evacuation- while we were in the building.

May 11, 2005. We’d scored a tour of the White House Press Room because the White House correspondent from Peter’s work force graciously used her pull to get us a short tour.

So there we were, in the White House Press Room. The press podium was at the front of a very small room where such weighty and world-changing decisions and speeches had taken place.

Our guide told me I could go stand on the podium. What? Stand where so many presidents have stood before? Where so many White House Press Secretaries have parried and evaded questions about weapons of mass destruction?

I was behind the podium before I finished the thought. I touched the wood, eyed the room, and wondered about the history that had taken place right where I was standing. Kennedy stood there. Reagan stood there. Clinton denied stuff there, and George W. still makes a fool of himself there.

To say it was cool would not be doing it justice.

But when we left the press room and walked towards the front of the building to exit, we found ourselves confronted by men with guns, telling us to run, run RUN!

We stood there like idiots. . .wha. . .? Was this a joke?

The press room emptied and people with cameras, phones and microphones were busily dialling numbers to find out what was going on.

We were shoved out the White House gates in confusion. Men on foot and horseback, armed with guns chased us across the park to the other side of the square.

To say it was chaos defines understatement. But the presidential cavalcade rushed out of the gates with three rumoured first ladies. W was on a bike ride, and Cheney was probably hiding in one of his giant man-safes.

F-16s flew into the air three seconds after we were out the gates and running across the park. One woman screamed into her phone ‘Not again! Is everyone out?’.

Surreal much?

As the news hit that an errant plane had flown into the no-no zone, stresses calmed.

I watched the snipers on the roof and turned to Peter.

“This is the best White House tour EVER!” He rolled his eyes at me.

So this trip, I don’t need the White House. It couldn’t be nearly that good the second time around.

What kind of excitement do you think I could get up to in Pentagon City?