Every word of this story is true.
I was sitting at my partner's desk, taking advantage of his absence to play with his Apple computer, when I was startled to see a man standing in the doorway. He was Asian, about fifty and he was wearing an elegant dark suit.
"Do you work here?" he asked. "Is this the top floor?"
I asked if he was looking for the empty office that was for rent downstairs.
"No, no, we've seen it," he said. "Do you work in this office? What do you do here? Tell me, can you get to the roof from your office?" He started down the hall towards my office in the back, and the fire escape out my window.
I left the computer and rushed into the hall. A younger man was coming up from the third floor, and he joined his colleague on the landing with a deferential nod.
"Can you get to the roof from this office?" the older man repeated.
"Why do you want to know?" I asked.
The man paused and looked around. My office did not command an aura of great authority. There was a wall full of Soviet propaganda posters and a pool toy in the shape of a full-size torso of Richard Nixon*seated by my desk.
Still, my visitor knew he was on my turf and he stepped back into the hall.
"We were thinking of renting the office downstairs, but if we do, we might want to trade space with you. Would you be interested in that? You see, we need to have access to the roof. What do you do in this office?"
I was a little too stunned to avoid answering his question. "We're consultants, political and fundraising consultants," I said.
"Do you work for Republicans?" the visitor asked. "No, Democrats." I replied.
"Ah." That explained the decor. "Would you be interested in switching offices?"
I felt that now was the time for my visitor to answer a question or two of mine. "Wait a minute," I said. "Where do you work?"
"Thai embassy. You see, our embassy is in a residential neighborhood and we can't put antennas on the roof for our communication back home. The zoning for the area doesn't allow it. We need an office with access to a roof where we can put our communications equipment. Can we look at the roof here?"
I thought about what was involved in getting to the fire escape from my office--a hunt in my jar of pens, letter openers, scissors and rubber bands for a key to the security lock, then the Rosemary Woods maneuver of holding the window open while fiddling with the lock, opening it, sliding open the window bars and pushing aside the gate while the air conditioning repairman (the usual traffic for this passage) squeezed through.
The alternative was to go through the kitchen of the restaurant on the ground floor, out into the alley and then up the fire escape. I would send most callers down that way, and I was about to do the same with these characters, when the building's real estate agent emerged from the downstairs office and chirped up in my direction.
"Oh hi, can these people go through your window and look at the roof?"
I gave her a look that was intended to suggest, "have you perhaps wondered just why these foreign gentlemen want to construct communications equipment on the roof of a downtown office building within range of the White House and most embassies?"
The real estate agent giggled. "I didn't want to bother Suzanne down in the restaurant, and I thought it would be easier to go through your window."
"Oh, I suppose so," I said to the flustered realtor. I was getting curious to see how far this incident would go, and besides, the crisp and determined gentleman I was beginning to think of as "the colonel" was still trying to negotiate with me.
He barked a command at his young assistant who eagerly fell in by my side. It was a cold February morning and the man was wearing a cheap blue blazer. He began to resemble one of the officers who gets killed in the first ten minutes of Star Trek as we busied ourselves with the process of getting access to the fire escape. I finally managed to clear the path and the young man disappeared up the stair.
"Tell me again why you need to get to the roof," I asked as I moved the colonel out of my office and back to the now considerably warmer hallway. He told me another version of the story, stressing his embassy's problem conforming to restrictive neighborhood zoning laws and how people who worked there needed to monitor TV and radio shows from back home, presumably things like soap operas and soccer matches. Fifteen minutes went by while the colonel's aide did whatever it was he was doing on the roof.
"What department do you work for in the embassy," I asked casually.
"Political," he said with perfect nonchalance, as his assistant finally came down the fire escape stairs and stumbled through the window. Then he nodded in approval of whatever he had seen upstairs, and the colonel spoke to me firmly.
"We would be very interested in changing offices with you, and if you're paying less for this space you can pay that price for the office downstairs." That office was considerably larger, and even had a little kitchen.
"I'll tell you what," I said. "When my partner comes back I'll discuss it with him. Give me your number and I'll call you. Do you have a card?"
"Oh no," said the real estate agent. "They can't give you their number. They work in an office where they can't make calls."
Of course not, I acknowledged, and we agreed that if I decided we'd like to make the deal I'd get in touch with the agent. After the men had left, I phoned my partner at home and told him about the visitors. He knows a few people who know a few people, and he made a few calls.
"People must think Americans are pretty stupid," my partner was told by his informed sources. They didn't think the Thai spies would be back, and as far as I know, they haven't been. But I did wonder whether the guy in the cheap blue suit installed anything on the roof during his visit, particularly since soon afterwards there was such a steady stream of "servicemen" supposedly "fixing" the units up there.
I'm not paranoid. Although I do believe in coincidences, as the story of Abbie Hoffman's desk proves. But that will have to wait until the next Tale from the Propaganda Factory.
