"Flashback - Episode 7. Stern words on terror." Wednesday, September 1st:
I made my way out to the front of the hotel and proceeded towards were my bike was parked in the car park that adjoined the hotel. I was traveling light, but even so, I had with me a large backpack, a hard black plastic, egg-shaped top-box, much like a Samsonite case, my bike helmet, a heavily armored bike jacket and two 2 litre bottles of water to ward off dehydration. Although the spot were I had parked the bike was not exactly far, with all of this clobber and after two days on a liquid diet, I was struggling with the weight.
The solution was to take the heaviest item, the big black egg-shaped top-box, and leave it tucked behind the base of the large Palm tree growing just off to the side of the walkway. Then, once I had picked up the bike, I would come back and reclaim it. Lighter, I carried on into the car park.
In keeping with the scale of the hotel and to accommodate both guests and day visitors, the car park was a huge multi-story complex that appeared nearly as large as the hotel itself. After a fairly good impersonation of a lab rat finding its way around a maze for the first time, I located the bike and loaded up what luggage I had.
Next came pre-ride preparations: ear plugs in - check, map folded to show the next few hundred miles and placed in magnetic tank pouch - check, camera and mini tripod secured in easy-to-access location - check, visor clean - check, water accessible and secure - check, lightweight riding gloves selected and on - check.
Due to my little allergic rash, I added a few additional points: t-shirt sleeves secured in down position by pieces of cord from hotel curtains - check, additional long sleeved t-shirt tied around neck in scarf fashion - check, red and white print handkerchief secured around face in stagecoach hold-up style - check.
Viewing myself in the bike's wing mirror it was clear that I had succeeded in covering all but the top half of my face above the bridge of my nose, and with my full-face helmet on and with it's rather menacing silver mirrored visor shut, I had achieved total sun block. Granted, this was a strange look in 100F + heat amongst a population wearing as little as possible, but hey, who would notice another strange person in a strange city like this.
Fully protected, I pulled out of the car park into the vicious sun and made the half mile circuit around the hotel the a spot nearest to where I had left my top-box. I climbed off the bike and, without removing my helmet, walked back up the walkway towards the Palm tree.
On rounding the corner of the hotel next to the Palm tree I was immediately aware that there was something hideously wrong. Standing in a circle around my Palm tree were three hotel security guards, two policemen and two men in suits with stern expressions - one of whom I noticed had a small curly plastic wire running from beneath his shirt collar and up to his right ear. This one was either profoundly deaf and had an extremely high powered hearing aid, or he was one of those secret security types that ran around talking into their sleeves.
My top-box was clearly the centre of their attention, which meant that I was soon to be the centre of their attention. This bore the classic hallmarks of a 'suspicious baggage security alert' and, if I didn't handle the next few minutes carefully, I might see my wash bag, clothes and more importantly, my medication disappear up in smoke in a controlled explosion.
All seven men had their backs to me and were deep in conversation. I had learnt to never approach heavily armed and extremely nervous policemen many years before, after being involved in a particularly nasty bit of civil unrest in Berkeley up near San Francisco. It had involved three days of rioting, large numbers of riot police, the National Guard and a liberal sprinkling of CS gas, rubber bullets and baton charges. One night, armed with my camera and a complete lack of understanding of the seriousness of my predicament, I had ventured forth onto the streets of Berkeley and joined a group of students walking towards the epicentre of the trouble in People's Park. About 20 yards from the park gates we were surrounded on three sides by riot police who proceeded to charge us. I made my escape by diving for cover over a hedge and into the relative safety of a front garden.
However, having decide that my adventure was ill advised, I had to make my way back to the apartment through the riot police who had just charged us and, facing away from me, who had formed a line blocking the end of the street they had just stormed down. I would thus have to come up behind them and ask to be let through. No one seemed to notice as I approached their rear - possibly due to the cacophony of noise coming from the few thousand chanting students opposing them, the police helicopter circling above, the occasional shattering of a high velocity beer bottle and the constant bull horn requests for the crowd to cease and disperse. In retrospect, it should have come as no surprise when the policeman who I tapped on the shoulder turned around, jabbed me in the stomach with his baton, pushed me to the floor with his shield and shouted, "stay down" as if I were 100 yards away.
I was not taking any chances here in Las Vegas, despite the lack of a riot. I was about 12 feet away and well out of baton range.
"Can I help?” I ventured.
They all turned, virtually in unison, like a choreographed singing group like the Drifters, or, dressed as they were, the Village People, and it wouldn't have surprised me at all if they had burst into song, "Young man, is this your box here, I said young man you had better be clear, I said young man we can sense your fear, Don't you lie to us you weirdo...We love to beat on Mo...tor...bike...riders, we love to beat on Mo...tor...bike...riders...."
Instead, the larger of the two police officers simply said, "Please remove your helmet Sir"
I obeyed immediately, as I do when anyone with a large ugly firearm strapped to his or her waist asks me to do something.
"Sir, please remove the rest of your headgear". The inflection in his voice was the one cops use when they're standing behind their police cars for cover - it's message implicit, "do as we say or we will hurt you."
As I removed the red and white print handkerchief - similar in many respects to a Ghutra, or Arab headdress - from my heavily stubbled face and the t-shirt from around my neck, both of which in turn revealed a larger and larger expanse of angry red skin, I wondered where the attitude had come from all of a sudden.
I was British and thus totally trustworthy...plus we were allies. Surely during security or terrorist alerts the police would be on the look-out for suspicious characters, Johnnie foreigners possibly; unusual looking types; loners, possibly with Arab associations; people who stood out from the crowd.
"Has this object got anything to do with you Sir?" He pointed towards my top-box, which lay unopened exactly where I had left it.
"Yes, it's my top-box" I said in my best English accented English, hoping this would act as a kind of Masonic handshake and pull the situation back from Defcon 1 some more agreeable Defcon.
"Your top-box?"
"Yes, it's the box that sits on top of the rack on my bike. It's a piece of luggage". As I spoke, and to make my story seem somehow more believable, I mimed how the box sat on the bike. I needed some help here because although it looked like a top-box to me, to your average Las Vegas cop, a large, black, egg-shaped box with a bright red reflector/warning strip and no obvious handle, is going to look more like a standard issue Al Qaeda Atom bomb, than an aerodynamically superb, Italian designed piece of motorcycle luggage.
"Could you explain what it's it doing in its current position.”? I though he was going to give me the exact longitude and latitude, but he didn't.
"It's extremely heavy you see, so I left it there, out of the way, whilst I picked up my motorbike and rode back around". This was obvious enough and totally believable...to me that is.
"And why didn't you leave it in the hotel lobby with the concierge as other guests do?
I wasn't ready for this and had no answer other than the truth.
"I hadn't thought about that"
Clearly I wasn't doing too well and as a result no one seemed to be relaxing.
"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to come with me."
He walked towards me with an outstretched arm, guiding me away from the tree and towards a police car that was parked in front of the hotel lobby. As we moved away the hotel security guards began to unroll blue and white-stripped barrier tape with the words "Police Line" printed repeatedly along its length. They were cordoning off my top-box and I was being lead off to the Vegas version of Guantanamo Bay.
"Can I see some identification" Worryingly he had dropped the "Sir".
I patted my pockets to check for my wallet "No, sorry, it's in my wallet which is on my bike"
"You left your wallet on your bike?"
"Err, yes, it's in a bag though"
"You have another unattended bag in the vicinity?"
I was the one getting nervous now, as I realised that everything I said was reinforcing his view that I was a very real threat to homeland security.
"Err, yes. I left it there whilst I picked up the top-box"
"The one you left hidden behind the Palm tree, or another one you've left somewhere else?" His mind was clearly spinning out of control now.
"No, the one by the Plan tree. There is only one."
He opened the rear door of the police car and motioned for me to get in. With the door firmly shut he reached up to his chest pocket for his radio.
"Mike, you there, over?"
An electronic squawk came back "still here, over"
"Could you check the end of the path towards the car park for a motorcycle with a bag on it somewhere. It'll be on the corner in the red zone"
I wasn't sure about parking on a corner, but the red zone was a real no-no. I hadn't spotted it when I'd stopped, but if it true, they would have the break they were looking for...I would be a confirmed felon.
He leaned down to the slightly open window next to me. "Registration"
"It doesn't have one yet. It's..." He wasn't waiting for more of my perceived obfuscation.
"Make and colour?"
"Suzuki, blue"
"Mike, it's a blue Suzuki. No tags, over"
"Roger that"
The situation was getting a little crazy now, and if not diffused quickly would lead to the appearance of numerous scoop thirsty network news crews with prerequisite support helicopters, to say nothing of the possible arrival of all manner of heavily armed law enforcement officers, hot to participate directly in the war on terror and salivating at the thought of a clean shot.
I waited in silence. With the engine, and thus air conditioning, off, sitting on black plastic seats in a predominantly black car, on fresh black tarmac in 100F+ temperatures, is neither pleasant nor advisable. In this position it's easy to imagine how a dog feels as it slowly bakes to death in a shopping centre car park...or Korean fast food joint. In fact, in the rear of an American police car, with its high security metal cage blocking all means of escape, it's quite easy to actually imagine being a dog. Hopefully, my treatment would be better.
20 millilitres of sweat later the radio came back to life and a conversation as to whether or not to cordon off my bike ensued. Having decided against a second cordon, presumably based on the realisation that the red no parking zone at the rear of the New York New York Hotel was an unlikely terrorist target, I was released from the dog oven and lead back to the red zone where my bike was parked. Then, once my driving license and temporary registration documents had been thoroughly scrutinised, studied, examined and stared at very hard, and having demonstrated that my bag and bike where what they appeared to be, a bag and a bike and not a mobile rocket launcher, I was led back to the top-box cordon...which by now had attracted a small group of Japanese tourists.
It's strange, but where ever something is 'going down', you will find the ubiquitous group of Japanese tourists hovering in the background - a fact not lost on many Hollywood action movie directors. Strange also how perverse people are when faced by the prospect of being torn to shreds and deposited in a random splatter across the side of a hotel - logic says run, but most simply pull out a camera and phone a friend.
The cordon around the Palm tree was a little half hearted given the lack of objects in the vicinity around which to tie the barrier tape. There was the Palm tree itself, to the left a frail looking six foot sapling and to the right a thick clump of Agapanthus plants that were not sturdy enough to tie to, so the tape had been tangled around their bases a few times. This created a slightly sad and extremely low-slung triangular cordon that, given my top-box was on the far side of the Palm tree, did not actually embrace the object for which it was created.
As we arrived at the barrier tape, which at this point was about 6 inches off the ground, Mike - as a refer to him here but did not there - requested that I open the top-box. We stepped over the barrier tape and into the triangle leaving the remaining security detail, Japanese tourists and a new group who appeared to be hotel porters on a cigarette break, behind us.
As I knelt down in front of the top-box with the key in my hand, a thought suddenly shot through my mind accompanied by a sudden flush of blood to my face. It was the same breed of irrational last minute thought that screams through your mind when you're pulled over in a car by the police, or when younger, when your mum walks into your bedroom, 'Christ, is my insurance current', or 'Christ, did I hide those Playboys '. You're 99% certain that your fear is unfounded, but there is always that nagging doubt. On this occasion I was 99.9% certain that there was nothing incriminating inside the top-box, however there was still that .01% doubt.
With the contents massively compressed the lid sprang open to reveal my waterproofs sitting neatly on top. Fine. No problems.
"Please remove that top layer", said Mike with still no sign of a Sir.
I complied and lifted the waterproofs aside. Sitting there now was a neat line of easy-to-access pharmaceuticals nestling on a freshly laundered pair of hospital issue, 'do not remove' cotton trousers. This was not so fine.
"Is that your medication, Sir?" Hurrah, a Sir at last.
"Oh yes" and I explained.
"And the medical pants?"
"They were given to me by the hospital because I was admitted without any", which sounded strange out loud, but Mike didn't bat an eyelid.
"And you will be returning them?" which was more of an instruction than a question.
"Of course, I was on my way out there before all of this...err, happened" I lied.
Leaning over and with billy club in hand, Mike cautiously prodded the mound that my medication sat on. It gave under pressure, as clothing should. He turned to the others and shouted the all clear, before tuning back to me and launching into an exhaustive list of do's and anti-terrorism don'ts delivered with the countenance of a stern schoolteacher.
I was off the hook, save for a citation for parking in a red zone, which frankly was a major result given the circumstances. The barrier tape was removed, the crowd drifted away, disappointed no doubt by the absence of an explosion, and the uniforms and hearing aids moved on leaving me repacking my top-box in the dirt.