Washington Day 1 - Spying and Counter Intelligence

Following a busy night we got out of bed early to be ready for the taxi at 7am. Five hours before the flight was due to leave the journey had begun.  Our cab driver rang a couple of minutes before his arrival, which lead to one of those "Oh, no!" moments, thinking that he had gone to the wrong address, because he wasn't outside when we looked.   Brody had already gone to work with Mike.
The cab journey was slow, but only due to the weight of the traffic, so we arrived at the recently re-built Terminal 2 with plenty of time to complete a game of "Check-in Challenge".
There are two sets of machines, one for passengers with check-in luggage and one for those with only carry on bags.  We had to find the ones which provide luggage tags - the second set.  Next, to comply with U.S. Immigration we have to record where we are staying.  Not being good at U.S. geography, nor realising that there are so many small states around Washington, nor understanding the menu system, I needed all three guesses to correctly locate the hotel.   
That completed there is only the absurdity of getting to the gate.  It is, according to the signage, 15 minutes away.  There is a large notice saying not to make your way to 'B' gates until the gate is confirmed.  The gate was due to be confirmed 10 minutes before it opened, to allow 50 minutes for boarding.  Had we and many others not gambled correctly, there would have been no-one at the gate for the first five minutes after it opened.  So it should be no surprise that even in boarding group 4 we were among the first to board.
The flight was routine.  I took "No Cloak, No Dagger" by Benjamin Cowburn to read on the plane.  It is about British Agents in WWII France.  I got about half way through the book by the end of the flight, so far there have been no acts of terrorism (resistance) committed.  It is all about the intrigue, and ensuring the enemy are kept busy with false stories.  For a break from reading I watched "The Imitation Game", the story of Alan Turing breaking the Enigma code.  It is a very well told story.  I had been concerned about the position it might take on Homosexual rights, but this part of Alan's character was not pushed to the forefront of the story.  For me there could have been more of the analytical methods and deductive paths discussed, but that may have lost most of the audience.  Long live the "Turing Machine".  I'm sat at one of them now.
In the early hours of the day Karen and I had agreed that we would meet at Reagan Airport, so once we had cleared immigration we found the Airport shuttle bus and booked our place.  The 15 minute wait to depart felt like ages, but in reality we were soon sitting in the late afternoon Washington rush hour.  We were not in a hurry.  Their plane was not due to land for 4 hours.  On the way we heard there was another 1 hour delay to their flight.
While Dulles airport looks like something out of the 1970's, Reagan Airport looks like something out of the 1950's, what a contrast they both are to the 2010's Terminal 2.  We wandered around Reagan for a while and found the "Legal Fish Bar', it looked OK, so we decided to eat there.  The food was good, but the airport prices, though expected, were still too high.   We met Karen and her family easily enough and had soon collected their bags and moved outside to wait for the bus to the car rental lot(?).  Standing waiting for the bags, and then the bus I noticed Robbie looking very intently at me, with a look of hard concentration on his face.  He was not sure of us, but he knew he had seen us somewhere before.  I wondered if he was thinking "How did you get out of the screen?"
We picked up the car - a "Chevy Impala".  It is a reverse Tardis - smaller on the inside than it looks.  Robert drove us to the hotel - the TownePlace Suites at Bowie (pronounced Boo-ie here).  It is 30 minutes from Washington.  We all need sleep, but jet lag means that we wake at 3am, after only 3:30 asleep.  Not a good night.