AP ECONOMIC NEWS FLASH: Retail sales reports were released two days early, on Saturday. This was done to give markets time to absorb the data. Sales were down almost 10 %. <STORY DEVELOPING>
Chapter Thirty
“Hey, Sandy, what do you think of this one?” Frank asked, calling her over to the jewelry case he was browsing trying to find just the right ring. He had no idea just how wide an array of sizes, shapes, settings, designs, and even colors these things came in before today.
She came over and looked at the ring he was holding.
“The nice woman here tells me this one is from a company that specializes in engagement rings of the more ‘one-of-a-kind’ variety. Things you just won’t see on other people’s finger,” he said with a smile.
“Frank, I know I said something simple in a solitaire design would be fine but this, now this, this I like,” she said holding up the ring he had found to the light.
The commissioned salesperson, who had no good sales recently thanks to the extreme downturn in the economy, saw and opening and jumped in, “Ma’am what you have there is a hand-made platinum setting. It holds a 2.5 carat canary yellow diamond, which is surrounded by an additional 1.25 carats of white diamonds. All of the stones are VSI in quality or better. You will truly be wearing a one of a kind, timeless piece of art.”
“I know I am going to regret asking this, but how much is it?” she asked.
Frank interrupted quickly, “Don’t worry about that, I know how much it is. If you like it, all you need to be concerned with is does it fit?”
She tried it on her finger and it fit perfectly. She smiled from ear to ear and kissed him with as much restraint as she could muster in such a public place.
Frank’s cell phone rang as he handed over his credit card, “We’ll take it.”
He smiled at his fiancé and pushed the button on his cell phone, “This is Captain Banner.”
Sandy just stood there looking at him with a smile, still not sure how all this happened. A month ago she was just a nurse in an emergency room with no boyfriend. She hadn’t even had a second date on the horizon. She had begun to believe she was married to her job, and was going to end up a crazy old cat lady.
From her point of view she was still that same nurse, but now she had a fiancé, now she was living a life instead of just existing. She wasn’t quite sure how this was supposed to feel, but for some reason she had no doubt this was the right thing for her to do. There was absolutely not a doubt in her mind about this man. Being in her mid-30s, and never married, she had never had a situation that felt this good with a man. With this wonderful change in her life she figured she could avoid owning a cat for a long long time.
Frank hung up his phone after a very one sided conversation in which Frank’s only spoken words had been “Yes Sir,” repeated at various intervals, “Ok, now I have to ask does it fit well? Do we need to have it sized, or is it good to go?”
“It fits perfectly, I have to say, that as corny as it sounds, like most of today, it is like it was meant to be. Frank, are you always this impulsive?” she asked hoping the answer was no.
“Never. But I am always a guy that just likes to get things done. This, as you said, feels like the right thing to do I have never been a guy who has been driven by feelings that is, until now,” he explained.
“I can see that, I guess. So from the phone call I am going to guess our day is done and you have to go to work. That’s fine, I understand,” she couldn’t stop smiling or looking at her new ring. She felt like she was having a sudden attack of being a girl again.
Since the attack she had not had many happy moments. In all her life she had never experienced one like this.
“Actually, that was a work call, and I do have something to do, but you are officially invited along. In fact, you may want to debut your ring based on where we are going,” he was smiling as much as her, and also staring at the rock on her hand.
“Cool. I enjoyed meeting the guys, and their wives or girlfriends. Where are we going? Will any of them be there?” she asked.
“Remember when I said I would probably never get to go back to where we went last night for dinner again? I may have been just a wee bit wrong,” he said.
“Oh my God! Really? When?” she said turning red after realizing just how loud she was speaking.
“Uhh, tonight. It will be just us, him, his wife, and one other person from his staff. Not even any members of my unit or Chain of Command, except for the one obvious one. I am under orders to tell none of them about this, and that part is very unusual, so I’m really not sure exactly what this is all about,” he said.
She picked up on his code and understood instantly why he was talking like this.
“That’s it? Ummmm. I wonder why? Did something happen?” she asked, sure there was something he wasn’t telling her.
They were walking out of the store with their purchase on her finger and they took some time to talk and walk through Georgetown, “I am not really sure how to tell you this, so I’ll just tell you. A news story is about to break.
“In it a picture of a soldier who was on a recent mission in Iran for a purpose that from what I know, so far, isn’t in the story. I don’t know much about what is being made public yet. It is a recording from the dashboard camera of an Iranian police vehicle. Apparently, it has been altered to remove the camouflage paint that was worn, and the face in it is unmistakable. It is me, and well, I am not in a position to deny that I was on that mission,” he was talking very fast.
“Frank, I made you a promise while we were at lunch to not ask questions that I know you can’t answer. I won’t dig, but you sound like this is worse than it seems, and it seems pretty bad,” she said.
“I really don’t know how bad it is yet, but it isn’t great. In my line of work we like to stay as anonymous as is practical. This type of publicity really runs contrary to that objective. They don’t have a name, but depending on how the news spins it, or if they can manage to fully identify the person in it, this could be really bad for my career. I could be wrong, it may not matter for my career, but the way I look at it is that this is not great. I don’t think it will affect the war effort at all, so that is at least something positive,” he said.
It seemed to her like he was just thinking out loud trying to figure the entire thing out.
“Look honey, if you need to work I understand. Dig into this problem. Figure out what is really going on. But dinner? What will that fix?” she asked.
“I have no idea. I’ve have never been in this situation before. I have been in the Army a little over 10 years. I think I’m about to be a Major in the near future. What I mean is that I have been around the block a few times, but nothing like this. No one has been down this road in recent decades. But look, we need to go to dinner, and I appreciate you telling me to just go take care of it myself. That was the man himself on the phone, and he was very specific about you coming along,” he squeezed her hand and stopped walking to look her in the eye.
“So given what he just told me of the dress code for this evening, which is also unusual for someone like me, I have some shopping to do. I was specifically told to not be in uniform, and that is really all appropriate that I brought with me. I will also bet you didn’t bring a spare set of clothes that is appropriate given the venue, so let’s go over by the Pentagon, there is a normal mall. I don’t want to become poor due to clothes shopping which is very possible here in Georgetown, with all these high end stores. Besides, I just bought a pretty impressive ring for a wonderful girl,” he winked and ran his finger across her ring on the finger in their intertwined hand.