Tirana, Albania
April 09, 2018
After a perfunctory passport inspection, they entered the waiting area and spotted the hotel's shuttle driver holding a sign board with their last names scrawled on it. The Mother Teresa airport in Tirana was built on the outskirts of the sprawling city, and the van made its way on a road paved at one time but now rutted with potholes surrounded by broken pieces of asphalt. With only one stop enroute to allow a herder and his small flock to cross the road, the van passed through the countryside dotted with large round-top reinforced concrete bunkers built in the 1970s, following the country's formal withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. Enver Hoxha, Albania's hardline communist leader, began the public works project that produced over a million of these structures. Several intersections boasted a bunker on every corner, begging the question of whether the military tacticians and the construction crews were ever on the same page. Today, most were abandoned, too deep to excavate and too heavy to remove.
The van snaked through the industrial part of town by way of crowded, narrow and unmarked streets to the city center where a modern structure on a modest rise greeted them. The Embassy made their reservations at the best hotel in the city that offered all the necessary amenities including a well-stocked bar, with both potables and attractive companions available to sooth the weary traveler.
Westerners filled the hotel. What a great target Dan lamented. He asked for a room on the second floor, and the desk clerk told him the Embassy confirmed rooms on the seventh floor already carefully prepared with a welcoming fruit basket and a bottle of local wine courtesy of the hotel GM. To the consternation of the day manager, Dan insisted and eventually got a room on the third floor. The room's last occupant was a heavy smoker. Dan opened the windows to change the air and to assess his surroundings. He used a small electronic device the size of a shaver to see if the room had been fitted with any listening devices and found none. He unpacked and took a quick shower and combat nap before meeting Sandy in the lobby at 6:00 p.m.
They walked downtown across the cobble-stoned plaza in front of the Parliament building for an early supper at a Greek restaurant. The agenda for the next day started with a meeting with the Embassy's Military Attaché at the hotel and lunch with the CIA Station Chief at noontime. Back in the hotel, Dan mindlessly surfed the channels on the small television for an hour before falling into a deep sleep. His expectations for the visit remained understandably low.