Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It was getting close to breaking point, when Mohammed, our Syrian guide, told us col-
lectively that someone had rung the travel company in London and complained about the
combining of the groups. One of the English guys stepped forward and proudly stated that
he was the person who rang London. He obviously expected some kind of kudos, but the
reverse was the case. By this time, Mohammed was clearly at his wits end because of the
cock-up and the various threats that some would pull out if they were not part of their pre-
ferred group. And so it went on.
Mohammed asked everyone to sit down in the foyer while he tried to sort things out. Sud-
denly the differences in the other group erupted into a yelling match laced with some mar-
ginal language.
A couple of us told Mohammed to ask everyone to check into their room and then go to
dinner, while we sat with him and tried to sort out the mess. We won his undying friend-
ship. Two of us worked through the lists and while this was under way, several from the
other group came up and asked to be “looked after”, as they wished to change groups.
We came up with various solutions and then went to them with the options. By this time
everyone had cooled down and decided to stay with their respective groups. There was a
collectively sigh of relief.
I arrived late to dinner and tapped one of the unhappy people on the shoulder spelling out
his options. For his part he said he had discussed it with his wife and they had decided to
stay with their group.
Later on he came across to our table and sat down for a chat. I can't for the life of me
recall how it came up, but he began to talk about a defence project and the involvement of
a friend of his who had died of cancer.
He was saying that his friend had been a brilliant engineer working on a missile decoy sys-
tem that involved a rocket. He didn't know the details and as his voiced trailed off I broke
in and said:
“Project Winnen”.
He sat back with surprise and nodded his agreement. I then went on to describe the project
that involved a hovering rocket that magnified signals back to incoming missiles and then
lured them away from the target.
