In 1980 I started working for NASA as a space physiologist and was asked to lead a three-person US delegation to Moscow to negotiate experiments to be flown on a Soviet biosatellite. The NASA Project Scientist provided me with a Nikon camera to document instrumentation, international equipment shipping forms, copies of existing agreements between the two “sides”, and notes on items to resolve during our meetings. This critical material just fit into a leather briefcase I bought for the trip and intended to guard carefully.
We flew into London from California for an overnight stay with departure the next morning, Sunday, to Moscow. We woke early to breakfast at the hotel and I looked for my briefcase that also contained my money, passport and visa. It wasn’t in my room and I panicked. My colleagues remembered that when we arrived at Victoria Station on the shuttle bus from Heathrow, because the last cab was waiting, we grabbed each other’s bags sitting next to the bus, jumped in, and headed to the hotel. We stowed the luggage in our rooms, went to dinner and then a late night jazz club, to help shift our biorhythms. But why wasn’t my briefcase in one of their rooms? They didn’t have a clue.
I guessed it was left in the cab and ran to the stand outside the hotel and accosted the first in line. Was there a lost and found? Yes. Was it opened on Sunday? No. Where did I get the cab to the hotel? Victoria Station. I told the cabby that if I couldn’t retrieve the briefcase within a half-hour we would not only miss our plane, our entire trip to Moscow to negotiate a joint space flight, would collapse. He pulled me into his cab and headed for Victoria Station. I asked why, but he couldn’t explain. I knew Victoria Station was just a bus-to-cab transfer point with an unoccupied, wide-open building. Of what possible use would it be to go there?
The cabby sprinted into the waiting room that contained only a bare counter. He jumped behind it and flung open cupboard doors and then – pulled out my briefcase. We did a quick bear-hug dance, and ran back to his cab. Tears welled up in our eyes as we raced back to the hotel and he assembled his story. The bus driver probably saw the briefcase on the sidewalk after everyone had left and figured that someone would come right back to look for it. He had to leave for the airport, so he put it in the cupboard. He never thought it would sit there overnight.
The cabby wouldn’t accept a tip, and said his reward was to know that the “system” had worked and international cooperation would continue unabated, even between the two Cold Warriors. Whenever I see a black English taxi I feel very thankful for a cabby’s faith in his fellow man.
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