It’s one of my dirty little secrets: I hate to answer the phone. I spend so much time on the blower that, most of the time, I just want to throw the thing in the Potomac. But there are some calls that fill me with joy. I had one of those calls earlier this week. I looked at that peculiar exchange - an area code you won’t see assigned to a city or state - and I knew my buddy Bill was checking in.

Like many Americans, one of my close friends, “Bill,” is currently detailed to Iraq. (For obvious reasons, I’m not using “Bill’s” real name.) This is his second tour of duty there. Unlike some people, Bill volunteered.

As an expert security and protection professional, Bill feels that working in Iraq is what he’s trained his whole career to do.

“Neill, when you were a performer, you played Carnegie Hall because that’s what professionals like you need to do. Well, Iraq is my Carnegie Hall. I’m needed there and I believe I can make a difference,” Bill explained when I protested his decision to go back there for another year. I didn’t want him to go and I did my damnedest to talk him out of it. I might have well have tried to talk a boulder out of a river.

The last time Bill was in Iraq, he was in charge of security for the “Highway of Death” that runs from the airport to the Green Zone. His job was to make sure that the drivers delivering air-lifted food, medicine, and supplies made it safely to their destination. This is no easy job because there are legions of fanatics who are willing to take extreme measures to see to it that Bill fails. Fortunately, for the drivers – many of whom are civilian Americans and Iraqis - Bill is very good at what he does.

This tour, Bill’s is focused on making sure that innocent Iraqis aren’t killed or injured for no more reason than they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tragically, this happens all too often. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how Bill and others who are working toward the same end can succeed. The evil in men’s hearts is no uniform for the eyes. The good, the bad, and the ugly look alike in Baghdad. I guess that’s the difference between Bill and me. He does know how.

As Bill and I used to sit outside on his deck, smoking our pipes and drinking red wine staring into the night forest, he would describe the various strategies and safeguards he’d put in place. It would make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I don’t know where we find these people - these stand-up men and women who are willing to lay their lives on the line day after day for the rest of us.

I came to know Bill at my pipe hangout, Old Virginia Tobacco Company. I still remember the day I met him. This compact, muscled, twinkling-eyed young man reached out and vigorously shook my hand with a farm-boy Indiana grin and gentle demeanor. For several months later, I had no idea about Bill’s line of work. Of course, one day one of the other guys in the group mentioned that Bill was a federal agent; I’d had no idea.

In my little gaggle of friends, there are all stripes of men from every conceivable line of work. In a town where just about the first thing out of most peoples’ mouth is “What do you do?” most of us understand that many of us - like those who work in intelligence, for example - can’t really talk about our work. So, a lot of questions aren’t asked. While we cannot help but learn about each others’ lives, work, hobbies, girlfriends, wives, successes, and aggravations, what brings us together is the warmth and comfort of each others’ company as we talk while smoking a pipe or cigar. Bill fit right in. We all liked him immediately, and there’s not a one of us who doesn’t ask after him and worry about him.

Bill loves to smoke his pipe. When he found out that I collected pipes and tobacco, he wouldn’t stop asking me questions. At that point, Bill had just two pipes, and he’d managed to smoke the living daylights out of them. One of them - a Peterson apple - looked like it had been smoked by some gnarly old junkyard salvager for fifty years or so without a break. But Bill handled that pipe with such affection and joy that it was inspirational to me.

Over the months - through a procession of talks, drinks, breakfasts, lunches, and dinners - it became apparent to me that Bill had never owned a first-rate pipe – not because he didn’t want one, but because he really didn’t know how to go about getting one or where he might find one.

The first time Bill visited my den, Bill stood in front of my pipe racks looking for all the world like an 20-year-old man seeing his first naked woman. You know the look: that glassy-eyed, jaw-agape, half-smiling slab of incredulity and wonder. I decided then and there to do something about Bill’s pipe dreams.

I listened carefully to Bill describe the shapes he liked and the grains he admired, the saddle bit-style that appealed to him, and the light weight that amazed him. I looked over my collection carefully and pulled several pieces out that I decided I was going to give Bill, along with some tobacco that would do the pipes justice.

A week or so later, after I’d had a chance to thoroughly clean and polish the pipes, Bill and I went out to Peking Gourmet (Bush One’s favorite Chinese restaurant) for dinner. Between pot stickers and hot and sour soup I laid a brown paper gift sack on the table. Inside were two pipes - an Ilsted pot I got from Poul in Chicago and a beautiful little Heeschen Volcano that I bought from Neil Flancbaum of Smokin’ Holsters fame.

Over the next several months I watched Bill absolutely glow with enjoyment as he smoked those pipes. Like many guys who have their first experiences with high-grade pieces, Bill was astounded at the difference in the quality of the smoking experience. Let’s face it, if you’re going to be baptized in the Church of the High Grade, it’s hard to do better than Heeschen or Ilsted. Of course, Bill still smokes his Peterson; it’s a great pipe and a great smoker for him as many Peterson owners would suspect.

Every week I look forward to my chat with Bill. I’ll be calling him later this morning. With luck, I’ll reach him; there’s an eight-hour difference. It’s hard for me to even describe the connection I feel when I hear that artesian laugh as it bubbles up when he tells me the latest outrageous joke he’s heard or shares other news. It saddens me a bit that he can’t (or won’t) tell me much at all about what he’s doing, work-wise, but I certainly understand why he doesn’t.

The best feeling of all, for me, is hearing Bill draw on his Heeschen or Ilsted, knowing that those pipes are giving him moments of peace and contemplation in a place where those things are in damn short supply.