Category: Uncategorized

40

Saturday, February 6, 2021, 3AM Eastern Standard Time

Joe sat bolt upright in a sweat in his hotel room. His head whipped around, trying to see where he was. It took a moment for his eyes to get accustomed to the dark; after a moment, he noticed Janice, who had jumped out of bed and assumed a defensive crouching position.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Joe whispered, as much to himself as to Janice.

“Jesus,” Janice said. “Are you okay? You were yelling in your sleep.”

Joe leaned forward and put his head in his hands, and took a few deep breaths.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m okay.”

“Excuse me, but that was not nothing,” Janice said.

Joe slowly swung his legs slowly over and got up from the bed.

“I’m gonna… I’m gonna go,” Janice said.

“No, please, you don’t have to.”

“No, I should go.”

“You really shouldn’t. I mean, you really don’t have to. It’s the middle of the night.”

“I’m kind of awake anyway.”

“Don’t go. Please. Just give me a minute.”

Joe rubbed his face and walked into the bathroom.

He switched the light on, filled a glass with water, shook some pills out of a brown plastic prescription bottle, put them in his mouth, and drank the entire glass down. He stood looking in the mirror.

The nightmares were lessening in intensity and frequency, as the doctor had foretold, but they had not yet subsided completely.

He thought back blearily to earlier in the evening. How did we get here? he wondered.

***

He had been out at a Georgetown bar, which had gotten increasingly crowded during his visit as the post-work Friday crowd came in. He was just finishing up a meal at the bar. Sitting with his back to the door was still an uncomfortable experience, but it was one his doctor had recommended.  He was chewing his last mouthful of salad when he started as he felt a poke from behind him.

He turned around to see Janice standing there, dressed in a business pantsuit.

“Hey,” she said. “How’s our hero?”

“Hey,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Okay, I guess. What have you been up to?”

“Ah, work, I guess.”

“What kind of work?”

“Security. I told Vaneida about it. VIPs who think they need security details, but mostly don’t. Beats being over in Iraq, I guess. Pays better, too.”

Just at that moment, the man seated next to him left his barstool.

“Mind if I sit down next to you?” Janice said. She’s already had a few, Joe thought.

“Not at all,” Joe said. “If you don’t mind lack of social distancing. Where’s… where’s your other friend?”

“Jenna?” she said. “Nature Girl?”

“Why do you call her that?”

“Ah, she likes camping. Canoeing and hiking and wrestling bears. She had a date, I think. Maybe with a bear.”

“So, what brings you here?”

“I’ve been stalking you,” she said.

He must have looked a little panicked, because she punched him in the arm.

“Just shittin’ ya,” she said. “Total coincidence. I come in here pretty often. Fridays mostly. End of the work week.”

“Where do you work?”

“Law firm,” Janice said. “I’m a lawyer. Litigator.”

“Huh,” Joe said. “Now I feel intimidated. I never even finished college.”

“You should be,” she said. “I am very intimidating.” She took a swig of her beer.

“Your friend, Jenna, is she okay? That was a nasty gash from that idiot at the Inauguration.”

“Yeah, she’s okay. She’s tough. Like you said, she’ll be more proud of it than sad about it.”

“I can see that. She is tough.”

“Yep. I think all three of us are.”

“Well, you showed that the other week. How was jail?”

“I like that. ‘How was jail?’” She punched him again. “How was jail for you?”

“It was… interesting.”

“Really? Any interesting interactions?”

“Not really. I think my old job taught me how to let other people know when I didn’t want to be messed with.”

“My job too,” Janice said.

“You want another one?” Joe asked.

“Job? No, I like being a lawyer. I don’t want to be a security guard. Though I am sure I would kick ass at that job.”

Joe indicated her empty glass.

“Oh, do I want another drink,” she said.

She did. And they went on from there.

She was not his type. He was probably not hers. But they had spent most of the rest of the evening laughing. It had been a long time since Joe had done that. Too long. They talked about sports. They talked about music. They compared parental divorces.

Suddenly, it seemed, it was nearing midnight.

“You want to get out of here? Go have a last drink at my hotel?” Joe said.

She had agreed.

While they were sitting in the hotel bar, she had turned serious.

“Are you being straight with us?”

“What?”

“Are your intentions honorable? As respects Vaneida?”

“I never thought she was interested.”

Janice shook her head vigorously and started pawing at the air between them. “No, no, no. I mean, with SNRM. Are you for real?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, are you a legit member of the Resistance? Or are you just here to spy on us?”

Joe swiveled his cranium from side to side as if to shake cobwebs from his head. “Where’s this coming from?”

“That whole… diatribe in the police van. Where’d that come from?”

“You didn’t agree with me?”

“Well, with some of it maybe. But you seemed pretty down on the Democrats.”

“Well, I don’t like how ineffective they’ve been.”

“But you’re still on our side.”

“Sure,” he said. Apparently not convincingly.

“You don’t believe me?” he said.

“Listen,” she said. “You seem like a nice guy. I think your heart is in the right place. But I have to tell you one thing. If you have something you need to tell Vaneida, something you haven’t told her, you have to tell her.”

He did not answer her. He stared at the wall in front of him.

“Got it?” Janice said, a bit slurringly.

“Got it,” he said, turning his head toward her and smiling.

“Okay, take me upstairs,” she said.

So he did. He had a vague memory of being pleasantly mauled. It had not been a disagreeable experience; in fact, in some ways, he thought, it had been exactly what he needed.

***

But as he stood looking in the mirror, he felt his duplicity more deeply than he had ever felt it. What kind of a guy am I? he thought.

He walked back out of the bathroom and saw Janice putting her coat on. He tried to take her coat off, but she was going.

“No means no, mister,” Janice said, pulling it back on. “I have to go.”

“Okay,” he said, hollowly. “This sounds stupid, but thank you. That was the best evening I’ve had since I went overseas.”

“‘You’re better than a night in a tent full of smelly guys in a country full of burqas, baby,’” Janice said.

They both laughed.

“At least,” Joe said.

“Okay, I’m going,” Janice said. “Think about what I said.”

“I will, if I can remember it.”

“You know what I’m talking about,” she said, punching him in the chest lightly.

“I’ll see you ’round,” Joe said, as she opened the door. “Be safe. Call me if you run into any trouble.”

“I’ll call you if I need help burying a guy I had to kill,” she said. “Be good. …Be straight,” she said, pointing at him as she went backwards out into the hallway.

He raised his right hand to her as the door slammed shut.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

41

Monday, February 8, 2021, Noon Eastern Standard Time

Kathleen rode the escalator up from the depths of the DuPont Metro station, reading the Walt Whitman inscription from the Civil War that encircled the north exit as she rose:

THUS IN SILENCE IN DREAMS’ PROJECTIONS,
RETURNING, RESUMING, I THREAD MY WAY THROUGH THE HOSPITALS;
THE HURT AND WOUNDED I PACIFY WITH SOOTHING HAND,
I SIT BY THE RESTLESS ALL THE DARK NIGHT — SOME ARE SO YOUNG;
SOME SUFFER SO MUCH — I RECALL THE EXPERIENCE SWEET AND SAD,…

Pretty damned topical, Kathleen thought to herself.
She crossed the Circle and went into the Starbucks, being careful to keep away from the other customers.

I should have asked him what he looked like, she said to herself. But there wasn’t much of a mystery there. A lone tall skinny man in glasses rose as she came in.

“I looked you up on line to see what you looked like,” he said. Then, realizing what that sounded like, he said quickly, “Not in a stalky way. I just realized one of us had to know what the other one looked like.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “Where do you want to eat?”

“Let’s walk for a bit,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, wondering where this was leading. Jesus, let this not be another #MeToo situation, she thought.

As they exited, at a prudent distance from one another, Hunter looked around as if he did not want to be followed. Kathleen wondered what exactly was going to happen here.

“Where are we headed?” she asked as they strode northwest up Connecticut Avenue.

“Just walking for now,” he said. They reached the light at Q Street and stopped with a number of other pedestrians, all of whom spread out to achieve social distance.

“Let’s turn right for a bit.”

Kathleen followed him east on Q.

“It seems like there’s something you want to tell me,” she said from behind.

“In a bit,” he said, walking out into the street to avoid an oncoming gaggle of unmasked and un-distanced tourists. They walked a block further and were alone. She thought he might begin to talk then, but he kept going until he reached 16th Street and turned left. She was about to ask exactly where they were headed again when he stopped at a Turkish restaurant on the east side of the street, walked to the door, and opened it for her. She looked at him, saw he looked more relaxed, and nodded slightly to him in thanks as she walked in.

He hailed a man behind the bar in what she assumed was Turkish, and headed up some stairs at the back to a mezzanine above. “You want some Turkish coffee?” he asked. “It’s the best in the District.”

“Sure,” she said, sitting down at a small table across from him.

He yelled down to the man behind the bar. “Two Turkish coffees.”

The man responded with a long nod forward and went off, presumably to brew their drinks.

“Okay,” she said. “This is all very mysterious. What do you have to tell me?”

He paused, then began asking her questions.

“What did you notice about the virus numbers?”

“Uh, they seemed suspiciously… upbeat the last six months or so. Straight-line declines.”

“Very good,” he said, rocking back and forth. He stopped suddenly. “Should I say this is all on background?”

She cringed inwardly, but kept her expression unchanged. “Why?”

“Because what I have to tell you is big, and big people would not like that I’m telling it to you.”

“So why are you telling it to me?”

He stopped and looked down at the table.

“Because I’m sick of the bullshit.”

“Okay,” she said. “What bullshit?”

“The war on numbers,” he said. “This is on background right now.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Just for future reference, you’re supposed to say that before we even start talking. But I’ll respect your privacy.” She thought to herself, well here’s a waste of an hour I’ll never get back.

“All right then,” he said, exhaling. “Have you ever heard of the USDA Economic Research Service?”

“Vaguely,” she said. Oh boy, she thought. We’re going to get to the heart of the Department of Agriculture! Pulitzer here we come!

“It’s a lot more important an agency than you might think. It’s not just counting cows. You can make an argument that the ERS is the mother of all statistical agencies in the United States government. It was formed 40 years before the Census Bureau. It goes back to the Civil War.”

“So, what does this have to do with the CDC virus numbers?”

“You remember a couple of years ago when the entire ERS was relocated to the Kansas City area?”

“Vaguely, again,” she said.

“The ERS did research on hunger, and provided the statistical rationale for the Food Stamp program and a bunch of other safety net programs,” Hunter said. “That angered a lot of Republicans. They want those programs destroyed.”

“So they relocated an agency. What effect did that have?”

“Exactly the one they wanted,” Hunter answered. “Two thirds of the staff refused to move. Hiring to replace them was a lost cause. Most of the intellectual capital of the agency walked out the door two Septembers ago. Reports were delayed, numbers were questionable. Even with the Democrats in charge of the House, it was difficult to get statistical support to maintain those programs.”

“Okay,” she replied. “What does this have to do with the CDC?”

“Well, as you know, the CDC used to publish regular pandemic reports and the official outlook for infections and deaths going forward.”

“Yes.”

“The election was possibly going to be won or lost based on what my old agency reported. You can’t nail down exactly whether one particular report swung one election. But you post steady improvement in the outlook for the virus, and record declining deaths, for a few months prior to an election, and the President is definitely going to be harder to beat.”

“Right.”

“And conversely,” Hunter said, “If the CDC reported rising infections, and hospitalizations, and higher deaths every month for a few months before the election, that was going to make his re-election pretty difficult.”

“Got it.”

“If you could put your thumb on the CDC scale, and also maybe on the agencies that report job growth and Gross Domestic Product, which are the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the BLS, and U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, or BEA, well, then, you’ve really got something. You can push the numbers toward whatever you want them to be.”

“Are you saying that the President got re-elected because of some deep dark conspiracy to produce fake statistics?” Kathleen was now officially annoyed.

“Actually, I’m not,” Hunter said. “I can’t prove that causality. I suspect they couldn’t quite pull that off for last November’s election. Him getting the virus – if he really did – probably pushed him over the top more than anything else.”

“Are you saying he did not actually have the virus?” Kathleen’s pulse quickened as she detected something that might actually resemble a story.

“No,” Hunter replied. Kathleen’s face fell. If Hunter noticed, he didn’t let on.

“Though there were definitely some questionable decisions that caused unemployment to be understated, at least for May of 2020,” he continued. “And of course, the White House took the collection of national virus cases and deaths away from the CDC last July and gave it to HHS. And did their best to stop testing.”

“So what exactly are you saying?”

“I’m saying that they used the Economic Research Service of the USDA as a test case. They succeeded there in crippling that agency’s ability to gather numbers that would not serve the purposes of wealthy Republican donors. Now that they got away with that, and the heist, so to speak, was not really reported, well, now they are out for bigger game.”

“Such as?”

“All the federal government statistical agencies. Across the board. Every single one of them used to be stocked with career federal employees who took their oaths to the Constitution seriously.”

“Statisticians take oaths to the Constitution?”

“You bet they do.” Hunter raised his hand. ‘I, Hunter Laszlo, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.’ Every employee of the federal government takes that pledge. From the Secretary of State down to the janitor in the Department of Transportation headquarters lobby buffing the floor.”

“Wow. I did not know that.”

“But you know who doesn’t take that oath?”

“Who?”

“Private contractors. Unless they are read into some classified project, they don’t take any oath. So, when government functions get outsourced, you replace these literally dedicated public servants with someone whose only motive is profit. Which boils down to, pleasing whoever is paying you.”

“And there’s privatization going on in this sphere?”

“All over the place. It’s what we military vets used to call ‘a self-licking ice-cream cone.’ Republicans in Congress get campaign funds from private interests. Then Republicans in Congress downsize federal agencies. Then the federal agencies, predictably, do a less good job than they used to. Then Republicans in Congress scream bloody murder that the federal government is a bloated bureaucracy that cannot get the job done, and that must be downsized further. Also, to get the job done, they get their friends in the private sector – some of whom used to work in the same agency – to contract with the agency to do the same stuff the downsized oath-taking federal employees used to. Almost always, there’s no real savings, nor is there better performance. And that’s great! Because the Republicans can use that to scream bloody murder about how terrible the federal government is again, and downsize the agency even more. You ever hear of Maxfield King?”

“Sure. He’s some kind of power behind the throne in the President’s administration.”

“He is the prime example of this. I used to be a first lieutenant in the infantry in Iraq. I used to make, I don’t know, $800 a month. Half the time I’d be standing next to a private contractor who was making $200,000 a year, tax free. He wasn’t doing anything different from me, unless it was something that was less of a pain in the ass than the stuff my CO had me doing. Hell, sometimes I’d be reporting to these guys. I don’t even know if that was kosher, but it happened.”

“Huh,” Kathleen said. The guy behind the bar was lumbering up the stairs with two Turkish coffees.

“Teşekkür ederim,” Hunter said to the man as he placed the tray on the table. The waiter tilted his head and stuck out his chin in response, turned, and went back down the stairs.

“Now I’m not saying these were bad guys,” Hunter continued. “Most of them were patriots, competent and professional, and good guys. But once in a while there would be a real son of a bitch in the mix. Some of them had no problem shooting any civilian that looked cross-eyed at them. Maybe you remember the case from about 15 years ago. Right in the center of a big city in Iraq. Some of these guys were doing a security detail for the State Department or somebody. Anyway, there was a traffic jam and one of them started seeing bad guys in every passing jitney. He lit the place up in the middle of rush hour on a Thursday, which is like their Friday over there. Over a dozen civilians got killed because one guy lost his shit. And King had them spirited out of the country, and they avoided a trial for years. Finally, one or two of them got sentenced to hard time. But the President swooped in and pardoned those fuckers. Do you know how dangerous it is to be an American soldier after something like that happens? And those guys just took off. Left us holding a bag full of shit.”

Kathleen stared at him. “Okay,” she said. “But we’ve gotten pretty far away from the CDC virus stats.”

“Not as far as you might think,” he said. “We had contractors getting in to the CDC statistical service even before the White House took the whole thing away from us last summer, and appropriators cutting our headcount. But we also had changes at the top of the management structure, longtime career federal employees replaced by inexperienced cronies of the President. And the whole situation drove a lot of indispensable, knowledgeable people out of the agency, either into the private sector or else into early retirement.

“What effect did that have?”

“It might not have been all that bad if some of them had come back as contractors to keep the place running. But when some of them applied for jobs with the contractors who started working for CDC, it turned out that competence at statistical analysis or managing workflow were completely irrelevant to them.”

“So did they change the numbers to help the President’s re-election?”

“You might think they would hack the virus numbers to make them look better, and there was some of that going on. But mostly, across the government, it was complete indifference as to whether the numbers got reported at all. It’s just vandalism. They are breaking the government, and specifically they are trying to make sure that any part of the government that reports facts is completely unable to do its job. It took me a while to figure it out. They see credible data as the enemy. Even if it’s data that makes them look good, it’s a threat to them. They are trying to break our ability to see reality for what it is. It’s taken since the 1860s to build up this capability in our government. They have deeply damaged that capability in just 4 years.”

“How do you know this is policy, and not just incompetence?”

“That’s the best part for them. They can just throw their hands in the air and tell you, ‘We tried, but the federal government is incompetent by nature. We need to have the private sector do these statistics.’ And the private sector actors that do the statistics? They all just happen to be friends of either the President or the Republican leadership. The Republicans have been slandering the federal government forever. At least since the McCarthy Era. Which by comparison to now seems like a golden age. Because now the forces trying to destroy the government and smear its employees have infinite money and have all the levers of government. Joe McCarthy never had that.”

“Democrats are no angels. I’ve covered them. I know.”

“Of course they aren’t. But Democrats are basically no different than they’ve ever been. Now there’s a left wing to the Democratic Party that didn’t exist ten years ago. But that is the result of the raging inequality in incomes and wealth that agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics used to quantify so well. Now we don’t have the funds or the people or the intellectual wherewithal to keep doing it. Some of my colleagues now report to an outside consultant that is responsible for publishing the virus data. My colleagues are trying to get the numbers right, but they don’t control what the White House actually releases anymore. What was today’s number again, for new cases?”

“500.”

“Seems like kind of a round number, doesn’t it?”

“I guess.”

“Just slightly less than last month, which is slightly less than the month before, and so on.”

“Are they fudging the data?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Hunter said. “All I can tell you is that late last summer, when I was still issuing the reports, the numbers were trending higher and higher, and used to vary a lot more. One day it might be 1,973, the next it might be 3,040, the next 2,631. There was an upward trend at that moment, but it jumped around a fair amount around that trend line. That to me looks like reality. This smoothly declining number every day, week after week, that doesn’t look like reality to me. My dad used to be in Naval Intelligence, tracking subs. You know how they would find Soviet subs? They’d look for straight lines in the water. ‘Nature does not operate in a straight line,’ he’d tell me. Well, I don’t think statistics move in a straight line, either. Did you check out the adjustment numbers for previous months’ reporting?”

“I didn’t.”

“My guess is, before the election they decided they were going to show a reassuring decline in deaths and new cases, come hell or high water. And hide some of the negativity in the out-month adjustments. Have you checked those adjustment numbers?”

“No.”

“You guys usually report just the headline numbers, right?”

“I think that’s standard practice.”

“Yeah, they count on that. It’s the same for the jobs numbers, unemployment. They seemed to be about to cover up how bad things were last spring, after the virus shut the economy down. But someone with half a brain cell doped them to the fact that trends, not absolute numbers, win elections. Do you know what the unemployment rate was for Reagan’s re-election in 1984?”

Katherine had no idea. “4 percent? 5 percent?”

“7.2 percent. But it was down from 10.2 percent. The trend is all that matters. If people feel things are getting better, they feel good. So, like I said, someone with half a brain got to them to realize that it was in their interest to jack the cases, and deaths, and unemployment, to the highest possible level, so they could show a substantial drop in those numbers by Election Day.”

“So, then they had to fudge the numbers on the virus and jobs to show steady improvement from that terrible starting point.”

“And the more terrible the starting point, the better the chance they had to show improvement. Remember that May jobs report in 2020?”

“No.”

“Everyone was expecting that it would show 20-plus percent unemployment. Instead, it showed a decline in unemployment, to 13% or so. The stock market boomed, public pessimism eased briefly.”

“You think that was dishonest?”

“I don’t know. I do know that the BLS said within days that the number should have been three points higher, because millions of people who actually were unemployed reported themselves as not quite unemployed, or not looking for work, and that they had made a mistake. There was a ton of chaos back then, so it could have been an honest mistake. But that very chaos meant there was a lot of leeway to alter policies on how things got reported. It’s hard to say what was fudging and what was just a mistake.”

“But at any rate, this goes beyond the CDC or White House virus numbers, is what you are saying?”

“In my judgment, it does. The virus actually interrupted their larger ongoing plan. They had been at war with the truth, but even more, they were at war with the public’s perception that truth is even knowable. They wanted the public to disbelieve all sources of facts and data and analysis. Hell, maybe even theirs. If no facts were knowable, then they could get away with anything, and anyone trying to honestly put forward a generally accurate picture of the truth would be ‘fake news,’ a ‘whiner,’ a ‘sore loser.’ They wanted, and I think still want, an electorate that no longer demands, or even expects, or even thinks it’s possible, for government to tell them what is true. And that applied to CDC, the Intelligence Community, law enforcement, Social Security, Medicare, the Fed, the U.S. Trade Representative, and even their allegedly favorite part of government, the only one they pretended to treat with any respect at all, the military. That’s how they were going for the bipartisanship. ‘We agree with you liberals! The U.S. military is mismanaged too! Look how straight we’re playing it!’ They were taking advantage of a fashionable cynicism that increasingly pervaded all sides, including the liberal side, and especially youth. Somehow, we had raised a generation that believed the U.S. federal government could do nothing right. The government was evil and could solve no problem. Except it somehow also was so diabolically clever it was at the bottom of all world conspiracies. Let me ask you something,” Hunter said to her.

“Wow. Take a breath,” Kathleen said.

“Sorry, this stuff gets me going. Let me ask you something. List the top ten achievements of human beings since we crawled out of the primordial ooze, or, if you’re a fundamentalist, since the world was created in 4004 B.C. Make a list in your mind.”

“Okay,” Kathleen said.

“It might include things like, I don’t know, splitting the atom. Sequencing the human genome. Ending slavery and Jim Crow. Curing diseases like yellow fever, making AIDS survivable. Defeating fascism and communism. Providing civil and voting rights to women and minorities. Transcontinental railroads. Interstate highways. Modern passenger jet travel. Communication satellites. Inventing the Internet. And putting twelve people on the moon and bringing them all back safely. What do all these things have in common? They all were completely or substantially the doing of the United States federal government. The single most stupendously successful organization in the history of the human race. If you think it isn’t, then tell me what is. You think vandalizing and sabotaging this unrivaled paragon of human institutions will have no impact on our lives? Our life as we know it has been created by the U.S. federal government. It’s done some bad things, to be sure. Some really bad things. So have all great institutions. Do you vandalize your home whenever it springs a leak? Do you stop maintaining it out of spite? Maybe if someone in your household can make a buck off of the sabotage by selling the house. This government in many ways is our national home. It’s being vandalized for profit. The thermostats are being hacked. The security system has been turned off. The furniture is being spirited away. The food’s poisoned and the entire family is sick with a virus. Let me ask you one final question, Ms. Kiersay.”

Kathleen waited, mouth agape, stunned by this avalanche of unexpected eloquence.

“The Republican Party likes to go on and on about how they revere the Founders, the Founders, the Founders. Tell me, what did the Founders found? It’s not a trick question. It’s only one thing. One thing. Not ‘free enterprise.’ Not capitalism. Not AR-15s. Only one thing. The United States federal government. When it was great, we were great. Now the government’s ability to see reality for what it is is being destroyed, which means that the government itself is being prepared for destruction. Do something, Ms. Kiersay. Start with the HHS virus statistical department and the BLS and the BEA. Maybe go from there to Maxfield King.”

With that, he threw a bill on the table, spun around, bounced down the stairs, and went out the door, leaving Kathleen still open-mouthed and wondering what had just happened.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

42

Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 11AM Eastern Standard Time

“Well, sir, we questioned him in the hospital,” the Director of the Secret Service said, sitting in the chair across the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.

“You questioned him?” the President replied.

“Yes, sir.”

“What did he say??”

“Not much, sir. He seems fairly calm, but he does not communicate much. It could have something to do with his condition.”

“His condition?”

“Yes, sir, his possible schizophrenia.”

“What does that do? Give him multiple personalities? I saw that in a movie once. Is he like Sibyl? Sixteen personalities?”

“No, sir, but he does seem a bit detached from reality. We think he might hear voices.”

“What do they say?”

“I… he would not tell us, sir. I think he’s a bit crazy.”

“Did he mention me?”

The Director shifted in his seat.

“Well?”

“Well, sir, we asked about you. We showed him a picture of you.”

“What did he say?”

“He, uh… it’s unclear, to be honest, but based on the material written on his signs, I think he thinks you are the Beast of Revelation.”

“I’m what?”

“I think he thinks you are the Beast of Revelation. It’s something from the Bible. Has to do with the end of the world or something. It’s in the last book of the Bible.”

“Mrs. Johnson,” the President said into the intercom.

“Yes, sir?”

“Do we have a Bible around here somewhere?”

“I’ll… I don’t know, sir. I’m sure we can find one.”

“Where’s that one we used last year at the church?”

“I’m not sure. But I’ll get right on it, sir.”

The President turned back toward the Director.

“McCarthy.”

“Yes, sir?”

“McCarthy, can you interview this guy? On tape? Ask him what he thinks about me?”

“Uh… we can, sir. But he’s pretty uncommunicative. And he has these seizures. Half the time I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“Ask him about this Beast thing. …Forget about it, can you bring him in here? I can ask him.”

“Uh… I think we’ll have to talk to his doctors, get some permission or something.”

“You can do it. Just say… well, you’ll know what to say. Leave my name out of it.”

“Okay, sir.”

“You said you talked to him. Did you tape the conversations?”

“It did not seem useful. He is very uncommunicative.”

“Well, get him over here.”

“I’ll have our people get on it, sir.”

“And McCarthy.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Remember. Need to know.”

“Right, sir.”

“Okay, scram. The guy’s coming to install my lumbar massage chair.”

“Yes, sir.”

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

43

Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 12PM Central Standard Time

“Why do you hate us so much?” Mike asked Pete.

“What?” Pete answered, incredulous.

“Why do you hate us liberals and Democrats?” Pete rolled his eyes.

“Here we go.”

“No, I’m serious. Do you hate me for being a liberal?”

“Are you a liberal?”

“Sure. Like JFK, FDR, LBJ, Okomo…”

“Wait a minute. Okomo doesn’t deserve to be in that group.”

“Why not?”

“He was much more radical.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“He socialized medicine.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Of course he did.”

“No… he didn’t. He didn’t even try to do that. A lot of Democrats wanted him to. But he didn’t even propose anything close to socializing medicine. He didn’t even try to have a public option alongside the private sector plans, which would have only been a hint of socialism. If he had socialized it, he would not have had to tack on a stupid law requiring everyone to buy into it, which I agree was the dumbest thing about it. But, in fact, he got that requirement from a Republican think tank from 1994, and then from his 2012 opponent, who instituted exactly the same plan when he was a governor in 2006. It was all a Republican idea from the start, because Okomo was trying to make nice to the Republicans and give them what they wanted. But all they did was move the goalposts out of the stadium. Wolf News and all those people were always going to say he was trying to destroy America, socialize medicine, blah blah blah. He should have gone and done it, since they were going to sabotage and destroy anything he did. Instead he compromised, as always, and we ended up with a muddled system that could be easily destroyed by the Republicans. As has now happened.”

“Blah blah blah.”

“Seriously. Look at what we saw the last four years. This guy got in, said we were in American Carnage. We had 4.7% unemployment and decent growth. There was very little unrest in the streets. Okomo had respected democratic norms. He didn’t even really let America know that Russia was interfering in the 2016 election, or that this guy’s campaign was being investigated about that. Since he got in, he’s strong-armed allies for dirt on his opponent, lied ten times a day, called for violence, crowed when liberals were shot in the street, pardoned dozens of his crook pals, broke the Hatch Act with impunity, minted money off his office, used the White House as a venue for political events, and even called for violence against judges. And his supporters have cheered. Which means, you guys think that there was something so super terrible about his opponent that it outweighed all these completely unprecedented violations of everything 44 previous presidents have refused to violate. So what was so terrible? That a black guy succeeded before him?”

Pete scoffed.

“He didn’t succeed. He was worse.”

“He was not worse, and he did succeed, by every previous normal measure. So you are willing to tolerate this guy just ripping up the government as we know it, which means you really, really hate us. So why do you hate us?”

“I don’t hate anybody.”

“I believe you. But you hate somebody or something, out there, and the President is the one you voted for to punish them, right?”

Pete sighed.

“I voted for him to shake things up. I hated what Okomo did to this country.”

“Aha. What do you think he did that was so terrible?”

“He socialized medicine.”

Mike stared at him, then raised his hand toward Janet.

“Tacos?” he said.

Pete turned toward him.

“Now you’re talking.”

Mike was silent.

“You’re mad.”

Mike stayed silent.

“What is it?”

“I explain why what you believed is wrong for five minutes, and then you just repeat the same lie. This is why we can’t have nice things.”

Pete rolled his eyes. “You’re boring, man.”

“This is the thing,” Mike said. “Do I shut up and pretend everything’s fine, or, if not fine, at least kind of business as usual? Or do I tell the truth, which bores people or, even worse, alienates the shit out of them? The day of the inauguration, remember how you kept telling me to get it out? This is me getting it out.”

“I thought you would get it out during one Taco Lunch Wednesday.”

“Well, there seems to be nothing between keeping my mouth completely shut, and talking forever about how dangerous this guy is. And by the way – it’s not just this guy.”

“Ooh,” Pete said. “A conspiracy theory. Lay it on me.”

“It can’t be a conspiracy if it’s right out in the open. It’s the Republican party. They’ve been at war with the truth for decades. …Now I’m boring myself. I’ve already said all of this, and it has no effect.”

“Have you ever considered drugs or gambling as a hobby?”

“Starting to.”

Their tacos arrived and they dug in.

“I’ll give you this,” Pete said, mouth full. “Those Mexicans make good lunch food.”

“Any self-respecting Mexican would gag on this,” Mike said, through a similar mouthful.

“I call bullshit,” Pete said.

“Let’s ask someone who knows,” Mike said after swallowing. “Hey, Homero.”

A man two seats down the bar nursing a bottle of beer turned toward them.

“What?”

“Homero,” Mike said. “You were born in Mexico, right?”

“Yeah. You want to check my papers or something?” he said, in completely un- accented English.

“Sure. You bring ‘em?” Pete said.

“They’re home getting re-forged,” Homero said.

“Makes sense,” Mike said. “They start falling apart after getting checked 600 times by La Migra.”

“So, what do you two gringos want with me?” Homero said.

“What do you think of these tacos?” Mike asked.

“Comida de perros,” Homero said.

“Thank you,” Mike said. “Dog food.”

“How do I know what that meant?” Pete said. “He could have said ‘Breakfast of champions’ for all I know.”

“That would be ‘desayuno de campeones,’” Mike said.

“Quit showing off, college boy,” Pete said.

“They don’t do breakfast down in Mexico, anyway,” Homero said. “It’s not a thing down there, really.”

“No huevos rancheros?” Pete said. “I like those.”

“It’s pretty rare,” Homero said. “Hey, what’s a Mexican three-course breakfast?”

“What?” Pete said.

“Cup of coffee, a cigarette, and a piss,” Homero answered.

They all laughed, two of them spraying shards of tacos de perros on themselves.

“How can you be against letting guys like this in?” Mike asked Pete.

“We’re full up,” Pete said.

“Ah, they’ve been saying that since 1850, since the Know-Nothing Party tried to keep my Irish great-great grandfather out.”

Pete put his taco down and turned to him, as if about to make a momentous point.

“Exactly.”

“Fuck you,” Mike said.

“Back atcha,” Pete said, grinning, and they both took swigs of imported Mexican beer.

44

Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 8PM Eastern Standard Time

Joe and Vaneida walked through the streets of Georgetown, talking about American history. Dinner conversation had been similarly restrained, as if neither wanted to violate the other’s privacy. After Joe asked her to postpone the topic of conversation he had wanted to talk about until later, when they could go somewhere less public, their talk was neither too political nor too personal. When the check came, Vaneida insisted on splitting it, and was impressed that Joe did not put up the typical male fight to pay the whole thing.

“Okay,” he simply said.

Then, “You want to stop by my place for tea or coffee to talk? I’m not even out of boxes. New apartment. A lot of my stuff is still down in an apartment in North Carolina. But I have a couple of chairs.”

“Uh…” Vaneida said, not sure how to answer.

“Let me get this out of the way, so we don’t have to worry about it. I am not coming on to you. I’m not on the market right now in any way, shape, or form. And I could be mistaken, but I would not be an option for you anyway, right? You can slap me down if I’ve offended.”

Vaneida exhaled.

“Not at all,” she said, in relief. “I think your… diagnosis of the situation is 100 percent accurate. And tea sounds good.”

“Perfect,” Joe said. “I’ve got an early day tomorrow, but I do have something I wanted to talk to you about before then.”

“Early day?”

“Traveling. Out west. Do some security training for a client, I guess.”

“Sounds very cloak-and-dagger.”

“More PowerPoint, I think.”

They paid the bill and walked out onto M Street, then east and south, under the freeway overpass, toward Joe’s large apartment building on the river.

“What was all that about in the van?” Vaneida said suddenly.

“What?”

“All that, ‘You guys aren’t united,’ ‘You failed,’ calling the Democrats ‘They.’”

Joe walked on in silence for a few steps. Then he spoke.

“You know, I guess I was never comfortable with politics. And I certainly never thought of myself as a member of any party before I went overseas. There was a guy over there who became important to me, he once told me, ‘You are a goat, not a sheep.’ I think he was right.”

“How did you vote, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Rarely,” Joe said. “And I have to admit I voted for a lot of Republicans. I think I was rebelling against my parents. They were pretty liberal, and then they got divorced. That probably didn’t make me very well-disposed toward Democrats.”

“Huh,” Vaneida said. “What changed your mind?”

“Really,” Joe said, “it probably was the betrayal of the Kurds. It really threw me. I was living in a world where we were the good guys, and suddenly we were definitely not the good guys.”

“But your political philosophy?”

“That’s why I am talking to you,” he said. “That’s what I have to figure out. I’ve never thought these things through in any sort of systematic way. I want to figure out what I am. …We cross here and there’s the entrance over there.”

They crossed the street to the riverside promenade. A glass atrium served as the lobby of his building.

“Believe it or not,” Joe said, “it came down to either this or a place in the Watergate. But this place was more convenient for work.”

They entered the apartment and took the elevator to the top floor. Joe opened the door and let Vaneida in, and said, “I’ll put the water on for tea. Have a seat.”

Vaneida walked to the living room picture window, which overlooked the river and Theodore Roosevelt Island. Turning back to the living room, she heard a kettle whistling, and walked over to the single bookshelf. She looked at the titles, mostly American history, with an emphasis on military history and biography, and a smattering of Middle East-related volumes. She was about to reach for a book about the Iraq War when she located an odd-looking object on the bookshelf, sticking out from under a pile of books and papers on a lower shelf. It looked like a diploma. She pulled it out and opened it up.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO ALL WHO SHALL SEE THESE PRESENTS, GREETING: 
THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
AUTHORIZED BY ACT OF CONGRESS JULY 9, 1918 HAS AWARDED

THE SILVER STAR
TO
SERGEANT GRADE 1 JOSEPH DURCAN
FOR
GALLANTRY IN ACTION
FROM
15 OCTOBER 2017 TO 15 OCTOBER 2017
GIVEN UNDER MY HAND IN THE CITY OF WASHINGTON

“What are you doing?” Joe said, coming up behind her with two cups of tea in his hands.

She spun around.

“Sorry… I thought it was a diploma. I wanted to know where you went to school,” Vaneida said.

“Here’s your tea,” Joe said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, putting the object back on the shelf. “I didn’t mean to snoop. I just like seeing what books other people like.”

“Well, that isn’t one of them,” Joe said.

“I’m really really sorry,” Vaneida said.

“No problem,” Joe said. “I guess if it was some real deep dark secret I’d have hidden it away.”

“The Silver Star… isn’t that kind of a big deal?”

“Medals. Do you know what Napoleon said about them?”

“No,” Vaneida said.

“‘Orders and decorations are necessary in order to dazzle the people.’ He also was supposed to have said, ‘A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon,’ and ‘Give me enough medals and I’ll win you any war.’ Though those last two may be apocryphal.”

“I guess he ran out of medals in 1815,” Vaneida said.

“I guess we ran out of medals in Syria and Iraq,” Joe said.

“I’m sorry, I hate people who intrude on me, and I’m very embarrassed to have done it to you.”

“That’s okay,” Joe said. “I know your intentions were good.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I think they are.”

There was an awkward pause.

“Why don’t we have a seat,” Joe said, motioning toward the only armchair. Vaneida sat down. Joe sat down on the couch.

“Sorry, no TV service yet,” he said.

“I hate television,” she said.

“I am amazed at the amount of time I used to spend on it,” he said. “That, and video games.”

“Did they help you with… that?” she said, motioning toward the medal citation.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Possibly, a little. I did do the single-shooter games a lot. I knew a guy in the service who had never played football in his life, but was addicted to an NFL game, and he walked on to his high school’s team his senior year and ended up the Most Valuable Player of his team’s conference.”

“Hey, if you need money, you could always do ads for the combat video games. ‘I was a slacker until I started playing Xbox, and now I have this medal.’”

“That is ALL I need,” he said.

“So how did you get into protesting wars instead of fighting in them?”

“I wasn’t protesting war,” he replied quickly. “Well, certainly not at first.”

“You weren’t?”

“No. I was actually protesting us getting OUT of a war. Well, the manner of our getting out.”

“So, you think those Middle Eastern wars were justified?” Vaneida’s hackles were raised again, as they had been in the police van. Maybe this was a mistake.

“Whether they were justified or not,” Joe said, “by the time I got there, certain expectations had been raised. Democratic institutions had arisen – I’m talking about Iraqi Kurdistan in particular. ISIL – ISIS I guess to civilians – had been kicked out of large swaths of territory. Women were suddenly free from medieval subjugation there and in places like Afghanistan, thanks to our presence. And all of a sudden, after doing all that, bleeding and suffering and killing and dying for that, boom, we’re just leaving because this guy rolls out of bed and decides to crap out a Toot. So, I and my fellow American soldiers, who were being treated like royalty by the people there, suddenly we are ordered out, and we’re having shit thrown on us and being cursed. I can tell you, Kurdish people know how to curse. And how to aim shit at you.”

“I can appreciate how that might be…maddening,” Vaneida said.

“The Kurdish leader I was working with predicted it, too,” Joe said. “I kept assuring him that America would keep her promises. He said to me, ‘Have you seen “Lawrence of Arabia?” I think you might need to watch that to see what happens over and over in this part of the world.’”

“Really?” Vaneida said. “My understanding is, that movie really romanticized the whole British effort to aid the Arab Uprising.”

“It did,” Joe said. “I did not watch it until I came back, but after watching it I can see why everyone wants to be ‘[Fill in the Blank] in Arabia.’ And that is dangerous. However,” he continued, “the way the film ends shows the whole cynical great-power land-grab and resource-grab thing triumphing over any ideals Lawrence started with. Now that I’ve seen it, I can see how Ahmed, the Kurd leader, was almost plagiarizing lines from the movie. ‘You are young, you have not seen how things always turn out in this region,’ he would say. ‘Young men fight wars, old men make peace, and by doing so they often betray the young men.’ And he was very big on the old Kurdish sayings.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, cryptic stuff, super-deep. ‘When a bald man dies, the mourners give him curly hair as a present.’”

“What does that even mean?”

“Beats the shit out of me. ‘Deal with your friends as if they will become your enemies tomorrow, and deal with your enemies as if they will become your friends tomorrow.’ That one was pretty painful to think about on the way out. The Kurds have really gotten the shaft throughout history.”

“Wow.”

“They are the largest ethnic group without a nation of their own. That’s what they like to say, anyhow. Thirty, thirty-five million people. About the size of Venezuela or Malaysia. Bigger than Australia.”

“They really got screwed after World War I when the Ottoman Empire was being carved up,” Vaneida said.

“Yeah. Their people all spoke the same language, but they ended up split between Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Ever since, those four countries have been oppressing them and killing them to keep them from uniting. But they still succeeded in building a free-ish state within a state in Iraq, and another one in Syria near the Turkish border.”

“Where and when did you meet up with them?”

“Iraqi Kurdistan. It’s by far the best place in Iraq now. Irbil is a real city, safe, great restaurants, they’ve done an unbelievable job. But they have a sword dangling over them at all times. ISIL took a lot of their territory, and we – the United States armed forces, including yours truly, helped them get it back.”

“They must have been grateful.”

“They were. For a while. The mala – Ahmed – almost treated me like family. The hospitality there is amazing. The mountain villa he took me to was pretty over the top. I got a whole wing to myself. He even talked to me about how he needed brave battle-tested husbands for his daughters. He was looking at me almost like he was talking about me.”

“Wow. That has to be rare, with a foreigner.”

“I think it is. Though I think you would like the Kurds. The Pesh Merga, their fighting forces, are completely gender-integrated. I met some women there who could absolutely kick my ass. Really impressive people. History has just completely scrubbed all the bullshit out of their society. They have no time for phony distinctions.”

“So why did he take such a shine to you?”

Joe paused.

“You don’t want to talk about it?” Vaneida asked.

“I’m… uncomfortable with it,” he said.

“I don’t want to pry,” she said. “Of course, I say that after I rifled through your belongings.”

Joe laughed.

“Well,” he said, “I think he obviously liked me because we fought side by side against ISIL. Or as he called it, Daesh, a name that ISIL hates. I guess it’s insulting in Arabic.”

“Was that October 2018, or whatever that thing said?”

“October 2017. That was probably when he began to trust me. We came under attack from Daesh forces unexpectedly, at a time and place we thought was secure. We were resting and all of a sudden four vehicles were headed for us. The guards started shooting at them but they kept coming. I had been asleep, but I woke up, saw what was happening, and I don’t even know how or why I did what I did, but I grabbed an anti-tank rocket launcher that was near me, scooped up some rockets, and ran up the nearest hill to a big rock.”

“Jeez. That is some GI Joe stuff right there.”

“It was pure panic,” Joe said. “If someone didn’t stop those vehicles, we were all going to be having a very short, very bad day. I set the thing up and started firing on the vehicles. It was pure luck that my first shot hit the lead vehicle. It blew up in just a huge explosion. That held up the vehicles behind it for just long enough for us to start firing effectively on them.”

“’Firing effectively.’”

“Yeah, that means something specific in the military. We have our own language. It makes things easier when things get kinetic.”

“‘When things get kinetic.’”

“See? And don’t get me started with acronyms. They save time, and also make it pretty much impossible for civilians to understand anything we say.”

“So how did things end up?”

“Honestly, I am not sure what the hell happened. There was so much smoke and noise and confusion, it was anyone’s guess who did what to whom. And of course, I was being shot at, which can be a little distracting. When the smoke cleared a little, they decided that I had disabled every one of the enemy vehicles. All I remember is shaking, getting shot at, and firing that rocket launcher continuously until I was completely out of rockets. I’m just happy I didn’t kill any of our own guys.”

“So that must have made you some fast friends among the Kurds.”

“Yeah. Ahmed seemed pretty impressed. I think he liked the fact that I refused to take credit for anything I was unsure of. That’s when I heard my first Ahmed Kurdish saying. ‘Only those away from the battlefield boast about their swords.’”

“Heavy.”

“Yeah. He was a heavy guy. Spiritually, anyway. Still is, I hope.”

“And you kept fighting alongside him for how long?”

“We were attached to his Pesh Merga group for several months then. Getting the area free of Daesh…” Joe paused for a moment, staring into space. “I don’t know what it was like for the American army in World War II to liberate towns from the Germans in France, but it must have been something like that. I’ll never be hugged or kissed like that ever again. It was a great feeling.”

“So when you were told you had to leave right away, that must have been a real letdown,” Vaneida said.

“It was. I felt so ashamed. I never thought I would be ashamed to be an American. I mean, I’m a patriot. But I’m not the sort of in-your-face America-Love-It-Or- Leave-It obnoxious type. I hope not, anyway. But when we were ordered out of Syria, where I had gone next, I felt like shit. We were leaving these people to be slaughtered by three different armies. Syrians, Russians, Turks. Even some Iranians. They had developed this sort of amazing mini-state on the Syrian-Turkish border, Rojava, they called it. It even had dual male-female leaders. They called their system ‘Libertarian Socialist Federated Semi-Direct Democracy.’”

“Wow. That’s a mouthful.”

“So technically I was fighting to preserve a socialist state, right? Pretty good for a Midwestern semi-Republican meatball, huh? But the Turks saw Rojava as a threat, thought it could be a rallying point for all the Kurds, including 12 million of them in their territory, to try to carve out a Kurdish nation. We were the only thing keeping the Russians and Turks from attacking, this little American force. We were only big enough to keep the Russians from risking World War III and the Turks respecting a NATO ally and arms supplier. And suddenly the President pulls the plug. It was a terrible feeling.”

“I bet.”

“So, I’m getting pelted with shit on top of my HUMV, and all I can think is, ‘I agree with you – keep throwing.’ Then I get a call on my cell from Ahmed. He had heard what had happened. Before I could even apologize, he said, ‘Remember what I told you. Young men fight wars; old men make policies. I know you had no say in this. You are not responsible for a foolish leader. We have a saying, “Fear an ignorant man more than a lion.” I’m sorry it ends this way for now, but some day we will meet again, to drink tea in Amed, my town.’ That’s what the Kurds call Diyarbakir, the biggest Kurdish city of all, but it’s in Turkey. Where his parents were born. Ahmed had never been there – few Kurds outside Turkey ever have. I got choked up at his generosity. ‘What will you do?’ I asked him. ‘We have another saying: “If you are a hammer, be strong; if you are an anvil, be patient.” We have much experience of being an anvil, we Kurds.’ So,” Joe said. “That’s the story of my grievance with this President.”

Vaneida half-whistled.

“His last words were, ‘Remember. Watch “Lawrence of Arabia.”’ I told him I would. It took me a few months to get home and watch it. He was my Feisal. But I was a pretty poor Lawrence. Lawrence got driven out of his war in a staff car. I had to creep through a traffic jam in an armored vehicle, tearing up, ashamed, getting dung thrown on my head.

“That makes me want to watch it again.”

“I happen to have it here. But it’s incredibly long. And it’s still boxed up somewhere. But listen, I need to talk to you about something.”

“I was wondering when you would get to it.”

“Yes. That speech after the State of the Union…well, that response speech by the Representative, it really did something to me. Wow.”

“It was powerful. But she was just saying what we all believe, right?”

“Yes. Well, for me it was, maybe more. Maybe because this stuff is newer to me. But that speech, well, it connected. It sounded a lot like what the Kurds told me wanted. Liberty. Freedom from tyranny. An end to lies and oppression and hunger and… well, everything bad.”

“That makes sense. That it connected that way. I think that’s great.”

“But there’s more.” Joe sat down.

Vaneida sat down also.

“What?”

“The people I work for, I have not talked a lot about that.”

“The security job?”

“Yeah… well, yeah.”

“What do you need to tell me?”

Joe paused. Do I really need to tell her everything?

“Well, they are not the type of people who show up at SNRM events.”

“No?”

“Not a lot of SNRM people in the military, which is where my boss gets all his people.”

“Or veterans in SNRM. Which is why I’m glad to have you as part of the organization.”

“Well, the people I work for, they have connections to the President.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Pretty direct connections. Like, my boss meets with him often.”

“Huh,” Vaneida said, leaning back in her chair.

“He – my boss – has this organization, company, that has a lot of connections with both the military and government, and I think he gave a lot of money to the President for his campaigns. He’s a really rich guy.”

“So, what do you have to tell me?” Vaneida said, this time with a bit of an edge to her voice.

“Uh, well… SNRM seems to be on their radar.”

“Whose radar?”

“Both my boss’s radar, and the President’s. Or, at least, people who are in the government and work for the President. I doubt the President knows anything about SNRM. Or much of anything else,” Joe finished, glad to end on a note of denigration toward the President.

“I see,” said Vaneida. “What does ‘being on their radar’ mean, exactly?”

Joe took a breath, and chose a tack.

“I overheard some people talking about you and SNRM. And it sounds like they think that SNRM is a very dangerous organization.”

“Dangerous? How?”

“Like, subversive, potentially violent, extremist politically, terrorist links, foreign government links.”

“How in the hell did they get that idea?”

Joe exhaled.

“I have no idea. Obviously it’s nuts.”

“What did you say when they said that?”

“Nothing,” Joe said. Then he continued on his chosen path.

“Obviously I couldn’t exactly say, ‘Gosh, I’m a member, nothing to worry about.’”

“No, I guess not. So, what do I do?”

“Well, maybe there are things I could do. Maybe I could be like a double agent for them. As long as I am there, they wouldn’t try to infiltrate SNRM with anyone else, for one thing. And I could tell you what they are up to.”

Vaneida considered this for a moment.

“I… I guess I have an instinctive revulsion to dishonesty. I don’t know.”

“Well, I think they might have bad intentions toward SNRM. From what I heard, they really have some crazy ideas about it.”

“That’s kind of alarming. I almost feel like inviting them to a meeting.”

“I think that would be a really bad idea,” Joe said. “These guys only see what they want to see, and at the very best, they will see SNRM as an organization that poses a political threat to them. You know the kind of slime they are capable of generating against innocent parties they see as a threat. How about you let me find out what their plans are, to the extent I can, and inform you about them.”

“Doesn’t this place you in a rather awkward position?”

It sure does, Joe thought. “To an extent. But it’s one I’m kind of used to. We were trained in intelligence-type matters. This is a lot more straightforward than a lot of stuff I have had to do, to be honest.”

Vaneida was silent for a moment.

“Well, I don’t like the sound of it,” she said, finally. “I like to be above board at all times. And I don’t like you being exposed like this. And when you’re a double agent… don’t you end up being compromised on all sides, somehow?”

“I don’t know about that. I think as long as you know which side you are really committed to, then you’re okay.”

“Well, this is all new to me,” Vaneida said.

“One thing,” Joe said.

“What?” Vaneida said.

“Please don’t talk about this to Janice or Jenna. Or anyone else. That is probably the only way I could get in serious trouble here.”

Vaneida thought for a moment.

“Secrets from friends. Life is getting complicated.”

“I like them both. I really do. And I respect them. But if they know anything about this, not only I could get in trouble, but so could they. These guys don’t play.”

“I guess that makes sense. I won’t talk about this to anyone, then.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate it. I’m glad I could get this off my chest. It’s been bothering me ever since…”

“Ever since you heard about it?”

“Yeah, ever since they were talking about you,” Joe lied. “I wanted to tell you right then.”

“Well, it’s getting late,” Vaneida said. “And you probably have to go.”

“I do. Thanks for giving me a heads-up. And for the tea. And the stories. You’ve had quite a life already. I feel like I’ve done nothing at all by comparison.”

“And yet somehow we met up, and ended up doing the same thing.”

“Sounds like there should be a Kurdish saying for that. ‘The donkey comes one mile, the hawk a thousand miles, but they drink from the same watering hole.”

“That’s pretty good. You should lead a militia movement.”

“Well, it sounds like your boss thinks I do,” Vaneida said. “What’s his name, by the way?”

“Uh,” Joe said, his mind racing, “Maxfield King.”

“I guess I should Google him.”

“Please don’t,” Joe said. “I mean, god knows how they are tracking you.”

“Well, that is disturbing,” Vaneida said.

“Yeah, sorry,” Joe said. “I’m not a cyber expert, but I try to be a little paranoid.”

“You’ve introduced me to a whole brave new world,” Vaneida said, not entirely happily.

Joe got up and stretched.

“I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you. I didn’t mean to. Just wanted you to know. Thanks for coming here. You know,” he said, “I never had a sister. I think I missed out on something there.”

“I have a brother,” Vaneida said, “but I can safely say he was never feted by some emir in Kurdistan. Or was a double agent.”

“Well, you’ll know better next time you choose your family.”

“Well, maybe I’ll see you again next meeting,” Vaneida said.

“I never even got to talk to you about basketball,” Joe said.

“Did you play?”

“Nah. Just playground. A fan, though.”

“Well, I haven’t played in a long time. I doubt I could beat you.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Joe said, as he opened the door.

“Good night,” Vaneida said. “Thanks again.”

“See you soon. Stay safe.”

The door closed.

I have to tell her the real truth, Joe said to himself. I have to tell her or I’m just like the people who betrayed the Kurds.

But when?

45

Friday, February 12, 2021, 4PM Moscow Standard Time

Sergei Borisevich sat in the President’s office in the Kremlin, in a chair facing the President. Beside him was Vyacheslav Viktorovich. The President leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, his fingers interlaced.

“So, you are prepared to brief me on the Deep Fakes program, as well as our other outreach to the U.S. Republican Party?”

“Yes, Gospodin Prezident. I have brought Slava Viktorovich along because of certain unique insights he can bring to the topic. But we also had some delicate questions to ask you in order to guide our further efforts.”

The Russian President tilted his head slightly and a quizzical look was manifest in his eyes.

“And what would these questions be, keeping in mind that I asked you both to bring me up to speed on these topics, and it is therefore I who should be questioning you?”

Slava leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “Boss.”
“Yes?”

“It was I who brought these questions up when Sergei asked me to accompany him here. I just thought that perhaps it would help us in our work to know a little more about the full extent of activities in which we have been engaged with respect to the subversion of the Republican Party and this American President. Only to the extent that you feel is appropriate, of course, Gospodin Prezident.”

The President was silent for a moment. “What is it you think you need to know?”

“There were rumors even before the 2016 election that we possessed certain documentary evidence that would compromise that President, obtained several years before when he visited Moscow,” Slava began.

The President remained silent.

“Does such evidence actually exist?”

The President continued to stare forward. At length he turned to Sergei Borisevich.

“Sergei,” he said, looking down at the desk, “Could you leave us? I need to speak to Slava for a moment.”

Sergei got to his feet, red-faced.

“Absolutely, Gospodin Prezident.” He turned on his heel, went to the heavy oaken door, opened it, went out, and shut the door behind him.

The Russian President turned to Slava.

“Slava Viktorovich, there are certain topics I do not want to discuss in front of more junior people.”

“Junior? He is your Deputy. …But I understand. Forgive me if I have offended.”

“Now tell me why you want to know about this alleged kompromat.”

“Because now might be an opportune time – perhaps the only time – to use such material.”

“And why would that be?” the President said.

“Well, as you requested, I have been briefed on the Deep Fakes program, and have brought that brief to you, as requested, and it is most impressive. Our people are now able to quickly produce compromising phony videos of anyone in the world, engaged in the most disgusting, embarrassing acts imaginable.”

“So?”

“So others will undoubtedly have a similar capability sometime in the near future. Which makes all video kompromat far less effective. If it is well-known that anyone can have his or her head placed on a plausible body and be made to do unspeakable things, then belief in all compromising videos will begin to fade very quickly.”

“Gresham’s Law,” the President said.

“Excuse me?”

“It is an old capitalist economic law. Bad coin drives out good. Fake videos will destroy the utility of real ones.”

“Something like that. So, in my humble opinion, what we have here with ‘Operation O Face’ is a wasting asset. It will begin to lose its value as soon as the deep fakes begin to be produced in any number.”

“Are you suggesting we expose some of the videos we have now?”

“That is one option. Another is to use them, while they retain their value, as levers to further compromise our targets in ways that will not depend upon video evidence for their value. We could go back to the old ways. Financial corruption. Threats to family members. Hacking the documents on their computers as opposed to their cameras. But yes, I think we have a strategic decision to make. Holding this wasting asset of credible video kompromat, if we believe that this American Republican Party has reached the end of its usefulness to the Motherland, this may be the only time to leak that video evidence through our usual channel. It will burn all bridges with that party, and make them look foolish and criminal, and could turn them against our interests. But we could still hold back the ultimate card – the immense financial support they have been receiving from our chosen oligarchs through legally untraceable SuperPACs, the National Gun Organization, and the like. Some of these connections have actually been public for years, but the NGO’s lobbying power has made even thorough investigation, much less prosecution, impossible in the United States. I was worried for some time that American journalists might unravel these connections. But I have been amazed at their almost complete lack of interest in them. If it was my country…”

“It is not.”

“And I thank God every day for that,” Slava said, crossing himself three times in the Orthodox manner, thumb touching forefinger and middle finger, up, down, right, left. “American journalists are a dying breed anyway. And the only ones with sinecures – the Washington Tribune, the New York Record, and the like – seem only interested in reporting on the virus, or any story about this American President. They seem to have decided their readers’ eyeballs can only be retained by endlessly detailing the latest outrages committed by this President, or who might succeed him, or how the pandemic could kill you, or how many people have allegedly died from the pandemic. Between you and me, Gospodin Prezident, I have it on good authority that even those numbers are not reliable.”

“So, you think this is the time to use any kompromat we have?”

“It is just a thought that has become increasingly persuasive to me. Any final decision, of course, would be up to you.”

“Thank you, Slava Viktorovich,” the President said, not without a hint of sarcasm.

“Excuse me for bringing it up in front of Sergei. Now of course he will think you have told me the truth about the old video kompromat of the American president.”

“I am sure you will disabuse him of that notion.”

“I will do my best. So, there is no such kompromat?”

The President simply smiled at Slava.

“All right. I will leave these two briefings on Deep Fakes and our campaign contributions to the Republican Party for you,” Slava said, placing two folders on the desk. “The latter will tell you that we gave far less money to them this election cycle, in keeping with our longstanding tradition of starving our assets once they have been compromised. As for the ‘Operation O Face’ material, I suppose there is something to be said for simply riding out the current administration, holding these assets over their heads for as long as possible, extracting the maximum from them while we hold these cards. But I felt that it behooved me to state my opinion that these are assets that must lose value as deep fakes become more common. I would estimate that we have somewhere between a year and four years before any authentic video kompromat simply loses almost all its impact.”

“I thank you for your opinion,” the President said.

“The strategic question, of course, is the one you phrased to me a few weeks ago. Is now the time to reverse course, to twist the knife on the Republicans? Will we really get much more of value from them by standing pat? And, of course, might we, by double-crossing them, gain immeasurably by throwing that entire rival nation into even greater disarray and confusion and division? The choice, Gospodin Prezident, is yours.”

“Again, thank you, Slava.”

“I merely wish to be of service.”

“Noted.”

“One final thing – Antonov has informed me of a breakthrough. He says he can bring you the apparatus by which you will be able to watch the American President very soon. Possibly as soon as the first of the month.”

“Good.”

“Perhaps after sampling the results, you may have the data you need to make your decision on strategy going forward. I will await that decision. In the meantime, I will continue with business as usual.”

“Very good. Send Sergei Borisevich in as you leave. I think he may require some feather-smoothing.”

“Certainly, Gospodin Prezident.”

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

46

Sunday, February 14, 2021, 4PM Eastern Standard Time

My, he is unexpectedly handsome, thought Kathleen Kiersay. Strong, clean-cut military type. I wish he was in a uniform.

“So, there’s no truth to the rumors about you being a warlord?” she asked her interviewee.

Maxfield King simply laughed.

“’Warlord’ is one of those words people use to scare you,” he said. “It’s true, I provide services to the military that they have adjudged fill their needs more cheaply and effectively than they could do on their own. And that makes sense, because the people who work for me came from the military, and were the best of the best.”

“What about your services for other nations? What about the Chinese?”

“What about them? I’m building military bases.”

“Some say you’re building concentration camps for the minority Muslim Chinese Uighurs,” Kathleen said.

“‘Some say,’” Max replied. “That’s a phrase people use when they are unwilling to speak on the record. I’m speaking on the record, and I’m telling you we’re building military bases.”

“Even if they are military bases, aren’t you helping the Chinese government to suppress their people?”

“Their military is different from ours. They don’t have the same kind of police forces we have. They have never been an internationally expansionist power.”

“That would come as news to Vietnam. And the Tibetans.”

“You know your history,” Max said. “Still, the farthest the Chinese have sought to grab land has been essentially right next door. And Tibet’s claim to be an independent country is really questionable. It gets romanticized, but it was never anything but an autocracy. A theocracy, in fact. I find it hilarious that all these liberals are so passionate about restoring this religious dictatorship. They would never tolerate it in the United States. We went through our own phase of having forts in the far-flung unpopulated areas of our own West. Hell, half the towns west of the Mississippi started as army outposts. Fort Laramie, Fort Kearney, Fort Worth, Fort Omaha, Fort Collins, Fort Walla Walla. We can hardly lecture these guys about trying to gain control of their own west. I’m just doing what William Worth and George Mercer Brooke did for the U.S.”

“But you’re doing it for another country.”

Max shrugged.

“It’s legal and above board. I would never do it if it wasn’t.”

“What about privatization more generally?”

“What about it?”

“There are those who say that it’s dangerous, that it is a corrupting influence. That contracts get steered to people with political connections who want to take things that are rightly the province of government, and strip them away to make money off of them. They say it results in inequity, that things are run not for the sake of justice or the common good, but to maximize private profit.”

“As long as the incentives are correctly designed, the metrics are right, then the interests can be aligned. Government is slow and bureaucratic by nature. It can’t keep up with modernity. You have to inject the profit motive into it to get it off its ass. Otherwise America falls behind.”

“But aren’t we falling behind anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“China is beating us in economic growth, and they had far fewer deaths and cases of the virus. We don’t seem to dictate the world’s trade regimes or military alliances anymore. I guess our hip-hop is still number one.”

“But we never should have been the world’s policeman, right? When we try to tell everyone how to run their lives, then sooner or later someone from the UN gets to tell us how to run ours. I think we now have an opportunity to make a transition to something better, newer. And by the way, though I would like this to be off the record…” He waited for a nod from Kathleen that finally came. “…you can’t trust the Chinese numbers. They tend to overstate growth and to minimize their problems.”

“That brings me to another issue. I understand that the Economic Research Service of the Department of Agriculture was moved in 2017 to Kansas.”

“Why should the Department of Agriculture be in Washington, DC? It should be out where the farmers are.”

“Well, be that as it may, the ERS, which began in the 1860s, was uprooted from Washington, and just one third of its employees decided to make the move.”

“I’m sure it got rid of a lot of dead wood.”

“Well, there are those –”

“Who remain nameless –”

“Who are afraid to come out and say the truth in public, who say that the mission of the agency was deliberately sabotaged –”

“Why would we do that?”

“Because the donors who support the Republican party want to destroy the Food Stamp program, among other things, and if the agency that collects the data that supports the provision of benefits can’t do that job, then it will be a lot harder to justify its continuance in Congress.”

Max simply shook his head.

“That’s the Swamp talking. Trying to preserve its privileges.”

“And there are a number of other statistical agencies that appear to be in line to get the same treatment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is one. Even though the numbers have steadily gotten better month by month by month beginning in mid- 2020. Has there been an attempt on the part of the administration to alter the employment statistics?”

“Nonsense.”

“Then there are the virus numbers compiled by HHS on the virus.”

“What about them?”

“I notice that they have been very upbeat since before the election. A steady decrease. Very reassuring.”

“Yes. The result of our administration’s spectacular efforts to deal with that crisis.”

“But we’ve done some digging, and we have found that those numbers appear to have been consistently smoothed to make them appear in a good light.”

Max looked annoyed.

“I’m not a statistician. I can’t answer for something I have no expertise in. But I think I can say categorically that there has been no effort to distort anything.”

“Is that on the record?”

“Absolutely.”

“And the National Weather Service?”

“What about it?”

“Is it true that it is being privatized, and sold to a friend of the President, and that from now on the only people who can get tornado warnings and the like will be those who pay a subscription fee?”

“I don’t know anything about that. But I can’t imagine that such a thing would be allowed. More scaremongering.”

Kathleen inhaled, then decided to go for broke.

“Is it true that the President did not, in fact, have the virus at all? That he merely announced it to create sympathy for himself when he was far behind in the polls?”

Max simply grinned.

“Nice try,” he said.

“Can I ask you about your time in the service?”

“I don’t talk about that, as a rule.”

“Can you change your rule?”

“If you have dinner with me. I have to eat anyway, and I have to get back to my ranch tomorrow.”

“You don’t have a date for tonight?”

“A date?”

“It’s Valentine’s Day.”

“Recently divorced.”

“Huh.”

“You?”

“Me what?”

“You don’t have a date for Valentine’s Day?”

“Also divorced. Not as recently.”

“Well, then, this could work out,” Max said. “Plus, I’m hungry.”

“As long as it’s clear that this is strictly business.”

“Absolutely.”

Well, I’ve had worse Valentine’s Days, Kathleen said to herself.

“Okay then,” she said.

Max got up. He picked up her coat and held it out.

“I guess they teach manners in the military,” she said, smiling.

She got into her coat with Max’s help. Max opened the door to his hotel room and held it open for her. She walked into the hallway. He joined her, and they walked toward the elevator.

Whatever you do, Kathleen said to herself, you are not going back into that hotel room.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

47

Tuesday, February 16, 2021, 4PM Pacific Standard Time

“AHHHHH…” Jake Nalley moaned.

“Sorry,” Joe said. “I’m trying to be careful.”

“Oh man,” Jake said. “It hurts.”

“Getting shot in the ass does hurt,” Joe said.

“I’m sorry, man,” Billy Boland said.

“AHHHH.”

“We’ll be at the cabin soon,” Joe said. “There’s an EMT there.”

Jake lay half-on, half-off the back of the snowmobile as Joe drove it very slowly down the trail. Billy looked back over the front seat sorrowfully.

“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I never shot a gun before this week.”

“Oh REALLY?” Nalley said. “You could have fooled me…Ahhhhh.”

For no particular reason, it suddenly hit Joe with renewed force where he was and what he was doing, and where he had been and what he had been doing a bit earlier. He was in the woods of the Pacific Northwest, on a private ranch, playing snow taxi to a couple of complete idiots, one of them bleeding. Fifteen months earlier, he had been in Syria, helping Kurds not get mass-murdered. Kurds were the antithesis of bullshit, Joe thought. Helping them under fire for $800 a month now seemed like a privilege, at least compared to training preppy white supremacists how to terrorize non-existent “home-grown communist-Islamist paramilitaries.” Joe’s bullshit meter was pegged.

Forget three months ago, Joe thought; just a few days ago life seemed to make a far greater amount of sense. It had been a surreal week.

***

“You were in the 10th Mountain, right?” Maxfield King had asked him what seemed an eternity ago, the previous Thursday.

“Uh, yeah,” Joe had answered. “Long time ago.”

“But you must have liked mountains and snow and all that, having chosen the 10th Mountain Division, right?”

“Well, personal preference and the military don’t always go together, as you know. But sure, I guess. In my foolish youth, coming from the flat Midwest, the thought of mountains sounded pretty cool.”

“So, you might be open to doing a short training assignment starting this weekend in the Cascades?”

Joe paused.

“What are we talking about?”

“It’ll be like a vacation. Training some guys in some rudimentary Spec Ops tradecraft. It’s a favor for a pal, to be honest. We know we are not going to turn these guys into Rambo. But we want to make them feel like Rambo for a few days, to help their morale.”

“Tradecraft…that sounds more like intel than Spec Ops.”

“They won’t know the difference, trust me. Nor do we particularly care if they do. Again, this is a favor to a friend who might be able to do us good down the line.”

“Who’s the friend?”

“You may have heard of him. Ban Wilson?”

Joe tried to remember where he had heard the name.

“Isn’t he some kind of conservative journalism guy?”

“He runs a journalism outfit. He’s made some films too. He’s a businessman. But he served. A long time ago.”

“Nam?”

“After. Navy.”

“SEALs?”

Max could not stifle a laugh at this.

“No. Not SEALs. Regular Navy. I think he made light commander.”

Joe was silent at this. After a moment he spoke again.

“This isn’t a long-term assignment, then? I finally have to get the rest of my stuff out of my apartment in Fayetteville and shipped to my new place by the end of the month.”

“God no. A few days. A week. Two, tops.”

“Where in the Cascades? We don’t have mountain training facilities near there.”

“It’s not a USG facility. It’s actually my family’s ranch.”

“Okay,” Joe said.

“It’ll be a vacation,” Max said.

It was not a vacation. Not that it was exactly a hardship post. The ranch was scenic, snow-covered and situated amid stunning mammoth evergreens. The guest cabins were at a five-star-hotel level. Like many things with Max, thought Joe, it was partly first class all the way, and partly completely insane. The insanity component, in Joe’s mind, arrived with Ban Wilson and his rather goofy “boots,” and had a local spike at the group’s introductory dinner.

Joe sat at that dinner between Max and Terry Sweeney, who had arrived separately, at a round table on the far side of the banquet room, as the salads were being served by the wait staff. Like the maids and maintenance staff and security guards and snowplow drivers, they seemed to be imported from various impoverished foreign nations – Philippines, Mexico, Caribbean, East Asia.

“They’re employees of the family,” Max had told him after he had greeted the uniformed guard manning the security gate by name as they drove onto the compound. “Really, we consider them members of the family.”

Joe had been silent then, though after seeing more of Max’s “family members,” he had wondered how Max had been able to keep all these obviously foreign-born, almost certainly undocumented, personnel in the country in this era of ICE door-to-door searches and mass deportations.

Ban Wilson entered the dining room and sat down across from Joe and Max.

“Joe, this is Ban Wilson. Ban, this is Joe Durcan. He’s one of our trainers. Recent Delta Force.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Ban said, standing up and leaning across the table.

Joe noticed that the table on his own side bowed upward as the Wilson gut, camouflaged by some sort of safari-wear fishing vest, pushed the table down on his side. Joe rose and leaned across and took his hand. He noticed that Ban seemed to be wearing sweatpants. His complexion was mottled and his face seemed to have been shaven by either a blind man or a very skilled chimpanzee.

“Likewise,” Joe said, and sat down again. He surreptitiously took out a small vial of hand sanitizer under the table and rubbed his hands.

“And I think you know another of our trainers, Terry Sweeney,” Max said.

“The famous Lieutenant Sweeney,” Ban said, leaning over again and shaking Terry’s hand. “It’s truly an honor.”

The “boots,” seated at the other round tables, numbered some twelve. They were all twenty-something white boys wearing blazers, and all seemed to have similar haircuts – short on the sides, floppy bangs on top. None of them looked as though they were in anything like combat shape, except perhaps one lean, tanned, darker-complexioned, befuddled-looking guy who looked like some sort of surfer dude.

Looking at one of the others, seated next to the surfer dude, a rather strange-looking tall guy, Joe suddenly recognized him as a famous “undercover reporter” who had successfully infiltrated various liberal-leaning organizations and press outlets, surreptitiously taping their employees, and inducing them to say things that would be embarrassing to them when they were creatively edited in post-production facilities generously subsidized by various conservative billionaires. His odd, vaguely glassy, almost cross-eyed, goofily cheerful countenance looked to Joe like nothing so much as someone about to laugh a little too hard because he was intoxicated, or else a portrait of a future assassin, or maybe a mental patient. His name tag read “Jake Nalley.”

What can we possibly teach these people in a few days? Joe wondered as the party was finishing its salads.

“Surprised to see you here,” Wilson said, addressing Terry. “Weren’t you just with the President?”

“Yes, I did have that honor,” Terry said in what Joe took to be a smarmy voice. Why are you buttering this guy up? Joe thought to himself.

“So glad he reinstated your SEAL trident,” Wilson said. “This President stands up for real warriors.”

It took all the willpower Joe possessed to keep his eyes from rolling completely back into his head. He sat with a slight smile pasted onto his face as he recalled a conversation he had had with one of Sweeney’s shipmates in a bar in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a few months earlier.

***

“So tell me. What’s the general feeling about this whole Sweeney trial?” Joe had asked the swabby, who had complained jocularly of being “in denied territory,” over a beer in Fayetteville. They had both just attended a lecture on tactics at the JFK School of Special Warfare, spiritual home of the Army Green Berets, Joe’s outfit.

“I can’t speak to the general feeling,” the SEAL had said, “but I have strong personal opinions about that guy.”

“You served together?”

“Yep. He was my CO.”

“Really.”

“Oh yeah.”

“So, what’s the skinny?”

“Real son of a bitch.”

“Tough?”

“Sure. But not that kind of SOB, not the good kind. The bad kind.”

“Really.”

“Yep.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“‘Elaborate?’ Jesus, they’re getting a more refined brand of operator in Task Force Green these days,” the SEAL said, grinning.

“I’m enlisted, sir,” Joe said, grinning back. “We noncoms have to read the dictionary all the time just to keep up with you guys.”

“Elaborate. Okay. Well, he was a son of a bitch to us, but that’s standard, as I am sure it is in your outfit.”

“Affirmative.”

“Maybe he was a bit more of a son of a bitch to us than other COs might have been, but we all knew how to deal with that. It was the other stuff that I could not hack.”

“Such as?”

“Such as posing enemy corpses for hunting trophy photos.”

“I had heard about that.”

“That stuff did not endear us to the locals.”

“I believe that. What else?”

“It was a constant effort to keep him from shooting random civilians. At least once I caught him aiming at one of my translators who was approaching our gate. He claimed he was just doing recon through his scope, but that’s not what it looked like. He was locked on to every movement of the bogey, rifle moving in perfect sync with it. He was a psychopath. Really fucking evil.”

“You think he’ll get convicted of this thing? The murder?”

“Letting that enemy combatant die? I don’t think so. From what I hear, for once, he was not the doer. I think especially with this administration right now, he’s going to get off.”

“What do you mean, this administration?”

“I think even if he does get convicted, which, as I say, is unlikely, he’ll be pardoned. I’m just glad they took his trident. We do not need his kind in the service. Bad enough if you’re captured and they don’t have any reason to mutilate you beyond general principles. Guys like him turn the entire civilian population into jihadists.”

“But better this President than the other side,” Joe said. “Right?”

“I… don’t know,” the SEAL said, looking Joe over skeptically as if reappraising him.

“I mean, those people have no respect for the military,” Joe continued. “They’re a bunch of slacker civilians with no discipline. Maybe the President is kind of goofy at times, and he sometimes says stuff that makes our Kurds pretty angry. But the alternative was pretty…unappetizing.”

“‘Unappetizing?’” the SEAL said, grinning again. “You sure you didn’t go to college?”

“Oh, sure, I went to college,” Joe said. “I just didn’t finish.”

“Well, I appreciate your critique of the Democrats,” the SEAL had said. “But I have to say, when supporters of the President who never served – just like he never served – start this balls-to-the-wall, all-out defense of this Sweeney guy on Wolf News and talk radio, it makes me reexamine a lot of things. I don’t want this guy representing me. He really fucked with the heads of some of our best operators. Three of them have already had their pins taken for not reporting him, and five or six more are leaving the service because of stuff they saw and had to testify to. Testifying against your own takes balls of steel, but it might also just break you. If Sweeney somehow survives this,” the SEAL said, his voice rising above the ambient country music, “then something is broken in our country. Because this ain’t about real patriotism. To do the kind of shit we do, we need to be the good guys. Otherwise, what the fuck is it all about? We’re all psychopaths like Sweeney, either perpetrating or turning a blind eye to massacres. Okay, he never did anything as huge as My Lai, but maybe that’s just because he never had the opportunity.”

Joe stared at the SEAL in surprise at this sudden vehement outpouring. They both took long pulls on their beers and sat back.

“Maybe we should talk about sex or religion,” Joe said after a minute. The SEAL laughed, and they began to talk about sports and video games instead.

***

Sweeney had indeed been acquitted of the murder charge after some odd and unexpectedly self-implicating testimony on the part of one of the other SEALs who had been there that day. That testimony had been given under a guarantee of immunity from further prosecution by the military prosecutors, who had been reduced to utter slack-jawed incredulity by their prosecution witness’s answers.

And the President had indeed restored to Sweeney his trident pin.

Sitting next to Sweeney, Joe thought back to the conversation with the SEAL, and felt certain long-held unexamined assumptions about reality begin to shift within him.

“Real warriors are what we need to revere in this country,” Ban Wilson was saying. “And real warriors finally have a Commander in Chief they can respect.”

Sweeney raised his water glass at this. Max and Ban did the same. Joe was still staring into space.

“Raise your glass to the President,” Max said.

“Oh,” Joe said, and raised his water glass. What did my Irish grandfather say? A toast using a water glass doesn’t count? Or counts the opposite?

“To the Commander in Chief, and his beating the virus,” Max said. And all four men, each a veteran, raised their water glasses to a man who had received five deferments in order to stay out of Vietnam.

Now, just before the main meal was to be served, Max got up and cleared his throat.

“Gentlemen,” he said.

The conversation among the “boots” dwindled into silence.

“I would just like to welcome you to my family’s ranch.” The “boots” clapped respectfully. Max continued.

“We’re going to have a pretty intense few days here, but I think you will also enjoy the challenge, and learn some new skills that will stand you in good stead as you form the core of a new organization, one that will in turn be an integral component of the future conservative movement. This visit is just the first step in a long process. By the time we are finished honing your skills, you, gentlemen, will be the finest private intelligence organization in the world. Private, but devoted to a public good – the triumph of conservative values over the decadent rootless elitist cosmopolitan globalists who sap the strength and commitment and entrepreneurial genius of our nation.”

These guys are going to fix all that? Joe thought to himself.

“Some eighty years ago, a man named William Donovan, ‘Wild Bill’ to his friends, called a meeting just like this one, a meeting of energetic, intelligent, young American patriots, to begin their formation as a force to combat the great evil of his time, totalitarianism. That group went on to become the Office of Strategic Services, which executed hundreds of heroic secret missions behind the lines in Europe. Later, the OSS formed the core of what became the intelligence services of our great nation.”

Joe looked around him, furtively. They are eating this stuff up.

“More recently, of course, those intelligence services were corrupted into becoming guardians of the Deep State. So now we must recreate them, outside the government, which by its nature is inimical to the liberties of a free people.”

Joe saw the surfer-looking dude mouthing the word “inimical” with a look of confusion on his face.

“From time to time the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” Max continued. “In order for this nation to be preserved, free men – free MEN – must stand up from time to time and wrest from a corrupt and tyrannical government the resources and authorities and weapons that guarantee our rights. Privatization is the name we give to this process of liberation.”

Am I the only one who is having doubts here? Joe thought to himself, looking around. The only one who seemed to share his hesitancy was the surfer guy. Well, there are different types of intelligence, he thought.

“So, I welcome you, the leaders of the future, to my family’s compound as you commit to putting your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honors on the line for our cause. Without further ado, I would like to introduce a man who has been an intellectual leader in our cause, a titan. He is a publisher, a filmmaker, a public intellectual, a gadfly, a journalist, a high government official, and a presidential campaign manager. You all know him already from his many books, his podcasts, his radio show. Gentlemen, I give you… Ban Wilson.”

Ban rose from his seat to enthusiastic applause from the crowd. Joe saw a large piece of lettuce fall from his shirt front as he got up. He had tucked his napkin into his collar; he forgot this as he walked up to the lectern. Max attempted to mime removing it, but Ban simply nodded and adjusted the microphone, and began to speak.

“Good evening, gentlemen. I echo Lieutenant King’s welcome to you. What is happening tonight is the beginning of a great movement. A movement that we hope will rescue this country from the weakness and anomie of modern liberalism, and reestablish it on sound conservative principles. You are part of a movement that has crossed borders, and has chapters in many nations, a movement of the best and the brightest against the global elites that threaten our way of life.

“For too long our national sovereignty has been ceded, bit by bit, to these unelected, elitist, transnational institutions. They have spies everywhere. So, we have to meet here, off the grid, as it were, away from the prying eyes of foreign corrupt forces, in order to preserve our precious European-American values.”

A Filipina server leaned in toward Joe to offer him some icewater. He nodded to her and she expertly filled his glass from an impressive height. He whispered thanks; she smiled and nodded and looked up at Wilson as he continued talking.

“The way forward, gentlemen, is to destroy the administrative state, to cripple its ability to interfere in our lives. For too long we have been told by elitists what toilets we can buy, how powerful our light bulbs can be, what fuels we can put in our cars. We have been told that we must wear masks, and ‘socially distance,’ participate in international bodies, giving way when those bodies predictably told us we must cede our God-given authority to them. No. Our government as it has come to be must be destroyed, and then it must wrest our sacred sovereignty back from these globalist foreign interlopers. …Thank you.”

A Central American man had come out from behind some curtains, replaced the water pitcher next to Wilson’s podium, and gracefully withdrawn again behind the curtains.

“The way to guarantee global security is for each nation to be completely free to pursue its own national interest, as it sees it, unimpeded by these globalist elitist institutions that have shackled them for lo these past seventy-five years. And the only way to guarantee American global supremacy is for America to withdraw from all these global institutions and to pursue our own interests, equally unimpeded. I have visited dozens of countries, throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America. In each country we find allies that are similarly nationalistic, similarly proud of their heritage, and similarly determined to bring greatness back to their own countries. To make each nation return to the apex of its historic greatness.

“We have created a worldwide movement against globalism, in which like-minded nationalists walk forward arm in arm into a future in which globalism has been banished. And in the spirit of Leo Strauss, we will defeat the elitist rootless cosmopolitans, utilizing people like you, who are the best of the best, a secret select few out of the entire country. For as Leo wrote, in his book Persecution and the Art of Writing, that in a world in which the truth is persecuted, and I believe that statement applies to our current age, that essential truths must be hidden from general view, and upheld in turn by a hidden priesthood that must be dedicated to upholding those truths at all costs.

“GENTLEMEN,” he thundered, at the precise moment when the attention of his audience seemed to be in danger of wandering, “YOU ARE THAT PRIESTHOOD.”

The “boots” got to their feet and applauded. The surfer dude, looking confused again, was the last up and the most dilatory in his clapping.

“But Leo did not believe that a nation could be ruled by philosophers,” Ban went on after they had resumed their seats. “That requires men of action. Action and philosophy – that is a formidable combination. So, we will be training you to be actors as well. Fighters, if need be. Spies, if necessary – or should I say, counterespionage agents, since we are certainly already being spied upon by agents of the administrative state.”

Joe saw the surfer dude look around in alarm. The rest of the “boots” seemed unperturbed, and continued to watch Wilson as he went on.

“So, imbibe well the lessons we impart here this week. Learn to be men of action. Learn how to preserve your sacred European heritage. All those dead white males. Greeks. Romans. Italians. Some of the Germans, the true ones – not Marx and Engels, of course. And learn how to handle a weapon. All true American males should know how to shoot. Our forefathers all knew how to handle their weapons. Stand up for American manhood. Stand up against the administrative state. Revel in your status as the secret international vanguard that will defeat the globalist elites. Prepare to take your own part in restoring the Founders’ vision by going to war against the federal government. Gentlemen – let us raise our glasses to the international nationalist movement against globalism! And to the restoration of American global greatness through isolation from international institutions!”

The audience stood and raised their glasses, clapping, and spilling much of the contents thereby.

“We’ll see you out on the training grounds later. Eat well, and get plenty of sleep.” Ban returned to his table.

“Jesus, I’m hungry,” he said. “I could eat a farmer’s arse through a tennis racket. Where’s my napkin? Did they take it?”

The dinner was consumed with increased bonhomie, with lots of laughing and loud conversation among the “boots.”

After half an hour, Max rose to his feet again. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’d like to propose one more toast.”

His audience stumbled back to its feet, glasses in hand.

“This toast is to you all,” Max said. “Each of you who has broken bread with us here, each of you who has partaken in this feast of manhood, is now a member of a sacred brotherhood.”

The brotherhood raised its glasses.

“Because your meals have all been infected with the virus.”

The brotherhood looked suddenly stunned. The surfer’s head whipped left and then right, and sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Maybe you have heard rumors,” Max continued, his glass still held high. “Well, those rumors are true. Congratulations.”

The honorees looked less than delighted at their luck.

“The initiation into this particular fraternity demands that each of you develop immunity to the virus. The way you do that is by voluntarily taking the virus into your system. I require it of all my people. If you’ve already had the virus, like the President, this can have no effect on you and you will suffer no ill effects. If you have not had it, then in a mere two weeks here, you need never fear this virus again. But you can still spread it to the weaker people in our society – the liberals, the multiculturalists, the politically correct. They don’t want to wear an MK medallion because they think it’s my initials? Fine. They will be shunned by everyone, and remain targets for the virus. And we – you – will be happy to pass it along to them.”

Joe was almost as stunned as the other attendees. He turned to Ban and saw that Ban was sweating and had a glassy look in his eyes. Terry was grinning, his eyes shining a little crazily.

“So, eat hearty. ‘The only way to avoid trouble,’ a philosopher once said, is ‘to meet it plump.’ The rest of society has driven itself crazy, destroyed its own wealth and security, desperately trying to avoid being infected. Those people are sheep. We are the sheepdogs. They fear and cower; we will drive them where we want them to go. But in order to do that, we cannot share their craven fears. We must take bold action to remove those fears from ourselves. Congratulations on your bold action.”

Max raised his glass once more. Those he toasted barely responded. Then Max sat down again, and his attendees slowly did the same.

Joe leaned over toward Max, being careful not to change his expression.

He whispered, “Are you fucking crazy?”

Max whispered back, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to you later. It’ll all be fine.”

***

After the dinner, Joe confronted Max.

“You infected me? Without me knowing it? You fed me a pathogen? What are you, Dr. Evil?”

Max laughed.

“You already had the virus. You’ll be fine.”

“You know that’s not necessarily true. There are credible reports that the virus has mutated.”

“No one reads the fine print in the contract. You agreed to hold me harmless when you signed up.”

“I read it. But this is over the line.”

“You’ll be fine. These kids need toughening up. That’s why you’re here.”

“These kids are rich. Their parents are gonna sue you.”

“They signed a contract too. My lawyers tell me I’m bulletproof.”

Joe looked at him. Before this is over, you may need to be literally bulletproof, he thought.

“It’s all good, Joe,” Max said to him as he walked away.

Joe had turned on his heel and stalked back to his room. He sat on the bed and looked up at the air conditioning vents in the well-appointed room. Who knows what he’s piping in from there? It took him hours to fall asleep.

***

The next few days had not been “all good.” And Max had taken off for a couple of days beginning Sunday morning, leaving his contractors to do the “intelligence training” without further direction.

“Sorry,” Max had told him. “Something came up.”

“What’s her name?”

“I’m a good Christian man,” Max had said to him. “But her name is Kathleen. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

Some of the boots had had rudimentary experience with firearms. Joe quickly learned that these were the most dangerous of the group, because the most cocksure of their skills. Most had developed wretchedly bad habits. A few of them shot pistols as they had seen television detectives shoot, with their palms pointed down, walking as they shot. When Joe did finally convince them to use two hands when firing, they often kept moving, as if walking through a house and clearing rooms, as in a movie, making accuracy an unattainable dream.

When they advanced to the AR-15, if possible, things got worse. One of the most arrogant and cocky of the bunch had actually had cut down the stock of his Armalite in order to “Gucci” his weapon, as he called it, rendering it almost entirely unusable.

“Jesus,” Joe said to Terry. “Where did they get these guys?”

“The movement,” Terry said.

“‘The movement,’” Joe said. “Well, we all need one, every day.”

“Well, we just have to train them,” Terry said. “We don’t have to turn them into G.I. Joe. It’s just to get them excited and feeling like masters of the universe or something.”

“I’m just worried that after surviving the sandbox, I’m going to get plugged by one of these morons. I’m starting to think maybe I should be standing right in front of the target. So far it’s the safest place on the range here.”

And so it went, for several days. Joe exhaled only whenever all the weapons had been collected from the eager boots and they could turn to some other seemingly pointless exercise. How is any of this stuff going to help them defeat urban cosmopolitan elites? Joe wondered. They’d probably get more useful experience if I got them building snow forts.

And then came the fateful Tuesday when Billy Boland had plugged Jake Nalley in the six.

It was a shame, really. Joe had come to actually like Billy. All these guys were idiots, from what Joe could see; only Billy seemed dimly aware that he was an idiot, and seemed willing to ameliorate his idiocy by asking basic questions that no one else dared to.

“If we’re the select few, but we’re supposed to be fighting elites…” Billy had begun to ask him one night.

“Yeah?”

“Well, I looked up ‘elite’ in the online dictionary, and it said it meant ‘select few.’ So, we’re an elite, fighting the elite?”

“Yeah, that doesn’t seem to make a hell of a lot of sense, does it,” Joe said. “Maybe you should ask Ban what he meant.”

“Nah,” Billy said to him. “He’d just get pissed at me again.”

“Billy,” Joe said to him, “in my experience, people who get pissed off when you ask questions about the stuff they’re telling you are sometimes bad news.”

“Well, all the other guys say he’s a genius,” Billy said. “They keep showing me this New York Record article that says he’s a ‘deep intellect’ or something.”

“I thought the New York Record was part of the Lügenpresse,” Joe said.

“Yeah, it is, part of that loogypress,” Billy said. “So now I really don’t know what to think.”

“Billy,” Joe said, “I think it takes an honest man to admit when he’s confused. Don’t ever change that.”

“Uh, thanks, I guess.”

The next night, Billy sat down next to Joe in one of the common areas.

“Joe,” he said.

“Yeah, Bill?”

“Here’s another thing I don’t, like, get.”

“Okay.”

“All these nations are supposed to be, like, trying to become great again, like ours.”

“Yeah.”

“Like, the greatest they’ve ever been.”

“Sure.”

“But I looked up some of these countries,” Billy continued, “and a lot of them, when they were, like, the greatest they’d ever been, owned a lot of their neighbors. And a lot of those neighbors, at different times, like, when they were the greatest they’d ever been, had, like, grabbed all their neighbors.”

“Oh yeah?” Joe said.

“So, my question is this, and this is another one Ban gets mad at,” Billy said. “If they are all going to try to be the greatest nation they can be, then aren’t they going to be bumping into each other? I mean, they all want the same land or whatever. Isn’t that gonna cause, like, a problem?”

“That’s an excellent question, Bill.”

“But you don’t have an answer?”

“I think that’s one of those answers that Ban wants to keep hidden. Maybe because it doesn’t exist.”

“I mean, I want to be part of this new Billy Wilder SS. But sometimes some of this doesn’t seem to make sense.”

He couldn’t help it, Joe liked Billy. And it was, Joe thought to himself, extremely ironic that a certifiable low-IQ surf dude was actually crystallizing some serious doubts that had already begun to form in his mind.

And those doubts had brought something to the surface that he really had been very good about keeping buried: the deception he had been practicing on Vaneida. He hadn’t come around completely to her political side. But he had come to like her a lot, and to respect her, in a way he suddenly realized he neither liked nor respected, say, Ban Wilson, or Maxfield King. Or, obviously, Terry. Or, it now occurred to him, the President. And it was eating him up that he still had not come completely clean with her.

***

And so, this Tuesday, when the inevitable happened and one of the idiots shot another idiot in the ass, Joe was sorry that Billy was the idiot who was going to take the blame. He was a good kid. But secretly, Joe was happy that one of these morons had gotten shot in the ass, and he was also happy that Billy was not the one who had, and maybe even more secretly, he was a little happy that Billy had plugged this particular asshole Jake. After three or four days with this crew, Billy, as far as he was concerned, was worth the entire rest of the lot combined. All the rest of them were rich arrogant ignorant entitled incompetent pricks; Billy alone seemed untouched by pride or ill will.

So, as they drove slowly down the trail toward the cabin, and Jake moaned in the back, and Billy teared up, Joe tapped Billy on the shoulder and winked at him. When they arrived at the cabin and unloaded their patient on the EMTs, Joe took Billy around the back of the cabin.

“I’m so sorry,” Billy said.

“Don’t be,” Joe said. “He probably had it coming.”

“He’s my friend,” Billy said.

“No, he’s really not,” Joe said. “Listen, Bill. They’re probably going to send you home after this.”

“Oh man,” Billy said.

“Listen to me. You are gonna be fine. You are a good guy. You have a good heart. These guys are not good guys. A wise man told me once, ‘Better a wise foe than a foolish friend.’ Do you know what I’m saying?”

“No,” Billy said, unhappily.

“Well, to be honest, I’m not a hundred percent sure what he meant there either,” Joe said, laughing. “But I think it had something to do with true friendship. A lot of these guys seem to me to be a little foolish. I mean, we’re all foolish to one extent or another. I guess it’s foolish to shoot someone else in the ass by accident.”

“It feels foolish,” Billy said.

“I know,” Joe said. “But I want you to know that I don’t think you’re a fool. At least not the way a lot of these guys here are. We have a saying. As far as I’m concerned, out of this whole group, you’re the only one that’s worth the bullet.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that none of these assholes are even worth the effort to fire a bullet, only you are.”

“I don’t get it,” Billy said.

“Don’t worry about it. But I don’t think you are a fool.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Billy said, miserably.

“And let me say one more thing. If you get kicked out of this particular merry band, don’t feel bad. Maybe consider it a lucky break. Because between you and me, and don’t tell anyone I said this, I think Ban is an asshole. And so are most of these Ban wannabes. Nothing good can come of this. So, if you value my advice at all, I would tell you, walk away from this whole thing and don’t look back.”

Billy looked at him, still not quite comprehending.

“Go back to surfing, man,” Joe said. “Do what you love, and stay a good person.”

“Thanks,” Billy said. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I can ask,” Joe said. “Now go back in there, and whatever happens, know you’re going to be all right. Because you are. And Billy?”

“Yeah?”

“Go to an urgent care facility and get tested for the virus when you get back. Trust me, if you are infected, you’ll want some medicine. This thing can damage you, no matter what Max or the President says. Get the best care you can.”

Billy got a little wide-eyed at this. “I don’t have insurance,” he said. “Ban told me I shouldn’t get Okomocare, it’s a scam.”

“Take my card. It’s got my cell number on it. Text me and I’ll find you a doctor.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Let’s go.”

They had walked around the cabin back to the front porch. Billy was sent home the next day, and the rest of the training was curtailed, with all live-ammo shooting canceled. None of the “boots” had developed symptoms within the training period, which Joe knew meant nothing; it was too early. But all the same, Joe breathed a sigh of relief as he packed up his gear for the return flight home.

But Max seemed to be looking at him a bit more intently on the flight home. Did he hear what I said to Billy? thought Joe. He dismissed the doubt from his mind as he pushed his seat back on the G5 and went to sleep.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

48

Wednesday, February 17, 2021, 11AM Eastern Standard Time

The President squinted at his guest, who was sitting across from him on one of the two couches in the Oval Office. A brace of Secret Service agents sat on either side of him.

“Zed,” he said.

“Zed?” the President inquired.

“Zed.”

The President leaned back.

“This is the guy who was outside the gate? With the table? North of the White House?”

The Director of the Secret Service, who was seated next to the President, said, “Yes, sir. As far as it is humanly possible to ascertain, this is the man.”

“And he was there for how long?”

“Every day for about two months. When it wasn’t raining or snowing.”

“But never at night?”

“Not as far as we are able to ascertain.”

“Was he near the church?”

“We were not able to obtain clear footage of that particular area.”

The President looked at the man closely. He did have a long beard. And it was gray, as was his hair. But there was something a bit off about him. He seemed too young to have such gray hair, and the hair was shorter than in the videos and stills. And the beard…

“What took ya so long? I’m a busy man.”

“Well…” the first agent said.

***

“You are gonna really owe me after this, mister,” the police makeup artist said to the second agent, two hours earlier in the limousine.

“I know.”

“I mean, I don’t hear from you for months, and then suddenly I gotta show up on some national security mission for you?”

“I know, I know,” the second agent said.

“He wasn’t exaggerating,” the first agent reassured her. “What you are doing today is of the utmost importance.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said.

They had just parked at St. Elizabeth’s.

“Stay here, we’ll be right back,” the second agent told the woman.

“Where else am I gonna go, check into the booby hatch?”

The two doors slammed and she sat with her arms folded.

The agents walked into the facility, flashed their badges, and proceeded to the elevator. When it reached the third floor, they got out and walked down the hall to the room. The first agent opened the door and walked in, then walked back to the nurses’ station.

“What happened to the guy who was here a couple of weeks ago?”

“What guy?” a burly male nurse said to him.

“The guy who was here – the Zed guy.”

“He’s still there. What – he didn’t escape, did he?”

The nurse jumped up and jogged toward the room ahead of the agents. He looked into the room, then turned back in relief.

“No, that’s him,” he said to them, smiling now. “Still there. Right, Zed?”

“Zed,” the clean-cut man said to him, beaming.

“Oh, Christ,” the first agent said.

“What are we gonna do?” the second agent said.

“You’d better think of something,” the first agent said.

“I’D better think of something?”

The first agent glared at him. The second agent got on the phone.

“Honey, I got a favor to ask. I know you were just in for a beard-tinting job, but how are you at fake beards?”

The first agent heard a jumble of angry noises from the phone.

“Is there a place we can get you the supplies? …Theatrical Supply? …Near Ford’s Theater? Okay.” He hung up.

“What’s the deal?”

“We gotta make a stop on the way.”

***

“We…had a holdup at the hospital, Mr. President. Some medical bureaucratic thing.”

“I guess they got papers to fill out for the kooks.”

“Yes, sir. Some red tape. But we’re here now.”

“What did the signs say?”

“Signs?”

“The signs he had outside the White House.”

“Oh… It was some kind of gibberish, sir.”

“But you printed it out?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me see it.”

The Director gestured to one of his agents, and he pulled out an enlarged photographic image of a sign. They all looked at it.

CAST YOUR BREAD UPON THE WATERS FOR YOU WILL FIND IT AFTER MANY DAYS GIVE A PORTION TO SEVEN OR EVEN TO EIGHT FOR YOU KNOW NOT WHAT DISASTER MAY HAPPEN ON EARTH IF WE ALL JUST GIVE AWAY EVERYTHING AND TRUST EACH OTHER THAN WE CAN ALL SURVIVE IF WE TRY TO HOLD ONTO EVERYTHING WE WILL ALL PERISH AM I WORTH MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE NO PLEASE MISTER PRESIDENT LETS ALL GIVE TO EACH OTHER AND RELY ON OUR FELLOW MAN AND WOMAN

OTHERWISE

BEAST OF REVELATION

THIS IS
THE END

“This is the end,” the President said.

“Zed,” said Zed.

“I want to try something,” the President said.

“What, sir?”

“Let’s take him for a walk,” the President said, and got up from the couch.

“All right,” the Director said, rising himself and gesturing for the others to rise.

The President made his way out of the Oval Office and the entire entourage followed him. He walked down the hall, then outside to the colonnade that led to the Residence. Once inside, they all got on an elevator to the second story. When the doors opened, he led them into a dining room with a view to the north.

“Come over here,” he said to the patient.

The patient docilely came over to him.

The President pointed out toward the church across Lafayette Park.

“You were there?” the President said.

“You were there?” the patient answered.

“No, YOU were there? At night?”

“YOU were there,” the man replied. “At night?”

“I was there? …At night?”

The man’s eyes widened.

“I was there…at night?”

“And this is the end?”

The man simply smiled at him.

“And the Beast of Revelation?”

The man walked closer to the President. He seemed to sniff him from three feet away. The Secret Service men moved quickly to stop him.

“No, let him alone,” the President said.

The patient simply beamed.

“I might have you come back,” the President said.

The patient continued beaming. Then he pointed out the window, roughly toward the Episcopal church across Lafayette Park.

“Zed,” he said.

“Zed,” the President said. “Z. The end. The last letter of the alphabet. That’s how my mother used to say it. She was from the U.K. That’s the classy way to say ‘z’.”

There was a pause. Then the President said, “Okay, you can take him back. I might want to see him again, though.”

“Certainly, sir,” said the Director. The agents took the man gently by the arm and they all made their way back to the elevator.

“Jeez. That was a close call,” the second agent said. “I really owe her now.”

“She’s still in the limo?”

“Yeah. She kept calling and saying she was gonna get fired.”

“Well… she might have a new job now,” the first agent said, gesturing to the patient.

“Zed,” the patient said, smiling.

49

Wednesday, February 17, 2021, 12PM Central Standard Time

“There is a dark force in our politics,” Mike said, in an ominous tone.

“Here we go,” said Pete. “Where are those tacos, Janet? We need some mouth-blockers.”

“They’re in Guatemala,” she said. “Held up at the border. Gettin’ their papers checked.”

“Do you need some pesos to speed it up?”

“That always works,” she said. “But I gotta go have a cigarette.”

“Give the ICE guy one, maybe he’ll speed things along,” Mike said.

“Pedro!” Janet yelled back at the cook, invisible to them in the kitchen. “When I get back from my ciggy break, those tacos better be ready.”

Janet went through the kitchen toward the back porch.

“Okay, lay it on me,” Pete said. “There’s a dark force. What conspiracy theory do you have today?”

“Okay, you know how the universe is expanding, and they’re always trying to measure how much mass is in it, so they can calculate whether the expansion will continue forever, or slow down and then reverse, because the momentum of the expansion can’t be maintained because the gravity from the mass will slow it down and reverse it?”

“This is why I come to Taco Wednesdays,” Pete said. “The light conversations.”

“Well, anyway, for a while they thought that the amount of mass in the universe was way too small to slow the expansion down. Based on the speed of the expansion and the amount of visible shit in the universe, there was no way the universe would ever stop expanding. All the stars were going to get farther and farther away from one another until they all burned out, and then the planets would freeze, and that would be that, the universe continuing to expand in frozen darkness forever, end of story.”

“So, it’s kind of like this place in February.”

“Except no spring, ever.”

“Exactly. It’s fucking freezing out there. And I haven’t seen the sun for weeks.”

“Anyway,” Mike said, “it turns out that there’s a whole lot more mass in the universe than they thought. Only it’s not visible.”

“Is this what you tell your dates? ‘There’s a whole lot more mass there than you think, it’s just not visible?’”

Mike ignored this.

“So, they measured the expansion of the universe, found it was slowing, and now they think there has to be far more mass out there than they thought. They now think that the vast majority of mass in the universe is invisible. Like 85% of it.”

“Thank you for the science lesson. I think I need another beer to forget it already.”

“So, I think there’s an analogy to our politics.”

“Of course you do, you analogizin’ son of a gun.”

“Everyone talks about the white working class and why they support the President. Well, when you ask them what they value, what they want, it sounds a lot like the platform of the Democratic party, may its soul rest in peace. But the white working classes keep voting against what they say they want, and against their measurable economic interests, as well. So there is some dark matter, some dark force out there, that makes them vote against their interests.”

“What about limousine liberals?”

“What do you mean?”

“They are rich, but they are constantly trying to get the government to raise their taxes. Isn’t that against their interests? What’s their ‘dark matter’?”

Mike looked at Pete.

“That is an excellent point,” he said. “Maybe no one really votes in their economic interests. Except the billionaires. They are getting exactly the tax cuts they paid for with their campaign contributions. But I would say that the real dark force in our politics is the one that makes white working-class people vote for Republicans when Republicans just do everything they can to kill them.”

“Why is our matter dark? And is your liberal matter light?”

“It’s dark because I as far as I can see, it all boils down to ‘Fuck you.’”

“Really? All my politics boils down to ‘Fuck you’?”

“In the end, I think it does. Okomo did a good job for the working classes. He saved us from Depression Two Point Oh.”

“That’s debatable.”

“Okay, then compare what he did to what your side predicted. Okomo was going to take away your Bibles. He was going to take away your guns. He was going to turn America into a socialist state.”

“Okomocare was kind of that,” Pete said quickly.

“No, it wasn’t, as I have shown you time and again, not by light years,” Mike said. “To continue: He was going to cause hyperinflation and debase the currency. He was going to never leave office because he was going to cancel the 2016 elections. He was going to cause more 9/11s because he was going to welcome terrorists with tea and sympathy. He was going to destroy the American military.”

“He did that,” Pete said. “My cousin is in the Navy, and Okomo came on his aircraft carrier, and he said Okomo hated the military.”

“Sure,” Mike said. “Some swabby seeing the world through a porthole gets within 300 yards of the President and suddenly he knows the inmost thoughts of the Commander-in-Chief. Aside from anything else, if you were President, and hated the military, and didn’t want anyone to know about it, I’m sure the first thing you would do is go on board an aircraft carrier crammed with enlisted people and talk loosely about how you hate the military. Pardon me for not swallowing that. To continue…”

“By all means, your majesty.”

“To continue: He was going to promote Islam, because he was a secret Muslim, and he was going to close Christian churches. He was going to drop Israel as an ally. He was going to close the New York Stock Exchange, which was going to crash and burn because of all the socialism. He was going to jail bankers and Wall Street types. He was going to raise taxes to 90%. He was going to have the government take over private businesses.”

“He did that – the car companies.”

“Sure, he SAVED the car companies. Then after they were saved, the government sold the stock at a profit. Thanks for reminding me – he was also going to lose all the bailout money that was laid out to the banks and auto companies.”

“He didn’t?”

“No, he didn’t. We, the People, made money on all those bailouts. They were all paid back with interest. But speaking of stock, let’s take stock, shall we? No Bibles taken away. More guns in America than people by the end of his term. No socialism – ” here he turned to Pete with a look of warning – “NO SOCIALISM, no, not even in health care. Lowest inflation in American history. Dollar strong as ever. 2016 elections went off on schedule and elected the exact opposite of him, and he left office right on time, offering a smooth transition that was not exactly followed up on, but that’s not his fault.”

Janet came up with two hands laden with tacos.

“Please, save me,” Pete said.

“I’m busy,” she said. “Save yourself.” She laid the baskets on the bar and walked away.

“It’s a cold cold expanding world,” Pete said.

“To continue: No more 9/11s. No terrorists being welcomed. In fact, the guy who did 9/11 was killed in a raid ordered by Okomo. The military was as strong as ever, with the budget increased, until the Republicans slapped on spending constraints – ‘sequestration’ – that damaged the economic recovery.”

“He also said he wanted to reduce the budget deficit, and he signed off on sequestration.”

“Well lookee here, my little boy has been reading the Wall Street Sentinel. How about that.”

“It’s true.”

“Yes, it is true. He signed off on sequestration, but it was at gunpoint, more or less. And all that debt ceiling brinksmanship the Republicans pulled. Did you know they raised the debt ceiling 19 times under his predecessor, without a peep? Hypocrites.”

“Ain’t it awful.”

“To finish…”

“I don’t believe you. That you’re finishing.”

“To finish: by the end of his second term, there had been no churches closed; Israel was still a huge ally; the New York Stock Exchange was in record high territory; no bankers or Wall Street types jailed; taxes just slightly higher, almost to where they had been before his predecessor cut them; no government takeovers of private companies. NOTHING that was said about him turned out to be true. But have Republicans changed their minds at all about any of that stuff? No. Back down in the lower reptile brainstem, they believe that all those lies are true still. Nothing of what they predicted happened. NOTHING.”

“I disagree,” Pete said, and took a big bite of taco.

“You are presented with facts, and you disagree, without offering me any other facts or reasoning. THIS, my friend, is the Dark Force in action.”

Pete munched on his taco placidly.

“You see?” Mike said. “Your basic answer to me presenting you with these inarguable facts is, ‘Fuck you.’ That’s what it boils down to. ‘I don’t care that nothing I said would happen actually happened, or that I’m wrong and you are right. Fuck you. I want everything my way.’ Hell, now, with this President, it’s been jacked up to another level. ‘I’m going to be wrong on everything on purpose, just to show you people who paid attention in school and made something of yourselves the way we were all told to do that I can be wrong and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.’”

Pete answered while chewing slowly.

“You’re not wrong. You’re just an asshole.”

Mike grinned.

“Did you know they did a test on various American males from different parts of the country, and their reactions to certain names they could be called?”

“No, but I have a feeling you are going to tell me about it.”

“The scientists hooked them up to some gizmo that measures heart rate, blood pressure, sweat, temperature, that kind of thing. Northern males, when called names, didn’t have any real physiological reaction to them. But Southern males had spikes when they were called insulting names. There was one magic word that drove them insane.”

“Let me guess: ‘Liberal?’” Pete said, smirking.

“No, surprisingly. It was ‘Asshole.’ Their BP and pulse and sweat went nuts. They basically got homicidal. I think that’s the ‘Fuck You’ phenomenon in its purest form.”

“Well, I ain’t Southern, but ‘Fuck You’ all the same.”

“Well I do declare,” Mike said. “But I still think there’s this dark force, this ‘Fuck You’ force, that is killing the country right now. Everything that has actually made us great, like strong central government, adequate taxes on rich people, reasonable wealth equality, huge investment in research and development, respect for science, investment in the next generation instead of seeing them as marks to be beaten out of college loan repayments, immigration, and especially anything that is given to anyone who doesn’t look like us, is being shut down. Think about when America was ACTUALLY great. When would you say that was?”

“I’m not gonna answer that,” Pete said. “I detect a trap.”

“You’re right, it is a trap,” Mike said. “A trap for anyone who is trying to get away with something. Let’s say that America was greatest in the postwar period, the 1950s and 1960s.”

Pete refused to be drawn.

“Well, what was the highest federal income tax rate then? 91%. Under Ike Eisenhower. We were building the interstate highway system. The moon program started around then. CEOs made more than regular workers, but more like 10 to 1, not 300 to 1. Investment in schools was adequate. The Cold War had us investing in technology. But then we hit some bumps economically. Oil prices surged. Inflation went nuts. So, Saint Ronald came in and declared that we could have it all – no taxes, total freedom, the private sector would take care of everything. Then the Cold War went away, and this me-me-me thing of hating on the government went ballistic. Suddenly, privatization took over the fucking country. Inferior, or at least not superior, charter schools sucked funds from public school systems, destroying their funding base, on purpose. The kids in the damaged public schools dropped out, shoplifted or blew a jay, and went to privatized jails that gave kickbacks to judges to cram them full of nonviolent ‘offenders.’ The ones who didn’t go to jail went to Iraq and served next to guys who were private contractors making ten times what they made. When they came home from Iraq with PTSD, they enrolled in for-profit colleges that suck up federal loan money and provide useless ‘education’ for careers that don’t exist. So, the ‘graduates’ end up in debt to their eyeballs and unemployed, still with PTSD, or get jobs for next to nothing in the private sector, maybe driving Unter cabs until they crash, get injured, and go on disability. Then they go on opioid painkillers they were prescribed by doctors because the manufacturers got sweet deals from the government. They get hooked, and then when the prescription runs out, they go on heroin and they go to jail and the private sector company running the prison gets another cut from the government. By the way, I just told the story of a cousin-in-law of mine, I think. Privatization, not too much government, is murdering our country.”

“Jesus,” Pete said. “Eat your taco.”

“And it all goes back to the dark ‘Fuck you’ force. You think you’re sticking it to me when you vote for the President, but what you’re really doing is screwing all of us, and especially your kids.”

“Fucking kids,” Pete said, swallowing his last bit of taco. “They have it coming.”

“You joke,” Mike said. “But they are seriously screwed.”

“Okay,” Pete said, without food in his mouth. “You eat, and I’ll talk.”

“Rroh-kray,” Mike said, finally digging into his lunch.

“Why are we all like, ‘Fuck you,’ to the Democrats? Here’s what I think. Democrats always seem to have a government solution to every problem. And the solution is always like 13,000 pages long, and has almost no relationship to real life outside Washington.”

Mike looked like he was about to interject something in reply, but instead started choking on his taco.

“See? Washington would have a 13,000-page document to stop you choking. But me, the private sector? I would just give you the Heimlich and we could go on with our day.”

Pete got up, slowly, as Mike continued to choke.

“You want me to call Washington for you? So they could do a study? What’s that?” he said, leaning in, ear cocked toward Mike.

“You want the study? No?”

Pete went behind Mike, put his arms around his midriff, and pulled back sharply. Mike spat out some taco.

“Jesus,” Mike said. “I told you this stuff would kill us.”

“See what I mean? Total private sector non-government response, and you’re good to go. Have some beer.”

Mike drank a little beer, coughing before and after.

“So, we have these problems in America, and the smart people all say, ‘Look, I have this 13,000-page solution that will solve everything!’ And what happens? Things get worse for regular working people. But do the smart people ever say, “Oops, I made a mistake!’? Of course not. They just pile in with another 13,000- page plan that screws everything up worse. The problem with Democrats is, they don’t have common sense. They create some big complex program, and people like them get to work on it, and they might have good intentions, but taxes go up and things don’t get better for people like us. I’ve got another example: busing. Now, there’s segregation, and that is bad, and so black kids go to shit schools, because the schools are neighborhood-based, and the neighborhoods are segregated. So, the smart liberals get together and say, ‘Let’s bus the white kids to the black schools, and vice-versa.’ So, the white parents go nuts. They protest. And liberals call them ‘racists.’ But the liberals don’t live in the neighborhoods where the white working-class people are. The liberals won’t have to bus their own kids to black schools. Hell, the liberals don’t even KNOW any black people, and they’ve never lived close to them. But they go ahead and force busing onto the white neighborhoods. And what happens? The white people leave the public school system and start their own schools. The black kids are bused, but there are no white kids in the schools they get bused to, so eventually the whole thing falls apart. Is that common sense? No. It was a 13,000-page plan imposed on white working-class people by rich liberals who would never be affected by it, but who got to stand over those white working-class people waving their fingers and saying, ‘Bad racist lowlifes!’ So, what’s my reaction to that? My reaction to that is basically ‘Fuck You.’ I saw Okomo as a similar kind of liberal. His plans were too complicated. They lacked common sense. So, I went a different way last election.”

Mike’s head hung low, almost in his food. He picked his head up and took another drink and coughed. Finally, he spoke.

“I think there’s a lot of truth to that. But it doesn’t explain such a violent swing in a random direction that has completely disrupted the country. Okomo wasn’t a Muslim. He was born here. He didn’t take away guns or bibles or destroy capitalism or the health system or the dollar. None of that has anything to do with liberals sometimes being too complicated in their solutions. It’s something darker.”

“Okay,” Pete said.

“No, don’t shut me down, man,” Mike said, still coughing a little. “I accept the truth of what you say. There is a lack of common sense. There were too many complicated plans proposed in the last election by the Democratic candidates. What they should have done is said simple things, like ‘No one should lose their house over medical bills,’ and then said they were open to any solution that met that standard. ‘College graduates – or graduates of professional training programs – should not graduate with $200,000 in debt, because it defeats the whole purpose of education, which is to give the next generation a leg up.’ Instead they said, ‘Look at my complicated plan, doesn’t this show how serious I am,’ and people like you said, probably correctly, ‘There is no way in hell this complicated plan is going to either get through Congress or solve my problems,’ and kaboom, here we are with President Moron, who has no plan at all.”

“If we are not careful, we may find some common ground,” Pete said.

“Don’t worry,” Mike said, hoarsely. “I have a feeling it’s far too late to save the country. Two more beers, please, Janet.”

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian