Silently Mason recognized that this was his love of Russian strongmen talking. His American family had adopted him from Russia when he was only six, but he still remembered a little of Mother Russia. The harsh winters, his cold parents, and his tough older brother were some of his earliest memories, along with his family’s hero worship of Lenin, Stalin, and Putin. Perhaps that was why although he was raised American, deep down he admired the most ruthless Russian leaders. The desire for absolute control. The totalitarian instinct. The consuming lust for power.
He had no love for Russia. It had abandoned him to America, wished him good luck, and dumped him in a place where good luck was in decidedly short supply. The midwestern American family that had adopted him lost their farm when the bank foreclosed. His adoptive mother had died in a factory accident a few years after the foreclosure. She was a farm girl at heart. She had no business being in a factory. She was inexperienced and poorly trained. That was what got her killed.
He remembered the family’s struggles in the tiny apartment into which they’d been forced. No heat, cold water. Being teased at school for wearing hand-me-downs. His sister having to drop out of school and take care of the housework. He was keenly aware how no matter how bad the economy got for his family, politicians still wore their fancy suits and silk ties and enjoyed their lavish perks. He saw how businessmen kowtowed to them, hosting receptions in their honor and showering them with invitations to sporting events and glittering galas in the nation’s capital. A thirst for power emerged along with an unquenchable determination to take advantage of the perks only afforded to the higher-ups.
People are going to toil on my behalf and beg for my favor, not the other way around.
“Murray has been screwing me since he joined the Debt Rebel Gang,” Mason spat.
“He’s a clever guy,” Stokely replied. “He knows how to play the game. He didn’t want you messing with his emergency budget. He wanted to present you a fait accompli and force you to swallow it whole.”
“He’d better be ready because I’m about to flex my muscles.” Mason snatched his beer bottle and took a vicious swig. He squeezed the bottle, half wanting to break it.
Murray was better looking, more popular, and, most painfully, more powerful than Mason. Even at the height of his power, Mason always felt like an outsider. No one ever talked about him as presidential material despite his high rank. He was rarely the guest of honor at Washington’s regular evening galas. And other power players graced the Sunday talk shows much more frequently. He was convinced others had an easier road than he did because of his humble background and his homely looks. And he was certain others were constantly plotting against him behind his back.
Mason’s deep-seated anxieties formed the foundation of his decided ambivalence toward democracy. Another expression of his Russian heritage, perhaps. Americans loved to talk about their democracy, government by the people and for the people, but Mason knew better. Handsome, polished guys like Murray won popularity and acclaim, book deals and board memberships, while people viewed Mason as nothing more than a grubby climber of the greasy pole. He hated his Russian parents for giving him up, but more than once he thought he was more suited to Russian politics, where the people’s opinions counted for far less.
Murray’s speech and failure to even give advance warning of its contents ratified every one of Mason’s conceptions about himself and his place in the political world. Mason’s inner rage, like volcanic magma, bubbled to the surface.
This is my game. I dedicated my life to being the most powerful man in Washington. And here is Murray showing me up in front of the entire country. His family didn’t get evicted. He wasn’t forced to live in a tiny rodent-infested apartment. He’s lived a gilded life while I’ve scrapped and clawed for every bit of power I have. And now he’s screwing me?
“How do you think the Gang should respond to this?” Stokely asked. “Murray is popular. He was inaugurated only one month ago. He’s still in his honeymoon.”
“I don’t know yet,” Mason replied. “But Frank Palmer and I are going to have a nice long talk tomorrow morning. I have not yet begun to fight. But I sure as hell will.”
“Okay, John Paul Jones,” Stokely wisecracked.
“Do you think this is some kind of joke?” Mason slammed his beer bottle on the table. “You think anyone would even know your name without the Debt Rebel Gang? Don’t you forget who got you where you are. The Debt Rebel Gang made you. And I made the Debt Rebel Gang.”
“Okay, take it easy, Lew,” Stokely pleaded. “Don’t be so paranoid. I’m on your team. Just let me know what you all decide to do.”
“Believe me, I will,” Mason seethed. “And you better damn well stand and salute when I do.”
“Of course, Lew,” Stokely reassured Mason. “You know you can count on me.”
I count on no one. I trust no one. This emergency budget is going down, and I’m the one who’s going to take it down.
“Let’s get out of here,” Mason said. “I have a couple long days ahead.”
“I bet Murray does too,” Stokely joked.
“You’re goddamned right he does,” Mason growled. “Just wait a moment. I need to send a text.”
Mason pulled out his smartphone and typed a quick text to Frank Palmer. He needed Frank to get working on a response. Frank would know exactly how to respond to Murray. He was a pure political mercenary, one eye on helping his boss and one eye on his next job up the ladder. Frank would gladly do the dirty work for Mason today and against Mason tomorrow. Trust was purely transactional.
Mason pressed send and scowled at the smartphone momentarily. Then he and Stokely made their way up the staircase and out of the club.
Acorn squeezed a foam stress ball as he sat at his desk awaiting Mason’s arrival. Manipulating Mason always made him nervous. Would Mason ever figure out he was being led down the garden path by his top lieutenant? Acorn gripped the stress ball so tightly his knuckles were white.
For Operation Pripyat to succeed, he needed to kill the emergency budget. And if he wanted to kill President Murray’s emergency budget, he had to get Mason into his raging irrational state. Because for the congressman, politics always came first. And when it came to politics, shivving his rivals and protecting his turf was his top priority.
The task before Acorn was clear: get Mason to forget about policy and focus instead on his political enemies. Make it about getting the upper hand on a rival. Then he’d dissolve into impulsive attacks, policy consequences be damned.
Mason had to be fuming. He had sent a short text after the president’s speech—That bastard. We are taking this emergency budget down—and then gone silent.
Sure enough, at eight a.m., Mason roared into his office foyer in a fury, coffee cup in hand. Acorn kept the door to his office open in the morning just in case Mason wanted to talk when he arrived. But Mason rushed straight into his own office without saying anything and slammed the door.
Excellent. He’s pissed off. He’ll be pliable today.
Acorn put his ear to the wall that separated their offices and listened intently for any sounds coming through. He easily could hear Mason’s purple rages through the cheap drywall. But today he heard nothing.
Then . . . boom!
The wall exploded into a cloud of drywall dust and wood shards. Acorn shrieked, ducking and covering his head with his hand against the flying wall debris. Shattered drywall littered the floor.
A baseball rolled to a stop against the couch. Acorn could clearly see the signature on the ball’s sweet spot: Stephen Strasburg WS 2019 MVP. Mason had thrown his prized 2019 Washington Nationals autographed baseball clear through the office wall.
Peering into Mason’s office through the newly created hole, Acorn saw Mason pacing around, punching the air. “Jesus Christ, Lew, calm down! You could have killed me!”
“Get in here, Frank!” Mason shouted.
Acorn went over to Mason’s office.
“I tak
e it you’re still steaming about the president’s speech last night?” asked Acorn.
“What gave it away?”
“You came roaring in here like a bat out of hell and damn near killed me with a baseball that you threw through a fucking wall.”
“Damn right I did. Goddamn Murray gives a speech like that without calling me first. I’m the chairman of the goddamn Appropriations Committee. The budget is my fucking sandbox! Who the hell does he think he is proposing this emergency budget without even calling me first?”
“Come on, Lew, you know perfectly well who was behind that speech.”
Mason’s eyes widened. Acorn had just lit the fuse on a bomb.
“Fucking Andrea Gartner! Fuck that fucking two-bit holier-than-thou schoolmarm. And fuck Murray for bringing her back from the dead!” Mason’s red face clashed with his plain white shirt. The floor vibrated with every crash of his stomping feet. “I’m the goddamn chairman of the goddamn Appropriations Committee. I’m supposed to write the emergency budget, not Andrea fucking Gartner!” He slammed his fist on his desk, knocking the Legislator of the Year award he’d won two years ago from the Maryland Chamber of Commerce off the desk. It shattered into pieces on the floor.
“Lew, stop breaking shit and try to figure this out, okay?” Acorn needed Mason to focus if his plan was going to come to fruition.
“Did you hear what they put in that budget? Cutting Social Security? Medicare? The voters will kill us all.”
Maybe so, but Acorn wasn’t thinking about the voters killing Mason. That would be a nice bonus. No, he wanted a full-scale economic meltdown, and for that to happen, he needed the emergency budget to fail.
“Downsizing the government?” Mason shouted, the veins on the side of his head bulging. “I mean, what the fuck? I represent Maryland’s DC suburbs! Half the people in my district are federal workers Murray wants to lay off. And the other half are federal contractors. And the other half are former government employees living on federal pensions! How am I going to face them and tell them the federal money spigot is off?”
“That’s three halves, Lew.”
“Oh, fuck off, Frank. You know what I mean.”
“Well, weren’t your voters hardcore Debt Rebels?” asked Acorn, continuing to egg Mason on. “They should be thrilled! Government spending is about to get a whole lot smaller.”
Mason lowered his head, pulled off his glasses, narrowed his eyes, and looked directly at Acorn.
“Let me ask you something, Frank,” he said in a low, conspiratorial voice as he jabbed his finger at Acorn’s chest for emphasis. “You ever wonder why the Debt Rebels stopped caring about the debt and carried water for President Roberts and his trillion-dollar deficits?”
“Not really, I hadn’t. What are you getting at?”
“I’m getting at power, Frank. Some people just feel like political outsiders and glom onto the latest political rebellion movement, whatever it is. Yesterday it was about the national debt, tomorrow it’ll be about something else.”
Acorn opened his mouth, but Mason raised his finger as if to say, I’m not done. Acorn got the message and let Mason continue his soliloquy.
“Then along comes some politician who harnesses that rebellion, that anger. ‘Follow me and we’ll stick it to the insiders!’ you tell them. You turn their anger into a virtue and others’ willingness to build coalitions, make compromises, and achieve incremental successes into a vice. You tag your opponents with some pejorative name: ‘Establishment,’ ‘RINO,’ whatever. Now they’re the villains. It’s some serious jujitsu, and it’s fucking magic. And the clever ones among them realize they can make money off the whole thing. Letters and histrionic emails to raise money against whoever is the Establishment quisling of the week. They may be supporting the cause, but they’re making sure they get their cut. There’s just one problem.”
“What’s that, Lew?”
“There’s always going to be someone who comes along and gives a bigger and louder ‘fuck you’ to the Establishment. That guy steals all your oxygen. And then you realize you were never really driving the anti-Establishment bus. The people were driving. You just got in the front seat and steered for a while.”
“Then what?” asked Acorn.
Mason narrowed his eyes again. Acorn recognized his cockeyed grin, with the left side of his mouth curled up, almost smirking. Mason was about to let him in on a secret.
“Then you’ve got two choices: you can become one of that guy’s lieutenants and keep riding the tide or you can quit the whole business. You want to know why my Debt Rebel Gang dumped debt reduction and didn’t say shit about Roberts’s trillion-dollar deficits? Why the right-wing cable TV and talk radio guys fell in line? That’s why. They realized they weren’t driving the bus and quickly figured out how to at least stay in the front seats. They knew damned well what they had to do to keep their careers and their gravy train rolling.”
“I don’t know, Lew. That’s a pretty cynical view of things. A lot of Debt Rebels really are worried about the debt.”
Mason finally lost it.
“Jesus, Frank, have you been listening to a fucking thing I’ve been saying?” He pounded his fist into the desk. This is why I’m the congressman and you’re the staffer. Isn’t it obvious by now that my constituents don’t give a damn about the debt? They dumped the fiscal responsibility shit the minute they found someone giving a bigger finger to the Establishment. So I stopped talking about the debt. And they kept reelecting me! So stop throwing the the damned Debt Rebellion in my face, dammit!
Mason had revved himself into a frothing, raging, irrational volcano.
Time to strike, Acorn thought.
“You need to kill the emergency budget, Lew.”
“You’re goddamned right I do.”
Easy as pie. The selfish son of a bitch didn’t even stop to think about the consequences for the country if the emergency budget doesn’t pass. All he cares about is his political career. He’s so damn shortsighted he doesn’t even realize that if the emergency budget dies and the country collapses, he’ll be out of a job too.
Acorn’s parents were right. Politicians were capitalists on steroids. The capitalist would sell the Communist the rope to hang him; the American politician would vote to save his career even if it meant destroying the country.
“Hold a public Appropriations Committee hearing,” said Acorn, rolling out his strategy. “Call Andrea Gartner up here and make her defend this budget. She won’t be able to. You’ll kick her ass and this emergency budget will never see the light of day.”
“Yeah, let’s haul her up here and make her tell America she’s cutting their Social Security,” Mason agreed as he rubbed his hands together spitefully. “Let her tell her Secret Service protection they’re about to be laid off. Call the press. Tell the rest of the committee. We’re having a hearing tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir,” said Acorn. His plan was working, and he’d barely had to lift a finger. It was almost too easy. He pictured himself in the new American government, the Communist government that would take power after the final collapse of American capitalism.
“Oh, and one other thing.” Mason wasn’t done.
“What’s that?”
“Make sure the place is filled with angry voters. I want the Capitol surrounded by pissed off protesters.”
“Gotcha. How about I set it for two? Give our protesters the whole morning to assemble.”
“Good idea. I want that damned Andrea Gartner fearing for her fucking life.”
Acorn smiled.
If Mason only knew.
The morning of the hearing with the House Appropriations Committee, Andrea felt as though she was preparing for her own funeral. She had spent nearly an hour with Rachel practicing her testimony. When Rachel left to take a call, Andrea sighed to herself. She knew as soon as she repeated the president’s insistence on cutting the budget, committee members were going to grandstand and either blame her for the cuts or pretend
it was their idea.
Rachel rushed back into the office.
“I just got off the phone with the Secret Service. You need to look at this.” She quickly typed something on her computer, then moved the screen so Andrea could see it.
“Take a look at my Facebook news feed,” Rachel said. “It’s saturated with ads from a million different groups all out to sink our emergency budget proposal.”
One ad showed empty medicine jars and shriveled IV bags attached to people slowly dying in their beds and elderly nursing home residents being rolled out in their wheelchairs, unable to pay for their care and dying in the parking lot. Another featured a doctor yanking the IV out of a patient’s arm and watching her slowly die.
“How long have these ads been running?” Andrea asked.
“The Secret Service says they’ve been running since yesterday. They’ve been viewed by at least a half-million people.”
Andrea swallowed hard. “Who put these ads out?”
“The first ad is from a group called the ‘Committee to Save Medicare.’ Some group called the ‘Save Social Security Committee’ did the ad with the IV.”
“Who the hell are these people?” Andrea’s eyes were wide.
“I have no clue,” said Rachel. “And I’ve been in the political game for a long time.”
“These groups sound phony,” Andrea said. “Someone has to be behind them. Can we figure it out?”
“Not quickly,” Rachel replied. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years in politics, if you want to hide the tracks of your influence schemes, just put together a front group, give it a high-minded name, and set it loose. It’ll take months to figure out who’s really bankrolling the whole thing.”
“We don’t have months,” Andrea said.
“These ads will go over great in the DC metro area.” Rachel pointed at the screen. The first ad featured frozen defense production lines, empty seats, and silent IT systems in government buildings that couldn’t even pay their electric bills. Beneath it was a video of agents boarding up federal offices and posting “For Sale at Auction” signs on their front doors. The second ad featured tumbleweeds blowing past the vacant, padlocked offices of Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin, America’s largest defense contractors.
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