by Reed Sprague
“Look what I found, River. This is the gold. This is it. We’re almost out of time. You go into the bathroom and look everywhere for the rest of it. And I mean everywhere.”
“There’s a cabinet in the bathroom high up on the back wall, above the partition wall. How am I supposed to get to it with my hand like this?”
“Climb onto the top of the partition wall,” Mitchell said.
“Thanks for the advice.”
River proceeded into the bathroom and climbed onto the top of the partition wall between the toilet and the shower. He positioned himself awkwardly to pry open the small wooden cabinet. The odor was nearly intolerable.
The sound of the office door deadbolt suddenly cracked throughout the room and hatcheted deep into the nighttime silence. Mitchell turned to see, then froze. The intruder tossed the quarter into the air and called out, “heads, just as I found it.”
River remained silent. Mitchell dropped the envelope into the open drawer. He gripped his flashlight securely, didn’t go for River’s gun, tried to grab the .357, but failed. It slipped from his hand and joined the envelope as his lifeless body fell to the floor.
The intruder walked quickly into the bathroom, looked around but not up, then walked back into the office and continued out the door. He closed the door and locked the deadbolt.
River waited quietly and listened for the intruder to return before he jumped down. He checked Mitchell for a pulse, grabbed his gun but left the envelope. He bolted out the office door and scrambled from one corridor to another looking for his boss’s killer. His search was fruitless. He returned to Peterson’s office. The envelope was gone.
2:00 p.m., 6 January 2021. Two lines of soldiers slid the coffin carefully from its temporary storage and transport unit. The soldiers placed it gently on its special coffin stand, then proceeded to remove the flag. After the flag was removed and folded appropriately, the pearl white coffin glowed in the bright Virginia sun and waited patiently for the formalities to proceed.
Mitchell’s mother, father and teenage sister all cried during the first solo as his sobbing young widow tried in vain to comfort them. She was comforted by her tiny baby boy who slept peacefully in her arms. The pastor spoke, then the military officer, then River. The soloist sang another song. An assistant to the Governing Council spoke from behind a black curtain. The pastor spoke again. The speeches and songs shined nearly as bright as the coffin.
The soldiers stood at attention. Lift. Aim. Fire. Return. Hold. — Lift. Aim. Fire. Return. Hold. — Lift. Aim. Fire. Return. Hold. Never at ease.
The big man in the suit and black overcoat barked out to Mitchell’s widow and to Mitchell. “Take the flag, please. On behalf of President James Ian Barnes, I present this flag to you in recognition of the sacrifice your husband made in service to the United States of America. Thank you so very much for your sacrifice, Robert Dwayne Mitchell, Sr. May God bless your soul as you move on into eternity.”
Arlington was white and spotless—only snow and clean white crosses. Even the dirt was clean. It was acceptable to dump it on top of the polished coffin. Taps blared. Soon only the cross, the snow and the tears. Later only the cross, the grass and the memories.
Back inside the counseling room the big man spoke again to Mrs. Mitchell. “Take the report, please. On behalf of the United States government, I present you with this report of your husband’s death while serving honorably to protect the citizens of this great country. Please retain this report in order for you and your child to receive all of the benefits your husband’s family so richly deserves because of his selfless service to, and ultimate sacrifice for, the United States of America. Remember to file with the USFIA for all benefits. There will be no record of your husband’s death at the Social Security Administration or at any other government agency.
“In order to receive your benefits, please sign this confidentiality agreement here on this line. By doing so, you are agreeing to keep this entire report confidential, and you are reminded that you are under a lifetime oath to keep your husband’s work at the USFIA completely confidential. You are not permitted to discuss your husband’s work at the USFIA with anyone outside the USFIA. You are permitted to speak about your husband’s work at the USFIA only if you are requested to do so by an authorized representative of USFIA’s three–member Governing Council. You are even forbidden to speak with USFIA’s Director, Sydney Albert, or any other subordinate of the USFIA Governing Council regarding your husband’s work at the USFIA.”
USFIA Report On The Death Of An Agent
USFIA agent’s name: Robert Dwayne Mitchell, Sr. Hereby officially reported: Death during service to the United States Federal Intelligence Agency while on assignment in Italy. Cause of death: USFIA Code A74N–3. Date of death: USFIA Code UB–Y18. Time of death: USFIA Code 94R–T7. This commissioned report is official and has been certified, accepted and filed in strict compliance with: USFIA Procedure 614.17.44(e).
Further Inquiry Allowed: None. Report status, including attendant details: Top Secret. Signed by all three members of the USFIA Governing Council: Yes. Coded signatures used: Yes. Subordinates of the USFIA Governing Council permitted access to the codes used in this report: No. Subordinates of the USFIA Governing Council permitted access to this report: No.
Case status: Closed. Reopen file no earlier than: 6 January 2071. Exceptions: None. At that time, computer will define report codes used: Yes. Exceptions: USFIA Governing Council Signature Codes. Entire report, including attendant details, exempt from United States Freedom of Information Act: Yes. Entire report, including attendant details, exempt from all other U.S. and international disclosure laws: Yes.
6 JANUARY 2021
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Tyler Lee Peterson, forty–three, worked for two decades as an online evangelist, government lobbyist and political advisor who counseled his clients exclusively through his radio talk show. Peterson endured the entire twenty years locked away in his rundown office in Washington, D.C., where he delivered sermons to his keyboard, sought government favors from his telephone and gave political advice to his microphone.
Peterson’s favorite of his three jobs was his work as evangelist for the Free Will Independent Christian Church, an Internet church and renegade Christian denomination he founded in January 2000. Peterson worked long hours—from early each morning until late each night, seven days a week. His daily schedule included an hour or so for him to despair over his filthy floors, water stained walls, decayed office furniture and patently false numbers.
To make his case for a successful twenty–year career, Peterson pointed to the numbers. Peterson claimed that his church, located at www.godsonlywaychurch.org, reached scores of people each day. And he told anyone who would listen that his lobby firm, Tyler L. Peterson Government Representation, LLC, was booming. His proof for this claim was the extensive list of phone calls entered each day into his phone logs. The large number of phone calls he placed could mean only success, he would say. Peterson also said that his political consulting business was a hugely successful enterprise. There seemed to be no challenge to his repeated claims that he spoke to uncounted thousands as he spewed his political advice during his radio program. While it was always easy for Peterson to claim his numbers, it was impossible for others to verify them.
No one was ever able to verify the scores of people who were reached by Peterson’s church. His church’s only known score was one to one: It was virtually alive and spiritually dead. It died at birth twenty–one years ago. Peterson programmed his church’s web site to add numbers each day to the registers displayed at the bottom of the main page. The counter program automatically increased all six totals displayed there. Each day’s total and the accumulated total from January 2000 for the following categories were calculated and recorded nightly at midnight: “Visitors To Our Church’s Site,” “Members Of Our Church,” “Heaven Chosen.” The trick program was even set to add a larger–than–average increase to the numbers each S
unday, as well as on other Christian days of celebration, to reflect the increased interest and activity one would expect to see on Christianity’s special days.
The phone calls Peterson placed for his work as a lobbyist were seldom answered or returned. No one recognized his name on their Caller I.D. He was never able to bed down with the people in Washington who offered their money to the politicians in exchange for political favors, and he couldn’t seem to get to know the politicians who offered to sell their services to the lobbyists. He was a lousy middleman. He had no club memberships, connections, or influence of any kind with the people who mattered. Nothing. He ate lunch alone each day.
Politicians ran for elected office without considering Peterson’s advice or even noticing that it was available to them. His political counsel could be found only on his radio talk show; he had no individual clients. The few politicians who had heard of Peterson believed that his advice wasn’t worth looking for on the radio dial or anywhere else.
Peterson’s radio talk show on WNWD, 1420 AM, is still broadcast daily at two o’clock in the morning. It has been broadcast live at that ungodly hour for twenty–one years. His show attracts a handful of listeners and even fewer actual callers. His listeners are those odd individuals among us who live their lives on the outer fringes of one extreme philosophy or another. They are the people you hear about who stay awake all night and well into the following morning festering because of their obsessions over the conspiracies that they believe fuel society’s engines of inequity. Before Peterson’s listeners go to bed each morning, they write voluminous e–mail messages and blog entries to their virtual friends telling them of the “real story” they heard on Peterson’s show.
Dante Hall, Martin Samuel and Stuart Gualt are the only three of Peterson’s listeners who are known by name. They’re fake callers who are each known by hundreds of false names and nearly as many fake voices. Each calls into Peterson’s show on a regular basis and uses a disguised voice and a false name to make it seem that Peterson has an audience. Peterson means that much to them. These are three guys you want your children and grandparents to stay away from. They’re the cream of the rotten coconuts—the toxic milk. Prime loons. Intelligent, but not smart. Truly dangerous. Years ago they were referred to as the three blind disciples or three blind stooges. Take your pick. Not any longer, though. They’re Peterson’s gulls, alright — his and only his — but they’re nobody else’s fools. Peterson’s many strange explanations of society’s conspiracies are gospel to them.
These three would get even with the world if they ever got their hands on a nuclear bomb or on any other weapon of mass destruction. It’s all so simple to them: God is an instrument of vengeance, Peterson is God’s puppeteer, and they are Peterson’s obedient followers. Their job is to be astonished and enamored by Peterson, and so they are. They love Peterson with a very strange love.
Peterson’s claims that his radio talk show reaches uncounted thousands each day seem true. And in a way, those claims are true. It’s a play on words, though. The thousands are not counted. Peterson doesn’t count. The radio station that broadcasts Peterson’s talk show doesn’t count either. The station can’t afford a ratings survey.
It became clear last February that behind all the murky numbers, Peterson’s professional efforts had produced no fruit. He had suffered through a life of professional humiliation. The depressing facts about Peterson’s life to that point were that few people knew who he was, and even fewer cared that he existed. Peterson was a nobody. His life for twenty years was one of bondage and obscurity in a black hole called the smalltime. Still, Peterson believed that he was a somebody—a somebody that the world stubbornly refused to revere or even acknowledge.
Peterson recently experienced a powerful personal vision. He described it as “an awakening that will morph into my own personal epiphany.” That’s how he chose to spin it. A more accurate version of his vision: Twenty years in his decrepit office, staring at his sad surroundings and rigging the numbers finally got to him. He was desperate. He had to make a move, and his move had to be dramatic. It had to catapult him out of the depths of his dark pit where few could see him and all could look down on him. He longed to be up, seated majestically on his perch, so that all could behold and admire him. With no other options available to him, Peterson began a campaign last February that he believed would deliver him to the liberty and prominence available in the bright lights of big–time public notoriety.
It actually worked. In eleven short months, Peterson did what he had been unable to do in twenty years: He succeeded at something. His campaign culminated with tonight’s acceptance speech to the annual convention of the American Conservative Consortium. These ACC people are amazing. They bought Peterson’s numbers without checking his math. They now own his story and he owns theirs. Peterson is their hero, and they are his admirers and followers.
As I write this, Peterson is addressing the ACC as its newly–elected president. He is now officially out of his black hole. As he speaks, the bright spotlights of the auditorium shine only on him. His new disciples here tonight are listening intently to his proclamations.
Tonight’s acceptance speech caps Peterson’s coronation ceremonies, begun three days earlier, and officially kicks off his three–year term. He began his riveting speech fifty–two minutes ago after ACC’s outgoing president, the Rev. Dr. James Vernon Wilder IV, laid hands on him and prayed a special prayer of blessing on him and his coming three–year term.
Sydney Albert, my boss at the United States Federal Intelligence Agency, is sick of hearing my repeated warnings about Peterson. Albert considers Peterson to be harmless. I disagree. Perhaps to appease me and shut me up, Albert told me to go ahead and attend Peterson’s coronation ceremonies, especially tonight’s speech. Albert instructed me to keep an eye on Peterson and his new flock, and report back to him with what he undoubtedly hopes will be my final report on Peterson.
After I submit my report, Albert will probably spend an hour or so of his time listening to me ramble while acting interested in my report and in what I have to say to explain it. He’ll file away my report in some archive at a remote USFIA office, then get on with what he feels is the truly important work of the USFIA—work that does not include concerns about Peterson. Albert will then be satisfied that he allowed a junior agent of the USFIA to voice his opinions, regardless of how outrageous those opinions seem to be.
I have made it known that I suspect that Peterson has evil motives. I have already written several reports to my superiors and peers alike at the USFIA in which I stated that I believe that Peterson might position himself to seize more power and influence well beyond that of the presidency of the ACC. I wrote that Peterson demonstrates the early signs of a person with the potential to one day mount a revolution against the United States. No one listened to me. The gossip in the office was that I was right about Peterson, but someone at the very top was for Peterson and against me, so my opinions about Peterson were to be quietly set aside while I was constantly assigned to cases that were far removed from Peterson.
Anyway, back to Peterson. The man can deliver a speech. That’s his one skill. Even before his eleven–month campaign, Peterson was known for his speaking abilities. Except that in those days, he rarely got the opportunity to deliver a speech.
Peterson is known for telling a crowd what they want to hear and for using the rhetoric of the speech he delivers to them to manipulate them while appearing to maintain deep, immutable convictions of his own. I am concerned that Peterson possesses only one deep and unchangeable conviction: to grab power for himself.
Whatever his motives, Peterson is an opportunist who knows how to seize the moment. He can convince a crowd that they need to act in unison to save their grandmothers, or he can convince the same crowd that they need to turn against their grandmothers to save the U.S. for God. Tonight’s crowd is being told that they must save the U.S. for God. So far there has been no mention of their grandmothe
rs.
Peterson’s speeches are often in conflict with one another. To one group he might rail about the evils of socialism; to the next he might speak of the necessity for the government to provide for the basic needs of its people. Though Peterson seems to speak in absolutes, he always leaves himself an out. His speaking skills are such that he is able to appear to make an irrefutable case during a particular speech, yet he could later claim to have meant something that was the opposite from what had appeared to be clear during the speech.
Tonight’s speech is shaping up to be a masterpiece of Peterson–speak. Peterson’s voice and physical gestures are becoming more intense as he approaches the end of his speech. It’s difficult to decide if his words are toxic, harmless, or somewhere in between.
“…and so, in closing, I leave you with these final thoughts.
“Perilous times are here, and America is in serious trouble. Not due solely to her recent economic and political catastrophes or her obvious moral decadence. And not even due exclusively to the fact that senseless, violent crime is completely out of control, and that her streets are owned by punks and thugs—monsters who roam wildly, seeking whom they may destroy. They were taught from an early age that they came from primates, and today they are acting the parts. No, as bad as these problems are, they are only symptoms. The root causes of these immense and pervasive symptoms, and more, are even worse; they’re far worse.
“America is in distress because for decades, nearly a century, her citizens have been invading her treasury. And she is in trouble because her businesses are run by her government. Her Christianity has been arrogated and hopelessly compromised by doctrinal imbeciles who occupy the see of theological elitism. They’re usurpers, all of them. May they be forever damned for their apostasy!