by Deforest Day
Knave's Gambit
A Political Thriller
by
Deforest Day
Copyright © 2017 Deforest Day.
[email protected]
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
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While you here do snoring lie,
Open-eyed conspiracy
His time doth take.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
“The President has the power to seize property, institute martial law, seize and control all means of transportation, regulate all private enterprise, restrict travel, and in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all Americans...
“It is possible that some future President could exercise this vast authority in an attempt to place the United States under authoritarian rule.
"While the danger of a dictatorship arising through legal means may seem remote to us today, recent history records Hitler seizing control through the use of the emergency powers provisions contained in the laws of the Weimar Republic."
Joint Statement, Sens. Frank Church (D-ID) and Charles McMathias (R-MD) September 30, 1973
Chapter One
DEERSLAYER—Secret Service code name for the Vice President of the United States—stood in the blind, dropping ducks at dawn. They fell by the brace, and soon dozens of mallards, mergansers, and canvasbacks littered the shoreline. The daily bag limit was of no concern. The Chesapeake Bay Retrievers were spent, and the air was thick with the sharp tang of gunpowder.
The weapons were a pair of Purdy double-barreled shotguns. A gift, one of many, from the slim man standing a discrete two paces behind the vice president and the Secret Service agent reloading with Remington Nitro-Steel High Velocity Magnum shells. It had greatly eased the anxiety of the Protection Detail when DEERSLAYER's guest had declined to participate in the morning’s recreation.
“God, but I love this sport,” the vice president said, admiring the pile of waterfowl the dogs had deposited at his feet. “The mud and the blood and the gore.”
His non-shooting companion, Prince Fahd of the House of Saud, toed the disgusting pile of feathers. His pleasure was falconry; the bird was the weapon, and the slaughter took place at a discrete distance. The royal peregrines were trained by rote repetition and had blind obedience to the falconer. Much like the students of Wahhabism in their madrassas.
At home he favored the dress of his Bedouin ancestors, and followed the strictures of his faith. In the West he wore Italian, drank Scotch, smoked Cuban and fucked American.
A pair of inmates on work release tossed the dead ducks in galvanized tubs, then swung them onto a Maryland Department of Highways flatbed truck. The Baltimore Outreach soup kitchens would welcome the donation.
A grizzled corrections officer held up one of the birds for the shooter’s perusal. “You done blew this'n foot off.” He grinned. “Bird can fly, but he's gonna be swimmin' in circles. Whatta ya want I should do?”
“What do you usually do with a lame duck? Wring its neck.”
While the minions went about their tasks, the principals toasted the dawn’s early light from the privacy of the prince’s Rolls Royce. Bloody Marys and freshly-shucked oysters made roughing it on the Chesapeake shoreline bearable.
The vice president reached inside his Barbour shooting jacket and removed a thick No.10 envelope embossed with the State Department seal.
“A dozen H-1B work visas, direct from the desk of the First Deputy Undersecretary for Middle Eastern Affairs.” He handed the envelope to the Prince. “Distribute them wisely, my friend.”
The prince slipped the envelope inside his coat, and contemplated the future. When one chose to ride the tiger the dismount could be difficult.
Chapter Two
The swarthy man carried his coffee and newspaper to a bench in the Hines Street Greyhound terminal. He carefully set the styrofoam cup beside him, and opened the Baltimore Sun to the Classifieds. New and Used Automobiles. Every city has its Miracle Mile, a strip of highway littered with fluttering pennants and glittering chrome. Today’s was on the way to Washington. How convenient.
He sipped his coffee, pulled up a map on his smartphone, and noted all the Interstate routes circling the nation's capitol. The 295 joined 495 at the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge, and crossed the Potomac River into Alexandria. What a monumental bottleneck. What an opportunity.
He scanned the busy bus station, searching for anyone he'd seen more than once during the ride from New York. Satisfied he had not been followed, he finished his coffee, folded the newspaper, and tucked it under his arm. Later, it would help him find the other items on his list.
His famous uncle was one of the Watergate burglars. A Cuban patriot. A long-dead soldier in the war to rid the world of Castro.
The swarthy man was a soldier of the second generation war. Dade County High School. Four years, learning this and that. Then Uncle Sam, another four years, learning this and that. The last twenty years he'd worked for another, not so well-known three-letter uncle, doing this and that. The Soviet Union was gone, but a Godless New World Order, run by the Illuminati, Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, had taken its place. Someone had to fight back.
Sometimes the assignments made no sense, but the Army had taught him that much of life made no sense. This mission offered plenty of money and plenty of travel.
Every big city has its Little Havana, and he made friends easily. With his dark eyes and bright smile many of his new friends were attractive young women, eager to hear his tales of adventure. Some of them true. He left the bus terminal and hailed a cab.
His search ended in the back lot of the third dealership. A nine year old F150 with a utility cap over the bed and a hundred and seventy thousand miles on the odometer. He used a driver's license that was not his, and paid cash.
At Walmart he bought a cheap mattress, a blanket, and a folding aluminum lawn chair. He paid cash.
At Home Depot he paid cash for a heavy-duty adjustable sawhorse and a pair of ten-foot two-by-fours. The lumber stuck out past the tailgate, and a helpful young man in an orange vest stapled a red plastic flag to the studs.
GUNS: BUY SELL TRADE was a gutted house trailer on a strip of gravel off the Laurel exit of 295, not far from Ft. Meade, home of the NSA. He could see the antenna farm from the h
ighway, and wondered if they still monitored Radio Habana.
The rifle was a 1924 Mauser, stamped FAB. NAT. D'ARMES de GUERRE HERSTAL - BELGIQUE on the left side of the receiver. Smooth action, good rifling; older than God, but most likely never fired in anger. Not the cheapest in the rack, but not the most expensive, by a long shot.
Bolt action, five round magazine, iron sights. A trained rifleman could put all five in the X ring at a hundred yards. At fifty feet accuracy would not be an issue.
He used the José Martí driver’s license this time, waited while the fat kid ran the NICS E-Check on a smartphone, and paid cash for the rifle and a pasteboard box of military surplus 7x57 mm ammunition. “Any place around here I can touch off a few rounds to sight it in?”
Bud had BUD in script on his XXL golf shirt and a matchstick in the corner of his mouth. “There's a pistol setup out back.” He touched a stack of paper targets. “Ya can have one of these bull's eyes for a buck.”
José Martí fired three rounds, policed up his brass, then walked down range to see the results. High and to the right; one in the nine ring, and a flier. Close enough for government work. He was more interested in the viability of the old cartridges than the accuracy of the rifle. The price was four hundred bucks below budget, not that anyone would be asking for a receipt.
He wrapped the rifle in the blanket, shoved it behind the seat, and headed for Washington's Dulles International Airport.
He wiped everything, left the truck in the Long Term Lot, and headed into the terminal. He put a Walmart shopping bag in a locker, wedged the key behind a concrete planter. At the JetBlue counter he became Ramon Chibas, and bought a one-way ticket to Boston. He hoped the visas were on their way.
Chapter Three
The young woman had long legs in a short skirt, and her heels clicked on the terrazzo as she double-timed to her doctoral advisor’s office. Heads turned as she made her swift progress down the long corridor.
Professor Becker breathed a sigh of relief as she entered the department chairman’s fifth floor suite. “Ms. Sinclair! Good of you to respond so quickly to my summons.”
As if, she thought. With my Ph.D. still locked in committee, whenever you say come, I play my best Meg Ryan.
She’d left the Bug a block from the Computer Sciences building, and dashed through a brief cloudburst. She dried her glasses on her BYTE ME tee shirt, giving the Professor a glimpse of a navel ring.
“Yes, sir.” When you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything. Dad taught her that. Ever the taciturn Yankee, he drove the town snowplow through Northern Vermont’s endless winters, then filled the endless potholes in the short summers.
The downpour had stopped. Professor Becker’s window wall gave an IMAX view of the Potomac, and they were high enough to see Theodore Roosevelt Island, and the Commonwealth of Virginia beyond. She replaced her glasses and noticed an old man in the corner, ensconced in Dr. Becker’s easy chair.
“Lawrence Edgerton,” said Becker, “allow me to introduce the department’s brightest star, Katherine Sinclair.”
Edgerton, overstuffed as the chair, wore a well-cut three piece tweed suit. His jowls concealed his collar, but not the knot of a blue necktie with tiny white bulldogs. A slim chain crossed his belly, Phi Beta Kappa key on display. His hands were clasped below it, thumbs sparring. He smiled, flashing a glint of gold incisor. “How do you do, Ms. Sinclair.”
Ms. Sinclair saw that it was more salutation than question, and only required a smile in reply. Dad would be proud. She turned to Professor Becker and used her eyebrows to ask the obvious.
“Edge is from the Department of Homeland Security,” he said, without further explanation.
Edgerton removed rimless glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I understand that you have done some interesting work in the field of data mining.”
She finger-combed wet hair. Data mining. Who was this old fart, and why was he here? Another Baby Boomer like Becker, a relic of IBM punchcards and tape drives.
Or maybe someone had uncovered her past, and she was about to be shitcanned from grad school. Fuck' em. She didn't need the damn doctorate to join Anonymous. Or any of the other subversive hackers running rampant in the cyberwar. Still, she should give this fossil a chance. Being broke was no fun.
“Sir, data mining is little more than a flock of bots, chittering in the dark. One step above boolean logic. My thesis tackles the challenge from an entirely new shift in the paradigm.”
His voice was tinged with sarcasm as he asked, “And what might that be, young lady?”
“A paradigm shift? It’s from the writings of Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science. It means a fundamental change in underlying assumptions.”
“Dear child, I know what a paradigm is. I meant your thesis. Summarize it. Briefly, please, for a codger who detests his smartphone.”
Summarize. “OK; think of a Venn diagram combined with Kevin Bacon's six degrees of separation. Except my Venn is not two or three sets, but a tesseract. A four dimensional analog of the cube?” She saw he was clueless. Not surprising, given his age, the key, and his necktie.
As both young and female—and what Dr. Becker called the department’s brightest star—she was used to suffering fools gladly. “How 'bout I give you a demonstration?”
Without waiting for encouragement or permission she removed her laptop from a carryall that was a complicated affair with zips and snaps and straps, accordion pleats and pockets for cells and keys and feminine essentials.
She accessed the University WiFi network, and played a brief allegro on the keyboard. After looking at Edgerton for a moment, she narrowed her search parameters. Hit Enter and peered over the top of her glasses at the results.
“Class of ‘73 at Yale. Wolf’s Head secret society, Silliman residential college, lettered in tennis. Degree in American History, Summa Cum Laude.”
Edgerton dangled his spectacles from a casual finger. “Clever. You accessed my on-line biography. Clever people are a dime a dozen in D.C.”
“Yessir. Except I didn’t. Too obvious, too easy. A freshman hacker can spoof their Wiki bio. I came in from a different direction. You're wearing either a Bulldog Club of America, or a Yale necktie, and I assumed the Phi Beta Kappa was legit, so I dove down that worm hole.”
She realized the smug jerk was clueless about her world. As clueless as she was of the who-what-why of Lawrence Edgerton. So let’s play some hardball, and flesh out that bio. She threw a slider, high and tight, hit Enter.
“Oh my.” She read for a moment. “About fifty years ago three SDS radicals died in a Greenwich Village safe house. They were building a bomb, and it blew up.” She skimmed a second news report. “Huh. Dustin Hoffman lived in the townhouse next door.” She chuckled. “One degree of Kevin Bacon; they were both in Sleepers.”
She scrolled. “Anyway, you were arrested, along with a bunch of other Students for a Democratic Society. The Venn diagram puts you in some interesting company. Here's a group photo with Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground. The FBI ran a background check after you attended a fund-raiser for the Black Panthers at Leonard Bernstein's home.” She handed him the laptop and a superior smile.
Edgerton replaced his bifocals, glanced at the screen. “You just accessed a raw FBI file. Most impressive.” He quickly closed the computer, drummed his fingers on the cover. His lips wrestled across his teeth, then let a smacking sound escape. “My casual involvement with the group was purely sexual in nature, and I was never charged.”
He glanced at Becker with rue. “All those hairy, dangerous gals were irresistible to a horny undergraduate.” He returned the computer to its owner. “Hat’s off, young lady. You’ve passed the audition.”
“Audition?”
“Like the Marines, we’re looking for a few good men. To wage the Cyber War on Terror.”
If he was offering a government job there would be a background check. Maybe even security clearances. Time to put a cautious toe in
the tub. “There is one thing, Mr. Edgerton. I have a criminal record. Five more years of probation.”
Edgerton tented his fingers beneath his chins. It hadn't taken some clever Venn diagram to run a routine background check on this admittedly clever girl. “Hacking into the IRS, then posting the tax returns of the members of Congress on that internet auction site.” Edgerton cleared his throat with a chuckle. “Yes, we are aware of your own youthful indiscretion.” He shifted his bulk in the chair and contemplated her future.
A clever, even amusing, prank, but one that was doomed to failure. Maybe Becker thought Katherine Sinclair was a mathematical genius, but the kid was a complete naif when it came to White Collar crime. Just as well, the field was already too crowded.
It had been a damned spirited auction, with the opposite sides of the aisle driving the bidding for the Speaker of the House’s 1040 to five figures. Then she learned that PayPal had been hacked by the FBI, assisted by a plea-bargaining cyber thief. She eluded the Correctional Experience by returning the money and programming a firewall for the IRS that would deter future attacks.
Cyber warfare had spread like a rampant virus since 9/11, and his department had become the poster child for the Peter Principal. Edgerton needed fresh blood, if his own paradigm shift was to bear fruit.
He offered her an inducement to come on board. “Should you choose to join us at HomSec we will expunge your criminal record so thoroughly that even you cannot find it.”
“Well then, sign me on. Do I get to mess with the NSA toys?”
“Afraid not. You will be fully occupied with our own toys, as you put it. Much more interesting. You will start at GS-15. There’s a housing allowance and a per diem for travel. With the D.C. differential it comes to a bit over a hundred and ten per-annum.”
“Holy crap!”
“Indeed. Congress has been most generous with our budget. And good men, er, people, are hard to find.” Especially, he mused, with a department largely staffed with political appointees; people whose primary job qualification was party loyalty.