Knave's Gambit

by Deforest Day

  Aunt Patty’s voice broke their reverie. “Liz. Aren’t you supposed to be watching this, for Current Events?”

  The girl took two quick strides across the carpet and jumped on the sofa, folded her legs in a position only the young can assume. She patted the seat beside her. “Daddy. Come watch with me.”

  “I can’t handle that crap without a beer. Pats?”

  “I’m mellow.”

  He headed to the kitchen for a bottle of Rolling Rock. His father-in-law already had one going. “Hell of a thing, over in Virginia, eh, Poppy?”

  Poppy's voice came from the inside of the Washington Post. “Takes me back to ‘Nam. A lot of crispy critters to clean up.”

  Nick took a sip of beer. “Not a job I’d want. Gotta go watch the debate with Liz. You have any interest?”

  Poppy lowered the Post, raised his beer, and studied his son-in-law. His memory returned to the day Mary brought Nick home, brought him, hand in hand, into this kitchen. She'd said, “Look what followed me here, all the way from Deutschland,” and laughed that way she had, even as a little kid; throwing her head back, her eyes shining. Tearing up with joy.

  Mary had been in Germany, her National Guard unit doing its two weeks, and she’d busted Nick in some beer joint, Drunk and Disorderly. Her emails home spelled it out with humor, and later ones had hinted at her attraction to the big jerk. A lot can happen in two weeks.

  Now Nick had taken his daughter’s place in Poppy Martin's heart and home, mostly because he was the father of his granddaughter. “Why would I want to watch a couple of crooks dodge questions?”

  Nick headed to the living room, settled beside his daughter. “I hope your teacher is giving you credit for this waste of time.”

  “Daddy. You’re watching history in the making. Sister Mary Margaret says it’s the first time since forever that a sitting president or vice president isn’t running.”

  “Well, good golly miss molly, I guess I better take notes.” Instead he took a long swallow of beer. “It’s all a bunch of hooey. Republicrats and Demicans; ain’t a dime's worth of difference between the two. Doesn’t matter who wins, they screw you just the same.”

  His sister-in-law gave him a dirty look. “That’s the attitude that’s got us into the current mess. When good men do nothing.” She pawed through the stack of magazines beside her chair, came up with an old issue of Rolling Stone. “Listen to this. A defense contractor received a 385 million dollar contract to build detention facilities in the event of an emergency influx of refugees, or—get this: to support the rapid development of new programs.” She dropped the magazine on her lap. “What do you think of that, buster?”

  “I think Rolling Stone’s supposed to be about music. What the hell do they know about national security?”

  —o—

  A few miles away DEARSLAYER watched the same event in the vice president's official residence at the Naval Observatory. A young woman was also at his side, but she was naked, and had no interest in presidential debates.

  As always, she had arrived high and would leave stoned, still clueless about the old man who paid top dollar for her oral skills. His Protective Detail arranged the transportation, coke, and cash, and assured DEERSLAYER his wife was safely away for the evening.

  “The one's a goddamn crook and the other's a low-grade moron.” The vice president groped for the remote, switched to C-SPAN.

  Raising her head, the girl asked, “Say what?”

  The vice president pressed her head back down. “I stand corrected. They're both crooks and morons.”

  “Baby, you needs to turn that shit off. You're tryin' to shoot pool with a rope down here.”

  —o—

  Nick Paloma locked his pistol in the glove box, locked his truck. He had a permit for the weapon—you’d have to be nuts to drive a hook in the District without one—but there was no point in carrying it into a federal building. They all had metal detectors and rent-a-cops who loved to abuse their limited authority.

  Plus, he was heading into what he knew would be a high stress situation. The VA. Same outfit that screwed him out of his benefits, after the Army tagged him as Borderline Personality Disorder. He clutched the fat government envelope containing his wife's records in one hand, and used the other to open the door.

  Nick passed through the metal detectors, took a number, took a pew. The digital display overhead said: Now Serving 419. His slip of paper said: 477. Half the men were half asleep, half the women were dealing with petulant children. The last time he’d been here Liz was three and Mary was alive and he was looking to sign up for disability pay.

  In the Army's separations manual it's called Regulation 635-200. Chapter 5-13: "Separation Because of Personality Disorder.” If you get blown up, they medivac you to a Combat Support Hospital, and some neurosurgeon diagnoses you with TBI, traumatic brain injury, and you tend to act a little weird.

  But the VA is only required to treat wounds sustained during service, and personality disorder is a preexisting condition. So the apathy and anxiety, the anger and the paranoia have nothing to do with your armory getting hit by a Serbian artillery round, airmailed from the hills above Srebrenica.

  Not after they learned you’d boxed in the Police Athletic League way back in grade school. That you have a juvenile record of Assault with Intent to do Bodily Harm, Disturbing the Peace, Disorderly Conduct.

  Then the diagnosis became Dementia Pugilistica. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. You were punchy way before Uncle Sam signed you up. Number 477 flashed on the screen.

  The government gray walls of the cubicle were made of some sound-absorbing fabric designed to soak up the rants of the loonies. A round, sweaty woman with complicated hair and eyeglasses the shape and thickness of dominoes shuffled through Mary Paloma’s 201 file.

  Melba Kramm had a sign on her desk that said: CLAIMS ADJUDICATOR. She tapped multi-colored fingernails on Nick’s wife. “Boy, oh boy. If you National Guard people don’t take the cake. A few years of weekend drills, and all of a sudden the government is supposed to support you for the rest of your life.”

  Nick pounded his fist on the steering wheel. Unlocked the glove box, took out the Beretta. Fifteen rounds—thirty, with the second, pre Brady Bill magazine. It was time to go back in there, go postal, show the fucks what a Personality Disorder looked like, point blank range. Adjudicate some claims of his own. He put the cool black steel against his cheek, smelled the gun oil. And leave Patty and Poppy to raise Liz?

  He swapped the gun for an old flashlight, unscrewed the end, and shook out a joint. It did a better job than the Luvox they gave him at the clinic, with none of the suicidal side effects. He fired the doobie and stared at the flat gray sky.

  —o—

  Two hundred feet overhead an Airbus A330 lowered its landing gear on approach to runway 01C at Dulles International Airport, and Abdul Hassan turned away from the window as a metallic voice told him to put his seat in an upright position.

  Abdul was thirteen when he stole the Kalashnikov. Not stole, exactly. Appropriated would be a more appropriate term. Because the owner, the former owner, not even that, because the dead Pashtun never owned the weapon, just had the use of it, as long as he was breathing, and as long as he was killing Uzbeks. Then he stopped killing Uzbeks and almost simultaneously stopped breathing. And Abdul came into possession of the AK-47.

  A year later he was in a Wahhabi-funded madrassa, learning the Q’ran during the daylight hours, and killing infidels at night.

  As the plane touched down with a chirp of tires on tarmac he finished reading a passage from the Prophet Mohammed.

  The day of judgment will not arrive until Muslims fight Jews, and Muslim will kill Jews until the Jew hides behind a tree or a stone. Then the tree and the stone will say, 'Oh Muslim, oh, servant of God, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.' Except one type of a tree, which is a Jew tree. That will not say that.

  He closed the well-worn paperback and shoved it deep in the p
ocket of the seat in front of him. It was not a book for the eyes of infidels. Especially the ones about to check his passport, his luggage, his H-1B Visa. CITGO, he said to himself. CITGO CITGO CITGO. He was nineteen, and he had come to deliver a message from Allah.

  Rufi Rafsanjani, two years older, and three seats ahead, checked his new passport and the Visa tucked inside. “Salaamu alaykum wa rahmatullah,” he murmured, drawing a curious glance from the elderly French woman next to him. He smiled. “Peace on you and the mercy of Allah.”

  “D’accord,” she snorted and rummaged in her Gucci for the Gitaines. Five hours of Nicorette gum was a poor substitute for the real thing.

  —o—

  The INS agent glanced at the passport, the business visa. Looked at Abdul and his cheap suit cut from an odd fabric. He didn’t need to hear the accented English to know this wasn’t no native-born American. One of the TSA new hires, a college kid, and needing to get his shit together, had said more visitors came to the U.S. every year than lived here. And the population was what; over three hundred million? Some days it seemed like every one of them came through Dulles. An H-1B visa meant he was here for temporary work. Well, we’ll see about that. “Purpose of visit?”

  Abdul said, “I am employed by the CITGO. I am coming here for work at the filling stations.”

  “CITGO? What, they can’t find enough high school dropouts in America?”

  “No, no, sir. We are coming to install new digital metering systems, in the petrol pumps. All across America.”

  “Uh huh. Well, let me give you a word of advice. Ab-dool. We call it gasoline, all across America.” He stamped the passport and let his eyes slide to the next arrival in the long line of Foreign Nationals.

  Abdul found locker C-3 and Rufi found the key. Together they removed the Walmart bag and examined its contents. Five thousand dollars in tens and twenties, keys to a nine-year-old Ford F150, and a parking stub for same in the Long Term Lot. A good place to practice their English. Except, as it turned out, the attendant was from Somalia, and his English was far worse than theirs.

  Over the following twenty four hours eight more travelers from Indonesia, Morocco, Chechnya, and Amsterdam landed at LAX, O’Hare, Logan, and George H. W. Bush Houston Intercontinental Airport. Two visitors from Pakistan picked up their truck at Sea-Tac, and headed down I-5 toward Tacoma. An even dozen, all with H-1B visas in their passports.

  Chapter Seven

  Katherine Sinclair, one of a quarter million Department of Homeland Security employees, stepped off the Metro bus and reported for her first day on the job.

  Labeled SW/WATERFRONT on the maps, the area was the home of H.U.D., USPS, Education, Health & Human Services. Agriculture, Energy, Transportation. After 9/11 thirty-three new buildings, containing seventeen million square feet of office space were constructed in the Greater D.C. Area.

  She paused, checked the address on the card Secretary Edgerton had handed her the day before.

  The building, like the rest of Washington, was guarded by a maze of concrete barriers designed to foil suicide truck bombers. She followed the crowd, thinking the obstacles were a solution in search of a problem.

  The revolving doors herded them into a cattle chute, and shuttled them through a bank of metal detectors and baggage scanners. Kat showed her driver’s license to one of the uniformed guards at the information desk. He ran his finger down a clipboard, then handed her a visitor’s badge, and pointed to the elevators. “Fourth floor.”

  The fourth floor was a vast rabbit warren, with glass-walled offices on the perimeter. A receptionist wearing a wireless headset glanced up from her keyboard.

  “Secretary Edgerton, please.” Kat handed the card to the woman; twice her age, twice her size.

  The woman snorted, said, “Name?” Her voice was tinged with annoyance after she found a Katherine Sinclair on her list. “You ain’t likely to be seein’ no Secretary anytime soon. Less’n you way more important than you look.” She pointed down the hallway. “Go see Mr. H. for you Processing and Orientation. Then bring you paperwork back here.”

  Mr. H. had Jesse Hanford, Asst.Dir.Pers. in gold leaf on his glass door, and wooly bear eyebrows with a matching mustache. A framed diploma from Clarkson Community College looked over his shoulder. It was flanked by a certificate from the Institute of Hotel Management, and a Holiday Inn plaque announcing his name and District Manager of the Year.

  He thrust his arm across his desk and gave Kat a quick grip and release. “Welcome to HomSec’s Research Department.” He swiveled, pointed to his credenza.

  It held a trio of books—Practical Human Resource Development, Spiritual Teamwork, and Motivational Techniques for the New Century—and a plastic doghouse with a plastic dog supine on its roof. “Or, as we like to call it, ‘Snoopy’s Lair.”

  He swept his hand across the landscape, encompassing the world outside his office. “The glass walls were my idea. No secrets here. Not after our Research Associates finish their reports.”

  Gee, she thought. A place where I won’t be the weirdest kid in class. “So. How do I get started?”

  Hanford reached to a far corner of his cluttered desk for a manila folder with her name already laser-labeled on the tab. He scanned it, muttered, “Hmm. Someone gave you a Level Two Security Clearance. Apparently Upstairs bypassed protocol.” He turned the form toward her, handed her a pen. “Initial each page, and sign the last. Official Secrets Non-Disclosure Act.”

  Kat began to skim the document, wondering if Secretary Edgerton himself had bypassed the background check. And why.

  “Don’t bother reading it, Ms. Sinclair. It’s boilerplate legalese, and you won’t understand a word. Everybody signs one, if they want to work here. All you need to know is any violation leads directly to prison.”

  He stood, pushed his chair back. “As soon as you accomplish this task, we’ll get you started with your photo ID, retina scan, and enter your palm print into the system. Next we’ll assign your parking permit, firearm, and systems passwords.”

  He came around the desk, impatiently snapping his fingers for the signature. “Then I’ll hand you off to a Shift Supervisor to show you the nuts and bolts of our operation.”

  Kat scrawled her name, stole the pen. “Did you say firearm?”

  “Yes, a new directive. All Homeland Security employees are issued a weapon. I suspect someone owns stock in the company. Most of us stick the things in a desk drawer and forget about them.” He rolled his eyes. “I hardly expect a terrorist attack in here.”

  An hour later, new Photo ID hanging from a color-coded lanyard around her neck, and a dull gray Glock hard case zipped inside her carryall, Kat sat in a cubicle, in front of a keyboard, with a clean-cut young man wearing a button-down blue Oxford shirt and power red necktie.

  A thick scent made her think of Dad. Old Spice. He leaned over her shoulder as she familiarized herself with the HomSec way of doing things. Which was a whole lot slower than her way. She kept the observation to herself.

  “Basically,” he said, “what we do is access target possibles from various external derivations, and input for Systems Analysis, then create a file and throughput the output to our Investigators.”

  She knew LISP and LINUX and C++, dead languages like COBAL and FORTRAN, but she saw she would have to learn another one. “And ‘target possibles’ are?”

  “Ahh, basically, it’s a name. Someone who is a ‘person of interest,’ as they say.”

  “And ‘external derivations’ are?” She tried to look both interested and eager, felt she failed at both.

  “Ahh, basically, alerts come in from various Total Information Awareness Programs. Developed some years ago by Admiral Poindexter’s DARPA project, at the Department of Defense. To generate, quote: ‘tools for monitoring the daily personal transactions by Americans and others, including tracking the use of passports, driver’s licenses, credit cards, airline tickets, and rental cars’. Unquote.”

  “I thought Congress said
you can’t use TIA anymore.”

  He gave her a look that said riiight. “Of course you are correct. Now we call it Tangram. And the subsets we employ are FTTTF, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, and EELD, that’s Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery. TIDES, of course, is our Translingual Information Detection, Extraction and Summarization program.”

  He leaned closer, put his cheek quite close to hers, and tapped a function key, pulled up the TSA No Fly and Selectee Watch lists. “On Ten September, 2001, the Transportation Security Administration’s data base contained sixteen names. Thanks to our efforts in the Global War On Terror, today more than half a million designees are on it.”

  Uh huh. GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. Kat recalled hearing every year several members of Congress wound up on the list. She clenched a fist beneath the desk. Moron. Any algorithm used to turn up suspicious behavior or suspicious people will yield so many false positives it’s useless. “Wow!” she said. “Impressive.”

  “With continued diligence, we’ll defeat the evil doers who hate our freedoms.” He raised his eyes to the suspended ceiling. “God willing.”

  Dad says God is an imaginary friend for grownups. “So we run the names, and if they come up as ‘evil doer’, then we put them on the list?”

  “Not hardly. That’s up to TSIS. The Transportation Security Intelligence Service. They maintain the list. But first our own investigators take a look at them. Credentialed by DoJ, but they work for HomSec. An example of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security working seamlessly together, fighting the Gee-WOT. Praise the Lord!”

  Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? She wondered if he was an anomaly, or part of the corporate culture. Curious, she asked, “Where’d you go to college?”

  “Liberty University.”