They Said It Would Be Easy (April Book 7)

by Mackey Chandler

  "I wouldn't put it that way," the fellow objected.

  "No, of course not." Ben stopped and thought a moment, then turned and called over his shoulder.

  "Honey, there is a young fellow who insists on speaking to President Wiggen. He looks military and is disgustingly earnest. I believe he is genuinely young. He doesn't look like he's regressed in life extension. He acts young," Ben said, like that was an indictment. "Do you want to get rid of him, or should I call Security and tell Jon he's stalking you and we want him gone the safe and gentle way, before I take matters into my own hands?"

  Martha came and leaned over Ben's shoulder. She didn't look very friendly.

  "Lieutenant, I'm not involved in politics now. I don't want to be involved in politics again. It took months to get the smell off when I abandoned that profession before. Who do you represent, and what sort of trouble are they fomenting?"

  "I'm Aaron Janowicz, Ma'am. I did not identify myself as a lieutenant," he said blushing.

  "Well excuse me if you made Captain and I guessed wrong, but Captains don't usually get thrust out on the sharp and pointy end of things like this," Martha said.

  Aaron opened his mouth like he was going to reply and then changed his mind and began again.

  "Madame President, I'd rather not discuss this on com. Can't you spare a moment and speak with me face to face in a more secure environment?" he pleaded.

  "How do I know you're not just an assassin, here to finish me off?" Martha asked.

  "Would an assassin simply call and ask for an appointment?" Aaron asked with an unbelieving look.

  "It sounds very efficient," Ben said, eyes lighting up. "That's going in my next book. I have this character I've been wanting to kill off, he's such a creep, but I hadn't figured out how to do it. The look on his face when he realizes he delivered himself up on a platter for the slaughter will be priceless." Ben had a manic snarl anticipating it already.

  "Uh, that's just in fiction," he added when he saw Aaron's horrified expression. "This time."

  "Pay no mind," Martha said. "You get used to the evil cackling as he types. Look, we're not going to invite you to our home. We're going to dinner in a bit at a place called the Quiet Retreat. If I leave word with the maître d' that you are our guest at the club, will you sit and have a civilized interview in a public place, and leave when I tell you I've heard enough and not make a fuss?"

  "We won't have eavesdroppers there?" Aaron asked.

  "Not political ones. We may have social media stringers take our pix, but they have never posted audio. They simply aren't interested in ancient politics," Wiggen assured him, "and it's the best deal you are going to get." When he hesitated Martha added. "And I promise I won't let my husband test his plot device on you."

  "Thank you, Ma'am. I'll be there," he agreed reluctantly.

  "You're nicer than me," Ben grumbled after she disconnected.

  "We established that a long time ago," Martha said, and leaned over with both hands on his shoulders and pecked his ear.

  After she went away to let him work Ben made a call.

  "Mackay? Ben Patsitsas. Are you free for a short security gig in a couple hours and free supper on top of your charges? Good. I want you to call Hussein the maître d' at the Quiet Retreat and tell him you need a table as our guest, on the same level as us but across the room. If you'd like to bring a guest to blend in that might make sense, and make the house happier than a singleton at a prime table. We'll be having dinner with a young fellow who I don't trust. If he produces a weapon or it looks like we are under any sort of duress to leave I want him dealt with. If things go badly I'll clap my hands together. I have no idea what will be behind us on the other side of the bulkhead, so bring a laser, not a projectile weapon. Thank you, that seems a very reasonable rate. Don't be shy ordering your dinner," he added.

  * * *

  "I have reports for us from several of Chen's operatives about why Earthies are ordering things from Home companies they should be able to make," Jeff said on com. He had the oddest look on his face.

  "I'll read them in detail," April promised. "But if you want to give me a quick summary? You usually describe things more succinctly than Chen."

  "Chen says you get insights from things that don't impress him at all. So he is reluctant to withhold details. Red tape is the basic answer," Jeff said. "They've had a massive epidemic, with millions dead. Since it was very rough on older people it stripped all sorts of shops and industries of the most experienced workers. There was physical damage where we bombarded specialty shops that made aerospace components. But nobody will soften any of the laws and rules that impede reconstruction. The USNA also embargoed quite a few things we make right after the war, but that was mostly drugs and electronics. Nobody has shown any interest in expanding or dropping the list."

  April frowned. "They haven't been able to rebuild in this much time?"

  "I'll give you an example. Back in the war we destroyed the Michelin specialty shop making tires for shuttles in North Carolina. There is production in Europe and Asia, but not the right types.

  "Chen's guys talked to half a dozen people either living nearby or who have worked on the site. Half the building was gone because it burned, and half was a shell. They had some foundation left, but they couldn't use it. The plumbing no longer met code and all the areas with pipes under the floor had to be broken up and start over. They went ahead and tore the whole thing up including the machine bases.

  "There was a delay because an environmental study had to establish that there were no heavy metal or organic contamination issues in the soil. A water table survey had to be done even though they didn't plan on having a well. There aren't a lot of labs and environmental survey companies running to do these things now. Building declined and a lot of them closed up shop.

  "An impact statement on endangered plants and animals couldn't be done because the state office was abandoned when they didn't get paid after the coup, and nobody knows where the workers went. There were some big issues with a lot of permit issuing agencies like that, because of disruption between factions of the government from the war and then the coup. Some workers were taken care of, some cut off as likely disloyal, depending on their known politics.

  "They also had to do a traffic study and community impact statement, but the guy doing that for the county died and they didn't rehire because there wasn't really much building or traffic now. They had a hard time hiring, because anybody taking the job knew they'd just be fired as soon as it was done. The man who finally did take it dragged it out for six months to keep getting paid.

  "The town council opposed rebuilding, because their zoning classification changed after the first plant was built, taking it from light industrial to heavy industrial. That also meant they had to put in a rain water run-off retaining pond, and there wasn't room on the property. They had to buy the plant next door and tear it down to get the retaining pond in and to increase parking and provide mandatory electric car charging stations for employees. Assuming anybody in rural North Carolina still had a functioning electric car by then with periodic power outages. The batteries only lasted so long and then they brick themselves if they are run low and don't get recharged for a few weeks. But that meant the power had to be not only restored to the site, but upgraded by the local utility.

  "By the time they could pour a new foundation there was a concrete shortage. Also they could not prove they were paying prevailing union wages or better because the agency collecting data on that was not functioning and there was no established current year prevailing wage. The agency's computer system was unusable and they bought a new one and the software from the old one couldn't run on it. When they had a new suite of software written it simply didn't work. All that caused delays.

  "There were more delays for things like the plumbing. They had pipe, but the site sat with no work done for a week because nobody had sufficient pipe solvent to bond the joints from supply disruptions. And they couldn't pour c
oncrete until the pipe was down. They had similar problems with the electrical. They were short some items that had to be under the slab. Also, running the conduit, the fire marshal and the electrical inspector got in a war over who passed on the in-slab wiring for the fire alarm system. Both kept visiting the site and slapping NO-PASS and cease and desist orders on top of the other guy's PASS tickets on the site permit board.

  "They shut down one day because an inspector found an older uncertified hard hat being used at the site and they all had to be inventoried and recertified. Some of them had the compliance label rubbed illegible or removed and they needed to bring in more from a city hours away.

  "Neither could they affirm the people they wanted to hire were within the diversity ratios allowed on a Federal project. You bombarded the snot out of all the Federal data centers during the war," Jeff reminded April. "Even the ones buried really deep. Birth records and citizenship documents were lacking, and just because they had old bills and driver's licenses, that wasn't sufficient documentation. They can't, well, won't take their word what their ancestry is, because people lie to get in the minority classifications. Especially, people from Mexico lacked a lot of records when they were first brought into the USNA. Tons of them had no birth certificate. And it turns out a lot of tire building people are Mexican because most of the production was sent down there even before Mexico was annexed. They mostly went home in the chaos after the coup, and none of them would come back, because as hourly workers they wouldn't be paid until they had a functional shop with special machines and the exotic materials needed to make shuttle tires up and running.

  "Electric power to the work site was disrupted, and they couldn't get permits from the EPA to run an onsite diesel generator, and the Governor wouldn't loan a military unit. When they finally got a gas turbine permit the city and county would only let it be run from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon for noise abatement, and no Sunday work. The site had to have ditching and special barriers inside the fence to prevent rain run-off, and there was a dispute what area it had to enclose. Basically the water authority wanted the barrier right where the chain link fence was already installed. They couldn't just put it against the fence. It had to be staked down a certain way.

  "Then there was a dispute and site strike because the Iron Workers and the Cement and Concrete workers couldn't agree on work rules for anchoring the frame to go up. A bunch of anchors got ripped out and both sides blamed the other. The site guards said everybody who went on site had the proper identification cards, and it wasn't their business what they did onsite. They just maintained a perimeter.

  "I could go on, but you get the idea. And that's just what we got told easily. Most of it over beer at the local tavern. Certainly not the full horror story.

  "The special machines to build the tires and the molds to cap them are all built in Mexico. They're somewhat more forceful about making a project go forward there. They haven't absorbed the full bureaucratic culture yet. You can still get things done under their old system, if you have enough cash to grease the ways. It isn't practical to bring them across country right now so they'll come by sea. But they're holding off sending them until the facility has walls and a roof.

  "The tires they want to build are defined in exacting specifications. All the materials are called out, and the glassy aluminum steel wire isn't being made at ISSII anymore. There's better available actually, but it doesn't meet the old spec to which they're locked. They are making as much of the new product as they can, running 24/7 for European shuttle tires, and don't want to shut down and change dies and purge melt furnaces to make one run of obsolete wire, but nobody will change the spec to European standards, because – not ours. The steel maker at ISSII is in the section under USNA law. If they nationalize them, or force the change-over it won't be well received."

  "I take it back. If that's the overview I'm not sure I want to read the blow by blow," April said.

  "It's amazing and educational," Jeff allowed, "but you might ration it out little at a time and not try to absorb the whole thing at one sitting. And this is just one specialty shop.

  "What I concluded is if you have a very complex system that has slowly grown over a long period of time, it adjusts and accommodates all those changes. But if it gets hit with a major disruption, it is almost impossible to bring the full complex system back up and running all at once. There's no way to reproduce the step by step way it was created. Especially when a lot of the details of its operation serve no useful purpose. It can carry all those burdens added on one by one. But if you drop that ugly beast to its knees you'll never get it standing again, much less walking, with the full load on it."

  "What will they do? Just give up on it?" April asked.

  "I think it has to get worse before it can get better," Jeff said. "Bad enough to force them to strip some of the stupid from the process. As a friend has told me a number of times, 'Not my circus, not my monkeys.' We can't force help on them they don't want. And we can't produce enough of anything in any reasonable time frame to be of much use to them."

  "We absolutely must never let our system get so complicated it's that fragile," April vowed.

  "Amen. I totally agree," Jeff told her.

  * * *

  The young man wasn't standing waiting for them when they got to the Quiet Retreat. Ben took that for a good sign, because he'd expected to find him standing outside impatiently shifting his weight from foot to foot. They were shown to their table and Ben could see Christian Mackay at another table on their level across the room. He had a date with him. Good for him, Ben thought.

  "Madam President, Mr. Patsitsas," the fellow said with an acknowledging nod when he was escorted to their table. "I'm Aaron Janowicz." He didn't presume to seat himself which was another good sign. They might have a brief civilized discussion and be rid of him.

  Ben pointed, indicating where he should take a seat, on his side, leaving himself between the young man and Martha. It took Janowicz a second to notice because he was intently looking at his wife, not Ben, but he caught on when Martha looked at where Ben was pointing.

  "Madam President," he started again, earnestly.

  "Don't call me that again or I'll ask you to leave," Martha said, with angry eyes. "The system of government that gave me Presidential authority no longer exists. If the present regime is deposed I doubt it will be replaced with anything described by the old constitution. The inconvenient portions of it were already ignored when I was in office, and I doubt anybody wishes to put it back in force without some significant modification."

  "Ma...'am, that is our intent," he said, leaning forward, "To remove the present military authority and eventually restore a full constitutional civilian authority."

  "Ah...eventually. You realize that's exactly what the present people have been promising to do?" Martha asked. "Order some dinner Mr. Janowicz, our waiter, Francois, is looking distressed at us ignoring the menus. Dinner is on us, and you have to eat like everyone," she pointed out, reasonably.

  "Thank you," Janowicz said and looked at the menu. Ben saw his nostrils flare slightly at the prices, but he kept admirable control. Their waiter looked happy to see all of them reading the menu.

  "Be aware we've had some shortages and the priorities have been for necessities rather than luxuries," Ben told him. "That's why the menu is a single sheet. They print it daily depending on what they have the ingredients to offer. You might find better choices of hearty meals in the cafeteria. People come here for the entertainment and to be seen. That's why the menu runs more to tapas and appetizers. It's been awhile since you could order a decent steak or a live lobster. The drink menu uses vodka from the moon. A week ago we had no drink menu."

  "It's been awhile since I could afford a steak or lobster," Aaron said, "If I even went to the sort of place that serves them. Would you order for me please? I've never heard of most of these dishes."

  That put off deciding how much to spend on Ben. It was smart and pol
itic of the fellow, and their server seeing the menus back on the table again hurried over.

  After Martha ordered a Papas arrugadas and some tea, Ben said he and their guest would both have the Albóndigas and Papas arrugadas, but his guest would have them media ración. They'd both have a Piparras, and Ben would have a lime vodka on rocks, and his guest water with a twist.

  "Would you like your beverages now, sir?"

  "Yes, thank you Francois."

  "That's meatballs with a sauce, seasoned small potatoes roasted, and a skewer of pickles and olives. I ordered a larger serving for you, since a young man usually has a hearty appetite. I assumed you are on duty and won't drink," Ben said, after the waiter was out of earshot. "If not tell him when he comes back if anything tickles your fancy."

  "No, you're quite right," Aaron agreed.

  "So, young man, exactly who do you represent? Does this faction have a name? Committee to Restore the Republic or something?" Martha asked.

  "My Colonel informs me that there is a private movement, and he told me early on that he wanted me to be set aside without knowledge of anyone but him, so I could be used on missions like this, without danger of exposing them. He assures me it's a broad conspiracy, but it has no public face at all yet, for safety. I trust him deeply, he's a genuine patriot. In fact I am supposed to report if anyone tries to recruit me as they wouldn't know I am his man, and besides, there are other movements trying to organize as well."

  "Isn't that lovely?" Martha said. "Others...That means there are at least three cabals fomenting rebellion, maybe more. What will you do if one of them beats you to the punch and rebels first?"

  "I believe that problem is way above my pay grade, Ma'am."

  "Yes, although it's amusing that the people who actually pay you are those you wish to depose," Martha mused.

  "Thus it has always been," Ben pointed out.

  The first of their food and Ben's drink arrived.