The Media Candidate – politics and power in 2048

by Paul Dueweke

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Sherwood Hits the Trail

  A short time later, with his newly augmented leadership qualities properly enabled, Sherwood finally achieved the goal he’d sought since his grade school sorties into his fantasy undercover world. His field assignment had been a routine position as liaison officer with the Southwest Regional Office of the CBS Party. Sherwood’s happiness knew only the natural bounds of his sterile personality. He spent the first two months doing nothing but getting to know how the party regional offices work and embellishing reports of his activities to his boss at COPE. He wanted to spy on someone or lead a clandestine operation against some enemy of the people or finger somebody for assassination. Anticipating some such great adventure, he responded to several issues brought to his attention by the regional director. They turned out to be disappointingly routine. One involved an expense report that a party executive had accidentally misfiled that caused the COPE computer to raise a flag that some breech of legislated ethics might have been perpetrated. Another concerned an interpretation of policy controlling the disposition of a donation earmarked for straight candidates. The Party had no such category and couldn’t decide how to account for it. His early enthusiasm was beginning to wane.

  Just as he started to understand why the turnover rate was so high among liaison officers, he answered a call from the regional director about a suspected anarchist. And making it even more savory, the anarchist was the same thief he’d confronted trying to break into the Halvorsen files. Sherwood learned how to deal with anarchists in Leadership Training. It had helped his perspective on things—enforcement things. And now he had an anarchist on whom to practice his skills.

  PART THREE

  Guinda

  —the present—

  “What luck for rulers that men do not think.”

  — Adolph Hitler