by Bell, D. R.
Once the garage door closed, the lights came on. The human driver guided two men and a woman upstairs, into what looked like a living room. There was a faint whirring sound and the floor reverberated ever so slightly. Maggie looked around: wooden floor with an expensive-looking rug, dim lighting, a leather sofa with a glass coffee table against one wall, a cherry-wood bookshelf lining another wall, an expressionist painting, a mahogany table with six matching chairs. Accurate, orderly, designed to look warm. She crinkled her nose; there was a smell of leather, tobacco, and hot wood even though no fireplace was visible. Perhaps a candle had been burning a while earlier.
A tall, goateed, olive-complexioned man of about thirty came into the room. He wore a camelhair jacket, shaded eyeglasses, a white open-collared shirt, hugging blue jeans, and dark brown shoes. Maggie’s eyes caught gold cufflinks peeking from the jacket’s sleeves and a black-and-gold watch with a silvery bracelet. The man opened his arms: “Oleg, Maggie, David!”
After a round of hugs and kisses, Oleg exclaimed:
“Alejandro, you devil, how do stay looking so young?”
“Safe and wholesome living, my friend. I don’t have half of the world’s secret services looking for me. Plus, I sold my soul to the devil.”
He laughed, took a couple of steps back, gave his visitors an appraising look:
“Whoever worked on you was good. If I met you on the street, I am not sure I would have recognized you,” he laughed. “David, your nose looks a hundred times better.”
David unconsciously touched his nose:
“Yes, it was broken in a bicycle accident when I was a kid. The doctor straightened it.”
David was still in his thirties but looked older, with cropped prematurely grey hair, hazel eyes, slightly stooped to betray his real height.
“For the record, I was disappointed,” chimed in Maggie. “I loved that crooked nose.”
Under Alejandro’s gaze, she instinctively tried to imagine what she looked like: a tired woman in her early-to-mid-thirties, with long blond hair, round face, gray eyes, light skin; dressed in a white embroidered shirt and tight blue jeans. Alejandro’s eyes lingered on her a second too long and Maggie put her arm around David’s waist.
“And I see they fixed your crooked teeth, my friend,” Alejandro turned to Oleg. “Plus you lost some weight and changed your hair.”
Oleg spread his arms, posing:
“Perfect new teeth and shiny blue eyes – to the delight of Mexican senioritas.”
Alejandro laughed, then grew serious:
“OK, why are you back? Why are you taking this risk?”
Oleg grew serious as well:
“Maggie and David... actually, officially it’s Ann and Mark at this time... and I am Peter... they’ve been trying to finish Schulmann’s work and discovered more important names connected to the 2019 crisis. One, in particular.”
“So why come here? Why not publish them like you did two years ago?” Alejandro looked at David and Maggie in puzzlement. “Mind you, I am very happy to see you.” He let the ending hang in the air as his eyes stopped on her.
“Remember what happened then?” replied Maggie. “Within a few days they had begun a massive disinformation campaign, mixing true and false data, guilty and innocents. So that the guilty ones have been able to point to false data or to those who’ve been unfairly accused and claim that their hands were clean. Most of those with connections got away.”
“Plus we have some major gaps in the data that we have to close,” continued David. “But what we found is too important to ignore. We have to get more data and then pass this information to trusted parties.”
“And how are you going to do this?” wondered Alejandro.
“We have a couple of ideas,” Oleg scratched a side of his face. “They required David and Maggie to come here. We are all taking a big chance. But right now, we are tired, it’s been a long journey.”
“Of course, forgive me for holding you here,” apologized Alejandro. “Please come up and rest. Your bedrooms are ready. While the house is plain on the outside, I believe you’ll find it quite comfortable.”
Smolniy Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia
President Boris Mosin was looking from the window at the statue of Lenin standing in the middle of a small flower garden. Lenin was confidently pointing to the north, to Finland. Summer came to St. Petersburg late this year and, despite the sun being out, the air was chilly and people on the street had their overcoats and scarves on.
“I still don’t understand how this could have happened,” Mosin shook his head. “The Minister of Defense is killed in broad daylight in the middle of the city? And we have no suspects?”
“The FSB, the Military Police, and even the local militzia are all investigating,” Dmitry Kolotov, the Minister of Internal Affairs, spread his arms.
“I certainly hope so and they better find who did it,” grumbled Mosin. He had known Maksim Nedinsky for many years, liked the man and was angry over Nedinsky’s death. “Well, Maksim is now at his chosen resting place at Volkovo Cemetery, where generations of his predecessors have been buried. But the business of Russia’s defense must go on.”
He looked suspiciously at General Yuriy Shelkov, the new Minister of Defense, who shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“General, how are the ongoing joint exercises with the Chinese Navy going?”
“Well, Mr. President; I think they are proceeding quite well,” replied Shelkov carefully. “It took our forces two days of sailing from Vladivostok to rendezvous with PLAN in the East China Sea and we’ve been conducting coordinated maneuvers for six days now.”
“And why do you think the Chinese asked to have these exercises?”
“We have complementary force structure between our Pacific Fleet and their Navy: we now have two modern aircraft carriers with over a hundred Su-35 and Su-37 naval planes there, while PLAN’s strength is in helicopter carriers, anti-ship missiles, fast-attack ships and amphibious landing crafts.”
“In other words, they are more suited for invasion while ours is an open-water fleet?” prodded Mosin.
“That would be mostly correct, Sir.”
“And why is that so?”
“They’ve been always focused on threatening Taiwan and configured their Navy accordingly, for defense and access denial warfare,” explained Shelkov. “The Chinese themselves projected that it would be another twenty years before they will be able to rival the open-water capabilities of the U.S. Navy.”
“But they can’t take Taiwan with the U.S. Navy present, right?”
“That would be a risky operation. The U.S. 7th Fleet is only a few days of sailing from the Formosa Strait and Taiwan’s own defenses can hold off the invaders for that long. The Chinese have invested heavily into developing anti-ship missiles, but they are not proven against moving targets beyond a couple of hundred miles, not enough to keep the Americans away from Taiwan.”
“I wonder why the Chinese ambassador was so insistent on expanding the scope of these joint exercises,” wondered Mosin aloud. “Do they really think that our Pacific Fleet can stop the Americans?”
“I doubt they would think that. Our fleet is less than half the size of the 7th.”
“Are Americans watching the exercises?”
“Yes, they have ships and airplanes in the area.”
Mosin nodded: “Please make sure that these exercises do not result in any provocative actions from our side. Don’t approach U.S. planes or ships. I don’t want us to be sucked into any kind of military adventures there.”
Washington, DC, USA
President Joe Maxwell and his VP Brian Tice stared grimly at the numbers that their political advisor Michael Drake projected on the screen.
“With less than five months to go, both main political parties are way behind in the polls?” asked Maxwell incredulously.
“Yes,” nodded Drake. “I guess the good news, if there is any, is that Brian is running third, ahead of the
other major party candidate.”
“Please spare me this nonsense,” snapped Brian Tice. “John Dimon is ahead with 31% of the likely voters, Jeff Kron right after him with 26%, and I am way behind with 19%. Didn’t you tell me back in March that Dimon and Kron would flame out before the summer? Even if all ‘undecideds’ broke for me, if the elections were tomorrow I would still lose.”
“Well, the elections are not tomorrow. There are many ‘undecideds’ and some will change their minds,” pointed out Maxwell unenthusiastically. In fairness, he couldn’t stand his VP and would have chosen someone else back in 2016 but the contest was projected to be close and Tice was bringing key electoral votes from the South. Eight years later, he liked Tice even less but the party’s National Committee decided last year that Tice was their best chance to hold the office. “Let’s discuss our primary travel plans.”
“Michael, run us through the candidates and the issues again,” Tice ignored the president.
Drake seemed uncertain, looking from irate Maxwell to angry Tice, then decided to address Tice’s question.
“Our behavioral insights team tells me that these are truly the ‘protest’ elections. We expect that over 70% of people will vote this year, much larger numbers than we’ve seen in the past. The difference is particularly pronounced amongst the young people, whose participation is expected to double. Unfortunately, a vast majority of those voters that previously stayed home are breaking for the two new parties, the Spirit of ‘76 and the Reform ones.”
“Why are we seeing such an increase in participation?” asked Tice.
“In polling, the big drivers are the ‘Schulmann file’ revelations published two years ago by David Ferguson and Margarita Sappin.”
“But these ‘revelations’ have been thoroughly discredited!” protested Tice. “Multiple versions of these so-called files have circulated, many names and accounts have been shown to be false!”
“Come on, Brian!” Maxwell slammed his hand against the table. “Do you think everyone bought into the fabricated ‘evidence’ that was used to let some of the guiltiest sons-of-bitches of this country escape jail time?”
“I am afraid the President is correct,” nodded Drake. “I think a great many people believed the original allegations, not the subsequent denials. Remember how most politicians that were named in the Schulmann file ended up being thrown out of the office via elections or recalls, even though they were not found legally guilty?”
“That was almost two years ago, people’s memories are short,” Tice shook his head.
“Evidently, not that short, at least not for some,” continued Drake. “Dimon and Kron bring to the table some powerful arguments. We had three economic crises in this still young century. The national debt has tripled, well-paying jobs are hard to find, robots are replacing people left and right, the divide between the upper echelon and the rest of the country keeps growing. And then they see that the very people they believe to be guilty and responsible walked away with billions and are flaunting their wealth. Populist politicians are feeding this anti-establishment discontent, that’s why you see this sudden rise of two new parties.”
“Can’t we do something populist?” asked Tice. “Like offer a tax rebate? Increase welfare payments? Add some new tax credits?”
“With what money, Brian?” spitted out Maxwell. “Our tax receipts are down as is, the budget deficit is over a trillion dollars, and nobody would buy any more of our Treasury bonds unless we offer usurious interest rates! The Federal Reserve can’t buy anything since their trillions in mortgage-backed bonds blew up in 2019.”
“OK, let’s go over John Dimon and Jeff Kron again, this time focusing on how to attack them,” the corners of Tice’s mouth pulled down.
“Of course. Part of the problem is, they – and the platforms of their parties – are very different,” complained Drake. “Hard to go after them on the same grounds.”
He stopped, poured himself a glass of water and noisily gulped it down.
“OK, let’s start with John Dimon. Former mainstream politician, congressman from Colorado from 2014 to 2020. Following the crisis of 2019, quit the mainstream party and joined a fledgling new Spirit of ‘76 movement. Transformed the movement into an organized party that is fielding candidates in most of the states. Young, very charismatic, strong speaker. His ‘America First’ platform calls for acting aggressively to punish China and Russia for their ‘financial attack on our country’ – his words, not mine. He is for high tariffs on imported goods, cancellation of most of the trade agreements, effective prohibition of outsourcing jobs out of the country, draconian penalties for corporate crime...”
“He is going to drive the country into a war, a real one, not economic!” Maxwell shook his head.
“Dimon is feeding off popular discontent; populist slogans work. People want to punish the unfairness and looking for some way to channel their outrage. And he keeps promising to increase, not reduce, various forms of state assistance and welfare.”
“There were some rumors that Dimon profited from the 2019 crisis,” half-asked, half-stated Tice. “There is some shadiness to the man.”
“There were rumors about practically everyone. The fact is that Dimon is a good speaker and has received a tremendous amount of online coverage, partly thanks to Robert Treadwell and his social media empire. He has mastered the art of the slogan, the sound-bite, developed a very high name recognition and is now leading in all the polls.”
“He refused the Secret Service protection and is using the private FreedomShield forces. These mercenaries are expensive. Where does he get so much money?” wondered Maxwell.
“Dimon is very active in soliciting campaign contributions and signed up some deep-pocketed backers. His use of FreedomShield has been somewhat controversial, especially in light of accusations of intimidation leveled against this company. So far, it hasn’t caused problems for Dimon.”
Drake paused to drink water again.
“And what about Jeff Kron?” prodded him Maxwell.
“A very different bird, this Kron,” Drake pursed his lips. “Same age as Dimon – 42 – but, oh so different. Tragedy in his youth when his father killed himself, ruined during a recession. Twenty years ago he was sent to jail for a murder of the man he held responsible. Released after less than three years because the real murderer confessed.”
“Was it his future wife that helped to get him released?” asked Maxwell.
“Not quite. It was an interesting story,” Drake’s cheeks reddened with excitement. “In one of the interviews, Kron stated that he thought his wife’s father and grandfather were instrumental in proving his innocence. I checked and both committed suicide in 2006, a few months before Kron’s release. Fascinating, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, yeah,” waived Tice dismissively. “He is a God damn commie with a Russian wife!”
“Jennifer Kron, maiden name Jennifer Rostin, is half-Russian on her father’s side,” Drake calmed down. “On her mother’s side, her grandfather is Sam Baker, a long-time US congressman.”
“So perhaps trying to attack Kron via his wife is not such a great idea,” snickered Maxwell. Tice turned crimson and stuck out his jaw; it was well known that his political rise had been financed from his wife’s side with the money only one generation removed from organized crime.
“After his release in 2007,” hurried Drake, “Kron finished his college studies, got married, and had a daughter. Over time, he developed this Gandhi-like philosophy – I hesitate to call it a ‘platform’ – about non-violent resistance to an unfair system. He also used the California initiative system to put a number of measures on the ballot. His writings and propositions developed a bit of a following, but it was the 2019 crisis that attracted to Kron a critical mass of supporters. As California was teetering on the edge of separation in 2022, Kron was thrust into the limelight. Without any campaigning, he became one of the most popular politicians in California.”
Drake paus
ed. “Mind you, he did not position himself as a politician, did not act like one. Did not run a campaign. People just gravitated to him. It was kind of a melding of a political and spiritual movement.”
“But he now has a party! They put their people on ballots in multiple states!” exclaimed Tice.
“Yes, they call it a ‘Reform’ party, but they don’t have the organization of a mainstream party. Or the one that Dimon put together. Theirs is almost a loose organization of people that believe in common goals, united by Kron’s writings.”
“And what is their platform?” asked Maxwell.
“The central tenet is a more equitable distribution of wealth and income...”
“I keep telling you, he’s a commie!” Tice pounded his fist against the table.
“Kron claims he is specifically against communism as a system,” shook his head Drake. “He says he supports capitalism, but believes that extreme concentration of wealth undermines democracy and give a small group of people too much power. Kron’s ‘platform’ is a set of reforms intended to create more direct democracy and to reduce the inequality he sees around him.”
“OK, Michael,” interrupted Tice. “We’ve been running against both Dimon and Kron on a ‘Stay the course – things are getting better!’ message. We have the mainstream media on our side, we show the numbers that the economy is indeed getting better, but here I am, a distant third in the polls!”
“Well, Mr. Vice President,” demurred Drake, “the mainstream media just does not have the same clout any longer, losing ground to diversified social media platforms like Treadwell’s. And people don’t trust the numbers because they don’t see improvements in their situation. With the middle class now making up less than a third of the population, we have a minority of the population doing well while the majority is struggling. Both Dimon and Kron are dipping into a deep well of anger, they are just channeling it differently: Dimon is blaming the external enemies while Kron is pointing inward.”