The Liberty Intrigue

by Tom Grace

  “Authorities have identified the dead man in the hotel room as Michael Unden of Devils Lake, North Dakota. Unden is a decorated Marine veteran. He was a trained sniper. Unden registered in the hotel under his own name, not an alias. The Secret Service was aware of Unden not as a threat, but as a polite protester. He has been sighted at numerous presidential appearances and has previously been questioned by both the Secret Service and the FBI. Prior to his recent protests, Unden had no history of political activism or affiliation. Unden’s protest focused on two issues—the President’s health care reforms and the death tax.

  “To speculate on any of this barely one day after the assassination of the Vice President and the attempted assassination of the President would be both premature and irresponsible. The investigation will continue and the truth, in good time, will be revealed.

  “While I disagree with this administration on almost everything they do and continue to hope they fail in executing their radical agenda, we all must stand united with the President in this time of national mourning. There will be ample time during the fall campaign for the ideological and political debate, but for now we are united as Americans in offering our prayers and deepest sympathies to the family of the Vice President.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  AUGUST 16

  After lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda, the flag-draped casket bearing the body of the Vice President was removed by a military honor guard and carried down the west steps to a twenty-one-gun salute. At the base of the stair, the honor guard placed the casket into a gleaming black hearse for the five-mile journey to the Washington National Cathedral.

  People lined the route between the Capitol and the cathedral to pay their respects to the fallen Vice President and his family. The city was somber and quiet.

  Beneath the soaring vaults of the cathedral, the Vice President’s family and friends found their seats in the pews along with dignitaries and representatives from all over the world.

  The funeral service combined a dignified liturgy with uplifting hymns celebrating the Vice President’s earthly life and the hopeful promise of life everlasting. Then, for the first time since his brief speech at the convention just hours after the deadly attack, the President rose to speak in public—he would deliver the final eulogy.

  The President ascended the Canterbury pulpit with his chin slightly elevated, his demeanor stoic. His left arm still rested in a sling beneath his jacket, the empty sleeve folded and pinned in place. The President set a leather folio on the lectern and collected himself.

  “Arleen, Cynthia, and Victor; members of the Vice President’s family; distinguished guests, including our former presidents and first ladies; Reverend Stewart; fellow citizens:

  “In his eloquent eulogy to President Kennedy, Chief Justice Earl Warren remarked: ‘There are few events in our national life that unite Americans and so touch the hearts of all of us as the passing of a President of the United States. There is nothing that adds shock to our sadness as the assassination of our leader, chosen as he is to embody the ideals of our people, the faith we have in our institutions and our belief in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.’

  “Today, we find ourselves similarly united in our grief over the loss of a great man. To his family, he was a devoted son, a loving husband, and a cherished father. In a long and distinguished career in public service, he was a tireless advocate for the workingman and a powerful voice for those in need.

  “The Vice President and I were chosen, in Justice Warren’s words, to embody the ideals of the American people and our collective faith in the institutions of our form of government. We cheerfully assumed the heavy burdens of office not out of personal ambition, but out of love for our country and our fellow citizens and a profound sense of duty.

  “We can never fully comprehend the mind of the assassin who acted against our nation last week, just as we can never fully grasp the toll of his actions. But for a small distance”—the President said, using his right index finger and thumb to measure the space between his heart and the gunshot wound in his arm— “there but for the grace of God.”

  “What we do know is that such acts of violence are bred from hatred and ignorance. They are the spawn of a fanaticism that threatens our American way of life. And in the face of such bitter evil, we will not shrink. Our struggle for justice and peace, for the dignity and equality of people, will not be deterred. To do so would be a dishonor to this great man, this martyr.

  “The world is a poorer place for his loss, but we must rejoice in that we are better for having known him and console ourselves in the hope that he has found his eternal rest.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  ON AIR

  AUGUST 20

  “After a long weekend of golf and exhibition football,” Denby said to open the show, “I am fully rested and back behind the microphone for another three-hour excursion into the thought-provoking, IQ-elevating, cultural phenomenon that is The Garr Denby Show.

  “Like most Americans, I watched the funeral of the Vice President last Thursday and I continue to keep his family in my prayers. While I was never a fan of the Vice President politically, and this goes back to his inglorious days in Congress, the service and his interment in Arlington were befitting of the man and his office.

  “If there’s a nit to pick, it started with the President’s eulogy and festered over the weekend as it became the resonant talking point of the state-controlled media. The President eloquently decried the fanaticism that threatens our American way of life.

  “Over the weekend, fanaticism expanded to ‘right-wing fanaticism’ and ‘conservative fanaticism’ as pundits attempted to link the assassin with what the Department of Homeland Security describes as right-wing extremists. You may recall the DHS memo that linked right-wing extremism to frustration with the economic downturn and the general state of the economy.

  “If, as the evidence suggests, Michael Unden was the assassin, then one has to ask what drove him to this tragic end. The story starts with Jacob Unden, a war hero and winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor who was the father of the alleged assassin. The apparatchiks on the President’s death panel deemed the costly treatment for Jacob’s illness a poor investment of healthcare dollars and sentenced this man, who had risked his life for this country, to a nasty death. Jacob committed suicide to spare himself and his son that horror show which triggered Michael’s second gripe with our beloved leader—the death tax.

  “I don’t condone murder, and the Vice President’s death was clearly murder, but I don’t condone robbery, either. Unden lost his family farm not through mismanagement, but because his father died and the tax amounted to half the value of the land and equipment. I don’t know too many farmers whose net worth isn’t largely tied up in land and equipment. Farming is not a high-liquidity business.

  “The Vice President’s murder is a tragedy. The left’s totally expected tack to make political hay from it is also a tragedy. Now that we’re through the sympathy phase, the left is working overtime to link Unden to Egan by way of their shared antipathy for our country’s abysmal tax code. This is no different than saying that both the President and the Nazis support nationalized healthcare, therefore the President is a Nazi. The logic behind these kinds of arguments is clearly flawed, but logic has never been the strong suit of the left.

  “Not to sound crass, but the unexpected vacancy in the vice presidency has proven beneficial to the President’s reelection effort. Recent polling puts him within the margin of error against Egan, and no, this is not because of a post-convention bounce.

  “Over the weekend, the President moved to fill the vacancy in the order of succession by nominating New Mexico Governor Belinda Delgado for vice president. Both houses of Congress are expected to take up the Delgado confirmation in a special session this week and she could be sworn in shortly thereafter. If confirmed, the President has indicated that Delgado would be his runn
ing mate.

  “Not to diminish Governor Delgado’s qualifications for the job, but the political implications of her selection cannot be ignored. If confirmed, Delgado would become the first female vice president. She would join Gerald Ford as an unelected vice president, but she would be the first woman to stand a heartbeat away from the presidency. As a twofer, she would also be the first Hispanic vice president.

  “In nominating a Latina to fill the vice presidential vacancy, the President seeks to diffuse the impact that the election of a woman of African descent might bring to the race. Democrats hate the idea of Republicans breaking any ethnic or gender barriers, and in fact hate the idea of anyone other than white males being conservative or Republican. The dirty little secret is that the liberals don’t want their traditional ethnic base to realize that conservatives really don’t care about gender or skin color. You don’t have to look a certain way to be a conservative; you have to think a certain way. And to think like a conservative, you first have to think.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  SEPTEMBER 1

  “People,” Daniel Page said to the gathering of the President’s senior campaign staff, “Labor Day signals the start of the fall campaign and it’s a full-court press from now until Election Day. That gives us just nine weeks to crush Ross Egan’s populist campaign and send his sorry ass back into the sticks of flyover country where it belongs.”

  Dressed in gray pants and a white button-down oxford shirt, Page paced in the front of a conference room in the heart of the President’s reelection campaign headquarters. Around the table sat the campaign’s media strategist, communications chief, point person for research and policy communications, chief pollster, chief foreign and domestic policy aides, chief operating officer and national finance director. Also present was Zeno Rezi, the DNC research director who managed the party’s opposition research at arm’s length from the campaign. And near Page sat the President.

  “Let’s start with money,” Page began. “Where are we at, Tina?”

  Tina Crenshaw peered over the glasses perched on the end of her tapered nose.

  “With a month left to go in the third quarter, the campaign has raised just over six hundred fifty million this year and expended two hundred twenty million to date, leaving four hundred thirty million in cash on hand. Our numbers are a little behind four years ago, but we expect September to be a big month.”

  “Where are we down?” the President asked.

  “Our Internet contributions are off as compared to this time in the previous campaign. I expect the economy is taking its toll on this type of discretionary spending. Funds contributed by union PACs representing non-government workers are also down.”

  “Get me the particulars on both,” the President said, “and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Crenshaw nodded as she texted the President’s request to her assistant. The report would be in the President’s hands before he left the building.

  “Has the debate schedule been nailed down yet?” the President asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Page replied. “There will be four presidential debates set on alternating weeks starting on the tenth. The three vice presidential debates will occur in the off-weeks in between.”

  “Topics and format?”

  “The first three are standard format covering economics, foreign policy, and domestic policy.”

  “And the fourth debate?” the President asked.

  “Town hall format with direct questioning by the candidates.”

  “Questions in advance?”

  “No. The final debate was their only demand. The rest are by our rules. If need be, we can always kill it at the last minute.”

  The President nodded. “The public may love this Who Is I, but I don’t want these hackers interfering with the debates. I don’t want video monitors anywhere that I can see them—that damn crawl is too distracting. And we have to ban cell phones from the debate venues, otherwise the audience will look like a bunch of bobble heads.”

  “I’ll see to it. Moving on, I know we’ve all been preoccupied with what happened at the convention,” Page continued, careful not to say “assassination,” “and August was focused on getting the optics right on the Vice President’s funeral, the selection of the new Vice President, and getting the bottom half of our ticket set. But the summer is over and we have a serious challenger to focus everything we have on defeating.

  “First, we got blindsided by the Draft Egan move at the GOP convention. I don’t know or care how that one got by us, but we cannot afford another screw-up like that. The Vice President’s untimely death spun in our favor, but it could have just as easily finished us off.

  “From here on out, it’s all about Egan. Our onetime tool for splitting the right is now the enemy. Egan is the face of the right wing, the chief proponent of the kind of twisted ideology that not only destroyed our economy but also led to the brutal attack at our convention. Egan must be everything that is wrong with the right. What do we have on him?”

  Zeno Rezi consulted the notes on his iPad. At thirty-six, the wiry son of Greek immigrants was one of the youngest people at the table but had proven himself invaluable during the President’s previous campaign.

  “Egan’s bio sums it up pretty well. He is in his late forties, born and raised in the upper part of Michigan, which is like the North Pole with trees. He has undergrad and graduate degrees in engineering from MTU, not MIT. Transcripts are unremarkable and his thesis is unreadable unless you’re a gearhead. I got some people looking at it, but it’s all numbers so I don’t expect anything we can hang him on.”

  The President unconsciously shifted in his seat. His college transcripts and graduate thesis remained safely locked away for precisely this reason.

  “Political experience,” Rezi continued, “is nil. Egan has never run for office of any kind. He was on the committee that wrote the constitution for Dutannuru and served as an advisor to the president of that country. He was also involved in that nation’s public works—utilities and infrastructure. A lot of money was spent getting power, water, and such operating after the war, plenty of room for kickbacks and skimming. Rules are different over there, but I might find some graft we can nail to his door. I’ve got some people looking into it.

  “Personally—the guy is boring as hell. Quiet, shy kid growing up. Dated a little, didn’t knock anyone up as far as we can tell. Seems straight, but we’re still digging for any mano-a-mano indiscretions just in case. Closeted hypocrisy always plays well with the Joe six-pack crowd.

  “He’s had only one serious girlfriend. He married her, went to Africa because of her, had a kid with her, and lost both in the civil war. Since then, nothing. I got my guys out looking for hookers, titty bars, adult website memberships—anything that puts his personal conduct in contrast with the high moral standards of the right.”

  Saul Alinsky’s fourth rule of power politics, the President silently recalled. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.

  “Egan has spent most of his adult life in Africa,” Rezi said, “which makes fleshing out his backstory a little challenging. That and he’s a bit of a hero over there so few folks are speaking ill of him.”

  “Do you have anything we can use?” Page asked pointedly.

  “Egan is a global warming skeptic,” Rezi replied. “The guy is supposed to be this bright engineer and his thesis was on power generation, yet he doubts the science behind global warming.”

  Page sighed. “Global warming is out of vogue. The correct term is climate change, and doubting it has spread from conservative Neanderthals to the general public.”

  “Yeah, but the guy claims to be all for improved efficiency in energy production, storage, and use. So how can a guy who is pro-energy efficiency be showing up at his campaign appearances in a full-blown Humvee? And I’m not talking about the softened commercial version, but the original, military-grade truck. That pig gets like five miles per
gallon, possibly the most fuel-inefficient vehicle on the road.

  “Second, he’s in partnership with his parents on a wind farm on the coast of Lake Michigan. We’ve gone through their filings and it doesn’t seem to add up.”

  “What doesn’t add up?” the President asked.

  “Wind farms pump their power back into the grid, selling it to the local utility. We know the rates the utilities pay for green power, we know how much income the wind farm reported on its tax returns, and we know how many turbines this wind farm has operating. I’ve got some engineers working on it, but at first glance its power output doesn’t seem possible. Egan may be defrauding the utility.”

  “Get me something I can work with,” Page said.

  The President nodded. “Let’s hold this close to the vest until we find the best time to go public.”

  “Understood,” Rezi said. “I’ll tell my guys to tread lightly. Egan’s got another hinky power plant—that dam where he got famous. Seems the place is off-limits. Total lockdown. Other power plants in Dutannuru have public tours, that kind of thing, but not this one. Just seems odd.”

  “Have you discovered how Egan is paying for his campaign?” the President asked.

  “No,” Rezi replied. “I’ve got every return he’s filed from his first job up to last year and there is nothing that indicates the kind of personal wealth needed to fund his run. The wind farm keeps him and his folks comfortable, but not filthy rich. He has some modest investments and an IRA—all penny-ante stuff. The one unusual thing is half-ownership in a new company called Terrafuma Energy. It sprung into existence on the first of the year, so all we got is the filings that created it. Terrafuma’s corporate office is a post office box. It has no website, no apparent staff, no other footprint, nothing to indicate what it does or why it even exists.”