A Rambling Wreck: Book 2 of The Hidden Truth

by Hans G. Schantz

  Uncle Rob’s face was hard as granite and as merciless as Judgement Day. “I had to burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

  “I sent Amit to take you to his hotel. Surely you two couldn’t screw that up. Then, I drove back up here, and cached the loot from the library. I loaded up the liquid oxygen and carried it, Dewar-by-Dewar into the library. I disabled the sprinklers, soaked the books in liquid oxygen, and almost caught myself on fire when I finally set it off.

  “Meanwhile you and Amit had the genius idea of ignoring my instruction, and you went back to your house. The Circle’s ‘FBI’ agents caught you. You were damned lucky the sheriff was on top of what was going on and got you away from them. Then, your dad heard about your arrest, and he and your mom rushed back home and straight into an ambush.

  “You’re a smart kid. You’re honest, too. So, you tell me, should I have trusted someone of such demonstrated… inexperience in tactical operations to help me commit and cover up felony arson? Or to undertake any sort of tactical operation against the Circle?” Uncle Rob’s eyes bore into mine, as silence enveloped the room.

  He was doing it again: trying to use my own guilt against me. That was a ploy he’d tried one time too many. “However inexperienced I may have been or may continue to be,” I replied, “I think I’ve amply demonstrated I’m a quick study when given appropriate direction. I accept responsibility for my actions, the good and the bad, the competent and the inept.” I returned his gaze with all the will I could muster. “Can you say the same?”

  “How so?” Rob asked.

  “Let me run another scenario by you,” I hypothesized. “Suppose you had taken me and Amit into your confidence. Suppose we had stayed together and helped you burn down the library. Then, I wouldn’t have gone home, I wouldn’t have been arrested, my parents wouldn’t have left their safe house, and they might still be alive. You were the leader. You are a veteran. You are the man with the experience in tactical operations. You convinced yourself: your two teammates were inexperienced.”

  I thought better of that.

  “No, let’s not mince words. Amit and I aren’t just inexperienced, we’re inept and incompetent at tactical operations, certainly by your standards. Fine. Yet, instead of keeping the team together, so you could supervise and guide us, you left us to fend for ourselves.”

  “I trusted you to follow a simple order: go to the hotel and hide,” Uncle Rob countered. “I thought you and Amit were competent enough to handle that without my micromanagement. Yes, I was wrong. Yes, I am responsible for my mistake in trusting you. Yes, it’s possible with the benefit of hindsight that I might have done things differently. Yes, different actions would have led to different consequences and a different outcome. Nothing we say to each other now can change what happened last year. Actions have consequences, for ourselves and others. We must assume responsibility for our own actions, learn from our mistakes, and move on.

  “I’m being blunt, because I respect you,” Uncle Rob explained. “You’re a promising analyst. The way you spotted the clues and pieced together the hidden truth about that Heaviside guy and the Circle – that was truly remarkable. You do have a talent. You do have a part to play. If I’m going to defeat the Circle, I’m going to need your help to figure out what they’re doing and why. It’s only help I need from you, though. Not the main event. I have no intention of letting you get anywhere near any sort of tactical operation in the future. You’re a researcher, not a rifleman. And I will be the judge of what constitutes an acceptable tactical risk in any future operation. We are not gallivanting off to rescue everyone who falls under the scrutiny of the Circle.

  “My job is simple: to fulfill my promise to my brother, your father, to keep you safe,” Uncle Rob concluded. “Your job is to get your education and prepare yourself.”

  “No, sir,” I said out of habit and instantly regretted it. I needed to stop deferring to him. “Our job is to defeat the Circle. Yours and mine. Anything else is only a means to that end. I can’t be the analyst and figure out the Circle if you withhold critical information from me.”

  “Your role is secondary,” Rob countered. “Sure, the Circle’s been around a while. Yes, it would be nice to know their history. The sciencey stuff you’re working on might be useful. Fundamentally, though, taking down the Circle is a tactical problem – refining our understanding of who they are and what they do, identifying the ‘Inner Circle:’ the key players who call the shots. Then, I’m going to take them out. That’s not something you can look up online or in a library. It requires tactical intelligence, it’s not something you can discover from old books.”

  “You don’t understand the big picture,” I replied. “Neither do I. We need to know who they are and what they want. Those library books must have some current importance, or their Technology Containment Team wouldn’t be so sensitive about hiding them. Figure out what exactly they’re hiding and why, and you figure them out.”

  Uncle Rob was shaking his head. “I’m convinced saving those books was a mistake. They certainly weren’t worth your parents’ lives. I was expecting some kind of smoking gun. Instead we get folklore and obscure history, memoirs and mysticism with no real direct relevance to hidden technical secrets or to the Circle and their operation. Your study of them? Hardly rises to the level of ‘nice to have’ and miles away from ‘got to have.’ Amit’s more likely to come up with something of direct tactical relevance than you, reading those dusty books of yours.”

  “There has to be something in those books, or the Civic Circle wouldn’t be engaging in wholesale slaughter every time someone comes close to a copy their Technology Containment Team missed,” I pointed out.

  “Risk versus reward,” Uncle Rob said. “The Circle killed Jim Burleson, your folks, and those people in Houston to keep you from understanding this Heaviside theory. Electromagnetic waves actually bounce off each other. What good is that secret to us? It’s certainly not worth the bloodshed. It was a deleted sentence here, a botched index entry there that let you figure out the Heaviside business. Needle in the haystack stuff. The Tolliver Library haystack is vastly bigger – many more books. You’ve fixated on this MacGuffin for reasons that aren’t all that clear to me.”

  I was convinced Uncle Rob was wrong, but I couldn’t prove it. There had to be something in those books – something we just didn’t quite understand yet. The MacGuffin book? It was the most puzzling, the most perplexing with its rambling narrative meandering through memoir and mysticism. It was the life’s work of someone who’d tried to untangle the mystery of the Civic Circle. It was just a feeling I had, but somehow I was convinced MacGuffin had laid bare secrets that perhaps even he didn’t fully understand. Honestly though, Rob had a point. I hadn’t made much progress other than to confirm that the Circle had a long and shadowy history, the details of which we still didn’t know. Angus MacGuffin was the key to unlock that history. He had to be.

  Uncle Rob interrupted my thoughts. “Look, it’s not like I’ve been sitting on my ass since you went off to Tech. I left Bud Garrety and the shop rats in charge of the operation here, and I went up to DC and did some surveillance of the Circle. I talked to some of their staff and figured out what they’re doing.”

  “How did you get past their security to talk to their staff?” Mr. Burke’s private investigator had reported extremely high levels of security around their building in Arlington, Virginia.

  “The fraternity of smokers crosses all kinds of boundaries,” Rob grinned. “The building is officially non-smoking. There’s an alley behind the building where smokers go at breaks and over lunch. You happen to be there when they arrive. You hang out. You share a light. You listen sympathetically as they vent about their job and their bosses.”

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.

  “Used to,” Uncle Rob acknowledged. “Gave it up.”

  “Because of the cancer risk?” I asked.

  “No,” he explained. “I figured out how much of the price
went to the government in taxes. As far as I’m concerned, government is worse than cancer. You’re getting me off topic, though.

  “The Circle is hiring lots of those war hawks. They’re gearing up for a major lobbying push. You know how President Lieberman was all gung-ho to invade Iraq after we toppled the Saudi and Afghan governments, chasing the 9/11 terrorist masterminds? He was stopped by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans. Too many of the Old Guard in the establishment perished in the attack. The new Congresscritters who replaced ‘em were satisfied with avenging the 9/11 attack and wanted nothing to do with further foreign adventures. If Lieberman and McCain had gone ahead, Congress would have slapped them down and prevented them from taking action. Maybe it just took time for the Circle to get enough dirt on enough of the new guys in Congress. I don’t know. They’re beating the war drums again, though. In a year – maybe less, we’ll be at war again.”

  I was impressed he’d been able to figure all that out, however, his information just confirmed what I already knew. I realized, he’d managed to do it again: slide right back into the mentor-student role. “That confirms what I’ve already found out from Uncle Larry,” I pointed out, trying to regain the initiative. I shared what Uncle Larry told me, particularly his estimate of what the war would do to oil prices.

  “That’s what I’ve been hearing from my sources,” Uncle Rob acknowledged. “Someone’s been trying to buy out the small independents who’ve been crushed by the Gore Tax regulations. I’ll spread the word. Urge them to hold on.”

  “Would war with Iraq be a bad thing?” I asked. “Uncle Larry insists that by toppling Saddam Hussein, we can bring peace and democracy to the Middle East.”

  Uncle Rob was already shaking his head ruefully before I could even finish. “Proglodytes,” he said. “Progressive troglodytes. I swear half the reason they’re so fixated on universal equality and the doctrine that everyone is fundamentally the same is intellectual laziness. Assuming everyone is really just like them saves them the effort of having to figure out what makes other cultures tick. Expecting a stable democratic state to take hold in a low-trust culture is lunacy.”

  “Low-trust culture?” I wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “Many Middle Eastern societies are very tribal,” he explained. “For instance, cousin marriage runs rampant. It’s common over there for young men to marry their father’s brother’s daughter.”

  I thought the relationships through and frowned. “Like me marrying Abby.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Helps reduce sibling rivalries if you’re sharing the same grandchildren. Those cousin marriages keep family loyalties much closer than in the West. Over there it’s me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my clan; my clan against my tribe; my tribe against the world. And everyone against the infidel,” he added. “Family and local loyalties always trump national ones. Makes for unstable nations.

  “The European model is completely different. One thing the Catholic Church did early on in Europe was forbid relatives from marrying. There’s an argument that that policy led to a more open society where people would be more trusting of outsiders, more loyal to distant rulers.

  “I’ve seen it argued that these cultural practices reflect actual genetic differences. Or culture reinforcing genetics reinforcing culture. Hard to say. Can’t be a good thing genetically to have only seven great-grandparents. There’s a greater chance of getting two copies of the same recessive genes that could cause birth defects or similar problems. Maybe the genetic downside is compensated by the survival benefits of enhanced loyalties with family and clan.”

  “A high-trust society may have weaker family bonds, but makes it easier for people to work together in even larger groups,” I pointed out.

  “Right,” Uncle Rob agreed. “You can see how either approach might work out for the best, depending on the circumstances.”

  “So you’re saying that if we topple Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, the consequence won’t be a stable democracy taking its place. We’ll see chaos?”

  “Exactly.” He nodded his head. “People don’t understand how unstable the very concept of a nation is when superimposed on competing tribal cultures. The boundaries in the Middle East were drawn by the British and French without much regard for the people being fenced in together within the borders. It may well take an authoritarian government to hold together the competing tribes. Undermine the authoritarians, bad as they are, and the result may well be worse: bloody civil war of tribe against tribe and sect against sect.”

  I let that sink in. I had a feeling we were missing something. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Civic Circle, it’s that they’re smart people who understand exactly the consequences of what they’re doing,” I pointed out. “To understand what they’re after, you have to look at the effect of their policies and actions, not just listen to the rhetoric and justifications they use to get their way.”

  Rob was nodding his head, so I continued. “They promote social programs that don’t work, not from any affection for the poor, but to create a dependent class and buy votes. They see families as a threat to their power, so they encourage feminism to disrupt traditional families, suppress the birth rate, and create still more dependents who will vote for more government control and more handouts. Most everything they do ultimately contributes in some way to their goal of a centralized global government with themselves in charge. What are they after here?”

  “One consequence of this instability is a temporary shock to oil prices,” Rob observed. “That’s something your Uncle Larry is counting on. They’ll make themselves richer with that advance knowledge.”

  It didn’t feel right. “There must be more to it. The Civic Circle thinks long-term, years or decades ahead. They wouldn’t make this a centerpiece of their policy for the sake of a quick profit. What’s the long-term consequence of disrupting the Middle East? Chaos? Civil wars?”

  “Even more terror?” Rob speculated. “A more visible enemy to make us sacrifice even more liberty in the name of security?”

  “That’s got to be part of it,” I agreed. It wasn’t enough. Then, it came to me. “Refugees. Wave upon wave of migrants and refugees, fleeing the disorder in their homelands.”

  I could see Rob putting the pieces together, too. “An invasion of Europe. Not a military invasion, but a mass migration. Right into the heart of a prosperous, high-trust society. Transplanting their traditional Islamic culture. Terror and unrest everywhere. Necessitating a permanent police state and an abandonment of the liberties and rights made possible by our high-trust society.”

  “The Circle doesn’t want to rule our society as it is now,” I concluded. “They want to rule the world, but not our world as it is. They want to rule a world of their own creation, a remade world with a different culture. Somehow, this is part of the overall plan.”

  “That summer meeting of the Civic Circle and the G-8 meeting are critical,” Uncle Rob concluded. “The push for war will come right after the G-8 Summit. We need to get inside that meeting. Figure out how to disrupt it.”

  He’d done it again. He took the full brunt of my criticism for leaving me in the dark, and here we were again, right back to the status quo with him as boss and me as junior analyst. He was going to keep feeding me those little bits and pieces of data he figured I could handle while continuing to leave me in the dark. I tried again to see if I could break the cycle.

  “I want to point out something here.” I held Rob in the most penetrating gaze I could muster. “You spent your fall working around the periphery, looking for an opening. You successfully uncovered the Circle’s plot to instigate war in the Middle East. I appreciate your efforts,” I acknowledged, “and I’m glad you were successful, but I got the same and better intelligence from Uncle Larry. I have a solid opportunity to get myself, and probably Amit, too, inside the Civic Circle’s meeting, where I’ll be able to uncover even more.

  “You’ve
been keeping me in the dark, while I’ve been doing some heavy lifting, too – accomplishing as much or more than you. I got the same intelligence you collected, and Amit and I managed to expose the whole surveillance program to public scrutiny.

  “I haven’t told you everything I’ve been doing,” Uncle Rob replied, coldly: “making contacts, building a network, getting ready to move. There’s a whole operational side that has to be ready before we make a move. You have no need to know the details.”

  “Fair enough,” I conceded, “but, what kind of move? How do we hurt the Civic Circle? I don’t doubt you could lie in wait somewhere and kill someone. What would that accomplish? There are layers upon layers to the Civic Circle. Uncle Larry is on the outermost layer with several hundred other wannabe movers and shakers. The Civic Circle has a structure we’re only now beginning to discern. There are hundreds closer in, yet still in the periphery, and many dozens even closer to the top. We don’t know who’s really running the show – who’s actually in the Inner Circle.”

  “In any organization, there are only a few decision makers,” Uncle Rob observed. “A committee only works with no more than five or six people. If there are more, it becomes ineffectual – a hotbed of competing cliques and factions. By the time we can identify the Inner Circle, I’ll be ready to take them out.”

  “Understand this,” I explained. “Whoever killed my parents is living on borrowed time. If we can figure out who was responsible, the only problem I’ll have with killing them is if you try to cut me out.” He started to interrupt, but I kept on talking. “Organizations have a life of their own, though” I continued. “Kill the top dozen people, and more from the lower ranks rise to fill their places. Arguably, that’s exactly what happened on 9/11. President Gore and his most senior personnel died in the attack on the White House. President Lieberman assembled an all-new team and was acting within a day or less. Killing the leadership isn’t enough. More junior members are promoted and the organization continues on. We have to find a way to kill the organization itself, not just the handful of people at the top.”