The Evil That Men Do

by Robert Gleason

  You got off lucky, bitch, Putilov thought to himself. In my country, I’d have had you jailed, killed—or both!

  God, Putilov hated that documentary. He was sure that after it came out the Americans would build a cybersecurity firewall around their voting systems. In that film and on her website, www.BlackBoxVoting.org, Harris had described defect after defect after defect in America’s voting systems. For instance, she showed how touch screens could be programmed to register one’s vote for the opposite candidate. She laid out how incredibly simple it was to flip absentee and mail-in ballots and make them register as votes for a candidate’s rival. She pointed out how in one district votes for Al Gore in Florida had been subtracted from Gore’s final tally instead of being added to it. She demonstrated how—after voting systems had been hacked and the vote tabulations changed to elect the loser—forensic investigators lacked the technological means to detect and prove the system had been hacked and the outcome reversed … the same thing the Vegas experts had proved. She laid out for the world how hackable U.S. elections were.

  But the moronic Americans did … nothing.

  So Putilov had waged an all-out cyber-attack on America’s last political race, and after more than twenty years of hacking elections—both in his country and in those of his neighbors—there was nothing Putilov and his experts did not know about rigging a country’s electronic voting systems. So they penetrated and plundered every aspect of America’s state, local and national elections, and those vote thefts had been as easy for them as stealing milk bottles from sick babies. In fact, they had faced no obstacles at all. The voting machine vendors refused to work with the anti-hacking experts, because they knew that they could be held liable, when their voting equipment was proven faulty and that their stock prices could very well plunge precipitously. The states, who had absolute control over all elections within their borders, also refused to let the Department of Homeland Security help to them insure the integrity of their elections. They had stonewalled them when they offered to help prevent election hacking. Many of those states were already in the business of rigging elections through voter suppression laws and voter registration purges, and they did not want the feds looking over their shoulders. The state politicians also feared that their ineptitude in the face of proven cyber-attacks would become a political issue. In the coming elections, their opponents would accuse them of gross incompetence, and their opponents would, of course, be right. Thus, the states, like the private firms, ignored almost all outside cyber-security help. Putilov recalled how The New York Times had described in painful detail the states’ refusal to cooperate with these federal anti-hacking experts. The Times reported that the states would not allow the cyber-cops—both from within and without the U.S. government—to sort through voter databases, searching for vulnerabilities or attempts to phony up voter data, even though such intrusions had already been spotted in elections in over twenty-one states. Instead the states and the private companies rebuffed offers of almost all in-depth forensic investigations into their blatantly hacked elections. They had made sure that government couldn’t probe and monitor U.S. elections and that there was almost no way to audit the vote tabulations afterward. Only two out of America’s fifty states created systems that allowed for accurate vote recounts. Putilov and his allies could even kill many of their opponents’ votes in the cradle before their ballots could be cast. Putilov and his U.S. allies could purge any and all voters who were ex-felons, who had the same names as other voters in the registry or who had failed to vote in recent elections.

  Putilov allowed himself a small, malicious smile, as he recalled how he and his military spy agency, the GRU, had pillaged the providers of electronic election equipment and services and the anachronistic voting machines themselves as well as how he had exploited the states’ laughably ludicrous recount procedures. Putilov and his henchmen had raided the private vendors and state-run voting systems in almost half of the country and reversed the nation’s election results with breathtaking facility.

  Of course, the GRU’s manipulations did not go utterly undiscovered, but it did not matter. When cyber-irregularities were occasionally detected, Putilov’s good buddies, J. T. Tower and Jonathan Conley, saw to it that his electoral sabotage was quickly debunked and deflected. Even before the election, when the FBI caught Putilov’s people hacking into the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Conley saw to it that the Bureau bungled and delayed informing the DNC of the cyber-attacks. Consequently, Putilov had every file and email that he needed—with which to discredit the Democratic Party and its candidates—long before the DNC realized the seriousness of the breach.

  Putilov’s hackers now knew how to overturn any and all U.S. elections at the state, local and national level with impunity. There was nothing America could do about it. As Wired magazine had titled one of its articles, “America’s Electronic Voting Machines Are Scarily Easy to Target.”

  The memory of those cyber-assaults forced the Russian dictator to laugh out loud. When North Korea had hacked the electronics/media firm, Sony, the U.S. had done more to punish the Hermit Kingdom than that country had done to Putilov, and he had overturned many of their last state, local and national elections. He had even made J. T. Tower the American president.

  And now with the help of J. T. Tower and their Saudi allies, he and an elite cadre of global oligarchs were poised to purge the earth of all its so-called democracies. The pernicious plague of “one person, one vote” would be flung down the planet’s “memory hole” for all time to come.

  You can’t help but love capitalism, can you? Putilov thought, grinning. It had made him the richest man in the world, and now the Old Free Enterprise System was about to help him wipe all those reprehensible representative democracies off the face of the earth.

  * * *

  Putilov couldn’t wait to hack America’s coming election. He would be even better at it next time. After that election his band of merry cyber-thieves would leave no evidence whatsoever.

  Yes, Putilov thought, he was the one who had made Tower president of the United States. That sleazy, weasily, cretinous geek had nothing to do with it, but all that pretentious retard could do was brag about his “great political brilliance.”

  Putilov didn’t know how much longer he could take it. Somehow he had to though. He had to endure Tower until he could stop the UN threat to expropriate his and his backers’ clandestine offshore funds. He then had to consummate his seizure of the Baltic States and Ukraine, derail the Global Alternate Energy Movement and then, maybe then, just maybe, he could have Tower … assassinated.

  The thought of killing Tower brought a smile to Putilov’s face.

  How would he have it done?

  The image of Tower, writhing in blind agony, succumbing to a long, slow, infinitely torturous death, was the only thing anymore that brought Putilov anything resembling … peace. Maybe he’d have a marksman with a sniper rifle take Tower apart with exploding bullets a micrometer at a time, starting with the feet, inching his way up through the shins to his kneecaps, working his way up Tower’s thighs, penis, scrotum, testicles, prostate, carefully hammering the shit out of the bladder, the colon, the small intestine, the kidneys and the stomach—shot after shot after shot after shot. He’d stop at the stomach. Any higher and the shooter might accidentally put Tower out of his misery.

  And, Lord only knew, Putilov wanted the bastard to suffer.

  Oh, did he ever want Tower to suffer.

  Putilov went back to bed. He thought maybe now he might be able to get back to sleep.

  But it was not to be.

  Again, he sat up. He was too rattled. He decided he better smoke some more krokodil. The krok never failed to calm him down.

  He fished an aspirin bottle of desomorphine tablets out of his bedside table drawer, dumped out ten tablets and began grinding them up. He got out the two tablespoons, the razor blade, the Everclear bottle, the ether squeeze can and gasoline flask, the bong and the ligh
ter.

  Razor-chopping the pills assiduously, he poured the powder into the bong and watched it dissolve in the super-potent liquor. He heated the solution with the lighter. Watching the fumes fill the bowl, he began to slowly suck them in.

  He smiled with anticipation.

  Putilov knew the krokodil was now the only thing in this world he could truly depend on. As he pulled the fumes deep into his lungs and held them there—greedily allowing the krok to seep into every cubic millimeter of his heart and body, soul and mind—his eyes rolled back in his head, and his jaw went slack.

  The krok always knew what he needed.

  The krok would always be there for him.

  The krok would never let him down.

  PART VIII

  “But you, your relatives and your cronies could have made just as much money in legitimate businesses. Why did your father instead choose to traffic with devils like Hitler and Stalin? Why have you climbed into bed with the Saudis? You don’t need them to make your billions. Does all their carnage—and the knowledge that you’re backing and bankrolling their atrocities—turn you on?”

  —Jules Meredith

  1

  “And what of the toxic waste your benzene refineries and your nuclear power plants generate? They flood America’s earth, air and groundwater with some of the most carcinogenic toxins worldwide. Do you really believe you shouldn’t stop the polluting and—if necessary—close those plants?”

  —Jules Meredith

  Jules studied Tower, who was staring out the east window of his Tower of Power penthouse apartment. Brenda had joined them, and she sat across from Jules, drinking and smoking.

  “Do you realize,” Jules asked Tower, “that during the last presidential elections cycle, you and your billionaire consortium contributed more money to Republican political campaigns than all the other contributors combined.”

  “And we got jack shit for it,” Tower grumbled, refilling his and Jules’s glasses.

  He did not have to refill Brenda’s. She had her own brandy bottle and poured her own drinks steadily and heavily.

  “What did you expect from politicians?” Brenda asked. “Honor and loyalty?”

  “No, but for the money we’re paying out,” J. T. said, “they should keep their word.”

  “Hell, yes,” Brenda agreed, “we should … own D.C.”

  “Does doing what’s good for the country ever factor into your calculus?” Jules asked.

  Tower snorted his derision.

  Brenda laughed in Jules’s face.

  “What’s good for Big Jim,” Tower said, “is good for the country—hell, for the world—or, at least, it ought to be. That’s a truth I hold to be self-evident.”

  “You understand, Mr. President,” Jules said evenly but her eyes scornful and insolent, “that most of your life you’ve grown rich off those needle towers of greed, off Wall Street confidence games, rigged casinos and toxic petrochemicals. Did it ever occur to you that your money could have been better spent?”

  “Money knows no good or bad, no right or wrong,” Tower said. “It doesn’t care where it’s come from or where it’s going next. It comes and goes. It circulates.”

  “And in your world,” Jules asked, “you strive to keep the money circulating. Good money, filthy money, it’s all the same to you.”

  “Good for you,” Tower said, clapping. “You finally got it. Money is indifferent to how it is utilized or where it came from—whether it’s a force for ill or good. Dirty currency can do noble things, and moral money can bankroll terrorists. Money does what it does and doesn’t worry about it. Money just … is. In Jim World money circulates perpetually. Hell, it’s the Second Blood.”

  “So there’s no such thing as filthy lucre?” Jules asked.

  “Some of England’s most prestigious families—the old-money aristocracy everyone genuflects before today—made their fortunes out of ‘the Black Triangle,’” Tower said. “Starting out 400 years ago as ship captains, their dynastic forebears ran guns to Africa. After trading them for slaves, they swapped the human contraband in Jamaica for rum and molasses, which they brought back to England and sold at spectacular profits. After a decade in the Triangle, they—and their refined and sophisticated old-money descendants—were set for life.”

  “But does that justify your crooked casinos and your Wall Street derivative scams?” Jules said. “And what of the toxic waste your benzene refineries and your nuclear power plants generate? They flood America’s earth, air and groundwater with some of the most carcinogenic toxins worldwide. Do you really believe you shouldn’t stop the polluting and—if necessary—close those plants?”

  “I don’t see why,” Tower said. “The Justice Department’s not worried enough to shut those plants down.”

  “Okay,” Jules said. “So you don’t care about people or the planet. How about this? I called you something else: ‘the Barbaric Billionaire.’ Did you care about that?”

  “That was low, even for you.”

  “Not at all. You’ve been married three times and slept with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other women. Some of them accused you of sexual violence. One ex-wife said during a deposition that you pulled handfuls of hair out of her head while you raped her. Do you have anything to say about that one, Mr. President?”

  Glaring angrily at Jules, he poured her and himself another large snifter of cognac.

  Oh fuck, Jules thought. This is going to get serious.

  2

  “If you were any hotter, you’d spontaneously combust.”

  —Danny McMahon to Raza Tabarti

  McMahon came to. He was belly-down and stark naked, lying prone on a flat wooden bench. His wrists and ankles were lashed to a windlass, his arms and legs wrenched almost out of their sockets.

  Fuck, he was stretched out on a rack.

  Raza’s whip welts, the cattle prod’s scorch marks and the pliers’ pinch wounds covered his legs, arms and torso. Every square inch of his body felt like it was on fire.

  Looking up to his right, he spotted a 52-inch flat-screen TV monitor hanging on the wall. On the table beneath it was an open laptop.

  What the hell is going on? McMahon wondered. Were they streaming Netflix? Checking their Facebook pages? Ordering more whips and cattle prods online?

  Then, however, he saw Tariq and two goons in robes drag Rashid back to the sleeping room. He was badly scarred, groaning in unconscious agony and looked to have received a particularly ugly working over.

  And now it was his turn.

  The two women walked up to him, laughing, grinning.

  “Did you have pleasant dreams?” Raza inquired.

  “Yes, I wasn’t here.”

  “Where were you?” Marika asked.

  “At an Amnesty International fund-raiser.”

  “Raise much money?” Raza asked.

  “A fortune,” McMahon said. “I was their poster boy for illegal rendition and enhanced interrogation.”

  Keep them talking … McMahon thought to himself, remembering Rashid’s advice. Say anything … Flatter them … Tease them … If possible, make them like you … Anything to keep them from hurting you.

  “Mr. McMahon,” Marika said, “you only have yourself to blame.”

  McMahon looked away, silent.

  Raza gently palpated McMahon’s burns and scars.

  “N-i-i-i-i-ce,” she said, dividing the word into six syllables, purring them like a sleepy feline. “You told me earlier I was beautiful. Do you still feel that way?”

  Flirt with them, Rashid had said. They’re vain about their looks.

  “I’m embarrassed to say so but, yes.”

  She was, in plain fact, very beautiful—frighteningly, breathtakingly gorgeous. He couldn’t deny it.

  “You always hit on your torturers?” Raza asked, still fingering his burns and welts.

  “I never had one as attractive as you.”

  “You say that now, but will you love me in the morning?” Raza sa
id, her smile scary yet still strangely enticing.

  “You want to know the truth?” McMahon said. “I feel like we knew each other in another life.”

  Tease them … Keep them talking.

  “Mr. McMahon,” Raza said. “I hope you did not forget my warning?”

  “Not to understand you too quickly?” McMahon asked.

  “Bravo!” Raza said. “You are learning.”

  “Mr. McMahon, you’re trying to convince us you’re in love with your torturer,” Marika said. “Do you even know the meaning of love? You ever have a serious relationship?”

  “Only one.”

  “What happened?” Raza asked.

  “She talked too much. I had to drop her.”

  “Really?”

  “She’d talk me to death even while she was blowing me,” McMahon said with a sad shrug.

  Raza was now retrieving the cattle prod and riding crop from the steel worktable. She approached him with one in each hand.

  “Do I talk too much?” Raza asked him.

  “I want you to talk.”

  “Why?” Raza asked.

  “When you talk, you aren’t hurting me.”

  “What is it you like about me anyway?” Raza asked. “I haven’t been all that nice to you.”

  “I love everything about you,” McMahon said, “including your mind.”

  “What about my body?” Raza asked.

  “If you were any hotter,” McMahon said, “you’d spontaneously combust.”

  “You’re just saying that because you’re stretched out on a rack,” Raza said, shaking her head with sardonic skepticism.