And this time, it was working.
•
WIPING ANOTHER LAYER of sweat from his forehead, Cedric reflected on the inspiration for the day’s ploy.
The idea had occurred to him a few months back, when he read a news story about a controversy brewing in the Caribbean islands of the Turks and Caicos. The territory’s residents were railing against a VAT (value added tax) that their caretaker governor had threatened to impose on all goods and services.
It was the notion of the appointed governor, imposed by the overseeing British government, that had piqued Cedric’s interest.
He vaguely remembered the corruption allegations against the elected premier that had triggered the British takeover, but T&C was too far north of the Virgins to draw more than a passing mention in the local press.
Intrigued, Cedric quickly plowed through every news article about the T&C crisis he could get his hands on.
After a police inquiry into enormous bribes being paid to develop public lands, the T&C’s premier had suddenly resigned and fled to South America. The UK promptly suspended the islands’ government and replaced it with one led by the British caretaker governor, who would serve until the corruption issues were resolved and new elections could be organized.
The initial British takeover met only muted resistance, but by the end of the interim governing period, the appointed leader had plummeted in popularity.
The threatened imposition of the VAT drew a firestorm of criticism. The caretaker governor eventually withdrew his tax proposal, deferring the issue to the incoming elected government, which had since taken control—and summarily dismissed the hated tax.
•
CEDRIC HAD OBSESSED over the story.
What would it take to wake Virgin Islanders from decades of subjugated complacency? Could a similar scenario be devised to provoke a US takeover—one that would prove so distasteful the residents would finally rise up and throw out their overlords?
The question was tantalizing. He’d spent several days plotting out a strategy.
Then he shared it with the separatists.
Like a boulder careening down one of Charlotte Amalie’s steep hills, the project had been gaining momentum ever since.
~ 20 ~
The Rabbit Hole
IT WAS A long and winding path from devoted public servant to devious revolutionary, from starry-eyed intern to subversive malcontent.
Cedric had made the full conversion.
The man he once idolized, he had come to despise.
The system that had provided his life’s most valuable opportunities, he now loathed and labored to dismantle.
A vigilante’s blinkered zeal steered his vision.
He thought of the events still to come, the chips yet to fall, and relished his role in the Governor’s demise.
He was a complicated man with complicated ambitions.
But it hadn’t always been that way.
•
GROWING UP, CEDRIC was a studious sort, an awkward adolescent who tried hard to fit in but somehow always found himself outside the norm. His efforts to assimilate made him stick out all the more.
A fragile soul, he soldiered on, closely watching his peers for signs of acceptance that would never come, at least not in the demonstrative form that would satisfy his thirsty ego.
That perceived rejection wounded him to the core.
Emotionally closed off, he was a puzzle to his parents and the few friends he had accumulated. He could be openly hostile, frigidly polite, or, in his more desperate moments, unnervingly obsequious.
The alienation fed an isolation-induced vanity. In that coping mechanism sprung the seeds of the duplicitous adult he would become.
In politics, he was a natural fit.
•
CEDRIC STARTED WORKING for the Governor on his first campaign, volunteering as an entry-level intern. Eager to please, he worked tirelessly, making himself available for extra duties after hours and on the weekends. He made himself useful and then, inevitably, indispensible, soon earning a paid position as a junior staffer.
Latching on to the Governor’s broad coattails, Cedric gradually weaseled his way into the politician’s inner circle. His duties expanded into his natural area of expertise: data consumption and on-demand delivery.
Long an observer of local politics, Cedric was an encyclopedic resource on the topic. His brain was wired with an infinite capacity for minutia. He knew the pros and cons of every policy issue, the professional and private details of every actor engaged in the legislative process. Most important, he could disgorge these facts at a moment’s notice. This last ability, in particular, gained him the highest level of access to the Governor—and the informal title of “right-hand man.”
Maintaining this database, however, required constant study, intake, and observation.
It was while diligently collecting information that he slipped down the rabbit hole.
•
CEDRIC WAS ON his way home from another busy day at Government House when the first wayward step occurred.
He had stopped at Emancipation Park, where the separatists were holding a sparsely attended meeting. It was an innocuous gathering, clearly the dying sputterings of a dysfunctional organization.
But as he prepared to leave, one of the members touched him on the shoulder and whispered in his ear, extending an invitation to a far more select committee that would be convening later that evening.
Skeptical but intrigued, Cedric wrote down the location.
At the designated time, he wandered into the waterfront alleys and found the address of the jewelry shop he’d been told was hosting the event.
From the narrow walkway, he tried to peek through the grate-covered glass. Like the rest of the stores in the downtown area, it was locked up tight. There was no indication that anyone else was around.
Cedric rang the buzzer, not expecting a response. But after a few silent seconds, the furtive shopkeeper peered out through a hole in the protective grate and reluctantly let him in.
The aide was surprised at what he found inside—or more specifically, who. In a dimly lit room behind the display area, he encountered a cluster of the island’s most influential citizens, native Virgin Islanders with tremendous economic and political clout.
Then he was introduced to the woman at the center of the group, a charismatic figure of immense prestige. Due to the sensitive nature of her public position, her role in the organization had to be kept confidential, and she could only attend private meetings with closed access.
He left that evening unsure of how to process what he’d observed or of why he had been entrusted with such an important secret.
Nevertheless, he omitted mention of the meeting from his briefing the following day.
The next time the Governor asked for his thoughts on the separatists, Cedric dismissed them as irrelevant.
From that moment on, the schism slowly grew between Cedric and his mentor—even as the Governor remained unaware of the rift.
•
CEDRIC PIVOTED AWAY from the window in the concrete shell of the construction site on Government Hill. He turned as if to check on the Governor and Fowler. In reality, the aide was looking up over the far wall to the mansion perched on the adjacent hill, about twenty degrees around the city’s upper perimeter from the worksite where they were hiding.
Visible from almost every angle within Charlotte Amalie, the Governor’s Mansion looked down on the whole of the city. Flagpoles in the south yard framed the stately white-painted structure. Surrounded by a mass of jungled greenery, the building stood alone atop the steep slope, its columned front emulating the president’s living quarters in Washington, DC.
Cedric had visited the gated property numerous times during the Governor’s tenure. His admiration for the fine furnishing
s, manicured lawns, and expansive view had followed his overall transition, morphing into envy-tainted desire.
His was a patriotic mission, a matter of pride and heritage. But if he played his cards right, he would soon be moving into that mansion—as the new head of state.
The woman leading the conspiracy had assured him as much.
The Attorney General’s Office
Washington, DC
~ 21 ~
Buster
THE US ATTORNEY general sat in a top-floor office cluttered with stacks of legal files and document-laden banker’s boxes, pensively staring at a collection of papers spread across his desk.
He was a wolfish man with a lawyer’s worn-down look. Worry lines had aged his once-boyish face. A pair of smudged eyeglasses sat haphazardly on his nose, the lenses needed to correct the vision that Harvard Law School and fifteen years at an ultracompetitive Manhattan law firm had irreparably damaged. While the speckled gray of middle age made some men more attractive, his color change only lent an air of frazzled exhaustion.
It was late morning in the nation’s capital, but the country’s chief law enforcement officer had been up half the night. The lack of sleep—along with the accumulated wear from several decades’ worth of nocturnal deprivation—had taken their toll.
He reached for a bottle of antacid tablets, tilted the container to knock the last pink squares out into his palm, and popped them into his mouth like candy. The tablets crunched between his teeth, disintegrating into a thick powder that he swallowed without water. The chalky taste was no longer bitter or off-putting. Just another part of his daily routine.
The potent combination of stress, caffeine, and aspirin had worn his stomach lining to the point of constant irritation. The condition was exacerbated by his nightly relief, a cocktail—or more typically, cocktails—at the bar around the corner from his DC apartment.
The downtown digs had originally been meant as temporary housing, to use when work kept him too late to bother with driving home. The apartment had quickly become his permanent residence.
His wife and dog lived in the family’s townhouse in Old Town Alexandria. The wife had long since given up on the marital relationship. She accompanied her husband to obligatory work functions and social events; otherwise, the two rarely saw or spoke to one another.
A picture of the happy golden retriever was propped on the corner of the AG’s desk, facing his chair for easy viewing. There were no mementos of the wife.
The AG was the epitome of professional success. His career had been lauded by colleagues, fellow alumni, and myriad bar associations, but he rarely felt any satisfaction in his achievements or that his life’s sacrifices had been worthwhile.
A few months down the road—perhaps sooner, given the mess that his department had just created down south—someone else would take over this office.
After that, he doubted anyone would remember that he was ever here.
•
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL swallowed the last chalky bits of antacid and chased the pink paste down with a gulp of stale coffee.
He flipped over one of the top sheets of paper on his desk, cursed under his breath, and shifted his gaze to the framed photo of the dog.
The room was nicely furnished, fitting for his rank, but the décor was hidden behind the boxes and piles of paper, giving it a closed-in feel.
The AG was one generation removed from the modern trend of paperless record-keeping. While he was comfortable with a computer and at ease with the various forms of tablet technology, he still preferred to read a document on printed paper. He wanted to write notes in the margins, highlight important words and passages in the text, or, if the need arose, crumple the sheet up and throw it across the room.
When he walked into the tidy offices of his junior attorneys, he couldn’t help but feel suspicious. How could they work in places that were so clean? Where was the evidence of their diligence?
When these same attorneys handed him their legal briefs, he often asked to see their background notes. He still found it unconscionable when they handed him a tiny jump stick instead of a Redweld crammed with dog-eared court cases. The worst offense, of course, happened at the end of each day as they walked toward the elevator, carrying nothing but a thin briefcase and a laptop computer.
He still lugged a banker’s box home each night.
Of course, in times like these, with his career on the line and an increasingly unstable situation unfolding in the Caribbean territory his department had decided to seize, he just slept in his office.
The AG shivered, pulling on a cardigan he kept draped over the back of his chair.
An electronic wall setting allowed him to control the room’s temperature, but it seemed he could never get comfortable. It was always either too hot or too cold.
As the air-conditioning unit cycled on, blowing frigid air down onto his desk, he thought about the events unfolding a thousand miles to the south on humid St. Thomas.
“We’ve really stepped our foot in it, Buster,” the attorney general muttered to the dog’s flat photo image.
~ 22 ~
The Green Light
THE US ATTORNEY general rubbed his temples as he reflected on the circumstances that had brought about the day’s arrests on St. Thomas.
Attempted arrests, he corrected. The Governor and two senators were still missing.
The case had come up through the department’s Virgin Islands division, championed by the woman who led the branch office in Charlotte Amalie. Wendy the Wunderkind—that’s what the AG called her. She was one of his best and brightest recruits, an attorney who brimmed with the ambition that had all but drained from his being.
Despite Wendy’s stellar reputation and the merits of the case, the AG had shied away from the USVI corruption allegations for months—and for good reason, he could almost hear the dog’s picture reminding him.
But Wendy had persisted.
He’d finally been convinced by the analogies to the situation in the Turks and Caicos. Wendy had assisted the British government in their case against the T&C’s former premier, whom Interpol had tracked down to a beach in Rio. The fugitive politician had been extradited back to his homeland to stand trial on corruption charges. The suit involved bribes worth millions of dollars, some paid by US nationals, made in exchange for discounted purchase prices and facilitated development clearance for publicly owned land.
By all accounts, the premier had changed, seemingly overnight, from a man of relatively modest means to a lavish millionaire playboy. His rapid wealth accumulation had occurred in conjunction with his election to the territory’s highest elected office. Not long after taking the position, he began traveling the world in private jets and holding extravagant parties for movie stars and other celebrities. To top it off, he built a jaw-dropping private estate on one of the island’s most pristine and sought-after beachfront locations.
Despite the circumstantial evidence of the T&C premier’s flamboyant lifestyle, it was the testimony of the man’s ex-wife that dealt the fatal blow. As payback for her husband’s many infidelities, the glamorous American model had provided crucial evidence to the British Parliament. The investigating committee subsequently issued a damning corruption report on the premier.
Rather than face a full inquiry, the premier fled the country. A British caretaker governor was put in place to clean up the territory’s rampant corruption and supervise new elections.
All in all, the process of takeover and release went smoothly. The transition was completed in just under three years. The Turks and Caicos reformation was now touted as an example for other countries with pesky post-Colonial Caribbean holdings.
Of course, the premier’s decision to flee his post had facilitated the procedure. There had been a few rough patches during the caretaker governor’s rule, but the hastening of new elections had muted those c
riticisms.
With this precedent in place, the US attorney general had faced a difficult and pressing question.
If the technique had worked so well for the British territory, why not use it in the US Virgin Islands?
•
THE CASE AGAINST the USVI Governor and the Legislative Assembly came together quickly. The parallels with the situation in the Turks and Caicos were too numerous to be ignored. While the Governor was not as showy with his allegedly ill-gotten wealth, the bribery allegations were nearly identical in substance and scope.
The attorney general had worried endlessly over the matter. An indictment of the entire USVI government would look bad for his president, who had numerous ties to the islands, but—as Wendy had pointedly reminded him only the day before—the president was halfway through his second term in office. The AG had his own reputation to think about.
Over the past several months, the president’s administration had been plagued by an endless stream of leaks. The released information had included sensitive details about several of the justice department’s ongoing investigations.
If the AG declined to prosecute the USVI Governor and the Washington press corps found out, he would be in for a public grilling of epic proportions.
In the end, he felt he had no choice.
The portfolio of evidence was irrefutable. The primary witness was one of the Governor’s closest aides. The whistleblower had provided voluminous testimony that was buttressed by a slew of incriminating documents. It was one of the most ironclad indictments against a politician the department had ever handled.
And, of course, they couldn’t give the British an excuse to call their American cousins complacent.
After a vigorous evaluation and several tense discussions with the president, the AG had reluctantly given the action a green light.
It was a decision he already regretted.
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