—Allen Ginsberg
On the warm and sunny evening of June 18, Bob Campbell was in full Chicago Richie mode as he delivered an ice cooler full of rib-eye steaks, chicken leg quarters, and Polish kielbasa to a frat house on the campus of American University and collected a paper bag full of cash in return. The consignment of forbidden flesh set the wealthy frat boys back over $20,000. Inflated Federal Reserve notes good only for rats to nest in, true, but twenty grand was still a pretty penny for a backyard barbecue.
Bob’s special cell phone buzzed in his jeans pocket, the one he used for Operation Belladonna only. Bob moved out onto the sidewalk outside the frat house, stepped beneath a stately elm and flipped the phone open. He read a text message from Georgia Myers to her Jewish stepsister Talia Halberstam, Marvin’s daughter from a previous marriage, a quasi-friend whom she had begun cultivating again at the WPB’s request, and Marvin’s. Now that she was working at the White House, even if only as a high-end hooker, Georgia was persona grata again in the family. Talia and she were getting very chummy, a Jewish BFF being an excellent cover for a Nazi spy.
Every text message that Georgia sent to her stepsister actually did go to Talia Halberstam’s phone, so that if the Secret Service or DHS ever checked, they would find all the messages duly delivered and recorded there. Thanks to Birdie the criminal techie geek, who was making a fortune off Vinnie Skins’ business, text messages from Georgia’s phone were double-transmitted on a different frequency sufficiently close to the phone’s normal operating frequency to mask the fact, and were copied to Bob and Betsy both.
Georgia did not dare bring a disposable or other second device past White House security, in view of the questions it would provoke, so she had to use her own personal phone. In order to communicate with her handlers and remain undetected, Georgia had to compose a text to her stepsister which made apparent sense, but which contained hidden messages for the two Circus ops. In this case Bob read “Hoi, Talya—How did Sherman recep go? Was Larry high whole time again?” Bob had no idea who Larry was, and it didn’t matter. The important things were the misspellings in the salutation. Misspelling Talia’s name told them that Georgia wanted an emergency meeting, and the second misspelling indicated extreme urgency.
Bob used the Belladonna phone to call Betsy. Their two phones were programmed to break up transmissions between different cell relays, encrypt same, then bounce them off an old Euro-satellite from the 1990s stationed above D.C. that was still working, but which wasn’t equipped for monitoring from earth. Nonetheless, conversations had to be kept short and cryptic. “Did you get that?” Bob asked her.
“Yeah,” said Betsy. “Looks like Larry’s been a bad boy again.”
“Hey, sweetness, I feel like a bite to eat, and I don’t mean food,” said Bob lewdly. “Meet me at the Roller Derby?” Anyone listening would assume he was a client making a business date with working girl Betsy. The Roller Derby was a Georgetown nightclub, but in code, it referred to the actual proposed meeting place with Belladonna, which was a chew-easy on L Street, a Middle Eastern restaurant that paid the requisite bribes to the authorities so they could serve meat dishes to patrons. Kassim’s Garden of Delights was a restaurant and bar with cameras inside, but none in the outdoor piazza eating area, which was discreetly accessible through a wrought-iron gate on L Street and also a rear alley. The owner was Abdel Kassim, born Sheldon Silverstein in Tel Aviv, who arranged for his garden tables to be unmonitored through the simple expedient of bribing his brother-in-law in the DHS. It was a popular meeting place for people in government and organized crime who wanted a quiet tête-a-tête off the electronic record for assorted amatory, financial, or illegal pursuits, and Abdel/Sheldon surcharged accordingly.
“I can’t make it,” she told him. “I’m kind of tied up right now.” This was SOP as well; both handlers never came to an emergency meeting.
Bob fought off the temptation to ask “Literally?” and instead he said, “Tell you what, I’ll head on over there, and if you can get free, give me a call and we’ll hook up,” indicating he would take the meet at the kebab joint.
“You got it, stud,” said Betsy, and hung up. She would pass the information on to Vinnie Skins that something serious had happened and Richie was going for an unscheduled meet with Belladonna. They were coming to trust Georgia’s instincts. She was holding up better than they had expected, and if she thought something was important enough to break pattern, it probably was. Bob texted Georgia back, a pre-loaded spam text telling her that he was an exiled African head of state who urgently needed her bank account number, so he could split the fortune he had embezzled from the national treasury with her. This informed Georgia where the meet would be.
An hour later Bob was sitting at a table in the hot, muggy summer twilight under an umbrella in the outdoor section of the Garden of Delights, sipping an insanely overpriced imported beer and munching on artichoke and goat cheese hors d’oeuvres that may have born some vague resemblance to what people ate in some unspecified part of the Middle East. There were a lot of these Israeli-run Middle Eastern restaurants, and they were usually generic places like this that served the Tel Aviv equivalent of fast food. Bob saw Georgia slip inside from the L Street entrance. She was wearing a neat beige pants suit of the kind known to the fashion world as a Hillary, and she looked like any District civil servant or office worker out for dinner, except her beauty caught the eye of every man and many of the women in the place. It was always difficult for Georgia to remain truly inconspicuous. She strolled over and sat down with the scruffily dressed buttlegger type at the white wrought-iron table. Kassim’s was well known as a place for such incongruous meetings. “You okay leaving the White House in the middle of shift, if that’s what you call it?” asked Bob.
“Hunter’s at a diplomatic do at the U.N. in New York, and he won’t be back until midnight,” said Georgia. “They don’t mind if I take a long lunch, so to speak, and I don’t have to order up room service from the mess if I want to go out. I just take a lunch break like the other staff. I’m not in jail there; they just watch me like I was. I’m sure they’re tracking me on camera, but you said this place was safe. No spy cameras.”
“Yes, which is why your coming here may raise a red flag when they wonder where you’ve gotten to,” said Bob. “You need to have a quick salad or something and go. What’s up?”
“The government is going to kill Kanesha Knight and blame it on you guys,” Georgia told him.
“What?”
“They’re going to assassinate the head of the CIA,” she went on. “That’s the excuse they’re going to use to invade the Northwest Republic. They’re going to say you killed her. It’s going to happen tonight.”
Back in the White House, Secret Service Special Agent Lee Lyons got a call from Agent Victor Chan in the downstairs monitoring room. “Sir, you asked for anything unusual regarding FWOTUS’s movements?” In the absence of a FLOTUS, a First Lady Of The United States, the Secret Service had adopted the codename FWOTUS to designate the woman in Georgia’s job slot—First Whore Of The United States. It was strictly unofficial, but of course everybody in the White House knew it and was in on the joke, except for poor Georgia herself. She thought her Secret Service codename was the romantic-sounding “Moonstone.”
“Report,” ordered Lyons.
“FWOTUS went out for dinner, and she stepped into Shel Silverstein’s kebab hole up on L Street,” said Chan. “That’s a dead zone.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Lyons. “We keep bitching and sending nasty memos to DHS, but for some reason they won’t do anything about it. Silverstein’s probably paying somebody off over there.”
“She may be just eating falafel for supper,” said Chan.
“Or she may be meeting somebody she shouldn’t be,” said Lyons. “Maybe she has a boyfriend she’s still seeing, in violation of her contract, which would be understandable in view of—never mind. If we can catch her stepping out on POTUS, I can get her contrac
t canceled early and get her lovely ass out of here. Check it out. Get down there and get an eyeball on her. If she’s meeting somebody, stick with him or her, and let’s get an ID on them.”
“I’m on it, sir,” said Chan.
Back at the kebab garden, the two of them were interrupted by a Mexican waiter who took their dinner order. Bob was pleased to note that Georgia eschewed wine or beer and ordered Afghan tea. When the waiter was gone Bob said, “Okay, give it to me from the top.”
“We did seventh inning stretch early so Hunter could catch Air Force One up to New York, and after I got cleaned up I went up to the residence the back way like I usually do,” Georgia told him. “All of a sudden the door to the cabinet room opens up ahead of me, and Janet Chalupiak and that big black Secret Service guy Jimbo Hadding come out and start walking down the hall together. They didn’t see me behind them, and they’re talking about Kanesha Knight getting killed in some kind of drive-by shooting late tonight. The word around the West Wing is that Hadding is Hunter Wallace’s hit man when he wants somebody taken care of.”
“Yeah, we’ve picked up on that elsewhere,” Bob told her, nodding. “You need to be extra careful around him. What exactly did they say?”
“Well, I couldn’t very well tiptoe up behind them and eavesdrop, but Chalupiak says for Hadding to make sure he’s wearing a mask, but make sure the white guys on the team aren’t, so the cameras will pick up on Kanesha and her bodyguard getting whacked out by white men. Then they’ll photoshop the surveillance tapes to make sure the Secret Servicemen aren’t identifiable, and change their faces to known BOSS agents.”
“BOSS doesn’t work outside the Republic, only WPB and CMI,” said Bob.
“Maybe they don’t know that, or don’t care,” said Georgia. “Anyway, Janet asked Hadding if he minded killing a black woman and her black bodyguard if it would start the war that wiped out the Republic and killed millions of white racists, and Jimbo says, ‘Fuck it, I kill anybody I tole to kill. I gits paid all de same.’”
“The noble African at his best,” commented Bob.
“You wanted to know when the war was going to start,” said Georgia. “Well, looks like this thing tonight will begin the countdown.”
“Yeah, there will be a couple of days of ranting and raving and buildup in the media about us wicked Northwest racists, how dare we raise our hands to a Strong Black Womyn? How dare we even exist? Then they attack. Jesus!” swore Bob. He glanced up. The patio doors into the restaurant proper were open, and he looked right into the eyes of an Asian man standing at the bar in a dark, button-down suit and tie, who was looking directly at Georgia and him. The Asian’s eyes flickered briefly and he looked away, his face expressionless. For some reason, Bob got a tingling chill in his spine, and he was suddenly certain that the man was watching them, and he was up to no good. Then he spotted the small earphone mike in the man’s ear and he was sure of it. Damn! She was followed here! he thought. He quickly decided not to tell Georgia; he needed her calm and on point now, not rattled with paranoia. He took out his buttlegger phone. “Hang on. I need to set up a meet with my boss. He has to know about this right away.”
“Your mysterious boss that I don’t get to meet or know his name?” asked Georgia archly.
“That’s the guy,” said Bob. The waiter brought their food. He texted “Out of rotten blues & pearly whites, new business, need 5 and 3 units. Will watch for your call.” Anyone intercepting the text that was familiar with the flesh and plant peddling business would assume he was asking Vinnie Skins for five cartons of British-made Rothman’s filters and three pounds of chicken breasts. “New business” did not mean a new customer, it meant something urgent had come up, and watch for the call instead of wait for it let Cardinale know that Bob had reason to believe he was under physical surveillance. “Okay, Georgia, I want you to finish up your hummus or whatever that is, get up, smile at me in case you’re on candid camera, and then I want you to go back to the White House. You just went out for dinner, is all.”
“What are you going to do about the CIA woman who’s going to get killed tonight?” asked Georgia.
“I don’t know. It’s not my call, but keep a sharp ear out over there and be ready to go for a therapy session with Doctor Jake tomorrow morning, even if it’s not your regular day,” he told her. “Things will start moving real fast now.”
Georgia was a quick study in the espionage game, and so after finishing her plate of unidentifiable goo she stood up and left per instruction. Bob kept an eye on the Asian at the bar, and he saw him watch Georgia leave. The Oriental did not follow her, nor did he take out his phone. Bob started to wonder if he had been mistaken about the man. He ordered another beer and made a show of casually watching a niggerball game on his phone while he sipped, keeping a covert eye on the Asian, who seemed in no hurry either to leave. About half an hour later Vincent Cardinale and Duke dropped into the seats at his table.
“Where’s the bad boy?” asked Cardinale.
“Gook in the dark suit by the bar,” said Bob. “That guy’s got cop written all over him, and I should know, because I’m one myself. He appeared about ten minutes after our lady rocked up and I’m convinced he was watching us. Plus his ear decoration.”
“He forgot to take it out when he left the White House,” said Cardinale. “I know him. He’s a Secret Service agent named Victor Chan. Yeah, looks like you’re now a made man, so to speak. Do you think he’s reported back to his people yet? Has he used his phone?”
“Not that I’ve seen,” said Bob.
“He stayed with you and didn’t follow Belladonna. You’re still sitting here and not getting dragged away to the cellars of the J. Edgar Hoover building, so that means they want to see who you are and where you go. Now they see us and make the buttlegging connection, the Secret Service will figure our lady is maybe just working an angle to peddle smokes in the West Wing or something like that. If we’re lucky and the president finds her charms especially irresistible, she’ll just get a warning to stay away from known criminals like you, you naughty boy. Tonight he’ll follow you and see where you go, so just finish your route as usual, come back to Arlington, and let’s hope to hell I’m reading this right and we all of us don’t end up in the torture cellars. Now, what was the emergency meet about?”
Bob ran down for them what Georgia had told him. “Shit!” said Cardinale under his breath.
“What do we do, boss?” asked Duke.
“This changes things. We have to at least try to stop that hit!” said Cardinale decisively. “I don’t know if it will make any difference, but if we can blow the lid off and at least let people know it wasn’t us but Wallace’s goons cacking their own Sheba, it will take a lot of the wind out of their sails. I doubt they’ll call off the invasion, but it will sure gum up the works propaganda-wise. But we have to get on it now. We have to figure out when and where and how it’s going down.”
“What about our inscrutable friend at the bar?” asked Duke.
“We can’t have him following us around all night, considering what we’ll be up to,” said Cardinale. “Normally I wouldn’t cack a federal agent due to all the repercussions, but in a matter of days we’re going to be at war, and we’re about to be up to our ears in repercussions no matter what. Looks like that flatface gets to be the first casualty of the Great Northwest War, or whatever historians decide to call it. One of theirs and not one of ours, which I hope is a good omen.”
“The alley behind here is part of the dead zone,” Duke reminded him. “My main Red Sea pedestrian Shel pays for that so his customers can park elsewhere or take the bus and come and go through a private door and stay off digital. Nearest cameras are on M Street. We need to get flatface out back and take him there.”
“I’ll do it,” said Bob. “Don’t worry, I’m up for it. You guys split, I’ll finish my beer, and then I’ll leave by the alley gate. He’ll follow me out, since I’m the one he’s interested in. I’ve got my buttlegger gun, I
’ll use it, then I’ll break contact with the scene. I’ll find someplace private to disassemble the weapon; I’ll toss the pieces and meet you at one of the E&E points back in Virginia.”
Cardinale shook his head. “Sorry to rain on your NVA fantasy, young Galahad, but we need to keep you clean and uncompromised if at all possible,” he said. “You’re here for one reason and one reason only, to run point on Belladonna, hold that lady’s hand and blow in her ear, whatever you have to do to keep her functioning. No one is ever indispensible, but right now, you’re about as close as it’s possible to get. Don’t worry, Duke’s got this. You got your Dear John?” Duke patted his shirt pocket, which seemed to contain nothing but a pen. “Okay, Duke and I are going to leave through the main restaurant, all very cheerful and goombata. We will be seen to leave on camera, and ching ling ding over there will be seen to remain in his seat, ignoring us and watching Richie, whom we hope to God he hasn’t actually photographed and phoned in yet. Rich, you finish your beer, pay the waiter, and exactly five minutes from the time we leave the table, you leave by the alley gate and turn right toward M Street. We assume our spook gook from Sixteen Hundred will follow you. Do not step onto M, because then you will be on camera again and they will be able to place you in the alley. Just before you reach M Street there’s a dumpster, and before the dumpster, there is an unmarked glass door. It will be unlocked. Go in and walk down the hall like you own the place, and ignore anybody you meet. Here’s those five cartons of Rothmans you asked for,” said Cardinale, slipping him a plastic bag under the table. “Put them in your backpack and if anybody challenges you, tell them you got some plant life for the guys in IT.”
“What is the place?” asked Bob.
Cardinale chuckled, “It’s the Washington Post, and as a matter of liberal courtesy the régime keeps their offices and street entrances free of surveillance. At the end of the hallway, you’ll see another door that opens onto Fifteenth Street. I’ll pick you up there. In the meantime, Duke will have taken care of that monkey on your back. Duke, when he’s down you rob his ass, take his gun and his badge and his wallet, and above all make sure you get his phone. They probably won’t buy that it’s a street mugging, but we’ll give it a shot. This is going to bring heat on Belladonna no matter what, but that’s unavoidable now. Richie, you need to stay on top of her sitch over there. The minute she’s in danger, we extract. Vital mission or not, that gal is a brave comrade, and I’m not handing her over to the Dershowitz needles if we can get her out in time. Duke, give me a call when you’re done, and I’ll pick you up on the fly in McPherson Square. Rich, you got all that?” he demanded.
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