What was causing him to have second thoughts was the fact that a White House sex scandal was unfolding before his very eyes . . . and he didn’t care. This despite a story here just as salacious as anything he’d reported at the Daily Blabber. Although he’d never cared for politics, Donald J. Trump and the first lady were undoubtedly celebrities: Trump’s marital troubles with past wives had driven dirt sheet sales in the eighties and nineties. Who could forget his first wife confronting his mistress on the slopes in Colorado? The lengthy prenup battle with Marla Maples? Or the blink-and-you’ve-missed-it marriage to Megyn Kelly?
The story unzipping below Jimmie’s belt was bigger than all that. Even if he hadn’t been personally involved, the first couple were clearly having some sort of marital difficulties. Who knew how long Victoria and her husband been sleeping in separate bedrooms? Jimmie should have felt something. Anything. Well, anything besides the hand massaging him, which he definitely felt.
But no. A Trump sex scandal was small boobies compared to the rising body count at the White House. As much as it pained Jimmie to admit, whatever conspiracy was unfolding around him outside of the Lincoln Bedroom ran far deeper than what was happening inside the Lincoln Bedroom.
He never thought he’d think that there could be anything bigger than a sex scandal. But he’d found one—one that excited his journalistic instincts. One that got his blood boiling. Lester Dorset . . . the dead SJW . . . Emma Blythe being poisoned . . . the threat of war with America’s closest ally . . . and the most powerful men and women in the world. Something big was brewing, something that dwarfed a little extramarital swapping of bodily fluids.
“I can’t do this,” Jimmie said, pulling away from Victoria. “I’m sorry.”
She frowned at him. “Is it your kidnapped girlfriend?”
He nodded solemnly. It was only partially about Cat—and she wasn’t his girlfriend—but, yeah. No reason to get Victoria involved in whatever nasty business was happening at the White House.
“I can help you,” she said. “I want to help you.”
He tucked his shirt in and buttoned his pants. “I can’t get out of here with the recorder. But you can probably just walk out with it.”
“If I leave, it will be suspicious. Donny doesn’t like it when I leave.”
A woman like Victoria didn’t deserve to be locked up on the third floor of the White House like some crazy aunt who’d lost her mind. No woman deserved that. Not even crazy aunts. Victoria needed someone who cared about her . . . somebody who wouldn’t leave town to play golf all weekend while his wife and her amazing rack were stuck at home.
Jimmie gazed into her eyes and communicated all this with a single glance. She gazed back at him, letting him know she picked up what he was putting down.
He shot a glance at the window. The Rose Garden was directly below. If he exited the building through the rear employee entrance, he’d walk right past the flower garden on his way out. He’d be beyond the most invasive level of White House security at that point. All Victoria would have to do is toss the recorder out the window, and he’d catch it.
He glanced back at Victoria, who nodded. She understood his plan.
If things don’t work out with my girl, I’ll be back for you, Jimmie told Victoria with a wiggle of his eyebrows.
You promise? she asked with a narrowing of her eyes.
I promise, he said with a flare of his nostrils.
He bent down and kissed her on the forehead. They both knew he was lying, but they kept playing the parts. Jimmie knew that not only was it what James Bond would do . . . it was also, he realized with some horror, what Trump would do.
After his plan went off without a hitch, Jimmie Bernwood set the potted plant out on his deck at the Watergate. It had been a long day, but it was going to be an even longer weekend. He finally dozed off around one in the morning. He slept well and dreamt of large-breasted women.
Excerpt From the Trump/Dorset Sessions
July 1, 2018, 7:56 PM
Dorset: You believe in God.
Trump: Doesn’t everybody?
Dorset: Atheists don’t. Agnostics don’t know.
Trump: They should. They really, really should. The Bible is one of the two greatest books ever written. Right up there with The Art of the Deal. I would say that Jesus is my favorite author, besides myself.
Dorset: Jesus didn’t write the Bible.
Trump: Then He had a helluva ghostwriter. Shows you what a great manager He was.
Dorset: Manager?
Trump: He started his church with just twelve guys. Twelve! And look how many employees He has now. I have tremendous respect for the guy. He really knew how to work a room.
Dorset: Speaking of working rooms, you’ve come under fire repeatedly for working them into frenzies. At one of your campaign stops, you pointed to the press corps and called them “scum.” Journalists covering your campaign reported being pelted with batteries and ice cubes, among other objects.
Trump: That’s not true.
Dorset: No? There’s video of it . . .
Trump: It wasn’t just one stop. It was multiple stops. It was a part of my routine for a while. The line about “scum” always got big laughs. Brought the house down. People loved the interactive part, with the batteries and whatnot.
Dorset: Since, by your own admission, the media actually helped you out, shouldn’t you at least show them a little more respect now?
Trump: What do you want me to do, send Fox News a thank-you card? I’ll send them a fuck-you card, because fuck you, Roger Ailes. Do they make fuck-you cards?
Dorset: I’ve never checked.
Trump: Someone could make an easy million selling fuck-you cards. They wouldn’t even have to sell them on the street, because I’d buy every damn one. I’d have a long list of recipients, believe me. Longer than my Christmas card list, that’s for sure. Who’s in charge of making national holidays? Is that me?
Saturday, September 1, 2018
Chapter Fifty-Two
Stupid Is as Stupid Does
Jimmie Bernwood rose just after ten the next morning. He used the toilet and stretched his arms. He’d been up late at the White House, so he didn’t get his regular ten hours of sleep. Any other Saturday, he might have lounged around in bed until noon. Unfortunately, he had too much to do this weekend to prepare for the swap.
He’d decided that he would make a copy of the recordings. Not because of their content, but because he might need them down the line as evidence. He also needed to buy a gun. With Trump’s Affordable Arms Act, that would be relatively simple.
Jimmie toweled off his hands and—
He paused to stare in the mirror. There, on his forehead in black magic marker, was a message written across two lines: NOON. INT’L SPY MUSEUM. And running down the side of his cheek, as if someone had run out of space: OR SHE DIES.
Noon?! He couldn’t believe what an idiot he’d been. Why had he set the plant out last night and not waited a day or two? What a stupid mistake.
He spun the dial on the safe.
The recorder was inside, untouched.
Curious that the SJWs sneaked into his hotel room to deliver a message but hadn’t tried to force him into giving up the recorder. Why hadn’t they tortured him? Maybe they weren’t as villainous as they seemed . . . or maybe they just assumed Jimmie wouldn’t have been so stupid as to bring his bargaining chip with him back to the hotel.
Well, guess what, bad guys? he thought. I am that stupid.
If they wanted to overestimate him, let them.
He glanced again at the clock. He had only a little over an hour and a half now to get to the International Spy Museum, which was at least a forty-minute bus ride away. No time to make a copy of the recordings. No time to pick up a gun for protection. He was heading into this thing with just his wits.
From past experience, those weren’t going to be enough.
He flipped on the television as he got dressed. Emma Blythe’s dea
th should have been the lead story on CNN. Instead, the news network was running a story on gluten-free hip-hop. Nothing on Fox News, MSNBC, or the half a dozen other twenty-four-hour news channels either.
Someone was keeping her death quiet.
They couldn’t do it forever, of course—this wasn’t another Lester Dorset situation. Come Tuesday morning, the White House staff would be abuzz if she weren’t in her office by nine. Was her killer also doing the cover-up? Or did somebody within the White House or the US intelligence community know she was a spy and thus was keeping a lid on her assassination until the full depth of her espionage was known?
On his way out to catch the bus, he passed the stack of Trump books he’d amassed. Hadn’t had time to color them all just yet—maybe he never would, if he was gunned down today in the mean streets of the nation’s capital. The book on top caught his eye, however: Trump: The Art of the Deal: The Expanded Coloring Edition.
Maybe Jimmie didn’t have to go into his negotiation with the kidnappers unarmed after all.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Drawing Chickens
The International Spy Museum was located ten blocks east of the White House. Jimmie had read about the museum in a guide to area attractions. The private museum supposedly featured “the largest collection of international espionage artifacts ever placed on public display.” The museum’s board of directors included past members of the CIA, FBI, NSA, and even the KGB. In a city that supposedly had ten thousand spies, there were bound to be a few hanging out at the Spy Museum just shooting the shit. This was the place the kidnappers wanted to meet?
It seemed that Jimmie wasn’t the only one who’d overestimated the opposition’s intelligence. It’s your funeral, tough guys, he thought as he paid the twenty-five bucks for entry.
The girl at the counter with the nose stud and pageboy haircut handed him his ticket. “Made it just in time,” she said. “Nobody’s going to die.”
His heart stopped. “Excuse me?”
“The reminder on your face,” she said. “Noon? You’ve got twelve minutes.”
Of course. In his rush to get out the door, he’d forgotten to scrub the message from his face. The girl had read the backward message. Probably one of the skills you learned on the first day at a place like this.
“Is there a restroom I can use to wash it off?” Jimmie asked. “My roommate’s always drawing shit on my face.”
“Might be time for a new roommate.”
“At least it wasn’t a huge cock this time,” he said, a little louder than he probably should have, what with all the children around. Because it was a Saturday, the families were out in full force. A father in the next line shot him a look of disapproval, which was absolutely warranted.
“My roommate, uh, is always drawing chickens,” Jimmie explained, loudly and to nobody in particular. “Cocks, as everybody is well aware, are male chickens. That’s what I’m talking about—not cocks as in male genitals—”
“Please stop talking,” the girl behind the ticket counter said.
Jimmie headed down the hall. He’d nearly made a scene back there—not good, if he was trying to keep a low profile. The last thing he wanted to do was get tossed out of the museum and risk making the kidnappers think he’d bailed on them. Then what would happen to Cat?
After he washed the marker off, he realized he still had a few minutes to kill before noon. Plenty of time to do his morning business, which he’d skipped to get here on time.
All three stalls were open. Every time he encountered a choice of stalls at a public restroom, he had to do some quick mental gymnastics to determine which had the least germs. He wasn’t phobic about germs or anything, but he wasn’t a fool. It was automatically assumed that, in Western countries, most people would go for the stall farthest to the left. Stall #1. So he should pick stall #2 or #3. Except most people knew that most people would pick stall #1, so they would also go for the second or third stall . . . meaning that stall #1 would actually be the cleanest of the three. However, most people would run through the same calculation in their minds, leading them to choose stall #1 over the others because of its presumed cleanliness . . . meaning that, in the end, stall #1 would get the most traffic and have the most germs.
Jimmie chose the second stall as he always ended up doing. The third stall had never been in play, because everybody knew that the farthest stall to the right was the one where people went when they needed the most privacy—to shoot up drugs or drop a bomb.
He plopped himself down on the seat and opened the museum brochure he’d picked up at the gate. Somebody sat down in the stall to his right. Jimmie could see the man’s white penny loafers under the divider. The man coughed. This confirmed Jimmie’s impression that stall #1 was nothing but a germ farm.
He returned his attention to the brochure. According to the map, there were three floors at the museum. The permanent exhibits included “School for Spies” and “The Secret History of History” and apparently included interactive elements such as adopting your own spy name. Neat. There were a couple of different special exhibits going on right now, too, including one he wouldn’t have minded checking out on the Bond girls. But one temporary exhibit in particular grabbed his eye: “Ten Years of Taken.”
So that was why the kidnappers had chosen this as a meeting place. They wanted to mock his false bravado. They were in for a little surprise, though. He’d spent the bus ride over here boning up on his Trump negotiation tactics. He was ready for war.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Stool for Spies
Somebody opened the door to the third stall and sat down. Jimmie could see a pair of women’s shoes underneath the stall divider. Nothing unusual about that—to each their own. This wasn’t North Carolina.
What did strike him as unusual, however, was that the person to his left didn’t drop their pants after sitting down on the toilet. Shooting up? Maybe. Stall three, man. What the hell.
Jimmie quickly finished his business. As he was zipping up, he heard the warbling of a sparrow. No, not a sparrow—a house finch. It was the same chirping call he’d heard in Clinton Plaza just before Connor approached him.
Either there were birds on the loose in the museum’s restroom, or the Socialist Justice Warriors had found him. Apparently the drop zone was going to be in the drop zone.
He sat down as the toilet automatically flushed, misting the seat of his pants.
“Do you have the tapes?” the man to his right asked through a crack in the stall. The southern drawl in his voice was slight but noticeably there. This was the kidnapper he’d talked to on the phone.
“Is this restroom secure?” Jimmie asked.
“Our people did a sweep of it earlier,” the woman to his left said. “We have someone standing guard out front. We’re not going to be disturbed. We can talk freely.”
“Before we start talking, I need to know who I’m dealing with,” Jimmie said. “You know who I am. It only seems fair that I know your names.”
“You didn’t follow our directions,” the man said. “I told you to put a fern out on your deck.”
“That’s what I did.”
“It was a Ficus,” the man said.
“Fern . . . Ficus . . . what does it matter?” Jimmie asked.
“You’re not good at following instructions,” the woman said.
“And maybe you’re not good at giving them,” Jimmie retorted. “That’s not all on me. Now give me your names, or I walk.”
“I’m sorry we haven’t been up-front about things,” the woman said. “It was for your protection, as well as ours.”
“I’m a big boy—I can take care of myself.”
“Just letting you know what’s at stake here,” the woman said. “My name is Hillary . . . and the man in the other stall is Jeb! We’re the ones who are going to make America great again—again.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
The Dream of the Nineties Is Alive
Jimmie couldn’t
believe it. He stood up on the toilet, nearly dunking his foot in the process. He poked his head over the stall divider. Hillary Clinton waved at him. She was wearing a pink sweat suit, a fanny pack, and dark sunglasses, but it was her all right. A diamond-encrusted Bernie bird brooch was pinned to her top.
Jimmie then peered into the first stall. A man who looked like a bad Xerox of George W. Bush smiled from underneath a blue cap that read MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN (AGAIN). Neither of them was exactly being subtle.
Jimmie carefully stepped off the toilet seat. What were the Clintons and the Bushes doing working together? The Clintons and the Bushes were the Capulets and the Montagues of modern politics. Unless the Bush daughters and Chelsea pulled a three-way Romeo and Juliet, there was no way the two families were ever going to stand united. Trump had done the impossible.
“You’re Socialist Justice Warriors,” Jimmie said. He was stating the obvious, but he needed time to process this turn of events. The stall was spinning around him; he needed to catch his breath and think.
“Check out the big brain on Brad,” Hillary said. Jimmie recognized it as a quote from Pulp Fiction. Unsurprisingly, Hillary was still living in the nineties.
“You’re working with Bernie now?” Jimmie said.
“No one’s seen Bernie Sanders in years,” Hillary said. “We’re the ones who have been funding the Socialist Justice Warriors.”
“The Bernie bros said they’d never support you.”
“They have no idea who’s pulling their strings,” Hillary said. “But don’t feel bad for them: They’re a bunch of idealists. Even if they got the ‘change’ they wanted, they’d still find something to whine about. Ah, to be young.”
“We represent the true change America needs,” Jeb! said. “It’s time for the lifelong politicians to take our country back. We’re tired of getting bossed around by these Washington outsiders and their small-government underreaches. Our country should be governed the way the founders intended—by a small handful of political dynasties.”
The Day of the Donald Page 15