Second Thoughts and Last Chances
By
Latikia
Edited by
The Old Fart
Copyright © 2007,
2008
Chapter 33
The accepted revolutionary rule of thumb is that one of the first things you’ve got to get control of is the media. Radio, newspapers, television and I suppose nowadays that would also include the internet, though how you’d go about that escapes me. Lucy, who was by that point going by the name Laurie Tran, insisted that it was possible, but hardly worth the effort. I tended to agree.
Besides, I wasn’t conducting or even contemplating a
revolution. A coup was more what I had
in mind; a rapid, silent, peaceful coup d'é
tat. No violence, and
as little death, as possible. Most
importantly, I didn’t want anyone to know it had even happened.
No, I didn’t need or want the media under my thumb. They couldn’t help and, as long as they were unaware of my existence, they couldn’t hinder.
What I did need though was absolute control of the top levels of all major branches of the federal government.
We Americans like to believe we’re a democracy. We aren’t. Never have been. We’re a republic with a centralized federal government that can, pretty much at will, override and overrule any subordinate state government. State power kinda went by the way after the Civil War, and it’s been declining ever since.
Besides, if necessary, I could always put in an appearance at one or more of the gatherings state governors liked to hold several times a year.
No, I needed a way to maintain a hold on the federal government, no matter who was President, and no matter who got appointed to head the various departments. Otherwise I’d spend the rest of my life wandering from place to place dispensing rings, the thought of which did not appeal to me in the least.
James Barrett, the U.S. Attorney General of all people, gave me the idea for what became my eventual course of action.
I’d asked his opinion of what the various branches had in common and he jokingly remarked that the only thing they had in common were Inspector Generals. After a little personal research, I discovered that he was quite correct. The damn government was packed with Inspector Generals. They were everywhere, and I reasoned that if properly motivated, they could force the Cabinet, Congress and all the rest to do what they were supposed to be doing.
So that’s who I went after.
I started with the CIA IG, and then got him to bring IG’s from other branches that he was familiar with to see me, or take me to meet them. By the end of April there wasn’t one who didn’t have a ring.
Also during that period I went to visit the State Department. I’d heard that, in the weeks prior to my initial visit, there was a rash of retirements and resignations, which suited me just fine, if only because that meant there’d be fewer deaths on my conscience and living in my memory.
The Secretary of State, as usual, was out of the country so I had to content myself with turning the Under-Secretary, her staff and about fifty senior diplomats.
Then I turned my attention to the Department of Defense. You simply can’t have a proper coup unless you’ve got the support of the military. Having the IG helped, but I wanted more. So I turned the top three levels within the DoD itself then went after the Pentagon. Having the DCIA and the AG behind me made turning the Joint Chiefs less difficult than it might have been otherwise. Which is not to say that it was easy, because believe me, it wasn’t. You can’t just walk in to the Pentagon building, past all the security, along the maze of halls, the endless doors and offices, more security (and we’re talking armed soldiers now, not rent-a-cops with pepper spray and walkie talkies), and just knock on the door of the Joint Chiefs. Even I wasn’t stupid enough to try that. It took me the better part of a day before I finally got to stick a ring in the Chairman himself.
By the beginning of summer though the government was effectively in my pocket, with one exception that I’m afraid I completely and foolishly overlooked.
Treasury.
Yeah, I know…how much trouble could the Treasury cause?
Quite a bit, as it turned out.
I became aware of my error around the middle of May, when each of the girls and I received notices from the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, that we were being audited.
I came home from work that night and found all three of them waiting for me at the front door, envelopes in hand and livid scowls on their faces.
Lilly was absolutely incensed. She’d been handling all our family finances pretty much single handed for as long as we’d been together, and took it as a personal affront that anyone, including the government, would accuse her of cheating or mismanagement.
I took Lilly aside and told her not to worry; I’d deal with the IRS, and then spent the rest of the night calming the three of them down. They were unbelievably angry and had one hell of a lot of pent up aggression. It was one of the most violently passionate nights the four of us ever spent together and even with a city’s worth of emotions roiling around inside me, I was absolutely exhausted when I left for work the following morning.
As soon as I arrived at my office I contacted the Treasury IG and asked him to look into the causes for the four of us being audited.
By the end of the day I still hadn’t heard a thing.
Two days later he called back. It turns out that the IRS is almost as independent an operation as my own department. They have the power to go after pretty much anyone they want, for reasons known only to themselves. The Treasury IG couldn’t even find out what their justification for auditing the four of us was.
In the eight years that I’d worked at the CIA my salary had increased once a year; the traditional annual GS wage increase. By the time we received the audit notifications I was making just under two hundred thousand a year. That sounds like a lot, and I suppose compared to what I made while in the Army it was. But consider this; we lived in one of the more expensive areas of the country, we paid to put Peggy thru college and Vet school out of our own money, we had four children to raise, a home to heat and cool, property taxes, three cars and a mini-van…the list goes on and on. I’m not suggesting that we were hurting financially, ‘cause we weren’t. But even with the income that Izzy brought in from her teaching, which was never more than seventy thousand a year, and what Peggy could add after paying off her student loans and the costs of starting up her veterinary practice, and the few investments we’d scrimped and saved to make, we were in no danger of joining the Fortune 500. I don’t think our total net worth at the time was more than six hundred thousand dollars.
So why was the IRS coming after us? We paid our taxes ever year as individuals. The girls claimed their children as dependents, I claimed only myself. I took minimal deductions, because frankly I hated having to fill out the damn forms required to make deductions.
Yeah, that’s right…I did my own taxes. I’m not trusting enough to let someone I don’t know handle my money. Lilly did the taxes for the others every year, though she may have used one of those H & R Block kind of firms to help, but family finance has always been her responsibility and I’ve always gone out of my way not to stick my nose into any of their areas of expertise. Besides, Lilly’s good with numbers and I’m not. She’d taught the kids how to multiply and divide before they were old enough to attend kindergarten, whereas I can barely fumble my way thru basic algebra.
The first thought that crossed my mind was that the audits were politically motivated. It wouldn’t be the first time the government had gone that route to get someone they wanted. And it wasn’t like I’d been busy making friends with the members of congress. So naturally my second thought was that some of former Senator Gottschalk’s associates had decided that if their sub-committees couldn’t control me, maybe the IRS could bring me to heel.
That thought lingered in my mind for quite some time and I worked myself into one hell of a bad mood by the end of the day. I even contemplated sicking Laurie/Lucy and her gang of hackers on the IRS. Eventually I calmed down enough to reconsider that course of action, after coming to the conclusion that the country’s economy might not survive.
So instead I gathered up our audit notices the next day and dropped in on the IRS.
I sat down across from the chief auditor and handed him the notices. He glanced over them carefully then checked his computer records.
“They are legitimate.” he announced stiffly.
“I’m not disputing their legitimacy. What I want to know is why the four of us were selected. We don’t represent a single household or family unit. We’re not a business or any type of profitable organization. We’re just four people who happen to share the same last name and mailing address.”
He nodded his head. “Those two facts alone would be enough to flag you for an audit.” he pointed out reasonably.
“But that’s not why we were selected, was it?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to disclose our methods or discuss our reasons. The simple fact is that you were selected and you will be audited.”
I sighed softly, shook my head, looked him straight in the eye and slid a ring into the man.
Once I got everything from him that I was after, including a guarantee that our audits would be squashed as well as the identity of those people who’d instigated the audits, I walked out of his office and on my way out of the building put rings into fifty four other people.
It had gotten to the point where I couldn’t go anywhere without planting rings in people. I wondered if I was going to end up turning the whole damn city.
I also wondered if maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t taking my private vendetta against the government a little too far. Then I remembered who it had been that had put the IRS on my back in the first place.
The Congressional Finance committee. Revenge of the bean-counters.
Then I wondered if perhaps I hadn’t gone far enough.
Early in May, after allowing time for my NSA hackers to settle into their new lives, I invited the newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Nigel (I’ve no idea why Lam chose the name Nigel, but he had and seemed quite pleased with it) and Laurie Tran out to the ranch for a weekend.
I had several reasons for inviting them, not the least of which was that I’d gotten the distinct impression during the intervening weeks that my girls were in dire need of company other than my own.
I’ve never been what you might call gregarious.
As a child I learned that people didn’t like having me around and avoided them in turn. As a young teen that active dislike became muted to some extent, so I worked a bit harder trying to fit in, but I never got to the point where I felt comfortable around people in general. There were a few specific exceptions, but not many. As a young man I couldn’t have cared less what anyone thought or felt. I ignored those people I could and interacted as sparsely as possible with those I couldn’t. End of story.
When I was sent to the psych ward at Walter Reed all that changed. I actually began to care about other people. Some of them I liked, some I didn’t; some I wanted to like, some I didn’t, but the main thing was that I cared. For the first time in a long time, I cared what other people thought and felt about me. And for a few years things stayed that way.
Until I began feeling people’s emotions with out having to form a link.
I wasn’t aware of it right away, but I gradually started backing away; putting distance between myself and the rest of humanity.
And after returning from the West Coast that trend became even more obvious; at least it did to me.
I don’t mind feeling isolated from the rest of the world. In fact, there were times it seemed completely natural. And necessary.
You try living with millions of other people’s emotions sometime. I can tolerate one hell of a lot of pain, and I may need those emotions on some level to survive, but it doesn’t mean I like it.
Solitude…isolation…is one seriously undervalued state of existence.
So I began to withdraw more and more from normal human contact.
But my girls don’t react to people in the same way I do, and they needed friendship and social interaction with people other than me and the children.
Knowing that Lilly and Laurie had gotten on well, I hoped that Izzy and Peggy might as well. And they did. What surprised me was how quickly they took a shine to Nigel (Lam), and how easily he managed to ingratiate himself to the three of them. He obviously possessed social skills far superior to my own, but then so do most potted plants.
Even more impressive was how well they got on with our children. AJ was in awe of the tall thin man who topped me by three inches and wanted to know if he was a basketball player, while Rosie dazzled them by quickly sketching a charcoal portrait of the pair that was nearly as good as the one she’d done of her mother and I. Tink and Laurie, with AJ in tow, vanished upstairs to play on Tink’s computer, and before the evening was half over my tiny little daughter had found an intellectual soul-mate.
But the highlight of the weekend, at least for me, came when I introduced the towering ex-monk to Belle.
“Your daughter has the look of a warrior.” he commented over his shoulder after taking a knee and shaking hands with her.
“Belle wants to learn to fight.” I told him.
He turned her hand over and ran his long fingers over her knuckles. “It looks as though she knows how to fight.” he said firmly, looking her right in the eyes. Belle stared back, unflinching and unblinking. “You are ten, eleven years old, young dragon?”
“I’m seven.” she announced proudly. Nigel smiled at her tone.
“Seven?” He shook his head in disbelief and released her hand. “With your permission, Bai long?” he asked, looking back at me.
I smiled and nodded.
Nigel turned back to Belle and his face went stony. “Hit me…if you can.”
Belle looked up at me quizzically. “Go ahead honey. No holding back.”
I’d hardly finished speaking when Belle threw her first punch. She was quick and smooth, and I could feel her putting as much power behind it as she could. Nigel brushed her small fist aside easily. Belle pulled her arm back and went on guard in a defensive stance.
“Good…very good. Again!”
Belle erupted in a flurry of punches, using both hands. She jabbed, she swung looping uppercuts and overhand haymakers, she even attempted a spinning back hand (I’ve no idea where she got the idea for that one) and Nigel blocked every one; his hands became a blur as he shifted his weight from side to side, remaining on his knees the entire time, matching each attack with greater and greater speed. On three occasions he snaked his left hand out to lightly cuff my daughter on the upper arm, the shoulder and lastly alongside her head. Each time he made contact, Belle’s counter attacks increased in intensity and speed.
“Stop!” he commanded harshly, leaning back on his heels, both hands palm out, arms extended to half their reach. Belle stepped back quickly, but kept her hands up and close to her body, breathing hard, face flushed and yet expressionless. Expressionless she may have been, but inside she was peeved. She’d been having a good time, and like most children her age wasn’t too thrilled with anyone who got in the way of her fun.
“You taught her?” he asked me.
“No. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
His stony face broke into a radiant smile. “If you wish, I will take her for my student.”
I looked into Belle’s eyes and raised a questioning eyebrow. I could feel her excitement grow.
“We’d like that. I’ll pay you for your time.”
He shook his head adamantly. “No. No money. A teacher may search a lifetime to find the right student. I think my search may be over. Besides, my mother’s spirit would haunt me for the rest of my days if I were to take money for what she gave me out of love.”
So Belle got her teacher (sifu was the word Nigel preferred she use), Tink acquired a mentor all her own, and my women got two new friends to help relieve their loneliness.
In August, just before AJ’s sixth birthday, I went into DC on a tour of K-Street, ending up in the lobby of Hochweiler, Urbany and Associates, LLC. To make a long, and ultimately pedestrian, story short, their people threw up every imaginable legal obstacle in order to keep me from speaking, or even meeting, with the two junior partners who’d tried to recruit my brother and his wife.
Eventually I got angry, bored and completely fed up. So I completely dismantled their law firm. Not literally. I could have, but what would it have accomplished, apart from attracting unwanted attention?
No, what I did was, in some ways, much more devastating. I walked thru the building putting rings into every person I came across; lawyers, law clerks, legal assistants, secretaries, maintenance people…everyone. Rings in place, I told them to quit their jobs, move out of DC and find new jobs in some unrelated field. Not one of those people would ever work within the legal system again, even if their lives depended on it.
Two days later the local news was all abuzz over the demise of one of the city’s most prominent law firms. Personally, I hoped the rest of the K-Street crowd was having some serious second thoughts, but knowing people the way I do, I kinda doubted it.
AJ had announced the week before his birthday that he wanted to learn to play a musical instrument. He didn’t care which one; he just wanted to learn to play something. I half jokingly suggested the violin, at which all three of my wives winced dramatically and then spent several minutes loudly berating me for being a cruel, vicious and tone deaf fiend. The Geneva Convention was mentioned more than once.
Ultimately we settled on an electric keyboard and arranged
to have an instructor from the nearby town of
I was done taking chances where my children were concerned.
The first day of the last week in September I was sitting in my office, thinking very deep thoughts about nothing in particular, when the door opened and Eric came in. Which in and of itself was unusual. Eric rarely came in without checking first.
I looked up and saw that he held a fairly large, square, crème colored envelope in one hand.
“Excuse me Doctor; I thought you’d want to see this right away.” The man was actually flustered.
He crossed the distance between the door and my desk quickly, carefully placed the envelope in front of me, took two steps back and just stood there.
I raised an eyebrow, glanced down at the envelope’s face and read the engraved cursive script.
Dr.
Ike Blacktower
Central
Intelligence Agency
Department
of Internal Security
Apart from that there was nothing else on it. I looked up into my assistant’s face.
“A courier dropped it off not more than five minutes ago. I had to sign for the thing.”
I picked the envelope up, turned it over, forced my index finger under the flap and peeled it open. Inside was a folded card the same color as the envelope. I took it out, flipped it open, noticed the presidential seal embossed at the top of the card and then silently read the contents.
The
President and First Lady
Request
the pleasure of your company
I looked up and saw Eric staring quizzically at the card in my hands.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked after a long moment.
“Only if you think it’s an invitation to the White House.” I replied absently.
The bemused expression on his face faded quickly, replaced by concern.
“Have you ever been to the White House before?”
I set the card down on top of the envelope it came in and sat back in my chair. “Nope, never have. Never taken the tour either. I did meet the last President once, a long time back, but that was at Walter Reed, not the White House.”
Eric’s eyebrows went up.
“What do you think he wants?”
I shrugged. “You got me. Of all the people in this town that might rate an invitation to the White House, I should be way the hell down at the bottom of the list.” I paused for a moment, thinking quickly, pulling up memories of past conversations with a variety of people. “The only reason I can think of would be if someone, or several someone’s, had convinced him to shut us down.”
“Do you think he’d do that?”
“Sure, why not? Frankly, I’m surprised they created this department in the first place. From a political perspective it makes no sense. Honestly, why would you put a department within your primary intelligence gathering organization that is essentially a rogue operation? The politically appointed director of the agency has no functional control over us, congress has never had more than minimal control, and that only because they hold the purse strings, and to make matters worse only the head of the department can appoint his successor. It’s incredibly stupid.”
“Can’t be all that stupid, sir. It’s worked so far, which is more than you can say for the Department of Education or Energy.”
I chuckled and shook my head. “The only reason it’s worked up to this point is entirely thanks to dumb luck. All it would take to turn the CIA into a colossal cluster fuck would be one moderately demented individual in charge of its smallest department.” I shook my head. “I sure as hell wouldn’t have done it if it’d been up to me.”
“Have you ever wondered what caused them set us up in the first place?”
I thought about that for a long ten seconds.
“No, I can’t say I have. What I have asked myself, every now and again, is who the first Director of Internal Security was, and why he was chosen. This place is literally stuffed with records, some of them dating back to the mid forties, but in all of it I’ve yet to find so much as a single scrap of paper that mentions the first DDIS. Now that I’ve wondered about.”