The Obama Identity

by Edward Klein

  “Yurik,” I said, “whenever we show up in the same city, it usually means we’re on the same trail, doesn’t it?”

  “Higgy,” he replied, also ignoring the women, “I have such fond memories of London. What trouble we caused each other!”

  The door opened again, and this time Charnofsky came in looking furious. His hair was mussed, and he weaved as he walked toward Maligin, who saw him coming and stood up.

  “You drunken pig!” Maligin shouted. “How dare you defy me?”

  Charnofsky lunged toward Maligin who, despite his small stature, was surprisingly strong and agile. In less than a second he had flipped Charnofsky onto the floor, seized his right hand and placed it on the table, grabbed a cocktail fork, and stabbed it into the back of his hand.

  Charnofsky screamed.

  Maligin laughed. “You stupid fucker!” he shouted. “The next time you try that it will be Sebastopol for you!”

  Still smoking our cigars, Maligin and I stood up and said good-bye to Sydney Michael Green, who had by this time joined the two panting girls on the sofa. I had my reasons for not warning Sydney Michael Green about the intentions of these “Sparrows”; depending on what information the girls tried to pry out of him, I could determine how far Maligin had progressed in his investigation. I could also happily report to Nutwing that Syd had not a smidgen of self-control when it came to women.

  “Higgy, you are staring with such longing at them. Are you sure you don—?”

  “Would I? Are you asking, would I? No, of course not.”

  Maligin and I emerged onto one of the open decks. It was a beautiful, warm night. The stars were out. The Bamburi Beach Hotel was lit up off to the ship’s port side.

  Leaning over the railing, I turned toward my longtime adversary. “I have a question for you, Yurik. How can you work for a thug like Vladimir Putin. He’s no better than a gangster.”

  Maligin took a long draw on his cigar and then flipped the stub into the water far below. “Higgy,” he said, “you Americans are hypocrites. In one breath, you lecture us Russians about freedom and democracy. And then in the next, your CIA creates a secret directorate, headed by you, with the expressed goal of placing your hand-picked man in the White House.”

  He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s not argue,” he said. “Are you sure I can’t offer you some entertainment down below?”

  “No thank you,” I said.

  “You need to get over Taitsie,” he said. “Higgy, I have every type of woman down below. Perhaps one or two of them could make you forget….”

  But nothing could make me forget Taitsie. I threw my cigar over the railing, too.

  “I should be going,” I said. “Let’s find Sydney Michael Green, and we’ll be off.”

  A few minutes later, a surprisingly alert Sydney Michael Green appeared and we boarded the launch back to the Bamburi Hotel.

  “Tell me something,” I said after we were well out of electronic earshot of the yacht. “Down below decks….did those girls ask you any questions?”

  He grinned. “Yeah. They asked me what I wanted them to do to me!”

  “I don’t mean that,” I said. “Did either one of them ask you what we were doing here in Mombasa?”

  He shook his head. “Nope”

  “Damn!” I said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “They didn’t try to get information out of you, which can only mean one thing,” I said. “They know things about Barack Obama that we don’t know.”

  I recalled Vangie Roll telling me about the strange look that came over Barack Obama’s face back at that gym in Chicago when she asked him about the circumstances surrounding his birth. My spirits sank as I wondered whether, in exchange for that half-a-million-dollar McLaren Roadster, Grandma “Bibi” Obama had given Yurik Maligin documents proving where Obama had been born. If so, did those documents demonstrate beyond a shred of doubt that Obama had been born in Mombasa and that he was a Muslim instead of what he claimed to be—a Christian? And where did that leave Obama’s claim that he had incontrovertible proof that he was born on American soil—in Hawaii?

  More to the point, where did all this leave The Tchaikovsky Circle and me? I turned to Sydney Michael Green.

  “Tell Abubakar to pack my Louis Vuitton steamer trunk,” I said. “We’re out of here.”

  “Already?” he said, disappointment written all over his face. “Geez, Higgy, I was just beginning to meet some nice girls.”

  “Get on the horn and requisition one of The Tchaikovsky Circle’s Gulfstreams,” I said. “You and I have a twenty-one-hour flight ahead of us. We’re going to Honolulu.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  From the airport in Honolulu, Sydney Michael Green and I took a taxi directly to Kapi’olani Medical Center, one of two Hawaiian hospitals that claimed to be the site of Barack Obama’s 1961 birth. This guy’s popularity was unbelievable. Even as a baby, everybody wanted a piece of him.

  Waiting for us there was our red-bearded colleague Russ Slanover, The Tchaikovsky Circle’s brilliant computer hacker. Russ embraced me warmly, then looked over my shoulder at Sydney Michael Green.

  “Hello…Grrr-eeen,” he said.

  “Hello…Whiz Bang,” Sydney Michael Green replied.

  These two did not get along. Sydney Michael Green felt intellectually inferior to Russ Slanover. And Russ suspected that Sydney Michael Green was angling to replace me as head of The Tchaikovsky Circle. That meant Russ would have to explain his brilliance to a moron.

  Both of them were right.

  We walked into a scene of bedlam on the hospital grounds. A line of several hundred boisterous people—most of them middle-aged and white and wearing funny hats—was filing into a Barnum & Bailey-sized tent. A huge banner, fluttering from the top of the center pole, displayed the logo of the Fox News Channel and the face of Sean Hannity.

  “What’s going on, Russ?” I asked.

  “Sean Hannity flew in earlier today to do a live broadcast about a newly formed organization called Only The Truth,” Russ explained. “His guest is the head of the group—a female Polish-American Marine Corps sergeant with a huge following here in Hawaii.”

  I shrugged. “Anything with Hannity is all right with me.”

  We went inside and took our seats. Up on the raised stage, under the blinding TV lights, Sean Hannity sat facing his guest.

  “Welcome to a special edition of Hannity,” he said. “Today, we’re going to focus on a new conservative movement called Only The Truth. Please give a warm welcome to its leader…Dagmar D. Dagmar!”

  The audience erupted in applause, whistles, hoots, hollers and assorted victory cries.

  “Welcome, Dagmar, if I may call you that,” Hannity said.

  “You can call me Dagmar or you can call me Dagmar, just as you please,” Dagmar D. Dagmar said, sitting ramrod stiff in her chair and staring Hannity right in the eye.

  “Well, let’s get started,” Hannity said. “Tell us in your own words about your organization, Only The Truth.”

  “To begin with, we’ve assembled convincing evidence—proof really—that the United States government was behind the 9/11 attack,” Dagmar D. Dagmar said. “It was an inside job all the way. We also have proof that the Apollo Program was all faked. Man never walked on the Moon. It was all faked in a secret underground TV studio at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. And we also have evidence that John F. Kennedy is still alive. Most of his brain was blown away in Dallas and he’s a vegetable living in a secret wing of Parkland Memorial Hospital. Before she died, Judith Campbell Exner used to visit him and bring him his favorite New England clam chowder.”

  Hannity was smiling away. “Could he eat the soup?” he asked.

  “He couldn’t digest the pieces of clams,” she replied sadly. “They got stuck in his colostomy bag.”

  “Dagmar, you’re a great American,” Hannity said, swiveling his chair and facing the packed auditorium. “We’ll get into more detail
about Only the Truth with Dagmar D. Dagmar after a brief commercial break. That’s straight ahead. And don’t forget, you in the TV audience can vote on who gets the Freedom Edition Jeep Grand Cherokee and a trip for two to the Freedom Concert. Our Hannity video contest finalists are on Hannity dot com. Be right back.”

  The TV lights snapped off and the stage went dark. Hannity consulted the script on his lap. A makeup woman came over and powdered his nose and forehead and applied some shoe black to his sideburns. After a while, a producer appeared behind one of the cameras and began the countdown…four… three…two…one…

  “And we’re back with my guest, Sergeant Dagmar D. Dagmar.”

  “Sergeant major,” Dagmar D. Dagmar said, correcting Hannity. She tapped the stripes on her sleeve. “I’ll never get a promotion to warrant officer because of my involvement with our organization, Only The Truth. The Marine Corps can’t handle the truth.”

  “Well, Sergeant Major,” Hannity said, “I’m sure you’re aware that some people—some simpering, puerile, blockheaded liberals—would challenge the veracity of what you’ve told me.”

  “Not Oliver Stone,” Dagmar D. Dagmar said. “And he’s a liberal.”

  “That’s true, but what about Sharon Stone?” Hannity asked.

  “What does Sharon Stone have to do with it?”

  “She’s Oliver Stone’s wife, isn’t she?” Hannity said.

  “No she’s not.”

  “Are you sure?” Hannity said. “They have the same last name.”

  “A lot of celebrities have the last name of Stone.”

  “Name one,” Hannity said. “I challenge you.”

  Dagmar D. Dagmar thought for a long time, then finally said: “I can’t.”

  “You see,” Hannity said, smiling triumphantly into the camera. “Anyway, now I want to talk about someone with another strange last name—a rising star from the state of Illinois…a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate… a far-left Marxist politician by the name of Barack Hussein Obama. There’s talk that he may run for president in four years. Have you ever heard of this guy?”

  “Have I heard of Barack Obama!” said Dagmar D. Dagmar, slapping her muscular thigh and breaking out in a derisive laugh. “Are you kidding? “Was Alger Hiss a Soviet spy? Did Joseph McCarthy have a piece of paper containing a list of Commies? Does fluoride rot your teeth? Of course I’ve heard of Barack Obama.”

  “Good,” Hannity said, “then let’s focus on the question of Barack Obama’s birth. Was he—as he and his campaign claim—born here in Honolulu on April 4, 1961, which would make him eligible to run for the highest office in the land? Or has he conspired to hide the fact that he was born somewhere else?”

  “Our organization, Only the Truth, has assembled convincing evidence—proof really—that Obama was not born in Hawaii,” Dagmar D. Dagmar said. “It’s all a gigantic conspiracy by leftists to plant a Muslim in the Oval Office and to teach our children to wear shoes with Velcro instead of laces so they can take off their shoes when they come home.”

  “You say proof,” Hannity said. “What proof do you have that Senator Obama was not born here?”

  Dagmar D. Dagmar produced a document and held it up in front of the TV camera.

  “This is a Hawaiian birth certificate,” she said. “Obama says this certificate proves he was born in Hawaii. But, Sean, take a closer look. You’ll see that there’s no state seal on it!”

  “Wow,” Hannity said. “You are a great American, Dagmar!”

  The members of the audience went wild. They began chanting: “Only the truth…only the truth…only the truth…”

  “Okay, okay,” Hannity said, holding up a hand to quiet down the audience. “Wait a second. Also with us today are two obstetricians—both of whom claim to have birthed Barack Obama here in Honolulu! Help me welcome the first one—Dr. Benny Agbayani, the chief of obstetrics here at Kapi’olani Medical Center.”

  Doctor Agbayani, a short, plump, dark-skinned man, walked onto the stage. He squinted into the TV lights, held up a palm to shield his eyes and then settled into a seat next to Dagmar D. Dagmar.

  “Doctor,” Hannity said, “is it true that when you were a young resident, you participated in the birth of Barack Obama?”

  “Oh yes,” Agbayani said, “I remember that birth very well. It was a magical experience. He was such a lovely baby.”

  “But, doctor, there are no hospital records of that birth,” Hannity said. “So how can you be certain that you performed this birth more than forty years ago?”

  Dr. Agbayani opened a box and removed a specimen jar. He held it up toward the TV camera.

  “I knew then that the baby was going to be special,” he said, “so I preserved his umbilical cord and his cord blood. And here it is!”

  The crowd was stunned into stone, cold silence.

  “Now,” said Hannity, “let me introduce the second doctor—Dr. Dr. Louis Gabaldoni from Queen’s Medical Center here in Honolulu.”

  Gabaldoni, a tall, thin man with a shock of white hair, appeared from the other wing of the stage. He appeared to be in an agitated state. Even before he reached his seat, he began talking in a very loud voice.

  “This is ridiculous!” he said. “Ree-dick-you-louse! Barack Obama was born in our hospital and I have the preserved placenta to prove it!”

  He held up a jar with a reddish gooey object in it.

  “Well, there you have it, folks—two doctors from two different hospitals who both claim to have birthed Barack Obama,” Hannity said. He turned to Dagmar D. Dagmar. “Now, do you know what I call that?”

  “No, what?” she asked.

  “I call that fair and balanced,” said Hannity.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Dr. Agbayani’s umbilical cord blood and Dr. Galdoni’s placenta were shipped from Hawaii to CIA and FBI laboratories on the mainland to be analyzed. Only the most senior government employees with the highest security clearance were assigned to the project. Since these people were guaranteed a month’s vacation plus compensatory time off for overtime and ten days of sick leave, they were at their desks an average of less than ten hours a week. From this truncated workweek, the government workers subtracted an hour and twenty minutes each day for lunch plus morning and afternoon coffee breaks. As a result, they made very slow progress and the search for Barack Obama’s identity dragged on and on.

  On November 6, 2004—the Saturday after Barack Obama was elected to the United States Senate—Vangie Roll and I met in a Southside Chicago diner for breakfast. She was wearing a ruffled purple dress with a plunging neckline, and I was trying not to stare down it all the way to her navel. I could get pretty close, most of the way over the stomach….

  A frowzy old waitress in a dirty white uniform came over to our table and stood there chewing gum with sharp cracking sounds.

  “Whadda ya have?” she asked in a peevish tone of voice.

  “The waffles with well-done bacon and a cup of black coffee,” I said.

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” Vangie said.

  “Hey, ain’t that a line from When Harry Met Sally?” the waitress said.

  “Yes, and we’re just like Harry and Sally,” Vangie said. “The sex part always gets in our way.”

  After the waitress had left, I said: “Why did you have to say that?”

  “Because even though you like to deny it, you really want to nail me,” Vangie said, leaning forward.

  Finally, I thought I saw her navel, just a precious glimpse. “No I don’t,” I said.

  “Yes you do.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Do.”

  “All right,” I said. “Enough. Let’s get down to business.”

  “Well, as you know,” Vangie began, sitting back in her seat, “my Mom’s still a member in good standing of the Illinois Bar, and a few weeks ago she was appointed by Mayor Richard Daley to serve on the board of the Chicago Low Income Trust—CLIT for short.

  “As the mayor�
��s representative in our community, Mom’s supposed to recommend people and businesses to receive tax-exempt grants. There’s a lot of money behind CLIT, and as you might imagine, Mom’s been inundated with requests from a bunch of gonifs. The chief gonif is a local minister, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who invited us to his church.

  “Next to pulling your leg, Higgy, there’s nothing Mom loves more than going to church, so off we went for Sunday services. When we arrived at the church, you’d think the British royal family had shown up. Three huge men were at the curb to help Mom into her wheelchair, and a group from the ladies auxiliary rushed up to me with a corsage of white lilies.

  “Waiting for us at the vestry door was the Reverend Wright himself, a light-skinned African-American man, wearing a kufu, a traditional African cap, and a dark blue dashiki with gold embroidered neck and sleeves. And I’m talking about embroidery made of real gold thread.

  “I had on in my regular Sunday-go-to-church outfit, including a pair of Capezio flats so I wouldn’t tower over the men. The Reverend Wright’s in his sixties and on the short side, but that didn’t stop him from giving me the once-over from my head to my Capezios.

  “Then he said, ‘I hope you two will come back later tonight to attend a campaign meeting for our brother, Barack Obama.’ “

  “Wait a second,” I said. “Why would there be a campaign meeting four days after Obama won election to the United States Senate?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” Vangie said, warming up to her delicious news. “The Reverend Wright says this is going to be the first meeting of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.”

  Neon lights started flashing in my head. The game was on. “Vangie,” I said, “you’ve got to get me into that meeting.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  That night, when Vangie Roll and I arrived at Trinity United Church of Christ, the building was lit up like a Christmas tree. People were scrambling all over the place. Vangie introduced me to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright using the alias we had worked out—Alfred Douglas, the treasurer of CLIT.