by Jake Devlin
“I know, Riley, I know.”
“And look, Grampa! Here comes a Santa boat! Hi, Santa! Merry Christmas!”
“She really loves the boat parade, doesn't she, Marti?”
“Oh, yeah, Rosemary, especially the dragon boat.”
“That's really clever. What is it really?”
“It's a crane for marine construction; they built our dock way back in the '80s, used it to put in the pilings.”
“Oh, kewl.”
“'Kewl'? Where'd you learn to say it that way?”
“Uh, I think – oh, right; Gordy and I heard a teen talking on her cell phone, and I just picked up on it, thought it was kinda funny.”
“You do it well, glottal stop and all.”
“Thanks. How about this? 'Oh, no, you dih-n't.'”
“Oh, Rosemary, you've got that down perfectly.”
“Thanks. Gordy helped me with it.”
“Oh, no, he dih-n't.”
“Oh, yes, he – oh; got it. You've got it down, too.”
“A lot of my clients are teens, and I work with some of them to get past using that ritual language. Picked up a lot of their jargon along the way.”
“Ah, right; forgot you were a speech therapist.”
“Over thirty years now.”
“Wow. Any burnout?”
“Oh, yeah; been there, done that, got the T-shirt. But enough of that. Can I get you anything else?”
“Thanks, Marti; I'm good.”
“Those deviled eggs you brought are great. Never had 'em with marshmallow filling before.”
“Gordy's idea. He's never liked the usual filling, doesn't like the yolks.”
“Looks like he and Paul are at it again. Wonder what's so serious over there.”
“No, no, no, Gordy, boobs are bigger'n tits.”
“Nah, Paul, they're the same thing.”
“And then you got knockers, and jugs are the biggest.”
“Wait, wait, wait. What the hell are you” –
“No, really, Gordy; that's how the bra industry guys refer to 'em.”
“What?”
“Yeah; did a lot of ads for 'em back when I owned my agency.”
“Seriously? You're not pulling my leg?”
“No, really. Cup sizes A and B are tits, C's are boobs, D's are knockers, and double D and bigger are jugs. And each size has its own design criteria.”
“No.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, Gordy, would you sign this for me?”
“Sure, Gayle. Anything special you want me to write in there?”
“Um, just whatever you want.”
“Okay. 'To Gayle' or 'Gayle and Paul' or 'Paul and Gayle'?”
“'Gayle and Paul' is fine. Okay, Cakes?”
“Okay, hon.”
“Okay. Ah, 'To Gayle and Paul.' There you go, Gayle. Hope you enjoy it.”
“I'm sure I will. Marti told me she loved it, especially the online bit. She even said she came up with a new subtitle for the book.”
“Yeah? What?”
“'Orgasms, Assassinations and the FBI.'”
“Oh, I like that. She got one of the first ones off the press last weekend, sent me an email as soon as she finished it, Tuesday or Wednesday, I think.”
“Yeah? What'd it say?”
“I think it was 'I just now finished the online erotica. Holy Shit!' with five exclamation marks.”
“She told me it went way beyond 'Fifty Shades.'”
“Well, I had a ghostwriter do that part.”
“Really? Who?”
“Sorry, Gayle; I promised to keep her anonymous. We called her 'Dallas' in the book. And Rosemary added some stuff, too.”
“Your Rosemary?”
“Yup. And nope, she won't tell you Dallas' real name, either.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Oh, Grampa, look! There's another Santa! Hi, Santa!”
“C'mon, Riley, please, no more bouncing.”
- 43 -
June 18, 2013
9:51 a.m. local time
St. Tropez, France
“'Okay, Vlad, you've got my attention.'
“'That is fine. But remember, you must do your own research and see what you find.'
“'Okay. But where do I start?'
“'Look over your past, your assignments, your contacts, your – well, everything, and see if you can find a pattern. And keep your eyes open to everything around you all the time.'
“'But who are these people, this cabal?'
“'Some call them the Illumin-' – but he never finished the word. Pfft. His head exploded in a red mist.
“I had seen her coming, but my first mistake was not noticing what was hinky about her. She was pushing a baby carriage, looking for all the world like a doting mother, but she only had her left hand on the handle and she was looking at us with more intensity than you would expect. I should have caught it, but I was looking at Vlad and she was approaching in the background from behind him, no one else around, and I just flat out missed it.
“When she brought her weapon up, I had no time to react before the bullet hit the back of Vlad's skull. But then I grabbed the gun he'd been holding and fired back, hitting her in her right shoulder with the first shot and the middle of her belly with the second one. Pfft, pfft.
“She went down, pulling the carriage over on top of her and struggling to get at her gun with her other hand, but by then I'd run over to her and managed to kick it away.
“'Who sent you?' I asked her, still in Russian, but when she gave me a blank look, I switched to English. 'Who sent you?'
“'I – I – I – I am your backup,' she managed to gurgle. 'You – you were – you were – set up.'
“'By who?' And that's when I made my second mistake. I was looking closely at her face to see if I believed her, and she pulled a knife with her left hand and went for my groin.”
“That's not what backup would do.”
“Got that right, Pam; she wasn't backup at all. But I never did sort out who she really was or who had sent her.
“I brought my leg up to deflect the blade, but she got it into my thigh. I shot her in the head - pfft - and fell down, applied pressure to the wound, then cut off part of my shirttail and tied it around the bloody mess, tourniquetted it with my belt, searched her body till I found her car keys, righted the baby carriage and limped back out to the road, using the carriage for support and taking Vlad's gun and her gun and knife with me.
“It took me at least ten minutes to find her van, but when I did, I stuffed the carriage and the weapons inside, got behind the wheel and drove myself to the Agency safe house about two kilometers away, pulled into the driveway and passed out. When I woke up, I was being carried into the house by two agents, and I told them what had happened in the park and to send a cleanup crew, and when I woke up again, my leg was all stitched up, the painkillers were doing their job and I was being debriefed on all that had occurred.
“It was the toughest debrief I'd ever had, but I kept everything that Vlad had told me to myself, never revealed anything, told them he had pulled a gun on me, that the woman had shot him and was aiming at me when I shot her, then stuck to the facts from that point on. I kept asking who she was and who'd sent her, but they gave me the damn 'need to know' BS, and that was all I ever knew.”
“Wow.”
“But then I took Vlad's advice and started doing some research.”
- 44 -
December 14, 2013
9:27 a.m. local time
Undisclosed location
“Talk to me, Phil.”
“Okay, Amber, we've been at this for over six months now, and we've got nothing to show for it. None of the other teams do, either. No matter where we look, what stone we turn over, nada. Nothing about any dead drops, brush passes or any kind of unacknowledged communications with the Russians, either to or from. He may, in fact, be clean … or just very good at covering his tracks.”
“Yeah,
it could be either one; we've got to keep open minds and dig for whatever we can find.”
“Right. Everybody is being careful. We did find some stuff in his reports and his input to the Presidential Daily Briefings that may give some credence to his being a double agent.”
“Like what?”
“Let's see. In the PDB for July 12, 2001, the warning that Al Qaeda was planning a major attack within the United States was watered down and buried deep in the document, based on a draft of his that we found in the CIA's files.”
“The ones you downloaded after you hacked their networks.”
“Right. We also found a few recent email exchanges with that IRS woman who took the Fifth in front of Congress about them targeting conservative groups. He pointed out a few groups he thought she should add to her list.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you send those over to me?”
“Sure. And there's more.”
“Okay. Send me whatever you've got like that, okay?”
“Will do. I'll also send you some more recent stuff, like his email last week about the growing threat of Islamic jihadists in Syria and Iraq being much more important and significant than Putin's ambition to rebuild the Soviet Union, possibly starting with Crimea and the Ukraine.”
“What? He wrote that?”
“Yeah.”
“That I do want to see.”
“I'll include that, and some other stuff, too.”
“Great, Phil; thanks. Anything else?”
“Not right now, but I'll keep you informed as we go along.”
“Good. Hi to Nadia, okay?”
“Will do. And from us to Gisele and the girls.”
“Thanks. Bye.”
“Bye.”
- 45 -
June 18, 2013
10:03 a.m. local time
St. Tropez, France
“While my wound was healing, I did what Vlad had suggested, pored over every one of my assignments, my contacts, everything, just as you're doing now with your seventh-floor guy, Nicholas.”
“Right. Anything new from your people on him?”
“Sorry, Pam; nothing yet.
“Anyhow, with nothing like the internet back then, I was pretty much stuck with my own journals, like you, and whatever files I could dig into at the Agency and anywhere else I could think of to look, even newspaper archives at English-language libraries around Paris and then around DC when I was flown back home to recuperate. And I had to do all that on my own, not trusting anybody in or out of the Agency, not even Gordy or Amber at that point.”
“Neither of them?”
“Neither of them. Vlad had not only piqued my interest, but also had raised my paranoia. So I kept it all to myself, just looking at whatever documentary evidence I could find.
“The phrase 'New World Order' wasn't part of our lexicon at that point; we were still in the midst of the Vietnam War, Nixon's February visit to China and dealing with what that might mean, the fallout from the Watergate burglary in June and lots of other stuff.”
“Like the oil embargo.”
“Right – no, wait. That was – no, that was later, 1973, I think.”
“It was? I don't know. I just remember how pissed my dad was at having to wait in lines and then only being able to buy gas on odd or even days of the month. I was like 13 or 14, and it was winter; I remember that.”
“Well, that was political, too. The story as we heard it was that OPEC was retaliating against the US and other nations for supporting Israel in the 1967 war and that it took Nixon and Kissinger negotiating with both sides before that got lifted in – wait a minute – ah, yes; thank you, Al Gore, for inventing the internet – in March of '74. If only I'd had this back then.
“But – ah, wait another minute – right; there was a conspiracy theory around that, too --- wait – ah, something about – right, Nixon had taken the dollar off the gold standard in '71, and that messed up the Arabs' income from oil. And that tied back to lots of conspiracy theories about the creation of the Federal Reserve and the Bretton Woods Accord, and those fit with other theories about international banking cabals and families, usually Jewish, that allegedly have been manipulating and controlling the world's finances for centuries.”
“Like that – oh, what was the title – 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'?”
“Right, which was proved to be a hoax, a very convincing one, but a hoax nonetheless. Jews were often targets of the CTs.”
“CTs?”
“Conspiracy Theorists. Sorry; been dealing with this stuff for a long time.”
“So what did you find?”
“Back then at the beginning, just enough to get me curious about the whole control/manipulation stuff, and to make me determined to dig further and find whatever facts I could, if they existed. Facts, not theories.
“It took years before I found the first one, and that was long after I'd left the Agency, brought Gordy, Amber and Wes onboard, built the bodyguarding business up and then branched back into the security installation and monitoring business.”
- 46 -
December 14, 2013
7:34 p.m. local time
Bonita Springs, Florida
“She looks so peaceful, Marti.”
“After all that excitement, she's tuckered out.”
“And so sweet, cuddling her baby sister.”
“She's very protective, even when they're both asleep.”
“Nice. Jenn and Marc raised 'em well. It is Jenn and Marc, right?”
“Right; good memory, Rosemary.”
“Thanks.”
“Is that better, Dave?”
“Oh, yeah, hon, much better; you've got magic hands. She just couldn't stop bouncing.”
“She was excited. But maybe next year, she'll have toned that down some.”
“I hope so; she'll weigh even more then.”
“Looks like Paul's bending Gordy's ear again, Gayle.”
“Too many beers, I think, Marti.”
“So if bulls could talk, d'you think one of 'em might say to another one, 'Wow, nice udders on those two'?”
“Never thought about it, Paul.”
“That was one idea some of our guys had just before I sold the agency. I thought it had potential, but all the clients threw it under the bus.”
“Too bad.”
“Not even a second look. Coulda taken that a long way, dontcha think?”
“No idea.”
“Well, we coulda done it. Too bad those clowns were so stuck in their ruts.”
“Not that uncommon, Paul.”
“Yeah, Gordy, for sure.
“But they were prepping for the aging boomers even back in the '90s.”
“Yeah? How?”
“They were getting ready to add 'Longs' in all bra sizes.”
“Now you're pulling my leg.”
“Nope, it's true, really. And you wouldn't believe some of the style names they'd come up with for those. Like” --
“Oh, Paul, that's enough beer for you.”
“C'mon, Cakes, I'm okay.”
“Not to drive, you're not. And it's time to go.
“Gordy, nice to see you again.”
“And you, Gayle.”
“Come on, Paul. Now.”
“One second, Cakes. Gordy, title for a new book, about people in Bonita. 'Fifty Shades of Grey Hair.'”
“Now, Paul, now!”
“If you don't write it, I know people who will.”
- 47 -
June 18, 2013
10:14 a.m. local time
St. Tropez, France
“From my first research, I figured if there actually was a cabal anything like what Vlad had described, it would include only people who were rich, very rich, and probably several lower-level operatives, who may or may not know how they were being used. So I set my sights on getting the ultra-rich as clients, as many as I could, either for the bodyguarding or the security bu
sinesses.
“The shipping magnate who'd given me my first private hit was the logical place to start, so I surprised him on New Year's Day of '73 on his yacht, where I 'negotiated' a deal whereby he would refer our new bodyguarding company to other wealthy friends of his.”
“'Negotiated'?”
“Well, I played him a few parts of the tapes I'd made when he'd hired me for the hit, let him know that I had copies in safekeeping, and that was all the convincing he needed to do what I wanted him to do. Well, that and a few not-so-subtle comments about some of the flaws in his own security systems that had allowed me to get on board without any alarms or anybody noticing, and a few pics of his beautiful much-younger wife in her bed.
“But when his son died in a plane crash later that month, that almost ended our agreement. He was devastated by the loss of his presumptive heir, and I think he suspected me of some complicity, which was untrue. I didn't find out until later that it was an assassination, paid for by the same family that had me hit the old man.
“But before that, the old man got the ball rolling for us, and we kept leveraging the seven clients we'd gotten from him and built the business to around fifty clients in the first six months of '73.”
“That was quick.”
“But not easy. In fact, for a couple of the more resistant ones, we had to use some, uh, additional persuasive strategies.”
“Like what?”
“Well, for one of them, we took a shot at him, an intentional miss, which he never traced back to us, but he hired us as bodyguards, and we covered him until he died of natural causes in 1993. And he gave us many, many more clients over the years, and they gave us more clients, who gave us” –
“Okay, Jake, got it. It grew fast.”
“Yup. And we always gave more than we promised.”
“Under-promise, over-deliver.”
“Got that right, Pam.”
“So how'd you get that first fact?”
“Oh, right. In late '73, we got into the security install business, upgrading a few of our bodyguarding clients' systems after we showed them the soft spots in the ones they had.”
