An Unlikely Phoenix

by Frank Zafiro

  A cheered swell up and lasted for several moments.

  "About that concert, I said how every once in a while you play a place, you play a show that ends up staying inside of you, living with you for the rest of your life, and that East Berlin in 1988 was like that for me. I think maybe tonight might be, too.”

  More cheers filled the arena.

  “We need to remember our own history as a country, and as a human race,” Springsteen continued, speaking deliberately. Alex was too long a politician not to recognize this part as a prepared statement, but was impressed at how effortlessly Springsteen delivered it. “If we forget these things, we will miss those precursors that warn us that those events are in danger of happening again. Forgetting gives us another version of the Nazis, or another round of oppressive communism, perhaps masked as democracy.”

  There was a swell of cheering, but Springsteen didn’t wait for it to go down before saying, “It can happen anywhere. In East Berlin, they edited the broadcast of the concert. But they did let me come and play, and they did broadcast most of the show.”

  A couple of quick upstrokes on the guitar, then he added, “Just so you know...here, today, in our country...this concert is not being broadcast by any mainstream media. You should ask yourself why that is. I know I do. But I will say this—if you’d told me back in 1988 that this could ever happen, I honestly...I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  The cheering was punctuated with some booing and angry shouts.

  “Don’t get mad,” Springsteen chided gently, picking out a few notes. “It doesn’t do any good to hate your country for what it’s become. Instead, get busy changing what you don’t like.” He interspersed some strumming with the fingerpicking. “This is a new song. I wrote it in the aftermath of the President’s speech about immigration a while back. They say that you can tell a lot about a person by how he treats those less fortunate than himself. I think that’s true of countries as well.”

  The strumming and picking continued slowly, then picked up speed and rhythm, until it was chugging along steadily. “This is called ‘Stranded at the Border,’” he murmured, then continued to build the momentum of the music, bringing it up to a near peak and then using micro-pauses and single notes to back away again. When it finally seemed like it could go on no longer, the driving power subsided into a slow, gentle strum with the occasional accented note or chord.

  He sang of a Mexican father who crossed over into the United States every week to work as migrant labor in the fields, only to slip back south again each weekend to see his wife and two daughters. The contrast of his work experience, the wealth around him in the north and the comparative poverty of his own home punctuated the long verse, before the unnamed father finally got caught trying to cross one night, and found himself “stranded at the border.”

  Alex felt a pang as he listened to the narrative. The plight of migrant workers, especially those who came into the country illegally, was an old one that he was very familiar with. But sometimes the issue seemed so large that it became difficult to keep in perspective. The personal story in the song reminded him keenly.

  Springsteen sang verse after verse, each a different kind of story about coming to America, and in every case, the narrator was somehow betrayed or hurt by the process, always stranded at the border in the end.

  Alex marveled at how finely drawn the characters were and how easily Springsteen’s voice inhabited each of them. He was wondering how the song would end when Ebby leaned across him to speak to the Governor.

  “Madame Governor, there’s something happening you should know about,” she said urgently.

  The Governor cast her a curious, distracted look. “Can it wait, Ebby?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  The Governor didn’t sigh, but Alex could sense her mild frustration. “Tell me,” was all she said.

  “Better if I show you,” Ebby said, and tapped a few keys on her tablet.

  The screen split in half. The concert remained on the left side, but the audio was quickly muted. There was a murmur of surprise and disappointment from the assembled group, but this subsided as soon as the audio from the newscast on the right half of the screen began playing.

  The male news reporter straight out of central casting stood in front of the HSA Arena. “—and we are now being told that there is a potential terrorist threat inside the arena.”

  Terrorist threat? A shot of panic fired through Alex. “Nathalie is at this concert.”

  The Governor touched him on the forearm. “Oh, Alex.”

  The reporter continued. “In addition, Lieutenant Potulny of the St. Louis Metro has reported there may have been shots fired inside the arena.”

  “What shots?” the Governor asked. She looked at the screen and back to Alex. “Did you hear any shots?”

  Alex shook his head. “Maybe the music was too loud,” he offered, but he didn’t believe it himself.

  “No,” the Governor said resolutely. “Not a chance. The music wasn’t that loud, and the crowd was quiet and listening.”

  “There could have been shots outside of the performance area,” someone else said.

  She frowned. “Maybe.” She turned back to Ebby. “What about the terrorist threat?”

  “I only caught the tail end of the original report before I brought it up to you,” Ebby said. “But it doesn’t seem like there are a lot of details.”

  “Are they saying the terrorist are in the arena, or the arena is a target, or...?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t know.” She glanced up at the screen where the reporter continued to talk without saying anything new. “Neither does he, I don’t think.”

  “Can we try a different network? Or social media? God knows, people will post there before calling 911. If something is going on inside that arena, it should be all over.”

  Ebby tapped a few keys and the image switched to another affiliate, this one with a female reporter standing with the arena at a different angle in her background. But after a few minutes, it became clear that she didn’t know anything more than the first reporter.

  Alex took out his phone and dialed Ryan, but the call went unanswered. He tried Nathalie, but received an error message. Worried, he slipped the phone back into his pocket.

  “Nothing?” the Governor asked.

  Alex shook his head.

  They tried a few other channels, skipping past regular programming that went on, uninterrupted. Only news channels carried anything about the event. A social media search came back empty as well. After ten minutes of searching, they found themselves back at the first channel again, with sparse information.

  “We do not know the exact nature of the threat,” intoned the reporter urgently, “but authorities have said that it is very credible, and that the suspected terrorists may in fact be inside the arena as we speak.” The video feed broke away from the reporter while his voiceover continued. “The event this evening is the so-called Freedom Concert, including performances from known radicals such as Ashely Vera, Nate Crider, and the once-famous Bruce Springsteen. Once known for his patriotism, Springsteen was apparently fomenting dissension and near rebellion in between songs.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” the Governor snapped.

  The video cut to the house feed of Springsteen performing, with the audio catching him mid-sentence. “...hate your country for what it’s become,” he said, and then the audio cut away along with the video, returning to the reporter.

  “This and other similar statements was met with mixed responses from the assembled crowd,” the reporter said, “including significant booing. But reports from inside the arena are that there are some radicals in attendance, which authorities fear will put the remainder of those in attendance in potential danger.”

  “They took that statement completely out of context,” Alex said.

  The Governor was seething. “This is what they do, Alex. They lie and twist things to their own agenda.” She turned to Ebby. “Are ther
e any alternate news options available?”

  Ebby stared back at the Governor, then glanced around the room. “There are,” she said. “I can access the deep web. Or even go dark, if you want.”

  “Are you secure?”

  Ebby gave her a look that made the answer obvious.

  “Do it, then.”

  Ebby went to work on her tablet for a minute or so. Alex watched the continued mainstream news coverage while she typed. Springsteen had finished his final song and left the stage while they had been surfing the channels for more information, and the lights had come up on the arena. Rather than emptying, however, the crowd seemed to be milling around.

  “Violence has reportedly broken out on the floor of the arena,” the reporter stated solemnly. “It is unknown at this time if any of the suspected terrorists are involved, or if it is merely radical concertgoers, incited by the performers. The St. Louis Metro Police Department has secured the entire perimeter of the arena, and are fully engaged in resolving this scenario.”

  “Violence?” Alex asked quietly. He motioned to the house feed on the screen. “What violence?” He shook his head. “This is some real George Orwell shit.”

  “It’s what things have come to,” the Governor said sadly.

  “All right, I’ve got something,” Ebby said. “A shadow blogger I follow.”

  She made a couple more keystrokes, and the screen divided again. The right half had the house feed on top and the newscast on the bottom. Closed captions appeared on the newscast, rendering the reporter’s redundant words in clear, white font. The left side of the screen showed a low-res point of view feed from a camera phone as the reporter threaded through the crowd to the side of the stage. The video was full of visual interference and the audio was scratchy. In the background, Alex could hear ambient noise and music playing lightly over the house system. He heard snatches of conversation as the reporter passed by, but nothing to indicate panic by the concertgoers.

  “Why is the quality so low?” the Governor asked.

  Ebby considered. “My guess is that the authorities have implemented a dampener over the arena. Without the specific access code, all wireless signals are suppressed.”

  “So how is this transmission getting out?”

  “Superior technology,” Ebby replied. “Next generation, out of Canada. The dampener still affects it but can’t completely interrupt the signal. Or it might be able to burrow in underneath the outlet transmitter, even without the code.”

  “I don’t know what any of that means,” the Governor muttered, and Alex agreed sympathetically.

  “All that matters is that they can broadcast,” he offered.

  The reporter reached the edge of the stage and a pair of boots and someone’s shins filled the screen. The mute button clicked on for a few moments, and then the reporter was pulled up onto the stage. The camera focused on the back of the person who’d done the pulling as he walked away. The audio resumed, and the reporter began to narrate. The voice was digitally altered to a smooth androgynous tone that betrayed only a hint of emphasis.

  “Reports outside of the arena are stating there is a terrorist threat, and that there has been violence within the arena. As you saw moments ago, there is no violence in the crowd. And though I have been from one end of the arena to the other, I have yet to talk to anyone who has heard the gunshots that the mainstream media is also reporting.”

  “Because they didn’t happen,” muttered Ebby to Alex’s left.

  The camera stopped at a door, which was half open. The reporter slid the camera around the edge of the door, and Springsteen’s face appeared on screen. The singer had an uncomfortable expression, tinged with confusion. “Oh,” he said, then added, “Please, come in. We’ll talk.”

  “It’s better if I stay behind the door and you don’t see my face, sir,” the reporter said, the digitized voice sparking with static. “For your own safety.”

  Springsteen looked unconvinced, but shrugged. “I’m not sure what you mean, but sure.”

  “Sir, there are reports of violence within the arena. From your vantage point on the stage, did you see anything like that?”

  “No,” Springsteen said. “Absolutely not.”

  “Did you hear any gunshots?”

  Springsteen’s brow scrunched. “Gunshots? No. Really?”

  “Those are the reports, but no one I’ve spoken to has heard anything,” the reporter said. “Sir, the report out there in the mainstream media is that you and the other artists have been inciting the crowd to violence. How would you respond to that?”

  Springsteen looked shocked. “Violence?” He shook his head. “No, never violence. Never. All I ever suggest is that people pay attention to what’s happening in our country, and make up their own minds about it.”

  “You aren’t telling them how to think?”

  “Of course not. There’s far too much of that going on, as it is.” Springsteen sighed. “People need to think for themselves.”

  “Are you aware that the arena is surrounded by police at the moment?” the reporter asked.

  Springsteen scowled. “What? No.” He reached for his own phone and fiddled with it for a moment. Then he looked up. “No reception.”

  “No, sir. The authorities have probably incorporated a signal dampening device to isolate the people here.”

  Confusion seeped back into Springsteen’s expression. “I don’t understand any of this,” he said. “This is crazy.”

  The camera jumped suddenly and pulled out of the dressing room. A security guard’s chest filled the screen. “That’s going to have to be all,” he said gruffly. “We need to secure Mr. Springsteen.”

  The reporter thanked him, and then the screen went black. The scratchy audio continued, with the digitally altered voice of the reporter explaining, “Stand by for an update as soon as I have anything new. This is Veritas, reporting the truth, live from the HSA Arena.”

  The audio went silent as well. For a long moment, the assembled group was quiet, and then the room exploded with conversation. The Governor stood, raising her hands for quiet. “Folks, listen for a second. I think the best thing we can do here is call it a night, at least for this gathering. I would encourage each of you to share what you saw on the concert stream tonight, but please...do not mention that last broadcast to anyone. If federal authorities discover that we accessed the dark web and viewed an illegal broadcast, everyone in this room will be subject to charges of treason. I’m not trying to frighten you. I’m just making sure everyone understands what is at risk. Silence is imperative.”

  The group murmured agreement.

  The Governor smiled grimly. “Thank you. All of you.” She motioned to the man who had escorted Alex in earlier. “Miles?”

  “Of course, Ma’am.” He turned to the group. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you’d follow me, please.”

  Miles led the group out of the room. The Governor reached out and stopped Alex, giving him a short shake of her head. “Stay,” she said.

  Ebby stayed, too, as well as a young man in a sweater vest, a fashion that Alex noticed had been making a strong comeback recently among the younger set. The man held out his hand. “I’m Paul Keaton,” he said. “The Governor’s Press Advisor.”

  “Of course. We met earlier.” Alex hadn’t initially known him by his face, but had seen his name on some correspondences. As Press Advisor, Keaton did his work behind the scenes rather than being in front of the camera.

  “Should we draft a statement?” the Governor asked.

  Keaton shook his head. “Not yet, Ma’am. I think we should see what happens next.”

  “I feel like we should say something. Get the truth out.”

  “I agree, Ma’am. But you yourself just cautioned your guests against exposing where our information comes from. Even this live feed of the house cameras could be spun by the White House as being part of whatever treasonous activities they are claiming is happening.”

  “Oh, that’s ridicu
lous,” the Governor snapped.

  “Of course it is,” Keaton said. “But that isn’t the point. The point is that the White House would like nothing more than to take an incident like this and use it to discredit his most powerful detractor.”

  The Governor considered his words. “I can’t let the fear of being maligned by the White House keep me from telling the truth, Paul.”

  “No, ma’am. But we have to proceed carefully. There are large segments of the nation’s population who would be very inclined to believe that the Governor of California is surreptitiously engaged in domestic terrorism. It might seem ridiculous, but these types of accusations represent an opportunity for the White House to malign you.”

  “I don’t care what the White House says about me. He can’t do any worse than what he called me last Christmas.”

  The infamous ‘C’ word tweet, Alex recalled. The President hadn’t needed more than 140 characters for that one. He’d somehow managed to avoid being censured by Twitter for that flagrant violation, ironically citing the First Amendment. Twitter executives hadn’t put up much of a fight, Alex recalled. Once they’d capitulated to his demand to designate his account as a special “Presidential” account, allowing him a 1400 character limit, there wasn’t much room left for oversight on their part.

  Keaton continued his point. “As you’ve said many times in the past, Madame Governor, this is bigger than you. If the White House discredits you, they discredit our cause. And that is exactly what this concert was about – the cause of freedom.”