Eventually, two factors defeated the media’s onslaught. For one, the many false alarms and cries of wolf started to dilute the public’s interest. But more importantly, Mitchell’s middle-of-the-road brand of politics and quiet ability to get things done with both parties were getting noticed. Slowly, over the next eighteen months, his approval numbers crept up.
That was in the good old days of two weeks ago.
Now acts of domestic terrorism, the magnitude and frequency of which this country had never known, were challenging Mitchell’s administration midterm. The frequency and randomness of the events of the last few weeks were more heinous, more terrorizing, and more devastating to the national psyche than even the unbelievable destruction of 9/11. Mitchell was the man the entire nation now looked to as the only person who could stop the nightmare. In fact, for the majority of Americans, it was the first time many bothered to look in his direction at all.
Deep in his bones, James Mitchell knew that this kind of crisis could either make or break a presidency. The connection with the American public that any White House resident needed to govern and improve the nation was based on the way he performed in a crisis. In a warped manner of thinking, the smartest thing Ronald Reagan ever did was get shot. His political capital went through the roof when he uttered to his wife, “Honey, I guess I forgot to duck.” Legislatively he became unstoppable with that one-liner.
The decision he made today would be seen by history as Mitchell’s defining moment. As he listened to the head of the FBI and his Chief of Staff, he realized that the solution they came up with was really going to be his solution. If the FBI was right, then so was he. He would become a powerful force that his congressional enemies would disagree with at their own political peril. It was called “bounce,” the political lift an officeholder gets when he comes up on the right side of a critical national issue. As was the case with George W. Bush who limped into office after a messy election only to enjoy peak, albeit short-lived, record approval ratings in the wake of his handling of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, leading the country out of this crisis would be all Mitchell needed to hold sway on important issues like welfare, education, deficit control, and arms. If the FBI was wrong, however, the whole kettle of rotten fish heads would follow just as assuredly. He planted his feet firmly on the floor and set his backbone absolutely straight, a trick the fighter jockey learned in the preflight briefing rooms that helped him focus on every minute detail of the mission.
His was either a yes or no vote. It would probably be yes because, although he was the most powerful man in the world, he really hadn’t been given any choice. To vote no would be to vote for inaction until another plan was submitted. He continued to focus acutely on every word the FBI director said.
“Under my direction, the FBI will be turning up the heat on suspected cells and known affiliations of any …”
The director stopped speaking, distracted by a commotion outside the front door of the gym. The Secret Service agent on post grabbed his holster and stood in front of the president. Reynolds turned toward the muffled sound of the ruckus. The argument outside the gym got louder.
“What’s going on?” the Commander in Chief yelled.
The door opened and a Secret Service agent stuck his head in. “Sir, Mr. Hiccock is demanding to see you. Mrs. Lamson says he doesn’t have an appointment.”
“Let him in, Jim.”
“Mr. President, there’s no need for him to be in attendance,” the director protested.
The president didn’t acknowledge the director. Hiccock marched in, adjusting his suit, obviously having been physically restrained.
“Geez, Bill, you got my man here ready to take a bullet. Why all the fuss?”
“Mr. President, sir. I serve at your pleasure. If I have lost your confidence then there are plenty of swell teaching positions just waiting for me out there in the real world.”
The confused president looked to his chief of staff for clarity.
“Sir, your national science advisor doesn’t agree with the director’s analysis of the threat we face.”
“I wasn’t aware you had any experience in law enforcement, Bill.”
“No, Sir, I don’t. My degrees are in science and engineering, but you don’t have to know Dick, er … Tracy to see that we are using outmoded paradigms and Cold War fighting tactics to define an enemy that may literally have been born yesterday.”
“Wow, that’s a mouthful. Did you rehearse that all the way down here?”
Hiccock smiled. “Maybe just the gist of it.”
“Do you have any proof, Bill?”
“No, Sir. But neither does the FBI. They’re just rounding up the usual suspects.”
This comment pushed Tate into nuclear mode. “How dare you! This is FBI jurisdiction. We have more experience in this kind of crime than any agency in the world!”
“Listen, when it comes to this type of anarchy there is no track record. The first World Trade Center attack, the Olympic bombings, and September 11th taught us that.”
“What’s your point then, Mr. Hiccock?” the director said sharply.
“I see his point,” the president said. “Your agency and the traditional intelligence channels blew all those cases.” He turned to Hiccock. “Go on, Bill, this is almost refreshing.”
“Actually, Sir, I don’t know what to say next. I didn’t think I’d get this far. But I suppose I would not like to have alternate theories dismissed so quickly. It’s a new world, getting newer every day, Sir.”
“Nonsense,” the director said. “You’re just an intellectual chauvinist who thinks that science is the answer to everything.”
Hiccock bristled. “Then you explain to me how long ago an eleven-year-old Boy Scout, or ‘agent provocateur’ as you called him, would have to have been indoctrinated, trained, and stationed in proximity to the accounting firm that he eventually incinerated.”
“Perhaps his was an isolated incident, nothing more than a boy with matches.”
Hiccock’s Bronx attitude started to kick at its cage. “Come on, will ya? You’d have to be out of your friggin’ mind to think that a boy who bypassed security and disabled multiple floors of sprinkler and fire reporting systems didn’t have the smarts to hightail it out of there before becoming toast!”
After a moment’s silence, the president let out a long breath. “Okay, Bill, be careful what you wish for. As of now, you are in charge of your own investigation.”
“Excuse me? I didn’t ask, nor do I want …”
“Ray, come up with a way to fund him. Call it a … Scientific Ramifications Inquiry or whatever.”
“You could issue an executive order establishing the Office of Scientific Investigator,” the chief of staff said.
“Give him direct-line access to me, Ray.”
“What does that mean?” The slight indignation in the director’s voice was all too apparent.
“It means he reports directly to me and I expect you to offer him your bureau’s fullest cooperation.”
“Wow,” Hiccock said. “You can do that? I mean, of course you can. You are the president.”
“Ray, I can do that, right?”
“I’ll run it by counsel, but it sounds just like the Biotech thing you did last month.”
A light went on in the president’s brain as he remembered the Biotech initiative as being “cinchy,” a term a young female aid used to describe the constitutional and political realities of such a move. “Yeah, I can do that.”
∞§∞
A Marine guard was standing mute outside the gym, eyes front as Reynolds and the director of the FBI had it out.
“Thank you for your support in there, Ray.”
“First of all, I don’t work for you, I work for the president. And if he likes the idea of this geek running around the country under his authority, then I am duty-bound to love it.”
“You’ve managed to undermine my authority and the bureau’s reputation.�
��
“Get off that horse, right now. You had every opportunity to present your case and counter any of his arguments. You failed to convince the boss. Hiccock beat you, even when we stacked the deck against him.”
“Ray, I have been here through two administrations and I will not …”
“… Well then, you know how the game is played. I know James Mitchell and I know what he was thinking in there. He was thinking how his whole presidency is in your hands. And then Hiccock comes in and points out a flaw in your logic. And you had no good answer. You were blindsided. The boss is a man who likes to have options, Tate. Hiccock at least gives him an option.”
“But Ray, that little display by that uncouth character in there was mere grandstanding. I’m amazed he fell for it. Maybe you can point that out to him later?”
“I am not going down to the mat with the man just so your feelings won’t be hurt. Now go find the bad guys … before Hiccock does.”
CHAPTER NINE
Post Depression
ACCEPT, ACCEPT, ACCEPT, reject, reject, accept, accept, accept, 1-0-0-1-2 enter, accept, reject. Seven hours a day, forty-nine weeks a year. That was the rhythm of his work as well as the lot in life of U.S. Postal Service mail sorter Bernard Keyes. With sixteen years in, he was relegated the post of senior sort operator. His $38,000-a-year salary limited his life, like a small bowl stunts the growth of the fish in it. He was better than this and he knew it. As he heard his supervisor coming up behind him, he laid out his plan. He would grab the prodding tool used to un-jam the sorter and turn and smack him with it right across his fat, redneck face, and he would continue beating him until there was nothing but brains everywhere. He glanced down at the stick as the footsteps got closer.
“Bernie, what the fuck did you screw up now, you dipshit?”
He turned around with nothing more than a meek smile and a swallow. “It wasn’t me, Burt. Wanda up the line’s been screwing up the opcodes. Here, look.” His hand reached out toward the heavy prodding tool but passed it by, grabbing a mangled envelope instead. “She over inked the pads again! The shit’s smearing everywhere.” He pointed to the blob of ink where sharply defined lines should have been. Knowing even his lunkhead boss could see that these smeared bar codes would not be easily recognized by the laser reader, he felt he successfully defended his turf.
“Well then, get back to work, and try to be more productive.”
I’ll produce a bat right up your ass, you cocksucker, he thought. But out loud he whined, “It ain’t me, it’s up the line.” He went back to sorting. As he stood there accepting, rejecting, and revising the zip codes on a million letters, he was thinking of how his boss would cower if he knew what Bernard Keyes did when he wasn’t on the sorters.
It started seven years ago in a chat room called “Going Postal,” where U.S. postal workers logged on mostly to gripe about everything. An irony not lost on Keyes was the fact that in the chat room, the soldiers of paper mail used e-mail—the realm of the enemy—to communicate.
It was in the “Going Postal” room that the calling first came to him. A web surfer spouted off about actually “going postal” by getting a gun and wiping out his substation. At first, Bernie thought it was just a guy acting big, but as the rest of the room discounted him as a nut, Bernie read something that resonated between the lines of his rants. The man spoke truths about the threats everyone faced— potential losses of freedoms, property, and lives. Bernie instant messaged him. The man responded to Bernie’s IM and they started chatting without anyone else knowing what they discussed.
Bernie found his battle cry that night. This was a cry so loud that the crazy interloper, who was all set to buy an Uzi and spray his workplace, became, instead, satiated by the beginnings of a plan that would, in the end, be much more satisfying.
CHAPTER TEN
Old Flames Home Fires
YOU MAKE YOUR BED and you sleep in it, but you don’t always make your bed during the week, unless you are expecting company or your mother to drop by. Therefore, it was only sensible for Hiccock to have his usual once-a-week dinner with his ex-wife, Janice, at his home on Wednesdays, which just so happened to be the same day Mrs. Phelps, his combination cleaning woman, plant waterer, and surrogate mom, worked a full day sprucing up the Hiccock residence.
Having dinner with your ex-wife every week certainly made some people question either the dinner part or the “ex” part. Hiccock married Janice Tyler because she was the best person he ever knew. She was the best lover he ever had, and remained, to this day, his best friend. He wasn’t at all sure what he brought to the union.
He thought for a while it was a case of reading the wrong signals; two people, temporarily appearing to be going in the same direction at the same moment, only to realize they were on a course that would separate them.
Actually, he was the one who veered away. He allowed himself to become besieged with work. It was almost as if getting married checked off the relationship box on his “Things in Life to Do” list and made more room for work. And so they became the other half of the American Dream, the one nobody likes to acknowledge, the divorced couple. Nevertheless, Janice still possessed all those wonderful things he admired about her in the first place. Not having her to talk to was not an option. He needed her feedback on his ideas. Watching her while she focused on the pasta before her and the almost mechanical precision of each fork twirl, perfectly sized to slip into her mouth without requiring her to open it too far, his mind returned to their time together at Stanford.
It had been the start of a new research project, ambitious in scope and grand in scale. 2,000 sets of twins were to be interviewed and studied. An adjunct professor of statistical analysis had recommended Bill to the head of the project, Janice Tyler. Bill had heard of Janice. She was almost famous. Apparently she was a brilliant undergrad student who distinguished herself in behavioral sciences and won an unprecedented full project grant from the National Science Foundation. She even had office space in the Human Sciences building. Bill found the room number on an open door leading into a space that even an optimist would call cramped, and knocked on the doorframe.
“Hello,” he said as he entered into the tiny empty office. As he took a step inside, Janice came from around the back of the door with a pile of books and almost crashed into him.
“Here, let me get those,” he offered.
“I got it,” she said.
“You sure?”
“I said I have them.” They stood together for a second, then she squinched her nose. “What’s that I smell? Curry!”
“Uh, yeah I guess I had Indian food for lunch.”
“Yuck. I hate Indian food. You walk around smelling like you all day.” She waved away the “curry-fied” air from her nostrils as she walked off to put the books down on her desk.
“Maybe I should step outside and come in again?”
“Okay, do it.” Janice encouraged.
Bill stepped back outside into the linoleum-tiled hallway and rapped on the doorframe again.
“Who is it?”
“Miss Janice Tyler?”
“Yes.”
“I’m delivering your order from the Bombay Palace, with extra curry.”
When she laughed, he knew it was going to be okay. She wasn’t the stick in the mud she first appeared to be.
“I’m William Hiccock, referred to you by Professor Parnes. He said you could use a Scientific Methodologist on your team.”
“Well, listen buckaroo, I am the quarterback, coach, and manager of this team. We are going to generate a lot of data. Do you think you can handle the workload and still play your little mindless reenactment of warfare every weekend?’
“You know who I am?” the quarterback said with just a little self-satisfaction.
“I know that you are supposed to be good. Do you think you can handle crucial data and keep your facts straight?”
“GM”
“What?”
“You said quart
erback, coach and manager of this team. There is an aberration in the framework of the hierarchical order of succession you just employed to establish your archetypal position. Stemming from the fact that there are no managers in football, that titled position would be better suited to a baseball analogy.”
“So what do I want to be in that analogy?”
“I dunno… how about ‘bitch!’”
Janice was stunned. He could read all kinds of changes of mood and thought on her face. He wondered whether he had just blown it or blown it wide open. She took a deep breath as he waited for the explosion.
“Two rules, One. I am the high, exulted queen bitch of this team and you are nothing more than a subservient, scum sucking, drone worker bee. Two. You just used up the one and only time you can ever call me a bitch again… until I give birth to a litter!”
“I can live with that,” William said as he turned and walked out.
“I think that went well,” Janice said as she sat down and started reading through the pile of books.
∞§∞
“Janice! Janice!” The call cut across the campus as Hillary Dennison ran with her book clasped to her bosom. Janice turned and waited for her to flurry across the green.
“Are you coming to the pep rally tonight?”
“It’s so retro, and I think I have some socks to de-lint tonight.”
“Come on, it’s the biggest game of the year Saturday, and the boys need our support.” She actually stood taller when she said that making her chest stick out like an obscene version of Shirley Temple saluting in a sailor suit. It made Janice laugh.
“Who’s pitching?”
“Pitching? I’m not sure. Isn’t that baseball? All I know is Brad’s playing and that’s all I care about.”
The Eighth Day Page 7
