by Glen Tate
“To be honest, the days … actually the weeks, after we took Olympia are a blur to me. I remember being awake all the time, and I remember solving problems all the time. I remember that none of my protectees died or were even attacked. I remember being amazed.” He looked over at the First Lady again for comedic effect.
“In some ways, whisking the new Governor into a combat zone, securing him amid all the close quarters urban fighting, and making it look like no one was trying to kill him was easy. The hard part,” he paused, “was setting up a system for peacetime.”
“It was always easy for me work with my small detail,” he explained. “We’ve been together so long, we don’t even need to talk to each other anymore. We just knew what to do and what everyone else would do.”
“The hard part was bringing in,” he started to say the number of new SPU agents he had, but didn’t want to reveal that, “lots of new people. I couldn’t just nod at them and be confident that they would set the radios to our favorite frequencies and know all the backup frequencies.”
Brad looked out at the crowd, “But we’ve all had to do new things now, haven’t we? Every one of you has had to do a variety of things that you never thought you’d have to do, and we’re all surprising ourselves with how we can pull off lots of things we didn’t think we could.”
“So I’m setting up systems to make the SPU the very best, which means getting the best people, which hasn’t been hard. But, still, there are,” he started to give out a number, but stopped, “many new people. I need to make sure they’re the best.”
“The biggest operational challenge is that we now have more protectees, not because we have more government, but because there are so many people key to the Restoration. What I mean is that before the Collapse, the person in charge of a large water treatment plant wasn’t exactly a juicy target for making a political statement. Now he or she is. If the Limas can take out a water treatment guru, they can disrupt water service to thousands of people, and this is an important political statement. So now water treatment people and hundreds of others need protection.”
“Finally, and this might astonish some of you, my goal is to no longer have a job,” Brad said to the surprise of most in the audience. “We exist because good people need to be protected from bad people,” he explained. “Someday, hopefully soon, people like Governor Trenton and his family won’t need the SPU because everyone will be on the same page. There won’t be Patriots and Loyalists. There will just be people.” The pro-Reconciliation members of the audience, like Grant and Ben, stood and applauded. “But,” Brad said when the applause died down, “that’s at least a generation away. If we don’t work hard on it now, it will quickly be two generations, and then three. We’re getting there, though, and that’s what matters.”
Chapter 355
Col. Bret Rogers
(Lima Lobbyist)
Brad got a long standing ovation. He was responsible for the safety of most of the people in the room. His good work was personal for most of the audience. Many of them knew the sacrifices their SPU agents made for their safety, and clapping loudly for a long time was the least they could do.
Ben needed to add his personal thanks to Brad. He walked over to the rostrum and bro hugged Brad. He whispered in Brad’s ear, “You’re one of the family, man. Thanks.” Brad nodded.
Ben needed to take the focus off his story and let the next colonel get some well-deserved praise.
“How many of you here like lobbyists?” he asked. Most laughed, but a few booed—good-natured boos. Ben smiled, “Yeah, no one seems to like lobbyists, but one sure helped our side.”
“Let me start off by saying I was a former lobbyist,” Ben said, “but for small businesses and other freedom causes. I was rare in that regard, because almost all lobbyists work for large special interest groups who come to the capitol to get as much stuff as they can for the campaign contributions they make and the number of votes they can generate from their group’s membership lists. That’s the standard way it works.” Ben felt like he could put down the campaign money lobbyists raised because he had pledged not to accept any contributions over N$25, which was 25 New Dollars, and would not accept any corporate, union, or political action committee money of any kind. He wanted to establish a precedent for future Governors, much like George Washington established a precedent by limiting himself to two terms in office. Ben realized that every little thing he did as the first governor of New Washington would be a precedent, so he wanted them to be good ones.
“And, you’ll be surprised to learn, Bret Rogers was one of those lobbyists. He raised a ton of cash and, even more importantly, traded his group’s endorsement for lots and lots of favors. You see, Bret was the main lobbyist for the old state’s law enforcement association. The endorsement of his group, and individual police chiefs and sheriffs, was absolute gold to most politicians. The voters of the old state would vote for just about anyone ‘supported by law enforcement.’ Bret was the guy who could make all that happen.”
“What did he ask for in return from all these politicians drooling over a chance to get the law enforcement endorsement? Oh, just little things. Like increased funding for pensions, more money to expand police departments, more laws to let the police seize property and then sell it, keeping the profits. Little things like that. The other half of getting ‘tough on crime’ was spending huge sums of money on law enforcement. And Bret was a master at getting money and power to his law enforcement guys.”
“So, you ask, why are we honoring a lobbyist who added to the problems that caused the old state to collapse?” Ben paused for dramatic effect. “Because he was working for us.”
Realizing he had captured the full attention of the audience, he said, “Please welcome Col. Bret Rogers who will tell you what happened and why.” The audience clapped, but not as strongly as for some of the other colonels. They were still dubious about why a former Lima lobbyist was being honored by the Patriots.
A middle-aged guy with black hair, who looked like a game show host, stood up. It was easy to dislike this guy upon first impression. He looked like a stereotypical glad-handing politician, the very kind of person who had driven the old state into the ground.
Bret strode up to the rostrum. He was very confident speaking to large crowds and felt very comfortable in the Legislative chambers.
Bret could tell that he wasn’t the most welcome person in the room. He was okay with that; he knew what he did for the war effort and the risks he took, so he wasn’t troubled with the chilly reception.
“What do you think lobbyists do all day?” he asked. He motioned for the crowd to answer him. A formal speech to a joint session of the Legislature was not an interactive town hall-style meeting, but he wanted to involve the audience.
“Ah, come on,” he said, “You guys can yell out whatever you think the answer is.”
“Get drunk and bribe people,” someone shouted out.
Bret repeated into the microphone, “Get drunk and bribe people?” so everyone could hear it.
“Okay,” he said, “What are some other guesses?”
“Get dirt on people and use it to blackmail them into doing what you tell them,” another person shouted out.
“Get dirt on people and blackmail them,” Bret repeated into the microphone.
“Raise campaign contributions,” another person said.
“Raise cash,” Bret repeated into the microphone.
He waited to see if anyone else had an answer. No one did.
“Okay,” he continued, “Looks like we have getting drunk, bribing, blackmailing, and raising money. Right?” A few people in the audience nodded in agreement.
“All of that is kind of true,” he admitted, “especially at the end, right before the Collapse.” He raised his hand and said, “Guilty as charged doing all of those things.”
He realized he had thoroughly lowered his audience’s expectations of him. They thought he was a terrible person. Perfect.
“How do we get information?” he asked. “We build relationships. We trade things for information. And, yes, sometimes we get people liquored up and bribe them.” He paused.
“Just like spies, huh?” Bret allowed himself to smile.
“We have access to people in positions of power and we have special privileges to get things done.” He paused again.
“Just like… yeah, you know,” he said. He assumed his audience got his point by now and didn’t want to overdo it. The crowd chuckled.
“A typical day for me, before the Collapse,” Bret said, “was to work out with some legislators and agency directors, at James’ gym, I might add,” he said pointing over to Col. James McDonahue.
“I got information from people there and then I went to have coffee with more people who ran the former state,” he said, “Where I got more information.”
“Then I returned some calls and emails,” he said, “Same thing: more information.”
“Then I started my lunches,” he said. “Yes, ‘lunches’ plural. I would do a couple a day.” He patted his slender stomach. “I only ate salads.”
“Then in the afternoon, I had meetings with more legislators, agency heads, key staff, sometimes the Governor and her staff. You get the picture.”
“Then it was dinners—yes, plural—and drinks. Then repeat the cycle.”
“I’m not saying it was a hard job, I’m just saying it’s the job I did.”
“I was a true believer in the old government,” he began. “I was a Loyalist through and through. I actually thought, and this sounds funny now, that I was doing society a favor by getting more money for law enforcement. I was helping people get bigger pensions, better salaries, hire more people, and buy more things. But I only focused on that end of it; I didn’t notice, or even care about, the part where someone needed to pay for it all. I got the glory of increasing people’s pensions, but millions of people had to pay higher taxes to do it.”
“But I need to be honest, and when you hear a lobbyist say that, be skeptical,” he said jokingly. “I had a very selfish reason for helping the Patriots.”
“No, they didn’t pay me or blackmail me or threaten me,” he said. “No, I switched sides for one of the oldest reasons in the book: a woman.” He paused.
“Not the usual story about switching sides for a woman,” he explained. “It’s not like I met a beautiful Patriot spy woman and she seduced me, although that would make a better story,” he said with a chuckle. The audience was starting to warm up to him.
“I was married when I was a Lima lobbyist. She kind of loved me, but she really loved the money and power,” he said, baring his soul. “When I was in my late forties, the perfect time for a mid-life crisis, I realized that she was in it for the parties, cars, the beautiful house, and all of that.”
“This got me thinking. I looked at what I did and how I was making all this money by… doing what? Taking little bits of money from a few million people, ‘giving’ it to a few thousand people I worked for, and keeping a tiny little bit for myself. But those millions of people needed that little bit of money just as much, or more, than me or the people I worked for. I realized that I was trafficking in stolen property, and that stolen property was tax money.”
“That bothered me, but not as much as the conclusion I came to: I was hanging out with people who just wanted a little bit of the money I was taking from people. My wife, who started off nice, had turned into a gold digger.”
“So, in my mind, my anger at her became intertwined with my anger at myself for participating in this system. Because the two were directly linked: my work for this system was why she was staying with me.”
“I kept having the weirdest thought, like someone was beaming a thought to me. It wasn’t a voice, it was a thought. But it wasn’t from my mind. The thought kept saying that I should stay in this system, but do some good. The thought kept saying, ‘I put you here. Now do what you know is right.’”
“After I spent a couple of weeks wondering if I was crazy for ‘hearing voices,’ I was having some beers with John Trappford. Even though he was a Republican, and therefore had no power, I really liked the guy. He and I were similar. He was an eastern Washington cowboy and I grew up in Montana on a ranch. We were getting pretty buzzed and he just blurted out, ‘It’s coming, Bret. You know it’s coming.’ I was stunned because I simultaneously knew what he meant and also had no clue.”
“That last sentence is odd and deserves some explanation. I knew, on a gut level, that I was put in this position to do something important and good, and that he must be talking about the thing it was that I could do. But, at the same time, I didn’t know what he was talking about. I didn’t know the specific thing that was coming.”
“‘Like what?’ I asked him. I’ll never forget his answer, and this was about a year before the Collapse. He said, ‘It’s all coming down. The state, the budget, the federal government, the economy, everything. It’s all coming down.’”
“When John said that, I remember thinking that I knew better than almost anyone how bad things were because I spent all day gathering information. Then—boom—it hit me! That’s what I could do in my unique position that would be good. I could use the place I had in this system to help bring it down. It was almost done for, anyway. I might as well help it along. I remember thinking about my wife right then. I remember thinking about how her whole phony, obnoxious, BS world would fall apart when the government did. Perfect.”
“So, I need to be honest, getting even with my wife was what got me started as a Patriot spy. Not the purest of motives, I must admit, but you needed to know why someone like me, with my background, would suddenly switch sides. A woman. Kind of.”
“I started to listen to John describe how he thought the Collapse would unfold. He was a very smart guy and knew a lot about state government. I did, too. That meant that when he described the unfolding of the Collapse, I knew from my own knowledge that what he was saying was right. For example, he said the pensions were unsustainable and the public employees would riot when the pensions failed; I knew this, maybe even better than he did.”
“Here was a guy, Sen. John Trappford, who was telling me everything I already knew, but never had the courage to think out loud. He laid it all out in a very believable and rational narrative. No crazy conspiracy theories; just budget numbers and the fact that almost everyone in this state was dependent. The details of how the Collapse unfolds just flows once you know those two facts.”
“After he got done describing the Collapse scenario, I remember that my face was numb. It wasn’t the beer. It was numb from… well, from me being stunned. I was stunned that all this obvious stuff had been right in front of me and I never realized it. I was stunned at how selfish I had been. I was stunned at how I had been participating in an evil system. Yes, evil. I could feel that thought smiling when I realized this.”
“When some of the shock wore off, I had another thought that does not paint me in the best light. I remember thinking that when this system falls apart, guys like me are dead. I thought of crowds with torches and pitchforks looking for the bast…” he stopped mid-word so he didn’t swear, “looking for the people who had done this to them. One of those people would be me.”
“I started thinking about all the conversations I’d had where people who knew exactly what they were talking about told me that the state didn’t have the police, National Guard, or anything else to keep control of everything. They had done the computer simulations and had endless meetings, some of which I got to sit in on as a representative of the law enforcement community. We knew that the authorities could hold it together for a few days before chaos broke loose. I had always put that in the back of my mind, and simply used the fact tha
t we couldn’t control mobs of people to try to get more money for riot gear. That’s how shallow and short-sighted I was.”
“Given all I knew about how chaos would rip the state apart a few days after a collapse, I could start to envision Wal-marts being torn apart, gas stations being taken over by gangs, military checkpoints, and all the rest that happened. All these visions came rushing through my mind. Then the thought said, ‘Now you see.’”
“I knew I needed to do something, but I wasn’t sure what. My first impulse, maybe fueled by the several beers, was to blurt out to John, ‘What can I do to help?’ But I realized that I was taking a huge risk in getting caught up in some right-wing conspiracy. I didn’t mind being in the conspiracy, I just didn’t want to get caught.” The audience laughed at his candor.
“I waited a few days, during which time I kept thinking about how awful the Collapse would be and how people like me would be hunted down. Finally, I decided I could trust John. I wanted him to know that he could trust me, so I arranged for a meeting with him. I began the meeting by giving him dozens of pieces of highly valuable information. I told him about a large operation that just started to blame any upcoming crisis on ‘teabaggers.’ I was risking a life sentence for ‘terrorism’ by giving this information. I wanted him to know he could trust me.”
“We had a few more meetings and I started slipping him documents at a drop-off location we came up with. I started to volunteer to go to more and more briefings on ‘disaster planning’ in the months before the Collapse. I smuggled more and more documents out.” Bret didn’t mention that he found out who a Lima infiltrator was in Oath Keepers. He didn’t know what had happened to the infiltrator, but he recently saw the infiltrator’s name on a list of persons being tried for war crimes.
“I thought the information I got was important, but I didn’t realize how important until I recently spoke with Gen. Roswell. He told me that the documents I got to the Patriots showing exactly what the feds and state people were planning was the deciding factor that turned numerous military commanders toward the Patriot side. They were reluctant to disobey orders—until they saw what their orders would be.”
