The LieDeck Revolution: Book 1

by Jim Stark

  She dropped her new kimono onto the thick, sea-blue carpet and raised her long, thin arms to the sky. Slowly, her feet created little circles as she hummed a Mohawk lullaby. She watched her small breasts dance in the low light. The stereo went on of its own accord, as it always did whenever she twirled, and the tasty scent of oriental pipe tobacco wafted into the room like the fingers of an aroused poltergeist. Blade was there, behind the looking glass, and the steps quickened until her long hair flew from the small of her back and spun wildly through the air. She closed her too-scary eyes, as she had been told she must do when Blade came, and the rhythm of aboriginal drums penetrated her and tickled her, tapped and hammered at her from inside her bones, tripped switches in her mind.

  "My heart beats like the thunder of a great forest fire,” said the echo of a man's voice on a speaker system. “I am pressed for time, but I just had to see you for a few moments.” He was nearby, as ready as she was, exactly at the appointed hour and minute and second.

  Darlene's silence, or at least her abstinence from words, was supposed to begin with the sound of his voice—the cardinal rule. She thought of the pleasure he would have watching her while he “touched himself"—that's what they called it at the Meat Shop—and she thought of her own pleasure at moving the spirit of the phantom prince. She used her hand to dance herself into a mighty orgasm, then crumbled to the floor. She threw her heels up on the chesterfield and let her hips continue lunging, grabbing for more.

  "You are the Earthling of my dreams,” said the trembling voice of her client as she declined wetly into a slow rocking from side to side. “I'll see you in a few days, when I get back from ... from my trip ... and at that time I will enter your body. There's a present for you in the bedroom. I hope you like it."

  With that, he was gone, as if he'd never been there at all—or so Darlene believed. She rose slowly, picked up the silk kimono and held it to a slippery chest. Then she walked into the bedroom and closed the door, as per plan.

  Blade actually waited a few minutes before leaving the viewing room with the two-way mirror, waited for things to settle down, waited so he could tidy up. He stuffed the last wet tissue into his suit jacket pocket, pulled up his pants, zipped, tucked in his white shirt, did up his belt and tightened his tie. Then, with a final glance through the mirror to make sure his favorite Canadian was still in the bedroom with the door closed, he left the closet, walked quickly out the penthouse door, rode the private elevator to the main floor, ducked out the rear door and slipped into his waiting limousine.

  The world was changing far too fast for this phantom prince. He felt that if he relaxed his focus, everything he cared about would dissolve into droplets of molten lava, explode, like the mother of all hydrogen bombs. Maybe ... when I come back from Winnipeg, he thought, I'll finally get up the nerve to have actual sex with that beautiful creature. He poured himself a shot of scotch from the limo's well-stocked pantry and aimed his mind at the affairs of state.

  In the top drawer of a dresser, Darlene found a Swiss watch, and two crisp thousand-dollar bills—freshly minted, or so it seemed. This is so nice, she thought. She looked at the face of a long-gone white man on the brown bills, and recounted the zeros after the ones. I must please him well. All phantoms should be this tuned in to the material needs of mortals. Maybe they are, of course. How could I ever know, or guess?

  GOOD FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2014

  Chapter 7

  COLD WAR II

  The colossal U.S. embassy stood on a prime piece of real estate just a skip down Sussex Drive from Parliament Hill—line of site neighbor; “real close” if you figured from the standpoint of modern technology. It was a luxury liner of a building, five stories high if you go by the rows of visible windows, topped with two peculiar topknots, one of glass with mysterious structures inside, the other without windows ... or so it seemed. The old digs, from before WWII to the turn of the century, was an old gray box on Wellington, physically closer to the Peace Tower on the Hill, right across the street, actually, but indistinguishable from all the other gray boxes on “the strip” ... well, indistinguishable except for the menacing eagle over the front door and the star-spangled bar-graph above the bird of prey. Now that emblem stood guard above the doors of this new fortress, a state-of-the-art post-911 bunker, with outside cement barriers that robbed tax-paying Ottawans of one lane of Sussex Drive for several hundreds yards.

  In the middle of the sub-basement, three floors beneath pavement level, there was a special room known as “the safe-room.” It was an austere place, vault gray, with a phone, a couch, a TV/VCR, a table and four not-very-comfortable chairs. The walls, ceiling and floor of this room were electronically alive with the simultaneous sounds of music and human voices plus an encyclopedia of other noises, but inside the room, there was only the faintest hum. There existed no technology anywhere that could eavesdrop on this place. The CIA had tried, at the request of the former ambassador, and they had failed.

  It was only here that General George Brampton felt free to discuss the Helliwell situation. He lowered himself carefully into a chair and double-checked the crease in his civilian trousers. “I don't see why I can't wear my fucking uniform in this snow-bitten country,” he said aloud to the empty space.

  He was weary—not the kind of tired you feel from too little sleep, but the far deeper fatigue that invades the body by minuscule increments, caused by years of struggle, with too little to show for it. “War is hell,” he said as he folded his hands on the table, “but this Cold War business is the worst. God damned thing should have ended when everybody thought it did, back in the glory days of Gorbachev and Yeltsin."

  The general's thoughts retreated to their usual hiding place, inside his skin, a knee-jerk concession to the rules that applied everywhere in the world except this room. He retired back in 2010, at age 68, but he had been politically exhumed and militarily kick-started when the Cold War resumed in 2012. With the God damned never-ending War on Terror plus the Second Cold War, the American way of life is going down the crapper, he thought.

  "I'm too old to be chasing a fucking Russian Bear,” he said out loud as he took off his glasses, sat them on his knee, and massaged his loose temples. With his hands slapped over his face, he could still catch the receding scent of his daily splash of Old Spice. He remembered when that was meant to twig the hot buttons of the ladies. Now it seemed to serve only to mask the odd odors that seem to glom onto aging, pleated skin.

  For all four decades of his illustrious career, the scuttlebutt had been: “If you're meeting with Brampton, do not be late.” Colonel Findlay was about to be late, but this day, the general was grateful for the few extra moments of peace. “Too damn old,” he repeated aloud into his hands.

  * * *

  It was 0900 hours. Colonel Roger Findlay stood hangdog against the back wall of the elevator, his briefcase in one hand and his umbrella in the other. His armed escort was professionally silent. The two men avoided eye contact as rigorously as they avoided idle chitchat. Loose lips and all that, they both remembered.

  Findlay always felt ill at ease in the embassy. He worked in, and out of, the American consulate in Toronto, Canada's pretty-big apple, a couple of hundred miles southwest. The poop on the Colonel for the past forty years was that he could research anything, and he was proud of that reputation.

  Every time he was summoned to Ottawa and entered the front door of the embassy, he could smell the residual vapors of power. Those in power simply adored that aroma, but those who served the powerful feared it. Politics is a blood sport, he said to himself. It's entertaining for the masses, but it stinks when it's your own blood.

  When the elevator came to a stop, he was led quickly and quietly to the unmarked room where the general was waiting. He went in, stood at attention until the foot-thick door shuddered shut behind him, and saluted smartly. “Sorry I'm late, sir,” he said too briskly. “Couldn't be helped."

  Brampton stood to greet his colleague. “At ease,
Findlay, at ease,” he said, with a small, unmilitary wave and a cursory handshake. “How are you?"

  "Very well, sir,” he lied. He'd had little sleep the past two nights, but he would never allow his discomfort to show.

  "You have the tape?” asked the general as he picked up the remote, clicked on the television, and killed the sound.

  "Yes sir,” answered Findlay as he opened his briefcase—he knew that when General Brampton said “tape,” he could mean a CD, a DVD ... all sorts of things. “Like you said ... cutting-edge stuff, off-the-wall stuff. Actually, I recorded two clips—one's just funny. I think they're both more off-the-wall than cutting-edge, but that's your call."

  Brampton's eyes lit up a bit, a very tiny bit. “What's the funny one?” he asked.

  "Just an old Johnny Carson sketch from nineteen eighty-two, about a politician forced to hold a press conference while he was wired to a polygraph. My assistant thought you might enjoy it."

  "Is it good?"

  "Carson cracks me up,” said Findlay. “Do you want to see it?"

  "Maybe just a bit.” He felt silly opting to look at nonsense in such extremely serious circumstances, but for most of his military career, whenever he wasn't overseas, he had watched Johnny Carson, from his first Tonight show in 1962 until his final show in 1992. “Just a few seconds,” he added. Come to think of it, I used to watch Johnny almost every night when I wasn't overseas as well, he thought. Or is that what I just said?

  Findlay was surprised. Brampton rarely laughed. It was hard to tell, but maybe the old man was actually in a good mood. That could happen, he assured himself. Theoretically. He called up a section that he had found particularly amusing.

  Male reporter: Isn't it true that you won't subsidize heating bills for our senior citizens this winter?

  Carson: Absolutely not! No one is more concerned about our senior citizens than I am.

  BUZZ

  Carson: There may be some small cutbacks.

  BUZZ

  Carson: Some big cutbacks.

  BUZZ

  Carson: We're going to freeze their asses off.

  [Laughter]

  Male reporter: It's been alleged that your major contributors are corporate fat cats.

  Carson: That is not true. All of my contributions come from the small workingman.

  BUZZ

  Carson: From the middle class.

  BUZZ

  Carson: It's all from the Mafia.

  [Laughter]

  Female reporter: Congressman, what's your position on equal rights for women?

  Carson: I'm glad you asked that. I look forward toward a day when all Americans are equal, regardless of sex.

  BUZZ

  Carson: I'm looking toward a day when they're kind of equal.

  BUZZ

  Carson: I'm looking at your boobs.

  [Laughter]

  "I miss Carson,” said the general. “Wind it forward to the important part, Findlay,” he said—his mind was still back in the days of videotape, when these functions actually took time. “And while you're doing that, I'll fill you in, tell you what I couldn't tell you over the phone."

  Brampton had been standing, leaning with one hand on the table. He hobbled over to a chair and sat down as normally as he could without throwing his back out. It used to embarrass him when younger officers or women saw the evidence of his physical frailty, but no more. He hadn't been recycled for hand-to-hand combat. He had been recalled to service in Cold War II because of his superior military mind. The brain is mightier than the H-bomb, he remembered. He used to say that to raw recruits back in the 1970s, when he was a mere sergeant.

  "For years, we've had suspicions about Senator Joe Cadbury,” he said to Findlay. “He's not a Commie. We know that. But he is one of those pesky liberal squishheads ... always promoting peace ... you know the type ... absolutely no understanding of what's really going on in the world. We tap his phones. We got parabolic mikes aimed at his office, his home. The poor bugger can't beat his wiener that we don't count the strokes. I always felt it was a mistake to be on his case so heavy. He's basically a decent man, and we never got any usable dirt on him anyway ... until this Wednesday, when we had this hot intercept ... and that's when I called you.” Today's Friday, right? he thought. Yeah, yeah ... Good Friday ... whatever...

  "One of the local lobbyists made an appointment with him to meet a taxi driver, and it turns out this guy—his name's Victor Helliwell—is like some kind of a human fuckin’ lie detector! Whatever you say, he knows if it's true or not. But does the good senator call President Barker or his own PM or his military guys or even his own fuckin’ RCMP? No, he doesn't. He sends the lie detector guy over to see Randall Whiteside, for Christ's sake, so they can make money off him. Can you believe that?

  "That's why I asked you and your team to find whatever you could about the science and art of lie detection ... not the standard stuff, but the weird stuff. I don't believe in any o’ that psychic shit. This Helliwell character referred to his lie detection thing as a skill, an ability, but I don't buy it. There has to be some rational explanation. I don't know how he does this thing, but whatever it is, it works, and we've got to get it. At the very least, the enemy must be prevented from getting it.” He wasn't sure if he meant the Russians or the Arabs or ... “Whatever,” he added, flapping a mitt in an arc that covered pretty much everywhere.

  That called for a minor breather. He was about to get into an area where he considered Findlay to be weak. He hated weakness. He'd hated it all of his adult life, until he had developed a few weaknesses of his own. But his failings were physical, and no reason for shame. Findlay's weaknesses were psychological, mental, avoidable. What he had was an attitude. It never showed, but Brampton could sense it, as surely as when he was on his belly in the bush and “knew” that a deer was heading his way ... or a gook, or a raghead, or ... In any event, Findlay was a fairly good officer, on balance, and there was no sense playing to his shortcomings.

  "Obviously, this guy has to be stopped,” he stated. “Here we are on alert, right up at DEFCON-TWO, on both sides of the Iron Curtain and the Oil Curtain, for twenty months in a row, since August of twenty twelve, missiles at the ready, and the only damned thing that bastard Joe Cadbury can think about is making fucking money, for the love o’ Christ. People like him didn't learn piss-all from the first Cold War, or the War on Terror, or any other war.

  "Now, this ... this taxi driver ... he claims that anybody can learn to do what he does, and that's how they plan to make their millions, by teaching this skill to all comers. And we've found out that he can even detect a lie over the TV, for Christ's sake—he told that to Cadbury. Can you imagine what we'll be up against if those buggers start teaching all kinds of people to do that? Teaching Commies to do that? Teaching terrorists to do that? We'd have to..."

  Brampton wasn't aware that he was tuning out, but suddenly he was 20,000 feet in the air, looking down at little green concentric circles as they rippled outward from around the targets. March, ‘69, he remembered. His job, as described to him verbally and loudly by the Pentagon, was to bomb the living shit out of Cambodia. It was a neutral country, but that wasn't his concern. More than three thousand B52 raids, he recalled as he shook his head. “A hundred thousand tons of ordnance we dropped on them bastards,” he said out loud, as if Findlay had been privy to his thoughts for the last half-minute.

  The look on Findlay's face revealed massive confusion, or worse.

  Either he's thick, or he hasn't been listening, concluded the general. “Cambodia!” he shouted. “The fucking Cambodian campaign. Nixon went on national television and told the American people and the world we weren't doing it. Just ... imagine what would have happened if this Helliwell character had been around then, and if he had exposed all that stuff! It would have been a total fucking disaster for the government, for the military, and for the entire Cold War I effort ... for democracy, Jesus Christ!

  "Anyway,” he continued, hauling
in oxygen, “this is a very serious situation we've got here. I'll tell you the rest of it later. Let's take a look at the rest of that video and see if it sheds any light on things. When's it from?"

  "Two thousand and one,” said Findlay as he reoriented himself internally and pressed the play button. “Thirteen years ago."

  Anchor: ... and that's the news for Thursday, March fifteen. Stay tuned for Cross Country Pulse. Today, Paula Choquette interviews George Cluff, a man originally from Richmond Virginia who claims his machine can tell if you're lying by the way you talk ... coming up next.

  As the advertisements began, Findlay pressed fast-forward—or he said that was what he was doing—he'd learned that to get along with Brampton, you were best to set up the technology as if it was from twenty or thirty years ago. “This guy Cluff had no credibility whatsoever with the police or the courts,” he said. “Apparently, his technique wasn't even close to the standards of accuracy of the traditional polygraph, the galvanic skin-response machines, where they use electrodes. And ... Cluff died in a plane crash, just after he did this interview in aught one, and he ... okay, here's the interview."

  Choquette: Meet George Cluff, an American inventor with what he calls his twenty-pound machine—that's about nine kilos for us Canadians—a machine he claims can tell if you're lying by the way that you speak. Mr. Cluff, how does this gadget of yours work?

  Cluff: Well, Paula, it's called the C.V.A., for “Cluff Voice Analyzer.” When you talk, your voice emits vibrations, and these can easily be measured and represented on a graph, here—you see on the paper there—that's you doing the intro and me starting my answer. Some of the vibrations from your voice are beyond the range that the human ear can detect ... too high or too low. This machine picks up and measures only those inaudible frequencies. When you lie, these little lines go crazy, with large zigzags instead of the small ones you see here. Whenever I see any of those exaggerated squiggles, I know they indicate the psychological stress that comes from a person's anxiety about getting caught telling a lie. No one can control these inaudible frequencies in their voice, so what we have here is a lie detector that can operate without any electrodes being applied to your body.