The Lafayette Campaign: a Tale of Deception and Elections (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 2)

by Updegrove, Andrew

  That sounded a bit too smarmy, so he returned to a question that had occurred to him earlier.

  “How did you know where to pose by the side of the road in Nevada?” Then it hit him – Butcher had probably had a tracking device and a microphone planted in his camper even before it was delivered to him.

  “Scratch that – I just got it. But if your friend at Voldemort knew so much about me already, what was the point in your scamming your way into my camper?”

  “Because she did not know so much as you think. Voldemort has layers of security, even inside, as you might expect. And our colleague that works there is not so senior, you see. She works with someone named Len Butcher, and monitored your location for him, but did not have access to the information received from the microphone. So we would have no way to know if you discovered our secrets – if that happened, we worried that we might walk into a trap.”

  “So are you telling me you hacked my system way back then? What did you do – put in a back door so you could monitor what I was doing any time you wanted to?”

  He was about to storm away from the table when he noticed that Josette was no longer looking meek and repentant. Instead, she looked determined, and also suddenly older.

  “That’s exactly right, Frank. This is not a game, you see. And we are not little ‘fillies’ – yes, I know that word. We are willing to take chances, yes, but we are not foolish. We have no wish to go to jail unnecessarily, or to fail in our mission. If that means hitching a ride in your camper and tapping into your system, yes, I was quite willing to do so.”

  Frank began drumming his fingers on his thigh. So now he knew how far Josette was willing to go to get information. Strangely, the realization left him feeling calmer.

  For a time they sat in silence, staring at each other. Suddenly, Josette frowned.

  “Frank, have you been sick?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  She looked at him more closely. “I don’t know; there is something about you that looks different…”

  Ah! He’d been wondering whether she would notice he’d lost weight – twelve pounds now!

  “Well, I have been running and working out a bit.”

  “Oh! I see. Well, don’t do too much.” She reached across the table and turned his newspaper so she could see the headlines.

  “Yeah, well as you may recall, I was up really late last night.”

  They went back to staring, this time at their silverware. At last, a waitress materialized at Josette’s elbow.

  “Sorry to take so long. What will you have, darl’n? Your dad’s already ordered.”

  Frank’s eyes grew wide; Josette tried not to smile.

  “The fruit salad, please, and tea,” she said, her accent clear.

  “Oh! My mistake. Guess he’s not your dad after all.” She gave Frank a curious look and walked away.

  Frank debated what to say next, and wondered whether he should simply get up and leave. He stared across the room and out the window. At last he said, “So what will you and your friends do next?”

  “Ah!” she said, relieved. “Ah – yes, that is an interesting question. About that we are not so sure. It was never our intent to do more than try to motivate your sensible voters. But we failed so badly at that, did we not?”

  “Yes, it does look that way, doesn’t it? And if you hadn’t been flipping the poll results, maybe Davenport or Cabot would be ahead right now! Did you ever think of that?”

  “Yes, Frank. Indeed, we are wondering that.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Because towards the end we decided that this might be a problem, yes? So we did not do anything to the polls when Randall Wellhead entered the race. We were quite unhappy that he did so well, all on his own.”

  Frank’s eyes looked a bit vacant as he tried to sort through the dates and events of the last month.

  “So let me ask you this: did you and your friends ever instruct the pollsters’ computers to start checking a legitimate time signal again?”

  “No, no. We did not do that, because then we would have to hack the systems all over again if we changed our minds. We simply did nothing.”

  “You’re sure about that? There’s no chance that one of your friends might have decided to carry on anyway?”

  “No Frank. Why do you ask?”

  “Because when we checked the inputs to the pollsters’ machines after Wellhead entered the race, the poll results were still being switched. So if you and your friends didn’t do the switching, then who did?”

  * * *

  19

  Treaty Time

  The phone on White Crow’s desk rang. When he saw the number in the window, he smiled.

  “Hello, Dick. It is always such a pleasure to hear from you.”

  “I’m sure. What is it you want to talk about?”

  “The debate tonight, of course. I want to be sure that our understanding is clear.”

  “Of course it’s clear. I don’t operate any other way.”

  “To be sure, and I apologize. I phrased that badly. I meant between you and Wellhead. He is not, to put it politely, very good at staying on message, is he?”

  “He’s been thoroughly coached.”

  “Has he had a chance to meet Henry yet?”

  “No, but it’s been made clear to him that Yazzie’s off limits. I assume you can vouch for your candidate as well?”

  White Crow liked the sound of that. There had never been a Native American presidential candidate before. “Yes. There are plenty of targets to shoot at besides yours, and anyway, that’s not Henry’s style.”

  “Good. And just to be sure there’s no confusion − you understand that while we can promise to nominate Yazzie for Secretary of the Interior, we can’t and won’t guarantee that the Senate will confirm him. I don’t want any repercussions if your man throws his support to Wellhead when he drops out of the race and then his appointment gets filibustered.”

  “I am quite familiar with how the process works. You can be assured that if you do your part, we will do ours.”

  Fetters began to respond, but White Crow cut him off.

  “But hear me well when I say this: if it looks to us like your party isn’t supporting his cabinet nomination strongly, you can be sure there will be consequences.”

  Fetters wasn’t used to receiving threats, veiled or otherwise, and especially not from somebody like White Crow. But he needed to rely on the cooperation of the casino manager, at least for now.

  “You needn’t be concerned. We see Henry as a long-term asset to a Wellhead administration. He’ll give us some cover with the environmentalists, and he’ll add a non-Republican voice to the Cabinet without offending our right wing by taking a Democrat on board.”

  “Good. I’m glad that we understand each other.” White Crow looked at his watch. “And now I see it’s time to watch the debate.”

  * * *

  Frank and Josette were sitting in the middle of a very full community college auditorium, waiting for the candidates to walk on stage. Frank had a tablet computer on his lap, tuned to the network that was hosting and streaming the debate. Sharing a set of ear buds, they strained to hear the two network commentators over the babble of the crowd surrounding them.

  Of course the big news today was the entry of the newest candidate into the presidential race.

  That’s right, Roger. It’s amazing how quickly this has all come together. Until his formal announcement today, just about nobody had ever heard of Henry Dodge Yazzie. But it turns out he was doing very well with his signature campaigns while the media was ignoring him. He’s already qualified in eleven states to run as an Independent, and says he intends to make the deadline in all fifty.

  That would really be extraordinary, Peter! It’s a
mazing to see a Native American not only making a run for the Presidency, but gathering real support as well. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see how well he does once the voting starts.

  Frank took his ear bud out and turned to Josette. “A Native American in the race? How did that happen?”

  “I have no idea.” She typed in the address of a news site, and there, staring out at them, was the face of a fortyish, obviously Native American man speaking to a crowd of about fifty people. Behind him was a banner with big, bold letters that read: “Yazzie for President.” In smaller text below it read: “It’s Time for a Real Change in Washington.”

  “What does this mean for the election?”

  “Probably not much for this guy. Unlike Europe, third-party candidates never stand a chance here. But sometimes they’ve taken enough votes away from another candidate to tip an election.”

  “Has no one here ever won as an Independent?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “But why?”

  Frank strained to remember more about how his own country’s political system worked. “Well, I think we’ve always had only two really successful political parties at a time, although I think the two we have today aren’t the same as the original ones. Most voters have always been members of one party or another, although I guess that’s not so true anymore – there are a lot of people today that don’t identify with either party.”

  “So why then can an independent not win?”

  “Ah, well, you see we’ve got this weird system left over from colonial days where the President isn’t actually directly elected by the people. Instead, in all but one or two states it’s a “winner take all” situation. Whichever candidate gets the most votes wins that state. Then, each state sends a certain number of representatives to participate in what they call the Electoral College – I guess they must be called “Electors.” They’re the ones that actually elect the president, although they’re supposed to vote the same way the largest number of the citizens in their state voted. So even if a third-party candidate gets a lot of votes nationally, they never win a single electoral vote unless they get more votes than both of the main party candidates in at least one state.”

  “But still, that is possible, is it not?”

  “Well, I guess it’s possible, but it sure would be hard, with all of the money the main party candidates have to work with these days. And a third-party candidate would have to have a really clear, really popular platform − one that was different from what the other two candidates were running on or people wouldn’t have much reason to vote for him.”

  Frank took the tablet back and started typing. “The only third-party candidate I can remember that did pretty well was a guy named H. Ross Perot.”

  He skimmed a page, “Yes – he ran twice, and the first time, even though he got almost 19% of the popular vote, he didn’t get any electoral votes – not a single one. Almost 20 million people voted for him, and it was as if no one did. He had a fortune to spend on his election, too.”

  Frank read a bit further. “Wow – I’d forgotten this: a hundred years ago, Teddy Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate four years after he stepped aside to let William Howard Taft, his Secretary of War, run for President. And Roosevelt lost terribly, too.”

  “And Mr. Taft? How did he do?”

  “It looks like he was clobbered! Wilson – our president during World War I − got 435 electoral votes, Roosevelt got 88 – and Taft got only 8! And listen to this – even though Roosevelt got 11 times more electoral votes than Taft, he only had 4% more of the popular vote. Wow!”

  “So a third-party candidate can take a lot of votes away, then, yes?”

  “Sure. Back in 2000, George W. Bush probably wouldn’t have won if a consumer advocate named Ralph Nader hadn’t run for President, even though he knew he couldn’t possibly win.” Frank was typing again. “Looks like he only got 2.74% of the popular vote, and of course no electoral votes at all.

  “Al Gore – the Democratic party candidate that year − actually ended up with 500,000 more votes than Bush. But that wasn’t good enough, because Bush won in states with just a few more electoral votes than Gore. One of those states was Florida – he won that one by just 437 votes.” Frank let out a low whistle. “And Nader got more than 98,000 votes in Florida!”

  “I think I do not like your Mr. Nader very much.”

  “Yeah, a lot of Democrats felt the same.”

  Frank switched the tablet back to the debate coverage. “So I wonder which party this guy Yazzie would hurt the most?”

  * * *

  20

  Hello – Is This the Person to Whom I am Speaking?

  Frank checked out of the motel early the next morning. He had a lot on his mind as he motored slowly towards the highway.

  He’d tentatively decided not to drive too far. The Iowa caucuses were only two days away, so why not stick around to see what would happen? The only question was where to hang out until then.

  Then there was the question of what to do about his bugged vehicle, how to deal with his long-neglected publishing contract, and figuring who might have hacked the last poll – the one that Josette had claimed the Fillies hadn’t influenced.

  He tried to make headway on those issues but found he was too distracted. The problem was a certain guerrilla question that kept sneaking out of his subconscious to sabotage his concentration: what about Josette?

  Neither had said anything much after the debate about where they would go next, other than to acknowledge that each would be monitoring the primaries as they hopscotched around the country – Frank, for Voldemort as well as to satisfy his own curiosity, and Josette, as part of her academic project, and to satisfy whatever other goals she had or hadn’t shared with him.

  At the moment, Frank was driving in a direction that would not preclude ending up in Des Moines, and he grudgingly admitted that his direction might possibly have been influenced by Josette mentioning that this might be her next stop as well. But where else should he go? And Des Moines was a big enough city that the chances had to be low that he would run into her anyway.

  There seemed to be no purpose in dwelling further on that topic, so he tried to get back to something more practical. Like the fact that right now one of Len Butcher’s staff might be listening to the same radio station he was, via a microphone hidden who knew where in his camper?

  He wanted to find that microphone as a matter of principle. Well, more than principle. He didn’t trust Butcher, and there were already things he’d found out that he hadn’t shared with Butcher at all – such as who had hacked the pollsters. But if he found the microphone, then what? If he removed it, Butcher would know as soon as it went dead.

  Maybe he could start by occasionally jiggling the battery wire a little bit, to introduce static. After a day or two, he could start disconnecting it occasionally, and then hook it up again a few minutes later. Butcher would think it was just a wire loosening up due to roadway vibrations.

  No, that wouldn’t work either. Butcher might have planted more than one bug. Frank would never know if that was the case unless he heard it through Josette. And what about his computer system? Maybe that had been compromised as well.

  No, it was silly thinking about playing with wires. It was time to call in the cavalry.

  He pulled off the highway at the next exit and parked at a gas station with a cafe. He pulled a small box out of a drawer in the camper, and walked into the cafe. Sitting down, he took a brand new phone out of its packaging − one of several cheap mobile phones, each loaded with twenty hours of prepaid time, that he’d purchased during his previous exploit and never got around to using. He pulled a napkin out of the dispenser on the table and copied the phone’s number onto it two digits at a time: 21 52 53 86 41.

  After the waitress delivered his
coffee, he took his regular phone out of his pocket and called his father. But after letting it ring twice, he hung up, waited thirty seconds, and dialed the phone again. Good – his father didn’t pick up.

  When his father’s “leave a message” recording was over, Frank pulled the napkin out and began speaking.

  “Hi Dad – Frank. Hope all’s well. Hey, there’s a radio show that wants you and me to do that ‘long-lost father-son team cracking the Alexandria Project’ interview thing again. Would you let me know whether one of these dates would work for you? February 1, May 2, May 3 or August 6? Oops – one more – April 1? Get back to me, hey? Thanks.”

  He left a couple of dollars on the table and walked outside. Ideally, his father had been home when he called and had remembered the old signal about not picking up after a quick first hang up – kind of a sleazy way of avoiding paying long distance charges when you wanted to let someone know that you’d reached your destination safely, except this time he didn’t hang up quickly the second time as well. Anyway, he’d get the recorded message eventually if he was out.

  He was pretty sure his father would figure out that the message must have some kind of code in it, given the quick hang-up and the fact that the two of them had in fact never done a joint interview before. That should make him think to look for a message within the message, and the last part – “Get back to me, hey?” would clue him in to look for a hidden number. If he got that far, the rest would be easy: February 1 would obviously mean 21, May 5 would indicate 52, and so on.

  Frank felt pretty cute coming up with that little gambit, but it was cold outside and the wind was sending a thousand fingers through the tiny holes in Frank’s sweater. Maybe he’d been too cute and his father wouldn’t think the message sounded odd. Or maybe his father was out of town and wouldn’t get the message at all for days. He didn’t want to have to wait outside forever before getting back into his bugged camper.