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

by Updegrove, Andrew

  The prepaid phone began ringing.

  “Hey Dad – nice work.”

  “Nice work? That wasn’t exactly an Enigma class challenge, Frank. I hope you weren’t too worried about somebody intercepting it?”

  “At this point, no. But for what we’re talking about now, yes, which is why I wanted to use a disposable phone. I assume you didn’t call me back on your regular line?”

  “Know more than that, do I,” his father intoned in a solemn voice.

  “Oh come on, Dad, can’t we leave the Yoda bit behind with the last adventure?”

  “A new adventure this is?”

  “DAD!”

  His father chuckled. “Okay, okay. So what’s up?”

  Where to begin? He hadn’t been in touch with his father since his visit, and felt guilty for leaving him in the dark.

  “Well, it’s like this. Not long after I left your place, I was asked by an undercover type to help the government figure out whether someone has been monkeying with the presidential candidate polls. Turns out someone was, and I was able to figure out how they did it. They want me to stay available through the primaries, in case it looks like something funny starts happening again.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. You mean people aren’t really planning on voting for all the wing nuts the polls say they are?”

  “That’s hard to say. All we know is that sometimes they weren’t saying they favored the particular wing nuts the polls said they did.”

  His father chuckled again. “Okay, so I assume you’re working for my alma mater, the FBI this time?”

  “Nope. This time it’s Voldemort.”

  There was silence at the other end of the phone.

  “Okay,” Frank continued, “Not Voldemort. That’s just what…” he paused before selecting a pronoun, “I call it, because it’s some super-secret NSA type outfit that isn’t supposed to exist, much less have a name.”

  “Interesting. So if you’ve already caught the hackers, to what do I owe the honor of this subterfugenous contact?”

  How should he answer that? He hadn’t exactly caught the hackers so much as been lucky enough to have one confess to him. And he didn’t really want to start telling his father about Josette.

  “Well, there’s two things. First up, my job was to just figure out how the hack was carried out. It’s up to Voldemort to catch the black hats. I think there may even be another group out there as well.”

  “And the second thing?”

  “Right! That’s the reason I’m calling. I think the guy from Voldemort bugged my camper when he came out to recruit me. Probably a geolocation unit, too, and who knows what else besides.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me a bit. They’re just being thorough. And you did manage to give the FBI – the CIA, too − the slip last time, didn’t you? Twice, as I recall.”

  Frank hadn’t looked at it that way. But still, he had no desire to let Butcher know everything he said and did, much less have him find out about Josette and the FdL.

  “Well, whatever. But I don’t like the idea of someone I’m spying for spying on me, and I want to do something about it. Can you think of anyone from your FBI days that might be willing and able to scan my camper and find whatever’s in there?”

  “More than likely. We had annual meetings and I got to know guys from all over. Where are you, anyway?”

  “Iowa.”

  “Give me a minute or two to dig around. Call you right back.”

  As promised, it wasn’t long before the phone rang again.

  “Okay. Got just the guy for you. Name’s Howard – Howie − Schotz. I can give him a discrete call and let him know that you’ll be stopping by. Take down this address….”

  With a now-clear directional conscience, Frank drove back onto the highway and headed east. A sign informed him that it was 84 miles to Des Moines.

  * * *

  21

  Every Picture Tells a Story (Don’t it?)

  It was late, but Richard Fetters still sat before his computer screen. In less than twenty-four hours, the good citizens of Iowa would begin gathering in town halls and cafeterias to caucus, and the decisive phase of the primary season would begin. He was feeling uncertain, and uncertainty was not a state of mind he cared for. Indeed, he had labored long and successfully to wring every element of chance out of his political career.

  Acquiring that ability had taken time, though, as evidenced by the row of pictures on the wall above his desk. The first one displayed a far younger version of himself, with arms upraised and a cockeyed smile, acknowledging the cheers of his campaign team as he claimed victory in his first Congressional race. Those had been heady days, with everything to gain and nothing to lose − a time when a roll of the dice meant opportunity rather than risk.

  He had served three terms in the House, but the stress of defending a seat in a swing district every two years took its toll, as did the strain of feigning real interest in the welfare of the citizens whose hands he shook while stumping for their votes. When the senior senator of his predominantly blue state announced his retirement, Fetters willingly accepted the invitation to run for the seat. As he expected, he was decisively defeated by the popular former governor he ran against.

  But that was all according to plan. The party had needed a candidate to take the fall, and in politics, sacrificial lambs could be well rewarded if they were savvy enough to strike their bargain in advance. For Fetters, the payoff was trading the vicissitudes of elected office for the type of political power that could be built upon and consolidated without the need for constant glad-handing at coffee shops and county fairs.

  That explained the next picture, in which he was accepting the party leadership of his state, and the one to the right of that, where he was being welcomed as the Chairman of the national party. In each picture his demeanor became more confident, the set of his brow more determined as he became more skilled at a game he was better suited to play. Back room politics were direct; either you had the clout or you didn’t. When you looked another professional in the eye, each of you knew where the other stood in the political food chain. He had been determined to get to the top of that chain, and found that his dispassionate personality and calculating nature gave him the ability to realize his ambitions.

  In the fourth picture the setting was more formal. This time, only his right hand was in the air. The other lay flat on a bible held by a Supreme Court Justice. He served four years as Secretary of Defense, a just reward for helping ensure the last Republican president’s re-election. But his cabinet tenure ended when the Democrats took back the White House, and he had been on the political sidelines ever since. Still influential, yes. But without a top position to operate from he was no longer part of the inner circle that called the important shots behind the scenes.

  That had been fine for a time, as his plan going into the cabinet had been to take an excessively well paid private sector job on his way out again, the kind that was always available to former Defense Department officials. That was how things worked in Washington, and he was not disappointed – in the fifth and final picture above his desk he was standing, arms crossed and legs spread, in front of the floor to ceiling windows of a lofty corner office.

  Facing off Wall Street as the CEO of a multinational military contractor was not only obscenely remunerative, but also liberating in comparison to heading a public bureaucracy under the constant watch of Congress and the media. But it wasn’t long before his new life became tame and uninteresting. He had no private sector experience to inform his decisions, and only generic managerial skills to work with. That made him dependent on subordinates who knew more than he did about the business he was supposed to be running. And he missed the behind the scenes intrigue of Washington, as well as sparring with a dozen other influential administration members for the ea
r of the president. Now he was the one at the top, and he found the similar machinations of his own management team to be tedious.

  He found, too, that the techniques he’d refined in the political world weren’t conducive to creating the type of cohesive, motivated management team that achieved results and drove up the value of his stock options. By the end of his second year in the private sector he was actively planning his return to the center of power.

  But when he stepped down, he found that he’d underestimated the challenge of engineering his re-entry. Party politics abhorred a vacuum, and the hierarchy had reshuffled seamlessly as soon as he gave up his chairmanship. And none of the players that mattered were inclined to welcome him back.

  Not that he had expected otherwise. While on the way up, he hadn’t been shy about throwing a sharp elbow whenever and wherever necessary – indeed, he had cultivated a reputation as someone not to be trifled with. By the time he reached the top, his position was based as much on fear as respect, and fear leads to alliances of necessity rather than loyalty.

  Better to pursue another approach, he had decided, and shortcut the laborious process of rebuilding a power base. This time, he would remain hidden in the shadows, aiming straight for the ultimate target and leaving nothing to chance. At his age, he only had room for one more picture on the wall, and he wasn’t going to waste it.

  Or at least that was the plan. Now, on the eve of the first primary, he was anxiously waiting to learn whether his careful planning would pay off. There was nothing further he could do to alter the outcome in Iowa, but still he pored through screen after screen of detailed field reports from the network of well-paid grassroots organizers he had hired. Each report estimated the number of voters that could be counted on to show up and commit to Wellhead, how many drivers had been arranged to shuttle elderly citizens to caucus locations, and whether local momentum seemed to be gaining or waning.

  He shut his computer down at last. All the available data indicated that everything should proceed as planned. Except, of course, that this was politics, and politics was never totally predictable.

  Still, Wellhead didn’t need to rank even second so long as the percentage gap between him and the winner was not too great. All that was required was for him to survive the Iowa caucus as a credible candidate. A nice run of machine-voting primaries would follow, and everything would become easy. After clobbering his opponents in three or four states, the weaker candidates would start dropping out. Soon it wouldn’t matter if he stumbled in one of the few other caucus states. It would simply be seen as a local problem, and any remaining candidates would be slinking off for the exits.

  But still. He wasn’t used to having this much riding on the actions of a few tens of thousands of caucus attendees.

  He stood up and walked into the pantry to pour himself a drink. Enough of this. He was too much of an old hand to suffer from election eve jitters. But then he returned to his office anyway, and stared at the same field reports again until long after he had finished his scotch.

  * * *

  Frank was scanning the names over the dingy store fronts of a row of buildings in a tired looking section of Des Moines as he idled down the street. There it was − Great Plains Network Support, dark and closed for the day. He turned two corners as he’d been instructed to do and drove up the alley behind the building.

  Halfway down the block he backed his camper up against a loading dock beneath a smaller version of the same sign and called the number he’d been given by his father, still using his disposable phone. A few minutes later, the metal door behind the camper shot up, and Frank stepped out the back door of his camper and into the building.

  He found himself in a large room with bare brick walls and rows of old fashioned, four foot long fluorescent lights suspended from a high ceiling. Beneath were a half dozen 4’ by 8’ tables, strewn with tools, cables and the exposed insides of servers and other computer equipment. Banks of cluttered shelves lined the walls.

  He was greeted by a late-middle age, stocky man with a double chin sparsely frosted with white whiskers vaguely approximating a beard. Frank could have predicted the plain white T shirt, baggy pants and old sneakers before he saw them.

  “So you’re Frank’s son, are you? Your old man thinks a lot of you – used to talk about you all the time – what a computer whiz you were!” He held out his hand.

  Frank was momentarily taken aback. At the time his father would have said those things Frank hadn’t known whether his Dad was alive or dead, and couldn’t have cared one way or the other.

  “Thanks for helping me out on such short notice, Mr. Schotz – I really appreciate it.”

  “Call me Howie, and not to worry. Business isn’t exactly coming out of the woodwork right now anyway. Let’s go to my office and you can tell me what you need.”

  Frank followed him through a door in the back of the work room and found himself in a small store room rather than an office.

  “Just another sec,” Schotz said, pulling a ring of keys out of his pocket before unlocking another door and leading Frank down a flight of stairs.

  The room they descended into was a far cry from the one directly above. The work bench here was uncluttered, the lighting was modern, and obviously sophisticated equipment was racked neatly along the walls.

  “I’m a bit more organized than my staff,” Schotz said as he led Frank through the work room and into a small office with a desk, a couch, and a wall covered with recognition plaques and other mementos from what Frank assumed were Schotz’s years with the FBI.

  “Everything done here I do myself. Have a seat.” He gestured at the couch as he settled in behind his desk.

  “So how’s your old man doing? We only spoke for a couple of minutes. Is he still hanging out in the desert with the UFO crowd?”

  “He’s good, and yes, he’s still out in Nevada most of the time. Guess he likes the peace and quiet. But we spent some time together last year, and since then he’s been to Washington to visit me and my daughter.”

  “I read about what the two of you were up to. Sounds like you and he gave our old employer quite a merry chase. I’ll bet he enjoyed that.”

  Frank laughed. “Yes he did. Luckily, the way things played out they couldn’t just cut him off, so they still pay him to keep an eye out around Area 51. But he’s not getting info out of the local office like he used to.”

  Frank pointed at the mementos. “It looks like you had quite a career with the FBI. Have you been out long?”

  “’Bout ten years. Once I put in enough time to max out my pension, I figured it was a good time to move on. But most of what I call my ‘downstairs’ work I do for them, or to folks they send my way. The FBI has lots of local offices, but they’re mostly staffed with field agents and administrative folks. Sometimes they send the specialist work to Washington or to a big regional office, but most of the time they send it out to a former staffer like me who’s qualified and confidential.”

  Without missing a beat, Schotz changed the topic.

  “So what can I do for you? Your Dad didn’t really say, except that it was up my alley. And don’t worry about the ‘why’ part of it. Just the ‘what’ will do. I don’t need to know any more than that.”

  That suited Frank fine. He’d been wondering how to politely avoid answering that kind of question if Schotz pressed him.

  “Well, there’s an easy part – or at least I hope it’s easy – and then there’s a trickier part. The easy part is I’m pretty sure the camper I’ve got parked out back has at least one microphone and transmitter planted in it, and maybe more devices besides – like to track where I am. I need to have the whole vehicle scanned to find out where they are.”

  “Piece of cake. I can do that for you in no time. How about the tricky part?”

  “Right. Well, my concern is that i
f we just pull out everything you find, the people that put them there will realize it, and then just plant new ones, and I’ll be right back where I started. I’ve got a few ideas about what to do about that, but none that I’m very happy with. I’m guessing you’ll have some better ones.”

  “No worries there, either. I’ve got a few tricks that will work just fine. But first I’ll need to know how you want to handle it. Should the bad guys not hear or know where you are, or do you want to feed them some disinformation while you’re at it?”

  “That sounds interesting. What do you have in mind?”

  “Well, a tracker is the easiest bug to mess with. I can give you a pretty cute little unit that you can use just like a GPS. Plug in whatever destination you want, and it will simulate you going there even though you’re really going somewhere else.”

  “That’s very cool.”

  “Yup. I can hook my device up in parallel with theirs without them ever realizing it. Any time you want to drop out of sight, you’ll be able to flip the switch, program in a fake destination, and that’s where they’ll think you’re going.”

  Frank felt a surge of elation. This was great! He felt like Sean Connery in an old James Bond movie listening to Q rolling out the new toys he’d get to play with.

  “That sounds awesome – definitely, count me in for one of those. I don’t know how or when I may use it, but the potential is amazing.”

  “It is pretty cool. If you plug in the date you want to be visible again, it’ll also plot a course to arrive there the same time you do. Once your real location and the one it’s transmitting converge, you just flip the switch again, and they’ll never know that you’ve been somewhere else.”

  “I like that a lot. How about for the microphone? I guess I could just play loud music every time I don’t want to be heard.”