“Josette mentioned your name when we spoke – please, do not be concerned – she mentioned it only in passing. That is why I asked to meet with you. I am hoping that perhaps you might be more successful than I in convincing her to come to her senses. If she does not, I fear that it will not end well for her.”
Frank had heard as much as he wanted to hear. He leaned back and caught the eye of their waiter.
“It’s rather warm in here,” he said abruptly. “What do you think about taking a walk?” In truth, he did suddenly feel uncomfortably warm. But mostly he wanted to buy some time to think.
Falconet raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. Moments later they were walking along one of the Capital’s broad avenues, weaving from time to time to avoid those traveling in the opposite direction. Falconet was not wearing the most sensible of shoes, and struggled to keep up with him. He said nothing for some time as he tried to work out how much to share with someone he knew almost nothing about.
After a half a block he realized how quickly he had been walking and slowed down.
“I’m sorry to be so rude – but you took me by surprise. And I’m afraid that before I can say anything more, I need you to tell me exactly what you believe Josette is about to do.”
Simone gratefully resumed a normal walking pace. She drew closer so as not to be overheard.
“Josette is convinced that someone is manipulating your presidential polls and primary voting, and she is determined to find out who it is. Were you not aware of this?”
Frank ignored her question. “And did she say how she would go about doing so?”
“No. Only that she felt that she must do something. She contacted me to ask my advice on what to do.”
“And what did you say?”
“That she must do nothing, of course! No, that it not quite true. At first, she asked whether I might help her contact authorities in France that might take an interest in the matter. But I have no way to do so, so I asked why she did not alert their American counterparts. She said that this was impossible. She suspects that it is the authorities that are behind the mischief.”
Nothing new there. So what should he say? They were at the edge of a park, with the usual number of homeless people, strolling tourists and office-break idlers. He spied an empty park bench and steered them in that direction. When they reached it, they sat down at opposite ends.
At first, neither said anything. Falconet realized that reaching out had been a mistake, and looked at her watch. She really should be returning to her conference. She stood up, and once again held out her hand.
“I am very sorry to have taken so much of your time, Mr. Adversego. I will go now.”
He stood up and ignored her outstretched hand, “No, I’m sorry. I’ve been very unhelpful; but I hope you can understand that there is very little I’m at liberty to speak about. But please, have a seat.”
She gave a thin smile, and hesitated. But at last she sat down, and waited to see what he might say next.
Frank frowned and turned away for a moment before sitting down once again himself. A lone child, perhaps six years old, caught his eye, flying back and forth on a set of swings nearby. The little girl’s face was intent and fearless as she pumped her legs harder and harder, determined to soar as high as the swing could take her, and perhaps a bit beyond. Already, she had climbed to the point where the chains of the swing were parallel to the ground, and still she pushed on. With a pang of remembrance, Frank recalled the sense of reckless weightlessness when the chains of your swing suddenly went slack. Then you plummeted straight down until they came taut again with a neck-snapping jerk.
It seemed as if the determined child must be tossed from her seat if she flew any higher, either on the upswing as she flew skyward, or in a random direction when the chains reasserted their authority. To Frank’s relief, a woman materialized out of his peripheral vision, striding forward until she stood just in front of the swing’s path. Stop! she ordered; No! the child screamed back.
Falconet was watching the contest now as well. Once more, the young girl flew upwards, but this time, during her precipitous descent, the woman leaped forward and seized the seat of the swing with both hands. Half running and half holding back, she slowed the swing down until the child’s powerful momentum was absorbed by the woman’s own backward-leaning weight, all the while attempting to avoid the child’s rebelliously flailing legs.
Frank made up his mind, and sat back down next to Falconet.
“Okay, I’ll speak with her. As I expect you know, Josette has quite a mind of her own. I will tell her that she is taking chances that are more hazardous than she realizes. I don’t expect that she’ll pay any more attention to me than she has to you. But I will try.”
Simone gave him a real smile, and put a hand on his. “I cannot ask for more than that. You are very kind, Frank. Will you let me know if there is anything further I can do?”
He wished he could reclaim his hand, but it was still trapped beneath hers. “Yes,” he answered without much conviction or intention to actually do so. “Yes, I will do that.”
“Good!” she said, releasing his hand and standing up again. “And now I see that I must return to my conference.” She looked around uncertainly for a moment. She laughed. “That is, if I can tell which way to go.”
“Do you want a cab? It’s easy to get one here.”
“No, no. It is a pretty day, and you see so much more of a city on foot. Can you tell me, though, which way it is to the George Mason University campus?”
“Sure. I’m headed in that direction myself. I can get you started.”
To his great relief, she changed the subject, asking him questions about the public buildings that were in view. The eyes of anyone passing the pair would have been immediately drawn to the tall, self-assured woman with the stylish scarf and a French accent. If they noticed her companion at all, it would have been to note how incongruous he looked in contrast. And yet the French woman seemed to be quite interested in what he had to say.
* * *
34
There’s No Fool like a Middle-Aged Fool
Frank was out on his morning run, sneakers flapping flat-footed on the pavement as he labored through his usual route. He’d decided early on that he’d train for distance rather than speed, since his body had gone to great pains, as it were, to inform him that speed was not on the menu. But that was okay. He was exercising to stay in shape rather than train for a race.
He was rather astonished that he was still running at all. He had always disliked exercise as a physically and socially awkward child, and particularly during gym class at school. The embarrassing gym outfit, the damp, malodorous locker rooms, and, of course, the more athletic, mocking classmates – all were seared forever into his memory.
He had particularly loathed running. Sports weren’t part of his daily existence, and the gym program wasn’t regular enough to get anyone into shape, even under duress. When he and his classmates were herded out in the spring to flog their symbolic mile around the school’s soggy cinder track, he was usually the last puffing, aching, body to struggle across the finish line. The excruciating experience smacked of masochism, minus the payoff.
Now he found that the challenge of gradually building up his stamina had a strong appeal. And he had to admit that he did feel better for the rest of the day when he ran. Sometime during his second month of running his pain level had receded dramatically, and he now looked forward to the forty-five minutes each morning when he let his mind run as well, free from all distractions.
At least, he usually did. Today, as he ran in place waiting for a light to change, he wished he was one of those runners that blasted songs through earbuds into the defenseless inner sancta of their endorphin-stoked brains. Perhaps that might distract him from the tiresome loop his mind was insistently cycli
ng through. Its focus was not his recent and predictable failure to dissuade Josette from pursuing her real or imaged hacker, but on her continuing pleas for assistance. And therein lay the rub.
It seemed as if some sort of phantom debate team coach had taken up residence in his cranium, refusing to leave him alone. Frank didn’t like either of the positions available for him to argue.
The question, of course, was this:
Resolved: That Frank Adversego should render assistance to Josette Fernald in her quest to determine who is hacking the polls and voting in the U.S. primary election.
He chugged across the street and turned west along the Mall. At first blush, the “con” point of view had strong appeal. For one thing, he was not yet convinced that either type of hacking was actually occurring. And then there was the abiding challenge of relating to Josette simply as a friend. Okay, he could cut himself a bit of slack on that issue, given her flirtatious ways. How was he supposed to react when she turned on the charm?
But that led immediately to the more pernicious part of the relationship – if he should even call it that. He was relieved to know that she was older than he had first assumed, but he was nonetheless sure that she had no interest in him. That would mean that when she flirted she was playing him for whatever her current purpose might be. The problem was that she was awfully good at it. That, and the fact that while it was sometimes humiliating in retrospect, it could sometimes be awfully pleasant in the moment.
No fool like an old fool, right? He was painfully aware that one didn’t have to be that old to qualify for the part.
Reaching the Washington Monument, he made a wide, looping turn and began puffing his way back in the opposite direction. Then there was the “pro” side of the argument. Regardless of how he might feel about being manipulated from time to time by Josette, he couldn’t help feeling paternally protective of her as well; it was as much of a “man thing” as was the old fool part, despite the apparent emotional contradiction. If Josette’s assumptions were correct, whoever was hacking the election would scarcely hesitate to use violence if their scheme was in danger of being discovered. Who knew what they might do if they caught Josette sniffing around? Hell, his own government had tried to kill him the year before.
He swung back off the Mall and headed towards home. Time to play debate judge, and assess his own arguments. Should Frank Pro or Frank Con be declared the winner?
Both arguments had been persuasive. For a while his stride hammered out the refrain, Who should win? Who should win?
Two blocks later, there still seemed to be no decisive answer. Perhaps he needed to shed his judge’s hat and take external information into account. He was, after all, still on the Voldemort payroll, so wasn’t it his job to find out if Josette was right? And as an American, shouldn’t he feel some responsibility to catch whoever it was that had the unmitigated gall to hack a presidential election? And finally, wouldn’t he have to live with the consequences if he didn’t?
Without realizing it, he’d picked up speed after leaving the Mall, leaving him totally spent by the time he arrived at the front door of his apartment building. His forehead resting on one arm pressed against the wall, he stretched out his hamstrings and gasped for air. It took more than a few minutes before his breathing returned to normal.
Grasping the front door handle, he gave it an irritated tug. Damn it, he decided. Frank Pro had won the debate.
* * *
It was one of those wonderful, spring-like days that defy expectations by sometimes dawning during a Washington winter. Josette and Frank were taking advantage of the good weather to hold a planning session outside.
Josette was surprised and pleased when Frank told her that he was on board. Even he was feeling better about the situation, because the day after his running debate with himself Vickie had contacted him with a new assignment: his instructions were to thoroughly check several voting stations during the primaries to see if he could detect any evidence of vote manipulation.
“But that is perfect!” she said. “How do they expect you to do so?”
He took out his wallet and began sorting through the various cards jammed inside. “Here. Take a look at this.” He handed her the plastic card that Butcher had given him in Nevada months before and waited for her response.
At the top, she saw the words, “Lincoln IT Electoral Services.” Below that it read:
FRANK J. ADVERSEGO, JR.
Field Service Representative
Josette puzzled over the card. “What does the ‘J’ stand for?” she said at last.
“That doesn’t matter. The point is that I’ve got a way to check out voting machines to see if they’ve been tampered with.”
“Ah! Yes, that is very good! Did you get this from Voldemort?”
“Yes I did. If you look for Lincoln online, you’ll see that it has a very convincing website that says it sells and services all major lines of voting machines. I should be able to drop in just about anywhere and talk my way in.”
“But what if they recognize your name?”
Frank looked very smug now. “Watch this.”
He took what looked like a memory stick out of his pocket and plugged it into a port in his phone. Then he typed on his phone’s keypad for a minute, and finally slid the plastic business card along a groove in the side of the memory stick. When he handed the card back to her, it now read:
MILLARD FILLMORE
Field Service Representative
“If you check the Lincoln website, you’ll learn the surprising fact that the 13th President of the United States now works for Lincoln,” he pronounced triumphantly.
Josette knit her brows, looking puzzled. “Was he really the 13th president?”
“That’s not the point!” He’d be damned if he’d say it, but the point was that he had this really nifty gadget right out of a James Bond movie. How could she not be impressed?
“Okay, yes, I understand. This could be very useful to us.”
Frank barely heard what she said after that. He was too busy mentally kicking Frank Pro down a flight of stairs.
* * *
Two days later, he was parking his camper across the street from the county courthouse in Promise, Kansas, population 1,257, founded in 1876, according to the sign at the edge of town. Flanked by enormous cottonwood trees, the terra cotta trimmed brick courthouse was an impressive example of 19th century civic architecture, intended to bear witness to the boundless future and inevitable prosperity of a fast-growing town on the Great Plains.
That was then, however, and this was now. The courthouse looked pretty well maintained, but the rest of the town was clearly a run-down shadow of its former self. Only the grain silos and agricultural businesses by the railroad tracks looked active. The store fronts on Main Street were largely empty – the newspaper gone out of business long ago; the bank locked up for good; a restaurant with a faded “Welcome!” sign hanging a-kilter inside a chained-shut door never to open again – all the commercial cornerstones of a once burgeoning local economy were fly-specked and dark. All that remained were a thrift store, a couple of bars displaying unlit beer-brand neon signs in their day-dark windows, and a pharmacy. There were more churches than businesses still hanging on.
Frank had read about places like this, but never seen one first hand. Like so many other towns in the depopulating Great Plains states, the economic viability of Promise had been sucked out of it by changing times. The process started with the interstate highway that was laid out twenty miles to the north instead of along the grade of the railway line that had turned Promise from a dusty crossroad into a bustling county seat a century before. The last nail in the town’s coffin was driven home by Walmart, when it opened one of its superstores in a nearby town.
All of this had figured into Butcher’s decision to pic
k Promise for Frank’s first site visit after White Crow had ordered him to find out how the primaries might be being hacked. After all, how much of an IT budget could this hard luck town have? Frank should be able to get access to whatever he needed simply by flashing his card at the town office.
Or at least so it had seemed to Butcher. What he hadn’t factored into the equation was that the person doing the flashing would be Frank Adversego, who was not only the antithesis of an undercover agent, but socially phobic as well. Ordering a cheeseburger in a bar was enough to raise his anxiety level, so the thought of penetrating the defenses of a voting district in person rather than remotely via an Internet connection was enough to strand him in his camper while he reviewed his plan of attack.
Fifteen minutes later, a policeman walked out of the front of the courthouse. He stared idly in Frank’s direction before turning and getting into his squad car. Better get moving, Frank told himself. You don’t want to attract suspicion before you even get started.
Still uncertain regarding what he would say, he climbed down from the camper and extended the handle of a wheeled tool case he’d picked up at the same Walmart Death Star that had targeted the shoppers of Promise. It didn’t contain anything except his laptop, but he thought it added credibility as he towed it through the front door of the courthouse.
Inside, he looked for a directory, which turned out not to exist. Instead, there was a long, high-ceilinged hallway flooded with the morning light that streamed in through the large window at its eastern end. Its walls were lined with doors, each with a large frosted glass pane in the top half on which was painted the name of a department or official. He walked to one end, passing “Probate,” “Clerk of Courts,” and other unhelpful designations before backtracking and heading in the opposite direction, his footsteps echoing in the silence of what might as well be an abandoned building. Eventually he found a door that read “Electoral Commission.” Taking a deep breath, he turned the handle. The door was locked. Now what?
The Lafayette Campaign: a Tale of Deception and Elections (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 2) Page 23
