Most politicians were dirty. Filthy. Fisher knew he was the top predator, with the most to hide, but the minds of the majority of politicians were septic tanks of secrets, scandals, and hidden bodies. Although, for most of these pussies, these hidden bodies were only metaphorical.
But if he could read the minds of those in Washington, he could learn their biggest weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The locations of their skeletons. Their campaign strategies. Their fears and their hot buttons and their pressure points.
In short, he could turn them all into his puppets.
It would be no contest. He would be Godzilla to their Bambi.
But even knowing Hall’s location in the desert, the exploitation of this knowledge would take time and careful planning. First, he needed to assemble his own team of commandos. While this step would have been impossible for most, given his money and connections to the inner realms of the intelligence community, it had been surprisingly simple for him.
For decades, the business of fielding private armies had grown faster than almost any other, mushrooming during the Iraq war under George W. Bush, where these mercenary corporations had earned tens of billions of dollars. Euphemistically called Private Military Contractors, or PMCs—the most notable of which were Blackwater, DynCorp, Kroll, and Sandline International—these private armies collectively outnumbered the entire military force of the United States.
And all Fisher needed was one leader from their ranks. One man willing to form the nucleus of Fisher’s own private, although very tiny, army. He needed a partner. A point person with considerable military expertise who could recruit others.
So Fisher had used his access to the country’s vast intelligence databases to find the most competent, and ruthless, mercenary on file. After this it was a simple matter to describe the situation and how an alliance could benefit them both.
His new partner had worked quickly to recruit the others they would need, who would never know Fisher was involved in any way. Things were progressing even better than Fisher had expected.
And then the unthinkable had happened.
Hall had disappeared.
Just like that, he was gone once again. Fisher had received word of this just the day before.
Fuck!
The word was that Hall had managed this Houdini act all by himself. But Fisher didn’t believe it for a second, no matter how impressive his capabilities. That fucking ape, Justin Girdler, had to have helped him. Yet another reason for Fisher to throw his weight behind ensuring Girdler was court-martialed, and to exert his considerable influence to force others to do so as well. Girdler had shown he had a hard-on for this Hall. Maybe he fancied himself Hall’s guardian fucking angel.
Let’s see how effective a guardian you can be when your bony ass is in military court, thought Fisher triumphantly.
Okay, so Hall had gone to ground yet again. No problem. He would find him. No matter how difficult it was, and no matter what it took. And his new mercenary partner, who had previously been drummed out of the military for being a little too . . . overzealous, could come in handy in this regard, as well.
But time was wasting!
Fisher gulped down the last of his Manhattan and slammed the cocktail glass down hard on a shelf behind his desk.
Goddammit! He needed to spend every waking second racking his brain, thinking of all possibilities. How he would find Hall, and how he would proceed once he had.
Yes, only a hundred or so people knew about Hall. For now. But this knowledge would spread quickly. Fisher was confident there were none more ruthless, or opportunistic, than he was, but there would be others willing to take the ultimate gamble for the ultimate prize. The hunt for Hall would turn into a gold rush, if it hadn’t already, and he was determined to get there first.
But instead of holing himself up to work on his new obsession, he would be babysitting a fucking campaign manager. Fisher was still fuming about this a minute later when Engel arrived, right on time, as expected.
After cursory greetings the two wasted no time getting down to business. Fisher had Engel sit in a small chair at the foot of his imposing mahogany desk. Despite his impatience, Fisher knew that he needed to lend his political genius to be sure Tom Sutherland beat his Republican challenger, Donald Briggs. So he listened carefully as Engel ran through the highlights of his strategy.
When the man had finished, Fisher shot him a look of utter contempt. “A strategy even less impressive than I had expected,” he said. “Your focus is mainly on how great Sutherland is. You’re not doing enough to paint Briggs as an asshole. This isn’t the fucking Miss America pageant! You’re trying to win an election, not Miss Congeniality!”
“My thinking was—”
“I don’t give a shit about your thinking!” interrupted Fisher. “The fifth district has a lot of women,” he continued. “Most of them single. So one of your key strategic elements needs to be running Sutherland, hard, on closing the income gap.”
Engel blinked rapidly. “Could you go into a little more detail as to what you had in mind?”
“Really?” said Fisher. His dark brown eyes bored into Engel’s, and there was something about his unblinking stare that was unmistakably predatory. “Why had I assumed, as a campaign manager, you had actually studied campaigning? Since you haven’t, let me make my meaning even more clear. You need to run ads pointing out that a woman only makes seventy-seven cents for every dollar a man makes. Point out that the Republican asshole, Briggs, refuses to support legislation to narrow this gap. At the end have Sutherland look earnestly into the camera and say, ‘Women deserve to be paid the same as men. It’s only fair.’”
“I just wanted to be certain of where you were headed with this,” said Engel, fighting to keep his voice even. “Because I have studied campaigning. And I do know politics. This is an issue that’s been used for well over a decade. Back in 2014, Barak Obama even raised it in his State of The Union Address. I can quote him: ‘Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make seventy-seven cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment.’”
“Good. Maybe you’re less incompetent than I thought.”
Engel’s lips curled up into a snarl but he quickly returned his face to passivity. “My worry about this strategy is that even the most liberal papers gave Obama five Pinocchios on this one.”
“So what? If you had a year, I could list all the falsehoods Republican presidents have used that earned them five Pinocchios. This is a full contact sport. And the ends justify the means.”
“I know that,” said Engel. “But this could backfire. This factoid was on its last legs when Obama used it. Women may make slightly less—maybe—but the seventy-seven cents to the dollar statistic is what men and women make, on average. It isn’t a comparison of the two sexes in the same jobs, with the same experience. It’s comparing total earnings across all jobs, which ends up being apples to oranges in many cases.”
“Yeah, no shit,” spat Fisher. “Tell me something I don’t know. Men choose high-paying fields like engineering, chemistry, and mining more often than women do. Women choose lower-paying fields like education and social work more often than men do. This accounts for most of the difference. But so the fuck what? Are you in politics or the fucking priesthood? This statistic has been used so long because it always works! Truth doesn’t matter! It’s what people will believe that matters.”
“I don’t know. This has been debunked so often lately that people no longer—”
“Of course they’ll still believe it!” shouted Fisher. “You’re a fool. They’ll believe it because they’re programmed to. You construct the ad so everyone assumes you’re comparing identical jobs. But even if you gave the public the absolute straight scoop—if they didn’t tune you out or die of boredom—it wouldn’t change a fucking thing. We’ve conditioned the public to believe women are only making a fraction of what men make for so long now, they’ll believe the lie be
fore they believe the correction. This claim has been around for so long it’s created its own fucking reality. And there are cases where women really do make less for the same job.”
“There are,” said Engel. “But the opposite can also be true. Engineering companies desperate to attract women in the name of diversity often lure them with higher salaries.”
“You sound like you’re working for Briggs,” said Fisher in disgust. “You really don’t get it, do you? Most people are sheep. Stupid and uninformed. And they don’t dig. They don’t think for themselves. They’ll trust a sincere voiceover and whatever the television tells them. But even if they dig, they have no intuition for statistics anyway. Even experts can be fooled.”
His eyes continued boring into Engel’s with such intensity, the man was finally forced to look away. “In the second world war,” continued Fisher, “the allies conducted a study of planes returning from engagements in enemy territory. They determined the fuselages were the most exposed, because they were the most often hit. The vast majority of bullets and holes were found in the fuselages, whereas this was rarely the case when it came to the engines. So they decided to bolster the armor on the fuselages. Do you see their mistake?” asked Fisher.
Engel just blinked for several seconds and finally shook his head.
“They analyzed returning planes,” snapped Fisher, sneering condescendingly as though Engel were a complete idiot. “Of course they found most of the bullet holes in the fuselages. When the engines were shot, most of the time these planes never fucking returned. They were shot down. Get it? The planes whose fuselages were hit, and not their engines, were the only ones making it back to be studied.”
Engel’s eyes widened as he saw the truth of it.
“So even experts back then, and a smart guy like you, can be fooled by simple data, simple statistics, right? So don’t worry about the idiots in your fifth district. Fuck the truth squads. Fuck the five Pinocchios. For Sutherland’s constituents to learn this has been debunked, they’d actually have to read. And care enough to check. The pay gap is visceral. It feels wrong and unfair. Voters are already predisposed to think Republicans are uncaring, country-club pricks. So how dare Briggs refuse to support legislation to narrow this pay gap?”
“You don’t think it will matter that there is no such legislation?”
“Not a whit. You’ll get called on it. But so the fuck what? The ad will be seen by everyone. The correction by almost no one.”
“My feeling was that since the incumbent just resigned over a scandal, honesty would be at a premium.”
“This is politics!” snapped Fisher. “Where honesty is never at a premium! You really need to find some other line of work.” He shook his head in disgust. He would have liked to scold this idiot further, but he had already wasted more than enough time on him. “But we’re done here. Beat the income disparity theme into voters’ brains, and Sutherland will win.”
“The only thing is—”
“This is not a democracy,” said Fisher. “If you are interested in keeping your job, and if you don’t want me to close the purse strings on you so you’ll have no advertising, you’ll do exactly as I tell you.” He leaned forward with an almost primal intensity. “Now, do we understand each other?”
Engel blew out a long breath and nodded. “We do,” he said miserably.
“Good,” said Fisher. “Now get the fuck out of my office. I have important things to do.”
18
“Is this call secure?” asked General Justin Girdler.
The face in his computer monitor, belonging to a man in his early twenties named Drew Russell, nodded. “Of course. I can’t believe you could doubt me,” he said in amusement.
“Never hurts to double check.”
“And I’ve also set up a secure connection between you and Colonel Campbell, like you asked.”
“You’re the best, Drew.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” said the good-natured young man, who wore his playful cockiness like a badge of honor. But he was cocky for a good reason. He really was the best.
PsyOps had any number of remarkable computer geniuses working for them, but none were anywhere near the level of Drew Russell. Not only was he exceptionally skilled, but after Mike Campbell, he was the only other person in Girdler’s sprawling organization he had become close to, and that he trusted implicitly.
Drew Russell was a software genius almost at the level of Alex Altschuler. Girdler had recruited him himself. Russell loved comic books and the Marvel Universe—who didn’t these days? So Girdler had pitched BlackOps and PsyOps as being as close a real world equivalent of the SHIELD organization from the Marvel Universe as you could possibly get.
Well, absent the superheroes, aliens, gravity-defying planes, Hydra operatives rotting out the organization from within, endless scorching hot women, and a boss who wore an eye-patch, of course. Although during his efforts to recruit Russell, Girdler had offered to wear one if it would help, and call himself Fury.
In addition to appealing to Russell’s patriotism, romantic streak, and geekiness, Girdler had taken the unprecedented—and illegal—step of sharing the results of ops that were at eyes only level of secrecy, of which only a handful of people in the world were aware.
When the military failed to prevent terrorism, destruction, and chaos on the global stage, this was known by everyone. But its many successes in stopping these events went largely unheralded. Girdler had taken a big risk, since had his sharing of these secrets been discovered, it would not have gone well for him. But he was convinced Russell was that important. And by sharing the brilliant successes of his organization, such as the time they had helped to design a computer virus, with Israel, that had delayed a rogue nation from completing the production of nuclear bombs, he hoped to demonstrate the importance of the work.
Eventually, his cumulative and unceasing efforts had paid off.
“I’m not sure why you’re so hung up on making sure no one knows that Mike and I are talking to you,” said Russell. “You are our commanding officer, after all. I’m pretty sure it isn’t a crime for you to speak with those in your chain of command.”
“This is true. But it’s for your own protection, Drew. You want to appear as distant from me as possible. I’m afraid I’ve become toxic.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” said Russell, rolling his eyes. “I guess no good deed goes unpunished. I can’t believe you had the audacity to pull our national pecker out of the guillotine.”
“Well, we’ll see how it plays out. They’re still investigating. But Nick Hall has disappeared once again,” he lied. Well, this was technically true if your definition of disappearing meant convalescing on a luxury yacht. “And this has made matters a lot worse. One of the reasons I’m calling is that it won’t take long for those looking for him to guess that he can’t be found using facial recognition.” He paused. “Which means you’re exposed.”
More than six months earlier, at Girdler’s orders, Russell had artfully altered the facial recognition system to prevent Hall from showing up, and hadn’t asked any questions, including why this was necessary since Nick Hall was known to be dead. Given the computer maestro’s intelligence, he had known full well what was going on, but Girdler had never brought him into the inner circle.
“Don’t worry,” said Russell. “Even if they find the software I used to do this—which is unlikely, because it’s very subtle—there is no way they can trace it back to me. I clean up after myself better than anyone.”
Girdler frowned. “Yeah. I was afraid of that,” he said. “Let me ask you this, Drew. How many people in all of my organization could have doctored the system this perfectly, while leaving no trace behind?”
“Shit!” said Russell, as the truth dawned on him. “You mean my own greatness is doing me in?”
A smile flickered across Girdler’s face. “You may be a genius with computers, but I’m not sure how long you’d last as an operative. Do you know
how a teacher knows when you’ve helped your eleven-year-old daughter with her essay? When it’s far too sophisticated for an eleven-year-old.” Girdler shook his head. “Too little perfection can get you caught, true. But so can too much.”
“Now you tell me,” complained Russell. “Okay, I’ll go back and make it less perfect, so it will look as though a lesser light, a mere mortal, had done it.”
“I see that the fact I just pointed out something crucial you overlooked hasn’t done anything to shake your um . . . self-confidence.”
“That’s part of my greatness,” replied Russell with a twinkle in his eye.
“Good to know,” said Girdler in amusement. “So go back and muddy the trail. But do it quickly, because it won’t be long before they investigate.”
The general paused. “And I have a few other very important assignments for you. One, I need you to read the tea leaves for me, as only you can. I need any information you can learn from the various powers that be in the government and military about their investigation of me in the Nick Hall matter. This will benefit you, as well, so you can make sure your part in this is never discovered. I also want to know who’s pushing for a court martial, who isn’t, if they’ll try to stack the jury, what kind of sentence they’re likely to push for if it does come to this, and so on.”
Russell smiled. “No problem. I’ve already been on this for days.”
“Why am I not surprised?” said Girdler with an approving nod. “I’m happy to hear it. So continue putting an ear to the ground, but I’d like you to devote ninety-five percent of your time to the other project I have for you. You’re going to like this one. Turns out I now have the keys to BrainWeb.”
BrainWeb Page 11
