Chapter Thirteen

“I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

                                                                                                            Professor Bernardo de la Paz in
                                                                                                            The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

The Freedom Movement

The terrace was iced with snow now, and Bernard and Dave watched the Empire State Building from behind the glass of the French windows. Fuzz Ball spent a significant amount of time leaping at birds that huddled there close to the glass, frustrated by the surface but unwilling to stop trying. Dave smiled, trying not to laugh. The Fuzz would look so offended if he did. Bernard, not normally a cat person, had accepted the huge old feline as the personality he was. Certainly Fuzz Ball had accepted him after a period of watching cautiously from under the coffee table and from the bookcases. The negotiations had lasted about a month. Now Bernard knew just where to scratch. Fuzz Ball would roll over so that Bernard could stroke his belly, too, purring deep grumbly purrs that vibrated his entire body.

Fuzz Ball was splayed out on his back on the carpet, inviting a good rub. He slowly swiveled his head and looked at Bernard, sitting on the couch, hands behind his head. Dave noticed and laughed, reaching down and giving the cat a rub that set the motor going.

The ice made fragile patterns on the surface of the window. They were always changing as the light glazed the surface, transforming as the minutes ticked past. Dave and Bernard had stopped paying attention to Fuzz Ball, much to the cat’s annoyance. They were talking about the frustrations of the present tense of their research.

They had reached a tipping point. They now could see the past with its ever growing centralization of control through government and the increasing hunger for power this had bred. The greeds of the least ethical had changed the world for the worse. Dave had read their books, filled with self-congratulation and justifications. The NeoCons were just the most recent generation of thugs, perhaps the most successful in history but no different from countless legions of takers now dead and dust. Even if it were possible to take them out, they would have warped government still further, removing it from the control of the people. America had arrived at where she was today in just such increments; a combination of good intentions misused and the naked greed of those who bent and rewrote every rule to their own purposes.

How far did it go now? Good people like Fredrick Barry were working with this administration; bad apples were there, but to what extent were they really in control? Sitting down and working together, Bernard and Dave came up with a scant list of names of public figures that might be trust worthy and a longer list about which one of the other of them had questions. There were both Republicans and Democrats on the list.

America needed a revival of understanding and faith in itself and its institutions; a return to the clarity of a previous time. How could they help this happen?

What would not work was clear.

Dave had taken Bernard to several of the Fabituso Society Meetings, but the familiars there had just amused or annoyed him, and they both agreed that Bernard was not good at pretense. The people from Fabituso were mostly NeoCons or followers; those that were neither were very much in the box and did not see the problem. Dave had started enlarging his circle of acquaintance and found that most people either could not see out of the box or did not want to. They had the inside decorated to their taste and change caused clashes in their emotional or intellectual decorating scheme.

Civil, social and specific interest groups were pretty much the same about the inside of the box syndrome as were most professors, even those who prided themselves on being professional intellectuals did not see.

The questions took Dave and Bernard back to source material and to the realization that again they still did not know enough. This was coupled with a growing sense of impending doom. They needed to know; slowly they were beginning to realize they also needed allies.

These recent months had focused them on events now unfolding; the L.O.Y.A. L.T.Y. Act had shocked both of them down past their shoes. Not even hard line liberals like Jimmy McGee, the Senator from Massachusetts and the brother of assassinated president Jerry McGee, had raised a voice in objection. Bernard had had lunch with Jimmy in the airport in Boston while he was waiting for a plane while he, Bernard, was still working for Peace for the Planet. He had been impressed with the man’s approachability. They had really talked, Bernard said. Dave was skeptical. As a Republican he had grown up viewing all of the McGees as bad guys.

No, Bernard said, he is a good guy. He went on to explain why he thought so.

They had seen him sit down at a table in front of the MacDonald’s in the Airport after getting himself a quarter pounder with coffee and fries. He placed the suit bag he was carrying on the seat opposite him and was preparing to dig into the French fries when Bernard and his boss, Jess Stone, approached him, asking if he had a moment to speak with them.

McGee told them to have a seat, recognized Jesse from past meetings and told them he was happy to have the chance to help if he could. Bernard was impressed by his firm handshake and lack of ceremony. Dave was impressed that the senior senator from Massachusetts carried his own bag but still skeptical. That did not explain away his many years of womanizing or the death of a young pregnant campaign worker he had caused. Dave did not need to elaborate. The whole country had watched the unfolding of those events. But, Bernard said, can’t someone be good in one part of his life and bad in another?

Dave frowned, seemingly lost in thought.

Bernard went on. He and his boss had explained the problem they were facing. It had to do with the fisherpeople; the Congress had again changed the rules on them, substituting very different criteria for determining if the cod off New England were endangered. By the previous standards, literally the standards that were in place the day before, the population of cod was 75% of the way towards completely replenished. Today because of the new standards, standards the committee openly admitted were speculative; they were back to 25%. This meant more cutting of days to local fishermen who were even now marginalized for making their traditional living from the sea. Senator McGee was extremely sympathetic, promised letters of support and aid and then later followed through and delivered.

As they said goodbye he had nodded, smiled, and told both of them to keep in touch.

The recounted conversation surprised Dave, who had a very different conception of just who McGee was. It did not include carrying his own bags and eating at MacDonald’s and being nice to activists who accosted him there and even following through with the promised assistance. It was a sharp contrast in a lot of different ways. Dave would have to think about that. But McGee had voted for the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. Act, Dave pointed out. Bernard had no explanation for that sad fact. Nearly the entire Republican contingent in Congress had voted for it, too. Dave glanced down at his lap top. Three Republicans had voted against the Act, as had one Independent from Vermont. The most vocal Republican exception had been the cantankerous Don Allen, a congressman from Texas who had been the Libertarian candidate for President in 1988. Dave noted his name as someone they might be able to trust. Pausing, he looked up at Bernard.

“Are we going to have age limitations?” Bernard looked at him, puzzled.

“What is rolling around in your head? Help from some of Gramp’s friends?”

“No. The other end of the scale.” Dave smiled. Christopher Mershon would be just the kind of person he could trust.

The next night Christopher joined their briefing session, taking on the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. Act as his special project. He told Dave he expected extra credit, grinning. This was work he could really enjoy. He had immediately begun tracking enforcement where he could find cases, and projecting activities most Americans considered legal that could now get them arrested.

That list made Bernard’s eyes bug out slightly.

For instance, a small group of Muslims in Maryland, who had been getting together for dinner and paintball games for a while, were visited by the FBI and Homeland Security. They were then charged with seditious activity under the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. Act. For the year past they have been getting together on the weekends to play paint balls, having a great time whacking each other out in the brush at a local paint ball retreat. After 9/11, one of them had posed the question if what they were doing would attract attention. Most of them, local businessmen and loyal Americans, thought that was funny until the knock at the door. Now they were facing hard time in the Federal prison.

After talking about it, the three agreed they should follow the case to see how it played out.

Other cases were even stranger. Elderly women getting on planes were sexually harassed. Children are searched. Traveling was becoming a very hostile and frightening experience. The fear and insecurity was moving closer to home every moment. Many thought it was worth putting up with if it only kept them safe. But did it? Reviewing the material they had on terrorism had driven Dave and Bernard to the conclusion that it did not make Americans safe; it just made them less free.

After poring over the reams of documentation, Dave remembered one of Gramps sayings, “If the clerk makes mistakes that are always in his favor, it is not a mistake.” If the anti-terrorism measures were failing, they were never meant to work; another agenda was in motion and the point was not terrorism. But if not, what was it?

Christopher had actually graduated from high school now but was taking some time for extended studies before heading off to college in California. He had been admitted for the next year, when he turned 17, to Stanford. He had won a full scholarship and Dave was sure he had earned it several times over.

As soon as he had walked into the apartment, he had found lots to do. Looking over the website and database, he had immediately had some suggestions for reorganizing. But beyond that, he also had been studying what was going on from his own point of view and had focused on what was, to both Dave and Bernard, the younger and much younger generation.

Bernard had down loaded all 653 pages of the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. Act and they had begun an in-depth analysis of what it actually said and how it could be applied. Christopher had read parts of it already and had noticed a parallel with the passage of the Enabling Act in Nazi Germany. Having called this to their attention, Bernard and Dave were struck with the similarity.

That insight had caused sleepless nights, made terrible for Dave with nightmares. Suddenly events like Waco and Ruby Ridge were creeping closer to the mainstream. The momentum of shift towards a totalitarian state was accelerating.

It was one morning after yet another such sleepless night when Bernard walked in from his apartment, still looking like he needed eight hours of down time, when they finally came up with, if not a plan, at least another direction. When Christopher arrived a few minutes later, the three sat down for what they later called the Square One Meeting.

Bernard had shaken his head over the invasion of Afghanistan; they had nightmares over the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y Act; both of them had come to doubt everything they heard from official sources. Coming in the wake of 9/11, with its heightened sense of national unity, these frightening outrages were bitter to swallow.

They knew enough to know they and their country was in serious trouble.

It was time to begin identifying who might be allies. Dave and Bernard, looking at each other, realized that this could be risky with the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. Act in place. There was a lot to do and it had to be done carefully.

The days were full. The winter months passed in a blur, each day filled with overwhelming details, names, dates, financial relationships and the steadily growing vision of a corporate world that had become secured by interests of all kinds to government.

Between the three of them, the list of things to do, people to contact and research to do stopped growing and started holding steady at too much but not impossible. Nights were quiet. Fuzz Ball had discovered that under the covers was preferable to on top of Dave’s chest and, after a brief flurry of hostilities, Dave gave in and let him have his way. Otherwise he occupied the bed alone. He had stopped calling Lindsey; it hurt too much and his growing sense of anger was hard to hide. He had run into Tom Dicks at a conference given by the New York Institute, and the two had had a long talk. Dave was unsure afterwards how the subject had come around to Lindsey, but so it had. From Dicks, Dave heard that while the two had had a brief affair it had been over for a long time. Dicks told him he knew it had been a mistake from the beginning but was afraid to entirely end it. What he told Dave next shocked him.

Dicks confessed to having had a one-night stand with Lindsey’s mother many years before. Now, he was afraid that Lindsey would blackmail him, ruining his career.

Puzzled, Dave asked, “But the relationship is up on the web. How can anything else she could say hurt you?”

Dicks leaned towards him, his face lined and troubled. “Can I trust you to keep this confidential?” Slowly, Dave had nodded. He was not sure he wanted to hear this, but he couldn’t not hear it, either.

Dicks’ confession had been harrowing. He had been immediately attracted to Lindsey but knew that, given his past relationship with the mother, having a relationship with Lindsey was impossible. The mother, he said, had pursued him for years after their brief fling. He had decided she was strange. But Lindsey had asked him up to her hotel room and he had gone. It was a lapse in judgment. But his own guilt over the relationship with Linden, who had actually sent Lindsey to New York to seduce him, he said. Their machinations had put him in their control for the last three years. Dicks looked close to tears.

He went on to talk about how charming they both seemed to be. But if you examined their personal lives, it was a very different story. They wanted money for their silence, and only large amounts would satisfy them.

Disgusted, Dave assured Dicks he believed him.

Dicks thanked him profusely for his understanding, wiping his eyes. Dave felt yet again as if someone had dug his heart out with a spoon. How could he be so wrong about someone he thought he knew?

Shaking his hand as they said goodbye, Dicks offered to put him in touch with people who could give him a great job. Dave smiled wanly, hardly thinking about what Dicks was saying. He would need to think about this. It was time he confronted Lindsey about a lot of things.

Dave remembered just as Bernard walked in to the apartment the next day that he had promised to make dinner tonight. The two, now the three of them, usually ate together if something else was not going on. The grocery list was still sitting by the phone; Dave often had the staples delivered. Bernard laughed. Dave did not have to tell him he had forgotten. Dave was no poker player.

So instead of braving Dave’s cooking they braved the weather, which was as ugly as only days in New York can be. They decided that ugly weather demanded food that reminded them that hot was possible and headed out for a Mexican meal at the El Parador Café down on 34th Street. The tortilla chips were to die for and the salsa had some character and bite. Christopher inhaled the guacamole. They had rooted him out of the spare bedroom Dave and he had transformed into a second office for his use.

Dave, still depressed about Lindsey, decided to drown himself in carbohydrates and Margaritas. He had not mentioned the meeting with Dicks, although they generally logged every contact and observation. This was one contact with Dicks he did not want to share with Bernard and Christopher.

Over the savory chips and an appetizer of guacamole and Chicken and Goat Cheese Quesadillas, redolent with cilantro and shaved onion, they had mapped out a plan for gathering on the spot information on the list of possibilities for alliance they had found from various sources, mostly the Internet.

There were caucuses and organizations working for change from every possible angle. Surely some of them would have some people who could be trusted or have identified some approaches that could be applied elsewhere. Remembering his meetings with Darrin Youngblood and the Cal Techies in Northern California, Dave wondered just how useful they could be politically.

“I told you about that friend of mine, Darrin? The one who is now at Cal Tech?” Dave’s brow furrowed a little. “They seem to have rejected the classical idea of government.”

“Well, I would not go that far, but they have refined the underlying ideas on which government is based. And with reason. What we have now is not working as intended.” Bernard sipped on his Margarita, enjoying the salt on the lip of the glass. “I don’t think I got over the idea that a bunch of Libertarian types would be approaching the environmental issues at all.” He grinned. The two had clashed primarily on issues of the environment when they were first talking.

Dave smiled. “Yeah, I know, you think we want to pave Earth First and the other planets later, right?” Bernard laughed.

Christopher injected, “Tell me some more about the techies from Cal Tech.”

Dave found that he could stop thinking about Lindsey if he focused on what was right in front of him. His mind kept looking for evidence he had overlooked. How could he be so entirely attracted to someone who was a crazy user? The past eight months had been so full of trauma for the entire nation that this small injury, discovering that a beautiful face could hide an ugly person, should not hurt so much. But it did.

“Dave? What are you thinking about? Did you hear what I asked?” Bernard was looking at him, inquiry written on his face and obviously waiting for his question to be answered. Looking at him Dave wondered why it was that every other guy in the world seemed to have no trouble finding a decent woman. Bernard had been married to a pretty woman and he was short and very engineer like. Christopher had to beat women off with stick; his cool blond good looks were a real magnet. What was wrong with him?

“My mind wandered off into the weeds. Must have been the guacamole. Sorry, what was the question?”

“Census time. We need to make some in-person contact with those groups and individuals who may be useful.” This had been the first step they laid out in their Square One meeting. They had agreed that they would split up the work, making it look natural, and an extension of their other professional and personal activities.

Dave remembered. At the time he had hoped that Lindsey would be traveling with him. He grimaced.

“Hey, it won’t be that bad. Who knows, maybe you will find your Dagny Taggart along the way.” Bernard and Christopher had each actually read the book and so laughed, looking at each other. Dagny Taggart was the impossibly perfect heroine who every male hero in the book, Atlas Shrugged, lusted to possess.

Lindsey was the only part of his life Dave had never mentioned to either of them. Was she a hero? Dave had thought so at one point.

Matching Dave up with various possible ladies had become a subject of mild diversion, neither imagining that Dave was already in love.

Research in this case required a certain amount of travel. All of the organizations earmarked for inquiry had conferences, sometimes several times a year, sometimes once. For the Conservative and Libertarian Orgs, Chris and Dave divided them as was appropriate. Bernard took the liberal and actually nonpartisan conferences. This, and some discreet contacts in advance, should give them what they needed.

The fact was that the conferences put on by think tanks were a form of fundraising in thin disguise; so paying attendees were welcomed with open arms. Dave winced as a memory floated into his mind. He had learned something about the history of Cicero Institute from Lindsey’s mother and the story had shocked him. Dave had also learned that organizations, like families, develop a culture that expresses in action their values and he had to wonder what kind of values were expressed by selecting interns and students for positions on the basis of their gender, female preferred, and attractiveness. Linden’s stories about Morton B. Casterol, Jr., the president and founder of Cicero, were bizarre. At first he had assumed she was exaggerating to make the story better, but inquiries had revealed she had been unaware of many of the more lurid details.

Today Cicero had a practice of keeping attractive young women in the front office. Mort was very aware of the power attractive, sexually available women have on donors, and most of the donors to Cicero were wealthy men.

Mort himself had finally married the mother of his three children after they were mostly in grade school. She had been the wife of his best friend when he seduced her. The best friend had left town although he had waited, hoping she would return to him until the first baby was born. Mort had refused to marry her, telling her and others he would do so when she could arrange the wedding in Red China. The wedding actually took place in on the Great Wall of China when she was finally able to do just that. No one pretended that Mort was faithful to his wife. That had not been the deal and Mort’s sexual adventures were the stuff of legend. It had been said he had laid every woman in the Libertarian Party and made a large dent in the Conservative Movement. Back when he had served the Libertarian Party as its Southern Vice Chairman, he had organized volunteers so that women came in and worked for half an hour and serviced him sexually for a half hour to then be replaced by the next shift.

Dave was amazed that so few people knew the stories, given how volatile they were.

So Dave had arranged to attend both a conference and the Cicero Dinner in Washington D.C. The luncheon took place six days before the Dinner, which was scheduled for May 9th. The subject of the talk at the luncheon was wasteful spending. Before the speaker got started, the monotonic Master of Ceremonies, who was not Mort, droned on about the briefings and luncheons and other events scheduled for the near future. Dave’s mind drifted. He was seated near the front of the room; the hefty donation he had made to Cicero brought with it privileges, and sure enough a young and attractive woman had chatted him up as he was registering. Dave found he was absolutely not attracted to her. He had found no one attractive since he last saw Lindsey. Sometimes he wanted to bash his head against a wall.

Most of those attending were the cadre of ‘professionals’ meaning they worked for Congressmen, were at a local college or university, worked at some other think tank or were donors. As he had chatted before the event began, he had found the requisite sprinkling of others, many out of work and looking.

The Libertarian Party, itself spawned by the Goldwater Movement and the work of such writers as Ayn Rand, had spun off a whole series of think tanks. Although Cicero now used the term privatization as if it had invented the word, the word had actually been coined by Richard Creek, the founder of Rationality Foundation. Rationality was based in Los Angeles now, having begun its curious existence in Boston as a magazine. Creek had purchased the for profit magazine that never managed to do more than dig holes in its owners’ bank accounts in 1969, and moved it to Santa Barbara where it had continued to dig holes in the bank accounts of Creek and his two partners, Benny Kraust, an attorney practicing in Los Angeles, and Fidor Mortan, a philosopher.

The early history of Rationality lacked the excitement given to Cicero by Mort but they had their moments, according to old timers Dave had gotten to know. Linden had pointed him to some of her old friends.

In preparation for his trip to D.C., Christopher had compiled for him the analysis of the areas where Cicero produced policy, what actually was ‘placed’ with legislatures and what mostly went in puff pieces to donors to encourage them to keep giving. The money that flowed into Cicero was not very different than that flowing into the coffers of any other Conservative think tank. There were some significant large donors who had no ax to grind. And then there were the large corporations, many petroleum companies among them, who were definitely in ax sharpening mode.

As the speaker droned on and Dave consumed the elegant lunch, he wondered at the blindness of those assembled. How could they fail to see what was actually happening here? The only more horrible thought was that they did know and were actually helping.

The think tanks, viewed as the success story of the Freedom Movement, were actually helping the NeoCons in some places while they were mostly a layer of lard on the steadily growing body of the bureaucratic monolith America had whelped.

Getting on the train back to New York, Dave’s mind was taken up with what he had learned. The Cicero Dinner had been extravagant. The central focus of the event was the award of a prize for advancing the cause of freedom. The award was named for the still living Nobel Laureate, Melvin Freeport; the members serving on the selection committee had been impressive and included the former British Prime Minister who had worked so closely with President William Wallace.

Dave had been surprised at how many people he saw from the Fabituso Society Meeting. Also, the whole cadre of prominent pundits had been present and seated in a huddle near the front. The program included a seating card so you could find the seat assigned to each attendee. Dave made sure he put it away for Christopher. He would apply the analytical tools they had assembled as indicators of status and standing within the affinity group that Cicero represented. Dave knew what it was going to show. The NeoCons owned Cicero. Some bottom lines were too obvious to be ignored.

The phone was ringing when Dave walked into the apartment. Normally he glanced at the CID but the handle to his carry on bag had gotten tangled with the keys so he just grabbed.

“Hello?”

“Hi there stranger.” Dave heard Lindsey’s voice, sounding sort of tired and quieter than usual.

“Oh. Hello. Just got in from…” “Washington? Where you were attending the Cicero Dinner, right?”

Dave sat down. “Yes. I was down there for some business, too.

“Did you see Mom? She was there.” Thinking about it, Dave thought he actually might have seen Linden but they had not talked.

“No, don’t think I did. There were nearly 3,000 people there, you know.” Searching for something to say he grasped at one conversation that stuck with him.

“I saw Tom Dicks.” Having said it, he wondered why. He had talked briefly with Dicks, but mentioning the fact was at best unkind. The fact that Lindsey had charged Dicks with domestic violence was a very public scandal.

The reaction in Lindsey’s voice was palpable. “Oh did you? And was he well?” The anger in her voice came through like crystals of frost on a windshield.

“No, he actually looked pretty tired and upset.” Dave was starting to get angry. Dicks had taken the opportunity to again thank him for his understanding and ask him to reserve judgment until the courts had a chance to sort things out.

“Why don’t you call me anymore? I thought we were friends.” Dave could hear the reproach in Lindsey’s voice.

“You know, Lindsey, I really liked you, but this thing with Dicks….why couldn’t you just leave him alone?”

There was a long pause. “Leave him alone? What are you talking about? That bastard tried to kill me and you, my friend, are defending him?”

“Tried to kill you? Come on Lindsey, don’t you think you are being over dramatic? All lovers have their little spats.” Dicks had told him about the screaming conflicts that took place every night. Dicks had told him their sexual relationship had ended, but Dave did not believe that. What normal man would live with Lindsey and not make love to her? The sarcasm dripped off his voice.

“A little spat? So you were there, I suppose? You…do you know how it feels to have no one believe you? You…..I can’t believe you are saying this. God, oh God. I wish I was dead.” Dave could hear her crying as the phone was slammed down.

Washington D.C.

Humstead looked at his fingernails. It was time to get back in for a manicure. He tried to have his fingernails done at least once a week. It gave him a thrill to sit there being waited on by a woman who was usually pretty attractive. Hair too, of course. It made him feel more confident if his hair was perfectly cut. His hair was so thin and sparse, along with being a washed out blond, that he looked bald in some of the pictures they took of him.

He liked it when the President called him into the Oval Office for meetings. When he was there he not only felt like he had arrived, he could remember that if not for him, really, truly him, the President would never even have been elected governor of Texas. He had made this man.

Looking down at the agenda on his desk he realized that the NCMA material was not yet in evidence. He had asked for it two days ago. Most men who were as important as he was would have been happy just to have the synopsis drawn from the work, but if you did not get down into all of the details you missed things. His preliminary reading of the document had convinced him that this twenty-year-old bureaucracy was not being used as it could be. Now, two and a half years out from Election Day ‘04 he had begun to assemble the contingency plans, seven deep that would ensure a second term for the man in the Oval Office. The voting machine plan was working its way through channels. That was good, but he had always thought it was really problematical. Too many people would question the lack of paper ballots to rely on being able to swing votes as needed.

He looked up as his executive assistant walked in. The NCMA papers had arrived in their unabridged form. NCMA would be rolled over into Our Land Safe. That would create possibilities absent in either of the originals.

Humstead decided that his fingernails really should be done twice a week. His wife would never notice, but his girl friend would appreciate the thoughtful gesture.