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.

Chapter Seven - Dave Returns to Texas

“Elections are futures markets in stolen property.”

- H. L. Mencken

Dave Returns to Texas

The conventions were both over and done with and the summer had burned itself into the crisp of almost autumn. It wasn’t here yet but you could smell it on the air when you walked through Central Park. Dave knew that his friends wondered why he was not returning to Columbia Law right away. They had accepted his burning desire, expressed just months ago, to change careers. Most of them had found this sea change commendable. Politics was a risky career. But why on God’s good name would anyone want to go to Texas?

Dave wondered that himself right now, another long grey highway stretching out ahead of him. But Texas was still a long ways away. He had other things to do first.

The call had come in from Bert Sowers to his home in Connecticut, a call delayed by the fact no one had called Bert to let him know that Gramps had died in February. Bert was shocked; he later told Dave he would have come up for the funeral if he had known.

Dave was sure that was true. Bert was that kind of guy, and he and Gramps had been good friends. That exchange had lead to Bert getting Dave’s new phone number from Dave’s Dad and calling him, leaving the message Dave found on his answering machine when he came in from the train following the Republican Convention. The conversation that took place when Dave called Bert back had lead, step by step, to Dave packing up a motor home in Indiana and heading out, Texas his final destination.

Dave picked up the sleek Fleetwood American Condor at the factory in Decatur, Indiana. He would hand it over it to Bert for sale at his dealership in Texas as direct from the factory. Which it was, sort of. This model had dark wood paneling and Debonair Plum interior. The bed was amazingly comfortable and all of the appliances worked perfectly.

Dave had flown into Ft. Wayne, rented a car, and headed out to the factory for a tour before signing for the vehicle and hitting the road.

It had taken some time for him to put this together but his reasons were compelling.

When he called Bert back he discovered that George Weston was dead. George had been found in the RV Bert had sold him, apparently a suicide by overdose of sedatives last January. This had not rung true for Bert, but he had done nothing for a few weeks after attending the funeral service at the local Elks Lodge, Garland Elks No.1984, where George had been a member. He had ruminated over the circumstances and considered who he might talk to about it. Bert told Dave he had called the distant cousins who had been contacted by the authorities. They hadn’t known anything but the probable date of death, January 7. There had been no note found in George’s papers. There was also no record of George having a prescription for the sedatives. As far as Dave knew, George’s sedative of choice was cognac and his preferred brand was Five Star Hennessy.

It just didn’t seem like George to kill himself like this. George had been gregarious, determined, and directed. He decided what he wanted to do and then did it.

It was actually the purchase of the Fleetwood that had moved George to join the Elks. From George Dave had learned that members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks could use the facilities of any lodge as they traveled across the country. This had struck George as a good thing; club facilities while fleeing the attentions of Craig Humstead. It was also very inexpensive. George, for all his lavish spending in some things, was thrifty at heart.

Dave decided that joining the Elks was the only way to find out what had been going through George’s mind during the five months he had been wandering around the United States. So Dave was now an Elk himself; having joined the slightly decrepit organization dedicated to patriotic brotherhood, now admitting women, just three days before at Lodge No. 2533 located in Islip, New York. This was not particularly convenient to Manhattan but they were a nice bunch of folks. He felt badly that he would become one of the phantom members who sent in their dues but never appeared at a meeting after being initiated. They had been so excited to have him and urged him to become active. The Exalted Ruler, the CEO of the Lodge, had asked hopefully if he might consider taking an office the coming year and had pressed into his hands a book on the history of Elkdom. Dave read it, amazed to discover that the Elks were actually the ones responsible for the first veteran’s hospital. At the end of World War I they had contributed the money that built the first one. They continued doing the same kind of thing today and still saw to it that otherwise forgotten veterans had a meal and health care.

Dave stayed with a friend from Columbia while he was going through the process of joining up. He told them he was thinking of relocating (true), that he was interested in recreational vehicles (true) and that he was a loyal and very patriotic American (also true). They were delighted to take his money and paid for his first drink in their paneled bar. He was the youngest person in the building and younger than the whiskey served up to him at the bar. His membership card in hand, he took a plane from La Guardia to Ft. Wayne, changing in Chicago.

The call from Bert had chilled Dave. As much as he disliked Craig Humstead he hated to believe that he would have killed to protect his secrets. Dave had thought of Humstead as faintly ridiculous no matter what George had said.

The evening that he and George had talked into the grayness of dawn had been shocking. He had learned that George kept a cache of guns, always loaded, and was prepared to use them. There had been no guns found in the motor home according to the reports of the police. He could see the palpable fear on George’s face when Humstead was mentioned. But really, all Dave knew was what George had told him. Just words. Dave reminded himself how easily words lie.

His own take was that George was not the kind of guy to kill himself, especially with drugs. If he had blown his head off Dave would have had no problem believing it was suicide. But Dave could not believe that the feisty George Weston he had gotten to know so well had pulled off the road far from an Elk’s Lodge in Northern California and taken a lethal dose of barbiturates. No. That just could not have happened to the man who had served in the Marines all through Korea with distinction. Or could it? Not knowing bothered him. Now he wanted badly to find out.

Dave had the mileage of George’s motor home, if that was accurate. And he had a list of Elk’s Lodges that roughly covered the area between Garland, Texas where George had begun his final journey and the truck stop where he had died between Lake Tahoe and Reno. No one had bothered much to inquire. George’s family was dead; his only relatives were the distant cousins who had arranged for the funeral and sale of the vehicle. Old widowers get depressed and kill themselves; it happens. George himself had said he didn’t have much to live for, but Dave had taken that for empty rhetoric. George had a goal; more information on Humstead - and George had enjoyed living. Dave had a hunch that the story of those five months would be interesting--if he could find it.

Dave had found in his research that Elks lodges had created for themselves something of a presence online. Therefore, finding places where George had passed a few days was not too difficult. The Good ‘ol Boy had passed up through Oklahoma, cut across Kansas, Colorado, Utah and Nevada, stopping for several days at each of several lodges. They remembered him – and he had carefully signed into their guest books. So did Dave when he passed through.

Dave had no problem with the motor home. He had learned to drive one and to service them the year before while still working for Bert. But he felt like he was chasing a phantom. It was clear that while George had used the RV parking and services provided by the Elks, he had not talked to them about much but which brand of liquor he preferred.

That changed when Dave drove into a lodge a few miles from Salt Lake. George had parked in their tiny motor home park and signed in at the office just before the office closed.

As he was signing in he immediately noticed George’s signature just at the top of the same page where he was now signing. The lady at the window noticed he was looking at the other names.

She smiled. “Anyone there you know?”

Dave had discovered that Elkdom was like a not very large town. People knew each other.

It turned out that George had been here for a while, leaving on January 2nd, just five days before he died. Dolly, the lady who ran the office and it seemed about everything else here, had known George pretty well.

His intentions regarding the widow had raised expectations and fostered gossip. Dolly was attractive in an older lady kind of way, just a touch plump with clear skin and short curly hair just turning to a very nice silver that was far more attractive than the original brown had been, he could see. Her eyes turned up into crescents when she smiled, which was often. She seemed anxious to learn more about George when she realized that Dave knew him. He had been careful to notice the signature and comment when he signed into the guest book late one afternoon in the last week of September. Dave did not mention George’s death. As far as the Elks knew George had gone on west, wandering through a long life furlough.

The next week became something of a contest. Dave doled out snippets of information on George, receiving some in return from Dolly, who obviously hoped George would be back one of these days. At first it was interesting, but did not seem to be immediately useful. George had spent time going over records in the local city hall, looked over deeds, shot the breeze with some of the boys and taken Dolly out to dinner at The Salty Miner, the fanciest place in town. He was a generous tipper when accompanying a lady, according to the waitress who worked there. Everyone in town seemed to know almost instantly who Dave was and that he knew George. George had become something of a personality around town.

Then, over their third drink sitting in the Elk bar just before closing one night, Dolly had asked a question.

“I wonder if George found the father of that boy? Do you know?” Her voice carried the slight tremble of someone asking a question that is phrased to sound casual. Darla Farnsworth, called Dolly around the Lodge, was sharp. The question was anything but casual. She looked inquiringly at him.

“Boy?” Dave mouthed the words, wondering what the hell that meant.

“You bet. The boy from Texas, the one George was so interested in finding out about.” Dolly pursed her lips slightly, wrinkling her nose. She looked slightly anxious, her inquiry perhaps long in formulating.

“Do you remember the boy’s name?” Dave asked hesitantly, wondering if he had chanced on some unexpected aspect of George’s last days.

“Name of Craig, Craig something or other. Had a hard on for that boy, he did.”

Dave’s mind reeled. “Craig Humstead?”

“That would be him.” Dolly nodded affirmingly. The name obviously meant nothing to her except as someone George had wanted to know about very badly.

“His daddy. Said he got a line on him just before he took off. I did wonder. Hasn’t called again and it had been months now since I heard from him.” Dolly was obviously considering some further thoughts and the pause in the conversation gave Dave time to confront his own lack of forthcoming.

He looked at Dolly again. Her eyes showed a real concern. Dave knew at that moment that there had been some real contact between her and George. George had stayed in the trailer park in back of the lodge here for three weeks, much longer than you would have expected. Dave moved restlessly in the bright red Naugahyde covered seat of the bar chair, glancing around the walls of the place, seeing as if for the first time the faded photos of Past Exalted Rulers, their Ladies, and the beaming clumps of Elks and citizens memorializing the ordinary events of life in a small and undistinguished town.

When his mind returned to the moment he found Dolly looking at him.

“George is dead, isn’t he?” The words slammed Dave across the face with an extraordinary wave of shame.

“Yes. I’m sorry.” Dave choked slightly, not knowing what to say.

Dolly nodded her head just a little as if releasing some misspent but harbored hope.

“I thought it might be that.” She looked up at him, a glaze of tears now hovering as a mist over her eyes. She wiped her eyes carefully on the pressed, clean, white hanky that she drew out of the pocket of her carnation flowered shirtwaist dress. Dolly dressed differently, more formally than the other women who spent time around the Lodge. The undercurrent of tension that Dave now realized she had been carrying was gone. She looked sad and a little lost.

“What happened?” Dave knew as she asked the question he still had only part of the answer.

The package Dolly put into Dave’s hands that same night provided no direct answers to how or why George had died. It did fit in with the story George had told him the year before about the kind of man Craig Humstead really was though. Dave wondered how George had put his hands on so much of what appeared to be notes and documents that Humstead himself had generated during his checkered career. Any sensible man would have shredded them as soon as the need for notes was outlived.

Leafing through the two-inch thick swath of pages provided no particular surprises at first. They appeared to be notes prepared by Humstead on the dirty tricks he had perfected over the years. Gloating and smug comments on his original dirty election ploy staged while a member of Young Republicans was exhaustively laid out. There was not a nuance of shame reflected into the rather verbose prose to show that regret lingered in the mind of the writer, just pride at his cleverness.

The document covered every campaign, abruptly ending just eighteen months before.

There had been articles on just how Humstead had managed this earliest political triumph for years. It had taken place while he was still a Young Republican running for the chairmanship of that organization. The vicious and backbiting attack had ended in a dead tie. The tie had been broken by an appeal to the Chairman of the National Committee of the Republican Party, Randolph S. Branch. Now, of course, Branch was also a former president. Branch had never forgiven the loser for calling him on the outrageous decision; in fact, the senior Branch had made it his job to destroy any chance the guy had in politics. The Branches never forgot and never forgave. In some people you would think this was a personal quirk. For the Branches it was policy. Dave found this strangely at variance with their public reputations as good, family oriented Christians. But it accorded very well with what Gramps had told him and explained what they and Humstead saw in each other.

Many of the articles written on Humstead’s political history had been generated from interviews done by mainstream journalists who interviewed now repentant Humstead followers. The specifics were actually too well known to anyone who had studied the Branch’s political Svengali to be sensational.

This document read like a combination of ‘how to book’ on dirty tricks, and one long gloat over essentially petty triumphs. Then it struck Dave. This was just that: A copy of Humstead’s instruction manual on dirty tricks in rough draft form. Well, Machiavelli the man was not. The tricks were painfully obvious, sneaky but simple reformulations of strategies that would have better been left in the frat house. The book could well have been titled ‘how to lie, cheat and steal your way to success’. Given the Humstead propensity for optimizing the use of existing tactics like direct mail pieces to more and more specific special interest groups, it was only a matter of time before other political consultants caught on.

And when they did?

For a moment Dave was physically nauseated by the vision of the decent men and women who would be driven out of politics. That always happened, he realized. It was the untrammeled behavior of people like Humstead in government who had turned it into the lawless jungle it was today.

Before now Dave had concerned himself with avoiding Humstead. Now he realized he needed very much to understand him.

Dave had not come on this quest without being equipped for all contingencies; his computer connected directly to the internet via satellite, though he was also free to use the office phones at the lodges, he discovered. He preferred using the phone lines. It was both cheaper and friendly. Gramps hated wasting money.

While sitting in the office at a counter next to the heavy old wooden desk that had been Dolly’s seat of power for twenty-five years, Dave discovered to his astonishment just how little he could find out about Humstead. The available bios were obviously taken from the same very terse source. Normally, it was very possible to find out about siblings, mother, father, where the person had grown up. Not here. It was as if no Humstead had ever lived in the town where he was born, gone to school, worked, or died.

Dave paused, fingers still on the keys, thinking about what all of this meant. Dolly looked over at him from her desk, her attention drawn by the cessation of tapping. Dave smiled wanly. Suddenly he could almost hear his Grandfather talking to him when he was assembling a particularly complex model airplane. He had broken off all of the parts, sanded them down carefully over a period of two weeks, and managed to lose the instructions. He had thought about throwing it away but then his own thrift and the look of amusement on Gramp’s face had driven him back to the table of tiny parts. “Look at them from every angle,” Gramps had advised.

Dave looked down at the keys and up again at the screen. He had figured out the model by looking at the finished picture and seeing in his mind the parts that composed it. With Humstead, he could look at each known action and extrapolate backwards first. Then he would be able to see the trajectory of his life forward and understand just who Humstead is.

The memory the model and a dollop of cluster theory worked. About six the next morning the pieces started to make sense. He was now in the motor home. Dolly had locked up at two in the morning, her patience and sense of humor exhausted.

Humstead’s approach had been honed over the years but really, in the main, had not changed very often. When it had you could look around and find the strategy he had copied from someone else. Humstead optimized; he never really innovated. You could almost tell who he talked to and what he read if you knew the literature of politics at a given time.

The backbone of Humstead’s strategy was to approach a campaign using a ‘platform’ of promises. He made sure this included promises of personal preferment to those who supported him. That was the carrot. To this he added disinformation, some people call these lies. Lies were used as media events or to destroy the reputation of the opposition just like Dave had just seen done in the Lawrence campaign. This was routine and had caused some potential opponents to withdraw before the campaign really started. Dave’s thought process slowed and veered off to the image of Humstead and Dicks smiling together. Dicks, Dave had discovered, seemed to be at the center of the same kind of activity centering in media that Humstead used in politics. Dave had been working up profiles on every prominent figure in public life, trying to see patterns since he had read Gramp’s letter. Dicks had waged what looked like a similar war on Jeb Franks, the attorney for Quince who had shot himself to death in the Rose Garden. No, Dave shook his head. That was crazy. Dicks could not be like Humstead.

Dave noticed something else, too. While Branch was Governor in Texas, the use of actual policy to stroke money and allegiance out of donors and voters, pretty much absent in previous administrations, became standard operating procedure. Dave set up another line of inquiry, uploading the changes to the website.

It was amazing that the man had written it all down. Reproducing it would certainly embarrass him. But that was all it would do. Dave wondered again how George had come by the papers.

Then at the very back of Humstead’s over written paean to his cleverness there were a few pages of what appeared to be notes in George’s handwriting. Copies of notes, Dave then noticed. With dates. It appeared to be a running record of the Xeroxed copies George had run at the City Hall here and elsewhere along the road referring to two original pages produced by someone else.

The page numbers appeared to be for deeds. There were also copies of entries from old phone books with names Dave did not recognize. Then, looking further down the list, he noticed that one of the names was circled and referred to a birth certificate. The date this woman had given birth was the same date and location as given out in Humstead’s bio. There was a number and date for certificate of death and one for her birth. There was also some other dates and places noted.

What did it matter? What had George been doing?

The bartender, a fellow Elk, graciously changed the channel on the Lodge’s television so Dave could watch Saturday Night Live. Dave hated to miss what had become one of the most relevant pieces of political commentary available. The spoof on the presidential debates was funnier than he had imagined possible. Logan Hobbs, one of the regulars, watched solemnly, remarking later that he thought they made more sense than the last time. Dave realized that Logan thought this was the real debate. He did not disabuse him. There really had not been very much difference, all things considered.

Tough Talk that evening featured Brusk Crimshaw nattering on about the presidential race. It was less than a month now until Election Day.

The night sky was a blaze of stars as he walked out of the Lodge, heading for his bed in the decadent dark-wood interior of the motor home. Dolly had forgiven him for yesterday and tonight he had moved the computer into the bar to work when Dolly quit at closing time. Once again Dave had had too much to drink. It had seemed appropriate tonight.

Aspirin and water. Dave reached for them even before he crawled out of bed. It was late morning when the sounds of birds chirping and the distant hum from the highway that ran by the Lodge’s trailer court finally penetrated. It was pretty nice, all things considered. There was electricity, water, cable for the television and other niceties. Not all but some meals could be had very inexpensively at the Lodge. Dave was not going to bother with breakfast today. His stomach told him that would be a very bad idea.

Dave found Dolly working in the office when he finally walked into the Lodge just after noon. There was always a lot to do. Paperwork from members, bills to be processed, cubbyholes to be filled and phone calls from more members to be answered were all her responsibility. Dave had learned that on top of being the entire paid staff, except the barkeeper and a cleaning crew, Dolly was also Secretary. He had attended the Lodge meeting out of a sense of obligation. During that meeting he’d been impressed by her efficiency and quiet sense of humor when dealing with the cadre of old timers still unused to having a woman in a seat of power. Most meals and projects were all carried out by volunteers.

The repartee and comments told Dave there had been a little grumbling from the other members when she broke through the gender barrier and joined in her own right, but not much. Her father had been a founding member of this Lodge and her deceased husband was a Past Exalted Ruler.

Glancing up as he walked in, Dolly got out some more papers for him; these papers had been crumpled and pressed flat again. They were not more of Humstead’s political fantasies. These were letters; personal letters, hand written from Craig Humstead to the father he had not known.

After he finished reading the letters, Dave felt sick. Obviously Humstead had written these letters a long time ago when he was young and emotionally vulnerable. He might never have mailed them. All of the letters were from him to the man he had discovered was his biological father when he was 19. Now Dave vaguely remembered that there had been some story about this floating around. His parent’s marriage had ended on his birthday and soon afterwards some relative, an aunt or uncle, had casually mentioned that the man who walked out wasn’t his “real father” anyway.

It was an ugly thing to have been done to Humstead. Dave wondered about the kind of relative who would have dumped that on a young man, obviously already distressed. Then his mother had killed herself. Dave glanced down and looked at the date of death.

What kind of people were Humstead’s family? Dave did a search and found practically nothing on the family. No names of mother, father, siblings. A Google search brought up nothing that correlated for a date of birth or death for either legal parent. Nexis also bombed out. He tried the same procedures with another well-known personality. The bio had a full rundown, including smiling faces at a reunion.

When Humstead tried to get in touch with his biological father he was ignored. Dave leafed through the papers, looking for a name, anything about the biological father. Grimacing, he read through the painfully personal words that filled the letter to a man who obviously did not want fatherhood.

Humstead was very anxious that no one know about his background. Dave noticed that he had attended, but not graduated from, the University of Utah; he had been born in Denver, Colorado. He had gone on from there to enroll and presumably take classes at seven other colleges and eventually to teach at a prestigious college in Texas without having a degree himself.

Humstead’s early interest in politics had been all encompassing. Instead of collecting pictures of sports heroes, he had collected bios and photos of politicians. He had shared that in one early interview and though the tiny story had been picked up from time to time, it had never been enlarged on. Humstead never talked about his family.

At the time of his birth Humstead’s last name had not been Humstead. His biological father had been a prominent man having an affair with a woman whose family came from the Ozarks. She already had one illegitimate child. The man who became his father when he was less than a year old had some curious habits. He was now dead.

It was an ugly history. But it explained a lot about Humstead’s need to succeed no matter the cost. Sometimes what is absent is more important than what is present.

Dolly received a box from George through FedEx on January 5th. It had been dropped off in Reno. The package contained the Humstead notes in one folder and two other folders. The first was labeled Research, the second Storage File. Finally it had occurred to Dave to ask Dolly if she knew any more. It turned out she did. Those facts had, however, receded in importance when she confronted George’s death.

George had called and asked her to keep the ‘package’ for him. He did not want it on him where he was going. He did not tell Dolly any more except that he would be back if he lived. Before he had left, he had slipped a ring on her finger but told her not to tell anyone. It might not be safe, he said. She was not to wear it until he came back. If that happened he would be safe. Dolly showed Dave the gold ring with the five diamonds lined up across the top. It was engraved with the date they had first met.

As he and Dolly sat in the office she slipped it on her right ring finger and told Dave about those weeks. Dave did not quite cry but he wanted to. Somehow this unlikely romance reminded him of the poetry his grandmother and Gramps had exchanged. He had never imagined that passion could well up in the eyes of a woman who seemed old to him, but there was passion in Dolly’s eyes when she talked about George.

They had taken walks, holding hands under the one full moon they saw together. He had kissed her for the first time then; just a petal light touch on her lips. They had talked about everything but his research, covering his early life in Texas and as a young soldier. He had told her about his wife and kids. She had told him about her dead husband. Soon, she was spending nights in his motor home or driving him to her house nearby. There has been a lot of gossip at the lodge, of course.

Then, when he gave her the ring, he told her about the boy, Humstead. George had gotten the files from a cousin who had named him his executor. He had found the first file with the ‘how to’ manuscript and the letters while cleaning out his cousin’s filing cabinets, noticed the name with surprise, and started reading.

Everyone is related to someone. The cousin, Bobby Joe Meredith, who died leaving George with the duty of clearing out his office and home in Garland, had gotten the files via Xerox from the guy who cleaned Humstead’s office. They had been acquired for one of his clients, a former political opponent searching for information. Bobby Joe had made a copy for himself.

Bobby Joe was a private detective who sometimes fudged the lines of what was exactly ethical. His death, caused by cancer, had been swift but certainly natural enough.

Mostly, George had burned the contents of the files. These files had attracted his attention because of his own run-ins with Humstead.

George was worried because, Dolly said, corruption was rampant. George was sure that Humstead was the tool that enabled the Branches to continue behavior that had bothered him during his many years in Texas politics. She did not know who George was going to see.

“Had Humstead known George had the files?” Dave asked. Dolly had nodded yes. He knew; George had told him so when he saw him the last time. That is why George was scared. He hoped that making peace between father and son would save his skin. Evidently it had not worked.

The Houstonian - October 2000

The elder Branch had used the place as quarters while he was in transition. The group gathered here had flown in from various parts of the country to discuss the narrowing lead of the younger Branch and to consider the transition questions. They knew only part of the plan. Humstead never shared everything.

Not that they doubted that next January they would be part of the incoming administration heading to D.C. to occupy offices in the White House.

Humstead settled into the seat looking out onto the patio as others talked. The foliage was lush and perfectly manicured. Beyond the patio he could glimpse one corner of the golf course. Could life have been more perfect?

It was much nicer meeting here than in the Fortress down the hill. The facilities of the Our History Foundation looked more like a bunker than a think tank. These petroleum types were always thinking ahead. Humstead approved of that. Perfect security there, with no windows an inconvenient photojournalist or marksman would aim through. And this, a posh resort with everything he could want at his fingertips.

This was not just food. It was an experience in lavish excess served up with all of the extras. Humstead was used to perfection now. He glanced down at the buffet, well sampled, and smiled to himself.

He had spent the last four years laying out, in depth, the strategy for this election. He had revised the assumptions on their base of support, long, shaky and growing more so, and forged new alliances that continued and deepened Republican control of a voting block through evangelical churches. The voting blocs had been manicured as well as the lawn out there; seeded and curried to perfection with other safeguards in place.

Israel had been useful and would be more so. Issues, an annoyance for many political consultants, had proven to be more useful than gold to Craig Humstead. And with issues, you could promise forever and not have to come across. He would be disappointed if he was off by 2.5 percent.

Chapter Five - High up in the balcony, London, 1973

“Every social institution which teaches human beings to cringe to those above and step on those below must be replaced by institutions which teach people to look each other straight in the face.”

--Margaret Mead

High up in the balcony, London, 1973

Sometimes life provides insights when least expected. Sometimes those unexpected insights prove to be worth their weight in diamonds no matter how long we have to wait for the clear, clean edges of thought to crystallize.

The performance that evening at the opera house in London included singing by Ramona Dewitt, but although a polite hoard of attendees from all over the world were in attendance and the performers were excellent, no one had come just to hear the singing. Tonight marked the pomp filled opening of the first Environmental Conference for the United Nations, held here in England and attended by everyone who was anyone. Her Majesty, the Queen of England, was also in attendance.

Gladys Elliot Ramsey had been looking forward to this event for a good long time; the environment had become her issue in the years following her divorce while still struggling to raise her children alone and without the support of her wealthy ex-husband, Lionel Ramsey. Ex-husbands who are attorneys rarely pay very much in support, Gladys had discovered. The law includes the means to avoid accountability for those who wield it.

Gladys had become expert in bartering for lessons in tennis and tutoring in literature in exchange for any and everything her two girls needed. She tried not to complain. Her girls starting working when they were fifteen; there would be no long, slow summers visiting with friends and vacationing for them. The terms of the divorce, however, did mandate that their father pay for the college of their choice. He complained bitterly that this forced him to cut back on the two-month vacation his second family spent in Europe every summer. How, he would complain to all in range of his voice, could that bitch do this to him and his innocent children?

Gladys tried not to make money an issue. That would not have been acceptable.

Tonight was a non-monetary compensation for her many years of efforts. So it had been a shock when Gladys and Valerie realized that no ticket had been provided for Gladys. Valerie, sensing the disappointment of her long term and unpaid assistant, insisted Gladys use the one ticket provided to her. The world famous psychiatrist was used to galas; she would stay at the hotel, comfortably ensconced with dinner served up in her room, a good book and bed her earnestly sought companions. Dr. Newcomb really preferred it that way, she said with a twinkle in her eye. She had discovered an Agatha Christie she had never read in the bookshop around the corner from the Savoy, where they were staying. That would keep her well entertained.

It had been Gladys, a volunteering divorced mother, who first introduced and familiarized Valerie with the workings of the UN from her previous work at the University of Chicago. It was right that Gladys should go.

Gladys had loved the pomp and spectacle of galas since she was an undergraduate at Windhammer College. Chatting and seeing and being seen had always been a part of her life. Dressing for the event, she checked her gold silk gown. It had been designed by de Moi for her cousin Felicia, who had passed it on her. Felicia did not wear her gowns twice, and this one had been purchased for her daughter’s début in Philadelphia last year. The cousins were nearly identical is size and had been born only thirteen months apart.

Gladys did not envy Felicia her life of ease. Her life, Gladys thought, had been more interesting, if rocky in spots.

Gladys had picked Windhammer for college for herself because it was close to her home as well as for its academic excellencies. College was an expense that did not trouble her parents; it would be paid for by the family trust.

From Windhammer, Gladys could go home to spend time with friends and her parents. Some girls her age avoided their families but Gladys had been an only child who had learned to read and think on the gentle laps of Rector Elliot and his loving wife, Eleanor. The couple had waited nearly twelve years before their one daughter entered their lives and became the focus of their home. Rector Elliot was the last son of a large family of wealthy entrepreneurs. His interests had diverged from his family’s into arenas of the personal and spiritual. The husband and wife started each morning with a reading from the Bible; Gladys heard the Bible at least as often as she heard the classic fairy tales.

In Philip Elliot’s wife he had found a soul mate; both of them were uninformed on the fine points of mergers, stock, and management that filled the time of their closest relatives; both were sensitive and nurturing to their small daughter and to the flock they served.

That community centered on Eastchester County, New York, and included some of the wealthiest families in the world. This was home to them. They had met at a debut for the daughters of members of the Yacht Club. Eleanor had been visiting Pooch (Sylvia) Smith, a friend from school. Eleanor was the youngest daughter of a Main Line Philadelphia family; her husband’s family had fought the Revolution from New York. Then they had lived near the Murray estate now a part of New York City. Their families were long accustomed to wealth.

Gladys had gone on to Windhammer from the very good and up scale prep school paid for by her grandparents. She had taken with her a cheerful ignorance of the world beyond the rarified circles in which she had been raised. College at Windhammer had opened up many avenues, but others had remained closed. If you don’t know the door is there you never think to look for the key that will open it.

Gladys’ years at school had been exciting and rewarding. She had entered school during the third year of the Second World War, 1943, and had accepted as natural the many changes that war brought. She knitted for the troops, carrying her yarn and needles into class with her. She was careful about what she ate; the family maid had been instructed to cut back on their consumption of meat and eggs. The whole family carefully saved tin foil for the war effort. Gladys read the papers every day, discussing events with her parents over the dining table. She admired the courage and perseverance of Eleanor Roosevelt. The First Lady was her Godmother and just what a woman should be. Unconsciously, she took her as a model.

Gladys‘s boy friend, Jason Mitford, was a student at Yale. The two had met at the Yacht Club in West Harbor. Gladys was spending the summer crewing for Emily Randolph, a friend from Thatcher School. It was just the two of them at first. They shared a love of the sea, horses and the poetry of Rudyard Kipling. Gladys would slip Kipling’s collected works into her pocket and read aloud when they were out past the shoals onto the open water, mixing the excitement of India and war with the currents of the sea and air. Sometimes they would read Emily Dickenson. Emily had been named for the Massachusetts poet and thrived on the intensely anguished cadences of her verse.

Gladys also brought Whinny, her chestnut riding horse, to stay in the vastly cool stables with Chester, Emily’s jumper, and the small legion of other horses that resided there. Days with Emily were spent in motion, either on horseback or on the water. After riding they would walk the horses cool and then slip off in the dark interior of the stables, rubbing the horses dry and clean with towels and curry combs. They always smelled like horse, even when they were on the water; Nanny lectured with little effect in the long free space of summer. So it had been just the two of them until they turned 14.

Then Jason had joined them.

Jason was a friend of Emily’s brother Jonathan; he was fifteen but instead of ignoring them, he agreed to come along when they went out early one morning on the Gaucho, Emily’s little sailing dingy.

He went once and then somehow it became a routine.

That one day had turned into many days when Jason appeared for an early breakfast on the long wraparound veranda, served by Nanny on the teak dining set that comprised part of the furnishings that extended the possibilities for conversation and contemplation into the outdoors. The table was always set with a linen tablecloth and perfectly folded napkins, although outside the stainless steel tableware was used. It was at the opposite end of the three-story mansion so as not to disturb Emily’s parents. They ate eggs and buttermilk pancakes still crisp from sizzling in butter and coated with fresh, hot maple syrup that stuck to the tongue it was so thick. They drank orange juice squeezed by Cook just for them that morning. If they had any in the kitchen, cream-dipped berries would accompany their meal.

Then they sailed. The long days and the cadence of Kipling’s poetry had forged a bond. Jason was fascinated by the war stories of the Englishman and had memorized the Last of the Light Brigade. Reciting it to the backdrop of waves crashing on rocks had moved all three to tears. The three talked, dreamed, and laughed; they had experienced shell pink mornings and the glossing and dimming of summer.

They inhaled the class-conscious heroism of Kipling, adding his characters to their growing understanding of honor and courage. Their world was a simple place. Right and wrong remained firmly engraved, defined by ideals forged from the lives of those they admired.

Summer with Emily and Jason threaded through Gladys’ life becoming a part of her forever.

After her quiet wartime debut, held in New York although her mother would have preferred Philadelphia, summers with Emily ended. Emily spent her next summer in California with her married sister who lived in San Francisco. They wrote, talked on the phone, and saw each other briefly from time to time. To Gladys, it was a long winter away.

Jason went on to Yale, another in a long line of Mitfords to study there. But Jason left before finishing. He refused to say why at the time. That had been shock enough. Then he joined the Army instead of waiting for a slot that would have guaranteed his safety in the OSS or one of the politically oriented corps that worked in and around Washington D.C. These units were populated with a cross section of everyone they knew. Most had finished college and gone to officer candidate school or directly into the OSS. That was how it was. The Regular Army was not for their kind.

He wrote back, sometimes.

Back at school at Windhammer, Gladys wrote to Jason every day while he went through basic training and was shipped out to the European Theatre. That year she had studied the War in class with her favorite professor, Dr. Sybil Gwynn. Dr. Gwynn had insights into the political events that astonished Gladys. Flipping through a list of OSS agents years later, Gladys discovered the name of her favorite professor, Dr. Gwynn, listed as a covert operative. As she slowly ran her finger over the list of OSS her shock grew.

She had not realized back in the 1940s that Yale was ground zero for the OSS. She had not known that the College Librarian at Yale had been in charge of information transfer from the OSS to the newly organized Central Intelligence Agency.

Windhammer was not the closest women’s college to Yale. But Gladys’ family, at least the men, had been going there for generations. Gladys met Yale men at nearly every party she attended; a good portion of the families who attended the church her father had had in his charge for so many years were Yale men. Over her years in college there she had dated at least ten young men who had gone on to the OSS or the CIA.

Evidently there was a lot she had not known. No one had told her.

For Jason, joining up was a decision that also changed his life. He found himself fighting his way up the Italian Peninsula in 1943 in a war that never seemed to end. The letters from Gladys had been the bright spots of sanity that sustained him, but when he came home he was a very different man. His body and soul had been wounded and in the wake of World War II only visible scars were real.

Her work with the American Field Service had been fun and involving. She had met interesting people, traveled, and done her best to help accomplish the inspiring goals of their charter. She had served for a time as their Treasurer. Those goals were to connect people through service throughout the world, helping to create a new world order. That had sounded necessary and good. Why, she had wondered occasionally, was there all of this emphasis on politics?

Gladys had attended a conference of the American Field Service as the representative from Windhammer. It had been something of a fluke. The appointed representative had eloped with a fiancé who would prove to be a very temporary husband. Careful of her obligations, however, the young heiress had sent on to Gladys the agenda, tickets, and paperwork. Gladys had gotten on the train and gone with only two days notice.

The Conference took place in Madison, Wisconsin, in the summer of 1947. It had been an inspiring occasion, filled with new friendships and some astonished looks from people with whom she was acquainted. Later, this too would return to call into question the world she thought she knew.

Gladys had just finished college and was working as a volunteer for the American Field Service when Jason returned. He demanded the letters he had written her and tore them up while she stood watching in shock. He left her standing there, alone. Emily had gone on to Mt. Holyoak and marriage to a stockbroker whose family had owned a seat on the New York Stock Exchange since it began. The company, Randolph, Bates, Farnum and Fineman, had offices in New York on Canal Street. They also had offices in San Francisco, Chicago, and London. Emily would be traveling extensively in the years to come. Her first child, a son, was born in London less than a year after her spectacular wedding.

Eighteen months later, Gladys married an up and coming attorney who had made partner in an old and established law firm in the City. The marriage would last long enough for her to give birth to two daughters.

After the break up of Gladys’ marriage brought on by a series of affaires on the part of her husband, Gladys found surcease in what was really a continuation of the work she had begun even before her graduation from Windhammer. That work and raising Emily and Lilith kept her too busy for needless introspection.

Gladys tucked the ticket neatly into her evening bag along with her compact. She glanced in the mirror, tossing back her head just a little and smiling. The event included a lavish buffet during the intermission, so she would not need more than a few dollars for incidentals.

Walking into the main room, Gladys could see the VIP section reserved for the people she and Valerie had worked with right up front in the first balcony and so was astonished when the usher, glancing at the ticket she presented, escorted her upstairs to the nether regions of the highest balcony. There, glaring at her, twisting his wrist and jerking his head in the odd manner that had become so familiar to Gladys, was Paul Roofer, obviously surprised and annoyed to see her. He asked abruptly where Dr. Newcomb was sitting.

Looking at his sunken eyes blazing with anger, Gladys felt a stab of insight into this man who had worked so hard to make himself an integral part of the world of the United Nations. It was an ugly view into his soul. She had a lot to think about.

Dr. Newcomb had made her mark in the world and on the world in so many ways. Her foundational work on the neurobiology of the human mind, its functions, and the connective threads that created cooperation between people were now studied nearly everywhere on Earth. Where most psychiatrists were uninvolved with the larger world, however, Dr. Newcomb was a passionate advocate for the personal integrity of people everywhere. Her gold eyes flashed at reports of injustice and the heat of anger easily ignited her voice in protest.

Gladys loved her clear vision.

Breakfast the next morning was taken in Dr. Newcomb’s suite. Dr. Newcomb was up when Gladys knocked and already having her one soft boiled egg – two and a half minutes – and her slice of unbuttered toast, washed down with tomato juice and coffee. For Gladys she had ordered a croissant and delicately sliced fruit. Dr. Newcomb’s unceasing energy kept her as thin as a rail, although she was a dedicated trencher woman.

“How did the opening ceremony go?” Valerie looked up at her, her old eyes twinkling slightly.

“The ceremony was just what you would expect but…” Gladys paused, considering carefully what to say. “the ticket was for a seat up in the rafters.” She looked at Valerie. Valerie’s eyebrows rose slightly.

“Interesting. Now I wonder what…any ideas?” Valerie looked at her, head cocked slightly to one side, her expression all attention and inquiry.

“I, or you, were expected. The seat was right next to Paul Roofer.” Gladys smiled impishly. Valerie laughed. “He did not look very happy when I arrived.”

“If Paul Roofer is unhappy, then we must have done something right.” Valerie said, smiling at Gladys just before spooning up the last golden remnants of egg.

Both Valerie and Gladys had long since learned to be wary of Roofer.

Paul Roofer was a fixture at the United Nations. Roofer had been a classmate of Randolph S. Branch at Yale. Randolph S. Branch, who was himself the son of former Senator and oilman Bristol Branch, went on to become vice president and then president years later.

Roofer was forever around to be tripped over. Appointed through his connections, his presence had also over time correlated strongly with odd happenings that Valerie and Gladys could not fail to notice. For instance, previously unannounced changes in meetings, times, places and the wording of text that had been unanimously agreed on by committees operating out of the United Nations suddenly changed. The typists who prepared documents were sometimes seen chatting with Roofer. It had taken several years for them to notice this pattern. During those years, Gladys and Valerie had also become aware of the activities of Roofer’s more extended connections.

All of Roofer’s associates shared some common interests. Senator Branch, Roofer’s roommate at Yale in Fulbright College, was an oilman. He thought, breathed, and it was rumored, imbibed, oil. Certainly the family business consumed crude oil from all over the world. It was rumored that he had favored space flight until his staff of petroleum engineers had persuaded him that there could be no oil on the Moon.

Two of Senator Branch’s closest associates and business partners were Ralph ‘Musk’ McCallum, an oilman from Canada who ran a huge conglomerate of interests all over the world, and B.A. Shreveport, another individual whose massive oil empire included refineries and pipelines all over the world.

Oil, Gladys learned, was something that needed to be fed unceasingly into refineries for money to continue to flow.

Valerie had once said that all human action took place through human cooperation between individuals who shared common ideas. Sometimes cooperation was a good thing. Cooperation allied with innovation had created the cure for polio. Valerie had postulated some of the first theories on the neurobiology of cooperation, linking this field to economics, her second life interest.

But cooperation also founded the Nazi Party, she often reminded her students while lecturing at her classes at NYU. Motives and goals provide the direction for human action, but that direction could take you anyplace. In the case of Roofer, it seemed that his intentions were his own self-aggrandizement. Being seen with Valerie, sitting next to one of the most respected figures associated with the founding of the United Nations at this first meeting, must have been very important to him.

Neither Gladys of Valerie could see any other motivation for his odd behavior.

The United Nations had been founded in the wake of World War II to promote cooperation between nations and individuals. The focus of their activities was on governmental institutions. This was very much an artifact of the attitudes and preconceptions of their generation.

The world in the aftermath of the Second World War saw all human action as appropriately controlled through government. This had been the view of Marx, a reflection of the trend towards a larger and more centralized government that had become dominant in America with Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. The succeeding decades of collusion with the Robber Barons of trade had brought its eventual reaction but little move towards reversing the trend.

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Business was seen as a necessary evil, an adjunct to human action to be tolerated but distrusted. Business viewed government as both enemy and potential ally. If influence was for sale, the grandsons of the Robber Barons knew where to buy.

A small cadre of the best and brightest, many of them from Yale, had experienced the Second World War through their activities in the OSS, drawing their life lessons and truths from the delicious games of convert action necessitated by wartime intelligence. R & A, Research and Analysis, had become the province of those who could hone their academic abilities to produce rapid response assessments of probabilities based on reams of material sent to them from OSS officers operating in remote locations.

Some in R & A and throughout the two theatres, as well as at home, had met first in the darkened crypt of the Skull and d’Bones, the secret society that had selected and funded the elect of Yale for generations. The war years had broadened their acquaintanceships into every conceivable part of the world.

Secrecy was a way of life for them. For members of the Skull and d’Bones, that was natural enough. Those who were not even supposed to acknowledge that they had been ‘tapped’ could withstand the temptation to discuss their secrets because secrecy brought with it many rewards. Members of the Society gained, along with cash grants, connections that guaranteed their financial and social futures. This was an enticing reality for those initiated into the mysteries of the OSS and later the CIA. Money and the privileges of power were a part of their rebirth rights as Members of the Skull.

The OSS and later the CIA breathed in the culture of secrecy from the esoteric traditions brought back to America from the Illuminati of Germany, assuming for themselves the patina of righteousness that the Knights Templar had worn as a badge of honor. Some of them referred to themselves as the Knights of Darkness.

For these, the anointed, the heady heights of power and respect had come early. Many were still undergraduates or had received their degrees through the accelerated program at Yale when their careers began. Many of them had inherited wealth and knew that their choices in life would never be dictated by monetary need.

When the games had threatened to end along with the hostilities of World War II, these soldiers of fortune still wanted to play. The Cold War provided the reason for the games to continue. Communism had replaced the Socialist Nazi regimes of Germany, Italy and the Imperialist monarchy of Japan as the focus of evil rampant in the world. How or why anyone in the CIA thought that a collectivist system could compete in the arts, literature, or consumer production was a question that went unanswered. But those books, artists and suspect writers on their list suddenly found their careers frozen, their books removed from the shelves of every book store in the nation, and their friends cooling.

The logic of secrecy had been mainstreamed from the windowless block of stone and gothic presence on campus and injected into policy at the highest levels of American government. It had happened as a natural transition, transfusing the power of old money and privilege into the innermost workings of intelligence within government, putting the covert tools of diplomacy and the crypt into the hands of men with very different rules for living.

The games of the Cold War would be played out using the rules practiced by the boys of Skull and d’Bones. They would be brought to maturity by men hungry for power.

News in Brief

Americans, rattled by continued threats of war, today heard the President of the United States urge them to pay close attention to directives from Nuclear Preparedness Authorities, keeping a sufficiency of supplies and water to tide them over in case of war. The Mayor of New York, moved to action by the ensuing crisis, announced at a press conference today that in the case of Nuclear War, the City will not ticket cars illegally parked on the left side of each street.

March 20 – 22 1970

The National Organization of Women meets in Chicago to organize. Among other motions, the delegates vote on a proposal to adopt the use of Ms. instead of the traditional Miss and Mrs. or simply dropping the use of an honorific altogether. The motion passed by one vote. The woman who cast the deciding vote, Ellen Selfridge, the founding president of the organization at Princeton where she taught, immediately began using the honorific herself. She had wanted to for a good long time.

It meant a lot to the slender young mother of two. Seated in the far back corner she had watched as the standing count worked its way through the rows of women, nearly 300 in number, representing a national membership that had just topped 2,000. It had been a close vote, a ballot decided by a majority of one. Without an honorific before her name, no woman could be published in a paper or seated in the faculty dining room at Princeton. But choosing between Mrs. And Miss defined every woman within the context of her relationship with a man. The women here were building the tools to make equality more than a dream, and it was a dream that had been Ellen’s own since her childhood in the nearly Victorian world of England of the 30’s.

Ellen did not notice that afterwards she sat just a little straighter. But she did.

December - 1971

This month a group in Denver Colorado founded a new political party. The Libertarian Party founded on the ideas of Barry Goldwater and Ayn Rand, elected officers and moved to adopt a platform. The newly elected National Chairman of the group, Dennis Neilson, a former member of the Republican Party and Young Americans for Freedom said their action came about because of Wage and Price Controls, a policy mandated by President Ricardo Dixon earlier this year.

December – 1972

When the Electoral College polled today making, official the election of the President of the United States, one Elector from Vermont, a Roy MacBrain, cast his vote for the Libertarian candidates for President and Vice-President. Those were Dr. Jonas Hopsmeyer, a professor of philosophy at USC and Teri North, a talk-show host from Oregon. This marks the first time a woman has gotten a vote from the Electoral College for either office.

October 1973 - Blandinger Tape: Dixon Too Drunk to Meet

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AB) -- Five days into the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, with the superpowers on the brink of confrontation, President Dixon was too drunk to discuss the crisis with the British prime minister, according to newly released transcripts of tape recordings.

Horace Blandinger’s assessment of the president's condition on the night of Oct. 11, 1973, is contained in more than 20,000 pages of transcripts of Blandinger’s phone calls as the president's national security adviser and secretary of state -- records whose privacy he had guarded for three decades. The National Archives released them Wednesday.

GUARDIAN by Decon Gray - The USA breathed a huge collective sigh of relief when, in early 1973, the wretched Vietnam War came to an end - for the Americans, at any rate. Then the glow faded as a vast domestic scandal unfolded. Even before the dramatic events called Rivergate were played out, Vice-president Ricke Blintz was forced to resign after the revelation of his systematic income tax evasion, and grim allegations of other even more criminal frauds.

1975 - New Recruit to the Republican Party

The Republican Party has gained a surprising new, perhaps we should say neo recruit, in the person of Hyman Opal, a former neo-Marxist, a neo-Trotskyist, a neo-liberal, is now calling himself a neo-conservative.

1978 – The North Atlantic

Built in Aberdeen, the vessel that became the Rainbow Marine served the British Ministry for research before becoming a North Sea fishing vessel. It was bought by Green4Peace for around $70,000 in 1978. Used in campaigns against Icelandic, Spanish and Russian whaling activity, the harvesting of seal pups in Canada, and the dumping of nuclear waste by France and Britain, it was refitted for work in a new campaign in 1985.

Loyal Barrington, the President of Green4Peace, followed his conscience and authorized the use of the Rainbow Marine to patrol the oceans in defense of the whales. His action was a response to the death of thousands of whales killed in recent years and a rapidly dropping population of whales’ world wide.