The Cause (18 page)

NSA Director General Titus Montgomery hunkered down to kiss his four-year-old daughter goodbye in the vestibule.

“You smell like smelly juice,” little Elisabeth said, looking up at him.

Montgomery was mesmerized by the power of observation in youngsters, the bluntness, the raw sense of unedited truth that could spurt out of their mouths.

“It’s coffee, honey,” he said.

“It smells different than Mommy’s coffee,” she said.

“That’s because Mommy doesn’t know what a good coffee tastes like.”

He gazed over at his wife Emily, standing in the hallway, a tightened arm akimbo on a protruding hip, an eyebrow perking up in a perfect half-moon.
See
, the eyes said.
See, she can pick it up on you and she’s just a child
.

Montgomery brushed back his daughter’s hair, swept some loose bangs under a black metal barrette at the top of her head.

“Mommy says it’s not good for you.”

Montgomery put his hands to her shoulders, a sign to straighten-up, while he thought about the touch of propaganda latent in her last statement. Was she Daddy’s girl? Or had Mommy’s manipulation shaped her into her little pinion to grind Daddy’s gears?

“Lots of things aren’t good for you,” he said. “But coffee’s not one of them.”

“Can I try your coffee?” she asked.

“I’m all done with it now, little girl.”

“Tomorrow?”

“When you get older, honey.”

“I’ll be older tomorrow,” she said.

That was his girl, the midget Conquistador testing a border. Bouncing a ball off the wall of his will to say no to her. Montgomery had the expectation she would surprise him with every throw.

He kissed Elisabeth’s rosy cheek and stood. His wife was still giving him the stare, the look of
I’m better than you
.

“You’re late,” she said.

This phrase, the early-morning swan song. The
get the fuck out
way of pushing him through the door. She hated it that Elisabeth cherished this morning ritual, leading them through the hall dragging them for the morning sendoff.

“They’re waiting for you.”

“I’m the boss. I go when I feel like it.” He said this a lot too, and the kids fed on it, sensed the discord, especially the boy.

Brandon was five, but didn’t seem the older. Montgomery gazed down at his son who looked up at him wide-eyed. Montgomery ruffled up his hair. “Be good at school. Learn something and you’ll get ahead of the louts who don’t.”

The boy smiled at him hesitantly, eyeing his mother first before he did it, wondering if he had made a trespass. The poor kid was plugged in more with his wife’s ideology. Perhaps swayed by his wife’s not-so-subtle suggestiveness. Or just naturally introverted and shy, a kid whose mark on the world would be innocuous, a grain in the heap of human sand? Montgomery hoped it wasn’t the latter. The former he could live with because that was just a matter of swaying an opinion. An opinion he could manipulate, turn like a sheet of paper and begin drawing something new the owner would have to accept. The latter was weakness, frailty.

But he loved his boy, reaching out to understand him as he was doing now with both outstretched hands. “Come give your
dad a hug goodbye,” he said. The boy came and Montgomery picked him up high into the air and let the boy see him from above. Gave him the aerial perspective. Made himself small in the boy’s eyes. Showed him there was nothing to be afraid of. Brandon’s face lit up, and the smile, the trust—well, it made his morning. Brandon was the one who pulled him back, kept him human with the innocent look in his eyes. He had the fragility of a baby turtle scurrying out to sea. Within him, a blind hatchling scurried down a beach to duck into the pounding waves. He let the boy down and kissed his hand and blew it over to his wife. She squeezed her nose hoping the children would see, and when they didn’t, walked through the hallway toward the kitchen.

Outside, Montgomery’s double stood by the second car, the black Suburban with the shiny chrome hubcaps and dark tinted windows. Montgomery was late, always making the double wait, a morning mini-pleasure like the Jameson he added to his daily hazelnut coffee.

A couple of enlisted men holding machineguns saluted from the flat roof of the east wing staring down at the scene. The double leaned against the contoured hood with crossed arms, squinting from cigarette smoke curling in gray funnels above his eyes. The cigarette dangling out of the double’s mouth wasn’t him—never part of his persona. Montgomery hadn’t yet forbid him to smoke. This he blamed on himself. The squint wasn’t right either. He didn’t like The Dupe (as he liked to call him), but it was now a requirement for the National Security Council’s Director General to have one.

The Dupe wore the “dress blue” ASU uniform—the black tie, the peak lapel, the brass coat buttons, the four stars patched on top of his shoulders, golden cuffs, shined-up boots. The various patches were sewn in correctly under the lapel—the Army Service Ribbon, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Office of the Joint Chiefs Badge, and the many others. The uniform looked like his, and the black hair was slicked back like his, but certainly
he wasn’t using the same brand of hair gel. Most people missed the details, didn’t have the eye for them, and it pissed Montgomery off the guy hadn’t bothered to ask. He hated a sleepy work ethic. This one, the third imposter he had hired within the last year, didn’t take any pride in the job either. His driver and personal aide, Colonel Davis, had told him he was expecting too much, that he was looking for a mirror of perfection and none of these dweebs could live up. Davis was certainly right, even if it was an ass-kisser remark, but he liked Davis.

Montgomery saw himself as a man who had his eyes open. When someone took a shot at him a month ago, they had opened even more. He had some ideas of who it was. A squad of NSA and FBI was looking into it. If they didn’t find anything, he would “do the necessary”, as they said in Mumbai, and fire people down the ranks.

The double’s name was Leonardo Lord. He was of Italian descent, a guinea with a nose sloping more vertically than his, the heavy slant almost as steep as a y-axis on a coordinate system. At least the width was right. It was a Roman nose, where his was meatier with some other ethnicities thrown in—Slav, English, German. He was a mutt and knew it, took pride in it. He was American, a mixed breed, and he didn’t give a fuck where his ancestors came from.

Montgomery breathed in the crispy air, the wind like a cold blade against his cheek. He gazed over at Lord smoking a cigarette. Minus the cigarette, did he really look like that? Somehow, he couldn’t believe it, but Colonel Bowers, another one of his aides, was adamant—a canny resemblance he had said. Lord had on a pair of dark Gucci Aviators on. Why the fuck was he wearing those? Montgomery walked toward the car. Montgomery yelled, “Pretend you’re my double, not my bodyguard, okay?”

Lord stood there dumb-faced and quiet.

Montgomery frowned. “You still haven’t figured out what I’m talking about?”

The Dupe shrugged, was about to say something. Montgomery cut him off. “Close your mouth. Bugs might fly in.”

Davis, waiting near the other black Suburban, lifted a finger to each temple, mimicking someone taking off a pair of glasses. At least he wasn’t shit for brains. The double removed his shades, stood silent. Montgomery didn’t like to hear him speak, didn’t want his people to hear his voice. Davis opened the back door and Montgomery slipped in. “And tell him no more cigarettes. It’s a filthy habit.” Davis nodded and trotted out toward the other car. Then they loaded up. Three of them in the S-2, and him and Davis in the S-1. He wasn’t sure if they were going to take the long way or the short. He let his men handle it. The only one who couldn’t be trusted was the double. The others were solid. Some he had known for years, but even then you had to dig deep to be sure.

He turned on his iPad and flipped it to the news. What was the pulse of the day? How would he have to adapt? Events were malleable in so many ways. A story could be shaped, crafted for positive public spin even if the ground reality was chaos and bedlam.

The news was cheery. With the Dow up, everything was peaches. The newswoman droned on about macroeconomic data, Chicago PMI and Michigan sentiment. The charts slid on a downward slope, rolling softly toward the hills of the next depression, but they were spinning it as if they were bottoms.

But the economy was like a building about to undergo demolition. Dynamite at its base. When it went
ka-boom
, it was game over. New York Fed Board President, Jacob Lauder, was on MSNBC smiling into the camera explaining his new economic model, which he said would sterilize some of the macroeconomic problems facing the U.S. economy. Recently, he had received a call from Mr. Lauder, and he was overdue in calling him back.
But what would they talk about? The world was already awash in an ocean of liquidity. The Fed had used their bullets in 2009, then in 2011, then in 2012, 2017, and so on. The gun was empty, cards played. Montgomery watched Lauder’s smooth mannerisms, his cool demeanor. The face was camera-friendly. Much like himself, Lauder was a man on a charm offensive, a positive PR campaign to reverse public opinion. The Federal Reserve now acting defensive. The media wouldn’t criticize them, but for the rotating Senate and Congress, Fed policy was now the scapegoat and heavily scrutinized. A week ago, the President had come to him and told him The Fed was calling the probability high the financial markets would implode. As if this were some big secret.

All of the wound-up leverage in the financial system was unwinding, trillions of derivatives with failing counterparties, rehypothecated collateral where the same asset was used like toilet paper for a chain of loans. It would all come to roost. It was already happening in China. Empty warehouses on collateralized promises, Dongguan bankrupt and rioting. Banks failing to do due diligence because of promised bailouts. They had taken the bribes, reported the good numbers, taken the bonuses. The money was already out there in the system. Now it had to be pulled back. But it was like pulling at the wind. The nefarious economy, bludgeoned by debt, would have to suffer for it. The Chinese central authority now executing local village chiefs who let it run amuck, hanging them high and letting their bodies dangle on the top of street posts. Signs tied around their necks scrawled in Mandarin saying,
Timely return of a loan makes it easier to borrow a second time
.

Be ready, the President had told him. “Yes, Mr. President,” he had replied.

Of course Montgomery knew what he meant by this. It had been studied by the Minerva Research Initiative through social contagion research, discussed broadly in State Department think
tanks, and then more intimately with himself, General Cox, General Hanley, the Secretary of Homeland, Allen Swanson, and Secretary of State, Ronald Donaldson. Rule of law must be maintained at all costs. President Donnelly reiterated Donaldson’s words, emphasizing
all costs
in the same way
Breaking News
splashed the screens of newscasts. It was the eventuality they had prepared for, why DARPA had invested billions in advanced robotics, drone warfare, and secret computer labs. As a lieutenant in Iraq, Montgomery had seen firsthand when rule of law collapsed: beheadings; payback killings; ethnic cleansings; police murdering their own people; rape; looting. Morality flew out the window, and his Army unit had gone tribal too.

Kill ’em all
was the motto of his platoon. A couple of times they lived by it, either when they were fireteams on ambush, or just for the fuck of it when there was at least one bad egg they suspected in a squabble of a home whose door they would bust down. The motto had a certain ring to it. Three words of punch. Ruthless dogma. Three syllables with guts and glory sunk into it like a bayonet. It was the name of the
Metallica
album they used to listen to on patrols—Montgomery still remembering how amped up they all were. You needed something to sink your teeth into in the desert sands, the Arab fucking scabland.

They pulled out of the driveway. Montgomery glanced in the side mirrors, then at the rearview. There was a blue Prius, Virginia license plate XXJ-6605 behind them. Davis gazed up ahead at the edge of the woods, then down at the infrared detector, then back at the side mirror, eyes moving, eyes on the lookout.

It would happen suddenly. A butterfly effect vibrating the web of the epileptic system, ripping the fabric of civility. Bank runs, supermarkets cleared out, panic. Riots. Real riots. Not the tame riots of today, the sort with rubber bullets and tear gas. Somebody would get trigger happy and fire, killing the wrong
person. It would spark a public outcry. More riots, more guns. Small militias sprouting up. Buildings on fire. Mass looting. Gangs. Killings. The rule of law broken. Fear. The people would go crazy. The people would want blood. That had to be stopped. At all costs.

Democracy was a shaky building about to crumble. If it all collapsed, there would be a power vacuum. At that point the military would step in, and when it did, his current position would be an important one.

The TV anchor moved on to international news where the negativity could be expressed more openly, a pseudo-message that it was better in America. They buried the Chicago riot, but it still wormed its way into one paper when he did a Google search—the
Washington Post
, third page. Who cared? Still, he put the reporter’s name in a text message and sent it over to the National Security Council Special Division.

He shut his iPad then touched the automatic button that rolled down the glass window. “What do you make of this riot in Chicago, Davis?”

“You want my opinion, sir?” Davis seemed surprised.

“Why not? You’re from there aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” Davis took a moment to think, frame a response, fluff up what he really thought. Finally, he said, “Yes, I have some people there, sir. I’d say it’s more financial than anything. The poor are hungry. Prices in the store are more than the credit on their EBT cards. This wild inflation is whacking the little guy, and they’re starting to organize.”