The Devlin Deception: Book One of The Devlin Quatrology (7 page)

In the security office, the duty technician watched as DEI's
anti-hacking algorithms recognized the DOS attacks and automatically
and rapidly disabled the IP addresses involved in the attacks; all
the mirror sites stayed online. Nobody accessing the sites
experienced any difficulty. This event also provided feedback for
DEI's cybersecurity staff in defending against cyberattacks from
China, Iran and other countries in the future.

But in nearly five thousand basements around the world, corn chips,
potato chips and chocolate soda dropped and/or spilled on keyboards,
mice and floors.

* * * * * *

Friday, December 9, 2011

9:01 p.m. CST (10:01 EST)

Dothan, Alabama

Steven O. Burns, Esquire, logged on from his office at the national
trial lawyers society's headquarters, clicked on the link for "Legal
Reform," read the entire section, downloaded and printed it all,
then picked up the phone and dialed.

"Speak."

"It's bad, John. Not only has he doubled our tax rate and
banned advertising, he's ordered 'loser pays,' and he's limiting any
lawyer in federal courts to a 5% contingency fee, 2% for class
actions, and a max of $100 per hour for individual clients, $200 for
businesses, with a max of two lawyers per side."

"WHAT? That's price-fixing!"

"Not only that, but any lawyer who files a frivolous or nuisance
lawsuit will be fined 10% of his total assets, NOT net worth, for the
first offense, 30% for a second and 50% for a third and beyond, and
that's NOT billable to clients. And he can unilaterally declare ANY
lawsuit frivolous or a nuisance, even in state and local courts."

"Jesus."

"Same thing goes for what he's calling 'egregious delaying
tactics' and for over-billing and double-billing. He's also cutting
off lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as
environmental suits, even below the federal level."

"Christ."

"And he's encouraging the states to follow his examples."

"Shit. We've got to do something. We'll sue the sonofabitch."

"We'll figure something out. But I've got a lot more to do on
all of these directives. I've just scratched the surface."

"I've got the site split between all our top guys, so you just
stick with the section you're on and we'll all go over the whole
thing Sunday afternoon at headquarters. Two o'clock."

"Got it; two o'clock. See ya then, John."

"Keep at it, Steve."

* * * * * *

Overnight

Cyberspace

Within minutes of Donne's speech, the brouhaha that had engaged the
blogosphere and all social media since early in the day, when a few
leaks came out about something happening (although no one seemed to
have a clear handle on the actual facts) transformed itself into
all-out chaos and full-blown polarization, both with paid bloggers
from every special interest and with amateurs. It quickly
degenerated, as it usually did, into personal attacks by one
commenter on another … or on all the others. “SSDD,”
as one comment read.

-9-

Six Months Earlier

Sunday, June 12, 2011

11:08 a.m.

Bonita Beach, Florida

Eight men and one woman were working the beach and the shallow waters
with metal detectors. The two men in waist-deep water were
methodically repeating the grid patterns they'd run every weekend day
for several years, but the six men and one woman on the beach
appeared to be total newbies, wandering aimlessly, awkwardly swinging
their detectors back and forth, finding nothing. But if one listened
closely to the two in the water, one could hear them muttering to
each other as they passed, "Goddamn penny pitchers."

Pam set her beach bag down, flipped open a chair and slithered into
it, giving Jake a winning smile and batting her blues at him over her
elegant sunglasses.

"Just call me Pam."

"And you can call me Jake, okay?"

"Okay, Jake."

Jake reached into his beach bag briefly, then into his cooler, pulled
out a plastic sandwich bag, held it out to her and said, "I've
always wanted to say this. Want a cookie, little girl?"

Pam laughed, a deep, open laugh, and said, with an exaggerated
Southern belle accent, "Why, suh, I hardly know you."
Then, dropping the accent, "Don't mind if I do. Homemade?"

"Not by a long shot. Closest I come to the C-word is heating
cinnamon rolls from a tube in a convection oven."

"The C-word?"

"Hard for me to even say it ... c-c-c-cook."

"Oh." Pam chuckled as she reached into the bag. "But
wouldn't that be the B-word?"

"The B-word?'"

Pam chuckled. "Bake."

"There's a difference?" Jake said, looking blank and
naive.

Pam looked at him quizzically.

"Sorry, just pulling your leg. They're from a dollar store, a
buck a bag."

Pam took a bite, carefully licking all the crumbs from her lips.
"Mmm, that's good. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Pam glanced at the water over Jake's shoulder and giggled. Jake
turned and saw a little girl, maybe a year and a half old, putting
wet sand in her mouth. A teenaged girl, maybe her older sister,
said, "Tara, don't eat the sand. It's not dinnertime yet."
Jake chuckled, and when the girl and the toddler came past him on
the way back to their chairs, he asked the girl if he could use her
line in his novel. She said, "Sure." Jake wrote briefly
in his notebook.

Then he turned back to Pam and smiled.

"So, Pam, what brings a gorgeous young woman like you to visit
an old fart like me?"

"Well, thanks for that, Jake, but I'm not that young. And you
don't look that old." She paused, wrinkled her brow and
continued, "I guess after the emails we've swapped, I just
wanted to meet you in person and, well, see what makes you tick and
how you came to be writing this book of yours."

"Hmm. Okay. Long story or short?"

"Whatever you want; I've got all day."

Jake smiled. "Okay. But first I've gotta tell ya that it's
incredibly hard for me to be serious for very long. My record so far
is three and a half minutes. All right. So here goes.

“About four, five years ago, I was living in Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina, hanging out at the beach, and I thought I'd write a
book about all the stuff I was seeing and hearing about, like the
history and people's experiences and anecdotes of life there. There
was all kinds of interesting stuff on the beach, too. So I got it
all done and ready for publication, with the title 'Myrtle Beach
Memories.'”

"Nice title.”

"Yeah. And then another guy up there put together a lot of
photos of women in bikinis, called it 'Myrtle Beach Mammaries,' and
started selling it to tourists. So when I started to try selling
mine … well, let's put it this way. The boobs were more
interested in boobs.”

Pam stifled a laugh. “Oh, I'm sorry. That must have hurt.”

"Yup, and after a while, I quit trying to sell the book.

“But as I was talking with people up there, many of them were
also saying a lot of political things, mostly angry with the
government, similar to the stuff in the first part of Donne's
speech.”

"And this was when again?”

"Um, '05 until maybe early '08 – no, middle of '08,
fallish, just after TARP and the Lehman bankruptcy and all that
stuff.

"So I started asking people up there more political questions,
and as we moved toward the election, people's opinions got more and
more polarized and sometimes downright vicious, but most all of them
were pretty angry, on both sides. And they were VERY emotional, but
not very rational and reasonable.”

"I remember that, all around the country, not just Myrtle
Beach.”

"And it got even worse after the election.”

"So are you a Republican or a Dem- – oh, I'm sorry. I
shouldn't be asking that.”

"Neither, actually, but I don't tell anybody who I vote for.”

"No problem; I can understand that. Sorry.”

"Anyhow, then I decided to go somewhere else and do the same
kind of thing. I bumped into a web site, DiscoverBonitaSprings.com,
liked what I saw and moved here in, um, April? Yeah, April of '09.
And I found the same kind of political anger here. And then --”

A somewhat heavyset woman in her mid-fifties, jogging by near the
waterline, waved and said, "Hi, Jake."

"Oh, hey, Dr. Deb. How ya doing?"

Dr. Deb paused, jogging in place. "Fine, fine. You?"

"Mostly sunny. Pam, this is Dr. Debbie Jackson; Dr. Deb, Pam."

"Nice to meet you, Pam."

"Same here."

"See y'all later." She jogged off.

Pam looked back at Jake. "Dr. Deb?"

"Yup. She's a psychologist, private practice. She let me use
her for the Debbie Jackson character ... well, her name, at least."

"That's the skanky one in Slinky Joe's?"

"Right."

"Cool." She paused. "So then?"

"Well, then I started trying to think about all those opinions
and a lot of the anger, get some perspective on it all.

"You've seen the approval rating of Congress, right?"

"Oh, yeah. Low teens, like 13 percent, somewhere in there."

"Yup. And probably headed lower. And remember the Speaker of
the House saying, 'We've got to pass the bill to find out what's in
it'? I think that was on Obamacare."

Pam laughed. "Yeah, I remember that."

"And remember that idiot Congressman who was worried that if the
Marines added eight thousand troops to their contingent on Guam, the
island might tip over?"

Pam laughed even harder. "Oh, God, yes. Totally embarrassing."

Jake laughed along, and then frowned. "But somebody elected
him. Ever watched the nighttime talk show segment where the host
interviews people on the street who are so ignorant?"

“Yeah.”

"It's frightening, frankly, 'cause these people can vote. In
fact, I think he should rename the segment as 'And These People
Vote?' -- or make that a tag line after each segment."

Pam chuckled and said, "And they reproduce."

Jake nodded and then said, "Oh, did you ever see that movie ...
oh, what was the title?" He rubbed his forehead. "Damn.
Silly plot, but the first three minutes were great. Had a yuppie
kind of couple having a serious discussion about holding off on
having children until their careers were in good shape, and then a
trailer trashy couple yelling and popping kids out one right after
the other ..."

Pam said, "Oh, yeah, I did see it ... the one with the
incredibly stupid rapper as President later on?"

Jake said, "Yup, that's the one. Oh, what was the name? Damn."

Pam shrugged. "It'll come back."

Jake continued. "Okay; we'll see.

"Anyhow, then you've got the Democrats and Republicans playing
what I'd call 'Politics Over Policy,' and we've got that sandbox
analogy that I had Donne give in his speech."

"Oh, on the back deck of the Titanic?"

"That's the one.

"So as I was thinking about all this stuff, I began wondering
what could happen if we got politics out of policy-making and got rid
of the whole election-to-election pendulum and uncertainty."

"Impossible."

"Probably. But remember, this is fiction. Anyhow, I got
thinking, what about a complete do-over, a blank slate?"

"Tabula rasa."

Jake looked a little more closely at Pam. "Exactly, but I
wasn't even thinking about writing anything yet. But I realized that
a do-over might call for a dictator of some sort, who didn't have to
pander to the voters to stay in office. So I started talking about
that idea with people, asking the ones who bitched the most about the
government what they would do if they were in total charge and could
make whatever policies they wanted to. And not one of them actually
had any real policy ideas; they just kept bashing the government in
general and the party they opposed in particular and with lots of
passion. But the idea of a benevolent dictator kept running around
in my tired old brain. So the next question would be how to get from
here to there.”

"Like a violent overthrow of the government?"

"Thought about that, but that's such a cliche."

"And treasonous."

"But even worse, not practical. Look at what's been going on
with the Arab Spring. Nope. But I thought back to Pelosi's comment
and figured somebody could sneak something into a must-pass bill that
declares someone the boss and get in that way, all nice and legal.
Bingo. Basic setup done. Then it's just a matter of deciding what
he's going to do and who or what is going to be the antagonist or
antagonists, and there's the story. But not as simple as it sounds."

"Hmm; I'd guess not."

"So I added that to my list of things to talk about with people
here in Bonita. We've got lots of retirees and many of them have run
businesses, some have worked in union jobs, a whole spectrum of
folks, and lots more in tourist season than are here now. And when I
started asking the right questions, they gave me lots of ideas from
their experiences, and round about January, I think, I wrote a first
draft of Donne's speech and put it online, started getting some
feedback and new ideas, including yours."

"But not the minimum tax."

"Nope; I don't remember who that came from, but it's a pretty
cool idea, especially trying to figure out the 'what ifs' that would
spin out from that.

“Anyhow, it all sorta morphed into the idea of doing a novel.

"But then there was one guy on the beach, kind of a sarcastic,
arrogant --"

A shrill female voice broke through their conversation, "Billy
Lee, Stevie Bruce, kit thowin' sand!" Jake and Pam looked
toward the water and saw two young boys, maybe six and four, doing
exactly that, with each other as the target.