Things Turn Up

Things Turn Up

by JCDavison

Copyright 2017 by JCDavison

Smashwords Edition

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All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER ONE

JACKSON BAILEY WALKED OUT OF his favorite coffee shop, carrying a cup of his favorite coffee. The coffee shop was next door to the building housing the Defense Investigation Bureau. Thin but deceptively strong and well-conditioned, Jackson Bailey was an agent for the Bureau. Wearing levis, a button up and a corduroy sports jacket, aged in his late forties, he was not just any old agent. Officially he was a Special Agent for the Bureau.

Actually he was the Defense Department's go-to problem solver.

When the Secretary of Defense needed to find something out, and wanted to get the info ahead of the FBI or CIA or NSA or ATF or ICE or any of the rest of the alphabet soup of competitors infesting Washington like so many random patches of fungus, well, that was when he called Jackson Bailey.

The sidewalk was busy in Washington's morning rush hour. Men and women dressed for office work passed this way and that, studiously ignoring one another while avoiding collisions like they were radar-equipped. Jackson dodged a couple pedestrians then started to dodge a third, before he recognized the latest semi-intelligent missile headed his way. It was a member of the team he himself supervised. Special Agent Lafe Jenkins. Lafe was about ten years younger than Jackson, more classically handsome and a better dresser. At the moment he looked spiffy as usual, in a well-cut form-fitting business suit.

Watch out, boss, Lafe smiled. Don't spill your coffee!

You could just get me another one if I did, Jenkins, Jackson shot back.

Lafe laughed. Jackson was smiling a thin smile but not because he was kidding. It was the smile of a friend who also happened to be your boss. Lafe Jenkins had no doubt that he would be headed inside the coffee shop at this very moment, replacing his boss' coffee if he had spilled it.

Since he hadn't, the two men walked shoulder to shoulder through the pedestrian traffic toward Defense Investigation Bureau headquarters. In the background a newspaper stand headlined PRESIDENT HARTMANN BACK IN WASHINGTON!

What's your prediction, boss? Lafe asked, more to make conversation than in hope of any realistic answer. Think we'll see any action today?

You bored, Lafe? Jackson smiled.

Lafe laughed again, shook his head. No, boss. Not me. And of course he wasn't. Jackson Bailey's team didn't have many chances to get bored. There were plenty of cases and he commanded dedicated and hard-working agents.

Lafe was his senior field agent. The two looked casual and comfortable as they walked on toward headquarters.

Both were completely unaware of exactly how not bored Jackson and Lafe and the rest of the team would soon be.

* * * * * *

It's too goddamned hot for March! The President was in a bad mood. That would have been breaking news to no one. Even the illiterate could tune in a cable news show and receive a double earful of partisan spite direct from the Presidential lips most any time they liked.

If liked is the word.

Seeing President Gabriel Hartmann in other than a bad mood was the type of memorable event most people would be pleased to recall years later, perhaps as a tale for their grandchildren. When he was at his worst Hartmann didn't simply talk, he didn't order, he didn't even command. He barked. Loud and long. And a lot, day in and day out, to all intents and purposes a watchdog stuck on Intruder Alert. His tendency to rave was coupled with personal and business behavior not just bordering on sleazy but, when he thought no one was looking, straying over that damnably inconvenient border as often as not. The combination of personal instability and unethical business behavior had done as much as anything to prompt his first political opponents to label Hartmann a cross between a Rottweiler and a rabid weasel.

No one had accused him of anything in language that negative for a long time. Not in public. Some had, at first. A Rottweiler? A weasel? He'd shown them exactly what he was. He'd ripped their throats out.

Metaphorically, of course.

Of course.

Hartmann was in his late sixties. He had the look of an aging surfer, with an artificial tan and an expensive business suit featuring a silk tie and a prominent American flag lapel pin. Still strong but turning soft and pudgy, he had a double chin and wore the little hair that remained on the sides of his head combed over in a vain attempt to hide the ravages of time.

One of time's ravages, at least.

Everyone on the scene was well dressed, though not as well as Hartmann, and wore an American flag lapel pin just like his. An important accent to outfits for pretty much one and all in the Hartmann administration, the American flag lapel pin had the advantage of boldly displaying the wearer's patriotism out front, on the lapel, for all to see, thus relieving the wearer of the inconvenient necessity of demonstrating patriotism through actual behavior.

No heart required.

The whole thing had turned out to be a positive option, for an Administration apparently devoted to picking the pockets of everyone equipped with pockets while confederates roamed the aisles staging impromptu dramas as misdirection.

All good fun for Hartmann and his partners in crime.

Metaphorically speaking of course.

The president's critique of the weather flustered the aide walking behind him on the right. He was relatively new, on the job for no more than a week or two and, Hartmann vaguely remembered, was somebody's cousin. Gabriel Hartmann chuckled to himself at his use of the phrase relatively new as he tried to remember the name of the new aide who was someone's relative. He hadn't ever been much good with names. Not other people's at least, though he had no trouble remembering his own when the time for someone else to write a check came around.

He couldn't remember whose cousin the aide was.

Hartmann wasn't much good with other people's jokes either, though everybody around him seemed to consider his jokes devastatingly funny. They had thought that for years, a period starting by sheer coincidence around the same time, and with the same people, who had also started depending on him for their paychecks.

So many of those years of apparently uninterrupted funny quips, one after another after another after another ad infinitum, had blurred so far into the past by now that Hartmann himself had actually come to believe his jokes were funny.

Gabriel Hartmann believed a lot of things about himself that were, strictly speaking, not exactly true.

Not even approximately true, for that matter.

Is it a total surprise that many were not true at all?

It could be thought ironic that the final words of President Gabriel Hartmann, a sourpuss who had never told a truly funny joke in his life, would be a joke that everybody present laughed at, but no one actually considered funny.

Walking across the White House portico Hartmann still couldn't remember the damned aide's name. Mike? Mark? Matt? Malcolm?

Something with an M, Hartmann was almost certain of that.

Aides came and went quickly. Too damned quickly, Hartmann dimly suspected. He never had understood why.

He did know he was a really good guy and an easy man to work for.

He was certain of that. Everyone around him had been assuring him of it for years. Ever since he'd started paying their salaries, in fact.

About the same time he'd grown so unexpectedly funny.

Coincidentally.

An unmatched pair of SUVs waited in the White House driveway. Unmatched because, while both were black, one was a standard Road Swine, or whatever the model name was that year, while the other was the Whale.

Accompanied by a bevy of Secret Service agents, Hartmann and his two aides walked toward the heavily armored SUV General Motors had built to Secret Service specifications after the surprise of Hartmann's electoral victory. The Whale, parked at the moment in the White House driveway, directly in front of the Swine.

President Hartmann was always careful to make sure the vehicle he would be riding in was parked in front of any mere escort vehicle. That was important to the President of the United States, so important that whenever he arrived at a conference or a meeting or a show or any sort of venue, he turned parking lot attendant long enough to make certain the parking arrangements were acceptable before he let himself be led inside. Or led to wherever it turned out he was being led to. That wasn't his problem. Though they did turn over frequently, Hartmann always found himself surrounded by aides aplenty to worry about where the hell he was going and Secret Service agents to make sure he got there.

Hartmann himself simply went wherever they took him, bitched on the way there, said whatever he felt like saying at the appointed time to whoever'd turned out to listen, then bitched some more on the way home. It was a pattern the President of the United States was pretty comfortable with.

But he was still chronically mad as hell and wasn't about to take it anymore.

Whatever it was.

On this morning Hartmann and his aides boarded the Whale on the right, the side protected by the White House itself. The other side, the street side, was deemed unsafe. Even though the street was hundreds of yards away, and protected by an imposing brick wall besides.

Caution was a watchword for the Secret Service. There were people aplenty who wouldn't have thought twice if given the opportunity to kill Gabriel Hartmann. Even had there not been, and there were, believe me, what the Secret Service believed in was Better Safe Than Sorry. So far it had worked out well for the Secret Servicemen and for the President. The President remained safe, the Secret Servicemen remained on duty and those would-be assassins who had actually tried their luck by shooting at the President had failed.

Those unsuccessful assassins had in fact been the only ones to wind up sorry.

So far.

* * * * * *

Boarding the Whale, President Hartmann settled himself in the middle of the third row . Planting his customary scowl on his pudgy features, he scrunched to get comfortable in his seat. The usual routine. To his left was an aide. To his right was another aide. An Army Colonel holding the nuclear football occupied the right front, Secret Service agents sat in all the other seats, seven agents in all, counting the driver.

Why is it so goddamned hot? Hartmann asked, of no one in particular.

That's exactly who rushed to answer. No one.

It's only March Third and you can already smell the cherry blossoms in the air, one of the aides finally ventured.

Hartmann glowered. Bullshit! he replied.

The aide hemmed and hawed but felt called upon to respond. Uh, I'm not certain what they use for fertilizer, Mister President. They say it's just unseasonably warm this year.

The heavily armored Whale started slowly and wallowed out to the street as the President vented. Full of Secret Service Agents, the Swine followed. The colonel with the nuclear football and the Secret Service men in the Whale diligently absorbed themselves in their duties, or did their best to pretend they were diligent. And absorbed. Anything, actually. Since they weren't presidential aides they weren't paid to listen to the constant, whining inanities of the current occupant of the nation's highest office. They preferred instead to ignore as much of his nonstop rant as possible.

Unseasonably warm? Hoffmann groused. I don't know that I like that.

The aides themselves weren't just paid to listen, they were also expected to respond. Finally, against his better judgment, one did. Like you said, sir, it's too hot for March.

Hartmann glared fiercely. I never said it's unseasonable, damn it. Anyone says that, it sounds like they're talking about the weather changing. Weather? Climate? That's the natural order. The natural order doesn't change. Who the hell said it does? That's treason, goddamn it! I want a name.

Right, Mister President.

Climate? That doesn't change, Hartmann railed on. It's just the same this year as it always has been and always will be, by God. It just happens to be hotter than usual, that's all.

The two aides traded a glance. Everyone else in the SUV continued ignoring the conversation, working as hard as they could to avoid the attention of the President of the United States.

You're just kids. Hartmann scowled, peremptorily dismissing their opinions unvoiced.

Perhaps Hartmann's greatest talent lay in an unexcelled ability to demean anyone and everyone around him. His scowl was one of his favorite and most effective weapons.

He knew how to dominate and intimidate but you could count on one hand the number of times he had realized silence might be a better course than incessant blather. Perhaps those times could be counted on one finger, the number of fingers Hartmann customarily displayed to the world.

Metaphorically speaking?

Sometimes.

Sometimes he used two fingers. That required both hands.

You know what I believe and you believe the same. Or you don't work for Gabriel Hartmann! the President barked.

Yes, sir, the aides chorused agreement.

The President groped in the open plastic bowl custom mounted into the back of the seat before him, leaned forward, looked in, found it empty.

Where's my fruit chewies? he pouted.

Here they are, Mister President.

President Hartmann leaned back into the seat as one aide pulled a colorful bag of individually wrapped chewy fruit flavored candies out of a panel in the door, opened the bag and poured the candies into the bowl. Hartmann noticed it was the aide whose name he couldn't remember doing the pouring but Hartmann didn't really give a rat's ass about some aide's name anyway.

Fruit chewies, though?

That was another matter.

Lifting a candy out of the bowl the President beamed. It was his first smile of the morning.

The Whale lumbered ponderously along the pavement regardless of its occupants' shifting moods.

The streets were quiet. The gasoline-powered engines of the Whale and the Swine were the only sounds to be heard.

There were pedestrians scattered around the sidewalks. All wore US flag lapel pins just like President Hartmann's. Some were regular people, dressed as regular people dress and doing what regular people do, except they were eerily quiet. A few were blue-uniformed Metropolitan Police, men and women, also generally quiet, absorbed in eyeing the regular people suspiciously. But most of the pedestrians on the streets when the Whale wallowed past were neither regular people nor police. They were Loyalty Squadsmen. Clad in khaki uniforms reminiscent of the World War I uniforms they had been modeled on, with badges of rank on sleeves and collars, the Squadsmen had been organized after Hartmann's inauguration by obscenely wealthy friends and associates to guard the nation against treason.

Is it a surprise that treason, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder?

Just to be sure everybody could identify treason when they spotted it, as well as to make sure they spotted as much of it as possible, President Hartmann had proven happy to let his Loyalty Squadsmen know exactly what treason was, and to name the names of those who practiced treason, those who displayed the traits associated with that dangerous moral disease.

In his opinion.

As things turned out, though, Hartmann's opinion, once voiced, routinely became the opinion of sufficient other citizens of the great republic the United States of America had become that after the Squadsmen had put down an initial furor pitting citizen against citizen, which the government and its favored media outlets officially labeled as teeny-weeny, treason got considerably harder to discover.

Was it paradoxical that treason had never disappeared entirely? That as soon as one plot or unpatriotic belief was dragged kicking and screaming into the light of day another even more insidious than the last was waiting to be revealed?

It wasn't long before Hartmann and the Loyalty Squadsmen had honed their ability to detect treason to such a fine edge, they were able to locate that insidious quality on all sides, regardless of its actual existence.

An ability they demonstrated time and time again.

Given the extreme penalties for treason, detecting it wherever the President wanted was a valuable contribution to unifying the nation behind its beloved Commander in Chief. Especially after Supreme Court Justice Chadwick Bentham had been jailed for a legal opinion deemed treasonous.

Most everybody else fell into line right away after that.

Inside the SUV Hartmann downed piece after piece of colorful and tasty fruit flavored candy, discarding the empty wrappers on his aides' knees.

The candy made him happy but it didn't make him content. Perhaps it was the high sugar content but whatever the reason, he was definitely agitated, peering from side to side, catching random glimpses out the windows, curling his lip in disdain at every sight.

Was it a premonition?

No thought so metaphysical had ever set up housekeeping in Hartmann's mind before. Nor did it break through now.

Instead, he looked out the Whale's bulletproof windows with a combination of genuine hatred and something akin to fear.

One simple fact was accepted by everyone who knew Gabriel Hartmann more or less intimately, but totally ignored by those who followed him from afar. To those who watched him operate, it was obvious that he hated the little people as he customarily referred to the general public. He hated seeing them, hated touching them, hated smelling them, hated thinking about them, hated anything and everything to do with them, hated them thoroughly and completely. Except at election time. Then and only then he transformed into a regular Joe, or at least played the role well enough to win elections.

That respect for the values and behaviors of ordinary Americans was never more than an act, though. A role. A part he played in the great production of life, but only for as long as it took.

His fear of what some might have considered just retribution Hartmann projected onto the people he hated, which was, basically, everyone.

Since they had been designed to intimidate his opponents the Loyalty Squads had played a valuable role in that.

CHAPTER TWO

GO FASTER, PRESIDENT GABRIEL HARTMANN ordered, like a backseat driving child on a sugar high.

He was a backseat driver, in his custom armored Whale. And he was on a sugar high, eating fruit chewies like it was him that owned the company. And it might have been. Hartmann was filthy rich. Or claimed to be. No one was sure exactly what he was worth, or at least the ones that were sure weren't talking.

Filthy rich or not, he certainly acted like he was.

Summoning up his deepest reservoir of courage the