Chapter 34: A President is Tested

Seven months after the inception of Project Goldfish matters had come to a head. The project had yielded a rich dividend of actionable intelligence that was now in the hands of the President.

The official residence of the President of the Capitallian Republic (POTCR) was a large sprawling estate situated on high ground in the Borough of Queens and commanding a fine view across the East River to Manhattan's skyscrapers. The Capitallian Federal Government Complex was located in what used to be the United Nation's headquarters and the Government Complex was an easy helicopter ride away--or the POTCR could use a dedicated subway line. The small subway was both efficient and secure. Originally the estate had been built for the last United Nations Secretary General, Trung Nhi. Ms Trung wasn't able to complete her new home because of difficulties with American labor unions and then the break-up of the United States of America into three nations--Capitallia, Aztlan and the United States Remnant (which still titled itself the USA, even though a wane shadow of its former glory.)

The uncompleted Secretary General's home and the United Nations compound were the scenes of some of the fiercest fighting on the East Coast, almost as devastating as the Aztlan nuclear strike on Las Vegas had been. The United Nations complex was heavily damaged but the new Secretary General's estate was in ruins. As no private citizen owned the two prime parcels of real estate, the emerging Capitallian government inherited them both from the now defunct United Nations. Just emerging from a civil war, the economically depressed former United States had little money--and Capitallia needed a national capital.

In the first few years Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay was used to house the government, but it was decided by the First Capitallian Congress that the Federal District would be located in New York City. The rubble of the uncompleted Secretary General's estate was removed and an entirely new structure built to fill the needs of a modern nation--and its presidency. The drive that led up to the new Presidential residence was renamed 'Fairview Lane' and so the residence came to be known as 'One Fairview Lane'. More than a mere residence, One Fairview Lane could meet all the needs of a modern Presidency including hosting of visiting foreign dignitaries and leaders of the 'post-national mega corporations'--the latter were Capitallia's real competition on the world stage.

The security system protecting the POTCR was the priority because of the 2089 kidnap of three Capitallian delegates to Massachusetts. In the early days of Capitallia, the POTCR was the target of multiple plots originating in the USR and Aztlan--and there was always the danger that some of the people who built Capitallia would decide that the federal government had become another 500 pound government gorilla that this gorilla would stomp individual rights out of existence -- so these founders could possibly launch a coup against Capitallia. One Fairview Lane was perhaps the most well-guarded piece of real estate on Earth. Even a nuclear missile strike would not be likely to succeed. Despite elaborate security measures, the nightmare that kept the presidential protection security detail chief awake nights was the fate of Benton Harold, apparently killed by his own slave Dave.

Josh Luceno arrived for work at the President's official residence on a certain Wednesday morning. Chief of Staff to President Phillip Proctor, Josh was always in his office by 6:00 AM, an hour before the president's workday began. Josh used this time to review the presidential itinerary and revise priorities as needed. No matter how late Josh retired for the evening or how carefully Josh organized the president's day, the world didn't stand still. It was Josh's duty to make sure that the President of the Capitallian Republic was always well-informed and presented with more than one viewpoint on any given issue that would come up for a presidential decision. Josh had to ensure that the POTCR's time was effectively utilized--there were more tasks than any one man could handle. This responsibility made Josh Luceno the primary gatekeeper, the person who decided who would have access to the president and who would occupy some of Phillip Proctor's precious time.

Josh looked as if he had just stepped out of a high-end spa and a restful week-long vacation. The reality was quite different. Josh had stolen a scant three hours of sleep during the last 40 hours. There were more potent drugs than caffeine in the double expresso he sipped as he reviewed the unfinished business of yesterday and established the priorities of the day.

Waiting in the electronic queue on Josh's desk were seven scheduled meetings with the President that were of drop-dead priority. The first was set for 8:00 AM with the Secretary of State on the crisis in Nigeria--and the effect it would have on the supply of rare earths needed for Capitallia's high technology industries. Josh chuckled when he remembered a child's advice--mine the vast "land fills" left over from the old USA for those rare earths.

The second was set for 8:30 with the Secretary of Agriculture on a treaty to provide water from the Colorado River and expert Capitallian assistance bringing back life to the blighted Los Angeles area. This would relieve volatile Aztlan of balancing on the edge of mass starvation.

Goldfish Bowl had been running almost seven months now and had yielded much fruit. One of the findings from that project was the discovery that an extraordinary number of Capitallian citizens and legal residents had been enslaved or indentured. The Attorney General had urgently requested a meeting with the President to discuss that very issue. That would take place at 9:00 am.

At 10:30 AM there was a meeting with the Mr. Cai, the Chinese Ambassador and with the Secretary of Education. Subject would be proposal to train almost 2000 technicians in Capitallian slave control methods. China had quietly inquired into importing the bio digital slave control implants and hiring people to train slaves. That wasn't going to be a pleasant meeting. Mr Cai made Machiavelli look like a naive farm boy, newly fallen from the turnip truck.

At 11 AM there was a meeting with a Mr. Ned Saunders concerning a crash priority undercover assignment called 'Operation Bandaid'.

Then there was a dreadfully high-tech presentation by The Space Plane Group, a corporation assembled from multiple companies to construct and build large commercial space planes that would launch from mag lev tracks and could reach anywhere in the planet in under 90 minutes, or reach medium orbits in an hour. That meeting was going to last from noon to 2 PM and was given so much time because it would be a working lunch --and the thousands of jobs promised would relieve some of the economic stagnation.

Another finding coming out of the Goldfish Bowl project was the discovery that a very substantial number of Capitallian scientists and inventors had been enslaved and transported to USR to work on their own inventions under slave like conditions. Robin Tyson, Director of Operations for the newly-renamed Military Intelligence Service, had requested a meeting with President Proctor on what to do about that situation. General Milton Morgan, the MIS Chief of Staff, had forwarded Director Tyson's request with an endorsement that she and a contract civilian be be permitted to see the president at the earliest possible time for a minimum of fifteen minutes--thirty minutes if possible. Director Tyson was insisting that Josh give her some of the President's very limited time, and do so RIGHT NOW. The wording was polite, but the urgency was obvious. With so much happening that required President Proctor's immediate and personal attention, Josh Luceno wished he could put off the fifteen minuted Robin Tyson demanded until the year 2525. The current year was 2134, and Josh's desire to put off the meeting for nine decades showed how overwhelmed Josh felt. That meeting was scheduled for 4:00 PM.

When Josh finished the President's itinerary for the day, only 20 minutes had passed. Josh looked at his cup and decided on a refill. It was going to be a long day. As Josh's expresso machine cycled another cup of fortified Midnight Velvet.

President Proctor picked up his daily schedule, adjusted Josh's hard work when necessary and plunged into his meetings as planned.

A few minutes before 9:00 AM the Attorney General arrived for the meeting with his aide Harry Jenks in tow. Irene, the President's secretary, escorted the A.G. into the President's office and asked his aide to wait outside for the moment. By prior agreement with the President, Josh had Mike Mellon standing by, a key legal advisor to the President, and Jeff Brank a key political advisor. When informed of the A.G.'s arrival Josh joined the meeting, asking the President's advisors to wait for the time being.

The President rose with a smile to give the A.G. a hearty handshake.

"Make yourselves comfortable gentlemen," he said with a sweep of his hand, taking his own seat.

"Mr. President," the AG began, "I requested this meeting to discuss the extraordinary number of high-caliber scientists and inventors that have been enslaved or indentured. We in the Justice Department suspect that these were illegally done. Josh had the briefing material."

"Yes Brice, I have been briefed," Phillip Proctor responded.

The President was sitting behind his desk with the head of his pet tiger 'Paul' in his lap. A Siberian tiger is a lot of cat, but nobody in the room was bothered by Paul.

"Josh is a miracle worker," he continued. "He and his staff keep me on top of these things."

"If you have no objection, I would like to bring in my aide, Harry Jenks. Harry keeps me grounded."

"Not a problem Brice. In fact I need my legal aide and my political aide in here too. They keep me grounded as well."

"Brice, I bet you five dollars that your legal aide will freak over Paul," Jeff said.

"You're on," Brice said, "Harry is an EMT and nothing will faze him. Harry won't even raise an eye brow."

The President pressed the intercom button. "Irene, please show my advisors and the A.G.'s advisor in now. And please also arrange for Food Services to send up a coffee service for six."

The three men were brought into the office and seated. Paul's orange and black tail briefly flashed above the President's desk as the tiger shifted and laid beside President Proctor.

"Holy shit!" Harry Jenks exclaimed when his wide eyes took in two hundred kilos of cat. "Is that a tiger?"

"I'm as real as it gets," the tiger said in slightly accented English. Slightly Russian English. "But I don't bite."

"I got him several years ago," President Proctor said. "I don't exhibit Czar John Paul Jones, Paul for short. He is a part of my family. My daughter Prudence adores him and Paul is devoted to my family. But don't worry. Paul has been conditioned against hurting people."

"Harry," Brice gently chided, his grin splitting his impeccably groomed beard, "you just cost me $5. I bet Jeff that you wouldn't raise an eyebrow when you saw Paul."

"Moving right along," Josh said, trying to put the meeting back on track so that the day's agenda wasn't too badly damaged.

"Brice, this meeting was scheduled at your request and the floor is now yours," the President said.

"We have some preliminary indicators," AG Benson said, "that as many as 3 million people have been wrongfully indentured or enslaved. We suspect that many of these--we don't know how many--have been transported into the USR. Officially there is no slavery in the USR--that government doesn't call it slavery when the government owns people. Only when private citizens own people.

"There is every indication." Benson continued, "that a number of high-caliber scientists and inventors were illegally enslaved for the purpose of stealing their inventions. Milt tells me that some of those inventions have military applications and the loss of those inventions to the USR is a severe national security breech."

"What is your recommendation, Brice?" the president asked.

"We at Justice believe that a program is needed to get hard evidence. Ultimately, we need to arrange freedom for most of those folks. Milt tells me that a series of covert operations would require information we currently lack and that those missions will have a significant risk of failure, but we need to consider them. It's the right thing to do."

"Mr. President, if I may, sir?" Jeff asked.

The President and AG exchanged glances.

"Go ahead, Jeff" the President replied.

"Sir, I need to point out that three million freed slaves is going to be a huge political problem," Jeff plunged in, "especially when it gets out that slightly more than eight percent of all slaves and indentured servants are wrongfully enslaved. Unemployment is getting worse. Their current owners paid a lot of money for their slaves in good faith. It is likely that every one of those three million slaves will be very angry at Capitallia's justice system. You, Mr. President, are our nation's top law enforcement officer and the illegally enslaved may well think that you had a duty to protect their rights You will be perceived as failing the illegally-enslaved people and their owners both. It could mean that you won't be re-elected in three years."

"Go on," the president encouraged, though his mouth was dry with stress.

"Sir, as I recall, you won by less than a quarter million votes," Jeff responded. "The Economic Freedom Party challenged your victory. The recount still came out in your favor."

"I won by five electoral votes," President Proctor admitted. "Days like this make me regret leaving my professor's chair in Rutland."

"What I am saying, sir, is that we need to prepare for freeing three million people," Jeff said. "The average citizen owns two slaves--some own hundreds, and most don't own any slaves, sir. Average price for a term slave is in the neighborhood of $50,000 and that doesn't include upkeep, training, rehabilitation, the cost of implants or other costs. The average slave now works 11.5 years. A slave is a capital investment. When manumitted, some of those three million slaves will have their citizenship restored immediately because they were wrongfully--if not illegally--enslaved in the first place. Their fortunes and their honor have been destroyed. Most of their owners are also innocent victims. We need to study how to re-integrate the slaves into the work force as free people and we need to soften the economic impact on innocent slave owners."

Just then Irene's voice was heard on the intercom announcing that the steward from Food Services had arrived with the coffee. Stewards who delivered food or drink to the President's office had to be specially cleared by Secret Service.

"Send him in please."

There was a brief lull in the conversation while everyone who wanted coffee was served. There was a bowl of water for Paul placed beside the door--tigers don't like coffee. The steward departed. When the door closed the President signaled that the meeting should resume.

"I earned this office," President Proctor sighed. "I deserve this pain. Brice, give me your estimate as to who all these people are? The ones illegally enslaved, that is."

The Siberian tiger had by now grown tired of resting with his head in the President's lap. He was wandering around the office while the men talked.

"The most common profile is that these people were enslaved or indentured with debts that they claim aren't theirs. These debts are suspicious, but the evidence convinced many juries," Brice scowled. "As you know, non-citizens often don't get jury trials for debt. Their cases are heard administratively and in simple debt cases they are indentured for periods of up to ten years. There isn't a lot of difference between an indentured servant and a slave right now. Mike, tell the president about the study you did."

Mike yelped and jumped.

"He put his paw in my lap!" Mike's voice was high pitched.

"I like you," tiger Paul said. "I won't hurt you."

"Paul functions like a lie detector," Phillip said. "We civilized humans are too busy keeping our masks in place to notice deception unless it is blatant. Animals have better senses that we do and don't filter out the subtle signs of deceit."

"That's why we don't let Paul in the room when we play poker," Brice Benson said. "We can't bluff anyone with Paul in the room."

"I wasn't able to do a proper study," Harry said. "We are allowed to maintain only narrow single-purpose data bases on citizens or legal residents of Capitallia and our laws prohibit aggregating data collected by one agency for one purpose with other data collected by a different agency for a different purpose. This puts quite a crimp on any data mining we might otherwise be able to do. So my information isn't conclusive. We believe that the debts were phoney and that the USR is behind this activity is behind this activity. We are sure that the USR is tapping into our Capitallian communications and turning our system against us. We think that a large number of the illegally indentured Capitallians have been spirited away to the USR to contribute to their economy instead of ours. Worse, sir, is that we have identified several thousand who have completed their sentence but have disappeared. I cannot say this without further proof, but perhaps those slaves and indentured servants are being kept as slaves beyond their manumission dates in the USR."

"From a national security standpoint," the Attorney General butted in, "there are indications that something like 500 of them were highly-skilled inventors who somehow lost their patent rights through some sort of chicanery. The Department of Defense does have legitimate records on them due to their security clearances and the required background checks. These 500 were subsequently prosecuted for infringing in their own inventions, leading to huge fines and then being indentured for debt when they couldn't pay the fines.

"It gets worse, Mr. President, much worse. The average Capitallian citizen owns only two slaves--there are twenty million of us and forty million slaves and indentured servants. The approximately 500 inventors with Department of Defense security clearances were all sold to six people. These six are Capitallian citizens, so until we can develop probable cause, we cannot search their records."

"I see." President Proctor interjected. "Jeff, I want you to work on several alternate scenarios for how we might re-integrate such large numbers of slaves back into our society. Mike, I need you to generate proposals for restitution of the falsely-enslaved and their owners when we do free the slaves. I want options, people, and I need to know the pros and cons of each option. Josh is telling me that I have another meeting starting five minutes ago, so I think we are adjourned for now."

"Sir," Josh said, "you have a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador and our own Secretary of Education. The topic is your approval to train 2000 Chinese technicians and doctors in the use of bio digital slave control implants and associated mind control technologies. Ambassador Cai is a very effective negotiator, Mr. President. China needs the technology because they are laying the groundwork for copying our slavery system."

As Josh returned to his desk his thoughts went back to all the information that had been generated by Project Goldfish Bowl. The assignment had been completed successfully by Dr Dalton's people--and machines and animals, too. In fact it had been completed ahead of schedule, below cost, with less damage than expected and had exceeded all requirements.

Goldfish was expected to be a tap that could be compared to a garden hose. Dr Dalton's slave girls delivered a Niagara Falls. Josh had to add two staffers who did nothing but sort through the raw data. Finished reports were in three flavors--executive summary, detailed data and immediate action reports on specific events. Josh felt as if he knew more about the USR technology theft program than anybody in the USR did.

The surprising things that showed up in the report were the other nations working with the USR to thieve Capitallia's brains. Hank Dalton even inserted some phony inventions into the USR spy network and tracked those inventions from beginning to issuing an international patent. An entire plant in the USR was being built to construct non-functioning flying cars with robot pilots. The cost to Capitallia was only about ten dollars that Hank Dalton gave to a boy named Danny in Silver Orb for drawing up a totally useless flying car. Cost to the USR so far was three billon US dollars, about half a million Capitallian dollars. A bigger payoff was that factories with the same exact non-functioning flying car were being constructed in China and Aztlan. Hank Dalton was ready to insert the admission that the flying car was a flop and that the fictional Flyntskull Fabrication company was going out of business--when President Proctor commanded it.

It was only a few weeks ago that Kandi Cones found a conversation about the murder of Benton Harold. When President Proctor noted the time stamps, he found that the conversation took place before Senator Benton Harold's dead body was discovered. A hit list was recovered.

"People," President Proctor said at a meeting of his staff, "we've got four dead federal senators. Doctor Dalton seems to have a lead on the real killers. The question is, what do we do about it?"

The answer took three days to figure out. Dalton might well have the skills and experience to deal with these killers. But Dalton was a private contractor. The key would be finding the right person within the military to act as Dalton's handler. The right person for this job could not be Robin Tyson since MIS was devoted strictly to intelligence gathering. This was an action project. A strict separation had been made in the military between the intelligence gathering function (MIS) and the action functions carried out by all the other military services. This had been done because of abuses that had happened in the past.

Having action people and information people reporting to the same Chief resulted in a conflict between gathering intelligence and neutralizing direct threats to a nation's sovereignty. A case in point was the defunct War On Drugs declared by US President Richard Nixon in 1973 with the creation of the Drug Enforcement Agency. A similar crusade against guns had been signed by President Johnson in 1968 with the 1967 creation of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms division of the Internal Revenue Service. This combination of two addictive drugs, guns and taxes led to law enforcement abuses as surely as night follows day. One factor common to both was the paid informant--often a criminal who was granted immunity from prosecution in order to develop information on other criminals. Many paid informants simply lied, putting innocent people in jail.

One of Hank Dalton's old shipmates, Ned Saunders, was still working in the Department of Defense. Ned had been a private fresh from commando school when he followed Gunny Dalton and Major Harold into Baja California to counter Aztlan nuclear missiles. Later, Ned was part of a rescue team dispatched by President Shields, Capitallia's first president, and by Brigadier General Benton Harold, chief of special operations.

The President had made a decision last week to bring Ned Saunders in for an interview with himself and General Fred Logan, Army Chief of Staff. This was the 11:00 meeting. Ostensibly the purpose of the interview would be to get Saunder's opinion as to Hank Dalton's qualifications for a commando raid.

When Irene escorted Ned Saunders into the President's office, General Logan was already in conversation with the President. There were warm handshakes and then a gesture from President Proctor for Ned to have a seat.

"We understand you are somewhat of an expert on Hank Dalton. What is it like being in battle with a man like that?" the President asked?