Chapter 2

The brown landscape of the San Gabriel Mountains was laid out beneath us as the Gulfstream dropped into its final approach to LAX. It was still only 10:30 in the morning in Los Angeles; even though it was evening at our point of origin. The Gulfstream 550 costs $4,000 an hour to operate. But as far as I’m concerned it is worth the price. Instead of sitting for eight hours crammed into a 27-inch-wide seat, I was sitting in a luxurious leather chair.

My two companions had slept most of the flight. I hadn’t managed to get ahold of Mel until 7 AM and so her departure was necessarily hurried. Fortunately, her sister Sarai helped with the packing. When Mel finally showed up, she had the dreamiest, most well-fucked look that I have ever seen, except for the times when I am looking in my OWN mirror after a night with John.

I said, “I hope you had a good time last night dear?”

Mel sighed and said, “It was earth shattering. I think I’m in love.”

I didn’t really know what that meant given Mel’s rather eclectic sex life, so I said, “In love, or lust?”

She said “Both!” That was a little astonishing since usually Mel fucks is totally finished with a man once she fucks him.

She said, “William is the kindest, sweetest, gentlest person I have ever spent the night with. And he is the world’s most considerate lover. He pushed all of my buttons, multiple times. I didn’t have any idea that there were men like that out there.”

Then she remembered HOW she had met William and stopped with a look of horror on her face. She said, “Oh Hilley! I didn’t mean to talk about that in front of you. I know that you have experienced the same thing!”

I laughed out loud and said, “I could think of nothing that would please me more than having my two best friends find each other. I love William for the person he is. But we never had the slightest hint of romance in our relationship and frankly I am a little relieved that the question of sex with him will never be raised again.”

Mel smiled and squeezed my arm. She said, “I don’t deserve a friend like you.”

I said with total sincerity, “Yes you do.”

Prudence spent the entire flight dozing in one of the big leather chairs. She had showed up looking like she had spent the night with somebody too. But she definitely DIDN’T look well fucked.

I said, “Rough night?”

Pru said, “You have no idea! Men are such selfish pigs!” I gave her a rueful smile in acknowledgement. I was carefully studying Pru, now that I knew who she really was. It was clear that she had built a masterful legend around herself by blurring the lines of her portrait.

In essence, Prudence broadcasts conflicting behaviors, which prevents others from getting a true fix on who she really is. I had noticed that phenomenon. But I thought it was schizophrenia, not something Pru did to stay under people’s radar.

I now realized that Pru had carefully constructed the public persona of a useless and indolent specimen of English aristocracy. I’d known that was an act, even before I knew who Pru really was. Since, her total lack of interest in anything physical was always completely at odds with how she conducted her everyday life. Pru had almost frantic vitality. It was like she never slept. That behavior didn’t align well with the lazy child of privilege that she wanted us to see.

I had always thought that Pru was merely a party animal with the intelligence and attention span of a gerbil. That was the persona that we all were supposed to buy into. But her continual fluttering from place to place in the London social scene was also a splendid way to keep track of a certain stratum of society.

I had also just assumed that her odd behavior with men was due to her being an unabashed slut. She always seemed to be fucking the strangest and, in many cases, most unsavory people in the London club scene. However, if you knew what she really did for a living the more obvious explanation was that she was using her splendid body and flagrant sexuality to do what all female agents do, which is learn important things from pillow talk.

I realized now that there had been times when I had caught her looking at me, when I saw an utterly different person lurking beneath her party girl eyes. That person was very cool, competent and in control of all situations. It was almost as if that person was laughing at the rest of us.

Since I know that Pru is entertained by the human condition I just assumed that her apparent decadence was just her personal statement about life. NOW, I was sure that the flashes of what I saw behind those self-consciously indulgent eyes were the real Pru, enjoying how thoroughly we all misread her.

There was the normal “thump” as the Cessna dropped its landing gear. That woke both of them up. My little friend is still getting used to air travel. She said with trepidation, “What was that? Did something fall off the airplane?”

Both Pru and I laughed with affectionate delight. I said, “No dear that is just the landing gear. We are about to arrive in Los Angeles.” Mel looked relieved.

The Beverly Wilshire features the requisite five-star elegance that I demand. It is right on Rodeo Drive which added to our legend of rich girls with money to spend. The suites were $1,100 a night but they had all of the necessary amenities.

I had a lot of unpacking to do. I had brought along a couple of heavy plastic cases containing my mobile hacking and digital forensics equipment. I was not going to set up my gear until tomorrow because I was waiting for whatever Sir Alex could find out about Mr. Diggs. But I wanted to store the boxes someplace where they would be unobtrusive to the help.

We had arranged to meet in the lobby and walk to Spago, which was just five minutes up Wilshire on Canon Drive. I wanted to get down to the lobby first because I needed to decide about Pru. Both Mel and Prudence appeared together.

Mel was wearing a pair of painted on black slacks and a bright jungle print top that was almost modest by her standards. She was in her usual five-inch FMPs, which most people couldn’t walk in. But Mel seems to think are normal footwear. Perhaps she does that because it adds a little height to her tiny body.

Prudence was wearing a pair of light, pale cashmere pants that showed off her nubile hips and that little round butt in ways that were both erotic and extremely classy. She had on four-inch patent leather pumps like me and a shell top that displayed her small shapely breasts to their maximum advantage. To top off the outfit she was wearing the pearls that seem to be part of every blue-blood’s uniform. Her gorgeous face was made up to perfectly highlight her features while still looking understated and elegant.

Her hair might be Pru’s most remarkable feature and she had decided to emphasize that by channeling it down her back with a silk print scarf. Pru’s hair is an incredibly thick wheaten sheaf that radiates good health, natural beauty and something else, which only the English upper classes seem to be able to pull off. The only words I can use to describe it are “sophisticated breeding”.

Her hair hangs to the middle of her shoulders and it sways as she walks. She was wearing it unaffected, in a swept back fashion that made it gleam and bounce with each step. The impact of that exquisite waterfall of beauty was so classically elegant that I am sure people in the lobby were trying to figure out which movie they had seen her in. I was thinking that she DOES bear a striking resemblance to the 1950s movie star Grace Kelley, who was also a patrician blue-blood.

The stroll down Wilshire to the restaurant was in bright, hot LA sun. Pru glides like a runway model, very smooth and graceful. Mel bounces like an eager terrier and I suppose I swagger like the world class athlete that I am. There were a large number of cars slowing down as they went past, which did my ego a world of good. Although I am sure that it was the joint effect of the three of us that was causing the traffic jam.

We were seated outdoors in the patio because I wanted to do what I was about to do in a place that had a little space around it, and no obvious cameras. We were engaged with the enemy now. So, I had to find out exactly where Prudence fit into the situation and our plans. Also, I could see no good reason to continue the farce any longer.

Mel was on my left and Pru was across from me. They were studying the menus. I said conversationally, still looking like I was trying to decide which one of Wolfgang Puck’s salads I wanted, “Why are you REALLY here Pru?”

She said in her plummiest tones, “To spend oodles of money on Rodeo drive you silly goose.”

I said, continuing the flat conversational tone, “I know about your role with MI-5”

I had to hand it to her. She was a total pro. She looked at me with a blank look and said in her utmost Belgravia accent, “What is an MI-5? Is that a rock group? I have been a groupie with several of the London bands. But I have never heard of that one.”

I laughed, and still rock steady calm I said, “Imaginative answer sister.” Mel chimed in, “I don’t think there is a group by that name. But I once heard of a rock group called the MC-5. Is that what you are talking about?”

I laughed again. I turned to Mel like I was lecturing her about the history of pretentious Los Angeles eateries and said, “No dear, MI-5 is the British intelligence agency that is responsible for domestic counterintelligence.”

I added meaningfully, “It seems that our friend Prudence is a lot more than she has led us to think she is.”

I said playfully, “As you know, she has made us think that she is an indolent twit.” I stopped and turned to Pru and said, “Sorry Prudence but I know that is your cover. I have to say that you are very persuasive.”

Then I turned back to Mel and continued the lecture in my most pedantic tone, “While, all of the time, our friend Pru was really one of MI-5s best agents. She’s a fabulous actress.”

I finished with, “I imagine she is along with us because her bosses suspect that we are more than what WE seem to be, and she has been sent along to keep an eye on us.”

Mel’s beautifully exotic mouth fell open. Then her lips began to move. She looked exactly like a fish that had just been landed over on the Santa Barbara Pier. No words came out. I turned and looked across at Prudence. For the very first time in our friendship she was looking at me as her actual self. It was an amazing transformation.

Pru’s demeanor went from indolent to composed and dangerous. The woman was poised, capable and in command. She was sitting very straight but utterly relaxed, with her knees locked together and her hands placed flat on the table, cool as the proverbial cucumber. What had previously looked like languid muscles in her arms were suddenly drawn taught, like the string of an English longbow, thin but extremely deadly. Her full, almost erotic lips were drawn up in an unwavering line and her beautiful china blue eyes regarded me like a predatory animal, almost wolfish. She was a study in confidence and leadership.

She said, “We work with the Organization as you might suspect. And we trade information. WE have followed your exploits over the past year and a half, and I have to add that we are all impressed and I am proud to be your friend.” She added, “MI-5 knows about the package you are looking for and because the three of us are already social companions I was the logical choice.”

She finished with, “I am to support you in any way I can. Since we are in the U.S. you are likely to need weapons and I am an expert in every type of firearm. I know you are capable with a gun. But our sources tell me that you are more partial to, and adept at, hand-to-hand combat.” Then Pru turned, smiled fondly at Mel and added. “And if half the reports from Prague are true, I know that you don’t need anything to protect yourself but a pair of fighting batons.”

She turned to me and said, “I was read-in by our people and I am sure that you know that I have a Most Secret clearance so would you please read me in on what you have so far? I want to stress that I am here to help you.” I looked at her sitting there in all of her patrician glory and she was as splendid a consort battleship as my stalwart little Cockney friend.

Pru’s blood lines run through the Plantagenets, Marlboroughs, Wellesleys, and Churchills. They are the people who have protected England since 1066 and all of that breeding was now on public display in the utter assumed superiority of those coolly focused eyes. I began to fill her in, “As you know the United States lost a fully enabled hydrogen bomb back during the Cold War. That bomb has been dug up and it is in play somewhere, we don’t know where.”

I added, “As you probably ALSO know, I am an expert in the black arts of the digital universe. I have pulled a hint out of cyberspace that indicates that our trail starts here in LA.

I smiled and said, “So far, all I know about it is that a man named Diggs is involved. I’m waiting for Sir Alex to give me everything that we can scrape together on the guy. Then all we can do is follow the rabbit hole and see where it leads.”

Mel added with a laugh, “And we can do a little shopping and clubbing in-between. You know what they say about all work and no play.”

Pru slipped back into her legend like she was putting on a coat. In the blink of an eye she went from lethal back to languid. She added lazily, “And of course there are always men.” The word “course” came out as “cawse”.

Jolene was pissed. She did whatever Oz told her to do. But she was not interested in fucking some old man unless there was money involved. She had ridden all the way up in the cab of the 18-wheeler, dressed like any other trucker’s wife. The driver had tried to consummate the marriage in the sleeper part of the cab; while they were stopped at a rest area outside of Staunton on I-81. Jolene drove the rest of the way with his body wrapped in a bedsheet, stored in the trailer next to the bomb.

The bomb had been hoisted out of the trailer in the dark of a Maryland back road and dropped into a brand new F450 Super Duty. She then drove that vehicle to a barn on a remote farm north of Frederick Maryland and stored it there under a tarpaulin.

She and Oz had decided that the less people knew, the better. So, she was up at that farm by herself. That was alright with her. Besides being adept with a blade Jolene was a crack shot with the Glock 19 that she always kept in the concealed carry holster above the crack of her beautiful round ass. She slept that night in a sleeping bag on the floor of the farmhouse. It was an isolated place, as remote as you can get in the foothills of South Mountain. And the house and barn looked like they had been there when the Confederates tramped past on the way to Gettysburg. Jolene had all of the modern conveniences though, encrypted laptop, streaming video a bottle of Jack and a huge vibrator with batteries fully charged.

Oz sent her an encrypted text the next day. He told her to meet somebody at 11:00 that night in a place called Fort Marcy. She thought to herself “Where the fuck is that?” She had to do a little digging. But she found it. It was some Civil War relic off the George Washington Parkway in Virginia, about an hour’s drive from where she was holed up. The drive down was in one of those Washington DC nights where the heat and humidity were both 100 degrees.

The George Washington is a fancy parkway and the traffic was light. She was in the 450, which is an uncommon truck. It might have attracted attention if Jolene didn’t look like she absolutely belonged in one of them. She was wearing her usual skintight beaten out jeans, which showed off her amazingly muscled athletic legs, hips and butt. She had a black t-shirt that said “Oklahoma State Fair” stretched over her huge bra-less boobs. In the dark, with her dark clothing, her gorgeous pale face and pure white hair almost floated ghost-like.

Fort Marcy was some sort of Park Service thing. They had a chain across the access road. It took her a minute to get out of the idling truck and detach it. She pulled back through the tree-lined roadway with the lights off, navigating by the full moon. When she got to the little parking lot, she killed the diesel and waited. She didn’t like surprises. So, she wanted to scout the area first.

Finally, a black Lincoln Town car made its way down the access road as she crouched in the brush at the edge of the pavement. It stopped directly next to where she was crouched in the underbrush, like they could see her. The driver must have had military grade night vision. The nearest rear window rolled down. She thought to herself, “What is it with old guys and their fixation with being driven around?” She approached the car but a voice from the back seat said, “That’s far enough.”

Jolene thought to herself, “Apparently I’m supposed to meet the guy, not fuck him.” She felt a little twinge of disappointment. She was getting hungry sitting up there all by herself on that mountain. She stopped and stood, poised for action. She could not make out the figure in the back. The voice said, “Is the package safe?”

She said, “Yeah, I’ve got it. What do you want me to do with it?”

The voice said, “Keep it secure for another couple of days and then you will get a location from us. When you do, I want you to drive it there. Can you do that in this truck?”

Jolene said, “Sure I can. But it will be pretty obvious that I have something big in the bed even if it is under canvas. Is this going to be in a city?”

The voice said, “That’s none of your business. Here take this phone and wait for us to call.” He tossed an obvious burner out the window. Jolene caught it. All she could see when he threw it was an arm with a gleaming white shirt and a dark suit coat.

Jolene said, “Got it, is that all?”

The man said, “Just wait for my text. The password will be Pearl Harbor.” Then the window rolled up and the big car maneuvered its way back in the direction it had come. Jolene thought, “I am going to enjoy cutting that one’s balls off as soon as we get paid.”

Sir Alex called as we were walking back. I said, “I’m in the street. I’ll call when I get to a secure location.” Fifteen minutes later, I called him from my room. He was his usual affable self. He said, “I have sent you a file with everything we have on Diggs. He is a very bad man indeed.”

I popped up the message as I was talking to him. I said, “Let me digest this and I will call you back. I see you sent reinforcements.” He said puzzled, “What do you mean by that my dear?” I said, “I confronted Prudence Hobart. She has read me into HER mission. MI-5 wants to cooperate. I assume I can read her into ours.”

Sir Alex said jovially, “Of COURSE my dear. I served with her father in that little unpleasantness in the Falklands and he is the bravest of the brave. I’m sure his daughter is equally stalwart.”

I said, “I can see it now. But she’s a great actress. She can project indolent twit better than Maggie Smith can do Victorian dowagers.” He chuckled and broke the connection. I opened up the file, which was thick to say the least. It seems that Mr. Diggs was a well-known fellow in local police circles.

There was no explanation as to why a conventional crime lord would be involved in a case that had terrorist overtones. In fact, the opposite was true. The guy was a classic right-wing patriot type. He contributed to far-right causes and he was a fervent backer of some questionable but well-known conservative pundits.

One of the oddest things about Mr. Diggs was his sparse internet footprint. I didn’t exactly expect him to have a Facebook page. But I had assumed that I could get the things I needed to hack him; like email accounts, or business websites. I couldn’t find any of those. So, I decided that more robust measures would be needed.

I had an address for him. So, I checked it out via Google Maps. It never fails to astonish me how easy it is to look in a stranger’s window courtesy of Google’s busy little mapping trucks.

Diggs lived in a gated compound in Pacific Palisades. I assumed that I was not going to be invited in, to war-drive the neighborhood. From the satellite image I could see that his acres of lavish lawns were surrounded by an eight-foot wall. Based on that layout, I could see that the man needed a cat.

So, I got the Hertz people to send over a Camaro. It was black with a convertible top and the 6.2-liter engine. It radiated sex and power, perfect for a California girl. I told the girls to pillage Rodeo Drive, while I took a little side-trip. We arranged to meet back in the lobby at 7:00.

Then I visited the local Humane Society, where I liberated the toughest, most feral looking feline they had available. It was definitely belligerent. But it was exactly what I needed. He was a calico with one ear mostly missing and it must have weighed as much as a beagle. I had the Human Society people put the beast in a crate.

Then, I drove the half hour from the Humane Society to the wall outside Mr. Diggs estate. I could see the armed guards just up the road at a guard shack. I pulled over, like I was trying to take a picture of the canyon on the other side of the road. I reached into the cage, dragged the monster out spitting and hissing and snapped a collar around its neck. Then, when the guards weren’t looking, I heaved it over the wall. The thump on the other side was satisfying and the laptop on the passenger seat told me that I had an instant, very hard connection to the little device that I had hung around its neck.

That device is one of my little inventions and it reads and bounces all of the 2.4 Gigahertz 802 signals to an external repeater. It has a GPS built into it and a Wireshark protocol analyzer. It will ping and acquire any wireless router that comes into its range. I had assumed that the first place the cat would visit would be the Diggs mansion since I had tossed it into HIS back yard. and I was hoping that my war-kitty had already acquired Mr. Diggs’s Wi-Fi setup. But I needed to get to my gear to confirm that.

The range on the collar wouldn’t get the link all the way back to my room, so I paired it with a booster hardened into a construction brick. I used that device on a satellite uplink on my last assignment and I know that it is rock solid reliable. The signal I was pulling down from the repeater indicated that Diggs’s mansion had a live router. My war-kitty had acquired it almost as soon as I had landed its mangy butt in the back yard of the house.

The guards were giving me the move-on signal. So, I surreptitiously dropped the brick and jumped back in the car. I roared up to the gate, gave the three guards my flirtiest look, pulled my top up to just above my bra, exposing a lot of bare stomach, waved sexily and drove away. My aim was to erase any of the memories in their small brain, by appealing to their main brain, which is located between their legs.

And I also didn’t suppose any of them would think I was doing anything too diabolical, if I had just showed them my tits. They all gaped. I don’t think any of them saw my face. The half hour that it took me to race back to my room was agonizing. Since I wanted to lock in Diggs’s system. I knew I couldn’t pull the cat trick again and I was counting on my weaponized alley cat to connect me with the details of Mr. Diggs life. I wasn’t worried about the cat. I knew that it would be prowling the neighborhood for the rest of its no doubt highly colorful life. But the batteries in the little device on its collar were only good for about four days.

I planned to crack Mr. Diggs for all he was worth. I locked in the MAC address and started up the brute force PIN cracker. There is a well-known hole - well at least one that’s known to people like me – in WAP that actually lets me crack it faster than the older firewalls and I had Mr. Diggs in less than five minutes.

Something I have noted about crime lord types is that they are old, uneducated men who don’t trust nerds. At least they don’t trust them enough to turn their secrets over to them. So, they tend to do electronic things themselves and they make every mistake imaginable when it comes to on-line protection. Mainly they will encrypt things with weak encryption like PGP. That does two things for me. First, it puts a glowing neon sign over the stuff that they don’t want me to read, which says, “Crack this first!” Second, they make it so easy to read their stuff that they might as well have left it plain text in the first place.

Diggs had several encrypted folders in his file directory. But the one that was labeled “Patriot Revolution” attracted my attention. It was the first place I went. I decrypted and downloaded everything in that file. It told me everything I needed to know. I marveled at how easy it was.

Robert Bill was a man of action and a dedicated patriot. He had done a full 20-year hitch in the Marines and then transitioned over to the National Clandestine Service where he had become a CIA legend. After 9-11 he had been one of the true angels-of-wrath, cutting his way through the terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan.

It was during one of those times that he made his one serious mistake. He didn’t regret the gruesome torture killing of the Taliban war-lord. He needed information and that was the means to the end. What he DID regret was that he didn’t check for cell phones amongst the people who were in the room. That recording got a lot of play in the bleeding-heart circles in the States and it led to his forced separation from the thing that he was born to do.

But it also made him a hero to some segments of the American population. These were the true illuminati, the ones who understood that the United States was at war with an insidious enemy; one that would never rest until Sharia Law was the law of the land. Unfortunately, there were far too few of those visionary people and way too many sheep. Bob Bill had nothing but contempt for the human parasites who were willing to live their pointless lives off the sacrifices of a few good men. He viewed the mainstream, media, which was full of weaklings, gays and anarchists, as the enabler of that and he understood that America needed a wakeup call.

For the past seven years he had preached the good word to small gatherings of the chosen few. It was a combination of evangelical dogma and paramilitary doctrine. And he had gained adherents as time went by. Those followers saw him as a second coming; in that his message was one of redemption from the slough of despond that the American people had fallen into. In his mind America had been seduced into deep complacency by the idolaters and the atheists in government. It was not the government itself that he resented. He knew that American democracy was fundamentally the will of a God-loving, Christian country. But it had been perverted by greedy men and women whose love of power had created a vanity-fair of vice and corruption in the Nation’s seat of power.

Robert Bill longed to return the Country to the same simple patriotic fervor that had been triggered by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And like the initial patriots of the American Revolution, he had a small number of rich and powerful acolytes who saw the same thing. Since the leaders of the country were blind, that insight would have to come from direct action by a few chosen men. Those men understood that the only thing that could save their country was an old-fashioned cleansing; preferably by an all-consuming fire. That fire would do to the decadent masses what the Lord did to Sodom and Gomorrah. The committed few were willing to band together to bring that cleansing to the heart of America itself.

Oscar Diggs was among the most fervent of Bill’s followers. Both of those sixty-year-old men had worked in clandestine and often unsavory settings. But where Bob Bill had made very little money in service of his Country, Oscar Diggs was as wealthy and powerful as Croesus himself. They had come together when Diggs attended one of Bill’s lectures. From the beginning, Diggs had understood that Bill was a fellow traveler, a man as ruthless and driven as he was. And the message of hate that Bill preached was one that resonated deep within Diggs’s twisted soul. The two of them very quickly became the firmest of friends.

One day they were sitting in the sun on the extensive patio of Diggs’s huge estate enjoying their Cubans and discussing ways to bring the American people to their senses. They were getting angrier by the second as they talked about the weakness and conceit of America’s leadership. Bill felt like he knew the answer. What America needed was an event that would draw an unmistakable line between the good guys and the bad guys. It would be something that even the most delusional leader couldn’t ignore. He emphasized that point by pounding his fist on the patio table.

In his mind it was not the sinking of the battleships at Pearl that enraged the American people. It was the sheer unadulterated treachery of the act itself. America went to war with Germany after that, but it was never the all-consuming crusade that they conducted against Japan. And in his mind the dropping of the two atomic bombs at the end of the war were less meant to end things than a response to that original Japanese perfidy.