Chapter 33

The accepted revolutionary rule of thumb is that one of the first things you've got to get control of is the media. Radio, newspapers, television and I suppose nowadays that would also include the internet, though how you'd go about that escapes me. Lucy, who was by that point going by the name Laurie Tran, insisted that it was possible, but hardly worth the effort. I tended to agree.

Besides, I wasn't conducting or even contemplating a revolution. A coup was more what I had in mind; a rapid, silent, peaceful coup d'é

tat. No violence, and as little death, as possible. Most importantly, I didn't want anyone to know it had even happened.

No, I didn't need or want the media under my thumb. They couldn't help and, as long as they were unaware of my existence, they couldn't hinder.

What I did need though was absolute control of the top levels of all major branches of the federal government.

We Americans like to believe we're a democracy. We aren't. Never have been. We're a republic with a centralized federal government that can, pretty much at will, override and overrule any subordinate state government. State power kinda went by the way after the Civil War, and it's been declining ever since.

Besides, if necessary, I could always put in an appearance at one or more of the gatherings state governors liked to hold several times a year.

No, I needed a way to maintain a hold on the federal government, no matter who was President, and no matter who got appointed to head the various departments. Otherwise I'd spend the rest of my life wandering from place to place dispensing rings, the thought of which did not appeal to me in the least.

James Barrett, the U.S. Attorney General of all people, gave me the idea for what became my eventual course of action.

I'd asked his opinion of what the various branches had in common and he jokingly remarked that the only thing they had in common were Inspector Generals. After a little personal research, I discovered that he was quite correct. The damn government was packed with Inspector Generals. They were everywhere, and I reasoned that if properly motivated, they could force the Cabinet, Congress and all the rest to do what they were supposed to be doing.

So that's who I went after.

I started with the CIA IG, and then got him to bring IG's from other branches that he was familiar with to see me, or take me to meet them. By the end of April there wasn't one who didn't have a ring.

Also during that period I went to visit the State Department. I'd heard that, in the weeks prior to my initial visit, there was a rash of retirements and resignations, which suited me just fine, if only because that meant there'd be fewer deaths on my conscience and living in my memory.

The Secretary of State, as usual, was out of the country so I had to content myself with turning the Under-Secretary, her staff and about fifty senior diplomats.

Then I turned my attention to the Department of Defense. You simply can't have a proper coup unless you've got the support of the military. Having the IG helped, but I wanted more. So I turned the top three levels within the DoD itself then went after the Pentagon. Having the DCIA and the AG behind me made turning the Joint Chiefs less difficult than it might have been otherwise. Which is not to say that it was easy, because believe me, it wasn't. You can't just walk in to the Pentagon building, past all the security, along the maze of halls, the endless doors and offices, more security (and we're talking armed soldiers now, not rent-a-cops with pepper spray and walkie talkies), and just knock on the door of the Joint Chiefs. Even I wasn't stupid enough to try that. It took me the better part of a day before I finally got to stick a ring in the Chairman himself.

By the beginning of summer though the government was effectively in my pocket, with one exception that I'm afraid I completely and foolishly overlooked.

Treasury.

Yeah, I know ... how much trouble could the Treasury cause?

Quite a bit, as it turned out.

I became aware of my error around the middle of May, when each of the girls and I received notices from the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, that we were being audited.

I came home from work that night and found all three of them waiting for me at the front door, envelopes in hand and livid scowls on their faces.

Lilly was absolutely incensed. She'd been handling all our family finances pretty much single handed for as long as we'd been together, and took it as a personal affront that anyone, including the government, would accuse her of cheating or mismanagement.

I took Lilly aside and told her not to worry; I'd deal with the IRS, and then spent the rest of the night calming the three of them down. They were unbelievably angry and had one hell of a lot of pent up aggression. It was one of the most violently passionate nights the four of us ever spent together and even with a city's worth of emotions roiling around inside me, I was absolutely exhausted when I left for work the following morning.

As soon as I arrived at my office I contacted the Treasury IG and asked him to look into the causes for the four of us being audited.

By the end of the day I still hadn't heard a thing.

Two days later he called back. It turns out that the IRS is almost as independent an operation as my own department. They have the power to go after pretty much anyone they want, for reasons known only to themselves. The Treasury IG couldn't even find out what their justification for auditing the four of us was.

In the eight years that I'd worked at the CIA my salary had increased once a year; the traditional annual GS wage increase. By the time we received the audit notifications I was making just under two hundred thousand a year. That sounds like a lot, and I suppose compared to what I made while in the Army it was. But consider this; we lived in one of the more expensive areas of the country, we paid to put Peggy thru college and Vet school out of our own money, we had four children to raise, a home to heat and cool, property taxes, three cars and a mini-van ... the list goes on and on. I'm not suggesting that we were hurting financially, 'cause we weren't. But even with the income that Izzy brought in from her teaching, which was never more than seventy thousand a year, and what Peggy could add after paying off her student loans and the costs of starting up her veterinary practice, and the few investments we'd scrimped and saved to make, we were in no danger of joining the Fortune 500. I don't think our total net worth at the time was more than six hundred thousand dollars.

So why was the IRS coming after us? We paid our taxes ever year as individuals. The girls claimed their children as dependents, I claimed only myself. I took minimal deductions, because frankly I hated having to fill out the damn forms required to make deductions.

Yeah, that's right ... I did my own taxes. I'm not trusting enough to let someone I don't know handle my money. Lilly did the taxes for the others every year, though she may have used one of those H & R Block kind of firms to help, but family finance has always been her responsibility and I've always gone out of my way not to stick my nose into any of their areas of expertise. Besides, Lilly's good with numbers and I'm not. She'd taught the kids how to multiply and divide before they were old enough to attend kindergarten, whereas I can barely fumble my way thru basic algebra.

The first thought that crossed my mind was that the audits were politically motivated. It wouldn't be the first time the government had gone that route to get someone they wanted. And it wasn't like I'd been busy making friends with the members of congress. So naturally my second thought was that some of former Senator Gottschalk's associates had decided that if their sub-committees couldn't control me, maybe the IRS could bring me to heel.

That thought lingered in my mind for quite some time and I worked myself into one hell of a bad mood by the end of the day. I even contemplated sicking Laurie/Lucy and her gang of hackers on the IRS. Eventually I calmed down enough to reconsider that course of action, after coming to the conclusion that the country's economy might not survive.

So instead I gathered up our audit notices the next day and dropped in on the IRS.

I sat down across from the chief auditor and handed him the notices. He glanced over them carefully then checked his computer records.

"They are legitimate." he announced stiffly.

"I'm not disputing their legitimacy. What I want to know is why the four of us were selected. We don't represent a single household or family unit. We're not a business or any type of profitable organization. We're just four people who happen to share the same last name and mailing address."

He nodded his head. "Those two facts alone would be enough to flag you for an audit." he pointed out reasonably.

"But that's not why we were selected, was it?"

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to disclose our methods or discuss our reasons. The simple fact is that you were selected and you will be audited."

I sighed softly, shook my head, looked him straight in the eye and slid a ring into the man.

Once I got everything from him that I was after, including a guarantee that our audits would be squashed as well as the identity of those people who'd instigated the audits, I walked out of his office and on my way out of the building put rings into fifty four other people.

It had gotten to the point where I couldn't go anywhere without planting rings in people. I wondered if I was going to end up turning the whole damn city.

I also wondered if maybe, just maybe, I wasn't taking my private vendetta against the government a little too far. Then I remembered who it had been that had put the IRS on my back in the first place.

The Congressional Finance committee. Revenge of the bean-counters.

Then I wondered if perhaps I hadn't gone far enough.

Early in May, after allowing time for my NSA hackers to settle into their new lives, I invited the newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Nigel (I've no idea why Lam chose the name Nigel, but he had and seemed quite pleased with it) and Laurie Tran out to the ranch for a weekend.

I had several reasons for inviting them, not the least of which was that I'd gotten the distinct impression during the intervening weeks that my girls were in dire need of company other than my own.

I've never been what you might call gregarious.

As a child I learned that people didn't like having me around and avoided them in turn. As a young teen that active dislike became muted to some extent, so I worked a bit harder trying to fit in, but I never got to the point where I felt comfortable around people in general. There were a few specific exceptions, but not many. As a young man I couldn't have cared less what anyone thought or felt. I ignored those people I could and interacted as sparsely as possible with those I couldn't. End of story.

When I was sent to the psych ward at Walter Reed all that changed. I actually began to care about other people. Some of them I liked, some I didn't; some I wanted to like, some I didn't, but the main thing was that I cared. For the first time in a long time, I cared what other people thought and felt about me. And for a few years things stayed that way.