The Devlin Deception: Book One of The Devlin Quatrology (14 page)

"Nope; not one of my priorities. How about this? For now,
let's go with Mr. Donne and after we've gotten to know each other
better, we can go with Gordon or Gordy. I know that's not a title,
but my focus is on policy, not little stuff like that. Fair enough?”

"Yes, sir, Mr. Donne.”

"Oh, geez, can we drop the 'sir'? I'm pretty informal, in case
you all haven't noticed. I don't stand on protocol much.”

"Okay, Mr. Donne.”

"Thanks. Next? How about a tough one?”

"Kestyn ____ from ____. How can you justify lowering taxes on
millionaires and billionaires?”

"Oh, that's not a tough one. Two ways to answer that. First,
we get as much revenue from a ten percent tax on one guy making a
hundred thousand as from a five percent tax on two guys making a
hundred K each. And I would rather see two folks making a hundred
thousand each than just one. That's a goal of many of my policies.

“Second, I would rather that we collect 27 percent from ten of
those millionaires and billionaires than 39 or 45 or even 80 percent
from the one of them who's either too stuck or too stupid to move out
of the country. Remember, the rich have a LOT of choices. Think of
the folks moving from New York to Florida and Texas to escape New
York's high taxes, or moving their wealth to both legal and illegal
offshore tax havens. Okay. Next? Yes?”

"Savannah ____ from ____.”

"Oh, I can tell this is gonna be a tough one already.”

The group laughed, albeit somewhat guardedly.

"I'll do my best, Mr. Donne. As you know, several commentators
on Sunday called you 'heartless.' How do you respond to that?”

"Well, as I was watching them and hearing that, I just thought
that their sense of 'fairness' was a lot different from mine. I
believe you've gotta have a balance between reason and compassion, or
head and heart, and that'll be a bit different for each issue. But
as for me, I will never go so far in the heart direction as to be a
sucker. Word to the wise, okay? Next?”

"Avery ___ from ___. I've got a photo here of you and Mohammar
Gaddafi together, smiling and shaking hands. What's the story on
that?”

"Oh, that. You have a copy I can see?”

"Sure, Mr. Pres- – Mr. Donne.”

"That's okay, Avery; old habits die hard. Thanks. Oh, right.
This was in … ah … 1993? Yes, '93, when one of our
companies built an automated brick factory in Libya. He was one
sneaky, devious bastard, I'll tell you. So we had to be even
sneakier and deviouser – I mean more devious; sorry. I'm a fan
of win-win solutions, but he was like a dog with a bone trying to
make it win-lose. So we made sure he lost, I think it was to the
tune of about half a billion bucks on that deal. And knowing that
that was money he stole from his people and would otherwise have gone
into his personal fortune somewhere, we put that into a separate
account in our hedge fund in anticipation of his departure; that
account is now worth in excess of forty billion dollars and belongs
to the people of Libya.”

Avery spoke up again. “Did you say forty billion dollars?”

“That's correct, Avery. That's what half a billion can grow
into over eighteen years, prudently managed, as we have. Go ahead
and do the math yourself. I can also tell you that since Gaddafi's
death, Wes Farley and a team at DEI have been working with
governments and claimants around the world to track down the billions
he stole and hid away. Next? Yes.”

"Sondra _____ of ______. I'll try for a tough one, Mr. Donne.”

"If anyone can, Sondra, it's you. Go for it.”

"You were accused of being unpatriotic and anti-democratic on
one of the talk shows. Are you anti-democratic and unpatriotic?”

"Oh, I heard that on Sunday, and it came from one of the very
best and most practiced mudslingers, and he can sling vague and
highly emotional terms around like a short-order cook slinging hash
in a dirty diner kitchen. But I do like his Loosiana accent.

"First, I am NOT unpatriotic; he is dead wrong on that score. I
am concerned about making things better for this country and for as
many of its people as I possibly can. In my opinion, that's pretty
darned patriotic.

"As for the anti-democratic bit, I am definitely opposed to what
our, quote, representative, unquote, democracy has become, where it
seems your representatives do NOT represent you, but use crony
capitalism and earmarks to enrich themselves and their friends and
campaign contributors, at YOUR expense. If they were in the private
sector and pulled the kind of stuff most, if not all, of them pull,
they'd be in prison for life. Oh, that's my opinion.

“Also, I do think that democracy, and by that I mean mob
democracy, can be destructive and often illusory. I much prefer
plurocracy, which means individual choice in as many areas as
possible.

“Just for an overused example, if our breakfast cereal choice
was determined democratically, there would only be ONE cereal on
supermarket shelves, and about half the people wouldn't like that one
cereal. Plurocracy is what gives us the many choices we have there.
Our Founding Fathers were appropriately leery of direct democracy and
set this country up as a republic, with an electoral college, to
protect against ochlocracy, another word for mob democracy.

"Then there's the whole issue of minority rights. In a country
as large and diverse as ours, it's difficult in a democracy to
restrain people who want everybody else to believe and behave the way
they do and can lobby a few powerful representatives to accomplish
that. But we have to recognize that controlling everybody's behavior
is not a goal that we should support. Democracy can lead to tyranny
just as much as military force can, even by a 51-to-49 percent vote,
and if we look at how easily opinion can be swayed with propaganda, I
think a strong case can be made against mob democracy.

“My highest value is freedom and individual choice for 'the
people,' and that can be tromped on by democratic tyranny as much as
by any other kind of tyranny. I think you'll find as you look at my
policies and directives, freedom and plurocracy is the underlying
principle.

"Also, with elections every two years, there's a huge loss of
certainty. It makes it very hard for people and businesses to do
much long-term planning, when the rules could change with each
election. We have got to stop the pendulum from swinging so far to
the right and then to the left and let it settle down in one spot.
And what we have now and call democracy, but has gotten so corrupted,
just doesn't cut it when it comes to that need. Okay. Next? Yes.”

“Dennis _____ from _____. In an interview in yesterday's issue
of our paper, one of your competitors called you, quote, a “ruthless
negotiator.” Are you ruthless?”

“I read that interview and I want to thank him for the
compliment, but that particular fellow is prone to understatement.
Okay. Yes?”

“Doris _____, _______. In your directives, you have
eliminated the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, the Minority and Women Business Enterprise
and Affirmative Action initiatives, as well as the Americans with
Disabilities Act. How can you possibly defend those actions?”

“Well, Doris, I don't need to defend them, but I'm more than
happy to explain the philosophy behind them, and that boils down to
three words: Merit, Choice and Opportunity. While all of those
ideas were well-intentioned at first, they have all become little
more than full- employment-for-lawyers policies, as well as shakedown
vehicles for certain greedy and self-aggrandizing activists.
Preferences and quotas have come to overpower qualifications and
merit. That's over and done. The ONLY hiring preference that will
continue is for veterans, but even that will not outweigh merit and
qualifications.

“As for the ADA, that piece of well-intended legislation has
been used by hundreds of money-grubbing lawyers simply to shake down
thousands of small businesses and to literally kill thousands of good
developments. That's over. Next? Yes.”

“Charles ___, ____. Have you seen the report on the $800,000
GSA party in Las Vegas in October of 2010?”

“I haven't yet, but I've been briefed on it. And I understand
there are some videos, as well. If it turns out that what I've heard
is accurate, everybody involved in the decisions about that event
will be summarily fired AND held personally accountable for all
taxpayer money that they wasted on that fiasco, and I do mean
personally accountable. Furthermore --”

A rumble of voices was heard in the hall outside the press room, and
a uniformed Marine walked swiftly to Donne's chair, saluted and
handed Donne a sheet of paper. Donne read it briefly, then looked at
the press corps.

“I'm sorry, folks. We're gonna have to take a brief break
here, not more than ten minutes, and we'll continue this right after
that.” He stood up and the journalists did, as well. “No,
no, no, don't bother standing; I don't need y'all to do that. I'll
be right back.”

The break actually lasted nearly 15 minutes, during which the press
corps milled around the room, a few heading outdoors for a quick
smoke break. But notes and attitudes were compared and contrasted,
especially after Donne's last answer. Many arguments centered around
the correct pronunciation of “divisive.”

On Bonita Beach, Paul glanced at Gayle and Lucy, just as Lucy noticed
a middle-aged guy casting his line into the water.

“Hey, idiot, no fishing in the swimming area,” Lucy
bellowed.

-20-

Five Months Earlier

Sunday, July 3, 2011

4:54 a.m.

Vienna, Austria

The Carnivore (one of his many names) had arrived on a private jet at
four a.m. local time. A driver stood by a black SUV, which had been
chartered anonymously through a cutout.

As soon as the Carnivore had settled himself in the back seat, the
SUV left the airport through an open back gate. The driver had been
instructed to engage in no conversation with his passenger, so he
drove in silence to the
Bahnhof Wien Meidling
,
where his passenger left the SUV, watched it drive off and then
entered the station, favoring his right leg. But he wasn't there to
board a train.

Inside, the Carnivore went into the men's room and into a stall,
where he turned his jacket inside out, removed a set of scraggly
teeth, pulled off his blond wig and replaced it with a black watch
cap, stuffing the wig into a pocket with the fake teeth. As he left
the men's room, favoring his left leg, but only slightly, he checked
for watchers and, finding none, returned outside and climbed into the
last taxi in the line, giving the driver an address on Pottendorfer
Strasse, a short drive from the station. He got out there, paid the
driver and walked slowly toward the house, still favoring his left
leg.

Once the taxi was out of sight, he went back to the street, limped to
the corner of Pottendorfer Weg and turned north, walking with no limp
to the safe house a bit up the street, eyes constantly checking for
anything out of place. Again seeing nothing, he stopped on the
sidewalk and used his remote to deactivate the alarm system and
unlock the door, then hurried up the walk and inside, closing the
door and reactivating the alarm system at the keypad in the foyer.

“Welcome back, Carnivore,” a raspy female voice echoed
from the living room.

The Carnivore pressed a red button on the bottom of the keypad and a
rapid swoosh, a muffled shriek and a loud clunk came from the living
room. The Carnivore chuckled quietly, walked from the foyer into the
living room and turned on the lights. When he saw what awaited him,
his chuckle expanded into a full-blown laugh.

The Sniper squirmed in an easy chair, but she and the chair were both
encased in an all-plexiglass half-wheel about two feet wider than the
chair, arching over the chair from front to back. As she realized
what had just happened, she started to laugh along with the
Carnivore.

“Very funny, Carnivore. I like it. Now get me out.”

“Of course, Sharon,” the Carnivore replied, still
laughing. He crossed to the couch, lifted a part of one of the end
tables and pressed a button. The half-wheel quickly rotated forward,
sliding into the floor in front of the chair, where its edges merged
imperceptibly with the hardwood flooring.

Sharon slid out of the chair, got down on her hands and knees and
examined the interstice.

“Damned near invisible, and definitely very clever. How did
you come up with that?”

“I saw a tire half-buried in a garden in Sorrento when I was on
the Grianchi job. Of course, that one had a Madonna underneath the
arch. So maybe I'll call it the Madonna cage.”

“I like that. What makes it work? Hydraulics?”

“Springs to swing it up, winch to pull it back down. And check
this out.”

He pushed another button and a tiny nozzle slid out from the left
side of the back of the chair.

“Any kind of spray you want in that, incapacitating to fatal.”

“Nice.”

“You're the first chance I've had to really test it.”

“Thanks for skipping the gas.”

“You're quite welcome, my dear. This is just a prototype. The
final will also be bulletproof and soundproof and we'll make a key
fob remote.”

“Very, VERY nice.

“So how'd it go in Copenhagen?”

“Pizza cake. The DX201/6 worked perfectly.”

“Details, Carnivore, details.”

“Okay. Picture this. Ten minutes after midnight, full moon,
just outside the Rosenborg Palace Garden. I'm slouched over, in full
disguise, doing my drunk act, leaning against the fence near the
Gothersgade entrance when I see the target, with three heavy-duty
guards. He's waddling around the corner from Kronprinsessegade, one
BG in front and one on each side, slightly behind him.”