The Outer Circle (The Counterpoint Trilogy Book 3) (8 page)

Farmington, USA

Jim Brobak didn’t really care for his days off. Not in this empty rental house. Not since Janet left and took the kids. Ran back to her rich daddy in Dallas. She hated the move to New Mexico. She didn’t want to be the wife of a resident special agent in a sleepy little town. She mocked it as a place of ‘UFO obsessed baseball fans.’ As if he had a choice. As if he asked to be demoted and sent here. The divorce papers were lying on the sofa, right where he threw them two weeks ago when they arrived. Janet has left three messages by now.

It was only 11 a.m., but he was already nursing a glass of bourbon in the dusty backyard, looking at gravel, withered grass, and cactuses. He didn’t expect anyone, so sounds of people talking startled Jim. He walked over to the front yard and came face-to-face with a gardening crew.

“Hey, I didn’t ask for gardeners! And if that vulture landlady wants to send anyone, she has to call me first!”

“No problem,
señor
, no problem, we go,” agreed the older gardener, a short man with a withered face darkened by the New Mexico sun. “We go. This – for you,” he pushed a brown manila envelope into Brobak’s hands.

“What? What is this? Why are you giving this to me?” uttered a surprised Jim, but the crew quickly piled into a beat-up truck and left.

Jim shook his head and looked at the front of the envelope. It was indeed addressed to him. Probably another one of Janet’s tricks. He went back into the backyard, threw the envelope on the table and resumed his bourbon.

Something didn’t feel right. The landlady was stingy as hell, wouldn’t even replace a burned-out light bulb. And if she did send the gardening crew, why did they leave so quickly – was he that scary? Jim looked at the envelope and his eyes narrowed: it had no return address and no stamp.
What the hell?

Brobak pushed aside the glass with bourbon, studied the envelope for a couple of minutes, carefully picked it up and looked at the other side. Just a regular manila envelope. Something was inside, an object the size of a phone. He listened; there was no ticking or other suspicious sounds.

Jim went to the kitchen, brought scissors and at an arm’s length delicately opened the package. No powder. He gingerly shook the envelope and an object slid out. It was indeed a phone with a small yellow sticker. The sticker read: “From friends of John Platt.”

John Platt. His late long-time friend. The man who got involved in investigating the Schulmann affair and asked Jim to help. The man whose plane crashed only a few days after that. The man who changed Jim’s life, because it was helping Platt that got him demoted and transferred out of Dallas. Nobody said it outright, but Jim knew it. Which set in motion another chain of events, culminating in the divorce papers on the sofa.

Jim had the urge to throw the phone over the backyard fence, into the empty field outside. Let rattlesnakes and scorpions use it. He picked up the phone, then stopped. John didn’t do this to him. John tried to investigate a friend’s death and got killed. Because Jim didn’t for a second believe that the plane crash a few days later was a coincidence. And who were those “friends” that sent Jim the phone? When the Schulmann file story broke, Jim figured that John’s “associates” must have been David Ferguson and Maggie Sappin. Officially, fugitives on the run wanted for questioning. Unofficially, to a great many, heroes that stood up to powerful people that considered themselves to be above the law. Were they the “friends” trying now to contact Jim?

Jim studied the phone. It was a no-name brand. There would be only one reason to send him the phone rather than a number to call: security. No online key distribution. Probably built-in strong encryption. Working for the FBI, he was familiar with such devices. One of the costliest but also highly protected ways to communicate remotely. They tried to crack down on such devices, but it was next to impossible. And now he was going to use one himself?

Jim turned the phone on. It powered up. There were no messages of any kind. He opened the address book; it had one name “JohnP” and a number with a Newfoundland area code. It did not matter what the area code was, must be a gateway that would securely route packetized calls, bounce them across multiple servers in different areas, and re-assemble packets at the destination without allowing anyone to trace it. Jim gulped down the rest of the bourbon and pressed the number.

A man’s voice answered:

“Jim?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

The call must have been bounced between many servers because even with fiber-optic connections the delay was noticeably annoying.

“This is David Ferguson.”

As I expected
, thought Jim, feeling cold in the pit of his stomach.

“What do you want?”

“I need your help. I am sure you’ve heard of me. Two years ago, you helped John Platt evade the police. I was with him.”

“Go on.”

“I have continued working on the Schulmann file. I uncovered something that might be very important, but I need more data. We don’t have the kind of access required to get it. You probably do.”

“Why did you come to me?”

“Because John Platt was your friend. Because your helped us before. We can’t trust anyone else with such a request.”

“John was killed because of this!”

“I know. So were many others. Working on this is dangerous. I came out of hiding and returned to the US so we can get this information. It’s that important.”

Jim took a deep breath, anger rising:

“I lost my job and my family because of you!”

He ended the connection.

St. Petersburg, Russia

Vitaly Mershov was having lunch with two fellow
militzia
investigators in an open beer bar near Kutuzov Embankment. With this being a hot day, his two colleagues were already on their third beer while Vitaly, the youngest of the three, was still nursing his first one.

An observation drone was circling about a three hundred feet overhead, making an annoying mosquito-like noise.

“Vitaly, you know something about these drone things,” half-asked, half-stated Petr, the oldest of the group.

“A little bit,” cautiously replied Vitaly. The older
militziamen
were suspicious of the new technology so he was careful in his answers.

“How often do they break down and stop recording or sending data out?”

“Not too often. They seem to work just fine most of the time.”

“Isn’t it interesting then that the drone in the area broke down just before the murder of the Defense Minister Nedinsky?” slurred Slava, Petr’s partner. “Went dark, no video, no alerts.”

“So how did you know to get there?”

“They sent us to investigate a domestic disturbance a couple of blocks away. We were talking to an old fool who’s been beating his wife for years, neighbors called us but she refused to say anything,” explained Petr. “Suddenly, we heard gunshots. We ran out, looked left, looked right, saw where people are running away from and went there. Found the Minister’s car, the Minister, and one of his bodyguards are dead in the back seat, the other bodyguard is standing outside. Covered in blood and glass, but seems OK.”

“Did you talk to him?” asked Vitaly.

“Briefly. He gave us his name, Fyodor Bezdorukov, but then clamped down, saying he is only supposed to talk to special police.”

“I would have shown him special police,” said Slava, who in his spare time taught martial arts, “but that FSB colonel showed up and told us to get out.”

“And you left?”

“He had a bunch of heavily armed people with him. Come to think of it, he got there pretty damn quickly. I mean, we were in the area. Petr, how long did it take us to get there?”

“Perhaps three minutes or so,” said Petr. “And that SOB Zaychikov was only a couple of minutes behind us. How could he get there so quickly?”

“Zaychikov is the FSB colonel’s name?”

“Yes, Bogdan Zaychikov. He introduced himself when he told us to get out. Now that I look back at it, the whole thing stank. Slava, you were a sniper in the army – could you have taken out the Minister and his bodyguard in a back seat of a bullet-resistant car?”

“Not easily,” Slava shook his head. “Even with high-powered 50 caliber rifles you have to put in a few shots in the same area before you shatter the glass. So the driver would have had a chance to get out of there.”

“But they told us that the Minister’s car was blocked by trucks in the front and the back?” asked Vitaly.

“There were trucks there but there was room for the car to maneuver. And why was the car on that small street in the first place?” wondered Petr. “Anyway, they told us it’s not our case to worry about.”

Los Angeles, USA

Jennifer smiled at two men in a Jeep as she walked to the next door’s neighbor. They waved back at her. Familiar faces, they’ve been here before, guarding Jeff.

The door opened before she had a chance to knock.

“Hi, Jenny. I saw you from the kitchen’s window.”

“Thank you, Betty. Returning this,” Jennifer offered her neighbor the virtual reality contraption she borrowed. VR goggles as they were called.

“How was kitchen pipe fixing?”

“Actually, once I put the goggles on and turned the program, quite easy. I still got wet, but I did not have to beg Jeff or call the plumber.”

“Come on it, have a glass of ice tea,” offered Betty. She was a plump woman with short curly hair, whose grandmotherly appearance hid a bit of a temper. Neighbors that crossed her found out Betty’s steely side rather quickly. But Betty seemed to have a soft spot for Jeff and Jennifer ever since they moved next door some years back. “That hubby of yours, he is a dreamer,” Betty used to tell Jennifer. “But a nice one.”

“Do you have time, Jenny?” asked Betty half-way to the kitchen. “I am an old fool, bored while Bob is at work, you must have tons of things to worry about with all that you have to do these days.”

“Don’t worry, Betty. I have people coming for dinner in a while, but I have ordered takeout; no cooking for me today.”

“Well, here’s your glass then. No sugar, as you like it. How are you holding up?”

“Barely, to be honest. I stopped working and sent Nana to live with my mom months ago. There is no time for anything. I try to do a bit of gardening when I can, so I don’t just lose it. It all feels very surreal.”

“Yeah, I think the whole neighborhood feels this way. Who would have thought that we’ll have a presidential candidate in our midst, living in a small ranch-style house. Presidential candidates, they are supposed to live in mansions, in gated communities, surrounded by other rich people and bodyguards.”

“Betty, should have we moved out? I mean, this must be very inconvenient and bothersome for people.”

“No, don’t think that way! Of course, there are some that are grumbling but most of the neighbors are proud. Look at all the
Kron for President
signs on the lawns! They won’t tell it to you, but many came to tell me how grand it is that someone like them has a chance to be the President.”

“There are some
Dimon for President
signs too.”

“Yeah, you can’t really blame them. I reckon, one in five working people here lost their good-paying jobs and either work for less or live on what they get from the government. They look for someone to blame and Dimon tells them who to blame.”

“Betty, thank you for the tea,” Jennifer put the glass down. “And for the talk. I wonder every day if we are doing the right thing.”

“Take care of yourself, Jenny. You go, girl!”

Jennifer stood on the street for a minute, looking at their house. Yep, a tired small three bedroom ranch house. Comfortable like an old shoe. Completely unsuitable for a presidential candidate. But then, they were an unsuitable candidate.
They
because it truly was both of them. Once Jeff’s popularity started rising, he’s been offered mansions to stay in. He always refused with
That’s just not us
. That’s true; they had no great ambitions, no desire to rule. They had kind of fallen into the situation, one step at a time.
“Accidental politicians,”
a wise-cracking scribe called them, and the label stuck, sometimes used with sympathy, sometimes derogatively.

“Well, this was tasty! Thank you,” Robert Marosyan nodded in Jennifer’s direction.

“Why, Robert, you’re quite welcome! I would have gladly taken the credit, but I must admit that the food came from a local Italian restaurant.

Jeff and David Weinstein laughed.

“All right, David, now that we’ve fed you, share with us your politico-economic thoughts,” said Jeff.

“Well, there are a few interconnected trends that are unfolding right before our eyes,” David’s voice changed, as if going from a dinner chit-chat to a serious discussion required a different timbre. “The main thing is, our society has become very stratified. We have a tiny minority, perhaps one hundredth of one percent, that has it all and can spend money like water. Then, there is a reasonably well-to-do class, perhaps twenty percent of the population, with well-paying jobs that could not be outsourced or automated. And after that, there is everyone else, struggling to stay afloat. That’s partly the result of our increasingly digital ‘winner take all’ economy, and partly due to growing automation. There are jobs out there, just not many good, well-paying jobs. While manufacturing came back after the dollar crashed, the jobs did not. There are robots everywhere. Not only in factories, but in department stores and fast-food restaurants. You walk into a store and a robot is greeting you, not a person. And many of the jobs that have not been automated just don’t pay as much. A radiologist in Philippines can get an X-ray just as quickly as the one in downtown LA and read it just as well... now you are suddenly competing with someone whose cost of living is much lower.”

“We know all that,” grumbled Marosyan. “And we still have the greatest companies in the world.”

“Yes, but only a small minority can work for these companies. This lack of good jobs creates a negative socio-economic feedback loop. Firstly, the mass market starts shrinking because one super-rich person does not replace the purchasing performance of ten middle class people that lost their well-paying jobs. Secondly, the big money drives politics and the social trust starts disappearing. Once people stop trusting the government, they try to avoid financially supporting it. The government tries to enforce more, people trust it even less, and on and on it goes.”

“Yeah, yeah, we know about the
No taxation without representation
movement, the signs and graffiti are all over the place now,” shrugged Marosyan.

“That’s a part of it. Increasingly more people are reassessing their priorities, working less or dropping out of the work force altogether. When you realize that even if you work your butt off your chances of making it big are really miniscule, you may decide it’s not worth it. And even if you claw your way into the middle class, you find out that you pay tons of taxes but get little in benefits. People are starting to look at their quality of life differently. They consume less; they take government’s assistance. More than half of the country is on food stamps now. And they share. Local communities are really big now. Cars are expensive, so people share them. It’s common now for neighbors to buy one or more cars together. They grow and share food, they help each other. The underground local economy is growing by leaps and bounds, enabled by online sharing platforms and cryptocurrencies that allow people build neighborhood-based economic communities.”

“Hmmm, so you are saying that people are increasingly transacting locally, away from the big government, away from the ‘official’ market?” asked Kron.

“Yes, but even more than that. It’s very exciting to observe!” David shook his index finger in the air. “You see, this is more than an economic phenomenon, this is a societal phenomenon. In the Middle Ages, a man was rooted in his local community; he had connections, a structure, a place. In the Modern Age, we have increasingly subordinated the individual as a means to economic ends. We tore people out of their local structures and the man had no defined place. As the majority of the population has been falling behind, their feelings of powerlessness and aloneness have increased. In the 20
th
century, such people escaped by conforming or submitting to a strong leader. And we see these trends now too, just look at Dimon’s popularity. Internet connected people like never before, but it also created echo-chambers of like-minded individuals reinforcing each other’s views. The world has become both very interconnected and very fragmented. But we also see a strong movement to reconstruct local communities. These are very different and conflicting trends. Something quite profound is happening as people use less of remote social media connections and turn back to in-person associations.”

“Well, David, if you had a
carte blanche
to change things, how would you try to reverse this downward spiral we are in?” Jennifer leaned towards David, listening intently.

“We must earn people’s trust anew. And in order to do that, I think we have to embrace the localization that’s unfolding. Instead of only taking money out of the communities we should start returning it to them to spend as the communities see fit. Help rebuild the middle class; it’s the very cornerstone of democracy. Get big money out of politics and people may start seeing the government as an ally again.”

“It’s all very nice, but I don’t know how to turn it into an ad or a billboard,” shook his head Marosyan. “One has to win the election first.”

“I know, you are right, Robert,” said Jeff. “But like that old sailor Popeye, I am what I am. And to your great frustration, I have to run the way I am. Don’t be angry with me, I’ve warned you.”

“That you did,” nodded Marosyan.