Start at the Prologue and First Chapter here

Crypto was pedaling furiously away on a stationary bicycle. He loathed exercise, but over time had come to realize that the harder he exerted himself, the less likely he was to be bothered by the Bees. He believed the Bees couldn’t access his thoughts, then, too, because they rarely alluded later to something he’d thought while gasping for breath. As he was now.

The motive for his current physical self-abuse was the need to devise a strategy to convince the voices to ease off on their demands for violence against Frank Adversego. He was beginning to feel frantic in the face of the constant, shrill badgering of A Bee and the genuinely intimidating assaults by B Bee. Without a plan to divert them, he was afraid what they might drive him to do.

The Bees’ agitation had ratcheted up painfully a notch when they learned from the malware on Frank’s laptop that he had been asked to join the NSA Russ task force. What if he were to stumble on Crypto’s own plans for attacking the Russ? Adversego was just one member of the task force, Crypto had pointed out. Any of the other members presented an equal risk. But, of course, that had only made things worse; now they wanted him to somehow wipe out the entire group. Wait and see, he’d begged them. There’s no need to act now, because we can monitor what he and the task force do, and that’s a good thing. Crypto hadn’t expected that rational to help for long, and it hadn’t.

Now that he could think freely, the way to deflect the concern of the Bees was patently obvious. It worried him that their incessant nagging was interfering with his thought processes to the extent that he hadn’t thought of it weeks ago. If that was any indication, he’d have to spend more time on this damn bicycle.

He wasn’t even done showering after his exercise when the Bees attacked again. This time, he was happy to have them bring up the Russ task force.

You must stop him! A Bee screamed.

Now! B Bee boomed.

Really? Crypto thought calmly. Are you so very sure?

He smiled at the silence that followed. Ha!

Aren’t we? A Bee whispered at last.

Well, I suppose you could be, Crypto thought. But we would be so much better off if Adversego or someone else on the task force comes up with an attack. Then we will have two ways to destroy the Russ, and their way might be better than our way. Better yet, we could abandon our method. So much the better if our attack would seem to come from the Americans. When both financial systems collapse, perhaps the Russians and the Americans will even go to war with each other.

It was as brilliant an idea as it was simple. It was several days before the Bees bothered him again.

*  *  *

“If we were investigating Schwert I couldn’t tell you that, or give you any details,” George told Frank over coffee at their usual rendezvous. “But we aren’t, so I guess I can tell you that much.”

“Well, I think you should check him out,” Frank replied. “And don’t tell me it’s a domestic matter, so the CIA can’t touch it. The global financial system is using BankCoin, and there’s no more reason to think Schwert’s American than any other nationality.”

“So, you’re telling me the CIA should drop all the other important things it’s doing and start investigating every hot shot coder that works for free on an open source project?”

“This isn’t just any project.”

“True. But there are lots of other important projects. Also true?”

“Well, sure. But there wouldn’t be as much chaos if one of those systems went down.”

“Really?” George asked, his eyebrows rising as he looked at Frank over the rim of his coffee cup. “You don’t think it might be just a tad disruptive if the telecommunications system went down? Last time I checked, that’s what BankCoin runs on. Anyway, even if wanted to do what you’re asking, we don’t have enough people with the necessary skills to tackle that sort of investigation.”

“Then how about the FBI?”

“I think I’d know if they were monitoring Schwert, and the answer is no.”

“For Pete’s sake, why not?”

“Well, there is the little matter that to the best of your knowledge, your boy hasn’t broken any laws yet. Also right?”

“Well, sure, but how do we really know? And anyway, don’t you and the FBI infiltrate organizations – or even a few misguided domestic ideologues – all the time to see if someone is planning a terrorist attack?”

“Sure. But only if we have reliable information that there’s a real risk. And so far, all you’ve told me about Schwert is that he’s fanatical about his privacy.”

Frank was getting frustrated. “Okay, so you’d have to agree that the banking system is “Critical Infrastructure,” right? And the CIA is charged with protecting that against external threats? Right?” Frank gave the last word a distinct “Gotcha!” inflection.

“In normal times, yes. But these aren’t normal times,” George said.

“Nice try,” Frank said. “The last times I can remember anyone considered normal were maybe the 1980s. And anyway, if times aren’t normal, you have to adapt to the abnormalities.”

“Okay,” George said. “Fair point. So indirectly, it’s Yazzi’s fault. He appointed a lot of cabinet secretaries who are way too turf conscious. Security is a big deal these days, so everyone wants to have security specialists on their own staff. It’s a way to make your agency more important at the expense of someone else – like the FBI.”

“That’s crazy. What about the Department of Homeland Security? Weren’t they created to stop that kind of nonsense? Coordinate things so another 9/11 couldn’t happen again?”

“In principle, yes. But in case you haven’t noticed, ever since things became “abnormal,” as soon as an administration – or even Congress – creates something, the special interests, the next administration, or the legislators themselves start trying to tear it down again. Look at Obama Care. Heck, even Social Security, and that’s been around since Franklin Roosevelt’s time. A lot of Congressman are trying to cut back on that. Or Glass-Steagall – Congress passed that Act back in 1933 so that something like the Great Depression could never happen again. It took sixty-six years for Congress to kill the important parts of that, by the time they did, even a lot of Democrats voted to kill those – and it was Bill Clinton that signed the repeal bill.

“Oops! So, then Great Recession follows, and once again it’s the banks that pulled down the house of cards. What a coincidence! But Congress passes the Dodd-Frank Bill to stop a housing finance disaster from ever happening again. And what happens? This time around, it doesn’t even take ten years for Wall Street to get the politicians to start cutting the financial reforms back. I tell you, these days, nothing’s off the table if someone can make a buck by undermining it or stand a better chance of getting reelected by killing it outright.”

“So that’s it?”

“Afraid so. But I’ll let you know if I hear anything different.”

*  *  *

Frank was feeling thwarted at every turn these days. Perhaps that was why he was becoming increasingly fixated on triumphing in a war he still thought he could win: outsmarting a four ounce rodent.

He was pursuing that quest with typical thoroughness. Unlike Schwert, there was plenty of information to work with. Frank had never paid much attention to squirrels before, nor even seen one all that close up. Poring at anatomical diagrams of his nemesis he saw the beast had very large and muscular rear legs, for leaping, and much smaller, more clever, front ones for getting into mischief. When a squirrel stood up on its hind legs, Frank decided, it resembled a miniature tyrannosaurus with fur.

There was little now that Frank felt he did not know about the gray squirrel. He knew, for example, exactly how much larger the average male gray squirrel in Washington, D.C. was than its cousins in Orlando, Florida (eleven point five percent), the average distance a squirrel in the mid-Atlantic states could leap from a stationary start to a landing place of the same height (forty-seven inches), and even the last time squirrels had been commonly kept as pets in America (the Colonial Period.)

He had brought all that knowledge to bear in making his latest advance in anti-squirrel technology. He turned his creation around and admired his handiwork. It looked something like an old-fashioned light shade from a bordello. But instead of red satin and black tassels, each of its parts was made of shiny metal.

The starting point was a commercial squirrel baffle shaped something like a Hershey’s Kiss chocolate candy made out of aluminum. The concept behind the off the shelf baffle was that a squirrel crawling up a pole would find no purchase on its smooth surface. And if the baffle was hung loosely on the pole that supported the object of the enemy’s desire, the wobbling would shake the squirrel off onto the ground if it tried to leap on to the baffle from a conveniently placed branch.

All well and good. But that configuration would be of no use here, because the squirrel could leap directly to the feeder itself. To avoid that, Frank had drilled holes every inch half way around the lower rim of the baffle. And instead of hanging the baffle on a pole below the feeder, he attached it like a hat to the wire holding the feeder up, just above the feeder itself.

From these he hung thin, stainless steel rods, forming a jiggly curtain extending the full length of the feeder, but only halfway around it. He attached his contraption from the porch above his, with the curtain of rods facing the wall. That left the other side available for birds to feed from without difficulty. Assuming a bird ever arrived.

So tough luck for Mr. Fang. If it tried to get to the feeder from above, it must necessarily slide off the baffle and land on the porch, time after time. That would be fun to watch! And if Fang leaped instead towards the feeder from the wall, the dangling bars would deflect him. Nor would the squirrel be able to grab on to the rods themselves – Frank was sure they were much too thin and slippery for that.

And then there was the feeder itself, which now sported a thick, gnaw-proof iron shield on the bottom, as well as a titanium tube protecting the wire holding it up. Frank took a picture of his creation and then hung the contraption, full of seed, above the porch. He was momentarily sorry he didn’t have a Facebook page on which he could post the picture.

He worked at home the next day, waiting for Fang to take up the challenge. But the squirrel never did. Or the next day. Perhaps Fang was studying the situation from a hidden location, assessing his options. Well, good luck with that!

The next day, Frank left for New York, secure in the knowledge that Fang had finally met his match.

When Frank returned two days later, his magical, mystical invention had disappeared, without a trace.

It was time to go nuclear.

*  *  *

Author’s Notes for this Week:

Wait, what? “A Bee and B Bee?” Where the heck did they come from?

I’ll get to that shortly, but the reason you’re seeing them referred to, rather than explained, here is simple. I only came up with the idea to give virtual shape and names to the voices was while I was writing this chapter. I realized at the same time that if the Bees were to become part of the book, they needed to make their entrance on at an earlier stage. Which they now have been in my master copy of the first draft. For your reference, here is the introduction to the Bees:

Crypto waved his hand, but knew the gesture was mostly futile. The voices were like insects buzzing around his head. They had never introduced themselves, so he had labeled the insistent, hysterical one that was always there as voice A, and the booming, over bearing one that only put in an appearance at times of high stress as voice B. Over time the annoying, circling voices had simply become A Bee and B Bee.

Now, as to where the pesky creatures came from at all, here’s the back story. I have a daughter who is now 28. But once upon a time, she was an adorable little girl, and one of the principal obligations of the father of an adorable little girl is to tickle her. It became obvious to me that the delight bestowed can be augmented if fantasy surrogates are recruited to the task, and in my case, two bees materialized to help do the job. Their names were A Bee and B Bee.

There was also a Mrs. Jumping Spider, but so far, at least, she’s leaving Crypto alone.

Next week: As hoped, I’m now multiple chapters and several important plot developments ahead, so I can state with some assurance that next week’s chapter will be an interesting one. Frank will try without success to dive deeper into BankCoin, Crypto will reveal some details about his fiendish plans, and his plan to put off the Bees will begin to unfold.

 

Continue to Chapter 21