Rigolets Boat Dock
Billy works through the late morning and early afternoon to close-up and secure the boat. Rosie helps him where she can. Billy is not sure yet just how long he might be gone. But Shane McGregor, CIA director of counterintelligence, wants him to come to Washington. And Shane wants Billy to bring the Project: Red Dragon file with him. The CIA has a mole in the Kremlin. That means Shane must have a good outline of what is in the file, and he must have some operation he is contemplating, or he wouldn’t want Billy to come to Washington.
When Billy and Rosie have finished their work, and the boat is secure, they toss their gear into the back of the jeep and leave for Sam’s plantation estate on Lake Pontchartrain.
West Palm Beach, Florida
In early February of 2020, the U.S. president has assembled around him a circle of sycophants, obsequious yes-men, and out-right criminals. Staff and cabinet officers who do not tow the MAGA line are eventually fired or asked to resign. Just recently his former Homeland Security director was let go for allegedly trying to quietly inform the president that most of his border policies were probably illegal. The department now has an acting director, but The Bad King is said to be considering a former New York Police Commissioner, a convicted felon and former inmate, as the new head of Homeland Security. His former attorney general had earlier been replaced by an acting AG who was at the time of his appointment under investigation for fraud. He was then replaced by his current AG, Bill Barr, known as The Consigliere, a subservient, right-wing extremist Republican Washington lawyer who believes the entire Justice department exists only to serve the whims and caprice of The Bad King.
Morale is so low across the branches of government that it is now almost impossible, after more than three years of turmoil and chaos in his administration, for the truculent U.S. president to find qualified people with the right credentials who have actual prior experience in government to fill the various positions in the agencies and departments that they are being called to administer. The only criterion to be appointed to a high government position in the present administration is total loyalty and subservience to The Bad King.
To escape the rigors and demands of the office of president and the challenges put on him by the new Democrat House and its politically formidable Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the unrelenting attacks by the media, The Bad King—now in the waning months of his first term as president (and when he is not out campaigning)—retreats more and more to his West Palm Beach resort. Here he keeps around him—24/7—a coterie of political friends and supplicants who cater subserviently to his mercurial whims, acquiesce to his most impulsive decisions, excuse his most egregious mistakes and character flaws, and encourage and enable his worst behaviors.
It was on just such a weekend get-away more than a year earlier, following the crushing losses by his Republican party in the 2018 mid-terms, that he hit on an idea that would form the nucleus of the plan that would subvert the U.S. democratic government and allow him to take over, in dictatorial fashion, the reins of power and make himself the sole master of the U.S. government. The plan was first put forth by his friend and accomplice in Moscow, Tsar Peter, and encouraged by his most duplicitous and devious backer in the Senate, the senator from South Carolina, who—for reasons of power and personal aggrandizement—plays cunningly to the president’s political naivete and insecurities. But The Bad King now credits himself with the original idea.
Earlier in the day, the president had been out on the golf course with the CEO of a major Wall Street bank, who was looking for further relief from federal banking regulations, and a pair of worshipful professional golfers who—in their every gesture—attempt to court his favor. It has been a fun round of golf and the president, as usual, has cheated in tallying his score. But then he always cheats and his golfing partners—who know the president only too well—do not seem to care because it is one of the many perks accorded him (overlooked character flaws) because he is president. He has been a cheat his whole life, cheating on three wives, stiffing small contractors on his building projects, suing former business partners with dishonest claims of injury, conning and bilking millions of dollars out of gullible and aspiring real estate investors who emptied their savings and retirement accounts to get phony real estate degrees from his equally phony and fraudulent university. His whole life has been a tabloid orgasm, a public scandal, and a TV reality show fraud.
Now it is evening and they are all in the dining-room of his palatial Florida estate and the president is holding court to an eager group of supporters and apologists—just the kind of conservative Republican friends that he enjoys and is comfortable with because they are not his obstinate, meddlesome, and sometimes quarrelsome staff, or the antagonistic reporters that crowd into his press briefings and stalk him on the White House lawn, but the loyal true-believers, MAGA hat supporters, who sooth his ego and stroke and compliment his vanity. His critics and enemies attack him, saying he is just all about himself. And they are right.
Moscow, Russia – the Kremlin Palace
More than five thousand miles away, almost at the same moment, the Russian president is in his residence in the Kremlin Palace preparing for bed. On the bedside table is a snifter of brandy and a demitasse of thick, rich Turkish coffee. He sips the brandy, takes a taste of the coffee. Then he smiles secretly to himself.
Earlier in the evening he had hosted a gala dinner party in the sumptuous palace dining room—a lavish celebration honoring his decision to run for an unprecedented third term as Russia’s president. A change to the country’s constitution had been required, but in Tsar Peter’s Russia that is now a mere proforma technicality. There are dissenters, of course, who oppose the dictatorial president and the proposed change; but RT—the official Russian television station—reports that most of the Russian people support the constitutional amendment allowing the unprecedented third term. There had been some protests in St. Petersburg and at the Kremlin, but the dissenters had all been either forcibly dispersed or arrested. This included journalists who tried—at considerable risk to their own personal safety—to report on the illegal, heavy-handed tactics employed by the government.
Tsar Peter, though, does not tolerate any dissent. He is now—he realizes—the most powerful man in the world. He is the supreme autocrat in Russia, and he controls, like a puppet master, the president in the White House in the United States—the only man who can possibly challenge his power. This was amply—and quite convincingly—demonstrated to the world just months before when he sent Russian tanks into the independent Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. There were howls of protest from the western democracies—Germany, France, and Great Briton—the former NATO states. But without the U.S. to back them, their cries against Russian aggression were empty hollow threats.
Tsar Peter is still astounded by how easy it has been for him and his oligarch friends to corrupt and compromise (buy on the cheap) U.S. politicians and businessmen with money and bribes. He considers himself first a patriot and a Russian—a loyalist to country and tradition. The Americans though, despite their hypocritical reverence to God and country, are just transactional deal makers. It makes no difference their position—Republican speaker of the House, Senate majority leader, or president of the United States—their only loyalty is to the power they acquire, and the money they squirrel away in phony shell companies and offshore bank accounts to keep it from the tax collector. The president of Russia knows this for a fact because he has in his possession financial or sexual kompromat of a serious and politically disqualifying nature on all the top Republicans in the controlling party—including the current president. The president of the United States can play his silly political games with his so-called base—like banning Muslims, building a wall, or closing the southern border to all immigrants; but there will be no change on a hard line with NATO and the EU and no executive orders or laws passed in the U.S. Congress that do not first have the approval of the Russian president. It has been that way since the 2016 election, and nothing is going to change now.
America has been so easily and inexpensively conquered—not by force of arms with an expensive standing army, but through cyber warfare, social media disinformation attacks, election meddling, and sheer political corruption. He smiles at the ease with which the money used to pay bribes—buy the kompromat that could later be used against U.S. politicians to influence policies favorable to Russia—could be funneled through dark-money PAC’s, hidden in phony shell companies, gifted to organizations like the NRA or simply paid up-front in the form of speaker’s fees for partisan political events. American politicians and businessmen are so greedy, so gullible, and easily corrupted—ready to betray their country for, what to him, is a small pile of dirty money. His oligarch friends are no better in terms of corruption, but he despises the Americans for their cupidity and greed. He alone—from now on—will be the maker of U.S. policy. He will wipe out years of humiliation following the collapse of the Soviet Union and restore Russia to the position of power and prestige that it once had enjoyed.
The president of Russia takes another sip of the brandy, slips off his robe and crawls into bed. His mistress is alone in another room of the palace. He has told her that he wants to be by himself tonight. He puts his head down on the pillow and closes his eyes. Again, he smiles to himself. His dreams tonight will be of absolute power, hegemony over the U.S. president, and world dominion. But still, he is angry and upset, troubled by the disappearance of his two men. He knows instinctively as a former spy chief himself that this will mean trouble later. Their last known location was New Orleans in the United States.
The girl reporter must be found and dealt with. He has killed reporters in his own country who have threatened his power, and he has told the president of the United States to find the girl—recover the Red Dragon file—and dispose of her. He is deeply concerned about recent developments in America. He knows what the whole world knows, the president of the United States is a moron bumbler and narcissistic buffoon who cannot be trusted with the simplest task. If the contents of the Red Dragon file ever leak out into the public domain, the president of Russia realizes that all his grandiose plans could be toppled. Tsar Peter hates it when his commands are ignored and go unheeded. He hates incompetence and will personally chastise the president of the United States for his carelessness and his failure.
Lake Pontchartrain
Sam is waiting when Billy and Rosie arrive back at the house. After Rosie receives a big welcome from the dogs, they all go into the library where Sam keeps an office. He takes his chair behind the big desk. Rosie seats herself on a facing couch with Billy right next to her. Billy sets a plastic case down on the coffee table and opens the top. He looks at Rosie.
“Let me see the Glock.” Rosie reaches into her purse, takes out the small compact gun and hands it to Billy. “We’ll see if we can’t make this a little quieter,” he says.
Billy reaches into his case and takes out what looks to Rosie like a long barrel-shaped object. She watches as he expertly breaks down the pistol, removes the slide and the recoil spring and replaces the standard barrel with a threaded barrel. He puts the gun back together and screws on a new noise suppressor.
Billy hands the gun back to Rosie. “You should probably get a little practice in on the range. Get used to the feel, the new balance on the gun.”
Rosie frowns and looks back at Billy. “What? You think I’ve lost my touch?” she asks him back.
Billy looks back at the beautiful young reporter sitting next to him. He smiles. “I didn’t say that. I just think it might be helpful for you to get in a little practice, get used to the new feel of the gun.”
Sam weighs in from behind the desk. “I think Billy has a point. My chef has cooked up one of his specialties—a Cajun shrimp and lobster Jambalaya with some tasty New Orleans-style side dishes. But we got time before dinner for a little practice out on the range.”
Rosie takes the gun in her hand and confidently hefts the newly silenced Glock. Then she leans forward, reaches into Billy’s case, and takes out a seventeen-round clip. She inserts it into the grip and pushes it up into place. “Okay, guys. Let’s hit the range. And I’ll show you some real shooting.”
It takes Rosie almost no time to get used to the extra barrel weight and the new feel of the gun. “This is really fun,” she enthuses, as she takes down target after target. “It’s so quiet.”
“What do you think, Sam?” Billy asks.
The old oil man looks at Rosie and affectionately smiles. “Rosie’s got a steady hand. I think she’s a natural—and a damn good shot. That’s what I think.” Billy indicates the semi-automatic Glock in Rosie’s hand.
“Keep that with you at all times, and sleep with it under your pillow.”