New Orleans/Bayou Rod and Gun Club
True to his word, the next day Billy takes Rosie to the shooting range where he is a member and a regular. The sign at the entrance of the road leading in reads: Bayou Rod and Gun Club. He introduces Rosie to his friend, Bob, the owner. Billy explains that Rosie is new to firearms.
“Well,” the man replies, “a little range practice doesn’t hurt and can be a lot of fun. I’ll set you up at station sixteen down at the end.”
They spend two to three hours at the range every day for the next week. To her own surprise, Rosie starts to enjoy these sessions and she is a determined student. Billy first gets her totally familiar with gun safety procedures and how to safely handle the weapon. In their lessons, in teaching her how to shoot, Billy has Rosie raise her arm from her side and with a two-handed grip, aim and fire. The motion is slow and deliberate in the beginning; but as her proficiency improves Billy starts timing her with a stopwatch. Rosie is not perfect, but when she can routinely put two rounds into a six-inch diameter circular target in just over a second, with 80-85 percent accuracy, Billy compliments her.
“You’re a natural, and a good shot,” he enthusiastically praises her. “You’re doing well.” Pretty soon Rosie is handling the Glock semiautomatic like she was born with it in her hand.
Rosie’s face beams with pride. “You’re a good teacher, Billy.”
Following one of their afternoon gun sessions, Billy and Rosie go back to the Estrella restaurant in the French Quarter for dinner. This time they go out onto the patio, covered over with a vine latticed gazebo. Billy puts his green knapsack down in the chair next to him. Rosie has noticed that Billy is never without the green knapsack. He had it with them on the boat while they were fishing and carried it along to the gun range as well. They have just sat down at the table when the ringer on Billy’s cell phone goes off.
Billy answers the call. “Yes,” he says into the phone. “This is Billy.” There is a brief pause. “Okay,” Billy says, “but I can’t talk now.”
“Call me back on the secure line,” the caller says. “We need to talk.”
Billy looks across the table at Rosie. “Excuse me,” he says. “I need to make a call.” Billy stands and leaves the table, taking the green knapsack with him.
CIA Headquarters: Langley in McLean, Virginia
Director of Counterintelligence, Shane McGregor, is seated at his desk on the fourth floor of the sprawling CIA headquarters building. McGregor is forty-five years old and a career CIA man. After earning a degree from Boston College in political science, he joined the Marine Corp where he spent two years in language school studying and becoming proficient in Russian and Arabic, two of the most difficult languages to learn. As a CIA field operative in Asia and the Middle East, he has worked in most of the major hot spots around the globe and was for three years the CIA’s station chief in Moscow.
McGregor waits only a minute before he hears the phone ring. He quickly picks up.
“Yes—”
“It’s me, Billy.”
McGregor rocks back in his high-backed chair. “Is the girl with you?”
“Yes. How’d you know?” Billy asks.
“Just a hunch—call it a guess.” Shane breathes a sigh of relief. “Her name was picked up by the NSA in an intel intercept. The Russians are looking for her. “Tsar Peter wants her dead.” Like others around Washington, in the intelligence and foreign service circles, this—Billy has learned—is how his CIA friend refers to the Russian president.
“Is she safe?” he asks.
“Yes, for now,” Billy replies. “We were paid a surprise visit by two heavy-set goons in cheap suits, but they went for a swim with the sharks off Grand Island and never returned.”
Shane asks, “Were you able to ID them?”
“I don’t know,” Billy says. “I’ve got some probably phony papers—ID’s, passports, and pictures for your guys to look at. But they were nobody I’m familiar with. Just a couple of Kremlin gorillas.”
“Does she have the Red Dragon file?” Shane asks.
Billy hesitates. “Yes,” he finally answers. Then: “So, do you already know about this, Shane?” Billy asks.
“I’ve heard whispers, Billy, but nothing concrete, no details about who specifically is involved or how it is supposed to go down.” Shane pauses. “Have you read it, Billy?” he asks in a curious voice.
“Yes,” Billy replies.
“Good. Listen, I need you to come to Washington. Bring the file and the stuff on the Russians with you. Also, I would like to talk to the girl. I’ll send a plane tonight.”
“No, that’s okay,” Billy says. “I’ll arrange the transportation.”
“Okay,” Shane responds, “suit yourself . . . that’s up to you.”
Billy hesitates. Then: “Let me ask you a question.”
“Sure—shoot,” Shane says in an easy off-hand manner.
Billy hesitates again. “Did you know Scott was a target?”
There was a long uncomfortable pause. “Yes,” Shane finally admits.
“Why didn’t you do something, take some action to warn or protect him?”
Shane is frank. “We had to leave it alone, Billy. If we had made a move, it would have tipped-off Russian intelligence and compromised our Kremlin source.”
Billy is taken aback. “Kremlin source? You have somebody on the inside—a mole?”
“Yes, were on the inside,” Shane says, a note of pride sounding in his voice. “—deep inside. We’ve got a little cub right next to Papa Bear.” Billy hears a half gleeful, cynical little laugh emit from the CIA director of counterintelligence. “But that’s all confidential, of course.”
“I hate to say it like this, Billy, but Scott was stupid. He made himself expendable. He was talking on his phone to a girl, a Russian skier who works at the embassy. Have you ever heard of Irina Moldayavich?
“Yeah, she’s an Olympic gold medal skier, and from what I’ve seen of her an extremely attractive young lady.”
“That’s almost an understatement, “Shane says back. “I was introduced to her once at an embassy party here in Washington. She’s tall and leggy—and gorgeous. She grew up in a small Trans-Siberian town in the Urals. I suppose that’s where she learned to ski. Her IQ, though, from what we’ve learned, was off the charts, so when she graduated high school, she went to Moscow to study law. But her passion was politics, and not surprisingly she made a lot of important friends among the old Soviet apparatchiks and oligarchs in the Kremlin—particularly Tsar Peter, the president of Russia.” Shane pauses.
“After she won the gold medal for the downhill in the Olympics, she did a short stint as a top model in the high-end Paris salons. She’s a particular favorite of Tsar Peter. She has her own dacha just outside Moscow. Not bad for a poor peasant girl from Siberia.”
“Sounds like Scott might have been in a little over his head,” Billy responds.
“Yeah,” Shane agrees. “But, as I said, her real passion was always politics and espionage. Now she’s posted here in Washington at the Russian embassy as a diplomatic attaché’. She attends all the parties and receptions. And she’s made a lot of friends among the senators and congressmen—particularly the Republicans in the gun lobby—and personnel in the president’s administration. That’s probably how Scott first noticed her.
“Were they having an affair?” Billy asks.
“We don’t know what their relationship was for sure. But they talked on the phone, they were seen together a few times at embassy functions, and they met, secretly, a couple of times in hotels right in downtown Washington.”
Billy says, “Then probably they were lovers, Shane.”
“Whatever their relationship, Billy—it was ill-advised for a man in Scott’s position in the White House. Like I said, it’s unfortunate, but Scott kind of set himself up.”
“Is she a Russian agent,” Billy asks?
“Well, we don’t know that either—for sure. But she’s a Russian national, Billy. I explained to you her background, and her avid interest in politics and Russian nationalism. She first met Scott a couple of years ago on a skiing junket in Aspen. The president had only been in office about a year, and Scott was new on his national security team.”
“Do you have a tap on her phone?”
“Yeah, we’ve been keeping tabs on her, Billy. This is not her first rodeo. She had a brief affair right here in Washington with a current CPAC official, a lawyer no less, one of those holier-than-thou, bible belt assholes—you’d recognize his name—with deep connections inside the NRA. We think she has already compromised one married, high ranking, “family values” Republican senator with sex on tape, and at least two Republican congressmen with illegal campaign contributions, money directly from the Kremlin funneled through the NRA.”
“That’s not all,” Shane continues, “we had a tap on Scott’s phone, too.” Billy is surprised the CIA would be listening in on someone as high up in the White House as the special counsel to the president’s national security advisor.
“You got a FISA warrant to tap Scott’s phone? How’d you ever get that past a judge?”
Billy hears the CIA man breathe a long sigh. “You’ve been around long enough, Billy. You understand this business. Like I said, she’s a Russian national, and probably an agent for the GRU, the Russian military intelligence.”
“Did you ever hear anything incriminating?” Billy asks.
“No. Scott just talked vaguely about a secret plan to keep the president in office should he lose the coming election. They were both cautious and circumspect on the phone. We think, though, she probably passed along hints to the man in the Kremlin that Scott was possibly the source of the leaks to the media—that being Rosie—about the chaos in the White House.”
“Did Scott ever mention Project: Red Dragon to her?”
“No, nothing explicit. That’s why we’re so interested in the file.” Shane half laughs. “I can’t believe they were so stupid to put something so sensitive down on paper. But then, these assholes that traipse in and out of the Oval everyday are idiots just like the asshole they work for.” Shane laughs again.
“Well, I guess I’m not so surprised, Shane. From the little I’ve heard, what Rosie has told me so far, the White House is a real clown show.”
“Yeah,” Shane responds. “I’ve been to the Oval Office a couple of times to brief the president on intelligence matters, and I can tell you he’s an idiot. Things have to be dumbed down to the level of a Dick and Jane reader or you lose him. He’s a fucking moron, and I’m not the first to say it. He’s been called that by people within his own government, namely—and most recently—by his former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.”
Billy can’t help but wonder about his friend Scott. The Scott he knew was an almost over-the-top flag waving patriot. Not a traitor.
“Do you think she turned him?” Billy asks, referring to Irina Moldayavich, the Olympic skier and beautiful Russian spy.
“We don’t know for sure, Billy. But I don’t think so. My guess is they, the Russians, just suspected, based off some of her information, that Scott was the one leaking to Rosie the dirt on the president’s administration and the details about Project: Red Dragon. They probably had a tail on him.”
“So, they killed him,” Billy replies.
“Yeah,” Shane says with a note of resignation in his voice. “Just before he was killed, he sent out a text to Rosie: “Get Out.” We believe that was a warning. The next morning his body was found by the housekeeper. She called the police. We were informed by the FBI. Later that morning the White House put out its phony cover story. Then I detailed a couple of agents to locate and tail Rosie. They followed her to the airport where she bought a ticket to New Orleans.”
Billy is curious. “How’d you know she was here with me.?”
Shane gets a little chuckle. “Just a hunch, my friend. I am public school—and Boston College. I don’t have a fancy Ivy League degree like most of my colleagues here at the agency, but I’m smart enough to follow a trail of breadcrumbs that was leading right to Billy Tidewater.”
“Why didn’t you call sooner, Shane?”
“No need, Billy. I knew she would be safe with you. And I figured you’d call sooner or later. But now I need you both to come to Washington.”
“I’ll come alone, Shane. I’m going to put Rosie out with Sam, she’ll be safe there.”
“Okay, Billy. But at some point, I’m going to need to talk to her. How is Rosie, Billy?’
“Right now, she’s scared to death, Shane. But she’s okay. I took her fishing, and I gave her some target practice with my Glock.”
“Well, that’s good, Billy. But how soon can you get here. Like I said, we need to talk, and it’s not all about Red Dragon. Things here have taken a real turn for the worse. And we’re going to have to take this thing to a whole new level.”
“I’ll fly out in a couple of days, Shane. First, I want to get Rosie settled-in out on Sam’s estate. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a heads-up on my ETA in Washington. But what are you talking about—things taking a turn for the worse, and going to a new level?”
“This asshole in the Oval, Billy, is a top-down intelligence risk, a threat to the country’s national security. NSA has picked up some electronic intercepts between the Saudis and Qatar, and a couple other Gulf states. Again, from the noise we’re hearing, we’re pretty sure he’s passed secrets to the Kremlin about our troop deployments around the globe and our nuclear readiness.”
Billy is incredulous. “Are you sure about this, Shane?”
“Yeah, it’s been confirmed by my Kremlin source. And there was also some chatter between Iran and Hamas about plans for a future attack on Israel. This is serious stuff, Billy, top secret, Eyes Only shit that nobody but the president is supposed to know. Secret intelligence that could only have come from the president. I know because I personally briefed him on most of it just over the last 3-4 months. We, across the whole intelligence community, are right now trying to do a damage assessment. But we don’t know, at the agency, if he’s selling our most vital secrets to potential enemies, or if he’s just handing this stuff out to his friends like party favors just to play the big shot. Either way, it’s a direct threat to our national security, and he needs to be stopped—taken out if necessary.”
Billy is shocked. “You mean an assassination of the president of the United States?”
“Yes, Billy. That’s exactly what I mean.”
Billy takes a deep breath. “Do you have a plan, Shane?”
“Yeah, but it’s only just forming. Trust me though, Billy, when it’s done, you’ll be at the center. First though I think now we’re going to have to wait and see what happens with the election. Also, I know he wants another SCOTUS appointment. That could complicate things, and maybe push the timetable up. I’m hearing he’s pressuring Judge Kennedy to resign early, something about some blackmail bullshit he’s got on Kennedy’s son from their dealings together at Deutsche Bank.”
Billy feels like he is again getting dragged into something that he wants no part off. He would like to just walk away, but he feels an odd duty to the memory of his friend, Scott, and a responsibility for Rosie.
“I’ll be in Washington day after tomorrow,” he responds, “and I’ll have the file with me.”
“Good,” the CIA man replies. “And what about the girl?”
“Like I said, Shane, I’m going to arrange for her to stay with Sam out on his estate. Security there is almost as good as what you could provide at Langley. She’ll be safe with him.”
“Okay, Billy. But like I said, I need to talk to her at some point.”
Rosie could not see where Billy had gone. While Billy is away, a waiter comes by the table, but Rosie declines another drink. She is curious about what’s going on. A couple minutes later Billy returns. He sits down and again puts the knapsack on the chair next to him.
Rosie looks at the knapsack and her curiosity finally gets the better of her. “So, what’s the big secret in the bag?” she asks, indicating the knapsack.
Billy stares back at her for a moment, briefly hesitates, and then says, “A phone.”
“But you have a cell phone,” Rosie replies.
“This is a secure phone,” Billy answers back.
“Who picks up on the other end of this secure phone?” Rosie asks.
Billy grins. “My jailer,” he says with a small laugh and a touch of humor.
Rosie’s eyebrows arch up. “What do you mean—your jailer?” she asks.
“He’s a man in Washington,” Billy says.
Rosie stares back at him. “And where does this man work?” She thinks she knows the answer to the question, but she asks it anyway.
“At the CIA. He is the director of counterintelligence. He heads what is called the Russia House section. Plus, he runs a secret special operations unit.”
Billy has anticipated that he and Rosie would be having this discussion. So, he has decided that he will be as honest and forthright with her as his amnesty deal with the former president of the United States, Barack Obama, allows. He figures that he, at least, owes her that much.
The waiter comes to the table and Billy orders himself another beer.
Once the waiter is gone, Rosie looks across the table and asks, “And that’s where you fit into the equation—in the special operations unit? And that is the “dirty work” that Scott alluded to when he first told me about you?”
“Yes.” Billy is bland. “I need to go to Washington, Rosie. I will arrange for you to stay with a friend of mine. He has a house on Lake Pontchartrain—just a short way out of the city—that is almost a fortress. He’ll protect you.”
Rosie again feels a sense of dread, has a sense that she is in something way over her head. “Billy, I’m desperate and I need some answers—some honesty,” she pleads. “I’m just a reporter—not a spy. I was forced to flee Washington—told by my reporting source, just before he was killed—to “get out, to run” if something happened to him.”
She frowns. “I come into the possession of a file which—if correct—is a plan to destroy our American democracy and replace it with a fascist dictatorship run by a puppet president totally beholden to Russia. Then I come here to New Orleans—at my dead source’s direction—to find a fisherman.”
Rosie gets a grim but determined look. “—who I come to learn is a paid political assassin. We go fishing together, and then a couple of Russians—whom I have never seen before—come on your boat and to try to kill me. What is going on? I think I’m entitled to some answers.”
Rosie looks Billy directly in the face. “Scott seemingly had confidence in you. But who are you, Billy—really?”
Billy sits back in his chair. “Well—let me tell you.”
For the next two hours, over dinner and some wine, Billy gives Rosie his background story—excepting his time on the Court, his military experience, and his black ops work for the government. That is all another story that will have to come later.
“I was born here in Louisianna,” Billy tells Rosie, beginning his story, “to a Scots Irish, father, a poor Louisiana fisherman, and a French Creole mother. He died one night in a mysterious boating accident. My mother meanwhile worked as a maid and a cafe waitress. After my father’s death, my mother and I bounced around from one run-down trailer park to another whenever she found a new boyfriend.”
Billy goes on. “I was ten-years old, just a lost kid, skipping school, a wharf rat picking up odd jobs on the docks and getting in trouble, an angry kid with no direction, in a life and death struggle with the whole world. Then my mother was killed in a car accident. The social services tried to find a foster home for me, but I was a tough, street-smart kid—with a police record for getting in fights and always being in trouble—and nobody wanted to take me in.” Billy pauses meaningfully. “Then Sam came along and saved my life.”
Rosie looks thoughtfully across the table at Billy. “Who is this, Sam?” she asks. “You mentioned him once before.”
“Have you ever heard of the Tidewater Oil and Gas Company,” Billy asks.
Rosie nods. “Yeah. How could I not? It’s a major oil and gas exploration company. Down here you can’t miss it. The signs are all over.”
“Well, that’s Sam,” Billy replies. “It’s the largest privately held oil and gas company in the country. Sam has interests in a lot of businesses—he’s kind of mini conglomerate. He came home from Vietnam in the early seventies. He had a little money saved and he started doing some wildcatting, working in the oil fields. Sam worked on some of the earliest deep-water rigs out in the Gulf. He saved his money and one day bought four-hundred acres of Louisiana swamp and marsh land that everybody thought was worthless. Friends asked what he was doing, and Sam told them he was prospecting for oil. They all laughed and told him he was crazy—that the only thing he’d find out in those swamps would be gators and swamp rats.”
Billy smiles. “Well, old Sam was right. Those four-hundred acres of Louisiana swamp were floating on a reservoir of high-quality light-sweet crude oil. And the rest is history as they say.”
Billy pauses. “I don’t think Sam has ever sent an e-mail himself. But he understood the business applications for computers and was an early investor in Microsoft and Oracle. He bought shares in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. He is a private person who avoids the limelight, but today Sam has one of the largest personal fortunes in the country.”
“Sam was my savior,” Billy says with real honest affection. “I had done some work for him on his boat. Sam never married, never had any children of his own; but he took me in, gave me a stable home, adopted me, and turned my life around. He gave me a sense of pride in myself and instilled in me the ambition to make something of my life. Sam taught me how to fish and hunt, and how to shoot. He taught me how to fly. He was the father I never had. He taught me how to stand up straight and respect myself—and do it always with a sense of grace and humility. Sam taught me everything about life. He put me through school and provided the model for how to be a good and honest man.”
Billy pauses, gets a thoughtful look, and takes a slow sip of beer. “After Tulane, Sam paid for me to go to Harvard Law. After law school, I got a job at the Supreme Court clerking for Justice Stevens. That’s where I first met Scott.” Billy pauses again to remember. “Sam was so proud I thought he was going to burst and start to cry when I first told him I was going to be working on the Supreme Court.”
“So, what happened?” Rosie curiously asks. “Why’d you quit the law?”
“It didn’t take long before I became completely disillusioned with the law.”
Again, Rosie is curious. “How’d that happen? Didn’t you think about someday becoming a judge yourself?”
“No.” Billy adamantly shakes his head. “No. I was bored to death. The law—for me—lost its allure, its essential honesty, integrity, and basic validity. The Court is a conservative, status quo body; but that’s probably what the framers intended.” Billy smiles. “Social activism is not the Court’s forte. The more I went back and studied past case law, the more it became apparent that the decisions the Court hands down are often more political than legal. The justices—even those who are the most celebrated in the Court’s history, supposedly the most dedicated to judicial principle and the Rule of Law—are often more just political hacks than honest jurists. They interpret the constitution and make decisions that impact the lives of millions of people—sometimes for decades. But it makes no difference the issue, they use the law to protect the wealthy commercial interests and promote their own political agendas over the social interests of the country—and always in the end at the expense of the poorest and most disadvantaged persons in the society. In the words of a recent author on the subject, the Supreme Court, and I’m quoting: “has a long history of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted.”
Rosie wrinkles up her brow. “You make it all sound so cynical, Billy,”
Billy stops and takes another sip of beer. Then he looks back at Rosie. “I know. But I finally decided that I did not want to be a Washington lawyer, that I could not deal with the dishonesty—the insincerity, hypocrisy, and basic deceit. That’s why I left the Court and joined the military.”
Rosie asks, “Was your benefactor, Sam, disappointed?”
Billy nods, “At first, yes. But he later came to understand my feelings and my reasons.”
“So,” Rosie starts to ask with a growing feeling of helplessness, “. . . what happens to me in all this?”
Billy looks back at her. “I’m going to talk to Sam and arrange for you to stay with him for a few days while I’m in Washington. Like I said before, Rosie, he has a big estate out on Lake Pontchartrain, you’ll be safe there and he’ll protect you.”