American Fascist Page 5

  “You see that, Eli? They get it. They totally get it. It’s a beautiful thing,” Franks explained as he watched the news.

  “Yes it is, sir.” Eli answered. “Okay, I’m ready.” Franks walked over and handed his Samsung to Eli.

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll just back it up and we’ll get it going. But first, enter what you want your pin code to be on the iPhone,” Eli said as he handed the new phone to Franks.

  Franks entered a pin code, re-entered it, and handed it back to Eli, then watched him like a hawk as he connected the Samsung to the laptop, entered some settings, connected the iPhone, and began the data transfer. Once the process started, Eli sat both phones on the table to let it run.

  “Looks like about five minutes and you’ll be all set.”

  Franks turned back to the television. “Good. How much you want to bet CNN is spewing a bunch of Fake News about my Executive Order right now?” Franks asked. He changed the channel to CNN. The news crawl read “AIRPORT CHAOS CONTINUES AS FRANKS’ TRAVEL BAN GOES INTO EFFECT.”

  “You see? It’s all a bunch of shit they put out to make me look bad. And if there was a terrorist attack, who would they blame? Me, that’s who. That would be real chaos. This is nothing. We’re implementing security measures. What a bunch of fucking garbage, Fake News!” Franks suddenly yelled directly at the television, as if maybe they could hear him. Eli was jolted, but caught his breath.

  The president turned and stared at him, his face dark orange more than red. “For sure, sir, absolutely,” Eli replied. There was an awkward moment as Franks just watched Eli waiting for the phones to finish syncing.

  “Everything good?” Franks asked.

  “Yes sir,” Eli said, mustering his usual mask of confidence. “Just a few minutes.”

  “Then I’ll be right back,” the president said, and he walked back to where he had entered from and shut the door behind him. Eli assumed it was the master bathroom.

  He checked the two phones. Forty-four percent complete. He turned to CNN as the anchor explained the mass of protesters that were gathered outside JFK airport in New York. But his attention was broken by an unexpected beep on Franks’ Samsung. He turned and picked it up, the sync cable still attached. A text message notification simply said “don’t forget” with a little icon of a video attachment that he couldn’t quite make out. Eli’s heart skipped a beat. He looked at the bathroom door — it was still shut. And in that moment, and he didn’t know why, his automatic reflexes kicked in, and he swiped on the notification, and it opened the text message.

  The video attachment icon was larger now, and he could see it was a view of a bed, shot from an odd angle, as if up in the corner of a dark hotel room, lit only by a lamp next to the bed. All the text below it said was “don’t forget.” His chest was pounding, but he couldn’t stop himself — he tapped the video, and it began to play. There was a long second of stillness, nothing but that odd view of the empty bed in a dim hotel room. And then movement caused a shadow to cross the room — and then the figure of a slender girl appeared, her back to the camera, wearing a very short skirt, a slinky top, and high heels. She stood by the bed, her long blond hair pulled back over her shoulders, her legs so thin they could barely keep her stable in the shoes she was wearing. A woman’s voice from somewhere off screen said something very matter-of-fact in what sounded like Russian, and the girl seemed to obey, and using her hands to steady herself along the bed, she walked around it and then sat on the edge in the light of the lamp. The camera zoomed in from its high angle, blurring focus for a moment, then pulled back and re-focused on her face. She was stunningly beautiful, but now Eli could see clearly, she was just a girl. She was staring straight ahead, as if in a trance. The heavy makeup made it hard to tell exactly how old she was, but he guessed she had to be no more than fifteen. Maybe even thirteen. Her clear blue eyes kept staring straight ahead, and her lips were trembling. The camera pulled back, someone controlling it from who-knew-where. She pulled something from her bag and put it to her nose, snorted, then put it back into her bag. The camera zoomed in again, and there was a small tear running down her cheek, which she wiped away, smearing her mascara. The camera pulled back farther, and another shadow crossed the room, as a large figure came into the frame and stood by the bed. It was a man in a white bath robe, with slippers, his back to the camera. The camera zoomed into the back of his head, which was covered with a shock of white hair. He was standing over the girl now.

  “Boy, you are a pretty one, aren’t you,” the man said in a voice that sounded far too familiar. Then the man’s head turned toward the darkness. “Leave us,” he boomed, and without seeing his face, Eli was certain it was Franks. He couldn’t breathe. His chest was throbbing and tight, the Samsung in his hand, the news still blaring in the background. He saw Franks begin taking off his robe. How the hell was this happening? He looked at the bathroom door. It was still closed. He knew there was only one option. He stopped the video and swiped left on the message, and deleted it.

  Just as he did, the bathroom door cracked open, and he set the phone on the table as President Franks stepped back into the room, still in his bathrobe. Franks’ eyes were focused on Eli, a strange intensity that wasn’t there just moments before. He inhaled deeply through his nose, snorting like a bull, then walked toward Eli.

  “Everything good?” he asked as he got closer.

  “All good, sir,” Eli replied as he stiffened, and somehow got the lump in his throat down just far enough for his voice to be audible. He looked at the two phones, and picked up the new one.

  “Almost there,” he added. His hand was shaking so he put it back in his lap, under the table and out of sight.

  “Excellent.” Franks paced around the room, listening to the CNN anchors as they quizzed their guests about the impact of the travel ban, and what it meant for America’s place in the world as the immigrant’s dream.

  “What fucking horse shit!” the president yelled again, interrupting the anchor on the set. “We have too many goddamn immigrants as it is! Do you want another San Bernardino? Is that what you want, Anderson?” he hissed at the television.

  Eli felt dizzy. It was all he could do to not fall out of his chair. But the phones finished syncing, and he disconnected the cables and closed his laptop. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “That’s it, sir,” he said and stood up.

  Franks walked over, and Eli handed both phones to him. Franks studied them for a long beat. “You may need to download some apps and re-log into some of your accounts, Twitter, that kind of thing,” he suggested.

  “Of course, not a problem,” the president replied as he looked up at Eli with a fresh intensity. “It’s good to have this taken care of by someone I can trust,” he said.

  “Absolutely, my pleasure sir,” Eli answered.

  “No way I could leave it up to them,” Franks said, as he nodded toward anyone outside the room, whoever they might be. There was a long, quiet moment between them, punctuated only by a pharmaceutical advertisement with its never-ending list of warnings playing in the background.

  “You’re a good kid,” Franks replied. Eli watched as he put his new iPhone in his robe pocket, then walked over and put the old Samsung into a nightstand drawer on the left side of the bed. He walked over and offered his hand again, and Eli shook it.

  “Go home and get some sleep, kid. Oh, and leave the laptop here.” Eli looked back at him. “I’ll make sure they get you a new one.”

  Eli hesitated for a moment, but then understood Franks thought he was being extra-safe. He didn’t have anything of value on it anyway, it was just a spare from the Paragon office, and he had both a government laptop and his personal one, so he left it on the table. “Of course.”

  He put the cables back into his bag, moved toward the door, then looked back at Franks as he stood watching him leave.

  “Have a good night, Mr. President,” Eli said, and he opened the door and went into the Sittin
g Hall, where the usher, Walter, Reemus and Ken Miller were waiting on standby. After the president’s bedroom door had closed, Eli just stood there in a daze.

  “All set?” Reemus asked.

  “All set,” Eli replied. Walter looked at him, sensing something was off.

  “Everything go okay in there? I heard yelling,” Walter said.

  “At CNN,” Eli replied. Walter and Reemus chuckled.

  “Nothing unusual there,” Ken Miller added with a dry smile.

  “Good work,” Walter said as he patted him on the back. “Let’s go get a drink.”

  The usher guided them toward the stairs. “Thanks, but if you don’t mind, I’ll take a rain check. Need to get through some of the data I’m compiling,” Eli said.

  Walter turned to Reemus as they all headed down the stairs. “See that, Rick? He’s a company man, through and through.”

  ***

  Eli left the White House complex alone. It was cold, down into the low-forties, and felt like it might snow. His head was spinning.

  He headed east on H street, caught up in his own thoughts, walking on autopilot. There were only a few cars on the road, and less pedestrians. He tightened his coat against the wind and pushed into the night air.

  Questions were running rapid-fire through his mind: who was the girl? How old was she? Seeing no cars coming, he cut across H street to the other side, and kept moving.

  When and where was it filmed? And what might have become of her? He shuddered, but he didn’t know if it was the question, or the wind blowing through him.

  What else was in the video? How far did it go? His pulse was picking up as he turned left and headed north on 15th.

  Who was the woman speaking Russian in the background? Who sent it, and what did they want the president to “not forget?” Just the video? Or something else? The phrasing of “don’t forget” seemed to indicate that a) Franks already knew the video was out there, and b) they wanted something from him, and this was their leverage.

  He had never been prone to panic attacks in his life, and in fact, many people had told him that his calmness, especially when a storm was brewing, was one of his strongest assets as a person. He was logical and analytical, yet street smart at the same time. It was a good, possibly even lucky combination of traits that had kept him fairly safe throughout his life. Except for one or two times — like when he stopped his mother from slitting her own wrists when he was fifteen by breaking down the bathroom door and wrestling the knife from her hands — or when he took what he thought was ecstasy for a college friend’s birthday and it turned out to be acid — except for those types of rare and understandable moments, he didn’t panic.

  But now, he was. Not a raw panic that would totally overtake him, not yet — his heart was strong from all the running. But a recognition that something was wrong, inside him and out, and an inability to get his bearings and catch his breath.

  He inhaled a few long, deep times, and it helped a little. He kept walking, and mentally slapped himself in the face, chastising himself to pull it together.

  But the questions wouldn’t stop: should he tell someone? Who? Would they even believe him? How could he prove it? And why were both the president, and whoever the sender was, so naive as to have this kind of content on an unsecured phone? Was there anyone that didn’t know the NSA could have this transmission already vacuumed up into an ocean of servers for later recall, without a warrant, just as Snowden had revealed? How could they be so stupid?

  When he finally reached his apartment, he never felt more glad to be home, and yet he felt totally disoriented. As he took off his coat, emptied his pockets and set down his keys and phone, he realized he had been living in an insulated dream. His apartment, his little oasis, looked no different than when he left it. But now he had the sense that the apartment was connected to the city. And the city was connected to the White House. And there was nowhere he could go, no walls that this new knowledge wouldn’t permeate.

  Everything he had admired about Franks being a disruptor, and everything he had done to be a disruptor himself, and his whole world view leading up to and through the election — including his willingness to ignore the possibilities of who and what Franks might be in favor of the technical feat of helping him win — all of that had itself just been disrupted.

  He was suddenly, painfully aware that he was possibly on the wrong side of something far darker than he ever imagined. He didn’t know exactly what it was or where it might lead, but that darkness was right in the pit of his stomach, and he knew why. Because there was a single, inescapable fact, and it changed everything when you looked at it through this new lens: the President of the United States was a child rapist, and someone had the evidence, and was using it to control him.

  6

  Kompromat

  Eli stood in the corner of a dark room, and he saw the young girl from the video, sitting on the edge of the bed. Franks was nowhere to be seen. The girl, so young, so beautiful, and so terrified just beneath her controlled exterior, turned and looked at him, and blood began to drip from her eyes, like red tears. A deep, foreboding sadness filled him.

  And then he shot awake, and found himself on his couch in a sweat, the television still on, the last of the beers empty on the coffee table.

  The day was dawning outside. His head ached, and the image of the girl was right in front of him in his mind. He tried to shake off the feeling. He had to pull it together and go to work.

  He made coffee. Took a shower. Ate some oatmeal. Took some Advil. Put on a suit. Picked up his government laptop and put it back in his bag, threw on his jacket, set the alarm in his apartment, went outside, and grabbed a car to the White House.

  In the car, he scanned his phone voraciously for any news, as if somehow what he knew might have also been revealed overnight to CNN, the New York Times, or the Washington Post. He wondered if Fox News had this information, would they run with it? Or would they bury it? Then he wondered, what if the whole country had this information? It looked really bad, and he knew in his heart what it was, but it wasn’t exactly definitive. He thought about the infamous entertainment show tape that had been revealed only a month before the election, in which Franks was caught on a hot mic bragging to a talk show host how he kissed women without asking, and would “grab them by the pussy” if he wanted, and they let him, because he was a star.

  When it exploded across the news, all of the pundits and analysts once again thought for certain it was the end of his candidacy. Eleven women came forward claiming sexual assault by Franks, willing to put their names and faces into the public arena, explaining that they finally felt the courage to take on this powerful man and tell their stories. They all seemed to fit the behavior that Franks himself had described on the tape.

  And yet, after the required moment of public contrition, apologizing if his vulgar language had offended anyone, Franks had spun it as nothing more than “locker room talk.” He then combined that with furious counter-punching, saying it was “pure fiction” and that the women now claiming assault were “horrible, horrible liars.” He even went so far as to question whether two of the women were attractive enough to warrant assaulting. “She wouldn’t be my first choice, believe me,” he said of one of the accusers. He announced he would sue them all, and produce evidence they were lying. But he never did.

  Eli had found it incredible that evangelical Christians around the country, who spent so much time claiming the mantle of “family values,” had been able to so easily vote for a three-time married man who bragged about assaulting women, degraded them in public in his speech and tweets, and had been accused of rape and assault by no less than eleven of them. It was like his voters had somehow been brainwashed against their own beliefs. Or maybe they never had those beliefs to begin with, and secretly identified with him in some dark, twisted way? Or maybe, as the campaign strategists had told him, there were simply larger forces at play: economic angst in the heartl
and, the dissatisfaction with the “elite” controlling Washington D.C., and the fear of Muslim terrorists, Mexican immigrants, and the shock of a black man in the Oval Office were great enough for those voters to overlook the abhorrent personal behavior of a man they otherwise saw as their savior.

  Whatever was driving them, the strategists had been right. Even though a poll shortly before the election showed that more than half of Republican voters thought Franks had likely made unwanted sexual advances toward women, they voted for him anyway.

  But how far could it go? Would the same voters still stick by him now, even if they knew about this? Was it actually true, as Franks had claimed, that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York and shoot someone and his supporters would not leave him?

  He recalled the lawsuit that had been brought by an anonymous woman, who claimed she had been raped by Franks when she was only thirteen, degraded and beaten by him, and warned that if she ever told anyone, she would disappear and her family would be killed, like another young girl she knew of.

  In the suit, she claimed she had been procured for him through a series of contacts that lead directly back to an infamous billionaire financier whom she also accused of repeatedly raping her as a girl, a man who was a friend of Franks and many other powerful politicians and businessmen, Republicans and Democrats, a man who ultimately had gotten off easy by pleading guilty to solicitation of a minor, and was now a convicted sex offender, but walking free with his billions.

  Literally hours before a public press conference, the woman had disappeared and dropped her suit, her attorney stating that she feared for her life after numerous death threats surfaced from the bowels of the internet. Without a lawsuit and a woman with a name and a face, the story never had enough traction for the mainstream media to keep pursuing, and simply vanished before the election.