Category: My Work

Minor changes to some of the other preceding files. Nothing worth mentioning.

Yet.

Rhonda Gilbert lost her Company tail in a fifteenth-floor custodian’s closet at Trump Tower. The custodian’s closet contained one of her many New York City caches, one of hundreds across the globe. Wherever she posted, she used a mathematical formula based on the host city’s name to determine which buildings to use, which floors to use, and what to cache there. LiquidKey – a sweet little Special Services gadget – provided access to any mechanical lock. A Special Services app provided access to electronic locks.

Each cache contained a complete makeover. In this case, the athletically thin, black suited, middle-aged woman with thick, hip length blonde hair went in and an older, matronly woman with thick glasses, a slight lisp, ruddy complexion, and dark, Mediterranean features came out, each makeover took less then sixty seconds thanks to a special Quick-Change class her Russian handlers arranged for her when she first approached them.

Rhonda enjoyed playing both sides. She enjoyed having her own island which nobody knew about. She enjoyed the Russians paying her while they figured out how they could resurrect their empire, what shape it would take and who would run it. She enjoyed going to them, not waiting for them to come to her, with bona fides of a high-level US intelligence/security weapons research group they knew nothing about.

“Don’t beat yourselves up too much. Most of the people who should know about it don’t know about it.”

Irregular meetings were set up at various hotels – dives to five-star – at odd intervals and wherever her missions took her.

Lots of the stuff she told her handlers returned a nod, a “good job,” a “just continue what you’re doing.”

But everything changed when she mentioned Shaman to them, the US’ latest and greatest attempt to determine if ESP and now labeled PSI abilities existed, and if so, how to screen for them, how to foster them, how to develop them for strategic and tactical purposes.

One or two or her handlers completely lost their composure when she first mentioned it. Many sat forward. Most reached across the table for the files like greedy children seeing handfuls of candy for the taking. A few knocked phones off their cradles to make sure they got their candy first.

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Yes, rewrite #3.

I don’t want to talk about it.

Vincent Quarrals watched Monique Modine exit Martin’s store from deep in the shadows of the Kristoffersen’s barn. Stacey Knox headed south a few minutes earlier.

He considered walking over when he saw her pull in, decided no. She seemed okay enough. He did a cursory read of her background at the state capital using what little Monique knew as a starting point, and something about Knox told him to go deep, go further, do some more reading beyond her litigation histories.

She bought the Campbell’s farm. He never noticed her in town before. What, did she come into town on a lark, saw a broken down farm badly in need of repair with a for-sale sign on it, and decided hot damn, that’s for me? One of the top lawyers in New York City decides to go country?

Bullshit. Only a flake would do that and she didn’t seem the flake type.

Did she even know the Campbell farm’s history?

Sad place if ever there was one.

The Campbells owned the farm since dirt was young. Al Senior, Al and Blanche’s father, never came back from Korea. MIA or POW or KIA nobody knew, and Mrs. Campbell did what she could to hold things together. They dirt-farmed their small patch but that gave them enough for themselves and a little more. Kind-hearted neighbors, most of them farmers themselves, bought what little overflow she had. She’d drop off baskets of produce and they’d return the baskets, often with new or at least not too worn clothes for her and the kids.

They raised chickens and pigs. Mrs. Campbell planned on selling off the livestock and Al had none of it. “We have two good breeder sows and all our hens are good layers. I can learn how to slaughter and get things to market. We do this right and we can grow the farm, Ma.”

Ballsy for a twelve-year old kid, but nobody knew what a head for business Al had. By the time he graduated high school he was one hell of a butcher. He handled chickens and pigs with razor sharp knifes and never pricked a finger or thumb. Neighbors brought their livestock to him for slaughter. He smiled and only took some good cuts for payment.

Al was fourteen, Blanche twelve, and the widow Campbell gets a suitor. Within a year Mrs. Campbell is Mrs. Stockton and Gus Stockton, a woodsman out of the Canadian Maritimes she meets when a hen-party went to a movie in Albany, is chocolates and flowers and smiles and works the land, helps Al with the livestock and getting it to market, Blanche with her schoolwork, and doubles over laughing when Al and Blanche imitate his eh? accent.

Then one day Gus walks the property and discovers some good timber ready to harvest, complete with a warm little knoll in the center. He talks it over with everybody, leases two good Suffolks and begins harvesting.

Those Suffolk were skittish at first, didn’t like going to that part of the woods, but Gus was good and talked them through, made sure he kept them away until he had the trees ready for hauling.

Then something strange happened. Vince’s mother said “Glory train passed through him.”

Whatever it was, Gus Stockton changed. Oh, he’s still chocolates and flowers and helpful and handy when people are watching, but it turns into fists and belt and a water pipe when people aren’t.

Previous Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapters

No changes to chapter 8 (yet) so finally a new chapter.

Hope you enjoy.

Rhonda Gilbert lost her Company tail in a fifteenth-floor custodian’s closet at Trump Tower. The custodian’s closet contained one of her many New York City caches, one of hundreds across the globe. Wherever she posted, she used a mathematical formula based on the host city’s name to determine which buildings to use, which floors to use, and what to cache there. LiquidKey – a sweet little Special Services gadget – provided access to any mechanical lock. A Special Services app provided access to electronic locks.

Each cache contained a complete makeover. In this case, the athletically thin, black suited, middle-aged woman with thick, hip length blonde hair went in and an older, matronly woman with thick glasses, a slight lisp, ruddy complexion, and dark, Mediterranean features came out, each makeover took less then sixty seconds thanks to a special Quick-Change class her Russian handlers arranged for her when she first approached them.

Rhonda enjoyed playing both sides. She enjoyed having her own island which nobody knew about. She enjoyed the Russians paying her while they figured out how they would resurrect their empire, what shape it would take and who would run it. She enjoyed going to them, not waiting for them to come to her, with bona fides of a high-level US intelligence/security weapons research group they knew nothing about.

“Don’t beat yourselves up too much. Most of the people who should know about it don’t know about it.”

Irregular meetings were set up at various hotels – dives to five-star – at odd intervals and wherever her missions took her.

Lots of the stuff she told her handlers returned a nod, a “good job,” a “just continue what you’re doing.”

But everything changed when she mentioned Shaman to them, the US’ latest and greatest attempt to determine if ESP and now labeled PSI abilities existed, and if so, how to screen for them, how to foster them, how to develop them for strategic and tactical purposes.

One or two or her handlers completely lost their composure, sat forward, and reached across the table for the files. “How far has this gotten?”

She, of course, remained calm, cool, and composed, something she learned to do in high school. Each time she revealed only what she wanted revealed, or revealed something completely opposite to her true thoughts and feelings, she remembered the repeated, ongoing, incessant, never ending insult, emotional, psychological, and physical abuse, embarrassment, she suffered at the hands of other students, teachers, administration.

And let’s not forget the unending, over arching stupidity – Stupidity! – of the same.

Somebody told her to keep her head down and low.

It didn’t matter. They’d tilt her head up just to make sure they slapped her face.

And by the middle of sophomore year, she’d learned to not show what she felt, not show what she thought, and she remembered telling her worthless priest father-confessor, “Getting no response is no fun. Even they get it’s no fun besting an idiot, and if that’s my safest game, I’ll play my safest game.”

In the middle of her junior year she took saw a matchbook with BIG MONEY and INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL on the cover. Beneath them was “look inside for details.” There she read “Draw a camel and answer these three questions Yes or No.” with a postal address at the bottom.

Previous Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapters

No changes to chapter 6. Yet.

Tom stroked Frank Sinatra’s fur as Stacey exited the Station’s main gate. She glanced over and chuckled. “You’re approved of. He doesn’t give up his seat for anybody.”

Frank cushed Tom’s lap and fell asleep, his purrs almost as loud as the F-150’s AC. “Frank Sinatra, huh? If we had Gene Kelly, Ann Miller, and a couple of other hoofers we could make a movie. When did you get a cat? When did you get a truck? When did you get a farm? Feel free to answer in any order you’d like.”

Stacey entered I-278 traffic. Frank stood up and looked out the window as if riding shotgun.

Free of the kitten, Tom reached into his duffel. “Mind pulling over before we’re too far from base?”

He pulled out a second laptop, this one bio-locked. He pressed his thumb against what looked like a mousepad except it was on laptop’s cover. It pinged and opened. He typed in something and waited.

“What you doing, big brother?”

“Homework.”

Stacey couldn’t see the screen but did see him type in two numbers.

“You know, Acra may be in God’s back acre but we do have the internet. We have computers and modems, too. We even have TVs.”

Tom smiled. “You don’t have this kind of internet.” He nodded at the screen then closed the laptop and put it back in his duffel. “Ever hear of a Rhonda Gilbert?”

“Should I have?”

“Guess not. Thanks for stopping. We can move on, now.”

Frank Sinatra, still perched at the window, looked at Tom and twitched his tail.

Tom spread his hands in invitation. “Well come on.”

Frank turned, cushed Tom’s lap again, settled back down, and purred.

“Going to tell me what was so important we had to stop?”

Previous Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapters

Aside from a new title, that is.

 
Commander Tom Knox sat on one side of a large oak conference table in Naval Station New York’s Reagan Boardroom. His duffel and backpack were on the seat and floor beside him. An athletically thin, middle-aged woman with thick, flowing, hip-length blonde hair sat across from him in a sharp black suit with lapel pins, a service patch he didn’t recognize, and neither a name tag nor an obvious place for one on her suit jacket. Two younger men, both sandy-haired, both clean shaven, both dressed as she sans the lapel pin, sat on either side of her with their briefcases open and facing them on the table.

They stared into their open briefcases and she stared at him.

He stared back. “What department are you with again?”

She ignored the question. “The San Jacinto is equipped with the latest Aegis, that’s correct, isn’t it?”

He looked down at the highly polished table top for a moment. “What’s on the ship’s manifest?” His eyes caught Transport IDs on the bottom of both men’s cases – 717521 and 717522 – and kept moving.

The man on her left pulled a stapled, much handled report from his briefcase and slid across to Knox. It stopped right in front of him.

“You learn how to do that in school?”

The woman nodded at the paper without taking her eyes off him. “Is that the paper you submitted directly to the Joint Chiefs?”

He scanned his name under the title The Need for Confirmation of Objective Sans KeyHole, ALWYS, and Related Systems. “You reading other people’s mail again?”

“You subverted the Chain-of-Command on purpose?”

“You here to slap my hands?”

“Is your laptop available?”

He pulled it from his backpack. One of the woman’s aides reached across the table for it. “May I?”

“It’s government property. Go for it. For that matter, so am I. What do you want it for?”

The aide reached under the table to a network hub and ran a cable from the hub to the laptop. Tom could see the glare of the screen on the aide’s face as it came to life. The aide nodded at the woman and she nodded back without taking her eyes from Tom.

“You don’t blink much, do you, Miss…?”

“Are you familiar with MK-Ultra?”

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