Memoirs and True Confessions of a Disinformation Warrior (Part I)

Apologies for any formatting issues: I cut and pasted this from a word document.

While this is loosely based on true events and well-known people, I freely changed details and telescoped events, and the main plot is entirely invented. This should therefore be read as fiction.

Generally, I used real names for historical figures who are no longer living.

The Memoirs and True Confessions of a Disinformation Warrior

 

My Arrest

It’s a Hollywood myth that you only get one phone call when arrested. I called my wife, Susan. I could have called a lawyer as well, but I didn’t bother.

            I stood behind the counter of a garishly lit prison office. The room smelled faintly of tobacco. Standing next to me was the clerk who had booked me in. In a chair behind me was one of the guys who arrested me, a goon with a face that reminded me of a potato. By the time I was finally able to call Susan, I’d already been stripped of my dignity and reduced to a number. I was wearing prison garb—which turned out to be a black jogging suit and thin rubber shoes. At least I was spared the degradation of stripes. My prison identification card featured my name, Robert James Martin, and my number: 319. The clothes I’d been wearing when arrested and the contents of my pockets were in a locker. All my possessions had been cataloged on an inventory sheet, which I had signed. I gave permission for the money in my wallet, just over five hundred dollars, to be entered into a prison account that I could use to pay for extras and to make purchases at the commissary.

            “Hello?” Susan’s voice was groggy. She’d evidently been sleeping. The clock on the wall told me it was just after two a.m.

            “I’ve been arrested,” I told her.

             “Wait, what?” she asked. What for?”

            “I have no idea.”

             “Is Sam with you?”

            “Nope. I got as far as the airport parking lot.” I told her that visiting hours started in the morning at eight-thirty. I read the address of the prison from the packet of prison rules I’d been given. “Our car still is at the airport,” I told her. “To get here, you should take the train out of Manhattan and then rent a car. You can get our car later.”

            “Okay. Eight thirty,” she said. There was a quiver in her voice. “I’ll be there.”

            After we disconnected, the guy whose face reminded me of a potato rose out of his chair. “This way,” he said. I picked up the packet of prison rules and my identification card and went in the direction he pointed, down a corridor into a windowless room. The room was about eight feet square with a metal table in the center. Four chairs were arranged around the table. Extra chairs were stacked in the corner. A fluorescent bulb hung over the table and a camera was mounted over the door.

            “Sit down,” he said.

            I selected the chair facing the door. Even under normal circumstances, I don’t like sitting with my back to a door. As Potato Face settled into his chair, his jacket—a lightweight windbreaker that reached to his hip—opened to reveal a gun in a holster. I had the feeling he let his jacket open on purpose. That was when I suspected he was a punk and brand new to the job—one of the many Pike loyalists who Pike’s people had been moving into law enforcement positions.

            Arnold Pike was the chief executive officer of Pike Enterprises, where I worked. He was also the president of the United States.

           Potato Face seemed too earnest and too young. Really he was just a kid. He looked like an overgrown schoolboy with an air of self-importance. He was stocky with the bulky arms of a guy who regularly worked out. He had pale hair, shaved around the side of his head with a tuft left on top. There was a tension in his jaw that gave him the look of someone who was always angry. The top of a tattoo showed on the base of his neck.

            He took out a card and read me my rights. Then he said, “We won’t be questioning you so you may as well say you don’t want a lawyer.”

            “I want a lawyer.” I didn’t really want a lawyer. If, as I suspected, this had something to do with Pike, there’d be nothing a lawyer could do to help me—but I felt the urge to be perverse.

            “I didn’t hear that,” he said. “I specifically heard you say that you don’t want a lawyer.”

            “Since you’re not going to question me, why does it matter?”

            He shifted, annoyed. He obviously thought he could toy with me without pushback. To test my theory, I asked, “How long have you been in this job?”

           “That’s none of your business.”

            His defensive posture told me my guess was correct. “You’re a newbie,” I said.

            He bristled. The last thing a guy like him wants is for people to think he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

            Then, to spook him, I said—quietly— “You have been on the job for four months.” I watched the surprise come into his face. I’d guessed right. Four months earlier was when Pike began moving thousands of a particular kind of supporter into law enforcement positions: he went for the private militia guys, the ones he once called his “Second Amendment people.”

            “It looks to me,” I said in the same deliberately calm tone, “like you haven’t learned the arrest procedure part of your job.”

            Procedure probably sounded like a foreign word to this guy.

           “I’m doing what I was told to do,” he snapped. “I think you should shut up.”

            To really rattle him, I smiled. It worked. He shifted in his chair.

            Here’s one thing I knew about these guys: They were ridiculously easy to manipulate—if you knew how. I should know. I had been manipulating guys just like him for years. His type was particularly easy because they were ruled by their fears. You wouldn’t know it to look at him: He was husky and moved with a swagger and probably owned a few guns, but the men with the most bluster are often the most frightened.

           I became aware of the noises in the building: the sound of air rushing through the vents and the intermittent rattling of a metal door in the distance. Water gurgled faintly in the pipes in the walls.

            “What am I charged with?” I asked.

            “I don’t know.”

            “You told me you had an arrest warrant.”

            He let a moment pass. Then he said, “I lied.”

            That didn’t surprise me. So far, nothing had been done according to the required procedures.

            The sequence of events that led to my arrest began just after lunch when Sam Bates called to tell me he was in trouble. Sam and I had been buddies since law school. He was the one who had brought me into Pike Enterprises. He said he was calling from Riyadh and was spooked. A scandal was about to break, and he was in the middle of it. I couldn’t get the story from him. He said he was afraid to talk just then because there were crowds around and he suspected he was being followed. Scandals were a daily thing in the Pike Administration, but it was only recently that my own friends were running into trouble.

            Sam said his plane would land at JFK Airport at midnight, local time. I told him I’d be there to pick him up, and we could talk then. After we hung up, I told Susan what was going on. I’m a late-night person. Meeting a friend at the airport at midnight didn’t faze me, particularly a friend in trouble. There was always traffic in Manhattan, but at that hour, I could get to JFK airport in about thirty minutes.

            I reached the airport at eleven forty-five. I turned into the short-term parking garage and swung into the first available spot. I heard an engine behind me. A police car had pulled up and stopped directly behind me, making it impossible for me to back out. I cut the engine and waited. Potato Face got out of the car and came to my window. He flashed a badge and ordered me out of my car. He then handcuffed me and ordered me into the back seat of the police car. He got into the passenger seat. I expected to be taken to the nearest precinct. Instead, the driver—whose face I couldn’t see—merged onto highway 95.

            None of this was making sense. I had, in the past, thought about what might happen should someone look too closely at how I’d earned my fortune—but arrest and prosecution had never occurred to me as a possibility. Yes, I’d bent and broken a few rules and behaved in ways that could draw disapproval and even moral censure, but I’d always made sure not to cross the line into criminal behavior.

            I wondered if Sam had set me up but rejected the idea. It had certainly sounded like he had called from an airport. I’d heard overhead announcements in a language I didn’t understand. He’d had to stop speaking several times because of background static. Besides, we’d been friends for years. Sam was a simple guy, grateful for the job working for Pike, happy to be my friend. It was hard to believe he’d set me up.

If Sam hadn’t set me up, how had this goon known I was on my way to the airport? Had someone been surveilling me? Tapping my phones?

I figured I may as well ask. “How did you know I was going to the airport?”

His answer was predictable. “None of your business.”

He could have arrested me in my condo or on the street. That, however, would have attracted attention. Arresting me in the parking lot of an airport at midnight was one way to make sure there were no observers. In my building or the streets nearby, someone might recognize me as a Pike Enterprises executive.

            Footsteps came from the corridor. I sat up straighter in my chair. A warden opened the door. He could have been Potato Face’s cousin, with the same doughy skin and round face. “I’m taking him to his cell,” he told Potato Face. “Phillip isn’t coming.”

            “Phillip McHugh?” I asked.

            Phillip McHugh was the Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Pike Enterprise.

            Neither responded. Instead, the warden pointed down the corridor. “That way,” he told me. “Go.”

            I stood up, picked up the packet of prison rules and my identification card, and went in the direction he pointed. He followed behind me. At the end of the corridor was a staircase. He pointed, indicating that I should walk up the stairs. He walked behind me. The staircase was narrow and steep, with unpainted cinderblock walls and a single handrail attached to metal posts. The warden’s boots were so heavy that his footsteps echoed in the stairwell. Not much is creepier than walking up the metal staircase of a prison with a heavily booted man right behind.

            When we reached the third floor, he directed me into the corridor, which was lined with heavy doors at approximately ten-foot intervals, each with a spy hole and a plate with a number. The door handles were large levers, each with a deadbolt. The yellowed light in the windowless corridor gave the place a disturbing, otherworldly quality.

            About halfway down the corridor was cell number 319. He unlocked the door, pushed it open, and gestured for me to enter. He waited as I stepped inside. Then he closed the door behind me. The key turned in the lock with an angry click and I was alone.

            The cell smelled like wet pennies. The lighting, as in the corridor, was dim and yellowed. Along the wall to the right was a cot with two thin neatly folded blankets. The toilet was behind a low wall in a corner. Next to the toilet was a small metal trash can with a lid. On the wall across from the door was a stained sink. A board, which served as a table, was mounted to the wall. The chair facing the table was bolted to the floor. Also on that wall were three tiny windows slits about the size of a man’s hand, covered with a metal grating. Near the basin was a single shelf with a plastic cup, a toothbrush, a bar of soap and what looked like cleaning supplies: liquid soap and a few rags folded neatly. I put the packet of prison rules on the desk.

            I had the sensation someone was watching me through the spy hole, so I spun around and pressed my eye to the opening. The corridor, as far as I could see, was empty. My range of vision didn’t extend past two doors across from mine, numbers 318 and 320. The moment I turned away from the door, the creepy feeling that I was being watched returned. I spun back around and looked out the spy hole. The corridor was still empty.

            A door with a spy hole was far worse than a glass door with bars. With a glass door, or simply bars, you could see who was watching you. With just a spy hole, if someone in the corridor walked softly—or if I happened not to hear the footsteps—I could be under surveillance and not know it.

From the window, I could see a concrete courtyard with benches. The courtyard, flooded with light, was empty.

            I went to the sink, opened the tap, and filled the plastic cup. The water was lukewarm and had a slightly metallic smell—but I was thirsty, so I drank. Then I sat at the desk and read the packet of prison rules. This was a privately run prison contracted by the Federal Bureau of Prison. The rules themselves seemed typical, except that I’d heard federal prisons restricted visits to four hours per month—or perhaps that was after conviction. It could also be that rules no longer mattered. Meanwhile, I’d be allowed twenty hours per month.

            This prison housed both short- and long-term inmates. I was being housed on an isolation floor. The unit I was housed in was known as a special management unit—a euphemism if ever there was one. Those in other parts of the prison lived in groups. I knew from the rules that most inmates—the “general population” inmates as opposed to the “special management population”— ate in a dining room. I would eat in my cell. According to the prison manual, the general population inmates were the lucky ones, the ones whose background demonstrated that they could be trusted in groups. Obviously, I was here as some sort of warning, but I was fine alone. I needed to be able to focus. Besides, I didn’t intend to be here long. I intended to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. Being locked alone in a metal cell was creepy, but I suspected that being surrounded by a bunch of strangers would have been infinitely worse.

            I sat on the cot and removed my shoes. The mattress springs creaked. I laid down, wrapped myself in the blanket, and stared at the ceiling, which was streaked with rust-colored stains. Each time I moved, the springs creaked under me. In the distance, I heard a metal door slamming shut.

            The yellowed light in my cell and the knowledge that the door was locked from the outside gave me the eerie sensation that I was no longer part of the world of the living. I’ve heard it said that being imprisoned is like being enclosed in a tomb. I can tell you that it’s true. I had the unsettling sensation that the world of the living could soon forget about me and go on as if I didn’t exist. Oh, at first, people might think about me. The doorman of our building might wonder where I’d gone. My chauffeur would sit idle until Susan gently encouraged him to find other employment. (Susan preferred cabs. She said she couldn’t get used to the feeling of a chauffeur waiting for her next commands.)

            As I lay in the darkness, I had a heightened awareness of each sound: the air in the vents, the occasional gurgling of water in the pipes, a creaking somewhere in the building. The last thing I wanted to do was sleep—which, just then, felt like a kind of death. Sleeping meant that I could no longer be vigilant.

            But I knew I couldn’t face this ordeal unrested, so still wearing my prison-issue socks with my identification card in the front pocket of my jogging pants, I closed my eyes and gave in to the need for rest. I slept fitfully. It seemed as if every few minutes, my eyes popped open. Each time I woke up, I thought there must be a way out of here.

Prison: Day One

            I was awakened by the sound of a key turning in the lock. The weak light streaming in through the small windows had that pale early morning glow. Instantly I felt wide awake. A heavy-set warden with the stubble of a dark beard opened the door and put a breakfast tray on the floor. Then without a word, he slammed the door and locked it.

            I stretched and stood up. On the tray was an envelope. I put the tray on the table, sat in the chair, and opened the envelope. Inside was a list of prison jobs. According to the instructions, I could mark two selections and return the envelope with my breakfast tray. If I failed to do so, I would be assigned to a work detail. Work hours three afternoons each week.

            Most of the jobs involved heavy labor: unloading boxes, making repairs, helping with construction. Toward the bottom of the list were library clerk, commissary clerk, and adult literacy instructor, both of which required that the inmate have at least a high school diploma. The last thing I wanted was to try to teach any of the goons in this place. I’d rather sell them items in the commissary. I selected library clerk as my first choice and commissary clerk as my second, and put the slip back into the envelope.

            Also on the tray, under a clear plastic lid, was my breakfast: a scoop of oatmeal, scrambled eggs, toast with a pat of margarine, a box of corn flakes, a cup of milk, and a cup of coffee. The food wasn’t as bad as I expected. The eggs were buttery, and the oatmeal came with a packet of raisins and walnuts. The coffee was watery and weak, but the food helped me focus. When I finished breakfast, I put the tray on the floor near the door—which I knew from the prison rules was the protocol.

            A distant memory came to me. I must have been about twelve when a buddy and I were in a donut shop. At the table next to us, two police officers were laughing and talking about how they used to go to the local jail and beat up inmates for fun. At the time I’d thought they were joking. Much later, I realized they weren’t.

            I’d read once that inmates should regularly work out, not just to remain healthy while confined but because prisons were dangerous places, and an inmate should at least look like he could defend himself. It occurred to me that jobs like warehouse worker, which no doubt required moving heavy boxes, might therefore appeal to some. The fact was, I wasn’t going to scare anyone even if I worked out regularly. I was in my mid-sixties. As a child, I would have been described as wiry. Now, the word was “slight.”

            I felt restless so I paced my cell: three steps to the wall, pivot, three steps back. I often had that eerie feeling someone was watching me. Occasionally, I went to the peephole and looked out. Each time, the corridor was empty.Occasionally, I heard a faint tapping sound. I’d heard that inmates locked in individual cells occasionally tap on the walls to make contact with other inmates, but the last thing I wanted was any interaction with anyone in this prison.

            A warden came for my tray—the same stubble-bearded guy who’d brought it. I assumed these guys worked in shifts. After he was gone, I went to the window and looked into the courtyard. The sky was overcast, and the pavement was damp. About a dozen inmates were in the courtyard, some sitting on benches, others strolling around, some singly, a few in pairs.

            The other buildings that surrounded the courtyard each had four floors and a basement. The basement windows, just over ground level, were covered by heavy metal bars. If the building I was in was the same size, there was one floor above mine. The courtyard was about the size of two basketball courts. The pavement was badly cracked in places and dotted with puddles. At the far end were a few shrubs badly in need of a trim. In each of the four corners was a watch tower. I saw barbed wire in the distance.

            I resumed my pacing. Sometime later—I don’t know how much time passed—a different warden unlocked my door and said, “You can use the shower room now.”

            This one had a mean-looking face. His head was shaved, and he had a scar just below his eye. His eyes were flat and gray.  He looked like the type who would haul off and punch anyone who rubbed him the wrong way.

            “Thank you, sir.” I had enough sense to be exceedingly polite, under the circumstances.

            I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I just leave the cell and head to the shower room? I knew from the prison rules that each floor had a staircase on one end and a shower room on the other.

            “Go on,” he said and pointed with his thumb.

            I walked in the direction he pointed. Several cell doors were open. I walked past them without looking in. Three inmates were already in the shower room. A warden stood, watching. I ignored the inmates and accepted a towel and safety razor from the warden.

            Next to the shower room was a wall of shelves with stacks of jogging suits folded neatly, arranged by size. After my shower and shave, I changed into a fresh jogging suit and dropped my used one into a hamper. I wanted to bring an extra suit in my cell. According to the rules, showers were allowed once daily, and I hadn’t seen anything in the rules against taking a fresh change of clothing for the night.

            I picked up an extra jogging suit. Nobody said anything. The warden with the shaved head stood in the corridor, watching. I returned to my cell and closed the door behind me. Soon I heard the key turn in the lock.

            I put the extra jogging suit on the shelf and resumed pacing, three steps to the wall, pivot, three steps back. It wasn’t long before the same mean-looking warden rattled the door open. “You have a visitor.”

            He directed me into the corridor and then walked behind me. Hearing his footsteps gave my stomach the jitters. At any moment I expected to feel a blow to the back of my head. As I passed the other doors, each with a spy hole, I imagined the inmates inside gazing out as I marched past their door with a heavy-footed, mean-looking prison guard behind me.

            Once we were downstairs, he directed me to the front of the prison to a large room with about a dozen people milling about. The room was obviously equipped for visiting families. Children were playing on the floor. There were tables with chairs, and shelves with board games and toy boxes. A row of vending machines lined the back wall.

            A prison guard sat at a desk just inside the door, angled so he could survey the room and keep an eye on the door. He seemed bored. On the desk in front of him was an open laptop and an old-fashioned desk phone, the kind that plugged into a wall and had a separate receiver. The phone must have been thirty years old. So far, every prison worker I’d seen wore the same uniform—crisp button-down gray shirts with black stripes on their arms, and black pants. This guy was no exception.

            Some of the inmates wore jogging suits—most black, some navy. Others wore a button-down green shirt with matching pants, a lightweight cotton material. Each had a white tee shirt showing near their necks.

            Susan stood up and waved to me. She had pulled two chairs away from the others. You could see she’d had a sleepless night. Ordinarily, Susan was perfectly groomed. I rarely saw her out of the house without her makeup. Now she looked rumpled: Her hair was barely combed, her face was pale, and her lashless eyes gave her the look of a frightened rabbit. I wanted to take her in my arms and comfort her.

            I waved, but before joining her, I looked over the room once more. A few pictures featuring landscapes were taped to the walls, which were made of cinderblock. A large clock, like the ones that hung in elementary school classrooms when I was a child, was on the wall. It seemed to me that the only surveillance was the guy at the desk.

            I satisfied myself that there was no possible way our conversation could be monitored. Someone might see us if there was a hidden camera, but we were not close enough to any object that could hide a wire, unless every chair in the place was wired, which was highly unlikely. The fact that the idea even occurred to me showed you how paranoid I was feeling.

            I walked over to Susan and sat down. I touched her hand lightly for reassurance—but covertly so as not to draw the attention of the clerk at the desk. We couldn’t touch or hug—the rules were explicit about that. The prison offered a married couple’s room where couples could be alone and more intimacy was allowed, but absolutely no touching was allowed in the common visitor room.

            In her lap was a clear plastic bag containing her keys, sunglasses, and a packet of tissue. I knew from the prison rules that all visitors were required to carry their personal belongings in clear-prison issue bags. Devices with Internet access were stored in lockers.

            “W-w-w-hat is going on?” she whispered.

            The general noise level was high enough so that he wouldn’t be able to hear a whisper from across the room. I leaned close to her and told her about my arrest. As she listened, I could see a change come over her. She was now alert and focused, staring at me, hard. Susan is nothing if not competent. I suspect that stepping into her usual brisk, businesslike self was probably what she needed just then. I concluded with, “I have trouble believing Sam would set me up.”

            “I agree,” she said. “I found out where he is. He’s in a private prison in Manhattan.”

            “Well then it’s unlikely he set me up—but I suppose still possible. We need to consider every possibility. Have you heard anything about a scandal in the Middle East?”

            “No. I’ll try to visit Sam today to find out what’s going on. So, why are you in a prison and not a local jail?”

            “This place is both a short-term and long-term facility. The feds usually don’t use local jails. I don’t know what’s going on, other than the fact that Phillip McHugh has something to do with this.”

“Phillip? The guy with the Bronx accent? The guy in charge of Pike Enterprises?”

“That’s the one.”

“Phillip is a thug.”

Just then, we were startled by a thumping sound. Then I realized it was the plumbing pipes knocking in the walls.

“This place is creepy,” she said.

 “Yeah. Procedures are somewhat normal, except for the fact that I was immediately put into an isolation unit. But nothing about my arrest was according to legal procedures.”

“What should we do?” she asked.

“Contact Ken and tell him what’s happening.”

“Not Charlie?”

            Charlie was a top political operator and a member of Pike’s inner circle of trusted advisors. If any of my close friends had influence over Pike, it was Charlie.

I shook my head firmly. “It has to be Ken.

            Ken, like Sam, was a buddy from law school. Ken worked in the licensing department of the Pike Organization. I’d helped him get the job by recommending him to Phillip McHugh. A few weeks earlier, I’d talked him out of quitting. His wife, Eliza, was Susan’s best friend.

            I looked around. Nobody was paying any attention to us. The clerk at the desk was talking on the phone.

            “Find out everything you can about this prison and who runs it,” I said. “But you’ll have to come back to update me. I can take phone calls—they count toward visiting time—but my calls are monitored.”

            “I’ll come back tomorrow morning. Tonight, I’ll take the train out of Manhattan in the evening, rent a car, and stay overnight in a nearby hotel. I can talk to you when visiting hours open. I’ll be able to get back to the city before too late.”

            I nodded. It was a good plan. Just then, the room fell strangely quiet. It took me a moment to understand why. The rush of air in the vents had suddenly stopped. Afraid we’d be heard even if we whispered, Susan and I sat quietly, our knees almost touching.

            “I should go,” she whispered. “I have a lot to do.” She gave me a long look that substituted for a hug. Then she stood up and walked from the room. The guard at the desk watched her leave, and then picked up his phone and made a call. I assumed he was calling for someone to take me back to my cell.

            Sure enough, a few minutes later, a guard with a nondescript face and brown hair appeared in the door and beckoned to me. I got out of my chair and approached him. “That way,” he said, pointing to the door. We marched along the now-familiar corridor toward my cell, his footsteps behind me. When we reached the third floor, I stood back while he unlocked the door. Then I stepped inside and listened to the key turning in the lock.

            When Susan and I met, we were both in our forties, and both divorced. Susan had married young and ended the marriage when she learned that her husband was having an affair. “That’s the one thing I’ll never tolerate,” she told me not long after we met. That was an easy requirement for me. I, too, had been married, and I never once considered infidelity. I might have my faults, but I am loyal to the end—or, in Pike’s case, I’m one of the last to jump ship.

            After Susan’s divorce, she became the assistant to a banking executive. As her boss climbed the corporate ladder, she went with him as a kind of super-competent super-secretary. She quit her job when we got married. Her boss was devastated. “You took her away from me,” he told me once. “I’ll never replace her.” After we got married, she took over running the household, including taking care of the household accounts and bills. It was immediately clear why her boss had been disappointed when she quit.

            Sometime later, I was pacing my cell, when the same warden who brought me back from my visit with Susan came to tell me I could spend some time in the courtyard if I wanted to. I said I did. He directed me through the corridors to the courtyard.

            Once there, I sat on a bench by myself close to one of the walls. Some of the inmates wore lightweight green suits that looked like hospital scrubs. I figured there was probably a reason some wore jogging suits and others wore scrubs. I watched how the prison guards treated me, and how they treated the other inmates, looking for signs that there was anything unusual or different about how they treated me. As far as I could see, they treated me just the same as they treated any of the others. Nobody seemed to know who I was.

            I had the feeling most of the inmates, even those who were clustered in small groups, were trying to blend in. The uniforms—either scrubs or sweats—helped with this. None had hairstyles or mannerisms that set them apart. No one swaggered or talked too loudly. What struck me was that the inmates entirely lacked individual identity. They dressed the same and moved the same.

            It occurred to me that there is so much you can tell ordinarily about a person just passing him on the street—clothing, hairstyle, and even gait can give clues about a person’s profession and personality. Here, everyone was bland. One might be a dark-skinned man, another light-skinned, and another might have thick curls—but the uniforms and the way each man tried to avoid calling attention to himself caused them all to blend. While there can be something comforting or even reassuring in uniformity, here the sameness and way each inmate seemed to try not to call attention to himself seemed dehumanizing.

Inmates came and went, each escorted by a warden. I must have been there about a half hour when a different warden came to lead me back to my cell.

Back in my cell, I lay on the cot and stared at the yellow-stained ceiling. When a warden entered with my lunch tray, I sat upright. The warden put my tray on the floor by the door, and then turned and looked directly at me. With a jolt, I saw that it was Potato Face. All my internal alarm bells went off. In my confusion, I could not make sense of what it meant that I was seeing him here, now.

            “You work here?” I asked.

            “Nah,” he said. “I do this for fun.”

            He gave me a look that could only be called a smirk. Then he left, slamming the door and turning the key in the lock.

            I was alone again, reeling with shock. I could not think of a circumstance under which a prison employee would be sent to make an arrest. Surely it was out of the ordinary that he had both arrested me and was bringing my lunch tray.

            I realized I was shaking.

            I wondered if he was watching me. All those times I’d felt someone was looking in the spy hole—maybe he’d been there. I stood up and went to the door and looked out. The corridor was empty. Or at least I thought it was. My range of vision was limited. If he was watching, he would have seen me approaching and he could have ducked out of sight.

            I stood watching, waiting. If my theory was correct, eventually he’d assume that I had gone back to my bunk or resumed pacing. Nothing. The minutes ticked by. I heard the same tapping sound I’d heard earlier, but this time it sounded more distant. The corridor remained empty. I heard faint sounds from elsewhere in the prison—the knocking of the plumbing pipes, the distant slamming of a door—but the corridor remained empty.

            Stop, I told myself. If I persisted in such thoughts, I’d drive myself mad. I resumed pacing. I needed a way to identify him, but how? The only think I could think of was that I’d have to wheedle more information out of him.

            I sat in the chair and tried to eat another prison meal, a cheese sandwich with potato chips and a fruit cup. A clanging sound came from above, I assumed from an inmate in the cell above me. It was hard to tell, from the sound, what he was doing. I sounded like he was striking a sharp object against the ground. There were at least twenty clangs before it stopped. The silence was a relief.

            I wondered how I could learn Potato Face’s name. He had a distinctive enough appearance and I could describe him to Susan, but that wouldn’t do much to help her identify him.

            I finished eating and put the tray by the door. When a key turned in the lock, I assumed someone was coming for my lunch tray. Instead, a dark-skinned warden with silky black hair said, “You have a work detail today.”

            “Library clerk?”

            “Yeah,” he said. “Most boring job in the place.”

            “I like boring,” I said.

            “You’re in the right place for that,” he said and laughed at his own joke.

            He directed me out of the cell, toward the staircase. Most of the cell doors were open, I assumed because the occupants had been taken to their work details. We went four floors down, to the basement. He directed me through what felt like a maze of corridors. None were longer than twenty-five feet, and each segment was set with security cameras. After one right turn and two left turns, we came to a door that was half-glass, half gray metal, with “library” stenciled in bold white letters.

            “Go on in,” he said.

            I was surprised by the normalcy of the library. It could have been any town library—well, except for the fact that the only people milling around wore dark-colored jogging suits, the person at the desk wore the prison employee uniform of a gray button-down shirt, and the windows were high and set with metal bars. But the shelves were polished wood and the stacks were filled with books. Brightly colored posters featuring bestselling novels were taped to the walls. The clerk sat behind a counter instead of at a metal table.

            “Number 319 will be working here, starting today,” the warden who had brought me told the clerk at the desk. With that, the warden turned and left.

            The clerk, who sat behind the counter, was fat and balding with a double chin. “Not much to do today,” he said. “You can put those away,” he said, pointing to a pile of books on a nearby table. “If you picked library duty, you’re probably smart enough to figure out where they go.”

            I picked up the top book—a bright yellow and red paperback called The Bible for Idiots—and looked at the spine. The series of numbers told me that the library used the common dewy system. It didn’t take long to find the row of similar yellow and red Books for Idiots. I glanced at the clerk and amused myself by wondering how he’d react if I said, I suppose Jail Breaks for Idiots is checked out.

            It didn’t take long to put each of the books back in its place. I glanced at the clerk. He appeared to be reading from a screen. I figured I should just quietly busy myself. In the back was a table with an assortment of newspapers and magazines. Pushed under the table was a single school-house-type wooden chair. I pulled out the chair, sat down, and found that day’s copy of The Washingtonian. The familiar smell of a printed newspaper—slightly woodsy, slightly powdery—gave me a craving for normalcy: A fresh hot latte in a ceramic mug, the freedom to come and go at will.

            The library was so quiet I was acutely aware of the rustling sound of the newspaper as I unfolded it to look at the front page. The front blared with the latest Pike scandal: He was threatening to fire the head of another intelligence agency, which of course had everyone alarmed about his reasons. What had he done now? What was he trying to cover up?

            The reporter was David Hock—a liberal and vocal critic of Pike. He was one of the columnists who understood that Pike deliberately reeled the country so quickly from one scandal to another that nothing he did could really sink in. There were those who insisted that Pike didn’t have a plan and didn’t follow a particular strategy. They said he operated solely from what were obvious personality and psychological defects. It seemed to me that both were possible. As far as I was concerned, it was a non-debate. I knew for a fact that people like Charlie and others who understood propaganda tactics coached Pike. Pike was also a natural—something that doesn’t happen without a few personality and psychological issues.

            Other news seemed almost shockingly mundane. An incumbent Senator announcing a reelection bid. An opinion piece made a case for mandatory gun liability insurance for gun owners. Vladimir Putin wanted to pass more anti-gay legislation. More spring rains were in the forecast.

            At last, buried toward the end of the first I found a story about someone in Pike’s circle trading-classified-secrets-in-Qatar scandal. This was obviously the scandal Sam was talking about. There wasn’t much information. The article didn’t indicate who was trading classified secrets or what they were trading for.

            The library door opened. I turned to look. It was Potato Face. I assumed it was time to go back to my cell. He held the door open for me and stood back. I didn’t bother saying goodbye to the library clerk.

Instead of taking me back to my cell, he directed me toward the front of the prison down a series of windowless corridors. He took me through a series of corridors to a room near the front of the building. In the center of the room was a reception desk where a prison clerk sat. Like the clerk in the family visiting room, he had a laptop and a landline phone on his desk. Along the wall facing his desk was a row of glass doors. Inside each room was a metal table and two chairs. Some of the rooms were empty. Others had two people inside, an inmate and a person in business attire. I assumed this was where inmates met with their lawyers.

            The clerk pointed to the door on the end and said, “In there.”

            I looked where he pointed. Inside, in the chair facing the door, was Phillip McHugh. The room was small enough for a man to reach out both arms and touch the facing walls. There was nothing on the walls.

            “Come in and sit down,” Phillip said to me.

            I remained standing.

            “Sit down,” Phillip said again.

            This time, I did.

            “Phillip,” I said. “What is going on?”

            “Apparently,” Philip said, “you were negotiating a deal to sell American military secrets in the Middle East. You were flying back home by way of Riyadh and you were arrested at the airport.” I had the feeling he was exaggerating his Bronx accent to sound tough.

            That was the flight Sam was on—or the flight Sam told me he’d be on.

            “I wasn’t on that flight, as you well know. I was arrested before that flight landed.”

            “Not according to your arrest records. According to the records, after your plane landed, you were arrested and charged with soliciting a bribe and conspiring to sell state secrets.”

            I sat back and looked at him. “You’re not going to get away with this. There are procedures. What stops me from calling a top journalist and spilling the truth?”

            “Oh, Bob, how did you manage to stay so naive? Sure you can call a journalist. But what good will it do?”

            “For one thing, you can’t keep me here without a bail hearing. I’ve been to law school, remember? I know the drill.”

            “Did you know some courts conduct hearings until one a.m.? I had no idea courts were so helpful—but then, I suppose a lot of arrests are made late at night. Anyway, you had your bail hearing last night.”

            “Oh, please.”

            He reached into a briefcase on the floor beside his chair and pulled a small packet of paper held together with a large clip. He handed them to me. The top sheet was a printout from a court website giving my name, case number, and my charges: Soliciting a bribe and conspiring to sell classified information. My name was given as my first initial and middle name: R. James Martin. I assumed the first initial was to help keep my name from coming up in searches.

            Next was a copy of my indictment with a description of the charges against me. Under the description was a list of my co-conspirators: Three businessmen from Qatar. I skimmed through the remaining pages in the packet. Sam’s name was not mentioned anywhere.

            The final document in the packet was the transcript of my hearing.

            “You staged my hearing?”

            “To quote the great bard,” he said, “all the world’s a stage. To quote you, we are the creators of truth. If enough people believe a thing is true, it’s the same as if it actually is true.”

          According to the transcripts, I’d pleaded not guilty and told the judge that I didn’t need a court-appointed lawyer; I said I would hire my own. I was denied bail on the recommendation of the government lawyer, a guy named Tim Johnson, who presented evidence that I had recently moved millions of dollars to offshore accounts, which made me a flight risk. The judge, therefore, ordered me detained.

            I wondered how Phillip had managed to stage a hearing. Pulling off something that complex seemed way beyond his abilities. Phillip was nothing more than a glorified gangster who knew how to strong-arm people. On the other hand, Pike had an iron grip on the Department of Justice. There were loyal DOJ lawyers willing to do his bidding. I figured that must have been how Phillip arranged this. This Tim Johnson guy was probably one of those pale, beady-eyed, toady Department of Justice lawyers eager to win Pike’s approval. Guys without any brains or competence suddenly had a way to satisfy their ambitions: In the time-honored tradition of mob bosses, Pike elevated people who were both incompetent and completely loyal to him. That way they owed him their jobs—without him, they’d be nothing—and they’d do whatever he demanded. He often said he hired the best people. By that, he meant that they were completely loyal to him.

            I put the papers down on the table. “How do I know these papers haven’t all been forged?” I asked.

            He handed me his phone and told me to Google the Public Access to Court Records website. I did so. Once there, I typed the name of the court and case number from the packet of papers Phillip had given me. There it was, right there on the court website: my name, case number, and the charges against me.

           “I’ll prove this whole thing is a farce,” I said.

            “Who is going to listen to you? What happens when your history is made public? The liberal left will dismiss you as just another crook in Pike’s orbit. They’ll cheer to see you in jail. Besides, I have a lot of insurance. For example, I have irrefutable evidence that you helped spread the rumors that turned into Pizzagate.”

            That was true. I had helped spread those rumors—at Phillip’s direction.

            “Surely you know I have insurance as well,” I said.

            “What good will that do you?”

            I understood immediately how this would play out, should I challenge this in court. I could pick up the phone and hire the best lawyers and private investigators. I could ask them to gather evidence that the accusations against me were absurd. Proving my hearing had been staged would be easier than proving that the charges against me were false—but even that would take time. Meanwhile, if I went public with an accusation against Pike, he’d turn on me and his supporters would believe anything he said about me, no matter how preposterous. The Pike haters, on the other hand, would not want to believe me because of my history. Some would probably cheer my downfall and even delight in the irony that the propaganda machine I’d helped build was now destroying me.

            “There’s an easy way out of here,” Phillip said. “Pike needs a favor.”

            He pulled a manila envelope from his briefcase. From inside, he took out a single sheet of paper and handed it to me. It was a letter written by me to Pike. The letter opened with:

Dear Sir,

          I sincerely apologize. I was misinformed. I opened negotiations for a nuclear deal believing that this was something you wanted. I apologize.

            Pike liked being called “sir.” I stopped reading and looked back at Phillip.

            “All you have to do is sign,” he said. “Of course, you’ll also have to turn over your passport, at least until this all blows over. We can’t have you leaving the country and renouncing your confession.” Smoothly, as if it was an afterthought, he said,  “We’ll also need a videotape of your confession.”

            I sat back and looked at him. I knew he was lying. The videotape part gave him away. Signing that confession would not save my life. Once I was on videotape confessing, he could dispense with me. I looked at him steadily. He looked away. The noises in the building seemed to intensify. The water in the pipes rattled and groaned.

            “I suspect,” I said slowly, “that what actually happened was that Pike or someone in Pike’s immediate circle, probably a family member, was feeling around for a deal to sell American military secrets. A reporter caught on. The story was about to blow up, and now Pike needed a fall guy.”

            “That’s not what happened,” Phillip said. “What happened was this: You were trying to sell secrets and got caught. The question is whether it was an honest mistake based on a misunderstanding of what Pike wanted, or whether you were—once again—seeking to line your own pockets.”

            “So you’d be okay with just ruining me, just like that?”

            “If you sign, you won’t be ruined. You’ve lived under the radar. You’re a political nobody, so if you sign this confession and protect Pike from embarrassment, the whole thing will blow over in one or two news cycles. Nobody knows who you are so this will never become a big story. How will that hurt you? It won’t. Besides, Pike and I made you. Without us, you’d be nothing. What would you have been without Pike? Maybe you would have made partner in a firm. You could have earned a good living. But you wouldn’t be living in a luxury Manhattan condo, moving millions into offshore accounts, and hobnobbing with the most powerful people in the world. You owe us this.”

            This was exactly the kind of transaction Pike would think up: He made me rich, therefore, I owed him a fake confession when he needed it.

            “Pike wants this scandal to disappear,” Phillip went on. “Here’s how the deal works. You sign, and I keep this letter and the video safe in case I need them. Most likely, I won’t. Charges will be dropped because we’ll present evidence that you meant no harm. We will present evidence that you misunderstood your instructions. It will be clear that you didn’t have the necessary what-ever-it-is for a charge of conspiracy to stick, and the whole thing blows over.”

            “The legal term you’re looking for is mens rea.”

            “Yeah, right,” he said. “You didn’t have the necessary mens rea.”

            The problem with all of this was that Phillip had a motive to get rid of me: I knew too much. Over the past few months, I’d tried to hide the fact that I was turning against the organization, but I knew Phillip suspected my loyalty was waning. Even if Phillip was sincere in his offer of my freedom in exchange for my videotaped confession, I had my doubts about whether Phillip’s offer would even work. Pike and his people were good at creating trouble—like filing a false indictment against me—but they weren’t very good at cleaning up their messes. Pike demanded loyalty, but he considered everyone around him expendable.

            Besides, even if Phillip was sincere in his offer, and even if his people managed to clean up this mess, I didn’t believe if I signed the confession my life would return to normal.  I’d be thrust onto the public stage. For the first time, and possibly the remainder of my life, I’d have to endure public taunts and hatred.

            “I understand the desire to exploit your relationship with Arnold Pike in order to line your own pockets,” Phillip said, “but it appears this caper of yours may suddenly turn into a public scandal, and we need to prevent that.”

            “So tell me. What happens if I don’t sign?”

            “How about some straight talk? Jory Williams didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered because he was about to talk too much.”

            Jory Williams—who had also happened to be a close friend and associate of Pike’s—had been arrested for trafficking underage girls. Jory’s name and the methods by which he lured the girls into his prostitution ring were all over the papers. Journalists immediately dug up images of Pike posing for cameras with Jory Williams. Stories came out of long weekends Pike had spent in Jory’s offshore home. Then Jory was found dead in his cell. The official examiner said it was a suicide, but suicide raised questions. How could an inmate get the rope to hang himself?

          I kept my face carefully blank, showing only polite interest. I needed Phillip to believe that I believed his lies and that all I had to do was confess to a crime I didn’t commit and I’d go on as before.

            “More likely,” I said, “Jory bribed someone to bring him the rope. I don’t believe he was murdered.”

            “That’s your choice,” Phillip said. “Accidents happen in prison.”

            “He wasn’t murdered,” I said firmly.

            I could see from the glint in Phillip’s eye that he had been murdered—or, at least, Phillip thought he had been. It wasn’t Phillip’s style to order someone killed. Like Pike, Phillip gave orders through hints and innuendos. He would just find a way to communicate to his overzealous followers that I pose a special danger to the republic, and well, I was particularly vulnerable in a prison. It wasn’t like I could hire a bodyguard. And as Phillip said, accidents often happen in prison. Phillip was a simple guy who tended to confuse chronology with causation: If he put out the word that he wanted something to happen to someone, and the person was found dead, Phillip would assume that the death was because he had ordered it.

            “My job is to protect Pike,” Phillip said. “If this comes out, it will be embarrassing. The official story is a simple one. It came to the attention of the administration that you were looking to sell state secrets to line your own pockets. You were reported to law enforcement, who arrested you and did the appropriate investigations. As I already explained, if you confess your error, we will present the evidence to show how you reasonably thought you were supposed to enter such a negotiation, even though you were never given permission. Charges will be dropped and all will be well. See how simple it is? You sign. You take the blame. The whole thing blows over. And you go on as if nothing happened.”

            It wasn’t that simple, of course. But considering how thoroughly incompetent Pike’s personal lawyers were, it seemed to me that they’d done a good job setting this up. They don’t actually practice law, a friend once told me about Pike’s lawyers. Their job is to find a way around the law. They find a way to give Pike whatever he wants. Using me as the fall guy wasn’t a bad plan. My business practices made it believable that I would exploit my connection to Pike for profit.

            “Confess and you’ll be a hero,” he said. “Pike himself will personally let you know that he owes you a favor.”

            I nodded as if I believed him. I knew exactly what that promise was worth. Pike never did anything unless it benefitted him personally. If someone got into trouble doing his bidding, the person was out of luck—unless saving him would somehow benefit Pike. I handed back the letter. “Can I have a week to think this over?”

            “I’ll give you until Monday. That’s all I can give you.”

            Today was Thursday. That didn’t give me much time to figure out how to get out. He picked up the packet of court documents. “Wait,” I said. “I can keep those, right?”

            “You don’t need them. You have a simple decision to make.” He slipped the packet into his briefcase. He stood up. “Someone will be here to get you shortly,” he said, and then he walked out, closing the door behind him.

            To my surprise, I felt no fear. I didn’t even feel the rage I should probably feel. What I felt was a clarity of purpose: I wanted to get out of that prison alive, which meant I had to figure out how to escape. Another desire came to me that was equally strong. I wanted to make the truth known. Not the truth of my arrest. Nobody cared about that. But I wanted the world to know how we had created the world’s most effective lie-producing machine—the very lie-producing machine that now allowed Phillip to ensnare me. I understood the irony of my desire for the world to know the truth: Who would believe the truth from a professional liar like me?

            Footsteps approached and a warden appeared in the doorway. “I’m taking you back to your cell,” he said.

            “How do I send an email to someone?”

            “Sending an email will cost you ten bucks.”

            “Fine,” I said.

            He took me back to the same office where I’d been booked in. A different clerk sat at a desk. The smell of tobacco made my stomach turn.

            “Number 319 wants to send an email,” said the guy who had brought me in said to the clerk.

            “Give me your identification. card,” the clerk said to me. I handed it to him. “Use that computer.” He pointed to a computer on a counter. The clock on the computer told me it was just after 7 a.m.

            “I don’t know the email address,” I said. “I’ll have to do a Google search.”

            I expected to be told that a Google search would cost me ten bucks. Instead, the clerk just shrugged. He watched me Google “Jessica Harris.” Jessica Harris was a rising star in the world of print journalism. The first page came up with her professional page with an email address for tips.

            I composed a message telling her my name, where I was, and that I wanted to talk to her. To entice her into coming, I gave her my full name and enough information so she could find the court listing about my case. I told her that I had information about corruption at the highest levels of government. I had no idea whether she’d show up. I’m sure whackos send emails from prison every day of the week.

            After I hit “send,” I turned back to the clerk. “I have a question. The prison rules say I get twenty visiting hours each month. Can I take all of those in the first week?”

            “Yeah, you can. It would be stupid, but you can.”

            “Thanks,” I said. Twenty visiting hours a month was a lot better than federal prisons, which allow only four. The rules also provided that during the first twelve hours after a person was brought to prison, he was allowed extra phone calls and outside contact which didn’t count toward his allotment for the month. These extra calls were even allowed during off hours. After all, when you yank a person from his life, there are matters that must be taken care of.

            Time hangs heavy in a prison cell. Looking at steel walls and listening to the sounds in the prison set my nerves on edge. I’d been here less than twenty-four hours, and already I understood how incarceration can lead to madness. Each time I heard a sound from the corridor—usually the sound of boot steps followed by the rattling of a metal door—a jolt like a shock went through me.

            The worst part wasn’t the discomfort or the boredom—it was a constant and overwhelming feeling of helplessness. I was trapped—literally locked in a cage—waiting, but for what? I had no idea. I particularly hated the spy hole in the door. It felt like a pair of eyes were constantly watching me. I longed for the safe feeling of being in my own home with the doors locked and the windows closed, knowing that the world was shut out.

            At home, I would sit for long periods of time, but I never experienced this kind of mind-numbing monotony. I often sat in an easy chair in the combination living room and dining area. My chair faced the floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the Manhattan skyline. I could swivel the chair and push a button to reveal a large-screen television on the wall, or I could pick up the laptop that I kept on the table by the chair. Even if I chose to sit for an hour and do nothing but gaze at the lights of Manhattan, it was my choice. At any moment, I could go grab a snack from the refrigerator or head down to the bar in the lobby to see if my buddies were around.

            Moreover, my chair at home was comfortable. Here I had the choice of a squeaky cot or a straight-backed chair.

            Unlike me, Susan wasn’t the type to sit for long: She was always busy cooking elaborate dishes, arranging flowers, or just adjusting pictures and pillows. The only time I saw her sit for extended periods of time was when she was reading a magazine or working at the office computer, where she did of our household accounting. Back when I was working long hours, she catered to my needs. She made sure I had anything I needed—a fresh beverage, the temperature adjusted. Even after I reduced my hours during the weeks before my arrest, she continued waiting on me. “I can do these things now,” I told her. She’d respond with: “No, you rest.”

            I was on my cot staring at the ceiling when a key rattled in the door. I sat up and watched as a warden, one I hadn’t yet seen, put a dinner tray and fresh jogging suit on the floor. So I hadn’t needed to take the extra one from the shower room that morning.

            After I’d eaten and put the tray back by the door, there was nothing to do except get ready for bed. The lights never went out completely, but after ten, according to the prison rules, they were lowered to that ghastly yellow. I changed into the fresh jogging suit I’d brought from the shower room that morning, laid down on my cot, stared at the ceiling, and waited for the lights to dim for the night.

            I woke up when the first thin light of dawn lit the window. I lay still and thought about how I could escape. I hobnobbed with the most powerful men in the country and even had access to Pike himself, but there were very few people I could call on to help me in this emergency. Most knew better than to openly cross Pike or go against his wishes. Nonetheless, I did have a good friend who was also an executive at Pike Enterprises.

I rose from the bed and paced the room. As I paced, a plan took shape in my mind. I walked until my legs felt shaky, then I sat in the chair until that, too, became uncomfortable. I returned to the cot and lay on my back as the cell gradually brightened.

Prison: Day Two

My second morning in prison followed the same routine as the first. A warden brought my breakfast tray. Another came to let me shower and shave. Then, the warden who brought my tray came back for it. I had only been here a day and the monotony was already mind-numbing: The same noises. Gray walls. Yellowed lighting.

            When a warden came to tell me I had a visitor, I felt a quickening of anticipation. I slipped my prison identification card into my pocket. The warden stood aside as I walked out of the cell. He then closed the door and directed me down the stairs, then toward the front of the prison.

            Susan was waiting for me in the large visiting room. The clock on the wall said eight thirty-five. Once again, she had pulled two chairs away from the others. This time, she’d selected chairs on the other side of the room. The same bored clerk sat at his desk. Two children were playing with a wooden train set on the floor. Air rushed from a vent. There were only a handful of visitors so the room was quieter than the day before, but there were enough conversations going on that I didn’t think anyone could hear us if we whispered.

            I sat down, and we scooted closer together.

            After we exchanged greetings, I told her about my visit with Phillip. She listened closely. Then I whispered, “Here’s what I figure. If this whole thing was invented, we’ll have to come up with a better counter-narrative, something more believable. Surely whoever Phillip arranged this with thought something was off.”

            I paused to listen to the noises in the room.

            “What counter-narrative?” she asked.

             “Our story is that a mistake was made and a few people are acting without Pike’s approval. Most likely Pike hasn’t gotten personally involved. He keeps his hands clean. He makes sure others do the dirty work so he has deniability and can easily abandon any plan that doesn’t work. So, here’s what you need to do. Tell Ken to find a way to trick Pike into saying that none of his executives are in trouble with the law. If Pike thinks journalists are onto a scandal, he’ll say anything. This will lead credibility to our story. Ken then selects an administrator who was not likely to have had contact with Phillip and impresses him with the fact that Ken is calling from Pike Enterprises on behalf of Pike himself to straighten out a mistake made by one of his executives. Ken can make it appear as if the orders to let me out are coming from Pike himself.”

            “It’s a good plan.”

            I considered the irony that if I escaped, it would be because I out-lied the Pike lying machine.

            I looked around again. The clerk at the desk was talking quietly on the phone.

            “Orders from inside the Pike Organization will carry weight,” I whispered. “Orders from the White House, if Ken can manage that, would be even better.  Whoever helps us will earn a hefty bonus and a thank-you from Pike himself. Of course, Pike will never know.”

            “Should I use the accounts on the yellow ledger?” she asked.

            “Yes.” Those were my offshore accounts. Susan had the passwords. “We’ll also have to figure out who in the prison is working with Phillip, and get around them or flip them.”

“Anyone would believe Ken over Phillip,” she said.

           I agreed. Before coming to work for Pike, Ken was a top New York litigator known for his ability to take a witness apart on cross-examination. He was good on his feet and a good talker—and smart. Over the past few weeks and months, Ken, like so many others, had been growing disgusted with Pike’s entire operation. If anyone would feel an urgency to fool Pike’s people and get me out of here, it was Ken.

           “But we need more information,” I said. “We need to know what’s going on. We need to know who is in on this and who isn’t. There is one guy who works here who seems to be also working for Phillip. He was one of the officers who arrested me, plus he is working here—which is odd. Either he’s an officer who Phillip placed here, or he’s a warden who was sent to arrest me.”

           I gave her the best description I could of Potato Face and told her about each of my encounters with him.

           “I’ll start by seeing if someone new is on the prison payroll,” she said. Then she whispered, “Yesterday afternoon I went to visit Sam. He definitely didn’t set you up. He was shell-shocked. He kept saying, ‘Tell Bob I’m sorry. I would not have called him if I’d known.”

           If Sam’s phone was being monitored, it was possible I’d simply stumbled into the situation: Because I had gone to meet Sam’s plane, whoever was responsible for me figured they’d better arrest me along with him.

            “Can you find out from Sam whether he called me from a company phone? If he did, my guess is that his phone is being monitored and that’s how Phillip knew I was planning to go to the airport.”

           “I’ll do that,” she said.

           I looked around to make sure nobody was paying attention, then asked “What did you find out about Sam?”

           “Here’s what he told me. About a week ago, Pike Enterprises sent him to Qatar on an assignment. On his way back to his hotel one evening, a British reporter stopped him and asked him about a deal he was rumored to be negotiating that involved trading American nuclear secrets for a lucrative licensing deal. He denied the story. That evening, while poking around for clues, he checked Pike’s Twitter feed and found a Tweet that wasn’t getting much attention because it had no meaning to anyone but Sam. Pike had Tweeted, ‘I didn’t give Sam permission to negotiate any deals.’”

            She shook her head disapprovingly. She’d always been a fan of Pike’s—until recently when things started off the rails.

            “Anyway,” she said, “Sam understood immediately that someone in Pike’s orbit had been conspiring to sell state secrets, the scandal was about to break, and he was being set up to take the blame. In a panic, he got on a plane to Riyadh and called you from the airport. He was arrested when he stepped off the plane in New York.”

            “How is he holding up?”

            “Not very well. He signed the confession and he’s waiting to be let out.”

            “Oh, Sam.” I groaned.

            “He said he had known all along what he was getting into when went to work for Pike. He understood the nature of Pike Enterprises. He figured he enjoyed the wealth and the perks, and this was the price he needed to pay.”

            “Right,” I said. “In exchange for a lifetime of luxury and easy money, he signs a bogus confession when the boss demands it.”

            This was exactly the kind of thing Pike did. He left wreckage in his wake. He casually ruined people.

            “I hinted to Sam that there might be a way out,” Susan said, “and a way to avoid signing the confession, but he wasn’t interested. He said he was going to go along with what Phillip wanted, and that was that.”

            I wasn’t too surprised. Sam was the kind of guy to take the easy way out.

            I told her about Phillip’s visit. When I finished, she said, “If Phillip has Sam’s confession, maybe he doesn’t need one from you.”

            “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe I’m in too deep now and Phillip wants assurances that I’ll stay quiet. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe Phillip knows I’ve been turning against Pike.” Sam had never given any indication that he was turning against the organization.

            “Speaking of people turning against Pike, Larry called looking for you. I told him you weren’t feeling well. He didn’t seem to know that anything unusual was going on.”

            Larry was my childhood friend. He was also a former Congressman and legal analyst. He and I talked regularly.

            “Phillip is obviously keeping all of this quiet,” I said. “Nobody here seems to have any idea who I am. I don’t even think Potato Face knows exactly who I am.”

           She pulled a clipping from her prison-issue bag and handed it to me, which was probably something she wasn’t supposed to do. I resisted the urge to turn to see if the clerk was watching. Instead, I read what she handed me. It was a notice from an online news source that Sam had been arrested. The notice didn’t provide much information, just that Sam Bates had been charged with soliciting state secrets and conspiring to solicit a bribe. There was nothing in the listing about the fact that Sam worked for Pike Enterprises.

            She handed me a second clipping. Again, I resisted the impulse to turn around. This one was a notice of my arrest. It also was bare bones, revealing nothing about my connection to Pike Enterprises or Outreach Analytics. My name was listed as R. James Martin.

 “I should go,” she said. “I have a lot to do.”

            I wanted to squeeze her hand for comfort. Instead, I just watched her walk from the room.  Soon after she left, a guard came to escort me to my cell. I wasn’t there long when another came to tell me I had a visitor. What he said was,“A lawyer is here to see you.”

            A lawyer?

           Instead of taking me to the large visitor room where I had met with Susan, he took me to the reception area and the row of rooms where I’d met Phillip. The clerk looked up as we entered. He pointed to a door and said, “In there.”

           I looked inside. A woman sat with her back to the door. I knew, from her hairstyle—short and curly—that she was Jessica Harris. On the table in front of her was a plastic prison-issue bag. The rules said journalists must show press credentials, pass a background test, and sign an affidavit swearing that they don’t know the inmate personally. I assumed that was why she could meet with me in a private room. The warden probably assumed she was a lawyer.

            I opened the door and stepped inside. she turned around and said, “Hello.”

            “Hi,” I said.

            Before sitting down, I scanned the wall behind me—the wall I hadn’t been able to see from outside. There was nothing on it. There were only two places in the room to hide a wire: the vent on the wall or the table legs. I assumed that the only surveillance came from the clerk at the desk, who could look in at any time.

I sat down across from her.  “You came,” I said. “Thank you.”

            “I was curious.”

            She looked even younger than in her profile pictures. Her hair was cut short. Her unruly curls gave her a slightly rumpled appearance. She wore large glasses and an oversized gray jacket.

            “I am prepared to tell you my story—”

            “Why should I care about your story?”

            “I work for Pike Enterprises. I’m one of the founding members of Outreach Analytics—”

            “If that’s true, why haven’t I heard of you?”

            “My name is a common one and I’ve kept a low profile.”

            “Or maybe you’re a lunatic making shit up.” She unzipped her plastic prison-issue bag and took out a pocket-sized notebook and prison-issue pencil. In addition to being flexible, prison-issue pencils were the kind that didn’t need to be sharpened. As the graphite wore down, a pull-string allowed more graphite to be exposed.

            She pushed the notebook and pencil toward me. “Write down your full name, birth date and birthplace.”

            I wrote Robert James Martin, July 24, 1953, Baskerville Virginia.

            “I’ll be back,” she said. She stood up and left the room.

           She returned about ten minutes later and sat back down. “Okay,” she said. “You were one of the founding members of Outreach Analytics. You’ve been working for Pike Enterprises for almost forty years. Your luxury condo in Pike Towers on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan is worth thirty-five million dollars. You’re married to someone named Susan. You used to be married to someone named Rochelle.”

           She looked for my response. I nodded. She had the basics.

            “If all you’re being charged with is soliciting a bribe and entering a conspiracy to disclose state secrets, why aren’t you out on bail?”

           “It’s a complicated story. I’m prepared to tell you.”

           “Why me?”

            “That should be obvious,” I said. “You’re one of the most respected journalists out there. Both sides think highly of you.” I wondered if she’d be spooked if I revealed how closely I’d followed her work and her career.

            “Three years ago,” I went on, “you graduated summa cum laude from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Last year you earned your master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. While you were a graduate student, you had three bylines in The Washingtonian. You had an in-depth piece featured in City Life Magazine on the irregularities in the Justice Department. You are now working in both D.C. and New York, where you have access to the top editors. Despite all that, you still don’t have a full-time job. That means you’re good and you have time to hear my story.”

           “Let me guess. You are totally innocent, and you were framed.”

           “I’m not totally innocent, and yes, I was framed by top executives at Pike Enterprises. I will tell you everything, but I ask only one thing: Don’t publish my story until I am out of here and someplace safe.”

           She considered this. I assume she was trying to figure out if I was, in fact, a lunatic making shit up. There was something steely about her. She exuded intelligence and had the air of a person who moved through the world with complete confidence in herself—a rarity.

            “Why?” she asked.

            “Why what?”

            “Why do you want to tell me?”

            “Maybe there comes a time when even the vilest of swindlers wants to set things right. Maybe personal redemption is a real thing. Maybe I want the truth out there—for anyone who still cares about the truth.”

            She picked up her prison-issue pencil and tapped it against the table. When she noticed that I was watching her hand, she put down the pencil.

             “Okay then,” she said. “I’ll hear your story. But I want the whole story, starting with a David Copperfield beginning.”

           “What the hell is that?”

           “David Copperfield starts like this: ‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born.’ Then you take it from there.”

           “You really want all that crap?”

           She smiled. “Yeah. In fact, Holden Caulfield called it that David Copperfield kind of crap.”

           I didn’t bother asking who Holden Caulfield was. “What you need to know is how we successfully manipulated so many people. If you don’t know how, you won’t be able to counter the effects.”

            “I know how to counter the effects. Win elections so that we have enough ethical lawmakers who can pass legislation to outlaw the kind of crap you and your friends pull. We need to expose people like you who take advantage of the fearful and ignorant.”

            “Be careful. I also take advantage of people like you. I’ve successfully manipulated you. I’ve lured you to post on social media exactly what I wanted you to post.”

            “I don’t believe you’ve ever manipulated me into posting things I didn’t want to post.”

            “Of course I didn’t make you post things that you didn’t want to post. I made you want to post them. I riled your fears of an authoritarian takeover. I had you shaking with terror. When frightened, you published things that riled and upset others like you.”

            “Prove it,” she said.

            “Think back to the piece you published entitled, ‘The Supreme Court Is Making It Possible for President Pike To Rig the Election.’ Think of the people responding to your article who, when shaken and terrified, wanted Democratic leaders to adopt authoritarian methods as a way to beat back authoritarianism. Of course, they didn’t call them authoritarian methods. They called them hardball tactics. They said they needed to imitate the tactics used by the Republicans or they’d be crushed.”

           “I was wrong about what the Supreme Court would do. I shouldn’t have written what I did. Okay, you win. But I still want the whole story, from the beginning.”

           “I think you’ll find it boring.”

           “I expect I won’t, but we’ll see.”

           She was nothing if not stubborn. I figured, why not? It wasn’t like I had much choice. I wanted my story out there. It wasn’t like I could start interviewing journalists. Besides, there weren’t many like Jessica Harris. I just didn’t see why my David Copperfield kind of crap mattered. My childhood was completely ordinary. Moreover, I’m not much of a talker, but I had to be compelling enough to hold her interest until I got to the part about how we created a world-class disinformation machine.

           “All right,” I said. “How about this: It is unlikely that I will turn out to be the hero of my own life, but whether I will remain to be seen. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born in Baskerville, Virginia, in 1953.” I paused and then asked, “Like that?”

           “Exactly like that.”

           As I adjusted to the idea, I found I was not averse to telling the entire story. I suppose it’s natural for a guy who is staring at steel walls and who recently received a death threat to feel an inclination to look all the way back. Prison is the perfect—and ghoulish—environment for contemplating morality, mortality, and the meaning of one’s life.

           Besides, what else did I have to do with the empty hours ahead of me? Even if Susan and Ken managed to get me out of here, it would take a few days—at least.

           It also occurred to me that somewhere in my past were the explanations for what was happening to me now.

She took a small tape recorder from her plastic bag and turned it on. “We have some time now,” she said. “Just talk. I will edit it down later.”

*  *  *

Apple Pie Beginnings

I was born in the same white clapboard house where my father was born. Baskerville in the 1950s was a small rural town that had been left to dawdle, the kind of place where nothing much had changed in the fifty years before my birth.

           If you’ve ever watched those old sitcoms from the 1950s, you know what Baskerville was like: Neat houses with trim lawns. Quiet residential areas. Baskerville had a small downtown consisting of twelve cross streets. The town hall was flanked by a post office and a courthouse. Also lining the square was a church and a library. Men gathered to talk politics in the feed store the way they had when my grandfather was a young man. Many of the intersections were unmarked, so when outsiders stumbled upon our town, they often took a wrong turn and ended up at a dead-end in a cornfield.

           I played kickball in the town square with my buddies. The girls played hopscotch, jumped rope, and played with dolls. The girls wore dresses and bobby socks. The boys in my school dressed alike: neat pants or shorts, short haircuts. The older boys wore crew cuts. Younger boys went to the barbershop and asked for a “regular,” haircut short around the ears and back, with just enough hair on time to be able to comb or push to the side.

           The post office and courthouse flew the American flag. The clock tower over the church was always accurate, to the minute. I grew up confident that America was the greatest, strongest, and wealthiest nation in the world.

           The part they don’t show on the old sitcoms was that there was another part of town—really, on the outskirts—rundown and poor, where the Black people lived. Most of them were farmers. Some worked in the N.P. Norton Steel Company. They had their own school and church, but they used our library. There was no longer a sign on the library that said, “Colored use rear entry” —the library removed it when I was in kindergarten—but the Black people knew to go around to the back. I didn’t think about them much. They were always respectful when they came into the main part of town. When they weren’t the sheriff got them in line. They also knew not to swim in the public pool even though the law then required that all public facilities be integrated. “We pay more taxes,” my father explained to me once, “that’s why we have a swimming pool but they don’t.”

           I was the youngest of three boys. My father went to work each morning in a tie and a button-down shirt. He drove his Ford three miles to the insurance office. I was not sure what he did all day except that it involved a lot of paperwork. Once I asked him if he liked working in the insurance office, and he said, “I should have studied engineering.”

           By the time I was about eight, most families in our part of town had a television set. My father came home each evening, sat in his favorite chair in the living room, and turned on the television. He watched the news, and after dinner, we all watched sitcoms.

           In my childhood, the lines were clearly drawn: America—the world’s greatest and most powerful country—was good. Our archenemy, Soviet Russia, was bad. America was about rugged individualism, carving a nation from a wilderness, personal freedom, and personal responsibility. Soviet Russia, in contrast, was evil. The government told people what they could and couldn’t do. The government even told people what they could say and even tried to control their beliefs. The Soviet government outlaws religion and invaded its neighbors with the goal of spreading their evil communism worldwide.

           Soviet Russia wasn’t just some bogeyman. A few years before I was born, the Soviets built an atomic bomb. It was one thing to know that the United States had the capability to wipe entire cities off the map. It was quite another to think that the Russians could do the same, particularly when they aimed their nuclear warheads at us.

           One of my earliest memories in school was crouching, terrified, under my desk while we did duck-and-cover drills, simulating what we should do in case of an atomic attack.

           Then, when I was in middle school, something shifted: Now, the enemy was within as well as across the ocean. The unraveling of America began when communist ideas took root and spread in the United States. Then in the 1960s, an anti-American counterculture erupted. I didn’t understand how dangerous the situation had become because I never paid much attention to the dull droning of Walter Cronkite’s voice. The guy was boor-ing. Back then, everyone got their news from two sources: Walter Cronkite on the evening news and the local newspaper.

           One day—I must have been about fifteen, so we were well into the 1960s—Walter Cronkite showed a women’s liberation march. The camera zoomed in to show women burning their bras. Both of my parents were in the living room. I wanted to ask why they were burning their bras, but I felt embarrassed.

           Another time, Cronkite showed a newsreel that shocked me to attention: a group of long-haired protestors standing in a busy intersection in New York City burning the American flag. Some held signs that said, “Black Power.”

The camera zoomed in on the protesters. Many were African Americans with large afros. The white people were dressed oddly with long shaggy hair, tee-shirts with images dyed on the front, and tattered jeans. Some carried signs that said “Stop the War!” and “We Demand Equality!”

My mother, who was watching from the doorway leading to the kitchen, said, “It’s a few people making a lot of noise,” she said.

My father stood up, marched over to the television set, and turned it off muttering: “Damn commies. This country is coming apart at the seams.”

I understood why my father was calling them communists: The whole point of the protests was that they didn’t want us fighting the communist North Vietnamese. They were just fine with the evils of communism spreading throughout the world. I thought the protesters were lazy, entitled, and repulsive.

            “The way they dress,” my mother said, “you can’t tell the difference between the girls and the men.” It was hard to tell, from her tone, whether she disapproved, or thought it was funny.

           The next morning when I walked to school, I felt alert and vigilant, scanning the horizon for signs that angry people would come marching through the town—but all was quiet and tranquil. You’d think, listening to Walter Cronkite, that the entire nation was being torn apart by riots and protests. Baskerville, though, remained pristine.

           My mother was the type to bake apple pies. Like my father, she rarely spoke. We weren’t a chatty family. She was an excellent housewife. Our house was always sparkling clean, smelling faintly of lemon furniture wax. My mother did the grocery shopping, cleaning, and cooked all of our meals.

           I discovered my penchant for dirty tricks in eleventh grade when my buddy, Larry, ran for class president. Larry was the picture of wholesomeness. He had a cowlick that made his hair stand up a bit in front, a sprinkling of freckles on a small nose, and the kind of pale translucent skin that turns bright pink in the sun. My mother said he had the stamp of Ireland on his face.

           Larry and I had been friends since kindergarten. He lived two streets over. We took each other almost for granted, like brothers. You might have even thought we looked like brothers. We both had reddish-blonde hair and a lean, wiry build. Larry, though, was friendly and outgoing. He had a quick easy smile. In a word, he was likable.

           Baskerville was first settled in the late eighteenth century by immigrants from Ireland, so many of the kids in my school had the stamp of Ireland on our faces. My own ancestry was Irish mixed with German. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, that part of Virginia absorbed a wave of immigrants from Germany. In a funny bit of Baskerville history, the Irish inhabitants of Baskerville called the German newcomers Dutch. Why? Because when the newcomers arrived, they said, “Wir sind Deutsch,” and the citizens of Baskerville heard, “We are Dutch.” Eventually, there were intermarriages, and over the years, people from other towns settled in Baskerville as well, so there’s probably some Italian in the town mix, but all three churches in town were Protestant.

    Larry’s opponent in the contest for junior class president, Missy Little, was the kind of girl nobody liked. For one thing, she was way too serious. She had a large unattractive face that reminded me of a horse, and frankly, she walked around with a chip on her shoulder the size of Texas.

           One day after school, I went to the bus depot and bought a ticket to Richmond Virginia. The main office of the Virginia branch of the Communist Party was in Richmond, a ninety-minute bus ride from Baskerville. I had no second thoughts about what I was about to do. I viewed myself as a team player and a good friend.

           I arrived in Richmond and walked three blocks to the commie office. Signs plastered on the window said, “Worker’s Rights!” and “Organize!”

           When I opened the door, a bell jingled. A guy who had been sitting at a desk behind the counter stood up to greet me. I was struck by how ordinary he was. He, too, had the stamp of Ireland on his face. He was neatly dressed with a short haircut—nothing like the radical hippies I saw on television. I absorbed the lesson: It’s hard to tell at a glance who is an enemy.

           “I want to make a donation,” I said, consciously deepening my voice. I handed him ten bucks.

           “Do you need a receipt?” he asked.

           “Make it out to Missy Little,” I said. “The donation is a gift.”

            He filled out the receipt and handed it to me.

           The next day, I slipped the receipt into the in-box in the office of the student newspaper. The newspaper printed the receipt. That was the most popular issue in the history of the Baskerville High Banner.

           Missy was enraged. She said—loudly enough for a large group of students to hear— “Even if I had donated to the Communist Party, there would be nothing wrong with it. This is a free country!” She stamped her feet like a child. I believe that was the moment she sank her campaign.

           Larry didn’t know I pulled that trick, so when he said he didn’t know anything about it, people believed him. Larry read Mike Wasser’s The Conservative Conscience. He believed that politicians who pushed good conservative causes were doing the work of God.

           He had these high-flown ideas. I was the realist.

           I don’t remember when I turned into what you might call a bookworm. I think I was still in elementary school. There were not many books in the house, but I read them all, mostly novels from the forties and a few detective stories. I even read my mother’s copy of Gone with the Wind. My father made fun of me when he saw what I was reading. “Next thing you’ll want to wear dresses,” he said.

            After that, I hid my reading. I borrowed books from the school library, hardcovers. I removed the jackets and kept the jackets in my book bag. Hardcovers basically all looked the same: plain covers, cloth-bound, mostly black, sometimes maroon or navy. Mostly I read murder mysteries and spy novels. In almost every spy novel I read, the enemy was Soviet Russia.

            My two brothers and I shared a bedroom. We had one bunk bed and a twin-sized single. From the time I was born, my oldest brother had the top bunk. When I was about twelve I talked him into trading with me. The top bunk afforded me the most private spot in the house. I read books in bed, one after another, in private.

            I discovered my passion for government and politics in my senior year civics class. I understood right away that despite the tame-sounding name of the course, civics, the subject was really power: Who wields power and how others seek to dislodge them. I understood by then the connection between bra burning and power.

            That was the semester I read the classic works about government: John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Rousseau’s Social Contract, and Plato’s Republic, and worked my way through much of the Federalist Papers. Because it was power that interested me, I read Machiavelli’s The Prince and Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

 

Larry and I volunteered to work on political campaigns. We spent our afternoons stuffing envelopes and making phone calls. For my sixteenth birthday, my father gave me a subscription to The National Bulletin, or the “N.B.” as he called it. I immersed myself in the worldview of its conservatism. The articles—brilliantly written and beautifully argued—expounded the reasons communism would destroy everything that was good about America. From the N.B., I learned about the virtues of a free-market economy and the evils of government regulations getting in the way of free-thinking and innovative markets and businesses.

           One evening at dinner at the start of my senior year of high school my father asked me what I planned to study in college. My two brothers were already at UVA. My parents assumed I, too, would attend UVA.

           “Political science,” I said.

           My father put down his fork. “What can you do with a political science degree?”

           I had no answer. I figured I may as well tell them the rest. “I want to go to Benjamin Franklin University.”

           “In Washington, D.C.?” my father asked. “That cesspool?”

           “Larry also wants to go to Benjamin Franklin,” I said.

           I knew that including Larry in the conversation would help my cause. Both of my parents liked Larry. When we were younger, my mother used to say, “He’s such a nice boy.” Recently she’d changed that to, “Such a nice young man.”

           “You may as well attend college in a swamp,” my father said.

*  *  *

I stopped talking and looked at Jessica. “I understand wanting my whole story—but isn’t this too far back to matter?”

           “Not at all. It’s fascinating. I’ve never seen one of your kind offer an honest history, even when they realize their errors and try to make amends. Besides, you have to admit, evil has a perennial fascination.”

“It wasn’t all evil. Larry wasn’t evil. You probably know who he is. Larry Raskins—”

“Larry Raskins, the former Congressman? The political analyst? He was your childhood friend?”

“The former political analyst. Guys like Larry had high ideals and lived by high standards. We thought we were protecting the sanctity of towns like Baskerville.”

            “If you really wanted to protect the sanctity of towns like Baskerville, why did you leave? Why are you living in a thirty-five-million-dollar Manhattan condominium?”

            “Those things are not mutually exclusive. It’s possible to do both. A person can live in Manhattan and work to protect the sanctity of towns like Baskerville.”

           “You were stifled in Baskerville. Your parents were stifled there, particularly your mother. You were all trapped in a limited kind of life.”

           “There was a comforting sameness in Baskerville.”

           “There was a comforting whiteness in Baskerville.”

            I bristled. The most annoying thing about liberals was that every conversation included at least one instance of them implying that you’re a racist.

            “There was satisfying order in our lives,” I said.

            “You were trapped,” she said. “All of you. You’re looking back through rose-colored glasses.”

* * *

Am I? Both of my parents are now deceased, and my childhood home had long since been sold. I hadn’t been back to Baskerville in years, but—as if I had been there yesterday—I could remember the pungent smell of the creek that ran behind the field just beyond our neighborhood.

            When I was growing up, girls were expected to be polite and well-behaved, but it was understood that boys would get into mischief. I was the leader of the mischief-makers. Sundays often found me and my buddies by the creek with comic books and bottles of Coca-Cola when we were supposed to be in Sunday school.

           One time I went too far. I told two guys that a family of dwarfs lived in the basement of the bakery. They opened the storm door and climbed down to find out. The door closed behind them, shutting them in darkness. I couldn’t get the door open. When Jerry the baker found them, they had knocked over a sack of flour in the darkness. They emerged covered with flour and furious. The baker marched me home and told my father what I’d done.

           My father hit me on the side of the head, hard.

           It occurred to me that maybe Jessica was right. My childhood wasn’t all apple pie and white picket fences. Whenever anyone asked about my childhood, I said it was perfect: The ideal small-town 1950s American childhood. Mostly I believed it. Maybe being captured and locked in a steel cage and staring mortality in the eye is forcing me to look back honestly, without the rose-colored glasses.

           My father was not the type to show affection. Sometimes he called my mother “sweetie” in an off-handed manner. He was a no-nonsense guy who bluntly spoke the truth as he understood it. I grew up thinking that I respected my father. Now I realize that what I felt was fear: We never knew when he would snap and hit one of us. Most of the time he was calm. Then, without warning, something would set him off—like the time my middle brother was holding me down and threatening to beat me up. My father happened to walk by our door. He stalked into the room and hit my brother on the side of his head so hard that my brother reeled and almost lost his balance.

           Before you start talking about child abuse, I’ll remind you that spanking was commonplace back then. When that doctor in the 1960s—I forgot his name—published the book about why parents shouldn’t spank their kids, my father joked that the only use for a book that thick was using it as a paddle.

           My mother was as detached as my father, but she faked it better. Eventually, I realized she was faking it, but I pretended not to see it. She went through all the motions. We never really pulled together as a family. We were five people living under the same roof, but it was as if we were in a game of bumper cars. We bounced off each other but never connected.

           Maybe we were all trapped in a limited kind of life.

           I’d never thought much about my family. I always thought people who went to therapy and talked endlessly about their terrible families and horrible upbringings as excuses for their own failures were weak, pathetic creatures.

           But now, something occurred to me: Maybe my life took the shape it did because my father was unpredictable, and my mother was cold. Instantly, I rejected the idea. No, I would not go there. I firmly believed in the bootstrap theory. We each lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Whining is not allowed. Blaming others—or worse, blaming United States history or something our ancestors did—was a sign of weakness.

           Larry and I requested each other as roommates. Because some dorm rooms were triples, we filled out the questionnaire so we could be matched with a compatible roommate. We both wrote, “Conservative.”

           On a warm day in late August, my parents and I drove to Washington, D.C. with our backseat and trunk full of my stuff. The year I started college, 1971, was the height of the left-wing protests against the Nixon administration’s excursion into Cambodia. In May, three months before my parents and I arrived, one hundred thousand demonstrators had descended on Washington D.C. for a march. You could still see the aftermath of the demonstrations. Anti-war posters were plastered on windows. Posters praising Nixon had been slashed.

           “You should have gone to UVA,” my father said.

           I didn’t answer. It was usually best not to answer him. What I thought, though, was that someone needed to be here to fight back.

           Larry and I were assigned to a three-person dormitory unit: Our room contained three matching beds, dressers, desks, bookshelves, and closets. Our third roommate was Charlie Rocklin, who, of course, was from Connecticut—

* * *

           “Wait,” Jessica said. “Your college roommate was Charlie Rocklin?”

           “All four years,” I said.

           She stared at me so long I assumed she was wondering again whether I was a lunatic making shit up. Then she said, “Right. Charlie Rocklin went to Benjamin Franklin. Okay. Go on.”

* * *

           I had never heard of Charlie when I arrived at Franklin, although Charlie—with the bombastic manner he is well known for—acted as if everyone should already know his name. He’d been featured in newspapers all over New England as the high school senior who had helped mastermind the election of Congressman Sheldon Lessing. He’d even been featured in an article on the front page of The New York Times.

           Even back then, Charlie was the kind of guy you noticed right away. He was tall, walked with a looping gait, and wore round glasses that made him look a bit goofy. He liked to talk. More specifically, he liked to brag. Having a conversation with him was often like listening to a series of speeches.

           Our first evening in the dormitory, I was sitting in my desk chair, watching Charlie pin newspaper articles about himself to his bulletin board. Larry was sprawled on his bed reading the politics section of The Washingtonian. An empty pizza box and dirty plates were on the floor.

           “So,” I said to Charlie. “How’d you get that congressman elected?”

           “We torpedoed the other guy’s campaign,” Charlie said. “We used a few dirty tricks. The opposition refused to respond. The opposing candidate, a pinko commie, said he was going to take the high road. What a chump. There was this local news station, and the newscaster there loved the Pinko Commie and hated Sheldon Lessing. So, I forged a letter from Sheldon Lessing trashing the pinko commie and slipped it to the news station. They didn’t check carefully enough and presented it as if it was real. They talked about how the letters showed Lessing to be unprofessional. Lessing of course denied that he wrote the letter, and we easily proved it was a forgery. We then accused the campaign and news station of corruptly passing off forged documents to get their guy elected. It was a scandal. Lessing played the final weeks of the campaign as a victim of the biased media.”

           “I have a story,” I said. I told them how I had sunk Missy Little’s campaign in eleventh grade.

           “You did?” Larry said. “That was you?” I could tell he was trying to decide whether to get angry.

           Charlie lit up. He walked over and gave my arm a good-natured punch.

           That was when I knew Charlie and I would be good friends.

           The next morning, Larry put his breakfast tray down next to mine in the dorm cafeteria. “I can’t believe you did that, man,” he said.

            “Think what it would have been like with Missy Little as class president. She was unbearable.”

           “I know,” he said. “But still.”

           After that, I was careful with what I said around Larry. I tried to remember that he was an idealist, not a realist like me and Charlie.

           Larry and I joined a political group called The Right. The Right was organized, disciplined, and determined. We sat at a booth and talked to students. We hung fliers. We persevered even though we had actual hate directed at us from the liberals. They called us warmongers and worse because we supported Nixon and his efforts to rid Southeast Asia of communism. They conveniently forgot it was a liberal president who got us into the war in the first place. The liberals with their noisy marches and silly antics grabbed the headlines, but I knew we had the real strength.

           During our first year of college, two candidates for office—one for U.S. Congress and one for mayor of a small town in New England—asked Charlie for help with their elections. Both campaigns gave him the title of “advisor.” Twice he flew to their campaign offices, but mostly he talked on the phone.

           “I give them ideas,” he explained one evening. We were all three in our chairs. We were supposed to be studying, but we’d turned our chairs around to face each other, and were mostly just shooting the breeze.

“Come on, man,” Larry said and threw a pillow at Charlie’s face. “They hire you because they don’t have to pay you.”

           Charlie threw the pillow back. “They hire me because I’m good. I’ll collect later.”

           I wanted to major in political science, but math came so easily to me that it left me with more free time to do political work and just hang out in the dorm lounge. Computer science was a new major and the department was recruiting students who performed well in math.

           Late one night toward the end of my first year, I sat at my desk filling out the forms. The overhead light was off because Larry had already gone to bed. Charlie, whose desk was next to mine, was scribbling an essay on a legal pad.

           “Done,” I said, quietly enough not to wake Larry. I signed heavily. “Political science is where the power is, but what can I do?”

           “Political science is where the power is now,” Charlie said. “Computers are where the power is going to be.”

           At the time I thought he was trying to make me feel better. In fact, it was one of the most prescient comments anyone in my life has ever made. It also shows you that Charlie had natural talents and good instincts. There was more to him than bombast and a willingness to cheat.

           The story about the burglary of the Democratic National Party headquarters broke during the summer after my first year of college. Nobody at the time had any idea how that would blow up. It seemed like a two-bit random robbery. In late August, when we all moved back into the dormitory, Nixon’s reelection campaign was in full swing. The three of us—me, Charlie, and Larry—worked in the campaign office. Larry and I worked as volunteers. The campaign offered Charlie a small salary, so he reduced his class load to leave time for work. He became a member of the Committee to Reelect the President, known as CREEP.

           Charlie invited me to participate in meetings with a select group of CREEP members who took it upon themselves to devise dirty tricks. We met each Saturday in a diner near the campus where we could sit in a private room in a back room and talk freely. One day I told them about the trick I’d played on Missy Little. One of the more experienced operators said, “Brilliant. We’re doing it.”

           Later in the week, Charlie told me that he donated to a Communist Party candidate in a local race in the name of a top Leon Cade staffer. The local race was one in which the Republican candidate essentially ran unopposed—no Democrat got in the race—so the only other candidate was a Commie. Charlie leaked the receipt to the press. Leon Cade had to spend time refuting the story.

           A few weeks later, I sat in the CREEP meeting and listened as they devised a plan that I thought had no chance of working. They had persuaded one of their pals to apply for a job with the Cade campaign and they were working on the guy’s application letter and resume. They wanted a spy in the Cade camp.

           A few weeks later, Charlie told me that the guy so persuasively impersonated a liberal that he was given the job of driving Cade around. So they had a plant inside the Cade campaign. Their plant submitted its spy reports each day.

           “He gets plenty of rewards,” Charlie told me. “We’re paying him, and the Cade campaign is paying him. Plus, he’s paid in satisfaction for helping the conservative cause.”

           The tricks were not necessary, though. Nixon was popular. The economy was strong. It was clear that Nixon would give Leon Cade a total shellacking. Charlie said the Nixon campaign was not taking any chances. “Nixon knows there are people out to get him,” he said to me and Larry one night over a late-night meal of pizza and Coke in our dorm room. “Nixon says the intellectuals, the Jews, and the commies hate him. He’s sure they’re planning to sabotage him. So, we’re going to sabotage Leon Cade before he can get us. We’re not going to sit around like ducks with marks on our backs. We’re going to have some bare-knuckle politics.”

           “I don’t like it,” Larry said.

           “You don’t like what?” Charlie asked.

           “Bare-knuckle politics,” Larry said.

           “We need to win this,” Charlie responded.

           “I still don’t like it,” Larry said.

           The week after classes started, The Washingtonian reported that a $25,000 check intended for Nixon’s reelection campaign had been deposited in one of the Democratic National Headquarters burglars. Then, in October—a few weeks before the election— The Washingtonian reported that former Attorney General Jonathan Carlisle controlled a secret fund for spying on Leon Cade’s campaign. There were rumors that the fund had paid the burglars who’d entered the Democratic Headquarters.

           I bought a copy of the newspaper from the stand on the corner and returned to our dorm room. Neither Larry nor Charlie was back yet. I sat at my desk, trying to study, waiting for Charlie. By the time he returned, later that evening, Larry and I were studying at our desks. When Charlie walked in, I showed him the newspaper. “Hey!” I said. “What do you know about this?”

           “Who me?” he asked with fake innocence. “I don’t know anything!”

           “Come on,” I said. “Out with it.”

           “Look at it this way,” Charlie said. “The burglars got caught before they could get anything, so nothing they did helped Nixon.”

           “That’s not how it works,” Larry said. “If you break into someone’s house and you get caught before you steal anything, you still burglarized the place. It’s still a crime.”

           “Yeah, but it was a small-time two-bit burglary. A dime a dozen. It won’t hurt Nixon’s chances of getting reelected.”

           Charlie was right about that. Nixon cruised to an electoral college landslide. The victory party was held in the grand ballroom of the Hastings Hotel.

           An advantage of having kept such a low profile with almost no Internet presence was that I could feel confident that Rochelle did not know I was in prison. So many years had passed since I’d spoken to her that most of the time, she no longer lived and breathed in my imagination as a real person. I carried her image more like a picture of perfect beauty, timeless and unchanging. Now I remembered her as she had looked the night I met her, at Nixon’s victory party.

            Charlie was the one who got tickets for me and Larry to attend Nixon’s victory party. We spruced up in our best suits and ties and walked to the Hastings Hotel. The ballroom was lushly furnished, with glittering chandeliers, burgundy-colored curtains, and marble columns. A mouth-watering dessert table and trays of hors d’oeuvres were laid out in abundance. There was lamb and shrimp on skewers, mushrooms of olives, and fragrant curries.

            Pure joy and relief emanated through the ballroom. Nixon had won. Socialism had once more been beaten back. Law and order would live to see another day in America. The band played upbeat light classical and pop favorites, including exuberant numbers from Rogers and Hammerstein—My Fair Lady, Carousel, and Oklahoma! The crowd was mostly older, or at least, older from the vantage point of a college kid. Clusters of Franklin students were scattered through the crowd.

            I had been at the party for a few hours and was starting to feel bored. Larry had already left. Charlie was somewhere with his campaign buddies. I was searching for familiar faces when I saw her for the first time. She was standing with a group of Franklin students, wearing an ice-blue dress and a silver ornament in her hair. Her hair was light brown, silky with a golden sheen, and so long it hung to the bottom of her back. Her face was sweet and heart-shaped with rounded cheeks and a delicate chin. There was something calm and unearthly about her.

            I went to find Charlie. “Who’s that girl in the blue dress with the long hair?”

            He looked in the direction I pointed. “I’ll see if I can find out. Stay here.”

            He disappeared into the crowd. A few minutes later, he came back with another guy. “This is my friend Jeff,” Charlie told me. “The girl’s name is Rochelle Simon. Jeff’ll help you out.”

            Jeff said to me. “What’s your name again?”

            “Bob,” I said.

            “Come on, Bob.” Jeff walked straight toward the group. I struggled to keep up, weaving my way through the crowd. When we reached the group, Jeff maneuvered so that I was standing next to Rochelle. “Hi, everyone,” he said, “This is my buddy, Bob.”

            I said, “Hi,” looked around, and gave a little “hello” wave. I let a few beats of time pass so I wouldn’t seem too obvious. Then I turned to Rochelle. “And you are?” I asked innocently.

            “Rochelle,” she said.

            “Do you go to Franklin?” If she did, it was a wonder that I’d never seen her before. She wasn’t the kind of girl you overlooked.

            “Yes,” she said. “You?”

            Just then Charlie appeared. To Rochelle, he said, “Rochelle’s your name?”

            “Yes,” she said, startled.

            “I’m Charlie Rocklin.”

            “I know.” She gave a little laugh and said, “Everyone knows who you are.”

            Charlie grinned, pleased. He poked my shoulder and said, “This here is my buddy and roommate. Let me tell you about him. He’s a genius. Brilliant. If you like smart, he’s your guy.”

            The color came up in her face. It was possible this was helping. It was also possible that it wasn’t. I shot Charlie a get out of here look. Charlie grinned and left.

            “Okay,” I said to her, “now you know my major thanks to that commercial from my infamous roommate. What’s yours?”

            It wasn’t the world’s most original question, but it was sort of foolproof—the college campus version of “how are you?”

            “Marine biology,” she said.

            “Marine biology?” I repeated, taking care to hide my surprise. Girls in those days generally majored in English or education.

            “I like dolphins,” she said.

            I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but, desperate to keep the conversation going, I said, “I don’t think I have ever even seen a real dolphin. Just pictures.”

            “If I were to come back in another life as an animal,” she said, “I’d want to be a dolphin. Sometimes I think they’re a higher form of life than humans. They’re loving, loyal, intelligent, and playful. If we work at it, maybe we can evolve into dolphins.”

            I smiled, grateful that she tossed me such a perfect opportunity. “I’m sure,” I said gallantly, “that you are already all of those things.”

            “Which animal would you want to be?” she asked. It was a question that I was, to say the least, unprepared to answer.

            I gave the first response that sprang to mind. “A lion.” My next thought was wouldn’t everyone want to be a lion? Then I remembered she wanted to be a dolphin.

            “That is,” I added, “as long as lions don’t eat dolphins.”

            She gave her hair a toss. “Not to worry. If the lion tried, the dolphin would just swim away.”

            I took that as a challenge.

            “Would you like something from the refreshment table?” I asked. “I see pink lemonade, and an amazing dessert table.”

            “Sure,” she said. “Lemonade.”

            I led her toward the table, and then fetched two glasses of lemonade. As we sipped our lemonade, I kept up a steady stream of small talk. I learned that she was from a small town in southern New Jersey, she had two sisters and a brother, and she went home often to visit. She said she hoped that Nixon himself would appear to speak to us. He never did. Instead, one of his top campaign officials gave a victory speech. I don’t remember any of it. I was too busy staring at Rochelle while trying to pretend I wasn’t.

            We danced a few times. By then it was after midnight. The crowd started to thin out and the band packed up. She agreed to let me walk her back to her dormitory, which meant I didn’t have to worry about trying to get her phone number: Once I knew which dorm she lived in, I could call the phone on each floor until I found her.

            The air was crisp, the sky clear. I kept her talking by asking a steady stream of questions. She had a deliberate way of speaking as if thinking about each word. She was the type who has no rough edges, which I thought made her perfect for someone like me, who had only rough edges. I thought that the light gathered around her.

            When we reached her dormitory, I walked her into the lobby, which was now deserted. I had no intention of trying to kiss her too soon. I know how to play the game. I told her I’d call her, but I didn’t say when.

            I called her the very next day, even though Larry always insisted that the next day was too soon. His theory was that three days was obligatory—just long enough for the girl to wonder if you’d call, but not too long to appear uninterested. I had no intention of waiting. I asked her out for ice cream Thursday, after class.

            On Thursday we sipped old-fashioned ice cream sodas in a shop with black and white tile floors and soda from fountains. I wanted to know whether she was an idealistic conservative like Larry, or a realist like me and Charlie. I tested her by saying, “There are no boundaries in politics. You have to do what works.”

            “Oh that’s not true at all,” she said. “A president like Nixon has principles.”

            I glanced at her to see if she was sincere. She was. I wondered how she’d feel when she discovered that Nixon, like me and Charlie, was a realist.

            “He might be unconventional sometimes,” she went on, “but remember, he was one of the first to try to expose communism and the enemy within.”

            I smiled at her. I had my answer. She was an idealist like Larry.

            On Friday we went to a movie. As I walked her back to her dormitory, I lined up another date for the next day. Just before we reached her dormitory, I stopped in the shadows. I drew her close to me and kissed her for a long time.

            I called her the next day, and we fell into a routine, talking each day after classes, and getting together in the evening if our study schedules permitted. One day, in January, after lining up a dinner and movie date for Saturday night, I returned to my dorm room to find both Charlie and Larry sprawled on their beds. Larry was reading. Charlie was writing in a notebook.

            “I need you both to clear out of here by ten on Saturday night.”

            Charlie sat up and grinned. “Does Rochelle know about this?”

            Of course, Rochelle did not know. “She’s crazy about me,” I said.

           One memorable afternoon, I sat on a couch in the lobby of our dormitory, reading in The Washingtonian that Charlie and two other members of CREEP were accused of planting a spy inside Leon Cade’s campaign. I assumed planting a spy was a crime, but I didn’t for sure. I wondered if sitting in on meetings while a crime was planned was also a crime.

           The lobby of our dormitory filled up with students looking for Charlie. By the time he walked in through the door, the lobby was crowded. Charlie walked in and raised his arms, spreading them wide, and making the double-V peace sign that Nixon had made famous.

           “Yup,” he confirmed. “I gotta testify.”

           The day he testified, a bunch of us—me, Rochelle, Larry, Charlie’s girlfriend Laura, and about a dozen others from the Nixon campaign office—waited for him in a pizza restaurant not far from the campus.

           Charlie entered with a swagger, wearing a big, goofy grin. He slid into a bench next to Laura. “Nothing to it,” he said. “I told you all I didn’t break any laws.”

* * *

           “He did, though,” Jessica said. “He did break laws.”

           “Probably, but nobody could pin anything on him. He always insisted he was innocent.”

           “You know he wasn’t. Did he think it was all a joke?”

           “He thought he was doing what was necessary to save the nation from Leon Cade.”

            “I have heard that one before,” she said. “It’s the same ‘the ends justify the means’ argument used by would-be authoritarians everywhere. Go on.”

* * *

           All three candidates Charlie worked for—the two Congressional candidates and the mayor—also won their elections. It was the coattail effect. As Charlie liked to say, a rising tide lifts all the boats. Charlie now had national fame. He set up a lobbying business called Rocklin Consulting. Consulting, in this case, meant helping people get access to the officials he had helped elect. He even had contacts close to Nixon himself because some of the people he’d gotten to know on the campaign now had jobs in the administration.

           Mostly Charlie conducted his business from a pay phone. Sometimes he used the dorm phone, located in the hallway not far from our door. I could hear him saying things like, “Sure, I can get you a meeting.”

             Before long, Charlie was carrying around a thick roll of cash. When a bunch of us went out for pizza, Charlie picked up the bill. He didn’t exactly show off, but he didn’t try to hide his wealth either. He took his girlfriend on extravagant dates. He made large enough donations to campaigns to get the attention of candidates, thereby expanding his reach of influence.

           One evening, he said, “Why shouldn’t I make a little money? It’s just lobbying.”

           It was more than lobbying. I knew it and he knew it.

           “Is your conscience bothering you?” I asked.

           “Very funny,” Charlie said.

           Larry said, “You’re probably breaking a few laws.”

           “Nah,” Charlie said. “I checked. Besides, who cares?” He picked up a large book from his shelf and tossed it to Larry. “That,” Charlie said, “is the federal criminal code. One thousand, seven hundred, and fifty-five pages. That’s just the criminal code. It doesn’t include all the things you can get sued for. If you own an apartment building, and you don’t rent to some sleazy-looking guy who happens to be Black? Wham!” He pounded his desk with his fist. “You’re in trouble. Repeat that five thousand times with five thousand violations that shouldn’t even be in there and you could go broke from the lawsuits or be in jail for the rest of your life. Heck, you don’t even have to violate anything. You can get sued anyway and go broke defending yourself against made-up charges.”

           “Sort of crazy,” I said.

           “Sort of crazy? It is outright lunacy! You take my money by force, or you force me to do something, you’re guilty of a crime. Because you infringed my personal liberty. Everything else in that book is an infringement on all our personal liberty. There shouldn’t be more than a few pages of crimes. Murder, rape, theft, that kind of thing. You know why all these laws are on the books?”

           “No,” Larry asked. “Why?”

           I couldn’t tell if Larry was humoring Charlie. Sometimes Larry was unfailingly polite.

           “Because it’s a big, out-of-control administrative state,” Charlie said. “It is government gone crazy. The beast feeds itself. People like cushy government jobs, so they give themselves raises. They create more government jobs so they have something to give to their friends. It’s all wheeling and dealing.”

           “Uh, Charlie,” Larry said. “Aren’t you doing the same thing? Look how much money you’re making wheeling and dealing.”

           Charlie pointed his finger at Larry and said, “We have to beat them at their own game. I’m on the right side of this. You watch.”

           Two things moved quickly in 1973 and 1974—my relationship with Rochelle and Nixon’s unraveling. Sometimes on weekends, Rochelle and I studied together in the library, then walked along the river and through the Capitol Mall. We visited the monuments. We strolled in and out of the Smithsonian. She had the same attitude I did about the city: It was mostly dirty and grimy and noisy, so we remained in the central downtown area.

            Meanwhile, the burglary of the Democratic headquarters was moving closer to Nixon himself. In the spring, one of Nixon’s top aides was indicted and charged with conspiring to burglarize the Democratic Headquarters. When Nixon tried to fire the head of the Justice Department to shut down the investigation, Congress appointed a special prosecutor.

            That was where things were left when the school year ended. Rochelle and I both went home for the summer. I worked again in the hardware store. Rochelle took a full-time job babysitting for a five-year-old girl. Basically Rochelle spent the summer playing with Barbie dolls. Each day, I put my letter to her in the mail and received hers.

            We returned to school in the fall and picked up where we had left off, seeing each other most days, studying together on weekends. We both followed the impeachment investigations closely. Each day I bought a copy of The Washingtonian, even though I was growing to despise that newspaper with its obvious liberal bias. Each evening in the dorm lounge I listened to Walter Cronkite, although his evident bias against Nixon grated on me as well. Meanwhile, I breezed through my math and computer science classes.

            One weekend, Rochelle took me home to meet her family. Her mother and father were waiting for us on the train platform when our train pulled into the station. They made such a fuss you’d think they hadn’t seen Rochelle in years. I stood by awkwardly as they hugged.

            Then Rochelle’s mother turned to me. “And you must be Bob. We’ve heard such nice things about you.”

            I offered my hand, which she ignored. Instead, she gave my shoulders an affectionate squeeze. It wasn’t quite a hug, but it was warm, welcoming, and much more intimate than a handshake. We drove back to their house, where Rochelle’s siblings and a few cousins were waiting for us. Once I got over my shyness, I fell in love with her family. I came to feel more at ease with Rochelle’s family than with my own.

* * *

During my third year of college, I needed an afternoon class, and there were not many offerings. One was a course in Russian history. Intrigued, I signed up. Know your enemy, I thought.

            The course traced Russian history from feudalism and Czarist Russia, through the Revolution, to the establishment of the communist state. I ended up reading some Karl Marx, but I skimmed through the silly Communist Manifesto and read the far more serious Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles. I read about their insane idea that the evolution of society was basically predetermined: society would evolve from feudalism to capitalism and then finally to communism—which Marx and Engles imagined as a sort of utopia in which the government owns the nation’s resources and industries. According to the fantasy they spun, under the benevolent leadership of the communist party, all people would work according to their ability and share the nation’s wealth equally. Class systems would be eliminated through the redistribution of wealth. The way this utopia would come about was like this: the workers would realize that the evil capitalists were basically enslaving them. They would rebel and size the factories from the factory owners and establish a communist government, and then they would all live happily ever after in a classless society.

            People really believed that dangerous nonsense.

            Because the idea was so unrealistic, nobody should have been surprised when the Russian Revolution, instead of leading to perfect communist bliss, led to a government in which the Communist Party established a bona fide totalitarian state in the form of a sprawling bureaucracy dictating every aspect of people’s lives, including what people could believe or say.

            As far as I was concerned, Communist Manifesto and went directly to the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles deserved to be on the shortlist of books that did the most damage to the world.

            The problem was that America, too, was becoming a bureaucratic state—and American liberals, who held watered-down versions of Marx’s whacky ideas—were determined to enlarge that bureaucratic state, thereby moving us closer to Soviet Russia in which various bureaucracies would promulgate rules dictating every aspect of our lives.

            “We’re becoming like Russia,” I told Rochelle one evening. We were sitting in Smokey Joe’s, a restaurant entirely misnamed because nobody smoked. It was a student hangout with a jukebox, a dance floor, fried snacks for sale, and free popcorn. “All those alphabet-soup agencies deprive people of freedom and liberty in with the goal of creating a literal welfare state.”

            “Is that right?” she asked politely.

            “I understand now,” I went on, “why Charlie feels the way he does about the criminal code and all those rules. Who needs them? Did we have a fifteen-hundred-page volume of laws on the frontier?”

            She smiled and said, “Maybe if there had been more laws, there would have been fewer gunfights.”

            “Outlaws don’t obey the laws. They would have still carried guns and used them. Good people do obey the laws which means that all those laws puts good people at a disadvantage.”

            She frowned, gave her head a little shake as if considering this, but didn’t respond at all. I thought it was because my argument was so persuasive.

            The summer after our third year of college, both Rochelle and I made plans to stay in the city. I landed a plum summer job, a paid internship in the Senate building. I was a math major, but I had political connections: all my spare time was spent working for the Right or political campaigns. As the end of the term approached, I sublet a furnished studio in Arlington for the summer, an easy subway ride from D.C. The guy who I sublet from was a graduate student studying in Europe for the summer. It was your classic bachelor pad: lamps without shades, nothing on the walls, and chipped and unmatched plates and mugs in the cabinets.

            One of the dormitories remained open, and Rochelle stayed there. I’ll admit that I rented the studio for the sole purpose of having a place to be alone with Rochelle. She was taking summer school classes because she decided to add a major in education so she could teach high school biology. She spent her weekends studying at my place.

            On August sixth, a date seared in my memory, we sat together on the couch in my apartment watching as Nixon appeared in a special broadcast. He addressed the nation from the Oval Office. “Good evening,” he began. “This is the thirty-seventh time I have spoken to you from this office, where so many decisions have been made that shaped the destiny of this Nation—”

            Rochelle scooted closer to me. I put my arm over her shoulder. We both knew what was coming. “In all the decisions I have made in my public life,” Nixon said, “I have always tried to do what was best for the nation. Throughout this long and difficult period, I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me. In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in Congress to justify continuing that effort.”

            “His own party isn’t defending him anymore,” I said. “It’s a disgrace.”

            “I have never been a quitter,” Nixon was saying. “To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president, I must put the interest of America first. Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.”

            I stood up, reached over, and turned off the television. I went back to sit next to her.

            “He shouldn’t have given up,” I said.

            “What could he have done?” she asked. “Once the Republican Senators stopped supporting him, he knew he’d be removed from office.”

            “There is something so deeply wrong in this.” I heard the quiver in my own voice.

            Just then, the telephone rang. It was Charlie.

            “It’s bullshit!” Charlie was furious. “It wasn’t like that burglary would have changed the election. He would have still won.”

            “They hounded him for years,” I said.

            “Exactly. Nixon knew he was a victim, but he was too noble to say so. Remember in 1962 when he stepped down from his governorship? He looked at the reporters and said, ‘You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.’ He was wrong to resign. It was a bad decision. When you get knocked down, you don’t give up! You fight back.”

            Charlie ranted for a few more minutes. Listening, I felt my own anger growing.

            Charlie said, “Gotta go,” and we both hung up.

            I turned back to Rochelle. She said, “But if the media had it in for him, I don’t know what else he could have done.”

            I sat back and thought about Walter Cronkite and The Washingtonian.

            “Liberals control the media,” I said, “and that’s the entire problem.”

            I pulled her close to me and wound my hand into her hair. “I’ve never seen a girl with such long hair.”

            “I stopped cutting it when my sister died.”

            I felt a sudden chill. She had told me about two sisters, Melissa and Janet. She never told me there had been a third.

            “Your sister?”

            “Andrea.”

            “What happened to Andrea?” I asked.

            “Andrea was in fifth grade when she was hit by a car.” Tears welled in her eyes as she spoke. “She was crossing the street after getting off the school bus. The car swung around to pass the bus and didn’t see her. Andrea and I shared a bunk bed and played games in the dark after everyone else was asleep.”

            There was a beat of silence, and then another. I searched for something to say.

            “The last time I talked to Andrea was the morning she died. I was brushing my hair. I had always worn it in a short bob, but it was getting longer and was then down to my shoulders. The last thing Andrea said to me was, ‘Rochelle, you have such beautiful hair. It’s the color of honey. I’m glad you’re letting it grow.”

            In the silence, I felt I could hear my own heart beating.

            Then she said: “I haven’t cut my hair since.”

            I sat there, struggling to wrap my mind around the fact that Rochelle literally wore her grief on her back, every single day. That was my first inkling that there was much more to Rochelle than met the eye, and that, behind her tranquil face she hid a core of strength.

Rochelle and I got married the summer after graduation. She wore her hair loose around her shoulders, with a garland of flowers in her hair, like a woodland nymph. I wore the pale blue tuxedo she picked. (Yes, in the 1970s you could rent a light blue tuxedo.) The ceremony was held in Rochelle’s family’s church and the reception was in an adjacent public garden. For our honeymoon, we spent three days in Manhattan. We wandered around Time Square, went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and saw plays on Broadway.

            I took my vows seriously. When I said, “From this day forward, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health,” I meant it. It never occurred to me that I do was not forever.

*  *  *

The door opened and a prison guard said, “Time’s up for today.”

           Jessica gathered her things.

           “Can you come back tomorrow?” I asked, I heard the pleading tone in my own voice, and recoiled from it. I am not the kind of man who begs.

           “Yes,” she said. I’m embarrassed to admit how grateful I felt. “After nine-thirty is best. My wife may come first thing.”

           “I’ll be here.”

           I returned to my cell to find my dinner tray waiting for me on the desk. This time, the meal was lasagna, already cold, garlic bread, and salad. As I ate, I wondered if Susan was home by herself. I figured more likely, she was with Ken and Eliza. I imagined the three of them busy, each on their own laptops, searching, researching, and looking for the perfect target so they could execute my plan for escape. Or, for all I knew, something happened by now and they’d give up. Maybe the only way out of here was to sign a bogus confession and wait until the whole thing blew over.

            I asked myself, would that be so bad? I recoiled. It was like asking a man, will you sell what’s left of your soul?

            No. I would not let Phillip break me. He was nothing but a thug with half a brain. I would not allow Phillip or Pike or anyone else to use me like a piece of old junk and discard me when I was no longer useful.

            How had I reached this point? Surely, I hadn’t started in life as a person without honor. Surely, I hadn’t started life as the kind of guy who would end up being a tool for thugs. I felt a growing shock that I had come to the place where I might have no choice but to sign a bogus confession or risk death.

            I thought about Rochelle and wondered what she would think if she knew I was trying to reclaim what was left of my honor. Would she see that I did have some Larry in me? Or would she resist the idea that I had any honor to reclaim?

           I finished eating and then placed the tray by the door.

           Before my arrest, I knew nothing about what life in prison was like—except what I’d learned from the packet of prison rules and from the novels I’d read that were set in a prison. In high school, I’d read the novels of Arthur F. Manon and the memoir, Papillon, written by the French writer Henri Charrière who had been wrongly sentenced to prison and who managed more than one dramatic escape.

            I recalled a particularly unsettling passage from a Manon novel about how inmates, particularly those in solitary confinement, daydream about the future, think about the past, and train themselves not to think about the present. Essentially, they learn to live in another time, which makes sense. There was nothing to an inmate’s present life. An inmate had nothing but the past, and if lucky, the future. And how could a person think about the future when he had no idea took shape it might take? That left only the past—and I supposed that very few inmates could look back without pain or regret.

           By the time a warden came for my tray, the sun was almost down and I’d gotten ready for bed. From my window, I could see the moon, pale and cold. It was just a sliver. At the base of the moon, a bright star—or maybe a planet—shone brightly. The grating of the window formed a black pattern against the sky.

           Nights in a prison cell are long. That night, my second in the prison, I don’t believe I slept longer than an hour at a stretch. I wasn’t used to the noises, the metallic smell, or the sensation of being locked in a metal cell. Maybe a person never gets used to it. Perhaps people who are here for years still feel a momentary panic each time they are awakened by a loud rattling of the pipes or the sound of a distant door slamming shut.

           During one of the times I was awake, I stared upward at the stains in the ceiling. Then I closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep.

           The next time I woke up, it was with a start, as if something had awakened me. The sky was still black. The dim, yellowed light lit the contents of my cell. The only sound was the slight knocking of water in the pipes. I was tempted to get up and look out the spy hole, but I couldn’t summon the energy.

 

To continue reading, click here for Part II.