Blue Warrior

Now that Fiero and Diele were a major news item, the networks were hungry for more revelations. Ian chummed the waters carefully, ladling out the juicy chunks in digestible, quotable bites, not only to the media but to party organizations as well. Why not turn the sharks on each other?

The Sunday-morning talk shows were crammed with Republican and Democratic legislators jockeying for position, trying to seize the moral high ground from their opponents, each concentrating their verbal volleys on either Fiero or Diele according to party affiliation. Neither had any true defenders. The best either party could hope for was that the other party would get the most blame.

But the public was outraged at both parties. Even the venerable Howard Finch, an old ally of Fiero and a lifelong Democrat, gave an impassioned plea at the end of his show, Meet the Nation, urging Fiero to reconsider her decision to seek the presidential nomination.

Fiero’s election hopes evaporated, and Diele’s future was suddenly questioned. Greyhill pushed him off of the ticket, fearing the vice president’s scandals would ruin his own reelection chances, hoping to hide behind the paper-thin shield of plausible deniability.

Myers felt no guilt breaking her agreement with Diele and Greyhill to keep the incriminating audio under wraps in exchange for the pardon and release of Ian, Rao, and the others. Both men had committed a federal crime by agreeing to the deal in the first place. It would only add to Diele’s time in prison and put Greyhill in the center of the firestorm. Her calculation was dead-on. Both men kept their mouths shut. And they didn’t renege on the pardons—You can’t unring the bell, Diele told Greyhill — because Myers would release that audio conversation, too.

Myers reveled in the ruin of Diele and Fiero. But as far as she was concerned, it was only the beginning.

* * *

Myers feared for her country. It had been seized decades before by career politicians, an entrenched class of professional extortionists skilled in the art of the shakedown, and worse, of stealing money from future generations to buy votes. They enriched themselves and their families at the expense of the country. The greater crime was that their self-serving policies contributed to America’s rapid decline. Chronic unemployment, failing schools, endless wars, massive trade deficits, and crumbling infrastructure could all be laid at their feet, and yet, they were never held accountable.

Knowledge was power, but secret knowledge was the most powerful. The permanent political class continued to rule virtually unopposed despite the fact that the majority of Americans held them in contempt, as every public opinion poll confirmed year after year. What voters lacked were specifics. Regarding flagrant violations of the law, prosecutors lacked evidence. Myers was determined to change all of that.

Every member of the House was up for reelection in 2016, and one-third of the Senate. The Fiero and Diele exposures were an earthquake, but Myers wanted to create a political tsunami that would wreck the permanent political class that had bankrupted the nation and betrayed the Constitution.

Fiero and Diele were quickly pushed off the front-page headlines as fresh sacrificial goats fell victim to the media knives. The new revelations were bigger than WikiLeaks, the Watergate tapes, and the Pentagon Papers combined. Dozens of veteran politicians suddenly found the urge to “be with their families” rather than continue in public service before any incriminating data was released against them, hoping to avoid expulsion or conviction in order to maintain their lucrative, full-salaried retirement packages.

The ones that didn’t quit were clean, because they had nothing to hide. Men like Rep. David Lane, the only Democratic presidential candidate still qualified to run in all fifty states.

The data dump continued. So much quality information was released that newsrooms had to rehire entire staffs previously let go. Those newsrooms and editorial boards that tried to protect political favorites were quickly bypassed by the New Media outlets willing to tell the truth. Federal, state, and local prosecutors geared up for a series of high-profile trials.

Myers couldn’t be certain where all of it would lead, only that the power of entrenched incumbents might soon be broken.

Everything was about to change.

65

Galápagos Islands

Pacific Ocean

18 October

Jasmine Bath had a long bucket list. That was part of the reason she had needed to amass so much cash for her permanent retirement. She hadn’t quite reached her ultimate goal, but twenty-eight million dollars would go a long way, particularly the way she had invested it, spread out over twenty hedge funds in ten countries under as many different aliases.