Kim Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

Frank and Nick were saying that there were very few feral animals still at large, and almost all the holdouts were either arctic or mountain species. The other exotics had all come in from the cold, or died.

Charlie noticed Nick smoothly change the subject: “What about your friends?”

The human ferals, Frank said, were still pretty easy to find. “My own group is kind of scattered, but in general I think there’ll be more and more people like them as time goes on. Housing is just too expensive. If you can arrange some other way, it makes sense in a lot of ways.”

“You wouldn’t have to worry about blackouts,” Charlie remarked.

Later, when the boys were asleep, Frank hunkered down by the fire, holding his hands to it and staring into the flames.

“Charlie,” he said hesitantly, “has anyone on Chase’s staff been looking into the election, and that talk that went around about irregularities in some of the votes?”

“No one I know of.”

“I’m surprised.”

“Well, it’s kind of a Satchel Paige moment.”

“What does that mean?” Anna said.

“Don’t look back—something might be gaining on you.”

Frank nodded. “But what if something is gaining on you?”

“I think that was Satchel’s point. But what do you mean?”

“What if there was a group that tried to fix the election, but failed?”

Charlie was surprised. “Then good.”

“But what if they’re still out there?”

“I’m sure they are. It’s a spooky world these days.”

Frank glanced quickly at Charlie, then nodded, the corners of his mouth tight. “A spooky world indeed.”

“You mean spooks,” Anna clarified.

Frank nodded, eyes still on the fire. “There’s seventeen intelligence agencies in the federal government now. And some of them are not fully under anyone’s control anymore.”

“Whoah. How do you mean?”

“You know. Black agencies. Black agencies so black they’ve disappeared, like black holes.”

“Disappeared?” Charlie said.

“No oversight. No connections. I don’t think even the president knows about them. I don’t think anyone knows about them, except the people in them.”

“But how would they get funding?”

Anna laughed at that, but Frank frowned. “I don’t know. I suppose they have access to some kind of slush fund.”

“So, whoever was responsible for those funds would know.”

“They might only know…maybe they’re being run by people who have discretionary funds, so those people know, but they’re in the groups, or leading them. Forming them…I don’t know. You know more about that kind of stuff than I do. But surely there’s money sloshing around that certain people have access to? Especially in intelligence?”

Charlie nodded. “Forty billion per year on intelligence. Black program money could get subdivided. I’ve heard of that happening before.”

“Well…” Frank paused, as if weighing his words carefully. “They are a danger to the republic.”

“Whoah.” Charlie had never heard Frank say such a thing.

Frank shrugged. “Sorry, but it’s true. If we mean to be a constitutional government, then we’re going to have to root some of these groups out. Because they are a danger to democracy and open government as we’re used to thinking of it. They’re trying to move all the important stuff into the shadows.”

“And so…”

“So I’m wondering if you could direct Chase’s attention to them. Make him aware of them, and urge him to root them out.”

“Do you think he could?”

“I should hope so!” Frank looked disturbed at the question. “I mean, if he followed the money, made his secretaries and agency heads account for all of it fully—maybe sicced the OMB on all the black money to find out who was using it, and for what…couldn’t you?”

“I’m not sure,” Charlie admitted. “Maybe you could.”

“The Pentagon can’t account for its outlays,” Anna pointed out grimly, knitting like one of the women under the guillotine, click click click! “They have a percentage gone missing that is bigger than NSF’s entire budget.”

“Gone missing?”

“Unaccounted for. Unaccountable. I call that gone missing.” Anna’s disapproval was like dry ice, smoking with cold. Freeze all the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into one big cake of dry ice and drape it around Anna’s shoulders, in the few moments when she was professionally contemptuous.

“But if it were done by a competent team,” Frank persisted, “without any turned people on it, and presidential backing to look into everything?”

Charlie still was dubious, but he said, “In theory that would work. Legally it should work.”

“But?”

“Well, but the government, you know. It’s big. It has lots of nooks and crannies. Like what you’re talking about—black programs that have been fire-walled so many times, there are blacks within blacks, superblacks, superblack blacks. With black accounts and dedicated political contributions, so that the money is socked away in Switzerland, or Wal-Mart….”

“Jesus. There are government programs with that kind of funding?”

Charlie shrugged. “Maybe.”

Frank was staring at him, startled, even perhaps frightened. “In that case, we could all be in big trouble.”

Anna was shaking her head. “A complete audit would find even that. It would include all accounts of every federal employee or unit, and also what they’re doing with every hour of their work time. It’s a fairly simple spreadsheet, for God’s sake.”

“But it could be faked so easily,” Charlie objected.

“Well, you have to have some way to check the data.”

“But there are hundreds of thousands of employees.”

“I guess you’d have to use a statistically valid sampling method.”

“But that’s just the kind of method you can hide your black programs out of the reach of!”

“Hmm.” Now Anna was frowning too. She was also sending curious glances Frank’s way. This was a pretty un-Frank-like inquiry, in both content and style. “Well, maybe you’d have to be comprehensive with the intelligence and security agencies in particular. Account for everything in those.”

Charlie said, “So, that being the case, they probably aren’t tucked there. They’re probably in Commerce or the Coast Guard or the Treasury. Which by itself is huge. Like, you know, the bank.”

Frank said, “So maybe it isn’t possible.”

Charlie and Anna did not reply; each was thinking it over.

Frank sighed. “Maybe if we found a specific problem, and then told the president about it? Or, whoever could best put a stop to it? Wouldn’t that be the president?”

Charlie said, “I should think the president would always be best at that kind of thing. But there are a lot of demands on his time.”

“Everyone keeps saying that. But this could be important. Even, you know…crucial.”

“Then I would hope it would get attended to. Maybe there’s a unit designed to do it. In the Secret Service or something.”

Frank nodded. “Maybe you could talk to him, then. When you think it’s a good time. Because I know where to start the hunt.”

Charlie and Anna glanced at each other, saw that neither knew what he was talking about.

“What do you mean?” Charlie said.

“I’ve run across some stuff,” Frank said, adjusting a log in the fire.

Then the power flickered and hummed back on, and after a while Frank made his excuses and took off, still looking distant and thoughtful.

“What was that all about?” Charlie said.

“I don’t know,” Anna replied. “But I’m wondering if he found that woman in the elevator.”