COVERT WRITERS TAKEDOWN by Joe Bergeron (best beach reads txt) 📕

loaded into the Commander’s belly,
the Secretary stepped into the jet’s interior, and
proceeded down a plush Mohawk ocean blue carpet.
The tastefully appointed cabin had abundant natural
light streaming through its signature oval windows,
and 100 percent fresh air constantly circulated
throughout its interior. Should he require something
from his luggage, the aircraft had a large, fully
accessible baggage area, and retrieving a file, or
anything else would present no problem at all.
Selecting a seat over the port wing, Tollman
was greeted by a five foot nine inch strawberry blond in
a sharp General Telecom blue blazer.
“Mister Secretary, my name is Carole and I’ll
be your hostess during your trip. May I get you a
beverage?” 121
General Telecom didn’t actually have hostesses
on their fleet of private aircraft. The executives at the
telecommunications company were used to getting up
and getting their own drinks or snacks. Carole Martino
was actually the Executive Assistant to G.T.’s Executive
Vice President for government relations. Her boss had
asked her to take the plane ride.
Tollman responded without looking up.
“A water would be fine.”
Estimated time of arrival on the Cuban island
was 11:00 a.m.
Sunday, May 21, 9:15 a.m.
Catalina Salazar approached the door on the
second floor of the Vice President’s villa where two
armed secret police loyal to Miguel Belize stood silently.
Neither of them escaped noticing her shapely legs, nor
her cotton denim mini, and black, scoop neck lycra tee.
She addressed them during her approach.
“Has he finished breakfast?”
“Si Senorita Salazar.”
“Let me in, and stay by your posts.”
A key turned in a deadbolt lock.
Pat McKenzie sat in a gray stripped low-back
chair, a day-old NEW YORK TIMES on the floor beside
him. As requested by Tollman, they were keeping him
comfortable.
The turning deadbolt had attracted his
attention.
He rose as she entered.
She commented on the gesture.
“Are you standing because a woman has
entered the room, or to defend yourself, Mister
McKenzie?”
122
McKenzie gave her the truth.
“I’m standing because an emissary has
approached me. I meet my enemies as I do my friends -
face to face.”
“I’m not your enemy, Mister McKenzie.”
“You’re either one of the two.”
He moved toward her.
“Los Quinientos, I’m told, are my abductors.
You’re revolutionists in need of money. How much for
my freedom”
“That is being decided. For the time being we
need to address your absence from work. I’ll arrange
for you to speak to your daughter - she’ll make your
excuse.”
As he took two more steps toward her, she felt
a subjection.
“If my daughter’s harmed, you’ll have to kill
me, and when I die, I’ll come back from the grave and
drag you to Hell.”
She sensed a terrifying truth in both his words
and eyes.
“GUARD!”
Two agents quickly entered, quickly assessing
the room.
The Sergeant noticed her paleness.
Momentarily a bit shaken, she felt a sense of command
comfort return.
“No, I’m fine.”
McKenzie’s bearing was straight, honest, and
unaffectedly confirmed.”
She told him both a lie and a truth.
“We could use a man like you in our cause,
Mister McKenzie.”
He gave her the straight truth.
“Your fucking cause can go to Hell.”
123
With the same stroke he’d used during a
different regime on defenseless Panamanians, the
Sergeant brought the steel plated butt of his automatic
to the right temple of McKenzie’s head.
As he fell to the floor bleeding, a white hot
flash seized his body.
Raising the weapon for a down stroke, her
hand placed on the Sergeant’s arm caused him to cease
his action.
Looking down, she offered him her final
remarks.
“These men are dedicated, Mister McKenzie. I
hope for your sake you’re a quick learner. You’ll speak
to your precious daughter soon.”
Sunday, May 21, 10:58 a.m.
The Gulfstream touched down two minutes
before its estimated time of arrival.
During the flight, Tollmam had assembled and
detailed the information the U.S. public would see and
hear regarding his private meeting with Miguel Belize.
The Cuban Press, as well as the three
American television networks, and a few dozen Major
metropolitan U,S. newspapers had been told they would
all receive official press kits detailing the talks, which
were described as preliminary to comprehensive review
procedures, or, ‘I’ll tell you what I want to when I want
to tell you.’
The black Mercedes moved to within twenty
feet of the plane’s stairwell. It’s two occupants had
simple instructions.
‘Deliver the Secretary through the front gate to
the portico entrance of the Vice President’s villa.’
124
Sunday, May 21, 9:25 a.m.
Akron, Ohio
Murray Herold, Managing Editor for the
ACRON BEACON JOURNAL sat at the computer desk
in his den, a glazed donut in his left hand, a coffee in
his right while reading his TAC 5, and Michael
Courtney’s lead.
With a circulation of 160,000 THE BEACON
was not part of the cutoff for the ‘write positive’ Cuban
program.
Herold, a Laws candidate out of Ohio State,
had been writing for Yankee Echo for eleven years at
two different newspapers. He’d joined the organization
one year before the man who’s lead he now read.
M.H. 5/20 11:53 a.m.
ROBERT - ROBERT
CBA 1 WRT PROSPRS SUP PRES PLN
MCLEAD FOLLOWS
INS DT 5/24-29
This part of the TAC told him who the
communication was from, what the write was about, the
fact that he was to take a positive position supporting
the President’s Cuban Reform Plan, how many articles
to write, and when to publish.
DTL NEEDS
ECON MFG HVYEQ
C CORPS 6, 12, 37, 40, 41
SPT W/DTA FOLLOWS
SGST RDRS C/W CONG RPS A/O USSENS
The last five lines of the cryptic Tactical
Advance Communication instructed Herold to detail the
needs of the Cuban economy with regard to
manufacturing, and especially to the requirements
geared toward heavy equipment. 125
It additionally requested readers contact their
Representatives.
Taking the final bite on his donut, and licking
his fingers like any good glazed donut eater does, he
sipped his coffee one more time before placing it on the
desk top.
Pulling a three ring binder from his desk’s
lower right drawer, he flipped to the corporate section
and corresponded numbers to names.
(6) Cummins, (12) Caterpillar, (37) Dana, (40)
Borg-Warner, (41) GM
The fax sheet detailing Courtney’s lead
expressed the desperate need for the Cuban nation to
remain democratic. In addition it paralleled President
Benson’s thought that only through free and democratic
capital enterprise would the island nation be able to
maintain its present, albeit frail status, as an
independent and free country.
Herold spread his data around him while
speaking to himself.
“Here we go Courtney, one Cuban positive
coming up.”
Greenville, South Carolina
Julie Mathaeis, Business Editor for the SAN
BERNADINO SUN lit a Marlboro - a habit she’d
acquired while at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.
While at the school, the distance from home in
California, combined with her struggle in Laws class,
had caused he to worry incessantly, and cigarettes
helped calm her nerves.
Although not at the top of her class, she was a
fluid, pragmatic, and resourceful writer.
126
Because she wasted no words, her readers
found her stories easy to comprehend and remember.
She was a good choice for Yankee Echo.
Tapping the keyboard of her Apple Mac, the
Cuban editorial would appear in Wednesday’s edition.
‘President Benson’s Cuban Economic Reform
Plan deserves a chance…’
Albuqerque, New Mexico
Ron Collins, Editorial Page Editor for the
ALBUQUERQUE TRIBUNE was the oldest member of
the clandestine writing organization. At sixty-seven,
he’d taken up residency in New Mexico after retiring
from a senior editorial position with the NEW YORK
TIMES. A personal friend of Pat McKenzie’s for years,
they’d spent many afternoons chatting by phone about
national and international events.
McKenzie trusted Collins, he having been one
of the few writers who’d supported his son John’s
position, while chastising members of his industry for
their shoddy investigative procedures. Collins, sitting
on his porch with his Commodore laptop began his
‘write positive.’
‘I’ve been around a long time. Long enough to
remember The Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Riot Police death
squads, and all the other horrors suffered directly or
indirectly by the Cuban people under the Castro
regime. Juan Ramos Santiago is a democratic idealist
who needs help - we can neither turn our back on him,
nor on his people as they struggle to breathe the air of
freedom.’
There are approximately sixty newspapers in
the United States with circulation bases greater than
two hundred thousand.
127
Together they represent an incredible power
base, a force that, when united, can cause tremendous
damage or good simply because of the large number of
people who read them, and are influenced by either the
truth or fiction within their pages. The very real
possibility existed that the breachers, wherever they
were located, would be subscribers of one or more of
these publications.
By Courtney’s design, these newspapers had
been excluded from the ‘positive write’.
His first contingency plan had called for this
probable occurrence, and the risks were unacceptable.
There were still three hundred newspapers in
the U.S. where the ‘positive writes’ would see type hit
newsprint, and their pro-active effect on The Reform
Plan.
It was a one shot deal, and it was one of the
few balances Courtney had on the asset side of his
analytical equation.
Soon, half of Yankee Echo writers, at least
what Courtney thought was half, would be authoring
‘write negatives’.
He had to find Pat, free him, eliminate, or
discredit the breach, and remediate any damages to the
organization, and to the President’s Reform Plan that
would occur during the elapsed time.
What Courtney thought was a worst case
scenario for Yankee Echo would bring to bear on the
organization the truth in the famous quote from the
English Restoration’s leading poet, John Dryden, that…
‘Even Victors Are By Victory Undone’
128
Sunday, May 21, 11:40 a.m.
George Tollman’s luggage was carried from the
Mercedes up a back entrance stairway to the second
floor of the villa. During his official visit, although
separated by walls, he would oftentimes stand no more
than fifty feet from Patrick McKenzie, the man whose
son he killed in a fit of rage years before.
Although the Secretary of Commerce was well
aware of the relationship, the thought would not cross
his mind. It was in another time, another place, simply
a moment when he was disobeyed, and subsequently
threatened with revealment.
The logic of his warped mind had sent a
message to his trigger finger, a thought with no regard
for either life, or emotion.
He stood in the library where Dan Bellcamp
had first met, fell in love with, and then betrayed the
same woman standing there now.
Catalina Salazar was more appropriately
dressed for this visitor. Although nothing, save a tent,
could hide her exquisite Cuban figure, her white,
draping, V-neckline cotton blouse over a black skirt did
not evidence her womanhood as much as some of the
other clothing in her extensive wardrobe.
“May I offer you something, Mister Secretary?
There was no tilt of the head, no broad,
encompassing smile - only businesslike professionalism.
“No”
She was on his shit list, having allowed
Bellcamp to escape his death.
She sensed the contempt.
Had she not had a conversation with Miguel
twelve hours earlier, she would have told him what he
could do with his contumely manner.
129
“We need him,” her Vice President and lover
had told her.
“When he helps us turn American public
opinion away from investment in Cuba, we will have
the Presidency within out grasp. Santiago will not be
able to hold the government together.”
It was to important to allow egos to become a
variable in the plan; they shared a common goal for the
same reasons - money and power.
“George - welcome to Cuba.”
The Vice President had entered