The Fires of Orc
Chapter 24: Crescendo

There are no morals in politics;

there is only expedience.

A scoundrel may be of use to us

just because he is a scoundrel.

Vladimir Lenin

My apologies, reader. I’ve meandered. Sequential recall is, I’m sorry to say, a casualty of age. One doesn’t wish to stray but the tangent is an old man’s constant companion. With your indulgence, I’ll recap. We’re days away from a presidential election. A few weeks prior I undertook a morally dubious task that Lydia learned of prior to her accidental overdose on a drug I helped to promote and at the moment there’s a freelance cyberterrorist loose in the world who might or might not leak the story of how we used Mrs. Dunlap, which would be quite bad for Markus and far worse for me.

Four days before the election a message appeared on my tablet: It’s me. Time to talk. For a moment I thought of calling in an IT kid to see if the message could be tracked but there was no point in trying. Theowulf could hide in plain sight. He wouldn’t contact me unless he had the upper hand. I replied.

Ok. Talk.

So did she kill herself or what?

They ruled it an accident, I said.

But there’s what you know and what you can prove. I think we both know there’s more to that story than they can prove.

Talking to Theowulf was a hazardous undertaking. The slightest slip-up could be the weakness he would seize on as an excuse to unleash mayhem.

I have no reason to doubt the authorities, I answered.

Whatever. But she was plenty pissed at you and we know why.

I suppose we do know why, I conceded.

Don’t sweat it though. I don’t care about that.

All right then, I said, so what are we talking about?

The Dunlap story.

I was cautiously direct. I assumed that was it. What about the Dunlap story?

I didn’t want you to worry that I was going to use that against Markus.

I’m relieved to hear that, I admitted. Is there something you want from me?

I want your attention, he said, and now I’ve got it. So you’re going to sit quietly and keep paying attention. The Dunlap story isn’t really over. It’s nearly complete and all you need to do is keep reading while I tell you the rest of it. Do I have your attention?

I’m reading, is all I answered.

When I found the Dunlap information I wasn’t sure I was going to pass it on, but in the end I figured there were only two things that could happen: Either Markus would use it, which would crush Smith, which is a very good thing, or he wouldn’t because he was truly above going dirty, which is an even better thing. I didn’t really think there was much chance of the second possibility, so knowing it almost certainly meant the end of Smith as a viable candidate, I decided it was worth sharing. And the truth is it wasn’t Markus I was testing.

The screen went silent for several seconds. Okay, I’ll bite. Who were you testing then?

Isn’t it obvious? I was testing you.

You’re going to have to explain that to me.

I will, he wrote, but let me ask you something first – did he offer you a job in his administration?

I didn’t ask for one.

That’s not what I asked. Answer the question. Did the Great Markus offer you a job or not?

No, I conceded. As a matter of fact I was told there would be no such offer.

So you’ve done what he needed, he’s gotten everything he wanted from you and he’s ready to put you behind him now. Is that it?

Sure, I guess. I don’t think it’s that melodramatic, but put it however you want.

How would you put it? he pressed.

I would say that after the election my special skill set would be superfluous to his administration. There’s no need to keep me on.

That may be, he wrote, but I bet he offered superfluous pay-back jobs to a whole shitload of loyal drones. Why not you?

I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?

You do know, he countered. He got in the gutter with you and when he’s sitting in the big house he doesn’t want any gutter rats around him. He let you defame a man as a race traitor and he’s ashamed of having done it. He doesn’t want you around to remind him of how low he can go.

Suppose you’re right, what does that have to do with anything? I thought you were going to enlighten me about some grand test.

I tested you, he typed, and you failed.

I’m reading. Explain.

I knew he would use the Dunlap story if he got hold of it. We both knew he would…

I interrupted, Your premise is wrong. He had no idea what I was up to when I came to see you.

That makes no difference, really. He knew you were up to something outside the lines and he authorized it. In fact, not knowing what it was in advance is actually rather more despicable than if he had known all along.

But so what? I demanded. He’s running for office. Candidates use dirt to win. Is that some kind of revelation?

Not at all. Remember – I wasn’t testing him anyway. I wanted to know what you would do with the information if I gave it to you. I thought there was a chance you wouldn’t use it.

I don’t see where this is going, I told him.

Here it is, he wrote. Kings are what they are. There is no hope for kings. But king-makers, I thought maybe they could still be redeemed and I thought if there were still decent king-makers, maybe the kings they make would be worthy of their crowns.

I lost my last shred of patience. Damn it Theo! Enough of the metaphors. What are you trying to tell me?

I’m trying to tell you that if you had turned out to be what I hoped you were, my next steps in life might have been very different.

Are you telling me you’re going to leak the fact that the Dunlap story came from Markus?

I don’t need to leak that, he typed. There’s someone I might share it with, but don’t worry that you’ll see the story in the news. It won’t get out.

Well I’m relieved, I admitted. But if that’s the case, what is there left to discuss?

I guess nothing, boss.

He had gotten to me. He was under my skin and I lost my cool. I tried to regain control of the discussion.

So what does Theowulf do now? I asked.

I’m a mayhem monkey, he answered. I go where instability is prized.

Will we be working together again? I asked.

I’m afraid not, he answered. I’ve got some big work to do. Where we’re all going – you, me, Markus, all of us… Let’s just say we won’t care much longer about elections, or abortions, or affairs, or dead staffers. It’s not going to matter anymore.

And with that he was gone. Staring at the blank tablet I lost myself in wondering. I wondered what he had meant by that last cryptic line – It’s not going to matter anymore. I wondered at that until a new wonder pulled me away, wondering where I would go after Election Day. In my mind I’d gone already, off to someplace where I could be anonymous, maybe place after place after place. I sensed even then that I was not destined for a home. My place would always be where I found myself and where I would replace myself in the weeks and months to come was a wide open uncertainty. I liked it that way. I would start out the morning after the election and end up wherever I arrived.

Later that evening I heard from one of my geeks in Baltimore. He had received word through a distant but reliable source that Theowulf had gone over to the Julianistas, a band of cyber warriors sworn to a common cause and rejecting all nations and their governments. The Julianistas weren’t black hats, they weren’t white hats. They were too complicated to be defined in those terms. They were at once an enemy of stability, opposed more than anything to the status quo, and at the same time defenders of liberty, committed to protecting the world’s masses from the predation of the power elite. They leaked military secrets and they published the names and addresses of child pornographers. They drew no moral distinction between the two. They snooped into everything and blew the whistle on anything they found that offended their vague yet definite sense of justice and decency.

The Julianistas, it is said, had no leaders. They took votes and issued position statements, but each member was ultimately autonomous, directed by the group’s guidelines and principles, but free to act independently in every unique circumstance. The Julianistas were anathema to social order. Theowulf belonged with them. They claimed no country as base and swore no allegiance to any regime. That suited the likes of Theowulf and the whole band of quixotic misanthropes.

As far as anyone knew, the Julianistas had no real headquarters. It was widely believed, however, that they were based in Central Asia, with cells scattered around the six Stans: Kazakhstan, Usbekistan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. The U.S. intelligence bureaus also placed them in the city of Volgograd, a jumping off point for forays into Europe just a few hundred miles away. Russia was at the time under the complete control of a resurgent imperialist party. The fears in that country were very real for anyone threatening its regime. But a group like the Julianistas could work in Russia with little chance of interference. International sanctions imposed on Russia following its annexation of Georgia kept the country cut off from Western technology, including the sorts of systems required to wage any meaningful campaign against a hacker community as advanced as the Julianistas.

So Theowulf was out there. What he was up to I had no idea. But it didn’t matter. He was gone and soon enough I would be on the road. With no destination I allowed myself to muse about the wanderer’s life. My purpose was to replace meaning – or something like it. It was hot in San Diego that November day, a desert wind scraped up and down the mountains to the east and when it got to the city it brought thirst and a longing to be where collars could be turned up against the red-brown of autumn. Wherever I would go, I would carry my quest with me and where I found myself, there I would be.

A chance to get clean, that’s what lay ahead of me. I had had enough of the culture of celebrity that worships popularity for popularity’s sake; enough of blurring fame and infamy; enough of courting public opinion from a public not worthy of opinions. Where I was headed, only the scrupulous would be my companions. No more tawdry receptionists, no more cyber punks, no more hypocritical office seekers… and yes, no more Lydia.

With four days left on the job of a lifetime, I couldn’t make the time pass swiftly enough. Each second would grind grudgingly by before I was free to roam and when the time came, I would roam alone.