Henry Whip in Somalia

By Boinkaz

Meet Henry Whip and his friends. New kinds of spies who bring asymmetric warfare to enemies both foreign and domestic. His character emerges in the flagship literary epulp fiction novel Henry Whip in Somalia.

Recruited in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, day-trader Henry Whip moves his family from London to Pittsburgh where he becomes a bi-continental telecoms equipment liquidator. He soon finds himself in Somalia and hooks up with CIA operative Chester D. Bunkley, a vigorous proponent of Rotary International, positive thinking, and man on a mission to visit all the shrines to embalmed communist leaders. Bunkley is the intelligence brain-trust in a field facing rapid transition. Along with British-Somali operative Siad Muhammed they target jihadis in Kismayo for death by drone.

But things get complicated when, Henry's wife Eunice is murdered while the two are on vacation in Majorca. Whip, as an external contractor isn't especially popular among the CIA crowd whom he mockingly calls "The Furious Gerbils".

When he returns to Pittsburgh to raise his two children, Abigail & Xavier, the action plays out as he and his friends discover who killed Eunice and why, with the help of CIA love interest Dr. Vanessa Richtmann.

The first in epublishing company Carrierworld's Digital State series, "Henry Whip in Somalia" is the debut novel by Boinkaz. This series of books deals with the world as it is. Surveillance is omnipresent, torture is an accepted method of interrogation, the law means little, and sex is a prevalent and potent force.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Boinkaz
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301695409

Boinkaz

Boinkaz lives in America.

Book preview

The Digital State and How to Overthrow It (#1)

Henry Whip in Somalia

By Boinkaz

Copyright 2013 by Carrierworld

Chapter One: Remembrance Day

Henry Whip drew back the thick cotton curtain and peered out the window. A faultless blue sky cast a sunlit hand over the suburban patch of street below. A red-headed woman with a brush cut in a tan trench coat saw him looking down, and disappeared behind a wall, like the pendulum of a metronome swinging to its opposite point.

The only thing funnier than watching a grown man run for cover, said Whip, turning back to the room, is watching a grown woman do exactly the same thing."

He didn't know where he was. He had been led away by the arm at the arrival gate in Dulles, so he presumed he was in some subdivision nearby. He could hear one of the many highways around the Airport in the area off in the distance.

Dr. Richtmann rose from her wing-backed chair and glanced out the window and then at him. She smelled of lavender soap and was very pretty. He had no doubt that she was also pretty scary when she wanted to be.

Let's begin, Mr. Whip she said.

Henry, he replied.

Henry then. He sat down opposite her. He had a momentary sensation as he gazed into the clouded earths of her eyes that he was floating far out in space, and that he was very much alone. Go on then, she said. Tell me all of it.

In 2001 Henry Whip was a day trader in stocks and currencies. His office was set in Archway, off the Holloway Road, in an industrial complex inhabited by Greek Cypriots, all sewing bootleg football jerseys for the rag trade. This was well away from the pimply wide boys of the City Mile, and that was how he liked it.

Whip used a tool called spread-betting to play the markets. It was a tax-free way to invest in stocks, as under British law it's a bet, not an investment. As Henry never owned the asset he was betting on he couldn't be taxed on any gains.

On September 11, 2001 he hung his long tweed coat on a peg and brewed coffee. He flicked on the radio and the news began to flow like water. Henry sat down and flicked on the computer. He launched the JavaScript application to downloading from the website of his broker, Cantor Index.

Day trading is a stressful job, especially if you're trafficking with your own money. There was a lot of adrenaline churning inside him as he sat there, but no real way to relieve it. It took all hours of Henry's day to keep up. This morning, for example, he had been glued to the television since 5 am, watching the BBC and seeing how the Nikkei and Hang Seng indices fared overnight.

While August was dead, September was ripe with possibility. Henry had been playing indices in the past weeks with some success. He'd bet £2 on the FTSE and it had steadily advanced over a period of weeks until he closed it two days ago. He made £2 for every point the FTSE rose compared to where it had started.

His latest bet had more room to run. The Italian economy was looking weak (again), and Henry thought the Milano Italia Borsa Index might be in for a drop. Yesterday, September 10, he got on the Roller Coaster and placed a £2 down bet on the MIB.

He picked up the phone and called Fiona at Cantor. Hello Dah-ling, said Whip. How's it looking on the south side of Europe?

As always, Mr. Whip, we're sharpening our pencils, replied Fiona. They both cackled. The introduction of the Euro across Europe had been a glorious opportunity to poke those pencils into the balloon that was the grand European model, and everyone had made money. Do you want to trade anything today Henry?

Give me some of that RBOS, £10 to buy, stops at 296 and limit of 349.

To confirm, you're buying £20 of Royal Bank of Scotland with a limit of 349 pence and a stop of 296 pence. Agreed?

Agreed, said Henry.

For the rest of the morning he plowed through a Royal Bank of Scotland earnings report. At the bottom of his page the news headlines spat gobs of earnings, market-rattling comments from bank governors, and the endless ticker. The constant feed of information is what made the Cantor system good.

He went out for lunch and walked down Holloway Road to a café where he bought a sausage & egg sandwich & an almond pastry. He sat and unwrapped his lunch. Chomp, chomp, chomp, he waited for the Markets in America to open. And he wondered why he was chubby.

There is often a little opportunity to make some money in the minutes running up to the 9:30am opening on Wall Street or just before earnings are released prior to markets opening. Henry had his eye out for this kind of opportunity when a one line item popped up on the Cantor News Service, when Henry glanced at it five minutes before 2pm. A small plane had run into the North tower of the World Trade Center. More details were to follow as they became available."

No biggie, he thought. Minor accidents never impact particular stocks.

He checked his account. His RBOS bet had stopped out but he appeared to be in the money. A few minutes later, at 9:05, another item came up on the screen. Something alarming.

He called up Fiona.

World markets rolled over like a whale that hadn't realized it had been hit by a harpoon. What's happening? he asked. An airplane crashed into the World Trade Center, she replied with the lack of emotion only a stock broker could summon. We have an office there. There's been some smoke coming up so they're beginning an evacuation.

When the second jet had hit, it was obvious what had transpired. America was under attack. World stock markets crashed. The Italian Index dropped 2,000 points in a period of seconds. Whip rang Fiona back. Our traders in New York say they can't get out from the upper floors, she said. They're going to the roof.

For every point the MIB dropped, he made £2. He was now £5,000 to the good. Furthermore, the very people who would have to pay Henry Whip were Cantor Fitzgerald. He was making money from the very people dying in the attack. The more they died, the more money he would make.

One of the few gentlemen in the finance industry is a fellow named David Buick who worked in Cantor's London office as chief analyst. He often laced his blog with poetry or literary references. His only entry over the following days was a poem. Laurence Binyon.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

It was a capitalist's dream. True, it would be obscene to make pudding out of blood, but Cantor would most certainly have stuck it to Henry Whip if he were the one dying up there. Stockbrokers and traders in general, as a class, are thugs.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

He pulled up a live feed from one of the news channels. The second plane had hit. The towers smoked and sweated tiny tears of flesh from its upper floors, diamonds in white and blue falling swiftly to the cement below.

It was now 2:40 PM London time. Whip had been emailing a friend in America all that week. This friend worked with a number of three letter agencies, and had been trying to recruit him, although he had been waving the flag, not a wad of cash.

Henry's friend had correctly picked out Henry as one of those breezy flag types. Suckers, patriots, operatives, volunteers. Choose what word you will. They helped keep the world afloat, each of them doing their bit. They're like most of us really. Henry felt special, but only after he got closer to the touchstone of intelligence would it become clear that all overseas American businessmen were spied upon by US agencies. The moment they crossed a border, they left their rights and privacy behind. This is true now, both of people and the communications they use, which is why voice and VPN signals are run through foreign servers, in case you decide to get cheeky about your rights.

Someone ran a plane into the World Trade Center, Henry wrote with the brevity and bluff these guys used on email. Pentagon too, replied his friend.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;

They fell with their faces to the foe.

Henry had never been especially good at making money, but his ideas were sound. Furthermore, he was out of shape and a little too groovy to fit in at any of the traditional spy agencies. Yet he was to discover that there were few people with his unique abilities. And he realized that western civilization would probably collapse without him and people like him, each contributing according to their means, united in a common cause. This, despite the fact that many of the people who run the intelligence agencies of the world are pricks.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Smart money was down. Henry stared grimly at the back of his hand holding the telephone. He could not abide it. He removed the receiver from its cradle, and rang up Fiona so as to close his bet on the MIB.

He put his head in his hands. On screen, a message appeared confirming his sell order. He turned on the radio. On it the BBC had reported that a jet was heading for the US Capitol and that the US Air Force shot it down. Whip's mother lived there, next to the airport in Latrobe. She was a proud member at Arnold Palmer's country club, which was not far away. He called her to check up.

Oh God, Henry, she said. The Civil Air Patrol came door to door and told us all to stay inside. That anybody who left their houses could be shot by the soldiers. Henry could hear the sound of a helicopter, evenly clacking like a stuck door in the sky.

Henry Whip was destined to lose the few profits he had gained that morning in an idiotic patriotic rally that the media hyped up after markets reopened the following Tuesday. And the Milano Italia Borsa index, which stood at 32,000 points on September 10, 2001, sank like an endurance diver in the choppy waters off La Spezia. Had he stuck to his bet he would have pocketed £32,000 - $50,000 at the time.

Now, even as Henry scrapes to find $20 to pay for gas, and is detained by cute representatives of the secret police like Dr. Vanessa Richtmann, he wouldn't have gone back and changed that moment. Any real day-trader most probably would have cashed in regardless of who was dying. Apparently Henry Whip wasn't one of them. Those traders called this tendency having ice in their veins. Henry Whip called it being a douchebag.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

They have no lot in our labour of the daytime;

They sleep beyond England's foam.

Later that day Howard Lutnick would go on TV and blubber that the company didn't have any money. Fiona later told him that everybody in the London office held their hands over their mouths and then began screaming at the television. Shut the fuck up, Howard. They knew a run on their company was coming. This, in addition to losing all of their New York staff, was shaping up to be a real bummer of a day for Cantor.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

Following 9/11, Henry still owned his soul, but he had nothing in his pocket. He had been lukewarm to previous advances from the intelligence community, but now like thousands of people around the world at that very moment, he stepped up. This decision would cost him dearly in blood and fortune, and create innumerable troubles. Once in a while it would actually cause him to fight an enemy. Sometimes he would win.

His friend from the Washington area contacted him over the next few days. He had just put down the phone when it rang again at his desk. It was his friend from Washington calling. Hey, dude he said.

Dudester, Henry Whip replied.

That thing we talked about? said his friend. The intelligence water boy thing, that is. A necessary business. A thankless job Whip would later discover. One that mercilessly took, and never gave back.

I'm in.

Duderific, said his friend. He never saw or spoke to his friend again, for he had done the job he had been sent to do.

As the starts that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain:

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.

Chapter Two: The Intervention

"If people like you don't do it, nobody else will, said Vanessa. Dr. Richtmann was now Vanessa and Henry Whip was now Henry. This is a basic truth.

She appeared slightly less scary. More engaging. More normal. Perhaps this was an act. Or perhaps her duty was an act—an act to which she was subject and was obedient yet she knew how to play in a way that allowed her to thrive in this strange environment.

Yes, said Henry. You are correct. What happened with my wife didn't have to happen, now did it? You people in the System. You don't lose like that, do you?

Please don't 'you people' me Henry, said Vanessa. We all have the same enemy. It just may not seem like that at the moment. I'm sorry about what happened. These things...these things happen.

Henry was opening up to her, not because she was persuasive, but because the one reason to entertain another spy who may have been the one who done you wrong with anything other than silence or a bullet, is that they are the only people who understand what it is like to be