Firewall

By Tom Norato

“We the people are the rightful masters . . . not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
―Abraham Lincoln

They said it couldn’t happen here. In 1933 the CEOs of ten of America’s largest banking institutions conspired to overthrow FDR. Some of the most powerful men of that era were involved, giants in industry, politics, and the military. Eighty-five years later, they’re trying again—not to remove a president but to keep one in office. And this time around, it may work. The motivation, then as now, is as ageless as politics itself: power.

After his wife’s death, former national-intelligence operative Charles Pike is thrust into the crosshairs of a conspiracy to subvert the 2020 presidential election. His search for answers uncovers a coup d’état attempt involving some of the most powerful players in Washington, DC. Will he be able to stop the men who cost him everything, or will he, too, be betrayed?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Norato
• Release date: Apr 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9780960004539

Tom Norato

Tom Norato is a firm believer in the age-old aphorism “Write what you know,” but with a corollary: Make it authentic, make it engaging, and at the end of the day, make it enjoyable! Having served at the directorate level in both the military and civilian sectors in Washington, DC, for over three decades, he is true to both the adage and his corollary to it. Tom is the author of numerous short stories and essays. His short story collection, "Every Picture Tells a Story," was released in 2018. He lives in Springfield, Virginia, with his wife, Karla, and one domestic and three feral cats, who are stories unto themselves!

Book preview

October 2018

Anton Volkov walks through the front door of 55 Savushkina Street, on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, Russia, at 7:00 a.m. Monday morning. An extensive array of surveillance cameras follow his every move, both outside and in. The building is unremarkable, gray concrete and four stories high; it shares a parking lot with the apartment building next door. His weekly salary is the equivalent of one thousand USD, an unheard-of salary in Russia. He was hired to do what he loves doing: write.

To land this job, he had to write an essay on the Dulles Plan, a conspiracy theory from a Russian novel titled The Eternal Call, written in the early seventies. The central theme is a supposed plot by Allen Dulles, director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961, to bring down the Soviet Union by corrupting its moral values and cultural heritage, in essence destroying Russia from the inside. The Dulles Plan is obscure to westerners, but it is the single most popular conspiracy theory in post-Soviet Russia and has been influential in shaping and nurturing Russia’s distrust of the United States since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Anton found the subject matter absurd, but he told them what he thought they wanted to hear. He must have nailed it; he was hired the next day.

He is now an employee of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), more commonly referred to as the Troll Factory. It is owned and run by Mr. Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, Putin’s cook, a nickname earned from Prigozhin’s restaurant-and-catering business. An oligarch worth several billion US dollars, he is a key advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, with close ties to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR RF) and the Federal Security Service (FSB). His most important connection is to Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU. He is also under indictment by the US Justice Department for interfering with the US political process, most notably the 2016 presidential election.

Anton sets his knapsack under the small desk in his cubicle and removes an old-fashioned CD player. After inserting his earbuds and a David Bowie disk, he begins his day. The CD player is company issue; cell phones or any other form of modern wireless technology are strictly forbidden. Anton has no qualms about what he is doing, writing lies for other liars to read. It is all fignya, or bullshit, as they call it in the West.

His closest friend in the building, Sergi Antonov, arrives just as he hits the play button. Sergi joined the factory two days after Anton. He is not quite the provocative and colorful writer that Anton is; he is an academic, but what he lacks in divisive political rhetoric, he more than makes up for by creating ideographs, the universal rhetoric of politics. He has a B.A. in speech from Oxford University, an M.A. in rhetoric from Princeton, and a Ph. D. in political science from Lomonosov Moscow State University. He has a unique ability to connect the base values of any particular community to whatever political position is required at the time. He can coin a phrase or term with no clear or specific definition and attach it to a cause that supports a candidate or that resonates with the target audience. He claims to be the originator of Make America Great Again, but to Anton, the jury is still out on that one.

Hitting the pause button, Anton says, "Hello, Sergi, and what is the topic today? Race relations? LGBT rights? Gun rights? Immigration? Don’t tell me. It has to be Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren!

I wish to hell we could open the drapes in this building; I miss the sunshine. Every window in the building is covered in heavy, dark drapes that are never to be opened except by one of the security officers constantly patrolling the cubicle canyons.

Sergi replies, Today it’s stoking the fires of anti-Islamic sentiment again. It should be an easy day; we can just pull up the files we used leading up to the Brexit vote. His fingers fly across the keyboard, and a story from Forbes pops up. The most retweeted tweet in the six months running up to the vote was ‘London: Muslims running a campaign stall for Sharia law! Must be sponsored by @MayorofLondon!’ Others claimed, completely falsely, that there were ‘no-go’ Sharia-run areas in the UK.

I can’t believe how many otherwise sane people buy into this fignya.

Anton responds, I can’t either, but just be thankful they do. Without them, we wouldn’t have a job, at least not a job that pays this well.

Sergi removes his own CD player from a brown vintage canvas messenger bag, along with a CD entitled Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. As he sets the bag down, the screens on both of their computers change to the Russian flag; it looks like it won’t be an easy day after all. This is the signal to stand by for new assignments. They both slowly sit down and anxiously wait for the screen to change again. When it does, a date appears: November 3, 2020, the United States presidential election.

Sergi speaks first. This is going to beat Brexit all to hell.

Anton smiles and replies, You really think we can pull this off again? It’s a rhetorical question.

Seven Thousand Kilometers Away

Admiral Jason Bates leaves his home on Porter Road, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, at 6:00 a.m. sharp. It will be a thirty-minute drive; his driver knows exactly where to go, and a thermos of hot coffee is waiting in the back of the staff car. Porter Road, more commonly known as Captain’s Row, is home to some of the highest-ranking officers in the United States military. These majestic duplexes built in 1905 are evocative of eighteenth-century New England sea captains’ homes. Blue-and-white canvas sails cover golden-brown teak-decked porticos reminiscent of the weather deck on a man-of-war. Verdigris-copper-gabled dormers set in slate-shingled roofs provide the wheelhouse. They more resemble ships at sea than landlocked manors. If you could buy one, it would set you back several million dollars. You