The Final Warning

By Peter Isdell-Carpenter

‘How advanced are their plans for infiltrating America?’

‘We believe they may already be here, Mr President’.

The Final Warning is an arresting and timely contemporary thriller from a master story-teller. Steeped in conspiracy, diverse characters and an incredibly deft knowledge of American consciousness, it is at times disturbing, at others heart-warming, at times light-hearted and at others unbelievably significant.

As an insidious plot threatens to bring the world’s most powerful country to its knees, the besieged President of the United States of America dares not reveal that American freedom is hanging by a tether. Meanwhile, young White House intern Chuck Pavel is launched terrified into the front line in a desperate effort to forestall the threat before it’s too late.

Is freedom already lost? Or is there something deeper, and far darker, going wrong between the stars and the stripes?

Peter Isdell-Carpenter’s debut novel is a must-have for anyone suffering from news exhaustion, who wonders how it will all end, and what might be next for the fracturing West. The Final Warning is as shocking as it is plausible and will leave you open-mouthed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zuleika
• Release date: Sep 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781838032456

Book preview

Chapter 1

None of Tessa Bailey’s friends had been able to understand what she had seen in Adam Sukova. Here was this attractive, popular 21-year-old – quite a beauty in fact, with her blonde hair, pale green eyes, and a winning smile – who had the choice of countless admirers. Yet she only had eyes for Adam.

Her standard reply to friends was I guess we’re just a good fit – and indeed they were, even if she was two inches taller than him. But there was more to it than that. They found each other endlessly interesting and entertaining. She loved Adam’s sense of humour. And she admired his honesty. From their first date he always said and did what he believed in and followed it on to wherever it took him, though Tessa never dreamed that that would be the White House.

Over time, theirs became a very successful partnership. As Adam grew into his developing role in front-line politics, so his wife matured with him. Nowadays she was often likened to Barbara Bush – handsome yet still feminine, her hair an elegant silver now, her eyes as strong and kind as ever. Her husband had worn a little less well, the strain of his work drawing lines in his face; crushed velvet was how she liked to describe it. Smooth and crinkled. But it was his eyes that captured her and later on the nation too – clear blue, sharp yet kind, deep set beneath strong eyebrows.

Of course, his election to the White House had not been the walkover they had predicted. Sukova had neither the charm and communication skills of a Clinton or Obama, nor the gung-ho of George W. Bush or Donald Trump. But to some extent, this lack of such qualities had helped to carry him through. He was an honourable man, prone to candour and seemingly free from cupboard skeletons. As a result, the public trusted him with votes that he was not able to gain through charisma or a gleaming track record.

By the start of the nomination campaigns, the general public were deeply worried by America’s isolation on the world stage. More seriously for the candidates competing for high office, people had become increasingly angry over what they saw as the mismanagement of domestic affairs. The tidal wave called Donald Trump had, in the end, only deepened the public’s scepticism about those in high office, and their suspicion of their policies and promises. So Sukova’s persuasive stance against the previous administrations, and its handling of the worsening social crises in the country, had served him well.

Yet, in its early stages, it was a bitter campaign that failed to catch fire with the electorate, and it had been a struggle from the start to capture the public imagination. To his friends and colleagues, he was easy to appreciate: open and straight, with unwavering convictions, topped off with a personality that tickled the funny bone and warmed you to him. In public though, he was unable to shine through as the character he was known to be to the people closest to him. There were experts skilled at managing this in his public appearances, but his natural stoop was harder to conceal, and with his rather beaky profile he had the air of a schoolteacher rather than a man suited to high office. With this in mind, he made sure to have his right-hand man Jeff Stone with him a lot so that the public got used to seeing them together. Jeff was a natural-born communicator and whenever possible he would handle media commitments and television appearances on the candidate’s behalf.

For the same reason, he had gradually involved Tessa in his campaign. Reluctantly, she had agreed on the condition that her role was restricted to accompanying him on a few of his endless trips round the country. So it took him by surprise when she suggested that she might appear on a couple of chat shows. He argued that it would expose her to situations that were outside her control. But she disagreed. She was at her most comfortable and competent in social situations, and the polls were showing that people gave her husband low scores when it came to his personality, the human side of the man.

As it happened, her appearance on The Late Show was one of the turning points of the campaign. Colbert quizzed her on the subject of her passion for music. She’d been briefed that it would be asked, but she’d not been warned that they were going to press her into playing the piano live on national TV. With her wits about her she spotted how for her husband this might be the goose that laid the golden egg. So she grudgingly allowed herself to be led to the backing band’s baby grand, where she proceeded to play, shyly and beautifully, part of Chopin’s E-flat Nocturne. Colbert and his audience were spellbound. It was a magical moment, and the next day’s Washington Post headline read First-Lady-to-Be Mesmerizes Chat Show Audience. Much to the nation's surprise, Nocturne No.2 in E-Flat Major entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Something had shifted. That one cameo had shone a human light on the couple, and the public began to look afresh at Adam Sukova.

Intuitive by nature, Sukova’s campaign had been marked by a series of initiatives that had simultaneously scared his staff and nudged him forward in the polls. It had been his decision alone to select as his vice-presidential running mate John P. Grover, an ex-war hero, veteran of overseas military successes, and ex-member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The two men had seldom met prior to the nomination convention, and when they came together they didn’t hit it off too well. In appearance they were opposites – Grover stood six foot two in his stockinged feet, a handsome dark-haired military figure – and in personality they were no less dissimilar. Sukova clever and studious; Grover not a brainbox, but dashingly appealing to the voters.

In his army days, Grover used to say that there were two types of military men: those who worked on winning over people, and those who worked on defeating people. His approach was decidedly the second of these. The reason he was there was to make others obey him, he used to say. Some called it bullying; others called it leadership. Either way, he was not someone to be crossed, and under his command life in the army was not a lot of fun.

To Sukova, his chosen running mate represented what he disliked most about successful men – pleased with himself, overtly ambitious, and a poor listener. He could not have imagined anyone less suitable to be his ‘mate’. On the other hand, he was well aware of his own shortcomings as a presidential candidate, and the ways in which Grover made up for them. Among these was an undisguised opposition to the Iraqi wars. He was implacably against his country pushing the rest of the world around and telling it how to behave. He did not believe in trying to impose American-style democracy on foreign nations, and he feared such wars would create a vacuum in which anti-Western resentment and revenge could fester. However, despite the public’s drift away from support for war itself, anxiety about national security and the threat from America’s enemies abroad was as strong as ever. On top of everything, the fallout from the outbreak of Coronavirus was still weighing heavy on the economy, and people were angry. People were scared. They needed a leader who understood national security as something that extended beyond just airports or the CIA, in a nation with a distinct, ever-growing distrust of the police and the justice system, in a world where a mere pathogen could bring such a nation to its knees. From the moment that Sukova emerged as a serious candidate for the White House, he began to come to terms with the calling that had somehow been thrust upon him – to lead America through potentially one of the most dangerous periods in its history, so it didn’t help that public opinion of central government had fallen to the lowest level since records began.

Ironically, he could remember a conversation a few years earlier with Sir Alistair Scott-Boyd, then London’s ambassador to Washington and a good friend of the Sukovas, who had assured him over dinner at the Embassy that the American public’s view of politics and politicians would never sink to the disastrous level of his own country.

‘Back home, politics is like the worst kind of soap opera,’ he had confided indiscreetly. ‘There’s no style or ceremony to it anymore. Just vulgar upstarts sniping at one another while they feather their own nests and test out their own bigoted theories. I can’t blame us British for not respecting our governments.’ He looked mischievously under the table as though searching for hidden bugs. ‘After all,’ he whispered, ‘I don’t, so why should they!’

Sukova had been surprised. Like most of his peers, he had always held the Mother of Parliaments in high regard, even if he couldn’t stand hearing commentators addressing the Prime Minister as Robert. But he knew the ambassador to be an astute and intelligent statesman, so at the time he had taken heart from his friend’s optimism about the United States.

‘In America, Adam, politics is like theatre. I remember years ago watching Charles Laughton in Advise & Consent, and thinking this was how the world of politics should be. The Watergate hearings – they had a sort of gravitas too, even if they were dealing with the highest level of sleaze. How could the Clintons have survived and prospered if there wasn’t an underlying respect for the offices of state?’

‘Even if the holders didn’t deserve it,’ Sukova added drily.

‘Another thing, Adam. Never let the people lose their faith in what makes America great. Democracy. Freedom. Trust. It’s too late in the UK. We’ve allowed ourselves to go shy about our beliefs, our values, the things that shape our way of life. And look at us. Look what’s happening. We’re limping around, stumbling closer and closer to the cliff edge. We’ve ended up weak and cynical. Now reality is tapping us on the shoulder, and we’re too afraid to turn around and face it.’

As the words echoed in his head, Sukova wondered now whether his friend’s advice was too late for America as well. ‘Never let the people lose faith in what makes America great. Heed the warning, Adam. Don’t let that happen to America. Don’t let it happen.’

Chapter 2

Chuck Pavel and his best buddy Luke Furrowes were as different as two people could be. For a start, Luke was a rising star in the world of professional golf – and Chuck hated golf. Secondly, he was supposed to have stolen a girlfriend of Luke’s, which had led to a major fight. Luke was slender, compact, athletically handsome; Chuck was short, overweight, and bookish. ‘Geek’ was Luke’s nickname for him. Luke was a social live wire; Chuck preferred his own company, except for some reason that of Luke.

They had met in Tampa, where Chuck was a computer sciences scholar at Tampa University and Luke was on a golf scholarship at the Tampa Golf Academy, one of the university’s more ambitious offshoots. They were brought together by accident through a mutual friend, who thought Chuck might appreciate some pocket money for pulling Luke’s trolley in the inter-university championships.

Chuck was overcome by the silliness of the game, but Luke wasn’t offended. In fact it amused him that someone could be so rude about the love of his life.

For whatever reason, the two men hit it off at once, and they were often seen getting lunch together on the Tampa University campus, or in one of their favourite bars in the city. Luke had a girlfriend called Polly, and everyone reckoned they were becoming a permanent couple. But when Luke heard rumours that Polly and Chuck had been seeing each other, he went looking for Chuck and found him in a bar with a group that included Polly. Wild with rage, he dragged his friend out into the street and slammed him with a right hook that chipped a cheekbone and left Chuck with a scar and a bump that he had to this day.

The rumours were false. Chuck had run into Polly in a café a few weeks earlier. They had discovered they shared an interest in astronomy and agreed to go together to an upcoming campus talk from a visiting expert. When Luke found them, they had all just left the talk and were discussing it over a drink at the bar before heading home.

It cost Luke the love of Polly, which was no big loss for a youngster who was finding the attentions of campus girls an enjoyable fact of life. Chuck on the other hand was mortified, mainly for having ended his friend’s love affair.

Where Chuck won out was on the brain stakes. In his whole life, Luke had never met anyone so clever. There wasn’t a subject that Chuck didn’t know something about, and the fact that he never showed off his amazing knowledge impressed Luke still more. They would spend evening after evening together, debating all kinds of topics, from economic theories to the meaning of life. Chuck taught Luke about Descartes and Nietzsche, and the fascinating notion that perhaps he and all the things around him were just a dream and didn’t really exist. They talked into the night about an idea that Chuck reckoned would revolutionise the country’s tax system.

‘Listen up, golfer. Public servants are paid by the government, right? And where does the government get the money to pay them? From tax they take off the rest of us. Then the government taxes the public servants’ pay, right? So they tax us to pay their workers, then they tax the workers. It’s the same money, going round twice. And something like twenty per cent of all the tax collectors in the IRS are employed to collect those taxes from public servants. Why in God’s name would you take tax in with one hand, give it out with the other hand, then take it back in again? Instead, why not pay the public servants net of tax, fire all the redundant tax collectors, and use the money you save to lower everyone else’s taxes?’

‘You’re hurting my head, Chuck.’

‘Better than hurting your pocket!’

Another favourite topic was the future of robots. Luke had been reading about it. ‘We’ve already got driverless planes and cars. Robots run factories. Bionic legs, robot nurses. Maybe the world’s getting too clever for its own good?’

Chuck was with him on that. ‘There’ll come a time when a computer designs robots that are cleverer than itself – and miles cleverer than us. Then what? Suppose the robots design their own value system and ignore little old us with our human values. And who’s going to monitor all of that and prevent the catastrophe that follows?’

‘Come to that, who’s monitoring anything on earth, right now even? I mean, we’ll never get the powers that be to agree on one global leader, or one global approach for running the world. And without that we’re off to hell in a handbasket…’

‘Replacing the United Nations would be a start.’

‘ United be damned. They’re too interested in what their own countries want to agree on anything worthwhile.’

‘So – we’re looking towards a seriously moderate future. Maybe the President was right when he said it’s in our hands to save or destroy the world.’

‘Sweet dreams, old friend.’

As they got to know each other, Luke took to testing Chuck among his friends.

‘OK, guys,’ he said to the gathering as they sat in the Groupie Bar, their favourite hangout on the edge of the college campus. ‘Listen up. I’ve got a new one for the Geek.’

Knowing the game, the others always gave them the floor once they began their familiar ‘Brain of Tampa Quiz’.

Chuck helped to set the tone. ‘It’s not going to be a tough one, coming from a man who thinks an iPad is what you wear to sleep on a plane!’

Luke ignored him. ‘What’s the scoop on Slobodan Petrović?’

The quiz required that Chuck was given minimal information. For most of the group, Slobodan Petrović could have been the next US tennis champion or an eighteenth-century Slovakian poet. To Chuck, it was a trick question that he saw through in a trice.

‘Would that be Slobodan Milovancev Petrović or Slobodan Tomislav Petrović?’

‘Don’t duck and wriggle, Geek,’ said Luke. ‘For trying to prevaricate, you get to answer for both.’

‘Slobodan M. Petrović is the next incarcerated Chechen, bar one, due to be put before a Russian grand jury on trumped-up charges of disseminating anti-Russian propaganda in the capital, Grozny. Whereas’ – Chuck paused to allow the group to wind up Luke with their chants of ‘Where-as! Where-as!’ – ‘whereas Slobodan T. Petrović was President Tito’s favourite ghillie at his private fishing lodge on the River Neretva forty kilometres inland from Dubrovnik, who died in 1968 from a rusty salmon hook snagged in his left leg.’

‘VA-VA-VOOM! VA-VA-VOOM!’ In unison, the tribal cry greeted another Chuck triumph.

Luke was having none of it. ‘Right leg,’ he muttered.

The boos drowned him out. ‘Right leg!’ he announced, louder this time, laughing with the rest at his feeble attempt to deny Chuck his victory.

Chuck clapped his hands to quieten everyone down so that he could have the final word. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am humbled by the amount of wisdom you have extracted from me!’

Luke called out above the renewed laughter. ‘Mark Twain?’

‘Woody Allen actually.’ It brought the house down.

Privately, Luke was so proud of his bookish friend’s prowess that he never minded losing. The only time Chuck had ever failed was over a golfing question that they both agreed was a cheat.

‘This guy is as round as a balloon and as sharp as a tack,’ Luke boasted, his arm around Chuck’s shoulder.

‘You talk such balls,’ Chuck said sheepishly. ‘What’s worse, it’s mostly golf balls.’ His eyes twinkled from behind his heavy glasses.

What I love about the Geek, Luke thought, is his wackiness.

* * *

For the last year of their time at Tampa, Chuck Pavel and Luke Furrowes had lived like brothers, even sharing lodgings on the university campus. The two of them graduated on the same day, and that night the party ran for twenty-three hours. They drank as if their lives depended on it, and Chuck did his best to keep away from Luke’s new girl, the effervescent Charlie from Southern France, in case he caught another fist on the chin.

But now another distance interfered with their friendship. Luke had recently won his second consecutive Amateur Championship and his golf career was about to go into overdrive. Chuck, on the other hand, was heading to the White House as an apprentice ‘runner’ for the Chief of Staff to President Sukova, Mr Jeff Stone.

They drank to each other’s health, once, twice, then again. They pledged to call every day and to meet every weekend – then they hugged as if it was their final farewell.

The next evening, bleary-eyed, heads throbbing, each finally set off on the next piece of his life.

‘Good riddance, old mate,’ said Chuck.

‘See ya, Geek,’ said Luke.

You bet, thought Chuck – little knowing how right he was.

Chapter 3

Ninety degrees, and Washington, DC was sweltering. On the skyline, the iconic government buildings were shimmering in the heat haze. The team of workmen repairing the vandalised stonework of the Lincoln Memorial took shelter in its shadow, while a hundred or so protestors wandered listlessly along the White House lawn railings, their banners and their spirits drooping.

The White House’s twenty-year-old air conditioning was struggling to cope, and in the Oval Office the President’s temper was close to boiling point. Through all the years they had been together, Jeff Stone had never seen him so angry.

‘Get it done, Jeff!’

President Sukova could be a quiet and gentle man on his good days, but this wasn’t one of them.

‘Just get it done!’

It was the second time in a month that Vice President Grover had gone behind his back to the press, and he knew for sure that he was behind the leaks.

The affairs of state were going badly enough as it was, without his own team briefing against him. Another seventeen US servicemen had been blown up in the Syrian battlefields that week, fuelling the anti-war campaigns in the media. He was failing to quell the resentment over the massive hurricane that had hit the southern states, worse even than Hurricane Andrew in 1992. And his State of the Union address was not getting the support that his press secretary had promised.

What annoyed him most was that Grover had taken to running his own affairs without linking into the White House machinery. Two weeks ago he had turned up as guest of honour at a West Coast Oil Producers Convention, and the first the White House knew about it was a CNN newscast. Not the end of the world, but another example of the way the discipline of state was unravelling.

And here was Jeff Stone, his old campaign partner and now his Chief of Staff, telling him that the VP couldn’t be found. ‘We’ve done all the normal tracings. I’ve spoken to his office myself. Either they’re covering up, or he’s gone missing.’

‘Find him, Jeff. I don’t care if he’s in fucking Afghanistan, I want him here and I want him now.’

‘Yes, Mr President.’

‘And, Jeff, that’s it for these wanderings of his. From now on, every time he goes for a crap you track him. And if his office doesn’t keep tabs on him 24/7, they’re fired. So help me, Jeff, I’ll fire them myself.’

‘Yes, Mr President.’

Chapter 4

Chuck Pavel was born in America of Romanian parents who had left Bucharest for the New World in 1996. His parents Georg and Anna were penniless young sweethearts when they reached America. They settled in Pennsylvania where Georg found a job as a car mechanic. Two years later, after he and Anna had married, they set up a business together, repairing trade vans and trucks for the manual workers who populated the poorer suburbs of Philadelphia.

The pair slaved hard and honestly, as they had been brought up to do, and their trade flourished. By the time Chuck and his younger sister Romana were born, the business had grown too big for its backstreet shed, and the Pavels moved with their two youngsters to a large derelict garage in Drexel Hill on the south side of the city. Working all hours that God gave them, the couple modernised the garage and converted the area above it into a comfortable three-bedroom flat for the family.

Georg Pavel’s mother and father had both been killed during the oppressive Communist regime in Romania when they were very young. As for Anna, she and her mother had watched helplessly as her father had been led away by the militia on a faked charge of espionage. They never saw him again.

In spite of their nightmare memories, Georg and Anna had kept in touch with their homeland, and with Anna’s mother Paola, who they had left behind when they moved to America. Eight years after they had arrived in the New World, Georg spoke by telephone to his old school friend Anatol Demescu, now a middle-ranking official in the Bucharest city council.

With the help of the US Consul in Bucharest, Demescu arranged for Anna’s mother to be sent by boat to the States. On a damp and windy day, standing on Pier 3 of the East River Terminal in downtown Manhattan, Anna and Paola were reunited after almost a decade apart. In the shadows of the terminal building, shielded from the weather by the overhanging iron roof, Georg Pavel gripped the hands of his two small children and watched as the two women stood locked together in an endless embrace, their tears joining the dank rain of the chill October morning.

Paola unpacked her few belongings in the bedroom that Anna had decorated for her, and that night Georg and Anna fell asleep in each other’s arms. For them, the nightmare was finally over and they could live their dream together.

* * *

The day before Chuck’s thirteenth birthday, the Pavel family moved from Philadelphia to the town of Summit in New Jersey. They could afford a proper house, thanks to the sale of Pavel AutoCare, and Georg felt the time had come to establish a new home for themselves within reach of New York City. Also, Chuck was beginning to turn in seriously good grades, and if they were going to give him a chance to shine academically they wanted him to have the best possible schooling.

Chuck was delighted to see the back of Drexel Hill High. He didn’t enjoy the teasing there, either for his brains or for his looks, both of which were somewhat unusual. And when his parents announced their plan to move to a proper house, with a room to himself where he could work and play to his heart’s content, Chuck was more excited than he had been since the Christmas he got his first ever computer.

In the summer after he turned seventeen, Chuck had started earning money by walking people’s dogs around his neighbourhood. The dog he liked best was a big sloppy retriever called Bilko which belonged to the Stone family. The now seventeen-year-old Chuck used to cycle over to the Stones’ handsome house on Dogwood Road, a posh leafy street about eight blocks away, and collect Bilko from Mrs Stone before she left for work at the Summit Municipal Court, where she was one of the chief bailiffs.

If Chuck had known she was a bailiff it would have surprised