The Georgetown Papers

By Richard Segal

As Kipling wrote: Show now if ye can ride. In response to a mysterious kidnapping in the East of England, a stumped police force drafts in the recently retired Australian detective Andrew Bomfi, fresh off seven career years in New York. Will he be able to unwind their riddle, or will he merely discover two mountains with no top, in which not even the lawyers will make any money out of it? If clues exist, they are hidden in Algeria and Egypt, where he is dispatched in the mistaken belief that he holds the green mamba.
Across the tides, a secretive but effective cabal was busy at work levelling the political playing field. If they succeeded, the long power drift away from the silent underrepresented majority will have been reversed. An unplanned trip to another A&E was but a short and temporary obstacle in their path.
I, a former charter member of the New Movement, had my own agenda, as I waited for my famous meeting of destiny, sports bottle in hand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728393827

Richard Segal

Richard Segal, an American citizen, resides in London, England, and works as an economic and financial consultant. He has written widely about matters relating to global public policy over the years. His most recent novel was The Man Who Knew the Answer.

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Copyright © 2019 Richard Segal. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/23/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-9383-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-9382-7 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

The Georgetown Papers

$138 for Two Nights, or, Waffles

Gremlins, the Prequel

Introducing the New Movement

Publix, Redux

Not Garth

Empires Falling

Doritos Collisions

Just Like a Rubber Ball

My Bucket List

And Then it Happened

Egyptology in the Rain

Introducing Monchos

Introducing Bomfi

Payback

Hi Hi

Naturally

Alice and Bomfi are Going to Jordan

Where Things Stand

Make Mine a Double

The Return of Clemenceau

Paydirt

The Meeting

Muscling Up

Larry Bakes a Cake

Introducing the Brexiter UB40 Tour

Howdy, M’name’s Nico, How’m I Doing So Far?

Requiem for an Epilogue

To my

grandparents

The Georgetown Papers

It’s democracy, baby

"Crikey, I don’t think much of this human race! the street cleaner blared to the sky, picking up one empty milk carton after another and placing them in the tall container installed by the local authority for unwanted refuse, followed by translucent magazine wrappers and wine stained newspapers. Where am I meant to put the F-ing rubbish?!? he asked rhetorically, mocking a hypothetical pedestrian. How about the bin, mate?" he answered, as if the solution to the proliferation of plastics in the world’s oceans was to sprinkle these non-recyclables on dry land.

Rather than utilise the container for its intended purpose, the residents made a neighbourhood call. That is, they would drop their used cartons in the neighbourhood of the receptacle instead of going the last yard, on the understanding that the binmen would clean up after them, and that out of sight was out of mind. Not to the municipal sanitation worker, though, who spoke to Christ in an actual rather than a figurative manner, but who in turn was not able to provide any assistance because it was a Sunday and therefore a school day for both, and I doubt collecting overtime, either.

However, he was undaunted. He looked toward the heavens again and thundered. When I get up there, I’m gonna give you a piece of my mind! as if his entry was pre-cleared due to his saintly and thankless profession. Save this undercover seraph, the street was unoccupied and therefore it can not be interpreted that he was accusing anyone in particular of being a litterbug. He is one of many in this precinct who could be heard shouting to himself on any given Sunday, but the only one in uniform and the only one who was certifiably sane. Never mind, I take pride in using the rubbish repository for its designated purpose.

Meanwhile across the tides …

$138 for Two Nights, or, Waffles

I t wasn’t merely a loss of data fidelity that prompted the Econo Lodge IT guy with the go faster stripes handlebar haircut and caterpillar moustache to tear his hair out. He was puzzled about the internet going down, again, during the low season. He is Mr Fixit - he should be breaking the internet rather than trying to repair it so that he’ll have something to do early on a Saturday afternoon, before catching up with reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show with the blood brothers, Bart and Darren. At this stage in his life, he should be getting ready for Saturday afternoon barbecues and vying for the title of Most Hamburgers Batted In with his third-generation Danish neighbor Magnus, rhymes with Linus, but he hasn’t saved up enough and therefore he’s working weekends as deed poll Fixit.

The motel is void of customers actual or potential, aside from me and there’s no one else in pursuit of a WiFi code. Moreover, I’ve just checked in and have to get cracking on my shopping list before I begin surfing. The debating topic is not whether he has rebooted the machine, but how many times, and if this hasn’t cured the problem any of the first four times, whether he’ll have any luck with the fifth. He’s not pining for Lawrence Welk, much as he enjoys quality time with the blo-bro’s, he’s too anxious because he’s running behind on his home projects.

His failure to engage with the motor inn’s internet backbone was not an error of fact, because it was being controlled behind his back by another actor and I didn’t believe for a second that he lacked the requisite technology skills. He didn’t suspect this at the time, though. I assumed he was capable of keeping separate books of electronic accounts, one for the tax man and another for his boss’s Management Information System, and equally capable of cooking one or both, but time would have to tell.

He scratched his head once more and reared back to old school technology failures, when neither the software nor the hardware were plug and play. I think the driver has got corrupted, he guessed. I’m gonna have to download and install a new driver.

Bend over, I’ll drive, the night and day manager joked, no jested, as outwardly troubled as he was by the loss of data fidelity at the outset of Fixit’s Adventure. The manager’s name was Vijay, his ostentatious parents having emigrated to this small city from an overcrowded Indian metropolis when Vijay was a child and acquired a chain of last resorts, Visakhapatnam being one of the largest cities you’ve never heard of. This was not considered a franchise arrangement even though it functioned like one. Rather, his father Pravin was a reseller in practice if an inn keeper in theory; reseller, that’s the technical term.

Vijay was in his 20s and was working his way through college. With his quick wit, he’d be superior as a stand up than an accountant or pharmacist, but now I’m describing his future value to society, rather than his ability to generate a steady income and support a family and a middle class suburban existence. Two of his brothers managed motels owned by his parents while the other two were on a rolling contract basis. And then there’s his cousins.

I had pulled up and parked by the side, without a reservation because it wasn’t going to make a difference to the price I paid. If I sat in my rental in the parking lot just out of WiFi distance to keep my signal from being blocked and tried to purchase a night online, my final price might be higher. I strolled in deliberately because if Vijay could smell blood on me, I would be paying more for sure. I wasn’t with it enough to have checked prices online beforehand, but I had a vague idea from previous visits to this area.

I was wondering if you have any rooms for tonight, I began, taking care not to interrupt, cognizant that Fixit, lurking in the background, might not be finished bellyaching.

How many nights? Vijay volleyed. If you want two nights I can give you 138, as in dollars.

No, just one night, I informed him. I only need a room for just one night.

He hesitated for realism, as if I didn’t know I was the game and about to be played. In that case I can give you 79, give you the room for 79, dollahs.

I began to walk out. I’ve just been across the street, though, I faux protested. And it’s only 71 across the street.

In that case I can make it 75, he attempted.

It probably was 59 across the street, where I imagine the heat actually worked full time. I had indeed stayed for just one night across the street the year before and still possess the Super 8 Motel pen to prove it. I was the one who was bluffing.

You get free breakfast here, he promised. Come downstairs and I’ll show you.

I followed him downstairs’ three and a half steps to the small kitchen triangle to apportion him his moment to shine, though it was obvious what the breakfast would be, because the free breakfast is the same at every motor inn along this strip, of which there are two more of similar quality further down the road. They borrow the same supplier, he provides identical food and beverages, and his service contracts are cookie cutter.

Look! Vijay pointed in a mixture of pride and glee. Free waffles, but I was playing a different game.

Long life orange juice, I said, very nice. It’s not really called long life, this orange juice with a half life inverse to its performance in blind taste tests, the SKU escapes me but it is ironic that the state answerable to the acronym FCOJ and the phrase ‘pure premium’ has brought to the world a reconstituted juice which tastes nearly as pristine as my used tooth paste. The good, the good and the bland.

Were I younger, meaning 12, I would have been impressed with the waffle maker, close my eyes and it’s a fair ground attraction. However, under the doctrine of the proof of the pudding, his waffles could only be consumed if drowned in synthetic maple syrup with product of more than one country artificial flavorings, and I don’t do flying on the ceiling any more. I will eventually take one of the Flinck’s Extra bagels and blueberry effet muffins upstairs the next morning after I sample and spit out his filter coffee, but only to keep the string going. No live blueberries were harmed during the making of these muffins.

In any event, my only tried and true prerequisites are a TV, fridge and a heating system that powers up, and it doesn’t have to power up to power 10. I have many tasks on my list, and top of mind is a minimum of service quality and lack of distractions, rather than creature comfort. I walked the three and a half steps back up to the front desk, leaving Vijay trailing in the dust, slapped my card on his writing tablet and barked in his direction out of the left corner of my mouth, while he waited nervously for my decision.

Ring it up for $73, I said. No, just pulling your chain. Make it $76, with which he smiled the smile of the eternally grateful. The life of the front of house staff during the low season when your parents own the property, and your only company is the rock ‘em, sock ‘em IT guy Fixit. Vijay intentionally allotted a substandard room so that he could shadow me up ten minutes later with the breaking news that the room he had chosen wasn’t quite right and another down the corridor would be more suitable for a person of my calibre. They were identical and both starved of investment, he simply sought the added personal association because I was his only customer for the night and Fixit had mentally locked himself in the computer room to sort out the internet. Was $76 going to cover the cost of two salaries, utilities and license fee payments for nineteen to twenty hours? If so, they must rake it in during the high season, because the free breakfast can’t set them back more than $1.20 per person and self-evidently they pay the cleaning staff $5.15 an hour. Pravin will need some creative accounting to reduce his tax bill, though, because there hasn’t been any depreciation to net off since the last decade.

I unpacked my toothbrush from the hold-all once Vijay was gone, performed three minutes of solar energy breath and walked downstairs again, ready to check items off my list. Vijay would enjoy a staring contest with himself until 11:30 pm, when he’d be able to punch out and click the front door bell to wake-up, because he had nothing else to do now that his mid-term exams were over and he wouldn’t be able to sign up for new classes until the Monday nine days hence. Moreover, he hadn’t yet found the girl of his dreams and he wasn’t a gamer or an e-sports fanatic.

My first stop was the C-suite change agency, no it was the Gas-o-rama, this microcosm of America. When I’m not in a hurry, this is cathartic. When I am in a hurry, I can not get this task over with soon enough. This occasion, meanwhile, was middling, which meant I would set the octane switch to automatic, and conceptually compile my indoor repertoire. Two cans of beer to purchase, and a gaze at the hard liquor selection and the magazine section, possibly some snack food to soak up the beer (‘When you fill your stomach with food, you could be slowing the absorption rate of the alcohol,’ according to Dr SJ Finkelstein), but let’s not over-choose the beer and snacks. The beer in the crap beer section is flavored by high fructose corn syrup, which by the law of definitions means it should not be called beer because the maturation time has been artificially shortened from six weeks to sixteen days, or as one barmaid once informed me at a provincial pub, we don’t have any beer on draft, only lager. You can’t say that about the snacks selection, because their snacks are by definition crap.

Nope, just beer, and two large higher proof cans, because they will have some taste and if I don’t drink them tonight, I can take them on the road. The snacks can wait, let’s see how filling the dinner will be.

The worker behind the cash register is either DaLibor or Karl, but he’s the equivalent of the sign at the amusement park with the white horizontal line which reads: ‘you must be able to see above this line to go on this ride,’ height that is. He was shut off at the tattoo parlor after half an eagle on his left arm and therefore he is Karl. He talks to all the customers and this produces a tailback that leads outside the door, but he has the patience and doesn’t have the IQ to stop. Moreover, no one at this location is in a hurry on a Saturday afternoon. He talks a lot, but without the gift of the gab, he hopes that if he keeps going some of it will stick, he’ll generate a reaction that is, build customer loyalty for future reference, and in some small way merit a wage hike or a promotion. Six months down the road, he’ll become aware of the concept of pop-ups, in his personal circumstance pop-up stand-ups, and as ceiling CCTV is installed above all check out counters, this will be his audition for the Comedy Connection.

But umm wait, when it was my turn he Umm, carded me. In another country at the self service checkout I will hear ‘Please wait for an attendant to confirm your age’ from an automated voice machine if I try to buy beer. Sooner or later a staff member will scoot over and glance at me briefly to ensure that I ‘clearly look’ over 25, which I had better. In this service station, though, Karl umm cards me. I should return to the beer fridge and buy a third lower gravity beer for sobering up later, or was it for self-discipline, but first I’ll have to go back to the motel and drop off the two cans I have already purchased, and are in my possession, because I can’t lose my place in the line.

This was a tough call because although I listened to the humming of the fridge to ensure it was ‘on,’ Vijay’s dad