Leave Well Enough Alone

By Elvin C. Bell

Bertha Aurora Dominguez is an alluring and provocative woman of considerable wealth. As the United States Delegate to the Organization of American States boards a plane from Santiago, Chile, to Atlanta, no one knows that she is also the leader of an international terrorist network—except perhaps the nun who has strategically seated herself two rows in front of her in first class.

Over the years, Dominguez, also known as Big Balls Bertha, has developed a heart as hard as diamonds, a stomach of iron, a tearless eye, and the ability to utilize various disguises and surrogates to outsmart the FBI, CIA, and Interpol agents determined to capture her. She hates trespassers and America. When she contemplates what America’s war forces have done to so many countries that include Kosovo, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Dominguez’s hatred of America grows. As she slowly transforms her apartment into an arsenal to be used by her mercenaries to rid the world of trespassers, Dominguez unfurls an evil plan that, if she is not stopped, has the potential to destroy America forever.

Leave Well Enough Alone shares the heart-stopping journey of a female terrorist as she embarks on a resolute mission to destroy the United States.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781480883581

Elvin C. Bell

Elvin C. Bell served sixteen years as an elected public office in California. He is a former correspondent for Time Magazine, and a retired USAF Colonel. He lives in Fresno.

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Copyright © 2019 Elvin C. Bell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Archway Publishing

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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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-8357-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-8358-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019915168

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/15/2019

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my friends Shelia, Ian and Ariel.

Shelia was my resource and compass during the Florida years when my job required extensive international travel.

I was constantly amazed by Shelia’s wit, wink and quick smile, and each quip had a blessed depth of humor that was deeper and wider than any mother lode. and her children were always welcome. They were family.

In remembering them, I am reminded of the words of Franz Kafka: No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sincere gratitude is offered to all who helped in the research, site selection, description and character development for this project.

My debt of appreciation is especially true to Rawlings Campbell for sharing some of his pharmacy background on chemicals.

Thanks to Denise Hillis for her artistic beautiful work, and my deep appreciation to Sean Justi for his awesome technical help on combat strategy and tactics.

Thanks, also, to Gayle Glover, Carolyn Mott and Tara Beard not only for their patience, but for taking some of my ideas and making them look good.

The development of this novel and getting it to conclusion would not have been nearly as fun and fine without them.

With love and gratitude to my family, and in fond memory of dear ones already gone, I wish all grace and peace.

PROLOGUE

There is something terribly strange and even eerie about inhabitants of Cardwell. The peculiar quirks and habits of people in the swamp and bayou country might remind some of certain folks they have tried to avoid.

But these characters can’t be ignored.

Most of them are AWOL soldiers, street urchins, rodeo has-beens, rap-sheet scoundrels, genuine mooches or hallucinating artists. And none of them can get stoned unless a high volume guitar is thumping in their ears.

They also snort rather than dip, smoke other than menthols and twang of more than calico visions, sweet smelling mommas and honky-tonk angels.

Such is the conglomeration of boondocks humanity that gives Cardwell its peculiar odor of ambience.

This sip and flip rant about bayou back-sliders moves rapidly among a diverse group of human frailties, foibles and fatal follies. The list includes two cops with heavy badges who hate everyone, a multi-millionaire who supports ISIS and Talban terrorists more than she does her church, and a raccoon hunting absentee-prone county sheriff who moonlights as a mandolin craftsman and crooner at high school half-time events.

There’s also a mayor on the take from deep-pocket developers, and a debt-ridden circuit court presiding judge who’s addicted to laying it all down at blackjack tables on the Internet’s Cherokee Turquoise Casino.

An abundance of femininity is provided by Roselizabeth, an eye-pleasing redhead with a smile that could launch a thousand limos. She’s a gorgeous combat veteran with expert marksmanship medals in several different weapons who lives comfortably thanks to a small, reliable and highly profitable clientele of bigwigs in Atlanta’s brotherhood of assassins.

Then there’s the code-named SisBathsheba, the stunningly attractive Director of Security Operations for the World Bank. Readers will need to buckle-up tight as they follow the battles she must fight to protect the world’s financial centers against terrorist forces.

The air and ground combat scenes on Chile’s Andes mountainous terrain, and SisBathsheba’s clever efforts against a terrorist’s dirty nuke missile launch, are spell-binding events that are well crafted and worth reading.

The world needs less worriers and more warriors like those two women.

W e are all here on earth to help others;

what on earth the others are here for,

I don’t know.

—W. H. Auden

CHAPTER 1

A picture-perfect face was displayed by the alluring and smartly dressed woman as she boarded the flight to Atlanta. Her slow and deliberate pace down the aisle to the first class compartment was discretely watched by men who rubbernecked her provocative hip movements, and were aromatized with orgasmic thoughts as they savored her perfume.

It had the pleasant fragrance of primroses; faint, wild and sweet. The woman’s quick smile and easy, swaying lightness complemented her effervescent wide-eyed look that gave her a shy, rather innocent air.

As she continued her casual, leisurely walk down the narrow aisle, steely-eyed glares from women blazed with envy that approached jealously. Their heads were collectively glued on the lady’s jewelry.

The forefinger on her right hand displayed a marquise diamond that must have been five carats with what looked like three half-carat baguettes on each side.

A flawless six-carat blue sapphire surrounded with eight-point diamonds in platinum flashed from the woman’s index finger on the other hand. Ornaments composed of coral and black jade caressed her ear-lobes.

The obviously sophisticated and wealthy woman finally settled with a window view, and immediately lowered the arm rest that had separated the two first-class seats.

Prying eyes nodded in appreciation that the woman had reserved both seats for her personalized comfort during the nine hour flight to North America.

The elegant passenger glanced out her window and watched intently as the plane taxied slowly from its gate at the west end of the Santiago, Chile terminal.

She turned, unfolded her seat blanket, wrapped it around her as she curled-up on the two seats, buckled her belt securely on the outside of the blanket to avoid flight attendant disturbance, fluffed her pillow and fell into a deep sleep.

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Finally, after a hard three-bounce landing in strong cross winds, the aircraft braked to a stop in front of the Atlanta International Processing Center.

Passengers hurriedly opened over-head bins and yanked out their bags while the aisle filled with anxious faces eager to deplane after the bumpy nine hour flight from Santiago.

Everyone was in a hurry except the woman who was still seated by her first class window. Being rushed was not her style. She had experienced worse flights on her frequent travels to and from South America.

Her stunningly tanned picturesque face transitioned into a forced smile as she looked down and focused on the smooth gray leather Gucci pouch that hung from a necklace of black pearls. She lifted the little wallet and snapped open the identification pocket.

Her smile turned into a glow of supreme authority as she whispered the printed words: The Honorable Bertha Aurora Dominguez, United States Delegate to the Organization of American States. Accord full International Diplomatic Immunity. Attest: The President of the United States of America.

Diplomat Dominguez owned several different corporate entities in her political and business careers, and the one she represented on this trip was a multi-nation skilled and un-skilled labor contracting conglomerate that was headquartered in Atlanta.

Her firm’s new client was a huge Asian auto-truck manufacturing enterprise. The firm’s principals needed a minimum of 250 menial workers to remove and clear surface growth, varmint life and large predator animals on 1,250 acres of snake and alligator infested swamp land in southwest Georgia, an area adjacent to similar swamps in nearby Florida and Alabama.

Bertha Dominguez knew that other labor contractors had backed out of offering proposals to the foreign vehicle company because of the high risk of injury or death to workers, and the resultant bad publicity each incident would create.

After Bertha jumped at the opportunity to make a quick seven figure profit, her colleagues in the industry disaffectedly tabbed her Big Balls Bertha.

So what, she figured, if lives were lost in a swamp. Gators and snakes, like her profits, also had to be fed!

Bertha had no trouble, as usual, in obtaining the needed laborers in the South America regions of Bogota, Colombia, Tegucigalpa, Honduras and Santiago, Chile.

Through her contacts with employees at the three U. S. Envoy’s offices she got all of the H-1C, H-1B clearances, seasonal approval forms and alien registration cards she needed to hire and transport 250 desperate laborers who would do anything to come to America. Anything, including Bertha’s last minute extra requirement of $500 that each person had to pay for a guaranteed six month minimum pay hourly job in America.

The extra $125,000 would be used to purchase additional ammunition she needed to augment her arsenal of weapons

Big Balls Bertha figured that what happened to the laborers after six months wasn’t her problem. She knew that those who survived the predators, insects, swamp gators and snakes could easily melt into the U. S. landscape along with the other 11 million undocumented foreigners living off tax-funded welfare in the U. S

Bertha also knew her client prohibited any up-front pay-offs or under-the-table deals, but that didn’t stop Bertha from making a quick buck. The contract also prohibited the bribes she paid to Envoy personnel, but she got the vital part of the job done her way and it saved a month of dealing with siesta-prone Hispanic bureaucrats.

The noise from coach passengers in the rear of the aircraft caught her attention. The sounds seemed to be much louder than she had heard on previous risky flights to and from South America.

Bertha examined the mass of humanity in the aisle and saw several anxious people who were crossing themselves, praying, fingering beads and thanking the Blessed Virgin Mary for a safe landing.

Others, Bertha thought, dressed like South American scum-pimps and acted like it. They conducted their business as usual by bartering names of cocaine and marijuana dealers who sold their commodities at discount, and rented virgin children for back seat trysts or long weekend respites.

Bertha slowly unbuckled her seat belt, forced her tall statuesque frame out of her window seat and snapped open the overhead bin. She looked in, gripped a well-worn pinkish attaché case, examined the sturdy locks on each side of the handle, and nodded her acknowledgement that they were still securely guarding the contents.

She turned and faced the aisle

It is bad, my sister, very bad and it just gets worse.

Bertha turned to her left, in the direction of the soft, clearly enunciated words.

Are you not your brother’s and sister’s keeper?

It was the nun. Bertha had seen her in the boarding area at Santiago before the plane departed for Atlanta. She was seated two rows in front of Bertha.

Bertha had wondered how a Sister, or her Order, could afford a first-class seat.

It was the first time Berta had seen the Sister’s face. She was exquisite with delicately shaped high cheekbones, narrow slits revealed alert, hazel eyes under lustrous dark eyebrows, and her lips puckered over both vowels and consonants.

But what was so fascinating about her was not the perfectly shaped radiantly-white teeth, but the rich, creamy dark tan on such youthful skin.

Bertha, who over the years had developed a heart as hard as diamonds, a stomach of iron and a tearless eye, heard herself say in a rare show of kindness, Yes, Sister, the need is great but we are so few.

You look American, the Sister said. Can your country help us in Bogota or anywhere in South America?

By her own proud count, Bertha Dominguez had never donated a penny or a peso to charity in her life, except Saint Mary’s Vincent DePaul Catholic Church in Cardwell, a city in the southwestern metropolitan area of Columbus, Georgia.

She lived and served as a re-elected City Council Mayor Pro Tem in Cardwell, and had controlled the Catholic and Hispanic votes for nearly eight years.

But there was something enticing, mesmerizing and charming about the petite Sister, and her Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, attitude.

Bertha reached into her pocket, withdrew her card wallet, opened it, and handed the Sister a business card.

For your convenience, Sister, Bertha said in a voice that was dipped in sarcasm, one side is Spanish and the other side is English.

The Sister glanced momentarily at each side. A frown crossed her face as she lifted her head and looked at the nattily attired but perfect example of an ugly mercenary American who displayed no redeeming value to the human race in front of her.

How thoughtful of you, senora, the Sister said, to acknowledge our provisional status and remind us of it.

Bertha faked a grimace of embarrassment.

She knew what the Sister meant. Her words were a clever substitute for a swift kick in the crotch.

As the Sister held the card and studied it, her long, smooth fingers displayed squared-off manicured nails that glistened from coats of clear polish.

As the Sister finished reading, she tilted her head up and her hazel eyes blinked and widened. They turned from compassionate grief to an expectation of fulfillment. She flipped the card over and read the English version.

As you can see, Sister, Bertha said, I am part of an international organization, as well as a participant in a continental organization. Send me your needs and I will respond. I cannot promise miracles, Bertha said while shaking her head and forcing a smile, but I will respond.

You are President of the International Sister City Program?" the Sister asked as she continued to study the card.

No, Sister. I am President of the Cardwell, Georgia International Sister City Program. I am a member of the city council and the mayor pro tem. I serve the people of our mutual faith, Sister, and all the people in my district who may not have any faith.

Oh, Senora, the Sister said with the facial display of a humble servant, I am unworthy to be in your presence, but so thankful to have met you. I shall surely post you a note."

Their eyes met in an inquisitive display of uncertainty.

Good day, the Sister finally said, you kind and generous servant of his holiness.

She moved ahead of Bertha and disappeared into the crowd.

Bertha Aurora Dominguez, an avid aficionado of Cuba’s hand-rolled miniature cigars, pulled some of her favorites out of a side pocket. She selected a Cohiba and lit it with a flaming gold Dunhill as she hurried through the mass of humanity in the terminal.

Only a keen eye would notice the irregular gait in her left foot.

Exited through the side door where the taxis and buses were always lined up, tossed her bag through the open door of the first cab she came to, climbed in and handed the driver a note with some currency.

As the taxi slowly egressed the terminal, Bertha saw the Sister entering the back seat of a black SUV. She was escorted by several men in dark three-piece suits. Each had a cell phone in his ear and the SUV was one of three black vehicles that pulled away in a close convoy.

A Sister with a beautiful tan and a manicure who has her own escorts and limos, Bertha whispered to herself. Her face slowly wrinkled into concern as she took a deep drag on her Cohiba.

‘How remarkable. How intriguing. How captivating, she said as she inhaled another long drag. It will be interesting to discover what intelligence agency the Sister works for, or directs."

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The constant blare of the taxi’s horn was a high decibel nuisance to everyone but cigar-puffing Bertha.

She was in a hurry and the driver had his orders. He kept his foot on the gas pedal as he maneuvered around pedestrians on West 30th Street, made a sharp, rubber-burning turn onto 10th Avenue, slowed just a tad through the Lincoln Tunnel, hit the gas again during a left turn at the Manhattan Mall, then right on Broadway Boulevard and coasted to a stop in front of an unpretentious apartment building.

Heavy stogie smoke billowed from the vehicle.

You earned the tip," Bertha said, as she waited for her door to open so the driver could help heave her tall frame out of the back seat.

On her way to her apartment, Bertha had her wardrobe bag slung over her right shoulder, her coat was unbuttoned, her red Atlanta Falcons cap covered most of her medium-length hair, and a new Cohiba was jammed into the left side of her mouth.

As her pace quickened, a cloud of thick, bluish stogie smoke trailed behind.

Bertha laboriously climbed the familiar steps to the apartment house, opened the door and waved to the desk clerk. The clerk mumbled a greeting to his strange tenant who showed up a couple days every other month, but always paid her rent in advance.

The clerk’s eyes followed the tenant as she walked through the lobby. She passed a few shabby tenants and a newspaper delivery man chatting about the falsification of hand-rolled tobacco products from Russia, and the counterfeiting of high quality cigars from Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

Bertha walked along the well-worn floor, past the restrooms, entered the open door of the elevator and punched her floor number.

It was the usual six second ride to the third floor.

She entered a long corridor, turned right, walked to the end of the hallway, unlocked the bolted door to apartment 337 and entered.

She walked to a sideboard and carefully poured two fingers of tequila into a shiny crystal glass. She removed her coat and cap, tossed them on a chair, took a Derringer from her inside vest holster and placed it on a nightstand, reached for her drink, took a long sip, straightened herself, turned and faced a full-length mirror.

She fit the role of an attractive successful business woman with a five-ton keel; steady in a storm. But inside, deep inside, Bertha’s self-talk was consistently on full volume. She was constantly angry; the hot blooded, ballsy type, seething with rage and energy, always spoiling for a fight.

Her right hand moved the glass of tequila in small circles until, finally, she closed her eyes and lifted the drink to her lips for a long, pleasant taste. She removed her hat, tossed it on the bed and gently shook her abundant crop of coiffured red hair; hair as red as the burnt radiant sunset on the south of France.

She looked again at her reflection in the mirror. A broad smile crossed her face.

States Delegate to the Organization of American States Bertha Aurora Dominguez suddenly looked White House red carpet and Cabinet Room professional.

On the verge of six feet, dressed in the fluidity of silk against a stiff tweed, a wool scarf casually cross-shoulder with a string of diamond and sapphire bangles on her left wrist, she was Bimini, Buenos Aires and Quito tanned, rich-casual and, quite unnaturally, novice-nervous.

Born 37 years ago in Argentina to United States Ambassador and Mrs. Carlos Santiago Dominguez, Bertha was the last in her family; the sole survivor. Her parents were killed in a mysterious airplane explosion while on a fishing trip to the Plateau of Patagonia in southern Argentina.

Alvaro, Bertha’s fourth and final husband, was killed in Lima, Peru. Her stepson died in a car accident shortly after graduating from middle school, and all five of her brothers were dead.

All gone, long gone, unlike her life of affluence as the daughter of a U. S. Ambassador, a life she had successfully kept hidden for many years.

She took all the money she inherited from her late parents, every penny she got from selling their Maryland estate, every dollar she siphoned from cashing their CDs, IRAs and stock, and nestled all of it safely in various banks in the Bahamas, Geneva, Toronto and the Caymans. Each account had multiple safety guards and passwords that she changed quarterly.

The initial deposits totaled $82.7 million. That was 13 years ago, after her first wedding and a three month quarreling match that was terminated by her vagabond husband’s murder from a Derringer bullet in the forehead.

Instead of attending the philanderer’s funeral, Bertha was in her lawyer’s office having her maiden name restored.

Georgia authorities were never able to find the murderer or the weapon.

Carefree and feeling her oats a year later after getting her MBA, young and adventurous Bertha decided to leave her late parents’ spacious hacienda in Buenos Aires and take a management job with a major American rail conglomerate. How was young Bertha to know that her father was the former Chairman of the Baltimore and Ohio Board of Directors?

After two years in Cincinnati, Bertha had a senior management position and a handsome, but scoundrel of a new husband whose passion was before its time: saving rain forests.

Then the damn foot accident. The death of her husband and the loss of her left foot was the result of accidently stepping on an improvised explosive devise intentionally planted on the narrow path the couple used while on a rain forest study program in Peru.

Although Bertha qualified for life-time monthly disability payments, they were poor substitutes for an awkward prosthesis she had to maneuver on the rest of her life. The new foot was a constant reminder to remember precisely in the future where an improvised explosive device was buried to avoid the loss of another foot.

Her present primary mission, to change the status quo, would never end even if it took the loss of both feet. She wanted more, and she wanted it at high risk, if necessary.

At first, nearly a decade ago, she had to be elected to a city council position from a district that had a substantial Latino population.

She did not want to spend her valuable time catering to whims, whiffs and whinny crazes of poor white trash constituents.

Second, she would maneuver herself into a position of leadership in the city’s Sister City Program.

Third, she would become an expert on developing Sister City Programs in Central and South America.

Fourth, and most importantly, she would use her influence with her late father’s colleagues and cronies to obtain a Presidential appointment as a senior cryptology intelligence level U. S. Delegate to the Organization of American States. The senior delegate status was important because it carried White House prestige, and provided her with worldwide amenities, privileges, courtesies, and a much needed asset; diplomatic immunity.

Those four steps would provide her with the foundation to build an empire larger than Colombia’s Cali cocaine cartel, more profitable than all the mafia assets of Gambino, Gotti, Colombo, Lychees and Genovese crime families in New York, Newark, Chicago, New Orleans and Phoenix combined, and safer than traveling on Air Force One.

A six-month search of southeastern states revealed the first step would start in Cardwell, Georgia located above the Gulf of Mexico and the central section of the Florida Panhandle. Its only drawback were the frequent summer hurricanes that spun-off tornadoes.

Second and third steps fell into place faster than expected.

The fourth step was accomplished with three phone calls. That was eleven years ago. Since then, each year had proven more profitable beyond expectation as Bertha Aurora Dominguez traveled hundreds of times to and from each of the thirty-five Countries in the Organization of American States, with major emphasis on the twenty nations in South and Central America.

With the trappings of full diplomatic immunity, and in the service of her President, Dominguez was impervious to reproach, question, interrogation, search, seizure or detention.

Likewise, every briefcase, letter, suitcase, pouch, box, crate or shipment she sent or received was protected from search or seizure.

Any variance of that standard by a law enforcement officer or agent would be a flagrant violation of U. S. and International Law, and would not be admissible in any court.

Bertha, who carried her tall stature with determination, was known in her multiple businesses and political circles as fully capable of trading earthy shots with the best.

But inside, the reality had finally sunk in that she had outgrown her old dreams of a Hollywood career by twenty pounds, fifteen years and four marriages.

She pictured herself as the last lone fighter, and she could be brutal, dark and foul enough to use her resources to save herself and what’s left of a life worth living without trespassers.

She rented and voted from her primary residence in an upper class apartment complex in Cardwell’s District 4, two blocks from her Saint Mary’s Vincent DePaul Catholic Church. She used her secondary triple-locked apartment on Broadway Boulevard in the lower class section of south Columbus to stash things that nobody needed to know about; especially the FBI.

She also liked southern Georgia because it was in Muscogee County where Sheriff Homer Jedbow Cogburn had a few years ahead of him before he could retire, and in the meantime, everyone knew Sheriff Cogburn always looked the other way to avoid any controversy and unnecessary paper work.

The Broadway apartment was also near the front gate of Fort Kerman, the nation’s largest Army training installation. The base was the training site for soldiers who wanted to become members of the Army’s Special Forces. Soldiers were constantly walking, jogging, biking or driving up and down Broadway, and unknowingly, they served as additional security for Big Balls Bertha’s personal armory.

Bertha was a purest at heart. She hated trespassers. The country she hated the most was America. In her mind, America was the world’s main trespasser.

Her hobby was to stop the trespasser.

The hatred grew inside her each day when she thought of Kosovo, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Bosnia, Lebanon, Iran, Slovenia, the Islamic ISIS States of Iraq and Syria, and what America’s war forces have done to those countries.

That is why her Broadway Boulevard apartment, which is unknowingly protected by the same soldiers who trespassed on other countries, had been turned into an arsenal that will be used by Bertha’s mercenaries to rid the world of trespassers.

In addition to the comfortable identical furniture her designers had arranged in each residence, her well-hidden and boxed personal property consisted of multiple armament munitions, shoulder mounted rockets, electronic tracking devices, grenades, automatic hand guns with 20-clip magazines, high caliber machine guns with 9-yard ammo belts, crates of super sensitive C-4 explosives and dozens of anarchist’s cookbooks that describe construction methods for improvised explosive devices.

She used the cookbook to make the IED’s that destroyed her parents’ airplane in flight over Argentina, and the one she used in Peru.

Within one year, she planned to have a similar well-stocked armory in a major city in each of the 50 states.

That is her hobby.

But it was now getting late and she needed a short nap before her final chore of the day. A nap would follow her daily ritual of entering some thoughts into a journal, her permanent records file.

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At home in Cardwell, Bertha reaches for the container of colored Mont Blanc pens and selects a dark yellow one.

Dear Journal:

I will always have the urge to write, to remind myself of the pain and disgust others can bring on society. I will stop them.

The events that led up to this dismay are not the same as before, but the pain mirrors that of more than a decade ago when I killed for the first time. It was a single shot from my derringer to the forehead while he climaxed. He begged me to do it. He said he wanted to go that way. So I let him.

The second time was a flat edge screwdriver through the throat when he refused to go down on me. He had to die. I put him in the stump grinder out back and buried his parts next to the almond tree.

The almonds were exceedingly tasty that harvest season.

I can’t help but ask myself, Will I ever learn? Now, in the back of my mind, I realize I sound exactly like Frog in response to Toad when I tell myself, maybe, maybe not.

Before, I’m sure my release of frustration was decorated with specific names and juicy details of the events. Of the many boyfriends. Lovers on the side. The four husbands mixed in between.

But as I have grown older, I realize these details are a waste of my time.

For the need to have relationships, whether personal, intimate, or professional, etc., all run the risk of hopes to enjoy some common interest, to be replaced with the sad but true reality of life; you cannot trust people. No matter how much an individual may hold high ranking in your heart or be one you want to be like, there is always a huge risk they have a personal agenda that doesn’t reflect that of your own.

One thing I always say and believe is that I shall try to prove myself wrong, but in the end, I’m always right. Most people are horrible. I know this. But I still have a burning desire to know people, to build relationships with individuals that forcefully put up walls.

I believe society puts these barriers on people leading them to believe because they lack a perfect life and have struggles or fears. They do not fit in.

I believe we all have a responsibility to open-up and engage in conversation to remind ourselves we are all part of the same thing.

Still I find myself hurt by individuals who just want to harm. So as a reminder to myself, I just have to remember people are scumbags. They are evil.

They say knowledge is power. But when that power is put into technology and takes away challenging mental stimulations, everyone loses.

The way we speak and interact with others have evolved and continues to change. How we interact isn’t the only thing evolving. Shouldn’t it mean more?

We all want champagne wishes and caviar dreams as an old TV show featured, but I already have enormous wealth. I have moved carefully from the ranks of oil billionaires, titans of the industry and Wall Street traders into the world of sneaker-wearing tech execs as the world’s richest people.

I probably lead the stampede. I have more than my share of mansions with diamond-crusted chandeliers, yachts with Jacuzzis, custom made helicopters and executive Leer jets.

I will. I promise. I will rid the world of trespassers who want to take all that away from me.

Now I want to say a word to my wife and lover, Libby Washington, my distinguished colleague on the Cardwell City Council.

Libby is free of hurts, habits and hang-ups. She is perfect for me. As a university provost, she lives in the white-hot light of fame that is trained on her. She is, to me, less morning glory than night phlox. By that I mean she is a flower that closes in the sunlight and opens after dark.

But when she is off campus and with me she is truly taciturn, more remote, more inclined to deflect praise for her books, her lectures, her accomplishments, than to accept it.

She is what I would call a very, very layered and beautiful woman. She is, basically, humble yet extremely knowledgeable.

I don’t know what I would do without Libby.

She dazzles me with her ebony color and amazes me with her glow.

Oh, my, oh, my, dear Libby there are two theories about our relationship.

First, this contest—remarkable, sexy, silly, comical at times and outlandish as it is—will be little noted nor long remembered because we are better than all the others.

The second theory will be reality-tested soon. This view holds that I am much better, wiser and richer than you. I also have tons of poise, too.

When the last one of us is still alive, and that will be me I assure you, I’ll pretend this whole fabulously ridiculous courtship never happened.

I discard hook-ups like Cecil B. DeMille killing off extras in a Roman Coliseum.

Of course I’ll fondly remember the Ménage a trois parties we had with guests in countless hotels around the world.

Remember that cold one when we were deep in a snowy forest north of Quebec City and we did it with the hotel bookkeeper on the dog sled?

Then we both had fun and terrifying moments when we drove our own sleds and gave the dogs commands in French? We had to. After all, we were in Quebec!

So often, the magic of a trip lies in the off-beat, intimate discoveries that feel like they were just waiting for us, and us only.

That was the idea I had on our first trip together. Remember Miami Beach when we did it with three guys who said the BeeGees were their parents?

Then, later on Sunday morning, we saw them at church. They were priests!

How about that trip in my new executive jet to incomparable Ireland where we kissed what our host said was the blarney stone. Do you remember our amazement when we found out later we were kissing our host’s cock that was in a dirty sock?

We both got all of him that night.

I’ve experienced many unusual sexual outings, but that one was the oddest, and coldest.

I’ll never forget how you hollered at him to have another climax, and he let go with a stream of profanities when he did just like you commanded.

Then he kept on shrieking and bobbing his head up and down on you with fire in his eyes like a Shakespearean king exhorting troops into battle.

Well, my dear Libby, after going through eight or ten soul-mates before I seduced you, I’m ready for another soft touch. So I’m planning to roll the dice with a replacement. But not just yet.

I am in the middle of a very big improvement project that will soon happen in Washington, D. C. It will bring down the President, the Vice President and the Speaker of the House and put into the oval office a great man, the President Pro Tem of the Senate.

My Chief of Staff, Julio Cardenas Padilla, is in charge of the operation. I have complete faith in Julio. It is his chief assistant, Jose Franandes Ramirez, who I wonder about.

For now, I must nap for an hour.

Good bye.

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Bertha took full advantage of being the daughter of the late U. S. Ambassador Dominguez, and she relished the opportunity of attending quarterly dinner meetings of the Board of Directors in the OAS headquarters on 17th Street, just off Constitution Avenue, in Washington, D. C.

Bertha did not know at her first dinner meeting that the FBI had followed standard operating procedures for new OAS Directors, and had taken DNA samples from the plate, spoon, fork, glass and cup she had used during the dinner.

By the following mid-day, Bertha’s DNA was in the international data code bank and available to Interpol, the United States Department of Defense, and federal, state and municipal law enforcement agencies.

From the Capitol Hilton Hotel on 16th Street, where she retained a penthouse suite, Bertha was chauffeured in a White House limo to her appointments.

She regaled and delighted her fellow delegates by communicating with them in the four official languages of the OAS – English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. And she rejoiced in manipulating them with stories and actions that reflected the rich diversity of the peoples and cultures across North and South America.

Last year, in recognition of Bertha’s dedication to the OAS’s Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission and its work with member countries to strengthen laws, improve law enforcement and stem the illegal trafficking of narcotics and related chemicals and arms, she was chosen by her fellow delegates to sit on the Permanent Council. Her title: Executive Secretariat of the Court of Human Rights and Integral Development of Hemispheric Security.

It was the highest, singular honor that could be bestowed on a member delegate. The status had no equal in the OAS family.

Each member state had one vote on the Permanent Council. The U.S. population, with more than 300 million people, represented only 25 percent of the OAS population, but the U.S. vote had broad coattails.

Bertha possessed the sole U.S. vote, and the majority votes in her pocket, to lead and direct the political and economic affairs of North and South America.

Each day brought Bertha closer to her goal: Why be President of the United States when you can control two continents?

Member nations on the Permanent Council had exhibited their fondness for Bertha Dominguez’s election by exalting her during a three-hour Summit of the Americas banquet at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. Every member nation from Canada to tiny Belize in the Caribbean was represented.

Everyone knew Senora Bertha Aurora Dominguez was the best of the best.

Such was the life of the masterful mobster who wore the silk pinstripes of an OAS Latino diplomat with retained non-pretentious apartments in Quito, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Tegucigalpa, Lima, Mexico City, Caracas, Bolivar, Costa Rica, Chile and Montevideo. Those did not include her leased hotel suites in nine other countries, or her two apartments in southern Georgia.

The apartments and suites were self-contained with a full wardrobe, a computer center with all the amenities, non-traceable phones with scramblers, a tequila bar, and, except for three of her suites, a helicopter pad with aircraft and crew on call.

There was no need to become familiar with a strange, new environment at the different respites because they were all cloned. Each had 2,250 square feet, with some minor exceptions in Lima and Buenos Aires which were larger, and each had the same furniture, the same amenable features, in the same location, and, the same inventory.

Bertha did not have the patience it took to open various drawers and search for hose, booze or ammo clips.

It was no coincidence that her apartment in San Jose, Costa Rica was directly across the street from the OAS Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and only fifteen miles from her well concealed international headquarters that were centrally located within six sections of the rain forest land she owned.

Her well-hidden command, communications and control complex in that tranquil area of South-Central America was secure geographically because it was bounded on the north by Nicaragua, on the east by the Caribbean Sea and Panama and on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean.

No one, not even the prying eyes of the CIA or Interpol, could get within 10 miles of her command post complex without detection because of primary and back-up high-tech aerial, land and sea sensors sounding a coded alarm with locater graphics.

Visits to San Jose was not complete without a stopover at the OAS office to lend her voice to people who had suffered human rights violations, reaffirm her support for women’s rights, and call for better housing for indigenous people.

Those visits also afforded her the opportunity to receive new classified code changes for OAS diplomatic immunity shipments or postings, and sit through a staff briefing in her headquarters.

No one knew that the fox who controlled the political and financial direction of two entire continents also had the keys to all the hen houses.

Her busy schedule also included the marriage and divorce of her first three disobedient, inadequate husbands, some four months apart; one in Mexico City, one in Puerto Cortes and the other in Quito. Her legal staff handled all the details including the pay-offs.

She balanced her personal affairs and various international enterprises by careful and precise planning.

Foremost among all concerns and entities was that she neither knew, nor cared to know, the names or faces of her second or third tier of employees, retainers or independent contractors who worked for her. And they, in turn, did not know the source of their orders. Was it a her, a him, an it, or whatever?

All they knew was they were paid well, very well, indeed, each Friday for accomplishing their assigned tasks.

She also knew that her key management staff at the headquarters would be in frequent contact with the Washington project coordinators, Julio Padilla and Jose Ramirez, and could give Bertha a 1.5 minute up-date briefing at her convenience. The briefing time was limited to 90 seconds or less to avoid sensor contact by repositioned over-head CIA intelligence satellites.

Her reach was global.

If a job meant bribing the captain or crew on vessels bound from the United States to Israel or Egypt, and stealing hundreds of U.S. made anti-aircraft Stingers, so be it.

If it meant the destruction of the Contra supply depot at the Ilopango airfield in El Salvador, so much the better.

Earlier, when OPEC oil ministers refused to negotiate, Bertha’s specialized henchmen kidnapped and tortured the ministers until they changed their minds.

Close ties with leftist insurrectionist groups in Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria resulted in Bertha’s association with lieutenants of the late Osama bin Laden in the master planning of the bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Those actions took the lives of 291 people and wounded 5,000 others.

That plot was preceded by Bertha’s introduction to a kingpin in Libya who needed assistance.

The ringleader wanted to avenge America’s bombing of a terrorist camp in Libya, and would pay a handsome retainer for a significant proportionate response.

Two days later, the client did not question the plan presented by Bertha’s team.

It was a simple arrangement: A C-4 bomb would be placed inside a Toshiba Boombeat radio, packed in a Samsonite suitcase and stuffed with clothes, loaded on a plane in Malta, transferred through Frankfurt, then shipped on to London where it would be placed aboard Pan America’s clipper Maid of the Seas Flight 103.

The next day, when CNN