Copyright 2008 by David Lawrence Cade

All rights reserved

THE CURE

A NOVEL BY

DAVID LAWRENCE CADE

CHAPTER ONE

The afternoon of Tuesday, December 2, 2008, Louis O’Connor, age twenty-eight, left his office at the George Washington University campus where he was a doctoral student of linguistics and drove along M Street to an art deco-inspired former branch of the national banking institution where he had his checking and savings accounts.

It had been another cold, dry afternoon, the early winter finding Washington D.C. in a whirl of preparation for the inevitable changes stemming from the November elections.

What would the inauguration entail? Larry McIntire - Louis’s husband since 2004 and a senior staffer age thirty-two in the office of a Republican New York representative - had not been among those invited. To his surprise, Louis had received an official invitation, due in no small part, he was certain, to his having worked aggressively that summer for the Obama campaign among war resisters who, having known Louis and his opposition to the 2003 invasion, had placed more than the usual weight on his insistence that the change promised by Obama would be the best alternative for Iraq.

“But what of the detainees?” his father Omar Aboudi in Basrah had asked by email Tuesday morning. “Our government still has thousands of Iraqi men living in horrific conditions. One hundred forty-three in a room no more than 540 square feet.”

Still living in the historic mansion that he had begun remodeling in Basrah in 2004, Omar and his wife Melinda were expecting their first baby, of great concern to Omar given Melinda’s age - forty-two - already a mother of two grown children from her marriage to Adam Kramer, that union having ended in divorce in 1999 not long after he revealed to her he had developed an interest in another woman, also a divorcee, whom they had both known socially since college.

Louis’s new half-sibling would be a girl, Melinda having undergone a test that she and Omar both deemed to be safe to determine the health and sex of the infant.

The wind was blowing the bare limbs of shrubs and trees along the Georgetown avenues with a whirl of arthymic gyrations, red berries on winterberry, bluish/black on nannyberry, and black berries on the inkberry radiant in the sunlight.

What about the detainees? Louis was again wondering as he parked at the converted bank building which was functioning as an upscale hastily-licensed day care center for children of the erstwhile government elite, many of whom had to find temporary quarters for their children now that the school years in Virginia, Maryland, and the capital were coming to the long holiday breaks.

He entered the foyer of the luxuriously appointed two-story facility, the entire building having been gutted and redesigned by the bank holding company along an art deco theme, the exterior having been restored to its early 20th century original façade, that having proved in vain as far as the bank in that it was one of those more than a little embarrassed to be holding out for as much of the government bailout as the new Congress would be generous enough to tender, the branch having been closed to help economize, that in early November and to Louis’s consternation since it was quite convenient for him being so close to GWU.

The building had been bought by an ad-hoc limited real estate partnership of mostly Republican, soon to be displaced Congressional staffers and executive branch appointees, more than thirty-five in all, who had formed an alliance and hired a law firm that had convinced the bank to sell at foreclosure prices, “since no one’s building bank branches these days, and you don’t want it sitting empty for a year, do you?” the closing attorney had said in making the offer.

Louis was stopping by at the invitation of Todd, a friend of Larry’s who, like Larry, had seen his employer - a Republican representative from the Midwest - fail to win re-election. Larry’s employer, a representative from New York, had lost his bid as well and was already out of the capital and not expected to return before his term ended.

Todd had asked if Louis would make an impromptu talk to the kids - many of them considered quite gifted, especially the 7 to 14 age group who grew easily bored - about linguistics, languages in general, “… and if you have even just fifteen minutes, I know they’ll enjoy it and you could be helping some child see their way to a career in languages to make us all proud,” Todd had said.

Inside, Louis, age 28, could hear a woman chatting with a group of preschoolers about snacks, the kids growing rather eager to move about and showing little regard for their teacher’s control management techniques.

“All right now, over here,” she coaxed them. “No, don’t run over on top of the teller counters, please, Johnnie.”

Louis noticed a group of several children seated in brightly colored plastic chairs in a semi-circle in front of the huge vault door, as the building had been equipped with a full-size walk-in vault.

They sat rather still, hands folded neatly in their laps, staring into the void of the vault, its gleaming safe deposit boxes and array of drawers reflecting a golden light from the lobby.

Todd came up and noticed Louis was watching the children at the vault.

“Sign of the times,” Todd said.

“What?” Louis asked.

“Children of the money generation,” Todd said.

“Oh?”

“Our generation,” Todd said.

“The money generation? My age and Larry’s?”

“Just a way of speaking,” Todd said. “Wouldn’t be surprised that their generation is known as the money generation; we had the baby boomers, the GenX, why not a money generation? They know what was in there, just a few months ago. All that cash. Some of them just sit there, refusing to take their naps, sitting wistfully gazing at the vault; they know some of their parents will be out of work before long, sent back to California or Illinois or wherever. One little boy told me last week when I stopped by to pick up Craig, ‘Where did it all go? My dad had his savings in a 401K, and says he lost three years income since the market collapse.’”

“Smart kids,” Louis said.

“Anyway,” Todd said, “I’ll try to get them away from their daily ritual. I think they like being near where all that money once was, just to get a feeling of security. Let me introduce you to Lisa, and she’ll get you acquainted with the kids before your talk. It’s just great you could find time for this. You’ll find them some of the nicest brightest kids and so eager to learn. They’ve been quite interested in the language expert we told them would try to stop by. They believe in a better world and already think that language barriers must come down to help the world come out of the present chaos.”

“It sounds like I’ll have something to learn from them,” Louis said. “Thank you for inviting me.”

After a quick introduction with Lisa, who had a degree in education from the University of Maryland, Louis began talking to the children - about thirty in all - who gathered their chairs near the center of the lobby.

He asked them what they knew about languages and linguistics and heard one twelve-year-old boy give a complex answer showing he had studied about it on the Internet just that afternoon.

“And if I were to ask you what this or that sound means, and why we use that sound, such as a labial sound, and a fricative, or a nasal, or labiodental sound, what would you think I mean?” Louis asked.

One Hispanic boy raised his hand and said, “Sounds like the gibberish we hear all the time in Washington from the politicians.”

To which Louis and the group all laughed.

He talked more about vowels and consonants, which all of them past age six had learned about, and voiced implosives and ejectives, with some of the kids looking entranced by his speech, others frowning and bored.

“Sounds like just what we need in Washington today,” a girl age thirteen said. “Now we can figure out what everyone in power is jabbering about.”

Most of the children thanked Louis for coming, with Todd walking him to the door, shaking his hand, and asking in hushed tone, “Know anyone looking for a displaced bureaucrat with background or at least competence in genetic engineering?”

“No,” Louis said. “But I would imagine there is a handful of firms around the capital who would love to see your resume.”

“Until next time,” Todd said, as Louis walked out into the blustery wind. “Bis nächste Zeit.”

“Hasta Luego.”

Larry’s hours at the Congressional office building were becoming more varied each day. “We pretty much just come and go as we please now,” he had confided to Louis. “There’s not much we have to do other than help with the transition.”

They had agreed to meet for an early dinner at one of their favorite dining spots, Gabir’s Grill on the River, situated along the Potomac waterfront in Georgetown, a French-Lebanese restaurant known for its salmon dishes, “je’ne sais pas quoi” - the title on its menus, dishes such as salmontini Dubai, and Larry’s favorite, “poached wild salmon with prawn and watercress sauce.”

It was just past four p.m. and Louis decided to head over to the GWU fitness center where he liked to work out, his exercise gear in an emerald green totebag that he kept in the back seat of his car. It would be just a few minutes drive back to the campus. He turned on the radio tuner with CD / MP3 player, audio in and audio out lines, and touched the pre-programmed button for the station that carried the weekday broadcasts of liberal commentator Hudson Elsmere Pembroke, who had been quoted earlier that day in the New York Times as saying he wanted the Obama administration to establish immediate diplomatic ties with Havana, “…for isn’t it time to put all that Cold War era posturing behind us?” he had told the interviewer.

Pembroke’s commentary was along the same lines as Louis listened while viewing traffic carefully.

“Friends,” Pembroke said, “like it or not, Fidel stands by his name - Faithful. Yes, Fidel means Faithful in Latin, and that’s one baby name - as in ‘think baby names’ - that his dear departed mother must have wondered about giving to that big baby after he nationalized her plantation and gloated like a Stalinist cut from the same cloth as Uncle Joe himself.

“And by the way, I have not received an invitation to the inaugural ball, which must mean their sent it to my old address at the place out on Long Island.

“Can’t you imagine the world reaction? They’ll love us again all over the third world. What a way to start his administration, with dear old America-hating Fidel in that scrubby old commandante uniform (they say it’s the same one he wore when he spoke at the UN in the golden days of Castro), babbling and blustering all over the White House at the ball, sipping our finest wine and looking at all he missed all these years if he’d only learned to think first and speak later.

Louis was in the parking lot nearest the fitness center. He found a space next to silver over-sized 4-door pickup truck, parked, turned off the engine, grabbed his tote bag, and walked briskly into the five-story building. He went into the men’s locker room, changed to his gym shorts and a white t-shirt with ‘SAVE THE DIALECTS’ in purple lettering on it, and went to one of the weight rooms. There were a few other men and women in the late teens, early twenties using the machines and dumbbells.

There was a song by a female vocalist who had been performing since the 1960’s coming over the speaker system.

This was Louis’s day to work on his chest muscles, so he found a machine that would strengthen that part of his body and adjusted the weights.

One of the teen age coeds was saying to a young man at the machine next to her, “We’re into dialectics in my literature class.”

“As in what?” he asked.

“As in the dialectics of sustainable technology, and the dialectics of Plato, the dialectics of diversity, cultural dialectics, the threat of dialectical terrorism…”

“Now that could be interesting,” the young man said.

“It’s the threat to human individuality rising on the horizon after the apparent collapse of globalization as seen in the financial chaos,” she said, gently lifting the weights she had set for her routine.

“It’s the biggest threat to the United States of America in the twenty-first century,” she said. “Dialectical terrorism. Where it all tends is a national transformation into a quasi-religious one-world government, based in a dialectical synthesis called communitarianism.”

“Never heard of it,” the young man said.

Louis was beginning to think he should have come to work out at a different time. What in the world is she talking about? he wondered.

“What’s the logical basis for that view?” the young man asked.

“Oh,” she said, “the logic of dialectical philosophy has remained above the reach of the common man since the beginning of recorded human history. The elite, top level globalists understand the final synthesis of dialectical ideologies. But the modern school system omits this. This omission is the defining line between freedom and slavery. Modern public education (which excludes the synthesis) furthers the separation of citizens into classes.”

“Uh huh,” the young man said, appearing a bit perplexed and looking over to Louis, making eye contact with him, and seeming to ask for help.

Don’t look at me, buddy, Louis thought. I have no idea what she’s talking about.

“In essence,” she said, “reality will shatter illusion. The elite will continue to dominate the masses. The change promised will not become change if the dialectical terrorism of the business elite forces the masses to perpetuate globalization at the moment it was about to plunge into the abyss to which it should be consigned by history and reason.”

“I see,” the young man said. “Then my graduate work in business may not be worth much ten years from now….”

Louis closed his eyes a moment and focused on his exercise routine. Pray God, he said, I do pray indeed for the well-being of the masses and that change somehow come to a world still under one of many illusions, too many for anyone to fathom.

“What would be the cure for all that, then?” the young man asked as he got up and walked to an exercise machine on the other side of the room.

The young woman called after him, a bit put-out that he was going away, “We must learn from history. The money masters are manipulating the economy and creating depressions. Obama is digging himself in deeper and merely putting the country through the hoops.”

“Then let’s learn from history,” the young man said.

“Yes, let’s,” she said, and remained silent for a while as she continued her routine.

After half an hour on the exercise machines and another half an hour lifting weights - dumbbells up to fifty pounds - Louis went to the locker room, undressed, locked his gear with a combination lock, and walked naked into the men’s wet area, where he showered and sat alone in the hot tub for a few minutes. As he was getting out of the water, the young man who had talked with the coed about “dialectical terrorism” came into the wet area naked and said hello to Louis.

“Hello,” Louis said. “Had a good workout?”

“Could have been better.”

“You must have been here a while.”

“Almost two hours. I’m Chad, majoring in business.”

Louis introduced himself, mentioning that he was working on his dissertation and should be completing his doctoral exam the following April.

“You know Lon… Lon Evans,” Chad said, the two men standing with towels around their shoulders.

“I do,” Louis said. “He’s in one of my two classes that I teach.”

“He and I were in the same dorm our freshman year. He’s works out here.”

“I know,” Louis said. “I’ve seen him here before.”
“So what do you think of the war of words that lady was suggesting?” Chad asked, his eyes moving across Louis’s shaved chest and abdomen and focusing on his genitals for a time, which Louis noticed, also looking at Chad’s hairy complete physique with no embarrassment. “Dialectical terrorism as the new guiding star of human thought?”

“Not quite my idea of a guiding star,” Louis said.

“Nor mine,” Chad said, now looking down at Louis’s shaved legs. “I understand you’re married, if you don‘t mind my mentioning it.”

“Not at all,” Louis said. “His name’s Larry.”

“I’m gay also.”

“What do you want to do with your life?” Louis said. “I mean your career.”

“Business.”

“Quite a lot happening, history in the making around the world for businesses large and small, ” Louis said.

“Oh yeah,” Chad said. “It’ll be all right.”

“Yeah,” Louis said.

“Well, time for my shower. Good to meet you.”

“And good to meet you,” Louis said, returning to his locker, dressing, and going out to his car.

Out in the lot, to his dismay, Louis saw that the right front fender had a noticeable dent, about a foot wide, an inch deep, paint scrape over three feet. Oh no! The truck parked by me, he thought. Of all the nerve! That’s hit and run….

Then he noticed, in the fading light of late afternoon, now near five p.m., a note in white paper stuck on the windshield.

Did they have the honestly to give me their phone number?

As it turned out, the driver who had damaged Louis’s car had written a quick note giving the name Richard Allison and phone number, saying how sorry he was to have caused the damage, with the admittal, “I hit your car, (giving the license plate) this afternoon in the parking lot. You can call: insurance agent: policy #: . Signed. Richard Allison.”

Oh, Louis thought. At least there are some honest people.

He then noticed that the paint scrape was of a different color from the pickup truck next to which he had parked. Chad came out of the building and noticed Louis gazing in consternation at his car. “You all right?”

“Someone hit my car,” Louis called back across the lot. “But at least he left his name and number. He left me a note.”

Must have driven off and this Allison character parked next to me, he thought. Not the best of timing. That must be a thousand dollars damage at least. At least I have two cars.

He got in, turned on the ignition, and called Larry on his cell phone, letting the engine warm up. He told him about the accident and that he would meet him at the restaurant in about five minutes, “if traffic is okay.”

“Okay,” Larry said. “Sorry to hear your car was hit.”

Louis then called the number given on the note. “Hello,” he said. “My name’s Louis O’Connor. My car was hit today in the parking lot at GWU.”

“Yes?” came the voice of a man in his mid-sixties. “Why are you calling?”

“There was a note left by the person who hit my car giving the name Richard Allison and this number.”

There was silence for a moment. “My name is Richard Allison, but I haven’t been at GWU in any of the parking lots in ages.”

Louis sat holding his breath a moment. “All I know is it gave the name, number, and this insurance agent.” Louis gave the policy number and agent’s name and phone.

“That is my agent also,” Allison said. “Oh no.”

“What?”

“My son is also named Richard and has been borrowing my car since last Wednesday when his own car went into the shop and they still haven’t found out what’s wrong with it. It must have been him. But I don’t want this on my insurance.”

“Of course not,” Louis said. “Could you give my name and phone number to your son, so he can call me with the name of his own agent? I won’t file a claim with your company if he’ll call. The paint scrape is from a dark blue vehicle.”

“That’s mine. Oh boy! I’m sorry he hit you.”

“Thank you.”

“Can’t believe he’d do that to me. He’s with the government, Homeland Security. I’m retired FBI.”

“Oh,” Louis said, frowning.

“Do you work at GWU?”

“Yes, I’m a doctoral candidate there.”

“Good for you. Well, we’ll get it all cleared up. I’ll call my son right away.”

Louis then called Larry back to say he was still in the parking lot and what he had learned.

“Take your time, Lou,” Larry said, who was still in the parking lot outside the Congressional Office Building. “I’ll reserve us a table. No sense in risking another accident talking on your cell phone if you’re upset.”

“I am rather upset now, yes.”

“See you in a while.”

As soon as he hung up on Larry, Louis’s cell phone rang again.

“This is Richard Allison, the son of the man who just spoke with you. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking when I left that note and my dad’s agent. I didn’t have my insurance card in my wallet and just grabbed the one in the glove compartment. Sure sorry I hit your nice car. Here, if you have something to write with, I’ll give you my agent’s name and number. I’ve already called him and I won’t dispute anything.”

“Thanks,” Louis said. “That would sure help.” He took down the information and said he’d contact the agency later that evening or the next day.

“Thank you for being understanding,” Allison said.

“Accidents happen,” Louis said.

A few minutes later, in NSA headquarters in Maryland, government officials Tony Lyeforth and Paul Beltmann, who had been making half-hearted attempts at monitoring Louis’s activities as an anti-war protestor since 2003, and despite their failed efforts in the autumn of 2007 utilizing questionable tactics disapproved of by most of the major American civil rights organizations of the time, sat smiling in a conference room reviewing the O’Connor file.

“Oh, Richard, what a piece of luck!” Lyeforth said.

“Wait a minute,” Beltmann said. “He’s still on the phone.” Talking on a phone console with buttons for twenty extensions, Beltmann asked, “Can I put you on speaker so Tony can hear?” He then punched the speaker button and the son, Richard Allison, who had last spoken with Louis, continued.

“I couldn’t believe it when dad gave me the name of the guy I hit,” Allison said. “We’ve been working on that dude since before the flood.”

“The flood?” Lyeforth asked.

“The great flood,” Allison said.

“Noah’s flood, you mean the ark?” Beltmann asked.

“Are you two being dense or just crossed the line into twilight zone post-election let-down?” Allison said. “I mean the war in Iraq.”

“Oh,” Beltmann said.

“That’s what we call it now at Homeland Security. It wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for all the crappy flood of shoddy intelligence reporting from CIA and a few others I won’t mention by name.”

“Good, don’t!” Lyeforth said.

“But come on, think of it,” Allison said. “I hit the car of the celebrated son of the most mystical Iraqi/American expatriate of all time, that trouble-maker Aboudi over the Basrah. My insurance company will insist on O’Connor taking it to our garage…. We’ll have a chance to plant the latest high tech listening devices, GPS tracking subtleties, and gosh knows what sort of monitoring clever tricks that will do homage to the memory of all those spies of bygone days aging out in northern Virginia wondering why the younger generation has no fun.”

“You’re sure that garage will let one of our technicians in to do the work?” Lyeforth said.

“The owner’s a former Green Beret and hates the anti-war dudes. I’m telling you, man, we’ve got O’Connor in our sights.”

“I don’t know,” Beltmann said. “We’ve got Obama coming in and no telling what he’ll do to rein in domestic surveillance. And we don’t have a warrant.”

“Don’t need a warrant, guys,” Allison said.

“I wouldn’t want his uncle Ron to find out what we’re doing,” Lyeforth said.

“Look, my dad has known Ron O’Toole since they were training as FBI recruits before I was even born,” Allison said. “We’d never do anything to hurt Ron or his wayfaring nephew.”

“Wayfaring nephew?” Lyeforth said.

“Way far out in left field with those anti-war hoodlums,” Allison said.

“Oh,” Lyeforth said.

“But we can’t do anything that will get the new Congress or Administration down on NSA,” Beltmann said.

“Look,” Allison said. “How many days until the inauguration?”

“I don’t know,” Beltmann said. “Forty?”

“Okay, forty,” Allison said. “We’ll call this the great flood, the world is covered with a flood of secrecy about our clever little plot to find out O’Connor’s anti-war mischief, and for forty days and forty nights, we monitor his every move in that car once we plant the tracking devices. If we hit the jackpot, it’s over; I mean we won. If we shoot craps, we’ll have him in to the garage for a free, and I mean free six week checkup to make sure the repairs were done correctly, no charge to him, and our techie lifts the gadgets and off O’Connor goes into the 2009 netherworld of agitators and malcontents.”

“All right,” Beltmann said. “You’ve got the go-ahead. But this is all Homeland Security’s caper. We’ll advise.”

“Make it advise and consent, okay fellas?” Allison said. “That sounds so much more historical and dignified.”

“All right,” Beltmann said. “We’ll advise and consent.”

“Good boys,” Allison said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” the NSA officials said.

At the restaurant, about five minutes later, Louis walked in to see Larry sitting over by a fountain in the center of the main dining area.

“I just got here,” Larry said. “Now tell me what happened.”

The Georgetown waterfront dining establishment which they had chosen was a favorite, and they missed the gentle breezes and chance to sit out under one of the now closed burgundy patio umbrellas and gaze over at the Kennedy Center and speculate what was going on up and down the Potomac with the other patrons.

This was their favorite place when they were in the mood for fresh delicacies from the sea, a place near 30^th and Whitehurst Freeway frequented by the affluent and ambitious of the capital area.

“What about the Maryland crab cakes tonight?” Larry asked.

“Maybe the shrimp scampi,” Louis said.

“I can’t believe they’re not serving the poached wild salmon with prawn and watercress sauce this evening.”

“Why not try the buffet?”

“Food!” Larry said, smiling. “I’m hungry. Nothing like a Congressional Office Building in a flurry with half the people you’ve ever met handing you their resume asking, ‘Here, take a look; how does it look? Do you think I have a chance finding another job with the economy the way it is?”

“Is it getting to you?”

“Not quite, not yet,” Larry said. “Afterall, I’ve got you to spend all those cold winter nights with, and days when you’re not at the campus.”

“How about the law firm you told me about this morning?”

“Ah yes,” Larry said. “Actually, they’re very interested in me, and I’m to interview there tomorrow.”

“That’s great. Are you putting me on again, Larry?”

“Am I putting you on again?”

“That’s what I thought. You’re putting me on again. You really are interviewing tomorrow, right?”

“As right as a Republican Congressman who lost re-election.”

They perused the menu a while longer.

“How about the chicken and rice soup?” Louis asked.

“Ummm…”

“The chicken parmesan with linguini?” Louis said.

“Possible.”

“Shrimp and artichoke pasta Alfredo?”

“With orzo salad or wild rice pilaf,” Larry said. “That might work.”

He read on, the complete menu reading thus: