Yesterday, shortly after noon, as has been a family tradition for several months now, my brother Rob Roy, his son Jason, and I once more sat down to enjoy the results of Jason’s Saturday lesson in gourmet cuisine, this time also honored by the Fates with the additional company of my lady friend Cerise, who had spent the night. It being that certain time of year when the shad run begins, we were just about to tuck into a repast that featured Shade Roe Chesapeake. That Tidewater delicacy was tastefully (IMHO) accompanied by hand-gathered organic Canadian north lake wild rice almandine, steamed fern fiddle heads and chanterelles with white truffle butter and a salad of mâche, arugula, cipollini onions and tomatillo topped with dollops of a creamy dressing made from hand-crafted, organic egg mayonnaise and genuine, cave-aged French sheep’s milk Roquefort. My usual brunch beverages, cappuccino and mimosas, were there, of course. This time I once more made the mimosas with fresh-squeezed blood orange juice, but, alas, now I’m out of juice-grade blood oranges. Creating the air of a special occasion, those were complemented by Rob Roy’s latest achievement – ice cold flagons of his homemade twelve-percent barley wine that looks, and tastes – I kid you not – like a crisp, sweetly hopped, smoothly malted Reinheitsgebot lager. So, the table was set with the fruits Jason’s earnest efforts, and Rob Roy had just finished pouring his inspired handcrafted brew when the doorbell rang.
“You go ahead,” I admonished – it’s my house, after all. At the threshold, I found Merkin, a veteran White House staffer, pale as a ghost.
“Tom!” The poor man gasped, decidedly beside himself with anxiety. “I’ve got to talk to you! Now!”
“About what?” Visions of a velvety smooth shad roe sac, wrapped in paper thin, succulent slices of apple wood smoked Smithfield cured bacon danced in my head. It was getting cold. So was the wild rice, the ferns, the chanterelles. My glass of Rob Roy’s meisterbier was going flat. Distant sounds of silverware on china drifted past me from the dining room. Having been washed over by the fresh air rushing in from the porch, my olfactory senses, now cleansed, realized anew the aromas wafting from there, too. Why me, Lord?
“About a missing government laptop!” The expression on Merkin’s face said it all – as far as he was concerned, nothing I had on my agenda could be more important than that.
“So some bozo who works for the United States government lost their laptop. So what?”
“Not just any bozo,” Merkin asserted with profound consternation as he pushed past me into the foyer, “I’m talking major, top-level, ultra-bozo!”
“POTUS?”
“That’s right,” Merkin lamented as he plunked down on the living room couch, “The Biggest Government Bozo of Them All.”
“How the hell,” I inquired, “did he get hold of a laptop?”
“It was a gift,” Merkin confided. “A gift from a foreign government functionary, on his African good-will tour – the one he just got back from. You know, like they usually give the President some kind of chotcke or another. But this time, along with the usual junk, the Tanzanian Under Assistant Minister for Information Technology gave him one of those hand-crank operated Negroponte jobs…”
“The UN One Laptop Per Child program?”
“Yeah, one of those. Well, it looked like a OLPC laptop, anyway – that’s the reason we let him have it in the first place!”
“But,” I pointedly extrapolated, “it wasn’t?”
“No way,” Merkin muttered, dejectedly. “Inside, it was running 16 gigs of 667 megahertz DDR SDRAM, quad core 3-gigahertz CPU with 15 megabyte caches, a 1.344 gighertz front side bus, overclocked polysynced Intel 915GMXL northbridge and ICH6-MXP southbridge twin turbo chipsets, an integrated core logic GMA901XM video controller, 160 gigabyte hard drive, embedded 16-bit Audio, PCMCIA, internal 56Kbps V.90 Fax/Modem, integrated 100/1000Mbps Ethernet, internal Mini PCI, 802.11b/g…”
“I get the idea,” I interjected, interrupting as politely as possible. “A wolf in sheep’s clothing. How the hell did some yokel IT bureaucrat in Tanzania get hold of something like that? The Chinese?”
“No,” Merkin shook his head sadly. “Microsoft.”
“Microsoft?”
“Yeah,” Merkin continued, “it was Microsoft. You are aware, I’m sure, that Microsoft desperately wants in on the third world children’s PC initiative?”
“Of course,” I acknowledged, “they have to get into it. Otherwise, millions of kids in developing countries will find out how stable, modular, rugged, dependable and adaptive Linux is, and Microsoft will never be able to foist its crappy operating systems on them and their future generations.”
“Exactly,” Merkin concurred. “Those specifications I just told you about – you comprehend them, right?”
“Sure as I know a motherboard from a USB connector,” I assured him.
“Well, last month, Microsoft’s secret OLPC task force reported to upper management that those are the minimum specs for a platform that can support an installation of Microsoft Vista capable of doing anything more than sending and receiving e-mails.”
“So that thing was Microsoft’s prototype Vista platform for the OLPC initiative?”
“You got it,” Merkin affirmed in a heavy voice. “With samples distributed to the IT bureaucrats of every developing country in the world. But now, I have to give credit where it’s due, Tom, because your guess about the Chinese was almost on the money.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Merkin ruefully replied, “that some wiseacre at the Chinese Embassy in Dodoma talked that Tanzanian IT wonk out of that machine for a couple of hours, wiped Vista and loaded a Gentoo Linux core with a complete open source desktop – everything hot off the Internet, current as of no more than two weeks ago!”
“Christ Almighty,” I exclaimed. “Something like that – in the hands of a person like George W. Bush…”
“Tell me about it,” Merkin wailed. “Oh, Mary, Mother of God, tell me about it!”
A long and pregnant pause elapsed before I dared to ask. “What did he do?”
Merkin’s eyes rolled heavenward. “Plenty. What tipped us off was when he created a fake Facebook entry for Robert Mugabe. It said ‘I’m really proud of Zimbabwe’s 100,000 percent inflation rate. If I keep trying, maybe I can beat out Jimmy Carter’s record,’ and ‘If you think 300,000 US dollars is too much to spend celebrating my 84th birthday, check out what the Democrats in the American Congress are spending to support Cadillac-driving welfare queens with sixteen Social Security numbers and a couple of dozen illegitimate children, each with different fathers, and all of them gang-bangers serving life without parole for dope murders.’”
“Big scandal potential there,” I observed.
“No kidding,” Merkin concurred, “and we were damn lucky it was only up on Facebook for a couple of hours before we found out about it and had our Web espionage experts at the NSA take it down.”
“How did you find out about it?”
“We got the word from the Zimbabwean ambassador in Washington, madder than a scalded badger, screaming at the poor S.O.B. who took the call,” Merkin related morosely.
“So you didn’t suspect anything before the Zimbabwean ambassador called you?”
“Well, it did look a little funny, with George fretting over that thing, turning the crank all the time…”
“Oh, right!” I exclaimed. “Because of the power requirements!”
“Yeah, but we really didn’t connect the dots…”
“Don’t beat yourself up over that,” I consoled, “Connecting the dots always seems easier in retrospect.”
“We just figured he got a kick out of turning the crank; you know, like a three-year-old with a new toy,” Merkin explained. “It wasn’t until we got the call from the Zimbabwean ambassador that we had somebody sit discreetly behind George’s seat on Air Force One and check out what he was doing. Turns out, that laptop was running out of juice and flashing the Recharge Alert icon every eight minutes. That’s why he was cranking the battery charger like crazy all the time. So, after we saw that, I waited until Laura put him to bed for his ten o’clock morning nap and had a look at the thing. As soon as I saw it was Linux instead of Windows, I knew George could have done some serious damage – you just can’t give Linux machines to people like him. It’s like taking a kid with a learner’s permit who’s never driven anything but a Toyota and putting him behind the wheel of a Porsche or something. Then I used Linux utilities to scope out the hardware in that laptop and knew we had a potential disaster on our hands – I mean really, forget about the teenager driving the Porsche, now I knew – we were dealing with a chimpanzee driving a Ferrari full of plastic explosives.”
I must admit, by this time, I had forgotten about brunch. “So what did you do?”
“The problem was,” Merkin complained, “that Cheney wasn’t around. If Cheney had been there, he would have just walked up and told George to give him that laptop, and the whole affair would have been settled. But with anybody by Dick, George always starts up on a ‘Who are you to tell the President of the United States what to do?’ tirade, and we all knew that’s what we could expect. Luckily, it just so happened that one of the entourage had a plain vanilla Negroponte laptop with her. She got it from some teacher in Benin who said he was ‘Returning it to President Bush and the people of the United States in order to symbolically protest American cultural imperialism,’ or some such tommyrot as that. Anyway, his loss was our gain, that’s for sure.”
“So,” I surmised, “you switched laptops while George was napping?”
“Yep.”
“How did that go?”
“Slicker than seal snot, as a matter of fact,” Merkin beamed. “He never noticed a thing.”
“Not even the fact that it stopped telling him to turn the crank every eight minutes?”
“Ah, well,” Merkin stalled as he searched for the appropriate words, “George doesn’t… uh, experience time the way most of us do, and, in any case, the icon’s just a picture of a crank, and the prompt just says ‘Turn Crank’ after all, and… well, I sort of doubt he… understood the… relationship between turning the crank and… ah, the machine’s requirement for electrical power.”
“Okay, sure, that’s hardly surprising,” I conceded, stretching back in my seat. “So then what? I mean, if that was the end of the story, then you wouldn’t be here, would you?”
“Correct,” Merkin confirmed, “there was more. It turned out that the joker who installed Linux set up the wireless interface defaults so that the system automatically downloaded everything on George’s cell phone any time George got within 100 meters of it.”
“As long as its batteries were charged, right?”
“George saw to that, believe me. What’s more,” Merkin sighed, “George’s cell phone takes pictures and videos.”
“That’s pretty bad,” I offered.
“It gets worse – every download off George’s phone, text messages, e-mails, pictures, videos, you name it – all got copied twice: once in a format anyone using the laptop could access and once again in a password-protected, 1024-bit strong encryption format.”
“So George created passwords?”
“No.”
“Ah! I get it – some geek at the Chinese Embassy in Tanzania created them.”
“Actually,” Merkin admitted, a bit sheepishly, “we don’t know that for sure, either.”
“Okay,” I pressed on, “what did you find on George’s over-powered laptop?”
“First of all,” Merkin confided, “we found a video entitled ’Big Bottoms of the Ivory Coast Party.’”
“Big Bottoms of the Ivory Coast?”
“It’s the latest fad over there in Africa,” Merkin clarified, “absolutely huge…”
“Bodacious junk in the trunk?”
“Yeah.”
“Big-time pushin’ cushions?”
“Uh, right.”
“Tantalizin’ tip drill traction?”
“Exactly.”
“Bootilicious badonkadonks?”
“Okay, okay! Jeez, you got it, already.”
“So Curious George contracted Jungle Fever while on this big safari, huh?”
“Just having that on the laptop,” Merkin carefully qualified, sounding for all the world as if he were George W. Bush’s lawyer at a sex-fiend trial, “would not itself qualify as prurient.”
“But?”
“Oh, yeah, as I said, there was plenty of butt…”
“Excuse me. However?”
“Oh… right. However, there’s more – a video of some African women, ah, um, uh… so endowed…”
“Doing George?”
“In a brief sequence, ah,” Merkin slowly cleared his throat, “it could be… possibly… so construed…”
“Fine,” I concluded, interrupting him abruptly. “As they say at the delicatessen, ‘and what else?’”
“Some revealing…”
“Nude photographs?”
“Yeah,” Merkin conceded. “There are some nude pictures of Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. We honestly have no idea how George got hold of them.”
“And what else?”
“Some… pictures of the White House staff… in… ah… that is… using the…”
“Male or female?”
“Both.”
“And?”
“An extensive amount of evidence that George was… ah, I guess ‘tracking’ is the most appropriate…”
“Stalking? Who the hell was he stalking, using a government computer?”
“Have you ever,” Merkin asked as he blushed bright red, “heard of a music group named ‘Linkin’ Park?’”
“What,” I shot back, “have I been living under a rock? Of course I’ve heard of them!”
“Yeah, sorry, Tom, no offense. You know David Michael ‘Phoenix’ Farrell?”
“Sure. He’s the bass player.”
“Well… ” Merkin squirmed in his seat as he struggled to speak, “Him. That guy. George was… following… his activities… whereabouts… that sort of thing. There were several e-mails and texts where George states he much prefers Phoenix to the other guys in the band.”
“Even Chester Bennington?”
“As incredible as it sounds, Tom, yeah. One of the e-mails we found says George thinks Phoenix is ‘way sexier’ than Chester Bennington.”
“Is that all?”
“Gee, Tom,” Merkin averred, clearly vexed and embarrassed, “isn’t that enough? I mean, he only had about three days to play with the damn thing.”
“After which, you took charge of it?”
Merkin sadly put his elbows on his knees, then rested his head in his hands, staring pointedly downward at the antique Persian rug. “Yeah. And then it disappeared.”
“And you are here for what reason?”
“Because,” Merkin moaned as he looked up at me, “I think your room mate took it.”
“Veronica?”
Merkin nodded affirmation, so slowly it looked like he was doing so underwater. “Uh-huh. I couldn’t risk turning that laptop over to the Secret Service, White House Security, or the State Department, so I stashed it in my apartment at the Watergate. And… she was there until about three o’clock this morning.”
“How was it?”
Merkin gave me a harsh, regretful scowl. “Almost good enough to totally ruin my career, it looks like.”
“Nice to hear she hasn’t lost her touch.”
Merkin snorted derisively. “What the hell,” Merkin demanded, “made her into such a lying, thieving, conniving, two-faced, amoral, perverted top-shelf whore?”
“Well, she started her career in Hollywood.”
“And what the hell is she doing in Washington?”
“I should think that would be more or less self-explanatory. What happened after you two got done?”
“I… I fell asleep.”
“Knocked you out, did she?”
“Stuff it, Collins! I was tired! You follow George around Africa for a few days and see what your jet lag feels like when you finally hit the sack in your own bed.”
“Sure. Then what?”
“When I got up around eight this morning, I noticed the laptop was gone.”
“So, you two… are… an item, as they say?”
“Yeah.”
“How long?”
“About three weeks. I met her at Dick’s nightclub.”
“She was at Dick’s nightclub alone?”
“No, she was there with date.” Merkin gazed around at my living room for a moment. “I had no idea she was living here, of course. Are you and Veronica…”
“Absolutely not,” I hastily corrected. “We’re old college buddies. Her house burned down. This is… temporary.”
“You don’t sound very… sure of yourself,” Merkin observed in an tentative tone.
“I don’t suppose I am,” I confessed. “But she’s paying half the mortgage and utilities. So when she runs out of money, I’ll have a perfect excuse for asking her to move out.”
Merkin looked at the staircase, an odd, wan expression on his face. “Is she here?”
After a quick glance out the window to verify that her Beamer was still parked in the driveway, I spoke. “I think so. Cerise and I heard her arrive about seven-thirty this morning, and that’s her car out there in the driveway. When she comes in after five a.m., she usually doesn’t get up until after two or three in the afternoon.”
I watched as Merkin steeled himself with as much resolve as he could muster. “Shall we wake her, then?”
“Oh. Well, that might not be necessary. Veronica usually sleeps with Sir Johnnie Walker, Ms. Paxil, Mrs. Ambien and Prince Valium.”
“I see.”
“Very comfy and cozy, the five of them, all snuggled together like that. Why don’t you just go up and have a look around her room? It’s the first one on the left,” I gestured, pointing, “at the top of the stairs.”
I waited on the couch while Merkin went up to Veronica’s room. In less than three minutes, he was bounding down the stairs with a laptop in a carrying case, and in such a hurry, he didn’t even bother to thank me and say goodbye.
So I walked back into the dining room, to find that Cerise had put my plate in a low oven to keep it warm and Rob Roy had placed my beer in the freezer to keep it nicely chilled. Thanks to that, my brunch still held the promise of being quite satisfactory, Merkin, George Bush, Africa, Microsoft, OLPC and Veronica notwithstanding. What’s more, and, in my estimation, even better, nobody at the table asked me even one single, solitary question about what had just transpired.
Instead, Jason informed me that while I was in the living room his girlfriend Paisley sent him an instant message stating there was a rumor going around that Ralph Nader would declare his intention to run for president within the next three days.
Right about then, the Blackberry in my trouser pocket started vibrating like a middle-aged divorcee’s entire adult toy collection. I decided to ignore it, however, and enjoy my meal. After all, some things in life are more important than politics, and shad roe is one of them.