Satan's Gambit Read online

  All the families bordered the vessel with Father Ed. Should they attempt to cross the Gulf of Thailand they would risk getting caught by patrol boats or swapped by a sudden squall, as it was early in the monsoon season. The captain suggested they hug the west coast and follow it up to Bangkok. They would travel only at night and anchor and sleep during the day in small hidden alcoves. The vote was for going up the coast.

  They seemed to avoid the patrol boats easily enough, but they were almost captured by a group of North Vietnamese Army Regulars while moored one day in a tiny fresh water bay by a river outlet in Cambodia. The women on board were washing clothes and some of the men and boys who weren’t sleeping were fishing.

  The foot soldiers on the shore beckoned the vessel to come closer, probably with the intent of stealing the vessel’s supplies and foodstuffs. Father Ed was sure the soldiers had absolutely no knowledge of the freighter’s “real” cargo. They immediately pulled up anchor and high tailed it out of the bay under a fusillade of bullets. No one was hurt, but the freighter had a few holes that needed to be plugged up.

  Eventually they made it to Bangkok, Thailand. Father Ed went immediately to the American Embassy, pulled out all the stops and called in all his favors. He presented himself first as an American CIA operative and then as a Catholic chaplain in the Marines. Father Ed could put on a stone face and a stare that would melt steel when he needed to. No shouting, just a strong presence and firm words to those low-life bureaucratic pukes at the embassy.

  He had himself and all those families, who wished to go, on a flight back to the states in twenty-four hours.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE PRESIDENTS

  He finished his tour of duty as chaplain stateside and was honorably discharged. He renewed his relationship with his alma mater, Georgetown University, and for the next several years taught as an assistant professor of theology and poly sci to the undergraduates.

  One evening I was waiting for Father Ed, at the Tombs, a restaurant at the edge of the Georgetown campus, for one of our usual “blethers” as he called our chats. The Tombs, built in a Federal-style townhouse circa 1800s, was known for good food and as a great gathering place for students. While waiting I ran into one of Father Ed’s former students. We shared a brewski together as he raved that it was the best two courses he had ever taken.

  “Had I taken just theology or poly sci, the impact on me would not have been the same,” as he waved and gave a thumbs up to one of the basketball players—probably regarding the big win Georgetown had the night before against Syracuse. The Hoyas were on a winning streak.

  The kid said that about 60 percent of Father Ed’s lecture notes were essentially the same for both classes. Very animated, he expressed, “I never realized how much theology and political science overlapped and dovetailed with each other.”

  I knew from reading Father Ed’s books exactly what that kid was talking about: the fact that metaphysics and government are so intertwined. They are literally two halves of the same coin, which is why I had been “relieved,” at least partially, of my professorial teaching duties.

  By the late 1980s, the Reagan administration had the county’s economy booming again. The media was still controlled by ABC, CBS, and NBC almost exclusively. They tagged it the “decade of greed.” Perhaps they should have called years of the prior administration of Jimmy Carter the “decade of want”? Mortgage rates under Carter had skyrocketed to the high double digits, and inflation was rampant.

  Father Ed perceived President Carter to be wishy-washy and inept. The 1979 takeover of our embassy in Iran by the Muslim extremists and the Ayatollah Khomeini was a travesty; and the disastrous failed rescue attempt in April of 1980 of our hostages by Carter humiliated the USA even more. The scenes of the twisted wreckage in the desert of a Delta Force helicopter and transport plane from Operation Eagle Claw, along with the deaths of eight servicemen, were splashed across the evening news. Carter’s fate was sealed.

  Father Ed said that we should have listened to our military leaders and squashed them like bugs immediately after the embassy takedown, instead of Carter’s dilly-dallying for more than a year afterward.

  At another blether, late one afternoon, after Father Ed had finished teaching for the day, we were having some java at the coffee shop across from the Georgetown University bookstore in the Leavey Center. The coffee shop had a checkered past, but was trying to really help the students. He educated me as to the time President Teddy Roosevelt went head to head with the Moroccan government in the early 1900s. A brigand Muslim terrorist had captured an American businessman, and Roosevelt was going to invade a sovereign country by sending in the Marines to rescue the American. Just the threat from Roosevelt made Morocco back down.

  Hollywood made it into a movie called the Wind and the Lion with two attractive stars: Sean Connery and Candace Bergen. “The theatre-going public would rather pay to see Sean Connery as a debonair sheikh and the beautiful Candace Bergen as a damsel in distress than someone playing the role of a fat, pudgy businessman, and another as a fanatical wild-eyed crazed Islamic kidnapper,” Ed declared as he downed the second cup of strong black coffee.

  Then came the Clinton era. Father Ed had no use for either of the Clintons. Still maintaining his friendships with some close friends of the alphabet agencies, he and his buddies would occasionally bowl at Potomac Lanes at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling (JBAB), just across the Potomac from Reagan International, and have some pizza with beer to wash it down.

  Sometimes they would bowl against the team from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) who were on the same base. “Those guys at DIA were smart as whips, but a little stiff, which may have affected their bowling skills, or lack thereof,” he commented to me between sips of his third java brew.

  The group that he seemed to have the most fun with was the guys of the Secret Service. Serious dudes when they were guarding the President and First Family, but they really knew how to cut up in their off time. Their fleet of black Suburbans was also parked at JBAB. The array of antennas that splayed from the roofs of the SUVs gave it away that someone of importance was being transported on “the train,” as he said they called it, when they were all driving bumper to bumper at high rates of speed.

  “Bill Clinton’s code name was ‘jumper’ because any time he saw an attractive woman, he would want to ‘jump her’. Clinton knew the code name the Secret Service had given him and he liked it. Hillary was another matter. Hers was ‘broomstick,’ for obvious reasons,” Ed explained.

  “A real life ‘cailleach’,” Father added. “She cussed like a trucker and could drink like a sailor. One never, but never addressed her. You didn’t speak unless she directly asked something of you. And the shorter the answer, the better. If you could respond with a “yes ma’am” or “no ma’am,” so much the better.”

  “Cailleach?” I asked, wondering what that Gaelic term meant.

  “A hag or witch - the code name ‘broomstick’ must have been someone’s stroke of genius,” as he struck a pose of the Wicked Witch of the West.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MR. PEN AND A PHONE

  FBI Agent Gary Aldrich and Father Ed were close in those days. He was one of the first to blow the lid on the Clintons with his book Unlimited Access. On occasion, Gary invited Father Ed down to Blackwater in North Carolina. They would go with a few of the other agents during the summer months to hone their driving skills on the Blackwater track, and use the firing ranges and shoot houses to bone up on their marksmanship.

  There were other facilities the FBI used locally in the Washington/Maryland area, but Virginia Beach was only a stone’s throw from Blackwater. The lure of the strip and nightclubs was the summer draw, especially for the single agents. Father said he would retire to Star of the Sea Catholic Church in Virginia Beach and stay at the rectory with the pastor, who was a good friend of his.

  “Both Bush I and Bush II, and their families,” Father said at another of our coffee klatches, �
��took the office of the President seriously and were respectful of it, and looked upon their temporary stay in the White House—the people’s house—with the admiration and courtesy that the old edifice deserved. That doesn’t mean they were without their faults,” he added. “Bush II and Cheney have a lot to answer for regarding 9/11.”

  “The Obama’s were another matter,” Father voiced. “They truly believed they were royalty and pranced around the White House as if it was their personal domain, all while treating the staff as servants to be bossed around. Both Barack and Michelle looked down upon the American people, with contempt and derision.”

  “Take the 9/11 Commemorative Ceremony in 2011 when she leaned over toward Barack and asked, ‘All this for a damned flag?’ pales in comparison to her earlier 2008 statement of ‘for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.’” Father Ed adamantly added, “Look at her facial expression as she said it. That look alone speaks volumes and should silence the Obama supporters,” getting so angry and red-faced that he almost totally spilled his coffee.

  “Confirming her position as American Royalty, Michelle’s travel junkets spent the taxpayer’s money in a way that would have made Marie Antoinette feel like a penny-pincher. All while 43 million people were on food stamps and 95 million were out of work,” Father fumed as he dabbed up the coffee from the table with a napkin.

  Mr. Pen and a Phone, is what Father Ed called Obama. “A community organizer is simply a modern connotation for rabble rouser; which is exactly what Obama was. An extremely amiable, smooth-talking liar, whose divide-and-conquer skills he had perfected in the Chicago gangsta political machine. He was iron fisted in his attempt to destroy Christian America and a milquetoast internationally, with all his bowing and sucking up to the Muslim leaders.”

  By now, Iran, with Russian support, and Radical Islam had conquered most of the Middle East, save that one tiny island of democracy called Israel. The radicals had by now tortured, burned, beheaded, and crucified almost one in four Christians.

  “The women and children who weren’t killed, were raped and then sold as slaves and prostitutes,” Father told me. “They’re getting smart now, timing their executions to sell—cash only, of course—the transplantable organs to middlemen for transport to the highest bidders and thereby increasing their liquidity to purchase more arms and supplies. And our once-Christian country stands by silent.”

  Regarding both houses of Congress, and both parties, Father Ed said he prayed for them daily. With few exceptions, he said, “they were eunuchs who had sold their souls to the highest bidder. The K street boys would fund their re-election campaigns in exchange for favorable tax breaks, and EPA and OSHA passes for their firms.”

  “The politicians then promptly use their campaign war chests to pay for flashy ads offering their constituents more ‘free stuff’ than the other guy—who is a liar and a cheat—if the poor slobs would only re-elect them again for the umpteenth time. The ‘free stuff’ really came from the worker and small businessman who actually paid taxes.”

  The tables had tilted many years ago in favor of crony capitalism, warfare, and welfare. There were now more people, illegals, and counterfeit corporations in bed with the government and on the dole, than there were people actually working and contributing to the experiment called America. Even the stock market was rigged. Free enterprise was dead. We had lost our moral compass. Truth and the Judeo-Christian definition of right and wrong had been ripped from the lexicon.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  COMPLIANT WEASEL

  At another session, Father and I were at Froggy Bottom Pub somewhat near the Georgetown campus (you really needed to drive there). He knew the owners well. The Buis were both refugees from Vietnam. Hoang’s cousin was saved on Father Ed’s escape years earlier on the fishing trawler up the west coast of Vietnam to Bangkok. He and Hoang chatted a bit while Hien, Hoang’s wife, brought Father his usual pint of Guinness Extra Stout and bowed slightly, as she placed it on the table before him. I hated the stuff. He took a long slow draught and proceeded to enlighten me.

  “Sweet Mother Mary,” he started off, “thank God that hooligan and shamus of a President is behind us.”

  He was speaking of course of Obama.

  “Since he’s been out of office, everyone and his brother has been writing books on how they knew from the very beginning, before he was elected, what a fraud and numptie he really was. Why on God’s green earth didn’t they warn us while he was first running in ’08?”

  “And a ‘numptie’ is?” I queried, blowing the head off the draft beer I had ordered.

  “An idiot,” he shot back loudly, just as some guy with one too many under his belt bumped into our table giving Father Ed a dirty look.

  I had beer coming out of my nose with Father’s weak maladroit attempt to explain his faux pas to the plastered patron.

  “Aye, that fella’s blootered,” he half whispered to me. “And getting back to our numptie, it’s not considered an ad hominem attack against someone, if you can back it up with evidence.”

  “Oh, kinda like a superstar ball player; it ain’t bragging if you can really do it,” I remarked as I stuffed some peanuts from a bowl on the table into my mouth.

  He ignored my poor analogy and went on.

  “Every President has had his share of wrongdoing. But Mr. Pen and a Phone, where does one start? The guy has a laundry list a mile long, and that’s no exaggeration—the Fast and Furious scandal, the IRS scandal, the Benghazi scandal, the Bowe Bergdahl scandal with the Taliban Five scandal piggybacking it, the Associated Press scandal, the Solyndra scandal, the VA scandal, the Clinton e-mail scandal, and the Fort Hood scandal. Those are just some I can think of off the top of my head.”

  “Yeah, and no one prosecuted. Hey Father did you see 13 Hours?”

  “I know Kris Paronto. We call him Tanto. If it weren’t for his team of six private contractors who disobeyed orders, all those civilian CIA pencil pushers would have died. And they may have even been able to save our ambassador. All one need do is watch the clock on the screen which silently indicts both Hillary and Obama with each passing second.”

  “I remember, in less than thirty minutes the Pentagon knew, which meant both Hillary and Obama knew,” I exclaimed, slamming my beer mug onto the table. “What if one of those CIA personnel was your son, your wife, your brother?”

  Father’s eyes were getting red and started to tear. “We lost three good men in Tyrone, Glen and Sean. Obama sent no help whatsoever—even after thirteen hours! He and Hillary expected the whole lot of them to die.” He wiped his eyes. “Marines don’t cry, the eyeballs however sometimes sweat a little,” he explained as he took another sip of his Guinness. “And the leftist media never pressed the issue with the public.”

  “Forty or fifty years ago, the press would have wanted them both impeached,” I remarked. “And what’s with the new President?”

  “The current POTUS has been selected, as usual, by the international elites. The American people think they have a choice; they don’t.”

  “Any and all honest candidates are eliminated early on by lies, guile and subterfuge, using a compliant media. Recall how they destroyed Dr. Ben Carson, and others, several years ago in the 2016 elections. The candidate of both parties is vetted in advance by the powers that be—the Council on Foreign Relations, CFR for short, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, etcetera. The Bilderbergers pretty much make the final two selections.”

  “The election process itself is just a formality. The international elites usually watch and root with feigned admiration for the party who could rig the voter fraud in their candidate’s favor, whether by sophisticated manipulation of the computerized electronic voting machines or just old fashioned stuffing of the ballot boxes with dead people’s votes and/or voting multiple times at different precincts.”

  “It didn’t make a wit worth of difference which of the two candidates the people elected. All U.S. Preside
nts are either a member of the CFR prior to election or must meet with them after being elected. If the newly elected President was to dispute their authority, they are read the riot act in no uncertain terms.” He waved the waitress over and pointed to my empty mug for a refill.

  Father reminded me of the talk that Hillary gave at a CFR meeting, which can still be seen on YouTube where Hillary Clinton admits the CFR gives the orders. She thanked the CFR for helping guide U.S. policy.

  “In the run up to the ’08 elections, Obama and Hillary slipped away from the press on June 5th only to be hosted at a Bilderberger meeting. Hillary dropped out of the race two days later; but as you know, in 2016, they gave Hillary her shot. Her moment had arrived to be coronated now; the globalists would want see to that. However, with her loss, rest assured they would not, and have not made the same mistake again - since they underestimated the populist turnout for Trump back in 2016. Hmm.” Father tilted his head to the side, raised an eyebrow while nodding his head with a knowing smirk on his face; then he took another swig of his Guinness. “Obama was such a compliant little weasel,” he added. “Once he was POTUS, they had him carrying a Blackberry which rang each time he went off script by not using his teleprompters.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  KEY TO THE FUTURE

  Father Ed has great foresight and vision. It was during the Nixon administration that Father saw the writing on the wall for the United States and the world, when Nixon closed the gold window and our government began to print un-backed paper. Father Ed saw Reagan as an anomaly. There were too many liberals and progressives gaining control in seats of power, whether it be in government, education, the media complex, or even the churches. He knew the only way he could make a difference was at a foundational level.