Read Born with Secrets: A Political Thriller Online
Authors: Bowen Greenwood
The overall look was a
cross between a community college and a war zone.
It shared a basic
appearance with countless other Federal construction contracts that went to the
lowest bidder. The walls were plain, the architecture was boxy, and the
building materials were chosen for function, not form. Then they added
twelve-foot-high concrete walls, barbed wire, and towers.
There was also an exercise
yard surrounded by one of those twelve-foot barriers, with an observation tower
at every corner. If there had once been grass, it was long-since trampled to
death. Now it was only an expanse of hard-packed dirt. Rather than a simple
square, the yard was more like a short rectangle joined to a larger one. The
corner created by the disparity in size also created a situation where one area
of the yard was much less visible from the towers. Only one tower had a view of
that corner, and the officers had to be specifically looking there if they
hoped to see anything.
Alyssa Chambers had been
in prison for about a year and a half. In that time, she had come to know the
exercise yard better than she had once known the leather seats of her Mercedes
sedan.
Before being locked away,
Alyssa Chambers had been a thief. Not just any thief. She had been a thief for
hire who specialized in stealing secrets from the rich and powerful and selling
them to the highest bidder. All that came crashing to earth, though, when one
job went horribly wrong. Paid to download the contents of a popular
Presidential candidate’s hard drive, she broke into his campaign headquarters.
Unfortunately, she broke in on the night he was assassinated.
Deliberately framed for
murder, Alyssa found herself running for her life, hunted and alone. The
beloved candidate’s death outraged the nation, and every “man on the street”
interview called for her capture and punishment, preferably by execution.
Although she eventually cleared her name, it came at great personal cost.
Not only did she learn
that she’d been betrayed by her own father, her entire criminal career came to
light in the investigation.
Innocent of the
assassination, a Federal Court still found her guilty of multiple counts of
assaulting Federal Agents, among other crimes. When they thought she was an
assassin, the public had been howling for her death. When she turned out not to
be, the passions inspired by the 24-hour trial of the century news coverage
proved hard to undo. The mob wanted justice, and the court did its best to
appease them. She went away for 30 years for all her previous crimes. Meanwhile,
her name lived on among conspiracy theorists as the real assassin who had
gotten off by legal trickery.
Her hair had grown back
and regained its natural black. If anything, prison had made her physique
stronger and harder. Her strength and skill manifested themselves in a stride
that was always on the verge of becoming a spinning kick, and in a face that
could share space with murderers and drug dealers without a hint of fear. Many
who met her for the first time experienced the unnerving sensation of her eyes
picking out target points where she would aim her strikes if a fight broke out.
She wore gray sweat pants
that she’d purchased from the prison commissary and a gray T-shirt as well. It
had “FCI Rocky” in blue letters on the chest.
She walked out into the
exercise yard like she owned it. Her experiences here so far had given her
reason for confidence. Although fights were much rarer in a women’s prison than
in one for men, on the rare occasion that physical violence did happen, it
usually had to do with drugs and gangs.
In her early days, Alyssa
got tangled up in a few of those. For a woman who had earned black belts in
several different martial arts schools, winning fights had not been a problem.
No one picked fights with her anymore.
However, they might pick
them with others.
In the corner that was
hardest for the Correctional Officers to see, four of her fellow prisoners were
beating a fifth one. They had the victim down on the ground, curled into the
fetal position. The attackers were kicking her repeatedly.
Although she didn’t know
the attackers, Alyssa recognized the woman on the ground. She was a teenage
punk who got locked up a few days ago for computer crimes. But all Alyssa
really needed to know was that repeated kicks to the face, temples, throat, and
spine could kill. Even if she didn’t die, the newbie’s injuries could be
severe.
Alyssa bit her lower lip.
This wasn’t her affair. She had learned early on that her key to survival in
prison was to keep her nose out of other people’s business.
She had invested a lot of
effort in cleaning up her life. She’d become a model prisoner. The Correctional
Officers, or COs, liked her, the chaplains who came in to do chapel services
liked her, even most of the other prisoners liked her. She was earning good behavior
credits. And most important of all, she was clean. She wasn’t a bad guy
anymore.
All of that investment in
a changed life teetered on the edge of a cliff as she watched the fight.
As she stood there
watching, one of the women rolled the victim over onto her belly, climbed onto
her back, and wrapped an arm around her neck in a chokehold.
That did it. She couldn’t
just stand by and watch another human being be murdered.
It took only a second
before she was racing over there, shouting “Stop!”
One of the women turned,
crossed her arms over her chest, and said, “This ain’t your business. We don’t
want any trouble with you Chambers.”
She was bulky, and it was
hard to tell how much of that was fat and how much was muscle. Her pixie cut
didn’t look much like a pixie on that large frame. Her hair was fading from
brown to gray.
Behind her, the other
three were still kicking and choking the woman on the ground.
Alyssa took a step to the
side to go around the woman, who reached out to try to grab Alyssa’s shirt as
she passed.
That was a mistake.
Slip to the side. Spinning
side kick right to the ribs.
Alyssa’s heel connected
very hard with the area right under the woman’s arm. A cry of pain came out as
she tumbled over sideways.
While one of the remaining
three women continued choking the victim, the other two rose, turned, and faced
Alyssa. They ran at her simultaneously.
A double punch aimed at
nose level stopped both of them in their tracks. One blocked it, the other bent
over with a broken nose.
Alyssa turned back to the
woman who had blocked her first punch and threw her a light front hand jab so
she would block again. The attacker obliged and did exactly that. Before her
block had even moved very far, Alyssa took advantage of the fact that her hand
was now out of position. She threw a straight front kick to her gut so hard the
woman went flying backward and ended up on the ground retching.
The last two women were
still on the ground, one choking the other. Alyssa knew what it was like to be
lost in adrenaline, so she wasn’t surprised that the last aggressor was too
focused on the victim to notice the fight.
Alyssa calmly walked up
and kicked her in the head.
The attacker fell off to
the side, unconscious. The victim gasped desperately for breath, retching as
the pressure on her windpipe finally subsided.
Just as she was about to
offer the woman on the ground a hand up, Alyssa noticed one of the Correctional
Officers.
He must have been new
because she didn’t recognize him.
The thing was, he wasn’t trying
to stop the fight.
He had been standing there
the whole time. Watching.
He stood there with his
arms crossed over his chest. The scowl on his face wouldn’t need much downward
pressure to become a feral snarl. He was bald, and it looked like his nose had
been broken in the past.
As other Correctional
Officers poured out of the prison in response to the fight, he jerked into
motion to pretend like he, too, was responding to the violence. But Alyssa had
seen the truth. She had seen him just watching the fight – almost as if he had
a stake in the outcome.
***
Yesterday’s debate had been so awkward. He and
Vincent weren’t friends, of course. But they were warm acquaintances or at
least they used to be. Regular as a metronome, every two years Doyle had
written a $5,000 check to the Mike Vincent for Congress Committee. The
Congressman had come in person to pick it up — usually right to this office.
They had always shared a few minutes of small talk, and Doyle always told him
he was glad to have Vincent representing him in D.C.
All that changed when his brother Luther pointed out
to him the real value of his discovery. His sibling was a bit of a family black
sheep. He hadn’t gone into academia like Doyle, like his father, and like his
mother. But when Doyle told him about his academic project, he did see the
utility of it right away — far quicker than Doyle had.
In his university research, Doyle Cobalt discovered
a key gene that powerfully affected the growth of criminal tendencies.
Variations in this gene could be linked to the risk that a person either was or
would become antisocial or violent.
The gene regulated a signaling pathway in the brain
that was tied to violent and rebellious behavior. It affected the creation of a
specific neurotransmitter.
He tested 900 people with nonstandard levels of that
particular genetic marker against a control group of about the same number. The
nonstandard subjects were 10 times more likely to have a criminal record seven
years after the study began.
Doyle conceived of it as a way to help people know
when they should seek therapy. But his brother suggested a different idea.
What if the police knew in advance every person who
had that gene? Couldn’t they use it to reduce crime? Couldn’t they use it to
make the world a more peaceful and less violent place?
Together, Doyle and his brother conceived the
Genetic Probable Cause Bill. If it became law, Federal law enforcement agencies
would completely and totally switch from fingerprinting to taking a DNA swab.
The bill said that all the DNA gathered that way had to be tested. And when
those tests revealed a person with the “criminal gene,” so to speak, it let
Federal law enforcement agencies place people under surveillance.
And, of course, some company would have to get the
Federal contract to store and test all that DNA. For that purpose, they formed
Cobalt Data Mining Systems.
Unfortunately, the Congressman to whom Doyle had
been giving money for so many years didn’t see the wisdom of the project. So,
once again, his brother Luther supplied the next step of the plan. If Doyle
were in Congress instead of Mike Vincent…
And so, it had come to this. He had to stand across
stages from a man he once considered an ally and call him soft on crime. He and
Vincent didn’t speak much anymore but every time they both had to appear at the
same event, Doyle felt vaguely dirty.
Which didn’t seem fair because he was the one trying
to do something good. If the Genetic Probable Cause Bill passed, the government
could accumulate genetic data on more and more people. It could know who was
likely to commit a crime. They could know who was a potential terrorist or who
might be a threat to National Security. The government could give that list to
the FBI or the NSA. The suspects could be watched.
How many mass murderers made social media posts
before they killed? With the NSA’s tracking of social media and Cobalt’s
ability to predict who had the tendency to become a killer, how many of those
shootings could be prevented?
Cobalt knew the Genetic Probable Cause Bill was a
good thing. It was too bad Mike Vincent didn’t.
The victim must have
testified on her behalf because, for once, that didn’t happen.
Which was a good thing because
today was visiting day.
When she first pled guilty
to breaking and entering and assaulting Federal Agents, Alyssa thought she
wouldn’t mind prison. She thought her whole life had been destroyed, and she
wouldn’t care about being locked up in a dangerous place with no friends.
FCI-Rocky quickly
disabused her of that notion.
Although she had made a
friend or two here, she missed her world. She missed her life. She missed
people who knew the things she knew and cared about the things she cared about.
Somewhat to her surprise,
she missed Matt Barr.
As she entered the
visiting lounge, she saw him from across the room. Without conscious thought, a
big smile spread across her face. She felt her feet quicken a little bit to get
to where he was standing.
Embracing still felt a
little strange. Her family had not been one to show physical affection, and
Alyssa didn’t have a lot of experience with it. But prison had helped her
change that behavior, and she hugged Matt.
“Thanks for coming,” she
said.
“Of course. You know I’m
never going to stop.”
Matt Barr was a man of
average height. His wavy brown hair framed a square, clean-shaven face. He wore
jeans and a white shirt with a button-down collar. Somehow, for once, the cuffs
of his pants weren’t frayed. Alyssa figured they must be new.
As they sat down in the
cheap plastic chairs, among the din of all the other prisoners and their
visitors, she looked him up and down.
“Are you OK, Matt? You
look a little off-kilter.”
He paused for a long time,
not meeting her eyes. He opened his mouth once or twice as if to speak. Then he
shrugged.
Matt said, “It’s nothing.
How’ve you been?”
“I was doing fine until
this morning,” she replied.
Matt raised an eyebrow and
waited for her to explain.
“There was a fight this
morning. Four women from one of the gangs were beating up some newbie. They had
her down on the ground and were choking her; I was afraid she’d get killed, so
I broke it up.”
Matt shook his head and
smiled before speaking. “I’m guessing you don’t mean that you broke it up by
reciting the gospel to them and calmly advising them of the rules here?”
Alyssa shrugged and said,
“That’s not what I know how to do. Kicking people in the head is what I know
how to do.”
He nodded and replied, “I
know. I also know there’s more to you than that.”
She shrugged again and
looked away. It wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have right now. When she’d
turned herself in to the Feds, she had wanted to put her old life behind her.
She’d been betrayed as deeply as she could imagine, and it made the whole ugly
life look like something to be left behind.
Matt was a churchgoing guy
and pretty serious about wanting to share that with her. When she talked about
quitting the old life, he was eager to help. And that was as far as the easy
road went. From that point on, it hadn’t worked very well… yet.
In childhood, she and Matt
had been best friends. But the path she choose as she grew older took her
farther and farther away from him. That path grew darker until it ended in
disaster, with her own father setting her up to take the blame for a murder so
he could reach the pinnacle of power politics. But what if she had chosen
differently?
Without looking back to
Matt, Alyssa allowed herself to give voice to her questions.
“I wonder how my life
would have been different if my father had been different?”
At once, Matt took her
hand and squeezed it. He didn’t say anything, he just held her hand.
Alyssa didn’t say anything
either. For a long time they just sat there.
Finally Matt whispered, “God
is a father to the fatherless, Alyssa.”
She didn’t know what to
say. She was not a woman who needed emotional support. She was not someone who
needed comfort. She was iron-strong, self-sufficient, hard, and invincible.
But something about those
words called to her.
Finally, she changed the
subject.
“How’s Mike?” she asked.
Matt took a while to
reply. She could tell by looking at him that he didn’t like the subject change.
“He’s having a hard
primary,” Matt replied. “He’s running behind Cobalt, and things aren’t breaking
his way. He’s been talking about trying to get the President to endorse him or
at least commit to vetoing Cobalt’s bill. I’m not sure if it will really help
or not.”
Congressman Mike Vincent
was a mutual friend. Matt was a political reporter and, until two years ago,
Alyssa was a political operative – of sorts. That meant they knew a lot of the
same people, including Vincent.
Other than Matt,
Congressman Vincent and his wife Kathy were Alyssa’s only regular visitors. It
meant a lot to her. Her reputation was politically toxic. If the press ever
tumbled on to how much time Vincent spent visiting the notorious accused
assassin, he’d suffer for it in the polls. But he came anyway, and Alyssa loved
him as a brother for it.
Matt went on, “Your old
friend Tom Wheeler’s helping Mike. He’s trying to get the President to commit
to vetoing Cobalt’s bill even if he does get elected and maybe even endorse
Mike in the primary. Wheeler’s a fairly decent guy.”
Alyssa shrugged. “He
probably saved my life with that call to the Attorney General when we were
being arrested. But then, he got me into that fix in the first place, so he
owed it to me.”
After the last job for
which Tom Wheeler hired her had gone so disastrously wrong, Congressman Vincent
and Matt had worked to help Alyssa save herself from the assassination charge.
Together, the two of them helped her clear her name – at least of murder. Now,
they were essentially her only friends. The only other people who showed up on
visiting day were reporters and conspiracy theorists looking for a story.
Matt wanted marriage, the
white picket fence, blah, blah, blah. Even if she did want the same thing — of
which she was far from certain — it was physically impossible for her to give
it to him. And it would remain so for another 28 years, until long after youth
and beauty had faded into senior citizen discounts and wrinkle cream.
But he never stopped
coming. Every week, without fail, she could count on him for a visit. The cost
in plane tickets from D.C. had to be astronomical. She’d finally gotten him to
sign the power of attorney forms so he could spend some of her money on that,
but she still felt guilty about it.
Visits from the outside
were too precious to give up, even when she knew how inconvenient it had to be
for him.
She never wanted to get
married and now she couldn’t get married; yet, Matt still flew across the
country every week to see her.
She listened to him talk
about political gossip and about the world outside. All the while, she was
running through the math of how good behavior credits would affect her sentence
and trying to work out the best possible case for when she might get out. All
too soon, visiting time was at an end.
***
The only good news was
that his wife had flown home with him, and they’d gotten a tiny bit of time
together. It would probably be the last for a while.
It was ten at night, and
Congressman Michael Vincent was more than ready for sleep. But it would be at
least an hour before that happened. It would take him that long to get home. He
sat in the Party’s national headquarters, finishing up some campaign business.
The small office had
pictures of various Presidents hanging on the walls, along with various kitschy
Americana. The desk was a plywood special and the chair behind it had obviously
required some assembly after it came home from the big box office supply store.
A couple of guest chairs in the room were marginally more padded than the desk
chair, but not much. Even this late at night, Vincent was not the only person
still working here.
Vincent fiddled with a
lightweight dumbbell. It was a habit. He was a free weight guy who could name
every muscle group in the body and when he had nothing to do with his hands, he
often started curling or at least toying with a weight. Over time, most of the
spaces he regularly worked in wound up with a few dumbbells of various weights
sitting there for him.
He was running for the
United States Senate. The media attention was higher than when he’d first been
elected to the House of Representatives and so was the demand for fundraising.
It was harder and harder to get any time with his wife.
Instead of his wife, he
was currently sitting across a desk from his campaign manager, who was kind of
hard to take. She was a tightly wound Type A personality who would start
yelling at the slightest provocation. Mike spent an hour every day consoling
vital campaign staff who wanted to quit after Gina had lit into them.
At the moment, though, she
was yelling at the safest available target: him.
“Mike, we need more money.
Cobalt is up six points in this new poll, and nothing we’re doing is making a
dent in his lead. I need more TV! I need you on the phone more.”
The tall, overweight woman
had graying hair and dark eyes. She had a pen in her mouth – constantly chewing
them was her vice.
The Congressman said, “G,
I’m making seven hours of calls a day. I haven’t got any more time.”
She shot back, “If you
want to lose, it’s no big deal to me. I’ll have a job next election cycle one
way or another. You’re the one who will be out of politics if you lose this.”
“Don’t get like that,”
Vincent replied.
“Sorry. I know I get too
uptight. I was actually totally lying. It’s a huge deal to me if we lose. I
hate to lose.”
“I know, G. And I’m giving
you everything I’ve got. It’s getting us nowhere. Let’s come back to that plan
I mentioned. I think I know a way to boost our poll numbers.”
Gina said, “I hope it’s
not, ‘Come up with a better stump speech.’”
Mike said, “Gina, I’m not
a child. Stop patronizing me. I’ve been elected before, you know. I have an
idea that’s better than ‘give a better speech.’”
She replied, “I do, too.
You can bring me enough money to bump our TV buy by 25 percent.”
Vincent asked, “What if
the President endorsed me?”
Gina raised an eyebrow and
asked, “In a contested primary? Against Doyle Cobalt, whom all the money men
and lobbyists love?”
“It could happen. I got to
know him a bit after Rich West died. I got to know Wheeler, too. He was
Communications Director on the campaign at the time. They talk to me more
lately.”
His manager said, “Yeah,
but Mike, your whole brand in politics is Mister Nice Guy. The President is the
polar opposite. He’s like a walking cover-up. It’s amazing to me there’s never
been a front page headline about his love life. Everyone knows about him.
“And as for Wheeler, if
the President is a walking cover-up, Wheeler’s the guy who does the covering.”
She finished, “These guys
aren’t your team, Mike. They’re Doyle Cobalt’s team. They like power, they like
money, and they absolutely love themselves. They might do the right thing
occasionally but only if they can do it while getting more power.”
The Congressman shrugged
and replied, “This President’s changing in office. The responsibility is
helping him grow up. Wheeler talks to me about it. The President doesn’t sleep
around anymore.”
Gina shot back, “Yeah,
right.”
Vincent said, “Gina, I
believe in people when they’re trying to fix their lives. I believe in second
chances.”
“I know you do, Mike,” she
replied. “But does he? You’re talking about betting the success or failure of
your Senate campaign on hoping that he’s really changed.”
“I’ll keep raising money,
just in case,” the Congressman said.
Vincent’s opponent was a
former university professor who’d gotten a lot of government grants to develop
some important genetic technology. He had then taken that same technology to
the semi-private sector to make a fortune. Now he was a contractor, leasing the
technology back to the same agencies that had initially funded its development.
That made it easier for Mike.
He disliked that kind of shady double dealing.
What made it harder was
that Cobalt used to support him. For many election cycles, Cobalt had been a
max donor to Vincent’s campaign. Mike didn’t feel like he’d done anything to
break the relationship, but the facts were the facts. His one-time ally was
running against him… and was favored to win.