CLOAK & CORKSCREW: 22)PENNER PAROXYSMIC
My Saturday Evening Post: A Serial Novel of Intrigue & Lunacy
46.
The first PI Jeremy Katz and the duo from TZM knew about Josh Penner’s covert departure came from the Dataveillant, who stayed up late and rose early, getting by on no more than four hours sleep a night. The Dataveillant’s melatonin levels had long been worn down by from the backlighting of eight monitors all night long.
He was actually half asleep in the swivel chair from which he commanded a cacophony of robotic voices when one of his computers spat out news that Penner’s credit card had just settled a room tab at the Dolder Grand in Zurich.
The Dataveillant immediately connected to Katz, who, sitting in the Dolder Grand’s lobby, was taken by surprise.
“I’m doing a sweep for new charges,” said the Dataveillant, “see where he’s headed. Stand-by.”
Using the last four digits of Penner’s social security number combined with either his mother’s maiden name or day & month of her birth usually got the Dataveillant into any online credit card account. Thereafter, pet names—a generic list usually sufficed.
On a hunch, the Dataveillant also began to check airline flight manifestos departing from Zurich to the United States and, within minutes, found Penner’s name on United Airlines to Los Angeles. More interesting, from his perspective, was how the flight was booked: A McLean, Virginia travel agency utilized by The Spooky People down the road in Langley.
Several more keystrokes and the Dataveillant gleaned that one Charles Mulberry had been booked as part of the same reservation.
He connected to Katz, who stood-by. “They’re at Zurich airport.”
“They?”
“He’s traveling with a male: Mulberry, Charles. United Flight 9314, departing 1:10 p.m. Hold on….” The Dataveillant touched a few more keys. “The three of you now have reserved seats in business class.”
47.
Josh Penner stood in line with Charles Mulberry at United’s check-in at Zurich Airport. “I still don’t friggin’ get it,” he said, referring to the stand-down order. He had already discarded the wig and spectacles, along with the pebble from his shoe used to disguise his departure.
“Simple,” whispered the CIA operative. “We operate on a need-to-know basis. All you need to know is your part. I can tell you only that the operation is proceeding and everyone at headquarters is satisfied with the role you played.”
“The hell,” snapped Penner. “You just let that traitor sell everything he knows to the Russians!”
“Did I?”
“You sure as hell did. And that’s exactly what I’m going to tell the FBI.”
Mulberry stared at Penner in disbelief while repulsing a compulsion to count his teeth. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Are you out of yours?”
“Look, if it’s any comfort to you, there are things about this I’m not privy to, because I, also, don’t have a need-to-know. I accept that. So should you. Now it’s time to revert to our situation in Venezuela.”
“Ah, I’m glad you mentioned that,” said Penner. “I’ve got a little problem that you need to solve.”
Mulberry felt another urge to count his teeth.
A United check-in agent beckoned them forth and issued boarding passes. The two men trudged through security before resuming their conversation.
“What little problem?” Mulberry braced himself.
“I got a guy from the State Department blackmailing me.”
Mulberry pulled a face. “ What do you mean, blackmailing you?”
“He says he’s going to prosecute me for visiting Cuba.”
“But nobody gets prosecuted for visiting Cuba.”
“That’s his point,” said Penner. “He says he wants to make an example of me. We celebrities are always catching that kind of heat, it goes with the territory. The authorities come after us so that media reportage of it will scare everyone else into submission.”
“And you’re saying he’s demanding money not to prosecute you?”
Penner shook his head. “Not money. He wants to cut in on your action in Venezuela.”
“What? How does he know…?”
“He doesn’t. He says if I don’t introduce him to Hugo Chavez, I will be prosecuted.”
“But why does he want you to introduce him to Chavez if he’s in the State Department?”
“How am I supposed to know.” Penner shrugged, exasperated. “He said something about creating a back-channel. I want him off my back.”
Mulberry shook his head. “It’s nothing we’d want to get involved in.”
“Whattaya mean? The whole reason I went to Cuba and Venezuela was for you guys. Which means you gotta set him straight.”
“We don’t want the State Department knowing about our relationship with you,” said Mulberry. “It’s secret.”
“So tell him it’s secret!”
“Can’t,” said Mulberry. “It wouldn’t be secret any more.”
“Well, then how about this,” snapped Penner, raising his voice. “They prosecute me, I go to court, the prosecutor asks why I went to Cuba, and I say the CIA sent me.”
Mulberry looked at Penner stony-faced. “We won’t confirm or deny that.”
“I don’t fucking believe this.”
A minute later, Penner also could not fucking believe when he saw Natalie Ruvo and Bradley Bish enter United’s first-class lounge. “What the fuck are they doing here?”
Mulberry glanced around. “Who?”
“The scumbags from TZM. I thought we lost them.”
“Oh dear,” said Mulberry. “Excuse me.” The first thing Mulberry did was go to the men’s room to count his teeth, twelve times. I’m definitely losing my job this time. The next thing Mulberry did, upon leaving the men’s room, was make a beeline, solo, to the departure gate.
After 15 minutes, Penner realized Mulberry would not return. He caught Ruvo’s eye, gave her the finger and stormed out of the lounge. At the departure gate he approached Mulberry but the CIA officer waved him away, not wanting to be photographed or in anyway associated with the movie star so long as TZM was anywhere near.
“Chicken-shits,” Penner muttered. “Goddam chicken-shits.”
Although they sat side-by-side in business-class, Mulberry completely ignored Penner, and repulsed every attempt the movie star made to engage him. Instead, the CIA officer counted his teeth and studied the help wanted ads in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.
Penner gave up, enjoyed a long lunch with two glasses of wine and took a snooze, awakening as the jumbo jet approached North America. He had totally ignored Natalie Ruvo and Bradley Bish, who sat three rows behind him. And he did not know anything about Jeremy Katz, who also sat nearby.
After a cup of coffee, Penner pulled a Mac Book from his satchel, paid for on-board internet and launched into Mail, checking, as was his habit, any Google Alerts for Josh Penner.
Penner read in stunned disbelief: Josh Penner Pisses Himself. A click took him onto TZM’s website, which featured a YouTube of himself, scared and wetting his crotch.
Penner felt anger well deep inside, tingling, growing, until he felt steam blowing from his ears. He tried every trick taught him by his court-ordered anger management shrink. Nothing worked. And so he rose from his plush seat and aimed himself down the aisle toward his tormentors.
Natalie Ruvo, wide-eyed, saw him coming, but could not alert Bradley Bish, so fast was Penner upon him, pummeling his head and upper torso with a steady stream of blows.
Jeremy Katz, sitting nearby, had nodded off, but quickly awakened to Bish’s squealing and other passengers gasping in disbelief. Katz jumped up, not to aide Bish, but to document the beating with his video camera.
Two flight attendants and three male passengers subdued the enraged movie star. Penner flung his arms wildly, hollering about how he would single-handedly end scumbag media oppression of celebrities.
The first word in the cockpit of the fracas caused pilots, unsure whether this was a terrorist attack, to initiate emergency procedures and request permission to land at the nearest airport inside the United States. Within a minute they were instructed to land at Boston’s Logan Airport, where FBI special agents waited to remove a hostile from the plane and take him into custody.
Bound in duct tape, and held prostrate on the floor until landing, Penner called out a number of times for Charles Mulberry.
The CIA officer remained in his seat, mortified, counting his teeth.
A flight attendant with medical kit treated Bradley Bish as best she could. He had a bloody nose, possibly broken, and a face that had blown up like a balloon—all documented by Jeremy Katz, who also managed a few shots of the hog-tied movie star. Soon after, he videoed four burly FBI agents bustle Penner off the plane into their custody.
Offered the opportunity to disembark and seek hospital treatment in Boston, Bish declined, so the flight became further delayed while Boston police officers took his statement and interviewed witnesses.
Jeremy Katz remained invisible, keeping his photographic evidence to himself.
Mulberry phoned CIA headquarters from the plane at Logan and, patched though to Tyler Dixon, chief of Foreign Research, conveyed details of the incident. He also took the opportunity to tender his resignation, which Dixon refused, pending review.
A bevy of news photographers clamored outside arrivals as FBI agents marched its culprit to a black Excalibur.
“That’s Josh Penner!” called one.
And thus began a media circus that culminated hours later with TZM posting its video and photographs of their intrepid reporter’s beating-in-progress, along with the aftermath of Penner being frog-marched off the plane in handcuffs.
The Boston press, especially, had a field day, musing comically whether Penner had become a terrorist on behalf of the Venezuelans or the Cubans.
TZM then revealed what Penner had been up to in Geneva: Meeting a rogue ex-CIA officer and conspiring to expose U.S. national security secrets, which further fueled a media feeding frenzy, until Penner’s arrest became the hottest national news story for three days straight.
Reporters from news outlets everywhere, meantime, tried to track down rogue spy Tom Richardson, who had suddenly, and mysteriously, become even more incognito than before.
TZM, which owned this story, had never experienced so many hits. It took technicians over an hour to reconfigure their web-hosting server after it crashed from too much traffic.