#and I met a guy from my client’s team (whom I never spoke to but whose office is literally facing mine at my client’s)

[pippapimentina]

….

[purplesurveys]

1114

survey by dishwallafied

WHO was the last person...

you spoke to, in person? I think it was my sister, like earlier at 1 AM. She was the last person apart from me to head upstairs for bed.

you called? I tried calling our internet service provider’s hotline to inquire about our lost connection last weekend, but all I got was a useless automated message saying they’re on top of all concerns and will be addressing ours soon, which did not make any fucking sense because I didn’t get to report my issue anyway. Their social media was virtually useless too, and my dad had to physically go to one of their offices last Monday to settle the issue.

that called you? My phone’s not near me at the moment (omg a rarity) but it was the delivery person for Reggy’s croissants. GPS has always hated our street and has never been able to identify it, so whenever anyone in the family makes a purchase for delivery we’re bound to get a call or two from the rider assigned to our order to ask for directions.

you texted? It was the same delivery guy. He had tried to call me but I was in a meeting that I couldn’t get out of, so I explained to him I could only text. I also gave him a Waze link containing the exact positioning of our house so that he could set it up on his phone.

that sent you a text? I think it was just my mobile services provider sending out some random promotional text. Idk, I never open those.

you kissed? Gabie.

that kissed you? Also her. I don’t plan on kissing anyone new any time soon.

you yelled at? I haven’t recently been in a situation where I’ve had to yell at anyone...I do slightly raise my voice a lot on video call meetings just so I’m sure everybody on the call can hear me. That’s the closest I’ve got.

that yelled at you? My mom, when she was being a real drama queen about MY money a couple of weeks ago.

you watched a movie with? I watched it by myself, but I remember calling my ex for comfort because the movie was a little scary and creepy. I also remember how bothered she sounded that I was calling her, as if I was a huge burden, so...there’s that. Y’all do me a favor and be with someone who gets delighted when you call instead of making you feel like you’re a waste of space okie?? Good

you ate dinner with? My family. My dad laksa for dinner, which was perfect because I had been watching 2 Days 1 Night yesterday and the cast members kept eating ramyeon, which made me develop a serious craving for noodles all day.

you were in a photo with? I think it had been a family selfie. My family and I were about to leave the accommodation we stayed at in Tagaytay, and my mom wanted a final photo in the living room before we stepped out.

you took a photo of? My employer sent out heart-shaped red velvet cakes for all of us for Valentine’s Day, so I took a photo of it with Cooper in the background to share to the work group chat. I definitely did not expect any goodie sendout considering I never viewed Valentine’s as a special day even when I was still in a relationship, so it was a nice surprise to receive. 

you went to a concert with? Oh my Paramore show was a solo date. Gabie did come to the arena with me and I also drove Denise, Erycka, and Leigh, but the three of them settled for a different section somewhere farther out given how they already did VIP seats for Paramore’s previous concert in 2013. It was my turn to have a front-row seat and since I didn’t know anyone who was as big of a fan as I was or was willing to shell out ₱7,000 for a VIP seat, I went by myself.

you lied to? I think it was Bea, my manager? She scheduled a quick call last Tuesday just to do a check-in with me, and she was asking how I was. Of course I had to tell her I was doing fine, which is never completely true for a lot of people, I think. I didn’t want her to ask me to open up anyway, so saying I was fine was the easy way to go.

you invited somewhere? I recently saw a music clip of a certain song that’s played a lot in bars, so I tagged my entire college barkada telling them we should go back to TK soon, at least when the lockdown and the pandemic subside considerably.

you dated? Gabie.

you dumped? It worked the other way around.

you rejected? I mean, I guess I technically rejected the girl Mik told me was interested in me. We never met since Mik refused to tell me her name or show a photo, but I informed him I wasn’t planning on talking with anyone soon so she can stop thinking I’m available.

you held hands with? Angela.

you hugged? Andi, before they got out of my car since we were parting ways for the evening.

you let cry on your shoulder? This hasn’t happened in a very long time. Most likely Gabie, but this would’ve been around at the start of 2020 when we could still see each other regularly.

that let you cry on their shoulder? Figuratively, Angela and Andi.

you bought a gift for? I got a weekend accommodation for my family, but it was really meant for my dad for his 50th birthday.

you wished a happy birthday? Hans.

that disappointed you? I was more annoyed than disappointed, but it was some random Fil-Am who was being ignorant at the Subtle Filipino Traits Facebook group. That community gives me a huge migraine most days because of Fil-Ams who continue to romanticize the ~beauty~ of the country whilst completely ignoring the socio-political trainwreck here, but the group is kind of the place to be for Filipinos so I can’t see myself leaving it either.

that stayed over at your place? They didn’t stay over for the night but Angela and Hans did a surprise visit to my house a few days after Christmas.

that let you crash at their place? Gab. I used to always crash at her place when I’ve had a few drinks.

that made you angry? Idk man, can I give Mark Zuckerberg as an answer? HAHAHA I went on Facebook first thing today and the first thing I saw was a Facebook Memory, and it was a photo of me and Gabie at Athenna’s birthday party four years ago. I got irritated at first until I remembered that we were both tagged in the post, which means it would most likely show up on her feed as a Memory as well. Just to humor my petty ass, I kinda hope the memory would make her sad, wherever she is; but otherwise seeing the Memory pop up didn’t make me sad or bothered anymore so that’s a win for meee.

that complimented you? Leah, my employer’s CEO. She did a check-in call with me recently to get to know me better, so one of the first things she asked was a list of the clients I handle. I happen to be in the team that works with the company’s more big-league clients, so once she heard the brands she told me I must be a good enough worker to be assigned those clients. It meant a lot and it still does.

whom you complimented? Bea. I just let her know how helpful she’s been with me considering I’m a fresh graduate on her first job in a work-from-home setup in the middle of a global pandemic.

you thanked? A supplier I’m currently in contact with, for work.

that thanked you? The said supplier thanked me back.

you saw, in person? My sister.

that bought you something? Dad bought siopaos for us yesterday.

that made you laugh? The cast of 2 Days 1 Night, from when I was watching the show last night.

that you said you loved? I don’t remember. I think it was Kate since she helped me out with a favor.

that said they loved you? Hannah.

you flipped off? I haven’t whipped out the finger in a while, come to think of it.

you made a silly face at? Not a person, but Cooper.

that drove you somewhere? Dad was the driver for our Tagaytay trip.

WHAT was the last thing you...

touched? Aside from my keyboard, my vape pen.

threw? Cooper’s bowling pin squeak toy. He’s gotten a lot better at catching things with his mouth, so I’ve been throwing it a lot at him to continue training him.

ate? A caramel croissant.

drank? Coffee.

found stuck in your teeth? Haven’t had this happen to me in a while.

cooked? I’ve never tried cooking anything.

baked? Idk, maybe cookies 873984732842 years ago.

threw away/tossed out? The packet for the sauce that came with the siopao my dad bought.

bought? I made a purchase for 20 bags for a work thing, but only because I was assigned to do the whole correspondence with the supplier. My manager was the one who sent over the payment when the purchase was confirmed.

sold? I don’t think I’ve ever tried selling anything before.

took a photo of? Cooper hahaha. I had been dancing to a song and he was staring at me.

were frustrated with? Our internet provider when they cut off the connection last weekend.

broke? I’m not sure if I can say I broke it, but the adaptor for my phone charger finally gave up on me the other day. I’ve taken to borrowing my sister’s for now, since she says she “doesn’t use it a lot” anyway.

spilled? Some drops of coffee spilled out of my mug when I dumped several ice cubes in it.

tripped on? Kimi. He follows me evvvvvvverywhere, so I bump into him at least once a day.

kicked? I’m not really sure.

put batteries in? Haven’t had to use batteries in a while, either.

turned on? The Bluetooth on my laptop.

turned off? The electric fan last night since I found it loud.

wrote? Other than my answers to this survey, I’ve also been talking with Angela this morning over Messenger.

wrote on? Other than my phone/laptop, my journal.

cleaned? My glasses.

stuck up your nose??? My finger when a nostril itched recently.

WHERE was the last place you...

dined at? Ramen Nagi.

ordered something to go? I don’t do takeout deliveries, but the last thing I got for delivery was banh mi and iced Vietnamese coffee last week.

bought something? Facebook Marketplace.

cried? In the living room. I came across that viral video of a guy proposing to her girlfriend at a Taylor Swift concert, when he knelt at the exact moment Taylor sang “He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring” from Love Story. It was such a sweet, classy, non-cringey public proposal and I allowed myself to be swept away by the cheesiness of it all, haha.

felt uncomfortable? Dining room table. I was sharing a story to my parents about work involving a guy and my mom asked me if I had a crush on him. My dad kind of snorted and said, “Her? Crush on a guy?” which told me he knew something was up re: my preferences lmao. They’ve never heard anything from me yet, so that made me feel awkward and I most especially didn’t want my mom to catch on to the question and suddenly put me in the hot seat.

drove to? Other than back home, I last drove to UPTC.

had an appointment at? Google Meet, hahaha.

went on vacation? Tagaytay. 

hung out with a friend? Andi and I went to a Korean barbecue place at UPTC (again), but we also drove to UP after just to revisit the good old days of being in campus.

bought clothes? H&M in Feliz.

spent more than you had planned? Ramen Nagi. I had a couple of add-ons in my meal and I didn’t know their service fee was going to be quite high, so my final bill ended up being slightly more than the budget I planned out for that day.

saw a band/singer/musician perform? Late 2019. My ex and I stopped by a jazz bar and there was a live band playing.

WHEN was the last time you...

told someone 'I love you'? Last Friday.

cried? Last night.

laughed? This morning. Cooper was being silly around me and my dad, as always. This time he was unusually behaved when we let him out, and the bizarreness of it all made us so unsettled we ended up laughing.

left your home? Last Sunday. I might go out later, too.

drank a soda/pop? Early last year. There was Coke being served at an org event, and since I felt thirsty and there was no drinking fountain around I just said fuck it and drank the soda.

made your bed? Last night when I left my room to settle in the living room.

visited a doctor? May last year.

went to the emergency room? Other than when 23 years ago when I was born, I’ve never been brought to the emergency room.

kissed someone? September.

hugged someone? Mid-January.

prayed? Six years ago. Or maybe five; I can’t really tell when exactly I made it a point to stop for good.

worked out? Around a week ago. I’m thinking if I should keep at it or if I should just stop, seeing as I’m not willing to give up my favorite foods anyway lmao.

made a phone call? I tried to make a phone call to our internet provider last weekend.

answered a phone? The other evening when the landline rang.

had an argument? Two weeks ago, instigated by my mom as usual.

played a video game? I think 2-3 weeks ago when I got in the mood to play the Switch.

played a card game? Safe to say at least a couple of years ago.

played a board game? November when we suffered a power outage for two days and had nothing to do at home.

rode a bike? LOOOOOOOOL March. The lockdown had just started and I made plans to learn how to ride a bike, but those plans fell through as soon as they began.

fell on your butt? This doesn’t happen often.

took a shower? Last night.

took a bubble bath? I can’t even remember anymore; this is a rare occasion for me.

watched TV? I last watched a TV show in general last night, but I last watched something on an actual television last Sunday when my family watched a Sunday mass livestream.

saw a movie at a theater? December 2019.

ate fast food? I got Bonchon for my family last December, if I remember correctly. My dad had done a huge favor for me and I asked what I can do to repay it, and he said to just buy dinner for the 5 of us for that evening.

ordered a pizza? Last month.

made someone laugh? I’m not sure if I had made her laugh in real life, but Angela and I had a humorous conversation over chat earlier this morning.

sang? Few minutes ago.

played a musical instrument? Absolutely no clue.

read a book? Couple of weeks ago when my employer sent me this book on PR that I was asked to read in preparation for my meeting with Leah.

drove a car? Last Sunday.

went swimming? Think it may have been my Nasugbu trip with Angela, Sofie, and Gabie back in August 2019.

got a sunburn? Idk man, when I was 8? I stopped getting sunburns as I got older.

went to church or temple? The last Sunday in March before the lockdown started.

went shopping? I did my final around of Christmas shopping last month for friends I still had to give presents to.

drank alcohol? Sometime last month after my work shift, following back-to-back meetings with my least favorite client.

smoked a cigarette? Feb last year, I think. I don’t buy cigarettes of my own and I’m also a lot more watchful of my cigarette usage, so I haven’t been able to smoke since I haven’t been around a crowd who does. I mostly vape.

threw up? I last felt like throwing up back in May, but I haven’t actualy thrown up in at least a couple of years now.

had a headache? Just this Thursday.

had a cold? No idea.

had the flu? It wasn’t strictly the flu, but I was last sick in May.

had your hair cut? March last year.

dyed your hair? Never done it.

laughed so hard that you cried? It’s happened in at least the past couple of weeks, I’m sure.

[dat-town]

CODE Z3RO | CODE 05

characters: BTS & Red Velvet genre: thriller, futuristic au warning: none other than grief, guilt tripping and not so nice words thrown at each other’s heads summary: The twelve most ambitious and promising university students are welcomed in Choego, the world’s first entirely artificial intelligence-driven city, to compete for five job contracts that could change their life. But what if something goes wrong? What if they get trapped? What if the city suddenly turns against them? Can they find a way out before the countdown reaches zero? words: 5K tagged: @philosopher-of-fandoms​

➼ Chapter Index

A heart-wrecking, loud cry came from the distance.

Yerim couldn't tell whom it belonged to, it could have been her for all she knew. Around her there was nothing but deafening silence and bright white stars in her vision. She had become cold and numb to the call of her own name. She barely registered when someone grabbed her firmly by the arm to pull her farther from the bloody handprint on the glass door. But even when a lithe body covered her eyes, she couldn't unsee it. She would never be able to forget the horrific sight that carved itself deep into her mind, leaving behind such an unerasable imprint that she could never get rid of. This was what nightmares were made of after all.

Jungkook just stood there deadly still, watching as Wendy sneaked a comforting arm around Yerim, pulled her up to her feet and walked away with her. She acted as collected and professional as one could be while all of them were confused and shaken up by the recent events. Merely 5 minutes earlier Seokjin had been yelling at them to leave but now he laid there in the pool of his own blood. His handsome face was ruined by the burgundy liquid flowing from his ears, eyes and nose. Jungkook had seen things like this in movies but it was happening right in front of him felt even more unreal than stupid B-category horror movies from Hollywood. It was almost too much to process that it really had happened but he certainly wasn't the only one feeling that way. Hoseok was vomiting somewhere in the corner at the first sight of seeing blood. Joohyun was so pale she looked like a ghost on the verge of fainting and quiet sobs were ripped off Seulgi too as she turned her gaze away.

“What the hell happened? How could he…” The words died on Namjoon's tongue as many eyes, including Jungkook's, shot up at him. He couldn't finish the sentence, there was no way he would say the words out loud. It would have made it too real, it would have meant he accepted it while without fail everybody was confused and shocked. They just saw someone, a rival, an ally, a brother die right in front of their eyes. How could they have gone on like nothing happened?

Jungkook gulped and glanced down again, foolishly hoping to see the slight stir of the immobile body. It was in vain though, hopes couldn't bring anyone back to life. The bloody strikes, those unnatural tears had left behind on Jin's cheeks were still vivid red under the artificial light and Seokjin's glassy eyes bore into distance in a more morbid manner than Jungkook could have ever imagined, it was truly a sight that would haunt them all for sure.

It was the sound of a door slammed open, metal colliding with brick as the handle hit the wall that startled them all enough to finally move when Yoongi's robust voice echoed in the basement.

“Get out of there! The lab is dangerous!” he yelled not even suspecting that it was already too late. But how could he know? How could he be so sure that it wasn't safe? Where were he until now to get that information?

Questions flooded the young engineer student's mind and his legs moved by themselves following the crowd out of there on instinct. It was the same bandwagon effect that made everyone follow him downstairs. Sticking together had never been such a bad idea before. But playing with what ifs based on the tons of variables of the situation only made his head hurt and was useless like crying over spilled milk.

He was the last one who reached the top of the stairs and he flinched when Yoongi shut the door behind him with a loud thud. The IT guy and the chaebol one who had disappeared a while ago now were both eyeing them suspiciously but it was Jimin who spoke up.

“Why the hell do you all look like someone just died?” he snorted not grasping the seriousness of the moment and not even understanding the rudeness of his own words.

It was the elder guy beside him who let the quiet question fall from his lips.

“Where is her brother?” Yoongi asked, pointing at Yerim who was wailing oh so heartbreakingly into the crook of Wendy's delicate neck.

Each gaze avoided meeting the interrogator's, they rather turned away, glances shifting to their own shoes. 

“He...” Namjoon found his voice but was quickly cut off by the lilac hair Marketing major who seemed the least affected out of them.

“He died,” he blurted out straightforward, not sugarcoating his words at all. There was no humour in his voice and one dark look was enough to freeze that nasty, cunning smile on Jimin's face. “Smartypants here thought it's a good idea to check the labs and that other idiot tried to open a door when it obviously closed for a reason.”

Taehyung pointed his finger at them, first at Jungkook and then Hoseok. While the former looked away guiltily, the latter raised his voice at the accusation.

“What the hell did I do wrong? I tried to save him when nobody did anything!” he argued but the truth was nobody knew what was right or wrong anymore. The bracelet should have opened the door like it had done for the first time, they should have been able to pull him out and whatever had killed him could have dissolved in open air before infecting their bloodstreams too. 

“And kill us all with whatever made Mr. Team Leader bleed everywhere?” Taehyung shot back a question, the raw sarcasm bringing the worst out of him.

“It's not his fault, nobody knew,” Namjoon tried to reason as calmly as he could but Hoseok wasn't that self-controlled and was on the younger already, grabbing him by the collars of his shirt, gritting his teeth.

“It's a freaking hospital, who would have thought there are poisonous gases in the basement?” he spit into his face, mouth turning into an ugly grimace not caring about the audience. Nobody has seen this side of the Sociology major before. He seemed a rather peaceful kind of guy but he and Taehyung clashed way too hard since the beginning and it turned out one remark was already enough to trigger this aggressive reaction in him.

Though, the Marketing student didn't even budge. He looked like he expected something like this to happen with that annoying smug grin on his face. There was a devilish glint in his coal dark eyes and only then Jungkook realized that he might have known just as much about people's reactions as a Psychology major because of his studies and maybe he knew manipulation techniques the best out of all of them.

“I have been saying from the beginning that it's an everybody for themselves kind of show. Teamwork, my ass!” he scoffed, rolling his eyes not even making a move to peel Hoseok's hands from himself, it was the other guy who gave up with a sigh and the look of disgust on his face.

Around them the others were whispering and yelling over each other about poisonous gas, someone accidentally spilling or opening something they shouldn't have but they weren't closer to the truth. They couldn't be sure what triggered the shutdown of the room and why there were no warning signs about it. Even though unlike Taehyung everyone else was more invested in figuring out the reason rather than finding someone to blame, Jungkook couldn't help but feel targeted. He was the one who had suggested to go downstairs, he was the one who hadn’t paid attention to Yerim thus Jin had had to go back for her. Was it his fault? Since when was it his task to take care of stupid teenage girls? Or was it rather the generosity of Seokjin that killed him?

Kill… such an absurd verb, it indicates purpose and active behaviour on the subject's part. But weren't they all killers one way or another driven by their own selfish ambitions?

“So you are saying Mr. Know-It-All just… died?” Jimin gaped at the group still processing the new information. It was almost painfully funny, he still smugly called others by mocking names instead of the real ones while they were talking about life and death.

However, in the silence there was another, weak voice that came to the surface. It was almost too quiet to be heard but everybody shut up at the girl's first words since what happened. 

“No, that can't be. This is all part of the simulation, right? He didn't die, he's too smart for that. It must have been planned,” Yerim mumbled with voice wrecked and eyes still watery from tears, face red and bloated from crying so much. She straightened her back looking around seeking reassurance in empty eyes.

Denial, Joohyun noted as she watched over her, the first phase of grief. During her internship at a Family Help Center she has met a lot of clients who suffered after losing a loved one. She knew very well that each person reacted differently to loss and not everybody could be boxed into a textbook-like model. Some overcame it easier and faster, maybe even skipped stages while others lingered on each step longer than they should have for the sake of their own sanity. Context and circumstances mattered a lot and Joohyun couldn't tell yet whether Yerim would be able to handle the loss and accept the truth within a reasonable time frame. From what she had seen so far the youngest girl had had a very strong and close relationship with her brother, so a mental breakdown was more likely than anything else. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to let her think it was just the simulation. At least it wouldn't have messed with the team dynamics.

Joohyun let out a shaky breath and walked to the weeping girl. She should have done that long ago, if she was more selfless and empathic she would have but she wanted to rank well in this simulation and she had already made a stupid mistake when she forgot about her insulin. It was Wendy who had helped her with that and now the Med student took care of the grieving girl too, so Joohyun felt like she owed her this, to offer a helping hand when needed.

“Let's take her back to the canteen, so she could sit down and drink something,” she suggested barely audible. But Wendy heard her just right and nodded. She turned around to tell her boyfriend about it. Namjoon didn't look happy about being separated but since all their staff was also in the canteen they had to go back eventually either way.

Having an arm around her shoulder and waist from two sides the elder girls started leading Yerim through the hallway following the signs back to where they had come from.

“It's all my fault,” Yerim whimpered body shaking even more fracticly now that she moved and vivid flashbacks kept disturbing her mind. “If... if I moved quicker... he wouldn't have to come back for me… I–”

Guilt, another stage of dealing with loss, Joohyun noted and didn't look back at the boys playing Sherlock.

“Our bracelet holds information about our health status, they might send an ambulance,” Namjoon spoke up in a helplessly hopeful voice and it stirred up unwanted feelings in the others. A few unconsciously touched the metal object stuck onto their waist like second skin, a grape vine curling around its branch.

“What for? It's not like they can do anything about it.”

Of course it was Taehyung who voiced out what everyone knew. It didn't look like anyone could save him at this point.

“They might think it's broken or that he took it off,” Hoseok wasn't that hopeful either. As a sociology student who had participated in his fair share of researches he doubted the leaders would give up after the first bump in the road. A project like this took too much time and effort to just give up on like that.

“But they are watching us with cameras,” Jimin reminded them and pointed at the flashing red point on the ceiling. “They must know about it. They should stop the simulation.”

It would have been too good to be true. Too easy to end it like this after months of preparations for making this simulation work but Hoseok didn't want to ruin their hopes, he didn't want to stand on one side with the Marketing major.

“What if they don't?” Namjoon wondered out loud. With his engineering background he could imagine countless scenarios of things going wrong. “I mean we can't be sure how much the electricity shutdowns could affect the camera network.”

“It would be a pretty shitty system if  it fell apart just because of that,” Yoongi commented drily and well, he was right.

Choego was supposed to have one of the most advanced technologies in the world. If the short circuit in certain zone's electricity supply was really a part of the simulation, then it shouldn't have affected the other zones or even the cameras no matter where they were. In any case, there should have been an extra generator to make sure it didn't cause too much trouble. A smart city couldn't function without electricity, so if it was him, Yoongi would have planted a rebooting system in each zone. So either it wasn't well-made or they switched it off for the sake of the simulation. Maybe it was their job to switch them back? At least this was his wild guess.

“It's working within the building for sure. We just saw. That's how we knew you were in the basement,” Jimin butted in but bit into his lower lip. Even though he didn't see the group's eldest taking his last breath and a part of him was skeptical as he doubted he really had  died, the others' reaction seemed genuine, so he didn't comment on it. They must have really believed that what they had seen was real but it wasn't impossible to trick our brains. Optical illusion existed for a reason. Not to mention that the labs had a glass door, a key item for magic tricks. What if the researchers really wanted to make them believe it was a life and death simulations? What if they just wanted to shake them up?

“Speaking of which, where were you?” Namjoon turned to them curiously. As a vanguard of the belief that it was better to stay together he didn't get why the other two had to disappear.

“In the offices, trying to find some cue about the sector blackouts,” Yoongi shrugged explaining. He almost told them about the conversation he’d had with the artificial intelligence but wasn't sure how the others would have reacted, so he played safe. Jimin didn't correct him either. “According to the computer the city really shuts off the sectors one by one. The brain of the city, the main computer will be the last one standing.”

“So you think we need to get there.”

It was an easily drawn conclusion, so the IT guy just nodded.

“Yeah.”

“Cool and how? It's not like we can use a GPS or Naver Maps. This city basically doesn't even exist yet,” Taehyung snorted and Hoseok wondered whether he was ever satisfied because all he heard from him for either offences or complaint. But it shouldn't have been that surprising. After all, those who are not useful at all are usually the ones whining.

“I have a picture of a city map but it's not detailed enough,” Yoongi pulled out his phone and showed them the picture he had taken in the office earlier. It really wasn't helping much but it was still better than coming back empty-handed. “But at least the evacuation plan's arrows on it show that we have to go East to get to the bridge. That can be Plan B.”

They all knew going to the bridge, the only exit of the city, was the same as giving up because it was impossible the researchers wanted them to leave. It wasn't like one of those stupid escape games they used to play on old computers. There must have been some obvious purpose, a goal they had to achieve but they had to figure that out first. Because without it they were tapping around in pitch black darkness looking for clues.

Maybe the main computer had all the answers they needed but how they were supposed to find it?

“Hey wasn't that journalist girl taking pictures all the time? Maybe she shot something actually useful,” Jimin managed to come up with a decent suggestion. He remembered seeing the young girl looking around as if it was a school trip while he himself was busy taking selfies and updating his social media about his whereabouts just to show off how important he was.

“Her camera must be in the canteen with our other stuff if she brought it with herself.”

They all agreed it would be better to check in case it turns out to help them. They had nothing to lose with it, just a bit of their time. The group of seven started walking towards the canteen not saying any other word. Funnily it seemed like they were even fewer than that because neither Jungkook nor the quiet girl, Seulgi, didn't say a thing this whole time. Maybe they both were too shocked by what happened. To be honest, Yoongi wouldn't have even noticed the girl if it wasn't for her mumbled apology to the sulky Taehyung while in fact he was the one who bumped into her and not the other way around. She was like a ghost, letting silence envelope her and Yoongi wasn't sure whether it made her weak or smart.

When they arrived to the buffett area where the three girls sat by a table, two of them comforting the still quietly sobbing Yerim. She was far too out of it to comprehend the question when they asked about her camera, so Jimin decided to fuck it and took it without permission. Nobody scolded him for acting impolitely as they all anxiously waited for the pictures to load. When they actually did it was like reading a travel magazine except the unreasonable amount of pictures of the silhouette, side- or back profile of one certain boy.

“See? I told you how lovesick she is!” Taehyung scoffed while Jungkook stepped back. Seeing himself on those pictures that had been taken without his consent felt like invading someone's personal space and not just his. Even though a part of him was flattered by the attention, he never really liked to stand out like this, he wanted the glory for his accomplishments and not for his looks.

“Well that was totally useless,” Hoseok sighed but Yoongi beside him rolled his eyes. What did he accept? A huge sign saying main computer room on one building or what? He believed the pictures could be useful still, just maybe later.

“In the main research building there must be some clues about where we should go,” Namjoon brought up another idea and if Miss Han worked there with her people then most likely he was right. Even if they wouldn't get clear clues, even something small could have helped them at this point where they were more lost than anything.

“Probably, but first we should check if it's safe or not. We can't be sure of the sectors' order, maybe it's already shut down,” Yoongi said quietly and started pulling out something from the laptop bag resting on his shoulder.

“And how do we do that genius?” the Marketing major grimaced.

“I can connect to the network and check the cameras,” Yoongi challengingly raised an eyebrow at the arrogant guy waiting for further heckling remarks. When he didn't get any he put his notebook down on a table and with a circle of curious people around him he turned it on.

Except maybe Jungkook, Namjoon and Jimin, none of them really got this technical stuff, so when a black terminal popped up and Yoongi started typing long green codes, they didn't even try to understand what was going on. At one point the computer demanded a password and the IT student typed in the series of numbers engraved into his bracelet without thinking. Taehyung was actually surprised it worked but he didn't voice that out. They all gaped at the computer screen when suddenly sixteen small camera view appeared on it under the label Sector 1.

“Whoa, that's so cool,” Hoseok exclaimed finally getting a little of the delicious taste of victory and watched closely as Yoongi switched between sectors by typing out short commands. However it was tricky to tell which ones were down because the morning sun has already lit up the entire city.

“Can we go back? To the 4th sector?” Jungkook spoke up for the first time in a long while and his voice held so much fear in its trembles that everyone was taken aback. Yoongi fulfilled his request without a world and zoomed in on the camera Jungkook pointed at.

It was a snippet of the researchers’ dorm which resembled their own very much but on contrary of the emptiness of sector 3’s dorm this one was full of people… people with pained, puffy and purple faces on the floor.

“Wendy…” Namjoon breathed quiet and scared.

“What?” the med student looked up and walked over to the bunch when nobody answered. Not knowing what to expect her gaze darted down to the screen.

“Oh my god,” she shrieked averting her eyes and clasping a hand over her mouth in horror.

“Is this what I think it is?” her boyfriend turned to her, offering a comforting hand, stroking her back but Wendy didn't even flinch like she didn't even feel his touch. The sight of dozen strangers lying dead on the dorm's floor when they most likely woke up in the middle of the night to not be able to breathe properly was like the haunting image of war victims scattered over streets in their on blood with disfigured limbs.

“This is how people die from insufficient oxygen,” she said remembering her studies but it didn't make it easier to accept the tragedy. Or the realization that it could have been them if Yerim didn't wake them up.

“Do you still think it's just a simulation? Because I don't,” Yoongi muttered under his breath, staring at the screen of his computer dreadfully. It was a loaded question, a gun to their heads and some realized what it meant sooner than others.

“Does this mean Sooyoung is also...” dead. Jimin didn't even have to finish. Everybody knew what he meant.

Behind him Jungkook felt like dying too, his own cropper blood tasted like metal in his mouth. He didn't know but a lot could kill a soul. Like guilt.

In a way they were all already dying. And what for? A dream job and dream life in a city based on artificial intelligence?

“I think I know why the sectors are shutting off,” the IT guy blurted out suddenly, voice strained and low. Nobody dared to ask why even though they all anticipated the answer which he gave to them after swallowing back his own curses. How could they not realize it earlier? “Remember what Han Raina said about the Louvre move?”

The sectors would be switched off the electrical grid one by one… to trap the attacker...

“But… but didn't she say it happens due to a hacking attempt?” Wendy furrowed her brows recollecting her memories from yesterday. Gosh, was it really just the previous day? It had already seemed decades away, so much happened since then.

“Or maybe someone started the process manually,” the IT major mused out loud and the possibility he mentioned pissed Taehyung off again.

“Are they trying to lock us in?”

“I guess so. They probably wanted to test us to see if we can find a way out, to see if their security system works accordingly but something must have gone wrong,” Namjoon nodded as the simulation started to make sense to him. However, there was no way the researchers were ready to sacrifice lives, especially their own for a social experiment like this.

“What do they think we are? Lab rats?” Jimin made a disgusted face, his voice clearly giving away his offendedness.

“In a way we are, you could say that,” Yoongi agreed and a lot of them envied the neutrality and stoic way he approached this topic. Or was he just rational enough to understand the difference between what they could change and what they couldn't. 

“You know what? I don't care. I had enough of this stupid game. I'll call father to get me out of here. It's ridiculous. Locking us in,” the chaebol scoffed, quieting down word by word until they were muttered under his breath, barely audible. He didn't hesitate to turn his back on them to grab his own stuff and stride towards the exit.

Taehyung spat coward his way disguising it as a cough but little did he know it wasn't cowardice that made the Genetic Engineer student leave. He simply had too much to lose. Back in Seoul he had everything a young adult could have wanted, he had a future set in stone, the promise of a high manager position and the heritage of the CEO chair and millions on his bank account. He didn't want to risk all that for a badly planned simulation.

Maybe it was the same for Hoseok too, his girlfriend waiting from him back home was a more convincing argument than staying here for a possible job. But he justified his choice with something very different.

“There's no way I'm going where that jerk goes,” he exclaimed, gaze shooting daggers at Taehyung's figure and he threw his bag on one shoulder before rushing after Jimin.

Everyone else sat or stood in complete silence and watched them go. This time, nobody tried to stop them, to prove it was so much better to stay together. They said nothing but knew well there was nowhere else to go. They were all in this murderer cage together.

[warp6]

Rocky Myers, an intellectually disabled black man, is on death row in Alabama, even though the facts of his case suggest that he is innocent.

(Image description: Photo of Rocky Myers. End id. Photo source - Nation article, courtesy Kacey Keeton)

Sign the ACLU petition to Governor Kay Ivey

Rocky Myers, a 53-year-old father and grandfather, remains on death row in Alabama for a crime that evidence suggests he did not commit.

Rocky’s neighbor, Ludie Mae Tucker, was murdered in her home in 1991. Before she died from her injuries, she described her attacker to the police as a black man wearing a light-colored shirt.

Ludie Mae and Rocky knew each other; Ludie Mae’s cousin Mamie Dutton told a lawyer that, earlier that day, Ludie May had seen Rocky across the street and mentioned to Mamie that he sometimes came to her house to borrow ice. But when she spoke with the police, Ludie Mae did not identify her attacker as having been someone she knew. Rocky was described by multiple witnesses as wearing a dark shirt on the night of the murder, not a light one, and no fingerprints or other physical evidence connected him to the scene of the crime.

Another local man, Anthony “Cool Breeze” Ballentine, was originally implicated in the murder after multiple witness statements, until a longtime friend of his implicated Rocky after the police offered a reward for information.

Eleven of the twelve jurors in Rocky’s trial were white, and one of them openly called Rocky the n-word in an interview. While several jurors believed that Rocky was innocent, the majority wanted to convict.

(Image description: Stills of Mae Puckett, a juror on the Rocky Myers case who believed that Rocky was innocent, saying “Going into the deliberation room kind of had a cloud hanging over it already, because you knew you couldn’t – it didn’t matter what you said – you couldn’t get anywhere with certain people. They weren’t going to listen to anything.” End id. Stills taken from ACLU YouTube documentary)

Afraid that a hung jury would result in a retrial that could have fewer sympathetic jurors, the jurors who believed in Rocky’s innocence came up with a compromise to save his life: the jury would convict him and recommend a life sentence.

“The verdict came as a stunning blow to Rocky, who’d been convinced that the trial would end with his acquittal. “I was very surprised,” he said in a phone interview. “I thought I was going to go back to New Jersey.” - Nation article

However, the Alabama judge, who was up for reelection that year, then sentenced him to death instead using a now-illegal option called judicial override.

“In Alabama, state judges are elected by popular vote, and they often emphasize their “tough-on-crime” record while campaigning. According to another Equal Justice Initiative study, the use of judicial overrides to dole out death sentences in Alabama often spiked during election years. (…) In Rocky’s case, the judge who imposed his sentence was facing reelection the next year.

“Although the practice is now no longer permitted in Alabama, the law passed by the Legislature wasn’t retroactive—which means that anyone put on death row by judicial override stayed there despite the Legislature’s tacit acknowledgement that the practice was unjust.” - Nation article

Rocky remains on death row – despite more evidence pointing to his innocence that has come to light since his trial – because the lawyer representing him dropped him as a client without telling him or anyone else, causing him to miss the crucial deadline to file a federal habeas corpus petition after his appeal was denied.

“In 2003, [attorney Earle J. Schwarz] received notice that Rocky’s petition for a post-conviction appeal had been denied by the state. The next step was to prepare to file a federal habeas petition. “Federal habeas corpus review is a critical stage in a death-penalty case, because it allows death row prisoners to bring federal constitutional claims that were heard in state court but were not successful,” said Anna Arceneaux, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. (…) “And federal court—where judges are appointed and not elected—is a very different atmosphere for a prisoner.”

“But by then, Schwarz had begun working at a new law firm, and inexplicably, he didn’t tell Rocky that his state appeal had been denied. (…) A year later, Rocky received a letter from the state attorney general’s office saying that he’d missed the deadline to file any further habeas corpus petitions and notifying him that Alabama would be moving to set an execution date. Rocky, who could only read at a third-grade level, had to ask another prisoner to read the letter aloud to him.

“In a recent interview, Rocky said when he realized what the letter meant, “It scared the hell out of me. I mean literally, I didn’t know what to do. I was shaking and I couldn’t breathe. A couple of guys calmed me down and told me what to do.” (…) “Schwarz later signed a declaration admitting that he “did not tell Mr. Myers I was no longer representing him,” and that he “did not inform Mr. Myers that I would not pursue relief on his behalf in federal court.” The Board of Professional Responsibility of the Supreme Court of Tennessee issued a public censure to him in 2005, saying that he “willfully neglected his representation of his client.” - Nation article

This means that Rocky’s current legal team has never had a chance to raise the evidence that surfaced in 2004 that local police, who had ties to the first suspect considered in the investigation, had bribed one of the witnesses against Rocky.

“The evidence that police in Decatur tampered with at least one witness was a bombshell. (…) In federal court, Marzell [Ewing]’s declaration along with Puckett’s account of the jury’s compromise verdict might at a minimum have called his death sentence into question, if not the conviction itself. But it still wasn’t enough. A federal judge ruled that Marzell’s new statement didn’t override Rocky’s failure to meet the habeas corpus deadline; even with the new evidence, the case was effectively closed. With the door to judicial review shut, the only remaining relief was—and still is—intervention by Alabama’s Governor Kay Ivey.” - Nation article

As of August 24, 2019, Rocky Myers remains on death row in Alabama.

‘“When I’m praying, I tell the Lord I’m terrified,” Rocky said. “I just don’t show it because it don’t do any good to other people. But inside in my mind and heart and stomach, I’m scared.”

“A former church drummer, Rocky attends services regularly, singing in a choir that meets once a week. His children are now grown, with children of their own, some of whom he met during a visit for the first time last year. Rocky says that being separated from his family has taken a toll: “It’s one of the worst things that I’m going through. I have grandkids that are growing up without me.” (…) “The only chance for Rocky to avoid execution now is a grant of clemency from Governor Kay Ivey. Both he and [attorney Kasey] Keeton know it’s a long shot, and initially he told her not to pursue it. “I didn’t want to be over here begging for my life and stuff like that,” he said. But Keeton persisted. “The fact that we are potentially executing a man who did not have his day in court because an attorney screwed up should give everybody pause,” Keeton said.” - Nation article

Nation article by Ashoka Mukpo

ACLU podcast episode on Rocky Myers (with transcript)

ACLU documentary “Rocky Myers Doesn’t Belong On Death Row” (6 min 18 sec)

“We were trying to get school records for him, and went to the Orange County school system several times. They told me there were no records – literally gave us a document that stated that after a thorough and, you know, absolute search of all records there was nothing for Rocky Myers.

“I happened to get a bit of a relationship with some of the office workers there and they ended up telling me that there was a place where they had just, like, thrown old filing cabinets in a storehouse. And those two women met me on their day off, on the weekend, to go through these filing cabinets and one of those women found Rocky’s school records. And it showed that – back then, the term was mental retardation, so it showed that he was in MR classes.

“She was jumping for joy. They were crying. We were so excited because it’s like, here’s the proof. And there’s a Supreme Court decision that says you can’t execute someone who is intellectually disabled. So we thought we had a win. And I was floored to learn that we weren’t going to win Rocky’s case on that.”

- Sara Romano, investigator on Rocky’s case, on the ACLU podcast episode on Rocky Myers

Sign the ACLU petition to Governor Kay Ivey here.

[irarelypostanything]

Slice of Life[6]

[Andy]

“There have been some increasingly controversial topics in the news,” began Andy, in the milionth meeting they were holding that week, “and I know that not everyone here is in agreement with regard to personal beliefs.  Though there is some merit to discussing these topics, I would encourage you to do so outside of work.

“So please,” he continued, “for the love of the old gods and the new, stop arguing about the last episode of Game of Thrones.”

“It was kind of bullshit though, right?” asked Jake, to murmurs of approval.  

“I haven’t watched it yet,” complained Kevin.

“Spoiler,” said Jake, “it sucked.”

“Jake, please.”

“There was a shocking twist about Tyrion being the Night King.”

“Kevin, Jake may or may not be messing with you.”

“I did think the part where Eddard rose from the dead was a little out of left field, though.”

“Amy, please proceed with your presentation.”

Amy was standing in front of their conference room’s projector.  Her long, dark brown hair was tied into a bun, and her usual Davis badminton jacket was replaced by a white button-up.

“Thanks Andy,” she said, relieved that the meeting was back under control, “as I was saying, this project is worth roughly 25.6 million dollars, collectively.  As is the usual case, the largest defense contractors are going to take the majority of business.

“But this is where things get interesting.  I’m going to have to be intentionally vague about the next portion of this, since we’re in a nonclassified setting, but we have certain...capabilities...that even some of the largest corporations don’t.  Thanks to some wise decisions we made early last year with regard to our research allocations, we are actually the first team we know of that can use...”

Her voice trailed.  “Well, that’s also classified.  But the figures aren’t.  Look at this.”  The slide changed.  “We are poised to become the government’s preferred vendor for the entire sensor, and all we have to do is give them a taste.  They expect delivery within three weeks.  For this to work, all teams have to collaborate perfectly.”

“It’s really important that we execute this now,” agreed Andy, “that means it’s really, vitally important that we not let our meetings diverge into arguments about petty bullshit.

“Kevin, we’d like a status report from you.  What’s the important software issue you said you wanted everyone to know about?”

“I know we were told not to compile on the hardware,” began Kevin, “but unfortunately, with our system, it’s unavoidable.  The time stamps are messed up, so doing basic things like compilation is surprisingly difficult.”

“Why not code it in Python?” suggested Jake.  “that way you won’t need to compile it.”

“Wow,” said Dan, with mock amazement, “switch programming languages.  Brilliant.  This is the kind of empty-headed bullshit that only a hardware engineer would come up with.”

“Right,” Jake retorted, “because messed up time stamps is a hardware issue.  Do you guys also give your system administrators mops, then give your janitors root access?”

“Switching to python actually isn’t a bad idea,” said Ryan, “but there’s a much more obvious solution to this problem.  You can-”

“Hang on,” interrupted Dan, “care to repeat that comment about root access?”

“You guys don’t understand separation of duty,” said Jake.

“You guys don’t understand fuck about fuck,” said Dan.

The next half hour went about as productively as that conversation.

[Nora]

Saturday.  It was a surprisingly clear morning, for San Francisco, and the sun was just starting to rise.  Because it was San Francisco, though, the morning was ice cold.

Nora made her way up the steep trail of Mt. Davidson.  Kevin said he knew every trail and angle at this place, and she believed him.  The park was tiny.  She reached the peak with ease.  She glanced in the direction of the sun, then turned away to look at downtown in the distance.  She could see the bay, and Castro, and a bunch of major downtown buildings until her view reached Sutro Mountain.

She pulled out her cell phone.  “This is boring,” she told Kevin through the speaker.

“Did you know it’s the tallest hill in all of San Francisco?”

“Highest of the seven hills?”

“Sure.”

“What, because of the giant cross?”

“I admit that the giant cross is cheating, but the point still stands.”

“Not sure what the big deal is, to be honest.  I’ve had a more fun time at Bernal Heights, and that place has some pretty good coffee.”

“Giant blue building.”

“What?”

“Find the spot where Balboa is, look a bit to the left, and you’ll see that giant blue building.  It’s a water tower.  We used to sneak up there, forever ago, when we were young.”

“Okay...”

“I used to love this city.  It’s not the same now.  Whenever I came back it was never the same, always a little different.  So I started to come home every month, then every other month.  The last time we spoke, it was my first time back in almost a year.”

“Well, what’s changed?”

“It’s just different.”

Nora looked at the tower, then at Kevin’s high school, then at the water again.  From a distance, it was all tiny.  Like none of it mattered.

“You used to love this city,” asked Nora, “and now you don’t because it’s changed?”

“Exactly.  You took the words right out of my mouth.”

“So you believe that the city you once loved is gone.  I believe that the city you loved never existed.”

“That’s morbid.”

“Seriously, how much of it had you really seen?”

Nora looked again at the view.  “Oh wait, technically you’ve seen quite a bit of it.”

“Technically.”

[Kevin]

Sunday.  Kevin was at a church.  Again.

After another sermon, a middle-aged person named Leo (whom he had met a couple of weeks ago) sought him out.

“Hey Kevin,” he said, “do you know a lot about social media?”

The question hit him with surprise.  Kevin had once been obsessed with social media.

“I know a little bit,” said Kevin, “why do you ask?”

“I’d like to give our church more of an online presence, but it’s all new to me.  What do you know about Facebook groups?”

“Well,” said Kevin, “not too much.  I know that you can pay to have the algorithm favor you, so you get more traffic.  I also know that you can integrate it with Google Analytics, and I believe the algorithm will favor you if you can rack likes or comments in a five-minute window.

“The whole thing is very calculated.  The emojis you use, whether you use GIFs, whether you use tags...all of these are taken into consideration when considering your post placement.”

“That’s all fine and good,” said Leo, “but you don’t sound super enthusiastic right now about Facebook.”

“Have you heard of Life Church?”

“No.”

“It’s a nice resource, it’s an online church, but it’s just a little bit too good.  It’s hard to describe.  It’s ridiculously high quality video, full Facebook integration, professional band.  You can view the likes and comments in real time.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s weird.  All of this is weird to me for some reason.  Doing that kind of thing for a church?  I prefer sites like Medium.  I can harvest so much sweet, sweet data.”

“Are you okay?  You just turned red.”

“You know, I get crazy about this a lot.  I used to be a normal guy.  A couple likes here, a couple likes there.  I started to find forums where I could get 100 likes a post, consistently, and I started to get a presence.  Click, like, share.  Click, like, share.  It’s no way to live, man.  Every second a feeling of wanting judgment, every act of communication a desperate plea to please the algorithm.

“But this one time, this one night I’ll never forget, I put up an article that went #trending.  It got 36,000 Facebook shares.  Pretty okay, sure, but then I found the real analytics.  3 million hits.  3 million people read it, all around the world.”

For a little while, Leo just stood there.  Finally, he spoke again.

“Kevin, I just want to share some videos.”

“Oh, okay.  Have you considered YouTube?”

“What’s that?”

Kevin walked back to his apartment after lunch.  Part of him wished he could be as enthusiastic about church as he was about technology, but there was still something he couldn’t get over.  It was a belief that was fundamental to him for as long as he remembered.  It was a belief that went against everything he had read in every book of the bible.

Kevin didn’t think it mattered what people believed.  All that mattered to him was what people did.

Some Christians donated to the poor, built schools, saved lives.  Some atheists donated to the poor, built schools, saved lives.  Both Christians and non-Christian people had done great things, and horrible things, but so had Muslims.  And Hindu people.  And scientologists, and probably a million other religions.  But no one thought it was okay to believe that your beliefs didn’t matter.  

Kevin wasn’t sure if he believed in everything or nothing.  He figured it was impossible to believe in nothing, because that would mean that he still believed in something.

[Dan]

Monday.  8PM.  Dan was one of the only people in.

It was a long meeting, followed by a crucial lunch meeting, followed by coding, followed by another meeting.  These past few days had been tough on everyone, but Dan sometimes wished he could just hole up, not talk to anyone, and code.

He finally had a few hours to himself.  This was when he felt most productive.

2, he thought.  2, 4, 8, 16…

Dan’s weapon of choice had always been C++.  He knew bitwidths, 56-megabyte proprietary structs, obscure abbreviations that only meant anything to him, Andy, and the Department of Defense.  He knew 18 different ways to bind to a socket.  He knew 19 different ways to accidentally bind to the socket incorrectly, which is why he was careful who he hired.

He looked at his code.  100 lines.  18 minutes.  It compiled, implemented a client/server, verified that both sides were properly using the data.  Not bad.  He added error handling, comments, varied conditions.  He updated his code like a skilled writer polishing his prose, and like a skilled writer he knew how important every individual unit was.  He knew how significant the difference was between --i and i--.  He knew the implications of using [] on a vector instead of .at()

Having accomplished his main goal, he decided to spend a few minutes making fun of other people on Github issues.

He saw one branch of code where someone failed, failed again, then tried changing all the include statements from using “” to using <>.  Dan laughed.

He saw one branch of code where someone tried to log everything as fatal.  This was surprisingly common, especially for people too dumb to figure out how to set log level.  Dan laughed.

Then Dan saw a branch made by one of his best friends.

Ex-friends.  No one ever figured it out.  Things were mysterious, but for reasons he never understood this friend’s family chose not to mention their company (or Dan) once.  But how did it happen?  This was also mysterious.  Dan compiled a list of all the things he had learned after college, and it was long, but one item stood out:

When an obituary omits cause of death, that usually means it’s suicide.

What appalled Dan wasn’t the act itself, but the sheer indifference that their company displayed.  They just didn’t care.  His cubicle was replaced by an intern’s, then another intern’s.  That’s more or less how he felt the company regarded this death.  It was a name tag change, a commented out line in payroll.  It frustrated Dan to no end, the sheer meaningless and triviality of the ordeal.  

Silently, when he was sure no one was there to hear, Dan wept.

He cried to a timer.  When five minutes passed, he got back on track with coding.

[theforgottengn]

Brother Sweet Brother

Characters: Victor, Kilo, Papa, Juliett, Sierra, Holly Wallchester

Word Count: 2,698

Trigger Warning: Violence. Blood. Slight Swearing.

Parts: X

A/N: So here’s an attempt at a part two of this little Sierra Company adventure. I tried my best to write something but I don’t really know how to write these things… (I have no idea why I keep writing these things without fully developing all that good ol’ background stuff anyway.)

Summary: Victor has been abducted so the others scramble to find clues and him. But the one person on the team who actually can is overcome with guilt. Can the team figure out what’s going on before it’s too late? Click the read more if you feel like it.

XXXXX

Victor was laying on Wallchester’s queen sized bed with his laptop open in front of him. Everything in the room matched with the precision only someone obsessed with appearances could achieve but he didn’t care. He was currently trying to complete the Bear Necessities side quest in WoW. Hunting bears in real life was definitely harder than in the game. Not that Victor could really attest to that since he has never hunted anything in real life. But he could imagine. Kilo had already ducked out for a snack run so he was completely alone. Just him, his laptop, and the game.

Suddenly he hears the door open with a slow creak. Victor’s years of training and field experience taught him the only thing the noise could mean. The thought runs through his mind like a police siren.

That isn’t Ki.

He quickly reaches behind his back for the gun that rests in the holster there. He doesn’t bother putting his gloves on. This is not the time to worry about fingerprints or possibly breaking one of the many HERACLES rules. Not to mention that, depending on what happened next, he could be breaking probably the two most important rules of all.

Never leave a trace.

Never acquire a rabbit.

Sitting on his knees and pointing the gun directly at the closed door Victor barely breathes. He sits so still, his chest hardly rising and falling, that he looks like a statue. If the second rule was broken, as it seemed to be, that wasn’t his fault. He didn’t do anything that could’ve set anyone on the team’s trail. Victor had to admit that he wasn’t the best Cobbler in the business but he was pretty damn good. And he had a secret weapon.

As the doorknob turns Victor smoothly takes a hand off the gun and presses three specific keys.

Esc + F12 + 7

That’ll show ‘em.

Five men storm into the bedroom and two more crash through the windows; all armed. Each one was dressed in all black from their gloves to the balaclavas under their riot helmets. Each of them moves like they have received intense military training, but, they seem a bit rusty. To the Cobbler it was obvious they were ex-SEALS turned hired guns. Bad ones it looked like.

Looks like I’m a bit outnumbered… Not that it matters.

Instead of putting up a fight Victor starts to lower his gun. He gently rests it on the bed. Then Victor does the one thing HERACLES operatives were trained not to do. He puts his hands in the air and opens his mouth.

“I surrender,” he shouts loudly.

Just as the words leave his lips one of the men behind him opens up a pair of handcuffs. The click of metal is louder than normal in the quiet room. Victor agreed to go with these guys, but, that didn’t mean he was going to come quietly. And he definitely wasn’t going to go in handcuffs.

“Looks like you need a break,” he says before thrusting his arm back and upwards in one fluid motion. Victor rams his elbow right into the guy’s nose. The all too familiar sound of cartilage breaking fills the room and is followed by the clang of metal on a wood floor.

Turning his attention to the trigger happy idiot who had begun spraying bullets all over the room Victor groans. Rolling off the bed and sliding underneath Victor hides out until the bullets stop flying. When they do he rolls back out and swipe kicks the man's leg. And kicks hard. The force isn’t enough to make the burly man fall but is just enough to catch him off guard and make him drop the rifle.

He punches the guy in the throat.

As the man staggers backwards in pain Victor sends another kick his way. Finally the man falls to the floor. Victor quickly takes the twin 9mm black Beretta pistols from the ankle holsters and points them at two of the remaining five guys. He knows that these men are wearing protective gear so he aims for areas that aren’t covered by bullet-proof vests or helmets. Shooting at the men’s arms and legs Victor empties a clip from both guns but doesn’t land many of the shots. He was never that good of a shot in the first place. But he lands enough of them to send both men to the floor in pain.

Four down. Kinda... Three to go.

Victor drops the empty guns and makes a dive for the gun on the bed.

But one of the remaining thugs bum rushes him and pins him against the wall before he can stick the landing. The guy is similar in height and weight to the spy so Victor wouldn’t have a hard time getting the man off him. But the guy has his hands wrapped around the blonde’s throat in an attempt to strangle him. Scratching at the man’s arms and wrists Victor doesn’t think. He just kicks. But he doesn’t kick in the direction of his assailant. He kicks backwards against the wall. The sudden pressure against the back of his boot heel activates a mechanism which releases a hidden knife blade. He kicks forward with all of his might and stabs the guy in the thigh. Holding onto the thug for support Victor turns his foot slightly, sharply turning the blade inside the wound effectively deepening it, and then pulls the blade out with a backwards jerk. The blade releases with a gushing sound and a burst of blood just as the man goes down screaming in pain.

“I got a kick outta that. You? Probably not.”

The very last guy starts to make a break for it.

The man ran to the window and started climbing up one of the ropes while Victor was busy with the other one. But he wasn’t going to get off that easily. Victor makes it over to the window just in time to grab the guy by the leg. He starts to pull the man down but he’s met with a ton of resistance. Kicking as hard as he can the guy tries to shake Victor off him. He succeeds and the swings back; kicking Victor in the face as hard as he can. He falls flat on his back but on the shattered glass from when the guys crashed through earlier. He may be down but he’s not out. Victor gets back up quickly enough to see that the guy changed his mind about making a break for it. Just as he is about to punch the last guy in the face Victor is struck in the back of the head by the butt of a rifle.

He falls to floor with a thud.

That was almost half an hour ago. And now Victor sits tied to a chair in a seemingly empty room. His head hung down and his chest moved up and down slowly. A thick rope ran across his thighs and wrapped around two, three, times. Sections of the same rope were tied tightly around his wrists and ankles. The black combat boots had been taken off his feet and so had his socks. His captor had already used his comm to contact his team, to threaten them, and destroyed the device.

Victor was slowly coming to so he didn’t know any of this. Not yet.

Suddenly a shot of cold ran down his back waking him with a jolt.

“Someone’s awake,” a voice next to him said.

The person, to whom the voice belonged, walked around Victor and stepped into the light. The man wore a black suit jacket, matching pants, and a cornflower blue dress shirt. A thin, bridge lead to a pointy nose. His eyes matched his dress shirt to a T and the smile he wore underneath those eyes added to his creepy demeanor. His hair was thin, light brown and balding.

Victor grit his teeth against the cold as the ice continued to run down his back.

“Ice to meet you, too, Bouvier.”

“Looks like it likes puns boys,” the man said to goons Victor couldn’t see.

“Let’s see how it likes the feel of hot iron.”

XXXXX

Papa lay on the bed, on top of the covers, a good space away from Holly Wallchester’s naked, sleeping, form. The Swallow herself only wore a black lace bra and matching panties. They had just finished having relations which meant that Papa was done with her work. She got everything the team needed and the lawyer was none the wiser. Stretching her hands over her head Papa happily sat in satisfied silence. Her brown, green-flecked, hazel eyes closed as she sighed happily.

But then the calm, collected, voice of her fearless leader suddenly erupted in her ear.

Vic’s been abducted.

The Swallow practically jumped out of the bed and ran to the bathroom. Closing the door and locking it she shielded herself from possible listening ears. Her long, curly, jet-black, hair spun, with her upper body as she turned away from the door, and fell over her shoulder. Papa pressed a finger to her ear comm and responded in the only way she could.

“What the hell?! Who could’ve gotten the drop on us?!”

We don’t know. But I’m betting everything it’s Wallchester’s client.

“What makes you say that?”

Ki. Play it back.

A short pause followed Sierra’s request. Then a voice Papa couldn’t recognize flowed through her comm. The voice was male, soothing yet authoritative with a dash of creep, and with a painfully obvious Swiss accent. A voice that threatened the group and then spoke of the defense lawyer by name.

“That’s got to be Yves Bouvier. What an idiot using his own voice to make a threat like this… Ki’s working on finding Victor, right?”

Of course but you know…

You tell that Holly bitch, Juliett said suddenly cutting off the conversation, that when I see her I’m going to stab her in the trachea.

Jule. This isn’t the time for stabbing threats, Sierra responded with a sigh.

Of course it is!

“I’ll bring her over and find out what she knows. Papa out.”

With that she double-tapped her ear comm and took the small, practically invisible device, from her ear. She laid it on the edge of the fake marble sink and then left the bathroom. Sneaking over to where she had thrown the clothes, and shoes, she wore the night before Papa quickly grabbed them and returned to the bathroom. She was quiet enough on her feet to not wake Wallchester. Once Kilo had changed into the sleek, black, sheath dress with cut outs in both the front and the back, she ran her hands down the front and sides of the garment to smooth out any wrinkles.

Before she did anything else she returned her comm to her ear and tapped it back to life.

Then she bent down onto the tile floor and reached up under the tiles nearest to the bottom of the sink. Removing the false tiles was easier than one would expected. It did help that the team had been in the area for a few weeks prior, preparing, and that Juliett had already switched the real tiles with the false ones. And carved out a large cubbyhole in the floor. Which meant that all Papa had to do was store her goody-bag inside and replace the false tiles.

“Goody-bag come to Mama,” she said to herself as she grabbed the handle of her small, black, duffle. Just as the words left her mouth she realized what she said and stopped herself.

“Oh my god I’m turning into Jule!”

Shaking the thought off Papa removed the duffle. Reaching into the bag, after unzipping the zipper, she rooted around blindly for a few seconds. Then she stretched the sides of the duffle so she could get a better look inside. Eyeing what she was looking for she grabbed it, zipped the bag, grabbed the handle and walked out of the bathroom.

Once she was out of the bathroom she saw Wallchester sitting on the bed and pulling a white blouse over her head.

Papa dropped the duffle bag on the floor and climbed onto the bed, carefully hiding something behind her back. Snuggling up behind the other woman Papa began to nuzzle her face against Holly’s neck. Slowly she snuck the hidden object closer to its intended target. Grabbing Holly’s face with her free hand Papa kissed her passionately.

And while the woman was distracted Papa brought the needle of the syringe into her thigh. Then she pushed down on the plunger.

“Ah!” Holly screamed, “What the hell was that?”

“Ketamine. You should be feeling its affects in a few minutes.”

The Swallow scowled at the criminal defense lawyer as the sedative worked its magic.

XXXXX

Sierra and Juliett sat on Holly Wallchester’s ruined black leather sofa.

Hotel had dropped them off a few minutes or so after Kilo told them what happened. But he didn’t stay to freak out with the rest of them. He did what he always did when things got a little too stressful. He drove. And since Echo wasn’t needed on this mission and was back home that left the knife-loving-slight-pyromaniac and half-inspirational speaker half-mom to help calm things. Problem with that was Juliett was the last person to calm any situation. The woman just sat and watched Kilo pace as she spun one of her many knives in her hand, throwing it up every few seconds, with the expertise one only gets from years of practice. The team decided to leave the place in the disarray that Victor’s captors left it in. The destruction would make the Cleaners’ job a lot easier. Especially if Papa was bringing the criminal defense lawyer back to the apartment.

But none of that information calmed Kilo at all. While the two women sat she paced worriedly, biting her lip and, muttering to herself. After telling Sierra what had happened the Musician suffered a bit of a freak out. She screamed loudly and threw her tech with all the angry strength she had. And now all her equipment lay scattered about the room. It was busted but not broken.

It would work if Kilo wanted it to.

When Sierra and Juliett arrived they entered to a scene similar to the one that played out in front of them. The only difference was that Kilo was up and pacing not crumpled on the floor. She wasn’t crying anymore either. But her long hair was still a slightly tangled mess, her eyes were still puffy and red-rimmed, and her voice still scratchy.

“It’s all my fault. Vic is gone. Who knows what these dudes are doing to him. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault.”

“Kilo. If you just sit down and put your mind to it you’ll find him,” Sierra said in the most reassuring voice she could manage.

“I can’t.”

“Then Vic’s dead. And we’re also dead. Great going Ki, you killed us all,” Juliett stabbed the blade of her knife into the only standing wooden leg of the coffee table for emphasis.

Sierra shot Juliett a death stare and then turned to Kilo. They really needed Kilo to be on her A game if they wanted to find Victor. Which meant that Sierra had to do what she did best; lead.

“Don’t listen to Jule. She’s crazy. But we really need you to do your job.”

Kilo continued to pace as if she was contemplating what Sierra said. As she paced she bit her bottom lip. In fact ever since she entered the penthouse apartment to find Victor gone she hadn’t stopped. The skin began to split and bleed from her nervous habit. But Kilo had a right to be scared since she was the one who got that blonde, pun-loving-game-obsessed, idiot into this mess in the first place. Whatever happened to him was on her.

After a few minutes she stopped and sighed.

“Fine. I’ll do it. But I’m doing this for Vic and nobody else.”

[footballghana]

FEATURE: A tribute to former Marseille president Pape Diouf, Africa's pioneer into European football

The world of African football was plunged into mourning on March 31, following the news that Senegalese journalist-turned-agent Pape Diouf, the first black chairman of a club in a major European league, had become the continent's first high-profile sporting loss to the coronavirus.

Various African football figures throughout history could reasonably be classed as pioneers, but Diouf, who was appointed Olympique de Marseille president in 2005, held a position of power, prominence and influence within the European game that no other black personality has matched before or since.

No other figure represents, more emphatically than Diouf, the bridge between the worlds of African and French sports.

Born in 1951 in Chad to Senegalese parents -- his father was a member of General Charles de Gaulle's Compagnon de Liberation -- Diouf was raised in Richard-Toll, on the Senegal-Mauritania border, and in Dakar.

At 18, with independence having already swept through Africa, he was sent to Marseille to complete his studies by his father, who served in Chad while the country was still a French colony.

He arrived on April 25, 1970, and despite complaining about the wind and cold, he began a longtime and profound love affair with the Phocean City.

After prematurely curtailing his studies at Sciences Po, Diouf opted against following his father's wishes that he join the military, and he instead embarked on a career as a sports journalist, initially as a freelancer with La Marseillaise, with the club at the heart of the city, OM, his beat.

It was here, at this junction between sport and Africa, that Diouf met the legendary Cameroon goalkeeper Joseph-Antoine Bell, who facilitated the young man's entrance into the inner workings of French football and set him on his way to a prominent role in one of Europe's great institutions.

"When I arrived in Marseille in 1985, he was a local journalist, so we became friends and were friends for years," Bell told ESPN in a conversation punctured by laughter and anguish.

"[It's important] to have someone we know when we get somewhere new, someone we can talk to freely.

"We spoke well together every day, we saw each other at training in the morning, and then at 4 p.m., we'd spend time together every day until 7 p.m. and then talk together again on the phone in the evening.

"What links you together is shared values, and for him, money was good, but money didn't really count. So even as a professional player at Marseille, I could spend time with him -- a journalist -- without any problems, and we could talk about all subjects. There was nothing we didn't discuss."

After 12 years with La Marseillaise, Diouf joined a newly launched daily, Le Sport, as its regional correspondent, but he was forced to seek a new line of work when the new venture folded in June 1988.

At this point, Bell, then coming to the end of his time as OM's No. 1 and seeking new pastures, suggested that his friend seek a new profession managing players, overseeing their financial responsibilities and contracts, and seeking new employment opportunities.

"This friendship allowed us to establish complete trust, so I asked him to become my agent," Bell told ESPN. "I didn't really need an agent, but I'd had a white agent, and I thought that if others can do [this job], then [Pape] can do it, too.

"We talked every day about the problems facing players, and together we thought that he could do this well. Early on, I told him what he should say to players or to club officials, but his only problem was getting players.

"When you're a lawyer, you still need someone to give you that first dossier. Once you have a high-profile dossier, then people see you and know you. It's the same thing with agents. Once one player signs and others see the TV reports, the photos, the line in the paper, then others will know of him."

When Bell signed for Bordeaux in 1989, he ensured that Diouf accompanied him to the contract signing to garner visibility and a measure of authenticity. Before long, Diouf had added Abdoulaye Diallo, Senegal international Pape Fall, Cameroon's Francois Omam-Biyik and Ivory Coast-born France international Basile Boli to his stable of clients.

In the following years, some of the great names of French football fell under Diouf's guidance.

"Clearly, he's a pioneer in all that he did," former Liverpool midfielder Mohamed Sissoko told ESPN.

"In the domain of journalism, he left his mark. In the job of being an agent, he was one of the first African agents, and he oversaw big players who had a great career, like Marcel Desailly and others."

"The impact he had in the domain of football was an example for all young entrepreneurs, an example for the youth, an example in Europe, in France, in Marseille, and for all of the continent." Mohamed Sissoko describes Pape Diouf.

Marc-Vivien Foe, William Gallas, Bernard Lama, Frederic Kanoute and Didier Drogba were among the high-profile figures to work under Diouf, and more recently, he had a hand in the career progress of Samir Nasri and the Ayew brothers, Andre and Jordan. Many of his former charges paid testament to his warmth and loyalty after his death.

"Trust isn't given, it's earned," Fall told ESPN, "and this gentleman was someone truly sincere who you could trust.

"We're sad but also proud that the sports world -- and even beyond that -- have honoured a guy who was, simply, a great, great man.

"He was an icon, a man of conviction, engaged, generous, a great humanist. He had integrity, was cultured and a rare example of a guide, a guide who is both dignified and sincere."

Boli described his late friend as a "big brother" upon learning of his death, and others remembered how Diouf's personal and human qualities, as well as what he once described on French television as his "African values," underpinned his professional success.

"Few people in the world of football have touched me or had an impact as you were able to have in my life or on my career," Nasri wrote on Instagram.

"You were always a mentor, you were my first agent, you were my president, and it's with a heavy heart that I must say goodbye. You left too early, and I will never forget you."

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-adG75CYem/?utm_source=ig_embed

Diouf's work with so many prominent stakeholders at OM -- players and club officials alike -- led to his appointment in 2004 as the club's general manager, responsible for overseeing sporting affairs.

Following poor results at the start of the 2004-05 campaign and concerns raised about the management of the club, Marseille president Christophe Bouchet -- another former journalist -- stood down in the autumn, with Diouf appointed as his successor.

"Primarily, he was first a supporter," Bell said. "He arrived when he was 18, and at Marseille there is nothing apart from l'Olympique.

"When he became the sporting director, it was a bit like a son of the city had arrived at the heart of the club, without leaving his own home. The conditions were favourable to do something good, and he made an impact."

For the next four years, Diouf oversaw a renaissance in Marseille's fortunes. The Ligue 1 title proved elusive, but the team posted three top-three finishes in successive seasons between 2006 and 2009 and were regular UEFA Champions League qualifiers.

Current France coach Didier Deschamps was appointed OM manager in May 2009, but a month later, Diouf left his post -- a consequence of personal disagreements with club chairman Vincent Labrune and a lack of silverware.

"As president of Marseille, he achieved great things," Sissoko said, "and it's a person to whom we owe respect.

"He's the kind of person who opened doors for us [black Africans], who showed us how to carry ourselves and to have real respect toward people. For me, Pape was someone who has all of my respect.

"I met him several times, we had the chance to talk together, and really, he's a person who I admire enormously, and he was a very beautiful person."

Diouf was subsequently indicted -- and acquitted -- on a charge of irregular financial dealings related to player transfers, and in 2012, he was awarded a Legion d'honneur -- the highest French honorary decoration -- by former French president Francois Hollande.

He also invested in the European School of Communication and the European Institute of Journalism in Marseille, and in late 2013, he stepped into local politics but failed to win a seat on the city's municipal council in the 2014 elections.

Bell said the latter move was a misguided venture, albeit one motivated by Diouf's enduring love of the city and desire to serve Marseille, as Diouf -- an eloquent, articulate and engaging speaker -- mistook sporting popularity for broader civic popularity.

"He confused the 40,000 fans at the Stade Velodrome for the population of the broader region of Marseille," Bell said in a blunt assessment of his friend's political career.

Despite this failure, banners were hung in the city to commemorate Diouf upon his death more than a decade after he left his role as OM president, and L'Equipe dedicated its front page in tribute to "Our Pape."

"He didn't dream of being the first to do this or that, and when he became an agent, we didn't talk about how cool it was," Bell said. "It was just that the opportunity had presented itself, and we had to do it.

"Diouf was the first black agent, and now you have black agents everywhere, and it doesn't surprise anyone, which means he had a positive impact. When the first one is good, it opens the door for others.

"The problems agents face and the questions they must answer are whether they are moral or whether they are people of integrity. Clearly, he has been judged favourably because of all who have followed. People still talk of him because he was the first ... and the only."

Diouf, who lived between Senegal and Marseille in his latter years, had been in ill health before he contracted the coronavirus and was hospitalised in March in Dakar.

"I knew he had been unwell, to tell the truth. He had a bad back," Bell said. "But we joked together. You never actually imagine death."

After he was placed on a respirator, plans were put in place to transfer Diouf to Nice for treatment, but he was too ill to make the trip and succumbed to the illness on March 31.

For Sissoko, Diouf's legacy is not confined to sports or football but is an example of how an African upbringing, values and business spirit can underpin a successful entrepreneurial career in Europe and the transition between continents.

"His impact was his spirit," Sissoko said.

"The impact he had in the domain of football was an example for all young entrepreneurs, an example for the youth, an example in Europe, in France, in Marseille and for all of the continent.

"We can see the journey of Pape Diouf is very respectable and honourable, so for us, he's an icon, and he's someone who opened certain doors for us in order for [Africans] to affirm ourselves within the domain of football."

Pape Diouf, journalist, agent and club administrator, born 18 Dec. 1951, died 31 March 2020.

Source: espn.com

source: https://footballghana.com/

[bountyofbeads]

Giuliani Sought Help for Client in Meeting With Ukrainian Official https://nyti.ms/2u6Y2H6

Giuliani Sought Help for Client in Meeting With Ukrainian Official.... As he discussed the possibility of a White House meeting for Ukraine’s president, President Trump’s lawyer asked to save the Kyiv mayor’s job.

By Ronen Bergman, Anton Troianovski and Kenneth P. Vogel | Published Jan. 31, 2020 | New York Times | Posted February 1, 2020 |

KYIV, Ukraine — When Rudolph W. Giuliani met with a top aide to Ukraine’s president last summer, he discussed the prospect of a coveted White House meeting for the president while seeking Ukraine’s commitment to certain investigations that could benefit President Trump politically.

Mr. Giuliani also threw in a request of his own: help the mayor of Kyiv keep his job.

The mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, a professional boxer turned politician and longtime friend and former client of Mr. Giuliani’s, was on the verge of being fired from his duties overseeing Kyiv’s $2 billion budget.

Firing Mr. Klitschko would have fit with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s campaign promise to fight Ukraine’s entrenched interests and allowed him to replace a political adversary with a loyalist in one of the country’s most important posts.

But despite the fact that Mr. Zelensky’s cabinet approved Mr. Klitschko’s removal, he remains there today, leaving his adversaries in the murky and lucrative world of Ukrainian municipal politics to wonder whether Mr. Trump’s personal attorney may have tipped the scales in his favor.

“The coincidence in timing between Klitschko’s meeting with Giuliani and the developments in the governance of Kyiv was striking,” said Oleksandr Tkachenko, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament whom Mr. Zelensky had been expected to nominate as Mr. Klitschko’s replacement.

Mr. Giuliani’s effort to help his friend and former client, first reported in The Washington Post, shed fresh light on the former New York mayor’s mingling of personal, business and political interests with his role as personal attorney to the president of the United States.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Giuliani acknowledged discussing Mr. Klitschko’s position in a meeting with a senior aide to Mr. Zelensky, Andriy Yermak, in Madrid on Aug. 2.

“I said, ‘I don’t know, I’m from the outside, but he seems like one of the good guys,’” Mr. Giuliani said, recalling the conversation. “‘And I’m speaking, speaking, speaking as a personal friend, not as a representative of the government or anything else.’”

In the same meeting, Mr. Giuliani discussed a possible Oval Office visit by Mr. Zelensky that the Ukrainian president had been seeking, and asked for a commitment by his government to pursue investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his son, and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The meeting took place at a time when Ukraine’s new president was looking to cement support from the United States, his country’s most powerful ally in the conflict against Russia, and to build a relationship with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Giuliani said that he made it clear that he was relating his personal view of Mr. Klitschko, not that of the administration. “I gave it as my opinion — not the government — and based on our personal relationships,” he said.

Mr. Yermak also acknowledged that the two discussed Mr. Klitschko’s fate.

“Giuliani asked for my opinion about Vitaliy Klitschko as a mayor,” Mr. Yermak said in a statement in response to an inquiry from The Times. “He immediately issued the disclaimer that I should not see his question as an attempt to influence me.”

Mr. Yermak said he told Mr. Giuliani that he had long known Mr. Klitschko and that he had the support of Kyiv’s citizens.

“That was the end of our conversation about Klitschko,” Mr. Yermak said. “As a result I reject any speculation that Mr. Giuliani in any way sought to influence my opinion or to make me accept some narrative regarding Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko.”

Given the complex and opaque nature of Ukrainian politics, it is not clear whether Mr. Giuliani’s intervention was the decisive force allowing the mayor to keep his job.

But it is clear that he tried.

Mr. Klitschko, a former heavyweight world boxing champion, first hired Mr. Giuliani as a consultant for his unsuccessful run for mayor of Kyiv in 2008.

Since 2014, Mr. Klitschko has held dual roles: both the largely ceremonial, elected position of Kyiv mayor and the powerful position of head of Kyiv’s city-state administration, an appointment made by the Ukrainian president. The latter position gives him oversight of matters such as the city budget, building permits and transportation funds, making him one of the most powerful people in the country.

Mr. Klitschko supported Mr. Zelensky’s opponent, the incumbent Petro O. Poroshenko, in last spring’s presidential election in Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky’s landslide victory appeared to augur Mr. Klitschko’s political demise.

Mr. Zelensky, a comedian, had frequently lampooned Mr. Klitschko on his Saturday Night Live-style variety show, portraying him as a dunderheaded member of Ukraine’s shadowy, corrupt elite. In one skit, Mr. Zelensky played a translator to a boxing-belt-wearing Mr. Klitschko, who is unable to string together an intelligible sentence.

After taking power in May, Mr. Zelensky had no way to remove Mr. Klitschko as mayor but could strip him of the more influential post as head of the Kyiv administration. Ukrainian politicians and analysts expected him to do so.

A confidante of Mr. Klitschko’s, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was concerned about harm to his business if he spoke publicly, said that by the end of July, “it was clear that only outside interference, say the president of the United States or anyone on his behalf,” could save Mr. Klitschko from dismissal. As the power struggle escalated, Mr. Klitschko flew to New York to meet with Mr. Giuliani.

On July 30, in an apparent prelude to the dismissal, Mr. Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan, called a news conference and accused Mr. Klitschko of allowing corruption to flourish in Kyiv. Without offering evidence, Mr. Bohdan said he had been offered a $20 million bribe for Mr. Klitschko to remain head of the Kyiv administration.

The next day, Mr. Klitschko posted photographs on Facebook of his meeting with Mr. Giuliani, his “old friend and one of the most authoritative mayors in the world.” The two discussed “the situation in Ukraine,” he said, “future cooperation between the United States and Ukraine,” and the topic of “local self-rule” — an apparent reference to Mr. Klitschko’s battle to hold on to power at home.

Upon returning to Kyiv, Mr. Klitschko told his aides that his American allies would help him keep his job, according to several people who heard him make the comments in staff meetings and who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are still involved in municipal politics and were afraid to be identified when discussing issues related to Mr. Klitschko.

“That’s ridiculous,” Mr. Klitschko said in a statement on Friday. Asked about the meeting with Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Klitschko said, “I did not ask anyone for any assistance.”

Mr. Klitschko said he had never had a business relationship with Mr. Giuliani, a claim contradicted by Mr. Giuliani, who consulted for the former boxer’s 2008 campaign. Mr. Giuliani said that he had not formally represented Mr. Klitschko in years, “even though I still advise him.”

But two days later, Mr. Giuliani was speaking about Mr. Klitschko to Mr. Yermak in Madrid.

On Sept. 4, Mr. Zelensky’s cabinet approved the dismissal of Mr. Klitschko as head of the Kyiv administration.

But on Sept. 6, Mr. Giuliani fired off a tweet: “Reducing the power of Mayor Klitschko of Kiev was a very bad sign particularly based on the advice of an aide to the President of Ukraine who has the reputation of being a fixer. The former champion is very much admired and respected in the US.”

The tweet came as Mr. Zelensky was scrambling to stabilize his relationship with Mr. Trump after finding out that American military aid to Kyiv had been halted for unexplained reasons.

The last step needed to make the dismissal official was Mr. Zelensky’s signature on the dismissal — a formality, it seemed, since it was Mr. Zelensky’s office that had sought approval for the firing in the first place.

But the signature never came.

Asked by reporters in October, Mr. Zelensky said that he was still thinking about whether or not to sign.

“When a controversial issue arises, he tries to balance various interests,” a Kyiv political analyst, Volodymyr Fesenko, said of Mr. Zelensky’s unexpected reprieve. “He decided not to make a sudden move.”

Aside from any influence Mr. Giuliani may have had, Mr. Fesenko points to a power struggle within different factions in Mr. Zelensky’s administration as another factor, along with Mr. Zelensky’s own dwindling political capital amid intense criticism from domestic political opponents that he was too soft on Russia.

Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Klitschko declined to comment on the Madrid meeting between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Yermak, or on why Mr. Zelensky decided to keep him in office. He described Mr. Giuliani as “a big friend of Ukraine and one of the most successful mayors of the world.”

Mr. Giuliani himself became a fraught figure in Ukraine as the impeachment investigation unfolded on Capitol Hill.

“Starting in late September, the Giuliani issue became very toxic,” Mr. Fesenko said. “It seemed Klitschko’s team stopped pushing the relationship with Giuliani.”

_______

Ronen Bergman and Anton Troianovski reported from Kyiv, and Kenneth P. Vogel from Washington.

*********

Nigerians in New York Worry Expanded Travel Ban Will Hurt Family Ties

“It’s just not right to just blanket ban a group of people,” said one college professor who has lived in the U.S. for about 20 years.

By Aimee Ortiz | Published Jan. 31, 2020 Updated Feb. 1, 2020, 1:15 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 1, 2020 |

The Trump administration’s expansion of the nation’s contentious travel ban on Friday to include Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, and several other countries deeply rattled immigrants, leaving some Nigerians in New York worried that it would break family ties and have a negative effect on both countries.

“Africans have very strong family ties,” said Henry Ukazu, 35, of the Bronx, warning that not allowing people from Nigeria to come to the United States to live would result in negative consequences for both the United States and Nigeria.

Mr. Ukazu, who immigrated to the United States 10 years ago, predicted that the travel ban would bring about “a level of detachment from family members, and that is not a welcome development.”

“We are not wired to be an individual,” Mr. Ukazu said. “We are raised like a bond because we are like a broom, when we are mixed together, we perform very, very well.”

Nigerians have added a lot of value to the United States, Mr. Ukazu said, but the travel ban will affect the productivity of those immigrants, possibly causing strife within families who support relatives abroad and receive support from them in return.

The expanded ban, which was announced Friday, came amid Mr. Trump’s impeachment battle in the Senate and the 2020 presidential election. It increased the number of countries on the restricted travel list to 13 from seven.

Besides Nigeria and Myanmar, where refugees are fleeing genocide, other countries affected are Eritrea, Sudan, Tanzania, and Kyrgyzstan.

The policy bans immigrant visas, which are issued to those seeking to live in the United States, for people from Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea and Kyrgyzstan. It will also prevent immigrants from Sudan and Tanzania from moving to the United States through the diversity visa lottery.

Uchenna Ekwo, 53, of the Bronx, came to the United States from Nigeria about 20 years ago. A professor at Medgar Evers College, the City University of New York, he said he saw racist elements in the policy, voiced concerns that the ban could harm cultural exchange, and warned that a blanket ban would not stop corrupt, wealthy people from buying their way into the country.

Mr. Trump has denigrated African countries in the past and once complained that Nigerians entering the United States on visas would never “go back to their huts.”

“It’s just not right to just blanket ban a group of people,” he said, later adding that criminals are the only people who should be barred from entering the country.

He cautioned that the policy would affect only poor people as the rich are able to buy homes, cars and effectively green cards.

“If the president wants to help Nigeria,” Mr. Ekwo said, “he should help by fighting corruption.”

Stressing that the world is “one village,” he voiced concerns for the possible drop in information exchange between professionals of different countries

“We live in an interconnected world,” Mr. Ekwo said. “I consider it an ill-advised policy because it’s counterproductive, it’s not going to last.”

The Trump administration has argued that the travel ban, enacted in 2017, was necessary to ensure that countries satisfy security requirements for travel into the United States, or face restrictions until they do.

In a political win for the president, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld the ban in a 5-to-4 vote in 2018, arguing that the president had ample statutory authority to make national security judgments in the realm of immigration.

The leader of a national nonprofit civic engagement organization for Muslims said in statement on Friday that news of the expanded ban was received “with deep sadness.”

“Already, the ban has ripped countless families apart, and has denied refuge to communities fleeing unimaginable persecution,” said Wa’el Alzayat, chief executive for the organization, Emgage. “It is horrific that this rejection of humanity is being expanded.”

Now is the time to “promote coalition-building and cross-community solidarity,” he said. “That is the only way we may work to defeat this unspeakably vitriolic banning of humanity, once and for all.”

______

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.

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Why not ban Saudi Arabia that recently had one of its air force officers commit terrorism/murder at the US Navy base in Pensacola, and also supplied 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists?

Politically, it is most counter-productive, since these are countries where the United States, China and Russia are vying for influence and profit. It's almost as though Trump is helping Russia and China expand their power. At a human level, it also makes no sense, since these countries, despite internal conflicts, have not produced terrorists attacking the US. On the other hand, America's supposed allies Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have produced them in quantity.

Trump Administration Adds Six Countries to Travel Ban

President Trump added Africa’s biggest country, Nigeria, as well as Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Tanzania, to his restricted travel list.

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs | Published Jan. 31, 2020 Updated Feb. 1, 2020, 10:18 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 1, 2020 |

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday added six countries to his list of nations facing stringent travel restrictions, a move that will virtually block immigration from Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, and from Myanmar, where the Muslim minority is fleeing genocide.

Beside Nigeria, three other African countries, Eritrea, Sudan and Tanzania, will face varying degrees of restrictions, as will one former Soviet state, Kyrgyzstan. Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims could also be caught in the crossfire.

All six countries have substantial Muslim populations. The total number of countries now on the restricted travel list stands at 13.

Immigrant visas, issued to those seeking to live in the United States, will be banned for Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea and Kyrgyzstan. The ban will also prevent immigrants from Sudan and Tanzania from moving to the United States through the diversity visa lottery, which grants green cards to as many as 50,000 people a year.

The proclamation will take effect on Feb. 22. Immigrants who obtain visas before then will still be able to travel to the United States, officials said. Nonimmigrant visas, including those for students and certain temporary workers, as well as visas reserved for potential employees with specialized skills, will not be affected by the ban.

Immigrants will be able to apply for waivers from the restrictions. The administration has said waivers are issued to those who would experience undue hardship if denied entry into the United States, although the process has been criticized as opaque.

The administration has argued that the ban, enacted in 2017 to restrict travel from Muslim-majority countries, is necessary to ensure that countries satisfy security requirements for travel into the United States, or face restrictions until they do.

The expansion of the restrictions, which already affected more than 135 million people in seven countries, is likely to hinder more than 12,300 potential immigrants in the next year from resettling, finding work or reuniting with their families in the United States. The effect on Nigeria, not only Africa’s most populous country but also its largest economy, could be particularly severe. The United States issued more than 7,920 immigrant visas to Nigerians in the 2018 fiscal year, the second-most of any African country.

Officials with the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity said Eritrea, Tanzania and Kyrgyzstan were being added to the list because each country had either had not satisfied the administration’s information-sharing requirements related to terrorism or did not have updated passport systems.

The officials said Sudan remained a state sponsor of terrorism, even though the country has transitioned to a civilian-run government from one ruled by its military.

While Nigeria has partnered with the American military, the officials noted an “elevated risk and threat environment in the country,” when justifying the travel restrictions. But before the announcement on Friday, an American government official said the administration planned to add Nigeria and Tanzania to the list because of the number of people coming from those countries on a visa who end up staying in the United States illegally.

Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, said earlier this week that Nigerian officials had not been advised that their country would be included in the ban.

“It would be quite unfortunate if for any reason Nigeria were on the list,” Mr. Mohammed said, noting the two government’s cooperation in combating terrorism. “It would be a double jeopardy: The country has committed a lot of resources to fight terrorism. Any travel ban cannot but be inimical to the growth of the country.”

He added, “Once a travel ban is imposed on a country, the consequences are not always pleasant.”

The extension of the travel ban comes at a delicate time for international travel amid a coronavirus outbreak in China. The administration also announced on Friday that most foreign citizens traveling from China would be temporarily suspended entry in the United States.

But it also comes as the 2020 election heats up. Mr. Trump is expected to use his travel ban, as well as his efforts to cut refugee admissions, to rally his political base as his administration contends with a Senate impeachment trial. Some of the most vulnerable populations in the world had one door to the United States shut last fall when Mr. Trump lowered his cap on refugee admissions to 18,000, down from 30,000 in the year prior. The administration has also severely restricted the ability for migrants to obtain asylum at the southwest border.

In countries like Myanmar, which is also called Burma, the expansion of the travel ban closes off another avenue for many seeking safety or family reunification.

“Nearly 5,000 Burmese refugees started to rebuild their lives in America last year, many of whom seek to reunite with family still in harm’s way,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a refugee resettlement agency.

Mr. Trump has made disparaging comments about African nations in the past, complaining that Nigerians who entered the United States on visas would never “go back to their huts.”

Democrats, who have long opposed the ban, condemned its expansion.

“President Trump and his administration’s continued disdain for our nation’s national security and our founding ideals of liberty and justice dishonor our proud immigrant heritage and the diversity that strengthens and enriches our communities,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement.

Days after he came into office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that closed the country’s borders to people from seven predominantly Muslim countries, making partial good on a campaign pledge “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”

The policy took even some of Mr. Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security officials by surprise and prompted widespread confusion at airports across the nation.

The ban drew several legal challenges but, after some adjustments, was narrowly upheld by the Supreme Court in June 2018. The ban initially restricted travel from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Chad — as well as Venezuela and North Korea. Chad was later removed from the list. The court’s majority argued that the policy was not a Muslim ban, citing the inclusion of North Korea and Venezuela and the administration’s process of granting exemptions.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. also wrote for the majority that Mr. Trump had the statutory authority to make national security judgments in the realm of immigration. More than 79,700 visas have been subject to the ban since December 2017, according to the State Department.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, said in a statement on Friday that the committee would discuss legislation to repeal the ban, which excludes “large classes of people, without adequate justification, and in some cases, to implement sweeping changes that contradict existing law.”

In recent weeks, American citizens, as well as immigrants and potential students, have felt the consequences of the increased vetting that has come with the travel bans.

After the death of Iran’s powerful commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, who was killed in an attack ordered by Mr. Trump, Customs and Border Protection officers at American borders stepped up vetting of travelers of Iranian descent, including American citizens and legal permanent residents, who have a constitutional right to enter the United States. Two days after the attack, hundreds of Iranians and Iranian-Americans travelers were held for hours at a port of entry in Blaine, Wash., where many said they were subjected to questioning about their religious and political beliefs.

Customs and Border Protection officials denied afterward that a national directive had been issued to detain or deny entry to travelers based solely on their connections to Iran. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation later reported that it had obtained documents stating that a directive had, in fact, been issued.

A Department of Homeland Security official confirmed the authenticity of the document, adding that the directive was limited to the field office in Blaine. It stated that Iranians as well as “any other nationality that has traveled to Iran or Lebanon” should be subjected to increased vetting.

A spokesman for Customs and Border Protection declined to comment on the document but said the situation was under investigation, and that, “at no time did D.H.S./C.B.P. issue a directive to deny entry to any individual.” The spokesman did not say whether Iranians were being subjected to increased vetting as a matter of policy.

Doug Rand, who worked on immigration policy in the Obama White House and helped found Boundless Immigration, a technology company that helps immigrants obtain green cards, said the additions to the ban would not just affect foreigners but also American citizens.

“It has become a de facto family separation policy besides the obvious one at the border,” Mr. Rand said. “This will just magnify the pain to extend it to other countries.”

______

Ruth Maclean contributed reporting from London, Caitlin Dickerson from New York and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

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[mastcomm]

Giuliani Sought Help for Client in Meeting With Ukrainian Official

KYIV, Ukraine — When Rudolph W. Giuliani met with a top aide to Ukraine’s president last summer, he discussed the prospect of a coveted White House meeting for the president while seeking Ukraine’s commitment to certain investigations that could benefit President Trump politically.

Mr. Giuliani also threw in a request of his own: help the mayor of Kyiv keep his job.

The mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, a professional boxer turned politician and longtime friend and former client of Mr. Giuliani’s, was on the verge of being fired from his duties overseeing Kyiv’s $2 billion budget.

Firing Mr. Klitschko would have fit with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s campaign promise to fight Ukraine’s entrenched interests and allowed him to replace a political adversary with a loyalist in one of the country’s most important posts.

But despite the fact that Mr. Zelensky’s cabinet approved Mr. Klitschko’s removal, he remains there today, leaving his adversaries in the murky and lucrative world of Ukrainian municipal politics to wonder whether Mr. Trump’s personal attorney may have tipped the scales in his favor.

“The coincidence in timing between Klitschko’s meeting with Giuliani and the developments in the governance of Kyiv was striking,” said Oleksandr Tkachenko, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament whom Mr. Zelensky had been expected to nominate as Mr. Klitschko’s replacement.

Mr. Giuliani’s effort to help his friend and former client, first reported in The Washington Post, shed fresh light on the former New York mayor’s mingling of personal, business and political interests with his role as personal attorney to the president of the United States.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Giuliani acknowledged discussing Mr. Klitschko’s position in a meeting with a senior aide to Mr. Zelensky, Andriy Yermak, in Madrid on Aug. 2.

“I said, ‘I don’t know, I’m from the outside, but he seems like one of the good guys,’” Mr. Giuliani said, recalling the conversation. “‘And I’m speaking, speaking, speaking as a personal friend, not as a representative of the government or anything else.’”

In the same meeting, Mr. Giuliani discussed a possible Oval Office visit by Mr. Zelensky that the Ukrainian president had been seeking, and asked for a commitment by his government to pursue investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’, his son, and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The meeting took place at a time when Ukraine’s new president was looking to cement support from the United States, his country’s most powerful ally in the conflict against Russia, and to build a relationship with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Giuliani said that he made it clear that he was relating his personal view of Mr. Klitschko, not that of the administration. “I gave it as my opinion — not the government — and based on our personal relationships,” he said.

Mr. Yermak also acknowledged that the two discussed Mr. Klitschko’s fate.

“Giuliani asked for my opinion about Vitaliy Klitschko as a mayor,” Mr. Yermak said in a statement in response to an inquiry from The Times. “He immediately issued the disclaimer that I should not see his question as an attempt to influence me.”

Mr. Yermak said he told Mr. Giuliani that he had long known Mr. Klitschko and that he had the support of Kyiv’s citizens.

“That was the end of our conversation about Klitschko,” Mr. Yermak said. “As a result I reject any speculation that Mr. Giuliani in any way sought to influence my opinion or to make me accept some narrative regarding Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko.”

Given the complex and opaque nature of Ukrainian politics, it is not clear whether Mr. Giuliani’s intervention was the decisive force allowing the mayor to keep his job.

But it is clear that he tried.

Mr. Klitschko, a former heavyweight world boxing champion, first hired Mr. Giuliani as a consultant for his unsuccessful run for mayor of Kyiv in 2008.

Since 2014, Mr. Klitschko has held dual roles: both the largely ceremonial, elected position of Kyiv mayor and the powerful position of head of Kyiv’s city-state administration, an appointment made by the Ukrainian president. The latter position gives him oversight of matters such as the city budget, building permits and transportation funds, making him one of the most powerful people in the country.

Mr. Klitschko supported Mr. Zelensky’s opponent, the incumbent Petro O. Poroshenko, in last spring’s presidential election in Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky’s landslide victory appeared to augur Mr. Klitschko’s political demise.

Mr. Zelensky, a comedian, had frequently lampooned Mr. Klitschko on his Saturday Night Live-style variety show, portraying him as a dunderheaded member of Ukraine’s shadowy, corrupt elite. In one skit, Mr. Zelensky played a translator to a boxing-belt-wearing Mr. Klitschko, who is unable to string together an intelligible sentence.

After taking power in May, Mr. Zelensky had no way to remove Mr. Klitschko as mayor but could strip him of the more influential post as head of the Kyiv administration. Ukrainian politicians and analysts expected him to do so.

A confidante of Mr. Klitschko’s, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was concerned about harm to his business if he spoke publicly, said that by the end of July, “it was clear that only outside interference, say the president of the United States or anyone on his behalf,” could save Mr. Klitschko from dismissal. As the power struggle escalated, Mr. Klitschko flew to New York to meet with Mr. Giuliani.

On July 30, in an apparent prelude to the dismissal, Mr. Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan, called a news conference and accused Mr. Klitschko of allowing corruption to flourish in Kyiv. Without offering evidence, Mr. Bohdan said he had been offered a $20 million bribe for Mr. Klitschko to remain head of the Kyiv administration.

The next day, Mr. Klitschko posted photographs on Facebook of his meeting with Mr. Giuliani, his “old friend and one of the most authoritative mayors in the world.” The two discussed “the situation in Ukraine,” he said, “future cooperation between the United States and Ukraine,” and the topic of “local self-rule” — an apparent reference to Mr. Klitschko’s battle to hold on to power at home.

Upon returning to Kyiv, Mr. Klitschko told his aides that his American allies would help him keep his job, according to several people who heard him make the comments in staff meetings and who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are still involved in municipal politics and were afraid to be identified when discussing issues related to Mr. Klitschko.

“That’s ridiculous,” Mr. Klitschko said in a statement on Friday. Asked about the meeting with Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Klitschko said, “I did not ask anyone for any assistance.”

Mr. Klitschko said he had never had a business relationship with Mr. Giuliani, a claim contradicted by Mr. Giuliani, who consulted for the former boxer’s 2008 campaign. Mr. Giuliani said that he had not formally represented Mr. Klitschko in years, “even though I still advise him.”

But two days later, Mr. Giuliani was speaking about Mr. Klitschko to Mr. Yermak in Madrid.

On Sept. 4, Mr. Zelensky’s cabinet approved the dismissal of Mr. Klitschko as head of the Kyiv administration.

But on Sept. 6, Mr. Giuliani fired off a tweet: “Reducing the power of Mayor Klitschko of Kiev was a very bad sign particularly based on the advice of an aide to the President of Ukraine who has the reputation of being a fixer. The former champion is very much admired and respected in the US.”

The tweet came as Mr. Zelensky was scrambling to stabilize his relationship with Mr. Trump after finding out that American military aid to Kyiv had been halted for unexplained reasons.

The last step needed to make the dismissal official was Mr. Zelensky’s signature on the dismissal — a formality, it seemed, since it was Mr. Zelensky’s office that had sought approval for the firing in the first place.

But the signature never came.

Asked by reporters in October, Mr. Zelensky said that he was still thinking about whether or not to sign.

“When a controversial issue arises, he tries to balance various interests,” a Kyiv political analyst, Volodymyr Fesenko, said of Mr. Zelensky’s unexpected reprieve. “He decided not to make a sudden move.”

Aside from any influence Mr. Giuliani may have had, Mr. Fesenko points to a power struggle within different factions in Mr. Zelensky’s administration as another factor, along with Mr. Zelensky’s own dwindling political capital amid intense criticism from domestic political opponents that he was too soft on Russia.

Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Klitschko declined to comment on the Madrid meeting between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Yermak, or on why Mr. Zelensky decided to keep him in office. He described Mr. Giuliani as “a big friend of Ukraine and one of the most successful mayors of the world.”

Mr. Giuliani himself became a fraught figure in Ukraine as the impeachment investigation unfolded on Capitol Hill.

“Starting in late September, the Giuliani issue became very toxic,” Mr. Fesenko said. “It seemed Klitschko’s team stopped pushing the relationship with Giuliani.”

Ronen Bergman and Anton Troianovski reported from Kyiv, and Kenneth P. Vogel from Washington.

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[how2to18]

THIS IS PART VIII of LARB’s serialization of Seth Greenland’s forthcoming novel The Hazards of Good Fortune. Greenland’s novel follows Jay Gladstone from his basketball-loving youth to his life as a real estate developer, civic leader, philanthropist, and NBA team owner, and then to it all spiraling out of control.

A film and TV writer, playwright, and author of four previous novels, Greenland was the original host of The LARB Radio Hour and serves on LARB’s board of directors. The Hazards of Good Fortune will be published in book form by Europa Editions on August 21, 2018.

To start with installment one, click here.

To pre-order on Indiebound, click here; on Amazon, click here; at Barnes & Noble, click here.

¤

Chapter Eighteen

  On West 139th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard to the east and Frederick Douglass Boulevard to the west lay Striver’s Row. A landmark block in Harlem, for more than a hundred years it has been a home to African-American notables like Eubie Blake, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, W.C. Handy, and, more recently, the sports agent Jamal Jones who stood at the second story window in the hallway of the newly renovated brownstone that served as his home and office gazing down at his former client, D’Angelo Maxwell, waiting at the front door below. Across the street, Jamal spotted Trey Maxwell leaning against the McLaren smoking a cigarette.

Dag had called and texted but Jamal, still smarting from being fired, had not responded. News had reached him of Dag’s Los Angeles fracas. He thought perhaps his erstwhile friend and client might benefit from experiencing a little of life without Jamal Jones running interference. There were other matters to occupy him and having Dag on his list was no longer essential to the success of his business. Jamal’s business was already successful. That morning he had met with a television production company in Midtown to pitch an idea for a show. In half an hour, he was having lunch with a projected NBA lottery pick at Sylvia’s Restaurant and expected to sign the kid before the peach cobbler arrived at the table. After that, there were drinks with an agent in town from Atlanta with whom he was thinking of partnering. If the encounter bore fruit the Jones Group (he named it “Group” when he learned the Gladstones used the same word) would have a second front. Jamal could hear the two junior agents he employed working the phones down the hall. Business was thriving.

“You want me to let him in or not?” The speaker was Donna, Jamal’s assistant. An African-American woman in her forties, she wore a patterned knee-length dress and flats. Her head wrapped in a cloth scarf from which several braids snaked. Donna was Jamal’s majordomo, taking care of his scheduling, travel, and the day-to-day operations of the Jones Group.

He quickly reviewed any grievances Dag might be nurturing. In light of what the man had inflicted on Moochie Collins, Jamal did not want to forget something he might have done (or that Dag might think he had done) that could be the cause of another violent outburst. Donna narrowed her eyes.

“You’re gonna keep Dag standing on the stoop?”

  The man hug with which Dag greeted his former agent caught Jamal by surprise. Given how they had parted, he was expecting something a little more formal. They were in Jamal’s office, overlooking the street. One of the walls was a gallery of framed photographs, several of which were of Jamal and Dag: at the Super Bowl, on vacation in Mexico, on the court at Sanitary Solutions Arena, all suffused with a bonhomie that reflected their years of friendship. Now Jamal stood in front of his desk and, pointedly, did not offer Dag a seat.

“All right if I sit down?”

“Dag, I got a busy day.”

Knowing it was the price he had to pay, Dag remained standing. Jamal wanted to ask about California, about the hand injury, but he was still indignant over being fired. So, he said nothing.

“How are you coming with Chevy?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Chevy trucks, man. You were working on endorsements.”

“You forgetting something, Dag?”

“It wasn’t Ford, was it? It was Chevy, right?” Dag grinned and waited for Jamal to reciprocate. This would signal that there were no hard feelings. The echo was not forthcoming.

“You fired me.”

“Forget that, Jamal. We boys. You got lunch plans?”

“Yeah.”

“Cancel ’em. I’m taking you out, my treat.”

“Dag—”

“I owe you an apology, man. I’m apologizing to everyone. Already said I was sorry to Church, Gladstone, and the team. Now it’s your turn.”

“Just checking all the boxes.”

If Dag heard the judgment in Jamal’s words, he barreled ahead in spite of it.

“I was mad that day at my house, I said some shit I regret, I’m sorry and now let’s you and me get back to business.”

“Did you apologize to Moochie?”

“Why you worried about Moochie?”

Jamal pondered how it was that guys like Dag rarely understood the ramifications of their actions, how because of their ability to put a ball through a hoop, the ordinary laws of human interaction did not apply.

“Forget Moochie, man. I’m worried about you.”

“I appreciate that. I’m gonna write Moochie a check. How much you think I should send him?”

“You’re not hearing me, Dag.”

“What am I not hearing?”

“You fired my ass.”

“I told you, forget that shit.”

“You meet with Gladstone to try to negotiate for yourself, you beat up Moochie, injure your hand.”

“Ain’t gonna miss a single game!”

“That’s great, Dag.”

Dag seemed surprised at the pushback he was getting from Jamal. He pointed to a picture on the wall. It had been taken the previous summer at the D’Angelo Maxwell Summer Charity Basketball Tournament and showed Dag and Jamal posing with the winning team, a group of gangly teenagers, everyone happy.

“Them kids had a helluva squad. Remember?”

“Yeah, I remember, Dag. I put that tournament together with Trey.” Jamal felt he had to namecheck Dag’s brother even though he had done most of the work himself. Placating stars was reflexive.

Dag continued to examine the display of framed photographs: Jamal’s high school and college teams, Jamal with various sports and entertainment celebrities, Jamal with his wife and two young daughters. All of it spoke to a life independent of D’Angelo Maxwell.

“How do you know I met with Gladstone?”

“The man called because he was worried.”

“About what?”

“He was worried you weren’t thinking clearly.”

However true it might have been, the implication did not please Dag, who was getting more worked up. Jamal kept a Louisville Slugger baseball bat near his desk. It was meant to be decorative but would serve as protection if Dag came at him. “So, he called you?”

“The guy likes you, D’Angelo.”

“He’d kick me to the curb like a ten-dollar ho.”

Jamal ignored this. They both knew professional sports was transactional and that was the level on which 99% of all decisions were made. When it appeared that Dag was not going to become violent, Jamal relaxed.

“If you want a max contract from a major market team, maybe you shouldn’t have beat up Moochie. That ain’t franchise player behavior.”

In the course of their friendship, Jamal had never once castigated Dag. For the player, this represented an unwelcome new day in their relationship. Jamal cracked his knuckles and regarded Dag. He enjoyed the shift in their power dynamic although he took pains not to show it.

“Moochie needed to get schooled,” Dag said.

“So now you want me to clean up the big mess you made?”

And like it was the most natural thing in the world, Dag said: “Yeah.”

Jamal put his hands in his pockets. Dag waited.

“You told me I was bush league, Dag. You remember that? Rinky-dink.”

“I did?”

“You don’t remember? Maybe you remember this: The last contract I negotiated for you paid a hundred and twenty million. A hundred. And twenty. Million. That sound rinky-dink to you?”

“Jamal, from my heart,” Dag said, and pounded his chest with his fist, “I apologize.” He looked out the window as if to draw on the African-American collective capacity for endurance that had manifested on the sidewalks of this venerable neighborhood. When he turned back to his former agent, there was an imploring look in his eyes that Jamal had not seen before. “I need you, man.”

Jamal reached up and placed a hand on Dag’s shoulder. Dag smiled ruefully. He genuinely seemed to feel remorse over his recent actions. For all Dag’s superstar affectations, Jamal believed somewhere inside lived the humble kid he first encountered at the McDonald’s All-Star Camp when they were in high school.

“I’m gonna think on it, Dag.”

Dag stepped back and looked at Jamal as if he were some bizarre animal species of whose existence he was previously unaware. Agents did not refuse opportunities like this. Jamal’s commission on Dag’s next contract would be several million dollars. He was going to “think on it”?

“What’s there to think on?”

“You disrespected me, man.”

People did not say no to men like D’Angelo Maxwell, especially anyone in the position to financially benefit from their talents. It contravened the laws of nature and Dag was unsure how to respond. He had apologized already. There was no point in doing that again. This was when they were supposed to clasp hands, embrace, and then go out to the lunch Dag had offered to pay for. Why had Jamal departed from the routine? First Gladstone, then Brittany, now Jamal all were undermining the foundations of his existence. The frustration this engendered and the general sense that something he could not entirely understand had shifted disoriented him.

“That’s what you got for me? All the money I made for you?”

“Ain’t about the money, Dag. Ain’t about the money for you, either.”

Dag gestured toward the room, its high ceilings and ornate moldings, all exquisitely restored. “I put you in this townhouse, man. I ain’t gonna apologize again.”

“You wouldn’t let anyone diss you the way you dissed me.”

The degree of resolution Jamal exhibited left Dag unmoored. He had a disturbing vision of life without Jamal. How he would manage was not entirely clear.

“What happens if we’re not in business together?”

“The lawyers and accountants sort it out.”

“That’s how you gonna be?”

“I told you I’d think about it.”

The ongoing ambiguity was more than Dag could take. He had prostrated himself, begged. The superstar posture had been dropped, but to no positive end. The existential aloneness his longtime agent’s abandonment revealed was terrifying.

“That’s fucked up, Jamal.”

Jamal watched, unsurprised, as Dag rolled his shoulders and strode out of the office. He had wanted to provoke him, to provide the shock that would convey the new reality. He knew Dag was going to return eventually.

  As he passed through the front door and stood on the stoop, Dag considered going back to Jamal’s office and apologizing once more. All that history, their years together held deep resonance. But he quickly banished the thought. He had done enough apologizing. If Jamal wanted to throw away what they had built together, let him. He doubted that would happen. He hoped it wouldn’t happen. Still, he remained on top of the brownstone steps. With each passing second, the degree to which Dag depended on his former advocate came into sharper focus. He glanced at the windows of Jamal’s office. Should he go back up? No, he told himself; don’t do that. Jamal would realize his error and come crawling back. That was their essential dynamic. Dag believed he only had to survive the current impasse, and all would be well. He squinted into the sun.

“Dag Maxwell! What up, G?”

Dag peered down the steps. Rooted there was a trio of black teenagers. The boys wore identical low-slung baggy jeans, oversized flannel shirts, and white Jordans accented in ‑multihued palettes. The one in the middle was average sized, but his sidekicks were at least six five. The tall kids were twins. Sideways baseball caps, two Knicks and a Laker. Ballers. It was the kid in the middle who had spoken.

“What are you doing up here, man?” one of the twins asked, his voice pitched high with excitement.

“This and that,” Dag said, and regally descended the steps. The boys had abandoned their studied indifference in the presence of this hardwood god.

“We saw you play the Celtics,” the non-twin said.

“Should’ve won that night,” Dag replied.

“Can we get a picture with you?” the other twin asked.

Dag had interacted with the public for so long it was part of the fabric of being Dag Maxwell, and he did it like punching a clock. But there was something about these boys, their unbridled joy at spotting him, the pure approbation, no, it was more than that, the worship they radiated as if this were some holy rite and Dag the idol to which they prayed. It was a welcome balm to his spirit on a stressful day. He beckoned Trey over from across the street and told him to take their picture.

The shorter kid produced a phone and handed it over. As the boys gathered around Dag to immortalize the experience, other passersby stopped. An older man dressed in a natty suit, two young mothers pushing strollers, a deliveryman from a laundry service watched and when Dag finished taking pictures with the boys all of them wanted pictures, too. Word filtered down the block in both directions, and a flock of students from Medgar Evers Learning Academy came running over from a nearby playground. They carried cardboard boxes and were accompanied by their Latina science teacher. Dag observed the boxes and wondered what they were for.

Two minutes later there were several dozen people on the sidewalk, young, old, different races, and Dag was autographing pieces of paper, and T-shirts and his smile broadened when he signed a Dag Maxwell jersey with a Sharpie someone handed him. The flock called encouragement, wished him luck in the playoffs (they assumed the team would get there), assured him no one cared about what had happened in California.

Dag was signing an autograph for an older woman who had asked him to make it out to her nephew when he noticed a shadow rolling across the street, covering the cars, the asphalt, the facades of the buildings as if a supernatural being was slowly pulling a shade over the sun. The temperature dipped. The windows of buildings dulled. Without warning the school-kids placed the cardboard boxes over their heads. Several of the adult bystanders looked toward the sky, but the science teacher warned everyone not to. They waited. Several people whooped. Dag heard someone crying. The street, in half-light for a brief period, was now entirely shrouded.

The moon had slid in front of the sun, and an eerily radiating circular penumbra was the otherworldly result. A solar eclipse. Harlem, Manhattan, New York City: All dark. The crowd, so festive, had quieted. The adults observed the school-kids, impressed with their seriousness of purpose. Several people shaded their eyes with their hands and glanced fleetingly at the sky. Dag was not sure how to behave in the face of this natural phenomenon. The science teacher suggested he not look directly at the sun. She handed him a pair of goggles. Dag thanked her, slipped them on, and faced the sky.

Almost as impressed with the celestial event she was standing next to as she was with the one occurring in the heavens, Gloria Alvarez took several pictures of Dag with her phone. Haunted by having witnessed the killing of John Eagle, the beauty of this cosmic wonder, in the presence of D’Angelo Maxwell, was a cherished consolation.

Dag shared the goggles with Trey, who held them to his eyes and was instantly transported by what he saw. Trey stared at the sun until his brother asked for them back.

This breathtaking contravention of habitual expectations that held everyone’s attention transfixed and unsettled Dag. He believed in signs and warnings. A bird winging into a room brought bad luck. If you accidentally put your clothes on backward, there was money coming. But what was the meaning of a solar eclipse? He had no idea.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Religion was not a significant factor in Nicole Gladstone’s suburban Virginia childhood. Her parents were vaguely Protestant but neither attended church, so other than Christmas, which in the Pflueger home was more about Santa Claus, gifts, and candy canes than anything having to do with the birth of Jesus, there were no markers of the season aside from a liberally tinseled tree. Back in Washington after having pulled the plug on her modeling career, the overt religiosity of many of the politicians she encountered (and her belief that this fervor often seemed motivated more by political expediency than authentic religious feeling) was not appealing, and further rendered any thought she entertained of exploring her nominally Christian roots a nonstarter. When Jay suggested, after they decided to get married, she might want to explore Judaism, or at least take the dreidel out for a test spin, Nicole, always game for new adventures, was willing to investigate the possibility. Following some research, she enrolled in a conversion class taught by a young female rabbi with a halo of curls and a welcoming manner at a Conservative synagogue on the Upper West Side and dutifully attended for several months.

Nicole took pleasure in learning about Jewish history and rituals, but when it became apparent how much actual work was involved—familiarity with not only the Torah, but all of the holidays (What was Shemini Atzeret again?), the Mishnah, the Talmud, the Shulchan Aruch, Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed, and other texts so numerous her jottings about them filled an entire Moleskine notebook—what seemed an endless list of mysteries all finally blended into one big who-put-the-bop-in-the-bop-shoo-bop and it no longer seemed worth the effort.

These arcane requirements never ceased to baffle her. Nicole could not fathom why the Jewish people, a tiny minority of the world’s population, did not allow anyone who wanted to share their joys and lamentations to do so without delay. If you declared yourself a Christian, you were a Christian. You accepted Jesus as your savior, and that was the end of it. Anyone wanting a more hardcore experience had the option of being dunked in a baptismal font. No one cared if you knew what St. Paul said to the Ephesians. Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, none of them required aspirants to pass a religious exam. Whatever her problems with the theology—most of it seemed beside the point—the Christian attitude struck Nicole as more, well, “Christian.” She knew that was simplistic, and perhaps even slightly anti-Semitic, but why did religion have to be so demanding? Wasn’t it something that was in your soul? Who cared what she thought about the Talmud? It was as if they expected her to earn a Ph.D. in Judaism before she would be allowed to take off her clothes and submerge naked into the welcoming waters of the mikveh bath in order to surface as a recognized member of the tribe.

It’s not like she wanted to be a rabbi. Although she found the lighting of Sabbath candles unutterably beautiful, to Nicole the Jews remained inscrutable.

Since Jay was not particularly observant, he lacked the moral authority to press the issue and disappointedly submitted to her announcement that, while she was happy—if he’d like, if he ever wanted, if he insisted—to fast on Tisha B’Av in order to commemorate the destruction of the temple (fat chance), wave a lulav and an etrog around on Sukkot (again, unlikely), light the menorah and exchange gifts during Hanukah (she liked that), and, of course, host the family Seder, she was going to hold off on becoming an actual Jew, particularly if it was going to have no effect on Jay’s desire to have another child. If she chose to read a biography of Spinoza, that was her business.

While Nicole was not Jewish, the fact of her marriage rendered her, in real estate terms, Jew-adjacent and as a result, she lived a kind of a dual life. Despite Jay’s lack of overt religiosity, and his having never found the time in his packed schedule to visit Israel, he was an ardent Zionist and a staunch defender of the nation (if not every specific policy of whatever government happened to be in power) when friends and acquaintances discussed Middle Eastern politics. Nicole adopted his point of view (At dinner parties, she would declare: “The situation is far more complicated than a lot of well-meaning people in the media seem to think.”) and learned to bridle when anyone attacked Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

Jay did not reciprocate. Although Nicole harbored a sentimental attachment to seasonal tropes—the carols, the eggnog, the Charlie Brown Christmas Special with its undercurrent of melancholy that transported her back to lonely childhood—he refused to have a Christmas tree in the house (“It reminds me of two thousand years of Christian anti-Semitism,” he said) so Hanukah became her domestic marker for the arrival of winter. As for spring, its advent was Passover. This is how a former high school cheerleader from Virginia came to be pushing a cart down the vegetable aisle in the Mt. Kisco Whole Foods on a March afternoon, shopping for the ingredients to make charoset in preparation for her Seder.

It was Nicole’s fifth Passover since beginning her life with Jay and the first one where she had stated her intention to supervise the meal. In previous years, they had used caterers who served an elaborate if soulless feast, but this Seder would be prepared in the Gladstone kitchen (by a chef, of course) and have Nicole’s artisanal stamp. It was her unstated but firmly held belief that if Jay saw her in this light, as a woman who, however gentile, could nonetheless direct the preparations for this most Jewish of celebrations, the liberation of a people from bondage, perhaps he would unchain her ardent womb.

  An hour earlier Nicole was in a Chappaqua cafe eating lunch with her friend Audrey Lindstrom, the thirty-six-year old second wife of an investment banker in his fifties. The two women had met on a committee to plan a gala for the Guggenheim Museum and, upon discovering that they were both former models and second wives of successful businessmen with homes in northern Westchester, established a friendship. Nicole was on her second glass of chardonnay. Audrey wore a fedora and large sunglasses even though they were indoors. Some recent cosmetic injections in her upper cheeks had caused unanticipated swelling.

“I gave one of your necklaces to a friend,” Audrey said, picking at a crab salad. “For her birthday? She loved it. Loved it!”

Nicole took a sip of wine. Preoccupied with her ovaries, the asparagus omelet in front of her was untouched. She regarded her slim and preternaturally stunning friend whose skin appeared luminous.

“Which one?”

“With the rubies?”

“That one’s nice,” Nicole said. Recently, she had been working exclusively with sapphires because of Jay’s Brooklyn project of that name, believed it to be good for marital karma. Had he even noticed? She wasn’t sure.

“I’ve been holding out on you,” Audrey said, taking a sip of chamomile tea. “I have news.” Nicole wrenched her mind from her reproductive system. “I’m pregnant.”

Although this was the most brilliant announcement imaginable for Audrey, it was the last thing Nicole wanted to hear. They had talked about having children. Audrey was slightly younger, a fact that always reminded Nicole of her own rapidly advancing age, and with great effort, she feigned joy for her friend.

“That is splendid news,” Nicole said. Audrey’s husband already had two older children, which made the entire situation even worse since it nearly mirrored her own. Nicole swallowed the last of her wine. It was all she could do to keep from ordering a third glass.

“I had been considering starting a business,” Audrey said. You know, like you? But now that the baby’s coming, I think I’m going to put it off.”

“Makes sense.”

“But you find jewelry design fulfilling, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, so fulfilling. I do.”

The tears that had formed in Nicole’s eyes took her by surprise.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing.” She produced a tissue from her bag and daubed her cheeks. “I’m thrilled for you.”

  Nicole sorted through a pile of Granny Smith apples in Whole Foods, pleased that she had repressed the impulse to get drunk. It was bad enough she had cried in front of her friend. Perhaps Audrey interpreted them as “tears of joy.” It would mortify Nicole if anyone thought she was jealous or, worse, bitter. She worried that her wine intake was growing at a rate that indicated a prescription for Ativan might be in order. Of course, that was hardly better than medicating herself with wine. It was a puzzle.

The conversation that had taken place with Jay while horseback riding continued to trouble her. She had been turning it over in her mind, examining his words from every angle, and now viewed their spat—was it even a spat? Did it rise to that level?—as indicative of an ungraspable marital fissure. How did Jay see her? She was an accomplished woman, hardly a trophy wife. The work in Washington on the Congressional Ethics Committee attested to that. She was formidable on her own, and were they not partners? Why was he so against having another child? It wasn’t as if he would be the one getting up to do the middle-of-the-night feeding, cleaning the spit up from his pajamas. Jay was always saying he wanted to make her happy. Was his refusal a sign of both the emptiness of those words and the lack of seriousness with which he viewed their marriage?

She finished packing the apples into a plastic bag, fastened it with a tie, placed it in her cart, and moved to the beverage aisle.

Nicole had never considered having an affair, but she and Jay hadn’t had sex in over a month, and her libido remained vigorous. Something was going on with him. For a man in his fifties, he had a healthy sex drive. Or at least he used to. His recent attempt at making love lacked passion, which is why she resisted. Had that been a mistake? He hardly seemed overly concerned with her rejection of his advances. Could it be that he was the one having an affair? The possibility had not even occurred to her. It was a wild thought. One of her many calculations in marrying Jay was his age and how that would affect his future behavior. Presumably, the need to spread his seed was something for which there was no longer a biological imperative. But if he were feeling dissatisfied in the marriage, if he were no longer finding the emotional sustenance it was meant to provide, then perhaps he was searching for it elsewhere. To Nicole, he never seemed like the cheating type, but a therapist had once told her that “love is giving something we don’t have to someone we don’t know,” from which she concluded anything was possible, and that was the most disturbing realization of all.

She was loading bottles of San Pellegrino water into the cart when she heard an unwelcome voice, at once insinuating and aggressive.

“Nicole!”

A slightly plump middle-aged woman wearing a forest green tracksuit with white piping and tennis shoes was piloting a shopping cart in the opposite direction. Her russet hair naturally fell in tight coils, but the industrial-strength straightening solution her stylist employed gave the tresses a wiry quality. The result was pulled into a short ponytail. Expensive sunglasses perched on her head. Recently, the skin around her light brown eyes had been tightened and despite having abandoned herself to a scalpel belonging to one of the top plastic surgeons in Manhattan the result left her looking as if she were in a perpetual state of surprise. This was Marcy Gladstone, Franklin’s wife. It was bad enough that Audrey Lindstrom was pregnant. What malevolent imp had placed this woman in her path? Didn’t she live on Long Island?

“Marcy,” Nicole trilled.

“Are you sure you have enough matzo?” Marcy said by way of greeting, examining the two boxes of unleavened spelt in Nicole’s cart.

“No one eats a lot of matzo,” Nicole said. “Too many carbs. What are you doing up here?”

“I was visiting a friend who just put in a new tennis court and I thought I’d get some shopping done before I drove home. What’s with the spelt?” she inquired, tapping a fire engine red fingernail on the offending item.

“Jay likes it. It helps with digestion.”

“Men and their heartburn,” Marcy said, shaking her head. “And their prostates.”

This declaration caused Nicole to reflect on Jay’s health. Was he overdue for a checkup? One of the downsides of marrying someone twenty years older was the Prostate Years came earlier.

“I’ll bring some regular matzo,” Marcy assured her as she began to root around in Nicole’s brimming cart.

“What are you doing?”

“Just looking,” Marcy said, innocently.

Along with the apples, there were lemons, walnuts, raisins, and cinnamon for the charoset she was going to make, ingredients for kugel, kreplach, borscht, a root vegetable casserole, and an impressive brisket. Marcy eyeballed it. Nicole had no idea what she had done wrong, but apparently, the spelt was not her only offense.

“I also found chopped liver they make from the livers of cage-free chickens,” Marcy said. “I’ll bring that, too.”

“It’s not a potluck. You don’t have to bring anything.”

“Did they have those at your church? Potlucks, I mean?”

“We didn’t go to church. My parents weren’t religious.”

“Right, I forgot. You were nothing.” Nicole flared, and Marcy quickly said, “Oh, I’m sorry. That was stupid. I didn’t mean it in a negative way.”

“I would never take it like that,” Nicole lied. Her counterfeit smile failed to find its target, now squinting at the ingredients on a carton of chicken broth with the same discernment she brought to the offending matzo.

It was a deeply held belief of Nicole’s that Marcy judged her ability to hew to the holiday traditions and found it wanting. Anyone could prepare a meal, but for the food to have the requisite Jewish soul, her cousin-in-law believed, it required the presence of a Jew in the kitchen. Marcy’s attempt to hide her disappointment when Nicole told her she had abandoned her plans to convert was unsuccessful. In Marcy’s view, it was bad enough Jay divorced his first wife for reasons she could never comprehend, but he compounded that error by marrying a non-Jew who didn’t even know what kind of matzo to buy for Passover. That there would be no Jew supervising the kitchen of the Seder family obligation forced her to attend rankled Marcy almost as much as the concept of her cousin-in-law’s intermarriage.

“Am I forgetting something?” Nicole asked.

“No,” Marcy said, in a way that conveyed yes. Then, “San Pellegrino?”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s not exactly seltzer.”

Nicole reflected that if she were to become the Grand Rabbi of the Satmar Hasidim, somehow, she still wouldn’t be Jewish enough for Marcy. The first time they had met was at a family brunch. When Nicole had referred to the lox as “smoked salmon” Marcy’s laugh devolved into a fit of coughing, which she recovered from to patronizingly explain that no self-respecting Jewish person would ever refer to lox (“It’s lox for godsakes!”) as smoked salmon (“That’s like calling a bagel a roll!” she pontificated).

“You know, I’m curious why you mentioned prostates,” Nicole said, tired of her quasi-relative’s self-righteous bullying. “Is Franklin having problems with his?”

Marcy seemed taken aback by the question. She looked around to make sure no one was listening. Several shoppers grazed passively nearby, none paying attention to the Gladstone women.

“What does that have to do with Passover?”

“You brought it up,” Nicole reminded her.

Marcy weighed whether to share anything other than her disdain with Nicole.

“He is.”

“Can he get an erection?”

If Marcy could have opened her eyes any wider, she would have, but surgery had rendered that impossible. Nicole looked around with feigned concern as if atomic secrets were being discussed. She enjoyed tweaking the prudish Marcy’s sense of decorum.

“With or without the little pill?”

“It’s not always men’s prostates, Marcy. Sometimes you have to spice things up a little.”

“Oh?”

“Jay and I made a sex tape.”

Somehow Marcy’s eyes widened. The thought that two married people, at least one of whom was Jewish, had made a sex tape was like telling her there were eleven commandments.

“No, you didn’t.”

“It was hot.”

“You videoed yourselves?”

“For Purim.”

Marcy’s mind spun into orbit. Since Purim was the holiday where Jews were encouraged by rabbis to wear costumes of the most outrageous kind, drink wine to the point of intoxication, dance in the street—behaviors Marcy would never in a million years engage in, but still—and pursue all manner of licentiousness short of having sex with other people’s spouses, perhaps Nicole was telling the truth.

“You’re not serious.”

“I was Esther and Jay was Haman.”

“Okay, you’re kidding, right?” Marcy’s eyebrows, which could still move, had nearly reached the sunglasses on her forehead. “Tell me you didn’t wear Purim costumes.”

“It’s not like we’re putting it on the Internet. What’s the problem?”

“You’re married people.”

“It’s not a sin.”

“You had sex in Purim costumes?”

“I can’t tell you everything.”

“Nicole . . . that’s sacrilegious, isn’t it?”

“Come on; it’s not like people in the Bible didn’t have a ton of sex. What do you think all that begat-begat-begat was?”

“They didn’t tape themselves.”

“Oh, touché, Marcy. You’re right about that.”

“Tell the truth. Did you make a sex tape?”

Early in their marriage she convinced Jay to make tapes of their lovemaking—the usual gymnastics as well as some light bondage that mostly involved the creative application of her pashmina collection—and in a postcoital haze watch them on her laptop. After they viewed the images (which did not include Purim costumes), the couple laughed with a freedom more satisfying than the actual sex. Jay always made sure she erased them promptly, but Nicole was not going to report any of this to Marcy.

“You two should think about it,” Nicole said.

“Making a tape?”

“Ask your rabbi.”

“I should ask Rabbi Nachman for permission to make a sex tape with Franklin?” Marcy hooted. “Have you met Franklin?”

“Maybe he’d be into it,” Nicole said. “You’d probably feel better about yourself.”

“I feel fine about myself.”

“Then don’t do anything.”

Nicole bared her teeth in what a passerby would swear was a smile. To deal with someone like Marcy, it’s sometimes necessary to move from a stance of receptivity to one of artfully couched aggression. Having done that, Nicole was now ready to finish the shopping.

“I’ll see you at the Seder,” she said, and triumphantly thrust her cart down the aisle.

  Chapter Twenty

  In the gray dawn light that filtered through the windows of the Crush It health club, a caffeinated Christine Lupo pumped iron in the company of other early risers. She intended to transform her pastry-craving middle-aged body into the kind of smoothly humming machine that could better withstand the rigors of a political campaign. To this end, she rolled out of bed each day at five-thirty, was picked up by Sean Purcell (more than happy to book the additional overtime), and was driven to the gym where she stretched, jogged on a treadmill, and lifted weights for an hour.

As the perspiring district attorney worked out, her uneasy consciousness invariably wandered to the guilt she felt over her divorce, although why she felt guilty mystified her since the whole thing was Dominic’s fault. Together they had told the kids, and neither had taken it well. Dominic Jr. stared at the floor and, when his sister’s crying jag subsided, asked if he could live with his father. Dominic Sr., to his credit, said that would not be possible. The scene played on an endless loop in her head, and she had to concentrate to think clearly and consistently about her nascent campaign and the duties of her current office.

Through the murk and mist of her professional quandaries (staffing, budgets, trials), the one that kept surfacing and submerging then surfacing again like a mutant swamp goblin was the question of whether or not to convene a grand jury in the shooting of the unarmed civilian John Eagle by Police Officer Russell Plesko.

The shooting had predictably generated a great deal of local media attention, but after an initial press conference (carried by all the local network affiliates), Christine had kept a low profile. How she proceeded would have ramifications for her political career and, while it was important to serve justice, she was intent on handling the situation in a way that would redound to her benefit. But the more she pondered her options, the knottier the problem seemed. To not convene a grand jury would send the message that she was insensitive to the needs of the community. Arrange for one and the police would hate her. Somehow, she believed Obama was responsible for the position she was in.

  Rain threatened as the district attorney walked from the parking lot to her office accompanied by her vigilant driver, Sean. She noticed a bus from the County Department of Corrections parked at the side of the building. A daisy chain of shackled prisoners plodded into a side entrance supervised by several armed guards. Christine stopped and watched this motley array of pimps, drug dealers, armed robbers, check kiters, serial shoplifters, deadbeat dads, and sex offenders as they shuffled into the building and imagined Russell Plesko in their ragged midst. The easiest choice would be to bring the case to a grand jury. The DA could control the entire process, and she would never have to see the unlucky officer in one of her courtrooms. But things did not always go as planned. There was a slim possibility, however remote that the grand jury would recommend an indictment and then she would be—

This thought was disrupted when she observed one of the prisoners, a hulking white man in his thirties, glaring at her. She met his rage-filled eyes.

“HEY LUPO, FUUUUCCCKKK YOOOOUUURR AAASSSS!!!”

The man’s voice resonated against the building and into the trees. Most prisoners had no idea who the district attorney was, saved their fury for the judges, and rarely expressed it out loud. This criminal was obviously someone who watched local television. A breach of decorum that involved verbal abuse was highly unusual. Visibly provoked by the prisoner’s insolence, Sean asked if she would like him to talk to the guards. She motioned for him not to move and waited for the officers to take control. When the procession continued to snake into the building the district attorney lowered her voice an octave and commanded:

“HALT!”

The guards and prisoners ceased moving because they were accustomed to following orders.

Christine marched over to the prisoners, heels sparking off the pavement.

“Guard!” she barked at the one nearest her, a crew-cut young white guy shaped like a fire hydrant. “What’s your name?”

“Officer Kimble,” he said in a voice suddenly flush with authority. He seemed to know who she was.

“What’s the name of the prisoner who shouted that obscenity at me, Kimble?”

Kimble looked up and down the hapless row. Some stared at nothing, submitting meekly to their fate, others eyed the DA with a mixture of fear and contempt.

“Dunno,” he admitted. There were fifteen inmates in this human bracelet of unlucky charms. “Could’ve been any of them.”

It was rare that Christine made a move not knowing where it would lead. But now she stood in front of the prisoners unsure what to say. To turn and walk away was not an option. She had chosen to confront the loudmouth who had yelled the insult, and so she approached him. The man gathered over her like a storm. There were several murky tattoos on his neck. He sucked on large teeth. If he was intimidated by the presence of the district attorney his behavior did not reflect it. All eyes were on them.

“The reason you’re locked up,” she began, “is that you think the laws don’t apply to you.” Her tone was merciless. “Because of the way you choose to act, you’ll be in front of a judge today. I’ll find that judge’s name. The judge is going to know what you said to me, and he or she will enter it on your record. I’m not going to ask you to apologize because if you had the brains to do that, you probably wouldn’t be here today.” The prisoner regarded her from his lofty height with what looked to Christine like indifference. She wondered if he would seize this chance to clean up his mess. He did not. “Enjoy your day,” she said.

When the DA walked away, she repressed the urge to stick her middle finger over her shoulder and flip off the whole group, including the guards. Sean Purcell increased the length of his strides to keep up with her.

In the office, she pulled up the day’s docket on her computer and quickly determined the name of the belligerent prisoner, then dashed off an email to the trial judge reporting what had just occurred. A nerve-jangling telephone conversation with her divorce lawyer took up most of the next hour. There were meetings until lunch, which she ate at her desk while reviewing the various prosecutors’ reports on trials currently underway. When she found herself reading the same document for the third time, it occurred to her that the decision regarding the Plesko situation was having a greater effect on her ability to concentrate than she had realized. Why was the decision to convene a grand jury proving such a challenge? Had the bombastic O’Rourke, the head of the police union, intimidated her? That couldn’t be possible. She had faced him down, put him in his place, just like she did that obstreperous prisoner earlier in the day. What, then? She told her assistant Kelly to find Lou Pagano.

Ten minutes later he was seated on her office couch, drinking a can of diet soda.

“No grand jury,” he said. “What good could come of it?”

“It would be unusual.”

“I talked to the witnesses myself, Christine. They all said the same thing. I saw the video the maintenance guy took with his phone. It’s a terrible thing that happened, but the cop shot a mentally ill individual who was attacking him. Plesko is clean. He had rotten luck. And I’ll tell you something else—he’s a nice kid, married with a baby, spotless department record, youth league coach. In this environment, you and I both know what can happen, and if it goes in front of a Bronx jury—“

“Why would we get a Bronx jury in White Plains?” Pagano snorted. He recognized her message. She knew what Bronx jury meant.

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“So give the cops exactly what they want,” she said.

“Police violence is a problem, but this is the wrong defendant,” Pagano said. He drained his soda and crumpled the can. “This guy goes to trial, anything can happen, and if he winds up in jail, I’m not gonna sleep well for a while.”

Elbows on her desk, Christine made a steeple with her hands and inserted her face. The DA would have more challenging problems than this when she became governor.

“I don’t see how we can avoid a grand jury.”

  Late that afternoon the district attorney looked up from a trial report she was notating to see the jittery Kelly.

“That imam?” Kelly said, “He’s back.” Her tone was apologetic as if Ibrahim Muhammad’s presence was her fault.

“What do you mean, he’s back? In the office?”

“No, out front. With some friends.”

Christine rose from her chair, crossed to the window, and looked toward the plaza in front of the building. Seventeen stories below, the imam, situated behind a police barricade, led a group of protestors, several of whom held signs she could not make out. A group of police officers observed them from a distance.

“They have a right to be there if that’s what they want.”

“Should I have Sean bring the car around the back of the building?”

“I’m not scared of them,” the DA said.

Against her better judgment, she took a call from her husband, who let her know that he had no intention of taking a beating in the division of their assets. As his agitation intensified and became personal (Him: “Why are you being such a bitch?”), she resisted the urge to return fire (Her: “I only said you’ll regret your behavior.”), but her lack of aggressive pushback only seemed to embolden Dominic Lupo who, by his account, anticipated being subjected to a brand of torment not meted out since the Spanish Inquisition. By the time she hung up on him, the window in which she could accomplish anything having to do with her actual job had slammed shut. She locked her office door and for five minutes sat in her chair and stared at the framed picture of her children that she kept on her desk. Somehow, the district attorney managed not to weep.

Forty-five minutes later, briefcase packed with work, Christine Lupo left the building with Sean at her side and headed across the plaza toward the parking lot. Government employees moved through the twilight in groups of twos and threes toward their cars. All of them were ignoring Imam Ibrahim Muhammad and his band of demonstrators, who stood quietly holding signs that said INDICT PLESKO, JUSTICE FOR JOHN, and ALLAH WILL JUDGE. A mixture of men and women, black and white, some in Muslim garb others in street clothes, stood on the sidewalk at the edge of the plaza and Christine had to walk past them to access the parking lot. Unafraid of the sidewalk foot soldiers or the judgment of their god, she set her shoulders, quickened her step, and nodded to the police officers. They saluted her.

When the protesters recognized the district attorney, the whole scene sprang to life and Ibrahim Muhammad shouted into a bullhorn, “What do we want?” His enthusiastic flock yelled back, “Justice for John!” “When do we want it?” Muhammad loudly asked. The reply: “Now!”

One of the police officers, an imposing black woman, detached from the group of cops and appeared at the DA’s side. Her nameplate read “Malone.”

“I’m going to walk you to your car if you don’t mind, m’am,” said Officer Malone.

“I got this, Officer,” Sean informed the cop.

Christine told Sean to let the policewoman do her job, and the three of them continued past the chanting protesters, across the street, and into the parking lot where the DA thanked the officer again. Sean held the door open and the DA climbed into the town car.

As Sean backed out of the parking space, turned the wheel, and made for the exit, her mind strayed back to the upsetting conversation with her husband, and it took her a moment to realize that a wedge of activists had broken from the group and swarmed across the street toward her car. Police officers sprinted from the plaza to chase them down.

She watched with increasing concern as Sean calculated whether he had enough time to floor the gas pedal and, with a hard twist of the steering wheel, skirt the protesters and get away before anything could happen or whether he was going to be forced, by the presence of human beings in front of the vehicle, to come to a complete stop. Instead, he did neither, and while two young protesters, a white man and a black woman, threw themselves in front of the car, Sean let the vehicle roll forward. The white man jumped out of the way, but the black woman did not move quickly enough. She lost her footing and the car knocked her to the ground. Sean jammed the brakes as the cops corralled the unruly mob.

The DA jumped out of the car and kneeled by the woman. Several demonstrators surrounded the victim, including Imam Ibrahim Muhammad. Sean stood at his boss’s side, alert and prepared to deflect anything incoming.

To Christine’s immense relief, the woman did not appear to be badly hurt or hurt at all. Putting the humanitarian concern aside, running over a pedestrian was not the best way to kick off a political campaign. Christine asked the woman if she was all right.

“I think so.”

“What’s your name?”

“Tamika Crawford.”

Christine noticed her left leg had begun to shake. She made an effort to control the timbre of her voice.

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Crawford.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Sean said, teeth clenched.

Ibrahim Muhammad asked if she wanted an ambulance and Tamika Crawford said no, I didn’t hit my head, so let’s just get on with it. She climbed to her feet, brushed her jeans off, and trained her gaze on the DA. Christine noticed the woman had unusually long eyelashes.

“You need to serve justice,” Tamika said.

“You sure you’re okay?” Officer Malone asked the protester, who was examining a scrape on her elbow.

“I think so,” she said.

“Then you’re under arrest,” Malone said, brandishing handcuffs.

This turn came as a surprise to Tamika and she looked at the DA, who understood that an escalation would not be helpful.

“Let’s forget it,” Christine said to Officer Malone. “Just let her go.”

While this was going on several security guards poured out of the building and with their assistance the police detail herded the protesters back across the street.

It occurred to Christine, while the event unfolded, that this would be an extraordinary moment to announce that she was convening a grand jury in the Russell Plesko case. The drama would leap out of news accounts, and cement her reputation as a woman of both compassion and principle. Instead, she wished Tamika Crawford well, expressed her gratitude to the police, and asked Sean to take her to the Parkway Diner. She was meeting with a political consultant and did not want any county officials who frequented the usual watering holes to see her.

  When he was in high school and wanted to drink somewhere the management didn’t check IDs, Russell Plesko and his friends went to the Fenian in Port Chester. A brackish dive near the train station with a jukebox and cheap drinks, most nights back then it was packed with high school athletes. Russell lettered in three sports, and he and his teammates were regulars. They drank tequila sunrises, ate beer nuts or pickled eggs, then drove back to their family homes careful to go just under the speed limit. He went less regularly now but could usually count on seeing a friendly face. In the early evening on this weeknight, he sat alone at the bar sipping his second beer. A couple of dull-faced commuters nursed restorative cocktails nearby.

The bartender approached him, wiping a glass. A robust woman in her sixties with an unlit cigarette dangling from thin lips, Mrs. Costello was married to the owner. Russell had known her since he was sixteen and he had never called her anything other than Mrs. Costello.

“How are you doing, Russell?” Her voice held a lifetime of Virginia Slims. “You want another beer?”

“No, thanks, Mrs. Costello.”

He wasn’t in a chatty mood, but Mrs. Costello didn’t move.

“You know the bar sponsors a Little League team, right?”

“Sure, I know.”

“Ralphie Bonfiglia’s the coach and his company is transferring him to Boston for a few months.”

“Yeah, so?”

“You coach basketball, don’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you want to coach the Little League team until Ralphie comes back?”

The offer flabbergasted Russell. Given the state of limbo he currently occupied, the idea of making plans was something he had not considered.

“Are all the parents on board?”

Russell and Mrs. Costello had avoided any talk about his situation. She had not brought it up, and Russell did not volunteer information.

“Don’t worry about the parents. Mr. Costello likes you, he’ll talk to anyone who’s got a problem.”

“And Ralphie’s okay with this?”

She told him not to worry about it, everyone would be grateful. Russell had trouble envisioning any return to routine existence, but this gesture showed him he could be accepted back into society despite what he had done. He rubbed his knee, the one that had buckled on him that awful morning. It was still sore.

“All right, then yes.”

She nodded and went to check on the customers down the bar.

Russell thought his interview with Lou Pagano of the Westchester County District Attorney’s office had gone well. The encounter had been friendly, and Russell told his story from every possible angle. He liked Pagano who did not seem to have a bad attitude about cops but came away from the meeting not sure how it would work out.

Since the shooting, his days had taken on a strange texture. The White Plains Police Department had placed him on administrative leave and confiscated his firearm. He and his wife fought constantly, and their bickering caused the baby to cry incessantly. Reporters waited for him outside his apartment building. Circumstances led him to the house of his brother, a Yonkers firefighter with a wife and three kids. He had spent the last several nights on a pullout couch in the finished basement. It was not an ideal arrangement. There, he would thrash for hours, unable to sleep. In the morning, he would put on sunglasses and pull a trucker cap low over his eyes before he left for the day. He worked out at a local gym during off hours when he would be less likely to run into anyone he knew. He took his laptop to the library where he read the news in a quiet corner. His friends on the police force called but he parried their invitations to grab lunch or drinks. He prepared himself for the worst. Mrs. Costello’s offer of a coaching opportunity was like seeing an angel slide.

  That morning he had met with his attorney for the second time, a meeting he had requested. Joan Abelson was a lawyer at Rose, Gardener & Seligman in downtown White Plains. Her manner was as brisk as her wardrobe, which consisted of a tailored gray pantsuit and a white blouse. Blond hair cut short, two gold studs in her left ear. Russell sat across from her in a sports coat and khakis, cap on his lap. The lawyer sipped a large mug of chai tea. Russell found the scent relaxing.

“How have you been doing?”

“Been better,” he said.

He realized that his leg was bouncing and stopped it. He did not want the lawyer to think he was nervous. She waited for him to talk but Russell was not sure exactly what to say. He knew he needed to ask a question before she told him she had work to do and would call when there was news.

“How long does it usually take before the DA’s office says whether it’s going to put a grand jury on a case?” He hoped that his edginess was not painfully obvious. At least his voice was forceful.

“As I told you when we met the other day, it varies.”

“Is my situation taking longer than usual?”

“If the DA were to make an announcement today, that would fall somewhere into the average length of time. She’s not taking too long.”

““I’ve been reading about grand juries.”

“And what have you learned?”

“They can be unpredictable,” Russell said. He pinched the brim of his cap, now resting on his thigh.

“That’s true.”

“It’s impossible to tell how this is going to play out?”

“Russell, look, as I said, this is a serious case that will have ripples far beyond you and your situation. It would be highly unusual for the district attorney not to convene a grand jury. I can pretty much guarantee it, in fact. But that doesn’t mean you have to start worrying yet. If the case goes to trial, you’ve got a better-than-average chance of beating the charges. Your record is exemplary, you’re active in youth sports. It was a bad situation.”

“The fucking worst,” he said. “Excuse my language.”

The attorney nodded supportively. He appreciated that she seemed to be listening to him and was sensitive to his distress. Russell wished he could stop worrying. Joan Abelson certainly seemed untroubled by it. He admired the dispassion lawyers brought to their work. Studying law interested him. If he were allowed to return to his job, perhaps he’d ask to be assigned to the DA’s office. The department certainly was not going to put him back on the street anytime soon.

“If the case goes to trial, and I’m not saying it will, we’ll get you a sympathetic jury, and I’m going tell them your story.”

  The door to the bar opened, and Russell heard the men before he saw them. Two black guys. He tensed. They were talking about a school board meeting that had occurred the previous evening. The men, who appeared to be around forty, sat in a booth and ordered drinks. Although people stared at him in public, and some probably judged him harshly, no stranger had spoken to him since the incident. The media had not widely circulated his picture, but he had assumed people would know his identity. That this did not appear to be the case astonished him. Still, Russell was sensitive to the presence of African-Americans, who, he believed, would take a particularly harsh view of what had happened. He glanced at the men and was pleased to see they remained indifferent to his presence.

Russell was not a regular churchgoer but he believed in God, and this put him in a knotty position. In his view, he had not sinned. And yet now a man was dead, and this death was on him. He had caused it. That was horrible but what else could he have done? His life had been in danger. John Eagle could have grabbed his gun. Whether or not he was at fault, the remorse at having taken a life weighed on him. Russell Plesko lived by the words “peace officer.” It was the first time he had drawn his weapon on the job.

He took another sip of his beer and peered around the bar. Since he was young, he had wanted to be a cop. He had barely finished college not because he couldn’t do the work, but because he wasn’t suited for sitting in a classroom. Russell loved being on the force. It allowed him to interact with new people each day and he enjoyed the respect they showed him. White Plains was a mostly middle-class city, and despite pockets of poverty, it was not a bad place to be in law enforcement. He had planned to work for twenty years then pension out, buy a weekend cabin upstate, spend time in the woods with his family. Now all of it was in jeopardy.

He glanced at the black men. They were still engrossed in conversation. Down the bar, one of the commuters ordered a refill. Russell tossed a couple of bills on the bar, waved to Mrs. Costello, and walked out.

It was early evening and the air had chilled. The sun was low in the sky when he walked into the Fenian. Now traces of purple lingered on the horizon, and he could see the moon rising over downtown Port Chester. Russell had parked around the corner. Turning up the collar of his jacket, he wished he could call Christine Lupo. He needed to know what was going to happen.

It was evident something was wrong when he turned on to the side street where his car was parked. The streetlight lit the windshield of Russell’s five-year-old gray Honda Civic unevenly. The illumination reflected in intricate patterns on both lateral extremes, but the middle was bashed clean through and swallowed the glow like a dead star.

  Christine regarded her dinner companion across the table at the Parkway Diner. Bruce Lathrop was a husky man with a shaved head and stubbly face, the combination of which lent him a menacing aspect that he undercut with an open, easy-going manner. He wore jeans and a sports coat. The two of them were in a booth, and spoke quietly so as not to be overheard. They were expecting someone else to join them.

As the ambitious politico picked at her salad, the consultant revealed that the initial polling she had commissioned exposed an unfortunate truth: Her name recognition was not as high as either of them had hoped.

“All the drug dealers you lock up, the wife beaters—our research shows that, at least outside of Westchester County, no one cares.”

He chewed thoughtfully on a piece of turkey bacon and let this unappetizing reality sink in. Despite the hour, Lathrop had ordered breakfast.

“What about all the times I’ve been on television?”

“The TV has mostly been local, so some people in the city know you, but upstate, no one.” He saw her reaction to this, a barely perceptible downturn of her coral lips, and said, “Hey, you’re not paying me to sugarcoat it, right? But look, since you’ve been in office, you haven’t had a genuinely sexy case.”

“I was on TV for an entire month when we put away the doctor who killed his wife’s boyfriend. CNN did that story on the nightly news.”

“Joe Blow in Buffalo? He doesn’t care,” Lathrop explained. “You can’t take it personally.”

The district attorney forked a juiceless piece of tomato into her mouth and chewed but did not notice the lack of taste. She took her entire situation personally. The lucrative career in the private sector she had passed up to work twelve hour days for a government salary, dealing with armed criminals, rapists, murderers; her conviction rate was the envy of her colleagues across the country, and yet she remained a nonentity to the public? It was maddening.

“And we convicted the doctor on evidence that was circumstantial,” she reminded the bullet-headed operative.

“Which was impressive, don’t get me wrong,” he said, awarding her the booby prize of his approbation. “But locking up that guy doesn’t make people look at you and think”—here he paused for effect, then said in a stentorian tone—“Governor Lupo.”

Christine examined the combination of greenery in her bowl as if the configuration in which the chef arranged it contained a code that, when cracked, might offer a solution to this riddle. It ate at her that despite the high level at which she discharged her duties, brought indictments, and put criminals behind bars, she found herself barely better known than some state senator from Poughkeepsie.

Then came the consultant’s proposal: “But if there was a case that was the right kind of high-profile—” He didn’t need to finish the thought.

“You think I should indict the cop who killed the civilian?”

“Not for political reasons, that’s for sure.” He tore a piece of wheat toast, dipped it in a pool of egg yolk, placed it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “But it would be a publicity bonanza.”

“People already say I’m too in love with the cameras.”

“You can’t be successful in this business if you hang back,” he pointed out. “All this racial stuff going on now with the cops, no one’s taking them on.”

“You know what happens when you antagonize the police?”

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a gamble, but when you take a hard look at your profile, you might want to think about it.”

“Even if I were inclined to do that, this looks like the wrong defendant. My deputy personally interviewed all of the witnesses. He believes the officer was justified in his use of force.”

“What’s the cop’s name, Plesko, right?” The DA confirmed this. She could see the computer in Lathrop’s head sort files and bring up a document. “I think that’s a Hungarian name, probably Catholic, which falls under the heading of white European. He’s not from some ethnic group that’s going to rally to his defense.”

“You forget the cops,” she reminded him. “They’re a group. I hosted a delegation of them in my office to discuss this, and I can tell you, they’ll be upset.”

“They’re always upset. And by the way, I’m not advocating either position, just thinking out loud.”

“I’m not going to indict that guy to get traction in an election.”

Bruce Lathrop held his hands up, palms facing across the booth, stop right there.

“Hey, I would never suggest anything so cynical,” he assured her. “Look, you want to be elected governor, you need to win the city. You want to spend your time running around upstate putting the Schenectady-Albany-Troy equation together, be my guest, but that’s not how you get elected governor. New York City is a union town. You gotta make inroads down there. On the one hand, if you want to look at this thing through the self-interest prism, you’re better off not bringing the case to a grand jury.”

“But if I do, then it would look like I had balls.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “Frankly, I think voters prefer balls to integrity.”

“New York is full of liberals who might be pro-union, but they’re not particularly pro-police, and it would look like I had more integrity if I did, right? And balls.”

“Look at what happened when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers,” Lathrop said, wistful at the memory of the routed labor movement. “It was like Washington crossing the Delaware. Balls and integrity in a single package.”

“Not that I would ever think that way,” the DA said.

“So, you have a conundrum.”

“That’s your brilliant insight?”

“Hey, don’t kill the messenger,” he said.

That her frustration had revealed itself further frustrated the DA. It wasn’t Bruce Lathrop’s fault that she was in this position. Was the harsh tone she had just used misdirected anger she felt toward her husband? It was her suspicion that if she were not going through a divorce at this highly inconvenient time, her thinking around the police shooting would have greater clarity. Her inability to come to a decision was something that she would be happy to lay at her husband’s feet if that were not a sign of mental weakness. But it was. She offered her apologies for snapping at Lathrop. Accustomed to far worse from egotistical, narcissistic politicians, he told her not to worry about it.

Outside the window, a black limousine glided into the parking lot and pulled up to the restaurant door. A substantial man in a business suit emerged from the backseat and Christine instantly recognized him. He hustled into the diner and seconds later was hovering over their table. He smiled ingratiatingly at the DA and introduced himself to Lathrop.

“Sorry I’m late,” Franklin Gladstone said. The consultant moved over, and the new arrival slid in beside him. He looked at Lathrop’s plate. “Who eats breakfast at night? This guy’s nuts!” Franklin delivered the words like a punchline, but since they were not funny, he only received forced smiles in response.

The waitress arrived and asked Franklin if he’d like to order something, but he waved her away. The three of them exchanged pleasantries, then Franklin declared the preliminaries over and requested that they discuss the reason he’d driven up to White Plains. Christine admired Franklin’s no-nonsense style as it reflected her own. He was someone who “got things done” and was acquainted with a great many potential donors, two qualities she prized. She walked Franklin through her money-raising operation, how much the campaign had already, and what her projected needs were between now and the election. Franklin listened intently, nodding as she enumerated the challenges of putting a donor network together. Having illuminated the financials, the district attorney asked if there were any particular policy issues he wanted to discuss.

“I’ve already vetted you on policy,” he said.

“I need to know you’re comfortable,” Christine said.

“I can tell you I’m nearly always the smartest person in the room,” the hereditary kingpin assured them. “I assess situations quickly based on the data my people put in front of me. I don’t like it, I’m out, but if I like it—”

“You’re in,” Bruce said.

“This guy’s a genius,” Franklin said.

Christine smiled, pleased by Franklin’s enthusiasm. He was a force she could harness. “Do you think you’d like to be a bundler?”

“It would be an honor to encourage my friends to violate campaign finance laws on your behalf.” The DA and the consultant stared at Franklin. When he said, “I’m joking!” the pair laughed like it was professional comedy.

The check came, and Christine grabbed it, but while she was digging into her wallet, Franklin picked it up. “It’s a thing I like to do,” he said. “Indulge me.”

In the parking lot, Franklin asked Lathrop if he might have a private word with the district attorney. Deferring to the donor, the consultant shuffled to his Prius.

“My wife and I would like to host a fundraiser for you at our home.”

Christine’s eyes melted. Franklin Gladstone was the whale she had been praying for. “I would love that,” she said, deploying the word love strategically with the expectation her new patron would derive warmth from his proximity to its sound.

“Are you free for dinner next week?” Franklin asked. “I have some ideas.”

It sounded as if he were asking her on a date. She was not remotely attracted to anything about her new admirer other than the size of his investment portfolio but was nonetheless flattered.

“I think so.”

When they shook hands, Christine noticed that Franklin held hers too long. His was fleshy and slick like an eel. She had been an emotional wreck since viewing the photographic evidence of her husband’s perfidy and Franklin’s attentions had a palliative effect on her feminine ego. She stood a little taller as she walked to the car, entirely resolved to exploit her new benefactor’s remaining hormones.

¤

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2018 by Seth Greenland First Publication 2018 by Europa Editions

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

¤

Seth Greenland is the author of five novels. His latest, The Hazards of Good Fortune (Europa Editions), will be published in 2018. His play Jungle Rot won the Kennedy Center/American Express Fund For New American Plays Award and the American Theater Critics Association Award. He was a writer-producer on the Emmy-nominated HBO series Big Love.

The post The Hazards of Good Fortune, Part VIII appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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Giuliani Sought Help for Client in Meeting With Ukrainian Official

KYIV, Ukraine — When Rudolph W. Giuliani met with a top aide to Ukraine’s president last summer, he discussed the prospect of a coveted White House meeting for the president while seeking Ukraine’s commitment to certain investigations that could benefit President Trump politically.

Mr. Giuliani also threw in a request of his own: help the mayor of Kyiv keep his job.

The mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, a professional boxer turned politician and longtime friend and former client of Mr. Giuliani’s, was on the verge of being fired from his duties overseeing Kyiv’s $2 billion budget.

Firing Mr. Klitschko would have fit with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s campaign promise to fight Ukraine’s entrenched interests and allowed him to replace a political adversary with a loyalist in one of the country’s most important posts.

But despite the fact that Mr. Zelensky’s cabinet approved Mr. Klitschko’s removal, he remains there today, leaving his adversaries in the murky and lucrative world of Ukrainian municipal politics to wonder whether Mr. Trump’s personal attorney may have tipped the scales in his favor.

“The coincidence in timing between Klitschko’s meeting with Giuliani and the developments in the governance of Kyiv was striking,” said Oleksandr Tkachenko, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament whom Mr. Zelensky had been expected to nominate as Mr. Klitschko’s replacement.

Mr. Giuliani’s effort to help his friend and former client, first reported in The Washington Post, shed fresh light on the former New York mayor’s mingling of personal, business and political interests with his role as personal attorney to the president of the United States.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Giuliani acknowledged discussing Mr. Klitschko’s position in a meeting with a senior aide to Mr. Zelensky, Andriy Yermak, in Madrid on Aug. 2.

“I said, ‘I don’t know, I’m from the outside, but he seems like one of the good guys,’” Mr. Giuliani said, recalling the conversation. “‘And I’m speaking, speaking, speaking as a personal friend, not as a representative of the government or anything else.’”

In the same meeting, Mr. Giuliani discussed a possible Oval Office visit by Mr. Zelensky that the Ukrainian president had been seeking, and asked for a commitment by his government to pursue investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’, his son, and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The meeting took place at a time when Ukraine’s new president was looking to cement support from the United States, his country’s most powerful ally in the conflict against Russia, and to build a relationship with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Giuliani said that he made it clear that he was relating his personal view of Mr. Klitschko, not that of the administration. “I gave it as my opinion — not the government — and based on our personal relationships,” he said.

Mr. Yermak also acknowledged that the two discussed Mr. Klitschko’s fate.

“Giuliani asked for my opinion about Vitaliy Klitschko as a mayor,” Mr. Yermak said in a statement in response to an inquiry from The Times. “He immediately issued the disclaimer that I should not see his question as an attempt to influence me.”

Mr. Yermak said he told Mr. Giuliani that he had long known Mr. Klitschko and that he had the support of Kyiv’s citizens.

“That was the end of our conversation about Klitschko,” Mr. Yermak said. “As a result I reject any speculation that Mr. Giuliani in any way sought to influence my opinion or to make me accept some narrative regarding Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko.”

Given the complex and opaque nature of Ukrainian politics, it is not clear whether Mr. Giuliani’s intervention was the decisive force allowing the mayor to keep his job.

But it is clear that he tried.

Mr. Klitschko, a former heavyweight world boxing champion, first hired Mr. Giuliani as a consultant for his unsuccessful run for mayor of Kyiv in 2008.

Since 2014, Mr. Klitschko has held dual roles: both the largely ceremonial, elected position of Kyiv mayor and the powerful position of head of Kyiv’s city-state administration, an appointment made by the Ukrainian president. The latter position gives him oversight of matters such as the city budget, building permits and transportation funds, making him one of the most powerful people in the country.

Mr. Klitschko supported Mr. Zelensky’s opponent, the incumbent Petro O. Poroshenko, in last spring’s presidential election in Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky’s landslide victory appeared to augur Mr. Klitschko’s political demise.

Mr. Zelensky, a comedian, had frequently lampooned Mr. Klitschko on his Saturday Night Live-style variety show, portraying him as a dunderheaded member of Ukraine’s shadowy, corrupt elite. In one skit, Mr. Zelensky played a translator to a boxing-belt-wearing Mr. Klitschko, who is unable to string together an intelligible sentence.

After taking power in May, Mr. Zelensky had no way to remove Mr. Klitschko as mayor but could strip him of the more influential post as head of the Kyiv administration. Ukrainian politicians and analysts expected him to do so.

A confidante of Mr. Klitschko’s, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was concerned about harm to his business if he spoke publicly, said that by the end of July, “it was clear that only outside interference, say the president of the United States or anyone on his behalf,” could save Mr. Klitschko from dismissal. As the power struggle escalated, Mr. Klitschko flew to New York to meet with Mr. Giuliani.

On July 30, in an apparent prelude to the dismissal, Mr. Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan, called a news conference and accused Mr. Klitschko of allowing corruption to flourish in Kyiv. Without offering evidence, Mr. Bohdan said he had been offered a $20 million bribe for Mr. Klitschko to remain head of the Kyiv administration.

The next day, Mr. Klitschko posted photographs on Facebook of his meeting with Mr. Giuliani, his “old friend and one of the most authoritative mayors in the world.” The two discussed “the situation in Ukraine,” he said, “future cooperation between the United States and Ukraine,” and the topic of “local self-rule” — an apparent reference to Mr. Klitschko’s battle to hold on to power at home.

Upon returning to Kyiv, Mr. Klitschko told his aides that his American allies would help him keep his job, according to several people who heard him make the comments in staff meetings and who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are still involved in municipal politics and were afraid to be identified when discussing issues related to Mr. Klitschko.

“That’s ridiculous,” Mr. Klitschko said in a statement on Friday. Asked about the meeting with Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Klitschko said, “I did not ask anyone for any assistance.”

Mr. Klitschko said he had never had a business relationship with Mr. Giuliani, a claim contradicted by Mr. Giuliani, who consulted for the former boxer’s 2008 campaign. Mr. Giuliani said that he had not formally represented Mr. Klitschko in years, “even though I still advise him.”

But two days later, Mr. Giuliani was speaking about Mr. Klitschko to Mr. Yermak in Madrid.

On Sept. 4, Mr. Zelensky’s cabinet approved the dismissal of Mr. Klitschko as head of the Kyiv administration.

But on Sept. 6, Mr. Giuliani fired off a tweet: “Reducing the power of Mayor Klitschko of Kiev was a very bad sign particularly based on the advice of an aide to the President of Ukraine who has the reputation of being a fixer. The former champion is very much admired and respected in the US.”

The tweet came as Mr. Zelensky was scrambling to stabilize his relationship with Mr. Trump after finding out that American military aid to Kyiv had been halted for unexplained reasons.

The last step needed to make the dismissal official was Mr. Zelensky’s signature on the dismissal — a formality, it seemed, since it was Mr. Zelensky’s office that had sought approval for the firing in the first place.

But the signature never came.

Asked by reporters in October, Mr. Zelensky said that he was still thinking about whether or not to sign.

“When a controversial issue arises, he tries to balance various interests,” a Kyiv political analyst, Volodymyr Fesenko, said of Mr. Zelensky’s unexpected reprieve. “He decided not to make a sudden move.”

Aside from any influence Mr. Giuliani may have had, Mr. Fesenko points to a power struggle within different factions in Mr. Zelensky’s administration as another factor, along with Mr. Zelensky’s own dwindling political capital amid intense criticism from domestic political opponents that he was too soft on Russia.

Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Klitschko declined to comment on the Madrid meeting between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Yermak, or on why Mr. Zelensky decided to keep him in office. He described Mr. Giuliani as “a big friend of Ukraine and one of the most successful mayors of the world.”

Mr. Giuliani himself became a fraught figure in Ukraine as the impeachment investigation unfolded on Capitol Hill.

“Starting in late September, the Giuliani issue became very toxic,” Mr. Fesenko said. “It seemed Klitschko’s team stopped pushing the relationship with Giuliani.”

Ronen Bergman and Anton Troianovski reported from Kyiv, and Kenneth P. Vogel from Washington.

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[bountyofbeads]

How two Soviet-born emigres made it into elite Trump circles — and the center of the impeachment storm (Trump: I hire only the best mafia people... Trump International Hotel is the definition of the swamp)

By Rosalind S. Helderman, Josh Dawsey, Paul Sonne and Tom Hamburger Published October 12 at 7:03 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 13, 2019 10:30 AM ET |

Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-born emigre, appeared at a dark time in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Less than a month before the election, major GOP donors had been spooked by the revelation that Trump boasted about grabbing women during a recording of the television show “Access Hollywood.”

Parnas had never been a player in national Republican politics. But the onetime stockbroker chose that moment to deliver a $50,000 donation to Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party, and it quickly opened doors.

The contribution helped propel Parnas and his business partner, Belarus-born Igor Fruman, on an extraordinarily rapid rise into the upper echelon of Trump allies — before they became central figures in the presidential impeachment inquiry.

By spring 2018, the two men had dined with Trump, breakfasted with his son and attended exclusive events at Mar-a-Lago and the White House, all while jetting around the world and spending lavishly, particularly at Trump hotels in New York and Washington. That May, a pro-Trump super PAC reported receiving a $325,000 donation from an energy company the duo had recently formed. 

Where Parnas and Fruman got their money remains a mystery. When they were arrested Wednesday on charges of campaign finance violations, prosecutors alleged that Parnas and Fruman were backed in part by an unnamed Russian national who used them to funnel donations to state and federal candidates.

This summer, Parnas had begun working as a translator for the legal team of Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian gas tycoon who faces bribery charges in the United States, according to Victoria Toensing, one of Firtash’s lawyers. The energy magnate has been accused by federal prosecutors of having ties to Russian organized crime and has been fighting extradition to the United States from Austria. Firtash has denied wrongdoing.

As they scaled the ranks of Trump’s Washington, Parnas and Fruman demonstrated a remarkable facility for capitalizing on their newfound connections, according to people who observed them. They also appeared to be constantly in pursuit of new business ventures — “always hustling,” in the words of one Trump ally who interacted with them.

In 2018, they hired the president’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to serve as a consultant as they launched a security business — and then helped Giuliani, in turn, reach Ukrainian officials in his quest to find information damaging to Democrats.

During a visit to Israel last summer sponsored by a pro-Israel charity, Parnas and Fruman were “mega-dropping Rudy’s name” as they snapped photos with well-known figures, according to former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who was also on the trip.

“ ‘We’re best friends with Rudy Giuliani,’ ” Scaramucci said the two men told him. “ ‘We work with him on everything.’ ”

Giuliani’s ties to the duo are now under scrutiny by both federal prosecutors and congressional investigators seeking to unravel how two businessmen trailed by creditors and failed past ventures came to be at the center of an expanding international drama.

Giuliani has denied knowledge of any wrongdoing. He said Friday that he had seen the two men “quite often.”

“I have no reason to believe that they are anything other than decent guys,” he said.

Parnas and Fruman, who made a brief court appearance Thursday in Alexandria, have not entered a plea to the charges against them. 

Their new lawyer, John Dowd — who also previously served as a personal attorney for Trump — declined to respond to a number of questions about the two men, writing only in an email, “You publish at your peril.”

ELITE TRUMP CIRCLES

Parnas, 47, was born in Ukraine but moved with his family to the United States as a child and grew up in Brooklyn. He told The Washington Post in an interview conducted before his arrest that he got his start in real estate, selling Trump condos for Donald Trump’s father, Fred, then worked in shipping in the former Soviet Union before becoming a securities trader. He moved to Florida in the mid-1990s.

People who encountered the two men in recent years said that Parnas did most of the talking and seemed to be the public face of their U.S. partnership. But Parnas told The Post that Fruman was the one with especially deep connections in Ukraine.

Born in Belarus, Fruman, 53, owns a luxury jewelry business, a luxury car dealership and a hotel in Odessa, the port city on the Black Sea. He also owns an ­import-export business based in New York.

Both men have been trailed by financial problems, including a lawsuit filed against them earlier this year claiming they had failed to repay a $100,000 loan in 2018. The suit has been settled. 

Parnas told The Post that he got involved in the Trump campaign because he admired the real estate developer, whom he said he had met several times before the election.

“I was really passionate about the president,” he said. “I started really believing that he could really make a change and make it happen. Then I jumped on the campaign, donated money and became a really big believer.”

Now, Parnas said, “I think he’s going to go down as one of the greatest presidents ever, even with all this negativity.”

As for Giuliani, Parnas said he had met the former New York mayor during the campaign but that the relationship “bonded and built over time.”

“We’re just very close,” he said, calling Giuliani “a very good friend.”

Giuliani said Friday that he recalls first meeting Parnas and Fruman in “mid-to-late 2018” after a lawyer who is a friend referred them to him.

At the time, Giuliani said, the men were ramping up a company called Fraud Guarantee, which would use specialized software to identify possible fraud in companies.

“I know a lot about cybersecurity,” he said. “So they wanted my advice.”

Giuliani said his security consulting firm did “intense” work for the two men in 2018 and 2019, providing paid advice on how to structure their company.

Around the same time, the two men began to appear regularly at elite Trump-related events and started to track their travels on Facebook and Instagram. Their posts have now been deleted, but they were captured by BuzzFeed and other news organizations before they were taken down.

Fruman posted photos of himself at a Republican National Committee fundraiser at Trump’s estate Mar-a-Lago in March 2018. In one, he was standing in front of a Florida flag next to Trump, who offered two thumbs up for the camera. 

That May, Parnas posted photos and videos on Facebook that he wrote were taken at the White House, including one of him beaming as he stood next to the president between two American flags, giving a thumbs-up. “Thank you President Trump !!!” he wrote, adding, “incredible dinner and even better conversation.”

Ten days later, Fruman told the Brooklyn-based Russian-language publication Jewish World that the two men had been part of a group of just eight people who met privately with the president and discussed the upcoming midterm elections. Fruman said he also had discussed Ukraine-U.S. relations at the dinner.

White House officials declined to comment on the event.

Later that month, Parnas posted a photo of himself and Fruman breakfasting at the Beverly Hills Hotel Polo Lounge with Donald Trump Jr. and Tommy Hicks Jr., a close friend of the president’s son and top RNC official. “#Trump2020,” he captioned the photo. 

An attorney for Trump Jr. declined to comment. Hicks did not respond to requests for comment.

In an exchange with reporters outside the White House on Thursday, Trump said he doesn’t know Parnas and Fruman, dismissing the photos of himself with the two men.

“I don’t know those gentlemen,” Trump said. “Now, it’s possible I have a picture with them, because I have a picture with everybody. . . . I don’t know about them; I don’t know what they do. I don’t know, maybe they were clients of Rudy. You’d have to ask Rudy.”

Parnas and Fruman were also patrons of the president’s hotel.

In one five-week period between September 2018 and October 2018, the two men racked up more than $13,000 in charges at the Trump hotels in New York and Washington, according to a person familiar with their finances, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private information.

In December, they attended a White House Hanukkah party, posting a photo on social media that includes Giuliani, Trump and Vice President Pence. A White House aide said the event was attended by hundreds of people. 

The two men also began donating liberally to federal and state political committees, including a $325,000 contribution in May 2018 to the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action.

All told, the two and their energy firm contributed at least $630,000 to federal GOP candidates and PACs since 2016, campaign finance filings show.

The money also flowed to candidates in Nevada, Texas, West Virginia and Florida. Prosecutors now allege the campaign contributions were part of an illegal scheme to funnel foreign money to “buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns and the candidates’ governments,” according to the indictment.

The two men, along with two other associates, are charged with laundering money through corporate bank accounts and using straw donors to obscure the source of their funds, including illegal foreign contributions.

Kelly Sadler, a spokeswoman for America First Action, said the super PAC is placing the contribution it received in a segregated bank account “until these matters are resolved. We take our legal obligations seriously and scrupulously comply with the law.”

Jay Sekulow, an attorney for Trump, said: “As the indictment states, neither the President nor the [Trump] campaign were aware of the allegations.”

PITCHING A GAS DEAL

Over the same period that they were cultivating political ties, Parnas and Fruman were involved with a dizzying array of business pursuits. 

Apart from Fraud Guarantee, they planned to launch a recreational marijuana business in states such as Nevada with the Russian national, according to the indictment.

Parnas also received tens of thousands of dollars last year from the firm of Brian Ballard, a longtime Florida lobbyist who is close to Trump, according to a person familiar with Parnas’s finances. Another person familiar with the arrangement said Parnas was paid to refer possible clients, but none were connected to Ukraine.

In April 2018, the two men incorporated their new company, Global Energy Producers, which purportedly intended to sell liquefied natural gas. Quickly, the two began an effort to export American gas into Ukraine through Poland.

Efforts to bring more U.S. gas to Europe — particularly Ukraine, to reduce its dependence on Russian energy — have been a priority for the Trump administration.

Neither Parnas nor Fruman had any particular experience in the energy world, but at an energy conference in Houston in March, they made a pitch to Ukrainian state oil and gas giant Naftogaz.

Parnas and Fruman approached a top official at Naftogaz, Andrew Favorov, regarding their venture, according to Dale W. Perry, an American businessman close to Favorov, as well as another a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition on anonymity to describe the private conversation.

Then, in a conversation first reported by the Associated Press, Parnas and Fruman pitched their LNG business and their hope to soon see new leadership at Naftogaz that would be receptive to their proposal. They asserted that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who opposed replacing the company’s chief executive, would soon be gone.

By May, Yovanovitch had been abruptly recalled from her post on Trump’s orders.

The implication, according to the person familiar with the meeting, was that the men would help Favorov take the top job at Naftogaz and then begin selling LNG to the Ukrainian state gas conglomerate.

Favorov declined the offer, Perry said. He said the Naftogaz official, a former business partner, contacted him soon afterward and described the encounter, which Favorov told Perry made him deeply uncomfortable.

Favorov and Perry were particularly concerned by the efforts of private businessmen with personal motivations to push for the ouster of Yovanovitch, who they view as a conscientious public servant, Perry said.

“If she can be removed, then anything is possible now,” Perry said. “Where is the rule of law? Where is the stability?” Favorov could not be reached for comment.

Parnas, speaking to The Post before his arrest, said nothing ultimately came of his efforts to launch the LNG venture in Ukraine, in part because of the attention he and Fruman received for their political activities with Giuliani.

“Now everybody is scared to do business with us,” Parnas said.

BACKING GIULIANI’S EFFORTS

The campaign against Yovanovitch was embraced by Giuliani as part of his broader effort to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations into Trump’s political rivals. Parnas and Fruman assisted him in that project.

“They were helping me a lot in Ukraine,” Giuliani said Friday.

According to Parnas, he was sitting at lunch with Giuliani in late 2018 when the former New York mayor was approached by an American with information about Ukraine. On learning of Giuliani’s interest in Ukraine, Parnas said he then worked to connect Giuliani with people in Ukraine who had information he believed could assist the effort. 

“Me just being next to him, me being Russian speaking and having business there and knowing the culture and also knowing a lot of individuals and having a lot of relationships somehow just basically steamrolled into me taking an active role as a patriotic duty,” Parnas said. “And here we are now.”

Parnas has said he helped set up a call for Giuliani in January 2019 with Viktor Shokin, a former Ukrainian prosecutor who has alleged that he was fired in 2016 for investigating a company whose board included former vice president Biden’s son Hunter. Parnas said he and Fruman also connected Giuliani with Yuriy Lutsenko, who served as Ukraine’s top prosecutor until August.

“We took it upon ourselves as our patriotic duty, basically, whatever information we could get, to pass it on and to basically validate it as best as we could,” Parnas said.

[In gambit for Trump, Giuliani engaged parade of Ukrainian prosecutors]

Among other topics, Parnas has said he and Giuliani discussed Yovanovitch, who was removed from her position in May on Trump’s orders after a whisper campaign that she was disloyal to the president.

Prosecutors said Thursday that Parnas’s efforts to remove ­Yovanovitch came “at least in part at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.”

In recent months, Parnas has become even more financially entangled with Giuliani and his allies. 

In an interview, Toensing said she and her husband, attorney Joe diGenova, retained Parnas this summer to work as a translator as they represent Firtash, who has been charged in Illinois with bribing Indian officials related to mining interests in that country. He is fighting extradition to the U.S. from Austria.

Firtash, who U.S. prosecutors have alleged in court documents is an “upper-echelon” associate of Russian organized crime, has denied wrongdoing. Earlier this year, he hired Toensing and ­diGenova, who appear frequently on Fox News and are close to Giuliani.

Toensing said she was “outraged” by the Justice Department charges against her client, adding that “the Indian government has investigated” the bribery claim and filed no charges in the case. She said Firtash’s Austrian extradition case included testimony from investigators who found that he had “no ties to organized crime.”

Toensing said she met Parnas through Giuliani and tapped him “to be our translator to review documents and to help with Ukraine,” noting that “he speaks Russian and our client does not speak English.”

Parnas’s and Fruman’s myriad political and business ventures came to an abrupt halt Wednesday.

The duo had lunched that day with Giuliani at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Hours later, they were at Dulles Airport, about to board a plane to Europe, when authorities in the hallway stopped them and asked to see their passports, according to a person who saw the encounter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

Soon, the person said, about a dozen plainclothes investigators converged on the scene, and the two men were led away.

Alice Crites, Ashley Parker, Anu Narayanswamy and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.

Trump’s envoy to testify that ‘no quid pro quo’ came from Trump

By Aaron C. Davis and John Hudson | Published October 12, 2019 9:50 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 13, 2019 10:30 AM ET |

The U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, intends to tell Congress this week that the content of a text message he wrote denying a quid pro quo with Ukraine was relayed to him directly by President Trump in a phone call, according to a person familiar with his testimony.

Sondland plans to tell lawmakers he has no knowledge of whether the president was telling him the truth at that moment. “It’s only true that the president said it, not that it was the truth,” said the person familiar with Sondland’s planned testimony, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters.

The Sept. 9 exchange between Sondland and the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine has become central to the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into whether the president abused his office in pressuring Ukraine to open an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden and his son, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. The White House and its defenders have held up Sondland’s text, which included “no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” as proof that none was ever considered.

The person familiar with Sondland’s testimony said the ambassador “believed Trump at the time and on that basis passed along assurances” that Trump was not withholding military aid for political purposes.

But Sondland’s testimony will raise the possibility that Trump wasn’t truthful in his denial of a quid pro quo as well as an alternative scenario in which the president’s interest in the scheme soured at a time when his administration faced mounting scrutiny over why it was withholding about $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine and delaying a leader-level visit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Whether he’s deciding it’s getting too hot to handle and he backs off whatever his position really was a month earlier, I don’t know,” the person said of Sondland’s understanding.

Hours before Sondland called the president, he received a text message from the acting ambassador to Ukraine, William B. Taylor, raising questions about the aid holdup. “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Taylor texted Sondland.

That’s when Sondland, according to the person’s understanding, called Trump, who then told him he didn’t “want a quid pro quo . . . didn’t want anything from Ukraine.” The call lasted less than five minutes, and Trump appeared to be in a foul mood, according to the person, who spoke to The Post with Sondland’s permission, an intermediary said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Sondland declined to comment through his lawyers.

Sondland, who has emerged as a central actor in Trump’s efforts to persuade Ukraine to open investigations, will be deposed before House investigators on Thursday.

Sondland is expected to say that for months before the Sept. 9 message, he worked at the direction of Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, to secure what he would call in another text message the “deliverable” sought by Trump: a public statement from Ukraine that it would investigate corruption, including mentioning Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, by name. In exchange for the statement, the president would grant Ukraine’s new president a coveted White House audience.

“It was a quid pro quo, but not a corrupt one,” the person familiar with Sondland’s testimony said.

Sondland appears poised to say that he and other diplomats did not know that the request to mention Burisma was really an effort to impugn the reputations of Biden and his son Hunter, who had served as a Burisma board member. Sondland contends that he didn’t know about the Biden connection until a whistleblower complaint and transcript surfaced in late September.

To trust Sondland’s testimony, members of Congress will have to believe Sondland had not seen televised appearances by Giuliani over the spring and summer, or numerous newspaper and magazine articles questioning whether Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma could prove to be a drag on his father’s presidential campaign.

“If people find that incredulous, it strikes me that the incredulity is hindsight bias,” said the person familiar with Sondland’s testimony. “The things that seem so clear to people now didn’t seem so clear in real time.”

The testimony by Sondland, a Portland hotelier who gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee through four of his limited liability companies, could prove damaging to Giuliani and the president.

For months, Sondland’s deep involvement in issues related to Ukraine struck diplomats in Brussels and Washington as highly unusual, given his role as envoy to the European Union, a large trade bloc that does not include Ukraine. Former U.S. officials have said Sondland viewed the Ukraine assignment as critical to winning Trump’s favor and auditioning for a more senior job in the administration.

In Sondland’s account, he describes an assignment that begins with excitement and enthusiasm and ends with concern about how the Trump administration was pressing Ukraine, a country fending off Russian-backed separatists that relies heavily on the United States for economic and military support.

Besides working with Giuliani, Sondland also partnered with Kurt Volker, special envoy to Ukraine, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry. The three men were all part of the U.S. delegation to Zelensky’s inauguration in May and left that ceremony excited about the prospects for a vibrant new American partner in Ukraine, according to Sondland’s perspective.

The three returned to Washington intent on pressing Trump to meet quickly with Zelensky. But instead of receiving a positive reception, the idea was met with a “buzz saw” in the Oval Office, the person said. Trump was disgruntled about Ukraine, blaming opponents in the country for attempting to undermine his 2016 victory.

“Trump was saying Ukraine ‘tried to do me in,’ ” the person said. The three surmised that Giuliani had filled Trump’s head with a number of baseless conspiracy theories, including that a hacked server belonging to the Democratic National Committee was spirited away to Ukraine. Perry, Sondland and Volker each took a turn trying to move Trump to no avail. The president ended the meeting saying: “If you want to do something you have to talk to Rudy.”

Volker would take the lead in trying to iron out Giuliani’s wishes, starting a three-month exchange of messages over WhatsApp, which were released this month.

Sondland is prepared to say he had a very limited role over the summer. He did not speak directly to Giuliani until Aug. 1, the person said. And because of his job in Brussels, he “was not the central connection.”

Giuliani, in conversations with The Washington Post, has described Sondland’s role as more expansive, saying he spoke with Sondland about six times this summer about Ukraine. “He seemed to be in charge. It just seemed like he was more decisive,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani acknowledges seeking a statement in which the Ukrainians would have publicly committed to investigating Burisma, but he says Volker and Sondland drafted it, not him.

Sondland, while acknowledging a close relationship with Trump, viewed Volker as more of a presence on the Ukraine issue. “The fact that he had some relationship with Trump did not put him in the vanguard of dealing with Rudy, that was Volker,” the person said.

From May to August, Giuliani’s requests for investigations seemed odd but not overly concerning to Sondland, the person said.

“The statement that Rudy was demanding was a quid pro quo for a White House visit, there was no doubt about that. But it was about corruption, which from their perspective wasn’t particularly problematic, it’s an issue the U.S. had been dealing with there for years.”

By Sept. 9, Sondland, however, had grown increasingly concerned, as military funding for Ukraine now appeared tied to the statement as well. The person said Sondland was never briefed about Biden being part of the issue and was not aware of it until the transcript of the phone call was released. “If he had known earlier, he never would have touched this.”

Some analysts have expressed skepticism that Sondland, who spoke frequently with the president, would not have been read in on why Burisma was of interest to him.

Sondland “somehow wants all of us to believe that he is ‘shocked, shocked’ that anything he was wrapped up in was aimed at the Bidens. That beggars belief,” said Andrew Weiss, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “After all, he is a political appointee who prided himself on having direct access to Trump during this period.”

Josh Dawsey, Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe contributed to this report.