But the prank became too elaborate to be a prank any longer. He was assigned a persona strategist—an old, slightly daft retiree from MI-6. The man was prone to daydreaming, and he looked like a stock British scientist from a 1940s jungle movie, but he was a superb strategist. Commander Alfred H. Denharding left the intelligence agency in some sort of disgrace involving a lost disk of vital data.
“Those bastards claimed it came from a source in Baghdad, they did. Said I misplaced the only intelligence on actual hiding places of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.” Commander Denharding blew forcefully into his bushy mustache. “They were about to use me as their whipping boy. They wanted me to take all the blame for the mess down there! Then I found the bleedin’ disk stuck under the floor mats in my Ford. You know what was on there? Office supplies inventory for the whole MI-6! Paper clips! Notepads!”
“But they fired you anyway?” Dowzall asked.
“Couldn’t stop the process then. I was already officially discredited. Once it’s official you can’t take it back, you know. Not in intelligence circles. They wanted me to take a job in organization supply. They said, “You’re so bleedin’ good with ballpoint pens, you can just be in charge of ballpoint pens for the whole agency.’ I told them to bugger themselves with their ballpoint pens and retired. With a bonus, mind you, and full benefits. They had to keep me hushed up, see.”
“I see.”
One thing Denharding didn’t have intelligence about was who was putting the whole thing together. “I talked to him on the phone maybe eight or ten times, and he never said a name. I call him Duke Earl. He talks like somebody from an old family. Not many of them have money anymore, but Duke Earl has cash, I’ll tell you that.”
Dowzall believed it when the equipment started arriving. Weapons. A fleet of armored, vehicles. Electronics. The hardware was followed by the arrival of the humanware. Trained soldiers. Skilled programmers. Media-relations professionals of the highest caliber. All of them were outcasts, however, of one kind or another, brought into the Recolonization of New Jersey Alliance to give themselves another chance at achieving a level of greatness in their lives.
All of them, Commander Denharding included, were in it for themselves, but every one of them had something to prove: that they could make themselves look good again.
Dowzall understood that no matter how far you had fallen, no matter how heinous your disgrace, you could change the world’s perception of you with a few simple strokes of promotion. If there was one lesson he had learned from politics, it was that the people would believe you if you could just get them to listen to your message often enough.
Forget facts, forget reality, forget common sense. The mentality of human beings was that they would listen to what you said, regardless of the words’ validity, if you said those words often enough.
Dowzall began to believe that the mission was not a hoax, that it would truly happen, that it was meant to happen and he was meant to be the spearhead. He was fated to be the governor of recolonized New Jersey. Everything else that had come before was leading up to it. He would have more power than he ever had as the elected governor of the state of New Jersey. Most importantly, his post would be permanent.
Governor for life.
No matter how many more of his videotapes got into circulation.
He watched the news snippets about the takeover in Newfoundland. He heard about the successful recolonization of Ayounde. Newfoundland didn’t have much to offer the British Empire in terms of resources, as far as Dowzall knew. He wasn’t even sure where Newfoundland was. He had a feeling it was one of those sections of the Arctic Circle that didn’t even have land—it was just a big sheet of ice that sometimes melted and refroze, like the North Pole.
But Ayounde would be a valuable addition to the empire. Ayounde had oil, and its population was amazingly stable and non-self-destructive by African standards. Ayounde would enrich the empire.
But they wouldn’t hold a candle to New Jersey, with all kinds of industry, a big stretch of North Atlantic sea-coast, and a skilled population of blue-collar and white- collar professionals. New Jersey was going to be the jewel in Britannia’s North American crown.
And it was going to happen today.
“Morning, Charlie.” The governor gave Charlie Fagen a hurried smile.
Fagen looked worried, and he looked at the electronic device in his hand. “Governor, I already got you checked in this morning.”
“Oh.” The governor was stripping off his trench coat to go through the metal detector. He was clearly in a big hurry. “You know, I was in, then I left for a quick meeting down the street. I bet they didn’t scan me out properly.” Fagen punched his thumb on the keys, looking for some answer on the electronic display. “That never happened before,” he muttered.
