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    Straw Man
    Straw Man
    Straw Man
    Ebook122 pages2 hours

    Straw Man

    By Roland Keller

    ()

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    About this ebook

    When President William Robert Ayerhed calls on his Special Assistant on Politics Joshua Hussein to portray a Middle Eastern figure in a video that Joshua is told is to improve relations between the United States and the people of the Middle East, he finds himself embroiled in a dark conspiracy that has cast him in a role at odds with the truth.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPKA Publications
    Release dateFeb 23, 2023
    ISBN9798215788172
    Straw Man
    Author

    Roland Keller

    When he wasn’t riding on one of his Paso Fino horses, Roland Keller was the editor of the literary tabloid, PKA’s Advocate, for over three decades. He is the author of the ‘Easy Taylor’ mysteries Pardee Holler, Nature of the Beast, Denial, Chimera, and Squirrelly, and of the political romance novella, Straw Man. He, his wife Patricia, and their Paso Finos live in the Catskill Mountains of New York.

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      Book preview

      Straw Man - Roland Keller

      Straw Man

      Copyright 2023 Roland Keller

      Published by PKA Publications

      At Smashwords / Draft2Digital

      Straw Man, as with so much in life, is entirely fiction, except for those few details that are real, like the District of Columbia, the city of Alexandria, the city of Hyattsville, the Federal Government, the White House, New York City, Amtrak, West Point Military Academy, the town of Garrison, the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, and a few other details I don’t recall.

      All of the actual characters are completely fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, whether living or dead or anything in between, is really quite remarkable and not at all the result of the author’s efforts or lack thereof, and so may be discounted totally or just ignored as irrelevant. –RK

      © 2017 PKA Publications All Rights Reserved

      This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means whatsoever, without permission from the publisher.

      Contact PKA’s Advocate on facebook & on the website for more books & publications written available.

      https://m.facebook.com/PKAsPublication

      https://advocatepka.weebly.com/

      E-Book Edition

      ISBN 978215788172

      Published in the

      United States of America by Americans

      Cover Art & Layout Design by Patricia Keller

      https://pixels.com/profiles/patricia-keller

      https://m.facebook.com/PKAArtistPublication

      This story is dedicated to the memory of CONTRATERCERO,

      more widely known as Bud,

      (April 28, 1993 - July 3, 2016)

      for his unconquerable love of life;

      & to Pat for reasons too numerous to list.

      "…whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings

      and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms

      against a sea of troubles…"

      Hamlet

      Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

      by William Shakespeare

      Prologue

      I watched a thin shaft of gray predawn light caress the face of the woman that lay sleeping next to me in the narrow bed, but it aroused in me only a vague feeling of regret. Regret for how far things had come, regret for what I would be giving up, and regret for having misled her.

      For the briefest instant, I was tempted to kiss her just to wake her, to tell her I had to leave immediately. But I knew it would be a mistake. She would plead with me not to go, insist we should stay together. I couldn’t stay with her without putting her in danger.

      Silently, I swung my legs to the floor and left the bed. Gathering up my scattered clothes, I dressed. On a whim, I donned the shaggy brown wig and the faux eyeglasses. Retrieving the gun from under the bed, I tucked it into my waistband, and slipped from the tiny room. I left the Y before the sun crested the horizon.

      The street was deserted. I felt conspicuous and vulnerable. Had the street been crowded, I would have found it menacing, with nameless assassins lurking.

      You see, they’re coming for me, I’m sure of it. Given their resources, they’re bound to find me sooner or later, and they will kill me, or at the very least give it their best shot. They think that if they don’t kill me, I’ll talk. They’re right, of course. I have to talk, otherwise the truth will die with me, and I can’t let that happen. That’s why I’m telling all this. Even if they silence me, this record might still exist. I wouldn’t have to do this if they hadn’t lied to me in the first place, lied about the whole operation. They lied to me, and they will lie to the whole country and to the whole world. And I can’t just sit quietly and let the lies stand. It’s too big, too far reaching, and too terrible.

      Contrary to the propaganda about me, I am an American citizen, born in the U.S. to an American mother and an Iraqi father. My name is Joshua Hussein.

      1

      Until the tenth of September, 2001, I was Special Assistant on Politics to President William Robert Ayerhed. Actually, at his inauguration, he followed the lead of Jimmy Carter and swore his oath as Billy-Bob Ayerhed. Before my debut behind the scenes, his 2000 presidential campaign had become such a fiasco that poll after poll concluded the Party could not win the White House.

      At first, I was just another foot soldier in Billy-Bob’s ground game. In late September 2000, he stopped in at the campaign office where I worked. Acting as if we didn’t know who he was, he went around saying, Hi, I’m Billy-Bob and I’m working to be your next president, and asking us what we were encountering during canvassing.

      He asked me. I said that voters wanted a president who could guarantee to stem the rise of gas prices, offhandedly I added it was unfortunate his predecessor, number 41 to be precise, hadn’t simply appropriated the Iraqi oil fields in the wake of the Gulf War. Of course, I wasn’t serious about the oil fields, just about the gas prices, and I didn’t see that as an earth-shattering insight. But Billy-Bob apparently took my suggestion to heart, and as it turns out, not just about gas prices. The day after I met Billy-Bob, his campaign hired the advertising wunderkind Israel Abramson to concoct a slogan.

      Because of Billy-Bob’s Texas background, he pronounced the words ‘all’ and ‘oil’ the same way, much like the fictional character J.R. Ewing in the old TV show Dallas. Drawing on that peculiarity of accent, Israel came up with Billy-Bob Ayerhed: he’s one for oil and oil for all.

      I, for one, wasn’t all that impressed, and, to judge by Billy-Bob’s loss of the popular vote, neither was much of the electorate. But in politics, a win is a win is a win. And, for what it’s worth, Billy-Bob credited my input with altering the political momentum in his favor. After that, he sought me out and elevated my position in the campaign to that of an advisor. Following his election, my job was formalized as the White House post of Special Assistant on Politics. As Billy-Bob’s SAP, my specific duties were to design the political strategies that would guarantee Billy-Bob’s reelection in 2004.

      One afternoon shortly after the Florida State Appellate Court disqualified a critical five-hundred-and-forty ballots cast in favor of former Vice President Savage, thereby throwing all of Florida’s electoral votes to Billy-Bob and deciding the 2000 election in his favor, and before his inauguration, he and I were going over strategies for the transition period. Ellis D. was with us in the hotel room. That’s Ellis D. Tripp, at the time the Vice President Elect of the United States of America.

      You better hit this nail on the head, boy, Ellis D. said, jabbing the air between us with his cigar. You don’t, and come midterm, that mob in the House is going to turn on us.

      Now El, the Princeton educated Billy-Bob drawled in his best Governor of Texas voice, don’t get riled about something that hasn’t happened. We wouldn’t have come this far if Josh here wasn’t on the mark. Don’t forget it was Josh who had me suggest Katherine… Katherine… Billy-Bob turned to me. Now what did you say that girl’s name is? You know, the one you had my brother appoint to Florida’s apple court.

      Just months earlier, Billy-Bob’s brother, Florida Governor James Robert Ayerhed, had appointed Katherine Hall to the Florida Appellate Court. Calling it an apple court was simply some of Billy-Bob’s odd sense of humor.

      Appellate Court Judge Hall, I said, Katherine Hall. I didn’t say that Judge Hall, at sixty-three years old, probably wouldn’t enjoy being called a girl, political correctness aside.

      Hall, Billy-Bob repeated to Ellis D. as though the Veep hadn’t heard me. It was her vote that put us here…

      Ruling, I quietly interrupted. Her ruling.

      And all she wants is for me to nominate her as my first Supreme Court appointment.

      Almost imperceptibly, Ellis D. shook his head. He covered by relighting his cigar. Good. Fine. The boy helped get us here. He puffed aggressively, then looked at me and said, Now what?

      I think for whatever remains of my life, I will regret having said what I said then. Well, Mr. President, off the top of my head, I think it’s going to take something on the scale of a Pearl Harbor attack to get Congress solidly behind you and to make 2004 work.

      Attack Pearl Harbor? Billy-Bob mused. No, no. Too many people like to vacation in Hawaii. I don’t think that would work. Might alienate my political base.

      Ellis D. and I knew that Billy-Bob was joking, but it was that kind of off-the-cuff humor that made his Conservative supporters in Congress cringe every time Billy-Bob got an unscripted question at a press conference. It was beginning to earn Billy-Bob more derision than he needed. As his time in office went on, even his most ardent supporters grew frustrated with his joking because of what the press made of it. But from the very beginning, if I broached the subject of his joking, Billy-Bob would shrug it off.

      Oh, don’t make a molehill out of an anthill, Josh, he’d jest. Even the Liberals know I’m joking, and they’re not only famous for having no sense of humor, they’re damn proud of it.

      In the long run, I think it might have been better if, after being inaugurated, Billy-Bob actually had attacked Pearl Harbor instead of what really did happen. I suppose I have to accept some of the blame for what grew out of my remark, but never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined things would go as far as they did. And while I was the one that gave voice to the notion, it was Ellis D. that actually got the ball rolling, and he kept it rolling until it snowballed into a Himalayan-sized avalanche.

      Big described both Ellis D.’s physical stature– six-foot-six and two-hundred-forty pounds– and his way of thinking. As the former Chairman of the Board and CEO of Halberd Industries, Ellis D. could

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