Editor’s Note: This is the sixth installment of Scott McKay’s new novel, King of the Jungle, which is being released exclusively at The American Spectator in 10 episodes each weekend in February, March, and early April, before its full publication on Amazon later this spring....

The post Threats and Betrayals: <i>King of the Jungle</i>, Episode 6 appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Editor’s Note: This is the sixth installment of Scott McKay’s new novel, King of the Jungle, which is being released exclusively at The American Spectator in 10 episodes each weekend in February, March, and early April, before its full publication on Amazon later this spring.

So far in the story, our narrator Mike Holman, an independent media man and podcaster, has just agreed to write a biography and work as a public-relations consultant with his friend and old college roommate, the billionaire industrialist Pierce Polk — only to find that Polk has built a small city in the jungles of Guyana as a redoubt away from the corrupt Joe Deadhorse administration back home in America.

Holman is shuttling back and forth between the States, where politics is turning deadly with the recent shooting of Republican presidential candidate Donny Trumbull by a would-be assassin, and Guyana, which is under threat of an invasion by the Venezuelan Army…

May 20, 2024, Atlanta, Georgia

It was at about this point when things began happening faster than most of us could manage.

I had mentioned my reticence to go with the information I had about the near assassination of Donny Trumbull in Indiana. That didn’t last, because the story took on a life of its own.

First, Trumbull simply fired the Secret Service. He put out a statement saying that he’d hired his own in-house security team for the campaign, headed up by a guy named Ellis Marcado, who had been a staffer for the National Security Council when he’d been president. Marcado had done some heavy work as an Air Force special operator and he’d been a CIA contractor — he’d cycled out of Benghazi only a week or so before that whole thing had gone to shit. He was known.

And the campaign put out a statement saying that owing to his recovery and the effort to put a first-class security team together, Trumbull’s campaign was going digital for the next few weeks. He was going to do a lot of remote-broadcast rallies, internet town halls and the like until the convention from his big estate in Boca Raton.

The truth was that Sentinel was taking over the entire thing, but it was going to be done on the sly with Marcado as the face of the operation.

And on the same day Trumbull fired the Secret Service, Pauline Chang resigned.

Here was what I knew and was too chickenshit to go public with for fear I’d do more harm than good. It turned out that two key members of the Secret Service detail protecting Trumbull, that Chang was newly in charge of, had been taken off the job before Trumbull’s rally in Terre Haute.

And they weren’t replaced. The detail was understrength when Trumbull was shot.

So in Terre Haute the Secret Service was missing somebody working one of the doors to the basketball arena that Shirley Sterling ended up coming through, and also missing was the Secret Service agent that was supposed to be next to the stage where Sterling ended up standing when he began blasting away at Trumbull.

That looked very, very bad for Pauline Chang. The fact that her father was a Chinese immigrant who’d made a few hundred million in the import-export game and had been a colossal donor to pretty much every Democrat politician in California, not to mention Omobba and Deadhorse, looked even worse.

But when Chang resigned, I got a note from Trumbull. “What you ought to do,” he said, “is get her on your podcast.”

“What the hell for?” I said.

“I think you’ll like her,” Trumbull replied.

I didn’t know what to make of that. The one thing that came to mind was that she was, as my grandma used to say, “a swell looker.” She was in her early 30’s, about 5’8” and athletic as hell — apparently, she’d been a pole vaulter at UCLA in college — and she had those amazing features you see so often in girls of mixed oriental and European ancestry. The high cheekbones, the clear complexion, the whole bit. But softer, if you know what I mean.

I wasn’t even the first one to notice. Kaylee was. Which was not unusual.

“You know I’m not gay,” she said when we were looking at the Breitbart story about her resignation which featured a wire photo of her standing near Trumbull. “But I would totally hit that.”

“Well, there’s a colossal case of TMI,” I said, shaking my head at Kaylee.

“I’m joking, dummy. But seriously. That’s the hottest Secret Service agent I’ve ever seen.”

I couldn’t disagree, but I still corrected her. “Ex-Secret Service agent, you mean.”

“I’ll bet there’s more to this, Mike.”

“Are you seriously going to take up for the chick who almost lost a president just because she’s hot?” I said.

“No, of course not. I just think there’s more.”

And I remembered that conversation when Trumbull’s text came in.

“Kaylee,” I said as I poked my head into her office just after the former president’s suggestion, “maybe we ought to look into booking Pauline Chang.”

“You’re kidding,” she said. “I literally just got an e-mail from Jenny Wilson, who’s doing her publicity.”

“She has a publicist already?”

“I mean, people with a story to tell tend to get publicists, Mike. Oh, and now is the part where I tell you ‘I told you so.’”

“Fair enough. When do we want to book her?”

“I think we ought to do it tomorrow night. Jenny said she’s in Arlington right now and she can set it up. You’re already scheduled to be in DC tomorrow.”

I was. I had a speech scheduled at a PAC fundraiser lunch and I was supposed to interview Jim Jordan about the House Oversight Committee’s attempts to prove the Mexican cartels had bought off the Secretary of Homeland Security. But following that, I could fit Chang in.

“Then let’s do it,” I said.

Kaylee gave me a big smile.

My speech to that PAC at the Waldorf was a big hit, although I thought I sucked, and while Jordan was good, he didn’t say anything we didn’t already know — it was probable that the cartels had corrupted the DHS bureaucracy, and maybe some folks even higher up than that, and there was circumstantial evidence that they had, but they were far too crafty to leave a smoking gun around.

But then I met Pauline Chang in Jenny Wilson’s conference room in Arlington that night, and she was nothing like I expected.

For one thing, most of what had been written about her in the conservative media, and that was most of what had been written about her at all; the legacy corporate media barely covered anything about the Secret Service scandal, had it that she was a nepot who’d been pushed into the job of Trumbull’s head-of-detail because of her family connections. There was even a story line out there which said Pauline Chang had been set up as the fall guy for the security failure because it was understood that she would then “fail up” and get rewarded with some plush job up the Secret Service chain or in the White House somewhere.

That was the Washington way, after all.

Except Pauline was not in that frame of mind.

When I met her, she told me straight-out that this would be different.

“Look,” she said, “what I’m going to tell you is going to blow your mind. But I can substantiate every word. And I want it as public as possible because this stuff simply can’t remain a secret.”

“I think I know most of it,” I said. “But hearing it from you means we can take it public. The real question is are you absolutely sure that you want to do this interview? There are people out there who really hate you right now.”

“And if I didn’t know the real story I’d hate me, too,” she said. “It’s more important I have a good name than a life. Going public is the only way I can get that back, so I’m all in.”

“All right, then.”

We started the interview with her life story — she grew up in the Bay Area, one of four siblings. Her three brothers all joined the Navy; one of them was a captain on a submarine in the Atlantic, while the other two got out and worked in the family business.

Pauline was supposed to be a lawyer like her mother, a tall blonde who’d been a Golden State Warriors dancer while she was putting herself through law school until she met Peter Chang. But after UCLA, Pauline decided what she’d rather do was law enforcement, and she chose the Secret Service over the FBI. She’d had a good career in the Secret Service, rising particularly quickly while Trumbull was president, and got onto the security detail for Perry Mince, then the VP. Then after 2020 she’d worked in a few other roles while they were grooming her for a big job.

And just a few days after she got one, they pulled the rug out from under her.

What I’d heard about Terre Haute was true. But what I didn’t know was a lot worse.

They didn’t just take two of the agents on her detail out of the field, they did it only half an hour before Trumbull’s speech at that arena. And because of a “bureaucratic snafu,” nobody informed her.

But it was worse even than that. Pauline alleged, and our contacts at Sentinel Security backed her up on this because they had terabytes of video from cameras all over the arena, that there were a pair of lookalikes who had stood in for Agents Eddard and Cole, and they’d magically disappeared just at the right time — Cole’s doppleganger, just when Shirley Sterling made his way through Gate D into the arena, and Eddard’s, just before Sterling started shooting.

So Pauline, watching the whole thing from mobile command, had absolutely no way to either recognize the problem or fix it in time to stop that almost-assassination.

She was hot about it, and I didn’t blame her.

“I don’t know how high up this goes,” she said, “and I don’t have enough information to accuse anybody specifically of anything. All I can say is what’s obvious: this does not happen unless someone deliberately contrived it and executed it.”

“My experience keeps telling me that accidents are a lot rarer than people think these days,” I said. “It doesn’t seem like this is one.”

“Of course it isn’t,” she said. “And I guess I’m the perfect patsy, or maybe they thought I was.”

“Because you’d have the family connections to survive it? There’s a column out there by Robert Zane saying you’d have the opportunity to ‘fail up’ following this.”

“Yeah, I saw it,” she said, seething.

“I can tell you aren’t very happy about that piece.”

“No, I am not. But I’m not angry at Robert Zane. Based on what I’ve seen working inside the government I think he’s probably right about most of what he wrote. What makes me angry is that the Swamp thinks I would just roll over and take it.”

“So you think there is some entity out there, or some cabal, that would protect you if you’d played ball?”

“I’ll put it like this: I had a couple of conversations with people inside the government who told me I could expect to be taken care of it I kept my head down. But it didn’t get any further than that before…”

“Before you decided not to keep your head down.”

“Exactly. The fact that this was even a possibility infuriates me.”

“Why? At the end of the day, the plot — I’m assuming based on what our sources have told us and what you’re saying that it had to be a plot to kill Donny Trumbull — failed. And the people responsible are almost certainly not getting away with it.”

“You would think they wouldn’t, Mike, but honestly? I’m not sure about anything.”

“That’s a little bit bleak, don’t you think?”

“It definitely is. But what I’m most upset about is that the deck is now stacked against the honest professionals in government who just want to do a good job regardless of the politics. OK? What I wanted to do was to protect people from the bad guys who would do them harm. I busted my ass to get really good at my job. And what’s what worth, at the end of the day? Here I am, 31 years old, I’ve put in maximum effort at everything I’ve done, and I’m a fall guy. That’s it. I resigned because I’m always going to be considered a failure. I can’t protect a president anymore; they’d be crazy to have me on the job.”

“That isn’t what President Trumbull told you, is it?”

“No, he was sympathetic once he understood what happened. But he fired the whole Secret Service off his campaign, and I can’t blame him for that. We failed him.

“And if I’d just kept my mouth shut they would have shunted me off to some desk job until the coast was clear and then up I’d move through the bureaucracy, totally dependent on somebody’s favor for advancement because I’d have this major black mark on my resume.”

“So this was your one shot, is what you’re saying,” I said.

“Sure. But the thing I want to make clear is that this isn’t just me we’re talking about. Whoever’s responsible for this has destroyed the Secret Service. The whole agency. It can’t be trusted ever again because now it’s clearly vulnerable to this kind of corruption.”

“Well, that’s definitely bleak.”

“Absolutely it is.”

“So what’s next for you?”

“I want to get to the bottom of this horrible case, and I hope that you and your team can help because I know you’re one of the best if not the best, and then after that? I don’t have a clue. I’ll have to start completely from scratch.”

We finished the interview, I flew home, the next day we released it and bumped the release of the Jordan interview to the following day.

And Pauline got us 75 million views on X.

Pauline Chang went from a hated figure to a national heroine in no time flat. There was a big outpouring from people all over the place — lots of federal and state employees, especially, who echoed what she said about just trying to be a pro at a difficult job and finding it impossible because of all the bullshit politics and power agendas their agencies had been corrupted by.

Somebody caught up to Deadhorse outside a Planned Parenthood event where he was speaking and asked him about the Pauline Chang scandal. “She’s lying,” he said.

“What’s she lying about?” the reporter asked.

He waved his hand dismissively. “All of it,” he said. “All of … I was in the Secret Service. I know.”

“Mr. President, you were never in the Secret Service.”

“You’re lying,” he said.

And then he was whisked away to his vacation home on the beach an hour away.

Deadhorse’s approval ticked down to 27 percent in a poll released the next morning, and Candy Abrams’ gossip column in the Times suggested that it was only weeks away before he’d bow out of the race.

But back at Holman Media, we were ecstatic. Pauline had been gold for us. She was the perfect thing to push our traffic right back up into the stratosphere — and we needed it, because Megan had sold more impressions than we were even generating, and Tom had been freaking out about having to issue a make-good to the advertisers.

But the Pauline stuff was money in the bank. It didn’t hurt that she looked absolutely fantastic on video, or that she disappeared — and I mean vanished — right after our interview hit the internet.

A couple of days later Kaylee got hold of Jenny Wilson to ask her about Pauline; we wanted to do a follow-up interview with her, because going back to that well was the best possible idea to stoke traffic.

“Oh, she’s gone,” said Jenny.

“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Kaylee sputtered. “Jenny, you can’t have a client as good as that and just let her disappear.”

“Apparently, I can,” came the response. “But tell Mike to ask his buddy Pierce Polk. I’ll bet he can figure it out from there.”

So I did, and the next day I was on a HondaJet 2600 to Guyana courtesy of the folks at Exoil. It occurred to me that I’d become a private-jet snob, because after you’ve flown on a Gulfstream 700 or a Bombardier 3500, pretty much anything else feels like coach.

Well, let me backtrack on that. I shouldn’t blame HondaJet for my lousy flight down to Guyana. It had more to do with the company than the equipment.

For example, this was how the conversation went.

“Kaylee, that so gross,” Melissa was saying. “I mean, you’re a straight girl with a fiancé. Could you stop?”

“OK, I was joking. You know, a joke? Come on, Melissa.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t seem like a joke the way you’re making googly-eyes at pictures of Pauline.”

“I’m not making googly-eyes. I’m trying to pick out a couple of still shots and maybe a little B-roll we can use if we do a follow-up podcast with her. It’s just business!”

“Then what was all this you were saying about how interesting she is, and what a good interview she was, and how she’s stunning and brave, and on and on?”

“Fine. I’ll admit it. I’m a fangirl, OK? I mean, I think it’d be cool to be friends with her, that’s all.”

“All right, enough,” I said. “That’s all the bickering I can handle for now.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Kaylee, “because somebody got into the bourbon last night and has a massive hangover, and because of that we’re not allowed to talk.”

“I didn’t ‘get into the bourbon.’ It was a business dinner. Megan had the XOX Communications people, and she and Phil and I took them out last night…”

“…and then you got into the bourbon. Got it.”

I gave Kaylee a shitty look, and just then the flight attendant, an exotic-looking brunette named Francesca, dropped in on me.

“Can I get you anything, Mr. Holman?” she asked sweetly.

“Percocet, maybe?”

“Sorry. I think I might have some Aleve, though.”

“That would be terrific. And some water. Thank you Francesca.”

“Sure!” she said, and then she flashed me a million-dollar smile.

I noticed Melissa was looking at me a certain way.

“What?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she said.

Kaylee giggled. Francesca returned with a little bottle of Advil and a big glass of ice water.

“It’s from my personal stash,” she said. “I thought we had Aleve on board, but I was wrong.”

“OK, great,” I said. “You’re a life-saver, Francesca!”

She smiled, dropped something in my lap, and sashayed back out of the cabin.

I picked it up. It was a business card. “Francesca Gianotto, Realtor,” it said on the front. I guess the flight attendant gig was a side hustle for her.

And a little message on the back: “call me anytime. For any reason!” with a little heart as the top of the exclamation point.

That earned Francesca a grin when I caught her looking at me from the attendant station in the front.

And of course, Kaylee and Melissa both had their jaws on the floor when I turned to them.

“Sly … dog,” said Kaylee.

“Don’t do it,” I told her. “It’s none of your business.”

“I’ll bet she wants you to hook up with Pauline so she’ll have to be friends with her,” said Melissa.

“Oh my God! Shut up, Melissa!”

“Enough,” I said. “Hush, or you’re fired. Both of you.”

That bought me a little time and I managed to get a tiny nap in, at least for a few minutes, until my phone rang. It was Karen.

“I just heard,” she said, “you’re being investigated by the FBI.”

“Fabulous. What did I do?”

“Sharing classified information, apparently. The Pauline Chang interview.”

“Are you serious right now?”

“Yep. You’re going to want to protect yourself. I’ll be sending you stuff on Signal. You do have the Signal app on your phone, right?”

“Yes. Go for it. I’ll get with Sammy, our IT guy, and figure out what to do.”

“Good. But between you, me and the NSA who’s listening, I don’t think you should take this lying down. You should get as loud as you can and see if you can scare these creeps off.”

“Great minds think alike,” I said. “On it.”

So I pulled out my laptop and wrote an 800-word column for the website laying into Wreath and Ray Christofferson, the FBI director, calling them a pair of tyrants and criminals. Then I sent the link to Jim Jordan on Signal, with a quick message telling him his podcast interview was doing well traffic-wise.

“Not surprise about that investigation,” he said. “It’s par for the course. We’ve got Christofferson set to testify next week. You should come up and be on the panel with him.”

“As much as I’m growing to hate DC, I guess I can’t turn that down.”

As we came in for a landing, I noticed that Liberty Point was noticeably bigger — but something else struck my eye.

Across the Potaro from town, right on the point where it met the Essequibo, there was a big circular concrete pavement that was scored to look like brickwork with a bunch of rectangles embedded into it. In the middle was a steel skeleton of … something.

Pierce was in the hangar when the jet pulled in.

“How about this?” I joked when I saw him. “I get the royal treatment!”

“It isn’t really you,” he said with a laugh. “I have the Venezuelans, the Guyanese, the Argentinians, the British and the Americans coming in, so I’m meeting them here. Big confab, trying to head off whatever is coming.”

“That sounds like fun. Good news opp for us. I hope you’ll have time to sit in for some interviews about the book while we’re here, though.”

“For sure, Mike. Absolutely. You guys want to go get comfortable first?”

“Yeah, but I’ve got a question: what’s that you’re building on the other side of the little river?”

“Oh, right. That’s the Liberty Torch.”

“The Liberty Torch?”

“It’s going to be a big statue of a hand holding a torch. Two hundred and six feet high. Got a natural gas line going in so the flame will always be lit. Be able to see it for miles and miles around.”

“That’s pretty cool. Bet the environmentalist crowd is gonna love it.”

He just smirked, and then Craig, Kaylee, Melissa and I caught a ride into town.

On the way, we passed what looked like a factory. The driver said they had some big 3-D printers they were using to make prefabricated concrete blocks to turbocharge the construction process.

“It’s impressive,” said Kaylee, “but why the rush to build all this if it’s just going to get invaded?”

“Because they’re building the stock exchange,” said the driver, whose name was Vinod.

“The stock exchange?” I asked. “What stock exchange?”

“The Exchange of the Americas,” he said. “It’s not public yet, but they’re going to trade stocks here in Liberty Point.”

Melissa looked at me and shook her head. “Crazy,” she mouthed.

“I keep telling you guys,” I said. “Keeping up with Pierce Polk is impossible.”

There was some time before we were supposed to meet at Pierce’s place at the Grand Waica, so I decided to hang out for a while at the lodge’s bar.

And that’s when I saw her.

Pauline didn’t look at all like she did when we met for that interview. She’d cut her hair into a short bob and she’d dyed it a dirty blonde, and she was wearing a denim miniskirt and a tank top with a plaid button-down shirt worn like a jacket, plus a pair of Tretorns. She was sitting alone at the half-crowded bar, drinking a Banks out of a frosty mug.

“Well, well, well,” I said. “I’d search the whole world looking for you, just like everybody else is doing, and here you are in my building.”

She didn’t say anything. She just turned to me and beamed.

“You’re the first guy to hit on me today that I was happy to see,” she said.

“Is that a fact?”

“Yeah. Sit down, will you?”

“Sure, my dear. Are you enjoying your anonymity?”

“Anonymity? Not around here.”

Just then a couple of guys came up to us wanting to take pictures. Grudgingly, I said yes, and grudgingly, Pauline did too. And the next thing I knew we were posing for pics for most of the people in the bar.

Finally, they left us alone.

“How are you holding up?” I asked.

“I’m good,” she said. “Your friend Pierce set me up with a great condo that has a view of the park, and everybody here is friendly. I have no idea what I’m going to do next, but I can think of worse places to lay low while I figure it out.”

“Maybe you could be the top cop around here. You could be the police commish or something.”

“I don’t think so, Mike.”

“No?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do next, but I think I’m done trying to be a badass. Besides, I’m told I’m likely a felon now because I talked to you, so I don’t think I have a great future in law enforcement.”

“What a shame. You’re my favorite badass chick!”

She laughed, and softly punched my shoulder. And those eyes looked straight into mine and I … was … hooked.

May 23, 2024, Liberty Point, Guyana

To an extent, it was unfortunate that I ran into Pauline and hit it off with her. Because after a couple of hours of hanging out in the bar, I had to go. Pierce was having another one of his VIP receptions at the Waica and he wanted me there. Not to mention I needed to talk to those diplomats and see if we could set up interviews with some of them.

But on my way out, Pauline made me give her my phone and she texted herself with it.

“I think you’re the only person in the world who has this number,” she said with a smile. “It’s new.”

So I kissed her on the cheek. And she gave me a tight hug, which told me I wasn’t the only one feeling something.

“I’m sending my producer down to keep you company,” I said, taking back my phone and sending a quick text. “You remember Kaylee, right? She has a fangirl crush on you, or something.”

“Cool. I need a girlfriend down here. With the job and all, I haven’t had girlfriends in … hell, it’s been since college, really. Please give me an actual life.”

I smiled at her.

“Gotta go,” I said.

“Go save the world, or whatever.”

And she raised her glass as I left, wishing I didn’t have to.

No sooner did I jump in a golf cart to catch a ride to the Waica, but it started raining like I’d never known possible. I’m talking sheets of it. Nick, the driver (he was a transplant from Texas who dropped everything and came down here a month earlier because, as he said, “it’s all goin’ to shit in the States and Pierce Polk might just be the guy to save it”), pulled under a rain shed — that’s what those big canvas tent-looking things were, which struck me as a little stroke of genius — and had me help him roll down the plastic walls on the side and back of the cart.

“Won’t keep us too dry,” he said, “but it’s better than you lookin’ like you fell in the pool.”

“This is what the rainy season is like here, I take it,” I said.

“That’s what they tell me. I’m as much a rookie about this place as you are, Mr. Holman.”

A little better situated for the weather, Nick sped us to the Grand Waica and down the ramp into the underground garage.

I asked him if I needed to tip him. He shook his head.

“Instead, can we do a selfie?”

“Sure, Nick.” I’d never thought of my image as currency, but he seemed happy.

But when I made it up to Pierce’s party, it didn’t really appear that happiness was the flavor of the day.

When I’d been to Pierce’s VIP receptions before, it was usually a collection of business people and notable figures who did what I’d call “private-sector” things. A race car driver. An actor. Football players and other athletes. Writers and pundits like me. But this group was different.

These were the politicians.

Ishgan and Janaroo were there, like they always seemed to be, and both of them had a big retinue of staffers and minions. Then there was Sir Richard Montrose, the British ambassador to Guyana; the word on Montrose was that he was a military hero in Afghanistan who’d risen fast after joining the Foreign Ministry but his career had collapsed due to an over-affection for gin and they’d parked him in Guyana in hopes he’d dry out.

He definitely had not dried out.

Rigoberto Andujar was there; he was an envoy from Venezuela. Pierce told me he needed me in the room for the private meeting Andujar was asking for.

And then there was Valerie Wynn, the U.S. ambassador to Guyana. She’d been on the job for maybe a year. It was her first ambassadorship; she’d been in South Africa, Pakistan, Egypt, Belize, Iceland and a couple other places, essentially as a State Department office worker. Valerie was 38, never married, no kids, definitely not a fan of mine. She showed me a picture of her Siamese cat, whose name was Snookums. She made a big deal of the fact she spoke Urdu.

“Is the U.S. military going to come to Guyana’s aid if the Venezuelans invade?” I asked.

“On the record?”

“If you want to. While I’m down here I’d like to do some interviews and I’d like to do one with you. But if you don’t, we can just talk on background.”

“OK, on the record, we’re evaluating our commitments and have made no decision on an American role in what conflict might arise.”

“In other words, no comment.”

“It’s all I’ve been authorized to say.”

“Fine. Off the record, what’s the deal?”

“Off the record, I have no idea.”

“Wait, what?”

“Honestly, I don’t think the administration believes this is a thing. They don’t want to provoke a big international incident by coming in heavy. That just pisses off the Chinese and it’s destabilizing.”

“Destabilizing? Telling the Venezuelans they’ll come out like Saddam Hussein did if they roll into Essequibo seems like the most stabilizing thing you could do. I don’t get it.”

She just shrugged.

“I don’t think they see it that way.”

“But it’s different than what the administration was saying a couple of months ago.”

“Well, this approach has worked so far.”

I wanted to hit her with the “Bold strategy, Cotton” line, but thought better of it.

And she turned me down flat for a podcast interview. Which was par for the course. Nobody from the Deadhorse administration would do interviews with us, just like nobody from the Omobba administration would after the first couple of years.

Montrose was different, though. He said he was happy to sit down with me the next morning. And on background, in between gulps of his G&T — the pretty Patamona server knew to keep them coming when Montrose was around — he told me that the Brit government was considering preparations to deploy a naval flotilla and some troops for Guyana’s defense.

“Why aren’t they here?” I asked.

“Politics, dear boy. The London press would have a grand time skewering the PM over a return to colonialism if we were to go in. That must be managed.”

“Yeah, but this is about Venezuela colonizing Guyana. It’s the exact opposite of British colonialism.”

“You know that, and I know that. Sadly, they don’t know that.”

“So what your government has to offer is empty threats to the Venezuelans.”

“I should point out that it’s more than your government is offering, my friend.”

“Fair point.”

When I finally ran into Pierce, he looked like he’d aged 10 years in the past couple of weeks.

“Hey, come with me,” he said. “I need to talk to you before we sit down with the Venezuelan.”

“Sure,” I said, “but I don’t know why you want me in there.”

“Because I want him to know that whatever they do, the world will know about it.”

We retired to that private study where Pierce and Hal Gibson had laid into Ravi Darke before, and it was just us.

“How’s the book coming?” he asked.

“I’m crunching away at it in my off hours, but I have an outline and some parts written. By the end of July I’m hoping the first draft will be done and then we’ll bring in an editor, and maybe a couple of months later it’ll be finished. Shooting for Labor Day to have it out to the public.”

He grimaced.

“What’s wrong?”

“I was hoping maybe we could accelerate that.”

“A book isn’t really like one of your construction projects, Pierce. You can’t 3-D print a biography.”

“Well, you can use AI to…”

“Shut your mouth. There will be no AI in anything with my name on it.”

“OK, fine. I was thinking maybe if we could publish the book it might generate public sentiment behind getting the U.S. involved down here.”

“I talked to Wynn. I don’t think there’s much help there.”

“No, there is not. And even if there was I don’t think she’s somebody who could handle it.”

“You’re not impressed with the cat-lady ambassador?”

Pierce just rolled his eyes.

“So what’s the story with this stock exchange?”

Now Pierce lit up a bit.

“Right, that. So here’s what we’re doing — we’re going to build an international exchange to trade companies that refuse to embrace DEI or ESG or any of that World Economic Forum bullshit. The Argentinians and Chileans have agreed to use it as a secondary exchange for their stuff and we’ve gotten some buy-ins from some Caribbean countries as well. We want to make it a place for companies from Prudhoe Bay to Tierra del Fuego to go public.”

“Yeah, but you don’t believe in public companies, Pierce.”

“I don’t believe in my companies going public. If somebody else wants to do that, I’m good with it.”

He told me he had Ishgan and Janaroo behind the idea of turning Guyana into the world’s biggest tax haven, more or less like a Switzerland of the New World; after all, the oil revenue would be more than enough to fund the government for a good, long time, and he said what was missing in places like the Cayman Islands was a stock market to capture more than just bank accounts here and there.

“We don’t really have the banks in Guyana yet,” he said, “so the money will actually get handled in the Caymans.”

“Then why build the exchange in Liberty Point? Why not Georgetown?”

“Because Liberty Point is going to be the biggest, richest city in this part of the world in 20 years so long as we keep the Vinnies out. And actually, Ishgan wants it here. He wants the Vinnies to be scared to invade the place where all these stocks will be traded.”

“I don’t know, Pierce. It seems like a Hail Mary pass.”

“It kind of is, but anyway … are you ready to have this sitdown with Andujar?”

“Sure.”

Pierce pulled out his phone and sent a text, and a moment or two later, Hal Gibson and the Venezuelan came in and sat at the table.

“I take it everybody has met,” said Pierce, “so let’s talk.”

“Are we in confidence?” Andujar asked. He was looking at me.

“I’ll report what we agree I should report,” I said.

“But if everyone agrees but me?”

“Then you’re on the wrong side of a consensus, Rigoberto,” said Pierce. “Mike stays.”

The Venezuelan sighed.

“If that is the case, then I will just say this: my government is acting with the full will of the Venezuelan people when it moves to right a wrong done to us two hundred years ago. We will annex Essequibo and return it to its rightful place inside our borders. By force, if necessary.”

“That’s going to be very, very expensive for you,” said Hal Gibson. “You should know that you’re going to absorb catastrophic losses among the men you send here.”

“We know about what you’ve got waiting at Las Claritas, Tumaremo and Santa Elena de Uairen,” said Pierce. “You’ve forward-deployed your Jungle Infantry Division, but you can’t move them through Brazil and that’s the only road.”

“Helicopters and planes are very, very vulnerable,” said Gibson.

“It sure would be a shame if you tried an invasion and lost most of your guys on the way to the fight,” said Pierce.

Andujar laughed.

“Your threats are not convincing,” he said. “Let us not waste time with bluster.”

“It isn’t bluster,” said Pierce. “I can recruit thousands and thousands of American patriots to come down here and fight you, and we’ll hold the line for months. Maybe years. Can your government sustain a war effort for years?”

“Can your little town here? The Guyanese surely cannot.”

“I’m prepared to put my entire fortune into this fight,” said Pierce. “And given the debt-load of your government, which is what? Something like $450 billion? I think I might actually have more money than you do.”

Andujar made a face, like he thought what Pierce had said was absurd.

“You’ve so destroyed your country that one American businessman has more money than your government which rules, what? Twenty million people?’ Pierce barked. “I don’t know what your population is anymore because so many of them have left. And you think you can come in here and invade another country with guns and bombs?”

“Unless what you’re actually doing is playing stooge for China,” said Gibson. “But if you think doing their dirty work will save you, you’ve grossly miscalculated.”

They were making Andujar uncomfortable, but I got the impression he wasn’t in a position to stop anything. He held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

“What I hope to accomplish here is an accommodation. Your Liberty Point might maintain a sense of autonomy as part of Guayana Esequiba. We would even discuss having it become the capital of the new Venezuelan state.”

“Not interested.”

“Why not?”

“You make us Venezuelan, and now we’re on the hook for your national debt. And since this place would be the only place that works in your whole country, you would sink your hooks in us so deep that we’d turn into your slaves.”

“What if Liberty Point were to become a city-state in its own right, then?”

“In other words, you want us to stand aside and watch you conquer our neighbors who we’ve made great friendships with,” said Gibson. “You want us to sell them out.”

“And then we’d have to take them in as refugees,” said Pierce. “So we’d have to pay to feed and house and clothe them after they’ve lost everything.”

Andujar looked at me.

“As you see,” he said, “it is los Yanquis taking an immovable position.”

“The lamb refusing to be dined on by the wolf, one might say,” I said.

“We don’t care about these old territorial claims,” said Pierce, “and we know Madiera doesn’t care, either. He’s trying to rally your people by ginning up bloodlust and blaming the Guyanese for the problems he’s caused for his own country. Venezuela is in no position to annex anything. You’re a failed state.”

“We are not a failed state.”

“You damn near had a revolution two weeks ago. I’d say that’s pretty failed.”

“And you think we are not aware of your involvement in that? That we are ignorant of your corruption of General de la Vega? That you didn’t pay him to become your puppet?”

This was new, but it made sense. This would be the “something else” that Pierce had alluded to, rather cryptically.

“General de la Vega is a patriot who was attempting to save your country from its government,” Pierce said. “What help I’ve provided to him and his family is a recognition of his efforts to bring democracy and freedom back to those people. You were going to execute his wife and children! You think I would willingly do business with monsters like that?”

Andujar shook his head and looked at the ceiling.

“We appreciate your efforts at peacemaking, senor Andujar,” said Gibson, “but you need to tell your superiors in Caracas and their taskmasters in Havana and Beijing that the cost of this invasion will be utterly ruinous. It will bring down your government.”

“I will see to that personally,” said Pierce. “And you should know that when I take on a project, I complete that project.”

“I will relay your statements to my government,” said Andujar, “and I do admire your resolve if not your judgment. I hope that you do not all die here in this place when just across the river is safety.”

Gibson smiled at him.

“We’ll take care of that,” he said, standing up and extending his hand to Andujar. The Venezuelan rose up and shook it. Then he nodded at Pierce and me and left.

“Well, that was a little less cordial than I was hoping for,” said Pierce.

“Are you sure the city-state thing is a no-go?” I asked. “What if you could take this place and make it a Hong Kong?”

“No way,” said Pierce. “We’d have a hostile army camped out next door and they’d be putting the arm on us daily. I’m not having that.”

“And don’t forget what happened to Hong Kong,” said Gibson.

“OK, but this threat to make it expensive; what’s that? A bluff?”

“We’ve got man-portable surface to air missiles distributed all over the villages around here,” said Pierce. “I’m not saying we’ll shoot down all their choppers or planes before they could put troops down, but we’ll get a lot of them.”

“And there’s the four SAM batteries we’ve already set up around our perimeter,” said Gibson. “They’re gonna have a very, very hard time getting in here.”

“You ever get a submarine like you were hoping to do?”

Pierce just smiled at me.

“You having fun so far, Mike? Bet you never thought you’d be getting this close to the great game.”

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