“That’s not entirely right,” said Ed, frowning. “Our main source for this is Steve Penn, the CIA agent who led the Russian hacking investigation.”
“The former agent,” Josh Kantor interjected.
“The former agent,” said Ed, “who has risked his life to get at the truth about the corrupt relationship between Stokes and the Russians.” Whose side was Kantor on?
There was a pause again as Riggs was fed another question. By whom? By a corporate lawyer? By Josh? “What about Penn’s sources?” asked Riggs.
Ed glanced at Penn. Steve shook his head firmly.
“Since the beginning Penn has said that he cannot give his Russian sources,” said Ed. “It would be like pinning a target on each of their backs. He swore he’d never reveal their identities to anyone. That includes me. But, after going back and forth over the documents, we’re convinced they’re for real. And by the way, Woodward never revealed his key source to the editors of the Washington Post.”
“I don’t give a shit about Woodward and the Post,” Riggs was yelling now. “I want to know Penn’s Russian sources.” Steve again vigorously shook his head.
“No way he’ll reveal them,” said Ed. “Not even to you. But, like I’ve said, everything he’s given us checks out a hundred percent.” He paused, took a deep breath and then added quietly. “But, you know what, Mark, the bottom line is you should never have bought the network and put yourself in the news business to begin with.”
“Ed, wait!” Josh tried to cut in.
“No, Josh, you can’t deprive me of my heroic last lines,” Ed said. “Mark, for you, news is just a product to sell and make money from, like anything else. All this talk about needing Russian sources. You could care less about them. You’re just looking for an excuse not to broadcast this report. You’re scared shitless.”
They could hear Riggs furious breathing on the line, “The broadcast is cancelled,” he bellowed. “And you, Ed, are on the verge of being fired.”
“As a matter of fact, Mark, I quit.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:
London
“That son of a bitch,” said Ed after he ended the call.” He paused, shook his head, “Deep breathing doesn’t always help,” he said. There was a funereal stillness in the room. Everyone avoided each other’s gaze. “I was thinking it was time to make a career change,” Ed finally said. “But what happens to you, Steve? You put everything on the line for this.”
Steve remained silent, but the fear he’d felt a few minutes ago – that everything had been in vain – hovered again on the edge of his consciousness, a black depression waiting just off stage. He couldn’t give in to it. “Why don’t we broadcast the report ourselves?” Steve said. “On YouTube.”
Ed paused. “Why not? Better than throwing it in the trash heap.”
“Better? Hell,” said Charlie, “This report will go viral in minutes. How many watch Focus each week?”
“Ten to fourteen million,” said Ed.
“On YouTube this will get just as many viewers; probably more.” said Charlie. “The most popular ones are getting billions of views.”
“They star pet cats and naked pop singers,” said Steve “but, just the same, with luck, we could certainly get tens of millions.”
Ed turned to his editor. “Dave, how long will it take you to upload the report to YouTube?”
“Maybe ten minutes,” said Turecamo. “But tagging it so it goes viral will take up to an hour.”
“Let’s do it,” said Ed. “I’ll write a new intro about how Stokes blackmailed Riggs to keep this report off the network. We’ll spread this goddamned story all over the world.”
“I’ll also put up a Facebook page,” said Charlie, tapping away at his laptop. “After that come Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and on and on.”
In less than an hour after the report had been uploaded to YouTube it had hit 100,000 views and was climbing vertiginously. It was then that President Stokes also launched the first of several furious tweets from the White House.
“Laughable, absurd, don’t waste time watching this crap. No wonder Focus wouldn’t broadcast it. FAKE NEWS @PresStokes”
“Lies, all lies from the lying media. Everything made up. OUTRAGEOUS! @PresStokes”
“This is treason, traitors & terrorists wanting 2 destroy us & all we hold dear. DEATH TO TERRORISTS @PresStokes”
Russian President Kozlov also joined in the Twitter attack from the Kremlin: “More American smears and lies against the Russian people. We will no longer stand for it. @VKozlov”
After he had dictated the last of the tweets, Kozlov bellowed at Markovich, “Get me Stokes again on the line.” He’d already sent a blistering order to the head of Russia’s Cyber War Command.
Meanwhile, the numbers of viewers on YouTube and Facebook continued soaring, and #Stokes&Kozlov became the trending hash tag on Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Steve broke out the champagne again. “With so many people watching this,” he said, “there’s no way the U.S. Congress will not move to impeach.”
Then, suddenly, all across YouTube, the broadcast simply vanished. A variety of different messages appeared in its place: “Error loading. Tap to retry.” “There is no network connection.” “This material has been removed because of obscene content.” Links to the report also disappeared from Facebook, to be replaced by a similar slogan. All tweets linked to the show also mysteriously evaporated.
“What the fuck?” said Charlie, staring at his laptop.
Indeed, within minutes the report had completely disappeared from millions of sites across the planet. Only copies of snapshots with transcribed text remained on rogue channels or conspiracy theorists’ pages, most had been edited to sound like they were penned by some teenage prankster and most were peppered with commentaries dismissing the credibility of the source. A transcribed copy on The Onion didn’t help at all.
“It’s as if it never existed,” said Ed. “How the hell can that happen?”
“It’s obvious,” said Steve grimly. “Our intelligence organizations and military have developed the capacity to rule the Internet. They’ve made no secret that was their goal.”
“It’s ironic,” said Charlie, “I actually worked on that project with the NSA when I was at the agency. Nothing is as important as the Internet. We wanted to destroy all enemy communications and capacity to react instantly.”
“Yeah, but this isn’t war,” said Ed.
“It is to Stokes,” said Steve.
“And to the Russians,” said Charlie. “From what we heard they were out to do the same thing to us in a fraction of a second, censor whatever they chose anywhere. And instantly control everything. They were supposed to be a couple of years ahead of us. I’ll bet Kozlov and Stokes made this a joint cyber operation.”
“Great,” said Steve, “I can already hear the White House line at the press briefing – after all the squabbling between Russia and America, it took Stokes and Kozlov to make a major step forward in their combined fight against terrorism.”
Though he was certain it would be of no use, Steve put in another encrypted call to Senator Gurd in Washington.
“What the hell happened to your broadcast?” said the senator. “I’d alerted our key guys in Congress, told them they had to watch this piece. They were finally going to get the truth on Stokes. I went way out on a limb for you.”
“Senator, they’ve totally blocked us from the network and from all social media.”