Wireless Puppet

By Nicholas Sheffield

On the brink of imploding, the last thing the ruling government of an economic backwater wants is a scandal. Miguel, a senior political figure in that government, knows that better than anyone. Unfortunately he finds himself in the middle of one at the most inopportune moment.

What’s worse, he doesn't know the first thing about it. Someone is using him. Someone has set him up. Their modus operandi is particularly unorthodox, and if he doesn't figure it out very quickly he won’t make it to the end of the week.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicholas Sheffield
• Release date: Jan 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301645176

Nicholas Sheffield

Nicholas Sheffield grew up in Hamilton, New Zealand. He obtained a Bachelor of Management Studies from the University of Waikato, and has a long history of work in the Information Systems sector. He and his wife Simone have six children. Double Dragon published his first work, Overlanders, in 2004. The novel revolves around a group of friends whose utopian existence is put at risk when they’re thrust into the archaic and dangerous cities of the overlands. Sheffield’s writings are generally set in, or around, the Earth, and employ a plausible use of technology. Therefore many of the popular science fiction themes, such as time travel and alternative dimensions, never appear in his works. The concepts that form the spine of each story are often as important as the main narrative. They’re not always held up to the spotlight, but tend to be woven quietly into the background.

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Wireless Puppet

Nicholas Sheffield

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012, Nicholas Sheffield

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 9781301645176

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Chapter 1

Miguel ambled listlessly along the sweeping conveyer belt footways of the seventeenth floor. The huge tracts of rolling fabric, which blended seamlessly into the floorage, were moving at a brisk pace beneath his feet.

The capitol plaza was a huge complex of buildings. In order to avoid spending half the day walking people really needed to commute around the place quickly. The conveyer belts carried them in every which direction – through the grandiose gilded reception areas, along the lengths of the colonnaded thoroughfares, and down passageways walled by rows of tall doors. A person could get anywhere they wanted to at something approaching a running speed.

Miguel was so used to them that he hardly thought about it. He could step from a main corridor onto a side passage without so much as a downward glance. That was in stark contrast to newcomers to the plaza, who were easy to spot on account of the fact that they had to cast their eyes down to check their step before changing lanes.

There were a lot of people using the foot highways this morning. Shapes came and went in the other direction - some walking, some standing – too many to greet. The conveyer belts carried environmental people to business people, business people to legal people, legal people to social welfare people, social welfare people to foreign affairs people, and so on and so on. Of course there were videoconference facilities available in each and every office, but this was the cut and thrust of the country’s central government. Those with ambition didn’t want to sit around brooding in their offices. Not a chance. They wanted to sweep into high-powered board rooms and make the very walls shudder; they wanted to hear their own voices echoing gloriously back in their eardrums; they wanted to see lesser people quivering with fear and greater people sitting up to take notice.

Miguel was of that ilk. Being minister of civil works and minister of energy, he was right up there.

As he neared his offices the fleeting faces coming the other way became more familiar. Polite nods and reserved facial gestures grew into waving salutes and animated greetings. Arriving at his ministry, he came across a huddle of colleagues standing in the foyer chatting. He waved them a hearty good morning with both hands – one of his typically flamboyant signature gestures.

The colleagues were some of the veterans of the parliamentary corridors. Just like him they’d been around the block a few times and were well settled into their respected years. He considered them members of his inner circle – a seasoned enclave with whom he’d shared many a long campaign. When things got rough and the knives came out these harmless looking congressmen with wispy white-tufts on their heads were the ones that had his back. They were a lot more ruthless and calculating than appearances would lead to believe.

Of late the knives had been coming out with alarming frequency. There was a fair amount of infighting in the ruling party because a small number of ham-fisted ministers had been a little too transparent about their backhanders. That was a feature of less affluent countries. Bungling corruption. In larger countries a backhander was done with shrewdness and tact, concealed elegantly from the public beneath a complex mountain of law and accounting. But second-rate countries had second-rate white-collar criminals. A few clumsy oafs could ruin the gravy train for everyone, and that’s what was happening at the moment.

Miguel swaggered up to his colleagues. He cleared his gravelly throat and addressed them in his usual booming manner.

‘What’s the view from the ramparts, gents?’

One of the angle-faced sages raised a crooked eyebrow. His name was Alfredo. He was a lean, hawk-eyed looking player. He shaped his words slowly and articulately, savouring every syllable from the first to the last, but it paid to listen to each and every one of them.

‘Glorious as ever,’ he said. ‘The peasants are amassing on the hills while the garrison is trying to slip out through the underground tunnels.’

It was an expression he often used to describe a spell that was more politically volatile than usual, but this time he followed it up with another line. ‘And the noblemen’s quarters are alight.’

Miguel stuck out his fat bottom lip at this new variation. ‘The noblemen’s quarters are alight?’

The old sage squared him up with dark eyes and nodded knowingly. ‘You’re a bit off the pace in the mornings, aren’t you. Fall asleep in your cornflakes again?’

Miguel threw his head back with a hearty chuckle. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he conceded. ‘You know what my philosophy is… don’t like to get slapped with news as soon as I open my eyes. Information overload these days. As far as I’m concerned the sensory assault begins at eight o’clock. Not a minute sooner.’

‘The assault on young Jose couldn’t wait,’ said Alfredo in his measured way. ‘He had had his house razed by a fire overnight.’

‘Whose Jose?’

‘Jose Bencomo. Backbencher. He’s one of Yucef’s underlings.’

‘Dear, oh dear,’ said Miguel with an exaggerated shake of his head. ‘Anybody hurt?’

‘Nothing too serious,’ said Alfredo, pausing to nod slowly at his own words. ‘One of his little ones is under observation for smoke inhalation. But that’s just a precautionary measure.’

‘So they all got out ok?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the house?’

In answer to that question Alfredo made a flicking gesture with his fingers, which implied that the whole structure had gone up in an all-encompassing fireball.

‘Tough break,’ said Miguel.

‘That you could say.’

Miguel tipped his head back and pouted his lips. ‘What exactly do you mean by razed though? I mean, what is that? Did someone torch his house?’

‘Yeah. I think that’s what I’m saying,’ said Alfredo. His tone was rather cynical, but it was an inherent mannerism and Miguel knew better than to take offence at it.

‘How do you know it wasn’t just some accident?’

‘Well, let me see,’ said Alfredo slowly. ‘I guess the main clue was the failure of the smoke detectors. Eighteen independently powered smoke detectors… all failed to activate. The house was quiet like a mouse and then…’ He made the same hand gesture again.

‘Oh,’ said Miguel with a sigh. ‘I guess one could definitely argue a case for malicious cause then. Does carry the foul stench of an arson attack’. He slowly scanned the faces of the three other people in the group. ‘It’s no wonder the Spanish call this the wild frontier. . What a county. What a bloody country.’

Alfredo curled up his thin top lip. ‘The Spanish can’t be too high and mighty. That pack of pompous buffoons had quite a hand in making this land the way it is. They carved it out.’

Miguel shrugged. ‘The fire… you think that’s contract related?’

The muddling of Alfredo’s eyebrows indicated that he wasn’t sure. ‘A warning for Yucef perhaps?’ he postulated. Then he raised his nose and sniffed. ‘There’s more bad news too.’

Miguel looked at him with worried eyes and waited for it.

‘Last night,’ began Alfredo, ‘a couple of rather tidy skirts from the transport department decided to take a leisurely stroll through the CBD. It was a quiet, starry night... quite the picture. I guess they lost their heads in the moment. To be fair they did do quite well… almost made it past the Grand Central. But that’s where their luck ran out. Dragged into an alley; given the flogging of a lifetime. It concluded with the removal of personal items, clothes, and their last vestiges of virginity.’

‘Oh that is appalling,’ said Miguel with a shake of his head. ‘That is simply appalling.’

Alfredo nodded. ‘They’ll get through it. In a few months time their jawbones will have reset nicely.’

Miguel threw his hands up. There was simply nothing to say to that.

‘On another subject,’ said Alfredo. ‘ Did you hear Steve got another death threat text?’

Miguel blew a deep breath over his fat bottom lip. ‘Yeah, he should charge back his time for reading those. He’d make a killing.’

Alfredo smiled grimly. ‘There’s too many of those texts going around at the moment. People are starting to lose their nerve.’

‘And if we start to lose our nerve,’ added Miguel, ‘then the public are going to lose theirs.’ He sucked in a deep breath. ‘Boy, a lot happens in one night. We got enough trouble on our plates already. Aren’t Jose and Sandro up for their arraignment today over those corruption charges? It’s this afternoon, right?’

Alfredo confirmed with a nod.

Miguel pulled another despondent expression. ‘Man, it never rains...’

‘True,’ agreed Alfredo. He held his mouth for a moment and looked down his nose at Miguel. ‘But I haven’t delivered the big news from last night yet. I thought I’d save the best to last.’ He took a deep breath through his nostrils and made them flare at the ends. ‘Our illustrious party leader was snapped visiting a male strip-club yesterday evening.’

Those words hit Miguel like a slap on the chest. He looked like he’d been slapped too. He leant a fraction forward with mouth agape as if just winded and stayed in that pose for a time while struggling to come to terms with the bombshell.

‘Frank?’ he finally said.

‘Yes.’

‘Frank?’

Another affirmative nod.

‘Good grief!’ said Miguel. Then he waved his hand. ‘This is a joke, right? Come on, this is a joke.’

‘The up side,’ added Alfredo, ‘is that it didn’t quite make the news last night. Some fat-knuckled heavyweight in the national service beat up the cameraman before he got the film out. The down side is that the journalist has now got two terrific scoops for tonight’s screening.’

Miguel screwed up his face and his voice weakened. ‘A male strip club? A male flaming strip club? Honestly, I didn’t know Frank liked to jump the fence.’

‘Neither did we, old friend, neither did we.’

Miguel struggled to process the information. The revelation had certainly knocked the wind out of his sails and the up-beat smile beaming off his face when he’d first turned up was now well dissipated. He looked around the other faces to gauge their thoughts. The collection of jaded, despairing expressions merely mirrored his.

‘Just as well we didn’t put him forward for the presidency,’ he muttered.

Alfredo closed his eyes and nodded slowly. ‘You might want to change your morning routine, eh? This is not the time to be sticking your fingers in your ears as it were. Parliament is ready to blow.’ He leant forward and spoke in a hushed tone. ‘There is talk of a coup brewing.’

Miguels shoulders sank. He wasn’t sure how much more of the morning report he could handle.

‘If that does happen,’ continued Alfredo, ‘we need to make sure we’re in a good position to weather it. To start with, we need to distance ourselves from those insufferable Spanish capitalists. There’s going to be a big backlash against their dominance in the contract market. Any politician caught under the sheets with them is going to get a rude awakening from the mob. It’ll be pitchforks at dawn. And trust me, you don’t want to find yourself with bared buttocks in front of that lot.’

Miguel straightened. ‘So it should be,’ he said resolutely. ‘Bloody Spanish. One soft trade agreement in their favour and what do they do? They overrun the whole blasted country. Everywhere that money falls there’s another Spaniard catching it in his cap. They’re a pack of creeping parasites.’

Alfredo gave him a wry look.

Yes, he was right. Miguel Ottolina, the self-proclaimed nationalist, was hardly in a position to trounce the Spanish influence. His association with those people had forever besmirched his career. In fact it was a stain he could never get rid of. Miguel grown up in Spain, received an upper class Spanish education, and learnt to speak the Spanish language as fluently as his own.

In this country that was not a good record, and in these perilous times it made him a particularly caustic ally. In order to distance himself from that past he tended to be the first to point the finger at his old compatriots