The Media Candidate by Paul Dueweke Read Free Book Online Page B

him.”
    Sherwood reached for a button, and the holograms
at each end of the conference evaporated.

 
    PART
TWO
     
Sherwood
—the past—
     
     
    “But lo, men have become the tools of their
tools.”
    — Henry David Thoreau
     
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
A Singular Lesson
     
    Fifteen-year-old Sherwood sat on his front porch
one Saturday awaiting his monthly issue of Double Agent . It
was two days late, and he fantasized the mailman taking it home.
“If he does not bring it today,” he mumbled, “I am going to tail
him and find out what he did with it.”
    He relived last month’s “true life” spy
adventure. Saber Tomb was last seen setting up an inflatable M-53
antenna on the balcony of X-Dog’s apartment to transmit ocean-test
data on the latest Q-Line North Korean nuclear submarine. The story
was continued just as the North Korean RF source locator had locked
on to a side lobe of the transmitter signal and pinpointed the
source. Tomb is smart , he thought, but how would he get
away?
    Suddenly the robotic mail tricycle cart appeared
rolling down the sidewalk. Then the mailman appeared, head bowed to
the packet of mail in his hands.
    Sherwood fixed his eyes on that packet, looking
for the international orange cover. When it appeared, he sighed
with relief. Yes! Come to me Saber Tomb , he thought. Now
we will see how you deal with those North Korean devils!
    These heroes had been his real family. The
secret codes of a dozen spies crowded his mind like baseball
statistics do most boys. He knew each agent’s tricks. He applauded
their ingenuity, celebrated their bravery, and imitated their
treachery.
    He bought kits for a laser-bounce listening gun
and an infrared snooper-scope from the Double Agent classifieds. His financial resources might include the change he
forget to give his mother or the few dollars that would disappear
from her dresser. She encouraged his enthusiastic purchases of rare
stamps, so he solicited cash for those special stamps, then bought
some cheap surrogates to satisfy her alacrity. Sometimes she wrote
him a check to the stamp company. He preferred cash.
    His parabolic listening device introduced him to
the “natural state” of girls. He found that some girls thought
about sex as much as he did, which repulsed him and his Victorian
model of females.
    He planted an FM wireless microphone under a
library table where a group of girls sat, and what he overheard
nourished his plan for his first sexual encounter with a girl. He
built an audiotape mixer in his basement electronics shop. He taped
some erotic music and electronically mixed it with a spoken message
of his own that subliminally suggested that the girl was getting
very excited and should take her clothes off. His plan, however,
assumed he would be able to get a girl to listen to the tape with
him. It was never field-tested.
    He bought an ultra-miniature TV camera, which he
installed in the ceiling of the girls shower room from the crawl
space above it. This became his new window to sex. The sting of his
subliminal tape defeat made him aware of a basic shortcoming in
that earlier strategy. He’d failed to use the resources available
to him, information privy to him alone that could make the
difference between victory and defeat. His arrogance propelled him
toward spying like oxygen draws a whale to the ocean’s surface.
    He listened again to a conversation he’d
recorded with his library bug.
    First Girl: “Gary thinks he’s perfect cool in
bed, but he’s, like, really flapping me lately. I just don’t know
anymore about him … or any poke.”
    Second Girl: “You still like me, don’t you? You
know, I never, like, had anybody like you. You are so major
gris.”
    First Girl: “That’s what’s so, like, ripping.
I’d rather rip with you than any poke. I think about the other
night, like, all the time. I want us to rip again so bad, and I
don’t give a damn if I, like, ever see another boy again.
Especially that Gary