Hillary was getting very tired of the campaign and needed a day of relaxation. It was autumn and she was scheduled for a Saturday afternoon rally in Fayetteville, giving her the opportunity that she had been looking for.
They bought a cabin in the Whitewater wilderness in the Ozarks back when Bill was governor as a retreat. It wasn't much, just a lonely three-room cabin, roughly furnished with cold spring water available as running water, an outhouse, but no electricity. Set on the mountainside with a beautiful view of the valley below and the ridges of other mountains fading off in the distance. This time of year with the trees coming into color of reds, yellows, oranges, purples and greens and the angled autumn light made the view even more spectacular, mythical. The musty smell of rotting leaves and the whiff of smoke from wood and leaf fires reaching the nostrils gave joy to being alive in the warmth of the Indian summer sun.
So remote, it took hours to drive there on a fire road that often grew up in saplings. Visited only by the Clintons, an occasional hunter in the surrounding state forest and very hardy hikers, there was a tablet and pencil under the overhanging eve by the door with a sign that read, "Welcome to our humble abode. Please leave it as you found it." Over the years various souls, some lost, but most not, had spent some time in the cabin and had left their pleasing remembrances on the paper for the Clintons to read. Inside, a scrapbook with pictures and scribblings gave a history of the place to all who entered. Given the remoteness, the last time Bill and Hillary had been there, they left a fully charged iPhone on the table with the hopes that the battery would not run down. Based on their history with the place, they weren't worried about it being stolen, but it would certainly help anyone that was lost or needed assistance.
To get there quickly, the Clintons had created a helicopter pad on a level meadow 300 hundred yards below the cabin. Based on her schedule, Hillary could only spend Sunday afternoon there and then be picked up by helicopter at 6 pm to be flown to Minneapolis for Monday's rally and fundraiser dinner. She would use this time to take a long walk alone in the woods, breathe in the mountain air and restore her vigor for the tight campaign schedule still to come leading up to the election.
Her team rented a helicopter to take her to the cabin bright and early Sunday morning. Hillary so enjoyed flying over the beloved state of Bill's birth, so long left behind. It had been four years since she was able to come here and she was looking forward to the relaxation it would bring. About 11 am, they arrived at the meadow. The grass was turning brown and about knee-high. There were no deer in sight. But it was a favorite place for them near dusk. Hillary stepped out of the helicopter and told her Secret Service contingent not to worry. She wanted to be alone these few hours. She had her iPhone and the one in the cabin in case she needed them. Andrew, her detail officer objected, but she told him to leave and come back when she would be picked up.
Before taking her walk, Hilary thought she would take a moment to check on the cabin and take a drink from the spring although she had adequate Gatorade and trail mix in her backpack along with other necessities like toilet paper. So, when she reached the cabin and saw that everything looked in order, she walked down the well-traveled trail to the spring and taking the old aluminum dipper hanging from a nail on a tree, dipped some of the ice cold, crystal clear water and took a big drink that would probably last her for her entire hike. Already, her blood pressure had dropped considerably as she smiled to herself just enjoying the ambience of nature all around.
Arriving back at the cabin, Hillary checked the tablet for any messages. There weren't any. Pulling back the screen door and opening the door with its creaky hinges, she was greeted by the stale smell of slight mildewed remains of an un-lived in abode. So she left the door open to let the warm sun and fresh air in to revitalize the place. Dust had settled on all the surfaces, including the table and the iPhone.
Hillary picked up the phone, blew the dust off and checked it for messages. She found the phone to be very heavy. There weren't any messages that she could see from visitors to the cabin. As a curiosity, she checked Twitter and found that there were a number of messages from .realDonaldTrump. The first one read:
"I know you are playing hooky from the campaign, Hillary. There is little that I don't know."
Others read similarly, all revealing information that only Bill, she and close members of her staff and the Secret Service would know. Hillary immediately became alarmed and dropped the phone on the table as though she had been burned. She felt violated. Stripped naked. This side trip was only known by Bill and her Secret Service detail! Not even the staff! How would Donald Trump know? She felt like crying, but she didn't. Hillary was too tough for that. She took action. Hillary pulled her iPhone from her backpack and stepped outside into the fresh air sunlight to catch her breath and make a call.
"Andrew, we've got a problem. When I got to the cabin. I checked the iPhone that Bill and I left here. When I picked the phone up, it was quite heavy. And then, when I looked at the messages I found tweets from Trump that are very personal and alarming. I don't want those to get to the general public because they're personal and have nothing to do with the campaign. And they're heavy messages, too, because the phone weighs so much… Dammit!"
"Heavy messages? Are you sure? How would messages make the phone heavy Hillary? I'm no geek, but messages are electronic and have no weight." As chief of her security detail, there is little that Andrew wasn't privy to. But this was indeed strange coming from this pragmatic lady. Heavy messages, indeed!
"Well, get me a geek. This phone is definitely heavier. I'm going to wash my hands in the spring and take my walk. Please come on back after you pick up somebody who can check this phone out to see why it's got these messages that shouldn't be on the Internet because they could damage my campaign. You can track me by my phone. I'm going to get off this thing, try to put it out of my mind, and start my walk."
"Okay Hillary, I'll get right on it. Something is really strange going on." Both of them hung up. Andrew got on the phone again and called in the best he could muster in the Arkansas area.
Hillary, sweating from anxiety and adrenaline walked back down to the spring. She washed the dust from the cabin from her hands and splash some in her face, lowering the temperature of the flush there. The sooner she got on her walk, the better. She really needed to calm down. Dammit!
Although her walk through the dappled sun and shade of the familiar trail along the ridge line of their mountain was peaceful, with only the chattering of squirrels worried about her taking their winter stores, and the twittering of birds flying here and there among the trees as the dust and leaves settled down through the slanting autumn light of a beautiful, calm day, Hillary remained uneasy. The walk settled her down some, but as she returned to the cabin near the end of the afternoon her anxiety grew again.
There were three helicopters in the meadow. In addition to the one to take her back to Fayetteville and the airport for the flight to Minneapolis, a FBI helicopter and military helicopter were on the scene. The cabin was cordoned off with crime tape and a number of men in hazmat suits were carefully scrutinizing the place.
There was no time to talk to anyone. Andrew met Hillary on the trail and escorted her to the helicopter and their trip back to Fayetteville. There was a brief time to talk to him before they got to the helicopter and they couldn't talk about what was happening in front of the pilots.
"What's going on, Andrew. Why all the men? Military? It was only the phone. That was the only problem. Why did you have to bring the FBI in on it?"
"You were right. That phone was heavy. That phone was placed there by somebody else. We checked it out and those tweets were not from Trump, thank goodness. They were placed there on that knockoff iPhone to make you think that they were real and came from Trump. But whoever has got that information has the goods on you--at least your personal life."
They had to get on the helicopter and leave or they would miss Hillary's flight to Minneapolis. She was left with a lot of questions that would have to be answered later. She didn't tell Andrew, but that phrase haunted her, has the goods on you, all the way as she tried to sleep on the plane.
The next day was normal with a lot of activity. Finally, when the dinner talk was over and all the glad handing and checking in on wealthy donators was over, Hillary was escorted back to her hotel room for the night. But Andrew sidetracked her.
"Hillary, we've got some information on that phone. Come with me, the FBI is here to talk to you about it." Instead of entering her suite they walked a few doors down to another hotel room.
Andrew knocked on the door, someone came to the door, and he let Hillary enter, with Andrew staying outside as is usual in his guarding role as Secret Service. The casually dressed man who let Hillary in introduced himself. "I'm Special Agent Scott Peters. We want to brief you and interview you about the incident you had yesterday. Won't you please sit down on the couch over there so that we can get a video interview for our files. This is Special Agent Gloria Walker and Special Agent James Harper. Please be comfortable. Would you like something to drink?"
"I like a strong one right about now. It's been a long day. But I better not or I won't be able to sleep. Water will be fine. I hope this won't take long." Hillary, almost reluctantly, took her place on the couch in front of the camera.
Gloria Walker, with an kind look on her face, took over the discussion. "Ms. Clinton, would you please tell us what happened when you entered the cabin yesterday. Provide as much detail as you can. There may be some clues that will help us find out who did this."
Hillary recounted how she just got in the place, saw the phone, picked it up and found it rather heavy and then saw the disturbing messages, so she put it down in disgust and left the cabin to clear her mind and talk to Andrew about what she saw. Told Gloria that she felt so violated, dirty and agitated that she had to go back down to the spring in wash her hands and face of it in the cold, fresh water. When she finished, she asked. "What's with the phone? What have you found out about the phone?"
Agent Harper answered. "When we got the call from Secret Service, I was the first to arrive on the scene. I too, noticed that the phone was very heavy. Thinking that it was a bomb, I quickly left the cabin and called in the military. They arrived just before you returned from your walk and we didn't have any information then. Now we do.
"The military team put on hazmat suits and approached the phone with caution. When they confirmed that it was heavy like I told them. They immediately got out their radiation detectors and learned that the phone was a very special one. Its case was not aluminum like Apple makes. The phone apparently had been reconstructed with a uranium case that was alloyed with plutonium. I'm so glad you only held the phone momentarily and immediately washed off the spring. If you had held the phone up to your ear and used it to make a call, you may have received damaging beta radiation to your brain. I was tested immediately and found while I had low levels of radiation on my hands, I was not in danger from the dose that I got. We have that equipment here and will test you shortly. Based on what you told us, I think you are okay."
"Where do you think that phone came from?"
"It could have been Chinese, where they make the phones. Or, Russian, the only two countries that have the technical capability of providing such a lethal combination of uranium and plutonium as well as rebuild an iPhone like that. The signature's definitely Russian. As you know, they seem to have a lot of information they are leaking through WikiLeaks that they got from hacking your Internet server."
"I wish I had never taken that advice to have a secure server in my home. But that information I saw on that phone was new. They couldn't of gotten it from the server."
"We know that, Ms. Clinton. We suspect the information was gathered the old-fashioned way, either by bugs planted in your home, your offices, or even hotel rooms you visited. And then, there could be a member of your staff that is a part of the Russian espionage ring in the United States. We are looking into a couple of so-called "diplomatic" retreats that they have for parties and other nefarious activities that we believe are the source of their ever-growing spy network. They seem to have a lot to gain by sabotaging your campaign."
"You don't know the half of it. They really hated me when I was Secretary of State. I just tried to be as diplomatic as possible whenever around Putin and his gang." Hillary shuddered.
"That's it for now, Ms. Clinton. Will run that radiation test now. The CIA is working with us on it and we will reporter findings to the Secretary of Homeland Security and President Obama as soon as we have tracked down all the leads. The cabin seems to be okay, otherwise except for radioactive dust on the table. We found your phone in a drawer in the kitchen. Whoever they were, they were very clean and precise. We didn't find much yet on how they came or went. Very professional and probably Russian. The phone will eventually tell us."
Ms. Walker applied the machine and took readings. "You have a bit of residual radioactivity but no more than those old radon hand watches. You won't have to go to the hospital for any radiation treatment and can continue your campaign without any interruption. Will inform you of our progress whenever we make any. Thank you so much for your time. You must be tired and want to go to bed."
"I sure do, Ms. Walker. I really appreciate what the FBI has done so far. Can't do this without you. Thank you."
Andrew greeted Hillary when she left the room. "Is everything okay, Ms. Clinton? Did they find out what the phone was all about?"
As they returned to her room she replied, "They have a good idea that the Russians were behind it. They are still investigating. The reason the phone was heavy was that it was made from uranium and plutonium and very radioactive. Poisonous. Glad that you or I didn't have it in our possession very long. Everything's going to be all right. Good night, Andrew, and as usual, thanks so much for your help. You are priceless."
But things weren't all right. All Hillary could think of as she tried to go to sleep was, God, I hope they don't have any of those Betamax tapes we took of those threesomes with Bill groupies and then destroyed because they were too dangerous. We sure knew how to screw up in those days, Bill and I.
Copyright 2017 © Ronald W. Hull
1/22/17
