Fanis and Kera are in London. Kera has been going to various meeting in and
around London and Fanis is unsure what they’re about but he feels safer in the
United Kingdom. Acting as Kera’s
bodyguard has really been tough as of late as there had been several attempts
on her life. Fanis has had to use every
bit of his military style training to get her out safely and Kera seemed to put
herself in dangerous situations knowing that her cousin would get her out of
it. Kera sits down at the TV after a
long day and Fanis sits next to her as she sees her sigh. She says, “I’m working on a huge sale, the
biggest one I’ve ever had but it causes us to go to another dangerous area.”
Fanis is solemn and replies,
“Can we just go there for business only?
No freeing sex slaves or disrupting a human trafficking ring. Let’s just go in, make your sale, and get
out.”
Kera takes a deep breath and
says, “I can only promise I won’t seek it out.”
“Fair enough; so where are we
going?”
“Saudi Arabia”
Fanis rolled his eyes. The calendar had just turned to June and he
knew of something going on in Saudi Arabia.
He said, “Can you ask him if we can do it in Jeddah? There’s a professional wrestling event going
on there so I think security is going to be at an all time high to make sure
Americans aren’t hurt and cause an international incident and stop the WWE from
going there again?”
Kera gave him a weird look and
inquired, “How long as the WWE been going there?”
“This is the second time”
“When’s the event?”
“This Friday, June 7”
“Well, I’m meeting him on June 4”
“That’s close enough to the
event.”
“It’s a large item that’s hard
to transport.”
“Aren’t we transporting it from
England?”
“Yes, we are”
“So he can transport it from
Jeddah”
“I can ask but I can’t guarantee
anything. I do have a surprise for you
though”
“What’s that?”
“Well, I know how you’ve been
really involved in Spygate and the spying on Trump”
“Yea….”
“So, you’re not a big fan of Christopher
Steele”
“No, and President Trump is in
London now.”
“Trust me, I know”
“Am I going to get to meet the
President?”
Kera sighed, “No, but that is
something I should’ve thought of. I
think this is better though.”
“Alright what is it?”
“You’ll find out tomorrow”
“Alright” Fanis answered
suspiciously.
The next day, Kera came into the
TV room and said, “Fanis, come here, let me show you the surprise”
Fanis came in and Kera turned on
the TV to the news. What he saw was,
“Breaking news, Christopher Steele has agreed to be questioned by US
investigators.”
Fanis smiled and declared,
“Trump has done it again!”
Kera rolled her eyes and
uttered, “Don’t credit Trump with my work.”
Fanis threw her a strange look and Kera just smiled. She went on, “Anyway, this is just the first
part of the surprise”
“What’s the second part?”
“You’re going to meet with
congressional investigators. They are
doing a focus group on what questions they should ask him.”
“I’m going to Washington? I thought we had to be in Saudi Arabia in two
days.”
Kera gave Fanis a dirty look and
stated, “You really have to learn that we have technology now. It’s going to be a video conference. Hell, even if we didn’t have video
conferencing, this could have been done over the phone!”
Fanis shook his head as if to
tell himself that he should have known this.
“When’s the conference?”
“Two hours. You have to do it in Parliament because they
want to make sure it’s a secure line.”
“How did you….never mind”
“Look, you’ve saved my life a
lot lately. I know it’s your job but I
felt like I needed to reward you with something besides money and you don’t
like Chinese artifacts, so I’ve used my influence here in London to get you
this. I can’t promise they’ll use your
questions but I did get them to pressure Steele to talk to the Americans”
Fanis couldn’t tell if she was
joking. It seemed a little coincidental
that a couple days after President Trump arrives in London, Christopher Steele
decides that he’s going to come in for questioning. Then again, she has to have some influence if
he’s going to Parliament to talk. He
decided to do what he always did and ignore it.
He never thought it would be hard to not ask her about her business when
he took the job but it was. Two hours
later, Fanis is sitting in the house of parliament in front of a computer. The American ambassador in London is on the
line along with various members of congress.
One congress member started, “Now, Mr. Rozakis, we want to know what the
American people would like to know from Mr. Steele. Do you have some suggestions?”
“Yes, thank you for your time….”
A Democratic member of congress
said, “Well obviously we want to know if the Republicans paid Steele through
Fusion GPS”
Fanis was never one to care
about authority and didn’t mind speaking up to power so he retorted, “Well, we
already know that to be false. That’s
about as ridiculous as saying that since a lawyer has two clients that those
clients are involved in the same crime.”
The Democratic congressman was
speechless and the original speaker pronounced, “I apologize for the
interruption. Please continue Mr.
Rozakis. I assure you it won’t happen
again.”
“I want to know who Trubnikov and
Surkov were to him.”
“Could you provide some
background as to why you ask that question?”
“Well, they are listed as
sources in Kathleen Kavalec’s memo at the state department. How did they come about to be his
sources? Most of my questions revolve around
these two characters since they are supposedly the sources for the dossier.”
“Alright, anything else?”
“Did he make any effort to find
out who they were? It’s well documented
how close they are to Putin. It’s also
very well documented that Surkov in particular wrote an article about how to
manipulate the media. Given how close
they were to Putin and the Kremlin, did he ever consider that it was a Russian
disinformation campaign?”
“Thank you for explaining the
context and the ‘why’ to the question. Please
continue to do that so that we are clear what you mean. Remember, most of the times, we are just
parroting what people like yourself tell us to ask so assume we aren’t as
knowledgeable as you.”
Fanis wanted to say that he had
no doubt in his mind they weren’t as knowledgeable as he but decided against
it. He threw out, “Why couldn’t he
recall his own story with Kavalec? In
the October 8 meeting he clearly states that Michael Cohen went to Prague. Eight days later, he says in one of the documents
that make up the dossier that they didn’t know where the meeting was going to
take place.”
“Noted, anything else?”
“Oh, I’m not done with that
one. As a follow up, did he actually
write the dossier or did he just sign someone else’s work to give it
credibility?”
“More specifically, who do you
think wrote the dossier?”
“Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS”
“Are you through with that
aspect of the question? I don’t want to
make another false assumption”
“Yes, thank you. I also want to know if the FBI interviewed
his sub-sources. Actually, back to the
first question, did he know that Trubnikov taught a course with Halper right here
in Cambridge? If so, when did it
happen?”
“Is there a particular date you
want us to focus on?”
“Before or after January
2017. Also, are there FBI 302’s or memos
they wrote about their interview with his sub-sources if they happened.”
“You seem to think that these
interviews happened? What do you hope to
confirm or deny with this question?”
“Is there an FBI 302 saying they
thought his sources to be unreliable but they renewed the FISA anyway?”
“There’s a lot in there but I
think I got the gist.”
The Ambassador chimed in, “Well
one of them should be a question for the FBI”
“No it shouldn’t…” Fanis fired
back, “the question is whether Steele has any knowledge of the FBI doing
that. You can also ask the FBI to see if
they contradict each other but it’s a fair question for Steele.”
The main congressman speaking
pronounced, “Anything else?”
“After the FBI fired him in
November 2016, who was it that tried to bring him back? Why did they bring him back if they thought
he was, and I’m quoting from the FISA, ‘not suitable for use?’ Was he given a reason? Why did he have to go through Bruce Ohr of
the state department?
“Keep going”
Fanis did and after a little
while he exited the House of Parliament ecstatic. He tried to tell himself that the Democrats
controlled the house and they may not use his questions but he loved that he
had the chance. He went back home and
when he saw Kera she asked, “How was it?”
His response was to give her a
big hug and lift her up. Kera giggled
and declared, “I’m guessing you like my surprise.”
“Thank you so much”
“Thank you for saving my life a
couple times lately.”
“My pleasure.”
“Likewise”
The next day, June 3, Fanis and
Kera are at the airport. The meeting is
not in Jeddah but in a town near Riyadh. While at the airport, Fanis looked up
and sees CNN on. He believes that if it
wasn’t for public places playing CNN, they would have no ratings at all. He sees Asha Rongapappa on saying that
verification has nothing to do with tracking down sources for a FISA court.”
Sitting at Heathrow, Fanis
bursts out, “What are you talking about?
Then what is it? Just believe
everything someone tells you and not try to verify it at all? You’ve never heard of the Woods procedure?”
Kera scolded, “Shut up, we’re
not at home.”
“No, I will not. I can’t deal with this stupid shit.”
Someone at the gate retorted, ‘I
think she knows better than you, she was an FBI agent?”
Fanis turned to the Englishmen
and rebutted, “For three years. You
can’t even graduate college in that amount of time. Hell, a third of that time was spent in
training. When you apply for job that
wants experienced people, it says 5-10 years.
She’s at three. Hardly an
expert.”
“Three more than you chap”
Fanis pulled out his phone and
typed some buttons and handed it to the Englishmen and explained, “I may never
have been in the FBI, but I know how to stay consistent”
The Englishman read an article
by Asha on 3/6/16, in which she says, ‘DOJ verifies the accuracy of every fact
stated in the application.’ The title of
the piece is defending the FISA warrant saying that the DOJ and FBI thoroughly
vet everything so if a warrant is issued, then it must be true because of the
vigorous verification process.
Kera sees the Englishmen
crestfallen and decides to bail him out.
She utters, “I’m sorry sir, he doesn’t really know his manners.”
The Englishmen hands Fanis back
his phone and says nothing but just turns away.
Fanis smiles because he takes it as a victory.
Kera is wearing a head scarf on
the plane in order to not stand out.
Every woman has a similar scarf.
She is wearing elephant pants and is dreading it. Taking risks in Dubai and Egypt was one thing
as they are used to westerners but Saudi Arabia is not. She knows she is going to always stay in
close proximity to Fanis. She would be
by his side but that’s frowned upon in Muslim culture. She has to walk behind him. Kera has never been more afraid and thinks
that maybe she should have just had Fanis go on his own. She starts speaking in Greek and states, “Ok,
so remember, you’re going to make the offer with everyone else on my team. It’ll take a bit to assemble but I’m going to
always be near you. I know you’re
oblivious but I need you to always focus.
I’m going to be making hissing noises since you won’t be able to see me
as I’ll be behind you. If you stop
hearing hissing noises, turn around.”
Fanis nodded. He was happy that Kera was going to be
cautious this time. He responded also in
Greek, “Am I going to have to negotiate like last time? I won’t know what to say. I don’t even know what we’re bringing”
“No, it’s already paid for. We are just presenting it.”
They land in Riyadh and go to
their hotel. They quickly go to sleep
and the next day they meet up with their team that has rented trucks. The monument is covered so Fanis can’t see it
but they head out with him in front and Kera in the back seat. They arrive at a museum and are welcomed
hospitably by a group of Arabs. Fanis
shakes their hands and is led to the back of the museum. The person that Fanis believes is a museum
curator is showing them where to put it.
As he’s talking, Fanis is constantly listening for a hissing noise
behind him. The hissing turns to
muttering as Kera tells him in Greek to start saying random things in Greek in
a stern voice. Fanis excuses himself and
knows what she is getting at. She turns
to the men and barks random expressions in Greek. He then pauses and Kera walks toward the men
and pretends to translate but really she’s instructing them what to do. The men set up a life size reenactment of the
Tiananmen Square when a tank came at a young Chinese student who didn’t
budge. The date, “June 4, 1989” was
written in precious stones on the side of the tank as that’s when it
happened. The boy’s shirt is engraved
with “Never forget” written in Mandarin, Arabic, and English. On the long gun of the tank is written, “30
year anniversary” in Arabic and Mandarin.
The tank is decorated in bright lavish colors that all have symbolism to
both Arab and Chinese culture. Fanis
takes it in with the curator. The
curator exclaims, “It is magnificent, thank you”
Fanis nods and keeps a poker
face. He is just as stunned. He turns to the curator and asks, “Is there
anything else you need from us?”
“Please join me
for lunch”
Fanis accepts and they go to a
restaurant. Kera is sitting next to
Fanis keeping her head down knowing not so speak until spoken to. The curator introduced himself as
Muhmoud. He starts and says, “I find it
odd that we just set up an anti-communist monument but you have your own
problem with socialism in the United States.”
Fanis tries to remain calm and
says, “What do you mean? President Trump
is far from a communist.”
“Oh no, although I have many
issues with your president, socialism is definitely not one of them. I’m talking about that woman Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez”
Fanis rolled his eyes and
replied, “Oh her, yea, in that case we are in agreement.”
“This is why women should not be
in power. They just lack the
intelligence.”
Fanis grinned because he could
feel the anger in Kera over this comment. Fanis did agree Cortez was a
moron. He, however, didn’t generalize
that to all women. He merely stated,
“Well, when she says that people’s right to housing trumps their privilege to
work, I have trouble disagreeing with you.”
“Yes, you Americans are big on
rights.”
“Well the left doesn’t realize
that when you declare something a right, you are forcing an obligation on
someone else. In this situation, it is
somehow the obligation of every working person to pay for your home. That is absurd but it’s not a policy yet so
at least it’s isolated as it stands”
“What is her belief on how to
pay for a house for everyone?”
“She’s a socialist, so she
thinks the government controls everything.
With the money the government gets from controlling the means of production,
they determine when you get paid for your labor. First, though, they need to pay everyone’s
housing cost then you get paid.”
A man in their group replies, “I
don’t think that’s what she’s saying”
Fanis declared, “She
specifically said ‘people’s right to housing takes precedence over people’s
privilege to earn an income.’ What do
you think that meant?”
“She just tries to raise
awareness to homelessness”
“Why do people always insist on
using that line to refute what she actually says? You can still be a leftist without supporting
that moron.”
The curator said, “It appears
that she means that you don’t have to work to keep your home. It’s everyone else’s obligation to pay for
it.”
“She’s not literal. She’s
speaking figuratively to raise awareness” the crew member snapped back
Fanis replied, “No, she only
says that when she gets caught for making idiotic statement. Then again, everything she says is idiotic”
The curator says, “Obviously,
she’s a woman. That’s why we don’t allow
them to govern here. We need to keep
idiocy out of our laws. That is why we are such a rich country.”
Fanis was going to point out
that America is the richest country but decided against it. He said, “Well, there are some intelligent
women she’s just not one of them. I
respectfully disagree with you but, again, I can’t defend this particular woman
at all.”
The night proceeds like this and
when they return to the hotel, Kera wraps her arms around Fanis and buries her
head in his chest and lets out a guttural scream that’s suppressed by Fanis’
chest and shirt. He laughs and hugs her
back. He knows that every chauvinistic
comment made drove Kera crazy but it drove her even crazier that she couldn’t
respond. Kera wants to get out of Riyadh
as quickly as she can so she leaves to get to the airport six hours before her
flight back to London. Fanis is going to
Jeddah as he got tickets to the WWE event but Kera isn’t going with him. Even though Jeddah is more western and has
bragged about their progressiveness by letting women drive, Kera doesn’t think
that that’s too impressive. The fact
that they brag about that means they got a long way to go before they really
respect women by western standards. As
they are driving to the airport, they see a crowd of people in a circle. Kera commands, “Pull over, I want to see
what’s going on.”
It turns out this was a
mistake. At first, Fanis didn’t realize
what he was looking at as a young boy around 12-years-old was standing with a
leather strap. There was an object
strapped to a poll about a foot taller than he was. The boy was whipping the object with the
strap as a bunch of grown men watched.
At first, Fanis thought it was a piñata and he was watching a birthday
party or something similar. Then he
realized that what he thought was a piñata was actually a girl with her hands
tied to the pole. It was an act of
Sharia law. The girl was being publicly
punished for something that Kera and Fanis knew would probably be encouraged in
the west. Fanis and Kera stared at each
other. They had the same thought and
didn’t even need to articulate it. Fanis
stormed back to the car and took out a bag from the trunk and removed some
regular household items that, under experienced hands, can be turned into an
explosive. Fanis quickly made two and
handed one to Kera. Kera took the
explosive, a gun and a machete and walked toward the crowd while Fanis walked
around with the same weapons except a knife instead of a machete. Nobody was paying attention to them. They both activated the explosive and tossed
it into the crowd of males. It exploded
and Fanis and Kera use the confusion to slay any survivors. The boy and girl are the only ones unarmed
and the boy tries to run but Fanis runs him down and grabs him by the
neck. He throws him to the ground and
screams in English, Greek, Russian, Italian and Spanish “Boys don’t hit girls.”
The kid probably only speaks
Arabic so all three were pointless except for him to let out anger. Meanwhile, Kera untied the girl and picked up
the leather strap where the boy dropped it.
He handed the strap to the girl and pointed at the boy. The girl shook her head and ran the opposite way
of the boy. Kera shrugged her shoulders
and turned to Fanis and said in Greek, “Bring that piece of shit here”
Fanis drags the boy to the poll
and ties his arms in the same way as the girl.
Whereas the boy blows were concentrated on the girl’s legs and sometimes
her back, Kera’s first blow went right across his face. She removed her headscarf and the elephant
pants to reveal her shorts underneath.
She wanted this to be as disrespectful as possible. Just like with the boy, Kera swung freely and
relentlessly. Unlike the boy, she struck
all over his body as he spun. When she
was tired, she took off her shirt revealing only a bra. She grabbed the kids head and shoved it in
between her breasts. Boys in the west
would love this but this was considered dirty in Muslim culture. Kera untied
him and tossed him on the ground. She removed
her right sandal and stepped on the boy’s midsection pinning him down. In Asian culture, showing the bottom of your
foot toward someone is disrespectful.
Actually placing it on someone is the ultimate form of disrespect. Kera glided her foot towards the boy’s face
and placed it against his lips and cheek as the boy yelled at her in
Arabic. She placed her foot in his mouth
and said in English, “That should shut you up.”
Fanis came up to Kera and put
his hand on her shoulder. He muttered,
“We need to go, these people live somewhere”
Kera put her sandal and shirt
back on and went back to the car holding the elephant pants and head
scarf. She hadn’t decided yet if she was
going to put it back on. Her crew all
had guns out to protect them in case anyone came. They repacked everything and continued toward
the airport. Kera did decide to put the
head scarf and elephant pants back on. They
arrived at the airport and Kera cried out, “I need to get the fuck out of this
country.”
They went to the gate and Fanis
waited with her until she boarded the plane always worried that authorities
would stop them. It didn’t happen. Kera boarded her plane and Fanis went to his
gate to go to Jeddah. After the WWE
event, he reunited with Kera in London.
When he got back, Kera was still shaken up about what happened in Saudi
Arabia. She gave him a big hug when she
saw him and stated, “Let’s go for a walk”
Kera loved walking around big
cities. As much as she loved Beijing,
the population had reached a point where she could no longer do walk so it no
longer was her favorite city. London,
like New York where she was born and raised, was a city where a lot of people
walked. Kera and Fanis walked around and
they went by an anti-Trump protest as he was still in town. Kera made it a point to walk near it because
she hated Trump but knew Fanis was a Trump supporter. While there, an 80-year-old man was walking
with a “MAGA” hat on. A mob of people
grabbed him and forced him to the ground.
Luckily a few people scolded the mob and helped the man up castigated
them for ‘acting like Trump’”
Fanis whispered to Kera, “See
where your beliefs lead?”
“The right has assholes too”
“Very few and they’re on the
fringe. They are much more punished by
other conservatives than those assholes were.
There’s two main differences between us and you. We have limits we won’t go because we believe
in objective morality. Even if you
don’t, we respect what we consider objective truths and reality. It keeps us at a behavior above you chaos
lovers.”
“Did your objective truth stop
you from attacking that boy in Saudi Arabia?”
“Yes it did. I merely threw him to the ground and yelled
at him. You did exactly what he did to
that girl. We had a very visceral
reaction to it and then you went and did the same thing”
“That fucker deserved it!”
“I’m not going to say he
didn’t. I do think it’s much worse for
boys to hit girls than girls to hit boys.
What I’m saying is our reaction to the situation was very different. I threw him to the ground and yelled. You tied him up and whipped him. See, conservatives think that liberals are
good people with bad ideas whereas liberals think conservatives are bad people
with ideas.”
“Did your little moral code stop
you from throwing that explosive into a group of people?”
“Those were men that condoned
the beating of a little girl. They’re
beyond saving.”
“So they’re evil”
“Yes, evil exists. They were
evil. I feel no remorse but I’m not
going to generalize to all Muslims”
“Just the ones that practice
Sharia law”
“Yes, but in that sense I’m not
very conservative, I admit. I, however,
would never attack an old man for not agreeing with me on whether or not a
politician is a good politician. What I
did in Saudi Arabia was in defense of a girl being violently attacked. Self-Defense or defense of another justifies
violence. What we just witnessed is how
you liberals resort to violence even if you are not attacked physically. You make up things like ‘speech is violent’
to justify your using pepper spray and physically assaulting people all under
the mantra, ‘No tolerance for the intolerant.’”
“Well, I agree so stop saying
‘you liberals.’ What those jackasses did was deplorable.”
“Alright, I’m glad we can agree
on that.”
Fanis and Kera walked and talked
for a long time before they went back home.
When they returned home, Kera asked Fanis, “Look at this study about how
a 15-dollar minimum wage won’t affect businesses.”
“It’s already raised prices in
New York, which already had one of the highest rates of pay so that’s
bullshit.”
“Just read the article”
Fanis did and said, “Alright so
they calculate the ideal minimum wage to be 59% of the median”
“Right, which is 13, so two
dollars more is close enough.”
“No, it’s not. Two dollars an hour adds up really
quickly. Besides, the calculation itself
is crazy.”
“What do you mean?”
“They don’t include seasonal and
part time workers. If they did, it would
bring the ideal amount to a little over ten dollars and now it’s a little under
eight dollars. So there you go, there’s
your ‘only two dollars.’
Kera grinned, “No, that’s not
what I meant.”
“Look, you see what happened in
New York. Fast food restaurants raised
their prices.”
“I don’t eat fast food”
“I do”
“Fine, I’m not arguing economics
with you, you’re the econ major”
“That’s right!”
“So there’s another big order in
Saudi Arabia”
Fanis glared at her and said,
“Kera….”
“I turned it down. No matter how much money they’re willing to
spend, I’m not going back.”
“Good, me neither”
“Yea, that was traumatizing to
watch”
“At least we did something or
else we’d feel guilty too”
A male co-worker of Kera’s took
over the sale and the Arab insisted that it be Kera or else they would
withdraw. Kera wasn’t going to accept it
anyway but she became suspicious. The
deal fell through and Kera was reprimanded at work but she didn’t care. It turns out it was the correct decision as
they had found out who was responsible for the massacre in the Sharia law
punishing of the young girl. The Saudi
military was involved and they were going to target Fanis and Kera the moment
they got off the plane. Luckily for Kera
and Fanis, they didn’t go. As far as
Kera was concerned, her business in Saudi Arabia was over the second she saw a
girl tied up and whipped mercilessly.
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