339: Chapter 339 Deep State Machinery

"The chain of evidence is in place," the man from Langley spoke up. "The Persia language document left in the warehouse is an authentic item we seized in northeastern Syria last year—it originally belonged to a regional coordinator of the Quds Force. He had tucked a blank operational authorization letter inside the cover of a Quran; we seized it but never entered it into the official records." When he said "never entered it into the official records," his tone was flatter than if he were saying "the weather is nice." "The forensic and trace evidence teams have arranged their people, and the ballistics matching results will point to an Iran-made sniper rifle 'seized' in Iraq last year. The timeline matches, the location matches, and the weapon model matches. Any jury that sees this would deliver a guilty verdict—though this case will never go to court."

"What about Congress?" Greenberg looked toward Madeline Klein.

Madeline Klein took a folded chart from her briefcase and spread it out on the coffee table. It was a Senate voting prediction model, with each Senator's leaning marked in red or blue. "The bipartisan leadership of the Armed Services Committee has already privately agreed to fast-track the review. Opposition votes in the Foreign Relations Committee are mainly concentrated among the left-wing progressives and the libertarian right—together, these two groups account for about eight to ten votes. The Majority Leader has promised to complete the debate by tomorrow afternoon, with a full floor vote the following morning. In the current public opinion climate," she placed the polling data next to the chart, "the 'yea' votes will not be fewer than eighty-five, and it will be difficult for 'nay' votes to exceed ten. According to the War Powers Act, once the joint resolution of the House and Senate is passed, the President will receive formal authorization. The Vice President—the current President—will sign the executive order within two hours of the Congressional passage, authorizing Central Command to execute."

"And the public? The public hasn't fully digested this yet. What about the media? How is the media reporting it?" Greenberg turned to Abramovich.

Abramovich pulled up a set of real-time online public opinion data and adjusted his glasses. "Our media matrix was activated yesterday evening, and twenty-four-hour loop broadcasts have covered sixty-three percent of the cable television audience—as of six o'clock this morning, that number has risen to seventy-one percent. Regarding social media, the three Super PACs we control have simultaneously deployed over sixty million dollars in targeted advertisements, concentrated in swing states and constituencies surrounding military bases. The ad content mainly consists of slow-motion footage of President Te being shot and falling, with the caption 'They killed our President,' and the final frame of the footage freezes on that Persia document from the warehouse scene. Current polls show that the proportion supporting military retaliation has surged from fourteen percent before the assassination to forty-nine percent. According to model predictions, by the time of the vote tomorrow, this proportion will exceed fifty-five percent."

The pine wood in the fireplace made a crisp crackle, spitting out a few sparks. Greenberg stared at those sparks until they went out in the stone hearth. "And the military? Those people at the Pentagon have never been a monolith. Although Esper is one of ours, there is more than one troublemaker in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We need to ensure that when the President gives the order, no four-star general dares to say 'insufficient evidence' in front of a media Lens."

Haskins took a file marked 'Top Secret/SCI' from his briefcase, the seal of the Joint Chiefs of Staff printed on the cover. "The Minister of Defense has personally intervened, meeting separately last night with the Chief of Naval Operations, the Air Force Chief of Staff, and the Commander of Central Command. General Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had a wavering stance, but he was among the first to receive a detailed 'Briefing on Persia's Involvement Evidence' immediately after the Dallas incident—we ensured he was one of the first people in Washington to see that document. Currently, all theater commands have received warning orders issued by the Ministry of Defense, requiring all units to complete pre-deployment preparations within seventy-two hours. The USS Ford carrier strike group passed through the Suez Canal early this morning to enter the Red Sea; the 'carl vinson' strike group is on standby in the northern Arabian Sea. The Air Force has deployed an additional expeditionary bomber squadron each to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, including B-2 stealth bombers and B-52H conventional bombers. The B-2 bomb bays have already been loaded with GBU-57 heavy bunker busters, with the target list jointly prepared by Central Command and the Squid Nation Defense Forces. All these movements currently have temporary Congressional authorization—valid only until the day after tomorrow."

This was the machine Greenberg had built with his own hands. It did not rely on any single president, nor did it rely on any single election. The President could be the one sworn in today, or the one who said four years ago that he would drain the swamp; it made no difference. The gears of this machine were life-tenured or quasi-life-tenured: senior civil servants, middle management in intelligence agencies, procurement bureaucrats at the Pentagon, and the boards of directors of defense enterprises—they would not lose their jobs with a change of administration at the White House. A bullet can replace a president, but it cannot replace the deployment inertia of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, it cannot replace the production lines for Standard-3 interceptors, and it certainly cannot replace the distribution logic of a defense budget that approaches nine hundred billion dollars annually.

Greenberg made a decision. He told Madeline Klein to initiate Phase Two—nominate a hardliner with deep cooperation with the consortium to serve as Minister of Defense, with the incumbent remaining in office but actual power transferred to the Deputy Minister; meanwhile, send the insider trading records of several Congressional troublemakers from the past five years to their respective Chiefs of Staff's desks to ensure no one dares to ask rogue questions during the key hearings. He also requested the man from Langley to arrange a 'release' within a week, led by Squid Nation's Mossad, acting as a third party to publicize communication records of high-level Iran officials discussing the 'USA political situation' on the dark web—the content of the communications to be written by Langley.

"One more thing." Greenberg turned to Abramovich, "Those nationalist donors in Wisconsin and Michigan—have they stated their positions?"

"Our people contacted them yesterday afternoon. Two are not cooperating. They said this war would increase the risk of Iran's oil supply being cut off and raise their petrochemical raw material costs."

Greenberg did not respond immediately. He walked to the coffee table, picked up the stack of folders marked 'Top Secret,' pulled out two thin files from among them, and handed them to Abramovich. "Show them this. If they still don't cooperate after seeing it, tell them the next file will be sent directly to the IRS Criminal Investigation Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan."

Abramovich took the files and flipped them open. The first was the flow of a secret account in the Cayman Islands belonging to that donor in Wisconsin, and the second was a photo of a private warehouse in a certain overseas special free port belonging to the one in Michigan. This was not his first day working for Greenberg, but he still felt a chill—these files did not exist before. This meant that for today's needs, someone had dug these things up overnight within the last seventy-two hours, and the original samples might have been stored in Greenberg's underground safe for five years or longer, just waiting for the day to be opened.