Leeches

Charles Wu had come to America as a triple agent (Beijing, Hong Kong, Great Britain) for the purpose of unlocking the most important secrets in the nation's capital.  To execute this plan, he had built a huge network of spies and informants, both human and technological.  However, he enjoyed nothing better than learning a secret himself, straight from the source.  Nobody could resist his charm, comeliness, cunning, charisma, and chi.  And though it had taken a great deal of money, time, and effort, Wu had not only ingratiated himself into many of D.C.'s power circles, he had risen to the master ranks in a number of secret and semi-secret societies, including the Freemasons, the Trilateral Commission, the Star Chamber, the Seekers, the Cherry Blossom Cherubs, the Church of Scientology, the New Order of Malta, the Knightum Templarum, the Sunny Moonies, the Shriners, and the Paw Paw Phalanx.  (The latter involved a secret ceremony in which mushy paw paw fruit had to be placed in every orifice of the human body, though Wu had used his chi power to persuade them that he only needed to eat it.)

Wu had suffered through rambling speeches about American destiny, astrology, the political war between professional football and professional baseball, the Islamic Crescent and Star of David supposedly hidden on the dollar bill, the secret atheist agenda of Farmers' Markets and community yard sales, America's hidden addiction to chick pea salad and kale chips, and the responsibility of alien implants for all four Presidential assassinations.  Wu had skinny-dipped in the Reflecting Pool at midnight, rappelled up the Washington Monument at 2 a.m., urinated through the White House fence at 4 a.m., and crowed like a rooster at the dawn's first gleaming over the Capitol.  Nonetheless, today's initiation ceremony was finally testing the limits of how far Wu was willing to go to spy on Washington's power brokers.

"Live leeches?" asked Wu.

The Grand Extractor of the Shock and Awe Political Action Committee (SAAPAC) nodded and repeated his instruction that Wu take off his shirt.

"On my stomach?"

The Grand Extractor nodded again.  "No guts, no glory.  You have to prove you're willing to sacrifice from the gut."

Now Charles Wu was more willing than most people to sacrifice from the gut, having done a fecal transplant for former Senator Evermore Breadman, but that procedure had been under sedation, in a lovely European spa.  This procedure was going to be lying on an American flag placed on a pile of dead leaves in the dead center of the dead Congressional Cemetery.  Wu looked around the group, hoping this was a joke.

"Didn't you have leeches in Hong Kong?" asked one man.  "Wasn't that part of your culture?"

"Lying in a cemetery while leeches suck blood out of my abdomen?  No, sir, that was not part of my culture."

"Well, we've all done it," said the Grand Extractor.

Wu looked around one more time.  He adjusted the cuff links on his white silk shirt (tailored in London), exhaled deeply, and told them he had decided to start his own political action committee.

A mile away, law clerk Wince was pacing his Supreme Court office, having just read a blackmail letter concerning his secret engagement to Bridezilla.  "Bloody leeches!" he exclaimed, pounding his right fist into his left hand.  "Is it somebody in this office?"  He started running through his list of coworkers, any of whom might rise in importance if Wince were to be dethroned as Justice Prissy Face's favorite "confirmed bachelor".  He sat down, then jumped back to his feet.  "Is it Marcy?  She could be angry that I rebuffed her advances.  Or Melvin?"  Wince was hampered in his deductions (as Congressman John Boehner had similarly been hampered when first blackmailed by the same person) by the perplexity of not actually receiving any demands from the blackmailer...at first.  "Or Manuel?  Still pissed off that I wouldn't try his mother's Twinkie chili?"  Wince sat down again.  "They haven't told him yet.  What do they want?"

Back at home, The Tarantula was smiling, remotely listening to Wince fret over the bug planted in his office.  The Tarantula had planted a wave of bugs all over the Supreme Court offices before selecting Justice Prissy Face as the easiest target to influence this term.  This is gonna be a walk in the park! he thought.  Then he began hearing something odd from the listening device:  Wince's speculating whether he was being blackmailed by somebody from Clarence Thomas's office.  "First they make me have nightmares that Thomas is a zombie, now this!  How are they doing it?"

Over at Prince and Prowling, former Senator Evermore Breadman took a few more gulps from his bourbon bottle, placed two fresh leeches on his ankles (circulation trick he learned in Saigon), pulled his socks up, and marched back into the War Room.  "OK, how are we doing on the Saudi team?"

"Eighteen more PAC donations, five more SuperPAC donations."

"And thus?" Breadman asked, turning to his Qatar point person.

"They countered with nine more PAC donations and two more SuperPAC donations--big ones--against the Saudi candidates."

"Big Oil?" Breadman asked, moving to the center of the room.

"Approaching $50 million--twenty of that is through our secret PACs."

Breadman rubbed his hands in glee.  "What have you got?" he asked, turning to the Wall Street and pharmaceutical team before making his way over to the defense contractor team.

A few minutes later, Breadman was heading back to his office.  "God, I love this country--and McCutcheon vs. FEC!" he exclaimed, stopping at his Wall of Me to move the photo with Harry Reid down to the bottom.  (His photo with Mitch McConnell was in the filing cabinet, of course--ready to come out if need be.)  In his office, he found Chloe Cleavage in an obscene Statue of Liberty Halloween costume.  She knew that Breadman was always feeling his oats at election time, and once Chloe Cleavage had started blackmailing the firm about all her sexual shenanigans, Breadman saw no reason to resist temptation ever again.

"Is there any SuperPAC you can't grow bigger?" she cooed, grabbing his huevos.

"Not if I have your help!" he replied, perfectly willing to put up with her usual shtick to have a quickie on his leather couch.

Over on Capitol Hill, coroner John Constantine had managed to sneak back into the Rayburn House Office Building without the help of his girlfriend, Ann Bishis.  (Congressman Herrmark's chief of staff was on the campaign trail.)  They had debated for weeks about the evidence they had found in the first sweep, and could not agree.  He knew she just didn't want to face it.  "Zombies, and witches, and bears--oh, my," he whispered to himself, poking his flashlight into dark corners.  "What is going on here?"  He stopped in the 3rd floor men's room to relieve himself, never feeling the leech crawling over his shoe and up his leg.  This is the creepiest place on Earth, he thought...but John Constantine would not have to put up with it much longer.

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COMING UP:  Heurich Society outspent by Qatar, vows revenge!