Abuse of Power by Michael Savage

malt.
    When it came down to it, this place was the real Beat Café. Kerouac had spent many a night here, getting polluted with Neal Cassady and the woman they shared. Jack honestly couldn’t care less about these people, but Bob Copeland’s suggestion that he buy a copy of Carolyn’s autobiography had not been unmotivated.
    So, as he waited for his drink, he opened the book—which she’d titled Off the Road —and carefully leafed through the fragile, yellowing pages, scanning them one at a time.
    He got his first hit on page 94.
    Halfway down, in an excerpt of a letter from Neal Cassady to Kerouac, a word had been neatly underlined in pencil:
operation
    Jack knew full well that this wasn’t some random marking, but was Copeland’s handiwork, the result of his love for cloak and dagger.
    He found the next one on page 98, at the end of another excerpt:
road
    Then there was nothing for a few pages until he reached page 109, where the last word of the first paragraph was underlined:
show
    His drink came, and he let it sit as he continued on through the remaining pages, one after another, all 355 of them. There were no more pencil marks to be found.
    When Jack was done, he quickly went through it again to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Then he closed the book, knocked back his scotch, and felt its heat roll through him as he quietly contemplated Bob Copeland’s message.
    Operation Roadshow.
    Jack immediately thought of a PBS television series that Rachel used to watch, where people brought in ancient household items to be evaluated by antiques dealers, in hopes of striking it rich.
    He was pretty sure that Copeland’s message had nothing at all to do with antiques.
    Not even close.
    But what, then, did it mean?
    *   *   *
    Jack spent most of the night trying to find out.
    He got on his laptop back at the boat and hit Google and his usual go-to databases, checking news sources, public records, legislative filings, reference materials, freedom of information archives.
    All he found was a single notation in the footnotes of an article about World War II, referencing a little-known intelligence operation called Roadshow, in which British spies attempted to infiltrate the German government and take it down from the inside. The operation had been a complete failure.
    And so, apparently, was this search.
    A couple hours before dawn, Jack looked down at Eddie, who was curled next to him on the bed. “What do you think, fuzzy? Are we being played?”
    Eddie cocked an ear and tilted his head as if puzzled by the question, and Jack gave him a pat.
    “My thoughts exactly.”
    Abandoning his task, Jack closed his laptop and then his eyes. He quickly fell asleep.
    Before long, Jack was launched into a dream about Iraqi insurgents trying to steal his Humvee, which had a cache of explosives in back. His dead friend Richard Riley made an appearance—eyes as blank as ever—and so did Agent Forsyth, both of them coming and going as the dream shifted and morphed into a Truth Tellers panel discussion about Islamic fundamentalists and Beat Generation poetry.
    He awoke at six A.M. with Eddie’s usual face lick, and found the little guy wiggling around like crazy—which meant only one thing:
    Tony Antiniori was in the vicinity.
    Jack pulled on some clothes and found his friend topside, sitting at the dining table across from the galley, sipping a cup of coffee and reading the paper. Eddie immediately jumped into Tony’s lap and let him scratch his ears.
    “You look like hell,” Tony said to Jack.
    “Thanks, pal. You look rested.”
    “I had a good workout.” He winked.
    “Good thing I’m a gentleman or I’d ask for details.”
    Jack rubbed his face, trying to wake himself, then moved to the galley and poured a cup of coffee. Black, no sugar.
    “How did things go with Bob Copeland?” Tony asked.
    Jack took a long sip of his coffee. “He’s an enigma. I wish for once in his life he’d get to the point instead of