Chapter 13

How he loved this blessed land. Oscar Dowzall had devoted his adult life to the service of the green hills, the shining seashores, the powerful industries and the wonderful people of his beloved New Jersey.

New Jersey had loved him in return. He started out as a representative in the New Jersey state house, was appointed secretary of state and eventually ran for governor. He was put in the governor’s mansion by a landslide vote.

For seven glorious years he reigned supreme. He was a great leader because he adored the people and the land he led. He accomplished many victories and made a mark on history.

All of it swirled away in one afternoon. The conniving bitch he had married stabbed him in the back. She found out about his indiscretions. A truly loyal politician’s wife would have kept it to herself. Not his wife. First she screamed at him for a week. She said he humiliated her. “If you’re going to go screw around, couldn’t you at least find somebody attractive?” She thrust the photo of Sabrina in his face. “This one is built like a bodybuilder.”

“He’s a construction worker and a very sweet man.”

“But he’s a man,” his wife harped. “Why’d you marry me if you’re into cross-dressing men?”

“Men who are into cross-dressing men aren’t the kind of men who get elected to high office,” Dowzall explained, very reasonably, he thought.

“So you used me.”

“Well, yes.”

That set her off again, wailing like a siren. He tried being reasonable. She had a pretty nice life as the first lady of New Jersey, didn’t she? Wasn’t that good enough? Apparently it wasn’t. She just kept screaming, and come morning she filed for divorce. The divorce papers got the newspapers on the trail of the nature of his indiscretions, and pretty soon he was outed in front of the entire damn state—Dowzall’s Dirty Deeds.

The backlash was intense—especially when Greg “Sabrina” Uddersholf and Derek “Jasmine” Gorey sold video recordings of their private sessions with Dowzall to a maker of porno DVDs. They were distributing The Governor Begs for His Just Desserts within a matter of days. The morning radio stations were playing outtakes.

It saddened Oscar Dowzall. He had sort of expected his wife to turn on him, but he never thought he would be stabbed in the back by Sabrina and Jasmine. It shook his faith in mankind.

In a twinkling, Dowzall was a pariah. Even his own party distanced itself from Governor Oscar Dowzall.

“What’s the problem?” Dowzall demanded. “There are other gay politicians.”

The state party chairman chuckled grimly. “It’s not that you’re gay. It’s that you cheated on your wife with a pair of cross-dressing masochists and had yourself filmed being tied up and dominated. I don’t know how to start calculating your lapses in good judgment.”

“Homophobe!” Dowzall shot back.

Whatever. He was out of office so fast they had to Fedex him the clothes and toiletries he left in the governor’s mansion. Far from enjoying the easy lifestyle of a retired politician, with classy dinner parties and wealthy peers, he was outcast and snubbed. He tried getting speaking engagements, but the only ones who would have him were the fringe groups. He found himself taking two thousand dollars to deliver a half hour of commiseration at the monthly gathering of New Jersey Cross-dressers in Crisis. He felt like a cheap, depraved whore—but not in a good way.

One thing they couldn’t take away from him—his knighthood. He’d worked hard for it, and it was going to be his salvation.

One of his guiding principles as governor had been his insistence that New Jersey was just as good, with just as much to offer, as New York. New Jersey loved him for his tenacity in this regard. He had argued with reporters, with heads of foreign nations, and even with famous late-night talk-show hosts who were known for constantly making fun of New Jersey.

Jersey had everything New York had, only better. All the advantages, more benefits. New York was just bigger, that’s all. That’s why everybody thought of New York first and New Jersey second.

“Or not at all,” the gap-toothed talk-show host replied. He got a big laugh for that one. Jerk.

“The point is, we’re as good as New York City,” Dowzall had insisted.

“The point is. New York is a city and New Jersey is a state. You can’t compare them.” The talk-show host thought this was all a big joke. “It’s like New York is the apple and New Jersey, I dunno, a cigarette butt.”

Another big laugh. What an asshole.

Such ridicule only spurred on Governor Dowzall. He demanded equal treatment for New Jersey, in all forms. He lobbied the federal government for highway- improvement dollars on par with New York—although it had fewer miles of federal highway. He publicly berated the executives of Kartoons for Kids channel for their School-Toons program, “Fifty States in Fifty Minutes,” which actually devoted just thirty-nine seconds to New Jersey and a whopping one minute, eight seconds to New York.

When the mayor of New York City was honored by the British government with a knighthood—simply because he stayed cool and collected in a time of crisis Dowzall was ticked off. Just because he was on the television a lot, just because he was the mayor of New York City, he got a knighthood. Dowzall did a lot of public speaking himself during that time of crisis, and none of the damn TV stations bothered to pay attention—even the Newark stations!

Then came the crisis Dowzall was waiting for. The Jersey City water-main break was “the worst crisis that the brave people of New Jersey have ever faced, but we will face it together,” Governor Dowzall said, face slack with drained emotion as he spoke to the reporters from the streets of Jersey City.

He spoke on the network news, his suit pants soaked, with sewage water. “It is the courage and fortitude of these brave people that enables them to pull together, especially when in the face of calamity and devastation.”

He spoke from the serving line at the emergency housing shelter. “Someday we will prosper again. Today, we can only mourn, but we mourn together, as a united people.”

Even back then, when he was New Jersey’s golden boy who could do no wrong, there were a few in the state who thought he was laying it on a little thick. “It’s just some flooding, Oscar,” his lieutenant governor said. “It’s a big mess, that’s all. It’s not a catastrophe.”

Dowzall shook his head sadly. “People are dying, Mel.”

“What people?” the lieutenant governor asked. “You mean the old bag lady who was bobbing down Kensington Avenue? Oscar, she’d been dead since February. The water just floated her out of wherever she’d been stashed all that time.”

“Think of the loss, Mel.”

Mel was thinking that the loss would be covered by insurance agencies and disaster assistance. He conceded that the governor’s high profile during the flood secured federal disaster funding in record time.

The real dividends came later. Dowzall sent video tapes and press clippings of his performance during the disaster to the queen of England—under the name of a citizens appreciation group that didn’t exist. Despite assurances by the British that “one does not lobby for knighthood,” knighthood happened. Just like the mayor of New York City, Dowzall officially became one of the members of the Order of the Garnet Corset. He was Sir Oscar Dowzall.

“Uh, no. I’m afraid you can’t call yourself Sir Dowzall,” said the queen’s royal secretary of nonroyal relations. “That’s a privilege reserved for British citizens.” They were at the small and somewhat hasty reception staged for the new knights. The queen wasn’t in attendance. In fact, most of the Brits who were in the room seemed to be serving disgusting canapes. Dowzall was distinctly aware that he was among this year’s crop of second-class knights.

“But I am a real knight, right?” he insisted.

“Oh, yes. Absolutely a genuine knight, so to speak.”

“That’s all I care about,” Dowzall said agreeably.

“I know,” said the queen’s royal secretary of nonroyal relations, who found relating with nonroyals to be thoroughly repulsive.

The knighthood added luster to his star as governor, but when his downfall came, it was just a trinket of honor for him to cling to. It didn’t do much for him once his political career was ended.

Or so he thought.

A phone call woke him up one afternoon. The man on the line sounded like an American trying to imitate a snobby British accent. In fact, it was an authentic British snob on the line.

“Hold on. I can’t hear a thing you’re saying.”

He muted the TV, which was playing The Governor Begs for His Just Desserts. Dowzall had to admit, it was pretty good as far as homemade sadomasochist transgender gay porn went.

“My God, was that someone tortured?”

“Just TV. Who is this?” Dowzall asked, intrigued by the accent.

“I’m not going to tell you that. I will tell you I am a member of a political organization in the United Kingdom. We are proponents of a return of the British Empire. We would like you to join us, Governor Dowzall.”

“What? Why?”

“You are a knight of England. With knighthood comes a series of responsibilities. One of which is to protect Her Majesty’s interests against traitors and foreign aggressors.”

“I’m not following you.” Truth was, Dowzall was convinced he had a prankster on the line. “You sayin’ I owe you money?”

“No, not at all. Governor Dowzall.”

“Hey, buddy, have you read the papers this year? I’m not governor anymore.”

“How would you like to be again?”

“Huh. A British guy is gonna get me reelected governor of New Jersey? How much is it gonna cost me?”

The man on the other end made a breathing sound that was the equivalent of a manly, snobby British chortle. “It is I who will provide you with the funding you need.”

“Now you’re talking,” Dowzall said. “I’m listening.”

“Then listen carefully to what I am about to ask you. To what do you owe your highest allegiance? To the United States, whose political system stripped you of your rightful place? Or to the land called New Jersey, legally and in perpetuity a colony of the British Empire?”

“Is this a trick question?”

That was how it started. Every step of the way, Dowzall was quite sure this was going to turn out to be some elaborate prank pulled at the expense of the poor, disgraced former governor.

But the prank became too elaborate to be a prank any longer. He was assigned a persona strategist—an old, slightly daft retiree from MI-6. The man was prone to daydreaming, and he looked like a stock British scientist from a 1940s jungle movie, but he was a superb strategist. Commander Alfred H. Denharding left the intelligence agency in some sort of disgrace involving a lost disk of vital data.

“Those bastards claimed it came from a source in Baghdad, they did. Said I misplaced the only intelligence on actual hiding places of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.” Commander Denharding blew forcefully into his bushy mustache. “They were about to use me as their whipping boy. They wanted me to take all the blame for the mess down there! Then I found the bleedin’ disk stuck under the floor mats in my Ford. You know what was on there? Office supplies inventory for the whole MI-6! Paper clips! Notepads!”

“But they fired you anyway?” Dowzall asked.

“Couldn’t stop the process then. I was already officially discredited. Once it’s official you can’t take it back, you know. Not in intelligence circles. They wanted me to take a job in organization supply. They said, “You’re so bleedin’ good with ballpoint pens, you can just be in charge of ballpoint pens for the whole agency.’ I told them to bugger themselves with their ballpoint pens and retired. With a bonus, mind you, and full benefits. They had to keep me hushed up, see.”

“I see.”

One thing Denharding didn’t have intelligence about was who was putting the whole thing together. “I talked to him on the phone maybe eight or ten times, and he never said a name. I call him Duke Earl. He talks like somebody from an old family. Not many of them have money anymore, but Duke Earl has cash, I’ll tell you that.”

Dowzall believed it when the equipment started arriving. Weapons. A fleet of armored, vehicles. Electronics. The hardware was followed by the arrival of the humanware. Trained soldiers. Skilled programmers. Media-relations professionals of the highest caliber. All of them were outcasts, however, of one kind or another, brought into the Recolonization of New Jersey Alliance to give themselves another chance at achieving a level of greatness in their lives.

All of them, Commander Denharding included, were in it for themselves, but every one of them had something to prove: that they could make themselves look good again.

Dowzall understood that no matter how far you had fallen, no matter how heinous your disgrace, you could change the world’s perception of you with a few simple strokes of promotion. If there was one lesson he had learned from politics, it was that the people would believe you if you could just get them to listen to your message often enough.

Forget facts, forget reality, forget common sense. The mentality of human beings was that they would listen to what you said, regardless of the words’ validity, if you said those words often enough.

Dowzall began to believe that the mission was not a hoax, that it would truly happen, that it was meant to happen and he was meant to be the spearhead. He was fated to be the governor of recolonized New Jersey. Everything else that had come before was leading up to it. He would have more power than he ever had as the elected governor of the state of New Jersey. Most importantly, his post would be permanent.

Governor for life.

No matter how many more of his videotapes got into circulation.

He watched the news snippets about the takeover in Newfoundland. He heard about the successful recolonization of Ayounde. Newfoundland didn’t have much to offer the British Empire in terms of resources, as far as Dowzall knew. He wasn’t even sure where Newfoundland was. He had a feeling it was one of those sections of the Arctic Circle that didn’t even have land—it was just a big sheet of ice that sometimes melted and refroze, like the North Pole.

But Ayounde would be a valuable addition to the empire. Ayounde had oil, and its population was amazingly stable and non-self-destructive by African standards. Ayounde would enrich the empire.

But they wouldn’t hold a candle to New Jersey, with all kinds of industry, a big stretch of North Atlantic sea-coast, and a skilled population of blue-collar and white- collar professionals. New Jersey was going to be the jewel in Britannia’s North American crown.

And it was going to happen today.