top of page
Search

The Gray Anarchist by Jeffrey Marcus Oshins

oshins9

Updated: 23 hours ago

She was more dangerous and more destructive than any foreign terrorist. She was a pair of scissors cutting through the fabric of trust that held a civil community together, allowing democracy to exist. She epitomized the essential threat of terrorism–that a terrorist could be anyone–a grandmother or a white American eco-terrorist from West Virginia–that a single person could attack, destroy, and move about freely in a free society. The terrible truth of modern terrorism is that anyone and everyone could be the enemy. And when everyone is the enemy, there can be no trust, and without trust, there can be no freedom, and without freedom, there can be no democracy.


Lauren Bastini
Lauren Bastini

Blum’s wife, Franny, liked it when he took her on jobs. He’d gone crazy for her, as had a few other agents when she’d booked evidence at the bureau many years and three grown kids ago.

They avoided the valet parking service at the movie star’s oceanfront home and parked a quarter mile down the Pacific Coast Highway in a restaurant lot.

Franny, dressed in five-pocket jeans and an Apolline cropped jacket, plump, if not fat, barely came up to his shoulder, but Blum had to hustle to keep up with her as they walked beside the busy highway cut between steep hillsides and cheek-by-jowl beachside homes.

They passed through an open gate and walked up a driveway lined with towering palms and flower beds. They were purposely one of the first to arrive. Still, six people were ahead of them in a security line. Blum overheard a woman in the line say that she just wanted to see if she looked as much like Barbara Stein as people said she did. Blum thought the heavily touched-up woman vaguely resembled the actress when she’d portrayed a good-hearted Las Vegas hooker. A gay couple behind them, hyped up like they were on amphetamines, kept jabbering about “Bababwa.”

Blum didn’t see Jake Gillium. He’d sent Gillium one of the thousand-dollar tickets to the fundraiser with a handwritten note: The senator would like to see you.

Highly unlikely that either Hansen or Gillium would recognize him. If they did, that would be more pressure to cooperate.

Thirty-five years ago, rail-thin, long-haired, calling himself Cliffy, Blum’s first assignment in the FBI Counterintelligence Program–COINTELPRO–had been to infiltrate an eco-terrorist group in Berkeley. A misguided bunch of yahoos the press called the Oakland Four thought they were defending the environment with crimes against businesses. Blum had tipped law enforcement that Lauren Bastini and Jimmy Tolver were going to firebomb the Monsanto Company’s Biotech Research facility in Berkeley.

In a shootout with the police, the bomb had ignited, killing Tolver and burning the skin off Bastini. Blum regretted the death and injury, but the operation had sent a powerful message to other eco-terrorists that the bureau meant business.

He had collected evidence that Allan Hansen, then a freshman at Cal, had been a coconspirator. Hansen had avoided prosecution by testifying against his roommate, Jake Gillium.

Now, not a far reach those thirty-seven years later, Gillium would want revenge against Hansen by confirming he’d been an active member of the terrorist gang. The object of this operation was to get pictures and, if possible, audio of the two together. They might even discuss Hansen’s past involvement in the Oakland Four.

“No cameras or cell phones,” announced a Latino man with SECURITY printed on a blue windbreaker.

The Blums presented their tickets and provided fake names and email addresses. Blum left a burner phone with a coat check girl and entered a separate line for men. A security wand did not detect a camera disguised as black reading glasses or the brown prescription bottle holding translucent-strip microphones, each with enough power to reach the recorder in the trunk of his car.

In a foyer, Hansen campaign workers sat behind a table greeting guests and giving them name tags. Large windows in the living room blended indoors and out with sweeping ocean views.

They stepped outside into the backyard, where a buffet table and bar were set up beside a large infinity pool. Beyond a seawall of large boulders, the late-afternoon sun reflected off calm blue water that rolled in low, foam-capped waves up a narrow stretch of sand.

A quick swipe of Blum’s hand on the sandstone sculpture of a seagull attached the first microphone that hardly appeared as a smudge.

A waitress offered them canapés from a silver tray.

“Hey, you look like you’re coming undone back there,” Blum said. He placed another microphone as he tightened the bow of her apron.

“Thanks,” she said with a curious expression as if he was trying to cop a feel, evidently excusing him because of his age and Franny smiling at his side.

A bustling woman was preparing silver trays of canapés in a makeshift kitchen inside an open tent. “May I help you, sir?” she asked as he ran his hand over the side of a tray of bruschetta.

“Oh, I was wondering if you had a business card.”

She smiled. “I’m busy, as you can see. Can’t talk now, but after things settle down, I’d be happy to give you a brochure.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t be bothering you. I’ll look for you later.”

He put a microphone on a vase of flowers on a white-tablecloth-covered table where a bar had been set and another on a woven cloth atop a black piano in the living room.

The place was wired now. The camera in his glasses could be activated with a touch of a thin button in his pocket, but it wouldn’t make a difference if Gillium didn’t rise to the bait.

In the meantime, he and Franny enjoyed being in the home of a Hollywood star.


3 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page