gives you something in common with other people that height, it doesn’t take a genius to see that height is not the operative factor. It’s other people’s perception of that height.
The way Joe saw it was, you can’t do much about people’s perceptions. But at least other disadvantaged groups get some perks to go with it. Well, when was the last time you heard of someone being hired as the token dwarf? Never, that’s when.
Joe could only stand by while Walter did his best to promote rapport between the Bureau and candidates for political office. But when it came to installing appropriate facilities it was another matter. In fact, as soon as Walter had outlined the new opportunities that would arise, Joe had thought through the nature of the facilities from scratch. This was a chance to make an impact that would not come again.
If you’re an ideas man you don’t just stop having ideas because cash flow is not a problem. You go right on having new ideas, and when you have an idea you want to see that idea in action. One of Joe’s ideas was an idea for height-friendly ATMs. You could have a screen and keypad that could slide up and down the wall according to preference, and not one but two potential slots for the card and the cash. You could have some kind of gadget that would automatically adjust the screen depending on which slot you put the card in, though it would probably take some pretty fancy programming. Or you could just have some kind of manual device, a button or a handle of something, and the user could select the appropriate cash slot from a menu. Unfortunately he hadn’t been able to think of a way to justify it to the client.
What Joe now decided was that he was going to just put his foot down. He wasn’t even going to argue with people. He was going to just go right ahead and let the chips fall where they may. If you have height-friendly ATMs and toilets in government buildings that sends a message to the business community. They may choose to ignore that message. But at least they can’t say you didn’t send up the smoke signals.
That was how Joe made the best of things. He was getting involved in politics, after all, and people who get mixed up in politics soon discover they can’t have everything exactly the way they want it. All they can do is try to achieve some good in the areas where their hands aren’t tied—because they sure can’t do a heck of a lot where their hands are tied. And they’re bound to be tied some of the time. That was what Joe discovered working with Walter. An uncomfortable discovery in many ways, but he had to make the best of it.
Walter, on the other hand, felt pretty damn good about the way things were going. In the first place, he was serving his country to the best of his ability. In the second place, the new development was doing his career no harm at all. And in the third place he had the satisfaction of seeing the FBI strike a definitive blow against one of its oldest and deadliest enemies.
When Walter had joined the FBI its energies had been divided. Communism was still a threat to national security, and taken seriously as such. Also, the war on drugs took its toll. Not to mention organized crime. There simply wasn’t the manpower to take on the CIA, and the FBI was to pay the price for that understaffing. While the FBI’s attention was otherwise engaged the Agency’s sphere of influence grew by leaps and bounds. Of course, in some ways the CIA was its own worst enemy—even just reading the papers you could tell it was just one balls-up after another, and the papers didn’t report half of what those clowns got up to. You might well think it was only a matter of time before operations were handed over to an organization that knew what it was doing. Unfortunately it didn’t work that way.
Well, what comes around goes around. If the lightning rod level of surveillance, with the level of control it implied, became a reality, the FBI would at last be able to control one of the greatest existing threats to national security.
The Future Is Ours
COMPETITION
Joe’s synergy with the FBI was a major factor in extending the operations of Lightning Rods. Ironically, however,