[Note: This is the first draft of a treatment that I'm writing. I'd appreciate your feedback on it. Feel free to offer suggestions on structure, pacing, political shading, even technical details, including cyber-terrorism and international law.]
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No one knows exactly when the cyber-thieves struck first against the VP, or more accurately, everyone around him. There was no consensus on whether or not they had struck in concert. But, in retrospect, everyone agreed that once they acted, a chain of events was set in motion that eventually led to the Vice President on the verge of being tried before The Hague for crimes against humanity.
Some suspected the Eurasian Youth Movement or some loose affiliation like-minded cyber terrorists. But most people doubted that they had the motivation to follow through on so narrow a target objective. The conventional wisdom was that they had to have been working with a "spotter," someone close to the VP who could call in the attacks with utmost precision.
It all began when the VP's chief of staff got a phone call. Actually it was his wife who took the initial blow:
"Harriet, I have bad news."
"Oh god. Is it Bob?"
"No Harriet. It's not like that." He paused. "You've been wiped out."
"I'm sorry, you're joking? This is a joke, right?"
"I'm afraid not, Harriet. Can I speak to Lewis?"
Next was the VP's legal counsel. Then his broker. Even his doctors were hit, including the one who maintained his pacemaker. All woke up on the same morning and discovered that they didn’t have a penny to their names.
In all cases, the details were sketchy (at least to the traditional media who didn't seem all that interested in digging for the truth). But one thing seemed clear: through a complex series of electronic funds transfers, they were left with nothing. Overnight, all of their accounts had been drained dry.
At first, these incidents weren't even reported. After all, what bank wants it known that their system has been hacked to the tune of tens of millions of dollars? And besides, everyone was taking a hit in one way or another as the economy slowly ground to a standstill.
But, as usual, it was the bloggers, or (more accurately) several blog commenters, who were the first ones to see a pattern in the mayhem.
A commenter on Boing Boing was first to observe that the whole affair reminded him of the online Flash game called Chat Noir:
Chat Noir is a turn-based puzzle game based on a very simple idea: you have to click, one by one, on a honeycomb of spots to confine a black cat and keep it from escaping off the edges of the playing field. Every time you play, the game presents you with a random arrangement of pre-darkened spots, and the rest is up to you.
Another commenter on Daily Kos pointed out that the one thing all the victims had in common was that these were people that reported to the VP either now or in the recent past. Or they were people on whom the VP relied for legal/financial/medical advice and support.
Much, much later, when the traditional media finally caught up with the bloggers, they dubbed the incident The Black Cat Affair.
Not that it mattered much but even random individuals were suspected to be part of the pattern. For example, a wealthy (but now ruined) real estate investor turned out to have been a former contributor to the RNC who had earlier sold his estate on the eastern shore of Maryland to the VP and his wife. And a wealthy (or formerly wealthy) cattle rancher in Wyoming was the owner of the resort where the VP had, for years, gone flyfishing.
But the traditional media finally noticed, with the customary shock and awe, when the news broke that the President of the United States was victim to a spectacular swindle that left him -- and his entire extended family including his father -- essentially penniless. No one knew exactly how it had happened but the result was the same: overnight, cyber-thieves had drained every dollar out of every accounts that the president "controlled" and -- it was presumed -- some in which he had been a silent partner. And, in a measure of how big THAT story was, it swamped the otherwise stunning revelation that the former Secretary of Defense had also been robbed blind overnight when hackers took every penny out of his accounts.
Through it all, the VP was untouched.
But as more than one blogger pointed out (in hindsight), the perimeter around the VP was slowly being closed off; the honeycomb of spots were darkening, one by one. The black cat was facing fewer and fewer avenues of escape.
In years to come, some observed that those opinions were, perhaps, more than idle speculation.
As we all know now, the beginning of the end occurred when two things were reported nearly simultaneously: that the UN Security Council was on the verge of referring a case to the International Criminal Court and that the VP had made a surprise visit to Qatar.
The rumors went like this: that the Security Council was going to refer the case of the VP's alleged war crimes to the ICC. At the same time, the VP's new spokesman (who replaced the last one who had suddenly resigned in order "to make more money") did not answer inquiries about when the VP would be returning to the US.
The cable talk shows were flooded with legal experts who generally offered the same advice about the rumored referral:
When the UN Security Council refers a case to the ICC, all UN member states are obliged to co-operate, since its decisions are binding for all of them. Also, there is an obligation to respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law, which stems from the Geneva Conventions.
But of course not all UN members are signatories to the treaty in question. So speculation was rife as to whether or not the Security Council would vote unanimously to refer the matter.
Of course, that speculation was rendered moot when the US representative admitted under tough questioning that she had recently, mysteriously, been rendered bankrupt in the recent economic unpleasantness. Cyber-thieves were suspected but nothing was ever confirmed.
Shortly thereafter the Russian and Chinese members indicated they were in favor of the referral as were the UK and France.
And/But they weren't the only ones fearing the consequences if they resisted the tide of history moving inexorably toward the VP.
Within days of the VPs arrival in the tiny Persian Gulf state, Qatar's Council of Ministers (as well as the Amir himself) asked the VP to leave the country. The governments of Argentina and Brazil released similar statements. And, as the list of countries with which the US has no extradition treaty is long (nearly 50 countries), it isn't infinite. And besides, some of those places you don't want to be caught dead in.
So that's where we stand today: the Black Cat is nearly closed in. The only way out seems to lead to The Hague.