THE ANTIFA UNDERGROUND.

There's an old telephone booth on the sidewalk outside Jake's Famous Crawfish in Portland, Oregon. It has been repurposed into a sidewalk library. The bookshelf is displayed on one glass wall. The other walls have been covered with dark glass so the occupant can't be seen. The books are all banned books, which the Homeland Security Secretary forced the Multnomah County library to get rid of. If the door's closed, don't bother knocking. 

 A furtive figure in a hoodie slid into the booth and closed the door. He searched the books until he found what he was looking for, Grapes of Wrath. One of Secretary Noem's aides had to tell her that that book is not about Oregon wine. He tipped the book toward him. The floor began sinking below sidewalk level and descended into the cavernous underground of Portland's streets. When it stopped, the man stepped out of the booth and sent the floor back to street-level. This is the place card-carrying ANTIFA in the know, with a conspiratorial twinkle in their eyes, call Jake's Starfish. It is the underground home of the ANTIFA Underground. 

He was an old man maybe in his 70s. He had a bushy mustache and round-lensed glasses. His skin was wrinkled, the white smile lines outlined by tanned facial skin. He approached a fiberglass figure resembling a naked Donad Trump, with as bereft of a penis as a Ken doll, but much fatter. The man scrutinized the Statue and lifted his right hand, sticking his index finger into the resinous fold of Trumps man-gina. He touched a hidden darkened-glass ID reader with his right index finger. A door opened and the man stepped into the underground chamber where the ANTIFA underground manages the three states that border the Pacific Ocean and Hawaii. Referred to by some as, The People's Republic of the Left Coast. 

"Hi, Mike, how's the world up there?"

"Sucks. Rains coming in, iCE remains. How's things with you Rick?" 

"Can't complain.  I get a lot of reading done here. And I'm safe from being tackled in the street and zip-tied for being darker-skinned that Republicans prefer. Ain't it great, You heard that the puppy-killer is searching for our source of funding?"

"Yeah. Are you worried?

"Nah, are you kidding? These people couldn't pour piss out of a boot, if you wrote instructions on the heel.." 

"What if they find that Mr Soros is not our chief funder?" 

"They won't. They hate George because he's wealthy and not a Republican. And Jewish. Even if he wore a MAGA hat, they would blame him for something.". 

"I've never known where our money comes from. Who is our chief funder?"

He gave me the hush sign, "OH, he does provide us with a healthy amount of funding, but most of our funds are from ordinary people. Ordinary Joes. We let them think George Soros runs the DNC. It's like letting them think ANTIFA is a club. They run around trying to prove what they can't. Say, ya wanna send ICE on a wild-goose chase?" 

"Whataya got in mind?"

"I've beeb wanting to do something sinister on them. See, they think we are all 007. That we do super-spy stuff. Meanwhile they are completely and totally incompetent. And they forget that their success is the result of millions and millions dollars of oligarch cash, and a corrupted Supreme Court. Here's what we're gonna do! Turn on your  cellphone recorder, let's create a scenario where some fat toady stumbles on what he thinks is a message where a large cache of Soros cash can be discovered."

Two weeks later: 

Ralph, Ralphie, Denoso pushed open the door to Homeland Security headquarters. It opened easily because it was a tent, no lodgings were available to Sec. Noem and her contingent, not even at Motel 6. She even had to do her toilet duties in a porta-potty between two semi trucks which held temporary lodging for the rank-and-file. "Hey Will, I got somepin' here!" William Berforce had taken the bonus and college loan forgiveness. He was starting to wish he was back at his old job as the data-master at an indoor Marijuana grow. It was Will who kept the CO2, induction drip irrigation, grow lights, and other mechanical devices working smoothly. But he had gambling debts. He and Ralphie had sipped a few pints of Miller Genuine Draft over the two decades of their friendship, a fact that would surprise no one. "Waddaya got Ralphie?"

Ralphie pulled out a grimy envelope, and laid it on the table theatrically. "Check this out", he said. He bent and kissed the envelope. "We're gonna win that $50,000 bonus! Check this out, the return address. It's from George Soros! Omaha, Nebraska. See?" 

Will picked up the envelope, and pulled out the message from inside. It read, in large, bold type; "BURN LETTER AND ENVELOPE IMMEDIATELY AFTER READING"  "Where'd ya' get this?"

"Funny thing, the wind blew it across the parking lot at Voodoo Donuts. I got winded chasing it down. I gotta get out of this job before I have a heart attack." 

"Did you read it, Will asked."

Ralphie grinned. "Shit yeah. This is our way out!" He kissed the letter.

Will read the letter:

"Agent X: "read this, memorize it, then burn it, mixing the ashes with water, and poor it onto the street. Your dead-drop is as follows: take Burnside Tri-Met to Forest Park,  get off at the 27th Street stop. Walk along the trail for 3/4 of a mile. Sit on the first available trail bench. Look to your left for a discarded Starbucks coffee cup, with the remains of a latte in the bottom. Follow along the sight line from the Starbuck's logo till you see two crossed limbs. Dig down at that spot and there will be $100,000 in $1000 bricks." Do not forget to burn this letter and the envelope. 

If there is no Starbucks coffee cup with a splash of latte'. Come back in 3 days and try again. After nine days we will contact you for an alternate dead-drop." (Rick was particularly proud of this wrinkle, which he inserted.)

"Whaddaya think Will? Ya think it's the real deal?"

"These guys sure go to drastic links to protect themselves. It's like a spy novel. What's the date on the envelope?"

Ralphie squinted at the return address, "Nov 3, 2025. That was two days ago. We could do it tomorrow."

"Should we rent a car?" 

"No", Ralphie said. "We will take the bus. After this day we can get our own Dodge Ram pickups, brand new. We're  gonna get this cache of money and the $50 thousands schmuzzoles Sec. Noem put up to discover George Soros' money. We'll leave before Sec. Noem goes out for her morning toilette," Ralphie squeezed his nose. "Can you believe how loud her farts are? What does that woman eat? Let's get some sleep."

The next morning:

Ralphie and Will took the 8:15 Burnside bus from the bus mall downtown. They got off at 27th and Burnside and looked for the entrance to Forest Park. Once they were on the trail, Ralphie asked, "Hey Will, how'll we know when we've gone three quarters of a mile?"

"Uh, I don't know, why don't we each download the Step-Tracker app?" They installed the step-tracker app and set off up the trail. "How do we know how many steps are three quarters of a mile?" 

"Google it". A steep arduous trail for two such portly figures were ahead of them. The alarm went off first in Will's phone, him being somewhat fitter than Ralphie. Ralphie was at length rewarded with his own app-alarm. They looked around, a beam of dappled sunlight was shining through the alder trees illuminating the bench.

Ralphie was gasping for air. "Let's sit down, I'm not cut out for mountain climbing. They both sat down and pulled out their cell phones, erasing the Step-Tracker, and then brought up their screen-capture of the letter.. "Can you see a Starbooks cup?" 

"Not yet", Will responded, "WAIT! Over there!" He stood and walked over to the cup, well- concealed in a copse of shiny, reddish-brown leaves. He bent and picked it up, flipped the lid on the ground and looked inside. 

"Is it a latte'?" Will looked up, a big smile on he's face. "Oops," he said, moving the cup back to the area from which he had picked up the cup. He knelt on the ground and looked in the relative direction where the Starbuck's logo pointed. "There! Two crossed sticks! They both knelt before the sticks, looked at each other and started lifting the soil with their hands, neither had thought to bring a digging tool. After digging with their hands and the sticks, about 2 feet down, Ralphie found a black metal box. He pulled it out of the ground and pried the hasp open with his Swiss Army knife. He opened the lid. A letter was inside. 

"Look around you morons! You have been digging in poison oak!"