by Ed Miracle
She folded her hands. “Release Tiffany.”
Parker finished his note, then keyed his phone. “Bring her now, please.”
Ms. Lavery tensed. When the door opened, she rushed to the girl and embraced her. Official business or not, staging reunions for tactical purposes made Parker queasy. Joy, replete with hugs and strokes, would soon give way to resentment. He was not immune to what he was doing. For the moment, mother and daughter clung to each other, relieved and oblivious. Each assured the other she was okay, and then they stood apart, uneasy in his presence.
He collected the Lenox cups, gave the women a few minutes to trade captivity stories until Tiffany broke it off.
“They wouldn’t stop, Mom. They tricked me into saying things that I had to explain because they took everything the wrong way. I should have kept my mouth shut.”
“We are not criminals,” Ms. Lavery said to her. “Nothing you told them can change that.”
“So why won’t they let us go?”
Ms. Lavery raised her voice. “Agent Parker says you can leave now.”
Parker met her eyes. “We release minors only to adult guardians.”
“Her grandmother lives in Pleasanton.”
Tiffany backed toward the door. “No. You have to come too.”
“Thank you, honey, but the sooner you are safe with Grandma, the sooner we can clear this up.”
Tiffany backed farther.
“Don’t tell him anything, Mom. Whatever you say, he will turn it against you. I thought telling the truth would help, but I was wrong. They don’t care about truth. They want you and Philip in jail.”
Ms. Lavery seemed to consider this. “Makers are hurting people,” she said. “They need someone to blame. If I don’t tell them what really happened, they are going to invent false stories and blame me.”
“Don’t you see, Mom? Philip didn’t do anything wrong either. He’s just trying to help. He’s helping poor people out of their poverty and the rest of us out of our ruts. Makers are feeding people. Nobody pays a dime. They only have to share. He didn’t attack us. He didn’t steal anything. He’s only given. Okay, so everybody’s cash turned into confetti. But he didn’t steal it or destroy it. He just made it obsolete.” Tears welled in her eyes.
“We owe him everything,” she said. “If Philip hadn’t picked you to sell Powerpods, you wouldn’t have been dancing all night at the Black and White Ball, that’s for sure.”
Ms. Lavery recoiled. “Maybe so, but he’s ripped that to pieces, hasn’t he? Philip used us, Tiffany. Then he dumped us. Sold us for . . . for less than money.”
“You’re just pissed because he ruined your stupid ball.” Tiffany spun around and charged.
Parker sidestepped, let her reach the door and throw it open. In the hall, a matron and a U.S. Marshal engulfed her.
“Tiffany, come back.” Ms. Lavery tried to follow, but the marshal slammed the door in her face. She rattled the knob, pounded the door, then turned to Parker.
“You son of a bitch. You told me she was safe. I begged you to release her, but you had her strip-searched. You held her in one of those dinky rooms and grilled her half the night, scared to pieces. She’s just a girl, you creep. Why don’t you leave us alone and go find Philip?”
She shoved him with both hands and stomped to a far corner. “Until I know Tiffany is safe with my mother, I have nothing more to say.”
Parker strolled to the sideboard. He wiped each cup with a cloth and placed them in their box. He resealed the coffee pouch and laid it with his Gaggia machine. The pittance Ms. Lavery might surrender to threats or bullying would not suffice. He wanted everything she knew and everything she thought she knew. He finished packing and indicated the armchair.
“Give me something.”
She stood immobile, fists on her hips.
He strolled to the sofa, sat deliberately, and opened his notebook.
“Ms. Lavery, I’m not your enemy.”
She marched to the chair, sat, and crossed her arms, glaring.
“I know what scares him. How he thinks he might fail.” She unfolded her arms. “Ryles’s theory for social tipping points. We didn’t sell enough Pods.”
“Enough for what?” He took out his phone and laid it nearby.
She tracked the gesture, evaluated the cut of his suit, the color of his eyes.
“I have his diary,” she said. “That’s what he called it, anyway. Now let her go.”
Parker pressed a key, put the phone to his ear.
“Drive the girl to her grandmother’s and have her call me at this number when she arrives.” He clicked off and laid it down.
Before Ms. Lavery could speak, the phone vibrated. He checked its screen and held up two fingers. “Excuse me, please.” Then to the phone, “Parker.”
“Get your butt over here. You have an STU-5 coming from Washington in ten minutes.”
“Yes, and good morning, Derek, but I won’t arrive that quickly, will I? Are you sure it’s me they want? I’m quite involved at present.”
“They want you and only you, asshole. And they are in a mood. I’ll buy you some time, but I want you rolling, code-fucking-three, right now.”
“Coming,” he said to a dead connection. He leaned back. “Where is it?”
She snorted at some private irony. “My desk at home, middle drawer. A memory stick.”
He wanted to console her, to sympathize his way into her confidence, to learn her story. But he dared not ignore a summons from headquarters, even with progress staring at him through those lovely green eyes.
ELEVEN
Oakland, California. Still Wednesday, April 22
Day Five
Parker drove eight miles to downtown Oakland under red lights and siren—code three—feeling foolish. Surely his witnesses were more important than this interruption. Why the STU-5, for pity’s sake? His duty phone was secure enough, although the STU-5 had Class-A encryption and a zero-emission fiber optic connection. Sequestered as it was in a soundproof cubicle in the Communications Center, he’d never used one for real. Mere mortals were seldom invited.
The SAC, his Special-Agent-in-Charge, Derek Majers, was nowhere to be seen when Parker arrived at the dispatcher’s fifth-floor sanctuary. The C-shift voice of Oakland’s FBI was uncommonly standing, not sitting, at her console. She pointed to the windowless chamber, as if he needed directions, and shrugged off his question. “Who is it, by the way?”
Latching the door triggered a green light on the machine. Parker paused to collect himself, dragged a comb across his head, and smoothed his jacket. When he touched the yellow button, a man’s face appeared, harried and unkempt.
“Parker? Log your ID, please.”
He plugged his card into the slot. “Who is calling, if I may ask?”
“Your ID is confirmed. Sit down, Parker. Your head is out of frame. Attorney General Brayley will join you in a moment.”
Parker swallowed. Ten seconds later, the AG’s bulldog face filled the screen and stared through him from behind gold-rimmed glasses.
“Agent Parker, this morning I briefed the president of the United States from that pusillanimous crap you sent us yesterday, and it didn’t fly. Homeland Security giggled behind her hands. Probably wet her skivvies. I’m here to tell you this is never going to happen again.
“Your SAC says you have the confidence of Ms. Powerpods, but all you’ve sent us so far is a crock of suppositories.” He waved a sheaf of papers. “I’m telling you that suppositions derived from polite chitchat are not better than nothing. They invite second-guessing, not to mention the giggles. We need leads, Parker, not surmises. President Washburn wants facts. Do you read me? This case is going to make you or break you. If you fail to produce, I will see that you and your SAC spend the rest of your days cleaning latrines in Dismal Seepage, Afghanistan. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
“You left gaps. Even Homeland noticed. Machen quit college without a degr
ee, yet five years later he comes up with Powerpods. How? You don’t know. Then his girlfriend peddles them all over the world for six years until he announces Makers. But what was he doing while she was selling his Trojan horses? He already had the Makers. That’s how he made 55 million Powerpods. He wasn’t sipping Mai Tais with a squadron of super-models, now was he?”
“Sir, we found a quarter mile of scorched grass behind the hangar at his ranch.”
“But nothing in the hangar. So what was he working on? Another gizmo? A weapon?”
“Not sure, sir.”
“Well, get sure, Parker. Do you know how feeble that sounds? You will fill these gaps and tell me what that bastard is up to, or your career is finished. I will boot you out the door myself.”
“Yes, sir, I understand.” Collecting evidence is Derek’s domain. I do motives and probabilities.
Brayley hunched as if to share a secret. “It’s revenge, you say, for the murder of his family? What are we supposed to do with that? Declare the guy insane and hope somebody turns him in? He’s just a nerd with a gadget, for Christ’s sake.”
Parker raised a hand.
“The Lansing State Journal called his father an atheist recruiter who had to move his family four times to escape the backlash. The guy who killed his family was—”
“Yes, yes,” Brayley said. “Some religious bozo set fire to their house, so the kid wants revenge. But why attack the whole world? We caught the bastard who burned his family. The kid knows which jail we put him in. What more does he want? Revenge against the world gives us no leverage, Parker, even if you’re right. How do we find this guy? How do we stop him?”
Parker sniffed.
“By all accounts, he is sane, averse to confrontation, and highly motivated. People say he’s thoughtful and—”
“Vengeance drives the man, you said. He plots destruction behind a show of benevolence. If we wind up with mass unemployment and street riots, then a lot of people are going to suffer, so his generosity is double-talk.”
“One of his teachers called him cerebral, even spiritual.”
“I saw that, too, Parker, and it’s crap. There are no spiritual atheists. Even if there were, what’s it got to do with stopping this one? I give you until eight o’clock tomorrow morning, Eastern Standard Time, to dump your psychobabble and come up with some solid leads. I want Philip Machen, and I want him now. Bend that Lavery bitch over a sawbuck and beat it out of her.”
The screen went blank. Surely the AG didn’t mean that, not literally.
Parker was right not to have mentioned Ms. Lavery’s daughter. Tiffany knew Philip far better than her mother did, and just as clearly, he must protect them both from the likes of Nick Brayley. Secrets of the flowers are best coaxed by a friendly bee, he was thinking, a bee with the culprit’s diary in hand. Brayley’s urge to jackboot the garden was most disturbing.
TWELVE
Washington, D.C. Thursday, April 23
Day Six
Attorney General Nicolas T. Brayley surveyed the supercilious faces gathered around the Cabinet Room table, and he wanted to spit. Obviously, they didn’t understand. They’d wasted most of the morning plowing the counterfeiting furrow, wondering whether cash might truly be dead, and debating strategies for moving everyone to electronic money. With those irrelevancies settled, only minutes remained to address the real problem.
“If we don’t eliminate the sources,” he said, “counterfeit will be nothing but a sideshow.”
“Back to terrorism, are we, Nick?” The vice president’s jibe delighted half the room.
“We were not grandstanding yesterday,” Nick replied. “There is no such thing as a friendly Trojan horse. We are under attack. That idiot is trying to torpedo America, not just our currency, and so far he’s succeeding.”
“We take your point, Nick.” Vice President Harlan Fletcher peered over his wire-rimmed spectacles at his rival for the Republican nomination. “However, we must treat this Machen fellow as we would a common fugitive. We must not inflate his importance by dwelling on his crimes or speculating about his motives. We must deprive this screwball and his cause—whatever it is—of every public soapbox while we undo what he’s done. As far as we are concerned, these machines fell out of the sky. Does everyone understand that? Our agenda must stand before the public, not his. The media are with us, are they not, Lon?”
Lon Kissler, the president’s hawk-nosed Chief of Staff, nodded.
Nick nodded, too, but for a contrary reason. Public relations, it seemed to him, was the practice of sewing your rectum shut while swearing it never produced that smell. This was no time for business-as-usual, even if it soothed public anxieties.
“We will stop these Makers,” Fletcher said. “But seizing private property from law-abiding citizens requires the appearance of due process, especially with elections coming. The public is taking a hit from this counterfeiting—everyone has lost some money—so they are blaming him, not us. Let’s keep it that way. Remind them who started this, and assure them we will end it.”
Nick huffed.
“You can’t stop malaria,” he said, “by swatting mosquitoes and ignoring their larvae. If we confiscate every Maker but leave the components to build them, folks are simply going to take an extra Powerpod or two, and hide them somewhere, along with a few of those cones. It’s human nature. Free goods are too juicy to resist. But if we ban Powerpods, also—and link them to the chaos that Makers are causing—we have a chance to abort this thing before it metastasizes. As of Monday, fewer than one in six American households owned a Powerpod. At a minimum, we must keep that number from growing.”
He downshifted to a growl.
“Only an immediate, comprehensive ban can work. If we ban Makers while ignoring Powerpods, the public will understand we don’t mean business, that we don’t have the guts to do what’s right, and that they are truly on their own. Precisely what Machen wants them to believe. We should appeal to their patriotism. These machines are no damned good. They are destroying the country. But if our actions don’t match our words, all is lost. I say hit ‘em hard and hit ‘em now. Outlaw Powerpods as well as Makers, and do it today.”
Secretary of Homeland Security, Geraldine Fullwood, who was also Fletcher’s Election Committee chair, could not conceal her alarm.
“There aren’t any convenient abstractions to hide behind, Nick. This is not some airy-fairy civil right that everyone argues over but no one can see or touch. You are asking us to invade people’s homes and seize their personal power sources, to shut them down to candlelight, with no refrigeration or air conditioning. Seizures on the scale of one-in-six households will generate enormous resentment. Even if we control the media and offer compensation, many will resist. Violent images are bound to surface, as they have overseas, and those images will generate more resistance. The Democrats will pounce, and we can kiss our hopes for the election goodbye.”
“When somebody punches you in the face,” he said, “you don’t respond by tying one hand behind your back. If you won’t defend yourself with everything you have, you are going to get clobbered. We can’t risk the economy just to win the election.”
Half the room frowned, the other half smirked, and Geraldine spoke to the ceiling.
“Holding the line against this recession is our proudest achievement, Nick. We can’t afford to give the economy back to the Democrats. It would be giving whiskey to alcoholics.”
“It’s not the economy,” he shot back, “It’s our country.” And my nomination.
General Clinton Holmes, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said, “I don’t see where this Machen fellow has any traction with the public. He’s pissed off everyone with this counterfeiting, and the markets are spooked. If the markets stay down, it will cost jobs and threaten pensions. Seems to me he’s handed us all the moral authority we need to roll up his little insurgency.”
Geraldine hoisted an eyebrow. “What insurgency? There’s been no call to arms.”
“You make my point, ma’am.” Holmes looked askance as heads swiveled.
“Like hell I do,” she said. “Have you seen the bloodshed in Guatemala? France? Indonesia? To seize a few thousand machines? Consider that most Powerpods were sold right here, to millions of law-abiding Americans. Forget Philip Machen—in six months we face the voters. If we seize their property and turn off their lights, they will remember how this Republican administration treated them. Better to let things simmer while we build a mandate. Nobody can predict where this Maker thing will go, so until we see job losses, I counsel restraint. We cannot march into November looking like thugs.”
From his place at the center of the table, President Washburn tipped back in his leather chair, once again looking too young to be sitting there. The president cleared his throat.
“Nick said it earlier. We are the government. We are supposed to ban things. So let’s signal our intentions. Get Congress in bed with us. We have to stop the Makers, but circumstances warrant a staged approach. We need to demonstrate control, even if setting it up takes a day or two. Meanwhile, financial jitters work in our favor.” He sat up straight.
“We go high-profile, ban Makers outright and demand that Congress ratify the ban. Then we push them to outlaw Powerpods. That spreads the heat to Congressional backsides. Either they join us, or come November, they will face the voters with empty hands. That should work, shouldn’t it, Lon?”
Chief of Staff Lon Kissler nodded from his chair behind the president, eager to protect his boss’s legacy.
“The markets will go for anything with muscle,” said Kissler, “and we can count on our base. The mainstream media will not oppose, so the votes should be there. Soon as our polls indicate Joe Sixpack is nervous about his paycheck, we hit the patriotism button, and demand that he surrender his Powerpods. Any opposition, we smear as weak-kneed socialism and un-American. Should be a cakewalk.”