“Go make a speech.” She was not impressed. “If you have a magic panacea to cure the world.”
“I don’t. Alden didn’t. He was simply trying to diagnose the sickness. I was hoping to pick up what he hadn’t finished.”
“Not here, Mr. Barstow.” Her voice had sharpened. “I don’t care what you want to write about Kentucky or even about the country, but I don’t want your meddling into my own family. We McAdams may sometimes soil our laundry, but we wash it ourselves. If you want my advice, forget the McAdams and get out of town.”
“Thanks. But I can’t do that.”
“You’re a fool if you don’t.”
“I’m fool enough to stay.”
“Listen to this.” She bent toward me. “Last night, when I was wondering what to do about you, I called my brother Stuart. He’s a hard man, Mr. Barstow. He does hold grudges against a lot of people. Against Alden Kirk, because of something about him and his militia in Terror in America. He thinks Kirk’s infonet series helped his enemies send him to prison.”
She must have seen me flinch from her determined face.
“I didn’t tell Stuart who you are, Mr. Barstow.” I saw a brief sardonic smile. “I don’t want your blood on my hands.”
“Are you saying he’d kill me?”
I met her icy eyes. The way, I thought, that he killed my brother? “He’s not a murderer.” She flushed as if I had slapped her face. “But he does have friends. I’m simply suggesting that you might be on guard if you happen to meet the friends or his clients.”
I sat wondering what she meant.
“Mr. Barstow, you’ve got my advice.” She pushed the unsigned contract at me. “Withdraw from the college and get out of the county.”
I pushed it back.
“God damn you, Mr. Barstow.” Violence quivered in her voice. “You’ll be sorry.”
Yet then she signed the contract.
Next morning, curious about Stuart McAdam, I pedaled out to the Kentucky Rifle headquarters. The shabby old building had been a furniture store. Two new metal poles stood in front, an American flag flying from one, a red-starred Rifle banner from the other. Ben Coon bustled out to welcome me with a genial grin.
“Mr. Barstow, come on in and meet the captain.”
I followed him into a huge, bare, barn-like room, with rifles racked along the wall behind a bare metal desk where Stuart was rising to his feet. Standing lean and very straight, he wore a red jacket that had a military cut and a gold rifle emblem pinned over his heart. What struck me was his likeness to his sister, the even features of her beauty hardened into a striking male distinction.
“Clay here’s a new grad student out at the college,” Coon was bumbling. “I told him about the Rifles. Let’s sign him up.”
Smiling affably, Stuart came to take my hand in a vigorous grip. “Yes, sir?” Even his voice had overtones of Beth’s. They might have been twins. His smile was appealing; I wanted to like him. “What can I tell you about the Rifles?”
“I’m interested.” Which was true. “I’m new here, learning what I can.”
“If you want to join up—”
“Probably not.” That dimmed his smile. “I’m an intern on the Freeman. I was looking for a story.”
A story I knew he was unlikely to tell, but I felt anxious for anything I might learn.
“That yellow rag of Pepperlake’s.” Beneath a thin brown mustache, his lip curled in comtempt. “He doesn’t like us. He won’t want your story.”
“Maybe not.” Coon caught my arm and appealed to Stuart. “Listen, sir. Here’s a man we need. Fit enough and smart enough. Give him a pitch.”
“About the Rifles—” Stuart took a moment to eye me, and his tone grew warmer. “We aren’t outlaws, no matter what you hear. We’re just old-style Americans, the same sort that fought the Revolution to win our independence. We’re organized now to take it back again.”
I glanced at the rifles on the rack. “To fight for it?”
“If we must.” His chin thrust out. “I’m afraid we must.”
“Who would be your enemy?”
“The system.” The words came fast, as if he had spoken them before. “A federal system rotten to the heart, run by power-mad politicos and bureaucrats that have bought the media. They’re taxing us to death, squandering our good money on idiotic projects, stuffing their own pockets, running us to ruin. They’ve got to be stopped.’ ”
“That’s the Rifles.” Coon grinned with approval and gestured at a ledger-like book lying on the desk. “Let’s sign you up.”
“We’re for real,” Stuart pressed on when I shook my head. “A little band of good men and a few brave women unhappy with the system, looking for recruits with cause enough to join us. We find them everywhere. I’ve been a victim—”
“The captain’s a martyr.” Coon spoke up with a kind of devotion in his tone. “But fighting back.”
Stuart shrugged. Silent for a moment, he burst out. “Fighting the drug laws! Laws enacted by self-righteous bigots who claim the right to regulate the private lives of everybody else. They’re wrong. They’re racist. They’re killing the country. They killed me.”
I must have stared. I was astonished by his sudden vehemence. “I was a lawyer,” he went on more quietly but still grimly earnest. “A good one, I think, trying to do right for my clients. Some of them had planted pot when they lost their tobacco quotas—if you want to make a difference between cannabis and nicotine. The Feds did. And did me in for defending my clients.” He shook his head, his voice gone bitter. “The justice system—they call it justice—got me disbarred. Revoked my license. Put me in prison.” Stabbed with sympathy in spite of myself, I wished Alden could have met him.
“A stinkin’ system, but now we’ve got the captain back to carry on the fight.” Hopefully, Coon gestured again at the open book. “We need you in the ranks, Mr. Barstow—”
“Barstow?” Stuart stiffened. “That’s your name?”
“It is,” I had to say. “Clayton Barstow.”
“My sister spoke about you, Mr. Barstow.” He stepped back from me, his face suddenly hard. “I don’t want you in the Rifles.” Coon gaped and waved me toward the door.
CHAPTER FIVE
"ACORN ONE, ” BOTMAN’S recorded voice answered when I called his scrambled phone at midnight. I gave my code name. After a moment I heard his live Brooklyn voice, sharply impatient. “Okay, Barstow, let’s have your report.”
“Nothing to report,” I said. “Worse, my cover’s broken. My academic adviser has recognized me. She dislikes me. I don’t know her intentions. She may expose me—”
“You can’t quit now. We have bad news from field agents on the site. They are convinced that an underground group in McAdam County is near success in developing a new and deadly weapon, possibly intended for terrorist attacks on federal agencies. The nature of it is still unknown, but we have to give the report some credence. The Moorhawk Institute has made the county a center for high-tech research. Unfortunately, our field agents say their sources have been unable or unwilling to reveal names or other specifics. Your own mission is now more critical than ever.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I don’t have a clue about what to do next.”
“Just get with it.”
“Can’t you give me something to go on? Possible sources? Possible problems or dangers?”
“Sorry.” He was sharply abrupt. “We’re already compromised. You’re on your own. Report progress as you make it.”
Progress was hard to make. All I got from Professor McAdam was a cold look when I happened to cross her path on the campus. I’d dropped her seminar in Confederate history and enrolled in Atwood’s information theory. At the Freeman, I answered the phone and keyboarded copy from the rural correspondents. Working with Tom Hobbs, I took the photos and wrote the stories for a series we were running on local business. He sold the ads to run beside them.
I had a letter from my little nephew back in Geo
rgetown. He was writing his own game programs on a wonderful new computer his mother had given him for his birthday. Angela had got over a cold; she and their mother were well. They all missed me. He told me to take care and come home when I could.
And Cass Pepperlake took me to Rotary.
“Senator Finn will be speaking,” he said. “He’s here on a campaign swing. A prince of the Beltway, but not very popular here in the county. His law of life is tax, spend, and please the special interests that pay him off. A lot of us locals are sick of him.”
“Madison Finn? Didn’t Kirk mention some funny business with campaign funds?”
Pepperlake shrugged without concern.
“If he’s crooked as a double-jointed snake, what’s new? Under our wonderful system, I doubt that any really honest man can be elected to high public office.”
My eyebrows must have lifted.
“Look at the cost of a winning campaign. To raise the millions, you’ve got to make promises you know you’ll never keep. Which means common honesty is no longer so common. What does matter is the spin you put on the facts—or what the media report as facts. Finn has an instinctive gift for spin control.”
Rotary met at noon on Fridays at the Bluegrass Inn. We filed by a counter to fill our plates and looked for a table. The long room was filled with well-dressed men and women shouting greetings, shaking hands, cracking jokes, bending over their meals. Community leaders. Pepperlake called them the local elite.
“Clayton Barstow, our new intern at the Freeman. ” Pepperlake introduced me to the little group around our table. “He’ll be calling some of you about our new business series.”
Cordially enough, they shook my hand as he identified them. Merchant, horseman, home builder, optometrist, soft drink canner, a woman who owned a hillbilly museum, a mortician who was also a captain in the National Guard. Good American citizens by the look of them, jovially prosperous and law-abiding.
Yet I had begun to wonder.
“Our senator.” Pepperlake nodded toward three men at the head table, on a low stage at the side of the room. I knew Finn from the infonet. With a bulldog jaw and an artful wave in his thick shag of iron-gray hair, he looked statesmanlike enough.
“Sheriff Bull Burleigh on his left,” Pepperlake murmured. “The manager of his county machine.”
Burleigh was a beefy man with a badge on his breast and a pistol at his hip. He and Finn sat with heads close together, Burleigh nodding to whatever Finn was saying.
The other man had leaned in to listen.
“Rocky Gottler.” Pepperlake nodded toward him. “He owns the ballot box and tells the senator how to keep his seat.”
He turned to introduce a youthful latecomer who had brought his plate to our table and slipped quietly into the vacant chair beside me.
“Rob Roy McAdam. Our own computer wizard.”
“When the magic works.” Modestly, he grinned. “Sometimes it doesn’t.”
The other brother of my beautiful professor. Dressed in un—
pressed chinos and a dark T-shirt, he had her blue eyes and high cheekbones, with a stronger chin. A silver shield on the T-shirt was printed
CYBERSOFT
CRYPTOPHONE
He shook my hand with no hint that his sister had said anything about me. I told him about the business articles I was doing for the Freeman and asked if I might see him for a piece on CyberSoft and the cryptophone. Hesitating, he looked at Pepperlake.
“Why not?” Pepperlake asked him. “It’ll give you a chance to tell your side of the story.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “Call me.”
Acting City-County Attorney Saul Hunn was president of the club. A tall thin man with sharp fox features under a heavy mane of silky white hair. He rang a bell, called us to order in his formal courtroom voice, had us stand and face the flag for the pledge of allegiance.
“An old tradition,” Pepperlake murmured. “No longer taken as seriously as it used to be.”
Hunn recognized a few visiting Rotarians from other clubs. We sang “America” and “My Old Kentucky Home.” Burleigh rose to introduce our distinguished guest.
“Our man in the Senate.” He paused for a lukewarm patter of applause, “He got us the new post office. The new armory. The new airport. He saved our tobacco quota. He stands for law and order. America for Americans! Senator Madison Finn!”
At the podium, Finn apologized for his voice, rusty from speaking in thirty counties in three days. He thanked the citizens of McAdam County for their loyal support, and praised Sheriff Burleigh for his war on crime.
“Can we win it?” A jeer from the back of the room. “What about the gangs in grade school? Drugs on the campus? The abortion mill and Father Garron. The jail running over. Sex maniacs let loose. The Frankfort bomb?”
‘The FBI works under wraps, but they tell me they’re on top of the bomb cases.”
Were they, really? I didn’t ask.
Pepperlake raised his hand. ‘‘What about the marijuana fanners reported to be shooting at the Feds?”
Burleigh stood up when Finn turned to him.
“A tough problem, Senator.” He paused to inflate his chest and raise his nasal Appalachian voice to fill the hall. "Crime’s always tough to fight, but we’ve working hand in glove with the Feds. We’ve picked up a dozen suspects. They all stand together, swearing to their alibis, but we’ve got three of ’em still in the cooler.”
And delayed one of our correspondents. I recalled, with her column for the Freeman.
‘‘Senator?” A cocky little man with no coat and a bright green vest stood up. “Where do you stand on the Fair Tax Plan?”
“Kit Moorhawk,” Pepperlake murmured. “His tax plan would abolish the IRS.”
“Taxes, sir—” Finn had to clear his scratchy throat. “Taxes are one of my major concerns. You know I've always fought waste and fraud. I always will. But we’re all Americans.” He gestured at the flag. “I just heard your pledge of allegiance.”
Burleigh clapped once, but subsided when nobody followed. “Allegiance,” Finn repeated, “to our great American democracy, which now stands as it has always done on a foundation of fair taxation. The Internal Revenue Service is that firm foundation. Some of you may be unhappy—”
“We are!” I heard that shout and a volley of applause. A raucous voice rose higher. “We pay taxes with our own good money. You Beltway bandits steal it. You buy votes with it and fly around the world on your luxury junkets. Your reformed welfare system is grinding us into the mud and squandering our money to feed a generation of whores and their bastard babies.”
Finn looked hurt.
“Sir. please!” He raised a protesting hand. “Don’t forget that America is a great democracy—the greatest that ever was. Democracy includes everybody. I won’t balance the budget on the backs of starving mothers and their crying babies.”
“On our broken backs?” A derisive snort.
“Look at what your taxes buy!” Finn scanned the room, searching in vain for any show of support. “Your precious freedom and the national power to preserve it. We are still the world’s single superpower. I’ll be holding hearings on national defense. I intend to keep our splendid military machine the mightiest on Earth.” Not impressed, the mortician waved to get his attention. “Senator, I hear talk of martial law if there’s more trouble here. Will you turn that war machine against us?”
“Against McAdam County?” Finn looked startled. “You just heard me swear my own allegiance to our sacred nation. I’ll defend it to my last drop of blood. I trust, however, that we’ll never need to put down another armed insurrection.” He looked at Burleigh. “Sheriff, do you care to comment?”
“No problem, sir. Not here in McAdam City.” Burleigh grinned with a show of yellow teeth and his hand on his heart. “We do have a few bad apples, but most of them are already in the jug or on their way there. If I ever need the National Guard to help defend our county or our Constitution, I’ll ask for i
t.”
“Senator, I hope you never need to.” Pepperlake had raised his hand. “But I am concerned. More than one of my subscribers have said we ought to follow the example of our revered forefathers who rebelled against the oppressive tyranny of George the Third.”
“Rebellion? Actual talk of rebellion?” Flushed with anger, Finn goggled at him. “High treason!” He turned to Burleigh. “Get their names.”
Burleigh rose to approach our table.
“No names. Not from the Freeman. ” Pepperlake waved him down. “My readers may be unhappy with the state of the country, but they aren’t idiots. When they talk of armed resistance, they don’t want their names in print.”
Burleigh glowered.
“Unsigned letters can be traced. I want them for the FBI.”
“Signed or not, they’re no danger to the union.” Finn waved him back to his chair. “The writers are likely backwoods hicks. If they knew the unhappy history of Kentucky in the Civil War, they’d hold their peace and pray to keep it.”
He looked at his watch and said he must leave for an afternoon rally in the next county. A few loyal supporters rose to begin a standing ovation, but sat down again when nobody joined them. Burleigh escorted him out of the room.
“An independent county!” The soft-drink canner at our table spoke to Pepperlake. “What kind of fool would talk of that?”
“Fools or not,” Pepperlake told him, “people do.”
Burleigh came to the the Freeman office that afternoon with a federal agent to demand those seditious letters for the FBI. Grumbling because Pepperlake hadn’t saved the envelopes, they stayed to question him about his finances, his editorial policy, his rural correspondents, his infonet edition.
“Finn’s one of our Beltway overlords,” Pepperlake said when they had finally gone. “At least as long as his magic holds. He takes money from Gottler, hires the best in the business to whet his daggers, and recruits the likes of Burleigh and his bullies to do the actual stabbing.” His eyebrows lifted. “Today’s great American statesman.”
The Silicon Dagger Page 5