“What we discuss today is between you and me, whether we come to an agreement or not,” John warned politely. “You seem to be a promising young fellow. Sit down.”
He indicated a chair in front of a bare-topped desk. Trout accepted it. John took the swivel chair behind the desk and leaned forward with his elbows on top of the desk and his hands tented below his chin.
“Let’s not waste each other’s time,” he suggested. “We’ll get directly to why you were summoned here.”
Summoned? Well, he had been summoned. Trout smiled. He was an old hand at kissing ass. When obsequious was called for, he could out-obsequious even his brother-in-law. He really wanted to be a congressman.
“Drink?” John asked, scooting back and taking a bottle and two glasses from a desk drawer. He poured. They lifted their glasses. “To hope and change,” John toasted.
They sipped. John regarded Trout through heavy eyebrows.
“If you are selected as one of our candidates—and you come with top recommendations—rest assured you will be elected,” John began.
“How can you promise that?” Trout asked, curious. “I hope I’m not being too forward?”
“Not at all. There’s no need for us to be guarded with each other, Congressman Trout.” A thrill ran up Trout’s leg. “A very wise man once said, ‘It’s not who gets the votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes.’ Suffice it to say that everything is in place to bring about a complete transformation of the United States of America, as Anastos promised. All we need to ensure that our policies and programs are implemented is to have enough good people ready to take over the House and Senate when the time comes. There are eighty seats in the House and eight in the Senate up for grabs in November. We already have a majority, but once we install far-sighted Progressives like you in all those contended seats there won’t be anything to stop us.
“Incidentally, after this election, there will be no future elections in which the outcomes are in doubt. We will control voting—or at least the counting of votes. Congressman Trout, you may be on the ground floor of the most historical movement the world has ever know. Indeed, the rise of the oceans will slow and the planet begin to heal. Hitch your star to those who really count, who can change the world for the better. We’re Aristotle’s men of gold who rightfully should rule to bring about a new, brighter, more equitable age of civilization. It’s our destiny.”
Trout liked John. He relaxed and had another glass of brandy. John chuckled. Trout tittered. They chatted about various other topics. Trout had a feeling that John knew everything about him.
“How’s your wife Marilyn?” John asked out of nowhere.
Trout nodded, noncommittal.
“And Judy Taylor?”
John chuckled at the look on Trout’s face. “We do our homework,” he said. “For dinner tonight, may I suggest you take her to The Pig Out Café in the Bronx. She’ll feel more at home there.”
The cheap shot annoyed Trout, but he restrained himself. He wondered if John knew Judy’s maiden name was Sparks and that she was a cousin to the Homeland Security agent hung in the cemetery? That she had been at her cousin’s funeral when Sharon Lowenthal and the cop escaped from Kimbrell’s men? Trout volunteered nothing, however. It was none of Wiedersham’s business; it was certainly none of John‘s or his boss Zuniga’s.
John moved on, surprising Trout further with a candid discourse about the nature of government and political power, at least according to George Zuniga. Trout wondered why John bothered to explain it to him. Perhaps to test him? To see where he stood?
“Are you aware that twenty-six percent of Americans want authoritarian control, need to be told what to do?” John asked in a conversational tone. “Most of the other seventy percent will go along with almost anything. They can be controlled by tapping into their deepest fears and dreams, as long as the illusion of freedom and Constitutionality is maintained.
“A man named Edward Bernays believed that opinion can be regimented and democracy administered by an intelligent minority. Marx taught that you first identify what it is you want to control—in this instance, the U.S. Government. You earmark and organize people who consider themselves to be oppressed victims. Blacks, Hispanics, gays... You also infiltrate and corrupt powerful institutions such as unions, politics, education, churches, the media...”
He laughed without humor.
“We’ve been manipulating them for our own purposes for decades under the guise of liberalism and compassion, waiting for the right time. Well, our time has arrived. Now we turn all these groups against each other and create chaos. It doesn’t matter whether the chaos comes from the Right or the Left, as long as we have rioting and violence in the streets. People will be howling for government to step in and do something to stop it.”
“And we are waiting in the wings to accommodate them.”
John beamed at him. Apparently, Trout had provided the proper response. He swallowed any misgivings he might have initially indulged and beamed back.
“Out of chaos will come the new social order,” John said. “When it comes, it will come fast, like—how does that phrase go?—like a thief in the night.”
He chuckled, then sobered. He stood up and stuck out a hand to shake Trout’s, ending the session. “We’ll be in touch,” he promised.
Trout assumed he had passed the test as to what Zuniga and Wiedersham expected of him once he was bought and paid for.
Congress Passes Finance Bill
(Washington)—After an all-night meeting, Congress passed the Finance Reform Bill in response to the worst recession crisis since the Great Depression.
The law allows government to take over companies that threaten the economy. A powerful council of regulators would be on the lookout for risks across the finance system.
Senate Majority Leader Joe Wiedersham (D-Ill) said the new law “sends a clear message to the country that financial recklessness from Wall Street to the consumer on Main Street won’t be allowed to spread joblessness across the country...”
Chapter Thirty
Green Country, Oklahoma
The first part of their drive from the Safe House to Green Country passed in broody silence, Nail and Sharon each deep in thought. Jamie and Jerry Baer were being buried today, Jamie in Tulsa’s Floral Haven and Baer in New York. Nail had cell-phoned Connie last night to try to explain why he couldn’t attend their daughter’s funeral. She didn’t want to listen; she hung up on him. Sharon in turn spoke with Irene, Baer’s wife, who responded with warmth and understanding. She cautioned Sharon not to return to New York.
“Jerry wouldn’t quit over threats,” Nail overheard Sharon say. “Neither will I.”
For the trip, they dressed in jeans and T-shirts to better blend in with the ambience of Nail’s old rusty Chevy pickup. A couple of farmer types on the road. Nail found a spare baseball cap for Sharon with the logo Six Chuter Inc on it. She twisted her hair into a curly ponytail that she let hang out through the cap’s back opening. He liked the way she looked—a mixture of saucy and tom boy.
They dropped the rental Saturn off at Avis in Tulsa before proceeding together in the pickup. The Homies might be wise to the rental but not likely the Chevy. They stopped for lunch in Sallisaw at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. At least, Sharon observed with an attempt at levity, lunch didn’t come in a can. Afterwards, they headed north into the hills to meet Big C at a restaurant in Stilwell. That was all the information he provided when he called last night.
It might have been a pleasant outing but for the shadow of today’s funerals hovering over them. They passed through some road construction heralded by a big sign that read Project Funded by The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. There were some sawhorses and orange road cones, but nobody was working.
“The beneficence of the Anastos administration,” Sharon commented in disgust. “Like some dictator reminding the little people of how much he’s doing for them.”
Off the main roads, Sharon w
as intrigued by the Oklahoma countryside, an eclectic mixture of shacks, mobile homes on rural lots, prosperous farms and ranches, and the occasional 19th Century antebellum plantation house.
“I’m a city girl,” she exclaimed over one stretch of poor road lined by a series of hillbilly-type dwellings with yards full of chickens, hound dogs and kids. “I didn’t realize Americans still lived like this. Maybe I did, but I hadn’t seen it up close.”
“This is the real America where values mean something,” Nail said. “All these folks are poor, but they’re proud. All they want is to live and be left alone.”
“Is this how you grew up, James?”
“Not too far from here. They tore down the old home place.”
As Nail drove, Sharon absently jotted down on the back of an insurance form from the glove compartment a list of book titles she thought Nail should read to further his understanding of what was happening to America. He had admitted that he didn’t keep up with current events. Like most Americans, he was too busy with life to pay much attention to the constant squabbling of politicians in distant Washington D.C. He had been chasing murderers, working odd hours, keeping up with Jamie. He rarely watched TV, read few books outside professional manuals, and didn’t believe a word the Tulsa World printed.
“If we get a chance, we’ll stop at a bookstore on the way back and pick up some of these books,” Sharon offered.
“Young lady, when am I going to have time to read? We’re in the middle of working the most important case of my career.”
“It’s not exactly going at a Sherlock Holmes pace,” she observed.
“I won’t quit.”
She clasped her hand over his on the steering wheel. “I well know that,” she said.
She handed him the list of titles when they located the café in Stilwell where they met Big C:
Atlas Shrugged
1984
The 5,000-Year Leap
Rules for Radicals
Culture of Corruption
How Evil Works
Going Bonkers: The Wacky World of Cultural Madness
Lenin, Hitler and Stalin...
Over coffee, Big C informed them of what he had in mind. “At the Defenders meeting tonight, I like Sharon to be the speaker. They really impressed with her. For sake of morale they need to hear what she have to say. Most of them watch Jerry Baer. You’ll be safe there.
“We got two new men come in the Defenders right before Ron Sparks did. Colonel Mosby and I trust the rest of the unit with no question. It just a hunch, but we think one the new guys was planted to spy on us and on Ron, make sure he doing the job Homies sent him to do. During the meeting tonight, Colonel Mosby and I gonna slip word to these two guys that ya’all staying the night in a motel in Sallisaw. One will think ya’all in the Callahan Motel, the other that ya’all in the Sallisaw Motel. I already signed your names into a room at each, but ya’all ain’t gonna be at either one. Kimbrell want you two as bad as we think he does, Homies will be on the way. We sit back after the meeting to see which motel the Homies raid—and we got the guy who snitch to Kimbrell. If you right about all this being connected, James, we could find out who hung Ron and shot up the folks at ORU.”
So far they had little else to go on.
* * *
The sun was setting in breathless scarlet behind a row of elms that bordered an abandoned one-room schoolhouse near the community of Bunch when Nail and Sharon arrived with Big C following in his own pickup. Whippoorwills were already echoing each other while crickets and frogs warmed up in the wings. The lot around the sandstone-sided WPA Great Depression-era building was grown up in weeds, among which a sizeable number of vehicles were parked in unstudied disarray. The Bunch township sometimes rented the schoolhouse out for various civic and social functions, although not too often, judging by its rundown condition.
Some eighty or more men crowded into the one long room, gossiping and laughing and waiting for Colonel Mosby to call the meeting to order. Most were whites or Indians with a few black men thrown in from Tulsa or Muskogee. Militiamen suffered a reputation enhanced by the media for being backward Neanderthals armed with God, guts and guns. The atmosphere inside the schoolhouse failed to support the reputation. Nail found the gathering jovial and friendly, more like an old-time cake walk or a brush-arbor revival than a clandestine rendezvous to plot against the government. Sharon agreed that this wasn’t at all what she expected.
A local minister opened with prayer. Colonel Mosby led the Pledge of Allegiance. Someone else read passages from the U.S. Constitution. Excitement rippled through the seated congregation when Mosby introduced Sharon and people recognized her from TV. Nail and Big C took seats in the front row when Sharon mounted the little stage up front to the makeshift lectern.
“We not setting the trap on the snitches tonight until you two safe someplace else,” Big C whispered to Nail.
Sharon gave a command performance, considering how little time she had had to prepare. She reasoned, she challenged, she cajoled, she mesmerized, her graceful hands swooping and dipping to emphasize and italicize. Her words were as sharp as rapiers one moment, soft and purring and judicious the next. She had learned from the best: Jerry Baer. The rough cut men seemed not to take a collective breath for minutes at a time. When they did breathe, it was as a single organism. In her jeans, t-shirt and ball cap, she had them in the palms of her hands. They loved her.
Something outside caught Nail’s attention. He turned his head to listen. The windows were open to let in air. He heard nothing but the distant hoot of a barn owl. He must have the jitters. He shook his head when Sharon noticed and shot him a questioning look. She immediately resumed where she had left off, drawing her audience with her into a world where conspiracy theories were based on facts and hard evidence.
“People are in place to take over this government,” she was saying. “Their tactic is to intimidate and scare, divide and conquer. Radical Marxists and others from the Progressive Left have been granted permission to act up in the streets, to march and riot and protest for social justice. They need you to get angry, to be racist, to grab a gun and fight back. They want violence, they want us at each other’s throats. They must convince people that the Tea Parties and the Conservatives are the radicals, not them, and that you are a threat ready to explode. The more unruly the Left becomes, the more we react, the better these people like it. Government, they claim, will have to take away rights and clamp down in order to restore order. People in the middle will beg for government to do something, anything. Just keep us safe. It’s a trap—”
A trap! Something snapped in Nail’s mind. The nightly serenade of nocturnal insects and tree frogs was at once soothing but, when it ceased unexpectedly, was like an alarm going off to the ears of the experienced outdoorsman. Nail should have caught it sooner.
The serenade had stopped.
Chapter Thirty-One
Ozark Mountains, Arkansas
Dark figures appeared at the windows on either side of the building, the light inside reflecting off snout-like countenances that Nail recognized as men wearing gas masks. His hand streaked for the .38 snub he carried in his belt. He heard Big C shout, “Get down!”
Stun grenades exploded in bright flares that blasted out glass in the opened windows, rattled the walls and slapped people off their feet. Tear gas followed, issuing toxic clouds of smoke and mist. Trapped men yelled and coughed. The attack was swift and well-coordinated.
Nail desperately looked around for Sharon, his eyes burning and almost blinded. He caught sight of a ball cap with a ponytail. She knelt up front with both hands covering her eyes and face. Smoke swirled. Nail sprang to his feet to go to her. An explosion knocked him over a row of folding chairs. He landed on his head. The gun flew from his grasp. Pain shot from the wound he sustained at ORU and down his spine.
There was a reason they called those damn things stun grenades.
A brief rattle of gunfire, sharp and deafening in enclose
d spaces. Stomping and crashing about. Yelling and screaming. Hacking and coughing up tear gas. More gunfire. Not from the Defenders, who, unsuspectingly, had secured their weapons in their cars and pickups.
Nail had no idea what was going on. Now unarmed, he crawled on elbows and knees toward where he last glimpsed Sharon, carrying his head low to the floor for the fresher air there. He reached the lectern and felt all about. His eyes seemed scalded with boiling water. All he saw were blurred shapes appearing and disappearing in the churn of smoke and mist.
Someone kicked him in the back, knocking him flat on his face. Arms grabbed him from both sides and from behind. Half-blinded, Nail wrenched free and lashed back at blurred forms. His knee connected with somebody’s groin; he heard a satisfying yelp of pain. He kicked viciously at other man-shapes.
Although he accounted well for himself, he was outnumbered and quickly overpowered. His captors flipped him back onto his belly and locked his hands behind his back with plastic tie-strips. Men on each arm hoisted him to his feet and rushed him out of the schoolhouse into the fresh night air. He gasped to fill his lungs with it.
“Okay, we got them!” exclaimed a voice gone Darth Vader through a gas mask.
Nail was ushered at a run from the school. There was no more shooting. The only sounds were of running feet, a few shouted commands, and muffled cries from tear gas victims. Even the whippoorwills had hushed.
Flames erupted from the windows of the schoolhouse. Nail smelled gasoline and felt the heat. He had last seen Sharon near the lectern. Frantic with fear and concern, he struggled with his captors, but succeeded only in knocking them off their stride. Although he still couldn’t see, he had the impression of being half-dragged through a collection of parked vehicles. A large number of men were running all around him. Doors slammed, engines roared to life.
A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller Page 13