After taking his foot off the gas as the odometer clicked off the next mile, he began to look for the gap in the trees that held the dirt road he had scouted out back at Thanksgiving.
“There we go.”
He frowned as he turned into the dirt road, noting the two hunters in blaze orange, standing by the pickup truck. One was looking at his watch. The other appeared to be checking a rifle.
Then he nodded. “Bastards! Waiting for the official sunrise to go out and zap some poor animal, calling it sport.”
The Chevette lurched uphill along the rutted road for another half mile, passing another older truck with a second pair of hunters seated inside. Finally, up around a turn in the road, he pulled up behind a newer pale blue K car. An older brown Ford was parked in front of the Dodge. Farther uphill, there was a green pickup.
As he got out and stretched his legs, two other figures walked toward him. Less than a mile of winter-denuded woods running gently uphill separated the group from the steel fencing topped with six strands of barbed wire that marked the reprocessing plant’s territory.
“You wanted us to be on time, and where were you? Where were you? Especially after that long lecture at your place,” demanded Graeme. The high-pitched whiny voice belied his hulking physical presence.
“Shut up, fuckhead. I said between six-thirty and seven. What time is it?”
“Six forty-five,” responded a lower and cooler female voice.
“Now what?” asked the young man with the long blond hair, joining the group. “And where’s Veronica?”
“I told you she’d play her part, and she will. Just you wait and see.”
“I thought maybe you’d eloped,” suggested Mike, now standing beside Liz.
“You can shut up, too.”
Liz glanced uphill in the general direction of the reprocessing plant. “I suppose it’s time to get on with it. What are we doing exactly, anyway?”
“There’s been a little change in plans,” snapped Peter. “We’re going to take the dust and cover the creek and the area below where it leaves the processing plant grounds.”
“I thought we were just going to dust along the fence line.”
“We’re going to do what I said.”
Liz shrugged. “You think that will do anything? Anything more than you’d get with the regular protest?”
“The regular protest won’t do shit. It’s useless, and you know it.”
“If protesting is such useless bullshit, then why don’t blacks still ride at the back of buses and why aren’t we still fighting in Vietnam?”
“Just stow it,” growled Peter. “Now’s not the time for arguments about protests. Besides, if protesting with signs is so effective, why are nuclear plants still poisoning us?”
“Peter’s right,” chimed in Graeme. “Protesting’s not doing anything. That’s why we need to take some real action.”
“Graeme, shut up.” Mike’s voice was soft, almost exasperated.
“Right. Shut up and start moving.” Peter turned back toward the blue hatchback. “There’s enough dust here to peg every counter the media boys have right off the dial. That’s what’ll make some changes.”
“Yes, let’s go,” added Tedor, his breath steaming from under the sweeping mustache.
A faint cracckkk echoed through the woods.
“What was that?”
“Hunters,” suggested Liz. “You saw them when we came in.”
“It’s awfully late in the year for hunters,” whined Graeme.
“Then why are they all over the place, fuckhead?” snapped Peter. “Come on. Help me get the dust out of the Chevette.”
“I don’t want to handle that shit,” objected Graeme.
“We’re each going to carry a pouch. I mean, for Christ’s sake, you think I’m going to lug a hundred-pound bag of it for more than a half mile? That’s why we put it in smaller bags. They’re all in lead foil, anyway.”
“I have some more in my trunk, too,” offered Tedor. “One should plan for … contingencies.” Tedor’s breath came in white frosty puffs that hovered briefly above his drooping mustache.
“How much of the shit do we need to set off Geiger counters?” snorted Liz. “If we’re going to do anything, let’s get on with it. Then we can get out of here and still gather with everyone else tomorrow and demand that the plant be shut down.”
“Why bother?” demanded Tedor. “The only reason we are here is because protests have led to protests, and still the factories poison the land. That is why we gathered to take some meaningful action.” Grimacing, he added, “Besides, do you know how much trouble I went to in order to get the dust?”
“No. Every time I asked, you refused to tell me.” Liz’s voice was easy and somehow disapproving. “Besides, it’s good cover to be there tomorrow.”
“Well, you didn’t need to know. But let me tell you—it was not easy.” Tedor puffed again. “Why do we need cover?”
“Mike,” Liz said in a louder voice. “Our packs are in the back there.”
Peter lifted the Chevette’s hatchback. “Come on, Graeme.”
“What’s he doing here?” Graeme whined as one of the hunters walked up the narrow road, rifle loosely cradled.
Peter halted as another hunter appeared standing in the trees. His rifle was not loosely cradled.
“Mr. Andrewson, Special Agent Barltrop. All of you are under arrest. You have the right…”
“Bastards! Fucking bastards!”
Two more hunters appeared, and two large black Broncos rumbled up the road.
“You can’t do this,” whined Graeme, his voice rising nearly into a screech. “We weren’t doing anything. We weren’t doing anything.”
Peter looked from one hard face to another, from one rifle to another, as the special agents moved in.
58
JONNIE WANDERED DOWN THE HALLWAY, past the empty kitchen, wondering why he was even in the office on the day before New Year’s Eve.
“Because,” he mumbled to himself, “Jack isn’t here, and Veronica went home to Columbus for a long holiday weekend.”
He hung up his dark trench coat in the outside closet and continued into the larger closet that was his office. The unread Washington Post, still folded in half, he dropped on the only clear space on the desk. His suit coat went on the hanger behind the door.
He wondered why he couldn’t see his breath—the office certainly seemed cold enough. Then he opened the panel on the office heating/air-conditioning unit and punched the heat stud.
“At least that’s working.” He turned back toward the kitchen.
When he returned to the office, he sat down, setting the steaming mug on the edge of the desk and looking at the dark computer screen. Then he shook his head and picked up the Post. Despite the relatively uncrowded Metro ride, he hadn’t really looked beyond the headlines, wondering more about what Veronica was doing in that salt-of-the-earth town of Columbus.
On page 3, he noted the story on the resurgence in the development of lower sulfur western coal, and the complaints from the environmental groups about habitat damage. What else did they expect after hammering through a clean air bill that required utilities to spend millions either on scrubbers and other technology or on cleaner coal? Jonnie didn’t even shake his head, not until he saw the story on the bottom of page 3.
In conjunction with the protests at the Fayettetown nuclear processing plant, three individuals were arrested on criminal conspiracy charges. The three—Peter Andrewson, Graeme Deveau, and Tedor Jaenicke—are all from the Washington, D.C., area. In related events, federal agents also arrested and released a number of other protesters …
Jonnie took a too-large sip of the hot tea, burning his throat. Should he call Veronica? Was she even in Columbus? Dust-day indeed. He smiled grimly, wondering exactly what conspiracy the feds were charging Peter and his friends with.
There were no other references to the arrests or the protests in the Post, nor had there been
anything on the news. Leaning back in the chair, Jonnie frowned.
Finally, he took a deep breath and returned to the financial section, observing in passing that the year’s trade imbalance with Japan was projected to be higher than ever, despite another fall by the dollar.
After folding the paper and setting it aside—he’d put it in the newspaper recycling bin later—he turned the chair and flicked on the computer.
“Time to make an attempt at earning a living.”
59
AS THE STORM DOOR SLAMMED BEHIND ELIZABETH, McDarvid took a deep breath and glanced at the clock. Even though he had gotten up fifteen minutes early in order to replace the cracked glass on the kitchen storm door, he was running late. Older houses kept coming apart faster than they could be fixed.
Still, he picked up the paper and began to read quickly, standing by the desk in the study. He let down the paper and watched as Elizabeth darted across Forty-sixth, then resumed reading.
The “Trade Association” business news announced that Lew Engelbright, the departing Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, had been named the new President of the Plastics Association. McDarvid grinned at the appropriateness of that match, then frowned. He hadn’t heard lately from Ned Llewellyn. With a Deputy Secretary of the Treasury reduced to the Plastics Association, it was clear why poor Ned was having trouble.
McDarvid set aside the business section and picked up the Metro section, pausing at the scholastic notes. A name caught his eye.
Keri Erison Saliers, a senior at Wilson High School, was awarded an Outreach Scholarship by the Lao Foundation. Keri is the daughter of Esther Saliers and the late Derik Saliers. She will attend Emory University. Melissa Anne Sommers, a senior at the Maret School …
McDarvid frowned. The Lao Foundation? Saliers? He walked into the study and pulled the DEP telephone book off the shelf, flipping quickly through the pages until he reached the alphabetical section. Esther Saliers was listed under one of the newer codes—H-7509-C in Crystal City. That would be Pesticides. He flipped back to the main directory until he found the name. The girl’s mother was the director of the Health Effects Division.
Replacing the DEP directory on the shelf, he tightened his lips. The Lao Foundation? There had to be hundreds of foundations that gave scholarships, but something about a scholarship to the daughter of a bureaucrat in charge of setting health-effects levels bothered him—especially when he remembered the Lao notice and Roger’s comments about the computer guy. He’d never mentioned Corellian by name, but Corellian’s card in the Air Office, Roger’s comments, the notice, and Lao Systems and the Lao Foundation seemed like too damned many coincidences.
Finally, he cut out the section and slipped it into the file under the blotter, the one that was his puzzle file, the bits and pieces that failed to fit anywhere.
Then he folded the paper under his arm and walked back to the kitchen. He was still late, and he had yet to shower and shave.
60
“AND I THOUGHT YOU WERE AN ENVIRONMENTAL EXTREMIST.” Jonnie remembered to swallow the eggs he had been chewing before he spoke. “While you were gone, some guys were caught trying to dump radioactive dust into a stream outside that nuclear processing plant. How crazy can you get?”
“What? Let me see.” Veronica’s voice was calm as she reached across the small table to take the paper.
Jonnie shook his head. “It’s not in this paper. It happened last week while you were … gone.”
Veronica looked slowly at him, saying nothing.
“Veronica, that guy who nearly attacked us in the parking lot? Peter Andrewson, you said his name was. He said something about dust-day. Was he referring to the nuclear plant protest?”
Veronica sighed almost inaudibly as her eyes quickly flicked from the paper Jonnie had lowered and back to his face.
“The names were—here’s the clipping. I saved it. I thought you might want to see it.” Jonnie extended the ripped section of newsprint. His eyes did not meet hers.
“Tedor and Graeme are friends of Peter’s.”
“Veronica, what gives? Why are you mixed up with these people?”
Veronica pushed away the remains of her breakfast and looked at Jonnie. “A while ago I got involved with a group of fairly radical environmentalists. They were sort of a splinter from Ecology Now! They believed in taking what they called direct action against the worst polluters.”
Jonnie continued mopping up egg yolk with toast.
“At first Peter was just going to demand monitoring on the plant fence line. That led to the idea of dusting the fence. Then Peter decided the group was going to spread the uranium oxide around and in the sediment of the creek running off the plant property. The idea was to try to convince the press that the radiation came from the plant. That was dust-day. I thought it was a crazy idea. I told Peter so and left the group. That made him angry. That was why he was here checking up on me, I think.”
“You just left? Let them poison the water?”
“What was I supposed to do? Tell the police that I was involved?”
Jonnie waited for more.
“I did … let someone know … indirectly…” Veronica shrugged. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“It must have been someone special. Somebody knew a whole lot about this. You just don’t throw conspiracy charges without a lot of background.” Jonnie paused and folded the paper, his eyes still on Veronica. “And it was handled just right. The arrests and conspiracy charges kept them from actually spreading the dust. That would have made every news outlet in the country. Only a few people care about threats by radicals—there have been so many.”
“Jonnie … I wasn’t there. I went home to Columbus. And I haven’t seen Peter since that day he was here. Thank God,” she added.
“There’s a lot you’re not telling me. I just can’t imagine you joining a group like that.”
“You can’t imagine me taking action to save the environment?”
Jonnie forced a brief grin. “Oh, I can imagine your taking action, all right. But not like that. It’s too flaky. Everything you do is well thought out.”
“Maybe I had a good reason to join.”
“Like what?”
Veronica walked to the counter and returned with a half-full pot from the coffee maker. After filling both mugs and returning the pot, she sat down. “Do you know what the biggest danger to the environmental movement is?”
“My clients.”
“Extremists, the kind who are willing to endanger or kill people to further their cause. For the first time, the environmental movement has gained really strong grass-roots support. Average consumers, the housewife in Moline, the attorney in Columbus, are considering the environmental impact of the products they buy. There’s widespread recycling even where it’s not required by law. And politicians know they’ll be judged as much by their environmental record as their stand on taxes, foreign policy, or civil rights. People are willing to make sacrifices for the environment. Little ones, but it’s a start. That’s what’s moving the politicos and businessmen. The big danger is that a handful of lunatics are going to do something really crazy and break the consensus. Anything that alienates the public from the green movement will do more long-run damage to the environment than a hundred Valdezes and Chernobyls.”
“Something really crazy, like putting uranium in a stream?”
Veronica nodded slowly, her lips a tight line. “I knew Peter was dangerous when he was with Ecology Now! I thought that if I joined with him I could persuade him not to do anything drastic. It didn’t work out that way. When I saw that I couldn’t, I left. At least I tried to. Peter didn’t want to let me go. I should have left earlier.”
Jonnie reached over to Veronica and squeezed her free hand. “Well, Peter’s … gone. You’re no longer involved with illegal protests, and they’ll be tagged for what they are. No real damage was done to the environmental movement. They’ll be written off as minor flakes, and even by now nobody
remembers their names.”
“I know. I was lucky, but it’s funny how things work out.” Veronica set down the coffee cup and took Jonnie’s hand in hers. “I still wonder. There were a couple of other people in the group, but they weren’t mentioned. I wonder why not.”
Jonnie got up and walked behind Veronica. He remembered her saying that Peter was already history. But he responded even as he began to massage her neck, “Who knows? Maybe they left, just like you did, and Peter and those two tried to do it all themselves.”
Jonnie continued the massage.
Veronica leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Maybe…” She shook her head, disrupting Jonnie’s massage. “But you know something? Right now I just don’t care.” Veronica reached back, took Jonnie’s head in her hands, and brought his lips to her own.
61
“EVER HEAR OF A COMPUTER COMPANY CALLED LAO SYSTEMS?” McDarvid asked. Outside his window, traffic clogged Nineteenth Street. January had already been a lousy month for snow, and early February didn’t look any better.
“Sure. Why?”
“I’ve run across their name several times in odd places.”
“They’re a big company.” Jonnie took off his glasses and began to rub his eyes. “Some of our clients have their equipment.” Jonnie replaced his glasses and focused on McDarvid. “Why are you interested? You never cared about computers before. I had to twist your arm to get that one in your house.”
“I still think they’re overrated. Computers, I mean.” McDarvid frowned for a moment. “Do you know much about Lao?”
“I’ve had to deal with them during some of my free-lance work. They used to be a really good company. Then they got big.”
“They can’t be too bad if they have that much business.”
“I didn’t say their quality was that bad. But, like all the others, the bigger they got, the less they paid attention to what made them successful. As for getting business, I’ve heard some odd…”
The Green Progression Page 20