Rising Phoenix

by Kyle Mills

  Blake strode purposefully past the reception area near the elevator doors, not returning the greeting of the young woman sitting behind the desk. As he walked into his office suite, his secretary motioned toward his office, indicating that his appointment was waiting. Blake threw his coat on the sofa and walked though the open door of his office.

  “Afternoon, John, sorry I’m late.”

  “No problem, Reverend, I just got here myself,” John Hobart replied, looking up from the yellow legal pad resting in his lap.

  Blake sat down across from him and pulled a pen from his pocket. He could feel Hobart watching him as he dated the first page of the pad. He didn’t immediately meet his gaze. Hobart had a lifeless stare. His eyes had a way of eliciting a nervous laugh from all but the most powerful of men. They seemed to be able to see things that people didn’t want seen.

  Blake had hired him five years ago as head of church security, a move prompted by his growth into a full-fledged public figure. He hadn’t liked Hobart when they’d first met, but the man’s qualifications had been undeniable. Hobart had spent two tours of duty in Vietnam attached to a special forces unit, and had been highly decorated. Upon his return, he had gone to work for an accounting firm, getting his CPA less than a year later. Despite his success there, he had joined the Drug Enforcement Administration in the late seventies. He had explained to Blake that the boredom and irrelevance of the accounting business had finally worn him down.

  Blake’s initial dislike for Hobart—his son would probably say that John gave him the creeps—had prompted him to continue his search for a security manager. He had spent weeks weeding through steroid-enhanced bodyguards, sleazy private investigators, and classless ex-cops. After all of the interviews were finished, he found himself rereading Hobart’s résumé. Despite the fact that a polite rejection letter had already been sent, he called Hobart back for a second interview. It hadn’t changed his opinion of the man; and in fact, his feelings about Hobart still hadn’t changed. In the end though, Hobart had seemed to be the smart choice.

  There had been no cause to regret his decision. Hobart had created a security force that the Mossad would respect. His less than sunny personality and ambiguous religious leanings were no great hardship when Blake weighed them against his own personal safety and the safety of his family.

  In addition to his security expertise, Hobart’s accounting knowledge had become indispensable in handling the church’s less-than-above-board transactions. While the Reverend liked to see himself as an honest man, he had grown accustomed to the finer things in life. He had also become increasingly addicted to political power, which had a price. His donations to various government officials didn’t always meet the current definition of legality, and could be extremely embarrassing to a great number of people if they were to become public. Hobart seemed to have a special genius for setting up shell corporations and foreign accounts that looked completely legitimate, even under heavy scrutiny.

  Blake’s secretary poked her head into the office. “Sorry to bother you, Reverend, but Senator Haskins is on line one.”

  Blake stood and marched over to his desk. “Thanks, Terry.”

  Hobart went silently back to the legal pad sitting in his lap. He spun his chair so that his back was to his boss, and suppressed a smile.

  The family-values senator and the family-values preacher.

  Blake had spent the last five years throwing money at “return to family values” campaigns. A shameful waste of resources, as far as Hobart was concerned. The Reverend came from a nice, white, middle-class family in western Maryland. Dad was a preacher, and Mom stayed home making pies and taking care of her 2.5 children. Blake seemed to think that people who wavered from that cosmic norm did so by choice. He thought that he could simply convince them of the superiority of a wholesome and fulfilling home life, and when convinced, they would come around instantly.

  Hobart knew better. He’d grown up in a poor, blue-collar family in New York that couldn’t have been farther removed from Blake’s idyllic childhood.

  Young John had been a disappointment to his father, and after a few drinks the mere sight of John would set his father into a violent rage. Like most men, he had hoped that his son would be a younger version of himself. He had wanted an athlete. He’d wanted a boy who would turn into a tough-talking, hard-drinking man. What he’d ended up with was a son who was much smaller than his peers, pale and reed-thin. He seemed to blame John for his small stature, as if the boy had kept himself from growing just to irritate him. Athletics held no interest for John. His first love was chess, a game his father’s limited intelligence couldn’t grasp.

  A few days after Hobart’s fifteenth birthday, his mother had been walking up the street with an armload of groceries, as she always did on Tuesdays. When she’d come around the corner, the flashing lights of two police cars parked in front of her home had momentarily blinded her. She hadn’t waited to reorient herself, but had dropped the bags and run to the house. The injuries that she and her son had suffered as a result of her husband’s binges had been getting worse. She was convinced that her son was dead.

  She burst through the door only to find John sitting on a kitchen chair, swinging his legs back and forth, sucking on a popsicle. A large policeman was crouched next to him, talking softly into his ear. He turned when he heard the door slam. There had been an accident, he told her. Her husband had fallen down the stairs. His neck was broken.

  She’d gone numb. Not at the sight of her husband’s limp body at the bottom of the stairs, but at the look on her son’s face. The policeman followed her gaze to John’s emotionless expression and explained that they thought he might be in shock. She’d walked over and knelt down in front of him, looking in his eyes. It was there that she found the truth about what had happened that day.

  That incident had formed John Hobart’s entire philosophy on life. Most of humanity’s problems were rooted in centuries of misguided and often contradictory moral teachings. For a man with the intelligence and resolve to rise above this tangle of right and wrong, there was no problem that couldn’t be solved simply, quickly, and finally. Despite its simplicity, Hobart had never met anyone besides himself who truly grasped this philosophy and had the inner strength to live by it. There had been a few men in Vietnam who were beginning to understand, but they had all become addicted to the killing—dependent on the brief sensation of ultimate domination to mask their feelings of guilt and horror. Hobart saw killing as nothing more or less than an effective tool; and he used it with the thoughtless precision of a master craftsman.

  “Sorry about that,” Blake apologized again, replacing the receiver. “What’s on our agenda today?”

  Hobart stood and quietly closed the office door. “Nothing too interesting, Reverend. I wanted to confirm that we’d funded Senator Haskins the money he requested—but it seems that we did.” He pointed to the phone. “Also, I wanted to let you know that I negotiated our own elevator when we renewed our lease. Starting next week, you’ll have a key to the far-right elevator downstairs. None of the others will service this floor, except in emergencies. I’ve been a little concerned about the easy access to your office. As it stands now, some crazy drug addict could waltz right up here and mug your secretary.”

  Blake nodded. He wasn’t thrilled about being imprisoned in his own office, but he deferred to his security chief’s expertise. Operational details, necessary as they were, bored him to tears.

  “Did you read that article in the Post today about that young boy getting set on fire because he wouldn’t do drugs? I was looking at it on the way here.”

  John gave a short laugh, trivializing the incident. “It’s a crazy world, Reverend.” He flipped a page on his pad. Blake could see the heading at the top of the page. Offshore Investment Accounts. He wasn’t yet ready to be immersed in numbers.

  “How much does the U.S. spend on trying to stop illegal narcotics?”

  Hobart frowned and looked at his watch
. Blake had seen that particular phrase of body language a thousand times, and it still irritated him.

  “Well?” he prompted, letting his anger seep into his voice.

  Hobart dropped his pad onto the table, looking frustrated. “Annually? Somewhere in the fifteen billion dollar neighborhood, I guess.”

  “And how much of the church’s money did I spend supporting law and order politicians last year?”

  Hobart thought for a moment. “That’s a tough figure to put your finger on Reverend. We don’t break it out anywhere.”

  “Guess.”

  “It must be in the two million range. Give me a few days and I’d be happy to pull it off the computer.”

  Blake waved his hand dismissively. “No thanks.”

  Hobart reached for his pad again, obviously anxious to finish their meeting and go home. Blake knew he hated working on Sundays.

  “So am I wasting my money?”

  Hobart released the pad with a sigh, but didn’t answer.

  Blake repeated the question.

  “I don’t know, Reverend. Is it a waste of money to try to do something good?”

  Blake laughed out loud at his security chief’s attempt at Christian philosophy. “I’d appreciate a straight answer, John.”

  Hobart gave a defeated look. “Okay, Reverend. If you’re asking me whether your giving these congressmen a few million every year will stop the spread of narcotics in America, the answer is no. Teen drug use has more than doubled in the last few years—you’ve seen the surveys. Coke use is up almost two hundred percent. Pot’s up a hundred and fifty percent. Heroin’s doubled.”

  Blake leaned back into his chair, taking a passive role in the conversation. An unusual position for the preacher.

  “Then what would you suggest? We have considerable resources and will. How should we allocate them to win the war?”

  Hobart started slowly. “Look, Reverend, illegal narcotics are a serious problem—and serious problems demand serious answers. That’s where things break down. The best way for a politician to get reelected is for him to look like he’s doing great things for the country, but not actually do anything at all. That way everybody’s happy and nobody’s mad enough to mount an effective negative campaign.”

  “That’s a pretty cynical view of the government of the greatest country in the world.”

  Hobart chuckled. “The greatest country in the world. Why? The Japs have a stronger economy. Man for man, the Israelis are better fighters. The European children test better than ours. And hell, I’d feel safer walking a dark street in Trinidad than I would West Baltimore. Yeah, we were the greatest country in the world once, but now we’re on our way out. In the next twenty years the rest of the world’s gonna run over us like a steamroller.”

  A flush had risen from Blake’s collar. Insulting the United States of America wasn’t much better than insulting the Lord himself. But there was truth in what Hobart was saying. He couldn’t deny it.

  “So what do we do to stop this slide?”

  “Hell if I know, but I think you’re right in starting with the drug problem. There are, oh, say, thirteen million regular users in the U.S. About a third of those are heavy users. Quite a bit of the crime and violence that’s eating this country up can be directly or indirectly traced back to those addicts.”

  “So what, then?” Blake said in a frustrated tone. “Should the government just execute anyone caught dealing drugs?”

  “Waste of time, Reverend. You’d break the bank, keeping that many people on death row. Not to mention the cost of the appeals. Besides, you’re talking about changing the way the judicial branch works to make it an effective policy. Not likely.”

  “I’m sick of people telling me there’s no solution. The Lord has told me that there is a way. And he’s charged me with finding it.”

  “There are a lot of ideas out there, Reverend. One is legalization and regulation.” Blake frowned and opened his mouth to give a well-practiced argument to this proposal. Hobart cut him off. “I know you’re dead against that option, Reverend, but it’s not as bad as you think. It increases tax revenue and takes the criminal element out of the drug game. The effect would probably be something like the repeal of Prohibition back in the twenties. Of course, it wouldn’t do anything to decrease drug use. It’d probably increase it a little, actually.”

  Blake folded his arms across his chest, indicating that he was looking for a better idea.

  “Another idea is to have the U.S. buy all of the world’s drug output and destroy it. Of course, that doesn’t do anything for manufactured drugs like speed, X, or LSD. Also, you’d probably have every country in the world with ten feet of soil growing poppies—and you’d still have black market dealing. Other than that, we just keep on doing what we’re doing.”

  “Which isn’t the least bit effective.”

  Hobart shrugged. “Complete waste of time and money.”

  “That’s it, then. I should just save my money and let my children grow up in a country where they could be shot down in the streets at any moment.” Blake was pounding on the conference table. Always the preacher.

  “There is a way, actually. It’s something we used to bat around late at night back at DEA. It’d put an end to drug use and trafficking almost overnight.”

  Blake leaned forward in his seat. “How?”

  “When you think about it, all you’d have to do is change the mission of the DEA from confiscating drugs and jailing dealers to confiscating drugs, poisoning them, and then putting them back out on the streets.”

  Blake turned his eyes to the large window overlooking the Inner Harbor and began chewing on his eraser. After almost a minute, he stood and walked to the window. The fall sun reflected off the water. Small sailboats appeared and disappeared in the glare.

  In the distance, he could see a stark white Coast Guard cutter heading out to sea. Next week they would probably be chasing a Colombian boat with a cargo hold full of sin and death.

  “Think about it, Reverend, it’s a win-win proposition. Hard core drug users, who are leeches on society anyway, would either have to clean up their act or die. That would include dealers, who are mostly heavy users. Anyone with half a brain would decide that the risk was too great and would stop using. Remember a few years back when the FDA found a couple of grapes with a little cyanide in them? You couldn’t pay people to eat those things. And as I recall, it wasn’t even enough to make you sick.”

  Blake grunted. He himself had sworn off grapes.

  “The other plus in this kind of an operation is the cost. After you started it up, it would probably be self-sustaining. The DEA confiscates the drugs—in essence, gets them free—then puts five dollars’ worth of poison in them and sells them for one hell of a profit. Besides, after a while you wouldn’t have to do much poisoning. Fear would do your work for you.”

  Carl pressed a button on the remote clipped to his key chain and slowed the limousine to a crawl. The imposing gate guarding the entrance to Blake’s estate swung open obediently. As they drove through, Blake caught a glimpse of a man in a dark suit standing partially obscured by a hedge, and recognized him as one of the guards who had been assigned to the house. He had initially resisted having men at the house, but finally acquiesced when Hobart promised to keep them out of sight. As always, Hobart had kept his word. Blake had actually been forced to introduce a couple of them to his young daughter, who became convinced that they were well-dressed ghosts. While he didn’t normally tolerate talk of the occult from his children, he really couldn’t blame her. Sometimes he thought they were well-dressed ghosts, too.

  The drive was nearly three quarters of a mile long, and climbed a gentle hill to the main house. The rise of the hill and the carefully calculated placement of trees kept the house completely hidden from the road. Carl stopped the car under the portico growing from the front of the large white Tudor and walked quickly around to open his boss’s door.

  “Will you be needing the car
anymore this evening, Reverend?”

  “I don’t think so. Be here at seven-thirty.”

  Carl touched the brim of his hat, climbed back into the car, and pulled slowly away.

  “Hello!” Blake called, dropping his shoes on a priceless Oriental carpet centered in the large entry hall. Directly across from him, a black antique screen partially obscured by a potted tree depicted Japanese women washing in a stream.

  “Erica! I thought I told you to get rid of this thing!” he shouted.

  Blake wasn’t crazy about the Oriental theme that his wife had chosen for their home. He considered the inhabitants of the Far East to be a godless people, and had developed a disdain for their culture based on the few business dealings he’d had with them. His wife’s last purchase had finally pushed his good nature too far. He’d be damned if the first thing his guests saw when they entered his home was a bunch of half-naked heathens immortalized in lacquer.

  No one answered his call, so Blake followed the sound of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He padded through the immaculate home in his stockinged feet, his nose latching onto the unmistakable smell of garlic and oregano.

  “Did you have a good day?” Erica Blake asked as she stirred a seafood steamer full of spaghetti with a ridiculously long wooden spoon.

  “Why is that screen still in the entry?”

  Erica turned away from the stove. “I put a tree in front of it, honey. I thought …”

  Blake cut her off. “I want it gone when I come home tomorrow. I don’t mind you collecting these things, but I won’t have obscenities at my front door. You can put it in your bedroom if you like.”