Midas w-2

by Russell Andrews

  We will be using volunteer civilian groups, trained and armed civilian groups, as terrorist deterrents.

  We will be imposing a mandatory death penalty on all known terrorists and anyone known to aid terrorists.

  Terrorists and known terror suspects will no longer have the same rights as the American citizens they are trying to destroy. We will no longer tolerate government policies that protect the very people who are threatening to dismantle our government.

  Many more details will emerge over the next forty-eight hours. But what I would like to make clear to our friends and to our enemies is this: if we are struck, we will strike back and our strikes will be far more forceful, harder than anything you can possibly imagine. If we believe we are going to be struck, we will strike before you, and those strikes will be just as forceful. I believe this to be my mission as president of the United States: not merely to eradicate terrorists and terrorism but to eradicate the idea of terrorism.

  This is a sad and tragic day. But it may also, sometime soon, be seen as a day of hope, optimism, and renewal because it is the day when we declare to people around the world that we are a free nation, under God, and that we will remain so long after our enemies have disappeared.

  Thank you and God bless you all.

  Justin Westwood spent that evening the same way most of the country did: watching the president’s speech and the omnipresent media coverage that followed it. There was disturbing and intimate film of the bombing-or rather its immediate aftermath-and, partly due to the excessive commentary, it was like watching a gruesome instant replay of the destruction at Harper’s. Interspersed with the painful footage were responses and declarations by various public officials. Senators and congressmen from both major parties were backing the president one hundred percent. The support of the American public was nearly as strong: instant polls were taken immediately after the speech and Anderson’s words received a ninety-two pecent favorable rating. Despite the president’s stated intent not to politicize his actions, the political ramifications were huge and immediate. Within an hour after the president’s speech, a record sixty-eight percent of Americans said they would be voting for Dandridge in the next election no matter who he ran against. Everyone in the government-from both parties-assured the nation that the Triumph of Freedom Act would pass handily. Everyone promised that this was a fight we would not lose.

  The most forceful and impressive performance came from Ted Ackland, the assistant attorney general of the United States, who, according to political rumormongers, was very much in the running to be Phil Dandridge’s vice presidential running mate. Ackland was a handsome man, in his mid-forties, Clark Kent-looking with his horn-rimmed glasses and conservative suit and his lean, clearly chiseled body. Ackland was the most eloquent member of the administration, soft-spoken yet commanding, and when he elaborated on the T.O.F. Act-pronounced “tough”-as it was already being labeled, he was both convincing and reassuring. It was hard to dislike Ackland. He did not have the hard edges-or the controversial background-of Attorney General Stuller. Jeff Stuller made people ill at ease, sometimes even frightened them, including members of his own party. He was a man of stern religious upbringing and never wavered in his moral convictions, of which he had many. Pornographers were akin to murderers in Stuller’s book. Foul language was a violation of freedom of speech equal to words of treason. He was famous for never having danced, even with his wife, for dancing was not embraced by his Pentecostal religion, as it was considered frivolous and overtly sensual. The joke, often repeated in the print media, was that Stuller did not believe in sex-because it led to dancing. He was a stern man, with steely eyes and a steelier demeanor. His politics-as a two-term governor of Wisconsin and a one-term senator from the same state-were just as unwavering. He had, at various times in his political career, been branded as racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-civil rights. Stuller rarely responded to such criticism. He didn’t seem to even care about anything his detractors said. When Jeffrey Stuller spoke, it was clear that he did not believe he had ever been wrong or ever would be wrong.

  Ackland was the perfect counterpoint to his boss. He was not linked to the religious right. He had never held an elected office and so had no traceable history of controversial votes or preferences. The speeches he’d made that had been on the record, as well as his performance as a Second Circuit judge, were considered moderate and reasonable. That combination of attributes-even his detractors sometimes referred to him as Ted “Tough but Fair” Ackland-made him a rising political star. There was talk that, if he wasn’t put on the national ticket, he might run for senator in his home state. But the smart money was on the assistant attorney general to get the vice presidential nomination. Dandridge, hard-nosed and humorless, was much in need of someone like the more congenial Ackland if he were to continue the Anderson legacy for another four years.

  As the evening progressed, and as responses to the latest attack and to President Anderson’s speech came from around the country, Ted Ackland’s star began to burn even brighter. He spoke in a voice that was unafraid but not hell-bent on revenge. A voice fervently defending the new Triumph of Freedom bill, but also cognizant of its flaws. A voice that was strong but compassionate. In a world gone seemingly mad, his was a reassuring voice of sanity.

  And more than anything, that was what the country was demanding right now: sanity.

  In his living room, Justin Westwood was finding anything but sanity.

  The TV was on-it was impossible to turn off; the violent replays and the constant commentary were a necessary link to the real world-but for Justin, the bulk of his attention was focused elsewhere. When he’d had his fill of sound bites and tough political talk, he’d begun to read through Chuck Billings’s notes. He wasn’t sure why Chuck had gotten them to him. Maybe just for safekeeping, as his cryptic cover letter had stated, but Justin suspected it was more than that. A lot more. There was something he wanted Justin to know. And judging from Justin’s visit from Special Agent Schrader this afternoon, something the FBI didn’t want him to know. So Justin figured he’d better plow through the scrawls. At first it was tough going. The beginning was rife with technical jargon, hypothesizing about various ways the bomb was built and detonated. Justin recognized several phrases from the conversation he’d had with Billings and was able to piece together enough to understand the makeup of the explosive device. There were several pages under the heading “Signature.” Justin couldn’t follow it all but he got the gist. Billings was analyzing the bomb’s quirks, the “tells,” as he called them in the notes. Chuck discussed the primary fragmentation and explained the importance of the use of jacks in that capacity. There were other tells, too, but none as important as the jacks. He stressed the uniqueness of that as a killing tool, noted that if they were used again in another attack, it meant, with great probability, that there would be a specific person in charge. Someone separate from the bomb carrier.

  In his scribblings under the “Signature” section, it was clear that Chuck’s biggest desire was to know the exact tone transmitted by the cell phone that set the bomb off. But that was unknowable information. It was also crystal clear that Billings believed that the poor bastard who’d carried the device into Harper’s Restaurant was not the person who’d set the thing off. Chuck seemed convinced that the incoming call was what had set off the detonation. Which was exactly the opposite of what the president of the United States and all his appointed spokespeople were saying after the first attack. The official word was suicide bombing. One man, one fanatic, random havoc.

  After that came a section on Semtex, which was what Chuck believed the explosive to have been. He had various pages on the different terrorist and criminal organizations known to favor the material-sometimes with names of specific members and their level of expertise. He detailed various signatures in this section, too, but none of them matched up to the bits of information he had about the bomb that went off in Harper’s. Chuck knew manufacturers of Semtex as well
as known couriers. He even had various maps-some standard and slipped into the book, some hand-drawn-to show the various ways Semtex was brought into the country. He had put a red asterisk at the top of a subheading labeled “Colombia,” and by the asterisk had scribbled the letters “JW-Piper,” with several exclamation marks after it. This was connected to a map with a thick red line drawn along it, tracing a route from Colombia to Florida, then to Long Island. It took Justin a few moments to decide there was a pretty good chance that “JW” stood for “Justin Westwood,” and that Billings was making a connection between the explosive used to destroy Harper’s and the plane that had crashed in the middle of East End Harbor. Justin knew enough about the way that Billings’s mind worked-or at least the way it was working in this investigation-to begin to make his own connections.

  If the guy with the briefcase-the president had revealed his name, Bath-something Shabaan, something like that-wasn’t the one who set off the bomb, if he was only the messenger boy, then it was likely he hadn’t been expecting to be blown to smithereens. That was backed up by the witnesses who said he was on his way toward the front of the restaurant when the cell phone rang and the bomb went off. Shabaan had expected to survive. But the men who detonated the bomb wanted him dead. One less connection to the real source.

  If the Piper that crashed in East End Harbor had carried the explosives up from South America, it was also tied to the bombing. Ray Lockhardt had speculated that the plane was carrying drugs. It could just as easily have been carrying Semtex. If that were true, it also made sense that the pilot was murdered. Yet another connection eliminated.

  But a connection to what?

  A connection to whom?

  Justin put the notes down. He was breathing heavily and realized there was a reasonable chance his imagination was running away with him. He was getting spooked. Or just as paranoid as Wanda had accused Chuck Billings of being.

  There were too many ifs. Too many broken links in the chain. It was safe to assume that the two bombings were connected, even the government spokespeople were acknowledging that. They had revealed the possible existence of a terrorist cell connected to both events, but they weren’t revealing any direct link between the attack at Harper’s and the one in the city. Without a direct link, it would be almost impossible to find the person or persons responsible for both attacks. Not the two suicide bombers, the person controlling the bombers. It was that link that Chuck thought the Feds were doing their best to hide. It was that link that Justin decided he needed to find.

  He wished he could talk to Chuck right now. He didn’t know enough about signatures. Hell, he didn’t know enough about anything. All he had, all he could really tell from the notes, was that he needed to find out if jacks were used as the primary fragmentation for the second explosive. If there were, he’d have the link he needed. He wasn’t sure what the hell good it would do him, but at least he’d have something concrete. But it was highly unlikely he could get far enough inside the investigation to pursue that any further. And the only person he knew who had been inside the investigation-and questioned it-had been killed.

  Justin shook his head. What the hell was going on inside his brain?

  Signatures? Jacks? Connections? International terrorism?

  No, he decided. This was nuts. He was way overthinking this one. The world had turned into a crazy place where things rarely made sense. Where patterns weren’t always logical and where motives no longer came from jealousy or rage but from God or the latest messiah with a message of hate or a desire to find a spaceship to take his followers into outer space. Nope. There was no point in following Chuck Billings’s thought processes. He was looking for something he’d never find. Something that wasn’t there.

  One good way to put a stop to that problem, he decided.

  Justin went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and pulled out a cold beer. A bottle of Pete’s Wicked Ale. He leaned against the door of the refrigerator and downed the brew in three large gulps. It made him feel more settled, so he reached for a second bottle, took one long swig from that, and carried it back into the living room. He stared at Billings’s notebook for a moment, listened to the drone from the television commentators. He did his best to resist. It was pointless to keep reading. He’d already decided that. He thought about turning the TV off, putting some good hard rock and roll on his CD player-maybe some Stones, Sticky Fingers, or some Kinks-but his mind wouldn’t stop racing, it just didn’t feel right, and if he’d learned anything at all it was that things had to feel right, so he went back to Billings’s book, flipped it open again, skipped ahead to a page that was covered with circles and numbers. He realized it was a hand-drawn view of the table arrangements at Harper’s.

  Chuck had drawn circles to represent each table and its placement in the restaurant dining room. Each table-including the built-in booths along three of the walls-was numbered, from one to thirty-two. On the next page, Chuck had managed to line up the names of the diners that were covered by the reservation list and match them to the tables they’d been seated at when the explosion occurred. According to Chuck’s markings, the bomb had exploded either at table number twenty-three or table twenty-six, both toward the middle of the room. Justin checked the names on the next page. Jimmy Leggett had been eating at table thirty-one, just a few feet from the explosion. At table twenty-three were two names Justin had never heard of. At table twenty-six was a name he had heard of: Bradford Collins. The CEO of EGenco. Vice President Dandridge’s friend. Attorney General Stuller’s friend.

  Justin realized he’d finished the second beer. He decided he could definitely use a third, so went back to the fridge. In fact, he pretty much decided at least one of the two six-packs on the refrigerator shelf was a goner, but halfway back to his living room, his doorbell rang.

  Justin glanced at his watch. Ten o’clock at night. He wasn’t used to unexpected visitors at this hour. He wasn’t used to any visitors, he realized. In the nearly seven years he’d lived in East End Harbor, not more than a dozen people-including the exterminator and the kid who cut his grass-had been inside his house.

  He headed for the door. Through the shaded glass panel he saw a woman’s figure. He pulled the door open, cocked his head in surprise.

  “I’m sorry,” Reggie Bokkenheuser said. He saw that she’d been crying. He must have been staring because she wiped at her cheek with her fingers, brushing away the moisture. “I just couldn’t stand being alone anymore and I don’t really know anybody else.” She waved in the direction of his television, which was still tuned to CNN. “I can’t stand watching it, but I can’t stop. I’m sorry, I just needed some company. If you want me to-”

  “No, no,” he said. “Come on in.”

  She hesitated, standing on the scraggly straw welcome mat on his screened-in porch. He gently took her by the elbow and guided her inside.

  “It just got to me,” she said. “The images, all the blood, the goddamn talk about war and-”

  He handed her his untouched bottle of beer. She looked surprised, but when he nodded, she raised it to her lips and took a long swallow.

  “I didn’t want to drink alone,” she said. “I didn’t know if I should drink at all. I didn’t know what the hell to do. Every time I thought of something that’d take my mind off all this, I felt like such a coward. Do you know what I mean?”

  “No idea,” he told her. “I was just about to get blind drunk.”

  She did her best to smile, almost succeeded, wiped at her cheek again and sniffled back a potential tear.

  “You moved in already?” he asked.

  “This morning. I didn’t have much. And I rented it furnished. All I really had to do was unpack.” They were still standing near the front door. “Look,” she said, “I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to come barging in here.”

  “It’s okay. It got to me, too. I’m sure it’s getting to everybody.” He did his best to look reassuring, realized that wasn’t one of his best things. “Did yo
u eat dinner?”

  “No. I couldn’t bring myself to eat.”

  “How about now? A cheese omelet goes extremely well with beer. And I hope that appeals to you, because the only things I’ve got in the house are eggs and cheese and maybe a frozen steak that’ll take half a day to defrost.”

  She used her shirtsleeve to dab at her eyes and nodded. “I’m starving all of a sudden. Craving a cheese omelet.”

  So he went inside and made a six-egg omelet, mixed in some strong Epoisse cheese, cooked it until it was firm and nicely browned. She watched him cook, didn’t say a word. Occasionally he would glance up at her. Once, her eyes were unfocused and she was drifting off into her own thoughts. He noticed that she was wearing low-cut jeans, and scuffed black boots that added a couple of inches to her height. And a shirt that was too small, fashionably so, revealing some skin around her midriff. She was not a small girl, he realized. She was a little bit fleshy but it was sensual and sexy. She did not look very much like a cop at the moment, he thought, but then their eyes met, and she was jarred back into the present, so he stopped looking at her and concentrated on the omelet, which was almost ready.

  He got them each another bottle of beer and they went into the living room to eat. She gobbled her eggs down in what seemed like three bites. He liked the way she ate. There was no pretense to it, no attempt at being dainty. She was hungry and she attacked the food. After her last bite, she ran a finger around the rim of the plate, soaking up the olive oil, then put the finger in her mouth. When she was finished she said, “I guess eating was a good idea.”

  “I can make you another one if you want. You practically inhaled that.”

  “No, no, that was perfect. But yeah, I kind of like to eat. I’m not exactly the Gwyneth Paltrow/Calista Flockhart type.”

  “That’s probably a good thing. I don’t think they’d make such good cops.”

  She managed a real smile this time, like something had just loosened up inside of her, and she offered to go to the fridge to get this round of beer. When she returned they sipped slowly from their bottles, in no rush to finish. She talked a little bit more about the bombing, kept trying to change the subject, kept returning to the violence and the shock. Her legs and feet were tucked under her as she sat on the couch. Her boots were still on and for some reason he liked the fact that she knew he wouldn’t care if the leather rested on the couch. At some point, she pointed over to Chuck Billings’s notebook, asked what it was, but he just shook his head and said, “Work.” She asked if it was anything she should know about and he said no. He waited a few moments, then went over and closed the book. He couldn’t help himself. She didn’t seem to mind.