Dragonfly

by Dean Koontz

  Consulting The Wind in the Willows, he found that the fourth word in the three-hundred-twenty-first line of the first chapter was "fly." He wrote that down and looked at what he had thus far:

  snapdragon fly

  He crossed out the first four letters and drew the rest of it together in one word:

  dragonfly

  He had another sip of whiskey.

  600030007

  He worked that out rather quickly and wrote the word "to" after "dragonfly."

  600030008

  10002100003

  11000600010

  Gradually he worked his way down through the list of numbers, taking time out to sample his drink, now and then reading a passage out of which Rice had plucked a word. In half an hour he had decoded the entire message:

  dragonfly to be used

  as soon as possible

  stop

  within twenty-four

  hours maximum

  essential

  stop

  city will be unsafe

  for ninety-six hours

  after dragonfly

  is triggered

  stop

  save self

  but staff must be

  abandoned

  stop

  risk all

  end

  Humming softly and tunelessly, the man at the desk read the brief message several times, savoring it as he savored the whiskey. Then he put it through the paper shredder and watched the pieces flutter into the wastebasket.

  The largest and yet quickest war in history was about to begin.

  FOUR

  FAIRMOUNT HEIGHTS, MARYLAND:

  FRIDAY, 7:40 P.M.

  "I still don't see what the hell Sidney Greenstreet has to do with this," Bernie Kirkwood said, leaning over the back of the front seat as the sound of the car's engine faded and the night silence closed in around them.

  Burt Nolan, the six-foot-four Pinkerton bodyguard who was behind the wheel of McAlister's white Mercedes, said, "Do you want me to come in with you, sir?"

  "There won't be any trouble here," McAlister said. "You can wait in the car." He opened the door and got out

  Scrambling out of the back seat, Kirkwood said, "I suppose I'm allowed to tag along."

  "Could I stop you?" McAlister asked.

  "No."

  "Then by all means."

  They went along the sidewalk to a set of three concrete steps that mounted a sloped lawn.

  "You've been damned close-mouthed since we left the restaurant," Kirkwood said.

  "I guess I have."

  "The description in the newspaper . . . You recognized the man who beat up on that hooker."

  "Maybe I did."

  At the top of the three concrete steps, there was a curving flagstone walk that led across a well-manicured lawn and was flanked on the right-hand side by a neatly trimmed waist-high wall of green shubbery.

  "Who is it?" Kirkwood asked.

  "I'd rather not say just yet."

  "Why not?"

  "It's not a name you toss around lightly when you're discussing sex offenders."

  "When will you toss it around, lightly or otherwise?"

  "When I know why Beau called him 'that Sidney Greenstreet.'"

  The house in front of them was a handsome three-story brick Tudor framed by a pair of massive Dutch elm trees. Light burned behind two windows on the third floor. The second floor was dark. On the ground level light shone out from stained, leaded windows: a rainbow of soft colors. The porch light glowed above the heavy oak door and was reflected by the highly polished pearl-gray Citroen S-M that was parked in the driveway.

  "Who is this Beau Jackson?" Kirkwood asked as McAlister rang the doorbell.

  "Cloakroom attendant at the White House."

  "You're kidding."

  "No."

  "This is an accountant's neighborhood."

  "What kind of neighborhood is that?"

  "Right below a doctor's neighborhood and right above a lawyer's."

  "It isn't exactly what I was expecting," McAlister admitted.

  "What does he do on the side, rob banks?"

  "Why don't you ask him?"

  "If he does rob banks," Kirkwood said, "I'd like to join up with his gang."

  A dark face peered at them through a tiny round window in the door. Then it disappeared, and a moment later the door opened.

  Beau Jackson was standing there in dark-gray slacks and a blue sport shirt. "Mr. McAlister!"

  "Good evening, Mr. Jackson."

  "Come in, come in."

  In the marble-floored foyer, McAlister said, "I hope I'm not interrupting your dinner."

  "No, no," Jackson said. "We never eat earlier than nine."

  McAlister introduced Kirkwood, waited for the two men to shake hands, and said, "I'm here to talk to you about a man you once compared to Sidney Green-street."

  Jackson's smile faded. "May I ask why you want to talk about him?"

  "I think he's involved in a major criminal conspiracy," McAlister said. "That's all I can tell you. It's an extremely sensitive and top-secret matter."

  Jackson pulled on his chin, made up his mind in a few seconds, and said, "Come on back to my den."

  It was a large, pleasantly stuffy room. On two sides bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling. Windows and oil paintings filled the rest of the wall space. The desk was a big chunk of dark pine full of drawers and cubbyholes; and the top of it was littered with copies of The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and other financial publications.

  Picking up a Journal, Kirkwood said, "You don't rob banks, after all."

  Jackson looked puzzled.

  "When I saw this beautiful house, I said you must rob banks on the side. But you're in the stock market."

  "I just dabble in stocks," Jackson said. "I'm mostly interested in the commodities market. That's where I've done best." He pointed to a grouping of maroon-leather armchairs. "Have a seat, gentlemen." While they settled down, he looked over the bookshelves and plucked several magazines from between the hard-bound volumes. He returned and sat down with them. To McAlister he said, "Evidently you've learned who Sidney Greenstreet was."

  "Bernie told me," McAlister said. "Greenstreet was one of the all-time great movie villains."

  "A fat man who was seldom jolly," Jackson said. "His performance as Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon is one of the greatest pieces of acting ever committed to film."

  "He wasn't bad as the Japanese sympathizer in Across the Pacific" Kirkwood said.

  "Also one of my favorites," Jackson said.

  "Of course," Kirkwood said, "he wasn't always the villain. He did play good guys now and then. Like in Conflict, with Bogart and Alexis Smith. You know that one?"

  Before Jackson could answer, McAlister said, "Bernie, we are here on rather urgent business."

  The black man turned to McAlister and said, "When I referred to Mr. Rice as 'that Sidney Green-street,' I meant that he is very cunning, perhaps very dangerous, and not anything at all like what he seems to be. He pretends liberalism. At heart he is a right-wing fanatic. He's a racist. A fascist." Jackson's voice didn't rise with the strength of his judgments or acquire an hysterical tone; he sounded quite reasonable.

  "Mr. Rice? Andrew Rice? You mean the President's chief aide?" Kirkwood asked weakly. He looked as if he were about to mutter and drool in idiot confusion.

  Ignoring Kirkwood, certain that he was on the verge of learning something that he would have preferred not to know, McAlister stared hard at Jackson and said, "You're making some pretty ugly accusations. Yet I'm sure that you don't know Rice personally. You probably don't know him even as well as I do—and that's not very well at all. So what makes you think you know what's in his heart?"

  Back in the early 1960s, Jackson explained, he had reached a point in his life when he finally felt secure, finally knew that he had gotten out of the ghetto for once and all. He had plenty of tenure on the White House domestic staff. He was making a damne
d good salary. His investments had begun to pay off handsomely, and he had been able to move into a good house in the suburbs. He had been successful long enough to have accepted his new position, and he had gotten over the lingering fear that everything he had worked for might be taken away from him overnight.

  "All my life," he told McAlister, "I've enjoyed books. I've believed in continuous self-education. In 1963, when I moved to the suburbs, I felt financially secure enough to devote most of my spare time to my reading. I decided to establish a study program and concentrate on one subject at a tune. Back then, I was most interested in racial prejudice, having been a victim of it all of my life. I wanted to understand the reasons behind it. The psychology behind it. So I worked up a reading list, both fiction and nonfiction, and did considerable research. Eventually I was led to these two magazines owned by a man named J. Prescott Hennings."

  "I know of him," McAlister said.

  Jackson said, "He's published some of the most hateful racist propaganda ever committed to ink and paper in this country. It's not all directed against blacks. Hennings despises Jews, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos . . ."

  "I've seen copies of the magazines, but I've never bothered to read one of them," McAlister said.

  Jackson picked up the first magazine in his lap and opened it to an article titled "Negro Mental Inferiority." He handed it to McAlister and said, "Here's a little something written by Andrew Rice in 1964."

  Reading the first several paragraphs, McAlister winced. He passed the magazine to Kirkwood.

  Jackson gave another one to McAlister. "Here's an especially nasty little number titled 'Has Hitler Been Maligned?'"

  "Christ!" McAlister said, feeling sick to his stomach. Glancing only perfunctorily at the article, he quickly passed it on to Kirkwood. Weakly, he said, "Well . . . People do change."

  "Not as radically as this," Jackson said. "Not from a fanatical fascist to a paragon of liberal virtue." He spoke with conviction, as if he'd had considerable time to think about it. "And people certainly don't change so quickly as Rice appears to have done. That paean to Hitler was published exactly one year before Harvard University Press issued his Balancing the Budget in a Welfare State, which was the best seller and which was overflowing with liberal sentiment."

  Skimming through the Hitler article, Kirkwood said, "This is the work of an Andrew Rice who belongs in a nice little padded cell somewhere."

  "Believe me," Jackson said gloomily, "that Andrew Rice is the same one who is today advising the President." He opened another magazine to an article titled 'The Chinese Threat,' and he gave this to McAlister. "In this one Rice advocates an immediate nuclear attack on Red China in order to keep it from becoming a major nuclear power itself."

  Shocked for reasons Jackson couldn't grasp, McAlister read this piece from beginning to end. By the time he had finished it, he was damp with perspiration. "How could he ever have become accepted as a major liberal thinker when he had a background like this?"

  "He published eleven of those articles, the last in October of 1964," Jackson said. "They all appeared in magazines with terribly small circulations."

  "And even then, not everyone who received a copy read it," said Kirkwopd.

  "Right," Jackson said. "My guess is that no one who read those magazine pieces also read his liberal work beginning with the Harvard book. Or if a few people did read both—well, they never remembered the byline on the articles and didn't connect that work with the book. As the years passed, the chance of anyone making the connection grew progressively smaller. And when Rice did move into a position of real power, it was as a Presidential aide. Unlike Cabinet members, aides do not have to be confirmed by the Senate. Because Rice doesn't have an engaging or even particularly interesting personality, he hasn't been much of a target for newspapermen. No one has combed through his past; they all go back to the Harvard book and never any further."

  As he wiped the perspiration from his face with his handkerchief, McAlister said, "Why haven't you blown the whistle on him?"

  Jackson said, "How?"

  "Call up a reporter and put him on the right track. Even give him your copies of the magazines."

  "Too dangerous."

  "Dangerous?"

  Sighing, Jackson said, "Do you think for a minute Rice could have gotten away with this change of face if Prescott Hennings didn't want him to get away with it?"

  "You're suggesting a conspiracy?'

  "Of some sort."

  "To accomplish what?"

  "I dont know," Jackson said.

  McAlister nodded.

  "But I'm beginning to think you know."

  Staring straight into the black man's eyes, McAlister said nothing.

  Jackson said, "I'd wager that if I hustled some reporter with this stuff, Hennings would have conclusive proof that the very famous liberal Andrew Rice was not the same Andrew Rice who wrote those articles way back when. And then yours truly would be marked as a slander monger. I've got a nice job and a big earned pension that's coming to me in a few years. When it comes to my financial solvency, I'm as morally bankrupt as the next man."

  McAlister folded his handkerchief and returned it to his pocket. "Rice isn't a very common name. Even if Hennings did have some sort of trumped-up proof, it wouldn't be believed."

  "Mr. McAlister, forgive me, but even if the proof was conclusive, Rice would remain as a Presidential aide—and I'd get bounced out of the cloakroom on my ass. Do you think all those liberals, Democrats and Republicans, who have praised Rice to the skies are suddenly just going to admit they were deceived? Do you think the President will admit Rice made a fool of him? If you think so, then you're more naïve than I would have thought. There will be a lot of somber speeches and statements about giving a man a second chance and about the marvelous capacity for change that Rice has shown. Hearts will bleed. Pity will flow like water. The conservatives won't care if Rice goes or stays. And the liberals would rather argue that a child killer can achieve sainthood even in the act of murder then admit they were wrong.

  "I believe that Rice probably has taken a long-term position in order to achieve power with which he can score points for right-wing programs—while he professes liberal aims. It's an ingenious tactic. It requires consummate acting skill and monumental patience, and it's more dangerous to our system of government than any screaming, shouting frontal attack of the sort that right-wingers usually make. But it's much too complicated for most Americans to understand or worry about. They like their politics nice and simple. Actually, I'm not even sure that it's anything to worry about. I'm not so sure he can do all that much damage. If he's got to maintain his liberal image, he can hardly begin pressing for the Hitlerian laws and schemes he wrote about in those articles for Hennings' magazines."

  Getting to his feet, McAlister said, "That's quite true."

  "But now I'm not so sure," Jackson said, standing, stretching, watching McAlister closely. "Since you came here like this, you must think Rice is involved in something very big and very dangerous."

  McAlister said, "I'd appreciate it if you kept this visit to yourself."

  "Naturally."

  "Could I have a few of those magazines?"

  "Take them all," Jackson said.

  Kirkwood scooped up all eleven issues.

  At the front door, as they were shaking hands, McAlister said, "Mr. Jackson, I can only repeat what I said on Wednesday: you're sure full of surprises."

  Jackson nodded and smiled and shuffled his feet, putting on a bit of that refined Stepin Fetchit routine which he used to such great effect at the White House.

  "Would you and your wife consider joining Mrs. McAlister and me for dinner some evening soon?"

  "I believe that would be most interesting," Jackson said.

  "I believe you're right."

  On the way down the flagstone walk to the car, neither McAlister nor Kirkwood said a word.

  On all sides of them, the grass looked bluish-white, pearly in the October moon
light.

  A teenage boy and a pretty blonde were leaving the house next door, just starting out on a big date.

  A child's laughter came from the front porch of the house across the street.

  McAlister felt as if the sky were going to collapse on him any second now. He walked with his shoulders hunched.

  When they were both in the car again and the Pinkerton man had started the engine, McAlister turned to Kirkwood and said, "It was your group that got the Cofield lead."

  "That's right."

  "And the Hunter lead too."

  "Yes."

  "How are you using your investigators?"

  "Some of the other teams are working a sixteen-hour day. But I've got my men divided into three different eight-hour shifts so we can pursue our leads around the clock."

  "Who are the federal marshals guarding your team?"

  "Right now, on the four-to-midnight grind, it's a man named Bradley Hopper. Midnight to eight in the morning, it's John Morrow. During the day shift, when I'm on duty with two assistants, we've got a marshal named Carl Altmüller."

  After six months with this man as his chief investigator, McAlister was no longer in awe of Kirkwood's ability to remember every detail of his work, even the full names of the guards who were assigned to him. "Which one of them was on duty when the Potter Cofield lead began to get hot?"

  Kirkwood said, "Altmüller."

  "What do you know about him?"

  "Not much. I chatted him up when he first came on duty. Let me see . . ." He was quiet for a few seconds. Then: "I think he said he wasn't married. Lived in—Capitol Heights somewhere."

  "Capitol Heights, Maryland?" McAlister asked.

  "Yeah."

  He turned to Burt Nolan, the Pinkerton man. "That's not very far from here, is it?"

  "No, sir."

  "Better get to a phone, look in the book, see if there's a full address listed for him," McAlister said.

  Nolan pulled the Mercedes away from the curb.

  Leaning up from the back seat, pushing one thin hand through his bushy hair, Kirkwood said, "You think that Carl Altmüller is working for Rice?"

  "Rice assigned the marshals," McAlister said. "He chose them. And once he had a list of possibilities sent over to him from Justice, he needed six hours to call the first one of them. Now, what do you think he was doing all that time?"