He popped open a fresh bottle. Big Brother. Deciding what the people should know and not know, think and not think. How had America come to this?
A knock on the door of his saucer woke Willum. “Who is it?”
“Clarisse.”
“There a problem?” He checked his watch. Ten o’clock. Please, please, please don’t be that the sheriff came back. His head hurt and his pillow smelled like a frat house. Plus it was covered with more strands of his kinky black hair.
“Just that it’s a beautiful day in the desert and you’re acting like a mopey child. Get dressed and get your ass out here. And bring a Frisbee.”
Willum sat up. She was right. He took an alternating hot and cold shower and swigged some pickle juice. Twenty minutes later he shuffled out of his saucer to a clearing they called the quad, a rectangular area that once served as a parking lot but had since been reclaimed by the desert sands. He flicked the Frisbee to her and sipped a Gatorade. “Good morning.” He kept his back to the sun—looking into it made his brain throb.
She snapped the disk out of the air and sent it soaring back to him. Three disks arced against the blue sky; he tried to focus on the middle one. “So when you were in high school, and you liked a girl, and you asked her out, and she said no—what did you do?”
“I’m sorry, what?” Even his hair hurt.
“You heard me. If the girl said no, what did you do?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. Or I looked for another girl.”
“See, that’s your problem. You know I adore you, but sometimes you don’t have enough ambition. Why not fight for her, why not try to change her mind?”
He got out of bed for this? Hell, he had an ex-wife for these kinds of conversations. “Well, okay, but that was thirty years ago.”
“What I’m talking about is this Thorne guy. You scared him off. I get that. But don’t give up. If you think he can help you find your golden chest, stay after it. How hard can it be to find his email address? Apologize, send him more info on the rune stone, get him to take another nibble on the worm.” She smiled. “You seduced me, you can seduce him.”
He threw the Frisbee again. “Actually, you seduced me.”
“That’s my point.” She reached around her back and caught the disk behind her hip. “You should have come after me from the beginning.”
“Well, it worked out okay my way.”
“Maybe so. But Cameron Thorne’s not as desperate as I was.”
His head throbbed. But that didn’t change the fact that she had a point.
Just as Willum’s head began to stop throbbing a bigger headache arrived at the front gate of the compound. “Sheriff is back,” the sentry reported via cell phone, “and this time he brought friends.”
Willum glanced at the sun. High noon; how appropriate. “I’ll be right there.” He made sure a couple of guys had manned the sniper’s nests above the domes, found Clarisse and jogged the hundred yards to the far corner of the compound. Four police cars, lights flashing, idled along the shoulder of the rural highway in front of the compound’s front gate.
Willum walked the last fifty feet; he didn’t want to be out of breath when he arrived. He pushed the gate open and stood in the open so the security camera in the guard house could capture the scene. “Sheriff Vaca,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“Mr. Smoot,” the sheriff nodded. But for their skin tone and Willum’s thick beard, the men were almost mirror-images of one another: late forties, just over six feet, husky. The sheriff wasn’t a bad guy. But he was in a bad spot.
Behind him stood five uniformed deputies and a handful of men and women in business suits carrying briefcases. County officials and maybe a lawyer or two, Willum guessed. Plus no doubt a soulless bureaucrat from the feds. “Surprised to see you all on a Saturday. What can I do for you?”
The sheriff took a step closer, his hands behind his back to appear non-threatening. He lowered his voice. “Mr. Smoot, we need to get in there to do an inspection. You’ve got people living in there but you don’t have an occupancy permit.” He gestured behind him. “The Building Inspector needs to check for health and safety violations.”
“I promise you, Sheriff, that we have everything under control. I just changed the smoke detector batteries myself.” Willum smiled.
“Glad to hear it. But I’m talking about structural issues. Are those domes of yours safe? Is the electrical up to code?”
Willum had studied the Ruby Ridge disaster. The feds fabricated some bullshit minor charges against Randy Weaver, and then when he refused to leave his compound to defend himself in court they issued a warrant for his arrest. The largest law firm in Phoenix, more than happy to take Willum’s money, had devised a careful legal strategy for him. “We only use the domes and other buildings for storage,” he said. “Everyone in the compound lives in tents.” He smiled again, knowing every word was being recorded. “Just like Boy Scouts on a camping trip. So we don’t need occupancy permits—we’re not occupying the buildings.”
The sheriff, in turn, smiled. “Once we verify that, we can be on our way.”
“I have no problem with that. But you’re going to have to verify it from outside the fence. This is private property, and I’m not inviting you in.”
“What if I have a warrant?”
“Well, I suppose that would be a problem for both of us. Since this is Saturday, there is no way my lawyers can go to court and obtain a protective order.” Willum glanced back at the snipers atop the dome roofs. “So that means my options would be limited.”
The sheriff nodded, turned and began to walk away. He hesitated and turned back to Willum. He stuck out his hand. “It seems fate has determined we are to be adversarios for some reason. I think in different circumstances we would have been amigos instead. I regret that.”
Willum clasped the sheriff’s hand. Willum suspected that at some point the sheriff knew he would be pressured to force the same hand that currently held his. Willum was just relieved it wasn’t today. “As do I,” Willum said. “As do I.”
Ellis watched Sheriff Vaca and Smoot talk and interact. Ellis had never met Smoot, though he knew him intimately. But you never really knew someone until you saw them in person, in three dimensions. Otherwise it was like falling in love with a centerfold or movie star after having learned all about them from the gossip magazines. Yet even this, standing ten feet away, wasn’t enough. Ellis wanted to smell Smoot’s breath, see the hairs growing inside his nostrils, count the number of times he blinked or licked his lips or swallowed. But this would have to do for now.
The hard-bodied woman, Clarisse was her name, was his lieutenant. Earlier, when they approached, Smoot had whispered something to her. Most people when they whisper do so into the ear so as not to offend with their breath or invade personal space. But Smoot whispered directly into her face. Interesting.
Ellis had edged close enough to hear Smoot’s conversation with the sheriff. Instead of fanning Smoot’s paranoia Vaca was placating him. It would have been preferable if Vaca were more of a hot-head—what were the odds of some country sheriff in rural America being a reasonable guy? It probably was unrealistic to expect them all to be like the redneck played by Jackie Gleason in Smokey and the Bandit, but that’s really what Ellis needed here. Some prick to do something stupid to raise the stakes and get everyone’s blood boiling. It wasn’t essential that bullets begin to fly. Though that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing either.
CHAPTER 4
Cam sensed something was bothering Astarte even before she slid into the back seat of his Subaru Forester. “Why would God command Abraham to kill Isaac?” she asked, a pink ski hat framing her face.
The girl had been living with them for only a few months, but Cam knew better than to talk down to her. “Good question. I think God was wrong to do that.”
“But how could God be wrong about anything. Shouldn’t he always be right?”
They wanted Astarte to have some kind of r
eligious education so they had enrolled her in Sunday school at Westford’s white-steepled Unitarian church. During their car rides home her questions often forced Cam to reexamine his own religious beliefs. Which was probably a healthy thing. “First of all, didn’t we agree God might be a woman not a man?”
“No. You and Amanda said that. But the Book of Mormon says he’s a man. And I’ve seen pictures.”
“Well, isn’t it possible the Book of Mormon is wrong? Women give life to the world, so couldn’t a woman have created life in the first place?”
“Well, either way why would God tell Abraham to kill his own son?” Her cobalt eyes narrowed in anger.
“I think God was just testing Abraham—he … I mean she … wouldn’t have let him actually kill Isaac.”
Astarte chewed on her lip and stared out the window. Cam glanced in the rearview mirror and waited, the traffic steady around the town’s snow-covered Colonial common. They had flown back on the red eye Friday night, landed Saturday morning in Boston, driven to their Westford home 30 miles north of the city and spent the rest of Saturday unpacking and shaking their jet lag. “Well,” she said, “Abraham was still a bad father. He didn’t know the angel would tell him to stop.” She brushed at her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffled. “He probably scared Isaac.”
That was it then. The psychologists had warned that Astarte might have issues with trust after the death of her uncle, who himself had taken custody of her as a toddler after the death of her mother. Still only nine years old, she was already on her third set of parents—the last thing she needed was to hear about parents slitting the throats of their children. Cam looked into the mirror again and waited for Astarte to meet his gaze. “You’re right, Astarte. Amanda and I would never do anything to harm you.” He smiled. “Even if God told us to.”
She sat up. “So you wouldn’t do what God says?”
“Not in that case, no.”
She looked out the window again. “Well then why do we call Abraham the father of our people? He wasn’t a very good father, it seems to me.”
“Again, I think you’re right. I’m guessing Sarah was very angry with him when she learned what he almost did to Isaac.”
“She shouldn’t argue with him. Her job is to obey her husband.”
Cam pursed his lips. He had read that the Mormon Church required women to swear obedience to their husbands. “Do you think Amanda always obeys me?”
Astarte shrugged. “Well, she should.”
“We don’t believe that. We believe we are equal partners.”
She didn’t respond for a few seconds. “Well, maybe Abraham should have at least told Sarah before taking Isaac up the mountain. She was probably worried.” She chewed her lip again. “I think what the Bible is trying to tell us is that women need to be careful who they pick for their husband. They don’t want to get someone mean like Abraham.”
Cam started to respond but instead just nodded. Astarte’s interpretation was clearly not the one the religious school teacher was trying to impart. But it was a pretty damn good one compared to some of the other things the Bible taught.
Cam turned into the driveway, making a wide turn around a dark sedan wedged tight against a snow bank in front of their home. He hoped whoever it was wouldn’t be staying long—already the frozen lake behind their house had begun to fill with ice skaters, dog walkers and cross-country skiers; he planned to have a quick lunch and join them. It was one of the best things about living on a lake—they were only thirty miles from Boston, but most winter weekends unfolded in a scene straight out of a Norman Rockwell print. Astarte, Amanda and he would skate for a bit and when Astarte got tired their dog Venus would pull her in the sled. At some point they would end up at a neighbor’s bonfire where the children would build a snow fort and the adults would sip schnapps-laced hot chocolate. Cam hoped that whoever was visiting brought warm clothes.
Amanda met them at the door, crouching to embrace Astarte before standing and tilting her neck to kiss Cam on the mouth. Venus, tail wagging, nosed at Cam’s thigh.
“Sorry to interrupt your Sunday, Cameron.”
Cam recognized the slight Southern drawl immediately. “Georgia? What are you doing here?”
A full-figured, sixty-something woman seated at the kitchen table pushed back her chair, stood and smiled. Cam ambled over and greeted her with a hug. Georgia Johnston wasn’t the most touchy-feely person, and neither was Cam, but they had—literally—gone to battle and almost died together. So a handshake didn’t seem to cut it.
Astarte also hugged her, which Georgia accepted more comfortably.
“How’s the little princess?”
Astarte swallowed and looked the older woman in the eye. “Very well, thank you. I like living with Amanda and Cameron.”
“I knew you would.”
“But nobody here in Westford calls me the princess. They just call me Astarte.”
Georgia smiled. “Good. It will be hard enough to be a princess when you get older. For now, just enjoy being a girl.”
They chatted over sandwiches. “So when are you two getting married?”
“We’ve been a trifle busy,” Amanda laughed.
“But you’re right, Georgia,” Cam said. “If I don’t pin her down soon, she might change her mind.”
When Astarte ran off to change her clothes, Georgia lowered her voice. “Astarte seems happy. How’s it going?”
Cam deferred to Amanda. “Pretty well. The hardest thing is the religious question. She has some really strong bonds to her Mormon faith—she’s angry we don’t let her go to the local Mormon prayer house. And of course she always argues with her Sunday school teachers at the Unitarian Church. But I can’t stomach raising a girl in a religion that is so patriarchal.” She paused. “Do you know they teach that, in heaven, a man can take as many wives as he wants and his job is to keep all of them pregnant?”
Georgia nodded. “And there are no female religious leaders—I agree, it’s not a great message to send to little girls.”
Cam weighed in. “Well, to be fair, there are no female Catholic priests either. Or Orthodox Jewish rabbis. Or Muslim imams, except in all-female congregations.” Cam didn’t totally agree with Amanda that they needed to yank Astarte away from her religion. Eventually, yes. But perhaps not so quickly. “And don’t forget, her uncle convinced Astarte that her destiny was to be some kind of worldwide spiritual leader. So it’s not like she was being groomed just to make babies.”
Amanda turned, pink rising on her cheeks. “Yes. But he also told her she could only be the princess or queen or whatever if she married some guy to be king and legitimize her. Astarte won’t be taught she’s anything special in the Mormon Church. She’ll just be taught to wear those high-neck dresses and hope for a husband who doesn’t beat her.”
Cam didn’t press it. Mostly because Amanda was probably right, though she was probably overstating things. He smiled at Georgia. “So basically we know we don’t want to raise her Mormon, Catholic, Muslim or Orthodox Jewish. There’s an old Woody Allen joke where he says he’s an atheist and his wife is an agnostic and they always fight about what religion not to raise the children in. That’s sort of us right now.”
“Well, I’m sure you guys will figure it out.” Georgia sipped from her coffee and got to the point of her visit. “Cam, we need your help.”
“When you say we, who you mean?”
“ODNI.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in response to 9/11 to oversee and coordinate the nation’s various intelligence communities, most of whom historically didn’t talk to each other.
“It’s bad enough that you are still working for them, Georgia. But why would we want to help them?”
Amanda chimed in. “Cam is right. They tried to kill us. And you.” Religious zealots had infiltrated ODNI and abducted Astarte, planning to use her unique bloodlines as a way to unite the country under the rule of religious extremists. Cam and Amanda, with Geor
gia’s help, had eventually stopped them. But not before Astarte’s uncle was dead. Amanda had suffered cracked ribs and Cam a torn-up knee and a concussion as well. And who knew what emotional scars Astarte carried.
“That’s not totally fair, but I do see your point,” Georgia responded. “To answer your question, the reason I’m still working for them is that there are still people out there trying to attack our country, our values, our way of life. I’m trying to prevent them from succeeding. Simple as that.” And she was in a position to do so, recently having been promoted to deputy director.
Cam took Amanda’s hand—what he really wanted to be doing was leading her around the lake by it. And after Astarte went to bed, they would cuddle in front of the fireplace and watch an old movie or read or play a board game. But it seemed Georgia had other ideas.
“So what do you need from me?” Maybe he could answer a few questions for Georgia about the Templars or some artifact and she would be on her way. But if that was the case, why did she fly all the way up from Washington….
She leaned forward in her chair. “I need you to go undercover.”
Amanda spat out a response. “Not to be rude, but are you daffy? Cam’s a lawyer and a historian, not an operative.”
Cam was tempted to point out that he—and Amanda—had been put in more dicey situations over the past two years than some operatives had experienced in a lifetime, but he bit his tongue.
“I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”
“Okay, I’m listening.” Amanda shot him a look. She was still peeved about the Mormon conversation. But it couldn’t hurt to listen.
Georgia sipped her coffee. “There’s a group of Survivalists down in Arizona who have us concerned. They’re starting to get a bit ornery.”
Powdered Gold: Templars and the American Ark of the Covenant (Templars in America Series Book 3) Page 8