He moved cautiously in that direction. In the limited light, he could barely see the houses and fences around which he had to negotiate. The sound, although still faint, was getting louder. After he passed two houses, he saw a tiny speck of light in a house one over from where he was. That was probably where the sound was coming from. He passed the next house and now could tell that the sound was a muffled voice. He thought he probably found the place where the radio was hidden.
He needed to get over to the house so he could look in a window. Scanning the area to see what was in his way, he walked slowly in that direction. His knee hit something solid, but not too hard. It was a picket fence, one so low he could lift a leg over it. By putting his hands on the two by four cross piece, he was able to get sufficient leverage to lift his body and his other leg over without having to jump. He didn’t want to alert whoever was in the house until he knew what he was facing.
The light – Zach reasoned that it must be a small flashlight – made a window visible and revealed that the front door was open. The light was coming from the living room, so whoever was in the house must be in that room. Zach still couldn’t make out any words, but now he was sure it was a man talking. With the door open, he could get in and capture the man before he had a chance to put up a defense.
He started for the house, keeping his eye on the door. Ten feet from his objective, he stepped on a rake. It snapped up and hit his shoulder. He froze, not sure if the sound of the rake hitting him was loud enough to carry into the house. The voice in the room stopped for several seconds. Zach waited without moving. Then, the man resumed talking, apparently assuming the slight noise was just a small animal.
Zach waited another full minute. The voice went on as though nothing happened, so he walked toward the house once again. When he got to the door, he could see the shadow of a man seated on a chair, talking on a radio that was sitting on a coffee table. The man’s back was to him, so Zach knew he would be able to get in close and take him by surprise.
He stepped into the room and walked stealthily toward the man. He could now make out some words and the voice sounded familiar. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He saw the shadowy features of what looked like the face of a Chinese man, but he had no time to react. A two by four hit him solidly on the head, and he reeled from the impact. He was unconscious before he dropped to the floor.
* * * * *
Chapter 38
“WELL, what do we have here?” asked the guard who followed Mary out to the dumpster. He grasped her arm near the wrist. She tried to break his grip, but he was too strong. It was the same guard who watched her go to the doughnut shop toilet to try to clean her mop.
“It seems to me,” he stated, shaking his head, “that you’re always doing something that doesn’t look quite right. I guess I better see what you’re up to.”
He took the note from her hand and brought it to his face with his free hand, but couldn’t read it in the dark. “Come with me,” he ordered, changing his grip to her upper arm as he raised her to her feet. He marched her back to the building. “We’re going to find out what’s going on here,” he muttered as they entered the room.
When he had her inside, Silva and Venable got to their feet.
“What are you doing to my cleaning lady?” demanded Silva. He wasn’t really concerned about her, but rather wanted people like this lackey to act on his orders rather than to use their own initiative. Free thinkers were loose cannons.
“She’s up to something,” the guard said as he walked Mary over to the sofa. He handed Silva the note. “She was putting this under the dumpster out in the parking lot.”
As Silva read, the expression on his face went from unconcern to mild curiosity and then to outright anger in less than five seconds.
“You traitor,” he screamed at Mary. He lurched at her, but she was out of his reach. The guard wasn’t intentionally trying to protect her but happened to be between them.
Venable grabbed his friend from behind and held him back when the governor tried to go around the guard. “Easy, Dick,” he cautioned. “Let me see what this is all about.”
The attorney general took the note from Silva’s hand and read it. He turned to Mary. “Who is this for?”
“It’s for that rat Larry Campbell, of course,” seethed Silva. “She must have been feeding him information all along.”
Venable thought for a second. His legal mind was used to quickly assessing what the other side had and how it affected his case. “His knowing what we’ve talked about won’t make any difference,” he concluded.
“To start with, he won’t get this message, so he won’t know we’re on to him. Then, once we trash that phony election of his, he will be powerless to do anything, anyway. Our vision for the future will be realized as planned.”
“Fine, I buy that part,” Silva concurred reluctantly, “but we’ve talked about what we’re going to do to Catalina. She has probably told them what we’re going to do out there, so now they’ll be ready.”
“No, that’s definitely not the case. According to our guy out there, they still think the attack won’t be until four or five days from now. Remember, he just called a few minutes ago. Nothing has changed. So, it’s clear there is no contact between Campbell and the Catalina people. The man says they’re actually having meetings to set up an organization to run the place in the future. They’re clueless to the fact that they’re going to be obliterated in less than thirty-six hours.”
That pleased Silva, but what Mary did disturbed him. His anger subsided but in another mood swing, he was aggrieved by what he considered unforgivable duplicity. “Why, Mary?” he asked plaintively. “Why would you do this to me, your friend? I let you clean my building. I even promised I’d pay you when we had a currency.”
“But,” she responded as bravely as her fear would allow, “what you’re doing is wrong. You want to make slaves out of people.”
“Oh, no, no,” Silva protested. “What we’re doing is for the people’s own good. We’re just giving them the leadership they want and need.”
“You’re going to kill all those poor people in Catalina. That’s a terrible thing.”
“Mary, you need to understand that all we’re doing is simply what’s necessary to create a society where everyone has the things they need. We will provide that. That’s what a government is for. Those people in Catalina are traitors against the common good. They are making it very difficult for us to do what we need to do. You must see that they have to be eliminated for the overall good of society.”
Mary didn’t reply but looked doubtful.
“Dick, there’s no point in trying to explain it to her,” Venable told his friend. He said to the guard, “Take her upstairs and lock her in the third room to the right.” He took out a key and handed it to the guard. “Make sure she stays there until we say otherwise.”
“Sorry, Mary,” Silva apologized. “You must understand that we’re doing it for your own good. It will give you time to think.”
She looked pleadingly at him as the guard led her away, but he turned his head and ignored her.
The two men resumed their seats on the sofa after they were gone.
“What can we do with someone like her?” Venable asked.
“I don’t know, and I’m not gonna to waste any time trying to figure it out,” Silva replied, waving it off, his mind already having moved on other things. “I’ll leave that to Mal when he gets back.”
“Mal? He’ll kill her,” Venable predicted.
“That’ll be up to him,” Silva replied, shrugging. “It’s out of my hands.” He put up a finger to make a point. “The important issue now is Campbell. We need to get back to making sure we destroy him and whoever is foolish enough to join with him.”
* * * * *
Marcus jumped up from his radio when he heard the noise at the door. In the dim light, he saw Zach being hit over the head. He rushed over to see what happened.
�
�It is as I suspected,” the man who hit Zach snarled. “It is that nosy sailboat captain. I will kill him and get him out of our way.”
“Kill him?” Marcus exclaimed, startled. “No, you can’t do that.”
“He has been a nuisance since I first saw him.”
“Well, yes, he has been a lot of trouble,” Marcus admitted. He was nervous, and his voice was getting high-pitched. “But, you can’t just murder him.”
“Perhaps in your country it is considered murder. In China, it is simply an act of expedience.”
Marcus had the small flashlight with him that he used to light the radio. He shined it on Zach, who was out cold on the floor, and then turned the light on the Chinese man who was holding the two by four, ready to beat the unconscious man on the floor to death. “There’s no need to kill him.”
“He has discovered your radio. Before, he was simply a nuisance. Now, he is dangerous.”
“Yes, he may have seen the radio, but it doesn’t make any difference. I can move it. Besides, in a little over a day, it won’t make any difference. Two Harbors will be wiped out and the state militia will be here to take over the island.”
“They will kill him anyway when they arrive. Why wait when it can be done so easily here and now?”
Marcus stared at him. He was a crewmember aboard the Chinese submarine, a cook, who made contact with Marcus soon after the meeting between the Simi Valley group and Captain Kotchel. From what he heard, he told Marcus, they were comrades in arms. How he determined that it was Marcus, not Goldman, that he should contact, only he knew. He was not just a cook. He was a professional, a secret agent who was assigned to the submarine by the Chinese Communist Party to keep an eye on Captain Wang.
Now, he had added purpose.
* * * * *
Chapter 39
THE secret agent had given his name as Han to Marcus, which was the same name he used in the Chinese navy. It was not his real name but that made little difference now. There were no longer any records with his real name or even of his birth. There were no records at all in what had once been China.
Han was good at his job. Neither Wang nor anyone else on the sub suspected he was anything but a cook, and no one knew he spoke English.
Wang never did anything to cause officials to doubt his loyalty except being educated in the United States. That, by itself, was enough to make him suspect. In all the time Han watched him, the captain did nothing even remotely disloyal. That is, not until he met the Arthur family in the middle of the Pacific Ocean two months earlier. Then, in an act Han considered highly treasonous, Wang expressed admiration for democracy and the capitalistic system.
To Han, he was now a traitor. However, China was wiped off the face of the planet and he had no one to report to. When he heard Marcus and Goldman’s political views, he did some discreet listening and learned that the organization they both belonged to was the Socialist Party. It wasn’t really communism, but it would have to do.
He determined that Goldman was a talker, but not a doer. Marcus was not a man of great strength, but he did take action. He was the man to go to and their first contact proved he was right. He learned about Silva through Marcus. Neither what Silva advocated, nor what Marcus professed to believe, were actually communism but Han could count dozens of similarities. With people like them in power, it would take only a little guidance on his part to turn their blossoming society into the communist paradise he sought.
* * * * *
Han tossed the two by four aside. “I believe it is a sign of weakness that we allow a man of his nature to live,” he stated, “but you are in charge.”
“Thank you, Han,” Marcus said appreciatively. It was a long time since anyone acknowledged his leadership. “I believe it is the right thing to do. I’m going to take the radio to a location four houses over and go back to my house. If he looks for me after he wakes up, I will say I hadn’t left my house.”
“Stick with that story,” Han advised. “Remember, deny, deny, deny. Even those who do not believe you will have a flicker of doubt. Those with no serious stake in the situation will believe you.”
“What are you going to do?”
“It is time to return to my room. It would be unwise to create suspicion, and I want to keep an eye on Captain Wang. If he takes the submarine out tomorrow, I must be there. I will take it over so that he cannot help these island people.”
“You said he still believes the attack is four or five days away.”
“I said he has shown no signs of knowing it is coming sooner. However, he is cunning, as is this man.” He nodded toward Zach, who was still unconscious on the floor.
“Then you think they do know.”
Han trusted that that the dark room hid the look of exasperation on his face. It was best that his irritation with this incompetent was not noticed, although he was getting less and less concerned about people noticing things. In the end, it might not make a great deal of difference. The foolish Americans were oblivious to simple subtlety.
“No, I do not think that,” he said with barely concealed impatience. “As I have said before, everything is going as planned. They know nothing. But, as uneducated as Americans are, yourself excluded, of course, you have one saying that is worth emulating: It is better to be safe than sorry.”
Chapter 40
ZACH groaned and rolled over on his back. He regained consciousness but was disoriented. In those first few seconds of recovery, he had no idea where he was or why he was lying on a floor in the dark.
For a split second, the clear image of a Chinese face flashed through his mind. It disappeared, and he felt a throbbing in his head. He reached up to find a lump near the back of his skull. His hand came away with blood on it. The skin was broken but he knew that wasn’t the worst part. The main problem was the pain.
He sat up and shook his head. It started to come back slowly, and as he focused better, the events leading up to his being hit on the head returned. It had all happened quickly; the most fleeting segment was that instantaneous glimpse of the attacker’s face.
All the other memories crowded that one out but that was the one he needed. He tried concentrating but what little he remembered was a blur.
He touched the bump on his head again. When his fingers came away, he realized that the blood was mostly dry. He looked at his wristwatch and pressed the little button that lighted it. It was twenty minutes after one. He had been out for over five hours.
He got up and felt his way over to where he saw a man talking on a radio transmitter. There was enough starlight coming in from the window for him to see the shadowy form of a chair pushed up to an end table at about the location where he remembered the radio was located. There was nothing there now except the chair and table.
He was certain it was Marcus at the radio. The radio was gone now and Marcus would deny everything, so it was pointless to question him, at least for the time being. He now knew there definitely was a radio and that Marcus was the spy. It would be easy enough to keep information from him. Besides, in a little over twenty-four hours, it would no longer matter. Now there was a new threat. Marcus had a Chinese accomplice. He still couldn’t remember the face but there was that brief moment of clarity, so it was filed somewhere in his mind. Maybe if he saw that face again, it would be the spark to bring back his memory.
The man had to be a member of the submarine crew. Zach headed for his boat. He had to get his head taken care of, get a little sleep, and be ready for the next day. The first thing he would do after getting some rest would be to warn Wang about the possibility of a “loose cannon” aboard his sub and take a look at the crew. After that, he and the others who were aware of the coming attack needed to make final preparations for their part in the plan to repel it.
* * * * *
The submarine captain listened with stoic interest to Zach’s revelation. The submarine crew had just returned from the sub after having breakfast aboard. Zach took the captain aside in the lobby
of the hotel.
“You don’t seem surprised,” Zach said.
“Not too much,” said Wang. “Even though my men know that the old government no longer exists, they are still Chinese and loyal to their homeland.”
“I can’t fault them for loyalty,” Zach granted. “But what does that have to do with a man joining a group that’s led by a man who wants to be dictator?”
“At a later time we can discuss political realities,” said Wang. “Right now, we need to find this man and take him out of action. If he is a member of my crew, I do not want him aboard tomorrow.”
“Does any of your crew know that tomorrow is the day?”
“Only Yu and you know him well,” said the captain. “There is a spy among your people and unrest among some of mine, so only the two of us know the plan. As we discussed, I plan to participate in the defense of the island and my men know that. However, they believe it is still many days away. I didn’t plan to tell them the new plan until we are ready to go to sea.”
“And, now?”
Wang thought. “What you tell me is disturbing, of course. Having a new antagonist. . . ” He stopped in mid-sentence and explained his wording. “Understand, my friend, that I cannot call a man a traitor who is only following the orders he received when we left China.”
Zach reached up and touched the knot on his head but he was smiling. “No, I guess not. I understand loyalty, even if I think it is misguided. . . I just wish he hadn’t clobbered me so blasted hard.”
“I’m glad you have a broad perspective,” said Wang, He used the time of that brief conversation to contemplate the matter and reached a conclusion. “I do not believe there is reason to change our plans. Even if there is a spy aboard, he does not know our plans. Unless one of your group has, as you people say, ‘let the cat out of the bag,’ no one knows except the people who are supposed to know.”
Seeking a Sane Society: Nothing is the Same (The Seeking Series Book 2) Page 17