Red, White, and Blood

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Red, White, and Blood Page 27

by Christopher Farnsworth


  11:12 p.m., OCTOBER 26, 2012,

  37,000 FEET OVER ARKANSAS

  Zach didn’t sleep. Instead, he watched reruns of the debate on the plane. Despite this little break back in the surface world, he’d received a harsh reminder that his life was belowground now.

  But for a moment, he forgot all that and simply watched the big game on the screen. This must be how retired athletes feel, he realized. For a few moments, you could pretend you were still the one making the decisions and reacting to the plays.

  Curtis was at his best in situations like this: fluid, eloquent and good at mixing his rehearsed lines with improvisation. Seabrook was not as good but made up for that in points just with his baritone and his solid appearance. Both men had the gift of saying things that sounded very deep and reasonable as long as you didn’t start dissecting the actual words coming out of their mouths.

  “We live in a world of uncertainty, where there are enemies who want to destroy the American Dream,” Seabrook said. “And I’m sorry to say, we are not safer now than we were four years ago. If the president cannot keep his own people safe, then he has failed in the first responsibility of his job.”

  Oh, son of a bitch. Seabrook went there. Zach could feel the reporters’ reaction, as if they’d just watched Seabrook land a body blow on the president.

  Of course, maybe half the people watching this would have no idea what Seabrook’s carefully veiled reference meant. But the media would tell them, over and over again.

  But Zach wasn’t worried for his boss. He knew Curtis was waiting for an opening just like this one.

  Curtis smiled when it was his time for rebuttal. “I appreciate my opponent’s concern for all of our safety,” he said, drawing mild laughter. “But the fact is, I don’t need anyone to tell me about the dangers of the world. They have come to my front door. And they have not deterred my commitment in the slightest. I am here to tell you that our worst fears can be defeated. I know because I have seen our brave men and women do it with my own eyes. I know the cost of our fight against our enemies. And I know it is not more than we can bear. I know we will win our War on Terror because we as a nation will never surrender to fear.”

  Despite the moderator’s instructions, the auditorium erupted into roof-shaking cheers. Seabrook actually looked stricken. It was a hell of a countershot.

  Goddamn, Zach thought. The boss can still bring it.

  March 4, 1869

  The White House, Washington, D.C.

  When the inauguration ceremony was over, Grant went inside the White House. He’d been inside many times, of course. But now it was to be his home. It put every stick of furniture into a strange new light.

  He found his predecessor, Andrew Johnson, waiting in the presidential library. The silence stretched between them. Johnson had made no secret of his dislike of Grant. During the war, he’d argued loudly that Grant be removed from command. His dislike turned to hatred when Grant refused to follow his orders during the Reconstruction process in the South. The fact that the nation had chosen Grant to succeed Johnson was a stinging wound in Johnson’s inflamed pride. He’d even refused to attend the inaugural ceremony.

  Grant, for his part, couldn’t have cared less. He was loath to cause anyone offense, but he had no use for Johnson. The man was an abscessed tooth; the sooner he was removed, the better. But now, Johnson seemed to have something to tell him.

  He looked uncertain. “I don’t know how to say this,” he said.

  “Plain words might be the best start,” Grant said.

  But Johnson remained silent. A first for him, Grant assumed. Instead of speaking, Johnson turned to the desk in the center of the office, took a key from an inner pocket and opened a drawer. He came out with two objects.

  The first was an old, scarred leather journal. Pages had been added over the years. Grant could see the colors change along the binding from yellow to gray to fresh white. The other was a small leather pouch bound by a cord. Johnson held this in his hand.

  Johnson glanced up. Grant’s benign amusement seemed to ignite his contempt again. “You wouldn’t believe me anyway. Read the book,” he said, slapping it to the desk. “It will explain everything.” He walked toward the door.

  He stopped and offered one last piece of advice. “The key also opens a door in the basement. Do not use it until you’ve read everything in the book. God be with you, Mr. President. You’ll need Him.”

  With that, the seventeenth President of the United States left his office to the eighteenth. The two men would never exchange a word again.

  Grant’s curiosity was piqued. He crossed behind the desk and flipped open the book, meaning only to look at the first few pages. It wasn’t until Julia came to fetch him for the Inaugural Ball that he realized he’d been standing in place for hours, horrified and fascinated.

  He asked Julia to make his apologies. He would be late for the celebration.

  GRANT MADE HIS WAY quickly to the White House basement. It was cold and dank. The floor was still dirt in most places.

  But in the far corner, far from the rest of the space, a door was locked and bolted on a wall thick enough for an icehouse.

  Grant heaved the bolt out and put the key into the lock. His hand did not tremble. There was no hesitation.

  He heard something scurry in the dark center of the locked chamber. His boots crushed the skulls and droppings of rats. The stench was nearly as bad as the surgeon’s tents in the war.

  Grant put a match to the lantern hanging by the door.

  The muddy yellow light fell on a gaunt being clothed in rags and dirt. A heavy chain linked a manacle around his neck to a stake pounded deep into the dirt floor.

  The creature flinched as Grant entered. Grant held the pouch before him. For the first moment since heading down the stairs, he felt uncertain. Something rose in him that was very like the first time he went into combat.

  He saw the creature’s fangs first. He’d interrupted a meal. It had caught another rat and was sucking the rodent dry.

  Then he saw the creature’s eyes and saw the intelligence there.

  Just like he did that first time in battle, Grant put aside his fear. He walked closer and showed the creature the pouch.

  “You know what this means?”

  The creature nodded.

  Grant took a deep breath.

  “Then let’s see what we can do about cleaning you up.”

  His hands did not shake as he undid the manacle on the creature’s neck. Grant knew that if the creature had wished, it could have torn the metal like paper. If it had meant him any harm, he’d be dead a dozen times over by now.

  Grant had spent much of his life training horses. Though it seemed absurd, the lessons he’d learned while riding seemed to apply both here and in soldiering. He never understood those who would beat an animal to ensure its loyalty, just as he never understood his fellow officers who held themselves aloof from their men, sending them into death like throwing grain into a thresher. He held himself to a simple standard—those who command must be worthy of it—and that began with how those under his command were treated. This was no animal—indeed, this was nothing natural at all—but it was now indisputably his soldier; he did not see any profit in treating it as if it were nothing more than disposable stock, easily replaced. From what he’d read, it seemed as if the opposite was the case. The future of the fragile, barely healed Union might well depend on the missions this being would carry out in the dark at his order.

  “I’m Ulysses S. Grant,” he said. He offered his hand.

  The creature took it. “Mr. President,” he said in a rough voice. “I’m Nathaniel Cade. At your service.”

  “Yes,” Grant said. “I suppose you are.”

  On the morning of July 2, 1881, Charles Guiteau could no longer resist the demon voices that commanded him to kill President Charles Garfield. The President clung to life through the agony of a long summer before yielding to the assassin’s bullet in his back. Guitea
u was relieved that he had fulfilled his mission. He went to the gallows confident that the demon he hailed as “Lordy” would take care of him in the afterlife.

  —Brad Steiger, Out of the Dark

  1:14 a.m., OCTOBER 27, 2012,

  OUTSIDE LAWRENCE, KANSAS

  Zach parked the government car outside the home of Andrew Nolan. It was on the outskirts of the university town where the houses began to give way to fields and pastures. It was small and white and dingy. It looked remarkably normal.

  He walked to the front door and knocked. Nobody answered. No surprise there. But he was surprised when the door swung slowly inward in response.

  Wouldn’t the Boogeyman, of all people, want to keep his door locked? Suppose the neighbors dropped by for a cup of sugar? Or something like that.

  Maybe that’s why he moved out here. Old-fashioned American values. You never had to lock your door at night. All that small-town heartland values stuff.

  Maybe you should stop stalling and go inside the damned house, Zach, he told himself.

  Inside, the place was dull and old but clean. Cheap white paint on the walls. Fairly new carpet on the floor. Not much furniture aside from a TV and an easy chair. It could have been Zach’s place.

  He went through the living room into the kitchen. There was milk turning to cheese in the fridge. A mostly unfinished twelve-pack of beer. A freezer full of TV dinners and a pantry with nothing but cereal boxes.

  There was a door in the kitchen. From his time in many old houses—way too many at this point—he knew where it led.

  The basement.

  He opened the door. A single bare bulb on a string illuminated a narrow flight of stairs.

  Sometimes he hated being right.

  THE BASEMENT WAS AS BIG as the entire upper house. It was clear this was where Nolan really lived. A shiny chrome-and-black weight set rested in one corner, next to a top-of-the-line home gym. Nolan kept in shape. A whole gun shop’s worth of rifles and pistols were displayed proudly on hooks mounted along the far wall. A workbench included tools for loading cartridges as well as a vise and other hardware. A standing desk had a new computer and printer.

  Everything was neatly squared away and organized. His mail was even alphabetized in a standing file.

  Zach made a note to come back to those letters and bills, but first he had to check out one last thing.

  There was another door.

  It was built into the cement foundation and made of steel. It looked solid. It looked like it was built to contain secrets.

  Zach really didn’t want to open it.

  He walked over and put his hand on the knob.

  Just as he began to turn it, the door slammed forward and cracked him in the forehead. He went down on his back and something leaped out at him.

  SOMEONE WAS ON TOP of him. Someone was hitting him.

  He recognized the man beating him. He wasn’t sure from where. But he knew they weren’t old friends. He was certain because the man was going for a gun in a holster under his jacket.

  The pain and blood actually helped Zach focus. He was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a deadly master of kung fu. But he had been trained by Cade to fight for his life. Zach called it “The Way of the File Clerk”—use whatever you can reach, whatever’s at hand, however you can, as long as you can stay alive. It doesn’t have to be smooth or pretty or dignified. It just has to hurt the other guy. If that means jamming a pencil in someone’s eye before he strangles you, so be it.

  Zach didn’t have a pencil. But he was able to reach a dumbbell on the floor by the weight bench.

  While the man wrapped his fingers around his gun, Zach swung fifteen pounds of metal into his ribs.

  There was a satisfying crunch and the bigger man fell over, screeching in pain.

  Zach got to his knees and brought the dumbbell down again. He missed the man’s head but landed solidly on his right forearm. The man grunted and kicked, knocking Zach back into the wall.

  Zach didn’t wait to catch his breath. He threw the dumbbell as hard as he could. It flew with all the grace of a dead chicken, but it caught the man in the gut, doubling him over.

  Zach scrambled on the wall behind him and yanked a pistol away from its hook.

  Beretta 9 mm. Dependable, solid weapon. He racked the slide and aimed it with both hands at the other man.

  The man froze. He looked right at Zach.

  Zach knew him.

  Reyes. Augusto Reyes. He’d worked for Helen Holt in Los Angeles. He’d also provided assistance with Zach’s beating and torture.

  Reyes started giggling, a really unsettling sound in the basement. “Oh, of course it’s you. Why not?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  He sighed. “Waiting to die, pendejo,” he said. “I don’t suppose you brought your friend Cade?”

  “He’s occupied. Where’s Holt?”

  Reyes smiled. “I’d hoped he would be the one to finish this.”

  “My heart bleeds for you.”

  “You seem pretty sure that thing is loaded,” Reyes said.

  “You really want to find out?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

  He pulled back his jacket, like an Old West gunslinger.

  “Reyes. Stop.”

  “You’re going to have to shoot me,” he said. “I mean it. I really can’t take this anymore. You have no idea what it’s like, living with a monster.”

  “I’ve got an inkling. Let’s talk about it.”

  “No.” Quick as a snake, Reyes had his gun out of its holster and aimed at Zach.

  Crap, Zach thought. He pulled the trigger.

  The sound of gunfire was deafening in the concrete-walled room.

  Zach realized a tight group of three holes had appeared in Reyes’s chest.

  The blood came a moment later.

  Reyes smiled and collapsed on the floor.

  Zach crossed the room and took Reyes’s gun from his body. He realized the safety was still on. Reyes hadn’t even fired.

  Then he heard the door slam upstairs.

  Someone else was inside.

  FOR THE RECORD, Zach hated guns. People used them like they were remote controls, shutting down lives with no more thought than switching off a TV. He hated how cheap they were, how easy they made killing and how they were more likely to be used against the people they were supposed to protect. He hated that most of the things he and Cade faced laughed at them. But most of all, he hated the thrill he got when he held one.

  Zach hated guns, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know how to use them. He was actually pretty good with them. And right now, he was glad to have one as he faced Helen Holt.

  He was pretty sure he would hate himself for that, too. But later.

  He came up the basement stairs as fast and as quietly as he could, leading with the Beretta. No one was in the kitchen.

  He heard something. Footsteps coming back from the rear of the house, where the bedrooms were.

  “Reyes!” A woman’s voice. Holt. “Did you get the files? I want to get out of here before—”

  Zach had the gun almost at her nose as she emerged from the hallway.

  “Before what, Helen?” he asked.

  _____

  “TURN AROUND AND GET on your knees,” he ordered her, pointing the gun.

  “Oooooh, kinky. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  Zach fired a bullet into the floor for emphasis. Holt only flinched a little.

  “Fine,” she said. “Be that way.”

  Zach noticed how difficult it was for her to kneel. Her body seemed half frozen. She wore a scarf on her neck, not very successfully covering a bandage. And the weird sheen to her skin seemed almost artificial. It was like she’d overdosed on Botox down half her body.

  “He’s still out there,” Holt said in a singsong voice. “You know that, right?”

  Zach remained silent. She was still a talker.

  “Oh, you didn’t know?
I’m sure Cade did. I wonder why he wouldn’t tell you. I wonder if that means there’s a lot he hasn’t told you.”

  Damn, she was good. It’s like she had a radar for insecurity. Zach was no slouch in that department, either, however.

  “What the hell happened to you, Helen? You used to be hot. Now you’re gimping around like you’ve got a wooden leg.”

  A long pause. “Careful there, Zach.”

  “Or what? You’ll hobble me to death?”

  He could see her shake as she got herself under control. “Nice try,” she said. “We could go after each other all day—I haven’t even started on your deadbeat degenerate daddy—or we could find a compromise.”

  “I’m surprised you need me to point this out, but you’re not in a very strong bargaining position,” Zach said.

  “Zach,” her tone was scolding. “You should know me better than that by now. This is all my operation. Everything. I was moving you into place like chess pieces before you knew what a Boogeyman was. I even tipped those little Nazi dirtbags you were onto them. The president would be dead already if that’s what I wanted. You should be grateful I didn’t have you all killed in your sleep.”

  “Well, gee. Thanks.”

  “I know where the Boogeyman is. I know what he’s planning to do. You’ve gotten very attached to the president’s daughter lately, haven’t you? I had your room bugged. I never would have figured her for a moaner in bed.”

  Zach tried to keep his voice and his hand from shaking. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that there’s more than one way to tear out the president’s heart and show it to him. There are worse things to lose than an election or even your own life.”

  She could have been lying. But it fit with Cade’s behavior. With the weird, persistent doubt he’d been feeling since the second floor of the Y blew into dust.

  The only question was, what would he do about it?

  He couldn’t torture Holt. She was tougher than he was, trained to resist it, and anyway, he had no idea how. That was Cade’s department. He’d only waste time and probably amuse her in the process.

 

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