It impacted the cop’s skull with a sickening crack. The impact left the tire rim ringing, and left the wounded cop in a comatose heap on the ground just inside the barn door.
“That’s for my daddy,” the girl said. She swung her foot, landing a vicious blow to the cop’s balls. “And that’s for me, you sick bastard.”
She kicked him again, over and over, gathering steam, sobs escaping, flailing furiously until Mike Charles pulled her away and held her in a tight embrace. “It’s okay,” he said.
Sam rolled the comatose officer over onto his stomach and used the patrolman’s own zip-ties to secure his hands behind his back.
Then she checked his pulse. “Huh. Dead.” She shook her head, surprised.
“Basal skull fracture,” someone said in the back.
“Must have been karma, kicking his ass,” Sam said. “Thanks for not hitting me with that thing.” She snapped the collection of keys from the dead cop’s belt. “These belong to all of you, I imagine?”
Nods.
A burning ember from the flaming farmhouse next door landed in view of the barn door. “We need to get out of here,” Brock said.
“I’m afraid the only way out of here is to pile back in that van,” Sam said. “We’re miles from civilization. Are any of you able to drive it back to the rest stop?”
Mike Charles was first to raise his hand.
Sam shook her head. “Afraid not, Mr. Charles.” She grabbed his arm just above the elbow and walked him toward the cop car. “You and I have a date.”
Sorting out the keys had taken some doing. The kidnappers had intermingled everyone’s key chains with their own, and it took a solid ten minutes for Sam to find the right key to gain access to the cop car.
She commandeered it. Eminent domain, and all. She was pretty sure there was a court precedent for it somewhere. And she was also sure there weren’t going to be any court cases of any sort for a long time to come, barring a social and economic miracle. So she wasn’t nervous in the least about driving a dead Oklahoma cop’s cruiser to Denver.
“Why Denver?” Mike Charles asked from his seat in back, behind the plexiglass window that separated cops from perps in the police cruiser. He wasn’t cuffed, but neither was he free. He had no door handles and no vote.
“Homeland has an office there,” Sam said. “They have skills in a particular area.”
“Don’t you have to do something about the murders?”
“Aside from killing all of the suspects?”
“I just thought there might be paperwork,” Charles said.
Sam laughed. “I’m sure there will be. For somebody else to fill out. And something tells me it’ll be a while before the bureaucrats get back to shuffling files around. But my job is to prevent whatever shitty thing is supposed to happen next from actually happening. That’s where you come in.” She used the rearview mirror to look at Charles. His expression was impassive.
“You don’t look like you’re in a helpful mood, Mike.”
No response.
“I’m having trouble figuring out what an East Coast DoD heavy might have been doing in Oklahoma, and where you might have been going.”
He stared blankly out the window.
Sam glanced at Brock. He looked a bit uncomfortable. He didn’t report directly to Mike Charles, but to Charles’ co-lead, Major General Charlie Landers, whom Brock hated. She knew Brock favored Mike Charles, and by all accounts, Charles was a good man and a good boss. All of that was probably what made it uncomfortable for Brock to witness Sam going to work on the shoeless, shirtless middle-aged man in the backseat.
And work on him she did.
“So let me tell you what I think I know, Mike. Mind if I call you Mike?”
Charles shook his head. He didn’t mind.
Good. Any response is a start, Sam thought.
“So here are my puzzle pieces,” Sam said. “Mike Charles, member of the Senior Executive Service, the civilian equivalent of a two-star general, signed a paper authorizing an airplane to land at an Air Force base two hundred miles away from the Pentagon.”
She saw a little bit of surprise on Charles’ face. She smiled. We’re not all blundering idiots.
“Then, the same Mike Charles took a last-minute trip to Fort Worth, to witness a demonstration of a very expensive gizmo.”
Charles finally spoke. “At the request of the Vice President,” he said.
“The same gizmo that ended up stolen just two hours later,” Sam continued. “And a few hours after that, the very same device ended up strapped in the cargo hold of the very same airplane that our hero authorized to land at Langley Air Force Base.”
She looked at him in the rearview mirror again. “You see how weird all of that sounds, Mike?”
Sam had long held that everyone wore basically the same expression the moment they knew they were cornered. There were individual variations on the theme, of course, but it was still ridiculously easy to tell when subjects realized they were done for. It was a combination of worry and exhaustion. Carrying secrets around was tiring work, and it took a toll over time. And revealing secrets usually caused problems, sometimes very big one, which accounted for the worry.
“You’re thinking of your family now, aren’t you, Mike,” Sam said. Brock looked at her, his expression asking whether bringing Charles’ family into it was really necessary. She nodded at him, a tinge of sadness in her expression. She rarely enjoyed pulling people apart at the seams, but she was extremely good at it, and it tended to produce results.
“I’m sure people are going to be really pissed off about all of this, especially judging by the size of the mess you’ve made out of the entire world economy.” She paused meaningfully, letting imagined consequences germinate, hatch, and flitter about in Charles’ consciousness.
“And the espionage angle has an ugly optic, too,” she added for effect, again pausing to let things marinate, watching his expression carefully for signs of the next big moment in the interrogation.
That moment didn’t always come, but when it did, it was important not to miss it. It was the instant when a subject ceased to have sufficient control of his emotions to maintain his chosen resistance posture. It was a significant turning point, and Sam had learned to recognize the façade fading to reveal the subject’s inner turmoil. It usually happened when the imagined consequences, invariably dire, started to feel inevitable.
“Don’t you have a daughter in college?” Sam asked.
She thought she saw the turning point in Mike Charles’ eyes. They misted, and his breath fluttered just a bit.
But then his eyes focused a long way out the window, his jaw clenched, and she saw resolve return.
Time to help the inner demons a little bit.
“So here’s the score, Mike. I have you for espionage. I have you for accessory to grand larceny. And conspiracy. And I don’t know if they’ve invented a legal term for bending over the entire world, but I’m sure the Attorney General will be able to dream one up. When you play alphabet soup with all of that, it spells many times more years than you have left in your life.”
Another glance at him in the rearview mirror. She saw worry and tiredness.
“And that’s assuming the state of Texas doesn’t find a way to get involved,” Sam continued. “I bet they use the old felony-murder law. A few hundred people have died in the rioting, which was caused by your felony, which, blammo, makes you a murderer. Considering the death penalty record in Texas, I don’t like your odds.”
Clearly, this was an angle that Charles hadn’t considered. He blinked several times involuntarily before regaining his composure.
“You’re assuming there will be a government left to do all of this,” he said after a long moment.
Sam smiled. “Excellent segue. You’re like my straight man. I was just about to say that everything I mentioned, that’s all ancient history, and it all falls squarely in the category of someone else’s problem to figure out. Me? I look
forward. I want to know what happens next.”
She looked at him intently in the rearview mirror again.
“So tell me, Mike. What happens next?”
Steely eyes, jaw clenched, hands in fists, neck vein bulging a little bit. There was a struggle going on in the backseat, Sam could tell, but it didn’t look like her side was winning.
“So that, what you just did right there? That’s why we’re going to Denver,” Sam said. “There’s a guy there who deals especially with situations like this one.”
She looked at him again. She wanted to watch his reaction to what she had to say next. “It’s not really true, what you read in the papers. The Executive Branch talks a big game to keep the ACLU off their asses, but the big boss is actually a big fan of what people call ‘enhanced interrogations.’”
Charles blanched. So did Brock.
Sam smiled. “I know, right? Even the name sounds like something Stalin would be proud of.”
Charles struggled to keep his composure.
“I’ll do my best to save you from the assholes, Mike, but this is a two-way street here. So Denver’s maybe, what, seven hours away? Lots of time for you to weigh your options.”
A few more miles passed in silence. Sam occasionally glanced at Charles in the rearview mirror. He kept his eyes out the window, a faraway look on his face, but Sam could tell that he was wearing down.
“You know, Mike,” she said after a while, “people talk a lot about how bad women have it during torture, and I can certainly attest to the truth of it.” She shuddered, briefly recalling her horrific hours once spent at the mercy of a Venezuelan madman. That was a shitty weekend.
“But let me tell you,” she went on, “I am really glad I don’t have a sack full of testicles hanging down between my legs. I never really realized what a liability the ol’ bean bag was, until I watched some interrogation footage a while back. Turns out, there are about a million and one different ways to make a guy’s nuts hurt.”
In the rearview mirror, she saw Charles’ face turn a whiter shade of white. “Anyway, that’s just me talking,” she said, a small smile in her voice. “You enjoy the ride back there.”
28
Lost Man Lake Ranch, Colorado
“But it isn’t inherent value that we’re trading when we pay modern currency to someone,” Archive was saying, cigar waving in the cool mountain breeze. “We’re trading implicit value.”
It felt like old times, Protégé thought.
Almost.
The scotch, cigars, and subject matter were largely the same, but the atmosphere was quite different. He and the old man used to have these kinds of discussions in the tycoon’s house-sized study, at the center of his DC mansion. With its ornately carved oak furniture and tiffany lamps, it was a far different setting than the rustic mountain retreat, Protégé thought as he watched the sun set over the east peak of Geissler Mountain.
This particular conversation was also unique because they were no longer just discussing theories and ideas. They were now talking about the global reality that their efforts had indelibly altered over the past twenty-four hours.
Surreal.
“But you could make the argument that even if people were trading gold coins before yesterday, they’d just have been doing the same thing – trading symbols of something else.”
Archive nodded. “From one standpoint, that’s very true. After all, a gold coin won’t fill your belly or keep the rain off your back. It’s still very much a proxy for items of real value.”
These discussions always made Protégé’s brow furrow. None of the old man’s ideas would ever fit within a typical MBA curriculum. Even Harvard’s, with its famous case studies, which wove tales of inevitability between events that, in reality, occurred stochastically, the pompous old charlatans casting hindsight pearls before the poor swine charged with producing favorable future outcomes. Predicting the future was impossible, but it didn’t stop people from searching for entropic alchemy, some holy heuristic to sidestep the inevitable arrow of time in a random universe. And it certainly didn’t stop the gurus from claiming prescience, and charging an arm and a leg to spew forth B-school platitudes and other delusional dribble.
“But there’s always the problem of fungibility,” the old man continued. “Hence, currency.”
Protégé nodded. “How many chickens is a house worth?”
Archive chuckled. “Right. Sounds like a koan.”
“Answerable only with shiny objects, apparently,” Protégé offered.
A belly laugh from the old man. “How true. We’re silly beasts, at our core, just like magpies picking up glimmering shards to decorate their nests.”
“So what now?” Protégé asked, face darkening, thinking of the chaos and turmoil and, in some places, bloodshed, brought on by what was, in retrospect, a remarkably arrogant gambit designed to suck the life blood out of the world’s fiat economy.
Pretty damned successful gambit, Protégé thought, judging by the gnashing of teeth.
“Ride it out,” Archive said, exhaling gray-blue Cuban cigar smoke into the crisp, cold mountain air. “People are smart.”
Protégé snorted. “Not smart enough to avoid charging headlong off of a cliff. They let the currency bubble get completely out of control. What makes you think the herd will be able to lift themselves out of the morass now?”
“Ah, the impetuous certainty of youth,” Archive chided.
As usual, Protégé bristled at the old man’s presumption and patronizing air. Also as usual, he let the annoyance pass, awaiting the inevitable lesson on the other side of it.
Archive didn’t disappoint. “Simple, really. Given the way the world was arranged at the time, it was not in the best interest of any individual, public or private, to alter their behavior. Money was cheap, so people borrowed cheap money to acquire nice things. Easy. And, as a policy, cheap money was a great way to earn both reelection and outrageous corporate profits, so there was tremendous dis-incentive to make any changes. The system simply had to run its course. There really was no other way.”
“You’re saying that’s different now?”
“I sure am,” Archive said, suddenly animated. “If you weren’t living here now, taking advantage of the painstaking preparations my team and I orchestrated, you would be awash in the welter, negotiating your time and talents for food and water, learning for the first time that you always held the power of the agreement, and that the little green pieces of paper never had the power.”
Protégé smiled. “Now you sound like Monopoly Man.”
Archive laughed. “Amazing coincidence, that.”
He rose abruptly. “Speaking of, it’s time to check in on our resident troglodyte.”
Protégé followed him through the large glass doors leading from the giant deck, into the eco-lodge’s cavernous great room, and down a spiral staircase leading to a finished basement carved into the side of the mountain.
Archive walked to a far wall and moved a painting aside to reveal a keypad, the kind that normally granted access to secret spaces in exchange for a demonstration of the right numerical knowledge. But Protégé could see no visible door.
Archive typed a surprisingly lengthy sequence of digits into the keypad, and Protégé heard the unmistakable clack of a lock receding into its receptacle. The sound seemed to come from the wall opposite the staircase.
Sure enough, a dark gap appeared at the ceiling and floor, widening with a hydraulic hiss, the entire wall sliding to create an opening several feet wide. “Secret doors in a secret hideaway,” Protégé said. “How perfectly cliché.”
Archive laughed. “Quite. But it usually pays to plan for the worst case. The remoteness helps, but doesn’t grant us immunity from angry hordes, if things were to suddenly go unexpectedly sour.”
“I think you mean more sour.”
The old man shook his head as he walked down a lengthy hallway, his footfalls echoing in the close quarters, surrounded on all
sides by concrete. “Things didn’t go as neatly as we hoped,” he said, “but neither have they turned out nearly as badly as the worst-case scenario in our planning.”
“Admit it,” Protégé said. “You’re scared shitless that this is going to turn into hatchet wars and ethnic cleansing.”
Archive laughed. “Yes. That thought does cross my mind with annoying regularity.” He came to another keypad and typed in another code. The door opened, and Protégé felt the heat and hum of computers, and smelled the distinctive scent of ozone.
A short, vaguely ethnic hacker with the oversized nose and unkempt hair sat hunched in front of two screens. Protégé didn’t know his given name, but Trojan was his handle. A large laptop computer, cords protruding from a crude hole drilled in the casing next to the keyboard, sat adjacent to the monitors. Protégé counted two towers, and a rack full of servers.
The place looked like the IT closet in his office building in DC, Protégé thought, full of GE Government Services Division employees. Probably not full today, he corrected himself. And maybe not for a while.
“You can make the lights dim in New York from here, can’t you?”
Trojan smiled.
“Gotta be sucking a lot of juice,” Protégé observed. “Dependent on grid power?”
Archive shook his head. “Not in the least. Lots of solar photovoltaics, as you know, and there’s that Archimedean generator sitting in the stream at the low end of the lake. Not to mention those outrageously expensive batteries. Our man Trojan will be in business long after the power grids go offline.” The old man looked at Trojan. “Which I suspect is already starting to happen, yes?”
Trojan nodded. “That’s right. Looks like they’re having trouble paying for coal.” He smiled. “I managed to get us a ringside seat in the power management network,” he explained to Protégé.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 156