by Steve Berry
“They know the backpack is still inside,” Lael whispered. “They’re going in to find it. You can count on that.”
“Which gives us time to get out of here,” I said.
“You got that right.”
I noticed that the garage door opened with an electronic motor. Which could take forever. I saw Lael was considering that dilemma, too.
“We’ll pop the release to the motor,” he said, “and I’ll roll it up fast. Once I have the door headed up, start the motor and I’ll hop in. Cie—”
“I know. I’ll be ready.”
Cie and I crept over to the truck, and I quietly eased open the driver’s-side door.
“They’re about to make their move and go inside,” Lael reported from the window.
I settled in behind the wheel and she handed me the keys. I readied the ignition and noticed her rolling down the passenger-side window, leaving the door itself half open.
They’re inside, Lael mouthed, shifting from the window to the front of the truck and hopping up on the bumper, reaching for a rope that hung from the metal ceiling track on which the garage door ran. Every garage had a release lever that allowed the door to be manually opened and closed. If not, what would you do when the power went out?
Lael released the door from its track.
Then he climbed down and grabbed hold of a metal handle, glancing back my way.
His look said it all.
Ready?
I nodded, my fingers on the keys, foot on the accelerator.
He lifted the door upward.
It rose, exposing the light of day. I fired the engine and moved my right foot to the brake, shifting the automatic transmission into drive. Lael hopped into the cab and closed the door.
“Hit it, rookie.”
I revved the engine and we roared from the garage, heading for the drive out to the street. We passed the new vehicle and Lael pushed back in his seat, allowing Cie to aim her rifle across him, out the window. She fired three times, taking out two tires in the process.
That should slow them down considerably.
In the rearview mirror, through a plume of dust rising in our wake, I saw the two guys rush from the house. We found the highway and I turned left, heading west, away from Starke. A van appeared to our right, slowing at the drive. I cut it off by speeding ahead.
The van braked to a stop.
I increased speed.
Lael and Cie were staring out the rear windshield.
In my mirror I saw the two guys from the house run out into the highway and leap into the van.
“That’s not good,” I muttered.
“No. It’s not,” Lael said.
The van sped our way.
We had a half-mile head start, but that might not mean a thing. The gleaming blob in the rearview mirror kept growing in size as it approached.
“You ever done this before?” Lael asked.
“On my grandfather’s farm all the time.”
He shook his head. “Lot of good that’s going to do us.”
I drove with a sense of urgency, forcing attention on my hands and feet, my eyes flicking back and forth, watching the mirrors, then what was ahead.
The road ran straight as a ruler.
Where was a state trooper when you needed one.
“They’re coming,” Cie said.
At least we had the rifle.
The van sucked close to my bumper. I gave the engine more gas, but the van stayed near. Then it veered into the other lane and pulled abreast. I decided why outrun it and let off the gas, allowing our speed to slow, dropping us back behind the van.
“That’ll work,” Lael said.
The van veered back into our lane and its rear doors suddenly swung open.
We all saw the gun at the same time.
I swung the wheel hard left, into the oncoming lane. Away from the gun, but right into the path of a vehicle coming straight at us.
An eighteen-wheeler.
The van seemed to see the approaching truck, too, dropping speed and trying to hem us in in the wrong lane. I had no choice but to hit the brake and slow, so we could drop in behind the van, but the move was going to allow the eighteen-wheeler to close the gap between us even faster.
Timing was everything.
I popped the brake, slowed the truck, then veered right into the correct lane just as the eighteen-wheeler swished by, its horn blaring.
“Not bad,” Lael said.
We were now back behind the van with our original problem.
Men with guns ahead of us.
The rear doors swung open again.
But Lael was ready.
He hung his head and arms out of the passenger-side window with the rifle in hand, firing twice.
The van swerved into the opposite lane to disrupt our line of fire. No cars were coming from ahead. Trees and fields lined both sides of the rural highway.
“Can you take out one of the tires?” I asked.
The speedometer showed we were moving at 75 mph. The van had started weaving back and forth between the two lanes, the men inside probably readying for more shots of their own. Lael stuck his head and shoulders back out the window, along with the rifle, and tried two shots that missed. I decided I’d had enough and floored the accelerator, speeding us up so that when the van veered left into the opposite lane, I brought the truck parallel to it, then I jerked the steering wheel left, slamming the truck into the van.
Once.
Twice.
A third time, adding even more speed to the thrust.
The van vaulted the highway and plowed a path into a field, bumping and weaving before settling into soft earth.
Lael let out a yell.
We kept barreling down the highway.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I followed the directions Cie provided. We eventually found U.S. 301 and turned south, driving thirty miles to Gainesville, home of the University of Florida. Neither Lael nor Cie had much to say. Cie led us through town to the Greyhound bus station. I parked out front and we walked inside.
“This is where we leave you,” Lael said. “We’d planned on a different route. But that won’t work anymore.”
“I’ll say it again. You two are the only ones who can verify any of this.”
Lael unzipped his duffel bag, removed the files, and handed them over. “This is your problem, rookie. Not ours. We’re done.”
“You’re just going to let this all fade away,” I asked.
“Better than us dying,” Cie said. “You have no idea all the bad things COINTELPRO did. It was so much more than Martin Luther King. Tom Oliver wants all that to stay buried, and I agree. You need to take a lesson from us and let this lie. Give those damn files to whoever you have to give them to, then forget any of this ever happened.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can,” Lael taunted. “It’s real easy. Nobody is going to believe you anyway. They’ll just say those files were fabricated.”
“That’s where you two come in. It’s called corroboration.”
Lael wrapped an arm around my shoulder. A friendly gesture. “Listen to me. There’s nothing here. You can’t prove a thing. Let it go.”
The bus station was crowded, typical probably for a college town. I’d only ridden on a Greyhound once, years ago when my mother and I traveled from my grandfather’s farm in middle Georgia to Atlanta for the weekend. An adventure, she’d called it. I was eleven, my father gone by then. I remembered every minute of the entire weekend.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Better you don’t know,” Lael said. “But it’ll be somewhere that Tom Oliver, you, and the FBI will have a hard time finding.”
“Keep the truck,” Cie said. “You’re going to need it more than we do, since I don’t suspect you’re going to take our advice and give this up.”
“Valdez has Foster, his daughter, and his son-in-law. And Oliver is still out there. I’m the only one who can d
eal with that.”
“Now, that’s some new information you kept close to the vest,” Lael said. “Another piece of advice. Being the hero is great. There are rewards. But when you tug on Superman’s cape, expect him to tug back. Oliver has resources and reach and he’s on high alert. Everything he’s worked to accomplish could unravel. He lives that rich high life now off his wife’s money. He doesn’t plan on spending the rest of his time in jail. So he’s prepared to do anything, and I mean anything. Are you?”
I didn’t answer him.
But it was a fair question.
“I saw a lot of agents in my time,” Cie said. “I became pretty good at judging them. You need to turn this over to the professionals.”
Now, that one hurt. “I can handle it.”
She chuckled and looked at Lael. “Another hotshot. How many did we know?”
“You can change history,” I said to her.
“And get myself killed in the process.”
“You have to realize something,” Lael said. “We didn’t know anything about anything at the time. I knew some, thanks to the taping I overheard. More than most, in fact. But I didn’t know it all. Cie, here, learned a lot from me, and I learned things from her. When I made contact with Foster years ago, I learned some more, as he did from me. But I never had the whole picture, and I liked it that way. I know just enough to get me either jailed or killed.”
There was nothing more to be said. These two were about to disappear. Fine. Good riddance. I had a job to do. “Go find your bus. I’m out of here.”
And they walked off.
No farewells, no handshakes, no words of comfort or encouragement, just a blunt parting of the ways.
I headed outside for the truck with the files, disgusted by the whole situation. At the time their attitude was both puzzling and annoying. But twelve years later when I left the Magellan Billet, I felt the same way. I’d done my time. Served my country.
And survived.
It was someone else’s turn.
“Rookie.”
I turned to see Lael, outside, trotting my way.
He approached and stopped. “I wanted you to find Cie for a reason. I’ve become quite the cynic in my retirement. But when you’ve done the kind of things I did for a living, for as long I did them, it’s unavoidable. Your view of the world changes. Your morals change. Your conscience changes.”
He reached into his pocket, removed a cassette tape, and handed it over.
On it was written a date.
March 31, 1968.
“I recorded that myself, in Atlanta, from inside a motel room. It’s a conversation between Jansen and Foster. The original went to Oliver as part of COINTELPRO. But I made a copy. It’s the only thing I ever copied. A few years ago I transferred it from the old reel-to-reel tape to cassette. You’ll understand everything once you listen to it. I was going to burn it, but Cie just told me that would make what we did even worse.” He paused. “She’s right.”
I could see he was bothered.
“I was like Cie. I hated blacks. I really hated King. Why? I couldn’t tell you now. So I had no problem, then, doing what I did.”
“And now?”
He shrugged. “I wonder what in the world I was thinking. I broke into people’s homes and businesses and planted bugs. I recorded what they said and listened to every private word. I thought I was doing the right thing. Protecting America. But I wasn’t.” He pointed at the cassette. “That’s the only copy that exists. Cie has kept it all these years. That’s why you and I had to come to her. It’s your problem now, rookie. Make the right call, okay?” He paused. “Cie and I have been divorced a long time. She remarried. I never did. Truth be told, she’s the only woman I ever loved and she knows it. Maybe we can have a few years together, in peace, and forgive ourselves.”
I stared at the cassette.
Over the following decade I came to learn that the second rule of the intelligence business was to always know your opponent. The first was to identify your friends.
And this man had just become the latter.
“Good luck to you,” I told him.
A small wisp of a smile formed on the corner of his lips.
He tossed me a casual salute then walked off, disappearing inside the bus station. I never saw him again, nor did I ever learn what happened to him or Cie. Hopefully, they found those few years of peace.
I climbed into the truck and noticed that the music system came with a cassette player. I was parked under the shade of some tall oaks, so why not. I laid the files on the front seat beside me. The coin was still in my pocket along with Nate’s cell phone.
I popped the tape into the machine.
And pushed PLAY.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Jansen: What happened in Memphis? That was a full-fledged riot. The police had to use Mace and nightsticks. A sixteen-year-old boy was killed, fifty more injured. Four thousand National Guardsmen had to be called out to keep order. What a mess.
Foster: The march turned uncontrollable. We were moving along, like always, then a group of militants appeared and started smashing store windows. After that, it just became worse. King wanted to stop them, but the locals were worried about his safety. They took us out of there. People are angry in Memphis. Really, really angry. They’re not interested in nonviolence anymore.
Jansen: This just proves our point. The Bishop talks that peaceful protest crap, but he can’t deliver on that anymore. The press filleted him for that riot. Finally, we’re getting somewhere with him. For the first time, a march led by Martin Luther King Jr. turned violent by the demonstrators themselves.
Foster: You need to know. There’s also a division forming within the SCLC. A meeting yesterday turned nasty. King walked out and told them all to go to hell. Most everybody wants to head off in a new direction. Jesse Jackson is probably breaking out on his own soon. Hosea Williams has been attacking King more and more. The Black Panthers are on the rise. Everything is changing.
Jansen: Did you see what LBJ said about the Memphis march? He offered no defense of King. None at all. But he did denounce what happened and laid the blame on the black leaders. LBJ isn’t King’s pal anymore.
Foster: King wants to go back to Memphis in a few days.
Jansen: Does he now?
Foster: Nobody else wants to go back. Jesse Jackson thinks Memphis is too small for King. Andy Young is ready to move on. Even Levison wants to stay away. But King told them he has no choice. He has to go back and lead another march. He says it will be his Poor People’s Campaign, planned for DC next summer, in miniature. He’ll show the country that he can lead a peaceful, nonviolent protest. No one agreed with him. He became really agitated and lost his temper. That’s unusual. Then he stormed out of the meeting.
Jansen: So he’s having problems with his own people. That’s even better to hear. He’s been on a self-destructive path for a while now.
Foster: Why don’t you stop hedging with me?
Jansen: What are you talking about?
Foster: I’m not a fool.
Jansen: I never said you were.
Foster: You just treat me like one. We’ve been at this for months now. I know what you’re doing.
Jansen: We pay you for information. What we do with it is none of your business.
Foster: I’ve watched King for years. I’ve been right there every step. Hoover’s right. He’s immoral. He’s also a liar. He tells all of us to toe the line, but he does whatever he pleases. He says money isn’t important, but he wants for nothing, while we get paid next to nothing. I’m tired of it. I don’t give a damn about this civil rights crap. Who the hell cares? I’m not interested in changing the world. I’m tired of being sprayed with fire hoses and attacked by dogs. They’re never going to give me a Nobel Prize. I. Don’t. Care. All I want is money. What do you want?
[PAUSE]
Jansen: We don’t want a martyr.
Foster: You won’t get one. You people have tape afte
r tape showing what King does with women. I heard the recordings you sent to his house. I know about all those women, along with others you don’t know about. Release those tapes and you won’t have a martyr. People will know King for the barnyard dog he really is.
Jansen: What will happen if he’s killed?
Foster: There’ll be violence of a magnitude never seen before in this country. Cities will burn.
Jansen: You really think so?
Foster: Everything is ready to explode. I just told you that the SCLC is on the verge of collapsing. Nonviolent resistance is over. America will burn, then it will all fade. If you handle it right, King will be remembered for what he is. A lying, cheating husband who can’t be trusted. And I’ll be rich.
Jansen: You’re a coldhearted bastard.
Foster: I’m just being real. I’m a black man in a country full of hate. Some of what King says makes sense. But the price to be paid to get what he wants is too much. Too many are going to be hurt or die. White people aren’t going to share their world with us. Not without a fight. I don’t want to pay that price. I don’t care about civil rights. I care about money. I figure if I get enough from you, it won’t matter that white people hate me.
Jansen: How much do you want?
Foster: A million dollars.
Jansen: You can’t be serious.
Foster: Don’t push me, or I’ll ask for two.
Jansen: And what do I get for that kind of money?
Foster: I’ll make your job real easy.
[PAUSE]
Jansen: What do you have in mind?
Foster: He’s headed back to Memphis. He’ll be at the Lorraine Motel starting the afternoon of the third.
Jansen: Why wait three days? I can have it done here in Atlanta right now.
Foster: No. Do it in the turmoil in Memphis. A white man kills Martin Luther King while he fights for the rights of black garbage workers.
Jansen: Who said anything about a white man?
Foster: If it’s not, then you’re a damn fool. It has to be a white man.
Jansen: I prefer to choose the place.
Foster: Good luck with that, since if you do I won’t be providing any information to help. Ever thought about Kennedy’s death? Oswald didn’t need informants. They published the president’s whole schedule in the newspaper, days in advance. All he had to do was show up. There’s no schedule printed for King, and things change constantly. My job is to keep up with those changes and get him where he needs to be. I’m your only source on that. I can help, or hurt you. Make a choice.