Green Dreams

by Gary W Ritter

  There were rumors in the department about her sexuality. More than once Jason had passed two or three agents in huddled conference where the words that reached his ears were lesbian and Evans in the same breath. Alternatively, some believed she was a Christian, something the agency had more overtly demeaned in recent years. He’d never joined either speculation. It wasn’t important to him. As long as she did her job and didn’t flaunt her lifestyle, she could fly with pigs for all he cared.

  As the sun continued its steady late afternoon descent, the two CID Special Agents following the GPS turned onto a narrow road that wound through cornfields and stands of mature oaks just beginning their growth of popping green buds. After several miles, they came to a gravel road with a large mailbox to the side.

  “Look at that,” Evans said.

  It wasn’t an ordinary rural mailbox, although its first appearance was meant to convey that impression. Rather the steel post held a locked container that Jason bet couldn’t be opened without serious explosives. “Want to wager that the post is anchored in concrete?” he said.

  They drove a couple of hundred yards beyond the mailbox and pulled into a thicket that concealed the car from the road. From the trunk they stuffed a handful of small implements into their pockets and started into the woods.

  “Tell me again why we’re not just driving up and asking what they do?” Evans said.

  Jason had had to decide whether to work alone or with his new partner. There were constraints in being employed by the G; one of them was the amount of autonomy he could employ. In the car he’d told her about the business card and some of his suspicions. She already knew of the limitations that Steve Drennan had imposed on him. The intricate dance he was trying would have made Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers take notice.

  “We might do that later. First, I want to see what this place is about. Better to understand our potential adversary.”

  In that spirit, he’d conducted a web search using Google at home before approaching Evans at her desk earlier. Smithfield Academy had a web page that contained several descriptive pages below that. The school’s stated philosophy was that it “brings meaning to the secret yearnings of every child” by combining “rigorous instructional methods” with a “solid curriculum of science and philosophy.” It was all standard stuff, except that buried deep on one of the pages were hyperlinks to Green Liberation, Animals Unleashed!, Earth Liberation Front (ELF), Animal Liberation Front (ALF), International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), the Workers World Party (WWP, of which ANSWER was a front group), and a host of other environmentally radical or blatantly communist organizations. All of a sudden, an unremarkable school took on a remarkably Marxist persona.

  After trudging some distance through high grass and dense clusters of vegetation, Jason and Evans came to a barbed wire fence. It rose ten feet high, stark and ugly before them.

  “What is this place?” Evans asked. “A school or a concentration camp?”

  “Makes me wonder whether they’re keeping people out or in,” Jason said.

  Inside the barrier, numerous roughhewn wooden cabins dotted the spacious compound, and a modern, architecturally striking steel building gleamed in the red shafts of the weakening sun. Its lines were stark; there were no windows at ground level, and a single tower rose upward like a guard lookout. In fact, it towered over the nearby trees and had three hundred sixty degrees of windows only at its top.

  A number of pit bulls wandered the grounds. Periodically, they came by sections of the fence to sniff what might be outside. “If they catch wind of us, we’re in trouble,” Jason whispered.

  Sets of two to three children, each accompanied by a lone adult, walked purposefully into and out of the imposing front door of the towered structure. When the groups exited, they strode to the cabins and disappeared within. In the time the IRS agents watched, none of the ones exiting the main building were the same that had entered. There was no indication what activities the people were engaged in; it was also difficult to make a count of the how many there were.

  “Interesting,” Nancy Evans breathed. “I wonder—”

  In that instant, a dog howled a warning and a chorus of answering barks took up the alarm.

  Chapter 26

  Nancy Evans rose and was in mid-flight even as Jason clamped a hand on her meaty calf and tripped her. She fell heavily into the tall grass, her chest heaving. He pointed toward the gate at the front of the property. “It’s not us. See the car?”

  Through the gathering dusk, a black limousine had pulled up outside the enclosure and waited, its engine idling. Armed guards appeared and secured the dogs. At a signal the gate slid back, and the vehicle moved smoothly into the compound.

  Evans’ eyes remained large. She took several calming breaths. “I thought they’d made us.”

  Jason put a finger to his lips and gestured toward the car with his head. The driver of the limo angled the car near the entrance of the steel building and jumped out. Bowing his head in deference, he opened first one rear door and, running around to the other side, the second one. Two men got out.

  Jason trained a set of miniature binoculars on the pair and gasped. With a sense of amazement, he handed the glasses to Evans who adjusted the focus and saw what Jason had. He quickly took out his smartphone and took a series of photos. She lowered the binoculars, her mouth hard set, recognition on her face. To both of them there was no doubt; they’d seen him walking the executive hallways in their building too many times for there to be any doubt. One of the men was the Branch Chief of the Chicago IRS-CID, Steve Drennan.

  ***

  “What’s he doing here?” Evans mouthed.

  “Don’t know,” Jason replied. But I don’t like it, he added mentally, all his worst fears confirmed.

  There was something about the short, heavyset second man that seemed familiar, but Jason couldn’t place him from the distance in the looming darkness. The door of the steel building opened and a woman emerged. Her features were obscured in shadow; she wore her blonde hair in a bobbed style that framed her face. When she strode toward the men Jason saw that her stride was athletic, her hips and legs slender.

  They shook hands and spoke for several minutes in the pleasant air of the warm spring evening. Behind them, children and adults continued to flow in and out of the building’s entrance. It was a busy place, and the sense of purpose was palpable.

  The threesome turned to likewise enter. Immediately, an adult shepherding two children spoke sharply at the kids and tugged at the arm of a younger one. All bowed their heads and stood with hands clasped loosely while the visitors and their host walked by. Allowing the two men to precede her, the blonde woman hesitated and turned to watch the last gasp of the dying sun that streaked the western sky with yellow and red. As she looked, Jason trained the binoculars on her. His stomach twisted with certainty. It had been some years since he’d last seen her, but she had a face he would recognize anywhere.

  The woman was Mary Sue, his ex-wife, who had stolen his daughter.

  Chapter 27

  Jason slowly lowered the binoculars and rocked back on his heels. The case had just taken on a bizarre new twist.

  It was hard to think. Hard to comprehend where this was going. What it might mean.

  Nancy Evans was beside him, worry in her brown eyes. He realized he’d sat down and was holding his head.

  Evans said, “I know who the fat one is.”

  Jason almost didn’t care. “Who is it?”

  “It’s the head guy from Gaiatic Charities.”

  Jason blinked and straightened. “You’re not talking about Mossberg?”

  “Yeah, that’s him, Lee Mossberg.”

  She was right, Jason now realized. He had looked familiar, but in his obsessive concentration on Mary Sue, he hadn’t placed the man, distinctive as he was. Well under six feet at over three hundred pounds, Lee Mossberg was the Executive Director at Gaiatic Charities, the very one whose business card he�
��d found in the mafia raid.

  Here he was riding in the same limousine as his Branch Chief and meeting with Mary Sue, his ex-wife. The implications were incomprehensible.

  “I want to see what’s in one of those cabins,” Jason said under his breath.

  “What about the dogs?”

  “We’ll kill them if we have to.”

  But he didn’t really want to do that, and Evans suggested less drastic measures to which he readily agreed.

  ***

  In the pitch darkness of a new moon, they returned to the spot they’d left several hours before. The limo with its visitors had left. Jason gathered himself and heaved loosely wrapped balls of raw ground beef over the top of the barbed wire like hand grenades, an awkward semi-sideways toss that scattered the objects on the grassy earth.

  Before long, first one dog, then another, came up and discovered the treats. In each instance there was a moment of hesitation and awareness of the intruders. But fortunately, none of the dogs was trained to avoid such deception, and their Pavlovian instincts took over. They tore into the sedative-laced meat and within minutes, four peaceful beasts were gently snoring.

  When the last had succumbed, Jason used wire cutters and created a large enough passage for the two of them to slip under the fence.

  Light shone dully from the single window of the nearest cabin. They ran crouching, hoping their furtive movements would go unseen. The pitch darkness of the night worked for and against them. They couldn’t be easily seen, but neither could they necessarily spot someone walking the grounds who might stumble upon them to raise an alarm. The vulnerability was worrying, but a risk they had to take.

  From beneath the half-shuttered window, Jason rose by degrees and peeked inside. He saw no one at the moment, but a sense of déjà vu from North Carolina overcame him.

  He was strapped in a chair bolted to a concrete floor with roughhewn wooden walls surrounding him. Overhead, a single bulb dangled, casting stark angles of light and shadow. Near his feet, a green garden hose snaked into the gloom at the room’s perimeter. In front of him, a wall of glass rose floor to ceiling like a darkened movie screen.

  Jason let out a strangled exclamation, “Huh!” and sank next to Evans. She sensed his distress, placed a hand on his shoulder, and pushed on him slightly to lever herself up to peer into the interior of the cabin.

  When she’d seen what she wanted, she placed her mouth at Jason’s ear and whispered, “It’s odd. Looks like an interrogation set-up. What’d you see?”

  He had himself under control again and said, “Nothing more than that. Let’s check out another one.”

  She gave him a quizzical look, but nodded.

  They sprinted low to the ground to the next cabin fifty yards away. At this one, although light seeped out from the cracks, visibility was blocked by the interior shutters that had been more fully closed than at the last unit.

  Jason shook his head and pointed at a third building. At this one they lucked out. Lights were on and access to the window was unimpaired. He saw movement inside from his vantage point and held his breath.

  It was nearing midnight, yet an adult and two children were seemingly at play. The scene in this cabin was also a harsh reminder of his brief incarceration at Christmas and what he’d seen through that lighted picture window. However, the players here were more active, and threatening, than what he’d witnessed with his daughter and putative grandchildren. They appeared to be role playing.

  The woman in charge had piercing blue eyes and wavy black hair held back in a pony tail, twisted around and clamped in place with an amber alligator clip. She wore military fatigues and a holstered semi-automatic pistol at her hip. The two boys, each about ten years old, were grim-faced, yet acted their parts with a zeal Jason found disturbing. On command from the woman, they donned bulky vests from a rack at the side of the room. Again, Jason mentally revisited the scene from his capture in his home state. That room behind glass had similar vests.

  The threesome walked through a routine that they’d obviously rehearsed many times before. The children slipped sweatshirts over the vests. They could have been overfed adolescents at that point. It was the next set of actions that froze Jason’s blood.

  The boys gave each other high fives and separated, approaching a retail store mannequin dressed like a policeman. At a word from their instructor, the boys simultaneously pulled at a cord extending from the vests under the sweatshirts. Their mouths opened in joyous O’s. The one word they shouted struck Jason’s ears like a decree of doom as their hands flew upward and out in an overstated gesture. “Boom!”

  One child pushed the uniformed dummy over and both boys sprawled on the floor giggling at the fun of the exercise. The adult clapped her hands in approval and sprinkled them with flower petals as they lay “dead” in the “street.”

  Chapter 28

  The voice at the end of the line was fuzzy with sleep. “What?”

  “Wake up, Lizzy, I have to talk with you.”

  There was a pause. “Jason?”

  “Are you awake?”

  “Do you know what time it is? It’s…ugh, it’s only five-thirty. Call me later.” She severed the connection.

  Jason redialed and she answered resignedly, “All right, what do you want?”

  “I want to talk about Mary Sue.”

  Dead silence.

  “Lizzy? You there?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was cautious, a nerve struck. “Where are you?”

  “Chicago.”

  “It’s four-thirty there. This is ridiculous.”

  “It’s important.”

  “What about Mary Sue?” There was a wariness behind the words.

  “I saw her today; last night,” he corrected himself. “I want you to tell me what you know about her.”

  “Why do you think I know anything?” She was irritable now, but Jason thought he heard a hint of defensiveness.

  “You people are all connected, one way or the other.”

  “You people?” She snorted. “And what kind of people might I be, under the assumption that you’re lumping me into this all-inclusive category?”

  “I’m talking about…ah, darn it, you’re part of the environmental movement. It has tentacles, nebulous as well as direct, reaching out and touching, if not encompassing, the moderate environmentalists as well as the radical Greens. Its socialist roots are well documented. The movement is global and well organized. Anti-capitalism and over-population are at its core. It’s well funded and responsible for enough terrorist activities to make Al-Qaeda envious. Mary Sue joined up with these groups and stole my daughter from me, and you admitted you’re on retainer for them, so you know very well what people I’m talking about.”

  Her voice took on righteous indignation. “You know what? You’re no different from any other non-believer. You make these accusations. You disparage the scientific basis of the truth, which is absolutely indisputable. You call us Communists, even though we’re progressives and simply want a better world. You ridicule the very essence of our philosophical and belief system. You criticize our methods with the false charges that they bring ruin and destruction instead of hope and good works. I thought you might be different, but you’re part of the same mold as everyone else I’ve ever met on the Outside. I’m so tired of this baloney. I’m tired of you.”

  Jason felt his own anger grow but held it in check. She would hang up on him any second now. “Lizzy.” Through gritted teeth he barely spoke loud enough for her to hear him. “Tell me about Mary Sue.”

  There was a whoosh of breath as though all the air had left her. The sense of her physical and mental deflation was palpable through the receiver. She said, “Not over the phone.”

  ***

  On the flight to confront Lizzy directly to determine whatever secrets she held about his ex-wife, Jason reflected on the allegations she’d made about him. His anonymous blog allowed him the freedom to think and express himself in a way he’d never before
been able to do. In the exercise he’d found and mined a vein that brought him personal satisfaction. He’d learned he had strong opinions. He could fire them off at any time, and others could take their potshots if they disagreed, or compliment him on his right thinking. The blogosphere was the epitome of the free market in action.

  The point was that he did think—a lot—and much of what he encountered and subsequently wrote about disturbed him. There were forces in the world that were powerful and seemingly good on the surface, but which had evil at their core. It was a great deception that most people never saw. Jason had never had much of a political bent prior to writing his blog but, he admitted, he’d certainly been reading and absorbing a great deal relating to the political arena of late. Besides the politics behind finding missing children, and how insidious human trafficking was, he’d learned a significant amount about the environmental cause. Come to think of it, Mary Sue’s affinity to it during their marriage, and what he’d absorbed then, may have influenced his attraction to this issue now.

  Jason’s sense was that there were two great motivators behind the environmental movement, one feeding the other. The first was the desire to feel good about oneself. If a person said he was for the environment, how could anyone criticize his intentions? Obviously, anyone not for it had to be against it. That made the opposition bad in the eyes of an environmentalist.

  The problem was more complex than this simplistic approach. The environmental cause seemed to move in lockstep. Right thinking—their way—was paramount. Differ from the prescribed line and someone was on the outside looking in.

  Self-virtue was also a key component of the anti-capitalist, excessive population, globalization movement. Corporations were easy targets to demonize. They were large and impersonal. They appeared to be uncaring, and in theory they were. But they produced jobs and created wealth that raised the living standards of the people around them. The alternative—what amounted to welfare handouts for the world’s poor—could never produce a similar effect. Yet handouts felt like the caring thing to do, and they gave donors the warm and fuzzy sense that they’d done the right thing.