by Dean Koontz
“Well, at least this is a federal seizure. If it was under the California forfeiture law, it’d be gone ten days after the hearing. Feds give us more time.”
“They’ll sell it.”
“Listen, we’ll do everything we can to overturn before then….” Darius’s voice trailed away. He was no longer able to look his brother in the eyes. Finally he said, “And even after assets are liquidated, if you can overturn, then you can get compensation—though not for any costs you incurred related to the forfeiture.”
“But I can kiss my house good-bye. I might get money back but not my house. And I can’t get back all the time this will take.”
“There’s legislation in Congress to reform these laws.”
“Reform? Not toss them out completely?”
“No. The government likes the laws too much. Even the proposed reforms don’t go far enough and don’t have wide support yet.”
“Evicted my family,” Harris said, still gripped by disbelief.
“Harris, I feel rotten. I’ll do everything I can, I’ll be a tiger on their ass, I swear, but I ought to be able to do more.”
Harris’s hands were fisted again on the table. “None of this is your fault, little brother. You didn’t write the laws. We’ll…just cope. Somehow, we’ll cope. The important thing now is to post bail, so I can get out of here.”
Darius put the heels of his coal-black hands to his eyes and pressed gently, as if trying to banish his weariness. Like Harris, he hadn’t slept the previous night. “That’s going to take until Monday. I’ll go to my bank first thing Monday morning—”
“No, no. You don’t have to put up your money for bail. We’ve got it. Didn’t Jessica tell you? And our bank’s open Saturdays.”
“She told me. But—”
“Not open now, but it was earlier. God, I wanted out today.”
Lowering his hands from his face, Darius met his brother’s eyes with reluctance. “Harris, they’ve impounded your bank accounts too.”
“They can’t do that,” he said angrily, but no longer with any conviction. “Can they?”
“Savings, checking, all of it, whether it was a joint account with Jessie, in your name, or just in her name. They’re calling it all illegal drug profits, even the Christmas-club account.”
Harris felt as if he’d been hit in the face. A strange numbness began to spread through him. “Darius, I can’t…I can’t let you put up all the bail. Not fifty thousand. We have some stocks—”
“Your brokerage account’s impounded too, pending forfeiture.”
Harris stared at the clock. The second hand twitched around the face. The time-bomb sound seemed louder, louder.
Reaching across the conference-room table, putting his hands over Harris’s fists, Darius said, “Big brother, I swear, we’ll get through this together.”
“With everything impounded…we have nothing but the cash in my wallet and Jessica’s purse. Jesus. Maybe just her purse. My wallet is in the nightstand drawer at home, if she didn’t think to bring it when…when they made her and the girls leave.”
“So Bonnie and I are putting up bail, and we don’t want any argument about it,” Darius said.
Tick…tick…tick…
Harris’s entire face was numb. The back of his neck was numb, pebbled with gooseflesh. Numb and cold.
Darius squeezed his brother’s hands reassuringly once more, and then finally let go.
Harris said, “How are Jessica and I going to rent a place if we can’t put together first month, last month, and security deposit?”
“You’ll move in with Bonnie and me for the duration. That’s already been settled.”
“Your house isn’t that big. You don’t have room for four more.”
“Jessie and the girls are already with us. You’re just one more. Sure, it’ll be tight, but we’ll be fine. Nobody’ll mind if it’s a bit of a squeeze. We’re family. We’re in this together.”
“But this might take months to get resolved. My God, it could take years, couldn’t it?”
Tick…tick…tick…
Later, as Darius was about to leave, he said, “I want you to think hard about enemies, Harris. This isn’t all just a big mistake. This took planning, cunning, and contacts. Somewhere, you’ve got a smart and powerful enemy, whether you realize it or not. Think about it. If you come up with any names, that might help me.”
Saturday night, Harris shared a windowless four-bed cell with two alleged murderers and with a rapist who bragged about assaulting women in ten states. He slept only fitfully.
Sunday night, he slept much better, only because he was by then utterly exhausted. Dreams tormented him. All were nightmares, and in each, sooner or later, there was a clock ticking, ticking.
Monday, he was up at dawn, eager to be free. He was loath to let Darius and Bonnie tie up so much money to make his bail. Of course, he had no intention of fleeing jurisdiction, so they wouldn’t lose their funds. And he had developed a prison claustrophobia that, if it continued to worsen, would soon be intolerable.
Though his situation was dreadful, unthinkable, he nevertheless took some solace from the certainty that the worst was behind him. Everything had been taken away—or soon would be taken. He was at the bottom, and in spite of the long fight ahead, he had nowhere to go but up.
That was Monday morning. Early.
At Caliente, Nevada, the federal highway angled north, but at Panaca they left it for a state route that turned east toward the Utah border. The rural highway carried them into higher land that had a stark, cauldron-of-creation quality, almost pre-Mesozoic, even though it was forested with pine and spruce.
As crazy as it sounded, Spencer was nevertheless completely convinced by Valerie’s fear of satellite surveillance. All was blue above, with no monstrous mechanical presences hovering like something out of Star Wars, but he was uncomfortably aware of being watched, mile by lonely mile.
Regardless of the eye in the sky and the professional killers who might be en route to Utah to intercept them, Spencer was ravenous. Two small cans of Vienna sausages had not satisfied his hunger. He ate cheese crackers and washed them down with a Coke.
Behind the front seats, sitting erect in his narrow quarters, Rocky was so enthusiastic about Valerie’s way with a Rover that he expressed no interest in the cheese crackers. He grinned broadly. His head bobbed up and down, up and down.
“What’s with the dog?” she asked.
“He likes the way you drive. He has a need for speed.”
“Really? He’s such a frightened little guy most of the time.”
“I just found out about this speed thing myself,” Spencer said.
“Why’s he so afraid of everything?”
“He was abused before he wound up in the pound, before I brought him home. I don’t know what’s in his past.”
“Well, it’s nice to see him enjoying himself so much.”
Rocky’s head bobbed enthusiastically.
As tree shadows flickered across the roadway, Spencer said, “I don’t know what’s in your past, either.” Instead of responding, she eased down on the accelerator, but Spencer persisted: “Who are you running from? Now they’re my enemies too. I have a right to know.”
She stared intently at the road. “They don’t have a name.”
“What—a secret society of fanatical assassins, like in an old Fu Manchu novel?”
“More or less.” She was serious. “It’s a nameless government agency, financed by misdirected appropriations intended for lots of other programs. Also by hundreds of millions of dollars a year from cases involving the asset-forfeiture laws. Originally it was intended to be used to conceal the illegal actions and botched operations of government bureaus and agencies ranging from the post office to the FBI. A political pressure-release valve.”
“An independent cover-up squad.”
“Then if a reporter or anybody discovered evidence of a cover-up in a case that, say, the FBI had investigated,
that cover-up couldn’t be traced to anyone in the FBI itself. This independent group covers the Bureau’s ass, so the Bureau never has to destroy evidence, bribe judges, intimidate witnesses, all that nasty stuff. The perpetrators are mysterious, nameless. No proof they’re government employees.”
The sky was still blue and cloudless, but the day seemed darker than it had been before.
Spencer said, “There’s enough paranoia in this concept for half a dozen Oliver Stone movies.”
“Stone sees the shadow of the oppressor but doesn’t understand who casts it,” she said. “Hell, even the average FBI or ATF agent is unaware this agency exists. It operates at a very high level.”
“How high?” he wondered.
“Its top officers answer to Thomas Summerton.”
Spencer frowned. “Is that name supposed to mean something?”
“He’s independently wealthy, a major political fund-raiser and wheeler-dealer. And currently the first deputy attorney general.”
“Of what?”
“Of the Kingdom of Oz—what do you think?” she said impatiently. “First Deputy Attorney General of the United States!”
“You’ve got to be putting me on.”
“Look it up in an almanac, read a newspaper.”
“I don’t mean you’re kidding about him being the first deputy. I mean, about him being involved in a conspiracy like this.”
“I know it for a fact. I know him. Personally.”
“But in that position, he’s the second most powerful person in the Department of Justice. The next link up the chain from him…”
“Curdles your blood, doesn’t it?”
“Are you saying the attorney general knows about this?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I hope not. I’ve never seen any evidence. But I don’t rule out anything anymore.”
Ahead, in the westbound lane, a gray Chevrolet van topped a hill and came toward them. Spencer didn’t like the looks of it. According to Valerie’s schedule, they weren’t likely to be in immediate danger for the better part of two hours yet. But she might be wrong. Maybe the agency didn’t have to fly in thugs from Vegas. Maybe it already had operatives in the area.
He wanted to tell her to turn off the road at once. They had to put trees between themselves and any fusillade of machine-gun fire directed at them. But there was nowhere to go: no connecting road in sight and a six-foot drop beyond the narrow shoulder.
He put his hand on the SIG 9mm pistol that lay in his lap.
As the oncoming Chevy passed the Rover, the driver gave them a look of astonished recognition. He was big. About forty. A broad, hard face. His eyes widened, and his mouth opened as he spoke to another man in the van with him, and then he was gone.
Spencer turned in his seat to look after the Chevy, but because of Rocky and half a ton of gear, he wasn’t able to see through the tailgate window. He peered in his side mirror and watched the van as it dwindled westward behind them. No brake lights. It wasn’t turning to follow the Rover.
Belatedly, he realized that the driver’s look of astonishment had nothing to do with recognition. The man simply had been amazed by how fast they were going. According to the speedometer, Valerie was pressing eighty-five miles per hour, thirty over the legal speed limit and fifteen or twenty too fast for the condition of the road.
Spencer’s heart was thudding. Not because of her driving.
Valerie met his eyes again. She was clearly aware of the fear that had gripped him. “I warned you that you didn’t really want to know who they are.” She turned her attention to the highway. “Kind of gives you the heebie-jeebies, doesn’t it?”
“Heebie-jeebies doesn’t quite describe it. I feel as if…”
“You’ve been given an ice-water enema?” she suggested.
“You find even this funny?”
“On one level.”
“Not me. Jesus. If the attorney general knows,” he said, “then the next link up the chain—”
“The President of the United States.”
“I don’t know what’s worse: that maybe the president and the attorney general sanction an agency like you described…or that it operates at such a high level without their knowledge. Because if they don’t know, and they stumble across its existence—”
“They’re dead meat.”
“And if they don’t know, then the people who’re running this country aren’t the people we elected.”
“I can’t say it goes as high as the attorney general. And I don’t have a clue about Oval Office involvement. I hope not. But—”
“But you don’t rule out anything anymore,” he finished for her.
“Not after what I’ve been through. These days, I don’t really trust anyone but God and myself. Lately I’m not so sure about God.”
Down in the concrete aural cavity, where the agency listened to Las Vegas with a multitude of secret ears, Roy Miro said good-bye to Eve Jammer.
There were no tears, no qualms at being separated and possibly never seeing each other again. They were confident of being together soon. Roy was still energized by the spiritual power of Kevorkian, felt all but immortal. For her part, Eve seemed never to have realized that she could die or that anything she truly wanted—such as Roy—could be denied her.
They stood close. He put down his attaché case to be able to hold her flawless hands, and he said, “I’ll try to be back here this evening, but there’s no guarantee.”
“I’ll miss you,” she said huskily. “But if you can’t make it, I’ll do something to remember you by, something that will remind me how exciting you are and make me even more eager to have you back.”
“What? Tell me what you’re going to do, so I can carry the image in my mind, an image of you to make the time away pass faster.”
He was surprised at how good he was at this love talk. He had always known that he was a shameless romantic, but he had never been sure that he would know how to act when and if he ever found a woman who measured up to his standards.
“I don’t want to tell you now,” she said playfully. “I want you to dream, wonder, imagine. Because when you get back and I tell you—then we’ll have the most thrilling night we’ve had yet.”
The heat pouring off Eve was incredible. Roy wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and melt in her radiance.
He kissed her on the cheek. His lips were chapped from the desert air, and her skin was hot. It was a deliciously dry kiss.
Turning away from her was agony. At the elevator, as the doors slid open, he looked back.
She was poised on one foot, the other raised. On the concrete floor was a black spider.
“Darling, no!” he said.
She looked up at him, baffled.
“A spider is a perfect little creation, Mother Nature at her best. A spinner of beautiful webs. A perfectly engineered killing machine. Its kind have been here since before the first man ever walked the earth. It deserves to live in peace.”
“I don’t like them much,” she said with the cutest little pout that Roy had ever seen.
“When I get back, we’ll examine one together, under a magnifying glass,” he promised. “You’ll see how perfect it is, how compact and efficient and functional. Once I show you how perfect arachnids are, they’ll never seem the same to you again. You’ll cherish them.”
“Well,” she said reluctantly, “all right,” and she carefully stepped over the spider instead of tramping on it.
Full of love, Roy rode the elevator to the top floor of the high rise. He climbed a service staircase to the roof.
Eight of the twelve men in the strike force had already boarded the first of the two customized executive helicopters. With a hard clatter of rotors, the craft lifted into the sky, up and away.
The second—and identical—chopper was hovering at the north side of the building. When the landing pad was clear, the helicopter descended to pick up the four other men, all of whom were in civilian clothes but were
carrying duffel bags full of weapons and gear.
Roy boarded last and sat at the back of the cabin. The seat across the aisle and the two in the forward row were empty.
As the craft took off, he opened his attaché case and plugged the computer power and transmission cables into outlets in the back wall of the cabin. He divorced the cellular telephone from the workstation and put it on the seat across the aisle. He no longer needed it. Instead, he was using the chopper’s communications system. A phone keypad appeared right on the display screen. After putting a call through to Mama in Virginia, he identified himself as “Pooh,” provided a thumbprint, and accessed the satellite-surveillance center in the Las Vegas branch of the agency.
A miniature version of the scene on the surveillance-center wall screen appeared on Roy’s VDT. The Range Rover was moving at reckless speeds, which strongly indicated that the woman was behind the wheel. It was past Panaca, Nevada, bulleting toward the Utah border.
“Something like this agency was bound to come along sooner or later,” she said as they approached the Utah border. “By insisting on a perfect world, we’ve opened the door to fascism.”
“I’m not sure I follow that.” He wasn’t certain that he wanted to follow it, either. She spoke with unsettling conviction.
“There’ve been so many laws written by so many idealists with competing visions of Utopia that nobody can get through a single day without inadvertently and unknowingly breaking a score of them.”
“Cops are asked to enforce tens of thousands of laws,” Spencer agreed, “more than they can keep track of.”
“So they tend to lose a true sense of their mission. They lose focus. You saw it happening when you were a cop, didn’t you?”
“Sure. There’s been some controversy, several times, about LAPD intelligence operations that targeted legitimate citizens’ groups.”
“Because those particular groups at that particular time were on the ‘wrong’ side of sensitive issues. Government has politicized every aspect of life, including law-enforcement agencies, and all of us are going to suffer for it, regardless of our political views.”