America Rising

By Tom Paine

Copyright Tom Paine © 2012

All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover art by Angelica Soderlund

For more about Tom Paine and America Rising, go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/America-Rising-The-Novel/134337723279375

For Suzanne, who is everything

and makes everything possible

Contents

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26 | Chapter 27 | Chapter 28 | Chapter 29 | Chapter 30 | Chapter 31 | Chapter 32 | Chapter 33 | Chapter 34 | Chapter 35 | Chapter 36 | Chapter 37 | Chapter 38 | Chapter 39 | Chapter 40 | Chapter 41 | Chapter 42

Acknowledgements

About The Author

Chapter 1

The morning sun rose grudgingly over Radabob Key, a dull orange bruise against a chilly, gray sky.

I sat in the bow of an 18-foot Dauntless as it slid along the twisting passageway that wound through stands of spiky mangroves from Largo Sound to the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. The hull slapped rhythmically against the choppy water, misting me with an icy spray that numbed my face and hands. In my lap was a small wooden box that held the last ten years of my life—the ashes of my wife, Carolyn, dead only days from the cancer she’d battled for the past three years. It was a rare form of blood cancer—horrible, awful, terrifying—but manageable if treated properly.

It wasn’t.

Carolyn’s insurance company had had some “financial challenges,” I knew from reading reports in the newspaper I used to work for. Quarterly profits were down, executive bonuses at stake. So to crack down on “fraud,” they scoured the applications of clients with the temerity to get sick, looking for an “i” not dotted, a “t” not crossed, any minor error or omission, any reason at all to avoid paying. They called it “rescission.”

I call it murder.

Of course, the company found what it was looking for, a couple months of acne medication taken as a teenager that had long ago slipped my wife’s memory. That was all it took. A legal-sounding letter informed us that Carolyn’s policy had been cancelled, her treatment denied. We were on our own.

Just thinking about it made a red cloud boil up in my eyes. I tightened my grip on the box as Robert called out from the boat’s console, “You alright over there, Josh?”

As alright as I was going to be.

“I’m okay, Robert.”

“We’ll be at the reef in about fifteen minutes. We can drop anchor any place you like.”

I nodded back, not trusting myself to speak. This would be the last time I touched my wife, scattering her ashes over the water we’d grown to love. We cleared the channel buoy at the mouth of the passageway and the 135-horsepower Mercury whined louder and more insistently, tilting the bow up as we quickly gained speed. The icy mist was a pinprick spray now but I barely felt its chill.

Despite everything, we had never given up.

After the denial we burned through our savings, maxed out our credit cards and, when that was done, borrowed from friends and relatives, cajoling, pleading, bullying doctors and hospitals for the drugs and care she needed. Carolyn fought with a ferocious courage that shamed my own resolve. I fought back my own way, filing a lawsuit—Henson v. United Medical—drawing on my contacts and knowledge of how to play the media game gained from twenty years in the news biz. It was almost enough, but a year and $150,000 later, we were out of money. Too broke to afford treatment, too rich for Medicaid, we had precious few options.

Finally, after six months of watching my wife slowly give back all the ground she’d gained on her adversary, I succeeded in my PR gambit, making “rescission” and Carolyn’s case the focus of a slew of stories in print, on television and the ‘Net, culminating in a brief mention on one of those network morning shows I’d spent years deriding.

That did it. The negative publicity, the threat of legal action by the attorneys general of several states, the fear of having to explain their decision to the jury of a dying woman’s peers caused the company to cave. They reinstituted Carolyn’s coverage, reimbursed us for her expenses and threw in a few more—actually a lot more—dollars to make us go away.

We took the money and ran, moving to the Florida Keys and buying a house on the water in Key Largo. Carolyn was sick and getting sicker but was adamant we spend what time she had left in the kind of tropical paradise we’d both dreamed of. There wasn’t much. In six months she was bedridden. In a week, she was gone.

An abrupt drop in the boat’s speed and the outboard’s return to a low-pitched growl brought me back to the present.

“Anywhere you like, Josh,” Robert called from the console.

The vast, unknowable expanse of gray-blue water seemed to want to reach up and swallow me whole. For a moment I thought of following Carolyn in, letting the cold and current take me. But the moment passed.

“This is fine, Robert,” I said. “Just let her drift.”

I sensed rather than saw my friend duck down behind the console to give me some privacy. I took the box in my lap and raised it to my lips.

“Goodbye, Linnie,” I whispered, carefully removing the box’s top and tilting the silver dust into the water. It floated on the surface for a second, glittering like powdered crystal, then the waves carried it away. I imagined I could see the tiny particles carried outwards, infusing new life to the ocean from what had been taken from mine. After a time I felt Robert’s hand on my shoulder.

“Thank you,” I said, still watching the water. He squeezed gently, turned the boat around and took me back to the rest of my life.

* * *

“Godammit, Moosh! Where’s the fucking car?”

Moises Ben Levi hid a thin smile and ignored the question. The former Israeli paratrooper was used to swallowing his employer’s digs and minor slights, like the deliberate mispronouncing of his given name, but a seven-figure salary and the chance to retire before he hit fifty made them go down easier. Besides, this was a vacation compared to what he’d seen on the West Bank and Gaza. It was just part of dealing with Ed Bane, being poked and prodded and reminded a dozen times a day exactly who was the boss.

When it came to the kind of political punditry that intimidated politicians, terrified bureaucrats and could generate millions of angry emails on whatever subject engaged his tonsils, Edwin MacArthur Bane, Jr. was indeed the boss. A former vacuum cleaner salesman and talk jock on a one-lung Illinois radio station, he’d worked his way up through the media minor leagues, honing his act and biding his time until his show exploded and he grabbed the throne once held by the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

Combining the weepy apocalypticism of the former with the carefully calibrated bombast of the latter, Ed Bane developed a pair of nationwide radio and television broadcasts that didn’t so much dominate the airwaves as grasp them by the throat and strangle them. Every day more than twenty million listeners and viewers tuned in to hear him announce, “Liberals, Democraps, socialists, losers, I am Ed Bane. The bane of your existence.”

Standing in the foyer of his sprawling, Addison Mizner-designed Palm Beach mansion, Bane tapped his foot impatiently until twin Maybach limousines emerged from the garage at the back of the estate and parked beneath a portico large enough to shelter a baseball diamond. The limos rolled up and Ben Levi held open the massive Macassar Ebony front door for Bane and girlfriend Olivia de Silva, eyeing her backside appreciatively as she passed. De Silva was a stunner, no question—athlete’s toned body, model’s high cheekbones, plastic surgeon’s swollen breasts. She was dressed in a hand-tailored pantsuit of iridescent silk that rippled in the breeze of a balmy South Florida evening.

Bane himself was rather more doughy, thanks mainly to a diet rich in Kobe beef and expensive Napa Valley Cabernet. From his neatly manicured nails to his impeccably cut and styled dark hair to cheeks so smoothly shaven they appeared to have been waxed, everything about him spoke of the soothing balm of obscene amounts of money. He capped off the look by dressing in full Palm Beach regalia—white slacks, red-and-white striped Brooks Brothers shirt, royal blue Berluti loafers, pink Ralph Lauren sweater draped over his shoulders. Moises Ben Levi hid another smile. They looked ridiculous, and the cost of their outfits could have fed a family of four for a month.

Two beefy men dressed in identical black suits jumped out of the lead Maybach and stood at attention beside the vehicle. Bane stopped in the doorway and gave exasperated.

“Who are these two, Moosh?” he asked, looking through the men as if they were made of glass. “You put two more goons on the payroll?” When’s it going to stop?”

“I told you last week,” Ben Levi said patiently, maintaining his even tone by imagining grabbing Bane by his fruity-looking sweater and slapping the living shit out of him. “I’m not comfortable with some of the things I’ve been hearing. Nothing definite, but there’s a threat. And it’s real. If I’m to keep you and Ms. de Silva safe, I need manpower. Besides, these men are not goons; they’re ex-Special Forces who can kill a man more ways than you can split an infinitive. I’m your head of security, remember? If you don’t like the job I’m doing. . .”

Ed Bane grinned and waved his hand dismissively. This was all part of their daily dance. “You do your job well, Moosh. I know that. Now can we get the fuck out of here? I’m starving.”

Moises Ben Levi hadn’t bothered to explain the reasons why even a five-minute ride to a local restaurant on a quiet Saturday evening required two vehicles, two two-man teams and himself. But those things he’d heard through the intelligence grapevine made him subconsciously pat the Glock he kept in a shoulder holster under his off-the-rack suit jacket.

The U.S. senator who was the biggest booster of another bloated, over-budget Pentagon weapons project hadn’t been quarantined with a virulently contagious infection as reported but in fact had been missing, incommunicado, for more than a week. When he was found by police not far from Capitol Hill, he shrank from the patrolman’s touch and refused to talk to authorities, even his wife. Instead, he resigned his Senate seat, flew back to California and checked himself into a hospital, reportedly for “exhaustion.” The weapons project was ultimately terminated.

The Connecticut mansion of the CEO of one of the country’s largest and most profitable hedge funds had recently been broken into in a daring midnight raid. In minutes the invaders had disabled a state-of-the-art alarm system, disarmed and rendered unconscious a trio of security guards, then melted away. The only clue they left was a plain white business card printed with a single word in big black letters. Moises Ben Levi knew the man who ran the CEO’s security detail. He was very professional, very good. Whoever made him look like an incompetent amateur was better.

The two black-suited newbies stood stiffly until Bane and de Silva and Ben Levi climbed into the second Maybach, then jumped back into the lead car and rolled down the long driveway, past the locked and guarded gate, the thick hedge of manicured ficus that rose twenty feet into the air and out onto the street. Even though the route was less than two miles through one of the richest and most exclusive communities in the country, Ben Levi had checked it out as if it were in downtown Baghdad. He knew that Bane had bought out the restaurant—a mediocre “Tuscan” joint that would have been laughed out of Italy—for the evening, paying the entire staff to stay home except for the chef, a favored waiter and the oily, obsequious owner. If Bane left happy, each would go home with a five thousand dollar tip. Since he’d had recently inked a lifetime deal estimated to be worth close to one billion dollars, five grand was pin money.

Ben Levi turned in his seat and addressed his boss.

“This is how we do it, now and every time after. Two cars, always. Your car will change position at random: back to front, front to back. When we get to the restaurant, we will park directly in front of the entrance and hold there. Michael here”—he indicated the driver—”and I will escort you and Ms. de Silva in. Antwan will park the other car across the street and watch the building, John will take the restaurant’s rear door. I’ll be at the bar, watching the front. When you’re finished dinner, we do it again. But we take a different route home. Anything happens, even smells like it might happen, I give the word and you get down on the floor. You don’t get up until I say. Got that?”

Olivia de Silva opened her mouth to launch one of her trademark whines but something in Ben Levi’s eyes made her reconsider; instead, she fluffed her hair and flopped back in the seat. Men. Ed Bane grinned. “Got it, Moosh,” he said. He looked like he was enjoying the attention. Moises Ben Levi frowned and thought of the hacienda and thirty acres of land he owned in Costa Rica.

* * *

Eldrick Brown padded out of the studio and back to his desk in the “cube farm” of KKLI “Talk-Back Radio.” It was a few minutes after five in the morning and he was tired and ready to go home; he’d been on the air since one, the slot he’d held for the past twenty years. Back then it was just a sop thrown by station management to the black community of the San Francisco Bay Area, but Eldrick Brown made news and got ratings with his defiantly left-wing views, uncanny feel for his audience and mouth that could cut like a scalpel or hack like a meat cleaver.

He took the elevator down to the station lobby and had the relentlessly cheerful security guard at the desk buzz him through to the underground parking garage. Even though four hours of live radio left him drained and weary, he was looking forward to the drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to his Marin County home in his new Jaguar. As he approached the car he heard steps, then a rough voice. “Hey, nigger!”

Eldrick Brown hadn’t heard that word spoken with bad intent in more than twenty years. He stopped and cocked his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it. He couldn’t believe it was happening here. The KKLI garage was guarded, secure, open only to station employees. None of them would be crazy or racist enough to openly slur one of the station’s stars, especially one with his clout and stature. He balled his fists and turned to face the voice; Eldrick Brown never backed down from a fight, either on the air or in the street.

He didn’t have a chance. In an instant, a fist as hard and heavy as a lead weight landed on the side of his face. He could hear his cheekbone crack, feel his mouth fill with blood. Other fists connected with his ear, his kidneys, his groin. But he was already falling to the pavement, losing consciousness. He never felt the boot that broke off a piece of a rib and drove it straight through his heart.

Chapter 2

Early Monday morning the phone rang in my cluttered home office.

“Josh, it’s Chloe.” I knew that tone of voice well—tired and wired, a combination known to any reporter who’d pulled an all-nighter chasing down a breaking story.

“Jesus, Chloe, it’s four-thirty in San Francisco. You sure are burning the candle.”

Chloe Enders was one of my best friends in the news business. We met in the Mission District covering a triple homicide, me for the San Francisco Trib, she for a local TV station. Despite the usual print-broadcast rivalry, we liked each other immediately, and when we were both laid off by our respective employers, we banded together with a couple dozen other turned-loose scribes in several big cities to start Public Interest, a nonprofit investigative journalism service—a sort of Huffington Post with fangs—that dug up the dirt that most print, broadcast and online outlets had neither the funds nor desire to uncover. We sometimes partnered with other media, and posted on our own website too, embarrassing more than a couple of major news outfits by exposing scandals in their own back yards. If Chloe Enders was at her desk before the sun came up, the excrement was about to hit the forced-air induction system.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Josh. But I’ve got bad news.”

Great. I already felt like flypaper to bad news.

“Eldrick Brown is dead.”

“Ahhh, shit, Chloe.”

I knew Eldrick well and I liked him a lot. I’d first met him at a divey Mission District bar favored by media types, and though our schedules were typically crazy, we made it a point to get together for drinks, gossip and general bitching at least a couple of times a month. He was a good friend when Caroline was sick, and after we moved to the Keys he kept in touch via email and the occasional phone call. Eldrick Brown was smart, tough and fearless. The media universe was a lesser place without him.

“What happened?”

“He was beaten to death. In ‘LI’s garage as he was going home after his show.”

“Are you kidding?!” I was stunned, incredulous. “Jesus Christ! How the hell did that happen?”

“Surprised the guard at the gate. Shot him. Three males. They ambushed Eldrick and just worked him over. The guard’s in critical condition but he managed to give the cops a partial license plate. CHP stopped them on 101 on their way to the airport. They were speeding. Doing eighty in a fifty-five zone. Dumbshits. The chippies were about to let them go when the BOLO came through.

“Here’s where it really gets interesting, though. My sources in the cop shop tell me two of them are hired muscle from L.A. But the other one is from your neck of the woods. Armando Gutierrez. Cuban, thirty-three years old, six-two, two-fifty. South Beach address. He’s been in the system. A couple of assaults, one looks like a road rage. A B&E. Domestic disputes, one of which ended in a kidnapping charge. But no convictions, everything dropped. No one wants to beef on this guy. He doesn’t seem like any kind of real player but still, it’s goddam odd. Why is a Miami gangsta coming all the way to San Francisco to stomp a sixty-two-year-old talk show host?”

“Fuck if I know, Chloe. There are still a few groups of Cuban Castrophobes around here who might want to take out the Bay of Pigs on “commies” and lefties but they’re pretty much relics now. The younger generation, conservative or not, doesn’t go in for that kind of stupidity. Cuba is a place they’ve heard about, not a reason for murder. But you’re right, Gutierrez being there is goddam odd, and definitely worth looking into.

“Speaking of which, I’m working another one here; you’ll love it. Seems some of our esteemed public servants in Tallahassee like to come down to the Keys once a year to do the wild thing with a bunch of hookers and some serious pharmaceuticals. I got a tip on when and where, and I’m setting up a stakeout. That should stir up some major shit, no? Video of a houseful of pompous, self-righteous politicians doped to the gills getting their dicks sucked at an orgy pad. I can’t wait to see that one go live.”

Chloe could only laugh; I could almost see her shaking her head. “What is it with you people in Florida anyway? Sun bake your brains? Hurricanes scramble your senses? Something in the water? You people give corruption a bad name.”

I guess I’d grown used to it.

“Acts of outrageous stupidity and criminal intent,” I said. “It’s what we’re best at. I’ll be in touch, Chloe.”

* * *

The Lincoln Town Car bearing U.S. Senator Kip Richardson gleamed like a shiny black stone as it crept through the clotted maze of Manhattan streets to a sleek white granite and limestone-faced tower on West 56th Street. More than two decades in the Senate, half of that a member of the powerful and prestigious Banking Committee, the New York Democrat still savored the chairmanship he attained last year with the election of fellow Democrat Nancy Elias, the first woman to attain the Oval Office.

He wasn’t savoring much today, though, not even the excellent dinner and white Burgundy he’d consumed last night, just a few hours before boarding a Gulfstream G500 to fly to New York on the summons—and it was a summons, not a request—to meet with Meyer Global Financial Inc.’s chairman and CEO Frank Bernabe.

What bothered him, besides the curtness of the order and its humiliating implication, was the purpose of this hastily arranged meeting. He didn’t know what it was. Since the day his parents divorced when he was twelve years old, Kip Richardson liked to be in control, and the one thing you were not when you dealt with Frank Bernabe was in control. The man’s obsession with dominating his environment and his ruthlessness in doing so were legendary. He personally approved even the paper clips used in every one of his worldwide offices, and was said to have fired an executive who used an unauthorized kind.

He brought that same domineering managerial style, not to mention personal and corporate resources estimated at more than one trillion dollars, to the political side of Meyer Global’s operation. Kip Richardson owed his career and chairmanship to Frank Bernabe’s financial support and influence, and he had placed so many former executives in the Elias administration, from the vice-president on down, that Washington insiders had taken to referring to the famously strong-willed Elias as “President Bernabe’s press secretary.”

They arrived at the sleek I.M. Pei-designed tower where Bernabe kept the top-floor penthouse, one of two Manhattan penthouses registered to Meyer Global, in addition to personal residences in the Hamptons, Palm Springs and Monaco. The Town Car dipped into an underground garage and parked. Without speaking, the driver carded Richardson into a small foyer sealed with heavily smoked glass, carded him into a private elevator, then watched the numbers above it blink until it reached the 17th floor. The elevator doors opened and Kip Richardson found himself staring at a stunning young Asian woman in a gray silk pantsuit.

“Good morning, Senator,” Wei Lee said, taking his overcoat and handing it to a houseboy. “Mr. Bernabe is in his study. Please follow me.”

Richardson had never been inside Frank Bernabe’s opulent aerie. before. He gaped at the extraordinary apartment with its severely contemporary décor, millions of dollars worth of modern art and floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on Central Park. Rumor had it Bernabe bought all three of the building’s penthouses and combined them into one so there would be no question who ruled this particular gold-plated roost.

Wei Lee opened the study door and motioned the senator to go in. Frank Bernabe was seated behind a mammoth stainless steel and glass desk, engrossed in something scrolling down on his smartphone. He was a compact man, not much bigger than his Asian majordomo, but he filled out his dark Saville Row suit so much it appeared to be bursting at the seams, even though it had been hand-tailored to his frame with surgical precision. With a shining bullet of a shaven head, pugnacious jaw, unblinking black eyes and aggressive posture, he resembled a tank rolling implacably forward, trampling anything in its path.

He tapped the smartphone’s screen while Kip Richardson fidgeted nervously, sweat dampening the collar and armpits of his Turnbull & Asser shirt. One more tap and Frank Bernabe looked up as if he’d just noticed he had a visitor.

“Ah, Kip. Good of you to come on such short notice.”

He made no motion to sit so Richardson stood, face reddening, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He tried to cover this further humiliation by putting on his best vote-hounding voice and booming, “Good to see you too, Mr. Bernabe.”

It was always “Mister Bernabe.” No one addressed Frank Bernabe as “Frank.” Consensus was the gates of hell would swing open and swallow the first person who dared. Finally deciding the senator had suffered enough, Meyer Global’s boss nodded at a low-slung Barcelona chair opposite the desk. Kip Richardson sat.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Kip. Very disappointed,” he said without preamble. “You were supposed to keep that bill”—S.4220, aka the Financial Reform and Stability Act—”bottled up in committee. Then you assured me you would work with your colleagues on the other side of the aisle to keep it from coming to a vote. Then you assured me it didn’t have the votes to pass. Your assurances, frankly, weren’t worth shit.”

Kip Richardson swallowed and hoped the sweat on his upper lip wasn’t showing; the back of his shirt was wet and stuck to his skin as if glued.

“Do you realize what effects this could have on our business here?” Bernabe demanded, allowing a flash of anger to show. “To our economic recovery? Do you have any idea?”

“Uh, yes, Mr. Bernabe, I do,” Richardson said. “I do indeed. But you have to understand, the mood of the country is terrible. People are angry—damn angry, if you’ll pardon my French. They hate us, all of us, in Washington and on Wall Street. Why, last district meeting, people actually threw rocks at my car—not left-wing thugs and vandals but good, solid, blue-collar Democrats, people who have supported me for years.

“We have to do something to calm them down. I know you despise government meddling in your affairs and I agree; capitalism and free markets are what made this country great. But believe me, there’s less here than meets the eye. My colleagues and I will oppose the appointment of anyone who doesn’t understand your position to any regulatory post, I guarantee you that. And I’ve been assured by that you’ll have veto power over any appointments that are sent up.

“I’ve also already reached out to your representatives in Washington to help us flesh out these regulations—to write the fine print, so to speak. As you know, that’s where the power to shape legislation actually lies. I realize this may cause some hardship for you, Mr. Bernabe, but with all due respect, I’m not sure you know how much anger and frustration is out there on Main Street. If we don’t throw the people a bone, they may just tear the flesh off of ours.”

Frank Bernabe scowled. “And if you throw them a bone, next thing you know they’ll want another. And another after that.” His eyes bored into Kip Richardson’s. “It’s your job to manage their expectations, Kip. Not just to go soft in the head whenever a few people start screaming. If we have to throw them a bone—and at present I’m not at all convinced that we do—then the bone will be thrown in our way in our own time. Is that understood?”

“I do understand, Mr. Bernabe. But I’m telling you, that time is now. Something is going on out there. Something has changed. People have reached their breaking point. They—”

“Don’t talk to me about breaking points,” Frank Bernabe snapped. “I didn’t send you to Washington and put you on the committee to work against my interests.”

Kip Richardson shuddered. He’d heard that tone only once before. It was molten honey poured over an icepick—warm and smooth and poised to gouge out your jugular in a heartbeat. Frank Bernabe gauged his visitor’s reaction and smiled to himself.

Actually, he had no objection to the Senate’s approving this transparently phony bit of “financial reform.” Despite what he’d just said to Kip Richardson, he had already decided that now was indeed the time to throw the peasants a few crumbs, so long as they didn’t grow fat or come to expect them. But he was annoyed that Richardson hadn’t been honest with him, and he wanted to stiffen the man’s spine in case any of his fellow employees down there in Washington decided to propose legislation with real teeth.

He let his smile show and said, “But all that’s water under the bridge, Kip. I can live with S.4220. Just next time do a better job of keeping me informed.” He pressed a button on the underside of his desk and the Asian woman appeared at the door. “Ms. Lee will see you out.”

Kip Richardson’s nerves held until the silent driver backed the Town Car out of its parking space. Then he opened the door and threw up on the pavement.

* * *

The letter Julie Teichner had been dreading arrived on a cold, dark November afternoon. She’d sat at her kitchen table and stared blankly at the single page, feeling as if someone had hollowed out her insides. It was a legal-looking document, full of whereases and therefores, but the only words she saw—the only words that mattered—were “strict foreclosure of said mortgage.”

Her weathered two-and-two bungalow in Coston, Ohio, a town of about 12,000 some sixty miles southwest of Akron, was worth just half of the $105,000 she and her late husband had paid for it five years ago, two months before John died and six months before she gave birth to Megan. A year later Julie was laid off from her secretary’s job, the bills piled up and the house was worth even less.

She tried to work things out with the bank but there was always some sort of problem, some sort of delay. They’d lost her application to modify her mortgage. Twice. There were endless requests for more documentation, which never seemed to be complete enough or get to the right people. When the case finally wound up in court, the bank couldn’t produce the note on her house. Then it produced a note with her name on it for a different house. Then it produced a note so obviously back-dated the bank’s attorney smirked when he submitted it. None of that mattered. The court ruled for the bank anyway.

All the while Julie’s neighbors did what they could, making the home repairs she couldn’t manage, bringing over home-cooked meals at the end of the month when her unemployment check always seemed to run out, even loaning her money to get her fifteen-year-old Honda fixed. It was a close-knit community; people there looked out for each other, even if their own situation was equally desperate. Julie stopped making her mortgage payments, socked away what money she could and tried to prepare for the day the sheriff would show up and tell her she had to leave.

That day had finally come.

It was November again, five o’clock in the morning on another cold, dark day. Temperature was in the mid-twenties; an unusual early season storm carried snow flurries on biting winds. Julie was at her living room window, watching the street through a crack in the curtains; a friend in the Coston police department had warned her today would be the day. She bit her lip as a patrol car eased down her street and parked in front of the house. Thank God she’d sent Megan to stay with her parents for a couple of days. She couldn’t bear the thought of her daughter seeing this.

The black-and-white’s doors swung open and two cops clambered out. Julie recognized the bulky one. Sgt. Dan Majerle. Mid-fifties, divorced, passed over for a promotion he knew now he was never going to get. An angry and bitter man, a real hard-ass. Even his fellow cops thought so. Majerle and his partner stepped up to the curb and started for the house.

Then it happened.

Julie could only watch in fear, in pride, her pulse pounding, as the two cops stopped, frozen, their eyes bulging in surprise, then disbelief. They exchanged glances, refocused again. Sgt. Majerle’s hand eased towards the Glock strapped to his waist.

Like ghosts materialized out of the blowing snow stood Julie Teichner’s neighbors. In ones and twos, they came from her block and the block down the street and the block around the corner. Standing silently, with unflinching purpose and immense dignity, they formed a line in front of her home. Every one was armed, some with hunting rifles, others with pistols, others with weapons brought back from Iraq and Vietnam. Tom Tanner, Julie’s next-door neighbor, blocked the pathway to her front door, cradling an old Remington 700 in hands rough and calloused from two decades in construction. Out of work for more than a year, his own home was being foreclosed on too.

His voice wasn’t loud but it rang like a clarion.

“Sorry, Dan. We can’t let you do this.”

The big cop’s hand closed around the butt of the Glock. He jerked the weapon from its holster, assumed the two-handed firing stance and shouted, “Put down your weapons! I am ordering you. Put down your weapons and disperse!”

The men and women in front of Julie Teichner’s house remained silent, expressionless. Unmoved. Majerle’s partner radioed in the situation, leaned into the sergeant and said, “Let’s lighten up a little here, Dan. Backup’s up its way.”

“No!” Majerle’s face was red, his breathing heavy. He trained his pistol on Tom Tanner. “For the last time, put down your weapons and disperse! I will fire on you!”

The air was thick and salted with electricity, the snow eddying on winds that suddenly seemed to blow in slow motion. Men swallowed and tasted their own mortality. Tom Tanner stared into the Glock’s barrel. At the window, Julie Teichner held her breath, too scared to look, too proud to look away. The slightest false movement, panicked reaction, and the snowy ground of this quiet neighborhood would ooze red.

Three more patrol cars arrived and a half-dozen blue uniforms jumped out, eyeing the armed citizens and their angry, huffing sergeant with equal unease. They weren’t prepared for this, an armed confrontation a millisecond away from a massacre. It was the stuff of New York or Chicago or L.A., not a small town in the Midwest where people still waved hello to their neighbors and spoke to strangers without fear.

“Unholster your weapons and place these people under arrest!” Majerle shouted at the deputies. “I am in command here! I AM IN COMMAND!”

“Put it down, Sergeant,” a calm voice said.

Dan Majerle shook his head as if to banish the unthinkable and felt the cold, smooth barrel of a Glock like his own at the base of his skull.

“Put it down, Dan,” the calm voice repeated. “No one’s getting hurt here, no one’s getting arrested.” The voice belonged to Majerle’s partner, a two-year patrolman named Rafael Ortega, a veteran of three tours in Iraq whose quiet, steady demeanor had impressed even officers many years his senior. “I’ve seen all the killing I ever want to see. There won’t be any here today.”

The sergeant’s face blazed red. His gaze flicked to the assembled uniforms. They stared back impassively, hands at their sides. Their eyes held only pity. Majerle’s shoulders slumped. He let out a long, slow, defeated breath and dropped his pistol back into its holster. Rafael Ortega holstered his own pistol, then faced the line of defenders and raised his voice.

“You can go home now,” he said. “This is over. I didn’t become a cop to throw my friends and neighbors out into the street. If the bank wants to take this woman’s house, let them come here and do it themselves.”

He paused and let the electricity in the air subside, then he took Dan Majerle by the elbow and led him back the patrol car. Tom Tanner and the guardians watched the cars disappear in puffs of exhaust and clouds of swirling snow. They watched a minute more, then, as silently as they had assembled, they were gone.

Chapter 3

It was time to go to work on Armando Gutierrez.

I did a Google search on the name, starting broad and gradually narrowing it down, just to see what would turn up. There wasn’t much, but what there was confirmed the outlines of what Chloe Enders’ contacts in SFPD had told her. There was a news story about an arrest for waving a gun at a fellow motorist in a road rage incident, about a fight in a South Beach bar, another arrest for beating up a man at a political rally in central Florida.

A criminal history check in the Miami-Dade court database revealed more of the same—a domestic abuse “stay away” injunction, an arrest for burglarizing a downtown law office, an assault trial that ended in dismissal when the alleged victim refused to testify. It was a curious and disturbing picture—a half-dozen violence-related arrests and charges filed only once. Armando Gutierrez had some kind of juice.

A little more digging and the picture grew more disturbing still.

Using Chloe’s information, I did a LexisNexis search next. Armando Gutierrez’s thuggery wasn’t just local. There were arrests in Denver, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and other cities—assault, assault and battery, criminal threats, brandishing a firearm. More searching produced another set of results—news stories suggesting a campaign of threats, vandalism, confrontations, beatings aimed at individuals and groups deemed “not American” enough to suit an amorphous collection of self-proclaimed patriots. All occurred during election years. All without charges being filed. I cross-referenced the dates of those stories with the dates of Gutierrez’s arrests. They matched.

Gotcha, you piece of shit.

I wanted more. Chloe had scanned and emailed me her files; I paged through them and found Armando Gutierrez’s mug shot. He was a nasty-looking sort—big round head, meaty face, short goatee, lightning bolt tattoo racing up a thick neck. I paged through some more and printed out his inventory sheet. When booked into SF County jail he’d been carrying $7,000 in cash and credit cards in several different names. Other personal property included a smartphone, two diamond earrings, a half-dozen gold chains and a Rolex President that retailed for more than twenty thousand dollars. There was other good stuff too, like a home address that more searching revealed as a waterfront condo at the tip of South Beach, a building where even in Florida’s depressed real estate market, individual units went from eight hundred thousand to eighteen million dollars.

That was all I could find out on my own. Anything else, I’d have to go to Mongoose.

I had no idea who Mongoose was, where he lived, how he supported himself, his real name. All I knew was that he was one of a tribe of cyber-anarchists who lived on the margins in Northern California, squatting in abandoned buildings in San Francisco one month, pitching tents in the wilds of Humboldt County another. The only constants in their lives were an Internet connection, prodigious computer skills, and complete disdain for virtually every aspect of American society.

I first met Mongoose covering a story on San Francisco’s young urban squatters, and immediately thereafter was scorched by his on-line flamings. But we’d established a fragile bond over our mutual love of great jazz on vinyl, and during my war against insurance companies he’d fire off an occasional approving text message. When I needed access to internal company emails to provide the smoking gun that would give her case credibility to the mainstream media, I thought of Mongoose, offering him the chance to fuck over a rapacious American corporation and a rare European recording of Thelonious Monk from my collection. The next day a thick folder containing every document relating to Carolyn’s case was dropped at my front door, and Mongoose and I had established a tentative but oddly compelling relationship.

My clumsy thumbs typed out a message on my smartphone: “Need ur help. Call.” An hour later the phone rang.

“Henson.”

“Speak.”

Mongoose was never much for social niceties.

“I need a full jacket on Armando Gutierrez. G-U-T-I-E-R-R-E-Z. Cuban. DOB 11-30-77. 100 South Palm Drive, Miami Beach. He’s got a cell; I don’t have the number. That’s it.”

I could feel Mongoose’s scorn on the other end of the line. It was like asking Michelangelo to paint your bathroom. But I knew how to play him.

“He’s one of the assholes who beat Eldrick Brown.”

The scorn vanished.

“Done. Expect. Soon.”

And the line went dead.

* * *

The package delivered to Lauren Pinter’s Capitol Hill row house arrived by private courier a little after noon. There was nothing unusual about this. Spending as much of soon-to-be ex-husband Jake’s vast fortune as possible was Lauren Pinter’s chief pastime; deliveries of everything from designer outfits to expensive jewelry were as regular as sunsets. She’d even joined a wine club that sent a dozen bottles a month of whatever wines were currently trendy.

But there was something unusual about this particular package. For one, the thick padded envelope bore no markings from any retailer, no markings from anyone, just Lauren Pinter’s street number, city and zip code on a computer-printed label. But what really grabbed her attention was the name on the label: former Senate Minority Leader Jefferson Dalworth, with whom she’d been having a year-long affair and who at this very moment was in her shower, washing off the musky residue of their morning’s love-making.

Her breath caught in her lungs as the implications of the mysterious package penetrated her post-coital fog. She threw open the door and rushed outside to confront the anonymous man in the gray uniform who’d rung her doorbell and handed her the envelope but the street and sidewalk in front of her house were empty. Worried now, she ducked back inside, closed and locked the door, set the envelope on the desk in her study and fled the room as if it might suddenly burst into flames.

Jefferson Dalworth emerged from the shower toweling off his tanned body and tousled gray hair. He was in his mid-sixties but looked ten years younger, not exactly handsome but with a personal magnetism that could instantly draw people, especially beautiful women, into his orbit like smaller planets revolving around a shining sun.

Professionally he was on a roll, having been voted Republican majority leader after winning a fifth term representing Texas in the U.S. Senate and leading the fight to kill President Elias’s half-hearted attempt at healthcare reform. His on-camera appeal, coupled with ambition totally unfettered by scruples and the ability to generate millions of dollars in campaign contributions had convinced many of the party’s bigwigs he was presidential material and put him at the top of the list for next year’s nomination.

Personally he wasn’t doing so bad either. Over the past months he’d cemented his relationship with Lauren Pinter, a fortysomething blonde in the process of divorcing her tycoon husband. Marriage was even on the horizon, giving him access to her share of the Pinter fortune, estimated at $500 million. There was still the matter of smoothing things over with Meryl, his wife of more than two decades, but the promise of a generous division of property plus $10,000 a month for life, that last his payoff from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries for killing Elias’ healthcare bill, had persuaded her to forgo both her marriage and any public comment.

Even through the clouds of steam hugging the marble walls of the bathroom he could see Lauren was upset. He moved to take her in his arms but she recoiled and said, “I just got a package for you.”

Dalworth looked puzzled.

“I just got a package for you, Jefferson,” Lauren Pinter repeated, her voice riding the edge of hysteria. “In your name. Delivered. Here.” She put her hands on his chest and pushed. “You said no one was going to know. You promised. You promised! If Jake finds out before the divorce is final he’ll want to renegotiate everything. You know what a bastard he is. He can buy lawyers, judges, investigators, anyone; they’ll do whatever he wants. This is my future, money for the rest of my life and somebody knows!”

Instantly, his politician’s instincts took over. He took Lauren Pinter by the shoulders and said soothingly. “Let’s not get carried away here. It may not be as bad as all that. We don’t know what’s in the package; it might be just a simple mistake. Even if it’s not, whoever did this wants something. Probably money. I have some and I can get more. If anyone wanted to put this story out they’d have done it already; the fact that they haven’t means they want to cut a deal. We can do that, give them what they want and be rid of them. It doesn’t have to go any further.”

His mind was racing—cataloging his enemies, evaluating their destructive potential, game-planning his response. But he kept his face calm and stroked Lauren Pinter’s hair.

“We can get through this,” he said. “It’s just something we have to deal with and then things will get back to normal.” He made a mental note to ask his contacts in the FBI to get any footage of surveillance cameras in the area to try to determine just who and how the package had been delivered. “First thing I need to do is put something on and see what’s in that package. Then we’ll decide where to go from there. Okay?”

“Alright, Jefferson.” Lauren Pinter took a deep breath and managed a semblance of a smile. “I trust you. Just make this go away. Please?”

“I will, sweetheart. I will.” He kissed her absent-mindedly on the forehead. “Now, where did you put that thing?”

* * *

“Soon” came two hours later with an email from Mongoose that laid out Armando Gutierrez’s thirty-three years like a butterfly pinned to a board. Processing all the data in the dozens of scanned pages and attachments would take days, but for now I was interested in only two things. How did Gutierrez get his money and where did he spend it?

Income tax filings gave the answer to the first question. Gutierrez was employed as a “security consultant” by something called Genesis Group, a company I’d never heard of. They paid him twenty grand a month, not including bonuses, enough to afford a new Corvette and his expensive South Beach condo. For that kind of money, I decided, he must be one hell of a consultant.

His bank and credit card statements answered my second question. Gutierrez was not only a well-paid consultant but a well-traveled one, with cash withdrawals and airline, hotel and rent-a-car bills in cities large and small across the country. I already knew what he’d been up to during election years so I focused on the last eighteen months, and in a few minutes had his complete itinerary—trips up and down the East Coast, to a pair of cities in the Midwest, to Miami, to Los Angeles and Sacramento and up to Oregon.

It was an ATM transaction in a small Illinois town that piqued my attention. I remembered reading about it a little over a year ago, how the workers in a foundering manufacturing plant there, hoping to replicate the earlier, well-publicized success of the employees of Republic Windows and Doors in getting severance and vacation pay when its owners suddenly shut it down, took over the plant and embarked on their own quest for economic justice.

I jotted down the date and went through Gutierrez’s credit card statements. An ATM withdrawal of two-hundred dollars occurred towards the end of what hotel, rental car and restaurant receipts suggested was a stay of at least two weeks in Peoria, about forty miles away. I accessed local newspapers’ archives for the period and began flipping though stories, realizing as I did that I never knew how the occupation of the manufacturing plant turned out.

Now I did.

During the weeks Armando Gutierrez was around a series of accidents befell the families of the men and women holed up in the plant. The foreman’s wife was seriously injured in a hit-and-run, another’s house burned down in a suspicious fire, the husband of one of the few female workers was mugged and severely beaten. Several families reported threatening phone calls, burglaries, car tires slashed and windows broken. It was a mini reign of terror, and no one was apprehended. After three weeks, the workers gave up, left the plant and were cited for trespassing. Armando Gutierrez moved on.

I ran through other dates with building anger. Gutierrez’s East Coast trips matched up with town hall meetings, demonstrations, sit-ins, local elections and other political actions where violent confrontations had been reported. His trip to Oregon coincided with a statewide campaign to boost taxes on the rich and corporations. I’d seen enough. There was a lot more to this than just Armando Gutierrez. What that was would be my job to find out.

* * *

Jefferson Dalworth locked the door to Lauren Pinter’s study and examined the envelope on the desk. Despite his confident dismissal of her fears, his mind was churning. Stomach too. Lauren Pinter’s millions were crucial to his planned run for president, and a vengeful, cuckolded, well-connected husband with the means and will to make life difficult for him was a problem to be taken very seriously.

He slit open the envelope and shook out a clear plastic case containing an unmarked DVD, not noticing the plain white business card that fluttered silently to the floor. He turned on Lauren Pinter’s computer and shoved the disc into its slot, trying to ignore a nagging sense that he had just handled the instrument of his own destruction.

The DVD whirred, an image flashed and that nagging sense became a physical shock that had him gagging on his own bile. The computer screen filled with the imposing façade of a five-star hotel on exclusive Brickell Key, a posh and pricy retreat where he stayed whenever he was in Miami. That segued into footage of him striding through the lobby, standing at the concierge’s desk, slipping his key card into the door of his top-floor suite.

He knew what was coming next and moaned aloud. From somewhere in the ceiling a camera’s unrelenting eye stared down at him, propped up on the bed in his bathrobe, a bottle of chilled champagne and two crystal flutes on an end table. Seconds later the bedroom door opened and a knife-like pain shot through his chest that made him want to retch all over again. Even through the pain and horror he was still stirred by the boy’s almost feminine, pre-pubescent beauty. His creamy, coffee-colored skin and midnight-black hair and slim, hairless body, the air of innocence that only vanished if you looked too long into his deep brown eyes.

The boy shrugged out of his clothes and stood naked at the bedside. Then he knelt down and slowly opened Jefferson Dalworth’s bathrobe. The pain and horror only built as the camera showed him fall back in bed, his hips jerking, face twisted with pleasure, the boy’s head bobbing, bobbing. . .

“No! No, no, NO!!”

Jefferson Dalworth rose from his chair and swept the computer off the desk. His chest felt wrapped in barbed wire. He fell on the machine and scrabbled at it with numbing hands, desperate to remove the offending disc from its slot. Then something exploded inside of him and he collapsed on the floor. Jefferson Dalworth died with the DVD just beyond his grasp, the business card he’d never noticed only inches from his sightless eyes.

Chapter 4

AnnaLynn Conté stifled a yawn and took a sip of water to steady her nerves. She could have had coffee but was afraid it would make her even more jittery. As a lawyer and former legal analyst for a New Orleans television station, she was used to being in front of the camera. And it loved her petite figure, her short-cut, pixie-ish hair framing delicate features and luminous green eyes. But this was the big leagues, the Sunday morning network talk show circuit, and she was only too aware that she was this Sunday’s sacrificial Christian about to be tossed to the lions.

An assistant producer led her out of the “green room”—the waiting room for guests about to go on-air, actually painted a dull industrial shade of beige—and into the studio, sitting her down across a large, Formica-topped desk opposite moderator Charles Wheatley. Wheatley, a one-time Congressional aide turned political operative turned TV talking head, had in eleven years as ringmaster of In the Know made the hour-long show a font of inside-the-Beltway punditry and faux wisdom. He was talking to the show’s producer over his lapel mike and didn’t bother to look up.

AnnaLynn Conté didn’t mind. She could use the minutes of quiet time to gather her thoughts and boost her sagging energy. She’d gotten only a few hours’ sleep in her Washington D.C. hotel room, fielding a constant stream of updates about the sophisticated denial of service attack on the website of the organization she founded and led, SayNo.org. At one point she might have thought it coincidental the site was attacked on the eve of a national TV appearance sure to result in thousands of desperate inquiries. But after the burglary of her group’s offices, intermittent cyber attacks, and inexplicable and repeated telephone and power outages, she didn’t much believe in coincidence.

Wheatley finished his conversation, turned to her and said curtly, “Thirty seconds.” She took a deep breath, put on her most composed, impassive “TV face” and waited for the show’s producer to count down the final ten seconds to open. At the magic “one,” the host’s normally dour countenance instantly transformed itself into a mask of avuncular munificence, the rich uncle passing out Christmas presents to his disadvantaged nieces and nephews, the little bastards.

“Good Sunday morning, and welcome to In the Know,” he intoned gravely. “I am Charles Wheatley, and today the subject is middle class anger and what can be done about it.” His tone suggested a good whipping would suffice.

“Our first guest is AnnaLynn Conté, founder and director of SayNo.org, a radical left-wing organization that advocates the overthrow of the government. The organization was in the news lately when it posted a video on its website of a group of armed citizens in Ohio, confronting police who were attempting to evict a woman who hadn’t paid her mortgage. No one was injured in the confrontation, but it has already spawned similar incidents in other cities, and Ms. Conté has taken credit for more than three million homeowners walking away from their financial obligations. Her organization is also claiming pledges from more than five million Americans not to pay any of their bills for the month of July, in what she calls ‘the People’s July Fourth celebration.’ Others call it an assault on the American way of life. Welcome to In the Know, Ms. Conté.”

AnnaLynn Conté smiled sweetly. “Thank you, Chuck. I’m glad to be here. You don’t mind if I call you Chuck, do you?”

Charles Wheatley grimaced and tried to look like he didn’t want to wrap his fingers around her throat.

She spoke quickly, giving him no chance to interrupt. “Just to correct a couple of misstatements. As of yesterday we actually had seven million pledges. And I am not calling it ‘the People’s’ anything; it’s called ‘The New Declaration of Independence.’ As for the incident in Ohio, we don’t advise anyone to walk away from their mortgages; we lay out all the options and advise them to do what’s best in their particular situation. For some people that might mean a short sale, renegotiating terms with their bank or even continuing to make their payments. For others it might mean giving the keys back to the lender. But one thing we do advise everyone is not to do anything unless the bank can produce a legitimate note, real legal proof that it actually owns their house.”

“Isn’t that the height of irresponsibility?” Wheatley hammered back. “Rewarding people for not living up to their obligations. For taking out loans they couldn’t afford, for living beyond their means.”

“You mean like irresponsibly giving out loans to people they knew couldn’t afford them and pocketing thousands of dollars in fees for each one? Like slicing and dicing those loans into little pieces, repackaging them, getting corrupt ratings companies to sign off on them as Grade A investments and pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars more in profits? Like then betting against the garbage they just sold and pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars of more profit? Then finally, when they crashed the world economy and ruined the financial future of millions of Americans, taking billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money and, instead of lending that money back, used it to do the same things that got us into this mess in the first place. And to pay themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses, and buy senators and congressmen and even a president like Las Vegas hookers to make sure there’s nothing to prevent them from doing it all over again, a year, two years, ten years down the road. You mean that kind of irresponsibility?”

“That’s not the kind of irresponsibility I mean,” Wheatley barked. “I mean the irresponsibility of people buying new cars and big-screen TVs and taking fancy vacations, and now they’re crying for someone to bail them out.”

“I don’t think I like the implications of what you’re saying, Chuck. The productivity of the American worker is the highest in the world. We work longer hours with fewer vacations, fewer benefits, fewer protections than workers in any first-world country you’d care to name. Yet over the past forty years the wages of the average working man and woman have been stagnant, while at the same time salaries for people at the top have increased hundreds of times over. They’re spending more on birthday parties than most Americans make in a year; buying second, third and fourth homes; living in luxury most of us can’t even imagine. But for all our work and all our hours and all our productivity, when the average American wants a slice of the pie that he and she helped create—maybe a newer car, a bigger TV, a nicer vacation—all of a sudden we’re greedy and irresponsible? I don’t think so.”

Wheatley bore down. “You still haven’t answered my question. Is it or is it not irresponsible to encourage people to walk away from their mortgages or refuse to fulfill their debts when they have the ability to pay?”

“It is not. Not at all. As you know, it’s a common practice in business. Companies do it all the time. It’s called ‘strategic default.’ Didn’t Morgan Stanley give five office buildings in San Francisco back to the lender because they were only worth half of what they paid for them? Surely you’re not saying Morgan Stanley didn’t have the ability to pay. So why shouldn’t people have the same rights as corporations? After all, the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have the same rights as people.”

“But the Supreme Court said nothing about violence, about armed men attacking police officers trying to enforce the law.”

“If you’re referring to the incident in Ohio involving Julie Teichner, as you already pointed out, no one was attacked, no one was injured and the situation was resolved peacefully. And let’s look at this thing called ‘the law.’ It’s not the Word of God engraved on stone tablets and handed down from the heavens. It’s a hash of elements cobbled together by men—many of them corrupt, duplicitous, working only in their own self-interest. ‘The law’ could allow people like Julie Teichner to declare bankruptcy and maybe keep their homes. But that law was changed to make it more difficult. ‘The law’ could allow judges to force banks to renegotiate mortgages for people like Julie, but that law was killed because the banks didn’t like it. ‘The law’ could allow the government to provide real financial assistance to people under water on their mortgages, but, as you know, it doesn’t. So let’s not get too self-righteous about ‘the law.’”

It was only the thick layer of pancake makeup that kept Wheatley’s face from glowing a vivid crimson.

“But the violence! What about the—”

“There was no violence, Chuck. Remember? But if George Washington and Thomas Jefferson believed that violence, or at least the threat of violence, was never, ever justified, we’d all be eating spotted dick instead of hamburgers and playing soccer instead of baseball.”

“That’s dangerous talk, Ms. Conté.” Wheatley’s voice was ominous.

AnnaLynn Conté said simply, “Yes, it is.”

“And here’s more dangerous talk. This is quoting from your website. ‘There are only two things that matter in this country today: money and power. The people who hold both believe that you should have neither. Show them they’re wrong by signing the New Declaration of Independence. For one month, beginning July 4th, we will pay no bills, no fees, no taxes, not one penny to corporations or the government. We do have money and we do have power. And if we use them we can make America work again.’ That sounds like you’re advocating class warfare, Ms. Conté.”

“Absolutely. The rich and powerful, the folks at the top of the pyramid, have waged class war against the rest of us for decades. We’re just saying it’s time to wage class war back.”

“That’s outrageous!”

“Is it? It’s peaceful, non-violent civil disobedience, in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. We’re just saying that by refusing to make payments for one month to corporations and a government that consistently work against the interests of the vast majority of Americans, we can force them to take our interests seriously. We’re calling it, to borrow a phrase conservatives seem to love so much, ‘Starve the Beasts.’”

“And you think you’ll get away with that?”

“Oh, we’ll get away with it. If they retaliate—in any way—we’ll withhold payments for a second month. . . and a third and a fourth. We’ll see how long they can go on without our money, how long they think we have no power.”

“Why, why”—Charles Wheatley was practically sputtering—”that could collapse our entire economic system!”

AnnaLynn Conté suddenly felt suffused with an eerie, Zen-like calm. She paused, savoring the moment, rolling it around in her mind like a sip of fine Bordeaux, then gave the answer that made mouths go dry in corporate boardrooms, executive suites and government offices around the country.

“Exactly.”

* * *

No one at city hall paid undue attention to the permit application filed by something called The Collective to hold a demonstration in West Palm Beach’s Waterfront Park, except perhaps for a few staffers’ snickers over its grandiloquent title: “A Rally for Economic and Social Justice.”

Originally a source of cheap housing for those who toiled to comfort the comfortable across the waterway in Palm Beach, over the years West Palm evolved into a solidly middle-class town with a pronounced blueish collar, known chiefly for its bad water, gang violence and corrupt politicians.

Demonstrations, for justice or anything else, were the sole purview of a handful of homeless activists who enjoyed rubbing their clients’ misery in the faces of those who were only a missed paycheck or two away from joining them on the street. “The Collective,” the clerks in the city’s Community Events department assumed, was just another group of these sad sacks. If they’d have bothered to check, not that there was any reason they should have, they would have discovered the demonstration coincided with the final day of a week-long convention of the Financial Services Association, this year held at an opulent resort on what Palm Beach’s wealthy denizens call “the Island.”

The Collective’s application asked for permission to run a sound system and amplifiers for acoustic guitars, to pass out fliers and bottled water. In the field inquiring about where the demonstration might be promoted or advertised, someone had scribbled “Internet.” That was all. Inexplicably scheduled for a mid-week afternoon, the city estimated it would draw seventy-five, a hundred people max, and detailed a couple of cops to occasionally cruise by. Then they promptly forgot all about it.

The first inkling authorities had that perhaps they had miscalculated was a series of morning traffic reports on local radio and TV stations indicating an unusually heavy flow on I-95, backing up at all West Palm Beach off-ramps. In the month since the permit application was filed a couple of the city’s younger staffers mentioned to their superiors that word of the demonstration was all over the ‘Net—”gone viral,” was the phrase they used—but their concerns were waved away.

Then the calls started coming in. Blocked intersections, fender benders, double and triple parking. Cops on morning commute patrol were quickly marooned in an ocean of stalled vehicles. The city’s entire downtown was in gridlock. People abandoned their cars in the street, got out and began hoofing the blocks, half-mile, mile and more to the demonstration site. In a town where the only acceptable form of walking is taking a few steps to your car, the streets and sidewalks of West Palm Beach resembled Manhattan at the peak of rush hour. Police dispatch and local emergency phone lines were overwhelmed.

“Traffic’s backed up on 95 at all West Palm exits.”

“I’ve been sitting here half an hour and haven’t moved an inch.”

“There are cars and people everywhere!”

“Sidewalks are jammed; people are running through the street.”

“We need some uniforms out here. Now! And tell them to walk; there’s nothing moving in any direction for as far as I can see.”

“The entire city is shut down.”

“Where are all these people heading?”

“What the fuck is going on here?!”

The growing throng converged on West Palm’s Waterfront Park, a pleasant grassy expanse with a small pavilion facing the Intracoastal, within sight of Flagler Memorial Bridge. The organizers watched first with pride, then awe, then terror as a seemingly endless sea of bodies overwhelmed the park and pavilion and then filled surrounding streets and sidewalks. This was not the handful of fringe players The Collective had been expecting but a crowd that was solidly middle class, blue and white collar, with little sympathy for masked anarchists and professional protestors. The dozen or so members of The Collective wanted nothing to do with this new kind of demonstrator; they ducked their heads and fled, leaving their equipment and water and fliers behind.

As time dragged on without direction or encouragement, the crowd’s euphoria in its numbers, its shared purpose began to wane. The day grew hotter. Tempers grew shorter. Nerves frayed. The inevitable jostling and trodding feet and sharp elbows became an irritant, then an affront. One man pushed another, a woman snapped at her mate, a bored teenager tried to steal cigarettes from a shop. The immense crowd’s patience and good will was rapidly draining away.

Police sirens wailed. The mood grew edgier. Rumors spread like ripples on a pond. Police were massing on the Palm Beach side of the Intracoastal and would begin to sweep the area. Blocks would be cordoned off and everyone in them would be arrested. Helicopters would drop tear gas and flash-bang grenades. The National Guard was on its way.

The crowd’s mood was ugly now. More sirens wailed. Shopkeepers closed and locked their doors and drew their hurricane shutters. A young man stood in the center of the pavilion, speaking quietly to the people around him. They listened intently. More people crowded around him. He spoke louder to reach them. There was nothing distinctive about him, except perhaps his indistinctiveness. He was slight but not skinny, neither short nor tall, with a coffee-shaded complexion that could have been black or Hispanic or Caribbean. Or not.

Two of his listeners hoisted him on their shoulders. A third handed him a microphone. Others fiddled with the sound equipment. A banshee howl of feedback cut like a dagger through the humid air. Thousands of pairs of eyes riveted to its source. The young man looked nervous, even scared. He raised the microphone to his mouth and in a faltering voice said, “We’re here today. . .”

He stopped and shook his head, a faint smile on his lips, an amused rebuke to his own ineptitude. He straightened his shoulders, swept his arm across the throng and boomed in a voice that was suddenly deep and confident and magisterial, “Is this a beautiful sight or what?”

Thousands of conversations halted. Thousands more eyes riveted on him. Sirens still wailed.

“I came here today just as you did,” the young man began. “To speak with a voice greater than the power of one, to speak with a voice greater than the power of money and influence, to speak with a voice greater than those who use their public microphone to advance their own narrow self-interest.

“Perhaps like you too, I wasn’t sure what to say.” Murmurs of agreement swirled, eddied, crested. The young man nodded in acknowledgement. “I didn’t have any great words, the gift of oratory that can set men’s and women’s souls on fire. But then I thought, what we came here to seek doesn’t demand great words, great oratory. What we came here seeking is simple. Justice. Equality. Representation. Fairness. Compassion. And I thought, all I really need to say is one simple word.

“Enough.”

The murmurs grew louder.

“Enough.

“To those who hold themselves as princes, gathering riches upon riches while outside their gated mansions people struggle to survive, to feed their families, to make a better life, we say enough! To those who hold themselves as uncrowned kings, who believe it is their place to rule and ours to bow our heads, who believe the law is their servant and they are its masters, who believe our freedoms are mere trifles to be granted or withheld as they see fit, we say enough!”

He was soaring now, carrying the crowd along with him.

“And to those who have sold our hopes and dreams, our futures, our birthright as Americans, for thirty pieces of corporate silver, we say no more. We say your time is over. We say stand with us or dare to stand against us. We say enough! ENOUGH!!”

The crowd exploded.

“ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH!”

The young man paused and cocked his head as if he couldn’t hear their answer.

“But maybe it’s not enough,” he said. “Maybe we can do more.”

He turned and pointed to the short span rising over the Intracoastal. “You see that bridge over there? Just across that bridge are the people we should be talking to. They’re at a hotel, a beautiful hotel, a hotel where people like you and me cut the grass and clean the rooms and wait the tables.

“They’re the people who sold you a loan you couldn’t afford or understand, then took your house. They’re the people who ruined their companies and paid themselves million-dollar bonuses. They’re the people who ruined our economy and paid themselves million-dollar bonuses. They’re the people who threw millions out of work and paid themselves million-dollar bonuses. They’re the people who took billions of dollars of your money and paid themselves yet more million-dollar bonuses.

“So maybe we should go talk to those people in their nice hotel, maybe we should tell them that we’ve had enough of their million-dollar bailouts, their million-dollar bonuses, their million-dollar arrogance. We should tell them that we are not serfs, we are not pawns for them to push around on their own private chessboard. We are Americans. And this is our country too. We should tell them that their millions cannot buy us, their millions cannot buy our government, cannot buy our country. Because America is no longer up for sale! I say right now we should walk across that bridge and tell them. What do you say?”

The sound that rose from thousands of throats was a huge, angry, inarticulate cry that could have rattled the clouds drifting overhead. A phalanx of bodies surged along the Intracoastal towards the bridge, moving inexorably like the tide. The young man was carried along in their wake but pushed forward, surrounded by a group of men and women who helped him cleave through the crowd and position himself at its head. Sirens wailed louder, almost drowned out by a rhythmic chanting:

“Enough, enough, enough!”

The authorities made their stand at Flagler Bridge. Every available man and woman, every piece of equipment from local police, sheriff’s office, Highway Patrol was massed at the foot of the bridge, an immovable object intended to halt an unstoppable force.

No one knows who fired the first shot. The multitude of law enforcement agencies present denied all responsibility, and there was no evidence of weapons fired from the demonstrators’ side. For a time, suspicion centered on several bands of beefy, black-uniformed men originally thought to be SWAT teams but the matter received little play in the press and soon faded away. A special commission appointed to investigate took a few days’ worth of testimony, then retired with a bureaucratic shrug of its shoulders.

Whoever was responsible, what is known is that twenty-two people died that day, seven by gunshot, thirteen trampled to death in the frenzy to escape that followed, and two by drowning when they were forced off the Flagler Bridge and into the water below. One of those seven gunshot victims was the young man whose speech had set wings to the crowd, his head exploded like a ripe melon from a high-velocity bullet fired from somewhere behind police lines. He carried no ID, and his fingerprints and dental records matched none in the system. Days later he was given a perfunctory burial to which no one came.

That evening it rained hard, a cold, driving rain that lasted until dawn and left the air clean and palm fronds glistening. But it didn’t wash away the red-brown stains that lay like stigmata on the pavement.

Chapter 5

Sometimes, when you pull on a thread, an entire tapestry can unravel. Armando Gutierrez was that thread, but before I could start pulling, I needed to know more about him. What kind of person was he, really? Was he loved, respected, feared, despised? Was he a good son, mate, neighbor? What were his likes, dislikes? What pushed his buttons? He was my chance to unravel a tapestry of intimidation, violence, even murder that made a mockery of our small-d “democratic” ideals.

Armando Gutierrez’s condo was in an area of South Beach known as “SoFi”—South of Fifth Street. It was an area that came later to the upscaling of South Beach than the streets to its north—Ocean Drive with its lineup of gaudy Art Deco hotels, Lincoln Road with its array of shops and restaurants on a broad pedestrian mall, Collins Drive with its massive four-star hotels and Washington Avenue’s tony boutiques and eclectic mix of eateries. I didn’t have the patter or brass balls to bluff my way past the guards at the front door, but there was no reason I couldn’t get in through the back. Or the side.

On my way into South Beach I stopped at a supermarket and bought a bag of groceries—lots of cans and jars and packages, the kind of crappy, processed fare that’s a staple of bachelor life. Before leaving home I’d printed a handful of phony business cards on my computer, tied my graying hair in a neat ponytail and shed my typical Keys’ uniform of shorts, flips and frayed tropical shirt for my one remaining good suit, which still sort of, almost, fit. No socks, though. After all, this is South Florida. When I got to the Gutierrez condo I parked at one of the side entrances and waited for its residents—among them, hopefully, a sympathetic woman—to come strolling back from an early dinner or late day at the office or quick trip to a local market.

After half an hour of drumming my fingers and running my Miata’s wheezing air-conditioner I saw what I was looking for—a pair of good-looking young women, still in business dress, chatting animatedly and heading for home. One was already reaching into her purse for her key card. As they approached the entrance I got out of the car, awkwardly holding my heavy bag of groceries, and quick-footed it to the door, then faked a stumble and dropped the bag to the pavement, scattering my goodies in their path.

“Oh, shit!” I muttered, kneeling down and cramming everything back in the bag. I looked up at the women, a harmless, embarrassed loser. “I am such a doofus,” I said, rising to my feet, the crumpled bag held tightly to my chest. “Would you mind getting the door?”

They both smiled sweetly at the clumsy, aging, hippie doofus, then the blonde swiped her card and the brunette held the door open. They smiled again at my chivalrous, “Thank you, ladies,” and walked down the hall, chuckling, I was sure, at my pathetic lack of coolness.

But I was in.

I already had Armando Gutierrez’s apartment number from the county real estate records so I ditched my groceries in an empty elevator and rode another to the twenty-first floor. My plan was to brace his neighbors with a modestly believable cover story and find out anything they knew about the man in apartment 2144, maybe get a lead on a girlfriend or frequent visitor who I might pump for more information.

No one was home at 2142. At 2146 a large man with a military buzz cut and body builder’s physique straining a wife-beater t-shirt opened the door.

“I’m Christopher Travers with Secure Tech Industries,” I said, holding out my fake business card. “We’re considering Armando Gutierrez, your next-door neighbor, for an important position with our firm, and I’d like to ask you a few—”

Slam!

I must have been in the Keys too long; I’d forgotten about the hospitality of big city residents.

I didn’t have much better luck at 2141 or 2143. At 2145 a gnome-like woman with dyed-blond hair wearing a flowing designer caftan answered. She looked to be in her mid-seventies but remarkably well-preserved, with quick, bird-like movements and ice-blue eyes that raked over me like lasers.

I did my Christopher Travers thing.

“. . . and I’d like to ask you a few questions about—”

“Hah! You can’t bullshit me, Christopher Travers or whoever the hell you are. Come in and have a drink. And don’t think I’m a helpless old woman. I’ve got a .38 Police Special and I know how to use it.”

I stood in the doorway, still recovering from her verbal onslaught, not sure whether to laugh, run or go in.

“Scotch or vodka? That’s all I’ve got.” She’d already turned her back to me and was filling a glass from a bottle of vodka on a table in the living room. “Well, what are you waiting for, Christopher Travers? You’re not one of those teetotaling health nuts, are you?”

Not me.

“Scotch, please. Just a couple of cubes.”

I shut the door behind me and she stuck out a bony hand, giving mine a good, firm squeeze.

“I’m Marilyn Kravitz. Moved to this humid hellhole thirteen years ago from the Bronx. Never wanted to leave New York but Melvin, he wanted to retire to Florida. He’s gone now, may he rest in peace. Never made much money but enough to buy this place. Now it’s worth half what we paid for it and I can’t afford to leave. So who are you, anyway? And don’t give me that Christopher Travers crap.”

“No crap, Ms. Kravitz,” I said. “My name’s Josh Henson. I’m a reporter for Public Interest. It’s a group of investigative journalists all over the country. I’m working a story that involves Armando Gutierrez and I was hoping you could give me some information about him. Anything you know would be a help.”

Marilyn Kravitz considered that, then handed me a glass filled to the rim with Johnny Walker Black.

“Drink.”

I drank.

“That’s good. I don’t trust a man who doesn’t drink. And I’m not Mizz Kravitz anything. I’m Marilyn. You’re Josh. You are Josh, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“That’s a good name. Sit.”

I sat.

“So you want to know about the Shitheel. What’s he done?”

The Shitheel. This was going to be good.

“He works for a so-called security company here in Miami with ties to right-wing organizations. Basically, he’s a thug. He goes around the country beating people up, staging ‘accidents’—mostly political stuff. Except now he’s graduated to murder. He’s in jail in San Francisco; he and some buddies beat a friend of mine to death. I’m trying to find out about the people he works for, who they work for. What the hell is going on here.”

Marilyn took a big gulp of her vodka. “I’m sorry about your friend.” She sat quietly for a moment. “The Shitheel—that’s what everyone in the building calls him—is a real nogoodnik. The kind who bumps you with his shoulder in the hall if you don’t get out of his way. He’s not here very much but when he is he hangs out with a bunch of other schnooks just like him. Every night it’s a party—that horrid rap music, drinking, drugs. I think they smoke marijuana. It goes on until five, six in the morning. No one can get any sleep but they’re all afraid to complain. I’m not, though. I’ve got a .38 Police Special—”

“And I’m sure you know how to use it.”

“Damn straight. He’s got a girlfriend too. She lives in the building, two floors down. Nice girl. Pretty. Gaby. Gaby Lopez, I think. He beats her.”

Jesus. A real class act.

“You know anything else about her? Or the guys he hangs out with?”

“She’s Colombian, I think. I heard her say once she works in a law office. I’m a nosy old woman but that’s all I know. I don’t know anything about his shitheel friends, either. But one time I saw this little guy rip him a new one.”

“Do tell.”

“I was in the parking garage. It was late, after our girls’ poker night. I waxed that old biddy Nadine Terwilliger good. She thought she had me with two pair but I had a full house. Took her for twenty bucks. Thought she was gonna shit her pants right—”

“The little guy, Marilyn. Ripping the new one.”

“Oh, right. I was in the parking garage. My reading glasses had fallen out of my purse, beneath the seat. I was down on the floor looking for them when I hear another car pull in. The Shitheel gets out—”

“How did you know it was the Shitheel?”

“What, you think I’m stupid? I’m a nosy old broad from The Bronx; I peeked over the dashboard. And stop interrupting.”

I sighed. “Yes, Marilyn.”

“That’s better. So the Shitheel gets out, and this little guy gets out too. He’s shorter than me. Gray hair, gray beard. You know, that kind of beard that just looks like stubble. He says something to the Shitheel and the Shitheel says something back. Then the little guy slaps him across the face, slaps him really hard. The Shitheel didn’t do anything, like he was scared. The little guy started yelling at him about keeping his fucking mouth shut, pardon my French, about staying away from ‘bitches.’ I don’t remember what else. Tell you the truth, I was scared too. He may have been little but he looked like he’d bite your nose off, just to see if it tastes good. Then he got back in the car and drove away and the Shitheel went inside.”

“When was this?”

“About two weeks ago.”

“Would you recognize him if you— Of course you would.”

“Damn straight.”

“What about Gaby?”

Marilyn took another big gulp of vodka and checked her watch.

“When the Shitheel’s not here she’s probably in the exercise room, running on one of those treadmill thingees. What is it with you young people and exercise, anyway? Melvin and I never exercised a day in our lives and we’re still going stro—well, Melvin isn’t. But he was as strong as an ox. Did I tell you—”

I waved my arms in surrender. “Marilyn, Marilyn.”

No wonder poor Melvin was no longer with us. Just trying to get a word in edgewise had probably worn him out.

“Oh, right. Sorry. I’ll take you up to the exercise room if you want to see her.”

“Yes, I would. Thank you.”

Marilyn grabbed her purse and we took an elevator to the building’s top floor, which opened onto a huge swimming pool, barbecue area, lounge and exercise room. That last was really a well-equipped gym, full of whirring, clanking, chrome-plated machines and wall-to-wall mirrors so you could admire your own sweaty, self-conscious industriousness.

A row of treadmills sculpting already admirable female derrieres lined a far wall. Marilyn pointed to a woman in pastel gym shorts with long, dark hair tied in a ponytail hanging almost to her waist.

“That’s Gaby,” she said.

“You stay here,” I said. “I’ll only be a minute.”

I walked across the room and stopped in front of Gaby Lopez’s treadmill. She wasn’t just pretty; she was drop-dead gorgeous. Slim and petite but with curves in all the right places. Soft, luxuriant hair the color of ink at midnight, creamy skin that could make cashmere feel like sandpaper. But even a thick coating of makeup couldn’t hide the bruise under one eye, the purple marks on her neck and wrists. She resolutely ignored me and kept her legs pumping as I took out my Public Interest business card and laid it on the treadmill console in front of her.

“Gaby, I understand you’re Armando Gutierrez’s girlfriend,” I said, trying to keep my voice down but still audible over the humming machines. “I wonder if you could talk to me about him. You know he’s in jail for murder in San Francisco?”

I don’t know if it was the mention of Armando Gutierrez’s name or his arrest that did it, but Gaby Lopez jerked backwards as if she’d just seen a rattlesnake, almost losing her footing and spinning off the treadmill. Before I could move or speak again she turned and fled, brushing past Marilyn at the door and running out into the dusk. I stood there like an idiot, all the workout junkies watching, then I picked up my card, put my head down and nodded at Marilyn to get going.

She ignored me too—this was getting to be a habit—and instead continued glaring at a lean, muscular twentysomething with a shaven head and colorful dragon tattoos running down both arms who’d sat up on the bench of his weight-lifting machine and was giving us the hairy eyeball.

“What that clown be mean-muggin’ me for?” she said. “I’m-a give him a taste of my gat.” She reached into her purse and I could see the black butt of a .38 Police Special in her hand. I grabbed her wrist and shoved her hand back into the purse.

“Jesus Christ, Marilyn! Are you out of your mind?! You can’t be pulling guns on people here! And where did you learn to talk like that? You sound ridiculous.”

“One of those cable shows. About the ‘hood. You feel me, dawg?”

“No, goddammit, I don’t ‘feel’ you. And I’m not your ‘dawg.’ Now can we please get the hell out of here?”

I took her by the arm and she let me guide her back to the elevators and down to her apartment. I really needed to go in and finish my scotch but I was afraid she’d never stop talking or put a hole in one of us with that damn gun. Instead, I settled for shaking her hand. “It was very nice to meet you, Marilyn Kravitz,” I said with at least some measure of sincerity. “Thanks for your help.” I passed her the Public Interest business card meant for Gaby Lopez. “If you think of anything about the Shithe—Armando Gutierrez—or if anything else comes up, give me call, okay?”

“Sure thing, Josh.” She patted the gun still in her purse. “And you need me to bust a cap on some fool, I’m down with it, homey.”

I couldn’t help it any longer. I burst out laughing.

“I love you, Marilyn. I really do. You are just too much.”

“Damn straight.”

* * *

One of the bank of cell phones lined up in Leland Elliott’s desk drawer chirped its distinctive ring. It wasn’t the smartphone he used for his personal calls or the one on which he took off-hours calls from his handful of employees. It was one of six phones, each dedicated to a single client, which put its caller in 24/7 contact with the founder, president and sole owner of Tutis International. After each call the phone was destroyed and replaced by a new phone with a new number. Tutis International had become obscenely profitable and Leland Elliott obscenely wealthy by being very, very careful.

He reached into the desk and took out the device. It was an old-fashioned “dumb” flip model; an Internet connection was a security breach waiting to happen. He pried it open and said, “Yes?”

The voice on the other end was brusque. “This is Mr. Flowers. We need to meet. This Friday. The usual manner.”

“Yes.”

He closed the phone, placed it in a burn bag and buzzed for his assistant to take it down to the incinerator in the underground parking garage of his Miami office. It was, of course, illegal to have a furnace burning a fiery 1,500 degrees built without permits or permission in the basement of a downtown office building but he owned the structure and had spread a lot of money around and, after all, this was Miami.

The assistant entered and took the bag and handed Elliott a new phone, which he placed in the same position in the drawer of his lovingly restored antique French pedestal desk. Then he leaned back in his chair and wondered what so concerned “Mr. Flowers” to make him pick up the phone and call. Whatever it was, Leland Elliott decided, it smelled like money.

* * *

On my way back to the Keys from my encounter with Marilyn Kravitz I got a call from Chloe Enders.

“Armando Gutierrez has been released,” she blurted.

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish. I just got off the phone with my source in the cop shop. They had to kick him loose. No evidence tying him to the scene. No witnesses. No DNA. The other two swore he was just a friend they called to drive them to the airport.”

“Anyone believe that?”

“No. But it’s not what you believe. . .”

“It’s what you can prove. I know. Where is he now?”

“Probably on a plane to Miami. You ought to be careful, Josh. Gutierrez is a thug. If he finds out you’re checking out his shit he may get nasty.

Damn. I told Chloe about my visit to the condo and Marilyn and Gaby.

“Wow, that’s not good,” she said.

“It’s very bad,” I agreed. “I’ll call Marilyn, let her know what’s going on. Maybe she can warn Gaby too. Thanks for the heads-up, Chloe.”

I finished my drive thinking of Marilyn Kravitz and her .38 Police Special. I hoped she really did know how to use it.

* * *

That Friday morning, two days after receiving “Mr. Flowers’” call, a black Lincoln town car picked Leland Elliott up at his Coral Gables mansion and drove him to a small airport in a Miami suburb. There he boarded a Gulfstream G500 for the short flight to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. Another town car was waiting to take him to the sleek tower on West 56th Street. He rode the private elevator from the parking garage to the penthouse, trying to control both his nerves and anticipation of a hugely lucrative payday. The elevator doors opened and Wei Lee said, “Good morning, Mr. Elliott. This way, please. Mr. Bernabe is waiting for you.”

Frank Bernabe was sitting behind his severely modern desk in his office. He didn’t look up. He swiveled a computer monitor in Leland Elliott’s direction and said, “Have you seen this?”

On the screen was a grainy, fluttery video, shot at a distance with a cellphone camera. It showed a line of men and women, all of them holding weapons, standing in the front yard of a home as snow flurries swirled around them. Audio was indistinct but there was no mistaking the confrontation that was taking place between them and a group of uniformed police officers. The video ended with the men and women watching the officers climb into their squad cars and drive away.

“This has already had more than one hundred million hits on YouTube alone,” Bernabe said. “There have been forty-six incidents similar to this across the country since it was posted. In all but three, police backed down and refused to enforce the law. Now many police departments are refusing to respond to lawful eviction notices at all.”

“That is a problem,” Elliott said.

“That is not a problem,” Bernabe snapped, the heat of his words causing Leland Elliott to blink. “But it could become one.” He stroked his chin and his expression grew thoughtful. “I may have underestimated the rabble on this one,” he said. “They seem to have grown some balls.”

“Which, of course, must be crushed.”

“Of course.”

“No offense, Mr. Bernabe, but I’m familiar with the operations of Meyer Global and I don’t see how this affects you.”

“We have, shall I say, our fingers in very many pies. . . pies even you, Mr. Elliott, know nothing about. That said, you are essentially correct. I called you here not primarily as a representative of Meyer Global but of a number of large and importation organizations that would be at far greater risk should such lawless actions be allowed to continue. That is why I am prepared to offer you significant compensation—up to twenty million dollars—to put a stop to this nonsense and ensure the properties in question are returned to their rightful owners.”

Leland Elliott was already thinking of the additions he would make to his estate on a private island in the Bahamas.

“That is a very generous offer. I’ll begin preparations as soon as I return to Miami.”

“See that you do, Mr. Elliott. See that you do. Anything less would itself become a problem. And I have a very strong aversion to problems.”

Chapter 6

Russell Millar had been dreading this trip for weeks. As president and CEO of All-American News—the hugely profitable three-legged stool of broadcast, print and Internet that formed the news division of behemoth All-American Media—a distasteful but necessary part of his job was the care and feeding of its star, Ed “Bane of Their Existence” Bane. More to the point, it was the care and feeding of Ed Bane’s ego, which Millar estimated to be roughly the size of Ohio.

It wasn’t that Bane was a pompous gasbag with the worldly appetites of a modern-day Nero. Hell, if all the pompous, hedonistic gasbags peddling “news” were suddenly obliterated in a meteor strike, you could fit the survivors in a phone booth. No, what really bothered Russ Millar and his boss, All-American Media founder and ruler William S. Bigby, was the suspicion that Bane didn’t truly believe in the righteousness of their cause, that it was all just an act, that he was using them the way he used the “Bane-iacs” who slobbered over his every word.

Still, twice a year Millar gritted his teeth and flew from American Network’s New York office to Palm Beach, a town he despised only slightly less than its most famous resident. The routine was simple and long-established. Millar would bring tribute—in this instance two cases of Screaming Eagle Cabernet and several boxes of Bane’s favorite Cuban cigars. Then he would take Bane out to dinner, eat too much food whose ingredients he couldn’t pronounce, drink too much wine whose provenance left him cold, and stay up long past his bedtime smoking those foul cigars and guzzling cognac while being continually reminded of the greatness of Ed Bane.

Dinner went just as Russell Millar expected, though he found eating in the deserted dining room empty rather disconcerting, as was the hustle from the restaurant’s entrance to the pair of waiting Mercedes. Millar’s stomach rumbled as the vehicles sped off down the street, ignoring speed limits and stop signs, while Bane wore a look of smug satisfaction the way George Clooney wore Armani. The talk jock was going on about the gorgeousness of his new Bentley and his intention to purchase a professional football team, which Millar acknowledged with an occasional grunt. Finally, when they almost broadsided another car flying through a red light, he couldn’t take it any longer.

“For god’s sake, Ed! Is all this really necessary?”

Ed Bane grinned and nodded at Ben Levi. “Moosh here thinks it is. I think it’s kind of a hoot, like a presidential motorca—”

Ben Levi pressed his earbud deeper into his ear, listening intently. “We’re being followed,” he said in a voice sharp enough to cut through Bane’s bluster.

Bane chuckled indulgently. “C’mon, Moosh. Russ didn’t mean anything by it. You’re scaring the poor guy.”

Moises Ben Levi gave him a look that said, Why do I bother protecting this jerk? Then he thought of his paycheck and directed the driver to one of the town’s narrow, one-way residential streets. Bane twisted in his seat to catch a glimpse of their pursuer but could only see the grill of the second Mercedes hugging his bumper. The two vehicles snaked through town, the sedan still behind them.

Halfway down the block Ben Levi said something under his breath to the driver, then spoke quietly into his cuff mike. Michael floored the accelerator. Squealing and smoking tires, the Maybach rocketed off. In the trailing Mercedes, Antwan stood on the brakes. Tires squealed and smoked, then in a single practiced movement he flipped the shifter into reverse and stepped hard on the gas. The massive vehicle shot backwards, crumbled the sedan’s front end with the shriek of metal scraping metal, the hiss of steam escaping a shattered radiator. Before the noise died in the air he and the other bodyguard had the sedan’s two occupants face down on the pavement, knees in their backs, the barrels of heavy SIG Sauers jammed behind their ears.

“Well, that was exciting, wasn’t it?” exclaimed Ed Bane as he and Millar eased into overstuffed leather chairs in the mansion’s mahogany-paneled smoking room. Bane’s butler and personal assistant had already poured three fingers of Hennessy Paradis in cut-crystal snifters and left a pair of neatly clipped Cohibas in crystal ashtrays on a table between them.

Bane produced a gold Dunhill with his initials inlaid in diamonds and lit his guest’s and then his own cigar, letting smoke dribble out of his mouth with exaggerated satisfaction. Russ Millar was still shaken, almost as much by Bane’s pleasure in the brutalizing of what turned out to be a pair of over-eager fans as the act itself. Millar took a careful sip of his cognac, hoping it would smother his anxiety about the conversation to come.

“Ed, Mr. Bigby has some concerns he wanted me to communicate to you,” he began.

Instantly Bane’s air of jocularity vanished like the cigar smoke pulled towards the ceiling by industrial-strength fans but Millar ignored it and pushed on.

“The cartoon of President Elias as a witch on a broom, the photoshopping of her in a Nazi uniform, a bikini, a burka, calling her a bitch, a communist, a fascist, a slut and a lesbian—’rug muncher,’ I think is how you put it—intimating the ‘c-word.’ Mr. Bigby thinks that’s going too far. After all, no matter how much we all despise her, this company has relationships with many people in her administration, does a lot of business with the government, and alienating the President of the United States is not a very smart move.

“There’s also the matter of the new division. I know, I know, you’re not part of the news division. But the Great Unwashed doesn’t understand the difference between news and commentary, and Mr. Bigby feels that commentary so far over the top damages the news division’s credibility, makes it harder to give the American people the news they need, news that strengthens their opposition to this president’s socialist-communist agenda.”

Ed Bane let his eyes linger on his visitor until Russ Millar squirmed in his seat. When he spoke, his tone was glacial. “So just what part of the billion-plus dollars a year I make for you and ‘Sir William’”—a dig at Bigby’s upper-crust pretensions—”do you have a problem with, Russ?”

“None, Ed. None at all,” Millar said hastily, trying not to swallow his cigar. “It’s just that Mr. Bigby would appreciate it if you’d tone down the rhetoric a little. Use a scalpel instead of a bludgeon, make it more policy than personal.”

Bane pointed his cigar like a shotgun at Russell Millar’s face.

“Listen to me, Russ,” he said. “There is no such thing as going too far. My audience doesn’t give a shit about the news division’s credibility or Sir Billy’s ‘relationships.’ They don’t even give a shit about the president’s ‘socialist-communist agenda.’ They couldn’t tell you what that agenda is if you tied them to an anthill. They’re scared and mad and want to take it out on somebody.

“That’s my job, Russ. I give them somebody—a lot of somebodies—to take it out on. And I do it so extraordinarily, exceptionally well that they run right out and buy enough of the cars and soap and incontinence medication you peddle to make us all filthy rich. That doesn’t happen by saying Nancy Elias is just another ambitious hack who is no different than the hack before her and will be no different than the hack who comes after her. That happens by telling them she’s an evil bitch-cunt-whore who wants to take all your money and give it to Osama Bin Laden and let a bunch of illegal Mexicans move next door and rape your daughter. Whether you believe that or I believe that doesn’t matter. They want to believe it, and when I tell them, they will believe it.”

Ed Bane put down his cigar and glared at Russ Millar.

“You know what you’re really afraid of, Russ? You’re afraid I might have more control over them than you do. You’re afraid they might get too riled up and upset the whole goddam applecart, the one you and your Wall Street and Beltway buddies have been riding around on for all these years. You’re afraid the only thing that’ll be left standing between you and the pitchforks and ropes is a low-class commoner like me. Well, get used to it, Russ. And tell Sir Billy not to send you on any more missions here. Or all his moats and drawbridges may not be enough to protect him.”

* * *

I’d been so focused on checking out Armando Gutierrez I had let plans to nail my drug and hooker-loving Florida legislators slide. I needed help and some high-tech spy equipment and there was only one person to call: my friend Robert, whom I hadn’t seen since he dropped me off at the dock in front of my house after scattering Carolyn’s ashes.

Robert Ford was sitting at the end of the bar at Pilot House marina when I walked in after going through my first hurricane in the Keys. It was something of a tradition after a storm had passed for locals to wander into their favorite watering hole and mock the standups of TV storm “reporters,” who’d stood in half an inch of water and acted like it was the second coming of Noah. And for the beer.

The only seat at the bar was next to the trim but muscular man in faded shorts and t-shirt with close-cut salt-and-pepper hair and a few days worth of grizzle. I sat and ordered a draft and by the third glass knew that Robert Ford ran a small security company specializing in “high net worth” individuals from his house just a few doors down from mine, that he loved fishing and flying his private plane, that he had no use for politics or politicians, and that his favorite beer was Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. He didn’t say and I didn’t ask, but his deceptively quick, precise movements and air of calm self-assurance suggested ex-military, and eyes that took in every detail of a room without ever leaving yours suggested a background in something more.

Over time we became good friends, going fishing and snorkeling and grilling grouper or lobster on my backyard barbecue when Carolyn was up to it, inviting me out for a beer or taking me on long, quiet cruises on the bay when she wasn’t. Carolyn liked him a lot, and when she died he was the only person I could let inside that tight ball of grief on her last boat ride. A pile of palm fronds in Robert’s driveway announced that he was home. When I walked around to the back of the house he dropped another armload and pulled me into a brief, sweaty hug.

“How you doing, Josh?” he said, trying not to show his concern.

I didn’t want to dwell on it. “Okay, I guess. As good as can be expected. Listen, I need your help with something. . .” I told him about my lecherous legislators and what I had in mind. He listened intently as he always did, gave a mirthless chuckle and said, “Assholes.” Then, “If you have time now, give me a minute to clean up and we’ll do some recon.”

A half-hour later we were at Tavernaero Park Airport, where Robert kept a Cessna Corvalis TT, a fast little number he used for in-state trips and the occasional sight-seeing flight above the Keys. Our destination was Rock Island, one of hundreds of small and not-so-small islands dotting the waters around the Keys. The vast majority were nothing more than coral rock dots covered with scrub and mangroves, but a few had been purchased by wealthy individuals and corporations and turned into posh retreats for the well-heeled and reclusive.

Rock Island was a four-and-a-half-acre atoll a short boat ride from the town of Marathon, itself halfway between Key Largo and Key West. It got its name not from its coral rock composition but from its purchase in the 1980s by the lead singer of some fleetingly successful metal band, who blew through his fortune buying coke and exotic cars and constructing a large, two-story Key West-style home on the island, which he had landscaped with everything from an Olympic-size infinity pool and small white-sand beach to a putting green and driving range where he and his buddies could launch golf balls into the ocean. When he went broke, one of the legion of real estate developers who specialized in cramming zero lot-line houses onto every inch of Florida open space took it over, spruced it up and used it for his own infrequent getaways and those of the politicians and bureaucrats whose approvals he needed for his various projects.

I’d gotten a tip about the orgy week from a reporter who’d been covering the hugely corrupt state legislature for longer than any human being should have to. Apparently the politicos had been at it for years without being discovered, until one of the working girls who’d been invited along blabbed after her state senator boyfriend slapped her around in a Glenfiddich-fueled rage. The party boys were scheduled to arrive Friday, two days from now, so I didn’t have much time to firm up my plans and set them into motion.

As the Seven-Mile Bridge rose in the distance, Robert banked the Cessna towards the ocean and over Rock Island. From the air it was a perfectly idyllic slice of paradise. The house and grounds were at one end, sheltered from view on all sides by a dense veil of palms, bougainvillea, oleander, giant ferns and assorted tropical plants. A short pier and dock stuck out into the water. The rest of the island had been left to its natural state, with wooden walkways snaking through the mangroves in case jaded vacationers sought fleeting respite from their man-made pleasures.

We dropped to lower altitude to get a better view and I explained to Robert what I was thinking. We agreed that most of the action would take place around the pool, and he promised to hook me up with a guy in Miami who could supply me with wireless video cameras and a USB receiver that I could connect to a laptop. He made another circle around the house and pointed out the best places to set up the cams, how to connect and operate the system.

He pointed to a wooden walkway that skirted the easternmost edge of the island and said, “That’s where you’ll go in. We’ll leave from Marathon in my boat; I’ve got a dingy with a three-horse motor. A couple hours before your buddies arrive, I’ll anchor offshore. You motor in, tie up under that walkway, then follow the path to the house. Text me when you’re done and I’ll pick you up the same way.”

I was already feeling better. A project like this was just what I needed. “Thanks, Robert,” I said. “I really appreciate you—”

He waved off my thanks.

“Hell, just nailing these fuckers is its own reward. But you do have to promise me a private screening.”

* * *

My little film session couldn’t have gone better. Early Friday morning we left Marathon Marina and cruised to Rock Island. I tossed a waterproof bag full of electronic equipment, power bars and bottled water into the dingy, then climbed in and fired up the tiny motor. It took only a few minutes to reach the island, secure the craft and be on my way. Before the sunrise I’d set up an observation post behind a huge wall of bougainvillea at the edge of the property, placed my cameras, checked to see that they were recording and took up a position by the home’s boat dock to get some still shots of the party boys arriving.

Two hours later a gleaming Sundancer pulled up to the pier and the partiers clambered off. There were six legislators, including the former House speaker and current Senate majority leader, plus another four whose faces I didn’t recognize. Their “dates” were a dozen young women who appeared to have been popped out of molds in some giant factory of siliconed and Botoxed replicants. The men were worse—pasty-white and already liquored up, their bellies stretching Polo shirts over the tops of their gaudy shorts.

I got nice tight close-ups and group shots of them all, then hot-footed it back to my post behind the bougainvillea and waited for the action to begin. It was predictably sad and revolting—eighteen naked and oiled bodies writhing in noisy faux passion in groups of two and three and more, fueled by bowls of sky-blue pills for the men and fine white powder for the ladies. After several hours they broke for lunch, then went at it again until cocktail hour.

I’d seen enough. I checked the laptop’s hard drive to make sure I’d recorded the day’s activities, packed up my gear and texted Robert to come get me. The party picked up after dark but I was already at the dingy, watching Robert flash his running lights. When we’d tied up the little craft I described the scene to him, reminded him of my promise to give him a preview. He stared at me a moment and shook his head.

“Don’t make me puke,” he said.

Chapter 7

The limousine that would take Edwin Eustice Chalmers III from his K Street office to his weekend estate in Virginia’s horse country pulled up to the curb promptly at 5 p.m. It had been two months since he’d gotten out of D.C., an extremely busy but equally profitable time, having picked up several new clients with the unexpected retirement of one of his competitors and the surprise dissolution of another, one of the capitol’s best-known lobbying firms. With the kind of hours he’d been pulling, he figured he deserved a little R&R.

Edwin Eustice Chalmers’ blood was as blue as his politics were red. His great-grandfather was a contemporary of Joe Kennedy’s, and subsequent generations of Chalmers rose to new heights of business and political prominence, becoming ever more conservative as they grew ever wealthier. His father, Edwin II, had represented the people of the great state of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives for twenty-six year before retiring over a scandal involving a stripper, a couple pounds of Peruvian flake and a large bag of cash.

Edwin III liked politics but hated the restrictions that came with holding public office, so he leveraged his connections and experience running his father’s campaigns to become chief of staff to Rep. Mark “Sparky” Thomson, whose iron-fisted reign as of head of the House Ways and Means Committee lasted the better part of a decade. When Massachusetts voters finally kicked Sparky aside, Edwin Chalmers again leveraged his connections and experience, this time opening a law office-slash-lobbying firm whose primary business was acting as an intermediary—”bagman,” to put it less politely—between Washington politicos and the corporations that suckled them like piglets at their mother’s tits.

Chalmers & Associates’ clients were some of the biggest pigs in the pen: several Wall Street financial institutions and hedge funds, two of the country’s largest banks, three of its largest health insurance companies, a pair of major oil companies, and a smorgasbord of manufacturing, service and real estate firms, not to mention the odd foreign dictator or two who wanted to keep the American aid flowing.

Edwin Chalmers’ ability to tap into his clients’ vast wealth and spread it around without leaving any fingerprints, plus a rumored little black book full of the peccadilloes of prominent politicians, had given him a 120-acre horse country estate, a suite at D.C.’s famous Watergate hotel, a vacation home in Bermuda, ownership of several large apartment complexes, a yacht, a Bentley and a collection of classic cars, still with enough left over to support a wife and pair of mistresses in the style to which they had come to view as only natural.

It was a cold December day when Edwin Chalmers hurried out of his office under a Billionaire Couture umbrella and settled into the limo’s plush leather seat, where his customary Johnny Blue-and-soda was waiting in a heavy Baccarat glass. Distracted by work and fumbling to close his fifty thousand dollar plaything, it took him a minute to notice the normally well-lit interior was dark. Also the man dressed in black jeans and sweater, sitting at the front of the spacious compartment.

“Good evening, Mr. Chalmers,” the man said easily, as if they were being introduced at some anonymous government function.

Edwin Chalmers almost spilled his drink.

“What the— Who the hell are you? You can’t—” He lunged for the door handle but it gave nothing in his hand. He reached for his cell phone, blanching when the screen lit up with “No Service.” He tried to bluster his way out. “Who are you and what do you want? I demand—”

“Shut up, please,” the man said. His voice was still easy but underneath it was chipped and sharp as steel. “Settle down and drink your scotch. I want to show you something.”

Chalmers downed his drink in two quick gulps. He pushed himself back in the seat, getting as far away from the intruder as possible, eyeing the man warily. As the limo inched through gridlocked city streets he felt suddenly, inexplicably weary. His arms and legs seemed tied to lead weights. His vision grew fuzzy. He couldn’t keep his head up. He tried to speak but his mouth felt full of cotton. When he leaned over to try the door handle again he lost his balance and slumped face-down on the seat, a thin stream of drool pooling on the butter-soft leather.

Some time later Edwin Chalmers awoke slowly, like an animal coming to after a winter’s hibernation. His arms and legs were his own again, though his head pounded and his mouth was as dry as desert sand. He blinked focus into his eyes and took in his surroundings. He’d been laid out on a couch of inexpensive black leather, his jacket and tie removed and neatly hung on a hook, his shoes side-by-side on the floor, his wallet and keys in a small cardboard box.

The room itself was small, no more than twenty by twenty feet, its walls painted off-white. A thin indoor-outdoor carpet covered the floor. There were no windows and no adornments. Besides the couch, the only furnishings were a long folding table and metal chair, the kind you’d see at conference rooms in cheap airport hotels. On the table was a laptop computer, a cell phone, a bottle of water and a plastic glass. Careful not to set off the brass band playing inside his head, he planted his feet and stood, then gingerly made his way to the table, where he sat, poured a glass of water and washed the sand out of his mouth. It was only then that he noticed what appeared to be a blank business card next to the computer. He moved to turn it over when a voice crackled from an unseen speaker.

“Good morning, Mr. Chalmers.” It was the man in the limo. “Sorry for the short nap, but it was necessary for your security and for ours. You are, of course, wondering who we are and why you’re here. The first question, I’m afraid, I can’t answer. The second, we’ll get to in a moment. My associates and I know very much about you, Mr. Chalmers. We’ve followed your career with great interest, particularly of late. We’ve also been following the careers of some of your colleagues. You of course know Anita Cowell of Cowell & Co. and Nathan Rifkin and Wesley Mathers of Rifkin-Mathers.”

Edwin Chalmers’ mouth went dry again. Cowell, one of the only women in the big-time D.C. lobbying game and a tenacious and formidable advocate, had retired suddenly two months ago and seemingly vanished off the face of the earth. Nat Rifkin and Wes Mathers had been in the business of bribing and influencing politicians since George Washington crossed the Delaware; the unexpected dissolution of their firm had shocked members of the D.C. establishment. Since then nothing had been heard from them either, though rumor had it Rifkin had moved to Paris and Mathers was somewhere in the Caribbean.

“Ah, I can see that you’ve been wondering too,” the voice continued. “Their departure from your chosen profession was, shall we say, sudden? Unexpected? Even baffling? I suppose so. Well, they had their reasons. And so will you.” The easy voice was all flint again. “You’re a cancer, Mr. Chalmers. You and the people who ply your trade are a disease that has sickened this country, corrupted its politics, made fools and paupers of its people.”

It seemed the man behind the voice could read his thoughts.

“I know, I know, much of what you do is not illegal but, frankly, my colleagues and I are not too interested in legality these days. What we are interested in is a country where policy is not made in corporate boardrooms, where the people’s ‘representatives’ are not bought and sold like pork belly futures, where the interest of the American public isn’t something to be traded away for a new Bentley and a vacation home in Bermuda. Now, this is not all the fault of you and your profession. There’s plenty of blame to go around. For other players, rest assured, their time will come. In some cases, it already has. But at the moment we are talking about you. Please tap the touchpad on the computer.”

Edwin Chalmers obeyed. He cringed at the image as the computer screen flickered to life.

“Tell me what you see,” the voice commanded.

“Silverhill,” Chalmers said, his own voice a fearful whisper.

“Your $4.5 million country estate.”

“Yes.”

“Watch.”

What happened next occurred so quickly, so unexpectedly, so violently that for a full minute Edwin Chalmers showed no reaction, felt nothing at all. Then it hit him. Hit him so hard he gasped and almost fell out of the chair, unable to take his eyes off the screen. His sprawling red-brick mansion had exploded in a blazing fireball, flinging millions of particles of brick and wood and piping and insulation high into the night sky, now as bright as day, forming a giant nimbus that hung in the air as if suspended before falling away to reveal a scorched foundation dotted with piles of rubble and tongues of flame. He tried to speak but that power had been stripped from him. All he could do was stare at the destruction.

“Don’t worry.” The voice was again easy and serene. “Your wife and children are safe. Lila and Madison are at a sleepover at a neighbors’, and Margaret is on her customary girls night out.”

“Wha— Why? How could—”

“I’m afraid we’re not done here yet,” the voice interrupted. “Please tap the touchpad again.”

Edwin Chalmers obeyed. This time, though, he saw only an official-looking document. He tried to focus on the columns of numbers but his mind was still reeling from the shock of minutes before.

The voice seemed to understand and helped him out.

“This is the statement for your account at Bank of the Caribbean in the Cayman Islands. After all, no one wants to pay U.S. income taxes and the advantages of the Cayman banking system are very well known. Please note the balance on this account is zero.”

Chalmers blinked and shook his head, trying once more to clear the fog from his head. He peered at the computer screen, forcing himself to concentrate, then his muscles seized up like a faulty motor and all he could do was stare.

“No, no. . . You can’t. . .”

“Yes, Mr. Chalmers, we can. In fact, we have.”

Other forms flashed by on the screen.

“This is your account at Islands Bank, Ltd. This at Hanniford Bank & Trust in Turks and Caicos. And this is at Banque Suisse. Spreading your money around. Very impressive, I must say. Note too that the balance on all of these accounts is also zero. If you don’t believe I’m telling the truth, the cell phone on the table is programmed to the Essex County fire department and your personal bankers at these institutions. Feel free to call them and confirm everything I’ve said.”

Edwin Chalmers gave no evidence of having heard. He sat rock-still, unblinking. Mouth open. He made no effort to pick up the phone.

“Cheer up, Mr. Chalmers.” The voice was not unsympathetic. “You will receive a large insurance settlement on the house, several million dollars, I believe. The accounts in your and your wife’s names in the U.S. are untouched, as are your 401Ks and stock portfolio. So you and your family will not be living in a cardboard box on the sidewalk. In fact, there’s a good chance you will get a large portion of the money we’ve removed from your other accounts returned to you. . . If you agree to certain conditions.”

The briefest spark flared in Edwin Chalmers’s dulled eyes.

“These conditions are simple, inviolable and non-negotiable. First, within the week you will dissolve Chalmers & Associates and retire from the business of selling out your fellow citizens. Say it’s because of your health or to spend more time with your family or join the priesthood. Whatever. No one will believe you anyway.

“Second, within two weeks you will pack up your wife and daughters—your mistresses too, if that’s what you want—and move to your house in Bermuda. Third, you will not return to the U.S. for any reason until you have been informed it is okay to do so.

“Fourth—and this is very important, Mr. Chalmers; it’s not too much to say your entire future rests on your not violating this condition—you will have no contact with anyone in the U.S., outside of your immediate family, and you will especially have no contact with anyone in your previous profession. That means no politicians, bureaucrats, colleagues, corporations and individuals, not via telephone, email, text message, third-party communications or even old-fashioned snail mail. Comply with these conditions and at the end of one year a portion of your ‘missing’ funds will be placed in the bank account of your choice. At the end of the second year you will receive another portion, and so on and so on.”

The voice was all flint now.

“But if you do not comply with these conditions, Mr. Chalmers, if you violate them in even the tiniest, most insignificant way, we will cut you open and bleed you dry. You saw what we are capable of today. Don’t take my words lightly.

The conversational tone returned.

“Someone will be in to take you to your limousine shortly, but before you leave we have one more small piece of business to conduct. You see that card to your left? The one you thought about picking up earlier? Please turn it over.”

Edwin Chalmers reached out and with artless fingers lifted the plain white paper and turned its face to his. He read the single word, printed in big black letters, then a low, keening sound rose in his throat and he buried his face on the desk and wept like a baby.

Chapter 8

The day I feared most was fast approaching. For Carolyn and me, Christmas had been a joyous occasion. Commercialism, crowded malls, annoying music made no dent in our giddy good spirits. We’d made it our own personal holiday and let the various indignities of the season roll right off our backs.

This first Christmas without Carolyn, though, was agony squared, compounded by grief and multiplied by guilt. A certain song or Christmas decoration or even a cheesy commercial would make me choke up and clench my jaw and fight for self-control. To keep from being a weepy basket case I intended to stay as busy as possible, working the Armando Guiterrez angle, doing odd jobs around the house, fishing and kayaking and sampling the fine selection of craft beers at Pilot House.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried.

* * *

I was hacking dead palm fronds in the front yard when Jeff O’Neill called. Jeff was the sort-of boss of Public Interest. I say “sort of” because journalists react to corporate structures like cats do to a spray of scalding water—we make a lot of noise and run like hell. Since all of us were either working part time for a pittance or full time for a slightly larger pittance, we were even less amenable to taking direction. But someone has to steer the bus and Jeff did a damn good job. Thankfully, he dismissed with Christmas pleasantries and got right to it.

“We’re looking pretty solid in all the big cities,” he said. “We just added another guy in Miami, two more in New York and L.A., and we now have a presence in Cleveland, Denver, Philly and Atlanta. I’ve talked it over with everyone and we’d like you to be our national correspondent. A rover, if you will.” He gave a gruff chuckle. “There’s no more money in it for you but we can cover your expenses, some of them, anyway. And, you know, there is the prestige.”

Jeff always did have a sense of humor.

“Prestige. Will that and a dollar buy me a cup of coffee?”

“I don’t know where you buy your coffee down there,” Jeff said. “But here in New York it’ll cost you three dollars. What do you say?”

This one was easy. “Yes.”

“Good. For your first assignment I want you to go see Julie Teichner, the woman in Ohio whose neighbors faced down the cops trying to evict her. She had her fifteen minutes after the video went viral but, as they say, that was then and this is now. You know the drill. Give me an update—how things have shaken out, what effects the whole thing had, where do she and her neighbors go from here. Write it up, shoot some video and get it back fast. I think it would be a terrific Christmas post. Sound good to you?”

“It does. And thanks, Jeff.”

“Thanks? For what? I just got you to do a buttload more work on your own dime.”

“There is that.”

I got hold of Julie that afternoon and set up an interview for the day after tomorrow. I got a plane ticket and a hotel room, then headed back outside to finish whacking palm fronds. I hadn’t made it to the door when the phone trilled again. I thought it might be Jeff so I picked it up.

“Hello, Josh? Is this Josh Henson?”

Oh, shit.

“Hi, Marilyn. Yeah, it’s me. Are you okay? Has the Shit—, I mean, has Gutierrez been bothering you? How’s Gaby?”

“That’s why I’m calling. I’ve been doing a little detective work.”

Double shit

“Well, snooping, really. And I overheard the Shitheel saying something I thought you should know.”

“What do you mean, ‘overheard’? Dammit, Marilyn, that guy is dangerous. You stay away from him, you hear me? And let me know if he starts bothering you. If anything happens to you I’ll never forgive myself.”

“You’re an awful worrywart for a young man, you know that, Josh? And lissen, I’ma get my gat ‘n’ do dat fool if he mess wit’ me.”

“Marilyn, please. Stop talking like that. You sound like a goddam cartoon.”

“Aw, I’m just funnin’ wit’ cha.”

I could only laugh. She was hopeless.

“Okay, sorry. Anyway, I was listening at the Shitheel’s door last night. He and Gaby got into a big argument. She said she was going to leave him and he was yelling at her, calling a bitch and whore and that horrible c-word.”

“Did he hit her?”

“No, but he sure sounded like he wanted to. He was banging on the furniture so loud that somebody called security and they sent one of the guards to tell him to pipe down. But what I wanted to tell you was, when she said was going to leave Miami and move in with her sister in North Carolina, he said, You better not. I’m going to go take care of one bitch and when I get back I’m going to take care of you too. A couple minutes later the guard showed up and told me to go back to my apartment. I offered to let him borrow the highball glass I was using to listen through the door but he got all snotty about it so I told him to go fuck himself.”

Actually, she was beyond hopeless. I had to wonder if Melvin really did expire from natural causes. I’d have thrown myself off their twenty-first-floor balcony.

“Marilyn, you’ve got to promise you won’t do any more ‘detective work,’ okay? And don’t be giving the security guards a bad time; this is Miami, they’ve got enough crazy people to deal with. Now, did Gutier— Ah, what the hell. Did the Shitheel say anything about who he was going to take care of? Or where?”

“Not really. But right before the snotty guard got there he was trying to make nice and said something about how if she’d promise to stay and not always make him so angry when he came back they’d really let the good times roll. I don’t know if that means anything but maybe you could do some investigating, like those Woodman and Burnside people.”

Sigh.

“That’s Woodward and Bernstein, Marilyn. And, yeah, I’ll look into it. But no more detecting now, right? If you promise to stay away from the Shitheel and not tell the security guards to go fuck themselves, next time I’m in town I’ll take you someplace for a nice dinner. That sound okay?”

“That be jake, dawg.”

“Goodbye, Marilyn.”

* * *

I was sitting in the Miami airport, waiting for my flight to Ohio and my interview with Julie Teichner. It was, of course, delayed, and the only free seats were directly in front of a wall-mounted television spewing CNN at jackhammer volume. There was no way to avoid the report on a woman I’d seen on TV just a few weeks earlier.

“AnnaLynn Conté is the director of SayNo.org,” a plasticine young reporter was saying, “a left-wing group that claims several million members. It advises people to fight foreclosure or walk away from their mortgages. It has also launched a campaign called ‘Starve the Beasts,’ an attempt to pressure business and government by recruiting people not to pay their bills for the entire month of July. At a press conference yesterday, President Elias termed SayNo’s efforts ‘scurrilous’ and ‘an attempt to break the bonds of trust between business, government and the people.’ How do you respond, Ms. Conté?”

AnnaLynn Conté cocked her head as if she wasn’t quite sure of what she’d just heard.

“‘Bonds of trust between business, government and the people’?” she repeated incredulously. “What bonds are those? Any bonds that might have existed were broken a long time ago, long before there even was a SayNo. As for ‘scurrilous,’ I’ll take that as a compliment. And since neither banks nor the government have seen fit to help people in danger of losing their homes, we have added another service.

“We call it ‘Save Yourself, Save Your Home.’ We have agreements with attorneys in forty-six states who will work pro bono with people facing foreclosure. If you want to hand your home’s keys back to the bank, they will advise you on all applicable laws and represent you in any legal actions. We also offer a limited amount of financial assistance and counseling. If you want to fight foreclosure, our attorneys will make sure all laws are followed down to the tiniest detail. They will represent you in any mediation hearings and in court. It’s a sad fact that if the American people want social and economic justice, they will have to grab it and take it.”

“That campaign may already be having an effect,” the reporter segued smoothly as the camera cut away from AnnaLynn to a large Southern-style home with a columned porch and neatly manicured lawn. “In this neighborhood alone, only a few miles from SayNo’s downtown New Orleans offices, at least two-dozen families are. . .”

I’d already stopped listening as the connections began falling in place. Marilyn’s phone call. Armando Gutierrez. Take care of one bitch. Let the good times roll. As a theory it was pretty goddam slim. Anorexic, even. But I would go with it. I looked up SayNo’s phone number, played my reporter’s card and asked to speak to AnnaLynn Conté. She didn’t sound particularly anxious to talk to me but I plunged in anyway.

“Ms. Conté, My name is Josh Henson; I’m a reporter with Public Interest. I’ve been working a story that may involve you and your organization. I don’t mean to be an alarmist but I think you and your staff could be in imminent personal danger.”

I ran it down from the beginning: Eldrick Brown, Armando Gutierrez. The years’-long campaign of political violence and intimidation. My snooping around at Gutierrez’s condo, the phone call from Marilyn Kravitz. She listened patiently, not interrupting, but not quite convinced either. I gave it one last try.

“I know it sounds far-fetched, Ms. Conté. But I know that Armando Gutierrez was involved in the murder of Eldrick Brown and that he’s part of a group that for years has traveled around the country targeting people and organizations like yours. With your high profile and the position SayNo is gaining on the national stage, I think it’s entirely possible he’s targeting you next.”

AnnaLynn Conté was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I believe what you’re saying, Josh, and I’m not questioning your sincerity. But we’ve had break-ins and run-ins with loonies before and none of them have stopped us from doing our jobs. This Gutierrez and whoever he works for won’t either. So while I appreciate your concern, I don’t see there’s much we can do except deal with the situation when and if it arises. And, please, stop calling me ‘Ms. Conté.’ It makes me feel a hundred years old.”

I could appreciate that. I never felt much like a “Mister” either.

“Okay, AnnaLynn. Look, I’m not suggesting you fold up your tent and go home. All I’m saying is take some reasonable precautions. Back up your data somewhere off-site where a thug like Gutierrez can’t get to. Ramp up security at your office. Get something for your personal protection and be aware of your surroundings. These people are serious, and you’ve got to take them seriously.”

“Alright, already, Josh.” She was getting impatient now. “I’ll take your advice. I promise. I’ve still got my dad’s old deer rifle. I used to go hunting with him every year until I turned eighteen and became a vegetarian.” She chuckled at the memory. “That didn’t last long. I’ve never been able to resist a thick, juicy steak.”

That seemed to break the ice.

“Me neither,” I said. “Tell you what, next time I’m in town I’ll take you out for one. Anyplace you like. And a bottle of Bordeaux. Deal?”

“Deal. Now I really do have to go, Josh. Thanks for the warning.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said. And when I hung up, I wondered why I really did.

Chapter 9

My flight to Akron was only four hours late, the usual airline comedy of errors, though not especially funny. I called Julie a little after 9 p.m. to reschedule for tomorrow but she insisted I come over now. She sounded hyper and jittery, a combination of too much coffee and nervous energy. I was feeling hyper and jittery myself; three slugs of café cubano while killing time at the Miami airport will do that to you.

I picked up my rental car and thanks to cold but clear weather and an utter disregard of posted speed limits made it to Julie’s house in under an hour. Her neighborhood seemed deserted. Half the streetlamps were out. On some blocks almost all the houses were dark; only a few spilled dim light through tightly drawn curtains.

Julie met me at the door wearing jeans and a loose sweater, her blondish hair tied in a ponytail. She was small and trim and what women would describe as “cute,” though there were bags under her eyes you could have carried groceries in and her nails were split and bitten. She looked to have aged well past her thirty-five years in the weeks since the YouTube video of her home’s defense went viral and she joined the ranks of instant celebrities.

We made awkward introductions and she poured two cups of coffee and set out a plate of Christmas cookies while I unpacked my pocket video camera and set it on a miniature tripod. I wasn’t much of a shooter but the video team at Public Interest would take my raw footage, edit it, mix in complementary footage, tweak the sound and picture, and come up with two, five and twelve-minute reports for our clients and for our own website too. We’d also post the entire unedited interview so we couldn’t be accused of manipulating the facts.

“I’ll be with you in a minute, Josh,” Julie said, “I just have to check on Megan.”

I sipped my coffee and eyed the cookies hungrily. They looked like something you’d see in one of those glossy, four-color food magazines. They were delicious too. I was wiping the crumbs off my shirt when Julie emerged from her daughter’s bedroom.

“She’s finally asleep, thank God,” she said. “This is a lot for a five-year-old to take.” She sat in a cracked leather armchair facing the camera and gave a wry smile. “I guess I’m ready for my second fifteen minutes now. Maybe I’ll even get my own reality show. We’ll call it ‘Making It and Losing It in America.’” Her eyes welled up and she took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I guess this is a lot for a thirty-five-year-old single mom to take too.”

It’s times like this that make me doubt my chosen profession. Julie Teichner wasn’t a publicity hound or a celebrity. She didn’t seek out the media spotlight but it was trained on her anyway. And here I was, shining that blinding light again, taking her pain and turning it into a product for all the world to consume. But how else would the world know? The real stories of real people are the only things that matter. Everything else is just filigree. Or so I choose to believe.

I swallowed my ambivalence and turned on the camera.

“Tell me about life since the video,” I said, just to get her comfortable talking to the camera.

“It was sort of fun at first,” she said, smiling wistfully at the memory. “Seeing myself on TV. People would stop me in stores, in line at the bank, walking down the street, and say they appreciated what I did, that it gave them a little hope. I had five thousand new friends on my Facebook page. Megan kind of enjoyed it too. The kids at school would say, ‘I saw your mom on TV,’ and she’d feel really proud. That lasted a couple of weeks.”

Her smile faded. The memories weren’t so good now.

“Then it all changed. Someone found out my phone number and address and email and posted them on one of those hateful anti-every-thing websites. I was just. . . overwhelmed. Phone calls, emails, even letters. Thousands of them. And the things people said! Terrible things, ugly things. People would yell at me from their cars, throw trash in my yard. It was like we were criminals. I changed my phone number and email address, started picking up my mail at the post office, closed my Facebook page. I had to call the police twice because people were stalking me. I was afraid for me but even more for Megan.”

Tears pooled in her eyes. “I never asked for any of this,” she said haltingly. “I never wanted to be a celebrity or a symbol or a spokesman for anything. All I wanted was a good home, to be a good wife and mother. Now I don’t know if I’m good at anything.”

I moved to turn off the camera but she stopped me.

“I’m sorry, Josh,” she said. “I get a little emotional sometimes.” She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

“It’s okay, Julie. Really. You want to stop? Pick it up tomorrow? Or not at all.”

She shook her head. “I’m alright. Ask your questions.”

“Where do you go from here?” I asked gently. “Physically. Emotionally.”

“I’m don’t know,” she said. “This is my home. My parents are here, my friends are here. Megan’s school and friends are here. But I don’t know if we can stay. My sister lives in San Diego and we’ve talked about my moving there and the two of us opening a little bakery.”

I would have bought stock in it right then. “You made those cookies?” I said. “They look like they came from some fancy restaurant. Delicious too.”

Julie smiled shyly. “I’m a pretty good baker, I think. John always used to say that. And I’d always sell out at school fundraisers. To leave all this and move across the country. . . I just don’t know.”

“How is Megan taking things? Have you talked with her about—”

A soft tapping at the front door made me stop. Not loud but insistent. Who knocks on someone’s door in a deserted neighborhood at midnight? I wanted to tell her not to answer. That you never know who or what could be just beyond that thin wooden slab. But this was her neighborhood, her neighbors, the ones who stood with her in the snow, risking their lives to keep her and her daughter from being thrown into the street. She got up and went to the door. Threw the deadbolt. Reached for the chain lock—

CRASH!

The door exploded inward. The frame splintered. Julie staggered back and fell. Three bodies—two large, one small; two men, one woman—burst in. They were clad in black, wearing ski masks. Each held a small boxy pistol with a stub of a barrel. I’d seen guns like that on TV; they looked even deadlier in real life. I jumped up and got in the first man’s face. He slashed at me with his pistol, tore a channel through my cheek. Blood splashed on my collar. I staggered and pitched to the floor.

The second man yanked Julie up, threw her on the couch, kicked me in the ribs, motioned towards her with his pistol. I crawled over and sat next to her, blood really flowing now. The small body, the woman, holstered her pistol. She reached beneath her nylon jacket, produced a tiny video camera and swept it across the room, then over Julie and me on the couch, the two men pointing guns at us.

All of a sudden I got it.

This was payback. Payback for that day in the blowing, swirling snow when a handful of men and women faced down an angry Dan Majerle and a squad of blue uniforms, when they stood in the path of wealth and power. This was the response. A warning. A lesson. The video would be posted to show with brutal clarity that anyone who stood up would quickly be knocked back down

I tried to think it through, look for a way out. There wasn’t any. They had numbers, guns, surprise. We had nothing. Julie trembled beside me, the enormity of the outrage beginning to sink in.

“Who are you people? Why are you doing this to us?” she sobbed, blinking away the tears.

“Shut up, lady.”

The man was the largest of the two. His voice was rich with arrogance and contempt. The woman trained her video camera on him as he loomed over Julie. “You think you can steal someone else’s property? Think your neighbors with their little popguns will protect you? You have no idea the people you fucked with. You’ve got five minutes to get your stuff and get the hell out of here.” He turned to the smaller man and barked, “Back bedroom. Get the kid.”

“Don’t you touch her!”

Julie Teichner flew off the couch like a madwoman, hands like claws grasping for the man’s throat. If she was forty pounds heavier with a fraction of his skills she would have torn out his windpipe. He swatted her back like a bug, wiggled his pistol at me. For the first time, the woman spoke. “For crissakes, we don’t have time for this. Let her get the damn kid.”

The big man glared at her, thought the better of it. He switched his gaze to Julie and said, “Go.”

Julie went. The second man followed. The bedroom door opened. Megan’s quiet sobs filtered into the living room. I could hear Julie murmuring to her. The sobs rose to hysterical. More murmuring. A gruff voice interrupting. The sobs rose, then fell. Drawers opened, closed. A suitcase unsnapped, then snapped back up again. More sobbing.

The man standing over me sneered. “What are you, the boyfriend?” he said. His eyes lit on my reporter’s notebook on the table, then the camera and tripod. “So you’re some kind of snoop. You bonking the bitch?”

“Fuck you.”

He laughed. It was a harsh, grating sound. “Ooh, tough guy.” He tossed a box of tissues in my lap. “Clean yourself up, tough guy. You’re bleeding all over the furniture.”

I took a wad and held it to my cheek. The wound stung and began to throb. I’d probably need stitches. Julie came out of the bedroom holding Megan’s hand, the little girl hiding behind her legs, face red, eyes swollen. She was still sobbing, very softly. The man came behind them, carrying a pair of suitcases like a porter. The woman with the camera recorded every move.

The big man who’d hit me opened the shattered front door. “Get in the car,” he said.

Julie paled, her voice trembled. “It. . . it doesn’t run. Mitch—my neighbor—said it was the alternator. I was saving up to get it fixed. . .”

Everyone stopped. Tension crackled like a static charge. Everyone was impatient, edgy. This was almost over, and now complications. The woman’s brown eyes flashed. “Check it,” she said to the big man. He glared again. “Don’t give me that,” she said. “Just do it.”

I didn’t like the feeling of this. Things could go south in a heartbeat. I caught the woman’s eye. “Forget her car,” I said. “We’ll take mine.”

The tension eased a bit.

“Fine,” she said. “Keys.”

I handed them to the big man. He popped the trunk. The small man tossed the bags in and went to a big gray Hummer parked behind me in the driveway. He got in, got the engine running. The big man pushed me to the car, handed me the keys, shoved me in the driver’s seat. I twisted the key in the ignition, clicked on the heater. Waited.

The woman pulled her pistol, stepped into Julie until their bodies were almost touching, put her face in close. Julie didn’t flinch, just stared back with a preternatural calm. Megan’s wailing grew louder. The woman’s voice was low and deadly, “You leave here. You don’t come back. You don’t go to the police. You keep your mouth shut. We can always find you. Find the kid. Mom and Dad. Anyone we want. Clear?”

Julie just stared.

“Yes,” she said, finally.

The woman stepped aside and led Julie and Megan to the car. The big man held open the door, watched them get in. He rapped on the window to get my attention. “We’ll follow you,” he said. “Just to make sure you get where you’re going.”

The Hummer backed up, waited for us in the street. I backed up too, heading for anywhere away from them. The Hummer’s lights blazed in my rear-view mirror.

“Where to?” I asked Julie. “You have friends, family? Any place I can take you?”

“No!”

The force of her response made me jump.

“I don’t want them involved, Josh. Not in any of this. Just take us to a hotel. There’s a cheap one a few miles from here.”

“I’ll take you to mine,” I said. “It’s close and they’re not exactly overrun with business. I’ll get you and Megan a room and in the morning you can decide what to do. We could all use a few hours rest.”

Ten minutes later we were at the hotel, the Hummer on our bumper the entire time. It wasn’t much of a hotel, rather a slowly decaying motor court that looked better in the postage stamp-sized photograph on its website than up close. It was now after one in the morning. The clerk at the desk was so surprised to see anyone he couldn’t stash his copy of Hustler quite fast enough. He stared at my cut face; I gave him hard eyes back. He looked away, embarrassed. Maybe frightened too. He checked me in, handed me the keys to two rooms. I didn’t bother thanking him. Let him go back to his magazine.

I went out to the car, got our suitcases, led Julie and Megan into the seedy lobby, down the chilly hallway to their room. I waited outside until Megan had checked under the bed, in every drawer, every corner, making sure no more bad guys were lurking. Thirty minutes later she was satisfied. I was exhausted. I said goodnight and staggered off to my room. It was as crummy as the lobby but there were no bad guys under the bed. I barely got my clothes off before I fell on the lumpy mattress and slept.

It was fitful sleep at best. I dreamt of blood and violence and death. My cheek hurt. Dried blood was still caked on my face. I got up with the sun, cleaned up as best I could, got in the car and found a twenty-four hour convenience store. I bought bandages and antiseptic, a large bottle of orange juice and one of those breakfast sandwiches that tastes like congealed grease wrapped in library paste.

In my room again I cleaned and bandaged my wound, chugged the juice and gobbled the sandwich; for all its nutritional qualities I could have eaten the bag. Then I went back to bed and slept soundly for two hours. That helped a lot. I took a long, hot shower, carefully shaved and rebandaged my cheek, changed into fresh clothes.

It was almost nine o’clock, when real stores would be open. I went to the bank, to a giant Walmart and a local coffee shop that sold home-made pastries for ridiculously low prices. I filled up a half-dozen bags. I lugged my loot up to Julie’s room and knocked on the door. “Julie, it’s Josh,” I called. “I brought you something to eat, some other stuff too. I’ll leave it outside if this isn’t a good time.”

“Just a minute.”

I waited a minute, another couple minutes more, then Julie opened the door. She looked better than last night, though not by much. She was wrapped in a heavy bathrobe, her face pale and drawn, her eyes red. Megan had stopped sobbing but still cowered behind her mother. She’d probably kept Julie up most of the night. I set my bags on the room’s single table and began pulling stuff out.

“I brought you some coffee and pastries and OJ. And whatever toiletries I could think of.” I looked at Megan. “And I brought something for you too.” The girl shrank back and I thought she might begin sobbing again. Julie went to her and stroked her hair. I took one of those cheap portable DVD players and a stack of kiddie movies out of a bag and pushed them across the table. “I thought you might like to watch a movie.”

Megan’s eyes brightened just a little. We took the DVD player out of its box, stuffed it with batteries and a movie, gave Megan some juice and a pastry and watched her lose herself in the story of an animated rat. I didn’t want to intrude any further. “I’ll leave you two alone now,” I said to Julie. “Knock on my door when you decide what you want to do.”

I stood to go but she stopped me. “Please stay, Josh,” she said. “I really don’t want to be alone right now.”

Fine by me. I didn’t want to be alone either.

“Thank you for this,” she said. “For thinking of Megan.”

I shrugged her thanks away. “She’s seen more than any little girl should ever have to. Maybe this will help.”

“It will,” she said, looking lovingly at her daughter. “That, and time.” She straightened up, set her face, looked at me. “I was up all night, thinking about what to do. I can’t stay here, not after this. While you were out I called my parents, told them what happened. Some of it, anyway. They’re upset but they understand. I called my sister in San Diego. She and her husband have an extra room we can stay in until I find a job. The perv—” she smiled ever so slightly. “The manager let me use his computer. I bought two airline tickets. Our flight leaves in a few hours. As soon as we freshen up I’ll call a cab.”

She put her hand over mine for just a second, then withdrew it. “I’m sorry the interview didn’t work out,” she said. “Thank you for bringing us here, for the room.” She reached for her purse. “I’ll pay you—”

“Don’t you dare,” I interrupted. Polite but firm. “There’s no need to call a cab. I’ll take you and Megan to the airport.” In my pants pocket was an envelope. I took it out and set it on the table. “And I want you to have this.”

The envelope was crumpled and bulging, like it was pregnant. Julie eyed it warily, then me, then it again. Through the partially open flap she could see a thick stack of green. She shook her head adamantly. “No, no, no. I couldn’t possibly—”

I put my hand over hers. “You could. I want you to. It’s five thousand dollars. Call it a down payment on your bakery.”

Julie’s eyes glistened. “I can’t, Josh. I just can’t.”

“Yes, you can. The insurance company that killed my wife gave me lots more to keep me from suing them.” I removed my hand and pushed the envelope closer. “I want you to have this. Carolyn would want you to have this. Please.”

Julie bit her lip.

“Don’t say anything. Just take it. I’m going to go pack and make a few phone calls. Come by when you’re ready to leave.”

Forty-five minutes later she knocked at my door. She looked a lot better, almost like herself. Megan looked better too. I gathered our suitcases and took them out to the car.

The ride to the airport was quiet and full of meaning. Julie and I tried to make small talk, pass the time and miles, but words were futile things, insignificant, like air. When we pulled up to the curb at Departures we turned to each other—awkward, proud, bonded—like soldiers who’d survived a battle but weren’t quite sure how or why. I offered to walk her and Megan to the gate but Julie shook her head. “We’ll be fine,” she said.

And I knew they would be.

Then she gently took my hand and I saw her face glow with the light that John Teichner must have seen the day they met, the glow that lit when she looked at her daughter, the glow that only comes from inside and shines like an aura.

“You’re a good man, Josh Henson,” she said. “Carolyn must have loved you very much.”

I felt a football lodge in my throat.

“I loved her very much too.”

“I know.”

Julie Teichner leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, right above the bandage. Then she took her daughter’s hand an led her out of the car and into the airport.

I couldn’t explain it, but I didn’t hurt for the rest of the day.

Chapter 10

When I finally got back to Key Largo I wanted to fall to the ground and kiss every inch of impenetrable coral rock. But it was late and I was tired and my own bed beckoned so I settled for throwing my suitcase in a corner, tearing off my clothes and falling asleep on the bedspread.

In the morning I showered, shaved around my wounded cheek, took a cup of coffee across the street to the beach, pulled a plastic chair up to the water and sat. It was my all-purpose remedy for anything that ailed me. Better than any drug. The rest of the day I did as little as possible. I was already showing symptoms of what locals—called “conchs”—referred to as “Keys Disease”: an unbending aversion to doing anything other than drink, fish, dive and soak up the sun. I always thought it a glorious affliction; I hoped to contract it for real one day.

I went to the doctor and got my cheek sewed up—a half-dozen stitches, no big deal—then stowed the Miata’s top and enjoyed the coolish evening air on a drive to Pilot House. It was the heart of “season,” as in “tourist,” so the bar was packed. Robert was at his favorite seat at the bar, though, and even drunken tourists had the sense to leave the seat next to him empty. He caught my eye, waved me over and ordered a couple Sierra Nevadas. I took a big gulp, wincing as it went down.

“Cut yourself shaving?” he said.

“Something like that.” I told him everything, from Marilyn Kravitz’s warning call to the scene at Julie Teichner’s house. I could feel the intensity of his concentration.

“The three people at the house—tell me about them,” he said. “Everything you can remember.”

“Not a lot, really,” I said, trying to recast the events in my mind. “Dressed all in black. Not military. Jeans, sneakers, sweater, jacket. Ski masks; holes for eyes and mouth.”

“Vests?”

I assumed he meant bulletproof.

“I don’t think so.”

“Go on.”

“Men were large, muscular but not body-builder types.”

“One of them Gutierrez?”

“I don’t know. Could be. The one who did the talking was too big, the other one was the right body type. But he didn’t say anything and I couldn’t see his face.”

“What about the woman?”

“Small, wiry. The big man did most of the talking but she seemed to be in charge. It seemed he had a problem with that.”

“How so?”

“He told the other guy to get Julie’s daughter from the bedroom and she jumped all over him. He smacked her down and the woman told him to knock if off, let Julie get the kid herself. They didn’t argue or anything but they exchanged looks. He wasn’t happy.

“Accents?”

“Not that I could tell. Though the woman could have been from New England or thereabouts. You know, Bah-ston.”

“Gloves?”

I had to think about that one for a moment. I pictured the man holding the gun on me.

“Not leather but disposables, I think.”

“What about weapons?”

“Nasty things, like a squared-off pistol. Short barrel, rectangular body, pistol grip with a clip sticking out the bottom.”

“HK. Micro-Uzi. Lot of firepower for a woman and a little girl.”

“They seemed prepared to use them.”

“They were.”

“So who the hell are they?”

“Specifically, I don’t know. Less specifically, they’re professionals. Of a sort. Ex-military but not elite. How long did the whole thing take?”

“Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.”

“Too long. And there’s no question who’s in charge. The more interesting question, though, is who do they work for? The people who employed your Gutierrez perhaps?”

I’d thought of that one myself. “Perhaps.”

Robert must have seen something in my face. “Don’t fuck with these people, Josh,” he said. “You don’t have the weight to take them on.”

“Bullshit. I’m going to find the bastards and nail their hides to the wall. This is still America. You can’t get away with shit like this.”

My friend smirked as if I’d announced I was going to flap my arms and fly off the barstool.

“And how do you think you’re going to stop them?”

“It’s called journalism.”

“It’s called dreaming. You really think you’re going to get the people who pull the strings? Or the people who pull their strings? You can’t touch them, and if they think you’re getting even the tiniest bit close, they’ll take you off at the neck. Believe me, Josh, those guys at the house are bad news, but they’re just the tip of a very large, very deep iceberg.”

“So what are we supposed to do, Robert? Sit by and let the entire country be taken over by a bunch of thugs in ski masks?”

He took another sip of beer and regarded the foam billowing up in the glass for a second.

“No,” he said. “Not that.”

* * *

It was a childhood Christmas ornament, AnnaLynn Conté realized later, that saved her life.

She’d arrived at her Saint Philip Street home on the fringe of the French Quarter just before dark after a long and nerve-racking day. After telling her staff about Josh Henson’s warning everyone was stressed, jumpy. Before leaving for the office that morning she’d taken her father’s old Remington out of the closet, loaded the magazine and placed the gun under her bed. She bought a can of Mace and stashed it in her purse too. She appreciated Henson’s call—he seemed like a nice enough guy—but also something of a paranoid. Still, she told herself, better safe than sorry.

Then nothing. No men in trenchcoats lurking around SayNo’s Warehouse District office. No one being followed, watched, harassed. No cyber attacks, denial of service. Nothing out of the ordinary. But she did as promised. Backed up files on external drives and stashed them in a safety deposit box. Had the burglar alarm checked out, had a company come in and sweep for bugs.

Again, nothing. So when she got home that evening she was pissed, mostly at herself for letting some guy who’d called out of the blue push her into acting like a scared little girl. But it was almost Christmas, and the tree in her living room made her smile and the day’s hassles drop away. She was looking forward to a glass or two of wine, an old movie on the TV and eight hours of peaceful, dreamless sleep.

The wine was good, the movie was terrible. When sleep came it was fitful. She’d probably had one glass too many and it kept waking her up every couple of hours. She was fading away again. . . then a sharp pop, a soft crunch.

A memory floated in as if in a dream. She was eight years old, couldn’t wait to see the new bicycle her parents had gotten her for Christmas. She’d waited until they had gone to bed, crept out of her bedroom, into the living room. . . then a sharp pop, a soft crunch, and she was bleeding and wailing in pain, shards from an ornament that had fallen off the tree embedded in her bare foot.

It wasn’t a dream! She bolted up in bed, sleep falling from her eyes, frightened disbelief mixed with dreadful certainty. There’s someone in the house! There was no time to think, only to act. She slipped off the bed, pulled out the Remington, thumbed off the safety. Knelt on the floor, elbows on the bed, using it to steady the heavy rifle, aiming chest-high at the bedroom door.

She waited.

The old gun felt incredibly heavy. She fought for calm, to keep the rifle steady. Her ears strained to pierce the silence. She waited. Panic like tiny tongues of flame licked at her insides. Her muscles twitched under the weight of the gun. Her back ached. Her eyes watered. The barrel wavered, dropped. She willed it to stop, fought harder, brought it back up.

She waited.

Another squeak of floorboard. More silence.

She could feel the intruder’s presence, the building menace. What is he waiting for? Her heart raced. Her muscles twitched, the rifle barrel wavered. . .

Then a split-second of madness. Pure reaction. Survival.

The bedroom door banged half-off its hinges. A black shape filled the doorway, rushing in like a giant wave. . .

AnnaLynn Conté’s heart stopped pounding. Her hands were steady. Her breath came slowly, evenly. Smoothly, gently, her finger closed on the trigger, squeezed the trigger. The gun exploded. It sounded like thunder. Once, twice, three times. The black wave disappeared. She kept squeezing. The firing pin clicked on an empty magazine. Then the adrenaline left her and her whole body began to shake. She realized that her ears hurt, her shoulder ached. The air in the bedroom was gray; it smelled of burnt matches, smoldering embers. Death. She waited until the shaking stopped, then she picked up her cellphone, dialed 911 and said in calm, firm voice, “I want to report an intruder.”

* * *

Three days to Christmas and I received an early present, albeit of the coal and stick variety. Jeff O’Neill called. He was pissed.

“Our so-called partners bailed on your politicians piece,” he said. “Bunch of chickenshits.”

I wasn’t surprised. Public Interest had contracts with most of the big national newspaper chains to provide the kind of investigative stories they no longer had the manpower—or willpower—to do, though their support was mostly a financial pittance and the occasional tip and legwork. But video of four of Florida’s most powerful legislators getting their dicks sucked by coke-snorting hookers on a developer’s private island was going to cause a major shitstorm, and stirring things up was not what the media were about any more.

“They tell you why?” I asked.

“Oh, sure,” O’Neill said, disgust filming his words. “They got all ‘ethical’ on me. You know, you were trespassing, filming without permission, invading their privacy. Finally, I got hold of Ted Janks of U.S. Media—we went to J-school together a million or so years ago—and he said their new owner is a developer buddy of the guy who owns Rock Island and if any one of his papers even mentioned your story he’d fire everyone on staff and tell them to sue for their severance. Plus the two of them are working together to build a shitload of tract housing—excuse me, ‘planned communities’—right up against the Everglades and they don’t want to piss off the politicians they’ve spent so much money buying.”

I shrugged. “Same as it ever was.”

“You got that right. But fuck ‘em. We post tomorrow, and let the shit rain down where it will.”

I liked the image of that one. “I’ll get my umbrella,” I said.

* * *

I’ve never been much of a sleeper. The next morning I woke at four, was out of bed at four-thirty, at the computer poring over Mongoose’s file on Armando Gutierrez at five. The phone on my desk gave its electronic chirp and I wondered who could be calling me at this ungodly hour.

“Josh, it’s AnnaLynn.” She sounded dazed, empty. Like someone who’d just walked away from an airplane crash and couldn’t believe she was still alive. Then the words came tumbling out. “They came for me, they came for me. You were right.”

There was no satisfaction in that.

“Oh, Jesus, AnnaLynn. Are you okay?”

She didn’t hear the question.

“It was a man. He cut the power to my house and picked the lock. I. . . I drank a little too much the night before and couldn’t sleep. He stepped on a Christmas ornament and I heard it and when he came into the bedroom I—” She stopped and I could hear her rapid breathing. “I shot him. With my dad’s gun.”

“Are you alright? Are you at the house? Are the police there?”

“I’m okay, I guess. I don’t think it’s really hit me yet. The police are here now; an officer is going to drive me to a girlfriend’s house in a few minutes. I can’t imagine staying here tonight.”

“Do they have any idea who the guy is?”

“Not yet. He was dressed in black, wearing a ski mask. I told them about your call and took a picture of him with my cellphone. I’m sending it to your cell now.”

My phone beeped and I punched up the photo. It was a tiny, grainy shot of a man with a round head, meaty face, short goatee, a lightning bolt tattoo creeping up a thick neck. Except for the smear of blood on his cheek he could have been sleeping.

“That’s him, AnnaLynn,” I said. “Armando Gutierrez.”

I heard her say something to the cops. They went back and forth for a couple of minutes, then she came back on the line.

“I’ve got to go now,” she said. “But thank you, thank you, thank you. I was mad at you earlier today but you saved my life.”

“AnnaLynn—”

“I’ve really got to go, Josh. I’ll call you later. Some merry Christmas, huh?”

A very Merry Fucking Christmas, indeed. As bad as I felt for AnnaLynn, I wasn’t in all that great shape myself. I hoped she’d keep her promise and call me again, then caught myself and felt guilty for hoping. The holidays were like that. On Christmas Eve I drove down to Pilot House and joined the other orphans for an impromptu party that lasted well into the early morning and made me realize how much I loved the tight little community of people who lived here.

Christmas Day bloomed glorious. Eighty degrees, no humidity, not a cloud in the vivid blue sky. I sat on my little beach and talked to Carolyn like I did sometimes, told her everything that had happened. I didn’t mention AnnaLynn Conté but I believe she knew anyway and understood.

Later in the day Robert came over with a present; I hadn’t realized he was an orphan too. He set a plastic bucket on my kitchen counter with two hogfish he’d speared only half an hour earlier. We went to work gutting and scaling them, tossed them in a hot skillet with a big knob of butter and a few squeezes of lemon and ate them out on the deck with a bottle of white Burgundy I’d been saving for a special occasion. When the wine was gone we switched to cognac and Cuban cigars and sat staring quietly at the sky, contemplating all those things bigger than ourselves.

Chapter 11

The stack of reports on Raymond Carmody’s desk was half a foot thick. Unemployment was up, the stock market was down. Foreclosures were rampant; under water homeowner were walking away from their mortgages in unheard of numbers. Crime stats were through the roof. Small businesses were closing at the rate of a hundred a week. Local governments were begging for more federal money. The states of California, Florida, Nevada and Illinois were essentially broke. Then there was Iran. Iraq. Israel. Afghanistan. Syria. Yemen. And those weren’t all the issues President Nancy Elias’s chief of staff had to take up with his boss at their regular morning briefing.

But his mind kept going back to one file in particular, four densely written pages winnowed from mountains of data compiled by the FBI, CIA, NSA and local police departments around the country, supplemented by information gathered from Carmody’s own sources, sources he’d cultivated in more than twenty-five years as a member in good standing of the Democratic Party establishment.

He adjusted his reading glasses, picked up the file and read it through for the third time, then flipped it shut, a troubled frown on his face. This could make all those other problems seem insignificant, shatter the very bedrock of the country. The facts were there, lots of them. But the conclusion was speculation. His own speculation, to be sure, arrived at grudgingly and with great trepidation but speculation he couldn’t ignore. If he was wrong, his usefulness to the president would likely be at an end. His career too. But he had to tell her anyway. Somebody had to warn her of the thunderclouds gathering just beyond the horizon.

The briefing began at precisely 8:01 a.m., Nancy Elias being nothing if not punctual. She was a big, ungainly woman who over the years had learned to use her size to intimidate fellow politicians, almost all of them male, while appealing to voters who found in her horsey features and adamantly unstylish appearance something of a common bond.

Moving quickly, Carmody went through the agenda, getting instructions, giving the occasional word of advice, adjusting the president’s schedule and updating her on what had transpired since the briefing of the day before. Raymond Carmody was not just the president’s gatekeeper; he was her friend and most trusted advisor, someone who’d had her back since her first campaign for the Los Angeles City Council, then California state senate, House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate and, finally, the presidency. Nancy Elias knew she’d still be arguing with L.A. Public Works over potholes if not for the crusty, bearded gnome of a man sitting across from her in the Oval Office. Her trust and confidence in his judgment was absolute.

“There’s one more thing, Madam President,” Carmody said, taking off his reading glasses and engaging her directly. “I’ve been hearing some very unsettling rumors for the past several months. So unsettling, in fact, that I thought it best to check them out myself. I have reports from several agencies if you’d like to see them.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose as if to sharpen his thoughts. Nancy Elias watched with surprise; she had never seen Ray Carmody so concerned.

“Forget the reports now, Ray,” she said. “What is it?”

“I don’t know of any other way to say it but to say it,” he said. “I believe we have the beginnings of a real class war on our hands, maybe a revolution.”

“What?”

“I know that sounds preposterous. But bear with me. You remember the thugs who were out there during the past couple of elections, the ‘accidents,’ the beatings, the intimidation. I know you were embarrassed by it and asked Frank to make it stop. And mostly it did. For awhile. But they’ve come back—in Oregon, California, Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania. Those factory workers in Illinois, the ones who took the place over to get their back pay after it was shut down? They got beaten up, ‘accidented’ too. It was pretty ugly.

“And it gets worse. One of them was arrested a few weeks ago for beating a talk jock to death in San Francisco. African-American. A flaming liberal. The cops didn’t have enough to hold him so they had to let him go but my sources tell me there’s no question he was involved. Then just before Christmas the same man broke into the house of that SayNo woman, Conté. She shot and killed him. That same night someone firebombed her office, attacked two of her colleagues. They’re both in the hospital; one of them might not make it.

Ray Carmody spread his hands placatingly. “I know you and Frank are close, and I’m not saying he orchestrated this. Or even knew about it. But it’s something we have to consider. And it goes even deeper than that.”

Nancy Elias rubbed her thumb and forefinger together like she did when she was worried. “How deep, Ray?”

“Someone is targeting our people,” he said soberly. “Not just yours and mine. All of us. Remember Senator Stens and the bomber project? Charles Cooper of Republic Fund? Somebody got to them. No one knows who. Remember how surprised we were when Chalmers and Rifkin and Mathers retired, then disappeared? Well, I did some checking. Right before he quit, Chalmers’s house blew up. Gas leak, supposedly. Rifkin went ‘missing’ for three days on a camping trip. I couldn’t dig up anything on Mathers but his neighbors said he was practically in seclusion for two weeks before he walked away. Now they’re all out of the country. Chalmers is in Bermuda, Rifkin in Paris, Mathers in Belize. I reached out to them—discreetly, of course. And they wouldn’t say a word. Literally, not a word. Not hello, good-bye, fuck you. Nothing. They’re terrified of something, Nancy. Absolutely terrified.”

The president’s fingers rubbed harder. Worry lines deepened on her face. Ray Carmody thought she looked a little pale.

“And that’s not the worst of it. Remember Jeff Dalworth’s heart attack? It really was a heart attack. But his mistress—you know Lauren Pinter—found a DVD next to his body and passed it on to the FBI. It showed him in a Miami hotel room, performing some, ah. . . highly illegal and immoral acts on a young boy. Someone had both the knowledge and the skills to bug his hotel room. Knew he and Lauren were having an affair and had the DVD delivered to her house. The coroner thinks the shock of seeing it could have triggered a heart attack.”

Nancy Elias grew a little paler. A blister rose on her thumb. “You’re right, Ray,” she said. “It does look bad. But what makes you think they’re connected?”

Ray Carmody opened his folder and removed a plain white business card printed with a single word in big black letters. He slid it across the president’s desk.

“In every one of those instances,” he said. “They found this.”

Nancy Elias’s face went white beneath her makeup. She licked her lips. Swallowed. Blinked.

Ray Carmody was really worried now.

“What is it, Madam President? What’s wrong?”

Nancy Elias ignored him, stared without seeing at the rectangle of white paper in the center of her desk. “I warned them,” she said softly. “I told them this day would come.”

“What day, Nancy? What day?”

She couldn’t take her eyes off the card.

“The day they decided to fight back.”

Chapter 12

In the days between Christmas and New Year’s, the following events occurred:

Nancy Elias called Frank Bernabe on a number only she possessed and said, “Frank, call the others and get them down here. What I was afraid would happen is happening.” She sounded shaken and anxious. “We’ll call it an emergency economic summit or whatever but I want you all here in two weeks.” Frank Bernabe sighed into his hand but said meekly, “Yes, Madam President.” He despised weakness in anyone, especially the woman he so successfully sold to his fellow titans as presidential material, but alternately playing wet nurse and taskmaster to weak-willed politicians was part of his job description so he resigned himself to spending several frigid days in the charmless shithole that was Washington D.C.

Sixteen Congresspeople—eleven in the House, five in the Senate—were delivered DVDs in plain brown envelopes, just like Jefferson Dalworth’s. On them were videos and audio tracks that revealed a startling variety of personal peccadilloes, from the mundane to the revolting, plus the most intimate and closely guarded financial records showing secret payments, money transfers, kickbacks, no-interest loans and every credit card purchase for the past five years. The DVDs came with a message stating that instructions for keeping their contents from public view would be forthcoming and must be obeyed. They also came with a plain white business card bearing a single word printed in big black letters.

A hidden surveillance camera trained on a vacant lot in the gritty Miami neighborhood of Overtown recorded a fortyish white man with a short pony tail and wearing jeans and a faded tropical shirt asking nearby shopkeepers about the rock- and rubbish-strewn site. The woman who monitored dozens of such cameras punched a few keys on her computer. The property was registered to something called Genesis Group. She had no idea what that was but it didn’t matter. Anyone who showed more than a passing interest in it was to be reported immediately. She punched some more keys and isolated the man’s face, sharpened the focus, plugged it into the same facial-recognition program used by the CIA, NSA and other agencies she wasn’t even aware of. The face belonged to a man named Josh Henson, a reporter for an obscure news organization called Public Interest. He lived by the water in Key Largo. He had a decent-sized bank account, a small house, little debt, no outstanding warrants. His wife was dead. He was considered a troublemaker. She opened a file, filled it with the details, the video and the photo from his driver’s license and sent it off to her superiors.

In the woods of Humboldt County, a young man driving a beat-up red pickup drove to an isolated encampment of tents and lean-tos that was home to close to close to one-thousand people, many of them families with children who had no other place or means to live. Within days he was helping organize a governing council and provide for sanitation facilities and safe drinking water. He convinced a local physician to make regular visits to the encampment and treat its residents in exchange for such services as they could render. He prevailed upon the local outlet of a giant national supermarket chain to truck in a portion of its meat and produce that might otherwise be thrown away. When two months later he left what had grown into a small city of three thousand, he was as much a mystery as the day he arrived.

In New Orleans, AnnaLynn Conté’s shock had turned into anger and hardened into determination. After a jazz funeral for one of her staffers, who died from the beating administered in the same series of attacks as hers, she resolved that SayNo would launch a new campaign, a New Bonus Army march on Washington. She further resolved that SayNo’s New Declaration of Independence kickoff would take place at a giant rally at the National Mall in the shadow of the Washington Monument, and that following the rally as many people as were willing would camp out for the entire month of July in Anacostia Park, site of the original Bonus Army encampment in 1932. Would a new General Douglas MacArthur order soldiers to fire on their own people to preserve government authority? That was a question AnnaLynn Conté couldn’t quite bring herself to ask.

* * *

Beyond that fruitless trip to Miami to check out the non-existent offices of Genesis Group, I spent the rest of the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day happily succumbing to Keys’ Disease. Robert had taken the week off too, and with the season’s first big cold front having just blown through, we decided to forgo spending New Year’s Eve getting blotto and bleating “Auld Lang Syne” and instead do a little Keys-style shrimping.

Robert checked the tide tables and gassed up the Dauntless. We bundled up like Eskimos, and shortly after 11 p.m., slid into the water and motored slowly across Largo Sound to Adams Cut, a short, narrow man-made channel linking the ocean and bay sides of the island. With the rest of the world out partying, we had the Cut to ourselves, waiting for shimmering masses of pink shrimp to glide toward us on the chilly current.

I steered with one hand and played a powerful spotlight on the water with the other. Robert hovered over it, wielding a long-handled net like a jai alai player and scooping up dozens of the wiggly creatures as they swam to the light. As quickly as he could he dumped them into a cooler packed with ice, which after an hour’s work and as much cold as our warm-blooded bodies could stand was so full we could barely get it closed. Half an hour and half a bottle of brandy later we were both at home in bed, refrigerators packed with bags of shrimp awaiting a New Year’s Day feast.

Robert came over a little after two bearing two six-packs of cold Sierra Nevadas and we got down to preparing our bounty. By halftime of the Your Name Here Corporate Bowl they were ready. I spread newspapers over the coffee table in the living room, turned up the sound of the football game and we attacked the sweet-succulent crustaceans as if they might jump up off the table and attack us first.

By dark we’d created an impressive mountain of shrimp shells and empty beer bottles, USC was beating the crap out of another bunch of hapless farm boys from the Midwest, and Robert and I were both pretty well lit. When the Trojans went up by three touchdowns I flicked off the game in disgust and landed on CNN, where this week’s Great White Anchor Hope was running down the outrages of the year just past and speculating earnestly about the outrages to come.

Feeling the effects of excessive consumption of cold adult beverages, I wadded up a napkin and threw it at the TV screen.

“Do you believe these people?” I snapped. “Unemployment is through the roof, people are losing their houses right and left, we’re still fighting insane wars, there’s still not a decent system of health care, and those worthless fuckwads in Washington aren’t doing a goddam thing about any of it. The whole damn system is broken.”

“Now, what makes you say that?” Robert said, a sly smile on his lips. “I think our worthless fuckwads and ‘the whole damn system,’ as you put it, are actually working quite splendidly.”

I almost spit out my beer.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “Name one problem any of them has even tried to solve.”

“Ah, Josh,” Robert sighed. “For a supposedly skeptical journalist you can be so conventional. It depends on how you define ‘problem.’ Take health care. To you, not having a system that provides reliable, affordable health care to everyone is, in fact, a problem. But to the CEO of a big pharmaceutical company or health insurance company, that’s not the problem at all. The problem is people like you, people who are so pissed off about the pathetic state of health care in this country that they’re starting to demand their ‘leaders’ do something about it.

“Or take our various and sundry and endless wars. You might think it’s a problem that kids are coming home in body bags or missing arms and legs, that the Pentagon is eating up money that could be spent fixing up the country. But to the head of a company that supplies the military or a private contractor that does construction and security for an oil company that wants a lock on Middle Eastern oil fields, the problem is you, people who want to ‘cut and run’ and throw all of them off the gravy train. So if you look at it that way, our ‘worthless fuckwads,’ as you put it, have actually solved both ‘problems.’ There is no decent national health care, and the wars will continue until the end of time. Is this a great system or what?”

It was so cold-bloodedly cynical it had to be true. But I couldn’t force myself to go there. “Okay, I get what you’re saying. But if the system doesn’t work for ninety-eight percent of the American public, doesn’t that prove it’s broken?”

Robert studied me as if I were a particularly dim-witted child.

“That’s the second time you’ve said that and you’re still wrong. Look, have you contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to those politicians’ campaigns? Have you gone to their fundraisers and eaten their rubber chickens? Let them ride on your corporate jet and sponsored ‘fact-finding’ conferences in Hawaii and Paris and Singapore? Hired their wives and kids and relatives to high-paying, make-work jobs? Given them low- and no-interest loans, insider stock tips, the chance to buy into IPOs before the rest of us even know they exist? Have you hired them for millions of dollars a year after their ‘public service’ is over to bribe their former colleagues on behalf of some mega-corporation?

He took a sip of beer and threw down a challenge.

“If you haven’t, then just what is it that makes you think those people work for you? Government isn’t broken, it’s just another business. And in business, you work for the people who pay you. So if you’re not paying everyone from the president on down to some crappy little first-term representative, you don’t even get a seat up in the nosebleed section. Money talks, ideals walk, Josh. It’s Capitalism 1A.”

That was just about the most goddam depressing thing I’d heard all year. I grabbed the remote and clicked back to the Rose Bowl. It was halftime. USC was ahead by four touchdowns. It was still better than this. I cranked up the volume.

“Hey, Robert,” I said, reaching for the last two bottles on the table. “Want another beer?”

Chapter 13

The Falcon 2000 sat on the tarmac at Henderson Executive Airport in Las Vegas waiting for the arrival of U.S. Senator John Hammer. It was a quick trip for the influential Republican while Congress was in recess, flying out of Washington D.C. to his home just outside Little Rock, Ark., on the corporate jet generously provided by the state’s largest bank, U.S. Bank & Trust, and then on to Vegas to address a convention of banking industry executives.

Luckily, it wasn’t all business. The chairwoman of the local Republican party was hot and hot for him, or at least for what she hoped he could do for her, getting her out of this sun-singed hellhole to D.C., where the real action was. She didn’t have a prayer of that happening, but Hammer wasn’t about to spoil the fun.

His pipes freshly cleaned, a pound of Kobe beef and expensive California cabernet in his belly from last night’s dinner, the fit, tanned, sixty-seven-year-old Senate minority leader was downright jolly when he clambered into the Falcon’s plush leather-and-walnut-trimmed cabin with his long-time aide, Miles Severn. Hammer loosened his tie and dropped into one of the cabin’s overstuffed leather captain’s chairs, while Miles went to the bar and fixed him his usual Stoli rocks. Heavy on the rocks; it was, after all, barely noon in Vegas.

“Some shindig, huh, Miles?” Hammer said, as his aide uncapped a bottle of sparkling water and sat opposite him. “These Vegas guys really know how to throw a party.”

Severn, who’d spent much of the evening trying to convince local reporters that the dyed-blond, silicone-enhanced chairwoman wasn’t giving his boss a hand job under the table, didn’t think it was such a swell party. But he kept his opinion to himself.

“That’s what makes America great,” Hammer continued, oblivious to his aide’s indifference. “Good hootch, fast jet, fine Corinthian leather.” He jiggled the ice in his drink and took another long sip. “God, it’s good to be out of the bog”—his private name for the nation’s capital— “and out here with real people. I’m so sick of hearing from one more bunch of whiners.” His voice took a mocking tone. “We need more unemployment. We need help with our mortgage. We need free health care. We need protection from the evil banks and insurance and oil companies. We need, we need, we need.”

He finished his drink and slammed the glass down hard enough to spill ice on the thick pile carpet.

“Goddammit, we’ve become a nation of wimps! Lying around on our asses sucking at Big Government’s tit, crying about how bad everything is. Boo-hoo-hoo. Go out and get a fucking job! Stop whining! Stop expecting someone else to do something for you. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps! Stand on your own two feet! Nobody owes you anything! You didn’t see those people last night asking for a government handout, did you? Whining about Wall Street, the banks, the e-con-o-mee?”

Miles Severn fought the urge to point out that Wall Street, the banks and the rest of corporate America had bought their handouts fair and square by purchasing the services of John Hammer and his colleagues like so many pairs of underpants at Walmart. It was a battle he was losing when the pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom.

“We’re cleared for takeoff, Senator. We’ll be in the air in a few minutes.”

Hammer thrust out his empty glass and Miles Severn got up and made him another drink. He was glad to do it. His boss was a nervous flier, and he knew the senator would be white-knuckling it until the aircraft reached cruising altitude and leveled off. Spared another boozy sermon, he closed his eyes and laid back in the big, comfy seat. The soft whine of twin Pratt & Whitney engines and the tinkling of ice in the senator’s glass had a hypnotic effect and as the aircraft rolled down the runway and pointed its nose towards the sky he felt himself dozing off.

That grip pinching his shoulder, that strange voice greeting the senator, Hammer answering back. . . They must be in a dream. He tried to shrug them off but the grip tightened, the voice said sternly, a little louder, “Be still.” Then Miles Severn was wide awake, gazing unbelieving at the man standing over him. He was dressed in the blue uniform of the bank’s private pilots, not large but filling out the uniform. He wore an opaque plastic mask that obscured his features but his hair was cut short, his face was clean-shaven. His hand was incredibly strong. It shoved Miles Severn back in the chair, eyes flicking over him in warning. Then he noticed the small black gun with the long, fat barrel.

“What is the meaning of this?!” John Hammer’s voice was a frightened screech masquerading as outrage. “How dare you! How dare you! Do you know who I am?”

“Oh, I know who you are,” the man said. His words were muffled, distorted by the mask. “You’re John Patrick Hammer the second, Democrat from Arkansas, Senate Minority Leader, son of former U.S. Senator John Patrick Hammer the first, the richest man in Arkansas, serial asshole and thieving sack of camel pus.”

“You can’t speak to me like—”

The muffled voice cut through John Hammer’s bravado, the whine of the jet engines.

“Shut up, Senator. One more word out of that hole of yours and I’ll plug it up like a stopped drain.” He turned his attention to Miles Severn. “You’re not going to be any trouble, are you?”

“No, sir.” If it weren’t for the fear he might share John Hammer’s fate, he would actually be enjoying this.

“Good.”

The man’s hand left his shoulder, reappeared holding a syringe filled with a clear liquid. “Don’t worry,” he said. “This will just put you to sleep for awhile. When it takes effect I’m going to bind your hands and feet. Not too tight; you’ll be able to work them loose. It will be better for you that way. You were surprised, knocked out, tied up. You’re an innocent victim here. You had nothing to do with this. Okay”.

Miles Severn nodded. The man jabbed him with the needle and his body felt suffused with a soft, warm glow, like the sun bathing him from the inside out. His head lolled, his body went limp. The man checked his pulse, gun barrel never wavering from John Hammer’s head. He pulled a fistful of plastic ties out of his pocket and tossed them in the senator’s lap, then he waggled his pistol in Miles Severn’s direction.

“Get up,” the man ordered. “Roll him on the floor. Do his wrists, ankles.” That done, he tossed a roll of duct tape at the senator. “One strip over his mouth. Then sit back down.” Hammer made like he might speak but the man waggled his pistol again. “Not a word,” he said. “Remember what I told you.”

Hammer remembered, sweating profusely in the air-conditioned cabin. When his chief of staff was trussed like a Christmas goose, he backed into his chair and sat. The gun barrel followed his every movement like an all-seeing eye.

“That was a nice little speech you gave before we took off,” the man said. The ice in his voice indicated this was not a compliment. “You’re a real man of the people, U.S. Senator John Patrick Hammer. At least the people with gold-plated Gucci bootstraps. Your daddy bought you your Senate seat after you ran two of his companies into the ground. I guess he figured you’d do less damage in Washington. Or maybe that your particular kind of weasel would be more successful there.”

John Hammer began to sputter. “Now listen here—”

The man appeared motionless but a second later John Hammer’s cheek stung as if bitten. He’d hardly seen the man move, yet somehow a calloused hand flicked out like a snake’s tongue and hit him hard enough to turn his head around.

“Open your mouth again and I won’t be so gentle.” The man lowered himself into the seat opposite the trembling politician. “You’re a real piece of work, Senator. No bootstraps for you. Everything handed to you on a platter. Hell, why stand on your own two feet when you can stand on daddy’s shoulders? You were born on third base and think you hit a triple. And all those people who can’t afford admission to the game? They’re just a bunch of whiners.

“Well, Senator, I’m here to give you a taste of your own medicine. You want a society that’s dog eat dog, might makes right, survival of the fittest? You’re going to get it. We’ve made a small alternation to your flight plan. You’re not going back to Arkansas. You’re going to California, to a place where daddy’s money, daddy’s influence, all the deals you’ve made, all the power you think you have, don’t mean shit. You chew on that awhile, U.S. Senator John Patrick Hammer. I’ll fill you in on the details when we get there.”

The man rose from his chair, pistol in one hand, syringe in the other. “Roll up your sleeve, Senator,” he said. “You’re about to take a little nap.”

* * *

Christmas and the weeks preceding it left me in a peculiar state of lethargy, as if a giant hand had wrung out my juices and tossed me aside to shrivel. I surrendered fully to Keys’ Disease, broken only by a trip to Key West that reminded my why I usually avoided the place until “season” was over. I’d hit town just as a pair of cruise ships disgorged thousands of pasty-skinned tourists like a swarm of MasterCard-bearing locusts onto Duval Street, where they were ripped off by sleazy merchants and exacted their revenge by getting stinking drunk and obnoxious at Sloppy Joe’s. One look and I turned the Miata around and headed home.

On the way I stopped for an early dinner at Keys Fisheries, one of my favorite haunts, a squat concrete bunker on the bay in Marathon. They do a lobster reuben that’s the size of a manhole cover and one of the best things between two slices of bread you can put in your mouth. The evening was a little chilly but not too bad. I fought it off with a couple glasses of sturdy red wine and drove off with a full belly and a sigh of relief that they hadn’t figured out how to dock cruise ships here yet.

I pulled into my driveway just after dark, unlocked the door, went inside, flipped on some lights. Poured another glass of red wine, went into my office. Stopped dead and stared at my desk. On it was a big yellow mailing envelope, about a half-inch thick, no address or markings. No anything. It wasn’t mine; it wasn’t there when I’d left. I got that pins and needles feeling all over my body. Someone had broken into my house and placed the envelope on my desk. Who? Why? And was he or she still here?

Still tingling all over, I padded quietly into the kitchen, grabbed a ten-inch chef’s knife and checked every room, every closet, the pantry. I flipped on the outside lights and checked around the house, examined the door knobs and jambs for signs of forced entry, the windows too. Nothing.

I went back to my office and examined the package. There wasn’t much to see. No suspicious bulges, ominous traces of white powder. It wasn’t ticking. I felt a little foolish, creeping around the house with a knife in my hand, studying an envelope like it was some sort of nuclear device, imagining all sorts of doomsday scenarios. So I said fuck it and undid the clasp and spilled its contents on my desk.

They were dozens of pages of official-looking documents. Deeds, records, bank statements. Personnel files. Charts and photographs. I shuffled through each one with growing excitement. This was great stuff. Amazing stuff. Better than even Mongoose could dig up. It was a complete file on Genesis Group. It detailed years of political intimidation, dirty tricks and worse. Showed every facet of the organization, every action, every holding. Showed how it shielded itself from scrutiny as a shell company within a shell company within a shell company. Showed how Genesis Group was a multimillion-dollar octopus whose tentacles reached into every corner of American political life. It was a treasure chest. The motherlode.

The final two pages really grabbed my attention. One was a simple chart that showed Genesis Group and its counterparts as a series of interconnected boxes, a hierarchical ranking that marched up a ladder from many to one. The one was a box labeled Tutis International.

The second page was a photograph. It showed a man who appeared to be in his mid-sixties emerging from a limousine in front of an anonymous big-city hotel. He was wearing a dark suit, fedora with the brim pulled down and impenetrable black sunglasses. A bit of silver hair peeked out from beneath the hat. The man’s face was gaunt, his lips thin and seemingly bloodless. It was not a face that made you feel warm and fuzzy. I turned the page over. On the back was written, “Leland Elliott, CEO, Tutis International.”

That would be my next target: Leland Elliott and his octopus.

I was back in business.

Chapter 14

The first thing Senator John Hammer heard was the steady thwock-thwock-thwock of helicopter blades grasping at the air. He opened his eyes but the world was black, the air heavy and fetid. His cheeks chafed against the rough fabric of the hood drawn loosely beneath his chin. He tried to move his arms and legs but they were bound, immobilized. His body too; there was no give in the straps that held him tightly to a seat. Fear, bewilderment, a sense of his own impending doom were overwhelming.

Where am I being taken? What do they want with me? And who are these people who can take over a private jet at a major American airport and kidnap a sitting United States senator? He moaned aloud and was startled at its unremitting despair.

“Welcome back, Senator.”

It was the man in the airplane again, talking over the noise of the helicopter, still cold and unforgiving.

“We’re coming to the end of our little journey together,” he went on. “Though yours, I must admit, is just beginning. You probably have a few questions, some of which I will attempt to answer in the short time we have remaining. You have, as you have no doubt deduced, been kidnapped, though I prefer the term ‘borrowed.’ It wasn’t terribly difficult, but it did require a good deal of planning. My colleagues and I simply replaced U.S. Bank’s pilots and filed an amended flight plan. We landed outside of Bakersfield and transferred you to this helicopter, which is now only a few minutes from its destination.

“Who are we? That, I’m afraid, you will never know. Let’s just say we’re Americans who can no longer sit by and let you and your ilk destroy everything that is good and just about this country. Call us patriots, call us terrorists. It really doesn’t matter. As to what we have planned for you, rest assured that you will not be killed or tortured or harmed in any way. At least not by us. But you will be forced to live by your own philosophy or, rather, the one you seek to impose on those less fortunate than yourself.

“Remember what I said about might makes right, survival of the fittest, dog eat dog? Well, Senator, you’re about to live it. We’re currently flying over Inyo National Forest, almost two million acres of untamed and unspoiled wilderness on the California-Nevada border, one of the most beautiful places in the nation. Also one of the most isolated.

“This will be your new home for. . .” John Hammer could sense the man’s shrug. “Who knows how long. Or it may be your graveyard. That’s up to you. You’ve perhaps noticed that your clothes are a bit more substantial than that finely tailored Brooks Brothers suit you were wearing. You are dressed in full cold-weather hiking gear—North Face, lots of layers, very good stuff. You’ll need it. Temperature on the ground is approximately thirty-five degrees, not counting wind chill.

“You’ve also been given a backpack with a one-man, all-season tent, thermal-insulated sleeping bag, miscellaneous hiking gear and a week’s supply of freeze-dried food. In just a minute now we will land and you will embark on an exciting new adventure. You may walk out of here on your own, you may meet up with a group of fellow adventurers who will take pity on you. You may die and be eaten by animals. Honestly, I don’t much care. But you will have to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, Senator. You will have to stand on your own two feet. And then we’ll see if you’re one of the fittest who deserves to survive.”

The man’s voice dripped contempt. “And, remember, no whining.”

The helicopter began its slow descent and suddenly John Hammer didn’t want to break free from his bonds but to embrace them, to beg his captors to tie him down tighter, for all eternity if need be. The craft jumped and shimmied as it hit ground, the engine whine lessened, the rotor chop slowed. Hands were all over him, unhitching him from the seat, unwrapping the ties at his wrists and ankles, jerking the hood off his head.

At last John Hammer saw the man who would turn his life of comfort and prestige and privilege into a filthy, dangerous and quite probably terminal hell. He was an unremarkable-looking man—no plastic face mask now—but there was neither mercy nor hesitation in his clear blue eyes.

“Please don’t do this, please don’t do this,” Senator John Hammer wailed. He was weeping, begging. Unashamed. “I have a wife and children. I have—”

The man’s eyes held nothing. He said nothing. He stepped in front of the pleading senator, swung open the helicopter door and yanked John Hammer to his feet. He picked up the backpack and tossed it onto the rocky earth. Finally, he spoke.

“This is it, Senator. Time to go.”

“No! Please, please. . .” Hammer grabbed at the man’s down jacket, tears staining his own. “Please don’t do this, please don’t do this.”

The nothingness in the man’s face was terrifying. It was like peering into a block of stone. His hand disappeared into his parka and emerged with the long-barreled black pistol. Frigid winds whipped at them as they stood at the open door. The man grasped John Hammer by the hair, roughly pulled his head back, jabbed the barrel into the soft tissue under his chin.

“When people came to you—people who were hurting, desperate, people you had taken an oath to represent—and said Help me, I’ve been laid off and have no money for food. Help me, my home is being foreclosed on and I have no place to live. Help me, my wife or husband or son or daughter is dying and I can’t afford health insurance, what did you say to them, United States Senator John Patrick Hammer?

“When they said, ‘Please, please, please,’ what did you tell them? You bragged about your expensive booze and your freeloading on a corporate jet. You called them wimps and whiners and told them to stop crying and pick themselves up by their bootstraps, even if they had no shoes. You told them to go fuck themselves, Senator, because they had nothing to offer you but their hope and trust and belief that their government actually cared about them. So it’s too late to beg for mercy; that ship sailed a long time ago. Now, if you don’t get out of this aircraft, pick up that pack and start walking, I swear to God I’ll put a bullet between your eyes and leave your carcass for the animals to fight over.”

He gave the senator a shove. Hammer stumbled out the door, landed on a patch of loose rock, pitched hard on his back. He lay there, too stunned and scared to move, as the man tossed a plastic case about the size of a cigarette pack.

“This is a compass,” he said dispassionately. “The nearest ranger station is due north. If you’re lucky, you might make it there in a few days.” Then he pulled the door shut and the helicopter’s powerful turbine engine whined louder.

John Hammer grabbed for the case in desperate, frenzied hope. He scrabbled at the latch, pried the case open. Inside, a slender needle in a red plastic circle pointed towards salvation. Wedged into the upraised cover was a plain white business card. He tore it loose and turned it over. He read the single word printed in big black letters.

Then he started screaming, screams that went unheard as the helicopter’s rotors churned and scattered dirt and brush and pebbles and the craft lifted up and soon was a mere speck in the distance.

Chapter 15

The mood of the men and women assembled around the long mahogany table in the Roosevelt Room was one of grim anticipation. It was the second to the last day of what was billed as the “President’s Economic Summit”—aka, “Nancy’s dog and pony show”—and they knew that this meeting in the buff-painted room across from the Oval Office was the real reason for their attendance.

They didn’t like it but they all played their parts in this uniquely Washingtonian bit of kabuki, responding to the president’s appeal for a gathering of the country’s “wise men” to discuss how to lessen the effects of what even her own economic advisors were calling the Great Depression 2.0.

The indicators were bad and getting worse. Official unemployment had topped twenty percent. Unofficially, it was closer to thirty. And while corporate profits steadily rose, so did the pace of layoffs, which continued with the implacable drip, drip, drip of Chinese water torture. Foreclosures were rampant. Tent cities composed of once middle-class homeowners had sprung up on the outskirts of every major metropolitan area. How many more were huddled together in rural areas and even national parks was impossible to estimate. Not that anyone cared to.

More worrisome still was the sense that the threads that bound the American public to the system which had served the men and women in the Roosevelt Room so tightly had unraveled. The summit was marred by daily demonstrations in front of the White House that had shut down Pennsylvania Avenue and resulted in thousands of arrests. Each day the demonstrations grew in size and intensity; the anger of people at their government glowed white-hot.

Armed resistance to foreclosures had become commonplace. As police refused to enforce eviction notices, gun battles between homeowners and private bands of enforcers were no longer a rarity. The campaign of SayNo.org to starve corporate America of revenue for the month of July, once derided as the fantastical posturings of a group of left-wing nuts, was now being taken seriously. The group’s plan to bring a new Bonus Army to the heart of the nation’s capital was downright scary. Something had to be done.

The president was running late and impatient murmurings swirled around the Roosevelt Room. It was hot and crowded and uncomfortable; twenty people crammed at a table meant for sixteen, another twenty-two seated in chairs arranged against the wall. This was not how they expected to be treated, stuffed into an overheated room and forced to wait on the whims of someone who, president or not, was just another politician. After all, they were the people who made Nancy Elias, had made her predecessor and would make whoever came after her.

They were a remarkably insular and homogenous group. The executives of the country’s major banks and financial institutions were seated in descending order of importance from Frank Bernabe at the president’s side. The CEOs of the four largest energy companies came next, then the heads of the biggest technology firms. Seated down from Ray Carmody at the president’s other side were the executives of defense contractors, insurance and pharmaceutical companies and media conglomerates, followed by representatives of powerful trade associations and K Street lobbying firms.

Finally, the door swung open and Nancy Elias walked in, trailed by Ray Carmody bearing an armload of baby blue folders stamped with the presidential seal. The denizens of the Roosevelt Room rose grudgingly from their chairs.

“Good morning, everyone,” Nancy Elias said. Her tone of voice made clear that it was not a very good morning.

“Good morning, Madam President,” came the equally dispirited response.

The president took her seat and motioned for her listeners to do likewise as Ray Carmody circled the room passing out folders. When he was done and seated she held the assembled tycoons in a steady gaze as if to remind them who sat at the head of the table.

“I must apologize for being late,” she said. “But I have just received some unfortunate news. Senator John Hammer, who I’m sure you know has been missing for more than a week now, has been found dead in a national park in California. I don’t have full details yet but the circumstances of his death are highly unusual. I’ve directed the FBI to send a team of agents to handle the investigation and I expect an update in forty-eight hours. I’m sure I speak for all of you when I say our hearts go out to the Senator’s wife and family.”

After an appropriate silence marked by much lowering of eyes and sad shakings of heads, she continued.

“I also want to thank all of you for coming here, especially on such short notice. I don’t have to tell you that our nation is facing a terrible economic crisis, and I appreciate your ideas and input as to how we can get our economy moving again.

“Some of those ideas will be reflected in legislation I intend to propose and support with the full power of this office. My staff is already working with members of the House and Senate on bills that will dramatically reduce the size and scope—and cost—of Social Security and Medicare. New legislation that will mandate annual reductions in the deficit—not goals but specific, concrete amounts—will be introduced shortly, as will bills to eliminate the estate tax and reduce corporate taxes and taxes on those whose wealth powers our economic engine. And I know your staffs are working with legislators and my administration to minimize the impact of new regulations on your businesses.

“I also know that many of you have opposed those regulations, as is your right. Which brings me to the second crisis facing our nation. That is a crisis of confidence, such that in more than twenty-five years of public service I have never seen. Very simply, ladies and gentlemen, most of the American people don’t trust us to act in their best interest. It’s not about left or right, Democrat or Republican. It’s about a profound distrust—hatred, even—of our corporate and political leaders. So I ask you in this time of crisis to look beyond your own immediate interests and look to those of the country as a whole, to join with me to show the American people we care about their welfare, that we’re working to—”

One of the executives, a forty-ish man with slicked-back black hair and a prize fighter’s pugnacious jaw, could contain himself no longer.

“All these regulations are killing us, Madam President,” he said loudly. There was a collective gasp as all eyes riveted on the speaker. “Roger Pruitt, USA Bank Corp. How can my company continue to make a profit, continue to grow the economy, with all these little punk staffers from this agency, that agency, looking over our shoulders? With this new tax, that new tax. More health care obligations, more reporting obligations, more ridiculous restrictions on how we conduct our business? When does it end?”

“Are you finished, Mr. Pruitt?”

The president’s glare was colder than the drifts of snow scraped up on the shoulders of the capitol’s wind-swept streets. Raymond Carmody hid a smile behind his hand. Nancy Elias may be in the employ of these corporate nobles but she had the office and political smarts to make them regret any overt disrespect.

“Tell me, sir,” she said. “How much money did USA Bank Corp. make the past few years peddling subprime loans to janitors and dishwashers? How many of those loans are still on your books at values that will never be reached in this century because this administration stood strong against those who would have nationalized your bank, broken it into little pieces and sold it off, and probably sent you to jail for fraud as well?

“How many billions of dollars—taxpayer dollars—did USA Bank Corp. take from TARP and Temporary Liquidity Guarantee and other government bailout programs? How many more billions of taxpayer dollars did you borrow from the Fed at zero-percent interest and then call ‘profit’ or loan back to the government at three percent?

“How many billions of dollars has USA Bank Corp. made from selling derivatives in a totally unregulated market, from betting against your own customers and charging them fees with no legal basis and no regulatory oversight? And, by the way, sir, what was your salary? Thirty, thirty-five million dollars? With a fifty-million-dollar bonus?”

Roger Pruitt wilted like an ice cube in a blast furnace. Frank Bernabe replaced Nancy Elias’s glare with his own. He’d long thought the head of USA Bank Corp. was a man of limited intelligence, little sophistication and even less subtlety. He also knew Roger Pruitt was largely the creature of Bill Bigby, whose constant undermining of Bernabe’s leadership was motivated as much by jealousy as a rigidly reactionary, hard-line ideology.

Goddam idiot, Bernabe swore under his breath. If Nancy Elias wasn’t on our side she wouldn’t be sitting here. And like her or not, disrespecting the President of the United States in her own house is an act of monumental arrogance and stupidity. He was pleased with the vehemence of Nancy Elias’s response; Roger Pruitt needed to be put in his place. And she wasn’t finished with him yet.

“Is there anything I’ve said that isn’t correct, sir?” she asked. “Are there any other complaints you’d care to voice?”

Roger Pruitt knew better than to speak. He kept his eyes down, studying the fine wood grain of the table.

“Good. Then with all the financial and political support that you and everyone in this room have received from the federal government throughout this crisis—support, by the way, not one of you has ever refused—don’t you dare have the effrontery to tell me this administration is your enemy. Hear this now, all of you: I am the best friend you’ve got. If any of you had bothered to pay attention to the mood of the country you’d know that my administration, the men and women on Capitol Hill, those ‘little punk staffers’ you so callously deride, are all that stand between you and the peasants with pitchforks and ropes. Now. . .”

Tongue-lashing over, she gave her audience a minute to settle down. “That brings me to the third crisis,” she said calmly. “It is detailed in the folders in front of you, which Ray compiled and brought to my attention. This third crisis is one of which you may not even be aware. Or you may only be aware of part of it. But it is the most profound crisis of all, one that has never before been faced in all of American history.”

She had them now. Forty-two pairs of eyes fixed on her. Forty-two brains whirred, wondering what was so momentous that they’d been called to this room to discover it, why they hadn’t discovered it themselves. The president let them stew in their wonderment, then gave them their answer.

“It is a direct challenge to the authority and the legitimacy of this office, to our very system of government and to every person in this room. It is a challenge being conducted, according to our best estimates, by a paramilitary-style group of a hundred or more people. These are not your usual left-wing radicals and disaffected college students, these are highly trained operatives skilled in all aspects of intelligence gathering, tactical operations, computer technology and guerilla warfare.

“As you will see in your folders, for the past six months this group of terrorist revolutionaries—and make no mistake about it, that’s what they are—have waged a campaign of violence and intimidation against those they perceive to be their enemies.”

Nancy Elias swept her gaze across the room, making eye contact with every person in it.

“We are their enemies.”

She let the words sink in and turned to Raymond Carmody.

“Go ahead, Ray,” she said.

The president’s chief of staff unfolded his reading glasses and opened his folder.

“All the known actions of this group are detailed here. It is strictly Eyes Only; I can’t emphasize that enough. If word of this should get out the reaction of the public could be devastating. Given the state of the country today, it is entirely possible many Americans would consider these terrorists to be national heroes. It could spawn copycat attacks, make it difficult or impossible to track down the perpetrators, incite the kind of unrest we simply cannot afford.

“I won’t enumerate every action in this report but I do want to touch on the most significant ones. You perhaps recall the recent untimely passing of Jefferson Dalworth. The official cause of death was listed as a heart attack and, in fact, that is correct. But it was a heart attack likely brought on by his receipt of video showing him in a, ah. . . sexually comprising position with an. . . ah, underage boy. We believe this video was shot and delivered to him by this group of terrorists.

“I’m sure many of you are also aware of the sudden retirements and disappearances of Edwin Chalmers, Anita Cowell, Nathan Rifkin and Wesley Mathers. Some of you may even have used their services. In each case, within days of their departures they were victims of a series of suspicious ‘accidents’ or unexplained occurrences.

“Edwin Chalmers’ house blew up in a gas explosion. Anita Cowell’s chartered jet lost an engine in mid-flight and barely made an emergency landing. Nathan Rifkin’s wife and children went inexplicably missing for a week. Wesley Mathers contracted a mysterious case of food poisoning and almost died. Immediately following each of these events, they dissolved their firms, packed up their possessions and left the country. All efforts to contact them, by myself personally and by others, were summarily rejected.

“There were other incidents as well. Mr. Cooper here can tell you about the intruders who broke into his house. Some of you may remember the late Senator Stens, his disappearance and subsequent hospitalization. It has also been made known to me that two weeks ago several members of prominent House and Senate committees were delivered DVDs similar to the one sent the late Senator Dalworth. They contained the most intimate personal and financial information, information impossible to access through normal, legal channels. What is most unusual is that in none of these instances was credit taken or demands made.”

Ray Carmody closed his folder and deferred to the president.

“Obviously it came too late to be included in this report,” she said, “But we believe this same group is also responsible for the death of Senator Hammer.”

An oppressive silence fell over the room, broken only by Frank Bernabe gently clearing his throat. “Excuse me, Madam President,” he said. “But why are you so sure a single group is responsible for all of these actions?”

Nancy Elias’s lips tightened. “In every instance they left something behind.” She nodded at Ray Carmody.

“This.”

Her chief of staff pressed a button and a TV monitor on the far wall flickered to life. Its screen was filled with the image of a plain white business card, printed with a single word in big black letters:

F E A R

Chapter 16

Only minutes after the final press conference of President Elias’s economic summit, she called three meetings in the Oval Office.

The first was with Ray Carmody.

“Where do we stand with the task force, Ray?” the president asked.

“Assembled and ready to go,” he replied. “I’ve attached elements of CIA, NSA, Defense Intelligence, FBI, Homeland Security and Special Forces—both intelligence and ops—plus certain individuals who can be called on to perform, ah. . . special assignments. I can personally vouch for their trustworthiness and loyalty.

“I think it best if we assign this task force an innocuous name, say, Task Force One. Its team leaders will report to the director, who will report to me; I and I alone will report to you. All communications will be back channel, nothing official, off the books and off the grid. You’ll have total deniability. TF1 is ready to proceed as soon as you give the word.”

“You have it,” Nancy Elias said. “And, Ray, I want to be sure that you and every member of this task force understand precisely what we’re dealing with. This is a group of armed revolutionaries with a high level of expertise who are seeking to bring down the government. They are terrorists, plain and simple, and they will be treated like terrorists.

“There will be no arrests and no trials; I don’t want to read about their heroic exploits in the New York Times or see some hotshot Johnny Cochran wannabe rubbing our noses in their crimes in court. These people are to be hunted down, interrogated—by any means necessary—and then terminated. No excuses, no exceptions. Is that understood?”

Ray Carmody said a quick prayer: God help us if we screw this up.

Then he said, “Yes, Madam President.”

* * *

The second meeting was with All-American Media founder, chairman and chief executive officer William S. Bigby. Bill Bigby was unprepossessing to the extreme—in his mid-seventies, tall but stooped, with a receding chin and high forehead topped with a few tufts of mousy brown hair. His manner was that of a petulant accountant, both irritable and irritating. Few people could stand to be around him for any reason other than money. Over the years he had given much of that to politicians of both parties but this was the first time he’d ever had a one-on-one with the president in the Oval Office. It was recognition he felt long since overdue. It was, however, recognition that came with a price. William Bigby had a pretty good idea what the president was going to ask. And he had no intention of giving it to her. Finessing that was what kept him awake last night and made him as wary as a buck on the first day of hunting season.

He settled into the high-back chair opposite the president’s ornately carved Resolute desk and took stock of the woman sitting there. She was a product of the same system that had nurtured and protected him and his colleagues, but there was something about her that had always made him uneasy. Part of it, he decided, was that she was a woman, and women just didn’t have the cold-hearted ruthlessness her job required. Part of it was that she was a politician, and politicians had this infantile need to be liked. But most of it was that she was just too damn smart.

William Bigby didn’t like smart people. Sooner or later they always turned out to be a problem. They noticed too much, thought too much. Saw a thousand shades of gray when the people who did William Bigby’s bidding saw only black and white. Frank Bernabe was like that too, and sooner or later that also would be a problem. But for now he would just try to get out of this meeting with as little damage to himself as possible.

Nancy Elias got straight to the point.

“Mr. Bigby,” she said. “I need your help.”

Her seemingly humble approach put William Bigby instantly on guard.

“Yes, Madam President?”

“At our meeting yesterday I spoke of the two crises facing our country. One, of course, is that group of terrorist revolutionaries. Rest assured, the effort to track them down and eliminate them is already under way. The second crisis, however, is almost as serious. You are of course aware of the group that calls itself SayNo, of its ‘New Declaration of Independence’ and plan to stage a New Bonus Army march on Washington and to camp for the month of July in Anacostia Park.”

William Bigby nodded gravely.

“You are also doubtless aware of the recent attacks on the members of this SayNo group, one of which I believe resulted in a fatality. These attacks were extremely ill-advised and unfortunate, and have had the result of making them and others like them more popular than ever. According to their own records, which of course we have accessed, as many as twenty million people will participate in their pay-no-bills ‘Declaration.’ Another million have already pledged to join their Bonus Army. Our intelligence is that these numbers are substantially correct.

“I have directed my staff to explore ways to negate this threat and they have come up with several solutions, one of which can only be accomplished with your assistance. We need to turn the tide of public opinion against this SayNo group and their fellow travelers, Mr. Bigby. Take the bloom off their rose, so to speak. Paint them as dangerous left-wing radicals intent on destroying the country. As socialists or communists or fascists or whatever. You are the most important and influential media figure in the country; I don’t have to tell you how to play this.

“What I ask is that you use your media outlets to get this message out, to warn the American people that they’re being played for fools by a group that hates their country, that participating in this ‘New Declaration’ and march is wrong and evil and un-American. I know you will probably support my opponent next year, but this is bigger than that. Can I count on you, Mr. Bigby?”

William Bigby felt a cautious relief.

“Of course, Madam President. If this virus isn’t stopped it will infect the entire body politic.”

“Excellent. Thank you, sir. Now, one more thing, if I may.”

This was the money shot. He would have to be very careful now.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“It’s not enough for opinion makers like those at your network to oppose SayNo in general, we also have to show that there’s substantial public opposition to their agenda.”

The president stopped and flattened her hands on the desk.

“I would like you to speak with Ed Bane,” she said, “to enlist him in this cause. We both know the size and strength of his audience. If he can mobilize millions of—what do they call themselves? Bane-iacs?—to support their government, the capitalist system, our way of life, to organize against these radical leftists, we may be able to force them back into their holes.

“Two cautions, though, Mr. Bigby. One, this must be done without violence. Physically attacking these traitors, though completely understandable, only gains them more sympathy with the public. Don’t worry, though, when the time comes they will be taken care of.

“And, two, please tell Mr. Bane that his constant personal attacks on me are terribly unproductive. This is not about me or my feelings. Politics is a contact sport, and my skin is tough enough to deflect anything Ed Bane throws my way. But disparaging me, and more important, the presidency, to that extent only undermines public confidence in the entire government, the entire system. I don’t have to tell you the consequences if these left-wing revolutionaries found common cause with Mr. Bane’s army. We—you, me, all of us—would be doomed.”

William Bigby’s mind was churning. Nancy Elias did have a point. Destroying a few politicians, even a president, was one thing. But that was a very dangerous game—too much destruction and the rabble might no longer fear and respect the office, the system, the people who ran it and benefitted from it.

He was caught between the proverbial rock and hard place. Ed Bane was showing ever more disturbing signs of independence and megalomania. Yet he was All-American Media’s cash cow, a profit-generating machine like no one had ever seen. Controlling him was impossible, taking him off the air unthinkable. The Bane-iacs, however, could be much more easily manipulated. He resolved to tighten up control of the various groups he funded that made up the core of Bane’s supporters, and to send Russ Millar to meet with their leaders and tell them to keep their people in check. He was dancing on a high wire without a net, he knew. But, Bill Bigby told himself happily, that’s why I pay me the big bucks.

His mind at rest now, he stroked his chin and said thoughtfully, “I understand, Madam President. I’ll do my best. But Mr. Bane has already rejected a similar request made earlier, and legally speaking I have no control over the content of his program. I will convey your request to him with my strongest recommendation that he comply. But I’m afraid I can’t promise anything.”

Nancy Elias could see the calculation in William Bigby’s eyes. This pompous asshole is playing me, she thought contemptuously. He’ll risk everything generations have built for a few months’ profit. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. She glanced at her visitor dismissively.

“Then your best will have to be good enough, Mr. Bigby.”

* * *

The third meeting was with Frank Bernabe.

It had been a very successful week for the chairman and CEO of Meyer Global Financial. The president had agreed to his proposals to chop entitlements down to size, eliminated Medicaid, turn Medicare into a voucher program and Social Security over to the tender mercies of Meyer Global and its Wall Street brethren. She’d also agreed with his suggestion to increase taxes on the poor and middle classes and lower them on the businesses and the wealthy, though movement on those would have to wait for her re-election.

And while he was philosophically opposed to reform and regulation of any kind, he knew it was important for Nancy Elias to be seen as demonstrating at least some modicum of concern for the teeming masses, just as he knew the end result of that concern would be business as usual. She had yet to commit to two more of his proposals—eliminate the home mortgage deduction and institute a flat-rate income tax—but he was confident that eventually she would come around.

The good news didn’t end there. His sources had already informed him of Ray Carmody’s task force and its mission. A brief, discreet talk with William Bigby filled him in on the media mogul’s intention to use all the powers of his network to slap down that radical bunch at SayNo. Best of all, in a few hours he’d be out of this stuffy provincial burg and back in Manhattan. As he sat in the chair across from the president in the Oval Office, he reflected admiringly on all he’d accomplished. It had been a very productive trip.

He had to admit, however, that Nancy Elias looked like shit. Her adamantly unstylish clothes had begun to hang on her large but increasingly gaunt frame, her eyes looked as if they’d been smudged with charcoal, and she moved with the weary, robotic energy of someone who’d substituted too much coffee and adrenaline for too little rest and relaxation. Even so, she seemed upbeat and in control.

“. . . and thank you for taking the lead on the summit, Frank,” the president was saying as Bernabe pulled himself out of his musings. “I believe what we’ve accomplished here will help put the country back on the road to prosperity.”

They all talk like this in Washington, he thought sourly as the president nattered on. It’s one of the reasons I hate the goddam place. He loved the direct, brutal language of finance and its cold, emotionless logic, despised the pompous oratory of politicians who even in private persisted in their childish self-delusions. He feigned interest as the president went on at length about Task Force One and William Bigby, as if he didn’t already know. When she finally concluded he nodded gravely and said, “Wise decisions, Nancy. Both of them.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Nancy Elias said. “But I’m afraid you won’t be so happy with what I have to say next.”

Frank Bernabe was instantly wary. He hated surprises even more than he hated politicians. A politician with a surprise was worse than the Second Coming of Karl Marx and almost as dangerous. He focused his attention on the president and said, “How so?”

“The home invasions on that Teichner woman and others,” Nancy Elias said, “The attacks on the SayNo people in New Orleans. They’ve got to stop.”

Bernabe’s face darkened.

“Don’t look at me that way, Frank,” she said. “I’m not saying you had anything to do with them. Or even knew about them. But you have contacts, influence. I need you to use them to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen. They haven’t solved the problem, dammit, they’ve made it worse. Those videos that were supposed to intimidate people have enraged them instead. They’re making martyrs out of people who should be pitied. Or scorned.

“Now, I’m not criticizing here,” she said soothingly. “You’re one of the most brilliant men I’ve ever met, and you know how I value your support and counsel. But you’ve got to admit, you have all the people skills of a hungry great white shark. We need to act with some subtlety here, not with a meat ax. There’s enough unrest and anger in the country already. We don’t need to add any more.”

Grudgingly, Bernabe allowed that she might be right. He tended to divide people into two groups—fellow predators and chum. The first was to be treated warily, the second to be eaten. But in sufficient numbers and with proper motivation, even chum could cause serious indigestion. He’d get hold of Leland Elliott and have him call off the dogs. Then he’d offer Elliott’s services to Ray Carmody to help track down the terrorists. Pleased with the efficacy of his solution, he bowed his head in acknowledgement and said, “Understood, Madam President. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Nancy Elias said. “Now, there’s one more thing I need your help with.”

So this is the big pitch, the real reason for this meeting. Bernabe’s wariness doubled. Alright, Nancy, out with it. But it better be good.

“I’m concerned about this ‘New Declaration’ business,” she said. “That SayNo group and their don’t-pay-your-bills month that’s supposed to start July Fourth. I’m told it could involve as many as twenty million people. Now, it may just be a lot of lefty hot air, a handful of whack jobs talking to themselves, but I believe those figures to be accurate. You’ve seen what’s happening out there, Frank. People are in a desperate state, and I’m afraid this kind of action could be very, very appealing.

“Just think of the impact—economically, politically, psychologically. It could be devastating. Twenty million Americans refusing to pay their mortgages and their credit card bills and car loans and utilities and payments on everything from that new washer and dryer to car registration? It would be the equivalent of a general strike. A rebellion. And it would set an incredibly dangerous precedent, give people a dangerous sense of power. To respond in the usual way, the way they expect—ruin their credit ratings, garnish their wages, hit them with collection agencies, fees, repossessions—would only make things worse. It could set off an enormous backlash, a civil war. Of course, eventually we’d win. But at what cost?”

“Damn the cost!” Frank Bernabe snapped, a flush creeping up his neck. “That’s a recipe for anarchy! It’s one thing to avoid stirring up the peasants any more than necessary, but if they think they’re going to start a civil war. . . I’ll give them a goddam civil war! This is a country of laws, and they goddam well better obey them.”

Nancy Elias waited patiently for the storm to pass.

“Spoken as I would have expected, Frank,” she said. “Believe me, I understand your anger and frustration, but we need to look at the bigger picture here. This country is on the verge of a class war, a challenge to our authority that’s never been seen before. Try to stop it by brute force and you’ll create dozens more SayNos, a dozen more terrorist groups, a dozen more challenges to government and business and the rule of law. Don’t forget, this system of ours has been very good to you and your predecessors, me and mine too. Do you really want to risk it in favor of a police state locked in perpetual war with its own people?

“This is what I’m proposing; just hear me out. This ‘Declaration’ is supposed to begin July Fourth, right? Well, on July first I hold a press conference on the White House lawn and announce that every major American bank, financial institution, retail company, public utility, every major American business in the country, will give their customers a one-month amnesty on all their bills in honor of our nation’s birthday and in recognition of these trying economic times.

“Think about it, in one fell swoop you’ve taken the play away from the radicals, totally stolen their thunder. All of a sudden, there’s no reason for them to protest. C’mon, Frank. Lay your emotions aside and put that cold, analytical mind of yours to work: Taking something from someone is power, giving something to someone is generosity.

“Do this my way and the story isn’t the people versus big, evil corporations, it’s about socially responsible American businesses extending a helping hand to their valued customers in their hour of need. Besides, in a few months you can jack up some fees, add a surcharge, rachet up the interest rates—I’m sure you can think of something—and get all that money back. Then once this crisis is over, we can deal with the people who caused it. But right now we need to manage it so it doesn’t get out of hand. Remember, I won this office on a campaign of hope and change; if I can’t offer the real thing, I have to at least offer the illusion.

“Now, I know I can’t sell this to your people myself. But you can. It’s a big step and a big risk, I know. No question, everyone is going to lose some money, the economy is going to take a hit. But both of those are only temporary. And they buy time for the other actions I’ve set in motion to succeed—hunt down and eliminate the terrorists and marginalize, if not destroy, SayNo and similar groups. It’s a good plan, Frank, and you know it. But it won’t work without you. Will you help me?”

For the first time since he met her as the junior senator from California, Frank Bernabe was genuinely impressed with Nancy Elias. He’d always respected her political skills, but this was an order of magnitude above. It was smart, tough, devious, cynical and showed an instinctive understanding of how to hold and deploy power. Plus it took real balls to propose it to him when she knew the fury of his reaction.

He stroked his chin thoughtfully. Nancy Elias may have just earned herself a second term. He stood up and reached across the desk and shook her hand.

“Yes, Madam President,” he said.

Chapter 17

My initial euphoria over what I’d taken to calling the Christmas Papers crashed hard into the reality of trying to confirm anything in them. I knew in my gut they were real but proving it would be extraordinarily difficult, even dangerous.

Not trusting the security of email, I went low-tech, copying each page on my home copier and hiring a private courier to deliver the package to Jeff O’Neill at the Public Interest office in Atlanta. He called within minutes of the papers’ arrival, as excited as I was, and the following day dispatched more than two dozen reporters in eight cities to dig into their allegations.

From the beginning that digging yielded only frustration. Every person mentioned in the papers had apparently been warned ahead of time and disappeared. Legal and even extra-legal searches of public records, from arrest reports to DMV files, came up empty. They had disappeared too. Even the SFPD file on Armando Gutierrez, a copy of which I still had in my office, had been erased. If it weren’t for the victims, their pain and their recollections, it was as if nothing had ever happened.

That pissed me off big time. I had a name, an address and a phone number. It was time to rattle Leland Elliott’s gilded cage.

* * *

The two men met at a house rented by a third man atop a high ridge of the Vaca Mountains east of the Napa Valley. It was a modest house in a remote and isolated area of stark natural beauty, accessible only by a narrow, packed dirt driveway that switchbacked up the ridge under a canopy of giant oaks.

In mid-February it was cold and drizzly but the men abstained from building a fire in the large stone fireplace. They wanted no telltale smoke wafting from the chimney, giving away their presence, so they kept their sweaters on and cranked up the heater. A bottle of Cabernet from an esteemed St. Helena winery only a few miles away sat between them on the kitchen table, but they abstained from it too and sipped strong black coffee. They’d been at the house only a few minutes and would leave—separately, half an hour apart—as soon as it got dark.

The first man to arrive refilled his cup and said, “Well, now it’s official.”

The second man nodded. “We knew it would be. Eventually.”

The first man said, “Our security is good. Our procedures are tight.”

“They better be,” the second man responded. “They’ll come after us with everything they have. It’s us or them. They know that.”

“Do we abort?”

“Do you want to? Do the others?”

“Of course not.”

“Then we don’t. We see it through. But there’s no margin for error.”

The first man smiled thinly. “Like there ever was.”

The second man returned the smile. “True. But now it’s less than zero. How close are we?”

“A couple weeks, at least. Maybe more.”

“It’s got to be air-tight.”

“It will be.”

“Good.”

“How’s our reporter doing?”

“Not much yet. He’s still scratching around but he’ll get there. We need him to make the public case.”

“You’re putting him at risk, you know. Using him as bait, even.”

The second man lapsed silent. He looked out the window at the dripping trees and wet earth. “I know,” he said quietly. “That’s on me.”

“It had to be done,” the first man said. “Hard choices.”

“Yes.”

The first man refilled his own coffee cup and said, “If. . . I mean, when we pull this off, we’ll be toxic. Nuclear. We’ll have to go dark.”

“Probably. But it’s the only way. And it’s worth it.”

“Yes, it is.”

* * *

Ed Bane listened to the patriotic music rise and fall, then swell to a crescendo in the radio studio he’d had built in a far wing of his Palm Beach estate. He punched a red button on the console in front of him and leaned into the big silver microphone and intoned solemnly, “This is Day One-Thousand-One-Hundred-Thirty-Six of the socialist revolution in America. Welcome to the Resistance.”

The music faded and he amped up his delivery to take its place. “Today’s outrage is a group of liberal terrorist revolutionaries calling themselves SayNo.org. These left-wing scum have a plan—they admit it, plain and simple—to destroy our national economy. They call it ‘The New Declaration of Independence,’ spitting on the memory of the men who brought forth and fought and died for this great country.

“And what is this ‘New Declaration?’ Just what you’d expect from these godless parasites: We won’t pay our bills, we won’t fulfill our obligations, we won’t live up to our responsibilities. All of you honest, hard-working Americans out there can support us, take food out of the mouths of your children, work two and three jobs to feed a tax-tax-tax, spend-spend-spend government, while we do drugs and sodomize each other and laugh all the way to the welfare office.”

He let his audience choke on that for a moment, then continued: “But that’s not the only outrage. Now these SayNo parasites, these Nazi Marxist revolutionaries, plan to march on Washington to defile our nation’s capital, to establish a tent city—a temple of filth and crime and perversion—right in front of the Washington Monument.”

He shook his head at the perfidy of it all. “I can see it now, thousands of these useless sacks of human flesh copulating and shooting up and relieving themselves on sacred ground in front of the entire world. For an entire month! And when do you think they plan to do this? When do you think this collection of perverts and losers and communists will attempt to destroy our capitalist system, to move into our nation’s living room and leave a stinking pile on the carpet? Of course: six months from now, on the birthday of the United States of America, July Fourth.”

Ed Bane paused again and smiled as the bank of tiny screens built into his console filled with the names of callers itching to express their fury at this desecration of everything right and good and holy. I am the conductor of a great and powerful symphony, he told himself happily. A symphony that moves only at my command, with a single wave of my wand. And there is no one—not Russell Millar, not William Bigby, not Nancy Elias—who can stand in my way. Satisfaction warmed him like the heat of a tropical sun. I am a force of nature. I am untouchable. Unstoppable.

He returned to stoking the fire ever hotter.

“But even that’s not the only outrage. What do you think the government of this imposter, this hater of America, this sick, corrupt, demented president, our Rug Muncher in Chief, is going to do to about it? I’ll tell you what, ladies and gentlemen. Not a single, solitary thing. She’ll put out the welcome mat for these liberal socialist terrorists, roll out the red carpet.”

He gave a snorting chuckled as if he had stumbled on a particularly interesting thought. “You think our Rug Muncher in Chief and this SayNo woman, this ANNA-Lynn CON-tee have a little carpet action of their own going on? You think maybe that’s why the President of the United States has the spine of a wet noodle when it comes to defending the honor of our nation and everything it stands for ? Or maybe she’s really one of them, one of those left-wing sickos who hate America and despise real Americans, who want to take our freedoms and make us slaves in their socialist-communist-totalitarian paradise.”

Now he let his voice soar, moving in for the kill.

“Well, my fellow Americans, real Americans, patriots, Bane-iacs, it’s time for us to stand up for our country, to stand up for America, to tell these radical communist fascist revolutionaries and that socialist-loving, America-hating, rug-munching hag in the White House to stand down. Stand down or we will stand you down! This is our country—our country—and we will not hand it over to these scum!”

He relaxed for a moment, let his audience breathe, then delivered the coup de grace: “This is the Ed Bane Show. And liberals, terrorists, socialists, rug munchers, we are the bane of your existence.”

He pointed at the engineer sitting behind a glass panel across from him in the studio and the faux-pop commercial theme song of a major bank bounced cheerily over the airwaves. He slid off his headphones and took a sip of tea from a heavy ceramic mug.

“That was brilliant, Mr. Bane,” his young call screener cooed over the studio intercom. She was Bane’s latest hire—smart, beautiful, hot and hopefully willing. He had to make sure Olivia didn’t get wind of her.

“Yes, it was,” he answered matter-of-factly. One thing Ed Bane didn’t believe in was false modesty.

“I was wondering about something, though,” the young woman said. “I think that SayNo group wanted to camp out in Anacostia Park across the river from the Capitol building. Not in front of the Washington Monument.”

Ed Bane slowly raised his head and shot a look that made the young woman blink and clutch her silk blouse tight around her shoulders.

“Don’t you ever question anything I say,” he snarled, every word enunciated with cutting precision. He waved his hand at the audience beyond the studio. “I know what these people want, I know it better than they do. They don’t care about your facts and your figures, what’s right and what’s fair and what’s true. They want to believe. And they want to be told what to believe. By me. And they do believe. And they do believe in me.”

He slammed his fist on the console so hard tea sloshed out of the mug. “And you and everyone else around here better goddam not forget it!”

* * *

Before Ed Bane signed off the air for the day the impact of his words was already being felt.

In New Orleans, a mob descended on SayNo’s Warehouse District office, threw rocks through the windows, broke down the front door and trashed the place, heaving furniture and computers out onto the street and trying to set the building on fire. Warned of the mob’s coming, AnnaLynn Conté and the rest of her staff had already fled. Police arrived after the damage had been done. They made no arrests.

In his opulent hotel suite in St. Barts, William Bigby listened to the Ed Bane Show on his laptop, mood alternating between pleased and vaguely unsettled. There was no such thing as excess when it came to taking it to those SayNo traitors. Putting pressure on Nancy Elias to shut their act down was gravy. Yet Bane was sounding ever more messianic, ever more drunk on his own power. Russ Millar better make damn sure all those ass-kissing Bane organizations Bill Bigby funded knew what side their bread was buttered on. He might not be able to control their fearless leader, but he sure as hell would control them.

In the All-American News building in New York, Russell Millar clicked off the broadcast and groaned. His meetings with the heads of the various Bane-affiliated groups had not gone well. They were almost as megalomaniacal and out of control as Bane himself. If Bill Bigby thinks he can turn these people off and on at will, he’s making a very serious mistake. Russ Millar sat down at his computer and tried to calculate how many years he could afford his current lifestyle if he was fired tomorrow.

In his Manhattan office, Frank Bernabe too had listened to the Ed Bane Show on his computer. The only clue to his feelings was a nervous tic that tugged repeatedly at the corner of his mouth. When Wei Lee entered to get her day’s assignments, the chill in the room was so deep that she turned and fled and didn’t enter again for the rest of the day. Frank Bernabe ignored her and sat lost in thought until the noontime sun broke through the clouds and directed a thin, quavering beacon at his feet.

Chapter 18

Tutis International occupied the top floor of a downtown Miami highrise clad in iridescent sea-green glass that glittered like a fifty-story emerald in the brilliant South Florida sun. Or so it said in my Christmas Papers, though there was no mention of the company in the directory posted in the building’s severely modern lobby.

I’d made myself look as corporate as possible and attracted only a fleeting glance from a pair of bored security guards as I walked briskly past them like a man on important business. The elevator rose like a guided missile to the top floor, and when the stainless steel doors peeled back I found myself in a tiny foyer barely large enough for me and a much more attentive security guard who resembled a heavily muscled SUV stuffed into a blue uniform.

For a second I glimpsed a frosted-glass door framed by twin glass panels. Tutis International was inscribed on one of them in small, plain type. Then the SUV stepped in front of me, blocking out everything but his massive chest straining the seams of his soon-to-shred uniform.

“Can I help you, sir?” he said. His voice was somewhere between thunder and the rumble of a freight train; it seemed to come from somewhere south of his ankles. If God was looking for a voice double, this guy would be first on His list.

“I’d like to speak with Leland Elliott, please,” I said, trying not to squeak too badly.

“There’s no one by that name here, sir,” the giant responded.

“Sure there is,” I said. “I’ve got his address and phone number in my pocket. I’m sure you’ve seen him: thin, mid-sixties, white hair, likes dark suits. Sometimes he even wears a hat. He runs this place.”

“I’m sorry, sir, there is no Mr. Elliott here.”

“This is Tutis International, right? I didn’t take a wrong turn coming out of the elevator, did I?”

That was a little joke. Apparently SUVs have no sense of humor.

“I think it’s time you left, sir,” he rumbled. I was surprised the building didn’t shake.

“Just a sec, okay? Let me call him on my cell. I’m sure he’ll want to—”

“Now.”

The giant took a small step toward me, his bloated pectorals almost touching my nose. Testosterone rose from his pores like cologne.

“Now.”

“Well, since you put it that way. . .” I said, always gracious in defeat.

He grabbed me with a hand the size of a canned ham attached to an arm the size of a tree limb, turned me around and shoved me into the elevator. I bounced off the back panel, then straightened my clothes and stared back with as much dignity as a man who knows he almost had the shit kicked out of him could muster. The monster banged the “down” button and by the time the doors peeled open in the lobby the pair of guards were waiting for me. They didn’t look bored any more. Each took an arm and then they frog-marched me through the lobby and onto the sidewalk.

“It’s best you don’t come back here, sir,” one of them said.

He was probably right about that. But I still had Leland Elliott’s phone number. I walked down the street to a little sidewalk café, ordered a café Cubano and took out my cellphone. Leland Elliott answered on the second ring.

“Who is this? And how the hell did you get this number?” He was obviously looking at his caller ID and seeing I wasn’t on his Christmas list.

“And a good day to you too, Mr. Elliott,” I said. “This is Leland Elliott, founder and president of Tutis International?”

“I asked you a question,” he snapped.

“Actually, you asked two questions,” I replied, ever the wiseass. “But just to show you what a good sport I am, for this day and this day only I’m offering a two-for-one special. You answer one of my questions and I’ll answer two of yours. How’s that for a deal?”

“Listen, you little shit. You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

“Oh, I do, Mr. Elliott. Really, I do. You don’t mind if I call you Mister, do you? You run a company that specializes in what might be called ‘dirty tricks,’ except some of your tricks are downright filthy. The trio of goons you sent to beat up Eldrick Brown in San Francisco, the ones employed by your shell company, Genesis Group. That’s some pretty nasty shit. Of course, they got a little carried away and now he’s dead. You’ve had people do all kinds of bad things, Mr. Elliott. Beatings, fire-bombings, intimidation, bribery, payoffs. And I’ve got the records. Times, dates, places. Names too. Not all of them, but enough.

“You remember Armando Gutierrez, right? He got blown into dog food in New Orleans, breaking into the house of a woman who runs the kind of organization Tutis International seems to have a real hard-on for. So I have a very good idea who I’m dealing with, you arrogant sack of shit. And soon the entire country is going to know as well.”

Silence. Then a low, menacing hiss, an animal bearing its fangs. “Whoever you are, however you got this number, you’re a dead man.”

“Eventually, we all are, Mr. Elliott,” I said.

* * *

The Diamond Rock subdivision in North Las Vegas was at the epicenter of the national real estate meltdown. Hundreds of virtually identical, faux-Mediterranean-style houses, laid out on a perfect grid, were thrown up as quickly as possible by mostly immigrant labor and peddled as a “vibrant new community” by real estate agents who collected fat commissions with the regularity of the rising and setting sun.

Most of those agents were now broke or working at Starbucks, and the homes they touted were worth less than half of what their over-stretched, over-stressed owners had paid for them. There was nothing vibrant about Diamond Rock now, and little sense of community. Fewer than half of the planned two thousand homes had been built, the rest were either patches of hard-packed dirt or half-finished frames, wooden skeletons baking in the desert sun like the bones of a dead animal.

Of the eight hundred or so homes that were actually constructed, nearly half had been abandoned or had never found a buyer. Thieves and former owners had stripped them of everything of value, carting off appliances and fixtures, dismantling plumbing and pulling out copper wiring. Then they savaged whatever was left and moved on to the next opportunity. Squatters, drug dealers and predators of all sorts saw opportunity there too, while the remaining homeowners tried desperately to keep their lives together. They kept to themselves, bought large-caliber handguns and waited for a miracle that would allow them to escape with body and bank account intact.

For all these reasons the handful of residents on Goldmine Drive paid no attention to the battered red pickup truck with a rusting camper shell that one day in early February appeared in the driveway of a dirt-colored three-and-two in the middle of the block. As long as there were no wild parties or steady stream of junkies looking for a fix or posse of thugs looking for trouble, neighbors minded their own business.

But then something remarkable happened. In just a few days the waist-high weeds in the home’s front yard disappeared, those in the yards of the empty homes on either side too. The dirt-brown paint had been replaced by a sunny gold with off-white trim, and lights shone in windows that had been dark since the power was turned off ages ago.

Neighbors paid attention now, watching from behind pulled curtains as a slight, fair-skinned young man who appeared to be in his late thirties began turning the trio of once-dilapidated homes into tidy, middle-class jewels. In two weeks the buzz about this mysterious, do-gooding stranger had spread throughout the entire subdivision. Residents warmed by the tiniest spark of hope drove by and admired the young man’s handiwork, all the while dreading what would happen when word reached the community’s more rapacious elements.

They didn’t have to wait long.

On a sunny but cold Saturday afternoon two cars parked in front of the young man’s home, disgorging a dozen men in their twenties wearing the wannabe-thug’s uniform of do-rags, hoodies and jeans sagging to their knees. Joking loudly among themselves, they strolled up the neat front yard, stopping midway when the door opened and the slight young man stepped out and planted himself in their path.

Neighbors cowered behind their curtains, too scared to even dial 911. Not that it would have mattered. The town’s police force had been disbanded—more fallout of the real estate collapse—leaving only a handful of disillusioned, overwhelmed county sheriffs to deal with an ever larger and bolder criminal element.

But the young man appeared unafraid. He said something to the mob in a voice too soft to carry across the street and their jokey bravado faded. He said something else and they hesitated, looked at each other, confused, wary. One of them, whom neighbors recognized as the gang’s leader, turned on his companions, cursing them as cowards and weaklings, ginning himself up into a nervous, deadly rage. He faced the young man, reached beneath his hoodie, pulled out a flat-black pistol. Held it horizontal, like he’d seen in the movies. Sneered and said, “You want somma this, fool?”

The young man didn’t move. Neighbors grabbed their children, fled from their windows. The gangbanger spit at the young man’s feet. Now the young man moved. He pivoted away from the gunman’s pistol, reached behind his back and in a single fluid motion brought out a revolver the size of a small cannon and squeezed off a single shot. The bullet caught the gangbanger in the chest and splattered his companions with blood and bones and shreds of internal organs.

No one spoke. No one moved.

“Go on home,” the young man finally said. There was hurt in his eyes, pity in his voice. The gangbangers avoided his gaze. They dragged their leader’s shattered body to his car, slung it in and peeled rubber off the curb.. When their cars were no longer in sight the young man went back inside his house and quietly closed the door.

Chapter 19

I first heard Ed Bane’s attack on AnnaLynn and SayNo when Jeff O’Neill emailed me an audio file of the show and a link to a report on the attack on SayNo’s office. Listening to Ed Bane was like masturbating with a porcupine glove but I forced myself to sit through the entire thing, then deleted it with an angry stab at my keyboard.

I debated whether to call AnnaLynn and see how she was doing, not wanting to come off like an anxious parent. On the other hand, getting personally reamed on-air by the country’s most potent media figure might warrant a little moral support so I put my doubts aside and called. She picked up right away. The strain of the past several weeks was grinding her down, though she tried hard not to show it. She sounded like she wanted to crawl in bed, pull the covers over her head and stay there until all the bad news went away. Which gave me an idea.

“It’s been rough, Josh,” she admitted when I pressed her. “Bane really has the Neanderthals all stirred up. Somebody broke all the windows in my car last night and slashed the tires. They spray-painted graffiti on my house, threw a rock through the window. I’m staying at a hotel now. And it’s not just me; everyone on our staff has been harassed. Our office is destroyed; we have no place to work. . .”

Her voice trailed off. I’d never heard her sound so despondent.

“Honestly, I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” she said. “Maybe it’s just too hard. Maybe there are just too many of them. Maybe they’ve already won.” She sighed wearily. “You know, all I really want to do right now is sail away to some tropical island and say the hell with everything.”

That was all the opening I needed.

“You don’t need to sail to one,” I said.

“What?”

“You don’t need to sail to one. I have a tropical island right here. They don’t call the Keys the ‘American Caribbean’ for nothing, you know. You have everything on computers, right? You can work from anywhere. Why don’t you and your staff come down here for a couple of weeks? I can fix you up in a gorgeous place in Islamorada, a few miles down the road from me. It’s huge, plenty of room. Totally private. Right on the water. Killer views. Your own beach. Boat dock. Outdoor barbecue. A friend of mine owns it; he’s a trust fund baby who spends his summers in Europe. I know he wouldn’t mind letting you stay there for awhile. What do you say?”

AnnaLynn didn’t know what to say. Or she didn’t know what to say to me. But she was thinking about it. I could hear the gears clanking.

“It’s not as crazy as it sounds,” I said, suddenly giddy at the thought of her actually being here. “It’s just an overnight trip by car. You’ll still be able to get your work done but you can also chill, get some R&R. Go out on the reef. Catch a fish. Sit in the sun. Get away from it all. Once the cretins realize you’re not there they’ll crawl back under their rocks and you can go home. And I can promise you a hogfish dinner that will blow your mind.”

She was wavering now.

“Wow, Josh, I don’t know. I mean, it sounds wonderful but. . .”

I wanted to close this deal. Fast. And, to be truthful, for reasons not wholly altruistic.

“Look, AnnaLynn,” I said. “Don’t decide right now. Talk to your staff. I’ll call my friend Peter, make sure he’s okay with it. Then I’ll call you back. Alright?”

I had her now. She just needed a little time to digest the idea. I called Peter, left a message on his cell. An hour later he called back.

“Sorry I missed you earlier,” he said. “I was up to my elbows in palombacci alla giotta. That’s roasted pigeon with a really complicated sauce. I’m on a break now.”

I couldn’t help but feel envious. “So where are you this time?” I asked

“Umbria. One of the wineries here holds a six-week culinary school every year. I thought it was time I learned how to cook something besides steaks and hamburgers.”

Lucky bastard.

I told him about what I wanted with AnnaLynn and her staff and he said, “Of course. Tell them they can stay as long as they like. I’ll have my guy who takes care of the place bring you the keys. Just two conditions.” He told me his conditions and I laughed and said, “I don’t think that will be a problem.” His teachers were calling him back to finish his pigeon so I let him go. “Thanks, Peter. I appreciate it. I owe you a cold one next time you’re at Pilot House.”

“You owe me two cold ones, Josh.”

Peter always did drive a hard bargain.

This time it was my turn to rein in my emotions. I called AnnaLynn, careful to keep the excitement out of my voice.

“It’s all set,” I said. “Peter said come when you want, stay as long as you want. What do you think?”

“Well. . .”

“What does your staff think?”

She laughed sheepishly. “I just finished talking to them. They’re already packing.”

“And you?”

She laughed again. “Okay, okay, Josh. You all talked me into it. Give us a couple of days to get everything together, sign off on a new office and we’ll be there. But just until the office is ready. You sure this isn’t too much trouble.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Of course it’s not too much trouble. Oh, there’s just one thing I forgot to tell you. Peter does have two conditions.” I told her Peter’s conditions and she laughed once more.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Would I kid about a thing like that?”

“I better not tell Ian and the rest of them. They’ll never leave.”

“Maybe you won’t either.”

“Enough, Josh. Enough. You’re relentless.” She tried to say it sternly but it came out happy. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

“You sure will.” I think I sounded happy too.

* * *

Twenty-four hours after watching a man die on a sunny midday afternoon, a delegation of Diamond Rock residents ambled over to the young man’s home, carefully avoiding the bloodstained walkway, and knocked on the front door. When he answered they were struck by how much smaller and less imposing he seemed than when faced off against the gang of thugs. They were also struck by the force of his personality. Even standing there mute he had an undeniable presence.

The man who’d assembled the delegation cleared his throat nervously, stuck out his hand and said, “I’m your across-the-street neighbor, Bob Johnson.” He was short and balding, with the portly build of a desk jockey and the vaguely downcast manner of someone who’d once been of some small importance. He flicked his eyes over the other members of his party. “This is Eric Schmidt, Oscar Gabriel, Lisa Turnbull. . .” His voice trailed off as he realized the futility of rattling off a long list of unfamiliar names.

“Anyway,” he said, picking up his broken monologue. “We wanted to say thank you for what you did yesterday, for what you’ve done fixing up these houses. And to welcome you to the neighborhood.”

The young man shook hands with a grip that wasn’t particularly firm nor especially weak. “I just did what I had to do,” he said. “But thank you for coming by. I’ve been meaning to get out and try to meet all of you but, as you can see, I’ve been pretty busy around here.” He stopped and slapped himself on the forehead reproachfully. “And where are my manners? Please, come in.”

The little party trooped in. They looked around the house, admiring the young man’s efforts. The place was little more than a plundered shell when he’d moved in. Now new drywall was up and freshly painted. Newish carpet, probably remnants from someone else’s remodel, had been laid. The house had been replumbed and old but carefully refurbished appliances fitted into their long-empty places. The young man filled in his guests on the details, told them of his plans for the other two properties. There was something bothering them, though, They threw covert looks at each other, wondering who would make the first move.

It fell to Bob Johnson. He cleared his throat again. “You’ve done a tremendous job here,” he said. “You really have. But we didn’t get your name.”

The young man smiled that diffident smile of his.

“Call me John Doe,” he said. “And now that I’ve met all of you and the house is at least presentable, I’d like to invite you and your families and everyone else in the neighborhood to a barbecue next weekend. Nothing fancy, but I do grill a mean hot dog, and I know where I can get a good deal on a couple of kegs of beer.”

That seemed to lessen their uneasiness, and when the day of the party rolled around more than three dozen people showed up at John Doe’s little compound. In a neighborly way they brought food and drink, and their host had somehow managed to scrounge up enough hot dogs and hamburgers to feed everyone, plus the promised kegs of beer and cases of cheap red and white wine.

After everyone had eaten, the kids played tag and dodgeball in the yard, and the adults stood around in little clots talking. John Doe led the men, many of whom were once in construction, through each of the houses. He showed them what he had done and asked their advice about what he had left to do. He flirted with the single women and was respectful to the wives, many of whom, at least for a moment, wished they were still single.

As the night sky arrived and temperatures dropped, partygoers began to trickle away, until it was just John Doe and a small group of diehards and the last bottles of red wine. They talked until the early hours. Next morning they were back, a little construction crew. They went to work on the other two houses and by the end of the week had made all the major repairs and were putting on the finishing touches. By the end of the next week the crew was larger, the three houses ready to inhabit, and the crew decided to begin renovating another trio of dilapidated homes two blocks away.

By the end of February John Doe was head of a small company of more than thirty men and women: experienced plumbers, electricians and carpenters; a half-dozen “designers” who combed flea markets, garage sales and Craig’s List for cheap but useable furniture and appliances; a “support staff” of one—Bob Johnson, the laid-off banker—who recorded every bit of work done, every man-hour put in, husbanding each and every dollar as if they were solid gold.

John Doe contributed some unusual skills of his own. Along with a rudimentary knowledge of plumbing, electrical and carpentry, he knew how to pirate electricity from one house to another without the power company being any wiser. He identified abandoned construction sites and led midnight raids to “liberate” tools and materials. And he seemed to have a sixth sense for deals. If anybody was selling anything that was good and cheap and useful within a hundred-mile radius, he would somehow find out about it and within hours be hauling it back in his ratty old pickup truck.

His scavenging trips increased in number and duration as what its members jokingly referred to as “Doe, Incorporated” grew in size and ambition. By mid-March its workforce had grown to fifty and the total of reclaimed homes to ten. When he suggested they rent the properties to families forced out of their own homes and use the money to rehab more houses and pay themselves a small stipend, they took a vote and unanimously agreed. Interestingly, though, no one recalled the idea as being his. The slight young man had an uncanny ability to influence others while leaving them thinking that his ideas had been theirs all along.

As March flowed into April, Doe, Incorporated was a smoothly functioning machine. The workforce had grown to sixty and the number of refurbished homes to sixteen. The formerly unemployed workers were putting in full days and weeks, and though they weren’t making anywhere near the kind of money they did at the peak of the real estate boom, it was enough to keep their heads above water.

Despite the near reverence that the denizens of Diamond Rock felt for the young man, as the days fell by they realized he was hardly a saint. He liked to drink and held it well, except when he didn’t, and could become prickly and difficult. He enjoyed women and their attentions and enthusiastically bedded any and all who showed an interest. He was prone to mood swings, not quite manic-depressive but ranging from long bursts of furious activity to shorter periods of black despair. On one occasion a former lover had peeked through his bedroom window and found him curled up like an infant in bed. Still, his neighbors’ gratitude ran deep, even as he shrank into the background, letting Bob Johnson and others take more and more control.

Then one day they noticed that the battered red pickup was no longer in his driveway. That wasn’t unusual, but after several days more another delegation trooped over, found the front door unlocked and entered. The house was as it had always been, as neat and orderly as a hospital operating room, nearly devoid of furniture, still smelling of fresh caulk and paint. They went from room to room, calling his name, feeling vaguely unsettled, as if they were violating some kind of sanctuary. On the kitchen counter they found a small scrap of paper.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” read the scribbled handwriting. “I have to go. I love you all.”

That evening the neighborhood held what felt like a wake. More than two hundred people congregated in John Doe’s former backyard. They brought food and wine and beer, and Bob Johnson grilled hot dogs and hamburgers just like John Doe did all those weeks before. They exchanged stories and reminisced, and as the sky darkened and the night grew chilly they raised their glasses in silent toast, a silence they held for a full minute as a gesture of gratitude and of respect. Then they cleaned up and one by one, in small groups, they wandered home.

Life goes on.

Chapter 20

In the time it took Henry Desmond “Joe” Josephson to slice into his overcooked filet mignon all hell broke loose.

The former Vice President of the United States in the Howard Trask administration, two years out of power with the election of Nancy Elias, was sitting down to dinner in the Grand Ballroom of the Icon Gold Hotel in downtown San Francisco after having been named a “Great American Patriot” by the American Progress Institute. Joe Josephson despised such ceremonies almost as much as he hated the city itself, a place, he was fond of saying, with “more communists than Beijing.” But it was the price to pay for the largesse of the Institute, a lobbying group thinly disguised as a think tank, funded by wealthy families and business executives whose fortunes had increased exponentially during Joe Josephson’s eight years in the White House.

Seventy-four, recently divorced from his wife of thirty-two years, with a wrestler’s build, hard eyes and lips that seemed fixed in a perpetual sneer, Josephson made his fortune as a corporate takeover artist, buying up companies for shadowy investment conglomerates, installing himself as chief executive, then leveraging them to the hilt, gutting staffs and facilities, breaking the firms into pieces and selling each off at record profits before their inevitable collapse. Then he moved on to the next victim.

His efforts earned him a fortune estimated at $100 million before he was fifty-five and entrée into Republican Party politics. The politics went swimmingly—two terms as governor of his home state of Montana before being chosen by Howard Trask as his running mate. Trask was an amiable sort, unmatched at the public relations aspects of running and holding the presidency and thoroughly uninterested in actually governing. Which suited “Bulldozer”—Josephson’s nickname and Secret Service handle—just fine.

His fortune, on the other hand, didn’t fare so well. His nasty and well-publicized divorce, series of bad investments, extravagant spending and millions spent defending himself in lawsuits brought by former colleagues and employees in his legion of deals, had reduced his status from obscenely wealthy to merely rich. But the beneficiaries of his years in politics had stepped in, aware that even out of office he could still be useful. They appointed him to their boards of directors, offered him consulting contracts, no-interest loans and insider deals, and in return expected him to use his considerable behind-the-scenes influence on their behalf and to grace the occasional glad-handing function such as this, giving a speech to hundreds of people he didn’t know or care to know in cold, gray, communist San Francisco.

His speech concluded, Joe Josephson picks up his steak knife, jabs his fork into a grayish filet and begins to saw.

7:05:35 p.m. A call comes in. The hotel operator answers. “There is a bomb in the Grand Ballroom,” a mechanical-sounding voice announces. “It will go off in one minute.”

7:05:40 p.m. The operator, new on the job, scared and flustered buzzes the head of hotel security and relays the warning.

7:05:45 p.m. The head of hotel security, a man named Laskey, speaks urgently into the earpieces of Joe Josephson’s three bodyguards, deployed around his table. Four hundred forks and knives clink on bone china plates. Two hundred jaws bite down on tough meat.

7:05:50 p.m. Three things happen simultaneously. Joe Josephson’s bodyguards rush the table, haul Josephson out of his chair. The lights in the Grand Ballroom flicker and die. A loud explosion rattles glasses and silverware, and a brilliant white light illuminates the room. Smoke billows. The light disappears. The room goes dark.

7:06:00 p.m. Shouting. Wailing. Chairs are flung back from tables. Fear. A woman shrieks: “Oh, my God! It’s a bomb! It’s a bomb!”

7:06:05 p.m. Panic seizes. The crowd stampedes, heading for the ballroom’s only exit.

Joe Josephson’s bodyguards form a triangle with the vice president in the center. “Code Red! Code Red! Bulldozer is on the move!” shouts one into his two-way. Drivers of twin black SUVs idling at the curb in front of the hotel fire up their engines. The triangle bulls mercilessly towards the exit. Women, the elderly, the infirm are pushed aside, knocked down, trampled. Panic increases. The frenetic surge grows even more so, trapping the triangle in a sea of pushing, shoving bodies. Progress is nearly impossible, trying to force a raging river through a single straw.

7:06:35 p.m. Another explosion. Smaller. More bright light, more smoke. Panic becomes hysteria. The crowd’s screams are deafening. The river rages harder at the straw. The triangle is compacted into a tight little ball. It’s a street fight now. Practiced fists, elbows, knees strike soft, pampered flesh. Bodies give way, more fall. Finally the triangle begins to move, cleaving through the frenzied mob like a sword.

7:09 p.m. The triangle reaches the exit, bursts through the door, charges down the hall, down the stairs, into the lobby. Panic has reached there too. Elevators have been shut down. Guests mill around in the halls, cram into stairwells, flow downhill like water. The triangle bulls through them, through the lobby, through the giant double glass doors at the entrance and onto the sidewalk. The SUVs are waiting, engines revving. The triangle peels off. Two bodyguards lift Joe Josephson by the armpits and throw him into the second SUV. The third slides into the passenger seat of the lead vehicle, screaming, “Go, go, go!”

It’s 7:11 p.m.

The SUVs rocket off the curb onto Geary Street. Strobe lights blinking, airhorns blaring, they slice through traffic on Geary, make a screeching turn on Mason and then on O’Farrell. They head for Fourth Street and the quickest freeway access to San Francisco airport and Joe Josephson’s waiting private jet. At precisely the same moment, a bodyguard in each SUV switches on a small GPS-jamming device, then pulls a Glock .45, jabs the barrel behind the driver’s right ear and commands, “Drive or die.”

In the back seat of the trailing SUV, one bodyguard flings his arm over a still-stunned Joe Josephson and performs shime-waza, trapping the vice president’s neck in the crook of his elbow and compressing the carotid artery. Josephson loses consciousness within seconds.

“Eyes straight ahead. Turn off the flashers. Slow down,” are the bodyguards’ next commands. The drivers obey. The two SUVs merge into the flow of traffic. Cross Market Street, then Mission, Howard. Folsom. Almost to the freeway. In the lead SUV, the bodyguard digs the gun barrel deeper. “Past Bryant, second left,” he says. In the trailing SUV, the command is, “Don’t follow. Go to Townsend, make a right. I’ll tell you where to turn next.”

The drivers obey. The SUVs enter the perpetual gloom underneath the concrete spaghetti of freeway on and off-ramps. They break free. The trailing SUV turns left onto a narrow one-way street. The man with the gun commands, “Kill the lights.” The vehicle rolls past dilapidated warehouses, factories, the occasional seen-better-days Victorian.

The lead SUV continues down Fourth Street, then turns onto Townsend. Half a block and then another turn, this one into an alley between two commercial buildings. “All the way to the end. Then lights, engine off. Eyes straight ahead,” comes the command. The driver obeys.

The bodyguard palms a cigarette-sized stun gun and touches its prongs to the driver’s neck. The man twitches, then slumps against the window. The bodyguard pockets the stun gun, produces plastic ties and a small metal box. He binds the driver’s hands and feet, opens the box, removes a syringe, plunges 500 mg of Diprivan into the driver’s arm, rolls him face-up on the seat. He locks the SUV, strolls down the alley to Townsend Street, is met by a woman arrived seconds earlier in a silver Mercedes. More seconds later they’re on the freeway, heading south.

The SUV with Joe Josephson rolls up to a chain-link fence topped with swirls of razor wire. Behind the fence is a warehouse, a windowless monolith faced with a heavy steel garage door. A tap on a remote and a gate lurches back on rubber wheels. A second tap and the garage door grinds upwards. Two more taps and the gate and door close. In the warehouse, the SUV squeaks to a stop on the dank concrete floor. “This might sting a little,” the first bodyguard says. He uses the stun gun on the driver, injects him with Diprivan, passes a third syringe to the back. The other bodyguard injects the vice president.

The lights in the warehouse come on. Next to the SUV are a pair of nondescript Japanese sedans and a black Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle. Next to them are a man and a woman. The woman is tall, willowy, dressed in a tailored pantsuit, her auburn hair cut fashionably short. The man is the same height, lean, tanned, a neatly trimmed beard. A stylish couple ready for a night on the town.

The five people in the warehouse now move with swift, precise economy. The three bodyguards strip off their dark suits and ties, stuff them in garbage bags, pull on jeans, sweaters and leather jackets. The woman secures the driver’s hands and feet with plastic ties, slaps a strip of duct tape over his mouth. The man does the same with Joe Josephson. The bodyguards wipe down the SUV for prints. The man and woman heft the vice president to one of the sedans and drop him in the trunk. They get in and start the engine. Two of the three bodyguards slide into the other sedan; the third climbs aboard the Suzuki.

7:14 p.m. The kidnapping of former Vice President Joe Josephson is right on schedule.

The man on the motorcycle dons a helmet, opens the garage door, the gate, circles around the side streets to Bryant Street, listens to the frantic chatter on the police scanner. He says “Go” into the microphone built into the helmet. The sedans creep out of the warehouse, circle around Bryant, fall into traffic. The sedan bearing the vice president follows the motorcycle east to the Bay Bridge, across to Oakland. The other, trunk filled with the bodyguards’ discarded clothes, shoe lifts, hairpieces, other cosmetic disguises, heads in the opposite direction, towards the 101 freeway and points south.

At the Grand Ballroom, police, bomb squad personnel and paramedics sort through the chaos. A bomb squad check shows no more unexploded devices; quick analysis of the bomb remains shows they were little more than larger and more sophisticated flash-bang grenades. Maximum effect, minimum damage.

Police take the names and contact numbers of dinner guests from the event registry and begin interviewing those who hadn’t already fled, noting those to be interviewed the following day. Paramedics wheeling stretchers hustle into the ballroom and begin treating the injured. They’re clustered close to the exit, mostly old, fragile, lying down or sitting up, moaning softly. Something strikes a patrolman as odd, though. Three men—big, fit, filling out their identical dark suits—are sprawled on the floor far from the exit, away from the others. They make half-hearted swimming motions, like marionettes with tangled strings, trying futilely to stand.

The patrolman notices something else too. He kneels over the men, notes the earpieces and wireless mikes clipped to their shirt cuffs, their empty shoulder holsters. He rolls one of the men over and sees a lapel pin, a five-pointed star embossed with the words “Five Star Security.” He also sees the plain white business card sticking out of the man’s breast pocket. He pulls it out, reads the single word printed in big black letters. Something cold and heavy forms in the pit of his stomach. He leans into his collar mike and says tersely, “We have a problem.”

Chapter 21

It was a good idea at the time.

At least that’s what I told myself in the four days between when I invited AnnaLynn to the Keys and her call to me from the top of Card Sound Bridge. I’d begun having second thoughts almost from the moment she accepted, and spent the interim chowing down on a tasteless stew of regret, recriminations, self-doubt and, of course, guilt. Carolyn hadn’t been dead a year and here I was, already intrigued by another woman.

With that infallible sixth sense that almost all women have, AnnaLynn seemed to know all this from the moment I met her in front of Peter’s Islamorada house, a sleek glass-and-steel box on the ocean side of the island, shrouded in oaks and pines and palms on a quiet street known to locals as the “Old Road.”

Our greeting was cordial but reserved, a quick handshake, an introduction to the two men and three women with her. She intrigued me all the more now. AnnaLynn Conté wasn’t what most men would call beautiful. Her legs were too short, her skin too pale. Her breasts were tiny. Her dark brown hair was cut for convenience rather than style. But she had real presence and seemed to glow with an inner goodness.

It wasn’t until the house tour was over and we were all standing around on Peter’s private white sand beach that I really noticed her eyes. They were an arresting, luminous shade of green. They reminded me of the famous Keys “green flash,” a rare optical phenomenon that paints a blazing emerald spot above the sun right before it dives below the horizon. Right then I knew I was a goner. Not that day. But one day.

I covered my discomfit with chatter, edging towards the house to make a quicker getaway. Then I remembered something.

“Did you tell them about Peter’s conditions?” I asked AnnaLynn.

She smiled and shook her head. “I was afraid to. Maybe you should.”

“Two things Peter wanted me to ask you to do.” I said, nodding towards the 28-foot Regal powerboat suspended over the water on davits a few yards away. “Take that baby out and run it around for awhile. Peter doesn’t like it to hang there unused all summer. And over there in the garage is a ‘52 Jag XK120. Fully restored. Gorgeous, if I do say so myself. Take that out once in awhile too. Go to the store or something, take a trip to Key West. Peter didn’t think you’d mind.”

The tall, skinny, long-haired guy named Ian flashed a wide grin. “I think we can help you out there, mate,” he said.

I grinned back. “I thought you might,” I said. “And now I’m going to let you guys unpack, get settled, chill. I hope to see you around but if not, I’ll throw a small party before you go. We’ll eat some fish, drink some wine, tell some lies. I’ll introduce you to some of the folks who live down here; you might be surprised at their resumes.”

And with that I was back in the Miata, heading for home, my stew of the last few days actually tasting a little better.

* * *

Joe Josephson opened his eyes slowly and painfully, as if his eyelids were hung with heavy weights. The remnants of the drug still in his system left him groggy, his memory hazy, his brain fogged. Nothing made any sense—where he was, how he’d gotten there. He closed his eyes and lay still, afraid to move, as if the slightest shifting would disturb his fragile re-entry into consciousness.

Gradually it all came back to him, first in quick, intense flashes, like every third frame of a movie bursting on-screen, then at a steadier tempo, the movie filling out, until the realization hit him like a gut-punch, terror prickling his skin as if he’d been dunked in an ice bath.

He’d been speaking to his wealthy patrons and their hangers-on in San Francisco. He was sitting down to dinner. There was a bomb scare. His bodyguards scooped him up and bulled him through the crush of panicked diners. He remembered being amused at how their air of smug superiority vanished as they scrambled to flee the hotel ballroom like a pack of frightened animals. He remembered his own sense of relief at seeing his two SUVs parked at the hotel curb as he was hustled out of the hotel and safely deposited behind their armored and bullet-proof panels. But what happened after that? He couldn’t remember.

But he did know the end result, though. He’d been taken, kidnapped. Captured by someone or someones with the skills to snatch a former Vice President of the United States from the ballroom of a major hotel in a major American city and get away clean. He was alone, isolated. Totally in someone else’s power. A sense of helplessness consumed him like a fever but he swallowed it and summoned up the anger that burned constantly within him, an eternal flame that had always singed whoever got in its path.

Joe Josephson was a tough old bird and he wasn’t afraid to die. He’d been through several health crises in his seven decades on this earth—heart attacks, prostate cancer, three operations on his back—and he’d faced his possible demise with the same sneer that was his trademark. But he did have one fear: he was deathly afraid of being kidnapped. In those same seven decades he’d made more than his share of enemies, and he knew they would show him no more mercy than he’d showed them. Less, even.

He swallowed that fear too, almost gagging on the effort, and sat up in bed to take in his surroundings. He was in a room about the size of his wife’s walk-in closet at their palatial home in an exclusive suburb of Phoenix. Actually, it was more like a room within a room, a large plywood box, a do-it-yourself jail cell. There was just enough light emanating from one of four bulbs recessed in the ceiling for him to see its crude construction—unpainted, unfinished, the only concession to comfort a patch of cheap industrial carpet on the floor. He swung his feet off the bed and stood the three other lights in the ceiling clicked on. Motion-sensitive. He assumed he was being filmed and recorded at all times. He ignored the realization and focused on the room’s details.

His bed was a raised plywood slab held up by thick four-by-fours. At its foot was a one-person table and chair, both similarly constructed and secured to the floor by heavy bolts. Across from him was a chemical toilet and small wash basin. On the wall opposite him was a low door; anyone entering or exiting would have to duck to keep from banging their head. At the bottom of the door was a small pass-through. There was no handle, no lock on the inside, no way to get out.

“Welcome, Joe. Glad to see you’re up and about.” The voice was a man’s, calm and well-modulated. Infuriating in its contemptuous familiarity.

The anger Joe Josephson had been nursing exploded.

“Goddam you bastards, whoever in the hell you are! Do you have any idea of who I am? I am the Vice President of the United States of America, and I will have your fucking heads on a platter! When I get through with you there won’t be an inch of skin on your worthless bodies! I’ll have you taken apart piece by piece, and your wives and children and dogs and cats and. . .”

Suddenly, Joe Josephson gasped and clutched at his chest, as if his fury had shorted out his own nervous system. He inhaled air in giant gulps—his face burning, foam on his lips, spittle flecking his chin, murder in his eyes.

“Joe, Joe, Joe.” The voice was soft, soothing, a parent calming an upset child. “Settle down now. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Fuck you.”

“Indeed.”

“What the fuck do you want?” The snarl was back.

“We just want to talk, that’s all.”

“And who the hell is ‘we’?”

“‘We’ are the people who have taken you, Joe. That’s really all you need to know. We have no desire to hurt you, and if you cooperate your stay here will be brief and not all that unpleasant, and you’ll be released to go back to your usual raping and pillaging and selling your fellow Americans down the river.”

“Fuck you. Talk about what?”

The man behind the voice sighed. The child was still throwing a tantrum.

“About you, Joe. Your triumphs, your glories. Your illustrious career. Not the business stuff. It’s pretty well established that you’re a greedy, amoral piece of shit. We’re more interested in what is laughably called your ‘public service,’ though that’s basically serving the public up on a silver platter for the benefit of those assholes you were speaking to in San Francisco.

“What we want—no, what you’re going to tell us—is how things work in Joe Josephson’s world. The real world. What really happened on 9-11? Why did you sucker us into two useless wars? What kind of network did you set up to spy on Americans? What did you get for allowing Wall Street to gut our economy like a fish and then walk away with billions? What deals did you make with your buddies in the ‘oil bidness’ when you invited all those CEOs to the White House to set the country’s energy policy? And what about the deals with the insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry, the banks and coal companies and your other buddies in the ‘defense’ business. . . Well, that’s just a start. I’m sure there’s plenty more.

“We want your files on those people too. A man in your position—especially you, Joe—has every speck of dirt on every person you’ve ever looked crosswise at. You’ve got it recorded, hidden, ready to use when and if you need it. We want all that. Then we’re going to take it, and all the video of our little talks, and post it on the web, send transcripts and video to every major news organization in the world, shout it from the rooftops if we have to, so everyone can see the reality of the system you’ve helped create, the system that works so well for you and so poorly for everyone else. That’s what we want, Joe.”

Incredulity fought with fury on Joe Josephson’s face.

“You’re fucking maniacs! You’re out of your goddam minds.”

The voice seemed amused. “Perhaps. But we did get you here.”

“I wouldn’t tell you shit. And if I did, what do you think they’d do to me?”

“Probably the same thing we’ll do to you if you don’t. Well, we won’t actually kill you. We’ll simply leave you here to die—a long, slow, painful death. You see, Joe, at the end of the day we’re both a lot alike. We don’t care about what’s fair, what’s legal or moral or ethical. We care about winning. That’s the way people like you and the scum you work for have played the game for millennia, why you always win and the people you play against always lose. But we’re not losing this time, Joe. You are. And the sooner you come to grips with that, the sooner we can all go about our business. Are we clear?”

Joe Josephson stoked his fury to white-hot intensity. He bared his teeth like a wild animal. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck all you miserable little shits.”

The voice was amused again, but this time there was something underneath it that made even Joe Josephson flinch a little.

“Somehow I thought you’d say that. No problem. We’ll talk again later.”

“In your dreams, asshole.”

“In those too, Joe.”

* * *

President Nancy Elias had just finished expelling a mouthful of platitudes toward the prime minister of India when an aide interrupted their dinner in the White House’s ornate State Dining Room, leaned over the president and whispered urgently in her ear.

The prime minister and others at the table noticed nothing out of the ordinary; only the faint tightening of Nancy Elias’s lips betrayed the gravity of what she’d just been told. It took all the discipline she’d acquired in a lifetime of hiding her true feelings in pursuit of power to continue with the platitudes, to make casual conversation while counting the minutes until she could excuse herself without raising eyebrows.

The moment arrived just after dessert. As the prime minister and the rest of the guests were shuffling off to the East Room for a piano recital, she plead a slight indisposition and a minor crisis and hurried up to her study off the Oval Office. Ray Carmody was already there, worry pinching his features.

Freed from the bonds that had restrained her at dinner, Nancy Elias burst into the study and slapped her hand on the small, plain desk that had been a childhood gift from her father. It sounded like a gunshot.

“Goddam it, Ray!” she snapped, hovering over her chief of staff like an angry bird of prey. “How could this have happened?!”

Ray Carmody looked hurt, defeated. “I don’t know, Madam President,” he said helplessly. “We didn’t know. We didn’t expect. . .” He shook his head as his words trailed off.

Nancy Elias had never seen her longtime friend and confidant so beaten down. She bit hard on her anger, sat and gave herself a moment, then said quietly, “I’m sorry, Ray. That was uncalled-for. Tell me how it happened.”

The apology didn’t help. Ray Carmody looked even more worried. “Joe was giving a speech to a bunch of fat cats at a hotel in San Francisco. Apparently there was a bomb scare—a couple of small explosions—and in the rush to get out of the room the vice president’s bodyguards, all three of them, were knocked out and their places taken by the kidnappers. They must have already been in the room, waiting for the right moment. How they got in. . . We don’t know that either.”

The president’s lips tightened again and he feared another explosion, but she merely sighed and said bitterly, “I offered Joe Secret Service protection, more than once. Told him he was a fool for not taking it. But he had to hire his own people. You know Joe, he’s always smarter than everyone else. Now the arrogant bastard has got us all in deep shit.” She grimaced and waved the thought away. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Go on.”

Ray Carmody’s voice was still pained. “The rest was easy. In all the panic the kidnappers got Joe out of the hotel and into his vehicle. He has two SUVs, armored, with GPS locators. They blocked the GPS and must have overpowered the drivers—or maybe they were in on it. . . And then they just disappeared.”

He stopped and looked sorrowfully at Nancy Elias.

“We don’t know where they are, where Joe is. We haven’t found the drivers or the SUVs. The kidnappers must have ditched them before they got far so we have to assume they now have other vehicles. We’ve received no communications, no ransom note, no demands. Local PD and FBI on-scene have found nothing; I’ve already dispatched a strike force to San Francisco and will monitor the investigation personally.”

He stopped and squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. Dread like a fever suffused Nancy Elias’s body.

“Who did it, Ray?” she said softly. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Ray Carmody looked like he wanted to throw up.

“They found a card,” he said simply. “On one of the bodyguards. The same one. FEAR.”

The stillness in the room lasted a long time.

“God help us,” the president said, barely above a whisper. The room went still again. Finally she said, “How much does the media know? Can we keep a lid on it?”

“So far we’re good,” Ray Carmody said, his voice rising with a scintilla of hope. “The official line is the vice president was evacuated uninjured from the scene of an attempted assassination and is secure in an undisclosed location. There are rumors, of course, but I’ve already reached out to the heads of the media companies and asked them to rein in their people in the interest of national security. Local law enforcement has been instructed not to comment or release any information; the first uniforms on the scene have already been spoken to and sequestered.”

“That’s good. I’ll reach out myself, just to make sure they understand the stakes here. But, why, Ray? Why Joe? What do they want with him?”

“I don’t know,” Ray Carmody answered, running through the possibilities in his head. “If they wanted to kill him, he’d be dead already. If they took him for ransom, we’d have already heard from them. Joe does have a lot of enemies, both here and overseas. I suppose they could have been working for one group or another, but I don’t believe that either.

“The only thing that makes sense, frankly, Nancy, scares the bejesus out of me. They want to know what he knows. All those years in business, politics, two terms in the White House. . . Joe knows damn near everything. What deals were cut and with who, who calls the shots, who doesn’t, who gets paid, where all the bodies are buried.” He laughed harshly, a sound with neither wit nor humor. “Figuratively and literally. Hell, he’s shoveled dirt over a lot of them.” Then, glancing up at Nancy Elias. “Figuratively, of course.”

The president sat thinking. Ray Carmody waited.

After a time she said, “And when they know what Joe knows?”

“Those FEAR people? They’ll release it,” Ray Carmody said miserably. “They’ll release everything. Put it online. Make copies on discs and hard drives and Xerox machines and send them to every news organization, blogger and crackpot liberal group on the planet. Expose everything. Expose all of us.

“The only way to stop them is to find Joe before he breaks, and the odds are aren’t with us. These people are too good, too professional. They’ve been at this for months and we still don’t even know who they are. And we both know they won’t cut a deal. So all we can do is try to contain it when it happens and hope too much shit doesn’t fly off the fan. We’ll keep trying to find them, of course. Take them all out. Joe, too, if need be. But as your chief of staff—your friend, Nancy—I’m telling you to prepare for the worst. Starting now.”

Ray Carmody stared at his wingtips and said mournfully, “I’m sorry, Madam President.”

Nancy Elias sat with her hands folded, her mind a million miles away. “I am too, Ray,” she said. Then more briskly, “Work up a plan and get it to me ASAP.” She reached for the telephone. “I think I’d better call Frank.”

* * *

Everyone came to the party—AnnaLynn, Ian and the rest of the SayNo crew. All of my friends and drinking buddies. Robert too. That was a surprise; he was traveling so much nowadays I hardly ever saw him. I cooked that hogfish dinner I’d promised, set out bowls of Key West pinks with spicy cocktail sauce and a couple of store-bought Key lime pies. Washed them all down with a couple cases of beer and half a case of sturdy White Bordeaux.

In my role as attentive host, grillmaster and party facilitator I didn’t get much chance to talk to AnnaLynn. In fact, I’d hardly talked to her at all since she came to the Keys. But she seemed to be having a good time, which made me happy. When she announced after dinner that she and her staff were leaving for New Orleans the next day I felt a few pangs but, in truth, I was a little relieved too.

Around midnight the party started breaking up, everyone drifting off until it was just AnnaLynn and me. It was an awkward moment but I didn’t want to leave it like that so we walked across the street to the beach, grabbed a couple of chairs and studied the sky and water until the awkwardness just seemed to melt away. At length she broached the subject I probably should have brought up myself.

“Robert told me about Carolyn,” she said. “I’m very sorry. It must have been hard for you.”

“It was,” I said. “It still is. But I deal with it.”

We were silent for another moment, then she said, “I want to thank you again for everything you’ve done. For New Orleans. For this. You didn’t have to do any of it.”

I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything. Then AnnaLynn stood up and I started to stand too but she put her hand on my shoulder and gently pushed me back down.

“I’ve got to go now,” she said. “It will be a long day tomorrow. But I’m honored you let me share this place with you. It is beautiful.” She kissed me on the forehead. “Take care of yourself, Josh Henson.”

I listened to her footsteps crunch in the sand, heard the engine start up, its low rumble crest and then fade away as the van rolled up the street. Then it was just me and the sky and the sand and the Sound. They were pretty good companions too.

* * *

In the end, Joe Josephson talked.

He talked for eighteen straight hours, every word and gesture recorded, every deal, betrayal, lie, bribe and cynical manipulation explained in Technicolor detail. When it was over both the former vice president and his interrogator were exhausted, their emotions raw as if sandpapered.

It had taken less than a day to convince Joe Josephson to sing like Maria Callas, though he had no sense of day or night or the actual passage of time. At some point after that first conversation the pass-through on the cell door opened and a plastic tray bearing a sandwich, bowl of soup, bag of potato chips and large bottle of water was shoved into the room. The sight and smell of food had an explosive effect on his appetite. He hadn’t eaten since his speech in San Francisco, and quickly polished off the simple meal. Then he lay back down on the bed and began plotting a strategy for when his captor’s voice returned.

It didn’t, though.

Instead what returned was a warm, tingly, drowsy feeling, the same feeling he vaguely remembered in the back of his SUV. His nerves seized with fear. He tried to move, to sit up but his limbs refused to obey. Then that warm, tingly, drowsy feeling took over and he felt consciousness leave him like a pinpoint of light vanishing into darkness.

How long he stayed in that dark place he didn’t know. He only knew that as awareness began to slowly seep into his brain he was in a very different place than before. His head pounded, something cold and hard jabbed him in the side, his mouth was filled with something firm yet pliable that hurt against his gums.

That was odd too. The air he was breathing was fresh and clean, yet the air on his skin was cold and clammy, so thick with moisture he felt he could cup it in his hands. But he couldn’t move his hands. His feet either. His eyes blinked open. Nothing but black. He couldn’t see.

God help me! I can’t see!

Panic drove the last vestiges of Diprivan from his system. He screamed and thrashed wildly, scraped patches of flesh off his elbows and knees. He tried to rise and banged his head hard on a rough, unyielding surface. Terror flowed through his veins like an evil poison.

“I did say we would talk again, Joe.”

It was that preternaturally calm voice again.

But Joe Josephson didn’t hear. He screamed into the mouthpiece, slashing his gums, almost choking on his own spittle. Thrashed violently. Banged his head. Screamed and thrashed some more.

Only silence.

Eventually, his panic spent itself, his screams and gyrations gave way to a feeble, trembling whimper.

“Are you ready to talk now, Joe?” The voice was coming to him through a tiny receiver in his ear. “Let me explain your situation to you. You have, to put it bluntly, been buried alive. I do apologize for the crudeness of your containment vessel. Fine carpentry is not among my skills. You and your, shall we say, coffin, are ten feet below the floor of the room you were just in. Which itself is already below ground.

“The thing sticking you in the side is a small oxygen tank. It has enough air for about half an hour, less if you keep flailing about like that. You are breathing, of course, through a mouthpiece connected to the tank. When those thirty minutes are up, you won’t be breathing at all, and my colleagues and I will pour a large amount of dirt and concrete over you and leave you there for however long it takes you to die. And decompose and be eaten by worms and so on. So I repeat my question, Joe. Are you ready to talk? Kick your. . . receptacle three times if you do.”

Joe Josephson kicked. God, how he kicked.

“Excellent,” the voice said. “Things are looking up already. Now, my second question is: Do you remember our earlier conversation? The one where I asked you to, as they say, ‘spill the beans’ on all the rotten things you’ve done, give up all your filthy little secrets. If you remember that conversation, give me another three kicks.”

Joe Josephson kicked as if his life depended on it.

“Very good. So if I let you out we’ll talk about all that. You will answer every question I ask, tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you go back in the box and die a slow, painful, suffocating death? Answer carefully. You won’t get a second chance. Three more kicks if you agree.”

Joe Josephson kicked.

Within minutes he felt his wooden coffin lift, heard the top pried off, felt a life-saving rush of fresh air on his face, hands hoisting him up, carrying him off, depositing him on the bed in his makeshift plywood jail cell, which now had the aura of the presidential suite at a five-star hotel. He heard the wooden door close, the lock click shut. He curled up on the bed and clutched at the pillow as if it was the very life itself that had come so close to being taken from him.

Chapter 22

A battered red pickup truck rolled slowly down St. Claude Avenue, a main thoroughfare splitting New Orleans’ hurricane-ravaged Lower Ninth Ward. It was a sunny spring day with a hint of chill in the air. The streets were full of cars, children skipped along the sidewalks, small clots of men clustered in front of liquor stores or on the porches of modest houses.

After all these years the effects of Hurricane Katrina were still on painful and unavoidable display. Boarded-up homes and businesses shared space on the same block with meticulously repaired and renovated buildings, with those still in reclamation and those, like their residents, that were barely hanging on.

That the devastation of one of America’s iconic cities no longer elicited outrage or even attention made the driver’s ears burn with a simmering anger. But he let it go and turned off on a side street. He was looking for a home that spoke to him, a place where he could stay for awhile and use his skills and make new friends and then, as always, move on.

He found it on a street barely wide enough to let two cars pass. It was a long, narrow, wood-frame home—”shotgun,” in the vernacular—because a slug fired from the front door would fly unimpeded down the length of the home’s hallway and exit at the rear. The doors and windows were boarded up. The façade, which might have once been white, was defiled by a thin, brown line that reached almost to the sagging roof. That’s how high the noxious mix of water and sewage and toxic waste from the overflowing Industrial Canal had risen. On the plywood slab covering what used to be the front door was an X spray-painted in neon orange even now as common in the Ninth Ward as drunken tourists on Bourbon Street.

The man stared at it for several minutes, deciphering its hieroglyphics. They said that the house had been searched by Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms personnel on September 10, and that there were no obvious hazards within. But it was what was written in the bottom quadrant of the X that chilled the man’s soul: “3 DOA.” Then, beneath it, “CAT ALIVE.”

John Doe climbed out of his truck and picked his way through the weeds and trash and rubble around the house, inspecting it like a home appraiser doing his due diligence. It was in bad shape cosmetically but seemed to be structurally sound. It sat sturdily on its foundation, and though the roof sagged at the gutters, it was missing only a few shingles and appeared to be intact. Inspection complete, he went back to the truck and retrieved a crowbar and pried the plywood panel off the doorframe. The stench of mold and rot billowed out, clotting his nostrils and forcing him to step back. He stood on the porch, breathing deeply, then went inside.

His every move was followed by neighborhood children playing in the street, who halted their game and watched with mouths open and eyes big, as if the dirty red pickup truck had suddenly descended from the clouds and disgorged a battalion of little green men. When John Doe disappeared into the house, they looked at each other in amazement, then ran back home to tell their parents about the crazy white man who’d just broken into the old Everett place. Their parents wanted nothing to do with crazy white people, and they warned their offspring to stay away. The man was either a scavenger or a criminal. Or a mental defective. Hopefully he would soon take his crummy old truck and get the hell out of there.

Except he didn’t.

He stayed, and his neighbors watched, as once or twice or even three times a day he would pull up in front of the house with his ancient truck creaking under the weight of lumber and sheets of plywood and drywall, giant buckets of paint and copper tubing and rolls of electrical wire. The neighbors were impressed at his perseverance and prodigious work ethic, a little unsettled by it too. They made no attempt to talk to him and, save an occasional friendly nod, he made no attempt to introduce himself.

Though children and adults kept their distance, the neighborhood teenagers were bolder. A handful of them showed up one afternoon to taunt the crazy fool, but two stayed behind after the man offered them fifty dollars a day and lunch if they’d help him fix the place up. Another group gathered in front of the house long past midnight, intending to vandalize the truck but found it so decrepit they gave up and settled for bouncing their beer cans off its cracked and dirty windshield.

The neighborhood gangbangers made an appearance too. They didn’t come back, though, not after John Doe faced them down with a disconcerting lack of fear and a very large pistol, screwing its barrel into their leader’s mouth and promising to splatter his brains all over the home’s freshly painted porch if he ever saw them again.

Eventually, the rotting, sagging structure began to resemble a home. Eventually, the neighbors’ distrust turned to grudging admiration. Eventually, just as it had in the backwoods of Mendocino and suburb of Las Vegas and the other towns and cities where the quiet young man had been, a minor transformation was taking place, one that kindled a tiny spark of hope in even the most cynical and downtrodden onlookers.

Eventually too a delegation of neighbors knocked on the strange young man’s front door, now a slab of ornately carved and beautifully refinished mahogany, and welcomed him to the community. They tried, with subtlety and blunt directness, to pry any speck of personal information from him, but beyond giving his name and a knowing half-smile, John Doe calmly deflected their questions.

He did give them a tour of the house, though, which now had its plumbing and electric restored and drywall up in half the rooms. They noted too that he was almost completely devoid of personal possessions, that he slept on a sleeping bag thrown unpadded on the floor, ate at a rickety table held together by roofing nails and appeared to own nothing more than a duffel bag filled with books and a few changes of clothes, a small collection of cheap hotel toiletries and the tools he kept in a large metal box in the bedroom. As if he knew they’d be coming he’d procured a jug of sweet white wine and poured it out in paper cups and thanked them for the visit. Then he led them into the back yard and watched their eyes bulge at the piles of building materials secured under thick blue tarps.

“Feel free to take what you need,” he said. “I seem to have way more than I can use here.” Feeling their sudden discomfort, he added, “They’re not stolen; I can show you the receipts.”

The neighbors hastily declared that receipts would hardly be necessary and invited him to a block party the following weekend. He seemed pleased by the invitation, even more pleased when they told him the pitmaster at a local barbecue joint lived nearby and would provide the food, and that a group of neighborhood kids who’d achieved some success playing the local blues circuit would perform. He thanked them for the invitation and promised to bring potato salad and some better-quality wine, then thanked them again for coming and shook their hands as they filed out the door.

Two weeks after the party the blocks around John Doe’s house were humming with activity. Volunteers from within the neighborhood and beyond attacked the homes that had blighted it for so long, tearing down those that could no longer be saved and salvaging their materials, rehabbing those in good-enough condition to again fulfill their purpose. Many took advantage of the invitation to help themselves to his excess supplies and painted their own homes’ exteriors, made modest updates to kitchens and bathrooms, spruced up their bedraggled landscaping.

Through it all John Doe was a constant presence, though not so much that anyone really noticed. If the people who followed his instructions precisely to the letter were asked, they would say the slight young man sitting quietly in a corner merely offered a few suggestions.

AnnaLynn Conté might have said that once too. But she would come to know better.

* * *

Just after midnight on a rainy Monday morning a dark-colored minivan exited the winding, narrow road through the Mayacamas Mountains that connected northern Napa Valley to Sonoma County. The driver made a sharp left turn on Mirabel Road and headed for the tiny town of Forestville. Two minutes later, down to the second, a late-model American sedan did the same.

Half a mile outside the town center the minivan turned onto a barely paved country road shrouded by hulking pines and oaks, continued down it for another half-mile, turned again onto an unmarked road that was little more than a gravel path and stopped. The driver was dressed for the cold in jeans, heavy windbreaker and baseball cap. He was also dressed for something else, wearing disposable latex gloves and plastic booties over his workboots. He shut down the minivan’s engine and waited.

Precisely one minute later, the sedan stopped at the mouth of the unmarked road. The minivan’s driver got in and before he could close the door the sedan was moving again, back on Mirabel Road, heading for Guerneville Highway, US 101 and the California-Oregon border. The man from the minivan removed his gloves and booties and put them in a plastic sack for eventual disposal.

When the sedan was finally on the freeway he pulled out a cheap, pre-paid cellphone purchased weeks earlier at a San Jose liquor store and punched in the number of a cellphone held by a woman sitting in a car parked on the edge of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The man let the phone ring three times, then removed its SIM card, crushed in under his boot and tossed the pieces out the window. He did the same with the rest of the phone. When the woman heard the rings she dialed 911 and held a voice recorder to the receiver. At the dispatcher’s answer, she pressed “play” and a digitally altered voice announced, “Vice President Joe Josephson is in a van on an unmarked road a quarter-mile up Mirabel Road in Forestville, Sonoma County. He is uninjured but needs medical assistance. Send help now.”

The woman snapped the phone shut and placed it and the voice recorder in a heavy plastic bag. She took the car’s tire iron and smashed them into little shards of plastic and tossed them down a storm drain. Then she headed out of San Francisco towards Highway 5 and her eventual destination of San Diego.

In her more than ten years on the job, the 911 dispatcher had fielded her share of bizarre and crank calls but she instinctively knew this wasn’t one of them. Before the caller hung up she had notified the Santa Rosa police department, Sonoma County sheriff and the local hospital, which sent out a pair of ambulances and prepared for the arrival of a Very Important Patient.

The news quickly shot up the law enforcement food chain, from the agent in charge of the area FBI field office to his supervisor to his supervisor to the director, who called Ray Carmody a little after four o’clock in the morning, Eastern Standard Time. By then a phalanx of police cars had surrounded the minivan and paramedics were loading the still-drugged but conscious vice president into an ambulance.

“They found Joe,” the director enthused when Carmody answered. “He was in some jerkwater town in Northern California. A nine-one-one call came in. He seems okay. He’s being taken to the hospital in Santa Rosa, about an hour north of San Francisco. Local law enforcement has full security but I’ve got a team heading up there right now and have already notified Secret Service. We’ve also got Joe’s SUVs. They’re being taken apart as we speak.”

He flashed back to the press conference he’d held after the “assassination attempt” on Joe Josephson, how he’d repeatedly insisted that the vice president was safe and uninjured, how rumors of something more were “irresponsible and uncalled-for speculation.” He groaned inwardly at the memory. “All that stuff I said at the press conference. . . Shit! We’re going to take a major reaming on this.”

Ray Carmody didn’t give a damn about the director’s press relations. “That’s your problem,” he said brusquely. “I’ve got to notify the president.”

Nancy Elias showed no emotion at the news, though inside she was roiling. This was the beginning of a whole new phase of the game, one that would decide the very future of the country. There would be many lies told, many arms twisted, many deals made, many powerful people making many ruthless decisions in the coming days and weeks. It was war, plain and simple. Either the system would endure or it would be brought down in flames and something very different would rise from its ashes.

“Thank you, Ray,” she said evenly. “Keep me informed.”

* * *

What Nancy Elias and Ray Carmody most feared came to be a few hours later. The president’s chief of staff was in his White House office, re-reading Task Force One’s mostly useless reports, when the red light on his desk phone began flashing. He frowned at the annoyance; he’d specifically instructed that he not be disturbed. But he picked up the receiver anyway. It was his chief aide, Martin Chang, and the young man sounded shattered, as if he’d been paid a visit by the Grim Reaper himself.

“You’d better—oh, my god, sir—it’s on PD’s website. The vice president. He’s. . . I don’t believe it, sir. . .”

Ray Carmody felt ill. It had happened already. I thought at least we’d have a little time to prepare. He ignored his aide’s anguished mutterings and banged on his keyboard. The New York Post-Dispatch’s front page appeared. It held a single story. Under the headline, “The World According to Joe,” was a video of Joe Josephson seated at a rough table in a dark room that gave away nothing of its location. The only illumination was a beam of light directed at the table from above. Next to the video was a block of copy. Ray Carmody read it and forgot all about Martin Chang.

“This video is the statement of former vice president Joe Josephson, made after he was removed from the Icon Gold Hotel in San Francisco and placed in our custody. It was made under duress but it is truthful and has not been edited in any way. Clicking here will bring up a full and unedited transcript of this video, which has been placed on the websites of more than one hundred news organizations in the U.S. and abroad.

“This same video and transcript have also been disseminated via various other media to approximately two thousand other organizations and individuals around the world. They make clear the true scope and nature of the disease that has infected our nation. Release of this information—and action upon it by the American people—is vital to the survival of the United States of America as it was conceived and built by our founding fathers. We have made this video and transcript available for one reason and one reason only so that, to quote Abraham Lincoln, ‘Government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.’”

Ray Carmody couldn’t bear to watch, he couldn’t afford not to. He clicked on the video and Joe Josephson came to life. The former vice president appeared ashen and nervous but unharmed. When he spoke he was less the Bulldozer running over his opponents than a broken man confessing his sins.

And confess he did. Joe Josephson gave away everything, from 9/11 to Vietnam. After only a few minutes Ray Carmody was numb. The thought of these revelations, played out on computer screens across the world, made his insides shrivel. This was worse than he’d imagined, worse than he could imagine.

He punched off the video and forced himself to click on the bank of TV monitors that lined the wall opposite his desk. As the screens flickered to life he began to breathe easier. There were no “Special Reports,” no “Breaking News Updates,” just the usual morning show pablum. He watched a celebrity chef pretend to cook a fancy hamburger, an over-the-hill actress plug her latest movie. He watched long enough to be sure the broadcast media, at least, had not been compromised, that there was no word of Joe Josephson and his revelations, that it was still fulfilling its purpose. Then he made himself ready to face the president and hurried down the hall to the Oval Office.

Chapter 23

For a few hours that same Monday morning I was blessedly oblivious to the drama taking place in Washington D.C. At least until Jeff O’Neill called.

I’m normally at my computer before the sun comes up, but it was one of those gorgeous South Florida spring days and I was playing hooky at the beach, sipping coffee and idly thumbing through a trashy novel. I did, however, bring my electronic ball and chain so when my cellphone lit up with Jeff’s name I felt just guilty enough to answer.

My mistake.

“Are you at your computer? Are you at your computer?!” Jeff’s an excitable guy, but he sounded as if he was about to take a flying leap out of his skin. I was still at the beach, figuratively and literally. So that’s what I said.

“Uh. . . No, Jeff, I’m not. . . I’m at the beach,”

“Jesus Motherfucking Christ! Get your ass to your motherfucking computer. Now! Move, move, move!”

“For god’s sake, what is it?”

“It’s only the most goddam fucking important story in modern American history, you lazy sack of shit. Get to your computer! Now, now, now! And don’t hang up the motherfucking phone.”

So I went, spilling coffee all over myself in the process. And I didn’t hang up the motherfucking phone. How else would I have heard Jeff’s sotto voce muttering, “Goddam fucking hippie. . . at the motherfucking beach. . . goddam beach bum. . . most important story. . . at the shit-eating beach. . . Mother Mary and Joseph. . .”

Did I mention that Jeff used a lot of bad language?

Trailing sand and dripping coffee from my front door to my office, I flicked on my laptop and said, “Okay, Jeff. Get a grip. I’m here.”

“Pull up my email and read it. Then click on the link! Click on the link!”

I was already tired of all the drama but I found Jeff’s email and opened it up. I stared, shook the disbelief out of my brain. Stared again. Then I almost took a flying leap out of my own skin.

“Ho-lee shit! This is un-fucking-believable!” I shouted, my excitement almost matching Jeff’s. “Is this real? How did we get it? Who did this? Who sent it to us? Does anyone else have it?” I had a million more questions. I couldn’t get the words out fast enough.

“Get a grip, Josh,” Jeff O’Neill said dryly.

I watched the video with the sound turned down in one browser window and scanned the transcript in another. It truly was unbelievable. For news junkies like Jeff and me, it was the Rosetta stone, the Arc of the Covenant and the Fountain of Youth all rolled into one. Of its veracity I had no doubt. Whatever had been done to Joe Josephson to force him to cough up these jewels made no difference to me. He’d done worse to better people. Or had it done. Tough shit for him.

Finally I tore myself away from the computer and back to Jeff.

“Amazing stuff,” I said, still in awe at the scope and detail of the revelations. “I’d like to shake the hand of whoever squeezed this out of a scumbag like Josephson. Now, about the video. Do we know who made it? Do we know if it’s true? Is Josephson alive? Do we know where he is? Do we know where the kidnappers are? Have they been arrested? What about a response from the White House? Have they said anything?”

I had to stop and take a breath. The enormity of the story was overwhelming.

“This just popped up on our site twenty minutes ago,” Jeff O’Neill said. “All we know so far is that the video has been hacked onto the websites on all the major metro dailies, networks, cable stations. It’s already burning up the ‘Net. We’ve got a call into the White House press sec but they’ve got to be in full panic mode and we’re not going to hear anything until they get their story straight.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want everyone to bite off their own piece of this thing. Focus on the stuff that most impacts your area, start with the recent stuff and work backwards. Confirm what you can. Flesh out the details. Don’t bother with the pro forma denials; MSM will be all over that. We don’t need to restate other people’s bullshit.

“Also, check to see if there’s anything in there about that Tutis International business, about Genesis Group and their thugs. And give me a heads-up on local reaction. When people get a good look at this thing the shit is going to hit the fan. Big time. Feed me copy as soon as it’s done. I’m putting together a group here that will take everything from all of you in the field and work it into the big picture. Oh, and one more thing, Josh.”

“Yes?”

“Be careful. Some very powerful people have just been exposed. They’re backed into a corner and are capable of just about anything.”

“I know, Jeff. Not a problem.”

It wasn’t now. But it would be.

* * *

It took only minutes for the Joe Josephson video to go viral. Traffic on the Internet exploded, then slowed to the pace of the evening commute. It took only minutes more for Ray Carmody to gather the executives of the country’s four telecommunications companies and major media outlets for a video conference call from the Oval Office.

President Elias was still shaken by Joe Josephson’s revelations but she bore down with the grim resolve of someone who has no other choice. When Ray Carmody signaled her listeners were all in place, he brought up the video and audio links. A dozen nervous executive stared fixedly into web cameras, appearing on a large split-screen monitor. The president didn’t waste any time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to dispense with the usual platitudes and pleasantries today. I don’t have to tell you what a dangerous situation this morning’s events have created. If the charges made by the former vice president this morning go unrefuted, if they gain traction in the public mind, then the future of every one of us here and of the nation as we know it are at terrible, terrible risk.

“First, let me say that vice president Joe Josephson is in our care and custody. He was, in fact, abducted by a group of domestic terrorists during his speech in San Francisco, an action my administration reluctantly denied out of fear for his health and safety. I have more information on that, which I will give you a little later.

“Now, to the issue at hand. I have consulted with my chief of staff, Ray Carmody, whom you all know and respect and is in the room with me here today. I have also spoken with members of the Cabinet and other advisors. Together, we have developed a plan that I believe will contain and neutralize the allegations set forth in today’s video. It is imperative that you follow this plan precisely, that you set aside any differences with this administration and with each other, that you think beyond your short-term goals and profitability. All of us are facing a ruthless and, frankly, an exceedingly skillful adversary. If we don’t hang together, as Benjamin Franklin said, we will surely hang separately.

“The first and most crucial step is to take down that video. Every minute it is up on your websites is a dagger into the heart of our system of government. I am making available all the resources of my office to—”

A delicate cough broke into Nancy Elias’s soliloquy. She frowned and glared at the image of the offender. It was Leslie Goldberg, CEO of Entertainment Inc., a multimedia company that owned newspapers, web publications, TV and radio stations, and production studios.

“I’m sorry, Madam President,” she said, nervously fingering her wedding ring. “Please forgive me for interrupting. But I’m afraid it’s not going to be that simple. We’ve been trying to take down the video since the moment it showed up but we don’t seem to be able to.”

There were murmurs of assent from the other media potentates.

“I don’t understand the technical issues,” she continued. “But my people tell me it has some sort of self-replicating properties. Like a virus. Like squeezing toothpaste in a tube—you shut it off in one place and it pops out the other. They assure me they can take it down. But it’s going to take some time.”

The president hid her disappointment well. “Thank you, Leslie.” Then to Ray Carmody: “Please see that Leslie and everyone here gets immediate assistance with this.” She turned back to the monitor and continued.

“The second step may help with that problem. This is for Jim, Hassan, Emily and Walter—our telecommunications representatives here. I would not ask you to ‘shut off the Internet,’ as some of my advisors have suggested. But I am told that this video has already caused an unprecedented increase in traffic, so much so that it has dramatically slowed the entire system. Until we can get a handle on this situation, I expect traffic to only increase, which combined with several unforeseen technical issues, will contribute to an even more dramatic slowdown. You will, of course, be working diligently to resolve these issues and restore service to normal levels, but unfortunately this problem is expected to last for several days, perhaps even weeks. Do I understand your situation correctly?”

The four executives, whose firms controlled virtually all Internet access in the country, swallowed hard and nodded.

“Good,” Nancy Elias said. “Step three. To Jerry and Michael: I know your search engines use complex algorithms to find and display search results. In light of this morning’s events, you might want to review those algorithms, to make sure they’re not contributing to the undermining of our national security. I’m not suggest you ban searches for certain words or phrases; that is the action of a dictatorship afraid of its own people. I’m merely suggesting that you note the identities of people who visit potential terrorist sites and pass that information on to duly constituted authorities.

“And, finally, step four. To the rest of you: At the end of this session I will announce a press conference to address the allegations made in the video of the former vice president and the circumstances of his abduction. I will say that my administration did conceal the facts and the very existence of that crime out of fear for the vice president’s life. And I do not apologize for doing so.

“I will also say that the vice president was rescued this morning by an elite anti-terrorist team, which has been tracking the group that abducted him for several months. During this rescue attempt, which occurred in a remote area of Northern California, all of the terrorist kidnappers were killed, but unfortunately not before one of the terrorists critically wounded the vice president. He was immediately taken to a local hospital and stabilized, then moved to a secure military facility where his care continues.

“Despite the severe nature of his wounds, he was conscious enough to deny each and every allegation contained in that video, which he made under the influence of drugs and only after days of brutal torture and beatings. These last have already been confirmed by his doctors. For his brave resistance past the point at which most men would have broken, vice president Joe Josephson is an American hero and will be honored as such by my administration.”

Nancy Elias let a long, portentous silence underscore the gravity of her announcement. Then, her eyes hard: “That is the story. Do I make myself clear? I don’t want to see some snot-nosed reporter running around repeating vile, baseless, treasonous accusations; impugning the reputations of many fine public servants; and casting unwanted and unwarranted aspersions on our system of government and our very way of life. So control your people, ladies and gentlemen, for your own good and the good of the country.”

The president paused once more and softened her tone. “That is all I have to say for now. I want to thank you for agreeing to meet like this, and for your cooperation and support during the difficult days ahead.”

“Excuse me, Madam President.” It was Leslie Goldberg again. “One question, if I may?”

“Yes?”

“All that. . . everything. . . in the video. It’s not true, is it?”

Nancy Elias could barely contain her exasperation.

“Does it really matter?”

Chapter 24

The big-time shit that Jeff O’Neill predicted took less than twenty-four hours to develop. By Monday evening spontaneous demonstrations had erupted in cities throughout the country, groups of ten or twenty or a hundred or a thousand marching on government offices and businesses, congregating in public places or taking to the streets. They were scattered and disorganized, little more than group venting sessions, but the demonstrators’ anger and sense of betrayal were palpable.

Tuesday saw more of the same. Groups of protestors—now numbering in the tens of thousands—blocked streets, took over blocks surrounding state and federal buildings, Congressional offices and banks, the corporate headquarters of oil and insurance companies, media conglomerates, any firm mentioned in Joe Josephson’s video. In Washington, D.C., demonstrators massed in front of the White House, for a time shutting down Pennsylvania Avenue. In New York they swarmed the Financial District, cutting it off from the rest of the city and forcing brokers to spend the night in their offices.

Wednesday, the demonstrations grew larger and more numerous but still leaderless and disorganized. Police departments taken unawares by the suddenness and randomness of the protest regrouped and pushed back hard. There were hundreds of little confrontations—angry words exchanged, rocks thrown, billy clubs swung. It was the toothpaste tube analogy all over again, squads of armored police squeezing protestors out of one area, only to see them pop up in another.

Thursday, the protests continued unabated, but the more savvy protestors began to realize that flash-mob demonstrations had only limited effect, that they needed a more concerted national effort. Tapping into the network of activist groups around the country and riding a tsunami of texts and Facebook and Twitter posts, that notion grew into plans for a series of simultaneous demonstrations in major American cities, a one-day national strike to take place the following Monday, exactly one week after the release of the Josephson video.

In more than thirty cities from coast to coast, frantic preparations for what was dubbed Rescue America Day were launched. In New Orleans, AnnaLynn Conté and SayNo threw themselves into planning for a rally they hoped would bring fifty to seventy-five thousand people to Audubon Park, three hundred-plus acres of fields and facilities in the city’s tony Uptown neighborhood. On such short notice, the organizational and logistical hurdles were daunting, even more so to already exhausted staffers running on po’ boys and Red Bull.

Thursday evening a slight young man with short reddish hair and a quiet, diffident manner walked into SayNo’s office and volunteered to help. He wore blue jeans scuffed and stained at the knees and a faded plaid shirt. His hands were rough and calloused, his fingernails embedded with the grime of his Lower Ninth Ward home.

He was immediately put to work—running errands, accessing and copying documents, filling out forms, answering phone calls—the scut work of any busy office. He worked through the night, never stopping, saying little, his bright blue eyes missing nothing. When staff members who’d finally gone home around four in the morning returned several hours later, he was still working, looking as fresh and relaxed as if he’d spent the night sleeping peacefully in his own bed.

AnnaLynn Conté had noticed the quiet young man, noted his preternatural calm, his remorseless efficiency, his quick grasp of detail and iron constitution. She introduced herself and he said simply, “John Doe.” Then he shook her hand and went back to work. She stood and watched him go, vaguely unsettled by their meeting yet somehow light-hearted, though she couldn’t say why.

By Friday afternoon he was indispensible. By Friday evening he was shouldering the responsibilities of any of SayNo’s senior staffers. He seemed to have an alchemist’s touch with people. When one staffer got into a screaming match with a city bureaucrat over some detail of the coming protest, John Doe politely asked if he could help, took the telephone into an empty cubicle and emerged ten minutes later with the issue resolved and an apologetic official only too glad to help. Every eye in the office watched him return to his makeshift desk, feeling vaguely unsettled and—like AnnaLynn Conté—just a little bit hopeful too.

* * *

In the White House, Ray Carmody and Nancy Elias watched the week’s events unfold with faint hope curdled by rising apprehension. Everything had gone according to plan, the media had played its part. Everyone except ever-growing numbers of the American people. They ignored the media campaign, worked around the Internet roadblocks, and gathered with increasing frequency and building anger to voice their opposition to the system that had spawned the likes of Joe Josephson.

It wasn’t just the ferocity and resilience of the public response that kept Ray Carmody awake at night, it was its spontaneity and self-generation. There was no single head to chop off to ensure that the body would die. The SayNos and other activist groups had a role, to be sure. But they were riding the bus, not driving it.

The coming demonstration was more worrisome still. One of Ray Carmody’s first rules of politics, learned over decades of give-no-quarter fighting in the trenches, was to never let your opponents feel their own strength. Keep them weak, divided, fighting each other. Helpless. He’d worked that rule so successfully for so many years he had taken it for granted. He wasn’t taking it for granted now.

In the executive offices and studios of the media companies there was apprehension too. They’d done everything the president had asked—churning out a constant stream of news stories, exposes and special reports, unleashing all their “journalists” and pontificating heads—all aimed at denying Joe Josephson’s revelations and heaping scorn on their believers. Yet their only success was to drive away even more of their continually shrinking audience.

Their worry over Rescue America Day was even more pronounced. Too-positive coverage and the president would be pissed, their lucrative, back-scratching arrangement with the government at all levels would be jeopardized. Too-negative coverage they’d lose even more viewers. Ground between two irreconcilable extremes, all they could do was flounder.

In the boardrooms of the nation’s Internet providers, executives there were also caught in a crossfire of unpalatable options. Acceding to the president’s demands, they allowed her “unforeseen technical issues” to take the ‘Net back to its dial-up roots. But that hardly slowed the circulation of the Josephson video. Copies on flash drives and DVDs multiplied and were passed around like heirlooms, were shown in private homes and theaters and libraries and rented halls. Even the lowly transcript was copied, distributed and devoured. Indeed, the only real success of their efforts was to throw a monkey wrench into the workings of the rest of corporate America, which depended on a fully functional Internet to conduct business. To survive. Presidential directive or no, this could not go on much longer.

* * *

In his office in New York City, Frank Bernabe heard his cellphone ring with the one call he did not ever, ever want to take. He stared at the number displayed on the tiny screen, afraid to answer, even more afraid not to. When he finally forced himself to pick up the receiver and raise it to his face, he heard nothing but his own breathing.

Then a voice broke the silence. It was soft, sibilant and deadly.

“What’s going on there, Frank?”

He tried not to let his shaking hands betray him.

“Just a temporary setback. I’m dealing with it.”

This time the silence was longer. It went on so long Frank Bernabe thought he might void himself. When it ended he didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more frightened.

“See that you do.”

* * *

Chasing down Joe Josephson’s revelations was the single most frustrating task of my career. No one would talk, even to answer the most innocuous of questions. Some people literally ran away when I identified myself as a reporter. Others had already run. When I got to fifty I stopped counting the number of disconnected phones and “no longer at this addresses” I encountered. People had been gotten to and told to keep their mouths shut. I felt like a man with a four-foot reach chained five feet from a pot of gold.

I switched gears and went back to tracking Leland Elliott and Tutis International but that was a dead end too. Elliott’s cell phone had been disconnected, and there was no longer a directory listing, or any listing, for his company. When I went back to the Miami highrise that had housed its corporate offices I found its name stripped from the building’s list of tenants. A helpful security guard told me the company had moved out in a hurry about ten days ago, right around the time of Joe Josephson’s kidnapping. Then he told me he shouldn’t be seen speaking to me and that I had to go.

I said all this to Jeff O’Neill and he said the same thing had happened to every one of my Public Interest colleagues. He wanted the Tutis International story, though. It was a good story, better than nothing, so I banged it out quickly and sent it off. I was still frustrated at how thoroughly the Josephson pipeline had been choked off but at the moment I didn’t know what I could do about it. Soon, however, that would be the least of my worries.

* * *

Frank Bernabe sat at his desk, regulating his breathing, waiting for his nerves to stop jangling. When he felt ready he went to his wet bar and poured himself a shot of Johnny Walker Blue, noting with satisfaction that his hands were no longer shaking. He downed the amber liquid in a quick, greedy gulp, savoring its soft, warm burn as it coursed down his throat. Then he resumed his position at the desk and began plotting how to make good on his promise.

* * *

Russell Millar always enjoyed the commanding view of the world’s greatest city from the wraparound windows of his 21st floor Manhattan office. Today he was wondering if he had the nerve to launch himself out of one of those windows and into the nothingness, if the terror of falling twenty-one stories would kill him before he landed. He decided there were easier and less messy ways to do himself in, if it came to that. Thankfully, it hadn’t come to that yet.

He backed away from the windows, thoughts of suicide temporarily banished. But his dilemma remained. Ed Bane had really done it this time. True, he had followed through on Bill Bigby’s request to beat down the Josephson revelations, had done so with such malevolent, maniacal glee it made Russ Millar uncomfortable. But he didn’t stop there. Oh, no, Ed Bane never stopped there.

Millar had listened to the taped open of yesterday’s show so many times he could almost recite it from memory.

“In two days this great nation will come under attack by the forces of pure evil. This brazen assault on our freedom, our liberty, our Constitution, our very American way of life is being planned even as you listen by a band of godless communist-socialist-fascists who will turn the land we love into a giant concentration camp and begin feeding you and your children into its ovens. ‘Rescue America Day,’ these scum call it. Do you believe it? And do you think our Rug Muncher in Chief, the witch in the White House, that spineless sack of pus on Pennsylvania Avenue will do anything to stop them?

“Hah!

“But that’s alright, ladies and gentlemen, fellow Bane-iacs, that’s alright. Because by the time we get through with these wastes of good oxygen, it won’t be America that needs rescuing. God is calling you, I am calling you to stand up against this evil, this conspiracy of One Worlders and atheists and liberal-fascist-terrorists who would take this most blessed of all nations from you and turn you into slaves in your own country.”

The next words made Russell Millar shiver.

“If it takes a fist, make a fist. If it takes a rock, pick up a rock. If it takes a stick, grab a stick. If it takes a knife, unsheathe a knife. And if it takes a gun, dammit!, lock, load and ready, aim, fire!”

Russ Millar had never felt so helpless. He was not adverse to violence, to its judicious application on the right people. But this was playing with fire in a room painted with nitroglycerin. Ed Bane has to be reined in, profit margins be damned. Bill Bigby may think he can forever ride the tiger that Bane has become, can use him as a wrecking ball without getting blasted by the inevitable backswing.

But Bane doesn’t see himself as a tool for the Bill Bigbys of the world, he sees himself as their superior. Declaring war on the demonstrators was implicitly declaring war on his nominal boss, not to mention the President of the United States. Ed Bane was feeling his power, intoxicated by it, and now all Russ Millar and Bill Bigby and Nancy Elias could do was watch hordes of Bane-iacs run amok and turn the rest of the country against them.

Russell Millar contemplated the scene outside his windows and began to reconsider his decision.

Chapter 25

Rescue America Day turned out to be bigger than even its organizers had anticipated. More than one million people jammed into Washington’s National Mall, almost as many overwhelmed New York’s Central Park. In Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Phoenix, Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami and other major cities the throngs numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Small-town parks and public squares were filled too.

The crowds could have been mistaken for those jamming the average suburban shopping mall. They were a cross-section of America, good-humored but somber, anger stoked by the betrayals enumerated by Joe Josephson crackling just below the surface. Still, there were no outward displays of violence. They listened to speeches and music, talked amongst themselves, waited patiently in lines for bottled water and bad food, but mostly just gathered to make their numbers and determination known.

Some of them also died.

Ed Bane’s call to ready, aim, fire was taken literally. Mobs of Bane-iacs, joined by remnants of the old Tea Party, various fringe groups and paramilitary types, fell on the demonstrations and exacted their vengeance. They may have been outnumbered but they were not out-armed. With rocks and sticks and knives and guns and their own fists they attacked. Six people were shot and killed in D.C., four in New York, more than a dozen in other cities. Injuries reached into the hundreds. In several cities, police lines were pulled back just before the attacks took place, to the consternation of many cops on-scene. The major media blamed the violence on demonstrators.

AnnaLynn Conté would always remember this day as a turning point. One hundred thousand people swarming Audubon Park, spilling onto side streets, gathering with quiet dignity and sober resolve to say the America they loved could not be taken, had not died, could be reborn.

She would also remember it as a day of great sadness, a day when American turned on American at the ravings of a cynical manipulator of his own people. But above all she would remember it as the day that John Doe burned himself into the national consciousness and set the country on a path no one, even Doe himself, could have ever imagined.

She and Ian and several other organizers and volunteers were standing under a tent behind the stage at Audubon Park. A local zydeco band had just launched into their set, and the air thrummed with the stirrings of the giant crowd and the sounds of guitar and accordion and fiddle and the staccato scraping of the rubboard. Under the tent the mood was a mix of euphoria and relief. So far everything had gone well, and they were looking forward to a smooth finish to the day and their first good night’s sleep in weeks.

The commotion started slowly, almost imperceptible at first, like ripples disturbing peaceful waters at the furthest edges of a pond. No one under the tent noticed, except perhaps for John Doe, who as usual was part of the group yet somehow apart from it. AnnaLynn felt rather than saw the subtle change in his demeanor and followed his eyes past the stage where the ripples were coming stronger and more frequent.

She saw it a second after he did. A young black man she recognized as one of SayNo’s steady volunteers—Tyrell something, she couldn’t remember—was tearing through the crowd, sweat and desperation painted on his face. He burst through the crush of bodies and ran to her, breathless and panting.

“A mob. . . I tried calling. . . you didn’t answer your cell.” AnnaLynn said something soothing, hoping to calm him. He shook off her efforts. “There’s a mob. . . coming down Magazine Street. . . they’ve got guns. . . no police.” He looked at her with plaintive eyes. “I tried to warn you.”

For a moment, AnnaLynn Conté went blank. Then the weight of Tyrell’s news hit her and she almost buckled beneath it. Euphoria, hope, relief all vanished. Conversation died. Every eye went to her, seeking strength, direction, wisdom. Almost instinctively, she looked around for John Doe. But he was gone.

What followed was indelibly stamped into the minds of millions, whether watching it unfold before them in real time or on video, viewing it on tinny cellphones or still photographs or the high-def images of professional videocams. A small army of Bane-iacs—estimates ranged from two to three-thousand—marched determinedly down the breadth of St. Charles Avenue. American flags billowed from car antennas. Confederate flags did too.

The mood was raucous, angry, resentful. Marchers shouted catcalls and chanted slogans. Patriotic music fought with guitar-heavy Southern rock on throbbing car stereos. Many of the crowd carried baseball bats and lengths of pipe and heavy chain. Others carried weapons—shotguns and hunting rifles held loosely in their hands, pistols strapped to their sides or under their armpits.

No one seemed to be in charge, but a large, bearded man dressed in overalls and heavy boots marched in the lead. He held an aged Mossberg side-by-side shotgun that was like a stick in his meaty hand.

The mob continued its surge down St. Charles, turned on Walnut, again on Magazine. Spectators gathered, followed, their numbers growing. Reporters for local Internet news sites streamed the procession live. A local TV news crew, drawn by the promise of a violent confrontation, joined them. They were met by jeers and a hail of rocks; they moved back but kept filming.

The mob reached the park entrance. Its mood was now frenzied. Its angry shouts grew louder, more numerous. The raucous music boomed even more feverishly. Flags waved. Pipes, chains, baseball bats thudded rhythmically on the pavement. A man raised a rifle and fired in the air. It subsequent blasts went unheard in the mob’s cheers.

Then it happened.

A slight young man with short reddish hair, wearing faded jeans and a frayed blue workshirt, appeared as if from nowhere in the center of the street. He stood like a lone sentry, his face expressionless, his eyes on the bearded man with the shotgun. Then John Doe began to walk. Calmly, deliberately, each step measured, marching into the depths of twin barrels. The bearded man blinked as if he couldn’t believe it. He shifted the shotgun to the crook of his arm and glared at the approaching figure.

At fifty yards out the jeering started. John Doe kept walking. At thirty-five yards a volley of rocks skittered on the pavement around him. John Doe kept walking. At twenty-five yards a rock grazed his cheek, left it torn and bloody. The bearded man lifted the twin barrels of his shotgun. “You better stop there, boy,” he called.

John Doe kept walking.

The jeers and rocks continued. The man’s shotgun stayed level. His thumb flicked off the safety. At ten yards out he raised the gun to his shoulder, sighted down the barrels. His fingers closed around the trigger. At five yards out he shouted, “Last chance, boy. This’ll tear you clean in half.”

John Doe stopped walking.

The mob went quiet. Spectators held their breath. Video cameras whirred.

John Doe started walking.

He kept his eyes fixed on the bearded man’s, two empty vessels that seemed to absorb the man’s thoughts, hold him in their thrall. The shotgun barrels wavered. The man’s trigger finger twitched almost imperceptibly. Another hair’s worth of movement and two slugs packed with eighteen steel pellets would tear through the air at 1,600 feet per second and pulverize organs, shred skin from bones, blast bones into random chips.

John Doe took one final step forward, pressing the barrels of the old Mossberg into his forehead, leaving two identical indentations, two blueish-white circles in his pale white skin. There was no one else in the world now. Only a man with a gun and a man not afraid to take its bullets.

Witnesses said later that John Doe and the bearded man held that position for four, maybe five minutes. But the time counters on the videocams said it was less than sixty seconds. Only those closest to them could see the tremor that wriggled up the bearded man’s spine, the beads of sweat that popped on his forehead, the softening of his angry features.

But everyone saw—and the cameras recorded—the shotgun come down, the man sag as if the blood had suddenly drained from his body. They saw John Doe touch the man’s shoulder, draw him close, whisper something in his ear. Then they saw him wrap his giant arm around John Doe’s shoulder and weep his pain into the faded blue workshirt.

Chapter 26

Nancy Elias was furious. And scared. Scared because for the first time in her fifty-seven years, her belief that the system she served so long and faithfully would endure had been shaken. Furious because the actions of “the crazies,” as she called them, were now putting that endurance to the test.

She’d never imagined that something like Rescue America Day could happen—millions of people across the country in the streets, demanding the kind of change she knew she could not give them. And if those millions were willing to leave their homes and jobs and routines to put voice to those demands, who knows how many more millions standing on the sidelines supported them. If they all ever came together. . .

Suddenly, the so-called “New Declaration of Independence” and the reprise of the old Bonus Army march Ray Carmody had warned her about seemed less more dangerous than ever, the kind of seismic upwelling that could knock entire governments off their foundation.

What was especially galling was that Ed Bane and the rest of his ilk had only made that upwelling more likely. Though the mainstream media had done its best to play them down, scenes of moms and dads insurance agents and grocery store clerks and teachers being attacked and in some cases killed by rage-fueled mobs played repeatedly on the ‘Net. With every viewing another fence-sitter moved, another supporter was lost.

Like those millions of Americans, she too had seen the video of John Doe. Many times. It was the most frightening one of all. She’d already called the director of the FBI and instructed him to find out just who the hell this young man is and to get back to her with the information within twenty-four hours. Actually, though, it didn’t really matter. All that did matter was that he was dangerous, the most dangerous foe she had ever faced. More dangerous than Ed Bane, more dangerous even than Frank Bernabe. There was only one way to deal with that kind of danger.

Even crazies had their uses.

* * *

Rescue America Day in Miami was typical South Florida chaos. The “organizers,” if you can call them that, had no plans to accommodate the three hundred thousand people who showed up at Bayfront Park expecting some minimal level of facilities and coordination, no idea what to do when demonstrators spilled out of the 32-acre park into the city’s downtown, clogging streets and sidewalks beyond even the usually brutal weekday congestion.

Trying to cover the event was like swimming in a giant vat of jello—a prodigious amount of energy expended without any discernible progress. Like other reporters attempting to make sense of the scene, after awhile I just gave up and settled for gathering anecdotes and recording impressions. When a line of thunderstorms trained over the city, dumping almost two inches of rain in less than an hour, everyone bailed and fled for their cars, some parked a mile or more away. It was pure pandemonium, total Miami. Which, I had to admit, on some level I found rather endearing.

I managed to disengage myself from the scrambling mass just as a particularly violent storm cell exploded overhead, firing off jagged bullets of lightning and pouring down rain like God’s own firehose. Already a soggy, freezing mess, I ducked into a tiny doorway with a handful of similarly miserable souls, one of them being a tall, good-looking black man with the musculature of an NBA center and an expression that said he was either suffering a painful episode of gas or was trying desperately not to double over in laughter.

I couldn’t hear much over the constant buzzing of the crowd and intermittent cracks of thunder but it appeared he was being quizzed by a small, elderly white-haired woman in a flowered housedress underneath a leather coat at least three sizes too big for her. Then the noise abated for a moment and I could just make out her words.

“I said, Wassup, dawg? You a baller, yo?”

Oh, shit. I’d recognize that voice anywhere.

I elbowed between the two of them and said to the man, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think I know this woman.”

He grinned and said ruefully, “My condolences.” Then he took off as if he were scrambling for a loose ball in the NBA finals. I turned to the woman and said, “Hello, Marilyn. See what you did to that poor man?”

Marilyn Kravitz surprised me by blushing. I didn’t think she could be embarrassed.

“Hello, Josh Henson,” she said, as if I’d just caught her pinching pennies from the church collection plate. She looked so mortified I almost felt sorry for her.

“So how are you, Marilyn?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“You think all old people do is sit around watching Days of Our Lives?” she crabbed. “It gets boring sitting in that goddam condo all day. I wanted to get a little action, see what’s crackin’. You feel me—”

I gave her my sternest expression.

“Mar-i-lyn. . .”

“Okay, okay,” she said, her face falling a little. “You don’t know what it’s like to be old, Josh. All everybody sees is your white hair and wrinkles and saggy tits and they want to throw you away like a piece of garbage or stick you in a home with a bunch of geezers. They think you don’t know anything modern or new, that you’re some kind of antique. I just wanted to feel with it, you know? I just wanted to feel alive.”

It was one of the most heartfelt things anyone had ever said to me. I felt ashamed for having mocked her.

“You’re more alive than most anyone I know,” I said. And I meant it. “Listen, Marilyn. If you promise not to talk like Snoop Dogg, I’ll take you out to dinner. What do you say we get out of this crappy weather and get something to eat?”

I figured that despite more than a decade in Miami she’d never eaten Cuban food, so we scooted through the rain to my car and battled the crush of traffic leaving downtown until I got on Southwest Seventh Street, which I took all the way to Little Havana. It was still early so we got into Versailles—the Taj Mahal of Miami’s Cuban community—with no problem and gorged ourselves on ham croquetas, roasted pork, arroz con pollo, creamy plantains and black beans so good you could almost believe Castro was a Republican. Marilyn drank her vodka and I sipped beer while I told her about Armando Gutierrez and AnnaLynn Conté.

“Good for her!” she said gleefully, clapping her hands together. Then, slyly, “You’re sweet on her, aren’t you?”

Luckily, our waiter asking about dessert and coffee kept me from having to answer. For a second I considered ordering a pair of hyper-caffeinated café Cubanos but decided the world wasn’t ready for a nuclear-powered Marilyn Kravitz. We skipped dessert too and waddled off to my car and I took her back to the downtown garage where she’d parked hers. As the Miata idled behind her boat-like Caddy she fished her keys out of her purse, leaned over and pecked me on the cheek.

“Thank you for dinner, Josh Henson,” she said. “It meant a lot to this old broad.”

I was touched by her sincerity. “Don’t mention it Marilyn. I had a great time. Next time I’m in Miami we’ll do it again.”

She opened the door and got one foot out. Then she twisted around and punched me on the shoulder.

“Dat be fresh, homes,” she said.

* * *

Frank Bernabe was furious. Mad at himself for his momentary weakness, mad at the world for upsetting his perfectly ordered plans. There was a lot of other people’s shit for him to clean up, and the thought made him madder still. But that was his responsibility, as the soft, deadly voice had made exceedingly clear. So he picked up the phone and dialed Nancy Elias. When she answered, he said brusquely, “It’s Frank, Nancy. We have some problems to discuss.”

“We do indeed,” Nancy Elias said. “I’ve been giving them a lot of thought, and I believe I have some solutions.”

That was one thing Frank Bernabe didn’t expect. “Oh?”

“First, this Rescue America business. Honestly, I had no idea it would get so much support, which makes it all the more important we do something to calm the public mood. Have you got your people to support my New Declaration proposal?”

“Reluctantly. Very reluctantly. It’s going to cost them a lot of money. I know, you think they can get it all back later. But that’s not the way they operate. Bigby has them wanting to take a hard line, stamp out these protests once and for all. I managed to convince them your approach would work, but if it doesn’t, if things get any worse, if these demonstrations go on much longer, you’re not going to get another chance.”

“Fair enough. Now, about these SayNo people and their rally and Bonus Army march. The attack on that Conté woman—not that I’m saying you had anything to do with it—really put us behind the eight-ball. No one will believe it if she has an ‘accident’ or a heart attack or is mugged or whatever. And the public mood is too volatile to risk it.

“But there are other ways to get to them. I’ve directed CIA to dig up everything they can on everyone in SayNo and all those other groups. Maybe they’ve got a drug problem or a porn habit, maybe they hit their wife or kids. Maybe they’ve got a second family stashed somewhere. Whatever secrets they have, we’ll find them and use them. I’m sure the IRS will find they have a lot of tax problems too.

“As for the rally and Bonus Army march, we let them happen. We need to let people blow off some steam. And we really can’t stop them. They’re going to come to Washington D.C. whether we like it or not; the last thing we need is a major public relations disaster on the country’s birthday. So we work with our friends in the media to manage the coverage, control the spin. How am I doing so far?”

Frank Bernabe didn’t like it. But he didn’t like his other options either. The president was right about the New Orleans op. Botching it had now made getting rid of Conté and her cohorts almost impossible. And one big demonstration would be easier to manage and spin than dozens of smaller ones.

He ran a hand over his freshly shaven head. Bigby and the others had no idea of the pressures of keeping their precious system together. They had no subtlety, no vision, no sense of the larger picture. Be too soft and the rabble would think they actually had a say in things. Come down too hard and they might rise up and burn the whole house down. He was balancing on the edge of a straight razor, trying to keep the great profit and power-generating machine of state running smoothly. Nancy Elias, for all her flaws, at least understood that.

“It will be a tough sell, Madam President,” he said. “But I can do it.”

“Excellent. Two more things, Frank. One, you’ve got to do something about Ed Bane. It’s not just that his attacks on me are destroying respect for this office and what it represents, it’s that he’s encouraging those cretins of his to attack Americans in the street. I had Bill Bigby sitting right across from me and he promised he would try to tone Bane down. Obviously he hasn’t done that. So I need you to talk to him, make him see reason.”

William Bigby was blind to reason, to everything but his own interests. But Bernabe knew he had to try.

“Agreed.”

“Thank you,” the president said. “Now, that brings me to the most important point: John Doe. You’ve seen the video of him in New Orleans, right? Do you have any idea how big it’s gotten? It is all over the Internet, all over the world. In less than twenty-four hours it’s gotten almost as many hits as the Josephson vid. The guy is already a national hero. People are selling ‘Who is John Doe?’ and ‘John Doe for President’ bumper stickers, t-shirts with the image of him standing there with that gun to his forehead. Next thing you know his face will be on coffee mugs at Walmart.

“You know me, Frank. I’ve been in this business a long time, and I don’t scare easy. But this guy scares the hell out of me. He is a very, very dangerous man.” Her voice turned reflective. “They hate us out there, Frank. They really do. They think we’re all a bunch of liars and thieves and con artists running a crooked game where they’re the suckers. For years—decades—we’ve managed to dance around it, find an outlet for their hatred, buy them off with trinkets, distract them with flashing lights, dog and pony shows.

“But now the wheels have come off. It’s bad out there, very bad. And it’s only going to get worse. You know it and I know it. And there are millions of people who would just as soon see every one of us hanging from the nearest tree. They already have the spark. All they need is someone to fan it into a flame.

“Then along comes this Doe character. We don’t know anything about him—who he is, where he’s from, what he wants. I have the Bureau on him now but the most they can tell me is that he seems to have spent the past several years going around the country organizing people in poor communities, homeless encampments, distressed towns. He fixes them up and moves on.

“You may think I’m worrying prematurely, Frank. But with that terrorist group attacking us below the surface and this John Doe coming on like some kind of modern-day messiah, we could be looking at—God help us—a real revolution.”

Frank Bernabe’s famous temper flared. “So Doe comes off the board,” he said curtly. “Find him and take him out. Now.”

“No!” the president brought her fist down hard on her desk. “Not like that! We’re not in the business of creating martyrs. You saw what happened in the Middle East a few years ago. The worst thing we can do in this current situation is create a martyr of our own. We have to be smart about this. If we’re not, the same thing that happened over there can and will happen here.”

Frank Bernabe wasn’t used to being admonished by anyone, even the President of the United States. But Nancy Elias stepped in before he could explode.

“I’m sorry, Frank,” she said, humbly. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. But I have an idea; I want you to tell me what you think of it. I’m not suggesting anything, mind you, just speaking hypothetically. But you know the Bane-iacs and those other crazies aren’t exactly stable. They’re easily influenced, prone to violence.

“So what if one of them were to stalk this John Doe, track him down and brutally murder him just before a special team of anti-terrorist agents could stop it. What if this hypothetical killer was arrested and tried—a very public trial at that—then convicted, given the death penalty and executed. Wouldn’t that solve three problems at once? John Doe is no longer a threat. We get to look like heroes to the public for bringing a killer to justice. And Bane and the crazies get thoroughly discredited. It’s a win-win-win.”

The heat that had been building in Frank Bernabe’s head suddenly dissipated. Nancy Elias’s idea was positively genius, a stunning combination of ruthless, devious and deniable. He didn’t think she had it in her. That she did was something he would have to think on later. But for now he had to admit he was greatly and unexpectedly impressed. Only one flaw he could see.

“Extraordinary, Nancy,” he said. “Absolutely extraordinary. I must commend you on a brilliantly conceived plan. I have one issue, though. I agree that these Bane-iacs and the whole miserable lot of them are mentally unstable, easily influenced and prone to violence. But they’re also incompetent fools. I wouldn’t send any one of them to the grocery store for a quart of milk. How could they pull off something like this? Speaking hypothetically, of course?”

“C’mon, Frank,” Nancy Elias chided. “You’re smarter than that. ‘They’ don’t have to pull it off. All they have to do is take the blame.”

Frank Bernabe felt like a parent whose child had just won an Olympic gold medal.

“Of course, Madam President,” he said. “I should never have doubted you. And may I just say that moments such as these make me proud to be an American. I will leave you now, as I know you have a very busy schedule. And I have much work to do too.”

Chapter 27

Frank Bernabe had two more calls to make.

One was to Leland Elliott. The head of Tutis International would require a bit of stroking, upset as he was at being outed by some chickenshit reporter and forced to flee his posh Miami offices for a crappy low-rise in godforsaken Kendall.

But “Mr. Flowers” had a proposition. It would require Elliott’s best men, not amateur leg-breakers like Armando Gutierrez. The proposition was simple. One target. Time is of the essence. Money is no object. Eliminate the target and you will be a very rich man. Fail to eliminate the target and you will be a very dead one. Leland Elliott’s stomach clenched but his eyes glittered as he accepted.

The final call was the most distasteful. William Bigby had a knack for getting under Frank Bernabe’s skin. The media mogul’s faux aristocratic pretensions combined with his ideological single-mindedness and smug self-righteousness were infuriating. That he didn’t bother to hide his disdain for Frank Bernabe didn’t help either. But the stakes were too high to let personal feelings get in the way of good decision-making, so Bernabe put his emotions aside and called.

The phone rang a dozen times before Bill Bigby picked up. That was just one of the many ways Bigby used to annoy him, but he put his annoyance aside and said, “William, it’s Frank. We need to talk.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

Damn him anyway! Can’t he ever give it a rest?

“Apparently,” Bernabe said. “Is this line secure?”

“What do you think?”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ I was speaking to the president earlier today, William, and we have a problem. His name is Ed Bane. The president is asking you—I am asking you—to dial the volume down. This Rescue America business was an absolute disaster; it’s playing right into the hands of our enemies. Especially this John Doe character.

“Who I’m sure you’ll take care of.”

“Goddam right I’ll take care of him.” Frank Bernabe could feel his neck getting hot. “But Ed Bane trying to start a civil war in the streets isn’t making it any easier. The country’s in a goddam precarious state right now and there’s no sense tipping it over the edge.”

“What do you expect me to do, Frank?” Bill Bigby said scornfully. “Take the biggest moneymaker in media history off the air because you and Nancy Elias haven’t got the gonads to stamp out this petty rebellion. Come down and come down hard, I say. Declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, shut down the Internet. Anyone who doesn’t obey, doesn’t pay their bills goes to jail. Show the people who’s boss.”

“And how long do you think you can do that before they march on Washington with pitchforks and ropes?”

“Until long after we’re gone,” William Bigby said. “That’s all that matters.”

Frank Bernabe’s neck grew warmer. The man had the intelligence of a mushroom and the mentality of a storm trooper. “This is a very interesting philosophical discussion,” he said. “But it still doesn’t solve the Ed Bane problem.”

“There is no ‘Ed Bane problem,’” Bigby said mockingly. “These people want to talk about fear? Well, we just gave them something to be fearful about. I don’t suppose you’re any closer to catching that terrorist cell now, are you?”

Now Frank Bernabe’s neck was hot.

“I didn’t think so.”

“Dammit, Bill! I’m trying to keep the rabble from taking over the country and you’re giving me this crap about fear and martial law.” He made one last effort. “All I’m asking is that you have Ed dial it back a little, just until the crisis is past.”

“Well, Frank,” William Bigby said blandly, “I did ask Russ Millar to talk to him. Apparently, he wasn’t too receptive.”

Frank Bernabe laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.

“Don’t give me that crap. Ed Bane eats Russ Millars for breakfast and shits them out at lunch. If you wanted him to put a cork in it you would have told him so yourself.”

William Bigby was getting a little heated now too.

“And I told you that’s not going to happen. The problem here isn’t Ed. It’s you, Frank. You and that wimp in the White House. And if you can’t handle your responsibilities then one of us is going to have to step in and handle them for you.”

That would be you, Sir William, Frank Bernabe thought bitterly. “I’ll handle my end,” he said sharply. “You just make sure to handle yours.” He hung without waiting for a reply.

* * *

For Leland Elliott, it was personal. “Mr. Flowers’” proposition, he felt, had given him a free ticket, carte blanche to address a matter that had been sticking in his throat like a chicken bone. He called in two of his most skilled operatives and gave them an assignment.

But first there would be a little tune-up, nothing too difficult, a civilian who’d asked too many questions, stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. Take care of that quickly, cleanly, and when the client pays up there will be a fat wad of extra cash in your pockets. With the kind of money he’d be making, Leland Elliott could afford it. And the satisfaction would be well worth the price.

* * *

It was the end of a long week. I was tired, burnt out, a little tipsy from too much red wine. I’d worked late and wasn’t in the mood to go out so I made myself a sandwich for dinner, streamed a movie to my TV and settled in on the couch in my office to numb a few brain cells. The movie did its job, and before it was half over I started nodding off. Every once in awhile the sound of another car chase or explosion would cause me to crack an eye, but long before the hero dispatched the last of the villains I was down for the count, snoring peacefully.

Then I couldn’t breathe.

There was a claw around my windpipe. Like an iron band. Am I dreaming? Am I awake? I wasn’t dreaming. The claw belonged to a man. A big man, dressed all in black, face hidden behind a ski mask, just like the men who rousted me and Julie Teichner from her home in Ohio. I struggled against the claw, kicked out, threw flailing punches. He blocked my strikes, lifted me off the couch, bounced me off the wall. He was choking me. He was incredibly strong.

My vision was blurring, my punches were like a child’s. The man still wouldn’t let go. He held me for thirty seconds. Forty. Sixty. The room revolved. I was starting to blacking out. I had no more fight in me. Finally, he let go and dropped me on the couch. I gasped for air, pulling in huge drafts, coughing them back up. My neck still felt like it was in a vise. Then the man grabbed my hair, yanked my head back, pushed something cold and hard into my mouth. I gagged. The man laughed, withdrew the pistol barrel, keeping it inches from my face.

“The file on Tutis,” he growled. “Where did you get it? Who gave it to you?”

I couldn’t think, could barely breathe. He put the barrel in my right eye. “Don’t know. . .” I stammered. “Someone. . . On my desk. . .”

“Maybe he needs some encouragement.”

Another voice, higher pitched. Leland Elliott’s men. Had to be. I never imagined it would come to this. I tried to breathe, to get the words out, but the second man jammed a soft, furry ball into my mouth. One of my old socks, I thought idly. I haven’t worn socks in years.

The first man pinned my arms to my side, lifted me up, set me on my desk chair. The second man unfurled a roll of duct tape. Wrapped it around my chest and arms, pinned me to the chair. I wasn’t going without a fight. I kicked out, my foot hitting the tender spot right beneath the kneecap. The man grunted, stepped back, hit me in the face with his open hand. Hard. Once, twice, three times. The room started spinning again. Cautious now, he bound my legs, rasped, “Dining room.”

They wheeled me out of my office and into the dining room. I could hear the uneven, limping footfalls of the man I’d kicked. The second man grabbed my wrist and slapped my hand on the table, pinned it there, splayed my fingers. The man with the gun now held something else. Tinsnips. Big and silver and looking very sharp. He waved them in my face, his eyes dancing.

“I’ll start with the tip of the little one and work up from there,” he said.

I knew what was coming and was powerless to stop it. I strained and bucked and wriggled. The men laughed at my struggles. I wasn’t brave, I was terrified. The one with the tinsnips fitted my little finger between the blades and leered. Said, “This is going to hurt.” I could smell the pheromones coming off him. For a man like him, this was better than sex.

I tried to throw myself into the void, where fear and pain and death are only concepts that can be acknowledged or discarded, but then something exploded and my body filled with white-hot ice, warm lava flowed beneath my hand, pain like I’d never experienced jerked me around in an epileptic’s fits. But before I passed out some hazy, remnant consciousness noted two very odd things: a tiny red dot at my torturer’s temple and a calm, lethal voice saying, “I don’t think so.”

* * *

I came to in a cold, white, sterile room, all scrubbed Formica and stainless steel. It smelled of medicine and disinfectant. I thought it was heaven. Through a haze of drugs I recognized a room at Mariner’s Hospital, a few miles down the road in Tavernier. A bag of fluids hung from a rack at my side. My head ached, my throat hurt, my hand wore a bandage the size of a softball. I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten here, who brought me, what had happened since I’d arrived. I could remember other things, though. The claw around my throat. The tape binding me to the chair. The sock. The tinsnips. The blood. The writhing agony. The red dot and the calm, lethal voice.

The memories left me exhausted, or maybe it was just the drugs, and I dozed off again. This time when I woke up I felt better. After awhile a nurse came in, took my temperature, fussed with my IV, helped me buzz the bed into sitting position. She bustled out and a few minutes later the doctor arrived. He was pleasant but impersonal, the way busy professionals get when they have things to do, people to see and you’re just one of many. And I was probably that way in my job too.

He asked how I was feeling, looked over my chart and made some notes, said I had a slight concussion, that my finger hadn’t been completely severed and the surgeons there had sewn it back together with no complications. That I’d need some doctor visits and a lot of antibiotics but it should be okay. Then he left. I was surprised he didn’t ask me anything about how I’d managed to almost part company with an inch-long piece of my digit, but my surprise vanished when Andy Stevens walked in.

I knew Andy a little—if you live in the Keys long enough, you know a lot of people a little. I’d run into him at the bar at Pilot House, shopping for hurricane supplies at KLI, even bobbing in his boat watching the Fourth of July fireworks on Blackwater Sound. So I knew he was a detective with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department. I knew too that he was basically a nice guy, about my age, easygoing and athletic. Unlike some of his colleagues, he had no hard-on to bust a big case and move up to Miami. The Keys lifestyle suited him just fine, so he had no incentive to go around acting like a tough guy.

“How ya’ doing, Josh,” he said, pulling a chair up to the bed and plopping down.

I smiled weakly. “I’ll never play the violin again but, other than that, okay.”

“Glad to hear it.” He eyeballed my bandaged hand, like he was waiting for me to explain something. I didn’t. Finally, he nodded at the big gauze softball and said, “So how’d you get that?”

I was still too groggy to come up with a believable excuse so I said the first thing that popped into my mind. “I was up on a ladder with a machete, hacking off some palm fronds. I felt a little light-headed and then. . . then I woke up here. I really don’t remember.”

Andy pursed his lips thoughtfully, like he hadn’t just heard the biggest load of bullshit south of the Miami-Dade County line. “Seems kind of convenient, doesn’t it? Falling off a ladder, hacking off your pinkie, hitting your head. I suppose the tree grabbed you and made those bruises on your throat. And then somehow you were magically transported to the hospital.”

The drugs were making me too tired to appreciate his sarcasm. I yawned and said, “I guess. What can I tell you, Andy?”

“How ‘bout the truth?” he said. “That had to have hurt like hell, and you’re going to be dealing with it for a long time. If someone did that to me I think I’d like to hurt him back a little too.”

Maybe I should have coughed it up right then. Told Andy about Leland Elliott, Tutis International, the two guys in black. The laser sight painted on the grinning man’s face, the voice of the man who saved my life. Probably wrapped up my finger and dropped me off at the hospital too.

And I did consider it. But I also considered that anyone capable of killing two of Leland Elliott’s goons wouldn’t exactly relish the attentions of law enforcement, even a well-intentioned, small-town detective who was only trying to help. So I shrugged and said, “It was an accident. I wish I could blame it on someone else, but you’re looking at the only culprit right here. Guess I’m not cut out to be a tree-trimmer.”

Andy pursed his lips again. He didn’t appear thoughtful this time.

“I’d like to see that machete, Josh,” he said pointedly. “The ladder. The tree where this ‘accident’ supposedly happened.”

I pretended to think about it. Then I said, “I don’t know, Andy. I’m not sure that’s really necessary.”

“I could get a warrant.”

“You could.”

“But you still aren’t going to tell me anything, right?”

“Sorry. There’s nothing more to tell.”

“There is. But you’re not going to tell it.”

I shrugged and looked at him with what I hoped was innocence.

“Okay, then,” he said. “That’s the way you want to play it.” He stood up and placed his business card on the tray table at my side. “You decide there’s something more to this, you’ve got my number. Take care of yourself, Josh.”

I mumbled, “Thanks, Andy” at his departing back and promptly fell asleep.

They kept me in the hospital another day, just to make sure there were no aftereffects of the concussion and surgery. I still got a little dizzy occasionally and had a bucketful of pills to take. And trying to type with a mangled finger was going to be a bitch. But when I walked through Mariner’s sliding glass doors the sun was shining and a cooling breeze had the palm fronds swaying lazily against a brilliant-blue sky. And I was alive to enjoy them both.

For now, at least, that was plenty.

Chapter 28

It took the FBI less than twenty-four hours to find John Doe’s erstwhile residence in the Lower Ninth Ward. Once agents started asking around they quickly picked up stories about the crazy white boy with the skills of a carpenter and the unearthly calm of a Zen monk who came out of nowhere and started rebuilding a neighborhood in the Lower Nine.

Not long after that they had kicked in the front door of the partially rehabbed house off St. Claude Avenue. But John Doe and any trace of him were gone. The feebs roped off the house with yellow crime scene tape and gave a brief check of the rusty red truck that was still parked out front, then had it towed away to let the techs go over it with a microscope.

They ran dozens of fingerprints from both through the bureau’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, took strands of hair found in the bathroom for DNA analysis and ran that against the agency’s DNA database, took the video of John Doe at the park entrance and ran his facial characteristics through its biometric ID system. They spread out over town, interviewing people at shops and clubs and restaurants where he might have been.

An entire task force was on the case. They traced the truck’s registration to a retired postal clerk in Philo, a tiny town near the ocean in Mendocino County. He was eighty-seven years old, mostly senile and couldn’t remember when he’d sold the truck or who he’d sold it to. The task force checked DMV records in California and surrounding states.

All of this yielded nothing. In all fifty states, there were hundreds of John Doe birth certificates for abandoned babies who would now be men somewhere between thirty and forty years of age. The John Doe they were looking for could be any of them. Or none of them. If that was even his birth name.

The face of the John Doe they were looking for matched none on any U.S. driver’s license, nor in any mug shot, local, state or federal. There was nothing to tie him to the Social Security card, bank account, credit cards, telephone or utility bill, Internet address, email account or Facebook page of any of the hundreds of John Does across the country. In fact, by every modern method of identifying and tracking more than three hundred million Americans, John Doe simply did not exist. He had come out of nowhere. And, it seemed, to nowhere he had returned.

* * *

As terrifying as my encounter with Leland Elliott’s men was, it was almost as frightening to go back to where it happened. I called one of my drinking buddies at Pilot House and he picked me up at the hospital and took me home. I gave him the same story I’d given Andy Stevens and he seemed to buy, though I didn’t much care. After he dropped me off I stood at the front door, waiting until he left, trying to work up the courage to go in.

My heart was pounding when I put the key into the lock. What would I find inside? A pair of decaying bodies in a sea of dried blood? Another team of Leland Elliott’s thugs? A note from my rescuer explaining what had happened? Any sign at all that I’d been attacked and mutilated just thirty-six hours earlier?

I steeled myself and stepped across the threshold. The house was immaculate. There were no bodies, no blood. The table and terrazzo floor had been wiped clean. My office had been straightened up, desk chair put back. I went through the rest of the house, going from room to room, muscles tensed, like a man walking through a field of poisonous snakes. I checked the closets and under the bed, checked under the couch. Checked the pantry and the laundry room, pushed back the shower curtains. Nothing. It was as if nothing had ever happened.

For some reason that seemed to scare me more. My heart thumped harder. But I knew what I had to do. It was my own personal therapy. I locked up the house, walked across the street to the beach and pulled a chair to the waterline. This time I didn’t contemplate the sky, ponder life’s mysteries, ruminate on my place in the universe or any of that metaphysical crap. I just sat. It felt good.

* * *

Ray Carmody bustled down the hallway to the Oval Office. He had just received a disturbing phone call. Disturbing in its content, disturbing that he received it just after midnight, East Coast time. Disturbing that he’d received it at all. He knew the president was still up and working in the her study so he buzzed her and said, “I need to see you.”

The call had come from the doctor he had hand-picked to “treat” former Vice President Joe Josephson, who since his release by his kidnapers had been held at the Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton in San Diego until the president could decide what to do with him. The doctor’s nerves were unraveling as he spoke.

“The patient is becoming uncooperative and belligerent,” he said, careful not to mention the patient’s name nor the name of the man he was speaking to. “I had to call the guards so I could sedate him. He’s demanding to be released. He says we have no right to keep him. He’s made threats.”

Ray Carmody knew what was coming next but he forced himself to speak calmly.

“What—precisely—did he say?”

The doctor practically hyperventilated getting the words out.

“He said, ‘I’ll tell the world everything I said is true if you don’t get me the hell out of here.’”

“Thank you for the information,” Ray Carmody said grimly. “I’ll have instructions for you shortly.”

Nancy Elias was seated behind her desk in the Oval Office when Carmody hurried in. He knew she preferred to receive bad news there rather than in her study; the trappings of the presidency seemed to boost her confidence in her ability to handle crises. She would need that confidence today.

“What’s so urgent, Ray?” she said as he sat down across from her.

“It’s Joe,” he said simply. “He’s acting up. He wants out. He’s threatened to go off the reservation.”

The president sighed and shook her head. “I suppose it had to come to this.” She sounded both sad and relieved. Then more briskly, “Who else knows?”

“Me. You. The doctor and nurse at Pendleton. Some of the guards. Apparently they had to hold him down so he could be sedated.”

“Can we keep it quiet?”

“I think so. We emptied out an entire wing of the hospital for him, brought in some of our best contract employees to keep it secure. They’re dressed military but aren’t. There’s no record they were ever on base. The doctor is someone I’ve known for twenty years. He can be trusted. He vouched for the nurse so she can be trusted too. But we can’t hold Joe forever. At some point we’ll have to deal with him.”

“What do you advise?”

Ray Carmody ran his hand through his thinning hair and wondered if there was such a place as hell and if he might be spending eternity there.

“If we let him go we’ll have this problem hanging over our heads for. . . who knows how long? You know Joe. Every time he wants something, wants us to do something, he’ll beat us with the same stick. And what if he gets religion and decides he has to confess? Plus, he’s a target for any hot-shot reporter who wants a big excloo, not to mention a lot of the people on that video, who’d just as soon put a bullet in him. That will just open the whole can of worms again and we’ll have two messes to deal with.”

Nancy Elias spoke without emotion.

“So what you’re saying is that we need to deal with the situation now rather than later.”

“Yes.”

“And the doctor and nurse?”

Ray Carmody swore he could see the gates of hell swinging open to welcome him.

“Yes.”

“Then make it happen.”

“Yes, Madam President.”

* * *

Preparations for the New Declaration of Independence-slash-New Bonus Army march on Washington continued at a fevered pace. Despite an army of volunteers and assistance from activist groups across the country, AnnaLynn Conté and the staff at SayNo barely had time to eat or sleep. Most hadn’t been home, showered or changed their clothes in days. The atmosphere in the crowded office was growing ripe.

Everyone missed John Doe, AnnaLynn most of all. He was invaluable in so many ways; no one was better or more useful in a crisis. And he had a soothing effect on the staff. Everyone seemed to work and feel better when he was around. She hesitated to admit it, but she missed Josh Henson too. He was still grieving over his late wife and she didn’t want to intrude on that. But those few weeks in the Keys were like a window on a life she never imagined had existed. She could see why he loved the place and thought she might be able to love it too. She caught herself daydreaming. Stop it, she told herself sternly. None of this work is going to get done by itself.

There was a lot of work, but plans were beginning to firm up. Say-No would lead the main caravan out of New Orleans, skirting the Gulf of Mexico on I-10, then breaking north to Atlanta, where they would honor Dr. Martin Luther King at Ebenezer Baptist Church and wait for caravans from the north and west to join up. It was important to AnnaLynn to commemorate King’s legacy, the life’s work of a man whose heart and intellect spoke to equality for African-Americans and to economic justice for Americans of every color.

From there the caravan would head due north and east, joining up with other caravans and arriving in Washington, D.C. early July Fourth for a rally and celebration to take place on the capitol’s National Mall. Based on the responses on SayNo’s website and Facebook page, as many as five hundred thousand people could roll into D.C. that morning, joining two, three, maybe even four million more for the rally.

After that, the New Bonus Army marchers, their numbers so far around a hundred thousand, would caravan down Pennsylvania Avenue away from the White House, cross the Anacostia River and settle down for a month-long stay in Anacostia Park. The planning for this was beyond complex, demanding the kind of highly specialized knowledge neither SayNo nor any of the other activist groups possessed. But help had come from a seemingly unlikely source: hundreds of current and former members of the U.S. Armed Forces. Most had served in Iraq or Afghanistan and were expert at the logistics of moving large masses of people, providing for their sustenance and giving them some basic organization.

Surprising too was the cooperation of the federal government. It was as if an order had come down from the very top to be polite and cooperative and make sure the rally and subsequent occupation of the park were a success. It all seemed too good to be true, which made AnnaLynn Conté seriously consider they were being played. But she’d take the cooperation now and face the consequences when they arrived.

She had little doubt they would.

* * *

John Doe pulled a tattered baseball cap over his reddish hair and shrugged deeper into his oversized plaid shirt. He knew the instant the weeping giant with the shotgun released him that he had been painted with a giant bulls-eye, that the forces he fought in his own quiet way would already be moving to pin him to a spreading board like a dangerous and exotic insect.

In the aftermath of the confrontation at the park he’d managed to lose himself in the crowd, stripping off his blue workshirt to the white t-shirt underneath and picking up a trampled Yankees baseball cap he found laying on the ground. With that minimal disguise he hitchhiked back to his Lower Nine home, packed up his few possessions, left a brief note to his neighbors and hitched another ride to the bus depot.

He’d heard that the governor of Tennessee was trying to crush the state’s public employee union, that the union had responded with daily sit-ins and rallies in the state capitol. So he would go to Nashville. There, he thought, he could be of help. But he’d give himself a break and go by way of Memphis, a city he’d always loved. Stretch his legs after a day-long bus ride, eat some barbecue, drink a few beers while taking in some blues on Beale Street, get a good night’s sleep. Then in the morning catch a bus for Nashville.

While in Memphis he’d have to do something more about his appearance too. His face was likely already on TV screens from one coast to the other; a baseball cap and different shirt would only keep him hidden for so long. The bus ride was as tedious as he’d expected, as uneventful as he’d hoped. He got off at the Union Avenue depot and made the short walk to Beale Street and A. Schwab Dry Goods, a local landmark and the last original business left on the now furiously touristy street. Picking through its long aisles strewn with everything from Elvis Presley coffee mugs to voodoo candles, he found a pair of khaki pants, a plain white button-down shirt and a skinny black tie.

He purchased the items, put them in a plastic bag and walked a few more blocks to a drugstore, where he bought toiletries, a cheap pair of sunglasses, another baseball cap with no markings at all, a large bottle of water and a container of blond hair dye that he thought would come close enough to matching the beard he’d started growing. A few blocks further was the kind of hotel he was looking for—inexpensive, unpretentious, full of people who nobody would ever notice. He got a room, dyed his hair and changed his clothes, stuffed his old clothes into one of the plastic bags and dropped it in a sidewalk trashcan on his way back to Beale Street.

There he caught a cab and rode a few miles east to Cozy Corner, a funky little barbecue joint he’d eaten at once or twice before, and treated himself to half a slab of ribs and iced tea, then cabbed back to Beale Street and bought a ticket for both shows at The Blues Room restaurant and niteclub. It was a tourist trap that no self-respecting local would be caught dead in, he knew, but he wanted the anonymity of a roomful of strangers studiously avoiding looking at each other. Besides, the beer was cold and the white boy band on-stage had a guitarist who got off some pretty good licks.

He left after a well-played tribute to the master—”The Thrill Is Gone”—and ambled back to his hotel, enjoying the soft, warm night air. The day had been a pleasant respite. Tomorrow morning he’d fill up on the hotel’s free buffet breakfast and hike to the depot and his ride to Nashville.

It didn’t quite work out that way.

* * *

The man whose calm, implacable voice was embedded in the memories of Joe Josephson and Josh Henson poured himself a cup of coffee and sat at the head of a heavy butcher-block table in the kitchen of a ranch at the foot of Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains. Seated to either side of him were his five team leaders, three men and two women: Intelligence, Tactics, Technology, Weapons and Logistics. The five called him Leader. They never used their given names when working. He had just told them of the incident with the reporter in the Florida Keys, and their concern hung in the air like the faint wisps of smoke from the fire burning in the ranch’s massive stone fireplace.

Intelligence, a chubby man in his mid-forties with searching eyes only partially concealed behind thick glasses, was particularly upset. “I should have kept closer tabs on Elliott. I should have known,” he said over and over, wringing his hands in his lap.

“No way you could have,” Leader responded. “We all knew we’d have to suspend operations after Josephson. The hunters are out there, and now there are more of them and they’re hungrier than ever. Luckily, the rest of Josephson team is already out of the country and secure. We’ve done all we could. So stop blaming yourself.”

“How did you find out?” asked Weapons. She was in her mid-thirties, barely five feet tall, with a lean, mannish body and a face that made her appear ten years younger. But she could field-strip an M4 carbine in thirty seconds in the dark and empty its clip dead-center on a target three hundred yards away. Anyone who underestimated her would not live long enough to regret it.

“A hunch,” Leader said. “It’s the reason I called this meeting.”

He tapped the screen of his iPhone and it blossomed with the still photograph of John Doe standing in the middle of Magazine Street with a shotgun at his forehead. He slid the phone down the table and said, “You’ve all seen this video. This is the most popular man in America. You can’t turn on the television, click on the Internet, without seeing his face. They’re already printing it on t-shirts and posters. There’s a John Doe for President website. And no one knows who or where he is.

“I reached out to some of my own sources and all they could say with certainty is that sometime in the last year or two he bought a truck in Northern California. Born, raised, parents, work history, bank account, driver’s license. . . nothing. I did get confirms from several different locales, mostly in the West, that he’s something of a wandering do-gooder, going from place to depressed place, working with the people there, then taking off. I know he’s been in California, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona. His last stop was in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans. He was working with that SayNo group to organize the demonstration there. After that, he disappeared. He’s in the wind.

“Bottom line is, he’s a very, very dangerous man. Perhaps the most dangerous man in America, at least to the people we’ve spent the past year fighting. He’s a man who has nothing and apparently wants nothing. There is no more dangerous man than that. Now he’s become a symbol of everything this country used to be and no longer is, which is why I believe he’s touched so many people, why they see him as almost a modern-day messiah. Which is also why he must be eliminated.”

He drained his coffee and set the mug down on the table. “Sorry to be so long-winded, but that is the basis of my hunch. As soon as that video went viral, it was obvious that between Bernabe, the feds, CIA and other acronyms, someone would send a team after him. I thought it would begin with Bernabe. Bernabe usually uses Leland Elliott—he ran the old Tutis—for this kind of op. So I put the man I knew Elliott would go to first under surveillance. We’d gone dark anyway, and it seemed like the smart thing to do.

“I followed him to a meet another shooter, figured they’d head for New Orleans to begin tracking Doe. That’s when I was going to call you in. But I was wrong. Three nights ago I watched them pack their gear and get on 95. But instead heading for the airport they went to the Keys. I tailed them to the reporter’s house. They wanted to know about the Tutis package; they were about to chop off his finger. And they wouldn’t have stopped there.”

He shrugged and scanned their faces. “I did what I had to. After all, it’s basically our fault; we sent him the package. The story he wrote took a big bite out of Elliott’s operation. We had a responsibility.”

No one disagreed.

“What about the bodies?” Tactics asked with clinical dispassion.

“Bagged ‘em, put ‘em in their SUV, dumped ‘em in the Everglades. Alligators must have thought it was an all-you-can-eat buffet. Then I hiked out and called all of you.”

“What about the reporter?”

“He doesn’t know anything. He’s a smart guy, though. He’ll think this through and see there’s nothing to gain by talking to the cops. And he may be useful later.”

“What about Elliott?”

The man’s thin smile was one even those in the room didn’t want to see. “I’ve sent a message to Mr. Elliott.”

Even though it was late May it was still cold in Montana. Patches of frost hugged the ground, the wind gusted through the limbs of towering pines and firs. Leader pushed back his chair and made another pot of coffee. The others watched him without speaking. When the coffee was done he brought it to the table and filled six mugs.

“Now, the reason I called this meeting,” he said. “John Doe.”

He looked at each of his colleagues in turn and continued. “Our first mission is over, at least for now. But I believe we have a second mission, as important as the first. Maybe more. That is to keep John Doe alive. There is no way to pry the country out of the hands of scum like Frank Bernabe without a rising of the American people. And they need a leader, at the very least, a symbol. I can’t swear to you that John Doe is that leader, but my intuition tells me he is.

“So what I am proposing—with your approval, of course—is that we become John Doe’s own private Secret Service. I don’t know for how long or at what cost. Until the job is done. If any of you don’t wish to participate, I understand completely. You have made enormous sacrifices, sacrifices no one will ever know. Your country owes you a debt that will never be fully paid, and it is my greatest honor to know you as my colleagues and my friends. But I will undertake this mission alone if I have to.”

Weapons spoke up immediately, the affection in her eyes belying the harshness of her words. “Don’t be stupid.”

The others nodded in agreement.

“Of course we’re in,” Tactics said. “What next?”

The man bowed his head. “You honor me again.” Then, “Go back to your people, see how many will join us and give me a count. It will be all of them, I’m sure.” He turned to Intelligence. “For the duration of this mission, intel is our number one priority. If we can see the threats coming we can neutralize them before they get too close.”

Back to the group again. “I want all of you to task as many people as you can spare to intel. They’ll need all the help they can get. The rest of you: I want eight of your best people, two from each. There’ll be two teams of four. I’ll lead Blue team, Weapons will lead Red. We’ll rotate out at two-week intervals. This is going to be 24/7 protection so we need to stay sharp.

“And one more thing. Doe is not going to want us there, so we have to be invisible. If we’re invisible to him, we’ll likely be invisible to anyone coming after him.” Once more, he fixed his gaze on Intelligence. “Find out where Doe is. We’ll move as soon as you do. That is all.”

They stood up and filed out of the room as the embers crackled and glowed like little orange suns in the fireplace.

Chapter 29

Leland Elliott screamed. It was a soundless scream, as if the horror just visited upon him had robbed him of his ability to vocalize it. But it was a scream nonetheless.

He sat at his desk in his modest Kendall office and averted his eyes from the package he’d flung away across the room like a hot coal tossed flaming in his lap. There was no way he should have even received the small cardboard box addressed to him in his own name. No one beyond the few clients who’d stuck with him after he’d had to fold Tutis International and flee to this sprawling Miami suburb knew his real name or his new address. No one beyond the man he’d spoken to knew about the team sent to the Keys. But that these people knew—and had sent him this. . . He began to tremble as the implications unfolded before him. Barring divine intervention or some most unlikely quirk of fate, Leland Elliott knew his lifespan could now be measured in days, maybe hours.

He also knew he should do something—empty out his bank accounts and run, call “Mr. Flowers” and beg, pull the chromed Colt Combat .45 from his desk drawer and eat the barrel. But he was paralyzed with fear. He couldn’t be in the same room with that package either. At length revulsion won out. He punched his intercom and croaked to his assistant-slash-secretary, “In here. I need you.”

A minute later, the young man entered. He was ex-Marine, two tours in Iraq, dishonorably discharged for torturing Iraqi civilians—hushed up to save the government the embarrassment of a trial. His temper had washed him out of Miami Police Academy. Leland Elliott was the best he was going to get. He stopped when he saw his boss’s deathly pallor, the box on the floor. It was the same box he’d delivered just a few minutes earlier. He wondered what it could have contained to cause that kind of reaction.

Leland Elliott waved his hand in the box’s direction. He couldn’t look at it. “Take it away,” he said feebly. “Take it away.”

“Yes, sir,” the young man smirked, not bothering to hide his contempt for such a shameful display of weakness. He carried the box out of the office and set it on his desk, silently amused at the softness of the great Leland Elliott. He had to see what was inside, what had turned his boss into a mass of quivering goo. He opened the box. Blinked. Then clenched his teeth to keep from vomiting all over himself. On a bed of brightly colored straw like that in a child’s Easter basket were a pair of tinsnips and two severed fingers. The digits had been sliced off cleanly. The snips were crusted with dried blood. Next to them was a plain white business card, blank side up.

The young man clenched his teeth harder as he picked it up . He turned it over and read the single word printed in big black letters. His hand started to shake. Before the card fluttered to the floor he was out of the office and racing for his car. He didn’t stop driving until he reached the Florida state line.

* * *

Frank Bernabe sat contemplating the package his secretary had just set down on his desk. It was a small cardboard box, about six inches square, delivered by private courier.

There was something about it that was very disconcerting. Alarming, even. Not that it might contain a bomb or anthrax or whatever. Every item that came near Frank Bernabe was screened for such items. No, what made his danger antenna quiver was the address label.

PERSONAL

To: Mr. Flowers

From: Mr. Thorn

This wasn’t just a package, it was a message. A mocking message, at that. “Flowers” was the name he used only with Leland Elliott and a handful of other operatives. How could this arrogant “Mr. Thorn”—whoever he was—possibly know that? And what other insolent message might be lurking inside? Frank Bernabe’s temper ignited. He was not the object of intimidation, he was its instigator.

Angry now, he ripped the box open. Frank Bernabe was a much older and harder man than Leland Elliott and the young ex-Marine, but what he saw there still made him suck in his breath and yank away his hand as if the cardboard had suddenly glowed radioactive.

On a bed of brightly colored straw were two severed fingers and a pair of business cards. For several minutes he contemplated the bloody digits, wondering who they might have belonged to, the purpose of their being sent, the nature and intent of Mr. Thorn’s game. Then he picked up the first business card and turned it over. It was one of Leland Elliott’s. It read “Tutis International.”

Anger boiled hotter in Frank Bernabe’s face. That goddam fool Elliott has fucked up again. He waiting until the heat diminished and his mind grew clear. Then a thin smile played on his lips. Perhaps this was a blessing, after all. Perhaps there was a way to kill two birds with one stone. Literally. Maybe even wing a third.

The thought of such a neat solution widened his smile, but he put away his satisfaction and turned over the second card. He was not surprised by its single-word inscription, nor was he intimidated. It was inevitable that the people who had targeted so many of those who moved, knowingly or unknowingly, at his direction would eventually target him. He had prepared for that possibility, and would crush this Mr. Thorn and his associates as he’d leveled every obstacle that dared place itself in his path.

Even so, somewhere in the very furthest recesses of his reptilian brain a tiny voice was speaking, trying to make itself heard. This isn’t like the others, the voice was saying. This one is different.

But Frank Bernabe was a much harder man than that. He ignored the tiny voice and allowed himself to savor the sweet taste of payback.

* * *

The call the doctor had been dreading came just after midnight, Pacific Daylight Time. Ray Carmody was on the other end.

The conversation was short and brutal. The doctor would do as he was told. Immediately. Then report back when it was done. He had a wife and twin daughters whom he must love very much. No further threat was necessary.

Joe Josephson’s room and the entire wing around it had already been vacated, so there was no one there to see the doctor fill a syringe with three milligrams of fentanyl and plunge it into the still-sedated vice president’s vein. Within seconds Joe Josephson’s pupils contracted, his skin grew cold and clammy, his pulse weakened, his breathing slowed. Then it stopped. The doctor waited a minute, pulled a sheet over the corpse and texted Ray Carmody: “TOD 12:32:47 pm.”

He threw the used syringe in the biowaste bin, went home and woke his wife. “You know that place in Guaymas you wanted to buy?” he said. “I think we should do it now.”

* * *

The text message on the man called Leader’s phone was a single word: “Memphis.” He relayed the message to his three Blue Team members and gave them six hours to meet him at the modest downtown hotel he’d chosen as their base. By early evening they would all have checked in under false names and would begin planning how to find one man whose entire life was an exercise in anonymity in a city of almost seven hundred thousand. If he was still even there.

That Intelligence had located John Doe while the FBI and other federal agencies were still chasing wisps was a blend of intuition, legwork and a fair dollop of luck. Given Doe’s predilection for inserting himself in crisis situations, Intelligence compiled a list of communities where public distress and protest might draw a man who saw responding to them as his life’s calling. It was a long list. One of those communities was Nashville.

Intelligence made two more assumptions. One, that his quarry would continue moving east. And, two, that he was smart enough to leave his ancient pickup truck behind and flee New Orleans by other means. For a man broke, in a hurry, seeking to avoid attention, that would be by bus. These assumptions were all not without risk, but he had to narrow the field somehow. He sent an operative to the New Orleans bus depot to see if any of the clerks had recognized a slight young white man with reddish hair and a diffident manner purchasing a ticket to one of thirteen eastern cities the day of the Rescue America Day rally.

That’s where luck came in. One of the clerks who had been working a ticket window that afternoon lived in the same Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood where John Doe had landed. When she greeted him at the ticket window he pretended not to know her, said he’d only been in town for a couple of days, looking for work. Said he hadn’t found any and was going back home. Hurt and a little offended, she sold him a ticket to Memphis, then took the next day off to stay with her sister whose husband had just up and gone. Bureau agents showed up at the clerk’s own house only to find her gone, and then she fell through the investigation’s cracks. No one bothered to follow up.

When she got back to work she was questioned by Intelligence’s operative, a middle-aged black woman with an empathetic manner and knack for eliciting information. She said she remembered John Doe from his work in the neighborhood, remembered their conversation at a neighborhood block party. Since she’d sold him the ticket she had seen the video and now understood the apparent snub, why he tried to conceal his appearance, why he was running. She was sympathetic and very sure of herself.

A minute later the text message was on its way. An hour later three men and a woman were preparing to travel to Memphis, on their way to join a battle that would begin sooner than they’d ever expected.

Chapter 30

President Nancy Elias called a press conference in the White House briefing room for 8 a.m. on a warm and breezy weekday morning. She delivered this statement:

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my sad duty to inform you that Vice President Joe Josephson passed away last night due to injuries suffered at the hands of his kidnappers. He was a great man, a great American and a great friend. His wise advice and counsel will be missed.

“To my fellow Americans: I urge you to ignore the lies and slander that marked the final days of this great man’s life, and to join with me in mourning his passing. To the terrorists who abducted him I say: You are cowards and murderers, and I will use all the powers of this office to see that you are hunted down and brought to justice.

“May God bless the Josephson family, and may God bless America.”

* * *

The next day Ray Carmody scrolled through the back pages of the local section of the San Diego Times on his Kindle, looking for the pair of items he had been assured would be there. At the very bottom of the very last page he found them. They were written in the clipped, bloodless style of stories that were of no real importance but had to be reported anyway. It took him only seconds to read through both.

House Fire Kills Family of Four

LA JOLLA—A man, his wife and two children perished when their home in this exclusive seaside San Diego community burned to the ground early this morning in what investigators believe was a fire caused by faulty electrical wiring. The victims were identified as Dr. Michael and Michelle Lemieux and their daughters Elizabeth and Aimée. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Woman Dies in Botched Burglary Attempt

ESCONDIDO—In what police are calling an attempted burglary gone bad, a former military nurse now in private practice was shot to death in her home late last night. Mildred O’Connell, 47, apparently awoke to a burglary in progress and was shot three times by an unknown assailant. Police say the shooting is under investigation but they have no leads at this time.

* * *

Ray Carmody left his office early that evening and was in bed before midnight. He lay awake until the morning sun filtered through the window shades, unable to sleep, his body thrumming with fever as if the flames of hell were already licking at his feet.

* * *

The call that came from Chloe Enders would change everything, though I couldn’t have known it at the time. I was happier than I’d imagined, enjoying a taste of premature retirement. I could have kept working despite my mangled hand; voice-recognition software and the old hunt-and-peck would have allowed me to file at pretty much my usual clip. But, in truth, I was still pretty shook up by the attack in my own home, and when my boss Jeff suggested I take a few weeks off to recover, I think I surprised him by instantly saying yes.

I couldn’t do my favorite things on the water—no diving, snorkeling, kayaking. But I spent a lot of time reading and lounging on the beach, went fishing with my buddies from Pilot House, even bought a set of oil paints and pre-stretched canvases and made like some kind of beach-bum Pablo Picasso. My “Shit Period,” I called it, looking over the muddy, pathetic results.

Then Chloe Enders called.

It was one of those sun-blessed days in early June, before summer’s face-crushing heat and humidity kicked in. I was noodling on the computer, wasting time, when Chloe’s number flashed on my caller ID. I couldn’t get a word out before a voice exploded in my ear, “Goddam you, Josh Henson! Why the hell didn’t you tell me?!”

I thought about playing dumb—it was, after all, one of my signature talents—but Chloe was a friend and deserved better so I said, “Sorry, Clo, I was trying to keep it quiet. I didn’t want to have to answer a bunch of, ‘Sorry someone tried to chop off your finger’ cards.”

“That’s the lamest goddam thing I ever heard,” she snapped.

My wise-ass act wasn’t working.

“Sorry about that too, Clo,” I said. “Honest. But the whole thing still scares the shit out of me, and talking about it. . . Well, talking about it doesn’t make it any better.”

That seemed to satisfy her.

“I didn’t mean to yell at you, Josh,” she said, her tone softening. “It’s just that when Jeff told me. . . I know I’d be a wreck if something like that happened to me. How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “A little shaky now and then but not bad. And I really am enjoying the time off. I could get used to being a gentleman of leisure. How about yourself?”

I expected a snort of derision and a cutting remark. Chloe Enders didn’t take time off. She worked twice as hard as any two people. Twice as long too. But I didn’t get any of that. What I got was Chloe Enders nervous, shaken, even scared. I’d never seen that Chloe Enders before.

“There’s. . . there’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “Something that’s happened here. Something. . .”

“Something what, Clo?” I said. Gentle. Coaxing.

“I had dinner with one of my girlfriends two nights ago,” she said hesitantly. “Trish Oliver and I have been friends for a long time, and we usually talk once or twice a week. But I hadn’t heard from her and she hadn’t returned my calls so I stopped by her house in Noe Valley after work, just to see if anything was the matter.

“She was there but she was really upset. She’d been crying. A lot. I asked what was wrong but she wouldn’t say. But she didn’t want me to leave, either. So I went and got some take-out Chinese and a bottle of wine and we got a little tipsy and she told me that two days ago her brother committed suicide.”

There was an ominous silence on the line. I waited for it to end. Waited longer. I was really worried now.

“He was one of the paramedics who picked up Joe Josephson.” Chloe said finally. Her voice was sepulchral. “Everything the president said was a lie.”

There was another silence again. Shorter this time. Then it all came out all in a rush.

“They found Josephson in a van on a back road in Forestville. Someone called it in to 911. There was no rescue, no gun battle. He wasn’t injured. He was drugged but conscious. Lucid. Mostly, anyway. While the paramedics were working on him they found a business card in his pocket. There was one word on it. FEAR. Josephson kept babbling it all the way to the hospital. ‘Fear. They want to make us fear.’ Then something about the president and Frank Bernabe, war, revolution. He wasn’t making any sense. And he kept saying, ‘They’ll kill me, they’ll kill me.’

“When they got him to the hospital in Santa Rosa there was a team of agents waiting. They didn’t identify themselves. They took Trish’s brother and the other paramedics and doctors and cops who responded and locked them in a room. Kept them there until morning. Then a man came in—he didn’t say who he was either—and told them this was a matter of national security, that if they ever said anything to anyone about what had happened they would disappear, never be heard from again. ‘No one will even find your bones,’ he said.

“He asked if the vice president said anything but my everyone was too scared to tell. Finally, they were let go. But Allen—that’s Trish’s brother—felt like he was being watched, that his apartment was bugged, his phone was tapped. Everyone at work avoided him, his friends too. Like he had the plague or something.

“A few hours before he committed suicide he called Trish. Said he’d been followed but had managed to get away, that he’d bought one of those throwaway cell phones so they couldn’t trace the call. He told her what I just told you. Trish said he seemed at peace, like he’d already decided he was going to die. That evening he locked himself in his bathroom and took some pills.”

She paused once more, gathering in her emotions.

“I don’t know what to do, Josh,” she said, anguish gnawing at her words. “For the first time in my life I’m afraid to go after a story. Not just for Tricia but for me too.”

There was nothing I could tell her. I saw blood and death everywhere.

“I’m afraid for all of us, Chloe,” I said.

* * *

The package he’d received from “Mr. Thorn” caused only a slight alteration in Frank Bernabe’s plan. Improved it, actually, tied things up in a neater package. He sat at his computer and called up a folder on All-American Media and William Bigby. Some of the information was standard stuff, readily available from government filings, press releases and media reports. Much of it, however, was gleaned from other, more valuable sources—disgruntled ex-employees, surreptitious electronic surveillance, moles who had been carefully placed in positions where they could do Frank Bernabe the most good.

Bernabe scanned the folder and selected a file tagged “Revere Corps.” The Revere Corps, named after Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere, was the most virulent of several groups that loosely bound Ed Bane’s Bane-iacs, Tea Party flotsam and others on the moonbat fringe. All were funded, Bernabe knew, by William Bigby and like-minded executives, though their contributions were disguised by funneling the money through a variety of conservative think tanks, nonprofits and political clubs.

Revere Corps had been penetrated by one of his operatives. Frank Bernabe had never met the man dubbed “James Rodgers,” had never spoken to him, had never even looked at his file. “James Rodgers” knew Frank Bernabe only as “Mr. Flowers,” a man his handler had told him possessed the kind of wealth and power that made mere presidents cringe. So when the secure cell phone that had been issued to him for emergency contacts trilled, “James Rodgers” answered it instantly, all his senses sharp and focused.

“This is Mr. Flowers,” a rough voice said. “I have an assignment for you. . .”

* * *

One of the blessings of detaching yourself from the daily grind is that you have time to think. Really think. Not just find a solution to a specific problem but give your mind space to wander, letting the neurons fire as they will, discovering things, unearthing subtleties, finding patterns where none seemed to exist. Putting in plenty of time on the beach, on the water, at the bar at Pilot House, my mind wandered onto something that at first seemed crazy, then seemed plausible, and eventually would turn out to be prescient.

It started with an article I read several months earlier. It pointed out that the philanthropy of the robber barons of the Twenties and Thirties wasn’t just born out of some sudden attack of civic virtue. It was inspired mostly by fear. Fear for their personal safety, that the peasants might rise up and tear the whole rotten system down.

It was obvious to anyone with the sense of a goat that our current crop of robber barons were afraid of nothing. They had no fear of the White House; they chose the president. They had no fear of Congress; they bought senators and representatives like so many hookers at a Las Vegas convention. They had no fear of the courts. After all, judges lived in the same gated communities, belonged to the same private clubs, shared the same backgrounds and politics and values. And who appoints judges anyway?

They certainly had no fear of the American people. Up to now, at least, they were the easiest con of all. Feed them a few fairy tales about “free markets” and “socialism,” demonize whatever group happened to be out of fashion at the moment, pit them against each other over issues of personal morality, and you could get a reliable fifty-one percent to act in complete contravention of their own self-interest. I thought of all this as my conversation with Chloe Enders played over and over in my head. ‘They want to make us fear,’ the terrified paramedic said Joe Josephson kept repeating.

The word stuck in my brain.

Other fragments drifted in. The odd and unexplained disappearances of K Street’s biggest lobbyists. The curious death of Senator John Hammer. The rumors that I and everyone at Public Interest had heard about CDs full of damaging personal information mailed to members of Congress, about corporate executives ramping up their personal security after unexplained and unreported attacks. Maybe even the sudden death of Jefferson Dalworth, a corporate buttboy of the first order, a man more subservient to their interests than even Nancy Elias. And, of course, the abduction of Joe Josephson, compelled to reveal secrets the guardians of the system had worked so hard to conceal.

What if, I thought idly, meandering down a winding path on the way to a conclusion, what if a single group was responsible for all of these incidents? What if there existed a group of men and women who possessed the skills, the resources, the astonishing courage to bring fear to the very doorsteps of those who believed themselves to be immune, who believed their exalted status removed them from the concerns that afflicted mere mortals?

“War and revolution.”

Leland Elliott and Armando Gutierrez. The attack on AnnaLynn. The mobs at Rescue America Day. The attack on John Doe. Maybe even the attack on me. The throttling of the Internet. The ceaseless attacks by corporate media. The thugs who traveled the country, bringing violence and intimidation. The black-clad figures who attacked me and Julie Teichner.

What if this really was a war, a war taking place in the shadows, off the books, beneath the radar? A war between a band every bit as cunning and ruthless as the elites they opposed, the ones who controlled every lever of government, business and the media and would press every one to have them hunted down and exterminated.

“The president and Frank Bernabe.”

Were they the ones pressing those levers? Who else could? True, Nancy Elias was no worse than any other representative of the elites who’d occupied the Oval Office. But faced with a challenge that could actually topple those elites, would she really act less cold-bloodedly than the head of any other government whose control of its citizenry was threatened? As for Frank Bernabe, I knew of him, vaguely. Obscenely wealthy, obsessively secretive, reputed to be the man who’d put Nancy Elias in the White House. What if they really were afraid? What if they really had come to know fear?

A war, in fact. A revolution, in deed.

I couldn’t think about it any more. I shut off my computer and spent the afternoon at the beach.

* * *

The next step was to put Leland Elliott in play. Goddam fool, Frank Bernabe snorted as he punched up Elliott’s number. But no matter, he was simply one more piece to move around the chessboard.

“This is Mr. Flowers,” he said curtly as Elliott tried to keep from swallowing his tongue. “I suppose you also received a package?”

At the “also,” Leland Elliott almost fainted, but he managed a strangled, “Yes, sir.”

“You fucking idiot!” Bernabe exploded. “Do you realize you almost compromised the entire mission?! You were not authorized to go after that chickenshit reporter. You had one target, and one target only. Not only did you disobey my orders but you fucked up your own folly besides. Did you think you could hide that from me? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? You worthless piece of shit, I’ve taken people’s heads for less.”

Frank Bernabe smiled thinly to himself. He could hear Leland Elliott’s terrified breathing over the phone; his display of anger had had its desired effect. Now it was time to reel the idiot in.

“Fortunately for you, unfortunately for me, I still need you for this mission. Now, Mr. Elliott, I want you to listen to me very carefully. You will do exactly what I say, when I say and how I say. If you fuck up one more time I will have things done to you that you would not believe are possible. Are we clear on that?”

Leland Elliott was by now far too scared to speak.

“Good. You will lead this mission yourself. Pick your two best men—hopefully better than those incompetents you sent to the Keys—and be ready to move out within twenty-four hours. The target is the same: John Doe.

“But you will also have a third man, a patsy. A Lee Harvey Oswald, if you like. He is being chosen now and will be put in contact with you shortly. This man is your responsibility. When the target’s location has been determined your team will go, surveil the area, track the target and develop a plan to take him out. When that plan is approved you will terminate the target and retreat to a pre-determined location. There you will be paid half your agreed-upon fee as punishment for your previous stupidity. You will be given new identities and travel documents and you will disappear. And you will stay disappeared until you have been told otherwise. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.” The thought that he might be allowed to live brought Leland Elliott’s voice back.

“Now, listen to me, Mr. Elliott. Your survival as a functioning human being depends on your executing what I am about to tell you down to the absolute letter. The slightest failure on your part will result in the consequences I have described to you.

“You must place the patsy in position to plausibly strike the target. It is possible that he might, but this man is not a professional and cannot be counted on. It is the task of you and your team to ensure that the target is struck and terminated. You will also ensure that the patsy is held—unharmed—until he is taken into custody by the authorities. This last is very important, Mr. Elliott. It is necessary that the patsy be put on trial to show the American people we believe in justice and the rule of law. Then, and only then, will your team retreat and follow the other steps as I have outlined. Is that clear?

“Yes, sir. Crystal, sir. And let me say how much I appreciate the second—”

“Save it,” Frank Bernabe said brusquely. “Just do your fucking job.”

He broke the connection and scowled with disgust. The man’s cowardice was revolting. Thank God he won’t be fouling the air with it much longer.

* * *

The FBI may have let Hattie McDaniel slip through the cracks but not the two men with the harsh Brooklyn accents and granite chips for eyes. With real-time access to the Bureau’s reports and communications, they quickly noticed the agents’ oversight and met the Greyhound clerk at her Lower Ninth Ward home. She took an instant dislike to the men and angrily ordered them off her property, but before she perished on her kitchen floor, almost decapitated by a fierce swipe of a freshly honed Marine Combat knife, one of them was already texting a message to New York.

It was a single word: Memphis.

* * *

Having moved Leland Elliott into position, it was now time to arrange for his demise. Frank Bernabe got a secure line to the White House. Ray Carmody would see to the details.

“The president has briefed you on our discussion of the Doe matter?” Bernabe asked after exchanging curt greetings with Nancy Elias’s chief of staff.

“She has,” Carmody acknowledged.

“Then I will need two things,” Bernabe said. “One, I will need an ops team to terminate the shooters after the target has been struck. There will be three of them. Once the patsy has been secured, they have been instructed to rendezvous at a location which you will be given. They will be expecting payment and new identities, so your team will have tactical advantage. How they dispose of the bodies is up to you.

“Two, I will need someone in the administration, preferably the Attorney General, to leak to the press the patsy’s connection to Ed Bane. Also, through the Revere Corps, to William Bigby. It is important to have our friends in the media play this up in order to discredit Bane and Bigby and neutralize them and their supporters in the coming election.

“If we are successful at these tasks we will deprive the opposition on both the left and right of their most important players. Then we can deal with the secondary players on our own time. Of course, I will be available to you and the president for consultation, and to provide any services or intelligence you might request.”

Frank Bernabe cleared his throat, giving his listener time to think things through.

“Is there anything else you require at this time?” he asked.

“Not at this time,” Ray Carmody said. “I will inform the president that the matter is being handled.” And may God help me, he prayed silently. I’ve become a murderer.

Chapter 31

Blue Team arrived in Memphis thirty-six hours after a smog-belching bus disgorged John Doe and a clot of other stiff, weary travelers onto Union Avenue. Armed with still photos of their subject and Hattie McDaniel’s anecdotes about his affinity for barbecue and blues, they immediately hit the restaurants and clubs in and around Beale Street. No sign of him there so they checked into their hotel, freshened up, had dinner, then held a quick meeting

As always, when in the field they referred to each other only by number. Blue One was the man known as Leader. Blue Two was a thirty-five-year-old African-American woman, ex-Army sergeant, tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, proficient with pistol and knife. She was short and stocky, homely in appearance, but with an open, honest manner that instantly drew people to her.

Blue Three was a former Army Ranger sniper, an expert with a variety of weapons with absolutely no compunction about using them. Blue Four was the group’s computer geek, a former gangbanger who realized he could make more money designing software than sticking up liquor stores and banked his first million before he turned twenty-five.

After the meeting they went back to their rooms and got a few hours’ sleep. They would be up at dawn to find John Doe and surround him with an invisible shield. They had no idea if he was still in the city or, if so, where he might be. But they were confident in their abilities and sure that one of the most-broadcast faces in the country couldn’t remain anonymous forever. The trick was to find him before the hunters did.

What they didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that they already had. He was in room 306, just down the hall from Blue Four, sleeping off a day’s orgiastic consumption of bourbon, barbecued pork and highly amplified electric music. His former neighbors in New Orleans, Las Vegas, Mendocino and elsewhere would hardly have recognized the gray-skinned, bleary-eyed figure sprawled inertly on the bed, which he’d only leave to make a stumbling rush to the bathroom.

* * *

Occasionally they’d glimpsed the underside of his unfailingly serene, almost Zen-like demeanor, despite his best efforts to keep it hidden. It was as if the pressure of being the man he’d willed himself to be built and built until it had to be released, in ways typically involving alcohol, drugs, food and women. He supposed it was a character flaw, but he derived a certain inexplicable pleasure from the after-effects of his excesses, even the head-pounding, nausea-inducing ones. He’d always felt like an alien, an outsider, among people yet not of them. The pain made him feel more human, and he liked the way being human felt.

After a night’s sleep and several gallons of water, the rest of him was feeling better too, good enough to eat some solid food, wash it down several cups of coffee and get on with his journey to Nashville. He showered, dressed, gathered his few possessions and rode the elevator down to the hotel restaurant.

Blue Three almost lost it when he walked into the restaurant and saw a slight young man with a stubble-patched face and bottle-blond hair beneath a black baseball cap ravishing a plate of bacon and eggs. He recovered quickly, palmed his cell phone and snapped the man’s picture, then grabbed a table in the corner where he could keep his quarry in view. He ordered breakfast and sent the photo to Blue Four to run through “Face”—the facial recognition program he’d created using still shots of John Doe. The confirm came back immediately.

By the time John Doe finished shoveling the last of his eggs, the rest of Blue Team was in position. He paid his bill and left the hotel, heading east on Union Avenue with Blues Two and Three following on foot. One and Four were already at the bus depot, parked around the corner in a white minivan with blacked-out windows.

Four kept the minivan idling while One made a sweep through the depot. He was dressed like a laborer—heavy, well-worn jeans, white t-shirt under a nylon windbreaker, ancient yellow baseball cap with a Caterpillar logo. The depot was bustling with morning arrivals and departures. Blue One skirted the perimeter, looking for the unusual, the stand-outs, anyone who seemed out of place, who paid more attention to others than to his own business, was standing around for no discernible purpose. He saw no one. The room was clear.

“Subject approaching depot,” he heard Blue Two say in his earbud.

Then, with urgency, “Heads up, Two and Three.” It was Blue Four in the minivan. “Union Av, Silver Ford, single driver. Just made his third pass.”

“Subject at depot.” Blue Two again. “Stopping. Buying newspaper. Maintaining distance. Three approaching.”

“What’s going on, Three?” Blue One asked.

“He’s reading the damn paper,” Three said, baffled. “I’m moving away before he makes me. Keep an eye on him, Two.”

“Roger that.”

“I’m coming out,” One said. “Three, go inside. You may have gotten too close. Two, hold position.”

“Roger that.” She slipped around the corner of the depot, just a few feet from the entrance, and peered around. “Eyes on him.”

Blue One exited the depot. John Doe was at the entrance, leaning against the building, newspaper under his arm, consumed by thought. One moved past him down Union Avenue, ducked into a recess in the depot’s façade, looked up and down the street. He didn’t like what he saw.

“Two males coming toward you on Union,” he said into his wrist mike. “Gray sport coat, black leather jacket. Two, you take the subject. Three, get out here. Four, back up Two. Move, people.”

No one else paid any attention to the two men on the sidewalk. In fact, there seemed nothing out of the ordinary about them. But to Blue One there were tells. Their eyes, for one. They weren’t on each other or where they were going but flitted back and forth like pinballs, sweeping the street, assessing each occupant, gazes hanging a millisecond too long.

Their shoes, for another. Or rather Sport Coat’s shoes. They weren’t the shoes worn by someone hanging around a seedy downtown bus depot. They were the shoes you saw at fancy charity events in Palm Beach or trendy restaurants in Beverly Hills—gray suede, monogrammed with the initials of some poofy designer, worn without socks. The third tell was a slight hitch in the men’s right arms as they walked, as if the weapons in their shoulder holsters were chafing a bit.

“We’re on,” One said, calmly. “Two, you’re still on the subject. Three, take Black Jacket. Four, take Sport Coat. I’ll cover.”

Now everything happened at once.

John Doe shoved off the wall, rounded the corner of the depot, passed Blue Two on his way to a line of cabs at the curb. Sport Coat and Black Jacket, saw him, exchanged knowing glances, followed. John Doe nodded at the first cabbie in line. Blue Four slid out of the minivan parked behind the cabs and moved up the street. Blue Three exited the depot, trailing Sport Coat and Black Jacket. John Doe opened the cab door and said, “Graceland.” Blue Two came up behind, covering his back.

Sport Coat and Black Jacket were within striking distance now, hands inside their coats. John Doe climbed into the cab. Blue Two leaned over him. Smiled and said, “I was going to Graceland too. Mind if we share the ride?” John Doe smiled back. “Sure, hop in.”

Sport Coat closed in fast, gun in hand, still beneath his coat. Blue Four moved faster, cut him off, pretended to stumble, bent down, pretended to tie his shoe. Sport Coat tried to maneuver past. Black Jacket trailed his partner, closing in fast too. Blue Three moved to intercept.

Sport Coat was at the cab, gun out now. Blue Four was on one knee, fiddling with his shoe. Threw an elbow, felt Sport Coat’s knee bend sideways, heard bones crack, ligaments snap. Heard a scream, saw the man fall, heard his gun clatter on the sidewalk. Black Jacket was startled, looked down, lost his focus. Blue Three came up behind him, hooked an ankle with his foot, swept the man’s leg from under him, dropped him as if poleaxed. His head banged hard on the pavement.

Blue One pounded on the hood of the cab. Shouted, “They’ve got guns! Go, go, go!!” Then to the bystanders, “These bastards tried to mug me! Call the cops!”

The cab shot off the curb. Blue One stomped Black Jacket’s gun hand, felt tiny bones crunch beneath his foot. Three and Four were already at the minivan. Sport Coat and Black Jacket were surrounded, held down by an outraged crowd. Sirens wailed faintly, then louder, coming closer. The minivan joined traffic on the street, turned right at the depot. Blue One was waiting. The van stopped. He got in.

A minute later they were watching a red dot move across Blue Four’s computer screen. “Two’s tracker is on,” he said. “Let’s see where they’re going.” They watched the dot and settled in for the ride.

* * *

Leland Elliott saw the odds for his survival shrink dramatically. Only minutes earlier he’d been blessing his good fortune, just happening to cruise down Union Avenue as John Doe stepped out of that crappy old hotel. He too was sure Doe was heading for the bus depot so he radioed the two shooters who’d been cruising Beale Street and told them to get there and make the hit.

It was a spur of the moment thing, not the well-thought-out plan Mr. Flowers had ordered. But as long as Doe was dead and the patsy set up to take the fall, Elliott was confident that Flowers wouldn’t mind. True, he hadn’t figured out the patsy part yet but he would have come up with something.

Instead, it had all gone to hell.

Somebody had Doe’s back, somebody good enough to pick up on his shooters, take them out, then vanish. He’d seen the group of people at the cab as he flashed by in the rented Ford, noted the gathering crowd and the construction worker pounding on the cab’s hood, but he couldn’t make it as anything other than a bunch of citizens who’d just witnessed an attempted mugging.

In any event, he was in deep shit now. Terminal shit, even. Mr. Flowers would know he’d screwed up again, maybe before the day was out. His only chance to stay alive and in one piece was to eliminate Doe before Flowers sent someone to eliminate him. So he goddam better well find out where Doe was heading, get his ass over there and come up with some way to kill the bastard. He’d have to improvise again, have the patsy in position this time. But it was still better than taking his chances with Mr. Flowers. That was no kind of chance at all.

Chapter 32

A reporter bulldogging a story is like building a house. You start with the right piece of land. Shape, size, elevation don’t much matter, it just has to be solid enough to support a structure. Then you lay your foundation—no bigger than what the land can carry, making sure it’s strong, true, can bear the weight of what you’re about to set upon it.

Now you can start building. Brick by brick, layer by layer, stopping often to check your work, examining it for poor construction, shoddy materials, the inevitable shortcomings of any human endeavor. You throw up the walls, attach the roof, and if you’re smart and good and did everything right you should have something that can withstand the jostling of time and Mother Nature.

I had my own piece of land. Figurative land, that is. It was an idea that had been kicking around my head ever since my conversation with Chloe Enders, an idea so outlandish and yet frightening I could scarcely admit it even to myself. It was a terrible piece of land—full of boulders and sinkholes and poisonous foliage. But I couldn’t stop thinking it was just sitting there, waiting for me to build a house on it.

So I did. And history moved with me.

* * *

“What was that all about?” John Doe asked, baffled, as the cab merged onto I-240 for the short trip to Elvis Presley’s mansion-turned-museum.

“Hell if I know,” said the cabbie, a wizened black man with short gray hair who looked as if he’d been hacking since cars started with hand cranks. “Some kind of stick-up or something. I wasn’t going to wait around to find out.”

“There were a couple of creepy guys hanging around the depot,” Blue Two said, deftly palming her earbud and slipping it in a pocket. “I thought maybe they were following me. That’s why I had to get out of there. To be honest, though, I’m not really much of an Elvis fan. More a John Lee Hooker type.”

John Doe arched an eyebrow. “The Healer?” he said, suddenly interested.

“Great album,” Blue Two said. She didn’t have to feign her enthusiasm. “Santana, Robert Cray, Bonnie Raitt, George Thorogood. Charlie Musselwhite’s harp. But I like the roots stuff too: Boogie Chillen, King Snake, Boom Boom.”

“Did I tell you I love you?” John Doe said, a big grin splitting his face. He stuck out his hand. “John Doe.”

“Sheila Boniface,” Blue Two said, then immediately wanted to crawl into a hole, pull the opening over her and disappear.

She’d just given the subject her real name.

She could have slapped herself. Fifteen years of iron discipline, gone after a few minutes in a cab with a man she had never met, never even heard of until a few days ago. Former Staff Sergeant Sheila Boniface had been around her share of charismatic men—Leader was one. But this guy was like human crack. You were swooning and drooling with your pants around your ankles at hello. She’d have to be especially careful around him.

To cover her embarrassment she pumped John Doe’s hand and said, “What about you? Are you an Elvis fan?”

He shrugged noncommittally, extricating his hand, thankful she didn’t make the usual cracks about his name. “Not really. But he is an icon, and I’ve been to Memphis three or four times and never got around to seeing the place. So when my plans fell through I figured, What the hell?”

“What plans? If you don’t mind my asking.”

John Doe shrugged again. “Not at all. I was heading to Nashville. The governor was trying to gut the public employees’ union. I thought I might be able to help. But then I got to the depot and saw the newspaper and it looks like the union won. So I thought I’d stick around Memphis a little while longer, figure out what to do next.”

Suddenly he grew wary, like he’d just remembered he was on the run.

“What about you?” he said. “What brings you here?”

It was Sheila Boniface’s turn to shrug. “I get antsy staying in one place too long,” she said, not entirely untruthfully. “My parents died a few years ago, left me a little money and I’ve been traveling ever since. I was born and raised in California, haven’t really seen the South. I was thinking of going to New Orleans next, then hit the Delta Blues Museum in Mississippi, maybe join up with that New Bonus Army caravan. You heard of that?”

“Oh, yes,” John Doe said, grateful to be spared revealing any more by the their arrival at the Graceland complex. Sheila Boniface’s hand went to her purse but Doe waved her off and paid the fare himself. They got out and headed for the ticket window but halfway there he stopped. He looked at her, looked at the ticket window. Looked at her again. Gave an embarrassed smile.

“You really don’t want to do this, do you?” he said.

Sheila Boniface laughed and shook her head. “Not really. Tell you what, though, since you paid for the cab, how ‘bout we go back to town and get something to eat? My treat. A pulled pork sandwich and a cold beer sound like heaven to me. That is, if you feel like it.”

John Doe surprised himself by answering without a second thought. “I do feel like it,” he said. “I absolutely do feel like it.”

* * *

In New Orleans, AnnaLynn Conté punched up some numbers on her computer and allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction. More than thirty million people had now signed SayNo’s New Declaration of Independence pledge, vowing to pay nothing to corporate America for the entire month of July.

It was an impressive achievement. Of course, not all of them would follow through. But more people were signing up every day, and if even half of them lived up to their pledge, the hit to the country’s economic and political elites would be substantial, the message unmistakable. It would be painful for the people too. She didn’t delude herself about that. But it was plenty painful now, and it wouldn’t be getting better any time soon. The least they could do was spread some of that pain around.

The pledge list for the New Bonus Army march was growing as well. Projections called for up to four million people at the New Declaration rally, more than one hundred thousand committed to spending July camped out in Anacostia Park. Her smile faded. The enormity of the task, the responsibility were like weights pressing against her chest. She turned off the computer, the lights, and sat in her darkened office until the weight lifted enough for her to get up, lock the door and head for home.

* * *

In Washington D.C., Ray Carmody was also looking at numbers on his computer. But he felt no satisfaction, only a sickening feeling that the day of reckoning Nancy Elias had long feared was finally poised to arrive.

The numbers were bad. Very bad. Eighty-nine percent of the American public no longer had any trust in business or the government. Eighty-six percent said both parties were pawns of corporations and the rich, and served their interests to the ruination of the country. Seventy-nine percent feared that ruination would occur within their lifetimes.

Three out of four Americans had a favorable opinion of the mysterious John Doe. “Guts,” “honest,” “cares,” “not a politician,” were all used to describe him. If the election were held today, forty-seven percent of Americans would vote for him for president, a man who had never uttered a single public word, whom they knew only from a few minutes on TV and a handful of mostly derogatory news stories.

Ray Carmody felt a crushing weight too. How had it all come to this? All those dreams and ideals, all those years of long days and longer nights, serving what he’d once believed was the greater good, all come down to acquiescing in the murder of the one man who gave Americans hope, of forcing two innocent people to murder a vice president and then ordering their murders too. He looked inside himself and was frightened by what he saw.

He thought of the .40 caliber Smith & Wesson he kept in a lockbox beneath his bed. He thought it might be his only way out. He thought it might be salvation.

* * *

In Memphis, John Doe and Sheila Boniface hailed a cab and fled Graceland for downtown. Blue Team followed. Leland Elliott too. He’d tailed the cab to the garish Presley complex, so intent on keeping his quarry in sight he didn’t notice the white minivan hanging back in his wake. When the couple got off at a barbecue restaurant on the fringe of downtown and went inside, Leland Elliott parked across the street where he could see the restaurant entrance and waited. The white minivan circled around the block, parked around the corner so the silver Ford was still in sight.

Blue Four ran the plates, hacked into the rent-a-car company’s database. “Rented this morning to an Edward Jones,” he announced after a few minutes fiddling with his computer. “Fake name, obviously. I’ll run the credit card numbers but it’s probably stolen.” More fiddling. “It is.”

Blue Three squinted at the Ford. “Looks like it’s only the driver,” he said, “But I can’t see a face. We should get some eyes on him.”

Blue One dug through a duffel bag, came out with a pair of sunglasses and tennis shoes, a Tennessee Titans football jersey. He stripped off his windbreaker and workboots, lost the cap, added the glasses. “I’ll go around the block and come at him from the opposite direction, see if I can make an ID,” he said. “If he moves while I’m gone, follow him. I’ll catch up with you later.” He slid open the minivan door and disappeared around the corner.

Minutes later he reappeared at the end of the block, walking towards the silver Ford. Hands in his pockets, casual, just another guy on the street. His step didn’t falter, his head didn’t turn. Walked past the car, back to the minivan, a thoughtful look on his face.

“It’s Leland Elliott,” he said.

* * *

In New York City, Frank Bernabe eyed the young man entering his Manhattan office and motioned for him to sit.

“Yes, Mr. Barrows?” he said.

“I’ve received a report from Memphis, sir,” Barrows responded hesitantly. “It seems Mr. Elliott’s first attempt has failed.”

Frank Bernabe wanted to smash his fist into the gleaming Carpathian elm inlay of his hand-made Parnian desk but he controlled the urge, the muscles in his forearm bulging at the effort. “Details,” he spat.

“Sketchy. But apparently two of his men tried to take Doe outside the bus depot. There was some sort of scuffle and the subject got away. Neither Mr. Elliott nor the patsy were involved; Mr. Elliott has not responded to messages.”

Goddam that incompetent fool! I should have terminated him when I had the chance.

“And?”

“According to the police report, sir, it seems Elliott’s men were prevented from fulfilling their assignment by several bystanders.”

A warning flashed before Frank Bernabe’s eyes. Leland Elliott may be an idiot, but his people were at least marginally competent professionals. No John Q. Citizen was going to get between them and their payday.

“Bystanders, Barrows?” he said balefully. “I don’t think so.”

“I think you’re right, sir,” Barrows said. “There was too much damage. One of the men has a shattered knee and will be on crutches for months. The other has a broken hand and a concussion. Both are still in the hospital.”

“So John Doe has a guardian angel. Or angels.”

“Apparently so, sir,” Barrows said.

Frank Bernabe didn’t hear it. He was alone in his head, racing through the probabilities. After a very long minute he spoke.

“Two things, Barrows. One, contact Mr. Elliott. Leave a message if you have to. Tell him he has seventy-two hours to eliminate the target or I will eliminate him.” He picked up a pen, scribbled a phone number on a piece of paper and pushed it across the desk.

“This is a contact at CIA,” he said. “His name is Edward Foster. Tell him you are speaking for me. Tell him I want any and all surveillance tapes around that bus depot—banks, hotels, traffic cams, whatever—collected and analyzed eight ways back to Sunday. I want to know how many of these guardian angels there are, who they are, what they are, where they are. Everything about them. Everything. And I want it yesterday. Now go.”

Barrows went, only too glad to get out from under his boss’s wrath with his skin still attached. Frank Bernabe watched him go with unaccustomed nervousness. For the first time in life he thought events might be slipping out of his control.

Chapter 33

“What’s going on, Sheila?” Blue One said as he shut the door to his hotel room behind the young woman.

Sheila Boniface stopped, turned. Surprised. Stunned, even. Then blushing, embarrassed.

“Is it that obvious?”

“Pretty much. To me at least. I don’t think the others noticed.”

“Oh, god.”

Sheila Boniface—Blue Two—put her hand to her mouth and plopped down in an uncomfortable chair. For her team leader to use her real name in the field was unprecedented. On the other hand, so was her lapse in judgment. He didn’t appear to be angry, though. Just concerned. That was something.

Blue One took the other chair. “You were supposed to check in,” he said reproachfully. “You know you had Leland Elliott on your tail?”

Blue Two groaned softly.

“And you shouldn’t have brought him back to this hotel,” he continued. “The one where we’re all staying.”

“I know, I know,” she said miserably. “I should have checked into another hotel. Made him watch two places instead of one. I should have called you too.” Her face was pained. “I really screwed up. I’m sorry.”

Blue One looked at her closely. “So what’s going on?” he repeated.

“I. . . I got caught up in it, I guess. I mean, you know me. I’m not the kind of person who goes gaga over some guy I’ve known for all of a few hours.” She shifted in her chair, looked out the window, back at Blue One. “But this is. . . different. There’s something about him. Some connection. Some. . . I don’t know. You want me to stand down and bring someone else in?”

“Can you do this job without your personal feelings getting in the way?”

“Yes!” Her answer was quick and vehement.

“Then start doing it,” he said pointedly, eyes grabbing hers. Then he let his expression soften. “Now, let me catch you up. Elliott picked up your cab at the depot and followed you to Graceland. We were on him right away, tailed him tailing you to the restaurant, then back here. We were ready to step in if he moved on you but he was just surveilling. After the fuck-up this morning he probably figures he’s got only one more chance to get it right.

“When he saw you and Doe come in here, he checked into the hotel across the street. You can bet he’s got a room where he can watch the entrance, keep tabs on the two of you coming and going. I had Four sneak into the garage and put a tracker on his car, then sent him and Three off to rent another car. We’ll need something besides the van.

“Elliott will have to move quickly. He’s Frank Bernabe’s boy, and Frank can’t be too happy about how things went down this morning. But he can’t afford another half-assed attempt either so he’s going to pick the time and place he thinks will give him his best shot. What I want you and Doe to do is establish a routine, regular as clockwork. We’ll keep eyes on Elliott, find out who’s working with him, what he’s got planned. If I know Bernabe, this isn’t a straight shot to the pocket. It’s a double or triple carom. So we need Elliott to show his hand, maybe show Bernabe’s hand, before we roll the fucker up.”

He eyed Sheila Boniface closely again.

“Are you sure you can do this?”

Her own eyes filled with gratitude. And fire. “Let me get cleaned up,” she said. “Then I’ll go find John and bait the trap for Mr. Elliott.”

* * *

Sheila Boniface and John Doe began establishing their routine that night. It was a pleasant routine, the routine of two people getting to know each other in a new and largely unexplored city. If it weren’t for the fact that someone was trying to kill them, they could have been a young couple enjoying their first vacation.

To restrict the area in which Elliott would have to operate they stuck close to downtown. In the morning they’d walk to an upscale coffee shop for breakfast, then stroll for several blocks to work it off. Lunch would be at another restaurant within walking distance, followed by a visit to one of the many expected tourist attractions. Dinner would be similarly regular, with the night ending at The Blues Room on Beale Street, where they’d hang out and drink beer until it shut down around 2 a.m. John Doe thought it odd his partner had such a fetish for planning out their days so precisely, but in the flush of the moment he was willing to overlook it.

They followed that routine for two days. Sheila Boniface saw no sign of Leland Elliott or her colleagues, though she knew they were there. The tension and release of her situation—tasked with protecting a subject of national stature from hired killers without giving anything away and still nurturing the first tender buds of a relationship made her feel like a human spring. But that’s the job you signed up for, she told herself, not at all unhappily. It could be a whole lot worse.

Their third day began like the others. Breakfast, walk, back to the hotel for some quiet time alone. Then lunch, a tourist attraction. After that, more quiet time at the hotel. Then drinks at a Beale Street bar, dinner and the Blues Room.

Unlike the other days, though, this day Leland Elliott didn’t follow. While Sheila Boniface and John Doe were having a leisurely breakfast, Elliott eased his silver Ford out of the hotel garage and drove a few blocks to a giant downtown shopping complex that had gone from potential revitalizing urban hope to semi-abandoned white elephant when the bottom dropped out of the economy. He eased into the complex’s mammoth, multistory parking garage; even during the day it was too deserted for Blue One to safely follow, so he settled for parking across the street from the exit and watching the blinking red dot of Elliott’s GPS tracker circling the garage’s perimeter until it reached the top floor.

Blue One immediately grasped the nature of Elliott’s plan. The top floor of the garage offered an unobstructed view of several blocks of Beale Street, in particular The Blues Room. It was a perfect sniper’s lair. But not during the day, when downtown crowds and traffic would make a clean escape difficult if not impossible. So it would have to be at night. And soon.

The red dot began winding back down to the street again. A minute later the silver Ford nudged out of the exit and took a path towards the airport. Blue One trailed several cars back as Elliott exited the Interstate and pulled into the parking lot of a suburban home improvement store. Twenty minutes later he emerged, wheeling a cart loaded with an adjustable workbench, plain metal work stool and a roll of black plastic sheeting. Then it was back on the Interstate to a generic suites hotel directly under the flight path of the hundreds of planes that flew in and out of Memphis International every day.

Elliott parked in back. Blue One parked in front, strolled around the hotel, peered around the corner at the silver Ford. It was parked next to a dirty-brown panel van facing the hotel’s back entrance. Elliott got out of the car, jingling the keys in his hand. Impatient. Waiting. A minute later a man pushed past the door, heading straight for Leland Elliott.

Actually, the newcomer was more boy than man. Big, pasty-skinned, muscles hidden beneath layers of baby fat. Head shaved, wife-beater t-shirt and baggy jeans, Confederate flag tattooed on a massive bicep. Blue One allowed himself a quiet chuckle. If this was Leland Elliott’s accomplice, the former head of Tutis International was scraping the bottom of the bottom of the barrel. This kid stood out like a turd in the punchbowl; a blind man could pick him out of a crowd a hundred miles away.

Even though the kid had at least seventy-five pounds and eight or nine inches on Elliott, he still flinched when the smaller man barked something at him. Elliott popped the Ford’s trunk and had the kid load the workbench, stool and sheeting into the van. They exchanged keys, Elliott barked something else, the kid flinched again. Elliott backed out of the space. The kid went back into the hotel. Blue One ran back to his car, waited until Elliott was out of the parking lot and on the street, set up a loose tail, spoke to Three and Four in their earbuds.

“Go to the top floor of the parking garage of that shopping center north of Beale Street and make a note of what you see,” he said. “Then meet me in my room in half an hour. I think I know what Elliott is up to.”

* * *

The attempt on John Doe’s life went down that night.

He and Sheila Boniface left the hotel before dark, walked the few blocks to Beale Street. Leland Elliott watched and followed. Blue Three followed Elliott. Blue One and Four parked the white van on Second just past Beale. They slapped a fake Official Use placard on the dashboard and joined the crowd loitering in the street in front of The Blues Room.

Sheila Boniface was having a hard time and working hard not to show it. It wasn’t using herself as bait for Leland Elliott’s assassins; that was her job. It wasn’t even putting John Doe on the same hook. He’d already put himself in harm’s way; if it weren’t for her and her teammates he’d be dead already. No, what stuck in Sheila Boniface’s conscience like a thorn was the hurt and disappointment she knew she’d see on his face when he found out the game she was playing. But it wasn’t a game. And she wasn’t playing.

They stopped for dinner at a café where the food tasted like cardboard and their silences lasted longer than their attempts at conversation. The hurt and disappointment were already there as John Doe tried to draw her out, to recapture the bright, easy feeling of the past days, when everything was good and anything was possible. But she pushed him away and hurried them to The Blues Room, where she knew she could hide in the crowd and the loud, throbbing music.

The club was filling up as they threaded their way to the bar and sat on a pair of stools opposite the stage. Blue One had beaten them there. He sat at the stool closest to the entrance, absorbed in a glass of beer that appeared to be untouched. He’d lost his construction worker guise and now dressed the part of fading hipster—jeans, sandals, pastel t-shirt, lightweight sport coat. A few days worth of stubble. He didn’t look up or acknowledge their presence.

The band was four white kids, the classic rock instrumentation—guitar, bass, keyboard, drums. They kicked off their set with the Clapton hit, Crossroads, the guitarist throwing his body into his sunburst Les Paul as he churned out riffs. Sheila Boniface listened with half an ear, eyes on the crowd, mind on the man sitting next to her, the job she had to do.

The band finished the first set and walked offstage. John Doe ordered two more beers and Sheila gave her best impression of having a good time. Blue One said, and they all agreed, that Elliott would wait until dark to take his shot, and that he’d blast his way through a crowd of civilians if he had to. There was no way they were going to let that happen. They’d have to force his hand, offer up the bait on a silver platter.

When the second set began the club was even more crowded, a mass of bodies swaying in time to the music. From her perch at the bar, Sheila Boniface could see even a slight disturbance becoming a commotion at the entrance. A shiny shaven head appeared, towering over the crowd, swiveling around, looking, searching. His eyes met hers. She looked away. Blue One watched the band, shifted on his stool. He could block the kid, take him down with any number of hand strikes. But the kid stayed put, sweating profusely, swaying in graceless rhythm to the music.

Blue One checked his watch. Twelve-thirty. Time to put their plan in motion. He scratched his jaw, spoke into his wrist mike.

“Four?”

“Yes.”

Blue Four was in a café across the street, watching the club’s entrance.

“Three?”

“Yes.”

Blue Three was on the ramp leading to the top floor of the parking tower. He had night-vision binoculars trained on the van, which was backed up against the railing overlooking Beale Street.

“Two?”

Sheila Boniface stood up in acknowledgement.

“Let’s do it.”

Sheila Boniface grabbed John Doe by the arm and pulled him off his stool. “We have to go now, John,” she said.

He balked. She pulled harder.

“Please.” Her voice urgent, eyes pleading. He relented and moved. They wove through the crowd towards the door.

The kid saw them, began edging out too. Blue One slid off the stool, kept his body between the kid and the target. Blue Four crossed Beale Street, stood just beyond the club’s door, pretending to examine t-shirts displayed in the window. Blue Three double-timed it across the parking lot to the van. He knelt beside the front bumper, raised his head to the windshield, looked inside, saw the plastic sheeting taped behind the seats, heard metal scrape metal as Elliott shifted on his stool.

The kid bulled through the crowd, stepped onto the sidewalk, stood facing the door, staring hard. He was sweaty, nervous, full of jittery energy. His hand went into the pocket of his baggy shorts, made a fist. Blue Three watched. He was close enough to grab the arm, break it if necessary.

Blue One neared the exit. He could feel the cool night air on his face. He could feel Sheila Boniface and John Doe behind him. He passed the door, hit the sidewalk, next to the kid. Stretched and yawned like he couldn’t decide whether to go back to his hotel or keep the party going. He could hear the kid’s breathing quicken, feel the tension in him about to release. It would be very soon now.

He focused everything on the kid’s hand. Blue Three crept around the van. Sheila Boniface and John Doe neared the door, were at the door, through the door. The kid’s fist moved in his pocket. Blue Three saw the fat black tube of a rifle noise suppressor emerge from the van’s back window.

The kid lurched at John Doe and Sheila, gun out now. Blue One moved, blocked his path. In the van, the suppressor moved slightly, drawing down on the target. Sheila Boniface grabbed John Doe, swung him around, pinned him against the wall, shielding him with her body. Kissed him hard and hungrily, like she wanted to draw him inside her right there.

The kid raised his free hand, tried to push Blue One aside. One put a ridge of bony knuckles in the kid’s throat. Short and quick, like a cobra striking. Not hard enough to rupture the windpipe, just enough to interrupt breathing and momentarily paralyze. The kid could take a punch, though. He staggered, dropped to one knee. Blue Three raised a gloved hand, grabbed the suppressor, jerked it backwards. Hard. Leland Elliott toppled off the stool, landed with a crash on the van floor, groaning. The rifle followed, clattered next to him.

Blue Four ripped the pistol out of the kid’s hand. Sheila Boniface kept John Doe pinned to the wall. Blue One dug his fingers into the nerves under the kid’s collarbone, forced him upright. Blue Three raised himself on the van’s bumper, looked inside, saw Leland Elliott sprawled out, put two nine millimeter bullets from his combat Sig in the center of Elliott’s chest, another under the jaw. The second bullet blew the top of his head off.

Blue One grabbed the kid and frog-marched him to the white minivan. Sheila Boniface released John Doe but kept hold of his arm. “We have to follow them,” she said. He didn’t resist. Blue Four slid behind the wheel, revved the engine. Blue One slid the van door open, pushed the kid in. Sheila Boniface and John Doe followed. Blue Three came running from the parking garage, jumped in after them. Blue One yanked the door closed. Blue Three hit the gas and pointed the van out of town.

Flying down the Interstate, they could finally relax. The air was heavy with spent adrenaline, grim satisfaction, relief. Blue One and Three sat on either side of the kid, Three with the kid’s .22 caliber Ruger jammed into his ribs. John Doe and Sheila Boniface sat opposite them. Together, silent, not touching.

“Who the hell are you people?” John Doe demanded. His voice was angry, raw. “What the hell is going on here?”

Sheila Boniface took his hand. He looked at her as if something had gone sour in his mouth. I’m sorry, John, she mouthed. He shook her off, shook his head. Her face was a mask.

“Well?”

Blue One grimaced. Sheila was taking this hard. “I’ll explain in a minute, John,” he said. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

He turned his attention to the kid. “Two choices,” he said. “Talk or die.”

The kid shrank back in the seat. Blue One almost felt sorry for him. He had no business being involved in this. It was practically child abuse.

“Name,” he said curtly.

“Billy Dean Rafer,” the kid said hoarsely, his adam’s apple working like a yo-yo on a string.

“Well, Billy Dean Rafer, what are you doing with a .22 caliber Ruger in your pocket outside The Blues Room?”

The kid looked like he was going to pee in his pants. Oh, please, Blue One thought. Don’t do that. I just had these seats recovered.

“I. . . I. . . I was supposed to kill him,” the kid said finally. He tilted his head at John Doe.

“And why was that, Billy Dean?”

“Cuz he’s a communist-socialist-fascist revolutionary who wants to burn the Constitution and sell us all as slaves into the One World Order. The black helicopters and all that stuff.”

Blue One shook his head in dismay. Blue Four stifled a grin. Sheila Boniface was like a stone. John Doe stared with something approaching pity.

“You are a moron, you know that?” Blue One said.

“Yessir!”

God help us, he’s actually proud of it.

“Whose idea was this, Billy Dean?”

“Mine, sir.”

“You couldn’t think your way out of a paper bag. Let me put it another way: Who made it possible for you to do this?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Blue Three jabbed the Ruger harder. The kid winced. More sweat dribbled down his head.

“Honest, sir. I don’t know. I was talking with some of the guys at Revere Corps. You know, about how somebody’s got to stop these godless-liberal-socialist-terrorists from taking over the country. The next day I got a phone call. This guy asked me if I meant what I’d said, if I wanted to make some good money. I said, Hell, yeah. He said he’d send me a plane ticket, have a van and a hotel room ready for me. All I had to do was check in and wait for instructions. He’d tell me who to kill and how to do it. Said I had to do it exactly like he said, that he’d kill me if I fucked it up.” All of a sudden he noticed Sheila Boniface. “S’cuse my, French, ma’am.”

Blue One and Blue Four exchanged glances. Revere Corps meant Ed Bane, William Bigby. They hated Frank Bernabe. Leland Elliott worked for Frank Bernabe. This was starting to get interesting.

“Who was the guy with the money and ticket, Billy Dean?” Blue One asked. “You see him, meet him? Anybody else?”

“No, sir. No one. Just him, talking on the phone.”

“So how was this supposed to go down? You get a phone call telling you where the target is, go up to him on the street and blow his shit away?”

“Yes, sir. Pretty much like that.”

“But it didn’t go like that, did it?”

Billy Dean Rafer bowed his head in shame. “No, sir.”

“And after you shot a man in the middle of the busiest street in Memphis, how were you supposed to get away?”

“The guy said there’d be a car waiting for me around the corner. He said it’d take me to a safe house where I’d get my money. Then they’d take me to a private plane and fly me anywhere I wanted to go. I always wanted to go to Cancun, check out some of that hot Mexican coochie.” His eyes flitted to Sheila Boniface again. “No offense, ma’am.”

She gave no sign of hearing.

Blue One gave an exasperated sigh.

“You know there was no getaway car, right, Billy Dean? No money, no plane, no ‘hot Mexican coochie.’ You were the patsy, the fall guy. The guy who put you up to this was in a parking garage across the street with a high-powered rifle. He would have either put a bullet between your eyes or let the cops arrest you and throw you in jail for the rest of your life.”

Billy Dean Rafer nodded morosely. “I guess so.”

“I was wrong what I said before,” Blue One admitted. “You’re not a moron. You’re an absolute pathetic fucking excuse for a moron.”

The kid perked up a little. He appeared to take it as a compliment. Blue One gave up.

“So what am I supposed to do with you, Billy Dean Rafer?” he said.

“Kill me, I reckon.”

This time Blue One was impressed. The kid did have a grasp of the essentials.

“You know, I’m tempted, Billy Dean. I really am. But it just wouldn’t be right. To be perfectly honest, you’re too stupid to kill. It would be like shooting my dog for peeing on the carpet. I couldn’t live with myself.” He thought for a moment. “Your friends, relatives. . . they think you’re going away for awhile?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You got a passport, ID?.”

He patted a buttoned pocket on his shorts. “Right here,” he said.

“But no money, right?”

Billy Dean Rafer looked downcast again.

“No, sir. Maybe twenty bucks.”

Blue One gave another sigh, said, “Four, get the bag.” Blue Four reached under the seat and came up with black nylon bag. “Give him five,” Blue One said. Blue Four gaped. John Doe gaped. Sheila Boniface gaped. Blue Three turned around in the driver’s seat and gaped.

“I know, I know,” Blue One said, holding up his hands in surrender. “But what do you want me to do? I can’t kill him, and we can’t leave him running around loose. Everyone’s expecting him to go to Mexico. So let him go to Mexico.”

He grabbed Billy Dean Rafer with a death stare and said evenly, “Listen to me, kid. I’m giving you five thousand dollars of our money and taking you to the airport. You buy a one-way ticket on the next flight to Mexico and make absolutely goddam sure you’re on it. You stay there for a year. One full year, you understand? If you come back before a year is up we’ll know. I’ll hunt you down and my friend here will shoot off pieces of you until you bleed to death. Is that a fair deal?”

“Yessir!” Billy Dean Rafer beamed.

Now he looks like he wants to hug me, Blue One thought. Don’t do that either, kid.

“Three, take us to the airport,” he said. “Mr. Rafer has a plane to catch.”

Chapter 34

I began building my reportorial house the only way I knew—confirm what I already know, check and recheck those facts I can, measure my assumptions against those I’ve managed to substantiate, let the facts drive the narrative rather than the narrative drive the facts.

Even that’s a whole lot less than proof. But it’s a start. And that start was telling me I was on the right track. I reached out to my colleagues at Public Interest for times, dates, places. For details, rumors, wild speculation, anything they might have picked up. I reached out to my contacts in government and law enforcement too. What do you know? What have you heard? What’s the scuttlebutt? Who’s sweating? Who’s not?

I got a lot of quick, nervous, No comments. A lot of breaths sucked in, followed by the metallic buzz of the dial tone. A lot of odd bits and pieces, stray information floating in the air, maybe something, maybe nothing at all. I wracked my own brain too. What had I heard, seen, noticed? What did I know? What did I assume? Where was I in all of this?

In the end, I had a few facts. I had a few thousand questions. Mostly what I had was two timelines. I sat at my desk in my cute little house in the middle-of-nowhere Florida Keys and compared, running down those times, dates and places, one by one. Looked them over, ran them down again. I began to shiver. I had no proof. I had no evidence. I had no smoking gun. All I had was two timelines.

And they scared the hell out of me.

* * *

After dropping off Billy Dean Rafer at the Memphis airport, Blue One talked to John Doe. Told him everything, from Hattie McDaniel’s tip in New Orleans to Blue Three putting three bullets in Leland Elliott on the top floor of a downtown parking garage. Doe listened attentively, his anger melting, the lines in his face erasing. Sheila Boniface sat in silence so deep her teammates ached for her.

When Blue One finished John Doe’s eyes were wide and glistening. They fell on each of his protectors, one by one, and for a moment they saw what made men and women he’d never met instantly give him their complete faith and trust.

“Why?” he asked, his voice almost breaking. “Why would you do all this for me?”

Blue One regarded him solemnly. “Because you’re you. Because someone has to.”

“I. . . I. . .” John Doe was searching for words. Couldn’t find them. “All I can say is, thank you. Thank you.” He reached over and squeezed Sheila Boniface’s knee. Took her hand and entwined his fingers in hers. His lips brushed her cheek. “Thank you,” he whispered. Her smile was beatific.

Blue Three drove the white minivan to a ranch in northeastern Tennessee, several hundred isolated, densely forested acres belonging to Eleanor Beatty, the woman called Logistics. There she ran the group’s motor pool, complete with body shop where the minivan would be repainted, scoured of fingerprints, strands of hair and any other identifying markers, then given new license plates and stored until the next mission.

The members of Blue Team showered, ate a quick dinner, slung the luggage they’d stored at Eleanor Beatty’s place in their own vehicles and drove off. Their mission was over; they’d had too much exposure in Memphis. They would go to ground now, either overseas or in isolated locales that had been identified and made secure months earlier. But there would be a new Blue Team, and Weapons’ Red Team was already standing by to throw a shield over John Doe, wherever he would go.

But he wasn’t going anywhere yet. Eleanor Beatty gave him and Sheila Boniface the keys to a guest cottage about half a mile down a dirt road from the sprawling wood-frame main house. They walked, flanked by towering pines, hand in hand, saying little. When they arrived at the house, John Doe let them in, shut the door, then turned to Sheila Boniface, took her by the shoulders and said, “All of that, before, did you mean it?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, falling on him with a passion that left him weak in the knees. “Oh, yes.”

* * *

The call came from a frantic Ray Carmody.

“What the hell happened, Frank?” he shouted. “What the hell happened? First I hear about two guys taken out on the sidewalk. Then I send my team to the rendezvous and your guys don’t show. Then I get a call that this Elliott character was found in a van with his head blown off and John Doe is gone. Jesus Christ!

“Do you have any idea of the kind of problem we’ve got here? If Doe stays alive we are utterly and completely fucked. Have you seen the latest poll numbers? He already creams everybody, anybody in the election, Nancy hasn’t got a prayer. I thought you were going to take care of this, Frank. You told me you were going to take care of this. And now it’s all gone to shit! What am I going to tell the president?”

Frank Bernabe had no patience for Ray Carmody’s whining. “Stop acting like an old lady,” he said coldly. “You tell Nancy you are going to handle it, then you work with me to handle it.”

His tone turned reflective. “I admit, I may have gotten too cute trying to hang the Doe hit on Bigby. But that’s done. Give me the contacts for your black ops people, the ones you used in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve got some people in mind myself. No more fucking around. We’ll put the two of them together, have them track Doe down and take him out once and for all. Okay, Ray?”

No answer.

“Ray?”

“Okay,” Ray Carmody said finally. It was more like a whimper. He opened his desk drawer and stared at the big black Smith & Wesson he’d brought from home. He stared at it for a very long time.

* * *

John Doe and Sheila Boniface spent two days in Eleanor Beatty’s cottage, sleeping late, making love, walking the forest, eating home-cooked dinners that evolved into long explorations of philosophy, politics, the arts. It was a joyous, carefree time, as if the rest of the world beyond the house and giant pines and land split by running streams and teeming with animal life didn’t exist.

It couldn’t last.

On the third day they woke up, made love. John Doe rolled over, Sheila Boniface’s head on his chest, and said, “I have to go back to New Orleans.” She kissed him on the lips and said, “I know.”

They gathered their few possessions and said goodbye to Eleanor Beatty, taking off for New Orleans in one of her cars, a ten-year-old Chevy coupe outfitted with a small-bore V8, heavy-duty suspension and run-flat tires. Sheila Boniface drove. John Doe used her cell phone to call AnnaLynn Conté.

“It’s John,” he said when she answered. “I’d like to have my old job back.”

Her surprise and excitement were palpable. “At the same pay?” she said, laughing. Then more seriously, “When can you start?”

By evening they were back on the same Lower Nine street John Doe had fled a little over a week ago. They parked at the curb in front of his old house. His crew had kept working. The exterior was freshly painted, the rotting steps to the porch torn out and rebuilt. Sturdy new windows replaced the original wood-frame ones that leaked air like a sieve. They could see dim light through the windows, hear the faint whirring of a power drill.

John Doe took Sheila Boniface by the hand and led her up the steps. He knocked at the front door, now a handsome dark wood slab with a small oval etched-glass window. A tough-looking young black man with gang tats scrolled up his arms and a blue do-rag wrapped around his head peered out the window. When he saw who was there he put down his drill and flung the door open.

“Wassup, JoDo?” he said, flashing a full set of grills that gleamed even in the weak light.

“I’m back, Nathan,” John Doe said as they went through an elaborately choreographed handshake ritual the white guy had obviously never managed to master. They abandoned it midway, laughing, and hugged with real affection.

“This is my friend Sheila,” he said. “Sheila Boniface, Nathan Franklin. Best damn carpenter I ever worked with.”

Nathan Franklin flashed his grills again, prepared to give the stocky black woman a good-humored dose of street jive. But something made him reconsider and instead he politely shook her hand, trying not to wince at the unexpected power of her grip. “Very nice to meet you, Sheila Boniface,” he said gravely. He nodded at John Doe. “That’s a good man you’ve got there.” Then with a sly grin: “And if you stop trying to crush my fingers I’ll get us a round of beers from the fridge.”

Sheila Boniface let go. Blushed. Nathan Franklin flexed his hand, got the beers. The three of them sat on the floor of the unfinished living room and drank, made small talk. Then Franklin looked at John Doe, his expression somber.

“They came after you, right?” he said. There was no need to specify who “they” were. Both knew there were very many “theys.”

He turned to Sheila Boniface. “And you stopped them.”

“With a lot of help.”

“They’ll try again.” It wasn’t a question.

“Undoubtedly.”

He drew her eyes to an AK-47 propped in a corner. “They try that shit here and they’ll get seriously fucked up.”

“Enough, you two!” John Doe exclaimed. “There has to be something less depressing that we can talk about. Besides, Nate, we’re just going to be here a couple of weeks. I’m going to help out over at SayNo, then we’ll leave with the caravan for D.C. You mind if we crash in one of the rooms here until then?”

“Mind? Hell, it’s your house.”

John Doe shook his head. “No, it’s not. It’s yours. You’ve done all the work.”

If Sheila Boniface had blinked she would have missed the light that shone for just a second on Nathan Franklin’s face. It looked very much like love.

“That’s the first time anyone has ever given me something without expecting something in return.” He said it so quietly it was more a thought than actual words. Then he stood and said, his voice hoarse, “Don’t get up. I’ll go find you a mattress and sheets.”

* * *

I told myself I called AnnaLynn Conté because I hadn’t heard from her in awhile and was wondering how she was holding up. That I was worried about her safety. That I cared for her and didn’t want to lose the connection. But I really called because I just needed to hear a friendly voice.

I caught her around dinnertime. She sounded tired and stressed and hyper all at once but also confident and excited. I kept it light, not wanting burden her with my arcane conspiracies and theories of civil war, and I think she was glad for a break from the seriousness and relentless pace of her day. It was a good conversation; whatever we had between us was still there. I was making my goodbyes when she dropped her bombshell.

“Oh, by the way, Josh. I meant to tell you. John is back in town.”

Like everyone else in the country, I’d seen the video of John Doe, seen it a couple dozen times. And like every reporter in the country I’d have traded my left nut for the chance to interview the young man who’d come out of nowhere to represent the last best hope for a reborn America.

“You think he’d agree to an interview?” I asked cautiously. “Any time, any place.” One more thought. “Would you be willing to vouch for me?”

“Of course,” she answered without hesitation. “In fact, he’s right here. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

There was a rustling of papers and scraping of chairs in the background, then John Doe got on the line.

“Yes?”

“John, this is Josh Henson with Public Interest. I think AnnaLynn mentioned me. I’d like to do an interview with you. Your impact on the country, the political process, the American people is just. . . phenomenal. Everyone wants to get to know you better, find out who you are, what you are. It sounds clichéd, I know, but you’re a beacon of hope to millions of Americans.”

Silence. When he finally spoke his voice was soft, pensive. “Maybe they’d be happier not knowing.”

That threw me.

“I don’t think so,” I said, trying hard to salvage my chances. “There are no saints in this world, only self-proclaimed ones. What draws people to you is you don’t pretend to be anything other than who and what you are. I’m speaking not just as a reporter, John, but as someone who sees what’s happening in this country and has real concern for its future.”

His response came quick and forceful.

“I don’t want this. Any of it. No offense, Josh, but I don’t want to be a celebrity. I don’t want to do interviews. I don’t want to be on TV. I don’t want people pointing at me and saying, There he is. I want to do what I’ve done—help a few people at a time, as best I can. Quietly. Alone. Without cameras and reporters and dogs and ponies and dancing bears. I’m trying to take my life back, not give it up even more. I’m sorry, Josh. I know AnnaLynn likes you, respects you. But I can’t do it.”

There was no point continuing.

“I understand your decision, John,” I said. “And I hope you do get your life back. But sometimes our fate is chosen for us. We’re just passengers, along for the ride.”

* * *

Frank Bernabe wasn’t lying. There would be no fucking around in his next attempt.

Shortly after midnight on a calm, starry late-June morning a three-hundred-foot megayacht owned by one of Frank Bernabe’s associates through an elaborate maze of shell companies left its harbor on the west coast of Florida and set a course for New Orleans. Several hours later the military version of a Eurocopter AS350 landed on the yacht’s flight deck. The pilot and his three passengers were employees of a private company founded by former CIA and Mossad agents that had carried out numerous black ops on behalf of the U.S. government in Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The quartet disappeared into the belly of the giant yacht and waited.

By two o’clock the following morning the yacht was moored one hundred fifty nautical miles off the coast of New Orleans, well within range of the helicopter. The pilot and passengers, outfitted and equipped in full military combat gear, boarded and took off on a flight that in approximately one hour would take them over a dilapidated house in the middle of the Lower Ninth Ward.

Flying low to avoid civilian radar detection and with radar operators at NAS New Orleans instructed to ignore any small aircraft approaching the city from the Gulf, the pilot was confident he could get to the target and get out with no interference. As he got closer he radioed a message to another team on the ground, this one of eight members waiting in twin SUVs in an abandoned warehouse just across the Industrial Canal.

“We’re hot in five,” the pilot said.

Lights off, the SUVs exited the warehouse, crossed the canal on North Claiborne Avenue into the Lower Nine. It was three-twenty in the morning. Three minutes to go.

The men about to converge on the house where John Doe and Sheila Boniface had been traced were sure they had planned for every contingency. They had the element of surprise, the latest technology, overwhelming firepower and superior numbers. They could never imagine being defeated by the children employed by neighborhood drug gangs.

Nathan Franklin had done more than just get a mattress and clean sheets for his two guests. He reached out to his former associates in the drug trade, told them of the situation and secured an agreement to defend their turf against the attack he knew would come.

As soon as the two SUVs flashed across the Industrial Canal, a twelve-year-old boy whose “day job” was lookout for the Fourteen-Thirty Mob IM’d his gang leader, who relayed the message to his fellow gangbangers. They’d already discussed what to do. They took their positions and waited.

Then all hell broke loose.

The SUVs drove deeper into the Lower Nine, lights out, running hard. The dull roar of the approaching helicopter split the warm night air. The vehicles turned onto John Doe’s street. Three blocks away. Then two. The helicopter roar was louder, almost directly overhead, descending. One block away, almost there. The men in the SUVs stiffened with anticipation. They flicked off their weapons’ safeties.

Suddenly, without sound or warning, a junked Caddie shot out from behind a decaying house, blocking the street. The driver of the lead SUV didn’t have a chance. He t-boned the Caddy, his vehicle went airborne, landed upside down, collapsing its roof like a tin can. From their hidden positions the gangbangers opened fire, pinning both SUVs in the center of a lethal triangle.

The second SUV almost made it. The driver gunned the engine, ran the big truck up on the sidewalk, a front lawn, back on the street. But he couldn’t outrun the bullets that fell like rain. Its windows shattered, sheet metal perforated, the SUV jumped the curb, tore through a patch of grass, half collapsed a sagging front porch. The four men inside never made it out.

The helicopter was over John Doe’s house now, holding it in a beam of blinding light. A door slid open. A rappel line snaked to the ground. Figures appeared in the doorway. The line tensed. One by one, the figures dropped swiftly, silently. Then they tumbled, out of control. They were dead before they hit the ground. They never figured an ambush, never saw their attackers, never heard the soft spits of suppressed M4s that tore their flesh apart. The helicopter pilot panicked, clicked off his spotlight and fled, rappel line trailing like a forlorn streamer.

On the ground, the gangbangers melted away. Now the noise was the wail of sirens. The four members of Red Team hustled out of the house, through vacant lots, neat backyards, empty streets, to a blacked-out van. John Doe and Sheila Boniface were already there. Nathan Franklin was there, waiting. Red Team climbed in, the van took off. The woman called Weapons, her lips tight, eyes fierce, nodded at the tattooed gangbanger, a gesture of respect. He took it, gave it back. The van crossed the Industrial Canal. John Doe was safe again.

For now.

Chapter 35

A powerful spring thunderstorm chased pedestrians off the streets and flung jagged shards of neon lightning across a midnight-black sky. Rain poured down so fast and heavy it sounded like white noise. Nancy Elias got up from her desk in the Oval Office and stood in front of the room’s bank of tall windows, contemplating the storm’s fury. It matched her own.

A paramilitary assault in the heart of a major American city was not something easily bottled up. Reports of men rappelling out of a helicopter and eleven corpses in full body armor with military-issue equipment and not a trace of identification had local law enforcement in an uproar, at least until they called in the FBI. The director immediately dispatched every agent within two hundred miles to the scene with instructions to seal it off and sequester residents for two blocks in every direction. The bodies, vehicles, bullet casings, every speck of evidence was to be bagged, tagged and transported to the FBI Crime Lab in Washington, D.C. That done, the director called the White House.

Nancy Elias’s first step was to get the heads of local and national media companies out of bed, threaten them with “national security” and demand they throttle any coverage of the battle until an appropriate cover story could be worked up. She promised to have that for them in a day or two. Her second step was to call the director back and tell him that if any of his agents leaked a single word of what happened they would be prosecuted under the Espionage Act and federal conspiracy statutes and “anything else I can think of.”

Her third step was to buzz Ray Carmody.

Even from across the Oval Office she thought her chief of staff looked terrible. He’d lost weight, his eyes were dull, his skin papery and pulled tight on his face. He moved with the shuffle of an old man. He sat down in front of her and she thought about New Orleans again and her anger got the better of her sympathy.

“I got a call from the director, Ray,” she said, her voice a sharp instrument probing an open wound. “About New Orleans. What in the hell have you done down there?”

“What you instructed, Madam President,” Ray Carmody said listlessly. “Eliminate John Doe.” He seemed lost in some private recollection, then brought himself back. “We tried in Memphis. Twice. Frank set it up. The second time it was supposed to traced back to Bigby; Frank wanted to neutralize him. But Doe apparently had some guardians. Even Frank didn’t know about them.”

He looked at her with pleading eyes. “We had to do something, Nancy. Frank said there wasn’t any other way, that we had to just go in there and get him. We didn’t have a choice.”

Nancy Elias exploded.

“My God, Ray! You declared war on American citizens!”

Something twisted and broke off inside Ray Carmody.

“Isn’t that what we do, Nancy?” he said savagely, his voice and body suddenly animated. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for years, what those before us have been doing for decades? We declare war on the American people every goddam day for the benefit of Frank Bernabe and Bill Bigby and anyone else with thirty pieces of silver to slip into our pockets. Then we lie to them and ourselves and say it’s for the good of the country. What a joke. We don’t give a damn about the good of the fucking country. You know it and I know it.”

Ray Carmody was just gathering steam.

“And now they know it too. That’s why you wanted John Doe dead, because now the peasants know what we’re all about, because they just might throw us off the gravy train, run the whole goddam engine straight off the tracks. But you didn’t want to get your hands dirty, did you? You wanted to see Doe shot down like a dog and act like you had nothing to do with it. At least those people in New Orleans had the courage to pull the trigger themselves. We pay other people to pull the trigger for us. We’re a thousand times worse than they are. We’re the ones who deserve to die.”

Finally, Ray Carmody stopped. Panting. Spent.

Nancy Elias stared at her chief of staff with eyes glazed and cold, like diamonds under ice.

“I expect your resignation within the hour,” she said stonily. “You’re no longer of use to me.”

Ray Carmody’s face was gray.

“I’m no longer of use to anyone, Madam President,” he said.

* * *

The same summer thunderstorm battering Washington D.C. was also sweeping through New York City, filling the sky with angry clouds and slaking rainwater down the windows of Frank Bernabe’s Manhattan office. He unconsciously rubbed his temples to ease the throbbing in his head as Nancy Elias’s voice rang metallic from the speakerphone.

She’s starting to come unglued, Bernabe thought bitterly as the president’s tirade continued, alternating between furious over the botched attempt in New Orleans and weepy over the disintegration of Ray Carmody. The time and effort I have to spend keeping these people together, holding their hands, wiping their noses, is ridiculous. Don’t they realize if they let themselves go to pieces the peasants really will bring the system we’ve given our lives to building down around our ears?

“I understand you need to vent, Nancy,” Frank Bernabe said soothingly. “But we have to focus here. I regret that the attempts in Memphis and New Orleans were unsuccessful and I’m sorry about Ray, but we can’t let ourselves be distracted by occasional setbacks. Look at the big picture; there are other ways we can accomplish our goals.”

He’d thought long and hard about what those ways might be, lying awake until early morning as the storm raged outside. Doe and the coming rally and Bonus Army march were threats that had to be dealt with, Doe in particular. Yet his attempts to rid the country of the do-gooding bastard had failed, the last spectacularly, something Bill Bigby and his coterie of supporters would hold over his head like an ax. They were pushing ever harder for a nationwide crackdown, mass arrests, martial law.

Unfortunately for him, he now believed they were right. The old ways of controlling the masses no longer seemed to work, and his covert methods of denying them leadership had been a disaster. But he couldn’t concede to Bigby and his faction just yet. That would be an admission of failure. His failure. What he needed was to buy some time. Time to shift the blame, to get out in front of the battle he knew was coming with or without him. This wasn’t just about the survival of the system, it was about the survival of Frank Bernabe. But he couldn’t afford to fail again. Or to put it more precisely, to be perceived to have failed again.

Nancy Elias, on the other hand. . .

It’s too bad he had to set her up. He knew what he was preparing to force on her had only the remotest chance of success. Of course, if by some miracle it did, he would claim the credit. If it didn’t. . . Well, that’s what happens when you swim with sharks. Sometimes you get eaten.

“Madam President,” he heard himself saying, “we need to reach out to Doe and the people around him. Unfortunately, the time for eliminating his threat has passed. The best we can do is to take control of it, channel it, co-opt it. Every man can be bought; all it takes is the right price.”

Nancy Elias was aghast. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you, Frank. It sounds like you’re giving up.”

“Oh, come now, Nancy. You know me better than that. But as you told me yourself, there’s a time to send in the cavalry and a time to regroup, to build your advantage and attack by other means. My advice—my strong advice—is to reach out to Doe before that July Fourth rally. Invite him to the White House, ask for his advice, offer him a position. Be humble. Then leak it—very carefully—that he asked for the meeting, that he wants a job, money, that he’ll back off this man of the people bullshit if you give in to his demands.

“In the meantime, your earlier suggestion about how to deal with Conté and the rest of them applies equally to Doe. Put together a backstory on him. No one knows who he is so you can say anything; just make sure it’s believable. We don’t have to destroy him, just chip away at his reputation, bit by bit. Then, when he’s discredited, yesterday’s news, we can take him out and no one will give a damn.”

He wasn’t about to let her object. “I know, it may seem humiliating, the President of the United States catering to an itinerant shit-disturber. But in times like these we all have to swallow our pride, perform unpleasant tasks. Myself included. And,” he added pointedly, “we all have people we have to answer to.”

Nancy Elias took the threat and twisted her own knife in. “Even you, Frank,” she said calmly. “Even you.”

* * *

I didn’t expect an early morning phone call from John Doe. Or any phone call, for that matter. But there it was, a message from him on my cell: “It’s John. I’ve been thinking about what you said. Let’s talk.”

Let’s indeed.

I called back immediately. When I got him on the phone he was blunt and to the point. “I’ll do the interview. But on two conditions: It has to be just you and me, one on one, here in New Orleans. And it has to be this week, before we leave for Washington.”

I couldn’t accept fast enough. “How about tomorrow? Any time and place.”

“Tomorrow’s fine. I’d prefer it to be at your hotel. We have a ton of work to do here before the rally and I don’t want this to be a distraction. Let me know when you arrive and where you’re staying.”

I threw some clothes in a suitcase and by noon was standing outside of Louis Armstrong airport locked in the full Nelson of New Orleans’ late June heat and humidity. A lot of people hate that wet, heavy air and ferocious blast of heat but not me. After more than thirty years in and around San Francisco, I’d had enough cold, wind and fog to last several lifetimes. No matter where I was, that soft, moist air on my skin and sun warming my face made me feel at home.

I checked into a hotel a block off Bourbon Street, texted it to John Doe and strolled over to the Desire Cafe for an oyster po’ boy and a cold Abita. When I got back he was waiting in the lobby, at his side a serious-looking but not unattractive black woman who gave me the once, twice and thrice-over look that said make a single false move and I’ll tear your arm off and beat you to death with it. Apparently satisfied that wouldn’t be necessary, she stepped back and let her charge approach.

From that brief self-conscious two-step I could tell they were more than bodyguard and client, something I filed away in my mental folder for future reference. We shook hands and he sniffed the air appreciatively; the beer and fried oysters on my breath must have given me away.

“I’m sorry, John,” I said. “I just went to get something to eat. I wasn’t expecting you for another half hour.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “Next time try Mahoney’s. Best po’ boys in town.”

“Maybe I’ll treat.”

He looked at me like he might have found a kindred spirit.

“Maybe I’ll accept.”

The black woman cleared her throat and shot a glance at the hotel elevators.

“But first we need to take care of business.”

We trooped up to my room. John and I sat around a small work table. His “friend” peered out the window, scanned the buildings and street, pulled the curtains shut, then sat facing the door. He watched her with obvious affection and shrugged. “Precautions,” he said.

I set my miniature voice recorder on the table between us but before I could click it on his hand closed over my wrist.

“A couple ground rules,” he said. “One, no mention of my friend here, either direct or oblique. I have my reasons, and they’re good ones. Two, ask anything you like, but I won’t promise I’ll answer. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

It wasn’t the worst interview I’d ever done, and it certainly wasn’t the best. John Doe wasn’t kidding about not being willing to answer all of my questions. I kept circling back to them, one by one, like a vulture over carrion, but he pushed me away with a shake of his head and his trademark bemused smile.

I did find out a few things, though. That as an infant a few days old he was found abandoned in the bathroom of a hospital emergency room just outside San Francisco. That he was given the last name of his first set of foster parents but always answered to John Doe. That he was a wild teenager but settled down, that the foster parents he finally stuck with had long since passed but left him with a financial stipend that let him go on the road in search of people in need. That his self-imposed “mission” had taken him to more than a dozen cities in a half-dozen states for the past twelve of his thirty-seven years.

I found out he really didn’t remember much about the incident at Audubon Park that rocketed him into the national consciousness. He said he felt like he was in a trance, watching someone else, and I believed him. I found out about his flight to Memphis, that there were two attempts on his life there, a third at his house in the Lower Nine, but he wouldn’t offer details or speculate as to who or why.

I found out that he despised politics and politicians but loved blues and jazz, B.B. King and John Coltrane. That he loved to read and hoped to write a novel one day. That he had a weakness for fast women and slow-cooked barbecue, for cold beer and single-malt scotch, that he’d indulged those weaknesses to excess on more than one occasion.

I found out that he’d worked a compendium of blue-collar jobs, that he was a skilled cook, mason, carpenter, plumber and truck driver. That he believed in non-violence but would kill to defend himself and others, that underneath his aw-shucks smile and easygoing manner was pure case-hardened steel.

I found out that his political philosophy, if you could call it that, could be stated simply: We all matter. That he was stunned it was perceived as some dangerously radical notion, that he was even more stunned by his celebrity and enormous national following and missed his privacy with a painful intensity.

And I found out one more thing: that I liked him immensely, that he might just be the man who could make hope and change more than just glib campaign slogans, who possessed both the naïveté and ruthlessness to take on power and defeat it. I thought that he liked me too, even though his “friend” sat impassive through our entire conversation, emanating silent disapproval.

As they were leaving, John stopped in the doorway and said, “If you’re going to be in town and don’t mind staying up late, there’s a place I’d like you to see.” The black woman’s stoic expression cracked and she grabbed his arm as if to drag him away but he gave a tiny shake of his head and whispered, “It’s okay, Sheila. I trust him.” To me he said, “Meet me at SayNo’s office at midnight. And don’t forget about Mahoney’s.”

I didn’t forget about Mahoney’s, the nouveau po’ boy shop on Magazine Street. I had their grilled shrimp, fried green tomato and remoulade po’ boy and it was one of the best things I had ever put in my mouth. I went back to the Quarter, bounced around for a few hours, then caught a cab downtown and met John Doe on the sidewalk in front of SayNo’s office.

“Isn’t Sheila coming with us?” I asked, just to let him know I’d been paying attention.

He smiled and said, “You caught me. She’s not coming with us. But she will be around.”

He left me to ponder that one as we cabbed over to Rampart Street. “This is the best jazz club in town,” he said. “One hundred percent New Orleans. It used to be Donna’s but the new owners didn’t change a thing but the name. I hope you don’t mind dives.”

After just a few hours on Bourbon Street I was ready for anyplace that didn’t include strip clubs, open-air bars and drunken frat boys guzzling their way to an early-morning puke fest. The club was everything John Doe said. A total dive, packed with locals, and a band made up of any musicians who felt like sitting in and playing their hearts out until the sun came up.

We sat at a table in front of the tiny stage and between sets I took the opportunity to get us another round of beers and probe a little further.

“What made you change your mind about the interview?” I prodded, sliding a chilled bottle across the table and taking a swig of my own.

“Are we off the record here?” John Doe asked back.

“John, as far as I’m concerned we’re off the goddam planet.”

“The last time they came after me,” he said simply. “Day before yesterday. At my house.”

I’d rumors of an early morning firefight in the Lower Nine. “The gang battle. Or so they say.”

“Did they say gangbangers with military-issue equipment rappelled from a helicopter at three-thirty in the morning?”

I wasn’t surprised. “Ah, no. So who were they?”

“I’m not sure. But Sheila has these. . . ‘friends.’ They’re a team, really. They found me in Memphis, saved me. Said both attempts were by someone named Leland Elliott. He supposedly works, or worked, for Frank—”

I couldn’t keep the shock off my face.

He looked at me attentively. “Are you okay, Josh?”

I was still processing it all.

“I know Leland Elliott,” I said finally. “He’s from Miami; I wrote an exposé of him. Before you left for Memphis he sent a couple thugs to my house to find out my sources for the story.” I held up my bandaged finger. “They tried to chop it off.”

The shock was John Doe’s now.

“Jesus Christ! What happened?”

“They broke in while I was sleeping. Held me down, sliced off my pinkie. After that, I don’t know. I saw a red light, heard a voice, just for an instant. Then I woke up in the hospital. When I went back home it was like nothing had ever happened.”

He was silent for a moment, then let out a long, low whistle.

“Holy shit.”

I didn’t want to talk about that. I didn’t want to talk about me.

“You said Sheila had ‘friends,’ a team. Who are they?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, they found me, I didn’t find them. They know what they’re doing, though. Ex-military, CIA, private, I couldn’t tell you. But they are professionals. And there are a lot of them, at least two teams just on me.”

Something in my head clicked. I had to know more.

“Why, John? Why them? Why you?”

“They said I was important, that some people thought I was dangerous.”

“Are you?”

He gave a self-deprecating snort.

“Important? Maybe to the few people I’ve managed to help. But dangerous? Maybe so. But it’s hard for me to imagine.”

“Maybe you should. Listen, this team of yours, can you tell me anything about them? Names, ages. Height, weight, accent. Identifying marks. Anything?”

“Not much. You’ve already met Sheila.” He gave me a stern look, anticipating the question he knew I wanted to ask. “And, yes, we are. When I’m with them they don’t use names, just the team—Blue or Red. And a number—One through Four. Four I think is the computer guy. Hispanic, mid-thirties. Longish hair, very little accent. Three definitely seems ex-military. White. Big and beefy, shaven head and face. He’s a shooter. One is obviously the leader. He’s older, in his forties. Short hair, close beard. Not big but he just looks powerful. Moves like an athlete. They all look up to him. They don’t say much, though. Not to each other, not to me. They’re just. . .”

He was still talking but I wasn’t listening. Suddenly I knew. Absolutely knew. Now everything made sense. Dozens of threads now pulled together in an intricately woven tapestry as plain as words on a page. John Doe must have noticed my far-off expression because once again he looked at me strangely but by then the band had launched into a ferocious take on Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology” and we let the music carry us away.

It was closing in on four in the morning when the band finally played itself out. We decided to walk back to my hotel and call a cab for John from there. At that hour New Orleans is a combination of magic and the gutter, the honeyed scent of night-blooming jasmine mingling with the stench of rotting garbage, the frantic thrum of the French Quarter reduced to an eerie calm broken only by the occasional racing cab and the weary exclamations of spent, straggling partiers.

I debated whether to tell John about my revelation, how much to tell him, whether spilling my guts would help or hurt. But in the end I realized that he deserved to know, that he’d earned that right a hundred times over with his selflessness and courage. I stopped under a lamppost a couple of blocks from the hotel and said, “There’s something I have to tell you, John.”

And I did.

I told him of my conversation with Chloe Enders, of Joe Josephson’s kidnapping and the business card that read only “FEAR,” of the repeated attacks on the representatives of money and power by a group that could seemingly neither be identified nor apprehended. I told him my belief that a war was being waged deep beneath the surface, a war for the very soul of the country, that these unknown warriors and Sheila’s “friends”—his guardian angels—were one and the same. There was only one thing I didn’t tell him; I really don’t know why.

When I was done I could see the burden of my words settle on him.

“I always wondered why they chose me,” he said. I could see something approaching panic shining in his eyes. “But I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t want it. I can’t do it.” He was almost pleading. “I don’t want to be a symbol. I don’t want to be a leader. I don’t want the position. I don’t want the power. I am not that person!”

At that moment, standing under the wan glow of the streetlight, the sweet-sour essence of the city filling my nostrils, I felt terribly, terribly sorry for him, yet at the same time strangely buoyant, even hopeful.

“Actually, John,” I said, “I think you are.”

Chapter 36

The first phone call earned a curt, “Yeah, right,” and a sharp bang! of the receiver being slammed down.

The second call, less than a minute later, got a moment’s edgy silence, a mortified, “Oh, my God!”, then a round of groveling apologies and a frantic search for John Doe, who was dragged out of the bathroom, fly still unzipped, thrown into a chair and handed the still-warm receiver.

“It’s the president!” hissed the young woman who took the calls, her face the color of a very ripe tomato.

John Doe stared at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted wings and a tail.

“It’s the president!” she hissed again, a little louder. When he kept staring she said, louder still, “Of the country! You know, the United States of America.”

“The White House,” someone else added helpfully.

“Holy shit!” John Doe held the receiver to his face.

“What was that, Mr. Doe?” Nancy Elias asked.

“Uh. . . oh. . . ah. . . Nothing, Madam President. I mean, Good morning. I mean, How are you? To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”

“The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Doe.”

Instantly John Doe’s bullshit detector revved into overdrive, ready to translate her words into English.

“I have a proposition for you.”

Get ready to be screwed.

“First, however, I understand that you have been the victim of certain. . . incidents of a violent nature. I want you to know that no member of this administration or in any position of authority had anything to do with them.”

You can’t prove a thing.

“I have directed the FBI to begin an investigation into these incidents, and I can assure you that the perpetrators will be apprehended and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The cover-up is already in progress.

“Now, about that proposition.”

Now bend over.

“You’ve come out of nowhere to capture the imagination of the American people, Mr. Doe. Yet they—and myself, for that matter—know almost nothing about you.”

There’s got to be dirt on you somewhere.

“These are perilous times for our country. Extremely perilous times.”

The natives are getting restless.

“I and everyone in this administration, in the business community as well, are working day and night to solve the problems that beset us. But they are many and complicated and, despite our best efforts, will take time to solve.”

It’s damn hard putting lipstick on this pig.

“The American people are impatient, I know. They’re angry and frustrated, and justly so. They want results, but results are in short supply right now.”

They’re tired of being fed bullshit and told that it’s foie gras.

“That’s why I’m asking for your help.”

Look out, here it comes.

“I would like to invite you to the White House, as my guest. You are obviously a man of the people, have traveled to many places in this great nation, have seen and heard much. I would like the benefit of that knowledge. Your insights, your advice. As president, it can be difficult to get outside the Washington bubble. A voice such as yours, a voice from the heartland, as it were, would give me great perspective.”

Just step right into this nice, cushy bear trap. It won’t hurt a bit, I promise.

“You have the ear of the American people, Mr. Doe. Together we can help defuse this crisis, ratchet down the anger and frustration, bring people together to solve our common problems without resorting to violence and demonstrations and threats against the businesses that make our prosperity possible.”

Maybe you can convince the suckers it really is foie gras.

“What do you say to my proposition, Mr. Doe?”

Say yes, you idiot.

“I’m flattered, Madam President. I really am. But I hardly have the kind of knowledge and influence, let alone insight, that you seek. Besides, I have much work yet to do here; we leave for Washington tomorrow. I’m sorry.”

“Very well then. I’m disappointed but I accept your decision.”

Damn! He almost fell for it.

“Good day, Mr. Doe.”

Fuck you, you little twerp.

“Good day, Madam President.”

John Doe hung up and realized his hands were shaking. The entire staff of SayNo was clustered around him, listening intently, peering down at him as if he was on a slide under a microscope.

“What did she say?”

“What did she want?”

“What was she like?”

“Why did she call?”

“What are you going to do?”

The questions came at him like fastballs.

He stood and flailed his arms as if shooing away a flock of geese.

“It was nothing,” he said. “Really. Now can I please get back to work?”

* * *

On Thursday, July 1, the SayNo caravan left downtown New Orleans and headed north on I-55 for Memphis and Washington, D.C. It was composed of more than one hundred vehicles, from motorcycles and RVs to dented, wheezing beaters and expensive European sports cars. The caravan would stop overnight in Memphis, where it would be joined by similar convoys from points west, and from there travel on to Atlanta for another overnight stay and a brief visit to the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site. The next day the procession would travel to just outside Raleigh, North Carolina, where it would again stop for the night and move out early the next morning. The plan was to reach the National Mall around 9 a.m., three hours before the scheduled start of the New American Independence Day rally.

I brought up the tail end of the procession in a hastily rented sedan. After my interview and night out with John Doe there wasn’t much point in my flying back to Miami, and I wanted to stick around to see how a game-changing few weeks would play out. I’d also decided that it would be my last assignment for Public Interest. It was something that had been building in me for awhile; I no longer hungered for a ringside seat to what the news biz grandly calls “the events of the day.” I wanted to sit on the beach, to cook and fish and paint, to learn to play slide guitar, to see where things would go with AnnaLynn Conté, to retreat to my little castle in the Keys and let the world go to hell—or not—without me.

AnnaLynn and the rest of the staff of SayNo were already in D.C., making last-minute preparations and untangling the usual assortment of last-minute knots. John Doe and Sheila were in the convoy, his protectors too, I suppose, though I didn’t notice them and I’m sure nobody else did either. John, however, was treated like a rock star, mobbed at every stop, surrounded by adoring crowds that increased day by day.

My job was to observe and circulate, to chat up everyone who was willing, to file daily bits of “color”—anecdotes, observations, personal stories—and leave the heavy political lifting to PI’s New Orleans-based reporter. I wasn’t the only one who was busy. Nancy Elias’s minions had been hard at work too, rolling out a campaign to divert public attention from the journey and demonstration that had obviously been planned well in advance.

On July 1, just as the caravan was rolling out of New Orleans, the president held a press conference to announce the arrest of more than a dozen bankers and Wall Street executives on fraud, tax evasion and perjury charges, also the imposition of millions of dollars of fines and the introduction of a bill to allow judges to roll back underwater mortgages. It was left to a handful of independent news organizations and bloggers to point out that the executives were all mid-level types who wouldn’t wipe their asses without permission from their superiors, that the fines would eventually be dismissed or settled for pennies on the dollar, and that the bill had neither meaningful White House support nor a snowball’s chance in hell of passing.

On July 2 they went after John Doe. Not with a broadside of outrageous allegations but with the quiet planting of rumors that could destroy a person’s reputation and give the corporate media and right-wing noise machine the fuel to run amok for weeks. There were accusations of child abuse and drug addiction and of violence against women, assertions that Doe was both a terrorist sympathizer and an FBI informant, a rich brat taking the gullible for a ride and white-trash hustler conning his way to glory. The stories multiplied like rabbits. They offered no names, no facts, no proof. But it didn’t matter.

By the time the caravan, now approaching two hundred vehicles, pulled into Atlanta the rumors were all over the airwaves and Internet. Ed Bane cancelled his commercial break and harangued his listeners for six solid hours. President Elias offered a smarmy no comment. John Doe, looking pale but composed, denied every one. Sheila Boniface looked like she was chewing nails. But the crowds around them only got bigger and more adoring. They chased off one network reporter and her camera crew and chanted, “Lies, lies, lies!” during another TV airhead’s standup.

The attack on the third day, though, was born of such pure, unbridled cynicism it surprised even me.

* * *

“It didn’t work, Frank,” Nancy Elias said sourly, half-watching the computer monitor on her desk play an Internet feed of the SayNo caravan rolling out of New Orleans.

“I know,” said Frank Bernabe. “But it was worth a shot.”

The president sat up straight. “What do you mean, ‘I know’? Godammit, Frank, did you have the SayNo office bugged? I gave express orders that our taps be turned off before I called. So now you’ve got a tape of me begging that little shit Doe to please come to the White House and save my bacon? Goddam you, Frank.”

Frank Bernabe’s answer was a verbal shrug. “Come off it, Nancy. Did you really think I wouldn’t be keeping tabs on those assholes? When things are as bad as this? Don’t worry, there is no tape. I’m the only one who heard and, trust me, it won’t go any further.

“But this is bigger than your hurt feelings. The people I represent are out of patience. They think you’ve been too soft, that you’re afraid to make the hard decisions, that you’ve let things get out of control. Bill Bigby’s been breathing down my neck. He wants to bring the hammer down, bring it down hard. Declare martial law, round up these traitors, cancel that damn rally and march. I’ve always supported you, you know, trusted you to be able to defuse this situation without jeopardizing our interests.”

That was bullshit, of course. But he had to keep her on the hook, still believing she was in control. It wasn’t time to reel her in yet.

“I may be able to give you one last chance to handle it your way,” Frank Bernabe said. “But time is very short. Very short. Do we understand each other?”

Nancy Elias wanted to scream.

Too soft? Hard decisions? I just had a former Vice President of the United States murdered to keep him from spilling his guts! I’ve ignored god knows how many other murders, years of violence, intimidation, corruption up the yin-yang. Bent the law, the Constitution, morality like a pretzel, all for the greater glory and benefit of you and your “interests.” What the hell else do you want from me?

Nancy Elias wanted to say to say all this, to rage at Frank Bernabe, at his “people,” at the unfairness and injustice of it all. But she could only manage a choked, “Fine, Frank,” before quietly setting down the phone.

* * *

Frank Bernabe hung up and allowed himself a grim smile of satisfaction. So far, everything had gone according to plan. Nancy Elias had been maneuvered into position to take the inevitable fall. He’d worked his colleagues behind Bill Bigby’s back; now they saw him as a man betrayed by a weak and conniving politician. When he played the recording of the president’s humiliating conversation with John Doe, their opinion solidified. All that was left was for him to finish the undermining of Bill Bigby so when it came time for the iron fist, it would be at the behest of, and under the control of, Frank Bernabe.

There was still one thing that bothered him, though. John Doe’s guardians. Who possessed that kind of expertise with weapons, tactics, intelligence? Who could operate with such impunity right under the nose of the modern American surveillance state? Who could take out not only Leland Elliott’s goons but an eleven-man black ops team skilled in urban warfare?

There could be only one answer. The people who kidnapped Joe Josephson, who took John Hammer and ran off half of K Street. Who brought fear to the previously inviolable world of power and privilege, who executed their mission to bring down the system Frank Bernabe spent his life building with the same cunning and ruthlessness he exercised in protecting it. It was more important than ever for these people to be found and terminated. Once he had the country locked down he would redouble his efforts to see that happen.

But first things first. He picked up the phone and rang Edward Foster. “This is Mr. Flowers,” he said. “That black site of yours in West Virginia—I want you to get it ready. I’ll be sending you a list of names. . .”

* * *

As “Mr. Flowers” was hanging up the phone, Nancy Elias was contemplating her future. It was bleak. Without Frank Bernabe’s support, her presidency was just as good as over. She wished Ray Carmody was still here. He was the only one she really trusted, whose advice she trusted, who had her own best interest at heart. She felt awful, forcing him to resign. But he’d lost his nerve, was deteriorating before her eyes. It was all so very, very sad. She lingered on her regrets for a moment, then punched up the White House intercom and said, “Tory, come see me, please.”

Tory Brewer was her new chief of staff. She was Ray Carmody’s former deputy, also his protégé, friend and one-time mistress. Nancy Elias waited for an answer. When none came she said again, irritation showing, “Tory, come see me.”

“I’m. . . I’m here, Madam President.”

That wasn’t what she expected. Tory Brewer could barely speak. Her voice was broken, halting. She sounded like she’d been crying. “He’s dead!” she finally sobbed, the dam breaking. “Ray’s dead!”

Nancy Elias froze, her hand still half-reaching for the intercom. It took awhile—she wasn’t sure how long—before she could will her hand to move. To ask in a voice that hovered on the edge of cracking, “How did he die?” But she already knew.

“He. . . He killed himself, Madam President. A pistol. The D.C. police found his body this morning in Rock Creek Park. I knew he was depress—”

“Goddam them,” the president said softly, her eyes moistening. “Goddam them all to hell!” She reached for a yellow legal pad and began writing.

* * *

I was in Atlanta, bored shitless, lounging in my hotel room, half-ignoring a generic police procedural plodding relentlessly across the TV screen. There was nothing in it to complete the thought that firsts fired my synapses during my interview with John Doe but it was there nonetheless. I flicked on my computer and began trolling. YouTube, mostly. News sites, city blogs, personal blogs. It was just a hunch, a wild hair. But what the hell, I told myself. You never know.

And you never do.

I found it on the site of a guy who blogged about downtown Memphis. He apparently lived in one of the condo-lofts fashioned out of old warehouses along the Mississippi and kept himself busy by posting photos and video and commentary on everything from restaurants and shops to the trials and tribulations of urban life. It was all so tedious even his own mother would fall asleep reading it, but if he was here in my hotel room I’d give him a big, sloppy kiss and buy him the most expensive steak dinner in Georgia.

Deep in his archives, under the headline, “Takedown at the Depot” was a video taken with a cellphone cam. Shaky, indistinct, badly shot, it showed a sidewalk full of people who’d apparently just gotten off a bus. There was a commotion, two men pushing through the crowd, three others moving quickly but stealthily to intercept. There were no clear shots of the men’s faces; they seemed to sense the cameras’ presence and turn just enough to avoid them. But suddenly the two pushing men were gone, lost in a scrum erupting behind a parked taxi. Two people got into the cab—a man and a woman, white and black—then a man who could have been in construction pounded on the cab’s hood and shouted, “Go, go, go!”

I couldn’t see the man’s face, and the body could have belonged to a million different people. But I recognized the voice. I had my proof. The circle had closed.

* * *

At nine o’clock in the morning on July 3, one hour after the SayNo caravan had left Atlanta and filed back on the road, President Nancy Elias strode to the podium in the White House press room and delivered a statement. She did not take questions and stalked from the room the moment she finished.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press, my fellow Americans. This morning I received some terrible, terrible news. My former chief of staff, my friend and mentor, my closest and most trusted advisor, Ray Carmody, has died by his own hand.

“I’ve known Ray for almost three decades, since I first ran for the Los Angeles City Council, and during that time I came to love him like the older brother I never had. His service to his country and to my administration has been selfless and beyond reproach. But the pressures of his job began to overwhelm him and he felt he could no longer perform up to his exacting standards.

“I begged him to stay; half of Ray Carmody is still twice any other man. But he said that recent events—the kidnapping and murder of Vice President Josephson, the attempts to foment class hatred and warfare by groups like the one headed for our nation’s capital even as I speak, the rise of dangerous demagogues who have crawled from the gutter speaking with the forked tongue of populism—had robbed him of his appetite for public service, stolen his vitality, injured his very spirit.

“I don’t blame Ray for ending his pain. I blame myself for not recognizing how deep and abiding it was, for not urging him to get help. But I do blame those forces that have chosen to tear our country apart, who would set American against American, who would destroy our system of government and the very fabric of our nation. And I would say to my fellow Americans: Don’t listen to these demagogues, don’t participate in their schemes, don’t fall for their false promises of justice and fairness, of opportunity and renewal, of hope and change.

“Instead, place your faith in those who are working tirelessly for the greater good, who have dedicated their lives to serving the public, who shun class war and demagoguery. Working together, these prevaricators, these provocateurs, these poseurs will be defeated. Working together, we shall overcome.

“Thank you, and good morning.”

Chapter 37

The SayNo caravan, now almost four hundred vehicles, rolled into Washington D.C. beneath a sky that seemed as portentous as the day, bright and sunny with an ominous black thunderhead lurking off in the distance. It was just after nine o’clock in the morning of July Fourth and already the scene in and around the National Mall was near chaos.

Legal parking spaces and parking garages had filled hours earlier, followed by streets blocked off by police to take up the overflow. Those streets overflowed too, and drivers then simply abandoned their cars in place and began walking.

I was traveling in a two-car group with John Doe, Sheila and four men with taut bodies, tight faces and eyes that never stopped moving. They didn’t speak to me and I didn’t speak to them. John and I had bonded during the three-day trip over our love of jazz, blues, spicy food, strong women and a general ambivalence about everything else. Sheila began to warm up to me too, no longer casting bone-breaking glances in my direction. I was moved by her fierce devotion and protectiveness. Even the four tough men who followed Doe everywhere knew better than to infringe on the space she’d carved out for the two of them.

A generous bus driver created just enough room for us to squeeze our cars into a lot about half a mile from the mall, and we joined the throngs hiking through East Potomac Park, double-timing it to the stage in front of the Capitol Reflecting Pool at the east end of the two-mile-long expanse of tree-lined lawn.

It was an amazing journey. As our fellow marchers recognized John, word spread with fiber optic speed. He could have been Moses parting the Red Sea. When they saw us, people moved aside, created a lane for our little party to hurry through, shouted words of encouragement, support, affection.

“We’re with you, John.”

“Keep it up.”

“We need you, John.”

“Give it to the bastards.”

“Give ‘em hell.”

“We love you.”

John appeared awed by their passionate intensity but no more than the rest of us. Even our quartet of minders couldn’t keep the wonderment off their normally impassive faces. But as exciting and inspiring as it was, I couldn’t help feel a twinge of sadness. After more than two centuries of holding ourselves up as a shining light for the rest of the world, our last, best hope was a slight young man who a few weeks ago had been pounding nails in a dilapidated house in a devastated city.

With the crowd’s help we quickly made it around the Tidal Basin, past the Washington Monument, the Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Art to the stage. It was barely controlled chaos there too—speakers, comedians, famous bands scheduled to play, hundreds of support staff, AnnaLynn and other organizers, all thrown into a cauldron of frantic activity. The buzz over John Doe had evidently reached there too, as even celebrities whose faces I’d only seen on the pages of glossy supermarket magazines turned to gape as we passed.

AnnaLynn came over, her face lighting up at the sight of John and Sheila and, I hoped, me too. She seemed exhausted but ebullient, hugging my friends, then me, a little longer, a little tighter. She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and was gone, guiding John and Sheila and their security contingent to the rally’s “command center,” a giant open-air tent behind the stage packed with people working with controlled fury and barely cooled by whirring fans.

I tagged along in my usual role as observer. With a hard drive overflowing with notes, observations, stories I couldn’t use for Public Interest, I’d decided to record everything for a book that would offer a ground-level view of either the beginning of the slow rise or long, terrifying fall of a country founded almost three hundred years ago with such hope and promise.

Amid the maelstrom of activity, I couldn’t remain an observer for long, and was eventually drawn in to running errands, answering phones, helping the small crew of overworked roadies set up equipment for the bands who’d be playing on and off through the evening. Looking out across that stage in the building heat and humidity of a Washington D.C. summer was one of the most awe-inspiring moments of my life. A seamless blanket of bodies covered the park all the way to the horizon, spilling over its boundaries, creating its own enormous cityscape. Estimates were that three, maybe four million people would be here today, and they didn’t seem far wrong.

I left the stage to look for AnnaLynn, found her wrapped in conversation with John and Sheila. I read its trajectory on her face—from confident to astonished to resigned in the arc of a few words.

“What do you mean, you’re not going to speak?” she said incredulously, trying to keep her voice down. “There are millions of people out there, John. Millions of people in the country, who are dying to hear you.”

John looked at her with round, sad eyes, a man trapped in a world not of his own making. “I can’t do it,” he said quietly. “I just can’t. I’m not the man they think I am; I’m not fit to carry their burden. I’ll only leave and disappoint them; I always do. They deserve someone better, someone stronger, smarter. . . better. Someone who will stand with them until the end. That’s not me, AnnaLynn. That’s not me. I am not The One.”

AnnaLynn tried again, appealing to his sense of justice, fairness, morality. She tried Sheila but was stopped by a slight but definitive shake of the head. Finally she smiled wanly, almost to herself, as if in acknowledgement of her own folly. She touched John lightly on the arm and said, “I’m sorry, John. I understand. I really do. You’ve done so much already, more than anyone has a right to expect.” Then she hugged Sheila, whispered in her ear, “Take good care of him,” and quietly walked away.

I shuffled away too, feeling like a Peeping Tom who’d just been nabbed peering through a keyhole. Further off in the tent a crowd was gathered around a portable TV. I wormed my way to the front and caught a glimpse of Nancy Elias standing at the podium in the White House Press Room.

“. . . in honor of our great country’s birthday,” she was saying, “and in recognition of these trying economic times, I am declaring today national Debt Freedom Day. I have proposed, and the business and financial communities have accepted, that interest charges on all loans, all debts, be suspended for the month of July. This is the kind of cooperation between the government and. . .”

A sardonic chuckle eddied through the crowd. That was the president’s big announcement—a one-month reprieve that was scarcely more than window dressing and would doubtless be made up later when no one was looking. What struck me most, however, was the sourness of Nancy Elias’s expression and the passionless monotone of her delivery. She’d always been able to infuse even the most baleful proposals with a politician’s cheery faux-optimism. This time she couldn’t keep the disdain for what she was selling off her own face.

It was a sign. I should have seen it. But I didn’t.

* * *

For Nancy Elias, though, it was more than just a sign. It was recognition that her presidency was in fact at an end. Frank Bernabe had promised her one last chance, promised she could match SayNo’s New Declaration scheme and show the public the government still had some relevance to their lives, some interest in their welfare. Instead, he’d double-crossed her, sent her into battle with a proposal that was doomed to fail. Designed to fail. She was just as much a patsy as the poor dumb cluck set up to take the fall for John Doe’s attempted assassination in Memphis. Funny how things work.

* * *

The president’s speech over, the gathering around the TV broke up and last-minute preparations for the kick-off grew even more furious. AnnaLynn was a dervish, whirling from person to person, problem to problem with cool assurance. When she stepped onto the stage in front of millions of people and said, “Welcome to a new day for America, a new day for Americans. A New Declaration of Independence!” I couldn’t have felt prouder.

What followed was as much celebration as rally. Politicians had been banned from the stage, their places taken by those whose words and work had gained the public’s trust, from the satirist heirs to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to independent journalists to ordinary citizens who’d stood up to power. They alternated with bands playing everything from jazz and hip-hop to rock and reggae, with theatrical skits and live improv sessions.

Technology and social media were omnipresent, allowing those in the audience and thousands of miles away to watch live feeds from more than a dozen cameras, to interact with the speakers and bands and attending celebrities, with the organizers and each other, to track the progress of a slew of different initiatives. Even a brief downpour dampened only heads and umbrellas, not excitement and enthusiasm. Everything was going, if not exactly to plan, as close to it as a giant enterprise with millions of human moving parts could reasonably expect.

Until it didn’t.

The twenty-four-year-old lead singer of one of the country’s hottest rock bands—neither of whom I’d ever heard of—doubtless had only good intentions. To young people of an activist bent, John Doe was already an underground icon, and the kid was probably a little starstruck, caught up in the moment, trying to give the enormous crowd what he knew it wanted. So as the final chords of their latest hit faded into the atmosphere, he pointed backstage where John Doe, Sheila and I were standing and announced, “There’s someone back there I know you’ve been wanting to see: John Doe! C’mon out, John!”

I could feel John’s body go rigid, see the blood drain from his face. He was shaking his head—no, no, no. But the young singer couldn’t see it, thought he was milking the moment for a little extra drama. He had no idea.

“C’mon, John,” he shouted. Then, to the audience, “Encourage him!”

The drummer began thumping his bass drum in powerful, steady rhythm. John Doe, John Doe, John Doe.

The crowd instantly picked it up. “John Doe, John Doe, John Doe.”

John looked stricken. I tried to wave off the drummer. Sheila clutched John’s arm, brought her face up to his, whispered something in his ear.

The drumming grew more insistent. The crowd’s chanting grew louder. “John Doe, John Doe, John Doe!”

John still resisted. The whole band chimed in now, their amplified voices booming in unison with millions across the mall.

“JOHN DOE, JOHN DOE, JOHN DOE!”

Finally he relented. Sheila again whispered in his ear, gave him an encouraging pat on the back and he stepped out from behind the wall of amplifiers and walked haltingly to the microphone like a man heading to his own execution. The young singer noticed; he suddenly appeared to be trying to melt himself down and ooze through a crack in the stage floor. The crowd didn’t, though. Their chanting was relentless.

“JOHN DOE, JOHN DOE, JOHN DOE!”

John stood silent. Raised his hands. Begging. Pleading.

“Please, please,” he said. He waited. “Please. I don’t deserve this.” The drumming stopped. He waited some more. The chanting subsided. He fingered the microphone nervously.

“I. . . I don’t know what to say,” he began. “I never intended to be up here. I’m not good at this.” He looked out over the crowd, millions of people in rapt attention, waiting for his words. “What you’re doing here today is, is amazing. I’m honored to be here with you, to make this journey with you. To fight for ourselves, our families, our country, to recapture its soul.”

Down in front of the stage a group unfurled a long banner and held it high over their heads. On both sides in bright red paint was written: “John Doe for President.”

“Run, John!” one of them shouted. “We need you.”

“Yeah, John. Run!”

“Run, John. You’re our only hope!”

“Run, John!”

“Yeah. Run, John!”

“Run, John, run!”

It started all over again.

“Run, John, run! Run, John, run! RUN, JOHN, RUN!!”

Even from my spot backstage I could see him flinch as if struck. Sheila grabbed my hand and squeezed my fingers so hard they turned blue. I felt someone else on me, heard breath coming in sharp, short takes. It was AnnaLynn. I wrapped my other arm around her and the three of us stood there, helpless, like sailors watching a man clinging to a life raft in raging seas without a line to throw.

John waited. At length he raised his arms again. “Please, please, no,” he said, pain carved into every syllable.

“NO!”

The word exploded like a gunshot. The chanting stopped. The crowd quieted.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was raw. “I can’t. I can walk with you, I can fight with you. I can be there with you. But I can’t lead you. You deserve someone better. Not me. Not me. I’m sorry.”

I could never have imagined, but the stillness of four million people has a power not unlike that of gravity. It seemed to have mass and weight, to give substance to the very air. As John Doe turned from the crowd and walked away I could hear his tennis shoes squeak on the wooden stage, feel the wild exultation of just seconds earlier dissolve into numb acceptance. Before he could reach backstage Sheila released my hand and ran out to meet him. She put her arm around his waist, draped his arm over her shoulder, and like a trainer helping a wounded boxer from the ring, led him out of the arena and into the shadows.

Chapter 38

Time had run out.

For Nancy Elias. For John Doe. For AnnaLynn Conté and the rest of those damnable agitators. For Bill Bigby too. But not for Frank Bernabe. He was stronger, smarter. A leader. A survivor. He’d cut the legs out from under Bigby, made the media mogul’s agenda his own, re-established his standing as first among equals. The crackdown and its benefits would be all his now.

But he wouldn’t forget the slights, the challenge to his leadership, the doubts about his judgment sown by his rivals. He would never forget those. He would remember every one, hold them to his breast like a suckling child. And there would be payback. Oh, yes, there would be payback. Now, however, it was time to deal with Nancy Elias. He called her private number and addressed her brusquely, without greeting or preamble.

“We’ve come to a decision here, Nancy,” he said. “About Doe, these agitators, this Declaration business, everything. It’s time to put an end to it, once and for all. I appreciate your efforts, understand your position. But you have failed. Our enemies are stronger than ever, and if we don’t cut them down to size, they will grow stronger and overwhelm us.”

The president interrupted. Her voice was shrill, whiny. “You promised me more time, Frank. You promised! You fucked me on Debt Freedom Day and now this? You saw Doe on stage yesterday. He’s not going to run! He’s scared shitless. If we stick to the plan—the plan you supported, by the way—eventually all this will settle down and everything will go back to normal.”

“You’re not hearing me, Nancy,” Frank Bernabe said coldly. “There is no more time. We have reached a decision. At this moment D.C. police, elements of the Third Infantry and, ah. . . private contractors are on their way to Anacostia Park. There will be no New Bonus Army. The encampment will be dismantled; anyone who doesn’t leave or resists will be arrested and charged with treason. Doe will be terminated; tonight if possible. If not, as soon as can be arranged thereafter.

“Tomorrow you will declare martial law, establish a national curfew, ban all public gatherings of more than ten people. Anyone who violates these will be arrested and charged with treason. That Conté woman and the rest of her ilk will be picked up and charged with treason. They will be held without bail, as enemy combatants. The Internet will be restricted and monitored. All communications of anyone considered a security risk will be monitored; they will be put under surveillance and arrested if necessary. A bill will be introduced tomorrow declaring that failure to pay one’s lawful debts is economic terrorism, punishable by twenty years in prison. We will not tolerate any more of this nonsense. There will be no revolution on my watch.”

Nancy Elias was stunned into silence. She gripped the arms of her chair until her fingernails dug deep valleys into the leather. When she could finally get her lips to move she didn’t recognize the sound of her own voice.

“I am the President of the United States,” she said, her words echoing hollowly. “Don’t I have any say in this?”

“You can say, ‘yes,’ Madam President,” Frank Bernabe said.

* * *

The first inkling I had that our world had just been upended was when AnnaLynn’s cellphone erupted in frantic chirping. We were standing outside the privacy tent where she’d guided John Doe and Sheila; when they entered the celebrities there joking and chatting suddenly grew quiet and filed out, leaving them to each other. AnnaLynn answered and in an instant her expression went from astonishment to anger to the sickly realization that her grandest work had just come undone.

“What?! They can’t. . . It’s all been approved. . . I have the. . .” She was shouting into the telephone. “Soldiers?! Oh, my God. . .” It was almost a moan. “Try to find whoever’s in charge. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

AnnaLynn was frantic. “That was Ian. They’re tearing down the camp. Police, soldiers, men in black uniforms. They’re arresting everybody. Beating anyone who resists.” She turned plaintive. “This was all approved. We did everything we were supposed to.” Then resolute. “I’ll be damned if they’re going to get away with this. I’ve got to go.”

She wasn’t going into the lion’s den alone. “I’ll go with you,” I said. AnnaLynn gathered the other organizers and gave them the news. One of them handed her a briefcase. I latched onto one of John’s Red Team guardians and said, “We need to get to Anacostia Park now. One of you people has to know how to get a car or something.”

The man looked at me skeptically, hesitated. His job was to protect John Doe, not to go running off to confront a small army at some stranger’s request. But John was already out of tent, Sheila with him. He must have heard. Or maybe he somehow knew. But there was no hesitation in his voice now. “We’ll all go with you,” he said.

That was it. We took off running—AnnaLynn and I, John and Sheila, the Red Team guardians—past the Capitol Reflecting Pool, out of the mall, heading for the nearest street. I didn’t know the city, had no idea how to get to the park. But our guardians did, and in minutes we were on a side street choked with cars, looking for something easy to steal and big enough to fit eight. An elderly sedan pockmarked with rust spots, dents and patches of Bondo was good enough. One of the guardians smashed the driver’s side window with the butt of her pistol, jumped in, reached under the dash, fiddled with some wires. The engine coughed, sputtered, caught, then rumbled encouragingly.

Our light-fingered guardian could not only steal cars like a pro but drive like one too. She goosed the rattling sedan as if she was on the NASCAR circuit. To the Anacostia River, across, then onto the road that ran through the park paralleling the river. Almost immediately we hit the roadblock: three hulking, olive-colored Humvees, parked side-by-side, closing off the road, the blinding-white beams of their headlamps in our faces. In front were a half-dozen soldiers of the Third Infantry in full combat gear, M4s at the ready.

The sedan slowed to a crawl. The soldiers snapped to position. AnnaLynn and I shrank. Sheila and Red Team looked bored. John Doe looked thoughtful. The sedan stopped. Our driver sat perfectly still, hands on the wheel.

“Driver, this is a restricted area,” boomed an amplified voice. “Turn your vehicle around and leave or you will be fired upon.”

Before anyone could stop her, Sheila Boniface opened the car door, slid out of the back seat hands first, raised high and stepped onto the street. She stood facing the soldiers, eyes seizing theirs. Her gaze never faltering, she began walking toward them. The soldiers looked at each other, uneasy, shifted from foot to foot.

“Don’t move,” our driver whispered. We held our breath. Sheila kept walking, six gun barrels tracking every step. The tension in the sedan was so high I thought I was going to piss myself. Then she was at the line of soldiers. Stopped. Talking. We started to breathe again. Now from behind the Humvees another soldier appeared, two-tiered gold arrows glinting on his shoulders. More talking. Sheila turned, waved for us to come on. Gold Arrows pumped her hand, said something to his men. They lowered their weapons. We double-timed it to the Humvees.

“They’re going to let us through,” Sheila said. “This is Corporal Jamison. The man in charge here is a Captain Turner of Metro police.” She pointed to a grassy meadow fronting the river. “He’s over there.” She noted our curious expressions and shrugged. “I used to know some of the guys in the Third when I was in.”

The lights of the city across the river illuminated a scene of utter chaos. Shadowy figures tore down tents, knocked over porta-potties, upended tables, chased other figures, fell on them, beat them with rubber truncheons. Ran others into the treeline or further down the road, where other figures were waiting to beat them as they tried to hide behind a wall of parked RVs.

Shaken, horrified, we raced towards the heart of the battle. “This is not good,” Sheila shouted, jerking her head back at the soldiers. “They’re supposed to establish a perimeter, not let anyone in or out. But they’re not happy about it. They didn’t sign up for this.”

We kept running, ignored in the chaos and confusion, making for a group of twelve, maybe fifteen men. Two groups really. They didn’t appear happy with each other. Twenty yards out, one of them saw us. Ten yards out and hands flew to holsters. We slowed our pace to a fast walk. The four guardians surrounded John Doe. AnnaLynn waved a sheaf of papers she’d pulled from her briefcase.

“What the hell are you doing?!” she shouted angrily. The men looked at her as if she was a bug. They were evenly divided between blue-uniformed D.C. police and men in black military-style uniforms bereft of insignia or identification. “This camp is legally permitted. I have the papers right here!” She thrust them at a stocky black man as thick around as a redwood. The fruit salad on his blue uniform suggested he was the man in charge. “Here!” she said, a little more calmly. “Signed by the Park Service. Read them.”

Captain Joe Turner gave her a pitying look and pushed the papers away. The excitement of our journey faded and I was suddenly aware of the desperateness of our predicament. We had no business being here, surrounded by two dozen armed men and God knows how many more beyond them. Our guardians edged closer to John and Sheila. Hostility hung heavy in the air like smoke from a forest fire.

“Fuck your papers, lady,” snarled one of the black-uniformed men. He was as big in the legs and torso as Joe Turner but a good six inches shorter, with an oddly high-pitched voice and the vaguely mechanical movements of an over-muscled weightlifter. The D.C. cop turned on him, face hot. “I thought I told you to get your people under control. You’re supposed to be breaking down this camp, not acting like a bunch of goddam thugs.”

Behind them the black uniforms were still at it, tearing down what was left of the encampment, beating those neither fast nor agile enough to get away. Some of the uniforms were breaking into the RVs parked to house other Bonus Army campers. They hauled people out, threw them to the street. Beat them too.

“Oh, pardon me, Captain,” the burly man said, his voice brittle with sarcasm. “You’ve got no authority over us, so stay the hell out of our way.” He stalked off, left Joe Turner steaming. AnnaLynn gripped the captain’s arm. “You’ve got to do something,” she pleaded. “You’ve got to stop this. Please.”

Joe Turner detached her hand and said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. But my orders come straight from the White House. And those bastards—” He waved at the black uniforms chasing down the last few campers. “I don’t even know who they are.” He stopped, looked at John. Stared him up and down. “Mr. Doe,” he said, “I just wanted to tell you—”

I don’t know what Sheila Boniface saw. Or if she saw anything at all, if she didn’t just pick up an alien scent riding the breeze, a faint disturbance in the atmosphere. Whatever it was, none of us saw it, picked up on it, not even her Red Team colleagues. But without warning, without a sound, she pivoted on one foot, clutched John Doe to her, placing her body between him and the captain and the black uniforms and what was left of the camp and drove him hard into the ground.

Our guardians started moving while he was still in mid-air. Weapons drawn, facing outward, they formed a cordon around the two fallen bodies. Joe Turner’s head swiveled, following their eyes, searching the darkness for. . . He didn’t know. I stood speechless, bile rising in my throat, as a small crimson circle expanded with terrifying quickness between Sheila Boniface’s shoulder blades, darkening her blouse and filling my heart with despair.

Now everyone saw. “Oh, no,” our driver moaned. She knelt and gently lifted Sheila and set her body on the ground. Captain Turner cursed the black uniforms, shouted at deputies to seal off the area, yelled for paramedics on his two-way. The other three members of Red Team looked ill. I bit my lip until it bled. John lay still. In shock, uncomprehending. His head tilted. He saw Sheila. Her eyes were closed, her face was peaceful. Her blouse was soaked with blood. A thin skein of red hung from the corner of her mouth.

Then the horror hit him. His face seemed to deconstruct before my eyes. Planes rolled and twisted, axes bent, angles turned soft and rubbery. His eyes clouded, his lips moved, “No, no, no,” each whispered word a piece of him torn off by blunt teeth. He threw himself on top of her and wrapped her in his arms, as if he could force his own life into hers.

None of us dared speak. Could speak. It began to rain. Not hard, just a drizzle, enough to dampen our hair and stick our clothes to our bodies. The paramedics arrived, rolling a stretcher across the wet grass. They tried to pick up the body but the fierce faces of Red Team drove them back. I knelt down and touched John on the shoulder. “She’s gone,” I said softly, my eyes tearing up. “We need to get her out of here.”

He turned on me like he wanted to rip my throat out. But he let me lift him off Sheila’s body and sit him on the ground, head between his knees, silent sobs heaving in his chest. The paramedics moved in again but our driver stepped in front of them, her expression feral, her own sobs barely contained. “Don’t touch her!” She and her three teammates lifted Sheila Boniface, placed her on the stretcher, covered her face with a jacket.

“John?” one of them said.

He didn’t seem to hear but he stood and walked stiffly to the stretcher. Stood over it for a long minute, the longest minute I’d ever known, oblivious to the rain, the paramedics, the crowd. The world. He lifted the jacket and kissed Sheila on the lips, his tears mixing with the mist on her cheeks. He lowered the jacket and the transformation was remarkable. Frightening. His face seemed to reconstruct as quickly as it had fallen. Planes reasserted themselves, axes straightened, angles grew sharp and hard. There was something burning in it, something infinitely determined and virulently dangerous.

“Take care of her,” he said to the guardians. To me and AnnaLynn: “We’re going back.” To Joe Turner: “An escort, captain?”

The captain barked at a deputy. “Take these people to the National Mall,” he said. “Lights, siren, the whole nine yards.” His gaze fixed on John. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Doe. Beyond words. Godspeed to you.”

The ride back to the mall was grim and silent but for the wailing of the siren and the distant booms of fireworks. The deputy drove fast, badged us through police checkpoints to within a block of the mall. We ran for the stage. John ran like a machine; AnnaLynn and I struggled to keep up. When we burst into the tent all conversation stopped, every eye on John, his bloody clothes, the ferocious set to his face. Without realizing it, they flinched, stepped back. I thought right then that they’d caught the smell of death on us. Fireworks boomed. Patriotic music blared. The crowd oohed and ahhed. “What do you want to do, John?” AnnaLynn asked quietly.

“Speak.”

A man handed AnnaLynn a walkie-talkie. She said something into it, then something else, sharply. Like do what I say or I’ll have your skin for a wetsuit. Minutes passed. The fireworks stopped booming. The music stopped blaring. The sky went black. The giant crowd fell silent. More minutes passed. The sky stayed black. A technician hustled onstage and plugged in a microphone. Murmurs rose, wafting on the breeze. Bewildered. Disappointed. Unsettled. More minutes passed. John Doe stood in the tent. Alone. Apart. Lost in himself. Lost. No one spoke or went near him. Another minute passed.

Then he roused himself. He strode out of the tent, up the steps, onto the stage, this time like he owned it. Strode out from behind the bank of amplifiers and up to the microphone. A single spotlight flared and held him in its incandescent shaft. The crowd gasped, a collective drawing of breath that sounded like a gust from a hurricane.

Caught in the finger of light, John Doe looked haunted, ghostly, gray. His shirt and pants were stained with blood. Caked in his hair, under his fingernails. A pinkish smear ran down his face and disappeared under his shirt collar. He swayed. Started to speak. Choked up. He looked out over the mass of people, every ounce of their being focused on him, and seemed to draw strength there. Then he spoke:

“A few minutes ago the finest person I have ever known, the light of my life, was taken from me. She stepped in front of a bullet that was meant for me. She bled to death in my arms. She gave her own life for mine. I don’t know who pulled the trigger. I don’t know who gave the order. But I do know why.”

He paused. He wanted everyone from the White House to Frank Bernabe’s Manhattan office to hear the next words.

“They want me to be afraid. They want me to run, to hide. They want you to be afraid. They want you to run and hide.”

He paused again. Raised his arms. Held them outstretched so everyone could see his bloody shirt, the rust-colored stains that ran from his wrists to his shoulders, his chest to his waist.

“I stand before you tonight wearing the blood of Sheila Boniface. And I say that I am not afraid. I will not run. I will not hide. We will not run. We will not hide. But to the people who have taken her from me, who have taken so much of what we all hold dear, who live by no law but their own interest, no code but their own ambition, no morality but their own gain, I say this: When I am President of the United States of America you will learn what it is to fear. It will be your turn to run, your turn to hide. Because as of this moment your time is over.”

He paused once more. When he spoke now his voice was barely audible, spent and weary beyond the grave.

“God help me,” he said. “God help us all.”

Chapter 39

President Nancy Elias declared martial law at nine o’clock the following morning. She suspended habeas corpus and established a dusk to dawn curfew. A bipartisan group of Republican and Democratic senators introduced the Economic Terrorism and Homeland Protection Act. AnnaLynn Conté and the rest of the New American Independence Day organizers were arrested at their hotels or the homes of friends where they were staying.

John Doe, his four Red Team guardians and the body of Sheila Boniface disappeared. The black uniforms tried to pick up his trail leaving the National Mall but the enormous crowd closed around them and practically suffocated them with its bulk. An official APB and unofficial orders to shoot on sight were issued but neither Frank Bernabe’s teams nor the agents of several acronymical government agencies turned up even the smallest clue to their whereabouts. When informed of the teams’ lack of success, Nancy Elias could be heard screaming at Frank Bernabe over the telephone, shocking her listeners less by the vulgarity of her language than to whom it was being addressed.

I had no knowledge of any of this, no knowledge of anything but rage boiling in my veins. Seeing Sheila Boniface gunned down in cold blood, her life slowly spilling out of her, did something profound to me. In common parlance, I guess I “snapped.” I saw that scene play over and over in my mind. I saw the boots in the chest of Eldrick Brown, the leering face of Armando Gutierrez and fearful, desperate countenance of Julie Teichner, the contemptuous smirks of the black uniforms who’d driven her from her home and the man who fitted my finger in his razor-sharp tinsnips.

I saw the faces of people I didn’t know, of Trish Oliver’s brother, driven to take his own life, of the people brutalized by Leland Elliott’s thugs and assaulted for the greater glory and ratings of Ed Bane. I saw the faces of millions of Americans who had been foreclosed out of their homes, “downsized” from their jobs, abandoned—further assaulted—by the very institutions created for their protection. I saw the faces of millions treated as fodder for the enrichment and empowerment of a few. It lit a rage inside me that was primal, unthinking, all-consuming. It demanded pain and death and destruction. It demanded revenge.

And I knew just where to get it.

After John Doe’s speech I said an abrupt goodbye to AnnaLynn and hailed a cab for Reagan airport, snagging a seat on an early-morning flight bound for Miami. My very persona was toxic. Other passengers averted their eyes when I walked down the aisle, dared not sit next to me. In Miami I caught a shuttle bound for the Keys, the fire still burning. Ninety minutes later the shuttle dropped me off at my house on Largo Sound. I didn’t bother going in. I marched down the street to Robert Ford’s house, threw open the front door without knocking and stormed in like an invading army.

Robert was on the deck, his back to me, gazing out at the Sound. At my noisy entry he turned, surprised at first, then alarmed. If I had been myself I would have noticed the grief that pinched his features, the sag in his normally erect posture. Instead I strode up to him, shoved him in the chest and shouted, “She’s dead, Robert! She’s dead! They killed her! You killed her!”

Had any other man laid hands on Robert Ford like that he would have been on the floor with two broken arms and a crushed larynx. But my friend merely stepped back and brushed me aside. His voice was calm. “Josh, Josh, I know what you must be—”

But I was too far gone. I got in his face and pushed him again. “I know who you are, Robert,” I said, low and ugly. “I know what you are. I figured it all out. Sheila Boniface was one of yours. The others too. You were the one with John Doe in Memphis. You kidnapped Joe Josephson, Senator Hammer. You were the one who scared off the K Street vultures, the bankers, those slimeballs in the House. You’re the one with the calling card that reads ‘FEAR.’”

It took a lot to shock Robert but that did. “Listen to me, Josh,” he began. “You don’t have any—”

I was having none of it. My rage had boiled over. “You were supposed to protect John but you couldn’t even protect one of your own! Sheila’s dead because of you and you’re standing here looking at the water like some kind of goddam tourist!”

That hurt him. He could take a bullet in the gut and bite down on his pain but the accusation that he’d left one of his own on the field of battle was more than he could bear.

“Why are you standing here?!” I screamed, eyes wild, spittle flying. “Kill him! Bernabe did it. Even I know that. You’re the great avenging angel. Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”

The effort it must have taken to hold himself in check was enormous. Even in my delirium I could see the muscles cording in his neck, bulging beneath his clothes, his lungs expanding, chest swelling.

“Trust me, Josh, his time will come. But not—”

“Trust? Bullshit!” I totally lost it now. “You deal in fear but you’re afraid yourself. You’re a coward and a hypocrite, Robert. Sheila’s blood is on your hands!”

Without another word I turned and stomped out of the house, slamming the front door so hard its etched-glass panel shattered. I slammed the front door at my house too, punched the wall with my good hand, then dropped onto bed still in my clothes and slept for twenty straight hours.

When I woke just after sunrise I felt like a malaria patient whose fever had just broken. I was weak and listless, wobbly from dehydration and lack of nourishment. My shirt was still damp with sweat; my own body odor made me gag. My confrontation with Robert came back to me in a rush and my face burned with shame.

The burning grew even more fevered. The soft, deadly voice that pierced my fading consciousness when two men I didn’t know broke into my house, when razor-sharp tinsnips closed down on my finger. . . that was Robert Ford’s voice too.

If the tears could come I would have wept with shame. I’d barged into the house of my best friend, a man who’d saved my life, whose courage and fortitude were greater than anything I could hope to possess and demanded that he murder the most powerful man in the country, then called him a coward and a hypocrite for not instantly acceding to my madness. By all rights he should have slit my belly and tossed me into the Sound.

I stumbled out my front door and down the street. Even at this early hour the heat and humidity were oppressive; a wave of nausea rolled over me. At Robert’s house it was clear that he had gone. The hurricane shutters were closed, the gate to the driveway locked. I hauled out my cellphone and punched up his number but there was no answer. Another wave of nausea hit so I stumbled back home, stripped off my filthy clothes and parked my reeking body in the shower under water as hot and stinging as I could make it.

Freshly showered, I sat at my computer and was hit with another shock. President Elias had declared martial law, banned public demonstrations and imposed a nationwide curfew. AnnaLynn and her colleagues had been arrested, held without bail at an undisclosed facility. Bills had been introduced to define non-payment of one’s debts as economic terrorism, punishable by a lengthy prison term.

MSM coverage was predictable, mostly stern warnings to obey or suffer the consequences. Public Interest and a few other independent sites had blasted the moves, put up some analysis, but the corporate media had fallen dutifully in line. I logged into my email account and saw a string of messages from my boss so I dialed Public Interest and got Jeff O’Neill on the phone.

“Where the hell have you been?” he barked before I could get a word out. Then, reconsidering, “Were you there when it happened? Are you alright?”

“Not really,” I said. “And to answer your questions: On a plane to Miami. Yes. And not really.” I filled him in on Sheila’s death, the scene at Anacostia Park, the transformation of John Doe from unwilling candidate to avenging warrior.

“You’re going to get me a couple thousand words on this, right?” he said eagerly. “Before noon.” He didn’t wait for my answer. “Good. Now, have you seen what your buddy John Doe is up—” His gasp sounded like the air escaping from a punctured tire. “Jesus Christ! Are you seeing this?! It’s everywhere!”

I heard his phone clatter to the desk, him shouting at his editors, his fingers skittering across the keyboard. “I’ve got to go, Josh,” he said breathlessly. “They’re doing it again. Go to our website. Go to any website! Jesus Christ!”

I tabbed over to the Public Interest home page and there was John Doe. Or to put it more accurately, a live streaming video of John Doe. I opened up a few more browser windows and he was there too. He was everywhere. He was seated at a wooden table in front of a plain white backdrop, what could have been a sheet attached to a wall. He looked tired, wan. Haunted. But his eyes were clear and his words reverberated with the simple honesty that had always drawn people to him. He was halfway into his message when I cranked up the volume.

“. . . ask yourselves, Is this the America I believe in? Is this the America I love? Is this the America I want for my children, for their children and their children? In my America, no one is taken away in the middle of the night and carried off to an unknown ‘detention facility.’ In my America, the right to speak freely, to assemble and demand that wrongs be redressed is enshrined in the highest law. In my America, our representatives do not sell themselves to the highest bidder, then turn around and demand that those least able foot the bill.

“But as painful as it is for me to say, as painful as it is for all of us to see, that is the America we are living in today. It is a terrible sight. But our vision is clear. Our America, the America of Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, of generations of men and women who have worked and fought and bled and died to preserve, is about to be reborn. Beginning today, in every city, every town square, every speck of public land we will assemble—calmly, peacefully, resolutely—and we will stay there until the actions that have robbed us of our America, the America we love, the America that will be, are reversed. I will be with you until that happens. God help us all.”

By noon the crowds had already begun to assemble. By nightfall they had doubled. By the next day they had tripled. The weather turned brutal. It stormed relentlessly in the Northeast. The crowds stayed. Heat and humidity broke records throughout the South. The crowds stayed. The Midwest was hot and parched. The crowds stayed. The West was cool and drizzly. The crowds stayed.

There was no violence. People simply got together and sat. Police and military units called on to disperse the demonstrators refused. They would take up position, keep the peace, protect and serve. But they would not attack. Ed Bane raged daily against police and demonstrators alike, but the black uniforms, the Bane-iacs, Revere Corps and the rest stayed away. They had no illusions about their chances for survival if they tried to interfere.

By the end of the first week the crowds had formed cities within cities, towns within towns. An elaborate support system sprang up. For all the hundreds of thousands camped out in the streets, hundreds of thousands more spelled the weary, brought in food and drink, tended to sanitation and medical emergencies, even provided entertainment.

John Doe resurfaced and kept a relentless schedule, every other day at a different city, a different encampment. He’d arrive without fanfare or entourage; though he’d banished Robert Ford’s guardian angels they ignored his order and protected him anyway. He handed out bottled water and emptied porta-potties and bandaged cuts and scrapes. He cajoled local merchants into providing tents and other forms of shelter, cooking equipment, better sanitary facilities, fresh food and immense quantities of water. Then he moved on and did it all over again. Two more hit teams were sent out. None of their members got close. Or survived.

By the end of the second week the business of America had virtually ceased. There were no shoppers in stores, no passengers on airplanes, little traffic on streets. Offices were dark and empty. Manufacturing plants sat idle. Service industries had no one to serve. More than forty million people had signed on to SayNo’s “Starve the Beasts” economic campaign, sending shivers down the spines of the heads of banks and other financial institutions.

By the end of the third week, as the stench of fear bloomed in executive suites and government offices, a sense of their own power bloomed among the millions who had risen in their own defense. I felt it in Miami, where I joined three hundred thousand determined South Floridians alternately sweltering under a laser sun and cowering beneath ferocious summer thunderstorms.

By the end of the fourth week Frank Bernabe and his “people” gave up. The prospect of economic ruin was too great, the pressure from corporatocracy impossible to ignore. The president lifted martial law, released AnnaLynn Conté and the others, abandoned efforts to pass the Economic Terrorism and Homeland Protection Act, promised amnesty to everyone involved. She also announced her resignation and handed over her duties to the vice president, a bureaucratic cipher named Caldwell. Bill Bigby and several of his colleagues made plans to leave the country. Frank Bernabe informed the staff at his Hamptons estate that he would be there soon. He contacted the head of the black uniforms and gave him one final assignment.

Tired, filthy, sunburned but exhilarated, I went back to the Keys, taking refuge from the rest of the world and, in truth, from myself.

Chapter 40

It took me two days to reach AnnaLynn Conté. When I finally did she sounded shaken but ebullient. When I asked her about her detention she grew quiet and her voice got small and she said very carefully, “I was scared, Josh. Really, really scared.

“After you and John left, Ian and the rest of us found a hotel for the night. We were supposed to be staying in the RV we drove from New Orleans, but it was in the park and we didn’t feel safe going back there. About four in the morning these men in black uniforms broke down my door. They put me in handcuffs, put a bag over my head, took me out to a van. All of us from the rally were there. It was so crowded we barely had space to breathe.

“They drove us for maybe an hour, maybe two or three. I was so disoriented I had no sense of time. Then they marched us into some kind of holding facility—like a jail, but newer and nicer. They took all our belongings, made us wear these pajama-like things. We each had our own cell and were forbidden from talking, but we passed notes and could whisper messages when the uniforms weren’t around. There weren’t any windows, so we couldn’t tell what day it was, how long we’d been in there.”

I didn’t want to ask the next question.

“Did they hurt you?”

She hesitated a little.

“No. Well, not really. Not physically. They kept asking me about Sheila, about John’s guardians. Did I know their names, who they were, who they worked for, where their headquarters was. I told them I didn’t know, didn’t know anything about them except they just sort of appeared with John. They didn’t believe me. Threatened me with some pretty horrible things. Twice they gave me injections but I don’t think I told them anything then either because they still kept asking.

“Then one day they came, put us in handcuffs and bags again, marched us back into the van and dropped us off at the bus depot in D.C. in the middle of the night. I caught a cab to the airport and flew back to New Orleans, got in yesterday.”

Suddenly my days of rain, sunburn, bad food and no decent chardonnay in downtown Miami didn’t seem so noble. But she had something else to tell me.

“John wants me to help manage his campaign.”

I did a quick double-take but I really wasn’t surprised. “There’s nobody better,” I said. “But what about SayNo?”

“Ian will take over,” she said. “He’s good and smart and committed. But there’s something else too.”

“Yes?”

“John wants you to handle the media.”

That was a surprise.

“Me?”

“Why not you? He likes you, Josh. He trusts you. And he needs someone to help him with the media. Not a formal press secretary or anything. He’s not going to have a formal campaign anyway. More like what he’s been doing—going from place to place, seeing what people need, getting his hands dirty. He’s been meaning to call you himself but you know how it is. . .”

It was a hugely flattering offer. The responsibility that came with it scared the shit out of me. But what else could I say?

“Tell him yes, AnnaLynn. But only for a few weeks. As Candide said, it’s time to cultivate my own garden.”

* * *

Sitting in a summer rental in East Hampton, Robert Ford reviewed the files that had just been downloaded to his computer. He picked up his cellphone and texted, “That all?”

Immediately came the reply, “Yes.”

He put down the phone and printed out the files. Wei Lee closed the door of Frank Bernabe’s Manhattan office and caught a cab for JFK airport. Two hours later she was on a flight bound for Hong Kong.

* * *

At three o’clock on a mid-August morning, two cars converged on a narrow country road paralleling Threemile Harbor just west of the town of East Hampton. The road was really little more than a barely paved path tunneling beneath a dense canopy of oaks and maples leading to Frank Bernabe’s twenty-two-acre compound.

Over the years the head of Meyer Financial had purchased five adjacent homes and properties that ran from the main road all the way to the beach. Three he had razed, the foundations torn out and planted over. The smallest home closest to the road was the compound’s command center and housing for its staff. The other was Frank Bernabe’s residence, a twenty-five-thousand-square-foot monstrosity three times the size of its predecessor, built at a cost of upwards of sixty million dollars. The whole compound was then walled off behind concentric circles of security. For a man obsessed with privacy and keeping the world at a distance, it was ideal.

Just after midnight on that mid-August morning, the leading edge of a powerful storm system rolled over Long Island Sound and blasted the area. Fierce winds bent and snapped tree branches, whipped stinging gusts of rain sideways. Barbed strings of lightning split the night sky, followed by thunder that sounded like sonic booms. The weather was just what the men in the two cars had in mind. They had, in fact, been monitoring forecasts for days, waiting for the storm to arrive.

It was at its full fury as the cars pulled out of the driveway of their rented home. No one else was crazy or desperate enough to be out in this weather; they had virtually the entire island to themselves. They approached their target from opposite ends, roughly north and south. A quarter-mile away the vehicles ran up on the shoulder and slowed to a fast walk. Each disgorged a team of four men. Two wielded scoped and suppressed HK MSG-90 sniper rifles, two others M4 carbines with undermounted grenade launchers, two more held full-auto M4s. All carried SIG Sauer pistols and wore CADPAT rain gear designed to foil infrared vision technology.

Within seconds the men disappeared into the trees and the cars sped off, heading back to the rental where their drivers would wait for precisely one hour, then return to the drop-off points. The eight men in the assault team would either be there or they wouldn’t. No one wanted to think about the latter possibility. At the head of one four-man team, Robert Ford flipped down his night-vision goggles. Padding silently through the forest, the rest of Blue Team and Red Team did likewise.

Frank Bernabe’s compound was very well-protected. The first line of defense was an electrified fence that ran around the property all the way to the beach. Beyond that was an array of motion sensors and motion-activated cameras and floodlights that were monitored on multiple video screens 24/7 in the compound’s command center. The perimeter of the clearing around the estate was patrolled by three teams of four men, heavily armed, each team working an eight-hour shift.

The main house was wired to its own alarm system, disabled only by an electronic code that changed daily. The house was also hooked up to a pair of massive generators, fed by giant underground propane tanks, that would kick in within minutes of a power outage. Whenever he was there, Frank Bernabe felt secure, isolated, powerful. Just the way he liked it.

Precisely three minutes into the mission the two teams, spread out and moving in on the compound like pincers, were at the electrified fence. “Blue in position one,” Robert Ford whispered into his throat mic. “Red in position one,” echoed his counterpart. They stood silent and waited for a burst of lightning, a bang of thunder. At the rented house, the team’s tech expert sat at his computer. He’d already hacked into the power company grid and was prepared to bring it down just long enough for Blue and Red teams to breach the fence and slip past.

Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The tech tapped a few keys. Power in the Bernabe compound died. Two members of Blue and Red snipped the fence, two others held the flap open. When they were all inside the tech tapped more keys. Power returned. Robert Ford and the Red Team leader switched on their hand-held computers. Ahead was a hundred-yard swath of motion-activated sensors, cameras, floodlights. Each lit up on the tiny screens. Ms. Lee’s information was comprehensive; they hoped it was equally accurate. Her files contained maps, blueprints, codes, schedules and notes that had been pored over, analyzed and worked up into what was literally a road map through a mine field.

“Blue in position two,” Ford said. Red’s leader repeated the message. The teams waited. Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The tech tapped a few keys. Power in the Bernabe compound died. The teams glided silently through the trees. “Position three,” the team leaders whispered. Power came back on.

They were approximately fifty yards from the treeline; through the foliage they could see the beginnings of the great lawn, a full acre of immaculately manicured grass, beyond that the faint glow of lights glimmering in the Bernabe mansion.

Ms. Lee’s information was accurate. When Frank Bernabe was on-premises, each guard patrolled a quadrant at the edge of the treeline from atop an ATV, rotating their position to the next quadrant every fifteen minutes, as regular and predictable as clockwork. They were ex-military, good enough at their jobs but wet, miserable and bored. With nothing and no one to challenge them, they’d long since grown sloppy, relying less on attentiveness and careful observation than on the compound’s array of electronic gadgetry.

Taking them out was easy. Two men from each team crept through the damp underbrush to within about one hundred yards of their assigned target. The HK’s had a range of more than thirteen hundred yards but the foliage and weather made a clear long-range shot impossible. Two members of Red Team edged closer to the staff house. Robert Ford and another Blue moved parallel to the treeline towards the beach, creeping as close as possible to the main house.

Then they waited.

The storm raged. The guards on the ATVs rotated position, wetter and even more miserable. After three minutes Robert Ford whispered into his throat mic, “Call in.” One by one, Blue and Red teams answered, “Ready.” The tech at the computer heard them too. “At your command,” he replied.

They waited. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The tech tapped a few keys. Power in the Bernabe compound died.

Simultaneously:

A single soft “pfft” from each of four barrels of the HKs and four 7.62 mm NATO rounds sped at almost three-thousand feet per second towards the guard on the ATVs. The two members of Red Team rushed the staff house. Robert Ford and Blue Two rushed the main house. Three bodies, shot to wound, not kill, tumbled off their vehicles. The fourth staggered to his feet. Red Team fired flash-bang grenades through front and back windows of the command center. Ford and Blue Two hit the front door of the main house. Ford clicked a button on his radio transmitter, disarmed the alarm. A fifth “pfft” from an HK and the remaining guard went down.

The snipers hustled out to the wounded guards. Red Team broke down front and back doors, stormed the command center, caught one guard leveling a Glock, put three bullets in his chest. The other surrendered. Blue Two pulled out a ring of master keys, withdrew the door’s deadbolt, turned the lock with another, yanked the door open. The snipers field-dressed the guards’ wounds, dragged them to the shelter of the treeline. Red Team bound and gagged the second guard, calmed the house staff, bound and gagged them too.

The snipers took up position on the ATVs, on guard, watching for reinforcements. Red Team locked down the command center. Robert Ford slipped into the main house, headed upstairs for Frank Bernabe’s bedroom. Blue Two followed, closed the door, swept the downstairs, M4 at the ready, just in case. One by one, team members called in. “Target secured.”

“Gaining target now,” said Robert Ford.

Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The tech tapped a few keys. Power in the Bernabe compound returned.

* * *

Robert Ford stood at the door to Frank Bernabe’s bedroom, contemplating the solid slab of Honduran mahogany. This was the culmination of a journey begun in his mind more than five years ago, growing from the idea that in a country where the rich and powerful felt no constraints on their behavior, their ambition, their appetites, where neither corrupted government nor neutered and divided citizenry could call them to account, the only weapon left was fear. He fervently hoped this would be the last time he had to wield that weapon. He opened the door and stepped into the room.

If Frank Bernabe was startled, he didn’t show it. He was sitting in an oversized bed, laptop on his thighs, snifter of cognac on the table beside him, glaring at the intruder as if some sort of vermin had dared invade his space.

“Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing here?” he spat. “Get the hell out of my fucking house.”

“Hello, Frank,” Robert Ford said. “Or should I say, ‘Mr. Flowers.’”

Recognition flickered in Frank Bernabe’s eyes. “Mr. Thorn. Well, aren’t you clever. Elliott and his people were a bunch of fucking idiots. That reporter too. And so are you. Now get out.”

“Not just yet, I’m afraid, Frank. There are a couple of things we have to discuss.”

“I have nothing to say to you. Get out.”

“You’re a real hard case, aren’t you, Frank? I’m not impressed.”

Frank Bernabe said nothing. Glared harder. His right hand slipped beneath the bedsheets and inched towards the headboard.

“Don’t bother with the panic button,” Robert Ford said. “The system’s been disabled, your security people neutralized.” He shook his head sadly. “I really thought I understood you, Frank. You and people like you. You took and took and took. You took the government. The president, the Congress, the statehouses, courts. You took the law. You took people’s jobs and homes and bank accounts. You took their hopes and dreams and futures. You even took their lives. I thought one day you might have taken enough. I guess I was wrong.”

“You are a fucking idiot,” Frank Bernabe sneered. “There’s never enough. There’s only more. And don’t give me that ‘man of the people’ crap. The ‘people’ were begging us to take it; we couldn’t do it fast enough. The more we took, the better they liked it. We told them anything and they believed it. Every goddam time. What do you call people too stupid to act in their own self-interest?”

He didn’t bother waiting for a response.

“Americans.”

“Not so stupid now, though. Huh, Frank?”

“Fuck you. If it weren’t for that idiot Bigby and Elias and that fucking Doe—” He stopped and stared at Robert Ford, recognition once more glittering bright in his eyes. “You. . . You’re the bastard in Memphis. In New Orleans. You’re following that little shit around, protecting him. I’ll be goddammed.”

He hacked up a laugh. It sounded like a death rattle.

“That bitch in D.C. was one of yours.”

Robert Ford went very still. Slowly, reverently, like a priest bestowing a sacrament, he pulled the SIG from its holster, raised the muzzle, held it there, steady, like an unspoken promise. Then he gently squeezed the trigger and blew off Frank Bernabe’s kneecap. Shrieks of pain caromed off the walls, were swallowed up and lost in the enormous bedroom suite. The laptop slid to the floor. A tide of red surged over the sheets. Robert Ford waited patiently for the screams to die down.

“Her name was Sheila Boniface,” he said softly. “You’re not fit to speak it.”

“Ah, you motherfucker! Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou. . . “ Frank Bernabe’s face was the color of curdled milk. His breathing was heavy and labored. He clutched at his shattered leg as if he could somehow put it back together and staunch the bleeding. He was still snarling, though. He was still Frank Bernabe.

“So what are you going to do now, Thorn? Or whoever you are. Kill me?” He hacked up another laugh, but this time pained, feeble. “You think that will end this? Think someone else won’t take my place?”

“You’re right, Frank,” Robert Ford said. “But your life is at an end.” He reached into a pocket of his camouflaged jacket. “And whoever comes after you will at least know this.”

He drew his hand from the pocket and flicked an object across the room. It fluttered like a dying butterfly and landed right side up on the bed. It was a plain white business card, printed with a single word in big black letters. Frank Bernabe’s eyes went wide. His mouth worked but no sound came out.

Robert Ford nodded. A final benediction.

The first shot blew most of Frank Bernabe’s heart out his back. The second two finished the job. The fourth went through his right eyeball and splattered the wall and headboard with blood and tissue and brain matter. Robert Ford studied the scene for a moment, knowing, accepting, that it would be a part of him, like a limb or an organ, for the rest of his life.

Then he walked out of Frank Bernabe’s bedroom, closed the door and disappeared down the darkened hallway.

Chapter 41

The six weeks I spent with John Doe were the most exhausting and exhilarating weeks of my life.

They began portentously, only hours after AnnaLynn picked me up at the Baltimore-Washington airport and ferried me to the hotel where John Doe and the rest of his campaign staff were staying. We were in the middle of our first brainstorming session when AnnaLynn’s computer beeped with a news alert. It was a short item, two paragraphs beneath a headline that read simply, “Frank Bernabe Dead of Heart Attack.”

I thought back to the set of Robert’s face out on his deck in Key Largo, the loss in his eyes and the flat promise of his words, “His time will come,” and I felt my own face flush with shame all over again. There was no heart attack; I’d stake my life on it. Robert was true to his word, as I’d always known he would be, even in the depths of my momentary insanity. I still held out hope that one day I could tell him so.

The next day brought more news. William Bigby sold All-American Media to a group of Arab investors and retired to a castle in the English countryside. He was replaced as CEO by Russell Millar. Given considerably wider and grander play was the news that Ed Bane, the bane of the existence of liberals, Democraps, socialists, losers and anyone who didn’t think like he did, was found dead in his Palm Beach estate. Shot four times in the chest. Apparently during a robbery gone bad.

As sure as I was that Robert Ford had dispatched Frank Bernabe to the furthest corner of hell, I was equally confident he had nothing to do with the killing of Ed Bane. My confidence was bolstered a few days later when Public Interest reported that Bane’s chief of security, a former Mossad agent named Moises Ben Levi, had conveniently left the country just a week before the murder, taking half of his men with him, and was reportedly living large on a sprawling estate in Costa Rica.

None of us shed tears over any of them, if for no other reason than we were too ridiculously, stupendously busy. From the beginning John set a relentless, grueling pace—a new city every three or four days, traveling in a caravan of buses and rental cars, sleeping in people’s homes or cheap hotels, eating on the fly or out of machines or not at all.

We were essentially working for free. The “campaign” was taking in thousands of dollars a day, virtually all of it in donations of a hundred dollars or less, but John was giving it away as fast as the checks could be processed. We had our meals, cellphone bills and a few miscellaneous expenses covered but that was it.

We didn’t care. We all did everything. I was nominally in charge of handling the press but I spent most of my time working side-by-side with John, from setting up chairs in meeting halls and dishing up food at potluck dinners to marching with laid-off public employees and banging nails with neighborhood groups fixing up dilapidated homes. John’s energy and stamina were amazing; the rest of us were left breathless trying to match him.

Free time was a mostly unobtainable luxury, but John and I did manage to spend a few early-morning hours making a dent in a bottle of good bourbon and listening to vintage jazz and blues. AnnaLynn and I didn’t have much time together either but we made the most of what we had. It brought us closer, made us more comfortable with each other. We still hadn’t slept together—crazy schedules, numbing fatigue and still-unresolved baggage took care of that. But we’d lit a spark and enjoyed slowly fanning it to flame.

Even so, as August rolled into September I knew it was time for me to go. I didn’t want to leave John and the rest of the team dangling so I called Chloe Enders and asked if she’d be interested in taking my place. “It’s too much work, virtually no money and everybody wants a piece of you,” I told her. “It’s the best job you’ll ever have.”

She didn’t hesitate. She took the first flight out of San Francisco. I introduced her to John and AnnaLynn and they all liked each other at first sight. So I could leave in good conscience. The night before my departure they threw me a party in some diner in a neatly trimmed suburb of Kansas City. The owner kept the place open after hours and kicked in free beer. John brought his bottle of bourbon and AnnaLynn somehow dug up a decent Oregon Pinot Noir and we all got a little loose and then a little rowdy and then a little sentimental. In the morning I was gone, on a plane bound for Miami.

My first few days at home I saw no one, did nothing. I caught up on my sleep, hung out on my little beach, paddled my kayak around the mangroves and watched movies until late at night. It didn’t take long for that to grow old, though, so I fashioned a comforting and comfortable routine: Get up early, have a light breakfast, take my coffee out to the beach. Work on my book until noon, eat, then depending on the day, paint in the little studio I’d fashioned out of a spare bedroom or practice my scales before going off to guitar lessons or study Italian in preparation for my twice-weekly class. In the evening I’d fix dinner, then read or watch a movie or head down to Pilot House for a beer or several with friends.

It was after one of those nights that I came home late, having probably downed a beer or two too many. I was tired and tipsy so I looked right past the big black Mercedes parked across the street, ignored the footsteps behind me, was too late to react to the strong, callused hand that clamped itself around my mouth while the other grabbed my wrist and twisted it up painfully behind my back. I could hear quite well the calm, quiet voice in my ear, however. The one that ordered, “I’d like you to come with us, Josh. There are some people who want to talk with you.”

For some reason I wasn’t afraid. Or maybe I was drunk or feeling fatalistic or just had all the fight drained out of me. But I let the man steer me down my driveway and into the Mercedes, slide me into the back seat, slip in next to me and close the door. He produced a black felt bag from a seat pocket and said, “It’s for your own protection. We’re not here to harm you. I think the people we’re taking you to are people you’ll want to meet.”

Funny thing is, I believed him. So I let him slip the bag over my head as the car sped up the 18-Mile Stretch towards the mainland. I tried to keep track of time and direction but once we hit the turnpike I lost all perception of both. There was nothing for me to do, nothing for me to say, so I sat back, closed my eyes and let it all go.

At length I felt the car slow, stop, turn, go. Stop and go again. Then stop once more. I heard the engine die, a large door unroll and bang shut. My friendly kidnapper helped me out of the car, guided me past doorways and through rooms. Over tile, over carpet. Down a step, a feeling of space. He halted, took the bag off my head. “Please sit down, Mr. Henson,” he said.

I sat and looked around. I was in the living room of one of those South Florida houses that are as common as grains of sand on Ocean Beach. Vaguely Mediterranean, vaguely Caribbean, without the slightest speck of character, the kind of house fast-buck developers lined up like dominoes on previously unspoiled land. The room’s furnishings were similarly generic. The lighting in the room was dim.

On the chairs and couch across from me sat three men and two women. There was nothing remarkable or memorable about them. They were of more or less average height and more or less average build, dressed in well-worn, comfortable clothes. They gave off none of the aura of cartoon menace of the black uniforms or the men who snipped off my little finger, none of the serene self-confidence and Zen-like reserve of John Doe. But when I looked more closely there were little tells—the posture erect and yet relaxed, the eyes calm yet lit with a fire that never went out, the unmistakable sense that, despite the cordial setting, they were equally comfortable shaking your hand or putting a bullet in your ear.

The one sitting closest to me was the youngish-looking woman known to her colleagues, if not to me, as Weapons. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties, with short brown hair, sky-blue eyes that radiated intelligence, and a body that was all cords and tendons and fast-twitch muscles. She spoke as if she was in charge.

“Thank you for coming, Josh,” she said, in a voice surprisingly light and musical. “I apologize for the method of your transport. But I think we had good reason.” She motioned at the four people sitting with her. “I would introduce myself and my colleagues but it’s best we have no names.

“As I’m sure was mentioned to you, we mean you no harm. Robert asked us to meet with you, to fill you in on how we came to be, on everything that has happened since. We know you’re writing about it and he thinks—we all think—that it’s important for the story to get out. I’ll tell you everything I reasonably can, then you can ask whatever questions you like. I can’t promise I’ll answer them, and I seek no control over what you write. I only ask that you be mindful of the stakes here, of the lives in balance, of the future of our country. Is that agreeable to you?”

Agreeable? It was as if Santa Claus had crawled down my chimney with a red Ferrari, a villa in St. Barts and a million dollars in cash and asked if I wouldn’t mind taking them off his hands. Hell, yes, it was agreeable.

“This whole operation—mission, if you will—was Robert’s idea,” the woman began, clicking on a small voice recorder and setting it on the table between us. “But all of us here were with him from the beginning. We debated what to do, how far to go, were we justified, were we not.” She smiled semi-fondly at the memory. “God, how we debated. But in the end it came down to a simple question: Do we want to be better than our opponents or do we want to win?”

She led me through the early days, months of reaching out to like-minded individuals in the government and business, of assembling a team of experts in every field, more than one hundred men and women who were willing to put their own lives on the line, to make hard choices and eat the consequences, who believed the promise of America was too great to abandon without a fight.

From there they reached out to create a support network, hundreds more people who had access to information, equipment, the kinds of secrets governments work tirelessly to keep buried. “No one will ever know who they are,” the woman said. “We don’t know most of them ourselves. But they are real American heroes. They risked everything to help us and asked nothing in return.”

She led me through the weeks and months of acquiring and analyzing detailed information on everything from the sex habits and secret bank accounts of politicians to the financial and personal dealings of the country’s most powerful corporations and their executives to the top secret contingency plans of Frank Bernabe and the country’s intelligence agencies in the event of a public uprising.

She told me of planning and strategizing, setting up secure lines of communication and transportation, making sure they could operate beneath the radar of the organizations that would spare no effort or expense to see them terminated. And she told me of the power of fear, of the plain white business card with a single word printed in big black letters.

Then she led me through the actions themselves, one by one. The disappearing senator. The home invasions. Jefferson Dalworth. The K Street lobbyists. Senator John Hammer. Former Vice President Joe Josephson. It got more personal. The file on Tutis International. The disposal of two bodies in the Everglades, and the packages delivered to Leland Elliott and Frank Bernabe. Then a change of mission. Protect John Doe. The two attempts in Memphis, the firefight in New Orleans. The debacle in D.C. At that she flinched, ever so slightly. Her pain at Sheila Boniface’s death hadn’t lessened.

When she was done I had a million questions and asked a few thousand. I learned of the assault on Frank Bernabe’s compound and his subsequent “heart attack,” of the last assignment Bernabe had given the head of the black uniforms and the resulting death of Ed Bane. I learned dozens of other things too, more than I wanted to, more than I could comprehend. We were still talking when the sun came up and I finally realized I had everything I needed, that it was time to go and digest what I’d heard and begin working on what would indeed be the final chapter of this part of my life.

I pocketed the voice recorder and my five hosts stood up and I went to each of them in turn and shook their hand, thanked them for bringing me here, for trusting me, for what they had done. To the woman who’d briefed me I said, “When you see Robert, tell him I’m sorry for the way I acted. It was inexcusable. I’d like to say that to his face one day.”

She nodded gravely but her voice was kind. “I don’t think he needs an apology,” she said.

After that, I could have made it back to the Keys under my own power.

Chapter 42

My story posted to Public Interest and was picked up by media around the world.

“There are angels in America.

“Guardian angels. Avenging angels.

“Two days ago I spent several hours with them. They are men and women you have never heard of, have never seen, will never know. For years they have fought battles gone unheard, unseen, unknown. Battles in a war against those who had taken the country for their own. Battles in a war for the very soul of America.

“It’s a war that has gone entirely unreported. Until now. . .”

* * *

For the next two weeks my life was not my own. Within minutes of the story going live my phone started ringing, and it didn’t stop until I had the number disconnected and the phone itself stashed in the bottom of my linen closet. I turned down everyone and everything—interviews, profiles, radio and TV appearances, speaking engagements. I didn’t want to be a celebrity. I wanted to be left alone.

It was not to be. The press got hold of my address and reporters camped out in my yard, clogged the narrow streets of my neighborhood with their satellite trucks and annoyed the hell out of my neighbors. Somebody got hold of my cellphone number and I had to change that. Twice. My friends couldn’t call me. I couldn’t go outside without getting a microphone stuck in my face or questions thrown at me like I was an ax murderer. I was getting a taste of my own media medicine and, to be honest, I didn’t like it very much.

When I could no longer stand it I waited until after midnight and jumped my back fence, jumped a couple of neighbors’ fences until I landed at a friend’s house, where he laid me down in the back seat of his car, covered me with a blanket and delivered me to the blessed peace and quiet of my friend Peter’s Islamorada manse. After a couple of days the media hordes realized I wasn’t there. A couple days more and I was yesterday’s news and they left and my life returned to normal.

I picked up my comfortable routine where I’d left off, this time, I hoped, for good. I formally quit Public Interest, though I promised to write the odd piece here and there, help out if they were short-handed. I didn’t much follow the news, though I was pleased to note that SayNo seemed to be in good hands, that its “Starve the Beasts” campaign had put real fear into corporate America. I stayed in touch with AnnaLynn too. We talked at least once a week and made plans to see each other sometime in the new year. And I periodically checked in with John’s campaign, shooting off the occasional email with advice, encouragement, random thoughts. Once or twice he even responded.

I got an email from Julie Teichner that cheered me up for days. She and Megan loved San Diego. She and her sister had opened a small bakery. She’d met a man. Megan was doing well in school and seemed to have recovered from the trauma of being forced from her home by men waving automatic weapons. Julie thanked me for my help and money, sent me a check and a photograph. The check I tore up, the photo I framed and hung on the wall over my desk. It was taken on a beach, Julie and Megan holding hands with the sun and Pacific Ocean behind them. They looked healthy and happy and deserved every bit of their good fortune.

I was feeling so chipper I even looked up Marilyn Kravitz. She’d fallen and broken her hip and was confined to her condo so I brought her over some Thai food and sushi and listened to her rave about what kind of crazy people ate raw fish, that they must have been dropped on their heads as children and on and on and on. In spite of myself I found it all rather endearing. She still packed that .38 police special, still talked like a gangsta and called me “dawg.” So I called her “ho” and we bumped fists and laughed ourselves silly.

In late October there was a brief hurricane scare. A Cat One ramped up to a Cat Two in the Florida Straits. It brushed Key West and curved up into the Gulf but then just fell apart and did little more than piss rain all over Texas. I figured they could use it.

The days and weeks flew by and all of a sudden the stores were full of holiday decorations and little drummer boys rum-pum-pum-pumming with the incessant rhythm of mosquitoes biting in July. I had a good life, much to be thankful for: friends, health, enough money, a home in a place I loved. But I still felt bad about Robert and was resigned to never seeing him again. I missed Carolyn terribly and AnnaLynn was still a question mark and so I trudged through the holiday cheer enveloped in a cloud of melancholy.

Then it was Christmas.

It was still my favorite holiday and I was determined to make the best of it. I hung my latest painting on my living room wall and thought it looked pretty damn good. I gave myself a present of a new kayak and paddled it through the mangroves, marveling anew at the Keys’ brilliant-blue skies and seventy-five-degree temperature when the rest of the country was huddling around heaters in the snow. I watched some football, grilled a couple of slipper lobsters a friend had caught the day before, cracked my last bottle of white Burgundy and savored them to Miles Davis’s muted trumpet on In a Silent Way. That was my idea of Christmas music.

It was a good day but the melancholy was starting to overtake me again so I climbed into the Miata, slapped the top down and zipped over to Pilot House. All the usual holiday orphans would be there, and I figured their companionship—not to mention a few beers—would be enough to scrub away the gloom. The place was humming when I got there, standing room only, mostly locals with a handful of slumming tourists. I eased through the crush of bodies towards the bar, stopping every few feet to say hi to friends, do the holiday thing, chat and catch up, growing thirstier by the minute but feeling better too.

I finally got close enough to see a break in the crowd at the end of the bar and pushed my way to it. Then I stopped, my heart dropping in my chest, that familiar flush returning to my face. There, at the very last seat, was what I never expected to see again. Robert Ford.

Even from a distance I could see the past months had aged him. His hair was a little grayer, the crow’s feet at his eyes a little deeper, his lean body even leaner. But he still had that aura about him, that blend of toughness and kindness and simple humanity that made him the only person I wanted with me on that terrible cold winter day when I released Carolyn’s ashes onto the gray-blue waters of the Atlantic. And even tipsy strangers still knew better than to take the seat next to him.

I started, hesitated, then moved forward. But he’d already sensed my presence. He turned to me and I saw it in his eyes. Warmth, understanding, forgiveness. Absolution. Raw emotion poured over me.

“Robert, I’m so sor—” I began. But he waved me off, nodded at the empty seat, gave me a winking grin and said, “Buy you a beer?”

I was grinning like an idiot. I sat next to him, put my elbows on the bar and said, “Absolutely.”

Acknowledgements

Thanks first and foremost to my wife Suzanne, the best friend, editor and support system any writer (and husband) could have.

Thanks to Andy and Diane, who never stopped believing.

Thanks to Jill Grosjean, my agent and my friend.

Thanks to Angelica Soderlund for the cover design, and to many others whose names will go unmentioned. Your contributions to this book, however, do not go unappreciated.

About The Author

Tom Paine is the pen name of a South Florida writer and journalist who still has the audacity to hope for change.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Acknowledgements

About The Author