Guardians of the Secret

A Novel by Cary Shulman

Copyright © 1998 by Cary Shulman

All Rights Reserved

Chapter 1

Nime my father called me. Karl Richter was on the birth certificate, but he hoped the name he learned from Indians in the Amazon would make me a child of the New World and a stranger to the tragedies of Europe. Like everyone, I was too brief a child, too long a stranger. A family crisis led to my being sent back to East Germany. I became a therapist, in part, to find a meaningful union of child and stranger, the Old World and the New.

Michael first heard of me at the end of a two week episode. He would have called it a bender. I think of it as more of a misguided, misunderstood pilgrimage taken by a lost soul. A sort of a vision quest for those not ready to see. Sara had picked him up outside of Taos and was driving them to a plane in Albuquerque. As they neared the city, Michael surfaced from a hangover reverie. "I was thinking."

"In your state it might be dangerous," Sara playfully cautioned.

"You think God creating the universe was the first spree?"

"You looking for some Biblical justification for your behavior?"

"Precedence, that's all."

"Forget it, it wasn't a spree, he rested on the seventh day, remember."

"He was already finished. It was already done. Stars, fish, people, it was done."

"It wasn't finished. His rest was part of it."

Sara caught herself getting heated. " I can't believe this."

"What?"

"I come all this way trying to save you from yourself and wind up arguing theology with a man in your condition."

"Is it the theology that's bothering you, or my condition?"

"What do you think? A few hours ago you were so drunk you thought it appropriate to be screwing on D.H. Lawrence's doorstep."

"Memorial."

"Okay memorial."

"As in memory of," Michael said with slurred emphasis. "Besides, my present condition is the only one where I'm able to think about such things. My attempt to be an aspiring priest seems to have drummed it out of me otherwise. It's funny because it was this very question that ended my brief career."

"The meaning of the seventh day?"

"I just couldn't get it. I tried, really concentrated. It just set off some horrible commotion in my head I couldn't stop. I had to quit. It's what led to my thinking that hell was God's first failed creation."

"They must have loved that bit of heresy."

"No, at the time I was equally inept at heresy and orthodoxy. This came to me years later. It was the line, 'And God saw that it was good.' It finally dawned on me that he didn't know how it was going to turn out. He could have created anything he wanted. Why would he choose to make it so unpredictable?"

Sara had an answer, but was curious what Michael would say.

"He must have known better. By experience maybe. Maybe there was a first creation where God knew everything that was going to happen ahead of time. Perfect and ordered and a huge mistake. It was like a giant machine, a real no exit kind of place. Hell was God's first failed creation. And so he created a second."

"And got it right."

"Yeah he saw that right away. So we live in two creations side by side. You can find yourself in one or the other, and despite everything I do, and I do get out there, really out there as you know, most of the time I'm stuck in the first."

"Looking for the exit."

"Yeah, or the entrance to the real creation, the door that opens into life. And there are moments when it seems that a woman, a situation might do it, and I pursue it."

"Right up to Lawrence's doorstep."

"She was a book editor and loved Lawrence. I tried to be the next best thing. It didn't hurt that I'd read 'Sea and Sardinia."

"I read 'Sea and Sardinia', you just heard me talk about it."

"Okay so I'm second to next best thing. In a more perfect world you would make love to her. Anyway we both thought that Lawrence would appreciate the spirit of our undertaking."

"I'm sure he would. On the other hand, you must have noticed that the neighbors were not Dionysos and Bacchus."

Michael wasn't listening. He was already lost in a memory of parochial school. He was still back there struggling with it, when she asked him if he would listen to one of my tapes, thinking it might do him some good. She described my background and how we met doing work for indigenous peoples and had become friends.

"I'm not indigenous," Michael interrupted. "Maybe you're branching out into other categories like helping the indignant or the indulgent."

Sara knew he would razz her about the political correctness and her saying she trusted me. She was desperate enough about his condition to think that the altered state of consciousness engendered by a miserable hangover and deep depression might constitute a receptive frame of mind. Over his protest she started the tape.

Michael apparently got as far as the first lines. "The revolutionary idea we're putting forth here is that sexual fantasy is not just something you make up that brings you pleasure, it has a meaning. Interpreting and understanding that meaning can change your life. I'd go further and say that sexual fantasy is a call to change your life." Sara was sure his promise to listen to the rest of the tape was just an effort to get back to sleep and was surprised when it eventually turned out otherwise.

I wish I could say the idea had come to me when I first saw the cave paintings at Lascaux. Or at the very least germinated from that experience and the various clues from other fields. There were stepping stones that could have defined a path, anthropological studies of Paleolithic art and shamanism, psychology and Eastern religion. Reflecting later I could retrace these steps and see what I had missed.

I was in France for a conference. A rare opportunity to visit the West. Lascaux was merely one of the many sights to be seen. It had been closed to the public for some time in an effort to save it from further deterioration. I was fortunate to get the opportunity to visit it through the efforts of a professional colleague. That it had something unique to reveal was furthest from my mind. I was impressed, even moved, but not spoken to. It was all part of the mute grandeur of the world. So the opportunity passed and the direct path of insight replaced by a long and circuitous one.

The idea haltingly evolved many years later through a series of encounters, most importantly one involving a man who had delusions he was a famous philosopher and one involving a fallen evangelist. So much more pleasing to have made the leap from the insight contained in a 25,000 year old painting connecting sexual ecstasy and a way to knowledge. But such boldness is left only to children, who can see that Africa and South America fit together and have to wait years as their elders ponderously catch up to them.

It was shortly after a return visit to France that Michael appeared briefly at the back of one of my workshops. He never came back. It happens rather often, it's difficult work. I had no opportunity to learn any more about him than I had heard from Sara.

It wasn't until my life was threatened and the FBI showed up along with a set of my tapes, that I knew Michael was involved in the events in Washington. The tapes were among the things found in his car which the Georgia police fished out of a river, including the body of someone they accused him of killing.

Chapter 2

In the mid 1980's it was a typical setting for the intersection of illicit commerce and politics. An airfield cleared in the midst of a jungle in South America. A customized plane sat on the runway. The head of a drug cartel, Emiliano Diaz, surrounded by paramilitary troops, waited as an American operative exited a jeep nearby.

Diaz could have had a functionary be there in his place. His choice of not doing so put him in unnecessary danger. It was a matter of pride. Foolish pride, he knew. But when is pride not foolish. He grew up very poor and it was the only coat he had. He still wore it.

The linear dirt track runway announced a single-minded intention in the face of the impenetrable density of the surrounding jungle. It made flight out of the rain forest possible. A hundred miles away, across the mountains, Indians, who were being driven off their land, held on to an incomparably older way of flight. Their shamans took magical journeys from the jungle to the world of the spirits in order to maintain the integrity of their tribe.

The operative, whose name was Russell Everett, was interested in a more prosaic kind of flight. But one which he too believed was necessary in keeping his world together.

The rain forest offered a perfect place to grow and process the cocaine. It also provided with its profusion of trees and vines a perfect place to hide. In such tropical profusion the Hindus conceived the idea that God could even hide from himself. The drier world of the biblical Middle East was one of transparency. Eden, lush as it was, wasn't much of a place to hide.

But hiding was only of a practical concern for Everett, not a moral one. The clearing was the site of an invisible line. Step over it too boldly and the ethical tension that holds you and the country together begins to dissolve. Fall too short of it and you leave the field to someone else.

Everett had gone over that line many times, his career was built on that. As long as he knew the exact coordinates of just how far, he felt he could always get back. The moral terrain was no different than a topographic one. He had turned the Sisyphean effort of endlessly climbing back up slippery slopes into a kind of moral aerobics. It tested a certain moral rigor.

Diaz was looking at Everett as he approached. Everett was medium height had short dark hair and a military bearing that he had tried unsuccessfully to ease. He understood the problem. It was second nature to him and he had never known a first.

Diaz thought that he was like El Norte, cold, distant, clean. He and the others always seemed like they were headed for the stars. Diaz was bound to the earth and its dirt and blood. He loved it, but even he was giving his son to El Norte to go to college. He saluted Everett, gave him a warm embrace and finally a suitcase. Everett saluted back and climbed into the plane.

He checked that the suitcase was filled with hundred dollar bills and took off. He looked disdainfully at the Colombians below. The reckoning would have to come later he thought and then muttered to himself, "Billions of dollars, and all they can think of doing is buying yachts and gold bathtubs."

Ordinarily the suitcase of money would have gone from him through a dummy corporation to a bank like the one in Coral Gables, or Australia, but this was being sent by courier to Europe. The destination was someone he had only known as a constellation of rumors he had heard for some years. He had heard enough to make him realize that while he was trying to win the cold war, this person was planning for the next.

The flight ahead was routine, so he occupied himself speculating who the person might be. He recognized the rumors as a carefully constructed cover. They almost always stemmed from couriers and go betweens. This individual could be a fiction created by a group of people, or might be one of them protected by the others.

It was not in his interests to professionally penetrate it. This was for his private amusement so he continued in his efforts to fill in the blanks.

Of all the stories he had heard, one seemed more coherent and plausible. It often included the joke that the object of his speculation was an enigma wrapped in an expensive Armani coat. It went on to suggest that he was illegitimate, the son of a German high official who had escaped the downfall of the Third Reich to live in Argentina. The fall of Peron led to a brief sojourn in Brazil, remote Mato Grosso but also Sao Paulo where his father's interest in the prurient nightlife led accidentally to his birth.

The father's exile continued on to Paraguay, leaving his son to his own exile. His mother put him up for adoption, never telling him who his father was. He was left to solve the mystery of his identity. Having finally done so, he made his history a matter of complete indifference. He made no claims for himself one way or the other. That he was once poor, illiterate, now well to do and self educated. Irrelevant. Who his mother was, his father. Irrelevant.

This made his associates even more curious. They looked into it with conflicting results. In the end they realized it didn't matter, it was made irrelevant by the force of his character.

His father had lived at a time of great catastrophe, and rather than be buffeted around the edge of the maelstrom, he chose to move to its center. He worked for Hitler and secretly for Stalin giving substance to the long held notion that someone in the German high command had been a spy.

The son lived in a different age, but like his father he was fascinated with power, though not being on the margins of it. In the coming battle between the nationalists and the internationalists, it was simply a contest of vision and money. It was always a contest of vision and money.

He was certainly a visionary, but was clear headed enough to intuit that in having a dream there was the possibility of a nightmare. He felt the risk was worth it, even more, it was life at its fullest, the only life bearable. He possessed the vision, now he would set about getting the money it required.

Chapter 3

When Michael was eight years old he carved his initials into a tree. So intent on making his mark, he didn't notice that the tree was dying. The tree was gone in five years. Later Michael simply understood it as yet another example of putting his faith in the wrong place, and in his self absorption missed what there was to see. Another child in that part of the country noticed the yellowing leaves and curiosity ruled over pain. She became a botanist and reasoned that what could kill one tree could kill another.

Michael's mother disappeared when he was two. She was gone he was told, but not just for a day or two, but in a special way. She had been a religious person and a writer and she had killed herself and he was told simply that she was gone.

He imagined that she was swallowed up by a black hole. He wanted to enter it, to go into that darkness and find her. But it was a darkness that ate all light and the thought of it shook him with terror. He wished for a light so brilliant it would break that darkness. "I can't go there," he anguished in defeat. Later as he grew came the knowledge that she was dead and no one goes there.

Without her, life's joy and terror impinged upon him unabated. His mind filled with an onslaught of images. His father had reacted to the loss by becoming even more removed. His older brother was with his friends. Michael was left alone to deal with the loss. Overwhelmed he put his heart in a hidden place and with his mind by force of will he banished the images.

One day at school a boy taunted him with the story that his mother had killed herself. It was as if someone had taken a framed photograph Michael had of her and smashed it into pieces. He beat up the boy who told him. He couldn't wait to get confirmation from his father that it was a cruel joke.

Michael was devastated when he heard the truth. It was a sin, it was incomprehensible, but somehow he couldn't allow her picture to be shattered. His father's only explanation was that it just happened. His brother said only that their parents fought.

Michael gradually found his way by imagining he knew what his mother would say if she were here, what she would want him to do. The idea grew in him that she would have wanted him to be a priest. A priest would be someone who would not fear going into that darkness and save her.

Michael entered into his religious studies with dedication and passion. He was given an exegesis to do about God resting on the seventh day. He could have followed the lines offered by various commentaries, but the questions that naturally arose absorbed him personally. If God rested from the labors of creation what did that mean? Could it be that hard to turn spirit into matter? Why did God choose such a problematic creation only to have it yearn after spirit? Spirit seeking matter, matter seeking spirit. Will they meet only in heaven, or can they meet here on earth?

The questions led one to another and Michael worked diligently, driven to come up with answers, but his efforts began to be interrupted by sexual fantasies. They started with an innocent girl magically entering his life and grew increasingly vivid, erotic, and disturbing.

The more he tried to concentrate, the more intense they became. He went to see his advisor, who was reserved and conservative, but not without humor. He had a sign on his door that read, "Eternity in progress, please enter". Michael was uncomfortable telling him about his problem, but the advisor listened with sympathy. Having heard of such difficulties before he had a ready answer. Michael simply had an overly active imagination. It was a difficulty now, but could become a gift with prayer.

The encounter appeared to have ended and Michael started to get up when his advisor had an afterthought.

"Maybe it's a problem of you reaching too much. Not so much reaching for, Michael. Maybe it gets in the way of something reaching to you."

"The holy ghost."

"Be open to it."

"The only ghosts I see are not so holy."

The advisor started to think about it.

"Prayer, Michael. Be diligent."

Michael thought of Christ in the desert resisting temptation. He thought of the various Saints and what they endured. It was no use. Eternity seemed another emptiness. He dropped out in the first year.

Public high school filled him with a lonely indifference. He was aimlessly passing through the experience when he discovered athletics and the martial arts. Time became his companion. It could be as close as a step in front of him urging him on, or a distant goal to rush toward. Relentlessly pushing himself with it, he became a high school track star. And there was always someone to pursue. He was at his best coming from behind in a race, chasing down his opponents.

He idolized Woodward and Bernstein and thought about becoming a journalist. He was bright enough, but his grades suffered for lack of concentration. His high school coach suggested he think about a career in the Drug Enforcement Administration. He had the makings of a good agent and the coach had some connection.

Michael tried various other jobs for a few years before he took up his coach's suggestion. He was hired by the DEA and somewhat to his surprise it seemed ideal. It was a clear cut moral universe where he could exercise his drive to succeed and his tireless pursuit of drug dealers. He had a burning intensity beyond that of his fellow agents. Most of them shared his passion, but theirs was mitigated by other concerns, the usual ones like survival, advancement and family.

His ceaseless, single-minded focus didn't go unrecognized. He was the type of gungho agent they nicknamed Y.A.'s. Officially it stood for Young Ahabs, unofficially for Young Assholes.

Most of the others outgrew it. They got married, had kids and changed. He got married, had a kid and didn't. So they continued calling him Young Ahab, at first with some humor and then when they couldn't temper his fanatical enthusiasm, with derision. He made them uncomfortable and they regarded him as a danger. They passed along the accumulated wisdom. There were no old Ahabs, only old rehabs.

He ignored them. He knew the real danger was nebulousness. Life had to have a point, like a fire needed something to keep burning. Without it there was emptiness. It didn't matter if it was the kind that ached or just made the days drift.

In the early eighties he was constructing a career making case, building a pyramid, tying some small fry Panamanian drug dealers to their higher ups. To his growing satisfaction it was going very high up. Too high as it turned out. His supervisor called him into his office and warned him off the case. It was a matter of national security he was told.

He angrily responded that the security of the most powerful nation on earth didn't require protecting drug dealers. More probably the pet projects and egos of some intelligence officers did. "Get yourself another whale," the supervisor said with finality.

The two other agents assigned to the case agreed with Michael, but wanted nothing to do with his decision to proceed anyway. They informed his superiors, hoping they would try to stop him. They didn't and he chose the surprise of early morning to go in. The dealers were tipped off and told to clear out. Instead of leaving, they stayed around and ambushed him for fun. He was shot in the leg.

Disabled, he was offered a desk job for better pay. He was strictly a street agent. He knew the job was offered for his silence. His only interest in taking it was the chance to follow up on his own case. He pursued it relentlessly to the exclusion of everything else and wasn't silent.

His superiors responded to pressure coming from high up in the Executive Branch to take care of the situation in the interests of national security and of course continued support for their programs. The damage control included transferring the two other agents who were on the case. One had clout enough to get himself kicked upstairs to a cushy bureaucratic job in the Washington FBI office. This despite interagency animosity. Michael was let off with a disability.

The pursuit was over. The chase was over. Crippled and bitter that he was set up, he was driven to find out who did it. It was a passion that soon became an obsession. Although his reconstruction of what had happened made progress, leading him from the Panamanians ultimately to Noriega and an operative named Everett, his haranguing made enemies even of his friends and finally of his wife, who urged him to move on.

His life fell apart, his marriage disintegrated. "Irreconcilable similarities", he joked as they got their divorce.

He would prove them all wrong. He would get his man. He wouldn't let anything deter him, not his drinking, not his lack of sleep, after all the Pinkertons never slept. He was desperate for any lead and chased down the few he got. And when they turned out to be shadows, the chase would turn into a spree, and then he didn't need to be running after a lead, any excuse would do.

What he was doing and what he thought he was doing parted company. Good riddance. All confusion and agony burnt up in an all consuming passion.

It led to situations sometimes romantic, sometimes brutal. Waking up not only wondering where he'd been, but who he'd been. Living with recollections vague and not so vague. Like the one of a naked young woman over the back of his car in the middle of nowhere swearing at him somehow laughingly, angrily and lewdly at the same time. And women who wanted poetry underneath the moon and women who thought a black eye was sexy underneath their sunglasses.

It always started the same way as the sight of some woman suddenly pierced him, filling him with an impossible longing, a feeling so intensely painful it seemed like a knife wound. He imagined, when he could manage a laugh about it all, that it must be some payback for a past life as an Aztec priest who cut open sacrificial virgins.

The piercing visions multiplied, leading him on a spree from one woman to the next as he started to drink and drink heavily and take uppers. Not to fuel the fire that was raging in him. It needed no fueling. He was without a guide on this journey so the pills and booze were his friend and protector from the awkwardness and shock of the encounter of primal intensity with everyday life, the rejections, the overwhelming but alienated passion of sex, if it led to that.

Some of the women realized he wasn't there, some were as adrift as he was. It was like defying gravity he described later, cast away memory and consequence and you're so light you can fly. But for how long? It doesn't matter, gravity is in league with the ground and we'll all end there soon enough.

But the overcoming of the force of gravity or inertia involved another force, a force that propelled him to freedom. But what force or passion? And was he then not free but at its mercy? Once possessed, was possession the cost of freedom? Or could it be the road to it? He didn't know.

Six months later he was lost in the middle of a spree and missed the news that broke about the killing of Camerene, a DEA agent who was tortured by Mexican drug dealers. The outrage this produced pressured the CIA to sacrifice some of its contacts in order to reveal the dealers involved.

When Michael came to he was mortified to realize he was in no shape and in no position to add his voice to the outrage. Getting some rest would have helped if he could have stood resting. When he slowed down he couldn't get comfortable. His own body felt like an ill-fitting suit. He could only feel comfortable moving at speed and he was going nowhere.

He filled his sleepless nights with radio. He would sit in the dark listening to a montage of voices and music from different channels. It reached him like a transmission from another planet, proving to himself that there was a form of life out there, distant, alien and curious. It filled the silence, but didn't touch him.

Political programs especially amused him, they were so far off the mark. He was like a cynical chorus, making remarks to himself as the guests thrashed around in their ignorance, taking some solace that they were more out of it than he was.

His nightly montage of listening finally led to his hearing Sara's program. He was amused by her opening lines. "This is Inside America, where you the listener help uncover the truth." "The "blind leading the dame" he would joke every time he heard her intro.

He became something of a regular listener to her twice a week broadcasts. Not because of the show's content which he dismissed thoroughly. He was held by a quality in her voice. It was painful hearing how naive and earnest she was. He tuned in every so often he told himself to see if she got any better background information, but more likely hoping to see she had lost some of her earnestness.

That she didn't needled him. It challenged him in a way he didn't like. He would have stopped listening had he not heard her mention Everett.

He must have been only half listening because it seemed to come out of nowhere, said in passing in a list of names long familiar to him. It riveted him. He was shocked to hear somebody else mention Everett's name, something that seemed to exist only inside his head. He was impressed that she was able to piece together as much of his history as she did.

His private drama had gone public. He wasn't alone, somebody else was in the chase. And then he realized that she was in the chase and he was barely even watching.

This wouldn't do. He began with the limited intention to check out the information she had uncovered. But almost overnight it reignited his commitment to get Everett. He reestablished contacts he had in his years at the DEA. A good deal of his work was in using bank officials, informants, and hackers to trace money laundering, follow the money trails.

All of them were surprised and not exactly happy to see him again. He no longer had the institutional clout of the DEA. He relied on a few old debts owed him, but mainly on the persuasiveness of remaining silent about their present activities.

He created an intricately detailed hierarchy out of the photographs and data, and he watched it, the comings and goings of dummy corporations, offshore holding companies, Swiss bank accounts, wiretaps, especially anything having to do with Everett. He had an admiration for the historians and researchers he read. It was an art to reconstruct history out of meetings and phone calls, bank accounts and computer readouts. But he wanted more, to anticipate, to watch a pattern grow and intercede in its moment of crisis.

In certain operations he detected Everett's presence. But most of his information was secondhand, and the trail was cold, and he wasn't interested in adding to speculative history, but to catch him in the act. He wanted to draw blood.

It was like trying to discover a comet. You had to watch and watch and be lucky and he didn't seem to have much of that. Although he knew the saying luck came to those prepared, he held out the hope that if he worked hard enough he could eliminate chance and luck altogether.

The cost of his research ate up his disability checks. Out of necessity he started a security business. His interest in it was nil, but he did rather well anyway. It was just as an acquaintance had told him. "This one even you can't screw up. You got fear as your silent partner."

He called Sara after a program she did on the DEA and talked to her for an hour an a half. It was journalist's dream. They met for coffee.

Sara had successfully occupied an underinhabited niche as a liberal voice in radio. She was outgoing, bright, and ivy league educated. She had met her husband Jack in law school as she was preparing to be an activist lawyer. It turned out she was bored with practicing law.

Jack thought with her engaging personality she should try the media. He had friends who owned a radio station. His initial idea was a radio show with her answering questions using her law background. It was obvious her real interests were political so the idea soon became "Inside America", a talk show with a liberal slant. The politics didn't match the owner's views, but Jack convinced them it was good business.

It wasn't. Engaging in person, Sara was stiff and shy on the air. The show was kept on as a personal favor. Her improvement was slow. It didn't help that her marriage was breaking up. At her worst she thought Jack had devised the radio show to make himself feel less guilty about having his affairs. "I've got to hand it to you. You're the only person who could be having an affair and still be overcontrolling."

Not long after they separated Michael called the show. His wealth of background information helped her confidence. His intensity made her nervous, but she sensed a chemistry between them that might work on the show. She asked him to be a guest. He was knowledgeable, controversial and funny. The show clicked which led to his being a regular, almost a cohost.

They started having an affair. Michael's raw edges made for good sex, but he was too turbulent for someone trying to sort out her new life. She sensed he wasn't all there, but certain moments hinted at something inside. Nothing he wanted to deal with. "Don't you ever think about things?" she asked him. "They already bug me enough, they don't need my help." The two let the affair pass by, but they remained friends.

It was a friendship that was tested. Michael used up his backlog of information and wasn't getting much new. Frustrated and desperate that he had run dry, he took his customary way out. Sara picked him up in several adjoining states and helped him recover from these episodes.

It didn't seem to effect his performance on the show. If he was less informative he was more witty. It still worked except for Michael. Sara tried to reassure him as they walked to their cars after a ragged show. Michael shook his head.

"The show wasn't bad, I was."

"We just couldn't get beyond the flak to the real issues. All that talk about protesting the UN. By the way what was that stuff about the Gurkhas?"

"The callers didn't like the UN using US troops like mercenaries to police the world."

"I gathered."

"They're worried here will be next."

"What do they suggest? We let a fascist set up his own country in Eastern Europe? We'll be back in the middle ages in no time."

"The point is why is he acting so boldly now? But don't ask me, I'm only the person that's supposed to know. What about the call about soft money versus hard? She even quoted Bryant's Cross of Gold speech."

"And then she got stuck on 'the Federal Reserve is as about as Federal as Federal Express."

"It still could have been a natural intro to money and politics."

"It was my fault. I should have gone with our original idea of that as a focus."

"That'd be great if I had turned up something fresh. Your listeners were more with it than I was. And the election question."

"It's a long way off, and what can you say? We've got tweedledum and a field of tweedledees stretching from New Hampshire to California."

"Not if Allan March is in the picture. They asked me a simple question, do I think he's going to run? Simple if you know where the money's coming from."

"So you gave an educated guess."

"I wouldn't have to guess if I knew."

"You're working on it."

"It's a good line, I use it often. I'm not getting anything from the usual sources. Either they've gotten damn good at keeping quiet or I'm going deaf. I've got to take some time off, see if I can come up with something."

Sara knew what that meant, but she didn't say anything.

In a week he did actually produce a lead. A small one. He got a tip that a financial advisor to Everett was part of a group of investors interested in a beer company. It wasn't much, but you never know. Through his contacts he checked what it looked like on paper. Everything was upfront. No offshore assets. No dummy corporations. There were no promising signs anywhere. There was nothing here and he knew it.

He drove out to the breweries to confirm the obvious. He was as usual thorough, talking to everybody including the beermeister. Everett was thinking about retiring. Some friends of his were trying to set him up with good investments, like a string of microbreweries that could be made enticing to a conglomerate.

The beermeister offered Michael some samples of his art as the spoke. He remembered Everett and liked him and his enthusiasm. The others were interested only in finances. He was an amateur beer maker and wanted to talk about the process.

Michael left and decided to do some more sampling at a local bar. It didn't improve his outlook. He was depressed. It wasn't only that checking this out had been pretty desperate. It was hearing the words retire and Everett together.

He ordered another beer and considered his ultimate nightmare, Everett retiring. The thought of him just getting up and walking away from all this. He'd become somebody different, a stranger, even to himself. And where would that leave Michael? Even if he killed him it would be like killing another person, or somebody already dead. It gave him the shudders thinking about people changing like that. Permanent.

He didn't like the feeling. He was being ridiculous. What's the big deal about change? Hell he changes every time he takes a drink, doesn't he? No, it's like that Scandinavian warrior heaven, Valhalla, where you fight all day and wake up the next with all your wounds gone, ready to go at it again. You have a few drinks, change scenery a bit and next morning you're back the same. Or are you? He didn't linger long on that thought.

There was a woman sitting at a table nearby, reading a book. "So who am I competing with?" Michael said by way of introduction.

* * *

Two days later Sara was driving to Taos to pick him up. She was thinking about her life as she admired the red dirt mesas set off against a brilliant blue November sky. The mesas were once under water. Life's definitely about change. Just wish my life had a little less. At least Michael is picking nicer spots to fall to earth. Maybe Nimé's tape will help. Jack, it's still hard. Easier if I didn't see him, but he's great with the kids. They need it. Still hoping we'll get back together.

Parents broke up. Why I'm good at picking up pieces. Years of practice. I make a mess and then I pick up the pieces. I thought if you knew the past you weren't condemned to relive it. Must be a different kind of knowing. There's knowing in your head that fire burns and there's the kind of knowing when you put your finger on a hot stove and your hand pulls away. Must be more like that. Knowing it in your bones. How do you do that? Might have to settle for reminder notes on the refrigerator.

What happened to something working for a change? What about the show, the children? Can't take credit there. Seem to work in spite of how I screw up. There you go. She caught herself. She repeated two lines her friend Ann had given her that helped. "Today has never been done. Go easy on yourself."

Sara had wired the bail money. Michael was waiting in the shade in front of the city hall as she pulled up. It was hot and there was no soft breeze to shift the sun's focus. He seemed to stagger under its glare as he walked unsteadily over to Sara's car.

"Congratulations, you managed to get shipwrecked in the middle of a desert," Sara joked as he got in.

"We were just trying to follow a mighty river to its source. What can I say?"

She smiled as she took in his appearance. He was wearing sunglasses, a baseball cap and a D.H. Lawrence t shirt. Michael noticed her smile.

"She loved Lawrence and I wanted to be Lawrence for her." He tugged at his t shirt. "Probably the most innocent form of fetishism I've ever practiced."

"How gallant," Sara said trying to keep her jealousy in check by remembering she chose to cool off the relationship. "I remember you had a thing for my high heels."

"It's all part of my feeble mystical attempt at having a thing for everything."

"And who did you want her to be?"

"I don't know. She was southern, maybe she could have been Anabelle Lee. She was doing just fine as herself."

"Where'd you meet?"

"My mouth and her mouth, my mouth and her thighs, her mouth and..."

"Location, location, location."

"In a bar. I was sitting there thinking about this lead, but it looks for all the world like they took over a beer business, plain and simple. I kept going over it and dead silence, not a thought or idea's crossing my mind, empty and dry as that field over there. Then it begins like a few drops of rain and right away it turns into a flood. Every woman from there to here's going on in my head at once with every idea you could think of."

"Including Ms Lee."

"We made quite a fire, but I think she was disappointed it was only Michael Flaherty who emerged from the ashes."

"Were you expecting anything different?"

"I always seem to."

The two drove on. As they neared Albuquerque Sara played the tape for Michael.

"The revolutionary idea we're putting forth here is that sexual fantasy is not just something you make up that brings you pleasure, it has a meaning. Interpreting and understanding that meaning can change your life. I'd go further and say that sexual fantasy is a call to change your life."

Chapter 4

There were once photographs and memorabilia covering the walls of the study of an antebellum mansion in Columbia, South Carolina. Memorabilia of a family's long involvement in American military history, from Revolutionary War through Desert Storm. For the owner, Richard Coulter, what was passed on was not so much tradition, but that there was a place in this world where honor and fear and passions in the extreme could be expressed and tested and that his family always had a place there.

He had held them in his heart. He began to realize that it required more than the static grip of remembrance. They lived in a world made increasingly distant by the demands of his financial success. He found himself in a another world where the days welded together without a seam, and progressed with their own mundane logic until he was enclosed in them.

His disease in the beginning was fit into the same rhythm of accomplishment, success or failure. It was something to be overcome.

He gradually realized it wasn't going to be like that. It intruded into this seamless moving circle, breaking it. He viewed this with at first shock and then something deeper, richer, a kind of despairing relief, as a space was broken through, in which he could sense another world and he felt their presence once again.

He removed the mementos and sat in the den with the bare walls until the voices of those in the photographs began to speak to him. They urged him to action. But what to do? He called Everett. Everett served in Vietnam with his eldest son. Through his son he knew him well. More in the family mold than his son who was pensive and academic, and who served out of duty.

Everett was born to combat. He found the rhythm of the military frustrating, the long stretches between hostilities, periods of politicking and reconsideration of strategy and just waiting. His thought was tied to action and being with the CIA during the cold war provided ample opportunities with the bonus that everything was at stake. Post cold war conflicts increasingly felt to him like battles of mercantile interests over shelf space in the international emporium.

His career was beginning to uncomfortably parallel that of Colonel Smedley Butler, the repentant policeman for United Fruit. Coulter's call was a great relief.

Now Coulter had to convince others. He began meeting with like-minded people, and his house was often filled as they argued out their positions. His illness with its attendant cough robbed his refined southern accent of its fluency, but gave it the power of urgency.

"I remember my grandfather used to tell this story, just for a laugh it seemed, but now I don't know. Anyway, this fellow was out for a Sunday drive and he stopped in at an auction. He was always looking for old railroad gear. It turned out they didn't have any, but there was an old wheelbarrow that caught his eye. He asked about it. Belonged to Jefferson Davis he was told. The Jefferson Davis.

"That's right the salesman assured him. It's in awfully fine condition the fellow said. Well the salesman hems and haws and all the hemming and hawing must have improved his memory because he comes up with the fact that the handle finally broke and what could he do but replace it. And now he seems to recollect, the country gentleman who owned it before him replaced the wheel and so on. Turns out they went and called the thing Jefferson Davis' wheelbarrow even though it no longer had a damn bit in common with the original.

"And come to think of it, they're pulling the same shenanigans when they call this country America even though they've gone and substituted all the institutions that made it so. They may call it America, but it's America in name only."

"Richard, I knew that given long enough you'd accidentally stumble over the point," one of the other men jokingly interrupted.

"Very funny. But look at this, we've got an American army that's American in name only, it belongs to the UN. 'There's no substitute for victory,' MacArthur said. Well, they've found one, it's playing policeman for the UN. We've got an American economy that's being run from Geneva Switzerland. They've perverted the constitution, corrupted our institutions, made a mockery of our schools, a nightmare of our cities, destroyed the middle class. I don't know about you, but I think what we've got going here is starting to look a lot like Brazil."

"Okay, suppose we all agree America is being turned into a third world country. Where are we going with this?"

"We're going to take the country back".

"We're businessmen for God's sake."

"Yeah I know this isn't our stock and trade. It also wasn't the stock and trade of those gentlemen that founded this country."

The men fell silent.

"It comes down to who's going to do it? They're filling the country up with people that give them cheap labor, don't ask questions and wouldn't know an American institution if it bit them. These people will accept whatever substitute they sell them. We know better, but we're getting fewer and fewer, dying out or being bought out, and if we just clip our coupons and shake our heads, we'll lose it. And the worse sin will be, we'll lose it without a fight."

"We're not getting any younger."

"Who knows? Maybe if we didn't put up with this crap, we would."

"What about the election?"

"Politicians? They're all whores, bought and paid for by the same people."

"March isn't."

"He's a union man."

"With the teamsters. Biggest pain in the ass I ever dealt with."

"Didn't he quit them?"

"He's still Mister union now and forever."

"That's the problem, he's left and he's right. Where the hell does he stand?"

"Out in the open, and right beside us on what really counts. You all are going to play single issue politics while the country burns."

"Well us poor Neros would like to hear how you propose to get this man elected. He doesn't have a chance of being President."

"That's Everett's job."

"Everett's military, he fought wars, not elections."

"You obviously haven't been involved in any elections recently."

There was laughter.

"Seriously, this is a war, on the American way of life. We can leave this country in the hands of foreigners and one worlders who have no allegiance to America, only profit. We can sit back and profit with them, but we won't live in the country our fathers and sons died to preserve."

Coulter glanced over at a platoon photograph featuring his highly decorated son in Vietnam.

"I tell you from my heart, I hear my son. I can hear his voice. Saving America is worth any price."

Chapter 5

Michael was driving back from an unsuccessful attempt to get information. He had sat out Sara's shows since he returned, hoping for some fresh leads. They had planned upcoming broadcasts on the militia, a series on money and politics and a profile of Allan March. He had files that covered all of it. But if it wasn't news to him, he didn't think he could make it news to anybody else.

He glanced down at the set of tapes Sara left with him. He'd been avoiding it. That had worked until now. It was becoming too obvious to him that he was avoiding it and that got his pride. Dismissing it without listening wouldn't do. He'd have to listen to at least one and shoot it down point by point as he had some of her other finds. He started the tape.

"The revolutionary idea we're putting forth here is that sexual fantasy is not just something you make up that brings you pleasure, it has a meaning. Interpreting and understanding that meaning can change your life. I'd go further and say that sexual fantasy is a call to change your life.

"I know it's hard to believe the cast of characters you find in fantasy have anything to tell you, but they do. Believe it or not I think that 's why they're here. They are intermediaries between you and the sources of your life.

"If dreams are your unconscious attempting to communicate with your waking mind, then sexual fantasy is your waking mind attempting to contact the source of its ecstasy the unconscious. It's a journey we all take, only we are unaware so that its value as a way of knowledge remains a secret to us.

"The mysterious stranger occurs often in fantasy. It's a perfect symbol of that part of ourselves that is hidden, disowned, lost, stolen, forgotten. We are indeed estranged from our powers, our possibilities. So this mysterious stranger has a lot to tell us, to give us.

"Fantasy brings you pleasure. But to leave it at that, without examining the incredible riches within it, it's as if you were given a priceless gift and never opened it because you were so taken by the colorful paper it was wrapped in.

"If it has so much to offer, what has kept us from seeing that it has any meaning? Partially because its sources are the most intense parts of our lives. In those moments pain or pleasure peak, and in the avoidance of the pain or the distraction of the pleasure we are not there.

"And there's the message we all get from society? Like each one of us, society is much more comfortable with a road that leads to compensation than one that leads to emancipation. So society, which is already wary of sexuality's power, wants to keep it to a pleasurable respite that doesn't threaten to change anything.

"We begin with a tension, a longing, and want the release of that tension. The tension we feel is the gap between where we are and the possibilities of our becoming. Sexual release is a momentary arc across that gap. It's temporary because it occurs too rapidly to permit any awareness to be brought to it. Like visiting 10 European capitals in three days. A blur. It comes and it goes and we are moved by it, but we can't see into the heart of it.

"And that's what understanding our sexual fantasies allows us to do. It allows us to make a journey in that gap with awareness. To treat it as a way of knowledge, of fulfillment, understanding and change. And return like other seekers before us with the riches that come with connecting to the sources of our life."

Michael shut off the tape. He drove the rest of the way home sorting out his reaction. If he hadn't been in a car he would have been pacing, stopping only for a sip of coffee. It reminded him of something. It was that funny feeling he got trying to break a case and what he needed was right in front of him and he walked right past it.

This was worse. It was not just right in front of him, it was screaming at him, driving him crazy to get his attention. Life was supposed to be stingy with its secrets, well what better place to hide them, not in some remote place but in plain view where nobody would think to look.

He smiled at its simplicity and directness, but underneath he could feel the fear. You couldn't get lost in trying to find it or trying to avoid it, it was always right in front of you waiting for you to sit down face to face. He thought of himself at thirteen innocently searching for God and it turned out his greatest fear was he was everywhere, and you had to come to terms.

Chapter 6

Everett would never have called it the University of California. It was always Berkeley. He didn't think of it as a school, but simply as one of the capitals of the opposition and had never been there. That he was going there now amused him.

He had an appointment to see a research botanist named Rehema Boulat. He had heard of her years ago, but only as a member of a left wing political group. As he crossed the campus he thoroughly enjoyed the irony that he was going to a place where he was particularly reviled, to see a black woman radical who also hated him and all he stood for. That's what he liked about life, nothing too absurd it wouldn't throw at you. That he now needed her and that she needed him. Eat your heart out Ionesco.

When he got there, her office door was open and she was on the phone. She motioned for him to enter. She had pictures on her wall of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Patrice Lumumba. She got off the phone and noticed him looking at them. She didn't bother with a phony greeting.

"You assassinated all these people, not you of course."

"Do you expect me to apologize?"

"I expect you to have some tidy explanation."

"Malcolm would have appreciated my position. By any means necessary. And that should be your position now, by any means necessary, even if that means is me. Drugs are killing your people."

"You ought to know all about that. Our man in Ilaponga. Was it just advisory or did you actually help them load it?"

"They're enterprising sort. They would have sold it with or without our help. This way our scum beat their scum, and you and I can have this pleasant tete a tete in peace and freedom."

"I'm sure you always have a handy rationale."

"Never leave home without one."

"I don't like you or your politics, but the government won't do anything, this is the only way. I must have been last on your list."

"The only one."

"What about all the others? There were dozens of scientists involved in the research over the years."

"Your associates are busy hiding their consciences behind 'Top Secret'. They got paid for their research and their silence keeps them getting paid. They're a bright bunch, but they're not going to get the Ellsberg prize for bucking the system."

"Why should I trust you?"

"Things change. The cold war is over."

"There's always another war. They always need money for operating."

"Let me put it this way. It's come to the point where drugs are more of a threat to this country than anything else."

"And if that should change in the future?"

"The cat's out of the bag anyway. You'll be responsible for the most important piece of botany ever done instead of wasting your time not getting grants."

"I'll get another one."

"If we get in, you can have the whole fucking Department of Agriculture."

"That's not why I'm doing this."

Boulat handed Everett a file of research papers.

"It should be. But then it's been a long time since such things really mattered."

Everett began looking over the papers.

"Black Forest, that's perfect, your name?"

She nodded.

"How long have you been working on this?"

"Since I was six."

"You and Mozart."

"Not quite, I didn't write any symphonies. I just noticed the chestnut tree in our front yard was dying and wondered why."

"This all got started with good old chestnut blight?"

"It's no joke. Around 1900 a fungus came into the country on a shipment of botanical specimens from Japan. It started infecting the chestnut trees and spread like wildfire. It killed millions of trees, including the one that was dying in our front yard."

"You obviously didn't put the whole thing together when you were six."

"No, that just got me interested in botany. I didn't make this connection until much later. It wasn't until I'd been involved in studies about the vulnerability of monoculture, the lack of biodiversity."

"You mean the rain forest thing?"

"No, that's a real problem, but this is a different one. The whole world's food supply depends on massive plantings of a very few strains of wheat, corn, and rice. Very economical, growing huge acreage of these things. But something could come along like a chestnut blight to wipe it all out. Over and over I kept hearing how vulnerable our crops were. And I was studying how to prevent this. One day it crossed my mind, what about the plants we're not so crazy about? If there's something in nature that will kill a tree you love, why not one that will kill a tree you're not so crazy about?"

"The millions of acres of coca trees and opium poppies."

"Once I began thinking about it, I checked the literature, which goes back at least to the forties. They were worrying about what would happen if leaf blight broke out in the rubber plantations of South East Asia. They had Schultes studying it. The conclusion was that it would mean the end of the industry. Millions of acres wiped out. Genetic engineering means it can be more prolific and deadly."

"So it's a possibility. Is it more than that?"

"It doesn't involve any great breakthrough scientifically, which makes it all the more tragic it hasn't been done, much more of a political problem than a scientific one. It's not exactly the sort of thing that goes bang and lights up a whole desert. But it could change the world, if it was ever used."

"It'll get used. Either we'll do it or at least we'll force the government to do it. Either way you win. In the meantime we'll keep an eye on you. It'll be a dangerous time until it's announced."

"I remember speaking to a colleague at the University of Arkansas about going public with it in an effort to get some action. He said he didn't want to come out every morning and look under his car for a bomb."

"Any second thoughts?"

"Is that a serious question?"

"Not really, considering what I know of you. But I had to ask anyway."

* * *

The secrecy of Everett's meeting was compromised in less than twenty four hours. Emiliano Diaz heard the news on his way to a mountain resort outside of Bogota. The news of course didn't come to him first. He was retired. The Colombian government needed to show some results in its war on drugs and he was the oldest of the cartel leaders and his power was waning. He had chosen retirement rather than arrest. He wondered what the unretired ones would do with the news. Something stupid. It came from reliable sources in the American Mafia, but it came easily. He didn't trust easy.

Chapter 7

The cabin was in a part of Idaho that was once remote. The neighbors said it was built in the thirties completely out of stone by someone inspired by Robinson Jeffers. The isolation suited him as well as the privation of the depression. Twenty years later prosperity ended that dream as the development of the fifties drove him away to nobody knows where.

Steve Langford had rented it for the summer. The locals liked him. He had funny stories about the life in the East Coast he was escaping, wasn't too handsome, too bright or too anything and he listened.

The bedroom was romantically lit by moonlight as he and Patty Briggs were in bed. Patty was nineteen. She had told a girlfriend he was a breath of fresh air and they laughed considering this was supposed to be fresh air country. Steve was twenty six.

"You're sure something," he complimented her.

"That's what I expect to hear from the guys up here. I thought you were different." She was irritated that he had to rush her off in an hour to go to another meeting. He didn't even seem the type.

"Sorry."

They began making love. Suddenly she froze as she saw a thin beam of laser light trace its way along her body.

"Who's there?"

"A jealous patriot," a voice responded from the darkness.

Shocked, the two anxiously looked up and saw Martin Arens seated in a chair, partially concealed in shadow. Arens was in his early forties, sandy haired and had an almost languid grace. His appearance seemed as if life and death had parceled him out. His body, despite years of physical training, was soft and sensual. His features were hard, chiseled to the point that the artist might have been doing a death's head, except for his vibrant blue eyes that seemed to laugh at the death surrounding them.

He aimed his gun's laser sight at Patty's forehead. Patty was terrified, Steve looked for an escape route.

"You're not in the militia, what do you want?! There's money in my purse."

"I'm not in the militia, but neither is lover boy. He's with the FBI."

"What's he talking about?"

"Shut up," Steve cut her off, focusing on his jacket hanging on a chair nearby.

"Please don't hurt me," Patty pleaded.

"It's a shame you have to die in a drama beyond your understanding, but then don't we all."

In a single motion, Steve threw a pillow at Arens and lunged toward his jacket and a gun. Arens deflected the pillow. He watched Steve's movement as if captured in a series of stills. He waited for the still in which Steve had his gun in hand before killing him with one shot. He was chiding himself about his slightly faulty aim as he shot Patty.

Having killed the pair, Arens entered the kitchen and surveyed it. He returned to the bedroom and dipped his fingers with the blood from Patty's head wound. Going back in the kitchen, he began painting with his bloodied fingers on the refrigerator door.

He stepped back to judge his handiwork. It was a militia symbol, a rattlesnake and the words, "Don't Tread on Me". He smiled appreciatively at what he saw. "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like."

As Arens walked away from the cabin he began singing a ditty to the tune of "Over There".

"Heidegger, Heidegger,

For the angst is coming, the angst is coming,

And they'll soon be fear and trembling over there.

So beware, no exit there,

For the angst is coming, the angst is coming,

And they'll soon be fear and trembling over there."

* * *

A photograph of Arens was on the wall of a loft in downtown Philadelphia. He was one face among thousands as part of a giant collage of photos of organized crime, the intelligence community, militia and fringe groups. The loft was filled with filing cabinets, electronic surveillance equipment, computers and cameras. Jazz music was coming from a set of speakers.

Michael was on an exercise machine, strengthening his bullet scarred right leg. "Four more, don't quit on me," he said as he urged himself on. He was in a pair of shorts and shirtless and right now he was in pain. The phone rang and a voice came from the answering machine.

"Flaherty, this is Mr. Donaldson. That fancy alarm is so sensitive it goes off whenever the damn dog barks. I don't know whether to shoot you or the dog."

Michael ignored the message. He got off the exercise machine and talked to his leg.

"What's it going to be, good day or bad?" Michael tested his leg and winced. He began to massage it when the computer started printing. When it finished he walked over to it and was disappointed at what he read.

He dressed quickly. He was late and not much in the mood to go do a show, but Sara had asked him to come in. Leaving the loft, he stopped to get his mail. A letter addressed to his son had come back "return to sender". He knew it would like the others he'd sent. The pain he felt over his repeated attempts was a form of penance. What he'd do if he actually had to communicate, he had no idea.

He started his beat up but vintage 65 Mustang convertible. He was about to leave when he stopped. He sat in the car making himself more late.

The radio station where he was cohost was in downtown Philadelphia. Michael came up hurriedly favoring his right leg, while balancing coffee and a well worn shoulder briefcase. He arrived at the station. As Michael passed, staff members signaled he was late as he heard the intro to the show.

"From the city of brotherly love, welcome to Inside America, where you the listener help uncover the truth."

Sara Ellison was seated in front of a microphone with headphones on. To her right a computer screen revealed caller information.

"I'm Sara Ellison, with Michael Flaherty, former DEA agent and now a private security consultant. We're talking about the brutal killing of an FBI undercover agent, allegedly by the militia."

Michael entered and signaled an apology to Sara who was displeased. As he put on headphones, Sara handed him papers to read. He was impressed with what he saw. He pointed to the microphone, and shook his head, indicating the material was not for broadcast. Sara continued the show.

"Let's go to the phones, Lansing Michigan, you're on the air."

"Sara, who do you think you are, the liberal Rush Limbaugh? Allegedly?! The militia aren't patriots, they're criminals. Hell with the FBI, we should send in the army. And if this President won't do it, we'll get one who will!"

"Right. Imagine how much we'll save on court costs and haggling over that silly bill of rights. Kathy from Corvallis, Oregon."

"Michael, long time listener, even before you became a regular. The government betrayed you. Wasn't it you who called your superiors traitors? You should be a friend of the militia."

"I did say that. Those are harsh words, but I'll stand by them. But the government didn't betray me, certain people in the government did. That's an important distinction. We have a country based on law not men, and to use the actions of particular men..."

"I know where you're going, but it's more than that. There's a pattern."

"It still comes down to the actions of men. The idea of government is not the problem."

"What about the idea that the government governs best that governs least?"

"That's a mighty fine idea Jefferson had and we should keep it always in mind. But when it came down to it when he was president, he governed pretty hot and heavy. Bought the Louisiana purchase."

Sara barely could wait to respond. "I know it's not exactly fashionable, but we need government, lots of it. I know a lot of you feel you never get a real choice, but where else are we going to get democracy. We've got corporations, political interest groups, fundamentalists, extremists. They all have their goals. They may be right or wrong. But one thing's certain. They're sure not going to put it to a vote. Our problem is not the amount of government. Our problem is the lack of democracy."

Sara went back to the phones. "A call from right here in Philadelphia." There was the sound of a hang up as the call got disconnected.

"Whoops, we lost him. On line three, Randy, a militia member from Larkinsville, Alabama."

"We didn't kill anybody, and the government's going to come after us just the same. They tax us what they want, they teach our kids what they want, they attack us when they want." Randy's baby cried in the background.

"I prayed for God to show me a way for my family, and he has."

Michael was conciliatory. "I've documented government abuse. I've also reported some pretty reckless militia activity. I know there's been a lot of talk, people quoting Jefferson and the tree of liberty, blood of patriots thing. But I think after all these years what impresses us is not the bloodletting of those patriots, but their wisdom and foresight."

"Our local call is back, go ahead line four."

"Sara, good work on exposing the militia. Keep it up. You'll be as dead as that FBI agent!"

Enraged, Michael jumped in. "Don't threaten her, you son of a bitch! Come after me. I'll go one better..." The sound of the caller hanging up cut Michael off. Michael was furious while Sara masked her fear.

"We're off to a lively start. There must be a full moon tonight. Sioux City, Iowa on a car phone."

"You guys make wild claims about the militia, why don't you just name names?"

Sara was caught a little off guard. "We've got a commercial, want to hang on?"

"You're not out of time, you're out of liberal bullshit."

Sara's poise abandoned her.

"You want names?"

As Michael silently mouthed the word "No", Sara read from her paperwork.

"Okay, Russell Everett, Dean Peterson, Dennis Blackwell. Next week we'll document the right wing organizations they work for, and the money trail to the militia. So much for liberal b.s."

Michael took off his headset in disgust.

* * *

The Runway Cafe in a small municipal airport in southeastern Pennsylvania had been aggressively overdecorated with a vintage aircraft motif down to the glassware and napkins. There was a partial view of the runway through the windows.

Arens entered the restaurant, passing by the bar where the bartender was wiping down the counter. The TV over the bar featured a news segment which captured Arens' attention. A female newscaster was standing in front of a farmhouse, while FBI agents were busy collecting evidence.

"The early morning raid left two militia seriously wounded. The FBI seized automatic weapons, explosives and bomb making materials."

Arens joked to the bartender. "Must have been planning one hell of a hunting trip."

As they continued to talk, Everett was sitting at a booth at the back of the restaurant. He was sipping a drink while he pondered the chances of his current operation. He thought about it in military terms, momentum and leverage. How much leverage could a well financed handful of people exert? Even extremely well financed.

He thought of success stories from Joshua to Guatemala to the Bolsheviks. But these were isolated instances in a sea of contrary ones. Most of the time history has a damn stubborn linearity where it takes a damn lot of shovels to move a mountain. But those other times of instability where a butterfly's wings can cause a storm. They keep you coming back.

Easy to say after the fact that the time had come for this idea or that movement, but how to know this from the inside as it happens. That would be a dream. A perfect tactician, in touch with the grain of history and read its fault lines like a diamond cutter. He was speculating that it required some impossible combination of sensitivity and aggression as Arens approached his table.

Arens noticed Everett deep in thought and his orange juice and vodka drink. He smiled as a joke occurred to him

"Philosophizing with a screwdriver?"

"No, I leave that to you. I'm a practical sort." Everett was straight-faced, apparently missing Arens' wit.

"Just a joke about my favorite philosopher," Arens started to explain before he realized that Everett was putting him on.

"You had me for a moment. Practical sort."

Everett pulled out two envelopes and slid them across the table. Arens examined one. It was filled with new $100 bills. Inside the other was a promotional photo of Michael and Sara. Arens viewed it with an intensity that ensured they were two faces he would never forget.

"Rumor is you know this guy."

"It was nothing personal. Neither is this."

"Sure, just a couple of knights in shining armor. You know you're an artifact."

"Undoubtedly."

"No, seriously. That's why I like you. It's a new day. Everything is up for grabs, loyalty is out the window. Aldrich Ames was just a man slightly ahead of his time, a prototype. You and this guy Flaherty are relics. Nations are obsolete which leaves you a patriot without a country. The difference between you and this guy is you know it, and still you choose to sign on. In Japan they'd consider you a National Treasure."

"Remind me to have myself registered."

Arens pointed to the photos. "What do these two know?"

"If they're not guessing it could mean a problem."

"You want a solution?"

"I want to know how they know."

Everett lit up a cigarette with a restaurant matchbook.

"If everything's up for grabs what about you?"

"I refuse to bow to the limitations of my time. History is not on your side old buddy. But I'm a romantic, I still like the odds. I just want to see you and I keep traveling down the narrow road to the deep whatever."

Everett couldn't resist a smile.

* * *

Michael and Sara made it a habit to meet once a week at an upscale bar near the studio to casually talk over how the show was going. Their meeting now was not casual. Michael was drinking as he and Sara were in an argument.

"Two years, and in thirty seconds you blew it. If it turns out to be Everett, I don't want it to look like I'm just getting even."

"Nothing's blown. You're just sore because I was the one that got the information."

"Ridiculous. It's true I'm frustrated that I've run dry, you could have gotten what I've turned up in the last six months in an encyclopedia. But this is a whole hell of a lot more than that. I know its your source and I know I haven't been much help lately, but you know what I've got invested in this."

"You're not giving me any credit for some sense. I wouldn't have gone with it if it didn't look good. You saw it."

"Okay it looked good. Maybe it's too good, maybe it's a plant. You haven't even told me where you got it."

"It was anonymous. I got two mailings a week apart."

Michael was incensed.

"Great, I can't wait till this goes sour and along with it what's left of my credibility. All for a snappy comeback line."

"I cross-checked it."

"You mean what you could."

"You don't trust me, do you?"

"I know about trust. I believed people when they said "till death due us part" and "we're going to win the war on drugs". But trust loses to secret agendas. The government, people against the government, the DEA."

"So what's my secret agenda?"

"To show up your ex husband, piss off your rich relatives, prove you've got balls, be famous, I don't know. But that guy tonight ..."

"That guy tonight is an impotent little man who gets off calling radio stations to feel less impotent."

"And if you're wrong? I could stay at the house?"

"I think we've got enough to handle with our relationship backed off to where it is. I'm okay with this."

Michael took another drink.

"You put my side of the story on the air, and I owe you. But you're treating rumors like truth and there's too much at stake."

"If you're unhappy with my standards, maybe you should quit."

"You want me to quit, you'll have to fire me."

Michael started to leave. "Thanks for the tapes. I'll see you around."

Chapter 8

A cab slowly made its way through the traffic of New Orleans' French Quarter. Two men were in the backseat. They looked out of the same window at the passing scene, but it was a different world each of them saw. One coolly abstracted the city, taking what he wanted and discarding the rest, reshaping it to his liking with emphatic yesses and nos. Cajun not Creole. Funerals and history and politics, not Mars de Gras and Dixieland.

The other man thought no was an unpleasant, silly word. Time was like a heavy handed manic sculptor that reduced everything smaller than the Grand Canyon to furrows and dust. Might as well enjoy it all while you can.

Everett was holding an attaché case. Next to Everett was Dan Hollings. The two men had similar medium build, but while Everett was contained, almost at attention in his, Hollings seemed to overflow its boundaries, definitely at ease. In his 40's and a native of New Orleans, Hollings only concession to a crisp line was the cut of his expensive suit.

"I feel like I'm with a legend, Colonel. I can call you Colonel, even though you're retired?"

"Whatever's simplest."

"I've been looking forward to this. It's not often I get a chance to meet someone who helped win the cold war. It's a little awkward, but I guess I'll just say thanks."

"I appreciate that Dan. I wish I could tell you we lived happily ever after. But that's for fairy tales. Unfortunately we've got serious problems. Dan, I was hoping you could show these reports to Congressman March."

Everett handed the attaché case to Hollings.

"Colonel, if this biological stuff can really do what they say, why hasn't anybody used it?"

"It's been turned down by every administration since McCain offered the prototype to Carter in '76."

"You're not answering my question."

"We're talking about a five hundred billion dollar a year business. That's enough money to buy governments, even ours. You have no idea. Dan, you have any experience with the Mafia?"

"I'm from New Orleans, Colonel," Hollings replied knowingly.

"A President's life would be in constant jeopardy."

"I've been with Allan since we helped take the teamsters away from the mob. I know Allan, that's not going to frighten him off."

"That's why I'm here."

The Cab pulled up to a five star hotel. The two got out, and Hollings checked his watch and looked around. Tess Prudhomme was walking toward him. In her twenties, she had styled red hair and was wearing a sheath dress, a single strand of pearls and a broad brimmed hat. She looked to him like an attractive young socialite who had escaped a boring luncheon and was trying to find something declassé to amuse herself. The assurance of her carriage and movement was only slightly modified by the fact that she was quite drunk.

"Ted??"

"Ted Gilbert, pride of Jefferson parish. And you must be?"

"Diane. Sorry I'm late."

Tess' eye contact was disturbingly penetrating, but also so inviting that Hollings didn't mind the intrusion.

"You're worth waiting for. Diane this is..." Everett clearly didn't want to be introduced.

".. a friend, who unfortunately has a prior engagement."

"Too bad, he's cute."

Tess started to shake hands with a reluctant Everett, but instead embraced him. She ran her hand teasingly below his waist.

"Sure I can't change your mind?"

"That's not my mind."

Hollings took Tess in one arm, and the attaché case in the other. Everett returned to the cab which pulled out into traffic. Hollings walked Tess toward the hotel entrance.

"Now let's see if everything comes to those who wait."

The two were alone as the hotel elevator took them up to their room. Hollings was a little nervous as he couldn't help but notice that Tess' drunken behavior while sexy and funny, had a violent edginess.

"It's too bad your friend couldn't join us. Where's his team spirit? What does he do, he's so busy?"

"He's a businessman like me."

"He's no businessman, I know exactly what he is."

"What's that?" Hollings asked a little nervously.

"Let's have a little bet I get it. I'm good at this. I know my johns."

"What's the stakes?" Hollings asked with faked enthusiasm.

"Double or nothing. I win I get twice my usual, I lose I do you gratis."

"You're on."

"He's a scientist," Tess said confidently.

"That's amazing," Hollings replied with relief. "I owe you."

"See I told you I was good."

"No doubt about it."

"I've got another bet. We'll make it higher odds this time."

Hollings wasn't thrilled.

"I bet you're lying. And I bet I can tell you why."

Hollings stared at her in disbelief.

"How about it?" Tess urged.

Hollings was in a cold sweat. Tess gave him a sweet smile.

"Don't worry, it's just a little game. Making you sweat a little makes the sex that much hotter."

Hollings wasn't quite convinced.

"Everybody's got something to hide. The trick is knowing they'll pay double to cover for it."

Inside the hotel room Hollings set the attaché case on the dresser and paid a bellhop at the door. Tess opened a bottle of champagne and began drinking it straight from the bottle.

"Great vintage."

"It's been a while since I've done this," Hollings said very unconvincingly.

"I've been busy with choir practice myself. Just pick your poison and we'll swim in it."

Hollings looked at her to see if she was serious. It was a nice image even if she wasn't, but she was. He let the image entertain him as he saw himself picking out a bottle in a sort of pharmacy of ecstasy, a cross between a Chinese herb store and a border town farmacia. He was experienced with such choices and knew that like in Alice in Wonderland some would make you larger and some would make you smaller. He couldn't decide which this would make him, so he chose to make her smaller.

"I have a thing about the Civil War, let's talk about Longstreet."

"You serious or you just into humiliating dumb hookers?"

Tess went on before Hollings had a chance to answer.

"Talking about Longstreet will be $150 extra. Pretending I don't know will be $300 extra."

Hollings was both intrigued and put off. Tess picked it up.

"You feel uncomfortable there's more to me. You could have played it safe, you're the type that's got connections, why pick me off the street?"

"Let's just say I like taking chances. Maybe you come up with something different. Dumb is okay, but come to think of it maybe I'd like them hot at both ends if they came that way, but it never works like that."

"You don't work like that. Too dangerous. Men prefer the danger of death and killing. War and all that. Don't you think?"

"I guess it goes with the territory," Hollings said with uncertainty.

"But killing is woman's work too."

Tess formed her fingers into a mock gun and pointed them at Hollings' head.

"I'm good at it. Men ask me to do it for them all the time. Maybe there's something you'd like killed. Tess moved toward Hollings firing off her "gun" as she went on.

"I kill loneliness, I kill emptiness, I kill boredom, I kill fear. What do you have that's deep and dark you want killed?"

Hollings had regained his composure. "I'm in a peace loving kind of mood. Tonight I'm just into watching."

Tess shook her head in mock disapproval.

"You and everybody else. What's happening to this country? There's a tv over there," Tess gestured.

Hollings looked disappointed. Tess flashed a smile.

"I was just kidding. I'll give you something to watch. Check the southern exposure."

Tess turned around and tantalizingly lifted her dress. Hollings appreciated that she was naked underneath it, appreciated that her body required no window dressing. She did a slow grind against the dresser.

"Or maybe you like little schoolgirls?"

Tess plopped herself down in a chair, her legs straddling the arms. She coyly started playing with herself, moaning breathlessly. She suddenly stopped and walked over to Hollings who was mesmerized.

"But I'm tired of all this watching. Aren't you? We should get close. Rub each other the wrong way, the right way, every way."

Tess took a guzzle of champagne.

"Come on now, there must be a real man inside you somewhere. Show me you've got something more than a pair of eyes."

Hollings began passionately kissing her. Tess pulled away.

"How romantic. You're the kind that gives flowers and then can't even get it up."

Tess reached for his crotch.

"You're as soft as a baby's ass," Tess taunted.

Hollings snapped. "Fucking whore!"

In a rage Hollings ripped open Tess' dress. He shoved her up against a wall, slapping her across the face. Blood gushed out of her mouth.

"You've broken my fucking nose! Get me a towel. Hurry!"

Hollings hesitated, weighing passion against propriety as he caught his breath.

"If you like it we'll continue, but it's blood on a towel or your new suit."

"I like it," Hollings said as he turned and went into the bathroom. Tess instantly turned cold sober. She took a blood pill from her mouth, grabbed the attaché case off the dresser and rushed out.

Hollings finished wetting a towel in the sink and came back into the bedroom. He was stunned to see the room was empty and the door wide open. A moment later he realized the attaché case was gone. Swearing a blue streak, he dashed into the hallway and ran into a Japanese bellhop who was carrying a tray filled with pastries and coffee. As they untangled, Tess hurried down the hotel stairwell with the attaché case. She paused to see if she was followed.

There was an artist's portfolio case on the landing. She placed the attaché case inside of it. She took a nylon coat out of her purse and put it on, wiped the fake blood from her mouth and removed her wig. A pair of sunglasses and a beret over her blonde hair finished her transformation.

Moments later Tess emerged from the side entrance to the hotel. She walked casually away and got into a cab. She had the cabby drive around until she was satisfied she wasn't being followed and then had him drop her off. She made a phone call, picked up her car and drove to her apartment.

It was on the third floor of a building badly in need of reclamation. She had asked the owner about fixing it. "Darling, here in New Orleans decay is just part of the charm."

As Tess neared her door she heard one of her Edith Piaf CDs playing inside. She loved that Kit shared her taste. She expected to see him when she walked in, but the apartment was completely dark. She was shocked to hear Hollings' voice.

"Nice music, now give me back my case, and nobody gets hurt."

Panicked, Tess dropped the portfolio case. She was about to bolt out the door when she heard the sound of laughter. The light went on and she saw the bellhop, Kit Shimizu, laughing at his practical joke.

Kit was in his late twenties and pleased that his "too pretty" looks which had mocked the severity of his background, finally were being replaced by well worn character. Like all self made men, he had some help. He got his nickname Kit from his favorite writer, his vintage clothes from the top designers, his missing finger tip from the Japanese mafia, his dreams from the best minds of Japan's history, and his considerable skills from the streets.

Kit's laughter stopped abruptly as he noticed Tess' bruised face.

"I wish you didn't play it so full out."

He started to get ice out of the refrigerator.

"Don't bother, I'm used to it. "

Kit gave Tess a questioning look. She shrugged it off.

"I like to prove I'm up to taking what life has to offer." Tess laughed to herself. A lifetime of pain echoed in it. "You sure you weren't followed?"

"Positive."

Kit gently applied the ice to Tess' face as she winced.

"I can't stand watching this happen to you."

"Florence Nightingale, let's get to business."

Tess got the attaché case out of the portfolio and handed it to Kit.

"Our usual bet on what's in it," Kit offered as he placed it on the kitchen table.

"Sure."

"Maybe we got something. The guy went berserk."

Kit imitated Hollings squawking.

They both laughed as he took out a small tool and expertly snapped the lock.

"Just so it's better than last time."

Kit opened the case. He and Tess saw file folders sitting on top of a bed of $100 bills. They both were speechless until Kit spoke up.

"Not exactly an Italian sausage sandwich and a change of underwear."

"We've bought trouble."

Tess set the file folders aside and looked at the bills.

"Funny?" Kit asked hopefully.

"Coin of the realm."

Kit sized it up. "About three hundred thousand."

He started to look over the papers.

"What have we got?" Tess asked.

Kit stopped reading.

"I'm not sure. We're definitely in somebody else's wet dream."

"I have a feeling we'll be asked to leave."

"With a vengeance."

"I better find out what we've got here."

Tess refilled the attaché case and prepared to go.

"Be careful," Kit said with more concern than was comfortable. "Don't let him short you again," he added with a forced smile.

Tess drove to a phone booth. With all the traffic noise she didn't have to be subtle.

"I don't give a shit you said don't call here. Yeah, I got it. What the fuck did you get me into? So I looked. It's a goddamn good thing I did. You said it was easy payback. All the sudden I'm in the middle of some war. Bullshit it isn't. Then what is it? It is my business. It's my ass, it's my business. I don't want to be protected. I don't want to need to be protected. Just tell me whose money this is. Fuck you."

Tess slammed the phone down. She thought it over and called another number.

* * *

Left alone, Kit made himself some coffee and sat down to wait for Tess to return. As he did so, he tried to remember as much of the papers as he could. They were about drugs, and he had heard that his former "friends" in the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, were looking for something like this. Of course they really didn't know exactly what they were looking for.

A European dealer in technological secrets had contacted them. He claimed he had some scientific information crucial to their drug trade that he wanted to exchange for money. The asking price put them off, but also made them curious. He only told them it was American and stolen and they would understand when they saw it. They never got the chance. He never showed up for the meeting.

Their first response was it was a scam and he had lost his nerve. But soon the rumor began to circulate that he was bumped off by American intelligence.

Now here were scientific papers about drugs and an attache case filled with money. It could be what they were after. He could inform them and put himself back in good standing, very good standing. That meant nothing to him anymore.

He would tell them, but only because sooner or later they would find out he was involved in the robbery and come after him. He had no interest in them. They were a possibility once. They lived by a code he had foolishly believed. Now they're like the rest.

Might as well call his country land of the rising yen. Its rich heritage lost in a blizzard of banknotes. And all he can do is wait for a movement opposed to all this. But then what? Keep a low profile, play the fool. He was well aware of what happens to ideological purists like himself. If the revolution they helped give birth to fails, they get executed like his idol, the writer Kita Ikki. If it succeeds, they're considered a threat and purged like Rohm, killed in the night of the long knives as Hitler, the "gravedigger" of his own revolution, betrayed it to the industrialists. The list was long. He'd be dead, but in good company.

An hour passed. Kit heard the key in the front door. Tess has come back he thought as it opened.

* * *

Hollings got a message to Everett right after the attaché case was stolen. He was advised what to say if he were contacted by the police. He couldn't believe Everett wanted to reveal as much as he did so he asked him to repeat his instructions. Three days later the New Orleans FBI got a tip from an informant about the robbery and called Hollings. He didn't like it. It was a direct call and the agent wasn't his usual contact. Holllings made it clear he would only speak to his contact and hung up. When they met Hollings was furious.

"Why don't you just put a photo of us both on the front page?"

"Sorry. Someone in the office just got overheated when they got a tip it was a lot of money and drug related."

"The only drugs involved are the ones your agent is on."

"So what is involved?"

Hollings described the robbery and the attaché case filled with money, leaving out Everett and the papers.

"Give me a little something to feed the folks in Washington and we'll all be happy."

Hollings hesitated. He knew just how long to. "It was campaign money."

"March's?"

Hollings nodded.

"Who's the rich uncle?"

"An Italian friend of ours," Hollings lied.

The agent smiled. "Well if Washington asks, I'll tell them I'm working on it."

Hollings smiled back, but he was thinking about Everett. Everett was feeding the FBI a mixture of truth and lies. He didn't have to give them either.

Chapter 9

Sara's house was in a well to do suburb of Philadelphia. Unlike the other houses on her block, Sara's front yard was filled with children's toys. Today was her daughter's birthday, but the yard was always like that. Sara was in the playroom finishing decorating as she waited for the guests to arrive. Jack was in the living room with four year old Melanie, while seven year old Jason was loudly strafing presents with his hand.

"I want to open a present," Melanie more than urged.

"Wouldn't it be more fun if we waited until everybody was here?" Jack reasoned.

Melanie shook her head. Tommy's strafing had gone up some decibels. Jack addressed it.

"Tom, could we tone down World War Three?" Tommy was in a world of his own. Jack turned back to Melanie. "Okay. How about as a favor to me?" Melanie shook her head.

"Good. I'm glad that's settled," Jack said with joking finality as Sara walked into the room. She was obviously angry with him and he noticed with concern.

The trees had some autumn color on the road that led to Sara's. Dark clouds were framed in light by the sun. Had Michael noticed and entered into it, it might have opened a door. As it was, it was all background to him as he sped through the curves confined to his own world. A birthday present was on the seat next to him. He reached into the glove compartment for a cassette tape and started it, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

"I've called this talk Gauguin's Questions, which refers to the title of one of his paintings. He painted it in 1897 in Tahiti. If you're ever get a chance to visit the Fine Arts Museum in Boston you should definitely do so. It's on display there and a masterpiece and a summing up of his art. Its title is, 'Where do we come from?, Who are we?, Where are we going?'

"In all of Gauguin's travels, to Brittany, Arsle, Martinique, the South Seas, you can sense he's searching for an interaction with people and place that would put him in touch with the source of his creativity. I think in doing so he was trying to find answers to those three questions.

"Which brings us to sexual fantasy. I think like all creations and myth, sexual fantasy attempts to answer these same three questions: Where do we come from?, Who are we?, Where are we going? It's an interaction with people and place that tries to put you in touch with the source of your life."

"Where are we going?" Michael repeated to himself as the tape continued. "We're going to a birthday party. My son's birthday is...What the hell why dwell? Get off it. Sara invited you, she wants to make up."

Across the highway was a produce stand with a United parcel truck parked nearby. Michael glanced over. The truck was empty, and no one was working the fruit stand. Michael puzzled over the oddity. He looked for someone in the surrounding trees

"When you got to go, you got to go," he said to himself as if to test out a theory. He drove on with a look on his face as though it didn't pass muster.

Jack entered the kitchen as Sara was making dip in a food processor. She wasn't happy. Jack tried to make peace.

"It's Melanie's birthday, can we just forget it?"

"You always want to forget it when you're wrong."

"Okay, a terrible thing happened to Michael. But that was years ago. He's got no friends, he barely keeps his business afloat, he drove his own family away. His ex won't even let him see his own son."

"You're condemning him for her being unforgiving."

"All I know is Michael has no life, and you do."

"He has a life. You just don't appreciate what he's trying to do."

"You don't appreciate what I'm trying to do. It's time to move on. You've got the talent for something better."

"Better or less threatening?"

"It is threatening when it ends up with some moron calling like that. Look, it's not a matter of blaming anybody. I had no idea myself it would..."

One of the Parents swung open the kitchen door.

"We're ready."

In the living room Michael was talking to the two kids. Melanie was holding a large plainly wrapped present.

"Are you going to open it?" Michael asked.

"Jason's lost the card."

Jason defended himself. "Shows what you know. It didn't have a card. The deliveryman gave it to Mommy. And now it's.. mine."

Jason snatched the present and ran toward the backyard with Melanie in screaming pursuit. Jack went after them. Michael looked like he'd put two and two together and didn't like the answer.

Melanie chased Jason around a jungle gym as he teased her with the present. Jason tripped and fell, but landed on his back still holding the package to his chest. The two tussled for it. It was about to fall as Jack came up and caught it.

"Jason stop teasing Melanie. It's her birthday and her present."

"Then why can't I open it?" Melanie reasoned.

Jack was about to argue, but the logic got him.

"Okay, just this one present."

Melanie was thrilled. She immediately began undoing the ribbon and peeling away the wrapping paper.

"Don't open it!," Michael yelled.

Jack looked up and saw Michael running toward him shouting. Melanie tore away the paper and started to lift the lid off the box. Jack suddenly held the lid closed as Michael ran up with Sara behind him.

"What the hell is going on?" Jack demanded.

"I think it's a bomb. Set it down easy and get away from it."

"Bomb?!"

"We're wasting time."

Sara tried to reason with Michael. "Michael, I don't think this..."

Michael grabbed the package out of Jack's hands and heaved it. The package tumbled through the air, finally hitting the ground between some trees. The group watched the package in stunned silence. Michael braced for an explosion. A moment passed. Another. No explosion. Just silence. Melanie started to cry, breaking the silence.

"This is absolutely crazy," Jack said as he started walking toward the package.

"It could still go off," Michael warned.

Jack didn't stop. Michael pulled out a gun and ordered Jack to stop.

"This is madness," Sara said frantically.

Jack kept going. Michael raised his gun and fired. The package jumped as a bullet went through it. No explosion. Jack was stunned, while the children cried even louder. Michael fired again. The package jumped again. Again nothing. Michael fired again and again and again. Nothing happened. The children were hysterical. Jack, absolutely furious, turned to Sara.

"This is the insanity your show is leading to. Ex DEA nut shoots birthday present."

Jack turned and walked angrily into the house. Furious herself, Sara comforted her children as she led them inside. Michael was left standing alone.

Chapter 10

The three were waiting for a call. Tony, Gino and Pasquale. They were sitting around a motel room in Oakland waiting to kill someone. They were killing time playing cards and watching television. Perhaps exacting dull revenge on time that would kill them. Gino was the only one amused by the documentary on organized crime on the tv. Tony finally had had it.

"Can it."

"It's like home movies."

"Organized crime. They're dreaming. Vinie's so organized he needs a compass to find his dick."

The phone rang and Tony answered it. He had a brief conversation and returned to the table.

"She's the one."

"What about the others?"

"Just her, they said. Process of elimination."

"Process of elimination. That's our specialty."

They all laughed. They left the motel and drove to her house in Oakland. They were in good spirits. This was a night on the town. The only real danger they all agreed was the shitty neighborhood.

She had a regular schedule and they waited. It got late and cold. Their humor changed. She didn't come home. They made jokes about her sexual preferences.

They tried the next day, but she was out of town and stayed that way. Everett was taking no chances. He was monitoring the mob's wiretapped conversations through contacts he had in government.

* * *

George Hilliard's family was wealthy. His mother was one of the major black fund-raisers for the Republican party. She had savvy and clout. Hilliard had distanced himself from his family to make his own way. But if he had to fall along with Michael and the other agent, she made sure his fall was upwards into the Washington office of the FBI.

She saw a future in politics for him. His record as an administrator was not stellar, but with his connections he proved invaluable when he was taken on as a political liaison in the White House staff.

With an election coming up nobody had to tell him to pass along any relevant information and what was relevant political fuel seemed to expand constantly. A paper crossed his desk about a robbery of Allan March's assistant and campaign money and the Mafia. Hilliard began confirming the report. It was a career builder and he wanted to get it right.

Prints were taken off of a handcart. Finding no match in the US, the FBI sent them on to Japan for identification. The Japanese police identified the man as Masao "Kit" Shimizu. He was wanted in Japan in connection with his involvement in the Yakuza. Someone in the National Police Agency also provided the Yakuza with details of the robbery.

Chapter 11

Michael's week was an agony. He filled the days with catching up on his security business which he'd let hopelessly lapse. He almost made it through without anybody noticing he didn't have the slightest interest in what he was doing, only in something that would take him somewhere else. He was trying to be all business as he was giving an estimate of a security system to a woman who shared the desire for elsewhere. After sharing their interest in jazz, he was about to leave when she tried to book passage.

"You ever mix business with pleasure."

"Only at my worst."

"Leave it to me to bring out the worst in a guy," she added, half disappointed and half still trying.

"The best and the worst both..," Michael started to say with frustrated intensity. He could see it was too much. He quietly explained. "It's not that I'm uninterested. I'm too interested. I just can't handle it."

He sat in his car getting himself together. He noticed he was sweating. "The strain of restraint," he muttered to himself. He said it again. It was a favorite phrase. It summed up. He went home and listened to his answering machine. "This is United Parcel. We did have a delivery in your general area yesterday. Hope that clears everything up."

"Oh yeah." he said to himself. "Like this is going to do," he added as he poured himself a large drink. Several large drinks later he had the "clarity" he was looking for. Unfortunately, it was accompanied, as it often was, by an unruly inner dialogue.

Losing it. Shooting a gun with kids around. Am I losing it or already lost it. Five shots into that damn package, I'm thorough I'll say that. Today, got through today, didn't make a complete fool of myself. Can't believe my instincts are that off.

In excruciating detail he remembered the radio show, Sara's outburst, the parcel truck, the party, the package, the gun. He replayed the sequence over and over as if doing so were going to wear out the links in the chain of events and free them from their inevitable conclusion.

He finally caught a glimpse of himself on the not so merry go round. Time for a change. He lowered the lights and picked out one of Nimé's tapes. He noticed the title, "Guardians of the Secret", as he started the tape. "Let's see how the guardians do with Coltrane." He turned on the jazz CD and adjusted the volumes. He liked the effect. You could get lost in the sound if you had to.

"We began last time with Gauguin's questions. "Where do we come from?, Who are we?, Where are we gong? We were discussing how sexual fantasy helps us in answering these questions. One way was by showing us something important about our past. How we got into this fine mess as Oliver Hardy used to say.

"It dramatizes crucial turning points in our lives, unresolved conflicts that remain central to our development and gives clues how to overcome them. So sexual fantasy is a drama both in its entertainment sense as well as in its power to reveal meaning.

"The interesting question is why don't we allow ourselves both excitement and meaning. What would happen if our hearts, minds and genitals were all moved? Mishima the noted Japanese writer thought that was only possible in death. But it's our birthright to be totally present.

"We have a morbid fear of the complete person. Divide and conquer is not only a time honored strategy in the political sphere. On a personal level we have been divided and conquered and now we continue the job ourselves. We have been set off from ourselves, against ourselves. Here we lost the ability to speak forthrightly, here we lost some hope, here we lost some trust in others, her we lost some faith in our strength, our feeling of being beautiful, here we forgot how to dance...It makes us less, but more manageable. The political implications of this I'll save for another talk. Right now I'd like to move on to Gauguin's third question, "Where are we going?"

"The people that are going to help us answer that question are the people in your fantasies. They are where we've put our excitement and it's through that excitement that we can find meaning if we let it.

"So what is excitement? Excitement is movement toward that which would complete us, provide what's missing in our lives. As simple as a hot dog if we happen to be hungry. It can be the need of a moment or a lifetime. Excitement moves us toward unfinished business, undeveloped potential, poems unwritten, paintings unpainted, trips not taken, griefs not mourned, joys not chanced.

"Since fantasy is about arousal, it involves exciting ourselves. You can't tell yourself to get sexually excited the same way you tell yourself to move your arm or figure out an equation. We have to communicate with the source of our ecstasy, the unconscious. And the images of fantasy are how we do it.

"The figures in fantasy are mediators between you and the source of your ecstasy. Instead of having them play out their usual roles, using our imagination we are going to try to talk to them directly and see what they have to tell us. I'm sure you're saying to yourself, what possibly could they have to tell me, they're just something I made up.

"First of all I'd say that they're not just something that you made up. Who they are and the roles they play reflect your personal history. More importantly they occupy a unique place in your life. Through them you connect to the most exciting, vital depths of your being. That puts them in a privileged position to be witnesses to your inner life. Rather than having nothing to tell us, they have so much to reveal we'd rather have them play out their roles to convince us we're just having a good time and nothing more.

"So how to begin this remarkable conversation? What sort of questions do we ask? I mean these people are so extraordinary, so intimate and yet they are strangers to us. They remind us of how much of what we are and what we can be is astonishingly foreign to us.

"And how do they answer? Through your imagination. I think you'll be surprised at what your "imagination" comes up with, how real their response is and how meaningful it is to you. In freeing the figures of their stereotypic roles you are freeing your imagination to make connections with untapped, unrealized energies in yourself.

"You can begin by asking them basic questions. Who are you? The answer to this question in itself can be surprising and very revealing. It can give the first clues that the person you're addressing has much more depth and richness than you expected. It can also give you a feeling for what further questions you'd like to ask. Do you have something to tell me? Why do you excite me? Why are you in my life? What is our relationship like? Who do you remind me of? Do you have to something to say about where I've come from? Who I am? Where I'm going?

"Sometimes the figures are reticent to speak. Asking further questions like Why are you silent? What are you keeping from me? can start the conversation. Be patient. A good deal of meaning is hidden in that silence.

"This has all the awkwardness of a first date, which it in a way is. To the degree we all don't know ourselves, a blind one at that. You move on with the excitement of discovery , your interest and compassion.

"Fantasy is an existential message about growth. But we are all fearful. So rather than growth, we settle for repetition and stagnation. That means holding on to stereotypic roles in our fantasies. It's comforting in a way, but stifling. We have to allow the figures to live. If we allow them to change, then we change."

Michael was thinking about the tape as it went on. He thought about facing these images so casually created, about speaking to them and letting them speak back. The imagined conversation seemed to take place where there never had been a visitor let alone a conversation. Letting them in was like letting whores into a church, and what was more difficult was finding a church inside of them. Something lost in him was in their voices, did he want to hear it?

Chapter 12

Emiliano Diaz was at the mountain resort buried in mud. He was talking to himself as much as to the physical therapist who was working on him.

"It's good for my arthritis you say. You say there's an energy in the mud, that's what does it. I say it's like being buried before you're buried. I think that's what does it. Your body gets a taste of that and it shapes up.

"The fools that are sitting in my chair say I don't know what's going on. They say the Americans are considering attacking us. Okay they are considering it, and if local interests want to chase a black woman that's their foolishness, but now they want to get our people involved. I am told but not asked.

"It's right I'm old. I'm too old. You're always too young and then you're too old. They're all panicked. Idiots. They'll just make matters worse. It doesn't matter I told them. It's a piece of paper. It'll come to nothing. The politicians aren't going to destroy all this wealth. The biggest business in the world. They don't own it, but it's there for when they want to put their hands in. It's good for our farmers, it keeps away the communists, the people over there like it. Everybody likes it.

"A few high minded people. They're all right. Fools. They think they'll rid the world of evil. They'll get rid of a little evil and replace it with a bigger one. It's nature. Nothing disappears unless there's a substitute. And there's no substitute, believe me."

* * *

"Union without consent is rape" the bumper sticker read. It was on the back of an old Chevy pickup that was sitting in front of a small wood frame house in Larkinsville, Alabama. Fishing gear, including a tackle box were in the bed of the truck. Earl Tolliver was behind the wheel, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.

He puffed on a cigarette and tapped nervously to country music coming from the radio. He pulled a pint of whiskey out of the glove box which also contained a gun. He took a long swig from the bottle as he waited for his friend.

Inside the house, a small room off the kitchen had been set aside as a study. It was filled with books, most of them about American history. Randy Hastings was sitting at his desk finishing a letter. It was addressed to his wife and children, but a good deal of it outlined his political philosophy.

Starting with the Declaration of Independence and its statement that government should exist only by "consent of the governed", he documented the ever increasing usurpation of power by the Federal government. The critical act in this continuing outrage was Lincoln's war against the South which completely undermined the right of voluntary association as the basis of government.

To government's "war on its own people" there was finally only one response possible. The same as had been the founding father's. Rebellion. It was an action not desired, but forced on the people from Shay's rebellion to the present.

Earl watched as Randy exited his house and walked toward the truck. He was wearing a down vest and carrying a fishing pole. Earl turned off the radio and gestured to Randy.

"Hey boy, did you forget your 'tackle box'?"

Randy hurriedly headed back to the house. Earl took more swigs of whiskey. Randy returned, put the 'tackle box' in the bed of the truck and got in. He was struggling with something and showed it.

"You want to go fishing or what?" Earl chided.

"Sorry. Hard saying good-bye. First time I ever lied to them."

"You'll set it straight. We're coming back heroes."

"I had a dream that told me we weren't coming back."

"Forget it. I don't believe half of the things your crazy head tells you even when you're awake."

Randy's mood didn't change. " I left a letter. Jesus is my witness, I never thought it would come to this."

Earl started up the truck. "It's their doing, not ours. Those bastards are going to learn the road that goes from Washington to Alabama also goes from Alabama to Washington." The truck drove off in the early light.

Chapter 13

Michael's strategy had worked. Time and drink had taken some of the edge off. But what was allayed in the intensity of his thoughts was made up for by their repetition. No matter what direction his thoughts would go off in, they'd still deadend in the same place. The backyard with that stupid package. Prepare for the next show. Think about calling Sara. Think of rechecking the parcel delivery, rechecking the phone call. What about her challenge that she was going to reveal stuff about Everett? What about her info? Could he stop her? They ended up in the backyard with the package.

He couldn't sleep. What about the therapist's tape? Maybe that would lead somewhere else. He needed a somewhere else. Anything to work on. But what were the people in his fantasies going to say? What if they were silent?

It started to spook him. It was making him feel like he didn't know what was inside his own head. He realized with a laugh nothing new in that. What did he have to lose? And he didn't know the answer to that.

He speculated on a whole variety of their responses, accusatory, funny, hostile, sexy, silent. But speculating wasn't asking. He finally decided to ask. But who shall it be? Why not the girl that started it all. He imagined her sitting across from him. He imagined asking who she was.

She didn't say anything in response, but looked at him as she began to cry. It caught him completely by surprise. It unnerved him like looking in the mirror and seeing a complete stranger. He realized there were tears in his eyes. "I'm coming unglued, this is crazy." He had to stop. But he managed to get some sleep.

The next time he asked, expecting something similar, perhaps hoping for something similar, there were no tears. "Let's just have fun," she said. He asked again. "You don't want to know," she replied. He began to get a queasy feeling. He summoned up his courage and proceeded. There was a long silence, he was getting nothing and about to give up when suddenly she said "help me". At first quietly and then again and again with more intensity, her voice altering in the process until it seemed it had embodied the voices of all the women in his life.

He stopped, shaken at the realisation he had heard his mother's voice. He suddenly remembered a childhood fear that she might be in hell because of what she did. It was an awful, helpless feeling. He didn't need that. He needed a drink and got one. What was the use of this? He couldn't help her. Or his ex wife or Sara or any of the women he imagined he heard. He couldn't save any of them.

At five in the morning he gave up on sleeping and began driving. At first just to be driving and then toward Massachusetts and Nimé's workshop. He saw a hitchhiker and thought about picking her up. He passed her by. He already had more passengers on this trip than he could handle.

* * *

A note left at Sara's box at the station had led to weekly mailings of information. She was naturally skeptical, but it turned out to be interesting material and it kept getting better. It included the revelation about Everett and the militia. From its contents she had tried to figure out the source. Whoever it was is consistent she thought as she picked up her mail.

She had made it a habit of putting all important documents from the show in her safety deposit box. She went to her bank with the package. She sat down in one of the cubicles. She recognized the mailer. She opened it with expectation and started reading the material.

* * *

Nime had found the small actors' equity theater when he was having his house remodeled and he needed another place to give his talks. It was meant to be a temporary arrangement, but now he wasn't sure. There were two chairs on the stage of the upstairs theater and he was sitting in one of them, talking to a group of people sitting in the audience.

"It's been fitting in a way that we've had a chance to meet here in this theater. We've been working with sexual fantasy, and it's a drama both as an entertainment as well as in its power to reveal the deepest truths about our lives.

"The title of my talk today is "The Bedroom, the Battlefield and the Graveyard". They are the site of three great transformative experiences; sex, war and death. We have been focusing on the bedroom and will continue to do so, but I also want to talk about war and death whose meaning is missed.

"The great passions of life have been pushed into some corner and left there. This corner is sex, this corner is war, this corner is death. We want to take sex, war, and death out of the bedroom, battlefield, and graveyard into the rest of life.

"Speaking of death there's been a lot of research on near death experiences. It's fascinating. But here we attempt to specialize in near life experiences. Being alive is a very intense experience, we all shy away from it preferring an ambulatory twilight sleep. We shunt off our peak intensities of life into sex, war and death. Not only can you reclaim those energies for the rest of your life, but they can point the way to how you can transform the rest of your life.

"As I'm sure you've heard me say before, we start with a tension. The tension you feel is the gap between where you are and the possibilities of your becoming. Fantasy and orgasm take place in that space of growth, that gap. They're a journey in that space, but because you're unaware as to the true nature of that journey, when they're over with, that gap remains. Instead of an intense momentary arc, we wish to build a bridge connecting sexual ecstasy and insight.

"What is truly remarkable is that as we explore this idea we discover that mankind has been trying to build that bridge for a very long time.

"Twenty five thousand years ago cave paintings were done by stone age hunter gatherers that are not only exceptionally beautiful, but seem to have a mythic, almost religious significance. One of the paintings shows in addition to a large hunted animal, a bearded man wearing a bird mask. He has an erection and is falling backwards in a state of ecstasy. He appears to be a shaman of some sort. The bird mask is a symbol of the flight or journey that he takes during his rituals.

"In that ritual the shaman enters an altered state of consciousness and makes a journey to the realm of the spirits. He receives wisdom from them and returns in order to heal, make whole, the person he's treating. The journey he takes is associated in the painting with sexual ecstasy. Sexual ecstasy is intimately connected here with a way of knowledge.

"So we have the beginning of this idea in shamanism tens of thousands of years ago. From there it has continued to evolve. In Eastern philosophy and religion there is much made of the connection between opening up the energies of the body, changing our relationship to the energies of the body, and the awakening of consciousness and realization.

"A variety of techniques are used to accomplish this. Chanting, breathing exercises like pranayama, t'ai chi, meditation, dervish dancing. In kundalini yoga you attempt to move energy from the base of your spine through chakras or energy centers to the crown of your head to bring about illumination. In Tantric Buddhism there's the direct use of sexual energy for realization.

"What we are suggesting here is that these energies, which are manipulated to bring about insight in all these practices, are manifested by the people in your sexual fantasy. And that in relating to them and in changing your relation to them you are making the same sort of connection that brings insight.

"This presents an entirely new way of approaching this age old endeavor. A way that opens up many possibilities. For one thing it makes it more accessible. After all, it's a practice, unlike dervish dancing and t'ai chi, we are already involved with and familiar with. And since it involves working with the imagination, with the psyche, all the interpretive insights and techniques of psychology can be brought to bear.

"So we can add a modern technique of ecstatic wisdom to those that have been used before."

* * *

Michael got to Nime's house by early afternoon. He saw the note posted and found the playhouse in town. He walked upstairs past a sign announcing a production of "Uncle Vanya". He thought to himself it'd be funny if he ended up watching a play. There was a small room that led to the theater. He opened the door and took the first seat he came to. He was relieved nobody turned around. All eyes were on the stage where Nime and David, a preppy looking, nervous young man were sitting across from one another. Nime was addressing the audience.

Michael sized him up. He had long graying hair. His glasses gave him an intellectual appearance, but his build and physical presence were more like a manual laborer. "No, it's more aggressive than that," Michael thought to himself. He struggled with the image. A high school friend who was on the wrestling team popped into his mind. "Yeah, that's it," Michael concluded. "A wrestler, that's who he reminds me of. Maybe he got that way wrestling with the angels like Jacob."

Satisfied with his take on Nime, Michael shifted his attention to his talk. "I could tell you about it. I could give you an explanation. We do a lot of that, analytic work. And it's very helpful. That's why I've spent a lot of time with you discussing that approach. But in modern life explanation has taken the place of connection. We have an explanation for just about everything. But less and less connection to anything. We know more and more of the world, but it doesn't move us.

"So I could provide you with an explanation, tell you that probably this or that happened in your childhood, you had this sort of relationship. But it's like telling you what love is, it's better to experience it. And one way you can do that is through relating to the person in your fantasy. That way you begin to enter into it and it begins to live for you, it begins to move you. Does the world around you live for you, speak to you, have meaning for you, or is it just stuff out there? So let's continue."

Nime waited as David struggled to say something.

"I just can't talk to him. I worry where he is? Whether he's all right"

"I could tell you that he's all right, that in fact in the most profound way he's still everywhere among us, or that he's in heaven at peace. But this not really about where he is, it's about where you are. And if you can get in touch with that, it would be unnecessary for me to reassure you he's among us or in heaven, you would feel it in a way that nobody could possibly describe."

"I think I get that, but I still.." David's thought drifted off into silence. Nime turned to the audience.

"So we started with David's fantasy encounter with a woman in a deserted office. She's bound and gagged and made love to. And we worked on the fantasy. The woman stepped out of her role and David had a conversation with her and she asked him why he had to tie her up and gag her. And he had no answer. It just brought the conversation to a standstill.

I suggested he ask himself why he was stuck and it brought up this problem he is having dealing with the death of his brother. And I think if we go into it, we'll see that the woman in David's fantasy is not the only one that's bound and gagged.

"We've talked about war and sex. Death is also one of the areas where we put a lot of our fantasies. It doesn't tell us much about death, but a lot about ourselves. We stick a lot of our fears and energy there. So let's see if we can retrieve some."

Nime turned back to David, but didn't speak right away. Nime sat quietly as if he was listening to the man's silence, and then began again.

"You have visions of your brother being in a dark, empty place somewhere. I can't see this. What I can see is a dark, empty place in you. You're trapped in there somewhere, holding in all your grief, terror, rage and love. Somehow you're going to have to open. Let someone in to that closed space.

"Your brother is dead, we don't know what that means, but we do know what your being dead means. Your brother can't speak to you because you can't speak to him. You would have to connect your voice and your heart and you've choked the life out of both of them. Your brother will live for you when you live."

David began to weep. Michael watched him until suddenly he realized he was holding his breath. He tried to catch it but couldn't. He had to get some air. He hurried down the stairs and outside.

The street was deserted and still. It was if everything were holding its breath. Waiting. Waiting for what? Everything around him seemed to have more of a presence, about to step beyond itself, almost as if it were about to break its inanimate silence and speak. It lasted for a moment, but it was too much, and then it was gone. A car turned a corner, two people came out of a shop, everything rushed on.

* * *

Sara was lost in thought as she drove her BMW toward town. As her car headed up a long incline, Sara picked up her car phone and dialed Michael's number. The phone rang in Michael's loft. Michael was not there to answer. Sara's voice came over the answering machine.

"Michael, if you're there, pick up. All is forgiven."

Sara was disappointed when she realized Michael wasn't there.

"I've got something, but it doesn't quite make sense. Grab some coffee and meet me at the studio! Hurry!"

A mile ahead of Sara a United delivery truck was idling at the intersection to the highway. A deliveryman with a freckled complexion and jet black hair was at the wheel. He was like an All-American kid who had just gotten larger rather than older. Next to him was a young Latino deliveryman, his hat pulled over his forehead. The driver turned to him.

"Buckle up, Pedro, this is going to be a rough ride."

Pedro seemed unconcerned.

"Suit yourself macho man."

The driver made a left turn on the highway and started down the hill that Sara was going up. The Latino slumped against the door, his head tilted back. His eyes were glazed and there was a bleeding wound on his forehead. He had no need to buckle up, he was dead.

Sara saw the truck coming down the hill on the opposite side of the highway. It was almost up to her, when it suddenly crossed the highway heading right at her. She swerved off the highway. It swerved right toward her.

Two minutes later Sara's car was crumpled against a tree. The United delivery truck buried in the BMW's side had a shattered windshield. The Latino was slumped over the steering wheel as though he had been the driver. The other man was gone.

Chapter 14

Every so often Michael would think about the drive back from Massachusetts. At what point was Sara killed? Was there some sign? A sudden twinge in the gut or sweep of emptiness. Maybe if he hadn't stopped at a bar and got plastered there might have been. Instead he was lost in a conversation with himself about his abrupt exit from Nime's workshop.

No medal for that performance. Mister bravery. Now when it comes to facing a gun I stack up pretty good. Maybe because I never had much to lose. But I stack up pretty good. It's the up close and personal. Should be uptight and personal. Next time I'll call ahead and make sure everybody is armed. Next time. Yeah, next time.

Michael added a few more drinks before he drove to his loft. He climbed the stairs unsteadily, but painlessly.

"Great. The only time my knee works is when the rest of me doesn't."

Suddenly Michael noticed his front door alarm was off. He stared for a second before the thought "it's been disabled" alerted him. He pulled out his gun, cleared his head, and started cautiously up the stairs.

He stood to the side of the doorway preparing to rush in. A similar scene flashed through his mind. Gun drawn, Michael was standing outside a warehouse door. He kicked in the door and rushed in.

Blinding light, deafening gunfire and he was on the ground, wounded as three gunmen stood over him. Michael prepared to die. But instead they shot him in the leg. He writhed in pain while his attackers merely laughed.

Michael took a deep breath to block out the memory. He pushed open the door, expecting gunfire in return. There was none. He entered warily and surveyed the darkened room. Nobody was there. He turned on the light. He had the strange feeling someone had been there, but the place looked exactly like he left it. Michael examined the door alarm and realized he forgot to set it.

"Stupidity, now there's a new way to get a rush."

Michael cleared some papers off a chair and practically fell into it. The papers included a rubberbanded packet of letters to his son, all marked "return to sender". With a grimace, he tossed them to the floor. He made a mental note to get up sometime and check his answering machine.

* * *

Two cops were standing by the coffee machine near the entrance of the police station as if they were waiting for someone. Nearby a working class Hispanic family were talking to an officer at the reception desk.

"Michael's going to flip out," the first cop observed.

"He was born flipped out. Maybe we ought to meet him outside."

The two started for the door as it slammed open and Michael burst in. He was filled with despair and fury in equal measures. The second cop tried to console him.

"I'm sorry Michael"

"Where's the accident report? I want to see the fucking report."

"Take it easy Michael," the first cop said, knowing he wouldn't.

"Fuck you. Sara is murdered and all you can say is take it easy. Okay, okay, you want easy, I'll give you fucking easy."

Michael calmly put money in the coffee machine and watched the cup drop and begin to fill.

"Is this easy enough?"

Michael calmly picked up the cup of coffee and then suddenly hurled it against the opposite wall. The second cop put his hand consolingly on Michael's shoulder.

"Michael."

"Is this easy enough?"

Michael gave the first cop a shove.

"Is this easy enough?"

Michael gave the cop another shove. The cop grabbed for Michael attempting to corral him. Michael wrestled free and was about to slug him when the second cop pinned him from behind.

"Fuckhead, it's no murder! The other driver is dead!"

Michael stopped struggling and the three untangled. The news sank in as they all caught their breath. Michael wasn't buying their story.

"They blew it, that's all. They tried to run her off the road and bang."

"There's no 'they', Michael. I've known the driver for years. There's his family over there. You want to talk to them?"

Michael looked over toward the reception desk. He saw a family obviously distraught talking to the officer at the desk. Overwhelmed, Michael sat down. "It was no accident," he muttered almost to himself, trying to see beyond his confusion and pain.

* * *

Arens was in Los Angeles making a phone call to Everett. He was in a phone booth across the street from Chicken Itza a Mexican charbroiled chicken stand. Designed to look like its Mayan namesake it delighted Arens. It wasn't your usual intersection of vinyl, formica and bad coffee. It was what was left of the exotic. Progress and crowds of "been there, done that" tourists had accomplished what Tamerlane and his hordes couldn't, even with their intimidating giant pyramids of skulls. They destroyed all the fabled cities of the world. The lands of mystery were no more.

Arens collected such tiny surrealistic beachheads in a frontal assault on the mundane as others would collect porcelains or baseball trading cards. He had bad news for Everett. The person who made the death threat didn't kill Sara.

"How do you know?" Everett asked.

"We had a chat," Arens replied. From his tone it was obvious the chat wasn't casual.

"That's unfortunate. We're going to be getting heat for this. Guilt by association."

"The irony is so far he doesn't seem to be associated with anything."

"We've got to run this down quickly, even if he's a freelancer."

"A lone nut. Each nut in a world to himself and yet they all seem to come from the same can. There must be a correspondence course in it. Or maybe there's a lone nut academy that teaches them all how to keep an incriminating diary. They have antisocials on weekends."

Arens noticed Everett's silence.

"Don't worry, I'll see to it that he's ontologically challenged."

* * *

The marina on Long Island Sound was crowded with weekend boaters. Randy and Earl, trying hard not to look nervous and out of place, were searching for a boat along the dock. Finally spotting it, they climbed aboard. Greeting them were Everett and six other Men. Dressed like Sunday boaters, they appeared casual, but had a military bearing. Randy extended a handshake as the boat got underway.

"My name's..."

"Mobile," Everett interrupted. "Mobile and Montgomery, I'd like you to meet Memphis, KC, Indie, Billings, Phoenix, and at the helm, Austin."

The Men exchanged greetings as Everett continued.

"We all share the same beliefs and we're willing to die for them. That's all you need to know."

Austin took the boat out into the middle of the Sound. The men were enjoying themselves in the sun, drinking beer and having pointedly innocuous conversation about sports. Everett was the picture of good-natured nonchalance as he spent the next few hours talking to every one of them. The talk may have been innocuous, but his sizing them up was not. Finally he moved over next to Randy and engaged him in some small talk.

"You think you're ready?" Everett asked with a sudden seriousness.

Randy took Everett's question in and nodded affirmatively. In the same instant, Everett grabbed Randy by the back of his head and jammed a commando knife against his throat.

"Who are you?!"

Everybody was transfixed as they stared in disbelief at Everett. Randy was petrified. He struggled to say something, but couldn't.

"Who are you?" Everett asked again as probing as the knife in his hand. The group tensed, wondering if they had a traitor in their midst.

"Don't try to speak. Just listen. You hear what I'm saying. Every syllable of every word. Your eyes miss nothing. Your mind is racing, but your thoughts are focused and clear. Until now you might as well have been deaf, dumb and blind. You're about to die and this is the only time in your whole fucking life you're alive and not sleepwalking. You sleepwalk with your wife, you sleepwalk with your children, but I'll be goddamned if you'll sleepwalk with me."

The group was stunned. Everett released a badly shaken Randy. "You want an answer to who are you?"

Randy just managed a nod.

"Unfortunately, you're a helluva lot more than you'll ever know." Everett handed Randy the knife.

"For luck."

Everett thought to himself he must be getting old, he'd given that demonstration a hundred times and it had never lost some of its edge before. It still enabled him to eliminate Randy. He definitely was what he said he was.

"I want to call your attention to an interesting landmark on the right."

Everybody turned to look. Across the East River was the UN building.

Chapter 15

Michael realized he was again sitting at the back of a group of people as someone spoke. This time he wasn't just being coy. There were two sets of mourners at Sara's funeral, those he didn't want to talk to and those who didn't want to talk to him. The first set consisted of Nime and the second Jack and the others.

When Jack heard about the accident, he immediately thought of the caller's threat. He was devastated and furious. Hadn't he warned her. It would never have happened without Michael. Even after he was told it really was an accident, it was hard for him to shake his anger. He was cold when Michael called with his condolences. When Michael asked about the children, he told him they were all going to stay with his parents and he had to go.

They were all sitting together listening to the priest delivering a eulogy to Sara. A liberation theologian, he was wiry and intense and obviously cared about Sara and her work.

"Words were so important to her. As the bible says, 'In the beginning was the word.' And what of the end? We are left with what was said, what was unsaid. Her words. Our words to her. Now made final. Not if we take it to heart. Then it will continue to live.

"We see as if through a glass darkly. But if our lives were bathed in light crystal clear, we would see no better. For the eye that refuses to see clearly into our own lives is the same eye that is trying to see God's beauty. The heart that is closed to the injustice and the suffering of others is the same heart that is trying to open to God's joy. Sara knew the truth of this and strove to be open, caring and whole."

Michael came to honor her and to say good-bye. He knew right away neither were possible. He was stuck with his angry last words to her, "I'll see you around." He didn't want to be where he was. He didn't want to be listening to what he was hearing. It wasn't what was being said. They were good thoughts being offered up by a good priest. He still didn't want to hear them.

A different life and he might have been the one up there offering consolation and hope. It was painful and useless sitting here in agony. Not useless he reconsidered as he thought of Christ in pain and agony. He just couldn't do it, couldn't go through it to something greater. The only thing he could do was climb down off his personal cross and go catch and kill the people that did this to Sara. He couldn't even do that. He was stuck with it being an accident.

* * *

Michael spent the rest of the day considering his options. There were several. Yeah, get drunk or get drunk or get drunk one wise ass voice said. Sit down with your memories and your feelings and talk with her a wise voice said. Be haunted by phrases like "I'll see you around" and "It's madness". He would settle on one only to have the other two elbow it out of the way.

He drove around for hours. He drove by the station, he drove by every place they ever shared. By evening the family would be gone and he could go to Sara's.

He had no reason to go there. It was the blessed spot where he shot her kid's toy and killed their relationship. It was another destination and he didn't want to run out of them. The house was dark when Michael pulled up in front of it. He sat in the car and looked at it. More bad feeling. He thought about driving away, but got out of the car instead.

A wind had come up and was blowing hard at intervals. He walked around the house and surveyed the backyard. He half expected that the package would be gone, a phantom from a bad dream chased by morning's light. It was still there laying near the trees.

He looked lost and driven at the same time. The sound of the wind in the trees mingled with the whispered voices of remembered conversation going on in his head. Bits of the eulogy and his argument with Sara and her family. "This is madness." "He's crazy." And then the cops sendoff. "There's no they, Michael."

He went back to his car and got his shotgun out of the trunk. He returned to the backyard.

The voices continued. They got no louder than a whisper, but began to overlap faster and faster like a stretto in a mad fugue, finally getting stuck on the phrase, "I'll see you around." As the phrase repeated, Michael played with the heft of the shotgun as if he were weighing his life. His finger tightened on the trigger. He quickly raised the gun and fired toward the trees.

The shotgun blast was followed by a sharp percussive explosion as the entire hillside lit up in a white phosphorescent glare. Tree fragments flew everywhere. Michael was knocked off his feet. He lay there as the reverberation of the explosion died away. He listened. No voices, just the sound of the wind.

He got up and walked out of the yard. A white corvette with its lights off was slowly driving by the front of the house. As he appeared it suddenly peeled out and sped down the block. Michael jumped into his car and started after it. The Corvette accelerated like a rocket down a winding road. Michael raced to catch up. Rounding a bend, he spotted the Corvette.

"You like accidents. Let's have an accident."

Michael jammed the accelerator and hurtled toward the Corvette. He caught up with it on a curve. He could see the exact spot on the car where he would ram it, running it off the road. In his mind's eye he was already smashing the car and the driver in it, but he never got there.

The Corvette hit a straightaway and pulled away. Michael pushed his car for all it was worth and his speedometer topped one hundred. He got no closer as the two cars came flying out of the winding road to the outskirts of Philadelphia.

The speeding Corvette swerved to avoid intersection traffic and went into a spin. Michael headed straight for it. A bus pulled out in front of him. He hit the brakes and skidded around it, and out of the way of oncoming traffic. Cars everywhere but no Corvette, until he caught a glimpse of it up the street disappearing into an alley.

Michael raced to the alley. He knew it had no outlet. The Corvette was parked near the end of it with the driver's door open. Michael stopped, grabbed the shotgun from the seat next to him and cautiously approached. He aimed the shotgun, but the car was empty. Michael surveyed the street. A walkway between the buildings was the only way out.

He peered into the dimly lit walkway. At first nothing but darkness. With the light behind him, Michael knew his silhouette was an inviting target. He quickly moved inside the walkway, pressing himself against the wall. He waited as his eyes acclimated to the darkness. The blackness resolved into a murky view of stairwells, piled boxes, mattresses and scrap junk.

Shotgun poised, Michael moved along the wall. He listened, but there was only silence. It was suddenly interrupted by the distant noise of people cheering coming from a bar down the street. Then silence again. Michael waited for a sound, a sign of movement. He had no patience for it. "What am I doing clowning around in the dark, this asshole killed Sara." Michael readied himself for a move that would draw fire.

A figure in the shadows behind a dumpster aimed a Swiss automatic pistol. Michael took a deep breath, and looked hopefully at his leg. In a half crouch he ran across the walkway, winding up in an inset doorway. He winced in pain, bracing for gunfire.

"Dead or alive!" he yelled out.

No response. Michael readied his shotgun. He poised to make a move.

"Try it!" a voice yelled back. It was a woman's voice.

Michael was stunned. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Who the fuck are you?"

"What were you doing at Sara's?"

"Looking for Michael Flaherty."

"I'm Michael Flaherty."

"Bullshit."

"What do you want me to do, show you my ID?"

"Yeah, I've got an army of assholes trying to kill me. You're probably one of them."

"And you're probably full of shit."

Stalemate.

"Suppose I am Michael Flaherty."

"I hope you've got some answers."

"About what?"

"Russell Everett."

Michael reacted like she had said the magic word.

"There's a bar around the corner. If you're not there in five minutes, wherever you are, I'll be right behind you."

* * *

Michael entered the crowded sports bar and sat at a booth away from the action. He set down a distributor cap on the table in front of him and looked around the room. The crowd cheered as a team scored. Michael couldn't care less as he checked his watch. He impatiently toyed with the distributor cap. A waitress came up.

"What happened Michael, your car break down?"

"No, it's just a good luck charm. I thought it would bring me some company."

Michael checked his watch again.

"So much for good luck and charm," he said sarcastically. He got up quickly and headed for the exit. Tess suddenly appeared out of a crowd and Michael bumped into her as he passed.

"Hey dead or alive," Michael heard someone call out behind him. He turned and was startled to see Sara walk toward him. For a moment it seemed like a miracle and then a painful hallucination. She was dead and this was no time to be losing it, he thought as the woman neared him. But now he could see it was someone else who resembled her. Tess took his look to be questioning as Michael rudely pulled himself together.

"I was checking you out with the bartender."

"So?"

"He said you were trouble"

"So?"

"I told him I already had trouble."

Tess walked to a booth and Michael followed her. Tess sat down, Michael didn't.

"How do you know Russell Everett?"

"He's trying to kill me."

"What a coincidence. Get up!"

"What?"

"We're moving."

"Why?"

"Suddenly I'm a people person."

Michael forcefully grabbed Tess by the wrist and escorted her to a table in the middle of the room with a big screen tv in the background.

"Give me your purse?"

"Who made you God?"

"You want answers?"

Reluctantly Tess handed over the purse. Michael went through it, took out her gun and pocketed it. He pulled out a man's wallet.

"It's Everett's. I stole it, that's what I do, I'm a thief."

"Yeah and I stole the queen's tiara."

"Look jerk, my friend's been killed, and I've been up for three days, scared out of my mind trying to find you."

"Why me?"

"You know Everett. I heard you talk about him on the radio."

Michael began examining the wallet. There was a Virginia license issued to Russell Everett.

"You listen to the show?"

"I'm an insomniac, I don't sleep. You don't believe me, do you?"

"Not a fucking word. Big time war hero Colonel Russell Everett, you picked his pocket, just like that?"

Tess nodded.

Michael sorted through some receipts and credit cards. The credit cards were a dead end. Everett never used them. Sandwiched in between them was a matchbook cover. The Runway Cafe. It was hard to believe it still existed, it belonged so much to his past.

Michael remembered the cafe and the small municipal airport it served. Perfect for short midnight flights that wound up in Central or South America. Everett arranged for pilots to use it to fly money and drugs in and out of the country. He preferred more remote airports like the one in Mina, Arkansas, but sometimes it suited his needs.

Michael turned the cover over. Written in pencil were the words "March-11/21".

"You're a great thief...or a fucking liar. How do I know Everett hasn't sent you to set me up?"

Tess pulled a gun out of her coat and pointed it at Michael.

"You know what this gun is?"

"Smith and Wesson .38."

"It's your Smith and Wesson .38."

Michael started to reach under his jacket.

"Go ahead," Tess said.

Michael felt for his gun, but it was gone. Tess handed him his gun. Michael was clearly impressed.

* * *

The two emerged from the bar as it began to drizzle. Michael got into his car as Tess retrieved a bag out of hers. He watched her. It was painful and fascinating seeing Sara as a different person. A very erotic different person. He felt that sudden intrusion of fantasy into reality that signaled the start of his sprees.

It was clear that he was in that sort of place. He didn't feel strange that he was having a sexual reverie about a woman who almost killed him, and who might yet as his professional caution kept warning him.

The reverie didn't last long enough to make him wonder how an unbalanced guy could try such a balancing act. He was thinking about Everett and March by the time Tess got in. Michael glanced at her car.

"You better do something about the car. In this neighborhood somebody's going to steal it."

"So, I'll steal another one."

Almost amused, Michael started the car and drove away from the bar.

"March is Congressman Allan March from Texas. He's giving a speech in Charleston, and my guess Everett will be there. First I want you to have a look at some photos I've got, and then I'll find you a safe place to stay."

"I've got other plans. I'm going with you."

"I don't know you from anybody. You proved you're a great thief and you could have shot me in the bar and didn't, but maybe it's just you don't like shooting people in bars, I don't know."

"If it helps you any I'm not particular."

"You still could be anybody."

"Anybody could be anybody, don't you have any instincts?"

"Lots of them. Some of them say crazy things like never mind knowing who you are or caring. Or maybe that's just me talking. Maybe my instincts are a hundred percent right and on a nice quiet peaceful day I could actually hear what bright thing they have to tell me. Only I don't remember such a day. And all I can hear is just go with this woman. In the meantime you could be working for Everett for all I know."

"You've got to be kidding."

"No, how did you meet him?"

"Through an acquaintance that was looking for a good time. He thought Everett might join us in a threesome."

"What did you think?"

"He was military and not the least bit interested. I pretended to give it a try."

"What about the other guy."

"Nice dresser. Nice attaché case. Maybe something nice inside. My luck he was carrying about three hundred thousand dollars. I knew I'd stolen a problem. So I made some calls. Coming out of the phone booth I could see I was being followed. I knew right away I was going to end up dead over this, so I just dropped the case and ran."

"Did they get it?"

"Yeah, but they kept looking for me. There and everywhere since. I was afraid to go back to the apartment, so I called. Kit wasn't there."

"Who's Kit?"

"A guy I do jobs with."

"In the mob?"

"No."

Michael frowned in disbelief. "Sorry I asked."

"He's Japanese. He used to be involved over there, but they had a falling out. He killed one of the head honcho's sons in self defense."

"You trust him?"

"I do. You work with someone with everything on the line, you can pretty well judge."

"Pretty well hasn't worked that well for me."

"We had a contact number in case of an emergency. There was no message. I'm pretty sure he's dead. Meanwhile they got their precious case back and they're still trying to kill me."

"And you don't know why?"

"They're professional assholes, how should I know?"

"Maybe you could be holding out on everybody."

"You don't believe me."

"Don't take it personally. I don't even get the people in my own head. Anything else in the attache case?"

"Just some papers."

"What papers?"

"I don't know."

Michael looked at her incredulously.

"Hey I'm not in the paper business. I just glanced at them."

"What about your friend?"

"We were busy looking at three hundred thousand dollars. I was going to show the papers to one of my contacts who's good on these sort of things, but I never got there."

"I'm curious, why did you steal Everett's wallet?"

"It's just a thing. Personal reason."

"What reason?"

"Leave it at that."

"You're a mystery."

"So's everybody."

"I don't have to trust everybody."

"You've got nothing to worry about. I'm not a long term threat. The word is I picked the wrong people, that's it cold. Nobody wanted that kind of trouble. For old times they offered to see me off with something uncut and a respectable funeral. So go easy, I'm the last of your worries."

* * *

Michael's loft was located on a street lined with small manufacturing businesses and warehouses. Michael drove down the block approaching his loft. His description to Tess of his research didn't quite capture its scope.

"What makes you think the guy with Everett will be in one of your photos."

"I've got enough lowlifes up there, I guarantee you'll get another chance to meet him."

Upstairs, Michael's lowlifes were already meeting somebody. Arens was inspecting Michael's massive collage of political extremists, the intelligence community and organized crime. He viewed the photographs with an almost condescending interest. He rearranged the positions of some of the photographs.

"Not bad, for an amateur," Arens commented to himself.

He picked out another photograph.

"Although he's not up on some of my best work."

Arens crumpled up the photograph and tossed it away. He stopped as he heard Michael's car in the street below.

Michael slowed down as he prepared to park across the street. Tess was suddenly uneasy.

"Keep going."

"What?"

"Keep going. Just humor me, at least drive down the block."

Michael reluctantly drove on and stopped.

"What's going on?"

"I feel sick, like when something is going to screw up. Maybe somebody is up there?"

"Trust me. If there is I'll know."

"What about trusting me?"

"This is important. Maybe you can identify Everett's friend."

"Forget maybe. For sure they know you're here and they know I'm here. We should get the hell out."

"This is ridiculous."

Michael angrily u-turned the car and drove back toward the loft. Tess was furious.

"Stop the car!"

Michael ignored her.

"Stop the car!" Tess screamed.

Michael continued on. Tess pulled a gun out of her coat and pointed it at him. Michael jammed on the brakes.

"Look, I've got the place wired. I'll know downstairs if somebody is up there."

"Yeah, and if he's got friends on the street we're into a shoot-out with some well armed flunkies. If I'm going to end up with my brains on the sidewalk, I want Everett to be in the crossfire. He and every other asshole I've ever met think they can squash me when the mood strikes, and all because they think they've got a monopoly on violence. Maybe they do.

"Part of me still wishes I could try to hide and wait it out. But I don't see it that way. You want him dead, we'll do it together. All I want from you is to point me in the right direction, and keep me alive until I get there."

"It's not that easy."

"Neither is the alternative. In fact I think you're just like me, you don't have an alternative. Otherwise you wouldn't be chasing someone with a gun into a dark alley. Whatever you're supposedly hanging on to, a mortgage, hope, justice, forget all that. You and I are going to drive down this highway, find Everett and kill him."

Tess' revenge wasn't exactly his, but the shared passion was intoxicating. He drank it in a moment and then u-turned the car and sped away from the loft. He drove on in silence. He had been here before, but this was even more intense. Tess had a kind of abandon that took him hundreds of miles of highway and week of hard drinking to achieve. She smiled at him like out of a dream.

"You've done this before. Right."

Michael's silence assented.

"Many times. Right."

Michael couldn't believe they were on the same wavelength.

"How do you know?"

"I picked it up right away when I got in the car with you. There's a certain feel to it. Going off into the sunset with someone. That's romantic. This is more like trying to be the sunset."

"A bloody one. What makes you think I can do this?"

"I heard you on the radio. You know this guy and you don't quit."

"Don't kid yourself, I quit. The only activity I got for years was throwing caution to the wind. Now I keep up on my skills. I've still got a bum knee and it's not like being on the street. I've got stuff that obviously worries Everett, but I couldn't hang him with it."

"So we'll shoot him."

Michael smiled.

"We've either got a lot in common or you're just a great actress."

"Does it matter as long as you get what you want?"

"My trouble is it's beginning to."

"Well here's to new beginnings."

Tess leaned over and kissed Michael on the cheek.

Chapter 16

Allan March was looking forward to the interview. He was having lunch at a Picadilly cafeteria in Memphis waiting for her to arrive. In his late forties, his youthful good looks and charisma were compared to John Kennedy's, his populist politics with Huey Long. Several people came up to shake his hand and wish him well as he was eating.

Susan Wingate, a liberal graduate of Smith in her early twenties, didn't share her editor's enthusiasm for the project. One of March's well-wishers was leaving as she walked up.

"Playing the man of the people, Congressman."

"Try the gumbo before you accuse me of that. And until I'm knighted it's just Allan."

March extended his hand. Susan had to smile as she shook it. March motioned and Susan sat down.

"You want something to eat or drink?"

"No thanks, I got something on the plane. My editor was surprised to get your call."

"I knew you couldn't get Eleanor Roosevelt, so I volunteered to take up the slack. Seriously, you've got a point of view that's not for sale and I've got a point of view that's not for sale, that's a start. Don't you get tired preaching to the converted?"

"Never. There's so few of us, it's like family."

March smiled and then continued. "I wanted to try something different. They're always talking about politics as the art of the possible, finding areas of agreement. And it's a real art, believe me. But when you look at leadership, really great leaders, it's more like the art of the impossible, the ability to unite opposites. The art of the possible is getting people to act in their common interests. The art of the impossible is getting people to act in ways that are beyond their interests."

"You're talking about charisma and what I've read is that you have gobs of that."

"I'm sure what you've read is that I'm outspoken and dangerous."

"Okay, that is what I've read."

"Why is everybody so afraid of being outspoken? It's always dangerous. Bobby Kennedy was dangerous. Barry Goldwater was dangerous. And as I remember, it turned out he wasn't the one that nearly led us into World War Three. People seem to prefer the silent types that sell out the country without a word."

Wingate took out her notepad and a small tape recorder.

"Speaking of dangerous. You've certainly been very outspoken about the various militia groups."

"It's a matter of being driven to desperate acts because the Federal government doesn't represent them. It amounts to taxation without representation. That sort of thing has well known results in our history. But I think in all this these people have lost sight of a greater danger."

"Materialism."

"You have done your homework. I think the cold war distorted our perceptions. We made a mistake in thinking Communism was the only Godless materialism threatening our country. It was a natural mistake at the time. Communism was very up front ideologically, very aggressive. So you could see them coming. By contrast multinational corporatism doesn't announce its ideological agenda. But it's as big a threat as Communism ever was."

"I don't think you're going to make any friends on corporate boardrooms with that message."

"As a matter of fact I already have friends on corporate boards, personal ones. But they're too busy competing with each other to pay any attention to where the whole thing is leading us. I could do a whole hour on corporatism and its history, but let's just say there was nothing natural about their existence. I don't think the Supreme Court had any right to wave its magic wand and turn a corporation into a person."

"You're talking about the Santa Clara decision."

"Right. The people never had a choice, it was decided by a bunch of lawyers and the courts. The corporations simply bought their privileged status and legalized a form of idolatry. Beyond that the introduction of a single valued profit system into our traditional system of values has been catastrophic. I like to compare it to the introduction of Kudzu into the South. It's spread everywhere with disastrous results."

"And you can't serve both God and Mammon."

"I don't believe that people are even aware they're making a choice any more."

"On the subject of religion, you don't believe in separation of church and state."

"Church and state yes, there are many churches, but not God and state. When it comes to values there's never a vacuum. If one principle doesn't govern our government then another will, in this case profit. If profit comes first, then Government is for sale, our land is for sale, our morals are for sale."

"Speaking of morals you've had a lot to say about drugs. You compared it to oil, I assume because they're two of the most valuable commodities on earth."

"That's true. But they're also both lubricants. Without them the wheels of civilization would come to a grinding halt. Can you imagine Washington without Prozac?"

"Talk about the great depression."

March smiled at her joke and went on. "You know one of the first things built when people started civilization, were granaries for making beer. The workers had to be compensated for the extreme inequality of the system. Civilization from the beginning has been unjust, unequal, and uncivil. And drugs were there to keep it that way, an instrument of social policy as well as the misguided means of the individual trying to cope with that fact.

"So what's changed? You're not planning on creating a just society?"

"Only time and the people's will can do that. But in the meantime how about a real war on drugs?"

Susan made a face.

"Did I detect a note of skepticism."

"An entire symphony."

"No wonder. Only one thing worse than having to have a government, is having an impotent one. Credibility doesn't come from a bloated bureaucracy, but from doing what you say you're going to do. If you say as numerous Presidents have, that you're going to have a war on drugs, you better have just that, and proceed to win it."

"And how would you do that?"

"I have something concrete to announce about that shortly."

"That sounds uncomfortably familiar."

"It does, I admit. Same words, but I think you'll see I mean them."

"A lot has been made of your connection with the mob during the time you were with the teamsters. That maybe your effectiveness in dealing with them was you were part of the family."

"Fighting them I got to know them pretty well. It's funny about their use of the teamster pension fund. They went about it in a totally corrupt way, buying union officials. And I was naturally against that. But it also made me think. The pension fund was a hell of a lot of money. It shouldn't be used to illegally finance mob interests, but what about the practice of putting union money into mutual funds which invested in corporations that took their jobs overseas? It was their money, why not use it in their interest?"

"I think there's been some talk about moving in that direction."

"Finally. But beyond that I felt unions had to change or die. It wasn't enough to just organize workers for jobs created by someone else when that someone else had the power and privilege to up and take those jobs overseas. That way people get the idea you can't do that much for them and they don't join, and the unions shrink and pretty soon you're not organizing anybody. It's an infantile position, since they have to go hat in hand to the owner. I felt it was time the take responsibility for the whole kit and caboodle. I was pushing for them to incorporate."

"Union Incorporated? Were you serious?"

"After all I've had to say about corporations, not really. But it was a way to try to get everyone to rethink the whole thing. Get a hold of their money and get a hold of job creation. The idea was that they would take on the decision making process in order to create jobs. That scared the shit out of them, since they had the courage to oppose management but not to manage themselves.

"I don't blame them, that's a lot to take on."

"Sure it is. But it would have made the idea of unions that much more attractive because they were going to create a job for you. If they didn't have the expertise right away to do it, train someone and in the meantime hire some entrepreneurs. I liked the idea of the unions hiring venture capitalists, but it was all too much for them. And some of my political stances were just too right wing for them."

"Like what?"

"They were very internationalist in outlook. The whole world was going that way and meanwhile I'm for nationalizing everything."

"Nationalism in one country, you think it will work?"

"Very clever. Leave it to you to get me in the same boat as Joe Stalin. It's simple. We've got the government in the hands of private interests. Corporations in the hands of foreign interests. An army in the hands of the UN. Schools and unions in the hands of bureaucrats. I just want to see them all back in the hands of the American people."

"Your rhetoric's certainly warmed and ready, when are you going to run?"

"Speaking of warmed and ready," March changed the subject as one of his assistants walked up with a tray of food and drink and set it on the table. It brought a smile to Susan's face.

"Is that great timing, or does he always appear when you have a tough question?"

"Always. He's waiting tray in hand wherever I go. I know you said you weren't hungry, but how can we share ideas and not food. It's a crime in the South."

"Let us season together. Wasn't that one of President Johnson's favorite expressions."

March shook his head in admiration. "I knew I would like you."

Chapter 17

A thought had almost killed him. Kit could appreciate it afterward. "Tess has come back" wasn't even a thought, a lazy hypothesis, a hasty ill drawn sketch of reality. In the next instant he realized he was thinking when he should be using his senses. There was no sound of her keys. He had his gun out and was firing as the two men kicked open the front door. It gave him enough cover to get out a window.

He had escaped them, but he knew they would keep after him and soon the Yakuza would do the same. He wondered if Tess were still alive. Their contact number was useless. It was too dangerous until he had time to sort out what was compromised and what was not.

He had no illusions that he could avoid being caught. His only chance was to stay alive long enough to find out something he could bargain for his life, and if he were lucky some money. He decided to pass along the information about the papers to the Yakuza. He didn't like being connected with them again. But to find out anything he needed his contacts, and the Yakuza knew who they were. This meant he was free to work with them

Kit gave the Yakuza their first break since the papers were stolen out from under them, and they sent three men to meet the person who was giving it to them. One of the men Kit was to meet hated leaving Japan and hated meeting the man that killed his son. But he was ordered by his superiors to do both. He was told the killing was now regarded as self defense and officially over. It was a gesture of reconciliation. Kit was waiting for them at the Hotel Otani in Los Angeles.

There were official apologies and then they got down to business. He told them about the robbery. He lied about Tess' identity. He lied about what he knew of the papers. He said he hadn't seen them. A woman had set up the robbery and had told him they were about drugs. He thought she was killed and the papers taken.

They made a generous offer for his help in retrieving them. He accepted on condition that he actually delivered them. He was broke and could have used the money, but it was the proper way to handle it. Anyway, information was infinitely more valuable. It's what would keep him alive. He wanted to press them for everything they knew, it was vital in his efforts. They naturally knew little themselves, but they would ask their superiors. Kit hoped they weren't all stalling for time.

* * *

It was four in the morning as Michael's car cruised down a nearly empty highway 95. The car's interior was littered with evidence of life on the road, empty coffee cups and fast food wrappers. Despite the hour he and Tess were both wide awake. Michael attention was more on Tess than the deserted highway as she was going through the box of cassette tapes looking for something to play. She came across a couple of Nime's tapes.

"Gauguin. You know I've always been jealous of him."

"You wanted to be a painter?"

"No, he gets bored of France and goes to Tahiti. I'd just like some time to get bored with France. Questions, secrets, what are these about?"

"Finding some meaning in sexual fantasy. Rather than just a problem, the guy thinks it's an opportunity."

"And if your problem is fifty feet tall."

"More opportunity."

"He's definitely an optimist. You keep staring at me as if you were looking for something. Maybe we could pull over and find it."

Michael gave it some thought.

"It's just you look a lot like Sara."

"It must be strange. Two people that look so much alike and are so different. I liked her from what I heard on the radio. But she was straight as they come and I'm all twists and turns. Put us together and we'd make a very interesting person. Maybe too interesting for this world. But with your imagination you're probably already doing that."

"I don't have to. You're less different than you think."

"I don't see me at college or her on the streets at thirteen."

"I get that. But I still think you're similar."

"You're disappointing me. I thought from your radio program you're good on people."

"I am, but I also enjoy a little mystery."

"Maybe you only get off on me if I am a mystery."

"You come from money, not the wrong side of the tracks. You're brighter than what makes you comfortable, you care more than what makes you comfortable, you take more drugs than what makes you comfortable. You like to think of yourself as independent, but you're connected to the mob, probably in debt to them. But not for drugs. You're too much of a professional for that. Maybe gambling. Or maybe leftover from a partner or boyfriend who stiffed them. I could go on, but I still think you're more than all that."

"That's a good line."

"You're afraid there's more than all that."

"I'm just a thief. I'm not knocking it, and I'm not talking about sticking a gun in someone's face. It's an art not a mugging. It's all about watching, getting to know someone, anticipating their moves and making your play at the right time. Kit picked up on it when we worked together. He said it was like I was doing, what do you call it, that martial art, I always thought he said Hi Kiddo."

"Aikido. Someone suggested it for rehabbing my leg."

"Kit said it's about following your opponents moves so you can enter when there's a break in their concentration. He really thought I was a natural."

"How did you get into it?"

"I was young, what can I say. I figured it was an easy way to get even and money at the same time. Later I realized I steal money, jewelry, that sort of thing. What's been stolen from me I can't steal back."

"Tough way to make a living."

"It's honest at least."

Michael made a face.

"It calls a spade a spade. Look, as far as I can see everything's theft. Everything we've got is ours because we took it from somebody. Starting with this country. We stole it from the Indians, am I right. They write up a paper or pass a law that makes it legal. I'm just honest enough or stupid enough not to hide it. I say what it is. So they've got the law to cover them and I've just got my wits. You decide."

"So we're all thieves?"

"Or prostitutes."

"I should have guessed," Michael said sarcastically.

"Yeah, if you're not a thief you're a prostitute."

" I don't see myself as either."

"So what does that prove except you're blind. You have no idea of what's been taken from you, what you've sold out. It's a great gig. They cut you down to size, and as an added bonus they get to sell you back everything they took from you in the first place. You know the score."

Tess took Michael's smile to be a yes.

"You want to be smart you got to go to the right college. You want to be sexy you've got to have the right dress or tit job or car or attitude. It's their ballgame and you play it good or bad, it makes no difference, it's theirs and you've sold yourself off. Or you can be a thief."

"Or a Saint."

"Okay. But that's not exactly in the cards for most of us."

Michael was reminded of his advisor's commentary on the "sweat of the brow". "It's not just that work is a punishment, it's that God had something else in mind for us." But how do you read God's mind?, Michael wondered. Michael didn't have the patience to wait for a calling. Or concentrate well enough to get it in the revealed word.

His advisor suggested, "If creation is a reflection of God's mind, then you could try to read that." "How?" Michael asked. "An open mind and an open heart," his advisor said.

While Michael pondered this, he was looking at Tess' body. Nothing changes he thought to himself. He laughed.

"What's so funny?" Tess asked.

"I was thinking about an old advisor I had. He once told me to find God I should have an open heart and an open mind. Meanwhile I'm looking at your body and it's obvious all I can manage is an open fly."

"One out of three isn't a bad percentage. Look. This guy on the tapes is an optimist. I don't know about you, but I'm not. The only thing I'm hoping to find is Everett. We've got a fantasy going both of us like. We're both willing to play it out. Let's leave it at that."

Chapter 18

"Stop March, Stop Fascism" was how their signs read. A small group of protesters paraded in front of a hotel in Charleston, South Carolina as their leader was yelling the same message into a bullhorn. March supporters were carrying "Save America" signs, while police kept the two groups apart. Several news trucks were parked in front of the hotel.

Inside the hotel ballroom Allan March was at a rostrum giving a rousing speech to a packed house. Behind March were the South Carolina state flag and the American flag which was flying upside down.

"So now they're calling me a fascist. In the months to come you'll hear them call me everything, except wrong."

The crowd laughed.

"Their favorite is 'controversial'. Anybody who dares to talk about who really owns this country, they call controversial. I even hear it from my fellow Congressmen. Allan March, the only real independent in all of Congress, Allan March, the man who flies the American flag upside down to make a point, he's controversial."

The crowd groaned.

"But I never hear a solitary word from any of them about the fact that our whole country is upside down."

Michael was at the back of the hall, surveying the room.

"Corrupt people at the top, hard working people at the bottom, that's.. upside down."

The crowd roared as a contingent of March's security moved through it.

"Criminals can walk your streets, but you can't, that's..."

At March's prompting the crowd joined in.

"Upside down!"

Michael moved nervously among the crowd, but saw no sign of Everett.

"Foreign aid to dictators, while people here at home are starving. That's..."

"Upside down!"

March was working the room like a master.

"Since 1950 your taxes have gone up a thousand and forty one percent. Meanwhile big corporations get tax breaks, to take your jobs to foreign countries. That's..."

"Upside down!"

"When you need help, they talk about less government. Meanwhile they bail out Chrysler, they bail out the Savings and Loans, they bail out the Mexican Peso, the ruble, the yen or whatever currency they've invested in. They take care of their own and ignore you. That's..."

"Upside down!"

"Yesterday on the evening news, well it might have been evening, but it sure wasn't news. I saw a seven year old girl executed by gang members. Our inner cities are war zones, metal detectors in our schools, illegal immigrants flooding our borders, welfare lines, factories closing, drugs poisoning what's left of civilization. And where are our leaders? Busy stuffing their pockets with money from special interests. America is politically, economically, morally, and spiritually upside down. And you and I are going to turn it right side up!"

The crowd was on its feet in frenzied response as Michael left the hall, pushing past two security agents. He came out of the hotel and hurriedly walked around the corner where he met Tess waiting at a magazine stand. Even though he knew she was going to disguise herself, he was surprised at its effect. A wig, makeup and change of outfit seemed to make her a different person. She noticed that Michael didn't have great news.

"Let me guess. Everett still hasn't shown. Five hours we've been following this jerk. Is it always like this?"

"Always."

"Who the hell is this March anyway?"

"A right wing Congressman. He wants to take America away from the foreigners, bankers, big corporations and special interests and give it back to the people."

"Sounds pretty good."

"Yeah, unfortunately it'll turn out to be his people."

* * *

The President had called a meeting to discuss the upcoming election. Clement Pierce would never be accused of having delusions of grandeur. He believed in limits. Not just term limits, but limits period. He was a self proclaimed poll taker, current watcher. Nothing wrong in that, just the opposite, to keep ego in check is a strength, to ignore reality is a failing.

He hadn't started out as a politician. He was an engineer like Herbert Hoover and he saw everything as a structure, government, political parties, even as fluid a thing as history. You could get a little fancy in building them, but you were subject to the laws governing force and materials. If you were self indulgent you could throw something up and watch it collapse after a short time. Or you could design and plan and build it to last.

Asked to evaluate his presidency, he'd say he preferred to wait for the judgment of history. That would be all right his critics said except history has gone to sleep waiting for him. Wags with a historical bent said his height was between that of Harry Truman and Abraham Lincoln, but his stature was between Rutherford Hayes and Millord Fillmore.

Pierce had read history too. You lose connection with your backing and you're out there by yourself. And the people that did that were either unaware like Hoffa or Johnson, or they had a martyr complex and wanted to walk off the end of the world like King or Nixon. But they were finished. The art of the possible, that's what politics shared with engineering.

He listened as three of his aides discussed the upcoming election. Two hours of statistics covering contributors, economic forecasts, demographics for both Pierce and his possible opponents in all of the primaries as well as for the entire country. It wasn't that any of this was news to Pierce, but somewhere in the familiar litany he might be able to recognize a new pattern.

"All the indicators in the model we've been using still show you're well positioned for the election. Unless the interest rate goes up two points or there's war in Asia. I take it back. If the interest rate is steady, you can have your war in Asia."

Everybody laughed.

"That of course is based on the assumption of an eventual two person race," Pierce pointed out.

"It holds for the most likely outcomes even if March enters."

The President didn't look satisfied with most likely.

"What do we have on him and his wife?"

"So far she's clean unless we can get her on her spending habits. She travels to Europe on buying sprees. What Imelda Marcos was to shoes, Laura March is to hats. She's charming and good-looking and tends to leave politics to her husband. She's as hedonistic as he's spartan."

The President wasn't impressed.

"Great, we've got Marcus Aurelius married to Marie Antoinette. That's some trick. Any trouble they're having getting it to work?"

The Aide shook his head. "She came to this country to go to college. They met and fell in love and haven't stopped since."

"You don't suppose you could get Hilliard to at least dig up where she said 'Let them eat cake."

Pierce's aides smiled. They appreciated his occasional forays into humor. It made meetings more bearable and elections more winnable. As with most aspect of his public personality, it didn't come naturally, but he didn't regret the effort to acquire them. He had studied politicians and most qualities that came naturally were mixed blessings and this gave him the opportunity to get them right.

"Hilliard's busy working on the money backing March."

"If he's not busy working on his next mood."

"If they ever write his bio, it should begin he was born in a funk."

Everybody laughed. Pierce cut it short.

"He's a good man, just make him a little busier. I want to nail down this Mafia connection? If March's going to make a serious run he needs serious money. And this militia thing. He can't have it both ways. Let's get something on him. He's been in the mud for twenty years, he's got to have dirt under those fingernails."

* * *

Cassis was a French restaurant outside Charleston. It was started by gentlemen from Marseille who had liquidity, but didn't know Careme from cream sauce. A young inspired chef took it over. He didn't care for the decor, a ridiculous pastiche of French styles, but his patrons loved it so he left it alone and concentrated on turning it into a four star.

The mixture of Provencal and Normandine exterior was punctuated with trellised ivy. The Parisian interior came with a Muzak version of Edith Piaf songs. The restaurant was filled with diners. Allan March was sipping after dinner drinks with Hollings and political backers. He tried to ignore his differences with the people across from him as he listened to their banter.

"I told the reporter I hate political labels, they're meaningless. Democrat and Republican don't stand for anything but reelection. But he kept after me, so I told him I'm an ecologist. I'm out to save the most endangered species on earth, the individual."

"Speaking of individuals. What about the decision that judge just handed down? It's a travesty."

"It's happening more all the time."

"It is, because there's two Americas. The rich can buy their justice like their politicians."

"Not for long," Hollings responded buoyantly.

He raised his glass in toast.

"To Allan March, the next President of the United States."

March declined Hollings' boosterism.

"Forget Allan March, to one America."

As the Group raised their glasses in toast, Michael entered the restaurant. Pretending to study a menu, he studied the room instead. March and his group were seated at a large table near the back. Familiar faces, but he was disappointed there was no sign of Everett.

Tess was parked around the corner. She watched Michael emerge from the restaurant and walk toward her. He passed by a homeless woman who was selling roses. He didn't seem to pay much attention, but after a few steps he suddenly turned and went back to her. He bought her entire basket of roses.

He dodged traffic crossing the street and walked up to the car. He got in holding the roses. For a moment Tess' face reflected a flicker of joyful innocence as she thought they were for her. She knew better.

"I never guessed you're the romantic type," Tess said sarcastically.

"Ever sold flowers?"

"What?"

"You're going to plant a bug at their table."

"Why are we fucking with this?"

"You're going to have to trust me."

"I thought you didn't believe in trust?"

"I don't."

"Neither do I."

"Everett ruined my life. I spent years in rehab. Every step reminded me how he was going to pay. If it was as easy as blowing his head off, I would have done long ago."

With the help of a screwdriver, Michael wired a tiny listening device to one of the bunches of roses. Tess finished hearing Michael's instructions and then entered the restaurant with the basket of flowers. His instructions hadn't included carrying her gun concealed in the roses. She had deftly improved the arrangement as she left the car.

Tess began circulating among the tables, pretending to interest the diners in her flowers. She glanced toward the rear of the restaurant, looking for the group of people Michael had described. She was shocked when she saw Hollings. It unnerved her. The sight of her gun nestled among the roses was reassuring.

As Tess started making her way toward Hollings' table, Michael was sitting in the car. He was trying to eavesdrop on the melange of polite dinner conversation and faint French musical numbers broadcast through the bug. He was hoping Everett might show up for dinner and he could be the uninvited guest from across the street.

He heard dozens of voices, tinkling glasses and clattering silverware and talk about roses. John Cage would have been pleased, he wasn't. It was getting late. And then amongst some other conversation he heard March's voice in the background.

Tess was two tables away from March's. She was getting ready to approach them, when she noticed the maitre d' coming in her direction. She was relieved to see that his attention was focused on March. March whispered something to the maitre d' who nodded before walking toward the kitchen. Tess was wondering whether it was something more serious than a late dessert course, when a man dining with two women, called her over to buy flowers.

As she reluctantly carried out the transaction, she managed to see March get up and walk toward the kitchen. Tess hurriedly finished, almost forgetting the money. She watched as March disappeared into the kitchen. Tess whispered the news into the flowers.

Michael got out of the car and jogged around the side of the restaurant. He stopped running as he reached the corner of the building. The back entrance to the kitchen had several fluorescent lights above it which left the rear parking lot in shadow. Two chefs and their entire staff were standing some distance away from the kitchen taking a break.

A Mercedes sped into the back of the lot. Accompanied by a bodyguard Everett got out of the car. Michael pulled out his gun. As Everett and his bodyguard approached the kitchen, they emerged from the shadows into the glare of the fluorescent lights.

Michael watched as the abstract focus of his hatred that was nowhere to be found materialized as a perfect target. Michael found himself savoring the notion. He could see his bullets point of entry, the muscle and bone torn apart as his life had been. His hand tightened reflexively on the trigger. He was surprised how tightly, after all he was in control, not his rage. He was holding to that order of command. But why be difficult? This would be so easy and it would be over. He watched intently as Everett disappeared into the back of the restaurant.

He had been miles away from shooting him, he thought to himself. The tremor in his gun hand told him otherwise.

Tess had positioned herself so she had a direct line to the kitchen. She had already decided that if March didn't come out in a minute she was going in. Wait any longer, and if he went out the back he'd be gone. If he's in the kitchen sampling Vichyssoise, she'll just give her apologies. And if Everett's there she'll kill him.

Michael ran along the side of the restaurant, looking for some kind of access. There wasn't any, only an ivy covered trellis that went clear to the roof. Michael climbed it, boards snapping under his weight. Straining, he muscled himself on to the roof. He made his way toward the rear of the building. He stopped. A few feet in front of him the roof abruptly changed from concrete to glass. The dining room was visible twenty feet below.

The glass which was supported by steel struts spanned the building. There was no way around. He would have to go back and lose time, or cross it. He considered the risk. Forty feet ahead the roof was again concrete. The diners were in light, he was in darkness. Michael lowered himself gently on to the glass.

March sat beside a long work table that occupied the center of the kitchen. Everett started to move a chair next to him.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there to hear your speech in person. Excellent, especially the part about corrupt elites."

Everett sat down. "I assume of course that you'll be different."

"Definitely. I hold myself and all the people with me to the highest standards."

"Good. If it ever turned out differently, I'd also hold you accountable. By your neck I'm afraid."

March considered it a moment and then laughed. Everett joined him and then they got down to business.

"I wouldn't have imposed if this weren't absolutely necessary," March said apologetically.

"I assumed that."

"Those papers could transform this country. But if I go public tomorrow, I'm risking my entire political future."

"For the record, Black Forest is absolutely executable."

"That's what I needed to hear."

"What I need to hear is you'll have the courage to do it. If not, it won't be a personal thing, but it'll be more pain for this country, and that I'll take personally."

Michael tightrope walked his way along the steel beams supporting the glass roof. He was moving as fast as he could, but his leg was effecting his balance more than he expected.

Tess knew her minute was almost up. She had her hand on the gun in her basket. She tensed it, preparing herself. She was used to tight situations, but this was killing.

She tried to stay focused as a rush of sensations started to fill her mind. Distant faces, potted plants, a slight chill, the feel of the gun, the Edith Piaf song playing on the Muzak. Of all things. It was her favorite. Wait till it ends. Longer than a minute, but maybe for good luck.

The maitre d' spotted Tess across the room. Annoyed, he hurried toward her. He thought about calling to her. How to be forceful and inconspicuous at the same time?

"Madame. Madame."

At a nearby table a child looked toward the ceiling and saw Michael's darkened silhouette halfway across the roof. The child motioned to his mother who was in the midst of conversation.

Tess gave a last glance behind her.

She saw the maitre d' coming toward her and the child behind him looking upward toward the ceiling. Tess' eyes followed his to a view of Michael on the glass roof. Tess stopped. She looked at the kitchen door and then at Michael, trying to decide what to do.

The maitre d' seeing her look up began to turn his glance toward Michael. Tess walked toward the maitre d'.

"Monsieur, monsieur..."

Her attempt to get his attention only partially diverted him. He was about to look upward again. Frantic to distract him she suddenly began singing along with the Piaf song on the Muzak. Her first tentative bars got the attention of people nearby including the maitre d'. He wasn't pleased and was about to interrupt her.

Tess gathered her courage and started singing in earnest. Everybody in the restaurant watched in amazement as the song built until she was passionately belting out Piaf's "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien".

Tess finished and the diners applauded. She glanced up. Michael was gone. He was hurrying along the concrete part of the roof toward the vents to the kitchen.

In the parking lot Everett's bodyguard scanned the rooftop with a nightscoped automatic. Michael caught sight of the bodyguard and dropped into a crouch. He reached a large vent. He connected a bug to a roll of electrical wire and lowered it down the vent. He heard faint conversation between Everett and March. Michael lowered the bug and the conversation became clearly audible.

"An attack? What kind of an attack?"

Everett, who was pacing inside the kitchen, turned toward March.

"For all we know it could be government disinformation, or happy hour bullshit by a couple of weekend warriors. It's supposed to take place the night of the 23rd."

"That's two days from now," March said genuinely shaken. "I've heard rumors, but nothing like this."

"Speaking of rumors, somebody said it was being called 'Operation Paul Revere'."

"Paul Revere? They think they're going to warn the country about the redcoats?"

"Maybe it's turncoats they're worried about, traitors."

Everett got up to leave.

"I'm sure it's nothing, but I thought you might appreciate advance notice."

"With our limited resources I appreciate all the help I can get."

"Some day maybe there won't be..."

March cut him off. "Let's leave some days to the politicians."

Everett smiled. He exited the kitchen, and flanked by his bodyguard walked quickly to the Mercedes. Michael watched them from the roof.

Inside the restaurant the maitre d' was lecturing Tess. She was half listening, keeping an eye on the kitchen door. Hollings walked in her direction.

"This is an outrage," the maitre d' energetically exclaimed.

"I'm sorry, it just came over me," Tess replied.

"No, I mean you have the feeling, the passion. Why don't you study, train the voice, no?"

"I'm too busy."

"Too busy for your own gifts. C'est dommage. Same for me. Is silly or tragic, I don't know."

Hollings, lit by several cognacs, stepped up.

"Excuse me."

Hollings smiled at Tess as he tried to place her. Tess readied her gun.

"Where is the little boy's room?" Hollings asked the maitre d'.

The maitre d' pointed. As Hollings walked away there was the sound of footsteps. Tess and the maitre d' looked up and saw Michael crossing the roof. Tess started for the door. She had a clear path until Hollings angrily grabbed her arm.

"You were sexier as a redhead."

Tess saw the maitre d' coming toward her. She aimed her gun at Hollings.

"You going to shoot me?" Hollings challenged.

He drunkenly offered his chest as a target. "Kill him", a voice inside her said.

"You dumb bitch, I'm on your side."

Tess slugged the butt end of the gun into the side of Hollings face, knocking him out cold. She dropped the roses on his prone body and ran for the exit.

Everett's Mercedes pulled out of the parking lot and drove off. Michael tumbled down the ivy trellis as Tess sprinted out of the restaurant. They dashed to the car and sped off Catching her breath, Tess was still thinking about Hollings.

"I got recognized. The sharp dresser next to March was Everett's friend."

"Hollings?"

"It was Ted something or other to me."

Michael checked his rearview mirror.

"Nobody's following."

"I cracked him pretty good. Did you see Everett?"

"He was twenty feet away."

"And you didn't shoot him. What are you waiting for?"

"I'll know when I get there."

Michael turned a fast left at the first corner. He eased up when he saw the Mercedes up ahead in traffic. Tess got her gun out of the flower basket. Michael saw it.

"We're not going to get close enough. All you'll do is ruin his car and get us shot at."

"Everett was close enough in the kitchen. I should have killed him. Obviously you've got bigger ideas."

"You and I are not going down as a couple of losers trying to off a big war hero."

The Mercedes went south on 95 and Michael followed it. He watched the taillights of the car up ahead as he tried to filter out the static on a tape he was playing of Everett and March's conversation.

"So what are they up to?"

"It looks like Everett's involved in something called Operation Paul Revere. From the name it's obvious some militia group is planning a wake up call for America the night of the 23rd."

"They're probably not going to be satisfied with hanging a lantern in the Old North Church."

Michael looked surprised. Tess didn't appreciate it.

"What, I couldn't know American history?"

"I knew you were bright, I just didn't know you were bright like that."

"Great, you and Hollings should get together sometime. But Paul Revere you got from hearing the tape once. We've been over it ten times."

"I'm trying to get a read on Everett's voice, trying to figure out why he would tell March. March probably wouldn't distance himself from the militia and Everett probably knew that."

"Operation."

"What?"

"I just remembered Operation was in the title of Hollings' papers."

"What else?"

"I don't know, I saw them for a moment."

"Try."

"What do you want, it was just grief to me."

"Whose idea was it to steal the case?"

"Black... Forest!"

"What?!"

"It just came to me. Operation Black Forest."

Michael stared at her.

"Something about trees in South America."

"What would that have to do with Paul Revere? Are you sure?"

"That's all I know, you want it in writing?"

Frustrated, Michael knew they'd reached a dead end.

"That was some piece of work back there. Thanks for covering me."

"It's just part of the job description."

"Well thanks anyway. Where did you learn to sing like that?"

"Juilliard."

"I was trying to give you a compliment."

Tess didn't quite know what to do with Michael's sincerity. There was an awkward silence that seemed to grow and engulf her. Tess tried to ignore it as she had before. It was a familiar silence, but it kept pressing on her. She began self consciously.

"When I was a kid I pretended I was a French princess. I got records because I figured if you were a French princess you ought to speak French. I guess the songs stayed with me."

The moment was oddly vulnerable.

"So what's the song about?"

"This woman who's been through all of this heartbreak, but still says 'I regret nothing'. Can you imagine?"

"You're talking to a man who's lucky his bitterness doesn't eat through a major organ. I remember when I wanted to be like one of the saints with his hands outstretched embracing everything, and keep on even when they drive nails straight through them. I regret everything."

"So do I, that's why I love the song. Crazy, huh?"

"Not really. Not really at all."

Chapter 19

"It happens every time I drink Madeira that's not at least a hundred years old," Hollings had joked by way of explanation for having been out cold. He had first made sure no one had seen him get hit by Tess before he launched into his story. He had a terrible headache, but the night was young and it might improve. It did.

On the ride back to Charleston and their hotel, March filled him in on his discussion with Everett. Hollings heard about Operation Paul Revere and the attack on the 23rd. The FBI was all over him. The militia attack was something he could give them. It was no skin off anybody near and dear and it was patriotic for goodness sakes. It was a good feeling. The thought of making the call almost made his headache go away. Everett was counting on that call.

* * *

Kit took his time making sure he wasn't being followed before he went to see Sumiko. He had hoped it wouldn't just be time lost, that it might give him a chance to use his other contacts to clarify his situation. They didn't, which left him needing her brother's computer expertise.

Sumiko and her brother Akira had been politically and socially anarchistic enough to be an embarrassment to her wealthy family in Osaka. Part of the embarrassment was her casual affair with Kit. She and her brother were set adrift with plenty of money to go far away and stay.

When Kit came to the United States several years later he looked her up. She lived in a high-rise with a view of the Charles river. She had gutted the condo and turned it into an artist's studio. Her painting required a kind of free associative hyped up state encouraged by liters of green tea and breathing exercises refined in the Himalayas.

Kit had a hunch she wouldn't be thrilled about his wanting her brother's help. Sumiko hated computers, that was her brother's domain. They had divided the creative world neatly and absolutely in the manner of Portugal and Spain in the age of discovery. Kit should have known better. Sumiko could move from contradiction to contradiction without breaking stride. Thoughts were just so much fuel for her imagination to gain momentum and reach escape velocity.

"Computers, they're the nave of the future. The world of energy is tragic, not enough to go around, information is infinite. You still have to plug the things in now, but it will get more and more subtle until finally it'll work in the quantum sea of potential, like consciousness."

Kit smiled. "What ever happened to the silicon valley of death?"

"I still believe that," Sumiko replied. She saw Kit's confused look. "You don't understand contradictions. They're wonderful. I love contradictions even more than Nagarjuna did. You know how they say the horns of a dilemma. I did a series of paintings. Dilemma is a very Picasso like bull with glorious horns. You have to see them."

Kit made sure that between Sumiko's verbal cascades and their love making he had her pass along his questions to her brother. Kit wanted anything he could find on Black Forest including the scientist who gave the dealer in technological secrets the papers.

* * *

Michael had followed Everett's Mercedes at increasing distance as they got off the main highway and the roads narrowed and the traffic thinned. The marshy, wooded terrain got denser and denser, the traffic and lights sparser until there was just the two cars engulfed in blackness, seemingly a thousand miles from civilization.

Michael and Tess intently watched the lights of the Mercedes far ahead. They felt the tension of being in a dark, strange, end of the world place. Michael remembered a similar place and recoiled from the memory.

"I've been here before."

"Don't get mystical on me, this is weird enough."

"A place just like this."

Michael was lost in thought as the car passed over a causeway bridge and a swampy river. He remembered the highway was so empty the ambulance wasn't using its siren. Between the pain killers and the adrenaline, it was just like a ride in the country, nothing had happened.

Then suddenly he was sitting up, swearing at the attendant to turn the fucking ambulance around so he could go after them. They shot him and he thought for sure his partner and they were getting away. He still couldn't remember if he pulled his gun on the attendant or he was about to when he passed out.

In the distance the Mercedes' brake lights went on. Michael turned his headlights off and slowed down in the almost complete darkness. The Mercedes stopped alongside a heavily wooded area surrounded by an eight foot wire fence marked "Private Property, No Trespassing". A bodyguard unlocked the gate and the Mercedes passed through. Michael drove slowly along the road with his lights off.

"The dealers were tipped because the CIA was letting Noriega run drugs for helping with the Contras. I was set up because I wasn't going along with the program. Years later, I found out Everett was the liaison."

"So Everett got you shot?"

"Indirectly. We were a small price to win the cold war."

Michael pulled off the road and started to get out.

"Let's go. It's not often you get a shot at justice."

"Does the shot include marching through that stuff." Tess pointed toward the woods.

Michael nodded. Tess changed her clothes. She put on a pea coat and tennis shoes and took off her wig. They began making their way through the dense pines and underbrush. The two reached a barbed wire fence. Michael gave Tess a boost and followed her over.

They continued on until they were almost in a clearing before they noticed it. Michael instinctively pulled Tess back behind a tree. Up ahead they saw a flash of light through the trees. Another few steps and Michael and Tess were standing in thick reedlike grass, looking out over an inlet to the Atlantic Ocean.

Michael signaled and they squatted in the cover of the grass. He pulled out a pair of binoculars and looked out at the water. A large fishing boat was in the middle of the cove. It beamed more flashes of light. In front of it, two rubber rafts were in various stages of reaching the shore. Each raft was filled with what look like professional fisherman.

"What is it?" Tess asked.

Michael finished scanning the beach and handed Tess the binoculars. She peered through them.

"It looks like fishermen having trouble with their boat."

"That's what it's supposed to look like."

Michael took a small infrared camera out and began taking pictures. Tess soon interrupted.

"It's wonderful you'll have something to show your grandchildren, but they're coming this way."

Michael pocketed the camera and Tess handed him the binoculars and pointed down the beach. One raft had reached the shore. The fishermen were heading in their direction. Michael motioned and the two started back into the cover of the trees.

Suddenly everything around them was brilliant light and shadows. They scrambled for more cover as the headlights of three dark green vans parked in the clearing illuminated the woods around them. Their view was obscured by trees, but there was only the sounds of the woods and nobody seemed to be coming toward them.

Michael motioned Tess to follow. Sticking to shadows, they moved for a closer look. Two "fishermen", Memphis and Indy, were digging in an area in front of the vans. Michael pulled out his camera and started taking photographs.

Back along the country road a Georgia State police car pulled to a stop behind Michael's. A cop at the wheel picked up the c.b. Next to him was sitting Martin Arens.

In the clearing four other "fishermen", Randy, Earl, KC and Billings, had joined the other men. Their digging had just uncovered a metal silo. They pulled off the heavy metal lid. The silo was filled with large wooden crates. They began loading them into one of the vans.

"Wonder what we've got here?" KC mused as he and Earl hefted one of the crates.

Billings was nearby and offered an answer. "From what I hear an M2 machine gun."

"The perfect choice to level the playing field," KC commented.

"And enough plastic to move the UN to New Jersey," Billings added.

Michael drew a bead on the four men. He took quick snapshots of them. He watched as they finished loading, got in the van and drove off. Two other fishermen, Austin and Phoenix, appeared and started loading another van. Everett was nowhere to be seen. Michael whispered to Tess.

"Wait here."

Tess watched as Michael disappeared into the woods. He circled behind the vans. Through the trees he saw the men continuing to load. Michael reached the clearing closest to the vans. The van furthest from him was still being loaded. The back of the nearest van was not in their line of sight.

Michael pulled a small transmitter from his pocket and activated its electronics. He dashed to the back of the van and began attaching the transmitter.

Before he could finish, he heard the back door of the van being opened from inside. He scrambled underneath as Memphis jumped out. Michael pulled his gun. He heard Memphis open the driver's door and get in. Michael slid out from under the van. The engine started up and he hurriedly attached the transmitter. As the van pulled away he made a run for the woods.

The Georgia Police car was still parked behind Michael's. Arens was sitting in the driver's seat of Michael's car. He was satisfied, his work was done. He had searched the car and pocketed Michael's tape of Everett and March's conversation. For amusement he began playing one of Nime's tapes.

He smiled when he heard his voice. Small world. He listened to Nimé's talk about sexual fantasy and shamanism for a few minutes before commenting satirically in a Georgia accent.

"Shaman this, shaman that. The only shaman I'm acquainted with is the one who marched through poor Dixie to the sea. General Shaman."

Tess heard someone in the darkness and readied to fire. It was Michael. Before he could say anything, an intense light flooded the trees, sweeping toward them. A brilliant arc light on top of a van was searching the area. Tess and Michael turned and sprinted into the woods. They heard the sound of men shouting behind them as they crashed through branches and underbrush and kept going.

They finally ran out of the range of the lights. They reached the barbed wire fence, but the shouting behind them was getting closer. Michael hurriedly gave Tess a boost. As they started to climb over, Michael's injured leg was snagged in the wire. Tess looked back at him dangling in pain.

"Keep going," Michael urged.

Tess started to climb up to him. "Always where you're weakest," he swore to himself as he struggled with the wire impaled in his leg. Voices in the darkness were nearing them. Michael pulled the wire free and they scrambled over the fence.

They came running out of the woods and jumped into the car. Michael checked the rearview mirror as he sped away. There was nothing but darkness behind them. They caught their breaths.

"Who were they?" Tess asked.

"Alumni from special services. Something serious is going down, and I bet it's going to happen at midnight."

Tess looked like she'd take Michael up on it.

"Paul Revere's midnight ride."

Suddenly a voice came from the back seat.

"History for five hundred, Alex."

Michael and Tess turned in panic toward the back seat and saw Arens pointing a pistol at them.

"Just when you thought you were out of the woods."

Arens laughed at his own joke.

Michael made a subtle move for the gun in his coat. Arens was way ahead of him.

"You don't want her on my resume."

Michael stopped. Arens motioned.

"Pull over, we've got company."

Michael looked up ahead. There was a causeway bridge which spanned the waterway a half a mile ahead. Michael thought about a quick maneuver, but a police car sped over the bridge, forcing him to pull over.

A Georgia State policeman got out. "Pounds" was his overdetermined nickname, as he was English, fat and violent. His gun looked minuscule in his huge hand as he yanked Michael out of the car. Michael tried to hold on to what little self possession he had by joking feebly.

"Take it easy , Tiny?"

Pounds slammed Michael against the car.

"The name's 'Pounds', get it?"

Pounds began frisking Michael.

"Friends are having a picnic and I'm here to brush away the flies."

Pounds found Michael's gun and hurled it into the woods.

Inside the car, Arens had his gun pressed to the back of Tess' head. From behind, he seductively ran his hand down her body "searching" for her gun.

"Skip the pervert stuff, fuckhead, it's in my coat."

"Getting there is half the fun."

Arens pulled the gun out of Tess' coat while Pounds shoved Michael into the driver's seat. Pounds got in the back and handed Arens Michael's camera and bugs. Pounds was impressed.

"He's a walking emporium."

Arens gave Tess a knowing look.

"It seems both of you are very well equipped."

Michael remembered he had left the screwdriver under the seat. He might be able to reach it Then what? Two guns against a screwdriver. He tried reaching it without moving his body. Nothing doing. He heard Arens sigh.

"I don't know about you, but I've had a day. I guess after last night. A night filled with a white light of excruciating clarity, you know where life has more meaning and beauty than you can stand. But why quibble when fate has finally brought us together. Or I should say the fates have. I don't know about you, but I always saw them as an all girl rock group complete with choreography and monogrammed satin jackets with The Fates in dayglo on the back. I wonder what the gals have in store for the four of us."

Arens looked over the three others and shook his head. "And what a quartet we make. Only Shostakovich could put us to music. Michael. Not enough heart to be a priest. Not enough brains to be an agent. Of course from what I hear of your escapades they're not the best part of your anatomy.

"And Tess. Mister Proudhon's dreamgirl. If there were a heaven you would have stolen the key to it. Don't get me wrong, I think both of you are enchanting. Such pluck and high spirits. It's just the old story. You have what I want and I have what you want. And then there's my friend Pounds."

Arens repeated it enjoying its sound.

"His nickname has such a nice ring to it. Pounds is definitely a Hobbesian creation, nasty, British, and short. We get along splendidly despite the fact that he has no taste for metaphysics. I find metaphysics is like vinegar on fish and chips. It's tart but it adds a nice dimension to something basically indigestible. I don't have to tell you Michael, you studying for the priesthood, that every day is a good day. But some days it takes a bit of doing to appreciate that fact. The Grind of Being and all that.

"The world is such a funny place. So ingeniously designed. Just pleasurable enough for the hedonists, contentious enough for the politicos, beautiful enough for the artists, competition and power for the movers and shakers, and death and terror for all. Just enough to keep you in the game, but not enough to get your fill and catch on. Ingenious, no? Tom compared it to a hospital. I think it's more along the lines of an institute for the criminally mundane.

"And me?"

Arens pulled out a zippo lighter and began lighting it and relighting it.

"I feel like Diogenes with his little lantern searching the world for an honest man or in this case an honest woman. I love asking questions, don't you? Especially with a gun, it gives it the proper urgency and weight. After all they say an examined life is the only one worth living. So what brought you two together? Love, desperation, fate, mutual interests, good sex?"

Michael and Tess were silent.

"Don't like interviews? It's good practice for what's to come. After all what's the last judgment but the ultimate interview. Don't you find yourself asking yourselves those basic questions, who am I?, why am I here? Incidentally, why are you here?"

More silence.

Arens moved the flame toward Tess.

"Let's play truth or consequences"

Tess turned to face Arens.

"Play with yourself, creep. Maybe your friend here will help you find it."

Arens aimed his gun at Tess' face and started to squeeze the trigger. "Don't," Michael yelled as he lunged toward Arens. Pounds slugged him in the head with his gun. Michael slumped unconscious, bleeding profusely. Arens' gun was still pointed at Tess' face.

"So now it's up to you. Something enlightening would be appreciated."

"Go to hell."

Arens slowly squeezed the trigger. Tess braced for the percussion and the bullet. Instead a squirt of water ran down her face. Arens laughed.

"Fucking asshole", Tess screamed as she went after Arens. Pounds grabbed her right arm and started to break it. Tess winced in pain as Arens admired his squirt gun.

"I think you'll be glad I brought this along."

Arens flicked the lighter and put the flame in the ends of Tess' hair. He let it burn for a moment and put it out with a squirt. He repeated the process, letting the fire go longer each time. Tess trembled from anger and terror, but was stoic. Arens played inquisitor.

"Questions and answers, fire and water, understand?"

Tess glared at him.

"Now let's play Joan of Arc. You can be Joan. First question. Elementary and yet profound. What are you doing here?"

"Amusing a pusbag with eyes."

"That's a bit unflattering, but it's a start. Maybe you didn't care for the existential overtones. So many things to talk about."

Arens put the flame in Tess' hair.

"Let's talk about bellhops."

Tess was silent. Arens doused the fire with a squirt.

"How can you play if you don't understand the rules? I think Wittgenstein said that. It's simple. If you answer, the fire stops. Get it."

Arens relit her hair.

"Where's Kit?"

He's alive Tess thought as the fire grew. She tried to hold out as long as she could. Finally she beat it out with her left sleeve. Pounds wrenched her arm. Tess screamed in agony. Arens patiently continued.

"Let's give Joan one more chance."

Arens lit up Tess' hair. As it spread, she stared at him with an intense hatred. Nobody was going to break her. Arens was disconcerted by her toughness and Tess responded to it. She taunted Pounds.

"Your friend is jealous, Tiny. You've got all the guns, but I've got all the balls."

"End of fucking story," Pounds said as he raised his gun, set to blow Tess' head off. At the same moment, Michael pulled the screwdriver from under the seat, swung around and drove it into Pounds' eye as he fired. Blood sprayed everywhere as the deafening shot just missed Tess.

Bellowing like a wounded bull, Pounds went to fire again at Tess. Michael grabbed his huge arm, trying to wrestle the gun away. Tess ducked, but watched helplessly as the barrel of the gun arced toward her. She screamed as she saw Pounds' hand close on the trigger. Another deafening shot.

Tess felt a burning in her cheek. Shot and going to die went through her head. An instant later she was still watching the two men struggle, trying to anticipate the path of the gun. Their efforts seemed to cancel each other out, serving only to give the gun a frighteningly arbitrary will of its own as it kept shifting and moving, firing and firing. It was a dance of terror, punctuated by explosions of sound as the bullets ripped through the car, smashing the windows.

Arens, suddenly in the line of fire, opened the car door to escape. A stray bullet hit him in the shoulder and he tumbled on to the road.

Pounds, weakening, finally emptied his gun. The click of the hammer ended Tess' absorption in the gun's dance. The burning in her cheek wasn't a gunshot, she was on fire. Tess screamed, trying in vain to beat out her burning hair. Michael held Pounds at bay and turned toward Tess. He saw her hair engulfed in flames, and up ahead the bridge and the river.

Michael pulled away from Pounds. He started the car and slammed the accelerator to the floor as Pounds came after him. Michael sped toward the bridge, using his other arm to ward off Pounds, who was wildly beating on him. Michael yelled to Tess.

"Jump at the bridge!"

Tess frantically reached for the door handle as the car reached the bridge. A half a mile back, Arens, struggling to raise himself, pulled a detonator out of his coat. Inside the car, Pounds overwhelmed Michael's one armed defense, and grabbed for his throat. Michael lost control of the car. It hit the side of the bridge and catapulted over.

The airborne car began to revolve. Tess dove off, her hair flaming in the darkness. As the somersaulting car turned upside down, Michael opened the car door and tumbled out. The gas tank erupted and the car, with Pounds inside, was turned into a rotating fireball.

The fireball hit the water, vaporizing itself in steam and eddies. Pieces of the car floated on the river. Tess came to the surface, but she wasn't moving. Michael appeared, gasping for air. He looked around and saw Tess floating unconscious. Making his way through the debris, he swam over to her and hauled her to the riverbank.

She was still. Already gone. For a moment, in panic, all the procedures, dos and don'ts converged in his mind and he went blank. Michael tried to revive her. He covered her mouth with his and blew air into her lungs. She was so still. An idea that was merely a familiar shadow in childhood, "You can't bring her back", found a voice inside him. He frantically ignored it as he tried again and again.

"Tess! Tess!" The words came inadvertently and seemed to try to reach into a darkness.

Finally with a painful groan Tess began to breathe, to Michael's relief. His relief was wedded with agony as all his childhood strategies of reaching his mother in that defying darkness came back to him. He fought being overcome and looked over at Tess. She appeared to him new as if life had always held her hand and made her journey a sweet one. It was a moment of grace. Painful in its passing as he knew he saw her in a light he had never seen and might never again.

Van lights flickered between the trees in the distance. Michael pulled himself together and struggled to his feet. "They'll be here any minute," Michael urged Tess as he helped her up. She was still painfully catching her breath. The two were wet, burnt, and bloodied as they set off into the woods.

Across the river, Everett and Arens were standing on the causeway bridge surveying the debris. Arens was in a great deal of pain.

"There's no use sitting here speculating, especially when you're in pain."

"He had a camera."

"I assume he wasn't taking pictures of the Georgia wildlife, so get someone to help with the dredging tomorrow. We wouldn't want anything interesting to get misplaced."

Arens nodded .

"You didn't find out what they knew?"

"Relating to the other's needs was an issue."

"If there aren't three bodies pulled out of that river, make sure you resolve it."

Tess and Michael, whose bloody head was wrapped in a torn shirt, struggled through the woods, totally exhausted. They walked on, still shaken by their ordeal, silent with their own thoughts. Life threatened, life saved, a baptism of fire and water. They blunted its power to change everything. They had no time for its dangerous promise. There were more immediate dangers. Tess motioned for a halt.

"I have to rest."

"Five minutes," Michael warned her as the two slumped to the ground, exhausted. He watched as the lights of three vans passed in the distance. He took off his left shoe and removed a wafer size electronic device. He turned it on and there was a high pitched beeping sound. He was surprised it still worked.

"It's old, but cheap and reliable. They'll be out of range soon."

Tess saw the van lights disappear from view.

"They left some people behind, didn't they?"

"Definitely. They're not going to be happy until they personally escort us out of this world."

Tess laid back and closed her eyes, wondering if her nightmare would ever end. Suddenly she heard Michael's voice calling to her.

Tess opened her eyes. Michael was standing over her, hand outstretched. Tess took his hand as he pulled her close to him.

"Thanks for the lifesaving back there. Nobody's ever..."

Michael started to kiss Tess when they heard footsteps. Panicked, Tess looked up. Arens appeared from behind a tree pointing a gun. He smiled as he fired at Tess. Only instead of a bullet, a thin jet of flames streamed toward her as she screamed.

Tess' scream woke her and Michael. It was dawn and they realized they had passed out in each other's arms. Tess was still sorting it out as Michael tried to soothe her.

"It's only a dream, they're gone."

As Michael helped her up, Tess glanced toward the river.

"So are your camera and tapes. There goes the evidence it wasn't all just a bad dream."

"We have to keep after them."

"It's a long walk to the nearest town."

"And they'll have people watching it. We better arrange for some transportation. A couple of times to get out of the immediate area."

"And after that, any bright ideas?"

"Right now a dim hunch is all I've got. Let's get to a phone."

Michael tenderly brushed some soot off of Tess' face. "And get us a new look."

* * *

Hilliard was trying to set up his day so he could leave work early. He had already figured out what files he needed to take home and arranged to be informed if anything came up. The more he tried to speed up meetings and phone calls the more they dragged. It was a certainty like death and taxes. This was no time to be doing this. He had made a commitment to himself to reset his priorities and he knew from experience that some other time never came. Hilliard was rushing through a social call.

"I've got the kids. The older one has got problems. She..."

An intercom buzzed.

"Let me call you later."

Hilliard switched lines. "Who? Mister Coltrane? Oh yeah, I'll take it," Hilliard said clearly not pleased. The person on the other end of the line was in a phone booth in a small town shopping center in Georgia. The center had somehow escaped the ravages of minimall conversion that had spread across the South. It was fast becoming a historical curiosity like Williamsburg, Virginia.

Michael was on the phone. He was wearing new clothes and his head was neatly bandaged. He kept an eye on his surroundings as he talked to Hilliard. Hilliard tried to make it short.

"It's a bad time Michael."

"Wrong decade, I'm sorry."

"Lay off, I've given you plenty."

"You didn't do me any big favors. You probably wanted to smoke out some people and you used me to do it."

"So it helped both of us."

"So you still owe me."

"What is this, a lifetime proposition?"

"Why not, what happened to me was."

"We've been over this. I told you if I knew the way it was going to turn out..."

"You would have done it all differently. So you say."

"All right, you didn't turn me in. Now I'm not turning you in, so we're even."

"Turn me in for what?"

"Killing a Georgia State trooper. We got it this morning."

"Okay, so somebody doesn't like me."

"A lot of people don't like you."

"I have news about Everett with the militia."

"That's not news."

"What do you need, his picture on the wall of a post office?"

"I don't need a damn thing. We've already got it covered ten times over. You're completely out of your depth, please stay out of this. If it makes you feel any better you can send me your evidence."

"It's at the bottom of a river."

"The same river that officer was found."

"I need some files, starting with the agent who was killed. If they don't connect with a militia attack called 'Paul Revere', then call me a liar."

"You're not a liar, Michael. You're a civilian."

Tess, driving a new car, entered the mall and drove up to the phone booth. Her hair had been cut short and she was wearing a new dress. She had called her contact number with Kit hoping he had left a message. He hadn't. Michael admired her as he got into the car.

"Vive la difference."

Tess smiled.

"How'd it go?" Michael asked.

"I picked the car out of a factory parking lot. Hopefully it won't be missed until closing time."

Tess drove out of the mall.

"What about Kit?"

"There was no message. If he's alive, he's not saying so."

"He might be figuring that's the best way to stay that way."

"Check the glove box."

Michael pulled out two hand guns.

"Thank God for American Express and the NRA."

"What did Hilliard say?"

"There's a warrant out for me. Tiny was a cop."

"Obviously there was no written exam."

"Everett's using connections, so it'd be nice to avoid the police."

"Did Hilliard believe you?"

"I'm not sure, but he's getting the files. We're meeting him."

"Do you trust him?"

Michael checked the heft of one of the guns.

"I do now."

* * *

Shortly after the three green vans departed, Everett ordered that all of them be monitored for electronic devices. Memphis discovered Michael's transmitter. Rather than having it destroyed, Everett kept it. He made plans to have it picked up ahead. The three vans separated and took different northerly routes. None of them on a major highway. KC, Memphis and Earl were driving together.

"I never expected to find anything. You think that was for real?" Memphis asked.

"Something to keep us on our toes," Earl suggested.

KC glanced at the crates in the back of the van.

"I'll bet we got enough in just this van, they'll hear it all the way to Washington."

"Hell, George Washington will hear it," Earl joked.

They all laughed. Earl loved getting a laugh, but he was getting impatient. He had expected them to take a direct route. Instead they were taking their time going first through Columbia, South Carolina in what Earl figured was a wide arc through Charleston, West Virginia to New York.

Let's get on with it he felt. Everett must have his reasons. It was more remote and that was an advantage. Maybe there was going to be an unscheduled stop somewhere. More men and supplies.

Chapter 20

They liked each other. The Georgia policeman and his son in law. There was friction. The old man tried to fix things with the young couple too much and the kid needed some grit in his crevices, but somehow it worked. They were seated in the policeman's office listening to a cassette tape of all things. The policeman had his feet on his desk and was gazing out a window. The world seemed bigger. He could barely contain his excitement. He knew he had something this time.

It wasn't like before. It was an honest mistake. He winced as he remembered the kid's lecturing words. "What you're looking for is called parapsychology, that's mind reading. I'm in psychology." But it just made this that much more enjoyable. He knew his son in law would show up with an attitude about to burst with impatience and a barely contained "What now?".

Out of the corner of his eye, the policeman looked over and smiled when he saw his son in law listening intently.

"One way to look at obsessions is that they contain a crucial message about our lives only we don't get it. Like someone who is desperately trying to get our attention, they keep repeating in order that we'll hear it. Although they are intense and sometimes overpowering, their intensity is a mark of how much we can discover at the heart of them.

"Sexual fantasy is populated by an almost endless variety of characters and scenarios. From the most light hearted and sweetly romantic to the most darkly obsessional. And they all have something to reveal to us. Not without difficulty, but with great reward."

The tape ended.

"Kind of interesting, huh?" the policeman said, enjoying every moment as he shifted his feet to the floor.

"Definitely," the son in law replied, trying not to act too surprised. "Where you'd get them?"

"From a car we pulled out of the river this morning. It was A-One priority, there was a policeman killed. I've never seen so many people poke their heads in, even the Feds were involved. We thought the tape might relate somehow to this guy involved in the killing, so I gave it a good listening. It doesn't appear so, at least on the surface, though the Feds didn't take my word of course.

"But I got to thinking about you, so I made some copies. I had to turn the originals over to the FBI. I was thinking you could do a 900 number. People would call to find out about all this. Everybody's fascinated by this stuff. And if it turns out it all has some meaning like this guy says, that's icing on the cake. I've got some money set aside. What do you say?"

"I'm in experimental psychology. We work with rats."

The policeman saw the world get significantly smaller.

"The department's still hassling the daylights out of you. Why don't you join us folk in the real world? Couldn't you bone up on this?"

He was getting nowhere.

"Just do me this. I'll..."

He didn't finish his appeal. A smile was on his son in law's face.

"You dog."

The son in law's smile broadened.

"I've got enough background. It's a possibility."

"What do you think?"

"It sure beats mind reading."

* * *

Hilliard was irritated that he had to deal with Michael. He could ignore this meeting, but Michael wouldn't have asked for it if he didn't have something. Something besides what Hilliard made it painfully clear he already knew. It wasn't a sure thing or Michael wouldn't have bothered with the you owe me shakedown. He could be bluffing and have nothing, but he didn't think so. Was it worth having to meet Michael in some cockamamie park in the middle of the night?

Hilliard wrestled with it. He also wrestled with Michael's knowing about the attack. The number of people with such knowledge was accumulating. It put everybody's mind at ease including the White House, but not his. It would have eaten at him more, were it not for the fact that he was reassured by others that they had a stopgap, they had a man on site. He passed along his report to the White House with proceed with caution not just written between the lines.

The White House read his report and duly noted his concerns, but put them down to Hilliard having lost his nerve. They had more than enough confirmation that the attack on the UN was scheduled for tomorrow night. Both political and tactical reasons demanded immediate action. What did he want them to do, wait for more data and absolute certainty? Well they had certainty. They had a man on site.

* * *

March had scheduled a major address for later in the day. He would have liked to focus all his attention on it. Everett's warning about a possible militia attack had changed all that. The last thing he needed as he was about to launch his campaign with a bombshell, was to be put on the defensive about his "support" of the people behind some ill conceived attack. It wouldn't be better for Pierce if it had been cooked up in one of his strategy sessions.

What was even more frustrating for March was that his efforts to find out if such an operation was in the works were yielding nothing. All his sources were telling him was it was either government propaganda or it was renegades out on their own. How could he try to head off an attack that no one knew anything about? He kept trying to contact Everett.

His speech was to take place at a baseball field in his home town of Galveston, Texas. Caterers, technicians and advance men were setting up an informal mix of a press conference and Texas style barbecue. A soundman hooked up a mike on the improvised podium. He tested the hookup.

"Testing, testing, one, two..."

Feedback blared. The soundman made an adjustment.

"Testing, testing, one, two, three. One if by land, two if by sea."

There was no feedback, and the soundman smiled in satisfaction.

* * *

Tess and Michael were a thousand miles away driving highway 95 in North Carolina. It was a beautiful day. It served only to mock their mood. They were in pain. Tess' scalp was burnt, Michael had a concussion. The adrenaline of their recent ordeal had worn off, leaving them to endure their injuries with coffee and aspirin.

Tess offered him something stronger. It was tempting, but there was no predicting where that road might lead. For the time being he would go on trying to think things over with the counterpoint of a pulsing headache.

It bothered him as it had bothered Hilliard that too many people knew about the attack. It wasn't like Everett to leave tracks all over the place. On the other hand for Hilliard to be that positive, they must have somebody in Everett's camp. Tess interrupted his musings.

"You feel any better?"

"Some. In fact if I space my thoughts between the throbbing in my head, it seems to work. I've had these before. It's the kind of headache that feels just like you've been hit by a heavy metal object."

They both laughed. Tess had something on her mind.

"I know you've explained about Hilliard. But I still don't get why you trust him?"

"I said I trusted the situation. He thinks I've got something."

"Do you?"

"For one thing I've got a transmitter on the back of one of their trucks. If we can get close enough we can...."

"That sounds like we can find them if we can find them. You have anything else?"

"What they're going to use as a back door for their plan. The airport."

"The one on the matchbook?"

"I know it really well. Back in the eighties they used airports like this for their operations. It's not a stone's throw from Washington, Philadelphia and New York, but it's close. I have a hunch they're going to use it. I was planning to check it out before we meet Hilliard."

"Because of a matchbook?"

"Pretty much."

"You weren't kidding when you said it was a dim hunch. I'm not very impressed with what you've got, but if Hilliard shows I'll be very impressed with how you played it."

A highway patrol car approached in the opposite direction. Michael and Tess braced until the car passed.

* * *

The Texas style barbecue had come up to speed. Guests were enjoying themselves listening to a band play patriotic favorites. March and his wife Laura were shaking hands with well-wishers. Everyone who saw her thin, refined good looks came away thinking she must have been a fashion model.

Her features were actually too full and sensual, her figure too ample to fit the mold. She had successfully pulled off the transformation, but it required effort, an effort she disguised with considerable grace. It was the same grace that made people comfortable with her despite her stunning looks and upper class manner.

March stepped to the podium and the band stopped.

"Today I thought it appropriate to officially announce my candidacy for the President of the United States!"

The crowd cheered their approval.

"I'll be brief. I can compete with the other candidates, but not with Texas barbecue."

The crowd laughed.

"America has a representative form of government. Unfortunately it represents the few and the powerful. Those people you elect every four years are already spoken for. I'm not spoken for, so I can do a few things they can't. For instance. You want a drug free America?"

The crowd cheered, but a little uncertainly, like they feared March of all people was about to offer them pie in the sky.

"I know you've heard this sort of promise before, but I'll let you in on a little secret. The shameful truth is it's really possible. I've recently learned that we have the technology to do it and have had for some time. I know it sounds hard to believe, but what's hard to believe is that the other politicians have done nothing about it.

"I want to fill you in on a few of the details so you won't think this is the usual election year eyewash. I've learned that scientists have genetically designed a microorganism that will kill cocaine plants and only cocaine plants. They went to a lot of effort to make sure that it was harmless to any other living thing.

"In the operation that I will launch, the organism will be spread from helicopters across prime coca growing areas of Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru. It will completely eradicate the entire production in South America. Using the same principle we are now developing a microorganism to go after the opium plant.

"Operation Black Forest will be a three prong attack on drug growing areas of South America, the Middle East, and the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia. With this research we can take the war on drugs out of the middle ages and make it winnable. It can be done. So the real question is why hasn't the government done it. I know they don't have to answer to me. Believe me they don't."

The crowd laughed.

"But they have to answer to you, if you make them. If you want a government that will answer to you, choose me as your President. If you want a President that will carry out this plan, vote for me. I make this sacred promise to you. If I'm elected President of the United States, every last cocaine tree and opium poppy in the world will be dead. I don't say no to drugs, I say good-bye forever."

The Guests were stunned.

"It's really very simple. If you want a President who's your President, vote for me. The government of the special interests, by the special interests, and for the special interests, is going to perish from the earth. You and I are going to take back America."

The crowd applauded wildly.

* * *

There was no applause at the White House. The President quickly called an emergency meeting. In addition to his immediate staff he had his scientific advisor and the Secretary of State, hoping they would provide him with ammunition to label March's idea as scientifically and politically irresponsible. The scientific advisor was not very encouraging.

"With the caveat that my review of this is on short notice, it's conceivable you might be able to fray it a bit, but you're not going to poke a hole in it. On the contrary there seems to be decades of research behind it, the stuff from Beltsville alone fills a folder."

As he continued his report the Secretary of State was in a dark mood, reflecting on statecraft in the era of international interlocking directorates. Although the public saw the usual hands at the wheel of the ship of state, they were as decorative as the figureheads on the bows of old sailing ships. The ship of state had become a supertanker, a computer guided ghost ship controlled by distant unseen hands. He was just another exhibit in what amounted to a governmental theme park.

"You could proceed along the line that it would upset the delicate political balance in the hemisphere. Undermine the trust we've so carefully nurtured, that sort of thing."

"That's fine, but the downside is, if we push it too hard, you care more about those countries than your own people."

"What he's advocating amounts to outright invasion. There ought to be something there."

"There might be. But it's tricky. There's a lot of precedence for doing just that. March could point to Reagan invading Panama with a good deal less reason."

"Maybe we can get the Joint Chiefs involved. They're not thrilled about this policing stuff."

"Unfortunately I don't think we're going to get much soul searching for sending some helicopters with the clear goal of ridding the world of drugs."

The President wasn't getting what he wanted.

"Some of it must be classified or secret. Find out his access. I know March is supposed to self destruct, but make sure he's in everybody's sights. I don't want any more surprises."

* * *

After crossing from North Carolina into Virginia, Michael and Tess found a gas station off the main route where they stood some chance of being the only customers. Tess went into the convenience store to pay as Michael gassed the car. Minutes went by. Michael was uneasy. They made these stops no longer than necessary and it was taking her too long. Michael started to pull the car around the side of the store when Tess suddenly appeared.

She wasn't in a hurry, that was a good sign, but her expression didn't reassure him. She looked shocked. She got in the car and Michael drove off. Tess didn't say anything right away.

"What's up?"

"Black Forest. These women were talking, said it was on the radio."

"What?"

"They didn't know much, they heard about it from somebody else. They said some politician made a speech about drugs and something called Black Forest. The guy at the counter didn't know, he was busy listening to a game."

For the next half hour Michael kept switching channels, trying to get a replay of March's speech. He never did. What he got instead was the talk of talk radio, and he listened with frustration as the information came out in dribs and drabs.

"I guess I deserve this."

"Your show wasn't anything like this."

"I hope that's more than a half truth, like about seven eighth's."

Finally there was a replay of the speech. The two listened in disbelief as March laid out the details of Black Forest and his commitment to its execution. Michael was the first to comment.

"So much for Everett's secret."

"Terrific. I almost get murdered to keep a secret for a week."

"With what's at stake he'd do it for an hour."

"What for? What am I going to do? A small time thief is going to take a paper she knows shit about, walk right up to the President or the CIA and say look what I stole? Everett's a stiff if he thinks that."

"Maybe you know the right people."

"I know only the wrong people. The kind of people that get your ex boyfriend into debt and when he splits want it from you. So I did a favor to even up. Someone tells me to steal an attaché case with supposedly no problems attached, I do it, that's it. Be stupid like Everett, go make something of it."

"It's easy to see why your employer wanted the papers. Black Forest might really cut into their drug business. I wonder how they knew about the papers."

"They need lots of friends and they've got them. We on the right side here?"

"It's a good guess with Everett, even if he's doing good, it's for no good. And then there's the militia thing."

Michael fell silent.

"What are you thinking?" Tess asked.

"They went a little hot and heavy with us last night considering March's speech. Maybe we're missing something. Anything else in the attaché case?"

"Nothing besides the money and the big secret."

"What about his wallet?"

"Just what you saw. Hey, maybe you're right about that matchbook thing. They're going to use that airport. But how could he think I would know about it?"

"Maybe Kit did."

"I'll give you a better maybe. Maybe I should have just shot Everett and March in that kitchen and we wouldn't be talking about maybes."

* * *

It was Sumiko who told Kit about March's speech. Kit had secluded himself in the bedroom while he was working his way through pages of printout provided by her brother. The list of scientists who could be involved in a project like Black Forest seemed endless. And there were more pages to come. Akira had asked him for some criteria they could use to narrow the search. How about nationality or age or area of specialization?

"How about recently murdered," Kit finally responded. If the dealer was killed maybe the scientist shared his fate.

"Great filter," Akira replied.

Kit had a second thought. "They could have made it look like an accident."

"You'll still have a very short list," Akira concluded, promising to get right back to him.

Kit knew he was reaching, but he still had a good feeling about it. That is until Sumiko interrupted him. Black Forest was now public. There were no dead Black Forest scientists to speculate about. There was no reason to wait around for Akira's reply. Kit went out for some air while he speculated on his own chances of mortality.

* * *

The van with KC, Memphis and Earl arrived in Charleston, West Virginia. Earl went to get a pack of cigarettes. He didn't come back. KC sent Memphis to go look for him. Memphis came back without Earl and they drove on.

* * *

It was dusk and the last group of tourists were leaving the Washington Monument. The park ranger started to close up. He was surprised when a second park ranger walked in. He was even more surprised when the ranger pointed a gun at him.

Chapter 21

Hilliard was at home when he got the call. He asked to be notified if there was any change in status. The agent calling was irritated, he considered it a nuisance. Hilliard knew exactly how he felt. He even remembered how he swore when he was an agent that he would never be a meddling, politically motivated, out of touch bureaucrat.

Bad news. Their on site contact was late reporting. Then came reassurance. "It's not of immediate concern, he'll find his spot. It's a lot of hours until tomorrow midnight. We've got them bracketed, those trucks aren't going anywhere without an escort. Not to mention what we already have waiting for them at the UN. At this point I wouldn't have even called except you asked."

Hilliard knew the word prick would have finished off the sentence nicely. He got off the phone. He knew these things happen routinely, but why wait to worry when you can torture yourself now. He took a pill and began to live with the worst.

* * *

Everett and his team drove up into the hills of Eastern West Virginia where he knew the FBI would have difficulty following too closely. The FBI had heard from Earl that Everett planned to make a stop there, so they weren't surprised. It made it easier to maintain a moving perimeter surrounding Everett's convoy.

Everett had the vans parked at a remote property, and when it got dark they buried them. The FBI's perimeter was on all the roads. One by one Everett's team sneaked through the woods in between them.

* * *

It was seven thirty when Michael and Tess reached the municipal airport in Pennsylvania. They were meeting Hilliard at eleven in Washington and didn't have a lot of time. Michael hurriedly checked the Runway Cafe, pilots and planes.

While the look of the place hadn't changed much, there were all new names and faces. He didn't find anything, but given the rush, it wasn't surprising. Michael and Tess started back toward Washington.

"Still think they're going to use this place?" Tess asked.

"Definitely."

"You must have seen something you're not telling me."

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"A very pregnant nothing."

"A pregnant nothing? I like that. No wonder your friends at the DEA called you Young Ahab. You don't even need a white whale, an invisible one will do."

"Nobody even heard of Everett. You can take that two ways. I take it to mean he's allowed this field to lie fallow long enough. I'm sure they're coming through here."

"I'll go with your instincts. We'll camp out here tomorrow night. If you can convince Hilliard, we'll have company. Or we'll do it alone."

* * *

The FBI got a tip about three vans on the other side of the Shenandoahs near Harrisonburg and highway 81. They couldn't verify it. They got nervous, especially after they found a dirt access road through the woods past where their perimeter was. There was no sign of vans or anybody on the property. They checked all the roads, nothing.

Hilliard was passed the word that they were gone. No trucks, no team. No contact whatsoever. On site could still suddenly appear, the vans still could be sighted, things still could go as planned in New York. But it wasn't in Hilliard's nature to count on any of that.

The news gave his upcoming meeting with Michael a definite upgrade. Whatever Michael had went from an added piece of information to something possibly vital. How to handle it? Leave it to the chance of a one on one with someone as volatile as Michael? He could be a hero if it worked, but if he screwed up it better be by the book. He had to be careful.

* * *

Michael had known the park in Washington in better days. The few left overs from the families, teenagers, lovers, dog walkers and Frisbee throwers seemed totally out of place in the same tract of land occupied by the homeless, drunks and drug dealers. They were all isolated or in small tightly clustered groups separated by lots of space. This urban universe was not expanding, but its inhabitants were still drifting further and further apart.

"Great meeting place," Tess said sarcastically as she and Michael drove around the park.

"It's changed. But I didn't choose it for the atmosphere. It's relatively empty."

"So are a lot of places at this hour."

"I once chased a dealer in this park, and he had a neat way of losing me. If we need to get lost tonight, we'll do what he did."

First setting up their escape route, Michael and Tess parked the car and sat on a bench overlooking the dimly lit park and waited for Hilliard.

* * *

In Alexandria three green vans drove out of a warehouse and headed for downtown Washington. One was loaded with an M2 machine gun and another with plastic explosive, fuel oil and dynamite.

* * *

Michael and Tess watched the park empty except for those that got high in it or called it home. Tess checked her watch. It was eleven thirty.

"He's always late," Michael explained.

"You know, one way of not being late is not showing up."

Ten minutes later Michael spotted a car slowly driving along the edge of the park.

"That's him."

Hilliard got out and started toward them, carrying a file folder. Michael managed a smile as Hilliard waved the folder. Michael's smile vanished. Two unmarked cars pulled to a stop near Hilliard's. Hilliard turned.

"They're not with me!"

"Fuck you."

Michael motioned to Tess.

"Get the car."

Tess disappeared into the trees behind them. Michael drew his gun. Hilliard was flabbergasted.

"You crazy motherfucker."

"A little louder so they can pick it up on your wire."

Hilliard shook his head in disbelief.

"I don't have to take this shit."

Hilliard tossed the file folder to the ground.

"Now you've got what you wanted. What have you got for me?"

Michael started toward the file, but suddenly froze. Two park regulars were ambling in his direction. Hilliard reached into his coat. Michael fired over Hilliard's shoulder sending him to the ground. Michael dashed through the trees behind him.

Tess was parked in an alleyway with the engine running. Michael jumped a nearby fence, got in the car and Tess sped off. Michael was hyperventilating with rage.

"He owed you one and he set you up?"

Michael ran it over in his head.

"Yeah."

"You say that like you're not sure. You're sure, right."

Michael didn't say anything.

The two fell silent as they slowly drove on aimlessly through the streets of Washington. They reached a major interchange. Highway signs pointed in all directions.

"Which way?" Tess asked. "We've got time before tomorrow night."

As they worked on an answer, a drunk driver behind them began honking his horn. Michael waved for him to go around them. They were the only two cars in sight. The driver kept honking. Irritated, Michael motioned to him again. "All the room in creation and he has to sit behind us."

Michael and Tess began to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Lost in the sound of their laughter and the honking was a muffled high pitched noise. They ignored it along with the honking. It got louder. Michael and Tess finally noticed.

"What the hell?" Michael questioned and in the same moment realized the answer. He jumped in the backseat and grabbed a duffel bag. He madly rifled through it and pulled out the wafer sized receiver, which was beeping away.

"Everett's here."

"Where's here?"

"A few miles away. They could be parked in a warehouse for the night, they could be doing sixty heading away from us. Let's close on them before they get out of range. Tess sped across two lanes of highway going south. Michael superimposed a five mile circle on a mental map of Washington. If the vans were on the periphery of it? They would need some luck.

Three miles away a green van drove along the Arlington Bridge. It was heading straight for the Lincoln Memorial. Twenty seconds later a second van arrived at the Jefferson Memorial. It circled around the Memorial and stopped. The side door slid open revealing an M2 machine gun inside. The image in the crosshairs was crystal clear. The White House lay in a direct line of fire.

Tess zigzagged at high speed through Washington, trying to orient her turns to the ups and downs of the receiver's beeping. They would seem to gain on them, only to lose direction on one of the traffic circles. Michael monitored the signal as it was getting louder.

"The way we're closing, they're at least not doing sixty. They're on surface streets."

A minute later he knew they were heading downtown. There were bridges and freeway entrances offering numerous avenues of escape. The only hope was catching up to them before they sped off on one.

At ten minutes past twelve there were just a handful of visitors at the Vietnam Memorial. To the usual quiet sacramental atmosphere was added the enveloping silence of cold night. Visitors, some with candles, including a family with a teenage son, solitary onlookers, and four Vietnam vets, dressed in fatigues, were paying homage.

The teenager looked away. What he happened to see didn't fit any reasonable mental picture of reality, and his mind tried to contradict his senses. This wasn't happening. A blinking of his eyes would surely eradicate this aberration. It didn't. A van was driving up the lower steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The teenager was drawn to this rupture of the normal order as if he were acting in a dream. He started sprinting toward the Memorial. The Vets took notice.

The van reached the top of the steps. It drove between the pillars and pulled to a stop.

With the receiver going crazy, Michael and Tess finally caught the right direction off of first Dupont and then Washington circle and were racing down 23rd street.

"Slow down they could be turning off for the bridges," Michael cautioned.

Tess eased off the accelerator.

"Which way?"

"I'm trying to make sure. If we miss the turn now, they're gone."

Tess approached the intersection of 23rd and Constitution.

"I don't think they turned."

Michael listened carefully for a change in the beep. He caught sight of the Lincoln Memorial. He saw it first as part of a locus of streets, directions the van might be moving. His personal memories added themselves to that impression, and finally the Memorial as a locus of the nation's passions and the militia's. He looked down at the car clock. It was a quarter past twelve.

The teenager reached the steps of the Memorial. He saw a dark green van parked between the pillars next to the monumental figure of Lincoln. He paused a moment, waiting to see if someone emerged. There was only a heavy, inert stillness. It was dreadful and he was drawn to it.

He dashed up the steps somehow hoping energy and movement would order a world suddenly out of kilter. He tentatively approached the van, but it was locked and empty. The Memorial was deserted.

Michael and Tess got out of their car and started running toward the Memorial. In the distance they saw the vets racing up its steps.

The vets reached the van and the confused teenager.

"What's going on?" a vet asked him.

"I don't know, there's nobody here. You think it's a prank or what?"

The vets tried opening the doors. They were locked.

Michael and Tess caught sight of the van and the group. Michael motioned Tess to get down.

"Dynamite!" Michael screamed as he ran toward the Memorial.

The group was stunned as they heard Michael's shout. Panic and indecision. Michael reached the steps to the Memorial. He saw the group trying to push the van off the Memorial.

"Get away! It'll blow any second!"

The group kept pushing. The van wasn't budging. Michael saw the group wasn't budging either.

"Fucking heroes!"

Michael pulled out his gun and dashed up the steps. They had wandered beyond the bounds of reason and he was going to bring them back over the line.

"It's in gear!," a vet yelled to him as he reached the top of the steps. He got a quick look at their faces, which reflected a mixture of confusion, terror and bravery.

He started to point his gun at them, preparing to order them out. He smashed the van window out instead. He opened the door and jumped in. He hurriedly moved the gear in neutral and tried the emergency brake. It was jammed.

The group frantically pushed the van to no avail. Michael wedged his back against the seat and stomped at the lever. One voice inside his head was screaming get the hell out. Another voice was calmly counting off the seconds.

The lever finally gave way. Michael leaped out of the van as it began to move.

He joined the others as they strained against its weight. Slowly it moved backwards toward the pillars. Just a few more feet to the steps and a downhill push. Too late. All movement was eradicated as a brilliant flash of blue-orange light illuminated their horrified faces. Their bodies instinctively stiffened against the coming blast as they looked up. There was a deafening explosion.

A split second later the van was still intact. Across the reflecting pool, the top of the Washington Monument was an exploding fireball casting fragments of aluminum and marble everywhere.

The blast wave shattered the south windows of the White House. The interior was hit by bullets as alarms and sirens wailed.

From the Jefferson Memorial came rounds of armor piercing and tracer bullets from the M2. The tracer bullets burned their way in darkness across the Tidal Basin into the White House.

The group was awestruck. Realizing the van could blow any moment, almost in unison they threw their bodies against it. Slowly the van reached the steps, and down it went gaining speed and momentum. They dove to the ground, covering up, as it rolled harmlessly onto the grass. The van was there an instant, and the next it was completely obliterated by a horrendous explosion. Glass and metal shrapnel were sprayed over the prone bodies.

Michael lifted his head. He saw tracer bullets cross Potomac Park on their way to the White House. The shooting stopped.

Two men inside the van at the Jefferson Memorial hurriedly set a timer on explosives and ran toward the Potomac. A motorboat was waiting for them. They got in and the boat sped them to the other shore.

At the Lincoln Memorial there was the sound of countless sirens as the group slowly got to its feet.

"What's going on?! Why?" the teenager anxiously asked.

"Stay down, there could be more," a vet warned him. Michael shook his head.

"They're finished."

"You got the war plans Schwarzkopf?"

Michael didn't answer. He had just realized he'd seen one of the vets before. He looked around to verify it. The vet had disappeared. This was no place to speculate. There would be cops all over them any moment.

As Tess and Michael got back to the car, they heard another explosion. They got out of the area before there was any coherence to all the law enforcement converging on the government center. Michael sped along a highway to a connection with the beltway. Michael's mind and body were still back at the Memorial and speeding right along with the car.

"We're going in the wrong direction, but at least we're out of there. Another five minutes and we'd have been answering questions until we're dead."

"That first explosion, I thought you were gone."

"I was. I just pissed all over myself and it passed. You know some guys actually get clear headed in situations like that. The rest of their lives are a wreck, but put them in danger like that, it's a day in the country. With me it's still a mess."

"You did help save the Lincoln Memorial."

"Well anything freestanding and over sixty tons, it's a given."

"I'm serious."

"I didn't save anything, it was already saved."

"I don't get it."

"It was all going so fast, but afterwards I realized one of the vets looked familiar. He was in special operations, one of Everett's kind of people. So there was no way he was going to blow it up before we got it off the Memorial. He undoubtedly had a detonator to trigger the thing. So much for saving the Memorial."

"You had no way of knowing."

"All I knew was that I was embarrassed as hell watching those guys trying to push that van. That's it, and that missing vet's sense of timing."

"Everett have a special thing for Lincoln?"

"I'm not sure whether he wanted to save the Memorial or not have extra bodies along the way. Maybe the vet was supposed to set it off on the Memorial, and the teenager and the other vets and yours truly got in the way."

"I'm glad Everett chose this time to get humanitarian. I wonder why."

"Probably to make it clear the enemy is the government not the people. It'll make the government's miscalculated response that much worse."

"I take it we're heading for that airport."

"It's part of his effort to make this whole thing seem like a militia attack.

"Why?"

"So the government will crack down on the militia. Then the militia steps up their war, and we have chaos. Enter Allan March. Everett's had a lot of practice destabilizing other governments, he thought he'd try ours."

"So he's not finished?"

"He's just beginning."

* * *

Tess saw the plane in the sky even before they reached the airport. She pointed it out to Michael. It was still gaining altitude, heading southwest. All they could do was hope it wasn't Everett's. They continued on to the airport. It was deserted. Michael and Tess sat in the darkness and waited. After forty five minutes they knew they had missed them.

They checked out two local motels. It was a small town and the middle of the night. Everyone was asleep and hadn't heard anything yet about Washington. Tess described Everett and the others, pretending to be looking for a group of friends. Tess was very ingratiating, but nobody much appreciated being awakened, and no they hadn't seen anybody like that. The only group through recently besides the local Kiwanis was a Puerto Rican salsa band traveling from a concert in Pittsburgh to one in Philadelphia.

Michael thought it over as they drove to an all night convenience store. The manager and a few late night customers were glued to a tv broadcasting the first reports of the attack. While Tess went to try her contact number, Michael bought a bag of ice and two coffees and waited for her in the car. He wrapped his leg with the ice and tried to work a band of Puerto Ricans into the mix. Tess appeared with more compelling news.

"Kit's definitely alive. He left a message. Sort of paranoid, like he thought someone might be listening. He said if I'm enjoying my vacation, he advised prolonging it. Otherwise I could meet him at three today."

"That's it?"

Tess nodded.

"What did he sound like besides paranoid?"

"Like he's got something going."

"Where's the meeting?"

"Cambridge. He has a girlfriend there."

"Okay, but first I want to try to find Sara's source of information while we still can. Hilliard will figure I was the one on the memorial or they'll get my prints off the truck. Everett's vet will tell Everett. There's only limited time before things get too tight to breathe."

* * *

Two hours later, the plane that had taken off as Michael and Tess got to the airport, crashed in a remote part of the Alleghenies. Everett had left explicit instructions as to when the news was to be made public.

Chapter 22

Hilliard was up when the attack occurred. It was doubtful that he would have gotten any sleep anyway. He began receiving calls updating him. He tried not to focus on the heat he would be taking for having blown it, but get on with the job of getting a handle on the investigation. He was told that the FBI was already working on the fragments of the two green vans.

The teenager and the vets had been interviewed. Along with recounting the events on the Memorial, they told of a missing vet as well as a person who helped them. Hearing their description, Hilliard began speculating almost immediately that it could be Michael.

If it turned out it was, it was a hell of an opportunity. Michael was following Everett and winds up at the Memorial. He might be able to link Everett to the attack. Hilliard weighed the option of turning them toward Michael. He would definitely get some finder's points. But if it came out Michael was trying to lay the whole thing in his lap a half an hour prior to the attack, how would that look? By their questioning Michael would know Hilliard was involved. That might lead to a free fall of revelations.

It might be better to skip the credit and let them find him themselves. They might get lucky and get some prints somewhere? They would connect them to the man wanted for murdering a cop. In the meantime it might turn out not to be him. Hilliard knew he couldn't wait. He passed the word to associates in the FBI he trusted, that the person wanted in connection with the murder in Georgia might be also connected to the events in Washington.

* * *

There was an emergency meeting at the White House. Everybody expected Pierce to be unraveled. After all history is what happened at arms length, you didn't have spent bullets in your living room. He could have raged about the breakdown of intelligence, or being made to look foolish. He didn't. Reason had to prevail in all situations or lose its province. If history did come calling, even if it left spent bullets in your living room, you had to be ready with a response.

Pierce's aides summarized the obvious ones like having the heroes to the White House for picture taking. Start drafting a speech calling for tougher legislation aimed at the militia. It was apparent they made a feint toward New York and attacked Washington. There were calls claiming militia responsibility as well as prompt denials and claims of a frame up by the government. Connect March to any of this, and they can knock him out of the race before he's even started.

Hilliard was contacted. Did he have anything that would contradict militia involvement? It was too early he cautioned. He tried to make his warning emphatic, but at the back of his mind was a growing certainty that Michael was at the Memorial and that led right to Everett and the militia. He signed off knowing the President would proceed unless he quickly produced evidence to the contrary.

* * *

Hollings was more than surprised by the attack. He felt betrayed. He thought he had accomplished a number of things by tipping off the FBI to its possibility. If it was nothing, he had a chance to play the patriot and get them off his back at the same time. If it turned out to be a real threat, with his advance notice the FBI would stop it and save March considerable embarrassment. Enough to chill any election hopes.

Hollings had just arrived at a party when he heard the news. He sat in his car and listened to the reports. His worst fear was that March would respond with one of his shoot from the hip remarks. March's wife didn't make it any easier. Laura was outspoken when she should be silent and silent when she should be outspoken. Hollings rushed to March's house to try to head off disaster.

He got there expecting to find March and his wife following the tv reports word by word in a serious if not somber mood. Instead Laura was having fun trying on hats, only giving the tv an occasional glance, while March was chatting affably on the phone. Their bizarre detachment did nothing to set Holling's mind at ease. He kept motioning for March to get off the phone. He finally did.

Hollings smiled nervously. "I hope you're allowing your remarks to ripen a bit before you start shipping them out."

"Don't worry, I haven't given away the ranch," March responded.

Laura noticed Hollings' critical look. "You don't like the hat?"

"No, the hat's okay, it's just this doesn't seem to be the time for such things."

"What better time. If we're going to do battle, let's do it in style. Or do you think being drab will improve our chances?"

Hollings was about to respond when he heard a commentator on the tv, who had been speculating about militia involvement, mention March's name.

"Here it comes," Holllings warned. The commentator spelled it out.

"If it turns out that the militia were involved, and this is pure speculation of course, it would stop the momentum that March got from his announcement speech. Pierce would do everything to tie March to it and keep him tied to it. It would be a death sentence to March's chances in the upcoming election."

Laura waved her hand dismissively. "It's just pay back time for Pierce's help with that legislation. They should force them to say this is a paid political announcement."

"This is nothing," Hollings responded. "They'll have everybody but the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the same song before we're through."

The three fell silent. "You think the militia were involved?" March finally asked Hollings. He knew what Hollings answer would be.

Hollings nodded. "The sooner you can go on the record denouncing them the better."

"That's what Pierce will do," Laura responded angrily. "Allan doesn't back down."

"This is no place for South American machismo," Hollings shot back. "It may be good for your sex life, but he's running for President not caudillo."

Hollings expected Laura's angry response, instead she smiled. Mona Lisa couldn't do it better Hollings thought and then apologized. "Forget the part about sex life, I'm just jealous. But if he loses support over this he gets dangerously weak."

"So Allan loses, at least it's not some shadow of himself."

"You're missing the point. Allan's already a target, he becomes a vulnerable one. I know what's good about him is that he's not so self protective he can stand for something, but what good is all that if he gets himself killed."

Hollings ended the sentence with as much emphasis as he could muster, but still wasn't getting through.

"Either you two know something I don't, or I've got to get hold of some of the air you breathe. You might be satisfied with a commemorative statue of Allan with an inscription about a dead hero who stood for what he believed in. But I'm hoping he'll live long enough to outgrow his current penchant for over the top politics and develop into a fine politician excuse the profanity, and an effective leader if a little of me rubs off in the meantime, and actually change this country for the better."

* * *

It was five in the morning and still dark when Michael and Tess got to Sara's. The security system was easy for Michael to disable. As he worked on it he wished it was more challenging. Instead of occupying him entirely, it left too much room for the throbbing pain in his knee and replaying what he should have done to save Sara. Having Tess there helped him to stay focused. What he didn't need was some absentminded mistake that brought the patrol. "Let's just stick to fucking up the big things," he said to himself.

Michael checked out the surroundings before letting Tess and himself in. They began searching the pitch dark house. Tess took the upstairs, Michael the down. Everything was neat, abandoned and lifeless. Michael sat at Sara's desk in her workroom. There was a touching photo of her and her family. He allowed himself a brief glance at it before turning his attention elsewhere. He was looking for answers not tears.

It was hard enough seeing her in all her articles and research, all the work and heart and hope brought to an end. He went through them all, including her most recent papers she had shown him at the radio station. The contents of her computer didn't appear promising. He made copies of all the files.

Tess joined him carrying Sara's purse. They went through it together, emptying the contents on the desktop. Keys, wallet, make-up, a pocket phonebook. Seeing them there, Michael felt uncomfortably like he was performing an autopsy. It was distasteful, almost sacrilegious, but he wanted more than anything to know the cause of death.

The phonebook seemed to be filled with only personal numbers. As they left the house, Michael knew they hadn't got what he was looking for. Sara's last message to him was that she had something important she wanted to show him. Where was it? He had only found what he expected to find.

They parked a few miles away and he carefully read through the phonebook to make sure. They headed out on 95 toward Boston.

* * *

The FBI was still in the initial stages of sorting through the remnants of the vans, but already there was a clear link between the reports filed by the agent following Everett and the events at the Memorial. Everett disappeared with three green vans, two of them are at the scene. They had pieced together enough metal fragments to identify an M2 machine gun described by the missing agent.

The media was getting leaks of all this information as well as others pointing to the involvement of the militia. The President didn't like it. In addition to making it look like he was learning what was going on from CNN, the public response put Pierce under considerable pressure to take some action. After all they had the "smoking gun" even if it was in a thousand pieces.

The President had his speech writer prepare an address asking for strict anti terrorist legislation. There was the question of alluding to the militias. He put in a call to Hilliard as his aides debated the content of the proposed address. The consensus was that they wanted to at least indirectly hit the militias and March. Without it the speech seemed vague and weak.

The President asked Hilliard once again if he had anything contradicting militia involvement. Hilliard knew that everything pointed in that direction. He had just been informed that the vets had identified Michael from a photograph.

Hilliard reluctantly told the President about Michael following the militia and winding up on the Memorial. He knew that it would help ice the case for militia involvement and it made him very uneasy. The President wasn't much interested in Hilliard's cautioning remarks about jumping to conclusions. He was only interested in confirming what seemed to be obvious.

"If finding this guy is so crucial, why the hell isn't the Bureau going public yet with his involvement?"

"There's a chance that the people involved in this don't know that Flaherty was right in the middle of it. The Bureau would like to keep it that way. It might mean we get to him first."

Two hours later Hilliard heard that Pierce was planning a major address prime time that evening. He called the President. He told Pierce that the agency was devoting considerable resources to finding Michael and to delay the speech until he was found. In the end Pierce compromised. He decided to go ahead with the speech, but have it carefully revised line by line.

* * *

Kit was hoping that Tess had managed to get herself clear of all this and wouldn't show. Even if it meant his giving up the pleasure of seeing the look on her face when he told her. What she didn't need was more danger and that's what he had to offer. That and a guess that there was enough at stake to make it worth taking the risk. He wondered if she would choose to be free instead. He knew she wouldn't. The money alone. That's why he was hoping she wouldn't show. For him the money was just the beginning.

* * *

Michael and Tess reached Harvard Square at half past two. There wasn't much time to figure out how to make the meeting with Kit as secure as possible. They didn't even have a chance to begin. As they walked down a side street off Mass Ave, they noticed a crowd that had gathered near a restaurant. There was a police car parked nearby.

Keeping a good distance from the police, Michael and Tess entered the crowd. Accounts of what had happened were being passed along. Someone had been shot. What was the world coming to, Washington and now this? He was Chinese. Japanese someone corrected. Some said armed. Belonged to the mafia. The Japanese mafia. Maybe it was about drugs. There had been a shooting in a Thai restaurant a while back. The descriptions of the victim varied considerably. Kit didn't seem to fit them.

Moments later several other police cars with their sirens blaring made their way through traffic to the restaurant. Michael and Tess walked away from the crowd back to the appointed meeting place in the Square. Kit didn't show up. Tess called the contact number. There was no message.

"What do you know about his girlfriend?" Michael said in response to the news.

"Kit said she had a condo with a great view of the river and..."

"They probably put up a new one every Tuesday around here. Anything else?"

"She drives a bright red Austin Healy."

"That's it?"

Tess nodded.

"Well at least there aren't many of those."

They went to a real estate office, described what they wanted to buy, and got a list of likely prospects to go look at. They started down the list. They searched the parking lots for her car, and asked tenants if they knew her. Three hours later they were nearing the bottom of the list when they spotted a red Austin Healy parked on the street near two high-rises. Tess smiled.

"Is it me, or does that car scream steal me?"

"It's you."

"Come on, that's some spot to leave a car like that. The driver's door isn't even shut."

"I know, I'm just kidding you. Something's off."

"Either that or she gets them weekly like a magazine subscription."

They got out the car and walked toward the Austin Healy.

"Let's search it," Tess suggested. "She might have left something interesting in it, maybe with her address."

Tess didn't get a response. Michael was thinking about searching another car. Now he remembered there had been traffic noise in the background of Sara's last message. If she had called from her car, maybe she had whatever it was with her.

In a moment, the possibility grew to a certainty in his mind. He wanted more than anything to find her car and search it. It was so stupid he hadn't thought of it. Maybe not just dumb. Maybe he didn't want to see where she died. Feel the force of her agony in the twisted metal.

A car drove up interrupting his thoughts. A woman got out. She had an excess of style that made a workshirt and jeans seem elegant. She looked suspiciously at Michael and Tess.

"Not a great spot for Sumiko to put her car," Tess said.

"Blame it on the guy that was staying with her. He was using it when he got himself arrested."

Michael and Tess exchanged a worried glance.

"A neighbor saw it. She said the police pulled him over just as he was leaving the building. I wonder what happened. I thought he was okay for a guy." She gave Tess a wink.

"Does Sumiko know about it yet?" Michael asked.

"She's in Japan."

Michael and Tess called the police. There was no record of any such arrest. Everett had gotten Kit. Michael told Tess about his idea of searching Sara's car. It made sense. The sense included the fact that it was all they had.

* * *

Disregarding the advise of Hollings and the rest of his aides, March flew back to Washington. They had wanted him to stay put until some of the smoke had cleared. He wanted to be in the middle of it. He was in the air when Pierce delivered his address.

The speech was forceful, calling for tough legislation while cleverly denouncing the militia and March's connection to them without mentioning either by name. He had seized the high ground Pierces aides agreed, pointing to his first positives since March's speech.

March fended off reporters as he and his wife got off the plane. "It's a national tragedy. I'm sure these criminals will be found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." Then he got the question he knew was coming.

An up and coming Sam Donaldson tried to draw blood.

"Some claim the people behind this attack might be sympathetic to your campaign."

"First of all, I'm pretty sure the President's name is Pierce not Some."

March got a laugh from the reporters.

"Second, that sort of garbage is one of the things people in this country are sick of. You want a quote, let me give you one."

The reporter wondered if he was going to be lucky.

"How miserable is the man that governs a people where six parts in seven are poor, indebted, discontented and armed."

"That's pretty strong stuff," the reporter replied sensing a story. "You willing to be quoted?"

"The quote was by a governor of Virginia. Have any idea when he said it?"

The reporters drew a blank.

"1676. Three hundred years this has been going on. I think that calls for strong stuff. Instead the President is scapegoating these people, rather than solving their problems."

* * *

Everett's man had his instructions. Twelve hours after the President's speech he was to call in the anonymous tip about the downed plane. Everett gave himself the twelve hours on the chance he would get lucky in the meantime. He was hoping some campers or even better a wildlife outing would discover it in the morning. A self contained local militia group nobody ever heard of was on night reconnaissance practice, when it came across it around eleven o'clock and notified the local police.

* * *

Michael and Tess were halfway to Philadelphia when they heard the end of a newsflash. "Six bodies were discovered in the plane and over 400,000 dollars on board. The FBI has identified the men as Colombian nationals. At first thought to be drug related, authorities are now looking into a possible connection with the events in Washington."

"Possible connection," Michael said sarcastically. "Everett probably left their driver's licenses on Lincoln's lap. It'll turn out they were the ones that did it and Pierce is left looking like a fool blaming the militia. Colombian nationals. Could be our Puerto Rican salsa band. Let me guess. A plane takes off from an airport outside Washington, one we're familiar with, crashes in some remote area. An anonymous tip phoned in conveniently after Pierce's speech notifies the police, and suddenly Pierce's election chances crash right along with the plane."

Michael found the start of the news item on another channel. Everything fit except the part about a militia group finding the plane.

"Why would he use the militia?" Tess asked.

Michael didn't have an answer.

* * *

"Gentlemen I think it's possible we've just seized the low ground," the President began the early morning meeting. Pierce and his aides had been up all night. "We've got dead Colombians with the bunch of money, false passports and drug cartel connections."

"Who were found by some militia group, which makes one wonder," an aide interrupted.

"The FBI checked them out," Pierce responded. "It doesn't look like they're connected to anybody. I wish they were, because it turns out the Colombians have traces of bomb making material on their clothing. If we've got the wrong folks, we're going to have an uproar over this."

"We have next to no exposure. We didn't say the militia did it or didn't, that was the beauty of the speech."

"And a beauty it was," Pierce added. "But March pinned it on us anyway."

"What he did was pin himself in a corner with the militia. They haven't got a lot of friends."

"Just noisy ones."

Pierce wasn't cheered. "It still isn't our best hour. We have to look into the possibility that Everett and his associates were just running around in the woods and somebody else did this."

"There's too much evidence pointing to the militia," an aide pointed out.

"Maybe it was supposed to look that way. With Everett's background."

"It can't be discounted."

"This isn't Guatemala," Pierce said angrily. "I'll be damned if we'll be destabilized by some ex CIA mercenary. If Everett's involved in March's campaign, that's another reason to be tracking the money."

Pierce turned to Hilliard. "All right Hilliard give me one good I told you so, so I can feel free to light a fire under your ass and the investigation."

Hilliard smiled.

"I guess that will have to do. You have someone in March's camp, why the hell aren't we getting more on the money?"

"We're pushing him hard."

"Your agent's still missing, you haven't found ..."

"Flaherty."

"What's happening with that film?"

"It was badly burnt before it went into the river, but they're working on it as well as the tapes. The therapist on it could be Flaherty's. There could be a problem of privilege."

"That's swell. But I'm a little more concerned about the privilege of Mister Flaherty's company."

"We're devoting everything we can, but if we short other parts of the investigation we could end up with nothing."

"Meanwhile we've got these Colombians."

"We're due for an update on that from DEA and State," an aide interjected.

"I don't think they're going away," Pierce continued. "What are Flaherty's politics these days? He may be there just to point us in the wrong direction."

Hilliard shook his head.

"Or at least being fed disinformation," the President added.

"We've been going over his radio broadcasts. They were exposes on the militia. His partner on the radio show was killed in an auto accident."

"Recently?"

"Right after a broadcast which included a reference to Everett."

"Everett?"

"There's more to it. There was actually a death threat on the air, which doesn't seem like Everett's style. We've gotten the woman's files from her house and we weren't the first to search it. Another thing, the therapist is East German and we're already getting contradictory signals about a possible intelligence history. There might be international implications, I mean besides the Colombians."

Pierce saw the waters getting deeper and murkier. If Everett was orchestrating March's campaign, that's exactly where he wanted Pierce, knee deep and thrashing about.

"What about going public with Flaherty?"

Hilliard knew it wasn't a question. He resisted the President's pressure.

"If there are leaks we might have to. But I still think that's an excellent way of getting him killed. The Bureau's divided on it. If it makes it any easier, the more I think about it, the more I'm sure if he had the Rosetta stone in his pocket, he'd be in here bargaining with it. He's still out there hunting or he's already dead."

Chapter 23

"A perfect place to murder him," Arens thought as he walked up the steps to the theater. He laughed as he considered it. After all wasn't this theater a shabby contemporary version of a cathedral and wasn't the victim a shabby contemporary version of a high priest. His enjoyment didn't last as he was in a hurry and hated to rush. The FBI, with no sense of humor or history, might be coming soon.

Arens entered the darkened theater. Nime was walking from the stage, preoccupied with an armful of papers he was carrying.

"Herr Richter," Arens called out. Nime looked up with a start at the sound of Arens' voice. The sight of him relieved the strange sensation that he had heard the dead speak.

"I'm disappointed I didn't get to hear you give a talk," Arens went on, taking pleasure in Nime's discomfort. "I've always admired your work."

Nimé tried to regain his composure. "With what's going on I naturally canceled it. Apparently some people are trying to take us back to the middle ages."

"This is the middle ages. The multinationals are the nobility with their private domains as the serfs scramble for some security within their walls. Of course security was never your worry, you always had well placed comrades. They probably all felt guilty. You were the only true believer and you weren't even in the party, while they had their numbered accounts in Switzerland. There were certain jealous ones who insisted you had a secret fondness for the Americans."

"My only fondness, as you put it, was for the Indians of South America."

"Like father like son."

"How would you know? They pointed you in a direction and you killed."

"It's true my specialty was closing files rather than reading them, but I know more about you than you think. Shall I display my ignorance?"

"If that was a question, I would say no."

"Your father left Germany in the thirties because it was unhealthy to be a leading Communist in Hitler's new order. He emigrated to Brazil, bought a plantation and grew bromeliads in Santa Catarina. He met a dancer. She was only part German. Can't blame him for preferring the samba to the polka. He was born nobility, shows what can happen when you don't stick with your class. How am I doing so far?"

"Splendid, if your goal is rehashing common knowledge."

"They were married and had a son. They had problems. Maybe she wasn't German enough or maybe too German. Maybe she wanted to be free. Or maybe she found out he wasn't going to be the next Juan Peron. Who knows? She played around and he went native, spending his time collecting bromeliads and Indian cosmologies.

"It was no situation for a child. After the war he sent his son back to Germany to live with relatives. He never came back himself although he could have still held high position. Very strange. I'm sure you've considered it. Maybe you became a therapist considering it. What do you think Doctor Richter?"

"That you think seeing through everything is the same as seeing into the heart of it. For you it's a natural mistake."

"I'm heartless, what a revelation."

"Not heartless, just so fragile you've decided to destroy it to protect it."

"Not bad, that's almost worthy of us both. Your mother went on with her so called career and her escapades including one with Martin Bormann."

Nime started to protest.

"Of course it's just a nasty rumor. In any case we shouldn't be too hard on her, she had an extraordinarily developed nose for power. After all if the Communists had taken over instead of Hitler, your father might have been Chancellor. She wasn't very particular about political leanings. There are those who say the same about Herr Bormann. She had a second child."

Nime tried not to look surprised.

"Surely you've heard all this. She was raised by nuns, and later put up for adoption. No one knows what has happened to her. She ran away, just like her mother."

"It's ancient history."

"You're a psychologist. We're filled head to toe with ancient history. We're lucky if we can manage an occasional foray into the present or the future."

"So who are they pointing you toward now? Me?"

"Only indirectly. We'll have to save our discussion of Heidegger or ecstatic revelation for another day. The FBI is working on a connection between you and some people I'm interested in finding. Michael Flaherty and a woman named Sara Ellison. Unfortunately she's beyond finding, but she might have left something with you that would be of some help. There's not much use in threatening you. But we could take a walk, somewhere we won't be interrupted by the FBI, and pick a face in the crowd. Young, innocent, full of life. You understand."

Nime was silent.

* * *

Michael and Tess began the search for Sara's car at the salvage yards. It was the most logical place for a demolished car to end up. Even though it was daylight, they were counting on the fact that nobody paid much attention to you unless you bothered them with a question, or had a box of parts to buy. Hiking through the aisles of wrecks was time consuming. Their efforts were yielding nothing, and the longer they were at it, the more they worried about being spotted.

Even before they reached the last rows of cars, Tess had a feeling it wasn't going to be there. "You don't suppose they repaired the thing."

"It was too badly damaged," Michael quickly responded. He rethought it. "It was Jack's gift and Sara loved it. Maybe he decided to save it."

There were two body shops that specialized in BMW's. The personnel would have been more attentive than the ones at the salvage yards, but fortunately the shops were closed on Saturday. It was just a matter of breaking in and locating the car.

Michael was shocked when he saw it. It had been redone completely. He wasn't ready to see it twisted and bent. But even less ready to see this.

He got in the car and sat in the driver's seat. He expected to sense something of her, her terror, a whiff of perfume, a dying echo of a heartbeat. There was just metal, leather and the smell of polish and fresh paint. There didn't seem to be a trace. But then life isn't so interested in traces. At least not in making them obvious. It uses what it can and moves on.

That's what makes finding them an art. The trace might be a faint radio signal from the start of everything 10 billion years ago. It might be recorded in the rocks or an old newspaper, or in the funny way a person smiles. There's always a trace.

They began to go over the car. Michael went through the trunk while Tess checked the glove compartment. Michael got into the driver's seat and began to search under the seat, as Tess took the ash tray out. It was filled with potpourri. Michael noticed Tess take a small portion of it and smell it.

"Sara treated herself to the smell after she quit smoking."

As Tess put the ash tray back, she felt something shift in the bottom of it. She reached into the potpourri and felt something metallic. Michael was searching under the seat when he heard Tess say, "I think she treated herself to a safety deposit key as well."

Tess excitedly handed the safety deposit key to Michael.

"She obviously used it regularly. Of course she could have just gotten a kick out of visiting her diamonds."

Michael smiled, but he was already formulating a plan.

"She probably built up a whole file of papers. We can get Jack to open the safety deposit box."

Michael searched through Sara's datebook until he found Jack's parents number. They drove to a phone and Michael called. He got an answering machine and was about to leave a message when Jack picked up. A tv was going in the background.

"Michael," Jack said as if the word had a bitter taste. It seemed to clear his palate. "I'm sorry for the tone. Actually I'm glad you called. Sara should have never been involved, but nevertheless you'll have to excuse some of my behavior. You were right about the accident. That bomb in our backyard made it pretty obvious."

"Forget it, I'm sorry about it all."

"I appreciate that. What can I do?"

Michael had the safety deposit key in his hand..

"I can't go into it all on the phone. But what's happened in Washington and what happened to Sara are connected. She had some important information. I think she kept it in her safety deposit box and I need you to get it."

Michael arranged to meet Jack at the Englander motel. It wasn't nearby, but he knew the Indian owner and his wife and that meant two less people he might have to worry about should things get sticky.

Jack hung up the phone. The wall facing him was covered with framed photographs. One of them was a picture of a platoon in Vietnam. Everett and Coulter's eldest son were in it.

Tess checked into the motel while Michael waited in the car, figuring the less public exposure the better. The time had already passed when he expected the government to have identified him and plastered his face all over the media. He nervously looked around. He had been preoccupied with the key on the drive. He wondered if he had been as diligent as he should have been in making sure they weren't being followed. He was relieved to see nobody was in sight.

* * *

If the President had wanted clarity, he wasn't getting it. He was told that the FBI had searched Hastings house. They found a fishing trip letter, history books and Civil War memorabilia from a store called Articles of Confederation. They also determined that Everett and the six men associated with him were participating in a small town bowling tournament at the time of the attack.

The information coming in on the Colombians was suggestive, but not conclusive. The FBI traced the men to a motel where they stayed, apparently posing as a musical group. The search of the room and the phone records yielded nothing. Nobody at the truck rental in Georgia which rented the vans could remember them, and the rental paper work was also a dead end.

Then the DEA came up with a bombshell. In cooperation with Colombian authorities, they had been tapping the phones of several leading drug cartel figures. One of the conversations included their expletive laced feelings about the US government's interference in their business and references to an upcoming attack on Washington. It also included a reference to the nickname of one of the men found in the plane.

The President knew he would have to respond quickly. Despite his clever speech, he would still be blamed for targeting the wrong people. Not that he didn't still believe that Everett and the militia were also involved, but the proof would be slow in coming.

It called for a bold stroke, not considered Pierce's forté. It was all the more surprising to his aides when he asked for a draft of a Black Forest speech. It would outline the government's long commitment to the research and express his decision to go forward with its implementation.

The President's aides were dumfounded. Until recently all their efforts were aimed at shooting down the idea as "March Madness". But not being able to shoot it down was one thing, taking it on yourself quite another. They knew Pierce of all people would not be pursuing this without rock solid scientific backing. He reassured them he had it.

With the proviso that the DEA revelation would stand up, they came around to praising the move as brilliant. It would outflank March on the issue, help quiet the uproar, and show character and decisiveness in a critical hour.

The best part of it was that he wouldn't be stuck with having to pursue it after he won the election. He could satisfy the public by using it as leverage to gain huge concessions from drug enforcement in Colombia, Peru, Mexico, all over the world. Pierce nodded in agreement, but he had other ideas. He didn't know why he was being handed a page in the history books, but he knew he would take it.

* * *

A photograph of Michael filled the television screen in the Englander motel office. Satya, the owner's wife didn't notice. Her attention was elsewhere. She had turned the sound off when the last customer came in, and hadn't turned it back on. She was nervously fidgeting with paperwork at the front desk. She dropped the letter opener she was using as her husband entered from the adjacent living quarters. The tv caught his eye.

At the same moment Michael and Tess were absorbing the shock of seeing the newsflash. "ABC news has learned from reliable sources that an ex DEA agent named Michael Flaherty, wanted in connection with the killing of a Georgia state policeman, is being sought by Federal authorities in connection with the recent events in Washington."

"There goes my...," Michael started to joke when the phone rang.

"Don't answer it," Michael warned.

The telephone stopped ringing.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Tess urged.

There was a knock at the door.

"There's no way it's Jack," Tess said shaking her head.

Tess waited until Michael grabbed his gun and retreated to the bathroom. She pulled her gun out of her purse and went to the door. Another knock. Tess tensed.

"Ms Richards, Ms Richards, this is Satya."

Tess was relieved to hear her voice and opened the door a crack. Satya was alone, looking embarrassed. Michael listened at the bathroom door. He heard Satya say, "I'm sorry to have to ask, but part of the registration was incomplete." The door closed as Tess went out.

The two women returned to the motel office. Satya apologized for the inconvenience and handed Tess a registration form. As Tess started to fill it out, she noticed that the tv was turned off. Satya cast an anxious glance toward the open door to the living quarters behind her to the left. Her eyes began to tear.

"Something wrong?" Tess asked.

Satya was almost paralyzed, fighting an enormous inner struggle.

"Go," she said weakly.

"What?"

Satya gathered her nerve. "Just go."

Satya looked toward the open door with obvious dread. Tess glanced at the doorway.

"Before he..." Satya's mouth moved, but no word sounded.

Tess went for the gun in her purse. Her hand nervously tightened on the trigger as she pointed it toward the doorway. She saw what seemed like a young man appear in it. He had boyish good looks, freckled complexion and jet black hair. She had no conscious memory of seeing his gun as she fired. The thought it was all a horrible mistake entered her mind, and a split second later was driven from it by the sound of his gun firing.

Tess' bullet hit him in the shoulder as his shot wounded Satya. He staggered backwards. Tess rushed toward him, screaming and firing wildly, trying to finish him off.

He scrambled into the living room where Satya's husband and young son were bound and gagged. Tess entered firing at point blank range, but her gun was empty. He lunged forward, grabbing her arm, pulling her down.

The two grappled, ripping and tearing at each other. She grabbed a brass lamp and beat him in the head with it. Over and over. He grabbed the cord. He yanked it tightly around Tess' neck and began to choke her. He forced her on her back and sat above her, strangling the life out of her.

Tess saw his face twisted in a sadistic grin as his hands tightened around her neck. It got very quiet as she began to lose consciousness. Her thoughts strangely continued, but were no longer connected to action. "I'm going to die and this is the last thing I'm ever going to see is his horrible face."

"No air, losing it," she realized as his features became distorted, almost hallucinatory. She saw his grinning mouth sprout a darting tongue, adding a horrific lewd touch to his malevolent face. But the tongue was metallic and sharp edged. And there was a tiny rivulet of blood dripping from it. A blade protruded from his mouth as his eyes widened and glazed over. Tess screamed and jerked her head out of the way.

He toppled forward. There was a letter opener driven through the back of his head. Michael was standing above him. He pulled the dead body off of Tess. Shaking in horror, she hugged Michael. He comforted her and then went to untie the others. Tess' shock turned to rage. She grabbed Michael's gun and fired shots into her assailant's lifeless body. Michael restrained her.

"We've got to get out of here, the police!"

The two drove away from the motel. Tess suddenly asked Michael to pull over. She got out of the car and walked to the side of the road. Michael saw her doubled over, throwing up. He got out of the car, but she motioned to him that she was all right.

The two continued on. Michael noticed with concern that Tess was still upset.

"You want to talk?"

"I really thought he was going to kill me. I've been close to dying before, but this was different."

"Maybe you're different?"

Tess pulled herself together. "Who the hell was that guy?"

"Probably militia. Somebody working for Everett."

"And how the hell did he find us?...Jack set us up?"

"That's crazy, these people killed Sara."

"His phone could have been tapped."

"It's possible, but it's more likely we were followed."

"This is a nightmare."

"We haven't much time, but we've got this."

Michael held up the safety deposit key.

"You got any ideas on how we could use it?"

"Sure I've got an idea, it's my business to have ideas like that. If I rented a box, that would get me inside."

"You still need the bank key. The teller opens the other lock."

"Maybe I can save her the trouble."

Chapter 24

Hollings didn't take March's coolness over the phone too seriously. Friction between March and himself was nothing new. You couldn't go through what they had without real bouts of it. All you could hope is to keep to the issues, and not let the skeletons in the closet come out and do a dance macabre.

March was just finishing a pep talk to supporters who were setting up his campaign headquarters in Austin when Hollings walked in. March cut short his remarks, and the workers got the message that the two men wanted to be alone.

"I hear you've been talking to some friends," March began, trying to retain a casual warmth in his voice.

"I have lots of friends," Hollings replied matter of factly.

"You do, but you know who I'm talking about."

"They wanted to talk to me. They're worried about you."

"What about Pierce? This Colombian thing has opened the door for Black Forest. He might just go through it."

"They think he's afraid of his own shadow. It's you they're concerned with."

"Me?"

"They think you're crazy enough to do it. I keep reassuring them you're not going to win this time."

"That is reassuring. What about next time?"

"I've convinced them you'll be older and wiser."

"Older I can't seem to help, but wiser like that I hope I never am. By the way how much do you tell them?"

"As little as I can and still keep them happy and you alive."

"You've always had a finger in every pot."

"Right, and you get to find out what everybody's cooking."

"A friend to all, enemy to none, it's a neat balancing act. I don't know why I trust you."

"We go back to when it counted. Besides you don't trust me. You tell me next to nothing about the whole Everett side of the campaign, and believe me it shows."

"I don't know that much more than you. That's the way he works."

"You trust him?"

"I do. I know his politics."

"I don't know. Talk about a finger in every pot. You've got to wonder."

"We're talking about the Presidency of the United States," March said with finality.

* * *

Michael and Tess were driving a newly "acquired" Land Rover as they approached Sara's bank. Tess was dressed to look "pregnant" and disguised with a wig, while Michael had on a baseball cap and sunglasses. He finished going over a profile of Everett's men, with the admonition that Tess should leave immediately if any of them were there or there was any sign of the police.

She told him not to worry. This job like all the others was like a chess game. Every possible move and countermove was considered. She proceeded only if she had a response for every crucial outcome.

What if Everett's men were there? The police? What was her legal vulnerability at each step of the way? What if the teller returns? What if she were discovered? She knew under no circumstances would she be found with the bank keys and how Sara's papers might be passed as her own. When she was younger she thought it out awkwardly and painstakingly from beginning to end, but now it came to her instinctively.

"That's bullshit," Michael responded.

"Not as much as you think."

"I think you've never done a job like this before. You're defiant and reckless and a natural and have reasons all your own for going in there. Just be careful."

Michael looked over the street. He didn't see anybody that didn't seem like a civilian. No sign of the police or Everett's people. He handed Tess the safety deposit key.

"Good luck."

"Luck better not have anything to do with it."

Inside the bank Tess satisfied herself that the few customers and the personnel were not a problem. She purchased a safety deposit box from a woman teller.

Tess sized her up as they went through the transaction. Late thirties, divorced, been at the bank long enough to get a little sloppy about routines, carries bank keys in right pocket, easily flattered and distracted. Tess noted her physical habits, boundaries, blind spots. All this was done effortlessly thanks to her experience.

As the teller escorted Tess to the safety deposit area, Tess concluded her evaluation. Nothing much happens in this woman's life and she isn't expecting it to.

"So, when are you due?" the teller asked.

"Three months."

"Your first?"

"Yes."

Tess stopped suddenly. The security officer for the bank emerged from a back office talking with what looked like a bank manager. Tess got closer to the teller to shield herself from his view. She was supposed to get the hell out, but she didn't. To their right was the room that housed the safety deposit boxes. They entered it.

Michael was parked down the street with a view of the bank. He saw a police car pull up in front of it.

Inside the safety deposit room, Tess opened one lock, and watched as the teller opened the other. The teller handed Tess her key and the strongbox, and put the set of bank keys in her right pocket.

"Just let me know when you're done."

"Thank you...."

Tess appeared faint. She started to fall. The flustered teller practically grabbed her in a bear hug to steady her, and Tess adroitly stole the woman's keys.

"Oh, my God," the teller exclaimed and then called to the other room. "Someone, help!"

"I'll be fine," Tess said, recovering somewhat.

The teller grabbed a chair and assisted Tess. The bank manager entered with the security officer, who stared at Tess.

"I'm fine really," Tess assured them.

"Would you like some water?" the teller asked.

"You're sweet, but no thanks. I really feel better."

Again reassuring the teller she was all right, Tess got up and walked into the adjoining room with the strongbox. She entered a viewing cubicle. She knew she had to make her move before the teller's next customer.

She pulled out the bank keys from her pocket and opened the cubicle door slightly. She watched as the teller walked away, but the manager and the cop were still by the entrance. Tess closed the cubicle door. She looked as if she was trying to will them to leave.

The teller was about to go on a break when a customer walked up holding a safety deposit key.

Michael drove away from the bank, his mind racing for a plan. He passed an ambulance parked in front of a fast food restaurant. A twenty two year old ambulance driver was sitting in the driver's seat eating his lunch. He was reading a dog-eared Raymond Chandler paperback instead of the anatomy text he planned to study. Michael pulled his gun, opened the passenger's door and got in.

"I don't carry any drugs," the ambulance driver said nonchalantly as if this sort of thing happened every day.

"I need your phone."

"And I need peace of mind, an ever expanding sense of self and a Cuban cigar. But at least you get your phone."

The ambulance driver handed Michael the cellular phone.

Inside the bank cubicle Tess picked up the strongbox and opened the door a crack. The manager and the cop were standing with their backs to her. She weighed the chances of them leaving against the chances of the teller coming back. She walked quickly into the safety deposit room.

As the teller and the customer headed for the safety deposit area, Tess went to Sara's compartment. She set down her own box, quickly inserted the bank key and Sara's key and opened the compartment. The manager and the cop were still talking as the teller let the customer through the security gate.

Tess pulled out the box and lifted the lid. She had a moment of elation at seeing file folders when she heard the teller from the next room. Tess stuffed the file folders under her clothing, replaced the box and started to close the compartment. She didn't have time to lock it as the teller and the customer were coming toward her. The teller began reaching into her right pocket for the bank key. Tess stepped toward her, concealing the partially opened compartment behind her.

The teller was puzzled the keys weren't in her pocket. The cop and the manager walked over to the teller as she started to check her other pocket.

"Just hold it there," the cop said unfastening his gun.

Everybody stopped.

"You, over here."

The cop motioned to the customer. Tess glanced over at him. She could see that he resembled Michael. As the cop began interrogating him, the teller was momentarily distracted. Tess seized the opportunity.

"Can I talk to you?" she asked the teller.

"Certainly."

"It's personal," Tess said, moving closer to the teller as if she wanted to whisper what she had to say. Tess put her hand lightly on the woman's right arm and captured her full attention with a desperately earnest look.

"It's about my husband. This morning I found out he's having an affair."

"Oh my God."

"With my sister."

Agony suddenly replaced the teller's professional smile as tears came to her eyes. Tess had expected a distracting moment of sympathy in which to make her move. Instead she had hit a nerve and was distracted herself by the woman's sudden intensity. Fortunately the woman made it simple. She hugged Tess, who quickly dropped the keys in the teller's left pocket.

"I know how much you've been hurt," the woman said.

A strange feeling that the woman really knew filled Tess. It was both comforting and disturbing. Tess withdrew from the hug.

"Thanks, I feel better just telling someone," Tess heard herself say in character. The emptiness of the words somehow bothered her.

The teller "found" the keys in her left pocket, put back Tess' box and she and Tess turned to leave. Behind them Sara's open compartment was visible as they passed the cop still questioning the customer.

Tess started to walk toward the exit. She was hurrying as slowly as she could. She heard the cop's voice behind her call out for her to stop. She kept going, pretending not to hear him. He yelled to her again and drew his gun. She was nearing the exit. She decided to gamble that he wouldn't shoot her in the back before she walked through it. A bomb squad rushed in right by her shouting to everyone to clear the bank. Tess escaped in the confusion.

Tess hurried away from the bank, taking in the sight of police, bomb squad, and fire engines everywhere. She glanced around quickly, but there was no sign of Michael. She knew the cop would be out any moment. A siren wailed as an ambulance pulled up.

"Get in!" the ambulance driver yelled to her.

Tess had no time to think it over. She got in as the ambulance sped off. She looked at the driver with a mixture of puzzlement and paranoia until Michael appeared from the back. The ambulance weaved through the maze of police and fire trucks and drove off.

Michael and Tess left the ambulance driver with a long walk to the nearest phone, a short explanation and a kiss on the cheek from Tess for his trouble. They abandoned the ambulance and Tess acquired a new car. She drove as Michael examined the files.

"This is very detailed. Sara definitely had a high level source."

"Who?"

Michael rapidly flipped through the pages.

"Can't tell, but judging from the different sorts of information there might be more than one."

Michael scanned more pages.

"It gets better and better. Whoever supplied this must have been inner circle."

What Michael read next stopped him cold.

"I can't believe this, Richard Coulter was involved."

"Who's Richard Coulter?"

"Sara's father in law."

"Her own family?"

Michael nodded. "That's what she was calling to tell me about. Money went from his group to Everett to the militia."

"And she knew this and her family killed her?!"

For a moment Michael let in the horror of that possibility. "Unless Everett was on his own. Or even one of his men. That's operating procedure. No one's accountable."

"So we'll make him accountable. That'll be our operating procedure."

"There are plenty off leads here. But Everett's not going to wait around for us to put this together. I'm sure he's already heading out of the country. Which is what we should be doing. I want to do the negotiations with Hilliard and the government from a safe distance."

"You're going to leave his fate to them?"

"They'll never get the chance. We'll make him such a liability his friends will kill him."

Chapter 25

Michael made arrangements for the safekeeping of copies of the documents. He and Tess crossed the border into Canada. They picked up fake passports and visas from a specialist Tess knew in Montreal. His dream remained forging art works, but this was still his bread and butter.

The Montreal international airport was crowded with afternoon commuters. Michael and Tess had picked the time in the hopes that the crush of passengers would provide cover and distraction. They merged with the crowd as they made their way to an escalator.

A riflescope found them from a high angle and began tracking them. They momentarily disappeared into the crowd. Another scope immediately picked them up. They reached the escalator and ascended.

At the top of the escalator the family in front of them lifted their two small children off of it and turned to their left. That opened a line of sight for Michael and Tess that included Everett. He appeared out of a group of people and stepped toward them. A shock wave of recognition and hatred hit them both as they went for their guns.

"There's three rifles on you," Everett warned.

Tess pointed her gun at Everett. "I couldn't care less. I'm ready to go, are you?"

"Quite, but you'll only get other people killed."

"That shouldn't concern you," Michael said with venom.

"Let's move," Tess said motioning with her gun.

"Why not?" Everett replied. "If you're interested in slaughter, we can at least keep it private."

The three stepped away from the passing crowd as it rushed by them, oblivious to what was happening.

"I'm more interested in talking," Everett continued. "Kit told us about your forger and..."

"You killed him," Tess interrupted, threatening Everett with her gun.

"You want me to finish or do you want to finish this now?"

"Go on," Michael said.

"You undoubtedly have Sara's papers tucked away with a friend or encrypted on the internet, so you can play footsy with Pierce from across the Atlantic. And I thought before you foul things up in your typical fashion you might want to know the truth."

"The truth is what's about to ruin Coulter's breakfast and your health."

"Not once they find out her source worked for the mafia."

"Bullshit."

"It was Hollings. He's been cosy with them for years. They wanted to destroy March and Black Forest so they threatened him. Not his life, he wouldn't have buckled, but they threatened to kill March. Handing over the militia stuff was nothing, in fact he hoped it would force March to part ways with the militia. And when it came to Black Forest, he figured better a dead program than a dead friend. So he agreed to pick up a woman of their choosing. Your partner here owed them a favor, and they asked her to steal Hollings' attaché case. It's ironic. You almost gave your life for the DEA and now you're helping drug dealers".

"That's novel, a new found morality."

"Nothing has changed. You still don't begin to know."

"Enough to realize that Hollings may have been responsible for the theft, but there's no way he could have gotten all of Sara's stuff. That had to come from somebody in close. Close to you, close to Coulter."

Everett didn't say anything as Michael thought it over.

"It was Jack, wasn't it? He thought it would stop his father before he got in deep."

"I don't propose to get between father and son. When he passed that information he had no idea what he was getting into."

"And you killed her."

"Don't be obscene. Sara was killed by that frecklefaced gentlemen you skewered in the motel."

"A militia goon of yours."

"He was an insane criminal who liked the word militia better than bank robber. I had nothing to do with killing Sara."

"You never kill anybody," Tess nearly spat at Everett. "What about Kit?"

"We're the only reason he's still alive. He's got almost as many enemies as you do. After the robbery we assumed that Tess and he...well let's say we made some assumptions. But it turns out Kit and I have a lot more in common than I ever imagined. And I believed what he told us about Tess. In fact he had very nice things to say. So it turns out you don't know anything that would cause me any problems."

"That's a nice speech, but you wouldn't be here if it were true."

"Sara's papers will cause us some grief, if that's what you want. But it comes down to this. My friends and I were bowling the night of the attack. I think the government will sweep it all under the rug along with the charges against you. Pierce has his Colombians and his place in history doing Black Forest."

"The last time I looked, this country wasn't built on 'We hold these half truths to be self evident."

"Does Pierce want the truth? He's a pragmatist. The truth is what's simple and keeps him President. You'll just muck up the works at this point. I gambled he wouldn't do Black Forest and lost. March will have other issues."

"I'm sure you'll see to that."

"Why not? He's actually trying to do something. You'd wait until the American dream's a memory and nobody's safe but the rich. Hopefully before then you'll wake up and carry the torch. I'll leave you two to sort out your secrets. I have a country to save."

Everett waved off his unseen marksmen and started to leave.

"Everett!" Tess yelled out.

Everett stopped and faced her. Tess raised her gun and pointed it at him. Everett stared at her.

"It's your choice, freedom or revenge."

Tess thought it over as her hand tightened on the trigger. Michael reached over and grabbed her arm, deflecting her aim from Everett. She started to turn to Michael with a look of betrayal when she saw Kit walk up.

He smiled at her. His smile was full of the pleasure of reunion and friendship and still had room for something more. It seemed to offer up something to her and deny it all at once. She was trying to read it as he and Everett turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowd.

* * *

Coulter was passed the news of what might happen. The sky wouldn't fall, but they would definitely get rained on.

They had some factors in their favor in their effort to head it off. They had access to some large contributors to Pierce's campaign. Sara's files contained disinformation that Everett managed to get in through Hollings after he learned of Hollings' duplicity. Maybe enough manure to make the whole thing stink. And they had files of their own on people in Pierce's camp.

Coulter went to his study and began reading one of his favorite books on history. Accounts of others facing its ebbs and flows would prepare him for what was to come.

* * *

Nime had made up his mind to go to South America. He had heard the rumors about a halfsister before. In the past they had always been raised for political motives and so suspect. He brought it up a few times in the letters he exchanged with his father over the years, but he was told it was a closed subject. Any thought of pursuing it himself was precluded for three decades by the Berlin Wall.

When he was able finally to go home, the reunion with his father absorbed his energies. It was now time to return, made obvious by his reaction to Arens' words. It was small satisfaction that he told Arens nothing about Michael or Sara. It was not bravery that motivated him, he was afraid. It was pure hatred. He wondered if he would have been steadfast without it.

Nime collected his writings that he was going to bring with him and prepared for the trip. The woman he was searching for was scheduling no such trip. After her husband's campaign she had other plans.

* * *

It was a beautiful afternoon as Michael waited outside the US embassy in Paris. Two government officials appeared. He could tell by their expressions that it was over. The negotiations had been protracted and tedious, but each side got what they wanted. Michael left with the government's guarantee of immunity, some money and a feeling that a bitter part of his past had finally some resolution.

Tess had kidded him about what money the government would offer. "I know you want me to change my ways, but I think you're going to have to change yours. You'll pick it up in no time."

Michael stopped at a newspaper rack. He had spotted a French paper with a bold headline that contained Pierce's name and the words Black Forest. There was a photograph of Pierce in front of a research facility. Michael studied the paper for a moment and continued walking. Further along the street he bought some roses.

From a distance he saw Tess talking to children by the river's edge. As he approached, the children ran off to their mother. Michael handed Tess the roses. She was touched, but tenderness was too rare and strong to take straight. She started to say, "If you're asking me to eavesdrop," when he kissed her and they embraced.

They walked along the Seine at the same time together and alone. Tess couldn't help thinking about Kit's smile and what it meant. Michael was wondering how his life would change. Each confined by their own thoughts, but hoping the splendor of the day would prevail.

The End