by Kirk Russell
I read that then continued talking with Mara, who pushed an old Dalz file across the table toward me. I recognized everything about the file right down to the coffee stains on it. I’d spent many nights with it, and it didn’t get me anywhere. Mara’s theatrics, sliding it across as if the file held case-breaking information, put me on edge.
“Agent Blujace learns Dalz from you. Take her through that file. Your focus is Dalz, and she’s going to work with you. I may pull her off as needed, but she needs to learn everything you know about Dalz. Should we go out to the public with Dalz’s face?”
“I don’t think we do that yet, but let’s reach out to Las Vegas police.”
“All right, we start there. Aren’t you going to open the file?”
“I know everything in it.”
“I want Agent Blujace brought up to speed on Dalz. She’ll need the file.”
“I’ll give it to her.”
“I want you to take her carefully through it.”
I nodded and we stared at each other, then Mara jumped to Indonal and Eckstrom and said, “We’re assigning more agents to look for them, and that’s coming from headquarters. I’m sure you’ve seen the news coverage and the traitor speculation that they’ve sold out and are working with our enemies.”
“I’ve seen some of what’s on Twitter and the cable TV talk.”
“It’s gotten a lot worse in the past twenty-four hours, and Washington wants more agents on it. The search will broaden. If they try to board a flight to wherever, they’ll be detained. What they know is crucial to national security.”
“They’re computer scientists who quit,” I said. “They’re not criminals and we shouldn’t be talking as if they are.”
“They didn’t just quit. They disappeared and with extremely valuable information that could be shared. They created Indie with Ralin, but it’s not theirs. That’s where we’re at,” Mara said. “Whatever happens they’ve brought on themselves. The statement we’re going out to the public with is an appeal to help find them to keep them safe. They won’t be labeled as possible traitors.”
“That’s already happened.”
Mara didn’t answer, so I opened the Dalz file after all and flipped through photos, including one of a school bus carrying the kids of diplomats, twenty-four of them, where an incendiary bomb was used. Half the children burned alive. That’s when I’d started to learn about Dalz.
I closed the file as Mara said, “Let’s get back to you. Did you make an appointment with your doctor to get your back evaluated?” When I didn’t answer he continued, “I’ll keep you in the mix, starting with locating Bismarck. You’re the right agent for that. But let’s talk more on a day-to-day basis about your investigative goals.”
“You’re going to direct my days?”
“I want to talk more often and plan more together.”
“We can do that, but why now?”
He didn’t answer and I didn’t ask again. Something was changing between us. Maybe it already had.
12
Jace
“Where were you living before you moved here?” the building manager asked Jace.
She took him in: blue jeans, boots, a big belt buckle that cost some money, a tucked-in shirt loosened a little to hide his gut, and a name tag on the shirt pocket. Maynard Wright.
“I lived in Oakland near Lake Merritt.”
“Oakland?”
“Do you know Oakland?”
“I know enough to say a rat may have traveled with you. I have a friend who manages apartments in Oakland. He says there are major pest problems in the city.”
“The boxes in the kitchen and the bedding are all I brought in yesterday. It’s not a rat.”
“If you want me to bring the cleaners back, you’ll have to pay. Or you find another place.”
Before Jace could answer that, Darren the next-door neighbor walked in. He must have been in the hallway and overheard. He pointed a finger at the manager.
“The guy who lived here had hamsters, like five or six of them, and he let them live in the bedroom. They ran around in here.”
The manager stared at him, then said, “I didn’t know that.”
“There’s a lot going on around here you don’t know,” Darren said, and added as an aside to her, “I’ve been here nine years, ever since I got divorced.” He put a particular emphasis on the word and gave Jace a smile. “He had a pet snake that once a month he let hunt in here. If you want to smell something really friggin’ nasty, try snake shit.”
Jace looked at the manager and said, “Different apartment.”
“They’re more expensive.”
“Then it better be bigger.” Her phone rang and before answering she said, “This has to happen today.” She handed him her FBI card. “Call my cell in the next half hour. I’ve got a moving van that has to be returned tomorrow and movers coming today.”
“You’re an FBI agent?” He sounded disbelieving.
“You push the line with me, dude? Watch it.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“So what did you mean?”
While he figured that out, she walked out into the hallway feeling angry. She called Grale back, but he didn’t pick up. She tried him again. Still no answer, but the apartment manager had just discovered another unit he could show her.
“Let’s go take a look,” she said and returned a call from Mara as she trailed behind him.
“Grale was videoed buying from or meeting with Potello again today,” Mara said.
“Who is Potello?”
“A pharmacist suspected of illegal sales. There’s more I’ve got to brief you on when I see you next.”
“Who told us today about this meeting with Grale?”
“It’s coming from a Metro police undercover agent who has caught Grale and Potello on video once before. Metro just called me and said Grale went by Potello’s drug booth downtown this morning and met him again maybe an hour ago. I’m texting you the undercover officer’s phone number and where he saw Grale make a buy.”
“Or Grale picked up his prescription.”
“Sure, it could be. This Gary Potello is a licensed pharmacist, so I’m hoping that too.”
“Okay, well, I’ll give the undercover a call and go meet him. It’s time to see this guy and hear why he’s so sure.”
“Call me after.”
“I’ll do that. Talk to you then.”
13
I checked out Bismarck’s dark web site before I went looking for him. There’s the site and then separate chatrooms. The chatrooms we had trouble getting into, but Bismarck used a public bulletin board as well. I read a new posting about the imminent coming of the new order where some would die in sacrificial honor at the first mind-melding. It was the kind of thing you have to read twice.
It could mean Bismarck intended to ask his followers to trespass onto the base sometime very soon and make their way toward the building housing Indie. If so, that would lead to arrests. After rereading it yet again, I decided the best thing was to head it off, so I called the highway patrol. I talked to a captain who gave me directions to where vehicles in Bismarck’s caravan had left the highway.
“It’s a sandy desert road that runs toward some hills. Bring your own water, there’s nothing out there.”
When that call ended, I let Mara know my plan was to try to locate them and asked that we get a plane or helicopter up for a look as well.
“Be careful, Grale. Keep it to a scouting run.”
I didn’t say anything to that. Jace arrived and Mara took her in tow. She’d need an hour and a half, maybe two, for the tour of the office and some introductions. I left soon after.
In recent months Bismarck has called on his dark web followers to come to Vegas but couldn’t have known that a flood of bots originating
outside the US would help spread his message. The bots drew our attention, as well as that of other US intelligence agencies. The bots may lead us to their source, although I’m told we’d probably never hear the details. There’s a quiet war underway in cyberspace.
Forty minutes later, I found the cutoff then drove across a plain and up into heat-soaked hills with mesquite, cactus, and, higher up, small stands of stunted pines. In a sunburned clearing, a collage of vehicles and people were camped. I drove past and a half mile farther on, parked and called in my position. Just ahead was a rusted RV that was likely Bismarck’s.
Nearby was a modified jeep with enormous tires and painted in desert-camouflage colors. A picnic table, possibly stolen from a state park or rest stop, sat with a faded parachute propped over it for shade. I locked my car and walked up slowly, watching as a low shadow appeared near the side of the trailer, then disappeared. A quiet tinkling of link chain and a low growl led me to spot a yellow-eyed dog crouched belly to desert sand near the left rear tire beneath the trailer. According to Bismarck’s statements in a 2017 FBI interview in New Orleans, the dog was a pup feeding on a child’s carcass when he found him. I doubt it’s true. His discordant mind generates a steady flow of dark imaginings.
Bismarck’s boot heels clanged down the metal stairs. He stood in frozen silence for long seconds as he came off the last tread before calling the dog. He unhooked the long chain, and the dog lunged, but at Bismarck’s hard commands he backed away and slinked up the stairs.
Bismarck followed the dog up, pushed him inside, shut the door, then tramped back down. He faced me silently for a moment, then launched into how he’d staked six claims for mineral rights in Nevada, and others in Utah where the government had opened large tracts of public lands for exploration. He’d marked the corners with rocks and paid the nominal fee.
“I’ve got as much right to be in Nevada as you,” Bismarck said.
“But not on Independence Base. Trespass, or encourage your followers to do so, and you’ll see charges.”
“The AI was built for me.”
“Good to know, I’ll pass that on to the Department of Defense in case they haven’t heard. What you need to know is that if you incite your followers to trespass, we’ll arrest you. You could face terrorism charges.”
Bismarck turned, stared, and smiled. Like me, he knew it wouldn’t be hard to walk onto a large tract of land in the desert. Even patrolled, there’s always a way, and no way to fence it all. I stared back at him, committing his face to memory once more. He was older. His cheekbones were more prominent. Thin skin stretched over them barely hiding the bones, as if mocking mortality. His eye sockets were so deep, I felt like I was talking to a skull. He was wiry, strong, and unwashed. His breath was awful. No, it was worse than awful. It stank more than any I can remember, and I’ve sat in interview rooms for long hours with some rough smells.
“Your world is ending,” he said. “Your badge will get used as an ashtray, and the government that made you possible will be stories of failure for children.”
“That’s for later,” I said. “The warning I’m giving you is now.”
“You’re injured, and resting your weight on your right leg,” Bismarck answered. “You stumbled walking toward me. I know a man who has to drag himself across the floor. He can’t get into his wheelchair without help. He talked poorly to his daughter, and she left him on the floor for a week. If he hadn’t been able to get water from a toilet, he would have died. His daughter was traveling with me. There’s something like that in your future.”
“You need to know that terrorism investigations operate under a different set of rules. You could find yourself behind bars for a long time.”
“You’ll die young,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“Don’t forget what I said. The Bill of Rights, constitutional law, it’s all out the window when you get charged with terrorism.”
“Someday, after you retire, we’ll have a much more intimate talk. I look forward to it.”
“Let’s stick with today for now, and I’m going to repeat myself: if your followers trespass at your urging, we’ll come looking for you. Think about what that could mean, Bismarck.”
I didn’t wait for an answer and walked away.
14
Jace
Jace’s orientation was interrupted when ASAC Esposito texted Supervisor Mara he was needed in a meeting. Mara apologized, saying they’d finish her orientation later that afternoon, or to be safe, they could reschedule for tomorrow. That seemed to be what he wanted to do. The meeting he was going into was unexpected and might last for hours.
“Why don’t you finish your move,” he said. “If you’d rather stay here, there’s a file on a bomb maker named Dalz that Grale will take you through, but you may want to read it first. Dalz may be here.”
“Grale talked to me about Dalz.”
“Briefed you?”
“No, but he said with all the threats against Indie, Dalz could be headed here. He said Dalz is a kind of freelancer.”
“That’s right, and there’s a theory a group of freelancers might be used by an adversary or enemy as a way of disguising their involvement. There are always theories, so take that with a grain of salt. But listen to Grale about Dalz. He knows more about Dalz and his patterns than anyone in the FBI, so in this office you and Grale are on Dalz. That said, we have no idea if he’s headed here, so let’s not go down that rabbit hole right now. But take a look at the file and ask Grale to take you through it carefully very soon.”
Mara started to walk away, then turned and said, “Or, if you want to wait on Grale to go through the Dalz file, call that number I gave you for the Metro undercover officer. Just don’t make that call from the office.”
Jace took the empty desk she’d share with at least one other domestic terrorism squad agent and flipped through the Dalz file, then decided to wait for Grale and go through it with him. She tried texting him since he hadn’t responded to her calls.
When he didn’t answer her text messages, she checked with the front desk and was told he was out looking for a fringe group led by somebody who called himself Bismarck. She decided to join and called the Nevada State Highway Patrol as she headed out.
Their directions were straightforward. As she got closer to where they said to watch for an unpaved road, she passed a jacked-up Chevy Malibu with outsize tires. It looked like a pregnant insect. In it were four passengers, three fortysomething males and a young woman who could be as old as sixteen but looked younger. The driver glanced over, made her as law enforcement, then looked away.
She passed another Mad Max car and three worn campers a quarter mile or so on. Three miles later she found the unpaved road and turned onto it with a rising anger she couldn’t quite identify. Some of it was fear. Some of it was that Grale hadn’t called her back. She didn’t like being out here alone. A mile farther in, she approached some sort of bizarre refugee encampment in a fold between two sunbaked hills and called Grale again. This time he answered.
“I’m on my way out,” he said. “Turn around and I’ll meet you at the highway.”
“How about you show me what’s going on with this group first? Introduce me to this Bismarck.”
“Where are you?”
“I just came around a corner and am looking at a weird scene. Torn tents, rusting campers, pickup beds turned into homes, smoky mesquite fires—what is this?”
“Bismarck’s followers.”
“Who are they? Where are they from?”
“From all over.”
“This is big-time weird. Why do they follow him?”
“Bismarck claims to see the future and has a following of end-timers who are counting on everything falling apart. They’ve got their hearts set on it.”
“Say what?”
“Hey, Jace, turn around where you are. That
group of guys standing there is focused on me. I’m calling Mara for immediate backup. Better that you stay on the other side of them.”
“And leave you there alone? No way.”
She broke the connection and drove down the dip then up to him. Behind her, a pickup pulled in alongside a jeep and a rebuilt Army half-track to block the road out. They were out of their vehicles by the time she reached Grale. She saw guns come out and what looked like a grenade launcher.
“This is insane,” Jace said. “Why were you out here alone, and what are they thinking? I don’t want to die in some freak show.”
“We won’t.”
Grale retrieved a flare gun from his trunk. He laid that on his car roof as he talked with Mara. She checked and rechecked the clip in her gun, then returned to her trunk for a shotgun. Her hands were shaking as she made certain the shotgun was loaded.
“Mara has a helicopter on the way,” Grale said. “I didn’t know the crew down below us would pull weapons. I’m sorry, Jace. I’m walking down there as soon as Mara texts me.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Mara has a close friend over at Nellis Air Force Base, a jet-pilot trainer. Two pilots are on their way back from a training mission and will do a flyby here.”
“Who cares? What does that have to do with anything?”
“They’re working out an idea that may help.”
“Help get us out of here?”
“Yes, but we’ll get out either way. I drove out to let Bismarck know he could face terror charges for inciting his followers to trespass onto Indie Base.”
“You drove out here alone to tell him?”
“I know him.”
“You know him? What does that mean in this situation?”
