End Times

by P A Duncan

“Known others associated with right-wing movements, militias, patriot groups.”

  “Hell, that could be half the boys I grew up with. You didn’t provide a name.”

  “All I have right now is an opinionated man with no connection to any of the more dangerous groups. I’d rather not toss names about.”

  Randolph looked over the glasses at her and smiled. “You don’t want the FBI and ATF to know.”

  “I assure you as soon as I’ve detected and have proof of any illegality, I will notify the proper authorities.”

  Mai shifted on the Oval Office couch, distracted by the pain in her side. She’d sat too long.

  Randolph slipped her summary back into its folder and handed it to her. Mai pursed her lips to keep from wincing as she reached for it.

  “I’d rather you keep that,” Randolph said. “Things have been getting lost around here.”

  “So I heard.”

  The papers of a White House counsel who’d committed suicide a few months before in a Northern Virginia park had gone missing, fueling conspiracy theories in the right-wing media.

  “The claptrap must be hard on your family,” Mai added.

  Randolph sighed and said, “It’s hardest on my daughter. She only sees me as daddy and can’t understand why people are so mean. Sometimes, I wish when people start talking crap about her mother or me they’d stop and think about her. It’s like they don’t care.”

  “They don’t care you have an impressionable child. To them, you’re the enemy, and everything about you is fair game.”

  “Yeah. Don’t think I don’t know about Limbaugh and what he did on his TV show, holding up a picture of my little girl and encouraging the audience to bark at it.”

  A thin circle of white ringed his lips as he bit back angry words. He leaned back on the sofa and gave Mai an appreciative smile.

  “That’s a remarkable insight, and you’re also remarkably blunt.”

  Mai smiled in return. “Blunt is mild compared to what some have called me.”

  “When you’re president, people only tell you what they think you want to hear. I miss bluntness and honesty. And truth.”

  “Truth is a funny thing. We always dig for it, but when its unwavering light is upon us, we often feel the need to shade our eyes.”

  “More bluntness?”

  “You did say you preferred it.”

  Randolph laughed and said, “I did, indeed.”

  He checked his watch, and Mai hoped she was about to be dismissed.

  “I hope you have time for lunch with my wife and me,” he said.

  Curiosity overcame the annoying stitch in her side, but protocol overcame it. “I have to ask, how much does Mrs. Randolph know about me?”

  He winked. Mai thought it was her imagination, but, no. He winked.

  “I only keep a few things from her. She’s a damn good lawyer and knows how to keep her mouth shut, despite what some say.”

  “They put words in her mouth and decry them,” Mai said. Curiosity won again. “I’d love to have lunch.”

  51

  Betrayal

  Mount Vernon, Virginia

  Mai wished she’d used a driver for the day’s prolonged adventure. A meeting with Nelson, followed by a meeting with Sheryl Vejar, had been quick and efficient. The report and chat with Randolph had gone smoothly. Lunch with the First Lady, who was charming, had gone on deep into the afternoon. Randolph had cited the business of the country and left after an hour, leaving Mai and Renee Travis Randolph alone.

  Since Mai was the suspicious type, she’d almost concluded Randolph had done so to provide his wife a sympathetic ear from a person he knew would never be called to testify before a Congressional committee or grand jury.

  Not that Mrs. Randolph had confessed anything—that would have been great leverage to have. However, the drawing of a stranger into the family’s mounting stack of possible scandals was questionable.

  By the time Mai extracted herself, she had to drive home through Washington’s renowned rush hour traffic. When she finally pulled into the garage, she didn’t care what sort of crisis Alexei might be having; she wanted a long soak in her spa tub before dinner.

  In the family room, she noticed Natalia had turned up the bass on her stereo and Alexei had locked himself in the sound-proofed office. Coward.

  Still, she let herself into the office to let him know she was home.

  Alexei looked up from his computer. “That was quite the lengthy post-incident debriefing, and you look tired.”

  “I am tired, and Nelson sent me to give President Randolph an update. He didn’t tell you?”

  “I haven’t heard from him today. You’ve been with Geoff Randolph all this time? Do I need to do something old-fashioned in defense of my marital honor?”

  “You honor, his, and mine are unblemished. He invited me to lunch with the First Lady.”

  “Really?” Alexei was all curiosity now, too. “What’s she like?”

  Mai considered and said, “Needy.”

  “How was the debriefing with Nelson?” Alexei asked.

  “Par for the course. I’m cleared after another week’s rest. You’re sure you haven’t spoken to him?”

  “No, but now I’m wondering if I should have.”

  “Or he called, spilled his guts, and you’re playing me.”

  “Check the phone records if you like. I haven’t heard from him, but now I think you need to explain.”

  Mai told him about the query into her legend identity, and he took it about as she’d expected—with overwrought paranoia. He did, however, agree that the query originated from one of the extremist groups.

  “This means a group with a decent network here and abroad,” Alexei said. “I want that legend tightened.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “No more meets with Carroll until I’m satisfied the legend is unbreakable. Ah, no protests. I’m the senior agent. If we need to, we’ll surveil Carroll together.”

  Mai sighed. “Alexei, my cover hasn’t been breached.”

  “And British intelligence had no idea where Padraig O’Riordan was, either.”

  Well, he had a point.

  “Again,” he said, “I’m the senior agent. That’s my adjusted protocol.”

  She was too tired to argue.

  “Our soundproofing is excellent. You can’t hear the music Natalia is playing at an ear-shattering level,” she said.

  “Why do you think I shut myself in here?”

  “I think it’s likely setting off a nearby seismometer. I know I’m glad she’s out of the My Little Pony video stage, but what is she listening to?”

  “Your turn to be the bad guy,” Alexei said.

  “It’s always my turn, and I wanted a hot bath because my poor, wounded side hurts.”

  Alexei grinned at her. “That was an adorable attempt at a pout.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Go take your bath. I’ll talk to her.”

  “You’re a good husband.”

  “The best.”

  Mai closed her eyes and lay back in the steaming water. Jets pulsed at all the right places, and she relaxed in the warmth.

  A little bit of heaven could go a long way, though not far this afternoon. Someone knocked on the door, but Alexei entered before she could shout, “Go away!”

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  Ah, the tone he used when he was pissed. “Fifteen minutes,” she said. “That’s all I ask.”

  “Yes, of course, let’s allow your personal indulgence while the corruption of my granddaughter’s mind is ongoing.”

  She opened one eye. “You’ve got my attention.”

  “This is what she was listening to.”

  He held an audio cassette before her eyes. White Rage, a neo-Nazi, skinhead rock group she’d learned of during their research.

  Mai sat up, ignoring the pull in her side. Alexei was deadly serious; he wasn’t even leering at her nakedness.
r />   “Where the hell did she get that?” Mai asked.

  “At school. Someone was there when school let out, handing them out. In her defense, she claims she never heard of the group and was listening to the music, not the words. I’ve explained this drivel is off-limits or she’ll be punished.”

  “Did she know who was giving them out?”

  “Actually, he was telling everyone his name, and you’re not going to like it.”

  “Alexei, I already don’t like it. Who was it?”

  “Scott Wilder.”

  Her wannabe skinhead car-jacker. Her last report on him had been a good one. Five years probation, but he had an after-school job, one Mai had arranged for him. No hint of trouble, until now.

  “Ungrateful little fuck,” she said. She stood and grabbed her towel. “What was he doing at the middle school? Why don’t they have security?” She wrapped the towel around her body and stepped from the tub, heading for her dressing room, where Alexei found her.

  “You’re getting dressed?” he asked.

  “Yes, since people here look askance if you go out naked.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Scott Wilder’s house. I’m going to turn his ass in to his probation officer. This lesson will be learned.”

  52

  The Right Path

  Northern Virginia

  What?”

  The reply to her phone call was so abrupt Mai was taken back. “Officer Russell,” she said. “Dave. It’s Mai.”

  “Oh! Sorry. Wait. Hang on.”

  Mai heard several seconds of a muffled exchange, not a happy one either.

  “Sorry about that,” Russell said.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  “I’m on a date.”

  “I’m jealous.”

  “Don’t even do that to me. What do you need?”

  That was promising. “Do you remember my potential car-jacker?”

  “Sure.”

  “I have a job for you.”

  “Where and when?”

  Coming along quite well indeed.

  With Mai’s help, Bonnie Wilder had found a decent job, one enabling her to move into a better neighborhood, a few miles north of where Mai lived. In fact, Mai owned the modest townhouse, and The Directorate had once used it as a safe house. A better neighborhood, a better school, a better life, but none of it seemed to have worked for Scott.

  This had been a bargain among the judge, Scott, Mrs. Wilder, and Mai.

  Someone hadn’t lived up to his or her part of it, and that appeared to be Scott.

  Bonnie Wilder answered the door. At every encounter with Mai she’d behaved so obsequiously, Mai had little patience with her.

  “Oh, Miz Fisher,” Bonnie said. She looked over her shoulder at the interior of the house. “I wish you’da told me you was coming. The place is a mess.”

  Mai saw only the mild disorder expected in the home of a working single mother. As fitted the season, Hallowe’en decorations were visible.

  “May I come in?” Mai asked.

  “‘Course. It’s your house.”

  Mai stepped inside the small entryway. She detected the smell of cigarette smoke, fresh and stale, and suspected that was why Mrs. Wilder wished for prior notice. “No smoking” was in the lease.

  “Can I fix you some tea?” Bonnie asked.

  “Yes, thank you. That would be lovely.”

  “Well, then, have a seat here in the living room, and I’ll bring it in.”

  “I’ll go to the kitchen with you. We need to talk.”

  The woman gave a weak smile and walked toward the kitchen, eyes on the floor.

  As Bonnie turned on the burner beneath a glass tea kettle and took matching cups from a cabinet, Mai took a seat at the eat-in counter.

  Bonnie arranged the cups, two spoons, and two tea bags on the counter, and asked, “Is it Scott?”

  “Yes,” Mai said.

  She turned to Mai, defiance in her tone. “I’ve tried. I want you to know that. He’s bigger than me, and there’s not much I can do.” Tears came to her eyes. “He did so good for months. Let his hair grow. We got that tattoo burned off. I’m still paying for that. A couple of weeks ago he came home from school, head shaved, and said no one was keeping him from the truth again. I forbid him from listening to them tapes he ordered, to that awful music, but I got to work. I can’t be here all the time. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Can you show me the tapes he ordered?”

  “They’re up in his room. Just a minute.”

  While Bonnie was gone, the tea kettle began to whistle. Mai got up and went to the stove. She dropped a tea bag in each cup and poured hot water over them. As she wrung the last tea bag out against a spoon, Bonnie Wilder returned.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

  “Mrs. Wilder, I can make tea with the best of them. Let’s sit at the dining table.”

  Mrs. Wilder had a small table and two chairs in an alcove off the kitchen, and they sat. Mai spread the tapes out in front of her. Audio and video tapes. She recognized some of the same titles from John Carroll’s trailer, all from Patriot City. Mai took the White Rage tape from a jacket pocket and handed it to Mrs. Wilder.

  “Do you recognize this?” Mai asked.

  “I think it’s a rock group he likes. What’s wrong with that?”

  “One, it’s a white supremacist rock group, and two, he handed copies of this out at a middle school today. That copy he happened to give to my husband’s granddaughter. Scott knows associating with any of the people he was involved with before is a violation of the terms of his probation.”

  “He knows,” Bonnie said, with a sigh. “He don’t care. He wants things to happen so fast. He was doing real good at that copy center where he worked, but he complained he wasn’t making the same money as the others. I talked to the manager, and he said the other employees had been there longer than Scott. He even showed me the records. I tried to explain it to Scott, but he said the manager was a Jew and they faked the holocaust so it would be easy to fake employment records. And he quit.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “You done so much already. I didn’t want to be a bother.”

  “Mrs. Wilder, I’m here to help, but if I don’t know you need it, I can’t provide it.”

  Mrs. Wilder began to cry. She took some paper napkins from the holder on the table and wept into them.

  Mai reined in her impatience until the woman composed herself.

  “Mrs. Wilder, I’ve called Scott’s probation officer, and he’ll be here soon with the police.”

  The woman’s eyes were wide with pleading when she looked up.

  “Oh, please, Miz Fisher, don’t do that.”

  “I don’t want to, Mrs. Wilder, but Scott can’t get away with this. Now, it’s handing out bootleg music tapes. What if these so-called friends of his talk him into ‘jacking another car. The next time he might not be so lucky. He could hurt someone, or a cop could kill him.”

  “But…what’s going to happen?”

  “There’s a colleague of mine in France. He operates a humane detention center for juveniles, and he has an excellent record of turning lives around. He’s agreed to take Scott in.”

  “France? That’s so far away. I’ll never be able to see him.” The crying resumed, in earnest.

  Again, Mai waited for it to subside.

  “I can arrange transportation for you during the quarterly visiting periods. If the judge agrees to this, I think we can get Scott on the right path. I think the people he’s fallen in with look for troubled youngsters like Scott and prey on them. It’s clear Scott’s a follower, not a leader, and we need to show him the right kind of person to follow.”

  Bonnie shook her head. “You’re too kind. I mean, he tried to rob you.”

  “He’s a child, Mrs. Wilder, and he needs help. I’m naïve enough to think I can provide it. What time will he be home?”

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sp; “He’s supposed to be home by seven, but lately he’s been showing up later and later. Dinner’s at eight-thirty. He’s usually here for that.”

  Mai took out her money clip and peeled off two one hundred dollar bills.

  “Here. Go out to dinner, shopping, to a movie. Something. I’ll wait for him to come home.”

  “I want to wait with you.”

  “The police are coming to take him to jail. Do you want to see that?”

  The woman started crying yet again.

  At eight twenty-five Mai heard a key in the front door of the townhouse. She retreated to the dark kitchen.

  “Mom? Ma?” Scott called out. “I brought some friends home for dinner.”

  “Where is she, dude? You said she’d have food.”

  An older voice, more sullen.

  “The landlord don’t like her smoking, so she goes out on the deck. Wait right here.”

  Mai heard the clomp of boots nearing the kitchen, and she put her hand on the grip of the Beretta. When Scott entered the kitchen, she flipped the light on, grabbed him by the collar, and pushed him toward one of the dining chairs.

  “Sit,” she said and turned toward the front door.

  Two men in bits and pieces of BDUs, heads shaved, stood watching.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Scott asked.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Mai told him.

  “Who the hell are you?” asked one of the men, taking a step closer.

  The Beretta appeared, cocked and aimed at the two men.

  “Ask Scott if I’m good with this,” Mai said.

  The two men stood their ground.

  “Come on,” Mai said, adrenaline erasing any discomfort from her side. “If you think you can take me, try. I’ll fucking blow your heads off.”

  “She means it,” Scott muttered.

  The taller one smiled at Mai. “You can’t come into this guy’s house.”

  “I own this house,” she said.

  He took another step.

  “Keep coming,” she said, “so I can say it was self-defense.”

  The taller man grinned again, pointed a finger at her like a gun, and made a firing motion. He turned and pushed his buddy out the door.