A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller

by Charles W. Sasser

  The long, black car pulled into Wiedersham’s driveway. Patton kicked over his engine and sat idling while he waited for Cobb to get out to escort his boss from the house to the vehicle. Instead, Cobb remained seated.

  After several minutes, Wiedersham’s stout figure burst out the front door and stomped toward the limo, his posture and bearing telegraphing the ass-chewing he was obviously prepared to deliver for Cobb’s having violated protocol. He carried a thick briefcase and his own luggage. Would the indignities never cease? Definitely on his way out of town.

  Patton slammed in his gas feed and whipped his Hyundai in behind the stopped limo to block its retreat. Alfred and he bailed out and cut off Wiedersham before he reached safety. The Majority Leader stopped, scowling. The camera was already rolling.

  “Senator!” Patton snapped. “Will you explain for our Zenergy News audience the purpose of the Sustainable World Conference you will be attending starting tonight?”

  “You’re trespassing!” Wiedersham lashed back. “Get the fuck off my property.”

  The newsmen held their ground. Wiedersham flapped an angry hand for Cobb to come to his aid.

  “Senator, is it true that the purpose of this summit is to plan the final economic de-stabilization of the United States…?”

  He heard a car door open, the rush of feet approaching. Expecting Cobb, he wheeled about to fend off an attack. It took him an instant to recognize the man wearing Cobb’s hat.

  James Nail stormed past the reporters. To nosy neighbors, it might appear the Majority Leader was being rescued from the pesky news media. Only Patton and Alfred saw the handgun Nail jabbed into Wiedersham’s ribs.

  “You want to get that piece of junk car of yours out of the way so we can get out of here?” Nail growled at Patton as he shoved the shaken politician toward the limo’s back door, held open by a blond woman wearing a chauffeur’s costume.

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Washington, D.C.

  The unexpected arrival of Carl Patton and his cameraman couldn’t have been more perfect had it been planned as a cover for Wiedersham’s “rescue.” The Majority Leader sat frozen in stunned silence on his side of the wide executive-style back seat of the limousine as it sped away. The Indian-looking gunman on the other end of the seat regarded him from eyes that resembled blue slivers of ice.

  Part of the job description for a homicide detective was to make perps sweat. Wiedersham’s expensive business suit already looked damp and slept-in. Dark eyes sunk into the pasty jowls of the malevolent Pillsbury Doughboy shifted nervously. A cold half-smile touched Nail’s lips. He could almost read Wiedersham’s fears: So completely did the tinted windows isolate him from the outside world that no one was apt to hear him scream.

  Wiedersham wet his thick lips with the tip of his tongue. “Where’s Cobb?” he demanded in his best authoritarian tone. He was a man accustomed to power. “Do you have any idea who you’re fucking with?”

  A man less self-assured would have gone to pieces.

  “Who the hell are you?” the politician asked in a dreadful whisper when he received no response.

  Nail’s eyes continued to bore into Wiedersham’s. The fat face folded into pale, moist lasagna the instant he recognized Nail.

  “You’re the cop!” Hands trembled lying in his lap. “I can get you money—”

  “I’m not a politician. I can’t be bribed.”

  Judy took a left to shortcut through Georgetown University. All the usual suspects—teachers unions, student organizations, PEIU, ACOA, One Worlders—were already out organizing the day’s protests against “imperialism,” “hate,” “racism,” “sexism,” “lack of equality” and the other inequities of capitalism that seemed to bring geeks out of their parents’ basements.

  Nail grunted with distaste. As far as he was concerned, these assholes could starve if the only thing they knew to do was latch onto a bunch of politicians who promised to take from the greedy rich so that nobody would have to work in the coming Socialist Utopia.

  And after the Fat Cats were all used up?

  Judy made her way across campus and headed the limo north on U.S. 81.

  “My people will be looking for me,” Wiedersham warned. “Where are you taking me, Nail?”

  “You’re taking me to The Sustainable World Conference at Lake Ontario.”

  He watched Wiedersham struggle to hide his surprise. “Do you have any idea what security will be like there?”

  “I’m sure you’ll find a way, with the right incentive.”

  “You’re too late, Nail. Nothing can stop us now. The countdown is starting.”

  As a politician, the man had used words as weapons most of his life; he couldn’t seem to stop now.

  “This country is collapsing, Nail,” he insisted. “The Homer Simpsons of the world are too stupid to rule themselves. It’s up to their betters to drive them to a better place.”

  “You have it all figured out,” Nail said.

  “You don’t have to be one of the Homers, Detective,” Wiedersham offered slyly. “There’s a place for you if you’re smart.”

  The hard lines in Nail’s face remained. He tipped his gun so that Wiedersham was staring into its barrel.

  “I’ll want Sharon Lowenthal released when we get to the lake.”

  “Be realistic, man. Besides, what makes you think we have her?”

  “The only way you and I are leaving there without her is if you and I are in body bags,” Nail warned.

  Banks Closing Adds To Pressure

  (Washington)—More than 40 banks, including some of the largest in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami, have shut down operations one after the other this week, with others closing their doors almost hourly. CitiBank announced it was closing all its branches. Panicked people across the nation gathered in lines desperately seeking to withdraw their savings out of fear of cash shortages...

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Watertown, New York

  Nail recalled reading somewhere that the small city of Watertown on the Black River about twenty miles south of the tip of Lake Ontario had more millionaires per capita than any other city in the nation. He doubted any of its residents realized the irony of a bunch of the wealthiest redistribute-the-wealth Marxists in the world gathering there. He let Wiedersham sweat during most of the limo drive from Washington to Watertown. Police detectives whose job entailed penetrating the seedy minds and black souls of assorted perverts, torturers and murderers were good practical psychologists.

  The general public failed to realize that most perps actually wanted to talk in order to justify or excuse or explain their guilt and their behavior. The secret to interrogation lay in encouraging them in a way commiserate with their personalities. People like Wiedersham who considered themselves superior to the general population were actually more easily manipulated than run-of-the-mill variety thieves and crooks. Wiedersham was a blusterer who knew he was right and everyone else was wrong. A man like that found it all but impossible to resist showing off. Nearly everyone in official Washington seemed to be narcissistic to one degree or another, from the President down to the Congressional mail clerk.

  Nail sat silently in the moving limo waiting for the pressure to build. Every time the pol opened his mouth, Nail withered it shut again with a hard look. Wiedersham seemed about to explode from tension. Only the purr of the big limo’s engine and the periodic swipe of windshield wipers against a misting rain marred the silence.

  About a half-hour short of Watertown, Nail tapped the barrel of his gun on the glass shield that separated the driver from the passenger compartment. Judy glanced at him through the rearview mirror and nodded that she understood; it was time to implement the rest of the plan.

  The Majority Leader’s confusion turned to mild alarm when Judy whipped the limo off the main road onto a side road. His alarm became palpable fear as she slowed several times to permit Nail to survey even smaller, more isolated roads. Fina
lly, she stopped and backed up to the entrance of a narrow, muddy logging lane that led downhill into new growth red pine. Nail tapped the glass shield again and she turned into the ruts, jouncing the passengers, stopping in the pines out of sight of infrequent passing traffic.

  Wiedersham cried out in near-panic when the engine cut off and the door clicked unlocked. He seemed ready to forsake all caution and make a run for it. Nail shrugged.

  “Make my day,” he said in his best Dirty Harry manner.

  Casually, and therefore all the more disturbing to the politician, Nail got out, strode to the other door and yanked Wiedersham out onto the wet grass by the collar of his expensive suit coat. On his knees, he stared up at Nail’s gun. It was probably the first time in his life that his tongue failed him. He shivered from terror as much as from the chill. Judy remained in the car, looking straight ahead. The sky hung low and gray, spitting rain, promising much worse as the day wore on.

  Nail pressed the muzzle of Cobb’s pistol an inch into the fat at the back of the politician’s neck. Although the Beretta could be fired double-action on the first shot, Nail clicked back the hammer for effect. Wiedersham winced.

  “Do you know what happened to Kimbrell in Tulsa?” Nail asked.

  Wiedersham nodded spastically.

  “And the two goons who shot Jerry Baer at ORU and killed my daughter?”

  Another spastic nod.

  “I’m sure you also recall the Homie you sent to murder Sharon Lowenthal in New York?”

  Light rain collected like blisters on Wiedersham’s pale face.

  “A maggot like you surely understands that I have nothing to lose by killing you. I’m going to ask you some questions. Think them over. A lie will come back to bite you in the butt.”

  Nail almost heard the man’s brain working as it calculated risks and options, weighed in on hope and change.

  Wiedersham finally found his voice. “Don’t be stupid,” he protested. “Secret Service and Homeland have that place sealed up tighter than a nun’s pussy.”

  “Where is it?”

  Wiedersham hesitated as he thought over his options, which must have seemed limited under the circumstances.

  “It won’t do you any good even if I tell you,” he protested.

  “Where?” Nail sunk the muzzle of the Beretta another inch into the politician’s fat. Wiedersham’s entire body shuddered, like he could almost see the bottom of the abyss.

  Nail deflected the muzzle of his gun and squeezed the trigger. The bullet seared the skin on Wiedersham’s neck and gouged a plume of sod out of the earth directly between his knees. The fat man pitched forward, screaming and writhing on the wet grass and grabbing at his neck. Judy popped out of the limo but stopped at the front fender.

  Nail waited until the Majority Leader regained some control before he crouched over him.

  “I’ll ask the question one more time,” he threatened.

  “You’ve busted my eardrums!” Wiedersham shouted

  Nail cocked the Beretta. Wiedersham heard that.

  “The Butterfield Mansion,” he muttered, beaten. He was a coward, like most such men, and a pragmatist who had to realize that his only chance of survival was to cooperate.

  Nail left him moaning in the wet grass while he spoke to Judy. She looked pale and shaken, but she agreed to take a look at the Butterfield Mansion for him, paying particular attention to security measures, cover and concealment, and avenues of approach and egress. He didn’t think police would have found Bill and Cobb yet and therefore would not have alerted Homeland Security.

  “Don’t take unnecessary chances,” he cautioned. “Pick me up here in two hours.”

  Judy indicated the much-humbled fat man in the soggy suit. “Does he know where Sharon is?”

  “I’m sure he’ll have told me by the time you return.”

  She started the limo and disappeared up the logging road on her way to Watertown. From Wiedersham’s expression, Nail couldn’t tell whether he considered her departure a good sign or not.

  * * *

  As soon as the limo disappeared from sight, Nail jerked the frightened politician to his feet and marched him to a thick fallen log a few yards deeper into timber. Wiedersham seemed appalled that Nail had shot him and then made him suffer the further indignity of sitting astraddle one end of the log.

  “Do you know how much this suit costs?” he demanded indignantly.

  Nail switched on the hidden voice recorder in the pocket of his windbreaker before taking a seat on the other end of the log facing Wiedersham. A “confession,” along with Trout’s notebook, would go a long way in convincing the American people of the peril they faced. If there were still enough people left out there who gave a damned.

  Nail winced. He recognized the putrid stench emanating from his wound. Iraqi Desert Storm prisoners who suffered from untreated trauma smelled like that. Septicemia. But before God called in his warranty, he was determined to free the woman he loved and strike a blow for American liberty. A big-time order for a small-time cop.

  “I know who she is,” Wiedersham finally ventured, glancing toward the lane from which Judy had disappeared in the limo. “She’s the piece of slit-tail my former brother-in-law shot himself over. He was a weakling. I would never have taken in the cowardly bastard if it hadn’t been for my sister. He ended up killing her, too.”

  “And the dog,” Nail reminded him.

  “I’d have shot the dog,” Wiedersham admitted with nervous laughter, his palm pressed against his scorched neck. It was not bleeding, but it had to be painful.

  Wiedersham couldn’t seem to stop talking once he started, whether from nervousness or because it was his stock in trade. Whereas in the limo Nail had kept Wiedersham’s tensions deliberately bottled, he now encouraged him either by short general questions or by silences Wiedersham seemed compelled to fill.

  “You must understand, Detective,” Wiedersham said, feeling his way, “that what you’re witnessing is the inevitable tide of history to which you either adjust or perish.” He paused and studied his opponent. “I truly doubt you’re capable of understanding what I’m talking about.”

  “Try me. We have time.”

  “The tide of history killed your daughter, Detective. It will inevitably neutralize obstructionists who stand in the way of ultimate peace and justice for all peoples around the planet.”

  Nail stuffed his rage back down. He had a feeling this piece of shit didn’t believe a word he was saying.

  “You don’t impress me as a hope ’n change kind of guy, Wiedersham,” Nail said conversationally.

  Wiedersham seemed pleased with Nail’s insight.

  “Pardon me for saying so, Detective, but you Tea Bagger types are so fucking naïve. Detective, a man has a choice to either take the winning side of history, or the losing side. I choose to be on the winning side.”

  The more he talked, the more his self-assurance seemed to build. All his life he had used intimidation and his golden tongue to get him by.

  “Do you realize that hard-cores like yourself, Detective, are a minority? Not a lot of Homer Simpsons believe in freedom and capitalism. Your average Homer is not capable of running his pathetic little life. Do you realize that nearly half of American households receive government benefits of some sort? One in six are on full subsistence. It’s called social conditioning through education and handouts. The Homers will vote for whoever promises to give them the most that they don’t have to work for. The biggest argument you can make against democracy is a five-minute conversation with your average voter.”

  “I thought we were done with the commies when the Soviet Union fell.”

  Wiedersham chuckled grandly, getting into it now that he thought the burn on his neck was the worst he might expect.

  “Don’t blame people like me for what’s happened,” he said. “Blame yourself. Blame your willingness to give up everything in order to be cared for like children. For nearly a century, politicians have merely b
een agents doing precisely what we have elected them to do—using the power of office to take what belongs to one American and redistribute it to other Americans, or to confer special privileges on some that are denied others. Socialism is such an easy sell because it preys on greed and envy.”

  A stab of pain shot through Nail’s chest. He bent forward against it.

  “You have blood poisoning, Detective. I can smell it,” Wiedersham observed. “It won’t kill you, however. You know why? Because they are going to kill you first.”

  Nail flicked his gun barrel to remind the politician to keep on track. Wiedersham seemed pleased to have an audience who appreciated his cleverness.

  “We’re days away from a global socialist government,” Wiedersham boasted. “The United States is the last major holdout and it’ll soon be gone, a victim of the doctrine of the inevitability of gradualism. The radicals of the 1960s failed at open revolution—so what they did was go underground, scrub themselves clean so they wouldn’t look like radicals, and reemerge as Progressives. While the Homers took their liberty for granted, the Progressives were busy taking over the culture—universities and high schools, subverting newspapers, magazines, networks and the cables, infiltrating the churches....In order to take over, we needed to destroy the old culture.

  “Haven’t you noticed how novels and Hollywood dream factories portray businessmen as shallow, selfish, crude and pathetic? Traditional male figures are depicted as either effeminate or bumbling idiots. The military has become feminized. God has left the building. Decriminalize prostitution, legalize drugs, mock God, mock anything that’s traditional. Let down your hair, live it up. Give them cakes and circuses. It takes their pathetic minds off what’s really happening. The average middle-class Homer loses hope once he realizes that it doesn’t matter what he does.”