Wally was probably going to play the card that print journalists make crap for salary, whereas broadcast is the money train. Dangling the carrot of future big paydays once she established herself, he would then try to get her for the cheapest possible price. She was ready for his argument and felt she was prepared to walk if she didn’t get what she wanted.
Wally hung up the phone and mentally switched gears; a smile suddenly appeared on his face indicating he was ready to iron out the details with her. She let the silence grow, not wanting to start the negotiation.
Then Wally broke the ice, “So I assume we aren’t doing this over the phone because you have decided to join us.”
“Let’s just say I am interested,” Carly replied as neutrally as she could.
“Okay, let’s cut to the chase; your salary will be $120, 000 a year. You will have total editorial control over any piece you initiate. If you are assigned to a story, however, then the producer and the editor of that story have final say.”
The $38,000 a year print reporter was stunned. All her objections evaporated right before her eyes. Having to say something, all she could muster was, “Can I stay with SciAm?”
“I’d insist. It gives you more credibility for your beat.”
That’s $158,000 a year. “What’s my beat?”
“Science. I got a feeling this Hiccock guy is on a fast track with all this terrorist stuff and I can’t make the guy out. You seem to have a way with him.”
Carly was mildly amazed at this comment. Do I have a way with him? “So let me get this straight. I get paid and have control if I deliver Hiccock to MSNBC.”
“For now, yes. That’s the deal. You scoop every other cable network in town and you get to renegotiate for millions in a year or two. This is a good deal, Carly.”
Was he willing to go higher? It was worth a shot. “Is that all you are prepared to offer me?”
Wally smiled, paused for effect, and then said in a low voice. “Carly, let’s make believe I offered you the standard 60,000 starting salary and you countered with 180 and we spent weeks to get to 120,000. Now let’s make believe you feel good about beating me for 60 Gs and can get to work.”
“Fair enough. When can I see the contract?” Carly inquired.
“Give me your lawyer’s name and we’ll stay out the nitty-gritty; from this point forward we have to work together. Let our business affairs department and your lawyer hash it out.”
Carly smiled. I don’t have a fucking lawyer.
Wally smiled as they shook hands.
∞§∞
The long abandoned Bufford farm was off the interstate and down a road that only deer and, before he died, Bufford would normally ever travel on. But tonight was an exception. Seven trucks and three cars went down this deserted road, noticed only by a doe and her fawn. Inside the barn, the dank smell of straw, sawdust, and animal droppings attacked the olfactory senses. The rotting timbers, with their deeply etched, distorted grain gave the wood plank walls and cross members the gnarled look of the twisted souls from Dante’s Inferno. Bernard and the others listened to a report by RedBarron348. Everyone in the group used their chat room handles, never any real names. Bernard set this up as a security precaution; if captured, no one could divulge the identity of the others. His nom-de-web was Sabot. He thought it was a little obvious, but it would be looked upon as a bold and brash snub to the authorities when the time came to write his memoirs or, better yet, have them written by an adoring, thankful public.
World movements usually happened in synchronicity, as if the collective consciousness of mankind arrived at a single notion at the same time. America had already sustained and repelled attacks by fundamentalist zealots who made their statements on religious or political grounds. But now, for the first time, the high-tech mongers and “industrial rapists of humanity” were being attacked. Bernard acknowledged it as a signal that the great struggle was nearing. If they didn’t stop the advancement of technology taking over human life now, it would soon be too late.
In its seven-year history, the Supreme Council of the Sabot Society normally met twice a year. Tonight’s meeting, however, was special. Called last week, the cell leaders from across America converged on the farm to ascertain their position in the new movement that had exploded across America. Bernard opened the meeting to a room full of grinning faces. He reviewed the agenda he held in his hand. First, he would ask if anyone was responsible for any of the seemingly anti-technology “statements” that literally blasted their way onto the front pages. Then he would poll the group to see where they stood on showing further support and solidarity with the cause. He would follow with a suggested list of targets to “supplement” the already-initiated campaign, after which he would conclude with a report from the treasurer.
Looking up from his pad, he thought he knew the reason for the smiles around the room. The attacks escalated their struggle to national prominence. In a way, that legitimized this group’s existence. It also assured the communication of its message to the other warriors out there—those who realized the true depth of this impending crisis and could take demonstrable action and rally the fight. As soon as he had everyone’s eye, he began.
“I’d like to call to order this meeting of the Sabot Society. It is an exciting time …”
“Sabot, excuse me,” DuneMist interrupted.
“Yes,” Bernard responded, caught off guard.
“We have all decided to commend you on your recent initiative.” The room erupted into applause. Sabot was stunned, but his confusion was not apparent to the attendees. DuneMist continued, “Last meeting, when you singled out Intellichip and Mason Chemical as the advanced guard of the forces of enslavement, we thought you were asking us for recommendations on how to address them. Now we see that you have struck mightily and struck deep into their very hearts. We know our bylaws forbid each cell from knowing the activities or identity of the others, but all of us who were not involved in the operations applaud those of us who were. And Sabot, to you, a special note of appreciation for advancing the cause.” Once more, the room convulsed with applause.
Bernard just stood there, his mind racing. They were thanking him. They figured out that he masterminded the acts of insurgency being perpetrated on American high-tech companies. They were cheering him on. That never happened to Bernard in his whole life. Nobody ever gave him credit for anything. They were giving him their vote of confidence, and there was only one thing to do.
Bernard raised his hands and the ovation stuttered to a halt. He took his time, looked at them with a serious stare, and made a show of having just made a decision. “I will allow this one breach of security, and simply say thank you to those of you—you know who you are—for your contribution, and ask for a moment of silence for those who gave the supreme sacrifice in the Ultimate Battle.” Everyone in the room was moved by his words. Bernard’s head swam as he decided he liked the adulation.
“I have prepared a list of other targets. I will discuss these with each and every one of you independently. Some of your tasks may not be as grand or as risky as those that have been achieved thus far, but I want each of you to know that no matter the size or status, every mission will be just as vital to our goal.”
∞§∞
Through the extremely small, highly placed window, one could see the guards patrol the catwalks around the compound. Hiccock figured the window’s diminutive size and location—about six feet from the floor—were to deter the prisoners from using it to escape from Leavenworth Penitentiary. A heavy metal sound clanked, a buzzer sounded, and a female federal corrections officer escorted the bound and shackled seventy-seven-year-old Martha Krummel, aka “The Gardening Grandma Terrorist,” to a desk in the visiting room. Hiccock and Janice took their seats across from her.
“Are those necessary?” Hiccock asked the guard, pointing to the chains.
“She’s on suicide watch,” the guard said plainly.
“Hello, Martha,” Hiccock said to th
e gentle-looking woman. “I’m William Hiccock and this is Janice Tyler.”
“Are you lawyers?”
“No, Martha, we are investigators for the president.”
“Don’t like him. Didn’t vote for him.”
“Well, there’s one thing we agree upon already, Martha,” Janice said. “Do you fully comprehend the seriousness of your situation?”
“Like I told that lawyer fellow, I know I did it. I don’t know why I did it, but I know I did. It was like I was dreaming or sleepwalking it. I did things and knew things I didn’t even know I knew.”
“Like what?” Hiccock asked.
“How to cross-connect wires in a signal block vault, thus reversing the polarity and the direction of a main line interlock cutout relay switch.” She stopped, frozen, and shook her head. “You see! I don’t even know what I just said but I knew how to do it.”
“Do you listen to rap music?”
That remark earned Hiccock a swift kick under the table from Janice as she asked, “What were you going to do after you derailed the train? Did you have an escape plan?”
Martha started to tremble and cry. “I knew I had to kill myself. I don’t want to die. But I know I have to kill myself. I got knocked out by a piece of something or other from the wreck or I would have.”
The short hairs on Hiccock’s neck prickled up while Janice turned white and shivered as if it were twenty degrees cooler in the eight-by-eight cubicle.
“She tried to off herself the moment she woke up in the hospital. Twice more since she’s been here,” the guard said, nodding to the shackles around her thin wrists.
“I don’t want to die,” Martha said, looking down at eternity through the tabletop.
Hiccock’s eyes sank, too, and then rolled over to Janice. He expected her to be as moved by this as he was, but she sat intensely focused, observing Martha.
∞§∞
The flowers were well-tended and thriving, Hiccock thought, as he and Janice strolled the colorful little garden area off the prison exercise yard. It was a peaceful respite after the chilling interrogation of Martha. Hiccock realized the “free” labor here at Leavenworth must be the reason for the meticulously maintained patch. For a second he imagined that Martha’s gardening talents could be put to good use here. Then he remembered that she would kill herself as soon as someone put a shovel or rake in her hand. Maybe when this was all over, Janice could help her. They stopped at a bench looking over some kind of flowers. Maybe they’re irises, he thought.
“So, doc?” he asked.
“She is a case study in and of herself.”
“Glad I got you mixed up in it now, aren’t you?”
“Don’t push it. I think Martha might be exhibiting bi-stable concurrent schizophrenia. It’s rare.”
“Because if I remember correctly schizos don’t remember the other personality,” he said, dragging up Psych 101 from some obscure part of his brain.
“Yet she is fully cognizant of both her realities. Amend that. She is aware of her violent side. I want to call in Professor Wallace Jenkins from Harvard.”
“Can’t. He’s not on the list of cleared consultants.”
“What is this, a friggin’ HMO? Bill, he’s the guy!”
“No, you’re the guy! They want this contained.”
“What if …?”
“Listen, you can do this. I know you can.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ba Da Bing’s
JOEY PALUMBO HAD BEEN the coolest guy on Gunhill Road. He was part bad boy, part Franciscan monk. He managed the perfect balance between good and mischievous. If you were a young male, you could do worse than trying to be like Joey. To the surprise of no one, Joey became an FBI agent. He was really the perfect cut for one. He had smarts, kept his wits, and made everyone feel as if he had everything under control. He must have had a canary, Hiccock thought, when the director of the FBI called him to Washington, D.C., from his field office in San Francisco just to discuss his old friend, Bill from the Bronx, whom he hadn’t seen in eight years.
Hiccock sat at the bar in “The Prime Rib” on K Street. It was a Georgetown approximation of a place on Webster Avenue where they used to throw back a few and add two-inch, medium-rare increments to their LDL cholesterol count, way before anybody was counting. The waitress brought him his Dewar’s and soda, snapping Hiccock out of his thoughts.
“What, no egg cream? Who friggin’ ordered that?”
Hiccock made a 90-degree turn on the rotating bar stool to see Special Agent in Charge Joseph Palumbo standing behind him. Hiccock got up and, unexpectedly for both of them, gave his old schoolyard buddy a hug. Joey still wore cologne.
They ordered Joey a drink and took a table in the corner. As they sat, Hiccock almost forgot that Joey was here in an official capacity. Hiccock noticed a whole size difference in Joey’s face; not fat, but more filled out from the skinny Italian kid who could take a broomstick and smack a “Spaldeen” over three sewers with ease. Hiccock wondered what game they were going to play tonight. He chided himself for not having brought a Spalding rubber ball with him just for laughs.
“So how ya been, Billy Boy?” Joey said with a warm smile.
“I can’t complain.”
“Understatement of the century. You’ve come a long way from Bing’s.”
That was a name Bill hadn’t heard in a while. Bing’s Carousel was a candy store on Burke Avenue. It became the official headquarters of the Red Wings, a two-hand-touch football team that played its home games on the cracked cement of the big schoolyard on Bronxwood Avenue. Because of the concrete, the player who had the ball wasn’t tackled. Of course, the young stallions of the Bronx were not delicate in their application of the two-hand touch and turned it into various forms of two-hand crunch, two-hand crack, and two-hand smash. The results usually ended up like a tackle. For years the only equipment the players employed was a football shirt bought from Gunhill Sporting Supply. They asked Joe Mastruzzi’s mother to sew on the letters to save the 25-cents-a-letter sew-on charge. Eventually shoulder pads were used, but not by the real tough, real stupid guys. Bill’s basic athletic ability was hard crafted on the cold, sometimes snow-covered concrete “field” with spray-painted hash marks. When he got to Spellman High School and tried out for varsity, he was already the most experienced quarterback, including seniors, in the New York High School Football League.
“Football was your game and I hit a pretty mean stickball, but let me show you the future MVP, Gold Glove, batting ‘champeen’ of all time.” Joey reached into his wallet and pulled out a picture of Joseph Palumbo Jr. in a Bay Area Little League outfit, a small aluminum Louisville Slugger propped over his right shoulder. The kid had the same look his father had in the old days, confident and cocky.
“Geez, Joey, he’s got your ugly mug and probably your gift for swinging at the high ones.” Hiccock smiled to show Joey he was kidding. “He’s a great-looking kid. You must be out of your mind with all that Italian macho pride shit.”
“Better that than the WASP, ice-water shit you got flowing through your veins.”
“Irish and English ya Dago bastard!” Hiccock accentuated the familiar ethnic slur by flicking his right thumb under his top teeth, then adding Joey’s mom’s favorite exclamation “Fa!”
“You fucking hard-on, it’s good to see ya,” Joey said, his right cheek tightening as he half-smiled in that cool, I am straight but I still missed ya, way.
“You, too, Joey, you too.”
“So I figured your big mouth got you into this?”
“Geez, if I only kept it shut, I probably wouldn’t be seeing you for another few years,” Bill said, offering an opening for Joey to get down to business. But Joey decided not to take it. Instead he laughed. Bill looked over at him, “What?”
Joey sat up straight in his chair. Affecting a proper British accent emulating Sister Eugenia, he said, “I was just thinking. What are the odds of two ruffians from the Bronx winding up working fo
r Uncle Sam?” Bill smiled as he recognized the voice of the primary authority figure in black and white from their Catholic past.
“So how’d you wind up at the White House?” Joey asked as he tore off a piece of bread.
“The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology had asked me to take part in a project. They were trying to get funding for the Super Collider-Accelerator Ring. The one in Texas.”
“Oh, not the one on the Grand Concourse?” Joey jibbed.
“Anyway, I got to brief some people from the administration and I guess they liked my no-nonsense straightforward way of taking complicated, technological subjects and making them wholly unfathomable and totally boring.”
“You were always good at curing insomnia when you got into one of your smart guy rants.”
“So since I wasn’t a Democrat or a Republican, Mitchell’s people nominated me for SciAd. I think there was one other guy who actually wanted the job, but he had a tendency to wear fruit on his head. Ergo, they reluctantly settled on me.”
“I dunno, I always figured you for NASA or some nuclear shit.”
“Not on your fucking life. I had the chance to work with a guy I met back in college. Think-tank stuff on nuclear weapons and research. But I didn’t warm up to the idea of doing clean little calculations on messy mega-death yields.”
“Parnes?”
“Yeah, how’d you know that?” Then it hit him. “You dickhead! You read my file. I’ve got an FBI file?”
“One of our primary functions is the vetting of anyone working for the higher end of government. I actually recertified this Parnes guy two years ago.”
“Recertified?”
The Eighth Day Page 10
