Masked Prey

by John Sandford

  LUCAS LOOKED IN HIS REARVIEW MIRROR, but didn’t immediately see anything that looked like a dark blue RAV4. He checked repeatedly on his way to the meeting, never saw a RAV4, as far as he knew. But who really saw any difference between a RAV4 and about a million other mid-size SUVs? Dark compact SUVs were like cockroaches scurrying along the highway.

  Still, he called Jane Chase, told her what Toomes had said, and asked, “Could you check Lang and Gibson, see what vehicles they have registered to them? I don’t know who else could have picked me up.”

  “With a hotel security guard, could be a figment of his imagination,” Chase said.

  “The guy’s an ex-cop and not stupid.”

  Chase said she’d check, and Lucas relaxed in his Cadillac and dialed up some tunes.

  * * *

  —

  GREENE WAS WAITING IN A BACK booth at the Panera Bread finishing a grilled cheese sandwich when Lucas got there. Lucas got a lemonade and slid into the booth across from him. Greene was a heavyset man with skin-flaking sunburnt forearms and a fleshy nose set in a weathered face. He had white patches around his eyes, as if he wore dark glasses while recreating in the sun—fishing or golf, or something like that. Sailing, maybe, since he was ex-Navy. His face and forearms had an oily sheen, possibly sunscreen.

  He was wearing a short-sleeved Ralph Lauren golf shirt, had a gold bracelet on one wrist, a gold Rolex on the other, what looked like a Navy ring on one ring finger, and a pinky ring on the other hand, with a cracked green stone that might or might not have been an emerald. He appeared to be in his forties.

  He said, “Marshal. You’re not gonna eat?”

  “Had a late breakfast,” Lucas said. “Thanks for meeting me. We have a situation . . .”

  “Lang told me. 1919. I hadn’t heard of them until he mentioned the name and I called around—don’t bother looking, I used a burner. Anyway, a couple of guys had heard rumors about the site, but nobody had actually seen it. I don’t know how much credence you can put in a threat.”

  “We’re uncertain about the reality of it, but we can’t take the chance,” Lucas said. “How about taking a guess for me? Who’d do this? What about this American National Militia?”

  Greene gave a quick shake of the head. “I don’t think the ANM would be involved. They’re not like us anyway, though sometimes I feel a . . . temptation to move toward their position. You know, strip the country down, go back to basics.”

  “Why don’t you think they’re involved?”

  “Because . . . they’re so quiet. Very secretive. You know, we’re a little paranoid, over where I am, and we like to know about other political groups that might be out there and give us a hard time. Most of those black-flag dudes, they’re the guys who travel around the country, the Antifa and those people . . . they’re fools, but they can disrupt a peaceful demonstration. They’ll fight you. The ANM? You hear things. Like they might have snipers who actually snipe. Charlie said he mentioned the shootings in Pennsylvania and Michigan and so on. So . . . I don’t believe they’d be involved in a complicated conspiracy with websites and social media and all that. If they wanted to hit somebody, they’d just do it.”

  “Charlie suggested that they could be behind the site, but intended to hang the blame on the alt-right . . .”

  “That could be, I guess,” Greene said. “That would still leave them open to exposure, though, if you feds managed to trace the origins of the website. And it was sure to create a lot of investigative activity.” Greene shook his head. “There’s something off about the idea of that site. I can’t tell you exactly what’s wrong about it, but there’s something. It’s kind of . . . childish. Or, incredibly evil. One of the two. I think if the ANM was involved, there’d be no website. There’d be a dead kid and some secret phone calls.”

  “I’ll think about that,” Lucas said. “In the meantime . . . who might do something like this website?”

  “I was hoping to pick your brain about that,” Greene said. “I know you guys have files on everybody. Mine must be an inch thick.”

  “I can’t talk about the investigation, but I’ll tell you, Richard: one of those bigwigs’ kids get killed and the feds will be all over you guys,” Lucas said. “All over you. You’re ex-Navy, so I suspect you know what could happen if the government really decides to kick some ass. If the hammer comes down.”

  “Why do you think I’m talking to you?” Greene asked. “I need the brownie points. My people aren’t nuts—well, some of them might be, but it’s usually manageable. I don’t want anyone to know I was talking to a federal marshal, but if I find out anything, and I do have some lines out, I’ll call you.”

  “Do that,” Lucas said. “Anything that might possibly be relevant. Anything.”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS WAS IN HIS CAR again when Jane Chase came back and said that Charlie Lang had a BMW seven-series sedan and a BMW X5 SUV. Gibson had a BMW three-series sedan. “Good German cars, right outa Munich,” she said. “Not a Japanese car in the bunch.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I hate to say this, but we’ve got a problem.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yes. There’s been a leak. Fox is asking about 1919. They’ve apparently been on the website . . . hang on a minute . . .”

  She went away from the phone for a few seconds and Lucas could hear somebody talking fast in the background. Chase came back and said, “Okay, CNN is calling. They’ve been on the website, too. They’ve all got it.”

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  The traffic back into DC was brutal and Lucas didn’t get to the Watergate until almost six o’clock. When he got to his room, he turned on the television and switched back and forth between CNN and Fox; nobody was talking about 1919. Maybe, he thought, it was a false alarm, or maybe the FBI had made an appeal to the networks.

  The day had been warm and he’d been running around since early morning. He decided to get dinner in the hotel restaurant and then sit with his notes and figure out what his next step might be.

  Back in his room after a Santa Fe salad, he hit the shower, and when he got out, CNN’s talking head was shouting about breaking news, and sure enough:

  “CNN has learned exclusively that an apparent alt-right website has been publishing photographs of the children of prominent national politicians in what seems to be an implicit threat. The FBI has asked that we not reveal the name of the website, but we have reviewed the site and find it rife with alt-right articles in addition to the photographs. We have asked Barney Grier, an expert on the alt-right, to tell us what he thinks this site may mean. Barney?”

  Lucas: “Ah, shit.”

  The camera switched to a man with an exceptionally bad black toupee to go with a ruggedly squared-off nose and chin and deep-set eyes. A caption identified him as a former Navy SEAL officer.

  “This is a startling development, something we’ve not seen before—the children are those of Democrats, according to our source. Given the history of violence from the right-wing extremist groups, this threat has to be taken seriously . . .”

  Lucas turned to Fox, where a nearly hairless, soft-faced man was saying, “. . . most likely a provocation from some group like the Antifa organization, which has shown its willingness to use internet tools to spread fear. When you actually examine the articles on the website, you find that they come from a wide range of right-wing organizations, some of whom greatly disagree with others. In other words, this is a pastiche, a fabrication . . .”

  Blah blah blah . . .

  But, Lucas thought, the story was out there, and that complicated everything.

  He went back to CNN and watched for a few more minutes. Despite the tone of excitement, they were already repeating themselves. He turned the TV off, put on underpants and a T-shirt, and lay on the bed to read notes and files.

  At 8:30,
his cell phone rang; the caller was “Unknown.” He answered with “Yes,” and a woman asked, “Is this Marshal Davenport?”

  “Yes, it is, who is this?”

  “I’m Marcia Miller, the public representative for the American National Militia,” the woman said. “We understand you’ve been trying to get in touch.”

  “Yes, I have. Where are you located?”

  “Here in Washington—my office is actually across the river in Virginia, but the DC metro anyway.”

  “Great. When could we meet?”

  “Right now. I operate a small public relations firm and we normally keep regular nine-to-five business hours, but when I spoke with Charlie Lang, he suggested that your request might be somewhat urgent. I would be willing to meet with you tonight. I could come to your hotel.”

  “I could come to your place . . .”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary. I’m only a short distance from the Watergate. I could be there in fifteen minutes.” Miller said. “We could talk in the restaurant.”

  Lucas wanted to deal with her on her home ground, but couldn’t immediately think of a credible excuse to avoid a meeting right then, in a restaurant virtually on the other side of his hotel door. “I’ll see you in fifteen minutes, then. I’ll be wearing a dark blue jacket and a checked shirt,” Lucas said. As he got dressed, he tried to remember if he’d told Lang that he was staying at the Watergate. He wasn’t sure.

  Downstairs, in the restaurant, he got a beer and was halfway through it when Miller arrived. She was wearing a subdued women’s business suit, gunmetal-gray jacket with matching pants, and an icy blue, high-collared blouse. She carried a black leather satchel that could accommodate a full-sized automatic, if she felt the need for one.

  She spotted him, nodded as he raised his glass, and strode over. She was a middle-sized woman, auburn hair off her shoulders, a square nose and chin with blue eyes and freckles. She all but sweated competence and focus.

  She slid into the booth across from Lucas and asked, “Do you have a badge?”

  “I do,” Lucas said. He showed her his ID case, with the marshal’s badge and the plastic ID card. She took it and actually read the card, then handed it back.

  “I should tell you a few things before we get started,” she said, knitting her fingers together on the tabletop. “I can’t help you in identifying my clients. I repeat that: it’s not that I wouldn’t, it’s that I can’t. I was recommended by somebody, I don’t know who, to Old John. He interviewed me by telephone, hired me by telephone, and pays me in cash, which I carefully record so I can faithfully report it to the IRS. I get an envelope with two thousand dollars in it shortly after the first of each month, plus whatever expenses I’ve incurred, usually printing expenses. I have a series of ANM position papers that I send to people I’m told to send them to. They’re not recruiting documents, they’re arguments.”

  “Two thousand dollars a month doesn’t . . .” Lucas shrugged.

  “Sound like much? It isn’t. That’s because we don’t do much for them,” Miller said. She waved at a waitress, pointed at Lucas’s glass, and mouthed, “I want one.” The waitress gave her a thumbs-up, and went to get a beer.

  Turning back to Lucas, Miller said, “As I mentioned on the phone, I run a small public relations group, oriented toward conservative causes. I have five associates and we represent thirty-two different groups—everything from nonprofit conservative advocacy groups to small businesses to alt-right organizations. We began by representing some lesser-known guns-rights groups and then some smaller gun manufacturers, then other general small businesses, and so on. A couple of the alt-right groups, over-ground groups, got in touch, and we took them on, and then Old John called. We have no information that the American National Militia is engaged in any kind of illegal activity. If we learned that they were, we would drop them immediately.”

  “You say you don’t know who they are, but you must be able to get in touch—I assume you’re here with Old John’s permission.”

  “I was asked to meet you. I can get in touch much of the time; other times, I can’t. Somebody will send me a Gmail address. It’s good for exactly one outgoing message, as far as I can tell. They always read the first email, but I’ve never gotten a response to a second one to that address. Then sometime later . . . sometimes days later . . . another address will pop up in my email. Going the other way, from them to me, isn’t a problem, of course. They send what they call ‘white papers’ to my email. I take the papers to a printing company and then send the printed documents to congressional or other influential leaders at their office addresses. Whether or not anyone reads them, I have no idea.”

  “Do you have a contact address now?”

  She shook her head: “No. I used the one I had to tell the ANM person at the other end of the line about Charlie Lang’s call, about you. Charlie said that you’re investigating this 1919 group. I gave the ANM the website address for 1919. ANM got back to me and told me to get in touch with you and to tell you that they are not 1919 and have no idea who might be behind the website.”

  Her beer arrived and when the waitress had gone, Miller took a sip, said, “Good, it’s been a long day,” and then added, “I told them what Charlie said about the website—that it seemed to be an invitation for somebody to shoot a child, possibly as part of a vote extortion scheme.”

  “Did they react?”

  “Yes. They said that was crazy.”

  “They’re right about that. Now it’s out in the media.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Won’t last long, as a story, unless something happens. With all the insane politics going on, the cable networks will have moved along in two days.”

  “I hope.”

  “So do I, or you might actually get an attack from a crazy person. Anyway, Old John or whoever is on the other end of the email said I should give you the white papers so you could see who they were.” She reached down into her bag and pulled out a stack of computer paper, maybe twenty-five sheets, stapled in separate packs of three or four pages each. There was a simple “ANM” in large type at the top of the first page of each pack, with blocks of professionally laid-out type filling the pages. “They send us the material, we edit and format it and send it to the printer. I pay the printer, send the billing amount to the ANM when I get an email address, and they pay me.”

  Lucas took the paper, but said, “This is not going to help much. I don’t care what their papers say—I need to talk to one of the leaders, preferably Old John, if he’s a real person.”

  “He is,” Miller said. “Or at least there’s a person who calls himself that, and the three times I’ve spoken to him, it’s the same voice. He sounds older and gruff.”

  “Then when you get an address, give him my number and tell him to call me. There’s a reason that I need to talk with him.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’ll tell him,” Lucas said. “He might not want you to know.”

  “Okay.” She took two large gulps of beer, then pushed the glass away and slid out of the booth. “I don’t know when they’ll send me a new address. I don’t even know if they will, since I’ve been talking with a federal marshal. If they do, I’ll give them your phone number.”

  “Do that,” Lucas said. “We don’t need any kids killed by nutcases. They might help prevent that.”

  She nodded and walked away.

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS FINISHED HIS BEER, paid for both of them, and carried the ANM material up to his room. He spent a half hour reading it—and it was more interesting that he’d expected. The ANM was apparently a radical libertarian organization, unlike the usual race-based whack jobs. They didn’t like taxes and didn’t think there should be any, or very few.

  They didn’t like a big military, they didn’t like authority, they didn’t like cops or social workers or any kind of w
elfare, in which they included Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and school lunch programs. They did like private property and self-reliance. They apparently didn’t care about a lot of stuff. They didn’t care about race, they didn’t care about gay marriage, they didn’t care about feminism, they didn’t care about prostitution or gambling or drugs.

  “We don’t care what people inject in their arm. That’s their business. If they overdose, it’s not our business to take care of them—it’s theirs.”

  They did like guns. Guns, the papers said, were a practical symbol of self-reliance. Their media list of recommended titles, contained in the shortest of the white papers, included both Henry David Thoreau and the movie Fight Club.

  None of the papers were signed.

  * * *

  —

  JANE CHASE CALLED AS LUCAS was about to turn out the lights and go to bed, and he filled her in on the meeting with Miller. “We’ll look her up,” Chase said. “We should have done it before now, but I guess we didn’t know about her. Should have.”

  “Don’t disturb her,” Lucas said. “If she’s telling the truth, the thread that goes to the leadership is pretty thin. As far as we know, she could have some way of signaling that she’s been approached . . . or might be monitored. I need her to get to Old John for me.”

  “What are you going to ask him?”

  “It seems to me that he’s got an interesting organization and they’re sort of right-wing, in an unusual way. They’re not really alt-right, the way TV talks about alt-right. If Charlie Lang is correct, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they have a lot of . . . intelligence . . . on these other right-wing groups. That would be their natural recruiting grounds, picking out certain people who might tend to agree with them more than they would the crazier alt-rights. If they sent feelers out to all their cells . . . if they really have cells, like Charlie thinks they do . . . then they might come up with something.”