False Gods

by W. Glenn Duncan Jr.

  Me?

  I really wanted to pass out.

  But, I reasoned—okay, maybe I chided—that I couldn’t help Kimberly if I couldn’t help myself. So I went to work.

  Handcuffs and shackles.

  Not cable-ties. Not rope.

  Formal authority, probably government. Maybe cops, though the leg shackles and solitary confinement was overkill for anyone local. Result: unlikely to be private army.

  Chalk that one up as good.

  I’d been hit and dragged away, that was obvious. Without being able to feel my face, or look in a mirror, I couldn’t tell how much damage there was, but I didn’t think I’d taken any beatings after I was out. That’s another check for an organization with a set of rules and requirements to answer to a higher up. Again, read government.

  Two and ough.

  The hollow sound of the small room made me think that it wasn’t as secure as it appeared. A cell, made with concrete and bricks, and especially one without a window, had a different sound about it. Or rather it had no sound at all. It’s called dead quiet for a reason.

  No, this room, though it looked solid, wasn’t. I could hear the shadows of other sounds beyond the walls. That I couldn’t hear anything specific—voices, traffic, sirens, the hum of society—made me think we were still in the middle of nowhere.

  If I could somehow get out of here and back to my car, good. If I couldn’t find the car, bad. Let’s call that a tie.

  Three and one.

  And that’s where the game ended.

  For two reasons.

  The first? I couldn’t think of anything else.

  And the second?

  The door opened.

  An officious snick preceded the door swinging open.

  I got a quick glimpse of a blank gray space beyond and the profile of a man in camouflage with an MP5 slung across his chest.

  Same guy that hit me? Fucked if I knew.

  I couldn’t dwell on that for long before the doorway was filled by a man carrying a metal chair.

  He entered the room and flung the door shut behind him. It latched closed with another snick.

  He wasn’t much to look at, maybe five-eight with a round face, deep brown eyes and a close-shaved head. He wore a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, a red-and-blue club tie, navy blue pants with blade-straight creases, black socks and black shoes coated in dust. Just like the cuffs of his natty pants. I would bet he had a blue suit jacket slung over a chair outside.

  And I would win.

  A silver watch on his left wrist was his only jewelery and a lanyard around his neck carried an ID card, but he’d tucked this in his shirt pocket so I couldn’t read it.

  The sneaky bastard.

  He could have been wearing a sandwich board with bright yellow, eight-inch high letters proclaiming FBI, CIA, NSA, or any other three-letter-acronym of the federal government and it wouldn’t have been any more obvious.

  He spun the chair around and placed it hard on the floor, facing away from me. The floor boomed and shuddered.

  Not concrete. Interesting.

  He lifted a leg and straddled the chair, sat down on it backwards and folded his arms across the back.

  He probably thought it looked tough. Maybe he’d seen it in an Eastwood movie.

  He stared at me with a neutral expression and the vaguest hint of a smile on his thin lips.

  We sat like that for a few minutes.

  There’s an unwritten rule in negotiations: he who speaks first, loses. Normally, I’m all in favor of that. Both for the advantage and because there’s not many people I feel like talking to.

  But it had been a long day.

  A very long day.

  I was tired and sore and I wanted a pipe and coffee. And Hilda.

  I dragged a dry tongue over my cracked lips, looked at this weenie through my one and a half eyes and attempted to engage him in robust and worthwhile conversation.

  “You don’t know how pleased I am to see my tax dollars hard at work.”

  Surprisingly, he didn’t find it as funny as I did.

  The not-quite-a-smile flickered, before the G-man sheltering behind a piece of cheap office furniture—from a cuffed and shackled man—got his game face back on.

  He lifted one hand and pinched his lower lip between thumb and forefinger while he kept eyeballing me. Finally he put both elbows on the back of the chair and interlaced his fingers in front of his chin.

  “Yeah, I’m sure you’re concerned with the government’s distribution of tax money,” he said. “But you don’t pay any tax, do you? Hiding behind the false front of your so-called church.”

  “That’s harsh,” I said. “I know it’s been a shitty few years, but I pay my share. Too fucking much, given the way you assholes waste it.”

  The rest of his comment finished percolating through my cerebral fog.

  “Huh? Church?” I tried shaking my head. It cleared some cobwebs but spurred the flies to a new level of action. “What the fuck?”

  I tried to squint at him, then realized I didn’t have to try. He pursed his lips and focused on looking like he was in charge.

  We sat in that gray room waiting for our respective pennies to drop and the situation to make some sense.

  I had been beaten unconscious, isolated from my surroundings, and chained to the floor like one of America’s Most Wanted.

  On the other chair sat a man, free to come and go at will, with the resources of the mighty US government at his fingertips.

  Taking all that into account, I’d have put good money on me being the first one to piece it together.

  And I’d win that one, too.

  “You dickheads,” I said, after the fog rolled out far enough for me to realize what was going on. “You’ve got the wrong guy.” While technically accurate, it wasn’t the best line I could have used. Before I could coerce enough brain cells into coming up with an improved version, the man from UNCLE took his turn.

  “That’s the best you’ve got?” He chuckled. “I was hoping for something I hadn’t heard before.”

  I opened my mouth and tried to respond. I wasn’t sure what I would say, but he headed me off before I could get started.

  “You’re not Jakob Friesen, or as he’s now calling himself, Dariell Thof. I know that much. You’re just one of the brothers helping to build his private army.”

  He shrugged.

  “That don’t matter to me.” He let the half smile drop and crossed his arms again. “You’re in my house now and the only question is how far I’ll have to go before you give me what I need to take him down.”

  I’d started to laugh by this time, but my chest hurt when I did, so it came out more like a croaky hack. It didn’t matter; G-man knew what I was doing and it flipped a switch somewhere under the composed exterior.

  He stood up and flung the chair against the near wall. A starburst of shattered sheetrock appeared as the chair rebounded.

  Interesting. I could maybe punch my way out of here if I need to.

  I didn’t have time to go further with that thought, because he was standing in front of me then, filling my vision. His face was red, flushed enough that I could see it beneath his dark complexion. He leaned down and yelled in my face, spattering me with spit.

  “You think it’s funny? Helping Thof to steal more than six thousand military-grade weapons to protect his made-up empire?”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed harder.

  The fist came then.

  If it had been on my right side I might have been able to flinch. The swelling in my left eye made sure I had no warning at all.

  My head rocked back and a new well of pain sprouted under my left cheekbone. I tasted blood.

  I blinked a few times to orient myself. When my vision had stopped spinning, I could see G-man pacing in front of the door, sucking on his knuckles. He would see that loss of control as a weakness and, no matter his mission or jurisdiction, beating a chained prisoner would not be looked on k
indly by his superiors.

  That kind of stuff never bothered Cowboy.

  I spat out a glob of blood and tried to get my lips to work.

  “Listen here, hotshot,” I said. “We can do this all day. It won’t make any difference. I’m after the same …” I spat more blood toward the corner. He stepped away. “Call DPD. Lieutenant Ed Durkee. Tell him you’ve captured the elusive Rafferty. He’ll get a good laugh out of it.”

  My vision started to swim again.

  “Got that? DPD. Durkee. Rafferty.”

  I tried to laugh again. The room was darkening.

  From far away, I heard two hollow knocks and the door swung open. I thought I heard it shut.

  I went under.

  Chapter 27

  I heard feet shuffling and low voices, then a light boomed on the outside of my eyelids.

  I shuddered and sought the darkness again.

  I kept my eyes closed as I came to again.

  Took a chance and opened one eye, in case there was anything worth seeing.

  G-man was back.

  He’d righted the chair and sat down, having now been schooled on the correct way to use common pieces of furniture. Standing behind him, an older version cut from the same cookie cutter. This one wore aviators, had his shirtsleeves rolled down, flaunted more hair, and didn’t look like he was going to get involved no matter what was about to transpire.

  G-man hooked a finger at his throat and loosened his tie. Let out a big breath and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, fingers together and arrowed towards me.

  “Seems like we got off on the wrong foot,” he said.

  I swirled my tongue around and found my words.

  “If I can get a glass of water, my pipe and a cup of coffee, I’ll consider accepting your apology.”

  “Listen here, you fucking …” He stopped and looked down at his shoes. Reached down to rub a thumb through the dust. Looked back up at me.

  “Okay, Rafferty. I’ll agree that you are who you say you are. I’ll even stretch to believing we might be on the same side of this thing. That don’t mean your shit don’t stink. There’s a lot here that still don’t sit right with me.

  “You might be able to blow smoke up Durkee’s ass and have him vouch for you in the bright lights of Dallas, but you’re a long way from the city now. I’m gonna need to get a lot more comfortable with the how and why of you strolling into the middle of a two-year federal investigation before I even begin to think about letting you off the hook.

  “So, why don’t you tell me and Special Agent Smith all about it.” He jerked a thumb at the figure standing behind his right shoulder.

  “The playing field’s a little uneven,” I croaked. “You know who I am. Who the hell are you?”

  He smiled.

  “For the moment, I’m also Special Agent Smith. If I like what I hear next, then maybe we’ll get acquainted on a first-name basis. And you might even get that coffee.” The smile evolved into a shit-eating grin.

  “Why the hell not?” I said. “But for the love of god can I get these cuffs off and a glass of water? I’m sick of tasting my own blood.”

  Seated Smith looked up at Standing Smith and nodded. He, the standing one, knocked twice on the door and slipped out when it opened, reaching back to pull it shut.

  Smith stood up and showed me he was still in control by taking his own sweet time to stretch and pop his shoulders. He fished a small key out of his pocket and walked around behind me. My hands and wrists jerked painfully and then I could spread my arms like wings and blessedly roll my shoulders. I checked my watch. Nine-thirty.

  “Thanks,” I offered. I rolled my wrists, trying to get the sludgy blood in my arms moving again.

  “Don’t mention it,” Smith said as he sat down again.

  I decided against saying anything since it seemed like we were poised at the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

  “How did Durkee verify me?”

  Smith cracked a big smile at that.

  “We took a Polaroid and faxed it to DPD.”

  The flash.

  “Gave it a bit of time, ’cause we didn’t want to rush this, you know.” He raised an eyebrow and dared me to make something of it. When I didn’t, he continued.

  “I got him, Durkee, on the horn and he said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got the picture. That’s the dumb fuck, alright. What’s he done now?’ I told him you’d wandered into the middle of an active federal investigation and he said that sounded like you. And when I mentioned that we had been forced to subdue you to avoid blowing the investigation, I thought he was having a seizure. It was maybe three minutes before I could hear his voice clearly again. I asked if everything was alright. Turns out he was laughing. Hard.”

  Agent Smith beamed me another big shit-eating grin. I bet it was the one he reserved for convincing Oversight Committees to let him continue his ongoing misuse of taxpayer dollars.

  “Durkee said it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.”

  Over the next thirty minutes I imparted my knowledge of Dariell and The People’s Church of the Reformed Temple to Special Agent Smith.

  Some of it.

  The search for Kimberly and how that had led me to the three church compounds and eventually to Lincoln.

  I didn’t mention Lucy, by name or story. The last thing she needed right now was to be shuffled into a dark room for a heart to heart with a couple of sensitive FBI agents. Around that point, Standing Smith came back in with a white coffee mug filled with lukewarm water.

  It tasted metallic. And wonderful.

  I continued, mentioning Don, not by name, and paraphrasing his research. I touched on his belief that Dariell had turned the church into a doomsday cult with a hair trigger, but left out the stuff that I didn’t believe or couldn’t verify.

  My dreams, for example.

  The more I talked, the further downwards the smug look on Seated Smith’s face slipped. It was clear that I was filling in a few blanks. Strike another blow for government effectiveness. Both the Smiths got tight-lipped when I described the rain-drenched, night-time reconnaissance Cowboy and I had undertaken forty-eight hours earlier.

  The seated version sat up and leaned backwards on his chair.

  “Course I’m gonna need names to verify all this, Rafferty.”

  “Fuck off,” I replied. Which was cocky, given that I was still ankle-chained to the floor. “You already know enough about this mess to either believe me or not. If you do, then cut me loose, get me that coffee and tell me what you know—” He bristled. “Okay, tell me what you can that will help me get Kimberly back to her family.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “And if I don’t? Believe you, that is.”

  I held out my hands, wrists together.

  “Cuff me again and give it your best. I’ve been beaten up by better men than you.”

  The room went still and silent for a few minutes.

  I gulped the rest of the water, cracked my knuckles and rubbed my legs, stiff from sitting.

  I raised my eyebrows and sucked my lips in.

  Standing Smith shifted his weight and stayed neutral behind his sunglasses. Seated Smith looked hard at me, and when I didn’t explode in flame, seemed to reach a decision. He stood up.

  “Let me give Durkee another call. If he confirms you spoke to him about this missing chick, then it’ll be good enough for me. You sit tight.”

  I was thankful that I hadn’t mentioned Ricco. It would be just his sense of humor to have me thrown in a cell requiring piped-in daylight. Before the door swung closed I cleared my throat. Smith stuck his head back in. I held up the cup in both hands.

  “Please sir, can I have some more?”

  Standing Smith watched me impassively from the corner.

  He’d brought me a refill on the water, so I was happy to settle for uncomfortable silence rather than trying to fuck with him.

  Seated Smith came back a few minutes later. He didn’t shut the door b
ehind him.

  A good sign.

  “This is your lucky day,” he said. “Durkee confirmed your story about cheerleader girl. I told him I was gonna cut you loose and he spent a few minutes questioning me on whether that was a good idea.” He shook his head. “Jesus, Rafferty, if that’s one of your friends, I’d think about getting some new ones.”

  He fished the keys out of his pocket again, walked over and bent down to unlock the shackles between my ankles. I considered returning the favor by sucker-punching him.

  I waited. The thought passed.

  I stood up and stretched my whole body for the first time in hours. After I’d finished I realized he was standing in front of me with his hand outstretched.

  “No hard feelings I hope, Rafferty. Just doing my job.”

  I got that. Shrugged and shook his hand.

  “No problems, uh …”

  “Wesson. Special Agent Steve Wesson. ATF.”

  The acronym for the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco. I nodded.

  “And the tall, dark and silent type in the back is?”

  “You’re not gonna believe this. His name really is Smith.”

  I laughed, properly this time.

  “You’re telling me you guys are Smith and—”

  Steve stopped me with another shake of his head.

  “You have no idea how sick we are of hearing that.”

  Chapter 28

  I could see only darkness through the plexiglas windows on both sides of the office that Steve and his crew had set up inside the trailer which housed the interrogation room.

  That’s why it didn’t feel like a real building.

  “Steve,” I said. “You got a john around here?”

  “Outside, second trailer on the left,” Wesson said.

  I unlatched the trailer door and stepped down into the Texas night. It felt good to use my legs again and I walked forward twenty yards. Did a couple of deep knee bends. Stretched and looked up. A carpet of stars glittered on a background of deepest black. It was cool and I shivered in my shredded t-shirt. The desert rose slowly to a couple of small, dark hills.