Enough to feed a small army, Danny thought. A VC supply depot. This had to be why the kind man took him away for a long walk every three days. They wanted to hide him from the Viet Cong who came here for supplies. Today was not supposed to be a long-walk day, though.
This was just like the game of hide and seek, only the penalty for being found was death. Danny felt a desperate need to cough. His breathing sounded like a death rattle. Holding back the coughing made his eyes water. He waited until they had been gone at least five minutes before he left his hiding place. The oldest boy gave him an odd look. He had wanted Danny to know about this place. Danny coughed uncontrollably for several minutes, ejecting alarming amounts of goo from his lungs. He hoped the men were far enough that they wouldn’t hear him.
His mind was working furiously as they went back through the tunnel. Lester had sent him here for a purpose, and discovering this cache must have been part of his plan. But what to do next? He was tempted to slip away and call Les to ask, but Les had told him not to do that.
So he went back to the village with the children and ate the dinner the women prepared. The next day he worked in the rice paddy with the men. The one with the ruined hand gave him a sidelong glance as they headed out to the field. Had he noticed Danny hiding in the weeds near the supply cache? There was no way to know.
Two more days passed while Danny tried to figure out what to do. At the usual time, the kind old man took him for his walk through the jungle. In the evenings they ate together. The people were starting to think of him as part of the family now. The children had accepted him as one of their own, and it appeared that they hadn’t told the grownups about Danny’s secret. Blueberry smiled at him warmly as she scooped him out a small helping of rice. Even the man with the gimpy hand didn’t seem to scowl at him quite as much as he first had.
He was starting to feel at home. And that made it all the more difficult to accept that what he had to do next would probably cause them all to die.
12
Souvlaki
Ed took a seat in the booth and had a look around. He was twenty minutes early. The restaurant was in the heart of McLean, Virginia, a few minutes’ drive down Georgetown Pike from Witherspoon’s house. He’d driven here in his rented Plymouth Duster, a car that made him long for the Barracuda he’d left in L.A. the previous year.
Thinking of the old Barracuda made him think of Sarah. How long since he’d talked to her? She hadn’t been at their meetings for several weeks. She came home to their apartment in Manhattan sometimes, but only for a few hours before flying off again on some assignment from the mysterious Lester Myles. Ed had grown to hate that man without ever meeting him. And even when Sarah was at home, Ed’s frequent trips to visit Charles Witherspoon kept him away much of the time. He missed her.
Driscoll had called to request a meeting at this restaurant, and he said he was bringing a friend. Ed ordered a Coke and settled in to wait.
A man stepped into the restaurant, letting in a blast of heat from outside. He had a full head of perfect dark hair and a congenial smile fixed on his face as though it had been glued there. Ed wondered how he could keep his hair looking so flawless in this kind of humidity. A rug, maybe. He nodded to Ed in a friendly way, then went directly to a booth near the back of the restaurant, taking a seat with two other men. One of them had a very intense look about him as well as the flattest flat-top haircut Ed had ever seen. He looked like a character from a comic book. The other looked like an Army officer. He wore civilian clothes, but carried himself like a military man.
Driscoll came in a minute later and sat down across from Ed. He wasn’t even sweating. Ed was perspiring even inside the air-conditioned restaurant. He wasn’t used to this weather; it seldom got this sticky in Los Angeles, even when it was hot out.
“Where’s your friend?” Ed asked Driscoll.
“On his way. He’ll be on time. He’s always on time.” The waiter came over, and Driscoll ordered a glass of water with no ice. “Room temperature,” he said in response to Ed’s questioning look. “The Buddhists always drink water at room temperature. It’s better for you.”
Ed shrugged and sipped his Coke. He had plenty of ice in his glass, and liked it that way.
The door opened once more, and in walked a bearded man wearing a tweed sport jacket and ridiculous green fedora. He spotted Driscoll, came over to their table and removed his hat to reveal a shiny, balding head. Ed recognized him instantly as the man from Witherspoon’s mind.
“Hello again, Ed,” Jonathan Mason said.
“Erm,” Ed replied. He immediately inhaled a lungful of Coca-Cola and started coughing furiously.
Driscoll looked from one of them to the other. “You’ve met?”
With a wide grin on his face, Mason hung up his hat and jacket and sat down next to Driscoll with his back to the window. “Never in person. Bloody Mary, please,” he said to the hovering waiter, “thank you. No, no food for me, I never eat lunch.” The waiter hurried off to put in the order. “Lunch makes me sleepy in the afternoon,” he confided to Ed.
“Jonathan is an aide to a Congressman,” Driscoll explained to Ed. Turning to Mason, he said, “What did you say his name was?”
“George Bush,” Jonathan replied.
“You’re his Deputy Chief of Staff now, is that right?”
“I’m just a bureaucrat,” Mason said dryly. “Pencil-pusher. But I’ve got friends all over, some of them in the Bureau. When I heard that Ken was asking after a person named Nosgrove, I decided I’d better step in. Those are dangerous questions to be asking.”
“Who is he?” Ed asked.
Mason chewed his lip in thought. Finally he said, “He’s nobody.”
“Nobody?” Ed had always disliked mysteries, and he especially disliked people who intentionally tried to be mysterious. “He can’t be nobody.”
“Oh, there’s someone who goes by that name. But no one’s met him. No one can tell you what he looks like or where he works. I’ve been trying to track down Elmer Nosgrove for fifteen years, and at times I’ve started to wonder whether he even exists. Now I’m sure he does, but that hasn’t brought me any closer to finding him. That’s the thing about―” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “That’s the thing. Several people knew him, but nobody remembers him. No one who’s met Elmer Nosgrove can remember what he looks like. There are no traces of him ever working at the Bureau. That’s what I mean when I say he’s nobody. He has a way of vanishing without a trace. When Agent Driscoll came around looking for him, that opened up a whole new direction of inquiry. How’s the old guy doing, by the way?”
“Charles?” Driscoll said. “Not well.”
“He’s had a lot of people running around inside his head. Must make a guy tired.”
Their drinks came a moment later. Driscoll’s glass was full of ice. He sent it back. “They’ll sneeze in it,” said Ed.
“Not here,” Mason told him. “The service is wonderful here. We’re only about a mile from Langley, you know. CIA headquarters. Lots of important conversations happen in this restaurant. Deals and agreements that affect the whole world.” He kept glancing across the room as he said this, toward the dark-haired man and his two companions. “Ed, have you ever run into Shiloh Jones up in New York?” He said the name in an offhand way, as though Ed should recognize it.
“Shiloh Jones?” Driscoll said. “Is he still alive?”
Jonathan held up a hand to signal for a pause as the waiter arrived with a new glass of water for Driscoll. He continued after the waiter had walked out of earshot. “The staff hears everything here, of course. They’re the best-informed wait staff anywhere in America. Shiloh Jones.”
Ed shook his head. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“Not surprised. Nobody’s seen him in years. Decades. Maybe he’s dead by now. I just thought he might have tried to find you, with your Blake connections and all. You probably shouldn’t call yourself that, by the way.”
“I like it,�
�� said Ed. “Nobody butchers the pronunciation. You should hear how many ways people mess up my real name.”
Mason smiled at that. “You’re no good at hiding, Ed, and your new name is too obvious. Might as well just use your real one.”
Driscoll leaned in closer. “You knew Jones?”
Jonathan nodded. “I was part of his group when I came back from France, back in ’45.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“I still don’t know who we’re talking about,” said Ed.
“Sorry, Ed,” said Mason. “Shiloh was part of the old Vedanta Society, out in Los Angeles. Your neck of the woods, Driscoll tells me. Jones was studying to be a swami. That didn’t work out, so he moved to New York and started a following there during the war. He was sort of like the Guru who initiated you, but that was before cults were in fashion. Shiloh knew Aldous Huxley from his Vedanta days. When he left L.A., he got really attached to the idea of a Utopia on earth. Not a drugged-up Brave New World Utopia, but the real thing. He got some people together to try to make it happen.”
“I’m guessing that didn’t work out,” said Ed.
“It didn’t. His people all left him. I ended up working for the government, which is just as boring as it sounds.” The whole time he was speaking, he kept throwing furtive glances at the three men in their booth at the back of the restaurant.
Driscoll finished his water and signaled the waiter, who came over right away. “Ed, do you like souvlaki? How about a couple orders of souvlaki?” The waiter nodded and went back to the kitchen.
“What does all this have to do with Elmer Nosgrove?” Ed asked.
“Ah,” said Mason. “What was I saying?” He reminded Ed of a high school teacher, intelligent but disorganized. “Everything’s connected. When I was a disciple of Shiloh Jones, I read a great deal of Huxley. And I learned that Huxley’s ideas went back much further than I’d realized. You’ve read The Doors of Perception?”
Ed shook his head. “I’ve only heard about it.”
“It’s all about Huxley’s experiences with psychedelic drugs. What’s most fascinating about it is the way his images, his hallucinations, tend to resemble things that were written about long before Huxley was born. He named his book after a quote from William Blake, which is what prompted me to start reading Blake years ago. Are you familiar with Blake’s work?”
“A bit,” said Ed.
“How did you get into it?”
“My father studied Blake,” Ed explained. “Had quite a collection of his work.”
Mason seemed to find this interesting. “Your father? What was his name?”
“Richard Terwilliger.”
“Terwilliger.” Jonathan took a gulp of his bloody Mary and pondered that. “A Dutch name, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Dutch. That’s… interesting.” He frowned, then said, “All three coalitions together. What does that mean? Has Nosgrove’s influence reached all of them?”
Ed and Driscoll exchanged a baffled look.
“Those three men over there,” Mason said, speaking very softly now. “No, don’t look at them. The one with the flat hair is Bob Haldeman. He’s Nixon’s Chief of Staff. A real bulldog. The man next to him is Colonel Haig, military advisor to Henry Kissinger. And the other one…” He trailed off as an old couple walked past their table on their way out, waiting until they were out of earshot. “The other one just arrived in town. Caspar Weinberger. He’s just been tapped to be the new Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget.”
Three heads, Ed thought.
“OMB,” said Driscoll. “That job must be a thrill a minute.”
Mason smiled good-naturedly. “Maybe not a glamorous job, but the man who controls the purse-strings has a lot of power. A lot of power. He works for Nixon, but his loyalties remain in California with Governor Reagan.”
Something Mason had said was tickling Ed’s memory. It took a moment to make the connection. “Kissinger!” he exclaimed, at greater volume than he’d intended to speak. Driscoll and Mason both jumped in surprise. “That’s who I saw in Witherspoon’s memories,” Ed told them in a more appropriate tone. “When they killed Albert Wensel. The man in the woods was Henry Kissinger.”
“Ah,” Mason said, blinking several times in surprise. “That’s helpful. What was he doing? Do you remember what he said?”
Ed closed his eyes and tried to remember. “He mentioned Elmer Nosgrove. It sounded like he didn’t know everything Nosgrove was planning, but he was definitely taking orders from Nosgrove.”
“That makes it all the more interesting that Kissinger’s man is here,” Jonathan said thoughtfully. “Three coalitions. Kissinger, of the Northeast old-money crowd. Nixon, who represents the new money of the Southern Rim and the Wild West. And Ronald Reagan, the Hollywood star, a former Democrat who saw the light and converted. What I wouldn’t give to know what they’re talking about.”
“Which of those three coalitions are you a part of?” Ed asked.
The waiter came over with two plates of souvlaki, which he placed in the center of the table. None of them paid any attention to the food.
Mason waited until he was gone, then leaned in closer and lowered his voice even more. Ed and Driscoll both sat forward in their seats. “I’m not part of any of them. Not yet. But my boss, Congressman Bush, has some ideas about that. He wants to unite the factions. Mr. Bush believes we can only survive—by ‘we’, I mean the human race—by forming a new order out of all these fractured pieces. To do that, we have to find Elmer Nosgrove and remove him from the equation. Ed, you asked who Elmer Nosgrove is. He is our enemy. His real name is Urizen.” Jonathan paused for a moment to let that sink in. “At this moment Elmer is expanding his power, extending tendrils throughout the government to gain absolute control. I’ve suspected for a long time that he was associated with either Nixon or Kissinger, manipulating one of the most powerful men in government. Your discovery suggests that Kissinger is the one.”
Driscoll was looking at Mason as though convinced the man was a lunatic. “Henry Kissinger?” he said, trying hard to control his voice. “You can’t be serious.”
“Ken, I’ve been hunting Nosgrove for a long time. There aren’t many things I’m sure of in this life, but I’m positive that Nosgrove has latched onto one of those men. That’s his way. He always pulls the strings from the shadows, using someone powerful as a puppet. Terwilliger thinks Kissinger is the puppet, and I’m inclined to agree.” Ed was startled by the suggestion that this was his idea—he wasn’t at all sure what he thought about Kissinger—but Mason went on without noticing. “Ken, I’m going to need your help. We’re going to get the dirt on Henry Kissinger.”
“Shouldn’t we tell someone about this?” Driscoll said. “If you’re right about Nosgrove, he’s a murderer. We need to report this. He should be arrested.”
“By whom?” said Mason. “The FBI? And what would we report?”
Driscoll had no answer to that.
“I want to help too,” said Ed.
Mason shook his head. “Too dangerous. We need to keep you safe if you’re to do what you need to do.”
But Ed was determined not to be left out. “Everything that’s happened to me is because of him,” he said. “My wife is dead. Kajdas ruined my life. All because of Nosgrove. I want to find him.”
“And if you do find him, what then? You’re no match for Urizen. You’re not ready for him. Besides, he would spot you long before you…” Mason trailed off, suddenly frowning. “Those three men over there. Did any of them notice you or talk to you before I arrived?”
Ed tried hard not to look at the men in the booth. “No. Well… yes.”
“Which is it? No or yes?”
“One of them smiled at me when he came in.”
“Which one?”
“The one with all the hair.”
Mason stroked his beard, deep in thought. “Weinberger. Did he speak to you?”
Ed shook hi
s head.
Jonathan sighed deeply. “It was a mistake to meet you here. I should have known better. Those men are very likely under Nosgrove’s influence. If he learns who you are, you won’t survive long.” He took out his wallet and tossed a few bills on the table. “Finish up. We need to get you out of here.”
Alarmed by Mason’s sudden apprehension, Ed took one last gigantic bite of the souvlaki. It was quite good, as Mason had said, and he hated to leave good food on the table.
“They’re leaving,” said Driscoll.
Whatever the three men had been talking about in the back corner of the diner, their meeting was apparently finished. Ed was reaching for his Coke to wash down the souvlaki when they passed behind him on their way out. All at once, a wave of dread washed over him. It was similar to how he felt when he saw a spider: a sensation of intense disgust, almost strong enough to make him retch. His head swam and he knocked over his glass of Coke. Then they were gone, and the dread slowly lifted. Driscoll was mopping up Ed’s spilled drink with his napkin. Mason was watching Ed with deep concern.
“What is it, Ed?” said Jonathan. “What happened to you?”
“I… I don’t know,” Ed replied. “When they came near me, I just… it was like every bad sensation I’ve ever felt just hit me at once.”
Mason turned to watch the three men through the front window of the diner. They had parted ways, each one walking to his own car. “You can sense it, then,” Jonathan said quietly. “The evil of Urizen. You can feel his influence.”
“I don’t ever want to feel that again,” Ed muttered.
Mason looked troubled. “We need to keep you better hidden. Ken said you’re living in New York?” He didn’t wait for Ed to answer; he just kept talking, rapidly but precisely. “We have to assume your cover is blown. Go back to New York as soon as you can. Stay out of sight as much as possible. Talk to no one. Do you have a…a wife, or a girlfriend? Anyone close to you they might try to use?”
The Music of the Machine (The Book of Terwilliger 2) Page 18
