“Agnes, thank you for calling. But next time, call Mr. Rios and forward a message through him. I’ll get right back to you. Goodbye.” He broke the connection and buzzed Rios. “Call Serick and tell him I want to see him this morning.” Then, “Agnes, are you still on the line?” There was no answer.
“Now that was a wake-up call,” he mumbled.
9:35 A.M., Monday, April 12,
The White House, Washington, D.C.
Stephan Serick was upset. He stomped up and down in his corner office and glared first at Durant, then the Director of Central Intelligence, and then Kyle Broderick. “Why wasn’t I told about this Ebola virus sooner?” His Latvian accent was even stronger than normal, an indication of his anger. “This can destabilize the Middle East.”
“That’s a bit of an overreaction,” Broderick said. “The hotheads learned their lesson in the Gulf War.”
“You,” Serick rumbled, “missed the real lesson of the Gulf War.”
“And what is this so-called real lesson?” the director of central intelligence asked.
“I thought it was obvious,” Durant replied. “You don’t take on the United States unless you have nuclear weapons.”
Serick shot him a pleased look. It wasn’t often they were on the same side of an issue. “A weaponized delivery system for this Ebola virus is the poor man’s atomic bomb.”
The director of central intelligence, or DCI, sputtered. “Ridiculous. My Middle East desk had given the AIG a low priority not worth the President’s attention. I thought—”
“You didn’t think,” Serick interrupted. “The CIA is more concerned with determining policy than doing its job.”
It was the truth. The DCI was in orbit around Kyle Broderick’s political constellation, which dominated White House policy. Consequently, when the DCI had discussed the Armed Islamic Group with Broderick months before, the two of them had decided it was better to ignore the AIG than upset the President’s Middle East policy. Broderick tried to change the subject. “I had no idea the Project was such a powerful tool. I’m quite sure if we’d known about what the Armed Islamic Group was doing, the President would have responded accordingly.”
“The Project really belongs to the CIA, not the National Security Agency,” the DCI grumbled, gnawing on the bone of who controlled what. “The NSA should have never been made a separate operating agency.”
It was an old political battle and Durant had offered the Project to the government only when it was out of the CIA’s reach. In his view, the CIA had become ossified and incapable of reforming itself. “This information turned up during a test run,” Durant said. He decided a little lying was necessary to keep them focused on the threat. “My technicians can explain how it happened but it was pure luck. Unfortunately, we’re still twelve to eighteen months away from the Project being fully operational. But I thought you should be aware of what we discovered.”
“You should have shown it to me first,” the DCI grumbled.
“What is important at this time,” Broderick said, “is that we determine a proportional response to this threat.”
“I never understood that term,” Durant said.
“It means,” Broderick said, “that the President will respond accordingly.”
12:20 P.M., Monday, April 19,
Sacramento, Calif.
Hank Sutherland put the finishing touches on his apartment, making sure the bookcase was dusted and his collection of pewter miniature soldiers was properly arranged. He suppressed a longing for Rosa, their former maid. But he could no longer afford her, not after the divorce, selling the house, and quitting his job. He glanced at Beth’s picture that stood in its new place on the side table. The photo was six years old but Beth Page hadn’t aged a day. He often wondered about that. It must be in the genes, he decided.
He checked his watch; the mail should have arrived. He went out to the mailboxes, surprised by the unusually warm temperature for mid-April. Two letters and the usual junk. The top letter was a bill that was thirty days overdue. He would have to pay it and let something else slip, especially if he was to come up with the $9,000 in prepayment penalties. The second letter was from Beth. He turned the letter over looking for the return address. There wasn’t any. He checked the postmark: JFK International Airport in New York. Beth loved to travel so that made sense. By the time he walked back to his tiny apartment, his shirt was streaked with sweat. Once inside, he turned up the air conditioner and carefully laid the letter against her silver-framed photograph without opening it. What do you want now, Beth?
He sat down in front of the computer to work on the manuscript of None Call It Justice and stared at the blank screen. Nothing. The gentle whir of the air conditioner turned to a clanking sound and stopped. I can’t believe this, he moaned inwardly. He called the apartment manager and listened to the current crop of excuses about why it couldn’t be fixed until the next day. Rather than face the building heat that would soon turn the apartment into an oven, he opted to go out for a late lunch. He quickly showered and shaved and dressed in crisply pressed walking shorts and an open-necked sports shirt. He pulled on crew socks before slipping on his Birkenstock sandals. Just before he left the apartment, he glanced at Beth’s still unopened letter. It could wait.
Superior Court Judge Jane Evans parked her car on the levee road’s narrow shoulder across from the Virgin Sturgeon. She hadn’t meant to stop and wanted to get home to spend some time in her garden. It wasn’t often she could slip away from her office before four in the afternoon. But when she caught sight of Sutherland’s immaculately polished eight-year-old Volvo, she changed her mind. She was a big woman but moved with a fluid grace as she walked down the jetway that had been salvaged from the airport. The sheltered walkway descended to a barge that had been converted into a restaurant and bar where the trendy crowd watered. She found him sitting next to the railing staring wistfully at a cruiser heading down the Sacramento River. He was nursing a warm beer.
Without a word, she sat down at his table. “Why did you quit?” she asked.
Sutherland stared at his drink before answering. “Meredith.”
“So you lost a case after how long?”
“Four years.”
“It had to happen sooner or later.”
“That one was a slam dunk,” he replied. “Cooper was on the ropes. Those bastards were guilty and everyone knew it. What in hell happened to justice?”
“Is that the title of the book you’re writing?”
“No. I’m calling it None Call It Justice.”
Evans ordered an iced tea from a waitress wearing a pair of shorts that could stop traffic. “You could cause an accident dressed like that,” she told the girl. The girl smiled and flounced away, not recognizing her. “Don’t show up in my court dressed liked that,” Evans murmured. She looked at Sutherland. “How do you think I felt? Meredith took my court away from me.”
“You could have stopped him,” Sutherland mumbled.
“True, but that would have guaranteed those Neanderthals would have walked. That was a good jury. I was hoping you could save it.”
“But I couldn’t,” he muttered. “Who am I kidding? I couldn’t even save my own marriage.”
“You were a stepping stone on Beth’s path to bigger and better things. Your marriage was finished when she had the affair with Cassidy.” At the time, Ben Cassidy was the state’s attorney general and a fast-rising politician with a future on the national scene.
“Cassidy wasn’t the first,” Sutherland muttered, feeling very sorry for himself. This was not his first beer.
“Why did you put up with it? This is a small town and sooner or later, it would all have come out.”
“Beth always made sure there were, ah, consolation prizes.”
“Like Cassidy’s wife?” Evans asked, fitting the pieces together. Sutherland didn’t answer and only stared across the river. “You’re better off without her. She’s going for the whole enchilada. Besides, the wor
d is that you can’t afford to quit.”
“I unloaded the house and moved into a small apartment. I’m on terminal leave and still in the Air Force Reserve. By pulling a couple days’ duty about twice a month I should get by.”
“Not for long,” Evans said. “Damn it, Hank, you’re one of the good ones. You can make a difference.” She saw Sutherland’s eyes glance toward the jetway and caught the slight flush on his neck. It was one of the many things that made her a good judge. That, and the fact that she cared. She turned in the direction he was looking. Marcy Bangor, the reporter from the Sacramento Union was standing by the reception stand. Marcy was dressed in a pair of cutoff shorts that matched the waitress’s for brevity and a halter top that was a size too small. She clopped across the deck, her high-heeled sandals announcing her entrance.
“I’ll get by,” Sutherland repeated. “Besides, I’ve got an agent in New York interested.” Marcy wiggled onto a bar stool.
“What’s the book really about?” Evans asked.
“It’s an exposé on our system of justice. Be honest, we’re just pissin’ in the wind and getting splattered by it.”
“Hank, what we’re doing is making a system work. The bottom line: Our job is to support and defend the Constitution.”
“Against all enemies foreign and domestic,” Sutherland added.
“I took an oath to make that happen,” Evans said. “Barring the second coming of Christ, it’s the best thing we got for now.”
Marcy waved from the bar. “Hi, Hank.” Sutherland waved back.
Evans came to her feet. “I think the consolation prize has arrived. Hank, get your act together. You can make a difference. But if you’re searching for perfect justice, you’ll have to look outside the courtroom.” She turned and walked away as Marcy slipped off the bar stool, the friction pulling her shorts up even higher.
“It’s hot,” Marcy said. She sat on the edge of Sutherland’s bed as he slid back the sliding doors that opened onto a patio. “What happened to the air conditioner?”
“It’s broken,” he told her. He moved a fan into the doorway and turned it on. “I hope you like getting hot and sticky.”
She rubbed her hands on her bare midriff, feeling the perspiration. A long and drawn out whisper escaped. “Ha-a-ank, I’m not into kinky stuff. We can go to my place.”
“Neither am I.” The heat of the day hadn’t broken yet and the night air blowing into the bedroom was still warm with just a hint of river smell. “You ever been in New Or’lans when you can cut the night like soft butter?” His voice had taken on a richer, more husky sound, almost Southern. It was enough to tease her imagination.
He kicked off his Birkenstocks and pulled off his socks. She stood up and pulled his shirt loose, undoing the buttons. “Strip the bed,” he murmured. She helped him pull off the bed cover and shove the pillows on the floor. She sat back down on one side and looked over her shoulder as he crawled across the bed to her. Kneeling behind her, he gently rubbed her shoulders as her hands clasped the edge of the bed. She turned into the breeze, closed her eyes, and let the warm air ruffle her hair. His hands touched her waist.
“God, it’s hot,” she whispered.
His fingers traced a path across the top of her shorts, barely touching her navel. He felt a slight tremor dance across her stomach. “It’s going to get hotter, darlin’,” he promised, his voice now darkly Southern.
Marcy rolled over in bed. It was still dark and he was gone. “Hank, where are you from?”
“Bastrop, Louisiana,” he answered from the living room. “Not much there. A nice little town to escape from and go back to occasionally.”
Marcy sat on the edge of the bed, clutched a pillow to her breast, and buried her cheek in it, feeling warm and safe. She stood and took a few steps to the open patio door and let the warm night air wash over her naked body. She dropped the pillow and nudged it with her toe into the moonlight before padding into the living room. Sutherland was sitting on the couch in the dark, and like her, he was still naked. He was holding an envelope. “Can you read in the dark?” she asked. He shook his head. “Who’s it from?”
“My ex-wife.”
“What does she want?”
“Beats the hell out of me. I haven’t opened it.” She sat on his lap and nibbled an earlobe. “Ouch!”
“Do you have any idea what you did to me in there?” she breathed in the same ear.
He laughed. “Wasn’t that the idea?”
She licked at his damaged earlobe. “Are you going to read the letter?”
His arms encircled her as he tore the letter in two and threw it on the floor. “Nope. I’m done with her.”
She nipped his ear again. “Whoa! You’ve got sharp teeth.”
“If only you knew.” She stood and pulled him back to the bedroom and out onto the patio. She pushed him into a chair and knelt on the pillow in front of him. She rubbed his knees, spreading them apart. “Try not to wake the neighbors.”
Sutherland was cooking breakfast when Marcy came out of the bedroom wearing one of his white shirts and holding a cordless phone to her ear. “I’ll get right on it,” she said. She dropped the phone in its cradle and leaned over his shoulder. “That smells good. I didn’t know you were a cook.” He reached under the shirt and patted her bare bottom. “You are a bit of a goat, Hank. I’ve got a story assignment over on the coast near Fort Ross. Want to come along?”
“What’s the story?”
“About some group. They don’t have a name.”
“Millenarians?” he asked.
“What’s a millenarian?”
“Someone who believes they’ll find salvation at the end of the millennium.”
“We’ll find out when we get there.”
Marcy talked as she drove along the coast road. “I love this drive.” Sutherland relaxed in the passenger’s seat, glad that he didn’t have to navigate. He hated driving and got lost anytime he ventured beyond the city limits. Because it was mid-April, the road was deserted and the vegetation lush with the promise of spring. “Maybe we can spend the night at Mendocino,” she said. He said it sounded good to him and gave her a lecherous leer. “I think this is the turn-off.” She turned into a narrow lane that led toward the ocean. They drove past well-tended fields and into a farmstead on the edge of the bluffs that overlooked the Pacific. “What a beautiful place,” she said, stopping to take some photos.
Sutherland followed Marcy around as she toured the farmstead and interviewed the commune leader. He was a pleasant, ordinary-looking man in his early thirties who took a great deal of pride in his community. They walked past an expanse of lawn where a small group of children were clustered around their teacher listening to her read a story. “This reminds me of a kibbutz I visited in Israel,” Marcy said.
The man smiled and said they were just themselves, getting on with life. “Would you like to join us for supper?” he asked. “We eat early so we can meditate at sunset. We let the diurnal movement of nature dictate our lives, not the arbitrary ticking of a clock.” He led them into the commune’s dining hall where they sat at long benches. Large tureens of soup were brought out of the kitchen with baskets of hot, freshly baked bread and pitchers of crystal clear water. The people joined hands and silently prayed. Then the room exploded into a symphony of laughter and happy voices as they ate.
Afterward, Marcy and Sutherland followed them to a grove of eucalyptus trees nestled at the edge of the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Sutherland sat on a bench and studied the waves lapping against the rocks eighty feet below him. “This is pretty peaceful now,” he said. “But I bet it can get pretty wild during a storm.”
“Shush,” Marcy commanded. All around them the people were gazing at the sunset in silence. He was amazed how quickly the sun sank below the horizon and assumed they would leave once it had disappeared. But the people sat there as the fading light painted the clouds and sky with shades of ever-changing yellow, gold, and red. It had never occurred
to Sutherland that the most magnificent part of the sunset happened after the sun had set.
Instinctively, he looked around, letting the evidence speak for itself. What he saw was a group of sixty-four people living a pleasant existence in an idyllic commune. There was no ideology or weirdness driving them and they didn’t dress funny or act strangely. It was too good to be true, which in a D.A.’s world was an alarm. I’m not in that business anymore, he thought. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Then it was dark. He and Marcy walked in silence back to the car. “Not much of a story here,” she complained. “A waste of time.”
They got into the car and again, she drove. “I got a feeling they were searching for something, or maybe waiting,” he said.
“Waiting for what?”
He shrugged. “The end of the millennium? Someone to give them direction? Until then, they’re tending their garden.”
“I like that,” she said. “Tending their garden. The Gardeners. Still not a story, though.”
“There’s a story here, trust me. Keep asking yourself why? When you get an answer to the first why, probe deeper and ask why again. Keep at it until you get to the bottom line. It will surprise you.” He chattered on, wanting to discuss the dynamics of group behavior. But Marcy was bored.
“Hank, you were a D.A. too long. Besides, that’s not what reporting is all about.” She reached out and touched his cheek. “It’s been fun and the sex was great. But it’s not going to work, is it?”
He knew she was right. Without a word, she drove through Mendocino and headed for Sacramento.
5
9:55 A.M., Thursday, April 22,
The White House, Washington, D.C.
The Vice President was waiting when Art Rios drove the Lincoln Town Car up to the west entrance of the White House. A marine guard snapped the door open and Durant got out. The two men shook hands and walked to the Cabinet Room where the National Security Council was holding its first meeting since the San Francisco bombing. “We want to take a hard look at the Armed Islamic Group,” the Vice President said, “and the President asked for you to join us.” Durant read between the lines: The Project was going to be part of the discussion.
Against All Enemies Page 5
