Blown

by Francine Mathews

  . . . I applaud this man’s courage and only wish my family duties did not prevent me from riding out right now to join him . . . Four hundred dead in Washington is four hundred less of the vermin we’ll have to kill later to cleanse this nation . . . I wish he’d hit New York and Chicago and Los Angeles, too, maybe then all the fucking non-whites who’ve ruined this country would go back to the holes they crawled out of . . . If God had wanted those runners to survive he’d have given them the strength to do it. Burn in hell I say . . . Darien Atwood’s got the welcome mat out for all you Jew assholes on the ash heap . . .

  Those postings and hundreds of others like them, some anonymous and some attributed to nicknames or handles of nauseating swagger, all vicious, filled the chat rooms of neo-Nazi Web sites the FBI had followed all day. Ricin Boy had a growing host of fans in America’s heartland, all waiting for his next move like children agog at exploits of Robin Hood. But none of them—not www.aryannations.org or www.posse-comitatus.org or www.americannaziparty.com or any of the thousands of white supremacist Web sites Tom’s Domestic Terrorism unit monitored—dropped a hint as to where the next blow would fall.

  Somewhere down the highway, Tom thought savagely, beyond the next pool of blood.

  He did not understand a world where the murder of a young mother was cause for high-five congratulations.

  In the backseat of Julie Cohen’s car, Jason Bovian leafed through the Becker file. In the thirteen months since her son’s death, Rebekah Becker had attempted suicide three times. Twice with pills, once with a knife she’d used to hack at her wrists. Medical records were privileged information, but the local hospital, concerned about Becker’s mental state, had alerted West Virginia’s department of human services and requested outreach. Assessment attempts proved unsuccessful. Representatives of the department had twice driven up to the Becker house. Twice they’d been threatened with a gun.

  Bovian frowned. The woman could kill herself and welcome provided he learned three things: Was her hair brown? Were her prints on the back door handle of Norm Wilhelm’s limo? And had she driven the gray K-car in a cop’s uniform while her husband fired at a defenseless paramedic that morning?

  He glanced up as Julie eased the Camry to a stop. There it was in the headlights: a dripping steel cattle guard and security gate in front of a double-wide trailer mounted on cinder blocks, a clearing beyond maybe fifty feet square. A stockade fence twice as high as a man, razor wire spooled along the upper edge. A set of muddy tire tracks leading to the side of the house. There was a utility shed, and a snowmobile on a disengaged trailer; a child’s wading pool, cracked at one side; a dispirited plastic play structure that had once been orange. Several winters had weathered it to peach.

  Bovian waited for the inevitable bark of a dog but none came. From the appearance of the Becker household, he should expect the steel gate facing them to be wired. The search warrant he’d brought was useless—unless Rebekah Becker herself opened the trailer to them.

  She walked slowly down the driveway in her baggy old sweatshirt as though it were perfectly normal to find strangers at the end of the road. She carried a flashlight because it was dark and raining and she could not help remembering the other time, nine o’clock on an October night when her boy should’ve been safe in his own bed. She’d known, even as Daniel took the long walk from the trailer door to the police car pulled up in front of the barrier, that the news was bad. She’d known her Dolf was gone. Killed by them sumbitches in the government who refuse to let honest folks live in peace. She rolled her arms in the stretchy cotton fabric of the sweatshirt and plodded forward, thinking of her son’s face in the Charleston morgue. Oh Sweet Jesus. What did I ever do wrong in this life to deserve pain like that? It gnawed at her guts like a tapeworm.

  No police car this time, just a cute little silver compact with West Virginia plates. A girl and two men getting out, all of them in suits. Suits. The girl ought to be home makin’ dinner for her man. What are the suits doing in the driveway? Is it Daniel, Dearest Jesus? Is he caught already, him and that boy without his dinner? For an instant Rebekah wished she’d just stayed in the house and pretended nobody was home. But Daniel had told her to act normal if anybody came. He didn’t want people getting suspicious.

  “Mrs. Becker?” the girl called. She had dark hair cut to her chin and nice brown eyes. A real cute little thing. What she wanted with going door-to-door Rebekah did not know.

  “Who’s asking?” she demanded.

  “I’m Julie Cohen, FBI.” The girl reached into her raincoat and Rebekah flinched. But it was no gun—just a badge she was handing through the iron grille of the front gate.

  Rebekah didn’t take it. She just stood there, frozen as stone, with her hands rolled in the sweatshirt. Sweet Jesus. FBI. And the Leader’s boy taken off in a truck to God knows where. Daniel—

  But Daniel had left hours ago. She was on her own.

  “What you want?”

  “Are you Rebekah Becker?”

  “Maybe I am, maybe I ain’t.”

  The FBI woman stuffed her badge back in her pocket. Snake that she is, with her cute haircut and her foreign car. Nothing but a Federal.

  This time one of the men stepped forward, nice-enough looking, with his clipped hair and blue eyes, another plastic badge in his hand. Rebekah didn’t bother to look at it. Meant nothing to her. The calling card of the Devil.

  “Stan Heyduk, FBI—and this is Special Agent Jason Bovian,” he said, his voice curt. “We’re looking for Mrs. Becker. Her brother, Norman Wilhelm, was found dead this afternoon.”

  The world tipped sideways, reeled like a drunken man, and Rebekah reached involuntarily for the steel gate, her worn hands gripping the top bar. Daniel. You wouldn’t. Not Norm. Not my Norm.

  “Dead?” she repeated stiffly. “How, dead?”

  “He was shot in the head.”

  “What kind of shit you tellin’ me? Norm’s not dead.”

  “I’m afraid he is, Ms.—”

  Daniel. Daniel, Daniel—how could you? A bullet in his head. Just like Dolf. Poor Norm, who’d never hurt nobody, who didn’t even see it was a crime to work for that Jew Whore what the Zoggites put in power.

  “Are you Mr. Wilhelm’s sister Rebekah?” the FBI man persisted.

  Oh, Norm. Now there’s none of us Wilhelms left.

  She nodded once, her face set in granite. No tears. This is what it meant to live in the End Times: Survival came from the decisions you made. Daniel had done what he had to; he was a soldier, for God’s sake. He’d known Norm would blab everything that’d happened once the kid turned up missing. He’d known he owed absolute secrecy to the Leader, until the Overthrow triumphed. This terrible sacrifice. Her brother.

  “Mrs. Becker. We need you to come into the Charleston field office to discuss the disposition of the body. And to answer a few questions.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  The girl held up her hands placatingly. “When you last saw your brother, for instance.”

  Seven hours ago. Christ Almighty.

  “It’s just the usual procedure in a death of this kind, Mrs. Becker. We’re all terribly sorry for your loss.”

  “Cohen,” Rebekah said suddenly. “That’s a Jewish name, isn’t it?”

  “Would you come with us now?” the girl asked. “Or would you prefer to talk inside?”

  Rebekah stared at the Federal—at her unlined face, the pale lipstick so perfectly applied to her firm mouth. Jewish. No wonder she ain’t at home like a respectable woman. Doing Satan’s work at the dinner hour.

  “Is your husband here, Mrs. Becker?”

  With a blaze of understanding Rebekah saw it all, then: The FBI was lying to her. Daniel would never hurt Norm. They’d tried to use her sorrow to get her to break. To betray her man.

  But she was tougher than that. She knew what she had to do. She’d known ever since Daniel left her standing by the abandoned bike at the side of the road. She, too, was a soldier of the E
nd Times.

  A tide of rage surged upward from Bekah’s shoes—rage mingled with a hideous joy. This time she’d seen through their lies and obscenities first. This time, there’d be no body waiting on the morgue’s cold slab for her to identify.

  She released her hold on the steel gate.

  “You’d better come in,” she told them all. “I’ll answer your questions right now.”

  Tom Shephard took the call forty-three minutes later on his way to the Alleghenies. He swore aloud for a full two minutes, Bovian’s eager face suspended before his eyes. Then he turned the rental car around and headed back toward Charleston.

  Later, when the team sent out from Bureau Headquarters picked through the debris and reconstructed the crime, they came to the conclusion Rebekah had been wearing the belt of explosives throughout the conversation at her front gate. But she’d bided her time until the Devil’s Spawn who’d come to deceive her were standing in the trailer’s small kitchen, which smelled faintly of fried pork and baked beans. She’d gathered them all in a tight knot near the kitchen table before she pulled the cord and blew herself and the trailer straight to Jesus.

  Part 3

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23

  Chapter 36

  KALORAMA, 5:57 A.M.

  “Mommy! Mommy!”

  The wail from the makeshift bed on Dana’s chaise woke George Enfield at three minutes before six o’clock that Tuesday morning. Mallory, in the grip of a night terror, arms flailing among the down pillows. The child was reaching for someone who would never hold her again, for the perfect childhood swallowed in a yawning pit. It had been the same the night before: She would not sleep alone in her room, and her dreams were restless. He thrust himself out of bed and took three steps to the little girl’s side, lifted her by the shoulders, soothed her awake. Sshhhhhh. You’re okay. You’re okay. Which of course was the biggest lie.

  Mallory’s tiger eyes—more his than Dana’s—fluttered open and she stared at him, unseeing for an instant. Then memory lurched back and her expression flattened; she turned her face into his pajamas, buried it there, as though if she shut out this day she could recapture the one she’d been dreaming. Dana striding like a racehorse down M Street, maybe? Dana tall and elegant in one of her spangled evening gowns? Yesterday he’d stood for a full eight minutes in the scented darkness of his wife’s closet, breathing in the last of her.

  He smoothed Mallory’s hair and said nothing, both of them bleached in the faint light of early morning. Another day, he thought, pretending to go on.

  He had done this before—mourned a wife dead too soon. Mary Alice Carver she’d been, a Chicago banker’s daughter, mangled in the wreckage of a commuter plane off Sea Island, Georgia, twenty years ago. In the blackest depths of his sleepless nights he asked himself why he was cursed with this tendency to lose the people he loved most. Was it God’s way of evening the score? He’d grown up a fortunate son, privileged and sheltered, groomed for public office. He’d been either too young or too old for the major wars, sailed through college and law school, was undefeated in his bids for political seats. But here, in the heart of his home, where he’d kept the only thing that really mattered—here, he was as cursed as Job.

  His grip tightened on Mallory’s thin shoulders and she curled into his embrace, half asleep again. He could not replace Dana. But he could devote himself to the child she’d left behind.

  He laid her tenderly back down against the pillows and brushed his hand across her forehead. She had another bit of hell lying in wait for her: the funeral, scheduled for Friday. Her first taste of public violation. Of reporters scavenging among the bones of her grief.

  George stared out at the tulip tree rising beyond the window, its branches etched against the brightening sky. Another day without her. The first time—in the hours after Mary Alice’s death—he’d vowed to show nothing. He was a public figure, after all. He had to instill confidence and bear up despite adversity; it was important for his constituency to see. Strength. George Enfield had strength. A quality people needed to believe in.

  This time he didn’t care if the networks caught his fury in full frame, if his voice broke in the microphone and his careful politician’s mien shattered like a bludgeoned mirror. Dana had died for the most vicious of reasons. A random victim of the politics of hate. The world he’d polished like an apple, the bright shining lies of government he’d supported and upheld, had failed her.

  He left his sleeping daughter and trudged down the stairs to retrieve the morning paper.

  On the front page, he found Steve Price’s profile of Caroline Carmichael.

  “Where is she?” he demanded when he’d been put through to the Oval Office. “Where is this bitch you’ve set up as a hero? She’s been canned and left town and nobody can tell me how to find her. Not even Price will pick up his damn phone.”

  Bigelow was an old hand at managing the violent and the enraged. “George,” he soothed. “My deepest sympathy. You’ve lost the world in Dana, I know. Your pain and grief must be terrible. How’s that beautiful little girl o’ yours?”

  “Fine,” Enfield said abruptly. “Devastated, naturally. But—”

  “Hope you got our flowers. Adele sends her love. Our thoughts are with you.”

  “Yes. Thank you. What I wanted to—”

  “We’ll be with you Friday, of course, at the National Cathedral. I’ve suggested we hold a general memorial service one day soon, for all the people hurt by this vicious lunatic. I spent part of yesterday on the Mall, you know, in one of the medical tents. Blows your mind, buddy. People dyin’ in agony, and for no possible reason they or I can understand. But you know that better than anyone. Shit, I’m preachin’ to the converted.”

  “Have you seen the Post, Mr. President?”

  A fractional pause. “Yes, siree. Wouldn’t be a mornin’ without the daily dose o’ dirt those folks shovel on my plate.”

  “I plan to ask for a formal Congressional investigation of the intelligence-gathering process leading up to the Marine Corps Marathon.” George said it bluntly.

  “If you’ve read the paper, you know we’ve got a suspected terrorist sittin’ in jail right now in Germany.”

  “I don’t live in Germany. Neither did my wife,” George retorted scathingly. “I don’t care what happened there last week. I want to know what’s going on right now, right in my own backyard. The questions Steve Price raises—complicity and cover-up at the highest levels—are too serious to ignore. People are dying, Jack. Dana died.”

  “Searching for someone to blame, George?” Bigelow inquired kindly. “Don’t think it’ll help. Makes you feel better in the short term, but it just pisses people off in the end. Tragedy’s tragedy because it comes without warning. Otherwise we’d give it a different name.”

  “Like politics?”

  Bigelow laughed, ignoring the bitterness in George’s voice. “Glad you haven’t lost your sense of humor. Kiss that little girl for me, now.”

  He hung up before George could ask again where Caroline Carmichael had gone.

  Chapter 37

  FREDERICK, MARYLAND, 6:31 A.M.

  When the sun rose faint and acid that Tuesday morning, Caroline was already sipping coffee in Steve Price’s Boxster, which was exactly the kind of fast car she expected the reporter to drive. They were just outside of Frederick, Maryland, and heading for the Cumberland Gap; Caroline was concentrating on getting the hot restorative liquid in her mouth without melting her latex.

  She’d traded Jennifer Lacey’s regulation short black skirt and high heels for a pair of close-fitting black Lycra pants and a black cashmere sweater; she could move and breathe in these without having to think about them. In deference to Raphael’s Chapel, however, she had submitted to the chest prosthesis. She’d secretly always wanted to know what it felt like to have large breasts, and now she knew: as though she’d strapped on armor. Raphael’s artwork might not stop bullets—but Caroline was willing to bet it would thwart a knife.r />
  “Awake yet?” Price asked.

  “No.” He’d insisted she get some sleep last night—the first real sleep she’d had in forty-eight hours—and it was like heroin to an addict in withdrawal: She could not get enough. “How much longer do we have?”

  His eyes flicked down at the dashboard clock. “Another hour, maybe. We’ll stop for food before then.”

  They were on their way toward a place called Rochester: a small town buried in western Pennsylvania. A map lay open on Caroline’s knees. The coffee was intended to help her follow it.

  She’d said nothing of this strange collaboration with Price to Cuddy when he’d called her cell phone from Dulles last night. He hadn’t had time to chat.

  I’m in the men’s room, he’d said, and I’m on my way to Berlin. I’ll call when I can.

  “You’re going to see Eric? Oh, God, Cuddy . . .”

  What she’d wanted to say was Save him, save him, but fear and longing overwhelmed her. She wanted to drop everything—the secrecy and the hunt and the urgent need to find Jozsef—and run to Eric’s prison cell. The thought that Cuddy would be with him in a matter of hours made her heart leap. Maybe the Agency could work a deal.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Scottie. He’s already on the plane.”

  Hope died. “Then how in hell are you going to—”

  “I’ve got to go, Caroline.”

  “Sleeper, Tool, and Fist, Cud,” she urged before he could hang up. “Ask Eric what they mean.”

  She thought they were on the trail of one of the three now, but it was equally possible she’d thrown Steve Price into a wild-goose chase. The journalist did not seem to mind. The fact that she’d gone black in her own city and was practically a fugitive from the law did not disturb him. He told her he could scent a great story. Waiting for them somewhere in Rochester, Pennsylvania.