Dragonfly

by Dean R. Koontz

  “I guess you're going to tell me.”

  “He kept saying, 'You can't stop Dragonfly, you can't stop Dragonfly.'”

  They stared at each other.

  Finally Kirkwood said, “The police think he was just raving, that it doesn't mean anything.”

  “Maybe it doesn't.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I mean even to us.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Could be coincidence.'

  “Could be.”

  McAlister said, “Let me see that.”

  Kirkwood handed the newspaper to him.

  After he had read a few paragraphs, McAlister said, “Did she give a description of the man?”

  “Top of the second column.”

  McAlister read what the girl had told the police: her assailant had been fat, she meant really fat, three hundred pounds or more, and he was middle-aged, sloppily dressed, didn't belong in that expensive car, probably stole the car, she didn't know what kind of car, maybe a Cadillac or a Continental, all those luxury cars looked the same to her, she knew nothing about cars, she just knew he was fat and strong and kept saying she couldn't stop Dragonfly, whatever in the hell that was… With each word he read, McAlister felt the blood drain out of his face.

  Kirkwood leaned over the table and said, “Hey, do you recognize this guy?”

  No. It was impossible. It was crazy. It made no sense. He would never have taken such a risk.

  Rice?

  No.

  Rice?

  McAlister began to remember things and to connect them: Rice had been so eager to know whom McAlister was sending to Peking, even more eager than the President had been; the Committeemen had tried to kill Canning at his apartment within a couple of hours after Rice had been given his name; and Rice had lied about Bill Fredericks and the list of federal marshals who lived — Good Christ, the federal marshals!

  “Bob? Are you there?”

  The waiter brought their hearts of artichokes and the half-bottle of red wine.

  McAlister sat very still: stunned.

  The moment the waiter had gone, Kirkwood said, “You look like you've been pole-axed.”

  Softly, McAlister said, “I don't know… I may be wrong and… I have to be wrong! It would be such a foolish thing for him to do! What a risk to take in his position! Yet if he's as unbalanced, as completely crazy as he'd have to be to get involved in this, and if he's feeling the pressure half as much as I'm feeling it, he just might…” His voice trailed off.

  Frowning, Kirkwood said, “What in the name of God are you talking about?”

  McAlister stood up. “We don't have time for dinner.” He dropped his napkin and turned away from the table.

  “Bob?”

  McAlister hurried toward the front of the restaurant, weaving between the tables, nearly running.

  Bewildered, Kirkwood followed close behind him.

  PEKING: SATURDAY, 11:00 A.M.

  In the second-floor study of a stately old house in Peking, a man sat down at a large mahogany desk and unfolded a sheet of paper. He placed the paper squarely in the center of the green felt blotter. It was a list of numbers which had been transmitted by laser wireless in Washington, bounced off a relay satellite high over the Pacific Ocean, and picked up by a receiver in this house.

  The man at the desk smiled when he thought that the Chinese counterintelligence forces had surely monitored and recorded this same transmission at half a dozen different points along the Eastern Seaboard. Even now a score of code specialists would be trying to break down the numbers into some sensible message. But none of them would ever crack it, for there was no intrinsic alphabetic value to the numbers. They referred to chapters and page numbers within a certain book which was known only to the man in Washington and the man in this house.

  He poured himself some whiskey and water from the bottle and pitcher that stood on the desk.

  He opened the center drawer of the desk and took from it a pencil and a small brass pencil sharpener. Holding both hands over the wastebasket in order to keep the shavings from falling on the carpet, he put a needlelike point on the pencil and then placed it beside the list of numbers. He dropped the brass gadget into the desk, closed the drawer, and dusted his hands together.

  Still smiling, he tasted his whiskey.

  He was savoring the moment, drawing out the thrill of anticipation. He was not at all worried, for he knew precisely what the message would be, what it had to be. He felt fine.

  At last he turned around in his chair and took a copy of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows from the bookshelves behind him. This was the 1966 slipcased Grosset and Dunlap edition, illustrated by Dick Cuffari. In Washington, Andrew Rice had had the same edition at hand when he'd composed the message which had come in on the laser wireless.

  The first line of Rice's message read:

  8000650006

  The man at the desk opened The Wind in the Willows to Chapter Eight, which was titled “Toad's Adventures.” He counted to the sixty-fifth line from the start of that chapter and then located the sixth word in that line. He picked up the pencil and wrote:

  snapdragon

  He drank some more of the whiskey. It was excellent, due in large measure to the water with which he had cut it. You had to mix fine whiskey with the proper water; otherwise, you might just as well drink vinegar or moonshine — or that absolutely terrible rice wine which the Chinese fermented and served with such great pride. He had gone to considerable trouble to obtain the right water for this whiskey, and now he took time to enjoy it. After another sip, which he rolled on his tongue, he said “Ahhh,” and put down his glass.

  The second line of the number code read:

  10003210004

  Consulting The Wind in the Willows, he found that the fourth word in the three-hundred-twenty-first line of the first chapter was “fly.” He wrote that down and looked at what he had thus far:

  snapdragon fly

  He crossed out the first four letters and drew the rest of it together in one word:

  dragonfly

  He had another sip of whiskey.

  600030007

  He worked that out rather quickly and wrote the word “to” after “dragonfly.”

  600030008

  10002100003

  11000600010

  Gradually he worked his way down through the list of numbers, taking time out to sample his drink, now and then reading a passage out of which Rice had plucked a word. In half an hour he had decoded the entire message:

  dragonfly to be used

  as soon as possible

  stop

  within twenty-four

  hours maximum

  essential

  stop

  city will be unsafe

  for ninety-six hours

  after dragonfly

  is triggered

  stop

  save self

  but staff must be

  abandoned

  stop

  risk all

  end

  Humming softly and tunelessly, the man at the desk read the brief message several times, savoring it as he savored the whiskey. Then he put it through the paper shredder and watched the pieces flutter into the wastebasket.

  The largest and yet quickest war in history was about to begin.

  FOUR

  FAIRMOUNT HEIGHTS, MARYLAND:

  FRIDAY, 7:40 P.M.

  “I still don't see what the hell Sidney Greenstreet has to do with this,” Bernie Kirkwood said, leaning over the back of the front seat as the sound of the car's engine faded and the night silence closed in around them.

  Burt Nolan, the six-foot-four Pinkerton bodyguard who was behind the wheel of McAlister's white Mercedes, said, “Do you want me to come in with you, sir?”

  “There won't be any trouble here,” McAlister said. “You can wait in the car.” He opened the door and got out

  Scrambling out of the back seat, Kirkwood said, “I suppose I'm allowed
to tag along.”

  “Could I stop you?” McAlister asked.

  “No.”

  “Then by all means.”

  They went along the sidewalk to a set of three concrete steps that mounted a sloped lawn.

  “You've been damned close-mouthed since we left the restaurant,” Kirkwood said.

  “I guess I have.”

  “The description in the newspaper… You recognized the man who beat up on that hooker.”

  “Maybe I did.”

  At the top of the three concrete steps, there was a curving flagstone walk that led across a well-manicured lawn and was flanked on the right-hand side by a neatly trimmed waist-high wall of green shubbery.

  “Who is it?” Kirkwood asked.

  “I'd rather not say just yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “It's not a name you toss around lightly when you're discussing sex offenders.”

  “When will you toss it around, lightly or otherwise?”

  “When I know why Beau called him 'that Sidney Greenstreet.'”

  The house in front of them was a handsome three-story brick Tudor framed by a pair of massive Dutch elm trees. Light burned behind two windows on the third floor. The second floor was dark. On the ground level light shone out from stained, leaded windows: a rainbow of soft colors. The porch light glowed above the heavy oak door and was reflected by the highly polished pearl-gray Citroen S-M that was parked in the driveway.

  “Who is this Beau Jackson?” Kirkwood asked as McAlister rang the doorbell.

  “Cloakroom attendant at the White House.”

  “You're kidding.”

  “No.”

  “This is an accountant's neighborhood.”

  “What kind of neighborhood is that?”

  “Right below a doctor's neighborhood and right above a lawyer's.”

  “It isn't exactly what I was expecting,” McAlister admitted.

  “What does he do on the side, rob banks?”

  “Why don't you ask him?”

  “If he does rob banks,” Kirkwood said, “I'd like to join up with his gang.”

  A dark face peered at them through a tiny round window in the door. Then it disappeared, and a moment later the door opened.

  Beau Jackson was standing there in dark-gray slacks and a blue sport shirt. “Mr. McAlister!”

  “Good evening, Mr. Jackson.”

  “Come in, come in.”

  In the marble-floored foyer, McAlister said, “I hope I'm not interrupting your dinner.”

  “No, no,” Jackson said. “We never eat earlier than nine.”

  McAlister introduced Kirkwood, waited for the two men to shake hands, and said, “I'm here to talk to you about a man you once compared to Sidney Green-street.”

  Jackson's smile faded. “May I ask why you want to talk about him?”

  “I think he's involved in a major criminal conspiracy,” McAlister said. “That's all I can tell you. It's an extremely sensitive and top-secret matter.”

  Jackson pulled on his chin, made up his mind in a few seconds, and said, “Come on back to my den.”

  It was a large, pleasantly stuffy room. On two sides bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling. Windows and oil paintings filled the rest of the wall space. The desk was a big chunk of dark pine full of drawers and cubbyholes; and the top of it was littered with copies of The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and other financial publications.

  Picking up a Journal, Kirkwood said, “You don't rob banks, after all.”

  Jackson looked puzzled.

  “When I saw this beautiful house, I said you must rob banks on the side. But you're in the stock market.”

  “I just dabble in stocks,” Jackson said. “I'm mostly interested in the commodities market. That's where I've done best.” He pointed to a grouping of maroon-leather armchairs. “Have a seat, gentlemen.” While they settled down, he looked over the bookshelves and plucked several magazines from between the hard-bound volumes. He returned and sat down with them. To McAlister he said, “Evidently you've learned who Sidney Greenstreet was.”

  “Bernie told me,” McAlister said. “Greenstreet was one of the all-time great movie villains.”

  “A fat man who was seldom jolly,” Jackson said. “His performance as Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon is one of the greatest pieces of acting ever committed to film.”

  “He wasn't bad as the Japanese sympathizer in Across the Pacific” Kirkwood said.

  “Also one of my favorites,” Jackson said.

  “Of course,” Kirkwood said, “he wasn't always the villain. He did play good guys now and then. Like in Conflict, with Bogart and Alexis Smith. You know that one?”

  Before Jackson could answer, McAlister said, “Bernie, we are here on rather urgent business.”

  The black man turned to McAlister and said, “When I referred to Mr. Rice as 'that Sidney Green-street,' I meant that he is very cunning, perhaps very dangerous, and not anything at all like what he seems to be. He pretends liberalism. At heart he is a right-wing fanatic. He's a racist. A fascist.” Jackson's voice didn't rise with the strength of his judgments or acquire an hysterical tone; he sounded quite reasonable.

  “Mr. Rice? Andrew Rice? You mean the President's chief aide?” Kirkwood asked weakly. He looked as if he were about to mutter and drool in idiot confusion.

  Ignoring Kirkwood, certain that he was on the verge of learning something that he would have preferred not to know, McAlister stared hard at Jackson and said, “You're making some pretty ugly accusations. Yet I'm sure that you don't know Rice personally. You probably don't know him even as well as I do — and that's not very well at all. So what makes you think you know what's in his heart?”

  Back in the early 1960s, Jackson explained, he had reached a point in his life when he finally felt secure, finally knew that he had gotten out of the ghetto for once and all. He had plenty of tenure on the White House domestic staff. He was making a damned good salary. His investments had begun to pay off handsomely, and he had been able to move into a good house in the suburbs. He had been successful long enough to have accepted his new position, and he had gotten over the lingering fear that everything he had worked for might be taken away from him overnight.

  “All my life,” he told McAlister, “I've enjoyed books. I've believed in continuous self-education. In 1963, when I moved to the suburbs, I felt financially secure enough to devote most of my spare time to my reading. I decided to establish a study program and concentrate on one subject at a tune. Back then, I was most interested in racial prejudice, having been a victim of it all of my life. I wanted to understand the reasons behind it. The psychology behind it. So I worked up a reading list, both fiction and nonfiction, and did considerable research. Eventually I was led to these two magazines owned by a man named J. Prescott Hennings.”

  “I know of him,” McAlister said.

  Jackson said, “He's published some of the most hateful racist propaganda ever committed to ink and paper in this country. It's not all directed against blacks. Hennings despises Jews, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos…”

  “I've seen copies of the magazines, but I've never bothered to read one of them,” McAlister said.

  Jackson picked up the first magazine in his lap and opened it to an article titled “Negro Mental Inferiority.” He handed it to McAlister and said, “Here's a little something written by Andrew Rice in 1964.”

  Reading the first several paragraphs, McAlister winced. He passed the magazine to Kirkwood.

  Jackson gave another one to McAlister. “Here's an especially nasty little number titled 'Has Hitler Been Maligned?'”

  “Christ!” McAlister said, feeling sick to his stomach. Glancing only perfunctorily at the article, he quickly passed it on to Kirkwood. Weakly, he said, “Well… People do change.”

  “Not as radically as this,” Jackson said. “Not from a fanatical fascist to a paragon of liberal virtue.” He spoke with conviction, as if he'd had considerable time to think about
it. “And people certainly don't change so quickly as Rice appears to have done. That paean to Hitler was published exactly one year before Harvard University Press issued his Balancing the Budget in a Welfare State, which was the best seller and which was overflowing with liberal sentiment.”

  Skimming through the Hitler article, Kirkwood said, “This is the work of an Andrew Rice who belongs in a nice little padded cell somewhere.”

  “Believe me,” Jackson said gloomily, “that Andrew Rice is the same one who is today advising the President.” He opened another magazine to an article titled 'The Chinese Threat,' and he gave this to McAlister. “In this one Rice advocates an immediate nuclear attack on Red China in order to keep it from becoming a major nuclear power itself.”

  Shocked for reasons Jackson couldn't grasp, McAlister read this piece from beginning to end. By the time he had finished it, he was damp with perspiration. “How could he ever have become accepted as a major liberal thinker when he had a background like this?”

  “He published eleven of those articles, the last in October of 1964,” Jackson said. “They all appeared in magazines with terribly small circulations.”

  “And even then, not everyone who received a copy read it,” said Kirkwopd.

  “Right,” Jackson said. “My guess is that no one who read those magazine pieces also read his liberal work beginning with the Harvard book. Or if a few people did read both — well, they never remembered the byline on the articles and didn't connect that work with the book. As the years passed, the chance of anyone making the connection grew progressively smaller. And when Rice did move into a position of real power, it was as a Presidential aide. Unlike Cabinet members, aides do not have to be confirmed by the Senate. Because Rice doesn't have an engaging or even particularly interesting personality, he hasn't been much of a target for newspapermen. No one has combed through his past; they all go back to the Harvard book and never any further.”

  As he wiped the perspiration from his face with his handkerchief, McAlister said, “Why haven't you blown the whistle on him?”

  Jackson said, “How?”

  “Call up a reporter and put him on the right track. Even give him your copies of the magazines.”