Sam found herself with mixed feelings on the subject. She’d watched the movers and shakers work their crooked magic for a lot of years, and she wasn’t particularly enamored with the inner machinations of the world’s self-proclaimed bastion of freedom and decency, but there were practical considerations. Like a paycheck. Those were still handy for Sam.
And there were bona-fide assholes in the world in need of removal from circulation.
One of them might be sitting in the backseat, she reminded herself, putting her game face back on.
Dan stepped off the airplane, walked down the steps, and shook Sam’s hand. His hair was matted, and he had an upholstery line running across his face like a tectonic feature. “Good nap?” Sam asked.
Dan nodded. “How’d you know?”
She pointed to his face. “Bed burn. But don’t worry. I don’t begrudge you a few winks now and again.”
“Boss of the year.”
Brock hobbled over and shook Dan’s hand. Sam looked at the two most important men in her life, her lover and her deputy, and laughed inwardly at the contrast. Brock was tall, rangy, athletic, and a bit more graceful than average. Dan was a bowling ball, short and squatty, with short hair and small feet, all muscle, steroids Sam would have guessed, except he always passed the random drug tests at Homeland.
“Where are the reinforcements?” Sam asked.
“What am I, chopped liver?” Dan asked with mock indignation. “Actually, all the policy wonks and lobbyists have proven to be surprisingly feisty, and Homeland’s up to its eyeballs keeping the district locked down.”
Sam frowned. “Lockdown?”
“‘Martial law’ is the term. Didn’t you hear the president’s address?”
“We must have been singing road songs at the time,” Sam said. “Why would they lock things down? Seems like they’d want to get food and supplies into the cities.”
Dan nodded. “They do. But more than that, they want to control the movement of supplies into the cities. Government 101: if in doubt, seize control.”
“Nationwide martial law?” Sam asked. Dan nodded.
“Holy shit,” Brock said, shaking his head. “This is getting serious.”
Dan shrugged. “Maybe we should revolt,” he said with a laugh.
“Anyway, how’s progress with our favorite perp?” Dan motioned toward the backseat of the cop car.
“Singing like a bird,” Brock opined.
“Thanks again for the video of his daughter,” Sam said. “Amazing how quickly stuff like that works.”
“Too easy,” Dan said. “I can’t believe he left her as a loose end.”
Sam nodded. “That’s been bugging me too. I’m sure he probably couldn’t tell her about his plans due to the security concerns, but it was a pretty damn exploitable situation. Something tells me they didn’t plan for their conspiracy to stay secret for too long.”
Brock laughed. “‘Golly how truth will out’?”
“Something like that. So I’m wondering whether our conspirators aren’t of a mind to try to co-opt us. Why else invite us to their little lair?”
“Because we were about ten seconds away from finding it ourselves, anyway,” Dan said.
Sam nodded. “Good point. Not quite a forced confession, but not exactly an act of conscience, either.”
“I don’t know shit from shingle,” Brock said, “but is it really a great idea to follow the bear back to the den? I mean, who knows, maybe they’re going to carve us up and eat us.”
“Distinct possibility,” Sam said. “Which is why I’m a big fan of human shields. Speaking of which.” She nodded in the direction of an arriving limousine.
The vehicle was perfectly polished, a bit incongruously so amidst what had become an almost universal weeklong dilapidation. Who had time to polish a limousine when the world had stopped? Someone with resources to spare, obviously.
The limo driver got out, nodded toward Sam’s entourage, and opened the door. A thickset man of medium height emerged, with a slightly flamboyant shock of white hair, impeccably trimmed goatee, and a walking stick with a silver handle, tarnished just enough so people knew it was real silver.
He beamed. As soon as he smiled, Sam recognized him instantly as one of the richest men in America, a media-friendly industrialist, banker, and philanthropist who always seemed to be photographed with an approving, grandfatherly smile on his face. “Jesus,” Sam said. “Never saw that coming.”
“Jack Anderson,” he said, extending his hand as his labored gait brought him within a social distance.
“Pleasure,” Sam said.
“Where we’re going, you’ll hear people refer to me as ‘Archive.’ A bit of silliness, really, but we felt it necessary. Before the big event, of course. Now, however…”
“Cat’s out of the bag a little bit, isn’t it?” Brock said.
Archive smiled. “Quite so. And in grand fashion, if I may say so myself.” Was pride really appropriate? Too soon, Sam decided.
Sam noticed a younger man sidle up. He introduced himself as Robert Johnston. “‘Protégé,’ in this crowd,” he explained.
“Do you have secret passwords, too?” Sam didn’t regret the note of condescension in her voice. Best not to be too chummy with a group of people with the demonstrated willingness to zap satellites in geosynchronous orbit and decimate the worldwide banking and commerce system.
On the other hand, it was probably best not to be too unfriendly, either, with the full faith and credit of the United States Government not amounting to much at the moment, and with herself and her stocky deputy as the sole representatives of the vast federal law enforcement apparatus anywhere within a disturbingly wide radius. Might be good to give peace a chance, she thought.
Also good to exert a little control. It would set a good precedent. “Gentlemen, if you wouldn’t mind joining your colleague in the backseat of our ride,” she said, pointing to the Oklahoma police cruiser, “I’d enjoy a conversation with you during our trip to wherever we’re going.”
A knowing smile crossed the old man’s face. “Of course. I suppose I would appreciate a little insurance myself, were roles reversed.”
“That, too,” Sam said, opening the door. “Watch your head.”
Then, to Dan after she shut the door on the joyful reunion occurring between Mike Charles and the other two conspirators: “Mind riding in the limo? Token of my thanks for all of your hard work, in lieu of a paycheck this week?”
“Who’d say no to an offer like that?”
“Great. I say we go waltzing into the evil fortress of the lunatic oligarchs. You with me?”
Dan winked. “What could possibly go wrong?”
37
Northwest Washington State, near the Canadian border
Sabot’s heart pounded in his chest. He had no idea why he was suddenly paranoid about crossing the border to Canada. There was absolutely no reason to believe the federal authorities, and certainly not the Canadians, would have any pretext to stop them on their way north out of the States.
But there was also no reason to believe that Balzzack011’s crowd lacked the kind of reach it would take to arrange a manhunt at the border. They had, after all, strong-armed the FBI into releasing him from their auspices, which was no mean feat. Especially considering his background.
Connie, his maybe-mother-in-law-to-be, rode in the backseat, her increasingly shrill protestations and accusations now thankfully silent for the first time since they’d left her home behind. Drugs, money laundering, even the mafia, had all made the list of Connie’s paranoid fears about what she termed his “shady schemes,” of which there never were any, though Sabot now knew precisely what Connie had thought of him all this time he’d been living with Angie. He regretted taking Connie along, but Angie would never have left Seattle otherwise.
And they’d left for good, he was now certain, though he hadn’t told the two women anything of the sort. They’d never have gotten in the car if he had.
Perhaps it
was the unregistered handgun in the glove compartment that had Sabot’s heartbeat up. Illegal, maybe even an arrest offense. But completely necessary. He wasn’t equipped for a showdown in meatspace, having long ago chosen cyberspace as the domain he was most interested in conquering, and he didn’t know the first thing about trade craft and staying hidden. But he knew that he needed some sort of protection, and a gun seemed like a logical first step.
He was going to have to learn some survival skills quickly. Balzzack011’s crowd had all kinds of pull, and they were liable to be a little upset about his entrepreneurship. They would undoubtedly view it as having come at their expense. There was enough money involved to induce violence, and that wasn’t a game he was eager to play.
He momentarily thought that they might keep him around to administer the ongoing Bitcoin theft operation, but he quickly realized the naiveté of that idea. The sums involved were simply too large. With Bitcoin’s value skyrocketing, replacing the dollar as the world’s de facto base currency, the quantities he was swiping would establish their owner as a global force to be reckoned with.
They would view him as a rival, because his wealth would rapidly equal their own. And he’d already proven that he wasn’t afraid to do a little moonlighting, which wouldn’t engender much trust.
And now that he’d built a system that stole coins in staggering quantities, it wouldn’t be all that hard to find a few hundred other hackers who had the skills to maintain the operation in his absence.
So, the grim upshot was this: they would extort the passwords for his mirror operation, the one he’d set up for himself just before leaving Seattle, then smoke him.
Which was a bitter irony. By the hour, Sabot was becoming one of the richest men on the planet. But would he ever enjoy any of that wealth?
He looked over at Angie. Her face was tense, and her jaw clenched occasionally. Her worry caused his chest to tighten. I hope I haven’t signed our death warrant.
Sabot thought grimly of the old Russian proverb. With intrigue, it said, sometimes you can go forward. But you can never go back.
Ten miles to the Canadian border, a sign announced, sending another shot of adrenaline crashing uncomfortably in his stomach.
38
Lost Man Lake Ranch, Colorado
Their arrival at the ranch was utterly anticlimactic. There was no showdown, no drama, nothing but a peaceful mountain afternoon and a warm welcome, iced tea included.
Weird.
Sam had been expecting a much more sinister environment than the one in which she now found herself.
She was seated on the balcony of the vast ranch house, Brock next to her, the old man and his youngish fluffer on her other side. She marveled at the view of the lake, the valley, and the mountain beyond. A cool breeze, with a bit of a lingering bite at the end of it, as if to threaten of frost in the wings, ready to strike at a moment’s notice, brought a full-body shiver. The old man waved to someone inside, and a steward appeared, jacket in hand. Sam donned it gratefully.
“So, the obvious question,” Sam said, interrupting the babbling brook audible from the deck. “Why?”
Archive appraised her for a long moment, clearly pondering.
“You have the right to remain silent, of course,” she nudged. “But circumstances as they are, you probably shouldn’t.”
The younger man, Protégé, blanched a bit. But the old man was unruffled. He donned a wistful smile. “Sometimes to save lives, you have to euthanize an idea.”
“All right,” Sam said. “I’ll bite. You could kill a religious idea, and maybe stop a few million deaths every year. You could kill a political idea – neoconservatism or neoliberalism or force-fed democracy coming readily to mind – and maybe save a few zillion more lives.”
Archive beamed at her.
She paused, taken aback. “What?” she asked.
His smile widened to improbably large proportions. “I find myself powerlessly captivated by the grip of your nascent question.”
“And the home-run answer you’re formulating, no doubt, but I’ll pitch it right over the plate for you anyway. Why kill the economy? The global economy, no less.”
The old man leaned his head back, eyes gleaming, looking off into the distance momentarily. Sam glanced at Protégé, and noticed a bit of a here-we-go-again look about him, as if he were bracing for a diatribe on a painfully familiar topic.
“I’ll answer your question with a question,” Archive said.
Sam held up her hand. “These kinds of games are fun,” she said, “but my question wasn’t really about the theory and the motives as much as it was about what comes next. So that’s where I’m aiming with all of this, being someone who’s supposed to uphold my sworn duty to stop global-scale disasters when the opportunity arises, and when it isn’t too much bother.”
Archive continued, unabated by Sam’s attempt to focus him, holding up a solitary finger. “Just one question,” he said, still smiling, a professorial air about him. “What is an economy?”
“I’ve been meaning to waste a few years on an MBA, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet,” Sam said. “But I’ll play along. I’d guess that it’s something involving banks, currency, and transactions between people, who are very likely to get pissed off when you pull the rug out from underneath the whole damn thing.”
“Absolutely!” Archive clapped his hands, and Sam was sure she caught a little smile on Protégé’s face, as well. “Except for the part about the banks, of course. They’re not really a necessary participant, and, as the owner of a rather large banking concern, I can tell you that the world is a much worse place as a result of our activities.”
“So you’re a disillusioned rich guy,” Sam said. “Couldn’t you just start a charity, maybe some educational thing, or an orphanage, to burn down a bit of that guilt? Why pick on the whole planet?”
Archived wagged a finger. “No guilt here, madam. I was smart enough to know when I got lucky, and smart enough to take advantage of it. Nothing to feel guilty over.”
“And now?”
“Difficult moments, but I’m hopeful our better nature will prevail, and we’ll collectively recognize our new freedom.”
“Freedom from what?” Brock asked, annoyed, sitting forward in his chair.
“Terrific question!” More pearly whites from the old man, Cheshire-cat style. “What made it all go? What was the life-blood of the whole thing?”
“The dollar.” Dan wore his bad-cop scowl.
Archive clapped his hands. “Bingo!” He reminded Sam of the Monopoly Man cartoons.
“Now worth pennies, and on its way to nothing,” Dan said, a little snarl on his lips.
“And good riddance!” Archive’s joviality gave Sam the impression that he was a man deeply committed to his central delusion.
“Millions are suffering,” she said, her low, even voice playing counterpoint to the escalating emotions floating over the conversation. “How do you figure you’ve spared anyone from anything?”
“Inflation,” Protégé interjected. “The end of every fiat currency, the start of every revolution, the primary mechanism of wealth redistribution.”
“You’re well trained,” Sam said.
He flushed. “Think I’m wrong?”
Sam shook her head. “I know you’re not. But you’ll still have to help me with the connection. You destroyed the world economy because you’re mad about dogshit monetary policy?”
“We didn’t destroy the economy,” Archive said, pounding his walking stick into the deck floor for emphasis. “We released it.”
“From?” Dan asked, still dubious.
Archive smiled. “Debt. Leveraged drowning. Unhealthy consolidation. The cancer of the twentieth century.”
Sam shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not buying it.”
Actually, she was. Economically, at least. She just wasn’t sure what the old zealot had up his sleeve as an encore, and that was the rub. You didn’t break things just l
et them lie broken. There was some consolidation plan, some way for a guy like this to get an even tighter grip on an even larger fortune. “And that was worse than what you’ve turned the world into?”
“Certainly, there’s some momentary discomfort. But we’ve incited the transition from the debt economy, which was based on a toxic fiat currency to which the entire planet was deeply, deeply exposed.”
“But here’s the key.” He waved his finger again, pounding the deck floor with the walking stick in his other hand. “We’ve done this without any harm to the actual elements of value. Houses, factories, crops, roads, bridges, intellectual property, professional skills, the trades – they’re all still intact,” cane pounding again, “and in better shape than ever, just waiting for people to realize they’re free, finally free, to put all that glorious personal and public capital to work for themselves.”
Sam nodded slowly, then narrowed her eyes. “For the moment. But you’re going to lasso them, corral them for yourself, aren’t you? That’s what’s next, isn’t it?”
A tinge of sadness crossed the old man’s face. “That’s certainly the automatic, implicit assumption, and I don’t blame you for it. Your line of work doesn’t condition you to see anything else, at least not without a great deal of effort.”
He sat back in his seat, both hands resting atop the silver eagle’s head on the end of his cane. “Clearly, I am an ambitious man, as is obvious from my portfolio. And some of my colleagues in this endeavor surpass me tenfold. But we own our capital outright, and we don’t lust after more.” Archive took a breath, a wistful look on his face. “This is our gift to the people of our time. They were enslaved. Now, they are not.”
Sam could tell it was a heartfelt statement, a little embarrassingly so. Her discomfort wasn’t assuaged in the least by her sense that the old man might have just revealed the complete loss of his marbles.
Either that, or he was balls-on right. Tough to tell which.
She sighed. “Not sure what to make of all of that, to be honest with you. People are dying. And you’ve made a few billion people murderously angry. I don’t think you’ll ever convince them that you saved them from anything, and there’s a pretty strong case that you’ve made things horrifically worse. I don’t know how this ends for you, honestly.”
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 161
