Uncommon Assassins

by F. Paul Wilson

  June stopped in the hall near the gun rack. There was always the Second Amendment Solution. If someone didn’t tell her something soon, if someone didn’t allow her to see Charles, there was going to be hell to pay. Hell and damnation following.

  It was weeks before she had it all worked out. She had tried finding out what she could of the Homeland Security Act. She had appealed to the attorney general and the governor of her state of Texas. She had found little to help her. Charles was still gone, not a word about him or from him, as if he had vanished on that bright sunny Saturday forever. Finally she contacted one of Charles’s oldest friends, Barry Callfirth. The two had grown up together on arid ranches in West Texas and had stayed friends through a lifetime. Not only that, but they both held firm liberal ideas and bemoaned the direction the United States was headed, all predicated on the 9/11 attacks in New York City and on the Pentagon in D.C. The instant that happened, they were on the phone to one another talking about how this didn’t seem right, this seemed like some kind of strange event that couldn’t happen in America. Then when the President instituted the Homeland Security Act, they both were flabbergasted and alarmed.

  Barry still lived in West Texas, not far from Amarillo. June told him on the phone what had happened to Charles. He was instantly furious. “What does your attorney say? What’s happened since they took him?”

  “My attorney didn’t really want to get involved. I think going up against the government worries him. And since they took Charles I’ve called Washington, D.C. I’ve appealed to the Texas Attorney General, the governor, and the President of the United States. No one has helped me. Mostly I get shifted from extension to extension until I’m cut off.”

  “Good Lord, June. This isn’t good. Do you think your phone is tapped?”

  “I assume that it is.”

  “Come out here to the ranch where we can talk. You know the way?”

  “I’ll be there by tomorrow.”

  Barry sat in a ladder-back chair with a rush seat. He pulled it close to where she sat on his deeply cushioned sofa. “Now let me tell you something,” he said.

  June frowned and clasped together her hands around the small purse in her lap.

  “There’s a senator from Texas who’s been keeping his guard up and monitoring both me and Charles. He thinks everyone is a suspect, everyone has ulterior motives. His name is Kaden James. Heard of him?”

  “Yeah, I know who you mean.”

  “Well, I found out through the Freedom of Information Act that there’s a thick file on us. The name that kept cropping up in the reports was James. Hell, he even collected a copy of an essay Charles wrote in college about the difference between a democracy and a republic. I think this guy is the one who had Charles arrested.”

  “Oh God. But Charles isn’t a terrorist and neither are you!”

  “Of course not. This is witch hunting. It was bad back in the Bay of Pigs days, when everyone was suspected of being a pinko Commie if he disagreed with his government. Now it’s this overall catch phrase ’suspected terrorist’ that gets the nod. Anyone can end up on a list, and anyone does. Including me and Charles because we’ve been outspoken, independent thinkers since we went to college together. You know we were both on the college newspaper, right?”

  June nodded, recalling Charles had told her that.

  “Well, I edited and Charles investigated anything that looked suspect to him, any personal right that was being stomped on, whether it was done by the college administration or the U.S. Congress. He was really vocal. I told him one time we were going to get blackballed and end up digging ditches, but Charles just laughed. He was a firebrand. I was his torchbearer. Now it’s come to this ...”

  “What do you think they want him for? What could they imagine he’s done? Barry, you know him. He’s got fiery opinions, but he’s never advocated anything violent, not once in his whole life.”

  “I know, but you need to check into Kaden James. He’s got it in for Charles. He’s been in the senate for thirty-five years. He has plenty enough power to have Charles picked up and locked away. I wouldn’t blame the Homeland Security for this, he’s just using that as a stick. I’m pretty sure it’s James who is behind it.”

  June sat thinking while Barry made them coffee. She knew already what she was going to do. She was making a trip. She was going to see this senator and confront him on his own doorstep.

  Barry saw her off the next morning, admonishing her to be careful or she could wind up in a cell herself. June smiled and gave a sarcastic laugh. “Let them just try,” she said. “I know them now; I know how they operate. They won’t catch me unaware the way they did Charles.”

  She would get her husband back. She would spend her life getting him back if that’s what it took. No one had a right to treat them this way.

  “Mr. James is busy,” the housekeeper said at the door. It was a veritable mansion, paid for by taxpayers and lobbyists. The house stood three stories, boasted two wings, and had a wide circular drive that went under a portico framed with white columns.

  June stepped inside, brushing past the housekeeper. “I’ll wait. Tell him I’m here.”

  Flustered, the other woman stood holding the open door. She said, “You aren’t allowed in here. I didn’t invite you inside.”

  June turned and there was fire in her eyes. “Oh, is that right? Well, I’m in here and if you don’t want to make a scene, I suggest you tell Mr. James I’m waiting and I’ll keep waiting until I’m either bodily removed—in which case I’ll be calling the local TV stations to film it—or he sees me. Now go do your goddamn job.”

  The housekeeper’s eyes rounded and she slowly shut the door. She padded off down the carpeted hall and, without saying a word, left June behind. June knew that perfectly timed curse words coming unexpectedly from a well-dressed woman were extremely effective. It made people jump. It made people listen and follow her commands. She smiled to herself, watching the huge cliffs of the maid’s buttocks as they shifted beneath her uniform on her long way down the hall.

  An arched opening on the right led into some kind of reception area. June entered and found a chair right across from an ornately carved desk. She sat, not feeling at all nervous. She was over crying and despondency. She was about to take a stand.

  It was just minutes before Kaden James appeared. He looked ruffled and out of his element. He wore a dark suit and a light blue shirt, but his tie was askew and the look on his face would have been comical had June been in a humor to think of the man that way. “Mrs. Haver?” he asked, hurrying behind the desk to the chair there. “Could I ask what this urgency is about?”

  June paused before speaking. There seemed something about the senator that reminded her of someone from the dim past. It might be the eyes, or the shape of his lips. She mentally shook herself when she realized he was waiting. “Yes, you can. My husband, Charles Haver, was arrested at our home six weeks ago and he’s disappeared. I don’t have to know where he is, but if he isn’t home within one more week, I would say there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  “And why would you bring this matter to my home?”

  “I know about you, senator. I did my homework. I know you’ve kept records on my husband since his college days. I have no idea what your big interest is in him, but I do know you have something to do with his arrest. I want him released. He’s innocent of any charge you can think up, dream up, or make up. You are persecuting an innocent man, senator.”

  He sat back from the blast of her anger. He put up a hand to stop her right there. “I don’t know where you get your information, Mrs. Haver, but I have nothing to do with your husband’s arrest.”

  “You were on the committee that helped think up the Homeland Security Act—which, by the way is freaking unconstitutional, and I think if you’re only half as well-educated as you claim to be, you already know that—but you helped frame the act. And you’ve watched my husband for years. Now you think I’m so dull-witted that I can’t put
two and two together? You think my love and deep belief in my husband would just stand by and let people like you accuse him of some deed and lock him away, maybe forever? Do you people also use torture tactics to get people to confess to things they’ve never done? Are you into ’waterboarding’, Mr. James? Are you going to rush me out of this house knowing I’m going straight to the media to tell them every single thing I know about you? Is that what you really want?” Her voice had risen as she spoke until she ended in shouting.

  James flinched and caught hold of the edge of his desk with both hands.

  “I ... I’ll try to look into your husband’s case. I promise that.”

  Now she stood, her fury at its peak. “You better give me something better than that. You better tell me right now, this minute, that you’re going to where he’s being held and make sure he’s safe. Then you’re going to contact the people who are holding him and you’re going to get him released. Because if you don’t, Mr. James, I assure you I will bring down the mountain on you. You have never seen the backlash of bad publicity like I can brew and dump on your head. I want you to believe that the way you would believe in an oath.”

  She turned and left the room, her anger still at white hot, blotches blooming on each of her cheeks. She let herself out, slamming the door.

  Once outside under the portico where she had parked, the Secret Service men guarding the senator giving her the eye, she heaved a big sigh. As she drove away she wondered if anger was enough. She wondered if by threatening a U. S. senator with bad PR she had broken any law. All the way back to her hotel room she watched the traffic in her rearview mirror to see if she was being followed. She supposed she would know the answer to that when she got to her room. If no one showed up, she was going to be fine for a few hours at least.

  Barry sat studying the sheaf of papers on his kitchen table. He had no other clear, open space they would all fit. He had been at it for hours, and now it was after midnight. Outside he could hear doves calling and a soft wind sighing under the eaves of his house. Out here in the western part of the state, he was almost as secluded as he suspected Charles was in his undisclosed jail cell. Barry’s closest neighbor was fifteen hundred acres away.

  For the past twenty-five years, Barry had sat in these empty rooms of a house he inherited from his father, sat alone with his thoughts that year by year grew more aggrieved. Now his worst fear was realized when they had come to take away Charles. Why they’d arrested him and not Barry was not due to his friend being more liable. It was due to Barry being quieter, more reclusive, and close-mouthed. He had no other friends besides Barry and didn’t even really confide in him all his thoughts. He had never married—though he had come close right out of college. But Georgia had taken one look at the ranch house sitting in the center of ten thousand wild, windswept acres of Texas land and had quietly made her way back to Houston and away from his marriage proposal.

  He was better off alone. He was able to study and make charts, graphs, and notes on what concerned him most—the disintegration of his country. He was not a madman. Neither was he afflicted with paranoia, bipolar disorder, or any other sort of mental disease. He thought of himself as a good citizen. A citizen on alert. He had been on alert for decades. Charles’s arrest was about to move him from red alert to black action.

  First he had sent June on a mission. He didn’t think it would work, but he had to see if it would. Now it had been an entire month since June had accosted Senator Kaden James at his home in Washington, and June was all over the cable TV news channels. She made a strong plea. She cited her facts and answered the interviewers’ questions with a calm verisimilitude that made people listen to her.

  Yet Charles was still missing.

  Charles was being held against his will and for no other reason than he was sometimes stridently vocal. He hadn’t just joined the Occupy Houston group, he had been one of the instigators. He was at every Planned Parenthood clinic when there were protests against them. He sent in editorials to the newspapers. He attended city council meetings where he protested environmental issues and lobbied for affordable housing. He was a good citizen exercising his rights.

  Barry thought, of course, the men in the suits would show up at his own door one day. He never imagined they would have a worry about his friend Charles. Charles was vocal, but Barry was more serious. Charles was a lightweight in politics and Barry was an ardent supporter and a ferocious enemy. It was Barry they should have arrested.

  Slamming his fist on the stack of papers caused a few to scatter in the air and drift to the kitchen floor. Barry took hold of his fury and tamped it the way one would tamp down a campfire.

  Now he had to try to employ the Second Amendment Solution. He wouldn’t carry through unless he had to. He wasn’t a killer, a political assassin. He just wanted his friend set free and exonerated of all wrongdoing. He just wanted his country to act like a republic and treat its citizens with respect. He just wanted his Bill of Rights back.

  It was late fall and Senator Kaden James was on holiday for Thanksgiving. He had come to the cabin early to put in stores and ready this house for his family that would be following soon. The air was redolent of crabapples that grew wild in the woods and the heavy green scent of cedar. He loved this place in New Hampshire. It was small and hidden away from the public. The road leading to it was dirt and rutted, so much so that his Secret Service men always complained about how it was tearing up the cars. It was also not a place where anyone would think a Texas senator might spend a holiday.

  He straightened the afghan over the back of the sofa and peered at the roaring fire in the stone fireplace. Perfect. Dolly, his wife, was going to enjoy this respite from the public eye. Over the years that public scrutiny had taken a toll on their long marriage. She early on complained that her life wasn’t her own anymore. Everything she did, said, and everywhere she went was cataloged, quoted, noted, and discussed by people who didn’t even know her.

  He knew her as a former Texas high school sweetheart who became the mother of their five children, and a pretty matron with definite class in the political spotlight. He liked to make her happy when he could. She might even sleep with him again.

  He remembered the two bathrooms and went to check if there were toilet paper rolls in them. He had a groundskeeper, but no one to care for the interior of the cabin when he wasn’t using it. As he passed a window in the hall, he glanced out to the smaller cabin that sat behind the house and closer to the woods. That’s where the men guarding him stayed when he came here. He saw the lights on in there and felt safe again. Dolly didn’t like how they were followed around by these men, but they just couldn’t live their lives any other way now that he was such a powerful man.

  He stepped into the first bathroom and heard a sound that made him halt. He walked a few steps toward the glassed-in shower and saw someone standing there, a gun pointed at him.

  “Wha—?”

  The enclosure swung open and the man stepped out. He was tall, his face weathered, and James recognized him from official photos in the files he kept in his office. Barry Callfirth.

  “You’re going to make some calls, senator.”

  “My God, how did you get in here?”

  “I’ve been here a week. Waiting for you. You always have underestimated my investigative powers. I’ve known about this secret hideaway for years.”

  James started out of the bathroom and tried to hurry down the hall. A soft pfftting sound arose and wood splinters from the baseboard near his feet flew across the floor. He stopped, turned.

  “Why did you pick up Charles Haver? Just because he’s got a mouth? How many people do you think listen to him?”

  James put up his hand and rubbed hard at his cheek. He wouldn’t look the other man in the eye.

  “Well? Are we going to have a dialogue like civilized human beings, or am I going to have to take out your kneecaps?”

  James’s head snapped up at that. He began to stutter, something that ha
ppened only when he was under duress. “I don’t know why Charles was arrested.”

  Another shot spat from the handgun and lodged in the wall plaster near James’s head. A tiny whiff of white smoke puffed out. “Stop it!”

  “I’m not going to stop it, senator. Not unless I have to stop you. And I don’t want to do that. Now let’s go to the living room where you left your cell phone and make those calls.”

  Barry walked up to the other man, caught him by the shirt at his shoulder and pushed him down the hall, walking close behind.

  “You’re going to get in a lot of trouble for this.”

  Barry laughed. “You won’t ever find me to put me into a cell, senator. Not me. So let’s not even go there with your useless threats. I’m the one with the gun.”

  In the living room, Barry pushed him to the end table next to the sofa and indicated the phone with the barrel of the gun. “First, I want you to call your wife. Tell her Washington called you in. You can’t make Thanksgiving dinner, it’s an emergency and you can’t talk about it. Tell her you’ll see her at home in four days, give your love to the children.”

  James hesitated, and Barry thrust the gun to his temple and held it there. “No more warning shots, Bubba. Didn’t they used to call you ’Bubba’ back in Texas City when you were a shave-tail kid?”

  James called his wife and explained just as he’d been instructed. Dolly wasn’t happy. So what else was new?

  When he finished the call, Barry said, “Now call whoever you have to call and have them bring Charles here. Right here. Tonight.”

  “When my family doesn’t show up in the morning, my men here are going to wonder why and come asking about it.” James wasn’t cowering; in fact, he was brazenly staring Barry in the eyes now.