by Jeff Abbott
‘Organized anarchists. I love the concept,’ Henry said.
‘… and he loves to talk about eco-terrorism.’ Luke hit a button and a long series of comments made by ChicagoChris over the past few days rolled up the screen: Burn every McMansion to the ground, that’s the start. A serious attack on a gated community would send a message. Don’t kill people, warn them first, but level the houses. Sabotage the construction equipment. Get busy to save the Earth. People who destroy the earth deserve whatever bad stuff happens to them. Killing our environment is akin to the greatest murder ever committed. I blame the oil and construction companies. I know those guys, what they’re like when the attention isn’t on them, and they’re scum. Kill them, kill all of them, and there would be change. A change is in the wind, I know it. It’s coming, fast. I want to be a part of the storm of change.
‘He’s a charmer,’ Henry said.
‘And he believes every word he says. He emails me a lot, through the boards. I’m his new best online friend. And he’s not just crazy, Henry, he’s focused. That’s what’s scary.’
‘You said in last month’s report you think he’s one of the most likely to go violent.’
‘Yeah, he’s promising.’ Luke made a face. ‘But crazy.’
‘I’m not interested in the crazy ones. I’m interested in the committed ones. There’s a big difference.’
‘I can’t really diagnose these people, I can only catalog their comments. I hope this is enough data for your research.’ Looking at all the hate made him tired. ‘For your client.’
Henry heard the stubborn question in Luke’s voice. ‘I told you, I have to keep my client confidential.’
‘Let me guess. It’s the government. They want to watch these people, make sure they’re only hot air and not actually acquiring weapons or putting bombs on buses or targeting politicians.’
‘I can’t say. But I know my client will be extremely pleased with your work.’
Luke said, ‘I’m surprised you don’t trust me. You always have.’
‘And I always will. But the client set very specific parameters for me. If you worked for me full-time, were officially on the payroll, then maybe…’ Henry gave a shrug, a half-smile.
‘I’m not a think-tank kind of guy.’
‘Please. We’re academics, just in nicer suits,’ Henry said. ‘Let me guess. You would like to get a paper out of this data yourself. Maybe the foundation of a doctoral dissertation.’
Luke nodded. ‘Yes. I would. But I respect that you hired me to do the research. It’s your data, not mine.’
‘Luke. I understand why you’re driven to dissect the minds of those who think violence is a solution to every problem.’ The silence between them felt suddenly awkward. ‘But understanding why violence happens, that’s the puzzle that can never be solved. And it won’t bring your father back.’ Henry cleared his throat, looked at the picture of Luke and his father. His lips narrowed and he bowed his head slightly, as if under a weight.
Henry was a giver of speeches, and his phrases worked at podiums, not at dinner tables. He’d spent so much time with his books and found his family so late in life that Luke had gotten used to his step-father’s well-meant but flat-footed phrases. ‘I know. But I would hope this research would find the next asshole who wants to kill innocent people for a cause.’ Luke didn’t look at Henry. He didn’t look at the photo of his father, the one decoration on the fireplace mantel. A photo of Warren Dantry and Luke, age seven, holding a freshly caught bass, dripping from a Virginia lake. He could remember the smell of the clean fish, the scent of the pines, the warm sun against his skin, his father’s quiet laughter. A happy memory of a rare time with his dad, long before evil in the form of a cold-blooded airplane mechanic named Ace Beere stole his father away from him. Evil that Luke felt compelled to understand.
Reading Ace Beere’s rambling, incoherent suicide note – left at the airport hangar after he had killed Luke’s father and several others – had fueled Luke’s desire to understand the psychology of the violent mind. I did it because God said I must, the only way to get my pride back, to strike back at my employer and I had to pick a flight to kill and since they were professors, they were useless to society, no one will miss them. Rambling garbage, but inside the long letter there must have been the seed of an answer, a cogent reason why. Luke had never found it.
‘Tell me this,’ Luke said. ‘Your client. Whoever it is, they want to find nascent terrorists before they move from ideology to violence. This isn’t just a fancy profiling project.’
‘Luke. Identifying terrorists is far bigger than simply drawing out the disaffected on internet forums.’
‘But we already know that plenty of extremists connect through the internet. If we could narrow in on them, discourage them before they take those final steps, make the choice of violence unappealing or impossible…’ Luke got up from the computer, went to the window. ‘Any of these people might be harmless or be a time bomb. Ten thousand comments, hundreds of people, but I can’t prove any of them will turn terrorist. Really, the next stage of the project should be to follow them, to see if there are ways to convince them that violence isn’t an option.’
‘You’ve done a fantastic job, and my client will sift through all the data. You never know, maybe you did find the next McVeigh or the next person who’d mail anthrax to Congress or decide to take up the mantle of al-Qaeda. But you’ve spent so much time on it; I’m starting to think this is an unhealthy obsession.’
‘No. I want to finish the project. But.’
‘But what?’
‘The mail accounts I had to set up – the emails make clear that these people all think that I’m ready to join their battle… I’m worried they might find me. Even though I post from different addresses, use a bunch of fake names. I could be traced if someone tried hard enough.’
‘But they’re on the other side of the glass, in Wonderland.’ Henry tapped the computer monitor. ‘You don’t exactly live in a dangerous world, Luke.’
‘I suppose not.’ Not any more. He never spoke with Henry about the time after his father died, when he ran away and lived on the streets for two months. There was no point; that was a darkness in his life where he’d long ago shut the door.
‘I wonder if you might take me to the airport tomorrow. My flight’s in the afternoon. I have meetings at the university all morning.’ As though his stepfather hadn’t heard his concerns. Henry, he thought, had just moved on to his next idea.
‘Sure.’ A response to one of Luke’s fake comments popped up on the screen: Your right, A race war is in-evitible in this country. What’s got to be done is get all the un-desirables to leave this country. Killin em will encurage em to go faster. Maybe you and me can get together and talk about it. I could see if your serius or not.
Henry read the message. ‘You bait your hooks well, Luke. Very well. I want you to listen to me.’ And Luke thought, with affection, Here comes Henry trying to be a dad. Here comes the hand on the shoulder… yep. And now here comes the fumbling advice. ‘Luke. You know I loathe sentiment. But…’
‘I’m the only family you’ve got.’ Luke paused. ‘And this greeting card moment is brought to you by The Shawcross Group.’
‘Now, Luke.’ But Henry offered a rare smile. ‘I promised your mom when I married her that I’d take care of you if anything happened to her. To me that was a solemn vow.’
His mother. He put up the photos of her when he knew Henry was coming for a visit; it was too raw, too painful for Henry. The car crash had been only a year ago.
‘Henry, don’t treat me like a child. You don’t have to watch out for me.’
‘Habits are hard to break.’ He cleared his throat, as though preparing to deliver another speech or presentation. He seemed to have trouble looking at Luke. ‘Aside from you, the think-tank is my life. Come work for me. I would love to pass the think-tank on to you one day.’ The final words came in a rush.
‘Henry, wow. I don�
��t know what to say.’ He felt touched. Honored. Henry was a bit of an oddball – all into his researches, his pondering about the political trends of the world, his books and papers, but he was the only family Luke had. A world without family was a lonely place, and Luke thought it had been an unbearably lonely place for Henry before Henry married Luke’s mom. It had not always been an easy road for him and his stepfather but Luke never doubted that Henry, in his own way, loved him.
On the screen a comment appeared: you’re right, what we need in America is a nice dirty bomb set off in the beltway, clean up the whole act, make the Potomac a toilet for all the human waste in DC, start fresh. Another loon chirping to be heard. A nice dirty bomb, as opposed to an awful dirty bomb. These people made his blood run cold.
‘My God,’ Henry said, blinking at the comment. ‘This is the other reason I want you working with me. You get results. Say yes. Please, Luke. Please.’
Begging was most un-Henry-like and Luke felt a swelling of gratitude. ‘I will sleep on it. After I wander a bit down the Night Road this evening.’
‘Fair enough. I need to make a couple of a phone calls and then we’ll go out to dinner. Go get cleaned up.’ His stepfather patted his shoulder and went off to the condo’s guest room.
Luke turned back to the computer, eight more bits of poison on his screen, and had to smile at the viciousness of the responses. He didn’t want to admit it, but this taunting of people with such strong opinions was addictive. He wondered, despite all his worries about those he angered, if he could give this work up so easily. Behind the mask of the internet he was a badass, a troublemaker, a take-no-prisoners tough guy. Nothing like the mild academic who typed on the keyboard and thought hard about what precise words would evoke what terrifying responses.
Luke went to his bathroom and showered. Rubbing the shampoo into his hair, he wondered about the thousands of people he touched – angry, bitter, so convinced in their hate that they were blind to nuance or circumstance or even to a basic morality. The web connected them all, electronic threads spanning the country, and he had the uneasy feeling that the people he called the Night Road could reach out and touch him, know him for the fraud that he was, in an instant.
Luke hated airports. He had last seen his father alive at Dulles ten years earlier. Every time he stepped into the wide, cool expanse of a terminal he thought of his father; a dark-suited arm raised in farewell, Luke’s clothes still wrinkled from the force of his father’s parting hug.
‘Have a good trip, Dad,’ he’d said.
His father had stood close to him. He was a handsome man, with a trim beard, a full head of hair going gray early and bold blue eyes. ‘I’ll be back soon. Mind your mother.’
‘I will.’
‘You want me to bring you back some fish? In my pocket?’ An old joke between them, from when Luke had caught a perch when he was five and promptly stuck it in his pocket and left it there for a few hours. They’d burned his shorts.
‘No. Mom will get mad.’
‘Mom will be buying you new clothes,’ Mom had said, with a smile, touching his father’s arm.
Then his father had rumpled Luke’s hair, gently. ‘I’ll miss you every moment.’
‘That’s way too much missing,’ Luke said. He was fourteen and easily mortified in public by parental affection. He wanted to get back to the car, crack open his computer game, finish the level he was on. He let his impatience show with a sigh, an eye roll.
‘When you have a kid, you’ll understand what it is to miss someone each moment.’
‘You’ll be relieved to know I just got a girl pregnant.’
‘Ha, ha.’ His father said, then looked at him with mock surprise.
‘Kidding,’ Luke said. ‘Two girls.’
‘Funny man.’ His father kissed the top of his head. ‘Be a good boy. I got to go catch up with the others.’ Then a quick, firm kiss for his mother, and his father had gone. Walking away, with his fellow professors, for a fishing trip in North Carolina. Gone forever. Luke did not even get to see him in the coffin. The Atlantic had hoarded his father’s body in its gray clutches. He had walked on the beach closest to where the plane had gone down, wondering if he could hear his father’s gentle baritone in the crash of the surf. It had been a crazy thought, but after the long darkness of his grief and the long weeks wandering the roads as a runaway, being close to where his father died had been a strange comfort.
His father had become a regrettable haze, defined by only a few sharp memories – swimming at home in suburban Virginia, walking on the Georgetown campus to his father’s office, enjoying a Redskins game when Luke was five, hoisting Luke on his shoulders, a finger moving across the night tapestry, naming every star in the constellations. That light, Dad said in his quiet voice, it’s taken lifetimes to reach us. Starlight is long-term. Big picture. Always remember long-term and big picture, Luke.
He needed his father’s advice now. He knew he was facing a crossroads in his life.
Luke parked the BMW Henry had bought him as a graduation gift in the short-term parking lot. On the passenger side, Henry huffed out of the car. His appointments had run long and they were running late. Luke pulled Henry’s small bag from the trunk of his car.
‘I put a copy of my latest report in your bag, and a copy of the current database,’ Luke said. ‘You can scare your fellow passengers by reading the report aloud. Fun for everyone.’
‘What did you call it?’ Henry gave him a smile as they boarded the parking garage elevator.
‘A Drive Down the Night Road.’
‘It sounds like a bad heavy rock album.’
‘Yes, but the subtitle’s pure jazz: A Continuing Analysis of Extremists on the Internet.’
Henry laughed. ‘Thanks for all your work on this, Luke. Seeing you was the best part of my trip; trying to convince my fellow academics about the threats we face was much less fun.’
‘Your peers won’t listen to you?’
‘I believe huge attacks are coming. But they’re treating me like I’m saying the sky is falling.’ Henry couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice. They walked toward the main terminal of the Austin airport; the spring breeze was cool but the sunshine was bright and hard against their eyes. ‘So. What about the job offer?’
‘If I take it, then my job is now to officially… think. Mom would be amused.’
‘Your mother would have been incredibly proud of you.’ Silence then, for always about ten seconds, when they both spoke of Luke’s mother. ‘Proud of us working together.’ They waited for a security officer to wave them across the walkway, stopping traffic with a gesture. Henry gave the officer a polite nod.
‘I’m not sure this is going to put my psychology degree to real use. But playing tag with the crazies is slightly addictive.’
‘Danger is addictive,’ Henry said. Luke thought Henry’s sense of danger was probably double-parking or placing a five-dollar bet at a casino. ‘But what your research is, Luke, is important.’ Henry stopped in front of the terminal. His sharp-planed face made a frown. ‘The hinges of history are at a critical turn right now, Luke. The world has grown far smaller than we ever dreamed it could be. It’s easier than ever for people with certain… violent intentions to find each other. You could help us find ways to understand them, and fight them.’
‘Us. I wish you’d tell me who your client is.’
‘Take the job and you’ll know.’ They’d stopped at the American Airlines check-in touch screens. Henry tapped in his info and the kiosk spat out his boarding pass. Luke followed him to the line of people waiting to thread through the security checkpoint.
‘I don’t want…’ Luke stopped.
‘What, son?’ Henry didn’t often call him son. Only when he was worried about Luke.
‘I don’t want a pity job offer, Henry. Just because you made a promise to Mom.’
‘Good, because pity doesn’t play with me. You’ve done brilliant work for me, Luke, on researching the, um, Night
Road, as you charmingly call it. But I would never offer you a career out of pity for you. I respect you and my company far too much.’
Nice, Luke thought, how does that shoe taste? Your one family member offers you a job and you manage to insult him. ‘I didn’t mean that. I know you’re serious.’ Luke cleared his throat and his stomach gave a nervous lurch. ‘Yes. I’ll take the job.’
A surprising relief lit Henry’s eyes. ‘You’ve made me happy. And proud. Us working together, it’ll be, you know, cool.’
Luke couldn’t resist a smile. Henry’s definition of cool was singular. Monographs on political economics, treatises of the history of terrorism, all qualified as Henry cool. And maybe it would make their relationship easier… more adult. He wouldn’t be seen as just a kid any more. ‘You’re right. It’ll be cool.’
Henry did a poor job of keeping the happiness from spreading across his face. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, and we’ll get the paperwork started.’
‘Thanks, Henry.’
‘Go home and get some sleep. Stay clear of the Night Road for a while. Hang out in the sunshine.’
‘I’ll miss shaking the tree and seeing the rotten fruit fall.’
‘You and me, we’re going to change the world.’
‘Tall order.’
‘We can change the world. Trust me.’ And then Henry shook his hand, gave him an awkward hug. Luke hugged him back. Then Henry turned and joined the security line.
Luke walked back out into the glare of the afternoon and headed toward the parking garage.
We’re going to change the world, Henry said. At least he didn’t lack for ambition.
Luke stopped at the edge of the parking garage, trying to remember where he’d left his BMW.
‘Luke, hey, how’s it going?’ A heavy arm went around his shoulder. A man’s face – thirtyish, brown-haired, a crooked, nervous smile – was close to his. Too close. Luke started to pull back.
A metal object darted into the small of his back.
‘Don’t yell, Luke. Don’t run. You have a very large gun against your spine. Can you stay calm for me?’ The man had pulled Luke close, so he could whisper in his ear. He was dressed in an expensive pinstripe suit, a conservative navy tie. His face was a little fleshy and soft; he did not look like a man who routinely carried a gun. Luke could smell his mint-drenched breath, his nervous sweat.
