by Martha Carr
“I need to know everything you know,” she said gently, hoping it would encourage him to focus.
“They were organized. That tone in his radio frequency has got to be a tracker. They probably didn’t count on him being such an avid fan of AM radio. Wait,” he said, tapping his forehead. “He mentioned he saw the same van, no, maybe a similar van? He saw a white van in the parking lot where he went for a run.”
“I saw that van!” said Wallis, suddenly excited. “We were facetiming and he held up the phone. He thought they were Watchers just trying to make a point.”
Esther exchanged glances with Father Donald.
“What?” asked Wallis. “What does that mean?”
“That was probably their first attempt to take him but when he showed you the van they changed teams. I’ll say that wasn’t even the same white van that showed up at the church. There were contingencies,” said Esther. “This is good news. They went to a lot of trouble to take Norman and they’re going to take good care of him until they get what they want or become convinced it didn’t work.”
Wallis became aware of where they were still standing. This would be gossip across every courthouse within four counties by tomorrow if they didn’t move soon.
“I need to get home and tell Ned something. I want to make this clear. No one says anything to Ned, or to Harriet, which would be the same as talking to Ned, until I tell you it’s okay. That means no matter how long it takes me. Is that understood?” She used her best stern parental tone but her voice cracked in the middle of her short speech, spoiling the effect.
“I need to get out of this parking lot. No, no, Father, I don’t want you to come with me,” cutting off his attempt to say something. “I need to do this alone.”
A black SUV drove by the parking lots on the road that skirted all of them. Wallis watched it go by, feeling a chill take hold in the middle of her body making her shiver.
“There’s more than one now,” she said.
“What, dear?” asked Esther.
“It was bad enough when we had to worry about Management and Watchers.” Wallis spit out each word. “Now there’s an entirely new group that wants something from us and is just as violent as the last one but with one madman running the entire show.” Her voice trailed off in a whisper. She walked off to her car without looking back at their startled faces.
Wallis drove home, taking her time, sobbing behind her sunglasses, hoping anyone who noticed her shaking shoulders mistook it for laughter. She didn’t look around to see who might have noticed.
Different images of Norman tied up or beaten kept popping into her head as she waited at the traffic light at Pump Road and Broad Street. She gripped the steering wheel and let out a wail that filled the inside of the car.
She got to the top of her driveway and saw her neighbor, Sandra Wilkins waiting there. She was wearing a bright orange apron under her pale blue puffy coat, every hair of her blonde hair neatly in place. She was holding a casserole dish covered in foil, just waiting. Wallis pulled alongside her and put down her window.
“Have you just been standing here waiting?” asked Wallis, still trying to piece together how her life had changed, hoping it was only temporary.
“No, I got a phone call that you were on your way. I wanted to make sure there was someone here to greet you.”
“He’s not dead,” she blurted out, angry that anyone would even suggest that could have happened. But it was true. In each moment she had no idea where he was, how he was doing or if something permanent had happened to him. It hurt her feelings, somehow that she didn’t know.
Sandra stood there, waiting to see if Wallis had anything else to say. She was the Circle operative who bought Larry Blazney’s old house after the kind, old man was killed by Management Watchers for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Only his old dog, Happy had survived.
Then, when the civil war had spilled over into Wallis’ own neighborhood it was Sandra who had let go of her cover and taken out several of the Watchers who had come to kill Wallis. Not everyone had survived that night, though.
Wallis thought about Maureen dying in her arms not too far from where her car was idling.
“He’s not dead,” she repeated in a whisper, willing it to be true.
“This is not that kind of casserole,” said Sandra, in her usual thick Southern accent, drawing out every vowel. “This is so we can talk without drawing attention and so you get something to eat. You’re going to need your strength,” she said, leaning down to get a better look at Wallis.
“Can you call a neighbor who packs a gun and was ordered to live nearby your friend?” asked Wallis, her eyes filling with tears again.
“Well, you call Harriet your mother still, don’t you?” asked Sandra, smiling. Harriet had only recently come out from under her own lifelong cover and was still known to wave her gun around at the first hint of trouble.
“Good point,” said Wallis. “Thank you. In the worst of things Norman is the one who always finds a way to make a joke. I’d drown on my own, I think.”
Sandra stood up straight and looked around the nearby street. “You need to move off the street. There are too many eyes and not everyone is friendly.”
“I haven’t told Harriet yet…or Ned. Can we meet later?”
“Of course,” said Sandra, “but time is precious. Let me follow you down the driveway and I’ll leave this in your kitchen. You call me when you’re ready.”
Wallis eased the Forester down the driveway and parked, taking a look at herself in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were puffy and red and she knew Harriet would be all over her with questions the second she saw her. With any luck, her mother was taking a nap.
Sandra ambled down the driveway, making a point of looking calm and relaxed for anyone who might be watching and waited by the back door for Wallis to get out of her car.
“Don’t take too long,” said Sandra as she followed Wallis into the kitchen and put the casserole down on the counter. “This is warm lasagna. You can eat it right now. It’s good comfort food.” She put up her hand to stop Wallis from saying anything else. “There are no words right now. We’ll talk strategy later. I’ll leave you with this. If anyone contacts you, and they will, listen but don’t agree to anything. Give us a chance to help. I’ll show myself out.”
Once Sandra was gone the house fell quiet. Wallis crept upstairs and saw her mother asleep under an afghan, her mouth open emitting a low, rumbling snore.
She went into her bedroom, quickly passing to the master bathroom, not wanting to look at the bed, knowing there might be countless nights ahead of her trying to sleep alone. There were so many thoughts she just didn’t want to have right now.
She washed her face and tried putting back on her makeup. “Better,” she whispered, as her phone rang. It was a blocked number. Her hand hovered over the phone for a moment as she steadied herself.
“Hello?”
“Hello Wallis. I’m an associate of George Clemente.”
“How is Norman? Where is he? I want to talk to him,” she said. The words spilled out of her as she tried to keep her voice steady, sound confident. It was exactly what she would do in a heated courtroom. Her natural resting place with everyone but her family.
“Norman is doing fine. We’ve taking very good care of him. Your assistance is going to be needed to keep him that way. Do you understand?”
“I don’t understand any of this,” she said, her voice rising.
“I need you to listen because in thirty seconds I’m hanging up whether you listened or not. Come to the old beer caves under Rocketts Landing. The entrance looks like an old brick archway. It’s by the boat slip and the chain link fence will be open far enough for you to get in. Don’t mean to be a cliché but come alone and leave your phone in the car. You have one hour to get here.”
The phone went dead. Wallis thought about Sandra’s instructions. She was in over her head. She thought about waking up Harriet and taking her
along but she would probably end up shooting something, making things worse.
In the end, she gave in and called Esther.
“They’ve made contact. I have an hour to get down past Shockoe Bottom. I’m going.”
“I would expect you to go, my dear. Were there instructions?”
“Come alone and leave my phone in the car.”
“Simple, no drama. Do something for me. Wear that sweater I like so much. We sewed a very particular thread into several of your family’s wardrobe a long time ago. The thread can’t be detected and acts as a GPS. It’s a flexible antennae and the range isn’t as far as I’d like sometimes but good enough. You will be comforted to know, it’s part of the reason why we’ve been able to track Norman so easily and can safely watch from a distance of some measure for an opportunity.”
“How long ago?” asked Wallis, trying not to think about Norman, not now.
“We’ve been doing it for years as a matter of routine. Harriet helped, if you must know. It’s basic protocol.”
Wallis wanted to be angry but knowing there was a signal pinpointing where Norman was being held was worth the years of having her choices trimmed without her knowledge.
“A lot of my wardrobe?”
“Not the time, Wallis, but yes. Wear the sweater.”
“Won’t they know?”
“They’ll suspect but they won’t be able to detect them. It’s just a precaution. Pay attention. Don’t let the circumstances overwhelm you. A detail, a word may tell us more than they intended. At any rate we could find out more of the grand scheme of things.”
Wallis let out a breath she was holding deep in her chest. “I don’t want to fail him,” she said, biting her lip.
“And you won’t, now go. Meet the devil’s foot soldier. You were smart to call me. This will all be easier with a net rather than a single strand. Clemente may not be expecting you to still trust us so much that you would ask for help, and that could be his undoing.”
Chapter 11
“I want him to be brought back into the fold. I want Fred Bowers back.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be possible, Mr. President,” said Ty Nichols. It was his first day as the White House Chief of Staff to the president.
He had come through the security gate at the East Portico entrance in the early morning hours humming to himself. He found his way to the security office and tried to look serious for the picture on his new security badge that would have to last him. He was ready to change the world.
It was a grandiose idea, especially at his ripe old age of forty-three but something was different this time. The Circle was firmly in charge and not just of the White House, which they had held for the past four years. This time, Management had been weakened enough that the White House was able to hold meetings away from the prying eyes of the press and the public where they made deals with manufacturers, bankers and even educators that had nothing to do with politics.
Ty wanted to appear calm as he sat on one of the green linen upholstered couches in the Oval office across from the President of the United States. It wasn’t working. Every time he spoke he slid forward to the edge of the seat, leaning his elbows on his knees, talking excitedly with his hands.
The new bright blue silk tie dangled between his rangy legs. He wanted to look the part and had bought a lot of new ties. It was all he could afford with two children at the tony private school across the river in Alexandria and a wife who liked to volunteer for a living.
The President in contrast was wearing an expensive pair of dark brown slacks that passed for casual with a soft collar shirt and a deep green cardigan. He looked as if he had been pulled in to work from his day off. The truth was, though as the elected head of state and a member of one of the Circle elite there were no real days off, no weekend.
There were just moments of respite and they had been fleeting lately.
The president leaned back, distracted, not even looking in his direction. Instead, he was staring out the window in the direction of the Rose Garden. Ty wasn’t sure President Haynes could even see the flowers from that angle.
He slid forward again till he at the edge of the couch. He wanted to make a good impression but he was determined to make his point.
“Management may have been beaten back but they aren’t gone. If it were known that Fred Bowers was welcomed back, it could stir resentment.”
“What reason do you have to believe anyone outside this office would find out?” asked the president, turning his gaze to Ty, sounding weary.
The president was finishing his first term in office and had just won reelection. All of the preparation for the inauguration in January was keeping everyone busy. But the civil war had strained the President’s time and his patience and he walked through the house looking more like he had lost.
Too many good operatives in the Circle had died but there would be no monument to them, no public ceremonies honoring their sacrifice. The entire war had been fought out in the open but without the public understanding what they were seeing.
In the general media it was called the year of terrorism leaving the general populace feeling shaky about what hid in the shadows without understanding it was the foundation.
President Haynes had won reelection handily, especially after the assassination attempt in Iowa at a campaign stop that left the president wounded and one aide dead.
The public ate up the images of their wounded president waving bravely from the window of his hospital room, smiling and reassuring everyone he was still at the helm, his arm in a sling. It was a good photo op.
No one but a select few knew that the dead aide was really a mole planted by Management and the entire assassination attempt was necessary cover to take him out. A simple shooting on a lonely street would have accomplished the same thing but Management would have known and there would have been retaliation.
This way, the aide was a victim of a random lunatic and the Circle could get on with the business of finally having the balance of power tip in their favor. It was the first time in almost two hundred years that this had happened and it only took a hidden civil war and a grave misstep by Management. Killing Maureen Bowers had set off Fred Bowers who managed to strategically strike at the power structure, calling a halt to the conflict.
“Hell, he got the shooting to stop. We should be rewarding him with something. If I’d known that was what it would take to end that damn war I would have ordered it.” The president’s voice was rising to almost a shout.
The Secret Service gently knocked, opening the door. “Is everything alright?” asked an agent.
“We’re fine, Billy. Just a little difference of opinion. Not the first time you’ve heard raised voices in here. It’s alright.”
The men who shadowed POTUS on a regular basis had noticed how quiet the president had become and how he had stopped joking on occasion or walking so quickly down the hallway they had to hustle to keep up with him. These days it was more of a stroll.
The world was wearing him out and he had just signed up for another four years to take it all on again. Billy nodded and softly shut the door with a muffled click.
“It’s an exciting time, sir. We get the chance to make policy that could actually affect deep-rooted change. No, no, of course the public won’t know about almost all of it but we will. We can go through the dance of proposing legislature but we will actually have the means to change things on the ground level and up through every filament of society.” Ty was breathless from letting out the speech he had practiced at every stoplight for weeks. He had a vision of the way the country could be that was so real to him he thought it was a foregone conclusion that it had to come into being. They would be the generation to change everything.
The president let out a smile that spread to his eyes. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that kind of enthusiasm. It’s infectious but fragile. I suggest you let it out in doses.”
Ty was heartened by what he took a
s encouragement and launched into the part of the speech he always hesitated at when he was practicing it. He wasn’t sure of the reception.
He had been handpicked from a think tank full of Circle operatives directing battle movements and knew that there were certain things the Circle never liked to discuss, for more than one reason. The Butterfly Project was the biggest one.
It was the Circle’s salvation and it was something many wondered if they’d live to regret but couldn’t even know how it could go wrong. Raising the nation’s children that no one wanted on select residential education facilities, orphanages some would say, and grooming them for a life serving the Circle, if that’s what they still wanted when they graduated, was a moral seesaw.
Lean to one side and it was a way to make change to benefit the greatest number without destabilizing the institutions that fueled the economy or kept the country secure.
Lean the other way and it was a justification to spoon feed a population that didn’t have many options in order to bring them into the fold.
It was all an untested theory at best and might prove impossible once it was tested. That time was fast approaching.
The first generation of the Butterfly Project was graduating from universities, moving up the ranks of the armed services, running for public office, taking their seat on boards, and generally going out into the world by the thousands.
“We have people placed in every segment of society and Management has no idea,” said Ty, his enthusiasm building to a crescendo. “We can now call on them to help us create change.”
“We have asked people just starting out in their lives to trust us enough to basically hand over their wants and dreams, believing it will all make a difference,” said the president, his tone growing darker. “When we have no idea of the outcome and we have to look away from the past, even the near past, to believe it could be anything but a slaughter. We have to believe in what hasn’t yet been achieved,” he said, softly pounding the arm of the chair, as he went back to looking toward the far window. “Management takes revenge very seriously.”
