The Harvest

by John David Krygelski

  Preston Bennett, called for an urgent meeting by Clayton Dean, entered his boss’s office to find Margo Jackson and Bill Burke standing next to Dean’s desk. Dean looked up. “Preston, come in.” His voice sounded subdued and sad.

  “What’s up, Clay? Margo? Bill?” He could not help but notice the somber expressions on all three of their faces.

  Bill Burke said, “Preston, please have a seat.”

  “Something wrong?” Bennett asked as he sat in one of the visitors’ chairs.

  Instead of replying, Clayton clicked his mouse a single time. From the computer’s speakers, Bennett heard his own voice saying, “I just can’t believe Kaval would be behind this.”

  It was followed by Dean. “Believe it. We don’t have the smoking gun, but pretty damn close.”

  Then came Bennett asking, “What do you want me to do?”

  Dean clicked the mouse again, stopping the playback. All three stared at Preston silently. His mind whirled, trying to absorb the reality of the recording, desperately searching for an explanation, before he finally said, “I…how…where did you get this?”

  Margo hitched one leg up onto the corner of the desk in front of Bennett and said, “We found it on the desk of William Stavros.”

  “He’s been bugging my home?”

  Clayton answered, “Preston, it’s impossible to bug your house, you know that. Look, not only has Margo talked to Stavros, who told her everything, but we’ve also found fingerprints on the disc.”

  Preston continued to struggle with the facts presented to him. Clayton and the others were all looking at him so accusatorily that there must be only one explanation. “Mine? You found my fingerprints? Clay, that can’t be! I would never….”

  “They were Debbie’s.” Dean’s response was delivered flatly, carrying no inflection at all.

  The words cut through Bennett’s confusion instantly, triggering a natural reaction to defend his wife. “That’s bullshit! This is a setup. Her fingerprints mean nothing. Someone could have used a disc she handled.”

  Margo spoke again. “Preston, after we got this, we obtained a search warrant and found the recording gear in your house. Because of the anti-bugging systems in place, the only thing which would work was a local machine which burned a CD. The CD had to be hand-carried out of the house; any wireless transmission would be blocked, detected, or intercepted.”

  “You searched my house? Without even telling me?”

  Clayton answered, “Preston, knock it off. This isn’t some stupid corporate wiretapping thing; we’re talking about national security. Of course we did it without your knowledge. The recording gear was built into Debbie’s closet behind a false wall. The small CPU operating the machine was programmed to call Debbie’s cell phone whenever there was a new recording to be delivered. Her fingerprints were on the CD. Stavros told us she was his mole. And our search at his offices have turned up numerous visits from her on his building security surveillance tapes, including a visit the day of this conversation. After Stavros listened to the disc, he called Kaval who left the country that night.”

  Clayton stared at his old friend, watching as the details of the damning evidence sunk in. There was no longer any doubt in his mind that Preston was not in collusion with his wife, although he was certain Margo and Bill would want a little more talk time with Bennett to satisfy themselves.

  Finding his voice, Bennett asked, “Where is she? Can I see her?”

  Margo replied, “We’re picking her up now. We’re bringing her in for questioning. Preston, I’m afraid we can’t let you talk to her for a while.”

  “Why?” Bennett’s normally controlled voice sounded weak and pathetic.

  “We need to question her first. We also need to spend a little more time….”

  Clayton interrupted Margo who was obviously uncomfortable. In a gentle voice, he said, “Preston, the FBI still needs to rule you out as a conspirator on this.”

  Rather than becoming upset at the accusation, Bennett simply nodded weakly. “I understand. Am I under arrest?”

  Burke answered quickly, “No, you’re not. There isn’t any evidence in our possession indicating any knowledge or participation on your part. It’s just normal protocol to check out and eliminate everyone close to a known….”

  “Traitor,” Bennett said the word for him. Tears began to well in his eyes.

  א

  “It was late afternoon, the day that Elohim made His announcement about the marks on peoples’ palms,” Turbo said, staring directly into the camera lens. “Nobody else was here. It was a real quiet day. This guy walked in and said he needed a tattoo. I told him nobody needed a tattoo; he just wanted one. It’s kind of my stock line that I say to people. Anyway, I asked him where he wanted it, on what part of his body. He said he wanted it on his palm.”

  Kiefe Wilson, the network reporter, stopped him to ask a question. “At that time did you know who he was?”

  “Yeah, I did. He had a floppy hat on and sunglasses, but I recognized him. My woman watches his show all of the time, buys his tapes and books, too. So his face is all over our apartment. She’s always using his book title on me, you know, Be-A-Man – Beaman. I told her he changed his name to Beaman just to be able to say that. So, yeah, I knew it was Dick Beaman.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “I told him I don’t do palms. The tats don’t stay, and they look like sh…crap. He told me he’d been to other shops, I don’t remember how many he said, and the last shop sent him to me, said I was the best.” A smile of pride crept onto Turbo’s face as he made the last comment. “Then he peeled off nine $100 bills and dropped ’em on the counter. So I did it.”

  “Did what, exactly?”

  “I put that mark, the Elohim mark, on Beaman’s right hand.”

  “Where did you get it, the original to work from, so quickly?”

  “Are you kidding? Within minutes of that Elohim’s announcement, it was on TV. Within an hour it was all over the Internet. I watched the speech. The minute I heard Him say people going to Heaven would have a mark, I knew I could start selling some. It’s what I do. I figured I’d have to be ready. It was a bummer when He said it would be on people’s palms. Anyway, you know, I got a j-peg of it from the ’net.”

  Turbo reached around behind himself and picked up an inkjet printout of the mark, handing the sheet to the reporter who held it up for the cameraman to zoom in on it. Then the reporter asked, “Did you see the show where Beaman was attacked by his audience?”

  “I did. Ever since he was in here, I’ve been watching for him to appear. I kind of figured what he was up to.”

  “Did you see the mark that he showed?”

  “The devil mark, yeah!”

  “Do you have any idea how that could have happened?”

  “You mean other than Beaman pissed off God, and God switched it – no, I don’t. There’s no way what I did could have changed to that.”

  “And you’re certain of all of this? That it actually was Dick Beaman, and all of the other details?”

  Offended, Turbo’s voice took on an edge as he answered, “Look…I’m not a stoner and I don’t drink. It makes my hands shake, screws up my business. Yeah, I’m sure. Besides, I got the tape. And I take a picture of all my work, so I have one of his tat.”

  “Could I see the picture?”

  “Sure.”

  Turbo reached around to the counter again and retrieved another print, handing it to the reporter, who said to the camera, “This is a print of the picture Turbo took of his finished work on Dick Beaman.” He held it steadily for the cameraman who again zoomed in. It was a clear shot of a right hand, fully open, with Elohim’s mark on the palm.

  “Turbo, one more question. Why did you come forward about this? Violating the privacy of your customers on national television can’t be good for business.”

  “I didn’t want people to get the wrong idea about this Elohim. People were believing Beaman had the real thing on his
palm and God took it away. That wasn’t right, and I was the only one who knew.”

  “Turbo, thank you again. Kathy?”

  The view returned to the studio where Kathy Crocker was smiling at the camera. “Thank you, Kiefe. As you heard, Turbo mentioned a tape. We have a copy of the surveillance tape from the tattoo shop, taken the night Dick Beaman came in.”

  Crocker’s face was replaced by a black and white view of the same shop where the interview had just occurred. The front door opened, and a man walked in wearing the hat and glasses Turbo had described. There was no sound with the recording.

  Kathy narrated. “This is the front lobby view. You can see the customer come in. You can also see Turbo sitting at the counter. From this view, the customer is obviously not recognizable. You can see the exchange of money and the two of them going into the back room, the shop where Turbo does his actual work. The view changes now to another camera in the back, and you can see the customer sit down and Turbo start to work. We’re going to skip forward now to the end of the tape.”

  The tape fast-forwarded through the tattooing process, creating an unintentionally comical image of Turbo working at nine times his normal speed. As this played, Crocker said, “I can’t resist making one comment – now I can see why he calls himself ‘Turbo.’ Okay, we’re back to normal speed now. Turbo is finished and leaves the room for a moment. Thinking he has privacy, the customer takes off his sunglasses, probably for a better look at the tattoo.”

  The image froze as the customer removed his sunglasses. The video tech zoomed in on the face.

  “As you can see, the tape shows it was Dick Beaman at the tattoo parlor that evening.”

  Crocker’s face returned to the screen as she said, “Barry, quite a dramatic turn of events. We’ve gone from believing Beaman had a bona fide mark and was punished by God for refusing to go to Heaven, to discovering he forged the mark and was planning on capitalizing on it by pretending to stay. Either way, it looks as though Elohim was behind the final event which resulted in Beaman’s death.”

  Barry Thorndike stared at his desk mate for a moment before speaking. “Kathy, I’m not quite sure how to respond. Suffice it to say, you are obviously much more comfortable passing judgment on Elohim than am I.”

  Crocker’s smile tightened as Thorndike spoke. Through nearly clenched teeth, she said, “I guess I should be worrying about being struck by lightning?”

  Trying his best to make it seem as if they were engaging in friendly banter, Barry replied, “Kathy, if He were that kind of God, the lightning would have struck you years ago.”

  א

  Kirk Strickland stared through the view slot in the unmarked van, watching the U-Haul which was parked in one of the long-term lots at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. To Strickland, there did not appear to be anyone with the truck. Turning away from the slot, he said to Benny Watkins, his second-in-command, “I think we need to make our move.”

  Watkins agreed, “Considering we don’t have any idea what their timing is, I agree. How did we get so lucky to be the lead team?”

  Grabbing the first protective suit from the rack and struggling to put it on, Kirk answered, “Hmm…’cause we’re the best?”

  “Either that, or we’re the team they don’t care about losing.” Watkins also began the laborious process of donning his gear. “What do you think we’ve got in there, Kirk?”

  “Well,” Strickland answered, grunting from the effort of pulling on the head shield, “you know what I found with the sniffer.”

  “Yeah, another Oklahoma City. Fertilizer and diesel fuel.”

  “That, plus the radioactive stuff,” Strickland added, referring to the Geiger counter reading he also took during his surreptitious walk around the U-Haul.

  “Don’t remind me. I’m talking about the fuse. What do you think we’ve got?”

  “We know it’s not a mechanical timer; the microphone would’ve picked up the ticking. Either it’s an electronic timer or it’s remote-controlled.”

  “My guess, it’s tied to a cell phone.”

  “You might be right. I hope so. We’ll kill the RF when we blanket it. We just need to get the blanket on it quickly enough in case they’re watching from a distance.”

  Watkins looked suddenly worried.

  Strickland noticed and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “I know we’re doing this one first to figure it out and find any booby traps before the teams move on the other six. But what if they are watching? We throw the blanket over this one and they can’t send their signal. But they sure as hell can blow the other six. At that point they’ll figure out they’ve been made.”

  Strickland stopped fighting his suit for a moment. “You know, you’re right. Shit.” He keyed his microphone. “This is Eagle One. I need the ‘ops’ director.”

  After a brief pause, a voice answered, “Ops.”

  Strickland explained his partner’s concern to the man in charge of all the teams. When he finished, the voice said, “Stand by.”

  א

  “This is nail-biting time,” said Bill Burke, sitting next to Margo Jackson in the Command and Control Center of the Department of Homeland Security.

  “I hate this,” she answered in a soft voice. Her eyes moved from one large flat-screen panel to another, each showing a long-range view of one of the seven U-Haul trucks. All seven looked abandoned. In addition to the truck parked at Sky Harbor in Phoenix, she saw one at a shopping mall in Seattle, another in the parking lot near Union Station in Chicago, a fourth in a parking lot in downtown Atlanta, the fifth in the midst of a crowded lot outside a baseball stadium in Miami, the sixth in the center of downtown Los Angeles, and the seventh on the top deck of a seven-story parking structure in San Francisco.

  Thomas Eades, the Secretary of Homeland Security, was standing about ten feet in front of them, talking on the telephone. He turned and motioned for them to come over. When they joined him, he put on the speaker phone, saying, “You’re on speaker. Bill Burke and Margo Jackson with the FBI are with me. Please recap what you just said for them.” To them, Eades said, “This is Marlin James, the operations officer in charge of the bomb squads. Go ahead, Marlin.”

  “As you may know, it’s standard procedure with multiple bombs to disable one first. If there are any surprises, we can learn from our mistakes on the first one before we touch the others. Some of the bad guys are now using cell phones to detonate their bombs. We can stop the signal from entering a truck with a shielded blanket which we throw over the bomb. It stops the cell signal. We do it first on all ops. Our team in Phoenix was designated as lead team for this op. They just asked a good question. If the bad guys are watching, we can throw the blanket over the truck quickly enough to be okay on that specific one, but when they see us do it, they’ll figure out that we’ve made them. They might just detonate the other six while we’re trying to disarm the first.”

  Eades said, “Good point, Marlin. What do you suggest?”

  “Well, it’s really the lesser of two evils, I guess. We can proceed as planned and hope they aren’t watching, gaining the benefit of figuring one out first before we tackle the other six. Or, we can coordinate throwing the shield blanket on all seven simultaneously and proceed with simultaneous disarming procedures, in which case we lose the benefit of learning from the first one.”

  Eades turned and looked at Burke and Jackson. “What are your thoughts?”

  Margo spoke first, asking, “What’s the downside of blanketing all seven at once, but still doing the Phoenix disarming first?”

  Marlin’s voice came over the speaker. “Not a bad idea, actually. Should have thought of it myself.”

  Eades looked at Burke, who nodded his agreement, and said, “Marlin, that’s the direction we take. Blanket all of them and disarm Phoenix first.”

  “Roger that.” The phone line went dead.

  א

  Strickland told Watkins, “We’ve got our answer. Call in the truck with the blanket,
but tell them to hold until the others are in place.”

  Watkins spoke into his radio and instructed the team driving the blanket truck to move in and hold. They watched the plain, white truck through their view slots as it slowly drove down the parking lane. Fortunately, there was an empty space across from the U-Haul. They pulled into the space, with the truck positioned so the roll-up door at the rear was facing it. Shutting off the engine, they waited for word.

  At each of the other locations, identical trucks maneuvered as close as possible to their targets. The team in Miami, encountering a completely full lot, had no choice but to leave their truck idling in the driving lane behind the U-Haul. They radioed their status to the ops director who, realizing the tenuousness of their situation, put out the word for all teams to get ready quickly.