Cold Glory

by B. Kent Anderson

  Hudson nodded and turned away. Tolman reached into her desk drawer and slowly withdrew her holstered sidearm. She qualified at the FBI range at Quantico every year, and went to a private range with her father once a month to stay sharp. But Tolman had never drawn her weapon on the job. RIO didn’t lend itself to armed confrontation.

  Still, she kept the SIG Sauer 9 millimeter maintained, and she kept her skills up to date. The various federal law enforcement agencies all had different standard-issue sidearms, but any officer was free to use their own money to purchase a different weapon. Some agencies had contracts with Glock, some with SIG, some even still used Berettas. She’d been issued a Glock five years ago, but had instantly felt that it was too big for her hand, and balanced all wrong. She’d bought the SIG out of her own pocket.

  Tolman started for the door. Several of her colleagues took notice of the weapon. She hoped she wouldn’t need it.

  CHAPTER

  28

  It was after ten o’clock when Journey landed in Louisville. He’d suffered through a layover in St. Louis, where the fatigue began to catch up to his body. He rented a car at the airport, then checked in to a motel along Interstate 65, not far from the airport. He’d just dropped his backpack and small travel bag on the motel bed when his cell rang.

  “Where are you?” Tolman asked without preamble.

  “Just checked in to a motel in Louisville. We’ll need daylight to look around Falls of the Ohio. Are you here yet?”

  “I’m stuck at O’Hare. I’m having trouble getting a connecting flight. I’ll meet you in the morning.”

  “Do you know where to go?”

  “I told you, Dr. Journey, all I need is my computer and fifteen minutes. Just across the river in Indiana, Exit 0 from I-65 and follow the signs. Sounds like a fascinating place.”

  “That it does,” Journey said.

  “Dr. Journey?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not jerking you around, I don’t think you’re crazy, and I’m taking you seriously.”

  “I think they’re going to go after the president next. And if they do … I think we’ll know more when we find the rest of the document.”

  “I’ll meet you at eight o’clock in the morning.”

  Journey hung up, waited a moment, then called Amelia. “How’s Andrew?” he asked her.

  “He’s still in his bed, laughing,” Amelia said. She sounded frazzled. He remembered what she’d said about crying when Andrew was with her.

  “Sing to him. He’s always liked your voice better than mine.”

  “I will.”

  “What did you tell Paul?”

  Amelia was silent for a long time, then said, “He’s spending the night with his brother; then he’s going to meet Andrew tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Journey said, then could think of nothing else to say. “Good night.”

  After he broke the connection, Journey showered, undressed, and lay down on the bed. It was well after midnight before he fell asleep.

  * * *

  More than four hundred miles separated Washington, D.C. from Matewan, West Virginia, but Baltimore Two Gold made the drive with only one stop for gasoline. With a task force convened to handle the investigation of Chief Justice Darlington’s death, Brent Graves could not leave Washington, but he was able to slip away for fifteen minutes and meet his fellow Glory Warrior in downtown D.C. He gave him the document that Inspector Hendrickson had brought back from his interview with Nick Journey—the document Hendrickson unknowingly delivered into the hands of the Glory Warriors.

  Baltimore Two Gold then made the drive to the Judge. The Judge let him into the door of the mountain retreat, then went to his study without speaking.

  “Let me see it,” he said when the oak doors had closed.

  Gold handed him the paper.

  The Judge took it as if it were Holy Scripture. In a way, he thought, it was, but with more far-reaching power. The Glory Warriors had always been a work in progress, an incomplete picture, and his father knew that. But he told his son what he did know, how the original Glory Warriors had waited patiently for their time, and their time had never come. Still, the name and the objective were passed down, and those of like mind were chosen, carefully researched, and entrusted with the mission. At first only men, then women as well. At first only whites, then those of all races. Gender made no difference. Race made no difference. The mind-set was the difference—the understanding of power in governance, and how that power should properly be applied. The American government had long since stopped governing. The Judge felt that true government had actually ceased the moment shots were fired at Fort Sumter and the Civil War began. Everything since was shallow and inept and corrupt, and unworthy of men like Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee.

  “You will be leader of the Glory Warriors one day,” his father said to him, years before the day his father’s fist had crashed into the side of his head when he dared to question the mission. He was only a boy, eleven or twelve at the most, thinking a boy’s thoughts: chess tournaments and football games, school and vacations. “Educate yourself,” the old man said. “Learn the law, the military, learn politics, learn how things work. When the time comes, be ready. When Lee and Grant’s words are found, when we can document their true intentions and present them to the American people, you will be ready. The people will want us. By the time that happens, they will have no choice.”

  “Father, I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

  “Power, son. I’m talking about power, and about doing what’s right for America, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes.”

  Son.

  His father never called him “son.” Never. He heard other fathers call their boys “son”—for that matter, other fathers called him “son” a few times—but never his own father. The only time in the Judge’s memory was that day, nearly sixty years ago, when he first mentioned the Glory Warriors, first said the names of Grant and Lee.

  He had done as his father instructed. His family name opened many doors, but he took every opportunity to learn. He went to Vietnam, then worked in the highest levels of the Judge Advocate General Corps at the Pentagon, and was then elected to the House of Representatives from California, serving three terms during the era of the first Gulf War. He was a deputy Cabinet secretary; then he ventured into the media, consolidating his power base until he was able to come here to this symbolic place, this state that had been born of the Civil War.

  It had been a sometimes painful journey—occasionally the Judge found himself rubbing his cheek as if his father had just struck him—and his own relationship to the Glory Warriors had grown more complex over the years. The quest had consumed his life, as it had his father’s and grandfather’s. Now it was about to come to fruition. Was he a better man than they? Would he be a better head of government than they would have been? Was he worthy of Grant and Lee’s vision?

  On his deathbed in 1980, his father had said, “It’s in your hands now. Don’t fail.”

  Don’t fail.

  The Judge’s hands trembled a little as he slipped the page out of the plastic. He touched the embossed symbol of the Glory Warriors, a twin of the one in his desk drawer. He read the opening words:

  Whereas the late War Between the States has ended …

  The Judge read it five times, mindful that he was the first Glory Warrior to read it since 1865.

  We are on the right path, he thought.

  Vandermeer and Darlington were dead. The Judge had considered it before, how the original Glory Warriors foresaw the government’s instability, but never intended to have a hand in creating that instability.

  That was his creation. Anyone who was paying attention could tell that the government was unstable, and had been for decades. Perhaps the three heads had not been lopped off, but those were just three people, and the government was bigger than the three. Speakers and chief justices and presidents came and went, and still the government
failed to govern. Ideologies mattered little—whether they claimed to be right, left, or center, they accomplished very little, doing only enough to ensure their own political survival while mouthing platitudes about “the American people” and “rolling up our sleeves and getting to work” and “moving beyond partisanship.” Year after year, decade after decade, the governmental machine limped along, sustaining itself while the country as a whole disintegrated around them.

  So what if the Judge had helped bring about the circumstances that would hasten the Glory Warriors’ ascension? He had only helped to create the right climate, implementing the vision, going deeper than his father had ever imagined, taking bolder steps.

  Don’t fail.

  After a moment, the Judge gradually became aware that Gold was still in the room and was speaking to him.

  “What?” he finally said, staring across his desk at the man.

  “There are other pages, isn’t that right, sir?” Gold said. “Won’t we have—?”

  “We’ll have the rest of them soon,” the Judge said.

  “The professor?”

  “Yes. One of the Dallas teams has stayed with him.”

  Gold looked at him questioningly.

  “Dr. Journey said he would find the rest of the pages,” the Judge said. “We’re going to let him. Then we’re going to take them from him.”

  CHAPTER

  29

  Tolman finally rented a car in Chicago and drove the five hours to Louisville. She arrived after 3 A.M., slept for a few hours, and was up again at dawn, running on pure adrenaline and espresso. After leaving a phone message for her father to go to her apartment and feed Rocky, she grabbed her laptop, tucked her SIG into her shoulder bag, and pulled the Ford Focus back onto I-65.

  She passed the University of Louisville campus, with its ten giant concrete columns facing the highway, spelling out the university’s name. Past the sprawling Jewish Hospital complex, she crossed the Ohio River into Indiana and immediately exited the highway.

  A couple of traffic lights, stop signs, a double back under the interstate, and she was on a small street that curved toward Falls of the Ohio State Park. The river was on her left. Seeing it at eye level, as opposed to when she crossed it on the I-65 bridge, made her realize that the water was very high. It had been an extraordinarily wet summer in this part of the country, and she remembered hearing about floods throughout Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois in the last few weeks.

  A few high clouds floated above, but otherwise it looked like there would be no rain today along the Ohio. With the rising sun behind her, she bore left past a bronze sculpture of Lewis and Clark shaking hands, at the ostensible beginning of their westward trek. Beyond the statue, a curving stone sign announced FALLS OF THE OHIO INTERPRETIVE CENTER.

  Tolman slowed the car to a crawl. No one was around the place this early. She knew from her online research that the interpretive center didn’t open until nine o’clock. She was left thinking of what Nick Journey had told her on the phone.

  Glory Warriors.

  Tolman opened her laptop, logged in to Homeland Security’s custom search engine RACER—Retrieval, Assessment, Correlation, Expression, Review—and typed in the words “Glory Warriors.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the search was complete and one hit popped onto the screen. Tolman scrolled to it and clicked with the thumb bar.

  A white four-door rolled slowly past her. She looked up in time to see the man behind the wheel peer at her as the car proceeded toward the parking lot at the rear of the interpretive center.

  Her first impression was, He looks older and grayer in person than I expected.

  Tolman let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She angled her laptop screen away from the glare of the sun and looked at the file she’d just opened.

  In a few seconds, she said, “That can’t be right.”

  She looked at the screen again, then raised her head. The white car had stopped. Nick Journey—she knew it was him, since she’d pulled his driver’s license photo when she first worked him up—was getting out, a backpack slung over one shoulder. He cast a glance toward her, then walked away from his car. In a moment, he was out of her view, behind the stone building.

  Tolman looked at the computer. Can’t be right, she thought again.

  She closed the laptop, slid it under the passenger seat, dropped the car into gear, and headed toward the parking lot.

  * * *

  It was still not quite seven thirty, and Journey walked slowly around the back of the interpretive center and onto a curving wooden deck that extended from the building and overlooked the river. He saw that the main tourist attraction of Falls of the Ohio—the Devonian era fossil beds—was a moot point now. This was typically the dry season in the area, and when the river was low, the fossil beds lay exposed and people could literally walk almost halfway across the river. Now, with high water from the recent flooding, the beds were covered and a large amount of driftwood and garbage abutted the shoreline.

  Journey walked halfway across the deck, then stopped and leaned over the fence. Gazing in the direction of the road, he could see an iron railroad trestle spanning the great river.

  The Ohio had always been of critical and strategic importance. Journey had stood at both ends of it, on the spot at Point State Park in Pittsburgh where the Monongahela and Allegheny came together to form it; and on the little spit of land south of Cairo, Illinois, where it emptied into the Mississippi.

  But here had been the only obstacle to the river’s navigation. It bent, the water rushed, and its level dropped twenty-six feet in two miles. Many an early navigator saw their boat splintered to pieces here.

  The Poet’s Penn makes the waters fall and causes the strong to bend.

  He thought of the steamboat trade, of how vital Louisville had been to the river’s life. He thought of Kentucky staying in the Union in the Civil War, but its strong Southern culture making it the ultimate border ground, a place of confused loyalties and shifting ideologies.

  I’m missing something here, he thought.

  He heard the footsteps before the voice, and his entire body tensed. He straightened and took a step back from the fence.

  “Dr. Journey, I’m Meg Tolman.”

  Journey turned and looked at the small woman with the short blond hair. Her Nordic-blue eyes were constantly moving, scanning the area, finally settling back on him.

  “Let me see some identification,” Journey said.

  Still a good twenty feet from him, Tolman produced a leather case and flipped it open. “Put it on the deck and take ten steps back,” Journey said.

  She did. Journey picked up the case and read it, then folded it closed and extended his arm. “Anyone could have something like this made.”

  “That’s true,” Tolman said. “But if I wanted to hurt you, I could have shot you in the back while you stood there, couldn’t I?”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “I thought so.” She came forward and took the case from him. “What do you think?”

  Journey turned back toward the river. “I don’t know. It’s not … it’s not right. Something about it isn’t right.”

  “You understand that you are a material witness in the investigations into the deaths of Vandermeer and Darlington,” Tolman said.

  “I hadn’t quite thought of it in those terms.”

  “You’ll need to come back to D.C. with me. You’ve made arrangements for your son?”

  Journey gave her a sharp look. “He’s with his mother in Oklahoma City, but he can’t stay there long.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he can’t.”

  “I know about your son,” Tolman said. “When your case first came to me, I did a full profile on you.”

  Journey said nothing.

  “I know about Andrew’s condition,” Tolman said, “and I get the impression you’re not one to let others take care of him.”

  “He’s my son. I
t’s my responsibility.”

  Tolman shuffled her feet on the wood planks. “I don’t have any kids, just a deaf cat, so I’m not going to debate it with you. That’s just my impression.”

  Journey shrugged. “These people that are after the document—they’ll be here somewhere. They may already be here.”

  “I must say, you haven’t tried very hard to keep away from them.”

  “I don’t hide from things.”

  “Don’t you?”

  Journey looked at her again. “Meaning?”

  “I’ve just met you. Maybe I’m way off base. But we all hide from something.”

  Journey shook his head. “I tried to tell you people about Darlington.”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t believe me.”

  “Well, I believed you. Just because the FBI and the Marshals Service didn’t believe you … that’s not the same thing. Unfortunately, they’re the ones with the jurisdiction.”

  “Does that matter?” Journey said. “The chief justice is dead, and the Glory Warriors killed her.”

  They both heard footsteps. A young couple with a very blond toddler had come onto the deck. The father lifted the little girl onto one of the benches. “Lots of water!” she exclaimed.

  Journey turned away and started toward the parking lot, Tolman following. A winding sidewalk with steel railings on either side sloped down from the deck toward the river. Journey took it all the way down to the spot where it dead-ended in a pile of driftwood.

  With his back still to Tolman, he said, “What about the president? Is the Secret Service aware of the threat to him?”

  Tolman hesitated a moment. “We need to get you in, to make sure you are safe, to figure out exactly what is going on.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I can’t answer your question just yet.”

  “They’re going up the list. They’ve killed the Speaker, they’ve killed the chief justice.” He raised both hands and let them drop to his sides. “And you’re the only one here, from the obscure Research and Investigations Office.”