Dead and Gone

“Pure Aryan,” I interrupted him. “And we are in a position to guarantee it. And from very late-term fetuses. Do we understand each other now?”

His face was calm—maybe the oxygen mask had that effect—but now his eyes were luciferous. “Perfectly,” he finally said.

The Excursion’s cavernous back area was filled with the old man’s special chair, his oxygen tanks, and his new private nurse, Gem. The back windows were deeply tinted. Randy drove, Max on the front seat next to him. The Prof and Clarence would pick them up somewhere out of town, and ride cover for them all the way, the Mole in the back seat of the BMW.

We figured it for approximately the same distance that the Manhattan-to-Key West run had been. Then we factored in some extra time to attend to the old man. He wouldn’t like staying in anonymous rattrap motels along the way; but he’d bought into the whole total-secrecy thing, so he’d go along quietly enough.

And if not, between Max and Gem, he’d stay quiet.

His yacht was already on the water, heading for the South Texas coast. “Just in case,” I had explained it to him. “Nobody wants any exposure here. If your boat’s on the water, you’re on the water, should there be any … interest in your whereabouts. We have people who can move the boat back out to sea while you’re at the clinic. And we’ll just keep it there until you’re ready to return.”

“My own crew is on permanent—”

“But they don’t need to know your business, do they, sir? Wouldn’t it be a better plan to simply tell them you’re having work done to the boat where it’s being taken, give them a month off, and have them stay no more than a few hours’ drive from where it’s tied up? No matter how long they’ve been with you … well, you know what the tabloids are paying for information today.”

“I do,” he said, grimly. “The bloodsucking Jews.”

Michelle and I flew ahead to Houston, where we picked up another rental and headed down to Galveston. The hand-over of the clinic went nice and smooth. The doc who owned it didn’t want to know anything—just when he could come back.

The Excursion pulled in about an hour before we expected it. But we’d timed it for three in the morning, so we unloaded the old man in darkness, as planned.

“Thanks, kid,” I told Randy. “We’ll take it from here.”

“Burke, you know I’d do—”

“You just did,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Let me finish, okay? I don’t know what you’re up to, and it’s none of my business, okay? But if you need to leave here quick, I’m your man, and you know it. Besides, who’s going to truck the old guy back to Key West? What’s it going to be, a week or two? Let me hang out with the Prof and Clarence, catch up on old times. Please?”

“My man’s hip, and he’s got the chips. I say, let him play,” the Prof ruled.

The old man had a good night’s sleep, thanks to one of the Mole’s potions.

And in the morning, we all went to work.

First we explained to the old man that we’d have to run a lot of tests. Sure, we had his complete medical records—he’d had a copy in his safe—but this wasn’t exactly a routine medical procedure. The clinic had all kinds of incoming communications. Bigscreen TV, radio that could pick up anything on the airwaves, a T-1 line to the Internet. But we only used cell phones, outgoing. We explained that the clinic was off the charts. And any land-line call could be traced. We wanted him to be able to do any business he needed to do, so he was free to use one of the cellulars, but if he had a fax or an e-mail or even a FedEx that needed to go out, he’d have to give it to us, and we’d see it was sent from another location.

He just nodded. Hard to tell if it was from understanding or the drugs.

The Mole showed me how the cellulars would patch through a microphone into the harmonizer. I’d learned my lesson from Max’s daughter, and I wasn’t going to have this whole thing die if the target had voice-recognition software.

The T-1 found it in a few seconds. Darcadia had its own website, very slick and professionally done. But the phone and fax numbers were offshore. And there wasn’t even so much as a PO box for a physical location.

On the surface, it looked not only legitimate, but … possible. Why shouldn’t an island in the Pacific form its own country? Darcadia was nothing but an intersection of coordinates on a map, the very tip of a long archipelago, several hundred miles from its nearest neighbor. And it was unoccupied, so there wouldn’t be any indigenous people to dislodge. It could be purchased outright from the country it was … theoretically … part of. And a sovereign government could make its own laws.

The language of the website’s prospectus was veiled, but so thinly that even a third-generation inbred could figure it out. Strict control of immigration. Specific citizenship requirements. Complete freedom of religion “within the obvious constraints.” No gun control. No taxes—all revenues to be generated from “pre-screened tourism.” Abortion was against the law in Darcadia, which had a no-extradition policy for “citizen warriors charged with acts of revolution against New World Order nations.” Restrictions on “acts of personal or intrafamilial conduct” would not be tolerated. And on and on.

It sounded as if everything was in place. Although it was called “the Republic of Darcadia,” the site said the new country was “a confederation, not a democracy.” It had a chancellor, and a Cabinet consisting of various “ministers,” all of whom were named. I didn’t recognize any of them, and their affiliations weren’t listed. But a few hours on the Internet connected some of them with the kind of groups I expected, covering the White Night spectrum. No pedophiles, though; they weren’t going that naked. Not yet.

Then it got down to the money.

“Citizenships” were going for ten grand. For that, you got a passport, “business banking” privileges, and a whole list of “exemptions” while on sovereign Darcadia soil. You could visit your new homeland at will, since citizens, unlike tourists, would be exempt from visa requirements. A “homestead” would set you back a hundred thousand, which bought you a five-acre plot and the right to build on it “free of the sort of building codes and restrictions under which many have suffered in other jurisdictions.”

Voting was limited to owners of developed property, and various configurations were offered, including “self-contained” electrical and sewage systems, pending development of a country-wide grid. In something lifted right out of H. L. Hunt’s Alpaca, Darcadia would not hobble itself with a “one man, one vote” system. Votes were allocated on a “unit” basis, the units being reflections of property ownership.