arrangement of ink on a page could possibly hold a candle to the twists his actual day had taken, nor could any fiction likely lure his mind from this strange, beautiful character lying beside him, right there in real life. He was more than satisfied to simply listen to her quiet, steady breathing and watch her settle into a peaceful, deepening slumber. Before too long he’d joined her wherever she was traveling, having begun to dream quite a while before he finally drifted away.
PART TWO
“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies… is a foolish idea. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”
– PROFESSOR CARROLL QUIGLEY, AUTHOR OF Tragedy & Hope
“The popular will cannot be taken for granted, it must be created.”
– HERBERT CROLY, AUTHOR OF The Promise of American Life
CHAPTER 16
Stuart Kearns flipped his black ID folder closed when it seemed his credentials had been sufficiently absorbed by the desk sergeant. The man’s face was a classic deadpan, but when he looked up a faint glimmer of engagement had finally dawned there.
Kearns passed across a manila envelope that carried authorization forms for the interview and a conditional catch-and-release waiver for the prisoner in question. The papers were curtly received and slid into the queue with all the care and attention of a career man on the assembly line. Then, as he was directed with a wordless tic of the head, Agent Kearns took a short walk to a seat in a small side office to wait his turn, just like everybody else.
It was just another privilege of the badge, he supposed. Civilians have to go all the way to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get this kind of white-glove treatment.
It was a power thing, really, petty but always in-your-face in every bureaucratic exchange. A yardstick of rank and importance gets held up to a person, a pecking order is established with each interaction, and in this case the FBI is taken down a peg or two by a mere drone from the NYPD. To be fair, maybe it wasn’t the whole Bureau that had received the brunt of the disrespect, just this one road-worn and burnt-out representative.
The fact that such people and their passive-aggressive infighting were a big part of his professional life bothered him less than it used to. After thirty-one years of beating his head against the wall in law enforcement, a man shouldn’t be surprised to find his brains bashed in and the wall still standing. But you can know a thing like that and go on acting like you don’t. His first wife had said it best, on her way out the door. It’s not other people, it’s not your boss or your enemies or the kid at the supermarket. It’s you. You ask for it, Stuart, and all they do is give it to you.
Thanks again, Sunshine, for all your support. You were the best of your breed; spouse number two didn’t even bother to leave a note.
The little space where he’d been seated was broom-clean but musty, windowless and bare, roller-painted a dreary shade of leftover beige, its furniture decades old, stained and mismatched. The scarred wooden desk might well have dated from the days when Herman Melville had written of this jail before the Civil War. Whatever range of guest accommodations might exist in the huge expanse of the Manhattan Detention Complex, this waiting room must have rated somewhere near the bottom of the scale.
A picture frame stood on the desk, still displaying the yellowing promotional family photo inserted at the factory. Overlaid on that warm, staged scene of rural togetherness was the dim reflection of an unexpectedly older man, jowly and gray, looking back at him from the surface of the glass. The years do go by.
The sergeant from the triage desk knocked and entered, then passed him his carbonless copy of the necessary forms, all signed and authorized. “They’re getting your man now,” he said. “Be out in a minute.”
“Fine.”
“You should have told me,” the sergeant added, suddenly a great deal more civil than he’d been before.
Stuart Kearns straightened his glasses but didn’t look up from the papers in his hands.
“Either that,” he said, “or you should have asked.”
The sergeant correctly sensed he’d been dismissed, and left the room.
The man’s sudden snap to attention was no doubt due to the source of Kearns’s assignment, which, to be honest, would have become evident only after a look through the sealed paperwork he’d provided. A desk cop with a bad attitude might get a chuckle out of sending the average federal agent to cool his heels for half a morning just because he can, but when the orders come down from the D.C. headquarters of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, well, nobody at that low level wants to be fingered as a bottleneck in the War on Terror.
He checked his watch. Half-past seven on Saturday morning, and by the noise outside, the Tombs were officially awakening.
These places had a sound all their own. Back there among the inmates it would be drowned out by the hue and cry of those right around you, but from a distance those troubled voices all intermingled into a sound something like an ill wind-an airy, echoing howl that drifted up from the cell blocks at certain times of the day and night.
While he was waiting he pulled a hefty folder from his briefcase and opened it flat. This was an abridged version of the FBI file for the young man he was about to see. The guy was a marshmallow, he’d been assured, and by a covert order he’d just spent a long hard night in a cage full of the worst serial offenders this venue had to offer, so he would certainly be softened up even more by this morning. With luck, once a deal was on the table there wouldn’t be too much time wasted in negotiation.
It was an unusually thick file for someone who’d never been arrested for anything more serious than fairly minor narcotics offenses. Cocaine mostly, some party drugs, and he’d been busted with a modest grow operation and a trash bag full of premium bud at one point, years ago. He’d plea-bargained his way out of that last one, in exchange for testimony against his accomplices. That fact was worth an underscore.
A halfhearted suicide attempt when he was in his twenties, just a cry for help most likely, but then another one, a real one, during a ninety-day stint in a county lockup in Louisiana-this page was dog-eared, as was his psych evaluation from the time.
There were also some tax problems and other run-ins with the law dating back to his teens, but the latest entries concerned evidence gathered through recent home and business surveillance warrants, highlighted transcripts of a monitored ham-radio show, and a list of some videos he’d produced that were now circulating through the Patriot culture on the Internet. Hate speech/counterterrorism was the box that was checked on his first wiretap request, but the latest such authorization had been requisitioned by three cooperating divisions, as abbreviated in the margin: DC-JTTF, NM-DTWG, NM-WMDWG.
The Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Domestic Terrorism Working Group, and the Weapons of Mass Destruction Working Group. The last two offices were based in New Mexico.
Based on this file and, more important, based on Stuart Kearns’s own long experience in the field, this little guy didn’t seem like he’d ever been much for the government to worry about. It was almost as though they decided years ago that they were going to get him, but they hadn’t yet known exactly how. He didn’t seem dangerous, only
