Judas Horse

“Beautiful.”

“That’s the spirit of Bob Marley, right there.”

“Bob Marley? Are you a fan of reggae music?” I ask just to say something.

“Major fan. He had it right about Babylon nation.” “What is Babylon nation? When Slammer was going on about it, I figured he was just stoned.” “Babylon is the Vampire. The inability of the white race to live in the natural world without destroying it. Babylon System is America, the whore of nations, gorged on luxury and fornication — but remember, that’s before Armageddon.” “Gotcha.”

“See these waterfalls? A gargantuan river of melted ice comes raging down from Canada, fifty miles an hour, a thousand feet deep, gouging through those cliffs.” Stone is in a kind of rapture. “You want to talk cataclysmic?” “All because of the white man.”

He disregards my wit. “It’s coming.”

“What is?”

“The Big One.”

“Another cataclysm?”

“Of major proportion.”

“What is the Big One, Julius?”

“The end of arrogance and superiority.”

“That could mean the Yankees. Come on, give me something to work with.” “Funny girl.”

“What’s going on, Julius? Are we — the people at the farm — are we involved in something a lot more violent than I think?” He smiles slyly. “I wouldn’t want to freak you out.” “I can guess.”

“What?”

“You’re going to blow something up with a blood bomb.” Somehow, this flatters him. He settles back in the seat. “A long time ago, before I switched careers to filbert farming, I firebombed a power tower.” “Really? Cool! Where was this?”

“Ski resort.”

“Why? You didn’t like waiting on the lift?”

Stone chuckles. Today he is allowing me to tease him. It’s like scratching a pit bull behind the ears.

“The neat part was that all we had to bring the thing down were a couple buckets of fuel, a kitchen timer, and an igniter they use for model rockets. You should have seen that thing keel over — power lines, trees, man, that was a tangle — tipping, tipping…tipping… into twelve feet of pure virgin snow.” “Because?”

“Somebody was pissed off about endangered cats. I can’t remember what kind.” Caution. No, it’s okay. Darcy, the activist, would know.

“Were they lynx?”

He looks pleased. “That’s right.”

Ecoterrorism. Vail, Colorado. A wave of unsolved fire bombings the Bureau has been chasing since the early nineties.

“That was impressive. Nobody ever took credit.”

He slaps my thigh in a friendly way. “Now you know.” I can get anything I want from him now. What a feeling! It’s exciting. Tremendous! This is the good thing about penetrating without an informant: Nobody can snitch off you; nobody can compromise you. If we had tried to flip Megan, I’d never be where I am at this moment, confident and relaxed, riding up front with Stone. It’s as if you’ve stepped through the danger and you’re actually being sheltered by the source. The real source, which is Stone’s mind, a mandala of private symbols and pulsing hurts, in which the figure of Darcy DeGuzman has come to stand as a trusted ally. I see why guys like Angelo are addicted. It’s the greatest high in the world, to carry the shield you swore upon, to be representing the good people of this country, and the innocent, to be their emissary, to have the ability to talk with somebody who actually wants to harm you — talking to that person’s heart.

“This was in your badass revolutionary days.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Who said they’re over?”

I can barely control the eagerness. Everything seems so close. So possible.

“Does Toby have something to do with all this? You seem hell-bent on seeing him today.” “He found the kind of boat I need.”

“For the Big One? Tell me.”

Now he is teasing. “Mmm, I’m not sure you’re ready to know.” “Why not?”

Another trial of fire and ice?

“You promised to do something for me.”

“Off Herbert Laumann? I said I’d do it and I will.” He assents in a fatherly way. That’s all for now.

“Be at peace and know that everything is unfolding as it should.” “Swell. I’m in nirvana. When is lunch?”

When do we get approval from FBIHQ for the hit? What will it take to get the accountants off the dime? Because that’s the way it always is — the criminal side of the house versus the bean counters, leaving undercovers stranded on a seductively beautiful road like this one, guessing which fork leads to paradise, and which one to perdition.

We are edging along the Lewis and Clark Trail. In pictures you always see the explorers pointing, and with good reason. Imagine if you had discovered this plentitude of lumber and the riches of the salmon run. Not anymore, as Dick Stone vehemently points out, since a chain of hydroelectric dams has displaced the chinook’s ancient pathways to the sea.

“Look at those monstrosities, totally fucked the river. They are everything that’s wrong with big business and the U.S. government.” “Without ’em, we wouldn’t have electric lights.”

“Fascist pigs,” Stone growls. “Monuments to ego.” I stare at the dams going by — colossal concrete bunkers crested by powerhouse electric grids — remembering the surveillance photo of Megan, aka Laurel, confronting Congressman Abbott somewhere along this river, and that Dick Stone would have been there, too, but there is no credible way to bring it up. Below the spillways, where tons of water empty downstream from the dams, colorful windsurfers flick about the anthracite surface of the water, scraps in the bottom of a chasm.

“What did you do before you blew up that tower?”

“I was in the FBI.”

I just about eject through the roof of the truck.

“And I was in the CIA,” I say calmly.

“Don’t believe me.”

“You’re just playing.” Pause. “Am I right?”

At that moment, two sheriff’s cars pass at normal speed. What is this? A signal?

This can’t be happening. He can’t be telling me this now.

Dick Stone replies amiably, “What’d you think? Can you see me wearing a suit, in the FBI?” “Suits with guns?”

He laughs. “Guys in suits, with no sex life, who fight alien life-forms.” “Yeah.” I grin. “That’s you.”

But Stone is deliberating something. “Do you remember the Weather Underground?” “That was a little before my time, but yeah, they were anarchists who were against the Vietnam War.” “‘Bring the war home,’” Stone says grimly. “That was the slogan.” “They set off bombs, right?”

“Three of them blew themselves up trying to build a bomb in a town house in Greenwich Village.” “I vaguely remember.”

Memorized the files.

“What about the Weather Underground?” I prompt. “Were you part of it?” “Me?” He dismisses the thought. “Hoover’s gangsters really fucked those people. Destroyed their lives. Hard times comin’, no matter which side you were on,” he says. “Sad. Really sad.” The truck window is down and a river wind is washing Dick Stone’s commanding profile clean, blowing his long blond hair back over the built muscles of his neck, so a tuft of white in the honey-colored sideburns is revealed. In the deep lines of the forehead, and the clenched brows trying to grip whatever vision keeps eluding him at the far side of the journey, I see a middle-aged man asking if his life has been a fake.

Then he attempts to discard it, the past thirty years of it, with a rapid shake of the head, but a long silence follows as the road climbs the dark pine highlands, and we exit, loop up and back toward a spectacular gleaming