get that done?”
“I’m pretty sure All-Risks will take care of that. I’ll check and let you know. Main thing is we want to see those records as soon as possible after we get the order. Can you set that up?”
“That I can do.”
“Great. I have to hit the sack. I’ll talk to All-Risks and get back to you next week.”
“Fine. Good night.”
After I’d closed up the office—kind of Joe to leave that to me—I slumped into my car, ordered it to take me “Home, Jeeves,” reclined the seat and dozed while the roadnet took me there. When the car pulled into the garage I was sound asleep: it had to wake me up.
On Monday the Eighth Army called for a truce and pulled out. My bank account was flusher by 5,400 gold ounces. The rest of the week was downhill from there.
Tuesday Murdock was found guilty of theft; Thursday a Swiss court gave us access to Murdock’s bank records (which impressed Gunter no end. “All-Risks must have pulled a lot of strings to get the hearing done so fast,” he told us); and Friday we had copies.
All the money had flown. To places like Nauru, the Cook Islands, Pitcairn and other sandbars that made Mafia, Inc. look like first-prize winners in a gabfest.
The money trail was a dead end.
Meanwhile our phones were ringing off the hook with more red herrings, thanks to Berkshire’s reward….
Gerald Murdock has been declared an outlaw and a renegade under the rules of the American Insurance Association. A reward of 1,000 gold ounces will be paid to the person who provides information leading to his arrest.
People were told to contact us—and they did. Within two days, Murdock had been sighted in fifty-five countries, every major city in North America and half the small towns.
Luckily for us, Berkshire paid for all the extra staff, phone lines and follow-up on all the leads, just as Noni had promised.
Noni—and Fritz—weren’t quite so understanding on everything else.
Eventually, after several meetings, some of them heated, they had to agree that with the money trail dead and none of the leads leading us anywhere Joe’s instinct to “follow the sex” was all that was left.
“And if he dumps
Joe and I could only shrug.
Some three months later I’d just gotten to sleep when a phone call from Andy woke me.
“I’m on a rocket to Tokyo. Just took off.”
“So? What? Why?”
“I nearly lost her on the way to the airport.”
“Who?”
“Sophia Ackerman. Are you asleep or something?”
“I was.”
“I didn’t get a chance to call in earlier. We land in Tokyo in forty-five minutes and I’m going to need backup.”
“Okay. I’ll call you back.”
It was a wild night. We couldn’t arrange backup in time. Luckily, Andy kept up with her as she got on the Mag-Lev to Osaka. When the train arrived he had all the help he needed.
She took him on a merry chase, from Osaka to Shanghai, to Singapore, to Hong Kong and finally Manila. At each stop she changed her appearance. And at each stop from Osaka on, a female operative followed her into the bathroom. Otherwise we might have lost her entirely: each time, she had a new identity to go with each disguise.
She ended up in a condo in a high-security walled and gated village.
Andy sent us a picture of the happy couple by the condo pool.
“My god,” said Joe, “I’d never have recognized him. But it has to be him.”
Murdock had a goatee and mustache, had changed his hair and eye color (contacts, I figured), and had picked up a new nose somewhere along the line.
“Right,” I said. “If she was going to meet anyone else, why the merry chase?”
“Manila, hmmm,” Joe murmured. “No mountains, no beaches, no snow. Clever.” Among the useless information we’d piled up about Murdock was that he loved skiing, hiking, mountaineering, boats and deep-sea fishing.
“All you have to do now,” he said to me, “is go to Manila and pick him up.”
The only nonstop service to Manila was an aging Super Jumbo. I didn’t fancy a twelve-hour flight, so I took the rocket to Hong Kong and connected. Hong Kong-Manila took longer than San Francisco-Hong Kong.
As a kid, I loved hearing my granddad’s stories about the tax revolt—but I never knew until after he died that he was one of its heroes.
He’d sit on the swinging chair on the porch at night, set me on his knee and tell me how people hated the government, but were afraid. Some arm of the government called the “HSS” was rounding up terrorists, and nobody ever knew where they’d strike next. I’d wake up sweating from nightmares of giants, dressed in black, storming into my room in the middle of the night. Even so, I could never resist another of his stories.
He told me about Amanda Green, a teacher in a small town near San Francisco. When she didn’t show up at school one morning, someone went to see if she was hurt—and found her house trashed, all her files and computer gone, but no sign of her.
And her valuables untouched. No ordinary burglars.
Her neighbors had nothing. But they’d heard the familiar sounds of the sirens and car doors slamming and thumping feet in the middle of the night… and closed their houses up tight.
A terrorist, claimed the HSS, inciting her students to rebel against the state.
A homely grandmother, a dedicated teacher, loved by her students, and respected by the community a terrorist? For teaching her students the meaning of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Amanda Green was the spark that lit the fire. It started quietly, like a burning ember, as groups held sporadic protests here and there. Only to be brutally repressed by the HSS police.
The TV coverage inflamed the nation. Within days millions of people across the country were parading with signs saying “Liberty or Death,” “Don’t Tread on Me” and even “Taxation is Theft.”
One night an IRS office was burned down and somebody calling himself Tom Paine appeared on the web, urging people to strangle the government
The way my granddad told me as a kid, the people united against the hated government and brought it tumbling down.
