A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller (24 page)

Passages from
1984
seemed even more pertinent. He highlighted one phrase in particular and read it over several times, then closed the book and sat for a long time thinking about it.

Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain.

James Nail was beginning to see.

Supported by the internet which, so far, was still ungoverned from Washington, Sharon and Big C spent their evenings together introducing Nail to the major players in Anastos’ government.

“It is no conspiracy anymore,” Big C proclaimed. “These people doing all this in the open now. They think they got us cowed down.”

Sol Alinsky, Cloward and Pivens, Students for a Democratic Society, ACOA, George Zuniga, Duane Smith, PEIU, the New Weathermen, dozens of other individuals and groups whose radical agendas seemed to be playing out in Washington… These were the players. Avowed Marxists surrounded The One in the White House. Health czars, green czars, auto czars, financial czars, media czars... Over forty “czars” at last count, a kind of U.S. politburo that was not elected or approved or vetted by Congress. Anastos merely appointed them with the authority to regulate and control virtually every aspect of American commerce. A caucus led by House Speaker Barbara Teague was initiating a movement to repeal the 22
^nd
Amendment to the Constitution in the event of a national crisis. If successfully repealed through the states, the amendment would allow a president to serve more than two terms in office. Say, President-for-Life Patrick Wayne Anastos.

Big C said, “This is the same stuff thugs did in Italy and Germany in 1930s.”

“Scary stuff,” Nail agreed.

Sharon downloaded a copy of Sol Alinsky’s
Rules for Radicals
from the internet, along with
The Weatherman Manifesto
written by, among others, Bill Ackart and Bernadine Samson-Ackart, who were involved in bombing police stations and the Pentagon in the 1970s and were now personal friends and associate “community organizers” of the President of The United States. The publications laid out philosophy and tactics for fomenting a Marxist revolution to seize power.

Nail had to read the dedication page in
Rules for Radicals
twice.

Lest we forget at least one over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical, from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins, or which is which) the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer.

Big C was fixing himself a sandwich in the kitchen. Sharon sat at the table working on her laptop. She looked up at Nail, who was reading on the sofa by the window’s light, and saw him shaking his head over the Alinsky title page. She got up and walked over to him.

“His tribute to Lucifer should erase all doubts that what we are confronting is raw evil,” she commented.

“How do we stop it if it’s gone this far?”

“Our weapon is truth,” she replied bravely. “The days are over when we got out of bed with the New York
Times
and had dinner with Dan Rather—and kept quiet in between because our elite betters told us what to think. The flame of truth is hard to put out once it’s kindled.”

“And if nobody believes you?”

“Then we’re doomed to repeat history.”

Big C sank down on the other end of the sofa with his sandwich. “Peanut butter and bananas,” he announced. “Me and Elvis.”

“It’s the oldest story of mankind,” Sharon continued. “If we go down this poisoned path, all knees will bend and all heads bow.”

The way she looked at him. There was something she wasn’t telling him. Nail had thought so all day from the way she avoided him. She sighed a sad note and walked to Nail’s window to block the light. Looking out, she said, “Our attorneys at Zenergy have gotten the material witness warrants against me lifted. I received the e-mail this morning.”

Here it came.

“It won’t be safe for the two of you to be with me after my first show airs Friday,” she went on, with her back still to Nail and Big C. “I’ll have to be able to use the phones and computers. Homeland Security can trace them.”

Nail got up and stood beside her at the window, looking out.

“I’m returning to the studio in New York beginning with next week’s show,” she announced.

“Have you forgotten what happened in Arkansas?” Nail demanded. One kiss under the stars gave him no claim on her. “They don’t care about a warrant. Going back to New York is what they want you to do.”

Big C sided with his friend. The low-tone disagreement went back and forth, with Sharon contending that she would have around-the-clock bodyguards. Besides, she was too high profile for anything to happen to her.

“And Jerry Baer wasn’t?” Nail argued in frustration.

“They hold off maybe few weeks,” Big C pointed out. “Then they be coming, sis. Won’t be nobody there love you like James and me.”

She turned from the window to face them. She took one of their hands in each of hers and squeezed.

“This is bigger than us,” she insisted. “It’s about saving the country. How can I ever justify myself if I quit?”

“You can justify it if you’re dead?” Nail retorted. “I’m going with you.”

“James, no. They’ll be looking for that.”

* * *

After dinner on Thursday, Sharon loaded the program DVD of
The Jerry Baer Show w/Sharon Lowenthal
into the player so they could review it in its entirety before she dispatched it electronically to Carl Patton in New York. It would air tomorrow at five p.m. Eastern Time. Nail and Big C had acted as cameramen for her portion while she spliced in clips received via internet from Jerry Baer reporters and investigators. Big C pulled up the ratty easy chair to watch while Sharon sat on the sofa with Nail and took his hand. Big C smiled his approval.

As in real life, Sharon projected a straightforward and sincere presence on the screen. People
had
to believe what she said. The show began with a video clip of President Anastos addressing the auto workers union in Detroit. Government had just bailed out another economically collapsing motor company and took control of it.

“How’s this capitalism working for you?” the President smirked. “Did it give you a job?
We
gave you your jobs back.”

Union members cheered. Pre-prepared signs bobbed. The camera’s eye zoomed in on
Workers of the World Unite
.

Sharon came on in a close frame. She spoke gravely while looking directly into the eyes of her audience. “Folks, as most of you know, this is our first show since Jerry was assassinated. Before he died, he promised that the only way he would shut up was if—” She choked up and took a moment to recover. “Someone shot him. I, Sharon Lowenthal, renew the pledge.”

Somewhere outside the cabin a whippoorwill called to its mate and a pack of coyotes yapped.

“I’m speaking to you tonight only because of a remarkable police homicide detective who has so far saved my life twice. But for him I would have died with Jerry. His daughter was killed that dreadful day. He saved my life a second time at an Arkansas AmeriCorps camp where the training is not construction and road building but instead weapons and military drill. I was kidnapped and would have been executed except for him and another brave Tulsa police officer, both of whom are fugitives with federal government warrants issued for their arrest. They will not receive a fair trial. Chances are they will not receive a trial at all if they are apprehended.”

She chronicled the ordeal that began with the raid at the Bunch schoolhouse and concluded with their escape from Arkansas. Government agents, she said, hung Ron Sparks in the cemetery and gunned down two witnesses who knew the truth, the same way federal agents attempted to execute her.

A Jerry Baer clip from a previous show appeared. “Since President Anastos’ election,” he said, “I have had views confided to me privately by some of the most prominent men in the field of commerce and manufacturing. They are afraid. They know there is a power being organized that is so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, and so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breaths when they speak in condemnation of it.”

Bill Ackart’s image flashed onto the screen, saying, “We have an urgent responsibility to destroy capitalism from within in order to help free the world and ourselves from its grasp. We will use all weapons available to us.”

Sharon came back on with the cabin’s fireplace shown in her backdrop.

“The infrastructure of our new rulers is in place,” she said. “A ‘shadow government’ waiting for the right time to collapse the U.S. Republic and take over. The time of freedom is drawing short. The Senate and the House are being packed with corrupt politicians and ideological Progressives-Marxists. It has been going on for years. They have automatically rubber-stamped every socialist program to come along without even bothering to read bills that are designed to bankrupt and destroy the nation.”

A congressman from Michigan, in office for over forty years, had been caught by Zenergy News unintentionally admitting as much over the Healthcare Bill: “Read the bill? What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to understand it?”

For most of the hour, Sharon explored what was about to transpire, interspersed by clips of politicians, “community organizers,” and other radicals declaring their intentions “in their own words,” as she and Jerry Baer before her were fond of saying. She delivered a chilling summary at the end.

“Folks, as I explained earlier in this program, I know from horrible personal experience that President Anastos is establishing a KGB-like security force to help impose a Marxist dictatorship on the United States of America. We are just one incident away from martial law, be it declared because of an Islamic terrorist attack, a major financial blowout, a widespread natural disaster, or civil unrest. It’s becoming clearer every day that the groundwork is being laid for a seamless transition into totalitarianism. The Constitution and Bill of Rights will be suspended and what government officials believe and do, no matter how arbitrary, will become law. You can be sure that all this is about to happen—and it will happen very quickly.”

Sharon paused and gazed soberly out at her audience. “Folks,” she said, “we are one catastrophic event away from the total transformation of the United States of America.”

The DVD went off, the TV screen turned blank, the mournful yapping of coyotes echoed in the silence.

Chapter Forty-Two

Chicago

There were 360 Starbucks locations in the Chicago area serving “the finest Arabica” coffee. According to a Zogby poll, people who patronized Starbucks differed mightily from those who swigged at Dunkin Donuts. Liberals and Progressives were twice as likely to be found at Starbucks while men who knew how to change their own spark plugs went to Dunkin’s and would rather be chained to the soap aisle in
Bed, Bath and Beyond
than have to utter bastardized Starbucks Latin to order a lousy cup of Joe.

Senate Majority Leader Joe Wiedersham and his chief of staff Dennis Trout entered the Starbucks on LaSalle Street. Trout’s fine brown hair looked thinner than usual, although he had taken great pains with conditioner to fill it out to a younger look. As for the haggard look on his face, no amount of Speaker of the House Botox could have helped it. The little coffee house hostess took a second look at them. She appeared about eighteen, still with that clueless look of a teenager.

“Are you
them
?” she inquired, awed.

Wiedersham smiled. Politicians liked being recognized by the little people.

“I just seen you on TV,” the girl gushed to Trout, gesturing toward the Plasma flat-screens located at various sites around a room filled with some of Chicago’s coolest people. “You’re going to be the next politician. I liked what you said about people needing help from our government.”

She took their orders and left. The Majority Leader was in jovial form, at least by his standards, even though there had been a glitch in the press conference/town hall meeting at which Wiedersham introduced his young protégé and Trout announced that he was filing for the 9
^th
Congressional race. Before the arranged event, Wiedersham had summoned Trout to his hotel suite, paid for compliments of the American taxpayer. The Leader wore a Jack Victor original suit with a power tie by some wop whose name Trout couldn’t recall; he still looked as though he had slept in it.

“We’re getting into the race late because it took more persuasion than we expected to get that idiot Spencer to drop out and let you have the candidacy,” Wiedersham said. “Your Republican opponent will campaign hard up until a week before the election, at which time he will retire for personal reasons.”

Trout went deer-in-the-headlights as he recalled the New Orleans oil spill judge who “overdosed” and the fatal car crash after the New Hampshire nullification proclamation.

“Don’t look so slammed,” Wiedersham said with a bark of laughter. “Spencer accepted a position on the President’s economic recovery team. We’re going to campaign hard, like it really makes a difference on the outcome. It’ll all be over in a few months.
We
will be in charge.”

Trout was going to be rich and powerful.

“There is one little matter, however, that we need to discuss,” Wiedersham added.

Uh oh!

“President Clinton’s staff called it the ‘bimbo eruption.’ We’re vulnerable because Zenergy and the Rightwing talk gurus are just waiting for a slip.”