A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller (45 page)

Little by little over the decades, Americans had compromised away their God-given liberties in the name of what they perceived to be security.
Vote for me and I’ll give you—everything!
A government with the power to take from some to give to others had the power to take everything from everyone. It was now takeaway time.

Most of the media had already succumbed to government pressure to conform. Like court eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire. Only Zenergy News Cable and a small segment of talk radio and the internet survived to spread the truth. Their days were numbered. Passage of the FAD bill would see to that.

“While we can’t say what Sharon Lowenthal or Rush Limbaugh can or cannot say,” Speaker Barbara Teague declared ingeniously after the final vote on FAD, “I feel the FCC does have the right to regulate and say the public has the right not to be offended.”

“Access to the internet and the airways,” added Senate Majority Leader Wiedersham at the same news conference, “is a civil rights issue. Each radio and TV station and each internet site will be required to pass a Public Values’ Test. If they don’t pass it, their license will be stripped from them and assigned to someone who will use it appropriately in the public interest. Parasites like Lowenthal, Limbaugh, Hannity and the Zenergy fat cats should be called out for what they really are. They’re useless eaters, they’re nasty, they’re evil, they’re liars, thieves and cheaters against the American people.”

Gone were the days when the media were watchdogs against political corruption and misdeeds. Patton guessed that by the end of next week the government would have closed the doors to Zenergy and any other outlet it considered hostile. Independent news and commentary were becoming relics of past liberties.

Until that happened, Patton intended to keep the pressure on that bunch of Marxist coyotes in Washington. He consulted his watch. Ten until seven a.m. He didn’t think the limo would be late. The driver wouldn’t
dare
. He leaned forward over his steering wheel and peered at Majority Leader Wiedersham’s Georgetown mansion down the street, staking out the place. He and Alfred his cameraman prepared to play ambush journalism as soon as Wiedersham came out to get in the limo.

Alfred was a middle-aged man with an old-fashioned crew cut. Normally as cool and implacable as Alfred the Butler in
Batman
, today he was scared and tinkered with the video feed on his camera in order to keep his hands and mind busy. Patton was sweating too. He was none too confident that his surprise ambush would elicit much of value from the politician, but he had to try for Sharon’s sake.

It was general knowledge in upper circles of power that the President, along with most of the White House czars and the Congressional leadership, would not be available for the next several days; they would be attending an “economic summit,” according to White House spokesman Dewey Gubbins. It was Patton’s goal to goad Wiedersham into providing some clue as to where the top secret Summit was being held.

“If we can get an admission on camera that the summit is being held,” Patton fretted, his thin face hollow in the cheeks, “they won’t dare do anything to Sharon for fear the public will know.”

“I don’t think they give a rat’s ass anymore what the public thinks,” Alfred said.

The two newsmen initially discussed and then discarded the idea of attempting to tail the limo to its destination. They weren’t professional gumshoes. What they needed was the Okie cop. The poor bastard was in love with Sharon. But Patton had no idea how to contact him, hadn’t heard from him since he took off from Central Park like a scalded ape.

Patton nudged Alfred when a black limousine turned onto the street from the other end of the block. Alfred snapped the covers shut on his camera. They had to be ready to get in, slam their questions at Wiedersham, then get out again quickly enough to avoid security and the cops. Today’s little ploy was enough to draw both of them some “reeducation” time at “facilities” the government was supposedly constructing in the West.

The limo eased down the tree-lined street. Although the side windows were tinted, the angle of approach allowed Patton a view through the clear windshield. He recognized the gangster hat worn by the front seat passenger—that obsequious, ass-kissing little weasel, Justin Cobb.

The long, black car pulled into Wiedersham’s driveway. Patton kicked over his engine and sat idling while he waited for Cobb to get out to escort his boss from the house to the vehicle. Instead, Cobb remained seated.

After several minutes, Wiedersham’s stout figure burst out the front door and stomped toward the limo, his posture and bearing telegraphing the ass-chewing he was obviously prepared to deliver for Cobb’s having violated protocol. He carried a thick briefcase and his own luggage. W
ould the indignities never cease?
Definitely on his way out of town.

Patton slammed in his gas feed and whipped his Hyundai in behind the stopped limo to block its retreat. Alfred and he bailed out and cut off Wiedersham before he reached safety. The Majority Leader stopped, scowling. The camera was already rolling.

“Senator!” Patton snapped. “Will you explain for our Zenergy News audience the purpose of the Sustainable World Conference you will be attending starting tonight?”

“You’re trespassing!” Wiedersham lashed back. “Get the fuck off my property.”

The newsmen held their ground. Wiedersham flapped an angry hand for Cobb to come to his aid.

“Senator, is it true that the purpose of this summit is to plan the final economic de-stabilization of the United States…?”

He heard a car door open, the rush of feet approaching. Expecting Cobb, he wheeled about to fend off an attack. It took him an instant to recognize the man wearing Cobb’s hat.

James Nail stormed past the reporters. To nosy neighbors, it might appear the Majority Leader was being rescued from the pesky news media. Only Patton and Alfred saw the handgun Nail jabbed into Wiedersham’s ribs.

“You want to get that piece of junk car of yours out of the way so we can get out of here?” Nail growled at Patton as he shoved the shaken politician toward the limo’s back door, held open by a blond woman wearing a chauffeur’s costume.

Chapter Eighty-Two

Washington, D.C.

The unexpected arrival of Carl Patton and his cameraman couldn’t have been more perfect had it been planned as a cover for Wiedersham’s “rescue.” The Majority Leader sat frozen in stunned silence on his side of the wide executive-style back seat of the limousine as it sped away. The Indian-looking gunman on the other end of the seat regarded him from eyes that resembled blue slivers of ice.

Part of the job description for a homicide detective was to make perps sweat. Wiedersham’s expensive business suit already looked damp and slept-in. Dark eyes sunk into the pasty jowls of the malevolent Pillsbury Doughboy shifted nervously. A cold half-smile touched Nail’s lips. He could almost read Wiedersham’s fears: So completely did the tinted windows isolate him from the outside world that no one was apt to hear him scream.

Wiedersham wet his thick lips with the tip of his tongue. “Where’s Cobb?” he demanded in his best authoritarian tone. He was a man accustomed to power. “Do you have any idea who you’re fucking with?”

A man less self-assured would have gone to pieces.

“Who the hell are you?” the politician asked in a dreadful whisper when he received no response.

Nail’s eyes continued to bore into Wiedersham’s. The fat face folded into pale, moist lasagna the instant he recognized Nail.

“You’re the cop!” Hands trembled lying in his lap. “I can get you money—”

“I’m not a politician. I can’t be bribed.”

Judy took a left to shortcut through Georgetown University. All the usual suspects—teachers unions, student organizations, PEIU, ACOA, One Worlders—were already out organizing the day’s protests against “imperialism,” “hate,” “racism,” “sexism,” “lack of equality” and the other inequities of capitalism that seemed to bring geeks out of their parents’ basements.

Nail grunted with distaste. As far as he was concerned, these assholes could starve if the only thing they knew to do was latch onto a bunch of politicians who promised to take from the
greedy rich
so that nobody would have to work in the coming Socialist Utopia.

And after the Fat Cats were all used up?

Judy made her way across campus and headed the limo north on U.S. 81.

“My people will be looking for me,” Wiedersham warned. “Where are you taking me, Nail?”

“You’re taking
me
to The Sustainable World Conference at Lake Ontario.”

He watched Wiedersham struggle to hide his surprise. “Do you have any idea what security will be like there?”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way, with the right incentive.”

“You’re too late, Nail. Nothing can stop us now. The countdown is starting.”

As a politician, the man had used words as weapons most of his life; he couldn’t seem to stop now.

“This country is collapsing, Nail,” he insisted. “The Homer Simpsons of the world are too stupid to rule themselves. It’s up to their betters to drive them to a better place.”

“You have it all figured out,” Nail said.

“You don’t have to be one of the Homers, Detective,” Wiedersham offered slyly. “There’s a place for you if you’re smart.”

The hard lines in Nail’s face remained. He tipped his gun so that Wiedersham was staring into its barrel.

“I’ll want Sharon Lowenthal released when we get to the lake.”

“Be realistic, man. Besides, what makes you think we have her?”

“The only way you and I are leaving there without her is if you and I are in body bags,” Nail warned.

Banks Closing Adds To Pressure

(Washington)—
More than 40 banks, including some of the largest in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami, have shut down operations one after the other this week, with others closing their doors almost hourly. CitiBank announced it was closing all its branches. Panicked people across the nation gathered in lines desperately seeking to withdraw their savings out of fear of cash shortages...

Chapter Eighty-Three

Watertown, New York

Nail recalled reading somewhere that the small city of Watertown on the Black River about twenty miles south of the tip of Lake Ontario had more millionaires per capita than any other city in the nation. He doubted any of its residents realized the irony of a bunch of the wealthiest redistribute-the-wealth Marxists in the world gathering there. He let Wiedersham sweat during most of the limo drive from Washington to Watertown. Police detectives whose job entailed penetrating the seedy minds and black souls of assorted perverts, torturers and murderers were good practical psychologists.

The general public failed to realize that most perps actually
wanted
to talk in order to justify or excuse or explain their guilt and their behavior. The secret to interrogation lay in encouraging them in a way commiserate with their personalities. People like Wiedersham who considered themselves superior to the general population were actually more easily manipulated than run-of-the-mill variety thieves and crooks. Wiedersham was a blusterer who
knew
he was right and everyone else was wrong. A man like that found it all but impossible to resist showing off. Nearly everyone in official Washington seemed to be narcissistic to one degree or another, from the President down to the Congressional mail clerk.

Nail sat silently in the moving limo waiting for the pressure to build. Every time the pol opened his mouth, Nail withered it shut again with a hard look. Wiedersham seemed about to explode from tension. Only the purr of the big limo’s engine and the periodic swipe of windshield wipers against a misting rain marred the silence.

About a half-hour short of Watertown, Nail tapped the barrel of his gun on the glass shield that separated the driver from the passenger compartment. Judy glanced at him through the rearview mirror and nodded that she understood; it was time to implement the rest of the plan.

The Majority Leader’s confusion turned to mild alarm when Judy whipped the limo off the main road onto a side road. His alarm became palpable fear as she slowed several times to permit Nail to survey even smaller, more isolated roads. Finally, she stopped and backed up to the entrance of a narrow, muddy logging lane that led downhill into new growth red pine. Nail tapped the glass shield again and she turned into the ruts, jouncing the passengers, stopping in the pines out of sight of infrequent passing traffic.

Wiedersham cried out in near-panic when the engine cut off and the door clicked unlocked. He seemed ready to forsake all caution and make a run for it. Nail shrugged.

“Make my day,” he said in his best
Dirty Harry
manner.

Casually, and therefore all the more disturbing to the politician, Nail got out, strode to the other door and yanked Wiedersham out onto the wet grass by the collar of his expensive suit coat. On his knees, he stared up at Nail’s gun. It was probably the first time in his life that his tongue failed him. He shivered from terror as much as from the chill. Judy remained in the car, looking straight ahead. The sky hung low and gray, spitting rain, promising much worse as the day wore on.

Nail pressed the muzzle of Cobb’s pistol an inch into the fat at the back of the politician’s neck. Although the Beretta could be fired double-action on the first shot, Nail clicked back the hammer for effect. Wiedersham winced.

“Do you know what happened to Kimbrell in Tulsa?” Nail asked.

Wiedersham nodded spastically.

“And the two goons who shot Jerry Baer at ORU and killed my daughter?”

Another spastic nod.

“I’m sure you also recall the Homie you sent to murder Sharon Lowenthal in New York?”

Light rain collected like blisters on Wiedersham’s pale face.