America Rising (32 page)

A minute later the text message was on its way. An hour later three men and a woman were preparing to travel to Memphis, on their way to join a battle that would begin sooner than they’d ever expected.

P
resident Nancy Elias called a press conference in the White House briefing room for 8 a.m. on a warm and breezy weekday morning. She delivered this statement:

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my sad duty to inform you that Vice President Joe Josephson passed away last night due to injuries suffered at the hands of his kidnappers. He was a great man, a great American and a great friend. His wise advice and counsel will be missed.

 

“To my fellow Americans: I urge you to ignore the lies and slander that marked the final days of this great man’s life, and to join with me in mourning his passing. To the terrorists who abducted him I say: You are cowards and murderers, and I will use all the powers of this office to see that you are hunted down and brought to justice.

 

“May God bless the Josephson family, and may God bless America.”

 

* * *

The next day Ray Carmody scrolled through the back pages of the local section of the
San Diego Times
on his Kindle, looking for the pair of items he had been assured would be there. At the very bottom of the very last page he found them. They were written in the clipped, bloodless style of stories that were of no real importance but had to be reported anyway. It took him only seconds to read through both.

House Fire Kills Family of Four

 

LA JOLLA—A man, his wife and two children perished when their home in this exclusive seaside San Diego community burned to the ground early this morning in what investigators believe was a fire caused by faulty electrical wiring. The victims were identified as Dr. Michael and Michelle Lemieux and their daughters Elizabeth and Aimée. Funeral arrangements are pending.

 

Woman Dies in Botched Burglary Attempt

 

ESCONDIDO—In what police are calling an attempted burglary gone bad, a former military nurse now in private practice was shot to death in her home late last night. Mildred O’Connell, 47, apparently awoke to a burglary in progress and was shot three times by an unknown assailant. Police say the shooting is under investigation but they have no leads at this time.

 

* * *

Ray Carmody left his office early that evening and was in bed before midnight. He lay awake until the morning sun filtered through the window shades, unable to sleep, his body thrumming with fever as if the flames of hell were already licking at his feet.

* * *

The call that came from Chloe Enders would change everything, though I couldn’t have known it at the time. I was happier than I’d imagined, enjoying a taste of premature retirement. I could have kept working despite my mangled hand; voice-recognition software and the old hunt-and-peck would have allowed me to file at pretty much my usual clip. But, in truth, I was still pretty shook up by the attack in my own home, and when my boss Jeff suggested I take a few weeks off to recover, I think I surprised him by instantly saying yes.

I couldn’t do my favorite things on the water—no diving, snorkeling, kayaking. But I spent a lot of time reading and lounging on the beach, went fishing with my buddies from Pilot House, even bought a set of oil paints and pre-stretched canvases and made like some kind of beach-bum Pablo Picasso. My “Shit Period,” I called it, looking over the muddy, pathetic results.

Then Chloe Enders called.

It was one of those sun-blessed days in early June, before summer’s face-crushing heat and humidity kicked in. I was noodling on the computer, wasting time, when Chloe’s number flashed on my caller ID. I couldn’t get a word out before a voice exploded in my ear, “Goddam you, Josh Henson! Why the hell didn’t you tell me?!”

I thought about playing dumb—it was, after all, one of my signature talents—but Chloe was a friend and deserved better so I said, “Sorry, Clo, I was trying to keep it quiet. I didn’t want to have to answer a bunch of, ‘Sorry someone tried to chop off your finger’ cards.”

“That’s the lamest goddam thing I ever heard,” she snapped.

My wise-ass act wasn’t working.

“Sorry about that too, Clo,” I said. “Honest. But the whole thing still scares the shit out of me, and talking about it. . . Well, talking about it doesn’t make it any better.”

That seemed to satisfy her.

“I didn’t mean to yell at you, Josh,” she said, her tone softening. “It’s just that when Jeff told me. . . I know I’d be a wreck if something like that happened to me. How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “A little shaky now and then but not bad. And I really am enjoying the time off. I could get used to being a gentleman of leisure. How about yourself?”

I expected a snort of derision and a cutting remark. Chloe Enders didn’t take time off. She worked twice as hard as any two people. Twice as long too. But I didn’t get any of that. What I got was Chloe Enders nervous, shaken, even scared. I’d never seen that Chloe Enders before.

“There’s. . . there’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “Something that’s happened here. Something. . .”

“Something what, Clo?” I said. Gentle. Coaxing.

“I had dinner with one of my girlfriends two nights ago,” she said hesitantly. “Trish Oliver and I have been friends for a long time, and we usually talk once or twice a week. But I hadn’t heard from her and she hadn’t returned my calls so I stopped by her house in Noe Valley after work, just to see if anything was the matter.

“She was there but she was really upset. She’d been crying. A lot. I asked what was wrong but she wouldn’t say. But she didn’t want me to leave, either. So I went and got some take-out Chinese and a bottle of wine and we got a little tipsy and she told me that two days ago her brother committed suicide.”

There was an ominous silence on the line. I waited for it to end. Waited longer. I was really worried now.

“He was one of the paramedics who picked up Joe Josephson.” Chloe said finally. Her voice was sepulchral. “Everything the president said was a lie.”

There was another silence again. Shorter this time. Then it all came out all in a rush.

“They found Josephson in a van on a back road in Forestville. Someone called it in to 911. There was no rescue, no gun battle. He wasn’t injured. He was drugged but conscious. Lucid. Mostly, anyway. While the paramedics were working on him they found a business card in his pocket. There was one word on it. FEAR. Josephson kept babbling it all the way to the hospital. ‘Fear. They want to make us fear.’ Then something about the president and Frank Bernabe, war, revolution. He wasn’t making any sense. And he kept saying, ‘They’ll kill me, they’ll kill me.’

“When they got him to the hospital in Santa Rosa there was a team of agents waiting. They didn’t identify themselves. They took Trish’s brother and the other paramedics and doctors and cops who responded and locked them in a room. Kept them there until morning. Then a man came in—he didn’t say who he was either—and told them this was a matter of national security, that if they ever said anything to anyone about what had happened they would disappear, never be heard from again. ‘No one will even find your bones,’ he said.

“He asked if the vice president said anything but my everyone was too scared to tell. Finally, they were let go. But Allen—that’s Trish’s brother—felt like he was being watched, that his apartment was bugged, his phone was tapped. Everyone at work avoided him, his friends too. Like he had the plague or something.

“A few hours before he committed suicide he called Trish. Said he’d been followed but had managed to get away, that he’d bought one of those throwaway cell phones so they couldn’t trace the call. He told her what I just told you. Trish said he seemed at peace, like he’d already decided he was going to die. That evening he locked himself in his bathroom and took some pills.”

She paused once more, gathering in her emotions.

“I don’t know what to do, Josh,” she said, anguish gnawing at her words. “For the first time in my life I’m afraid to go after a story. Not just for Tricia but for me too.”

There was nothing I could tell her. I saw blood and death everywhere.

“I’m afraid for all of us, Chloe,” I said.

* * *

The package he’d received from “Mr. Thorn” caused only a slight alteration in Frank Bernabe’s plan. Improved it, actually, tied things up in a neater package. He sat at his computer and called up a folder on All-American Media and William Bigby. Some of the information was standard stuff, readily available from government filings, press releases and media reports. Much of it, however, was gleaned from other, more valuable sources—disgruntled ex-employees, surreptitious electronic surveillance, moles who had been carefully placed in positions where they could do Frank Bernabe the most good.

Bernabe scanned the folder and selected a file tagged “Revere Corps.” The Revere Corps, named after Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere, was the most virulent of several groups that loosely bound Ed Bane’s Bane-iacs, Tea Party flotsam and others on the moonbat fringe. All were funded, Bernabe knew, by William Bigby and like-minded executives, though their contributions were disguised by funneling the money through a variety of conservative think tanks, nonprofits and political clubs.

Revere Corps had been penetrated by one of his operatives. Frank Bernabe had never met the man dubbed “James Rodgers,” had never spoken to him, had never even looked at his file. “James Rodgers” knew Frank Bernabe only as “Mr. Flowers,” a man his handler had told him possessed the kind of wealth and power that made mere presidents cringe. So when the secure cell phone that had been issued to him for emergency contacts trilled, “James Rodgers” answered it instantly, all his senses sharp and focused.

“This is Mr. Flowers,” a rough voice said. “I have an assignment for you. . .”

* * *

One of the blessings of detaching yourself from the daily grind is that you have time to think. Really think. Not just find a solution to a specific problem but give your mind space to wander, letting the neurons fire as they will, discovering things, unearthing subtleties, finding patterns where none seemed to exist. Putting in plenty of time on the beach, on the water, at the bar at Pilot House, my mind wandered onto something that at first seemed crazy, then seemed plausible, and eventually would turn out to be prescient.

It started with an article I read several months earlier. It pointed out that the philanthropy of the robber barons of the Twenties and Thirties wasn’t just born out of some sudden attack of civic virtue. It was inspired mostly by fear. Fear for their personal safety, that the peasants might rise up and tear the whole rotten system down.

It was obvious to anyone with the sense of a goat that our current crop of robber barons were afraid of nothing. They had no fear of the White House; they chose the president. They had no fear of Congress; they bought senators and representatives like so many hookers at a Las Vegas convention. They had no fear of the courts. After all, judges lived in the same gated communities, belonged to the same private clubs, shared the same backgrounds and politics and values. And who appoints judges anyway?

They certainly had no fear of the American people. Up to now, at least, they were the easiest con of all. Feed them a few fairy tales about “free markets” and “socialism,” demonize whatever group happened to be out of fashion at the moment, pit them against each other over issues of personal morality, and you could get a reliable fifty-one percent to act in complete contravention of their own self-interest. I thought of all this as my conversation with Chloe Enders played over and over in my head. ‘They want to make us fear,’ the terrified paramedic said Joe Josephson kept repeating.

The word stuck in my brain.

Other fragments drifted in. The odd and unexplained disappearances of K Street’s biggest lobbyists. The curious death of Senator John Hammer. The rumors that I and everyone at Public Interest had heard about CDs full of damaging personal information mailed to members of Congress, about corporate executives ramping up their personal security after unexplained and unreported attacks. Maybe even the sudden death of Jefferson Dalworth, a corporate buttboy of the first order, a man more subservient to their interests than even Nancy Elias. And, of course, the abduction of Joe Josephson, compelled to reveal secrets the guardians of the system had worked so hard to conceal.

What if, I thought idly, meandering down a winding path on the way to a conclusion, what if a single group was responsible for all of these incidents? What if there existed a group of men and women who possessed the skills, the resources, the astonishing courage to bring fear to the very doorsteps of those who believed themselves to be immune, who believed their exalted status removed them from the concerns that afflicted mere mortals?