Seven Silent Men (53 page)

“Orin began with that premise thirty years ago, and on and off followed it logically forward. For him secrecy in groups was conspiracy, and he studied such groups as they had never been studied before—from the Knights Templar to the Rosicrucians to the Freemasons and Tong and Black Hand and KKK and Mau Mau, no one knew secret societies better than Orin. And secret rites and rituals. He had even detailed an honorary and secret group within the Boy Scouts, for God's sake. Something called the Order of the Arrow, first and second class. It didn't have to be bad to be secret … take AA. But it usually was bad.”

Amory paused and shook his head. “I still won't let myself get into it, will I? Keep skirting the matter. All right, here goes. There's a well-known story about Orin having been discredited for consorting with notorious ex-Nazis immediately after the war … that among other things he was using them as research sources in the preliminary planning of the new FBI Academy. This was true but to a lesser degree than supposed. The Nazis were high-ranking members of Heinrich Himmler's infamous Aryan Studies Department, the concocters and defenders of Germanic superiority. Most of his time with these SS men was spent researching the use of secret societies and pagan Teutonic rituals by the Nazis. One of the Germans was SS Colonel Helmut Markel, an anthropologist. Markel, at this time, was far more expert in secret societies than Orin. It was Markel who told Orin that the Gents and Silent Men had been revived. Markel claimed to have gone to see them in America during World War II, to have tried to recruit them to the German cause. Orin smuggled Markel into this country in 1950. Rumor later had it that this was done to help plan the academy. It wasn't. It was to try to track down the Gents and Silent Men. They never did. Not then.

“According to Orin, the Gents, or League of Gents, was a small, clandestine pre-Civil War group of high-born southern and eastern aristocrats, a far more refined and dangerous group than the Ku Klux Klan. Their motives were economic, to maintain their vast holdings in the South without substantial change. Their
modus operandi
was to achieve their ends through political and financial pressure, and when this failed, to have an in-house unit foment radical and violent change. The in-house unit they created for this was the Silent Men. Orin had always suspected Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated by the Silent Men … Orin thought the Gents had disbanded in 1870. Hearing Helmut Markel claim they had reappeared in the late 1930s and that he had made contact with them was what prompted Orin to smuggle the Nazi into America. When no trace of the Gents could be found, Markel went back to Germany and Orin returned to other subjects, not the least of which was finishing his master plan for the academy.

“The death of President Kennedy reawakened Orin's interest in the assassination aspects of secret societies. By then Orin was an expert in the subject. He had no doubt it was a conspiracy. His first thought was of the Silent Men. But it didn't prove out. At least that was the impression I got from him.

“Six months before he died, Orin had decided to abandon all his activities and write a book on the psychology of secrecy. He was still teaching his one seminar a week at the academy so he used his four students as researchers, had them scurrying about getting odds and ends for him. This, if you ask me, was the final straw for Edgar Hoover, who made known his intention to fire Orin before he could resign.

“Orin, I should point out, was in one of his manic states as the writing and final research began. More delusional than usual, which is probably why I thought so little of it when he told me with great enthusiasm that he'd discovered the Gents and Silent Men. He claimed they had come to him, which made it seem all the less credible. From then on I received occasional bulletins on his dealings with them. He claimed the Silent Men were the only wing of the Gents that had survived and that whereas they took credit for shooting Abraham Lincoln, they disavowed involvement with Jack Kennedy. I ask you, Yates, what would you think of anybody who told you that?”

Amory rose and began walking. “One night Orin came to the house more elated than I'd seen him in years. And more hyperactive. If I hadn't known better I would have suspected he was on some type of amphetamine. He was at once secretive and effusive, like a cub reporter who had come up with his first scoop and was trying not to breathe a word until the story was printed. He told me the Silent Men had infiltrated the very highest echelons of government, including the FBI. He said he had known this for some time but had just that night realized what it was they were up to. And he left it at that. I asked, ‘All right, Orin, what is it?' He was beside himself with joy but wouldn't answer, not that question.” Amory shook his head. “When he told me the Silent Men were the only hope for America, I concluded he was indeed dippy and let it drop …

“Now I am worried about you, Billy Yates. I don't know what the relationship between Orin's rantings and Mormon State is, but I suspect it just might exist. You see, Orin did let it slip why the Silent Men approached him in the first place. They wanted his research on model crimes. Those two volumes. Two sets of them existed according to Orin. The original and a copy. He said when the Silent Men asked, he couldn't find either set. Later I got the impression he had found one of them. Whether he gave them to anybody, I couldn't say. After his death I came across a set on an upper bookshelf in my office. Orin was forever leaving things in my office.

“More can be drawn from this, of course. Other implications. But I don't wish to get into that. I wish to be the old man I am and comfort myself in forgetfulness. Perhaps what I've said is my inveterate paranoia catching up with Orin's talent for the absurd extreme. Let us hope there is a more rational explanation than mine for why Orin's work is missing from my office and the storage bin. After all, missing books and papers do not a conspiracy make. In any case, young Yates, I've done my duty to you. I feel there was something special between the two of us. On the off chance my suspicions are real, go carefully. Particularly you and your strutting religious ways. Gents stands not only for ‘gentlemen' but also for ‘gentiles.'”

“Silent Men?” Brew repeated into the telephone receiver.

“That's right,” Yates's voice answered. “Barrett Amory thinks we could be right about someone meddling with Romor 91, only he's going us one better, he thinks it could be an all-out conspiracy and that—”

“Conspiracy to achieve what?”

“He doesn't know, but he implied the Silent Men are behind it.”

“Silent Men? What are you talking about?”

“The guys who maybe stole the model crimes.”

“Cut the clowning, Billy.”

“I'm not clowning. This thing is weird enough by itself. If we want to believe Barrett Amory, it gets a helluva lot weirder. One thing is pretty clear, most everything that's happened with Mormon State so far seems to have been outlined years ago in a classroom exercise called a model crime. From here on is where it gets sticky. Amory thinks the Silent Men stole specifications for the model crimes a while back and that they put one of them into effect at Mormon State. He doesn't know why, or what's to be gained by it, but he warned me to watch out. If his information is correct the Men have infiltrated the Bureau and—”

“Who the hell are the Silent Men?”

“I was hoping you wouldn't ask that.”

“What?”

“Remember Abraham Lincoln?”

“Lincoln!”

“They're the ones who knocked him over.”

“Billy, for Christ's sake.”

“I'm telling you what Amory told me. There was a pre-Civil War group named the League of Gents. A secret society. They formed an action wing, assassinations et cetera, called the Silent Men. The whole shebang disbanded. About the time of World War II a Nazi claimed the Silent Men had reappeared, or at least he had temporary contact with a group calling itself that. Remember Orin Trask?”

“He came to the academy after I left,” Brew said.

“But you know who he was?”

“Sure.”

“It was Trask who was on the trail of the Silent Men. He told Amory he found them. Now you know as much as I do. You check out those reports from Illinois yet?”

“I've got to wait till morning. Till everyone's over at the grand jury. They're running with the grand jury in the morning.”

“I thought that was next week!”

“They're going now. Washington's insisting.”

“Dammit.”

“… Billy, Barrett Amory really tell you all that stuff about the Silent Men?”

“Yep.”

“Jesus.”

Jez crossed a brick-paved, gas-lit avenue of boutiques and small restaurants and turned into Hosking Street in the bohemian, riverfront section of Prairie Port known as Steamboat Cove. The row of former stables to the left had been converted into fashionable townhouses. Across from them were several old industrial buildings. Twelve twenty-one was the number on a four-story brick warehouse that had been remodeled into offices. Jez picked open the lock with his penknife, took the steps to the third-floor landing, again picked a lock.

Three large rooms faced out onto the street. Jez kept the lights off as he wandered through the empty premises. He played his penlight beam on the wood floor. Fresh scratchings indicated the previous tenant had vacated only recently.

Near the window in the last room the beam picked up the faded outline of what could have been a stain. Perhaps even a blood stain. One that had been washed and later sanded, but never varnished over.

Jez stepped to the window, looked out across the street … saw directly into the studio bedroom of a townhouse, could not help noticing the red-headed woman standing at an easel, painting.

He crossed the street and pushed the buzzer. A squawk box asked who was buzzing. He told her.

The door finally opened. Elaine Picket looked terrific. She made no attempt to close the front of her denim shirt. “FBI? Did you say FBI?”

“Yes, ma'am.” He displayed his credentials.

“Oh, put those silly things away.”

He did, somewhat at a loss.

She contemplated him, turned in such a way as to let her shirt open wider on the small, firm breasts beneath. “What can I do for you, FBI?”

“I'd like to ask you a few questions.”

“Only if we fuck first.” There was no doubt she meant it. “You do fuck, don't you?”

“… When the occasion arises.”

She stood aside.

He slowly entered.

TWENTY-TWO

Three contingents of state troopers and forty federal marshals arrived at the courthouse building at dawn, barricaded the street and sidewalks and secured the premises inside. By 6:30
A
.
M
. media people were crammed into the narrow second-floor hallway assigned to them. At 7
A
.
M
. a bus with blacked-out windows entered the heavily guarded garage entrance in the rear of the building, drove down the ramp and deposited the federal grand jurors before a well-secured elevator door. The basement forces were beefed up and guns held poised when, half an hour later, siren-screaming police motorcycles convoyed a pair of cars down the ramp and up to the elevator. Strom, Cub and Jez got out of the first vehicle. Federal marshals emerged from the second, bringing with them Otto Pinkny.

The federal grand jury convened promptly at 8:30
A
.
M
. A South Carolina police officer related how he had arrested Pinkny for running a red light. A police sergeant told of Pinkny being booked and remaining silent until being identified, then asking to talk with the FBI. A Bureau agent from South Carolina recounted visiting Pinkny in jail and being told by the notorious killer of his participation in the Mormon State robbery. Headquarters agent Matthew Ames told of taking Pinkny's longer confession. Strom related going to South Carolina and bringing Pinkny back with him. Jez and Cub testified as to how Pinkny voluntarily submitted to days of interrogation and how the FBI had checked on the specifics of what he told them and found most of it to be corroboratable.

Otto Pinkny went before the grand jury at approximately 9:15
A
.
M
.… and for hours there would be no way of shutting him up.

Brew had reckoned correctly. The eleventh-floor resident office was all but empty. The central files in the rear wing were unattended. He began his search for reports on Teddy Anglaterra and the people who had sworn Mule, Rat and Wiggles were in Emoryville, Illinois, the week of the robbery. It was no small task. Romor 91 now filled four thousand volumes, over 600,000 report pages … a record for any robbery investigation ever undertaken by the FBI. Nor was the material indexed as well as it might have been. He soon found himself up on the twelfth floor, which maintained its own files, copies of which were sent down to the central file on the floor below. Most of the agents here, like those of the eleventh floor, were at the grand jury inquiry.

The twelfth floor's cataloguing system was immaculate. Information was quickly located. Being in a hurry, he did what he had done on the eleventh floor and which was forbidden … removed a report from the file and took it with him.

Otto Pinkny was temporarily silenced and excused from the grand jury so that newly obtained evidence could be brought before the panel. An assistant FBI director was called and told the body that after secret and continuous investigation and testing by both the Bureau's Washington lab and engineers from several reputable electronics companies, an answer could now be given to one of the paramount questions regarding Romor 91: why the alarm at Mormon State National Bank had not sounded until thirty-two hours after the robbery had been perpetrated.

The assistant director went on to explain that the system operative in the bank at the time of the theft, a Thermex ultrasonic scanner, had two distinct alert capabilities. One was by ultrasonic radio to an industrial security service alarm room where Thermex leased space. The second was a direct-line cable to the communications room in police headquarters. The radio aspect was dominant. On the detection of premises penetration, the radio alerted the security service, provided specifics such as where in the bank the intrusion was and how many persons were in the premises. Should the security service not respond to the radio and confirm having received the message within thirty seconds, then the Thermex system automatically sent a coded message to police headquarters via the direct-line cable.