Free Fall (13 page)

Ten? Twenty? Was she still in West Virginia? How far to the nearest town?

She finally stood and started carefully downriver, picking her way through the tangle of slick boulders and fallen trees. No matter where you were in the world, if you followed running water far enough, you pretty much always ended up in civilization. Or the ocean.

She picked up her pace a little, but not so much that she couldn't keep her progress quiet. Best to make some time now; the coming dark was going to cut her speed in half. And it was starting to get cold.

Uavid Hallorin leaned into the center most microphone and looked out over the people neatly lined up on benches in front of him.

"It looks like my time is running out. I think they'll let us squeeze in a couple more, though." He pointed to a woman in the back row. It was impossible to make out any more than her outline with the bright television lights bearing down on him, but that was enough. Her movements were slow, uncertain. The question would come the same way.

"Thank you, Senator."

He nodded and smiled easily.

"What do you have for me?"

The imprecise, informal way of speaking was pure Roland Peck and Hallorin was still having a hard time making it work. Despite the condition of the country and the rest of the world, the American people were still too stupid and weak to focus on anything but image. Even now, they were still more easily drawn to feigned personal warmth and deliberately meaningless and endearing character flaws than to strength and leadership.

"Sir, I agree with your stand on personal responsibility and the way you want to reform the tax system ... but I just can't agree with you on the legalization of drugs. Senator Taylor wants a more efficient government, too, but he says we can't afford to do it at the expense of our children.

If the government sold drugs, everyone would be doing them." She started to sit down before she was even finished speaking his Republican opponent's words.

"Hold on there, don't take your chair just yet," Hallorin said, squinting through the lights.

"I have a question for you."

She stopped halfway, and he could see the dark outline of her head move as she looked around her.

"Would you, ma'am?"

"Excuse me?" she said nervously, still not sure whether she should stand or sit.

"Would you start using drugs if they were legal?"

"No."

"Me neither." He paused, considering stopping this routine short. The rest was risky. Peck insisted that it couldn't fail there were no less than three cameras trained on the crowd, and according to Peck, the audience mothers and bosses would be watching. He decided to go forward.

"I want everyone out there who does not currently use narcotics, but would if they were legalized, to raise their hands." No one moved.

He scanned the audience for a few more seconds, shrugged meaning fully, and continued.

"As I've said before, I like my Republican opponent.

I always have. But more than that, I respect Senator Taylor's willingness to get bloodied over and over again in the war on drugs. The question is this: If you're fighting a war and you're losing badly, hopelessly, would you continue to send your sons and daughters to the front lines to be killed? Or would you change your strategy?" He leaned against the podium and made a show out of scanning the crowd before locking in on the woman who had posed the question.

"Let me correct one thing you said. I believe that the U. S. government, as it's now structured, is the only organization in the world that could lose money selling drugs." There was a brief, quiet tittering from the audience that he hoped was loud enough to be picked up by the mikes.

"I propose that the right to produce and market these products be sold to pharmaceutical companies. Now, there would be no advertising and you could only buy in state-run stores. These stores wouldn't take cash or checks no, you'd have to use a credit card specially designed for the purpose. The government could then track who was using what and how much. That would then be compared with tax returns to make sure that there were no disparities that might suggest that money was being raised by criminal activity."

"Big Brother is watching!"

The shout from the back was unamplified, but this time there was no doubt it was loud enough to have been picked up by the mikes. More Roland Peck. He'd allowed a number of staunch liberals to "sneak" into the audience. The town-hall format wouldn't look real without them, he'd said, all the while making sure that these red herrings were poorly spoken fanatics who would succumb to the carefully planned responses he'd devised.

The audience had been generally sympathetic to his positions all evening, so Hallorin chose the most forceful of the five or so retorts he had to choose from. He breathed out audibly but didn't turn toward the source of the voice.

"Big Brother. The battle cry of the paranoid." More quiet titters. It had been the right choice.

"Big Brother, as you say, is already watching drug users in the form of the DEA, FBI, and local law enforcement agencies. And what are they seeing? They're seeing people die. Children in gun battles over territory, in crossfires, of AIDS, as crack babies. Remember a few years back when a group of vigilantes decided to poison the drug supply?

Thousands died. You have a choice as an individual If you don't want Big Brother to watch you, don't use drugs."

There was a smattering of applause. Positive, but respectful of the gravity of the subject matter.

"Okay, time for just one more," he said, raising his arm out over the crowd.

"You, sir."

"Senator. Your rather harsh ideas on prison reform could be called ultraconservative and your ideas on drug legalization, though unique, would generally be considered far left. Time is getting short a little more than three weeks to the election. Do you feel that your message is appealing enough to the public to move you out of third place?"

"That question sounds suspiciously professional," Hallorin said, in an easy, good-natured tone that he'd been practicing for months.

"No reporters are allowed to ask questions today, you know. This forum is for the people."

"I'm an accountant. I swear!" came the unmiked reply.

Hallorin nodded and smiled engagingly.

"Since I have your word ... The problems you mention are interrelated, really. It seems to have become obvious that people are not reformed in prison often the contrary is true. In some circles..." Hallorin didn't identify blacks by name, but paused slightly to let the audience fill that in for themselves. The strategic fanning of racial animosities was critical to his campaign.

" .. going to prison has become a badge of honor; a rite of passage.

Let's look at the facts. Seventy percent of prisoners are nonviolent drug users.

That's roughly a million and a quarter souls. Conservatively, it costs us twenty-two thousand dollars per year to keep them in jail. That's over twenty-seven billion dollars out of our pockets. And worse than the cost, we don't have room to keep killers, rapists, and the like on the inside. If we can free up space by releasing people who are not a threat to the safety of others, then we've made one heck of a first step to taking the streets back from the criminals."

He paused again to usher in a slight change of subject.

"Perhaps it's time to say that the opportunity to live in a free society comes with certain requirements rules. You can't kill anyone, for instance. Many of my colleagues seem to think that this is an unreasonable and unworkably complicated rule. I disagree. You know how I remember things? Sticky notes. Got 'em everywhere. So I propose that everyone could put one beside their bed so that it's the first thing they see in the morning. In big black letters it would say: "Reminder:

Don't kill anyone today." I might even support funding to allow the government to give out packets of sticky notes, with that message preprinted on them, to every American."

He got a full laugh out of that one, as he'd expected.

"No more degrees, no more excuses. If you kill somebody and it wasn't an accident or self-defense, you go to prison for the rest of your life.

Not to reform you, but to keep people who can follow the rules safe from you."

Out of the corner of his eye he could see one of his men jabbing desperately at his watch, and he nodded an imperceptible acknowledgment.

"I was told yesterday that the highest voter turnout in fifty years is expected for this election. That seems to surprise a lot of people. But not me. America knows that it has an opportunity to do something wonderful here. Good can come from all the pain we've suffered over these last few years. Let's make sure our children don't have to go through any thing like this again."

The applause was polite but enthusiastic as he stepped away from the podium and was ushered through a door at the back by the Secret Service men who had been assigned to him. As always, they looked nervous. His utilitarian stances on the workings of the government, his out spoken criticism of popular politicians, and most of all his unwavering disrespect for the Arab world had produced quite a bit of speculation regarding the possibility of an attempt on his life. Good. That sense of danger sold tickets.

As they approached the exit, Hallorin slowed down, effectively using his solid two-hundred-and-fifty-pound frame to halt the procession. He had been told that he would meet with the press immediately after he'd finished in the auditorium. The head of his protection detail seemed to read his mind.

"Sir, we've been instructed to escort you out immediately.

Arrangements have been made to handle the press."

Hallorin didn't move.

"What the hell are you talking about? Who gave that order?"

"Mr. Peck insisted."

Hallorin looked back down the hall toward the sound of his audience as they left the building. It had gone well. Better than expected. But the press still wasn't with him--he needed this meeting.

"Sir?"

"Goddamn it," he said between clenched teeth and then started moving again, allowing himself to be pushed toward the exit.

The interior of the natural gas-powered van had been reconfigured to be like that of a limousine: two sets of plush seats facing each other right behind a heavy glass pane that separated them from the driver. In the corner of one of those seats, with his head resting against a side window, was Roland Peck.

The van started moving the moment the side door slid shut, the motion appearing to cause Peck physical pain. Headlights from oncoming cars filtered through the tinted windows, making his skin glow stark white and coloring his bright red hair almost black.

"What the fuck, Roland?" Hallorin said angrily.

"The press--"

"You did well, Senator," Peck interrupted.

"Yes. I watched. Our people can handle the spin. A simple matter."

Peck swallowed hard and flicked his nose with the forefinger of his right hand. It was another of the mannerisms Hallorin had come to know.

There was a problem.

"The file," Hallorin said.

"We'll have it within forty-eight hours." Peck spoke without looking up and Hallorin felt a vague sense of nausea wash over him. He waited until it passed before he spoke again.

"Tell me what happened, Roland."

"There was an accident."

Hallorin shot a hand out and grabbed hold of Peck's arm. His fingers went all the way around the man's thin bleep and overlapped in the back.

"Tell me what happened, Roland!" Peck still didn't look up, so Hallorin increased the pressure on his arm until a wince started to spread across Peck's thin face. He almost looked like he was going to cry.

"There was an accident. An accident... one of our men is dead."

Hallorin released him and fell back in his seat, the words ringing in his head.

Peck still didn't make eye contact, but the story finally started to flow in frightened stops and starts.

"I don't know how it happened. I left only for a moment. There were two of our men in the room and Newberry was tied up. The woman ... wasn't."

"Stop," Hallorin said, cutting off what he knew would be an incoherent jumble of excuses, facts, and speculation.

"Who's dead?"

"Anderson. He went through a window and ..." Peck put a hand up to his throat.

"It cut here."

"What did you do with him?"

"It looks like a car accident glass from the windshield."

"You said you left them with two men what about the other?"

"I don't know what happened he says that the woman pushed him and he fell against the edge of the bed. He was knocked unconscious long enough for her to untie Newberry and get out through the window."

"Who is 'he'?"

"Mcmillan."

Hallorin knew both men. State troopers who had been with him for a number of years. He'd kept the most loyal of them around despite the increasing involvement of the Secret Service as his candidacy had evolved. The Secret Service had no allegiance.