Day of the Delphi (8 page)

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Authors: Jon Land

BOOK: Day of the Delphi
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“Who are you?
What
are you?”
“Tell me about Yellow Rose.”
Carlisle let go of Blaine’s jacket and slid away. He spoke distantly with his eyes cast straight before him. “It was all so grand at the outset. What we Trilateralists set out to do to the world, for the world.”
“And yourselves, of course.”
Carlisle swung back toward McCracken. “It’s the same thing, damnit! We offered stability, consistency. At a price.”
“What price?”
The slightest of smiles crossed over the old man’s face. His gaze tilted toward the White House. “A wonderful thing, democracy. But it’s an illusion for the most part, bullshit like everything else. The only governable democracy is limited democracy. Give the people enough to make them think they’ve got what they want. But not everyone back in the seventies was ready to buy into that. We were challenged.”
“We?”
“Trilaterals, elitists, the upper class—call us what you want. Militant protests pounded us from all sides, threatening our attempts to produce stability, threatening the very foundation we were endeavoring to build. Women, Indians,
the poor, environmentalists, the militants—especially the militants. Rivals! Everywhere we turned.” Carlisle’s eyes sought out Blaine’s. “Something had to be done. We needed to get the nation’s house in order. I was chosen to lead a subcommittee of the Trilat.”
“To eliminate these rivals, no doubt.”
“To save the country from itself, from anarchy, you ass! Our enemies, the country’s enemies, were singled out. Operation Yellow Rose would have rid the nation of their menace.” Carlisle’s lips quivered. “Jesus Christ …
Jesus Christ!”
He slid close to Blaine again but stopped short of grasping him. “What you said before, about the overthrow of the government, we knew! We knew, goddamnit, but we didn’t do enough about it! The enemy went underground to wait his turn, to grow strong enough to make his move. We could have stopped what’s going to happen, but the others were too weak.”
“What others?”
“The bulk of the Trilateralists who didn’t have the stomach to carry out real governing. Buried themselves in theories, postulates, and position papers, but weren’t willing to pay the price for carrying out the recommendations the papers contained. Hell, Carter was a Trilateralist, Bush too. Even they wouldn’t listen. They goddamn fucking wouldn’t listen. And now,
now
!”
Carlisle’s yellowed eyes swung in the direction of the picketers. “Take a look. The enemy’s still there. I come here every day and I watch them. I don’t even know who I’m watching most days. But it’s getting worse, escalating. People are angry, capable of accepting anything that qualifies as change.” Eyes back on Blaine now, as much sad as furious. “And we could have prevented it. We had them all selected. The seeds of discontent plucked away so this could never happen.”
“That’s why you quit, withdrew.”
“I walked out, on the Trilateralists and the world.”
“And what about the Delphi?”
Carlisle’s eyes blazed at Blaine’s abrupt mention of the word, then seemed to sink back in his head. His lips trembled.
“Who are they, Mr. Carlisle?”
The old man reached over suddenly and grasped McCracken’s lapels again. But this time the fury was gone from the move, desperation in its place.
“Stop them,” he urged pleadingly. “You’ve got to stop them.”
“I’ve got only ten days. Not enough time maybe to do it on my own.” Blaine lowered his voice. “I need your help, Mr. Carlisle.”
Carlisle let his grasp on McCracken slip away and slid a trembling hand into the vest pocket of what remained of his three-piece suit. It emerged with a key he pressed into Blaine’s hand.
“Greyhound/Trailways Bus Station,” Carlisle said softly, eyes on the key.
McCracken could feel the grit of rust layered over what had once been smooth steel. “A locker?”
“A grave.”
 
McCracken didn’t open the locker right away. He loitered about the bus station providing intercity service for an hour before even approaching it. Anyone in the waiting area whose seat faced the bank of lockers was subject to his scrutiny. He was looking for a man or woman who lingered while paying little attention to the boarding announcements. After the hour had passed, he felt confident that no one had the station staked out. Whatever secrets locker 33 had to offer had remained just that.
Still wary, McCracken guided the key into the lock. It resisted and he was careful not to bend it in the process. At last it turned to the right and Blaine pulled the locker door open.
The first thing he saw inside were rumpled clumps of cash, some wrapped in bands, others simply rolled or
folded. Big bills for the most part, many of them new, part of a stash William Carlisle must not have made much use of anymore.
Partially concealed by the scattered bills was an old soft leather briefcase. The conditions of the locker had dried and cracked it. The case had a zipper that was open enough to let some of the bulging contents slip out:
Tabs, the tabs of manila folders.
Blaine brought the briefcase from the locker as nonchalantly as he could manage. One of its handles was torn from its stitching, so he placed the case under his arm. He closed and relocked the locker behind him. Then he glided back out into the warm afternoon air.
McCracken had found a spot inside a nearby parking garage for the car Sal Belamo had arranged for him. There, in the darkness broken only by the domelight, Blaine unzipped the briefcase all the way and removed a hefty chunk of its contents.
 
The first five manila folders Blaine opened contained detailed personal files with photographs included. Three of the names meant something to him. Two didn’t. All five had only one thing in common:
Affixed to the top of the first page in each was a sticker of a yellow rose.
One of the subjects was a college professor. Another was a union organizer. Two more were leaders of the antiwar movement who had organized the march on the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. The fifth was an Indian leader who had led the ’72 protest at Wounded Knee.
All champions of leftist protest movements and all designated enemies of the Trilateral Commission.
In that context the files made a great deal of sense. The Trilateral Commission’s grand scheme allowed no quarter for civil disobedience. The Vietnam war protests had clearly illustrated how public policy could be swayed by left-wing militancy. Carlisle and the other Trilateralists would have
learned their lesson from that, opting for a strategy of preemption in the form of Operation Yellow Rose: remove the perpetrators and leaders from the scene before they had a chance to set back the commission’s plans.
Blaine massaged his eyelids and resumed his scan of the stack of personal files. Somewhere in here was what Daniels must have been seeking. Somewhere in here might well be the identities of those behind the coming attempt to topple the government.
Something in the file before him now froze McCracken’s eyes. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said out loud. ‘I’ll be goddamned.“
“Excuse me,” Kristen Kurcell said to the old man sweeping up in front of the building marked GRAND MESA MUNICIPAL OFFICES. “Excuse me, I’m looking for the chief of police’s office.”
The old man kept sweeping and didn’t look up. “Don’t have one.”
“What?”
“Now if you were looking for the sheriff, I might be able to help you.”
“The sheriff, then.”
The old man looked up. Though his white hair was thin, it covered all his scalp. He had a scraggly beard of the same color. His face was tanned and creased. He wore a thin plaid jacket over a red flannel shirt and khaki trousers.
“You got an appointment?”
“Do I need one?”
“Asked if you had one.”
“No.”
The old man leaned forward against his broom. “Come with me. I’ll see what I can do.”
Kristen followed him through the door of Grand Mesa’s municipal building. She had driven here early Saturday morning after spending Friday night in Denver. She had considered driving out as soon as her plane got in from Washington, but it was after midnight by then and there wouldn’t be anything she could accomplish. Besides, she was exhausted and needed at least a few hours of sleep to settle herself down. Every time she closed her eyes in the airport hotel, though, she saw images of her brother and Paul Gathers of the FBI.
Both were gone. Both had disappeared.
Kristen hadn’t told anyone where she was going. She left a note for the senator that it was personal and she would call in as soon as she could. Until she had some grasp of what was going on, she could not involve anyone else. Paul Gathers had uncovered something and vanished as a result of it. Whatever that something was, it must have been connected to the source of her brother’s frantic, unfinished phone call.
The trail began in Grand Mesa. Grand Mesa might hold the answers.
She had not called ahead in the hope that surprise might be her best ally. Now the scope of the town before her made her question the need for that strategy. Grand Mesa’s town center consisted of one main street, a few cross streets, and a small complement of shops and stores for its two thousand residents. A single gas station doubled as the only choice for automotive repairs. There were two restaurants and a small L-shaped motel. What had been three additional motels lay not far from the center of town. But they were mere shells now, boarded-up relics that hadn’t seen guests in well over a decade by the look of things.
“Here we are,” the old man said and closed the door behind them.
The municipal offices were laid out in neat, precise fashion. There was a door marked COURT. Separate walled-off counters with desks behind them were labeled respectively
TAX PAYMENTS, ASSESSOR’S OFFICE, and AUTOMOTIVE REGISTRY. Two were not labeled at all. Not that it mattered: not a single person was on duty behind any of them. There was no label for sheriff, but Kristen did notice a nameplate that read SHERIFF DUNCAN FARLOWE atop a desk in the room’s front left corner.
The old man moved down the center’s aisle toward an open doorway, taking his broom with him. “I’ll get the sheriff for you,” he called back to Kristen.
She had barely begun to assess the municipal office’s furnishings when he reemerged. The broom was gone. A dull silver badge was pinned to the lapel of his jacket.
“Sheriff Duncan Farlowe, miss,” he said, extending a hand. “What can I do for you?”
 
He twisted rubber bands about his fingers as she spoke, hardly looking at her. He took notes, although Kristen couldn’t tell whether he was really listening as she told her story.
“You don’t have this tape,” Farlowe said at the end, still toying with the rubber bands.
“No.”
“Too bad. We coulda used it.” Farlowe’s eyes darted up from his fingers. One of the rubber bands flew across the room. “You sure your FBI friend said Grand Mesa?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Because there’s maybe a hundred towns in Colorado called
something
Mesa. Maybe you got the wrong something.”
“No, I’m sure he said Grand Mesa.”
“Your brother, he sounded pretty spooked on this tape?”
“Very.”
Farlowe nodded at that. Another of the rubber bands jumped off his fingers. “Not much here been known to spook folks. He probably came from somewhere else, just passing through.”
“I’ve thought of that, yes.”
“But he wouldn’t have been driving long. Way you tell it, he woulda wanted to call ya from the first phone he saw.”
Kristen nodded.
“That time of night, only thing open woulda been the motel, if Harley didn’t leave the TV on when he dropped off to sleep and couldn’t hear the buzzer.” The sheriff opened the bottom drawer of his desk and reached a hand inside. “What d’ya say you and me go over and have a talk with him?”
Duncan Farlowe rose with an old-fashioned leather holster in his hand and wrapped it around his waist. He drew a long-barreled black pistol that looked even older and spun the cylinder.
“Colt Peacemaker,” Farlowe said proudly. “Been in the family for generations.”
“You really think you’ll need it?”
Farlowe shrugged. “Reminds folks they got a sheriff.”
 
“Yeah, I remember him,” said Harley Epps, owner of the Grand Mesa Motel, as he looked up from the most recent picture Kristen had of David. “Checked in either two or three nights back. I’m almost certain it was two.”
“That’d be Thursday,” Farlowe prodded.
“Yeah,” Epps nodded. “Thursday. Paid in advance and was gone come morning.”
“Make any phone calls?”
Epps checked the log for that day. “Not that I got record of, but he could’ve used a credit card or called collect. I wouldn’t know about it then.”
Farlowe looked Kristen’s way.
“I’m not sure,” she told him. “The FBI agent didn’t tell me how my brother placed the call.”
“What room he stay in?” Farlowe asked the clerk.
“Seven.”
“Any other guests here that night?”
“I was just packin’ ’em in, as usual.”
“Yes or no, Harley?”
“Yeah, two, as I recall. Business has been slow lately, like about the last dozen years.”
Duncan Farlowe turned slightly toward Kristen. “Right about the time the silver veins went dry.” He looked back at Epps. “Might want to talk to those other two, Harley.”
“They checked in late, too. I didn’t ask for their addresses.”
“Tough to send ’em Christmas cards that way.”
“Cash in hand does fine by me.”
Farlowe extended his hand across the counter. “Give me the key, Harley.”
 
Room seven was dark for daytime. Farlowe flipped on the light switch by the door and then opened the blinds and drapes. Kristen followed him in tentatively, perhaps afraid of what the room might yield. All it gave up, though, was a musty, stale scent of disuse and a distant odor of disinfectant.
With Kristen hovering in back of him, Farlowe checked all the drawers. He made a quick inspection of the bathroom and then felt about the bed. His last stop was the small desk where the telephone was perched. He leaned over and sniffed the receiver.
“Been cleaned recently?” Kristen raised.
“No, little lady—replaced. This phone’s brand spanking new.”
“New?”
“According to the way you described that tape, it sounds to me like your brother was attacked in this room. Maybe he tried to use the old phone as a weapon. Maybe it just broke when he dropped it. Either way it would need replacing.”
“That means someone had to come back to replace it after they got David out.”
Sheriff Farlowe crouched down. The long barrel of his Peacemaker dropped beneath his leg and scraped against the
carpet. “That’s not all they came back for. Check out this rug. See how the nap’s all going in one direction.”
“No. Wait a minute, yes, I think so.”
“Well, Harley Epps ain’t vacuumed since you were still in diapers, and even if he did, it wouldn’t straighten the nap this much. Nope, I’d say somebody washed this carpet, real recent, too.”
Kristen felt the hollowness building in her gut. “My brother
was
here.”
“Seems that way.”
“But there’s nothing to tell us where they took him, where he is now.”
“No, little lady, but I got me a notion on how he got to Grand Mesa in the first place.”
 
“He drive a jeep, one of those little Jap jobs?”
“How did you know?”
“Figured as much.”
Farlowe hadn’t elaborated further. They climbed back into his 4 × 4 and drove three blocks down to the town garage and filling station. Inside a cluttered repair bay, a mountain of a man with red hair and a matching beard wearing blue denim overalls had his head beneath the hood of an old Ford.
“Jimbo,” Farlowe said to him.
“I’m a little busy, Sheriff.”
Farlowe turned off the work light dangling from the open hood. “So am I.”
The man mountain straightened up, towering over Farlowe, who stood back with this thumbs cocked in his pants pockets. Kristen noticed the butt of the Peacemaker was poised outside his jacket.
“Need to talk to ya about that jeep you found.”
“It was parked on my property. Nobody claims it, it’s mine.”
“Strange how it had no papers inside.”
“I figure it was stolen,” said the man mountain. “Abandoned here.”
“Could be. Mind if I take a look?”
“Long as you leave it just where it is when you’re finished.”
“In the back bay?”
“Where it’s stayin’, Sheriff.”
Farlowe tipped his wide-brimmed hat and led Kristen through the obstacle course of grease and oil that darkened the floor in splotches. The rear bay was accessible through a missing door, and the jeep was there waiting for them.
“This your brother’s, little lady?”
Kristen circled about it. “I don’t know. I never saw it. But it’s the same model, I think. I just can’t be sure.” She looked down. “The license plates are gone.”
“Big Jimbo probably dumped ’em in the river by now. Eliminate anyone else’s claim on it, that way.”
“I assume the glove compartment will be empty as well.”
“For sure.” Farlowe tapped the Wrangler’s hood. “Your brother was a smart boy, little lady. He musta parked his jeep out of sight so whoever was after him wouldn’t know he was in town. I mighta been the one callin’ you if Big Jimbo hadn’t’ve come upon this first. Don’t matter much really, I suppose.”
“Why?”
“Because what matters is figurin’ out where it was at ’fore your brother drove here. I mean, whatever got him hurt happened a ways out of town. We find out where and maybe we find out what.”
Kristen whisked her hand across the shiny-clean fender. “Looks like your friend Jimbo wiped off whatever evidence of that there might have been.”
“Not all of it, little lady,” countered Farlowe, kneeling by one of the front tires. “Looks like he hasn’t gotten to these yet.”
Farlowe drew a pen from his pocket and stuck it in the tread. A layer of clay-colored dirt coated the tip when he
pulled it back toward him. He brought the pen to his nose and sniffed.
“Looks like your brother was up in silver country.”
“What?”
“This part of Colorado used to be known for its silver mines. People came on through to stake their claim,” Farlowe explained. “Plenty got rich. Plenty didn’t. Town did fine either way.”
“You think my brother was looking for
silver?”
“Be damn stupid if he was, little lady. See, there hasn’t been any silver in these parts for a good dozen years now, like I said before. That’s why Grand Mesa’s little more than a ghost town these days. Anyway, all I’m saying is his jeep was up in the hills off Old Canyon Road where the mines used to be. Pretty dangerous territory. Man could fall in one of the abandoned shafts if he took his eyes off the ground for a second.”
“What else is out there?”
“Not much. Miravo Air Force Base, but that was shut down a couple years back. With SAC gone, they mothballed it. Killed whatever was left of Grand Mesa’s economy. Nobody even uses that old road anymore. We’ll drive out that way. See if anything strikes our fancy.”
They moved from the rear bay back into the front section of the garage where Big Jimbo was coolly working under the hood of the Ford.
“You find what you were looking for, Sheriff?” he asked, without poking his head out.

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