Gabriel's Stand (13 page)

John Owen's first sensation was damp concrete against his face, then a sharp pain in his right wrist which was suspended over his body. He opened his eyes. He was lying prone on the floor of a warehouse. His right hand was purple and swollen. His wrist was tightly wrapped with steel cable, bracketed to the wall above him with a set of bolts. A lamp glowed on a card table a few feet away. Someone—perhaps that same damned woman—was sitting at a chair facing him.

“Good,” the voice said. “Sit up if you can.”

When John moved, lancing pain ran from his wrist to shoulder. More disturbing, his right hand was beginning to feel numb. “I can't,” he gasped. “What do you want?”

“You will be able to walk out of here immediately, Dr. Owen. My principals need just three small things from you: One. You call your Senator friends and urge them privately and publicly to vote yes when the Earth Restoration Treaty comes to a vote. Two. You provide 100 million dollars to our movement. Three. You close Edge Medical and its subsidiaries.”

“You are out of you mind.”

“And you are out of your element. Think it over for an hour. You might even make up your mind in time to save your hand.”

“I can't move that much money.”

The light went out.

“We have all the necessary financial papers prepared, Dr. Owen. Someone will be back in an hour for your decision.” Footsteps retreated. A door opened and closed. More time passed. The sound of his breathing mingled with distant traffic sounds.

No one will hear me if I cry out.

He thought about the antibiotic run that was destroyed.
These people won't stop with me—they are monsters. But that is not a surprise, is it? I know their real agenda. A thousand people burned alive.
Dr. Owen thought about his daughter, his son in law, the baby to be born any time now
.

I have to make a stand here, now.

John twisted, trying to sit up.
They will never let me live. Sometime, somehow, they will kill me. Any bargain with them would be an illusion. They must know that. Why not kill me, then? They actually think I'll break.
Rage filled him like a drug. He fed on it, summoning his courage.

With his left hand, he felt in his pants pocket.
Idiots. My credit card knife. How big is that blade? An inch and a half, maximum.

So how big was my first scalpel?

His wallet was in his left pocket and but it took several minutes to fish out the card, and to open the small blade. Dr. Owen decided to cut just above the cable, using it as a cutting guide.
The nerves in that area should already be deadened
. He pulled himself next to the wall and, slipping the blade into his shirt pocket, he felt his right hand with his left. The swollen hand felt strange, almost like an alien hand, or inanimate object.
Good
. He thought that after the first cut, it would be easier.

He was wrong.

After five minutes of slashing, he was close to fainting. His face was drenched in sweat, and he could feel the blood pooling where he sat.
The bones! The damn bones!

I can't do this!
He let his good arm fall to his side.

Were those footsteps?

With a surge of adrenaline, John pulled savagely against the cable, hacking feebly at tendons and slippery bones. Then he fell exhausted, again, shaking from shock. He began to cry. Then he prayed. It was a silent, incoherent prayer.

What was that?

John noticed that his wrist had slipped. The cables had moved at least a full inch along the ruin that was his hand.

Go! Go! Go!

Dr. Owen braced his legs against the wall and, gave it a final, fierce push. There was an agonizing moment of doubt as his strength ebbed, then something gave way and he fell back sobbing. John lay on his back, breathing raggedly.
Free!

I've got to risk the light. No. They might see it from outside. God I'm losing so much blood!
He crawled to his feet in total darkness, using his good hand to brace himself.

His left hand was shaking violently. Clumsily, he pulled his shirt off everything except his right arm, and twisted it into a compress tourniquet for the stump of his right wrist. Stepping cautiously, he reached the edge of the desk, and felt for the lamp, careful to hold the compress in place.
There.
He could block the old fashioned incandescent bulb with part of his shirt. He found the switch.
Don't hesitate!

He turned it on, quickly pulling the lamp toward his body, and the bloody shirt. The heat of the bare bulb felt good against his arm. In the dimmed light, he could see that the wall behind the desk led to a door about fifty feet away
.

Cautiously he guided the light in the opposite direction. There was another door at the dim end of the warehouse.
My best chance.

Dr. Owen studied the distance and direction; then turned off the lamp. A wave of dizziness and nausea almost overcame him.
Not now, damn it!
He walked, counting his paces in total darkness, fighting the impulse to run.
The fear is good
, he told himself,
I need the adrenaline to delay the shock
.

Twenty short paces. I should be there
.
Two more. One. There!
He felt along the corrugated wall.
A door jamb
. His bloody hand slid along the metal surface.
Please, God, let it be unlocked.
A fire door
?

Yes!
He took a deep breath and pushed the metal door open a crack. Cold air, lights, traffic noises. He blinked, letting his eyes adjust, hesitating again.

Screw it
. He stepped through the door onto an unlit parking lot, near a busy waterfront street. There was a van and a car parked at the other end of the lot. Dr. Owen ran.

He ran as he never had run before. Reaching the curb, he ran directly into the street, staying near the center divider. He stumbled, fell, got up, and continued running.

Running. Running.

Max Cahoon had stayed in Seattle for the rest of the week, trying to follow up on the Unabomber angle. But it was a stonewall. He learned from a friendly source that all of the suspect's papers had been stolen from the police station evidence room sometime during the morning after the fire. The detective and arson inspector refused to talk to him about it. No one would go on the record.

Then the
Times
refused to run his terrorist angle story until further investigation. Before leaving Seattle, Cahoon had an angry phone confrontation with his editor. He was told to calm down. “We aren't the Enquirer, Max. Besides, in light of Panama, we're not running some eco-terrorist story. That's final.”

Max Cahoon flew from Seattle to Manhattan to make peace with his editor. It was another stonewall experience. After a few days, he booked a flight to DC, intending to cover the reaction to the Senate treaty vote. He needed time to decompress…and to think. In the days since Panama Canal was poisoned and Vector Pharmaceutical was torched, Max noted how the popular attention had arrived at an eerie state of horror saturation.
They're finally numbed by reality
, he thought. The trivial human interest stories were beginning to push the disasters to the inside pages.
And the Vector bombing is going to be spun as the act of a crazy loner. Damn.

Cahoon stared bleakly out the window of his plane. His follow-up story on Vector had just appeared in the Times as a heavily edited single paragraph buried on page eight.

Fools. What are they thinking
?

——

On April 21st, the night of the Senate vote, Cahoon went straight from his hotel to his favorite DC bar, a small pub on the edge of Georgetown. The Senate was a circus, locked in a televised session to which only electronic media and a select press pool had direct access. The
Times
had sent a junior reporter into the fray.
Just as well for me
, Max thought. He had arranged his follow up interviews for the morning after, and had tracked the entire debate on a video feed in the train. The roll call vote was to proceed within the hour.

Better to see it right here
, he thought. Cahoon had never quite gotten the general media.
Ironic
, he thought,
for an insider.
The Vector bombing was eclipsed by the Panama Canal disaster, a more compelling story driven by the videos of environmental impact.
I guess dead
fish are more interesting than dead Americans
, he thought. Cahoon had to concede that Panama was the bigger story. But he noticed that, somehow, the two events had begun to blur in the popular mind. And the terrorist origins of Vector—now called a ‘fire disaster' had just faded away.

Faded, hell! To the guy on the street it amounted to the same thing
. He thought.
The modern world is too much:
“Hey—It's just a crazy world, you know? Panama was the result of crazy negligence and that Seattle fire was just a crazy arsonist. Things are just coming apart. So what else is new?”

“People don't get it,” Cahoon said out loud
. It has become too hard for people to see wickedness outside the framework of mental illness.
Cahoon drained his glass and the bartender poured another. “Evil has finally been medicalized.” Max said out loud.

“What does
that
mean?” the bartender asked.

“We say ‘crazy sick bastard' when we really mean ‘evil sonofabitch', you know what I mean?”

“You're so deep, Max.”

“Screw you.” Cahoon smiled shaking his head ruefully.
I'm the one about to be screwed.
He knew with the dreadful certainly of defeat that he'd never be allowed to investigate the rumor that the Panama incident might have been a terrorist act, too.
People
just don't want to believe that stuff
…

Then Cahoon looked up at the screen behind the bar. The President of the Senate was surrounded by a crowd of Senators.
What have I just missed?
He caught a glimpse of Gabriel Standing Bear Lindstrom standing with two other Senators. All three were huddling by themselves, looking very grim while scrolling headlines crawled down the screen.

Cahoon stared in utter disbelief:

68 TO 30! EARTH RESTORATION TREATY RATIFIED

Washington, DC. The U. S. Senate has just ratified the most far-reaching environmental treaty ever signed, and has approved a package of enabling legislation previously enacted by the House. President Chandler will hold a Rose Garden ceremony tomorrow at 3:00 P.M. in which he will sign the enabling legislation. In a statement just released, the president has praised supporters of the historic Earth Restoration Treaty. “Finally joining ninety-three other countries, the United States is the last major power to ratify…”

Cahoon drained his glass. “I didn't think they had the votes,” he muttered. “Shows you what an astute observer of the political scene I am.”

“Fooled me, too,” his bartender friend said. “Shows you what an astute bartender I am.”

“People are scared,” Cahoon said. “Damn scared. Or just in shock. Either way, it makes them agree to foolish things.”

Cahoon made a night of it at the bar. The next morning, he missed a possible interview with Gabriel Standing Bear. But the Idaho Senator was refusing to return calls in any case. He caught two other interviews, Thurston Smith and one of the other committee members, that guy from Texas. Then Cahoon reported to the same bar just after lunch.

“Feeling better?” the bartender asked.

“Nope,” Cahoon said. “Pour me a pint of that dark ale?”

“Of course.”

On the screen, some soccer game continued in silence. “Are you going to catch the Rose Garden signing?”

“If you insist, Max. But you have at least an hour.”

“Fair enough.” Cahoon tapped his new SmartPage, unrolling and spreading out the glowing, paper-thin screen next to a bowl of peanuts.

NASDAQ Stocks Collapse…Technology Index Drops To De-list Levels…Trading Suspended Indefinitely…Treaty Ratification Blamed

New York
.
“Treaty panic” drove all technology shares into the basement yesterday, as a “grizzly bear” market overtook the entire technology sector. “This is no mere correction. It is the end,” said…

BUSINESSMAN REPORTED MISSING

Seattle
.
Bio-Tech leader, Dr. John Owen, has disappeared following the Senate's ratification of the Earth Restoration Treaty. Edge Medical Spokesperson Manny Epstein denied that Dr. Owen had any plans to leave the country.

“Max? Earth to Max.” Cahoon looked up. “Who are these new Commissioners and how did these people get appointed so fast?” the bartender asked.

“I see you've been keeping up,” Cahoon said.

“The names were mentioned on the TV this morning.”

“Really. Let's see,” Cahoon said, typing on his SmartPage. “Yes. They certainly are moving fast. Hey, today is “Earth Treaty Day,” did you know? April 22.”

“Great,” The bartender said, clunking Cahoon's second beer down next to the SmartPage screen.

“Careful,” Cahoon said.

The bartender squinted, trying to read upside down. “Aren't they waterproof?”

“Hmmm…one Baron Tumehausen is the European High Commissioner,” Cahoon said, reading. “And for Greater America, the High Commissioner is…” He paused as the press release scrolled. “Rex Longworthy.”

“Did I miss something, Max? When were the hearings?”

“You don't get it,” Cahoon said. “They were never going to be hearings. The Treaty gave effective appointment power to the European Commissioners. All President Chandler had to do was go along. As it was explained to me, that part was wired from the beginning. The rest of the world had already picked Longworthy as our first Regional Commissioner. All we had to do was ratify the Treaty. End of story.”

“Shouldn't be surprised. The fix is always in.”

Cahoon took a sip of beer. “It sure was this time.”

“It'll blow over, Max. Stuff like this always does.”

“This is very different, my friend. Very fucking different. Mark this date. Nothing will be the same after this.”

“Consider your words marked. April 22. A bartender is nothing if not attentive.”

“What do you have for lunch in here?”

“Nuts.”

“How appropriate.

“Don't look so glum. This is just politics, Max. You watch.”

“Like hell it is.”