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J
esse thought for several days about what he had seen before making any attempt to report it. In his mind he wandered through Coldwater's redoubt, making new discoveries each time; he sat at his desk and used a calculator to translate his pacing into area; he tried to figure out what the hell it all meant, and he could not fathom it.

On Christmas Eve he and Jenny stayed up late arranging Carey's gifts for the following morning, and, long after Jenny had fallen into an exhausted sleep, he crept from the bed, went to the garage and retrieved his scrambled telephone.

“Jesus Christ, what time is it?” Kip asked blearily.

“It's very late, but it's very important, too,” Jesse replied.

“Wait a minute while I go to another phone.”

Jesse waited on hold until Kip was away from his no-doubt sleeping wife.

Kip picked up another extension. “All right, what's so important?” he demanded.

“I hardly know where to begin,” Jesse said. “The whole thing is so unbelievable.”

“What's unbelievable?” Kip was awake, now.

“Last Sunday, I think I was finally fully accepted by Coldwater,” he said.

“That's certainly good news, but couldn't it wait until after the holidays?”

“I wanted you to have the holidays to think about what I'm going to tell you, Kip, because you're going to have to figure out a way to make Barker and the attorney general believe you—or rather, me.”

“It sounds as though you've finally figured out what Coldwater is up to.”

“No, I haven't. But I think I can safely say that, whatever it is, he expects to fail at it.”

“You're not making any sense, Jesse.”

“I know, and I'm sorry; but what I saw on Sunday doesn't make any sense unless Coldwater expects to go out in a blaze of glory.”

“What did you see on Sunday?”

“He invited me to lunch with Casey, and when we had finished, he drove me to the top of the mountain that rises above the town.”

“Did he show you all the earth and offer it to you on a platter?”

“No, I think what he offered me was the opportunity to die with him.”

“Go on.”

“Coldwater and his people have, over a period of years, I'm not sure how many, constructed a series of defensive positions on the sides and top of the mountain that probably isn't like anything else on earth.”

“What sort of defensive positions?”

“A long list of various types of heavy weapon, well dug in and placed strategically to repel any invader—antitank weapons, probably anti-aircraft weapons—more hardware than exists anywhere in this country outside a military base.”

“What else?”

“He's constructed what I can only describe as a cross between the White House Situation Room and Hitler's Berlin bunker.”

“How big?”

“At a conservative estimate, something in excess of sixty thousand square feet.”

“
What?
”

“And that's only the beginning of it. The exterior walls are a good eight feet of reinforced concrete.”

“
Eight feet?
What's he expecting?”

“Armageddon, apparently. Let me go on. The place is on three levels, only one of which is above ground, and the thickness of the floors seems equal to the outside walls. There are weapon emplacements on the top, or ground, level on all four sides, and he has amassed an extraordinary amount of munitions to support them. There are living quarters for, I don't know, in excess of a thousand people, maybe a lot more—kitchens, infirmaries, entertainment facilities, and food and medical supplies stacked to the ceilings. On the lower level, Coldwater has a suite of offices, completely equipped, and an apartment for himself. It looks as though he could take his people inside and remain for years, and I'm not exaggerating.”

“What sort of force do you think would be required to take it?” Kip asked, still sounding skeptical.

“Kip, I'm no military genius, but my guess is it couldn't be taken—at least, not without wildly unacceptable losses on the part of the attacking force.”

“Jesse, there can't be any such thing as a civilian installation that can't be taken by a military force.”

“It isn't a civilian installation, Kip; it's an unbelievably fortified military defensive position. It sits on top of a mountain that has about a twelve hundred foot sheer wall on the south side and very steep sides on the other three. Mountain goats might be able to make
it to the top, but infantry couldn't and neither could tanks. There's only one road to the top, and that must be heavily defended. They could simply blow the road and bar all access to the top of the mountain.”

“What about aircraft—helicopters with assault troops?”

“Any slow-flying aircraft would be shot to pieces before it could even land, and even if it could land, its troops would be cut up the minute they were on the ground. There's simply no cover. You could bomb the site with high explosives, but you'd probably destroy the town in the process; you'd certainly have to evacuate thousands of people. Coldwater says only a nuclear weapon would have any effect, and he's right when he says the government would never use it. I swear, you could spend a year attacking the place at a cost of thousands of casualties, and you might not even make a dent.”

“He's got to have some sort of outside support,” Kip said. “He couldn't exist inside a mountain without it. What about power, water and air?”

“He's got it all, and in triplicate.”

“Jesse, this just doesn't make any sense.”

“I know it doesn't, but it's real, I promise you that. And I'll tell you this, I don't think Coldwater would have built it if he didn't intend to use it.”

There was a long silence from Kip's end of the line. “I don't know what to say,” he said finally.

“Neither do I, except you'd better report this as soon as you can, and you'd better see that all knowledge of it is absolutely secure. If Coldwater had the slightest notion that the government knew about it, he'd go in there right now and zip it up behind him. And God only knows what he'd do before he went inside.”

“When can you call again?”

“When do you want me to call?”

“I need to think about this before I spring it on my people. I'll do that on the first day of business of the New Year. Try to call me around that time—during office hours, if possible. They may want to pass instructions to you.”

“All right, I'll try to do that.”

“I'm certainly not going to sleep tonight,” Kip said forlornly.

Jesse laughed. “Well, if I can't, why should you?”

“Oh, go to hell,” Kip grumbled, then hung up.

Jesse put away the phone and went back to the house. As he let himself in the back door, Jenny came out of the kitchen.

“Where on earth have you been?” she demanded.

J
esse gulped. “I went outside for a while,” he said. “What are you doing up at this time of night?”

“I had to go to the bathroom, and you weren't in bed. I was frantic.”

“There's no need to be upset,” he said soothingly, taking her in his arms. “I just couldn't sleep, and I thought some fresh air might do me good.”

She pushed away. “But what were you doing in the garage? I was at the kitchen window, and I saw you come out of there.”

“I was looking for my spare key to the truck, and I thought it might be in the glove compartment.”

“It's upstairs in that little tray where you keep change and things,” she said.

“Oh. I don't know why that crossed my mind, it just did.”

“Jesse, is something wrong? Is there something I should know about?”

He put a hand on her cheek. “No, of course not; everything's fine. I couldn't imagine things being any finer.”

She stepped closer and looked up at him. “Jesse, do you love me?”

“Of course I do; haven't I told you often enough?” He put his arms around her again.

“Sure, after making love. But I want to know if you love me
all
the time.”

He turned her face up. “
All
the time,” he said. “At the dinner table, at the breakfast table, at work, in bed—everywhere, all the time.”

She relaxed in his arms. “Oh, I'm so glad to hear that.”

“I can't believe you doubted it,” he said, rubbing her neck.

“Maybe it's going to be all right after all,” she said, sighing.

“It's going to be all right. I'll make it all right.”

“Do we have a future together?” she asked.

“I certainly hope so. That's what I'm counting on.”

“Because, if we don't, I'll just make a trip to Spokane and take care of it there. I won't do it their way any more.”

“Jenny, sweetheart, I don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about. What's this about Spokane?”

“Well, they've got a clinic there that hasn't been bombed yet.”

He held her at arm's length and looked at her closely. “What do you—”

“I'm pregnant,” she said. “I'm going to have your baby.”

He pulled her to him again so that she wouldn't see his face. God in heaven, he thought, what have I gotten this girl into? “How long have you known?” he asked.

“I guessed a few days ago. This afternoon I used one of those home pregnancy tests.”

“And it was positive?”

“It was positive. Jesse, is this all right? Do you want this baby?”

He tried to quell the panic inside him. What was he going to do? Here he was, undercover, his life in danger at every moment, Jack Gene Coldwater waiting for him in one direction, the federal government and its prison system waiting in the other. Was he going to get this girl killed or just banished from her community? “Yes,” he heard himself saying, and he knew it was true. “Yes, I want this baby and you and Carey. I want to take care of you all forever. Let's get married tomorrow, Jenny, or as soon as it can be done in this state. Will you marry me?”

“Oh, yes, yes!” she cried, then began sobbing.

He stroked her hair, said soothing words, held her close and after a while she stopped crying. “I'm sorry I doubted you, Jesse; I should have known you would make it right; I should have trusted you.”

“Trust me now and from here on,” he said. “I promise I'll never let you down.” It was a promise he knew he might not be able to keep, but he was goddamned well going to try.

“I will trust you,” she said. “I'll never keep anything from you again.”

“You should have told me when you first suspected,” he said.

“That's not what I mean,” she replied, and started to cry again.

The birth certificate, he thought. She wasn't married to Carey's father and the secret must have been eating at her. “Don't worry,” he said. “And don't talk about it now. You're exhausted.” He took her hand and led her toward the stairs. “Let's get some sleep.”

Upstairs, she snuggled next to him, and he wiped away her tears. “Sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow's Christmas Day, and we'll have a wonderful time with Carey. Don't think about anything else for now.”

“All right,” she said, moving closer.

I won't think about anything now, either, he thought. I'll sleep, and when I wake up I'll have an answer for us. He had a question of his own, too.

 

In the middle of the night he got out of bed, tiptoed across the room then crossed the hall and entered Jenny's bedroom. In her bathroom he silently opened the medicine chest and found what he was looking for. Only three of the birth-control pills had been removed since he had delivered the package, and that had been more than a month before.

Jesse replaced the pills in the medicine chest and padded back across the hall. He did not sleep again that Christmas Eve night; he was wide awake when Carey came to tug them from bed.

T
hey went to a Christmas morning service at the church and watched a children's nativity pageant in which Carey took part. Coldwater's sermon was mercifully brief and free of his usual cant. When the service ended, Jesse and Jenny approached the pastor.

“Good morning, Jesse, Jenny,” Coldwater boomed. “Merry Christmas to you.”

“And to you, Pastor,” Jesse said.

“I thought Carey looked very pretty as the Virgin Mary,” Coldwater said.

“Thank you, Pastor,” Jenny replied.

“Pastor,” Jesse said, “Jenny and I have decided to be married, and we would be honored if you would perform the ceremony.”

“Well, congratulations to you both,” Coldwater said, beaming at them. “When would you like to hold the service?”

“We thought Sunday, just after the regular service. We'd like to keep it as small and quiet as possible,” Jenny replied.

“I'll put it on my calendar. Will you have a honeymoon?”

“We hadn't gotten that far,” Jesse said. “I'll have to talk to Herman Muller about getting some time off when he can spare me.”

“Good, good. I'll see you on Sunday.” Coldwater wheeled and walked out of the auditorium.

 

Jenny was unusually quiet on the way home and during Christmas dinner. It was not until Carey had gone out to show her friends her presents that Jesse spoke up.

“Jenny, what's the matter? And what were you talking about last night, about keeping things from me?”

She beckoned for him to follow her, then led him out of the house. He found an old broom and brushed the snow off a picnic table, then they sat down. It was cold and clear, and they wouldn't be comfortable for long.

“First of all,” she began, “I want you to know that I wanted to get pregnant; I did it deliberately. Does that make you feel trapped?”

“No, it doesn't. I think that if you'd asked me I'd have wanted to wait for a while, but that doesn't matter now. I learned last night that you haven't been taking the birth-control pills, and I thought about it a lot, and I decided it was all right with me. I'm curious, though; why did you do it that way?”

“Because that's what Jack Gene wanted.”

Jesse stopped breathing for a moment. “How's that again?”

“Pat Casey came to see me and said that Jack Gene wanted me to get pregnant. You're new in the community, and I think they wanted to test you, see how you'd react.”

“And you were willing to do that for them?”

“No, not exactly; I love you, and I wanted a child; but I wasn't in a position to say no to them.”

“I don't understand.”

“When you went to the courthouse to get Carey's birth certificate, did you look at it?”

“Yes.”

“So you saw that there was no father listed?”

“Yes, but it didn't matter to me.”

“I sent you to get the certificate so you'd see that and ask me about it. I was surprised when you didn't.”

“Like I said, it doesn't matter.”

“Do you understand why there's no father listed?”

“I assume you weren't married.”

“I was married, in a way.”

“Then why wasn't the father's name on the certificate?”

“Because I can't be certain who the father was.”

“I'm sorry, but this is very confusing. Why don't you just tell me the whole story?”

“All right,” she said. “I'll tell you from the beginning. I was a little girl when Jack Gene Coldwater came to St. Clair, along with Pat Casey and Kurt Ruger. My parents became his followers, and they lived by his every word. When I was fifteen our house caught on fire. My bedroom was downstairs, and I managed to get out, but they didn't.”

“I'm sorry, I never knew.”

“I was alone in the world, and Jack Gene took me in.” She paused and a tear ran down her cheek. “He married me.”

Jesse gulped. “At fifteen?”

“Yes. It wasn't a real marriage in the usual sense. He performed a kind of ceremony, and I became one of them.”

“One of who?”

“One of his wives.”

“How many did he have?”

“I was one of five at the time. There've been more at times and less at others.”

“And Jack Gene fathered Carey?”

“I think so, but I'm not sure.”

Jesse was becoming very uncomfortable with this conversation, but if she was willing to talk about this, he was willing to listen. “Tell me why you're not sure.”

“I didn't get pregnant at first. I tried not to. And after a while, Jack Gene began to get impatient. He wanted children, a lot of them, and he hadn't much use for those of us who couldn't give them to him. We were separated from the other women, those of us who couldn't get pregnant, or who had girls. Jack Gene wanted boys, you see.”

Jesse was at a loss for words.

“So he put us aside—there were three other women—and sometimes, if he got bored with the wives who were living in his house, he would come to visit us. And he would bring Pat Casey and Kurt Ruger.”

In spite of the cold Jesse began to sweat inside his coat.

“And it was during one of these…visits…that I got pregnant.”

“All three of them?” Jesse asked quietly.

“All three,” she said, and the tears flooded down her face.

He reached for her, but she pushed him away.

“I want to finish this,” she said. “When Carey turned out to be a girl, they put me out of the inner circle, which was all right with me. I was nineteen; they put me in this house and gave me an allowance. I wanted to leave town, but Jack Gene wouldn't allow it. They made me send Carey to that awful school, and if I had tried to teach her different from what they did, she was trained to tell them. They would have taken her
from me and…I don't know what would have happened to me. Sometimes people just disappear from this town. I had no money, no education, no skills. There were no relatives I could go to, nobody at all. The only place I existed was here, and it was at the whim of Jack Gene. He seemed to forget about me for a long time, but when you came to town I heard from Pat Casey.”

“He told you to take me in?”

“Yes.”

“He told you to get into my bed?”

“Yes.”

Jesse laughed ruefully. “And I thought it was because I was so irresistible.”

“I'm sorry; it's so difficult to tell you all this, but I felt I had to.”

“Why?”

“Because I fell in love with you that first night, and I don't want us to go any farther on false pretenses. If, having heard all this, you want to forget about marriage, I'll understand.”

He took her shoulders and turned her toward him. “I'm glad you told me all this,” he said. “None of it matters, but I'm glad you had the courage to tell me.”

“You don't mind about…my background?”

“I'd change it if I could, but I want you the way you are, no matter how you got to be you.”

She snuggled her face into the hollow of his neck. “Oh, I love you so much, Jesse. Even more, now, I think.” Then she jerked away from him. “We can't stay here after what I've told you,” she said.

“I don't want to stay here, but I have to for a while. Can you stand it a little longer?”

“How much longer?”

“I'm not sure.”

“I have to get Carey away from that school and these people. She's Jack Gene's child, I'm as sure of
that as I can be, and he'll want to keep an eye on her. He'll use her as he used me; marry her off to one of his cronies, or just put her into a house of women, as he did with me. I'll kill him before I'll let that happen.”

“I understand, and I want to take you away from here, but I can't just yet.”

“Why not? What is there to keep us here?”

“Did Pat Casey ask you to pass on information about me?”

“Yes, he calls once or twice a week. I brought you out in the yard, because I thought he might have some way of listening to us in the house.”

“What have you told him?”

“Whatever he wanted to know. I don't know anything about you that he would think derogatory. If I had, I wouldn't have told him.”

“I'll take you away from here, Jenny, you and Carey, I promise; but I have to stay on for a while, and I can't tell you why. I don't want to put you in the position of knowing about me and having to lie to Casey.”

“What I don't know, I can't tell him, is that it?”

“It's for your protection. I'd trust you with my life, but you and Carey are safer knowing only what you know now, that I love you, and I'll take care of you both.”

“I guess that's good enough for me,” she said.

“Good. You have to go on living your life as usual, for a while. You can't say anything at all to Carey. We have to let Coldwater do this ceremony; I'll give you a better one later. And one of these days I'll say to you, ‘Let's get out of here,' and—”

“And I'll go with you the second you say it,” she said, and put her arms around him.

Jesse's mind was elsewhere. He was having fantasies of castrating Jack Gene Coldwater.