The Fury and the Terror (24 page)

"Passing through."

"Can't place
you
, young lady, although a little tingle of recognition tells me we've met somewhere."

"Bertie Nkambe." The Great Dane was licking the back of her hand. "Pleasure. The bitch is champion Roskilde's Pardon My Fancy. They all have names like that on the dog show circuit. She answers to Fanny when she's not putting on airs. My age, all a man needs is his mistress once a week, and a good dog the rest of the time. Fine-looking walking stick, Tom. Pedestrians are banned from the bridge this time of night, but I've earned a few privileges in my life of service. Mind if we press on? I stiffen up if I stand around too long."

"So do I," Sherard said. They continued on the walkway toward the Marin side of the bridge.

"What's on your mind, Senator?"

"You had some business with Danny Cheng tonight, or so I'm told."

"Social occasion. We met Cheng at the Elegant Forest; he invited us up to his place on Russian Hill for a nightcap. Entertainment was provided by a black helicopter that gave us a microwave sunburn, then I think they tossed a package into the house before slipping silently away. What do you know about black stealth helicopters, Buck?"

"No buzz numbers. Radar signature is virtually nil. Some of them are quieter than a ticking clock. Therefore they don't exist. A citizen who says he saw one, and is too vocal about the sighting, gets a visit from some tough-talking birds who convince him otherwise. That's when he learns he's not a citizen anymore, he's an inmate. Razor wire is still optional, but it won't be for much longer. I saw a couple of those choppers up close, touring MORG's facility in Montana."

"They conduct tours?"

"For members of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Still we had to squeeze some balls real hard. Research facility, they call it. Scientific, political, military. Advanced think tanks devoted to new geopolitical strategies and alliances. Plenty Coups. That's ironic. You couldn't miss the paramilitary arrogance. I'd say we were shown about a tenth of what MORG has underground. We had to be satisfied with that much."

"Who's running this country anyway?"

"Name your poison. For sure it's not the duly elected lawmakers on the Hill. Most of us abdicated our responsibilities long ago. Congress hasn't accomplished anything of significance in at least a decade. Into a governmental vacuum Fascism seeps like a gas nobody notices at first. But Congress did its part in creating that vacuum. How do you subvert a republic? No guns required. Only paper. Every session of Congress since I was a wide-eyed freshman, it's going on forty years now, there's been tens of thousands of pages of legislation introduced. All of it self-serving in some way. The bad laws and questionable appropriations get passed with the good, because there's too damn much of it to read, let alone debate. Don't get me started on debate. Doesn't exist anymore. Good honest adversarial relationships, thing of the past. Hell, most of us had good intentions, walking in. A few still do. But C-SPAN and
Crossfire
and thirty-second sound bites have turned us all into entertainers instead of serious legislators. Can anyone tell the difference between Hollywood and Washington anymore? Too many congresspersons lose their souls entirely. Drunks, womanizers, greed-heads, sell-outs, even a few traitors in the pack. The rest just get mired and fed up and rationalize the incompetence forced on them by a government that's far too big to accomplish anything useful for the people it supposedly represents. All big government can do anymore is reinforce its own existence."

A highway patrol car passed, slowly, heading toward San Francisco. Buck waved. The CHP officer at the wheel touched off the roof lights in greeting.

"They're good boys. Look after me on my rambles, although I expect I can still take care of myself okay."

"Lot of notches on that gun, Senator," Bertie said.

"I was a light colonel on Hondo Hobbie's staff in Korea. This was Hondo's forty-four. Bought it off his widow after the war. I never shot anybody with it, but there's times when some lobbyist on the other side of my desk is crackin' me foxy, I pull it out of the drawer and lay it on the blotter. Famous for that little gesture, I hear. No other comment necessary. Tom, want to tell me what you and Danny Cheng had on the front burner tonight?"

"We were just getting acquainted. Never saw him before. Danny wouldn't be much to look at now, I reckon."

"Tom," Bertie said, wincing.

"Don't count Danny out just yet. He's been valuable to me in the past, and the chink has more rebound than a new squash ball. Hold your flowers until they're done sifting through the ashes. Occurs to me maybe I ought to share a couple things with you, Tom."

"Sure, why not?"

"Had a long conversation with Katharine Bellaver earlier. You know that Katharine and I go way back, we're like-minded on a number of topics."

"I know."

"You asked who's running the country nowadays. Well, until recently I thought we had a good shot at taking it back from the gang with the black helicopters and the counter-insurgency teams and the detention camps they have staffed and ready way out in the deserts and off in the deep piney woods down south. Our hopes, mine and Katharine's and those of a few more of us who believe the republic is still salvageable with some decisive leadership, our hopes were on the rise when Clint Harvester took his oath of office. Clint knew what was necessary to shut down MORG, and with the help of key people in the FBI and inside the Pentagon he was determined to see it done. The one thing in life Clint Harvester wasn't smart about was his wife. Nothing more dangerous to a man than a two-bit whore with ambition and a scosh more brains than average, but that's what he married. How and why she got involved with Victor Wilding is something of a mystery. The fact remains. Clint was bound to get on to the relationship eventually, take the appropriate steps to return Wilding to private life, or a federal pen most likely. That is, as soon as Clint managed to wriggle himself off of the finger Rona had up his ass—pardon me, Miss Nkambe, but there's no other way to say it. Anyway, Clint's out of commission, probably for good, that was all seen to by Miss Rona and her—"

"How do you mean? The President had a stroke."

"Stroke? I'm not convinced that's what it was. Two weeks before he went down Clint had his checkup at Walter Reed, and he was the picture of health. Yeah, I know. He was fifty-five and it could have been an embolism, some weakness that was there in the brain from when he was a kid and fell off his birthday pony. There are hidden fault lines in every system of the body. But the timing was suspiciously convenient. I know Clint was, let's say, disenchanted with Rona. And she knew he was after MORG. My well-honed paranoia tells me that the so-called stroke he suffered was somehow induced. Something in his food or water, maybe."

Bertie looked at him. "Have you seen the President since he—"

"Yes, I was able to arrange it, without Miss Rona knowing."

"What was he like? How did he act?"

"Childlike. I'm told he had to be taught to feed himself. We've known each other twenty years. There was no recognition in Clint's eyes. He wasn't paralyzed. He obeyed simple instructions okay. But it was like most of his vocabulary and all of his memories had been ripped out of his head."

"Could he speak?"

"He had a few words. None of them I would repeat to a lady." Sherard said, "What did the brain scans show? A blood clot? Intercranial bleeding?"

"No clots, no bleeding."

Bertie glanced at Rory Whetstone, who was keeping pace with them in the Lexus. They were beneath the north tower, close to the Marin headland.

The highway patrol black-and-white drove slowly by again. Bertie stopped and with her hands on the walkway railing looked back at the lights of the city, a close-packed sparkle like the core of a split geode. More distant was a tented amber strand of the Bay Bridge, seemingly adrift in the night like spider's silk. The dark tide surged beneath them. The Pacific fog bank had moved closer. The lights and cables on their bridge were indistinct.

"You feeling okay, Miss Nkambe?" Hannafin asked her.

"Yes, sir. I think—to be sure I would have to see him, but it is possible that you're right and it wasn't a stroke."

"See the President? He's been surrounded by specialists for the last six weeks. You seem young to have yourself a medical degree."

"Medicine's not what I have a degree in."

"Bertie," Sherard said, warningly.

"Tom, it's the
President
. They must have brain-locked him. From what the Senator is telling us."

"Come again?" said Hannafin.

"When you reverse the polarities of the brain's electrical field, the result is instant loss of consciousness. Severe amnesia, confusion, the gestures and habits of childhood or infancy are symptomatic during the recovery period. Provided the victim does recover."

"Lord, where did you learn all that?"

"She still reads comic books," Sherard said. "Buck, it's been rather a dicey night for both of us, and I think—"

"Tom! Black helicopter!"

There was enough fear in Bertie's voice to raise goose bumps. Sherard put an arm around her. He needed a few moments to locate the helicopter she'd seen. The chopper was a couple of hundred yards away, more or less, on the Sausalito side of the bridge, at roadway level and parked in the air side-on to them.

"Yeah, that's one of them I saw up there in Montana," Hannafin said, taking the half-smoked cigar from his mouth and spitting on the pavement behind him.

A car door opened and closed. Rory Whetstone joined them, binoculars in his hand. He gave them to his boss.

"How do they
know
?" Bertie said, holding fast to Sherard. She glanced at Rory Whetstone. He caught the look and shied from it. In her presence he had the demeanor of a spooked child.

Buck Hannafin studied the helicopter through the binoculars, lowered them. The helicopter remained on station, unthreatening in attitude.

"I suppose," he said, thoughtful but hard-eyed, "nobody here needs reminding that if something happens to Allen Dunbar, yours truly is on deck."

Behind the watchers on the bridge one of the highway patrol cars stopped, roof lights flashing. A patrolman joined them. They heard a foghorn lowing.

"Everything okay here, Senator?"

Hannafin turned and gave him the binoculars. "Over there, by Sausalito. Have a look."

The patrolman was a big kid with a power-lifter's body and pyramidal neck. His nameplate said Hawkins. He focused the binoculars.

"Ever seen anything like that helicopter before?"

The other highway patrol car pulled up. A lot of blue lights now, diffused by fog like shades of the shipwrecked stealthily taking over the bridge.

The driver got out but stayed with his vehicle, an arm resting on the top of the open door as he watched them.

After a few moments Hawkins took the binoculars from his eyes. His lips compressed as if in reaction to gastric distress, or a less specific internal turmoil.

"I don't see anything, sir."

"That helicopter? Plain sight. Don't need binoculars. My old eyes probably can't compare to yours, son, and I'm looking right at it. We all are."

"Sorry, sir," Hawkins said, glancing around at the other cop.

"What you're saying then, you don't see that chopper out there without lights or appropriate identification because otherwise you might be obliged to fill out some kind of report. And that's a report none of your superiors want to see come across their desk."

"Sir," Hawkins said with a touch of desperation in his voice, "it isn't for me to say what I can say or can't say."

Hannafin's Great Dane nudged him. He rubbed the dog behind an ear.

"But as far as you and him over there and maybe the rest of the California Highway Patrol, there's no black helicopter out there and never could be any such thing."

Footsteps. The other cop approached them.

"What's
your
name, son?"

"Westernew, Senator Hannafin. Sergeant Jack Westernew. Fog's coming in thick and fast here, Senator, so what we need to do now is escort you and your party off the bridge. We'll be glad to see that you get wherever it is you'd like to go."

Hannafin took the cigar from a corner of his mouth, looked it over, threw it into the bay.

"That's very accommodating of you, Sergeant Westernew," he said with a wry look directed at Tom Sherard.

"All part of our job, Senator. And let me add that it is a personal pleasure to be of service to you."

GREENWOOD LAKE • MAY 29

B
etts looked steadily at Geoff McTyer and said, "I knew it had to be something like this. Sooner or later. You rat."

Riley, roused from sleep, complained, "I don't understand this. What's going on? Betts, my
back
."

The man temporarily known as Phil Haman, who was holding a submachine gun, the Heckler and Koch MP5 model, looked around the first floor of the lodge on the lake and saw an ebony grand piano. The sight of it jogged Face, his show-biz persona, to the head of the line.