The Hammer of Eden (28 page)

Simon smiled, looking pleased. “But did you notice anything about the vocabulary?”

Bo shook his head. “Nothing I can put my finger on.”

“What’s a tape recorder?”

Bo laughed. “A machine the size of a small suitcase, with two reels on top. I had one in Vietnam—a Grundig.”

Judy saw what Simon was getting at. The term “tape recorder” was out of date. The machine they were using today was a cassette deck. Voice mail was recorded on the hard disk of a computer. “She’s living in a time warp,” Judy said. “It makes me think Patty Hearst again. What happened to her, anyway?”

Bo said: “She served her time, came out of jail, wrote a book, and appeared on
Geraldo
. Welcome to America.”

Judy stood up. “This has been fascinating, Simon, but I don’t feel comfortable with it. I think you should take your report to Marvin now.”

“One more thing I want to show you,” he said. He touched the fast-forward button.

“Really—”

“Just listen to this.”

The woman’s voice said: “It happened in Owens Valley a little after two o’clock, you can check it out.” There was a faint background noise, and she hesitated.

Simon paused the tape. “I’ve enhanced that odd little murmur. Here it is reconstructed.”

He released the pause switch. Judy heard a man’s voice, distorted with a lot of background hiss but clear enough to understand, say: “We do not recognize the jurisdiction of the United States government.” The background noise returned to normal, and the woman’s voice repeated: “We do not recognize the jurisdiction of the United States government.” She went on: “Now that you know we can do what we say, you’d better think again about our demand.”

Simon stopped the tape.

Judy said: “She was speaking words he had given her, and she forgot something, so he reminded her.”

Bo said: “Didn’t you figure the original Internet message had been dictated by a blue-collar guy, maybe illiterate, and typed by an educated woman?”

“Yes,” Simon said. “But this is a different woman—older.”

“So,” Bo said to Judy, “now you’re beginning to build up profiles of three unknown subjects.”

“No, I’m not,” she said. “I’m off the case. Come on, Simon, you know this could get me into more trouble.”

“Okay.” He took the tape out of the machine and stood up. “I’ve told you all the important stuff, anyway. Let me know if you come up with some brilliant insight that I could pass on to Mogadon Marvin.”

Judy saw him to the door. “I’ll take my report to the office right now—Marvin will probably still be there,” he said. “Then I’m going to sleep. I was up all night on this.” He got into his sports car and roared off.

When she came back, Bo was making green tea, looking thoughtful. “So this streetwise guy has a bunch of classy dames to take dictation from him.”

Judy nodded. “I believe I know where you’re headed.”

“It’s a cult.”

“Yes. I was right to think Patty Hearst.” She shivered. The man behind all this must be a charismatic figure with power over women. He was uneducated, but this did not hold him back, for he had others carrying out his orders. “But something’s not right. That demand, for a freeze on new power plants—it’s just not wacky enough.”

“I agree,” Bo said. “It’s not showy. I think they have some down-to-earth selfish reason to want this freeze.”

“I wonder,” Judy mused. “Maybe they have an interest in one particular power plant.”

Bo stared at her. “Judy, that’s brilliant! Like, it’s going to pollute their salmon river or something.”

“In there somewhere,” she said. “But it hits them really hard.” She felt excited. She was on to something.

“The freeze on
all
plant construction is a cover, then. They’re afraid
to name the one they’re really interested in for fear that would lead us to them.”

“But how many possibilities can there be? Power plants aren’t built every day. And these things are controversial. Any proposal has to have been reported.”

“Let’s check.”

They went into the den. Judy’s laptop was on a side table. She sometimes wrote reports in here while Bo was watching football. The TV did not distract her, and she liked to be near him. She switched on the machine. Waiting for it to boot up, she said: “If we put together a list of sites where power plants are to be built, the FBI computer would tell us if there’s a cult near any of them.”

She accessed the files of the
San Francisco Chronicle
and searched for references to power plants in the last three years. The search produced 117 articles. Judy scanned the headlines, ignoring stories about Pittsburgh and Cuba. “Okay, here’s a scheme for a nuclear plant in the Mojave Desert …” She saved the story. “A hydroelectric dam in Sierra County … an oil-fired plant up near the Oregon border …”

Bo said: “Sierra County? That rings some kind of bell. Got an exact location?”

Judy clicked on the article. “Yeah … the proposal is to dam the Silver River.”

He frowned. “Silver River Valley …”

Judy turned from the computer screen. “Wait, this is familiar … isn’t there a vigilante group that has a big spread there?”

“That’s right!” said Bo. “They’re called Los Alamos. Run by a speed freak called Poco Latella, who originally came from Daly City. That’s how I know about them.”

“Right. They’re armed to the teeth, and they refused to recognize the U.S. government.… Jesus, they even used that sentence on the tape: ‘We do not recognize the jurisdiction of the United States government.’ Bo, I think we’ve got ’em.”

“What are you going to do?”

Judy’s heart sank as she remembered she was off the case. “If Kincaid finds out I’ve been working this case, he’ll bust a gut.”

“Los Alamos has to be checked out.”

“I’ll call Simon.” She picked up the phone and dialed the office. The switchboard operator was a guy she knew. “Hey, Charlie, this is Judy. Is Simon Sparrow in the office?”

“He came and went,” Charlie said. “Want me to try his car?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

She waited. Charlie came back on the line and said: “No answer. I tried his home number, too. Shall I put a message on his pager?”

“Yes, please.” Judy recalled that he had said he was going to sleep. “I bet he’s turned it off, though.”

“I’ll send him a message to call you.”

“Thanks.” She hung up and said to Bo: “I think I have to see Kincaid. I guess if I give him a hot lead, he can’t be too mad at me.”

Bo just shrugged. “You don’t have any choice, do you?”

Judy could not risk people getting killed just because she was afraid to confess what she had been doing. “No, I don’t have any choice,” she said.

She was wearing narrow black jeans and a strawberry pink T-shirt. The T-shirt was too figure hugging for the office, even on a Saturday. She went up to her room and changed it for a loose white polo shirt. Then she got in her Monte Carlo and drove downtown.

Marvin would have to organize a raid on Los Alamos. There might be trouble: vigilantes were crazy. The raid needed to be heavily manned and meticulously organized. The Bureau was terrified of another Waco. Every agent in the office would be drafted in for it. The Sacramento field office of the FBI would also be involved. They would probably strike at dawn tomorrow.

She went straight to Kincaid’s office. His secretary was in the outer room, working at her computer, wearing a Saturday outfit of white jeans and a red shirt. She picked up the phone and said: “Judy Maddox is here to see you.” After a moment she hung up and said to Judy: “Go right in.”

Judy hesitated at the door to the inner sanctum. The last two times she had entered this office, she had suffered humiliation and disappointment inside. But she was not superstitious. Maybe this time Kincaid would be understanding and gracious.

It still jarred her to see his beefy figure in the chair that used to belong to the slight, dapper Milton Lestrange. She had not yet visited Milt in the hospital, she realized. She made a mental note to go tonight or tomorrow.

Brian’s greeting was chilly. “What can I do for you, Judy?”

“I saw Simon Sparrow earlier,” she began. “He brought his report to me because he hadn’t heard I was off the case. Naturally, I told him to give it to Marvin.”

“Naturally.”

“But he told me a little of what he had found, and I speculated that the Hammer of Eden is a cult that feels somehow threatened by a planned building project for a power plant.”

Brian looked annoyed. “I’ll pass this on to Marvin,” he said impatiently.

Judy plowed on. “There are several power plant projects in California right now; I checked. And one of them is in Silver River Valley, where there is a right-wing vigilante group called Los Alamos. Brian, I think Los Alamos must be the Hammer of Eden. I think we should raid them.”

“Is that what you think?”

Oh, shit
.

“Is there a flaw in my logic?” she said icily.

“You bet there is.” He stood up. “The flaw is, you’re not on the goddamn case.”

“I know,” she said. “But I thought—”

He interrupted her, stretching his arm across the big desk and pointing an accusing finger at her face. “You’ve intercepted the psycholinguistic report and you’re trying to sneak your way back on the case—and I know why! You think it’s a high-profile case, and you’re trying to get yourself noticed.”

“Who by?” she said indignantly.

“FBI headquarters, the press, Governor Robson.”

“I am not!”

“You just listen up. You are off this case. Do you understand me? O–f–f, off. You don’t talk to your friend Simon about it. You don’t check power plant schemes. And you don’t propose raids on vigilante hangouts.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“This is what you do. You go home. And you leave this case to Marvin and me.”

“Brian—”

“Good-bye, Judy. Have a nice weekend.”

She stared at him. He was red faced and breathing hard. She felt furious but helpless. She fought back the angry retorts that sprang to her lips. She had been forced to apologize for swearing at him once already, and she did not need that humiliation again. She bit her lip. After a long moment she turned on her heel and walked out of the room.

11

P
riest parked the old Plymouth ’Cuda at the side of the road in the faint light of early dawn. He took Melanie’s hand and led her into the forest. The mountain air was cool, and they shivered in their T-shirts until the effort of walking warmed their bodies. After a few minutes they emerged on a bluff that looked over the width of the Silver River Valley.

“This is where they want to build the dam,” Priest said.

At this point the valley narrowed to a bottleneck, so that the far side was no more than four or five hundred yards away. It was still too dark to see the river, but in the morning silence they heard it rushing along below them. As the light strengthened, they could distinguish the dark shapes of cranes and giant earthmoving machines below them, silent and still, like sleeping dinosaurs.

Priest had almost given up hope that Governor Robson would now negotiate. This was the second day since the Owens Valley earthquake, and still there was no word. Priest could not figure out the governor’s strategy, but it was not capitulation.

There would have to be another earthquake.

But he was anxious. Melanie and Star might be reluctant, especially as the second tremor would have to do more damage than the first. He had to firm up their commitment. He was starting with Melanie.

“It’ll create a lake ten miles long, all the way up the valley,” he told
her. He could see her pale oval face become taut with anger. “Upstream from here, everything you see will be under water.”

Beyond the bottleneck, there was a broad valley floor. As the landscape became visible, they could see a scatter of houses and some neat cultivated fields, all connected by dirt tracks. Melanie said: “Surely someone tried to stop the dam?”

Priest nodded. “There was a big legal battle. We took no part. We don’t believe in courts and lawyers. And we didn’t want reporters and TV crews swarming all over our place—too many of us have secrets to keep. That’s why we don’t even tell people we’re a commune. Most of our neighbors don’t know we exist, and the others think the vineyard is run from Napa and staffed by transient workers. So we didn’t take part in the protest. But some of the wealthier residents hired lawyers, and the environmental groups sided with the local people. It did no good.”

“How come?”

“Governor Robson backed the dam and put this guy Al Honeymoon on the case.” Priest hated Honeymoon. He had lied and cheated and manipulated the press with total ruthlessness. “He got the whole thing turned around so that the media made folks here look like a handful of selfish types who wanted to deny electric power to every hospital and school in California.”

“Like it’s your fault that people in Los Angeles put underwater lights in their pools and have electric motors to close their drapes.”

“Right. So Coastal Electric got permission to build the dam.”

“And all those people will lose their homes.”

“Plus a pony-trekking center, a wildlife camp, several summer cabins, and a crazy bunch of armed vigilantes known as Los Alamos. Everyone gets compensation—except us, because we don’t own our land, we rent it on a one-year lease. We get nothing—for the best vineyard between Napa and Bordeaux.”

“And the only place I ever felt at peace.”

Priest gave a murmur of sympathy. This was the way he wanted the conversation to go. “Has Dusty always had these allergies?”

“From birth. He was actually allergic to milk—cow’s milk, formula, even breast milk. He survived on goat’s milk. That was when I realized.
The human race
must
be doing something wrong if the world is so polluted that my own breast milk is poisonous to my child.”

“But you took him to doctors.”

“Michael insisted. I knew they’d do no good. They gave us drugs that suppressed his immune system in order to inhibit the reaction to allergens. What kind of a way is that to treat his condition? He needed pure water and clean air and a healthy way of life. I guess I’ve been searching, ever since he was born, for a place like this.”