The Legend That Was Earth (15 page)

Figures materialized from the shadows outside. A flashlight played on him through the glass. Another light showed papers with a picture in somebody's hand, being scrutinized. Finally, the door was opened, and a voice directed, "Come with us, please." Cade got out and found himself between two muffled figures wearing hats. Another was visible on the far side of the car. Cade and the two with him began walking the way Marie had gone, over uneven gravelly ground. When they had covered twenty yards or so, the car started behind them, and its headlights came on. Cade looked back to see it begin moving, turning back toward the roadway. "It's okay. You won't be needing it again," the same voice told him. For a chilling moment Cade wondered how he was supposed to take that. Getting too imaginative, he told himself.

A pickup was waiting along with the car that they had followed, he saw as they got closer. Marie was standing with two more figures. "Okay, it looks as if there's a place where we can stay for a few days at least," she told him. "This isn't the best time to hold a conference. It's been a rough day. We can talk more about options in the morning."

A big man with a bearded face and pulled-down baseball cap ushered them into the pickup and then got in on the other side. As he started up, the car with the three others departed back in the direction of town. They pulled back onto the road, continuing in silence in the same direction as before for a couple of miles, and then turned off onto a dirt track climbing uphill through trees. It led to a camper trailer standing in the corner of a field behind what looked like a farmstead outlined dimly in the darkness. "There's linen inside and some grub. Just help yourselves," the big man said as he dropped them off. "You've got a phone that connects to the house. It would be best if you didn't show yourselves there, at least for a while.... Oh, and you can call me John."

The camper had seen better days, but the power and the plumbing worked. From the clothes in the closets and other signs of occupation, it seemed the place had been vacated for Cade and Marie's benefit. They made themselves a salad and cooked a couple of pork chops. Were it not for the day's events, this might have been a little like old times. The news on TV described a "terrorist hideout" in Chattanooga, which security forces had surrounded following a tipoff; they'd been met by gunfire. Five terrorists had been killed in the ensuing assault, and two had escaped. There was no mention of any incident at a motel. Cade's and Marie's pictures were shown as the two escapees, described as armed and dangerous.

By that time they were both too exhausted to talk more. Cade took a fold-down bunk in the camper's living and dining area. Marie used the bedroom, farther back. As Cade lay thinking back over the day, it occurred to Cade that the photograph of him that they had shown on the TV was one that had been taken around six months previously. How had the authorities gotten it? The only thing he could think of was that it must have come from Julia.

BY DAYLIGHT, THE FARM revealed itself to be in a dilapidated condition, with little to mark it as a going concern. The fields, for the most part, had been left fallow, and rusting machinery stood among the outbuildings. A few scrawny looking cattle were penned in a muddy patch on the far side of the house.

John called on the phone to ask how things were. Marie took the call, said they were comfortable, and thanked him again for helping out. Right now, they needed a little time to make plans. She listened for a short while longer and then hung up.

"The police are all over the area and still stopping traffic," she told Cade. "They're showing our pictures everywhere." She shook her head. "It was stupid for both of us to have gone into the coffee shop like that. We shouldn't have been seen together. Let's hope there weren't any wrong people there with sharp eyes and good memories." It wasn't something that could be changed now. Cade put on the coffeepot, popped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, and turned back to the eggs he was about to scramble. Marie set dishes and cutlery on the table, poured two glasses of orange juice, and slid into the narrow bench seat behind.

"Roland.... In case we end up going separate ways in all this, or maybe if we both don't come through... there's some information that I need to give you. It's important that it doesn't get lost." Cade got the feeling she had been thinking hard about this. He looked over his shoulder to indicate that he was listening. Marie paused, as if searching for the right place to begin.

"Rebecca wasn't being infiltrated so much to find me. It was the particular group I was associated with. It's the group that was blamed for that assassination in Washington a couple of weeks back—when the Hyadean flyer was shot down. What the media are saying is all a lie. We had nothing to do with it. No part of CounterAction did. You have to believe that."

Cade slowed his stirring, and then resumed again just in time to avoid burning the contents of the pan. That was right.... The ISS people who came to the house two days after it happened had told him Marie was suspected of being with the cell the Hyadean plasma weapon supposedly found its way to. With all that had been going on, he had forgotten about that connection. "A senator, wasn't it?" he said. "Farden.... And some general... ?"

"Right. Meakes."

"A couple of Hyadeans too."

"They shouldn't have been there. The targets were Farden and Meakes. The reason the cell I was with got picked was that it had been compromised somehow. Therefore, it could be targeted to be taken out. Get the idea? Nobody who had been implicated would be around to deny it. That was the intention, anyway. But we were warned ahead of time, and disbanded."

Cade turned, frowning, as he scooped the eggs out onto the plates. "So that wasn't what happened yesterday at wherever that call came from—where Len went?"

Marie shook her head. "That was a place in Chattanooga that we were using in transit to wherever next. But there was another man there, who went by the name Otter. He had the information on how those assassinations were really carried out. That's the information I'm going to give you now. The more chance it has to get around, the better. His real name was Captain Wayne Reyvek of the ISS. He'd had enough of what he'd seen and decided to switch sides. They couldn't afford to let somebody like him talk.
That's
who I think Rebecca was sent to track down."

Cade added bacon strips from a plate he had set aside earlier and sat down to pour the coffees while Marie buttered the toast. "But they set me up to lead Rebecca to
you,
" he pointed out. "What reason would they have to think that you and Reyvek... I guess he's history now?"

"Seems like it."

"What reason would they have to think you and he would be together?"

"I've been wondering that too," Marie said. "All I can think of is that they guessed he'd be asked to compare notes with the people who were being blamed." She shrugged. "The controllers monitoring a trace that Len took back found they had hit lucky, sent in a hit team—and you saw the cavalry heading the other way when we were leaving the motel. Guess who'd have been next."

Cade had already figured that much out. He went over what had been said so far while he began eating his breakfast. It still didn't make sense. "Why go to all that trouble?" he said finally. "If Reyvek knew who really did it, then presumably the ISS knew too. So why not simply go for them in the first place? Why go out of your way to lie about some other group, and then have to take them out in case they get a chance to disprove you?"

Marie sat back and smiled, as if something about the way he still couldn't see it delighted her. "
Because they did it themselves!
It was engineered within the ISS! Reyvek was involved in obtaining the Hyadean plasma cannon. It came from some that disappeared in South America, were recovered but not acknowledged, and found their way into an unofficial stockpile at Fort Benning in Georgia. It was fired by a colonel called Kurt Drisson, who specializes in deniable dirty work for friends in high places. Reyvek wasn't sure, but he believed that a financier called Casper Toddrel was behind it. Toddrel is mixed up in big land deals that are going on in Brazil and Peru. Reyvek had evidence to substantiate his story, which he mailed to a private box in Baltimore. I guess the key's lost, but there are ways around things like that."

Cade was listening, but he couldn't relate any motive to what he was hearing. The story the two ISS agents had given when they came to the house seemed straightforward enough. He shook his head uncomprehendingly. "But why? Farden was pushing bills that would open up big markets for cheap minerals that the Hyadeans are pulling out of Bolivia, right? Now, okay, sure, I can see how that might drop the bottom out of a lot of industries here that have seen their day, and make him unpopular with a lot of people. That would make him a natural target for an outfit like CounterAction, that looks for popular support. But why should somebody like Toddrel care? He's not a titanium miner who got let go last year with no place to go."

"You're buying the standard line that they put out," Marie told him. "Simple. Easy logic. Gives us an instant Enemy of the People to hate."

"Well... what other line is there?" Cade invited.

"Farden had enemies within the Terran Globalist elite. He was working with other interests—I suspect British, but I'm not sure—who were being paid by South American land agencies and development investors to expand the Bolivian extraction operations. That earns the Hyadeans the foreign currency they need for their land deals, and in recycling it everyone in the loop gets rich."

Cade still couldn't quite buy it. "But that still doesn't explain why Toddrel should want to get rid of Farden. I mean, isn't he in the loop too?"

"It's a different loop," Marie answered. "Farden's scheme is undercutting a lot of U.S.-capitalized mining, which makes it too radical for some people. Toddrel is part of a more cautious approach to cashing in on the Hyadean economic system by marketing Terran creative skills, which sell at a huge margin on the alien worlds. That means selling out middle-class professionals instead, which doesn't create powerful enemies. Also, you're not giving foreign governments a green light to rush into handing over big chunks of this planet, which not everyone is happy about." She waved her fork by way of conclusion. "Hence, eliminating Farden was convenient for a lot of people you don't find at Washington protest rallies. If you can do it and discredit the opposition at the same time, then so much the better."

Cade nodded reluctantly. It was starting to make sense now. "How come you know so much about all this?" he asked curiously.

"Oh, come on Roland. You know that reading between lines and finding sources that I believe has always been my thing."

"Yes, right. Let's not get into that...." Cade picked up his glass and drank. "So what about General Meakes? The version I heard was that he wanted to beef up our defense capability by introducing more Hyadean weapons and methods, which countries like the AANS didn't want to see happen. So they spread the story that he was going to put our military under alien control, and that made him unpopular enough for CounterAction to target. What's your take on that?"

"From what I've heard, Meakes was sincere," Marie replied. "He genuinely wanted a stronger capability. But that was so the U.S. could run its own security operations independently. But the same people who didn't want Farden bankrupting Western industrial interests
want
an expanded Hyadean military presence here to protect their investments, with our own forces maybe eventually under their command."

Cade was astounded. "You're kidding!"

"I wish I was. The joke is that what they're pushing for is exactly what Meakes was accused of, but which in reality he was obstructing. So they had reason to want to get rid of him too." Marie looked across. Cade had no more questions for the moment, but sat absorbing what he had heard.

"So that's what you need to know," Marie told him. "If I don't come out of this for some reason, get it to the right people in the organization." She finished her toast, thought for a moment longer, and then added, almost as an afterthought, "Unless you still don't want any part of it, of course."

After half an hour of brooding, shuffling restlessly around in the cramped confines of the camper, and saying little, Cade sat down opposite Marie as she sat staring through a window at the tree-covered slopes rising beyond the end of the field. "It's not enough," he declared. "Yes, we need to get this information to the right people in your organization. But it has to go further than that. It has to get to the Hyadeans too—the
right
ones. They need to know what kind of people their government is collaborating with. Because they don't question things, they'd be easy to take advantage of. But that would make them all the more appalled if they knew the truth. Maybe I have spent a lot of the last few years staying out of things that matter, but one thing it's done is put me on more than just speaking terms with a few who would be ideal to start with. One in particular that I'm thinking of is very close to Dee. Do you remember her?"

For a moment, Marie registered too much surprise to be capable of saying anything. She collected her wits quickly and nodded. "Dee? Yes. She's okay."

"We need to use her."

"How? What are you talking about?"

"Well, obviously we can't risk alerting Julia," Cade said. "What are the chances of getting a message to Dee somehow, through this network of yours?

"They could do it, sure," Marie agreed. "But in a situation like this, it's best to assume that anyone who comes to mind as a natural contact will have been marked by the other side too. That means they're likely to be watched and their lines tapped. It could take some time."

"Then the sooner we make a start, the better," Cade said.

THEY GAVE JOHN DETAILS of how Dee could be contacted, along with an instruction that she was to mention it to
nobody
. After that, there was little else to do but wait. There was no way Cade could use a credit card, write a check, or present ID without being picked up. The confidence of the people sheltering them evidently grew over the next two days, or maybe their story was authenticated somewhere. More of John's friends began showing up at the house, many of them at night. John himself stopped by from time to time to check up on things and drink a coffee or beer with Cade and Marie. Times had grown bad since the coming of the aliens, he told them, and that seemed all that was needed to establish cause and effect. Cade wasn't aware of any activities on the Hyadeans' part that would depress U.S. agriculture, and from what he had heard attributed it more to rising Third World productivity and changes in East-West relations, but there was no arguing with the local wisdom. Cade wondered how typical this might be of thinking across the country. Maybe he had been getting more out of touch than he had realized. Marie borrowed a laptop and encrypted as much as she knew of Reyvek's story in a file that she entrusted to John for consignment to Sovereignty. So at least there was some safeguard now in that respect.