THE OVERTON WINDOW (17 page)

Kearns passed across a manila envelope that carried authorization forms for the interview and a conditional catch-and-release waiver for the prisoner in question. The papers were curtly received and slid into the queue with all the care and attention of a career man on the assembly line. Then, as he was directed with a wordless tic of the head, Agent Kearns took a short walk to a seat in a small side office to wait his turn, just like everybody else.

It was just another privilege of the badge, he supposed. Civilians have to go all the way to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get this kind of white-glove treatment.

It was a power thing, really, petty but always in-your-face in every bureaucratic exchange. A yardstick of rank and importance gets held up to a person, a pecking order is established with each interaction, and in this case the FBI is taken down a peg or two by a mere drone from the
NYPD. To be fair, maybe it wasn’t the whole Bureau that had received the brunt of the disrespect, just this one road-worn and burnt-out representative.

The fact that such people and their passive-aggressive infighting were a big part of his professional life bothered him less than it used to. After thirty-one years of beating his head against the wall in law enforcement, a man shouldn’t be surprised to find his brains bashed in and the wall still standing. But you can know a thing like that and go on acting like you don’t. His first wife had said it best, on her way out the door.
It’s not other people, it’s not your boss or your enemies or the kid at the supermarket. It’s you. You ask for it, Stuart, and all they do is give it to you.

Thanks again, Sunshine, for all your support. You were the best of your breed; spouse number two didn’t even bother to leave a note.

The little space where he’d been seated was broom-clean but musty, windowless and bare, roller-painted a dreary shade of leftover beige, its furniture decades old, stained and mismatched. The scarred wooden desk might well have dated from the days when Herman Melville had written of this jail before the Civil War. Whatever range of guest accommodations might exist in the huge expanse of the Manhattan Detention Complex, this waiting room must have rated somewhere near the bottom of the scale.

A picture frame stood on the desk, still displaying the yellowing promotional family photo inserted at the factory. Overlaid on that warm, staged scene of rural togetherness was the dim reflection of an unexpectedly older man, jowly and gray, looking back at him from the surface of the glass. The years do go by.

The sergeant from the triage desk knocked and entered, then passed him his carbonless copy of the necessary forms, all signed and authorized. “They’re getting your man now,” he said. “Be out in a minute.”

“Fine.”

“You should have told me,” the sergeant added, suddenly a great deal more civil than he’d been before.

Stuart Kearns straightened his glasses but didn’t look up from the papers in his hands.

“Either that,” he said, “or you should have asked.”

The sergeant correctly sensed he’d been dismissed, and left the room.

The man’s sudden snap to attention was no doubt due to the source of Kearns’s assignment, which, to be honest, would have become evident only after a look through the sealed paperwork he’d provided. A desk cop with a bad attitude might get a chuckle out of sending the average federal agent to cool his heels for half a morning just because he can, but when the orders come down from the D.C. headquarters of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, well, nobody at that low level wants to be fingered as a bottleneck in the War on Terror.

He checked his watch. Half-past seven on Saturday morning, and by the noise outside, the Tombs were officially awakening.

These places had a sound all their own. Back there among the inmates it would be drowned out by the hue and cry of those right around you, but from a distance those troubled voices all intermingled into a sound something like an ill wind—an airy, echoing howl that drifted up from the cell blocks at certain times of the day and night.

While he was waiting he pulled a hefty folder from his briefcase and opened it flat. This was an abridged version of the FBI file for the young man he was about to see. The guy was a marshmallow, he’d been assured, and by a covert order he’d just spent a long hard night in a cage full of the worst serial offenders this venue had to offer, so he would certainly be softened up even more by this morning. With luck, once a deal was on the table there wouldn’t be too much time wasted in negotiation.

It was an unusually thick file for someone who’d never been arrested for anything more serious than fairly minor narcotics offenses. Cocaine mostly, some party drugs, and he’d been busted with a modest grow operation and a trash bag full of premium bud at one point,
years ago. He’d plea-bargained his way out of that last one, in exchange for testimony against his accomplices. That fact was worth an underscore.

A halfhearted suicide attempt when he was in his twenties, just a cry for help most likely, but then another one, a real one, during a ninety-day stint in a county lockup in Louisiana—this page was dog-eared, as was his psych evaluation from the time.

There were also some tax problems and other run-ins with the law dating back to his teens, but the latest entries concerned evidence gathered through recent home and business surveillance warrants, highlighted transcripts of a monitored ham-radio show, and a list of some videos he’d produced that were now circulating through the Patriot culture on the Internet.
Hate speech/counterterrorism
was the box that was checked on his first wiretap request, but the latest such authorization had been requisitioned by three cooperating divisions, as abbreviated in the margin: DC-JTTF, NM-DTWG, NM-WMDWG.

The Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Domestic Terrorism Working Group, and the Weapons of Mass Destruction Working Group. The last two offices were based in New Mexico.

Based on this file and, more important, based on Stuart Kearns’s own long experience in the field, this little guy didn’t seem like he’d ever been much for the government to worry about. It was almost as though they decided years ago that they were going to get him, but they hadn’t yet known exactly how. He didn’t seem dangerous, only outspoken and troublesome. But, heaven knows, stranger things have happened.

In these times, the tug-of-war between national security and personal freedom was becoming a losing battle for civil libertarians. It had happened bit by bit, with each slight loss of liberty or privacy sounding like a reasonable protection when viewed on its own. The effect was cumulative, however. Today even the most liberal of politicians were openly floating the idea of preventive detention for terrorism suspects:
basically, indefinite incarceration without charges or trial, all for what sometimes amounted to little more than thought crimes.

The presumption of innocence was an admirable doctrine in simpler days, though at best it had always been unevenly applied in practice— more an ideal to strive toward than a true and present cornerstone of American justice. In recent years an increasingly frightened public had approved of that hallowed concept being systematically replaced with another, especially when it came to certain groups and offenses: When in doubt, lock them up.

Clipped to the file was an eight-by-ten photo taken of his man only last night, when he’d appeared at a far-right-wing protest rally of some kind. He’d run afoul of the cops, and that’s when Stuart’s midnight call had come; a necessary piece of an important puzzle was about to drop into his lap. The hope was that this fellow would be interested in helping his country, but in case he wasn’t, the fallback was to make sure he’d be pretty desperate to help himself.

Three corrections officers approached the open door with a heavily shackled prisoner in their charge. He could barely walk on his own, either from the effects of heavy fatigue, the abuse he’d obviously taken from his cellmates overnight, or both.

They brought him in, sat him down across the desk, cuffed him to the chair, dropped a Baggie of belongings on the filing cabinet, and with a nod and a signature from his new custodian, left without a word being spoken.

The guy’s head was hanging, chin to his chest. Without the arms of the chair holding him upright he’d probably have slumped right to the floor.

“Daniel Carroll Bailey?”

He flinched at the sound of his name like he’d been roused cold from a nightmare. The chain at his wrist snapped taut; he squinted and hunched down as though expecting another boot to the side of the head.
He looked pretty bad, but with some cleaning up maybe not unable to travel, and that was good for the schedule. Beyond the cuts and bruises, if lack of sleep was his main problem then they were in good shape; he could rest on the plane.

“Are you my lawyer?” Bailey asked.

His words were weak and not formed very well. Swollen jaw, eyes trying hard to focus, one ear freshly torn ragged at the lobe from an earring theft, or maybe a bite. Before they’d brought him in someone had done a half-assed job of swabbing the blood that had dried around his nose and mouth, but a bit of real doctoring might be needed before they could get on the road for the airport.

“No, I’m not a lawyer.”

“I want my phone call, they won’t let me have my phone call—”

“You can make your call now if you want, and line up an attorney. That’s your right. But if you decide to go that route I want to warn you. This is from a high authority, the highest; in fact with your past record, your charges from last night, and especially”—he patted the folder in front of him—“the evidence from an ongoing federal investigation, the best any lawyer’s going to get you is fifteen to twenty years in a place much worse than this. That’s a fact. But it doesn’t have to be like that, Danny.”

Slowly, the other man seemed to be recovering his wits, or at least enough of them to understand what he was facing.

“Who are you?”

Stuart Kearns showed his ID, then took out his card and slid it across to the very edge of the desk.

“I’ve got nine words for you that I’ll bet you never thought you’d be so glad to hear,” he said. “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

CHAPTER 17
 

Over the intercom came an announcement that they’d just reached cruising altitude at 44,000 feet, and to punctuate that bit of news the no smoking light went off with a quiet
ting.

It was a nice touch, but on a jet this size the copilot could just as easily have leaned around his seat and shouted down the aisle to update his two lone passengers on the progress of the flight.

Stuart Kearns took a pack of Dunhills from one jacket pocket, his lighter from another, then reclined his seat a notch and lit up. He inhaled deeply, then blew a thin white ring of smoke and watched it drift up toward the rounded cabin ceiling.

“What are you doing?”

Danny Bailey had awakened from his nap and was staring at the lit cigarette across the narrow aisle as though he were watching a bank robbery in progress.

“You can still smoke on a charter. On this one, anyway.” Kearns extended the pack to him, shook a filter tip halfway out. “Come on, you know you want to.”

“I quit five years ago.”

“Last chance. It’s not every day you get a free pass to break the rules.” Bailey didn’t budge, so Kearns returned the cigarettes to his pocket. “Hey, remind me, how old are you?”

“I’m thirty-four.”

“In the decade you were born a man could still smoke a cigar on any flight across this country. Can you believe that?”

“Listen,” Bailey said, “what’s your name again?”

“Kearns. Stuart Kearns.”

“That’s right—Special Agent Kearns. Well listen, Stuart, I’m glad to be out of jail, but it doesn’t exactly feel like I’m free.”

He nodded. “That’s right.”

“Right. So no offense, but there’s no reason to strain yourself pretending you’re my friend. Let’s stick to business. What do you say you just enjoy your smoke and then tell me what the hell I need to do to go home.”

It wasn’t an elaborate scheme; it couldn’t be when success relied on the performance of an informant under duress. In undercover work, if anything can go wrong it generally does. The more straightforward the plan, the better. Keep it simple, and you keep it safe.

The targets for the operation were low-level militia types with a desire to graduate to a full-blown act of domestic terrorism. They were in the market for funding, logistical support, and some serious weapons. If all went well then the only thing they’d be getting at the final handoff was arrested.

Danny Bailey would be brought along to the first in-person meet-up, to lend a crowning bit of credibility to the proceedings; he was currently the closest thing the Patriot underground had to a national spokesperson. In essence, Bailey would play the Oprah to Kearns’s Dr. Phil.

The operation itself would be quick, in and out, but the lead-up to it had required a long and careful preparation.

A few years earlier a website had been set up by the IT guys at the Bureau:
www.stuartkearns.com
. The backstory on the site went like this: A former federal agent had been run out of his job when he’d tried to blow the whistle on some dangerous truths. After repeated death threats, this ousted agent had gotten angry and gone public on the Web in an effort to protect himself from retribution, and to continue his crusade to expose the dark forces intent on causing a global financial collapse and ushering in a one-world government.