THE OVERTON WINDOW (18 page)

The global villains named on the site were a grab bag pulled from the latest full-color catalog of extremist paranoia: the Zionists, the Royals, the IMF and World Bankers, the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, the Bilderbergers, the Masons, the Grovers, the Vatican, you name it. It was a big tent, and that was the point. Search engines had soon begun to present Stuart’s site as a top-twenty destination for all manner of curious like-minded wackos, and traffic became fairly brisk.

It was evident from the home page that this wasn’t a place for the no-guts armchair militiaman. The rants, posts, links, videos, documents, and forums hosted by this fictional ex-fed-turned-Patriot made it pretty clear that he believed a violent uprising, a shooting war, was the only route remaining to set things right again in America.

This site and its inflammatory content formed what’s known as a
troll
in the parlance of the Internet culture. Trolling is a fishing term; you toss your lure over the side and forget about it, letting it drag behind the boat in hopes that something you want to catch will eventually take the bait.

With 200 million websites out there no one really expected this obscure destination would make Stuart Kearns a household name among the diverse followers of all the competing hate groups. The FBI and many other agencies maintained thousands of such baited traps; sometimes they paid off, most times they didn’t.

But then one day the troll hooked a fish, and from the first tug it felt like a big catch.

A new discussion group had formed in a private chat room on the site, under the heading of “Direct Action.” The members began to kick around the logistics of the Oklahoma City bombing, Tim McVeigh’s attack on the Murrah Federal Building in 1995: what had gone right, what had gone wrong, and the various conspiracy theories still swirling around the event and its aftermath. With some encouragement from the forum leader the discussion evolved—some half-baked plans that would’ve gotten the job done better, other vulnerable targets, men, methods, and materials. Many dropped out of the conversation as things got more serious, but eight stayed on.

This remaining group progressed to tentative voice chats and then to encrypted e-mail exchanges, all the while inching their way from what had started as a mere discussion toward a solid plot that could actually be executed. Three more anonymous participants eventually got cold feet and dropped out, leaving five people ready, willing, and able to commit a grotesque act of domestic terrorism.

And now it was time to reel them in.

“These aren’t my people,” Bailey said. “You’ve gotta be kidding me, man, I’ve never told anybody to do any violence—”

“I’ve watched your videos, son, and you don’t exactly tell them not to, either.”

“Aw, come on.” Bailey sat back in his seat, shaking his head. “I’ve got to go over the top just to get people up off the couch. Have any of you guys ever actually read the First Amendment? Tom Clancy wrote two books about how terrorists could use airliners as weapons before 9/11. Did you arrest him for that?”

“No, but I’ll tell you what, we sure as hell brought him in for questioning.”

“I’m not the right guy for this.”

“Well, you’re the one I’ve got. You’re a big name to these people.
Trust me, they’ll believe what you say, and that’s all we need. You’re just going to come in and stroke them a little bit, tell them you know me and that I’m concerned there might be an agent among them—”

“You’re concerned that one of them might be a mole. That’s a nice touch.”

“Thanks,” Kearns said. “And I asked you to come with me and check them out before I’d agree to see them in person. It’ll be fine, believe me. Just that first meeting, and maybe a little follow-up afterward. That’s all you’ve got to do.”

“And then I’m out of this, and you’ll leave me alone?”

“Stay out of trouble, and there’s no reason you’ll ever have to deal with someone like me again.”

“I’m going to need to get that in writing.”

“You’ll get it.” Kearns put out his cigarette in the armrest ashtray. “Have you done any acting, like in high school?”

“Why?”

“Some people get nervous when they have to lie, that’s all. This isn’t much of a performance, but I want to know you can handle the pressure. You can’t flake out on me.”

“Oh, you want to know if I can fool a handful of small-time desperadoes role-playing
Red Dawn
in their living room?” Bailey nodded, took off his dark glasses, picked up his surveillance file from Kearns’s lap, and went through the stack until he found a series of photos about a third of the way down. “Did you miss these?” he asked.

The photos, time-stamped from earlier in the year, all featured a man dressed and made up in a convincing impersonation of Colonel Sanders, complete with goatee, white suit, and black-string bow tie. In the top picture he was shaking hands with a distinguished-looking gentleman under a huge United Nations seal.

“Is that you?” Kearns asked.

“That’s me.” Bailey pointed to the man standing next to him in the photo. “And that’s Mr. Ali Treki, the president of the UN General Assembly,
receiving an official state visit from the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, who’d been dead for almost thirty years at the time. Look.” He flipped to the next picture. “He even let me sit in his chair and bang the gavel.”

“You did this when, last year?”

“Those pictures made the
Daily News
that week. It was a publicity stunt for my DVD on UN corruption,
United AbomiNations.
It’s sold out, but I’ll see if I can get you a copy.”

“I’ll add it to my Netflix queue. How did you get past security?”

“What security? Security walked me all the way up to the president’s office.” Bailey smiled. “Everybody loves the Colonel.”

“That’s good,” Kearns said.

“Oh, Stuart, that’s not just good. That’s finger-lickin’ good.”

Despite the circumstances, it was clear to see what people connected with in Danny Bailey. He had an easy charm about him, a certain smoothness that could draw you in like a great salesman does as he effortlessly talks you right down to the bottom line. When it comes to undercover work that kind of skill is more valuable than it might sound at first. If things start sliding sideways your wits can sometimes get you out of a situation where your gun might just get you killed.

Kearns nodded and took the file back, with a thought to himself that he should find the time to go through it all more thoroughly. There was clearly quite a bit more to this young fellow than initially met the eye.

CHAPTER 18
 

B
acon
.

Scent appeals to the most primitive of the five basic senses. Unlike a sight or sound or even a touch, an aroma can rocket straight to the untamed emotions with no stops required at the smarter parts of the brain. You like it or you hate it; that’s the designed-in depth of raw stimulation the nose is built to deliver. So amid all the other deeper thoughts that should have come to Noah’s mind upon awakening, it was
bacon
that crowded them out to come in first across the finish line.

Other wonderful smells of a home-cooked breakfast, recalling the finest mornings from his early childhood, were wafting in from a couple of rooms away. Molly was nowhere to be seen, though an alluring girl-shaped indentation was still evident in the gathering of covers beside him.

He pushed back the quilt and squinted to read the clock on the far wall: 4:35 it said, with no clue whether that made it early the following
morning or late that same afternoon. It might take all weekend to get his body clock reset to normal again.

He slipped on his robe and pulled open the bedroom curtains. It was cloudy again and the sun was low; still Saturday, then.

“Are you up, finally?” He heard her voice from the doorway.

“Yeah.” When he turned he saw she was already dressed for the day. “Looks like you found the laundry room.”

“I went out and got some groceries, too. Your refrigerator was freakishly clean and really empty.”

“I eat out a lot.”

“Well, I made you something.” She smiled. “Late birthday breakfast. Come and get it while it’s hot.”

As they sat together at the sunroom table he focused on his food while she returned to chipping away at her half-finished crossword puzzle in the next day’s Sunday
Times.

“You like word games?” Noah asked.

“I love word games.”

“Well, if you get stumped over there let me know. Not that I’m so brilliant, but I was on the spelling bee circuit when I was a kid.”

“Wow. Nerdy.”

“Yeah. I was a late bloomer.”

“Here’s a long one I need to get. Twelve down: One deeply devoted to wine.”

He thought for a moment.
“Sommelier.”

She counted down with a fingertip, shook her head. “Not enough letters; you need eleven.”

“I wish you would have told me that.”

“Sorry.”

“Try …
connoisseur.”

“Nope. There’s a gimmick this week: the answers all start with the first letter of the clue. So ‘one deeply devoted to wine,’ it has to start with an
o.”

“Again, that would have been really useful information about twenty seconds ago. You’re making it hard for me to help you, Molly.”

“Just trying to keep you humble.”

He finished his coffee and put down the cup. “It’s
oenophilist.”
She gave him a skeptical frown, so he spelled it out. “O-e-n-o-p-h-i-l-i-s-t. Oenophilist. Wine lover. The
o
in the beginning is silent.”

She filled in the letters one by one, her lips pronouncing them soundlessly and precisely as she wrote, eyes darting to follow the hints provided by each new entry. It occurred to him that he could have happily watched her do that simple thing all day long.

“I would have gotten that,” she said quietly.

“You know, if you like word games so much I might have a better job for you down at the office.”

She put down her pencil, but kept her eyes on the paper in front of her.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something,” Molly said. She got up and took his empty plate and silverware to the sink.

“Okay. Let’s talk about it.”

“I’m not going to be in town very much longer.”

“Why?”

“I’m just not. There were some things I wanted to do here, and I’ve done them now, so I’ll be leaving.”

He sat back. “When are you thinking of leaving?”

“Soon.” Her attitude had changed abruptly, as though she was steeling herself for a discussion she didn’t want to prolong.

“Look, I didn’t mean anything when I mentioned a job, I know how you feel about that place—”

“You didn’t say anything wrong. This is just the way it is, okay?”

“Okay.”

She’d busied herself in silence in the kitchen for a little while, rehanging pans and tidying up briefly, but soon she sat down across from him again, reached over, and put her hand on his.

“Cheer up,” Molly said. “Go get ready, and loan me a jacket. I think we should take a walk.”

When he came back dressed from the bedroom he found her at the table again with a framed sheet of his childhood schoolwork in her hands, reading it over.

“What is this?” she asked.

“That was a penmanship exercise, from the fifth grade.” He pulled up a chair and sat beside her. “I don’t even think they teach that anymore, do they? Penmanship?” She tilted the frame a bit so they could both see it clearly. “They asked us to write down something we liked, obviously as neatly as we could, and that was my dad’s favorite poem, the last bit of it anyway.”

In the upper corner was the first gold star he’d received at his new school, near his new home, in the year that everything had changed. One of his nannies had framed the paper to commemorate the occasion. The movers placed it on a vacant desk in the study when he got this place, but he was certain he hadn’t looked at it a second time within those years. And it wasn’t quite right to say it was his father’s
favorite
poem; more like the old man’s justification of his life set in verse. He’d directed his young son to study it so he’d always know the way things really worked in this world.

Noah picked it up, let his thumb brush the dust from the corner of the glass, and read each metered line aloud.

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled,
and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled
and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up
to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back
to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and
no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror
and slaughter return!