“It sounds like now you get to pick your own battles.”
“That’s right, I do.”
They were quiet for a while. When he saw that she was finished with her meal he took their recyclable trays to the kitchen and poured them both some coffee.
“Does the name Merrick mean anything to you?” Virginia asked.
“Merrick? No, I don’t think so.”
“Molly never mentioned anyone by that name?”
“No, not that I remember. Why?”
“It’s just a bit of a lead that I’m following up.” Virginia made some notes on her pad. “Did you see the story in the news today about the rioting in Chicago?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I helped write it.”
“There’ve been other incidents around the country, shootings mostly, but also some fires and robberies, threats to politicians, threats against property, at least one actual bombing, and now this thing in Chicago. If you draw a line on a map between these incidents, it’s clear they’re heading this way, east to west. Molly and her group are claiming responsibility for all of it, and that’s looking very credible.”
He shook his head. “It’s not them.”
“I’m talking about what the evidence clearly indicates.”
He placed her coffee in front of her and as he sat down she reached into her bag and slid some blurry photographs across the table.
“Do you recognize anyone there?” she asked.
The pictures were time-coded and pixelated stills from surveillance videos. They showed a tall man in a long dark coat on a city street with a petite woman walking beside him.
“No, but it’s pretty obvious who they’re supposed to be,” Noah said.
“What makes you think these aren’t photos of Thom Hollis and Molly Ross?”
“Look at her clothes, for one thing.”
“So?”
“That woman’s wearing a tight short skirt and high heels.”
“And Molly wouldn’t own anything like that?”
“For Halloween, maybe.”
“What about the man?”
Noah thought about that for a few seconds. “I can’t say. He’s the right size, but thinner than I remember him. I told you I don’t think he would do the things you say he’s doing, but I can’t back that up, not with anything solid.”
“Do you know what the term signature strike means?”
“No.”
“It’s a new kind of attack order, the kind that’s been issued now for Molly and Hollis, just today. These drone wars the administration’s so fond of now, the idea came from those missions. It doesn’t just mean that Molly is now eligible to be shot on sight. It means that everyone around her is also a valid target.”
“Good God,” Noah said. “I’ve told you these people are no threat. They’ve got no power and no hope to get any. They’re being scapegoated, you can see that, can’t you?”
She rose gracefully above that question. “I asked you to reach out to her. Have you had a chance to do that yet?”
“No.”
“Come on, then.” She got up and walked to the laptop computer on the corner desk. “I don’t know if it’ll make any difference, but let’s start trying now.”
Chapter 30
By their second cup of coffee he’d composed and deleted several messages; none of them felt quite right. Though she was an ace at deception herself, Molly Ross was also a very difficult person to lie to.
“Clear out your mind for a minute,” Virginia said. “Just talk to her. Like I said, just relax and communicate. Think about your relationship.”
“I wish I had more to think about. We didn’t have much of a chance to get to know one another. There wasn’t a lot of time involved, not in the way you’d normally think of a relationship.”
“But you seem to have gotten so close.”
“I got close. I don’t know, maybe she did, too.”
“What did you talk about while you were together?”
“I spent most of my time saying stupid things, if I remember correctly. And I guess a lot of the things she told me weren’t true.”
“And yet you say that you trust her.”
“I know, it doesn’t seem to make sense. She tricked me, it was as simple as that in the beginning, but I don’t blame her. Whatever I got from them I deserved; that’s how I see it. What they were trying to do in those few days was better than anything I’d ever done with my whole life. Can you understand that?”
“I can.” She sat back, considering. “Let’s keep this simple.” She leaned over him and clicked open a new message. “You’re just trying to open a line of communication. We need to break through the clutter and establish that it’s really you who’s writing to her. Ideally it should be something that only the two of you would know about.”
He thought for a moment, and nodded as he began typing. “I think I’ve got something like that.”
The subject line he wrote was As a fellow oenophilist, let me B Frank.
“What’s that word mean?” Virginia asked, pointing it out on the screen.
“Oenophilist. It’s a wine word, and I only knew it because I was a spelling-bee geek. It was in a crossword puzzle we were doing in my apartment.”
“And B Frank, as in . . .”
“As in Barney Frank. That’s from a story I told her the night before.”
“When you slept together.”
“Right, when we literally slept together. She woke up at one point, and then she woke me up and asked me to help her get back to sleep. I asked her how I was supposed to do that, and she wanted me to tell her a story.”
“That sounds like something she’d remember.”
“She was very interested in anything about my father,” Noah said, “so I told her one of his tall tales. It’s the only kind of a bedtime story I ever got from him as a kid. No dragons or knights in shining armor, it was always about his work, and the one I told her involved Barney Frank.”
“Did it work?”
“Like a charm.” He cracked his knuckles. “Let me finish this up. You said to keep it simple, right?”
In the body of the message he typed a single line.
Molly, it’s Noah. Write back to me. I promise you I can help.
After waiting for Virginia’s approval he checked over the text once again and hit SEND.
With the message to Molly finally away, the fatigue of their separate days seemed to hit them both at once. Virginia asked if the couch was available for the night, and of course that was fine; he had the room and she wanted to stay close in case there was a reply. He brought out some sheets, a pillow, and a blanket as she changed in the bathroom, and then by the time he’d brushed his teeth and returned to say good night she’d made up the couch as tight as an army cot and had already tucked herself in.
Noah turned off the last lamp and there was just enough moonlight coming through the window so they could see one another clearly in the dark.
“I’m worried she won’t answer,” Noah said. He didn’t say so, but he was also every bit as worried that she would.
“If she doesn’t write back we’ll just keep trying.”
He nodded. “Last chance,” Noah said. “You can take the bed if you want.”
“No, this is better than I’m used to. I’ll be fine. I’m feeling a little overstimulated, though; too much caffeine, I think.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I might have to hear that Barney Frank bedtime story.”
“All right, if you think it’ll help. It’s going to sound kind of odd.”
“That’s the one thing I’m sure of right now. Just tell it to me exactly like you told it to her.”
“Okay,” Noah said, and when he spoke next he’d taken on the soft and calming tones of a bedside storyteller. “Once upon a time, in a faraway land called Washington, in the United States House of Representatives, two powerful trolls named Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich wrote a memo at the direction of their
party’s masters. With this memo they started a rumor that the new Speaker of the House, Mr. Tom Foley, was a homosexual, and possibly even a pedophile. Now, politics had always been a dirty business and always would be, but to many people on both sides of the aisle this was several giant steps over the line.
“And so a kindly elf named Barney Frank went to these two trolls, Lee and Newt, and he said, ‘That’s fine, you guys. You go ahead and keep on mudslinging. Knock yourselves out. But here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go all scorched-earth on your hypocritical asses. Unless you take it back and apologize to my friend Mr. Foley immediately, I will march myself down to the floor of the House, and I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow six of your secretly gay Republican congressmen right out of the closet, live on C-SPAN.’ And then all hell started to break loose in the back rooms of the castle where the real rulers lived.”
“Oh, my goodness,” Virginia said. Her eyes were closed and her voice was already drowsy.
“Yes, oh, my goodness indeed. And when King Arthur Gardner heard about this, he flew to Washington in the middle of the night and was so monumentally pissed that he almost didn’t even need an airplane. When he was finished restoring peace and putting things right, the two trolls had publicly apologized, the President himself had denounced their actions, and more than a few heads had rolled.
“And the moral of the story is,” Noah concluded, “in a government that’s been systematically weakened by lies and corruption, secrets are the most valuable currency. They’re the fuel that runs the machine and the leverage that keeps the greedy ruling class in power and under control, and my father wasn’t going to stand by and see all those secrets wasted.”
With the story finished, the room was still for a little while. By all appearances Virginia Ward had fallen asleep already, but as he moved to get to his feet she spoke to him quietly.
“Noah?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think Molly would do that, if she could?”
“Do what?”
“That scorched-earth idea,” Virginia said. “I’m just trying to understand her mind-set. Do you think she’d try something like that if she had the chance? Just tell all the secrets to the people at once, to wake them up so they could have a last chance to see the truth and try to take their country back.”
He thought for a moment. “Yeah, that sounds just like Molly.”
Noah sat there for a few moments longer but she didn’t say anything more. Soon it was clear that Virginia was out for the night, this time for sure.
Chapter 31
Anger was only one of several toxic emotions that his doctors had long since forbidden him to feel. When Aaron Doyle read and absorbed his latest morning dispatch, however, he had become so enraged that it took a private EMS team with a crash cart to rush to his aid and bring his fragile physical systems back under control.
Down a rarely traveled hallway a communications room was maintained for those unusual times when he was unable to take an urgent meeting face-to-face. With the doctors still hovering he ordered himself wheeled there. He needed answers, and he needed them immediately.
An assistant adjusted harsh white lights and brought the banks of televideo equipment out of standby. A test pattern lit up to fill the white wall, and soon the lines and bars flickered away and the face of Warren Landers appeared in their place. The man looked startled and disoriented, as though he’d been awakened from a sound sleep only moments before.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Doyle?” Landers said. The image pixelated and stuttered as the technicians sought to stabilize the secure connection, and the sound of the remote voice was slightly out of sync with the picture.
“Let me ask you,” Doyle said. “Do you understand my goals?” With a sharp motion of his hand he banished everyone from the room on his side of the conference call. As he continued, despite the oxygen flowing under his nose, his overtaxed lungs labored to deliver his words with the gravity he intended. “Do you understand what I’ve asked you to do for me, and why?”
“I believe so—”
“If you understand,” Doyle hissed, enunciating each word with as much acid as he could muster, “then tell me why the last torchbearer of the sad ideals of the American spirit, this Molly Ross, is now being contacted by a former co-conspirator who nearly spoiled all of my plans only last year, and who also happens to be the son of my right-hand man?”
Landers appeared to be confused by the question. “Mr. Gardner said that was what you wanted, to let them make contact so we could—”
“Did Mr. Gardner also say that I wanted an investigator on the case, a woman who’s apparently accountable to no one, who was trained as a peerless hunter-killer by the Central Intelligence Agency, whose zeal for seeking the truth is exceeded only by her nearly flawless record of actually finding it? Did he say I wanted that?”
“He did say that,” Landers said, “but it’s obvious now we’ve both been deceived. I take full responsibility. I’ll fix this.”
“No. I’ll fix it myself.” In all his years in this great endeavor, only twice before had Aaron Doyle come down from the mountain to take matters into his own able hands. This would be the third time, and hopefully the last. “I’m coming to New York immediately. I’ll be there by nightfall tomorrow.”
“What should I do before then?” Landers asked.
“Let your man George Pierce know we may need him for something major soon, but not yet. Let things proceed. And if my old friend Arthur wants to lay his own son’s head upon the altar as well, then all the better.” He leaned forward and spoke his final words clearly so his intent could not be missed. “And to that end, it’s time now to bid a permanent good-bye to Arthur Gardner.”
“Yes, sir,” Landers said, and he broke the connection.
With the call thus ended, Aaron Doyle rose from his chair and stood. His pains notwithstanding, he felt a new energy burning within him at the prospect of the days just ahead.
He walked to his study and sat down in his tall leather chair near the waiting chessboard, and then he addressed the identical but empty seat—William Merchant’s seat—on the other side.
“I see what you’ve tried to do, William,” Doyle said. “You’re trying to use my own pieces against me. But patience was never your strength, and I’m afraid you’ve acted rashly now and shown your hand a bit too soon. Truth, and love, and virtue, those were always your favorite weapons in this old war of ours.”
He leaned forward, and could almost see his old opponent seated in the opposite chair.
“But as you’ll remember, William, revenge is mine.”
Chapter 32
Arthur Gardner had never been one to take much pleasure in simple things.
Food and drink were occasional necessities, friends a seductive risk with only superficial benefits. And sleep—sleep was a thief of precious time and the persistent bringer of unwanted dreams.
As he sat, long past midnight at the head of the empty table in his private conference room, he reflected on these and other things, and in the quiet, he wondered. These halls were filled with a visual record of his accomplishments. Doyle & Merchant, the company he’d helped build from modest beginnings, would live on and speak its own memorial, carved as it was into the very skyline of Manhattan. Yes, with it all nearly over he found he knew very clearly what he had done with his life. It was all the things he’d missed along the way that now consumed him.
The media wall before him flashed its ever-changing torrent of images and messages. From where he sat, he could shift its content as he chose, just by gesturing, and he did so.
A solid wall of marketing communications was the first category to come up on the display. Advertising was a dark art somewhat related to his own. From what he saw, the primary challenge these days seemed to be how best to portray young people—supposedly living exciting and enviable lives—while they did nothing but stare nonstop into the little glowing screens in their hands. Ads for re
ality shows, ads for helpful chronic pharmaceuticals, ads for luxury vehicles, ads for bankruptcy advisors, ads for credit cards: in every stage of decline there were still desires to be stoked and needs to be created, and a last bit of money in the public’s pocket to be fought over and won.
His own business model was not centered in luring the gullible into wanting things they didn’t need. Instead, he made them know things, and love and hate things, and fear things, and thereby he made them do things, and the profit in that had proven nearly limitless. Despite the exorbitant fees he charged, the process was actually pretty simple: make the people learn and remember lies while burying the very truths that could save them.
And if those frightening, liberating truths should ever come to light, what then? Would it make any difference? Now, with mankind facing the final precipice, could any revelation be powerful enough to open their eyes and turn the tide?
We would see. He’d done what he could, as his wife had asked. He’d set a last, far-fetched opportunity into motion, put the intrepid players in position, and then stood aside. It was out of his hands now; the rest was destiny.
“Sir?”
Warren Landers stood at the open door.
“Yes?”
“I know it’s late but I’m glad I found you here. There’s a problem in the London office and I’m afraid they need your thoughts.”
Arthur Gardner sighed, and nodded. “We can do a conference call from here, I believe.”
“No, our links are down and we don’t have any techs on the night shift to make it happen. I’ve arranged for a video call at a vendor on Sixth Avenue. Come on, I’ll drive you there.”