This is virgin?' he had asked.
'Absolutely - home-grown, off the books. I know the chef personally.'
Despite that reassurance, Mallock had been cautious. The FBI's involvement in the far-reaching Trigger fraud was not limited to inserting microscopic radio detonators into commercial explosives and surreptitiously irradiating gunpowder supplies. According to the Truth Hunters mailing list, the agency also had dozens of operatives in the underground, posing as the operators of small-scale 'patriot labs' but serving up the same doped formulas.
So Mallock had abandoned his Tracker in the park, and set off on foot for his target, following a carefully mapped serpentine path which took him along wooded trails and down quiet streets with-out ever passing near an embassy, tourist landmark, public build-ing, or posted intersection. If he had been betrayed, and the explos-ives he was wearing were tainted, he had been determined not to discover it until he was standing outside the enemy's citadel.
But he had not been betrayed, either by those he depended on or by a misstep of his own. He had reached and entered the citadel, had looked on the clueless faces of the insects within and called down their king to an accounting. It should have been a moment of high drama - but it was playing out as anticlimax.
Mallock had waited in the short line at the contact island, enjoying the anticipation. 'I want to see the supervisor,' he had demanded when his turn came. When the floor manager had appeared and introduced himself, Mallock had steered him to one of the counseling cubicles along the west wall. There he had shown the manager the bomb and the controller taped to his right hand.
'I know the truth about the Trigger. I want to see Wilman. You get him here without making a fuss, or everyone in the room is going to be dead. You get him here, and I'll let these people leave.'
'I'm not sure where the Senator is at the moment,' the floor manager had said. 'Let me see if can reach him.'
'You'd better do more than try. I'm wearing enough live explosives to blow out these walls and bring this building down on top of us.'
'Can I tell the Senator that?'
'No. You just get him here. I'll tell him how things are going to be.'
He had listened in on the manager's conversation with Wilman and been satisfied with its direction. Then, at Mallock's insistence, the two returned to the reception island to wait. From there, Mallock had a clear view of both entrances to the room - the front doors and the stairwell on the left side of the back wall. He also had a substantial oak-and-steel counter and six employees available as shields should someone unwelcome or unexpected make an appearance.
There were still clients in the waiting area and at the counter, and Mallock had told the floor manager to see that his staff carried on with business as usual. But as one minute stretched into the next, and Wilman still had not appeared, Mallock began to rethink his tactics.
He had decided to announce himself only to a supervisor because he did not want to have to ride herd on a roomful of frightened people - they were just as effectively hostages while ignorant of the threat, and much less likely to do something stupid. He had decided to insist that Wilman should come to him rather than demand to be taken to Wilman because of the risk of ambush
- he did not know the building, and did not want to invite any surprises before his mission was complete.
But the longer he waited, the more he realized that he had not given enough thought to the possibility that Wilman was a coward and might need to be shamed into acting honorably. The longer he witnessed the staff at work, the less harmless they seemed
- more like termites than sheep, destructive in their own right, irredeemable by their nature. And the more people he watched pass through the main entrance, the more he worried that the latest arrivals were plainclothes police and special ops assassins.
'What's taking so long?' he demanded of the floor manager. 'Where is he?'
'I don't know,' said the floor manager. 'But I can page the Senator again -'
'No. What you're going to do is close the building. Get all those clients or customers or whatever you call them out of here, and lock the doors behind 'em.'
'What should I tell them?'
'I don't care what you tell them, so long as you get them out, and do it now. Gas leak, network crash, fire alarm - you people are good at lying. Improvise.'
But when it was done, Mallock felt no more secure. There were more than two dozen pair of eyes regarding him, some expectantly, some curiously, one with open amusement, but none fearfully.
'You don't know, do you?' he demanded. 'You poor fools - you don't know that it's a fraud.'
'What is?' asked the floor manager.
'The Trigger. It's a hoax. It doesn't exist - everything you've seen on the news has been staged by the FBI.'
'Oh, please,' a woman said, her voice dripping with disdain.
'It's true,' Mallock said hotly. 'Ever since they took over the ATF, they've been looking for a way to grab our guns. They couldn't find a way to do it legally, so they're trying to scare us into giving them up.'
Someone behind Mallock cleared his throat. 'Young man, have you been keeping up with your medicine?'
Mallock spun around, searching for the offender. The FBI's Section Zero started doping explosives almost two years ago. They've been recruiting Hollywood FX techs for twice that long. Everything that's happened was scripted months in advance by the United Nations.'
'And you know this how?' It was the same voice, and it belonged to a round-faced man with a gleaming pate and a short white beard.
'Do you people think you're so smart that no one could ever figure out what you're up to?' That was met with more laughter, and a cold fury crept up from Mallock's heart to take command of his features. 'You'll find out, in a little while. You'll find out the truth, and then you and me together are going to teach the rest of the world the truth.'
'That's what we try to do here every day,' said one of the woman at the reception desk. 'Maybe you should sit down with one of our counselors and talk out these paranoid conspiracy fantasies.'
It was his turn to laugh - a brittle, cynical laugh. 'Sit down with one of your hypnotists, you mean? Let one of your neurolinguistic programmers work me over? I don't think so,' he said, shaking his head vigorously. 'It's not really your fault if you've been lied to. I feel sorry for you, honestly. But you'll realize when you hear it from your own leader.' He turned on Donald and demanded, 'Why isn't he here? I want an explanation. I want Wilman, now.'
'I don't know why he isn't here. But he said he was coming. I'm sure he'll be here soon,' the floor manager said, his tone placating. 'And, everyone, please - Senator Wilman asked that we cooperate with our visitor. Let's do that without being argumentative or provocative.'
'Fine,' said a tall, slender black woman. 'I'm going to go cooperate from my cubicle. I have a lot of work to do.'
She started to walk away, and Mallock sprang after her. 'Nobody's going anywhere,' he said, grabbing her by the arm. 'Wilman's playing games. I want you all sitting up on the edge of the counter, facing out. You're going to be my shield. Come on -move!'
A few of the others started to comply, but the woman stood her ground and jerked her arm free. 'Honey, it's going to take more juice than you've got to get me to let you look up my skirt.'
'Nettie -' the floor manager said reproachfully.
'Boss, please - can't I just deck him? He laid hands on me -'
'Don't you get it?' Mallock screamed in her face. 'I'm wearing a bomb. I can kill us all, any time I want to - and if I don't start getting some fucking cooperation from you traitors, I'll goddamned well do it. And there aren't any magic rays that can stop me -'
Just then, he heard a pair of loud metallic clicks, and whirled toward them. He saw a well-dressed older man holding one of the front doors open as a SkyEye flew through the opening, followed by a man and a woman wearing Witness bands on their heads and transmitter packs on their upper arms.
'What are you doing?'
Mallock screamed. 'That door's supposed to be locked!'
The well-dressed man turned his way, and Mallock recognized him as Grover Wilman. 'I'm letting the media in. You wanted an audience, didn't you? You wanted to make a statement, right? Well, CNN2 is listening now, and so is Reuters, and StarNews, and Associated Media. Speak your piece.'
The rest of the people in the room were suddenly invisible as furniture to Mallock. He crossed the floor toward Wilman, shedding his flannel shirt and raising his right hand to show the controller taped to the palm. 'You're the one who's going to make a statement. You're going to end this hoax. You're going to admit your part in the conspiracy. You're going to tell the world the truth about the Trigger. Or I'm going to set off this bomb I'm wearing, and the world can read the truth in our mangled bodies. Your choice. Senator. You decide if protecting the lie another five minutes is worth these twenty lives.'
Wilman folded his arms over his chest and shook his head slowly. 'Mr Mallock, someone has been feeding you a lie. The truth is that the Trigger works. The Jammer works even better. That isn't a bomb you're wearing - if it ever was one, it isn't one now.'
'You're a damned liar,' Mallock said, advancing another step. 'Tell them! This is a conspiracy to disarm the American people. President Breland has already made a deal to surrender sovereignty to the United Nations. But you have to take away our weapons before the blue helmets arrive - before the last day of Breland's term. So you cooked up this hoax to trick us into surrendering them. That's the truth, Senator Wilman.'
'Who sold you that bill of goods, Mr Mallock?'
'There was documentation for everything I'm saying on the Patriot Crier Web site. Of course, it wasn't there long - the site was attacked by mites and maggots, and then crashed by a gridlocker. But I imagine you know all about that, since it was your spooks who took it down.'
'You might want to work on developing higher standards of evidence, Mr Mallock. I'm afraid someone's been taking advantage of your gullibility.'
'You can insult me all you want - it won't change the truth. And if I have to kill all of us to get the truth to the people, then it's my obligation as a patriot to do exactly that.'
'Don't delude yourself, Mr Mallock - you're no patriot. You're just another man who's having a hard time dealing with the fact that he's not in charge,' Wilman said, and then looked past Mallock. 'Please return to your duties, everyone. This man poses no threat to us.'
'Stop!' Mallock screamed, raising his right hand high above his head. 'By god, I'll do it - I will!'
'Do what you think you must, then,' said Wilman. Then he turned away as if to leave.
Receive me with mercy, Lord, Mallock prayed silently. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and twisted the actuator.
It took Mallock a full second to realize that his life had continued a full second longer than it should have. Opening his eyes, he stared disbelievingly at the actuator, then reset it to try again.
'Do you need some help, Mr Mallock?'
Mallock sank slowly to his knees, wearing a mask of incredulity and despair. '.He cheated me. Blade cheated me - gave me -' He grabbed at the belt, fumbling with the catch, tearing open one of the pouches. 'What, what is this stuff? Play-Doh? School paste? It was supposed to be ammonium picrate and C-l -'
'It is,' said Wilman, stepping closer. 'But it's been adjusted by our Jammer.'
Shaking his head violently, Mallock said, 'No - no, that can't be-'
'Why not? Because it would make it inconveniently difficult to upset the apple cart?'
'No, I must have done something wrong - a bad lead, the wrong connection -'
The wrong connection is the one you made between weapons and security. Do you really think that those of us who are fighting to drive out firearms love freedom any less than you do, care for our families' safety any less than you do?'
'Your freedom - but what about ours? Your families - but what about ours? You throw us to the wolves to keep yourselves safe -'
'We're trying to muzzle the wolves, Mr Mallock, not feed them,' Wilman said. He offered Mallock his hand to help him up; after a long moment's hesitation, Mallock accepted it. 'If you really want to understand, I have a better answer for you than that.'
Mallock's face wore a scowl, but he quietly said, 'I'm listening.'
'The only thing that keeps society from being a twenty-four-hour-a-day bloodbath is the fact that most men, most of the time, aren't willing to risk everything on a fight which might leave them crippled or dead. And most of the time, even when we do fight, we fight just long enough to settle the matter - somebody yields before it gets past the bruises and black eyes stage.
'We spent millions of years working out sane and survivable rules of conflict resolution - and then five thousand years breaking them by inventing ever-deadlier weapons that can kill more and more efficiently from farther and farther away.
'We're at the point now where all most of us can remember of the rules is, "It's good to be king" - a tragic abridgement. Too many fathers have forgotten the lessons they have to teach their sons, or abandoned their responsibility to impart them - honor to elders, service to the community, duty to the family. And too many men around the world have seized on the mistaken notion that because they can bring down a prince, they deserve to be one.
'You came here with a bomb, intent on destroying me and claiming the power of my celebrity. If I were playing by your rules, I would now be obliged to have you killed, for trying and failing. But I'd like you to have the chance to realize there's another way, a higher ethic to aspire to. So you can go as you came - those D.C. police waiting outside would need my help to charge you with anything, and they won't get it.'
Mallock stole a look through the front doors to the street before answering. 'Do you think this ends it?'
'No. But I think that you can end it - you, and those who believe as you did when you walked in here.'
'Do you think that putting on a show of mercy makes us buddies? Do you think we're going to just accept the way things are?'
'You think of yourself as a religious man, Mr Mallock - do you know the prayer that begins, "God grant me the courage -"'
'I know it,' Mallock said sharply.
'Then you understand that I pray for wisdom, every night,' said Wilman. 'I pray you will, too.'
Evan Stolta was waiting for Wilman in his office when he returned to it.
'Well - how did it play?'
'Awfully well, I thought - even if you got a little preachy at the end,' said Stolta.
Wilman smiled faintly. 'Comes from having had too much time to think about what I'd say. I was beginning to think that no one would ever take the bait, and we'd have to go all the way and hire our own terrorist.'
'You realize that if it ever comes out that we planted that material on the Patriot Crier site -'
'It won't.'
'The media are going to swarm all over this story. I thought you were getting awfully close to taunting him with the truth -"Someone has been feeding you lies", that sort of thing.'
'I might have been enjoying myself just a little too much,'
Wilman admitted. 'But it'll be all right. They won't find our fingerprints at the scene of the crime.'
Stolta shook his head unhappily. 'If he'd managed to get his hands on an exotic, or a dust bomb -'
'Why are you agonizing about this now? It's over. It came out well.'
'I suppose it's because I still don't understand why you were willing to take such risks.'
'That's because we're different kinds of people. Can you see yourself betting a hundred thousand dollars against a million?'
'I don't think so. A hundred thousand dollars would be a very big piece of everything I have.'
'You see? You didn't even ask the odds.'
The odds are irrelevant. My father taught me two rules about gambling - one, only bet on a sure thing. Two, there's no such thing as a sure thing.' Stolta flashed a rueful smile. 'All right, so I'm a careful man by nature. But I d
on't think you've really answered my question.'
'Did you ask a question?'
'I thought I did - why you were willing to risk a down side that would have destroyed twenty years of your work.'
'Ah. That question,' Wilman said, easing into a chair. 'Well, it's true that I was never much of a gambler. I can't stand to sit there passively waiting for the cards to come to me.'
'So why would you just up and decide to play a long shot?'
Wilman shook his head. 'This undertaking is more like combat than gambling, Evan - tactical, not statistical. And more often than not, the worst thing you can do in combat is let yourself think about the odds - especially if they're against you. If you do that, you never go over the top - you never charge the hill - and you never change the odds in your favor. What you do from one minute to the next can change everything.'
'That still doesn't explain why you decided to charge up this hill, at this particular time.'
'You're not going to let this go, are you?' Wilman studied the other man's face for a moment, then added, 'No, I see you're not.' He sighed. 'The truth of the matter is that I'm tired of waiting. I don't know how much time I have left, and I want to see the end of this. So I'm willing to take some chances.' He paused, as though weighing whether he wanted to say more. 'It's not the stuff of heroic legend, but a lot of battles are decided by someone who couldn't stand the waiting any longer.'
I'll bow to your experience,' said Stolta, who had never worn a uniform. 'But, Grover - you don't think that you converted that mark, do you?'
Wilman smiled and shook his head. I'll be happy if I just discouraged him. It's the audience I care about. Speaking of which - let's find out how big it was.'
* * *
28: Not Made for Defeat
'But man is not made for defeat… A man can be destroyed but not defeated.'
- Ernest Hemingway
The walnut block with the bronze emblem of the Missouri State Police on top had rested on John Trent's desk for more than six years. Though awarded to him for 'Public Service' - the KidSafe Firearms Education Program, introduced in the wake of the Truman Middle School shootings - it was less a treasured memory than a useful desk accessory. Not as a paperweight, which the designer might actually have had in mind, but as a front-line weapon in the NAR office's ongoing war with red ants.