These men had come here for a massacre.
Whatever vehicles had transported them, all had been parked somewhere out of sight, though there had also been two massively armed pickup trucks on their side. One of these vehicles lay overturned, the other had crashed headlong into a ditch, and both looked like they’d driven here straight from the set of Mad Max. Each had a belt-fed machine gun mounted in its bed.
Virginia headed back out toward the edge of the yard and knelt down beside one of the dead men there. He’d been shot in the face, and by his posture and the placement of his rifle he’d apparently been killed while firing toward the house from a prone position. Like some of the others he had a U.S.-made light rocket-launcher slung across his back, though he’d never had a chance to fire it.
It all seemed to fit. These marauders had come prepared for a coordinated surprise attack on those inside. They obviously got far more of a fight than they’d bargained for once the shooting had begun.
There’d been a prolonged gun battle then, and it appeared that the Merrick family had won. Whatever had totally destroyed the house and the grounds, though, had happened after the fight was over.
She checked several of the bodies for those distinctive markings she’d seen on the skin of the perpetrators from other regions—that line of tattooed diamonds denoting members of George Pierce’s organization. Some had them and others didn’t, many were burned too badly to tell, but there was more than enough jailhouse white-power ink among them to convince her that they’d all come from the same wicked source.
A man was walking her way and she spoke to him but he took no notice, being so thoroughly absorbed in his iPad that she had to stop him physically to get his attention.
“Are you in charge of this scene?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Who is?”
“Over there.” With a flick of his thumb he indicated a man standing nearer to the remains of the house.
Virginia turned and started that way without wasting another word. As she walked she crossed paths with several soot-covered workers leaving the rubble with salvage in their hands: computer components, hard drives, printers, laptops, and desktop units.
The man who’d been pointed out as the site manager looked up as she approached.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
She showed her ID. “Tell me what happened here.”
He scanned her credentials under his flashlight. “Figuring that out is not my job. Who let you through the roadblock—”
“One more time,” Virginia said. “What happened here?”
The man frowned for a few moments, as though he were performing a block of long division in his head. “Air strike,” he said at length, “on some terrorism suspects.”
“Who ordered it?”
“Who ordered it? Nobody ordered it; it’s procedure. The rules of engagement ordered it. And why the hell are you asking me? I saw your ID, I know where you’re from. You people probably wrote the training manual for all this, and you’re asking me what happened here?”
She felt like putting her fist through something but it wasn’t anyone or anything within her reach right then. “Who was in the house when the strike came down?” she asked.
“We haven’t been through it all yet. Just two people as far as we can tell.”
“Let me see them.”
“I will,” he said, “but there’s not much left to see.”
The bodies he showed her were burned and torn up far beyond any hope of a field identification. She snapped on a pair of thin gloves from her kit and knelt down with the remains to discover what she could.
One thing became absolutely clear after only a few minutes of the grim work. These two bodies by the house were not those of Molly Ross and Thom Hollis. Though in life they’d indeed been a large man and a small woman, both of these people had been much older.
“Where’s everyone else?” Virginia asked. “I’m told over twenty people might have lived here, and somebody defended this place against an army of white-supremacist goons just a little while ago.”
“Don’t know anything about that,” the man replied. “Wasn’t part of my briefing.”
But they must have been here, she thought. They must have escaped after the initial attack but before the air strike had come, and someone had decided that fact was to be kept quiet.
She stayed where she was, pretending to be performing a further examination though there was little more she could learn from those remains. She needed time to think.
Several years earlier, Virginia Ward had decided that the Big Picture was something she simply wouldn’t acknowledge anymore. She believed she’d earned the right to retreat in this way. In fact, she’d paid for that right with her own flesh and blood. Haven’t I done enough for my country? That’s how she’d rationalized her withdrawal from the larger issues.
On the ground was where she’d chosen to live, face-to-face with good and evil, where a limited form of justice could always be done and she could see it done with her own two eyes. There was a perfect clarity in such small-scale engagements. No matter who she was working for or what their ultimate objectives might be, at least she could always know and do what was right in that moment of truth.
It had worked just fine for her that way, but always with one nagging flaw: all the while a war had been under way, right here on her home soil, and she’d been involved only in its smallest details. The question that she’d somehow managed to keep at bay now loomed large.
Whose side was she on?
From everything credible Virginia had seen and all the data she’d collected, it seemed clear that Molly Ross and her people had never done anything but fight for their country by seeking the truth, albeit at times with tactics that bordered on the unlawful. In a way she’d taken up the role that the traditional press had long since sold out and forsaken. She’d made some very powerful enemies as a result, all the way to the top.
And the family that had lived in this place, the Merricks, they’d been known as pillars of their community until the recent smears against them had begun. Their only crime had apparently been material support of a legitimately patriotic cause that was dangerous and unpopular in the current climate.
And Noah Gardner was a good young man who’d never had a direction—he’d been a fellow bystander—and had finally found himself only when he’d gotten caught in the middle of a battle he was only now beginning to understand.
Those people were on one side of the war. And then there was the other.
George Pierce and his men obviously needed no further condemnation; their heinous vision of the future was crystal clear. But despite his FBI nickname, Pierce was no real general. He was only a puppet at best, one of many, and someone else was up there above him, funding, supporting, and pulling the strings. It was obvious to her now that Warren Landers must be a player behind the recently orchestrated turmoil, but he wasn’t at the top, either.
Arthur Gardner, Landers’s employer, had actually been Virginia’s original contact in this matter. If Gardner was the ringmaster of this whole thing then why would he bring her in? He must have known that, given her reputation, she might uncover the truth. Was that what he’d wanted? Could it be that he’d come face-to-face with the same decision she was now facing, and that he’d made a bold choice of his own?
Thom Hollis was still the only wild card in her mind. With so much deception at work she still wasn’t sure of who or what he really was.
And that was that; she made her decision right then. For better or worse, Virginia Ward had finally acknowledged the war and chosen her side.
She motioned for the fellow in charge to come nearer.
“What have you got?” he asked.
“Those two fugitives,” she said, “Molly Ross and Thom Hollis?”
“Yeah.”
Virginia did her best to never tell a lie, but in her line of work, sometimes there was simply no sound alternative.
“In my opinion this is them, right here,” she said, handing him her card. “Congratulations, your air strike killed them both. The next time you report in you’d better tell that to your boss, on my authority.”
• • •
Virginia hadn’t been completely clear on her next steps, but when she returned to her car and checked her mail there was some shocking news that told her exactly where she needed to go.
Arthur Gardner was dead.
A private memorial gathering had been scheduled on the grounds of a highly exclusive club on the West Coast. It was set for the following day. The late Mr. Gardner’s son would of course be in attendance, as might other players as yet unseen. And if Molly Ross was still alive and on the run again—and if she was planning something like what Virginia was beginning to believe she was—then she might see this development as an opportunity to get in touch with Noah, and maybe to pull him into her service once again.
Virginia opened up a browser on her tablet and quickly made reservations for the next available flight to Sonoma County Airport, just a few miles east of the funeral’s strange location.
Chapter 44
Noah had pledged to Ira Gershon that if he ever got a chance to leave that Denver compound he’d take his two coworkers along with him. At that time he hadn’t believed there would ever be such an opportunity, and yet here they were—a promise is a promise. So when he’d been granted a travel pass to attend his father’s memorial service, Noah had insisted that both Ira and Lana be allowed to accompany him, for moral support from his only friends in captivity.
Apparently even the most callous of deskbound bureaucrats has a hard time ignoring the wishes of the bereaved, especially when the request is delivered through the renowned attorney of a powerful family.
Formerly powerful, that is; the death of Arthur Gardner marked the end of the line for his brief dynasty, and with all due respect, Noah thought, good riddance to it all.
And so the flight to northern California found the four of them seated in the executive cabin of a small private jet—Noah, Ira Gershon, Lana Somin, and old friend Ellen Davenport—with four security guards buckled in behind them. Except for the crew, the rest of the plane was empty and so it had been a very quiet ride.
Toward the end, as the fasten-seat-belt light came on, Ira leaned to him and spoke in a hushed voice.
“Thank you for this, again,” Ira said. “Not so much for me, but for her.” He looked toward young Lana as he said this. She was in the far window seat, earbuds in her ears and her music playing loud enough that its muffled beats could be heard across the aisle. Her hand was to the glass and her gaze was intent and distant and directed outside. She looked as though perhaps she’d never seen her home planet from this altitude before.
“It might seem like a little temporary freedom but let’s not get carried away,” Noah said. “It’s just a few hours, and then we’re turning around and going right back to the grind again.”
“You never know what’s in store.” Ira looked at him. “And I realize your upbringing couldn’t have been ideal, I do. But still, you’ve lost your father, and I’m sorry about that.”
“Thanks.” That was one way to put it, that his upbringing hadn’t been ideal. In similar terms the last voyage of the Hindenburg hadn’t been without its hiccups. But though Noah was surprised to admit it, there was a trace of sorrow in him. His father did have his moments, and despite everything else those moments are what you remember when you finally realize there’ll never be another.
Even before he’d stumbled into his star-crossed involvement with Molly Ross last year, Noah was certain that he’d been a disappointment in many ways. The biggest of these had probably been his complete lack of ambition in the field his father had once hoped he’d pursue. It wasn’t public relations, it was politics that Dad had pushed him toward, and Noah had never felt any interest in that hard life whatsoever.
This thought brought to mind that wacky note that Ira had given him the night before, the one that had contained that bizarre r reagan nonsense. He’d destroyed the note, of course; its contents could be incriminating for both of them. He hadn’t forgotten it, though.
“You know, Reagan was far from a perfect man,” Ira said, as if he’d been sitting there reading Noah’s mind like an in-flight magazine. “Even his admirers admit to that. He didn’t have the background most men in government have, he wasted a lot of years in what some would call a frivolous profession, he was a liberal Democrat for a while, he was a big fan of FDR and the New Deal even when he was old enough to know better.
“But flaws and all, he had a gift that his country needed, and he was brave enough to use it. He was good with people, he had those skills just like his father, but he got his heart and his vision from his mother. And it was a simple thing that he did, really. It didn’t take a genius, just the right ideas and the right man at the right time. When a lot of us had lost our faith in America, he found a way to lead us to see the dream again.”
“But that isn’t me,” Noah said.
“And how do you know that?”
“I’m not a politician—”
“Neither was he, at your age. You’ve got time. Hell, when he was twelve years older than you he was still best known as the star of Bedtime for Bonzo.”
“Look, thank you for those videos of my mom, that meant a lot to me. And I see what you’re saying, I do, even though it’s more than a little crazy. But believe me, you’re trying to pin your hopes on the wrong guy. That business in your note, with the letters in my name? I’m sorry, but it’s meaningless. You know that guy Reince Priebus, the front man for the Republican National Committee? If you take all the vowels out of his name it spells out ‘RNC PR BS.’ Get it? I know it would be fun to believe that’s some hidden message, but it’s just a coincidence.”
“Think what you like,” Ira said. “As I said, you’ve got time. All I hope is that if you ever get another chance to make a real difference, you’ll find the courage to take it.”
• • •
From the point where the limo let them off there was still quite a walk through the wilderness to reach the site where Arthur Gardner’s memorial service was to be held. The rocky path wound through thickets of brush and stands of soaring redwoods to a timber-beam bridge that seemed to mark the end of the journey toward a place called Gaia Point. These were the secluded meeting grounds of the only club his dad had ever joined, the Ordo Seclorum.
That name they’d chosen means the order of the ages, so yeah, the membership had quite a high opinion of themselves.
Noah had been there once before at some father-son retreat back in his early teens, and he hadn’t enjoyed the experience. It wasn’t a funeral then, but a sort of after-party to the club’s regular annual summer meeting. Once a year they all traveled here for a secretive gathering of the supposed cream of the crop from the intertwined worlds of politics, media, entertainment, commerce, old money, and the military-industrial complex.
The motto of the club was “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here.” This was a warning that crass networking and shop talk were strictly prohibited lest the violators spoil everyone’s fun. These titans were here to relax among their own, to smoke fine pre-embargo Cubans, to get roaring drunk and carouse, to occasionally run around buck naked, and to take a leak at the base of a two-thousand-year-old tree if they felt the urge. They came here to be themselves, in other words, with no fear of judgment from the lower classes.
Despite the posted ban on talking business this was nevertheless one of the places where the really big deals got done. The Manhattan Project had been planned in the central clubhouse, as had the wholesale cooperative thievery that led to the current worldwide financial crisis. Presidents were groomed and anointed here, scams hatched, cartels and monopolies formed, allies and enemies chosen, and wars approved. Once those decisions were made it often fell to men like Arthur Gardner to go forth to beat the drums and make the magic happen. That’s why his memorial was bein
g held in this place; it was one of the few environments on earth where his greatest accomplishments could be openly discussed and appreciated.
As they walked they passed into a clearing, into full view of a crystal lake with the four-story, moss-covered statue of a giant watchful owl enshrined behind a stone altar on the other shore.
“I always thought this place was just a myth,” Ellen said.
“I really wish it was,” Noah replied.
Chapter 45
With the exception of some perky young servers and the top-shelf call girls brought in by the busload to service these old reprobates, women were strictly forbidden from the main property. As a result the female members of Noah’s group were escorted to one of the more remote and comfortable cabins to wait.
Ira chose to stay behind with the women and their guards as Noah left unescorted for the gathering by the lakeside.
There were world leaders in the crowd, past, present, and future, and many faces known from their regular presence in the news. There were also men familiar to Noah only because of his past work on their behalf. They didn’t wish to be known but many of them were far more influential than those who craved the limelight. Though much of their scheming was focused on the United States, the majority of them lived elsewhere, being citizens only to the extent that such status could benefit their portfolio.
His father’s body wasn’t present, just a gilded vessel containing his ashes. These were to be scattered later in accordance with a provision in his will. The urn had been placed center stage on a pedestal beside an amplified speaker’s podium, and a number of distinguished-looking gentlemen were assembled on the dais to deliver a final send-off. The mood seemed to be light, even jovial, like the prelude to a roast at the Friars Club.
An usher took Noah to a row near the front and pointed toward a seat that had a place card bearing his name. In the chair next to this one sat an elderly man he vaguely recognized. Their eyes met and after a moment’s thought he remembered that face, though it had been a number of years since he’d seen it. Noah walked over to where this man was cheerfully tapping the cushion of the empty chair by his side.