The Silicon Dagger, Page 2

  “Gottler has gripes of his own against the status quo. though I could never pin him down on exactly what they are. He's as keen as they come. He was wonderfully warm to me. so cordial he almost alarmed me. But he's a wild card. He cultivates dissidents. One is Stuart McAdam. When McAdam organized his militia. Gottler paid for uniforms and rifles, and after Stuart was convicted, he campaigned to get him out of prison.

  “All that may make the county look like a madhouse, but I did meet one sane man. He's Cass Pepperlake. owner and editor of a little weekly, the Freeman. His masthead reads 'The Truth Can Make Men Free." but he says he finds too few people ready for the truth. He warned me that my book had pretty well erased my welcome in the county.

  “I trust him, but I met another man whose ambition troubled me. Kit Carson Moorhawk, a little man with big ideas. The son of a miner, he got his law degree and made a fortune when he helped a client get patent rights to a process for clean-burning high-sulfur coal. He lived high till his luck turned, built the Moorhawk Tower in the middle of town, married a beauty queen, bought a stable in the Blue Grass country, raced a winner at Churchill Downs.

  “Till Gottler turned his luck, Gottler’s bank owns a coal company that beat Moorhawk in a long patent fight. He lost everything: his stable and his tower and his mansion on the horse farm. Gottler lives in the mansion now. Moorhawk’s wife went to Florida and sued for alimony he can’t pay. The IRS is after him for back taxes. He hates them and hates the courts and hates the whole national establishment, big business and big government.

  “Yet I like him, in spite of myself. His misfortunes are not entirely his own fault. He has charisma and aspirations to fit a bigger man. In the last election, he ran for the senate as a Libertarian. Defeated, of course, but he’s not finished. He hates the past, and he has dreams that could make him dangerous. If our nation is a powder keg, Moorhawk is the match that could set it off.”

  Marion had pieced that much of the mangled printout back together.

  “. . . anomie.” I found the words on the copy of another torn, black-spattered page. “Confusion, depression, despair, and a paradox that makes me wonder. The common man has always been at the mercy of the ruling few who commanded technology. It’s been true from the stone axe down to the H-bomb, but it’s a different story now, with information technology free to every man who can run a computer. That’s the paradox. Suddenly we all have the means of power in our reach. It ought to set us free, but we’re afraid of it, afraid other men will use it against us because they’re afraid of us. It’s a threat to the status quo, to the old world order, on a wider arena than McAdam County.”

  I frowned over that and the other mangled scraps till my head was aching. Finally I pushed them all aside and went to bed, wondering if I had overlooked some clue. Of all the men and maybe women in the county nursing private discontents or grudges, who might have feared my brother and been desperate enough to seek out the technology to build a letter bomb? I went to sleep with no idea.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE POLICE CAME back next morning, a federal agent with them. They searched the crime scene again, photographed it, removed the yellow tape. Special Agent Botman was a tall gray man with shrewd black eyes in a pale hard face. He kept me in my own office, pausing now and then to answer the beep of a muffled pocket phone as he grilled me about Alden and my research job. His flat-voiced persistence finally vexed me.

  “Alden never told me all that much,” I protested. “He kept his secrets for his books or the infonet. Most of my own work was done right here in this room, reading proof on his manuscripts and handling correspondence. I did bits of background research for him at the university and in the Library of Congress, but I’ve never been to McAdam County. Or even to Kentucky, except for one summer vacation, when I cruised from the Falls of the Ohio down to Cairo in an outboard motorboat with a college friend.”

  He shrugged and kept me there with pointless inquiries about my life and my family and my schooling, till the police came to say

  they were through. Still in Alden’s office, they gathered up their notes and prepared to go.

  “Sorry we haven’t got further,” Sergeant Hammond told Marion. “But you can see the problems. We’ve found nothing promising. A few bomb fragments. Bits of a nine-volt battery. Pieces of plastic and aluminum foil. A scrap of paper with a possible Kentucky postmark. And one odd thing—”

  He paused, with a puzzled frown.

  “Something you’d never expect. Shreds of an unusual vegetable fiber mixed with the fragments. We’ve had the lab look at them. Bits of an oak acorn, so they say, shattered by the explosive. You say you knew about no acorns in the room.” He stopped again, peering at her till she nodded. “Why would anybody put an acorn in a bomb?”

  She shook her head.

  “No sense to it.” He shrugged and stood up. “That’s about it. Nothing we can move on, except maybe the postmark. We’ll send everything to the forensic lab and keep the file open.”

  While they were muttering their awkward words of sympathy and apology for troubling her, Botman drew me aside.

  “Mr. Barstow, I must ask you to come downtown with me.” His tone was civil enough, but also commanding. “Director Garlesh wants to see you.”

  That astonished me, but he gave me no time to ask why. In his car, he spoke briefly again on his shielded phone and drove in silence to the new FBI center on Constitution Avenue. A silent elevator shot us to the top floor. I waited with an armed guard in the anteroom till a sallow-faced male secretary called me into the director’s big bare office and sat down at a silent keyboard in the comer of the room, looking poised to record everything we said.

  Bella Garlesh was a thick-set, ham-faced woman with heavy jet-black eyebrows and a low-pitched gravel voice that might have been a man’s. She sat stiffly erect behind a huge bare desk in front of a wall hung with enlarged photos of herself at official events.

  “Clayton Barstow?”

  I nodded.

  “I regret your brother’s death. For many reasons.” Scanning me with narrow, steel-colored eyes, she left me wondering till her next words startled me. “Did you know he was reporting to us?”

  “He wouldn’t!” I blinked into her wide blank face. “That would have ruined him, if anybody knew.”

  “We agreed to keep it secret. He was never an official agent. Never took an oath or accepted funds. We can’t give him public credit for his sacrifice, but he knew the cost and willingly took his risks.” She paused with a solemn nod at the seal of the bureau on the wall across the room. “Your brother did perform a significant national service, Mr. Barstow. I think he died for it.”

  “I don’t believe—” I shook my head. “His whole career depended on respect for his sources. He’d never break his word.” “Alden Kirk was a loyal American.” She let the words float for a moment. “Loyal, and deeply troubled by all he was uncovering. His infonet articles revealed a disturbing state of affairs. His book was even more alarming. We asked him for confidential reports on matters he considered too sensitive for publication.”

  “You say he agreed?”

  “A reluctant compromise.” Her heavy shoulders twitched. “He never broke his word. I think not to anybody. Yet he did confirm that he was on the trail of something grave. Something that made him willing to bend his professional rules enough to give us useful help.”

  Shocked at that, trying to grasp it, I had time to trace the dark shadow of mustache across her lip. Her colorless eyes fastened on me, narrowed to unreadable slits.

  “Did you know he had had wind of a group that was plotting actual armed insurrection?”

  She waited, grimly silent, till I spoke.

  “All I know is what he published. He didn’t compromise his sources, even with me.”

  “He hadn’t got to the bottom of it,” she said. “All he ever reported was hints and hearsay, but they were enough to disturb

  him. And to alarm us, when we take them with the whole atm
osphere of rebellion that worried him. Enough to concern the National Security Agency and President Higgins when our reports went on to them.”

  She paused to see how I was taking it,

  “Something else.” Her cold stare grew sharper. “Did he ever mention rumors of a weapon? Some group working to develop an actual super-weapon?”

  “Something atomic?” I groped for something that might make sense. “Maybe stolen plutonium?”

  “We discussed that.” She shrugged off plutonium. “Your brother thought it was something new. Perhaps based on the new information technologies. He was never sure. And now—” Her lips set hard. “His death is a crippling loss.”

  A loss perhaps to the bureau, yet her blunt voice held no hint of personal regret.

  “If you can give us any kind of clue—” She had paused again, her steely eyes as narrow and intent as if she were accusing me of mailing the bomb myself.

  “I can’t,” I said. “He wouldn’t have mentioned it to me. He never wanted to risk me or his family.” I searched her wide poker face. “So you think these plotters killed him?”

  “That could be.” She shrugged, her dull voice suddenly harder. “We don’t know. We do have other information that seems to confirm it: militia activities, anti-government sermons from a dissident pastor, infonet traffic in codes we haven’t broken. There’s also big money banked, from sources we can’t trace. Rumors of secret research at CyberSoft that could shake up digital information technology. We were pressing your brother for more than he ever gave us. Names. Plans. Locations. Anything about an actual weapon.” She bent closer toward me. “We were hoping you would know more than you’ve been able to tell us, but I believe there’s still a role for you.”

  “For me?” That took my breath. “I don’t see anything—”

  She raised an imperative hand to stop me.

  “As Mr. Botman reports of their last contact, your brother wanted to end his connection with the Bureau. He had picked up fresh hints of a criminal group—with no names for anybody he called it a shadow gang—organized to fund the would-be rebels. They were only hints, but he said McAdam County had got too hot for him since his book came out. Even the innocents, he said, were afraid to talk. Mr. Botman wanted him to send you there to carry on for him.”

  “Me? I’ve told you—”

  She halted me again.

  “Your brother refused. Indignantly, Botman says. He didn’t want you there in what he saw as an ugly situation. The bomb seems to prove that his concerns were justified, but we’ve worked out something that ought to protect you.”

  I’d caught my breath to speak, but she waved her thick-fingered hand.

  “Here’s our strategy for you. The Barstow name will be your shield. In college, you had a history minor. We’ll arrange your admission to McAdam College as a graduate student doing research for a thesis on the history of McAdam county. That will be an adequate cover that betrays no connection to Alden Kirk. It should allow you to move freely, meeting people and gathering facts.

  “What do you think?”

  What could I think? She had turned my whole world upside down. I sat there feeling dazed, staring blankly at her impatient face and the photos of her triumphs till she spoke again. She raised her voice.

  “President Higgins has read your brother’s book. Our briefings have left him deeply anxious for the safety of the nation. If those traitors are actually building a weapon and hatching rebellion, he wants them crushed.

  “ ‘Now!’ He’s got a temper. He was yelling at us. ‘Squash ’em! If it takes a nuke!’ ”

  “Why me?” I asked her when I found wits enough to speak.

  “I’m not Alden. I don’t have his know-how or his experience or his contacts.”

  “The Bureau’s got the know-how. God knows we’ve got the experience, though it has got us nowhere in McAdam County. People are hostile to our agents and too often able to spot them. Even the local lawmen aren’t very helpful. That’s why we’re sending you.”

  “I’ve not agreed—”

  “You will.” Her voice had a flat finality. “Though not in any official way. You will work as your brother did, with nothing on paper to connect you to the Bureau. That ought to protect you, but it means we can give you no help or recognition if you run into trouble.”

  A spy mission was nothing I wanted. It had hit me too hard for any quick response. The secretary coughed discreetly. I shook my head and sat peering blankly around the big room, looking for any way out. All I saw was bookcases filled with dark-bound, gold-stamped legal volumes, an American flag on a staff standing beside them, the big photos of the director’s bureaucratic victories.

  “Think about it, Mr. Barstow.” Her voice had sharpened. “Think about your country. Think about your brother. Mr. Botman will call you in the morning.”

  That was all. She waved a commanding hand at the secretary. He rose to show me out. Another agent drove me home.

  I took a long bike ride that afternoon. I’d loved Alden. I knew the importance of his work, and the mission seemed a little less appalling as I rode. The autumn sky was brilliantly blue, with fallen leaves scattering the paths. Yet I had no eyes for the splendor of the turning trees. I came back feeling that my life had tilted. Suddenly I wanted no more of the comfortable sameness of the world I had known. My dread of the mission was fading into wondering expectations.

  Marion was out, trying to settle her future with Alden’s agents and editors. I spent the rest of the afternoon reviewing his laptop files. Most of them were pointless now, but I circled the names of

  people I might hope to meet. Trying to imagine anything I might do where the federal agents had failed, I drew a blank. She asked me in for dinner. Afterward, when Angela was in bed and Tim had gone up to study, she made fresh coffee and we sat in the den.

  “What now?” she asked me. “Have they got anything?”

  “A few bomb fragments. Part of a Kentucky postmark. No fingerprints. Nothing, really.”

  “What did you find in the file?”

  “Nothing the cops didn’t. Alden was turning over rocks, the way he always did. He found good citizens, and uncovered scorpions. Maybe one vicious enough to sting him, but there's nothing to tell us which one.*’

  “So the case is closed.” With a long sad sigh, she set her cup down. "His life gone for nothing.”

  “Not yet.” That brought light back to her eyes. “Not quite.”

  I told her about his reports to the Bureau.

  “Alden?” She seemed as deeply shocked as I had been. “He was no spy!”

  “Not willingly. Garlesh said he’d felt he had to do it. For America.”

  “So he was a hero?*’ she whispered. "If it's true.”

  “Garlesh says it is. Not that she intends to tell anybody else.” Her head sank for half a minute, and then she looked back at me.

  "So they want you to take his place?”

  “Not in any official way. I swore no oath. They will cover certain essential expenses, but that’s all. No badge, no papers, no pay.” “So you’re all alone?” She made a quick little grimace of pain. “No support from anybody? No help if you run into trouble? They’ll just disown you, leave you to the wolves?”

  “I suppose so. It’s no more than the risk Alden took.”

  “Why go?” Her voice was sharp with protest. “You can’t bring him back.”

  “They want me to carry on his work. Reach his sources. Look

  for the trouble spots that troubled him. Report whatever I can find. I don’t like it, but I must try. For Alden’s sake.”

  She wiped her eyes and looked at me. “You think you can finish this new book?”

  “Later, maybe.” I stopped to think about it. “He’d made a good start. I have his notes and drafts of the opening chapters. But all that’s for later. The bureau thinks he was about to uncover some kind of plot he never really knew much about. They want me to finish his job.”

  “Clay, you shouldn’t!
” She was suddenly my older sister, giving wise advice in an anxious voice. “You aren’t trained for it. I don’t want you dead, Alden is enough.”

  “I want to know who killed him.”

  “If you must go.” She shrugged, with a sad little grimace. “If you must.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE TELEPHONE RANG the next morning while we were still eating breakfast. Marion answered and handed the instrument to me.

  “Barstow?” Agent Botman’s hard flat voice, with a note of emotionless authority. “I’ll see you in your own office at nine, to discuss our preparations for your duty in McAdam County. Can you be there?”

  It was more command than question. I said I’d be there. He knocked on my office door at nine, precisely. A tall gaunt man in a gray business suit, he wore a narrow black mustache in a narrow, sallow face.

  “Thank you, Barstow.” He gripped my hand briefly and seated himself as if he owned the place. “Director Garlesh is grateful for your service to the Bureau and the nation. She regrets that you can never be rewarded.”

  I sat down at my desk.

  “I am going to Kentucky,” I told him. “But not for the Bureau.

  I want to know who killed my brother. If I do work for the Bureau, what can you do for me?”

  “Nothing.” He was crisply impatient. “Not for you as an individual. Of course we still have a very active interest in your brother’s case, and in all the elements of unrest he was investigating in McAdam County. At the moment, unfortunately, we have few promising leads. That’s why the director has asked you to undertake the mission.”

  “As if I’d had a choice.” Muttering, I added, “I don’t want a letter bomb.”

  “Better watch your mail.” He spoke without humor, dark eyes shrewdly squinting. “There is risk. The risk your brother took. The director hopes to keep you safer. She has created a special high-security unit for you. We are arranging your admission to McAdam College as graduate student in history. That should give you adequate cover. Here are your instructions.”