30
HARLAND WEBSTER GOT back to the Hoover Building
from Colorado at three o’clock Thursday afternoon, East Coast time.
He went straight to his office suite and checked his messages. Then
he buzzed his secretary.
“Car,” he said.
He went down in his private elevator to the garage
and met his driver. They walked over to the limousine and got
in.
“White House,” Webster said.
“You seeing the President, sir?” the driver asked,
surprised.
Webster scowled forward at the back of the guy’s
head. He wasn’t seeing the President. He didn’t see the President
very often. He didn’t need reminding of that, especially not by a
damn driver sounding all surprised that there even was such a
possibility.
“Attorney General,” he said. “White House is where
she is right now.”
His driver nodded silently. Cursed himself for
opening his big mouth. Drove on smoothly and unobtrusively. The
distance between the Hoover Building and the White House was
exactly sixteen hundred yards. Less than a mile. Not even far
enough to click over the little number in the speedometer on the
limousine’s dash. It would have been quicker to walk. And cheaper.
Firing up the cold V-8 and hauling all that bulletproof plating
sixteen hundred yards really ate up the gas. But the Director
couldn’t walk anywhere. Theory was he’d get assassinated. Fact was,
there were probably about eight people in the city who would
recognize him. Just another D.C. guy in a gray suit and a quiet
tie. Anonymous. Another reason old Webster was never in the best of
tempers, his driver thought.
WEBSTER KNEW THE Attorney General pretty well.
She was his boss, but his familiarity with her did not come from
their face-to-face meetings. It came instead from the background
checks the Bureau had run prior to her confirmation. Webster
probably knew more about her than anybody else on earth did. Her
parents and friends and ex-colleagues all knew their own separate
perspectives. Webster had put all of those together and he knew the
whole picture. Her Bureau file took up as much disk space as a
short novel. Nothing at all in the file made him dislike her. She
had been a lawyer, faintly radical at the start of her career,
built up a decent practice, grabbed a judgeship, never annoyed the
law enforcement community, without ever becoming a rabid
foaming-at-the-mouth pain in the ass. An ideal appointment, sailed
through her confirmation with no problem at all. Since then, she
had proven to be a good boss and a great ally. Her name was Ruth
Rosen and the only problem Webster had with her was that she was
twelve years younger than him, very good-looking, and a whole lot
more famous than he was.
His appointment was for four o’clock. He found
Rosen alone in a small room, two floors and eight Secret Service
agents away from the Oval Office. She greeted him with a strained
smile and an urgent inclination of her elegant head.
“Holly?” she asked.
He nodded. He gave her the spread, top to bottom.
She listened hard and ended up pale, with her lips clamped
tight.
“We totally sure this is where she is?” she
asked.
He nodded again.
“Sure as we can be,” he said.
“OK,” she said. “Wait there, will you?”
She left the small room. Webster waited. Ten
minutes, then twenty, then a half hour. He paced. He gazed out of
the window. He opened the door and glanced out into the corridor. A
Secret Serviceman glanced back at him. Took a pace forward. Webster
shook his head in answer to the question the guy hadn’t asked and
closed the door again. Just sat down and waited.
Ruth Rosen was gone an hour. She came back in and
closed the door. Then she just stood there, a yard inside the small
room, pale, breathing hard, some kind of shock on her face. She
said nothing. Just let it dawn on him that there was some kind of a
big problem happening.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m out of the loop on this,” she said.
“What?” he asked again.
“They took me out of the loop,” she said. “My
reactions were wrong. Dexter is handling it from here.”
“Dexter?” he repeated. Dexter was the President’s
White House Chief of Staff. A political fixer from the old school.
As hard as a nail, and half as sentimental. But he was the main
reason the President was sitting there in the Oval Office with a
big majority of the popular vote.
“I’m very sorry, Harland,” Ruth Rosen said. “He’ll
be here in a minute.”
He nodded sourly and she went back out the door and
left him to wait again.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN the rest of the FBI and
the Field Office in Butte, Montana, is similar to the relationship
between Moscow and Siberia, proverbially speaking. It’s a standard
Bureau joke. Screw up, the joke goes, and you’ll be working out of
Butte tomorrow. Like some kind of an internal exile. Like KGB
foul-ups were supposedly sent out to write parking tickets in
Siberia.
But on that Thursday July third, the Field Office
in Butte felt like the center of the universe for McGrath and
Milosevic and Brogan. It felt like the most desirable posting in
the world. None of the three had ever been there before. Not on
business, not on vacation. None of them would have ever considered
going there. But now they were peering out of the Air Force
helicopter like kids on their way to the Magic Kingdom. They were
looking at the landscape below and swiveling their gaze northwest
toward where they knew Yorke County was hiding under the distant
hazy mist.
The Resident Agent at Butte was a competent Bureau
veteran still reeling after a personal call from Harland Webster
direct from the Hoover Building. His instructions were to drive the
three Chicago agents to his office, brief them on the way, get them
installed, rent them a couple of jeeps, and then get the hell out
and stay the hell out until further notice. So he was waiting at
the Silver Bow County airport when the dirty black Air Force
chopper clattered in. He piled the agents into his government Buick
and blasted back north to town.
“Distances are big around here,” he said to
McGrath. “Don’t ever forget that. We’re still two hundred forty
miles shy of Yorke. On our roads, that’s four hours, absolute
minimum. Me, I’d get some mobile units and move up a lot closer.
Basing yourselves down here won’t help you much, not if things
start to turn bad up there.”
McGrath nodded.
“You hear from Jackson again?” he asked.
“Not since Monday,” the Resident Agent said. “The
dynamite thing.”
“Next time he calls, he speaks to me, OK?” McGrath
said.
The Butte guy nodded. Fished one-handed in his
pocket while he drove. Pulled out a small radio receiver. McGrath
took it from him. Put it into his own pocket.
“Be my guest,” the Butte guy said. “I’m on
vacation. Webster’s orders. But don’t hold your breath. Jackson
doesn’t call often. He’s very cautious.”
The Field Office was just a single room, second
floor of a two-floor municipal building. A desk, two chairs, a
computer, a big map of Montana on the wall, a lot of filing space,
and a ringing telephone. McGrath answered it. He listened and
grunted. Hung up and waited for the Resident Agent to take the
hint.
“OK, I’m gone,” the old guy said. “Silver Bow Jeep
will bring you a couple of vehicles over. Anything else you guys
need?”
“Privacy,” Brogan said.
The old guy nodded and glanced around his office.
Then he was gone.
“Air Force has put a couple of spy planes up
there,” McGrath said. “Satellite gear is coming in by road. The
General and his aide are coming here. Looks like they’re going to
be our guests for the duration. Can’t really argue with that,
right?”
Milosevic was studying the map on the wall.
“Wouldn’t want to argue with that,” he said. “We’re
going to need some favors. You guys ever seen a worse-looking
place?”
McGrath and Brogan joined him in front of the map.
Milosevic’s finger was planted on Yorke. Ferocious green and brown
terrain boiled all around it.
“Four thousand square miles,” Milosevic said. “One
road and one track.”
“They chose a good spot,” Brogan said.
“I SPOKE WITH the President,” Dexter said.
He sat back and paused. Webster stared at him. What
the hell else would he have been doing? Pruning the Rose Garden?
Dexter was staring back. He was a small guy, burned up, dark,
twisted, the way a person gets to look after spending every minute
of every day figuring every possible angle.
“And?” Webster said.
“There are sixty-six million gun owners in this
country,” Dexter said.
“So?” Webster asked.
“Our analysts think they all share certain basic
sympathies,” Dexter said.
“What analysts?” Webster said. “What
sympathies?”
“There was a poll,” Dexter said. “Did we send you a
copy? One adult in five would be willing to take up arms against
the government, if strictly necessary.”
“So?” Webster asked again.
“There was another poll,” Dexter said. “A simple
question, to be answered intuitively, from the gut. Who’s in the
right, the government or the militias?”
“And?” Webster said.
“Twelve million Americans sided with the militias,”
Dexter said.
Webster stared at him. Waited for the
message.
“So,” Dexter said. “Somewhere between twelve and
sixty-six million voters.”
“What about them?” Webster asked.
“And where are they?” Dexter asked back. “You won’t
find many of them in D.C. or New York or Boston or L.A. It’s a
skewed sample. Some places they’re a tiny minority. They look like
weirdos. But other places, they’re a majority. Other places,
they’re absolutely normal, Harland.”
“So?” he said.
“Some places they control counties,” Dexter said.
“Even states.”
Webster stared at him.
“God’s sake, Dexter, this isn’t politics,” he said.
“This is Holly.”
Dexter paused and glanced around the small White
House room. It was painted a subtle off-white. It had been painted
and repainted that same subtle color every few years, while
Presidents came and went. He smiled a connoisseur’s smile.
“Unfortunately, everything’s politics,” he
said.
“This is Holly,” Webster said again.
Dexter shook his head. Just a slight
movement.
“This is emotion,” he said. “Think about innocent
little emotional words, like patriot, resistance, crush,
underground, struggle, oppression, individual, distrust, rebel,
revolt, revolution, rights. There’s a certain majesty to those
words, don’t you think? In an American context?”
Webster shook his head doggedly.
“Nothing majestic about kidnapping women,” he said.
“Nothing majestic about illegal weapons, illegal armies, stolen
dynamite. This isn’t politics.”
Dexter shook his head again. The same slight
movement.
“Things have a way of becoming politics,” he said.
“Think about Ruby Ridge. Think about Waco, Harland. That wasn’t
politics, right? But it became politics pretty damn soon. We hurt
ourselves with maybe sixty-six million voters there. And we were
real dumb about it. Big reactions are what these people want. They
figure that harsh reprisals will upset people, bring more people
into their fold. And we gave them big reactions. We fueled their
fire. We made it look like big government was just about itching to
crush the little guy.”
The room went silent.
“The polls say we need a better approach,” Dexter
said. “And we’re trying to find one. We’re trying real hard. So how
would it look if the White House stopped trying just because it
happens to be Holly who’s involved? And right now? The Fourth of
July weekend? Don’t you understand anything? Think about it,
Harland. Think about the reaction. Think about words like
vindictive, self-interested, revenge, personal, words like that,
Harland. Think about what words like those are going to do to our
poll numbers.”
Webster stared at him. The off-white walls crushed
in on him.
“This is about Holly, for God’s sake,” he said.
“This is not about poll numbers. And what about the General? Has
the President said all this to him?”
Dexter shook his head.
“I’ve said it all to him,” he said. “Personally. A
dozen times. He’s been calling every hour, on the hour.”
Webster thought: now the President won’t even take
Johnson’s calls anymore. Dexter has really fixed him.
“And?” he asked.
Dexter shrugged.
“I think he understands the principle,” he said.
“But naturally, his judgment is kind of colored right now. He’s not
a happy man.”
Webster lapsed into silence. Started thinking hard.
He was a smart enough bureaucrat to know if you can’t beat them,
you join them. You force yourself to think like they think.
“But busting her out could do you good,” he said.
“A lot of good. It would look tough, decisive, loyal, no-nonsense.
Could be advantageous. In the polls.”
Dexter nodded.
“I totally agree with you,” he said. “But it’s a
gamble, right? A real big gamble. A quick victory is good, a
foul-up is a disaster. A big gamble, with big poll numbers at
stake. And right now, I’m doubting if you can get the quick
victory. Right now, you’re half-cocked. So right now my money would
be on the foul-up.”
Webster stared at him.
“Hey, no offense, Harland,” Dexter said. “I’m paid
to think like this, right?”
“So what the hell are you saying here?” Webster
asked him. “I need to move the Hostage Rescue Team into place right
now?”
“No,” Dexter said.
“No?” Webster repeated incredulously.
Dexter shook his head.
“Permission denied,” he said. “For the time
being.”
Webster just stared at him.
“I need a position,” he said.
The room stayed silent. Then Dexter spoke to a spot
on the off-white wall, a yard to the left of Webster’s chair.
“You remain in personal command of the situation,”
he said. “Holiday weekend starts tomorrow. Come talk to me Monday.
If there’s still a problem.”
“There’s a problem now,” Webster said. “And I’m
talking to you now.”
Dexter shook his head again.
“No, you’re not,” he said. “We didn’t meet today,
and I didn’t speak with the President today. We didn’t know
anything about it today. Tell us all about it on Monday, Harland,
if there’s still a problem.”
Webster just sat there. He was a smart enough guy,
but right then he couldn’t figure if he was being handed the deal
of a lifetime, or a suicide pill.
JOHNSON AND HIS aide arrived in Butte an hour
later. They came in the same way, Air Force helicopter from
Peterson up to the Silver Bow County airport. Milosevic took an
air-to-ground call as they were on approach and went out to meet
them in a two-year-old Grand Cherokee supplied by the local
dealership. Nobody spoke on the short ride back to town. Milosevic
just drove and the two military men bent over charts and maps from
a large leather case the aide was carrying. They passed them back
and forth and nodded, as if further comment was unnecessary.
The upstairs room in the municipal building was
suddenly crowded. Five men, two chairs. The only window faced
southeast over the street. The wrong direction. The five men were
instinctively glancing at the blank wall opposite. Through that
wall was Holly, two hundred and forty miles away.
“We’re going to have to move up there,” General
Johnson said.
His aide nodded.
“No good staying here,” he said.
McGrath had made a decision. He had promised
himself he wouldn’t fight turf wars with these guys. His agent was
Johnson’s daughter. He understood the old guy’s feelings. He wasn’t
going to squander time and energy proving who was boss. And he
needed the old guy’s help.
“We need to share facilities,” he said. “Just for
the time being.”
There was a short silence. The General nodded
slowly. He knew enough about Washington to decode those five words
with a fair degree of accuracy.
“I don’t have many facilities available,” he said
in turn. “It’s the holiday weekend. Exactly seventy-five percent of
the U.S. Army is on leave.”
Silence. McGrath’s turn to do the decoding and the
slow nodding.
“No authorization to cancel leave?” he asked.
The General shook his head.
“I just spoke with Dexter,” he said. “And Dexter
just spoke with the President. Feeling was this thing is on hold
until Monday.”
The crowded room went silent. The guy’s daughter
was in trouble, and the White House fixer was playing
politics.
“Webster got the same story,” McGrath said. “Can’t
even bring the Hostage Rescue Team up here yet. Time being, we’re
on our own, the three of us.”
The General nodded to McGrath. It was a personal
gesture, individual to individual, and it said: we’ve leveled with
each other, and we both know what humiliation that cost us, and we
both know we appreciate it.
“But there’s no harm in being prepared,” the
General said. “Like the little guy suspects, the military is
comfortable with secret maneuvers. I’m calling in a few private
favors that Mr. Dexter need never know about.”
The silence in the room eased. McGrath looked a
question at him.
“There’s a mobile command post already on its way,”
the General said.
He took a large chart from his aide and spread it
out on the desk.
“We’re going to rendezvous right here,” he
said.
He had his finger on a spot northwest of the last
habitation in Montana short of Yorke. It was a wide curve on the
road leading into the county, about six miles shy of the bridge
over the ravine.
“The satellite trucks are heading straight there,”
he said. “I figure we move in, set up the command post, and seal
off the road behind us.”
McGrath stood still, looking down at the map. He
knew that to agree was to hand over total control to the military.
He knew that to disagree was to play petty games with his agent and
this man’s daughter. Then he saw that the General’s finger was
resting a half-inch south of a much better location. A little
farther north, the road narrowed dramatically. It straightened to
give a clear view north and south. The terrain tightened. A better
site for a roadblock. A better site for a command post. He was
amazed that the General hadn’t spotted it. Then he was flooded with
gratitude. The General had spotted it. But he was leaving room for
McGrath to point it out. He was leaving room for give-and-take. He
didn’t want total control.
“I would prefer this place,” McGrath said.
He tapped the northerly location with a pencil. The
General pretended to study it. His aide pretended to be
impressed.
“Good thinking,” the General said. “We’ll revise
the rendezvous.”
McGrath smiled. He knew damn well the trucks were
already heading for that exact spot. Probably already there. The
General grinned back. The ritual dance was completed.
“What can the spy planes show us?” Brogan
asked.
“Everything,” the General’s aide said. “Wait until
you see the pictures. The cameras on those babies are
unbelievable.”
“I don’t like it,” McGrath said. “It’s going to
make them nervous.”
The aide shook his head.
“They won’t even know they’re there,” he said.
“We’re using two of them, flying straight lines, east to west and
west to east. They’re thirty-seven thousand feet up. Nobody on the
ground is even going to be aware of them.”
“That’s seven miles up,” Brogan said. “How can they
see anything from that sort of height?”
“Good cameras,” the aide said. “Seven miles is
nothing. They’ll show you a cigarette pack lying on the sidewalk
from seven miles. The whole thing is automatic. The guys up there
hit a button, and the camera tracks whatever it’s supposed to
track. Just keeps pointing at the spot on the ground you chose,
transmitting high-quality video by satellite, then you turn around
and come back, and the camera swivels around and does it all
again.”
“Undetectable?” McGrath asked.
“They look like airliners,” the aide said. “You
look up and you see a tiny little vapor trail and you think it’s
TWA on the way somewhere. You don’t think it’s the Air Force
checking whether you polished your shoes this morning,
right?”
“Seven miles, you’ll see the hairs on their heads,”
Johnson said. “What do you think we spent all those defense dollars
on? Crop dusters?”
McGrath nodded. He felt naked. Time being, he had
nothing to offer except a couple of rental jeeps, two years old,
waiting at the sidewalk.
“We’re getting a profile on this Borken guy,” he
said. “Shrinks at Quantico are working it up now.”
“We found Jack Reacher’s old CO,” Johnson said.
“He’s doing desk duty in the Pentagon. He’ll join us, give us the
spread.”
McGrath nodded.
“Forewarned is forearmed,” he said.
The telephone rang. Johnson’s aide picked it up. He
was the nearest.
“When are we leaving?” Brogan asked.
McGrath noticed he had asked Johnson direct.
“Right now, I guess,” Johnson said. “The Air Force
will fly us up there. Saves six hours on the road, right?”
The aide hung up the phone. He looked like he’d
been kicked in the gut.
“The missile unit,” he said. “We lost radio
contact, north of Yorke.”