A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller (46 page)

“A maggot like you surely understands that I have nothing to lose by killing you. I’m going to ask you some questions. Think them over. A lie will come back to bite you in the butt.”

Nail almost heard the man’s brain working as it calculated risks and options, weighed in on hope and change.

Wiedersham finally found his voice. “Don’t be stupid,” he protested. “Secret Service and Homeland have that place sealed up tighter than a nun’s pussy.”

“Where is it?”

Wiedersham hesitated as he thought over his options, which must have seemed limited under the circumstances.

“It won’t do you any good even if I tell you,” he protested.

“Where?” Nail sunk the muzzle of the Beretta another inch into the politician’s fat. Wiedersham’s entire body shuddered, like he could almost see the bottom of the abyss.

Nail deflected the muzzle of his gun and squeezed the trigger. The bullet seared the skin on Wiedersham’s neck and gouged a plume of sod out of the earth directly between his knees. The fat man pitched forward, screaming and writhing on the wet grass and grabbing at his neck. Judy popped out of the limo but stopped at the front fender.

Nail waited until the Majority Leader regained some control before he crouched over him.

“I’ll ask the question one more time,” he threatened.

“You’ve busted my eardrums!” Wiedersham shouted

Nail cocked the Beretta. Wiedersham heard
that.

“The Butterfield Mansion,” he muttered, beaten. He was a coward, like most such men, and a pragmatist who had to realize that his only chance of survival was to cooperate.

Nail left him moaning in the wet grass while he spoke to Judy. She looked pale and shaken, but she agreed to take a look at the Butterfield Mansion for him, paying particular attention to security measures, cover and concealment, and avenues of approach and egress. He didn’t think police would have found Bill and Cobb yet and therefore would not have alerted Homeland Security.

“Don’t take unnecessary chances,” he cautioned. “Pick me up here in two hours.”

Judy indicated the much-humbled fat man in the soggy suit. “Does he know where Sharon is?”

“I’m sure he’ll have told me by the time you return.”

She started the limo and disappeared up the logging road on her way to Watertown. From Wiedersham’s expression, Nail couldn’t tell whether he considered her departure a good sign or not.

* * *

As soon as the limo disappeared from sight, Nail jerked the frightened politician to his feet and marched him to a thick fallen log a few yards deeper into timber. Wiedersham seemed appalled that Nail had shot him and then made him suffer the further indignity of sitting astraddle one end of the log.

“Do you know how much this suit costs?” he demanded indignantly.

Nail switched on the hidden voice recorder in the pocket of his windbreaker before taking a seat on the other end of the log facing Wiedersham. A “confession,” along with Trout’s notebook, would go a long way in convincing the American people of the peril they faced. If there were still enough people left out there who gave a damned.

Nail winced. He recognized the putrid stench emanating from his wound. Iraqi
Desert Storm
prisoners who suffered from untreated trauma smelled like that. Septicemia. But before God called in his warranty, he was determined to free the woman he loved and strike a blow for American liberty. A big-time order for a small-time cop.

“I know who she is,” Wiedersham finally ventured, glancing toward the lane from which Judy had disappeared in the limo. “She’s the piece of slit-tail my former brother-in-law shot himself over. He was a weakling. I would never have taken in the cowardly bastard if it hadn’t been for my sister. He ended up killing her, too.”

“And the dog,” Nail reminded him.

“
I’d
have shot the dog,” Wiedersham admitted with nervous laughter, his palm pressed against his scorched neck. It was not bleeding, but it had to be painful.

Wiedersham couldn’t seem to stop talking once he started, whether from nervousness or because it was his stock in trade. Whereas in the limo Nail had kept Wiedersham’s tensions deliberately bottled, he now encouraged him either by short general questions or by silences Wiedersham seemed compelled to fill.

“You must understand, Detective,” Wiedersham said, feeling his way, “that what you’re witnessing is the inevitable tide of history to which you either adjust or perish.” He paused and studied his opponent. “I truly doubt you’re capable of understanding what I’m talking about.”

“Try me. We have time.”

“The tide of history killed your daughter, Detective. It will inevitably neutralize obstructionists who stand in the way of ultimate peace and justice for all peoples around the planet.”

Nail stuffed his rage back down. He had a feeling this piece of shit didn’t believe a word he was saying.

“You don’t impress me as a hope ’n change kind of guy, Wiedersham,” Nail said conversationally.

Wiedersham seemed pleased with Nail’s insight.

“Pardon me for saying so, Detective, but you Tea Bagger types are so fucking naïve. Detective, a man has a choice to either take the winning side of history, or the losing side. I choose to be on the winning side.”

The more he talked, the more his self-assurance seemed to build. All his life he had used intimidation and his golden tongue to get him by.

“Do you realize that hard-cores like yourself, Detective, are a minority? Not a lot of Homer Simpsons believe in freedom and capitalism. Your average Homer is not capable of running his pathetic little life. Do you realize that nearly half of American households receive government benefits of some sort? One in six are on full subsistence. It’s called social conditioning through education and handouts. The Homers will vote for whoever promises to give them the most that they don’t have to work for. The biggest argument you can make against democracy is a five-minute conversation with your average voter.”

“I thought we were done with the commies when the Soviet Union fell.”

Wiedersham chuckled grandly, getting into it now that he thought the burn on his neck was the worst he might expect.

“Don’t blame people like me for what’s happened,” he said. “Blame yourself. Blame your willingness to give up everything in order to be cared for like children. For nearly a century, politicians have merely been agents doing precisely what we have elected them to do—using the power of office to take what belongs to one American and redistribute it to other Americans, or to confer special privileges on some that are denied others. Socialism is such an easy sell because it preys on greed and envy.”

A stab of pain shot through Nail’s chest. He bent forward against it.

“You have blood poisoning, Detective. I can smell it,” Wiedersham observed. “It won’t kill you, however. You know why? Because
they
are going to kill you first.”

Nail flicked his gun barrel to remind the politician to keep on track. Wiedersham seemed pleased to have an audience who appreciated his cleverness.

“We’re days away from a global socialist government,” Wiedersham boasted. “The United States is the last major holdout and it’ll soon be gone, a victim of the doctrine of the inevitability of gradualism. The radicals of the 1960s failed at open revolution—so what they did was go underground, scrub themselves clean so they wouldn’t look like radicals, and reemerge as
Progressives.
While the Homers took their liberty for granted, the Progressives were busy taking over the culture—universities and high schools, subverting newspapers, magazines, networks and the cables, infiltrating the churches....In order to take over, we needed to destroy the old culture.

“Haven’t you noticed how novels and Hollywood dream factories portray businessmen as shallow, selfish, crude and pathetic? Traditional male figures are depicted as either effeminate or bumbling idiots. The military has become feminized. God has left the building. Decriminalize prostitution, legalize drugs, mock God, mock anything that’s traditional. Let down your hair, live it up. Give them cakes and circuses. It takes their pathetic minds off what’s really happening. The average middle-class Homer loses hope once he realizes that it doesn’t matter what he does.”

The man’s candidness surprised Nail. “People are starting to fight back,” he asserted.

“Are they indeed?” Wiedersham barked that annoying sound that served as laughter. “You conspiracy theorists are all a bunch of Rightwing kooks. Nobody listens to you. Men like George Zuniga have the real power. They pull the strings while you stand around bickering among yourselves or hypnotized in front of the TV. Marxists are masters of misdirection and deception. The socialist infrastructure has been building for decades. While you think you’re fighting back, we’re waiting in the shadows ready to take over. It doesn’t matter whether a few old stalwarts fight back or not. You’ve already lost.

“Don’t you know it makes no difference whether you elect Republicans or Democrats? We could have elected a trained seal to the White House for all that Anastos influences
anything.”
Wiedersham barked in disgust. “The emperor of hope ’n change! Anastos can’t even read a teleprompter without stuttering. Useful idiots are, well,
useful
, during the de-stabilization stage of subverting the target. Afterwards, when their jobs are done and the
real
power takes over, you take ’em all out and shoot ’em.”

“It’s not going to happen here,” Nail exclaimed, bitterly unconvinced.

“It already
is
happening. Total transformation is only days away. Capitalism will be destroyed from within. Be realistic. Look at what has already happened, all according to plan: deficit spending in the trillions; a national debt that can never be repaid; government control of natural resources, energy, transportation, agriculture, the military, law enforcement, communications; heavy taxation for redistribution; government underwriting of employment, food, housing, education, medical care... No one can stop it now. Anyone who stands in the way of progress must be eliminated.”

Nail said nothing. The recorder was getting it all.

“The countdown to the end has started,” Wiedersham said. “I predict it will all be over in two weeks. Everything will collapse within ten days from when China refuses to buy any more U.S. debt and closes off our credit. Wall Street spooks and loses a thousand points in twenty minutes as rumors spread. Europe raises interest rates, but it’s already too late. Markets worldwide close. The plunge of the dollar causes global economic meltdown. People break into banks, ATMs are dry, food is rationed. Worldwide panic. Anastos declares martial law. The invisible government is no longer invisible. The IMF and G-20 led by Zuniga and his worldwide players redistribute all the debts and declare a New Global Order centered in The Hague.”

Nail was stunned at how well it all seemed to have been orchestrated.

“The purpose of your meeting this week is to bring all this about? Nail presumed.

“Watch it all play out, Detective—” Wiedersham offered. “Oh, I forgot. You won’t be alive to see it.”

Nail rose slowly to his feet and stood over Wiedersham. “You are more despicable than the communists because you do their bidding out of self-interest.”

Wiedersham opened his mouth to say something.

“Shut up!” Nail snapped, swallowing the lump in his throat. “You and your commies murdered my daughter. You’re barely worth the bullet to blow you to hell. Remember that when you answer this next question. Where is Sharon Lowenthal?”

Rain began falling harder, pattering in the pine boughs and beading and running down Wiedersham’s pale, fat face as he looked up into the cop’s menacing features. He muttered a few last words before a single shot cracked in the forest, all but muted by the low rumble of thunder. A lone figure holding his side limped out of the pines in the rain and stood next to the logging road, the Beretta hanging loosely in his hand. His head lifted. Rain mingled with his tears and washed them away.

Violence Disrupting Nation

(Washington)—
According to Harvard’s Department of Sociology, this summer has been the most disruptive in the nation’s history. The following is a representative summary of some of the violence during which scores of people have died or been seriously injured:

On the Gulf Coast, protests instigated by Tea Parties against President Anastos’ ban on offshore oil drilling following the AP oil spill turned nasty and had to be dispersed...

Demonstrators displaying anti-Muslim signs had to be broken up in Manhattan after they disobeyed a New York law that forbids hate groups from congregating...

Detroit. Yoga teachers, soup kitchen volunteers, university students, public schoolteachers, union members and ACOA community organizers demanding the end of capitalism were attacked by rightwing militia and Tea Baggers, who burned police cars and broke out street windows before police restored order...

In Phoenix, a “Festival of Resistance” against sweeping new Arizona anti-immigration laws exploded in violence when racist groups confronted undocumented Hispanic protestors...

Portland, Oregon. PEIU union members peacefully picketing a branch of CitiBank were fired upon by drive-by shooters...

San Francisco police broke up a clash between the peaceful New Black Panther Party and a White Aryan Movement...

Homeland Security police firing automatic weapons and hurling concussion grenades broke up a police uprising in Los Angeles that was prompted by a Federal proposal to nationalize city and county police departments. The unrest began when hundreds of angry policemen called for a nationwide police strike to shut down the government. At least four LA policemen were killed and eight wounded. Several hundred were arrested...

There have also been militia attacks against Homeland Security and AmeriCorps members in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, New York, Florida, and other states across the nation as Rightwing terrorism spreads...