Revolution No. 9 (24 page)

“So you think Freeboot might be involved?” he said.

“That's a long shot. And the whole thing might be complete bullshit. It's April Fool's Day, for openers. But we can't ignore it. What I'd like you to do is be there. We'll have undercover agents, too, but you're the only reliable witness we've got who's actually seen those people. You go in disguise and hang around. You spot anybody, you alert us.”

“I don't know that I could do you any good,” Monks said. “They're going to be in disguise, too. Freeboot told me I looked right at him.”

“Yeah, but you weren't thinking about him then. If you're
looking
, you might see things you recognize. Even the way somebody moves.”

Monks nodded hesitantly. “I'll try.”

“I'll call you tomorrow. We'll figure out the details.”

Pietowski turned toward the door, then picked up the bottle of vodka and hefted it. The room had gotten warm from the added firewood, and his big doughy forehead was gleaming with sweat.

“For what it's worth, I've crawled into one of these plenty,” Pietowski said. “Last time it happened in a big way was after Waco. I got called in there, after the ATF fucked it up. There were plenty of ways they could have walked up to
Koresh and slapped cuffs on him. Instead, all those people burned. Kids.”

He set the bottle back down. “I'd love to jump in right now, believe me, but I can't afford it. Neither can you.”

After he left, Monks saw that he had barely touched his drink, if at all. Monks had the sudden sense that Pietowski had come to him as a sort of priest, offering absolution, giving him a chance to set aside the past days and move on to action that might be of actual benefit. Ashamed, Monks dumped out his own glass in the sink.

He went to the kitchen calendar and pieced together that today was March 30. Tomorrow was going to be ugly and penitential, filled with sweat and pain—splitting wood, lifting weights, and working the heavy bag to a base line of pain throbbing in his head like the rap music blasting from a passing car.

Then, the wait to find out if this rumor was an April Fool's Day joke or the next outrage that Freeboot planned to throw in the world's face.

M
onks was in a hotel room in Bodega Bay just coming out of a restless half-sleep when the phone rang. It was 5:33
A.M.
, the morning of April 1. He located the phone's red LED in the darkened room and picked up.

“Monks,” he said.

“This is Pietowski. Turn on the TV, any news channel. Call me back.” He sounded enraged. Monks finished waking up instantly, fearing that he'd done something wrong.

He found the TV's remote and started flicking through channels. His finger stopped at the fourth one he hit. An attractive blond anchorwoman was at her desk in the foreground, with the CNN logo on the backdrop.

“…was e-mailed to millions of computers around the nation, from an unknown source, early this morning,” she said. “A list of five hundred names and addresses, titled—apparently, with vicious sarcasm—‘The Fortune 500,' in
cludes prominent members of the business community, legislators, and government officials—among them,
all
the victims of the Calamity Jane killers.

“Initial response from law-enforcement agencies is that the list is an April Fool's Day prank. But the people whose names are
on
the list are alarmed that it's a warning—that they're intended targets, too.

“We'll have more on this
explosive
new development after this short break. Stay with us.”

Monks punched the number of Pietowski's cell phone. They had talked enough times during the past two days that he had memorized it by now.

“I only got part of the story,” Monks said.

“Freeboot just stomped on the panic button, is the story. Sent out a mass e-mail that looks like a piece of spam, except it could only have been compiled by some highly sophisticated hacking.”

“The news announcer said the police were treating it as a joke.”

“Joke, my aching ass. They got the addresses of people that are harder to find than Osama bin Laden. Cracked fire-walled corporate and government databases, identified people who operate way,
way
behind the scenes.”

Monks swallowed a dry lump at the back of his throat. That pointed to Glenn, and the FBI agents knew it. Yet it fanned the flicker of hope that he was still alive.

“We're already spread thin, and now we've got five hundred of the world's most influential people screaming at us about what we're going to do to protect them,” Pietowski said sourly. “Anything happening there?”

Monks walked to a window and opened the curtain. The view looked west over the town along Highway 1, and down the long spur of Doran Beach farther out, a favorite spot of windsurfers and body boarders. It was just dawn, and the
vast expanse of ocean and sky was a pale gray-blue that would soon turn to azure. The highway was empty. The sea was calm, the surf hardly more than ripples. Toward the harbor's north end, the fishing fleet and recreational boats floated in the marina like beasts of burden grazing in a peaceful pasture, waiting to be put to use.

Informants had confirmed a rumor on the streets of San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities all the way to L.A. and Seattle, that some sort of mass party was supposed to take place in Bodega Bay today, and that “Revolution No. 9” seemed to be the motif. But the odds of finding Freeboot here seemed tiny, and Pietowski even feared that it might be a diversion from something serious, like another Calamity Jane killing.

“Right now, the place looks quiet as a tomb,” Monks told him.

“I guess that's good, except it means we're going to waste a lot of manpower. Call me again when you're ready to hit the bricks. We'll run a test on your microphone.”

Monks got a cold bottle of orange juice out of the room's mini-refrigerator, then started making coffee, using half the specified amount of water. He shaved in the shower, mirrorless, a habit he'd carried over from his navy days.

When he came back out, he poured a cup of the thick black brew and stepped to the window again, still grappling with his hope that the “Fortune 500 List” might mean that Glenn was still alive—and his fear that if so, it deepened his involvement in the killings even further.

Outside, the sky was lighter, but things remained as tranquil as before. Local police and sheriffs had been alerted, but everyone agreed that it would be best to stay quiet, rather than alarm residents over what might amount to nothing.

A single car came into sight, driving into town on Highway 1 from the south. Monks kept watching it. It was a big
old sedan, an Olds or a Buick, 1970s or even sixties vintage, dented and crusted with dirt that looked as permanent as paint—not the kind of vehicle that was common around upscale Bodega Bay. He could hear its rumble all the way up to his room. It moved slowly, giving the sense that it wasn't in a hurry to get to anyplace in particular—it was just cruising.

As it drove past his window, an arm flopped carelessly out of the rear passenger-side window and flicked a cigarette butt that skipped a few times on the pavement, throwing off sparks.

The car kept going north on the highway, then turned left on Westshore Road, which led down toward the marina and campgrounds.

B
y noon, Bodega Bay's marina was thronged with people—close to five thousand, Monks judged, with more still pouring in. Parking areas were jammed with vehicles, a lot of them junkers, along with a fair number of chopped Harleys. The newer arrivals were parking some distance away and walking in, since vehicle traffic was almost impossible. The strip of Highway 1 through town, with its shops and restaurants, was clogged.

It was looking like
The Birds,
all right—only this time it was thick with human beings.

Monks wandered around the fringes, wearing the disguise that Pietowski's makeup specialists had provided—ragged jeans, worn-out boots, a threadbare army field jacket. His wiry black hair was dyed gray, then worked with pomade to straighten it and give it a greasy, matted look. One of his incisors was blacked out to appear missing. A thick beard and mustache, along with a weathered baseball cap pulled low
over sunglasses, hid most of his face. A tiny receiver was planted in his left ear and a body bug microphone was sewn inside his collar, giving him two-way contact with an FBI listening post set up in a phony delivery truck parked nearby.

The day was pristine, clear, warm with sunshine but cooled by a light ocean breeze. The scene was outwardly festive, something like the mass concerts or happenings of the late sixties—but Monks percieved an undercurrent that was disturbingly different. These weren't kids who had come to party, to soak up the music, grooviness, peace, and love. These were fully formed adults, most of them well past their teens and many pushing middle age and bearing the hard look of years on the streets or in jails. Even the younger faces tended toward an uncaring cynicism, a sense that nothing they saw was of value or even interest.

He eavesdropped on conversations as he cruised, trying to get a sense of what this gathering was all about, but nothing became clear. There didn't seem to be any kind of central event planned. All that he could glean was that some mysterious groundswell had named today as the day, and Bodega Bay as the place, for a party. There was a lot of beer and screw-cap wine. Marijuana smoke drifted through the air, and he was sure that there was plenty of hard dope around, too.

So far, all was peaceable. But several police cars had moved into the marina, inching their way through the crowd, which parted, grudgingly, to let them pass, then immediately closed to swallow them like a giant amoeba engulfing its prey. A white-and-red Coast Guard patrol boat was hovering just outside the mouth of the harbor's channel, and Monks had seen three different helicopters—a Coast Guard Dolphin, a dark green Bell sheriffs' search-and-rescue craft, and a small one he couldn't identify that was probably the media. Not surprisingly, the local residents looked alarmed.

The cricket-like chirp of Monks's cell phone in his coat pocket startled him. He had brought it as a backup in case radio contact failed, but he hadn't expected it to ring, and he didn't want to be seen using it. He angled his steps away from the crowd with covert speed, shielding the phone with his hand to talk, as if he were coughing.

“This is Monks,” he said.

“Oh, God, you've got to
help
me.” The woman's voice was shaking, the words spilling out in a fearful rush.

But Monks recognized Marguerite. This was the first time anyone had heard from her since the night that she had slipped away from him on the beach.

Startled, he said, “Yes, of course, honey. Tell me what you need.”

“You were right, he killed Motherlode, and he wants to let Mandrake die. I know that now. What if
my
baby's not perfect? He'll do the same thing.”

“
Your
baby?” Monks said, with swiftly deepening surprise.

Then he understood.

“Jesus, Marguerite, are you pregnant?” he said. “By Freeboot?”

“He chose me to start his new dynasty,” she sobbed. “Then I found out the truth. Now he doesn't trust me anymore. I'm just a, a
thing
, like a cow. Breeding stock. He's keeping me here. Please, come get me and hide me.”

Monks strode deeper into the scrubby headland vegetation and raised his voice, knowing that Pietowski would hear at least his end of the conversation.

“Where are you?” he asked her.

“He won't tell me. Somewhere back in the woods, like always. He's gone now, but there's others around. I'm sneaking this call, I can't let them see me.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Bodega Bay. Him and some others.”

Monks's scalp bristled. “What does Freeboot look like now?”

“I don't know. They're all wearing disguises and I didn't see them leave. Oh, God, I can't believe this is happening.”

“Come on, Marguerite,
think
. There has to be something that will help us find him. Then you'll be safe.”

There was a several-second pause. “Callus,” she said tremulously. “He's the one you shot. He'll be limping.”

Monks had a grim flash of satisfaction. He hadn't known until now that Callus, the
maquis
who had beaten his shins, was the man he had shot. But a glance at the teeming crowd mocked the hope of finding a single limping man among the thousands.

“Keep talking,” he said. “Think out loud. What else?”

“Someone's coming.” Her voice sharpened with panic. “I have to go.”

“Marguerite, call back and stay on the line,” Monks said urgently.

But a man's voice cut harshly into the background on her end. “Hey, what the fuck you doing?
Give
me that.”

“Chill out, man,” she said shrilly. Then she squealed in fear or pain.

“Marguerite!” Monks yelled.

There was a brief scuffling noise, a
clonk
as if the phone had hit the floor, more of her squealing and unintelligible words. Then the connection went dead.

Monks clenched the phone in his fist, willing it to ring again, knowing that it would not.

“Andrew, did you get that?” he said into the transmitter.

“Some of it.” Pietowski's voice was tinny in Monks's ear, but his vexation came through. “We're already looking for the limper. You got any more description on him?”

Monks remembered Callus, all right—his ruthless face and brutal efficiency.

“Five-ten to six feet, athletic, hard-looking. Very clean cut when I saw him, like the others. Nothing that stood out.”

It wasn't much help, but Pietowski said, “All right, now we know they're here. Let's go rip some new assholes.”

Monks moved back toward the crowd, his rage at Freeboot and the
maquis
boiling up afresh. With it came a weight of worry for Marguerite. It seemed that she had finally come to her senses—but at what price?