The Unknown Knowns (15 page)

 

Rep. Frost:
[
coughs
] After Denver your next destination was the town of Piston Ridge, Colorado, where the second incident took place. My understanding is this isn't much more than a little ghost town way up in the Rockies. Kind of an out-of-the-way place for Homeland, didn't you think?

 

Diaz:
Congressman, I never question the asset list. You have to understand I'm just ticking off the sites, doing my job. Piston Ridge might be just a wide spot in a narrow road, but right up the mountain is the oldest water park in the Rockies, which as you know is called
. I suppose DHS deemed this a valuable enough asset to warrant our scrutiny. You want to talk symbolism, this place is one fat juicy slice of Americana. Those Muslim fascists would cream in their dishdashas if they could explode an antitank mine inside their dining facility. Can't you just see it on Al Jazeera now: girls in bikinis all covered in blood and soot, and then cut to kids dancing in the streets of Kabul. To me that's a disturbing image.

 

Rep. Frost:
We've all seen this water park on the news. But I'm wondering if you could paint us a picture of your impressions, in your own words.

 

Diaz:
Okay. Piston Ridge is up past Breckenridge, with all the ski resorts. You get off the interstate and take this two-lane that winds all over the mountains. It's like Tora Bora out there. Caves and hollows and arroyos and such. I mean, they could be hiding anywhere.

You get off the paved road and finally there's this little green sign.
THIS WAY TO
. Then you follow this logging road maybe four miles up until you come to a hairpin turn. On the left is a video store and an auto parts shop; on the right it's like the whole Rocky Mountains spread out below you. It's majestic, but scary too. All those hidey-holes.

At the auto parts shop I hung a left, which is to say uphill. And just when I thought I'd run out of mountain I saw the Prospector, who is this old statue guy about twenty-five feet tall holding a pan filled with gold nuggets that spell out
.

There's a little two-story motel. They set me up in a corner suite on the top floor with a California king and no TV. I get up to my room, and let me tell you I am beat. But I can't sleep. It's Rath. I close my eyes and all I see is that creepy forehead in the dome light. So I get out of bed and open the curtains.

It's early in the morning, I judge it to be about 6:30 or something. The sun must be coming up, but that's all happening behind the mountain. Only a little bit of orange is creeping in through the tree line, just enough light for me to survey the grounds.
isn't much to look at relative to today's water parks, but it's got the basics.

There's one big creek that cuts right down the middle. And off of that shoot all these—what's the opposite of a tributary?—well, little streams that fill up the different rides. One feeds into this pond that's got wooden ducks for kids to cruise around in. It's called the Duck Pond or something. At that hour all the ducks are corralled together in one corner under a tarp. But there's one and his head is sticking out. I can see that big blue duck eye staring at me through the window. I know rationally that it's just paint and plywood, but it seems to me at that moment like a harbinger. I believe in that sort of thing, Congressman. I think that duck was giving me a warning.

Next to the Duck Pond is what they call the Water Wheel. Which is exactly what it sounds like, except it's more like a Ferris wheel that dips into the water at the bottom. Just above the Water Wheel you get to Flatiron Falls. There's a big sign that says:
DANGER
!
FLATIRON FALLS
! 200
FEET
! or some nonsense. But in reality it's more like fifteen feet, max. Maybe twenty yards above that you get to the Oaken Bucket, but I guess I don't have to describe that to you.

 

Rep. Frost:
Yes. I'd say everyone with CNN is familiar with the Oaken Bucket by now. But just for the record, I wish you'd describe it for the subcommittee.

 

Diaz:
Basically it's a big bucket with an oak veneer, maybe eight foot in diameter, five foot high, with seating inside for four. Not really roomy enough, in my opinion. It's mounted on these rails but they're under the water so the illusion is you're hurtling down a white-water creek in a crazy, out-of-control bucket. The good part comes when you get to the edge of Flatiron Falls. The bucket leans out maybe fifteen, twenty degrees, and then rights itself just in the nick of time.
After that you go through this mine shaft and when you come out it's like
wham,
you land in this big pool.

But of course none of this is happening when I get there. The place is dead quiet. I look all around and there's just one Indian guy with a push broom out on the patio. Or maybe he was Pakistani.

 

Rep. Frost:
Again, we're told that you made the acquaintance of the victims shortly prior to the incident. Tell me, Agent Diaz, exactly how well did you come to know Brenda Mills, Jenny Mills, and Keesha Stephens, and what were the circumstances?

 

Diaz:
Well, Congressman, it sounds like you knew those girls better than I did. We were strictly on a first-name basis. I feel like it's part of my cover to blend in with the guests. We're directed to do so, in fact. You see, I was utilizing tradecraft, or clandestine methodologies, to gather a lot of this vulnerability data, while still trying to, in a sense, fade into the fabric of pedestrian life. The lay public, and even our elected officials for that matter, are often stymied by this, but it's the nature of clandestine work that it's not going to be transparent, unless by transparent you mean invisible.

In other words, yes, we interacted on a social basis the night before the incident. Brenda and Keesha were roommates from, I think, Colorado State, and Jenny was Brenda's little sister. They were just out there to blow off a little steam before classes started. So I helped them in that regard, in the steam part.

But let's be clear. I mourn these girls' deaths along with the rest of America, but the bottom line is, if that incident hadn't transpired on the Oaken Bucket, you and I wouldn't be sitting here today having this conversation. Loss of American life is always an unfortunate outcome, but we've also got to acknowledge the positives. We've
finally got a public dialogue going about water terrorism. And any way you julienne it, that's constructive.

 

Rep. Frost:
Of course you know those girls didn't actually die. Nobody died.

 

Diaz:
Yes. I know that.

I
have word from Jean. Not direct word. Indirect word. Which might as well be no word at all.

Two days ago Uncle Keith was nice enough to send over a cell phone for my personal use. So what if my conversations are being monitored? The Fat Man, my attorney, told me as much. But I don't care. It's mid-March; I've been floating here in this leisure gulag for a month and a half with no line to the outside world. I haven't spoken to or heard from my wife for nearly seven months, and I have grave concerns for her emotional safety. And her personal well-being. Surely there must be death threats, or worse. So I've been placing calls—probably too many calls—to Jean's co-workers.

Last night I was scrolling through the telephonic directory of extensions at my wife's work when someone actually picked up.
Josh has always been frank with me, maybe more than I deserved, so when he answered the phone I was filled with as much dread as excitement.

“She doesn't like you anymore,” he said, probing to the core of the issue before I could even pose the question properly. “Mainly because you won't shut up about the Little Mermaid. And also because you're a terrorist.”

“Where is she, Josh? I'm worried.”

“Jesus, man, I shouldn't even be having this conversation. Probably being taped.”

“I'm worried about her, Josh.”

“Look, if you're going to worry, dude, worry about yourself. Worry about what you're doing for the rest of your life, whatever's left of it. That's what Jean's worrying about.”

“She's worried about me?”

“No. Her life.
Her
life.”

“Sure, Josh—but where is she? With that cabinetmaker?”

“Who? Look, she's staying with friends. Somebody who'll take care of her. That's all I'm allowed to say. But she wants you to stop calling the office, and if she has to get a restraining order—Hey, Curtis—Yeah, I'll be off soon as I wrap it up with Unabomber Junior.”

The pressure to hang up was intense. It made the receiver feel heavy against my cheek, like some superdense galactic matter. But I wouldn't give up that easy. I needed more. After a few seconds Josh said:

“So, Jim. What are you going to do, call here fifteen times a day, or let Jean move on? Haven't you done enough damage?”

“It hasn't been fifteen times. I keep phone records, you know!”

“Sure you do. Look, man, I gotta run. Just grab the elevator,
Curt—I'll meet you there in a sec. Do yourself a favor, Jim, and take my advice.”

I was ready for it, open to it: the advice. I wanted to hear it. Then, mysteriously, the line went dead. When I speed-dialed Josh again seconds later, I got the voice mail.

Then the call-waiting beeped. The noise went straight through my bloodstream like a charged wire. I clicked over too quickly, without looking at the caller ID. For the first four syllables I thought it was Jean herself. It wasn't; not even close.

My mother was saying this wasn't her baby. Her Jim would never do this. But if I did do something I regretted, if I was angry about something, I should tell her. She knew things hadn't been easy with Jean. She blamed herself for neglecting my emotional growth. Tell her the truth, she said: Were they torturing me?

Something was off with her timbre. Her voice was tinny, like a microprocessor pretending to care. Like the wake-up service in the hotel. She was asking suspicious questions. Every awkward pause was filled with an electronic hum. Was this my real mother, or some advanced government simulacrum? Either way she didn't even say hi.

I refused to respond, except to grunt as a way of marking the desired end point of each of her trailing reluctant momlike sentences. When she'd run out of questions to ask, she said she loved me. And that's when I knew it was her. Those are words no synthetic voice clone can ever mimic. I love you, baby.

 

“All mammals have tear glands, whether they weep or not.”

This piece of zoological wisdom we learn from Elaine Morgan, author of
The Aquatic Ape
among other titles. But out of all
the land mammals only elephants and humans cry actual tears motivated by anguish. I guess we've both got our reasons to cry, elephants and us. My mother, for her part, was an exemplary bawler. She wept when she drank rosé, she wept on holidays, and she cried her eyes out watching TV ads for suicide hotlines.

After my talk with Josh, I sat on the deck trying to weep. But nothing came out, even though I worked at it for close to an hour, exerting so much internal force on my tear ducts that I gave myself a headache. I've been assured by my lawyer that a serious cry would expel Jean from my system; without the purgative sob I'm doomed to retain the impression of her memory under the surface of my face forever. But nothing came out, so I closed my eyes on the bay and returned to the Colorado interstate of memory, where I was still tailing the Nautikon into the Rocky Mountains.

 

I drove through the early-morning darkness, uncertain but resolute. Interstate 70 climbed steadily into the mountains. I was light-headed, whacked-out, and still a little buzzed from the three beers in Denver, but turning back now was not an option. There was nothing to go back to. My life was onward and upward, his taillights three car lengths ahead, luring me to some soft destiny.

Just west of Denver I saw the Mother Cabrini Shrine in the distance, its big white Christ glowing like a night-light on top of one of the hills. If you married a Roman Catholic like I did, you'd know that Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini is the patron saint of immigrants. I felt her guiding presence. She blessed the Nautikon with safe passage. So much for blessings.

Next came the brown historical marker for Buffalo Bill's Grave. I cracked my driver's-side window and took a deep breath.
You could actually smell the herd of buffalo, all warm and loafy in the distance. It wasn't long before I could see the white frosted hackles of the Front Range directly ahead. The moonlight collapsed the distance to make it seem like the mountains were sitting right there on the end of my hood.

The Nautikon took a single pee break, at a rest area designed to look like a corporate retreat center. You could see the colorful humps of Winnebagos and hear their generators humming. I pulled in beside a big one. Through the side curtain I could see the silhouette of a couple playing cards while their nasty pachyderm sump-pumped the contents of its waste tank into the loose summer soil.

The Ford was parked several spots down. I waited until I thought the Nautikon was in the men's room, then I crept over to the vending machine kiosk. The rest area had one thing to recommend it, a considerable stock of Paycheck bars. I fed eight dollars into the slot and was rewarded with a whole night's worth of nutrition. Actually I only got seven bars. I must have keyed in the wrong code (4D instead of 4B), because the machine gave me one baggie of edible pectin worms. I tossed them in the backseat, where they remain to this day in a secret CIA impound lot, unless they've been entered into evidence.

We got under way again. I remember a tanker truck rumbling past. The driver tipped a cigarette out his cracked window. It skittered toward me on the road, spraying up a little fanfare of sparks whenever it struck the blacktop. We entered a long tunnel, the screaming orange-lit bore swallowing our cars like a wormhole to destiny. On the other side the interstate had been carved out of solid rock. A stepped wall rose on my right, bristling with pines. I remember thinking I was in a model train set in a child's dark base
ment. But not mine, not my basement. I never had a basement.

I was tired, but I drew sustenance from the familiar taillight pattern on the road ahead. Every time the Nautikon hit the brakes, which was often enough on this winding road, my heart issued a corresponding throb of exigency.

When we cleared the Eisenhower Tunnel and passed the sign for Summit County, my dashboard clock registered 4:15 a.m.
COLORADO'S PLAYGROUND
, said the big green sign. Several more miles passed before the Ford exited onto a steep rural route going south. I followed carefully behind, eventually killing my headlamps to fly by the glow of the parking lights. The two-lane did its best to confound my expectations, winding and wiggling with sadistic asphalt glee. There were times when I felt like I was steering a car on TV, just steering and steering with no reference to reality. On the few occasions when I thought I'd lost him, my forehead went cold and wet. The mountainside soared up on my left; on my right was the Lite-Brite display of towns and ski resorts. Every single one of those lights, I told myself, represented a cell of humanity, a family, or a business. Something I ought to cherish. Something I should want. But when I pictured my own light, the light of the town house as viewed from the high satellite of nostalgia, it looked cold and empty. Every light was on, but Jean wasn't home and I wasn't either.

Another half hour passed before the Ford braked abruptly. He cut a gravelly left onto an even crappier rural road. I followed uphill for a few more miles until the road leveled out. Together we rounded a tight bend and I saw a video-rental shop and auto-supply store combo shuttered for the night. The Ford took a hesitant left onto an old logging road. Trailing him any farther would have been seriously pushing my luck, so I pulled over in the auto
supply parking lot to catch some sleep. It was about 5:00 a.m. The Nautikon couldn't go anywhere from here but up. And if he came back down, I'd be waiting for him.

 

I woke up a couple hours later to a rapping on my driver's-side window. The knuckles were knuckly in the extreme and scored with axle grease. The man was missing one index finger, his face old and empty of expression, but he looked friendly enough.

I rolled down the window and rubbed my forehead.

“You been here all night?” the man asked.

“No.” He looked at the heap of candy wrappers on the seat beside me. “Just a couple hours,” I said.

“There's a motel up the mountain.” The man pointed with his right hand, but without an index finger the gesture seemed incomplete. “More like a water-park-type place. It's got ducks you can ride in, but the rooms are reasonable priced. Looks like you could use some shut-eye.”

It was a eureka moment for me. That explained my Nautikon's strange trajectory. He was like a human divining rod, seeking some mythical mountaintop water park where he could continue his arcane experiments.

“Just up there?” I felt self-conscious about my own index finger, so I pointed with my pinkie, but this didn't feel right either. We both looked up the dirt road that ran beside the auto-supply store, the same road the Ford had taken hours ago.

“Can't miss it. Look for the giant prospector.” He slapped the side of my car.

 

The giant prospector is molded from concrete and rebar and stands about thirty feet high. He's your stereotypical forty-niner in a droopy calfskin hat and dungarees, with a grizzled beard and wild eyes that scan the valley below. In his outstretched hands he's carrying a pan filled with gold nuggets. They're actually yellow lightbulbs and they spell out the name of the amusement park:
PROSPECTOR'S BEND
. At the back of the statue an iron-rung ladder leads to a small door in the seat of his pants.

The parking lot was nearly deserted. I took a spot beside a mini SUV with Colorado plates and most of the Greek alphabet decaled on the hatchback window. The backseat was littered with mail-order clothing catalogs and frozen yogurt cups. On the way to the motel office I passed the white Ford. Its hood was cool to the touch. I looked up at the motel, a two-story box made to resemble a mountain lodge. Most of the brown paint had peeled off the fake timbers, and an array of satellite dishes waddled in the high wind on the rooftop.

Above the motel the sky was a waxy blue. Little swabs of cloud stuff moved swift and high overhead. The weather suggested all kinds of change and inevitabilities. I sneaked up the exterior stairwell and pressed my ear against each of the doors on the second floor. The rooms were dead quiet until I got to room 19. From inside I heard perky morning TV and a hair dryer. A girl's voice was singing “I wanna sex you up.”

Two doors down I came to room 22, a corner suite. A window faced the breezeway, but the curtain was drawn tight. I concentrated and thought I could hear the Weather Channel prognosticating from somewhere within. Then I heard the familiar booming voice, chanting along with the forecast.

Downstairs in the front office I found a pamphlet that pro
vided the history of the place. Prospector's Bend was built in 1969 during that weird revival of Gold Rush nostalgia. The site really was a prospecting town back in its day, and when the park first opened kids could still try their hand at panning for gold. But by 1972 all you could expect to get was pyrite and pull tabs, so the owners started adding water rides to keep the customers coming.

The oldest attraction is called the Duck Pond, built in 1973 (coincidentally the same year Marvel Comics premiered
Howard the Duck
). The Darn Tootin' Straight Shootin' Water Chute arrived a year later, followed by a pond stocked with actual trout and a Ferris-type wheel shaped like a waterwheel. The existing swimming pool was rechristened the Waterin' Hole. Then in 1976 they debuted the now infamous Oaken Bucket. You've all seen this one on the news, so I won't bore you with the specs.

In the 1990s local college kids made Prospector's Bend a shrine of hipster kitsch. Along with their insincere mustaches and T-shirts promoting little league teams they never played for, every Colorado coed's irony training included a pilgrimage to Prospector's Bend. At spring break they'd converge here to get their faux-bois jollies, get ironically wasted, and ironically have sex. This wasn't in the pamphlet; that part I learned by observation.

“You just here to read, or do you need a room?” The woman behind the desk was talking to me. “This ain't a library, you know.”