The Overton Window Page 12

  He checked his watch. Half-past seven on Saturday morning, and by the noise outside, the Tombs were officially awakening.

  These places had a sound all their own. Back there among the inmates it would be drowned out by the hue and cry of those right around you, but from a distance those troubled voices all intermingled into a sound something like an ill wind—an airy, echoing howl that drifted up from the cell blocks at certain times of the day and night.

  While he was waiting he pulled a hefty folder from his briefcase and opened it flat. This was an abridged version of the FBI file for the young man he was about to see. The guy was a marshmallow, he’d been assured, and by a covert order he’d just spent a long hard night in a cage full of the worst serial offenders this venue had to offer, so he would certainly be softened up even more by this morning. With luck, once a deal was on the table there wouldn’t be too much time wasted in negotiation.

  It was an unusually thick file for someone who’d never been arrested for anything more serious than fairly minor narcotics offenses. Cocaine mostly, some party drugs, and he’d been busted with a modest grow operation and a trash bag full of premium bud at one point, years ago. He’d plea-bargained his way out of that last one, in exchange for testimony against his accomplices. That fact was worth an underscore.

  A halfhearted suicide attempt when he was in his twenties, just a cry for help most likely, but then another one, a real one, during a ninety-day stint in a county lockup in Louisiana—this page was dog-eared, as was his psych evaluation from the time.

  There were also some tax problems and other run-ins with the law dating back to his teens, but the latest entries concerned evidence gathered through recent home and business surveillance warrants, highlighted transcripts of a monitored ham-radio show, and a list of some videos he’d produced that were now circulating through the Patriot culture on the Internet. Hate speech/counterterrorism was the box that was checked on his first wiretap request, but the latest such authorization had been requisitioned by three cooperating divisions, as abbreviated in the margin: DC-JTTF, NM-DTWG, NM-WMDWG.

  The Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Domestic Terrorism Working Group, and the Weapons of Mass Destruction Working Group. The last two offices were based in New Mexico.

  Based on this file and, more important, based on Stuart Kearns’s own long experience in the field, this little guy didn’t seem like he’d ever been much for the government to worry about. It was almost as though they decided years ago that they were going to get him, but they hadn’t yet known exactly how. He didn’t seem dangerous, only outspoken and troublesome. But, heaven knows, stranger things have happened.

  In these times, the tug-of-war between national security and personal freedom was becoming a losing battle for civil libertarians. It had happened bit by bit, with each slight loss of liberty or privacy sounding like a reasonable protection when viewed on its own. The effect was cumulative, however. Today even the most liberal of politicians were openly floating the idea of preventive detention for terrorism suspects: basically, indefinite incarceration without charges or trial, all for what sometimes amounted to little more than thought crimes.

  The presumption of innocence was an admirable doctrine in simpler days, though at best it had always been unevenly applied in practice— more an ideal to strive toward than a true and present cornerstone of American justice. In recent years an increasingly frightened public had approved of that hallowed concept being systematically replaced with another, especially when it came to certain groups and offenses: When in doubt, lock them up.

  Clipped to the file was an eight-by-ten photo taken of his man only last night, when he’d appeared at a far-right-wing protest rally of some kind. He’d run afoul of the cops, and that’s when Stuart’s midnight call had come; a necessary piece of an important puzzle was about to drop into his lap. The hope was that this fellow would be interested in helping his country, but in case he wasn’t, the fallback was to make sure he’d be pretty desperate to help himself.

  Three corrections officers approached the open door with a heavily shackled prisoner in their charge. He could barely walk on his own, either from the effects of heavy fatigue, the abuse he’d obviously taken from his cellmates overnight, or both.

  They brought him in, sat him down across the desk, cuffed him to the chair, dropped a Baggie of belongings on the filing cabinet, and with a nod and a signature from his new custodian, left without a word being spoken.

  The guy’s head was hanging, chin to his chest. Without the arms of the chair holding him upright he’d probably have slumped right to the floor.

  “Daniel Carroll Bailey?”

  He flinched at the sound of his name like he’d been roused cold from a nightmare. The chain at his wrist snapped taut; he squinted and hunched down as though expecting another boot to the side of the head. He looked pretty bad, but with some cleaning up maybe not unable to travel, and that was good for the schedule. Beyond the cuts and bruises, if lack of sleep was his main problem then they were in good shape; he could rest on the plane.

  “Are you my lawyer?” Bailey asked.

  His words were weak and not formed very well. Swollen jaw, eyes trying hard to focus, one ear freshly torn ragged at the lobe from an earring theft, or maybe a bite. Before they’d brought him in someone had done a half-assed job of swabbing the blood that had dried around his nose and mouth, but a bit of real doctoring might be needed before they could get on the road for the airport.

  “No, I’m not a lawyer.”

  “I want my phone call, they won’t let me have my phone call—”

  “You can make your call now if you want, and line up an attorney. That’s your right. But if you decide to go that route I want to warn you. This is from a high authority, the highest; in fact with your past record, your charges from last night, and especially”—he patted the folder in front of him—“the evidence from an ongoing federal investigation, the best any lawyer’s going to get you is fifteen to twenty years in a place much worse than this. That’s a fact. But it doesn’t have to be like that, Danny.”

  Slowly, the other man seemed to be recovering his wits, or at least enough of them to understand what he was facing.

  “Who are you?”

  Stuart Kearns showed his ID, then took out his card and slid it across to the very edge of the desk.

  “I’ve got nine words for you that I’ll bet you never thought you’d be so glad to hear,” he said. “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Over the intercom came an announcement that they’d just reached cruising altitude at 44,000 feet, and to punctuate that bit of news the no smoking light went off with a quiet ting.

  It was a nice touch, but on a jet this size the copilot could just as easily have leaned around his seat and shouted down the aisle to update his two lone passengers on the progress of the flight.

  Stuart Kearns took a pack of Dunhills from one jacket pocket, his lighter from another, then reclined his seat a notch and lit up. He inhaled deeply, then blew a thin white ring of smoke and watched it drift up toward the rounded cabin ceiling.

  “What are you doing?”

  Danny Bailey had awakened from his nap and was staring at the lit cigarette across the narrow aisle as though he were watching a bank robbery in progress.

  “You can still smoke on a charter. On this one, anyway.” Kearns extended the pack to him, shook a filter tip halfway out. “Come on, you know you want to.”

  “I quit five years ago.”

  “Last chance. It’s not every day you get a free pass to break the rules.” Bailey didn’t budge, so Kearns returned the cigarettes to his pocket. “Hey, remind me, how old are you?”

  “I’m thirty-four.”

  “In the decade you were born a man could still smoke a cigar on any flight across this country. Can you believe that?”

  “Listen,” Bailey said, “what’s your name again?”

  “Kearns. Stu
art Kearns.”

  “That’s right—Special Agent Kearns. Well listen, Stuart, I’m glad to be out of jail, but it doesn’t exactly feel like I’m free.”

  He nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Right. So no offense, but there’s no reason to strain yourself pretending you’re my friend. Let’s stick to business. What do you say you just enjoy your smoke and then tell me what the hell I need to do to go home.”

  It wasn’t an elaborate scheme; it couldn’t be when success relied on the performance of an informant under duress. In undercover work, if anything can go wrong it generally does. The more straightforward the plan, the better. Keep it simple, and you keep it safe.

  The targets for the operation were low-level militia types with a desire to graduate to a full-blown act of domestic terrorism. They were in the market for funding, logistical support, and some serious weapons. If all went well then the only thing they’d be getting at the final handoff was arrested.

  Danny Bailey would be brought along to the first in-person meet-up, to lend a crowning bit of credibility to the proceedings; he was currently the closest thing the Patriot underground had to a national spokesperson. In essence, Bailey would play the Oprah to Kearns’s Dr. Phil.

  The operation itself would be quick, in and out, but the lead-up to it had required a long and careful preparation.

  A few years earlier a website had been set up by the IT guys at the Bureau: www.stuartkearns.com. The backstory on the site went like this: A former federal agent had been run out of his job when he’d tried to blow the whistle on some dangerous truths. After repeated death threats, this ousted agent had gotten angry and gone public on the Web in an effort to protect himself from retribution, and to continue his crusade to expose the dark forces intent on causing a global financial collapse and ushering in a one-world government.

  The global villains named on the site were a grab bag pulled from the latest full-color catalog of extremist paranoia: the Zionists, the Royals, the IMF and World Bankers, the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, the Bilderbergers, the Masons, the Grovers, the Vatican, you name it. It was a big tent, and that was the point. Search engines had soon begun to present Stuart’s site as a top-twenty destination for all manner of curious like-minded wackos, and traffic became fairly brisk.

  It was evident from the home page that this wasn’t a place for the no-guts armchair militiaman. The rants, posts, links, videos, documents, and forums hosted by this fictional ex-fed-turned-Patriot made it pretty clear that he believed a violent uprising, a shooting war, was the only route remaining to set things right again in America.

  This site and its inflammatory content formed what’s known as a troll in the parlance of the Internet culture. Trolling is a fishing term; you toss your lure over the side and forget about it, letting it drag behind the boat in hopes that something you want to catch will eventually take the bait.

  With 200 million websites out there no one really expected this obscure destination would make Stuart Kearns a household name among the diverse followers of all the competing hate groups. The FBI and many other agencies maintained thousands of such baited traps; sometimes they paid off, most times they didn’t.

  But then one day the troll hooked a fish, and from the first tug it felt like a big catch.

  A new discussion group had formed in a private chat room on the site, under the heading of “Direct Action.” The members began to kick around the logistics of the Oklahoma City bombing, Tim McVeigh’s attack on the Murrah Federal Building in 1995: what had gone right, what had gone wrong, and the various conspiracy theories still swirling around the event and its aftermath. With some encouragement from the forum leader the discussion evolved—some half-baked plans that would’ve gotten the job done better, other vulnerable targets, men, methods, and materials. Many dropped out of the conversation as things got more serious, but eight stayed on.

  This remaining group progressed to tentative voice chats and then to encrypted e-mail exchanges, all the while inching their way from what had started as a mere discussion toward a solid plot that could actually be executed. Three more anonymous participants eventually got cold feet and dropped out, leaving five people ready, willing, and able to commit a grotesque act of domestic terrorism.

  And now it was time to reel them in.

  “These aren’t my people,” Bailey said. “You’ve gotta be kidding me, man, I’ve never told anybody to do any violence—”

  “I’ve watched your videos, son, and you don’t exactly tell them not to, either.”

  “Aw, come on.” Bailey sat back in his seat, shaking his head. “I’ve got to go over the top just to get people up off the couch. Have any of you guys ever actually read the First Amendment? Tom Clancy wrote two books about how terrorists could use airliners as weapons before 9/11. Did you arrest him for that?”

  “No, but I’ll tell you what, we sure as hell brought him in for questioning.”

  “I’m not the right guy for this.”

  “Well, you’re the one I’ve got. You’re a big name to these people. Trust me, they’ll believe what you say, and that’s all we need. You’re just going to come in and stroke them a little bit, tell them you know me and that I’m concerned there might be an agent among them—”

  “You’re concerned that one of them might be a mole. That’s a nice touch.”

  “Thanks,” Kearns said. “And I asked you to come with me and check them out before I’d agree to see them in person. It’ll be fine, believe me. Just that first meeting, and maybe a little follow-up afterward. That’s all you’ve got to do.”

  “And then I’m out of this, and you’ll leave me alone?”

  “Stay out of trouble, and there’s no reason you’ll ever have to deal with someone like me again.”

  “I’m going to need to get that in writing.”

  “You’ll get it.” Kearns put out his cigarette in the armrest ashtray. “Have you done any acting, like in high school?”

  “Why?”

  “Some people get nervous when they have to lie, that’s all. This isn’t much of a performance, but I want to know you can handle the pressure. You can’t flake out on me.”

  “Oh, you want to know if I can fool a handful of small-time desperadoes role-playing Red Dawn in their living room?” Bailey nodded, took off his dark glasses, picked up his surveillance file from Kearns’s lap, and went through the stack until he found a series of photos about a third of the way down. “Did you miss these?” he asked.

  The photos, time-stamped from earlier in the year, all featured a man dressed and made up in a convincing impersonation of Colonel Sanders, complete with goatee, white suit, and black-string bow tie. In the top picture he was shaking hands with a distinguished-looking gentleman under a huge United Nations seal.

  “Is that you?” Kearns asked.

  “That’s me.” Bailey pointed to the man standing next to him in the photo. “And that’s Mr. Ali Treki, the president of the UN General Assembly, receiving an official state visit from the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, who’d been dead for almost thirty years at the time. Look.” He flipped to the next picture. “He even let me sit in his chair and bang the gavel.”

  “You did this when, last year?”

  “Those pictures made the Daily News that week. It was a publicity stunt for my DVD on UN corruption, United AbomiNations. It’s sold out, but I’ll see if I can get you a copy.”

  “I’ll add it to my Netflix queue. How did you get past security?”

  “What security? Security walked me all the way up to the president’s office.” Bailey smiled. “Everybody loves the Colonel.”

  “That’s good,” Kearns said.

  “Oh, Stuart, that’s not just good. That’s finger-lickin’ good.”

  Despite the circumstances, it was clear to see what people connected with in Danny Bailey. He had an easy charm about him, a certain smoothness that could draw you in like a great salesman does as he effortlessly talks you right down t
o the bottom line. When it comes to undercover work that kind of skill is more valuable than it might sound at first. If things start sliding sideways your wits can sometimes get you out of a situation where your gun might just get you killed.

  Kearns nodded and took the file back, with a thought to himself that he should find the time to go through it all more thoroughly. There was clearly quite a bit more to this young fellow than initially met the eye.

  CHAPTER 18

  Bacon.

  Scent appeals to the most primitive of the five basic senses. Unlike a sight or sound or even a touch, an aroma can rocket straight to the untamed emotions with no stops required at the smarter parts of the brain. You like it or you hate it; that’s the designed-in depth of raw stimulation the nose is built to deliver. So amid all the other deeper thoughts that should have come to Noah’s mind upon awakening, it was bacon that crowded them out to come in first across the finish line.

  Other wonderful smells of a home-cooked breakfast, recalling the finest mornings from his early childhood, were wafting in from a couple of rooms away. Molly was nowhere to be seen, though an alluring girl-shaped indentation was still evident in the gathering of covers beside him.

  He pushed back the quilt and squinted to read the clock on the far wall: 4:35 it said, with no clue whether that made it early the following morning or late that same afternoon. It might take all weekend to get his body clock reset to normal again.

  He slipped on his robe and pulled open the bedroom curtains. It was cloudy again and the sun was low; still Saturday, then.

  “Are you up, finally?” He heard her voice from the doorway.

  “Yeah.” When he turned he saw she was already dressed for the day. “Looks like you found the laundry room.”

  “I went out and got some groceries, too. Your refrigerator was freakishly clean and really empty.”

  “I eat out a lot.”

  “Well, I made you something.” She smiled. “Late birthday breakfast. Come and get it while it’s hot.”