The Eye of Moloch (15 page)
Shortly thereafter the first of many official registered letters had arrived.
Hundreds of supposed violations had been reported to an army of bureaucrats, boards, and commissions. Fresh raw milk was being served to guests who requested it, along with ungraded butter and eggs. Wild horses and “feral” animals were alleged to be present, perhaps to be bred and raised on the property. Child labor laws were being flagrantly sidestepped. Dinner menus lacked the required nutritional data. The trumped-up charges and obscure technicalities went on and on.
As a result, multiple licenses and permits were under review or in the process of revocation. Retroactive taxes, fees, and fines were being assessed, and several cease-and-desist orders had been served. All these
charges were baseless and most were trivial, but some were dead serious. One of the Merrick brothers traveled the gun-show circuit with hand-tuned and legally augmented high-end firearms; his inventory was actually being named in a preliminary injunction as an illegal cache of assault weapons.
“What does this one mean?” Tyler asked.
“They’re accusing your aunt Mary of diverting storm water.”
“Wait, what? You mean the stuff that falls from the sky?”
“Yeah. She’s got a sixty-gallon rain barrel out by the vegetable garden.”
“How can that be against the law?”
“Those paper-pushers made a mistake because it’s not against the law yet here in Wyoming, but it is in more states than you’d think. Doesn’t matter, though. It still takes time and lawyers to answer it all.”
Tyler put the paper back with the others and closed the folder. “This is just, I don’t know . . .”
“Harassment?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s un-American, is what it is,” Hollis said. “Intimidation by regulation, and selective enforcement against a hit list of political enemies. Now don’t get me wrong, government’s not all bad. Once you let these corrupt control freaks get their hooks into office, though, they never stop. It just grows and grows. This is the kind of nonsense they thrive on.”
The next few hours passed quickly as honest work gradually replaced the conversation. At the start what this boy knew about carpentry wouldn’t pack a thimble, but he picked things up with ease and he seemed to like to learn. It was almost eleven when Tyler’s mother dropped by to bring her son a ham-and-egg sandwich and to let Hollis know that Molly’s meeting was about to begin.
“My mom’s been talking about you,” Tyler said, when she’d left.
“Is that a fact?”
“Yup. I think she’s smitten, as grossed-out as I am to say it.”
“There’s a compliment in there somewhere,” Hollis said, “and by George I’ll take it.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“I guess there’s no stopping you.”
“It’s not because anyone’s including me in all the secret talk around here, but I’ve picked up a little in the past couple of days on what you and your friends are all about.”
“Okay. What do you want to ask?”
“Now don’t take this the wrong way,” Tyler said, “but you’re sitting in here fixing old drawers and bitching and moaning about regulations and bureaucrats and stuff.”
“So what?”
“So if you’re all on this great mission, shouldn’t you be out there saving the country instead of sitting here?”
From the mouths of babes,
Hollis thought. He wasn’t looking forward to it, but in a few minutes down the hall that very important question would be put to a final vote.
H
ollis wasn’t anxious to get where he had to go, so he took the scenic route to the dining room.
When he could avoid his destination no longer he arrived at the meeting place with the sheaf of printouts he’d collected from the Web. He paced for a while, listening in, before finally opening the door to step inside. The program was going full steam by then, and the current speaker went right ahead without taking much notice as Hollis found a seat near Molly’s side.
The spirit of ’76 was running high in these people, and it sounded all too familiar. They were deep in their Founding Fathers’ roles, talking on about various grassroots actions to ignite a reawakening in the American people.
Samuel Adams stressed the critical importance of the clergy as a sure route to reach a wider, sympathetic congregation—there were 180 million churchgoers across America who might be reached with this message through the pulpit. Alexander Hamilton put forth a more political agenda, with goals secured by throwing the group’s support behind enlightened and right-minded candidates in future elections. Ethan Allen
spoke of organized boycotts, protests, and other high-profile public acts of civil resistance meant to raise awareness of the unfolding crisis threatening to destroy the great country they loved.
Incredibly, they proposed these things as though they were actually possible, as though some vast and dormant constituency was out there just waiting to embrace the message, hit the streets, and take up the cause.
Hollis watched Molly through each of the impassioned speeches. With every untenable tactic put forth and debated, not a trace of uncertainty showed on her face. She looked as driven and determined as ever, ready to take any measure whatever the risk, as long as the action might move their campaign of liberty forward.
And when it was Molly’s turn to speak, Hollis learned that she had an idea of her own that made the others seem mild by comparison.
In her past work as a white-collar spy and whistle-blower, Molly would infiltrate her target organizations and then, through contacts in the press, leak what she’d learned to the world at large. These escapades would sometimes yield a few days of below-the-fold headlines before fading into the general swamp of corruption and vice in the news. More often than not, though, the stories found no traction and simply disappeared. By and large the public seemed to have grown completely immune to outrage anymore.
The problem had been one of scale, she now said, not of substance. This time, rather than taking on these targets and exposing them piecemeal, Molly proposed an elaborate scheme to bring about a single, massive day of truth-telling far too big for her enemies to cover up.
Apparently she’d been thinking this through for a long while. When they’d been together in New York, Noah Gardner had inadvertently told Molly of the place where his father sent the most sensitive and damning information concerning his list of powerful clients. And it wasn’t only Arthur Gardner, but all the scheming villains in every hidden seat of power—in government, in media, in activist corporations, in global
finance, every one of them, right to the very top—they all stored the evidence of their dark designs in this one ultrasecure facility.
This near-mythological place was called Garrison Archives, and its heavily guarded doorway was Molly’s new finish line. Her goal was to take a team and travel east to open up this vault of secrets to the sunlight, unmasking the enemy’s agenda all at once in a scorched-earth exposé that finally couldn’t be ignored.
No one present raised the slightest concern at the prospect of such a dangerous, one-way mission, and “one-way” described it perfectly. It was clever to a fault, right up until the all-important moment of the getaway. This group talked a lot about miracles and, at the end of such a fool’s errand, they’d need one.
After all his warnings, after all they’d just been through, the sad truth of their situation still hadn’t dawned on these people.
At last he’d heard enough. Before he could temper the impulse he brought the flat of his hand down onto the table, hard, and put the whole room quiet at the sound.
“No,” Hollis said.
The others turned to him and stared.
Not being a bona fide member of the group, he had no official voice in these meetings. But in another area—when it came to Molly’s safety—he would always hold the deciding vote.
“I’ve tried to tell you every way I know how”—Hollis stood as he continued—“but somehow it ain’t sunk in. So let me put the hay down where the goats can get it. We’ve lost, people. The other side won.
“I guess you’ve all forgotten where we were a few days ago, so I’ll remind you. We had no food or water or shelter and no money to buy any more. We’d been chased until we’d finally painted ourselves into a corner and had no place left to run. We were one inch away from being dead and gone forever, and you can thank God all you want but dumb luck and some damned neo-Nazis were the only things that pulled us through and got us here.
“And this house we’re in? Far as I can tell this is the home of the last friends we’ve got. If you don’t believe me, you read what I’ve been reading.” As Hollis shoved his tall stack of Internet printouts the papers fanned across the polished table and some slid onto the floor.
“Go on and read it if you’ve got the stomach, but I’ll summarize. After what happened last year to put us on the run, everybody else has turned tail and jumped ship. The things we believe in have been thoroughly smeared and demonized in the mainstream press, and they’d treat every one of you the same way if they’d bother to talk about you at all. You’re just the butt of a vulgar joke to the majority of people who never took you serious in the first place. Outside of this house the only folks that still seem to want us are employed by the FBI.
“The most we can do now is try to survive. So I say it stops, right here. I say we disappear while that option’s still available. The minute I see that it’s safe we’ll hightail it up north. We’ve got a place there that’s all built for us, dug-in and ready, and we’ll ride out the crash and make the best lives we can in what’s left of this country in the aftermath.
“This time, what I say goes,” Hollis continued. “That’s the way it’s going to be. You all fought the good fight, and everyone who matters still respects you for what you tried to do. But it’s over now.”
He waited for a rebuttal, having come fully armed to make his case, but none came forth.
They might have already known these things—how could they not?—and had managed to stay in a fragile state of denial, swept along one day to the next, borne on false hope, until finally faced here with the indisputable facts from one of their own.
A few had begun to read from the printed pages he’d brought, touching the words with their fingers, grim and baffled as if they’d come across their own obituaries in the Sunday morning gazette. The rest, it seemed, didn’t really need the confirmation. As the silence persisted all of them appeared to be slowly deflating from the soul on outward. The heroes they’d each embodied were dissipating before his eyes,
retreating from the needful present to resume their hallowed place in history.
Then, before he knew what was happening, Molly had taken up her guide dog’s harness and run from the room.
By the time he caught up with her she’d already made it to her suite. He found her kneeling by the side of her bed, but this time she wasn’t praying. She was weeping from some awful place deep inside. An admission of defeat this final was something she’d never had to face before.
Hollis sat next to her, near enough so she would know he was there, but he didn’t try to comfort her. Coming from him, the things normally said at these times would all ring hollow because he knew them to be empty and untrue.
Everything will be all right.
Better days are coming.
This, too, shall pass.
And of course,
Have faith.
Her breathing eased after a time, her hand found his, and she said only a single word, but it was enough.
“Okay.”
“Good,” Hollis said. “Now don’t you trouble yourself; you stay and rest. I’ll tell the others myself.” He paused before deciding to leave her with the only bit of good news that he had. “I got word this morning that Noah Gardner made it through that battle up at Gannett Peak. He’s hurt, but he’s alive, Molly. And he’d want you to stay that way, too.”
When he returned to the group they were still assembled and waiting. They took the news of their coming retreat better than he might have expected, and just like that, it was over.
Hollis stood at the window of the dining room after the others had left to return to their quarters. In the end they’d seemed relieved, more so than their still-tenuous situation should warrant. These days, to disappear completely was a difficult thing. Safety was within reach, but they weren’t nearly there yet.
Then, across the enclosed interior garden he saw that ancient woman again, seated in a rocking chair, watching him from a second-story dormer in the rustic, original part of the Merrick house.
Just as he had at dinner, he tried at first to convince himself that she couldn’t really be focused on him from such a distance. But no, she saw him all right, and that black scowl of hers was locked on like a geriatric heat-seeker.
It wasn’t just the old lady that seemed to be haunting him. Outside the sky was as clear and blue as he’d ever seen it; the winds were unusually calm for that time of year. This peace and quiet was deceptive, though.
At high altitude a glitter of sunlight reflected off something that shouldn’t be there. If that something overhead was one of those domestic government drones that were all over the news, up there searching and watching, it only confirmed his decision.