The Hammer of Eden (30 page)

He took a deep breath, then walked across the slope of the hillside to the vineyard. Dale greeted the two agents, as arranged. Priest filled a watering can with the pepper mixture and began to spray, moving toward Dale so that he could hear the conversation.

The Asian man spoke in a friendly tone. “We’re FBI agents, making some routine inquiries in the neighborhood. I’m Bill Ho, and this is John Aldritch.”

That was encouraging, Priest told himself. It sounded as though they had no special interest in the vineyard: they were just looking around, hoping to pick up clues. It was a fishing expedition. But the thought did not make him feel much less tense.

Ho looked around appreciatively, taking in the valley. “What a beautiful spot.”

Dale nodded. “We’re very attached to it.”

Take care, Dale—drop the heavy irony. This is not a frigging game
.

Aldritch, the younger agent, said impatiently: “Are you in charge here?” He had a southern accent.

“I’m the foreman,” Dale said. “How can I help you?”

Ho said: “Do you folks live here?”

Priest pretended to go on working, but his heart was thumping, and he strained to hear.

“Most of us are seasonal workers,” Dale said, following the script agreed upon with Priest. “The company provides accommodation because this place is so far from anywhere.”

Aldritch said: “Strange place for a fruit farm.”

“It’s not a fruit farm, it’s a winery. Would you like to try a glass of last year’s vintage? It’s really very good.”

“No thanks. Unless you have an alcohol-free product.”

“No, sorry. Just the real thing.”

“Who owns the place?”

“The Napa Bottling Company.”

Aldritch made a note.

Ho glanced toward the cluster of buildings on the far side of the vineyard. “Mind if we take a look around?”

Dale shrugged. “Sure, go ahead.” He resumed his work.

Priest watched anxiously as the agents headed off. On the surface, it was a plausible story that these people were badly paid workers living in low-grade accommodation provided by a stingy management. But there were clues here that might make a smart agent ask more questions. The temple was the most obvious. Star had folded up the old banner bearing the Five Paradoxes of Baghram. All the same, someone with an inquiring mind might ask why the schoolroom was a round building with no windows and no furniture.

Also, there were marijuana patches in the woods nearby. The FBI agents were not interested in small-time doping, but cultivation did not fit in with the fiction of a transient population. The free shop looked like any other shop until you noticed that there were no prices on anything and no cash register.

There might be a hundred other ways the pretense would fall apart under thorough investigation, but Priest was hoping the FBI was focused on Los Alamos and just checking out the neighbors as a matter of routine.

He had to fight the temptation to follow the agents. He was
desperate to see what they looked at, and hear what they said to each other, as they poked around his home. But he forced himself to keep spraying, glancing up from the vines every minute or two to see where they were and what they were doing.

They went into the cookhouse. Garden and Slow were there, making lasagne for the midday meal. What were the agents saying to them? Was Garden chattering nervously and giving herself away? Had Slow forgotten his instructions and started to jabber enthusiastically about daily meditation?

The agents emerged from the cookhouse. Priest looked hard at them, trying to guess their thoughts; but they were too far away for him to read their faces, and their body language gave nothing away.

They began to wander around the cabins, peeking in. Priest could not guess whether anything they saw would make them suspect that this was anything more than a wine farm.

They checked out the grape press, the barns where the wine was fermented, and the barrels of last year’s vintage waiting to be bottled. Had they noticed that nothing was powered by electricity?

They opened the door of the temple. Would they speak to the children, contrary to Priest’s prediction? Would Star blow her cool and call them fascist pigs? Priest held his breath.

The agents closed the door without going inside.

They spoke to Oaktree, who was cutting barrel staves in the yard. He looked up at them and answered curtly without stopping his work. Maybe he figured it would look suspicious if he was friendly.

They came across Aneth hanging diapers out to dry. She refused to use disposable diapers. She was probably explaining this to the agents, saying, “There aren’t enough trees in the world for every child to have disposable diapers.”

They walked down to the stream and studied the stones in the shallow brook, seeming to contemplate crossing. The marijuana patches were all on the far side. But the agents apparently did not want to get their feet wet, for they turned around and came back.

At last they returned to the vineyard. Priest tried to study their faces
without staring. Were they convinced, or had they seen something that made them suspicious? Aldritch seemed hostile, Ho friendly, but that could just be an act.

Aldritch spoke to Dale. “Y’all have some of these cabins tricked out kind of nice, for ‘temporary accommodation,’ don’t you?”

Priest went cold. It was a skeptical question, suggesting that Aldritch did not buy their story. Priest began to wonder if there was any way he could kill both FBI men and get away with it.

“Yeah,” Dale said. “Some of us come back year after year.” He was improvising: none of this had been scripted. “And a few of us live here all year round.” Dale was not a practiced liar. If this went on too long, he would give himself away.

Aldritch said: “I want a list of everyone who lives or works here.”

Priest’s mind raced. Dale could not use people’s communal names, for that would give the game away—and anyway, the agents would insist on real names. But some of the communards had police records, including Priest himself. Would Dale think fast enough to realize he had to invent names for everyone? Would he have the nerve to do it?

Ho added: “We also need ages and permanent addresses.” His tone was apologetic.

Shit! This is getting worse
.

Dale said: “You could get those from the company’s records.”

No, they couldn’t
.

Ho said: “I’m sorry, we need them right now.”

Dale looked nonplussed. “Gee, I guess you’ll have to go round asking them all. I sure as heck don’t know everyone’s birthday. I’m their boss, not their granddad.”

Priest’s mind raced. This was dangerous. He could not allow the agents to question everyone. They would give themselves away a dozen times.

He made a snap decision and stepped forward. “Mr. Arnold?” he said, inventing a name for Dale on the spur of the moment. “Maybe I could assist the gentlemen.” Without planning it, he had adopted the persona of a friendly dope, eager to help but not very bright. He
addressed the agents. “I’ve been coming here a few years, I guess I know everybody, and how old they are.”

Dale looked relieved to hand the responsibility back to Priest. “Okay, go ahead,” he said.

“Why don’t you come to the cookhouse?” Priest said to the agents. “If you won’t drink wine, I bet you’d like a cup of coffee.”

Ho smiled and said: “That’d be real good.”

Priest led them back through the rows of vines and took them into the cookhouse. “We got some paperwork to do,” he explained to Garden and Slow. “You two take no notice of us, just go on making that great-smelling pasta.”

Ho offered Priest his notebook. “Why don’t you just write down the names, ages, and addresses right here?”

Priest did not take the notebook. “Oh, my handwriting is the worst in the world,” he said smoothly. “Now, you sit yourselves down and write the names while I make you coffee.” He put a pot of water on the fire, and the agents sat at the long pine table.

“The foreman is Dale Arnold, he’s forty-two.” These guys would never be able to check. No one here was in the phone book or on any kind of register.

“Permanent address?”

“He lives here. Everyone does.”

“I thought you were seasonal workers.”

“That’s right. Most of them will leave, come November, when the harvest is in and the grapes have been crushed; but they ain’t the kind of folks who keep two homes. Why pay rent on a place when you’re living somewhere else?”

“So the permanent address for everyone here would be …?”

“Silver River Valley Winery, Silver City, California. But people have their mail sent to the company in Napa, it’s safer.”

Aldritch was looking irritated and slightly bemused, as Priest intended. Querulous people did not have the patience to pursue minor inconsistencies.

He poured them coffee as he made up a list of names. To help him
remember who was who, he used variations of their commune names: Dale Arnold, Peggy Star, Richard Priestley, Holly Goldman. He left out Melanie and Dusty, as they were not there—Dusty was at his father’s place, and Melanie had gone to fetch him.

Aldritch interrupted him. “In my experience, most transient agricultural workers in this state are Mexican, or at least Hispanic.”

“Yeah, and this bunch is everything but,” Priest agreed. “The company has a few vineyards, and I guess the boss keeps the Hispanics all together in their own gangs, with Spanish-speaking foremen, and puts everyone else on our team. It ain’t racism, you understand, just practical.”

They seemed to accept that.

Priest went slowly, dragging out the session as long as possible. The agents could do no harm in the cookhouse. If they got bored and became impatient to leave, so much the better.

While he talked, Garden and Slow carried on cooking. Garden was silent and stone-faced and somehow managed to stir pots in a haughty manner. Slow was jumpy and kept darting terrified glances at the agents, but they did not seem to care. Maybe they were used to people being frightened of them. Maybe they liked it.

Priest took fifteen or twenty minutes to give them the names and ages of the commune’s twenty-six adults. Ho was closing his notebook when Priest said: “Now, the children. Let me think. Gee, they grow up so fast, don’t they?”

Aldritch gave a grunt of exasperation. “I don’t think we need to know the children’s names,” he said.

“Okay,” Priest said equably. “More coffee for you folks?”

“No thanks.” Aldritch looked at Ho. “I think we’re done here.”

Ho said: “So this land is owned by the Napa Bottling Company?”

Priest saw a chance to cover up the slip Dale had made earlier. “No, that ain’t exactly right,” he said. “The company operates the winery, but I believe the land is owned by the government.”

“So the name on the lease would be Napa Bottling.”

Priest hesitated. Ho, the friendly one, was asking the really dangerous questions. But how was he to reply? It was too risky to lie.
They could check this in seconds. Reluctantly he said: “Matter of fact, I think the name on the lease may be Stella Higgins.” He hated to give Star’s real name to the FBI. “She was the woman who started the vineyard, years ago.” He hoped it would not be of any use to them. He could not see how it gave them any clues.

Ho wrote down the name. “That’s all, I think,” he said.

Priest hid his relief. “Well, good luck with the rest of your inquiries,” he said as he led them out.

He took them through the vineyard. They stopped to thank Dale for his cooperation. “Who are you guys after, anyway?” Dale said.

“A terrorist group that’s trying to blackmail the governor of California,” Ho told him.

“Well, I sure hope you catch them,” Dale said sincerely.

No, you don’t
.

At last the two agents walked away across the field, stumbling occasionally on the uneven ground, and disappeared into the trees.

“Well, that seemed to go pretty well,” Dale said to Priest, looking pleased with himself.

Jesus Christ almighty, if only you knew
.

12

S
unday afternoon, Judy took Bo to see the new Clint Eastwood movie at the Alexandria Cinema on the corner of Geary and Eighteenth. To her surprise, she forgot about earthquakes for a couple of hours and had a good time. Afterward they went for a sandwich and a beer at one of Bo’s joints, a cops’ pub with a TV over the bar and a sign on the door saying “We cheat tourists.”

Bo finished his cheeseburger and took a swig of Guinness. “Clint Eastwood should star in the story of my life,” he said.

“Come on,” Judy said. “Every detective in the world thinks that.”

“Yeah, but I even look like Clint.”

Judy grinned. Bo had a round face with a snub nose. She said: “I like Mickey Rooney for the part.”

“I think people should be able to divorce their kids,” Bo said, but he was laughing.

The news came on TV. When Judy saw footage of the raid on Los Alamos, she smiled sourly. Brian Kincaid had screamed at her for interfering—then he had adopted her plan.

However, there was no triumphal interview with Brian. There was film of a smashed five-bar gate, a sign that read “We do not recognize the jurisdiction of the United States government,” and a SWAT team in their flak jackets returning from the scene. Bo said: “Looks to me like they didn’t find anything.”

That puzzled Judy. “I’m surprised,” she said. “Los Alamos seemed like really hot suspects.” She was disappointed. It seemed her instinct had been completely wrong.

The newscaster was saying that no arrests had been made. “They don’t even say they seized evidence,” Bo said. “I wonder what the story is.”

“If you’re about done here, we can go find out,” Judy said.

They left the bar and got into Judy’s car. She picked up her car phone and called Simon Sparrow’s home number. “What do you hear about the raid?” she asked him.

“We got zip.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“There are no computers on the premises, so it’s hard to imagine they could have left a message on the Internet. Nobody there even has a college degree, and I doubt if any one of them could
spell
seismologist. There are four women in the group, but none of them matches either of our two female profiles—these girls are in their late teens and early twenties. And the vigilantes have no beef with the dam. They’re happy with the compensation they’re getting from Coastal Electric for their land, and they’re looking forward to moving to their new place. Oh—and on Friday at two-twenty P.M., six of the seven men were at a store called Frank’s Sporting Weapons in Silver City, buying ammunition.”