Ryne Pearson - Capitol Punishment

Bored with the same story for the fourth time, Vorhees flipped through the pages, scanning stories on the surprising rebound of California’s aerospace industry. Wait’ll they see next year’s budget. Then on to the inevitable litany of crime stories. A dead body here. A drive-by shooting there. A — Wait .

“Shit,” Vorhees said softly, the artist’s conception of the face of one dead… Nick King! …slapping him across the face. He read the accompanying story, including the complete account of a woman who lived near the house where the nerve gas accident happened. It took a minute more to sink in fully. “Goddamn you, Monte!”

Vorhees slapped the paper shut and tossed it over his desk, where it fluttered to the floor in separate pieces. He leaned forward, resting both elbows on his large wooden desk, and tried to think. Think fast. Wonderful! He had already hurled the requisite invective at the man, the former — as of now — contributor, who had gotten him into this. It will be good for the country, Dick. “Yeah, damn you again, Monte.”

Damage control. That was the priority now. And first? What came first?

Say something . That ran contrary to the rule about keeping one’s mouth shut, but silence was no longer accepted. No longer could an elected official not dignify such a ludicrous suggestion . He had to say something. And fast. But what? He thought on that question for a moment before coming to a startling conclusion.

“The truth.” He might have laughed if the chance for real political damage wasn’t so real, but the truth was his ally in this fight. It would have to be massaged, of course, to give it the proper feel. To portray him as terribly upset over this horrid, unforeseen twist. And that, too, was actually true. Vorhees emerged from the anger of the previous moment, now allowing a small laugh. He was really innocent in this. But who would ever believe that? he thought. The voters, he knew, answering his own question. Convincing them took little more than thirty seconds of video and some catchy ad copy. How hard could it be?

“Mark,” Vorhees said after dialing his chief aide, “get me a press conference for this afternoon… No, not tomorrow — today… I don’t care how hard it is, just do it. And make sure there’s press from my district there… Call them yourself, goddammit! Just get them here, all right… This is important.”

Vorhees laid the phone back in its cradle, his manner surprisingly calm. He swung his chair around and looked to the Capitol again. That was where it would happen, in a suitably sedate room. Some books in the background, he thought. Maybe a flag to… No, no flag. This had to be him and his shame.

He lowered his head, shaking it slightly. No . That didn’t feel right. This truth thing, and its requisite emotions, was, surprisingly, a tough act to master.

Vasquez Rocks, a popular county park north of Los Angeles, had seen much activity over the years. Formed by the geological forces of plate tectonics long before the first Mexican bandits used the giant rock formations as hiding places from which to launch raids upon arriving pioneers, the park now enjoyed favor as a place to climb and hike on the weekends. Hollywood, too, had taken notice of the somewhat alien-looking landscape, with its huge, rounded slabs of red rock jutting from the earth at near 45-degree angles, and had used the park many times in films and television shows, from the obvious westerns to the futuristic Star Trek series of the 1960s.

But during the week the visitors were fewer, mainly those dedicated rock climbers who simply could not wait until the weekend to travel to the more distant, and more challenging, Joshua Tree National Monument in the desert to the east of Los Angeles. There were also those who were there just to walk, to enjoy the sights. And there were those who enjoyed the solitude. And the privacy.

“Monte,” John Barrish said as he approached the man from behind.

Monte Royce jumped and spun around, the somewhat disguised face of the man he had once expected never to see again just feet away. “Christ, John, you scared the daylights out of me.”

John removed the sunglasses but left the large Aussie bush hat on as protection from the fine, chilly mist that was falling across the beautiful landscape. “You move fast for an old man,” he said, the observation far from innocent in its meaning. “When you want to.”

“What do you want, John?” Royce asked.

“I want more money, and I don’t want any of the crap you gave my boys while I was away,” he answered, his voice coming down after punching up the word he knew would carry the most impact.

Royce, his face long and lined after seventy years of life, stared into the younger man’s eyes, his breaths coming quicker. “Listen. I gave you what you said you needed before. I kept your family fed while you were locked up. I supported you.” His head shook. “No more, John. I can’t reconcile what you’re going to do anymore with what I believe.”

“Going soft, Monte?”

“No, just getting smart,” Royce said. He was much larger than the odd-looking man challenging him, but there was a power to John Barrish, one that had once drawn him into his inner circle. But now, with time away from the man to be with his own thoughts, Royce was beginning to understand the place he had been, a place as alien as television had made the landscape around him appear, but infinitely more real, and frightening.

“The choice isn’t yours, Monte,” John said coolly.

“You don’t have any—”

“Not me, Monte,” John said, reminding the elderly man of an undeniable fact. “I don’t think you make the decisions about the money.” He chuckled a bit. “You’re a middleman. A big, powerful middleman, who wouldn’t want to anger his mama.”

“Shut up, John, she has nothing to—”

“She has everything to do with this,” John corrected his reluctant benefactor. “Now do I need to go straight to her and put a strain on that ninety-six-year-old heart of hers?”

“I can turn you in,” Royce threatened. “I can tell the police everything.”

John shook his head with disappointment. “You wouldn’t like jail, Monte. Because, remember, if you hang me, you hang yourself…and your mama.”

Royce didn’t let his gaze break from that of the man he had once respected, but who had used him. Had used him so completely that death would be the only way out. But he was not ready for death. In fact he feared it, feared meeting a maker that would assuredly cast him into the fires of hell. No, Monte Royce was not ready for that. He never would be.

“How much?”

John Barrish looked up at the man, whose head was dripping from the hour he’d waited in the rain…as instructed. Humiliation. It was so easy to inflict, as it was merely a by-product of control.

“Now you’re getting smart.”

Director of Central Intelligence Greg Drummond leaned across his desk and handed the plain manila folder to Bud DiContino. “Take your pick. Forty-three groups, nations, or sufficiently wealthy individuals that Intelligence and S and T say could have provided the supplies and the technical expertise to pull this off.”

Bud scanned the multiple pages before closing and handing the folder back to the DCI. “This is quick work.”

“Intelligence put the press on,” Drummond explained, referring to the agency directorate he had headed until just ten months earlier. Now he was at the helm of the most powerful intelligence-gathering agency on the planet A company man heading the Company. It made many on the Hill nervous, but they would have been more apprehensive had there been another fiasco of leadership like the one that had preceded him. That was reasonably cleaned up now, just a few ripples disturbing the otherwise calm waters his ship was sailing upon. But the present situation was showing much more wave action, threatening a swell that would make navigation difficult and holding course tricky. But the youthful DCI, still older than the president he served, had seen troubled waters before, and knew the best way to sail around the offending storm, and how to sail headlong into it.