Ken Follett - The Hammer of Eden

Kincaid said: “Get to work on the Hammer of Eden case right away. We need something to tell the governor.”

Judy was surprised. “You’re seeing the governor?”

“His cabinet secretary.” He checked a note on his desk. “A Mr. Albert Honeymoon.”

“I’ve heard of him.” Honeymoon was the governor’s right-hand man. The case had taken on a higher profile, Judy realized.

“Let me have a report by tomorrow night.”

That hardly gave her time to make progress, given how little she had to begin with. Tomorrow was Wednesday. “But the deadline is Friday.”

“The meeting with Honeymoon is on Thursday.”

“I’ll get you something concrete to give him.”

“You can give it to him yourself. Mr. Honeymoon insists on seeing what he calls the person at the sharp end. We need to be at the governor’s office in Sacramento at twelve noon.”

“Wow. Okay.”

“Any questions?”

She shook her head. “I’ll get right on it.”

As she left, she felt elated that she had her job back but dismayed by the news that she had to report to the governor’s aide. It was not likely she would catch the people behind the threat in only two days, so she was almost doomed to report failure.

She emptied her desk in the Asian Organized Crime squad and carried her stuff down the corridor to Domestic Terrorism. Her new supervisor, Matt Peters, allocated her a desk. She knew all the agents, and they congratulated her on the Foong brothers case, though in subdued tones — everyone knew she had fought with Kincaid yesterday.

Peters assigned a young agent to work with her on the Hammer of Eden case. He was Raja Khan, a fast-talking Hindu with an MBA. He was twenty-six. Judy was pleased. Although inexperienced, he was intelligent and keen.

She briefed him on the case and sent him to check out the Green California Campaign. “Be nice,” she told him. “Tell them we don’t believe they’re involved, but we have to eliminate them.”

“What am I looking for?”

“A couple: a blue-collar man of about forty-five who may be illiterate, and an educated woman of about thirty who is probably dominated by the man. But I don’t think you’ll find them there. That would be too easy.”

“Alternatively …?”

“The most useful thing you can do is get the names of all the officers of the organization, paid or volunteer, and run them through the computer to see if any of them have any record of criminal or subversive activity.”

“You got it,” Raja said. “What will you do?”

“I’m going to learn about earthquakes.”

Judy had been in one major earthquake.

The Santa Rosa earthquake had caused damage worth $6 million — not much, as these things go — and had been felt over the relatively small area of twelve thousand square miles. The Maddox family was then living in Marin County, north of San Francisco, and Judy was in first grade. It was a minor tremor, she knew now. But at the time she had been six years old, and it had seemed like the end of the world.

First there was a noise like a train, but real close, and she came awake fast and looked around her bedroom in the clear light of dawn, searching for the source of the sound, scared to death.

Then the house began to shake. Her ceiling light with its pink-fringed shade whipped back and forth. On her bedside table, Best Fairy Tales leaped up in the air like a magic book and came down open at “Tom Thumb,” the story Bo had read her last night. Her hairbrush and her toy makeup set danced on the Formica top of the dresser. Her wooden horse rocked furiously with no one on it. A row of dolls fell off their shelf, as if diving into the rug, and Judy thought they had come alive, like toys in a fable. She found her voice at last and screamed once: “DADDY!”

From the next room she heard her father curse, then there was a thud as his feet hit the floor. The noise and the shaking grew worse, and she heard her mother cry out. Bo came to Judy’s door and turned the handle, but it would not open. She heard another thud as he shouldered it, but it was stuck.

Her window smashed, and shards of glass fell inward, landing on the chair where her school clothes were neatly folded, ready for the morning: gray skirt, white blouse, green V-neck sweater, navy blue underwear, and white socks. The wooden horse rocked so hard, it fell over on top of the dollhouse, smashing the miniature roof; and Judy knew the roof of her real house might be smashed as easily. A framed picture of a rosy-cheeked Mexican boy came off its hook on the wall, flew through the air, and hit her head. She cried out in pain.

Then her chest of drawers began to walk.

It was an old bow-fronted pine chest her mother had bought in a junk shop and painted white. It had three drawers, and it stood on short legs that ended in feet like lions’ paws. At first it seemed to dance in place, restlessly, on its four feet. Then it shuffled from side to side, like someone hesitating nervously in a doorway. Finally it started to move toward her.

She screamed again.

Her bedroom door shook as Bo tried to break it down.

The chest inched across the floor toward her. She hoped maybe the rug would halt its advance, but the chest just pushed the rug with its lions’ paws.

Her bed shook so violently that she fell out.

The chest came within a few inches of her and stopped. The middle drawer came open like a wide mouth ready to swallow her. She screamed at the top of her voice.

The door shattered and Bo burst in.

Then the shaking stopped.

Thirty years later she could still feel the terror that had possessed her like a fit as the world fell apart around her. She had been frightened of closing the bedroom door for years afterward; and she was still scared of earthquakes. In California, feeling the ground move in a minor tremor was commonplace, but she had never really gotten used to it. And when she felt the earth shake, or saw television pictures of collapsed buildings, the dread that crept through her veins like a drug was not the fear of being crushed or burned, but the blind panic of a little girl whose world suddenly started to fall apart.

She was still on edge that evening as she walked into the sophisticated ambience of Masa’s, wearing a black silk sheath and the row of pearls Don Riley had given her the Christmas they were living together.

Don ordered a white burgundy called Corton Charlemagne. He drank most of it: Judy loved the nutty taste, but she was not comfortable drinking alcohol when she had a semi-automatic pistol loaded with nine-millimeter ammunition tucked into her black patent evening purse.

She told Don that Brian Kincaid had accepted her apology and allowed her to withdraw her resignation.

“He had to,” Don said. “Refusing would be tantamount to firing you. And it would look real bad for him if he lost one of his best people on his first day as acting SAC.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Judy said, but she was thinking that it was easy for Don to be wise after the event.

“Sure I’m right.”

“Remember, Brian is KMA.” It stood for kiss my ass, and it meant the person had built up such a generous pension entitlement that he could retire comfortably at any time that suited him.

“Yeah, but he has his pride. Imagine where he explains to headquarters how come he had to let you go. ‘She said “fuck” to me,’ he says. Washington goes: ‘So what are you, a priest? You never heard an agent say “fuck” before?’ Uh-uh.” Don shook his head. “Kincaid would seem like a wimp to refuse your apology.”

“I guess so.”

“Anyway, I’m real glad we may be working together again soon.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to many more brilliant prosecutions by the great team of Riley and Maddox.”