Ken Follett - The Hammer of Eden

Priest’s vineyard had saved the commune, but the commune had saved Priest’s life. He had arrived here a fugitive — on the run from the Mob, the Los Angeles police, and the Internal Revenue Service all at once. He was a drunk and a cocaine abuser, lonely, broke, and suicidal. He had driven down the dirt road to the commune, following vague directions from a hitchhiker, and wandered through the trees until he came upon a bunch of naked hippies sitting on the ground chanting. He had stared at them for a long while, spellbound by the mantra and the sense of profound calm that rose up like smoke from a fire. One or two had smiled at him, but they had continued their ritual. Eventually he had stripped off, slowly, like a man in a trance, discarding his business suit, pink shirt, platform shoes, and red-and-white jockey shorts. Then, naked, he had sat down with them.

Here he had found peace, a new religion, work, friends, and lovers. At a time when he was ready to drive his yellow Plymouth ’Cuda 440-6 right over the edge of a cliff, the commune had given meaning to his life.

Now there would never be any other existence for him. This place was all he had, and he would die to defend it.

I may have to .

He would listen to John Truth’s radio show tonight. If the governor was going to open the door to negotiation, or make any other concession, it would surely be announced before the end of the broadcast.

When he came to the far side of the vineyard, he decided to check on the seismic vibrator.

He walked up the hill. There was no road, just a well-trodden path through the forest. Vehicles could not get through to the village. A quarter of a mile from the houses, he arrived at a muddy clearing. Parked under the trees were his old ’Cuda, a rusty Volkswagen minibus that was even older, Melanie’s orange Subaru, and the communal pickup, a dark green Ford Ranger. From here a dirt track wound two miles through the forest, uphill and down, disappearing into a mudslide here and passing through a stream there, until at last it reached the county road, a two-lane blacktop. It was ten miles to the nearest town, Silver City.

Once a year the entire commune would spend a day rolling barrels of wine up the hill and through the trees to this clearing, there to be loaded onto Paul Beale’s truck for transport to his bottling plant in Napa. It was the big day in their calendar, and they always held a feast that night, then took a holiday on the following day, to celebrate a successful year. The ceremony took place eight months after the harvest, so it was due in a few days’ time. This year, Priest resolved, they would hold the party the day after the governor reprieved the valley.

In return for the wine, Paul Beale brought food for the communal kitchen and kept the free shop stocked with supplies: clothing, candy, cigarettes, stationery, books, tampons, toothpaste, everything anyone needed. The system operated without money. However, Paul kept accounts, and at the end of each year, he deposited surplus cash in a bank account that only Priest and Star knew about.

From the clearing, Priest headed along the track for a mile, skirting rainwater pools and clambering over deadfalls, then turned off and followed an invisible way through the trees. There were no tire tracks because he had carefully brushed the carpet of pine needles that formed the forest floor. He came to a hollow and stopped. All he could see was a pile of vegetation: broken branches and uprooted saplings heaped twelve feet high like a bonfire. He had to go right up to the pile and push aside some of the brush to confirm that the truck was still there under its camouflage.

Not that he thought anyone would come here looking for the truck. The Ricky Granger who had been hired as a juggie by Ritkin Seismex in the South Texas oilfield had no traceable connection with this remote vineyard in Sierra County, California. However, it did occasionally happen that a couple of backpackers would lose their way radically and wander onto the commune’s land — as Melanie had — and they would sure as hell wonder why this large piece of expensive machinery was parked out here in the woods. So Priest and the Rice Eaters had slaved for two hours to conceal the truck. Priest was pretty sure it could not be seen even from the air.

He exposed a wheel and kicked the tire, just like the skeptical purchaser of a used car. He had killed a man for this vehicle. He thought briefly about Mario’s pretty wife and kids and wondered whether they had realized yet that Mario was never coming home. Then he put the thought out of his mind.

He wanted to reassure himself that the truck would be ready to go tomorrow morning. Just looking at it made him edgy. He felt a powerful urge to get going right away, today, now, just to ease the tension. But he had announced a deadline, and timing would be important.

This waiting was unbearable. He thought of getting in and starting the truck, just to make sure everything was okay; but that would be foolish. He was suffering from dumb nerves. The truck would be fine. He would do better to stay away and leave it alone until tomorrow.

He parted another section of the covering and looked at the steel plate that hammered the earth. If Melanie’s scheme worked, the vibration would unleash an earthquake. There was a pure kind of justice about the plan. They would be using the earth’s stored-up energy as a threat to force the governor to take care of the environment. The earth was saving the earth. It felt right to Priest in a way that was almost holy.

Spirit gave a low bark, as if he had heard something. It was probably a rabbit, but Priest nervously replaced the branches he had moved, then headed back.

He made his way through the trees to the track and turned toward the village.

He stopped in the middle of the track and frowned, mystified. On the way here he had stepped over a fallen bough. Now it had been moved to the side. Spirit had not been barking at rabbits. Someone else was about. He had not heard anyone, but sounds were quickly muffled in the dense vegetation. Who was it? Had someone followed him? Had they seen him looking at the seismic vibrator?

As he headed home, Spirit became agitated. When they came within sight of the parking circle, Priest saw why.

There in the muddy clearing, parked beside his ’Cuda, was a police car.

Priest’s heart stopped.

So soon! How could they have tracked him down so soon?

He stared at the cruiser.

It was a white Ford Crown Victoria with a green stripe along the side, a silver six-pointed sheriff’s star on the door, four aerials, and a rack of blue, red, and orange lights on the roof.

Be calm. All things must pass .

The police might not be here for the vibrator. Idle curiosity might have brought a cop wandering down the track: it had never happened before, but it was possible. There were lots of other possible reasons. They could be searching for a tourist who had gone missing. A sheriff’s deputy could be looking for a secret place to meet his neighbor’s wife.

They might not even realize there was a commune here. Perhaps they need never find out. If Priest slipped back into the woods—

Too late. Just as the thought entered his head, a cop stepped around the trunk of a tree.

Spirit barked fiercely.

“Quiet,” Priest said, and the dog fell silent.

The cop was wearing the gray-green uniform of a sheriff’s deputy, with a star over the left breast of the short jacket, a cowboy hat, and a gun on his pants belt.

He saw Priest and waved.

Priest hesitated, then slowly raised his hand and waved back.

Then, reluctantly, he walked up to the car.

He hated cops. Most of them were thieves and bullies and psychopaths. They used their uniform and their position to conceal the fact that they were worse criminals than the people they arrested. But he would force himself to be polite, just as if he were some dumb suburban citizen who imagined the police were there to protect him.