April Smith - Judas Horse

“I’m getting to me. Stone took thirty years to implement the Big One, his ultimate revenge on Peter Abbott and the federal government that abandoned him. If anything makes him a terrorist, that’s it: the patient planning, the fixed beliefs. He used his influence with the vulnerable Rooney Berwick to uncover illegal deals with the Abbott family. Stone always said that symbols are important, and destroying the dam was a good one. What is it except a massive monument, literally, to power?” Galloway has been sitting forward, hands on the armrest. His body has become still, but his worried eyes take everything in.

“And you?”

“Me? Well, I was the perfect dunce for Peter Abbott. Good enough to get Stone, and then totally disposable. He wasn’t worried about family dirt coming out, because that could be manipulated. You could blame it on the source. The undercover was unstable. Disturbed. Am I sounding a lot like Dick Stone? And if the deputy director was very lucky, I might go over the edge and identify with the suspect, and die in a tragic shoot-out.” “That’s a stretch, Ana.”

“I could easily have been the first one out that door, Robert.”

Galloway’s expression goes from cautious listening to pissed as hell. “This is terrific.” He gets up so abruptly, the chair scoots backward. The hostile Brooklyn accent hits like a bludgeon.

“We did everything possible not to let this happen. Despite training and supervision, you allow yourself to get in too deep, and let a nutcase, someone out for nothing but sick personal revenge, destroy your career.” “Are you talking about Abbott or Stone?”

“Lady, you are cruising. You defied the deputy director during a tactical operation.” “I made the determination he had something to hide.”

“So you toss crucial evidence into a river. In a case of domestic terrorism.” “I didn’t want him to have it.”

“How stupid can you be?”

“I guess that’s obvious.”

“This is big-time stupid. I am here to tell you that Peter Abbott is charging you with treason. Destroying evidence in a terrorism investigation is a treasonable act.” Lights blink. Computers tick along, mockingly doing their job. There is hydropower to output! Fish to manage! But you are trapped inside a concrete bunker ten feet thick and you will never see daylight!

The future will be this: imprisonment in a stale progression of lawsuits and appeals, maybe even jail time, until my vitality is sapped.

Just go on being Ana Grey.

I notice Galloway has been watching me during this brief meditation, jacket open, fists on hips, totally perplexed.

“I have something to tell you, too,” I say. “About Steve Crawford.”

“What about Steve?”

“He wasn’t who we thought he was. Going in, you couldn’t have asked for a more loyal friend, a more good-hearted person, but when nobody was looking, he got hungry.” “Is that so?”

“That’s right. The most talented agent to come through L.A., isn’t that what you said? The golden son? Steve knew that Stone had a valuable stash and figured to steal it, but the thing blew up in his face. He wasn’t killed by an act of terrorism. It was greed.” I watch Galloway’s face as the shadow of uncertainty deepens.

“Or, you could say, it was due to the stresses and strains of undercover work. He was a casualty of war. Like a lot of us.” I take a ragged breath. “I’m just as devastated as you are. I loved the guy.” Galloway’s hands fall to his sides.

“I choose not to believe it.”

“Lucky you.”

Donnato escorts me out of the powerhouse and into a black sedan. He maneuvers through the remaining rescue vehicles and news vans and hits the darkening road. The locks on the doors go down.

“Did they really burn down the farm?”

“Yes.”

“Did they kill Geronimo?”

“Who is Geronimo?”

“The blind baby foal, goddamn it—”

“I think he’s fine.”

“You think ? Don’t lie to me.”

“I have never lied to you.”

“All right.”

“Are you okay?”

“I want that horse to go to a good home.”

“Don’t get teary. Jesus, what’s the matter?”

“Promise me. It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I have the data.”

“No you don’t. You threw it in the river.”

“That was Darcy’s cell phone. She didn’t need it anymore.”

In the dashboard light I see Donnato’s face squinching up.

“Don’t be telling me this.”

I reach inside the sling where I have secreted the PalmPilot from the clumsy searches of baby deputies and the sharp eyes of my SAC.

“Dick Stone gave me his testament.”

“What’s on there?”

“The manifesto. What he wanted to be printed in the newspapers. What he said the American people need to remember.” Scrolling past planting schedules and shopping lists, I discover a file called “Career of Evil.” “This is it! Memos dated 1972 to 1974, signed by Peter Abbott, authorizing illegal phone taps against ‘suspected student radicals.’” “Keep looking.”

The screen is filled with numbers.

“Fish statistics. Great.”

And then a map. “A map of Bonneville Dam. Hey, wow. It’s a schematic.”

Donnato looks over. “Detailed?”

“The building plans for the dam. What Stone must have used to plot the bomb attack. There were several contractors.” I’m punching buttons, enlarging the type on the plans. “Hamilton, Meizner, Adams-Vanguard—” “Adams-Vanguard is one of Abbott senior’s shell companies.”

“So Peter’s father, the congressman, was lining his pockets with a multimillion-dollar contract.” “I’ll bet if we had another twenty-four hours, we could come up with a link between the builders of the powerhouse project and contributions to young Peter Abbott’s political career,” adds Donnato. “But we don’t have twenty-four hours.” I hold it out to him. “You do.”

“It’s collateral,” Donnato says. “It was Stone’s collateral; now it’s yours.” “He wanted to cash it in. He wanted Abbott to roll on the floor like a pill bug.” I press the device into Donnato’s hand and find that mine is trembling.

“Get him,” I whisper.

“Roger that.”

I realize that I am becoming incoherent.

“Where is Galloway sending me? Why would he burn me? I’m a hero. Aren’t I?” “Shhh. You’re valued. Believe me, at the highest level.”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

“If you knew everything, you wouldn’t do the job. These aren’t the days of Dick Stone. The tentacles were working — all those people behind the scenes, helping to protect you until the case came together. The supporting elements of the undercover are like your crystal ball — we see your future and help you dodge it.” He kicks it up to eighty on the country road.

“What is my future?”

I watch a big green freeway sign for Portland snap backward into the dark.

“Aren’t we going to the county jail?”

Donnato does not reply.

“But I’m in custody.”

Donnato’s voice is breaking. “You just have to trust me.”

We drive in silence through the poignant end of day. The little road is sweet, the way it flows between the silver river and vertical slopes of scree, where multiple waterfalls sport like nymphs. It is the same drive I made with Stone when he began to tell his story of betrayal by his own people; we are simply going in the other direction. Stone wasn’t asking for trust or belief. He wasn’t asking for anything when he told it. But Donnato’s tone is full of pleading.

A rusted shell of a gas station and a neon sign half-buried in leaves that says MOTEL put you in mind of 1940s detective stories, where scheming lovers escape to a motor court out in the boonies with a million bucks in cash — only to discover the final, bitter twist.