Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

"Ah!" he said-and he looked up-and he knocked down another shot, guzzled some more beer by way of an exclamation point. He leaned toward me, a Man Imparting the Secret History of the World. Also a Man Breathing Whiskey All Over My Face. "He. Diggs: He. Understood. America. The Country of the Imagination. He-saw: that-that would be Rashid's target. Not some… towers." He waved off the three thousand people who had died in the Islamo-fascists' destruction of the World Trade Center-waved them away as if they were nothing. Only in Hollywood, I thought. "That's just money. That's just the economy," he said. "The Pentagon, too. What's that? The military." Another wave-off. "The Capitol? The White House? The government? No. No. None of those is what really matters. Casey-he understood. The Country of the Imagination. That-is what Rashid has spent a-a lifetime attacking, undermining. With his-theories-ideas-propaganda. Not the economy, the military, the government, but…" And here, unbelievably, Piersall lifted his two hands and tapped his fingertips against himself three times, each hand against one breast, rat-tat-tat. "The American Imagination. The Bible. The Constitution. Jesus Christ. Thomas Jefferson. Movies. TV. Augustus Kane. Patrick Piersall. That's what he's out to destroy."

I hid a smile behind my hand. I couldn't suppress it. I suppose I was smiling at myself as much as him. I mean, what an idiot I'd been to come here, right? To think that this goofus might have some information that could help me decide what was true and what wasn't. Hell, look at him.

I looked at him. He was an ego acting the part of a human being. He wasn't obsessed with Casey Diggs's theories because they were true. How could they be true? The police and the FBI had already investigated them, already dismissed them. But that didn't matter to Patrick Piersall. To his pickled mind, Diggs's theories were valid because they recentered the news of the world around the only thing that really mattered to him, the only thing that even existed to him: himself.

Once again, I felt as if I had stepped from reality into Television Land. Only now, I had followed the land's Yellow Brick Road to its conclusion and stood before the Great Citizen of its Emerald City: the Wonderful Wizard of Me. Pay no attention to that narcissist behind the curtain. Just talk to the Giant Transparent Head.

Which is what I did. "Did Casey have anything more specific to go on? I mean, other than the idea that Rashid was organizing an attack on"-I gestured at Piersall himself. I couldn't resist the comedy of it-"the American Imagination. Had he uncovered some specific plan?"

"Oh, yes! Oh-ho, yes," said the onetime admiral of the spaceship Universal. Then he barked in those very tones of command that once struck fear into Borgons throughout the galaxy, "Charlie! Another!"

Then he explained it all.

I won't go over the whole thing here. Diggs's obsessive, paranoid writings are public record now. You can look them up online and read them yourself and good luck to you. You'll find detailed glosses on all of Arthur Rashid's writings, translations of interviews Rashid gave to the Arab press, interviews with sources Diggs had uncovered on his own, not to mention a complex mathematical and what I guess you'd call symbological calculation based on religious prophecies and-so help me-the phases of the moon. It was Casey Diggs's version of my mother's Spiral Notebooks.

And what it all came down to was this: Rashid, according to Diggs, believed that Americans had become so rich through their financial institutions, so powerful through their military, and so free through their system of government that they had forgotten that the financial institutions, the military, and the government were merely the visible structures that had been built on the foundation of an ancient culture and its ideas. Rashid, Diggs said, loved this culture intellectually for its genius, but hated it in his heart because it made him feel inferior on his father's side, made him feel his British mother was humiliating his Egyptian father every day the West thrived. He wanted to destroy America, said Diggs, and he believed the country could be decoyed into pouring all its resources into protecting the visible structures of its success while it left the cultural foundations open to a devastating attack. This attack-and here's where all the mathematical and symbological hoo-ha came in-this attack, Diggs believed, was to take place on the highly symbolic eve of both Ramadan and Yom Kippur, which arrived this year on the same day: Saturday.

"So Diggs thought Rashid was planning an attack for Friday, then?" I asked Piersall.

"Friday," the actor muttered. His words were becoming slurred now.

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow… yeah."

"You're not talking about an intellectual attack here, right? A diatribe or-I don't know-a really sharp editorial or something? You mean an actual bombing or assassination?"

Piersall nodded heavily, as if all that alcohol had gone to his head now and made it weigh twice as much as normal. His torso had begun to tilt forward in his chair with the weight so that he was hovering horizontally over the table, staring down at his hands where they sat wrapped around his latest beer glass. All of which is to say: The guy was so shit-faced, he looked like he was about to sink right into the table. A drop of drool fell from his open mouth and ran down the liver-spotted back of one hand.

I sat and studied him a long, quiet moment. I thought of him as I'd seen him on TV. Augustus Kane delivering the camp sci-fi histrionics that had somehow intersected with a momentary zeitgeist. The man who had watched that zeitgeist slip away like a balloon through a child's fingers, his career earthbound while the culture vanished into the blue.

Now here he was before me in the flesh, an old drunk raving about the fate of the world. Like Casey Diggs raved after he got booted off the school newspaper. Or like I had been raving these last two nights, after I'd forced myself to clean out my mother's attic and burn the Spiral Notebooks. The world always seems like it's going to hell when you're depressed. And, of course, it always is going to hell in some way. That's what makes it so hard to tell the difference between Armageddon and the blues.

Well, I guess I was a little better off now than when I'd walked into the bar anyway. Now, at least, I was certain that the Diggs Conspiracy Theory was a lot of crazy nonsense. You only had to listen to Piersall explain it to understand why the authorities had brushed it aside.

But I still wasn't sure what to do. Even if it had nothing to do with Rashid, Diggs could still have been murdered. Serena's story about the Great Swamp might still be true. And while I hated to set the police on the girl, I didn't see how I was going to avoid it, especially now that Anne had confirmed seeing her and Diggs together about the time he disappeared and had linked Jamal to their meeting.

But there was one thing I knew I wasn't going to do. I wasn't going to tell any of this to Patrick Piersall. Really, he was nearly unconscious now. What would be the point?

"Well…" I said aloud. I stood up out of my chair.

The movement seemed to reach Piersall even in his stupor. He roused himself a little. With what seemed a great effort, he lifted his head. He reached out a hand spasmodically and seized my wrist.

"They killed him, you know," he said-and I couldn't tell anymore whether he was a drunk speaking his deepest truth or a drunk playing the part of a Drunk Speaking His Deepest Truth. He blinked slowly, trying to focus on me. "Diggs. They killed him."

"Did they?"

He gave a short laugh, as much as to say: Of course, you fool. Then a sly smile came over his face, that famous, englamoured, once-handsome face. He let go of me. He raised his chin in a gesture meant to bid me stay and watch him. Then he tried to reach inside his natty corduroy sports coat. It took several attempts for his unsteady hand to find the coat's opening. Finally, the hand slipped in under his arm. When it came out again-just halfway out, just peeking out-I could see he was holding a gun. I don't know what kind of gun it was. I could just see the grip. It was something blocky, powerful, and deadly, by the look of it.