Greg Bear - Quantico

‘The tree hath blossomed in the night, and the fruit it is set. I am an old man, and my family will prosper and do great works after I am gone.’

Griff shook his head. ‘You got a long life ahead preaching and spreading the word.’

Chambers took a deep breath through his nose. ‘Come into my house, Monroe man. I’ll show you something glorious and then we’ll say goodbye.’ Chambers pushed himself slowly to his feet; getting down was easier than getting up again. Griff did not like this. Playing a part and being wary all at once had never been easy for him. He followed the old man through the wood-framed screen door with the squealing spring into the neat shade of the snow porch with bundled twigs pushed into a corner and two rusted metal snow shovels, and then into the living room. The oak furniture was sturdy but worn. The big stone fireplace was as described by the deputy, who had eaten his muffin where Griff was now standing.

‘I do love my children,’ Chambers said, ‘and they love me. I will miss them, but I have through deeds builded my mansion in heaven. There will be a sharp correction, Monroe man. The Jews will weep and Jesus will greet me as a brother. Mary will soothe me and stroke my hair and though I am reborn in a youthful body, I will mourn for those that still suffer on this Earth, forced to dwell among the ones bathed in darkness. For surely the dark races are hiding from that cleansing ray. Surely the sun is out today, searching, and they hide in their ghettos and in their holes in the cities, in their black and noisome hives of squalor and brick. Comes soon a time when the pillar of fire shall yet again rise, and a man will carry with him across this world a vessel as virulent as the Ark of the Covenant, and all who come near, all the Mud People and the lying and deceitful Jews, wearing their pubic hairs on their heads, their long curly black hairs, shall reach out to touch the beauty of it, and they shall be smote by the tens of thousands, as it was in olden times. God never did much like the Jews. History proves it. Once more, a pillar of fire shall rise over the land by night, and a pillar of cloud by day.’

Chambers’ face turned peaceful. He favored Griff with a fatherly smile.

‘Hallelujah,’ Griff said. ‘That’s preaching, Reverend.’

‘You haven’t told me your name, son.’

‘Jimmy, Jimmy Roland.’

The Patriarch held out his hand. Griff shook it: a dry firm grip, no sweat, no worry.

‘It is no sin to sweep away the polluted.’

‘Amen to that,’ Griff said.

‘Now you look a proper wise fellow, Jimmy Roland, no sense playing stupid, you’ve been around. You know your work, and you know mine.’ Chambers sat gingerly in a rockerglider and slowly started moving back, forward, back and forward, up a little, down. ‘Nobody comes from Monroe without passing me special words. I am certain I smell a Jew on you.’

Without being obvious, Griff had taken inventory of the room. Behind and to the immediate right, Chambers had within his reach a narrow cabinet set back to one side of the fireplace, where pokers and shovels might be stored, the door open. Griff could not see the inside.

‘You should have been here last month. Nipped it in the bud. You could have had us then. You saw the burn barrels. We cleaned things out. We have cleared the path. The rest is in the hands of the true God. Has been since before you arrived. Just know that the fruit has set, and soon the Jews and their children will bring it to the world’s table and eat of it.’ He leveled a finger at Griff’s chest. ‘They are listening, so let them hear my epitaph.’ He paused with a wicked smile. ‘An end to all the evil they have done since time began. Death to the Jews, my friend.’

Chambers leaned and thrust his gnarled fingers toward the cabinet.

Griff slipped his hand through the Velcroed seam in his shirt. ‘FBI!’ he shouted.

Faster than he had any right to be, Chambers brought out a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun from the cabinet. In an instant he had it cocked. The blued-steel barrel gleamed as it swung.

Griff’s gun was out and he shot Chambers four times. The shotgun barrel swayed and dropped an inch, the old man’s finger still trying to pull the trigger. Griff squeezed off two more rounds. Chambers let go of the stock and the shotgun fell. Its butt thumped heavily on the floor. The barrel sang against the stones of the fireplace. The old man’s lungs gurgled air through new holes in his chest and neck and his eyes twitched back in their sockets. His voice was liquid and bubbled like a frog’s and he said, ‘Lord, Lord.’ Then, barely audible, eyes quivering but trained on Griff, ‘Fuck you.’

After that his eyes went flat and he was dead but his movement continued, legs and one arm shivering as he slumped in the chair and finally hung half-in, half-out. His trigger finger jerked like a snake. Stopped.

Griff raised the SIG and with a grunt rolled the old man over, quickly and rudely palped him, then turned out his pockets looking for IED or remotes or timers. He pulled a plastic restraint cord from his pants pocket and cinched the limp, bony wrists. Only then did he check the old man’s pulse, mostly avoiding the slick smear of blood around the floor and the last of the flow from the nicked carotid.

He swallowed hard, trying to focus on the remaining danger, trying to keep the nervous crime-comedy voices out of his forebrain and back in the rear cages where they belonged. Papa has left the premises.

Suicide by cop. At his age. Preaching and then trying me on. I don’t believe it.

Griff quickly moved through the house, swinging along the walls, down the hall, into the rooms. He opened the closets just to make sure; very likely with kids so recently in the house they were not booby-trapped but he was still taking a chance. The house was clean and neat, beds made in each of the four small bedrooms, the single office with its roll-top desk prim in ordered austerity.

He passed the Patriarch on the way out. Erwin Griffin hated dead bodies. He had never admitted that to anyone; agents were supposed to be hardcore. Bodies made him feel sick.

Only then did he remember he was on the grid and that since the shooting, other than shouting out his affiliation, he had said nothing-maybe grunted, maybe cursed. Back up by the main road, they should have heard and seen everything that had happened inside the house and especially the shots and he did not want hordes of people up here or near the barn, not yet.

As he stepped through the door and out on the porch, peering left and then right, he said, ‘Chambers is dead. I’m fine. Keep everyone back.’

He faced north and saw agents and police running toward the house. How long had it taken him to search, two or three minutes? It had seemed like at least ten.

‘Get the hell back!’ he shouted from the porch, his voice cracking as he waved them off. They stopped. ‘Get back, you idiots!’ They turned and retreated with equal haste.

He had blood on his arm. The tattoos were smeared. He sat on the porch, letting his heart slow from Krupa to oompah, wishing to hell he had a cigarette, before deciding he would have to take a turn about the yard, around the house, just to make sure.

By that time, he saw vans and more people up by the edge of the clearing.

The farm was no longer quiet.

El Centro, California

‘I’ve been thinking about what you were saying,’ Charlene told the tall blond man. It was past noon. Her eyes were puffy. They had made love and slept a little and then talked into the morning. Now they were having breakfast in a Coco’s restaurant. ‘I just can’t be that cynical. I need hope. Even when I know what I’m doing and think about where my husband is, I still want to be a Christian.’