Jack Chalker - A War of Shadows

Jake Edelman looked down at the thick transcript of the Honner confessions. “Jesus! The names in here, Bob!”

The other man nodded. “I know, Jake, I know. We’ll have a tough time getting them all. A slow process. But everybody in the Mickey Mouse organization has them, knows them, as do the RCMP and MI-5. They’re through, Jake, if we aren’t.”

“Hear about Colonel Toricelli’s group raiding Camp Liberty?” Edelman asked. “No wonder that boy, Cornish, saw jets taking off and landing regularly! It was forty-eight kilometers southwest of the Tucson airport!”

Hartman smiled. “Well, there’s nothing left now. The papers have been playing up the smashing of the terrorists and the discovery of domestic traitors. All the usual bullshit, except that it’s all true. We’re heroes, Jake. The President’s going to give you the Medal of Freedom and I’m going to get the New York office and all that. Didn’t you know?”

Edelman snorted. “You know he wants me to meet with the cabinet and the emergency council tonight. Wants to be sure he has everything. I’ve been asked to appear on tomorrow’s address, can you believe? He told me to bring maps, pictures, exhibits.”

Hartman was suddenly bright and alive. “He did, did he?” His expression suddenly feel. “They can’t be that dumb, Jake. They just can’t be. I mean, Allen Honner absolutely did not know what the hell Mickey Mouse was except a cartoon character. They must at least suspect that we’re on to them.”

“Arrogance, Bob,” Jake Edelman said. “Arrogance and conceit. Back in the old days, in World War II, the Germans conquered practically all of Europe and came within a whisker of the world. They did this even though their intelligence apparatus was so lousy the British were almost running it. They just couldn’t believe that they could be fooled by some slick tricksters. At the same time, we’d broken the Japanese code yet were so damned dumb we set Pearl Harbor up so it’d be easy for the Japanese to cripple us, and we even courtmartialed a general who said we’d get hit by the Japs from carriers there! They’ve got it made, Bob—and they know it. That’s our defense. That and the fact that they are men and women like Honner—they’re not used to being on the receiving end. Conspirators and masters of terror are quite often the easiest to terrorize—they assume you think like them. You watch.”

The tone did not have the full confidence the words conveyed. Hartman knew it, but echoed it all the same. “Go get ’em, Jake. All that can be done has been done.”

The old man got up wearily and started packing his exhibits case, then closed it, picked it up, and walked slowly for the door.

“Jake?”

He turned. “Yes, Bob?”

“God be with you,” Bob Hartman said.

Jefferson Lee Wainwright, President of the United States, was going over his speech before his cabinet and emergency council. It was a distinguished group: thirty-four men and women who, together, handled much of the top echelons of government and the military.

“And so, my fellow Americans,” he was saying, complete with flamboyant gestures, “these radicals of bygone days, defeated and demoralized but not deradicalized, went different ways. Some left the country, some went underground to hiding-holes, but some, the best and the brightest of them, went into normal careers and rose brilliantly in them. Men like Dr. Joseph Bede, who wormed his way into the National Disease Control Center and, there, in a major authority position, secretly used your tax money and your facilities to create what became known as the Wilderness Organism.” He paused and looked directly at the crowd, and in a lower, more normal tone said, “And, you know, the son of a bitch really was involved in the blowups when he was an undergrad? Man! Will that hold up!”

Suddenly he changed back into the Presidential orator.

“These radicals, still dedicated after a decade or two of dormancy, waited for the rallying cry. And it came! It came from those who had wormed their way into government and society and positions of importance! They trained at an abandoned Army test range near Tucson, gathering the scum of the earth from its four corners. And Bede gave them the weapon. The Wilderness Organism.”

Again he paused, but remained in his professional charismatic pose.

“Yes, my fellow Americans! But it was not complete. Oh, no. No such beast could be perfect without testing. So they tested it on you. On small-town America, where they could observe its properties and effects. And, when they were ready, they made plans to strike at the heart of our major cities. The tragedies in Chicago and New Orleans are witness to what the whole country could have undergone—and may still. For such elements as these still exist in society!”

He stopped, relaxed, and put down the sheets. “That’s all the further Barry got on it. We probably will go through another draft or two, but it’s pretty effective. The rest is spelling out the plans and justifying them, and you know all that by now anyway.”

Most of them nodded.

There was a commotion at a far door, and heads turned as two Secret Service men entered, flanking a tiny, strange-looking little man with a big nose.

“Chief Inspector Edelman!” Wainwright boomed. “Please come up here so I can shake your hand.” He turned to the rehearsed audience. “This is the man who saved the country!”

Jake Edelman came up and accepted the handshake and the polite applause of the bigwigs.

“Inspector, I would like you to brief us all personally on the plot, how you solved it, and how it all worked,” Wainwright said. “Barry Sandler, there, is writing tomorrow’s speech, and we want to give credit where credit is due and also get the thing a hundred percent accurate.” He pointed. “You can take that chair, there. It’s Al Honner’s. As you might have heard, he had a really bad heart attack.”

Edelman’s expression was grim, but he smiled slightly at the last and took the plush chair. He was at the corner of the long double conference tables; he could see just about everybody in the room.

“Go on, Inspector. Don’t be shy. We’re you’re biggest fans,” said Attorney General Gaither.

Jake looked at the President. “May I have some wafer?” he asked meekly. The President smiled, nodded at an aide, who got up, poured some from a pitcher on a little table to one side, brought it to Edelman, and resumed his seat.

The audience really was attentive and expectant. Edelman was to be the proof of the pudding; if he gave the official version, then all was well. If he did not, there was still enough time to paper over mistakes.

“Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen,” Jake Edelman began. “I wish to tell you tonight of all that my department and its capable staff, with the help of a lot of people throughout government, discovered about this conspiracy against our country. I hope you will bear with me until I am completely through.”

They were peering at him expectantly.

“The story starts many years ago, in the turbulent years when Presidents were killed or forced from office, when our enemies made spectacular gains abroad while we did nothing. A lot of people saw this as the end of civilization. Many of these were corporate heads, millionaires, men of influence and power. They formed the Institute for Values and Standards, and endowed it with over a hundred million dollars.”

There were murmurings in the room, and a few whispers of “He knows,” but they calmed down. They wanted to know all that he knew.

“This Institute endowed research in forbidden areas, masked by the corporation’s international operations, and at the same time picked the best young minds they could find in every field. Poor families in particular were targeted, and lavish scholarships were offered. Ideological purity was stressed, as well. These people were young, ambitious, bright, and, of course, malleable. The Institute saw to their philosophical upbringing—wasn’t above eliminating those who later strayed or would not stick to the path. This elite, brought up in much the same way the criminal syndicates of America were brought up and replenished, slowly attained position and power in government and industry. All doors were open to them. Their names read like a Who’s Who in American government, business, and industry. In fact, their names are a lot of the current Who’s Who.”