Glenn Beck - The Eye of Moloch

“Groggy.”

“You must be. The chart says you’ve been in and out since you got here, but mostly out. They’ve been overdoing the sedation for some reason. I’ve put a stop to that, and as long as you don’t get physical with the staff again, my orders should stand.”

He laid his head back, thinking. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “Now, if I raise the bed a little so you can sit up and have a visitor, do you think you can handle that?”

“Sure. But not him.”

“Look at it this way,” she said. “He’s here, and he won’t leave until he sees you. I’m going to put my career and my normal relationships and my fine life in the big city on hold and stay here to take care of you. Whatever else he’s done, he made that happen, too, Noah. And he’s assured me that whatever’s gone on since I last saw you in New York, everything will be different going forward.”

“Different? Is that how he put it? Because it’s like signing a pact with the devil when you’re dealing with him; you’ve got to analyze every damned word.”

“Better, then,” Ellen said. “Everything will be better. He promised me, Gardner, and I promise you.”

When she’d left, it seemed that whoever else was lurking outside the room felt it best to give him a few minutes alone. The quiet time didn’t help anything. Every second that passed only dripped more acid tension into his gut. By the time the handle turned and the door began to open, his fists were clenched so hard he felt the nails biting into his palms.

And then his father came into the room.

Something had diminished about the man, there was no denying it. He’d always seemed younger than his age, buoyed up from within by some boundless hamster wheel of manic energy. Now he was seventy-five, and for the first time that Noah could remember, every single year of it showed.

Arthur Gardner turned to look up into the ceiling-mounted camera behind a smoky glass dome near the corner. He made a motion toward it with his hand as if to order a pause in the surveillance, and he waited to see it comply. That little red light just continued its steady glow. After a time he relented the effort and seemed to accept the fact that whatever he was going to say or do here, it would be watched.

There was a physical difference in his walk as he came on forward, maybe a weakness of one side that required a compensation.

“Stop right there,” Noah said.

The old man halted so abruptly he had to brace himself with one hand on the footboard.

“Son,” he began. But nothing more followed.

“Ellen told me you had something to say. Let’s get on with it.”

He nodded, and took a little while to begin. “When I last saw you—”

“When you last saw me?” Noah interrupted. “We’re starting there? Because when you last saw me you were supervising my torture and interrogation. Then you put me into a white-collar prison job, and that went from white-collar to blue-collar to no-collar to an involuntary ride-along with a pack of mercenaries who were hunting people that I actually care about. That was your doing, and it almost put an end to me more than just this once. Hey, there were a lot of times that I actually could have used a fatherly visit in the last six months, but no, there wasn’t a peep out of you then. Now, if I’m reading your signals properly, you actually came here to say you’re sorry after all this time, and all you’ve put me through. Your apology is so unbelievably not accepted. If that’s all you’ve got, you might as well shuffle out of here right now and piss off.”

Arthur Gardner endured the onslaught of these words and again, quite out of character, he made no attempt to counter. He only took a small step closer before seeming to recall that he’d been told to stay right where he was.

“Son,” he tried to begin again, “it may be very important—no—it is, very important, that you attempt to put the old feelings between us aside for now and do what I ask. Important for everyone, not only me. This concerns the young woman, Molly Ross.”

Noah frowned. “What about Molly?”

“It’s as simple as this.” Arthur Gardner stole a glance toward that camera again. “If you’ll do what I ask, she can live.”

When listening to a man who’s spent his career constructing deceptions so perfect as to shape entire cultures for his profit, it’s a good idea to think hard before buying into his lines. Noah didn’t speak, and the old man continued.

“More than that, son; you can have a future again. Back in New York, or in London, or Geneva, or Zurich, or the south of France. Anywhere, or nowhere if you’d prefer to disappear and put me and everything else you’ve ever known behind you forever. I’ll arrange that myself, with Charlie Nelan. You’ll trust Charlie; I can’t blame you for doubting me but you must know he wouldn’t let you down. He can set you up for life in a way that no one could ever undo it.”

“Sounds just great,” Noah said. “You know I had most of those options already, don’t you? Before you took them away.”

“Now you listen.” And there it was, low and menacing, a venomous hiss from the real man had momentarily escaped containment. “The past is gone, son. There’s a change coming, and soon. Our failure last year only delayed it, but the storm is gathering again. This offer I bring will cost me more than you’ll ever know. But it will buy a life for you, a good life, and one for her, if that matters to you more than your own.”

“It does,” Noah said, and he was more than a little surprised to hear himself admit to that. As his mind raced to find the old man’s hidden angle—because there was always at least one of those—he couldn’t see how it could hurt to hear the proposal. “So what do you want from me?”

“I’d like to sit.” He’d pulled a rumpled handkerchief from his pocket and was dabbing at his neck and his brow.

“Be my guest.”

His father took a seat at the foot of the bed. He seemed unusually weary and short of breath when he spoke again.

“We’ll bring someone in to meet with you,” he said, “an investigator whose honor and integrity you’ll know you can rely upon. She’ll ask you what you know, and then she may require that you make contact with Ms. Ross and arrange a meeting, and you’ll do that. Through this interaction she’ll be brought into custody. She’ll stand trial for a minor felony and spend as little time as we can bargain in a minimum-security federal penitentiary.”

“And what about her people?”

“They don’t matter at all without her. They’ll scatter and soon be forgotten, and they’ll be left alone.”

It hurt to do it but Noah brought himself up to an elbow, a little closer to his father and on a more eye-to-eye level. “So that’s it?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, that’s all? I just have to rat her out, and set her up, and then we all live happily ever after?”

His father didn’t respond to this latest snide rejoinder because he must have known by then that he didn’t have to. There comes a time in a sales transaction, right before the close, when the mark’s been reeled in and both the salesman and his victim know the deed’s already done. When it’s over and everyone knows it, you stop the pitch, slide the contract across the table, and you wait.

It went without saying that Noah didn’t believe a word of this, but he thought for a moment before he spoke again. Maybe there was something to be gained by playing along.

If he declined this deal he’d only be shut out while they continued to pursue her. They’d find her before too long and then they’d do whatever they wanted: kill her, humiliate her, publicly destroy her work, and erase any good she’d ever tried to do. Probably all of the above. As an afterthought they’d no doubt do the same to him.