Glenn Beck - The Eye of Moloch

“So long, boss,” Warren Landers added. “I’ll see you at the funeral.”

The room was quiet for a few seconds after. And then as the two men began to turn to leave, without warning the still hand on the bed arose and clutched outward and took Aaron Doyle firmly above his delicate wrist.

It was as though Arthur Gardner had saved his last ounce of energy to allow himself a chance to respond, to speak with the strength he wished to show in this final confrontation.

“I do have something to tell you, Aaron,” he began. His voice was strained and weak but steady as stone. “All this time I’ve helped you in your battle of wills against your old partner. At first the stakes were small, and then your goals grew larger along with their toll, and now it seems that your ambitions have reached a practical limit. Now, if you have your way, the whole world hangs in the balance. And I think that’s finally too much. I think that won’t be allowed.

“I’ve watched this war rage for most of my life. You move, your opponent counters, on and on I’ve watched the games unfold by your side. But I’m afraid there’s something you don’t know. You made a confession to me just now, and I have one of my own for you. There’s something I’ve kept from you, something I learned myself only a few months ago.”

“What is it?” Doyle asked softly.

“Bill Merchant . . . died . . . in 1979.”

Gardner pulled Aaron Doyle even closer, his voice fading, his nails cutting into the papery skin at the forearm, and his eyes burned with the very last of his departing spirit.

“You now have to wonder, don’t you, Aaron? If Merchant is dead, then who in heaven’s name has been up there fighting against us for these past thirty years?”

Chapter 35

Noah’s second day at work began much like the first, and he was getting the feeling that sameness and a dry routine were all he could look forward to for the rest of his life here. Ira Gershon was the only one who didn’t seem to have given in to the structured monotony.

“Can either of you tell me,” Ira chirped, as they were finishing their lunch break in the office, “just approximately now, how many possible different ways that a deck of cards can be arranged when you shuffle them?” He’d been fiddling with some cards, riffling them and then studying them, as he ate his cold turkey sandwich from its clamshell tray.

“I don’t know.” Noah thought about it for a few seconds; no branch of arithmetic had ever been his strong suit. “What’s fifty-two times fifty-two?”

“Twenty-seven hundred and four,” Lana Somin said, only half listening, and without even breaking her stride at the keyboard.

“I’ll go with that.”

“You’re a little low, my young friends,” Ira said, and he picked up a pencil from the desk. “There are about one hundred and fifty sextillion atoms in this little yellow stub, including the eraser, but that number isn’t even close to the answer. The fact is, there are as many ways to rearrange this deck of cards as there are atoms in our entire galaxy.”

“No way,” Noah said.

“Yes way.” He put down the pencil and then shuffled again. “And that means that of all the games and all the decks that have ever existed in all of history, it’s almost impossible that these fifty-two cards right here have ever been stacked in precisely this way before, or that they ever will be again.”

Lana slowly removed her headphones, frowning and looking very thoughtful. “I totally hate to say it, but he’s right.”

“Wonders seem so hard to come by these days,” Ira said. “I take them wherever I can find them.” He got up and walked to the phonograph. “What’ll it be today? Old Blue Eyes? Duke Ellington?”

Noah shrugged. “I’m sure whatever you play will be fine.”

“Then I guess you’ve never heard the Harmonicats,” Lana said.

They’d just gotten down to work again when a red light flashed over the doorway and out in the hall a harsh buzzer began to sound. The other two stopped what they were doing, rolled back their chairs and placed their hands in their laps, and at an urging from Ira, Noah did the same.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“You’ll see.”

Two people wearing security uniforms came into the room, and one by one they visited the three occupied desks, examined the computers, opened the drawers, swept an electronic wand here and there over each of the workers and their belongings, performed cursory pat-downs, made some notes on their handheld screens, and then without saying a word left again and closed the door behind them.

“Where are we, at the iPhone factory? Does that happen a lot?”

“I told you there were no cameras in here,” Ira said. “Spot inspections are one of the trade-offs for that.” He picked up his cards again, and shuffled. “They’re not supposed to keep a schedule but they’ve gotten very predictable. We won’t see them again for a week or so.”

This was Ira Gershon’s day to write his newspaper fillers, and all through the morning he’d stopped occasionally to share a particularly interesting factoid with his coworkers.

“Did you know,” Ira said, “that sea otters hold hands with their mates while they’re sleeping so they won’t drift apart in the night?”

“Some of us are trying to concentrate here,” Lana snapped. “I swear I can’t take much more of this. ‘Did you know that ninety percent of all pumpkins come from Peoria, Illinois? Did you know that there are nine thousand metric tons of ants on earth? Did you know that Flipper’s real name was Kathy, and when the TV show was canceled she committed suicide?’ I know exactly how that fish felt, Grandpa.”

“Dolphins are mammals.”

The girl got up abruptly. “I’m going to the bathroom, and we’re going to start this day all over, my way, when I get back.”

The two men were alone, then, and Ira came closer and sat down by Noah’s side. When he spoke his previously jaunty mood had darkened a bit and turned quite serious.

“Did you listen last night, like I told you,” he asked, “to the radio that I gave to you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And what did you hear?”

“I got a late start, so I only heard the very last part of the Gettysburg Address. And at the end, the guy said, ‘We are Americans. God bless Molly Ross.’ ”

Ira nodded. “I want to ask you about what you said yesterday, about it being too late to save this country. Is that how you really feel?”

Noah paused before he answered. “I don’t want to believe that, but—”

“Then don’t believe it. That’s the first step. Noah, I know they’re trying to get you to help them bring her in. Never mind how I know, I know. I’m here to tell you, that’s not what you were meant to do.”

“What do you mean? What was I meant to do?”

“Take this.” Ira quickly looked both ways and then handed over a small memory stick on a neck-chain. There was also a sheet of paper, folded and sealed, tucked into its pocket clip.

“Is it from her?”

“No, smart guy, it’s from me. Now, we don’t have much time. You look at what I gave you there later tonight, listen some more to that little radio, and then after that, read what I wrote to you in that note. I hope it all may change your mind about things.”

“Okay, but—”

“And promise me this: whatever happens, the three of us, you and I and Lana, we’ll stay together. We’ve all made the same enemy, and I hope you can see that he’s only keeping us around temporarily. We’re only still here because they haven’t figured out what to do with us exactly, but that won’t last forever. I don’t care about myself, but just like you, that girl was meant for bigger things than to wither away in this place. One way or another, whether it’s fast or slow, that’s what’s in store for all of us. So if you get a chance to leave here you’ll take us with you, understand?”