A few blocks down they switched to a D.C. police van, which roared off, lights flashing. None of the patrols, sentries, and the like checked it. They turned and headed back along Pennsylvania Avenue, reached the circle, turned onto Wisconsin, and headed into Georgetown, turning the lights off now. Down into the old but fancy original section they drove, finally reaching the spot they wanted, turning into a back alley, and pulling up behind a particular house.
The agent fumbled in Honner’s pockets, got a key ring, and got out. Quickly and efficiently they got the unconscious man out of the van and through the back door of the house. Four other agents, two male and two female, walked down the alley from opposite directions and, one by one, entered the house. The van drove off, to be replaced in the D.C. police garage.
It was a safe house nobody knew, all right. Allen Honner awoke, bound hand and foot, in his own bed.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded. “Who are you that you dare this?”
A thirtyish man in shirtsleeves, looking tired and serious, came up to him. “We’re the FBI, Mr. Honner,” he said dryly. “The part you don’t own.”
Honner’s face showed panic. “You have no right to do this!” he almost yelled at them. “No right at all! Do you realize who I am?”
Bob Hartman nodded slowly. “We know, Mr. Honner. And, yes, we do have the right. You gave it to us. You and whatever others are involved in this. Preemptory arrest of citizens whenever an officer believes there is cause, suspension of habeus corpus, suspension of civil rights. Yes, Mr. Honner. We do have the right. And, thanks to directives coming out of your office, and those of the Justice Department, we may use any and all means of questioning if it is in the interests of internal security. My boss thinks you’re a traitor, Mr. Honner. That gives me the right to break every damned little bone in your body, stuff you with any and all mind-probes, drugs, and other devices, and do whatever I feel like to get the truth.” He smiled evilly. “And I’m not even responsible, Mr. Honner. I’m just following orders.”
Allen Honner was scared to death. His face was white, and he was sweating profusely despite central air conditioning.
“Look,” he said. “I’m powerful. One of the most powerful men in this country! Anything you want! Power, money—you name it. Anything. Just—don’t hurt me.”
Bob Hartman gave a dry chuckle. “All right, Mr. Honner, I’ll make you a deal. The truth. The complete and full story, no commas and periods omitted. That’s the price, Mr. Honner. The truth, or we get it our way.”
The Chief of Staff looked around at the grim faces staring down at him on his own bed. Fear was mixed with confusion. “I don’t understand you people! What’s in it for you? What the hell will this get you?”
Hartman shook his head sadly. “I see a brilliant mind reduced to a pathetic pawn. I see men and women afraid to move, to think. Others—who knows how many countless lives wracked by a disease that was engineered by human minds. Engineered!” His voice exploded with rage. “Crippled minds, crippled bodies!” Suddenly his tone lowered, became calm and mixed with pity. “No, Mr. Honner, I don’t think you and your kind will ever understand what we get out of this.” He turned to one of the women, nodded, and she brought up a huge case filled with, it turned out, medical gear and monitors. Honner’s eyes fell on it and went wide with terror.
“All right! All right! What do you want to know?” he cried, then seemed to sink down in the bed, resistance gone. And yet, as they stared at him, a curious half-smile crept into his expression, and his eyes seemed wild. “I’ll tell you what I can,” he said. “It won’t matter. It’s too far along. Even if you know everything now, there’s not a damned thing you can do to stop it.”
Hartman didn’t like the switch in the man’s manner; that last was spoken not with bravado but out of conviction. He began to have the creepy feeling that Honner just might be right.
He reached over, got a chair, and sat down in re-versed position, leaning forward on the chair back. Recording devices started.
“Whose phone rings when I call 1-500-555-2323?” Hartman asked.
Honner chuckled. “One of mine—if I’m there. If not, one of my assistants’. The coder on the phone makes the voice identical no matter who is speaking.”
Hartman nodded. “Where was the Wilderness Organism developed?” he asked.
This, too, amused Honner. “At Fort Dietrick, at NDCC, of course. A private foundation we helped endow started the work based on the Cambridge stuff long ago. A couple of solid scientists felt they knew where both we and the Russians had made our mistakes, and saw the total ban on research as dumb. They, like we, were convinced that other nations were working on the recombinant DNA problems, and that we would be vulnerable, wide open in fact, if that were the case. It was good defense and good science. The work was there; you couldn’t wipe it away. It was inevitable that it be pursued. When President Wainwright was elected to his first term, we arranged for that and a number of other projects to be transferred, funded, and masked by NDCC, supposedly as cancer research—which it was, too, among other things.”
“Where are the remaining blue cylinders and Wilderness Organism cultures?”
“Some are at Camp Liberty, some are at Dietrick, in a special bunker, and the rest—most of it—is with the poison gas stores at Dugway in Utah,” Honner said. “Except, of course, for the stuff already distributed. We didn’t want some of it out very long. It’s subject to easy mutation, and that lowers the effectiveness of the vaccines.”
Hartman took a deep breath. “Who are ‘we’, Mr. Honner? Who, besides you, is involved in this?”
“Patriots,” Honner said. “Men and women of vision. This isn’t anything that’s just grown in the last couple of years, you know. It began, in fact, before I was born—a group of patriotic, concerned citizens who saw how this country was going to hell. We were weakening ourselves and retreating from the world in a slow, steady erosion of power and authority—matched by the same disintegration of society inside the country. Open sex, the breakup of the family, the discarding of old values without gaining or adding any new ones. These people deplored this, organized, worked long and hard to set this up, to stave off the eventual collapse either by external attack or from within until they were in a position to control this country and reverse the declines. It was a long time coming—I doubt if a single one of the original people is still alive. But they did their work well. Younger people, bright, ambitious people were raised and nurtured and came up slowly within the system, aided by political maneuvers to place one key person here, another there, working, waiting, until the seat of power was also ours, occupied by one of our own people.”
“President Wainwright,” Hartman said. “They always said that he was the type of man you’d invent for President. Now you’re telling me he was invented?”
Honner nodded and laughted. “And, you see,that’s why you can’t win. It isn’t one guy like me in a power position, or a dozen. It’s hundreds and hundreds, all in the right places. We control the Executive Branch. We control five Supreme Court positions—thanks to some timely and easily arranged natural deaths. We already had two seats anyway. Some top senators and key congressmen. And, most important, a lot of key civil service bureaucrats.”
Even though Jake had guessed it and Hartman had suspected it, the sheer scope of the conspiracy staggered him. And, once in those positions, those key people had unlimited access to information on most Americans, including others who worked for government. The IRS could tell them just who was spending what on what. The Treasury had a record of every check anybody ever wrote. Blackmail, pressure, and outright power bought the others—and, in many cases, bureaucracy did it of its own accord. If the proper codes and the proper signatures were on the proper forms, you could get away with anything.