Jesse looked at him, surprised. The man had just seen his old friend and partner murdered. He moved his glass to his left hand, and scratched his arm with his right, made sure the recorder was going.
“That’s very flattering, sir. I’m afraid I don’t know much about finance.”
“You’re a highly intelligent and quick-witted man, though, and that’s my need at the moment, now that Kurt is gone. Pity about Kurt; good fellow.” He didn’t sound grief-stricken.
“Yes, sir.”
“Your first assignment is to take Wood Products away from Herman Muller; do it any way you can; Kurt showed me that balance sheet you got him, and let me tell you, that company is a plum.”
“I think I can handle that,” Jesse replied.
“As soon as you do, you’re going to become president of the bank,” Coldwater said. “No need to know anything about banking; I know more than enough about that. But I need my own man in there.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jesse said, trying to sound brighter. Then he thought, what the hell, last chance to find out. “Pastor—”
“Call me Jack Gene; you’ve earned the right.”
“Thank you. Jack Gene, I don’t really have any grasp of what’s going on here. I mean, what’s the bunker for?”
Coldwater laughed aloud. “I suppose you must have thought I was mad,” he said. “Well, I’m not. It’s a very fine weapons store, isn’t it?”
“It’s all about weapons, then?”
Coldwater grinned. “You really are very bright, Jesse. If I was going to deal in weapons on any sort of scale, I had to have a secure storage site, didn’t I?”
“But why all this religion business? Why found a church?”
“Think about it, Jesse; nobody can build something as big as what’s inside the mountain without one hell of a lot of people knowing about it. With the church, I got to control the people who knew about it; the people who, in fact, built it, saving me millions of dollars in the process. Of course, I’ve enjoyed taking over and running this little town; that was fun. But it was all to protect the weapons business.”
“And controlling the town meant that nobody asked questions about all the trucks that were bringing in and taking out the stuff?”
“Exactly. And there were a lot of trucks. We deal worldwide, you know — not just to people like those yokels who just left. Mind you, I’ve equipped just about every bunch of nutters in the western half of the United States of America, and some in the East, too. The profits have been mindboggling. I have bank accounts in every safe haven in the world — Zurich, the Caymans, Singapore — so does Pat; so does Kurt, for that matter. After I’ve moved some of the money, I’ll see that you get the numbers to his accounts. It wouldn’t be fair to give you everything Kurt had earned, would it? I’ll take half, give Pat a quarter, and you can have the rest. That number will approach ten million dollars.”
Jesse blinked. “Thank you, sir. I must say, I’m a little surprised that Kurt would let you have the numbers to his bank accounts.”
“Why not? I opened them for him and put the money into them. Casey’s, too.”
“So, if something happened to Pat—”
Coldwater smiled broadly. “Now you don’t think I’d let anything happen to Pat? Couldn’t get along without him.”
Jesse thought, You’re fucking well getting along without Ruger all right, aren’t you?
“You’re going to become as indispensable as Pat, Jesse, don’t you worry. Listen, if you don’t want to go abroad when this is over, I’ll give you Muller’s business. If you feel you must work, you can stay in St. Clair and play with that.”
“When is it going to be over?” Jesse asked.
“Well, it’s winding down already, isn’t it? I mean, Charley Bottoms is the third federal agent we’ve had in here in the past year and a half. Somebody must suspect something.” He chuckled.
“Doesn’t that worry you?” Jesse asked.
“Not in the least; the feds are very slow to catch on to anything, and I control the local law completely. No, I’ve got another year, at the very least, before I move on to greener pastures.”
“Well, it all sounds very exciting,” Jesse said.
“More exciting that you can imagine,” Coldwater replied, then his eyes lit up. “Maybe I should show you just how exciting.” He pointed toward the bookcase. “Remember my safe? There’s a million and a half dollars, cash, in there. It’s yours.” He made to get up.
Jesse threw up a hand. “Please, Jack Gene, please. You don’t have to do that. I trust you completely.”
Coldwater paused, half out of his chair. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely,” Jesse said.
Coldwater grinned. “I trust you, too, Jesse; you were different from the beginning. You knew what was in your interests, but you didn’t buy the religion, ever, did you?”
“I can’t say that I did.”
“The sheep,” Coldwater said contemptuously of his congregation. “It has always astonished me the number of seemingly normal human beings who will follow, even lay down their lives for, any man who shows them some leadership. Did I tell you about the abortion clinics?”
“No.”
“We’ve razed a good number of clinics in the Northwest, for no other reason than to get the congregation excited about something, and, not to mention, to incriminate a fair number of them.”
“Why abortion clinics?”
“Oh, they’re very fashionable among the faithful, you know, and they’re also wonderfully easy pickings. They attract big headlines, too, and lots of TV time. The faithful like to know that their good works are not going unnoticed.”
Coldwater put down his glass and massaged his temples. “Well, I’m a little tired; such a big evening. I think I’ll turn in.” He got to his feet.
Jesse rose with him. “I could use a good night’s sleep, myself,” he said.
Coldwater put an arm around Jesse and walked him to the front hall, then helped him into his coat. “Tell you what, why don’t you come to lunch tomorrow? We’ll break bread, drink a fine bottle of wine and talk about the future.”
“I’d like that, Jack Gene,” Jesse said, shaking the man’s hand.
Coldwater suddenly embraced Jesse. “We’re going a long way together,” he said. Then he stood in the door and watched Jesse walk toward his truck.
“Not as far as you think,” Jesse muttered to himself.
Chapter 59
Jesse drove slowly down the long driveway, and, at the road, he stopped. He switched off the headlights, reached into the backpack behind the seat and extracted the night goggles. He slipped them on, then, instead of heading down toward town, he turned right and drove slowly up the mountain a few yards. He had no trouble seeing the road.
Coldwater’s house was nearly at the top of the mountain; only one thing lay in the fifty yards between the house and the gates. When he was nearly at the top, he turned right, down the dirt road, and a minute later stopped at the firing range. He got out and looked up. A hundred feet above the earthen bank that received the bullets, he saw what he wanted. The full moon came out from behind the clouds for a moment, and in the bright light the goggles were almost too much.
He changed his shoes and got into his warm jacket, then retrieved the backpack and the tool bag from the truck and checked his equipment. He stuck the pistol into his belt and the spare clips into his pocket, then slipped on the backpack, slung the tool bag over one shoulder and the machine gun, an Uzi, over the other and started climbing the mountain.
It was tough going with only one free hand and so much gear, but he made it in twenty minutes. He sat down beside the ventilator grate and rested for a few minutes. He checked his watch; just after midnight; he had plenty of time, he hoped.