“—and Conan O’Brien asks him about his plots. Burke, who’s a bit of a jackass at the best of times, according to what I’ve been told and the interview transcripts I’ve read, starts bragging about the fact that he has a plot that is so good, so perfect that his contacts with Homeland ‘strongly requested’ him not to publish it.”
“We know who that was in Homeland?” Bunny snorted.
“It wasn’t Homeland,” I said, “it was Hugo Vox, the guy who does all the screening for people getting top secret and above clearance. He ran the plot out at that counter-terrorism training center he has in Colorado. Terror Town. Teams ran it six separate times and Vox said that the best case scenario was a forty-percent kill of the U.S. population. Low-tech, too. Anyone could make it work.”
“Jeeeez-us,” said Bunny.
“What was it?” asked Top, intrigued.
I told them. Top gave a long, low whistle. Bunny’s grin diminished in wattage.
They considered it, shaking their heads as the logic of it unfolded in their imaginations.
“Damn,” Bunny said, “that’s smart.”
“It’s damn stupid,” countered Top. “Putting that in bookstores would be like handing out M16s at a terrorism convention.”
“It was stupid for Burke to talk about it on Conan,” I said. “Luckily he didn’t actually describe the plot on TV. Just enough to give the impression he really had something. You can probably guess what happened,” I said.
Top made a face. “Someone made a run at him?”
I nodded. “Within a day of doing the show he was nearly kidnapped twice. He must have realized his mistake and he went straight to his lawyer, who in turn called the FBI, who called Homeland, who called us.”
“And we did what?” asked Bunny. “Put a bag over him?”
“More or less. This is before we came on the DMS,” I said, “so I’m getting this secondhand from Church. I drew this gig because I know Burke. Or, used to. He did ride-alongs with me and a couple other cops when I was with the Baltimore PD. Bottom line is that Burke was set up in Pine Deep as a retired schoolteacher and widower. His handler’s cover is that of ‘nephew’ who lives one town away. Place called Black Marsh, right over the river in New Jersey.”
“So it’s just protective custody?”
“No. Homeland is cooking up some kind of scam thing where they’ll eventually use Burke as bait to lure the cockroaches out of the woodwork. Get them to make a run at him so we could scoop them up, take them off for some quiet conversation, say at Gitmo.”
“Well . . . that’s pretty much what just happened, isn’t it?” asked Top.
“I guess . . . but it wasn’t on a timetable. They wanted Burke completely off the radar for a year or so to let things cool down. Homeland wanted to scoop up high-profile hitters, not bozos with suicide vests. The plan was to start seeding the spy network with disinformation this fall that Burke was willing to sell his idea for the right kind of money. Let that cook on the international scene for a bit, then set up a meet with as many buyers as we can line up. Then do a series of snatch-and-grabs. It’s the kind of assembly-line arrests Homeland’s been doing since 9/11. Doesn’t put all their eggs in one basket, so even if they put four out of twenty potential buyers in the bag they celebrate it as a major win. And, I guess it is.”
Top nodded. “So what went wrong, Cap’n?”
“He disappeared.”
“Disappeared? Did he walk or was he taken?”
“I guess that’s what we’re here to find out.” I told them the rest, about Burke going AWOL a few times; and about the cell phones and the buzz overseas.
“Are we trying to find him and keep him safe,” asked Top, “or put a bullet in his brainpan? ’Cause I can build a case either way.”
I didn’t answer.
We’d caught up with the storm clouds, and the closer we got to Pine Deep the gloomier it got. I know it was coincidence, but subtle jokes of that kind from the universe is something I could do without. Luckily the rain seemed to be holding off.
We passed through the small town of Crestville, following the road so that we’d enter Pine Deep via a rickety bridge from the north. Both sides of the road were lined with cornfields.
It was the middle of August and the corn was tall and green and impenetrable. Here and there we saw old signs, faded and crumbling, that once advertised a Haunted Hayride and a Halloween Festival.
As we crossed the bridge, Top tapped my shoulder and nodded to a big wooden sign that was almost completely faded by hard summers and harder winters. It read:
Welcome to Pine Deep
America’s Haunted Holidayland!
We’ll Scare You to Death!
Somebody had used red spray paint to overlay the writing with a smiley face complete with vampire fangs.
“Charming,” I said.
We drove down another crooked road that broadened onto a feeder side street, then made the turn onto Main Street. The town of Pine Deep looked schizophrenic. Almost an even half of the buildings were brand-new, with glossy window displays and bright LED signs; the other half looked to be at least fifty years old and in need of basic repair. Some of the buildings looked to have been burned and painted over, and that squared with what I’d read about the place. Before the trouble, Pine Deep had been an upscale arts community built on the bones of a centuries-old, blue-collar farming region. Even now, with its struggle to create a new identity, there were glimpses of those earlier eras. Like ghosts, glimpses out of the corner of the eye. However, the overall impression was of a town that had failed. It wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t quite alive either. Maybe the economic downturn had come at the wrong time, derailing the reconstruction of the town and the rebuilding of its economy. Or maybe the memory of all those dead people, all that pain from the trouble was like an infection of the atmosphere of this place.
“Damn,” murmured Bunny. “They could film a Stephen King flick here. Won’t need special effects.”
“Town’s trying to make a comeback,” I said.
Top’s face was set, his brows furrowed. Unlike Bunny and me, Top had read a couple of the books written about the town and its troubles. He shook his head. “Some things you don’t come back from.”
“That’s cheery,” said Bunny.
Top nodded to one of the buildings that still showed traces of the fire that had nearly destroyed Pine Deep. “That wasn’t the first problem this place had. Even when I was a kid Newsweek was calling this place the ‘most haunted town in America’. Had that reputation going back to Colonial times.”
“Since when do you believe in ghosts?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead he said, “Places can be like people. Some are born good, some are born bad. This one’s like that. Born bad, and bad to the bone.”
Bunny opened his mouth to make a joke, but he left it unsaid.
We drove in silence for a while.
Finally Top seemed to shake off some of his gloom. “We going to check in with the local police? If so, what badge do we flash?”
“That’s where we’re heading now,” I said, as I pulled into a slanted curbside parking slot. “The FBI has been the public face of this kind of witness protection, but Federal Marshals are also involved. We’re both. I’m FBI, you guys are marshals.”
They nodded and Top dug out the appropriate IDs from a locked compartment. We have fully authentic identification for most of the major investigative and enforcement branches of the U.S. government. The only IDs we don’t have are DMS cards and badges because the DMS doesn’t issue any. We exist as far as the President and one congressional subcommittee is concerned.