"I just got up."
"Wait there. I'll get cleaned up and come get you."
"Turn on a TV before you do that. Channel Eight. But hurry."
"What's on?"
"Go look," she said, and hung up.
Lucas punched up the TV and found an airport press conference with Lawrence Duberville Clay.
"… in cooperation with local enforcement officials… expect to have some action soon…"
"Bullshit, local officials," Lucas muttered at the television. The camera pulled back and Lucas noticed the screen of bodyguards. There were a half-dozen of them around Clay, professionals, light suits, identical lapel pins, backs to their man, watching the crowd. "Thinks he's the fuckin' president…"
Lucas' heart jumped when Lily came out of the hotel elevator. The angles of her face. Her stride. The way she brushed at her bangs and grinned when she saw him…
Anderson had a stack of files for the morning meeting. South Dakota, he said, had files on Sunders and Close. There were photos in the driver's-license files, bad but recent. And when the white names were run through the NCIC files, a list of hits came back, along with fingerprints.
With a direct comparison available, fingerprint specialists confirmed that Sunders and Close were the men the Minneapolis cops had just missed in the apartment raid. An FBI computer specialist said later that the wide-base search of the fingerprint files would have identified them in "another four to six hours, max."
The South Dakota files had been faxed to Minneapolis, and the best possible reproductions of the driver's-license photos arrived on an early-morning plane. Copies were being made for distribution to all the local police agencies, the FBI and the media.
"Press conference at eleven o'clock," Daniel said. "I'll hand out the photographs of the Crows."
"We got some more coming from the feds," Anderson announced. "Sunders spent time in federal prison, fifteen years ago. He shot a guy out at Rosebud, wounded him. He spent a year inside."
"Old man Andretti has agreed to put up an unofficial reward for information leading to the Crows. They don't have to be arrested or anything. He'll pay just to find out where they are," Daniel said. He looked at Lucas. "I'd like to get that out to the media through the back door… I'll confirm it, but I don't want to come right out and say there's a price on their heads. I want to keep some distance from it. I don't want it to sound like we're turning a bunch of vigilantes loose on the Indians. We've got to live with these people later."
Lucas nodded. "All right. I can set that up. I'll get the guy from TV3 to ask a question at the press conference."
Daniel flipped through his Xerox copies of the rap sheets. "It doesn't seem like they've done much. A couple of smalltime crooks. Then this."
"But look at the pattern," Lily said. "They weren't smalltime crooks like most small-time crooks. They weren't breaking into Coke machines or running a pigeon-drop. They were organizing, just like Larry said."
The files on Sunders and Close showed a sporadic history of small crime, except for the shooting that sent Sunders to prison. Most of it was trespassing on ranches, unlawful discharge of firearms, unlawful threats.
The latest charge was six years old, on Sunders, who had been arrested for trespassing. According to the complaint file, he had entered private property and allegedly damaged a bulldozer. He denied damaging the bulldozer, but he did tell police that the rancher was putting a service trail through a Dakota burial ground.
Close's file was thinner than Sunders'. Most of the charges against him were misdemeanors, for loitering or vagrancy, back when those were legal charges. There was a notation by a Rapid City officer that Close was believed to have been responsible for a series of burglaries in the homes of government officials, but he had never been caught.
On a separate slip of paper was a report from an FBI intelligence unit that both Sunders and Close had been seen at the siege of Wounded Knee, but when the siege ended, they were not among the Indians in the town.
"I'd say they've got a deep organization, going all the way back to the sixties, and maybe back to the forties," Lily said, looking at the file over Lucas' shoulder. A lock of her hair touched his ear, and tickled. He moved closer and let her scent settle over him. He had not yet told her about Jennifer. The thought of it made him uncomfortable.
"The StarTribune this morning called them our first experience with dedicated domestic terrorists," Lucas said.
"They picked that up from the Times," Lily said. "The Times had an editorial Friday, said the same thing."
Daniel nodded gloomily. "It'll get worse when they do whatever it is they're planning to do. Something big."
"You don't think… like the airport?" Anderson asked.
"What?" asked Sloan.
"You know, like the Palestinians? I mean, if you were going to do something big, shooting up the airport or blowing up a plane would do it…"
"Oh, Christ," Daniel said. He gnawed on his lower lip, then got up and took a turn around his desk. "If we go out there and suggest tighter controls and the word gets out, the airlines'll take it right in the ass. And I'll be right there with them, gettin' it in the same place."
"If we don't tell them, and something happens…"
"How about just a light touch… just talk to the security, a hint to the FBI, maybe put some people out there undercover?" suggested Sloan.
"Maybe," said Daniel, sitting down again. He looked at Anderson. "Do you really think…?"
"Not really," Anderson said.
"I don't think so either. All the people they've hit so far have been symbols of something. Shooting up an airport full of innocent people wouldn't prove anything."
"How about the Bureau of Indian Affairs?" Lucas asked. "A lot of old-line Indians hate the BIA."
"Now that's something," Daniel said, his eyes narrowing. "An institution instead of an individual… It'd be a logical step, to go after the people they see as their oppressors. I better talk to the feebs. Maybe they could put a couple of people in the BIA office."
"Wait a minute," Lucas said. He stood up and walked around his chair, thinking. Then he looked at Daniel and said, "Jesus-it could be Clay."
They all thought about it for a moment, and Daniel shook his head. "Everything they've done has been pretty well planned. Nobody knew that Clay was coming in until the last couple of days."
"No, no, think about it," said Lucas, jabbing a finger at Daniel. "If you look at this whole… progression… in the right way, you could see it as a lure to pull Clay in. The terrorist angle, the publicity… That's exactly the kind of thing Clay'd bite on."
"That's an awful big jump," Daniel argued. "They couldn't be sure he'd come. You could wind up killing a half-dozen people and getting all of your own people killed, and Clay might sit on his ass in Washington."
"And why Clay?" Sloan asked.
"Because he's a big target and he's got a bad rep among Indians," Lily said. "You remember that hassle out in Arizona with the two factions on that reservation? I can't remember what the deal was…"
"Yeah, he sent in all those agents to kick ass…" Anderson said.
"If I remember right, there was an article in Time that said Clay has had a bunch of run-ins with Indians over the years. Doesn't like them…" Lucas said.
"The Crows can't get at him," said Sloan. "He's got an unbelievable screen of bodyguards-you should have seen them this morning. If the Crows tried to shoot their way through them… I mean, these guys got Uzis in their armpits."
"All it takes is a guy on a rooftop with a deer rifle," said Lucas.
"Ah, shit," said Daniel. He whacked the desktop with an open palm. "We can't take a chance. We'll talk to Clay's security people. And let's put some people around his hotel. Up on the rooftops, in the parking garage. Just put some uniforms in street clothes… Christ, the guy is a pain in the ass."