On the way over, he told me about the exciting finish to the moonpool flap, and how Ari had saved his ass by telling the irate technicians that he, Tony, was one of the good guys. After that, he said, they went to work getting their dragon-shit covered back up with lots and lots of water. That had even helped the county water problem, because they sucked a lot of the contaminated stuff back into the moonpool when they restarted the pumps.
The rest of my day was spent talking to the FBI. Sometimes they really like to talk. I was more than ready to get out of there that evening and get back to Southport and my dwindling supply of Scotch. Tony said he’d met someone interesting at the Hilton and asked if I’d mind if he stayed in town. Fine by me. I thought I might just go “home” and sulk, maybe even get wasted, something I hadn’t done in a long time. I also thought briefly about going over to County on the way back to visit young Billy Summers. Maybe squeeze an IV tube or three. But if McMichaels was right, and they’d amputated what I thought they’d amputated, that was good enough. For the moment, anyway. I could probably find him again if I wanted to.
I grabbed a greaseburger on the way into Southport and then went to the beach house. I was disappointed to find Buroids waiting. They warned me that subject Moira Maxwell was thought to be still in the Wilmington area, and said they would like to stake out my pad on the possibility that she might try to contact me.
“Why on earth would she do that?” I asked.
The young agent looked at me patiently. Then I understood. “My Bureau didn’t tell you why to stake out my house,” I said. “Just to effing do it, right?”
They both nodded, happy to not have to explain something they probably didn’t understand anyway. I asked them if they wanted to come in the house or just hang around within visual range. They chose the latter, and one of them gave me his pager in case something happened.
I went back inside, and they disappeared up the street. I wasn’t too worried about Mad Moira. I might have foiled her big show, but she had plenty of spleen left for her native land, and I assumed she’d know not to get within a mile of me or my people.
Another assumption shot to hell. When I turned on the lights in the kitchen, there she was, my favorite redheaded harpy complete with a nasty-looking, nickel-plated handgun and her computer bags. She’d cut her lovely red hair down to a skullcap that only a lesbian could love, and she appeared to be dressed for travel. Through the back window I could see Tony’s vehicle.
“Hey, cellmate,” she said. “Why don’t you just relax and sit down for a minute.”
“You know there’s Bureau in the neighborhood, don’t you?” I said, sitting down, and regretting that the kitchen could not be seen from the street. How in the hell did she get Tony’s car?
“Oh, them,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “I have some friends taking care of that problem.”
“You have friends?” I asked.
She slid into a chair opposite me and gave me that fire-eyed grin. “Believe it or not, Lieutenant. Not only friends but like-minded citizens who are more than willing to help me on my little crusade. We’re not done, not by a long shot.”
“What are you doing here, Moira? You’re not mad at me, are you?”
She barked a laugh. “Do you think?” she said. “But actually, this”-she waved the purse gun-“this is for my protection. I just wanted to tell you face-to-face that we’ll never stop until America regains its freedom and the rest of the world is safe from our grievously aggressive government and our runaway military-industrial complex. We intend to show them that the people are the real weapons of mass destruction when it comes to tyranny.”
I almost said blah-blah-blah. I hadn’t heard this bullshit since watching some of those sixties movies, but it was coming from the same quarter it usually did: arrogantly overeducated people who’d never been out there on life’s front lines. I said nothing, and just waited. I wondered if there was any way I could activate that pager in my pocket without her noticing.
“You don’t believe me?” she asked, frustrated at my silence.
“Don’t you think, Moira,” I said, “that creating incidents of terror will only strengthen the government’s resolve? Make it grab even more authority? If Trask was right, and the country’s become dangerously complacent, what you guys tried was exactly the wrong thing to do, wasn’t it?”
She shook her head. “What we’ll create is doubt-doubt about the government’s ability to protect the masses of citizens in this country who already feel powerless. Doubt about the moral underpinning of this so-called war on terror. Doubt about who the bad guys really are: them or maybe us. And from doubt springs true revolution.”
I’d finally had it, even if she did have a gun. “Oh, c’mon, Moira,” I said. “Masses and classes? That bullshit went out with Karl Marx caps and granny glasses. Communism is dead, or hadn’t you heard?”
“Don’t tell Comrade Putin that,” she replied. “Or better, visit Russia and see for yourself. I have.”
“The Russians can’t help themselves,” I said. “They like their tyrants. You, on the other hand, sound like a one-woman propaganda machine. What other Americans are going for revolution? None.”
“You think?” she said. “Have you asked yourself why Carl Trask told your boys where you were? It wasn’t to get you out, big guy-it was to get me out. That’s why you changed rooms. Our thing is a lot bigger than you know.”
“You’re telling me the major was part of this?”
“No, but he’s devoted to Carl Trask and his ideas about the decay in this country.”
“You and the military guys are on different sides, Moira.”
“They think so, and you think so. The difference is that my side is using them.” She glanced at her watch and got up. “I’ve got a plane to catch.” She pointed at our portable computer on the kitchen table. “You might want to get rid of that. That’s the computer that actually hacked into Helios. It’s a slave to the ones I have in here.”
I blinked. I was impressed and said so. Then I asked her where she was going.
She laughed. “As if I would tell you?” she said. “Oh, let’s see, then-how about, I don’t know, Mexico?”
“Mexico.”
“It doesn’t matter where I go,” she said, pointing at her computer bags. “As long as there’s one or two of these around.” She zipped up her jacket and headed for the back door. She saw the water bottle. “May I?” she said.
“Be my guest,” I said, keeping my voice absolutely neutral. She grabbed the bottle, stuck it in her jacket pocket, and pushed open the back screen door.
“Moira?” I called. “If you actually do go down to Margaritaville?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Don’t drink the water.”
The next morning, Tony and I went back to the hospital to be there when Pardee surfaced. We were too late. Alicia was beaming at his bedside. Pardee had come out of it on his own and announced he was hungry, damned hungry. The doctors were very pleased and yet equally adamant that there would not be a party just yet. They asked us if we would mind very much just going away and coming back later. We slunk away to find some coffee in the hospital cafeteria. I told Tony about what had happened last night, and he looked at me with new respect. I told him that he’d eventually get his vehicle back if he’d just be patient, and that, no, I didn’t intend to share the news of Moira’s departure call with Creeps and company.
We had our coffee and then went down to see Bernie Price to close the loop on the Thomason case. He had been in touch with the reluctant sister, who was now on her way home to the U.S. to see about her brother, and possibly even her sister, Allie. She had told Bernie that there had been an inheritance from their parents, but Allie’s revolt and subsequent enlistment with the sheriff’s office had provoked their father to verbally disown her. When the second parent died several years later, the money had been much larger than they’d known, and the older brother, acting as executor, had divided it between himself and Allie’s sister, even though the trust had specified a three-way split. Allie had apparently just found out, and had gone to Helios to confront Dr. Thomason. Whether she threatened to expose him wasn’t known, but when I had made that call to the sister in Turkey, she had known that the chickens might be coming home to roost. I suspected Thomason had admitted to Allie what he’d done, and when she threatened to expose him, he poisoned her with moonpool water. The loving sister would probably never admit that, but Bernie said she was in for some pointed questioning.