Chapter 65
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Jack walked over to the stainless steel sink at the wet bar and rinsed his mouth. He walked back to his Mac, and almost casually, scrolled through to the description of his sister’s attack from November 6.
“Meghan McDonald, Chief Scientist of ReWire, Inc., and sister to Bay Area entrepreneur Jack McDonald, was found unconscious this morning brutally beaten after a robbery.”
The red mark on the timeline from the heavy short volume two weeks previous was etched into his mind. He went back to the database and made one more change. He pulled out all of the companies using federal money in the form of grants or loans. Then the causation was basically a straight line. He should have smelled it before. All government money came with strings. It would be simple to guide government-sponsored research down dead end streets. The enemy’s organization had tentacles everywhere.
Jack picked up the remote control for the vertical blinds and held down the button. Sunset-enflamed storm clouds appeared in front of him. There was a major storm parked just off shore, with enough water to make a dent in the drought. A stubborn high-pressure ridge had let little pieces of storm energy sneak in, with just enough rain to turn some of the wind-blown dust of the Central Valley into mud. None of the rain made it past the foothills into the Sierras.
Jack felt as if he were at the eye of another storm, waiting, and watching it swirl around him. He didn’t know when it would hit or where, but he knew he would find a way to be at the center of the storm. He pulled the stock market numbers up on the Quotron he parked out of the way by the window. The machine was an anachronism, like him.
Jack typed in RWIR and pushed enter. Short volume was high on every up-tick. He turned the lights off in the room and watched the sky. At first he thought his sister’s attack had been the result of a random act of violence, and then a madman with a misguided, but understandable, motive. Then he learned the attack was part of a greater plan, a plan that made no sense. His pain wasn’t lessened or increased by knowing why his sister was at risk. A long-term, high-level conspiracy to control the price of a few stocks would leave her no more dead than a casual mugging in the Tenderloin.
Now he knew his sister was just one of many victims. They had burned and bombed and planted evidence and gotten away with it-until now. He knelt on the floor in front of the window, the occasional flash of lightning blending with the infrequent glow of emergency vehicle lights below.
He felt a kind of a peace come over him. He swore to the gods of strong winds and fast water, to the spirits of stark granite cliffs, and tall ocean waves, that he would stop these bastards and take vengeance.
The ringing phone interrupted his promise.
Sir Ian’s strong Scots accent rumbled like thunder over the speakerphone as he said. “Jack my boy, you have stirred a nest of hornets. We finally traced one of the trades directly to this church. The young man who acquired the information is now in the hospital, no apparent hit-and-run this, but a brutal beating. If our bodyguards had been slower he would ‘na still be alive. This is not all. Officials who have been friendly to us are now acting as if they don’t remember their bribes. Many are actively trying to hinder. Cargoes are being inspected, permits denied, securities trades questioned, and copies of records requested in very official ways.”
Jack heard the whine of the electric motor as Uncle Chin maneuvered his chair closer to the speakerphone.
“Ayee Ah, we have found a worthy enemy. To be on two strong legs again with an ax in my hand, this is what I want. Lee is on her way to you. I could not stop her.”
He started to tell them what he’d discovered when Dvora strode into the room. He pushed the button for speakerphone, making sure the signal scrambler was still on and started his story. Dvora moved closer as his story went on; toward the end tears streaming unashamedly down her face.
The group went back and forth, trying to hammer out a plan until the alarm chimed, reminding him they were due in Captain Yan’s office in twenty minutes. He told the old boys to be careful, explaining why he had to go.
Dvora no longer looked like a very young thirty. She looked as if the last ten years of her life had been waiting, hiding, and suddenly ambushed her.
“When the sorrow is yours, you don’t think past it to see other bigger sorrows. When Meghan was hurt, all I could think of was her dying and hoping she would live. Watching her in the coma, all I could think about was her not getting any better. When she started getting better all I could think of was her being a vegetable, never regaining that whacked-out humor, her mind leaping so fast and far. Now to discover that she is just a small part of it, that these…” she trailed off unable to think of the word she needed.
Jack headed toward the door. What she said next stopped him.
“I couldn’t think of a word bad enough. I think it comes from being a Jew, thinking the Holocaust was the worst inhumanity man has ever done to man. It’s not true. Stalin’s pogroms, the forced collectivization, killed more. Mao even more millions. These people, if they succeed, could be responsible for the death of even more millions. They can’t succeed can they?”
He answered, “These freaks are a pimple on the ass of the world and we are going to pop it. They will cause more harm. We will have to piss away more time and money. They might even kill a few more people, but they are going to lose and lose soon.” What he didn’t tell her was that she was almost right. The sabotage by the Church only made sense for two reasons. One was to make money. And they had. The second was to destroy the most promising biotech labs’ capacity to wage war on a virus. And that only made sense if the Church was planning to…
The phone rang with Bob’s signal. When Jack answered, Bob said, “Thank God! I knew it wasn’t you, but he looked so much like you. One of my operatives went into early labor so I watched Donald O’Hare myself, through binoculars. He was in that little park by his house just seconds ago. I watched you and Dvora walk up to him, watched you pull out your .38, and shoot him in the head. For a minute I thought it could be you. I just received confirmation on Albert Weise’s deposits. They came from Donald O’Hare.”
Jack would bet a thousand to one that his .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver was missing from the range. He would bet another thousand to one that it would be the murder weapon. The clothes he wore when he shot at the range, including the long sleeve shirt, were sitting in a hamper in the laundry room. He had washed his hands maybe twenty times in the last two days, so no powder residue on his hands. Time to stop being the wolf and become the coyote.
“It’s time to put the plan in place. I didn’t think they’d move this fast. I need cash and secure communications. I’m leaving now.”
Bob talked slow and thought fast. “I’ll have my people meet you in fifteen minutes outside our second favorite Chinese restaurant with a few useful things. You’ll think they are Korean tourists. My prayers are with you.”
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