The Truth Against the World, page 29
“And what will that accomplish?”
One of the crows perched along the second-floor railing lets out an ear-splitting caw, flutters its long black wings, and heads off, soaring low across the pavement and into the sunlight.
“It’s not a mere book they stole. Georgie bled stones to make it, only to see it not just pilfered but turned into something grotesque. For a purpose she’d never countenance, let alone allow. It’s more than betrayal. It violates everything about her. She wants to speak out—needs to. Deny her that, you kill her.”
“I understand, and I’m not unsympathetic, but why should we involve ourselves?”
“She’ll shine a light on the violence being plotted in the chat rooms, call out the Sacred Racial Warlords, Tower of Rage, any other pack of deadbeats trolling for recruits. Maybe some of the knuckleheads inclined to sign on with those jackals finally realize it’s them getting played, not the game. How many, who knows? But do it right, you could witness a turn in the whole sick business.”
The Latino returns. Pulling a thin black device from his pocket, no bigger than a matchbook, he places it on the door of the safe beside the lock. It latches on magnetically, and then the digital readout begins spinning like the tumblers on a slot machine.
After ten seconds or so it stops, the lock clicks open. He pulls the door wide, withdraws a large velvet bag containing something angular.
“This what you’re after?”
I untie the cincture knotting the sack, pull out what’s inside—the book, the very one, the original. The Truth Against the World. One page has been torn out, it’s tucked inside the front cover—the title page, bearing Georgie’s name. Not even Reggie could face the shame of destroying it entirely.
I think of Parisfal, beholding the Grail. I find myself trembling.
Mavia says, “What you were talking about, breaking into the game—I think we might be able to help arrange that.”
—66—
In service of covering tracks, it’s decided the Latino—“You can call me Daltón”—will transport Reggie’s car to the remote house where he and his crew will conduct their cleanup. Even with the change of license plates, there’s likely at least some record of the trip up to Calistoga last night, then down to Napa, in the event anyone’s already onto us. Impossible to know as yet. Since our having travelled that route also reveals where we spent the night, Mavia’s agreed to take me back to the motel, pick up Georgie, and deliver us elsewhere, a new place to stay.
“Incidentally,” I tell Daltón, “you’re going to find that three of the bodies left behind are in a somewhat gruesome state.”
“Yeah?” He bites back a laugh, shoots Mavia an icy glance. “Care to be more specific?”
“They’ll be missing an eye. You’ll find them—the eyes, I mean—in that cooler there in the boot. On ice, which I freshened up earlier.”
He looks at me as though I’m potted. Mavia’s mouth hangs ever so slightly open.
“In case you can’t access the devices without a retinal scan.”
The silence between us feels like it’s hardening the air. Then he can’t help himself, the laughter spills out. “Very thoughtful, güero. But unnecessary. We have our ways.”
On the ride with Mavia north to Calistoga, I try to imagine what Georgie’s been up to in my absence—going stir-crazy? Has the Old Black Dog come sniffing around? Perhaps she’s just lying there, staring at the ceiling, trying not to snap her fingers.
As we pull into the parking lot, I discover my fears misplaced. She and the motel owner sit side by side in rockers on the shaded patio beside the office. All seems laid-back and cheery. They’re sipping iced tea. And yet I can’t help but wonder what they’ve been discussing.
Mavia and I exit the car. Georgie comes down to greet us. A round of introductions and timid smiles, then the two young women saunter off toward the room. Mavia intends to make sure nothing gets left behind that might even remotely identify us.
I step up onto the patio, check my watch. “It’s well past checkout. I assume we owe for a second day.”
The old woman waves me off like I’m a nuisance. “I’m Delores, by the way. Your friend there calls you Turk. Calls herself Misty. Last night you were Michael and Lisa. God only knows what your real names are.”
Oh, fiddle-fuck. I neglected to tell Georgie about the names. “May I sit?”
“By all means.”
I take the nearest chair. “We’ll be gone shortly. Hopefully we’ve caused you no bother.”
“I figured you were in trouble the minute you stepped through the door last night. Wouldn’t let you stay if I was afraid of being bothered.”
“Thank you. For the hospitality.”
“Kinda what I’m here for.”
She picks up her glass but doesn’t drink, just tilts it back and forth in her hand.
“My husband died last year of a heart attack trying to keep this place safe. Flames weren’t more than thirty yards away, he’s out there with a garden hose, making sure sparks don’t burn through the roof. Once the fire crews arrived he came right here, sat down in the chair you’re sitting in now, struck up a smoke, waved out the match, and keeled over dead. Married fifty-three years to the man. Never did listen to a word the doctor said.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Didn’t know he’d secretly bought a million dollars in life insurance. So now he’s a memory and I’m a millionaire. My sister wants me to move in with her in Visalia. I’d rather slit my wrists. Point is, I don’t need this place, don’t need to let anyone stay here. But I did. Last night I told you I didn’t know why. That wasn’t the truth.”
“It’s not really my business.”
“You run a place like this for forty some odd years, you learn to read people. An imperfect science, for sure, but my take on you? Nice guy, good heart, can take care of himself. I’ve got no idea what your trouble is. Don’t much care. But your eyes are kind. And sad.”
From his eyes of flame,
Ruby tears there came
Good old Billy Blake. Again.
Mavia heads south along the Silverado Trail. One sorry winery after another passes by, the ones not burned to the ground lying shuttered, while the razed and barren earth stretches for miles along the ridgeline, century-old trees reduced to twisted sculptures of alligatored char, scorched arroyos etching down into the lowlands like jagged black scars. Not a single hawk circles overhead—what would it hunt? And yet the sky has turned such a dazzling blue it brings to mind a tranquil sea, smooth as glass.
Just beyond a turn-off heading for a place called Rector Canyon, we dip onto a side road that passes beneath an archway reading: Santa Yolanda Wines. The road shortly turns to gravel, winding uphill between Italian cypresses, many seared or withered, some half gone.
The driveway ends in the parking lot for a visitor’s center somehow spared the rampant fires that destroyed nearly everything else around, though the terra cotta roof tiles remain singed in places. Queer thing about fire, what it chooses to devour, what it leaves alone.
Plywood covers the windows. A handful of outbuildings, blackened and gutted, stand roofless in the background, knockdowns waiting for the sledge.
“You’ll be safe here,” Mavia says, “If you can stand the smell.”
“There’s electricity?”
“A generator. Around back.”
“Running water?”
“Last time I checked. But this is California, and water’s never a sure thing. Come on, I’ll let you in.”
We follow her up a stone walkway dusted with ash. Using a digital key, she opens the door and gestures us into what once likely served as a tasting room—Italian marble floor, a massive cherrywood bar lining one wall, a mirror as big as a cinema screen behind it.
“The service quarters are back this way,” she says, guiding us beyond a kitchen area.
“How did you come to know about this place?”
“Owners are sympathetic. After they were nearly burned out during the last fire season, they began to rebuild, hoping to get their workers back onsite. And that was happening, almost on schedule. Then five of the workers were kidnapped—three men, two women, all from Guatemala, lynched out there across the road, a note pinned to each one’s shirt: ‘No second warnings.’”
“You always hear California is different,” Georgie says.
“It’s not all boutique bourgeoisie and nouveau riche up here. You go five miles into the hills in any direction, you’re in the land of the Roughneck Reich. Have a lot of the sheriff’s deputies on their side, too.”
“So the owners, they closed up shop and fled.”
“Not exactly.” She turns into a bedroom, tries the light switch, glancing up—nothing. “You’ll need to crank up the generator. I’ll show you where it is.”
“If the owners didn’t pack up and go, where are they?”
“Around. The bikers and hilljacks and bent cops around here think they run the show now. All it takes is guns and attitude. They’re about to learn otherwise.”
—67—
Late-day dust devils tumble down the hillside arroyos, carrying with them a cascade of cinders and fine black soot. We huddle inside, but grit sifts through the cracks between the plywood sheets and the window frames and the occasional spy hole carved into the wood. It insinuates itself into our eyes and mouths, beneath our fingernails. The charred stench lingers.
I clean the pistols I took from Reggie’s house, just to keep busy, but with no solvent at hand this amounts to little more than wiping them down, reaming the barrel with a pencil and a thin square of cloth. Georgie’s writing away in a mad fury, jotting down her racing thoughts.
Come sundown, Daltón arrives. He’s shouldering a stylishly techie, surveillance-proof knapsack, but before opening it up and revealing its contents, he pulls me aside.
“Man, you weren’t kidding when you said you left a mess behind.”
I picture the bodies scattered through the house like charnel castaways, imagine the gore, the insects, the stench. The bloody gaping eye sockets. “I was striving for efficiency, not effect.”
“Yeah, well, remind me never to piss you off. As for the phones and laptops, even the plane’s GPS, they’re spoofed. Far as anyone can tell, them and their owners are all headed back to a little town called Punkin Center, last place they seem to have been before coming out here.”
“That’s where we crossed paths, them and their friends.”
“Middle of bumfuck nowhere’s the point. Hard to get to. Buys time, like you want.”
“Understood. Anything else?”
“Yeah. Those laptops. Fuck me. I mean, we knew the game was a watering hole for malcontents, them and their millions of pals—not just here but Europe, Russia, Israel, Australia. Any given time, there may be a hundred thousand players all over the world engaged—whole bunch just as radicalized as the Nightwolves.”
“They’re involved, then. In the game. Recruiting.”
“Not just them. But my point: the money, how much, from where—that was new. Revenue from this thing? Easily a thousand times what the books make. Means it’s a great venue for money laundering.”
“Yeah?”
“Inside the game, you can buy and sell virtual tool kits filled with special weapons, secret information, magic spells. You want to scrub a few million in ill-gotten gains—weapons trafficking, specifically—spread it around, buy up all the tool kits and drive up the price, then cash out. It’s called gold-farming.”
“What about the police, FBI?”
“Games remain largely unmonitored. One of the perks that bazillions of dollars can buy. ‘Unregulated digital bazaars,’ they’re called. It’s up to the manufacturers to police what goes on. Most do. Some don’t.”
“Like whoever runs this show.”
“Creative Solutions.”
“That was the name on their credit cards.”
“They infiltrated Christian publishing couple years back. Huge market, virtually invisible to the mainstream. Began with niche books praising free markets from a biblical perspective—denouncing social democrats, internationalists, the scientific community, all because they’re, you know, atheists. The initial Rory Fitzgerald book was their first attempt at mainstream fiction, and they hit it big, especially with the game as part of the platform. Again, incredible audience out there. Celts, Vikings, Goths, Cossacks, they’re idealized as Great White Warriors.”
“But they’re all pagans. Well, except the Cossacks.”
“Don’t overthink it. They sure don’t. That’s the great advantage of conspirituality—it doesn’t have to make sense.”
That word, it’s new to me. Apparently Daltón intuits that from my expression.
“Conspiracy theories mixed with spirituality. Life is meaningless chaos. Or it’s all a sacred mystery. If so, what better code book than Revelation? If the bible’s not your thing, try the game.”
“Or even if it is, apparently.”
“Everybody talks about the Russians, Chinese, Iranians. Hybrid warfare. Active measures. They’re definitely involved, but they’re not the main threat. Not now. There’s a homegrown network with global reach—petrochemical sector, major-project construction, derivatives traders, defense contractors. They filter funds to troll farms and these fringe groups through bogus charities.”
“But why?”
“Undermine the government, roll back regulation, all in the name of giving the country back to the little guy, the forgotten American, who tends to think of business as the good guys. There’s even livestream telethons, to fund the movement, like they’re pimping for muscular dystrophy, not a race war.”
“And the game’s a part of all that.”
“Thing’s a virtual parking lot for dark money. Plenty of it going to the militias, politicians in their pocket. Thought they were clever—numbered accounts, all offshore—but we ain’t stupid. And, like I said before, we have our ways.”
“Good to know.”
“I’ve printed some of it out, so your friend can read it off when you commandeer the game. Share the skinny with the world at large, ya know? Tell them who’s who, what’s what, where the money comes from, where it goes. Fuckers.”
“I’ll be sure to pass it along.”
“Just so you know, Mavia and me, the people we represent, we’re grateful. For what you’re doing.”
“Anyone’s guess what difference it will make.”
“Can’t think like that. They want us cynical, cuz cynics don’t fight.”
“Agreed.”
“By the way, not to throw you off, and I can’t say for sure if what we’re hearing’s true, but there’s rumors the American Cossacks have surrounded Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.”
I know what that means. The weapons there. “Christ in Hell . . .”
“Right now it’s a standoff—military for the most part leans pro-regime, but they’re not batshit. No one’s in favor of handing over nukes to those yokels. But things are tense. They’re threatening to drive warheads into Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago. Maybe they’re serious, maybe it’s blackmail.” He shrugs. “Just thought you should know.”
How ironic—or apropos. When terrorists at last get close to acquiring nuclear weapons, it’s Americans, intending to use them against other Americans.
“Explain something for me. I can understand the anger out there, the sense of betrayal, it’s directed at the wrong people in my view, but I get it. Even this nuke business—it’s crazy, but that’s the nature of rebellions. Nothing uglier than a family fight. Why, though, are the big money boys—not just here but around the world, from the sound of it—pouring millions into the enterprise through this stupid game? Isn’t all this chaos utterly contrary to their interests?”
“They want to burn the system down, man. Build something else, something better—for them. Disaster capitalism, conflict entrepreneurs—you never read Atlas Shrugged?”
“Ayn Rand? Rather pluck out my eyes. Nietzsche for Dummies.”
He’s brought a laptop for Georgie—not secondhand, courtesy of the dead, this one’s a different creature entirely: sleek as a missile, thin as a blade, but with an impressively sizeable screen. He sets it up on the mahogany bar, so Georgie will have the giant antique mirror as backdrop while she’s broadcasting.
“Okay,” he says, gesturing for us to join him. “Let me explain what’s going on.”
Georgie and I take opposite sides, she on a barstool, me standing.
Daltón opens the game space. “One of the laptops you gave me? Belonged to one of the game’s moderators.”
“Christina Harringale, I imagine.”
“Her, yeah. I cred-stuffed her login info to crack her password, which gave me back-end access to the gaming platform. You can take over the game any time you want but first, I’m going to tether this laptop to one of your burner phones, and that will act as your IP hotspot.”
“Whatever you say.” I catch Georgie’s eye—she shrugs, baffled as I am. I hand him one of the as yet unused burners.
He fiddles with it, then the laptop, glancing back and forth.
“When you log on,” he continues, “you’re going to use a special browser. I’ve set it up for you. Fun fact—the original version was created for the Dalai Lama. To defeat Chinese cyberattacks, no joke. But, like, in a matter of months it became the favorite of the cartels, sicarios, human traffickers, you name it.”
“Touching.”
“Anyway, it spoofs your position continually among peers. Makes it virtually impossible to pinpoint your location. They’ll try, of course, that’s to be expected. And once they see the source of the intrusion is a burner, not a traditional access point, they’ll start network sniffing, checking the application logs, try to figure out from the metadata who the intruder is, where you’re located. Thanks to how I’ve set things up, though, you should be okay.”
