[b]Boston[/b] The Boston Hall of Records sat right in the middle of Charlestown. The mid-afternoon sun in the sky cast a shadow on the building thanks to the tall obelisk that next door to the building. The large monument was erected and dedicated to those that fought and died in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Elliot Shaw watched traffic that drove past the Hall from his car. He looked for any signs that he'd been followed on his route here. Jane Wilson was still at Helena's apartment with Helena herself watching overt the girl. He hated leaving the two of them alone, but after Helena's bombshell he had to confirm what she told him. He carried a single paper from Jane's cache of incriminating documents. When he was satisfied, Elliot stepped out into the street and went inside the Hall. The antechamber just inside the front door had a receptionist at a desk. The young woman pointed him towards the land transactions section near the back of the main room. Through the antechamber he came out into a long, wide room that looked like a library. Instead of a wide selection of books, every item on the shelf was a large, thick leather bound book. It was big because the Hall was one of the oldest such buildings in America. It held copies of records dating back to the early 1600's when the city was founded. He was one of a dozen or so people seeking information that day. After watching to make sure he wasn't being watched by any of his fellow researchers, he made a beeline for the land transfer records. The records were listed chronologically starting at 1630 and going all the way up to last week. Shaw found all the books for late 1979 through early July 1980. All told it was six of the thick books. He managed to get his arms around all of them and carry them to a nearby table. Shaw took out a notepad and pencil along with the folded up paper in his jacket. The geological study Elliot hadn't bothered to really read had been read thoroughly by Helena and explained to him in detail by her. He was a good cop, but he'd never been to college and didn't know much that wasn't covered outside of high school. By contrast, Helena was going to BU Med to be a doctor. The call girl shtick was putting her through med school. Elliot went through the ledgers in search of records containing the land mentioned on the sheet. He found it slowly but surely. A corporation named Bunker Hill Land Management had been buying up land in and around the Boston marshes for pennies on the dollar. It made sense since the land was still swampy. What confirmed Helena's explanation was the size of the land purchases. The proposed land development outlined in the memos Jane stole had been bought by South Boston Construction, Big Jim Dwyer's construction firm. All but the land bought by Bunker Hill was owned by SBC. Bunker Hill had to be Dwyer and Liam Kane's company, used to undercut SBC and the other big investors buying into the marsh development deal. Elliot couldn't figure out exactly why Kane and Dwyer wanted to sabotage the development deal until Helena brought the survey back up. In the process of examining the marshes for construction feasibility, the geological study had discovered something big just below the surface. A massive pocket of petroleum rested down under the marshes. That was why Kane and Dwyer wanted to fuck over their partners and buy up the land themselves. Why make a million dollars on construction deal when you could make a hundred million dollars selling it all to Dixon Oil? Big money was at stake here, bigger than Elliot could fathom. It was so much money that it was worth snuffing out a quasi-hooker and Mick PI. He quickly put the books back up and headed outside. He found a pay phone down the block from the Hall and dialed Helena's number. There was no answer from her phone. He dialed again and waited five more minutes. Cursing, Elliot hung the phone up and ran towards his car. He felt his heart racing as he sped off and hurried towards Helena's place. ----- [b]Vancouver[/b] Mark Echols hobbled through the crime scene. Crime scene tape had the street blocked off while uniformed police officers kept traffic diverted from the area. A small army of technicians covered the crime scene looking for clues. A medical examiner took photos of the body laid out in the backseat of the taxi cab. In Echols' hands was the note found beside the body of Peter Leigh, leader of the territory's legislature. The note was inside a plastic bag to preserve any evidence or fingerprints on the surface. The lab had managed to lift a right index finger off the paper and were running it to the crime lab as quick as possible. While the note was spattered in Leigh's blood, it was perfectly legible: Death to traitors. The price for collaboration is death. Soon we will reap the seeds of discontent that were sewn during the war. Long live the Northwest Coalition. -- The Friends. After months of minor crimes and bombings that resulted in no casualties, the Friends had taken their first life and it was a big one. The US government was already foaming at the mouth to get these people, now assassinating a government official would kick it into overdrive. Echols knew just how bad they wanted the Friends. They dispatched a special forces team to deal with the terrorist. Echols' fed partner Simpson tried to track down the man Echols knew as Crystal but was stonewalled by the Army. Officially, a man known as Master Sergeant Silas Crystal served at Fort Bragg in North Carolina as a drill sergeant. He was on leave to his hometown back in Texas to deal with a sickly family member. No, the Army had no way of contacting him and would not worry about it until he was due to report back to duty whenever that was. He thought back to the night he met Crystal. The waning days of the war, when the Eighth Army Group was pushing through NWC/Canadian territory towards Vancouver. The gassing of Seattle tore the fledgling country in two, Echols siding with the side against the gassing. He and a group of four MPs rendezvoused near Surrey with an A-Team of Army Rangers led by Crystal. The Rangers were gathering intelligence and laying down the groundwork for a full-on invasion of Vancouver. The mission went sideways and Echols lost his kneecap after a grenade exploded beside him. He would have lost more than that if not for the gruff Ranger pushing him out the way just in time. Echols passed out and woke up in a daze the next day, in a US infirmary with the news that the invasion was on. He never saw Crystal or his group of soldiers again... Until the other day when he saw Crystal fleeing from a place where a weapons dealer who worked for the Friends was supposed to be but wasn't. Echols eyed the letter again, looking at the taxi and then back at the letter. Crystal, the terrorists, the missing Reg Boland, even the dead Army sergeant Brian Shea. It was all connected. Echols could feel the threads of inference tieing them all together into one case, one giant spiderweb he was tangled in. "Inspector," one of the uniformed cops said as he came under the crime tape. "The uniformed canvas turned up something. Apparently, Leigh left a nearby hotel with a redhead on his arm. Eyewitnesses say she was a total knockout. Hooker?" "Could explain why she's not here," said Echols. "Afraid of getting in trouble. But what about the taxi driver? Where did he go?" One word played in Echols' brain. Bait. Leigh had a reputation as a womanizer and a boozer. A honeytrap at the right time and place would leave him wide open. A quick search of stolen cars would reveal the cab had been stolen within the last few days. He played it through his mind. Get Leigh drunk and promise him sex, get him in a cab and ambush him. "Inspector," a crime tech called from the car. "We got a print on the steering wheel. Doesn't match the others..." "Rush it back to headquarters," he ordered. "Priority analyst, along with that other print we recovered. It's to be run it through all our criminal, civlian, and military records." "Now?" "Now, goddammit," Echols snapped. For the first time he was aware that the investigation was becoming a race. Whatever Crystal was doing in Vancouver, he was not bound by the same rules and regulations as Echols. The Rangers could be several steps ahead of him and preparing to close in on whoever these people were. He had to beat them and stop the Friends before whatever they were planning came next. ----- The thing on Arthur Stewart's bench didn't look like much. Wires were strewn across the surface, wires that soldered to a circuit board. To Arthur's right was the small crate with the biohazard sign on it. He'd opened the crate just one to look inside. The dull gray canister betrayed the deadliness of the contents inside. The new device he created for the nerve gas would work via radio controls. The circuit board and wires would activate the pinhole openings inside the canister and let the VX seep out into the open air. Arthur sighed and put down his soldering iron. He kept seeing Peter Leigh's dead body every time he closed his eyes. His blood was up when he committed the deed, and now a few days removed he felt a sense of numbness. He'd taken a life that night. Peter Leigh was a horrible person and a traitor, but who was Arthur to decide his death? Who were Alex or the rest of the Friends for that matter? Did Leigh truly deserve to die? "Hey, guy." Arthur looked up at the basement stairs. Chris was coming down into Arthur's work area with two cans of beer in his hands. He tossed on Arthur's way and popped his own top, pulling up a stool to sit beside the work bench. Arthur popped his own can and took a sip of the beer. "Alex wanted me to come down here and talk to you. He says you've been acting in a funk lately. I think I know why." "Enlighten me." "What you did the other night. You did something that you can't go back from." Arthur nodded and took another sip of his beer. Chris' eyes wandered towards his work bench. He took a few big gulps of beer and nodded towards the wires and circuits. "What we do next is going to be what happened with Leigh times a thousand. It's only natural for you have doubts. But I need to know you're going to be able to see it through." "It's just... the people. This is going to kill so many people and I'm not sure if I can handle that many innocent people." Chris finished off his beer and crushed the man with his bare hands, tossing it behind his back and onto the concrete floor. "I don't talk about this much, but I served in the war. I was a private in the NWC Army and stayed loyal right until the end. I saw plenty of innocent people die in the crossfire. After Seattle, the US Army didn't give a shit about innocent people." "They used this on Seattle and they took our country. If we do this now, what will they take?" "What's left to take?" Chris asked, taking Arthur's mostly full beer and drinking it himself. "There's no land to conquer or no armies to surrender. There's nothing but ideas now. And they can kill us, they can kill half of Vancouver, but they can't kill ideas. This is a war, Artie, a war that we didn't start and we didn't ask for but we got anyway. And if we want to win this war we gotta do whatever it takes, this is part of that." Chris stared intently at Arthur with unblinking angry eyes. He kept staring as he finished the second beer and crushed the can as easily as he crushed the last one. "We've gone too far to go back now, Artie. [i]You've[/i] come too far. Either you're with us or you're against us. Understand?" Arthur understood Chris' visit down here now. Joanna was the carrot and Chris was the stick. They'd been using the carrot so long and it hadn't proved a good enough incentive. Now, Chris with his big frame and hard stare was laying it out in no uncertain terms. "I understand," Arthur whispered. "Perfectly." "Good." Chris' large hand slapped Arthur on the shoulder. His hostile look was gone, replaced by a wide grin and a playful laugh. "Good to hear it. I need to go sleep it off, so don't let me keep you from getting back to work." Chris went back up the stairs, pausing just once to look back at him before disappearing back into the house. Arthur turned back to his unfinished device and stared down at it. For the first time since joining the Friends, he was having doubts. The way in which Chris went from friendly to angry and back again unnerved him. It made him wonder just what was real with these people? Was Alex's friendly nature a front? What about Joanna's love? If she was the carrot, was she acting as one on her own accord or under orders? Arthur wiped a small bead of sweat dripping from his hairline and picked up his soldering iron. Chris was right about one thing, he was in too deep to pull out now. If he wanted to live, he had to complete the delivery system for the VX. The Friends promised upheaval and death to traitors, and they were forcing Arthur to uphold that promise. ----- [b]Natchez, Mississippi[/b] "Denied." James Calhoun furrowed his brow at Alex Miller. The banker shrugged at him and shuffled James' loan application into the trash can beside his desk. They were in Miller's corner office on the second floor of the Natchez Savings & Loans. James struggled to find the words while Miller went about straightening other things on his desk and not meeting James' eye. "Why, Mr. Miller?" He finally managed to ask. "For twenty years you haven't had a problem with approving the loan." "That was then and this is now." James leaned forward and put his arms on the desk. "You know I need that money. We still got a couple of months before the harvest can come in and that money is gonna see me and my family through. I always pay it back with interest, sir. Have been for twenty years now." Miller sniffed and shook his head impassively. "If you really cared about that farm, Mr. Calhoun--" Not James like had been for years and years-- "You'd be working it and not running around the country demonstrating, getting people all riled up." James felt his stomach go cold, as cold as the stare Miller was giving him at that moment. So that was it then. He knew something like this would be coming, but he expected it from the rednecks and peckerwoods. Alex Miller was well-educated and was very friendly to the negro community in Adams County. His bank helped many black families down on their luck with low-interest loans they were patient on calling on. "So that's it, Mr. Miller?" James asked. "I'm a trouble maker? I don't know my place." "Uppity. That's the word they've been using around town, Mr. Calhoun." James stood and looked down at the man he considered something resembling a friend for so long. Now he saw him for what he was: Just another racist white man who saw anything like equality as a threat to white dominance of the South. "'Know your place'," James said softly. "That's the motto of the White South when it comes to us. When you all were in danger of losing your slaves and property, you sure as hell didn't know your place. You resisted and rebelled and said it was your god given right to protest and disagree. So where is my god given right to protest, Mr. Miller? All men are created equal, isn't that what this country is founded upon? But my 'place' is subservient to white people, no rights and no chance to vote to change that fact." "Leave," Miller said quickly. "Right now before I call the sheriff's department and they finish where they left off with your jaw." James stalked out the office and the bank in a huff. He came out onto the sidewalk in downtown Natchez. Not a lot of traffic on the mid-afternoon street, but the people that were there were staring at him. Angry, hostile, white eyes focused on him. Every other business on the street except the bank had their 'Whites Only, Colored Entrance in Rear' signs displayed prominently by the front door. James put his hands in his pockets to hide his balled-up fist and walked down the street towards his truck. The sound of an idling engine made him stop and turn around. A dirty white pick-up truck slowly cruised down the street behind him. Two mean looking white boys sat in the cab, eyeballing James. The front license plate of the truck had stars and bars Confederate Flag mounted on it. He stared straight ahead and met the boys' stares head on. He didn't show anger or fear, just boredom as they passed by. The driver of the truck rolled down the window and spat, a glob of brown tobacco juice landing right in front of James' boots. Still he held his ground and watched the truck go on past. One of them yelled 'jigaboo' in a thick Mississippi drawl as the truck sped off down the street. His own pick-up truck had been vandalized while he was in the back. The front window was cracked near the middle and long tendrils of fractured glass spread across the windshield. Someone had scratched the words NIGER NO YOU'RE PLACE down the driver's side. The fucking crackers couldn't even spell the word right. These people with their hateful hearts and their ignorance. These people who got liquored up and beat their wives and kids and raped and murdered and lynched black people by the dozens these... fucking animals. All his life he'd been taught that they were superior to him in every other way, they were smarter and knew better and were more moral and could do things he could never do. He was taught to never look a white woman in the eye and never under any circumstances say anything but "suh" to a white man, didn't matter if he was eight or eighty. He and every other black person across the South had been taught that they were not equals not overtly, but whenever the sheriff of Adams County dealt with a negro killing he never serious investigated it, the registrars at the Adams County voter's office used every trick in the book to deny them the right to vote. And now that James was trying to make a stand all that covert racism was swept away in place of out and out intimidation and threats of violence. They threatened his livelihood, his family's safety, and even his own life. James turned away from the truck and looked back towards downtown. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, he wanted to do [i]something[/i]. Anything. But... he couldn't. Crying would show them that they were winning, anger would give them an excuse to arrest him or kill him outright. He could take their provocation, he knew he could. The movement was growing day by day, both blacks and whites were coming to their side. He could not act rash or do anything that might jeopardize the movement here in Mississippi. These white people were on the wrong side of history just as they had been over a hundred and fifty years ago. It took a war to prove them wrong, and if it took a war to prove them wrong again so be it. There were more than a few white eyes still watching James as he got into his truck and headed back home to his farm. He knew they thought they had won some victory today and taught him a lesson. They were partially right. He'd learned a lesson about how far they would go to keep James and his people down, but the victory was his because he knew how to take the fight right back to them. ----- [b]Chicago[/b] Nate Parker slipped the headphones off his ears and sighed. The conversation in the headphones kept going but he stopped listening. He took out a pack of cigarettes and his lighter. He smoked in silence while the two voices kept talking. He knew the two men talking and he knew what they were saying. It was the same thing they always talked about. Nate hated his job. It wouldn't be so bad if he did something worth a damn, but his current assignment was a horrible one. The entire eighteenth floor of the Murray Building in downtown Chicago served as the midwestern headquarters for the Federal Crime Bureau. There were other smaller offices in adjacent states, but the chain of command ran from Washington to Chicago down to those offices. The eighteenth floor buzzed with investigations into kidnapping, bank robbery, racketeering, and domestic terrorism. All those things were part of the FCB's mandate. And what was Nate doing? Sitting in a moldy backroom transcribing a conversation from a wiretap. Ever since the country's political realignment away from socialism, the FCB made investigation into radical and subversive ideas a top priority. That was why they were working hard to crack down on the violence going on in Vancouver. It was also why the FCB had a network of sub rosa wiretaps installed across the country. It was also why they were illegally surveilling the burgeoning civil rights movement happening in the south. Sidney Siegel and Anthony Rosenbaum were members of the Chicago Communist Party, Siegel serving as president and Rosenbaum as secretary. As of January 1 1980, the Party in Chicago had a whopping fifteen registered members. The two men spoke on the phone every few days about the direction of the party. It always ended with them getting drunk and maudlin and decrying the state of politics in America today. The nation's pivot towards socialism was part of the Marxist theory. Pure communism was to follow after the socialist turn... but it never came. Their revolution had been denied and the forces of reaction and capitalism had taken the country back. Nate hated listening to their talks. They were sob sisters if the word ever existed, but they were harmless. They weren't plotting insurrection or mass violence. They got drunk and cried to each other. Nate wasn't sure what disgusted him more, their pathetic weeping or the fact the Bureau considered this a priority. Guys like Bobby Colosimo filled the midwest with drugs and destroyed lives in the name of profit, but to the FCB guys like Siegel and Rosenbaum were the real terrorists. He'd give anything to go after guys like Bobby C., either the mob or go out west and work on finding those radicals in Vancouver. Real bad guys and not imaginary ones the Bureau dreamed up. He finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the ashtray on his desk. He knew why he was in the backroom and not out in the field. As the country purged any socialist influences, they also purged socialist leanings. Nate was what they called a bleeding heart liberal and in the new order of the country, he didn't fit. Plenty of agents with questionable views had been forced to resign or sent to shit locations and assignments like Nate's. As bad as things were, he was at least in Chicago. Something might happen that would get him out of the backroom. The Bureau had a memory, but it wasn't a long one. They were chewing, but they'd spit him back out eventually. Nate picked the headphones back up and slipped them on. Rosenbaum was in the middle of a drunken rant about the contradictions and hypocrisies of the country's sacred founding fathers and how these bigoted, wealthy bourgeoises were seen as beacons of liberty. He finished his work transcribing the conversation and writing up an accompanying report. He submitted the papers to his supervisor's inbox and headed for the elevator. Most of the eighteenth floor was busy was some activity or another, reminding Nate just how much he was missing out on. He slipped into a bar two blocks away from the Murray Building and got a beer. He and his wife divorced three years ago, their only daughter away at Northwestern studying pre-law. She was following in Nate's footsteps by getting a law degree. There was nobody for him to go home to, nothing to do but get drunk and sleep it off before he had to show up to work the next day. Part of the reason his marriage collapsed was because of the job. Edith wanted Nate to leave the FCB and practice law. She knew about his desire to help people and correct wrongs, something he could never really do as a federal agent. Nate still refused to leave the job and Mara lost her patience with him. He knew she was right. Nate stood at the bar with his beer and said a silent prayer for the two communists and their hopeless quest. He was a practicing catholic, something else that didn't fit in with the country's new day, and he believed firmly in the church's dogma. His current situation was purgatory, a temporary way station until whatever came next. There was a good chance it would be hell, but he still held out hope it'd be paradise.