The Shack series

Chapter 41

I've spent enough time with her to suspect the body count rumor is probably true. Besides, it'd have to be one hell of a lot of money to risk bringing K2 down on you."

"Kurt and Katie would take it very personally."

"But they're okay with this...?"

"It's different. Business is business, Maria. Inherent risk. Kurt doesn't write greeting cards for a living."

*****

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis

*****

I sat alone in Mooky's bedroom with a brand new laptop. Getting into the flash drive was simple. The passphrase prompt was "Cabo Bikini." Only I knew what the obvious answer to that was. And I have every intention of taking that to my grave.

For a long while, I paged through document after document. Pay-offs, pay-outs, promises made, promises kept.

Wire diagrams outlining a vast conspiracy intended to dig in and spread like a cancer.

I'd seen something like this before on some nature show. There's a horrifying fungus that can infect ants. It takes them over from the inside, growing next to the brain and eventually taking over the central nervous system. When it does, the ant does whatever the fungus programs it to do. It has no resistance and no will. The ant looks the same, but serves to do whatever the fungus needs to grow stronger.

Until the ant dies, of course.

Folder after folder, document after document.

I clicked on a video in a folder, then just stared at the screen, feeling sick. Michael's thin, ravaged face stared back at me, frozen. I'd paused the video to catch my breath. I'd spent the last several days suppressing this. Not thinking about Michael actually being gone. As much as I had known it was coming with cancer advancing relentlessly, it still hurt almost too much even to feel real.

I pressed "play" even as I willed myself not to.

He'd suspected they were on to him, that they had people inside the Bureau. He wanted to look into one more thing but couldn't risk losing the data. One copy on him, one taped to the underside of the table. One more thing to do. The date on the file was the night before he was killed, the same day this all started.

He broke the one rule we'd always followed. He talked about the should-have-beens, the could-have-beens, and what we really meant to each other.

Even when the video stopped, I couldn't stop looking at him. I choked and held myself and felt all my internal walls give way.

It was almost two hours later when I left the room. All three girls took one glance and looked away uncomfortably. With my red puffy eyes and splotchy skin. I might as well have had a sign around my neck that said, "cried for hours."

The moment he saw me, Mooky got up from the counter and wordlessly gave me a gentle, practiced hug. The kind of perfect hug that someone who has dealt with grief over and over knows how to give. When we finally stepped back, he gave me a soft, understanding, sad half-smile.

After a long moment of quiet, Tess spoke up. "So what do we know, and what do we do next?"

*****

"Synarchists, Dude."

Delaney stared at Mooky in puzzlement. "What?"

"Super rich guys trying to take over the government. This isn't the first time. It was, like, the 1930s."

Tess shook her head slowly. "What are you talking about?"

"They've tried this before. There was like this secret cabal of rich guys..." He raised his eyebrows "...who wanted to rule the world. Dude named Smedley... Marine dude... Butler, yeah, Smedley Butler. I remember 'cause that's like the coolest name..."

Mackenzie looked doubtful, but Delaney's eyes narrowed. "Dude. Focus. What did he do?"

"He dimed them out. They tried to use him to take over, but he called them out to Congress."

Delaney swiveled to look at me. "Is he right?"

"It's been a long time since I took history, but it sounds vaguely familiar."

Tess looked up from her computer, looking drawn. "General Smedley Butler. The Business Plot of 1934 to overthrow the US government. Congress just sort of glossed it over, and everybody pretended it hadn't happened. Too many people with too much money and too much power involved."

Delaney gave Mooky a suspicious stare. "Where did you hear about this stuff?"

He shrugged. "I have a friend, Petey, and she does this podcast. Cool stuff, you know. Aliens, weather control machines, she's the real deal."

At a total loss for words, Delaney held her hands up in surrender and looked back at Tess. "Just stick to the plot; let's not worry about weather control machines for now."

We all moved around next to her and looked at the screen. Tess took a deep breath and put one finger up to the screen. "Look at the names."

Delaney looked at the ones Tess pointed out. "You have got to be f*****g kidding me. It's been a hundred f*****g years."

"Almost." My voice sounded hollow in my ears. Reisner, McGuire...Reinhardt.

Mackenzie's tone came in a whisper. "It wasn't just the US, was it? France... they really meant it..."

She looked up at me. "Or still mean it."

"They spent three hundred million dollars trying to pull it off in 1934." Tess brought up another page briefly. "That's almost six billion today."

Delaney's lip curled in a nasty sneer as she looked at the screen. "Billionaires. That kind of money does something to people. It rots their brains and makes them think they're f*****g gods or something."

I shook my head. "Aren't you the one that called the guy 'cash money' earlier?"

She gave me an unblinking stare. "I don't want money for money's sake. Money is just a tool to stay alive. I've dealt with people with this kind of money before." She gestured sharply at the screen. "They turn into monsters."

For a moment, she stared right through me, her eyes focused on a different time and place. Delaney's lip curled, grim and predatory.

Her jaw twitched and tightened; I could see tension and rage building in her, wire-taut nerves starting to fire, a growing manic glitter beginning to burn in her eyes. Something, maybe hatred, flashed behind the anger. "We're going after them, right?"

"No." I waited until she turned her now-unblinking stare on me. "This is for other people."

She was trying to figure out whether she believed me or not. I continued. "Part of this goes to the FBI and the White House. They have the resources to do this."

Tess looked over her computer. "The government didn't do much with it last time."

They already knew too much to bother hiding the rest, so I continued. "Some of it will go to Spooky's people, and some to the people Pogo works with. They won't stop. Ever."

"What about us?" Mackenzie seemed to be doing math in her head.

"I'd like to keep you and K2 out of it. This isn't your fight."

Delaney looked put out. But she smiled when she heard what else I had to say. "Besides, I'd like to keep you as a really nasty surprise if things go wrong."

*****

"I got a call from the Director of the FBI this morning." On the tablet, I saw Derek lean back as he talked.

"Let them know that once we see Reisner and McGuire in cuffs on the news, we'll talk."

"I already did, but it's not going to happen. They found Reisner hanging in his shower this morning. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense McGuire had a fatal one-car accident last night."

I shook my head. "Not very subtle."

"I think that's the point. To me, it looks like somebody has taken this personally."

For a moment, I wondered what he actually knew. Maybe Donna had let Spooky off the leash, maybe Howard was cleaning up, or perhaps the conspiracy was cleaning up after itself. Too many maybes.

"Maybe."

He flipped a page to check something out. "The FBI has swept a bunch of the lower level ones on the list, but a little bird told me that they were in it for the money and didn't really know who they were working for. Some in Homeland and Department of Defense, a number in the AG's office, some in the FBI. A fair number of Congressional staffers. A few more scattered across different departments and agencies. Even HUD."

A few hours later, I watched on the news as Emma, cane in hand, stood quietly behind the FBI Director as he conducted a press conference regarding a spy ring that had been uncovered "by hard work and sacrifice." He briefly introduced her as the lead on the investigation.

In the back of my head, I could hear Michael chuckle. Wherever they were, the leaders of the conspiracy had to be taking a very deep breath. Early on, Emma's insane drive had combined with her lack of height to give her the somewhat sneering nickname "Dangermouse." Now that name was only spoken with respect, mostly by members of the Hostage Rescue Team. Emma was a fanatic, the FBI-as-it-should-be was her religion, and she, a Holy Priestess, would fight to the death keep it pure. Worse yet, there was no way to buy her off. As Evelyn's daughter, she was the heir to the almost incomprehensible billions of the Reinhardt fortune. She should have been the conspirators' natural ally; she should have been one of them, as her forbearers had.

But Emma detested that vast fortune and everything it stood for. She saw it as rot, corruption incarnate, a soul-devouring source of evil. Somehow though, I doubted she would hesitate to use it as a weapon against these new Synarchists if she had the chance. They were heretics and apostates in her eyes. I had to smile along with Michael at that.

She stepped up to the podium, and in terse, diamond-hard words, explained that she was leading the effort across several agencies and the FBI itself. Her tempo stayed precise, synchronized to a metronome, and her inflection was perfectly even. But her hate and fury radiated blindingly. She had the eyes of her father, The Reinhardt, and those eyes blazed with the cold blue fire of her fury. The Heretics had breached the walls and defiled her sacred grove. When she stated levelly that she would use every tool at her disposal to hunt the rest of the conspirators down, it was a clear warning.

The Reinhardt Apparent was taking up her sword to go to war.

*****

Aftershocks

*****

The White House Chief of Staff leaned back in his chair and looked between the director and me. "So, we paint this as a planned covert operation. Deputy Director Hawthorne and Michael Sandeman's remarkable work to uncover foreign corruption of senior officials in the government gets publicly lauded, gets noted in the papers and on the Sunday news circuit, and we're covered."

"Point of fact, this wasn't a government action, it was..." The director showed a bit more spine than I'd expected.

The chief of staff cut him off. "As far as the public is concerned, this was the work of a foreign country, details classified. Imagine how the public would react if they knew that some of the companies that make their toothpaste, build their cars, and let them play funny cat videos were buying government officials, planning to put them into higher office, and were willing to kill to do it."

I pulled myself a little forward. "I think you underestimate the public. I honestly doubt they'd be remotely surprised."

The chief of staff studied me for a second, with a glint of malicious humor in his eye. "You sound a touch cynical, Maria."

I just stared back at him. "Being hung out to dry has that effect. I didn't exactly get the full support of the administration on this." He'd been one of the talking heads on the news calling for my immediate arrest. But Emma herself had grudgingly cleared him of any involvement. I wondered if he realized how close he had been to a traffic accident or suicide note.