“We’ve got only each other in this,” said Gianni. “But if I can’t trust you, I’m walking out of here this minute. Is that
what you want?”
“No.”
“Then I want to know why you lied to me.”
“Because I was afraid to tell you the truth.”
“And what’s the truth?”
She needed a moment to collect the words. “I didn’t want him around to tell about my shooting the others. This way I can at
least get rid of the bodies. Like you did with your two. Then all they can do is suspect.”
“You had it planned when you went in there with him?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you keep it from me?”
“Because I had the feeling you wouldn’t be happy about it.”
“And
you’re
dancing with joy?”
“I do what I have to do, Gianni.” Her voice was so low her teeth and gums seemed to be in it.
Gianni was silent. But there was something bad in his face that got through to her.
“I’m sorry if I disgust you,” she said.
“I’m not that holy. I just don’t understand you.”
“How can you understand me? You don’t even know me.”
At least that much is true,
he thought.
“All you know,” she said, “is what you read in that dumb computer printout. And that was nothing but a pack of lies I made
up for my press releases.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid you’d leave me flat.”
“Try me.”
“I can’t take that chance. Not now. Not with three dead Fibbies hanging around my house.”
A look of hers went through him.
All right. So he knew she was a liar and little better than a whore in her thinking. But he also knew there was absolutely
no way he was about to leave her.
H
ENRY
D
URNING, A
tall, physically imposing man with intense eyes, was delivering a lecture before an overflow crowd at Columbia Law School
in New York. It was one of many such talks he gave at regular intervals from some of the country’s most prestigious platforms.
Durning used these and other forms of public address because they allowed him to be seen and heard as he wished to be seen
and heard. He believed every occasion had its propaganda potential. You had an idea, a conviction, a wish, and you disseminated
it. If you were good enough, if your words took, those who heard you were influenced to feel the same way.
In his own case, Durning, the United States attorney general, tried to make it known to thinking audiences everywhere that
even the best of laws were all but worthless unless their true spirit was generally understood, accepted, and put into practice.
And what was Durning telling his audience today? What quick-fix solutions to the country’s statutory ills was he projecting
with his usual dynamic thrust?
No easy solutions. Only his core message that as long as the lawful rights of a single American—male or female; black, white,
or yellow; native or foreign born—were threat
ened by prejudice, then the rights of every other American were equally threatened.
Durning’s message.
Even-toned, clearly enunciated, it sailed across the auditorium on wings of metaphysical logic. Here on this podium he was
an authority, the respected head of the United States Department of Justice and onetime war hero, to whom large audiences
listened with attention bordering on reverence. Were they and he crazy? At times, Durning believed so. But more often he knew
it was the strength to master your own weakness, and do what you had to do daily and without complaint, that made the only
true heroes.
Still, they had hung the Medal of Honor about his neck for a different reason and made another sort of hero out of him. A
war hero. Maybe they had even made him a symbol. But a symbol of what, Durning didn’t know. Unless it was the image of him
as a onetime intellectual, a professor of law, no less, who could be trained to kill the enemies of his country with exceptional
skill.
The attorney general did not stay long after the lecture. He usually enjoyed the follow-up questioning, the student adulation,
the coeds with their nubile heat, all moving flesh and shining eyes, the flattering deference of the faculty. Ego food.
Lord, my days are vanity.
But today, in his current mood, Henry Durning was not even tempted.
Instead, he had his driver take him directly to La Guardia, where a plane was waiting to fly him back to Washington.
Durning was barely aboard and seated when he was handed a two-hour accumulation of telephone messages. He chose two for immediate
reply. One was from Arthur Michaels, the White House chief of staff, the other from FBI Director Brian Wayne. Durning called
Michaels first.
“What’s doing, Artie?”
“I don’t like what’s happening at that cult standoff in West Virginia. There’s been more gunfire, and the head nut is talking
mass suicide if the siege isn’t called off by five this afternoon.”
Durning glanced at his watch. It was 11:46 A.M.
Michaels said, “Have you spoken to Brian yet?”
“No. But there’s a message he called. I’ll get to him next.”
“When you do, calm him down. A couple of his agents were hit in this latest fracas and he sounded edgy as hell. What we
don’t
need is another Branch Davidian disaster.”
“Don’t worry,” said the attorney general. “I’ll handle it.”
There was a short pause. “Hold on a second. The president wants a word.”
Durning heard a click as the chief executive came on the line.
“Hank?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“I know you’re on top of this, but all I keep thinking about are the twenty-seven women and children in that compound.”
“I’m thinking about them, too, Mr. President. And I promise you. This will not be another Waco, Texas.”
“What about the five o’clock deadline?”
“I’m going to fly down there right now. I’ll either have them out before five or call off the siege.”
“Then we’re taking the mass suicide threat seriously?”
“After the Branch Davidians, Mr. President, how could we
not?”
When he hung up, the attorney general told the pilot they would be heading for Huntington, West Virginia. Then he called FBI
Director Brian Wayne, his oldest and closest friend.
“It’s me, Bri. I’ve just spoken to Artie and the president, so I know most of it. How bad was this morning’s shooting?”
“A state trooper and two of my agents took hits. Nothing fatal. But who needed it?”
“What about the Olympians?”
“No reported casualties, but they probably took a few, too.” Wayne’s voice was flat, morose.
“Who fired first?”
“I’m afraid our people.”
“Didn’t they have orders not to?”
“Yeah. But they’ve been out there nine days now. Everyone’s getting impatient.”
“Impatient for what? To kill or to die?”
The FBI director was silent.
“I don’t like the suicide threat,” said Henry Durning. “It’s probably just a copy-cat bluff after what happened at Waco, but
we can’t take that chance. So I’m going down right now.”
“I’ll meet you.”
“There’s no need for you to go, too.”
“Yes, there is,” said Wayne.
The attorney general’s plane landed at 1:00
P.M.
at Huntington Municipal Airport, where two state troopers were waiting with a car on the tarmac.
They drove through curving mountain roads at a steady fifty-five-mile-per-hour clip and arrived at the besieged religious
sect’s compound at about 1:40.
A sylvan feast gone bad,
thought Durning. Slowly, he got out of the car and looked around.
The Olympian site lay out of rifle range in the middle distance, a sprawl of barns and outbuildings clustered about a large
central structure, where an estimated forty-three men, women, and children were barricaded against a small army of county,
state, and federal officers. Standing bareheaded in the summer sun, Durning felt himself turn cold.
How do these things happen ?
He knew, of course. Knowing was part of his job. Yet no two of these often deadly confrontations were ever entirely alike.
In this instance, the trouble began when about fifty agents, troopers, and sheriff’s deputies raided the Olympians’ communal
compound to serve a search warrant and arrest their leader, the Reverend Samson Koslow, on weapons charges. In the resulting
shootout, two FBI agents and five of the religious cultists were killed and many more were wounded. Since then, until this
morning’s violence and the announced suicide deadline, the tension-filled standoff had held for almost nine days.
The scene along the dirt road where the attorney general’s car had stopped might have been part of an extended country carnival.
Colored lights flashed everywhere. Tents were scat
tered across the fields. Media vans, ambulances, and fighting vehicles stood in unmoving convoys.
Durning saw the big, converted recreational vehicle that served as the FBI command post and started toward it. He waved away
a growing crowd of reporters and photographers who had recognized him, and they backed out of his path a step at a time. They
shot pictures from all sides and shouted questions that were never answered.
When Durning entered the command post, Brian Wayne was already there, along with some of his top, on-site brass.
“Give us a few minutes,” the FBI director told his agents, and they left him alone with the attorney general.
Durning picked up a pair of high-powered binoculars, went to a window, and surveyed the area under siege. None of the Olympians
were visible in their compound, but he was able to spot the surrounding network of FBI sharpshooters lying within rifle range
of the central building.
He put down the glasses. “I’m ending this botched-up mess right now. I’m not taking any chances on that crazy deadline.”
Wayne just looked at him. A lean, spectacled man with a mournful, prematurely lined face, the FBI director knew his friend
too well to argue. At least not until he heard more.
“How do I get this Samson Koslow on the line?” Durning asked. Wayne reached for a phone, hit two buttons, and handed him the
receiver. “This is direct.”
Durning heard two rings. Then a soft voice said, “Yes?”
“Is this Reverend Samson Koslow?”
“It is.”
“This is Attorney General Henry Durning.”
The only audible response to his name and title was a baby crying in the background.
“I’d like for us to talk, Reverend.”
“We have nothing to talk about, Mr. Attorney General. Either remove your unlawful shooters by five o’clock and let us live
in peace, or stay right there and watch us die for God.”
Samson Koslow hung up.
Durning stood staring off through the window. Then he
tried again. This time he counted six rings before Koslow came back on.
“I’m calling in good faith, Reverend.”
There was a long silence. Then, “That’s easy enough for you to say. You’re not risking anything.”
“What do you want me to risk?”
“What all of us out here are risking. Our lives.”
Durning was silent. He motioned to Brian Wayne and watched as he picked up a phone and listened in.
The cult leader said, “What’s happened to your good faith, Mr. Attorney General?”
“I still have it.”
“Show me.”
“How?”
“By walking out here alone, sitting down, and talking to me across a small wooden table.”
Durning felt something pleasantly warm enter his chest. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” he said and put down the
receiver.
The FBI director stared at his friend. “Are you mad? The sonofabitch will either take you hostage or kill you.”
“No. He has himself and his disciples as hostages. He doesn’t need me. And whatever else he is, he’s not a murderer.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve done my homework on Koslow and his Olympians. They’ll only fight when attacked. Otherwise, they’re peaceful
and nonaggressive. If they suffer from anything, it’s an apocalyptic vision that could lead to mass suicide. Which is right
where they are now.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
Durning didn’t answer.
“For God’s sake, Hank! You can’t do this. You’re the attorney general of the United States.”
“I know who I am.” Henry Durning smiled. “That’s why I’m the only one here qualified to talk to Samson Koslow and God.”
They stood staring at each other.
“It just occurred to me,” said Durning. “That business of finding Vittorio Battaglia?”
“What about it?”
“On the outside chance I don’t make it back, you can forget about him.”
Wayne’s eyes were blank.
“I know I never did explain any part of that,” said Durn-ing. “But if I turn out to be wrong about Koslow, nothing about Vittorio
Battaglia will matter anymore.”
Henry Durning walked across the open fields.
At first it almost seemed he was back in‘Nam, with the green, quiet menacing, the sun hot on his face, and a sense of hostile
eyes watching him.
Then he picked up the faint whirring sounds of the Camcorders and still cameras at his back and sides, and he knew exactly
how different this was.
Yet some of his fear was very much the same. Never mind what he had told Brian. He was dealing with religious cultists, zealots.
Part of their theology was the theology of death.
If you want to die for God, you have to be ready to kill for God.
Also, with all their own dead and wounded, the Olympians would be seeing this by now as a holy war provoked by a repressive
government.
The attorney general pushed through high grass under a cloudless sky. He walked steadily past the agents, troopers, and deputies
positioned along the government perimeter. He could feel their eyes on him.
My army.
Yet at one particular point, Durning came near to feeling more like a halfback who had caught a forty-yard pass and was running
another fifty yards for the longest touchdown in the history of the team.
Then he was past the last of their positions and there was only the heavy part ahead, with the steel-shuttered windows showing
clear, and the gun muzzles aimed at him through their firing ports, and the solid, half-round logs of walls that could stop
any rifle bullet made. But most especially there was the knowledge that at any second, depending upon the unpredictable impulses
of fanatics steeped in a dogma of death and dying, he could be blown away.