The Final Hour h-4 Page 3

  “I know what you are,” I said. I was trying not to seem intimidated by him. I was intimidated by him, but I was trying not to seem like it.

  “Your history teacher, Mr. Sherman, has been telling you about me.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what has he told you?”

  “He said you were a powerful guy with powerful ideas. He said even if they convicted me of killing Alex, you could get me out of prison.”

  He spread his hands, gesturing toward the room. “As you see.”

  I nodded. “So far,” I said. I didn’t want to give him too much too fast. During the course of my murder trial, Sherman had been telling me all about his friends the Homelanders, all about what they were trying to do, and how I could join them and help them in their mission. I’d pretended to let him convince me slowly, but I couldn’t seem to have changed too suddenly or completely. My life depended on making this convincing.

  Prince now brought his hands back together and tapped his fingertips against one another thoughtfully. “What else has Mr. Sherman told you?”

  “He told me you wanted to destroy my country.”

  Prince laughed-or at least he flashed his white teeth again. “That’s a little strong. I don’t want to destroy your country, Charlie. I just want to… transform it.”

  I managed to smile back. “Transform it, right, that’s what I meant.”

  Prince turned his chair a half cycle and stood up out of it. He walked across to the big window and looked out at a blue sky with large white clouds moving swiftly through it.

  “Do you think your country is perfect?” he asked me.

  “Obviously not, since it’s sending me to prison when I didn’t do anything. If I thought it was perfect, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

  “Exactly. Exactly.” He stood silently looking out. Then he said: “People don’t like change, Charlie. They get set in their ways very easily. Custom-habit-is like a drug, very addictive. Before they’re willing to embrace a new way, they have to be shaken up. They have to be…” He tried to find the word.

  I helped him out. “Terrorized,” I said.

  “Frightened, yes. They have to understand that they can’t hide from what’s coming. That nothing can protect them from it.”

  “Protect them from…”

  “Righteousness,” he said. He turned to face me and I saw now that the brightness of his brown eyes was not intelligence-or, that is, it wasn’t just intelligence. It was madness too. He was out of his mind with a mad dream of power. “Nothing can protect them from righteousness,” he said. “You believe in righteousness, don’t you, Charlie? You believe in good and evil.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Your country is steeped in evil. In false religion. In false freedom that lets people choose to do what’s wrong in the eyes of God. Take your own situation.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, you said it yourself: Would a righteous nation allow you to be sent away to prison for twenty-five years for something you didn’t do?”

  I didn’t answer him. I’d been listening to Sherman talk like this for weeks now. It was always the same. They start with a falsehood: You think your country is perfect. Then they disprove the falsehood: Your country makes mistakes. Then they leap to an even bigger falsehood: Therefore, your country is evil.

  I knew what Sensei Mike would say: What a bunch of chuckleheads!

  But I didn’t say that. I didn’t think it would be wise. I didn’t think it was a good idea to try to explain the whole God-made-us-free-to-choose business either. I didn’t try to tell him that’s why it’s not a question whether your country is perfect or imperfect; it’s a question of whether it’s free or not free. Somehow I just didn’t think Prince would get any of that. And I didn’t want to stain his pretty rug with my blood.

  “So you’re going to blow people up until they’re righteous,” I said-but I smiled as I said it, as if I were joking.

  Prince flashed those pearly teeth again, moving back to his chair. Standing behind it, his hands on the high back as he swiveled it this way and that meditatively.

  “Something like that,” he said. “Something very much like that, in fact. And the question is: Are you going to help us? We’ll have to doctor you up a little so you don’t look too much like your wanted posters, but then, with a face like yours, with an all-American demeanor like yours, with your knowledge of the customs of the country, you could get into a lot of places I might not. You could help us a lot, Charlie, if you wanted to. Do you want to?”

  I let a long moment go by, but there was never any question what my answer would be. Prince and I both knew he would kill me if I said no. He would kill me if I said yes and he didn’t believe I meant it. But I had already told Sherman I would join the group. That’s why they’d busted me out in the first place.

  So I nodded quickly. “Sure,” I said. “Count me in.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The White Room

  The moment I spoke those words, the scene seemed to melt away from around me. It was as if Prince and the fancy room and the strange house had all been sculpted out of ice and now the heat had risen under them and they were melting, pouring down into nothingness.

  I heard a buzzer. A loud clanking sound… Suddenly I was back in Abingdon, back in my cell.

  My heart sank as I realized where I was: on the cot, curled up on the thin mattress. My body ached and stung all over, not just from the beating I’d gotten from Dunbar but from the spasms of the memory attack. I felt as if someone had gone through my insides with a staple gun. Not a great feeling if you’ve never tried it.

  I blinked into the present, dazed and confused. There was a dark form hanging over me. I squinted, trying to bring the form into focus. It took me a minute before I saw that it was a guard.

  “Get up, West,” he commanded. “You have a visitor.”

  I blinked, licking my dry lips. I could barely understand what he was saying. “A visitor…?” I murmured hoarsely. “Is it Saturday?”

  “Get up!” he said again. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist.

  I uncurled slowly, each motion sending pain through the core of my body.

  “Come on, come on!” said the guard.

  He gripped my arm and yanked me to my feet. The sudden movement sent a sharp pain shooting through my head. My hand went up and I felt the egg-sized bump there. That was where Dunbar had smacked me into the floor.

  “Too bad about that fall you took,” the guard said, smirking.

  “Yeah,” I said through my fingers. “Next time, I’ll watch where I’m going. Walked right into Dunbar’s fist.”

  The guard stopped smirking. “I wouldn’t mention that to anyone if I were you. Not unless you want to go back to the Outbuilding.”

  “Whatever,” I said. I tried to play it tough, but the very mention of the Outbuilding made me clutch with fear. “Where’s my visitor?”

  He jerked his head toward the open door. “Let’s go.”

  He herded me out of the cell and along the second tier of cells and down the stairs. We went past a Plexiglas module where a guard sat at a control desk surrounded by computers and security monitors. There was an iron door blocking the way ahead.

  The guard with me nodded at the guard in the module. There was a loud buzz and the iron door slid open.

  We went through the door and down a faceless concrete hallway. There were more doors, white doors in the white wall, almost invisible. We stopped in front of one of them. The guard unlocked it with a key and pulled it open. He tilted his head for me to go inside.

  I stepped through and he slammed the door behind me. I heard the key turn again, locking me inside.

  I looked around. There wasn’t much to see. It was a small, cramped white room. There were no windows, no two-way mirrors, just the rough painted surface of the blank, white cinder-block walls. There was a white table bolted to the floor, and two plastic white chairs, one on either side.
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  For a minute or two, I just stood there, staring stupidly at all that whiteness. My head was still a little messed up. The memories from my attack still clung to me. The scene had been so real, it was so much as if I were there, right there. It hurt to be back here again, back in this prison. Any place would have been better.

  I heard the lock on the white door snap again. The door opened.

  I turned and saw Detective Rose step into the room.

  Man, I can’t tell you what that was like. At the sight of him, I felt my sore, battered body go weak with relief. I couldn’t remember the last time I was so happy to see anyone.

  “Rose!” I blurted out. “Dude! Oh, man, it’s about time you showed up!”

  Rose didn’t answer. His face was blank, expressionless. But then he never was much in the expressing-himself department. He was a black guy with a round face and flat features, a thin mustache and smart, steady eyes. He rarely smiled. He rarely even grimaced. Even his suits seemed to have no particular color. He was always all business.

  I saw his eyes go over me, pausing on the cuts and bruises. But all he said was, “Sit down, Charlie.”

  I lowered myself painfully into one of the white chairs. Rose didn’t sit down in the other one. He put his foot up on its seat. He rested his arm on his raised knee. He looked down at me-studied me-for a long time.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I fell down,” I said.

  He snorted. “You fell down, huh.”

  “I fell down on a sadistic guard.”

  “That was clumsy of you.”

  “Tell me about it.” I looked up at him, searching his eyes for something, some kind of hope. I couldn’t stand the suspense. “So,” I said to him. “Are you gonna get me out of here or what?”

  “What’s the matter, Charlie? Don’t you like prison?”

  I wanted to come up with a snappy answer, but I wasn’t feeling very snappy. “It’s bad,” I admitted. “I’m trying to stay strong in here, you know? But I’ll tell you the truth, Rose: It’s really, really bad.”

  I thought I saw a trace of sympathy rise in Rose’s eyes, but it was tough to tell. He just nodded. “That’s the way it works, Charlie. You put a lot of bad guys together in the same place, you end up with a pretty bad place.”

  “Are you talking about the inmates or the guards? Because in here, it’s tough to tell the difference.”

  The faintest trace of a smile appeared at one corner of Rose’s mouth. “The guards wear the blue shirts.”

  I tried to laugh. I tried to sound hard and cool the way Rose did. But even I could hear the desperation in my own voice and I’m sure Rose could hear it too. The truth was I didn’t know how much more Abingdon I could take.

  “So?” I said again, my voice shaking a little. “What’s the deal: Are you gonna get me out of here?”

  Rose let out a breath. Something about the way he did it made my stomach churn. I could feel the bad news coming.

  He took his foot off the chair. He sat down across from me. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his eyes steady on mine.

  “Here’s what’s been happening since they put you away in here,” he said. “The Homelanders organization has been broken. The men we arrested at your friend Margaret’s house? They talked. They led us to their headquarters…”

  “That crazy-looking mansion?”

  “The crazy mansion, yeah. We’ve still got it under guard. They had computers there, papers, names, locations. Those led us to the training camp, the place you escaped from. A series of safe houses. We’ve rounded up almost all of them. The Homelanders are over. They’re done.”

  He let that sit for a minute between us, gave me time to take it in.

  “So… that’s good news, right?” I said finally. “The operation was a success. I did what you wanted me to do. Hooray, right? America is safe. You get a promotion. Waterman can rest in peace. And listen, as far as I’m concerned, you can forget my parade and the medals and all that. Just get me out of here and let me go home, okay?”

  There was another moment of silence. Then Rose said the words that made my breath catch with fear.

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, my voice rising. “What do you mean, it’s not that simple? Sure it’s simple. It’s really simple. You hold a

  … whattaya call it?… a press conference or something. You hold a press conference and you say, ‘Hey, remember the whole Charlie-West-is-a-murderer thing? Surprise, we were only kidding. He helped us bust up this terrorist ring and now we’re gonna set him free so he can have his own reality TV show…’ I don’t care what you say, man. Just get me out of Abingdon before I-”

  Rose interrupted me, speaking in the same flat voice with the same expressionless expression on his face. “I can’t.”

  I was in the middle of a sentence when I felt the words turn to ashes in my mouth. “What do you mean you can’t?”

  “I’m sorry,” Rose said.

  I swallowed, hard. “You mean you can’t get me out of here?”

  “No.”

  “Not ever?”

  His eyes flicked away from mine. “Not yet. Not now.”

  I felt the strength go out of me. I sagged against the chair.

  Rose went on speaking, without emotion. “You knew the risk when you signed on, Charlie. Waterman’s operation-our operation-it was never strictly… official. We never really had approval from our superiors. The government is happy to take the Homelanders into custody in a quiet way, but right now, they don’t want it to go any further than that.”

  “Any further than what? These people are terrorists. They’re at war with us. Why should we tiptoe around putting them in jail?”

  Rose cupped his hands over his nose and mouth and closed his eyes, almost as if he were praying. But I think he was just trying to gather his thoughts, trying to figure out how he was going to explain this to me. I was pretty interested to hear what he’d come up with.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said finally, dropping his hands. “An organization like the Homelanders doesn’t just spring up out of nowhere. People fund it, plan it, support it. Powerful people in countries in the Middle East.”

  “So?”

  “We need help from some of those countries. Help with security. Help with arms negotiations. Help with oil.”

  “Oil.”

  “Right now, it’s convenient for a lot of people in the government to pretend that the Homelanders were just a random bunch of crackpots. And that you were just a troublemaker who got involved with them. That way, there’s no pressure from the people, from the media, to go too high up the ladder, to embarrass the people we need to deal with.. .”

  Suddenly I found myself on my feet. The plastic chair toppled over in back of me, rattling against the floor.

  “Embarrass them?” I shouted. “Embarrass them? They’re just going to leave me to rot in here so they won’t embarrass people in the countries where these killers came from?”

  “It’s a sensitive moment, Charlie. A very powerful faction in our government is determined to believe the Homelanders didn’t really exist at all…”

  But I silenced him with a raised hand. I turned away from him. Paced to the wall. Braced my hands against it, my head hung down. I could barely believe what I was hearing-and at the same time, I believed it too well.

  Behind me, Rose said, “There’s something else you oughta know.. .”

  I just stood there, head hanging, waiting for it.

  “We didn’t get them all.”

  Now I swung around, looked at him, eyes glaring.

  “Prince escaped,” he said.

  “Prince…”

  “And some of his top operatives-some portion of his operation-we don’t know how many…”

  “But Prince was the head guy. He was the brains behind the whole deal.”

  “I know that.”

  “Well, do you have any idea where he is?”

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nbsp; Rose looked down at his hands clasped together on the surface of the desk. He was silent for a long moment. Then he raised his expressionless face and stared at me with eyes that said more than he could say aloud. “The government is convinced he’s left the country.”

  “Because they want to be convinced. Because it’s convenient.”

  He nodded.

  “But what if he hasn’t?” I said. “What if he hasn’t left?”

  “Well,” said Rose. “If he hasn’t left… you may not be safe.”

  I let out a laugh-if you can call it a laugh. “Oh, really? I’m not safe? What a surprise. I thought I was snug as a bug in a rug in here! I mean, it’s not as if someone just tried to slice me to pieces. It’s not like some guard just used me as a punching bag for half an hour.”

  “Look, I’m working on this,” said Rose. “I am, it’s just… They’ve closed Waterman’s operation down. I have no official power base anymore. I’m doing my best to go through channels, through friends…”

  Angrily, I reached down, snapped up my chair. “Channels!” I said. “Friends!” I plunked the chair down across the table from him. I plunked myself down into it. I was so mad I hardly felt the aches in my body anymore. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. Most of the Homelanders are in custody, but the government doesn’t want to admit they were a highly funded organization taken down by an unofficial undercover organization. Because of their negotiations in the Middle East, it’s more convenient to pretend the whole thing is over-and to keep me in here, with everybody thinking I’m a murderer. Meanwhile, Prince has escaped and wants me dead, but you have no way to find him because the government prefers to believe he’s gone and you have no power base. So not only am I stuck in this hellhole, I’m a sitting duck for anyone who wants to earn Prince’s favor by bumping me off. Have I got all that right?”

  For the first time, Rose showed some sign of strain. He rubbed one eye wearily. It was a quick gesture, over in a moment, but it revealed to me how tired he was, how hard he’d been working on all this.