"Now, I would be lying if I stopped there, and left you with the impression that happy talk is going to close the trade deficit," Cozzano said. "Uplifting speeches and slick media images do not an economy make. What we need is to educate our children. But not just to cram their heads with facts and figures - to teach them values as well, values of hard, steady work."
That was a little better. Cozzano was talking some sense there. Although Vishniak was beginning to get a little skeptical about politicians who always spouted this easy talk about education. Education was great but it wouldn't really help the economy for another twenty years. And it wouldn't help the likes of Floyd Wayne Vishniak at all.
"People think that when I speak of education I mean kindergarten, elementary school and high school," Cozzano said, "but
education is more than that. Education is a lifelong process. An unemployed, down-and-out factory worker in the Midwest can benefit from education just as much as a five-year-old child."
"Wait just a goddamn minute," Floyd Wayne Vishniak said, out loud.
It was just a little too much - that bit about the down-and-out midwestern factory worker. He rewound his mental tape of the last few minutes and played it back inside his head, ignoring the rest of Cozzano's speech (Cozzano had now gone on to talk about the need for corporate America to shape up and restructure itself).
Vishniak held the Dick Tracy watch up to his eye and scrutinized the scene carefully. Cozzano didn't have any notes up there on the lectern. And it didn't seem like he was using a TelePrompTer. He was looking around naturally, seemingly speaking off-the-cuff, making everything up as he went along. This was a habit that had been noticed and remarked upon by all the papers that Vishniak had been reading over the summer: Cozzano, who in years past had written his own speeches and read them back, hewing closely to a fixed script, had, in the last few months, taken to speaking extemporaneously.
Floyd Wayne Vishniak was beginning to understand why. William A. Cozzano was reading his mind. He was reading Vishniak's brain waves and telling him exactly what he wanted to hear! How was he doing it? Through the wristwatch, no doubt. That was the key to the whole thing.
Vishniak rotated his forearm, the palm of his hand facing upward, to expose the little button that would release the ratchet and pop the watch off his wrist. All he had to do was take it off and then he would be a free man again, and William A. Cozzano would no longer be able to read his brain waves. He had been wearing it continuously for a couple of weeks, and underneath it his skin was itching fiercely. But he couldn't take it off, no matter what. He had to trust his instincts. He knew that they were watching him and that to remove the wristwatch meant certain death, a nice dose of shellfish poison straight into his arm. He'd never get that thing off. He was on a suicide mission.
He jumped off the tailgate, climbing into the cab of his truck, dug his road atlas out from under the seat, and began to contemplate possible approach vectors to the seat of all evil in the world.
49
Shortly after Floyd Wayne Vishniak entered the greater Washington metropolitan area, something completely shocking and unprecedented happened to him: he got a job.
It happened in Pentagon Plaza, of all places. He had gone there expecting to stage a bloodbath and ended up filling out job applications. The unpredictability of life in America was a constant source of amusement to him.
He had spent half a day doing recon. Pentagon Plaza, he concluded after driving around it at high speed several dozen times, was a single building that just happened to look like a whole bunch of different buildings very close together. There was a parking ramp (the rich and powerful had to have their parking spaces!) and a low, squat, enormous structure mostly concealed behind that, and rising up from it were a couple of skyscrapers - Pentagon Towers. But they were all part of the same complex. The fortress of darkness owned and opened by Ogle Data Research.
How best to make his approach? His maps told him that there was a Metro stop beneath Pentagon Plaza. That would be a good way to get in close. But in the end he decided against it. He had no idea what was going to happen. If he didn't get killed, he would want to get out of there fast, and taking the subway wasn't the way to do it. Better to have his truck handy.
He could park outside and walk in or - daring idea - he could actually drive on to the parking ramp. This latter idea, while it might seem impossibly audacious, held major advantages. It was worth checking out. He drove past the entrances to the parking ramp several times, going very slowly, his window rolled down, and observed people driving into the place. Everyone got in without hassle. They pulled up to a little machine, slammed a button, and pulled out a ticket. The gate rose up and they drove on in. No one inspected them. You didn't have to show any kind of ID.
It was worth a try. The worst thing that could happen was that he'd have to crash through the gate. He pulled into the chute. So much adrenaline was pumping through his system now that his teeth hurt and his gums felt hot and swollen.
He stopped by the little machine, and, trying to look nonchalant, like he did this every day, he reached out and punched the button. A cardboard ticket spat out of the machine. He jerked it out. The gate rose up.
Calmly, like he belonged here, Floyd Wayne Vishniak piloted his pickup truck into the bowels of Pentagon Plaza.
The parking ramp held no secrets. He found a space and backed into it. This unorthodox maneuver caused consternation and horn-honking among several other would-be parkers, but (a) they could all fuck themselves, (b) he had a gun, and (c) he needed to park this way so he could pull out rapidly when the time came.
The Fleischacker was hanging in his armpit. He had purchased several overly long thirty-round magazines for it. Loaded with teflon armor-piercing bullets, these were secreted in the long cargo pockets built into the thighs of his trousers. By reaching down and unsnapping the flaps on the tops of these pockets, he could whip out a new magazine in a fraction of a second. One magazine was already stuck into the handle of his Fleischacker, making the gun huge, unwieldy, and L-shaped. His QUAD CITIES WHIPLASH windbreaker hid the weapon adequately as long as he kept it zipped up most of the way, and kept his arm down to his side.
He locked up his truck (wouldn't do for his getaway vehicle to get ripped off while he was busying himself inside) and then followed a few other people toward the sky bridge and a set of glass doors that joined the parking ramp to the huge, squat building next to it.
The headquarters of Ogle Data Research was cleverly disguised as a fancy department store!
Vishniak forced himself to keep calm. He walked through the middle of a huge display of women's shoes, trying to act just as cool as all the other people, like he came through here all the time. He did this on the assumption that the department store was just a false-front operation like the ones of Mission: Impossible and that it would be all of about thirty feet deep. Once he passed through this shoe display he would begin to see the brain-wave monitors and satellite dishes. Then the Fleischacker would come out and Ogle's evil operation would come to an end. Vishniak would die, probably, and Cozzano would be released from electronic bondage.
But when he made it through the shoe display, he came to a section full of purses. Then more women's clothes. Perfume. Cosmetics. He went up an escalator (Keep walking! Don't stop and look!) and found a display of television sets, then a little gourmet restaurant. It went on and on and on.