Dox laughed. “This about automobile cell phone use being illegal in the great state of California?”
“No,” I said, glancing in the rearview and trying to hide my exasperation. Dox’s cell phone habits had once nearly gotten us killed in Bangkok. “It’s about-”
He laughed. “I know, I know, we don’t want anyone triangulating on us. Just pulling your leg, partner. Though I don’t know why I bother, it’s so easy.”
I sighed. Probably I would never get used to it. I always go quiet in the moments before a mission, but Dox needed to crack jokes, most of them at my expense.
I turned on the bug detector and circled the block again, right on Westbourne, right on Sherwood, right on Westmount. I spotted Horton halfway up the street, on the sidewalk to our right, heading toward us. He was dressed the way he had been the other day-short-sleeved shirt, tucked in, nowhere good to conceal a gun except in an ankle holster. Or maybe, for the moment, in the back of his waistband, which we couldn’t see from our current position, but Dox had the window down now, the Wilson Combat just below it, and if Horton’s hands went anywhere we couldn’t see them, he’d have to be able to draw faster than Dox could shoot, which was another way of saying he’d be dead right there.
We pulled up next to him and I indicated he should get in the front passenger seat. He nodded, but first courteously hiked up his pants to expose his ankles, then turned around so we could confirm he wasn’t carrying in the small of his back, either. He got in and I did a quick K-turn that would be the first of the maneuvers I would make to ensure we weren’t being followed. The bug detector was still.
“I appreciate the two of you taking the time,” Horton said. “And let me say, nice work in Las Vegas. We’ll never know how many lives you saved and how many grievous injuries you prevented, but from what Shorrock was planning, probably it was thousands.”
“Don’t thank me,” Dox said. “I’m just here to shoot you if something goes wrong.”
Horton was smart enough not to mistake Dox’s genial tone for a lack of serious purpose. He said, “Well, then, let’s make sure nothing goes wrong.”
I headed south on La Cienega, then kept us on neighborhood streets to weed out traffic. I judged it unlikely Horton would risk having us followed-he would have known that as our passenger he would literally have a gun to his head. Still, I stopped several times to make sure no one was behind us and did a few strategic U-turns, too. With Horton’s reach, of course, I couldn’t rule out satellite surveillance in addition to the more common vehicular variety, but that wasn’t an immediate threat and Dox and I could deal with the possibility later. I knew Horton might have seen and memorized the plates as we approached to pick him up, too, but I’d rented the car under an identity that wouldn’t lead back to me. As long as we were careful, we’d be all right.
When I was satisfied no one was trying to tail us, I said, “If we’ve already saved all these lives, why do you need the other two plotters taken out, too?”
Horton nodded as though expecting the question. “Shorrock was the tip of the spear, so he was the most important immediate target. But while the spear still exists, its tip can be relatively easily replaced. There are two more key players, the loss of whom will completely end anybody’s hopes of using false flag attacks as the basis for a power grab.”
“Who?”
“Are you interested?”
“I can’t answer that if I don’t know who.”
He paused, then said, “Have you heard of Jack Finch?”
“No.”
“He keeps a low profile for a man in a powerful position.”
“Which is?”
“The president’s counterterrorism advisor.”
Dox laughed. “You sure do pick some hard targets. I’m afraid to ask who the third one might be.”
Horton said, “Let’s just keep talking about them one at a time for now.”
“What’s Finch’s role in the plot?” I asked.
“Finch,” Horton said, “is what you might think of as an information broker.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he is the modern incarnation of the illustrious J. Edgar Hoover, who as you might know maintained his position as head of the FBI for nearly half a century by amassing incriminating files on all the important players in Washington, including every president he served under.”
Dox laughed again. “Sounds like old Murdoch and Fox News.”
“In a sense,” Horton said, “it is. But more focused. And more extensive.”
“What does any of that have to do with the coup?” I said.
“The first step is the provocation, which was Shorrock’s department. After the provocation, though, the plotters need to ensure that certain key players in the government-the president, highly placed military and law enforcement personnel, and the judiciary, if there’s a challenge-support the president’s assumption of emergency powers in response to the crisis. You can see why this is critical. America is a big, fractious place. There are a number of people who want things to be run more efficiently, as they might put it. But not enough of them to guarantee success in the face of opposition.”
“He’s got dirt on the president?” Dox said.
Horton chuckled. “He has dirt on everybody. I told you, like Hoover. But Hoover didn’t have much more than phone taps and surveillance photos. Finch has intercepted email, Internet browsing histories, copies of security video feeds, records of hacked offshore bank accounts-everything you can imagine in an interconnected digital age. We’re talking about dossiers documenting financial corruption and sexual depravity, in such detail they’d make Hoover weep with envy.”
“I’m not buying it,” I said. “I don’t care how many people Finch controls. The president can’t just suspend the Constitution and get away with it.”
“Ah,” Horton said, “but he won’t call it a suspension. He’ll simply ask for certain emergency powers to deal with the crisis, and he’ll ask Congress for these powers for only ninety days, the powers to expire unless Congress agrees to renew them. Very serious and sober people will talk about the unprecedented nature of the threat, and how the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact, and other such things, and they’ll show how independent and level-headed they are by telling the president he can have only thirty days, renewable, they’ll be damned if they agree to ninety.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say it could be done. Still, what’s the point?”
“What do you mean?”
“The point of all of it. These people…don’t they already have enough? Power, money…they’re already running things. Why upset the apple cart if they’ve got all the apples?”
“The people behind this don’t care about apples. They’re doing this because, in their misguided way, they care about their country.”
“They’re going to destroy it to save it?”
“They don’t think of it as destruction. In their minds, America’s democracy is suffering from a fatal disease. Legislative gridlock, capture of the government by special interests, a war machine that’s become like an out-of-control parasite on the economy.”
“Are they wrong?”
“They’re not wrong, but their means of redress are. Their plan is to take the reins of power, set things right, and then return power to the people.”
Dox laughed. “Yeah, that always works out well.”
“They don’t think the chances are good. They just think they’re better than the chances of the current course, which they judge to be nil. Like an emergency procedure for a patient who, if heroic measures aren’t undertaken, is going to die regardless.”
“Sounds pretty insane,” I said.
“It is insane. In no small part because they’re not factoring in the cost of the thousands of people who will have to be terrorized, burned, maimed, crippled, traumatized, and killed in order to create the groundwork for their plan. And this is why we need to stop it.”
I told myself I should just walk away. We’d done Shorrock. That was enough.
But then I thought of something. Something I should have spotted sooner.