“Agent Banish, I don’t think—”
“Take one of the government cars,” he said, talking over Brian. “You’ll get through the crowd more easily.”
Brian was trapped. He tried to come up with something to say, but Agent Banish sucked the will right out of him.
“When you get back,” the agent continued, “we may be needing another man up here in the command tent. Someone who’s proven himself to be responsible.”
Brian felt a draft run over him. It was like a chill feeling of collapse. Those marshals had been dead-on right and it was killing Brian, standing there in front of Agent Banish. He knew what was being said. Agent Banish was dangling everything he wanted right in front of his face. Either the agent had guessed it somehow, or he was able to open Brian up like a rotten ear of corn and look right into him and see it. Brian couldn’t even look Agent Banish in the eye, but the agent didn’t seem to care. When Brian swallowed and felt himself wince, he knew that Agent Banish could see whatever sour ambition there was to see in his crushed face. Here was the secret of this agent’s strange power. Bargaining and manipulation. His treating Brian like a nothing. It made Brian want to do this thing for him and be recognized. There wasn’t anything about it that was fair or right, but it was Brian’s big chance and he was signing off on the dotted line by just nodding to the agent there in his office. Agent Banish wanted a bottle of whiskey. Brian saw a long, cold ride ahead of him.
Holding Tent
As directed, Blood entered with Deke, up from the front lines. The leg felt pretty good now and Blood limped only slightly. Banish was already there waiting for them. He was seated at the rectangular table in front, his bent right elbow on the tabletop, cheek and chin resting in his hand. He was in profile, sitting back, looking impassively across the tent at the blank inside of the left canvas wall.
There was a single standing iron-bar cell beyond the table, five or six feet in from each of the three nearest walls of the small tent. It stood about six feet tall and the bars, Blood noticed, were dug or somehow driven into the solid dirt floor. So were the legs of the heavy wooden table Banish was sitting at, and the poles supporting a thin handcuff bar running the length of it behind. Light was provided by two shaded bulbs hanging overhead, and there were two unlit ceiling spotlights turned toward the empty cell.
Deke started off by crowing a little, gesturing toward the mountain. “Some running around there up top,” he said to Banish. “Helicopters and such. A good lot of shooting.”
Banish turned to look at Deke then, his sooty face revealed. “Nothing for you to be worried about,” he said.
Deke whistled and stepped back in surprise and an unchecked bit of pleasure. “Looks like you got the worst of it. Turpentine ought to bring that right off.”
Banish said, “I appreciate your concern.”
Deke nodded rapidly, slyly. “Glenn got the best of things, didn’t he? He’s a polecat, I told you. I warned you don’t step on his toes. I said he weren’t afraid. What happened up top of Paradise? Hellfire, weren’t it? Wild stories spreading down below, folks starting to whisper. Near to bursting waiting for some word.” He looked at Banish and then at Blood.
“I’ll ask the questions,” Banish said.
Deke resumed his frisky grin. “You want to know what the talk is down there.” He nodded. “Something happened, something you’re worried about now, and you want to know what folks are thinking.”
Banish shook his head slowly. Blood was noticing now a change in Banish’s countenance, a darkening in the man’s manner. It included the sullen way in which he regarded old Deke.
“I want to know about Ables’s daughter,” Banish said. “The oldest one, Rebecca. I want to know if she’s developed.”
His words put a cold, strange needle into Blood’s side, so that Blood couldn’t even imagine how the words fell upon Deke’s ears, except that, for once, the old fool was at a loss even for chatter.
“Come again?” Deke sputtered.
“Developed,” Banish said. “She’s fourteen years old. Puberty, breasts. Coming of age. I need to know from you whether or not she is developed.”
Blood watched Deke’s face redden in disgust. The old man’s jaw started to shake before he could get any words out, then the angry quaking spread to his neck and shoulders and chest. “I don’t know what the hell you federal boys think—” His rage prevented him from finishing; his face showed him imagining the worst. “That what you spend all your damn time up here thinking about?” he said.
Banish stood up out of his chair. He crossed slowly to Deke and reached out and took the collar of the old man’s shirt and twisted it up under the loose flap of his fleshy neck, walking him backward and up against the tight wall of the tent. The old man grabbed at Banish’s fist with both hands. He gripped him with his dirty nails, looking up at him widely, but it was all in vain. Banish showed no anger, no haste. Only deliberateness. Deke’s eyes gaped as Banish leaned in close.
“You think I’m in this for kicks?” he said. The canvas wall was rippling from Deke’s kicking resistance. “One word from me,” Banish said, showing him a forefinger up close, “one word, and your little shack up there, everything you own in your rotten little world — ashes. Rubble. And not a thing you can do about it. Now you answer my goddamn question, and goddamn fast.”
Deke was shaking and staring like a small creature about to be consumed. It was Banish’s cool restraint that made the encounter so threatening. Blood decided that he had had enough. He stepped back without excusing himself and turned and exited through the tent door.
Two marshals waiting there snapped to attention when Blood emerged, then saw that it was only the sheriff. He acknowledged them with a nodding glance and turned to look off the other way. Blood wasn’t so genteel that he couldn’t stomach a little law-minded intimidation, but this particular encounter represented a philosophical difference. Blood saw that the way to deal with these people was not to confront them. A direct challenge to them was like questioning a religious man’s faith or calling his wife a whore. These were not reasonable people; they were proud people, and their ridiculous pride made them blind. The only way to lose a fistfight with a blind man was to come straight at him.
Banish exited the tent holding Deke ahead of him like a scarecrow. “Take him away,” he told the marshals. He turned to Blood then, his face hard-set but otherwise blank.
“It’s called COINTELPRO,” he said. “Counterintelligence program. Designed to disrupt and discredit the opposition.”
Blood looked into his eyes. “What happened to you up on the mountain?”
Banish shook his head, matching Blood’s gaze. “You know Mellis was sent down here to kill us.”
“He was sent down here to kill you.”
“Just follow my lead,” Banish said, close enough now that Blood could see the tiny ridges the burnt black powder made in the skin on his face. Banish’s expression was clear and commanding and hard as plated steel, as with a few simple words he brought Blood into his great reserve of confidence. “Ables thinks Mellis killed Watson,” he said.
Trailer
Banish jiggled the knob of the open door, stepped firmly inside, then pointed at Blood behind him, a prompt.
Blood said, “Do you think he really would have tried to kill us?”