The Traveler fr-1 Read online

  “That’s a wise choice,” Boone said. “Good for you.” He turned to Prichett. “Go back to the van and run communications. Tell Hector to suit up and use the sniffer. Ron stays on the front porch.”

  “Yes, sir.” Prichett slipped the gun back in his shoulder holster. “And what about the suspect, sir?”

  “We’ll be okay right here. I’m going to have a conversation with Thomas about his various options.”

  Determined to do a good job, Prichett hurried back down the driveway. Boone pulled out a bench and sat at the table. “What’s wrong with the garbage disposal?” he asked.

  “It jammed up and burned out the motor. You know what the problem was?” Thomas pointed to a small black object on the table. “A plum pit.”

  “Why not buy a new disposal?”

  “Too expensive.”

  Boone nodded. “That’s right. We’ve examined your bank account and your credit card balance. You’re out of money.”

  Thomas Walks the Ground continued his work, rummaging through the parts scattered across the table. “I’m very glad that a pretend police officer is concerned about my pretend finances.”

  “Don’t you want to keep this house?”

  “It’s not important. I can always go back to my tribe in Montana. I’ve stayed too long in this place.”

  Boone reached into the inside pocket of his leather jacket, pulled out an envelope, and placed it on the table. “This is twenty thousand dollars in cash. It’s all yours in exchange for an honest conversation.”

  Thomas Walks the Ground picked up the envelope but didn’t open it. He held it in the palm of his hand as if he was judging the weight. Then he dropped it on the table. “I’m an honest man, so I’ll give you the conversation for free.”

  “A young woman took a taxi to this address. Her name is Maya, but she probably used a false name. She’s in her twenties. Black hair. Pale blue eyes. She was raised in Britain and has an English accent.”

  “A lot of people visit me. Maybe she came to my sweat lodge.” Thomas smiled at Boone. “There are still a few openings for this weekend’s ceremony. You and your men should join us. Pound on a drum. Sweat out your poison. When you step into the cold air, you feel completely alive.”

  Sanchez walked down the driveway carrying a white biohazard suit and the sniffer equipment. The sniffer resembled a hand-held vacuum cleaner attached to a shoulder power pack. There was a radio transmitter attached to the pack that sent the data directly to the computer in the van. Sanchez placed the sniffer on a lawn chair. He stepped into the suit and then pulled it over his legs, arms, and shoulders.

  “What’s that for?” Thomas asked.

  “We have a DNA sample from this young woman. The equipment on the chair is a genetic data collection device. It uses a microarray chip to match the suspect’s DNA with the DNA found inside your house.”

  Thomas found three matching screws and smiled. He placed them next to a new electric motor. “As I said, I’ve had many visitors.”

  Sanchez pulled the suit over his head and began to breathe through the air filter. Now his own DNA wouldn’t interfere with the sample. The mercenary opened the back door, entered the house, and began to work. The best samples were found on bed linen, toilet seats, and the backs of upholstered furniture.

  The two men watched each other as they listened to the muffled whirring sound that came from the sniffer. “So tell me,” Boone said, “did Maya visit your house?”

  “Why is this important to you?”

  “She’s a terrorist.”

  Thomas Walks the Ground began searching for three steel washers to match his three screws. “There are real terrorists in this world, but a small group of men uses our fear of them to increase their power. These men hunt down shamans and mystics…” Thomas smiled again. “And people called Travelers.”

  The whirring sound continued from inside the house. Boone knew that Sanchez was moving from room to room scraping the nozzle of the sniffer on various objects.

  “All terrorists are the same,” Boone said.

  Thomas leaned back in his lawn chair. “Let me tell you about a Paiute Indian named Wovoka. In the 1880s, he began to go off into other worlds. After Wovoka returned, he talked to all the tribes and started a movement called the Ghost Dance. His followers would dance in circles, singing special songs. When you weren’t dancing, you were supposed to live a righteous life. No drinking alcohol. No stealing. No prostitution.

  “Now you would think that the whites who ran the reservations would admire this. After years of degradation, the Indian was becoming moral and strong again. Unfortunately, the Lakota weren’t becoming obedient. Dancers started the ritual at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and the whites in the area got very frightened. A government agent named Daniel Royer decided that the Lakota didn’t need freedom or their own land. They needed to learn baseball. He tried to teach the warriors how to pitch and swing a bat, but they weren’t distracted from the Ghost Dance.

  “And the whites said to one another, ‘The Indians are becoming dangerous again.’ So the government sent soldiers to a Ghost Dance ceremony at Wounded Knee Creek and they fired their rifles and slaughtered 290 men, women, and children. The soldiers dug pits and tossed the bodies into the frozen ground. And my people went back to alcohol and confusion…”

  The noise stopped. A minute later, the back door squeaked open and Sanchez came out. He removed the mouth filter and pulled off the hood of the white suit. His face glistened with sweat. “We’ve got a match,” he said. “There was a strand of her hair on the couch in the living room.”

  “Good. You can go back to the van.”

  Sanchez removed the suit and went back down the driveway. Once again, Boone and Thomas were alone.

  “Maya was here,” Boone said.

  “According to this machine.”

  “I want to know what she said and did. I want to know if you gave her money or a ride somewhere. Was she wounded? Has she changed her appearance?”

  “I won’t help you,” Thomas said calmly. “Leave my house.”

  Boone drew his automatic, but kept it flat on his right leg. “You don’t really have a choice, Thomas. I just need you to accept that fact.”

  “I have the freedom to say no.”

  Boone sighed like a parent with a stubborn child. “Freedom is the biggest myth ever created. It’s a destructive, unachievable goal that has caused a great deal of pain. Very few people can handle freedom. A society is healthy and productive when it’s under control.”

  “And you think that’s going to happen?”

  “A new age is on its way. We’re approaching a time where we will have the technology necessary to monitor and supervise vast numbers of people. In the industrial nations, the structure is already in place.”

  “And you’ll be in control?”

  “Oh, I’ll be watched, too. Everyone will be watched. It’s a very democratic system. And it’s inevitable, Thomas. There’s no way it can be stopped. Your sacrifice for some Harlequin is completely meaningless.”

  “You’re welcome to your opinion, but I will decide what gives meaning to my life.”

  “You’re going to help me, Thomas. There’s no negotiation here. No compromise. You need to deal with the reality of the situation.”

  Thomas shook his head sympathetically. “No, my friend. It’s you who are out of touch with reality. You look at me and see an overweight Crow Indian with a broken garbage disposal and no money. And you think: ‘Ahhh, he’s just an ordinary man.’ But I’m telling you that ordinary men and women will see what you’re doing. And we will stand up, rip open the door, and leave your electronic cage.”

  Thomas got out of the chair, stepped off the porch, and headed for the driveway. Boone swiveled around on the bench. Holding the automatic with two hands, he blew away his enemy’s right kneecap. Thomas collapsed, rolled onto his back, and stopped moving.

  Still holding the gun, Boone walked over to the body. Tho
mas was conscious, but breathing quickly. His leg was almost severed from the knee down and dark red blood pulsed from the cut artery. As Thomas began to go into shock, he looked up at Boone and spoke slowly. “I’m not frightened of you…”

  An intense anger overcame Boone. He pointed his gun at Thomas’s forehead as if he wanted to destroy all the other man’s thoughts and memories, then his finger squeezed the trigger.

  The second gunshot seemed unbearably loud, the sound waves expanding out into the world.

  31

  Michael was being kept in a windowless suite of four rooms. Occasionally he heard muffled noises and the sound of water going through pipes, so he assumed that there were other people in the building. There was a bathroom, a bedroom, a living room, and an outer guardroom where two silent men wearing navy blue blazers blocked him from leaving. He wasn’t sure if he was in America or a foreign country. None of the rooms had a clock and he never knew if it was daytime or night.

  The only person who talked to him was Lawrence Takawa, a young Japanese American man who always wore a white shirt and a black necktie. Lawrence was sitting beside Michael’s bed when he woke up from his drugged sleep. A doctor came in a few minutes later and gave Michael a quick physical examination. He whispered something to Lawrence and then never returned.

  From that first day, Michael started asking questions. Where am I? Why are you keeping me here? Lawrence smiled pleasantly and always gave the same set of answers. This is a safe place. We’re your new friends. Right now, we’re looking for Gabriel so he can be safe, too.

  Michael knew he was a prisoner and they were the enemy. But Lawrence and the two guards spent most of their time making sure he was comfortable. The living room had an expensive television and a rack of DVDs. Cooks were on duty twenty-four hours a day in the building, and they would prepare whatever he wanted to eat. When Michael first got out of bed, Lawrence led him to a walk-in closet and showed him thousands of dollars’ worth of clothes, shoes, and accessories. The dress shirts were made of silk or Egyptian cotton and had his initials discreetly monogrammed on the pocket. The sweaters were woven from the softest cashmere. There were dress shoes, athletic shoes, and slippers-everything in his size.

  He asked for exercise equipment. A treadmill and a set of free weights appeared in the living room. If he wanted to read a certain book or magazine, he gave his request to Lawrence and it appeared a few hours later. The food was excellent and he could order from a list of French and domestic wines. Lawrence Takawa assured him that eventually there would be women, too. He had everything he wanted except the freedom to leave. Lawrence said the short-term objective was to make him fit and healthy after his ordeal. Michael was going to meet a very powerful man and this person would tell him what he wanted to know.

  Late one afternoon, after Michael took a shower, he left the bathroom and discovered that someone had picked out his clothes and placed them on the bed. Shoes and socks. Gray wool pleated pants and a black knit shirt that fit perfectly. He went into the next room in the suite and found Lawrence drinking a glass of wine while he listened to a jazz CD.

  “How are you, Michael? Sleep well?”

  “Okay.”

  “Any dreams?”

  Michael had dreamed that he was flying over an ocean, but there was no reason to describe what had happened. He didn’t want them to know what was going on in his mind. “No dreams. Or, at least, I don’t remember them.”

  “This is what you’ve been waiting for. In a few minutes, you’re going to meet Kennard Nash. Do you know who he is?”

  Michael recalled a face from a news program on television. “Didn’t he used to be in the government?”

  “He was a brigadier general. Since leaving the army, he’s worked for two American presidents. Everyone respects him. Right now, he’s executive director of the Evergreen Foundation.”

  “For all generations,” Michael said, quoting the slogan the foundation used when it sponsored programs on television. Their logo was very distinct. There was a film clip of two children, a boy and a girl, bending over a pine seedling, and then everything morphed into a stylized symbol of a tree.

  “It’s about six o’clock in the evening. You’re in the administrative building of the foundation’s national research center. The building is in Westchester Country-about a forty-five-minute drive from New York City.”

  “So why did you bring me here?”

  Lawrence put down his wineglass and smiled. It was impossible to know what he was thinking. “We’re going upstairs to see General Nash. He’ll be glad to answer all your questions.”

  The two security men were waiting for them in the guardroom. Without saying a word, they escorted Michael and Lawrence out of the room and down a hallway to a row of elevators. There was a window a few feet away from where they were standing, and Michael realized it was night. When the elevator came, Lawrence motioned him inside. He waved his right hand across a sensor and punched the floor button.

  “Listen carefully to General Nash, Michael. He’s a very knowledgeable man.” Lawrence stepped back into the hallway and Michael traveled alone to the top floor.

  The elevator opened directly onto a private office. It was a large room that had been decorated to resemble the library of a British men’s club. Oak shelves holding sets of leather-bound books lined the walls, and there were easy chairs and little green reading lamps. The only unusual detail was that three surveillance cameras were mounted on the ceiling. The cameras moved slowly back and forth, monitoring the entire room. They’re watching me, Michael thought. Someone is always watching.

  He stepped around the furniture and lamps, trying not to touch anything. In one corner of the room, pinpoint spotlights illuminated an architectural model set on a wooden pedestal. There were two parts to the miniature building: a central tower surrounded by a ring-shaped building. The outer structure was divided into small identical rooms, each with one barred window on the outside wall and another window set in the top half of the entrance door.

  It looked as if the tower was a solid monolith, but when Michael moved to the other side of the pedestal, he saw a cross section of the building. It was a maze of doorways and staircases. Strips of balsa wood covered the windows like Venetian blinds.

  Michael heard a door squeak open and saw Kennard Nash enter the room. Bald head. Wide shoulders. When Nash smiled, Michael remembered the various times he had seen the general on television talk shows.

  “Good evening, Michael. I’m Kennard Nash.”

  General Nash walked quickly across the room and shook Michael’s hand. One of the surveillance cameras turned slightly as if to take in the scene.

  “I see you’ve found the Panopticon.” Nash approached the architectural model.

  “What is it? A hospital?”

  “I suppose it could be a hospital or even an office building, but it’s a prison designed by the eighteenth-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Although he sent his plans to everyone in the British government, it was never actually constructed. The model is based on Bentham’s drawings.”

  Nash stepped closer to the model and studied it carefully. “Each room is a cell with thick enough walls so there can’t be communication between the prisoners. Light comes from the outside so the prisoner is always backlit and visible.”

  “And the guards are in the tower?”

  “Bentham called it an inspection lodge.”

  “Looks like a maze.”

  “That’s the cleverness of the Panopticon. It’s designed so that you can never see the face of your guard or hear him moving about. Think of the implications, Michael. There can be twenty guards in the tower or one guard or no guards at all. It doesn’t make a difference. The prisoner must assume that he’s being watched all the time. After a while, that realization becomes part of the prisoner’s consciousness. When the system is working perfectly the guards can leave the tower for lunch-or a three-day weekend. It doesn’t make a difference. The prisoners have accepted their
condition.”

  General Nash walked over to a bookcase. He opened a false wall of books, revealing a bar stocked with glasses, an ice bucket, and bottles of liquor. “It’s six thirty. I usually have a glass of scotch around this time. We’ve got bourbon, whiskey, vodka, and wine. Or I can order you something more elaborate.”

  “I’ll have malt whiskey with a little bit of water.”

  “Excellent. Good choice.” Nash began pulling corks out of bottles. “I’m part of a group called the Brethren. We’ve been around for quite a long time, but for hundreds of years we were just reacting to events, trying to reduce the chaos. The Panopticon was a revelation to our members. It changed our way of thinking.

  “Even the most casual student of history realizes that human beings are greedy, impulsive, and cruel. But Bentham’s prison showed us that social control was possible with the right sort of technology. There was no need to have a policeman standing on every corner. All you need is a Virtual Panopticon that monitors your population. You aren’t required to literally watch them all the time, but the masses have to accept that possibility and the inevitability of punishment. You need the structure, the system, the implicit threat that becomes a fact of life. When people discard their notions of privacy, they permit a peaceful society.”

  The general carried two glasses over to a couch and some chairs clustered around a low wood table. He placed Michael’s drink on the table and the men sat opposite each other.

  “So here’s to the Panopticon.” Nash raised his glass to the model on the pedestal. “It was a failed invention, but a great insight.”

  Michael sipped some of the whiskey. It didn’t taste like it was drugged, but he couldn’t be sure. “You lecture about philosophy if you want,” he said, “but I don’t really care. All I know is that I’m a prisoner.”

  “Actually, you know a good deal more than that. Your family lived under an assumed name for several years until a group of armed men attacked your home in South Dakota. We did that, Michael. Those men were our employees and they were following our old strategy.”