'The tree hath blossomed in the night, and the fruit it is set. I am an old man, and my family will prosper and do great works after I am gone.'

Griff shook his head. 'You got a long life ahead preaching and spreading the word.'

Chambers took a deep breath through his nose. 'Come into my house, Monroe man. I'll show you something glorious and then we'll say goodbye.' Chambers pushed himself slowly to his feet; getting down was easier than getting up again. Griff did not like this. Playing a part and being wary all at once had never been easy for him. He followed the old man through the wood-framed screen door with the squealing spring into the neat shade of the snow porch with bundled twigs pushed into a corner and two rusted metal snow shovels, and then into the living room. The oak furniture was st.u.r.dy but worn. The big stone fireplace was as described by the deputy, who had eaten his m.u.f.fin where Griff was now standing.

'I do love my children,' Chambers said, 'and they love me. I will miss them, but I have through deeds builded my mansion in heaven. There will be a sharp correction, Monroe man. The Jews will weep and Jesus will greet me as a brother. Mary will soothe me and stroke my hair and though I am reborn in a youthful body, I will mourn for those that still suffer on this Earth, forced to dwell among the ones bathed in darkness. For surely the dark races are hiding from that cleansing ray. Surely the sun is out today, searching, and they hide in their ghettos and in their holes in the cities, in their black and noisome hives of squalor and brick. Comes soon a time when the pillar of fire shall yet again rise, and a man will carry with him across this world a vessel as virulent as the Ark of the Covenant, and all who come near, all the Mud People and the lying and deceitful Jews, wearing their pubic hairs on their heads, their long curly black hairs, shall reach out to touch the beauty of it, and they shall be smote by the tens of thousands, as it was in olden times. G.o.d never did much like the Jews. History proves it. Once more, a pillar of fire shall rise over the land by night, and a pillar of cloud by day.'

Chambers' face turned peaceful. He favored Griff with a fatherly smile.

'Hallelujah,' Griff said. 'That's preaching, Reverend.'

'You haven't told me your name, son.'

'Jimmy, Jimmy Roland.'

The Patriarch held out his hand. Griff shook it: a dry firm grip, no sweat, no worry.

'It is no sin to sweep away the polluted.'

'Amen to that,' Griff said.

'Now you look a proper wise fellow, Jimmy Roland, no sense playing stupid, you've been around. You know your work, and you know mine.' Chambers sat gingerly in a rockerglider and slowly started moving back, forward, back and forward, up a little, down. 'n.o.body comes from Monroe without pa.s.sing me special words. I am certain I smell a Jew on you.'

Without being obvious, Griff had taken inventory of the room. Behind and to the immediate right, Chambers had within his reach a narrow cabinet set back to one side of the fireplace, where pokers and shovels might be stored, the door open. Griff could not see the inside.

'You should have been here last month. Nipped it in the bud. You could have had us then. You saw the burn barrels. We cleaned things out. We have cleared the path. The rest is in the hands of the true G.o.d. Has been since before you arrived. Just know that the fruit has set, and soon the Jews and their children will bring it to the world's table and eat of it.' He leveled a finger at Griff's chest. 'They are listening, so let them hear my epitaph.' He paused with a wicked smile. 'An end to all the evil they have done since time began. Death to the Jews, my friend.'

Chambers leaned and thrust his gnarled fingers toward the cabinet.

Griff slipped his hand through the Velcroed seam in his shirt. 'FBI!' he shouted.

Faster than he had any right to be, Chambers brought out a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun from the cabinet. In an instant he had it c.o.c.ked. The blued-steel barrel gleamed as it swung.

Griff's gun was out and he shot Chambers four times. The shotgun barrel swayed and dropped an inch, the old man's finger still trying to pull the trigger. Griff squeezed off two more rounds. Chambers let go of the stock and the shotgun fell. Its b.u.t.t thumped heavily on the floor. The barrel sang against the stones of the fireplace. The old man's lungs gurgled air through new holes in his chest and neck and his eyes twitched back in their sockets. His voice was liquid and bubbled like a frog's and he said, 'Lord, Lord.' Then, barely audible, eyes quivering but trained on Griff, 'f.u.c.k you.'

After that his eyes went flat and he was dead but his movement continued, legs and one arm shivering as he slumped in the chair and finally hung half-in, half-out. His trigger finger jerked like a snake. Stopped.

Griff raised the SIG and with a grunt rolled the old man over, quickly and rudely palped him, then turned out his pockets looking for IED or remotes or timers. He pulled a plastic restraint cord from his pants pocket and cinched the limp, bony wrists. Only then did he check the old man's pulse, mostly avoiding the slick smear of blood around the floor and the last of the flow from the nicked carotid.

He swallowed hard, trying to focus on the remaining danger, trying to keep the nervous crime-comedy voices out of his forebrain and back in the rear cages where they belonged. Papa has left the premises. Papa has left the premises.

Suicide by cop. At his age. Preaching and then trying me on. I don't believe it.

Griff quickly moved through the house, swinging along the walls, down the hall, into the rooms. He opened the closets just to make sure; very likely with kids so recently in the house they were not b.o.o.by-trapped but he was still taking a chance. The house was clean and neat, beds made in each of the four small bedrooms, the single office with its roll-top desk prim in ordered austerity.

He pa.s.sed the Patriarch on the way out. Erwin Griffin hated dead bodies. He had never admitted that to anyone; agents were supposed to be hardcore. Bodies made him feel sick.

Only then did he remember he was on the grid and that since the shooting, other than shouting out his affiliation, he had said nothing-maybe grunted, maybe cursed. Back up by the main road, they should have heard and seen everything that had happened inside the house and especially the shots and he did not want hordes of people up here or near the barn, not yet.

As he stepped through the door and out on the porch, peering left and then right, he said, 'Chambers is dead. I'm fine. Keep everyone back.'

He faced north and saw agents and police running toward the house. How long had it taken him to search, two or three minutes? It had seemed like at least ten.

'Get the h.e.l.l back!' he shouted from the porch, his voice cracking as he waved them off. They stopped. 'Get back, you idiots!' They turned and retreated with equal haste.

He had blood on his arm. The tattoos were smeared. He sat on the porch, letting his heart slow from Krupa to oompah, wishing to h.e.l.l he had a cigarette, before deciding he would have to take a turn about the yard, around the house, just to make sure.

By that time, he saw vans and more people up by the edge of the clearing.

The farm was no longer quiet.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

El Centro, California.

'I've been thinking about what you were saying,' Charlene told the tall blond man. It was past noon. Her eyes were puffy. They had made love and slept a little and then talked into the morning. Now they were having breakfast in a Coco's restaurant. 'I just can't be that cynical. I need hope. Even when I know what I'm doing and think about where my husband is, I still want to be a Christian.'

The blond man glanced at his skinned knuckles. They had already scabbed over. He had told Charlene that he had barked them while changing a tire. In fact, he had slipped in a ditch after shooting an Arizona patrol officer.

The waitress brought another gla.s.s of orange juice. Charlene drank the second gla.s.s with equal speed-three quick gulps-sniffed, and looked around the Coco's: Scotchgarded print fabric on the booth seats, scarred oak table top, one knife magnetically stuck to a fork beside a plate smeared with yolk and bacon grease. Outside, bleached by the sun, El Centro, California: warehouses and auto repair businesses and trucks roaring by. The blond man was in his late forties, thin, run-down. He had put on sungla.s.ses after leaving the Day's Inn to hide his eyes-one green, one blue.

'You're so quiet,' Charlene told him.

'Sorry. I've probably said too much already.'

Charlene had driven the green Ford van from Highway 10, where she had picked him up by the side of the road, to El Centro, stopping at a Day's Inn. They had both taken rooms. She had met him in the lobby after midnight and asked what his name was and he had told her it was Jim Thorpe. Charlene had been needy. Even after she had fallen asleep, Jim Thorpe had stayed awake. He looked as if he had not slept for weeks.

Charlene looked through the low window beside the booth, out to the dry lawn and the street beyond. 'I'm ready to believe in Jesus, just give myself up to something that I know is totally good,' Charlene said. 'I mean, I can see Jesus so clearly and he is beautiful and compa.s.sionate and he has a lovely smile-just like yours.' She looked at him with real longing. 'I do not know why men have to act so tough. You certainly don't need to be bitter...I mean, you're an attractive older guy. You can travel the whole world, no responsibilities...' She stopped, confused, and looked at the table.

Charlene's husband had gone to West Point. After 10-4, he had signed up for infantry, taking the idiot sticks, the emblem of crossed rifles, over more plum army opportunities. Charlene had wanted him to stay home and be a husband and a father. He had enlisted for a second tour to kill ragheads and stay with his buddies. His name was Jason. She had shown Jim Thorpe a picture. Her guy was upright, young, strong, bullnecked, laser-eyed. He wondered what Jason was seeing right now.

'I think about him being G.o.d knows where because the d.a.m.ned army d.a.m.ned army won't tell the families anything and I wonder, what is Jesus really up to? What is He thinking, making all of us suffer? But I can't blame Jesus. It's us, isn't it?' Charlene tapped the juice gla.s.s on the table. Made it do a little dance. Made as if to smile bravely, but too late. Women liked confessing to him. It was the one thing that they gave him that he would have gladly dispensed with. won't tell the families anything and I wonder, what is Jesus really up to? What is He thinking, making all of us suffer? But I can't blame Jesus. It's us, isn't it?' Charlene tapped the juice gla.s.s on the table. Made it do a little dance. Made as if to smile bravely, but too late. Women liked confessing to him. It was the one thing that they gave him that he would have gladly dispensed with.

But hadn't he confessed to her-just a little, and started her flow? Opened up about his innermost opinions? If she only knew the half of it. If she only knew the half of it.

'I know you're a good man,' she said. 'But being so hopeless...I can't feel that way. It's just the way the world treats us. We're being tested.'

His nerves were starting to jangle. He needed to move on or the grief would slam back and he'd find the brick wall that he had built between him and his lost faces crumbling. 'Then maybe it's all taken care of in the end,' he offered.

Charlene's eyes filled with tears.

'It is so wrong to have to wait for my husband, and feel...so hungry hungry to have a man. Just a man to hug me, wrap his arms around me. I have never been desperate, not like this. Never. And my boy needs a father. I need to have a man. Just a man to hug me, wrap his arms around me. I have never been desperate, not like this. Never. And my boy needs a father. I need his his father.' Her face hardened. 'I have never done this before.' father.' Her face hardened. 'I have never done this before.'

Yes, you have, he thought. he thought.

'When is it all going to come right again?' she asked.

'Soon,' Jim Thorpe said. He wrapped one hand around her fingers on the juice gla.s.s and gave them a gentle squeeze.

Charlene frowned at him, don't tease don't tease. 'I just want my husband home. I want to feel normal, be right with my kids and my family.'

'Of course.' He stood beside the booth and opened his wallet. 'Breakfast is on me.'

'No,' Charlene said primly. 'We're not poor.' She laid a twenty next to his. Then she put down another ten and gave him back the twenty he had put down. Bravely, she said, 'Your money's no good here.'

'You sure?'

'I'm sure, Mr. Jim Thorpe. Or is it James?'

He smiled.

'Such a lovely smile,' she said. Her eyes turned quick and efficient, darting around the tables, squinting through the bright windows. 'You leave first.' Even in El Centro she was worried that people who knew her might see her with another man.

'Thanks for breakfast,' he said.

'Thanks for having a patient ear,' she said.

As he walked out into the glare she pa.s.sed him in a tidy hurry. No one could have guessed what they had been doing on thin hotel sheets just a few hours before. He admired that sort of efficiency. Women were good at such things.

He was not. The bricks were falling. There was no mental wall thick enough to block what he had lost. He stood on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, waiting, shivering despite the heat. He wasn't looking forward to telling Tommy. Tommy did not need to know about the patrolman. His selfimportant partner was tippy at the best of times. That was how Tommy described himself: tippy, but enthusiastic-when he wasn't Dipsy-Down, as he called it.

Unpredictable-but for the moment, still essential.

The tall man watched Charlene pull the green Ford van out of the Coco's parking lot. She rolled down the window and looked both ways but deliberately did not see him as she drove by.

Five minutes later, Tommy roared up in his battered, creamcolored El Camino. He reached over and pulled the door lock with fat dexterous fingers. He was small and skinny but for his face and his fingers; these belonged to a larger man. The effect was grotesque but Tommy no longer seemed to care how people reacted.

'No luggage?' he asked, his plump face showing an early flush of dismay. 'No truck. No printers. G.o.d, Sam, what happened?'

Sam opened the door and climbed in, sitting on the ripped seat. 'Let's drive,' he said.

'What happened to the big truck?'

'There's been a change in our strategy,' Sam said.

'Sam, I don't like being disappointed disappointed,' Tommy fluted. 'We need those printers. I can't do everything we want without those printers. I don't like failure failure.'

Sam was dangerously close to chucking it all. 'To the winery, Jeeves,' he said with a flourish.

'You're in fine spirits fine spirits. You got laid last night, didn't you, Sam? That's why you're trying to be funny.' Sometimes, Tommy's bursts of intuition made him seem psychic-hard to get used to in such a man-child.

'We're okay, really. We'll be fine. We'll get more printers.'

'Before you got here and got laid, something went wrong. Don't tell me,' Tommy insisted, his face clouded like a baby about to burst into tears. 'I don't want to hear it. Really, I don't. I couldn't take it.'

'We'll be fine,' Sam said.

'Did you leave fingerprints?' Tommy asked.

Sam raised his right hand. His fingers were shiny with clear silicone caulk.

'There's something else,' Tommy said, his tiny eyes shifting and wild. 'I turned on the radio. I heard it on the way to pick you up.' He pushed the radio k.n.o.b. The big news was the death of the bank robber and abortion clinic bomber called the Patriarch and the ongoing search of his farm hideaway in Washington state. 'Is that our guy?' Tommy asked. 'Sam, is that our guy? Is that our second factory?'

Sam did not have a quick story to soothe Tommy-or himself. He stared at the radio, then out the window.

Tommy said, 'Oh my. Oh my. Sam, oh my.'

'All right, Tommy. Pull over and I'll drive for a while.'

Tommy's nose was dripping and he was shaking badly. He had entered the land of Dipsy-Down and it was all he could do to stop the car without getting them both killed.

CHAPTER NINE.

Washington State.

Griff stripped off his shirt and body armor and handed it to the FBI evidence team. They whisked it to their van to offload the data and video contained in the vest. All of the police vehicles, at Griff's request, stayed on the edge of the clearing, about a hundred yards from the house and the barn.

He walked back toward the house with Rebecca Rose at his side. They stared at the barn. Griff's nostrils flexed and his upper lip twitched as if he were about to sneeze. The breeze was cool against his naked upper torso. He slipped an Underarmor T-shirt over his head. Jacob Levine joined them and handed Griff his own purple vest. Griff declined. Even chilly, he refused to go that far.

'Becky,' he said, 'Chambers kept looking at the barn.'

'Yeah,' Rebecca said.

'I think you might want to get back with the others.'

'I will if you will,' Rebecca said.

'Don't be an a.s.shole,' Griff said. 'I've done this kind of stuff for decades.'

Rebecca shook her head. 'I'll need to see what's in the house and the barn ASAP. Then we'll know what to do next.'

Levine held his ground, too. 'Have you heard?' he asked them.

'Heard about what?'

'The bus never made it to town. It stopped and the families loaded into three cars. They diverted at a side road and threw off the tracking vehicles. Some of them may be headed east to Idaho.'