The Hermetrius Conspiracy Read online

  “What about the men Preston said he will have watching?”

  “There’s no way we can identify them. If they’re good, they won’t look like they are watching; they will blend in with the shoppers. But once we grab him we’ll get him out too quickly for them to get to us through the crowds. If they make a move our security agents will handle that.”

  “Good. Go meet with Alexei’s men and get them up to speed. I want them to memorize all those disguises so they don’t keep looking down at a some papers.”

  #

  On the drive over to Alexei’s office, Jim thought more about the outcome of this for himself. ‘If I screw it up, Winston will fire me. Or he may even have me killed to protect his grand plan. I know too much for him to just let me walk out the door. And even if we succeed in catching Preston, Winston will still consider it a failure because we haven’t been able to find the others in his group. If Winston thinks we’ll get Preston to tell us where they are, he has a surprise coming. From what I’ve found out about Preston, there’s no way he will talk. No matter how this comes out, I might wind up dead. Or maybe he will just have me locked up until after the election. . . . No, that’s not how Winston operates. I have to protect myself somehow.’

  Chapter 49

  Jack sat down on the bench by the main entrance. He checked his pockets for the equipment he brought along – a short range cell phone and radio jammer, a folding knife, and a tiny digital recorder. He was ready. He looked at his watch, like his lunch break was over, and took up his station beside the Christmas tree. “Ho, Ho, Ho. Meerrry Christmas.” . . . ‘Wait a minute. I forgot about the political correctness disease that’s spread throughout the country.’ . . . “Ho, Ho, Ho. Haaappy holidays to you. Ho, Ho, Ho.”

  A few people nodded at him, some looking for the Salvation Army Bucket he didn’t have, but most of the crowd was hurrying in or out to get their shopping done on their lunch hours. At 11:55 Jack reached in his pocket and switched on the jammer and voice recorder. Three minutes later, Mr. Brown Suit showed up. Jack glanced around to see if anyone was lingering near by. If they were, they were Hermetrius’ men. But the fast two-way current of moving people just swept on by. As the man approached, Jack stepped in front of him with a big “Ho, Ho, Ho” and took his arm. “Come join me on this bench, Mr. H, sit and talk with me awhile.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m the man you came to meet. Now sit down before you attract attention.”

  “So you’re Preston. The Santa Claus suit is a clever disguise, and meeting me here at the main entrance was even better.”

  Jack leaned in near Norton’s ear. “I have a radio frequency jammer covering this area, so you can stop trying to pass along hints to your compatriots. Your people are hearing nothing but the local news station. Now according to your email, you have something to tell me.”

  “I . . . I, uh have some talking points that will outline what we, I, have in mind.”

  “You stepped out of character there, friend. The real head of something as big as this wouldn’t have hesitated. So if you’re not the Big Man, who are you?”

  “I can’t tell you that. They will kill me if I do. But I do have a written summary of the entire plan here in my pocket. It’s yours if you can keep me alive.”

  ‘Whoa’ Jack thought. ‘This is a twist I didn’t see coming. Think fast. Where do I take this. Is this for real or part of a ruse to lead us down the wrong path?’

  “Suppose for a minute that I believe you. How can I verify that what’s on this list is the truth?”

  “We don’t know how much of our plan your people have put together, but if you’re anywhere close, there will be things in this summary you already know to be true. That’s your verification. Now what about me?”

  “I can’t do anything for you right now, so you’ll have to go on as if nothing happened. We had a short conversation, you told me what you were instructed to, and we parted. After we verify your information, I’ll get in touch. Where can I reach you?”

  “My name and secret email account are written on the back of the last page in invisible ink. Heat it to make it show up.”

  “Good. Now here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to stick an auto injector into your thigh that will knock you out for 10 minutes. Sit like you are sleeping and I’ll do it. This should take some suspicion off you.”

  Jim folded his hands across his lap, slouched down on the bench, and closed his eyes. He felt a pin prick and his head started to spin.

  Jack got up from the bench, gave a couple of ho hos, and walked into the mall headed toward his escape exit. He let his line of sight bounce rapidly around, looking for something out of the ordinary – a movement, someone reversing direction, a lingering look, a radio microphone – but saw nothing. He ignored the sign on the restroom walked right in, like this was his dressing room. He headed for the rear stall, latched the door, and stripped off the Santa suit. He adjusted his street clothes, checked his face putty and cheek inserts, and opened the stall door.

  Someone was waiting there. Before he could react a huge muscular arm slammed him back against the tile wall. This was followed by a fist to the gut and would have been followed by a knee to the groin if Jack’s training reflexes hadn’t shielded it with his knee. Jack was up against the wall, dazed.

  The man stepped back and pulled out a silenced pistol. “I had you just as soon as you led our man next to you on the bench. I couldn’t call for reinforcements because my radio wasn’t working, so I followed you here. You picked the perfect place for me to trap you. I’ll call the others and we’ll hustle you out of here.” When he reached into his coat to get his cell phone Jack lashed out with his right foot in a vicious kick at his gun hand. The hand was shattered and the gun fell to the floor. Jack kicked it across the tile floor and turned back in time to see an incoming fist a foot from his face. No time to duck or block the punch, so he lowered his head and took it on the top of his skull. He heard knuckles crack just before the pain hit.

  Jack collapsed to the floor, semi-conscious, trying to fight back the curtain that divided semi from un conscious. Before he could recover a foot caught him in the ribs. He grabbed it before the attacker could pull it back and twisted as hard as he could. He heard the guy fall back against the trash bin. Still operating on the edge of consciousness, he crawled across the floor and grabbed the pistol. As the attacker came at him again, Jack raised the gun and shot him in the knee. He fell immediately and Jack was on top of him before he could scream and placed a karate chop directly into his larynx. While he held his throat gasping for air Jack stood up, retrieved another knock-out pen for his pocket, and put him to sleep.

  Jack had to get out of here fast. He looked in the mirror and saw a mess - torn shirt, blood trickling from the back of his head where he hit the wall from the body slam, blood spatters on his clothes from the shot to the knee. He didn’t have time to clean up. He put the Santa suit back on and headed out the door walking as if nothing had happened. He was a little bent over from the rib kick – probably a couple of cracked ones there – and went down the steps to the Metro.

  As he was driving back to Pittston, still in the Santa suit, he thought with a smile ‘Well, at least I kept the Santa outfit so I can model it for Lynn.’

  Chapter 50

  Jack was back at the Double Wide, laying on the couch nursing his taped ribs, with the others gathered around. As he read aloud the papers from Jim Norton – that’s the name that appeared on the back of the page when Lynn heated it with her hair dryer – they couldn’t believe what the Big Man intended to do with the U.S. Government. Jim had called it a summary, but it seemed to have most of he details about what the Big Man’s vision. It was frightening! They all sat in silence with their mouths open.

  Harriet was the first one to speak. “This is madness. This is conservatism run amok. No one will vote for a president who would do this.”

  “That’s the genius of this plan. No one will know wh
at the new president has in store when they elect him. Once he is in office, with the backing of an ultra right wing congress, nothing can stop him,” her husband added.

  Lynn could envisage the future with these maniacs in power. “They’ll have a lock on the Supreme Court and the District Judges so they can pass any law they want to. There will be eleven million starving illegal immigrants with no money and no way to get back to where they came from, a military that will bomb any country indiscriminately, and a flat tax on every worker that will leave those below the poverty level homeless. It will be a nightmare. We have to stop it!”

  Rick added, “I can’t believe Hermetrius doesn’t exist. He’s just a made up boogeyman.”

  “It doesn’t matter if we call him Herman, Hermetrius, or the Big Man, he’s still the guy behind the plot to overthrow America.” Jack added. “But we still need to find out who he is. Tom, why don’t you follow up on James Norton and see where that might lead us. Oh, by the way, Jim Norton has a gravelly voice. You can listen to the voice recording I made at our meeting, but I think you’ll recognize it, Tom.”

  #

  Over breakfast they all avoided talking about the Project – that’s what they had decided to call it – the Project. Everything they did from now on, from getting more information to finding a way to expose the conspiracy, would be part of the Project. After they cleared the dishes and had another cup of coffee, Jack announced in an official sounding voice, “I hereby call this meeting of the Hinson Holler Project committee to order. The first order of business is to review what we know.”

  One by one each of them gave a summary of what they knew and where they were in their research. Jack hooked his computer to the big screen TV in the living room and listed everything in outline form as they went. When they were finished with their summaries, Jack looked at the list on the screen. “Here’s what I think we need to do at this point. We don’t have a lot of time, so we need some short-term goals that will maximize our chance of putting this conspiracy out of business.”

  Rick spoke up first. “I think the key to everything is finding out who is behind this – the Big Man. I’m pursuing that on two fronts. I’m trying to untangle the money trails that funded the congressional victories over the past few years. If I can find out where the money came from, I should be able to find who is behind it. The second approach is the one you gave me yesterday, Jack – finding out who Jim Norton is and where he works. That shouldn’t take me long, so I’ll start with that.”

  Jack said “So there’s objective number one – find Mr. Big.” as he started typing a list of their goals on the screen. “The next objective is deciding if Norton’s information is useful, or just a diversion. If his information matches what we already know, then we can assume it’s true. I’ll check that out as soon as we’re done here. If it matches, we need to think about how we can get him out of Mr. Big’s organization and, maybe, into our own group. If he’s sincere, he could our biggest asset.”

  Tom took his turn next. “I think the next goal on our priority list is to find out who the golden boy is; who they are trying to put into the White House. We talked about Senator Roberts as a possibility, but we have no real evidence that it’s him. If we know that, we might be able to mount a counter attack from that direction. Sort of an end run without attacking the Big Man head on.”

  Jack added that to the list as Harriet spoke out. “These objectives will help us understand what we’re up against, but what are we going to do to stop it. We need an objective to explore approaches to crashing the conspiracy.”

  “You’re right on with that one. We can get too focused on our research and loose sight of the ultimate objective – putting a stop to this before they take over the country. Why don’t we all think about how we can do something about this and discuss our thoughts after supper. In the meantime, let’s go after the first three objectives this afternoon and see how far we can get.”

  #

  As Jack studied the information he got from Norton, he saw a lot of what they had already figured out about the conspiracy – influencing the congressional elections for the last two election cycles; positioning their selected Presidential candidate as a moderate conservative before he jumps into the race; plans to derail opposition presidential candidates with smear campaigns, including the planted embezzlement files; and the last-minute entry of their candidate into the race just before Super Tuesday. He also found some things they hadn’t thought about, like plans to hijack the republican convention in case their candidate didn’t win the nomination on the first vote, and the impressive team of right wing political advisors the Big Man selected to make all this happen. Jim Norton was definitely being level with him. Then Jack thought, ‘if that’s the case, why didn’t he tell us who Mr. Big, his boss is, and who their candidate for president was going to be?’

  It only took a minute of so before he hit on the answer. ‘Norton is holding those things back so we will have a reason to bring him out to safety, to keep him alive when his boss figures out that he’s a traitor to the cause. Not an easy problem. We need more information about Jim and who he works for before we can come up with a plan for that.’

  Chapter 51

  When Jim Norton woke up from the knock-out injection he was laying on the back seat of the van. They were expecting Preston to be in there with him, so the tension was running high. Winston sat up front, seething with anger that their capture plan didn’t work, waiting for Norton to wake up and tell them what happened. He knew the last part. One of Alexei’s men trapped Preston in a rest room, but somehow he got shot in the knee with his own gun. After that they had no idea where Preston went.

  Jim was alert enough to know that he should pretend he was still out. Once he woke up and Winston lit into him, there would be hell to pay. He started running through his options. Could he bluff his way through the questioning? He started composing his story. Keep it simple, as close to the truth as I can. ‘He grabbed my arm just inside the mall entrance, sat me down on the bench, and asked what I had to tell him. I mentioned the Santa suit disguise and our location to let our security guys know what to look for. Then I told him exactly what you said in the script you gave me. When I was done, he leaned over to whisper something to me and stuck some kind of injection device into my leg. The next thing I remember I came to in the back of the Van.’ Jim went over and over the story in his mind so he wouldn’t have to stop and think while he was telling it. Coming up through the ranks of the FBI he had learned to lie convincingly, overriding the usual facial signs a liar displays.

  As he heard the van enter the parking garage of the Winston Building Jim decided it was time to wake up. He rolled over on his side and tried to sit up, purposely faltering. When he got up he blinked his eyes several times and looked around, dazed. He slurred his voice a bit as he asked “Is this the parking garage? How did I get here?” No answer. The van pulled into a parking place where two men were waiting to grab his arms and drag him over to the elevator. They took him to the top floor, sat him down in Winston’s office, and left without a word. He let his head loll on his chest for a bit to look like he wasn’t fully awake.

  Thirty minutes later Winston stormed into the office and sat on the front of his desk. He bored his eyes into Norton’s and said, “Tell me everything that happened. Leave nothing out.” Jim recounted the story he had rehearsed, ending at the point he got jabbed in the leg.

  “Where were Alexei’s men? Didn’t you have any of them watching you?”

  “They were converging on the bench in front of the Radio Shack, where Preston said he would meet me. But they heard my Santa suit and front entrance clue over their radios, so they should have headed there. What happened to them? Did Preston’s men knock them out too?”

  “A funny thing happened to the radios when you walked in the front door. They all started playing a local news station. And the cell phones came up ‘No Connection Available.’ Did you have anything to do with that, James?”


  Jim thought ‘Oh oh. He used my first name. He’s trying to buddy up to me to put me off guard. He must know about our real conversation somehow.’ “No sir. I didn’t know your radios weren’t working. You saw me empty my pockets before I went it – keys, wallet, cell phone, change in my pocket. I had nothing to do with it.”

  Winston pushed an intercom button. “Get a couple of men in here to take him out for a search. Rip the seams in his clothes and pull the soles off his shoes, then search him from head to toe. I don’t trust you, Norton. Have you ever had a full cavity search? Well, you’re about to.”

  Jim had been strip-searched before, during his FBI undercover days, but never this roughly. ‘Winston must be trying to degrade me so I’ll give in to his power over me.’ When they were done, they lead him back in front of Winston in nothing but his underwear. “If you were involved in this fiasco, Norton, I will find out! Take him downstairs and put him in a paper jumpsuit, then drop him off in front of his house. We will talk again tomorrow – and after that, again, and again, and again – until I find a crack in your story.”

  When they dropped him off, he said a mental ‘thank you, Lord.’ Fortunately they gave him his cell phone, wallet, and keys back. As he opened the front door he realized that they had probably used his keys to search the house, and maybe to plant some audio and video surveillance equipment. He would have to continue his acting role while he worked out a plan. He stripped off the jumpsuit and stepped into the shower. He was still feeling some after-effects of the knock out drug, but the hot water brought him back close to normal. After toweling off, he put on his pajamas – the Santa’s Elves pair that his granddaughter gave him last year – to give his watchers something to laugh at, then fell into bed. He didn’t have to play act at falling asleep; that came immediately.

  #

  Back at the double-wide the evening was winding down. They were sitting around the living room, drinking wine, and sharing their progress for the day. Jack put the list of objectives back up on the screen. “Rick let’s start with you. Any progress on finding Mr. Big Man?”