“Well, we’re going to talk to Canfield too,” Jackman said. “And yes, he’s still around. I don’t know what his status is. I talked to the cops in Lower Merion, and they don’t know what his status is, either. But I thought it would be a good idea if we got pictures of the people in this group Canfield and his partner were investigating, and showed the pictures of the women to An-drechev. Just to see if he can make them.”
“As in the woman who brought him the gun?” Gregor said. “Good idea. Doesn’t it bother you, though, that whole incident? Why did she bring him a gun?”
“Maybe she didn’t,” Jackman said. “That must have occurred to you as well as to me. Maybe he had the gun and made up the story.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s connected with one of these conspiracy groups, maybe the very one that caused the bombing, and now he’s trying to cover his ass,” John said. “It’s not a great explanation, I know, but it’s a possibility. These people are not very bright. Or at least the rank and file aren’t. Some of the movement stars have better imaginations than Stephen King.”
“It’s a terrible explanation,” Gregor said. “But you should be able to tell if at least some of it’s true. Do you know about fingerprints yet?”
“Only unofficially.”
“And?”
“There aren’t any,” Jackman said. “Not any at all.”
“Which means the gun was wiped,” Gregor said patiently, “which An-drechev could have done himself. But you just said these people aren’t very bright. Even most bright people don’t think of all the places on the gun where there might be fingerprints.”
“Well, whoever wiped this one did,” John said. “It still doesn’t prove that he’s telling the truth. Don’t worry about it. I’m not trying to hang the man. I’m just trying to make the incident make sense. Why would some woman come up and hand him a gun like that?”
“He said she said she was trying to make sure he was armed against devil worshipers, or something of the kind,” Gregor said.
Tibor stirred in his seat. “It is ridiculous, this about devil worshipers. Where do they think of such a thing?”
“I don’t think you can call what they do ‘thinking’ in the conventional sense,” Gregor said.
“What’s more important,” John said, “is that all this talk about devil worship doesn’t really fit with America on Alert, which is not a religious organization. Some of them are, of course. They think the whole plot is about the Antichrist. But America on Alert is not one of them.”
“Did the woman who gave Andrechev the gun talk about the Antichrist?” Gregor asked. “I don’t remember him saying she did. He said something about how she kept calling him a good American, and then I don’t remember.”
John reached into his jacket pocket and took out his notebook. “According to Andrechev,” he said, “she told him that there were people on this street who thought they worshiped the devil, but that Andrechev knew like she did that they were really doing something else. That’s ambiguous enough.”
“What about that stack of literature he had? There was The Harridan Report, but there were other things too,” Gregor said.
John looked through his notebook again. “They hadn’t finished going through it by the time I talked to them. It’s going to take a few days. There was a lot of it, and from what they could tell, it seems to have come from all over. A-albionics, have you heard of them?”
“I have,” Tibor said. “They have a Web site. You must pay to be a subscriber, and then you can have their information. So I do not have their information. But they have a few free essays, and these I have read.”
“And?” Gregor said.
Tibor shrugged. “The usual thing. There is a plot to make the United States subject to one big New World Order and take all our freedoms away and have all our laws be the laws of the UN. Tell me, Krekor, because this I do not understand. What do these people have against international law? Do they think it is a good thing that when two countries have a border dispute, they shoot at each other? When they have a dispute with their neighbor, they don’t shoot him. They go to court. When somebody commits a crime against them, they don’t buy weapons and go down to this person’s street and shoot up his house and then hide behind concrete when the man’s family comes and shoots their house to retaliate. They call the police and the police bring the man to court. I have lived in places where there was no law and where there was war and I can tell you that that is not better than the Commonwealth of Philadelphia.”