While waiting to vomit in the gutter, Mazie had recalled lines from her favorite poet, T. S. Eliot, who wrote that although the world ceaselessly turned and changed, one thing and one alone never changed. However you disguise it, this thing does not change: / The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil. Their plan seemed grandiose, foolish, hopeless, but step by step, as they worked to fulfill it, they found the surest footing they’d ever known. If they had elected merely to change identities and hide, they would have had no hope of full and meaningful lives, because those who cower forget how to stand and, in time, can only crawl. By choosing the path of resistance, they had discovered people like Mrs. Fischer and Oscar, like Gideon and Chandelle, and they had learned the true and hidden nature of the world.
In the candlelit kitchen, Mazie topped off the four glasses of champagne, and we carried them downstairs to the basement, Big Dog in the lead.
This subterranean level, as large as the main floor, was the heart of their campaign of principled resistance. A wide corridor offered rooms to the front of the house on the left, to the back of the house on the right. We were headed to the armory, but first we stopped at a chamber on the left that was occupied by four computer workstations, racks of servers, and all manner of other electronics that I didn’t recognize. For all I knew, the young couple currently laboring there might be hacking the CIA or in communication with extraterrestrials in an orbiting mother ship, or playing video games.
The man, in his late twenties, was Leander, Kipp and Mazie’s son. He had one of his father’s green eyes, having lost the other one during a tour of duty, as a marine, in Afghanistan, a year before his father crossed the senator. Leander had two-thirds of his dad’s winning smile, the last third having been twisted by the scar tissue that disfigured the left side of his face. His wife, Harmony, was as cute as Goldie Hawn in her prime, looked fit and tough enough to win an iron-man contest, and spoke with a Georgia drawl.
As we shook hands, Harmony asked, “Where do I know you from?”
“I’m sure we’ve never met, ma’am.”
“Maybe, but I’ve seen you. I have an honest-to-God spooky memory for faces,” she declared.
“Well, I do have a spooky face.”
“Yeah, right. About as spooky as any guy in a crazy-popular boy band. I’ll remember you before you leave, pilgrim.”
“Boy band?” I grimaced. “That’s a low blow.”
The next big room on the left contained an impressive array of printing presses, scanners, laminators, engraving machines, and other equipment used to forge documents. This appeared to be the domain of Tracker and his second wife, Justine. Leander’s identical twin, Tracker had served in Iraq but had returned without wounds. On his first day back, however, he walked in on his wife, Karen, in bed with two men, and twenty-four hours later, he filed for divorce. He had struck gold the second time, not just because of how Justine looked, which was really fine, but also because she radiated intelligence as surely as a lamp gave off light.
Farther along the hall and on the right, we came to the largest chamber in the basement, the armory, which contained more weapons and ammunition than the average gun shop, even more than the average rap star’s recreation room. Kipp and Mazie set to work fulfilling our order, and Mrs. Fischer assisted, seemingly as familiar with their stock as they were.
Big Dog padded up and down the aisles between tall metal shelves of inventory, sniffing with apparent approval. After all, in addition to being a pet, he was also a guard dog, and he appreciated the need for a strong defense.
At one point, as he was showing me the pair of Glock pistols he thought best for relatively in-close work, Kipp must have detected my antipathy to guns. He said, “We have no choice, Tom. The world is going mad, overseas and here. Year by year, the government ever more aggressively militarizes state and local police forces and even its most seemingly benign agencies. In August of last year, the Social Security Administration purchased one hundred seventy-four thousand rounds of hollow-point ammunition for distribution to forty-one of its offices around the country. They must expect Grandpa and Granny to get really pissed about something the SSA intends to do. The Environmental Protection Agency, too. And Homeland Security ordered seven hundred and fifty million rounds in various calibers last August. Now, either they expect a hell of a lot of terrorist attacks or a civil war, and no matter whether the enemy is shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ or ‘God bless America,’ they must figure they’ll have to kill a lot of people.”
I stared at him, speechless. His grin was as winning as ever. Finally, I said, “You’re a scary guy.”