Hearts of Sand(59)
“They can’t show their hand,” Ray Guy said. “If they show their hand, the people will know what’s going on and they’ll rise up in rebellion.”
“They will?” Gregor said. “The Sheeple?”
“The difference between the Sheeple and the Patriots is knowledge,” Ray Guy said.
Gregor snapped the book shut. “You got those photographs by taking them out of photo albums in the Waring house yourself. It had to be you, because you act alone and Chapin Waring couldn’t have gone for them herself. Not for the earliest ones. You had both a key and the code to the security system, because Chapin Waring herself gave them to you. And she kept giving them to you, because she always had them. You never took any of those albums outright. Somebody might have realized they were missing. You opened them up and took individual pictures out of them. You got lucky that the Waring family was what it was. Nobody was going to go looking through old picture albums.”
“The old lady did,” Ray Guy said. “Back in the first year or so. She told the FBI. The FBI came asking.”
“And?”
Ray Guy shrugged. “I know my rights,” he said. “I knew they couldn’t search without a warrant. It takes time to get a warrant. And there was nothing here. Because I didn’t take them.”
“Of course you took them,” Gregor said. “And you took something else the other day when you broke in—except you don’t have to break in in the usual sense. My guess is that one of the things you do well is pick locks without leaving a trail. And I do take you seriously, Mr. Pearce. Unlike the rest of them, I know something about how people behave when they’re trying to both be in contact and not be in contact at the same time, when they have to give out information even though it would be safer not to. And I also know that if I insist they take you seriously, both the local police and the Bureau, they will find a connection to you from that break-in a couple of days ago. They will find it, and I’ll make sure they use it.”
“I’m ready for persecution,” Ray Guy said. “I’ve been ready for persecution for years.”
“Where did you hide Chapin Waring?”
“I didn’t hide Chapin Waring,” Ray Guy said, “and don’t tell me I should have turned her in. I’m a private citizen. I’ve got no legal obligation to do any such thing. And I wouldn’t. I’m not going to make their work any easier for them.”
“Where did you hide Chapin Waring?”
“I didn’t hide her,” Ray Guy said again. “She didn’t even have to hide herself. She just moved into a neighborhood half a dozen blocks from here, dressed herself up in a hijab, and went about her business. A hijab, for Christ’s sake. Thirty years ago. There couldn’t have been more than five or ten thousand Muslims in all New York, and still all she needed to make herself invisible was a head scarf.”
Gregor considered this. “It wouldn’t have made her invisible after 9/11,” he said.
“Sure it would have,” Ray Guy said. “Everybody was running around so frantic that anything they did would look like some kind of anti-Muslim bigotry, she was safer after 9/11 than she was before it. Besides, your Bureau can’t find clover in a country meadow. She lived a perfectly normal life. She even went back to that silly town half a dozen times. People reported seeing her. Oh, I’ve been watching all of it. I really have. And the authorities have been useless.”
“Which explains why they’re running the world and controlling the minds of the masses with such precision, nobody even notices,” Gregor said. “Where’s the money?”
“I don’t have the money,” Ray Guy said. “And if you want to know, she didn’t have it, either. My best guess is that there never was any money. There never were any bank robberies. Those were frames, setups to prevent the public from believing anything she said. After all, she was one of their own. She was a child of the very people who are running this world conspiracy, and she was ready to testify to all of it—to the infant sacrifices, to the devil worship, to the systematic rape of children to make them pliable agents of the powers that be—”
“For God’s sake,” Gregor said.
“I knew as soon as she showed up here that she was the greatest victory for right and truth and reason since I started this publishing company,” Ray Guy said. “I knew it and I knew that all the people at the top would know it, too. They got to her too early, though. If I’d been able to advise her, I could have kept her out of that kind of trouble. But even if she couldn’t testify directly, she could give me the information and I could get it on the record. And I have. And I will.”