The Middleman Read online

  A young woman cracked open the door and showed her face. “It’s kinda late, lady,” she said.

  “Sorry,” Rachel said, “but we need to take care of this before dawn.”

  18

  THEY HAD just passed through McAlester, Oklahoma, and were heading through the predawn gloom of big-sky country when on KLCU, 90.3, National Public Radio told them about the bust in Sheridan, Wyoming. Kevin looked over at Benjamin, waiting for the inevitable explosion, but it didn’t come. Ben looked out over grassy farmland as, on the radio, FBI Assistant Director Mark Paulson said, “The so-called Massive Brigade is on the run. Special Agent Rachel Proulx led the raid that resulted in thirteen arrests.”

  “Who the fuck is Rachel Proulx?” Ben asked.

  “Hell if I know,” Kevin said, because he had no idea.

  Paulson told reporters that the public should expect more arrests in the coming days. “The Bureau, in partnership with Homeland Security, is closing in.” Then he made an appeal to those among the four hundred who were having second thoughts. “Turn yourself in to local authorities. Our fight is not with you, but with Martin Bishop and Benjamin Mittag.”

  “You got that right,” said Mittag, grinning.

  “You’re not worried?” asked Kevin.

  “Do I look it?” He shrugged. “What you have to understand is that the Massive Brigade leads by example. What we did on July 4—what you did—that was unprecedented. It was massive. We showed everyone that everything is possible, as long as you’re determined. You have to want it.”

  “Sure.”

  “Fidelity, bravery, integrity,” Ben said to the road. “Know what that is?”

  Kevin did, but it felt like a trick question. “Three abstract nouns in a row?”

  “It’s the FBI motto. Might as well be ours, too.”

  Though he’d planned to, he hadn’t stolen the teenager’s phone in Marshall. As he’d hung up with Janet Fordham, he’d clocked the teen’s physique and quickly laid out a plan to knock him unconscious and hide him in the bathroom. He knew his plan was wildly reckless, but a phone that Fordham could track … that was gold. Then he and the boy turned at the crunch of gravel, and the fat woman from inside said, “Trey, Stacy’s looking for you,” and his opportunity passed. He thanked Trey for the phone and went back out front to join Mittag.

  Had the Bureau gotten a lock on his call in time to track their car via satellite? Even if they had, there was no guarantee that they would get the satellite coverage—more often than not, the satellite they wanted had already been booked by one of the other sixteen security agencies. Until he found another phone, he had to assume he was alone.

  “It’s all hype anyway,” Mittag said after another mile. “The FBI’s gonna play up any little success as a big deal, even if it’s peanuts. They’re gonna say we’re on the run.”

  “You don’t want to refute them?”

  He shook his head. “Massive plays it cool. Drop some politicians and a manifesto. Then let the others chatter all they want. We’re not going to become part of a discussion where they make the ground rules. When we speak, they’ll know because they’ll be hurting.”

  “But when we’re silent, they control the narrative,” Kevin protested. “They’re the ones who are defining you to the people.”

  “Let ’em. They could paint us as pedophiles. What’s important is the message we, as a movement, send out when we do choose to talk.”

  Nearly a thousand miles from Butte La Rose, they reached Lebanon, Kansas, by early afternoon and parked on Main Street in front of the American Legion Hall. Next door was Ladow’s Market, where they ordered plates of meatloaf with parsley potatoes and green beans as around them farmers laughed and gossiped and tried not to stare at the two strangers in their midst.

  “We should’ve gotten this to go,” Kevin whispered.

  Mittag looked boldly around at the men and women of Lebanon, then shook his head. “As long as we don’t have Martin’s face, we’re copacetic.”

  He was right. No one said a word to them, or showed any sign of alarm. The only alarm was Kevin’s when he noticed cell phones on neighboring tables, lying beside coffee cups and soiled plates. So close that it hurt.

  Though the pineapple cobbler intrigued them both, they decided against dessert and paid for their meals (four dollars each, plus tip) and when they got to the car noted a policeman across the street talking with a local. The cop glanced in their direction—they were strangers, after all—then returned to his conversation without missing a beat.

  The meeting point was just a little outside town, a plot of grass and trees where the American and Kansas flags rose over a stone pedestal beside a bench. A few yards away, a gazebo had been set up with picnic tables, and beside it was a shed-sized building labeled U.S. CENTER CHAPEL. A wooden sign said WELCOME TO THE GEOGRAPHICAL CENTER OF THE 48 STATES.

  Benjamin took a zip-lock bag from his pocket, and from it removed the pieces of an old Nokia with a black-and-white screen and Chiclet buttons. He inserted the battery, snapped it together, then powered it up.

  Kevin checked his watch—it was nearly three. “How long we here?”

  “About a half hour to go,” Benjamin said; then as if on cue a synthetic bleep sounded. The Nokia lit up with a message. Benjamin read it and said, “I take that back,” as he turned to look down the gray road that led straight to the blue-and-cloud horizon. Dust rose from a red pickup truck heading toward them. “Come on.”

  Kevin followed him to the gazebo, where they sat and waited, protected from the hot sun. The truck was farther away than it looked, and eventually it looped around the rear of the site and parked behind their car. The first person to get out was a woman, dark hair and sunglasses, jeans and a light blouse. She looked up each direction of the crossroads, then across the grass to where they waited in the gazebo. Then she looked back to Martin Bishop getting out from the driver’s side and taking off his sunglasses. He wore a mustache and beard, a flannel shirt and jeans, and a weathered red cap that said MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

  “So that’s her,” Benjamin said, standing.

  “Who?”

  “The bitch who’s been fucking with his head.” He spat in the dirt. “Ingrid Parker.”

  19

  THE GIRL—the one who’d opened the safe-house door—was crying. She’d entered the interview room erect and strong, but once they settled at the table and Rachel asked her name and age, the tears began, and fifteen minutes later they were still flowing.

  She had expected tears, of course, but not so quickly. As they’d filed out of the house they’d all worn a similar kind of shell-shocked expression, as if the world outside their walls were an indecipherable puzzle. In one moment, they’d been safely cocooned in a universe where their ideologies had become flesh; in the next they were being led out into the cool, predawn gloom by armed men in black who shouted at them to lie facedown in the grass.

  So, yes, she’d expected tears eventually. But before that she expected denial and anger and deal making, and was surprised to find so little of it. It was, she reflected, as if they’d been waiting for someone, anyone, to drag them out of that house.

  “I didn’t know. None of us knew. I mean—what could we do?”

  “Why did you leave?”

  The girl showed her confusion with an expression that looked, with her wet cheeks, more like agonizing pain.

  “Leave home,” Rachel said. “On June 18, you left everything behind and ran.”

  “But … we had to.”

  “Why did you have to?”

  “Because you were coming. People like you. The government.”

  By her own accounting, the girl was twenty-four, and her name was Mary. Rachel might have believed her, but this was the sixth Mary she’d spoken to in the crowded corridors of the Sheridan County Sheriff’s Office, and they all gave the same reason for June 18. Rachel leaned closer and said, “Listen to me, Mary. Are you listening?”

  Her eyes were wet,
but she nodded.

  “No one was coming to get you. That’s a lie.”

  Mary shook her head. “You came after Martin. You came after Ben. We were next.”

  It wasn’t worth arguing the point, so she went on. “What did you expect to happen after you disappeared?”

  “I expected a safe space.”

  “Safe?”

  “Where we could speak openly, without fear.”

  “Is that what you got?”

  Mary frowned, unwilling to judge what she had gotten.

  “So you arrived here,” Rachel said. “You met up with your comrades. But you had a plan. And it wasn’t to sit around and talk forever. What was your plan?”

  “Well, it wasn’t to shoot people!”

  “Then why did we find a dozen rifles and handguns in the house?”

  “We had to defend ourselves.”

  Rachel tried not to let her irritation show, but after listening to these kids, each of who seemed to have had an entirely different idea of what going underground really meant, she’d come to the conclusion that the only thing they really shared was the conviction—misplaced, as it turned out—that Martin Bishop would show them the way. What happened, though, was that Bishop had never shown up at this particular outpost, and so they were left to stew in their paranoia and dream up plans for the overthrow of everything.

  “We were gonna spread the word,” Mary told her.

  “Word?”

  “We were gonna disappear and then come back with the word.”

  “You’re not making any sense, Mary.”

  She sniffed, and Rachel offered her a tissue. Waited as she blew her nose. Mary shook her head. “It’s what I wanted, at least. We would figure it out on our own and then come back. And we were going to share what we had learned. We were going to educate ourselves and then educate our families.”

  “Really?” Rachel couldn’t quite swallow this as a workable plan, but then again she hadn’t been trapped in a house in the countryside, suffering from a myopia that made every plan, no matter how pie-in-the-sky, seem workable.

  Mary hesitated. “We had to make our own way, because no one was telling us what to do. But then they killed those politicians and…” She shook her head, still so confused.

  Mary, who Rachel would later learn was actually named Louise Barker, was much like the others in that house. Though details changed, they were all variations on a theme. They had gathered in the week following June 18, and in lieu of specific orders they had focused on learning how to protect themselves while engaging in revolutionary conversation.

  Later, Rachel asked one of the Georges about the shootings, and unlike Louise Barker, he didn’t recoil. He just shrugged. “Sometimes you have to let go of plans. Others, they freaked out. Thought everything must be falling apart. But, look: You have to be able to adjust based on the present situation. If Martin thought that killing those suits was necessary, then it probably was.”

  “So you had no trouble with it.”

  “I could deal.”

  When her phone rang, she was taking a nap in a back room the sheriff had cleared out for her. It was David Parker; he sounded out of breath. “Tell me—is she there?”

  “Is who where?”

  “Ingrid. My wife. Is she one of the people you arrested?”

  “No, David. She’s not. I’m sorry.”

  Silence, as the hope David had felt faded away. “Well, you’re a star now. Special Agent Rachel Proulx led the raid, approaching the house at great danger to herself.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Sam Schumer.”

  Rachel closed her eyes. Paulson had chosen to put her name in the press release; she wished he hadn’t. Then David said, “Oh, shit.”

  “What, David?”

  “Shit!” His volume rose. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me he was dead?”

  “Who?”

  Though David told her, she didn’t believe it until she hung up and used her phone to reach the Schumer Says website. And there it was, a flashing red EXCLUSIVE BREAKING NEWS banner: “Martin Bishop, leader of the terrorist group Massive Brigade, shot dead by his partner-in-crime Benjamin Mittag.”

  Even then, she couldn’t believe it, because it didn’t seem possible. On the day she’d made her first arrests, the leader of the Brigade was suddenly dead in a field outside Lebanon, Kansas? She called the Kansas City field office, which patched her through to agents still heading to the scene, and over speakerphone they gave her a rundown of what they knew: Forty-five minutes ago, there had been an anonymous call to the Lebanon police department, claiming that four people had been spotted at the intersection of 130 and Aa Road—three men and one woman, with two vehicles. As he drove past, the caller recognized one person as Benjamin Mittag, which was why he had called. By the time the police made it out there, they found one vehicle and one dead male, shot through the head. Maybe Bishop, but they couldn’t be sure. Then they called the Bureau.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to find out there,” the agent told her, “but if what we’ve heard is legit, then I’m getting drunk tonight.”

  “Not alone,” said his partner.

  “You haven’t even verified it yet,” Rachel said. “Who leaked it to Sam Schumer?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  She was literally on the edge of her seat, the rest of the sheriff’s station a flurry of activity on the other side of her closed door, when the agents reached the intersection of 130 and Aa, found the body, and squatted to check its fingerprints. There was silence on the line.

  “So?” Rachel said, trying not to shout. “Who is it?”

  20

  A LIGHT breeze came up, whisking away some of the heat as they left Kevin sitting in the gazebo to argue in front of the chapel. He watched, thinking that Martin Bishop, for all that was said and written about him, looked, more than anything, tired. He waved his hands and made shapes in the air, but unlike the man in the videos inspiring crowds, he just seemed to be going through the motions as he angrily laid into Benjamin, who didn’t look like he was having any of it. Ingrid Parker, by Bishop’s side, was no less furious. Kevin couldn’t make out much, but sometimes the wind shifted, and he caught phrases and words:

  Martin: “What the hell were you thinking? You’ve ruined—”

  Ingrid: “Wait! Calm—”

  Ben: “… just the start! There’s no other way…”

  Martin: “The start of what?”

  Ingrid to Ben: “… political neophyte!”

  Ben shoved Martin and shouted: “Fucking snowflake! Are you in or are you out?”

  Eventually, they calmed down, huddling close and talking, and from that point he could hear nothing. Kevin got up and walked in their direction. When he got too close, Ingrid glared at him, and he withdrew again. Defeated, he returned to Benjamin’s car, where he rifled through the glove compartment, finding chewing gum but little else, so he popped a piece into his mouth and went back to the gazebo. By then they’d taken a break, and Benjamin joined him while Martin and Ingrid remained in front of the chapel and spoke.

  “What’s going on?” Kevin asked.

  Benjamin shook his head, visibly upset. “He doesn’t get what has to be done; he never has.”

  “Then why have you stayed with him so long?”

  Benjamin furrowed his brow and looked suspiciously at Kevin. “Because how else is it gonna get done? You think I’ve got the money to run all this?”

  Kevin looked past him, to where Ingrid was shaking her head at Martin. She then walked ten feet away, staring down at the grass. Martin turned to look back at them in the gazebo. Kevin met his eye, and in Martin’s bearded face saw the passage of mixed emotions. What was he thinking? What was the big disagreement?

  Then Martin jerked, and the left side of his head exploded, splattering red across the white chapel door.

  Seeing the look on Ke
vin’s face, Ben turned, but Ingrid didn’t look back until the delayed pop of the gunshot arrived from out in the fields. Her scream was automatic, and she ran toward his body. Then, before registering what he was doing, Kevin ran toward her, shouting, “Go, go, go!”

  Finally, Ben moved, shouting, “To the car! Now!” as he bolted toward it himself.

  Kevin found Ingrid on her knees by what was left of Martin’s head, her hands wet from his blood. She wouldn’t move, so he grabbed her by the waist and lifted her even as she kicked and screamed at him. But he wasn’t going to let her go. He half-carried her around to where their vehicles were parked safely behind the chapel. He let her drop into the grass, her face red and teary. She was in no state to move, so he said, “I’m going to pick you up again. Please don’t kick me anymore.”

  He leaned down and reached out, but she slapped his hands away and, suddenly very calm, said, “I’ve got it.” He watched her climb to her feet, and while her knees were clearly weak, she made it to the car and climbed into the passenger seat as Kevin threw himself into the rear. Ben, sitting as low as possible behind the wheel, was already stomping on the gas pedal.

  “Keep your heads down,” he said with a voice wobbly from adrenaline and fear as they sped out from behind the trees, now exposed, kicking up dust and gravel. They turned onto 130 and headed west.

  Carefully, Kevin raised his head to look out the rear windshield, and far away he saw the glimmer of sun against what looked like a white pickup truck, all alone, in the middle of a field of wheat. Then it started to move.

  21

  WHO HAD killed Martin Bishop? What did this mean for the Brigade? And how had Sam Schumer learned it before Rachel had? She was preparing to call him when her phone started ringing. Paulson wanted to know what the hell was going on. “Bishop dead? Are we looking at the light at the end of the tunnel?”

  “We’re looking at something,” she admitted, but didn’t want to be more specific.