Liberty

CHAPTER FOUR

Galen O’Meara swallowed his second Percocet of the day. The leg still hurt him, but at least he could walk without crutches. He’d been injured when a section of ceiling collapsed while trying to retrieve the bodies of two fallen comrades beneath the streets of Boston. He shook his head at the memory.

His organization, the Sons of the Republic, traced its roots all the way back to the eighteenth century. Always it had sought to protect America from the kind of internal weakness the founders warned against. In Boston, they’d been mere feet away from obtaining the Prophecy of George Washington, which foretold a final struggle to restore the United States to the grand vision of the founders. Only the interference of Maddock and Bonebrake had prevented it.

The Sons had lost several people in Boston, including his brother, Sean O’Meara, and his friend Jillian Andrews. They’d tried and failed to reach the chamber where their comrades had presumably been killed. Now he was on convalescent leave from the Boston police force, and recent discoveries had led him to spend most of it here in Philadelphia.

Graham Mason stood in front of him, raising his voice and gesturing with his right hand. The man was descended from George Mason himself, the father of the second amendment. While the original Mason had possessed a healthy dose of reason to go with his passion, Graham had inherited mostly the latter. Mason had organized the recent assault attempt on Maddock and Bonebrake.

“It would have worked fine, O’Meara, if they hadn’t set that balloon loose. Who could have predicted a stunt that crazy? By the time we realized it was a diversion, they were gone.”

O’Meara exhaled. “Graham, what the hell possessed you to attack them in the first place? Before yesterday, they thought we were some fringe group they’d never hear about again. Now they’re both pissed and perhaps motivated to find us.”

Mason’s face reddened. “They took several of us out in Boston. No one crosses the Sons of the Republic. When we found out they were coming here, we knew God was smiling on us.”

O’Meara suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at the clichéd pronouncement and instead limped around the front of the desk until he stared directly into Mason’s round face. He didn’t soften his tone.

“Give me a break. They killed my brother. If anyone has a reason for revenge, it’s me, and you don’t see me executing a hastily-planned and failed attempt at pointless violence. The founders prized reason, not impetuosity.”

He quickly changed the subject, not quite ready to head where he knew the conversation had to end. “What about Franklin’s Legacy?”

Mason looked at the floor. “Nothing new. All we have is the clue we’ve had for almost two hundred years: ‘Seek the creator of the five hundred.’”

“Did we even find out when this phrase first came to the Sons’ attention?”

“No. For sure, we knew it before the Civil War. But it’s been passed down by word of mouth, and our research has come up dry.”

O’Meara paced to the left, still dragging the right leg. “Let’s face it, by the end Franklin didn’t trust anyone. Even back then, the country thrived in spite of, not because of, specific individuals. But maybe your lack of success won’t matter. I have it on good authority that we’ve made real progress on the other search. Cole will be here later today.”

“That’s great to hear.”

O’Meara took a deep breath. “So about Maddock and Bonebrake. You say they questioned Roberge and then let him go. He was just hired muscle, so there was nothing to find. Right?”

Mason paused and O’Meara raised his voice again. “Right?”

“Well… I gave him a pamphlet.”

“A pamphlet? What for?”

“I was talking to him about the state of the country and he really seemed to agree about how bad things are. He’d be a good guy to have on our side.”

O’Meara pressed his hands to his temples. “Mason, he’s an ex-con with multiple prison sentences behind him. Of course he hates the government. But giving out a pamphlet to someone who sounds sympathetic is not the problem. The problem is giving out a pamphlet to someone who you’ve just hired to kill two of the small number of individuals who know about us and what lengths we’re willing to go to. Someone who has no idea of the sensitivity of it. That puts us all at risk.”

“But there’s nothing illegal or even that unusual on the pamphlet.”

“It has the warehouse address. And it has the symbol. If they found it, you think Maddock and Bonebrake won’t follow up on those clues?”

“Maybe they didn’t find it,” Mason said.

“Think about it. They went after Roberge because they wanted information. They wouldn’t have left unless they found something.”

Mason put his palms up in front of him. “Okay, okay, I screwed up. I’m sorry. What more can I say?”

O’Meara met his gaze. Then in one motion he drew his Glock and fired a .40 caliber round into the center of Mason’s forehead.

The G27 was a small gun, but at point blank range it blew open Mason’s head, leaving some traces of splatter on O’Meara’s shirt. Mason fell backwards and the thump of impact echoed off the hardwood floor.

O’Meara took two steps back, cursing at the pain in his leg. A figure moved out of the shadows in the back of the room, stopping next to Mason’s body and gazing down at it. “Pity.”

O’Meara limped back to his chair and looked up at the newcomer. The raspy voice betrayed no gender, nor did the baggy black pants and shirt. O’Meara knew her well enough to never feel completely comfortable around her.

“It may be a pity, but he was an idiot. They’ll find the warehouse and they’ll trace the ownership soon enough.”

“He wasn’t an idiot,” she said. “He was simply a man of action.”

“Yeah, maybe.” O’Meara felt uncomfortable disagreeing with her.

“I assume you’ve shredded all the documents at the warehouse.”

“Yes. There wasn’t really anything there to find — if there was, we would have come across it. But at least that will be a complete dead-end. By now they know it’s us again, though.”

“I agree. I wonder how they found Roberge so quickly?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “They must have someone who can get them information in a hurry. It was a dumb move to go after them, but now we have no choice. They need to be eliminated.”

“Call our friend Long.”

O’Meara flinched. “Are you sure that’s wise? Long is pretty competent, at least the best we have. But Long is… unpredictable.”

“Do you doubt Long’s commitment to our cause?”

“To our cause, no? To our group, absolutely. Long never bought into us being any better than anyone else. Plus, Long has a soft spot for men in the service.”

“So we’ll say they’re traitors who shot several of us in Boston trying to protect the status quo. Unless you can think of someone better for the job?”

“Isn’t Long following up on the other search?”

“Yes, but that’s not a problem,” she said. Anyway, Long is a sniper, not a researcher. We’ll get Mark Cabrone to do the research.”

“How much does he know?”

“How much do any of us know? Have you told me everything you know?” Her eyes bored into him.

O’Meara swallowed. “How about I plead the Fifth? And I know you haven’t shared everything.”

“Precisely. Decentralization has its advantages, as the unfortunate Mr. Mason’s ancestor knew all too well. It doesn’t really matter. The whole point is to expose what the Constitution really says, not hide anything.”

“Yeah, but what if it’s like what happened in Boston?” They’d uncovered enough of the collapsed chamber that had claimed their comrades’ lives to discover it wasn’t at all what they had expected. In fact, the discovery called their motives into question, so in some ways the fact that it had been destroyed was a blessing. All he sought were the tools to stop America’s decline.

The shadow woman’s breathing grew louder, and for a few seconds she said nothing. Finally the breathing stopped. “I assure you O’Meara, it is not like what happened in Boston. I heard it from the lips of my grandfather himself, and his father was actually present that day in Gettysburg. In any case, we need proof, and neither you nor I can go poking around the Smithsonian’s archives.”

O’Meara could recognize a battle no longer worth fighting. “Fine, I’ll contact Long right away. I bet Bones and Maddock will go by the warehouse, that’s as good a place as any to do it.”

The woman nodded with the limited head movement common to the aged. Then she left the room without a word.

O’Meara glanced around the office, a temporary place owned by a Delaware corporation with enough layers of ownership to make an onion jealous. It all traced back to one of the Sons of the Republic if you looked hard enough. The building was old, the floors pitted and creaky, but somehow it felt just right given what he was trying to do.

His eyes landed on Mason’s corpse, and he sighed. One more headache to deal with. He suspected someone who invented a quick, easy, and untraceable way to dispose of a body would become rich beyond belief. Sadly, such a genius had yet to materialize.

As he painfully got to his feet, he muttered to himself, “The things I do for my country.”