October skies

CHAPTER 42

Tuesday

Claremont, Colorado

Shepherd watched the soccer match with feigned interest, smiling, clapping and cheering at all the right moments — as far as he could tell. The young boys playing on the pitch before him in no more than flimsy nylon shirts and shorts looked under-equipped and too willowy to his eye to be playing a proper sport. A strong gust of wind would carry them all away like a bundle of red and blue twigs.

He preferred a good wholesome all-American sport like football, where sheer brute willpower, strength of heart and tactical guile normally won the day, unlike this peculiar game that seemed to turn on the mere lucky bounce of a round ball.

He sighed.

A sign of the times.

It seemed just about every boy and girl wanted to play this imported game these days. No doubt because it looked like an easy sport to play and master, unlike football.

The referee blew his whistle at some minor infraction.

The Mayor leaned towards him. ‘Offside,’ he muttered. Shepherd nodded politely, none the wiser, as he watched the young boys waiting for play to resume, all of them gasping clouds into the cool winter air. It was a heartless grey day with a wintry bite on the breeze. A light mist veiled the edge of the sports field, but the strong turnout of parents and church friends on this distinctly autumnal Sunday afternoon spoke of a strong local community.

Good Christian people, all of them, he thought with a smile, despite liking this ridiculous game.

Duncan, his campaign manager, had briefed him that the statistics team was reporting strong grassroots support here in this part of Colorado, almost as strong as it was in Utah. The people here liked what they’d already seen of him on the main cable stations, and the prominent coverage he was beginning to get on FOX. Perhaps even more encouraging was the fact that not many of them were members of the Mormon faith. His appeal was beginning to hit a wider vein.

‘That’s incredibly important,’ Duncan had said. ‘Thirteen million Americans, all members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, are votes in the bank for you come polling day. But that isn’t enough. We’ve got just over eighteen months of campaigning to broaden your support beyond the Mormon community into the soft conservative Christian Right.’

Shepherd clapped along with the rest of the assembled parents at a narrowly saved shot at the goal.

It was a big task for an independent to try and pull off. However, it seemed both of the other parties — up to their necks in sleaze and allegations of corruption and nasty, dirty backbiting between their leading candidates — were doing most of the hard work for him.

Of course, if things continued on their current trajectory, sometime soon the Democrats and the Republicans were both going to realise they were leaking votes to him and would start working hard, perhaps even together, to dish the dirt on him.

They were going to come up empty-handed.

William Shepherd wasn’t distracted by bubbly blonde interns, or lithe young call boys; his hands had never wandered where they weren’t wanted. Nor had he ever felt the need to roll a joint or snort a line of coke, defraud a pension fund, buy shares with inside information, bribe a court official or involve himself in any spurious land deals. They could dig all they liked; they were going to find no skeletons in his cupboard. No foul-smelling crap was going to stick to him.

His old-fashioned message gave him the air of some character out of a Norman Rockwell painting, made him sound like someone from another century, but that was just fine. The politically correct liberal media might wince at his unfashionable values and the rabid right-wing radio jocks might scoff at his naive aphorisms, but his voice was hitting all the right notes with an ever-growing audience of frightened Americans. Their world was sliding towards increasing instability; a weakened dollar, punitive interest rates, a plummeting jobs market… a simple and reassuring message that promised redemption was all they were after; a message delivered by someone who didn’t reek of bullshit.

The large crowd of eager parents and local civil dignitaries around him in the stalls cheered jubilantly as the ball flew into the back of one of the nets. Shepherd nodded, applauded and smiled, his mind elsewhere.

There was something, though, something that he’d never confided to Duncan. Shepherd smiled. If Duncan only knew… if his campaign supporters only knew… they’d run a mile. His sights were set somewhat higher than the Oval Office.

It’s out there somewhere… in the Sierras.

He could see it in his dreams, buried somewhere in the deep woods, perhaps in a secure travel chest; seasons changing above it like the seconds on a ticking clock, years, decades drifting by, and there it sat, waiting to be found.

Shepherd had tried and failed. As a younger man with a lot more time on his hands there had been quite a few hikes taken into those mountains, going on whatever hunch was driving him at the time, listening to the inner whisper of divine guidance. But, there was a lot of wilderness to cover out amongst those wooded mountains. It wasn’t like trying to locate a downed plane — at least something like that left a noticeable impact and burn scarring. The Preston party’s camp would now, he surmised, be little more than barely detectable humps on the forest floor.

He sighed.

Somewhere out there.

And now, it seemed, like Bilbo Baggins ill-deservedly happening across a certain ring, there was one Julian Cooke who had stumbled across the place where they lay buried. He knew it would happen one day; a hiker, a party of drunken hunters, a bunch of teens goofing around in tents…

Something of a conundrum, this man Cooke: someone he needed badly, and at the same time someone he needed like a bullet in the head. It seemed from his email traffic that this Cooke could lead him directly to the place where Preston’s people had vanished. Which made him someone he very much wanted to sit down and talk with. On the other hand, this British guy was talking to other people now. If he kept doing that, talking to many more people, he could become something of a liability. The collection of meetings he’d been holding with his media buddies over in London wasn’t good news. He suspected that none of them would probe any deeper than an intriguing survival story set during the days of the old west. But there was always the possibility that someone might be clever enough… intuitive enough, to join together some very obscure dots.

The call that concerned him the most was the long one Cooke had had with the forensic psychologist, focusing on Preston.

It was a little too close for comfort.

Something like Preston’s story was the one and only thing that could come and bite him in the ass when he least needed it.

‘Politics is about nothing more than nuance… finesse.’ Another of Duncan’s very true maxims. ‘Something as trivial as a badly timed facial boil, the tiniest speech fumble or a badly behaved distant nephew can lose you a million votes.’

To be associated, in any way, with what had happened out there, albeit over a century and a half ago, could be damaging, very damaging.

He wondered if it wouldn’t be prudent to deal with Cooke sooner rather than later. This Julian Cooke, a man with a modest level of success in the past, something of a fading star now, was running what appeared to be a failing business — a single, middle-aged man with no close family. Shepherd could imagine he was probably a very lonely, very discontented, disillusioned person. A man like that might easily have one drink too many, might have a dark night of the soul and wonder if it was all worth the effort. A man like that might look down at the busy street below his apartment and decide to find out what it would be like to fly for a few precious seconds.

No. I need him.

Just a while longer. It was clear from the email exchange with his colleague, Rose, that the man was returning to the States in a few days, and then, hopefully, one way or another, Shepherd was sure he could talk him into leading him there. Money usually did the trick.

The crowd erupted with a good-natured roar as the ball flew past the goalkeeper’s hands and tangled with the net. Shepherd smiled and clapped. He knew he wanted this more than he wanted the White House.

I have a higher calling.