CHAPTER 7

HALF THE SEATS ON the Boeing 737 to Seattle were empty on the 4:00 p.m. flight.  Jan, after Monster had dropped him at the Billings airport, had boarded, settled in, and ordered a Crown Royal on the rocks.  He had pulled out the slip of paper Monster had given him in the café.  It said “Granny, 555-3665—maidenform.”

The drive to Billings had been uneventful—no sign of Hansen’s people.  Jan hadn’t expected any trouble when he left the ranch with Monster.  He hated being chaperoned, but Monster insisted that Jan not travel Highway 310 without him.  The 310 ran ninety miles north from Greybull to Interstate 90 just outside Billings, Montana.  The first twenty-five miles ran through alkali desert to Lovell, Wyoming.  Only rattlesnakes, coyotes, jackrabbit, and—interestingly enough—a herd of wild horses inhabited those dry sagebrush hills.  The horse herd had been there for a century and in the 1980s the state had erected a marker detailing the herd’s history.  Jan’s father had walked those hills searching for dinosaur fossils, proudly displaying a fossilized dinosaur tooth for Jan.  The road came within fifteen miles of the C1MS compound, and for Monster that was too close for comfort.

Jan and Monster had stopped on the way to Billings for lunch in Greybull where Monster had delighted the waitress, who couldn’t keep her eyes off him, by ordering a twelve-ounce sirloin cut in strips over a huge salad drenched with Bleu Cheese dressing, along with an order of mashed potatoes and gravy on the side.  One of the customers, a man of about fifty in a snappy business suit, immediately got up and left the café when they entered.  He threw a bill on the counter and glared at Monster as he left.  Jan cocked his head and raised his eyebrows.

“John Duffy,” Monster said.  “Banker.  He made the mistake of pointing his finger in my face when I brought his drunken teenage son home one night.”

“And?”

“I broke his finger.”

Monster took a sip from his coffee cup.  “I had a talk with George Olson last night.  Told him you were going to Seattle to see Deck.  I pressed Olson for information on C1MS.”

“He’s been helpful so far.”

“Yeah, he has.  He wants to nail Hansen as bad as we do.  But the Feds have their heads so far up their gray flannel bloomers they’re paralyzed.  They will never go into that compound unless they have hard evidence of violation of a federal crime.”

“Such as?”

“Such as possession of prohibited firearms or other weaponry.”

“How about murder?”

“There is no federal statute on murder.  Conspiracy to deprive someone of his or her civil rights can get you life without parole on a RICO indictment, but murder, per se, has to be tried in a state court.  Listen, Olson is very worried about Hansen.  And he’s frustrated.  He feels he is not getting the kind of response from Washington that he should.  He remembers the disaster at Ruby Ridge, both before and after the shootout.”

“After?”

“Did you know that Lon Horiuchi, the ATF agent who accidentally killed Randy Weaver’s wife during the gun battle at Ruby Ridge, spent ten years fighting the State of Idaho to keep from being prosecuted for manslaughter?  The 9th District Court ruled that Horiuchi could be prosecuted, but the boundary county prosecutor eventually dropped the charges.  Olson was galled that a great marshal nearly went to prison for simply doing his duty.”

“Yes, I followed that.  The 9^th district is notorious for such rulings.”

“Well, it just demonstrates that the bad guys still have more rights than the good guys.  Anyway that and a boatload of other stuff mean that Olson is no longer the company man he once was.  As for the Hansen compound, Olson says he continues to hear rumors of a stockpile of ammonium nitrate out there.  He’s worried we are on the verge of an Oklahoma City, but he is convinced the Feds won’t move until somebody blows the doors off the statehouse in Cheyenne or until the federal building in Billings gets a facelift.  In other words, the Feds are focused on Arab fundamentalists.  They have little heart or manpower to watch low level wackos like Hansen until there is clear and present danger.”

“Danger to whom?”

“To anyone.  If they have good intelligence that Hansen is abusing women or children, depriving them of their civil liberties, they could go in.”

“Like Waco?  Wouldn’t that be cute?”

“Well, that’s the problem, of course.” Monster continued, “But if they had sufficient evidence that Hansen is conspiring to put civilians at risk they might act.  But it would have to be evidence ‘of the highest reliability.’”

“And how are they going to obtain such evidence?”

Monster’s eyes twinkled. “Ah, my point exactly.  Just what I asked Georgie boy.  This is where it gets very interesting.”

“Go on,” Jan said, rotating his index finger in a circle.

“See, they know that Hansen is a computer wonk.  He considers himself very high-tech.”

“I remember he was a bright boy in high school.”

“Well, get this, he has lots of computer terminals on the compound.  He tracks all his financial stuff.  Did you know that he owns, or controls, nearly a hundred businesses throughout the West?”

“I’ve heard rumors.  In fact I started to look into that.”

“Yeah, he’s a multi-millionaire, but—get this—he stores no digital information at the compound.  None!”

“How can that be?”

“He microwaves everything to computers off compound.”

“Come on!”

“No kidding.  His terminals operate the remote computers through the microwave links.  Hey, this is the digital age, amigo!  It’s all speed of light.  It makes no difference where the hardware is.  And the microwave link is safer than Wyoming telephone cable.  Safer, I’m told, than satellite.  It can only be intercepted if you physically position an antenna somewhere along the line-of-sight transmission pathway.

“But what does all this cost him?”

“The costs are nothing for him, nothing. Believe me.  You do not know the kind of wealth we are talking about.  Remember, he is the grandson of the founder of the cult.  Sure, his own genius has multiplied the membership 100-fold, but his dad died very wealthy, controlling dozens of businesses, from garbage collection services in cities throughout the West to mobile home manufacturing plants in Oregon and Washington.”

The waitress walked up and set the plates on the table, her hip rubbing Monster’s arm.  He smiled at her and raised his eyebrows.  She winked and wiggled off.

Monster continued, “Ronnie-the-Third has built the church into a mega-wealthy empire.  In fact, Olson says the Fed’s best shot is an IRS conviction.  That’s part of the reason Olson chose the IRS cover.  Hansen is so sure of himself.  He expects the IRS to be present in the county.  Anyway, Olson said that the microwave is a backdoor into the Hansen compound.”

“What do you mean?” Jan asked.

“Well, the information that is microwaved from the compound—Olson doesn’t know exactly what route it takes or where it winds up, but he’s certain it passes through a relay site on Medicine Mountain.”

“The Medicine Wheel?”

“Right.  How’s that for spooky?  He apparently has a station on a piece of grandfathered private land within a mile of the Medicine Wheel itself.”

“Unbelievable!”

“Well, when you think of it, it’s another demonstration of our boy’s genius.  He’s not only Jehovah’s supposed spokesman, but he works powerful medicine.  He has actually attracted a handful of American Indians!  You ever hear about the Mormon connection to the Indians—the so-called Lamanites?  He has access to the Crow Agency just over the mountain in Montana.  We think another microwave transmission site may be located on the reservation.  Once the signal gets to Billings, it can be transmitted over secure landlines anywhere in the world.  Anyway, for our purposes, when that information is riding along the airwaves, it is accessible.  It can be intercepted.”

“What about decoding the encryption?”

“Jan, we are talking the ATF here!  They can decode Allan Greenspan’s bank statements.”

“But Olson won’t be party to some clandestine…”

“Jan, you don’t know Olson like I do.  All I’m willing to say at this point is that he served with Bill Degan at Ruby Ridge.”

“Oh wow!” Jan said.  “Marshal Degan was killed at Ruby Ridge!”

“Yep.  Olson has a well of bitterness inside that cool G-Man demeanor.  He told me that if we could find some way to provide him with a microwave feed, he’d find some way to turn it into usable information.”

Jan whistled low and shook his head in amazement.

“Anyway,” Monster continued, “as the signal leaves the compound, it must travel west before it is bounced back to the Medicine Wheel, and from there who knows?  It might wind up in some Ayatollah’s bedroom.  The point is that Hansen apparently can’t imagine the U.S. government would build a radio tower and intercept his data.  So, here’s the deal, Olson guesses there is enough information within the data to do real harm to Hansen.  Olson should probably get out of all this before he mucks up his retirement, but he promised me that if we can provide him with the raw data, he’ll make sure we get the meat of the translations.  And we—that is you and me, kimo sabe—have none of the Fed’s inhibitions when it comes to Ronnie’s civil rights.”

Jan could feel the excitement rising inside him, but he controlled it.  So far what he was hearing made some sense, but left too much unanswered.  It also begged a tremendous number of questions.  He’d think about it.

Monster spoke.  “Amigo, you’re as quiet as a gay hairdresser in an Army recruiting station. You’re asking yourself why the Feds don’t intercept the information themselves?”

“Among other things.”

“Olson says in order to do so, they would have to either finance an interception station to snake the material out of the air, or physically compromise one of Hansen’s relay stations.  Getting an electronic tap order is one thing.  They could do that if it were a simple wiretap.  But the Feds are very circumspect about physical incursion.  Olson says there is no way anybody in Washington will order a crew to penetrate a private relay station in a situation like this.  We are not talking international terrorism here.”

“So we’re out of luck.”

Monster paused.  “I wouldn’t say that.”  He slid the piece of paper across the table.  The paper with a Seattle phone number, a name, and the code “maidenform.”

***

Jan cleared Sea-Tac, picked up his rental, a Buick Century.  The girl at the Avis Wizard counter handed him the keys and said, “It’s the Bordeaux Red Pearl in space thirty-six.”

“Bordeaux Red Pearl?”

She smiled, “Yep.  Hope you have a date.”

He smiled back and walked to the car, scanning the parking lot, his bag in his left hand and the keys in his right.  Immediately after grabbing his luggage from the carousel he had gone into the nearest restroom, transferred the SIG-Sauer to the pocket of his leather jacket, and put the ammo gun cases in his bag.

He opened the trunk and deposited his bag, then took the jacket off, folded it, laid the gun on the seat and placed the jacket over it.

He caught Interstate 5 at 188^th and headed north to downtown Seattle.  The drive was familiar.  He arrived in the Pacific Time Zone at the same clock time he left Mountain Time Zone—4:00 p.m.  He settled into the bumper-to-bumper traffic, taking nearly an hour to make the fifteen miles to the Hilton.  By the time he hung his shirts in the closet, it was pushing 6:00 p.m.  Perfect.  He picked up the phone and dialed Suntorys.  A familiar voice came on the line.

“Jack, Jan Kucera.”

“Jan!  How ya doin, baby?  We gotcha covered.  $10-20, probably have ten players by 8 o’clock.”

“Including me?”

“What you mean, ‘including me?’ Gimme a break here, Jan.”

Jan laughed.  “Plug a seat.  I’ll be there.”

“You got it kid.”

The best part of coming to Seattle was Texas Holdem at Suntorys on Aurora in North Seattle.  Jan looked at his watch.  Time for dinner if he hurried.  He strapped on his shoulder holster, slipped in the SIG-Sauer and put on his worsted gray blazer.  It was somewhat out of date—he had purchased it more than thirty years earlier in Hong Kong—but he told himself that in the current atmosphere of sartorial liberty, he was OK.  And he was proud it still fit—at least in the summer.  With his Wrangler jeans, boots, and black T-shirt, he would be comfortable in the Seattle night.  He didn’t like playing cards in a jacket, let alone while wearing a shoulder holster.  And, he was not licensed for a concealed-carry in Washington State, but Monster had counseled him, “Being illegal is better than being dead.”  Monster assured him that if he were busted in Seattle the Big Horn County Sheriff could get him released with a phone call.

Whenever he was in Seattle, Jan tried to make time for an evening or two at Suntorys.  Jack Vecchio and he had been shipmates on the USS Preble during Jan’s WestPac Cruise of 1960.  They had spent hundreds of hours in an 04 deck radar room playing five-card-stud and California draw.  Back then, Jan was actually a better player than Jack, but that had changed over the years.  Now Jack was the professional and Jan tried to stay up to speed.

Until Emma’s death he had tried to drive to Billings once a week to play Texas Holdem across the street from the Northern Hotel where, as an eleven-year-old boy, he had stayed en route to catching the Northern Pacific to Minneapolis to visit his married sister.  Now he played cards only occasionally.

As he dressed, he reflected on those childhood visits to Billings, a shopping hub not only for South Central Montana, but for Northern Wyoming as well.  He remembered how, the first time he had stayed at the Northern Hotel with his mother, he had arisen early and left her sleeping in the room while he took the elevator to the roof of the hotel and helped the maintenance man raise the American flag.  His mother was ashen-faced when he finally showed back up at the room.  He had never previously been out of the state of Wyoming.  That would have been 1953, Jan recalled.

Funny how his mind drifted to childhood scenes so much these days.  His mother had taken him to a burger shop on Montana Avenue in Billings where they bought tiny little hamburgers—twelve for a dollar.  And they had fried chicken in a restaurant across the street from a department store named Fuchs.  He remembered putting Worcestershire sauce on his fried chicken, developing a lifelong quirk.  “Where in the world did you learn to do that?” Emma had asked him.

***

At Suntorys in North Seattle, Jack welcomed him to the club with a shot of Crown Royal.  He reached across the bar and punched Jan on the arm.  He insisted on a moment of conversation, even though Jan continued to glance at the game.

“That’ll wait, Ace.  Bring me up to speed.”  Jack exhaled a plume of smoke from his unfiltered Camel, picked up a shot glass, and sipped gingerly.  Jack had always looked like an old man, even when Jan knew him when they were youngsters in the Navy.  He had a face too small for his head and ears too big for his face.  He had been bald before age thirty.  But behind the funny face was a mind that tracked everything at the speed of light.  He had a heart as big as Wyoming in a body the size of Rhode Island, but in a fight—and Jan had been in several with him—he was merciless.  “Can I help it? I’m a Sicilian,” Jack would say, “I know how to punish people.”  Jan knew that first hand.  He had seen Jack take on a man twice his weight in an alley in San Francisco, Jack getting the poor guy in a headlock and running backward until the guy’s head popped into a brick wall.  Now, Jack ran his card room with grace but expected—and received—instant obedience from the patrons in case of a dispute.

“How you holdin’ up, Jan?” asked the Sicilian.

“One day at a time, Jack.  One day at a time.”

“Yeah, ain’t it?  I worry about you kid.  You getting out any?”

“You and Monster!  What’s with this inordinate interest in my love life?”

Jack threw his head back and roared, “Yeah!  Good ol’ Monster.  Hey, Jan, stick with me and Monster and we’ll get you straightened out yet.”  He laughed again, then looked down at the bar.  It got quiet.  “Man, when I think…”

“I try not to think any more than I have to, Jack.”

“I know, boy, I know.  Listen, I never told you this, but Emma was the best.”

Jan looked at Jack’s striped suspenders holding up slacks that were at least an inch too big around his skinny waist.  Was Jack losing more weight?  Jan chewed on his lip and looked at the gleaming bar top.  Finally, he looked up at Jack’s face and nodded.

“Listen, get to your game, kiddo,” Jack said.  “But when you’re done, have a word or two with me before you go.”

“You know I will.”

Ten players in a Holdem game, $10-20—a perfect game in Jan’s opinion.  The green felt, the heavy metal-centered plastic chips, the whir of the shuffle, the snick of the deal, the peek at the hole, the flop, the turn, the river—all these movements and sounds and tactile sensations got Jan’s blood up.  It wasn’t so much the risk of the wager, or even the satisfaction of a hand well played.  That was wonderful, but the game itself was the thing.  Mostly he liked the men and women who played the game.  He liked the conversations, the movements, the emotions, the mutual respect, and the humor that inevitably were part of a good game.  The diverse personalities converging on a felt battleground with explicit rules of engagement and the chance of gain or loss.  These factors combined to move his soul.  For Jan, poker was every bit as much an artistic pursuit as music or painting.

His Dad, Frank Kucera, had played cards at the Pastime Pool Hall in Basin every night of Jan’s childhood. Jan would slip in and lean on the rail made of gas pipe that separated the card table from the rest of the pool hall.  He would stand there quietly, watching his father play pan or pinochle.  They used real coins, not chips—dimes and quarters and occasionally a silver dollar or two would wind up in the pot.  Gambling was not technically legal, but the night marshal was in the game most evenings.

After Jan had stood quietly for a while, his dad would pretend to suddenly notice he was there.  “Want a pop, Jan?”  And Jan would take the dime over to the Pepsi machine and get an icy bottle with the most beautiful red and blue and white and black design on it.  Somehow, those exquisite colors mixed with the caramel color of the soda through the glass and with the green felt and the red and black suited cards with the red or blue diamond-patterned backs.  The smoke curling from his dad’s cigarette and the laughter of the man in the khaki pants and shirt and the sound of the cue ball zipping and clicking and the dull thud of the captured ball into the leather pocket and the sound of the plastic peas in the leather bottle shaken together and doled out to the players in the pea-pool game, quarters lining the pool tables—these sounds and sights and smells were layered into Jan’s psyche.

Every evening after work, his dad would come home for supper, then go to the pool hall and come home late. He left early in the morning.  He would go to the same café in which Ginny now served other khaki-dressed men.  And he would have a stack of hotcakes with patties of butter and syrup and a side of sausage.  His dad was respected and beloved in the town.  Tall, handsome, black hair slicked back, intelligent and funny.  He was not formally educated, once asking Jan if minus meant to add or subtract.  He was gifted with a mason trowel.  He poured a pink-colored sidewalk in the old house on Main Street before they moved into the new house right before the divorce.  The Basin City of his childhood was pastoral and dusty, predictable and quiet.  Basin and Mom and Dad…and a peace that Jan longed to recapture but knew he couldn’t.

No, he couldn’t recapture that.  But he could catch a nut flush and check it to a possible straight and bring down the straight and a couple of two-paired hind-titters.  And that was almost as good as the memories of the peaceful little river town of fifty years ago.