May 8, 1984

30

9:14 AM

     Agent Danley walked into the office with Agent Harper and the Assistant Director calmly. He knew what this meeting was, but he wasn't about to let on that he knew what this meeting was about.

     "Howard," the Assistant Director said, and pointed to a seat. "Do you have any idea what this meeting is about already?"
     "Probably something having to do with our little sub-department."
     "That's right."
     Agent Harper went into it. "We did a little re-reading of the enabling statute, and we found that the counter-terrorism work you are doing is indeed part of it, but that funding for it is at the discretion of the head of the Organized Crime Division and the Assistant Director."
     "You mean, you're getting rid of it."
     "Howard, no. We just misread the statute. It mandates that I spend part of my budget with approval from the Assistant Director on counter terrorism investigations. The Organized Crime Division is already working on several counter-terrorism investigations."

     "Related to organized crime."
     "Right, as intended in the original statute."
     They looked at Howard. "So then," he said. "I'm being reassigned."
     "Yes, yes, Howard. You are being reassigned back to your previous division."
     "Okay."

     There was a pause, where the only thing that could be heard was the soft tick of the clock.

     "I do want to say one thing, though. There is a threat out there, and it is only growing. What's more, the longer we fail to take it seriously, the more we give an impression to the communities seeing it, that violence is a legitimate form of political protest. Over time, seeing and internalized violence as a form of political protest raises the specter of Civil War. While I don't see an immediate horizon for such conflict, left unchecked I think in twenty years we could be looking at a very different picture. One in which, for example, Right to Life is a serious strategic threat to the United States, and threatens to bring down not only lives and structures but our democratic institutions themselves. This is an existential threat, not just a threat to life and property, as great or greater than the one presented by organized crime."

     They looked at him, for they knew they were going to hear him say what he wanted to say, but they weren't listening.

     "So then, that's it," Agent Danley said, and shook their hands.

     There wasn't a word he had just said to them that wasn't horribly, unbearably true.

     

10:13 PM

29

10:13 PM

     William Reginald Peterman, Jr. was left with the sad fact of his fatherhood: he had failed his eldest son. He had done his best, but he had failed him. It had probably been all those moments when he had terrorized the boy. All those night when he had gotten liquored up and been angry about some small sleight.
     Of course his son had always had a darkness in him. Something that made him have a tendency to view conspiracy in everything around him. That had been with him since the beginning. When Bill was just a little boy who they called Skip.
     He scolded himself. All he could think about was, what if it was an item in the news; what if the news item was picked up nationally. It was just the sort of thing that newspapermen liked. "State Senator's Son in Murder Probe."
     But he had to think about these things, because they were important to that split second decision people made in the voting booth.
     As he sat on the porch and smoked his cigar, he realized he had always put his career above his family, and especially his eldest son. But now the question was, would he use his significant resources to aid his boy in escape, or would he use them to catch him?
     Catch him, Bill's father decided. Catch him and get him the best defense lawyer in the world. Hope that he got a lenient sentence, mostly served at home and that something could be salvaged from the rest of his life.
     He had ignored his son for too long, and when not ignoring him, had injured him, had mentally scarred him. It was now his responsibility to find the boy.