PROLOGUE. PART ONE. CHAPTER 1

PROLOGUE

Eli Churchill was a talker. Once he got rolling it was unusual for him to stop and listen, but now a distant noise had him concerned.

“Hold on, ” he whispered.

He cradled the pay‑ phone receiver against his shoulder, glanced down the narrow, rutted Mojave dirt road he’d traveled to get here, and then up the long, dark way in the other direction.

In this much quiet your ears could play tricks on you. He could have sworn that there’d been a sound out of place, like the snap of a stalk of dried grass underfoot, even though no other human being had any business being within twenty miles of where he stood, but he couldn’t be sure.

The moon was bright and his eyes were well adjusted to the darkness. He didn’t see anyone, but with the kind of guys Eli was worried about, you really never do.

When he put the phone back to his ear an automated message was playing; the phone company wanted another payment to allow the call to continue. He worked his last six quarters from their torn paper roll and dropped them one by one into the coin slot.

He had just three minutes left. In a way, it was ironic. After years of planning, he’d brought all the evidence he needed to back up his story, but not nearly enough change to buy the time to tell it.

“Are you still there, Beverly? ”

“Yes. ” The signal in the phone was weak and the woman on the other end sounded tired and impatient. “With all due respect, Mr. Churchill, I need for you to get to the point. ”

“I will, I will. Now where was I…” As he riffled through his pile of photocopies a couple of the loose papers got caught up in a gust and went floating off into the night.

“You were talking about the money. ”

“Yes, good, okay. Two‑ point‑ three trillion dollars is what we’re talking about. Do you know how much that is? From sea level that’s a stack of thousand‑ dollar bills that would reach to outer space and back with thirty miles to spare.

“That’s how much Don Rumsfeld told the nation was unaccounted for in late summer of 2001. Don’t you see? Two‑ point‑ three trillion dollars is three times the amount of all the U. S. hard currency in circulation. You can’t misplace that much money. That’s not an accounting error, that’s organized crime. ”

“Mr. Churchill, you said in your message that you had something to tell me that I hadn’t heard before‑ ”

“I know where they spent that money. Or at least some of it. ”

A brief rush of static came and went on the line. “Go on. ”

“I’ve seen the place, one of the places where they’re getting ready for something‑ something big‑ planning it out, you know? I got a job inside in maintenance, as a cleanup man. They thought I was just a janitor, but I had the run of the place overnights.

“I saw what they’re planning to do. They’re building a structure. ” He checked his notes to make sure he was getting it right. “Not like a building, but like a political and economic and social structure. They’ve been working on it for a long, long time. Decades. When they collapse the current system, this new one they’ve put together will be all that’s left. ”

“I’d like to meet with you, Mr. Churchill, ” the woman said. “Where are you right now? ”

“I can’t tell you on the phone…”

“Say that again. You’re fading in and out. ”

The dry desert wind had been steady and cold since he’d arrived, but he noticed now that it had died down to almost nothing.

“They’re changing the books so that in a generation from now almost nobody will remember what this country used to be. They’ve got the economy set up to fall like a house of cards whenever they’re ready to tap the first one at the foundation. They’ve got the controlled media all lined up and ready to carry out their PR campaign. And they’ve got people so indebted and mind‑ controlled and unprepared, they’ll turn to anybody who says he’s got the answer. ”

“Where can I meet with you, Mr. Churchill? ”

“We don’t have the time; just listen now. They’re going to stage something soon to get it all started. Just like that two‑ point‑ three trillion dollars that’s missing, there are eleven nuclear weapons unaccounted for in the U. S. arsenal, and I’ve seen two of them‑ ”

A glint of brilliant red light on the wall of the booth caught his attention. He turned, as the man behind him had known that he would, and let the phone drop from his hand.

Eli Churchill had enough time left to begin a quiet prayer but not enough to end it. His final appeal was interrupted by a silenced gunshot, and a. 357 semi‑ jacketed hollow point was the last thing to go through his mind.

PART ONE

“It is the power which dictates, dominates; the materials yield. Men are clay in the hands of the consummate leader. ”

– WOODROW WILSON IN Leaders of Men

CHAPTER 1

Most people think about age and experience in terms of years, but it’s really only moments that define us. We stay mostly the same and then grow up suddenly, at the turning points.

His life being pretty sweet just as it was, Noah Gardner had devoted a great deal of effort in his first twenty‑ something years to avoiding such defining moments at all costs.

Not that his time had gone entirely wasted. Far from it. For one thing, he’d spent a full decade building what most guys would call an outstanding record of success with the ladies. Good‑ looking, great job, fine education, puckishly amusing and even clever when he put his mind to it, reasonably fit and trim for an office jockey, Noah had all the bona fide credentials for a killer eHarmony profile. Since freshman year at NYU he’d rarely spent a weekend night alone; all he’d had to do was keep the bar for an evening’s companionship set at only medium‑ high.

As he’d rounded the corner of age twenty‑ seven and stared the dreaded number thirty right in the face, Noah had begun to realize something about that medium‑ high bar: it takes two to tango. While he’d been aiming low with his standards in the game of love, the women he’d been meeting might all have been doing exactly the same thing. Now, on his twenty‑ eighth birthday, he still wasn’t sure what he wanted in a woman but he knew what he didn’t want: arm candy. He was sick of it. Maybe, just maybe, it was time to consider thinking about getting serious.

It was in the midst of these deep ruminations on life and love that the woman of his dreams first caught his eye.

There was nothing remotely romantic about the surroundings or the situation. She was standing on tiptoe, reaching up high to pin a red, white, and blue flier onto a patch of open cork on the company bulletin board. And he was watching, frozen in time between the second and third digits of his afternoon selection at the snack machine.

Top psychologists tell us in Maxim magazine that the all‑ important first impression is set in stone within about ten seconds. That might not sound like much, but when you count it off it’s a long damn time for a guy to stare uninvited at a female coworker. By the four‑ second mark Noah had made three observations.

First, she was hot, but it was an aloof and effortless hotness that almost double‑ dared you to bring it up. Second, she wasn’t permanent staff, probably just working as a seasonal temp in the mailroom or another high‑ turnover department. And third, even in that lowly position, she wasn’t going to survive very long at Doyle & Merchant.

They say you should dress for the job you want, not the job you have. That’s especially true in the public relations business, considering that that’s where appearance is reality. Apparently the job this girl wanted was head greeter at the Grateful Dead Cultural Preservation Society. But that wasn’t quite right; she didn’t strike him as a wannabe hipster or a retro‑ sixties flower child. It was more than the clothes, it was the whole picture, the way she carried herself, like a genuine free spirit. An appealing vibe, to be sure, but there was really no place for that sort of thing‑ neither the outfit nor the attitude‑ in the buttoned‑ up world of top‑ shelf New York City PR.

At about five seconds into his first impression, something else about her struck him, and he completely lost track of time.

What struck him was a word, or, more precisely, the meaning of a word: line. More powerful than any other element of design, a line is the living soul of a piece of art. It’s the reason a simple logo can be worth tens of millions of dollars to a corporation. It’s the thing that makes you believe that a certain car, or a pair of sunglasses, or the cut of a jacket can make you into the person you want to be.

The definition he’d received from an artist friend was rendered not in words but in a picture. Just seven light strokes of a felt‑ tip marker on a blank white page and before his eyes had appeared the purest essence of a woman. There was nothing lewd about it, but it was the sexiest drawing Noah had ever seen in his life.

And that is what struck him. There it was at the bulletin board, that same exquisite line, from the toes of her sandals all the long, lovely way up to her fingertips. Unlikely as it must seem, he knew right then that he was in love.

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