Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(98)

He seems ready to say something more when the door clangs twice. Somebody is knocking. Before the Tall Man can turn in his seat, the lock slides and the door opens, held by a guard who says, “Augustus Remington is here to see you, sir.”

Before the Tall Man can respond, a short, pear-shaped man sneaks past the guard and into the cell. He wears a light gray suit and a red tie. His glasses and bald head swim with the light thrown by the overhead fluorescents. “There’s our boy,” he says, nodding at Jeremy.

The Tall Man rises to his full height and side by side the men appear like funhouse distortions. They do not shake hands. Nor do they greet each other. Jeremy cannot tell if that is because of a mutual comfort or discomfort.

“The trial is set. It’s going to be a military tribunal.”

“Military? This doesn’t have anything to do with the military.”

“Act of war. That’s what they’re calling it. A week from now. I did everything I could to delay things further, but no dice. Somebody in here has been talking. Reporters are on it. ACLU is crying foul. Unfair imprisonment, prolonged solitary confinement, suspected abusive interrogation tactics, and blah, blah, blah. All that human-rights-violation crap.”

“The Patriot Act exists for a reason.”

“You don’t need to defend yourself to me. I’m just telling you that whatever information you’ve pulled from him, you’re going to run into a lot of inadmissible evidence since you’ve never assigned him a lawyer.”

“This has never been about building a case.”

Augustus goes silent for a moment and his eyes flit from the Tall Man to Jeremy to the open briefcase on the floor, the instruments within it polished and gleaming. “Well, I hope you’ve had fun, then. But the fun’s over. They’re going to make a martyr out of him.”

The Tall Man walks to the other side of the cell and stares at the wall as if there is a window there. “I wonder who leaked this to the press.”

Augustus seems not to hear him. He stations himself in front of the empty chair across from Jeremy and tugs at his pant legs and sits with a huff of difficulty. “As I understand it, he’s going to be indicted tomorrow on eleven counts. They’ll be shipping him off to the supermax in Colorado.”

The Tall Man continues to stare at the wall, his back to them. After a moment’s pause, he says, “I wonder, too, about a trial timed alongside the election. I wonder about that. I wonder about it very much.”

“Wonder all you want.” Augustus peers into the open briefcase. His fingers scrabble the air like a spider. He ends up selecting a scalpel and testing its weight in his hand and smiles at Jeremy. “May I?”





Chapter 41



CNN IS HER HOMEPAGE. Every time Claire opens her browser, she scans the headlines for news about the Republic, the Resistance. Every now and then an article pops up about a roadside IED ripping through a Humvee or a mortar attack on a combat outpost—and her finger always hesitates above the touch pad before scrolling down, checking the battalion number, blowing out the breath she didn’t know she was holding.

Today she does not hesitate. Today, hidden away in her library carrel, there is no doubt. She knows the content of the article before she reads it. Under breaking news—in white text on a red banner across the top of the webpage—“Resistance Leader Indicted on 11 Counts.”

Denver—Jeremy Saber, alleged mastermind behind the 8/3 plane attacks and the Pioneer Square Courthouse bombing, was indicted on eleven counts today, among them conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, use of a weapon of mass destruction, destruction by explosives, and first-degree murder.

Since late November of last year, Saber has been detained for questioning in a federal facility in Seattle, Washington. The secrecy of his imprisonment, defended by the Patriot Act, recently came under fire when an anonymous source leaked to the press information reporting alleged torture, including waterboarding, starvation, and months of solitary confinement. The ACLU filed a lawsuit against the FBI and ATF for human rights violations, including unfair imprisonment without a trial.

Saber has since been extradited to Colorado, where he will stand trial before a military tribunal in Fort Collins, a surprising and widely criticized move that will make any appeals and stays impossible if the death penalty is elected. Federal authorities declined to comment except to say that the military has designated the plane attacks and courthouse bombing as acts of war.



On her way back from the library, she keeps her hood up and her head down, busy with her thoughts. Following the courthouse square bombing, several articles ran about raids and arrests, but for so-called security reasons, the FBI was withholding names and any further details that might compromise its investigation. There were other attacks—a car bomb that ripped through a Christmas parade, a ten-gallon plastic drum of diesel and detergent that detonated at a Methodist church and flamed and clung to everything it splattered—but the courthouse square attack was the most dramatic and resulted in the most casualties, and several cameras captured it from beginning to end and made the rest of the country feel as though they felt firsthand the impact of the van shredding open, the tree igniting.

At that time, she and Miriam cleared out the cabin and moved to a room above a bar called the Weary Traveler, where they paid their rent in cash by the week. Miriam said she needed to do some digging and abandoned Claire for several days and demanded she remain in the apartment. She watched Christmas specials and stared at the snow falling out the window and listened to the music thumping from the bar below and worried about Patrick.