“His records were also accessed in their computer,” I interjected.
“By the hacker,” Gradecki said.
“Right.”
“And you have her in custody,” she said.
“We do. Apparently, she was dating Ted Eddings, and that’s how he got into this and ended up murdered.” Wesley’s face was hard. “What I am convinced of is that West has been an accomplice to Joel Hand from the start. You can see the district office now.” He pointed. “And what do you know,” he added ironically, “it’s right next to Hand’s compound.”
The district office was basically a large parking lot of utility trucks and gas pumps, and modular buildings with CP&L painted in red on the roofs. As we flew around it and over a stand of trees, the terrain beneath us suddenly turned into the fifty-acre point on the Nansernond River where Joel Hand lived within a high metal fence that according to legend was electrified.
His compound was a cluster of multiple smaller homes and barracks, his own mansion weathered and with tall, white pillars. But it was not those buildings that worried us. It was others we saw, large wood structures that looked like warehouses built in a row along railroad tracks leading to a massive private loading dock with huge cranes on the water.
“Those aren’t normal barns,” the attorney general observed. “What was being shipped off his farm?”
“Or to it,” the senator said, I reminded them of what Danny’s killer had tracked into the carpet of my former Mercedes. “This might be where the casks were stored,” I added. “The buildings are big enough, and you would need cranes and trains or trucks.”
“Then that would certainly link Danny Webster’s homicide to the New Zionists,” the attorney general said to me as she nervously fingered her pearls.
“Or at least to someone who was going in and out of the warehouses where the casks were kept,” I answered.
“Microscopic particles of depleted uranium would be everywhere, saying that the casks are, in fact, lined with depleted uranium.”
“So this person could have had uranium on the bottom of his shoes and not known it,” Senator Lord said.
“Without a doubt.”
“Well, we need to raid this place and see what we find,”
he then said.
“Yes, sir,” Wesley agreed, “When we can.”
“Frank, so far they haven’t done anything that we can prove,” Gradecki said to him. “We don’t have probable cause. The New Zionists haven’t claimed responsibility.”
“Well, I know how it works, too, but it’s ridiculous,” Lord said, looking out. “There’s no one down there but dogs, looks like to me. So you explain that, if the New Zionists are not involved. Where is everyone? Well, I think we damn well know.”
Doberman pinschers in a pen were barking and lunging at the air we circled.
“Christ,” Wesley said. “I never thought all of them might be inside Old Point.”
Neither had I, and a very scary thought was forming.
“We’ve been assuming the New Zionists maintained their numbers over recent years,” Wesley went on. “But maybe not. Maybe eventually the only people here were the ones in training for the attack.”
“And that would include Joel Hand.” I looked at Wesley.
“We know he’s been living here,” he said. “I think there’s a very good chance he was on that bus. He’s probably inside the power plant with the others. He’s their leader.”
“No,” I said. “He’s their god.”
There was a long pause.
Then Gradecki said, “The problem with that is he’s insane.”
“No,” I said. “The problem with that is he’s not. Hand is evil, and that’s infinitely worse.”
“And his fanaticism will affect everything he does in there,” Wesley added. “if he is in there–he measured his words–then the threat goes bizarrely beyond escaping with a barge of fuel assemblies. At any time, this could turn into a suicide mission.”
“I’m not sure why you’re saying that,” said Gradecki who did not want to hear it in the least. “The motive is very clear.”
I thought of the Book of Hand and of how hard it was for the uninitiated to understand what a man like its author was capable of doing. I looked at the attorney general as we flew over rows of old gray tankers and transport ships, known as the Navy’s Dead Fleet. They were parked in the James, and from a distance it looked like Virginia was under siege, and in a way, it was.