Читать книгу Under the Radar - Fern Michaels - Страница 10

If she had been wearing jodhpurs and knee-high polished boots, Annie de Silva could have passed for General George Patton, ready to announce that it was time to go into battle as she waved Charles’s pointer at the huge seventy-six-inch television monitor on which Lady Justice stood, balancing the scales of justice.

It was always a moving moment for the Sisters as they contemplated their past, the present, and whatever the future was going to hold for them. Breaking the law, serving up justice Sisterhood style, had its upside and its downside. This was always the moment when each of them knew they could bow out or forge ahead. The question was never a verbal one, but it was hanging there like an invisible thread, and they all knew it. One by one they would nod to show they were on board for whatever was to come.

The huge clocks on the wall showed various times around the world. It was ten minutes to twelve, Eastern Standard Time. Almost seven hours since their world had turned topsy-turvy, with Charles and Myra’s departure on the British helicopter and Pearl Barnes’s latest crisis.

Annie stepped down and stood behind her chair at the round table. “Listen up, ladies. We are on a short leash, timewise. Pearl needs us, and she needs us now. We’ve spent the last hour watching video of those strange people out there in Utah. I personally take offense at any man who claims he has the right to take as many wives as he wants. Like this man,” she said, pressing a button to show a middle-aged man, dressed to the nines, on the screen. “He has one legal marriage and says he has thirty-seven spiritual—or celestial, if you like that word better—wives. Which doesn’t say much for those dumb women. That makes thirty-eight wives. The legal wife and the thirty-seven spiritual/celestial wives have given him seventy-eight children. All under the age of seventeen. The man’s name is Harold Evanrod, and he is called ‘the Prophet’ of the HOE sect. It’s a splinter group of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints—the FLDS. The HOE stands for ‘Heaven on Earth.’”

“That’s an Ermenegildo Zegna suit he’s wearing,” Alexis said. “I know fashion, and that suit cost him bookoo bucks. Where does the money come from? And the guy drives a Bentley! I don’t get it.”

“Good question, and you’re right, it is a Bentley,” Nikki said. “A lot of the families are receiving welfare payments from our government. That means everyone out there is footing the bill for the Bentley and the suit. It’s called taxes. Thirty-seven celestial wives collecting welfare checks every week. That’s a lot of money no matter how you look at it. And this is going to make your jaw drop: the Pentagon is helping out with huge contracts to those people. I don’t know how that works because I just plucked it off the Internet a while ago,” she added as she looked down at her notes.

Isabelle waved a sheaf of papers in the air. “This is not only unbelievable, it is disgusting. I can’t wait to get there so we can”—she smiled—“take care of things. You are not going to believe what those creepy people do to their own, to the children. And no one does anything.”

Yoko started to cry. “In a way it is what my evil father did to my mother and all those other young women he brought here to…satisfy those horrible pedophile friends of his. Just tell me what to do, and I will gladly do it.”

Kathryn stomped her feet and stood up. “This little mission calls for everything we can throw at those people. I, for one, can’t wait to get out there, which raises the question, how are we going to do it?”

“We need Charles’s password to get into his…his secret files. There is no way we can even think we can crack it on our own, which means one of us has to call him to demand it.” Nikki looked down at her watch. “He should be setting down right about now on British soil. Will he cooperate? I don’t know.”

She had her special phone in her hand and was punching in a number. The others watched her, their expressions tense.

They all flinched when they saw her square her shoulders. The grim set of her jaw told them some unpleasant words were going to pass through her clenched lips, and they were right.

Nikki didn’t bother with a greeting. “I need your pass code, Charles, and I need it now.” She listened a second or two, then the ugly words flew. “I really don’t give a good rat’s ass about your secrecy and our secrecy. I need it now. We have a crisis here that you left us to deal with, and since you aren’t here, we have to act independently. Are you going to give it to me or not? Really, Charles. I feel for you, but this is a life-and-death matter for hundreds of people, and the son you didn’t even know existed does not enter into what’s facing us. You are dealing with your crisis, and we need to deal with ours. I can’t help you with your guilt. We all are praying for your son and for you, too. So, your answer is no?”

The other Sisters immediately started to jabber, their voices high-pitched, angry, and indignant. Nikki held up her hand for silence. Her voice turned warm in greeting. “Myra, Charles is not cooperating. I need the pass code. If you know it, give it to me, please. Hundreds of lives depend on it. HRM? Her Royal Majesty? I didn’t know there was such a title. Oh, Charles made it up. Okay. Are you sure, Myra? Thanks. Call us,” she said, and then hung up.

“Okay, every operative Charles ever used, all his sources will be at our disposal as soon as I enter his pass code,” Nikki said.

“But if he wouldn’t give it to you, why did Myra offer it up?” Yoko asked.

Nikki sighed. “It wasn’t that he wouldn’t give it up. He couldn’t give it up. There is a difference according to Myra. It’s that covert, British espionage stuff. You know, like a cop never gives up his gun, that kind of thing. Right now it really doesn’t matter, and Myra wouldn’t lie to us. It’s splitting hairs, but what the heck; we have it now, and that’s all that matters. I’m going on the computer, the rest of you delve into all that polygamy stuff. Be sure you understand what we’re getting ourselves into and how we’re going to extricate ourselves. Someone needs to call Pearl and tell her we need at least thirty-six hours before we can be there. That’s providing everything works to our advantage, and I can get us the help we need.”

Annie was already dialing Pearl’s number. The retired justice picked it up on the first ring. “Listen carefully, Pearl. We’re on board, but we need at least thirty-six hours until we can get there, possibly sooner, but we don’t work by the seat of our pants. Now, here is my suggestion: Move your people just the way you would, but this time use that fellow who owns the barn. Get them to a safe haven. I want you to pile those young girls into that special bus of yours and drive it to Montana to Jack’s cabin. This is the plan for the moment, and it will probably change, so don’t get too comfortable with it. We’ll be sending someone to stay with the girls there. Listen, Pearl, you might want to give some thought to changing your appearance once you leave Utah. I know, I know, you can disguise the bus and change the plates, but I’m talking about your physical appearance.”

“Yes, yes, Annie, I understand all of that; but, I’ve never delivered a baby. Some of these girls are in their third trimester. You might want to think about sending a midwife and everything that will be needed.”

“I’m on it, Pearl.”

“Annie, I need to tell you a few things, so listen carefully.” Pearl, her voice a little shaky, recounted the events leading up to her arrival at George Ellis’s barn. “I’m going to be leaving as soon as I can get the girls together. You realize, of course, that I am literally kidnapping them, right?”

“All right, I understand. Don’t worry about that right now. In the meantime, try and engage those girls in talk about how they live, what they believe, all the little et ceteras that make up their lives. After that, you won’t worry too much about the kidnapping charge. Take pictures of them so that Maggie can use them if it becomes necessary. And drive carefully, Pearl.”

Annie’s eyebrows slid up to her hairline. She gave herself a mental shake and dived into the papers in front of her. Oh, she could hardly wait to get her hands on those bastards at the HOE compound and the guy—whatever the hell his name was—who ran the place.

The discussion continued, with the Sisters commenting and taking turns reading aloud from the information they’d printed out from the Internet.

Kathryn went first. “As we all know, because we saw it on satellite TV for weeks on end, that guy Warren Jeffs who was the head of the FLDS was convicted and jailed. I think he got ten years to life, and he has two more trials pending. If I remember correctly, they said he’ll probably spend the rest of his life behind bars. So, we shouldn’t have any qualms about invading that place. Okay, they rehashed all that until we were nearly brain-dead, then they hit us with all those women in their Little House on the Prairie dresses who carried cell phones. The ones who spoke like zombies about wanting their children back, etc.

“A while back, this guy Harold Evanrod stepped up to the plate, even though no one voted him in, if in fact that’s how you get to be the Prophet. He splintered off and formed his own little group and started calling it the HOE, and, as we now know, that stands for Heaven on Earth, according to him and his followers. That particular compound is located approximately twenty miles from Sienna, where Pearl is right now.

“Jeffs and the FLDS people in Texas are a separate issue. There’s nothing we can do about that, and we don’t even want to go there since the authorities are making a mess of things as it is. Let them all stew in their own juice. What we can do something about is the HOE group.

“I have a little background, but not much because they practice secrecy to the nth degree in those places.

“There was an attorney named David Leavitt who prosecuted a guy named Tom Green. Green broke with tradition and went on the TV circuit with his seven wives and bragged that he’d married some of them when they were minors. At the age of thirty-seven, he impregnated a thirteen-year-old.

“Many of the spiritual/celestial wives register with the state as a single mother and draw welfare for their families. In one decade, Green and his dependents received more than $647,000 in public assistance. Do the math here, girls. He’s just one guy. Multiply that by all those guys in similar compounds, and the amount of free money they get is mind-boggling. And it’s the taxpayers who foot the bill.

“Leavitt considered Green a pedophile. He said little girls are raised from the cradle to marry as children and know only a life of polygamy. Leavitt said the children are victims of pedophiles and victims of the state of Utah, which turned its back on polygamy for sixty years. It appears it’s a new ball game these days, with new rules.

“Long story short, Leavitt filed charges against Green and won convictions on charges of bigamy, criminal nonsupport, and child rape. Unfortunately, the judge was lenient and Green only served five years total in prison.

“After that, the voters turned on Leavitt and voted him out of office that same year, with many voters saying the publicity was distasteful to them. Try and figure that one out, girls.”

Alexis took her turn and started reading. “What the polygamists were hoping was that the practice of polygamy would sink back into obscurity, but that hasn’t happened. A few have gotten away to tell of the abuse and are, as we speak, providing the authorities with as much information as they can. Some of them are suing the United Effort Plan, which is a communal property trust held by the FLDS. A judge removed the trustees and appointed new ones. Believe it or not, police officers have been forced to resign because they practiced polygamy and refused to uphold the secular laws. They even forced a judge out of office for the same thing.

“Some of the states have tried to crack down on the endemic welfare fraud in polygamous groups. The fraud is even institutionalized as ‘bleeding the beast,’ by which church members mean taking from federal and state governments because the government has persecuted them or their Mormon ancestors.

“Two listeners paraphrased the polygamous priest James Harmston as preaching that God ‘wants’ them to take from every government program possible. God ‘doesn’t expect you to wallow in turkey manure. In another lifetime, we were persecuted and thrown out of our country by the government. We are entitled to everything we can get.’”

Alexis read on. “With God ordering up fraud, as argued by modern-day polygamists, there is plenty of it. Many plural wives claim they don’t know the whereabouts of their children’s fathers. As many as 50 percent were on public assistance in a place called Hildale, Utah, in 2001; 33 percent were on food stamps in 1998 compared to Utah’s average of 4.7 percent. In 1997, every school-age child in Colorado City, Arizona, was living below the poverty level.

“That guy Jeffs got $2.8 million dollars from the federal government to build an airport for his chartered Lear jet. But that’s Arizona, so you have to believe it’s the same in the other states where they practice polygamy. Oh, another thing, Homeland Security gave that tiny little place a grant of $350,000, and it was the state’s largest HS grant. The state of Arizona had to take over the Colorado City school system because of gross mismanagement of public funds.”

Isabelle shuffled her papers until she found what she wanted. “Ah, here it is. I never heard of this, but since it’s been reported, I have to believe it’s true. The youngsters were called ‘the lost boys.’ They were kicked to the curb because they had a surplus of males. These kids were left to fend for themselves and didn’t know how. There were four hundred of them. Those children were taught from the cradle up that the Prophet must be obeyed as God’s representative, that the outside world is evil, and that anyone leaving will be ground to dust and damned in the afterlife. The youngsters didn’t know how to cope, some committed suicide, some turned to drugs, they steal, and are homeless. Those poor boys live their lives like it’s their last day on earth. They can’t believe they won’t have three wives as promised and are convinced that they’re doomed. All they want is to go back to their mothers. There are just too many heartbreaking stories here to read,” Isabelle said, tears in her eyes.

“Some of the boys, with some help, filed a civil suit back in 2004 against the FLDS. It’s in negotiation now. The church is fighting it, saying that because they are a church, they have a constitutional right to set their own standards for excommunication.

“Some of the appointed lawyers are saying that the ‘Babyland’ cemetery in Colorado City has many unmarked graves, plus eighteen minor children, plus eight stillbirths.

“It’s said that some women pray to have children with Down’s syndrome because such children usually have docile temperaments and because the mothers get $500 a month in assistance for a handicapped child,” Kathryn said in a cold, brittle voice.

“I don’t want to hear any more of this,” Annie said. “I think we’re all getting the picture here. Young girls are being forced to marry old men, and their mothers do nothing to stop it, and even encourage it. Since the children don’t know any better, they do what they’re told. They’re broodmares, nothing more. So, we’re going to go to the HOE compound, somehow. We’re going to take on those old men and the women who support them. Somehow we will get the children out of there to safety. Is that how you’re all seeing it?”

“Damn straight,” Kathryn said, speaking for the group. “But, Annie, what are we going to do with them once we take over?”

“I have a glimmer of an idea,” Annie said, her eyes sparkling. “Tell me what you think. Remember when we were in Las Vegas, and we went to that abandoned nursing home down the road from Mr. Fish’s property?” The women nodded. “Well, think about this. What if I buy that, add on a couple of wings, refurbish, and set it up to take care of all those people who want a better life? We can hire nurses and doctors and therapists. I even know just the person who I bet will jump at the chance to run the place. Paula Woodley. Remember her? I think she’ll jump in with both feet, and she’s loyal to all of us. Even after what we did to her awful national security advisor husband.”

“Damn, Annie, that’s a stupendous idea,” Yoko said. “But it is rather like putting the cart before the horse. What if we screw up our mission?”

“Honey, don’t think like that. We were all born to succeed. This time will be no different, and I, for one, am anxious to see if we can do it without Charles. Say the word, and I’ll put the wheels in motion.”

The chorus of ayes rang in the enclosed room.

“There you have it,” Annie said happily.

Thirty minutes later Annie had those wheels in motion, and Paula Woodley was on board.