The answers to those questions were no real mystery to him or anyone else privy to the politics that had been driving the case. Hampered by oversupervision from the Bureau and unrelenting pressure applied by the Justice Department, Werner had never been afforded the opportunity to establish a coherent methodology with which to pursue his investigation. The order to arrest those suspects prematurely that his agents had been following only accelerated the unraveling of a case that was already teetering on the edge of failure. The massive fire that had accompanied the arrest of a gun shop owner in Pocatello and the release of Louis Garvey, a man known to head the most notorious militia unit in the state, due to a lack of evidence only served to make things worse.

Within days of arresting the militiamen who were being referred to by the media as the Idaho Six, every man and woman in his office had become the target of vandalism and harassment. From slashed tires to pigs’ heads impaled on stakes planted on the front lawns of their homes, Werner and his fellow agents in the Boise office had been under siege. By the end of the first week those agents who could do so had sent their families out of state in an effort to keep them out of harm’s way. After two weeks the entire administrative staff of the FBI’s field office in Boise had quit or applied for indefinite leave. Were it not for the fact that the Bureau had sent replacements in from the Washington office, Tim Werner’s investigation of the militia movement in Idaho, hamstrung as it was, would have come to a complete and screeching halt.

Not that he had been able to make any progress of late. Even before the last embers of the fires in Pocatello had died, cooperation from state and local officials had ceased. The reams of advice sent to him daily from Bureau headquarters on how to proceed only tended to make matters worse. Rather than pursuing vicious criminals, Werner and his people had become virtual prisoners in an undeclared war between the Federal government and the people and state of Idaho. What had started as a difficult case had become an unending nightmare.

Finished shaving, the bewildered agent in charge cleaned his razor under the running water. Without ceremony he splashed hot water over his face to clear away the last traces of shaving cream before turning his back on the miserable wretch in the mirror that greeted him every morning.