“I have rights!” he protested. “I want to speak to a lawyer. I’m not telling you anything more until I do. You can’t just take me in like this. Jerks! I haven’t committed any crime.”

Vaill turned Lou around to face him. His smile was scornful and smug, as if this was the best part of his job.

McCall opened the Impala’s rear door, and with some difficulty, the two men stuffed Lou into the backseat.

“When it comes to terrorism,” Vaill said, “the law has a lot of latitude regarding who we take into custody and how we do it. And as for rights, thanks to your unwillingness to cooperate, and Miranda’s public safety exception, I’m sorry to inform you that you don’t have any at all.”

Chapter 32

CHAPTER 32

Social/Political philosopher Lancaster Hill’s growing popularity should be a source of concern to us all.

—DAVID CARP, New York Times Op-Ed, MAY 8, 1940

The elevator ride to the bottom of the granite shaft took Kazimi no more than thirty seconds. The platform shuddered and shimmied. Machinery, corroded from the salt air and water, groaned. With each passing foot, the sound of waves grew louder. Faint natural light filtered up through the elevator’s grated platform, and the complex smells of the ocean grew more pronounced. The eerie descent ended with the locking of gears and a jolting stop.

Kazimi peered upward. He saw the lights embedded in the walls and nothing more. There was no trace of the stairway on which he had entered the shaft. Still, he had to hurry. It was only a matter of time before Bacon’s thugs came looking for him. Kazimi exited the platform and followed a wooden walkway out an opening carved through the cliff face. Twenty feet down the narrow dock he entered the boathouse. There he paused, savoring the wind on his face, and breathing in the heavy salt air.

Freedom!

A few feet more and the dock widened to form the floor of a storage area—marine supplies, engine parts, oil and gas cans, life jackets, ropes, bumpers. Not unexpectedly, the construction was first-rate—hardwood walls, beamed ceiling, four good-sized windows. The dock continued as two extensions, one along each wall. At the center of the construction, bobbing on its moorings like a glistening mahogany torpedo, was the boat.

It was a stunning inboard—a Chris Craft, long and sleek, with fold-away seats that increased its transport area.

Please, let there be a key. Please …

The boat looked as if it were ready to speed off just by willing it so, but that simply wasn’t going to happen. Nothing in the ignition.

Please …

Kazimi hurried back to the shelves, and quickly scanned them and the walls for any kind of a key hook or holder.

Nothing.