Dark Rivers of the Heart

wasn't surprised. He didn't back off, as he had done in the men's room at the theater. Turning, he saw an attractive redhead in high heels, an ankle-length coat in a shade of green complementary to her complexion, and a stylishly wide-brimmed hat worn at a rakish angle.
        She appeared to be on her way to a party or a nightclub.
        "If the new world order turns out to be peace, prosperity, and democracy, how wonderful for us all," she said. "But perhaps it will be less appealing, more like the Dark Ages if the Dark Ages had had all these wonderful new forms of high-tech entertainment to make them tolerable.
        But I think you'd agree… being able to get the latest movies on video doesn't fully compensate for enslavement."
        "What do you want from me?"
        "To help you," she said. "But you have to want the help, have to know you need it, and have to be ready to do what needs done."
        From inside the Microbus, his family was staring at him with curiosity and concern.
        "I'm no bomb-throwing revolutionary," he told the woman in the green coat.
        "Nor are we," she said. "Bombs and guns are the instruments of last resort. Knowledge should be the first and foremost weapon in any resistance."
        "What knowledge do I have that you could want?"
        "To begin with," she said, "the knowledge of how fragile your freedom is in the current scheme of things. That gives you a degree of commitment that we value."
        The valet, though standing just out of earshot, was staring at them oddly.
        From a coat pocket, the woman extracted a piece of paper and showed it to Harris. He saw a telephone number and three words.
        When he tried to take the paper from her, she held it tightly.
        "No, Mr. Descoteaux. I would prefer that you memorize it."
        The number was designed to be memorable, and the three words gave him no difficulty, either.
        As Harris stared at the paper, the woman said, "The man who has done this to you is named Roy Miro."
        He remembered the name but not where he had heard it before.
        "He came to you pretending to be an FBI agent," she said.
        "The guy asking about Spence!" he said, looking up from the paper. He was suddenly furious, now that he had a face to put on the enemy who had thus far been faceless. "But what in the hell did I do to him?
        We had the mildest disagreement over an officer who once served under me. That's all!" Then he heard the other part of what she had said, and he frowned.
        "Pretended to be with the F.B.I? But he was. I checked him out between the time he made the appointment and when he came to the office."
        "They are seldom what they seem to be," the redhead said.
        "They? Who are they?"
        "Who they have always been, through the ages," she said, and smiled.
        "Sorry. No time to be other than inscrutable."
        "I'm going to get my house back," he said adamantly, although he did not feel as confident as he sounded.
        "But you won't. And even if the public outcry was loud enough to have these laws rescinded, they'd just pass new laws giving them other ways to ruin people they want to ruin. The problem's not one law.
        These are power fanatics who want to tell everyone how they should live, what they should think, read, say, feel."
        "How do I get at Miro?"
        "You can't. He's too deep-cover to be easily exposed."
        "But-"
        "I'm not here to tell you how to get Roy Miro. I'm here to warn you that you must not go back to your brother's tonight." . A chill shimmered through the chambers of fluid in his spine, working up his back to the base of his neck with a queer, methodical progression like no chill he had ever felt before.
        He said, "What's going to happen now?"
        "Your ordeal isn't over. It isn't ever going to be over if you let them have their way. You'll be arrested for the murder of two drug dealers, the wife of one, the girlfriend of the other, and three young children.
        Your fingerprints have been found on objects in the house where they were shot to death."
        "I never killed anyone!"
        The valet heard enough of that exclamation to scowl.
        Darius was getting out of the Microbus to see what was wrong.
        "The objects with your rints on them were taken from your home and planted at the scene of the murders. The story will probably be