The Detachment - Barry Eisler [83]
By the time they’re done, suspending the Constitution is going to seem like the only sane, centrist, responsible thing to do. This is fucked. We have to stop it.
Horton is the key. But I don’t know where he is or how to get to him. Call me as soon as you can.
I overheard some of the locals talking. One guy was typical, saying, “If we find out for sure the people behind these attacks are Muslims, I say we turn their goddamned countries into glass parking lots. That’s it, no more mister nice guy, no more talk, no more trying to understand each other. This is how you want it, this is what you get. But first, I say we ship every goddamned traitorous fifth columnist American Muslim back to their country of origin so they can be there, right at the center of the mushroom cloud, yes sir. And I’ll press the goddamned button myself, too. I guarantee you I won’t even be the first in line, either, there’ll be a whole lot of other Americans lined up to do the same.”
No one disagreed with him. I realized the hysteria was something we could hide in, at least among the populace, because we didn’t fit the profile of what had been ginned up in the public imagination.
We kept on, up and across the Oklahoma Panhandle, steering well clear of Oklahoma City and even of Amarillo, the grief and rage in Lubbock feeling uncomfortably close. Then the dusty, flat roads of New Mexico, through the Sitgreaves and Tonto national forests of Arizona, bypassing Phoenix by way of Prescott, and finally across the Colorado River and into California. We stayed on Interstate 10 the rest of the way in, skirting Joshua Tree National Park rather than using the quieter roads farther north, which would have taken us uncomfortably close to the Marine base at Twentynine Palms. Finally, with the sun coming up behind us, we reached the Pacific in Santa Monica. The whole thing had taken us three nights, on back roads and going not one mile above the applicable speed limit, most of it in a forced march blur, some of it in the cabin of the truck, other times in the stifling heat and dark of the cargo area, all of it while government forces hunted for us wherever they could. But we’d made it. We were here.
Now we just had to get to Mimi Kei. And through her, to Horton.
You can’t tell anymore the difference between what’s propaganda and what’s news.
—FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein
But what if elites believe reform is impossible because the problems are too big, the sacrifices too great, the public too distractible? What if cognitive dissonance has been insufficiently accounted for in our theories of how great journalism works…and often fails to work?
—Jay Rosen, NYU School of Journalism
We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.
—Sydney Schanberg
We found a suitable-looking place called the Rest Haven Motel. It was a little ways off the Pier on a mixed commercial and residential street, a small, one-story building bleached by the Santa Monica sun, with a private parking lot in back and a second, detached unit of rooms with its own entrance. Quiet, but also close enough to the traffic and bustle of the intersection of Pico Boulevard and Lincoln Boulevard for us not to have to worry about standing out. Dox backed the truck in so Larison and Treven could slip out of the cargo area unnoticed, and paid cash for a room in the separate unit. Then we drifted in one-by-one. We all looked like hell—unshowered, unshaven, unkempt. Like people in trouble. Like men on the run.
We pulled the two twin mattresses onto the floor, then spent a few luxurious hours alternating in the tiny bathroom showering and shaving, and cat-napping on the mattresses and the box springs. Next, we examined the room for anything Kei might later use to