Kenneth MacLean is Professor Emeritus of English at Seattle University. A newspaper editor and reporter in his early years, his first novel, (his has published poetry and criticism) is a narrative based in years of personal research into the real and potential abuse of microwave electronics. The protagonist of The Mind Keepers, Michael Neilly, is a former Army Intelligence officer and FBI Agent, drawn by a sense of duty into opposition against a "powercast" facility to be constructed in a small town in central Washington State. Though fiction, the novel suggests the very real threats to American democracy proposed by false secrecy.
Born in Berkeley, California and raised in Seattle, Washington, Kenneth MacLean holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in English from the University of Washington and a doctorate from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Now retired from teaching at Seattle University, he shares retirement with his wife, Verna (Wood) MacLean, and their five grown children. Before his university work, MacLean saw service with the U.S. Army in Korea. After university, he worked for several years as a newspaper reporter and editor before returning to university study.MacLean's The Mind Keepers is the story of a man struggling to escape bitter experience, ultimately finding himself bound to deal with it. The bitterness remains from the Intelligence services Mike Neilly has been part of, and from his personal experience of electronic abuse. After his military service and short FBI career, Neilly has settled in Morton City, a town of about 15,000 in Central Washington State. He is newly married and works as both and architectural designer and teacher. His happiness is darkened only by the murder of an old friend with whom he had soldiered, Jack Sutton, killed shortly after Neilly's arrival in town.
Wearied by his years in Intelligence, Neilly hopes to have that work slip safely into the past. Then an old colleague comes calling. Calvin Greves is Resident Agent for the FBI at the nearby County seat. Just a friendly visit, Greves says. As Neilly fears, the friendly visit becomes professional. Dangerous things are developing in Morton City, dangerous things hidden in plain sight. Neilly listens to Greves's concern about potential conflicts between the local environmental group, the Terra League, and an anti-government owner's rights organization, the Sunset Union. Neilly has his own suspicions about a government defense project near the town, Yellow Butte, contracted to the Eramond Company, a computer and electronics corporation.
What Greves tells him about the kind of project Yellow Butte really is, provides reason for Neilly to rejoin the Bureau temporarily in an undercover role, reporting to Greves on Alden Kornwith, a "field" operative for Eramond. the ground-wave electronic network that Yellow Butte is to be a part of. Kornwith's superior in this, Dr. Simon Ross, leads a group of pentagon and corporate officers who secretly serve an international clan of investors and political manipulators known as Interadom. Neilly and Greves gradually uncover Eramond's local designs, laying the groundwork for investigation of the wider conspiracy.
Greves's official assignment involves Kornwith's money dealings, but Greves is personally more concerned about the potential for electronic abuse in the "powercast station" at Yellow Butte, especially since it is represented by people such as Kornwith. Neilly has life experience that validates his fear and hatred of such abuse, a powerful incentive in his acceptance of Greves's proposition. Even as he feels tangled in troubling issues from his past, Neilly realizes he is in a unique place to monitor and investigate. Further, Greves tells Neilly, he has a hunch Kornwith may have been involved in Jack Sutton's murder.
Neilly's initial task is to define the liaison between Kornwith and Dr. Morris Reiger, a physician and town activist. Greves suspects that Kornwith is using Reiger and local bank president Carl Welcomer as conduits to secure cooperation from the town's leaders by distribution of Eramond money disguised as stock investments and by promised benefit from the completed powercast station.
Neilly's first contact with Kornwith justifies Greves's suspicion. convinced Neilly can be "had," Kornwith assumes his support. Neilly ends the meeting confirmed in his loathing of the man, determined to defeat Kornwith's manipulative plans and uncover what connection he might have to the death of his friend Sutton.
Hours before his meeting with Neilly, Kornwith had met with Morris Reiger and a local rancher, Carter Evans. Evans is the titular president of the Sunset Union, a militia-style landowners' rights group. Kornwith, who has federal credentials, carries an apparent security file on Evans and uses the file to intimidate Evans and gain his submission to the Eramond program. Resistant and suspicious, Evans is nonetheless intrigued by the electronic "benefits" Kornwith describes, his implied support of the Sunset Union. Ultimately Neilly discovers the contact between Kornwith and the Sunset Union, grasps how Kornwith intends to control the militia group by binding it to Eramond through the promise of a directed energy weapon.
The environmental group, The Terra League, organizes a protest meeting against the sale of public watershed. Neilly and his new wife, Trudy Smith Neilly attend. The meeting ends in dramatic violence manipulated by Reiger and Kornwith. Neilly is approached afterwards by newsman George Peters, who is also suspicious of Kornwith and recognizes Neilly as a former FBI agent. Ultimately, Peters becomes Neilly's ally in supporting his undercover work.
At a local roadhouse Neilly and Greves meet to connect the Terra League trouble to their investigation. Neilly relates his suspicion of a man who seemed involved in the disruption of the Terra League meeting. Greves identifies the man as Jim Foster, suggests he is an undercover agent for Sheriff Wynn Reid. Foster is employed by one of the Sunset Union Leaders, sheep rancher Willard Caplow.
Neilly and Greves have been watched by members of the Sunset Union. After the meeting, Greves is driven off the road by unknown assailants and seriously injured. Neilly is stopped and confronted by two men, one wielding a small, box-like device that hits him with a painful force he describes as "like being shaved with a blow-torch." Neilly is told to stay away from Calvin Greves if he doesn't want more of the same. National Defense is involved, he is told, and he and Greves are seen by powerful people as potential troublemakers.
With the FBI hierarchy alerted, Neilly comes into contact with Carter Evans, Sunset Union leader, whom he discovers is concerned about the attack on Greves as, at least, a dangerous mistake in strategy. Neilly senses that Evans is in a struggle with Willard Caplow for leadership. Caplow has acted as contact man for the purchase of stolen military weapons which Evans has been forced to store on his property. Torn by his uncertainties, Evans is further driven to alliance with Neilly by an attack on his son, who is given a warning like that given Neilly.
Alerted to trouble, Eramond security makes plans to kill Morris Reiger whom they have marked as a liability. Through Jim Foster, the supposed sheriff's spy who now is seen as an Eramond agent, Kornwith lures Reiger to Yellow Butte on the pretext of viewing the site. Kornwith, Caplow and pilot Sam Rice, fly to Yellow Butte where Caplow watches horrified as Kornwith uses an energy weapon to release a killing burst of pulse wave energy, leaving Reiger dead from what will seem heart failure.
As the helicopter circles to land, Caplow, who regularly goes armed, panics and pulls his handgun. Foster, seeing Caplow's gun drawn and mistrusting Kornwith's motives, fires at Caplow, who kills him. Panicked further by what he's done, Caplow turns his gun on Kornwith, forces him to leave Mitchell's body with Reiger's at the site. Foster's body hold's Caplow's bullet, evidence to be used to charge Caplow with murder.
Outraged by the threat to his son, Evans agrees to act for the FBI in gathering evidence against his Sunset Union friends, whom he now wants to save from criminal manipulation. He wears a wire into a Sunset Union meeting. The energy weapon is discussed and a contract agreement accepted. This allows FBI arrest of the four leaders of the Sunset Union, including Evans. Separately, Kornwith is arrested and held without charge. Facing charges of bribery and Federal bank fraud, Carl Welcomer is also held by town police who suspect his involvement in the death of Jack Sutton.
Anguished with guilt, Welcomer confesses a fight with Jack Sutton at Sutton's business.. He says he called an ambulance, left Sutton unconscious, has no knowledge of who shot Sutton before the ambulance arrived.
Meanwhile, curious about the interest Reiger and Welcomer have shown in a century-old mansion, Neilly discovers a weapon hidden there that the police link to the Sutton Killing. Carl Welcomer trustee of the property, admits loaning the house keys to Kornwith..Ultimately, Kornwith is charged with Jack Sutton's murder by city police.
Enjoying the prospect of justice against Kornwith, Neilly and Greves are desperate when he is taken from his cell by false FBI agents. Pursuit is raised by local and state police. Acting on his own, Neilly has a hunch about where Kornwith might be hidden, but he is too late to catch Kornwith and his Eramond rescuers at the Caplow ranch. Neilly disarms a ranch guard and forces more information. There is an old dairy farm higher up in the foothills where the Eramond "rescue" squad might still be waiting for nightfall.
Neilly finds the farm and discovers Kornwith held prisoner by his rescuers. They are about to escape in a small plane. Neilly has no choice but to act or lose Kornwith. Firing two handguns, he races onto the field shouting their arrest. In the confusion, Kornwith escapes into the woods edging the farm Neilly fires futile shots as the plane takes off. Neilly is left alone in gathering darkness to find his deadly quarry if he can.
Knowing Kornwith is unarmed, Neilly reasons he will either try to put distance between and capture, or try to find Neilly's car, kill him, escape in it. Neilly bets on the latter, takes cover in a small gully near where he parked. He has nearly decided he'd guessed wrongly when something wet strikes his neck. He has a glimpse of a shadow above him as he rolls and fires. The heavy stone Kornwith had meant for his head hits Neilly's left shoulder followed by Kornwith's crumpled body. Covered with Kornwith's blood, Neilly is left lamenting the loss of what Kornwith might have told them.
As Willard Caplow is to be tried for murder. Neilly suffers one final Eramond attempt at intimidation, a frightening electronic assault on his wife, Trudy, a few days before his testimony at Caplow's trial. Caplow claims self defense in the killing of James Mitchell, A.K.A Jim Foster..
Reiger's death, Neilly and Greves now realize, opens the Eramond pulse wave gun to full public knowledge. Richard Steele, Greves's superior, cooperates to keep the case local. The case is swiftly pushed to trial in state Superior Court. Bartley Stoner, an Eramond attorney, appears as a legal witness for Kornwith, his former client, now dead. His version of the incident at Yellow Butte opposing Caplow's. Still, he is forced to testify on the pulse wave gun, Eramond's XPW-87, photos of which have been put into evidence. Stoner attempting to refute Caplow's description of its use. Neilly's testimony on pulse-wave energy, drawn from his experience and from Calvin Greves, dominates Stoner's version, supporting Caplow's testimony before a full press gallery. The judge, instructing the jury for its verdict on Caplow, encourages them to include a judgement on Reiger's death. They do so, concluding Reiger's death to be murder, Kornwith the killer. They find Caplow not guilty of intentional homicide. A Federal Grand Jury has been called to investigate the Sunset Union matter, and congressional investigations are scheduled. Yellow Butte and its sister projects are suspended.
Finally, key figures of the Interadom conspiracy place the blame for failure on Simon Ross. Ross blames Kornwith and incompetent superiors, realizes he is in serious trouble, trouble enough to want to disappear. Neilly, while on a short getaway with Trudy, hears from Wynn Reid that while being arrested by the FBI, Ross has been shot. Seriously wounded, Ross will survive to testify, however. Neilly and Trudy realize their town has escaped tragedy by a narrow margin. Proud to have had a role in that victory, they remain concerned for their country's future.
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