Holdout: A Novel

by Jeffrey Kluger

  Polk said nothing and looked at the president skeptically. She’d never heard him refer to the Brazilian leader so dismissively before. It was always either a warm “Jair” or a respectful “President Bobo-deCorte.” This felt vaguely like a performance to her, and she plunged ahead with the question that immediately presented itself to her.

  “Will you actually follow through on all this, Mr. President?” she asked. “Are you telling the truth?”

  The president froze, and Polk did too, after a fashion. But it was a question that needed to be asked if she was going to act in reliance on his words. She was a prosecutor, and asking questions was what she did for a living. Today would be no different.

  “Yes, Connie,” the president said frostily. “I am telling you the truth.”

  “Very good, sir,” she said. “Shall I back-channel the congressional leaders that you’ll be in touch with them?”

  “Do that, yes,” the president ordered. Then he nodded at her briskly, took one more swallow of his bourbon, and summoned a waiter to take the rest of it away. He spoke not a word to his attorney general for the rest of the evening.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Mercado hospital had the look of a place that had been struck by a cyclone. Tents were collapsed and debris lay everywhere; furniture inside buildings had been tipped and tossed, with the contents of shelves and cabinets spilled out across the floors. And then, of course, there was the silence.

  The SSA was fastidious about its record keeping, and every time a patient was brought in—or staggered in—an entry was made in the computer system and a name and case number were attached. If anyone left—a child claimed by parents, a husband found by a wife—that fact was recorded too. So were the deaths. As of yesterday, there were 1,243 active names and cases in the system, meaning 1,243 tribespeople in the camp. That plus the 203 SSA staffers made for a huge crowd on the small patch of land.

  But the soldiers from the army that wasn’t really an army, wearing the flag that wasn’t really a flag, were fastidious too. From a rough head count the SSA doctors conducted, and then a much more careful search of the camp, it appeared that every single one of the patients and refugees who had been living there had been rounded up and then marched off or choppered out. The infirmary building was empty, the surviving tents were empty, the scrubby playground that had been filled with children earlier in the day was empty.

  Sonia had collected herself only slowly after the giant soldier carried Oli away, unable to get him out of her mind. He was a boy composed of pieces just loosely held together, and the centrifugal spin of this latest terror could pull his loose bits apart. No magical belief in hummingbirds and glowworms could put him back together if that happened. Worse, it was Sonia’s own inability to hold him close—her failed grip as she fought the giant soldier—that was the cause of all that.

  She returned to the doctors’ quarters and collapsed on her cot, consumed by a hot grief and a cold rage—a grief and rage that left her beyond even tears. She was spent. Worse, she felt defeated—wholly, helplessly defeated. Then—only then—did her own words come back to her: I’ll make them pay.

  They had killed Annie. They had killed Oli’s family. They had ripped Oli from her very arms. And she was lying on a cot in her quarters, trying to cry. At that, Sonia’s sorrow and anger tipped into something else entirely—to an electric sense of furious purpose. She leapt from her cot, sprinted back to the center of the camp, and quickly joined one of the three groups of doctors conducting the search for hidden survivors. She then helped muster teams to repitch tents, pick up furniture, and collect the spilled contents of the cabinets and shelves. The work needed to be done quickly because the staffers knew they would not be alone here for long.

  The 1,243 people who had been taken would soon be replaced by another thousand or two and then another and then another. The burnings were not going to stop and the displacements were not going to stop, which meant the people would keep flowing in. The doctors could do nothing but accept them and treat them and give them refuge, and the army that wasn’t an army would thus know just where to come to collect them.

  “We’re going to be a depot,” Mia said miserably as she was helping Sonia set the infirmary building to rights late in the afternoon. “We gather them in and the soldiers take them out.”

  The pediatrics building was the final one they worked on late that day. When they had finished, Sonia looked slowly around at all of the empty beds, coming to rest last on Oli’s. Mia followed her gaze, stepped to her, and took her by the shoulders.

  “We will find them,” she said firmly, then, conceding Sonia’s particular grief, added, “And we will find him.”

  “We don’t even know where to look,” Sonia answered.

  “Yes,” Mia said. “Actually, we do.”

  She took Sonia by the wrist and marched out of the pediatrics building and across the grounds to the far wall of the enclosure, where the camp’s small communications building stood. An array of dish antennas was positioned on the roof, and a snaking tangle of cables ran along the ground nearby. Two small windows spilled yellow light. When they reached the building, Mia flung open the door, and both women were struck by the energy and industry they found there.

  The soldiers had stopped by here briefly—just enough time to yank out cables, disconnect power and computer systems, and prevent the doctors from reporting the attack to the world, at least until the hospital had been emptied and the attackers themselves had vanished back into the jungle. Raymond and a handful of other staffers were busy bringing the entire facility back online. They had already reactivated the generator, and four of the twelve computers that were used both for patient records and for communications were rebooting and flickering to life.

  “Server first, server first!” Raymond was instructing a physician’s assistant, who was trying to activate a twin-screen computer console and getting nothing but a spinning color wheel on either monitor. “Get that working,” Raymond said, jabbing a finger at a cabinet-like piece of equipment and then back at the screens, “and those will work.”

  He then spun around, about to bark a similar exasperated command to a similarly befuddled-looking infirmary worker, when he spotted Mia and Sonia. He read Sonia’s face and spoke without preamble—unknowingly echoing Mia.

  “We will find them,” he said simply. “There will be fieldworkers at the relocation camps; there will be observers.” He pointed at the computers across the room, slowly lighting up. “And there will be reports.” Then he turned back around and proceeded to bring one more computer to life.

  * * *

  • • •

  The news of the president’s stunning decision to abide by a congressional vote, stop the burnings and relocations, and bring Beckwith home in the bargain leaked informally before the official leak. He was politically inexperienced enough not just to have discussed a matter so sensitive in as buzzing a hive as a Washington dinner party, but to have discussed it in a conversational tone. There were uncounted people in the room who knew uncounted people in the press, and it was certain that someone would pass the word fast.

  When that word did pass, the media jumped on it, reporting it all but universally as a presidential concession and a victory for the rogue astronaut—exactly the spin the administration didn’t want to put on the story. The White House pushed back, releasing a statement that it had hoped to get out first, describing the move as “a potential way forward that could serve the twin interests of saving lives and enhancing national security.”

  But the pundits were having none of it. Commentators in favor of intervention called the president’s move a “stunning capitulation” and a “White House surrender.” A Washington Post columnist described it as “a good start from a weakened president.”

  The president’s own party was even harder on him, with its most industry-friendly factions calling him alternately a cow
ard, a turncoat, a quisling, and, inevitably, Neville Chamberlain, though when the occasional reporter asked them what they meant by that, they could only mumble something about Munich and nothing more.

  It was the turncoat charge Beckwith first saw when she awakened that morning to an open laptop in her sleep pod with a headline screaming, “PRESIDENT BOWS TO ASTRONAUT. BASE ENRAGED.” She tore through the story, then another, then another, piecing together enough from all of the different takes on the same development that she thought she had a realistic sense of it. It was encouraging news—but encouraging was all it was until she learned more. She toggled open her air-to-ground link.

  “Houston, station,” she said.

  “Copy, station,” came the voice of a Capcom she did not immediately recognize. Before she could say more, the voice said, “Stand by one.” The line went silent, and a moment later, Lee Jasper took the Capcom’s place.

  “You get your newspaper delivery?” he asked her.

  “I did.”

  “So you heard the word from Washington?”

  “I did,” she repeated.

  “You check your email yet?”

  “No.”

  “You should. Message for you.”

  “From whom?” Beckwith asked.

  “Just read it.”

  “Copy.”

  “And, Walli . . .” Jasper began before she could go. “Walli Bee . . .”

  “Listening.”

  “Do what’s smart.”

  “Thank you, Jasper,” she answered.

  She signed off, turned to her screen, and opened her email. There were dozens of messages in her routine inbox—none of which jumped out at her in any way—but there was a single new arrival in her encrypted directory, which was used for confidential communications with NASA. She opened it with equal parts happy anticipation and creeping dread and then closed her eyes in relief when she saw it was from Jerry Ullage, the NASA house counsel and the astronauts’ advocate.

  The reports in the press were true, he told her, and she should believe what the president was offering. Connie Polk herself had called Ullage before dawn to talk to him about the outlines of a deal. She stressed that under no circumstances could anything she said be construed as a formal offer since Beckwith was still in violation of multiple criminal laws. A plea agreement could not even be considered until a suspect had surrendered—and Beckwith should make no mistake that her return would constitute a surrender.

  Still, Washington, Europe, and even Moscow were aware of Beckwith’s growing popularity, and they were, for now at least, reluctant to get crosswise with that. Tokyo was the lone holdout. They would probably file an indictment, but as long as no harm came to their Kibo, they might not seek extradition. If Beckwith simply accepted that she would have to cross Japan off any future travel plans, that problem could go away too.

  Polk mentioned the mild penalties the president had raised, adding the inducement that Beckwith could retain her pilot’s license so she could earn a living in commercial aviation. Finally, Polk stressed that from her personal reading of the president, she knew he was sincere about being open to compromise on the intervention—not a large-scale mobilization that would halt all the killing and burning, but enough to scare Bobo-deCorte into slowing down and pulling back, creating room for diplomacy to work. Certainly, the congressional vote would have to go the right way, with a two-thirds, veto-proof majority in both chambers approving intervention—since the president’s base would abandon him entirely if he didn’t veto the measure if he could—and that was by no means assured, what with anti-intervention lawmakers having their own voters to face. But the outlines of a deal were clearly in place.

  Beckwith considered Ullage’s email and then read through a sampling of messages on her home page and her Twitter feed, nearly all of which were from some of the millions of people who had signed on with the September 18 Coalition. None of them believed a word the president said; all of them urged her to reject any deal. Nothing Beckwith did would satisfy everybody.

  All at once, she felt utterly spent, deeply sad, and terribly alone. To her own surprise, her eyes began to fill with tears.

  In zero-g, her tears could not fall and instead formed a heavy film in her eyes, which she had to wipe on her sleeve twice before her vision cleared. She collected herself, logged onto her laptop phone, and dialed a number in Arizona. A woman’s voice answered.

  “Mama?” Beckwith said simply.

  “Belkie,” her mother said.

  “I’m glad you’re there, Mama.”

  “Would you like me to put your father on?”

  Before Beckwith could answer, her father picked up an extension.

  “Hello, B,” he said.

  “Pop,” Beckwith answered.

  “We saw the news this morning, about the president.”

  “Yes,” Beckwith said. “I just learned about it.”

  “What do you think?” her father asked.

  “I don’t know. I was surprised—and a little relieved. How would you feel if I came home?”

  Her mother answered before her father could. “How would you feel if you came home?” she asked. It was what she was sure to say, and it was one of the reasons Beckwith had called in the first place.

  “I’m trying to decide that,” Beckwith answered. “I feel like I should stay.”

  “You can’t bring back the people who have died already,” her mother said.

  “I know that.”

  “Maybe you’ve done all you can then,” her father said. “So now you come home.”

  “I promised I wouldn’t,” Beckwith said. “Not without a real intervention—and not until the president actually acts instead of just promising.”

  “Then that’s your answer,” her mother said. “You stay.”

  That too was what Beckwith had expected to hear, but the answer wouldn’t stick. Beckwith was not afraid of much, but she did fear herself a little: her ego, her stubbornness, her streak of conqueror’s syndrome. The president of the United States had offered her a deal. A nation had shifted at her command. Surely that was enough. Who the hell, she asked herself, did she think she was?

  “I think . . .” Beckwith began, “I think maybe I should accept the offer.”

  “All right, B,” her father said.

  “Mama,” Beckwith asked, “do you agree?”

  “I do, Belkie.”

  “OK then,” Beckwith said, with a wan smile she was glad her parents could not see. “I’ll make plans.”

  She cut the connection, radioed Moscow, and asked the Capcom on the console to get Zhirov. He was off-shift, sleeping in the cosmonaut quarters on-site, but the controller went to fetch him. When he came on the line, Beckwith did not say hello.

  “Vasily,” she said simply, “please send your Soyuz.”

  “All right, Walli Belka,” he answered. “I am very glad.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The news of Beckwith’s agreement—or concession or capitulation or surrender or victory or defeat, depending on who was doing the reporting—spread even faster than the news of the president’s had. She was called a coward by some people, which hurt, and a variety of foul names by others, which didn’t. “Turncoat” and “quisling” were again popular, as was “Neville Chamberlain” with the same vague hand wave to Munich. A fair share of people—though well less than half—praised her pragmatism, and that helped, but only a little.

  When the station made its next southwest-to-northeast pass over South America, she fired up Zoe and Ivy and scanned the Brazilian Amazon. The relocation camps in western Brazil were now large enough that they cut easily discernible brown rectangles in the green forest canopy, with wide roads running to them like arteries feeding sickly tissue. Estimates from fieldworkers and human rights groups were that the camps were capable of housing a collective 32
0,000 refugees, and there was every indication that they’d soon be filled to that capacity.

  But there were reasons for hope. Since the president’s announcement leaked, human rights workers reported that military activity had been paused in numerous parts of the jungle, and from her orbital perch, Beckwith could see just ten major fires burning across the jungle. In an ordinary year, that would be considered an environmental outrage; in the midst of the Consolidation, it represented progress.

  Before long, Moscow would begin sending her details on the arrival of the Soyuz, but she knew them already. The spacecraft would be ready to fly in less than two days. Beckwith would be expected to help dock the ship if needed when it arrived. She would be allotted three more orbits, or four and half hours, to secure the station, stow her gear, and review what she needed to know for an automatic reentry.

  That was the plan, and that would have remained the plan had one more leak not come out of the fundraising dinner the president had attended at the rich man’s home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington. He had lingered longer at the dinner than he intended to, deciding to tuck into a chocolate mousse cake topped with vanilla ice cream, and then to allow himself another helping, along with two cups of very strong coffee.

  Rich food, a few slugs of caffeine, and attentive company tended to loosen his tongue as much as alcohol did. No sooner did Connie Polk pass up her own dessert, make her apologies for keeping early-bird hours, and leave than the president became loose-tongued indeed. What he said to the aide who had taken Polk’s seat was overheard by three different people, who all took the better part of the night to decide what to do with what they had heard, and who all decided the next afternoon that what they would do was leak it to the press.

  Not long after Beckwith had made clear her plans to come home, word crashed onto the news sites that what the president was heard to say to the aide at the conclusion of dessert was, “Let this all sit till the space girl comes home. Release a statement that I’ll support a veto-proof majority, but back-channel the caucus that they can vote any way they want. That ought to put two-thirds out of reach. The jungle’s four thousand miles away, football season is coming, and no one will care by then. With luck we can slow-walk the whole thing till the midterms.”