Solstice

by David Hewson

  Briefly, she considered taking a swig from the bottle — for old times' sake — but common sense prevailed and she tucked the bottle back into the vent for another day.

  It was a two-minute wait outside the S&T offices in the new wing. Over at the original Agency building that dated back to 1961 she could see a long black limo pulling away, two shapes in the back. Levine and Barnside, she guessed. They could have waited if they'd wanted.

  A fawn Chevrolet came up, the driver anonymous behind overlarge Ray-Bans. Helen climbed in, aware that the day was so hot and airless she was sweating and short of breath before she even hit the seat.

  When the car was out of the security gates of Langley and mingling with the flow 'of traffic headed for the city, she closed her eyes and tried to picture the day ahead.

  CHAPTER 11

  A Kind of Love

  Yasgur's Farm, 1242 UTC

  'Slowly, Joe,' Charley Pascal gasped, breathless, feeling his hardness move too quickly inside her. 'I don't get so much any more.'

  The lithe, strong shape shifted position, his pale, half-Japanese face unsmiling, distant, though she didn't like to think of that. His rigidity became more still. Charley Pascal felt this familiar rushing of the blood, the growing wetness between them, and focused on herself, the way she always did at this point in the act, wondered how different this time was from the last, if you could measure it in terms of the electricity, the moistness between their entwined, coupling bodies.

  Joe Katayama was poised over her so carefully, palms down on the bed, back arched, making sure to distribute his weight away from her body just enough to slacken the pain, but not so far as to take away the sparking ecstasy that ran between them. She remembered, when this began, how she'd gently move beneath him, placing the soles of her feet on his thrusting buttocks, extemporizing with the circular motion of his bucking, rearing body.

  But that was before.

  The best she could do now was touch his chest gently, delicately with her hands, feel for his nipples, hard and tiny, surrounded by circlets of hair, stroke the nape of his neck, hope to taste the rime of sweat there, place her fingers in his mouth, moving in and out across the moistness of his tongue, like a mirror image of this older, larger thing that conjoined their bodies, pushing her hard into the soft white mattress, generating the tinny squeaking of springs from the old wood-framed bed.

  This time, she thought, it is different. I won't come. I won't get close.

  The illness was moving with such speed now, hand in glove with the events that were shaping beyond the closed wooden door of their room, elsewhere in Yasgur's Farm. The discrete shaft of time that was what remained of her life stood in front of her, dwindling by the minute, and, as it shortened, the physicality of the world diminished, putting in its place some filmy, ethereal appreciation of the subtle, peripheral parts of her existence, unseen before the illness came into her head, began to infect her body.

  She closed her eyes (trying, in her mind's eye, to bring the physicality back into their fucking) and felt, somewhere inside her partner's writhing, frantic body, the distant god Gaia work its way into his blood, firing the hardness that burrowed deep inside her. There were no thoughts in her head then, just the sudden, urgent need to hold his sweating flesh, to pull him farther into herself, all the while screaming, screaming.

  Joe Katayama released himself and she opened her eyes. The warmth ran between them, so copious she could feel it draining from her, feel the dampness coming through the plain cotton sheet.

  She reached up with what strength she had left, took his head, forced her tongue into his mouth, tasting the strength of his life, wondering how much this sudden, unexpected shock of a climax so strange, yet so powerful, might have milked her own diminishing store of energy.

  He moved slowly inside her again, hardening. She pushed him away.

  'No, Joe,' she said. 'Too much for me now.'

  He stared at her with his dark, expressionless, half-open eyes and it perplexed her how little she could sense of what was going on behind this flat, unsmiling face.

  'You were different,' he said, in a flat Middle American voice, the echo of concern behind the monotone, trying to break through. 'Maybe you're getting better.'

  'No,' she answered. 'I don't get better, Joe. We both know that. I just change. We're all changing.'

  As he drew back from her, she felt this hard extension of him leave her body, and wondered at the moistness that it left behind. Not all of it was Joe's.

  They lay still on the bed, silent, staring at each other, listening to the breeze outside, feeling the stain on the sheet grow to a dry deadness on their skin. After a few minutes, from somewhere close by, they heard the low, soft sound of people talking, happy, a tiny undulation of applause.

  He watched her, waiting. She said nothing.

  'You think something's happened,' he said finally.

  'No. I know,' she said, and wished he spoke French; it would, perhaps, help break this communications block that sometimes lay so obviously between them. 'I never doubted it, Joe. We're agents. We're channels for something that is so powerful, so real it can't be stopped. It rolls forward, like night after day. Like a tide that's come to cleanse us. Can't you feel it?'

  'Sure,' he said flatly, and she knew he was lying.

  In the end it didn't matter. Understanding wasn't essential. Just acceptance. And she was surrounded by disciples now, ones who didn't question this course they'd chosen. The world was waking up, and in the places she looked, the places that found her too, there was no shortage of followers.

  'I need to join them,' she said.

  He said nothing, picked her up in his arms, carried her into the bathroom, ran the water, tested the heat while she sat in a wicker chair, watching him fondly. When it was full, he lifted her into the bath, joined her, washed her all over, let her do as much for him too as she could.

  'So sweet,' she said, stroking his damp hair. 'None of this could have happened without you, Joe.'

  'You got inspiration, I got contacts,' he said, a brief smile there.

  'A leader needs lieutenants,' she said. 'A vision without a means to its completion is just a dream.'

  And such dreams, she thought.

  He nodded, lifted her from the bath, towelled her dry, dressed her in the clothes she wanted, a plain cotton shirt, comfortable linen slacks. Then took her in his arms and placed her in the wheelchair.

  As he bent over her, she kissed him.

  'I know this isn't love,' she said. 'I know it's something else, Joe. Sympathy?'

  The dark hooded eyes betrayed no expression. She felt guilty for pushing him this far. He was happier when he didn't have to think. He liked a role, a challenge. He didn't want to have to work out why, just how.

  'I don't know what love is, Charley,' he said, and seemed genuinely puzzled. 'I'd do anything for you. I'd die. Is that love?'

  'Yes,' she replied, and knew that evened up the lies. Such strength, she thought. There really was nothing he wouldn't do if it was needed.

  'I want you to be happy as you go through this, Charley,' he said. 'It's important for all of us.'

  'I know,' she said, and thought: He still doesn't understand. This is the fire from heaven, this is nature reclaiming its place in the order of things. Her own happiness was irrelevant.

  A smile came on her face as he pushed her into the big control room, filled with the whir of the workstations, the quiet low hum of excitement. In her wheelchair, dressed in white, Charley Pascal looked radiant. There were eleven men and women there, all in clean white shirts and pale slacks, applauding as she came in. Tina Blackshire pulled herself away from the screen, grinned at her, acknowledged Charley's smile in return.

  'Well?' Charley asked.

  'It's down. It was them,' she said. 'We monitored the first message.'

  'Good.' Charley nodded.

  She looked at the clock on the wall, wondered about the zenith, how best to calculate its precise arrival.
>
  'Let's not get overexcited. We've work to do. This is only the beginning.'

  Tina Blackshire bent back into the computer. The rest of them moved over to charts and other monitors.

  Charley pushed the wheelchair over to the window, measuring the strength in her arms (diminishing, she thought). They had everything they needed. Food. Information. The high-speed data links that were, to all intents and purposes, a virtual world, one they could enter and leave at will, with no one seeing their footprints. One they could, when the time was right, remake, forever. This place had no need of fixed geographical boundaries. You could touch a button in Hong Kong and make it flip a switch in Rio. There was a harsh, electronic oneness to it that was its own unmaking, and it removed the need for a physical presence when a virtual one served the purpose better.

  Besides, Charley thought as she stared out the window, there were other reasons for staying under this single roof (not hiding, she thought, it couldn't be called that).

  Outside the day looked as if it were aflame.

  CHAPTER 12

  The White House

  Washington, 1342 UTC

  Helen Wagner was rushed through the security entrance of the White House in a matter of seconds, then greeted by a smartly dressed middle-aged woman in a grey suit.

  'Your colleagues are waiting for you in the Vice President's office, Miss Wagner,' the woman said quietly. 'He will be joining you once he gets back from the Attorney General.'

  The woman wouldn't look directly at her. Helen was sure she'd been crying.

  'I'll take you there.'

  'Thank you.'

  Her head spinning, she followed into a large lobby where a group of people bustled around, papers in hand, none looking at each other, no one saying much at all, and Helen thought she just might be dreaming all this. The scene had some surreal, inconsequential atmosphere to it.

  She was beckoned into a larger office. Levine and Barnside sat there, with two other men, one she recognized as Dan Fogerty, the head of the FBI.

  Levine nodded at her.

  'Helen Wagner. Acting head of S&T. As of this morning. You're going to have to pick up on this one as we go along, Wagner. Hell, we all are. This is Dan Fogerty. I guess you know that. And Graeme Burnley. Right now the closest we've got to a White House Chief of Staff.'

  Burnley was thin, with the kind of tidily manicured haircut she always associated with Washington lobbyists. He looked no more than twenty-five. His eyes were pink and watery.

  'Hi,' Fogerty said, and waved her to a seat. She looked out the window. The White House lawn was still green, the kind of bright, artificial green you got when you watered things in a drought. In the distance a crowd seemed to be assembling: shorts and T-shirts, standard-issue uniform for the searing weather that seemed to be locked in for the duration of the summer.

  The door opened and Tim Clarke walked in, shooed them to stay in their seats, and said, 'Let's cut to the quick, gentlemen. I know the outline. And I know I'm breaking the rules here. Right after this I go into a meeting of the National Security Council and doubtless you think I should have gone there first, let you brief them, and do things by the book. Well, to hell with the book. If what I think has happened, I'm mad and I'm looking for answers. So who's going to start giving me them?'

  Helen couldn't help but stare at him. Clarke had been a sensation in American politics. Lionized for his role in the field in the Gulf War, a successful businessman after leaving the Army, then a fast-rising conservative force among Republicans as his wealth and ambitions grew. It was a classic rise from a working-class American childhood, and the only thing that set Clarke apart was his race. He was black, the son of emigrant Jamaicans, and the West Indies twang still surfaced in his voice from time to time.

  All the same, had the Republicans stood a chance in the election, Clarke would never have made it onto the ticket with Bill Rollinson. But everyone — everyone — knew the Republicans were non-starters from the outset. Until the scandal machine resurfaced one final, fatal time. The Rollinson-Clarke team went from laughingstock to racing certainties in the space of two months, and swept the board when November came. She'd watched Clarke on TV, feeling so proud that a black American had finally reached so far, then checked herself. It was obvious why a black man was there. The white guys had screwed up so badly they were unelectable, so no one cared who the running mate was. And as she watched Clarke move uncomfortably into office — and, according to newspaper reports, get sidelined into speech-making — she guessed the same thought was going through his head too. There was something too pure, almost to the point of naivete about the man. He didn't push his family to the fore. She couldn't even remember the name of his wife, a pretty, slim black woman, who was always pictured slightly in front of their one child, a boy, as if she didn't want him to step into the limelight and risk getting burned. Clarke somehow didn't fit, and it wasn't just his colour. He lacked the sophistication, the guile that everyone took for granted in Washington.

  Levine cleared his throat and said, 'I think this falls to me, sir. And I wish it didn't. At 0449 our time we lost contact with Air Force One on the way back from Tokyo. She was routed for Geneva. The last confirmed position was one hundred eighty miles east of Irkutsk. We keep constant radar surveillance on Air Force One whenever she's in range as a standard security measure. The indications are that she was in some kind of collision with a British passenger jet around one hundred twenty miles east of the city, but that's only half the story. Somehow both planes were downed by a single phenomenon. We have the same report confirmed from local radar too. They're sending out the Army to look for debris, and they've agreed we can airlift in our own team too. Some pieces of the planes are turning up already, according to the Russians. It's a mess, nothing much bigger than a passenger door, and that burned so bad they don't know whether it's ours or from the British plane. We have a mission on the way, people from the FAA along to take a look. This is Russian sovereign territory but we already have a commitment from the Kremlin that we can take in pretty much who we like so long as we don't take advantage of the situation.'

  Clarke shook his head. He was a handsome man, thought Helen. He wore close-cropped, military-style hair, gold-rimmed glasses, and a sober, dark suit, and he was big in the flesh, at least six feet tall and muscular. But there was a genuine spark of emotion in his eyes, more than you found in most politicians. She'd seen that on TV. Here, six feet away, it was even more obvious.

  'Any hope?'

  Levine shook his head. 'All the indications are that both airplanes were totally destroyed in some kind of explosion on impact at around six thousand feet. We'll look, but it's impractical to think anyone survived.'

  'Jesus,' Clarke groaned.

  Helen watched him. You could forgive someone for losing it a little at a time like this. Who knew what LBJ was really like when they told him Kennedy was dead? And this was somehow much worse. So distant, so huge.

  'Run me down the names, Graeme.'

  Burnley looked at a sheet of paper on his knee, but it was obvious he knew these all by heart.

  'The President and First Lady. The Chief of Staff and Mrs Sawyer. The Secretary of State for Trade and Mrs Olsen. Congressmen Simons and Bernhard, Congresswoman Lilley. Plus fifteen White House staff members and a crew of seven on the plane.'

  'And?'

  Burnley looked lost. 'Sir?'

  "The other plane?'

  He was lost for words. Levine interjected. 'There were three hundred thirty-two passengers and eight crew, sir. We have nationals, most are European.'

  Clarke shook his head. 'Almost four hundred people dead. Someone want to tell me why?'

  'Sir,' Graeme Burnley interrupted. 'There are formalities we have to deal with first.'

  'They're done, Graeme. I spoke to the Attorney General. I get sworn in right after this meeting. They're working on a TV broadcast right now. Formalities can wait. I want to know what the hell happened, and most of all why we just got rob
bed of one hell of a President.'

  'They go beyond that, sir. We need to be thinking about the funeral. The arrangements… this will be, effectively, a world summit and you will be leading it. We need to set agendas now.'

  'No, we don't,' Clarke said immediately. 'Dammit, Graeme, Bill Rollinson was a man. We have to bury him and his family, for sure. And this nation is going to have to grieve for him too, all of us. But we can leave the politics out of it, for now anyway.'

  They nodded, in a way, she thought, that said: You have to make these noises, sure, we know. But everyone understood how cool relations between Rollinson and Clarke had been recently, most of it revolving around how Clarke had been sidelined in government. Rollinson would push the black ticket so far, it seemed, and then no further. And as it turned out, in doing so he'd given America probably the last thing he'd ever expected: the first black president in its history.

  'And I still want to know what happened.'

  'Sir,' Helen said, and she tried not to blush when they all stared at her, 'I did some work on the Mauritius crash last year. When you get down to it there are really only three possibilities in these situations. Either there was some malfunction in the air — mechanical or navigational; or there was a device that destroyed one or both airplanes, or possibly damaged one so much that it crashed into the other; or the planes were destroyed by an outside agency. A missile, ground-to-air fire, enemy action.'

  'The rest of you I know,' Clarke said gruffly, peering at her. 'No one introduced you, lady.'

  Levine leaned forward. 'My apologies, sir. Helen Wagner here is acting head of Science and Technology at the Agency. Just started today.'

  Clarke smiled thinly. 'Wagner. I know the name, I guess you get sick of hearing people say that.'

  'The first time is okay,' Helen replied, unsmiling, feeling the eyes in the room upon her.

  'First day on the job. Baptism of fire,' Levine added.