2030

by Albert Brooks

  “We would consider another arrangement to help you rebuild one of the greatest cities in the world.” The room was silent as the Nextrons spit out what the Premier had just said.

  “What would that be?” the President asked.

  “We would be your partner.”

  “Our partner? I’m sorry. I don’t understand exactly.”

  “We would be your partner. We would help you rebuild your great city, we would shoulder most of the cost, and we would own the city with you when all was said and done. Fifty-fifty.”

  The President looked over at Susanna; Susanna looked at the rest of the delegation. The Chinese were looking straight ahead and many of them were smiling. The President wasn’t even sure what he had just heard. “I’m sorry, Mr. Premier. Please tell me again what you are proposing.”

  “Mr. President, we have the ability, unlike any nation on earth, to do massive construction quickly and with high quality. We have manpower second to none, and I am sure you have seen the architecture and building results throughout China in the last two decades. Where one country might have five hundred men on a job site, we have five thousand. We would treat Los Angeles as one of our own great cities and take pride in helping you make it better than ever. We will supply the needed manpower and materials and know-how and do what you desire, and we will charge you next to nothing. All we want to do is be partners in the result.”

  “I’m not clear what you mean by partners.”

  “Partners. When Southern California is up and running, it can generate more revenue than almost any area in the world. My goodness, from Los Angeles alone, you must collect countless billions of dollars in federal taxes. Not to mention all the fees you charge. My people tell me that it costs more to bring ships into your West Coast than any other port in the world.” Biao smiled. “So we would do the work and become your partner.”

  Everyone looked at the President. The American delegation was speechless. They had no idea what Bernstein’s reaction would be. “Partners for how long?”

  “Forever. Partners. Fifty-fifty. As we bring Los Angeles back to life and make it the income generator that it always was meant to be, we will split whatever revenue you collect from your people.”

  The President looked down the table. The Americans looked back. Bernstein couldn’t read their expressions exactly, but he could tell there was some interest in this.

  “Mr. Premier, if you asked me how this meeting would have turned out, I could have listed a hundred possibilities and this one would not have even been a distant thought. If you would be so gracious, I would like to break for a few hours and talk with my team and meet again this afternoon. Obviously we are not going to come back with specifics; it’s only to see if this idea you propose is workable in any fashion. Do you have any problem with taking a break at this time?”

  “Absolutely not,” the Premier said. “I was told there was a fine horseshoe area up here. I love horseshoes. Could someone show me where that might be?”

  “Yes, sir.” The President turned to John Van Dyke. “Get him some horseshoes.”

  When the American delegation met privately, there was a shocking lack of being shocked. Many people, including Susanna Colbert, thought this was an interesting and possibly workable idea. “Talk to me,” the President said.

  “Let’s look at raw facts here, sir,” Susanna answered. “There is nowhere to get this money except from China. Nowhere else to borrow it from and no ability to print it without going under. If they will take the brunt of the cost in rebuilding the city, then sharing the profits might turn out to be an advantage for us. Even if we allowed them to take half, which I think is too much and can be negotiated downward, how long would it take Los Angeles to generate fifty trillion dollars, since half of that is what we would be borrowing? A hundred years? And maybe we don’t make it forever. Maybe they will agree to a set period of time.”

  One of the undersecretaries, Mark Holmes, stood up. “Did we go insane? Are we really talking about letting the Chinese own one of our cities? Have we been drugged?”

  “Is this any different from borrowing twenty trillion?” John Van Dyke asked. “Don’t they own us even more by loaning us that kind of money? Maybe there is a huge advantage here.”

  “What would that be?” the President asked.

  “Well, first of all, if they worked here and knew that in order to get their money back Los Angeles had to be profitable and peaceful and all that good stuff, then they would be working toward that goal. Hell, I don’t think China would ever attack us if they had a fifty percent stake in our biggest city.”

  “Why not just give them half the country?” Mark Holmes shot back. “Then they would be sure never to attack.”

  People laughed, but Van Dyke was serious.

  “Listen, they’re not asking for half the country. We came to them, remember? They don’t need our cash, we need theirs. So what are the choices? I see none.”

  The President stood up and paced around the table. “In a strange way, this could work in our favor. John is right. The biggest protection against a threat is having a long-term investment in your enemy. If we were just borrowing money, the Chinese could eventually call our debt or cut us off or have more hold over us than if we were partners. And they’re right. They can build like no one else. From the worst disaster our country has ever seen, in a few years, we would have one of the greatest cities of the world. It would still be here, it would still be protected by our military, it would still be American, but its income would be shared. Why is that a bad thing?”

  And most of the delegation agreed. They would bargain for a better deal, try and make it a fixed term instead of forever, and put in all the security language that was needed to make people feel safe. But it was this or nothing. And with gangs roaming the streets of Los Angeles, with the rest of the country’s morale falling to a low never before seen as they watched Southern California rot, something had to be done and done quickly. If nothing else, the Chinese knew the meaning of the word “quickly.”

  And so it was decided. A new road was going to be opened in the history of the United States. The President authorized his team to take as much time as needed and work out a deal. “Try to get better than fifty-fifty and try to put a fifty-year term on it,” he said, “but work it out. We have no alternative. Make it palatable and I will sell it to the country.”

  The President walked out of the meeting to find the premier of China throwing horseshoes, and unless he was placing them he was doing quite well. Four shoes were on the post and three were close by. “You’re very good,” the President said.

  “And yet I hate horses,” Biao answered, smiling.

  “Well, you must like their shoes. In any case, let’s work out your offer.”

  “I am very pleased. Do you require any more meetings here?”

  “I don’t think so. My team and yours will go to work immediately to hammer out the details. Be gentle with us, because I have to sell it to a nation.”

  “Of course. Do you mind if my party stays the weekend? We are enjoying ourselves.”

  “Stay as long as you wish. But we’re not selling Camp David to you no matter how much you like it.”

  Biao laughed out loud. He was a sucker for a good joke.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The FBI had identified the San Diego suicide bomber as Jeffrey J. Anderson of Montgomery, Alabama, a man who had no previous criminal record but went nuts after he was fired from a paper mill. He drove out West to his father’s retirement home, which he was paying for, and killed twenty people. He left a rambling note, and when Max Leonard read it, he got a chill.

  To whom it may concern. I loved my parents but I could not take care of them on the low wages I was paid. All of my money went to them and when my mom died the insurance company did not pay the policy claiming she drove a car intoxicated which she did not. My life was worthless only to get up every day to take care of my parents with no regard for me or the fact I will neve
r become a parent because I cannot afford even one child. My father was greedy never offering to pay his own way and this country must take care of all people including the younger people and offer a quality of life for everyone. I hope my father is in heaven at least there I will not have to support him unless heaven is run by the United States and then I would be expecting to get a bill.

  Max was floored. He showed the letter to Kathy. “Can you believe how articulate he was?”

  “I don’t know if I would call it ‘articulate,’” she said, “but it certainly was heartfelt.” And as much as Kathy did not like to see innocent people die, she had to admit she identified with this man’s dilemma. She was going to be paying off her father’s debt for years and years, and he wasn’t even living. Still, innocent people were dead and she couldn’t quite resolve that. “It’s a good note,” she said. “Although I don’t think that kind of violence was necessary.”

  “And yet,” Max told her, “people are reading this all over the world.”

  “Do you think it will change anything?”

  “Not until these words come from someone hugely important.”

  “Like who?”

  “The President. The Speaker of the House. A Nobel Prize–winning scientist. Someone like that.”

  “How’s that going to happen?”

  “Well, baby, that’s exactly what I’m working on.”

  * * *

  Older people were spooked by the rambling letter. AARP got almost two hundred thousand contacts from their members, who were, not surprisingly, petrified. There was obviously enough truth in the man’s note that plenty of seniors thought it might awaken a sleeping giant.

  Robert Golden requested an urgent meeting with the White House. He was invited to have breakfast the next morning with John Van Dyke, a measure of how important a political force AARP was.

  Golden was furious. “The President needs to weigh in on this. He has said nothing. This could spiral out of control.”

  “The President knows this is serious, Bob, but we have to be cautious about speaking out too strongly at this juncture,” Van Dyke said.

  “They’re shooting up buses, our building was bombed, and now twenty people just died and a note was left that our membership is shitting in their pants over.”

  “Don’t they shit in their pants normally?”

  “That’s not funny, John. There’s nothing humorous here. We need to hear from the top.”

  “Bob, we know from experience that as soon as presidential attention is given to something like this, then the kooks and the nuts get energized. We are working on this at the highest level. The FBI is all over it, but if the President comes out with a speech to the nation, he raises it to a national emergency and we can’t do that.”

  “But it is an emergency.”

  “No, it isn’t. Los Angeles is an emergency. This is not the same.”

  “We’re scared, John. I’m scared. I go to work every day and worry whether I’m going to get shot.”

  “You won’t get shot. You have protection. Do you need more?”

  “No. I need the President to say this has got to stop.”

  “At this point that can do more harm than good. You’ll have to trust me.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if they bombed the White House.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. But they didn’t. I hear you, and I will convey everything to the President. But I will tell you that a speech to the nation is not going to happen at this juncture.”

  * * *

  The President lay awake at night. Normally, he was blessed with the ability to sleep, and he had a doctor on staff with every sleeping medication known to man if he needed it.

  Sleeping medications had taken great leaps in the 2020s. The only side effects associated with the new sleeping drugs were that once you got a good night’s sleep using them, it was hard to ever go back. They put you to sleep, you didn’t wake up in the middle of the night and eat or drive or make calls you were embarrassed about, and you didn’t feel groggy in the morning. It was like an anesthetic in a pill, and once people tried them, they wanted them forever.

  President Bernstein prided himself on his nonaddictive drug behavior. He used the medicine as often as needed but forced himself to sleep without it, just to strengthen his character. Betsy had taken them nightly for four years and had no interest in strengthening anything. She took them according to how many hours of sleep she desired. The pills were so specific that they came in six-, eight-, ten-, and twelve-hour doses, and they were amazingly accurate. In early tests, three thousand people who took the eight-hour dose slept within fifteen minutes of that time, most waking up on the later side. The time-release element in the medicine was brand new, a patent of a German pharmaceutical company. Their commercial had an animated alarm clock that looked at the pill to get the right time.

  The President used to wake his wife up in the middle of the night when he really needed to talk, but once she was on the medication he stopped doing that. At three A.M. she was useless. She would pretend to listen and snore at the same time and remember nothing of the conversation the next day. And that was what started his late-night calls to Susanna Colbert.

  Susanna slept without medication, only taking it when she traveled long distances. The first time the President called her was on a Thursday at one in the morning. It was the week after the Camp David summit. He wasn’t sure if her husband was in town, but he thought the worst that would happen was that if her husband answered he would just say it was the President and it was important. After all, presidents are allowed to wake people up. But Susanna answered the call. She sounded out of it. “Yes?”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Who is it?”

  “The President.” She jumped up.

  “What is it? Is something wrong?”

  “No. I didn’t know if you were sleeping or how late you stayed up. I didn’t want to wake your husband. I’m sorry if this is too late.”

  “My husband is traveling. We have separate bedrooms anyway. Actually, I fell asleep with tea in my hand and if you hadn’t called I probably would have scalded myself.”

  “Well, then, I’m sort of a hero.”

  “Yes. Is everything all right? Is there trouble?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking of so many things.”

  “Camp David?”

  “Yes. And my mother. For some reason when I think of my mother, I think of you.”

  “Well, I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or not.”

  “It is. Why do you have separate bedrooms?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I was just curious.”

  “We’ve had separate bedrooms for years. I don’t even remember how it started, I’m just so used to it now. I think because I would work in bed so late that it kept him up. It was something like that.”

  “I understand.” And he did.

  “Speaking of your mother, I was going to go and see her tomorrow, if that’s still okay. I would just go alone.”

  “It’s fine with me. And you’re absolutely sure you want to?”

  “Yes, I really do. I want to see it for myself. I didn’t tell you before, but the people who own the facility she’s in are former investors of mine.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “They own something like two hundred permanent-care facilities. It’s a very big business. And they were also involved with The Card.”

  The President said nothing for a moment, but he was so impressed with her. What is it? Maybe it was seeing the softness of a woman with the cunning of a man that was so enticing. So many women in power came off as bossy or ballsy, at least to him, but not this one. “Well,” the President said, “I think it would be very nice if you wanted to do that. You could give me your thoughts. In any case, I’ll let you go back to sleep.”

  “You’re going to wake me up and dump me?”

  He laughed. “Okay, let’s talk about Camp David. Am I going to
be known for taking down the United States?”

  “Quite the contrary. I know the pressure you must feel, but there is no other way. Change is scary and unpredictable and that is why most presidents don’t want it. But fate has given this moment to you. In my opinion, sir, not doing this would cause a knockout blow to the country. I think the choice was handed to you and I have to say I think you reacted brilliantly.”

  “Will you tell Congress that for me?”

  “Yes.” Susanna laughed. “I’ll take care of it in the morning. But you know something? You’re not going to have trouble with them. Everyone in Congress knows the mess we’re in. There’s no more raising taxes or cutting loopholes. Without something this bold we’re going down, and they know it. This is our rescue. And yes, if you need me to go up there and talk to every single one of them, I will be happy to, and quite frankly, I expect to.”

  The President’s smile was so big he thought it would wake up his wife in the other room. “Thank you, Susanna. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Mr. President?”

  “Yes?”

  “Call anytime.”

  “I will. Good night.”

  Bernstein wanted to talk to this woman for hours. He hadn’t had this feeling since high school.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Dallas, Texas, was the site of the annual stockholders’ meeting for Immunicate. It was in October, a week before Halloween. Max Leonard knew he had to be there. He was now obsessed with Sam Mueller and felt this was one more chance to hear him speak and, possibly, put a plan in place. He was going to drive to Texas and asked Kathy if she wanted to come.

  Kathy had never brought up the wall in Max’s bedroom, but before she could drive to another Sam Mueller event she felt it was imperative. She decided to pay Max another surprise visit. She spoke to him early in the afternoon and he said he was working at home but would love to have dinner, so she waited a few hours and drove to his house at four o’clock. She would tell him she was starving and ask him if he wanted to go early.