The Great Divide

by T. Davis Bunn

  Against the backdrop of thundering machinery, Marcus inspected the New Horizons facility. Despite the raw scarring of recent construction, the site had the air of a high-tech campus. To the east stood the oldest buildings, now dwarfed by a behemoth clad in brick and smoked glass. A sign planted in the landscaped foreground declared it to be the new central distribution facility. The two walls he could see were embossed with New Horizons emblems, bright gold stars streaming silver-clad rainbows. Beneath the logos, letters three stories high shouted the latest New Horizons slogan, GET IN GEAR.

  Closest to the state road, an old wooden farmhouse and barn had been converted to corporate guest houses. The farm buildings were now connected by a pillared walkway and decorated with fruit trees and blooming trellises.

  A half dozen brick factories and warehouses covered the area to his left, all surrounded by pristine gardens and adolescent trees. To his right rose the skeletal outlines of three mammoth buildings. Each was fronted by a sign sporting the world-famous logo, followed by completion dates. The dust and the noise were as constant as the light.

  Marcus climbed back into his car and drove up the hill to the office complex. The older building was steel and marble and mirrored glass. The new structure rising to its right was twice its size. As he pulled the Blazer into a visitor’s space, he could see down through the tops of trees to where the clapboard church and ancient cemetery shone in the hot afternoon sun.

  The first thing Marcus noted when he entered the marble-clad foyer was the battery of cameras. Four of them. Two mounted in the corners behind the receptionist’s desk, one over the electric doors leading back into the building, another rotating in the center of the high ceiling. The receptionist’s desk also merited a second look—chest high and tiled like the floor. The two men behind the marble counter wore dark blue jackets and cordless telephone headsets. One was white and bulky, the other black and even bigger. Behind them, a waterfall splashed down an aluminum slide. Both men watched Marcus’ approach with blank expressions.

  The black man asked, “Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to see someone from your legal department.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “Then we can’t help you.”

  Marcus chose his words carefully. “I’m here regarding a union matter.”

  Their focus upon him tightened. “Which union are you with?”

  “None. I’m an attorney.”

  “Your name?”

  “Marcus Glenwood.”

  “Who are you representing?”

  Clearly this was not the first time they had fielded such a request. Marcus sidestepped the question. “I’d rather discuss that with someone from your legal staff.”

  The two men both possessed the thick-corded necks and sloped shoulders of serious bodybuilders. The black man pointed behind Marcus with his chin. “Wait over there.”

  Marcus retreated obediently to a series of marble benches adorned with suede pads. The corporate logo was everywhere—the pads, the walls, carved into the aluminum waterfall, tiled in mosaic into the floor. The wall opposite the entrance sported a huge television screen that played a constant stream of corporate ads, all displaying the nation’s top athletes making their hottest moves. Between each ad, the shooting-star logo showered sparks that formed the words GET IN GEAR. Flanking the television were back-lit posters covering almost every conceivable sport. The top PGA golfer squinted down the fairway to where a Chicago Bulls former guard slam-dunked a basket. Beside him twirled the women’s Olympic gold-medal figure skater. Marcus walked from picture to picture, pretending to ignore the pair of receptionists. Their eyes never turned his way, but he sensed they were constantly watching him.

  The back doors sighed open, and a bright young woman walked straight to where he stood. “Mr. Glenwood, did I get that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great.” She offered him a cheery smile and her hand. “I’m Tracy. Welcome to New Horizons.”

  “You’re not an attorney.”

  “No way. I’m a summer intern in the PR department. This is my last week. School starts next Monday.” She gave a buoyant grimace. “Back to the old grind.”

  “I asked to speak with someone from legal affairs.”

  “Hey, I know, I’m so sorry. Everybody is really tied up right now. You wouldn’t believe how busy we are.”

  “Of course.”

  “But they asked me to give you a company brochure and thank you for stopping by.” She handed over the glossy magazine. “Say, do you have a card?”

  Marcus hesitated. “I’m in the process of moving.”

  “Sure. I can understand that. I am too.” Another grimace. “That’s the breaks, right?”

  Marcus allowed her to usher him toward the outer doors. “Have you had a good time here?”

  “Oh, hey, the greatest.” The blue corporate jacket did not entirely hide her bouncing curves. “You wouldn’t believe some of the people I’ve met. Just last week I helped host Todd Rankin.” When Marcus was not suitably impressed, she added, “Quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys.”

  “I know who he is.”

  “Sure you do. Me, I’m just your basic sports nut. Guess that’s why they said I could come back next year.” She halted as the doors slid back. They were instantly surrounded by the grind of construction machinery. She offered another cheery smile and raised her voice to say, “Thanks so much for stopping by.”

  He walked back to the Blazer, climbed in, started the motor, and sat there a long moment staring down the steep drop to the little clapboard church. He wondered why they had bothered to send the cheerleader down at all. Marcus put the vehicle into gear and pulled from the space.

  He stopped at the intersection, then drove past the construction site. The road became clogged with muddy tracks and the rumble of diesel thunder.

  That was when they struck.

  Marcus caught a glimpse of light against metal and turned in time to see a pickup hurtle down the graveled rise. He watched in disbelief as the mud-splattered truck hit an unseen slope and bounced all four wheels off the dirt.

  Marcus almost left it too late. Then the roar of the pickup’s engine spurred him to stomp on the accelerator. Which meant the pickup slammed into his rear fender, and not his door.

  The impact flung him across the seat, the wheel slewing under his grip. Before he could recover, he was hammered back the other way. The second truck’s aim was higher, mashing in his passenger door and showering him with broken glass.

  The driver of the second truck opened his door and leaned on the running board. He wore a sweat-stained cap and a two-day growth. He shouted above the roar, “Your kind ain’t welcome here!”

  Marcus glanced behind and to his left. The other driver was opening his door and reaching behind him for something hanging in his rifle rack—maybe a bat, maybe a gun.

  The man yelled through his side window, “We got ways to take out the likes of you!”

  Marcus jammed himself upright and stomped on the accelerator. The Blazer jumped the curb and sent mud and loose gravel spewing out behind. The attacker got off one good whack, splintering Marcus’ rear window. Marcus fought for control as the rise steepened, then slid back over the curb and roared away. He took the final corner overtight and struck the brick entrance logo a glancing blow.

  Marcus hurtled onto the state road and raced through the wooded section, finally bursting into the green fields bordering the old church. He was shaking so hard he had difficulty lifting his foot from the accelerator and unclenching his grip on the wheel. He searched the road behind him, saw nothing. He turned back in time to read the sign welcoming him to Rocky Mount, home of the new South.

  FIVE

  AS USUAL, the nightmare came calling in the raven-black hour before dawn. As ever, Marcus rose in weary defeat and started his day several hours before his body was ready.

  The year before the accident, one of the firm’s senio
r partners had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Marcus had taken over the partner’s most critical case, one he was destined to lose. Marcus had spent a lot of time with the senior partner—at first because Marcus needed guidance, later because the man needed some tenuous connection with the life he was leaving behind. Over and over Marcus heard the partner refer to his illness as simply, the cancer. Marcus had not taken much note of it then, assuming that the guy was saying it so briefly and succinctly because of Marcus’ own sensibilities. Now he knew better. It was all Marcus could do to refer to his own compilation of tragedies as, the accident. To give it any more space, either in thoughts or in words, would have broken him entirely. The same was true of his new nemesis, the nightmare. There was no way to use more words and still contain all the horror and all the pain. The nightmare came every night. It had been thus since the accident. It awoke him just before dawn. It robbed him of his most precious hour of sleep. It drove a spike through the heart of every new day.

  Marcus packed his bag, then ate his breakfast standing at the kitchen counter. He took the Beltline around Raleigh to the airport, the night-dark road tense and packed with early techie commuters.

  The earliest Raleigh flight bound for National was a prop job operated by United Express. Marcus joined the other boarders, observed their grim faces and stone-hard eyes, and wondered what other demons journeyed with them that day.

  Marcus emerged from National Airport in time to watch dawn streak the Washington sky with a hundred different shades, all of them palest blue. He took a taxi into the city, accompanied by fragments of unwelcome memories. He had not been to Washington in eighteen months. He had not left North Carolina in all that time. Before, Marcus had traveled almost constantly. He had come to Washington at least twice a month—sometimes on business, other times to visit Carol’s parents.

  Like Marcus, his former wife was an only child. He had once joked that this was the single part of their background they held in common. Carol’s family was old Delaware money. Very old. One of her direct ancestors had received a land grant from King George III. The deed, with its watered ribbons and royal seals, still hung upon the living-room wall of their Wilmington estate. They also had a summer home outside Annapolis, which had been in the family since Carol’s great-grandfather served two terms as a United States senator. The kids had loved this sprawling clapboard manor, the only reason Marcus had ever endured weekends with Carol’s parents. They also owned a penthouse on Central Park West and an apartment in a Louis XIV manor on the rue Faubourg St-Honoré—neither of which he had ever been invited to visit. He had never been to Europe at all. It was one of those things he had always promised Carol and never managed to deliver. One of many.

  Marcus sat in the window of a Starbucks in Foggy Bottom, pretending to read the Washington Post. Behind him, the six employees called a constant cadence and beat rapid tattoos on the coffee machine. Beyond his window streamed a hectic Friday crowd, most of them young and intelligent-looking and focused on the day ahead. Marcus sipped his coffee and found hints of his own past reflected in those intent young faces.

  In the early days of their marriage, he had refused the offer of a job from Carol’s father for a thousand reasons. The biggest had been that he was too hungry. He had wanted a place where he could scramble and push and fight and make it on his own terms. He had considered the firm of Knowles, Barbour and Bradshaw to be a perfect fit, and for several years it truly was. The firm had been cobbled together from numerous local groups, all merged under the umbrella of what had once been a San Francisco–based firm. Now it was everywhere—offices in thirty-two states and eleven foreign countries. Marcus had thrived on the sixteen-hour days, the ninety-hour weeks, the competition, the breakneck pace, the constant demand to bill more hours. Carol came from a long line of workaholics, and had learned early on not to complain.

  He wasn’t exactly sure when the marriage had started to unravel. It would be too easy to say, his final year of law school, on the day they had met. But there was some truth in that statement. Enough to propel him from his seat and out the door and down Constitution Avenue.

  At precisely nine o’clock he signed in at the State Department’s main entrance on C Street. Five minutes later he was approached by a balding man in his late forties with a bureaucrat’s poker face. “Mr. Glenwood?”

  “Yes.”

  “James Caldwell. As you were told yesterday on the phone, there’s nothing anyone can do for you here.”

  Marcus accepted that the man was not even going to invite him to sit down. “It seems to me that an American citizen gone missing—”

  “We don’t have the resources.” The man wore an ill-fitting checked suit of bluish gray and a goatee with more hair than was on the top of his head. “We deal strictly with policy matters.”

  “—who’s gone missing in China would be a vital enough issue to concern our government.”

  “Right. Mr. Glenwood, in eleven weeks the Vice President and the secretary of commerce are leading a trade mission to China. We’ve got seventeen places to fill and more than four hundred heads of industry who want to come along. Not to mention half of Congress. We also have to prepare position papers on two dozen different topics.”

  And this, Marcus realized, was a carefully rehearsed little speech. “Preparatory meetings for this mission would be the ideal chance to bring up the issue of a missing American citizen.”

  “Not a chance.” The words echoed loudly through the voluminous lobby. “Look, maybe you could ask your local congressman or senator to raise the matter.”

  “The parents have already tried that route.”

  “Then there’s nothing I can do for you.”

  “I can’t believe the State Department would take such a cavalier attitude to a kidnapped American citizen.”

  The man actually smirked. “You don’t know that.”

  Marcus studied the man more intently. “You know Gloria Hall?”

  “Absolutely not. We make it a policy to have nothing whatsoever to do with the lunatic fringe.”

  Marcus leaned closer. “The what?”

  “Gloria Hall was ready to enlist on any side making trouble for the Chinese. As you well know.” The man shook his head, a quick motion like a dog shedding water. “Look, Mr. Glenwood, you’re wasting your time. Gloria Hall went looking for trouble and she found it. We can’t help you.”

  THE YOUNG LADY at the International Chamber of Commerce was equally direct but far more polite. Her name was Patricia Calloway and she led Marcus through a warren of tiny cubicles to an office with a window. Her card said she was assistant director for Far Eastern policy and the plaques on her wall said she had graduated with honors from Wellesley and Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. When Marcus had completed his lead-in, she demanded, “You’ve spoken with someone at the State Department?”

  “I tried. They didn’t offer a thing.”

  “I’m not surprised. With a major trade junket on the horizon, they’re all heads down in the bunkers.”

  “Even so, it seems amazing how little interest they showed over a missing American.”

  “Because it’s a Pandora’s box they don’t dare open.” She watched him with intelligent green eyes, clearly assessing whether he was worth her time, and whether he would actually listen to what he did not want to hear. “A number of Chinese dissidents hold dual citizenship with the United States. They go back planning to be arrested, hoping their mission will pressure Washington to act on human rights abuses.”

  Marcus felt a niggling sensation at the back of his mind. Mission. It took a moment to recall where he had come across that word before. “A confrontation over human rights abuses just prior to a trade expedition would be—”

  “An absolute debacle,” she agreed cheerfully. “The State Department’s worst-case scenario.”

  “I seem to recall that this administration included human rights in its election manifesto.”

  “Maybe so. But now it’s trade
first, human rights last. And China just happens to be the world’s largest untapped market.”

  Marcus confessed, “I’m surprised at your candor.”

  “Oh, we’re definitely pro-trade around here.” She flashed a quick smile. “But that doesn’t make us blind to reality.”

  “Which is?”

  “That China has been backsliding on human rights ever since Tiananmen Square. They make no bones about it. The recent arrests of those pro-democracy advocates were highly publicized, both inside and outside China. This was a calculated act. They’re telling the rest of the world this is an internal matter, and we’re too big and too powerful for you to risk offending us. So don’t make an issue of it, or we’ll take our business elsewhere.”

  She offered another quick smile. “That’s my ten-cent tour. We dish it up to everybody wanting to tap the Chinese market. Your average American businessman will waltz in here and give us something like, there’s a billion people over there and not a single company making widgets. So we go, fine, but are you willing to get your hands dirty? Because nobody who does business in China stays totally clean.”

  He was listening to what was going on beneath the surface now, and thought he heard a confusing note of concern. “Did you know Gloria Hall?”

  “Just by name. We never met. She was making a reputation for herself as more than just another noisy activist.”

  He leaned forward. “How?”

  “These are all just rumors. But you hear things in this business. She was mentioned in a couple of legal suits against Chinese companies, claiming this and that. Usually something labor related. Then there was some Hong Kong issue, a man who’d been injured in a raid, I think it was. And she petitioned my boss on several U.S. companies operating in Tibet.”

  Marcus mulled it over. “A troublemaker.”