Invasive Species

by Joseph Wallace

  Trey said, “And?”

  “What the hell do you think?” Malcolm said.

  FORTY

  Washington, D.C.

  “WHAT DO YOU want from me, Gilliard?” George Summers asked.

  Trey looked across the desk at him. “That’s easy,” he said. “I want you to get out of my way, so I can talk to someone who gets things done.”

  Being obnoxious on purpose to gauge the depths of Summers’s worries, which he assumed were plentiful and multiplying.

  Even career bureaucrats with no fear of getting fired didn’t like it when their boats got rocked. And nothing rocked the boat like an incumbent president losing his bid for reelection. New department chiefs got named, new patronage posts were handed out, and even those who kept their heads down could find their lives suddenly very unpleasant.

  Summers’s boat was already rocking. Ever since the revelations that the Chapman administration had known about the thieves for months—but hadn’t told anyone—the possibility of a Harrison victory had grown exponentially. Issues like unemployment, health care, and foreign policy seemed to have been almost forgotten—and when they were discussed, it was always in the context of the thieves’ impact. That didn’t do much for the incumbent’s chances, either.

  Only the fact that the number of thief attacks had declined nearly to zero gave the president any chance at victory.

  A confident Summers, having been insulted, would have tossed Trey out of his office. The Summers who answered, though, merely said, “You have someone specific in mind?”

  He was scared.

  “Nathan Holland,” Trey said. “The president’s chief of staff.”

  Summers gave a bark of a laugh. “Clap harder, Gilliard.”

  “Here’s what you’re going to do,” Trey said. “You’re going to work your way up the food chain until you find someone who has Holland’s ear. And then you’re going to tell him that if he wants even the slightest chance of saving his man’s presidency, and his own butt, he’d better sit down and meet with me. Today.”

  Summers’s mouth hung open.

  “I’d ask to see the president himself,” Trey said, “but I don’t have the time to spell everything out for him.”

  * * *

  TREY HAD ASSUMED he’d be sent over to the West Wing, but as it turned out the chief of staff came to see him. An hour after Trey made his demand, Nathan Holland was sitting across from him in a room down a long hall on the third floor of the Ag building.

  A desk, a few chairs, a dead plant, two lighter-colored squares on the walls where paintings had once hung. Someone’s corner office, before all the antigovernment shouters and the bad economy had brought downsizing even to D.C.

  Sitting in a chair off to the side of the room was another man, youngish, thick bodied. Trey didn’t know whether he was an assistant or some kind of security, or both. Not that it mattered.

  The men in the hallway outside were definitely Secret Service.

  Holland was wearing a suit that had no doubt cost more than Trey had spent on clothes in the past ten years combined. His gray hair was trimmed into a near buzz cut, and despite the furrows of age, his clean-shaven face had the toned, cared-for look that spoke of expensive skin treatments.

  None of it mattered. Nothing could hide the fact that the chief of staff looked old, exhausted.

  Burdened.

  “So here I am,” he said. His vowels bore the trace of his Chicago roots. “Now tell me why I should listen to you.”

  “How’s not listening to me working out?” Trey asked.

  Holland grimaced. “Don’t fence with me, Gilliard.”

  “Okay. No fencing,” Trey said. “So tell me: How many reports have you read with my name on them?”

  “What?”

  “Seems like a simple enough question. I was the first American to see the thieves—or at least the first to live long enough to talk about them. I’m the guy who’s been tracking their spread. The guy who’s been traveling around the world learning everything I can about them, as I’m sure you already know. So I’m asking you: How often has my name popped up these past months?”

  After a few moments, Holland said, “Often enough. Why?”

  “Well, shouldn’t that, by itself, be enough to get you to listen to me?”

  The words hung in silence. Holland’s steel gray eyes stayed on Trey’s face, but it didn’t matter. Trey could return gimlet stares all day if he had to.

  “And anyway,” he added, “you came here today. Of course you’re going to listen.”

  Holland’s frown deepened, but when he spoke it was to say, “All right. So what do you want to ask?”

  Trey laughed, an unexpected sound in the gloomy corner room. “Ask? I’m not here to ask anything.”

  “Why, then?”

  “To tell you what you’re going to do for me.”

  * * *

  NATHAN HOLLAND SAT across from him, huffing and puffing at his presumption. Apparently Trey had neglected to use the proper tone. Hadn’t paid the respect the office of chief of staff was due. Hadn’t been a supplicant.

  Only . . . Trey didn’t do supplication. He never had, and he wasn’t about to start now. Human beings were the only species that spent so much time begging, and though this might generally be a successful tactic for an erratic, violent species occupying a crowded world, so far Trey had survived without it.

  Often enough, his unwillingness to kowtow had gotten in his way, but it wouldn’t this time. Holland would come around. Trey knew it, and he thought the chief of staff knew it, too. They just had to go through this ridiculous little dance first.

  Eventually Holland settled back a little and said, “Tell me that name again.”

  Trey thought Holland remembered it just fine. But he repeated, “Mariama Honso.”

  “I have no idea who that is,” Holland said.

  “Sure you do,” Trey said. “She was coming to see me back in July, and you stopped her.”

  “Did we?”

  “Yes. You stopped her, arrested her, and stashed her somewhere.”

  An instant’s cloudiness in the chief of staff’s eyes was the giveaway. The tell.

  “Or maybe you didn’t even bother to arrest her,” Trey said. “You’re still doing that ‘indefinite detention’ thing, aren’t you?”

  Holland didn’t answer.

  “I don’t care. We can talk about the morality of that another time. The point is: Mariama’s staying somewhere on the government’s dime, and I know why.”

  Holland, his mouth pursed, waited for him to go on.

  “Somehow you learned she was coming here,” Trey said. “Maybe you’d been tracking her progress all the way from Senegal, or maybe she pinged a watch list when she tried to enter the U.S.”

  He leaned forward in his chair. “That doesn’t matter, either. What matters is that you put it together—where she was from, what she was going to do. And the last thing you wanted, just a couple of months before the election, was some modern-day Paul Revere stirring up the populace . . . and the media.”

  Holland looked toward the third man in the room and said, “Kyle, would you please wait outside?”

  Without a word, the man got up and joined the agents in the hall, closing the door behind him.

  “Go on,” Holland said.

  “You cared more about shutting her up than learning what she knew. All that mattered was keeping a lid on the story. Making sure it didn’t bite your guy until after the election, when you’d have four more years to deal with it.”

  The chief of staff’s eyes were as translucent as old sea glass.

  “When you thought you’d have four more years,” Trey went on. “But now everything’s gone to hell anyway, right before the election. Mariama is the least of your worries. She can’t possibly have anything to say
that will make things worse for you—especially if you make her sign something promising she’ll stay quiet or go back to jail. Which I know you’ll do.”

  Holland looked at him, and something changed in his expression. Some life, some spirit, drained away.

  “Mariama Honso,” he said.

  “Where is she?” Trey asked.

  “I don’t know,” Holland said. “But I can find out.”

  “And bring her here?”

  Holland’s silence meant, What do you think?

  “Today,” Trey said.

  Holland’s lips twitched.

  “You don’t ask much, do you?” he said.

  * * *

  DON’T BE CAUGHT too far apart when the end comes, Elena Stavros had said.

  Trey stood outside with the Secret Service while Holland made some phone calls. Leaning against the wall, he thought about Sheila and Kait and Mary Finneran stashed by the Harrison campaign in a safe house on the Chesapeake. Jack and Clare Shapiro. Elena and her family. Mariama.

  Christopher.

  And about his plan. The one he’d begun to put into place only the day before.

  Something moved sluggishly inside of him.

  He wondered if he’d have enough time to see it through.

  * * *

  “WE’VE LOCATED HONSO,” Nathan Holland said.

  His tone struck Trey as odd, but he didn’t pursue it. “You’ll bring her to me today?” he said.

  The chief of staff shook his head. “There are procedures, and she hasn’t been staying next door,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  Holland looked around, gave a tiny shrug. “Here will do.”

  Trey said, “I’ll have to talk directly to her. Just me, at least at first.”

  The chief of staff sighed. “You’ll get to talk.” Then his eyes sharpened. “Anyway, tomorrow we’ll be . . . otherwise engaged.”

  Again there was something in the chief of staff’s tone. Trey felt his heart give a single thud in his chest.

  “Engaged doing what?” he asked.

  The chief regarded him with an unreadable gaze.

  “Tonight,” he said, “the president will tell you.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Higgins Island, Maryland

  THEIR WOODEN HOUSE, like most of the others they’d passed on the way, stood on sturdy stilts anchored by solid blocks of concrete. The man who’d brought them had told Kait that, come a flood tide from Chesapeake Bay, you could sit on the front deck and look down at the water flowing harmlessly under the house.

  “Sometimes,” the man had said, “you can even see schools of bluefish and striped bass swimming past!”

  Kait had guessed this was just a story, but she’d liked hearing it anyway. The man and the others with him, who’d been wearing suits but had seemed more like policemen, had been nice enough. At least, they’d tried to be nice. They hadn’t ignored her, like so many adults, like so many of the new people, did.

  Mr. Axelson, who’d arranged for them to spend a few days here, in this house on the edge of the marsh, didn’t ignore her, either. Even when she asked the wrong questions, and she could tell he wished she’d pipe down, he was polite and friendly. Only his eyes gave him away.

  Wrong questions, like when the policeman-in-dress-up-clothes told her about watching the bluefish. Kait had said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.” He’d smiled at her. “Anything.”

  “What happens to this house if there’s a hurricane?”

  That had made his smile go away. His mouth had moved for a second without any sound coming out. What he’d said finally was, “No hurricanes in the forecast, sweetie,” which both of them knew wasn’t really an answer.

  After this conversation, she’d planned to draw a picture of the house being swept away, stilts and concrete moorings and all.

  But then, last night, she’d heard something that had made her change her mind. So when she did sit down and draw, the result didn’t show them being whisked away by the wind or swamped by a giant wave. No. The house was being borne on the backs of a school of silvery fish. Big, strong fish carrying them to safety.

  When she showed her grandmother the drawing, Mary smiled and said, “That’s because Sheila’s coming for a visit, isn’t it?”

  No one was smarter than her grandmother.

  * * *

  AND NOW HERE she was. Sheila. Sitting out on the deck under a blue sky, a glass of iced tea “with a kick” in her hand. Her and Mary and Kait, just like the first time back on Marco Island, just after Ma and Da died. The day of the funeral.

  It felt like a million years ago to Kait, that day. Though not at night. Not when she dreamed.

  She hadn’t known she would do it, but the minute she saw Sheila stepping out of her car in the driveway, she’d gone hurtling down the wooden steps and leaped into her arms. She’d heard Sheila gasp, then laugh, and then for a long time they’d just held each other.

  But now that she was looking at Sheila from across the deck, Kait could see how skinny she looked. Skinny and sad, and maybe even a little scared. And that made Kait scared, too.

  “What have you heard from Trey?” Mary was asking.

  “Not much. He’s over in D.C., tracking down someone he thinks might be able to help.”

  “Help how?”

  But Sheila just turned her palms up.

  Kait said, “You miss him. You wish he was here.”

  Sheila said, “Stop looking inside my head, Kaitlin Finneran!” Then she smiled. “Yes, of course I do. But if he thinks this is important . . . well, it is.”

  Her smile vanished. “I also heard from Jack. A text.”

  “What did it say?” Mary asked.

  “‘Worst-case scenario. Batten down.’”

  Kait wasn’t sure she knew what that meant, but this time she didn’t ask. Sometimes you could learn more from staying quiet.

  “Is it what we guessed?” Mary asked.

  Sheila sighed. “I think so, yes.”

  She was so thin, Kait thought again.

  Almost as if hearing her thought, Sheila looked at Kait again. “We think the president is planning to attack the thieves,” she said. “He’s giving a speech tonight, and we think that’s what he’ll be announcing.”

  “I know,” Kait said. She looked at her grandmother. “That’s why he wanted us to be with him, right?”

  Sheila said, “Who did?”

  “The president. One of his lackeys called last week.” Mary’s eyes had that look they got only when she was angry. “I don’t know whether he wanted us there at the speech—we didn’t get into details. They definitely wanted us available to answer questions from the press after he was done. And then—”

  She paused. “And then what?” Sheila said.

  “And then I think he wanted us to join him while he watched the attack.”

  Kait could see that her grandmother’s lips were almost the same color as the rest of her face and that the wrinkles on her forehead were standing out. This was how she looked when she was very angry.

  “We said, “No, thank you.’ We’re not going to be a Ping-Pong ball anymore, are we, Kait? We’re tired of bouncing around and being looked at, right?”

  Kait nodded. Did anyone like being looked at? Maybe some of the blond girls in her class. But not her.

  A shadow passed overhead. She looked up and saw that it was an osprey, almost near enough to touch. When they’d first gotten here, she’d gone down to explore the marsh. There had been deer among the little stands of pine trees and muskrats in the more open water, and gulls and terns. Though no dolphins.

  It had all reminded Kait of home, which had made her cry. But she’d been dry-eyed by the time she returned to the house.

  Now Mary was saying
, “That’s when Jeremy Axelson had us brought here. One of Harrison’s fund-raisers owns this house, I believe.”

  Sheila said, “And then, when the president’s speech is done, Axelson will announce that you are not available for comment—implying that you disagree with the decision. He’ll use your absence to push public opinion.”

  Mary nodded. “Most likely. We can’t stop that.” She sighed. “We brought this on ourselves, I’m afraid. But at least we don’t have to participate anymore. This Ping-Pong ball is now retired.”

  Kait stirred in her seat. “I don’t understand something.”

  “What, Bunny?” her grandmother asked.

  “The president is going to attack the wasp-things?”

  “Yes, that’s what we think.”

  “Where?”

  Neither Mary nor Sheila answered. Some bird in the marsh gave a high-pitched, piping call.

  “And what will happen . . . after?” Kait said.

  When the grown-ups still didn’t speak, she stood and walked out to the edge of the deck. Leaning over the railing, she looked out toward the marsh.

  Her nose prickled from the faintest taint of a familiar bitter odor. And she thought she could detect, at the very limits of her hearing, the sound of wings.

  FORTY-TWO

  Dry Tortugas, United States

  MARIAMA’S LAST DAY in limbo was her sixty-eighth.

  She knew this because she asked the guard who brought her breakfast what day it was. The date. Not for Mariama, scratching marks in her cell’s stone wall to help her stay sane. She had no fear of losing her sanity.

  Nor did she think marking the passage of time was a way to keep in touch with reality. Quite the reverse, in fact.

  She supposed that, if you had a cast-in-stone sentence, this many days, weeks, years, watching the marks in the wall multiply might give you hope. You’d be filling in the blanks, knowing that when you got to the last one, you’d walk out.

  But for her, scratches in the wall might only mark the last days of her life, whether there were ten thousand of them or only a handful.