The Washington Decree

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  They were stopped several times along the way, but she was never asked for ID. This was partly because she didn’t look vaguely like the woman they were after and partly because the volume of the music discouraged any drawn-out inspection. They checked the trunk and the space between the front and back seats, then waved them on with tired expressions. After two weeks of this state of emergency, most of the soldiers carried out their shitty job as though they’d been doing it for decades. They knew they had to do it properly and that they’d be held responsible if they let any suspects slip through, but on the other hand they also knew there was another roadblock thirty miles farther up the highway. Maybe the next set of guards weren’t as dead tired; the sheer number of roadblocks made them feel reassured. They waved their rifles slightly to keep traffic moving so the lines of vehicles didn’t grow too long, and Ollie and Doggie worked their way steadily northward. The consequences of Jansen’s edicts were everywhere to be seen. The FEMA logo had become a common sight, the supermarkets and department stores no longer sported banners announcing sale items, the long-haulers were driving around half-empty, and cars were packed with passengers to save on gas. Orange-clad ex-convicts dotted the roadside with their implements and small pushcarts, tidying up everything in sight, but this couldn’t hide a general state of disrepair. Leaky roofs had been temporarily patched up with sheets of plastic, and folks were living in trailers and in their friends’ and families’ yards, clumped together in order to manage. Construction work had come to a standstill, and soldiers were everywhere. Every single day Doggie’s superiors in the White House had proclaimed that they were getting everything under control, that the first wave of intervention and hardship was over. But it was a lie. In truth, the wave was gaining in strength, threatening to unleash a flood that would submerge everything, herself included. It was hard thinking of her father in this situation, but she did.

  Constantly.

  * * *

  —

  At first Ollie said nothing. He simply surveyed the sluggish traffic and people being body-searched as he swayed to the music, kept the motor alive, and constantly reached over to stick his hand into his plastic bag, removing one apparently edible item after another. But when she finally asked him to turn off the music before her head exploded, her chauffeur instead began talking nonstop in a way that Doggie found very disturbing. As they passed one town after another, it turned out that nothing was sacred for Ollie Boyce Henson. He laid his own personal rap number on her that encompassed every ho he’d ever serviced, every dude he’d ever whupped, and every little stunt he’d pulled since getting out of reform school. He’d earned himself a bachelor of arts in bullshit, an MA in indiscretion. Ollie Boyce Henson’s motormouth represented no less than a danger to the environment.

  “You can hang out a couple of days with my cousin; he lives in the Bronx,” he said. “Lay a couple of hundred on him, and he’ll chuck out the bitch he’s got living with him. It’s probably not the nicest neighborhood you’ve ever seen,” he added indulgently, “but the way you look, you’ll fit right in!” He slapped his thigh and cackled with laughter.

  “Thanks, Ollie, but no. I’ll figure out what to do,” she said, trying to activate her newly acquired cell phone. “How do I get all my telephone numbers from my old cell phone into this one?”

  He slammed on the brakes in front of a Burger King and whipped the phone he’d gotten from Doggie out of his pocket. Then he took out the SIM card and snapped it into the phone he’d given Doggie.

  “Don’t you turn it on!” she warned—too late.

  He shook his head. “Just two seconds, then your phone book’s saved in the Nokia’s memory.” She tried to grab it out of his hand, but then it rang, sending a shudder through her entire body.

  “Turn it off, turn it off, goddammit! Right away!”

  “Whoa!” he exclaimed. “Easy, girl, I’m finished.” He waited another second, turned off the phone, and changed the SIM cards back again. It took him half a minute, max, but as far as Doggie was concerned, that was half a minute too long.

  “Don’t you do that again, Ollie, you hear? Delete my card the next time you turn that thing on, and don’t use it for a month, else you’ll be real sorry. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  He tried to put on a frightened expression with a mouth full of potato chips, but it wasn’t very reassuring.

  She sighed. They were still about seventy miles south of New York, approximately the position where those who were possibly trying to track her now would lose her. She had little choice but to believe this.

  She found Rosalie Lee’s number and dialed.

  The voice at the other end seemed out of breath and listless—not like the Rosalie Doggie used to know. “Oh, Jesus! My God, is that you, Doggie?” Then she heard Rosalie say a quick prayer: “Oh, Jesus, thank you for hearing my prayers. Thank you, Jesus, I love you.” Next her voice returned to full strength, although it sounded as if she might break down crying at any moment.

  “I’m on my way up to you, Rosalie. Is that okay?”

  “On your way up to me?” she almost whispered. “Here in New York? Oh, Jesus, Jesus, I love you!”

  “Rosalie . . . ?”

  “Oh, yes, Doggie. Come, please do! I tried to get hold of you today, too, yes I did. I called you a couple of hours ago, but we were cut off. Oh, it’s one of God’s miracles that you’re calling now.”

  So it had been Rosalie who’d called when the cell phone had been lying in her bag. Thank God. Maybe they hadn’t been able to track her a little while ago, either. Perhaps there was no one in the world—other than Ollie—who had the slightest idea where she was.

  She shook her head. One shouldn’t take anything for granted.

  “I’m in a really bad situation, Rosalie. I’ll tell you more about it, but right now I just want to ask if I can stay with you a couple of days.”

  The reply was prompt. “You can stay as long as you like,” she said. “But, Doggie . . .” Once again she could hear a faint, muttered prayer. “Doggie . . .” she repeated, “is it possible for you to loan me a couple thousand dollars?”

  There were also others for whom life wasn’t so easy.

  * * *

  —

  When she was done speaking to Rosalie, Ollie turned his music back on, so high that the license plate and several loose parts of the car began to buzz and rattle.

  “Stop!” she screamed.

  He gave her a pitying look. “Boy, baby, are you stressed out!”

  She wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. “Ollie, do you think this contradiction of physics—your car, I mean—can find a radio station that’s still on the air?” She pointed at his battered Blaupunkt.

  He pressed one of the remaining buttons confidently and raised his finger. “Don’t judge a book by the cover, sugar.”

  Seconds later she discovered that Ollie Boyce Henson’s universe contained more facets than she’d dared hope for. Because this crummy little radio not only brought in every little pirate station loud and clear, it did the same with all the police frequencies as well. She frowned as she eavesdropped on one communication after another. The cops were obviously busy as hell. There were still plenty of disobedient citizens who were brave and foolish enough to resist being spot-checked. Plenty who still had weapons hidden away and resisted having their homes searched. Many who’d simply had enough and whose resistance was a reflection of their anxiety and despair. But by now, most of this was just business as usual. What was far worse were the all-points bulletins that were broadcast every five minutes. No matter which frequency she tuned in on, the police, the military, the National Guard—everyone, in democracy’s name—was busy trying to apprehend a female White House employee by the name of Dorothy Rogers, aka Doggie. Their description of her was extremely detailed: a white woman with very fair skin, light-brown hair, thirty years old, five fo
ot four with unusually blue eyes, etc., etc. The description of her appearance was so precise and detailed that she slid down in her seat. They’d registered employees at the White House down to their toenails.

  Ollie sat beside her, laughing. She felt like punching him. There was absolutely nothing to laugh about. On top of all this, police in patrol cars were urged to switch on their intranet, where they could see video recordings of her leaving the White House, and even in the act of attacking the vice president. Ollie shook his head and laughed even harder. No, in answer to her question, he didn’t have a gadget in his car that could beam up that kind of shit.

  She listened to them rattle off her habits, her usual haunts, and finally stressed how dangerous she was. They painted a picture not only of a woman whose father had murdered the president’s wife, but one who had just this morning attempted to force her way into the Oval Office and murder the president himself.

  CHAPTER 23

  It wasn’t hard to count the days; It was hard not to. In a couple of hours they’d be sticking the needle into the guy who’d gassed his wife and her sister, and seventy-two hours later it would be his turn. It was an easy, brutal, bit of math.

  Now it was Friday. Bud hadn’t seen his lawyers for a couple of days. What was worse, he hadn’t seen Pete, the prison guard, either, so all hope was practically gone.

  The militiamen in the cells closest to the entrance were screaming back and forth to one another, driving him crazy. “So give them some pills to settle down, goddammit!” he yelled once in a while, but none of the guards reacted. They probably had more radical methods in mind.

  Daryl Reid had been raving for hours in the cell to the left about his last meal and how fantastic it was going to be, and Reamur Duke was crying and hovering over his everlasting math puzzles in the cell to the right.

  Everything was as usual, except that time was moving faster and faster now.

  * * *

  —

  Bud hadn’t seen himself in the mirror for a long time, but he could see it in his hands and feel it way into his soul: He’d aged twenty years during the four months he’d been in prison. Leave me sitting here a few more months and you won’t have to kill me, he thought. It’ll happen all by itself. The soul hibernated and the body fell into disrepair—it was unavoidable. Sometimes he caught himself having stared out through the bars for hours at a time, his thoughts full of green fields and the time he’d had a free will, and afterwards he was dead tired. On death row, one quickly lost one’s orientation to everything—to the life that once was, to feelings and sensations that dealt with the future, and to details that used to be all-important but had now faded. However, Bud didn’t want to let go of himself and was doing his best to remember. He’d be thinking all the beautiful thoughts he possibly could when they strapped him onto the gurney. He would keep his head clear to the end, and then he’d die, liberated in his mind and soul. This was what he worked on every single moment of the day.

  By afternoon the militiamen had temporarily ceased their hateful battle cries, so he could hear the clanking of the normal changing-of-the-guard ritual.

  “Have you heard, Buddy Boy?” Daryl whispered. “They can’t find a doctor for the execution. They have to postpone it till midnight.” He laughed, then called down to the prisoner who’d been crying and bitching all morning. “Don’t be dumb enough to think you’ll get out of it!”

  Bud stepped to the bars and pressed his face against them. A little deputation with grave faces was standing before cell number eleven. In their midst the prison director was speaking to the condemned man. But Pete still wasn’t there.

  Doors opened and closed for the next couple of hours, and the prison priest attempted to calm the poor wretch. This was the corridor to hell.

  “Shhh, here we go, Buddy Boy.” Daryl chuckled as he ran his knuckles over the bars. “Can’t you hear? Pete’s coming!”

  Bud leaned forward and tried to look down along the cells. A neon light had gone out in the middle of the corridor, leaving it in halfdarkness. He saw nothing.

  “Quit the teasing, Daryl. I hate it.”

  “Hey, he’s coming down here. . . . Yeah, listen! He’s coming now!”

  There was still some grumbling from the militiamen upstairs, but not much. Then a shadow glided along the floor and stopped.

  “It’s him, Buddy Boy.” Daryl laughed. Suddenly, there he was. Pete seemed calm in the subdued light, but when he stepped closer, the look on his face almost made Bud’s heart stop.

  Pete turned his head and gave Daryl a cold look in the adjoining cell. “I’m the one who’s taking care of you on the last day, Daryl. You know that, don’t you? Is there something special I can do for you?”

  Daryl gave a hoarse laugh. “No, Pete, I’ve already ordered everything. Cigarettes, Coke, everything I want to eat. It’s been ordered.”

  “Good, Daryl, then listen: If you tell anyone about any of this, I’ll piss on your plate of food. Got it?”

  There was a frightened outburst from Daryl’s cell. “Of course, Pete, of course. Absolutely. You can count on me. I won’t say anything. Buddy’s one of the cats, you know that.”

  Pete turned slowly to face Bud. He was so young and fit that it hurt. He would still be able to make love and stretch out under the stars years after Bud had turned to dust. Life still had a million experiences in store for him if he looked out for himself. It was completely unreal to think about.

  “Do you have the cell phone?”

  Pete patted his thermos. “You put five million in my bank account and you’ll get it.”

  Bud was dripping cold sweat. “I’ll do it, Pete, don’t worry. But it’s late now, and it’s Friday besides. I can only do it Monday morning, at the earliest.”

  Pete shook his head. “I’m loaning you the phone for a half hour to take care of it. Otherwise I’m taking it back, got it? I won’t be around by Monday.”

  Bud looked at the thermos and felt the sweat spreading under his arms. “You said you’d be here the twenty-sixth, but today’s the twenty-seventh. That wasn’t part of our agreement.”

  “I’m the one who makes the conditions. They changed my shift. Don’t argue with me; just do it. We’re coming to get the man in cell eleven in an hour, so you better be ready.”

  He looked around and unscrewed the top of the thermos. Steam came out when he pulled up the plastic bag. Bud was shaking inside. What if the cell phone hadn’t been able to stand the temperature?

  Pete unwrapped it, dumped the bag back into the thermos, flipped open the phone, and punched in his code. “I’ll wait exactly thirty minutes, Bud—no more!” He eased it through the bars and let it fall into Bud’s hand.

  Bud didn’t know that kind of phone and gave the display a worried look. It was a European or Japanese make and looked simple enough, but his blood froze at the sight of it.

  “There’s almost no battery left,” he ascertained.

  Pete shrugged his shoulders. “There’s an hour’s time left. It’s hard as hell to find a cell phone at all these days, so don’t bug me about a damn battery charger.” He pulled a little piece of paper out of his pocket with his bank account number and the phone’s number and passed it to Bud. Then he glanced at his watch and moved on.

  Bud closed his eyes and tried to think. By now it was almost Friday midnight. Where the hell on the face of the earth could he find a bank that was open, that would transfer such a large amount on the basis of a phone conversation? It was still night in Europe, in Japan such transactions couldn’t be made, and none of his local bank connections were open on Saturday. He couldn’t remember his Internet bank code, and he’d never had to memorize his telephone numbers, so he couldn’t call his lawyer, his business manager, his accountant, or Doggie, for that matter. On top of that, there was only a half hour until Pete returned, and the battery was almost dead.

  “How’s it
going?” whispered Daryl, but Bud didn’t answer. Try as he might, he couldn’t even remember how to call information. He rubbed his forehead. Come on, Bud admonished himself, your life’s at stake. The smell of urine grew around him. A piss pot was in use in a neighboring cell.

  Come on, Bud, come on . . .

  He analyzed the cell phone’s display and pushed the menu button. A series of options popped up on the little screen. He pressed the telephone book function and found it empty. Then he tried the stored messages and the phone book, but everything was deleted. He couldn’t even call a random person who’d been in contact with the phone’s last owner. He could take a picture of his own feet, change the ringtone a dozen ways, and play Deep Abyss or mini golf, but he wasn’t able to get hold of one person who could help him find his lawyer’s telephone number.

  He stuck his hand through the bars and waved for a moment, hoping Pete would see, but nothing happened. No help was to be expected from that quarter.

  The man was being careful as hell, which was understandable.

  So he punched in Virginia Beach’s area code, followed by a totally random number, and hoped it would awaken some poor soul. Please, let it be a good Christian, he prayed, and tried to keep from hyperventilating.

  After a half minute, there was a woman’s voice, tired as a rest home. “Yes?” was all it said. The word felt like the cut of a knife blade.

  “This is an emergency,” he whispered. “I don’t know whom I’ve called, and I apologize, but my life is in danger and I’m sitting in a dark room and can’t see what number I’m dialing.” He waited a few seconds that felt like half a lifetime.

  “Is there anyone there . . . ?” he whispered.

  “Dean, wake up,” came from the other end of the line. “There’s someone who says it’s an emergency. You have to wake up. I don’t know what to say to him.”