Blackmail Earth

by Bill Evans

  What would Lilton and his merry band of destroyers make of this wrinkle if it became public? Wrinkle? Hell, it’s a political San Andreas Fault, Reynolds warned himself. Imagine the attack ads. Merciless. Murderous. “Reynolds let America’s most dangerous enemy build thousands of deadly missiles that could destroy the whole world. And now he wants you to give him four more years? Say no to Reynolds. Say no to North Korean terrorists.” Horrible.

  If Reynolds made the Korean’s demands public, missiles might begin flying. Yet if he stayed mum, it would encourage the man’s madness.

  Reynolds’s cabinet and the directors of the National Security Agency, the FBI, and the CIA were waiting for his response to the Daily Brief. At last Reynolds looked up.

  “Before we get started on the subject of secret communiqués, what did we find out about that guy,” Reynolds nodded at Rick Birk, jawing away on a silent screen, “and his blinking eyeballs? Anything worthwhile?”

  The NSC chief said, “Our code breakers have found intriguing links to a little-known drumming pattern of the Lokele tribe in the Congo.”

  “No kidding?” Reynolds grinned. “Where did that old bugger come up with something like that?”

  “That’s puzzling and a little troubling,” the CIA chief answered from the cheap seats at the far end of the table. “He doesn’t appear to ever have had any interest in anything African, other than a liqueur called Amarula.”

  “Well, what was he saying with his eyes then?” Reynolds asked the NSC director.

  “Four words, sir: ‘fire mountain’ and ‘cow curd.’”

  “‘Cud. Cow cud,’” said a bony woman to the NSC director’s right.

  “Cow cud? Cow curd? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Reynolds demanded.

  No one answered.

  Reynolds couldn’t believe this shit. “That’s it? Fire mountain. Cow curd, or cud?”

  An uneasy silence followed before Vice President Andrew Percy said, “It’s possible, Mr. President, that he’s just jerking their chain.”

  “Or ours,” Reynolds volleyed. Goddamn code breakers could hear The Bells of St. Mary’s in a conch shell.

  The president rose to his full height. “Why didn’t we know about these sulfates until North Korea decided it was time to tell us?” Reynolds still couldn’t get over that.

  “Mr. President, we did know about them,” said Debra Abrams, the White House national security adviser. She nodded at the CIA chief.

  “That’s correct, Mr. President,” the director concurred. “We’ve been debriefing a North Korean defector from their U.N. mission.”

  “Then why am I the last to know what he’s been telling us?”

  “Verification, sir. We considered the information to be so outlandish that we thought we might be dealing with a double agent. We had to verify everything from sources in situ.”

  “And have you?”

  “Yes, sir. Those rockets are real.”

  “And they’ll really bring on years of winter? Worldwide calamity?”

  “That’s right, sir,” Abrams answered.

  Reynolds groaned. He couldn’t believe he was enduring this political migraine because of sulfates. Of all the goddamn things. Hadn’t he played around with them with a kiddy chemistry set when he was nine years old? Here he’d worried for years about the North’s nuclear capabilities, and now they were threatening to bring down the planet with stuff that you could buy in toy stores and hobby shops. Like being attacked with a garden hoe, till you found out that the hoe was about to chop down the sky.

  “What about a preemptive strike? Is that viable?” he asked.

  “We’d lose Tokyo and Seoul immediately,” Abrams said. “The Supreme Leader, as he insists on being called, made it clear many times that the instant the North Koreans detect an attack from the U.S. or NATO, they’re unloading their silos on those two cities. And if he does that, you can presume that he’ll launch those sulfate rockets, too.”

  Reynolds sat down and massaged his brow. “What about wiggle room? Do we have any?”

  “We tell him that we’ll give him food aid, that we’ve always been concerned about the welfare of the North Korean people, and that—”

  “The usual palaver,” Reynolds cut in. “He’s heard that before. Hell, if I had to hear that meaningless claptrap one more time, I’d push the button.” From the stares he received from around the long table, he realized that he’d better add the standard-issue disclaimer: “I’m joking. Jesus, folks, get real. What are we going to do?”

  “We buy time,” Abrams said icily.

  “What about giving the Dwarf a brownout, or a blackout even? Briefly shut down the plants to send him a signal that we’re serious about negotiating. Can we do that?” he asked his energy secretary.

  The energy secretary nodded. “We can.”

  Reynolds liked his direct and satisfying answer. “If we’re going to give the Dwarf something in the first round, give him something that feels real. We could think of it as earnest money, a way to say ‘We feel your pain.’ Domestically, we could blame it on a broken transformer, but tell him privately that it was to show our good faith.”

  “The problem, Mr. President,” Abrams said, “is that Al Qaeda’s demanding a shutdown of coal-fired plants, too, and if we have a power outage of any note, they will take public credit for it. They’ll say it’s a sign of how they’re already dragging the Great Satan to his knees. They’re not going to be quiet.”

  “Voters would see that as capitulating to Arab terrorists,” said Ralph Ebbing, Reynolds’s chief of staff, who was leaning against an Oval Office wall a few feet from his boss. “You cannot let that happen.”

  “So no blackouts then.” Reynolds leaned back. “Okay, let’s send him a C-17 filled with food. Promise him thousands of tons more.”

  “You couldn’t get a single-engine Cessna with a bushel of wheat to Pyongyang without some aviation geek somewhere Tweeting about it. Sending aid to North Korea? Right before the election?” said the chief of staff incredulously.

  Yup, he’s right. Reynolds looked around the room and reached out, his hands palms up, like a beggar. “Ideas, anyone? Time is short here.”

  “We reply that we are looking at any and all ways to satisfy his requests,” Abrams said. “And we tell him that we will keep our communications secret, as he’s asked.”

  “Basically, we give the bastard the first round,” Reynolds said, “and hope that keeps him happy for a few hours.”

  “I’m afraid so. It’s the best way to buy time and get you reelected. The last thing the world needs right now is a loss of your leadership.”

  Reynolds harrumphed, but not because of Abrams’s toadying. A heretical thought had struck him: After spending more than a billion dollars on this campaign, it wouldn’t matter who was president if those missiles went airborne.

  * * *

  “Jason Robb, you are charged with the murder of Linda Pareles, also known as GreenSpirit.”

  Sheriff Walker spoke formally to Jason in the command post for the joint federal, state, and local investigation into GreenSpirit’s killing. The sheriff sounded as if he’d never met the young man before. As if he hadn’t watched Jason come of age in this small town. As if the Sheriff’s daughters hadn’t gone to high school with the boy.

  Walker hadn’t told the FBI or the New York State Police that he’d planned to arrest Jason. His move came after GreenSpirit’s blood had been identified on the scrap of bandana.

  None of the agents and state police officers congratulated him. The sheriff’s brow wrinkled as he gazed at his colleagues.

  “You want to make your call?” Walker asked Jason, like the kid was such an arrest veteran now that the sheriff didn’t need to explain that all he got was the one call.

  “Sure,” Jason said jauntily. “This is bullshit.” When he spoke, the kid looked at the FBI agents. He didn’t sound remotely disturbed by the murder charge.

  The FBI profiler, Barb Lassiter, appeare
d to study the young man. Not in disgust. Probing—that’s what it looked like, as if there were more for her to find out.

  She might have suspected she was dealing with a serial killer in her midst. The murder of that Pagan in Vermont and GreenSpirit’s killing bore the same “signature,” as experts like Lassiter referred to it: eyeballs plucked from the skull and left on a floor in candle wax. And Lassiter had been told by Sheriff Walker that on the night of the Vermont murder Jason Robb hadn’t been seen by anyone in town. Not even by his parents. He’d taken off for parts unknown in that old truck of his.

  * * *

  At sundown, the Pagans gathered in the circle of white stones in which GreenSpirit had initiated Forensia and Sang-mi.

  They’d set up the altar as she had instructed them only two weeks ago, using the twig broomstick called a besom, iron cauldron, boline, candles, incense, and the animal skin pentagram. Now they sat, hand-in-hand—for this could take all night—and began to chant a secret invocation, asking for GreenSpirit’s guidance. The world felt leaden with the worst eventualities. Forensia remembered feeling like this as a young teen, as if an apocalypse were about to rain down from the sky. But this felt worse because now she knew that it could really happen.

  Another peculiar sensation swept over her: She felt watched again. She tried to dismiss this by reminding herself that Jason Robb had been arrested. And they were fully clothed.

  But still the feeling persisted. It felt so strange that Forensia violated the rule against opening her eyes while trying to summon the dead.

  Directly across from her, Sang-mi sat with her eyes open, too, but Sang-mi’s eyes were rolled up so that only the bottoms of her irises were visible. They looked like dark crescent moons in a milky sky. Sang-mi began to speak in Korean, beginning in a mumbled monotone, then becoming shrill and desperate sounding.

  None of the other Pagans knew her language.

  Akina whispered softly in the Korean’s ear, “Please speak English, Sang-mi. English.”

  Sang-mi fell immediately silent. But her eyes remained rolled upward, and when she spoke again, seconds later, there was no mistaking her meaning:

  “Tell the world. Tell the world.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Jenna watched Rafan sleeping on the portable bed. She’d cracked only a single bamboo blind, but it threw enough morning light into her wide, airy room to allow her to catch his peaceful expression. He looked grateful to have found respite, if only through sleep, from his considerable sorrows.

  Late last night, after police had surrounded the hotel, he’d knocked on her door looking thoroughly exhausted. He’d said little as she ushered him in, only that he’d visited Senada’s grave and run into Bilal, her youngest brother. “But that was all right,” he insisted before pouring himself, completely clothed, onto the twin bed; his long, lanky frame left his sandaled feet dangling over the rose-tinted bloodwood floor. In seconds, he fell asleep.

  Jenna saw no reason to wake him now. After performing her morning routine before the mirror, with the added difficulty of a bandage on her right hand, she slipped out the door, eager to have breakfast in the Golden Crescent’s open-air, four-star restaurant. Turning a corner, she spotted a Malé policeman by the elevator, relieved that a tight cloak of security still clung to the building. Nobody believed that Al Qaeda’s presence in the Maldives had begun and ended with the young man who’d tried to blow up a hotel.

  She nodded at the officer, and repeated the gesture when the elevator opened to reveal one of his colleagues at the control panel. More police and members of the National Defense Force were posted at the lobby’s entrances and exits. Jenna offered them all her best smile—nothing like a real crisis to make you thankful for law enforcement—and was about to take a table that offered an expansive view of the ocean when she heard a woman call her name. She turned to meet the imperious gaze of Alicia Gant and realized that she could not escape the news producer’s company, no matter how unappetizing she might make even the most enticing breakfast soufflé. But what stunned Jenna was when Alicia’s companion turned around—and Nicci smiled at her.

  They both waved her over. With no concern for pleasantries, or so much as a brisk “Good morning,” Alicia said, “We’re going to need a live interview with you about last night’s attempt to bomb this place to hell and back. If nothing astounding happens with Birk, the network’s going back to normal programming and you’re the lead story, so we’ve got to get this done soon.”

  “I had no idea that we’d have to move this fast,” Jenna said.

  “Of course not, you’re not a journalist.”

  “Were you going to call me about—”

  “I was just about to,” Alicia interrupted, “when you waltzed in.”

  Waltzed?

  “Maybe we’ll even get lucky,” Alicia continued, “and Birk will hurry up and bleed to death. I’m so sick of looking at his face.”

  Jenna spied a huge flat-screen TV on a lobby wall about forty feet away. “Where is he?” She hadn’t thought to check on Birk till now, and she wondered if she’d ever develop strong news instincts.

  “He’s been off the air since one thirty this morning,” Nicci said.

  Jenna noticed Alicia slide her hand over to Nicci’s. The two women entwined their fingers and Nicci gave Alicia such a warm smile that it shocked Jenna. Not because the producers apparently had spent the night together—though if Jenna could have picked a partner for Nicci it never would have been the acerbic Alicia Gant—but because Malé was Muslim, and only the densest or most naïve sensibility would have failed to read this kind of touching. Jenna looked around protectively; nobody seemed to be staring—yet.

  “When should we do the interview?” Jenna asked.

  Alicia checked her watch. “I gave the crew an early call so they’d be set up when we finished eating. They’re not happy, but tough shit, they’re doing it.” All spoken in a regal tone that Jenna found irritating; she could just imagine how the crew felt. “We’ll do a dry run in twenty minutes. We’re on for real in thirty.”

  “I’ll grab a quick bite and run upstairs,” Jenna responded.

  “No time, and I should probably brief you now. We need you to say—” Alicia stopped as Nicci gripped her hand tightly and shook her head. For a moment, Jenna sensed that Alicia was going to continue issuing edicts, but she said nothing, and the tropical air, thick with frangipani and sudden panic, seemed to settle at once.

  * * *

  Birk woke feeling sick. Just like he’d felt when he was going to sleep. Like he felt all the time now. And his shakes wouldn’t stop. A body could take only so much abuse.

  His unsteady eyes landed on his bandaged hand, his index finger still sticking out like a chunk of bloody bait from the stained and crusty gauze. At least there were no wire cutters attached right now. Raggedy Ass had dispensed with them so Birk could actually sleep. “I want you getting some shut-eye so you don’t blab so much,” the cracker jihadist had drawled. Which suggested to Birk that the bearded one really did appreciate the savvy—and always suave—correspondent’s premier importance.

  It wasn’t the first sign that Raggedy Ass had understood that he and his hostage had a confluence of interest, as Birk thought of it. The most telling indication came when his abductor, at the very last moment, realized that cutting apart his prisoner-cum-spokesman like a roast chicken would, indeed, make it tough for Birk to communicate clearly.

  If they couldn’t torture Birk, there was always the captain. Captain Moreno had screamed himself hoarse when the jihadist had clamped the cutters down on his thumb. The Waziristani couldn’t let the world think that he’d backed down from his very first threat. The captain’s thumb, a grisly but convincing imposter, now hung below Birk’s collar. The captain continued to bewail his wound.

  Birk wished he’d shut up. What a wuss. He needs to man up. It’s just a fucking finger. You don’t see me blubbering.

  The jihadist eyed his most famous hostage and said, �
��I’m going to get another finger.” He glanced at the captain, whose eyes opened wildly at the unwanted attention. “And I need you sitting still so I can hook it on your shirt while it’s nice and fresh.”

  “Righto,” Birk replied, appreciating that Raggedy Ass wanted a proper display; both of them had seen that a finger, especially one hanging severed-side up, leaked a paltry amount of blood.

  Birk had come to respect Raggedy Ass’s keen understanding of visual content, but that was to be expected because the young man, no doubt, had grown up on Sesame Street and had developed a bold sense of color in the broadcast spectrum. Besides, under any set of circumstances, red was always a vibrant consideration.

  “I’ve been thinking about something,” Raggedy Ass went on. “Ordinarily, I’d never give a man an alcoholic beverage, but you were shaking so bad yesterday that it was pathetic. It makes us look bad, like we’re mistreating you. So how much of this,” he held up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label that he must have unearthed from the captain’s private reserve—Blue Label!!!—“do you need to stop shaking?”

  “Oh, not much. Not much at all. A wee taste should do it—every now and then.”

  “I don’t want you drunk. You start looking or sounding drunk, and I swear to Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon Him, that I will cut off your head with this.” He held up the all-purpose wire cutters.

  “No, of course not. I’d never get drunk. I don’t even like to get drunk.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. “I totally understand your concern. It would be unseemly.” Now give ’er here. “The best way to keep me, let’s say, medicated, would be for me to have a few sips every hour.” That truly was how Birk had remained functional for decades. The thought of finally being able to sip away after all this misery was a bounty beyond belief. Thank you, Johnnie Walker, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him.

  Raggedy Ass held out the bottle with two fingers, like it was leprous. Because of the awkwardness of Birk’s heavily wrapped hand, the reporter had to clench the cap between his teeth to unscrew it. Still, he performed this feat in a flash. Ah, the sweetest scent this side of fresh-squeezed pussy. Birk spit out the cap and took what might well have been the most satisfying swig of his long drinking life. Then a second and a third swig before he saw Raggedy Ass go bug-eyed. Warmth flooded from Birk’s belly like the most wonderful glow imaginable, lighting up every cell in his body, even numbing him to the ungodly screams once more rising from the captain.