About twenty feet beyond, from a large white tent in which three men are talking, a man wearing a blue and white badge emerges. “I’m Richard C.,” he says, before Isabella can say a word. “May I help you?”
“Ahm looking for LuAnn Buford, the woman whose husband was killed yesterday, the woman ah saw on TV last night. Ah really need to speak with her.”
“Gladly,” he replies. “Let me escort you. It’s a ways.” They walk about thirty feet, when Isabella suddenly holds her chest with her right hand, seeming to have a hard time breathing. “Ma’am, is there a problem?”
“No, Ah’ll be all right. It’s just the young woman walking ahead of us, with the three children. They’re so young. She’s so young.”
“Ma’am, you know what this place is, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course, ah do,” Isabella says, fanning herself with her right hand. “Ah can look down on it from my bedroom window. I live in the Plaza Hotel. Ah’ve just never been down here, this close, seeing people eye-to-eye, like regular people.”
“There are thousands of us, ma’am, down on our luck. Most of us were something once. We’ve all got names, and faces, and stories to tell anyone who cares. Most people don’t. They look the other way, don’t want to see what’s here. Some don’t want to know about it. Some think we’re just lazy. Some think we’ve got bugs and disease. Angie and her kids are on her way to the lunch feeding. She wants to get there early to be sure there’s enough food for all of them. She’s looking after her children like any good mother. Her husband Jeff is out looking for work, any kind of work. I saw him leave this morning. He goes out every day at 6 a.m. Some days he finds work, just for the day. You can tell when he comes back with a smile on his face and can’t wait to find Angie and the kids. Most days he doesn’t. But he keeps trying. These are good people, ma’am, but they’re desperate. They’ve got no place to go but here. This country isn’t for people any more, hasn’t been for a long time. It’s owned by corporations. They don’t give a damn about real people.
“You’ll find LuAnn over there,” John C. says, pointing straight ahead. “Billy called it the Taj Mahal, because he was so in love with LuAnn. He really put his heart into making their place the best in Cooperville. I warn you, I was with her just an hour ago, she’s still in a state of shock. If you’d like, I’ll go in and tell her there’s someone here to see her. Maybe that’ll make it easier for both of you.”
“Thank you,” the countess replies, shaking her head in disbelief, then waiting outside, assuming LuAnn will come out.
“You’re here to see me?” LuAnn asks suspiciously. “John C. said ‘a fine looking lady’ was here to see me.”
“Why, yes, of course, LuAnn.”
“I know that voice,” LuAnn replies, taking Isabella in from head to toe. “But the face, the face. Oh my God, can it be you? Idabelle? Idabelle Sue Raft?” she says, burying her face in both hands in embarrassment, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “How did you get here? How did you find me? How did you know? I can’t bear for you to see me this way. I, I, Billy, you know about Billy? How could you know about Billy?” she asks, breaking out into tears. “How could they do this to Billy?”
“Calm down, LuAnn,” Isabella says, as she hugs her. “Just take it easy. Ahm here for you. Ah know about everything, well everything that was on TV. Ah saw you on the news last night.”
“But look at you, Idabelle, just look at you. You look like a rich lady, one fine, rich lady.”
“Well actually, ahm not Idabelle anymore. I’m the Countess Isabella de Horsch. My husband the count and I live right over there in the Plaza Hotel,” she says, pointing south. “Our apartment looks right out over the park.”
“You gotta look out on all of us? Not a pretty sight! A countess, a countess, my word. I always knew our Idabelle would amount to something. But a countess, a countess,” she says, again almost collapsing in tears.
“Enough about me. I want to know all about you and what happened last night.”
“Well, Billy and I wound up here after we were wiped out in the flood in Mississippi and we lost our land, our trailer, our clothes, our furniture, everything. Then, while the water was still knee-deep, a big developer come in, said we didn’t have clear title, or whatever, to our property, so he bought it right out from under us. We didn’t have insurance, but Billy could have rebuilt our place. He was an auto mechanic, but he could fix anything. ‘Gimme anythin’ broke and I’ll put her back in shape,’ he’d always say. And that wasn’t just boasting. He could do almost anything.
“Well, the whole town was wiped out, too. There was nothing left. First the flood, then the developer took everything. Some people had relatives who took them in. We had no one. So, we just headed out, looking for work and a place to sleep. Billy’s truck got swamped in the flood, so we didn’t even have transportation. We walked and hitched rides through Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. In South Carolina, Billy found work as a handyman at an apartment building for about two months. We had our own apartment, and things were starting to look up. I almost got a job as a waitress. But then, the bank foreclosed on the building, and that was the end of that. We just kept moving north, but we couldn’t make a dime. Finally, we wound up in New York City, where Billy always said he wanted to take me, ’cept we had nothing, absolutely nothing and nowhere to go.
“Finally, we wound up here, in the park. They call it Cooperville, you know, after the president, ’cause he and his people don’t give a shit about people like us. Pardon my language, but it’s the truth. Billy built our place all by himself. He called it the Taj Mahal, because he said he loved me so much. He always said he wanted to take me to the real one, but I knew we’d never have the money. Billy showed it to me in pictures, which was good enough for me. We never had kids. I was all he had. He was all I had,” LuAnn says, nearly collapsing. Isabella holds her for about five minutes. Neither one of them says a word.
“Okay, I can go on,” LuAnn says. “Last night, I went for a walk. Billy said he was tired and wanted to rest. When I came back, he was on the floor, dead—not just dead, murdered in cold blood. Why did I ever leave him, I keep asking myself? He’d be alive, maybe, if I hadn’t gone.
There was nothing anyone could do for him when I found him. Times have changed. There are no police to call. Unless you’ve got private security, you’re not protected. Nobody cares about people like us. Billy’s body was sold to a medical school. Look. They gave me $200, half of what they got for him. The rest went to help everyone in Cooperville. That’s all a man’s worth these days—if he’s lucky. They treat animals better.”
“LuAnn, ahm gonna help you,” Isabella says. She hands her an envelope. “There’s $500 in here, and it’s just the beginning. Ahm gonna find you a job and help you get an apartment if you want to stay here. If you want to leave New York, ah’ll help you get wherever you want to go. Ahm rich now. Ah’ll take care of you.” They both look up when a young woman peeks through the door.
“Excuse me. I’m Anne Guthrie,” she says. “Channel 10 News. I’m looking for LuAnn Buford.”
“That’s me,” LuAnn replies. “And this is my friend, the countess.”
“I’m Countess Isabella de Horsch,” Isabella says, offering to shake hands.
“Did you say ‘de Horsch?’”
“Why yes,” Isabella replies, flattered at apparently having been recognized.
“Is your husband Count Henry de Horsch?”
“Why yes, of course,” Isabella answers, feeling even more like a celebrity.
“I came here to talk with LuAnn about Billy’s murder. But since I found you here, I’d really like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. Countess, are you aware of how many people in Cooperville are here, like LuAnn, because, after the flooding in Mississippi, your husband challenged their claims to their land, paid next to nothing for their property, and made them homeless?”
“Ah know nothing about my husband’s business dealings. But he’s
an honorable man. He always does right by people.”
“Do you think it’s right to steal other people’s land?”
“Why, of course not.”
“Why are you here, anyway?”
LuAnn interrupts. “The countess is my friend. We grew up together. She was Idabelle Sue Raft then. She saw me on TV last night and came here to help. Look she gave me $500 to help me get on. And she’s promised to take care of me.”
“LuAnn, ahm gonna leave you to your guest, but ah’ll be back. Nice to have met you, I’m sure—Miss Guthrie, isn’t it?” And with that, the countess makes a quick exit.
TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 3 P.M.: TIMES SQUARE, MANHATTAN. On the giant TV screen facing 42nd Street, scheduled programming is interrupted.
“I’m Anne Guthrie, and this is a breaking news exclusive from Channel 10. The wife of a developer brings guilt money to Cooperville. A phony countess brings cash to her childhood friend, one of thousands her husband defrauded. You’re hearing it only on Channel 10! During my visit to LuAnn Buford, whose husband was murdered last night in the Central Park Cooperville, I was introduced to none other than the Countess Isabella de Horsch. It turns out the royal’s real name is Idabelle Sue Raft, and she was born closer to an outhouse than the manor. The fake aristocrat and her husband bought their titles from an Internet company so they could rip off the poor and still hobnob in society. The unscrupulous count has made millions by stealing other people’s property out from under them. Rumor has it that he wants to bulldoze Cooperville so he can buy up Central Park and develop it as a profit-making mall and amusement park. Hear from LuAnn Buford how Count Henry destroyed her life and the lives of everyone else in coastal Mississippi. Stay tuned throughout the day as this story unfolds.”
TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 5 P.M.: MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, THE PLAZA HOTEL. When Countess Isabella returns, Count Henry is sitting on the sofa in the living room, looking straight ahead, not moving a muscle. “Let’s go for a walk,” he says cheerfully, as though having been awakened from a trance.
“Ah’m a bit tired, hon.”
“I insist. Some fresh air will do both of us good. Wilson will follow us in the car, so then we won’t have to walk back.”
They walk south on Fifth Avenue about two blocks. “Have you seen what’s been on TV everywhere for hours?” the count asks coldly, turning to her.
“Whatever do you mean?” she answers.
“All afternoon, they’ve been running the headline, ‘Phony Count and Countess Exposed.’ That’s you and me. And really, you haven’t seen any of it?”
“Oh, no,” Isabella says, putting a hand on each cheek. “Why no! Ah haven’t seen anything.”
“That’s not all,” the count continues. “That bitch, that bitch reporter Guthrie, who says she talked with you, says that you think it was wrong for me to buy up land in Mississippi.”
“That’s not what ah said. That’s not what ah meant to say, Henry. You gotta believe me.”
“I told you not to go near Central Park. I told you to stay away from that piece of trash you said was your friend. Now, you’ve ruined me, you double-crossing bitch. They’ll never get off my ass now.” He taps twice on the window of their limo, which has slowly been following them. Wilson stops, the trunk pops open, and the count takes two suitcases out. “I picked you up off the street. You were nothing. I made you a countess. Now, you can go back where you belong. You can be the Countess of Cooperville. Here’s a thousand dollars. Get lost. Thank God I never married you.”
Without saying a word or shedding so much as a tear, Isabella smiles, squints, shrugs her shoulders, stares at the limo as it speeds away, picks up her suitcases, and hails a taxi.
FOUR
Connect, Protect, Elect
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 10 A.M.: AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION. What appears to be a cramped communications control room is pitch black, except for reflected light from twelve computer monitors mounted on a wall in three vertical rows of four. A bright blue test-pattern with two black P’s appears on all screens. From the back, the silhouette of what appears to be a man is seated at a console, but there is no way to tell the figure’s sex, age or anything else about it. The figure leans forward, slides a lever towards him, then punches a red button which turns green. The first monitor in the top row shows the picture of a classical Greek marble sculpture—a middle-aged, bearded man’s head and shoulders looking straight ahead.
“The Prometheus Project is called to order,” the deep voice declares. “This is Zeus. For verification purposes, please enter your code name and security code now.”
In quick succession, the names are typed letter-by-letter on individual screens: O-l-y-m-p-u-s, P-a-n-d-o-r-a, M-e-r-c-u-r-y, A-d-o-n-i-s
“Adonis, please reenter your security code. Thank you. Access is now verified for everyone. You are all in listening mode. If you have a question or comment, please wait until all updates have been presented and follow the usual instructions when I give you the go-ahead. May I remind you that our identities are completely anonymous, all voices are technically modified so they cannot be recognized or traced, no copies of these transmissions are authorized, and all communication between us is strictly confidential. That said, welcome everyone.
“We have much to celebrate since our meeting last week. As all of you know, months ago, we decided to launch our major initiative, ‘John Galt is dead,’ to coincide with what so many misguided fools call the annual celebration of the founding of New Atlantis. I will leave it to Olympus to give us a full report on how he turned it into a fiasco. But personally, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that, for the first time, those ‘bloodsuckers’ are on the defensive in a major way.
“Manfreed and his thugs at New Atlantis still think they can control the media their stooges own and suppress anything they don’t want the general public to know. But they’re living in the dark ages. Bloggers first put the word out about Saturday’s fiasco and the foreign press around the world picked up the story. What’s left of our independent domestic press courageously reported the truth, even though they were afraid they’d be attacked or shut down. Actually, they really didn’t have a choice. The word is spreading like wildfire. No one can ignore ‘John Galt is dead.’ As you’ll now hear, the backlash has reached all the way to the White House. We won a battle at New Atlantis. We now have to win the war that we already know is shaping up. Manfreed and Cooper are fuming. Olympus, please begin your report.”
“Gladly, Zeus. Thank you.” A picture of Hilton Manfreed, lips pursed, brow knitted, eyes compressed to slits, appears on screen two. “You are looking at the puny prophet of Free-for-All economics. One smug, pissed off little gnome, completely thrown off his game for the first time—and we did it. I wish you could have been there to see him, choking on the bullshit he’s been feeding the nation. You know their ritual: This past Saturday, Manfreed and the thousands of sycophants who flocked to New Atlantis came prepared to celebrate their raping of our domestic economy. They do it every year on the first Saturday in June, the same month Galt and his followers met in the valley every year. They came to be baptized again, to listen to the same old lies and deceptions about how the country is thriving because they insist corporations have reformed the economy. They couldn’t wait to get an update on the inroads they’ve been making to turn the world into their profit center. But they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. They walked right into our trap. Before thousands of their slavish followers, our technology sabotaged them. They had no idea what hit them. We made them look like complete fools. We took control of them on their own turf. Most of the people leaving the pavilion were whispering the same thing to each other: ‘What’s going on? Something’s terribly wrong here! Things seem to be coming apart.’ It was a dramatic change from their high spirits when they went in.
“The story turned out to be so big and so embarrassing, no one could ignore it. For once, even the mainstream press, almost completely owned and operated by Free-for-All believers, has been pretty
accurate in describing how we torpedoed Manfreed’s speech again and again at strategic moments. Every newspaper in the country is running the headline ‘John Galt Is Dead’ on its front page. They’ve published the link to the audio and video we posted online. Everyone can hear and see our attack for themselves. Most are even printing a transcript of Manfreed’s speech showing where our blast message interrupted the old geezer.
“Of course, what the press had no way of knowing was the total chaos that erupted behind-the-scenes after the program ended. Manfreed was so furious he lashed out at everyone backstage. He would have strangled the head technician if his toady assistant hadn’t stopped him. No matter what the poor guy said to defend himself, the old S.O.B. kept screaming, ‘You’ve made me look like a fucking fool. Who are they? How did they do it? How could they do it?’ He got so red in the face, he looked like he was going to have a heart attack.
“As stupendous as our attack at New Atlantis was, the most important thing to come out of Saturday for us was that it was the first major test of StarWords, our global multimedia interception system—and that it worked perfectly. It proved without a doubt that we can cut into circuits, take out whole communication grids, reword messages, even produce skywriting—in short, we can now override and cancel any signal anywhere in the world, without a trace. We can invade live meetings wherever they take place. If Manfreed and the White House are upset now, just wait. I don’t want to seem to be overstating our case, but we have created the most powerful weapon to publicly humiliate the corporate cabal, to get our message out, and topple the bastards. They have no idea what they are in for. Our invisible eyes and ears can see and hear them everywhere. Our invisible voice can interrupt them. They can’t escape from us. And we’ll pursue them until we defeat them. We’ll follow them like furies. We’ll be their conscience and haul them up on charges before the world for everything they’ve done—and we have the power to broadcast their own words against them, even what they say in secret, or what they think is secret.”
Atlas Drugged Page 7
