by Ron Savage
yada yada yada
He hadn’t forgotten the sting of his own exile, either. Snatch, the victim. There were also things he wanted—not much, nothing spectacular—a simple apology, a little satisfaction.
What terrible crime had he done, anyway? Feeb Mingling? He’d fallen in love with Dora, the unbelievably beautiful Dora. And no one had minded that. Or the sex. Many of his so-called “friends” had Feeb sex all the time. B.F.D., you know? What the Twit-Who-Is did mind—in Its bizarre and twitty wisdom—was procreation. Disseminating our kind isn’t allowed, Its final words before his trip into the abyss.
Now a recent development, one best kept to himself: more extra curricular spreading of his seed. But how could he have resisted? This Feeb, this woman, looking like Dora incarnate, even the same name; thinner, perhaps, less—what?—earthy?—yet close enough to get him good and crazy, to bring her into his world, visiting the woman’s dreams after he had released her.
Yes, best keep that quiet.
Our secret, little dear.
Snatch had briefly considered killing Dora. The baby would’ve been lost, though. He never saw his first child, the spitefulness of the Twit-Who-Is. He stays in the abyss throughout his son’s lifetime, was the command; and Keeper, ever political, obeyed. For all Snatch knew, his son could be deep beneath the city, a soul condemned to the dreaming field, hidden by row upon row of other souls.
“Can you honor our secret, Dora?” Snatch said out loud.
Will you be a good Feeb?
I’d prefer not to hurt the mother of my child, but I could do that.
Oh, yes. So easily.
He doubted if she’d tell Simon; or if she did, probably not right away. Dora’s love for her husband seemed greater than her guilt. But you couldn’t be sure. An eye on the situation was required, perhaps a threat or two.
Enough, enough.
Other problems demanded his concentration. BioChem, for one: how to convince Johnny boy that a test of his major contributor’s product was necessary to—
—What?
Insure national security?
That’s not a bad idea.
The option of BioChem withdrawing campaign support might help, too. That could be arranged. Let’s not rush it, though. Give the guy a chance, our hot-shot liaison between the budget committee and Defense needs a choice.
Yes…a no-contest sort of choice.
How ‘bout this, Johnny boy, gas Hussein or lose the presidency.
Snatch lighted a cigarette; leaned against the Washington Square Archway, inhaling the smoke, the fires of the night, that mix of oil and gasoline. He gazed up at the skyline, the silhouetted buildings.
If the son of a bitch refused, he could always kill Phoebe.
FOURTEEN
I
“Bacillus anthracis is like any other living organism, it requires a specific temperature range to survive.” Fenwick Day took a sip of water from the glass by his microphone. “I want you gentlemen to know that our vats at BioChem are layered in triplicate with double seals. The bacillus exist at a constant temp of 76.2 Fahrenheit. Under these conditions, anthracis’ shelf-life can be measured in decades.”
Fenwick absently brushed some invisible lint off the sleeve of his black Armani suit, or it looked like an Armani. A Rolex hung on the man’s left wrist. Though Jonathan couldn’t see the shoes, he figured the guy was sporting roughly eighteen thousand dollars worth of stuff on his body.
This had been a long morning: three hours of listening to Fenwick Day; three hours of colleagues asking convoluted questions. Co-chairing the Budget Committee seemed a good idea at the time, but what a nightmare.
You don’t even have the chance to pee, for Christ’s sake.
Gatekeeping, that’s what he was doing, settling disputes, watching the time, clarifying the rules, et cetera, et cetera. And no media, strictly closed-door. Talk about a bum deal: Kennedy got media, Sam Ervin got media, Lott and Barr got media, but what does Senator Clayman get?
Zip. Nada. Nothing.
Nice.
Real nice.
“Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman, I want to be reco’nized here. For a moment, if you please.”
“Ten minutes to Senator Vincetti,” said Jonathan, and leaned back in his leather chair.
Vincetti’s rimless glasses perched on the tip of a thin pointed nose. He peered over the dais at Fenwick Day, his shoulders hunched, his long pale fingers clasping the microphone. The old man was an albino hawk ready for the kill.
“Mis’ta Day,” Vincetti began, southern accent in full gear. “Ah you aware of the Geneva Convention’s rules on biological warfare?” Wawwfare.
“I am, Senator, yes.”
“Then you are aware that such warfare is illegal?”
“Like I’ve said previously, Senator, BioChem’s a research and development company?” Jonathan had noticed Day’s irritating habit of turning statements into questions. It gave him an innocent quality, especially when he sensed he was being lead up the path. “We at BioChem produce only enough product to do our research?”
“By product, I presume you mean anthrax.”
“Bacillus anthracis.”
“Now, Mis’ta Day, isn’t that the fancy name for anthrax?”
“…I suppose.”
“Uh-huh.” Like Vincetti was getting somewhere with this. “Mr. Chairman…” the old man’s accent seemed to go down a notch or two when he addressed the dais “…I need to go on record as being opposed to experimentation with anthrax.”
“I’ll make a note,” Jonathan muttered.
Vincetti was still poised over the microphone, glaring at Fenwick Day. “Don’t see why you have to experiment with anthrax, anyway. We already know it kills.”
“Delivery systems, Senator.”
Here it comes, Jonathan thought. The man’s raison d’etre, so-to-speak. He wasn’t here to sell anthrax. He was selling a system.
Day remained composed, his youthful face and short-cropped dark hair gave him a strange GQ-military-angelic quality. “Inhalation of dry spores seems most effective,” he said, a calm, patient voice. “That requires an aerosol approach.”
“You want to test the delivery system?”
“Uh-huh. That was my thought.”
“So you’re planning to put this stuff in the air,” Vincetti said, as if realizing for the first time what the witness was proposing.
“Absolutely. Look, Senator, there are more than ten countries that either have or are acquiring biological warfare capabilities. You might recall during the Eighties how our inspection team found eight thousand liters of anthrax spores in Iraq, enough to kill every person on this planet.”
“Would you explain what sort of delivery system you have in mind, Mis’ta Day?”
“If you’ll permit me, Senator, we can do better than that.” Fenwick Day covered his microphone with a cupped hand, whispering to the balding older man seated next to him; then he looked up at the dais. “This is Mr. Hodge, one of our researchers. I’ve asked Mr. Hodge to bring a sample of our system here today. It’s in development, but workable.”
He motioned to the older man, who lifted a metal attaché case onto the polished mahogany table; clicked open the two silver locks, carefully scooping up the case’s contents with both hands.
Jonathan waved the man to the dais, and Hodge began placing a small object in front of each senator while Fenwick continued to speak.
“The problems with a delivery system are two-fold, accuracy and detection. A warhead attached to a rocket fails in both categories. Not only can a rocket be detected and destroyed, but when you release the product at high altitude, you’re dealing with unpredictable wind currents. Now what if we were able to deliver the spores to a precise location? Suppose we had a system that—though detectable—appeared non-threatening?”
Vincetti removed his rimless glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “…then you’d have a lot of folks wantin’ to play with it.”
II
An insect.
“We’ve decided on robotics,” Day was saying. “What you see there is a locust, a mature adult. Up to thirty spores can be carried in its abdomen just below the thorax. Now granted, the mature adult usually settles on the ground for breeding. Younger ones are the flyers—and in very large swarms—but fifth stage hoppers have smaller abdomens, and we felt the payload would be insufficient. Our researchers picked the locust because of their spring breeding which usually occurs in North Africa as well as southern Iran and Iraq.”
Jonathan watched Vincetti arch his neck back like a crane, head lowering slowly until he was nose to wing with the insect. “These things fly, do they?”
Fenwick Day nodded to his assistant who stood near the dais. Hodge withdrew a box the size of a cigarette pack from inside his rumpled brown suitcoat.
“You have to map the coordinates,” the older man mumbled, pressing the six dark buttons on the box in three separate combinations. “Its similar to plotting a point on an XYZ axis.”
Jonathan heard a low soft humming sound from all six of the insects. Their wings began to move, but at such a speed that the cobwebbed contours seemed to vanish.
Six locusts rose from the dais in unison.
“They can do different flight patterns,” Hodge said, more to himself, a kid with a new toy. “Random, V-shaped, by twos, whatever you want.”
The insects flew across the room silently—Jonathan unable to detect even the initial humming noise—two abreast; this followed by a V formation as they headed through the sun that filled the three floor-to-ceiling windows of the chamber. For a moment he saw them as tossed gold coins in brilliant dust. Then they dipped into the shadows toward the back of the long wood-paneled room, shifting to a random order. Hodge probably showing-off, Jonathan thought. When the insects glided past the closed double doors, a man came into view, cut by the darkness and the hazy sunshine. The man stepped forward, the light on him, and grinned. Jonathan felt his stomach start to burn.
…Eddy?
Not his ordinary attire: a gray suit had replaced the leather jacket, but the hair was the same, that slicked down Elvis job.
How the hell did you get in here?
Jonathan glanced at the others on the dais. Had they seen him? The senators were all staring at the six golden insects that had just landed beside Fenwick Day’s microphone, their wings beating rapidly but visible now. Jonathan looked toward the rear of the chamber.
Eddy had gone.
God…
I’m going nuts.
“We’ve clocked these devices at speeds of sixty-five to seventy miles an hour, and a distance of one hundred miles,” said Fenwick. He looked at his assistant. “One last feature, gentlemen.”
Mr. Hodge clicked a code into the box.
Wisps of smoke curled upward from the insects; and as Jonathan watched, the tiny golden creatures began to dissolve, bodies, wings and legs seemingly decaying in unison, a matter of three to four seconds.
“An acid circulated from the thorax can be released on command,” Day said, the pride in his voice apparent. “What we offer is an accurate and completely disposable delivery system.”
Jonathan wondered how much Eddy had been involved in this creation, the silent backstage partner, no doubt, but involved nonetheless. He’d thought that when he heard the news of Robert McBaen’s death, too. Backstage Eddy: pulling the levers, turning up the volume—the Wizard of Oz gone mad—yet he immediately imagined himself as president, envisioned a thousand golden locusts swarming into the places of whoever and within that fantasy, he heard America cheering him on.
Rest well, Robert McBaen.
Our country is safe.
III
Lately, on Friday evenings, Phoebe would fly into Washington International with Uncle Jake just so she could meet her father and ride the plane back with him to Philly, a time for the two of them to be…well…pretty much alone. This night Jake had decided to spend the weekend in D.C., and that was even better.
“Did you miss me?” Jonathan asked, attempting to buckle his seat belt.
She leaned over and snapped his buckle. “Too bad you weren’t in politics when the senate was in Philadelphia.”
“Before our time, baby.”
“Not yours,” she said, giggling.
“Hey, I’m not that old.”
“Are we gonna live in the White House?”
“It’s a possibility, a pretty good one.”
“I’d be First Kid.”
“You’re First Kid, anyway.”
Jonathan took her hand and kissed it, wrapping a fist about her fingers as the plane taxied down the runway.
“This is my favorite part,” she said, brushing a strand of thick, rust-colored hair away from her forehead.
“My little thrill seeker.”
Phoebe shut her eyes; felt the lift-off, the vibration of the commuter jet. Her stomach tightened and she let out a wooo noise under her breath then looked through the small window, the night filled with city lights, the luminous Capitol dome and Washington monument.
Her father gave her hand a gentle squeeze.
She’d been thinking about Mr. Eddy at the airport. Now the image returned: the white-faced owl on her window sill, lighted by the moon.
“You’ll protect me, won’t you?” The words came in a whisper before she had a chance to stop them. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I promised myself I’d be good, that I wouldn’t, you know, discuss stuff.”
“It’s okay, baby.” He released her fingers, pressing his palm to the back of her thickly curled hair. “And, yeah, I will protect you. Always.”
She laid her head on his shoulder, looping both arms around the sleeve of his suitcoat; telling him, “I don’t sleep that great, anymore.”
“Do you ever dream? I mean, unusual dreams.” Her father seemed hesitant, as though he wanted to ask a question she might not like. “…a city, maybe?”
“Yes.”
“Manhattan?”
“I think so.” Phoebe hadn’t been to New York, but she’d seen pictures of it. One of her favorite old movies was Barefoot in the Park, with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, and she remembered the scenes in Central Park and the Plaza Hotel. “But it’s night time and there’s fires everywhere and nobody’s on the streets.”
“How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long have you been dreaming that?”
“Just once. When Mr. McBaen died. He’s in the dream, too.”
“What about Mr. Eddy?”
“The owl?”
“No, baby, a guy. Early twenties, black hair, leather jacket. Ever seen him?”
Phoebe shook her head. “Just Mr. McBaen.”
She had forgotten the owl had been a person, the man she saw standing at the edge of the woods. Those smoky, red-orange trees seemed like the sky in her dreams, the man far away and no more than a silhouette.
How could she forget that?
Mr. Eddy’s a man…
…no…
…not a man…
…something else.
Phoebe unhooked the safety belt, tucking her legs up under her, still holding on to her father’s arm. She felt exhausted. The joints of her legs and hips ached.
…can’t sleep…
…can’t…
Don’t want to go to that place.
Don’t want to see Mr. McBaen ever again.
Her eyes closed; then she heard her father’s voice.
“What did he do in the dream?”
“Who?”
“McBaen.”
“He just looks, I dunno, gross.” She forced her eyes open, the lids feeling so awfully heavy. “Like he’d been buried a
nd all.”
She had seen him at the entrance to the subway, standing on the first step leading down to God-knows-where. He wore a yellow jogging suit, the sort old people wear when they go to the mall, and the skin on the left side of his face was crusted and black. The charred flesh had peeled and showed his skull.
Mr. McBaen sang as he waved to her.
Happy birthday to you…
…happy birthday…
…dear Phoebe…
She screamed and ran, one empty street after another, the wind strong and hot; but at every subway entrance, he was there. Waving. Singing to her. And with a different jogging suit, each time she saw him the color had changed, yellow, black, purple, green.
…happy birthday…
…to you.
Then the wrong turn, the wrong corner: he’d grabbed her by the shoulders, his grip powerful, the face before her without expression, the eye sockets dark and vacant. Phoebe felt the heat of hard fingers go through her; and his breath—that smelly old up-chuck breath—she thought she might faint from the nastiness of it. What Phoebe didn’t understand was the hair, different than on TV, black instead of white, slicked back with big sideburns.
Little birthday girl.
Welcome to my Firehouse.
But this wasn’t her birthday, not yet, not yet. Didn’t the man know that? You can’t keep me here, she thought. I’m still eleven. I’m still a kid. I’ve got nine days, nine WHOLE days.
A bad dream…
…that’s all.
Holding her father’s arm tightly now, glancing out the small window of the commuter jet, Phoebe knew she’d learned something new from Mr. Eddy, him and his black greasy hair, something terrible—running off to Africa wouldn’t solve it, Daddy was right, maybe nothing would—and one of Jake’s favorite songs went through her mind, Martha and the Vandellas:
Nowhere to run to, bab-bee.
Nowhere to hide…
