She unpacked a smile and handed it back to him, but with a touch less frost than before. ’They are safe, as you’d know, sir. The Brits have them tucked away on a farm up in Scotland. They have good people looking after them, and more taking care of our farm while we’re away. They’re not a distraction. They’re a motivation. Is that what you wanted to hear, Mr Culver?’
Jed nodded, just a slight bobbing of the head. ‘It’s good that you’re motivated,’ he told her, ‘because I have something to ask of you.’
‘You do?’ she shot back. ‘Or the President does?’
Larrison looked like he was preparing to get all stern and old school again, but Culver shook his head as if to say Don’t bother.
‘I’ll tell you straight, Ms Monroe. Caitlin. You mind if I call you Caitlin?’
‘The list of things I care about is very short.’
He took a seat in the nearest swivel chair and motioned for the others to do the same as he gazed out over the city. Before the Wave had swept away most of Canada’s population, Vancouver had been a small city. About half-a-million people, as he recalled. It was twice that now, swollen with Canadians and Americans returned from abroad, where they had avoided the fate of their compatriots. Crowded too with migrants, another quarter-million of them from China and the Punjab mostly, although a few neighbourhoods were solidly Vietnamese and, surprisingly, Japanese. For the capital of such an empty, haunted country, Vancouver was crowded. Evidence of new, unregulated building was everywhere. Office towers had been given over to residential use without much planning, and new developments were spreading out on the city’s edge. Jed crinkled his eyes against the glare of the winter sun before turning away from the view.
‘The President knows nothing of this meeting and never will,’ he said. ‘Unless I’m called to testify in my own criminal trial at some point in the future.’
Agent Monroe did not react. She simply waited for him to continue. He admired that. Jed Culver had never been one for hysterics and drama queens.
‘Frankly, I’d have been happy if any arrangement you and I might come to could’ve been settled without the involvement of your boss here. I see no need to involve Mr Larrison –’
‘Well, I can see plenty, Mr Culver,’ said the director. ‘Starting with the fact that my agents do not act without my say-so. I’ve reviewed your case and I agree there is a role for us to play – if Special Agent Monroe is willing. Operationally, she remains on secondment to the London Cage. But your concerns about Texas appear to overlap with unfinished business of ours. Perhaps they don’t, but the possibility that they do invites us to speculate and study the matter further. Agent Monroe is our in-house counsel on Baumer, to borrow a phrase from your former career. I also understand why the President needs to be kept out of it. From our perspective, sir, that is a matter of little import. Echelon is not an American agency. We answer to the Alliance Secretariat. But nor are we your Praetorian Guard, sir, nor Ms Monroe your personal emissary or executioner. If she runs with this, she does so on my dime.’
Jed conceded the point with a tilt of his head. ’You’ve read the brief, ma’am?’ he asked.
‘Yep,’ said Monroe.
‘And?’
‘What can I say? We’re already in motion. The French didn’t release Baumer. Ahmet Ozal got him out and Ozal had a connection to Fort Hood through that salvage contract for Hazm. Contract’s not even registered in Texas, as I understand it. Treasury got the information from Hamburg. Lupérico says –’
‘Wait a minute – Lupérico says? I thought he was dead,’ said Culver, suddenly concerned that perhaps Echelon had stashed him somewhere.
‘Sorry. Poor phrasing,’ replied Monroe. ‘Lupérico is dead.’
‘Okay. Because I understood it was only you and him at the end.’
‘That’s right. He told me what we needed and then I settled our personal account.’
‘Is that something you’re in the habit of doing, Ms Monroe . . . Caitlin?’ asked Culver. ‘Settling personal business on company time?’ He was still a little put out.
She shrugged. ‘Business and pleasure. It can be hard to tell them apart some days. If you don’t like it, get someone else. I’ve got diapers to change.’
She wasn’t smiling as she said it. Jed felt the need to test her further.
‘It didn’t occur to you that there was more we could’ve learned by debriefing him out of the field?’
‘My mission parameters covered a hostile, in-field debrief,’ she said, without emotion, as if that concluded the matter. ‘The subject was terminated at the end of the debrief.’
Culver regarded her with the same caution he’d give a coiled rattler. Monroe was both an anachronism and a harbinger of the changed world. Fashioned as a weapon long before the Disappearance, she had proven she could adapt to altered realities more swiftly and with less apparent disinclination than most of the people he worked with. In their own way, everybody seemed to be trying to hold on to how things had once been, even as that history cracked apart and broke up like a giant ice shelf.
He exhaled slowly. It was her world, not his. There would soon be more like her, rather than fewer. Jed pressed at his stomach and tried to control the boiling underneath his right-hand bottom rib. Quite honestly, he preferred Lupérico dead. The fewer loose threads to unravel, the better.
‘So you’ve read the brief, Agent. You know what we need.’
‘I read the summary. I only got it when I arrived. Ten minutes before you.’ There was no hint of accusation in her tone. Merely a statement of fact.
‘Well, read it all, before you agree to anything,’ he said. ‘Because in spite of what will undoubtedly be sterling efforts on your behalf from Mr Larrison here, you’ll have zero ass cover if this goes wrong. And it could go wrong about ten ways from Sunday.’
‘In my experience, Mr Culver, life can and does go wrong more often than not.’
He leaned forward. Not getting into her personal space, but approaching as near as he dared. ‘You’re a realist, Ms Monroe. That’s good. Because here’s the reality: this country is dying. The Wave ripped our heart out and we’re just staggering forward, carried along by our own momentum. We could be at war with Roberto’s little pirate kingdom within six months, and we could lose if it doesn’t go nuclear. If we’re not at war with him, we might just turn on ourselves. Mad Jack’s got his Heart of Darkness routine polished to an obsidian fucking sheen down there in Texas, and it’s getting to a point where even my boss, the sainted and peace-loving James Kipper, might just have to stand to his guns in response. You were in Manhattan, Ms Monroe. You know what that fight took out of us. We cannot win against Morales. And we probably can’t win against Blackstone either. Not that anyone ever really wins a civil war in any case.’
As the White House Chief of Staff spoke, his earlier anxiety at meeting this woman fell away, replaced by the fears that really underlay his nervous agitation. They were the fears of negation, of total collapse, and the return of a dark age that would envelop the whole world.
‘I need you in Texas, Ms Monroe,’ he went on. ‘In the belly of the beast. You are not going to find Bilal Baumer there. Frankly, I don’t think you’re ever going to find him. In my admittedly amateurish opinion, Mr Baumer was pulverised into pink rat giblets by the US Air Force when they knocked flat about ten blocks of New York around the old Rock last April. But the reason Baumer was there, the reason he nearly bled us out – and, incidentally, the reason your husband and daughter were nearly killed too – that I believe you will find in Texas. That’s why Director Larrison has agreed to assign you a special clearance to operate within CONUS. That’s why I’m willing to go against the wishes of my boss, and risk a good thirty years in the pen if it all goes wrong. That’s why I want you down in Tusk Musso’s office asap, by way of KC, where you can start doing some primary research on Governor Blackstone’s policies. Kansas City is our main forward base and my people there know more about the dark corners of Bl
ackstone’s evil empire than most would care to. A day spent with them will help you adjust your perceptions.’
Both Monroe and Larrison were silent and still now as Jed spoke with more passion and genuine fear than he had for a long time.
‘When you’ve done your homework there,’ Culver said in conclusion, ‘you get down to General Musso’s and find out how and why Blackstone entered an arrangement with a company owned by Ahmet Ozal, one week before Ozal took ship for the new world, there to make an enormous and fatal pain in the ass of himself.’
‘It sounds like I’m going to have to get right up next to Blackstone,’ she said. ‘Why would he let me do that?’
Jed dismissed the question with a snort.
‘Mad Jack’s jumping around with a red-hot poker up his ass at the moment,’ he said. ‘Has been for months. The poker got jammed up there thanks to Roberto Morales.’
He could see he’d surprised her for the first time.
‘Yeah, I know. I don’t really understand it either, but Blackstone is convinced Roberto looks towards his little patch of heaven down Texas way with covetous eyes. He’s been trying to convince the President to pull forces out of the Pacific and put them in the Caribbean. That’s your way in. You’re going down as my personal envoy to give the governor a chance to make his case. Off the record. We keep everything informal. That’s how I do my best work and Blackstone knows it. He’ll give you an audience. Access. You use that as you see fit.’
‘What about Musso?’ asked Monroe. ‘He was the guy at Guantanamo, wasn’t he? Is he in the loop on this?’
Wales Larrison answered the question. ‘He is. It’s not my preference, but Mister Culver has his reasons and I can live with them.’
‘Tusk Musso’s a patriot,’ said Jed. ‘And he worked a goddamn miracle down at Gitmo. But the Corps, they dropped him like a turd at a tea party because he ran up the white flag. I got him that job in Temple, running the Federal Centre there, because it’s not all that different from what he had to do in Cuba, dealing with a hostile power hunkered down just outside his fenceline. The President didn’t need much convincing, I might add. He thought Musso did a great job too. Bottom line – you can trust Musso, he knows the score. But only him, okay? He won’t be your overwatch authority, but you can go to him if you need to.’
‘And you’re cool with this, Wales?’ asked Agent Monroe. The familiarity between them wasn’t lost on Jed. He was very much the outsider here. That made him vulnerable. He could use these people, but he couldn’t trust them.
The deputy director didn’t look happy, but he shrugged.
‘We don’t have the luxury of time with this, Caitlin,’ he said. ‘You spent years building your case file on Baumer, but —’
‘But we don’t have years,’ Jed put in. ‘We don’t have months or even weeks. Every day that Mad Jack sits down there getting stronger is an affront to the Republic and a hazard to its future. I think he fucked us in New York. And I intend to fuck him back, severely and without consent. With your help, Agent Monroe.’
‘It will be my pleasure.’ Caitlin smiled. It was a thin smile, which only hardened her face.
She should have fangs, he thought.
‘Your pleasure will be finding shit out and doing nothing about it,’ Culver emphasised. ‘Do you understand? You will bring any evidence you discover to me. And I will ensure that Mad Jack Blackstone pays with his life for this treason. But you won’t be taking that life. It is owed to the American people. Is that clear?’
Caitlin Monroe nodded. Slowly. Once.
Jed leaned back. Spent. He had rolled the dice on the largest bet he’d ever made in his life. Indeed, he may well have just bet his life on the outcome.
25
ARDMORE, OKLAHOMA
Traffic on Interstate 35 picked up as they approached the Oklahoma–Texas border, their small convoy augmented by another three trucks they’d picked up in Wellington. The snow thinned out too, revealing a layer of grey-brown weeds beneath the icy slush. Sofia had long ago lost interest in gawking at the vehicle wrecks strung along the side of the highway and the charred ruins of towns that had burned down to war-torn streetscapes. She focused her thoughts instead on Fort Hood.
Snuggled up in the SpongeBob blanket, warm inside the surprisingly comfortable steel cocoon of Mary Lou’s cabin, she dozed on and off, roused only by the grinding of gears or a particularly nasty bump. The convoy wasn’t able to risk going much faster than thirty-five miles an hour on some stretches due to ice, snow and giant potholes.
Cindy French had passed the early leg of the journey talking about her family in a bit more detail. The interior of the cab was plastered with pictures of her ‘grandbabies’. Dozens of images, following the lives of five little tykes from baby blankets to sleep-outs in the back yard. And then, of course, the pictoral history stopped. From time to time, Sofia caught the trucker looking at one of them, tearing up before wiping her eyes and waving her hands to drive the sadness away. The teenager wondered if she herself might one day feel something other than a cold background rage.
Cindy had the truck’s short-wave tuned to a station playing endless loops of old comedy, all from comedians who, like her family, had not survived the Wave. It was a uniquely American type of humour, which often lay well beyond Sofia’s comprehension. Jokes about bodily functions, jokes about private sexual things, and so many jokes about the insecurities of the comedians themselves. Some were funny, but most were just embarrassing. She shuddered to think what the nuns would’ve thought of them.
She asked Cindy once, as they drove past the wreckage of a downed passenger jet, whether they could pick up any news stations.
‘We’ve got the real world all around us right now, kid,’ the truckie replied, chewing on a drinking straw. ‘Whenever I listen to the news, all I hear is “Blah, blah, blah.” Ever watched Charlie Brown, the cartoon?’
‘Yes,’ said Sofia. She’d seen a video of the cartoon dog Snoopy in the refugee camp in Sydney. It was funnier than the comedians she was forced to listen to in Cindy’s truck, that was for sure.
‘And ever noticed how all the adults sound muffled, like “Wah-wah-wah”? Well, that’s what the news is like for me. Can’t stand it. Wah-wah-wah.’
Okay. No news, Sofia thought. A pity. She was hoping to start building up her knowledge of life in Texas under Blackstone, especially within the limits of Fort Hood. She knew from listening to the news in Kansas City that you couldn’t always trust the radio to tell you the truth about things. Or about the details, anyway, and the meaning behind those details. But even the broad outlines could be useful to know.
She craned her neck to follow the flight path of a pair of gunships that hammered overhead as afternoon settled across the bleak Oklahoma landscape. They surprised her, completely unexpected. Cindy hit her horn three times, snapped off the short-wave and turned on her CB. ‘Ardmore, coming up. We stopping?’
‘Reckon so,’ Dave said. ‘Time to stretch the legs, get a late lunch, and the like.’
They didn’t go into Ardmore proper, though, the ruins of which Sofia could see as Cindy pulled into yet another Flying J truck stop, this one on Cooper Drive, just off the highway. Unlike so much of the Midwest, Ardmore appeared to be marked for resettlement and redevelopment. Sofia had passed through here on the way north, late in the spring, and the town then had been deserted. They hadn’t even stopped for salvage, preferring to move quickly after having encountered signs of bandits on the trail the previous day. If those ne’er-do-wells had made their camp in Ardmore, as her father suspected, they had obviously been driven off in the months since Sofia had last been here. But by who? Her heart beat a little heavier inside her rib cage as she wondered whether she might be about to encounter the TDF for the first time. They used the same equipment as the US Army, of course, so there was no way of telling if those helicopters had belonged to Blackstone or President Kipper.
‘Is this a Blackstone settlement?’ she asked, trying to kee
p her voice steady.
Cindy smiled. ‘No. We ain’t quite in the belly of the beast yet, my friend. Seattle runs this here burg. Those were air force birds flew over us before. You can unpucker for now – nobody’s gonna press you into a work gang here, Sof.’
The Kenworth rolled slowly into a parking bay, crunching and hissing down through the gears before jolting ever so slightly to a complete stop.
‘Come on, hon, let’s go get us some supplies.’
‘Cindy . . . I only have a few dollars,’ Sofia confessed, feeling unexpected shame. She had taken so much from this kind woman, and all under false pretences.
‘Ppfft!’ The trucker blew off her worries. ‘Look, there’s a federal salvage depot across the road from the J. Anything you need, you can pick it up there. Is there something you need?’
A shrug.
‘I would like a map of Fort Hood and of this place Temple, where the federales are,’ she said. ‘And a small radio, if I could. I should’ve thought to get one earlier, in Wellington when we stopped and met those other lady drivers.’
‘Well, come on then. We’ll get fed and head on to the depot before we light out. See what we can do. I don’t know about the radio, but they’ll have maps for sure.’
Sofia followed the blue-clad truck driver’s lead and hopped out of the cab, with her spirits lifted slightly, glad to be able to stretch her legs and empty her bladder. Her breath fogged up again, but the cold was nowhere near as unpleasant as Kansas City had been. The borrowed jacket was more than enough to ward off the chill.
A tall, thin man approached from the rear of Cindy’s rig. She’d met Dave Bowman back at Emporia. He was a little strange, she thought, and unlike so many of the middle-aged drivers here, he didn’t have a potbelly. Dave seemed to glide across the cement surface.
Angels of Vengeance: The Disappearance Novel 3 Page 25
