She would do now what Miguel Pieraro had always wanted. She would live, and eventually the family would grow again through her. But first she had a debt to pay off. Having been delivered from evil that night in Fort Hood, Sofia had been given to understand, and she accepted without demur, that a responsibility had been laid upon her by that salvation. The premise sat easily with a Catholic. She would devote this first part of her new life to the fight against evil, raking for it where it had always lain, in the hearts of men.
But not men like her father, or Nick Pappas, who guided her now through the crush of the terminal with a paternal hand on her shoulder. They had grown very close. The last time she had spoken with Caitlin, when her saviour had visited the campus in the Snowy Mountains, she’d told Sofia that would happen. Echelon was a family, said Agent Monroe, and in Pappas, of whom she knew and approved, Sofia could be assured that she had somebody she could trust as if he were her own father.
Nick would never replace her papa of course, but Caitlin had been right. As a mentor, he had taken on many of the responsibilities she now understood Miguel Pieraro had carried on his own from the day their family had been taken from them in Madison County. To keep her safe. To protect her from evil. And to prepare her to go out into the world and to fight the good fight.
Sofia was ready.
‘I’ll see you in a year,’ said Pappas, when they reached the gate. He put out his hand, rather formally and uncomfortably, as though forcing restraint on himself.
‘Not if I see you first,’ she replied, grinning and standing on tiptoe to quickly kiss him goodbye on the cheek.
FOUR YEARS LATER
The last refugee family departed from Melton Farm a week before Monique’s fifth birthday. Caitlin and Bret had planned to celebrate the occasion with a small party, but as so often happens with working parents, time got away from them. The animals, as always, needed tending. The Ministry of Resources chose that week to send through a survey team to inspect the progress of their latest GM oat crop. Monique was about to start her prep year of primary school. Her little brother, Harry, was acting out his separation anxieties during his first week at kindergarten. And Caitlin had no idea when she volunteered to sit on the village’s royal wedding committee that the meetings would prove as frustrating and nearly as murderous as the long search for Bilal Baumer had been. So in the end they marked the departure of their last American refugees with a glass of wine on the front porch at the end of a long summer’s day.
‘We’ve still got Monique’s birthday party next week,’ said Bret. ‘Half the village will be along for that, anyway. We could do something then.’
‘I suppose so,’ replied Caitlin without any great enthusiasm.
She was underwhelmed by the idea of hand-to-hand battle at home with the vicar and Mrs Dingley about fucking Will and Kate’s wedding. The sleep-deprived mother of two was just contemplating a second glass of wine when Bret pointed out the vehicle, a white Peugeot by the look of it, coming over the rise and down the long unsealed road to the farmhouse.
‘Government car,’ he said, with confidence.
‘I think so,’ Caitlin agreed, suddenly aware of the pistol in the holster at the small of her back. She still carried it everywhere. The Kimber Warrior was so much a part of her that mostly she forgot it was there. It had now been, what, nearly four years since she’d last pulled the trigger on a man.
‘Maybe you should get the kids inside, and run the bath, honey,’ she suggested. ‘It might be for me.’
Her husband gave her a measured look before staring long and hard at the approaching car again. ‘Those days are over,’ he said before disappearing inside. ‘Monique! Harry! Bath time, let’s go!’
She heard the squeals and thunder of children running to attend to their father’s command. Outside the farmhouse, training, imprinted at the molecular level, caused her to scan her surroundings for any obvious threats, and then for any non-obvious ones.
Nothing.
The car bore HM Government licence plates. As it turned off the approach road and onto the driveway, which wound in through a stand of apple trees before looping around a small, broken fountain in front of the farmhouse, she recognised the occupants. And smiled.
‘Dalby and . . . Oh my God, Wales!’ she beamed. ‘This must be bad news.’
Her two favourite former overwatch controllers returned the friendly greeting, crunching over the gravel to say hello, to shake hands, and in Wales’s case to wrap her in a bear hug, a manoeuvre made difficult by the presents he was carrying for the children.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead, Caitlin,’ said the American. ‘But Dalby and I were on our way back early from something at Salisbury Plain, and I just couldn’t forgive myself if I hadn’t taken the opportunity to call in and say hello. It’s been too long.’
She aimed a sceptical frown at the gifts he was carrying.
‘I didn’t know that London Cage had opened up a Toys ‘R’ Us franchise,’ she said dryly. ‘Just picked those up on the way, did you?’
Wales had the good grace to look a little embarrassed. ‘Well, I was always going to be dropping by,’ he replied. ‘So it seemed a good idea to have them with me. An American Girl doll for Monique. They’re making them again, you know. And Lego Star Wars for young Harry.’
Her scepticism grew even more pronounced. ‘So you’ve been talking to Bret, then, I see.’
‘Perhaps just a little,’ Francis Dalby admitted. ‘That wine looks damned inviting. I notice your five years in this country have not softened your manners any, young lady. Perhaps you would like to invite your old friends and employers in.’
‘Or perhaps not,’ she mocked, turning around and walking back into the house, waving them along behind her. She could hear the bath running upstairs, and the children laughing as they splashed about in it.
‘Bret,’ she called up, ‘it’s Dalby and Wales. Are you going to come down for a drink when you’re finished up there?’
‘Sorry, I knew they were coming,’ he called back. ‘They said they’d torture me if I let on.’
‘Sounds about right,’ Caitlin muttered as she led her guests through to the kitchen. A pot of osso buco in the oven was about twenty minutes away from being ready, and the places were already set for dinner. Four plates at the big table and two at the smaller children’s table, where Monique and Harry ate most of their meals. Bret had used the royal wedding plates he’d insisted on buying last week. His idea of irony.
‘Your field craft is getting rusty down here,’ said Dalby.
‘It’s sharp enough for dealing with country vicars and village aldermen,’ she replied. ‘Sit down. I’ll open a new bottle. We had half of this last night and it’s oxidised. Life in the boonies, what can I say?’
‘Well, you could say how happy you are to see us,’ said Wales, teasing her.
‘I am, Wales. As long as you’re not here to try to talk me back into the office. I’m retired now. A lady of leisure.’
She uncorked a bottle of Côtes du Rhone and poured a generous measure into two clean glasses.
‘You’re not completely retired, Caitlin,’ Wales pointed out. ‘Dalby here tells me you’re kicking ass as a guest lecturer down at the college in London. And you’re not averse to doing a bit of consultancy here and there.’
She smiled. ‘Paperwork, Wales. I read papers and I write them. That’s all I do these days. When I’m not looking after the children. Or riding shotgun on the preparation for the crucial contribution of our little village to the wedding of the fucking century. Which is all the time.’
‘Wales and Dalby!’ boomed her husband, who had reappeared at the kitchen door with a glass in hand and a guilty look about him.
‘You could’ve at least given me enough warning to let me get changed out of my shit-kickers,’ she scolded him.
Bret looked sheepish but basically unapologetic. ‘Lego Star Wars buys a lot of silence.’
They finished the bottle of red w
ine before serving dinner, and another one with it. The children took themselves off to bed with dire warnings that their new toys would Disappear if they weren’t asleep within ten minutes, while the men finished off all the osso buco, which Caitlin had hoped would last for a couple of days. She returned from tucking in Harry and Monique to find the three of them gathered around a newly opened bottle of Highland Park, courtesy of Dalby, discussing the prospects for the US with Kipper’s second term drawing to an end, and Sandra Harvey and Sarah Palin looking like the front runners to punch it out in the big vote.
By the time they’d accounted for most of the whiskey, sitting by the fireplace in the lounge room after dinner, Caitlin had decreed that the visitors would have to stay the night.
‘Be just like you two to survive a lifetime of fucking villainy only to do yourselves in driving pissed at night. You’d probably get lost and end up back on one of the live firing ranges on the Plain.’
It was well after midnight before Bret and Dalby crashed out, leaving Caitlin curled up in a lounge chair in front of the hearth talking to Wales.
‘We would have you back in a New York minute, you know,’ he told her. ‘I wouldn’t want you to die wondering about that.’
‘Wales, I was in New York for a minute or two in April ’07, you might recall,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel the need to go back. I’m out of it, Wales. I push a shopping trolley around the local supermarket now and my idea of adventure is when Harry wets himself in that trolley and he’s not wearing a nappy.’ She shook her head at that unpleasant memory.
Wales Larrison, these days the global director of Echelon, didn’t smile. He sized her up as though she were a challenging puzzle.
‘Do you remember the young girl you brought to us, just before you left and came home, here?’ he asked, waving a hand to take in the lounge room and the farm beyond it.
‘Sofia,’ said Caitlin. ‘Of course I do. How’d she work out? She’d have been in the field for a few years by now.’
Larrison took his time again.
‘As always,’ he said eventually, ‘you’ve done well for us, Caitlin. She was a good find. We haven’t had an asset as good as her since . . . well, since you left, to be truthful.’
‘That’s very flattering, Wales. But I left. And I’m not coming back.’
The scar tissue just under her hairline, where they’d opened her up to remove the tumor back in ’03, was throbbing. It did that at times.
‘She wasn’t just good for us, for the office,’ Wales continued, swirling his whiskey before holding the tumbler up to the firelight. The flames threw long, snaking shadows across the room. ‘I still believe, Caitlin, that there was a chance your last mission in Texas could have ended very differently. There was a good chance that if Blackstone had lived, and if Kipper moved against him with the information you took, I think there was a very good chance he would have tried to take Texas out of the union. It could have meant civil war. Sofia Pieraro averted that outcome when she put him down. Those three IDs she left at the scene, the road agents, they helped us sell the story of Blackstone’s death as a bandit raid.’
Caitlin took a sip on her drink. Unlike the others, she had switched to mineral water hours ago.
‘Funny thing about those guys,’ she said. ‘They belonged to Blackstone. They were in McCutcheon’s files. That never came out, did it?’
‘It didn’t need to,’ replied Wales. ‘She gave us more than enough to start spinning up the myth that Jackson Blackstone was a murdered patriot. And you gave us her.’
‘Yeah. A patriot. Nicely fucking done, Wales.’
Larrison finished his drink and put it aside. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And she’s done very well for us ever since.’
‘How did Sofia take to that? The idea that Blackstone gets to go down in history as a martyred hero.’
The smile on Wales’s long, deeply lined face was wintry. ‘Like you, Caitlin, she’s a realist these days. Or she would be . . .’
‘I sense there’s a “but” coming.’
‘But,’ nodded Larrison, ‘now she has disappeared for real.’
Caitlin said nothing, but Wales seemed disinclined to add anything to his statement.
‘That’s too bad,’ she eventually replied. ‘But what does that have to do with me?’
‘You spent a lot of time with Sofia, staying low after Fort Hood,’ said Larrison. ‘You got to know her at a very vulnerable time. You probably know her as well as anybody in the agency, including her mentor. On all of her profiles and evaluations, she identified you as a significant figure in her salvation.’
‘It’s late, Wales. Really late.’
‘I’d like you to come back, Caitlin. I need you to find Sofia Pieraro. She’s somewhere in the South American Federation. She was working deep inside Roberto’s regime for us. And then she went dark. The same way you went dark after Fort Hood. We need you back, Caitlin. We need to know what’s happened down there. What might be about to happen.’
Larrison held up one hand before she could reply. ‘I don’t want you to answer me now, because I know what your answer will be, now. Will you promise me you will sleep on it, though, and talk to Bret in the morning? And then talk to me. Morales is a problem we’ve never encountered before. Not since the Disappearance, anyway. A madman in charge of an emerging super-state. He’s already rattling the sabre over the Falklands. You know what that means, Caitlin. You know how far the consequences can run. How people like this can imperil innocents, even on the far side of the world.’
He didn’t do anything so gauche as letting his gaze drift upstairs to where her children were sleeping. He didn’t have to. He knew her too well.
Caitlin was quiet for a long time. Finally she pushed herself up out of her chair.
‘I’m going to bed, Wales. I’ll see you in the morning.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
So, the end of a story. Time not just to look back and say thank-you to everyone who contributed to this book, but also to the other two that came before it. Some have been with me all the way. Betsy Mitchell, Cate Paterson, Joel Naoum, Jon Gibbs and Nicola O’Shea at Random and Pan Macmillan. Russ Galen, my agent. You don’t know them, but without them you would not be holding this book in your hands.
Others popped in and out during the long journey, editing here, publishing there, sprinkling fairy dust on the marketing and publicity machine. Yes, that black engine. They all need to be given a hearty slap on the back and bought a drink as well, because the Disappearance series was mostly published in the darkest days of the Great Recession and the tireless efforts of the sales and marketing teams from both houses need a particularly loud ‘Huzzah!’ Most of you, I never even meet. But you have my deep thanks for what is largely a thankless job.
And hell, while we’re on it, how about a shout out to the frontline troops. The guys and gals in bookstores, actual real world bookstores, with shelves and everything, who’ve sold so many copies of these babies for me. Some of you I do know personally. Most I don’t. Again, thank you.
On a personal note, as ever, props to my blog buddies. They know who they are and how much they contribute to the creation of each book. One of the really lovely things about the modern world is the way that authors don’t have to hide themselves in the garret all the time now. If you want to reach out and spend time with your readers, even make some of them your friends, you can do so. My readers and friends hang out my blog, Cheeseburger Gothic.
Many more hang out at the digital cocktail party known as Twitter. Hugely distracting, but enormous fun, this social not-working service has become a very important part of my work. The cloud is the greatest instant feedback service ever cobbled together from electrons and rubber bands. I can’t possibly even begin to name everyone who’s helped me out with a research question or a bit of encouragement there. They know who they are.
And last, but most importantly. Jane, Anna and Thomas. The rest of you get the best of me. My public face. All shiny and smile
y and scrubbed till my belly button shines.
They get the real me. The deadline me. The scruffy, smelly, grumpy where’s-my-goddamned-cup-of-coffee me. Feel for them.
I do.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Birmingham is the author of the cult classic He Died With a Felafel in His Hand, the award-winning history Leviathan and the trilogy comprising Weapons of Choice, Designated Targets and Final Impact as well as Without Warning and After America.
Between writing books he contributes to a wide range of newspapers and magazines on topics as diverse as the future of media and national security. Before becoming a writer he began his working life as a research officer with the Defence
Department’s Office of Special Clearances and Records.
John Birmingham refuses to build a website, but you can find him online at his blog, http://cheeseburgergothic.com and on Twitter @johnbirmingham.
Also by John Birmingham
Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1
Designated Targets: World War 2.2
Final Impact: World War 2.3
Without Warning
After America
ALSO BY JOHN BIRMINGHAM
John Birmingham
Without Warning
A wave of inexplicable energy has slammed into America. And destroyed it.
What will the world do without its last superpower?
For the jihadists, Allah has performed a miracle. For the US and its allies, Armageddon has arrived. Australasia, far from the noxious waste darkening Europe’s skies, beckons as a possible oasis.
Who and what will fill the void?
John Birmingham
After America
‘Our world went to hell on March 14, 2003.’
Angels of Vengeance: The Disappearance Novel 3 Page 57
