‘Bullshit,’ she muttered, hefting the pistol for reassurance. ‘Who sent you?’
Another taste of the taser, a quick one.
‘Was it Cesky? Did Henry Cesky send you?’
Zap.
The only answer she received was more grunting and panting as the voltage slammed into him. She took a length of heavy steel rebar from the skip, checked up and down the empty laneway, and broke his kneecap with one vicious swing. He would’ve screamed had she not cut him off with another burst of crippling taser-fire.
‘Did someone send you after me?’
She backed away a few feet, still holding both weapons. The man had soiled himself. The stench was foul. His whole body was shuddering involuntarily. As he recovered, slowly and marginally, he began to moan.
‘I’m really not interested in your sob stories,’ said Julianne. ‘Unless you want me to break your other knee and hit you in the back of the neck, you need to cough up the information now. Were you being paid to get me?’
‘Yes.’ His voice was so weak and broken she almost missed the answer.
‘What’s that? Yes? Did you say “Yes”? So who sent you?’
She let him have another two seconds of voltage.
‘My boss, my boss,’ he replied, sounding as though he was pleading. ‘My boss take contract. I do job.’
A surge of anger boiled up inside Julianne and she smashed the bar down on the middle of his thigh. He screamed until she cut him off with the 26.
‘And who do you work for, hey? Who sent you out to ruin a perfectly good evening? I could’ve had fun tonight. I could’ve got laid. Instead I’m stuck here having a shitty time with you and … and … Oh fuck, you’ve got blood all over my new shirt!’
Jules could no longer control herself. She was so sick of running and hiding and running again. It was all she had done since escaping New York with the Rhino. A red mist of rage clouded her vision as she let loose with both the taser and the rebar. She could feel the jolt of the power surge every time she hit him, but she couldn’t stop. Her fury, her fear, her sick satisfaction at finally being able to lash out when previously she had felt only impotence and frustration - they all combined to doom this Romanian who had been sent after her.
When she was done, when she finally regained some control over herself, he was long dead. A ship’s horn wailed nearby as she collapsed against the edge of the skip, dropping the iron bar to the road. It was filthy with matted hair, bone fragments and clumps of grey matter. Julianne vomited.
She heard voices close-by and almost fled, but her father’s memory, speaking calmly to her across the years, stayed her reaction. ‘Better to be found at the scene than fleeing it,’ the late Lord Balwyn always said. ‘One always looks so bloody guilty when fleeing.’
She gulped in a couple of long, halting breaths. Gathered her disordered wits. And checked her surroundings again. Nobody. Not even voices or footfalls this time.
The body was heavy, a dead weight, but Julianne was strong from years of shipboard life and months on the run with Rhino across the American frontier. She detached the taser darts from the corpse and dragged it over to a builder’s skip that was only half full.
‘Bugger me,’ she grunted, heaving him over the side of the industrial bin. ‘Weighed down by your sins, I’ll bet.’
Her would-be killer thumped down on top of a mound of plastic wrapping and cardboard. She took a few moments to cover him with rubbish she gathered from another skip, and thought about washing away the blood. But what was the point? In her experience the streets around here were caked with blood and vomit every morning. She did take the iron bar and the taser with her, however. She would have to dispose of them properly.
It would have been foolish to walk back up the hill towards the pub. Had she run into Donna and Jeff, there would be no way of explaining what had happened. And even if she hadn’t, she looked a frightful mess, covered in hot blood and brain flecks. Best if she headed down to the docklands, where the bottom-feeding whores plied their trade. There at least she could toss the rebar into the harbour.
She was going to have to get out of Sydney, though. The cops were hardly likely to break a sweat over a dead Romanian hitman, but they weren’t the problem. Cesky was. He had found her again.
Julianne started walking. She didn’t spend much time wondering where she might go next, because there was only one choice, really. The only place in this country where she had any real friends.
6
DEARBORN HOUSE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
They took a break late in the morning. The discussion about what to do with the prisoners in the east continued for at least an hour after Kip had made it clear he wanted to take Sarah Humboldt’s settlement plan to Cabinet. Having been told it was his responsibility to make sure any plan was workable and saleable, Jed Culver applied himself in spite of his misgivings. He still thought the best solution was to pack them on a raft made out of beer barrels and wave them off at the docks during hurricane season. But he understood the President’s reasoning and was grateful that he himself would have some control over the outcome. It might even be possible, according to Ritchie, to turn some of the fighters completely around and send them back against …
Against who?
Bilal Baumer’s movement seemed to have topped out with him. As best they could tell, he had been killed in Manhattan. It was unfortunate they hadn’t been able to lay hands on a body, or even a scrap of DNA. This wasn’t going to turn out like bin Laden, with a couple of goat farmers wandering into town with his severed head on a stick and their hands held out for the reward money. But there was very good intelligence placing Baumer in the ruins of the Rockefeller Center, surrounded by US ground forces, an hour before 2nd Bomb Wing’s B-52s had atomised the complex and everybody in it. As far as anyone knew, none of the leadership cadre had survived. The US Army had captured only small-unit commanders away from the site of Baumer’s last stand, all of them now held out at Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, north of Kansas City. None of those bastards knew of any higher authority than their so-called Emir. The pirate bands that had been captured, especially the Serbs and Russians, who surrendered en masse once they’d seen the hammer come down on Baumer, were likewise convinced that he was the mastermind. And deader than disco.
In the darkest corners of his heart, Jed remained unconvinced, and he knew that Kipper, even though he wanted to put the episode behind them, couldn’t do so until he was certain the men responsible for New York had all been captured or killed. The President might ignore the pawns, but he wanted to know for sure the king had been taken from the board.
‘Sorry about the ambush.’
James Ritchie had caught him unawares, wool gathering by a window looking out past the Christmas tinsel and over the grounds of Dearborn House. A good couple of inches of snow had fallen, blanketing the ground and capping the hedges and garden furniture. Culver abandoned his thoughts to the cold.
‘You didn’t need to sandbag me like that,’ he said, cutting to the point. ‘I pushed the President pretty hard to get you in here. I was impressed with the way you held it all together out in Hawaii. If you thought Sarah’s plan was a good one, you could’ve just told me. I might not have agreed, but I would have taken your opinion seriously.’
Ritchie had the good grace to look embarrassed. ‘Yes, I can see it was a mistake now. But Ms Humboldt sought me out in confidence and asked if I would keep her proposal to myself. It didn’t seem an unreasonable request. I’ve spent my life inside a chain of command that operates on a need-to-know basis. Needless to say, I’m still finding my feet here.’
He moved his shoulders around inside his off-the-rack navy blue suit. It was obvious to Jed that the National Security Advisor needed a tailor who could do more than sew patches onto jackets.
‘To be frank,’ Ritchie continued, ‘I miss the certainties of wearing a uniform.’
Just then, Kipper’s secretary waved to them from the far end of the ha
llway, calling them back to the meeting. Culver clapped a hand on the admiral’s shoulder, taking note of the cheap fabric. He decided not to ruin the peace gesture by saying as much. Instead, he made a mental note to see about getting this guy to a tailor.
‘If keeping someone’s secret is the worst thing you do in politics, you can consider yourself lucky, Admiral.’
‘Politics?’ Ritchie looked surprised. ‘I don’t think of this as politics, Jed. More like public service.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Culver, brightening considerably. ‘Dissembling with the best of us.’
They walked down the hallway, observed by portraits of presidents past, and re-entered Kip’s office via the anteroom, the door being held open for them by a Secret Service officer. The current US President was finishing off a sandwich, gazing out of the window at the snowfall. He waved them back to their seats as he returned to his own place, behind the generously proportioned desk that dominated one side of the room.
‘Now, Paul’s going to take us through the budgetary position, using small words and big numbers so that I can understand,’ he said, with a warning tone that wasn’t entirely to be taken as a joke. Secretary McAuley, who seemed to have not moved at all during the break, preferring to remain in his chair reviewing his papers, thanked the President.
‘Did you read that book I gave you on the Federalist Era, Mr President?’ Culver asked. ‘I’m not joking - you’ll find this Treasury stuff a whole lot easier to digest if you have a sense of history.’
Kip looked pained. ‘I’m trying, Jed. I’m trying. I’m more of a biography man.’
‘I gave you a copy of Miller’s biography on Alexander Hamilton as well,’ the Chief of Staff pointed out.
Kipper rubbed his head at that. ‘Well, the Federalist book is easier, but not by much. Paul, break it down for us laymen, if you would.’
‘Certainly, Mr President. The situation remains dire,’ he began, ‘although there are some positives. The call on supplementary spending for the armed forces has abated considerably as the last federal units rotate out of New York. Governor Schimmel’s state militia have resumed control of Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs, augmented by private security forces funded from salvage concessions in the interior rather than directly out of consolidated revenue.’
‘If I may, Mr Secretary?’ Ritchie raised his hand. ‘Some of those savings should come by leaving heavy equipment stored in New York for future use, either by the state or federal authorities in the future. Am I correct?’
‘That is correct,’ McAuley replied, nodding his head. ‘We only have to bear the cost of transporting troops who are still on active duty or wish to return to their original duty stations for discharge. Some troops will be discharged directly into New York’s state militias or into the civilian workforce, which will serve to reduce expenditures even further.’
‘So we’re not doing too badly, then,’ Culver interjected. ‘If there’s a safe place on the eastern seaboard today, it has to be New York. Next to KC and the Hood, it’s the most heavily armed and populated outpost in CONUS.’ He felt pretty good about that. Maybe in another year the joint naval base of Norfolk would join that list, if the Brits got a move on.
‘This is significant,’ Paul McAuley agreed. ‘Even after the end of major combat in the city, we were still haemorrhaging funds there. That difficult period is now behind us.’
The Secretary of the Treasury shifted in his seat, crossing his legs as though settling in for a long haul. Jed decided to avail himself of the sandwich plate. In many respects, McAuley was potentially the most powerful man in the room. Relegating Chief of Staff Culver to second place. Fortunately, while McAuley had Alexander Hamilton’s grasp of economics combined with a modern-day understanding of the imploded global economy, the egomania wasn’t included in the package, for which Culver was eternally grateful.
‘The line of credit negotiated with our Vancouver Alliance partners was activated at midnight last Friday,’ the Treasury chief continued, ‘guaranteeing our recurrent funding needs for the next twelve months. Once we agreed to pay our surviving creditors at face value with regular interest payments, our ability to regain credit was somewhat restored.’
‘So let me get this straight, Paul …’ It was Kipper now who held his hand up. ‘We’re just going to make the minimum payment. We’re not going to try to pay all of the debt off?’
‘We couldn’t if we wanted to, sir. Everyone knows that. It was not possible to pay off our debt prior to the Wave either. However, if we maintain our interest payments to the top six surviving creditors - aside from China, who are no longer a unitary state creditor - then we can restore a minimum level of faith, enough to grant us credit for funds to sustain us through the short term.’
‘I’ll never quite get over this notion that debt can be a good thing,’ Kip sighed. ‘You pay your bills, that’s what I was taught.’
Culver could not resist. ‘Spoken like a true Republican, Mr President.’
Kipper glowered at him.
The approval of the Vancouver treaty nations wasn’t news to anybody in the room, but Jed was aware of a palpable sense of relief. So wretched had the government’s finances become at one point shortly after the Battle of New York that Treasury had been forced to issue IOUs to employees and creditors. There had naturally been rampant speculation on those IOUs. Many had sold theirs off in exchange for more viable currency or food and resources. Some hoped to keep the value of the IOUs down, while others hoped for a profit if and when the government decided to honour those promissory notes at face value.
The Chief of Staff still woke up some nights with the pain in his chest, worrying about the speculative bubble. Marilyn had forced him to see a doctor in the end, so frequent had these episodes become. Apparently the federal budget deficit had been giving him killer indigestion. After the amount of vomiting he did from the acid reflux, Jed marvelled at the need to let out his trousers further and further.
‘Negotiations to roll over the line of credit at the end of its period will commence in Auckland, next week,’ McAuley was saying. ‘Both the Vice-President and I will be in attendance.’ He glanced up at Kipper at this point, as if confirming his permission to attend. Kip nodded. ‘Of course, our capacity to repay these loans by drawing on liquid assets is severely limited. We have been able to service some of the loans through barter, exchanging military surplus to our top six lenders. However, their capacity and need for such surplus is reaching an end, as is our ability to provide anything more they could want or feasibly integrate into their own militaries.’
‘I take it no one wants to buy another carrier?’ Culver asked.
‘The Brits have the one Nimitz class they want,’ Ritchie noted. ‘Frankly, it’s the only one they can afford.’
‘Continue, Paul,’ the President said, dragging them back on topic.
‘I will cover the accounts receivable first. We should start to see royalty flows from the mining leases taken up by BHP Billiton, West Rand and JCI within a six- to eight-month window, but it will still be three to four years before those companies ramp up to full production.’
Jed nodded. The United States, contrary to popular belief, still possessed vast mineral resources, especially in the form of coal. The mining corporations were required by law to hire at least forty per cent of their workforce from the local civilian population. It was dangerous, dirty work, but it paid relatively well compared to what else was available in the post-Disappearance economy.
McAuley went on. ‘The exchange of old US bonds and currency for the new Treasury bonds continues, with several major corporations and private investors buying in. They are able to exchange pre-Wave bonds for a variable face value that’s tied to their interest-rate payments. Currency exchange with overseas asset holders continues at twenty per cent face value, although there is a deadline for final exchanges set for this time next year.’
Jed suppressed a grin at the glaze he could see frosting ove
r Kip’s eyes. He, on the other hand, found this shit fascinating. A lot of folks were getting rich off of the new bonds, deepening their credit or using the paper to levy purchases of vacant land in the Wave-affected territories. Cesky Enterprises immediately came to mind as one of the major players in that brand of rampant land speculation. The US Government would accept bonds as payment at face value for land, whereas the best a bond holder could get on the open market was less than thirty per cent for face value.
It was simple enough: buy the land on the cheap, dumping the bonds to someone else in the process, and hope that the value of the land would rise, generating a profit. Several other corporations, such as Boeing, Microsoft and Starbucks, had opened land offices with a similar objective in mind. The only problem was the same one that faced the Confederation Congress prior to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Back then, they’d also tried to sell land in order to pay the bills, without much success. The territory, the much contested Ohio River Valley, was difficult to secure against the British and the Native Americans. This instability ensured that the land, while valuable on the surface, sold for far less than it was worth until the central government gained true control over the valley.
Funny how history could loop back and bite you on the ass like that. Spheres of control were ringed by looser rings of what might be called ‘influence’. The land in those areas did yield decent gains. However, outside of those areas? Selling that land was a lot like eating rat poison: it would fill your belly with blood while you slowly starved to death.
‘The profits from the bond and overseas currency exchange should be enough to restore short-term faith in the solvency of the government,’ Paul McAuley continued. ‘We will still be in debt, to be certain. However, the United States of America has rarely been without a national debt.’
‘The history books tell me as much, Paul,’ Kipper said. ‘Still, the blue-collar engineer in me would like to make that debt a bit more manageable.’
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