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 Cotes 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 wine 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 cha
rge 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 smiley 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.’
Four years after an inexplicable wave of energy decimated the American mainland, and then just as inexplicably disappeared a year later, US President James Kipper is no closer to explaining the catastrophe to the traumatised survivors.
In a decaying New York City, an assassination attempt on the President prompts the suspicion that the looters overrunning Manhattan may be more organised and sinister than previously thought.
Working on a farm in Texas to earn his citizenship, Miguel Pieraro believes in the promise of the New America. That is until tragedy cuts through his family.
In the English countryside, Echelon agent Caitlin Monroe must once again fight for her life, a sharp reminder that her nemesis is active again.
Then out of the smoking ruin of the Middle East comes an enemy that will be Kipper’s toughest challenge yet. The battle for the Wild East is just beginning, but does this New America, and its gun-shy President, have the strength of will to destroy the past in order to save the future?
John Birmingham
Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1
A near-future military experiment thrusts a multinational armada back to 1942, right into the middle of the U.S. naval task force speeding toward Midway Atoll - and what was to be the most spectacular Allied triumph of World War II.
The 21st-century sailors are a shocking spectre for these veterans of Pearl Harbor - men who have never seen a helicopter or a nuclear weapon, and who have never encountered an African-American colonel or a female Australian submarine commander. But they respect the armada’s awesome firepower, and what it may mean to the war.
Initial jubilation is quickly doused by a shocking realisation - other ships may have made the trip - and may be in the hands of the Japanese. What happens next is anybody’s guess … and everybody’s nightmare.
John Birmingham
Designated Targets: World War 2.2
The nightmare of the Transition has pitched a whole world into chaos, as the great powers of 1942 scramble to build the weapons of tomorrow.
But the military crisis is only one part of a ruptured history.
Awareness of the future is sweeping the globe, and many of the people of 1942 are split between desire for the freedoms their descendants enjoy, and fear of the society which awaits them. Then Japan invades Australia, foreign agents begin a campaign of terror in the USA, and Germany prepares for an all-out attack on Britain.
The 21st-century forces must resort to the most extreme measures yet and face a future rife with possibilities - all of them apocalyptic.
John Birmingham
Final Impact: World War 2.3
As history reaches a tipping point, the forces unleashed by the Transition threaten to destroy the world. Hitler and Tojo race towards an atom bomb. Stalin plots to tear down the future and rebuild it in his image. And the Allies begin their Great Crusade with weapons and knowledge from the next century. What price will Kolhammer and his people pay for disrupting their past?
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Document creation date: 27.5.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.53, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
John Birmingham
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