(R)evolution (Phoenix Horizon Book 1)

by PJ Manney

  “This red,” she pointed again, “is the Phoenix Club. Lots of conflicting emotion. Then over here. In green. ‘P-Peter Bernhardt.’ This is both old access and new information at time of recording. He knew you before you met. Like he studied you.”

  “I felt it at the time. But I don’t know how or why.”

  “This purple is ‘10/26.’ Terrorism. A conspiracy. Some nodes are events. Some people. Haven’t untied or identified them yet. But see? They all lead back to these . . .” Her fingers traced the links to “Peter Bernhardt” and “Phoenix Club.”

  And a third section, in orange. Tom couldn’t help but watch his own finger point to it, tracing the surprising number of connections, as though everything eventually led to it. All at once, the map came alive, and the connections ceased being theoretical. They were real relationships. A story emerged.

  Ruth nodded grimly. “T-T-Talia.”

  “What else haven’t you told me?”

  Talia hadn’t seen him standing quietly at the door, studying her. But his strangled voice shot panic through her. Abandoning her HOME controller, she scrambled to the far side of their bed, looking for escape.

  He leapt on the bed and caught her shoulders, shaking her. “Why do you keep things from me? Don’t you get you can’t lie anymore?”

  “How did I lie?”

  “Dulles! And the club! And me! What are you hiding from me?” Her entire demeanor changed in subtle ways he could now see as clearly as skywriting. “You’re lying now!” He grabbed her wrist and held it to her face. “Your raised heart rate, your quickened breath.” He gripped her jaw with one hand. “Dilated pupils. Cool skin. Flushed cheeks. I used to think it was pretty. Now I see microexpressions of distress across your face. I’m a fucking polygraph!”

  She wrenched her head away to climb off the bed. He lunged for her, pulling her to face him.

  “Talk to me! Why is everything a fight with you?”

  “Why do you keep digging? It doesn’t matter anymore!”

  “Just tell me what you know! I’ll find it out from Dulles’s recording soon enough. Unless you want me dead.”

  Expressions shifted like sand through a tangle of thoughts. After some time, authentic grief swamped her. “I didn’t think you’d get this far! If they caught you and found out about me . . .”

  “If I hadn’t taken the processor off the yacht, they would have read Dulles’s thoughts. And you would be dead! After everything that’s happened, how can you not trust me?”

  “I’ve lived a lie longer than you. It becomes your reason for being!”

  He studied her face. “That’s not the only reason. You didn’t completely trust me from the beginning, and it never changed.”

  She wouldn’t look at him.

  His own rage was harder to contain, and he focused on manipulating his neurons to relax. “Answer me: Did Dulles ever say the club was involved in 10/26?”

  “No, but after the attack, his attitude about the club changed. Dramatically. He’d been against them before, but after the attacks, it was personal.”

  “Against who?”

  “He hated Josiah Brant.”

  “Were there others inside the club, working with him?”

  “He claimed he had a reliable informant. That’s why I knew you were correct about bigger plans. The informant told him that.”

  “A mole! You were afraid of compromising a mole if I failed?”

  “Yes. It’d be one less person I could tap through Dulles. Tony said that every spy network is eventually uncovered. I was protecting mine.”

  “He’s right,” said Tom with sadness.

  “He also said you’d have your second initiation at camp and told me to let you go. He thought his informant would be able to help and, with both of you inside, maybe he could turn you to work with him . . .”

  “But you tried to stop me . . .”

  “I didn’t think you’d carry through the second initiation. And they’d kill you.”

  “And if he’d known he was the victim, he wouldn’t have stuck around . . . So did his informant fail him? Or betray him?”

  “I don’t know. But Josiah sets up the loyalty initiations. Maybe the informant had no clue.”

  “Let me get this straight. Someone inside the club may be my ally. Or may betray me to my enemies if I reveal myself.” The parallels with his ex-wife’s situation were unnerving. “I need to find him. He may know what the club is planning and help me stop it.”

  Talia rolled away from him and leaned over the side of the bed and yanked open her nightstand drawer. Fishing around, she found a prescription bottle, uncapped it, and dry swallowed at least one, if not more, of its contents.

  He reached over her shoulder and snatched the bottle. It was a prescription for Xanax. Ordered by Steve. “How could he let you take this shit?”

  “Excuse me? You can alter yourself beyond recognition, but I can’t even tweak me?”

  “You’re a former addict.”

  “Gee, that thing in your head really works. I’d completely forgotten.” She grabbed the bottle back and threw it in the drawer.

  Tom stared her down for a long moment. “I want you to change. And be better. Like me.”

  She turned her head away. “Why?”

  “Then maybe . . . you’ll understand me.”

  “I can’t be like you . . .” she said, shaking her head and looking at the ocean.

  “Why not? You can’t imagine what it’s like . . . I was a child until the surgery, and now, I’m finally an adult. It’s not a change, actually. It’s a maturation. If you did, we could communicate with just our minds. Share each other’s thoughts, feelings . . .”

  Terror of such intimacy filled her face.

  An improbable medley of monsters by Aimee Mann, Rob Zombie, Fantômas, and Mr. Bungle rang through his head. “That’s why you don’t trust me? I’m monstrous?”

  She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “All your changes . . . you’re running away . . . as much as me.”

  “I don’t want to run from you.” Pushing her hair off her neck, he kissed her skin, making a trail to her ear, where he whispered between kisses. “I’m sorry . . . I’ve been betrayed . . . so many times . . . makes me crazy . . . forgive me?” She nodded, not bothering to hide her fear anymore. His fingers threaded her frenzied curls and he kissed her mouth to shut off taunting lyrics of golems, Frankensteins, and their tragic revenge the only way he knew.

  Daylight flooded their windows. The bedspread was heaped on the floor, linens rumpled in postcoital disarray. Talia slept languorously on her side, naked back to him, sheets pushed off to bask in the warmth of the summer sun. He reimagined her back’s curvatures and lush tangle of hair as the cherry-red and flaming-maplewood curves and strings of a 1958 Gibson Les Paul Sunburst—as though he was Man Ray, she his Kiki de Montparnasse, and her body his electric Le Violon d’Ingres.

  Through it all, he wished he knew what she was thinking.

  Her breathing deepened as she awakened. After a moment, she rolled to face him and studied his face. Her own betrayed fear. Or was she reflecting his own? Since the boat explosion, he felt chained to his horrible past. Traumatic moments of Carter’s betrayal, Dulles’s last minutes, and his own near death played like Muzak in the background of his thoughts, unease creeping through his body. He wanted to erase the fear, even if that meant erasing the body.

  “I can’t stay here,” she said.

  “I have work for you here. Ruth needs help.”

  “No. I want to be nearby camp, in Yosemite.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got nothing to offer the club this time, except Thomas Paine. I guessed right: They need whatever popularity or celebrity I represent. I’m the product, and they won’t mess with that.”

  She coiled her limbs around him. “Don’t go.”

  He buried his nose in the tendrils of her hair. There was a sweet freshness to her body that conjured a younger, more innocent girl. “I need to be with them. Or I can’t
stop them.”

  “But I see you in the sea cave . . .” Her look implied this could be their last morning together. She kissed him, then pulled her lips away. “Remember the PAC fund-raiser?”

  Humiliated, he closed his eyes. “I can’t forget . . .”

  “I want to tell you my secret. Just in case.”

  His eyes opened. Her expression was raw, vulnerable. Her lips moved, but little sound emerged. “I love you.”

  She hadn’t said those words since her father had died. He wanted to believe her.

  “I love you, too.” He’d never said those words to any woman other than Amanda. Not even his mother, who left before he could speak.

  “Hard to say, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, God yes . . .” He forced his wiring to clamp down on his amygdala, to stop emotion overtaking him. Emotion was the enemy. Rationality was the key. Even though he knew he needed the first to have the second, it was too hard feeling so much. “And you’re telling me now, in case of what?”

  Her face twitched as imagination seethed with tragic possibilities. He flipped her aggressively on to her back, and grabbing both her hands, pinned them above her shoulders and laid his legs heavily across hers, as though he could immobilize her mind as easily as her body.

  For all their declarations of love, he knew after today there would be a letting go between them. Whatever he left behind wouldn’t be the same when he returned. Whether he would be changed or she was the mystery. The greater question was why he simultaneously knew things that came to pass, yet rejected the notion that implants could create something beyond improved pattern recognition, like ESP. He stubbornly refused to believe intelligence might be more complex than science accepted.

  “You can’t get rid of me that easily. I love you, and I’m coming back. And I always keep my promises.” His lips found hers and wouldn’t release them, as though force of will could make his conflicted mind stop spinning.

  They made love like it might be the last time. He was certain it was.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Thomas Paine took his place in Cabin 1 at the center of the Phoenix Camp next to the main lodge, along with Brant, Carter, and Lobo—and the president of the United States. Lobo had yet to arrive.

  Apparently, the president held no hard feelings from the initiation. This was the first time Tom studied President John Paul Stevens up close. A tall, lanky frame accompanied his Lincolnesque visage, making historical comparisons inevitable. Many presidents crafted an image the American people could easily grasp. Cowboys were perennially popular; however, Stevens’s role was president-as-stern-but-loving-father. The country was a screwed-up teenager, and the former marine was going to discipline us until we were worthy of his love again. But in private, he was a polka-playing accordionist, rock climber, and horticulturist, with a hybrid pansy species, Viola tricolor stevensii, named in his honor.

  They were waited on by the president’s personal Filipino American naval valet, from the same corps of Filipino American valets that had faithfully attended American presidents, generals, and admirals since World War I. As the valet made drinks, Paine listened to Brant and the president chitchat about recent Chinese investment in American illegal immigrant labor. The president joked that he wouldn’t know what to do without his consigliere, Brant.

  “We make a good team, don’t we, John?” nodded the secretary of state.

  “The best. I’ll be sorry to see it end.”

  “Good teams are important.” Brant’s eyes flicked between Carter and Tom several times. Carter got the old man’s message loud and clear: This is your new partner. And take notes.

  The president motioned to the valet. “Tom? You like Long Island Iced Tea? This one’s my secret recipe.”

  “Yes, thanks,” said Tom. Josiah quietly sighed in spite of himself.

  The valet poured a highball with ice full of amber liquid, garnished with a slice of lemon and placed it on the table in front of Paine.

  “Sure you don’t want some, Josiah?” teased the Bartender-in-Chief.

  “I’ll stick to coffee, thanks. Coffee?” Josiah asked Carter.

  “Not the way you drink it,” grimaced the younger man. “I’ll take the liquor.”

  “How’s that?” asked Tom.

  The old man cradled his creamer like it contained liquid gold. “With breast milk.”

  Tom cocked his head in amusement. “May I ask why?”

  “Tradition and self-preservation. Our brothers John Jacob Astor and John D. Rockefeller Sr. popularized it. They died of extreme old age, especially for the times they lived in. Rockefeller was ninety-eight! That’d be like one hundred twenty now. This stuff’s full ’a antibodies, amino acids, easy to digest. Young fellas like you should be doin’ this every day. Along with your Omega 3s and Vitamin D. The future’s comin’ when it might be possible to circumvent death itself. If we drink enough of this stuff, we might make it there in time.”

  “Not if I have to drink that,” shuddered Carter.

  Josiah poured a little more milk in his coffee. “Well, I may be too late, but no harm tryin’.”

  “And you get it from . . . ?” asked Tom.

  “World’s second-oldest profession: wet nurses.”

  The president sipped his cocktail while his valet discreetly wiped condensation rings off the rustic table and placed Phoenix Club coasters in their place. “Tom, I have to know how you’ve managed to stay out of the public eye for so many years. And what makes you so special that you’ve become my consigliere’s new boy here? We thought we had tabs on everybody who’d ever be anybody!”

  “Going blind is a traumatic experience and self-pity would drive anyone under a rock. It took me years to figure out my liability might be an asset. If I compare my life before and after, I’m more successful and complete now than I ever was as a sighted man. I’ve finally got a good woman who loves me, and she’s helped me see my way clear, if you’ll pardon the expression, to participate in the world in ways I never imagined. My blindness gave me ‘insight’ that sight never did. As to why I’m sitting here, in God’s own wilderness, talking to the president of the United States and surrounded by all the men who really matter in this country? I have no idea, except to guess blindness was a blessing.”

  “Until we cure it,” said Carter.

  “Yes,” said Tom. “And that would be a blessing, too.”

  “Blessin’s all around,” toasted Josiah. He raised his coffee cup to them. “To all our health.” Tom carefully felt for his glass and raised it.

  The other men raised their drinks. “To our health.”

  Tom sipped his cocktail. It tasted as innards-peeling as Josiah had warned. “Delicious, Mr. President.”

  His plan to be everything Davy Brant was not was working.

  Dionysus stood center stage once again, whipping his acolytes into fevered anticipation of limitless freedom. Carter Potsdam knew a dependable gig when he saw one. No one else in that amphitheater could control and guide this audience’s emotions as stunningly as the man strutting on stage in nothing but a lion skin and grape leaves. Tom’s déjà vu couldn’t rightly be called déjà vu—this was a replay of his past, however distant he felt from it. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had said a mouthful about being here before . . .

  The vice president of the United States, an affable, malleable man named MacAlister Buchanan, escorted Tom to the amphitheater. With a full head of white hair, his primary skill was to look and sound patriotic no matter what he did or said.

  With Josiah and Carter busy preparing their roles, the president felt it wasn’t appropriate to be seen leading a blind man around the camp. It was, however, the perfect job for the vice president. Tom was impressed with President Stevens’s sense of self-conscious irony.

  It was hard to ignore Buchanan’s whipsawed emotions during the play, from anticipation of the Praetor Maximus’s and Dionysus’s arrival to his fear of the phantom voices riding the wind to his frenzied joy at Dionysus’s endorsed d
ebauchery. He and his fellow masters of media supposed they were so sophisticated the basic tools of stagecraft could not manipulate them. But if the rabid crowd was any indication, they were more affected, perhaps from the simplicity of the techniques. Or maybe Talia was correct: Con men were easily conned. Regardless, being human meant emotion trumped logic every time. Even Tom was moved to nod when Dionysus beseeched his followers to “Cast off the civilized masks you wear and realize your true nature! Human and animal! Citizen and anarchist! Alive and dead! Here, in this sacred grove, you are born again, to live how you wish to live, to be how you wish to be!” Tom understood more than anyone both the thrill and the price paid for living such contradictions.

  Camp attendance this year was mandatory. The invitation claimed classified intelligence would be conveyed to the membership, but only in person. The last compulsory attendance had been during the darkest days of the Cold War when an unexcused absence was akin to Communist sympathizing. In truth, it was for members’ own protection, in case of nuclear war. Old-timers often joked about mines underneath the camp converted to bomb shelters in the ’50s. The tunnels were supposedly converted to food and wine cellars after the Berlin Wall fell. But was that true? Did he really know what was going on, out of his sight and just under his feet?

  As the crowd departed the amphitheater, Mac Buchanan pulled ahead like a dog straining to break his leash. He hurriedly described the fun on offer, jerking the blind man’s arm this way, then that.

  “Mac, why don’t you drop me at the nearest bar stool? Really. Go have fun.”

  “You sure?” the VP asked, as though the president or Josiah might spank him for not following orders.

  “Absolutely. I’d be happy with a drink.”

  It took twenty-eight minutes for Dionysus to find Tom nursing his whisky, a bottle at his elbow ready for refills. By that point, most of the drinkers had fortified their egos and scurried away into the night.

  “A man after my own heart,” the god said.

  “God of wine, women, and song?” inquired Tom with a smile.

  “You bet. Another glass,” he said to the bartender, pointing at Tom’s glass and sitting on the stool next to him. “So, what’d you think?”