by James Abel
“My people will come through. I promise.”
“No one is sure of the future.”
“I didn’t make a mistake.”
A pause, a long pause, and Harlan felt his pulse thicken in his throat. He smelled sour sweat. Then the voice said, quite mildly, “I hope so, Harlan.”
The connection went dead. He heard the buzzing on the line as accusation. The headache began as a small pressure in his temples. The sweat rolled from his armpits down his rib cage and collected by his belly, above his belt. He told himself to calm down, that the void of news was a glitch. Satellite delay. It had to be. Hell, Somalia was a primitive hell. You couldn’t expect information to leach out of there with the same speed at which it traveled everywhere else in the modern world.
He spoke to himself out loud, to calm himself.
“Keep to the schedule. You have a job to do right now. You need to finish by one A.M.! You need to keep to the plan.”
—
A twelve-foot-long staircase brought him topside, through the well-lit gouged-out rock tunnel and into the farmhouse, 165 years old . . . stone foundation, Cold War–era overstuffed furniture, granite fireplace, and low, heavily beamed ceilings for tough hill winters. The house was deserted except for him. He was the only one permitted inside between midnight and 6 A.M. He walked out onto the big wooden porch, away from the inside cameras, but in full view of the ones in the moosewood maples, oak, pine, and black birch trees. The men in the guard shack would be watching. They’d see a white man who had lost little to middle age except hair, a lean, spry figure, slightly taller than average, fringe bald at the top, with close-shorn sideburns, well trimmed and flared at the bottom, and a ruddy, open face that was slightly askew in a way that made him seem likable. His aura of knowledge and forgiveness marked him as special. An uncle. A beloved teacher.
He’d ordered his people to blend in with the locals, so all of them, like him, wore rural clothes—faded blue jeans, red-and-black-checked flannel shirts, long underwear, and Timberland boots. One green eye sat a fraction lower than the other. His goatee was white on gray and reddened his thin lips. He was the only one permitted to wear facial hair, or to wear a watch, the only one allowed to move in a clockwise manner across campus, and now he carefully carried the tray along shoveled paths, past foot-high snow and beneath a blanket of North American stars and past small wooden buildings that would look, to any spy satellite above tonight, like a normal “barn” and “chicken house” and “stable” and “fruit cellar.”
At one time they had been those things, housing nothing worse than canned peaches or whinnying geldings or masses of docile poultry.
But they were not those things anymore.
Now the old stable was a barracks.
The moon was a bright sickle shape over the forest surrounding the ninety-acre compound, with its trout pond, long paved driveway, cornfield and apple orchard, and two-story warehouses, stocked with food, guns, and explosives. The January breeze brought the smells of fresh snow and pine smoke, barn mulch and winter mist and farm animals: goats, chickens, guard dogs, llamas.
His goal was the old Quaker era—1755—meeting house, on a two-acre lot that had been added onto the original purchase of the property by the Defense Department. It was a one-story building, bricked over, 1950s style, new slate roof, stovepipe chimney, and lights blazing inside. He saw, silhouetted in a large ground-floor window, a single delighted face watching him approach. Then more faces. Happy ones. Black and white, coffee colored and Asian.
Men. Women. Some as young as nineteen. Some as old as seventy-four. No children allowed in the meeting house. No pets allowed. No smoking. No alcohol, except on holidays.
Someone in there shouted, “Here he comes!”
They sang to Harlan, “He’s here! He’s here! He’s here!”
—
“Mr. Maas?” interrupted a voice behind him before he could enter. He whirled. Nobody had been there a moment before. Orrin Sykes stood there now, bundled against the cold, an M4 over his shoulder.
Harlan halted on the steps, breath catching, but Sykes’s eyes were properly respectful, semiaverted, and even slightly cast down. Sykes had done well in Florida. Maas had not realized the force inside the man when he’d first arrived. Sykes’s quietness came across as shy anonymity. His ordinary looks gave no hint of the extraordinary violence inside, and the intelligence enabling him to carry it out. He could not be intimidated by anything except his own priorities. Sykes decided what he feared, and he had put Maas’s displeasure at the top of his list.
Sykes, in fact, was the most dangerous human that Maas had ever met. He was in charge of security tonight.
The way he moved, if Sykes had been a sound, Harlan thought, he’d be a whisper. Respectful, though. Hair cut short to the skull, prescribed length, shirt tucked in the required way, right tail over left, to cover genitals. Orrin smelled of sheepskin coat, lube oil, freshly laundered jeans, and Juicy Fruit gum, which he chewed incessantly when on guard.
Maas assumed his benevolent face. “Of course. Ask anything anytime, Orrin.”
“Have we heard from Africa?”
Maas needed all his willpower to suppress the flood of rage that seized him.
“Of course! I was just on the red line and we’re good.”
Sykes looked relieved.
“I never doubted, sir. I mean, Harlan.”
“Ah, but you did doubt, just a little, eh?”
Sykes reddened. “I need to work on that.”
Harlan patted the man’s shoulder. It was like touching granite. “Everyone has a past, Orrin. The point is to learn from it. Everyone has doubts. But we use them and don’t let them slow us down. You have a gift. You are valuable. There’s a reason you have your skills.”
“Thank you.”
“So don’t worry because there’s absolutely nothing to be concerned about tonight, unless,” he said, allowing his eyes to rove the skies, and woods outside the fence, and razor wire, “we get a few you-know-who’s out there. They’re always looking for us.”
Orrin straightened. “I have seven men on the wire, and the dogs.”
“Intruder could look like a neighbor. Lost tourist.”
“Like the two who claimed to be hikers last month. But after a while,” Orrin said, showing something different in his eyes, “they told the truth.”
“Orrin, we’re on the cusp here, so incredibly close. Days maybe. And once it takes off, well . . .”
Tears of emotion appeared in Orrin’s eyes.
“Seems like a dream, Harlan.”
“I’ll need you to go out again. To Washington.”
“An honor, sir.”
“Didn’t I ask you not to call me that?”
“You saved my life, Harlan.”
“Thank yourself, Orrin, not me.”
—
Harlan Maas walked down the center aisle in the old Quaker meeting house, past the gauntlet of smiling faces—living ones atop people sitting on benches—and less happy visages frozen in the hodgepodge of real paintings and framed magazine cutouts on the walls, some original work as old as five hundred years, other art a month old. The paint cracked and thick. Why, that top-left piece, the full-face visage of the sick man from the Greek island of Calidon, had to be worth half a million. The art magazine shot of Rembrandt’s man in a turban was worth a penny, it was just a page, but it made the point all the same.
An art thief would clean up here, if he ever got in, and managed to get out.
“Any word from Africa, Harlan?”
“We’re good to go, folks!”
Many faces in the illustrations seemed modern and recognizable, yet the bodies were clad in medieval clothes. No zippers. No buttons. The visages might be the same ones you’d see in the vegetable aisle at Walmart. Same DNA. Others were twisted and tortured. Men w
ith beaks. Women with the heads of chickens. A walled village, burning. Lurid stuff, especially in the plain setting of a Quaker meeting house.
But they went to the heart of the project, as did the red phone by the window, the red phones in every building on campus, the damn need to get news from Africa tonight.
In this very room, Quaker settlers had gathered before the American Revolution to talk and share and pray, and now, Maas realized, the old spirit would infuse new work. All around him as he stepped down the aisle, he felt adoration and hope, welling love, trust, and warm delight.
“Oh, my friends! My family!” he cried, passing the silver plate, offering the syringes, watching eager fingers pluck and choose and hold up amber fluid to the light.
—“You will go to Paramount Pictures, Annie and Eddy!”
—“Washington, D.C. The little brown house! Fritz and Bettina. Make those dollars count!”
—“For you, Christopher and Eloise, air tickets to Disneyworld! Bring sweaters for the air-conditioning!”
But inside, he fought down fear, his mind going again to the communications shack and the screens there, and his watchers, who would be riveted to CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC. WAITING FOR NEWS FROM AFRICA TO START!
He was in agony that the red phone would ring again. It had happened before when he failed.
Everyone, even kings, are afraid of someone, Harlan Maas knew. And he was terrified of the voice on that phone.
But outwardly he smiled so the group would think that nothing was wrong. He stood tall. He was the embodiment of worldly confidence and gentle command. He rolled his left sleeve up to expose blue veins on his pale, thin arm.
Harlan announced, “Now, all of you! Let’s line up and give each other the final round of shots.”
FIVE
Chris Vekey walked into the Wilson High School gym, and the sheer normalcy of it—after the horrors she’d seen last night—almost knocked her off her feet. For the next thirty minutes, for her daughter’s sake and the sake of sanity, she’d try to block out the situation in Nevada and the photos from Somalia sent in by Joe Rush. Her experience told her she needed this short break. Her role as a mother filled her with protectiveness. She looked out at the smiling kids and her gut clenched up.
Meet Rush’s plane. Find out if he’s infected. Find out if he thinks the Somalis started it. The Sixth Fleet is in the Indian Ocean, ready to blow those fuckers to smithereens. Homza believes it’s out of Africa. Consensus is, coordinated attack.
But in here, take a breath. For the next thirty minutes, another world. Eighty kids putting last-minute touches on exhibits that they hoped would win a prize and scholarship to college. Chris had worked in medical emergencies before. She’d worked in slums in Houston, and Los Angeles, and in shanty towns in Accra. She’d learned a long time ago that in an emergency you took solace where you could find it or you lost effectiveness. You controlled your fears and grabbed the nap, ate the meal, did whatever the thing was that relaxed you, if you were lucky enough to get a few minutes to do it. That break made you sharper, and could, in the end, mean the difference between a win and a loss.
Burke had been livid when he’d learned she was here.
“You’re where? A high school science fair?”
“Do you have children, Burke?”
“I don’t have that joy, Chris, no.”
“I was up until four A.M. on Nevada. Rush doesn’t get in for two more hours. YOU need six hours of sleep to do your job, you once told me. I need four. So back off. This is my break. It’s how I stay clear. There’s nothing for me to do until he gets in and I assume you want me in top shape, right?”
Burke had backed down. He usually listened to any reasoning that made you better at your job. Well, as long as the person saying it wasn’t Joe Rush.
Twenty minutes to go.
Burke had said, chilling her, “Two nurses have come down with it in Nevada, twenty hours after treating the first victims.”
Washington, she knew, was where too many parents forgot their children while concentrating on work. Sorry, son, I can’t see your Little League game because there’s a key meeting at the Pentagon. But I promise that we’ll have time together next summer. I know I said that last summer, but this year will be different.
Next thing you know, you shove your kid aside for a smaller meeting, not an emergency, and then something less important, and then to just write a memo, and before you know it, years have passed, the kid’s on drugs, the kid disappears to college or some ashram and you never hear from her again. Tell a kid that they’re unimportant long enough, they’ll believe it.
The fair was due to open in fifteen minutes, 9:30 A.M., and the tenth graders competing for the opportunity to present at the World Science Festival in New York made frantic last-minute adjustments, as if this, a project, meant the end of the world. The work lay along four aisles of fold-out tables, between the basketball backboards and folded-up stands—a cornucopia of science dreams, mini-robots, racks of test tubes, jury-rigged computers, hydroponic tomatoes, and, Chris thought with pride, my girl Aya’s project!
Washington! She’d lived here for twelve years now and was always struck by the way the city juxtaposed the mighty and the mundane. Nuclear war may be imminent but my kid needs braces. The economy grew by 4.5 percent but take the garbage out because it smells! The defense satellite system sucked up another billion dollars, and Ralph the plumber needs four hundred. I know you’re the senator from Alaska, dear, but mop up that bathroom floor right now!
The gym smelled of coffee and wood polish and sweat from last night’s b-ball game, where Aya had been a happy cheerleader. It smelled of the cupcakes that one mom had baked to bribe judges, and expensive aftershave from the few dads here, mixed with a cheaper kind from the teen boys.
And the projects. How fast is your computer? by Charles Jason, fifteen. The race between solar-powered bristlebots, tiny automats made from heads of toothbrushes. How to block a Wi-Fi signal. What is smog made of? Chris couldn’t believe that fifteen-year-olds had come up with all this stuff.
Mostly moms at the tables with their kids, but a few dads here, too, clad in better-than-usual gray suits, which ID’d them as high-level government or K Street types. Chris batting away a sudden vision of a nineteen-year-old girl in Nevada, her face eaten away as if by acid . . . and at the same time watching Aya arrange connections between a homemade plywood box, two cheap seven-year-old Dell laptops rummaged from friends’ basements, and a small red plastic unit that looked more like a toy. Aya’s poster. HOW I PROVED OUR SUPERMARKET LIED ABOUT FISH IT SELLS.
Aya, only a few years younger than those hideously mangled drone crews out West, in new crisp jeans and a red Abercrombie sweater, behind her table, muttering words she’d been practicing for the judges. “Anyone can now do DNA experiments in their very own home, like I did!”
“Win or not, you’re the best,” Chris told her daughter.
Aya’s mood jerking back and forth, one minute filled with excitement over the science, the next fearful over the competition. “It’s amazing, Mom. Used to be that if you wanted to do genetics, it was impossible unless you’re rich. Like, just a centrifuge costs, like, six thousand dollars.”
“Don’t say ‘like,’ honey. Just say the words.”
“Whatever! Anyway, my Cathal Garvey does the same thing, spins samples, separates components. I saved my babysitting money. The Cathal cost only sixty bucks! And this little disk? See the slots in it? It spins tissue samples at 33,000 rpms, 51,000 g’s, that’s 18,000 more than the centrifuge, which costs a lot more!”
“I’m proud of you,” Chris said, meaning it.
“You can mix tomato genes with pig genes! Amazing!”
Chris grew aware of another mom looking with ill-disguised antagonism between Aya’s exhibit and her own son’s, a half dozen bits of labeled cocoa, wood, bananas, and brazil nuts. SUSTAIN
ABLE CROPS FROM TROPICAL FORESTS.
“Is this your daughter?” the woman asked sweetly.
“Yes.”
“What a beauty! She looks just like you! And what a smart exhibit! You probably helped her a little, I bet? Moms always want to help their children. It’s so hard to resist. I resisted, though. It’s the rules.”
“Aya did it all by herself.”
Bitch. Liar, the woman’s eyes accused. You cheated.
But she was wrong.
And even if the woman had been right, Chris would kill to protect Aya. Aya was more important than anything else in her life. This child had started in her belly. She’d cherished that life from the first, when she was seventeen, pregnant, refusing to ID Aya’s dad for her parents, not to protect the boy, but because she had no intention of marrying him. Why open that can of worms?
She’d never considered abortion, as her best friend suggested. She’d sat in the principal’s office, heart slamming as she was stripped of the valedictorian title, told that she’d ruined her life, warned that fornication violated scripture. But never once did her commitment to the baby flag; not when she put herself through college, working in a toxics clean-up crew for double pay . . . not when other women her age went on dates while Chris hit the books. Never once did she feel less than lucky.
Because I made a life.
She pushed the fear about Nevada away. She would focus on Aya for the next eighteen minutes. She remembered her mother saying, years back, on a porch in Alabama, “Put the baby up for adoption. You have no idea how hard motherhood is.”
“I guess I’ll find out.”
“It will be too late to change your mind. You’ll already have a child.”
“I have one now, in my belly.”
Spending those last two months of pregnancy in Sulfur Springs, stared at by neighbors and friends and churchgoers in the supermarket, Chris was a more popular form of local entertainment than the multiplex; hearing whispers in ladies’ rooms, giggles from other cheerleaders, warnings that she was a “bad influence” from friends who’d been ordered by their parents to keep away from her.
