The Prisoner

by Carlos J. Cortes

  “Talk about dreaming.” Floyd chuckled.

  Russo grimaced. “Well, as Tyler said, we have a one in ten chance.”

  “I fear Harper Tyler is an inveterate optimist,” Laurel said.

  “Still, dum spiro spero,” Russo whispered.

  Floyd frowned.

  Laurel smiled. She’d seen the quote on her parents’ home mantelpiece every day since childhood. “While I breathe, I hope.”

  “Amen,” Floyd said.

  “And you? What would you do if there’s a tomorrow?” Russo asked.

  For a while Floyd didn’t answer, then he drew a hand over the incipient stubble on Laurel’s head, as if caressing a newborn. “I would go for broke and ask her out for coffee.”

  As his hand warmed her scalp, Laurel suddenly felt as if tomorrow was real.

  day seven

  Paradiso, Canto XVII: 12–14

  Not that we need to know what you’d reveal,

  but that you learn the way

  that would disclose your thirst,

  and you be quenched by what we pour.

  The Divine Comedy, DANTE ALIGHIERI

  chapter 53

  08:10

  The noise of an approaching engine drew a flurry of glances and nervous gestures from Raul and Lukas. Laurel turned to Tyler, who sat on a stool by the kitchen peninsula, seemingly unconcerned. She leaned over Russo and ran a hand over his brow. “Don’t worry; they’re friends.” She hoped.

  Russo nodded once.

  Lukas stepped over to the window overlooking the front porch, slid his fingers to widen a gap between the blinds’ horizontal slats, and peered outside. “Shit,” Laurel heard him mumble.

  “Indeed.” Tyler smiled and strode past them toward the front door, Antonio at his heel.

  Laurel squeezed Russo’s shoulder for reassurance. The previous days had been emotionally draining. Gradually she’d stopped seeing Russo as the father who abandoned her and let her mother die and started to see just a frightened human being in need of help. She trooped from the living room with Raul and Lukas. Once outside, she gasped. Parked parallel to the house’s front porch, a huge tanker truck—of the type rigged to empty cesspits—revved its engine. The driver looked vaguely familiar.

  A door clunked shut, and the towering anatomy of a vastly different Henry Mayer materialized around the front of the truck, a wide-brimmed Stetson on his head—probably shaved by the looks of the smooth skin down the sides. The gravel crunched noisily under the soles of gleaming lizard-skin boots. Laurel peered at the naked skin of his face, awed at the change. But for his bulk and voice, she would have never recognized the sewer chieftain. He had an interesting face, almost handsome.

  “Hey! Fancy seeing you again.” He ran an eye over the congregation and raised a hand to the brim of his hat. Then he slapped the truck’s fender. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

  Tyler stepped forward and indicated the rear of the truck. “Let’s see her guts.”

  At a nod from Henry, the driver killed the engine and climbed down from the cabin. Laurel exchanged a quick glance with Floyd. The man driving the truck smiled. She eyed the jeans and a drab coat that had seen better days that were hanging loosely from his meager frame. Can’t be. She stepped forward to peer at the tall, cadaverous-looking man with sunken eyes and thin lips. His freshly shaved head gleamed under the still-weak sun.

  “Jame—Barandus?”

  He smiled. “The one and only.”

  They shuffled toward the rear of the truck to face a vast circular door with a hinge on one side, secured around its perimeter with a score of sturdy bolts fitted with handles.

  “Cleaning trucks,” Tyler explained, “cannot be pumped empty. The contents of a septic pit decants to a thick slurry. When the trucks reach the treatment plants, operators free the bolts at the rear and tilt the tank to slide the contents out.”

  Laurel backed up a step when Henry and Barandus worked the bolts to open the tank—a sudden premonition too horrible to contemplate forming at the edge of her mind.

  When the ponderous door rotated on its hinges, a waft of dank moisture billowed out, bringing with it barely forgotten memories. Laurel cringed. Light spilled into the bowels of the tank to reveal a cavernous cylindrical space and three two-hundred-gallon drums lying on their sides in line, bolted to the bottom of the tank and spaced three feet apart. To the side, wedged between the drums and the inner curved wall of the tank, rested several panels of quarter-inch plate peppered with two-inch holes. Laurel dug her fingers into Floyd’s arm.

  “You must be out of your mind.” Laurel intended to sound outraged, but her voice came out as a croak.

  Lukas blanched. “In those?”

  “Wonderful stuff.” Henry climbed up to the gaping tank, bent over the first drum, and yanked its quick-release rim fastener. The interior of the drum was padded with two-inch foam. On its floor, like fat wasps, were two seventy-two-cubic-foot scuba cylinders. “We tested it last night after fixing the drums. After a two-hour runaround with the tank filled to the brim with water, not a drop seeped into the drums.”

  “Then why the scuba tanks?”

  “The air inside the drums wouldn’t last five minutes.”

  “You’re going to drive around with us inside the drums?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “In a tank full of water?”

  “Nah, shit. We’ll fill her halfway up with shit.”

  Tyler neared the open tank. “Washington is sealed. Vehicles entering or leaving the city are being searched. A tank will certainly be stopped and checked.”

  “But what about the company?”

  “Company?”

  Laurel pointed to the block capitals stretched over the tank’s side—O’MALLEY CLEANING Services, 24/7—and a phone number.

  “It’s a real setup—a small family business with six vehicles like this and twenty employees, established almost forty years ago. We bought it yesterday.”

  “We?” Laurel asked.

  “Antonio, Barandus, and me,” Tyler answered. “Could be a good business.”

  “If a patrol checks who owns it, won’t it look suspicious that the company just changed hands?” Lukas asked.

  “Good point, but it hasn’t,” Tyler said. “This is a small, unlisted firm. Although the sale was executed yesterday, it won’t be filed until tomorrow. By then there shouldn’t be any heat.”

  Laurel shivered at Tyler’s choice of words. Hibernation tanks were a hairbreadth above freezing. She scanned the others. Behind their somber faces, she could almost see the thoughts—the chances of an accident and death by suffocation in sewage.

  “How long will they have to be locked up there?” Floyd asked.

  Tyler’s left eyebrow shot up. “They? No way. Russo, his attending physician, and Antonio will go in the tanks. That will do nicely. You’re his doctor, and Antonio can help you carry him when we get there.”

  “But—” Floyd had paled.

  “I will ride up front with him,” he said, glancing toward Henry. “Raul, Lukas, Laurel, and Barandus will make the sham run toward the TV studios in the van. Barandus will lie on the stretcher with Laurel attending him. Raul will drive, with Lukas up front. The DHS will snatch photographs along the way to identify not just Russo but you. In fact, they can’t identify Russo; they’ll just assume it’s him when they identify the rest.”

  Something didn’t add up in Tyler’s plan. “Why is it so important they identify us?” Laurel asked.

  “I don’t know. But whoever is helping us insisted the DHS must make positive identification for the plan to work at all.”

  She’d been balking at the thought of being under tons of sewage, but suddenly the prospect didn’t seem as harrowing as facing the DHS agents, who would undoubtedly shoot on sight. “Where are we going?” I know where we are going: to our deaths.

  “The Senate.”

  A few inches over her head, a sharp intake of breath exploded. “Hang on a minute. We’ll never
get within a mile of the Capitol in that,” Floyd blurted, his eyes on the truck.

  “Oh, but we will.” Henry jumped down from the tank, landing with a sonorous thump. “We’ve got a job to do: a major sewage-pipe blockage needing our expert attention. The urgent request came a while ago, with a job number and the head of maintenance’s signature.”

  “But you said the tank would be full of shit,” Floyd said.

  “No, I didn’t. Half full, just enough to cover the drums.”

  “Sloshing every time you brake?”

  “Nope. These panels will go back in place across the tank once everyone is cocooned. No sloshing.”

  Floyd’s eyes continued to dart all over the truck. “Forgive me, but I can’t figure out how you can justify going to a job with a tank already full.”

  “Only half full, remember. We’ve made an earlier call.”

  Antonio smiled. “We were drowning in pig shit—” He bit his lip and seemed to wither under Henry’s caustic stare.

  “But to open the drums, you have to empty the tank …” Floyd insisted.

  Henry opened his arms wide, an expression of fatalism on his face. “Well, shit is shoveled around Congress all the time. Another cartload won’t make any difference.”

  chapter 54

  08:45

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Senator Palmer bit his lower lip before reaching for his snifter. “Is this a condemned man’s last wish?” He swilled the liqueur.

  Bernard Robilliard, the senator from Maine and secretary of the Senate, shook his head once and waited.

  “I have covered every possible angle, every eventuality, trying to predict anything Vinson or Odelle might have up their sleeves. Nothing, I hope, but there’s a chance my scheme will collapse,” he conceded. “Too many unknowns.”

  “Your witnesses?”

  Palmer nodded. “Their fate rests elsewhere, in seemingly puny details and in the hands of a man who seems to have switched sides but who is, in the end, playing for himself, and that makes for a dangerous ally. You know about illumination; it strikes at the unlikeliest of moments. He might back out yet.”

  “And then you will have?” Robilliard asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “And I will be forced to stand aside while Odelle Marino flushes the bilges,” Robilliard said.

  “Nice analogy. And one I’ve heard recently.”

  “Problem is, she would be reborn with awesome power. She would have this nation by the balls.”

  “She already has.”

  “But she’s not squeezing,” Robilliard pointed out.

  “Yet.” If I fail, I, my family, and everybody else will be fucked.

  Robilliard nodded and wet his lips on the liqueur. “Now it all hinges on your ability to convince Caesar to do something unthinkable. In my opinion, he won’t. You’re asking too much.”

  “To save one’s country from dictatorship is asking too much?” Palmer asked.

  “No. But to ask someone to wager his or her hide on the strength of your word is. For the best part of two hundred years, we’ve never been a democracy, at least not a real one. Too many powerful cartels: oil, weapons, and, above all, the security agencies. They, not the current White House resident, have dictated this country’s policies. Why do you think I know that paper is a fake?” He nodded to the single page with the presidential crest and seal resting on his desk. “Because no president would have the balls to tackle this country’s rulers and survive. They learned their lesson from Kennedy.”

  “So the answer is to do nothing? Fiddle while Rome burns?”

  Robilliard shook his head. “The eternal romantic. Within the past couple of centuries, no fewer than four empires have disappeared: the Nazis, the British, the Japanese, and the Soviet Union. They flared like shooting stars and burned out, some sooner than others. Now it’s our turn. You know the common denominator of their downfall?”

  “I do. Implosion. They collapsed when their core rotted.”

  “Exactly.” Robilliard nodded. “Now you’re planning to ask Caesar to cross the Rubicon and lay his head on the block of your dreams of justice. Can’t you see the difference? Caesar did it to overthrow the status quo and become emperor. You’re asking a man to do it so you can take the mantle.”

  “I’m not. One way or another, I’m out. This will be my last public deed. I retire.”

  “Oh?” Robilliard frowned. “And have you named a successor?”

  Palmer shook his head. “You still don’t get it. I want to challenge the system because it’s the only chance left for my country, but I’m too old to carry on righting wrongs. I only hope others will have it easier.”

  “I see. So President Hurst knows about your coup.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yet if you manage to pull off this stunt, with Odelle Marino disgraced, the President will have the floor clear to step in and really flush the bilges. Neat.”

  “You and your imaginings.”

  “Hardly. Common sense only, of the kind that has kept me in office twenty years.” Robilliard stood from the easy chair, holding on to his glass, and walked to stand beyond his desk, as if suddenly needing the physical protection of office. “He won’t do it, you know. And yet there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Palmer swirled his cognac in its glass, peering into the liquid amber whorls, but the answer he sought wasn’t there. Then, as he returned the snifter to the table, the thought hit him with such clarity that he had to blink repeatedly to clear his vision, as in the aftermath of sudden lighting. “Have you ever wondered why Caesar crossed the Rubicon?”

  “To become emperor.”

  “No, that was the outcome, perhaps the thought behind his action, but not the reason why.” Palmer leaned back and narrowed his eyes. “Let’s find out. Would you call Caesar in?”

  It wasn’t the gait of the career soldier, or the field of medals covering most of his chest, or the close-cropped hair, or even the chiseled face. The authority and might that surrounded four-star general James Erlenmeyer like a halo had other roots—ancient roots, honed in the same forges that had cast generations of warriors before him. The same fire that had forged Patton.

  “The issue is clear,” he said after listening to Palmer. “I would hear the request from the President herself. Then I would give it my consideration and, since the proposal entails high treason, I would refuse. That paper,” he looked with disdain at the single sheet of White House stationery, “is as false as the Roswell cover-up. Now, if you don’t have anything else to say, I will forget what I’ve just heard and be gone.”

  Palmer waited, but General Erlenmeyer didn’t turn on his heel. “General. I have shown you proof of the DHS and Hypnos’s debauchery. Such depravity has become commonplace to a point where our prison system has become the private fiefdom of agencies and corporations to use at their own volition. Everything is in here.” He tapped his portfolio, more for effect than for any real reason, since the hard data was branded in his memory.

  “Senator.” It was obvious the general was making an effort to keep his voice level. “You’re asking me to bring in the army and take over the Capitol. That’s a coup, rebellion, sedition, high treason, the works.”

  “I won’t march the army into Rome,” Robilliard muttered.

  General Erlenmeyer jerked around to face the senator. “You’re damn right I won’t!”

  “You’re wrong about one thing, General. That paper is not a fake. President Hurst signed it less than an hour ago, but you would have to take my word for it.”

  “Like everything else,” General Erlenmeyer retorted.

  “Right. But whatever I might be, I’ve never reneged on my word. On the other hand, President Leona Hurst will not give you the order herself. It’s all a matter of deniability. She’s a political animal, like Robilliard and myself. But for once I’m determined to do something honorable, even if it costs my life. I have the data, the proof, the
witnesses, and the floor of the House, but I’m on my own. Others, like him,” Palmer nodded at Robilliard, “have agreed to do nothing, to stand on the sidelines—a phenomenal display of courage, if I might say so. But they leave a path for their escape: their own deniability if things go wrong. They have given me access to the stage, but the performance is mine alone. Yet, even though I’ve laid my life and that of many others on the line, I can’t expose the rot that will eventually destroy our nation unless I’m granted security. This building is held by DHS personnel, and Odelle Marino will not be a party to her own destruction. All I need is a neutral zone secure for my witnesses and the select committee in which to present my case. Ms. Marino and Vinson Duran will be arriving shortly, unaware that their efforts to destroy the proof of their infamy have been in effective. As soon as they learn of it, she will order my arrest.”

  The general’s brow creased. “She can’t do that.”

  “This building is totally controlled by the DHS. She can and she will, and she’ll answer questions later. If there’s anyone to pose them, that is.”

  The general shook his head again when Palmer stood and squared off with the warrior.

  “General, there’s a reason why President Hurst refused to give you a direct order. You see, she’s also sorely aware of her limitations. She knows power has been leaching slowly from the constitutional seats for a long time and that a showdown like today’s would tip the balance. She further realizes that, even as Commander in Chief, this is an order she can’t issue. In fact, sadly, nobody in this nation can voice such an order.” Palmer changed the weight of his body to the other leg, hoping to forestall the unconscious shaking that threatened to become obvious. “I will go on the floor with the building secured or not, because I’m the only one who can do it. Call it a last-ditch effort. And you know the most surreal aspect of the whole sorry affair? The thing that singles out you and me? Even though nobody can legally issue the order, only one citizen can give it: me. And only one can obey it: you.”