Twelve Days

by Steven Barnes

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  For the Old Soldier:

  We are “Charlie Mike.”

  You can rotate home and rest easy.

  “Spooky action at a distance” is how Albert Einstein famously derided the concept of quantum entanglement—where objects can become linked and instantaneously influence one another regardless of distance.

  —Charles Q. Choi, Scientific American

  Fundamental biology tells us that survival is the name of the game. So potent is this dictate that in 1973 the psychologist Ernest Becker won a Pulitzer Prize for The Denial of Death, arguing that everything we think of as civilization, from cities we build to the religions we believe in, is nothing beyond an elaborate symbolic defense mechanism against the awful knowledge of our own mortality.

  —Steven Kotler, The Rise of the Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

  Shakti asks: “Oh Shiva, what is your reality? What is this wonder-filled universe? What constitutes seed? Who centers the universal wheel? What is this life beyond form pervading forms? How may we enter it fully, above space and time, names and descriptions? Let my doubts be cleared.”

  —The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

  Kali asks: “Oh Yama, what is your reality? What is this terrible universe? What constitutes the cessation of breath? Who stills the universal wheel? What is this ending of life, the dissolution of form? How may we depart it fully, ending space and time, names and descriptions? Let my fears be cleared.”

  —The Yama Sutra

  The document, which came to be known as the Dead List, first appeared on December 12, on Web sites hosted by servers in London, New York, Hong Kong, and Johannesburg, paid for with untraceable debit cards registered to false names. Some indications exist that the orders may have originated in Jakarta, but little else of consequence can be determined:

  TO THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD:

  For too long you have ignored the teachings of the one true God. He has tired of your ignorance and blasphemy. And as has occurred thrice before, there shall be a mighty Reaping.

  So that you might have time to repent your sins, the Reaping will occur in stages, slowly at first, then more rapidly, a righteous tsunami carrying all corruption before it. Only the Elite will be spared, to continue life in a sterilized world.

  In accordance with prophesy, it will happen in this fashion: on December 13, our high holy day, one sinner will die. On the second day, two will perish. Then four, then eight, and then sixteen, doubling every day until the world is cleansed.

  Some of these first men and women will be known to the world. Most will not. As all have sinned, none but the Elite will be spared. It is too late to join us. If you are Elite, you know already who you are.

  So that the world may know and tremble, the first to die are published below. Some of these names were extracted from the excellent list “The One Hundred Worst Unindicted Criminals,” published in the July edition of the American Rolling Stone magazine. Others are upon a list to follow. And others, for reasons that will be known in due time, are secrets known only to the Elite.

  The wicked will be punished. It is so that all may understand and tremble at the terrible justice to come that the despoilers upon this list will be numbered among the first.

  One the first day. Two the second. Four the third. Then eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Until our Christmas gift to the world, delivered on December 25—Freedom. You will enjoy the end of days without domination by governments or false religions. On that day, among other sinners, the following will die:

  The bishop of Rome

  The prime minister of England

  The prime minister of Israel

  The president of the Executive Yuan of the People’s Republic of China

  The chairman of the Federal Reserve

  The president of the United States

  All other world leaders will follow in turn. All mortal men and women, save the Elite, will follow. There is nothing any of you can do to prevent this. No medications, countermeasures, or fortresses can protect you. There is nothing any of you can do to save yourselves, or change the inevitable. This warning is only given so that those who are capable might save their souls with prayer.

  Merry Christmas

  CHAPTER 1

  DECEMBER 14

  5:37 A.M. PST

  MEXICO CITY

  The offices of television station XTRB were located in a two-story brick building nestled between a sleepy residential district and a commercial section of Mexico City known as El Corredor. The building had once been a carniceria, rebuilt in the 1990s during an uptick in the Mexican economy, responding to the needs of a society driven more by communication than consumption of albondigas.

  The tide of XTRB technicians, artists, and office folk ebbed and flowed at all hours. At first this had seemed a remarkable thing, but in time the formerly sleepy neighborhood had grown to take its renaissance in stride.

  Not today. Today the neighborhood was already abuzz, aware that something very special was about to occur.

  Former governor of Chihuahua Ramone Quinones, a man not seen in public since his indictment for drug trafficking and murder, was on his way.

  Death followed closely behind him.

  * * *

  Carlos Garcia had been a producer since the day he had learned it paid more than managing a publisher’s warehouse, or more specifically since his sister had married the owner of XTRB. As his mother had often told him, “Fortuna favorece a los que se casan de riqueza”: Fortune favors those who marry well.

  And of course, their brothers.

  Generally, Garcia considered his new position a decided improvement over the old, but today he realized that his ordinarily focused but intense mood could best be described as “flustered,” and that some other emotion lurked just beneath the surface. To his surprise, that emotion seemed to be fear.

  As had become his habit in recent months, he vented his anxiety upon Sonia Torres, the tall, slender lovely who anchored the morning talk show. During the seven months of their volcanic affair, it had often seemed to Garcia that her body was a husk filled with live coals. In many ways they were two of a kind. Sonia shared his own fierce ambition, as well as his amorality and political agnosticism, a general disinterest about anything except rungs on the ladder of success. There were times when there seemed nothing of softness or femininity about her at all. In comparison with Teresa, the slack, unresponsive wife who awaited him at home, Sonia was indeed firm. Sinewy. Possessed of that sort of feral strength a man needed to feel, a web of passion drawing him into her fire. At times, the memory was almost more visceral and immediate than he could bear.

  But while at work, they could never
acknowledge or suggest anything of the passion they had shared. That had been the arrangement when their affair began, and neither of them had ever violated it, regardless of how much he might have yearned to.

  So instead of confessing that he wished he had been able to awaken next to her, even once, he barked complaint. “Get that damned shine off your cheeks, Sonia! Damn it! Makeup!” She arched one sculpted eyebrow at him, perhaps believing imperfection impossible for such a golden creature as she. Sonia nodded at the makeup girl who hovered at the side of her chair as she tested her mic, and pored over her prepared statements.

  Their director, Manny Vasquez, was a short, skinny guy whose major claim to fame was that, as a boy, he had brought coffee to the great Cantinflas on the set of his last movie, El Barrendero. How many times had they had to listen to that mess! Cabron!

  Now, the little man was all nerves. “Have you heard from Quinones?” he asked. “Is this still happening?”

  Garcia nodded. “They called me fifteen minutes ago. He’s on the way from Juárez International.”

  Vasquez sighed hugely. “I don’t see how we’re going live if—”

  Before he could finish, the studio’s double doors opened, and an intern whose name Garcia could never remember popped her head in. “Thirty seconds to convoy!” she said.

  Despite his staff’s veneer of professionalism, the excitement was infectious. He sighed. Even the glacial Sonia seemed to ovulate at the very thought of meeting the drug lord. It was true: “El que no transa, no avanza”—loosely: You’re not going anywhere if you don’t cheat. His mother had said that as well, bless her mercenary heart.

  Reluctantly, he sidled over to the street-side windows in time to see the black motorcycle procession pulling into the spaces marked off with red cones. A black limousine half the length of the block itself miraculously navigated the turn and slid into the underground garage.

  He huffed and ran his fingers through his hair. With one last angry glance at Sonia, Carlos Garcia sprinted for the elevator.

  * * *

  Twenty-five seconds later the elevator opened on the underground level. Even before the steel slabs parted, Garcia felt the energy wash through the door. Despite his anxiety and thwarted lust for Sonia, he had to admit that XTRB had scored a tremendous coup. Quinones was scheduled to appear in court in just four hours, at ten o’clock. The morning news show created buzz, and Garcia reckoned that Quinones was doing everything in his power to poison the jury pool, tainting and confusing the narrative that he had abused the privileges of office to enrich himself in the business of narcotraficante. In a moment, the parking garage boiled with bodyguards and assistants. Steel- and Kevlar-reinforced Mercedes-Benz SUVs with deeply tinted windows and police cars driven by off-duty officers crammed the garage. Bulky men with eyes like chips of black ice were positioned like a line of concrete slabs as the limo pulled along the wall, blocking ten parking spaces that had been set aside with red traffic cones.

  The engine died. The door of the limo opened and a tall, elegantly handsome man exited.

  With all his heart, Garcia yearned to despise Quinones. There were so many reasons to do so. From the crimes he had been accused of, to his hand-tailored Bijan Pakzad suits (identical to one worn by American actor Tom Cruise and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto), to his perfect physical condition (said to be the result of three miles of daily ocean swimming under the view of snipers recruited from the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, Mexican Special Forces soldiers. Perfectly competent to deal with rival narco traffickers but Garcia wondered how they were with sharks).

  Quinones was perfectly dressed and coiffed, as if he had hosted a dinner party immediately before heading to the studio. The only concession to morning rust was the slight stretch he gave, a twist, almost a preparatory dance motion, as he stepped out of the limousine. His smile bristled with blindingly white teeth, except for one tooth on the left side, which was ever so slightly discolored.

  And damned if that didn’t somehow increase his charm.

  “Just in time,” Quinones said. The narco lord’s voice was higher, lighter than Carlos Garcia had expected. He took an absurd and childish pleasure in noticing that. He himself possessed a deep, manly voice. One of Quinones’ bodyguards interposed himself between the former governor and the producer, then stepped back when Quinones shook his head and extended his hand. “Mr. Garcia. Good to meet you again.”

  “Again…?” Garcia was taken aback. He had never met the governor.

  “Yes.” A secret, perfect smile. “Some years ago. You delivered cartons of books to a signing. This was shortly after I became a councilman.”

  Delivered books? A tiny memory wormed its way to conscious awareness. Perhaps fifteen years ago, when Garcia was managing the warehouse. An emergency call, extra cartons of first editions needed for an autographing by a councilman who had been married to a film star who had recently lost a battle with cancer. The story of their May-December romance, Quinones nursing the faded beauty through her heroic but ultimately futile struggle. The memoir had sold only moderately well, but had shaped public perception, and represented the beginning of Quinones’ rise. He had inherited her wealth … and that wealth had quite possibly funded his first major heroin purchase. Those profits had funded his expansion into cultivation and refinement.

  Or so the rumors declared.

  Was the man a gigolo? Garcia had totally forgotten the meeting. Had not read the book. Now he wished he had. The fact that Quinones remembered him, when they could only have possibly met for seconds, was intimidating. He began to reinterpret what he thought he knew about the governor.

  In a phalanx, they headed toward the elevator.

  * * *

  XTRB would have Quinones for twenty minutes only, and ninety seconds of that was already evaporated. Sonia Torres punched the intercom button and announced: “All right! He’s on his way! Everybody get ready. Don’t fuck me up!”

  The elevator doors opened, and two men the size of double-door refrigerators stepped out, followed by Quinones, strutting like a lord. As if he was ever on the verge of flipping a peso to the peasants. Carlos Garcia, an adequate lover and the toughest producer with whom she had ever worked, was following Quinones like a duckling waddling behind its mother. What in the hell had happened that could transform him from bull to steer in ninety seconds? Madre Dios. The interview had not yet begun, and already she was off balance.

  “Ramone Quinones,” he said, extending a cool, flat hand.

  “Governor Quinones, I’m so happy you could make it.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. His smile was so intimate, so open, as if the two of them had just tumbled out of bed together. “Where would you have me?”

  The sexual implication was obvious, and she hated the voice in her head that answered: here. There. Wherever you want. Whenever you want.

  Oh my God.

  What she said was, “We’re set up in studio three. Follow me, please.” As they walked, she contrived to brush the back of his hand with hers. The resulting spark was more than static electricity, she was quite certain.

  She smiled up at him. He was tall enough that she had to look up to meet his eyes, even in heels. She liked that. “You have a flair for the dramatic, sir.”

  “Essential in my line of work,” he said. Was he about to confess? Where was the damned camera? She fumbled out a question. “As…?”

  “A politician, of course.”

  A trap. A joke. He was toying with her. She suspected that much of life was a game to him. The room was filled with assistants, and assistants to assistants.

  “Everyone in their places! One minute!”

  Quinones was not the sexiest man Torres had ever met, but he came disturbingly close. She protected her sense of attraction with emotional ice, a tactic that had worked in the past, and one with which he was probably very familiar indeed.

  “So glad you could join us, Governor.”

  “How could I stay away? I wis
hed to see if you were as charming in person as you are on the television.”

  Very nice. Standard flirtation response. “And?”

  “I am seriously considering hiring you to read me the news every morning.” She wanted to ignore that, but when a man reputed to be worth over twelve billion pesos mentions employment, it was wise to pay attention. She felt the skin beneath her collar heating up, and in case her face was flushing, engaged in enough paper-shuffling to conceal it.

  “Thirty seconds!” her assistant said.

  Torres settled into the canvas chair emblazoned with her name. “I’ve been told to confine myself to the approved questions.” For a moment the query, which might have seemed utterly innocent, or even conciliatory, triggered something else in Quinones. Anger perhaps. Or fear?

  “And,” she continued carefully, “just before I came on, I was informed of a death threat against you. Do you mind if we discuss that?”

  “I heard of this list.” Annoyance tightened his voice. “The pope is also to be found upon it. Ordinarily I would be amused to be mentioned in such august company, but this is a bad joke, and the height of poor taste. We may speak of this after we conclude our interview.”

  “But not on the air?”

  He smiled. “That might be best.”

  The makeup girl hovered around him, a hummingbird seeking nectar. He touched her arm. “Making me less hideous?”

  She flushed at the contact and giggled.

  Torres had to admire Quinones’ skill. He used his sex appeal as she did, and she had met few men who were as facile at that as the average woman. Such confidence stirred curiosity within her, triggering a warm, soft sensation between her thighs. Despite her control, she began to imagine the two of them together in bed. Wondering about the touches, tastes, rhythms, and scents.

  Damnation.