The fat man got to his feet and put out a hand. “Mr. Reid, it’s an honor to meet you.”
This surprised Patrick, who nevertheless stepped forward and allowed his hand to be engulfed in Schultz’s.
As Patrick returned to his chair and sat down, Buchanan introduced the other half-dozen people—all members of her staff or Schultz’s and all instantly forgettable. Patrick knew who was important in the room and who wasn’t.
“I saw you in, what was it? Dawn of the Demons?”
Reid groaned inside. Sure, it was always good to meet a fan, but that particular film had been the low point of his career. Except that he’d met Joel Baxter there, and that meeting had ultimately led to this one.
“Thank you. Yes, I had fun on that one. Look, Madam President, is Jodi here?”
In truth, he’d only agreed to the meeting in hope of seeing her. They’d been arrested together after the Minotaur had exploded, but Jodi had been released as soon as the preliminary interrogations had finished. She’d been co-opted into the president’s retinue and, on the rare occasions he’d seen her in the past month or two, she seemed to be enjoying herself.
Buchanan nodded. “She’ll be along shortly. Quite a remarkable young woman. Astonishing, really, that your little group should contain a top-level scientist, a boy wonder and Jodi. Three geniuses out of five. Quite the strike rate. And, of course, you and Ms. Fischer: each with your own unique talents.”
“I don’t particularly appreciate being patronized madam President. I’m well aware that I’m just a Hollywood actor. My skill set isn’t exactly in demand these days.”
Schultz shook his head. “Don’t talk like that, Mr. Reid.”
“Patrick, please.”
“Patrick,” Schultz said, his smile expanding. “We can all contribute something to the recovery effort. Sure, we need the genius scientists, but don’t forget it was them who got us into this mess in the first place and ordinary folks like us who have to dig us out of it.”
Patrick watched this performance through narrowed eyes. He knew an actor when he saw one. This man might have many traits, but modesty wasn’t one of them, if he was any judge.
“I mean, there’s all your movies. Gotta keep folks entertained so they don’t get depressed.”
“So they don’t think, you mean,” Reid said.
Schultz’s shoulders heaved in a shrug that caused a sympathetic vibration in his double chin. “Well, so what? You know what our biggest enemy is right now? Disorder. Folks have to trust their leaders so they don’t panic and start the looting again.”
Patrick watched the performance. Facts were in short supply, but he knew that Schultz had cracked down hard on those who stepped out of line, especially in the early days. His mind flicked back to the manager of Oklahoma City. Now, there was a ruthless man. He’d done things that would have seen him in front of a war crimes tribunal in any sane time. And Patrick had only tiny slivers of intelligence. How much worse might things be elsewhere?
“Mr. Reid, we would like to have your help,” Buchanan said.
He switched his attention from Schultz, feeling unaccountably relieved. Perhaps she expected him to immediately pledge allegiance to her for the greater good. In that case, she would be disappointed. “I’m listening, Madam President.”
She sighed, and he suddenly felt as though he’d failed some sort of test. And he didn’t like it. “At the very least, I need to have your assurance that the intelligence revealed to you here will remain confidential to you. This information is classified.”
Now he was intrigued. He couldn’t help feeling as though he was stepping across a line he wouldn’t be able to pull back from, but whether curiosity killed the cat or not, he had to know what this was all about.
“You have my word,” he said.
Schultz looked almost apologetic as he spread his hands wide. “You’ve got to understand, Mr. Reid, that we’re talking about intelligence of national and international importance.”
“I understand,” Patrick said.
Buchanan nodded. “Good. Then we can begin.” She waved to a point behind Patrick and the door he’d entered through opened again to admit Jodi.
“Hi, Uncle Pat,” she said, walking in like a mountain breeze after a storm. “I told them you’d help.”
“Help what?”
She smiled, swept past him and stood beside the smaller table that stood between where he sat and the long table. She had a long tube under her arm.
Buchanan cleared her throat as Jodi made a zipping motion over her own mouth.
“Mr. Reid, I’m about to appraise you of the domestic and international situation. Consider this a primer on the world as it stands.”
Reid nodded. This had gone from feeling like a job interview to the part in a Bond film where the bad guy explains his evil plan for world domination.
“Jodi, please,” Buchanan said.
With a smile, Jodi opened the tube and pulled out a roll of paper the size of a movie poster. She flattened it out on the smaller table, weighing the four corners down with small pebbles.
“You have seen this before,” President Buchanan said.
Reid got up and examined it. “It’s Max’s map," he said.
“It has been further enhanced to increase the resolution, but yes, that’s correct.”
Patrick’s eyes followed the now-familiar coastline of the post-flood United States. The left-hand side was somewhat familiar, though when he looked closer, he could see that the edges had been nibbled out of it along the Pacific coast. And that left most major cities underwater. Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle.
But it was the right-hand half of the map that was unrecognizable. Florida was gone, along with half of Texas and the Midwestern states. New York, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Atlanta. All drowned. The only major land on the eastern side was a long finger based around the Appalachian Mountains and, roughly halfway up, the new capital city of the Eastern United States: Hazleton.
“A disaster of Biblical proportions,” Buchanan said.
Schultz nodded his head, mirroring a man sitting beside him that Patrick hadn’t noticed before. Compact and lean, the man had been hidden in the shadow of Schultz, like the forest moon of Endor.
“It is God’s judgment,” the man said. He was young—his late twenties, perhaps—and wore a black jacket over a dazzlingly white shirt. A gold crucifix hung in front of his top shirt button.
Patrick glanced at Schultz who, reluctantly it seemed, introduced the man. “This is Father John Smith. He supports me spiritually during this difficult time.”
Smith looked at Reid, not bothering to hide his smug contempt. Then he gave a curt nod and retreated into the shadows again.
“Father Smith’s point of view is shared by an increasing proportion of our citizens,” Buchanan said. “So it is represented here.”
“Praise be that the people are finally turning to the Lord,” Smith said, his voice curiously understated. Almost as if he were repeating a catechism. “We must turn to Him if we are to be saved.”
Reid made no response. He was not the most subtle or careful of people, but he realized that this was not the moment to expound his views on a deity that would kill billions to prove a point.
“Moving forward,” Buchanan said, and Reid sensed that she was also uncomfortable with the priest’s presence. “I don’t know how familiar you are with food production in the United States, Mr. Reid.”
“Not at all,” Patrick said. After all, why would he be?
Buchanan gestured at Jodi who drew a sheet of paper from the tube and began reading it.
“It is estimated that over two hundred and sixty million Americans died in the flooding of the coastal cities and rural areas.” She spoke robotically, as if she’d given this presentation many times. Aside from the shock of having figures placed on the scale of the disaster, he was disturbed that Buchanan had handed this grisly duty to Jodi ra
ther than read them out herself. He looked down again at the rolled-out map and realized that, although it looked as though over half of the land surface had survived, most of it was empty space: mountain ranges, deserts and prairies.
Buchanon spoke. “We estimate that there are now between forty and sixty-five million Americans alive.”
Patrick let out an involuntary whistle.
“But, unless we act quickly, many more will die.”
“What?”
Schultz shook his head sadly. “Where d’you imagine our corn is grown? Sweetie, will you?”
Jodi’s face colored instantly, but she swallowed the retort Patrick knew was on the tip of her tongue and laid down a piece of acetate with a yellow circle on it. “Eighty-five percent of corn was grown in these areas.” Patrick could see the blue of the map’s oceans behind the yellow. “And seventy percent of winter wheat was also grown in those areas.”
“Isn’t there some kind of national stockpile? Is it all under water?”
Buchanan made a resigned noise. “Fifteen years ago, we had a billion tons in reserve.”
“What happened to it?”
“It was sold off when commodity prices spiked.”
Reid’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly.
“Yeah, kinda stupid wasn’t it? A national stockpile that was nothing more than numbers in a bank balance. Worthless now.”
“So, there’s no food?”
Schultz shook his chins. “What there was is gettin’ awful low. That’s why looting and disorder is such a threat.”
“We lost three-fourths of the population in a few hours, Mr. Reid, but nine-tenths of our food production. Our people will be eating alfalfa over winter,” Buchanan said. “Or they would be if our cattle didn’t need it.”
“We’ve got beef and dairy,” Schultz said. “So we thought we’d be okay. I mean, a diet of meat and cheese is a lot better than starvation. But now this weather is changing and we’re worried we won’t be able to keep our cattle, pigs and sheep alive over winter.”
Patrick, who’d gotten to his feet to pore over the map, slumped back down in his chair. He rubbed his eyes, feeling overwhelmed by the hopelessness of the situation. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Please, let us finish briefing you first. Jodi, please outline the international situation.”
Jodi nodded and pulled out another large sheet of paper that she unrolled over the map of the USA. It showed the entire world, with ghostly lines indicating where the coasts had once been. His eyes were immediately drawn to Europe where he could make out the roughly familiar outline of Spain, but all that remained of the UK was scattered groups of islands where the mountains of Wales and the Highlands of Scotland remained above sea level.
Russia was gone. South America had been reduced to two long islands running north to south. The Amazon basin was entirely submerged. Africa had fared better, with the south and western two-thirds of the continent recognizable, though the coastal cities were gone. India was now a large island. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran were still largely above water. But the largest single block of land stretched from the Himalayas to northern Siberia and included the whole of Mongolia and the majority of…
“China.”
“Yes, Mr. Reid,” Buchanan said. “While their coastal and low-lying cities were inundated and they will have lost many millions of people, we have some evidence that they managed to evacuate at least a percentage of their people.”
“How could they have done that? Did they know in advance?”
“Not necessarily. We believe that the wave was so catastrophic because billions of gallons of melted ice had been held behind an ever-narrowing dam of ice which gave way over a very brief period. It so happened that this was somewhere south of the Argentinian Peninsula.”
“So it reached us first.”
“Exactly. The Chinese had at least twelve hours’ warning. And besides, we have visual evidence.”
Jodi switched on a monitor hanging on the wall and showed a series of images.
“These were taken from a surveillance satellite as it passed over China a day after the flood. You can see what look like convoys of vehicles traveling across the higher ground and, in other frames, square structures that look like camps being formed.” Buchanan finished speaking, then removed her glasses and looked directly at Reid.
“So, the Chinese became, at a stroke, the world’s only remaining superpower. And it gets worse.”
“Are you serious? How could it?”
Schultz, who’d been sitting with his head down throughout the presentation, drew in a deep breath. “It seems they haven’t wasted any time. The Chinese are in California.”
“What?”
Buchanan nodded gravely. “We don’t have conclusive proof, but it seems almost certain that Senator Booker has—how should I put it?—befriended the Chinese.”
“Why?”
“We explained the problems we face with food supply, didn’t we?”
“Oh.”
At a sign from Buchanan, Jodi showed the next slide.
“This image was found on a cellphone that was in the possession of a thief. All he knew was that he’d stolen it from a group of refugees and that they’d come from California.”
The image had been taken from within a crowd of people who’d been pushed back by a police cordon. It was tilted as if the person taking the photo had been concealing the smartphone. Beyond the figures in dark riot gear, people were unloading boxes from the back of a truck.
“What am I looking at?”
Jodi moved on to the next slide: a closeup view of one box. On the side was a logo Patrick didn’t recognize.
“It took some time to identify this marque, but it turns out to be a Chinese food manufacturing company.”
“Couldn’t the boxes have been imported before the flood?”
Schultz shook his head. “There is no record of that company ever exporting to the United States. No, this food shipment came from China. The question is, what did Governor Booker give in exchange?”
Leaning back in his chair, Patrick used the silence to allow the wheels in his mind to turn. He’d spent the past months in survival mode, his circle of attention shrinking to just those few people he cared about most. Now he had a much wider perspective. But why had they told him? Why had the president herself spent the past half hour laying out the nightmare for him? He glanced across at Jodi and caught her eye. What did he see there? Fear?
“Mr. Reid, I understand you have met Governor Booker?” Buchanan said.
Patrick nodded. “Yes, once or twice. But only briefly.” At the sort of Hollywood parties and functions he and the governor attended, there was always a brighter star than him in the room. He thought of Joel Baxter. They didn’t get much brighter than him. And Baxter had formed a friendship with the governor, hosting many private parties in his Beverly Hills mansion. Suddenly, he missed his old movie buddy and when he looked back at Jodi, he saw moisture in the corners of her eyes.
Schultz tapped on the table—perhaps consciously, perhaps out of impatience. “Tell me, Mr. Reid, what are your plans for the future?”
“What? I’m in custody at the moment, so my options are limited.”
“You are free to go,” Buchanan said.
Reid paused for a moment as he registered that new turn of events. “Well, then I guess I’ll stick with Ellie. Maybe go back to the farm. Or…well, I hadn’t given it that much thought.” That was a lie. He’d fantasized about finding a patch of land and building a home with Ellie. But that was just a fantasy. He’d settle for a suburban house in a safe area.
“Would you like to do something to help secure a future?”
Reid sensed the trap waiting for him, all baited and ready to snap shut. “I’m listening,” he said.
“You’re not a scientist.”
“Obviously not.”
“So there’s little you can contribute to our research on the recent climate changes and
how the rocket you helped sabotage is contributing to it.”
Ah, so a little stick as well as carrot. Guilt was a blunt weapon, but effective. He didn’t respond, but simply tilted his head to one side to encourage her to finish. He wanted it over with. All the cards on the table.
Buchanan waited for a moment then, realizing he wasn’t going to respond, she continued. “Aside from the changing weather, our greatest threats are our food supply and our security. The two are connected, as the evidence from California suggests. We need to know what relationship Booker has entered into with the Chinese. We need to know whether they have boots on the ground and, if so, their numbers and disposition. We need a friend in their camp.”
The penny dropped. “You want me to be a spy?”
Buchanan nodded.
A thin smile had appeared on Jodi’s face, despite her obvious attempts to hide it.
“Why me?” was all he could manage.
“Several reasons. Firstly, we have to work with the tools we have.”
Translation: we’re desperate.
“Secondly, you’re an actor, as you showed when you snuck into the Minotaur facility. And we know Booker has an affinity for show business, so you have a better chance than most of getting close to him.”
Buchanan paused for a moment, perhaps gauging his reaction, but he was giving nothing away. Right now, he was terrified. Playing a spy in a movie was one thing, but in real life double agents tended to find themselves hanging from street lamps.
“One other thing.” She nodded at Jodi and the slideshow view changed to a grainy photo of Governor Booker shaking hands with someone, clasping his arm on the other man’s shoulder. That image disappeared to be replaced with another, taken after the second man had come to stand alongside him on a low platform. It looked as if he were being presented to the audience.
Reid squinted at the low-resolution image. Then he felt his stomach drop and he let out an involuntary gasp. He looked over at Jodi.
“Joel?” he said.
She nodded. “Dad’s alive. Dad’s ALIVE!”
And she ran into his embrace.
Ice: Deluge Book 4: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story) Page 5