True Path

by Graham Storrs

  “There, that’s better,” she said, dropping into the newly-vacated seat.

  “What the hell are you doing here? I put you on a plane for Gatwick.”

  “Well, obviously not. You left me at the check-in, remember, then hurried off. All I had to do was follow you and see which plane you were catching, grab a ticket, and here I am.”

  “This plane’s going to Mexico! What do you think you’re playing at?”

  “I’m coming with you to the States.”

  “What? No, you’re not. We had all this out in my office. I’m going to Washington on official police business. It’s not a family vacation.”

  She looked away, clearly irritated. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

  For a moment, Jay was speechless. He glared at the back of her head. She couldn’t just follow him around. Surely she could see that? Why wouldn’t she just do as she was told?

  She turned back, suddenly, putting them nose to nose and Jay had to pull away. “Look,” she said. “Mum said you would help me. She didn’t say you’d pack me off home and pat me on the head saying, ‘There, there, don’t worry, little girl.’”

  “I never said any such—” He stopped himself. This was a time for calm authority, not to be bickering about who said what. He drew a settling breath. “Your mother would not want you traveling to America. According to you, she’s done all she could to keep you a secret all these years just so you didn’t have to face the kind of danger that comes with my line of work.”

  “Things are different now.”

  “Really? She loves you less now? She worries less about your safety?”

  Cara frowned, which Jay took to mean he’d won his point. When her face brightened, he almost flinched.

  “But I’ll be safe with you, Daddy. You’re an important man in Interpol. You’ll be able to protect me.”

  “It’s Europol, not Interpol. Very different.” He sat back in his seat, tired of sparring already. Was Cara like this at home? Wilful, argumentative, devious, willing to use any kind of emotional leverage to get what she wanted? “Have you ever wondered if your mother faked her own kidnapping? I would if I had to put up with this kind of brattish behavior for long.”

  She looked cross and threw herself back into her seat, no doubt to plan her next tactic. He let her stew for a while. Calling him “Daddy” had stung. Far from endearing her to him, it had shown a callousness, a contempt for his feelings that upset him more than he expected. Yet why should she respect him—or have any feelings for him at all? He was a stranger, her absent father who, he had to suppose, had not turned out to be the hero she was hoping for.

  And, if he were honest, did he love her? Yesterday he hadn’t known she existed. And there she was, fully grown, her own person, a complete stranger who had literally stepped out of a crowd on the street and said, “I’m your daughter.” He felt he should love her. He felt some kind of instinct should have kicked in. But there was nothing there except an irrational guilt, and a massive resentment. And yet … Every time he looked at her, he saw Sandra, and with every word she spoke, he heard Sandra’s voice. Even her stubbornness, her determination, were Sandra’s. If ever there were a time when he should love a stranger, this would be it.

  He turned to look at his miraculous daughter and found her looking at him.

  “I’m not going home,” she said. “If you get armed guards and drag me onto a plane, all I’d do at the other end is get right on the next flight to the States. You can’t get rid of me, not while Mum’s over there. I know you’re going to Washington. I’ll just search until I find you again. If America is so dangerous, isn’t it better that you keep me with you? Do you want me out there alone, trying to find you?”

  Jay simply did not know what to do. For Cara’s sake, he should take her back to the UK, deliver her directly into the hands of social services and let them take care of her. But that would consume another whole day and Sandra was still out there in god-knows-what kind of danger. And even if he did take Cara home, he knew it wouldn’t take her long to escape whatever kind of watch they put on her and make her way back to the U.S. And she was right, it was better by far if he could keep an eye on her. She couldn’t be alone out there.

  “Well?” she said. “Say something.”

  “All right. You can stay with me. But you have to do as you’re told when we get there.”

  She burst into smiles and bounced in her seat.

  “I’m not kidding. Promise me you’ll do as I tell you.”

  “Anything you say.”

  “No. Promise me. I don’t know what you get away with at home but when we’re there, you will have to be the model of obedience. The government, the FBI, these are deeply religious people. Fundamentalists. Fanatics. They have very particular views on how children should behave towards their parents and towards authority. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, yeah, bunch of loonies. No swearing in church. No running in the corridors.”

  Jay rounded on her angrily. “You’re not listening. The FBI is one of the most feared state police organizations ever. Federal agents have the power to summarily try and execute citizens for crimes such as blasphemy, adultery and witchcraft.”

  “Witchcraft?”

  “Yes, witchcraft. These are not policemen in the sense that you and I know it. The FBI is like a cross between the KGB and the Spanish Inquisition. Every field agent is an ordained minister in the Church of The Lord’s True Path. The Director of the Bureau, the Reverend Matthew Jones, who wants to see me when we get there by the way, is arguably the most powerful man in America. He’s a man with so much blood on his hands, it would fill the Great Lakes. Am I scaring you?”

  Cara had stopped smiling and was looking uneasy. “A bit.”

  “Good. I hope so. Because I’m scared shitless at the thought of the kind of trouble a careless, cocky teenager could get herself into over there. So when I say ‘do as you’re told’ I mean do exactly what I say, don’t ever argue with me, or even think about it. That way we might both avoid a major international incident and get back home alive.”

  She nodded, watching him warily. She was deep in thought and he reckoned it best to leave her to absorb what he’d said. He settled back in his seat and popped up a folder of briefing papers on his commplant. There were masses of documents to absorb on European-American relations, various inter-agency protocols, and lists of topics to avoid. As hard as he tried, he could not focus for long. He closed his eyes and tried to think how he might explain to his superintendent why he’d let his daughter tag along on this delicate mission. It was a good thing his unit was closing down because this was just the kind of thing that could get him fired.

  He felt a hand touch his arm and turned to see Cara looking at him with tears in her eyes. For a moment, he wondered if this was some new ploy.

  “Is she all right, do you think?” The question was put so simply and bravely that his heart went out to her. She was a child, after all, and his child, frightened for her mother’s safety.

  “Your mother is the strongest woman I have ever known. She’s clever, she’s resourceful, and she’s been known to beat up men twice my size. I’d say it’s the kidnappers you should be worried about. They’re the ones in real danger.” A hint of a smile crossed Cara’s face. “I had a cat once—well, my parents did—called Cleopatra. She was beautiful and sleek and elegant and all she wanted to do all day was sleep in front of the fire and have people admire her. Yet she was fierce and fast when she needed to be. She ripped up a big dog’s muzzle one time, and another time she woke us all up in the night to find she had a fox cornered in the garden. She could get up on the roof of our house—no-one knew how—and get down again. Dad even had to fit locks to the windows because she worked out how to lift the catches and get out when she felt like it.”

  He hadn’t thought about Cleopatra the cat for donkey’s years, and now he wondered if the pride and admiration he’d felt for his childhood pet had anything to do with why he had fallen i
n love with Cara’s mother so easily.

  “Anyway, the point is, your mum’s that kind of combination badass-escapologist-tightrope-walker, and I have every confidence that she’ll be just fine.” Although, the fact was, he had no idea at all. They had still received no demands, so they had no idea what the motive for the kidnapping might be. The involvement of the United States’ most wanted terrorist made Jay’s stomach tighten every time he thought about it.

  “You really loved her, didn’t you?” Cara asked, bringing him back.

  “She was a great cat.”

  Cara slapped at his arm. “No! Mum.”

  “Yes, I did.” More than she loved me, it seems. Even after sixteen years, it hurt so much. “We’ll get her back. I promise.”

  Chapter 11: Railroad

  What do you do when crude oil is worth five thousand dollars a barrel and your currency is so weak that even buying cheap fusion reactors from India is a huge extravagance? Well, for one thing, it seemed to Sandra, as she rattled along in the shabby railway carriage, you refit all your old diesel engines with boilers and revert to the Age of Steam.

  They’d caught the train at a town called Lake Charles, after being dropped near the station by yet another anonymous helper, this time with a woman in tow. The woman had brought clothes for Sandra to change into—a loose, floor-length smock dress in plain gray cotton, a matching headscarf, round-toed, low-heeled shoes, white ankle socks, and underwear that a Victorian peasant would have been proud to own. Sandra had argued, even when they pulled their guns on her, even when the woman whispered in her ear that if she did not dress “modestly” she would be a spectacle everywhere she went, and that there would be trouble, that they might lynch her for being a whore. In the end, her own desire to get out of the soiled clothes she’d been traveling in had changed her mind.

  “There now, don’t you look pretty?” Polanski had said when he saw her in the new outfit. In response, she explained, in fluent Anglo-Saxon, just how little she cared about his opinion of her appearance.

  It bothered her that the yards of material around her legs would hamper her if she needed to run or fight, but she had to admit that, dressed as she had been, she would have stood out on the streets of Lake Charles like a showgirl in a nunnery. For all her bravado and determination to be free, walking through the town on the way to the train station had intimidated her.

  It was like another world, not just another country. The women—even the little girls—wore long dresses with long sleeves. Every one of them also wore a headscarf or bonnet. Nobody wore makeup. The men wore jeans and plaid shirts and a good many of them wore cowboy hats. They were all clean shaven and short haired. It looked for all the world as if they’d been issued outfits by Central Casting for a historical vid about the Old West. More strange than the clothing, stranger even than the bizarre collection of rusty trucks that clanked up and down Ryan Street, dodging the potholes and the cyclists, was the way people behaved. All the women had their eyes cast down, as if they were all frightened by some constant threat. The men seemed completely normal by comparison, except for two things. One was that they seemed to feel free to stare at Sandra as much as they pleased, and to glare angrily if she stared back. The other was that, whenever they passed members of the Sons of Joshua—brown-shirted men with crucifixes sewn on their left sleeves, who carried sidearms and night sticks and strolled about the town as if they owned it—the men of the town also adopted the flinching attitude of the women.

  Sandra noticed that Polanski and the others would cross the street rather than pass close to these swaggering, uniformed men. Instinctively, she rejected the thought of turning herself in to the Sons of Joshua. Something about them told her to stay away.

  “Are they the police?” she asked Polanski.

  “Keep your eyes down,” he snapped. “People are looking.” Her wrist and leg bindings were off but Peter and the two newcomers walked behind her and she knew they were armed. “They’re not police. They’re the Church militia. The police just do detective work these days. Even then, only where the crime doesn’t involve Church ordinances. The SOBs keep order.”

  “Why is everyone so scared of them?”

  “Get yourself noticed and you’ll find out.”

  “What’s wrong with this place?”

  “Lake Charles? What do you mean?”

  “It’s so … derelict, poor, run down. It’s a dump and everyone looks like they’re frightened of something.”

  “Lake Charles is a good place. Doing well. You’ll see a lot worse where we’re going.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Washington, DC.”

  -oOo-

  The train rattled along at a slow but steady pace, passing through desolate suburbs, then broad farmland, in an endless, monotonous ride. Every farmhouse they passed sagged with age and neglect, every town was a core of decay surrounded by shanties and slums. Barefoot children stared stupidly at the passing train. Some of them had sores on their faces. Quite a few were lame. Polanski told Sandra it was polio. “Been real bad lately.”

  But the big cities were the worst. They passed through New Orleans and Atlanta, Charlotte and Richmond. In every one, the downtown skyscrapers had crumbled to jagged stumps. Some of them lay in heaps beside the railway. In the city of Greensboro, she saw a gang of workmen digging through the rubble.

  “Recovering metals and plastics,” Polanski told her. “Lot of steel in them old office buildings.” She looked at him hard, but he did not seem to be joking.

  They traveled all day, then slept in their seats. Whenever Sandra wanted to go to the toilet, two of her guards accompanied her. Despite the bulky dress, she could have taken them in the narrow swaying corridors, grabbed a gun and leapt from the train. But the unbroken miles of poverty and decay had left her shaken and unnerved. She didn’t want to be out there any more than she wanted to be Polanski’s prisoner. It was a strange and alien land. Not quite the Stone Age desolation of the Arab Peninsula, or the lawless Steppes of Eastern Europe, but still the too-quiet orderliness of the place filled her with unease. People were going about their business in the ruins of this once-great country with a lethargic acquiescence that made her skin crawl. It seemed as if everybody was too scared to admit that they could see what was happening to their hometowns.

  All that day and the next they traveled the line. At Charlottesville, a hundred and twenty kilometers from Washington, just as night began to fall, a boy got on the train. He was selling the local newspaper—a real, paper newspaper. It had happened many times along the route. A squadron of Sons of Joshua were also on the platform and they too boarded the train. They moved up and down the carriages in pairs, demanding papers and asking questions. Sandra felt Polanski and his people tense up as the militiamen approached. The three men drew their weapons but kept them concealed. Sitting in the window seat with Polanski and the boy Peter beside her and the other two men opposite, Sandra felt trapped and vulnerable. If any trouble started, she would be exposed and almost helpless.

  “Papers.” The big man stood facing them with his booted feet in a wide stance and one hand resting on his night stick. He looked sternly at the five of them as if he already had them pegged as troublemakers. His sidekick was a smaller man who stood gazing around the carriage as if bored.

  Polanski and the other men began fetching out paper documents. Sandra took in the embroidered crucifix and the colorful “Sons of Joshua” arm patch on the SOB’s shirts. She also noticed the two militiamen were carrying other equipment on their thick leather belts. Primitive communications gear, perhaps, along with scanners, handcuffs, and what might have been an overly large stunner … She was sure the militiamen she’d seen farther out from the capital didn’t have that kind of equipment.

  “What do you think you’re looking at, woman?”

  Without thinking, Sandra looked up at his face, ready to snap back a reply. She saw his eyes widen with surprise.

  “No need to take offense, sir,
” Polanski said, half rising to obscure Sandra’s view of the man—and his of her. “My wife doesn’t always know her p—”

  “Sit down!”

  Polanski hesitated but sat. “I just wanted to exp—”

  “Shut up!”

  Sandra could see the man now had his hand on his gun, and so did his partner. Her pulse raced. If she pushed the SOBs to start a fight—something that seemed disturbingly easy—there was a good chance she could get away in the confusion. Or get shot. Or get everybody in the carriage shot. She’d seen at least four more of these guys board the train, but who knew how many more were nearby? If she got off the train, at least she’d stand some chance of getting clear, but then what? This whole society seemed insane, a throwback to the Middle Ages but with turn-of-the-century technology.

  In her mind, she saw the moves she would make, choreographing it the way she would a complex kata in a karate bout. She would step up to the big guy. A quick blow with the heel of her hand under his nose would incapacitate him—or kill him. Then step to the side of him before he had time to fall, so he would be between her and the second SOB who would have drawn his gun by then. But Polanski and the others would have drawn too. They would take him out while he was distracted by his partner, and Sandra would sprint along the corridor to where the other SOBs had gone. She would yell, “Help, the terrorists just killed a man,” to stop Polanski’s crew from following her.

  She also saw how it could go wrong. The floor between the seats was full of legs and feet. She could easily misstep and stumble. If she missed hitting the SOB just right on her first try, he could grab her. Even if he didn’t, if the second SOB were faster than he looked, or if Polanski were slower, the militiaman might get off a couple of shots before they took him down. Two shots that could end up in her back, or someone else’s.