A three-quarter moon was up. Laura walked barefoot on the damp boards. Moonlight on the surf. It had a numinous look. It was so beautiful that it was almost funny, as if nature had decided to imitate, not Art, but a sofa-sized velvet painting.
She walked back and forth, crooning to Loretta, whose wails had finally died into crotchety whimpers. Laura thought about her mother. Mothers and daughters. This time around it would be different.
A sudden prickling sensation washed over her. Without warning, it turned to fear. She looked up, feeling startled, and saw something she didn’t believe.
It perched in midair in the moonlight, humming. An hourglass, cut by a shimmering disk. Laura shrieked aloud. The apparition hung there for a moment, as if defying her to believe in it. Then it tilted in midair and headed out to sea. In a few moments she had lost it.
The baby was too scared to cry. Laura had crushed her to her breasts in panic, and it seemed to have scared the baby into some primeval reflex. A reflex from cave times when voodoo horrors stalked outside the firelight, things that smelled milk and knew young flesh was tender. A spasm of trembling shook Laura from head to foot.
One of the guest room doors opened. Moonlight glinted on the gray hair of Winston Stubbs. A shaman’s dreadlocks. He stepped out onto the boardwalk, wearing only his jeans. His grizzled chest had the sunken look of age, but he was strong. And he was someone else.
“I hear a scream,” he said. “What’s wrong, daughter?”
“I saw something,” Laura said. Her voice shook. “It scared me. I’m sorry.”
“I was awake,” he said. “I hear the baby outside. Us old people, I-and-I don’t sleep much. A prowler, maybe?” He scanned the beach. “I need my glasses.”
Shock began seeping out of her. “I saw something in the air,” she said, more firmly. “A kind of machine, I think.”
“A machine,” said Stubbs. “Not a ghost.”
“No.”
“You look like a duppy come ready to grab your child, girl,” Stubbs said. “A machine, though.… I don’t like that. There are machines and machines, seen? Could be a spy.”
“A spy,” Laura said. It was an explanation, and it got her brain working again. “I don’t know. I’ve seen drone aircraft. People use them to crop-dust. But they have wings. They’re not like flying saucers.”
“You saw a flying saucer?” Stubbs said, impressed. “Crucial! Where did it go?”
“Let’s go in,” Laura said, shivering. “You don’t want to see it, Mr. Stubbs.”
“But I do see,” said Stubbs. He pointed. Laura turned to look.
The thing was sweeping toward them, from over the water. It whirred. It swept over the beach at high speed. As it closed on them, it opened fire. A chattering gout of bullets slammed into Stubbs’s chest and belly, flinging him against the wall. His body bloomed open under the impact.
The flying thing veered off above the roof, its whine dying as it slipped into darkness. Stubbs slid to the boards of the walkway. His dreadlocks had slipped askew. They were a wig. Below them, his skull was bald.
Laura lifted one hand to her cheek. Something had stung her there. Little bits of sand, she thought vaguely. Little bits of sand that had jumped from those impact holes. Those pockmarks in the wall of her house, where the bullets had passed through the old man. The holes looked dark in the moonlight. They were full of his blood.
3
Laura watched as they took the body away. The dead Mr. Stubbs. Smiling, cheerful Winston Stubbs, all winking piratical wickedness, now a small bald corpse with its chest smashed open. Laura leaned on the wet walkway railing, watching as the ambulance van cleared the cordon of lights. Unhappy city cops in wet yellow slickers manned the road. It had begun to rain with morning, a bleak September front off the mainland.
Laura turned and pushed through the lobby door. Inside, the Lodge felt empty, a havoc area. All the guests were gone. The Europeans had abandoned their luggage in their panic flight. The Singaporeans, too, had slunk off rapidly during the confusion.
Laura walked upstairs to the tower office. It was just after nine in the morning. Within the office, Debra Emerson prerecorded calls for the Central Committee, her quiet murmur going over the details of the killing for the fourth time. The fax machine whined on copy.
Laura poured herself coffee, slopping some onto the table. She sat down and picked up the terrorists’ publicity release. The assassins’ statement had come online at the Rizome Lodge only ten minutes after the killing. She had read it three times already, with stunned disbelief. Now she read the statement over one more time. She had to understand. She had to deal with it.
F.A.C.T. DIRECT ACTION BULLETIN—SPECIAL RELEASE TO AGENCIES OF LAW ENFORCEMENT
At 07:21 GMT September 12, 2023, designated commandos of the Free Army of Counter-Terrorism carried out sentence on Winston Gamaliel Stubbs, a so-called corporate officer in the piratical and subversive organized-crime unit known as the United Bank of Grenada. The oppressed people of Grenada will rejoice at this long-delayed act of justice against the drug-running crypto-Marxist junta which has usurped the legitimate political aspirations of the island’s law-abiding population.
The sentence of execution took place at the Rizome Lodge of Galveston, Texas, U.S.A. (telex GALVEZRIG, ph. (713) 454-9898), where Rizome Industries Group, Inc., an American-based multinational, was engaged in criminal conspiracy with the Grenadian malefactors.
We accuse the aforesaid corporation, Rizome Industries Group, Inc., of attempting to reach a cowardly accommodation with these criminal groups, in an immoral and illegal protection scheme which deserves the harshest condemnation from state, national, and international law enforcement agencies. With this act of shortsighted greed, Rizome Industries Group, Inc., has cynically betrayed the efforts of legitimate institutions, both private and public, to contain the menace of criminally supported state terrorism.
It is the long-sustained policy of the Free Army of Counter-Terrorism (FACT) to strike without mercy at the cryptototalitarian vermin who pervert doctrines of national sovereignty. Behind its mask of national legality, the Grenada United Bank has provided financial, data, and intelligence support to a nexus of pariah organizations. The executed felon, Winston Stubbs, has in particular maintained close personal involvement with such notorious groups as the Tanzanian Knights of Jah, the Inadin Cultural Revolution, and the Cuban Capitalist Cells.
In eliminating this menace to the international order, FACT has performed a valuable service to the true cause of law enforcement and global justice. We pledge to maintain our course of direct military action against the economic, political, and human resources of the so-called United Bank of Grenada until this antihuman and oppressive institution is entirely and permanently liquidated.
A further intelligence dossier on the crimes of the deceased, Winston Stubbs, may be accessed within the files of the United Bank itself: Direct-dial (033) 75664543, Account ID: FR2774. Trapdoor: 23555AK. Password: FREEDOM.
So flat, Laura thought, setting the printout aside. It read like computer-generated prose, long, obsessive streams of clauses … Stalinist. No grace or fire in it, just steam-driven robot pounding. Any pro in P.R. could have done better—she could have done better. She could have done a lot better in making her company, and her home, and her people, and herself, look like garbage.… She felt a sudden surge of helpless rage, so powerful that tears came. Laura fought them back. She peeled away the printout’s perforated strip and rolled it between her fingers, staring at nothing.
“Laura?” David emerged from downstairs, carrying the baby. The mayor of Galveston followed him.
Laura stood up jerkily. “Mr. Mayor! Good morning.”
Mayor Alfred A. Magruder nodded. “Laura.” He was a hefty Anglo in his sixties, his barrel paunch wrapped in a garish tropical dashiki. He wore sandals and jeans and had a long Santa Claus beard. Magruder’s face was flushed and his blue eyes in their little pockets of suntanned fat had the rigid look of con
tained fury. He waded into the room and flung his briefcase onto the table.
Laura spoke quickly. “Mr. Mayor, this is our security coordinator, Debra Emerson. Ms. Emerson, this is Alfred Magruder, Galveston’s mayor.”
Emerson rose from the console. She and Magruder looked each other up and down. They summed each other up with slight involuntary winces of distaste. Neither offered to shake hands. Bad vibes, Laura thought shakily, echoes from some long-buried social civil war. Already things were out of control.
“There’s some heavy heat coming down here soon,” Magruder announced, looking at Laura. “And now your old man here tells me that your pirate friends are at large on my island.”
“It was quite impossible for us to stop them,” Emerson said. Her voice had the infuriating calmness of a grade school teacher.
Laura cut in. “The Lodge was strafed by a machine gun, Mr. Mayor. It woke the whole staff—threw us into panic. And the—the guests—were up and out of here before the rest of us could think of anything. We called the police—”
“And your corporate headquarters,” Magruder said. He paused. “I want a record of all the calls in and out of this place.”
Laura and Emerson spoke at once.
“Well of course I called Atlanta—”
“That will need a warrant—”
Magruder cut them off. “The Vienna Convention heat will seize your records anyway. Don’t screw me around on technicalities, okay? We’re all walking fast and loose here, that’s the point of Fun City. But y’all have gone way over the line this time. And someone’s ass is gonna fry, okay?”
He glanced at David. David nodded once, his face frozen in a bogus look of chipper nice-guy alertness.
Magruder plunged on. “Now who’s it gonna be? Is it gonna be me?” He thumbed his baggy shirt, prodding a splashy yellow azalea. “Is it gonna be you? Or is it gonna be these pirate assholes from off-the-island?” He drew a breath. “This is a terrorist action, comprende? That kind of crap isn’t supposed to come down anymore.”
Debra Emerson was all strained politeness. “It still does, Mr. Mayor.”
“Maybe in Africa,” Magruder grunted. “Not here!”
“The point is to cut the feedback relationship between terrorism and the global media,” Emerson said. “So you needn’t worry about bad publicity. The Vienna Convention specifies—”
“Look,” Magruder said, turning the full force of his glare on Emerson. “You’re not dealing with some cracker hippie here, okay? When this blows over you can sneak back to your spook warren in Atlanta, but I’ll still be down here trying to make a go of a city on the fucking ropes! It’s not the press that scares me—it’s the cops! Global cops, too—not the locals, I can deal with them. I don’t want to go down on their bad-boy list with the data-haven mafiosi. So do I need you using my island for your clapped-out shenanigans? No, ma’am, I don’t.”
Rage boiled up in Laura. “What the hell is this? Did we shoot him? We got shot at, Your Honor, okay? Go outside and look at my house.”
They stared at her, shocked at her outburst. “They could have killed us. They could have blown the whole Lodge up.” She snatched up the printout and shook it at Magruder. “They even wrote directly to us and taunted us! The F.A.C.T.—whoever they are—they’re the killers, what about them?”
The baby’s face clouded up and she tried a tentative sob. David rocked her in his arms, half turning away. Laura lowered her voice. “Mr. Mayor, I see what you’re getting at. And I guess I’m sorry about this, or whatever the hell you want me to say. But we have to face the truth. These data-haven people are professionals, they’re long gone. Except maybe the other Grenadian, Sticky Thompson. I think I know where Thompson is. He’s gone underground here in Galveston, with the Church girl. I mean your friends here in the Church of Ishtar, Mr. Mayor.”
She shot a quick look at David. David’s face had thawed, he was with her. He looked encouragement: go on, babe. “And we don’t want them looking at the Church, do we? They’re all webbed together, these fringe groups. Pull one thread and the whole thing comes apart.”
“And we end up bare-ass naked,” David put in. “All of us.”
The mayor grimaced, then shrugged. “But that’s exactly what I was saying.”
“Damage limitation,” Emerson said.
“Right, that’s it.”
Emerson smiled. “Well, now we’re getting somewhere.”
Laura’s watchphone beeped. She glanced at the board. It was a priority call. “I’ll take it downstairs and let y’all talk,” she said.
David followed her downstairs, with Loretta in the crook of his arm. “Those two old boomers,” he muttered.
“Yeah.” She paused as they stepped into the dining room.
“You were great,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Now.” The Lodge staff, red-eyed with lack of sleep, sat around the largest table, taking in Spanish. They were disheveled and shaky. The gunfire had jolted them out of bed at two in the morning. David stopped with them.
Laura took her call in the little downstairs office. It was Emily Donato, calling from Atlanta. “I just heard,” Emily said. She was pale. “Are you all right?”
“They shot up the Lodge,” Laura said. “They killed him. The old Rastaman, I was standing right next to him.” She paused. “I was scared of the spy machine. He came out to protect me. But they were waiting for him, and they shot him dead right there.”
“You’re not hurt, though.”
“No, it was the walls, y’know, concretized sand. The bullets sank right in. No ricochets.” Laura paused again and ran her fingers through her hair. “I can’t believe I’m saying this.”
“I just wanted to say.… Well, I’m with you all the way on this one. You and David. All the way.” She held up two fingers, pressed together. “Solidarity, okay?”
Laura smiled for the first time in hours. “Thanks, Em.” She looked at her friend’s face gratefully. Emily’s video makeup looked off; too much blusher, eyeliner shaky. Laura touched her own bare cheek. “I forgot my vid makeup,” Laura blurted, realizing it for the first time. She felt a sudden unreasoning surge of panic. Of all the days—a day when she’d be on the Net all the time.
There was noise in the lobby. Laura glanced through the open door of the office and past the front desk. A woman in uniform had just pushed through the lobby door from outside. A black woman. Short hair, military blouse, big leather gun belt, cowboy hat in her hand. A Texas Ranger.
“Oh, Jesus, the Rangers are here,” Laura said.
Emily nodded, her eyes wide. “I’m loggin’ off, I know you have your hands full.”
“Okay, bye.” Laura hung up. She hurried past the desk into the lobby. A blond man in civvies followed the Ranger into the Lodge. He wore a charcoal-gray tailored suit vented at the waist, wide, flamboyant tie in computer-paisley.… He had dark glasses and had a suitcase terminal in his hand. The Vienna heat.
“I’m Laura Webster,” Laura told the Ranger. “The Lodge coordinator.” She offered her hand. The Ranger ignored it, giving her a look of blank hostility.
The Vienna spook set down his portable terminal, took Laura’s hand, and smiled sweetly. He was very handsome, with an almost feminine look—high Slavic cheekbones, a long, smooth swoop of blond hair over one ear, a film-star mole dotting his right cheekbone. He released her hand reluctantly, as if tempted to kiss it. “Sorry to greet you in such circumstances, Ms. Webster. I am Voroshilov. This is my local liaison, Captain Baster.”
“Baxter,” the Ranger said.
“You witnessed the attack, I understand,” Voroshilov said.
“Yes.”
“Excellent. I must interview you.” He paused and touched a small stud on the corner of his dark glasses. A long fiber-optic cord trailed from the earpiece down into the vest of his suit. Laura saw now that the sunglasses were videocams, the new bit-mapped kind with a million li
ttle pixel lenses. He was filming her. “The terms of the Vienna Convention require me to tell you of your legal position. First, your speech is being recorded and you are being filmed. Your statements will be kept on file by various agencies of Vienna Convention signatory governments. I am not required to specify these agencies or the amount or location of the data from this investigation. Vienna treaty investigations are not subject to freedom-of-information or privacy laws. You have no right to an attorney. Investigations under the convention have global priority over the laws of your nation and state.”
Laura nodded, barely following this burst of rote. She had heard it all before, on television shows. TV thrillers were very big on the Vienna heat. Guys showing up, flicking hologram ID cards, overriding the programming on taxis and zooming around on manual, chasing baddies. They never forgot their video makeup, either. “I understand, Comrade Voroshilov.”
Voroshilov lifted his head. “What an interesting smell. I do admire regional cooking.”
Laura started. “Can I offer you something?”
“Some mint tea would be very fine. Oh, just tea, if you have no mint.”
“Something for you, Captain Baxter?”
Baxter glared. “Where was he killed?”
“My husband can help you with that.…” She touched her watchphone. “David?”
David looked into the lobby through the dining room door. He saw the police, turned, and shot some quick, urgent border-Spanish over his shoulder at the staff. All Laura caught was los Rinches, the Rangers, but chairs scraped and Mrs. Delrosario appeared in a hurry.
Laura made introductions. Voroshilov turned the intimidating videoglasses on everyone in turn. They were creepy-looking things—at a certain angle Laura could see a fine-etched golden spiderwebbing in the opaque lenses. No moving parts. David left with the Ranger.
Laura found herself sipping tea with the Vienna spook in the downstairs office. “Remarkable decor,” Voroshilov observed, easing back in the vinyl car seat and shooting an inch of creamy-looking shirtcuff through his charcoal-gray coat sleeves.
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