Blackmail Earth

by Bill Evans

  For chrissakes, shove a sock in his goddamn pie hole.

  * * *

  Alicia had ordered the crew to set up by the hotel entrance, where the van had been. She’d also corralled three members of the National Defense Force to stand in the background in full combat gear. Only feet away was where the waterspout had savaged a garden.

  Jenna rushed out of the hotel accompanied by Nicci, who had gushed in a breathy whisper on the elevator that Alicia was “wonderful.” Jenna could have done without the effervescence but thought that maybe Alicia needed a little loving to crack her emotional carapace.

  If so, it wasn’t immediately clear that love had done the deed. The news producer positioned Jenna and Special Terrorism Correspondent Chris Randall facing each other with the sliding glass doors to the lobby behind them. Then she told Jenna that they needed a “strong sound bite. That’s not coming from me. That’s coming from New York.”

  “This is the run-through, right?” Jenna asked.

  Alicia shook her head, as if in disbelief. “Yes, it’s the run-through. Are you ready?”

  “Sure,” Jenna said.

  “I was talking to the crew,” the producer said frostily.

  What a bitch.

  “Can I get an answer?” she demanded of the cameraman, who glared at her and nodded. “Let’s go, Chris,” Alicia said to the tall correspondent.

  He turned to Jenna. “What did you see here last night?”

  “I came around the corner of the hotel in the middle of a powerful thunderstorm and saw a van right here by the entrance. I was rushing to get into the hotel, because I’d just seen a waterspout, when a young man jumped out of the van and we knocked into each other, and then he raced off. But a Maldivian friend of mine thought the driver’s behavior was suspicious, so he opened the door of the van, and that’s when we found the bomb.”

  “What did you see first?” Chris asked her.

  “About a thousand pounds of explosives. Every inch of the van was packed with it. And then I saw smoke from the burning fuse.”

  “What did you do then?” Chris prompted.

  “I pulled the fuse out of the bomb.” Jenna raised her bandaged hand. “It wasn’t that big a deal, once I saw it, and this is not as bad as it looks. It’s just a little burn.”

  “Hold on,” Alicia said to Chris and the crew. “Don’t eat humble fucking pie,” she scolded Jenna. “You stopped a bombing—”

  “No, my friend and I stopped it.”

  “You pulled the fuse out.”

  “He tried to, too.”

  “But you did it. Say it! You stopped a bombing that would have been the 9/11 of this part of the world. And skip the crap about it not being a big deal. It’s a big deal, so just say it.”

  “I’m not going to ‘just say it.’ I helped stop a bombing. I didn’t do it all by myself.” Jenna stepped away from the camera. “The only reason I even saw the fuse was my friend thought right away to check the van.”

  “What was your friend doing at the hotel at that hour?”

  Jenna shrugged, trying to avoid the issue. “That’s personal.”

  “Personal? What is he, married?” Alicia’s remark felt sharp as a coral reef.

  “I’m not going to get into that.”

  “Well, then, go get him. He’s still up in your room, right? We’re going to need him, too, I guess, if you’re not going to say what needs to be said.”

  “I am not getting him. There are people around here who want to kill him and he can’t risk being seen publicly.”

  “I don’t care if Dr. Evil is about to put him on a rocket and blast his butt into space, we need him since you’re not going to play ball. Persuade him. I’ll bet you’re good at that.”

  “Go to hell. That’s an outrageous suggestion.”

  “Oh, please. Grow the fuck up.” Alicia spun toward Nicci. “Talk some sense into her. We’re suppose to do this for real,” she glanced at her watch, “in about five minutes.”

  The weather producer looked clubbed, eyes shifting between Alicia and Jenna.

  Jenna returned her gaze and knew that she’d lost her. To that harridan. But how do you compete with “wonderful” sex? But Nicci didn’t disappoint her.

  “What Jenna said was fine, and it’ll be fine when we go live.” Nicci faced Alicia directly. “And I’m sure it was accurate. She says what she sees. But what you said was outrageous. And I think you need to apologize and get a grip.”

  “Oh, you do, you little twerp. I’ve got—”

  Jenna cut her off: “I’m not taking part in this charade.” She stepped away from the camera. “And I’m talking to Elfren about this.” Jenna started to walk away. Alicia seized her arm. “Don’t you dare touch me,” Jenna said. The producer let go.

  “Okay, go,” Alicia said. “I’ll tell New York that you had a hissy fit. I’m sure Elfren will be real impressed when the weather girl says it got a little too stormy for her in the tropics. Me?” Alicia pointed to herself. “I’m talking to Marv right now. I can’t believe he puts you on the air. I wouldn’t trust you to read a thermometer.”

  Nicci hooked her arm through Jenna’s and towed her back into the Golden Crescent before she could say another word.

  Still furious, Jenna pulled out her cell, but not to contact the network. National security concerns trumped her own anger as she placed her second call in the past eight hours to the man who lived at Number One Observatory Circle in Washington, D.C.

  An assistant to Vice President Andrew Percy answered on the first ring. Jenna told the young woman that she needed to speak to him as soon as possible about “a matter of the utmost urgency.”

  “Vice President Percy is not available at this time, but I’ll see that he receives your message.”

  Jenna could almost see the eye rolling from nine thousand miles away. “That’s great, and I appreciate that, but I left my first message a few hours ago and I haven’t heard back from him. This is really urgent, and I’m on his task force.”

  “Which one?”

  “On geoengineering.”

  “All right.” The woman sounded bored. “I’ll pass this on to his chief of staff.”

  “May I speak to him now, please. This is really important.” In government, Jenna was learning, there was no telling if the left hand knew what the right hand was doing, and she wanted to make sure that the executive branch knew without question that North Korean rockets were on the verge of changing world history.

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible. I will make sure that your message is heard.”

  Jenna heard no sense of urgency. It was as if she’d been speaking to an automated message center.

  As she and Nicci hurried to the elevator, she tried to think of someone on the task force who could get through to the vice president—or higher. She drew blanks. Maybe someone at the Natural Resources Defense Counsel. Stepping off on the third floor, Jenna left a message for the gentleman with the white goatee who’d given her the eye at the first meeting.

  As soon as they entered her room, they spotted Rafan walking out of the bathroom with his shaving kit.

  He smiled, looking so much better than he had last night. Nicci extended her hand while Jenna fished the room service menu out of a drawer. She handed it to Rafan, saying, “Order something in, please. I don’t want you risking a trip downstairs, not with all your ‘fans’ looking for you. I had to do an interview that turned into a disaster, so I never got to eat. Would you mind ordering me yogurt, fruit, toast, and coffee? I’ve got another call to make.”

  “Disaster?” Rafan asked.

  “More on that later,” Jenna said. “What about you?” she asked Nicci. “You hungry, or did you get enough downstairs?”

  “Stop being a mother hen and go call Elfren,” Nicci pushed her toward the balcony, “before she does.”

  But Jenna got no further than Elfren’s administrative assistant. As she was leaving a message, Marv called. She picked up expecting the worst.

&nb
sp; “You are not,” he shouted, “to disrespect our foremost producer of terrorism coverage. You are not to leave a run-through for an interview that she’s set up about a terrorist bomb until she’s satisfied with your answers. You are not to unilaterally cancel an interview about a terrorist act. And you are not to refuse her reasonable requests to provide sound bites that place you at the center of stopping terrorism.”

  Four sentences, and each one contained a variant of “terror,” Jenna couldn’t help noting.

  “Marv, shut up.” That was one of the great things about having a stellar academic background at a time like this. What was the worst they could do to her? Send her back to an Ivory Tower where she’d teach, oh, maybe two classes a week, and take a sabbatical every six or seven years? “I do not,” echoing his emphasis, “have to put up with this kind of abuse. Not from you. Not from her. She was ordering me to say things that weren’t remotely accurate. You can ask Nicci, she was there.”

  “You mean the sex-u-al har-as-ser?” Marv sounded like he was savoring every syllable. “Alicia says that she’s filing a sexual harassment complaint against your producer, who didn’t like having her aggressive lesbo advances rejected by a married colleague. Nicci’s days are numbered.”

  “Did you say ‘lesbo,’ Marv? Did you actually use that epithet?”

  “So what?”

  “For the record, I don’t know what Alicia’s marital status is, and I don’t see that it’s even relevant, but I do know that this morning Alicia was the one reaching across the table to hold Nicci’s hand. And it was Nicci who told her to bugger off when Alicia tried to bulldog me.”

  “What are you accusing her of?” Marv shouted. “She’s been around longer than you and Nicci combined. You should just shut the fuck up and do your job. Do you hear me?”

  “Marv, you stepped way over the line with the very first words you said to me, and now you’re totally blowing it. I’m not staying in the Maldives under these circumstances.”

  “Then leave. Now.”

  “I’ve already made that decision on my own, but there’s one thing I want to leave you with, while it’s still on my mind. I had my recorder hooked to the phone during your diatribe because I’d been doing an interview with Senator Higgens, and everything you just said, you know, ‘lesbo,’ ‘shut the fuck up,’ all of it, Marv, is on a neat little disk that I intend to play for James Elfren and anybody else on the eighth floor who’s interested in hearing it.”

  Silence. Then click.

  Then a smile: Jenna had lied, but how could Marv know? She figured that he had assumed the worst. And why? Because the worst was what he would have done, if he’d been in her shoes.

  Right then Jenna realized that her reporter’s instincts were getting sharper by the second.

  * * *

  Adnan stared at a sapphire ring on the Shopping Channel and turned up the sound. It was the only broadcast he could find that wasn’t showing the tanker takeover—and he desperately needed a diversion from the horrors of the wheelhouse. So … he locked his eyes on the scantily clad Western women with big breasts and baubles. But what else could a pious Muslim do? The Waziristani had pried open the captain’s hand with dire threats to the man’s privates—acted out with a shocking snip-snip of the wire cutters—and then clipped off his index finger, which took gritty seconds to complete and left the captain screaming and bleeding on the floor. The jihadist had thrown a white towel at Adnan and gestured with his hands for him to mop up and stanch the wound. Adnan had had to wrestle with the captain, who thrashed around a great deal, which was remarkable, considering that he was still trussed with his hands tied behind his back to his feet. The position left the poor man arched in the shape of a … crescent. But eventually Adnan had pressed the towel to the man’s swollen, bloody hand.

  Bad as all that was, Adnan had just seen the old newsman drink from a bottle of liquor that the Waziristani, a jihadist, had given him. Satan’s nectar! Surely, Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon Him, would condemn such a wicked practice. How could a self-professed Islamist commit such a grievous sin? The only explanation possible was that he truly was an American. Maybe even CIA.

  Once more, Adnan had to turn away from the old man. His Adam’s apple bobbed hideously each time he swallowed from the bottle, and every few minutes he took another big gulp.

  Reaching into his vest, Adnan pulled out the two wires that could put an end to this sacrilege. All he needed to do was rip off the plastic caps and bring the wires together.

  * * *

  Booze for Birk. Booze for Birk. The old correspondent could have sung that ditty all day long and added endless lines (Then he’ll work. Then he’ll work…). He felt so good he could have danced, too—the tango, mambo, and a tarantella! And romanced the Queen Mother, dead as she was, and her entire entourage while he was at it.

  To be finally himself again, slightly tipsy but no longer shaking. To feel every bit as debonair as he believed he looked, despite having not one but two chopped-off fingers hanging from his shirt.

  He glanced down, eyes steady, hands steady, delighted to see those free-swinging digits still as a Monday morning belfry. They’d done all the sh-sh-shaking they were going to do. As long as he could control himself and not drink too much, he’d weather this storm. No problem. The fate of the world, boys. And ol’ Birk’s got ’er under control. He’s just going to have himself another sip or two, that’s all, to tide him over, wet the whistle, kiss the sky. Yes, Birk wanted little more than that nice steady-state incipient inebriation that had served him so well for nigh fifty years now. But damn, hadn’t “another sip or two” always done him in, in the end?

  At that moment he caught a disconcerting glimpse of his reflection on one of the sonar screens in the wheelhouse. Those fingers from hell pulled down his shirt on one side, which made him look disheveled, shiftless. The sight of his whiskers made him think he’d better shave soon or he’d end up looking like his old acquaintance Yasser Arafat. These Islamists made him nostalgic for that bombastic fart.

  The more he looked, the more he realized those fingers looked monstrous and cruel, insane, like something Idi Amin might have sported at a Ugandan state dinner—where the meat was always of questionable provenance.

  But as Birk’s exuberance ebbed, it wasn’t the thumb and index finger on his shirt that alarmed him most, and it certainly wasn’t his pointer, newly tucked away. It was the finger that Raggedy Ass was smearing with blood right now, and straightening by clamping the wire cutters on it. Leaving it bizarrely erect. Birk dearly wished he hadn’t.

  “Ah, Birk,” Raggedy Ass said with good ol’ boy familiarity, “you are something else.”

  Yeah, I sure am. But when Birk stared at his middle finger, his “fuck you” finger boldly challenging the world, he felt a reinvigorating rush of defiance.

  * * *

  Senator Higgens trundled to the elevator with a throbbing headache. No question, she’d had too much to drink last night, but had she said too much to that persnickety, white bread meteorologist?

  Dear God, spare me every last one of your true believers, and deliver me to cynicism, blight, and the most sorely begotten. Amen.

  Sheesh, her mood was foul.

  In the restaurant, she collapsed into a seat at a table for four. A waiter hurried over with a carafe and poured coffee.

  “I look like I need it that bad, huh, bubba?” He didn’t reply. Maybe “bubba” was an unknown in these here parts. Maybe her eyes, red as wild roses, were enough to silence him. But enough to keep her quiet? Not with the need she had: “Give me a bloody Mary, too.”

  Her tired eyes rose to the huge screen on the wall of the lobby, but her grimace quickly turned to a smile wide as the ocean blue when she spied Rick Birk’s bloody bandage.

  Yes, yes, yes. Another one of his worthless fingers had been chopped off and hung from his shirt. Whoopee.

  But what made Higgens laugh so hard that she almost sprayed coffee all over the white table
cloth was the finger that hadn’t been clipped yet, but that was, deliciously enough, next in line: his middle finger, and it stood straight as an English guard.

  Well, fuck you back, Birk, Higgens chortled to herself, mirth overwhelming her once again, along with the realization that no hair of the dog—the bloody Mary had arrived—could ever equal the undistilled spirits of revenge.

  * * *

  “I’m coming home,” Jenna told Dafoe. She’d packed her bags after Marv had hung up, then given herself a couple of minutes to catch her breath before calling her guy.

  She reclined on a chaise lounge with a creamy iced coffee. In a few minutes she’d have to leave for the airport, and she wanted to use the time to enjoy the view, the brew, and her boyfriend. Nicci already had booked them on a commercial flight. Jenna was fine with that, realizing that her days of chartered Gulfstream jets—and outsize carbon footprints—had likely begun and ended with her trip to the Maldives.

  “Today? That’s great news,” Dafoe said. “It is great news, isn’t it?” he added tentatively.

  “Yes, definitely. I won’t numb you with details now, but I don’t think I was cut out for the news end of the business, not the way Marv and a certain unmentionable producer do it.” Nicci came over, holding up her laptop so Jenna could see an e-mail. “Marv just sent a message saying that Nicci and I have been suspended from The Morning Show. Whatever that means. Probably that we’re fired.”

  “The other networks will be bidding for you.”

  “Maybe for Nicci, but I’m starting to think that I might be better off taking a position at a college. One thing I’ll tell you is that I’m not taking this lying down. I’ve got a call in to Marv’s boss.”