Papa.
He was gone, and she knew his loss would soon hurt much worse. Worse than the loss of an arm or even a leg. Her heart had been ripped from her chest. But for now she remained deadened to the pain. That was good. She knew it gave her the chance to get moving, to act before she was paralysed by the weight of it all. That was one of the things she had learned as they crept and sometimes fought their way free in Blackstone’s Texas. Sometimes, no matter how grave the injury or outrage, you just had to move. To stand still was to die. You’d be overwhelmed, ploughed under. Like everyone who had died in that flood on the Johnson Grasslands. They hadn’t moved, or they hadn’t moved quickly enough.
Sofia moved. She quickly stripped off her loose cotton hospital gown and began changing back into the clothes she had been wearing. They were folded neatly in an armchair in the corner of the room, a pair of relatively new Levi’s, a long-sleeved tee-shirt and a black hoodie. She was almost undone by the thought that Papa should’ve been sitting there waiting for her when she woke up. That’s what fathers did. They watched over you. They were there for you when you woke up.
But that way lay madness, she knew. Even with the numbing cushion of the drugs to protect her, Sofia knew not to poke at that wound. It would pain her soon enough. As she climbed into her jeans and boots, listening for any sound of movement outside the room, she began to gather her wits. The fog was clearing from her thoughts, if not her feelings.
Maive.
Sofia had thought her dead. But no, she was not – not yet, anyway. She had survived the attack, the two police officers had said. As muzzy and clouded as the teenager’s thoughts might’ve been, she was clear-headed on that issue. Her father and Maive had been attacked, not simply run down in some random accident. And Maive had survived.
She would be here somewhere. Sofia remembered that now: Maive was still alive, but very badly injured. Was she in a coma? Was she undergoing surgery? Sofia was sure she’d known the answer to that once, but like a poor student, she had forgotten. It would be frustrating were she not inoculated against feeling anything.
She tucked the white tee-shirt into her jeans and put on the thick, fleecy hoodie. As she concentrated on dressing herself, she remembered. Maive was in intensive care. The nurses had told her that when the paramedics brought her in, after she’d collapsed back at the apartment. Maive was alive, but she was in intensive care. That’s why Sofia couldn’t see her. She recalled asking them if Mrs Aronson would be all right, but couldn’t remember what they told her. Perhaps the nurses had avoided the question. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Sofia would not be able to see her. Not if she hoped to get away from here.
And for now that’s all she wanted to do. To get away from this hospital, away from this city and back to Texas, where her family had been murdered. And where she could find the man her father blamed for the deaths.
The tyrant Blackstone.
Sofia Pieraro would return to Texas, as her father had promised to, and there she would settle with the man who had taken everything from her. She was done playing stupid games with the federales. They had done nothing in all the time she and Papa had been here in KC. Nothing but talk. She was the last Pieraro. She had no choice – she would act.
13
DEARBORN HOUSE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
A fixer’s work was never done. And a fixer he most surely was – not an aide, not a staff member, not even the Chief of Staff, despite what it said on his office door. Jed Culver was a fixer of small things, like disputes between Cabinet secretaries about who got the corner office, and big things, like existential threats to the Republic. And that’s what he was certain he was looking at here: the death of the American Republic.
It was a hell of a thing, when you thought about it. The Disappearance hadn’t destroyed the United States, even though it had killed pretty much everyone on the continent, save for a few lucky survivors in the Pacific Northwest and up into Alaska. Those survivors were doing the best they could to bind up the massive wound inflicted on the nation, but they were going to fail. America was going to die, and it was all because of one, self-obsessed asshole. General Jackson Blackstone.
Or Governor Jackson Blackstone as he was these days. And didn’t winning the territorial elections back in 2005 earn him the title fair and square?
Culver grimaced. Mad Jack simply demonstrated that the power of the people could be a very sharp, double-edged sword. After all, how could any right-thinking American resist a staunch defender of the nation who fought the good fight against the granola and tofu-chewing hippies of Seattle? Because, of course, your granola-chewing tofu types could never be real Americans, could they?
If only it were that simple, Jed thought.
He leaned right back in his office chair, cheating a little extra room to cross his legs, as he contemplated the photograph he was holding of Blackstone. It was a typical press shot of the former US Army Ranger, in his green dress uniform, bedecked in ribbons and stars, smiling at the camera with the pre-Wave flag of the United States draped artfully behind his right shoulder. He came across as a country grandpa of sorts, eager to get out of the army-issue suit and tie for some fishing by the river. When Blackstone wasn’t angry, he could even sound like your granddaddy, calmly telling you the facts of life with the same patience that one might teach a child how to thread a worm onto a fishing hook. Or throw a roomful of duly elected civilian representatives into confinement for arguing over Oreo cookies.
There was a bit of the Roman in him too, perhaps, something to Jed’s eye that brought to mind the old busts of Pompey and Vespasian. The great leonine head, the long nose and imperial bearing that seemed to fill out his uniform with extra awesomeness. You could understand why people might turn to him during the End Times. The motherfucker had a glint in his eye that whispered of your salvation. Or to Jed’s practised and cynical eye, of Blackstone’s Messiah complex.
He tossed the colour photo onto a pile of more recent, matte, black-and-white photographs that was threatening to spill over the edge of his desk. In the later shots, Blackstone had offset his bald pate with a grandfatherly beard that was slowly going white with age. The Santa Claus look, Kipper called it.
Culver’s special project took up all the available space in his rather cramped office. The desk wasn’t a mess by any means. Jed Culver’s mind was too organised to countenance sloppiness of thought or deed, but it was a mind possessed of an unnatural ability to take in and process vast amounts of information. It was why he had been such a successful attorney once upon a time. Having learned something, he retained that knowledge. But more importantly, he understood it within the context of everything else he had learned. That was the mistake people made, thought Jed: they confused information with meaning. It was all very well to have a so-called photographic memory – he didn’t, he simply had a very well organised and partitioned memory – but unless you could synthesise all of the random bits of information, the data points, the seemingly disconnected instances and episodes and reams of evidence and counter-evidence into a coherent narrative that was firmly grounded in reality, and not what you wanted reality to be, then you were fucked.
A sub-zero gale rattled his office window in its frame, as if applauding this grim, Darwinian opinion. Jed grunted in irritation. He’d jammed a folded wedge of paper in there a couple of hours earlier, Kipper style, to stop the damned thing annoying him. He wondered if they’d had these same problems, of working in an old, antiquated building, back in the original White House.
He dropped down on one knee to search for the missing wedge. For all of his justly famed powers of concentration, rattling windows drove him nuts, and left him unable to think. He found the makeshift wadding behind the floor-length curtain and jammed it back in between the sash and the frame, restoring blessed quiet to his office.
His desk looked as though children had made a game of constructing a city out of manila folders crammed thick with paper. Small towers of the buff-coloured fold
ers rose up from the leather desktop in a strict grid formation, giving the impression in the soft lamplight of a city skyline, built for play. But games, he didn’t need. Culver was tired.
He glanced across at the old, brass wind-up chronometer on his bookshelf. It was coming up on six in the evening. The ticking of the clock, the green shaded desk lamps throwing their mellow light down on the miniature city blocks of paper files, but leaving the upper reaches of his high-ceilinged office in relative gloom, all created the impression of an archaic museum exhibit. The office of a university don, preserved from the late 1800s. But he preferred it that way. Clockwork timepieces did not fail when the power went down, or their batteries ran out, and the necessity of winding them up at regular intervals imposed an exemplary discipline upon the mind. The paper files, too, might give the impression of bygone inefficiency, but in his experience, the efficiency with which electronic files could be copied and rapidly disseminated to a virtually infinite audience made working with hard copy a no-brainer. The security issue he dealt with by having two Marines on guard at his door whenever he had to break out the files. These folders, for instance, would remain stacked on his desk overnight, just in case he was able to sneak away from the President’s fundraiser in a couple of hours, to squeeze in a little bit more Machiavellian plotting.
For now, unfortunately, duty called him back to human contact. He had a short amount of time to freshen up and change before dinner and drinks with a roomful of potential donors. He already knew from past experience that Kipper would be absolutely hopeless when it came to putting the bite on people, so that was another unpleasant necessity that would fall to him.
He stood, with arms folded, his chin resting on his broad chest, and sighed. Somewhere in that mini Manhattan of paper was an answer. He had towers of documents detailing Blackstone’s official efforts to resist and undermine the settlement programs down in the Federal Mandate, and two solid blocks of binders containing classified files, among them investigators’ reports about Fort Hood’s suspected complicity in the ‘unofficial’ resistance to Seattle’s settlement program.
Thank you, Sarah Humboldt. Thank you, FBI.
He had Treasury reports going into fine, granular detail about Blackstone’s abrogation of federal–state cost and revenue sharing agreements, and more Treasury reports, from the Secret Service this time, particularising his administration’s many and complex contractual arrangements with foreign governments and corporations, all of them of contested legality, all of them designed to siphon off income that should have been going into the federal budget. Salvage agreements, mining and pastoral leases, technology transfer, even military sales. Blackstone was effectively running a shadow state. It didn’t matter how many times they dragged him off to the Supreme Court, his state law officers simply played to delay, or reformatted any commercial agreements to negate the case against them. Or sometimes, thought Jed with a great deal of chagrin, Blackstone just did as he damned well pleased and flipped off any court ruling he found inconvenient. As Kipper and he had discussed to the point of collapse, a law that cannot be enforced is not a law. It is a fatal weakness and a provocation to calumny.
He collected his jacket from the hanger on the back of his door, accepting that he would be back here later in the evening, probably working until the early hours. Because somewhere in that mountain range of files, he knew there had to be some point of weakness where he could apply pressure and break the administration of General Jackson Blackstone like a dry twig.
As he left the office, the two Marines standing guard outside, both of them armed, snapped to attention.
‘Thanks, fellas,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry you got this shit job, but I’m very grateful that you’re doing it. When is your changeover?’
‘We will be relieved at 2100 hours, Mr Culver,’ replied the Marine nearest him. ‘It could be worse, sir. We could be standing sentry out in the cold.’
‘I suppose you could,’ he conceded. ‘And at least you’ll get to see some pretty secretaries walk by when they all go home in half an hour.’
‘Sir, yes sir!’ the men replied in unison, bringing a smile to Culver’s face.
‘Okay, same drill as always, then. Nobody goes in there but me. Also, the damn window is rattling around. I’ve got it locked, but I really don’t want to trust the security of the nation to a Depression-era thumb latch. So maybe if you just put your head in there occasionally and chase off any cat burglars who might come by, that’d be cool too.’
‘I’m a dog person, sir. It would be my pleasure,’ said the first Marine.
‘Good to hear. There’s hope for this country yet.’
He gave them a friendly wink and left to find his driver.
*
Jed had his family ensconced in a large four-bedroom house over in Madison Park. Back in 2003 it had been leased by Arthur Andersen on behalf of one of their executives who was working in-house with Boeing. The place itself had been owned by a two-dollar shelf company, the ownership of which receded in clarity through a series of property trusts, holding companies and increasingly obscure corporate entities. The executive, and Arthur Andersen for that matter, had both Disappeared. For all intents and purposes then, the house had no owner. Under the Real Property Act of 2005, it had become an asset of the state, and from there the family home of the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States. It wasn’t a sweetheart deal. He was paying full market price for the lease.
Marilyn and the kids loved the house. Unfortunately, for Culver’s purposes, it was just too far away. There were weeks when he virtually lived in his office, and to save time he had taken a small one-bedroom apartment two minutes away from Dearborn House. His wife, his third wife actually, who loved, loved, loved to socialise, was waiting for him in her underwear when he rushed up from the town car. Sadly, Marilyn had no hi-jinks in mind. She was simply suffering from option paralysis, unable to decide what to wear to the fundraiser.
‘Jedi Master!’ she squealed when he hurried in through the door.
Marilyn Culver was not going to be bothering the selection committee at Mensa anytime soon. But Jed had not married her for her brains. He had been attracted by her smokin’ hot bod and well-preserved looks – unashamedly so. She was one of those women other women hate, the sort who looked better as they got older. Having been drawn to his previous wives because of their looks, however, that had not been enough to put a ring on her finger. In Marilyn, Jed found an innocent soul, possessed of a naïve faith in humanity that was entirely uplifting after having to spend his working day dealing with the worst aspects of his fellow man. Some of which aspects, he had to confess, he himself possessed in full measure.
He knew, as soon as he saw her standing all but naked in front of the full-length mirror at the end of the hallway, holding three formal dresses under her chin, what had been going on. She had been trying to choose an outfit for hours. The bed would be piled high with them. Even though this was just their bolthole in the city, Marilyn maintained a full wardrobe here. Some men would’ve lost patience, but he felt his spirits lifting and his eyes crinkling with a delighted smile.
‘There will be a great disturbance in the Force if you do not wear the glittery silver one that shows off your boobs, sweetheart,’ he called out down the hall.
She brought it to the forefront and tipped her head to one side, considering his advice. ‘You think so?’
‘If you don’t wear that dress, Marilyn, the terrorists have won.’
‘Can’t have that then,’ she said, sounding convinced.
He gave her a peck on the cheek and a playful pat on the rump as he hurried past to have a quick shower and climb into his monkey suit. ‘Don’t be long now,’ he told her. ‘We have to be at Kip and Barb’s place by seven.’
‘Just making myself beautiful,’ Marilyn pouted.
‘Too late,’ he shot back. ‘You already maxed out on that. Now, get into that sexy, sexy dress and get ready to distract some rich morons while
I shake them down for filthy lucre.’
Unlike the choice of formal wear, which really could go on for hours – days if you counted the phone hook-ups and girlfriend conferencing that went into compiling a short list – Marilyn Culver was something of a Picasso with a make-up case. A few minimal brushstrokes here and there and she could create a masterpiece.
Jed found himself stirring in arousal as he emerged from the bedroom doing up the buttons of his dress shirt. She really was stunning, and unlike the trolls he had previously married by accident, her beauty went deep. It was a pity to waste it on some of the assholes she’d be entrancing tonight.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s take you out to dinner and a show.’
‘And I’m the show?’ She beamed.
‘No, you are on show. The entertainment tonight will probably be provided by Henry Cesky, about fifteen minutes after he hits the open bar.’
‘Oh, him . . .’ She frowned now. ‘He’s not very nice, is he.’
‘Well, you’ll just have to make up for any shortfall on his account, won’t you?’
14
CENTRAL SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES
In her ‘go’ bag, Julianne had fifteen hundred dollars in local currency, two changes of clothes, a first-aid kit, and three plastic cards, two of them credit cards, one an international driver’s license, establishing her identity as ‘Julia Black’, a British woman, a resident of Florida, when the Wave removed all human life from that part of the North American continent. ‘Julia’ had been spared being turned into apocalyptic blood pudding by virtue of being on holiday in Spain with her husband. (In fact, Julia Black’s earthly remains were almost certainly staining the couch, carpet, toilet, or whatever, of her Miami home.) The sudden disappearance of more than three hundred million Americans like Mrs Black was a boon to the likes of Lady Julianne Balwyn. That is, to those individuals who, through misadventure and a certain moral flexibility, often found themselves in need of a spare identity and disinclined to let good manners prevent them from stealing one from the mysteriously departed. It wasn’t like the Disappeared were using them anymore, and of course the great majority of people lived their lives as unknowns anyway, dying in that same useful state.
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