Jennifer Government: A Novel

by Max Barry

  After a long time, a kid wearing baggy pants and a puffy jacket wandered into the lounge. “You John?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry I’m late, man. The airport is, like, two hours out of this city.”

  “Really?” John said. “Well, how about you turn around and go back there.”

  “Say what?” said the kid.

  “You see those things on your feet? That’s my company. There are some people you can leave waiting for thirty minutes, and I’m not one of them. I don’t get met by trainees, especially when they’re an hour late. So go back to London and tell your boss that when a real person wants to talk to me, I’ll be at the Hilton.” He stood.

  “Dude,” the kid said, “no need for hostilities. I’m a Liaison, too.”

  John started. “You’re the Shell Liaison?”

  “PepsiCo. We’ll be working together with Shell.”

  “Pepsi.”

  “So are we cool?”

  “You’re the Pepsi Liaison.”

  “Straight up.”

  John sighed. Consumer marketing could be so tiresome.

  “So can we move?” the kid said. “My Ferrari’s double-parked.”

  “I’ve never been to England before,” the Pepsi kid said. He had mentioned his name, but John hadn’t bothered to remember it. “I gotta say, I’m disappointed. I thought it would be all cottages and meadows and shit. But it’s just another city.”

  “Mmm,” John said. He looked out the window as they roared past a Mini.

  “I mean, I’m glad it’s not all, you know, European Union and police. But I thought there’d be some differences.”

  “Where’d you get the car?”

  “I just asked my P.A. to get me something hot.” He glanced at John. “It’s a 550 Barchetta. You like?”

  “It’s all right.” He decided to get Georgia to rent him a Porsche.

  “You wanna drive?”

  “No.”

  “Twelve cylinders, dude, it’s like wrestling a crocodile.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four. But trust me, I’m competent.” The kid swerved through lanes. “Hey, I saw this old British movie, all the people spoke so different, you could hardly understand them. But everyone here speaks American as good as you and me. What’s with that?”

  “It’s a smaller world these days,” John said. “Where are we going?”

  “Oh, sorry, man. We’re going straight to the stock exchange. Didn’t they tell you? Shell’s buying out ExxonMobil. They launch a hostile takeover bid in…” He looked at his watch. “Thirty minutes.”

  “That’s why we’re here? To watch a bunch of bankers?”

  “Brokers, dude. It’s a serious event. If this one comes off, US Alliance controls two-thirds of the world’s heavy fuels.”

  “And what are we meant to do?”

  “Crowd control.” The kid grinned.

  John said, “I’d really like to speak to the Shell Liaison.”

  “We’re meeting him there.”

  John said nothing. This was very screwed up. He wondered if he should call Gregory.

  “And what’s with these road signs?” the kid said. “ ‘Motorway?’ What’s wrong with ‘interstate?’”

  “They don’t have states. They call them shires.”

  “Why?”

  “They just do.”

  “Huh,” the kid said. He was silent for a while. “Well, I guess that’s different.”

  41 Intersection

  Buy was halfway into a new shirt when the buzzer went. He buttoned and hurried into the kitchen. He could see Jennifer in the fuzzy screen of his intercom, wearing a long coat.

  He suddenly decided not to answer. He shouldn’t have called her in the first place: that had been pathetic. He might as well have said, “Hi, Jennifer, this is Buy with a cry for help.” He felt embarrassed at his failure to competently kill himself.

  The buzzer rang again. On the intercom screen, Jennifer shifted impatiently. He pushed the button. “Hi.”

  “Oh, good. You’re still here.”

  “Uh,” he said. “Yes. Come on up.”

  He buzzed her in. His apartment looked plain and embarrassingly bachelorlike. Buy wished he had some flowers, or knickknacks, or something.

  She knocked. Buy took a breath and answered the door.

  “Hiya,” she said.

  “Hi! Come in, let me take your coat.”

  “Thanks.” Jennifer wandered in and looked around, almost professionally. “Nice view. How much does a place like this cost?”

  “You don’t want to know. Would you like a drink?” He had wine chilling in the fridge and two glasses on the sideboard.

  “Yeah, that’d be great.” She dropped onto the sofa.

  “I’ll be right back.” He went into the kitchen, collected the wine and glasses, tried to calm down, and went back in. Jennifer was flipping through a magazine he’d left on the coffee table: Investor.

  “Does this stuff really interest you?” she said. “All these numbers and graphs?”

  Buy sat down in the chair next to the sofa. It was hard to not look at her barcode tattoo. He kept wondering what would come up if you scanned it. “Not anymore.”

  “Ah.” She smiled wryly. Buy suspected that Jennifer Government had quite a repertoire of wry smiles; they might, in fact, be the only kind she had. “Hence the Colt.”

  “Uh, right.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Okay.” He fetched it from his bedroom desk drawer and brought it back. She turned it over, then put it in her bag. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t want you to do anything you won’t be able to regret later.”

  He felt himself redden. “You must think I’m pathetic.”

  “No.”

  “I shouldn’t have called you.”

  She touched his hand. “Buy, I was at that Nike Town. I know what it feels like to fail. I do.”

  He looked at her for a while.

  Jennifer said, “At least you got out of it with a decent haircut.”

  He laughed.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’m starving. Let’s get some food.”

  They ordered Chinese and spread it across the carpet in front of the window. Jennifer kept staring out at the city, and when she did Buy snuck looks at her. She caught him once, and he looked away, embarrassed.

  “I can hardly hold these damn chopsticks,” she said. “You know, my shoulder.”

  “Does it hurt much?”

  “It’s not so bad anymore. My hair is worse.”

  “No, no. It’s very… noticeable.”

  “Hey,” she said.

  “I like it. It’s French. Short and messy is hip.”

  “Yeah, well,” she said. “You’re too generous.” She drained her glass. “So what’s France like?”

  “Different. People pay tax, and the Government is…much stronger.”

  “My kind of place,” Jennifer said.

  “There isn’t the poverty of here. Or the wealth. There is unemployment. But France is very beautiful. The great buildings of Paris, and the villages like paintings…” He saw her smile, and it looked like a real one. “It is a truly romantic place.”

  “Mmm,” she said. “I could do with some of that.”

  “Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to help when I lived there.”

  “No?”

  “If anything,” Buy said, “it only seemed to make the breakups more poignant. One time I broke up with a girl outside the Notre Dame. She slapped me and ran away crying. I felt like the bad guy in a movie.” Jennifer snickered. “Oh, and you’ve never had a bad breakup?”

  “No, I guess I have.”

  “Don’t just sit there,” he said, topping up her glass. “Let’s have it.”

  She frowned. “It was in the board room of an L.A. office tower. This enormous room, with glass walls and views over the city, and we’d both just finished the most important meeting of our lives. I asked h
im to hang up a minute.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “He had no idea it was coming. He thought we were going great. I told him I was pregnant.”

  Buy said nothing. Jennifer’s dark eyes watched him.

  “He flipped. I mean, really flipped. He didn’t want a kid. He didn’t want me to have a kid. I can understand it, in a way. We were young and trying to establish careers. But when he said that, I hated him.” She shook her head. “As soon as I discovered I was pregnant, I knew I wasn’t giving up my baby. It sounds stupid, but it changes your life. It makes you realize who you are.

  “So he and I…went to war. It was insane. In the end I quit my job and moved out here. He thought that meant he won. But I have a beautiful daughter, and she’s everything I want. She’s everything.”

  They held each other’s eyes. Buy thought wildly: Should I kiss her? Should I?

  Jennifer looked down. “You mind if I make a phone call?”

  “Of course,” he said, trying to recover. “I’ll clean up.”

  She produced a cellphone and Buy carried the remnants of their meal to the garbage. When he returned, she was on the sofa. He carefully sat beside her.

  “…you, Billy. You have to get rid of him, any way you can. You’d better understand what I mean.” She paused. “You get all that? Okay. Thanks.” She beeped off her phone.

  Buy raised an eyebrow.

  “Work,” Jennifer said.

  “Right,” Buy said, and, like an idiot, kissed her.

  She tensed. For a second he thought she was going to flip him and dig her knee into his back. But then she kissed him back. It was strange and tentative. Then he felt her hand on his shoulder, pulling him closer. Her lips curved beneath his.

  She pulled away. “This is why you called me, right?”

  “Yes,” Buy confessed.

  “Good.” She smiled again, almost shyly. “That’s what I was hoping.”

  42 Revelation

  The NRA camp had grown a lot since Billy was last here. There were more tents, more soldiers, and spotlights sweeping the grounds. It didn’t look so temporary anymore.

  “Wow,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Expedition,” Bill said. “They’re bringing more of the regular NRA membership into the fold.”

  Billy didn’t know what that meant. “Wow.”

  The cabdriver was nervous. He slowed to a halt twenty feet from the gates, where NRA guards eyed them from behind metal fortifications. “You get out here. Okay? No further.”

  “They won’t hurt you,” Bill said, but he reached for his wallet. He grinned at Billy.

  As soon as they closed the doors, the driver spun the cab around and bounced down the dirt-packed road. Billy and Bill walked up to the gate.

  “Name and business!”

  “Bill NRA, Strike Team Operative, Operation Instigate.” “Billy NRA,” Billy said. “Uh, Strike Team Operative, Operation…Police.”

  The guards were kids, not even Billy’s age. “You got some ID?”

  “Son,” Bill said, “the work we do, we don’t carry identification.”

  “Um…” the guard said. “I’m gonna have to check this out.”

  “Look,” Bill said, “the only person in this camp who’s going to know me is Corporal Yallam. Now, you can either wake him up, or let me and my buddy in so we can get some goddamn sleep.”

  The guards huddled together, conferring. Billy frowned. That was another coincidence: Bill worked for Yallam, too! But that didn’t make any sense. Why wasn’t Bill with Yallam’s squad for the Police job, then?

  “I can put you in a secured area for the night,” the guard said finally. “Lock you in until Yallam can verify you in the morning. All right?”

  “Some homecoming,” Bill said, but he hoisted his pack and Billy did the same. The guards showed them to a secured barracks, a squat, wooden building with no windows and a metal door, and locked them in.

  Billy found the light switch. There were six bunks and a door to the bathroom. He dropped his pack on a bed. “Man, I’m beat.”

  “Me too. Let’s hit the sack.”

  In bed, Billy kept thinking about Yallam. Something was bugging him about that. Then he wondered if he’d be able to get away and see that NRA receptionist again, the one with the great body. That would be nice. That would be real nice.

  He woke sometime just before dawn with a full bladder. It was just light enough to see Bill asleep in the bunk across the room. Billy got out of bed and went to the bathroom.

  As he was pissing, he thought about Jennifer Government. She’d been pretty keen to talk to him yesterday, with all that buzzing. Maybe he should check in.

  He zipped and went back to his bunk. Bill was still asleep. He fished through his pack until he found his jacket and the Marlboros in the pocket. He needed that little headphone jack, too, but it was way down in the bottom of his pack. He tried to keep quiet. Bill didn’t stir.

  He went back to the bathroom and sat in a stall, pushing the door closed with his foot. That funky packet was still vibrating, although now only in little bursts. Maybe the batteries were running low. He plugged in the headphones, and was surprised to hear Jennifer Government’s voice.

  “—you check in together, it’s going to take them about ten seconds to realize what’s going on. Then they’ll kill you, Billy. You have to get rid of him, any way you can. You’d better understand what I mean.”

  “Hello?” he whispered.

  There was a click and then she started again. It was a recording.

  “Billy, this is Jennifer. You dumb shit, the guy you’re with is the guy you’re pretending to be. You said the NRA were expecting someone called Bill NRA. This is the guy. If you check in together, it’s going to take them about ten seconds—”

  Billy felt his body freeze over. “Oh, shit!”

  He heard the bathroom door squeak open. “Hey, buddy,” Bill said. “What you doing in there?”

  “I’m—” The words hardly made a sound. “Just taking a dump, dude.”

  He heard Bill’s footsteps. He looked at the door. No lock! There was no lock on the door! “What, another one?”

  His throat tightened until he could hardly breathe. “What?”

  “You get up, come in here, go back to your bunk, come back in here. What’s that about?” His voice lowered. “You got some girly mags or something?”

  “Yeah!” Billy said. “Yeah, I’ve—”

  “What are you, talking to them?”

  “Um,” Billy said. “Yes… sometimes I like to…um…” “Well don’t be selfish, dude,” Bill said, and pushed open the door. They looked at each other for a while.

  “What the fuck is that?” Bill said.

  “It’s…”

  “Some kind of radio? Can you get the baseball on that?”

  “What?” Billy said. “I—yeah! Yeah, I’m listening to a game now.”

  “Man, that is awesome! Who’s playing?”

  Billy coughed to give himself enough time to think. “The Yankees and the White Sox.”

  “You’re shitting me! The Sox are my team! Mind if I have a listen?”

  “Uh…sure.” He unplugged the headphones and handed the packet to Bill.

  Bill turned it over. “I’ve never seen anything like this. They look just like regular smokes! Where’d you get it?” He put the headphones into his ears and listened.

  Maybe the recording stopped, Billy thought. Maybe Jennifer heard us and turned it off.

  “Hey,” Bill said. “This ain’t baseball.”

  Billy kicked the stall door as hard as he could. It hit Bill in the face and rebounded. The door blocked Billy’s view for a second, then he saw Bill lying against the opposite wall underneath the sink, looking surprised and hurt. Bill spat blood onto his chest. “You’re Government.”

  “Sorry,” Billy said. He stood and walked over, looking for something to knock Bill out with.

  “Infiltrator!” Bill shouted, and kicked out Bil
ly’s legs. Suddenly Bill’s thick arm was wrapped around his neck. Billy coughed and struggled. “Help me!” Bill yelled. His voice bounced off the tiled walls. “Security! I need help!”

  Billy got an elbow free and rammed Bill’s head up into the bottom of the sink. The porcelain shattered, raining down onto him.

  “Uh!” Bill said. “You…nnnn…”

  “Sorry,” Billy said again. Then he felt something hot and wet on his stomach.

  “Take that, asshole,” Bill said.

  Billy looked down. There was a long, thin shard of porcelain sticking out of his side. He was so horrified at the blood that he forgot about Bill, so didn’t see his knuckles coming. His head rocked back and hit the wall. Then Billy stopped thinking about anything for a while.

  He must have slumped over and knocked the porcelain shard against the floor: that regained his attention. He screamed. He was alone in the bathroom. He felt dizzy. His hands and feet were numb.

  He knew he should probably leave the shard in his side, but he couldn’t stand it hanging there. He yanked; his vision flared; he felt blood stream down his side. He tried to cover the wound with his hand.

  “Infiltrator!” Bill’s voice echoed from the sleeping quarters. “Will you guys hurry up, there’s a goddamn Government infiltrator in here trying to kill me!”

  Billy heard keys rattling. Someone, or more likely some people, were unlocking the front door. He got to his feet, fell over, then stood up again. The bathroom door was a long way away. He staggered forward and grabbed hold of the doorway.

  Bill was assembling a gun on one of the bunks. It was an FN M249 automatic, if Billy wasn’t mistaken: not very accurate over long range, but pretty much guaranteed to chop him into pieces from ten feet away. Bill raised it. Billy took the only evasive action he could and dropped to the floor. The woodwork exploded above his head.

  The front door popped open. Four men in combat fatigues stormed in. They were carrying submachine guns.

  “Infiltrator,” Billy croaked, and pointed at Bill.

  They opened fire, and Bill backflipped across the room. For a second, Billy thought Bill must be incredibly acrobatic. Then he realized, and turned away.