Back at the White House, President Ann Kinji waited anxiously for Breyana to return. She had no fewer than seven secret service agents with her, so surely Breyana would be safe. However, after hearing the disturbing news about General Gustavo and Clyde, she had every reason to worry. She feared that Bryce was laying down another trap, but then again, she banked on Bryce wanting to save himself.
She wondered if John even knew yet that things had gone wrong. Was Gustavo instructed to merely hold them, not kill them? Obviously John wouldn’t have thought that the general would get killed. When Ann had spoken to Bryce, Bryce had the attitude of someone who had finished a mission, cocky, relaxed. She didn’t think that he knew that Gustavo was dead. And if not, how could that be? Wouldn’t John be expecting Gustavo to report in regularly? Either John didn’t know what happened, or he didn’t trust Bryce anymore. The first scenario worked well in their favor, the second one was chilling.
“Bird is in the cage,” said Special Agent Smith in her ear.
“Thank you, Special Agent Smith. No problems?”
“No, Madam President. She’ll be with you shortly.”
“Thank you, thank you!” Ann breathed a sigh of relief. Breyana was young, with her whole life ahead of her. Putting her in danger was wrong. But Breyana had volunteered, and in the end, Ann couldn’t think of anyone else she trusted to make the exchange. With great reluctance, and a whole swat team of agents, Ann had let her go. And here she was!
“I got it,” sang Breyana. She extended her arm, opened the fingers that had been gripping the flash drive tightly for the past fifteen minutes, and showed her boss the smoking gun: a small shiny gadget that held who knew what.
“Oh, thank you, Breyana, I sure could use a cup of coffee,” said Ann.
Breyana froze, a puzzled expression on her face, until Ann put her index finger to her lips, then pointed to the general direction of President William’s office and cupped her ear. Breyana nodded. “No problem.”
“I think I’ll take my coffee on the way out the door. I have a meeting with the governor of Indiana this afternoon.”
“Should I let them know you’re ready to go?” asked Breyana.
“Yes, please do,” said Ann.
Within the hour Ann was seated once again on Air Force One Plus. The computers were safe here on the plane, transmitting on channels that were tracked by more agencies than John would have been able to corrupt. Her hunch was that if her phones were tapped, her office bugged, well, naturally John had his dirty fingers all over her computer. She didn’t dare open those files until she was on a secure connection. But here she was, in a safe place, on a safe connection, with people who would keep her, and the information she held, safe. As much as she dreaded seeing the truth laid out in black and white, it was time for the big reveal.
The first thing Ann did was copy all of the files and send them to multiple places. Next, she asked one of her IT agents to put what she was seeing up on multiple screens. “Thank you, Agent Lehman. I’m ready now; please tell them to come in.”
Serena and Tom entered the plane, still traumatized by the day’s events, but in enough shock that nothing felt real. After Serena had phoned President Kinji, right after Clyde’s horrific and revolting demise, a team of agents was quickly on the scene at the house in Minnetonka, where Gustavo had never actually lived – funny how fabricated records can appear instantly in the right places when powerful people want them there.
The agents had whisked them out of the house, some staying behind to clean up the mess, and taken them to yet another secret airstrip. This one appeared to be in use by hobbyists, but it was available at that moment for a government jet – off record.
Once again, Serena and Tom were flown into Chicago, but this time they left their children in the safe keeping of Special Agent Thompson- who was beginning to think of himself as an over-muscled nanny- and two more agents who had been assigned to replace the ill-fated Special Agent Salisbury.
“I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through,” Ann began. “I want you to know that your country, that I, appreciate all you’ve done.”
“Thank you, President Kinji,” said Serena.
“No problem,” said Tom, which elicited a look of disbelief from both Ann and Serena.
“I hate to ask more of you, and I’ll be sure that you are both generously compensated, but I trust the two of you as witnesses, and well, you are already involved. I want you to read this material along with me. I have sent the material to several sources, but it will go unread until I give the word. I have also asked my husband, Ted, to sit in with us,” Ann gestured toward the seats behind them.
Ted stood up and shook their hands. No one spoke. The three stood for a few awkward seconds. Ann broke the tension, “Sit, we are ready. Look at the screen nearest you.” She took a deep breath. “Here we go.”
Ann clicked through twenty five folders, each containing over a hundred individual files. She skimmed through the first folder, with everyone watching on the various screens, and then realized that it was going to take a lot more time than she expected to wade through all the trivial saved documents to find the incriminating evidence.
She instructed Special Agent Lehman to set up shop for Ted, Tom and Serena to work through files on three more stations. Her request was quickly granted. For the next four hours, the four of them pored methodically through every folder and file, each person with their own section, so as not to miss a single document. Finally, it was Ted who signaled he found something by whistling softly through his teeth.
“I think you better put this up to share on all screens,” he said. Special Agent Lehman scurried to comply. And there is was; one of several guns that were smoking big black billows of toxic, toxic air.
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“What are we looking at? Who is this, and is it the same person in both messages?” asked Ann.
“Yes, same source,” said Special Agent Lehman.
“If I were to guess, the general?” said Tom.
“Makes sense,” said Ann. “Move on.”
Ted clicked on the next message:
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Serena said, “President John Williams is well known as ‘Big W’. This should work toward proof of his involvement.”
“I think we can get more solid proof by tracing these messages back to their digital fingerprint, am I right?” asked Ann.
“Yes, Madam President, exactly,” said Special Agent Lehman.
“There’s more in the next folder,” said Ted. He opened the next series of messages:
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“Wow, this is hard to believe,” said Serena.
“Is there more, Ted?” asked Ann.
“Do we really need more?” asked Ted. “Let the law take it from here. You don’t need to be personally investigating this.”
“I have to agree with the First Gentleman, Madam President, let us get all the agencies on this,” said Special Agent Lehman.
“May I suggest that you stay out of the White House for a while? Whatever happens next shouldn’t touch you or your Presidency,” Serena volunteered. She patted herself on the back for how much she sounded like an official advisor to Madam President.
“Back to Minneapolis? Reunite you with your family?” Ted suggested.
“I can’t get used to Minneapolis being the place to be,” said Tom.
“The new Wall Street, the Pentagon, the split Capital building. Brings us in,” said Ted.
“But why Minneapolis? Why are they rebuilding the Pentagon in Minneapolis and not Chicago near the White House? And why have two Capital buildings?” asked Tom.
“After 9-11, some questioned the wisdom of us having all of our governmental buildings in one basket. Spreading ourselves out, with the full capacity to govern out of two separate cities seemed wise, given that we’ll never fully be rid of the threat of terrorist attacks,” said Ann.
“And look at us now, needing to leave Chicago. It’s good to have a secondary location,” said Ted.
“I know of a farmhouse where you could wait for the green light to go back to Chicago,” said Serena.
Would it be too much to ask to have the President to her house for coffee and a girlfriend chat? No matter how wretched the day’s events were, it was hard not to feel a thrill at the thought of entertaining President Ann Kinji in her home.
“I haven’t been in a real house in years. I’ll take you up on that offer,” Ann said.
Serena resisted the urge to squeal with glee.
19
Paul obediently followed the agents out of the house in Minnetonka. He struggled through that first hour in a daze, not knowing how to formulate a single thought. How could he exist without Clyde? He stumbled down the sidewalk and allowed himself to be tucked into a government vehicle.
As he sank into the leather seat his heart welled up with fury and grief. The longer he sat, the more his grief was channeled into fury. President John Williams, and the previous President, pre-Big War, pre-apocalypse, had killed his brother. Paul was no sociopath, but Clyde had killed for him, and had ultimately died for him. It was the least Paul could do to avenge his brother’s death.
He knew that John would be taken care of; he’d be tried as a traitor, a terrorist. The divided nation would turn on him and curse him to the end of his days. But the former Prez? What of him? Had Kinji even put two and two together yet? Paul wasn’t so sure. And how deep was the cover-up? Would John take the Prez’s involvement with him to his grave?
The thought of him getting away with it, with Clyde’s blood on his hands, made Paul’s blood boil. The only thing on his mind was finding the former president of what was once the United States of America.
The agents dropped him off at home. They informed him that he would be contacted shortly, to be interviewed for a criminal investigation into President John Williams’ conduct before and after the Big War. Then they left him alone, re-assigned elsewhere. Apparently no one considered broken down wanna-be Paul to be a threat.
Paul locked the door and latched the dead-bolt. He went into the laundry room and took off his blood-drenched clothes. He hesitated, not knowing what to do. He had never done a load of laundry in his life. Where did the detergent go? Did he put it in now or after the clothes were in? Should he even bother – would the blood stains come out? He lifted the lid of the washer and, much to his surprise, saw directions for how to use the machines right there on the lid. He followed the instructions on the chart and started the washer.
Then he shuffled his way to the bathroom to take a shower. He did a double-take at his reflection in the mirror: was that Clyde’s face staring back at him? He closed his eyes; then opened them again. No, he saw his own face. He couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed. He would never see his brother’s face again: he didn’t have a single picture of Clyde, unless he counted the ones his mother had insisted their father put on the kitchen wall. He and Clyde had taken them down shortly after their parents died, but when they saw permanent silhouettes from years of nicotine stains coating the walls around the frames, they put the pictures right back up and left them there.
There were two photos on the wall: the first was from when there were three brothers, and the other was when it was down to just him and Clyde, like it remained until now. But Clyde’s death didn’t feel anything like it did when Bradley died, he told himself. Bradley had drowned, and was only a little boy, a baby really. Paul tried to recall his last memory of Bradley. Could he recall the day he died?
He remembered playing in the kiddie pool. They had toys in there, pool toys. Bradley toddled inside the house to get more toys. Paul could see it now as vividly as if it had happened yesterday. Bradley had Paul’s new electronic car he got for his birthday. It had been expensive, the best present Paul had ever gotten. Bradley was about to throw it into the pool. No! Paul grabbed the car and tried to wrestle it out of Bradley’s tight grip. Bradley clung on, working himself up into a powerful tantrum.
“Help, Clyde!” Paul yelled.
Clyde reached over the knee-high inflatable pool wall and pushed Bradley’s head under the water. He held him down until he released his grip on the car. Paul took the car, got out of the pool, and went inside to put the car on a higher shelf in his bedroom. On his way back outside, he got distracted by cartoons on TV and sat down to watch. A while later he heard their mother screaming like there was no end to the sound her lungs could make. She screamed over and over and over. Little Bradley was dead.
Paul shivered. It was the first time he fully remembered that day. Always before, he could recall that he was playing in the pool, went to watch cartoons, and then their mother was screaming because Bradley had drowned. He had completely blocked out the part about the toy car, and Clyde holding Bradley’s head under the water.
Maybe that was what had turned Clyde into a killer? Surely he hadn’t intended to drown their little brother; he was only trying to help Paul get his car back. Poor dear baby Bradley, poor big brother Clyde. It was down to Paul now to do right by both brothers’ memories.
After he showered and put on clean clothes Paul went directly to the computer lab. He recalled Clyde saying that the kids spent a lot of time in the lab. He hoped one of them was in there now. Sure enough, he saw the top of a boy’s head behind the rows of computer monitors.
Newbie child genius Nicholas was hard at work on a private project, oblivious to Paul’s appearance until Paul said something. “Nicholas, can you find somebody for me?”
“Sure, who do you want me to find?” Nicholas pushed away from the computer station he was working on and fired up a new station.
“The President of the old United States,” said Paul.
“What? Seriously?” Nicholas evaluated Paul, but Paul always seemed a little daft to him, how was this any different?
“Yes. Can you do it?”
“Can Linux outperform Windows?”
Paul stared blankly. “Just tell me if you can do it.”
“Yes! I can do it.”
“I’ll pay you,” said Paul. Then he remembered what Clyde said. “And order a pizza.”
Nicholas’ face lit up at the mention of food. “Veggie? Extra toppings?”
What kind
of kid was this? Veggie. What ever happened to pepperoni and sausage? “Whatever you want. You phone it in, here’s some cash. Keep the change.” He threw a substantial wad of bills, mostly hundreds, on the table in front of him.
“Hey, Paul, that’s a lot of money. You don’t have to do that.” Nicholas studied his face. “Are you okay?”
“My brother died,” he said simply. He sat heavily into a computer chair on wheels, causing it to roll backwards. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Clyde? No! I liked that old guy,” said Nicholas. “What happened to him, heart attack?”
“He wasn’t old. He had lots of years left,” mourned Paul.
“What happened to him then?”
“He got shot while saving my life.”
“Whoa! He’s a good big brother,” said Nicholas. “You should be proud.”
“I am proud. Find the president.”
Nicholas clacked at the keyboard for several minutes and then said, “I shouldn’t take your money for this.”
“Take it. I want you to find him, no matter how long it takes.”
“Done.”
“You found him already?”
“Yes, that’s why I said I shouldn’t take your money. It was too easy.”
“How did you do it?”
“I didn’t have to do anything; someone is blogging about the pre-Big-War days. She posted all of the former president’s addresses. This one says ‘until present’, so if she’s correct, he’s still there.”
“Keep the money. Buy yourself that pizza.”
“What are you going to do? You going to go see him?”
“Yes.”
“You think he’ll let you in? He won’t call the police?”
“He won’t be calling the police.” On that note, Paul left the lab, leaving young Nicholas to wonder if he should call the police.
Angels Mark (The Serena Wilcox Mysteries Dystopian Thriller Trilogy) Page 14