by Ginger Booth
“Send me the links,” Emmett requested. “PR’s treatment, and the source posts on Amenac. I bet Homeland Security can figure out what Dane was saying.”
I sent him the sources promptly, and muttered under my breath, “Why does HomeSec still exist…”
Emmett forwarded my links off within a second of receiving them. And sighed, “That meeting with General Cullen…”
“Yeah, yeah,” I conceded. “Can I stay for it?”
This was pushing my luck. I often stayed in the office while Emmett consulted with his Resco peers, but Cullen wasn’t a peer. He was martial law governor of all New York–New Jersey. But drat it, my future was on the line, too. The end of September was drawing near, and with it the end of our appointed time in Brooklyn. I had my heart set on Long Island next, to live near Cam and his husband Dwayne, back on the rocky marshy shores of the Sound again, just across the water from home. This call with Cullen could decide our future.
“No,” Emmett replied categorically.
I gave up wheedling, and we got back to work. I was deep into the still unfolding story of one Dane Beaufort, deceased, when Emmett’s video call came in, a few minutes early. I dutifully picked up my work to move to the dining room, stood, and hung arrested at the sight of the screen before me.
General Sean Cullen, head of New York–New Jersey. General Ivan Link, ruler of New England. Air Force General Seth Taibbi of Pennsylvania – the others, like Emmett, were Army. And General Charles Schwabacher of Ohio–West Virginia. Wow. No, this wasn’t about whether Dee Baker’s boyfriend got reassigned to Long Island like she wanted.
Emmett swallowed, and asked the generals to wait a moment. He escorted me by the elbow to the French doors at the end of the library. He locked me out in the garden, and drew the curtains.
Now, that was pretty heavy-handed. I was tempted to defy him, and sneak back in to eavesdrop. There were two other doors into the garden, leading to the kitchen and the housekeeper’s lair downstairs. Or if those were locked, I could hop the garden wall into the militia barracks brownstone next door, and back around to the front door.
What stopped me was the begging, haunted look in Emmett’s eyes as he closed the door, and mouthed, “Please.”
Emmett slipped out to the garden 20 minutes later, and kissed my forehead. “Thank you, darlin’. Sorry.”
He perched on the teak lounge chair next to mine, in the dappled shade of a stressed-out maple, already turning scarlet despite the Indian summer warmth. Most of this sad and ravaged city I wouldn’t miss. But I loved our back garden, safely walled in the interior of the block.
“How rude,” I commented to Emmett, but then let it go. “Can you tell me anything about the big brass meeting?”
He shook his head slightly. “Not done yet,” he said. “They’re conferring. Probably call me back in a few minutes with new orders. I need to go back in. Could you stay out here? Please, darlin’. Conflict of interest with PR.”
My eyebrows rose. “I guess they saw the article. Are we in trouble?”
“PR’s not in trouble,” Emmett said. “Murdering a Resco is a big honking deal, though. Please, darlin’?”
“Your career. PR vs. IndieNewsWeb,” I said. “No contest. Besides, via you, we might get a scoop. The lip-reading of Dane Beaufort’s final words.”
“‘We know what God demands of us,’” said Emmett. “Was the last thing Dane said.” He gazed at our lap pool thoughtfully.
“Can I use that?” I asked.
“Don’t see why not,” Emmett replied. “Lots of people can lip read.”
“And, um, what does God demand of us?” I inquired.
Emmett sighed, and said, “Quite a lot, really. I don’t know what Dane meant.” Emmett went back inside to await word of his fate from on high, if not quite that high. Far above us, anyway.
I typed, erased, and retyped several emails to the PR news team back home in Connecticut. I almost called our military censor Lt. Colonel Carlos Mora for advice. But in the end, I gave up and chose to tell them nothing.
My problem wasn’t the lip-reading, but rather not saying that the rulers of the Northeast were conferring about the death of a Resco, and that somehow Emmett was caught in the middle of it. And as Emmett pointed out, plenty of people could lip-read. So I could let that part come from someone else. I put work aside, and jumped into the pool in my shorts and tank top, to swim my laps before the afternoon cooled.
Emmett’s feet dangled into the pool to greet me at the end of about the fiftieth length, and I popped up out of the water for a breather, with a smile. Swimmer’s high is a lot like runner’s high. The water was beautiful, the sky almost blue, our lonely maple flaming red, and everything was wonderful. “Coming in?” I invited.
He smiled briefly in return, and shook his head. “Maybe after I’m packed. Got a train to catch. Pittsburgh. Wanna come?”
I stared at him. “They made you the new Resco of Pittsburgh?” I asked, alarmed. I couldn’t imagine New York–New Jersey giving away the savior of New York City.
“No. Dee, I leave in three hours,” Emmett returned. “Plenty of time to talk on the train. By phone, if you’re not coming with me.”
I nodded slowly. “Sure. I’m with you. Are we coming back?”
He gazed around the garden, eyes pausing on his chickens at the far end. Emmett loved fresh eggs for breakfast. He’d raised chickens most of his life. He shook his head. “Don’t know.”
“Emmett, we can’t pack up the house in three hours!”
He chuckled wryly. “Army created the problem, Army can solve it. No, Dee, we just pack up ourselves and go. Gladys will take care of everything here, for now.” We could trust our housekeeper Gladys. Most of our urban farm here was hers, anyway. I claimed the giant brick planters at the back of the garden, but Gladys farmed the roofs.
Emmett rose and held down a hand to me. “Glad you’re coming with me, darlin’,” he murmured.
“As a PR reporter?” I asked, toweling off beside him. He’d brought me the towel.
“…Partner,” he said slowly. “We’ll see about the rest. Dee, this is explosive.”
“I think I got that, when four military governors showed up for your career review with General Cullen,” I said. “What kind of explosive?”
“What happens when a cop is killed?” Emmett asked.
“The other cops go nuts?” I hazarded. “Leave no stone unturned? Somebody has to pay for it.” I recalled an incident last year when I was visiting Major Cameron on Long Island. A rape gang had tried to harass me and my camera-woman Kyla. Cam had the lot of them executed on the spot. Attempted rape aside, he mentioned that interfering with a Resco was a capital offense, and that included his house-guests.
“Murdering a martial law governor?” Emmett confirmed my suspicions. “Much worse than that.” He stroked my upper arm. “You can take notes, darlin’. But every word has to go through censors before you send it to PR. Not up to me. This isn’t my show.”
“Why are they sending you, then?”
He shrugged. “Specialist. My job is to tell them whether Dane Beaufort was a good Resco. And make recommendations. Whether Pittsburgh should get another Resco. Stuff like that.”
I stared at him. “That would be a death sentence on a whole city, to leave them without a Resco.”
“Maybe,” Emmett allowed. “But they killed the Resco they got. And there aren’t enough Rescos to go around. Default is Pittsburgh doesn’t get a second chance.”
“That’s too much, Emmett,” I argued. “For what? To make an example of them? Do you have any idea what the public backlash would be? Punish a whole city for the actions of a few? That’s beyond the pale! It would destroy public support for martial law.”
“Would it?” Emmett countered. “It’s a passive aggressive move, Dee. You don’t like us, Pittsburgh? Fine. We’ll leave you alone. The train won’t stop here anymore.”
If it were only the train, that might not be so bad. But without a
Resco, Pittsburgh’s power, communications, fuel, food, supplies, defense, and everything else would stop too. They’d be on their own.
2
Interesting fact: Pennsylvania has two major cities – Philadelphia and Pittsburgh – widely separated by rural areas. The cosmopolitan port of Philadelphia was the 5th largest city in America, second only to New York City on the East Coast. Pittsburgh, to the west, ranked down around 60th.
“Lieutenant Colonel MacLaren, Ms. Baker, thank you for meeting with us in our car. I’m Special Agent Aidas Kalnietis, IBIS,” the man said. “My partner, Donna Gianetti.”
Kalnietis was tall and fit, with short brown hair, maybe in his early 50’s. Gianetti was only a few years older than us, maybe 40, lean and angular, luxurious dark brown hair pulled back into a tidy ponytail. They both shared that special blandness of expression and well-fitted grey business suit, a signature of the FBI. When the Federal Department of Justice had refused to lend the FBI to the task of domestic spying and enforcement of the Calm Act, Congress axed the FBI’s budget in favor of Homeland Security. Most FBI agents had the choice of a transfer to HomeSec, or finding another line of work. With no Federal government left, the scattered remains of the FBI now went by IBIS, for Interstate Bureau of Investigative Services. I’d never run into an IBIS agent before personally.
“Your rail car is much nicer than ours,” I assured them with a weary smile. Emmett and I took our proffered seats at the booth. Their dining car had latched onto our train at the Pennsylvania border just after dawn, across the river from Trenton New Jersey. We’d already been traveling all night to cover barely 70 miles. Restoring the New Jersey rails was still a work in progress. Our latest train car was a rather down-at-heel standard commuter model, with a couple dozen soldiers for company. Here in the new dining car we had some privacy to talk.
“So will you be leading the investigation, sir?” Emmett asked.
“We hoped that you’d be the public spokesman, Colonel, if you don’t mind,” Kalnietis replied, with a self-effacing air. “The two of you are well-known and respected. We’d prefer a quieter profile. But yes, we’ll handle the investigation into Major Beaufort’s death.”
“Is there someone else leading the whole expedition?” Emmett clarified.
“You’re welcome to take that role, too,” Kalnietis encouraged. “In fact, I have a document here from General Taibbi. I believe this is an honorary commission to full Colonel of the Commonwealth Army of Pennsylvania. Congratulations.”
Emmett read the document once, carefully, then folded it and stuffed it into his field camouflage pocket. “Lot of red tape,” he muttered.
“I understand completely,” Kalnietis returned. “Agent Gianetti and I spent the last two years in the Virginia militia. We reactivated in IBIS just last month.”
Ah, so these two had not unbent enough to work for HomeSec. Interesting. And they were from Virginia–Delaware–Maryland. Yet another northeastern super-state was in on this affair.
“I understand you knew Major Beaufort, Colonel?” Kalnietis asked lightly.
“Yes.”
“Tell us about that,” Kalnietis urged.
“Beaufort was logistics officer for my brigade combat team, my last deployment in the Middle East,” Emmett supplied. “I was a field officer. Both 101st Airborne. So, first worked together six years ago? When we rotated back to the States, we both studied at Fort Leavenworth, the ILE program. Intermediate Level Education.”
“Not the SAMS program?” Kalnietis asked sharply. “He didn’t work to vet the Calm Act?”
Emmett’s eyes narrowed, surprised that Kalnietis was so well informed about this secret. “No. Beaufort wasn’t SAMS material.”
“What do you mean by that, Colonel?”
“ILE is required education for a middle-grade officer,” Emmett explained. “There’s also a master’s degree level of the program. Requires writing a thesis. Dane didn’t bother with that. SAMS is farther still, after that. Highly analytic, planning complex inter-service operations like joint Army–Navy–Air Force.”
“Out of Dane’s league?” Kalnietis suggested.
I noticed that Kalnietis was tracking Emmett’s switch to Beaufort’s first name, but I doubt Emmett did. It’s harder to catch mind games when you’re the target.
Emmett rocked his head in polite disagreement. “There are a lot of career tracks in the Army. SAMS wasn’t his.”
“Did you spend much time together at Leavenworth, outside of class?”
“We didn’t spend time together in class at Leavenworth,” Emmett qualified. “Same program, different classes. No, I mostly saw him at social functions. Softball games. Cafeteria. Church.”
“You attended the same church?” Kalnietis probed.
“Yeah. We’re both born-again Christian,” Emmett said, subdued. “Were.”
I sighed slightly, and caught Gianetti’s eyes drinking in my reaction. She smiled at me vaguely. That was unnerving. No, I’d never really come to grips with Emmett’s religion, and Gianetti easily picked up on that. Emmett didn’t press his views on me. We didn’t discuss Christianity much. In New England, it’s just rude to spew evangelical comments like ‘Jesus loves you.’ The dominant creed is Catholic. He attended rowdy born-again church services in New Haven, with an elderly black lady gospel singer named Liddy. But he mostly kept quiet about God otherwise. He allowed me my denial, I suppose.
“What was your first reaction, Colonel,” Kalnietis asked, “when you learned of Dane Beaufort’s final words? What were they exactly…”
“‘We know what God demands of us,’” Emmett supplied. “I don’t know what he meant by it.”
“I understand,” Kalnietis assured him. “But what was your first thought?”
Emmett struggled with that a moment. I reached over and squeezed his hand for moral support. “I thought it was a mistake,” Emmett finally said. “To play the religion card. That was a bad idea.”
“So the two of you share the same religious beliefs –”
“No,” Emmett cut Kalnietis off. “Well, partly. We were friendly, but not friends. Because of our religious beliefs. Dane was more…mainstream…for an evangelical. Intolerant, homophobic, blame the victim. Right-wing reactionary politics. I believe Jesus Christ is my savior, and He asked us to judge not, lest we be judged. Dane and I crossed swords a few times over politics. I was too liberal for his taste.”
“So you’d call yourself a liberal evangelical Christian?”
Emmett replied crossly, “I call myself Emmett MacLaren. Labels are just a lazy way to judge people. But my convictions are on the left side of the born again bell curve, yeah.”
“Was this a strong hostility between the two of you?”
“No,” Emmett said. “Friendly, but not friends. No hostility.”
Kalnietis moved on. “So, you last saw each other at Resco training?”
“No,” Emmett differed again. “I trained at south-central muster in Memphis. Trainer, actually. I transferred to New England the following month.” Emmett looked thoughtful. Kalnietis waited for him. “Just a random thought.”
“Please share,” Kalnietis invited.
“There was a flame war on Amenac. On the Resco forums,” Emmett explained. “Between the northeast and the south-central Rescos. I was thinking the last time I talked to Dane was during my SAMS year at Leavenworth. But no, it was during that flame war, in the spring. Just a few months ago.”
“Explain this flame war?”
“Oh, it was…no, it wasn’t stupid,” Emmett waffled. “During muster in Memphis, Sunday after church, we got together for a sort of panel discussion on using religion. As a Resco. It was an important talk, I thought. Anyway, it came up on the Resco boards. The northeast muster hadn’t covered religion. Not surprised. People up here take separation of church and public life for granted. In the Bible Belt, or even in the Midwest, it’s just not that way. Religion is always a part of life. People talk about it. It was hard for me
to learn, at West Point, then coming back a couple years ago. Have to censor myself. Don’t mention Jesus Christ.”
“The flame war?”
“Oh, I got in trouble by saying yeah, we need to enlist religious leaders, but maintain Resco authority above them. The more I explained, the more I got flamed by the northerners. The southerners already understood, and backed me up. And Dane Beaufort emailed me. Said he wished he’d been to my muster instead of stuck with the damn-Yankees. Some other things.”
“Such as?”
Emmett shrugged. “Dane was ticked off that I had a gay room-mate my second year at Leavenworth.”
“Major Cameron?” Kalnietis confirmed. This IBIS agent knew a surprising amount about the SAMS who vetted the Calm Act. Emmett and his classmates worked hard to keep their past secret, especially Cam. Officially, Cam was in ILE that year, not SAMS. Even the other SAMS weren’t aware of his role.
“Yeah. Anyway, Dane’s email brought that up again.” Emmett had his phone out, to search his vast collection of emails and texts. Apparently he found the exchange with Beaufort, and reviewed it. “Dane was concerned that Dee wasn’t a good Christian woman. Probably meant sex out of wedlock. I asked him how it was going, with communications restored outside Penn.” He paused and re-read Beaufort’s reply, and worried his lip with his teeth. “He said the public still didn’t have access. But it was an eye-opener for him.”
“In what way?” I asked. Kalnietis frowned faintly, but probably would have asked the same.
“Didn’t say.” Emmett handed the phone over to Kalnietis, so he and Gianetti could read the originals.
“What do you make of the Bible quotes at the bottom of his emails?” Kalnietis inquired.
Emmett shrugged. “Nothing. You can hook a random Bible quote generator to your email.”
“Is that professional, for a Resco?” Kalnietis suggested.
“I wouldn’t do it,” Emmett allowed. “But those were personal emails, to another born-again Christian. Nothing inappropriate.”
“Isn’t it odd, that most people still didn’t have Internet access?” Gianetti inserted.