Angels of Vengeance: The Disappearance Novel 3 (8 page)

‘Yeah, yeah, we know,’ Kipper complained. ‘Believe me, Paul, we know all about it. Bottom line – how much is Blackstone stealing?’

He wasn’t looking at the Treasury Secretary as he asked the question. He was hunched over the desk, rubbing his eyeballs, as though trying to massage away a gathering headache. Or possibly a stroke.

‘Twelve billion New American dollars in the last three quarters, Mr President.’

It was Kip’s turn to shake his head. ‘Son of a bitch. You know, we wouldn’t need a line of credit, or at least not one as big as we have, if that asshole would just play by the rules we both agreed to.’

Jed put aside the remains of the crab and avocado sandwich he’d been eating. In some ways, he thought, and not for the first time, their troubles were not that much different from the ones that faced the country when Washington became president, back in 1789. They had a huge debt, a wide-open frontier, and no shortage of foreign powers hoping for their failure. And they didn’t lack for internal strife or factionalism either.

Blackstone, Culver realised, was the difference. Even if George Washington were available to advise Kipper, he probably would’ve counselled caution. It was one thing to send an army to put down an uprising of farmers during the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, quite another thing entirely to send a broken military up against a well-armed, funded and motivated separatist.

Secretary McAuley, reluctant as always to comment on a purely political matter, remained silent. Ritchie and Sarah Humboldt both looked to the Chief of Staff, as though expecting him to say something.

Jed felt like rubbing his own eyes, so tired and exasperated was he with the never-ending perdition of having to deal with Jackson Blackstone. Or rather, of having to deal with him while the President insisted on tying one hand behind his back. The best solution would be for Blackstone to fall out of his executive helicopter while touring the ruins of Dallas-Fort Worth, he thought. Newton could take care of the details.

He took a deep breath. They couldn’t get that lucky.

‘This is one of those issues we were talking about, Mr President,’ he said. ‘One of the reasons you need to go to Texas and the very reason you cannot. There is a small dark corner of my heart wherein I believe Governor Blackstone is doing this not simply to starve us of funds and destabilise this administration, but also to draw you into a political confrontation you can’t hope to win. He would love to see you down there, on your knees, begging for a handout. Or even better, on your feet, demanding he hold to the letter of the agreement. It would make him look so much stronger when he says no.’

Kipper lifted his head, but only enough to peer through the gate he’d made of his fingers. His eyes looked bloodshot and watery. The storm howled outside, raking at the brickwork of Dearborn House with claws of ice and snow. The makeshift jamb still held the window firmly in its frame. But Jed was certain he could feel freezing tendrils of sub-zero air creeping in through the less than perfect seal. He felt a sudden need to throw a few more logs into the small fireplace.

The President pulled them back on topic. ‘Admiral, you’re new to all this. Perhaps you have some fresh perspective you could share.’ He said it in an uncertain voice, as though picking his way through the sentence with great care. The National Security Advisor frowned as if he’d been presented with a lump of questionable street meat wrapped in a soggy hotdog bun.

‘The man should pay his bills,’ Ritchie replied flatly.

The bald statement fell into silence, punctuated a few seconds later by Kipper’s bark of laughter.

‘Yes, yes, he really should! But short of driving a tank into his office and demanding the money at gunpoint, I don’t see it happening.’

‘You could always haul him off to the courts, I suppose,’ suggested Ritchie, causing Paul McAuley to lean forward with avid interest.

‘Oh, believe me, we’ve thought about it,’ said Kip. ‘Even tried once or twice on some minor fed–state issues. But Jed here won’t let me go the full court press, so to speak.’

The Chief of Staff found every eye in the room turned on him. ‘We’ll have the same problem that Andrew Jackson’s Supreme Court faced,’ he explained. ‘Yes, the courts would find in our favour. Legally our case is sound. Enforcing the decision, on the other hand, is another matter.’

Culver rose from his warm chair and wandered over to the window. The world outside had turned completely white. It was difficult to pick out any details from the garden through the blizzard. A native of Louisiana, he wondered if Seattle had suffered from this sort of weather before the Wave, or more accurately before the pollution storms that had raged when the continent had burned.

He turned and faced the Garage Cabinet.

‘We have to stop thinking of Blackstone as a reasonable man. Outwardly he appears to be reasonable – but rest assured, he is not. He’s a power-seeking loon who probably would have talked his way straight into a quiet retirement if not for the Disappearance. He will overreach himself. The trick is for us not to be caught off balance at the same time.’

Jed took a wander around the Oval Office. Barbara Kipper had placed about the room framed photos and other relics from her husband’s college days. Pictures from mountain walks; a few knick-knacks picked up while scuba diving. The Secret Service would not let him anywhere near an open body of water with scuba gear on his back. The best they’d grant him was some time in a pool ringed with agents. Kip understandably thought it wasn’t worth the trouble.

‘The last thing we need to do, Mr President, is give this asshole the opportunity to say, “I’m laughing in the face of the Supreme Court.” I can already see him hee-hawing through a performance on fucking Fox, slandering each of the justices as some pissant backwoods lawyer who tripped over his dick to fall onto the bench. Again, apologies Sarah.’

Secretary Humboldt smiled. ‘Quite all right, Mr Culver.’

‘Fucking Fox,’ muttered Kipper. ‘Three hundred million people turned into jelly by the Wave, and Rupert Murdoch wasn’t one of them. There is no God.’

McAuley lifted his briefing note. ‘If I might, Mr President?’

‘Sure, Paul, knock yourself out.’

McAuley began quoting from reams of figures contained in a table that summarised federal government income and outlays for the next six months. Culver was all too familiar with the math. Even with the reduced need for federal spending, the fact was they weren’t generating enough revenue to meet that reduced need and service the debt at the same time. The line of credit would mask the shortfall in their receipts, but while they’d be able to meet their obligations in the short term, the underlying deficit would continue to grow. A population of twenty million simply could not handle the tab left by three hundred million. Land sales, speculation, trading away this for that, had only slowed the slide.

It simply wasn’t sustainable. Nor was it James Kipper’s fault, nor Paul McAuley’s. The Secretary of the Treasury was obliged to prepare the government’s financials according to law. But as long as Blackstone wilfully ignored the law as it required him to remit monies to Seattle, there would always be a black hole in the middle of the accounts, sucking everything into it like the fucking maelstrom in that Edgar Allen Poe story.

As McAuley droned on through his delivery, Jed turned his thoughts to the crux of the problem. He couldn’t advise military force. That simply wasn’t an option. Down that road was the ruin of both Seattle and Texas. But Mad Jack Blackstone had to go, one way, or another.

He snuck a peek at his President. A decent man, who would almost certainly demure when faced with the necessity for hard and questionable action. Culver made a note to himself that he would have to talk to Sarah Humboldt after the meeting.

Maive and Miguel settled into their seats on the crowded city bus. They had strolled down Armour Road, past the store-fronts, some still abandoned, some recently reopened, in an effort to see if there was anything worthwhile. As they walked, they passed a single-screen movie theatre showing the latest Aussie blockbuster,
On the Other Side
, starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett.

Some people thought that, just like in the movie, the Disappeared were still alive somewhere, perhaps in some alternate universe. Young Adam Coupland could probably have explained it, but to Miguel Pieraro, it all seemed to be wishful thinking. He pushed the idea out of his mind as the bus coughed and stuttered down Swift towards the Missouri River. The warmth of the heaters allowed him to drop away from reality for a few precious moments into his own thoughts.

Miguel still wore the jacket in which he had set out from home a lifetime ago. He could have replaced it easily enough. They had passed through any number of small towns on the way north, and even skated around the edges of a couple of larger cities. At any point along the trail he could’ve ditched this filthy, often sodden lamb’s-wool-lined coat for something new, something that didn’t remind him of loss and grief. But he found it impossible to let go.

He still had the Winchester rifle with which he’d killed three of the men who had murdered his family, and with which he had killed more as he rode north, taking Sofia to safety. These days, the Winchester was secured within the gun cabinet he had erected back at the apartment he shared with his daughter. Kansas City might have been a frontier settlement now, but it was not the frontier. You couldn’t walk the streets here bearing arms; there were police officers to stop you if you tried. They drove ‘cruisers’, wore blue uniforms and made every effort to act as though the Wave had never happened. If they didn’t stop you, the local militia would, one way or the other.

For some months after they had arrived here, the lack of a weapon to hand left the Mexican journeyman feeling insecure, feeling like he was unable to protect his daughter. But he had recognised this as a form of madness. She was much better off living in a place where people did not routinely carry firearms. Particularly given the number of Indians and Pakistanis working in the city, he thought, just quietly. He had lost count of the number of fights he’d broken up at the railway yards, just as the Heartland resettlement authorities had long since given up trying to intermingle the two populations. The Indians tended to live down in the dilapidated buildings in the West Bottoms, spreading across the Kansas River to another part of the city. The Pakistanis ended up near the River Market, where Sofia was sulking right now.

In any case, over the weeks and months, he got used to sleeping in a bed each night, to not riding a horse every day, to not worrying about road agents, bandits or crazed wanderers stealing into camp to slit his throat and have away with the women. He did not want to get used to the idea of being without his family, however. For some reason he felt that keeping the jacket he had worn around his home, lately in Texas, and before that in Mexico, might help maintain a link with the past. For that reason too, he repaired his boots rather than picking up a pair from an empty store. There was the picture of Mariela and the children, also, which he carried with him – the one he had taken from the silver frame in the bedroom, the day he’d been forced to spirit Sofia away. He felt around inside the soft woollen interior of the jacket now until he found his wallet, where he knew the photo was safe. It gave him no ease, though.

The bus rolled onto Burlington Avenue and accelerated southbound past the warehouses and store-fronts. A loud, angry whine filled his ears as another military transport took off from the local airport. For a time, the planes were flying non-stop, bringing new settlers and equipment into the city while flying out valuable goods needed elsewhere in the country. When he’d first arrived in KC, the jets and the rumbling of the trains conspired to keep him awake at night. The trains still kept him up, but the planes now came every other day, always in waves, never alone.

Looking ahead, Miguel could see the ice-flows on the Missouri River float beneath the Heart of America Bridge. The bus was the only vehicle not powered by muscle that was crossing at the moment. Everyone else walked, rode a bicycle or used a draft animal of one type or another. The smell of droppings reassured him in an odd way. It was as familiar to this old
vaquero
as his coat.

The skyscrapers, on the other hand, were not. As cities went, Kansas City did not boast a large skyline, yet perched on a high rise above the river, the buildings still dominated the landscape for miles around. They were a mix of modern glass and steel with a leavening of concrete structures that Miguel thought may have been built in the 1930s. They looked like the sort of thing you saw in old black-and-white movies. The tallest of them, a more recent glass and steel monstrosity, still featured a large gash in the side near the top third of the structure where a plane had buried itself on Wave Day.

The only one he could readily identify by name was the Federal Court House, a barrel-like design with a large bank of windows that faced north, towards the direction from which they had travelled. Many of the endless interviews with the
federales
had taken place deep within the heavy stone walls of that building. At first, Miguel had viewed it as a symbol of stability, of order and hope. Now as he looked on the sand-coloured structure, the court house seemed to be the very embodiment of crushing futility.

He did not have long to gaze at the skyline. The bus turned off towards the River Market, passing the former warehouses, now loft apartment buildings, in one of which Sofia was probably nursing a cold rage at this very moment. The vehicle came to a stop a block or two short of the mid-week market and unloaded its passengers.

As he walked beside Maive Aronson, deep crevices of worry creased his already rumpled features. He found himself thinking often of Maive lately, and finding succour in those thoughts. Uncomfortable with where that might lead, he shook his head, forcing himself back onto practical matters.

‘Have you spoken recently to the investigators?’ he asked her.

‘Which ones, Miguel? There’ve been so many of them since we got here. They all ask the same questions, over and over again. I wonder some days why they can’t just compare notes.’

He had no answer for that, because he’d been thinking the very same thing almost from the moment they had presented themselves and their story to the first federal authorities they came across. The venue had been a humble sentry hut guarding the entrance to a militia training ground, formerly an airfield, near the ghost town of Grandview, south of KC. Miguel soon lost track of the number of people he had talked to since then about the attack on his family, the actions of the road agents he had witnessed in Texas, and the trials they had borne to escape the clutches of Governor Blackstone. That was how he described it: ‘the clutches of Blackstone’.

The agents and investigators didn’t always want to hear the truths he had to tell them, but then it was not his concern that the truth as he knew it was ugly and inconvenient for them. He knew that Maive was giving them the same accounts, and so was Sofia. Adam had taken many dozens of photographs with which to corroborate their tales of bloody murder and perdition down in the Republic of Texas. In addition, Trudi Jessup, a government employee, one of their own people, had verified everything. Yet they still didn’t seem to accept, or want to accept, the truth of what had happened. These were ‘isolated incidents’, the investigators told him. Unfortunate events. The frontier was a dangerous place everywhere, they said.

Miguel shook his head in frustration. He wished Trudi were with them now. For a government woman, she was akin to an angel. She had been such a good friend to them, not just on the trail, but after they’d finally made it to KC too.

He cast his mind back to early August, to the morning he arrived at the café in the River Market for their weekly breakfast meeting. They were falling into the routine of city life by that time. Sofia had settled, uneasily, into the notion of becoming a ‘Northtown Hornet’ at the high school. He was working. They had the pleasure of routine, meeting Trudi and Maive every week to ‘catch up’, as the women called it. That particular day, the barista greeted Miguel with a sad look, and handed him a note: Trudi was gone. He knew it before he opened the slip of paper. She had been transferred back to Seattle, with immediate effect; no time even to say her goodbyes.

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Maive asked, bringing him back to the cold reality of this stark winter morning.

‘They are worth less than that.’

‘They’re worth something to me,’ she said gently.

They reached a corner and waited as a small convoy of military trucks, gears a-grinding, rumbled by. The troops in the back looked wet and miserable, as though they had been out in the weather all night.

‘You know,’ said Maive, speaking up to be heard over the engine noise. ‘There were times when I wanted to tear my hair out talking to those migration people. Honestly, Miguel, it was like they were investigating
you
, not the road agents. But don’t worry. I told them I would go straight to the press, to the
Huffington Post
, if I thought for a moment they were trying to cause trouble for you or Sofia. I know that Trudi said the same thing. I think that drew them up short – the idea that they might have to account for the fact they’d let a bunch of rapists and murderers run wild in their precious Mandate. I think it might even explain why they transferred her so quickly.’

They set off again as the trucks rumbled away down the street, belching dark smoke from their exhausts.

‘You might be right. But thank you,’ said Miguel. ‘It must have helped. When we first arrived, I thought they might send us back to Mexico. Or, what is left of her.’

The chill seeped in through his clothes as they walked. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets but it did not warm them much. Icy gusts of wind picked up wet leaf litter that slapped against his legs, sticking to his jeans and boots. He took in the trees that lined the streets. As in many other places, nature had surged into the void left by the disappearance of humanity. He marvelled at the vibrant blue-green specks of moss that grew on the bark.

As they drew closer to the markets, there were more people in the streets, often carrying bags like them, backpacks and sometimes wheeled trolleys, all obviously intending to load up with groceries for a few days or more. There were very few cars, however. Vehicles were readily available and, with the right sort of effort, they could be made to run again. But even a healthy car would never get far without gasoline, which only the government seemed to have enough of these days. Although many businesses received a weekly ration, it was never really enough.

No, for people like Miguel and Maive, ordinary people, it was the bus, walking or horseback. He and Sofia still had the horses on which they’d fled the homestead. But most days his mount, Flossie, grazed in a field across the road from the apartment the government had given them. For the last few weeks, the horses had been stabled because of the poor weather.

He could smell the markets now. Not just livestock, but the tang of fresh herbs and greens, expensive at this time of year, because they’d come out of local greenhouses. One trailer by the entrance offered halal meat roasted on spits for the Pakistanis and anyone else who was interested. The salty sweet tang of kettle corn churned in the cold air with roasting nuts, coffee and mulled wine. As always, a small crowd had gathered around the entrance to the River Market. Another makeshift trailer was set up there with two giant steel pots steaming and slowly bubbling away, tended by a Canadian family, nomad Québécois, whose mulled wine was a favourite with the locals.

‘I wonder if I might tempt you with just one cup this week?’ Miguel suggested, his eyes twinkling with mischief. They both knew the answer already.

‘It doesn’t matter that the alcohol has been cooked off, Miguel. I still cannot drink it. It’s against the rules.’

‘So is drinking coffee, according to that crazy man this morning.’

‘That’s a different rule,’ said Maive. ‘A silly one, best ignored.’

Still, they waited in line while Miguel bought a paper cup full of hot, spiced wine for himself. He wasn’t entirely sure where the wine for the pots came from. Perhaps they made their own locally. Or maybe it was salvage – always ‘salvage’ in this country. The
gringos
were living off their own dead. Looking around in the chill air, he couldn’t imagine that the area was good for grapes, though. Trudi Jessup could probably have explained it. She had led him into wine drinking on the journey up from Texas, although he imagined she would be horrified to find him drinking something like this. Trudi took her wine, as well as her food, very seriously.

‘After this we can see about a cup of hot cocoa perhaps?’

She smiled. ‘Yes, why not.’

The actual marketplace was a series of outer brick buildings formed into a loose square. In the middle of that square stood three long shelters fitted with garage doors that were kept shut in the winter months. Merchants willing to pay a little extra for heated stall space were set up within the shelters, while the frugal or the unlucky toughed it out in the elements.

Miguel found it to be just a little warmer inside the gates than wandering the streets outside. The scent of barbecue in the air warmed him up a notch more as well. Winslow’s Barbecue held one end of the square, serving meat rubbed with a curry-inspired spice that Miguel had come to like. It was hotter than the usual American fare. Under the awning of the barbecue joint sat a jazz band, playing some tune he did not recognise.

‘Louis Armstrong,’ Maive noted.