The Edge of Ruin (22 page)

“The senator would like to see you tomorrow at eleven
A.M.
in his office. Can you be there?”

“Yes. I’ll be there.”

* * *

Both Grenier and my father told me that Senator Aldo had the same office that John Kennedy had occupied back in the 1950s. It was appropriate. Both Kennedy and Aldo had been military men. Both were Liberals. Both entered Congress in their early thirties. Where they differed was in ambition and background. Aldo had chosen to stay in Congress rather than run for president, and he had not come from wealth. He had grown up on a farm, and watched a way of life vanish under pressure from corporate farming. In his autobiography he’d written that the experience had killed his father and shattered the family. All of it combined to make him a fierce defender of the common man.

Grenier had also told me that Aldo valued courage and independence, so I arrived solo. Well, solo was a relative term—Joseph, Rudi, and Estevan waited with the limo in one of the underground parking garages. I’d met a lot of politicians over the years, dated their daughters, seduced a few of them, and even slept with a couple of their sons. Politicians, simply by virtue of being politicians, held no mystery or awe for me, but I still wished my father had come along. The judge’s calm gravitas would have been so much more effective than I could ever be.

I was reflecting on all of this as I walked down the hall. The three-beat rhythm of my footfalls and the awkward swing of the cane added to my nervousness. The hilt had been mounted on top of the cane so it wouldn’t cause any problem when I went through security. We knew it registered as inert, but it would have seemed too strange to have had it in my pocket. It did overbalance the cane, however, and made it hard to control. The fact that my palm was sweat-slick with nerves didn’t help either.

At the far end of the hall a group of tourists clustered around a portrait. As a cop I had been trained in situational awareness. I never entered a room without checking out every person in it, and I always got seated where I could watch people entering and leaving—even if I had to use a mirror to do it. Which meant I noticed the gaggle of tourists. I noticed the swing of long black hair, and the light glittering off the line of earrings running from the tips of her ears to the lobes. She had also been much on my mind during the intervening weeks since our last meeting in that dell in Virginia.
Rhiana.
I wasn’t hallucinating; she was actually here.

I tightened my grip on the hilt and stopped, waiting for whatever might be thrown at me. But she didn’t do anything. The tour was moving again. As they disappeared around a corner, she glanced back at me from beneath the brim of her fur hat. I made a hobbling run down the hall and spun around the corner. The tourists were still moving, the sound of shuffling feet and winter coughs loud in the enclosed space. They were all large, pallid, and older. A beautiful girl in a sable coat was not among them. I remembered when Grenier had vanished into a crack in a wall in a church in Colorado Springs. Rhiana had her own way of escaping.

As I retraced my steps I tried to comfort myself that there was more than one senator on this floor. They wouldn’t know I’d been to see Aldo … I stopped myself. Of course they would know. There were appointment calendars and sign-in sheets, and—I glanced down at the white tag pasted to my label—and badges issued.

Secrecy was never going to work for us. If anything, we needed more transparency, more light shined on what was actually happening to our world. I pushed open the door into the senator’s outer office. I was going to have to warn him that meeting with me might endanger his life. Yeah, that was going to go over well.

The staff didn’t make me wait. Moments later I was in Aldo’s personal office. I was surprised when Aldo left the power position behind the desk and indicated a pair of deeply upholstered chairs clustered around a low coffee table. We sat down, and for a long moment we just looked at each other. Fortunately, quiet had never bothered me. I’ve never felt the need to rush into conversation, and it gave me the time to study the man. Even in repose Aldo was an imposing figure. Six foot four, with broad, thick shoulders, and a neck as wide as his ears. Despite his age he hadn’t run much to fat. I glanced over at the Heisman Trophy on the bookcase, and the framed Silver Star that hung above it. Suddenly I felt very intimidated by this man. Why on earth would he listen to me?

Aldo leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled before his face. “So, the message made this sound like the fate of the nation was hanging in the balance, and you were our only hope.” The talking heads on the news channels described him as blunt rather than charming. They weren’t kidding.

I felt my face flame with embarrassment, and my knee began jiggling nervously. I didn’t think that would impress the senator, so I laid my hand on it, trying to hold it still. “Well, I wouldn’t … I don’t know who phrased it quite … well, it’s half true.”

“Which half?”

“Oh, come on, sir. You didn’t actually think I’d say the second half, did you?”

A smile split the craggy angles of his face. “You’d be surprised. Politics is an egomaniac’s game.”

“First, I’m not a politician. Second … you are.”

A rumbling chuckle shook the barrel chest. “Touché. Fortunately for you I know your father. Six years ago Judge Oort and I joined forces on an amicus brief in a gay adoption case coming before the Supreme Court, and worked together to oppose presidential signing statements. I respect your father, and somehow I don’t think his son would be a liar.”

“I’m not, sir,” I said.

“So what is it you want to tell me?” Aldo asked.

I caught the piercing gleam in his brown eyes, and suddenly I knew what to do. “I don’t need to tell you anything, sir. You’re on the Intelligence Committee. You’ve seen the satellite images. You know this goes way beyond a foiled plot to detonate a nuke. This is much, much worse.”

He leaned slowly back in his chair. “Those are classified. One call and I could put you in a world of hurt.”

“And I can say I never saw those damn images. Remember, I was there when the gate first opened.”

“A gate. Why do you call it that?”

“Because it’s an opening through which an invading army is entering, and the government isn’t doing squat. What’s happening in Virginia and Jerusalem and India requires a unified and international response.” I couldn’t sit still. I jumped up and started pacing. “It may be there’s a military solution to what’s happening, but whatever action we take, it needs to be coordinated and guided from the highest levels. This isn’t something the governor, the state police, or the National Guard can handle. America is the last superpower. The President has to act. I need to get in to see him. You’re the man who can make that happen.”

Aldo lowered his hands and began beating out a rhythm on the arms of the chair, while his big, square-jawed head swiveled slowly, assessing the pictures on the wall. I followed his gaze. Most of them were photos of the senator with five different presidents.

After a long moment he looked back at me. “Initially the FBI supported your position, but they’ve backed off that, and now they’re in agreement with the NSA and Langley.”

“And what might the NSA and Langley be saying?” I asked.

Aldo’s lips never parted when he smiled. The corners of his mouth just stretched, making his cheeks more prominent. “That’s classified.”

Frustration can have an actual taste. I clenched my hands and gritted my teeth, trying to hold back the profanity.

“Yeah, it makes you crazy, doesn’t it?” the senator said softly. “Look, I can tell you this much. Lobbing a bomb into an area where guns, radios, cameras, and so forth don’t work wouldn’t be all that effective.”

“Meaning they tried it,” I said, and I sat back down.

Aldo just smiled again. “But of course a place where weapons don’t operate would have some really interesting applications for a government that understood and controlled that technology.”

This time I couldn’t keep control. The words burst out, hot and intemperate. “It’s not technology! It can’t be controlled. And any moron who tries is going to end up dead or worse.”

“There’s a worse?”

“Oh, yeah. And these things that are pouring through the gates are going to prove that to us.”

Suddenly Aldo leaned forward. He was so tall that he came almost completely across the coffee table. His face was inches from mine. I could smell the breath mint he’d chewed. “And why should I believe you over all these other people and agencies?”

It was something I’ve had to learn; it was not my nature to get in people’s faces. But I was a cop, and if there was one thing we knew it was how to push back. I leaned forward, and was surprised when Aldo retreated. I pursued the advantage, saying, “Because I’ve come here at no small personal risk to offer my help. I could have stayed in New Mexico, and been safe for a little while longer. But sooner or later it will be everywhere. It will cover the world.
Unless we do something.
”

Aldo leaned back in his chair and regarded me for a long, long time. “What do you do, son?”

The question surprised me, and I answered instinctively. “I’m a policeman.”

“I thought you were the head of Lumina Enterprises.”

“I’m that, too, but …” I pulled out my badge case, opened it, and studied the badge. The light from the ceiling fixture gleamed on the gold shield. The hilt, perched precariously atop the cane, leaned heavily against my knee. and for one strange, distorting moment the shield seemed to expand until it filled my sight, blotting out the room.

I was jerked back to the moment when a hand fell heavily onto my shoulder. Aldo was looming over me, holding a glass of water.

“Here.”

“Thank you.” I took a sip. Clearly lack of sleep was catching up with me.

“Well, you’re not telling me everything. Not by a long way,” the senator said. He paused. The silence was excruciating. Then he suddenly added, “But that can wait until we sit down with the President.”

I nearly spilled the water in my haste to set aside the glass and stand. “You’ll do it? You’ll get me in?”

“Can you tell us why people are losing their minds?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us what these things are?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us how to fight them?”

“Yes.”

I hoped my bravura performance was enough to hide the fact that my final answer was a lie.

“You’ll be ready to go at any time?” Aldo asked as he moved back to his desk.

“Day or night.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

It was dismissal. I hesitated at the door, then looked back.

“Sir.” He looked up from the papers he was reading. “By helping me you’re putting yourself at risk, too. Be careful, okay?”

“Always am.”

Yeah, but you don’t know that one of them was in the hall outside your office. That they can walk through walls. That they can use magic against you because I wasn’t able to inoculate you. Because that really
would
have been a bridge too far.

I let myself out and went limping through the outer office. It was humming with activity. I noted that the senator’s staff tended to be young and passionate. At one desk a couple of staffers were reviewing legislation. At a corner table a trio of young women shook letters out of a mailbag.

As I passed the receptionist’s desk, she looked up and gave me a white-toothed smile. Her perfectly coiffed and sprayed hair didn’t move.

“Have a blessed day,” she chirped.

I got into the hall, leaned against the wall, and realized we were surrounded.

F
rom the bitter cold of a Washington, D.C., January to the sultry heat of an Australian January, and Pamela hadn’t packed a thing appropriate for a southern hemisphere summer. On her way to the Air Raid City Lodge, the taxi passed a mall in downtown Darwin, and she had the driver stop. She ran into a department store and bought jeans, a T-shirt, and sandals. “I’ll wear them,” she told the salesgirl, and had them put her wool slacks, cashmere sweater, and pumps into the bag.

During the seemingly endless flight, she’d spent time on what passed for research in the modern age—she’d Googled Darwin, Australia, and read all the tourist information sites. They had all agreed that Darwin had the youngest population of any city in Australia. Her brief foray into the mall had provided anecdotal proof of that—it was filled with lots and lots of young people.

Of course, most malls were filled with young people.
The sway of the taxi was like the rocking of a hammock.
Or maybe we have a visceral memory of floating in the womb, or being rocked in a cradle.
She realized she was maundering in her own head, and she gave herself a physical shake. Once in the lobby of the lodge she called up to Dr. Tanaka’s room.

“Hello?” It was a surprisingly young voice, and he sounded hesitant and suspicious.

“Hi, this is Pamela Oort, Lumina sent me. Are you ready to go?”

“Oh, shit, yeah.” And the connection was broken even as she was opening her mouth to tell the scientist what she looked like.

She took up a position where she could watch for a Japanese American entering the lobby. The room was buzzing with activity—people booking tours, and a party of young Germans, all wearing backpacks, checking in at the front desk.

Moments later an incredibly tall, incredibly thin Asian man dressed in jeans, a white tee, and tennis shoes hurried into the lobby. Pamela stood up, but he looked right past her. Instead he zeroed in on an older, heavyset woman. He said something, and she shook her head. Frowning, he moved on to the next closest woman. For some kind of physics genius he seemed pretty damn clueless, Pamela thought. After the fourth such encounter Pamela took pity on the other guests and walked up to him.

“Dr. Tanaka?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Pamela Oort.”

“Oh, okay. Huh, I didn’t think you’d look like … well, like you do.”

“And just how do I look?” The moment the unwary words emerged Pamela wished she hadn’t uttered them.