‘Sorry, hon,’ Cindy said. ‘The roads are shit in this town. Always have been, even before the troubles. It’ll be better once we hit 35. Sometimes I wonder why they don’t just knock it all down and start from scratch.’
Once they’d pulled onto the Downtown Loop, the ride smoothed out. The dark shadows of the snow shrouded the world outside as they made their way around the loop until arriving on the I-35 southbound. They were rolling through parts of Kansas City she had never seen, past the West Side, where the city’s original Latino population lived. Now it was crammed with the latest generation of migrants. Indians, some Chinese mixed in with arrivals from a dozen other countries. Some of her friends at school lived down here, in the West Bottoms.
She was vaguely aware of Cindy flicking off the citizens’ band radio, to allow her to get some rest, just before her eyes closed for the last time in Kansas City.
20
DEARBORN HOUSE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
‘Don’t patronise me, Jed,’ warned Kip. ‘Whenever you tell me I’m doing something admirable, I get a lecture about how I’m also being stupid and need to accept changed realities, or the situation on the ground, or some crap like that. Not this time.’
James Kipper folded his arms, creating a barrier between them.
‘I agree you’re onto something,’ he went on. ‘But the way we do this is by the book. You turn it over to the FBI …’
‘Oh, please, not the feebs …’
‘Yes. The FBI. And you let them run the investigation. If they agree there is enough to go on.’
Kip bit off a mouthful of cheese cruller, his breakfast of choice when Barb wasn’t around, and washed it down with a slug of hot chocolate, another indulgence. He too had a hangover after slamming a six-pack down with Barney Tench at the end of last night. It wasn’t improving his mood or his judgment this morning.
A small field of documents lay between them, the bare minimum Jed needed to make his case that Blackstone may have been involved, even if unwittingly or at some remove, with Baumer’s New York jihad. Kipper was impressed by Jed’s prosecution of the matter, but he remained entirely sceptical about the Chief of Staff’s preferred option for dealing with it.
‘Agent Monroe may well be the world expert on this guy,’ he conceded, spilling a few cruller flakes onto the blotter. ‘But you know as well as I do that she is a grossly inappropriate choice to take this any further. Put aside the fact that she’s personally compromised because of the attack on her family, she’s Echelon, Jed. She can’t blow her nose within the borders of the US without breaking half-a-dozen laws.’
Culver didn’t think much of that objection, and it showed. His eyes burned with sleeplessness, and fatigue cramped the muscles in the backs of his legs. He could feel his calves jumping and twitching as early morning traffic appeared on the streets outside Kipper’s office window.
‘If you turn this over to the Bureau, sir, they will do their usual thorough job, which will take about eighteen years. During which time Blackstone will get wind of what’s happening, giving him plenty of opportunity to build a large, roaring bonfire of incriminating evidence that could heat this city for Christmas and beyond. Monroe has the skill-set, the background and the motivation to close the file in weeks, if not days.’
Kipper’s hand cut through the air in front of him like a heavy blade. ‘Enough! Agent Monroe, who now works for Echelon UK, as far as I remember, Jed, is not a criminal investigator. She’s an
Culver stood up to stretch the painful knots out of his legs, but also because his frustration was mounting to the point where he had to walk it off. He stalked over to the fireplace.
‘She is not just a trigger-puller, Mr President. She’s a lot more than that. Fact is, she had two years’ training at Quantico, pre-Wave. An accelerated investigator’s course. She can play an undercover cop, if it helps to think of her in that fashion.’
‘No, Jed,’ said Kipper. ‘It doesn’t.’ The President pushed away the better part of his breakfast, uneaten, before continuing. ‘I don’t much like what Agent Monroe does in the name of this country, what she represents about us, or at least the way we used to do things. I can accept that she herself is a dedicated servant of the people, and I’m happy to acknowledge the sacrifices she’s made and the dangers she has faced in that service. What she did in New York, or tried to do, was outstanding. But she is the wrong person for this job. The wrong tool.’
Culver’s spirits flagged a bit at that. When Kip got going on the engineering metaphors, it usually meant he’d made up his mind, or was very close to getting there. His tone grew ever more sarcastic as he spoke.
‘I mean, where is this Luperico she talks about in her report? This guy running Sarkozy’s secret dungeon. Oh, that’s right - she blew his brains out in the jungle. No chance for anybody to verify his information, not to mention the illegality, the basic …
His face had become flushed with anger, and when he finished speaking he smacked his desk with an open hand to emphasise the point. Jed struggled manfully to restrain his own rising anger. He knew that getting into a fight with Kipper would serve no purpose.
‘Mr President,’ he said wearily, ‘I’m not suggesting we send her down there to whack him. But I am suggesting that unusual circumstances demand unusual responses. Having the FBI roll up on Blackstone’s front door to ask him to come down to the office to answer a few questions isn’t going to work. I don’t see why the justice system should be preferenced when dealing with what is essentially a black operation. New York was a black op. For Baumer. And possibly for Blackstone. Two different operations, maybe, I’ll concede. And maybe Blackstone’s went horribly wrong. There will come a time when we have to address the legal consequences of what happened. But right now, I would argue very strongly that we are still in the operational moment. And that moment demands a Caitlin Monroe, not a district attorney.’
Kip shook his head. He had his anger under control, but he had not changed his mind. ‘No, Jed,’ he said. ‘If our system is not strong enough to do things the right way, it is not worth the effort we put into maintaining it. We either do things lawfully or we’re as bad as Baumer and Mad Jack. Now I want you to get on the phone to the FBI and have them send over a team to take charge of the case you’ve built up. I want that to happen today. Are we clear?’
‘Yes, Mr President.’
Jed checked his watch. Dawn had arrived, but the world outside Kipper’s window looked even darker.
21
EMPORIA, KANSAS
She dreamed again. Not of Texas this time, but Oklahoma. In the strange attenuated temporal landscape of dreams, they had only just escaped the flood. Their clothes hung in rags from them. The horses were all swept away, drowned and torn apart when the raging waters dashed them against rocky outcrops in the accursed valley.
Papa was with her, supporting her on his strong right arm as he helped Adam and Maive escape the pull of the roaring river that had boiled up around them. As terrified as she was, Sofia’s heart swelled with joy at the touch of her father. She felt safe just being with him, knowing that he would let nothing bad happen to her.
And then the river was gone. Not receded, not fallen away - simply gone. They stood on the outskirts of Tulsa, which looked as though an Old Testament God had rained down fire and damnation upon it, smashing it flat, burning the ruins, before smashing a fist down on it again. It was as if they were standing on the verge of a city
