He fanned himself with his Panama hat, even though Jules was beginning to shiver in the chill of the arctic air-conditioning.
‘This station,’ he continued, waving the hat around, ‘indeed, all of the new police stations built in Darwin since it was given free-port status by the federal government - seven of them, in total - they were all built and funded, and
And with that, he fell silent, staring at Jules, his features lit with the merest trace of a smile that would have done credit to Shah for its ambivalence. As for the Gurkha veteran, he leaned forward and spoke for the first time since they’d entered the police station. His voice was much softer than Downing’s.
‘Things in this city are not always as they should be, or even as they appear,’ he said.
Downing leaned forward too, thus forming a quiet conclave over the expensive glass coffee table. Jules began to wonder just how expensive.
‘I need you to understand, Ms Balwyn, that power in this city is a fickle beast. The men we will talk to are agents of the state. But the state is not a unitary concept here. The Wave, everything that has come after it, smashed all that, washed it away. Given the nature of your recent tribulations, you must always bear this in mind. Power is not settled here. It is restless and seething and often wont to turn back on itself.’
The lawyer’s voice was so soft now that Jules found herself drawn forward until his face seemed mere inches from hers. Close enough so that she could see where he had missed a spot while shaving that morning.
‘This is the new world,’ said Downing. ‘Born of chaos and madness. Remember that, if nothing else.’
Before she could reply, a door opened to her left, next to the reception counter, and a large, immaculately dressed man in a business suit stood looking at her.
‘Detective Palmer!’ boomed Piers Downing. ‘Always a pleasure.’
27
NORTH KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
For the purposes of her first special clearance mission within the borders of the United States, Caitlin Monroe became Colonel Katherine Murdoch, USAF (Reserve), special advisor to the White House Chief of Staff on military liaison with the Texas Defense Force. The TDF was what happened when perfectly good National Guardsmen fell under the control of a disgraced former general with a Caesar complex and robust levels of popular support - or
The TDF was part genuine kick-ass military force, part state militia, and part Praetorian Guard for the Emperor of Fort Hood. Disgruntled veterans from the federal forces, many of them forcibly demobilised and slated for resettlement in Alaska before the Wave lifted in March 2004, had rallied to Blackstone’s standard. It wouldn’t have been Caitlin’s first choice in that situation, but then she had options that these soldiers did not. If you had a family to feed and no money or food to put on the table, a spot in the Texas Defense Force was certainly an improvement over crumbs and cold, empty promises in the Alaskan wastes.
Patronage. It worked for the Romans, and Blackstone was making it work for him.
She hadn’t much bothered with domestic politics before the Disappearance. The endless pig circus had been largely irrelevant to her concerns, and it felt even more pointless in the years since. Especially once she’d settled into life on the farm with Bret and Monique. To be honest, there had been times when she’d imagined herself never setting foot in America again. Caitlin used to simply tune it out. Care factor zero, she said. Until now.
Bret, on the other hand, couldn’t give up his old habits as a former combat journalist. He’d been a good one. Indeed, many of the reports on the TDF in her mission brief were freelance articles filed by none other than Bret Melton. He kept pretty close tabs on the plight of the demobilised veterans, particularly since some of them were peeps he’d met over in the desert. At night he would sit up with Monique in his arms, holding a bottle, listening to the BBC reports.
She ate her dinner - chicken salad without dressing, washed down with spring water - while committing the TDF’s order of battle to memory.
The Texas Defense Force drew upon the infrastructure left over from two active-duty army divisions and a National Guard division. All three of those divisions were ‘legacy forces’, designed to fight a conventional combined-arms war against a conventional enemy. In many cases, their Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles would have required a fair amount of refit before returning to service. No doubt that was what new inductees spent a lot of their time doing.
Blackstone had re-formed these forces into brigade combat teams with a full strength of close to three thousand effectives per team. On paper, Mad Jack could draw on six brigades with armour, infantry and artillery battalions. They were supported by two aviation brigades equipped with the latest Apache gunships. As impressive as the full combat teams sounded, however, they were rarely concentrated at brigade strength. Many of his units were scattered about as battalion-size task forces.
A good sixty per cent of that combat power was oriented along the northern approaches to Texas, ostensibly on internal security patrols for criminal elements and the like. No one in Seattle believed that story, and nor did Caitlin. The remaining forty per cent was evenly divided between the so-called Panamanian Expeditionary Force and the Gulf coastline, backed up by a small collection of patrol boats and a pair of destroyers, which combined to form the naval component.
Once you tossed in a number of squadrons drawn from air force F-16s and navy F/A-18 Hornets, she concluded, what you had was a first-order military power within US territory. And she hadn’t even reached the reserve structure table of organisation yet. In theory, every citizen in Texas could be mobilised for active duty. With one-quarter of the current US population living in the Lone Star state, that number could top out at three to four million.
She shook her head. Blackstone would never need that many. The campaign in New York had left most of the remaining federal ground forces a complete wreck. It would take years, perhaps decades, for them to recover. The only elements receiving full funding were the naval and Marine forces attached to the Combined Fleet. Everything else was falling apart due to a lack of financial resources.
As accustomed as she’d become to the changed world, Caitlin Monroe still struggled to accept the idea of a rival power establishing itself on the North American continent. Because that’s what Blackstone’s regime was starting to look like. Putting aside her own privileged access to information, there was simply no avoiding the conclusion that he was preparing for a confrontation with Seattle, either to break them or to break with them. That was hardly white-hot raw intelligence. The old media and the new filled up miles of on-screen real estate yammering on about it every day.
As always with politics, Caitlin just didn’t care. It might’ve been something more than sound and fury, signifying nothing. But to her, for now, the deepening cold war within the United States was just an operational parameter. She still drew a pay cheque from Echelon, but that was a multinational concern now. The old order, where the US had been first among equals - she couldn’t help but smile at that polite fantasy - had been swept away. Seattle was just a spear carrier these days. The America she had once defended was gone.
When she was done with Blackstone, and when she had confirmed to the best of her abilities that al Banna was dead, she would be gone too. Gone from this open-air mausoleum, gone from the continent of the dead, gone from Echelon, gone from the world of her past. Gone to her future.
At the thought of her husband and child, Caitlin checked her watch again. Another three minutes until she would be able to make a secure connection. She put aside the various briefing papers now to finish her dinner. She didn’t want to be shoving food in her mouth while talking to Bret and Monique.
Taking the salad bowl with her, she walked over to the window, where she had drawn the curtains against
