‘Oh dear,’ said Maive, although she did not seem particularly disapproving. ‘So she’s at home now, studying, I suppose?’
‘Studying, yes,’ he answered. ‘Or sulking.’
‘Well, that is a pity. But it is important that you’re seen to do the right thing, even if you disagree with it.’
She began clearing up the table. Using the tea towel under the cooling muffin tray to brush up the crumbs. Pouring the remains of her drink, more than half again, down the sink after the dregs of Miguel’s.
‘Will you still want to go to the mid-week markets this morning?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘We will need groceries before the weekend.’
It was also true that he looked forward to spending time with Maive, particularly since Trudi Jessup had transferred back to Seattle with her government job. Apart from Maive and Sofia, he knew nobody in Kansas City. Adam, the teenager who had impressed him so much, was now with relatives in Canada. Miguel missed him more than he might have imagined. He had come to regard the boy almost as a son over the long months on the trail. And a friend, if a young one.
He had no friends here, save for Maive, of course. The men he worked with at the railway cattle yards were mostly Indians, and he found them difficult to get on with. They spoke English, true, but sometimes it seemed like they spoke a very different version of the language. Even the Americans had trouble with them from time to time. Mostly he did his job there and came home. It was only a temporary position, at any rate; a place the government had put him so that he’d be available for interviews by investigators, agents and the small army of men and women who seemed to want to know everything about his time in Texas. Even if they never did anything about what had happened there.
‘I should get my bag, then,’ said Maive. ‘Shall we walk or drive? The weather isn’t that nice, but the radio said it probably wouldn’t get much worse either.’
‘We shall walk, I think,’ Miguel decided, mindful of the fact that the
‘Thank you, Miguel. You’re a very good friend.’
3
DEARBORN HOUSE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
‘I don’t think you should go to Texas, Mr President. The precedents aren’t good.’
James Kipper made a show of furrowing his brow and mashing up his lips. Culver had learned to think of this as his I’m-not-happy face. It was getting an Olympic-standard workout this morning. The White House Chief of Staff absorbed his boss’s displeasure with the unflappable air of a man who knew he was right. Because he was. Jed Culver was always right.
‘I think the longer I stay out of Texas, Jed,’ Kipper protested, ‘the more it looks like I’m too frightened to show my face down there. He hasn’t seceded, despite all his Republic of Texas bullshit. We’re all still living in the same country. And I really think it’s time I went down there. After all, with the election coming up …’ The President left the statement hanging there, dropping his chin and regarding Culver with an expression that said:
They were alone and the Chief of Staff actually allowed himself a small snicker of amusement. Kip was at his funniest when he was trying to play politics. It just didn’t suit the man at all.
‘The last thing we need before the election, Mr President, is Mad Jack Blackstone kicking your ass from one end of his snaggletooth republic to the other.’
He could see the boss looked even more put out than before - a common occurrence whenever Culver had reason to remind him of his naivete. That happened less frequently these days, especially after New York. But for a politician, even one press-ganged into high office, Kip could still be maddeningly childlike in the way he viewed the world. Jed felt the need to explain. They still had a few minutes before the cabinet members arrived for the morning meeting.
‘Right now, sir, Blackstone is looking for any excuse to paint you as a weak, soft-hearted fool. And he’s very carefully picking his fights to make himself look like the Great White Hope, quite literally. There are so many things we need from him right now that if you fly down to Fort Hood, you’ll have no choice but to lay our demands on the table and he’ll have no qualms about laughing in your face. He won’t even be cruel about it. He’ll do it in such a way as to make it obvious that you don’t know what you’re talking about, you can’t possibly be trusted to run the country, you’re a lovely man, but soft and weak, and the sooner we get rid of you the better.’
Kipper narrowed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers and frowning at Culver over the top of them. The first real frost of the winter lay hard against the windows of Dearborn House, sheathed in Christmas decorations just that morning. Outside the big picture window that framed Kipper at his desk, dirty grey clouds scudded slowly across the sky, obscuring the upper floors of Seattle’s taller buildings. The President seemed to lose himself for moment, staring at a picture of his daughter, Suzie, in a small silver frame on his desk. He sighed.
‘Why am I here, Jed?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr President?’
‘No, really. Why am I here? I just wonder some days, that’s all. There’s so much that needs doing to rebuild this country. We all know what’s needed. You, me, Blackstone, Congress, Sarah Palin, Sandra Harvey - Abe, the guy down the market who sells me my sausages. We all know what needs to be done. So why the hell can’t we just get on and do it? Why can’t I do my job? Pass my budget, get my tax law through, the migration bill, the energy bill - any of it? At every single step of the way, I got somebody telling me what I
He swivelled his chair around to stare out the window. His mood was as bleak as the weather.
‘I’m just wondering what the point is,’ Kip added resignedly. ‘That’s all.’
He’d been like this since the Battle of New York. Or rather, since he returned to the Big Apple a couple of weeks after the last of the diehards were killed or run off. It was as though James Kipper had decided to assume responsibility for every death, for every piece of rubble. It didn’t matter how many times Jed, Barbara or anybody else told him he had done what needed doing, that he had seen off an unexpected but deadly serious threat to the republic, and shown the world that an America laid low would still not countenance the designs of any foe upon her land or her sovereignty.
Kip had been the most reluctant of warrior kings, and having seen the cost of taking up sword and shield to expel the so-called Emir and his pirate allies from Manhattan, he seemed to have lost the stomach for any kind of fight. He was a tinkerer, a builder, an engineer; not a destroyer. Even his impacted rage at the attacks on settlers in the Texas Federal Mandate had abated as those attacks tapered off. He was a problem-solver by nature, and once a problem went away, his interest shifted elsewhere.
Culver, who had been comfortably reclined in a dark leather club chair that had become known as ‘his’ whenever he was in the Oval Office, put aside the folder of papers he’d been holding and heaved himself up to his feet. A one-time college wrestler, he’d always been a big guy, and he found the constant round of state dinners and cocktail parties in the new national capital ruinous to his waistline. Kipper was a lean and hungry-looking wraith in comparison. Jed grunted as he stood up. He was really going to have to start that walking routine his doctor and Marilyn, his wife, were forever hassling him about.
‘You’re here because you’re here, Kip,’ he said.
That got his attention. Jed almost never called him by his nickname. The President turned away from the window with its melancholy view of leafless trees and a slate-grey sky.
‘Somebody has to do this job,’ the former Louisiana attorney continued, ‘and it’s better done by a good man like you than an asshole like Blackstone or a feral, crazy eco-nazi like Sandra fucking Harvey. It’s not much fun, but someone’s gotta do it. So man up, buddy. You’re the guy.’
The President smiled as if conceding a pawn in a long game of chess. ‘Suppose you’re right,’ he admitted. ‘Nobody held a gun to my head and told me to do this. Although, you know, I think Barbara might have. She really surprised me back then.’
