Flashback

“It seems to be the magic number, doesn’t it?” said Oz. “The population of Israel at the time of the attack was somewhere around eight and a quarter million people, but more than two million of those were Israeli Arabs or non-Jewish immigrants. About a million of those Arab Israelis died with the target population, but it was still six million Jews who either died in the attacks, from the radiation shortly after—they were very dirty bombs, weren’t they, Mr. Bottom?—or from the invading Arab armies. Some four hundred thousand Jews incinerated in Tel Aviv– Jaffa. Three hundred thousand burned to ash in Haifa. Two hundred and fifty thousand in Rishon LeZiyyon. And so on. Jerusalem wasn’t bombed, of course, since that city—intact—was the reason for the attacks, both nuclear and military. Those six hundred thousand–some Jews were taken prisoner by the radiation-suited armies and just never seen again, although there are reports of a large canyon in the Sinai filled with corpses. What I’ll never understand was why the Samson Option wasn’t executed.”

“What’s that?” said Nick.

“I was a liberal, you understand, Mr. Bottom. I spent a good portion of my adult life protesting the policies of the state of Israel, marching for peace, writing for peace, and trying to identify with the poor, downtrodden Palestinian people—Gaza was more than decimated, by the way, with eighty percent fatalities when the fallout from the bomb that took out Beersheva—just two hundred thousand incinerated Jews—drifted to the north and east. But I wonder daily about the absence of the Samson Option I’d heard about my entire life… the rumored policy of the Israeli government, if attacked by weapons of mass destruction or if a successful invasion of the state of Israel was imminent, to use its own nukes to take out the capitals of every Arab and Islamic nation within reach. And Israel’s reach in those days, Mr. Bottom, was longer than one might think. Decades and decades ago, but after the first Israeli bombs were secretly built, a general named Moshe Dayan was quoted as saying ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’ But in the end, you see, we weren’t. We weren’t at all.”

“No,” said Nick. “You weren’t.”

He got up to go.

“I’ll see you to the gate,” said Danny Oz as he lit a new cigarette.

They walked out of the tent to find that storm clouds had come in from over the mountains. The rusted steel skeleton of the two-hundred-foot-tall Tower of Doom loomed over them. A rafting ride called Disaster Canyon had been all but dismantled for building materials behind them. From some tent or hovel or abandoned ride came that Jewish-sounding chanting or cry of grief again.

Nearing the gate, Danny Oz said, “Please give my best to your wife, Dara, Mr. Bottom.”

Nick whirled. “What?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention it? I met her six years ago. A delightful woman. Please give her my warmest regards.”

The 9mm Glock was in Nick’s hand in an instant, the muzzle pressed against Danny Oz’s temple as Nick slammed into the frail poet, shoving him up against a metal stanchion, Nick’s forearm tight and heavy across Oz’s throat. “What the fuck are you talking about? Where did you meet her? How?”

The pistol had gotten the old poet’s attention, but Nick could see something like eagerness in the man’s eyes. He wanted Nick to pull the trigger. That was fine with Nick.

“I… met her… I… can’t talk… with your… forearm…”

Nick let up the pressure on his forearm slightly and increased the pressure on the muzzle of the Glock. The circle of steel had broken the parchment-brittle skin on the dying man’s forehead.

“Talk,” said Nick.

“I met Mrs. Bottom on the day that Keigo Nakamura interviewed me,” said Oz. “She was here about an hour and I introduced myself and…”

“My wife was here with Keigo Nakamura?” Nick thumbed the hammer back.

“No, no… at least I don’t believe so. She and a man were standing back with the crowd but apart from it slightly, watching the interview—which was done quite publicly, you understand, so the old merry-go-round would be in the background of the shot.”

“Who was the man with her?”

“I have no idea.”

“What did he look like?”

“Short, heavy, early middle age, almost bald. He carried a beat-up old briefcase and had a mustache and wore old-fashioned glasses. The kind without the rims.”

Nick knew who that was—Harvey Cohen, the assistant district attorney for whom Dara had worked as executive assistant. But why the hell were those two here at Six Flags Over the Jews on the day that Keigo Nakamura interviewed Oz?

“Did you see the woman you thought was my wife talking to Keigo or his people?”

“No,” said Oz.

“What did she say to you when you introduced yourself?”

“Just how interesting the interview had been, how nice the day was for October… small talk. But when she said that her name was Dara Fox-Bottom, we discussed A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She said that her husband was a detective for the Denver Police Department.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you mention meeting her when I interviewed you six years ago?” demanded Nick, pressing the muzzle of the Glock even deeper into Oz’s bleeding forehead.

“It didn’t seem appropriate then,” gasped Oz, still having trouble breathing even though Nick had let up most of the pressure from his forearm. “There was that woman detective with you when you interviewed me… I mean, I didn’t think there was anything wrong about your wife being here during a workday with that short, balding gentleman, but since I was a suspect in Keigo Nakamura’s murder, I thought it best then not to mention it.”

“Why mention her now, then?” demanded Nick. His finger was on the trigger, not the trigger guard.

“Because of our conversation today… about Bottom’s dream,” said Oz. “Shoot me if you’re going to shoot me, Mr. Bottom. But otherwise let me go.”

A minute later, Nick did. There was nothing else to find out. It was starting to rain when Nick turned his back on the dying Jew and on all the other dying Jews and left the camp.

Out in the parking lot next to Nick’s gelding, Hideki Sato was waiting. Nick ignored the security man and got in his car, slammed the door shut, and thumbed the ignition.

Nothing. The gauges showed a flat charge. The car was totally dead, even though the batteries should have given him another dozen miles or so today.

“Fuck,” screamed Nick Bottom. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

He was out of the car and clicking off the safety of the Glock. Sato stepped back behind his own vehicle.

Nick put five shots through the hood into the batteries and long-emasculated engine, six shots through the windshield, and four more shots into the front tires and hood again. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

He kept squeezing the trigger but the hammer fell on an empty chamber.

Four guards came running from the entrance gate, their visors down and automatic weapons raised. Sato held up his badge and waved them away. Nick turned the Glock toward Sato but the slide was back, magazine empty.

Sato was looking at Nick’s gelding. The car was emitting some sort of murdered-battery ticking from under the hood and there came a dying hiss from the deflating tires.

“I have always wanted to do that to a car,” said Sato. He turned to Nick. “Having a bad day, are we?”

1.08 The People’s Republic of Boulder—Monday, Sept. 13

The motionless line of giant wind turbines ran along the entire visible span of the Continental Divide, from Wyoming in the north to beyond Pikes Peak a hundred and sixty miles south. The abandoned turbine-towers looked to Nick Bottom like nothing so much as a dilapidated, unpainted picket fence with each rusted picket post rising