Tuileries Garden
Paris, France
“If weathers doesn’t have these powers, then what killed my soldiers?” Siraj gripped the stem of his champagne glass like a man hugging a life preserver.
“Other aces. Aces plural.” Noel sipped his Hendricks gin martini and savored the cool/hot smoothness on the back of his tongue.
Siraj knocked back his champagne in a single gulp and waved his glass at a passing waiter. He got the usual Gallic sniff, frown, and shrug, but the man did head toward the bar. Noel looked out the window at the Tuileries Garden across the street. He had wanted to sit outside, but the late November rain made that impossible. The furled umbrellas in the metal tables looked like hunched, skeletal men in dripping coats.
“Then the PPA has multiple aces.” Siraj’s voice was heavy with despair. “How can that be? The release of the virus was localized over New York. The preponderance of aces has always been in America. I had one… Bahir… you. Now I have none. Unless…?” The implicit question hung in the air between.
Noel held up a restraining hand. “Oh, no, no, no, no. Weathers has sworn to kill Bahir.”
“I’ve got to have aces. If the PPA is recruiting them, then so can I.”
There was something about that that struck Noel as wrong. He contemplated Tom Weathers-charismatic, arrogant, impatient, always questioning the purity of one’s commitment to The Movement. “I can’t imagine Weathers ever accepting a mercenary ace into his army.”
“You’ve now taken two contradictory positions,” Siraj snapped. “Which is it?”
“Oh, they’re using aces. The question is where they came from.” Noel remembered Weathers’s dossier. The man had been thrown out of every revolutionary movement prior to the PPA because the other members always turned against him. The glimmering of an idea began to coalesce.
Siraj was speaking again. “Look, if you won’t fight for me will you at least help me recruit some aces? You have contacts from the Silver Helix.”
Noel gave an emphatic head shake. “If you field your own aces, Weathers will move directly on Baghdad. I have a better idea. One relying more on cunning, guile, and manipulation rather than brute force. The things at which I excel-”
“Yes, yes, yes, you’re a genius. Move on.”
“Remove the Nshombos. The PPA will collapse. The armies will pull back from the Sudan to join in the inevitable power struggle-”
“Which Weathers will win.”
“No, he has neither the personality or the force of character to hold it together. And he’s a white man. There are too many colonial memories to allow that to happen.”
“Yes, there are a lot of colonial memories.” Siraj smiled thinly. “So you’re going to kill the Nshombos.”
“That seems very crude. The last thing you want is to make a tin-pot dictator a martyr. It may come to that, but let’s try something more elegant and subtle first.”
“I suppose you use those same terms when referring to me,” Siraj said, and again smiled thinly.
“Oh, no, you’re not a tin-pot dictator.” Noel’s smile matched Siraj’s in thinness. “I know you actually want to help your people. I respected you for that, and that’s one of the reasons we selected you to replace the Nur.”
“Please, spare me your smug British approval.” The waiter returned with a bottle of champagne and an ice bucket. Siraj poured himself another glass. “I want this done by the end of the year. If it isn’t, I’ll release my little dossier on you to the World Court, the press, and Tom Weathers.”
There were times when remonstrating was pointless. This was one of them. Noel shrugged. “All right, but we need to postpone the march of the PPA on Baghdad. Let’s buy some time.”
“And how would you suggest I do that?”
“Ask Dr. Nshombo for a peace conference. If Nshombo refuses he’ll look like the aggressor. All these dictators like to think of themselves as the hero of their own three-penny opera. He won’t want the bad press.”
Siraj took another long swallow of champagne. “And if I involve the UN it will only add to the pressure on Nshombo to accept.”
“It will take time to arrange the conference, and you can spool out the talks for weeks, if necessary.”
“Five, to be precise.” Siraj filled up Noel’s empty martini glass with champagne. Their eyes met over the rim of their glasses and Noel saw no warmth in Siraj’s.
His old house mate would follow through on the threat.
Jackson Square
New Orleans, Louisiana
Michelle had been awake for several hours when Juliet and Joey showed up. The security guard let the girls in, and when the door opened Michelle could smell the olive trees, the heavy scent of the Mississippi, and beignets cooking at Cafe du Monde.
“Oh, honey,” Juliet said. “You’re awake again!”
Michelle opened her mouth, but only managed a hoarse croak. She swallowed and said, “Oil can.”
“Oil can?” Juliet asked.
“Fuck all. It’s a stupid joke, Ink,” Hoodoo Mama said. “ ’Member? Wizard of Fucking Oz? She needs some water.”
“Of course,” Juliet said. “You had that tube down your throat for so long.” She hurried out, then came back a moment later with a cup and a straw. Michelle drank and she felt as if there wasn’t enough water in the world to quench her thirst.
“Don’t drink too much, baby,” Juliet said. “The doctor said it could make you sick.”
Michelle dropped the straw. “I’m almost indestructible,” she said. “I doubt a little water will hurt me.”
Adesina hasn’t had water in God-only-knows how long, Michelle thought. She was just a little girl. Even a few days without water could… Michelle felt something warm and wet drop onto her cheek. Juliet was crying.
“Oh, God, Juliet… don’t.”
Juliet just cried harder. Michelle glanced at Hoodoo Mama-she felt guilty doing so with Juliet’s hot tears dropping on her. She shoved her guilt away and a stab of anger rose up in her.
It was Tom Weathers’s fault that she was here and that she couldn’t bubble even though she’d spent the last couple of hours trying to. There was this insane power in her and she couldn’t figure out how to get rid of it.
And that scared her so much she thought she might lose her mind. And then none of it mattered because Adesina was still stuck in that pit and Michelle couldn’t help her as long as she was trapped in her fat.
Another of Juliet’s tears fell on Michelle’s head and brought her back to New Orleans. The last time she had seen Juliet, she’d gone corporate for her job with Billy Ray. Now her hair was short and spiky again. But her tats weren’t the pretty Mayan ones she’d favored in her punk days. Now they were black and tribal and aggressive.
And then Michelle noticed that Joey and Juliet were dressed alike: both of them wore Joker Plague T-shirts and ratty jeans. What had happened to change Juliet back into a punk chick, and what had made Joey a fan of Joker Plague? Michelle knew the signs of girls who had hung out too long together. They’d gone all hive-mind. “What’s happening, Joey?” she asked. It was getting easier to talk. “Where am I? This is still New Orleans, isn’t it?”
“Jackson Fucking Square,” said Joey. “After you ate that fucking nuke you got really big and really, really, really, really heavy. The cocksuckers couldn’t move you, so, for a while, they just put up a tent around you.”
Michelle shook her head. Or at least she tried to. “How long have I been here?”
“A year and change.”
Michelle was staggered. A year. A year. A YEAR? She was cold, then hot, and then cold again. Her hands started shaking. How was she even alive after a year?
“I know it sounds like a long time…” Juliet said.
Joey interrupted her. “You just missed Thanksgiving. The city erected this temple thing over you after they couldn’t keep the tourists and grateful citizens away from your massive ass. You’re a cocksucking saint to most of the dumbasses on this planet. Except your shit-stain parents, who got you taken off life support so they could get their hands on your money again.
“Oh, and fuck me sideways, but Tiffani’s been coming down here every chance she gets to read to you all night long. She told us you weren’t dead. Fuck me if she wasn’t right about that one.”
