Noel stepped between them. Michelle felt a sudden jolt of cold as her apartment vanished. Adesina, she thought. I’m coming.
People’s Palace
Kongoville, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
“I want you to make more use of the young volunteers,” the President-for-Life said across his teacup in his most pedantic tone.
They sat at white wrought-iron tables in lush gardens surrounded by the high walls of the People’s Palace. Nshombo wore his customary black suit. A trim, handsome man in his late fifties, with the polished and perfect and unyielding features of a statue of African blackwood, the President-for-Life was a certified genius, who spoke over half a dozen languages and dared share Tom’s dream of world liberation. But he had no more tact than he did vanity. Nor charisma either.
“I don’t need them,” said Tom. “And they’re kids. They don’t belong in a war.”
“Yet they have served us so well,” Dr. Nshombo said. The four tiny Dandie Dinmont terriers lying at his feet raised cotton-ball heads and glared at Tom with eyes like suspicious obsidian buttons. “Khartoum was a great success, Field Marshal. As was the Sudd. With more seasoning, our young volunteers may soon be the equal of any foreign aces. Even Ra.”
The mention of Ra made Tom bristle. Old Egypt’s resident protector was the only wild card in the world who might be his equal. “Are you listening to a word I’m saying?”
“Boys, boys.” Alicia Nshombo clucked and shook her head. She was packed into a flamboyantly flower-printed dress and a sunbonnet. “You know you’re best of friends. Let’s have peace between us. Pretty please?” Despite her appearance and her Harlequin-romance tastes, Alicia was scarcely less intelligent than her brother. She was also Tom’s staunch ally in the increasingly fucked-up politics at the center of the PPA.
Tom Weathers frowned at her for a handful of pounding heartbeats. Then he stood up. “I’ll get back to you on that,” he said, and stalked back into the palace. But before he even pushed through the French doors he knew he’d give in. It was for the Revolution, and the Revolution was bigger than he was. Just don’t get to thinking you’re bigger than the Revolution, Comrade Kitengi, he thought bitterly.
United Nations
Manhattan, New York
“Could she have been lying?” Lohengrin asked. COOhd she haf beehn lAHying.
Bugsy lay back on the office couch, the UN-approved fair-trade leather creaking under him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, sure, maybe. She could have. But she’d just told me about how she was a big ol’ ho who’d boffed anything that moved and didn’t love her own kid. We weren’t really in withhold personal information mode, if you see what I mean.”
Lohengrin frowned and looked out over Manhattan. The winter light made the city look cleaner than it was. The German tapped his hands together in something between impatience and confusion. “That is very odd.”
“That’s what I thought,” Bugsy said. “But just because our first guess was off doesn’t mean we’re screwed. Okay, so Sprout isn’t Tom Weathers’s kid. The Radical and Cap’n Trips didn’t know each other because they’d slept with the same woman.”
“Captain Trips?”
“Mark Meadows. He went by Cap’n Trips back when he was trying to be the kind of guy he thought Kim would be into. Selling drugs, running a head shop, hanging out with aces. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Meadows was part of that scene during the two and a half decades that Weathers spent underground. Sixty-nine to ninety-three is a pretty long time. Lots of things could have happened.”
Lohengrin sat. His time on the Committee had aged him. Bugsy remembered when he’d come on, guest ace on American Hero. There hadn’t been the weariness around his eyes back then, or the sense of crushing responsibility. Maybe he’d lost it in Egypt. Maybe since then. Making the world a better place turned out to be a shitty job.
“Very well,” Lohengrin said.
“You doing all right, big guy?”
Lohengrin shrugged. With shoulders like that, it was a more tectonic motion than it would have been for Bugsy. “There are problems. You cannot know, Jonathan. The politics, the budget…”
“You know, it’s funny you should mention that. The next step on the whole Tom Weathers thing kind of depends on the expense account,” Bugsy said.
Lohengrin’s brows rose.
“There’s still got to be a connection between Meadows and Weathers,” Bugsy continued. “And the next most likely one is that something happened between them back when Meadows was chancellor of South Vietnam. Sprout was there. The Radical showed up in the same general part of the world not long after.”
“Yes,” Lohengrin agreed, but pulling the word out several syllables to make it clear he was waiting for the expensive part.
“Well,” Bugsy said. “It seems like we ought to talk with Meadows about it, and since he’s all blowed up…”
“You want to send Cameo,” Lohengrin said.
“Well, both of us. Me and her.”
Lohengrin smiled. “You’re sure you aren’t just trying to get a free vacation with your girlfriend?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Bugsy said. “She’s channeling my girlfriend. And her boyfriend, for that matter.”
“Simoon has a dead boyfriend?”
“No, Cameo does. It’s complicated.”
A hint of amusement seemed to touch Lohengrin’s eyes, but it might have just been the angle his head was at.
Bugsy yawned. “Look,” he said. “Cameo is a professional and an ace. She’s on the Committee. She’s the obvious choice. If you want me to follow up on the connection between the Radical and Sprout, it’s going to mean paying market price.”
“Fine,” Lohengrin said. “I will discuss it with the others as soon as possible.”
“You bet,” Bugsy said. “And can we get tickets on the company card? The airlines are giving me shit about the discount again, and if
…”
“Ja, ja,” Lohengrin said.
“Or you could see if Lilith’s in town, save us time and money both.”
Bugsy hadn’t meant it as a dig, but Lohengrin bristled.
“Sorry,” Bugsy said.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” Lohengrin said.
“No, really. If I’d known Lil was really Noel, the British hermaphrodite in really good drag, I would totally have waved you off that night.”
“I appreciate that.”
“And, you know, she’s an ace. Or, that’s to say he is. Or… y’know, Noel’s an ace. It’s a full-on transformation. It’s not like you got a hummer and just didn’t notice her Adam’s apple.”
“Jonathan?”
“And it was Vegas. You know, weird things just happen in Vegas. I knew one guy I would swear wasn’t into midgets when he went there for his honey-moon. Three days later, he and his new wife are-”
“Jonathan.”
“Yes, boss?”
“If I approve the expenses, will you leave?”
Grand Hotel
Kongoville, Congo
