‘No, not just teeth. It’s more than that. It’s a struggle, like other companies struggle. How to make it to the future. How to survive. Hell, how to thrive so you have jobs, and stockholders have dividends, and nice little people get their nice little packages on time.’
Adrianna said, ‘That’s very nice, general, but unless we do what we have to do there isn’t going to be a future, most of your stockholders will be dead, and those nice little people won’t be looking for nice little packages. They’re going to be looking at digging graves in their front lawn to bury their children, and they’re going to worry about getting food this winter. That’s the reality. And teeth isn’t going to cut it.’
Bocks was going to say something but the woman plowed right over him. ‘By my side is Doctor Victor Palmer. One of the best and smartest physicians working at the Centers for Disease Control. He could quit this afternoon and by tomorrow have his own hospital wing in New York or Los Angeles or Phoenix, to do whatever kind of research he wants. But he gets paid shit by the government and puts in tremendous hours, and suffers for it, all to protect his countrymen. And for what? Knowing he might fail, that millions might die, and that even if he succeeds people alive this instant will be dead by this time next month because of what he’s devised.’
Adrianna shifted in her seat, her voice sharper. ‘Then you have Detective Doyle. He’d rather be home in New York, rather be involved in his son’s Little League team and schoolwork, and put bad people behind bars, than be working for us. He’s sacrificed time with his son, he’s sacrificed his career with the New York Police Department, and for what? For being involved in something that could see him disgraced, see him sent off to jail. A New York detective whose own father was killed on September eleventh.’
Bocks looked at the detective. ‘That true?’
Doyle looked irritated. ‘Yeah.’
‘Tell me about it.’
He shrugged. ‘Thousands of people lost family or friends that day. My story’s no different.’
Bocks said, ‘Maybe so, but still I want to hear it.’
Doyle cleared his throat, shot a glance at the woman seated next to him — Bocks wondered what kind of dynamic was at work there — and said, ‘The story is simple. My dad’s name was Sean Doyle. Spent nearly thirty years on the Job. Raised me and a brother and a sister. Retired as a sergeant, decided he was going to be a handyman and single-handedly renovate the family home on Ridgeway. But the poor guy didn’t know one end of a hammer from the other and thought heat magically came out of the basement by itself. And my mom — well, she was used to having him out of the house during the day, and truth be told, he was used to being out too. So he got a job as a security officer, for a finance firm in Tower Two. He and nearly everybody else in that firm was killed that day.’
‘Did anybody see him that last day?’
‘An admin aide — Jackie somebody — she thought she saw him go into the offices, to try to get the people out of there, just as the smoke got real thick…that’s about it.’
Bocks looked at the quiet detective, tried to imagine what it must have been like to lose one’s father like that. In his years in the Air Force, Bocks had lost many friends and acquaintances, and tragic as their deaths were they made sense, in a grim sort of way. Aircraft crashes in bad weather or enemy fire or mechanical problems… in the back of your mind, what you expected could happen to you or somebody you knew. But to die in one of the world’s tallest buildings, from a terrorist attack, when you had retired safely after years on the street? Not only did it not make sense, it was obscene.
Bocks looked at the detective and said, ‘Your dad was a hero. You should be proud.’
‘No, he was just doing his job. That’s all. And nothing else.’
‘I respectfully disagree, detective. He was a hero.’
The detective didn’t say anything else. Bocks shifted to the CIA woman again, and said, ‘You’ve told me about the good doctor and the good detective. But nothing about yourself.’
‘There’s nothing to say,’ she said.
‘Of course there is, and I want to hear it,’ Bocks said.
Adrianna Scott looked at the sharp face of the general, knowing what she’d like to say. She’d like to say:
Arrogant man, it was men like you, men from your Air Force, who killed my family that February morning. Arrogant and powerful men, thousands of miles away, choosing which targets in my blessed city should be destroyed. Men in comfortable offices eating fine meals at the end of the day, choosing the targets here and there, deciding who would live and who would die. And then other arrogant men, in their high-powered machines, flying high above the ground, high above a place where the people would have fought you hand-to-hand if possible, but, the cowards in their machines came far above my land…and in a matter of seconds incinerated my family and hundreds of others.
Now you sit here, she thought, one more arrogant man among others, showing no regret, no remorse, no apology for what you and so many others did to my country, and to other poor countries, from Vietnam to Bosnia to Somalia and so many others, blundering around with your sledgehammer weapons, speaking of piety and democracy and human rights, and slaughtering all those who get in your way.
This is what I would say, arrogant man, that the time has come for this Iraqi woman to use your machines, your arrogance, your power against you, and in a matter of weeks the world will not be able to sleep at night for the crying and rending of the robes and the gnashing of the teeth from those cold and huddled and scared survivors in what was once known as the United States of America.
That was what she wanted to say.
Instead, Adrianna said, ‘The story is nothing exceptional. Nothing like those of the good doctor here and the detective. My parents died at a young age. I lived in a poor neighborhood in Cincinnati. Raised by an aunt who passed away while I was in college. Decided then in college that my country — my homeland — was in danger. No matter what the talk shows or newspapers or opinion polls said, I just knew my country was in danger. I entered the CIA and worked well and quietly until September eleventh.’
She kept her steady gaze on the general, who was looking right back at her with a direct expression. She said, ‘Now we’re approaching an imminent threat that will make September eleventh and everything that followed it look like a schoolboy brawl. Something that will destroy what Lincoln called the world’s “last, best, hope”. And I cannot believe that you, General Bocks, will allow this nation to face something like this without your help, your aid, over the matter of a union and a dental plan. I cannot believe that a man as powerful and as dedicated as you will allow that to happen. Am I right?’
The air seemed heavy. She knew that Victor and Brian, flanking her, were no doubt looking at her but she kept her stare fixed on the general. She wondered what machinations, what thoughts, were going on behind those eyes. The general stared and stared and then he smiled, and she caught herself. No, she thought, not yet. Too soon, too soon.
‘Very well put, Miss Scott,’ he said, shifting in his chair. ‘Very well put. Yes, you’re right. I’m not going to let a simple matter of a dental plan derail what you’ve asked of me. That’s not going to happen.’
Brian said, ‘If you’ve got a strike going down in less than two hours, how in hell are you going to stop it?’
Bocks said, ‘By going back to the past. By going to my roots. By seeing someone who I once thought of as a good friend, and bringing a six-pack of beer and some ribs. And we’ll work it out.’
Adrianna forced herself to breathe slowly, not to let any excitement show. ‘So… so we can count on you and your carrier company?’
A hammer blow, right to the gut. ‘No,’ Bocks said. ‘Not yet. I require something else.’
She could not speak. Only nod.
Bocks said, ‘No offense to you and your companions here, Miss Scott, but I need to verify your bona fides. All right? Every other op I’ve ever done for the CIA and anybody else in DC, I’ve checked and rechecked what’s been requested of me. Everything from sensitive packages to sensitive people, I’ve risked equipment and aircrews for my nation. But this one…this one dwarfs everything, miss, and I’m not going to proceed until I’m comfortable. So. Who do you have?’
‘Hold on, general,’ Adrianna said, and he wasn’t sure, but the woman seemed more pale than when she came in. What was going on there? he thought. The pressures? The responsibility? The burden of having to come to
