His indigestion felt like a fist squeezing tightly just below his rib cage. Pizza was the worst thing in the world for it, but pizza was what he felt like. And for the moment, at least, it was about the only thing in his life he could control. Plus, he knew that for half an hour or so, the food would be a blessed relief as it sopped up his stomach acids. After closing the door of the apartment behind him, and silently thanking Marilyn’s forgetfulness - she hadn’t turned off the heating system when she’d left for home - Jed dialled up for a four-cheese pizza from the place on the corner, and poured himself a double measure of Mylanta as an aperitif.
He channel-surfed the news stations for a few minutes, but that did nothing to settle his stomach or his nerves. Fox News, as usual at this time of night, was taking its feed directly from Sky in the UK. The Greens leader, Sandra Harvey, was on MSNBC, causing him to rapidly surf away from that channel, and the local news station was still obsessing about the weather. In the end, he left it on a movie channel, where John Wayne was trying to remake his image in The Searchers. He had just enough time for a shower and one glass of Bulleitt Bourbon before his pizza arrived.
Jed knew he shouldn’t have been inhaling so many tons of cheese and starchy carbs that late at night. Marilyn was already on his case about the extra weight he was carrying, and she had a point.
‘Soon as I put this asshole away,’ he promised himself as he levered out the first slice. ‘I will bury Mad Jack Blackstone, and then I’ll get myself back into shape. Maybe even go back to wrestling. But there’s not much fucking point pretending it’s going to happen before then, is there, Duke?’
He saluted the TV with his drink.
He probably should’ve had a glass of wine with the pizza, but he was on a roll with the bourbon and didn’t want to change drinks. It would just make for a worse hangover in the morning.
After sluicing down the last piece with another slug of antacid, Jed washed his hands and took a legal pad and pencil to bed with him. There he began to sketch the outlines of the problems he was dealing with, and what if any solutions he might apply.
‘Blackstone, for now, I can’t do anything about,’ he said aloud. But he wrote down the name Murdoch, circled it, and penned a question mark.
Of course, he had never intended for Kipper to find out about Agent Monroe’s mission in Texas. Since the President had expressly forbidden any such mission, there was a fair chance he would be unhappy to learn of it. Especially if he found out before Monroe was able to effect a result. Jed imagined she would do so quickly, but he would have to build a firewall around her to prevent Kip from having any contact with the fictional air force colonel. At least until she was done.
Distraction.
He wrote the word underneath the first entry and followed it up with another question mark.
Prisoners.
Jed had done some preliminary work on the question of what to do with the prisoners they still held from the fighting in New York. It was an issue the President wanted to deal with and move past. It was also an issue that spoke to the better angels of Kipper’s nature, unlike his own, and that made it ripe for exploitation.
The next hour passed quickly as Culver mapped out a plan for dealing with the prisoners in a way he knew would appeal to Kip. As a bonus it would also meet with the approval of Secretary Humboldt, meaning that he should be able to whip up a small shit storm of enthusiasm for it in the short term. Like, tomorrow. Kipper’s natural inclination would be to let Tusk Musso make the running on any initial response to this bullshit in Florida. For once, Jed had reason to be grateful for Kip’s natural scepticism about national security issues. Give him the choice between dealing with a security issue and an engineering challenge, or a question of development or resettlement, and you would do your dough cold betting on the former.
When he finally looked up from the legal pad, which he had filled with pages of scrawled notes and diagrams, it was after midnight. He wondered what might be happening in Texas, if anything, and resisted the urge to call Wales Larrison in Vancouver.
He could talk to him first thing in the morning. No point waking the man up to deal with something over which he had no control. For the moment at least, the President remained unaware that Monroe was operating within the boundaries of the United States, in direct contravention of his wishes. Perhaps they could keep it that way.
52
FORT HOOD, KILLEEN, TEXAS ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION
‘Well, this is awkward.’
‘You could put the gun down, Ty. Might help.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said, smiling disingenuously. ‘And if you could keep your hands where I can see them and stay out of striking range, which I presume to be considerable in your case, we’ll be cool.’
He took a step back into the corridor, allowing her a better view of two security guards flanking him, both with their own handguns drawn and pointed none too steadily at her head. One of them moved towards her, reaching for a set of handcuffs.
‘Whoa. I really wouldn’t do that if I was you, Sam,’ said McCutcheon. ‘You don’t want to get too close to her.’
Damn.
The Governor’s main man grinned as though he’d just played the winning card. ‘Gee, this is a surprise, isn’t it? The international super-spy gets her ass handed to her by a bunch of hicks. Embarrassing much?’
‘A bit. But how?’ she asked. ‘Surely not the clowns you had monitoring my room back in Temple?’
She had her hands up, and the night-vision goggles pushed back on her head. One of only two advantages she held at that moment. Another second and she would’ve fitted the NVGs, blinding herself when McCutcheon had thrown open the door and flooded the room with light.
He laughed. ‘No. Rest assured, your surveillance shift is still listening to whoever you put in your room. I checked in with them earlier. She snores, which you don’t. Those boys are probably jerkin’ their gherkins right now while they tell each other exactly how many ways they’d fuck you from Sunday.’
‘Nice to know I still got it,’ said Caitlin.
‘Oh, you got it, baby. And I want it. Now hand it over.’
He pointed his gun at her phone.
‘Just lay it on the floor and step away.’
‘You didn’t tell me how you blew my cover, Ty. You know, in the movies the super-villain has the decency to explain that sort of thing.’
She crouched down and laid the cell at her feet, before backing away. McCutcheon sent one of the security guards through to collect it while keeping his gun aimed at the centre of her face.
‘I’m more of a senior henchmen than your actual super-villain,’ he replied. ‘But for what it’s worth, you can blame your husband. Well, if you ever get to see him again.’
‘Bret?’
‘Oh, don’t be too hard on old Melly. He meant well. He loves you, and he’s very proud of you. That’s why he sent a wedding photo to an old army buddy of mine, a Ranger too, who forwarded it to their regimental association, who then published it in their newsletter. Their electronic newsletter.’
She closed her eyes.
‘Yes, you remember now? Hatches, matches and dispatches. That newsletter covers them all. And, of course, Bret was quite the fifteen-minute celebrity for a while there. Army Times correspondent, one of what, half a dozen who survived the Wave? He wrote some great dispatches out of Iraq. Pulitzer Prize-winning stuff, if there’d still been a Pulitzer Prize. So, yeah, when an old boy of the 75th Ranger Regiment makes good like that, and marries himself a pretty girl, it’s a feel-good story. The sort of thing that gets a good run in the old boys’ newsletter. You know - to lift the spirits. People have been so darn gloomy since the end of the world.’