Brian folded his arms. ‘Thing is, on the job, you know that most of the people you meet out on the street, they’ve got an agenda, they’re slinging bullshit, not telling you the truth, hiding stuff from you, all that. That’s part of the job. But the Fed job… it’s something when the people you’re working with, they’re the ones slinging bullshit, they’re the ones you can’t trust. Hell of a thing.’
‘That why you left?’
Brian thought about what he had been doing in Cincinnati, unearthing all those questions about Adrianna, about her past, about the death of her aunt, about the payoffs to her neighbors… A lot of questions to be answered. But when he had been offered the chance to leave, he had jumped at it.
Like a tired and scared rookie, seeing his first body.
Running away.
‘Good question.’
Jimmy said, ‘Years with you, I think I can figure out what’s going on.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I think you’ve got unfinished business back there. I think you wanted to leave but something’s back there, calling you. True enough?’
Brian looked at the cocky face of his partner, thought for a moment, and picked up his bagpipes. ‘Request time. What do you want to hear?’
“‘Amazing Grace”,’ Jimmy said, grinning.
‘Fuck you,’ Brian said.
‘Didn’t know that was a bagpipe tune.’
‘Lots of things you don’t know, for a detective.’ And he started playing ‘Teribus’, trying, just for a moment, to ignore the truth that his detective partner had been slinging his way.
At 11:05 p.m. the night before the scheduled departure of the canister-loaded aircraft, on a catwalk above one of the three maintenance hangars that AirBox leased, Alexander Bocks stood with Randy Tuthill, looking down at the organized chaos below them. Off to the left and right, MD-11 cargo jets with the yellow and black AirBox markings — and, a secret to all in the company save for a few, it was dear Clara, his wife, who had come up with the colors and logos, back when the company was two old 707s, rescued from an Arizona boneyard — and people were hard at work underneath all of them. People. His people! Scaffolding had been set up mid-fuselage, to gain access to the air-conditioning packs, and it had been an amazing process to see. The big jets had been towed in with the small tractor carriers, and machinists and maintenance workers had swarmed around them like the proverbial ants on a sugar cube. And when it was finished, each jet was wheeled out the other side of the hangar, and another jet, parked outside on the tarmac, was wheeled in.
Bocks slapped Randy on the back. ‘I’ve seen the work orders and routing sheets. Your folks are an hour ahead of schedule! An hour! Christ on a crutch, Randy, they’re doing a hell of a job.’
Randy folded his big hands, leaned against the catwalk railing. ‘Treat your people right, and give them an impossible job to do, and nine times out of ten they’ll pull through for you, General.’
‘Damn glad to hear it.’ Bocks checked his watch. ‘At this rate, we’ll have the right amount of aircraft ready for the mission, and we’ll be ready by the time for first flight. Two a.m. If nothing screws up.’
Randy didn’t reply, so Bocks repeated himself. ‘Like I said, if nothing screws up.’
His friend and machinist said, ‘Sorry to tell you, General. Looks like a screw-up is approaching.’
Bocks turned and saw his CFO, Frank Woolsey, coming towards them, face red with anger, one hand tightly clenched around a business-sized manila envelope.
Bocks said, ‘Hold onto your balls, Randy. This isn’t going to be pretty.’
‘Holding my balls don’t sound too pretty, either, but I’ll do what I have to do.’
In her hotel room at 11:10 p.m., Adrianna Scott put the picture of her family — still hidden behind the poorly repaired frame — on the small round table in her hotel room. She had spent just a few minutes looking at papa and mama, remembering. Her favorite collection of books was lined up next to the quiet television, on a low shelf next to a sliding glass door that led out to a waist-high balcony. For the past three days, while she hadn’t been over at AirBox checking on the progress of the canister installation, she’d spent most of her free time on the balcony, looking over Memphis, seeing the aircraft take off and land at the airport. Watching the daily waltz of aircraft movements, feeling excited at the stage she had set for the wonderful event that was going to take place in just a few hours.
Now she looked at herself in the room’s mirror. Presentable. That was all. Just presentable. She could not believe how tired she was. Ever since coming back to Memphis, after the death of Darren and the shunting aside of Victor, Monty and Brian — and truth be told, how often had she thought of that strong man’s tender touch these past few nights? — she had hardly slept at all. The only reason she was coherent was because of a CIA-issued drug cocktail that allowed her to rev on for a few days at peak performance despite the exhaustion she was now experiencing.
But it was close. Oh so close. Just one more session with the AirBox boys and in just a few hours the jets would be taking off to bomb the heartland of this country, the very first time it had been bombed since a few futile efforts by the Japanese more than a half-century ago. And she purposely didn’t count 9/11 and the few spastic attempts that had followed. She and the Japanese of the 1940s had one thing in common: an overwhelming desire to see the death and destruction of America.
Adrianna grabbed a light jacket, looked again in the mirror. The CIA cocktail was still working, but Jesus, there would be a price to pay once this was over. Two days of bed rest, if not more, while the body recovered… And then something struck her. One decision she had yet to make.
For where should she go after the aircraft took off? The continental United States was not going to be a particularly fun place to be within the next twenty-four hours, and she had no desire to be stuck here while Mexico and Canada — panicked about what was happening to their north and their south respectively — closed the borders. So where to go in the next few hours? Mexico or Canada? Canada had better government, better amenities, but in Mexico you could get things done quickly, especially certain illegal things, by the judicious passing of folding money to the right people.
Still, she would decide shortly. And she knew it would only be a temporary arrangement in any case, for she had no doubt that in a couple of weeks the entire North American landmass, from Acapulco to the Beaufort sea, wouldn’t be a particularly fun place to be either. France, perhaps. Provence. Nice weather, great food, and even if the politics were self-centered and corrupt, well, at least France had never murdered her family.
She looked at her bag on the bed, ready to be packed when she got back from a meeting at the airport. Her very last meeting, ever.
Adrianna went out of her hotel room, shutting the light off behind her.
At his condo unit at 11:30 at night, Victor Palmer was playing music from the late 1930s, swing band stuff — he couldn’t have identified who was playing what, for all he cared for were the sounds, not the composers or the bands — as he went through his Doc Savage collection, leafing through the brittle pages of the pulp magazines, trying to imagine himself alive and well during those magnificent times. Oh, he knew that the times weren’t that special — the Great Depression was roaring along and the black clouds of fascism and communism were looming fast over the horizon — but there was just such an innocence highlighted in these pages. The diplomas by mail. The truss supports. The pamphlets that promised ‘secrets of the ages’.