“I won’t,” Frank looked down. “Are these her sandals you’re wearing?”
“They are,” the girl turned away. The two men hurried to put their clothes on.
Then all three came over to the front door where Oprah was waiting for them. Lynda and Tom looked out of the first-floor window. Maggie waived to them, and they returned her farewell.
“Thanks a lot for the shirt,” Frank said.
“You’ve been a great help,” Max nodded at the children in the window. “Lynda said the Council was in Fordham. Is that correct?”
“That’s right,” Oprah took one step down.
“It’s that way, isn’t it?” Frank motioned in the direction of North Nelson Avenue.
“I shouldn’t hurry if I were you,” Oprah grabbed the banisters and glared at the coach, her corpulent body filling the stairway.
Max didn’t move. A car was approaching along 167th. Maggie cowered behind the men’s backs.
A few seconds later, an off-road pickup truck pulled up at the house: light gray with deep-treaded wide wheels. Three fit young men jumped out of the back. Two more men emerged from the cab.
“Lionel!” Frank recognized the one with high cheekbones as one of the camp’s leaders. “You’re Lionel Batford. Don’t you remember me? I was—”
“Which one?” the man cut him off and looked at Oprah. “Which one is it?”
She pointed at Max.
“I would ask you to surrender your gun, sir,” Lionel looked over Maggie and Frank and stepped toward Max. “You and your friends don’t need problems, do you?”
The men stepped forward surrounding them.
Chapter Seventeen. No Justice
Frank stood by a wide window in the Keating Hall. The tower’s shadow lay across the neat lawn below: the sun was setting, darkening the grass with the barely recognizable outline of the upper-story turrets. All around the former University building, heavy treetops barely moved in the breeze letting but a few soft sunrays fall through their thick foliage. Through the shafts of dust playing in the sunbeams, Frank, Maggie and Max had been shepherded up the granite stairs and into the building.
The coach and Maggie now sat at the long table with their backs to the window. Lionel Batford and Nicholas Floyd faced them. Frank watched their reflections in the window pane. Lionel, indifferent, studied the gun he’d taken from Max.
On the table between them lay the attaché case, buffed to its former silvery shine, its lid deformed by the bullets. Next to it stood the camera on its tripod connected to the monitor. The damaged battery hadn’t stood up to the pressure, so that the camp engineers, having fiddled with the contacts, had decided not to bother and connected it to the mains with a transformer. But it didn’t do much good, either. After a few minutes’ discussion, the engineers had said they were sure they could fix it if they could get it to the workshop. And so they had left under Max’s morose glare.
Frank looked down at the granite steps under the windows. He couldn’t read the names from that height, but some of them he remembered from schooclass="underline" Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mary Robinson, Harry Truman. The rest of the names he’d seen for the first time as he climbed those steps a few minutes ago. But if someone had bothered to immortalize those names in the stone worn by centuries of footsteps, then their bearers must have deserved being remembered.
It felt almost like a symboclass="underline" could it be why the Council presided here in the gothic edifice of Fordham?
He thought against asking those present, and only turned round when a door creaked, to meet Anna Gautier’s morose stare. She entered; Frank stepped to the table. The bored Floyd rose and pulled a chair up for her. Lionel Batford put the gun aside, placed his cell phone on the table next to him and sat up straight. Frank nodded to Max, looked at the restless Maggie and stood with his hands on the back of his chair, watching the Steel Lady.
“So,” her sharp contralto echoed off the walls. She glared at Max. “You’ve entered the Bronx bearing arms.” Her stare shifted to Frank. “You’re wanted by the authorities. You’re accused of murder and a terrorist attempt!” Gautier raised her voice high at the end of the sentence as if to underline it.
Frank held her stare. “You’re absolutely right. I am indeed accused of everything you’ve just said. God knows,” he sighed and looked at his coach, “I didn’t want my friends to get involved. Especially my new friends,” he looked at Maggie suppressing the desire to touch her shoulder. “I definitely didn’t plan on seeking help from you. Or from any migrants, for that matter. But,” Frank clasped the back of the chair hearing his fingers crack. “But I do have evidence of my innocence. This tape was made by Kathleen Baker and decoded using Joe Binelli’s workstation. This evidence, if only the public learns about it, will be Memoria’s undoing. Isn’t it what you want? You, of all people, need to get the authorities off your back. Didn’t you speak to Memoria’s bosses only this morning? What did they propose?”
Opposite him, Nicholas Floyd shifted in his chair. Lionel Batford’s hand slid under the table. Frank heard a click — could be the safety lock of a gun.
Gautier stared at him, her thin lips pursed. A web of deep lines crumpled her bony face, shriveling her forehead. Her eyes, encircled by a pair of crow’s feet, reflected the bright lights high above, as if her very glare was on fire. Would it destroy him and his friends? Only time could tell.
“Young man,” Gautier’s lips formed a bitter grin, “don’t you know you’re playing with fire? Who told you Memoria bosses us around? Who told you they are the authority? Could be the other way round, you know.”
She waited for him to answer. The future of Frank’s and his friends’ now depended on his right choice of words.
“But you are going to check the tape,” he allowed himself a passing grin, “of that I’m sure.”
Gautier nodded.
“Very well, then,” Frank breathed a sigh of relief. “The administration’s dependency on the Bronx camp and its business activities makes the migrants their number one enemy. They can’t control you. And no government can afford that. Especially if some members of the said government have a generous share in Memoria’s dividends. Russell Jefferson Claney is running for the Presidency. Doesn’t it make the administration one with Memoria? Did you get some of the answers you expected?”
She nodded. “Almost.”
Frank chose to ignore her sarcasm. “But this is only one side of the coin. Let’s turn it the other way up. Let’s presume that the migrants’ camp in DC has ceased to exist. There’re too many strategic objects in DC, aren’t there? The White House, the Pentagon, to name a few. So let’s presume, for the sake of argument, that the DC migrants,” Frank looked first at Max, then at Batford and Floyd, “have been relocated to smaller towns and communities. Let’s presume that there exists a secret agreement between the administration and the migrants’ Presiding Council that does just that…”
“Is it true?” Floyd rose, his bulk overpowering Gautier. She didn’t flinch, her morose stare fixed on Frank. “So it is, then. But how… How could you?”
Batford, as more cool-headed, pulled Floyd’s arm, forcing him to sit back down. Frank went on,
“It would only be a temporary measure, wouldn’t it? A compromise. Just another deal.”
The Steel Lady glared as if she wanted to burn a hole in him.
“We all want to live,” Frank mused. “No matter how old we are. We all want to live a long comfortable life. Back to DC, though. Theirs wasn’t a large camp: just over twenty thousand people. Many other smaller camps have disappeared off the map in a similar way,” he started unfolding his fingers, “one in Oklahoma, another in Montana, the West Coast…”