Mike ducked.
They're not running a stakeout but they've got regular surveillance,
he told himself.
Believe it, man.
Adding the Beckstein residence to a regular patrol's list of places of interest would cost FTO virtually nothing—and they'd missed spotting him by seconds. He stayed down, crouched over the passenger seat as the cruiser slowly drove past. They'd be counting heads, looking for the unexpected. His cover was good but it wouldn't pass a police background check if they went to town on him—and they would, if they found Miriam's purloined Filofax. Ten seconds passed, then twenty. Mike straightened up cautiously and glanced in the rearview mirror. The cops were nearing the end of the road. Thirty seconds; they paused briefly, then hung a left, and Mike breathed out.
Okay, back to the motel,
he told himself.
Then we'll see what we've got here. . . . . .
BEGIN RECORDING
"My fellow Americans, good evening.
"It pains me more than I can say to be speaking to you tonight as your president. There are no good situations in which a vice president can take the oath of office; we step into the boots of a fallen commander in chief, hoping we can fill them, hoping we can live up to what our dead predecessor would have expected of us. It is a heavy burden of responsibility and, God willing, I shall do my utmost to live up to it. I owe nothing less to you, to all our citizens and especially to the gallant men and women who serve the cause of freedom and democracy in our nations armed forces; and I say this—I shall not sleep until our enemies, the enemies who murderously attacked us a week ago, are hunted down wherever they hide and are destroyed.
"In time of war—and this is nothing less—it is the job of the commander in chief to defend the republic, and it is the job of the vice president to stand ready to serve, which is why I have nominated as my replacement a man well-qualified to fight for freedom: former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. I trust that his appointment to this post, vacated by my succession, will be approved by the house. The future of the republic is safe in his hands.
"But I can already hear you asking: Safe from whom?
"In the turmoil and heroism and agony of the attacks, it was difficult at first for us to ascertain the identity of our enemies. We have many enemies in the Middle East, from alQaeda and the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the mullahs of Tehran, and naturally our suspicions first fell in those quarters. But they are not our only enemies; and the nature of the attack made it hard to be sure who was responsible. The two atomic bombs that exploded in our capital, and the third that misfired in the Pentagon visitors lot, were stolen from our own stockpile. This was not only a cowardly and heinous act of nuclear terrorism, but a carefully planned one. However, we have identified the attackers, and we are now preparing to deal with them as they have dealt with us.
"There is no easy way for me to explain this because the reality lies far beyond our everyday experience, but the scientists of our national laboratories assure me that this is true: We live in what they call a multiverse, a many-branched tree of reality. Scientists at Los Alamos have for a year now been probing techniques for traveling to other universes—to other versions of this, our own Earth. They had hoped to use this technique for peaceful ends, to solve the environmental and climatic problems that may arise in future decades. But we have discovered, the hard way, that we are not alone.
"Some of the alternate earths we have discovered are inhabited. And in one of these, at least, the inhabitants are hostile. Worse: They, too, have the technological tools to travel to other universes. The enemy who attacked us is the government of a sovereign nation in another America, a Godless feudal despotism ruled by terror and the lash. They know no freedom and they hate our own, for we are a living refutation of everything they hold to be true. Agents of this enemy have moved unseen among us for a generation, and indeed they have been active in the narcotics trade, using it to fund their infiltration of our institutions, their theft of our technologies. They are followers of an alien ideology and they seek to bring us down, and it is to that end that they stole at least six atomic weapons from their storage cells on military bases—gaining access from another unseen universe even as our guards vigilantly defended the perimeter fences.
"We have a name for this enemy: They call themselves the Clan, and they rule a despotic kingdom called Gruinmarkt. And we know what to do to them, for they attacked us without warning on the sixteenth of July, a date that will live in infamy with 9/11, and 12/7, for as long as there is a United States of America.
"To you of the Clan, the cabal of thieves and drug smugglers who have attacked America, I have a simple message: If you surrender now, without preconditions, I will guarantee you a fair trial before the military tribunals now convened at Guantanamo Bay. Only those of you who are guilty of crimes against the United States need fear our justice. But you should think fast. This offer expires one week from today. And then, in the words of my predecessor, Harry S Truman, you face prompt and utter annihilation.
"Think about it.
"Good night, and God bless America."
END RECORDING
Bed rest
It was beyond belief, how far things could change in just a week. Sir Huw, beanpole-skinny and a bit gawky, reined his horse in and dismounted painfully while he was still a hundred yards short of the farmstead. He stretched, trying to iron the kinks out of his thigh and calf muscles.
"Is this it, bro?" rumbled the man-mountain driving the cart and pair behind him. "In the middle of nowhere?"
Huw glanced around. "On the other side, we're near Edison," he said. "I'll go first. We're expected, but . . ." No point saying it:
The guards are jumpy.
Because this week and forevermore,
all
the guards were jumpy.
Probably expecting Delta Force to drop in,
Huw mused idly. Not, in his estimate, that likely just yet—although in the long run it couldn't be ruled out. Anxiety battled caution, and set his feet in motion. "I wonder how Her Majesty is."
"Nearly three months gone by now," chirped another voice from the back of the cart, emanating from beneath a blanket that covered its passenger and a mound of wheeled luggage—all Tumi branded, expensive but ultralightweight ballistic nylon. "Sick as a mule on a coaster." Huw didn't look round: Trust Elena to interpret it as a political question. Because Miriam's pregnancy
was
political—and that was all it was. "Did you pack the books?"
"Yes." Huw had, in fact, packed the books. Two hundred kilograms of them, paper that was worth far more than its weight in gold, or cocaine, where they were going. The Rubber Bible, the Merck Manual, the US Pharmacopoeia; and more recondite references, science and engineering and medicine all, with a side order of mathematics and maps. They weighed a bundle, but when he'd messaged ahead to ask if they should go digital, the reply had been a terse
no.
Which made a certain sense. CDROMs and computers weren't durable enough for what Miriam was planning—if, in fact, he was reading her intentions aright.