They continued eating. Abraham came in and sat by his father. Turnbull looked quizzically at his host.
“He’s a man now, at least since last week,” David said. “We had his bar mitzvah on Sunday. We were very quiet. Anyway, he should know what we do since someday he will be helping us do it.”
“And what do you do?” asked Junior.
“Whatever we need to do to survive: buy, sell, trade. Perform tasks for our friends on the other side.”
“Do you know what we need?” asked Turnbull.
“Help. What kind they did not see fit to let me know. And then there’s something I have to give you to take back.”
“The hard drive.”
“The hard drive. It was very hard to get to.”
“And the PBI is looking for it.”
“Certainly. Which is why it is not here. It’s too dangerous to have here.”
“We can get it on the way out. But we need to find our target first.”
“And who is he?”
“She. His sister, in fact. You might have seen her. She’s a defector. Blonde. On billboards. Maybe on TV.”
David shrugged. “We’re not much on television here. Too much talking about how things are wonderful and we and everyone else they hate are terrible. What’s her name?”
“Amanda Ryan.”
“Do you have any information on where she might be?”
“We think Los Angeles. Where, we don’t know.”
“Can I see a picture?” David asked. Junior handed him one he kept in his pocket. David examined it and handed it back.
“She’s pretty. Pretty girls, they… powerful men like pretty girls, if you see what I’m saying.”
Junior glared. “She’s not a whore.”
“I didn’t mean that. It’s just that we all use whatever we have to survive. If she is on billboards and television, then perhaps she is running with the crowd in the Secured Zone. The rich people. The powerful ones. It can be hard to get in there.”
“We need to find out where she is first,” said Turnbull.
“We have a man, Jacob, who works in the PBI center downtown. He can find out.”
“Isn’t he a little conspicuous?”
“He doesn’t wear his kippah and eats whatever they put in front of him. He passes. It’s a sacrifice, but we all do what we have to.”
“And we’ll need transport.”
“Sure, a car. Gasoline. You have money for the car? It’s not free.”
“We have money. Now, what do we need to pay you?”
“Pay us?” David was confused.
“Yes, you’re taking a risk. How much money do you need?”
“No, you don’t understand. We have an arrangement. You’re a small part of it. But after we help out here for a while, your people over there will get us all out.” He patted Abraham on the head. The kid had not been able to live a normal life since he was a toddler.
“All of you? How many are you?” asked Turnbull.
“Twenty-seven. And a half – we have a pregnant lady. That’s our deal. We help your people here, they get us all over there.”
“That’s a hell of a price.” Turnbull’s mind began running through the logistics of getting 27 ½ people over the border; it was daunting. And, to his relief, it was not his problem.
“We do a hell of a job helping people like you. Now, you need to rest.”
Turnbull nodded, and they followed young Abraham to an empty apartment where they quickly collapsed into sleep.
9.
They slept until almost noon the next day, then spent several hours cleaning their weapons and double checking their gear. Their hosts left them largely alone. Life went on inside the complex; the children were quiet most of the day inside the empty room the community used as a classroom. The curriculum was English reading and writing, math, and history, as well as Hebrew and Torah. If they had gone to one of the grim schools within a few blocks away, all half empty thanks to the plummeting birthrate (but fully staffed because no unionized government worker could ever be let go), the curriculum would have been much different. They would take “Language and Writing” instead of “English” – English was no longer privileged over other, equally valid languages. Mathematics had been scrubbed to remove the sexist and culturally-biased concepts of the past. It consisted of, essentially, group work that amounted to exercises that involved counting. The science classes spent much of their time on global warming, though the global temperature averages had not increased since the late 1990s. And People’s History focused on the wicked legacy of oppression of the red states, and the new dawn of freedom in the People’s Republic since visionary President Hillary Clinton had cast away the backward red states that were holding back the forces of social justice.
The children also learned how the United States had broken the Treaty of St. Louis, forcing the People’s Republic to cut off all relations with the poor, backward red states. And it promised that someday the People’s Republic would liberate the oppressed masses trapped between the two blue masses on the West Coast and the Northeast that made up the People’s Republic. How it would do that with only the shell of a traditional military was never explained; while it spent generously on internal security to stamp out dissenters, the PRNA Army had withered into almost nothing. The People’s Republic chose to spend its money on other things, knowing its boasts about liberating the red were lies and secure in the knowledge that the United States would never bother trying to recover its lost territory.
At six o’clock, Abraham retrieved them and brought them to David’s apartment. Another man was there, nervous and quiet.
“This is Jacob,” David said. “He works for the PBI as a civilian. He has the information you need.”
Jacob offered a weak handshake.
“I assume you got the hard drive out?” Turnbull said. “How did you do that?”
“It was difficult,” Jacob replied, uneasy.
“He found your Amanda Ryan for you,” David said. “You may find this more complicated than you imagined.”
“Why is that?” Junior asked.
“She is a minor celebrity, like you thought,” David replied. “She is also a partner with the senior People’s Bureau of Investigation official in Los Angeles. A man named Martin Rios-Parkinson. A very bad man.”
“She’s a PBI agent?” Turnbull asked, mentally preparing to pull the plug on the whole thing.
“No, not that kind of partner. A domestic partner. A girlfriend.”
“That can’t be,” Junior said.
“It is,” Jacob said. “Her name was blocked on the system. I had to use a special authorization to access it. She lives with him.”
There was a rumble outside the complex, yelling and then honking. Something made a crashing sound. The men in the apartment kept perfectly still for a moment, listening. A siren sounded. It was some distance away.
“These things are happening more often,” David said.
“Yes, things are getting worse,” said Jacob. “More violence. Looting. The news won’t say it but the police in San Francisco had to open fire on looters yesterday. They killed many of them. We expect it to get worse when they announce a food rations cut tomorrow.”
“So how do we get to her?” asked Turnbull.
“She takes graduate classes at UCLA during the day at the Department of Social Justice. I printed her class schedule,” Jacob said, handing them a sheet of paper.
“What about her home address?”
“I couldn’t get that. I’m sure the Director’s address was flagged on our system, and that if I had enquired it would have alerted the Internal Security Division.” Jacob said sheepishly, looking down.