“Well, Senator, I am less concerned with this item than with what you might want to say that requires it. Are you planning on saying something no one else can hear?”
“I am, Director.”
“Something compromising?”
“Oh, yes. Certainly compromising. But not to me.”
“I do not understand.”
“Well, allow me to put it in context, Director. And that context is that you seem to be losing control of the area in which you have been appointed to keep order.”
Rios-Parkinson bristled, which the senator noted. He continued.
“There were almost two dozen deaths in Westwood this afternoon. Right inside the secured sector. You know, nobody notices a food riot by the hungry slobs out there outside the walls. Yes, I know they are getting more common, especially after the ration debacle, and I know you have given orders to use the force necessary to shut them down.”
“We will be focusing on the economic criminals too, Senator.”
“Economic criminals – don’t talk to me like I’m one of those true believing fools. And I’m not going to insult your intelligence by treating you like you’re one either. I ran companies before all of this. I know how to make things, how to get them to the people. The people we work with, that you and I compete against, they don’t, but they still naturally accrued all the power to do so themselves. They cannot abide anyone else choosing or doing or thinking without their approval, and that’s why we can’t even feed ourselves anymore.”
Rios-Parkinson remained calm, fascinated that the senator was saying these things to him. Why would he do that? What did he want?
“We could not compete with the reds after the Split, so we just stopped trying. We shut the borders and pretended the rest of the country was not even there anymore. Do you think they have hungry people rioting for food in Dallas, in Kansas City, in Atlanta?”
Rios-Parkinson had read the intelligence summaries on the United States – the accurate ones, not the ones modified and massaged for consumption by those less ideologically solid than he. He knew the truth too.
Harrington leaned in. “We don’t produce anything, except propaganda to stoke fake outrage so people forget they’re hungry. And since we don’t make anything or grow anything or pump anything out of the ground because of global warming or social justice or why ever, there’s no more money coming in. We are near the end of our credit line. No more loans. Russia, China, the EU already hold everything of value we have as collateral, and they are sick of carrying us. Do you know what that means? If we don’t change, we collapse, and when this all falls apart, people like you and I are going to be swinging from broken lamp posts.”
“We can suppress the unrest, control it.”
“With who? Your PSF and PBI thugs? Pretty soon your own people will be leading the riots. They already rob citizens in the streets outside the secure sector – don’t think I don’t know about that. But there is an answer.”
Rios-Parkinson silently considered what Harrington was telling him. Unmet expectations and anger were powerful weapons against an ossified establishment – he knew that from having exploited them himself before the Split.
The senator continued. “Remember the free market? Well, it works. And now we are seeing what happens when you replace it with a bunch of useless college professors, untalented artists, moronic movie stars, and San Francisco chardonnay sippers who think they can personally run every aspect of a country when they know absolutely nothing about how a country works.”
“There is a reason you are telling me this. What is it?”
“I need your help, and you definitely need mine,” the senator said.
“What help do I need from you, Senator?”
“Good,” Harrington replied, smiling. “Enlightened self-interest. That’s the right question. What can I do for you? Well, I can warn you that your problems have not gone unnoticed outside your little empire of the security services.”
“The riots…”
“Not the riots. Well, not just the riots. That has people talking, important people. No, it’s come to my attention that you have managed to lose a certain item that would be of great interest to people on both sides of the border. And that there are infiltrators – spies – here trying to get it.”
Rios-Parkinson froze. The senator sat back in his chair.
“Did you think you were the only one who collects information?” the senator asked.
“How did you –”
“Don’t bother asking. My informer network is nowhere near as extensive as yours, but what my intelligence assets lack in sheer quantity I like to think they make up in quality. But if I know, then other people know, or they could know, and you cannot have that.”
No, he could not have that. The hard drive’s files not only set out his entire informer network – that was bad enough – but provided proof of what loyal friend, devoted confidant, or faithful lover was actually an informer. The reds obviously wanted it for their own purposes, but here in the People’s Republic, there would be two kinds of people seeking it: those being spied upon, and those doing the spying.
“If someone gets a hold of it, your position becomes precarious,” Harrington said. “Like a man hanging out there on that ledge while another man pounds his fingers one by one with a ball-peen hammer.”
The server, a young woman in a short skirt that would not play anywhere else in the PRNA, hovered a few feet away with two bottles of French sparkling water and two cups of ice. Harrington gestured for her to approach, and she dropped two coasters on the table then placed the glasses on them and filled them up without a word, leaving the bottle. Harrington remained silent, waiting. Rios-Parkinson’s eyes never left him.
“Can I bring you something else, a drink maybe?”
“Go,” said the Director, and the server vanished. Rios-Parkinson leaned forward.
“And you will help me by…”
“By not telling anyone about your fuck up.”
“And in return for this gracious favor?
“Well, nothing now. You can bank that favor. Do you know what I mean by that, since we have largely done away with banking as part of our quest for ideologically unimpeachable impoverishment?”
“So sometime in the future, you anticipate requiring my assistance.”
“Oh yes. You run the security apparatus on the West Coast. I expect – assuming you solve your problems with the rioting and the spies and the missing list – that you will run the national security apparatus in the not too distant future, something I can certainly assist in making happen. National Director O’Malley is, well, you understand. Ineffective. A figurehead. But you could make that job into something more, bring the East Coast under your control, and then you would be a very useful ally for an ambitious man like myself.”
“You want to be the President?”
“I do,” said the senator. “And once I am, I intend to stay president for a good while. And to do that, to keep from being hanged from a lamppost whose lamp hasn’t worked since 2028, I need to bring people some measure of prosperity. I at least need to ensure they can eat. And if I am seen to feed them, they will love me and no one will be able to topple me.”
“So I watch your back?” said Rios-Parkinson.
“Yes, but not just when I am maneuvering for position. Once I have it, I will need to reform this dysfunctional abortion we call the People’s Republic. And when I say ‘reforms,’ as every former communist country whose standard of living has outstripped ours, from Albania to Vietnam knows, I mean market reforms.”
“They’ll resist.”
“They don’t have any guns. You have them all.”
Rios-Parkinson took a sip on his fizzy water, then put the glass back down.