She remembered the day when the world ended, and it was foretold that the northerners would win. The Americans were not cruel; they did not abandon their loyal allies. But they were not gentle either, and in truth, what followed next was a mess coming close in its sloppiness to a tragedy. In a confusion of camps and helicopters and ships and more camps, she ended up with those of her family who still survived in the belly of a cold, far city. She began a new life and raised five daughters and nothing ever scared her.
This filth didn’t scare her. Boys with guns, black boys with guns, just like the ones you sometimes saw in Saint Paul, with no respect for ancestors, for family or clan, no warrior ethic, not even an ability to read or write. They were nothing. She spat on creatures so low.
What scared her was her daughter Sally, who sat next to her under the blaze of windows in the roof high above, in an ocean of victims, somewhat like the camps where she had spent too many months. They sat, hands folded on heads, driven here by the panic of the crowd at the gunfire. Some had already died. Some were crying, some were breaking down, some sat with the dullness of the soon-to-be-dead, most prayed for deliverance or tried to hush frightened children, but all of them just hoped not to be noticed.
But someone had noticed Sally, Mom saw. He was the shooter, the one who’d killed the five. He was maybe a little bigger than the others, and there was something surly about him. He alone was-the Hmong word was khav, meaning “proud” or possibly “self-important,” although she didn’t know English well at all, even after these many years-in the way he carried his weapon with a certain deliberate coolness and disdain. The other filth saw nothing. Their eyes were blank, they had no appreciation for what lay in front of them, as if other lives had no meaning and other places had none either. They had no depth. Whatever had formed them-war, poverty, whatever-it had left them empty, incapable of paying attention to or feeling anything. They would take what was before them, life or death, beauty or ugliness, fate or luck, and do what they had been instructed. But they would not select. They would not consider, they did not winnow, they did not decide. This one had decided.
Sally, her youngest, was a fragrant blossom on a spring day, before the wet season arrived. She smelled of delicacy, sweetness, not-yet-ripeness. She was too young to have developed but you could tell from the way men looked at her that she had a rare, almost ethereal beauty. Molly, the eldest, so smart, went away to school and now was a lawyer for the Americans in their capital; Annie had married a Japanese dentist with a practice in the suburbs; Ginger was a softball coach and nationally ranked player who had almost made the Olympics and might still; and Jeannie was in first-year med at Bloomington. But Sally, a latecomer, a final surprise from God, was the baby of the family, with ears of porcelain and a perfect little nose and bright eyes and thick, lustrous hair gathered in a ponytail. She was her mother’s prize.
But he had noticed her. She sat beside Mom, huddling, trying to comfort both Mom and herself. She wore Ugg boots in suede, black tights, a little blue jean skirt, a hoodie sweatshirt with ST. PAUL TRINITY stenciled on it, and a blue jean jacket, much too light for the weather, though Sally was a native Minnesotan, far hardier than her tropically raised mom, and normally shrugged off the cold, like the white people did.
The crowd parted as he bullied his way to them. About ten feet away, he stopped, bent down, and snatched up a woman’s purse roughly. Opening it, he grabbed the wallet and pulled out a wad of bills. Then he tossed the purse and strode forcefully to Sally through the crowd of cowed hostages. He stood above her, looking down on her imperially, like the conqueror he believed himself to be. He smiled, showing broad white teeth. Then he took a step to Mom, bent down, and said, “I have no goats. Here, take this,” and he threw the money at her.
“I buy her from you. Now she is mine. She will be my bride this day.” He laughed heartily. Then he reached down, forced his hand inside her sweatshirt and bra, and enjoyed a fondle of her small left breast. Mom saw the pain and shame cross her daughter’s face and the girl, violated, seemed to diminish before her. The large man laughed, winked at Mom, and stomped away.
Mom watched him go. She knew what she must do. She reached back, over a low stone arrangement that separated grass from garden in this mock outdoors, and surreptitiously, she snatched up a fistful of black soil. She dumped it into her purse. Then she did it again and again and again.
It seemed to take forever, setting up the phone connections, finding a special agent fluent in German, getting numbers from someone at a Siemens branch in New York, reaching finally a Siemens PR gal in Stuttgart, then finally a vice president, getting an authenticating call from the German Federal Police (they were so goddamned careful!), and now finally, Hans Jochim, fifty-four.
Yet it was not like talking to someone named Hans Jochim, fifty-four. It was like talking to someone named Holly Burbridge, thirty-two, who sat next to him. She was the translator and eventually the rhythms of the time lags seemed to disappear.
“Sir, I understand you were the design team leader on the MEMTAC 6.2 program that runs the SCADA system at several big malls in America.”
“Well, not exactly team leader,” Holly responded. “I was more of a coordinator. Policy is set by the executive branch, and, alas, vetted by marketing; then an environmental committee and a labor union committee have to file action reports, which of course must be responded to, in detail, and then there’s the hearing where the arguments are made orally in front of a board composed of-”
Jesus Christ! How long would this take!
“Sir, we’re in an emergency mode here. May I proceed, with all due respect, Herr Doktor Ingenieur?” the last a flourish he’d picked up from some World War II novel or something.
Grumpily-grumpiness came even into Holly’s voice-Herr Jochim said, “I am not a Doktor Ingenieur, I am an Ingenieur. I may go back to Hamburg-”
“Sir, our perpetrator has taken the whole system off line and we can’t penetrate. It is necessary, lives are at stake, for us to penetrate the system and regain control of the building’s security system. I’m sure with your brilliance, sir, you can suggest another route in, a back door or something.”
Wrong word.
“Back door!” exploded Holly in rage. “I do not forget things! I have no back doors. This is not a parlor game, it is one of the most sophisticated programs in the world. It controls everything. We wrote a million kilometers of code just for the cooling system. And-”
Neal took his headset off, waiting for the Teutonic typhoon to blow out to sea. Finally, hearing a pause, he jumped in with “I did not mean to imply accidental openings or sloppiness in any professional discipline. Obviously, you’re smarter than I am because I can’t get in and I need your help and-”
“The fire control system,” said the German.