Bugsy lay back on the office couch, the UN-approved fair-trade leather creaking under him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, sure, maybe. She could have. But she’d just told me about how she was a big ol’ ho who’d boffed anything that moved and didn’t love her own kid. We weren’t really in withhold personal information mode, if you see what I mean.”
Lohengrin frowned and looked out over Manhattan. The winter light made the city look cleaner than it was. The German tapped his hands together in something between impatience and confusion. “That is very odd.”
“That’s what I thought,” Bugsy said. “But just because our first guess was off doesn’t mean we’re screwed. Okay, so Sprout isn’t Tom Weathers’s kid. The Radical and Cap’n Trips didn’t know each other because they’d slept with the same woman.”
“Captain Trips?”
“Mark Meadows. He went by Cap’n Trips back when he was trying to be the kind of guy he thought Kim would be into. Selling drugs, running a head shop, hanging out with aces. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Meadows was part of that scene during the two and a half decades that Weathers spent underground. Sixty-nine to ninety-three is a pretty long time. Lots of things could have happened.”
Lohengrin sat. His time on the Committee had aged him. Bugsy remembered when he’d come on, guest ace on American Hero. There hadn’t been the weariness around his eyes back then, or the sense of crushing responsibility. Maybe he’d lost it in Egypt. Maybe since then. Making the world a better place turned out to be a shitty job.
“Very well,” Lohengrin said.
“You doing all right, big guy?”
Lohengrin shrugged. With shoulders like that, it was a more tectonic motion than it would have been for Bugsy. “There are problems. You cannot know, Jonathan. The politics, the budget…”
“You know, it’s funny you should mention that. The next step on the whole Tom Weathers thing kind of depends on the expense account,” Bugsy said.
Lohengrin’s brows rose.
“There’s still got to be a connection between Meadows and Weathers,” Bugsy continued. “And the next most likely one is that something happened between them back when Meadows was chancellor of South Vietnam. Sprout was there. The Radical showed up in the same general part of the world not long after.”
“Yes,” Lohengrin agreed, but pulling the word out several syllables to make it clear he was waiting for the expensive part.
“Well,” Bugsy said. “It seems like we ought to talk with Meadows about it, and since he’s all blowed up…”
“You want to send Cameo,” Lohengrin said.
“Well, both of us. Me and her.”
Lohengrin smiled. “You’re sure you aren’t just trying to get a free vacation with your girlfriend?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Bugsy said. “She’s channeling my girlfriend. And her boyfriend, for that matter.”
“Simoon has a dead boyfriend?”
“No, Cameo does. It’s complicated.”
A hint of amusement seemed to touch Lohengrin’s eyes, but it might have just been the angle his head was at.
Bugsy yawned. “Look,” he said. “Cameo is a professional and an ace. She’s on the Committee. She’s the obvious choice. If you want me to follow up on the connection between the Radical and Sprout, it’s going to mean paying market price.”
“Fine,” Lohengrin said. “I will discuss it with the others as soon as possible.”
“You bet,” Bugsy said. “And can we get tickets on the company card? The airlines are giving me shit about the discount again, and if
…”
“Ja, ja,” Lohengrin said.
“Or you could see if Lilith’s in town, save us time and money both.”
Bugsy hadn’t meant it as a dig, but Lohengrin bristled.
“Sorry,” Bugsy said.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” Lohengrin said.
“No, really. If I’d known Lil was really Noel, the British hermaphrodite in really good drag, I would totally have waved you off that night.”
“I appreciate that.”
“And, you know, she’s an ace. Or, that’s to say he is. Or… y’know, Noel’s an ace. It’s a full-on transformation. It’s not like you got a hummer and just didn’t notice her Adam’s apple.”
“Jonathan?”
“And it was Vegas. You know, weird things just happen in Vegas. I knew one guy I would swear wasn’t into midgets when he went there for his honey-moon. Three days later, he and his new wife are-”
“Jonathan.”
“Yes, boss?”
“If I approve the expenses, will you leave?”
Grand Hotel
Kongoville, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
“What do you Mean you don’t have a reservation for me?” Michelle asked indignantly. She had been a supermodel once, and she did indignation very well.
The young clerk behind the reception desk looked very unhappy. “Miss,” he replied. “I do not see any reservation for a Michelle Pond.”
“This is your fault,” Michelle snapped at Joey. “I ask you to do one thing. One thing! And you can’t even manage that.” She turned back to the clerk. “I don’t suppose you could find us something? Anything. We’ve come such a long way and we’re both exhausted.” She gave him her very best oh-goodness-please-help-me look.
It worked.
“I think we might be able to arrange something,” he said.
Michelle breathed a sigh of relief. There was no way to make a reservation and then pop into the hotel a few hours later without arousing suspicion. She had hoped pretending that they had lost the reservation would cover her showing up out of the blue.
“I have a suite available,” he said after typing into his terminal for a few minutes.
That’s gonna be pricey. The interest rate on the big cash advance she had taken to finance this trip was going to be hell to pay, too. But it didn’t really matter to Michelle. What mattered was getting to Adesina.
“The suite would be perfect. Thank you so much for accommodating us this way.” Michelle gave him her very best you’re-just-the-nicest-person-in-the-world smile.
He beamed back at her and slid two room cards across the desk. “You know, you look very familiar to me.”
Michelle smiled at him. “Oh, I used to model,” she said. “I’m here on business now. I’ve decided to start my own clothing line. I’ve been told that the PPA has the best garment workers in the world.”
“That is true. The hotel has a wonderful tour of Kongoville. Would you like me to book you two seats? It will give you a very good feel for our city.”
“Oh, mostly I want to see the Congo River. I hear it’s beautiful. Can I get a taxi there?”
He gave her a shiny smile. “Certainly, but the bus tour also takes you to the river. And you will see many other wonderful places along the way.”
Michelle wanted to drag him across the desk and explain to him that a little girl was suffering in a goddamn pit of corpses and she really didn’t have the time to go sightseeing.
“My brother-in-law drives the bus,” the clerk continued. “He’s a very good driver.”
She nodded politely. His persistence about the tour became clear. But, in a group of tourists, perhaps she and Joey wouldn’t stand out quite as much. And she needed to figure out where to go next. “How long does it take?”
“Only two hours.”
“Two tickets,” she said.
Nyunzu, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Wally was sitting on a pile of rubble near the smoldering lab, scrubbing fiercely at his body with steel wool, as if he could scrub away the memories as easily as the blood, soot, and rust. “Here,” Jerusha told him, picking up one of the S.O. S pads and crouching down behind him. The few pads left in his pack had all been well used and were starting to fall apart and rust themselves. The piece she held was tearing loose in her fingers even as she started scouring his back, cleaning away the rust spots there that he couldn’t reach.
The rust was deep there-not just on the surface of his skin. She worried about that. She worried about the bandage tied around his leg. “Feels good,” Wally grunted. “Thanks, Jerusha.”