«Your cause is doomed. What can you possibly hope to achieve by this action?»
«Freedom for the political prisoners in my country. An end to the dictatorship.»
«By kidnapping me?»
«We will hold you hostage until the political prisoners are freed,» said Moustache. «The people will see that we have the power to bend the dictator to our will. They will rebel. There will be revolution—»
The Chairman shook his head like a tired, tired man. «Blood and more blood. And in the end, who is the winner? Even if you become the new head of your nation, do you really think that you will be better than the dictator who now resides in the presidential palace?»
«Yes! Of course! How can you ask such a question of me? I have dedicated my life to overthrowing the tyrant!»
«Yes, I know. I understand. Just as Fidel did. Just as Yeltsin did. Yet, if the people are not prepared to govern themselves, they end up with another tyrant, no matter how pure his motives were at the start.»
Moustache gave him a look that would have peeled paint off a wall. «You dare say that to me?»
The Chairman made a little shrug. «It is the truth. You should not be angered by the truth.»
Moustache jumped to his feet, yelling, «The truth is that you are our hostage and you will remain our hostage until our demands have been met!» Then he stomped up the aisle toward the front car.
I told Jade to stay there and hustled after Moustache. I caught up with him in between the two cars, out on the platform connecting them.
«Hey, wait a minute, willya?»
He whirled around, his eyes still burnin’ with fury. «Uh, excuse me,» I said, tryin’ to calm him down a little, «but you said it’d be okay for us to leave once the job was over, remember?»
The anger went out of his face. He made a strange expression, like he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. «The job is far from over, I fear.»
«But I did what you wanted—»
He put a hand on my shoulder. «We had intended to take the Chairman off the train and drive him to a helicopter pad we had prepared for this operation. Unfortunately, the truck we had stationed at the emergency exit from the tunnel has already been seized by your soldiers. We are trapped here in this tunnel, in this train. The Chairman is our prisoner, but we are prisoners, too.»
«[Deleted] H. [deleted] on a crutch!» I yelled.
«Yes,» he said. «Indeed.»
«Whattaya gonna do?»
«Negotiate.»
«What?»
«As long as we hold the Chairman we are safe. They dare not attack us for fear of harming him.»
«But we can’t get out?»
«Not unless they allow us to get out.»
I got this empty feeling in my gut, like I was fallin’ off a roof or something. I guess I was really scared.
Moustache went through the door to the car up front. I went back into the middle car. Jade was sittin’ where Moustache had been. She was talkin’ with the Chairman.
«I had wanted to bring a message of hope to the people of America, particularly to the disenfranchised and the poverty classes of the dying cities,» he was tellin’ her. «That is why I agreed to make this speech in Philadelphia on the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.»
«Hope?» I snapped, ploppin’ myself down in the chair across the aisle from the two of them. «What hope?»
He didn’t answer me for a second or two. He just looked at me, like he was studyin’ me. His eyes were a kind of soft brown, gentle.
«Do you know how many people there are like you in the world?» he asked. Before I could think of anything to say he went on. «Of the more than ten billion human beings on Earth, three-quarters of them live in poverty.»
«So what’s that to me?» I said, tryin’ to make it sound tough.
«You are one of them. So is this pretty young woman here.»
«So?»
He kind of slumped back in his seat. «The World Council was formed to help solve the problems of poverty. It is my task as Chairman to lead the way.»
I laughed out loud at him. «You ain’t leadin’ any way. You’re stuck here, just like we are.»
«For the moment.»
Jade said, «We could all be killed, couldn’t we?»
I knew she was right, but I said, «Not as long as we got this guy. They won’t try nuthin as long as the Chairman’s our hostage.»
The Chairman’s eyebrows went up a fraction. «You are part of this plot? From what your friend here has told me, you were forced to help these terrorists.»
«Yeah. Well, that don’t matter much now, does it?» I said, still tryin’ to sound tough. «We’re all stuck in this together.»
«Exactly correct!» says the Chairman, like I had given the right answer on a quiz show. «We are all in this together. Not merely this»—and he swung his arms around to take in the train car—«but we are all in the global situation together.»
«What do you mean?» Jade asked. She was lookin’ at him in a way I’d never seen her look before. I guess it was respect. Like Big Lou wants people to behave toward him. Only Jade was doin’ it on her own, without being forced or threatened.
«We are all part of the global situation,» the Chairman repeated. He was lookin’ at her but I got the feeling he was talkin’ to me. «What happens to you has an effect all around the world.»
«Bull[deleted],» I said.
He actually smiled at me. «I know it is hard for you to accept. But it is true. We are all linked together on the great wheel of life. What happens to you, what happens to a rice farmer in Bangladesh, what happens to a stockbroker in Geneva each affects the other, each affects every person on Earth.»
«Bull[deleted],» I said again.
«You do not believe it?»
«Hell no.»
«Yet what you have done over the past twenty-four hours has brought you together with the Chairman of the World Council, hasn’t it?»
«Yeah. And maybe we’ll all get killed together.»
That didn’t stop him for even a half a second. «Or maybe we will all change the world together.»
«Change it?» Jade asked. «How?»
«For the better, one hopes.»
«Yeah, sure. We’re gonna change the world,» I said. «Jade and me, we don’t even [deleted] exist, far as that world out there’s concerned! They don’t want no part of us!»
«But you do exist, in reality,» he said, completely unflustered by my yellin’ at him. «And once we are out of this mess, the world out there will have to admit your existence. They will have to notice you.»
«The only notice they’ll ever take of the likes of Jade and me is to dump our bodies in a [deleted] open pit and bulldoze us over.»
«Hey, stop the yellin’!» Little Lou hollered from the front end of the car. He had just come in, with Rollo right behind him like a St. Bernard dog. Lou looked uptight. His jacket was gone, his shirt wrinkled and dark with sweat under the armpits. His hair was mussed, too. He was not happy with the way things were goin’. Rollo looked like he always looked: big, dumb, and mean.
Moustache pushed past the two of them. Jade got up from her chair and came to sit next to me. Moustache took the chair and leaned his elbows on his knees, putting his face a couple inches away from the Chairman’s.
«The situation is delicate,» he said.
The Chairman didn’t make any answer at all.
«We are unfortunately cut off here in the tunnel. The security forces reacted much more quickly than we had anticipated. They are now threatening to storm the train and kill us all. Only by assuring them that you are alive and unharmed have I persuaded them not to do so.»
The Chairman still didn’t budge.
Moustache took in a deep breath, like a sigh. «Now the chief of your own security forces wants to make certain that you are alive and well. He demands that you speak to him.» Moustache pulled a palm-sized radio from his jacket pocket.