President Albert Bacon Fachearon was in trouble. Overwhelmed by the job, he seemed paralyzed by indecision. Congress called for action, but Fachearon faltered.
It was Raymond Harris who had calmly spoken of outsourcing the management of the U. S. government "until the crisis period had passed."
Troy was aghast. It was all coming true. The Transition that Harris's document had described. Worst of all, the media was buying it.
Harris was the man with the calm hand — at least in comparison to other PMC CEOs, such as Layton Kynelty of Cernavoda Partners, who had been a bit more assertive about taking control. By comparison, Harris did seem like a voice of reason. According to the article, opposition to Harris, even in Congress, was depicted as strident, even a bit irrational.
Troy couldn't believe his eyes.
Just as he thought he had seen it all, Troy turned the page. There were several photographs of Harris at a memorial service. Apparently, the magazine's editors wanted to show the human, "personal" side of Raymond Harris and had sent a photographer to cover him at the funeral of a fallen colleague.
It was only when Troy recognized his own mother in one of the pictures that he realized that this was the Troy Loensch memorial service.
The man who had tried to kill him was comforting his mother, who thought he was dead!
That duplicitous son of a bitch!
At that moment, the door to the guy's inner office opened. His previous customer smiled at Troy as she left clutching a ticket folder.
"Mr. Loensch, I presume," he said in Spanish-accented English. "I have your documents ready…. please step into my office."
He smiled proudly as he handed Troy a U. S. passport with a photo Troy had taken in a drugstore kiosk the day before.
"It looks real," Troy said, suspiciously.
"It is real," the guy said, sounding a little disappointed that Troy would imagine him dealing in counterfeit passports. "I know a young lady at the embassy."
"I see."
"They're using nongovernmental contractors over there now," the guy explained. "It's much more efficient."
"Of course it is," Troy said.
"And here is your ticket to Los Angeles."
"Thank you," Troy said, clutching the colorful ticket folder. "But I've just been having some second thoughts."
"Second thoughts?"
"As much as I would really like to go back to L. A., there is somewhere else that I really think I need to be." "Yes…"
"How hard would it be to exchange this for a ticket to Washington, D. C.?"
"Washington… hmmm…"
"How much?" Troy interrupted.
"Let's say… hmmm… a hundred dollars U. S. would take care of the exchange."
"That's a good deal…"
"I know a young lady at the airline." The guy smiled.
Chapter 44
It was personal. The loathing that troy had for Raymond Harris, the loathing that seemed to grow each time Harris crossed Troy's mind, was personal — very personal.
He hung from a strap in one of the lumbering mobile lounges that carry people from the midfield concourse to the main terminal at Washington, D. C.'s principal international airport. With no checked baggage and no overhead baggage, Troy was ahead of most of his fellow passengers on the American Airlines flight from Miami. Only an energetic young guy with a suit and a laptop had made this mobile lounge. He was already on his phone, already doing business as Troy fumed.
Herndon was just a few miles away. Harris was probably in his office on Firehawk's seventh floor, his office with the models and the flags and the framed pictures of politicians whom he now desired to put out of business.
Troy could be at Firehawk Headquarters inside a half hour — maybe as little as fifteen minutes. Getting to the seventh floor would be another matter. Nobody got to the seventh floor without an invitation. He could imagine Harris's reaction when the receptionist announced that Troy was in the lobby.
The last time Troy had walked into that lobby, he had done so as a conquering hero. Indeed, the plaque with his picture was probably still in that lobby. This time, he imagined quite a different reception. However, Troy had no intention of walking into the Firehawk lobby today, nor of allowing himself to be announced to Raymond Harris. The next time he met Harris face-to-face, he intended it to be on his own terms. How and when that would be, he had yet to figure out.
The last time Troy had walked through the Dulles main terminal, he had been headed toward the rental car section of Ground Transportation, but today, with no expense account and only about three hundred dollars in his pocket, he passed the rental car desks and took a place in line for the number 5A Metrobus.
The last time Troy had put Dulles Airport into a rearview mirror on the eastbound Hirst-Brault Expressway, he was headed for a comfortable room at the Marriott Courtyard in Arlington. Today, he hoped they'd have a bed for him at the YMCA on Rhode Island Avenue in downtown Washington.
The last time Troy had glimpsed Firehawk Headquarters from the highway, his thoughts had turned to Jenna Munrough, and they turned that way today.
He had not seen her in the pictures of his funeral, and he wondered what she must have thought. Had she thought it an appropriate fate for the man who had shot down Hal Coughlin to die himself in an airplane crash? Had she thought about it much at all?
THE SUN WAS SETTING AS TROY CROSSED THE M Street bridge over Rock Creek Park. He had managed to get a cot at the YMCA and stashed his little duffel bag in a locker. He had time to kill, so he decided to take a walk.
Washington was not the Washington he remembered. A pall hung over the city, a pall of uncertainty. The Washington he remembered exuded a confidence, a confidence that came with knowing that all of the important institutions had lives of their own, lives that endured regardless of which party was in power, regardless of whether the president in power was up in the polls, or down in the gutter of a scandal. Today, a nervous apprehension prevailed.
The headlines in the news racks, like the chatter of the talking heads on the television screen back at the YMCA, debated among themselves, even as Congress debated a bill that would place the executive branch under the receivership of a nonpartisan, nongovernmental commission.
Raymond Harris was on nearly every front page — he and Layton Kynelty of Cernavoda Partners. The two PMCs were now negotiating to bring in their management expertise to run the executive branch and get a handle on the myriad crises that the United States was facing around the world. It would be, in the words of the blue folder at Cactus Flat, The Transition.
Troy learned that had he indeed decided to stop off at Firehawk this morning and call on Raymond Harris, he would not have found him. Harris was on Capitol Hill, talking to Congress and offering his able services to head up the management of the executive branch. The man currently charged with that task, President Fachearon, was also testifying — across the street at the U. S. Supreme Court. He argued that, even though his approval rating had sunk to single digits, he remained the president under the Constitution. Congress had never before impeached a president so that he could be replaced by outsourced management, but as Harris insisted, there was a first time for everything.
Troy had returned from the jungle to discover that ex-generals running clandestine experimental aircraft operations had approval ratings! It mystified and infuriated Troy, but there it was. Harris had an approval rating of nearly fifty percent. In a polarized era when approval ratings rarely exceeded forty percent, that was considered very good.