Amerika (9 page)

“That’s what you were thinking about when we kissed?”

“After we had been married a few years you learned to breathe.”

He laughed and shook his head.

“I remember the first time we made love—I had this terrible thought: what if he has to hold his breath? That’ll be ninety seconds maximum.”

Peter couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You did not.”

“Absolutely. The important thing is
you
did not.” They hugged affectionately, listening to the songs that continued from inside, making the moment seem a suspension of time. Amanda turned in his arms and looked at the river.

“Sometimes—it seems as though nothing has happened.”

Peter nodded. “You know what I always wanted to do? Just get on that river—take it down through Kansas and Missouri, all the way to the Gulf. Devin and I—well, it was Devin’s idea. We were reading
Huckleberry Finn.
We must’ve been nine, or maybe eleven or twelve. Anyway, his old man called the state police. They found us about a half hour after we’d launched our raft—probably about fifteen minutes before we would’ve sunk.”

Am
anda smiled. “I’m game.”

“We’d better get back in.”

“No guts, huh?”

“We’d have to carry too many travel permits,” he said, pulling them abruptly back to the present. “No room for your knapsack.”

They had just returned to the noisy ballroom when a young man in a dark suit stopped them.

“Mr. Peter Bradford?”

“Yes.”

“Colonel Denisov would like a word with you.”

“Of course.” He shrugged to Amanda. “Save my place.”

Ward Milford had feared it might go this way. The old man hadn’t had a good word to say about Devin in more than two years. For that matter, he hadn’t exactly been jumping up and down about Devin’s campaign platform back in 1992, all that fiery rhetoric that sounded to a conservative man-of-the-farm like revolutionary talk. But when Devin had disappeared . . . that was it. Traitor. He might as well have been a terrorist.

“Well, that gives the bastard twenty-four and a half miles to stay away from here,” Will spat out when told Devin would be restricted to a twenty-five-mile radius. Ward argued, standing up for his brother, if only

because there was no one else to do it. Certainly not Alethea, who left the table almost as soon as the subject came up and the volume of conversation, in turn, did likewise. And certainly not Ward’s wife Betty, who knew trying to sway Will Milford would be like convincing a river to flow upstream. Nonetheless, she fed Ward an occasionally supportive half smile during the argument and, ultimately, followed him through the swinging door when he opted for the quiet of the kitchen.

He stood at the sink, calming himself, his face a portrait of frustration. Betty leaned against the refrigerator and waited until Ward first shook his head and then grinned, almost sheepishly.

“Guess I should have known better, huh?”

She smiled and moved to him, touching his arm. “He’ll have to get used to the idea. Just like with the squatters.”

Ward grinned and gave a short, sardonic chuckle. “If he gets used to it that well, we’re in for some real good times around here.”

“That’d be a switch.”

The two stood silently for a long moment. Ward broke it, wrapping his arms around her in a brief bear hug and then heading for the side door. “Gotta make the rounds,” he said almost apologetically. He opened the door to leave but paused as he noticed her faraway expression. “What?”

“I wonder if we’ll find out what happened?”

He shrugged, feeling a little strange by his own answer. “I don’t reckon it makes a lot of difference now.”

Betty studied his eyes and expression. “I suppose not. But it sure was strange. He was one of the few people who really tried to do something, and then—
gone. Like he just fell apart or something.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. When the going got tough . . . and with so many people counting on him.”

“Yeah, I guess maybe they were,” Ward said, suddenly bitter. “Maybe they shoulda counted on themselves a little.” And he closed the door behind him.

Ward wheeled the patrol car down the poplar-lined driveway, swerving to avoid the black UNSSU Rover parked at the intersection with the main road.

“Shit,” he muttered, glancing as he drove at the dark, tinted windows of the Rover and the shadowy driver inside. “Alethea’s carriage awaits.”

Major Helmut Gurtman, the German-born SSU commander for Nebraska, had been Alethea’s lover for more than a year. The affair had not gone unnoticed in her little hometown; it had caused many of her friends to scorn her and poisoned Will Milford’s love for his only daughter.

After the dinner’s angry turn that evening, Alethea was only too glad to make her exit. But as always, her anticipation was double-edged. Pleasure and degradation would be blended in her evening’s activity.

The driver of the Rover, a bearded Cuban she had seen before, didn’t bother to disguise his admiration for her appearance, and as she watched him watching her in the rearview mirror, she felt an excitement well within her. Helmut looked at her that way, as if he were mentally undressing her. Alethea asked the driver for a cigarillo and he promptly produced one, taking his time to light it, making it clear that Alethea’s lips would touch the filter where he’d held his mouth. His gaze lingered as she crossed her legs. She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and thought of Helmut. His hair was long and fine and brown, and his eyes so dark they seemed to blot out the light. For Alethea, he held an allure of sexuality and power that was somehow heightened by the guilt she felt every time she wanted him.

“You look quite lovely tonight,” Helmut said when she arrived, and handed her a fluted glass brimming with French champagne, splashing a bit on her arm as he did so.

She looked, in fact—in her tight, black satin dress, spiked heels, and garish makeup—like an expensive whore.

“But why so glum?”

“It isn’t easy trying to teach that Lincoln and Lenin stood for the same thing,” she said, her words laced with bitterness.

“Ah. And I assume this is why I continue to receive the most amazing reports about you, that your history lessons reflect a most, shall we say, pugnacious and retrograde Americanism.”

She was silent.

“It is also said that you have visited the exile camps and taught the children there.”

“Oh, are they the enemies of the people, too?”

He shrugged, “The sins of the fathers.”

“God, that’s a laugh, you quoting the Bible.”

He grabbed her by the hair suddenly and jerked her head close to his, then, almost in the same motion, caressed the back of her neck.

“That hurt,” she said timidly.

He held her face close to his, flaunting the domination that was so much a part of their relationship. His tone was almost taunting, sweet and cruel at once: “What am I to do with you?”

He kissed her, hard, then tightened his grip on the hair above her neck, pulling her lips a scant three inches from his. The two remained poised in that position, as if awaiting a signal, or an answer.

“You bastard,” she said softly, the timidity now replaced by something else. Something sexual.

He kissed her hard again.

She did not resist.

She never did.

Use club known as the Cavern sprawled through the basement of an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Omaha. The place was dim, noisy, and illegal. It echoed like an airplane hangar and smelled like a brewery. Its only concessions to decor were some ancient cable-spool tables and rickety chairs with generations of initials carved into their backs. Some nights, kids showed up and found the club locked and deserted. Police raids, they said. But it always opened up again.

No one seemed to understand how the Cavern stayed in business. The youths who ran the place didn’t answer questions; they took in money and after that the club seemed to run itself. There were rumors of payoffs to the police, or that the authorities viewed the club as an escape valve where kids could blow off steam. Whatever the reason, the Cavern was the only place in the state where teenagers could dance to live rock and meet kids from other towns. It was an outlaw club, with an aura of danger as pungent as the clouds of marijuana smoke that wafted through it, and it was very popular.

A kind of hybrid rock and roll was blasting from a band attempting to recapture a free and abandoned style of music. Very few people in the Cavern that night had ever heard “real” rock before. To them, rock was a kind of forbidden religion—one whose idols they worshiped gladly, yet one that might have come to them from another century.

Jackie, Justin, and their friends arrived, and gathered around a long table. Jackie felt exhilarated to be part of a world where people her age could be what they really were and not what somebody a
m
il
l
ion years old wanted them to be.

The band plunged into “Johnny B. Goode” and Jackie and Justin got up and started to dance. She made every step look good, her movements rough and sensual. It was as though the music expressed itself perfectly through her, as though its anger and hunger had found a natural outlet.

They sat a few songs out, drank and talked, then danced again. The music had an intensity that could not be ignored.

As if the place needed to cool down, the band went into a medley of dreamy old ballads. Songs like “In the Still of the Night,” “Teen Angel,” and “It’s All in the Game.” Jackie melted into Justin’s arms. The sound of blaring whistles and wailing sirens shattered her reverie.

“It’s a raid!” someone yelled.

Everyone who had been on the dance floor or at a table began to run. People screamed and raced in every direction. Jackie, terrified and immobile, panicked at the thought of being separated from Justin by the bodies plunging all around her. But Justin deftly reached through the churning crowd and grabbed her hand. He squeezed it and said, “Keep cool. I’ll try to get u.s out of here. If they catch us, don’t tell them your real name.”

He pulled her back to their table. Puncher was standing on a chair, looking for an escape route. One of the kids from Omaha ran up to them. “Follow me,” he shouted above the whistles and yelling.

There was an instant of indecision. The kids from Milford all looked toward Justin. He nodded once, and they all followed the boy from Omaha. He led them behind the bandstand to a trapdoor, then squeezed through it and ran along a dark, narrow passageway. Screams and whistles followed Jackie as she held tight to Justin’s hand and sprinted through the darkness toward an open door. They all poured out into an alley.

“Oh God, we made it,” one of the girls said, and broke into tears.

“Okay, we’ve got to split up and find our cars,” Justin said. “Keep in the shadows.”

Suddenly a powerful searchlight pierced the dark alley, encircling and trapping them all. Jackie was blinded. She heard dogs barking, then a wailing siren and men yelling, “Nobody move!”

“Cops!” Puncher roared. “Run!”

For an instant Jackie froze, her pulse pounding in her temples. Justin seized her arm above the elbow. “Come on,” he hissed. They raced down the alley with police and dogs in pursuit.

High atop one of the buildings a block from the alley, a group of men were watching.

The door to Andrei’s suite was left ajar. A young man escorted Peter in, then left quickly. It was a comfortable suite, not grand. Peter’s eyes moved to the terrace where a figure stood, silhouetted against a dark, wintry evening. The sound of police sirens cut into the night. Peter walked to Andrei, disturbing his reverie. The Russian turned toward the source of the interruption.

“I’d like to show you something,” said Andrei. Peter approached him. In the distance he could see the fracas between the police and kids. The helicopters, searchlights, and popping sounds of tear gas exploding seemed unreal.

“What’s going on?” he asked, without taking his eyes away from the disruptive scene.

“On our reports we call them ‘disturbances.’ It is young people attacking symbols of power. Those they can see—your president, senators, public buildings, the police, of course. It makes them feel they are accomplishing something. What’s your opinion of such disturbances?”

“Pretty stupid. Sad, actually.”

Andrei watched him carefully, waiting to see if Peter might retract his candid opinion. “It is controlled provocation. Agents stir up the young people so we can let them feel rebellious at the same time that we can keep track of them—scare them, arrest some, perhaps even move them to other parts of the area.”

Peter continued to watch the disturbance, his jaw set tight. He was not in favor of such manipulative tactics; he found them repugnant.

“I can see you do not approve. What would you do?” “I guess I’d try to find a way to use the energy a little more productively.”

“For whom? You or us?”

“Maybe both.”

Andrei raised his eyebrows. “Do you think that is possible?”

“It better be.”

Graciously, with an old-world ease Americans still found surprising, Andrei motioned Peter back into the warmth of the sitting room. When he spoke again, his tone was thoughtful, speculative. “You know, Bradford, no one in the Kremlin believed America would go down without a fight. They thought it would take a bloodbath—or a nuclear attack.”