Privateers (17 page)

“Bad enough.”

Looking out the untinted glass of the bus window, Dan could see the dirty brown haze that hung in the air, the product of burning coal to generate electricity. Without nuclear power, and with oil and natural gas prices set higher by Moscow each year, the United States had returned to its most abundant fuel. But the price for using coal was paid by degrading the quality of the air. And by the people who died of lung cancer, asthma and the resurgence of tuberculosis of a new and deadly virulent strain.

Dan got off the bus at the downtown transportation terminal. Most of the foreign tourists stayed on, heading for the fancy hotels. The bus terminal was seedy, filthy. It stank of urine and vomit. Panhandlers shuffled around, dressed mostly in rags. Bag ladies huddled in every comer. Helmeted police marched through the terminal in pairs, short-snouted shotguns clipped to their thighs, German shepherds walking unleashed between them. They skirted the sleeping or unconscious figures sprawled on the worn, littered tile floor.

Poverty, Dan saw. The kind of poverty that once was confined to the worst ghettos of the biggest cities. It was spreading all across the country.

“Everett McKinley?”

Dan wheeled to see a short, scruffy man with graying hair and a two-day growth of beard looking at him.

Remembering the identification phrase, he said, “Well, I ain’t the pope.”

The man grinned at him, showing bad teeth. “Okay, you’re the one. Let’s go.”

Instead of taking the risk of renting a car that could ultimately be traced to him, Dan had arranged for a local driver. The man, who knew nothing except Dan’s alias, the identification phrase and his destination, took Dan’s garment bag and led him through the reeking bus terminal to the parking lot. Under the watchful eyes of uniformed security guards, they made their way to a dilapidated four-door GMota Corsair. It had once been bright red, but rust and age had dulled its finish. The driver tossed Dan’s bag onto the back seat, muttering that the trunk lid no longer opened.

“You know where I want to go?” Dan asked as he sat on the tattered upholstery.

The driver grinned at him. “It ain’t the Vatican.”

They drove off through city streets filthy with litter. Idle men seemed to cluster at every corner, white and black alike. Poverty had brought a brotherhood that affluence had never achieved. Half the buildings seemed empty, abandoned. Traffic was only a fraction of what Dan had remembered from the old days, most of it hissing steam buses and trucks that belched black diesel fumes.

Once they got onto the interstate, the old car showed surprising power. The driver, squinting into the afternoon sunlight, said, “She might look like a shitbox, but she got a lot of cubes under th’ hood.” For the first time, Dan noticed the trace of a Cajun accent in the man’s voice. “She can outrun the cops, you know. When I carry stuff from the boats. That’s why the trunk don’t open. Full of radar spoilers. At night, they can’t even find me from helicopters, you know?”

“What do you carry?” Dan asked.

The driver glanced at him, narrow-eyed. “Oh, stuff. From Mexico. From Panama and all. You know.”

Dan nodded. Dope, illegal electronics parts, even bottles of propane heating gas-from what he had heard, the local black market made its money by evading the protective tariffs against imports. Smuggling even shoes could make a man moderately wealthy these days.

“Fuckin’ government, don’t make money worth anything,” the driver complained. “Tree dollars for a cup of coffee. Tree dollars! Medicare ain’t worth shit. Taxes keep goin’ up. Got to do something to make ends meet, you know.”

“Sure, sure,” Dan said.

“You know, I used to be a building contractor. Had my own company. Made damn good money, too. Started out as an apprentice. Then master carpenter. Then made my own company. Built houses, office buildings, whole shopping centers. Damn fine construction. Those buildings last, I tell you. Then everyt’ing went to hell. Whole country caved in. Nobody building nothing now. Most of my people out of work. Hungry, I tell you.”

The driver mumbled on about the impossibility of finding work, and how a man had to scratch and scramble to provide for his family, as they headed out onto the highway that ran across Lake Pontchartrain toward Baton Rouge. Dan was going to meet the President in the evening, after her speech in New Orleans. No one had told Dan where she would spend the night; that information was kept in strictest security. But he did not need to be told where Jane Scanwell would be that night. He knew.

With the spotlights in her eyes, the President could not see the vast audience that filled the huge auditorium. But she did not need to see them. She could feel their presence, hear their voices, sense their emotions as if they were one gigantic single beast lurking in the darkness out there.

The beast had been hostile when she had taken the podium. The applause had been perfunctory, a duty owed to the office of the President. They were angry with her, blaming her for their troubles, burdening four decades of slowly accumulating disaster onto her shoulders.

Jane felt their displeasure, their sullen, smoldering frustration and the gnawing fear that lay beneath. It was her task to transform them, to tame the beast hunched in the darkness, to harness their energy. She was their leader, whether they liked it or not. Whether they voted for her or not, she was their teacher, their guide, their high priestess.

She began her speech and listened even as she spoke at how the beast quieted down, how their coughing ceased and their feet stopped shuffling and they no longer rattled programs or fidgeted in their seats. As her amplified words boomed across the mammoth auditorium, the beast that was her audience began to be soothed, appeased.

Yes, America is no longer the leader of half the world, Jane Scanwell told them. And better for it. We no longer need to bear the burdens of being the world’s policeman. We no longer need to send our sons off to foreign battlefields to fight other people’s wars. We no longer live under the threat of nuclear annihilation. We no longer pay the taxes to support a bloated, ever-growing defense budget. We live in peace, and we are no nation’s slave.

Yes, our technological leadership has been overtaken by others. But we still lead the world in the production of food. And as long as the world’s population keeps growing, there will be markets for America’s grains and livestock. World prices may fall temporarily, but in the long run they will rise again. We must weather the bad times and prepare for the good.

Yes, unemployment is severe. But we have beaten recessions in the past and we will beat the one that faces us today. (But she did not remind the audience that more Americans were unemployed now than ever before in history.)

“There are those,” the President concluded, “who look longingly to the past, seeking faded glories and a way of life that we have outgrown. There are those who look to the future with despair and fear.”

She hesitated, took a breath. Not a sound from the audience. The beast was holding its breath, waiting for its mistress to tell it what to do.

“I look to the future with hope. With an optimism born of the strength of the American people. I have a vision of a new America-free, secure from the terrors of war and the burdens of overseas entanglements, threatening no one and being threatened by none, growing more prosperous with every year as we learn to live within the natural boundaries that God has given us, using the abundant resources that reside in our own lands and in our own hands and hearts and minds.

“We will move forward and rebuild our nation. We will purify its air and waters as we purify our own souls with the dedication that every generation of Americans has within them. God is with us. Our strength is boundless. We are moving toward a new era of peace and prosperity for all. We have taken the hardest and most difficult steps of all-the first ones. We will persevere. We will triumph. Thank you.”

They came to their feet applauding, pounding their hands together, smiling, cheering, calling to her, shouting their approval and encouragement. The big auditorium was swept by a tossing, heaving sea of applauding people.

The President stood at the podium, gripping its sides in her two hands, smiling back at them, just the hint of a tear of gratitude glistening in her eyes.

Two hours later, after the heavily guarded reception and precisely orchestrated press conference, after her staff and even most of the reporters told her what a wonderfully inspiring speech she had made, after the long, quiet drive in the dark shadows of the limousine out across the dilapidated highway, with the governor of Louisiana apologizing to her for every pothole and then renewing his plea for federal funds to rebuild “my infrastructure,” Jane wondered if Dan would show up.

She had made no move at all to contact him. She had ignored his attempts to contact her. She had maintained a tighter-than-usual security guard for this trip, surrounding herself with grim-faced young men and women who just might shoot Dan Randolph dead if he tried to get past them.

But he would be at the plantation, she knew. Dan will be there. There was no doubt at all in her mind. Years ago, when life had been so much easier for them all, she and Morgan and Dan and whichever girl he had picked up for the occasion would drive all the way from Houston to Knottaway Plantation and spend a quiet weekend sipping mint juleps and watching the Mississippi go by. It was the perfect place to relax, as far removed from the real world as Tara or Camelot or Xanadu.

Now, as she bade the governor good night in the gracious foyer of the old plantation house, and followed her trio of personal security guards up the stairs to the old master bedroom suite, she wondered how far Dan would get.

It was no surprise to her when she saw him sitting calmly on the silk damask-covered sofa at the head of the second-floor landing.

Her guards-two men, one woman-instantly pulled out their snub-nosed machine pistols. Dan sat unmoving on the sofa, his eyes on Jane.

She smiled. “It’s all right. I was expecting him.”

The guards relaxed and put their guns away. Slowly, though. Grudgingly. They did not like the idea of a stranger suddenly appearing, someone they had not been told about in advance.

One of the young men opened the door to the bedroom suite. Two more guards were inside. They stepped out as the President invited Dan into the suite with a wordless gesture.

She closed the door behind her. “We’re alone now. There are security agents on the roof and patrolling the grounds, but nobody else in here.”

Dan grinned at her. “Aren’t you afraid of being compromised?”

Jane did not smile. She was a tall, stately woman, with coppery red hair and skin as smooth and white as ivory. Dan saw that the years since he had last been this close to her had taken their toll on Jane. She was still beautiful, with the sculptured flawless face of a Norse goddess and those cool green eyes that he had known so well. But she was President of the United States now; her eyes were warier, they probed more deeply; her mouth was set in a distrustful, almost suspicious frown. She was dressed in an off-white suit that was tailored severely enough to look businesslike, yet took advantage of her tall, full figure and long legs. Scant jewelry: merely a choker of pearls with matching pearl earrings, and the diamond-studded gold wedding band that Morgan had given her so long ago.

Beautiful enough to be a screen star, Jane had earned her law degree in her native Seattle, where she met a lanky, bashful Texan named Morgan Scanwell. He was an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Jane went into corporate law, and when she helped Morgan to get a new assignment in Houston, she went to Texas with him. They married, he left the FBI and went into politics, with Jane guiding his every move and helping to overcome his natural shyness. They met Dan Randolph in Houston: an eager, impetuous, blithely reckless former astronaut driving hard toward his first millions. Dan raised money for Morgan’s campaigns. They became close friends. So close that Jane and Dan flirted in and out of an affair that started and stopped time and again, only to start once more. If Morgan knew, he gave no indication. And Jane pretended not to notice her husband’s occasional dalliances.

Morgan became governor of Texas. Then a senator. And then he ran for president as the ultimate confrontation of the Cold War took shape and the dark clouds of nuclear annihilation gathered on every horizon. One of the women on their public relations staff came up with the idea of having Jane run alongside her husband for the vice-presidency. Dan thought it was little more than a gimmick. But the gimmick won almost every woman’s vote in the country. When Morgan took the oath of office as president, his running mate became vice-president. When Morgan died in office, little more than a year later, the victim of Soviet pressures and the collapse of American will, Jane Scanwell became the first woman president in the history of the United States.

And by that time, Dan Randolph had renounced his American citizenship and fled to Venezuela.

“Just out of curiosity,” Jane asked him, “how did you get in here? Security was supposed to be airtight.”

“Yes, I know. They checked out every member of the staff very carefully.”

Her eyebrows lifted in a wordless question.

“When I found out that you were going to give a speech in

New Orleans, I bought this place. I’m the owner. Technically speaking, Madam President, you are my guest.” Dan made a sweeping, old-fashioned bow.

Jane could not help laughing. “You rogue! So when the security people checked out the staff …”

“They checked out the owner as well. All I had to do was show up and prove to your trigger-happy guards that I actually am Everett McKinley of Minneapolis, the owner of this noble and ancient house.”

They were standing in the suite’s morning room, furnished in cushioned white wicker chairs. Decanters of wines and brandies stood on the serving table next to the door that led to the actual bedroom.