The Fury and the Terror (5 page)

Have you hurt him?

"Absolutely not! He was cooperative. You scare him a little. Look, Kelane. We all need to work together in this thing. Or else, frankly, there goes the Buick dealership. Paso Robles too, most likely. We're all but in a state of siege here."

Don't talk to me about loyalty. Who are you?

"I told you already. Por—"

I know your name. That wasn't my question. How can you do her work, and live with yourself?

"It's where I used to live, that's the only thing ever bothers me," Darkfeather said hostilely.

Yes, I see it
, the Avatar responded after a few moments.
The grasslands and sugar-beet fields. The Mission school. The mobile home in which you lived.

Her recall gave Darkfeather a chill. "Call it a home. Call it a bed I slept on if you want to. That old pissed-up mattress where I was fucked by half the dam workers at Yellowtail while my uncle Louis Badger Foot hunkered down outside the door, taking the money I earned in his dirty hand."

The hand with the missing thumb joint and—

"God damn you! I work for Zephyr because she loves me. I own a condo in Falls Church. I've got ranchland. Quarter horses. Get out of my head!"

You came to me.

"All I came in here for was to say I was personally sorry about Frank Romanzo, it was a mistake. But you don't rile Zephyr. Man, you never do that."

The ensuing silence in Darkfeather's head was worrisome. She stared down at Cheng. Such stillness. Her rhythms at the brink of death. But Darkfeather understood that the attempted apology had failed. The Avatar wasn't ready to die. Not until she'd settled with them all.

And Darkfeather lost her nerve. Knowing that she had made herself momentarily vulnerable. Thoroughly unprofessional. She left Kelane Cheng and in a rage lit into the medical team, compounding her own anxiety.

"I'm telling you! She was in my head like a plumber's snake, rooting around! What the hell else could she be up to? You've got to control her."

But they were at their limits, pushing drugs into Cheng's system; there was nothing else in the pharmacopeia that didn't carry a huge risk of speeding her quickly and stone-cold to the afterlife. And, in spite of her long-standing relationship with Zephyr, Darkfeather knew very well what consequences the Avatar's death would have for her.

The problem wasn't only Kelane Cheng. Darkfeather had time to reflect on that dilemma as the TRANSPAC DC-10 flew on into the sun.

There was Kelane's doppelganger, that scary presence in the remote forest of western Maui. Did the Avatar have enough mental energy in her present state to animate her dpg again? And if she'd already done so, where was it now? Dpg's in their natural state only showed up when exposed to black light. The dpg could be sitting opposite Darkfeather, unseeable if she were naked. Or forward, paying a little visit to the flight deck, brimming with feline curiosity and perhaps—it was the common flaw in even the most intelligent doppelgangers—mischief.

They had black light aboard. And Darkfeather had her Persian kitty. Anywhere in the vicinity of a doppelganger Warhol would throw a three-alarm fit. She had decided it would be a good idea to search the plane when she received an urgent call from the captain.

(From Eden Waring's dreambook, #2)

I
m on the iland again. Where the Good Lady says Im safe from the Bad Souls they cant come here she says I can see them out there in the fog but not very well thats good they make scarry noiz and call to me saying how much better it is where they are but don't believe that the Good Lady always tells me because they only want to change me just ignore them she says and holds me Its so warm and breezy there on the iland when shes holding me I dont hear Bad Souls any more I want to stay forever but the Good Lady says oh no what about your lessons and I tell her forth grade is easy even if I did skip the third grade but she says not the lessons I mean now its time I have sprise for you darling then shes gone and nothing else much happens except for this girl my age I see making a sand cassel down the beach I don't know if thats the sprise she doesnt say anything when I ask what her name is goes on pushing up wet sand and patting it with her hands making walls and I say can I help she still wont say anything so I start wurking too on the sand cassel too and it feels funny when she looks at me because I know her then it feels funnier than ever because I ask is she my sister she says no Im you look the boat's here time to do your next lesson and I say what lesson and she says Im your next lesson youll see that is so dum I realy hate this dream its the snipedist dream I ever had

HONOLULU, HAWAII • MAY 28 • 6:14 A.M. HDT

R
ona Harvester woke up early in the eight-room Presidential Suite of whatever-hotel-it-was, disoriented at first blink, as if she'd rolled over to find herself in an alternate universe. The drapes were drawn but some heavy rollers were pounding Waikiki. The sound of surf awakening nostalgia for her vagabond days at Stimson, Maverick's, and the community of big-wave surfers in Santa Cruz. Friends like Trey and Reg and Havens, the transplanted Kansan who became one of the legends and was gobbled by a thirty-footer at Maverick's when a surface chop launched him from his board.

Shortly after the return of the MORG helos from Maui, a squall had hit the area. The limo hurried her back from Hickam AFB in blinding rain. Only one limo instead of the usual four with dozens of cops to provide a rolling roadblock along the streets. In that same limo she had been smuggled out of the hotel hours earlier, after her official retirement time of eleven-thirty P.M. Back entrance to the hotel sealed off by the MORG Praetorians who, at Rona's request, had replaced her Secret Service detail early in her husband's administration, a first valuable lesson in what had become holy writ in D.C.: Rona Always Gets Her Way. Going and coming she wore a dark wig in case one of the staked-out freelancers with a camera lens the size of a trash can got lucky from a thousand yards at that late hour. Forget about the regulars in the traveling press corps: they were billeted in a hotel of slightly less distinction a block and a half away, and those who weren't still drinking or screwing were dead to the world.

The entire floor below the Presidential Suite was occupied by staffers and security personnel. Standard practice when the First Lady was in residence anywhere in the world with or, as had been the case during the last three months, without her husband.

Rona got unsteadily out of the bed. The skin of her face was dry; she hadn't creamed it before tumbling to the pillows. Hadn't expected to sleep after the night's excitement, the fire still smoldering in her belly. And she'd killed a man. But she seemed to make an instant transition from nervy wakefulness to a state dinner at the White House, where she appeared wearing only her father's old fisherman's waders and a diamond choker. Lately the more stressed she was the more her dreams had a comical aspect. She sometimes awakened herself with laughter.

While she sat peeing Rona examined her hands in the too-bright bathroom, finding traces of dried blood in the knuckle creases. She'd split a nail on the decocking lever while handling the Sig Sauer. She felt a drenching coldness and almost passed out on the toilet. Rona despised weakness. So she'd killed him. So what? Frank Romanzo was an influence the Avatar didn't need. Gasping and trembling, she prepared her own bath instead of calling for Rochelle to do it and scrubbed until both hands were pure again. Then she put on couturiere lounging pajamas and a robe she had borrowed at Barbra Streisand's Malibu digs (because the blue of the robe matched her eyes so well, she had neglected to return it) and filed smooth the ragged nail. It was 6:21 Hawaiian time, past noon in Washington, when she signaled her staffers that their day had begun.

Rona reckoned that the plane carrying Kelane Cheng to Montana should be somewhere near San Francisco by now. She booted up her laptop. No coded message from Portia Darkfeather. So everything was going smoothly.

Sorting through her E-mail, she found a one-word message from the Director of Multiphasic Operations and Research Group.

Congratulations.

It meant more to her than the accolades she was about to receive as the two-day world conference on the eradication of childhood diseases came to a conclusion.

Rona keyed up music on the ten-thousand-dollar sound system, gift of the King and Queen of Sweden, that traveled everywhere with her. She wanted something rhythmic and spirited to put some zip in her blood before breakfast arrived. Her old favorites David and Michael Doucet and Beausoleil from the Louisiana bayous. David's version of "
Zydeco Sont Pas Sal
é
s
," with Josh Graves sitting in on dobro, really cooked.

At home or away, Rona had her first cup of coffee alone while she read either her husband's copy of
The President's Daily Briefing
or a summary of the world's worst headaches prepared by Melissa McConnell, the First Lady's communications director. Then Rona looked over her schedule for the day while Rochelle, the housekeeper who had been with her for eighteen years, supervised table settings in the dining room of the suite.

Rona made adjustments on her schedule, allotting time for phone calls. Three minutes to her son Joshua, studying at Cambridge. A minute and a half to her husband at Camp David, another two minutes to Clint Harvester's personal physician concerning the President's recovery and rehab. At Rona's insistence Clint had been all over the TV news last night, photographed while strolling the grounds with his Big Bertha driver, taking some practice swings to show how great he was feeling. Reassuring the nation that, as the White House spin-control corps tirelessly maintained, he was still in charge. Rona herself, interviewed at the conference yesterday: "Yes, he's made amazing progress. Of course the President has always had a wonderful constitution. Dr. Daufuskie and his team believe it is best that he limit himself for now to two hours of work a day." Lowering her eyes momentarily, blinking as if resisting a sun shower of tears, then looking at the cameras with a softer, more vulnerable expression, preparing to give them one from the heart. "Clint and I want everyone to know that God has truly been good to us. The prayers of the American people have been answered, and their President is only a couple of weeks away from resuming his full duties as the leader of the free world."

And, finally, five minutes—no, make it ten—for her morning briefing with Allen Dunbar, the Vice President. Rona would be in touch with her husband's stand-in (she would not utter, privately or publicly, the words
President pro tempore
) at least two more times during the course of their busy day, never letting "Dumbo" forget for a moment that, because of Clint Harvester's unfortunate impairment, it was Rona herself who was firmly in charge of the affairs of state. End of story.

A medley of tunes from Andrew Lloyd Webber shows replaced the energizing Louisiana French music. The R Team, as they were known in Washington, trooped in for breakfast. Always fresh fruit to start, the rest of the menu changing on a daily basis. Breakfast was prepared by an assistant White House chef who had his own team, including a nutritionist. The rest of Rona's support group consisted of two maids, known as housekeeping assistants; a wardrobe consultant; two makeup artists, one for daytime and one for evening; a hairdresser; a masseuse; a personal trainer; a holistic physician; and Rona's personal photographer.

Rona's Chief of Staff was Peach Boondecker. Melissa, the R Team communications director, had her own staff: a deputy CD who was Rona's senior speech writer, and the First Lady's press secretary. Two secretaries remained in Washington when Rona was traveling.

Rona only nibbled at breakfast, keeping the business of the day in focus with rapid-fire queries and objections. She had a short attention span. Her most frequent comment was "Next." She praised one staffer, toasted another for her failure to include a fifteen-minute audience with a trio of Asian businessmen who had been generous in their support of a respected international charity that laundered contributions to the campaigns of Clint and Rona's pet congresspersons. All photo ops were approved. Rona then had half an hour to rehearse her closing remarks for the luncheon and review the videotape of herself. Chin up, shoulders relaxed, minimize the gestures. She dictated changes in the speech while she was having her hair done. Rondorf, the First Lady's wardrobe guru, brought out three tailored suits from three different designers. She chose the dark blue Armani with a subtle herringbone pattern. Rona went to makeup eating the ass off anyone within range because Allen Dunbar was not returning her calls.

The VP was going to address the United Nations General Assembly in prime time, his second grab of prime TV time this week. Ostensibly it was because of what Dunbar had described in solemn tones as "the grave crisis" resulting from a terrorist attack on the U.S. air base at Incirik. Truck bomb. Big enough to damage aircraft parked two hundred yards away. Four hundred forty-two casualties. Rona had Casey, her press secretary, call the networks to see how much coverage they were planning to give the First Lady on the nightly news. But as Rona well knew, childhood diseases couldn't compete with U.S. bombers smoldering on a runway in Turkey.