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This novel is a fantasy of the future, a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Great effort has been made, especially regarding those individuals in the story who have recognizable positions with government, or publicly known organizations, mentioned herein, to insure they are not mistaken for actual past or present individuals in those positions. What the future holds, what possible outside influences may be brought to bear on future participants in those actual organizations, no one can say.

Copyright (c) 2018 Miles A. Maxwell FAB LLC. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher, other than for review purposes, is a violation of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. Earth Image: NASA/NOAA/GOES Project.
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The Death Of Everon

“EVERON!” Franklin croaked.

Nothing.

Franklin shook his head back and forth, trying to clear the bright specks floating across his vision. The living room was a mess. Cold air pushed flames through the big ragged hole that had been the picture window. Scrambling across shards of glass, bits of wood and plaster, pushing his dark hair out of the way, he yelled, “EVERON!”

The little television sat on the floor on it’s side, it’s bright white pinpoint still descending. A pair of work boots stuck out beneath the overturned coffee table. “Everon!” he yelled, grabbing the table’s edge, tossing it aside.

He watched his stepbrother’s chest a moment, put an ear close to Everon’s face. He’s not breathing!

Franklin pinched Everon’s nose, raised his chin, and breathed into his mouth. Dammit, you’re not going too! He did the rapid chest compressions of CPR, One — Two — Three . . . dammit, not you! He’d heard about this in the military, sudden overpressure stopping the heart. He took another deep breath — In! Out, put his mouth over Everon’s, inflating his brother’s lungs —

Everon’s head twitched, he sucked in a long gasp, “Ehhhhhhhhh —” pushing Franklin away. “Ohhhh — You’re gay!”

“I’m not gay. You were dead!”

“How do you know? Cccckk — !” Everon hacked, shoving his blond hair back off his forehead. He coughed harder.

“You weren’t breathing. Are —”

“No, how do you know you aren’t gay, being a virgin and all? Never having sex.”

“I think I know what a virgin is. Who told you that?”

“Ccchck — Cynthia.” Still on his back Everon pushed to his elbows, rolled to one side. “Aren’t all ministers gay?” Hacked out a long cough, spit a big loogie into the wreckage.

They took deep gasps, breathing the smoky air together.

“No, and I’m not a virgin either. Are you all right?”

“You — hack — when did you have sex? With — ? Oh!” Everon coughed, “that dark-haired girl? From the train? Victoria? That’s why you’re leaving your church?”

“How do you know I’m leaving?”

“I went there first. They were pretty upset.”

“That’s not the reason.”

“That’s part of it, isn’t it?”

“A catalyst, maybe, not the main — why are we talking about this? Are you okay?”

Everon tilted the toes of his boots side-to-side, wheezed out another deep chest cough. “I think so.”

The brothers’ heads tilted ninety degrees to the television on its side, ignoring the growing flames around the missing window. The screen was split: On the right, a religious gathering; on the left, the bright point of light.

“That damn missile’s still coming down,” Franklin said.

He crawled over. Pulled the TV rightway up. Pushed to his feet.

“Keep down!” Everon shouted, grabbing his brother’s jacket, pulling him back to the floor.

Joy’s Answer

“It’s okay,” Franklin said. “They probably think they got me.” He took a cushion from the couch.

“You?” Everon hoarsed at him. “It’s not you they’re after!” He struggled to sit up.

“It’s my jeep!” Franklin pointed at a chrome headlight stuck in the living room wall. He stood at the side of the window hole and beat at the flames that were lapping around the edge toward the ceiling. It had been his jeep. Shit! Pieces of it were burning in the driveway.

Who the hell would blow up my jeep?

He’d thought the shock wave had been something larger. A lot larger, something nuclear. Not likely. Zhou’s dead.

But Zhou couldn’t have been working alone. It takes a big organization to deliver a nuke. Nukes — plural. Someone paid for them. He glanced at the television. Are there more coming? How many more cities will be destroyed?

“It may be your jeep,” Everon said, “but I’m the one they’re trying to kill.”

“What do you have to do with it?”

“I was trying to tell you. Nan and I checked out this factory way back in the Pennsylvania woods — where those guys shot at me with machine guns.”

“Why would someone shoot at you?”

“I think they were stealing power, enough to run a whole factory. I don’t know! When we set the helicopter down back there, the goddamn place was empty. They’d moved out. What’s really weird is, Nan found a circuit inside the building like the one from your communion wafer.” Everon scanned the mess on the floor. The little circuit was gone.

“How’s that connected to this?” Franklin asked.

“It’s something to do with the bombs. Taking the generating plant off line before the first bomb went off!”

“Look, Everon, there’s so much — this guy came to my office, the manager of the River Café, a restaurant that used to be under the Brooklyn Bridge —”

“I know where — I knew the place. So?”

“He gave me a feather he found in a tool box he fished out of the restaurant dumpster.”

“A feather in a dumpster? What?” Everon made a disbelieving face.

Franklin huffed. He wasn’t explaining it right. “Look, the afternoon before the bomb went off, a Middle-Eastern guy tied a boat up at the River Café. Before he came in for lunch he had a yellow tool box and let an owl fly out of it.”

“An owl? You think it was Harry?”

“I think so. After lunch the guy disappeared, but the boat was still there. The manager found the toolbox in the dumpster. Inside was a feather that matched a gap in Harry’s wing perfectly. Just before I took the feather down to Pittsburgh to verify it was Harry’s, Chip called me.”

“Our Chip? From the Lab?”

“Yeah — remember that radioactive sample of New York dirt you yelled at me for leaving in Hunt’s jet? Chip ran it. He said the plutonium was Russian.”

“Russian? The bomb? Why would —” Everon glanced at the television, the missile coming down. “Why would Chip think that? We’re attacking Pakistan!”

“Yeah, well, he has a friend who used to work at a government lab. Apparently he recognized the mass spec numbers.”

Everon’s whole face squinted. He looked back to the TV set.

“When I was leaving the bird aviary,” Franklin said, “this gigantic guy Zhou shows up. He takes just one look at me and comes at me with a knife!”

Everon chin-pointed. “Is that where you got the bandage?”

Franklin nodded, pulling fingertips and thumb together across the gauze around his neck.

“Zhou went crazy. He called Harry, ‘Ting.’ He claimed Ting was his owl. I think Harry was what’s called a spirit guide. Anyway, when Zhou found out Ting died of radiation poisoning, Zhou screamed he: ‘released the fire!’ I’m certain he was talking about New York. Like he killed Cyn!”

“Zhou? This guy claimed he—”

“I know! But I started yelling a bunch of stuff at him, like: ‘Where did Ting get radiated? On a ship?’ And Zhou just lost it: Pure shock! The bastard killed my secretary Marj, I’m telling you, he killed the owners of the aviary. I fell out of a tree onto his neck and killed him. But last night at the aviary, somebody broke in and cut Harry’s intestines into strips.” Franklin pulled out his cell phone and scrolled to the picture the Pittsburgh cop sent.

Everon winced.

Franklin said, “It’s a symbol from the I-Ching — the Chinese Book of Changes. It means Begin Again.”

“I thought you said the guy was dead!”

“He was. But something happened to the ambulance his body was in. Nobody knows where it went!”

Everon grimaced. “None of this makes any sense.”

“Well, yeah, that’s true. I don’t know about your building in the woods, but I can tell you whatever is going on with these nukes has everything to do with Zhou.”

On the TV’s split screen right, the holy man still knelt in supplication.

“Dear Allah,” he begged, “save our people! Save our land!”

On the screen’s left side the bright missile dropped faster. City lights rose from the bottom. A banner of bold white letters appeared across it:

“How many people live there?” Everon muttered.

Franklin pulled in his lips. “Four million, maybe five.”

Everon shook his head. “They’re toast.”

A brilliant flash filled the screen. CRRRRSHSHSH! — static rushing from the little television. Then — nothing. The screen was solid white. Not even an announcer’s voice.

As they watched, the picture faded to ghostly white . . . then gray . . . and slowly to dark black. There was no nuclear fireball. Only a three-quarter moon and a twinkling city skyline below.

The screen’s left side expanded. The holy man was praying, tears streaming down his cheeks — thanking God, shrieking his praise of Allah to the sky. Thousands dressed in white, fists pounding the air, surrounded him with cheer after thunderous cheer!

“The guy’s taking credit for a nuclear dud?” Everon asked, astonished.

Franklin nodded silently. It has to be a trick. A mistake. Something.

“Michael Joy,” whispered the commentator, crying himself. “God, it seems, is on this man’s side.”

There it is again, Franklin thought. The Greatest Of Deceptions.

Ralph

Distant sirens began to wail.

Franklin scooped Cyn’s papers off the floor and slid them into his jacket. He took a final look around for the tiny circuit. The smoke was really starting to pour in. He took Everon’s elbow, trying to help him through the door outside.

Everon took his arm back. “I’m fine, Bro.”

Roaring gasoline flames danced over what was left of the jeep. The steering wheel was ten feet up, embedded in the trunk of a skinny grandfather oak. The brothers kicked burning books and clothing into the snow, scooping them up as the flames went out, brushing them off still hot.

Everon stopped for a second, bent over, hacking.

“You okay?” Franklin asked.

Everon straightened up, nodded.

Franklin pointed at the ground. “What’s that?”

“Looks like pieces of, uh — there’s another one over there,” Everon said. Curved, thin metal slices, like the peel of some charred white fruit, lay scattered through the wreckage. “You had a propane tank in your jeep?”

“No.”

“Like for a barbecue grill.”

“I know what you mean.”

“They must have followed me here,” Everon said. “Probably thought I was going somewhere with you.”

“Who?”

“That bunch of nuts that nearly killed me in the woods.”

“But why — ?”

“I’m telling you, it’s got something to do with New York.”

“No,” Franklin said, “this is either about Zhou, or the three guys who tried to kidnap me.”

Everon frowned. “Yeah, saw you on the news. I got your email. Why would anybody do that?”

“I don’t know.” He scrambled around. Felt his jaw bulge as he pulled his jeep’s mangled radio from the snow. “I had a great little homemade Cambodian language CD in here. I can’t replace that easily.”

A long red pump truck veered to the curb. Firemen in black hats and heavy coats jumped off, rushed hoses to pour water on the blazing jeep. More firemen targeted the burning front of the tiny manse.

A dark town car screeched up right behind them. Ralph Maples struggled his portly bulk out of the driver’s seat. He stared at the burning building, mouth opening and closing like a largemouth bass.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he yelled.

Everon shot his brother a quizzical look.

“Ralph Maples,” Franklin introduced. “The church’s Senior Minister.”

“How dare you leave your congregation like that!” Ralph said. “In the middle of a service? And now this?”

“Someone blew up my jeep.”

“You have a lot of explaining to do!”

Everon burst out laughing.

Ralph’s face went purple. “You’re going to pay for this damage!”

Everon looked at Franklin, face scrunched in disbelief, and mouthed, “What the fuck?”

Franklin snorted. “That’s more or less what I’ve been thinking for a while now.” But he felt like saying, Another huge anonymous chunk of cash didn’t show up in the church’s bank account this week, Ralph?

Before her death, Franklin and Everon’s sister Cynthia had learned that someone, for months, had been giving huge weekly donations to the church. Where the money was coming from no one knew, but it materialized as the sudden building of a big addition — the new Great Room; new robes and hymnals and expensive collection plates and a lot of other stuff. And for some reason, when Franklin asked, Ralph denied knowing anything about it.

Before Ralph could proclaim anything else, two Erie Police cruisers screamed to the curb. Four uniformed officers got out. One introduced himself as Sergeant Potts and took down their names. He asked them to wait and went over to talk to the fire chief.

When Potts got back, he said, “You had a propane tank in your jeep?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay. Erie has no dedicated bomb squad, but the fire crew is already calling it arson by explosion.” His look sharpened. “Who do you know that wants to kill you?”

Franklin pulled in his lips.

Everon didn’t have an answer either.

Invasion

Erik and Mary Lou Sorensen were policing their front yard, picking up the last bits of trash The People had left behind.

“I can’t wait to see how everything turns out, honey!” she called, tugging a soggy plastic bag out of the snow.

Erik gave her one of his big Nordic smiles. “It won’t be long now.”

Tires ripped gravel from the ground. A stream of black SUVs roared up the icy drive. A dozen people in heavy white parkas swarmed from the snow-covered woods yelling, “DOWN! DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!” Guns were everywhere. Erik had left his on the breakfast table.

He and Mary Lou looked back and forth, raising their hands. There was nowhere to run. They were surrounded. The white parkas had FBI in large bold blue letters on the back.

“Where were those trucks going?” an agent who ID’d himself as Bolini demanded while others wrestled Erik to the ground.

Erik dropped and let the men fall on top of him, deciding not to resist.

“What trucks?” Mary Lou blathered. The red and white checkered coat around her roly-poly body shook as a female agent slapped a set of cuffs on her.

“Eight. Blue. Garbage trucks!” Bolini shouted. “They left two hours ago! When they got down south they all went in different directions. What are they hauling?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” Erik laughed.

Another man crunched across the snow-packed lawn into Erik’s field of vision.

“Russ Bass!” Erik’s eyes narrowed, no longer amused. “A little FBI sneak thief!” he spat. “I knew it! Where’s Billy Bob? What’d you do to him?”

“Don’t worry about your friend,” replied Agent Russ Bezier, aka Russ Bass. “Worry about yourself. You’re in a lot of trouble if those eight garbage trucks are carrying nuclear bombs.”

“Nukes?” Sorensen said surprised — and started laughing.

“A federal charge of terrorism and mass murder, even as an accomplice, carries the death penalty.”

“We had nothing to do with New York!” Erik yelled. “Or Virginia Beach!”

“Where. Are. Those. TRUCKS?” Bolini screamed.

“Don’t say a word, Mary Lou!” Erik said.

While the FBI mobilized hundreds of agents to locate the missing trucks, tilt-rotor Ospreys and Cobra attack helicopters came in fast and dark across the border of Pakistan.

Six of the aircraft turned east into the mountains. Four more went north of Rawalpindi, four flew south of Islamabad.

Synchronized by the clock, thick ropes fell from the Osprey doorways, and U.S. Marines dropped onto the white flattop roofs of three lab buildings belonging to PINSTECH, the Pakistan Nuclear Authority.

In the ensuing firefight, U.S. soldiers killed more than fifty Paki troops to get inside and take possession of twenty-six nukes. The largest, at 100 kilotons, seemed small to the officers in command — for the amount of damage that had been done to New York.

Between the dud ICBM that exploded as nothing more than a dirty bomb — its radiation cloud carried away east on the desert wind; the small size of the confiscated nuclear weapons; and no sign of the eight blue garbage trucks, the U.S. government was zero for three. People were expecting results. President Christopher Wall wasn’t happy; he was losing control. And just maybe tomorrow more American cities.

Options

A paramedic team checked Everon out. As Franklin suspected, there seemed to be no lasting damage from the bomb’s sudden overpressure, shielded by the building as they were, and no signs of concussion. The flames were out. Franklin and Everon signed police statements. There wasn’t much to them. They didn’t know much. Ralph roared away vowing Franklin would pay “for everything!”

Everon watched the car disappear. “Good thing the furniture wasn’t yours.”

“It belongs to the church.”

A suitcase had blown clear and landed in the snow. Everon took it to the street and set it on the trunk of his rental. They began piling unburned clothes into it. Everon held up a dark blue T-shirt and grinned. There was a ragged black hole the size of a grapefruit in the center. He tossed it on the discards. Franklin found a rolled-up pair of socks near the jeep’s right front wheel. The outside was a black crust. He tossed them aside, looked around, walked over and closed the suitcase.

“What about these?” Everon asked, nodding at the pile of smoldering Bibles they’d gathered that had been blown out of a cardboard box.

“I speak the languages,” Franklin said, “and write them. I don’t need those anymore.” There was a U.S. road map in the middle of the yard. He brushed the snow off it. Oddly, it was undamaged. He spread the map across the suitcase and planned his route.

“So, Bro, you want to come back east with me?” Everon asked. “Or are you going to Del’s?”

“I’m going to Chicago — well, I was.” He looked at the black mess that had been his jeep. Considered his few wearable clothes.

“Chicago?”

Franklin smiled. “Somebody I want to see.”

“The woman from the subway?”

“Victoria. She stopped by and we spent a day together.”

Everon grinned. “The minute the thirty-three-year-old-virgin-minister has sex he goes chasing after the girl.”

“Just until I figure out what to do next.”

“What makes you think she wants to see you?”

“She said so.”

“Rescue appreciation?”

Franklin shrugged. “Could be. I don’t know — maybe.”

“If that’s what you want to do, don’t let anything stop you.”

“You sound like Cyn,” Franklin said.

“Well . . .” Everon stammered.

“Can you drop me at the bus station? I’ll have to look around for another car, maybe in Chicago. Hopefully the insurance —”

“Take my rent-a-car and drop me at the airport. You can leave it at one of their Chicago offices when you figure something out. I’ll square it with the company.”

“Hmm . . .”

“I insist.”

“I guess I could do that.”

Everon pulled out his wallet and counted ten bills. “Here’s a thousand from what Del gave me. It’s all I can spare. The banks are iffy right now.”

“Thanks. That’s great.” Franklin stuffed the bills in his jeans.

“Sorry about your stuff, Bro.” Everon put the suitcase in the trunk. They shoved the burnt clothes and old Bibles into trash bags the fire crew had given them, tied them shut and left them by the street.

Franklin sighed, “The point of life isn’t what one leaves behind, is it, harsh as that might sound. The point of life is to live it.”

“One of Cyn’s thoughts, wasn’t it?” Everon said softly.

“It still is.”

Leaving

The sign for Erie airport was up ahead. A news report was playing in the background. Franklin turned it up.

“According to White House sources, new FBI information suggests white separatists may have been connected with the New York and Virginia Beach bombs. Meanwhile, the so-called Prophet, Michael Joy, prophesied some say by a newly recovered tablet in gold — missing verses of the Qur’an — has been credited with saving millions of Pakistani lives, and the U.S. from making a terrible mistake.”

“Crazy!” Everon turned it off. “Lot of rediscovered religious artifacts around lately.”

“It’s a funny thing —” Franklin huffed. He opened the map again. “I was looking at this the other day. The Mormon plates were found about two hundred miles from where the bomb went off . . .” He traced his right index finger westward from New York City across upstate New York. “. . . here in Palmyra. Isn’t that awfully far from the City for a bomb-induced tremor to open up the earth?”

“Pretty far,” Everon nodded.

“That’s what the Mormons claim happened.”

“What was that Mormon plate thing all about? Who’s idea was it to go out there?”

“The Mormons. But Ralph wanted me to go.”

“The fat guy with the fish lips?”

Franklin nodded. “He thought it would be good for the church if I was part of the authentication team. But the plates weren’t made of tumbaga — gold and copper, not soft like they were supposed to be. They were brittle. I accidentally dropped one. A corner broke off when it hit the floor.”

“Bro!”

Franklin’s lips twisted. “The plates were cast. The edge was rough — I felt it with my thumb. It was some kind of pot metal.”

“The Mormons didn’t know you come from a mining family?”

“They invited me because of the Time article.”

“Yeah, the cover was on TV,” Everon laughed. “Nice photo.”

“There was another reason I took the chance dropping that plate. In Cleveland before my connecting flight to Salt Lake, two women corralled me at the airport. They hadn’t seen their husbands in weeks. One of their men is supposed to be a translator of ancient languages. The other one was retired from making engravings for the U.S. Treasury. They showed me this photo of that gold tablet in Saudi Arabia — that one on the radio? It’s supposed to be a rediscovered verse of the Qur’an.”

“Lama was talking about it a couple days ago.”

“They had a grainy blow-up of the photo. One of the women pointed out a tiny engraver’s mark and claimed it was her husband’s! I felt the same mark on the back of the plate I dropped!”

“Really?” Everon turned the corner.

“I mentioned the last names of those women to the project’s curator. He froze up, staring at me — all the classic signs of recognition. He had me out of there in less than two minutes.”

“Pretty strange.”

“I’ll say.”

Everon pulled into the airport lot.

“Then those three guys tried to kidnap me on the way home — right over there,” Franklin pointed.

Everon looked around at the icy, wide open space. “How’d you get away?”

“I covered myself with snow and pretended to be a snowdrift. They thought maybe I climbed that light pole. The bulb was out. They couldn’t see me.”

Everon laughed as he parked. “I probably would have made the same mistake — with you. Who were they?”

“I don’t know, but they disconnected the coil wire on my jeep. When they hopped the fence looking for me, I ran for it. I got the wire back together and drove out of here as fast as I could. I haven’t seen them since.”

They got out of the car. Everon smiled, handed Franklin the keys. “All I can say is thanks an awful lot, Bro, I mean it!” He laughed, “I’m gonna think about changing my name to Lazarus.” He gave Franklin a hug. “And yours to Stud.”

Franklin coughed out a laugh.

“I’m not the only one you know that almost bought the farm recently,” Everon said. “You know Enya — ?”

“Of course. What — ?”

“She had a heart attack on the job.”

“How is she?”

“They did a transplant.”

“That was quick.”

“They had to; her heart kept stopping. Apparently they have a lot of extra organs on the East Coast right now. She’ll make it.”

“Tell her I hope she feels better.”

“I will. Have a safe trip,” Everon said.

“You too.”

“Call me when you get there, okay?” Everon said.

Franklin nodded. “Forget what I said the other day about another bomb. It’s great what you’ve accomplished, getting all those people’s houses turned on.”

“Thanks.” Everon turned and walked toward the private aircraft terminal, stopped and looked back. His mouth was grim. “I guess we better hope you weren’t right — and the government figures out who did this.”

Hope? Franklin didn’t have much use for that lately. But he let it go as Everon walked inside and waved goodbye through the window.

For the last time, Franklin pulled through the declining Midwest town that was Erie, Pennsylvania. Goodbye to all Ralph Maples’s crap, he thought. But as he said a more sentimental goodbye to the people who’d needed and relied on him, his resignation from the church weighed heavy — and most of all he thought of Marj, his murdered secretary. What a wonderful, loyal friend.

Her body had been removed before he returned from Pittsburgh. He shuddered as pieces of a cop’s description came back to him. “Her throat was slit . . .” By the madman who nearly killed me, and killed Cyn in New York. Now Everon almost dies when my jeep is blown up?

He stopped at a light. Am I doing the right thing? he asked Cyn silently. Leaving the church, these people, this place? He couldn’t stay here.

The light changed. He drove past the worn, dilapidated buildings. The world’s falling apart, he thought. A nuclear missile ready to snuff out the lives of another four million Pakistanis. He wondered how those people were really saved.

Up the ramp he rolled, onto the westbound highway . . . He saw no flash of light, experienced no sudden blindness, no voice from above. Just the voice in his head: Six years ago you made a mistake . . . You dedicated your life to God.

He turned on the radio, hoping to find some relaxing jazz. But as the convertible’s tires reached their steady ffffvvvvvv, there came an old raspy Rod Stewart song above the engine’s deep hum: Reason To Believe. He couldn’t see a reason to do that anymore. GOD, he thought, the Greatest Of Deceptions.

But the deception was in me! Somehow, he had to let it go. If he could. Leaving the church, his mind felt a little clearer. One thing he was pretty sure of, Zhou killed Cyn! Zhou was Chinese! He spoke it, reacted to it! Killed the Adlans. And Marjorie! Why kill Marjorie? That much was obvious. To get to me, to find Harry! Franklin had never felt such violence from anyone, not even in the military. As if the giant’s rage were a physical object he could touch. Part of him wished he would never think of it again.

But why attach such importance to Harry — Ting? Why leave that symbol — UNFINISHED - BEGIN AGAIN — in Harry’s intestines? Zhou was dead. Is someone else about to destroy a third city?

So far the FBI hadn’t accomplished much. White separatists? The FBI probably wouldn’t believe what he had to tell them. No one did so far. Not that cop in Pittsburgh, not even Everon. At least he could call and tell what he knew. He pulled out his phone. Somebody had to find Cyn’s killer.

Are All Men Dogs?

With the rest of the officers in the big basement room at Langley, Greg Claus watched Director Sloat’s teleconference from Colorado.

“Go home everybody,” Sloat said, with uncharacteristic kindness. “Take the next twelve hours off. That’s an order. We’ve been working too hard. I don’t like slop. I want everyone well rested, and back on it early tomorrow morning.”

It was strange, really. It was one of the most reasonable things Claus had ever heard the CIA director say.

So Claus went home — well, to his present girlfriend’s apartment. She was keeping his German shepherd, Bowser.

“Are all men dogs?” were the first words out of Rosie’s mouth the moment he walked through the door. It didn’t surprise Greg. He’d heard it many times.

“You run around with your noses in the air,” she said, “trying to sniff out pussy. That’s where you‘ve been, isn’t it? Are you even aware of what’s been going on? Have you seen?”

“We’re at war,” he answered. Bowser ran over, waging his tail, grinning. Claus rubbed the dog’s back.

“That’s right! And look what I put up with, Greg Claus! I’m not talking about watching your dog for two weeks — I like Bowser. He’s — um, talented. I’m talking about no phone calls, no email, not even a smoke signal!”

Bowser went over to the corner and laid down.

“Sorry baby, I’ve been busy. I’ve been out of town.” He pulled off his shirt. Kissed her cheek. Went to take a shower.

In the mirror, Claus ran a hand across his close-cropped blond hair. His smile crinkled the bridge of his button-nose, puffed out his high cheeks. He put his chest out, shoulders back. His posture was excellent. I could have been in the movies, he thought, not for the first time. Just three inches taller. I could have been a star!

It wasn’t true. But Greg Claus did have two very unique and distinctive qualities.

His first was, of course, Short-Man Syndrome — SMS, as the Agency psychs called it (Claus didn’t care for abbreviations of any kind). A lot of guys would have been okay with being five-five. Deep down Claus felt short. Maybe it had to do with being so stocky, having such a thick, bulldog neck, as he’d heard the other ops call it behind his back. There were lots of men shorter than he was, all over the place: five-three, five-four. All you had to do was look. Not in the Company, of course, not its field operatives; the CIA hired the medium. Everywhere else, plenty of short guys.

It was thought to be Claus’s psychological compensation for SMS that had produced his second unusual quality, a talent so useful CIA recruiters had allowed him to bypass the Agency’s height restriction. People modification, they called it. The Agency did a lot of renaming of things it didn’t like to talk straight about.

There were field officers skilled in wet work, bugging — plenty of snipers who could shoot the eye out of an eagle at five hundred yards. Not many truly talented at the quietly practiced gentleman’s art; methods of twisting a person inside-out, exposing one’s deepest secrets, and never leaving a mark. For which Claus was highly respected. Okay, perhaps feared was a better word.

When one of Claus’s partners, Rick Delt, had jokingly tried to stick him with the nickname Santa, Claus informed him, “Not claws. It’s pronounced Clowse — like the German.” Delt took one look in Greg’s eyes and never brought it up again. Neither did anyone else after Delt mysteriously disappeared two weeks later.

Claus loved what he did so much he brought his work home with him. It was only natural. In his personal life Greg’s talents mutated into a very unusual type of sexual perversion.

He’d tried all kinds of things over the years — S&M, bondage, getting his girlfriends to urinate on him, doing it to them — until he stumbled onto something he liked a whole lot better. Late for a date one night he stood below his girlfriend’s apartment window and listened to her laugh on the phone. “Greg’s no different, all it takes is a little sex. I can get him to do whatever I want. Men are such dogs!”

Instead of pissing Claus off, it gave him an idea.

There were so many castoffs around DC. They came to get close to the power. Once they had even the smallest taste, they could imagine nothing else. They wandered the city at night looking for excitement. Washington had the highest ratio of single women to single men anywhere in the country, some claimed as high as two to one. He’d always picked weird women anyway, females who were just a notch or two off. It made his new plan a natural.

“I love your place,” they’d say the first night he brought them home. And then, “Oh, what a beautiful dog. What’s his name?” It began by letting Bowser sleep in bed with them after sex.

There was nothing to it, really. “Oh, come on. He’s such a cuddler. He’s lonely!” A date or two later he’d make sure the door was open during sex. Bowser loved to watch, especially when Claus took the girl from behind. Such a cooperative dog. Bowse would take up position on the bed’s right side, slightly to the rear, tongue hanging out of that grinning toothy dog mouth, long red-engorged dick hanging from its furry sheath. Claus always positioned them just where they could easily turn their heads and see The Bowse. Even when their bodies were turned away, they’d hear the dog panting. Eventually the girl would look back and notice the dog’s huge erection. That long red tongue, that huge red dog cock. At first they were bothered by it. After a while they got used to it.

Really, it wasn’t Greg. It was the dog. Bowser just knew naturally how to make it happen, a gradual thing. Bowser would lick the girl’s face, and then the transition, licking his way smoothly down to her tits. How they’d smile and laugh! Eventually Bowser would cruise lower, onto her belly until he got all the way down to business. On more than one occasion Claus had thought humorously, I could learn a thing or two from this dog! Had Bowser been human, he might have been one of the greatest lovers of all time. Casanova? Don Juan? Ha! Casa-Bowser! Don-Bowser! That animal gave great head — so Claus’s girlfriends eventually admitted. Every last one of them.

Once the girl had come two or three times from Bowser’s tongue, it was a simple matter of natural curiosity — combined with allaying her fears, of course — and offering a small amount of encouragement:

“A dog’s mouth is clean as it gets; much cleaner than a human’s — so’s his cock . . .”

“No, you can’t get pregnant from dog sperm . . .”

“Dogs don’t get STDs You know how good his tongue feels . . .”

A few more tongue induced orgasms, and after Claus had fucked the girl a few times doggie style — Bowser watching, of course — the girl noticing again the size of that giant, moist dog dick — Claus not quite satisfying her, the inevitable would happen.

Once started, there was no stopping it. That dog could fuck for hours.

Claus’s perversion didn’t end there, of course. If the girls had known they were going to be a part of his private film collection, surely they never would have done it. A remote sticky camera the size of a fly’s eyeball, so discretely placed, in the middle of one of President Wall’s eyes in a wall-mounted photo. Ha!

At least Claus was discrete. He never showed his private movies to anyone. But sometimes, he almost wished he could. He felt a kind of quiet pride in the work as he reviewed one or another woman’s Bowser Response, as he euphemistically called it. Enjoying the movies late at night he would muse, I could have been a director. This is my real talent, the lighter side of what the Company puts to damn good use in defense of the good ol’ U.S. of Fuckin’ A!

After his shower Claus wrapped a towel around his waist and returned to the kitchen. He picked up Rosie’s newspaper and instantly frowned. “Goddamn sonofabitch!” he whispered. “That’s his work! Way fuckin’ out of control!” He threw the newspaper on the table, stomped his damp foot like a petulant child. On the continent? The man should have been long gone. What the hell’s he doing in Pittsburgh?

“Greg!” his girl’s voice shook him loose.

More of her crap. He’d only been back in Washington one day, already a pain in his ass. Why couldn’t she whip him up some food? She was getting stale. She was only good for three things: Sex, watching Bowser when he was out of town, and making sure The Bowse had enough to eat.

He looked at the dog. Bowser grinned back. Maybe it was time Claus did something about Rosie. Something permanent.

He marked the alternatives clearly in his mind. Pulled his trousers off the chair and fished the big silver coin out of the pocket. He flipped it into the air, watching it rotate, side over side — crucifix on one, scales of his Libra birth-sign on the other. No one had ever been able to find out for him where the coin originated. One old Company language hacker claimed it was more than 1500 years old, but never suspected just how important it was. Without it, Greg Claus would have been unable to make a single major decision.

It landed on his palm. Crucifix side up.

“Hey, Rosie!” he called. “Bowser and I have to get back to my place tonight. I have to be up early.”

“You’re taking Bowser?” she pouted.

“You can come if you want.”

“Oh,” she brightened. “Okay.”

Gun Day Afternoon

Every burg has it’s good side, and its bad. If you wanted the really bad spots you went north: Hunting Park, Germantown, Frankford. On schedule, each of the blue garbage trucks left the I-95 convoy and powered into one of Philadelphia’s worst neighborhoods.

An old black grandmother, Ruth, proudly named for a famous biblical Moabite, had been out doing her weekly grocery shopping. She walked the slum street keeping to herself, her eyes down. She could still remember a time when the neighborhood had been nice, when people were polite to each other. She carried only a single paper bag of food, her house key, a few dollars change. She hoped to make it home alive.

The big blue truck skidded to a stop on an angle to the curb right in front of her. Skinny, gray-haired, hunched over, Ruth stared frozen, as the truck’s back tilted upward, then opened, dumping hundreds of dark objects at her feet. Dangerous objects. The pile grew. Russian AK-47s, old handguns, even some M-16s (though Ruth had no idea what they were called) — tumbling into the street, filling the sidewalk in front of her.

As if she’d stumbled across a stack of hundred dollar bills, the old woman stared at the weapons, wondering, Are these real? What are — boxes — bullets? Before she knew what was happening, she was surrounded. The grab began.

Those who realized what-was-what ran in two directions: Like hell, away from the guns. “What the fuck!” . . . And most people, fast as they could go, toward the guns. Waitresses, plumbers, fat hookers, old men, they yanked from the pile the nearest machine gun or handgun, a box of cartridges, and hauled ass out of there. Everybody wanted their share, and the first ones got their pick, whatever they could carry. Then it was a damn good idea to get clear — away from the center of what looked like a fantastically dangerous kill-zone. As the pile shrank around old black Ruth, the crowd thinned. They disappeared into houses, apartments, brownstones, down the street and around the corner. Finally, it was only her, and the big blue truck.

Ruth looked down. One overlooked pistol lay at her feet, a pretty nice Glock. A phrase came back to her from long ago, something from elementary school, she thought, it was hard to remember. She whispered, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” And then something more modern: “Think of it as a charitable donation.”

The old woman reached down, picked up the pistol, and moved quietly on.

Monday Morning Worry in Chicago

Bleary-eyed, Victoria Hill flipped through the dull early-morning channels on TV. Her eyes shot again to the big black clock, the kind elementary schools kept on their classroom walls. Two a.m. He’d called to say he was running very late. She’d told him it didn’t matter what time he showed up. She dialed the number for a friend in Cleveland, the kind you could call anytime.

“Hi! No, he’s not here yet . . . I hope so.” They talked for a while, mostly about all the things Franklin had been through lately. They hung up.

Three a.m.

She walked, barely limping, over to the kitchen and made herself some toast and blueberry jam. She no longer needed the crutches to get around, the white knee brace below her cream skirt was enough. She found an old Clark Gable movie on television. Nibbled her toast down to nothing.

Three-thirty-six . . . She’d told the doorman to look for him. She laid her head back and closed her eyes. A while later she checked the clock. Five to four . . . Is he really coming?

She woke with a start — what she thought was a second firm knock sounded from her apartment door. She rushed over and flung it open. His cobalt eyes penetrated first. He handed her a rose. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

She tossed it aside. “Where have you been?”

She pulled him inside and clung to him, her body arching against his, her mouth finding his. “Oh — your neck!” she said, brushing a fingertip across the gauze wrap.

“It’s okay.”

Their clothes peeled away — then flew. He carried her to the bedroom. The sex was immediate, intense, explosive. In the middle of some very basic and satisfying fucking, she pushed him back, then rolled up on one knee, showing him what she wanted him to do.

“Hmmm? Really?” Franklin said as she put his hands on her waste, helping lift her torso off the bed.

She let her left leg stretch downward beside the mattress, toes on the floor, hands up against the wall behind the headboard. Hers was a sleigh bed. Though the headboard wasn’t huge, it was far enough to make her stretch.

His hands slid down her long curved back, turned outward as they slid between her cheeks, fingers probing, finding her still sopping wet, he opened her, pushed himself forward — and now she did say: “Oh!” as he slid deep inside.

The feeling in his penis, sliding between the knuckles of his pinkies, then into her as he held her open was wonderful. He didn’t want to leave it. But there were so many parts of her to feel as he moved his hands up over the roundness of her ass and felt her clamp tightly around him. He felt her shiver, her breath catch, as if she was as excited to have him inside her as he was to be there. He slid a finger along her spine as she rocked back and forth, her round rear pressing against him. He trailed his hands, flat, up over her long, inward curving back, all the way to her shoulders — “Oooh,” she said — then slowly moving down her sides, up around to her breasts, each finger flicking lightly across her nipples, back down her long, gently curving belly to the sides of her waist.

He pushed against her fanny — harder, deeper, forward into her. His hands seemed to move without conscious thought back around to her elongated belly. Her skin was so tight and smooth here, her torso so long. Must be what’s making her feel so tight inside, he thought. And now they were pounding each other. Slap, slap, slap, slap — he couldn’t fucking take it! And neither could she because she let out a long, low, feminine, guttural growl that sounded like Arabic, “Rrrahhhhh —” an extreme exhale — and that was it for him as he released himself into her, pumping his juice inside.

As she snuggled against him on the bed sometime later, she thought he seemed surprisingly unsure, unconvinced she even wanted him to be here. But I’m so happy to see him — why doesn’t he know? There was only one way she could think to show him. Something he might find mind-blowing —

A few minutes of the action she performed and Franklin felt he was losing his mind. It was more internal pressure than he could take. He tightened uncontrollably, shuddered violently, and every bit of energy shot out of him.

A minute later — or maybe it was an hour — he felt her rise up before him, heard her swallow audibly — humorously, he thought. He peeked for a moment to see her face close to his, her right knee bent, the injured leg stretched out behind her.

Amazing.

He closed his eyes and felt a contented smile fill his face, all the way into his cheeks. She was the only woman he’d ever had sex with, and it had begun less than a week ago. Are most women like this? That thing she just did to me!

She seemed to know what he was thinking. She laughed, “Never had a blow-job before either, I suppose?”

He shook his head, and she kissed him. He felt her sit next to him, lean back. Sometime later he felt her reach over. Heard her turn on the large television screen on the bedroom wall.

A man was speaking.

Franklin’s eyes popped open. He frowned. At the pulpit of a familiar cathedral was the man he’d seen that morning — yesterday morning — televised from Pakistan. At the mention of the Golden Tablet, Franklin’s attention was fully focused. “Can you turn it up a little —” She was already increasing the volume.

Franklin felt disappointed as the picture shifted back to the news anchor.

“The Prophet, Michael Joy, is being hailed around the world as a hero before all heroes. Millions of Pakistanis are thanking him for saving their lives. Here’s what some of the people we interviewed in Washington had to say . . .”

The view shifted to a reporter on the street. Steam poured from a nearby sewer grate. Only the reporter’s right arm was in the shot which he used to shove a bulbous microphone in people’s faces.

“He saved us from ourselves!” said a blonde with heavy makeup, in a high, grating voice.

“What a wonderful human being,” said a slim man with a hook nose, a yarmulke on top of his dark curly hair.

“A modern-day messiah!” said a man with a Middle-East accent and copper skin.

The commentator returned:

“A few voices have risen, detractors who don’t believe this man had anything to do with stopping the U.S. nuclear attack. But they’ve been marginalized by the throngs praising God in thanks for Michael Joy.”

The picture returned to the large packed church Franklin now recognized as the Washington Cathedral. The holy man, identified at screen bottom as PROPHET MICHAEL JOY, was dressed in a beautifully-tailored blue suit. He was of medium height, medium build, with brown eyes, a good tan and dark hair. He had a dazzling smile and spoke with tremendous energy. He held a heavy gold tablet cut with Arabic symbols gloriously aloft. It glowed the way the Mormon Plates had when Franklin had seen them under the Temple lights in Utah. Joy said:

“This tablet contains the words of a long-missing verse of the Qur’an. There is an important connection between the New Testament and the Qur’an’s Jesus Surah, Book Three. Allah has many names: Builder, Creator, Architect. But as the old saying goes, his hundredth name has always been a secret. I can now disclose to you that which Allah hath disclosed to me. That name is Jesus.”

To Franklin’s surprise, Joy made connections between the gold Qur’an tablet and the Mormon plates. He urged love and forgiveness. Yet, within the message, Franklin heard something hidden, felt a jolt of disgust and fear.

“Cancel!” he whispered forcefully.

Victoria looked at him. “What?”

“I’m stopping thoughts I want my subconscious to reject,” Franklin said softly, staring at the screen.

Palming a large white open Bible, Joy held it before him, pouring forth a vision of reconciliation in response to the attacks on New York and Virginia, then claimed:

“It was God’s intercession that preserved the lives of four million of His people in Islamabad and Rawalpindi!”

“He’s lying!” Franklin said. “Every word that man is saying is a lie.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Victoria said.

Joy went on:

“In light of the United States attempt at such an unfair attack on Pakistan, without definite proof of wrongdoing, I feel God may no longer protect this city, Washington, with its white mausoleum-like monuments to the past.”

“His brain access is off,” Franklin said.

“I worry true harm may come to the people of Washington soon, as it nearly did last week when Virginia Beach was destroyed.”

“Follow his eyes,” Franklin said.

“I feel God desires a new center for this nation, somewhere to the west!”

“He holds the Bible in his left hand,” Franklin said. “Whenever he reads, he points to passages with his right index finger — he’s right handed. When he stops reading and finishes a passage from memory, his eyes move left.”

“So?”

“When he recounts his stories, anything from memory, his eyes should always move up and to the left. Instead they shoot back and forth. Left-right-left. He’s not remembering his vision, he’s inventing it, expanding, adding fresh details. It’s where the phrase shifty-eyed comes from.”

Victoria turned down the sound. Yes. She could see it now too. She had lost friends in New York. Was this holy man playing on her pain?

Franklin described the missing wild-eyed clerics of vastly different religions he’d met in Utah, so enthusiastic about the Mormon plates. How quickly the curator, Millar, had gotten him out of there when he broke a supposedly gold and copper plate on the floor and asked about Mattie and Barb’s missing husbands.

“I don’t know why there’s been no report about your trip,” she said, “on the Internet or anywhere else. It’s like you were never there.”

“I know.”

Then to her growing dismay, he told her about his jeep blowing up. About Everon’s heart stopping. “That’s why I was so late getting here.”

Once she got past the shock, she said, “I know it’s a weird thought, but could your jeep and those religious people in Utah be connected to the men who tried to kidnap you?”

He stared at her and nodded.

Part of him had just begun thinking the same thing.

A City Undamaged

Franklin and Victoria made love on and off all morning, dozing in between. By the time they finally got out of bed, Franklin hadn’t had nearly enough sleep. Maybe it’s better to be a little foggy, he thought, so I can’t remember so well all the death I’ve left behind.

“Want to bring your stuff up from the car?” Victoria asked.

Franklin hesitated. “Okay.”

When he returned with only a single suitcase, Victoria showed him where she’d made too much space in her closet, then sat on the bed and watched him unpack. The explosion of his jeep had left him little to wear. Only the jeans he had on were really okay. The others were singed with black crust on the cuffs and legs, around the waist. A good washing would probably leave holes. The shirts — pathetic. Victoria honked out a laugh as he ruefully held up a scorched white polo shirt. It wasn’t funny. Who could have done this to him? And he was down to a single spare pair of socks. He didn’t wear underwear, something she found kind of sexy, especially for a minister.

She suggested they do some shopping. They took a cab over to a diner she knew on Michigan Avenue for a late breakfast.

As Franklin chewed and began to wake up, the pain he’d been learning to live with in Erie came back — Marj, Dean and Sally Adlan, Cyn, the dead members of his church.

The curly-haired server with brown pinned-up ringlets he remembered taking their order brought the check. “Dontcha just love that apple-honey bacon?” she asked in a squeaky moll voice.

“Uh — yes,” Franklin said. “Very good.” The bacon probably was delicious. He vaguely remembered tasting it. He paid the bill.

Beneath her hand, Victoria pushed something metallic-sounding across the table. “I want you to have this,” she said, taking her hand away.

It was a key. Obviously to her apartment. He hesitated. Did she really want him to stay as long as he wanted? He picked it up and smiled. “Thank you.”

She smiled back.

Outside, when Victoria suggested they walk a bit up the wide sidewalk, he asked, “Are you sure you feel like walking?” But she draped an arm across his shoulder and urged him on. She’d be in the brace for a while yet, but her knee was getting better.

They walked in silence. He felt so unsettled. Even more so than at the church.

“You’ve been through a lot lately,” she said. “We all have.”

He frowned at the skyscrapers along Michigan Avenue, the people hurrying by. “Do you ever look at them and think: What a bomb would do to this place!”

“Sometimes.”

“I feel so frustrated,” he said. “The damn FBI — I must have called them five times on the way here, since my fight with that Sumo bastard — whatever he is — since he cut Marjorie’s throat. It doesn’t feel like they’re taking me seriously.”

“I take you seriously. They’re probably flooded with calls right now. Tell me why you’re so set on Zhou for these bombs. Lay it out the best you can.”

He felt the pockets of his jacket for his cell phone. He’d left it behind, at her house or in the car. “Do you have a pen?”

She found one in her purse. He pulled Cyn’s papers from his jacket, turned them face down on a FedEx drop box.

“After Zhou’s body disappeared, somebody came back to the Adlans’ and stole Dean’s eagle.”

“The one in the back room?”

Franklin nodded as he drew three horizontal lines, solid-broken-solid:

“On the floor of the eagle’s cage somebody left this symbol, in short pieces cut from Harry’s intestines.”

“Oh, how awful!”

“It’s called a trigram, part of the I-Ching — the Chinese Book Of Changes. It’s the symbol for fire.”

“That’s —”

“Here’s the whole symbol that was laid out on the bottom of the cage.”

Franklin added three more lines beneath the first three — broken-solid-broken.

“The bottom trigram means water. See how its the opposite of the one on top.”

“Fire over — Oh!” She stared at him, dark eyes large and round, picturing a nuclear bomb delivered from the sea, its fireball destroying Manhattan.

“That’s right,” he said. “Fire — over — water. Together, the two trigrams are called a hexagram.”

Victoria rubbed a hand across her mouth.

“Remember what I told you Zhou screamed in the Aviary about releasing the fire. The I-Ching has a name for this hexagram. Unfinished.” His fierce cobalt eyes studied her face. “Some translate it as Begin Again.”

“Begin — Damn!”

“I know.”

The Gap store on Michigan Avenue was just opening as they walked by. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s see what they’ve got.”

He paid cash for enough socks and slacks and polo shirts to get by on. She found a pink polo for herself. The store’s credit card machine wasn’t working. He paid for hers too.

As he took the bags and they left the store, she asked, “Where do you think Zhou’s body is? I wish there was something we could do to find out who took it. You’re sure he was dead?”

“He left an awful lot of blood on that flat rock at the Adlans’ if he wasn’t. The paramedics said he was. They were wheeling him out on a gurney. He sure looked dead to me.”

Raw Diet

From a distance, Rosie observed the dark-haired woman lying back on a hospital birthing table, feet in the stirrups, rounded stomach pushing upward against the cloth of her gown. The woman’s face was turned away.

She drew closer, and the woman looked at her. She was the woman on the table, became the woman on the table.

There was pain, but it was the pain of joy. Somehow, Rosie knew she was safe. A man in light-green scrubs wearing a sanitary mask stood between her surgically-tented open thighs. The man was her doctor, a nurse at his side. Rosie had been told she’d be giving birth to twins.

“We’ve — got — a — breech! The first one’s coming out backwards,” he said. “But don’t worry, everything is fine. We’ve . . . got the cord clear — and . . . a — boy, just one more little push for me and—” She bore down. “— Ahhh, here he comes . . .”

A gasp burst out that was not hers. She could see the nurse holding a hand to her mask.

“What?” Rosie screamed. “What is it? WHAT!” The nurse’s eyes were huge.

“No — uh, it’s nothing,” the nurse said, regaining her composure. “Everything is fine.”

Rosie lifted her head as she felt the second child slide out of her belly. The first nurse fainted, fell to the floor. The other nurse said, “Oh. My. God!” She held a human baby in her arms — with the head of a German shepherd. The doctor held it’s brother creature — a dog’s body, the head of a human baby boy.

Rosie bolted straight up in bed, sweat pouring from her forehead. Her eyes rose: 2:00 AM, projected by Greg’s fancy digital clock, green numbers glowing on the ceiling. She looked down at the peaceful form of the man beneath the light-blue covers on her right. Greg Claus was sound asleep.

She shivered. “What a fucking nightmare.”

She slid back down and stared at the ceiling. The big green numbers said 3:10 AM before her eyes closed and she drifted into an uneasy sleep.

In the morning Rosie was sitting up, waiting — back against the headboard, knees drawn up to her chest — when Greg opened his eyes and turned toward her.

“Good morning,” he said pleasantly.

“I had a terrible dream last night,” she said. “It was like . . . that movie . . . Alien!”

There was no way Rosie could tell anyone the whole thing. It was too awful. But her dread and worry were so strong, she had to tell some of it. Surely Greg would understand. “I dreamt I gave birth to a seven-pound German shepherd.”

“Ridiculous!” Claus laughed. “How many times have I told you? You can’t get pregnant from dog sperm!”

She stared at him. He isn’t listening. Can’t he see? It my body! “I’m worried, Greg. I really think I better see a doctor — please? Just in case?”

He paused, considering. Picked up his coin off the nightstand, gave it a flip. Caught it and checked the result. “Yeah, baby. Okay. If it’ll make you feel better.”

Rosie let out a long breath. “Thank God.” She got up and went to the bathroom.

When she got off the toilet, she started a shower. Water pouring over her fingertips, it warmed up quickly. She stepped in, pulled the translucent red curtain closed, sealing it to the walls to keep any moisture from leaking out. She cut back the cold until it was just the temperature she liked. Adjusted the nozzle downward a fraction. Sighed, relaxing into the warm stream. The tension melted away.

She never felt the first two bullets that penetrated the curtain, just jerked a little and made a sound: “Wha — !” as they entered her chest. The third entered her head as she collapsed into the tub. Thud-thud.

No argument, Claus thought. And no seeing any doctors.

He peeled back the curtain to be sure — but also to look. So peaceful, lying there — what a beautiful body this one had. And then, he extended one tiny bit of remorse. “I really liked fucking your meat, baby. And so did Bowser.”

Greg Claus tilted his head. At least it won’t be a total waste. It never is.

Claus sung a little tune, “Fi-ind the prob-lem and e-lim-in-ate!” as he started the motor and made the first deep cut, sawing the handy rotary tool back and forth. It would be nothing to find a replacement. Since the Virginia bomb, the local girls had gotten kinda frantic. And anyway, there was no rush — there were always his home movies. Maybe if he was more selective the next one could last a little longer. The freezer was getting kinda full.

Claus severed the foot. “Waste not, want not!” he sang out. He placed the whole foot into a heavy-duty zip-lock. First baggie into the freezer — slap! He began the next cut higher up the right leg.

Claus ate in restaurants so often he hadn’t been to a grocery store in ages. Each girl would do a little shopping — snacks, deserts. Bowser’s dog food, of course, he picked up on the street. He hadn’t paid for dog food in a very long time.

He made the third cut. Filled another baggie.

Claus would never eat this crap himself. Too much risk of prion infection within the same species. Those things traveled to the brain! But Bowser loved it. Completely safe. A raw diet was good for him.

Half an hour later, he lowered the top on the oversized freezer. Full to the brim. He left the padlock on the counter. Tonight Bowser would be hungry. This load would take care of him for a quite a while. Maybe he’d warm up the grinder. It was more convenient under certain circumstances. He’d do maybe half of Sue. She was getting a bit dated.

He looked down at the grinning dog. “What do you think you’d like for dinner? How about some Sue tonight? A thigh joint? Hmmm? Too old?”

He shrugged. Couldn’t sell it. “Okay. Rosie. Fresh is always better. You really liked her, didn’t you, boy?”

What Do We Know?

Franklin and Victoria went back to sleep. Hours later Franklin got up quietly and found his cell phone on the kitchen floor — where it must have fallen out of his jacket when they ripped each other’s clothes off. Victoria’s rose was on the table in a narrow cut-glass vase. He tried the Pittsburgh FBI again.

“No, I’m sorry, sir, there’s no news,” said the agent he was transferred to.

Franklin tried to find out if they knew what happened to Zhou’s body. Asked if they’d determined whether Zhou had a ship.

“We already have your questions in the record, sir.” The agent offered nothing except to note it was Franklin’s sixth call. The FBI was getting difficult to take.

Franklin pictured New York, the thousands of corpses recovered each day, parts of the city still burning — too hot or too radiated to get to. Hell on earth, he thought. Clearing the wreckage would probably take years before people could live there again, if ever. He went back to the bedroom.

“Good morning!” Victoria’s eyes were open.

“Good morning.” He went over and kissed her lips. “Can we talk about — things?”

“Sure. What things?”

He went to the bathroom, got a towel and laid it on the floor. Naked, he started doing crunches. She surprised him a few seconds later when she laid her own towel next to his and joined him, keeping one leg mostly straight because of her knee.

“I’ve become addicted to these since you told me about them,” she said.

As they exercised, he started with what he now saw as the beginning: the man at the River Café pulling up in a boat hours before the bomb, releasing the owl into the air — went over everything that had happened.

She frowned when he brought over Cyn’s papers and pointed out the huge weekly transfers running through the church’s bank account. A tear dripped from her eye as he described the Adlans and Marjorie with their throats cut. He got to the strange little circuits he and Everon had found.

“Everon has them?” she huffed out, finally unable to keep quiet any longer.

“They’re gone.” He pulled up his knees. “Everon said his circuit melted when he touched it. We lost the one from the communion wafer when the bomb in my jeep blew out the front window. What do I do with all this? The FBI doesn’t seem interested.”

Victoria got up, long dark hair down her naked back, brace on her knee, barely limping as she left the room. She brought back a big whiteboard. She had him hold it vertical on the bed as she erased what looked like a packing list. Her trip to New York, he figured.

She drew a line down the middle and asked softly, “What do we know for sure?”

Not waiting for him to answer, she started adding FACTS to the left side, put the QUESTIONS they wanted answered on the right.

He watched her work. He hadn’t realized she’d been listening so carefully. He didn’t expect her recall to be so good. But it irritated him to see on which side she put Zhou and New York. How can she call Zhou a question?

The well-organized list grew.

Some of the items connected to things he hadn’t thought of. Some didn’t. Bank transfers and communion wafer circuits? Not likely. He wondered why she put the clerics across from the government blaming Muslims and white separatists. He could see certain suspicions — fear, especially the disgust, that drove some suppositions together. But to what end?

“One thing’s clear,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“We need more information.”

She gave him a sly grin. “Meanwhile, my knee still aches a little. Maybe you could, um — make it better? Talk to me? Like you did the other night in your manse? And while you’re at it, I can think of a few other things you might do.”

He held her close, and in a near whisper, barely tone enough in his voice to hint at masculinity, said things that her mind could turn into uncontrollable urges . . .

She felt his words flow down into her belly — across her pelvis — until the feeling grew, became unbearable. The moment it crested into a thundering, violent, shuddering climax, before she could even grasp his ability to understand her so thoroughly, she was climbing again, connecting to something so strong — and she came with a scream a second time.

Her energy completely spent, they both lay back. She closed her eyes. He heard her breathing slow.

Franklin was pent up. He stared at the ceiling. When he knew he wouldn’t relax, he leaned on one elbow. Her dark hair was coiled about the smooth skin of her neck. So amazingly beautiful. So peaceful.

He felt no such peace himself. Only a hammering frustration. He’d left Erie, driven five hundred miles, To do what? Watch her sleep? Indulge in non-stop sexual ecstasy?

“Umph,” he whispered. There has to be something more here.

Publicity

“Take a look at this, Bro!” Jacob laughed at his laptop.

Ray looked over from an adjacent desk in the boys’ basement office. “What?”

“An article about us! The shark rescue!”

Ray stepped behind Jacob’s chair, leaned over his shoulder. Jacob was dark-haired, his older brother Ray, blond. “Cool! We’re famous! That ought to help us sell some Thhhrrashers!”

Local Boys Save Surfers From Sharks

It looked like a beautiful day for the Indialantic Surf Classic — a big post-hurricane swell, steady off-shore wind, and a clearing sky. Promoters decided not to let the tragedies of New York and Virginia Beach affect an annual event which has been attended by hundreds of surfers, mostly from the Florida region, for five years running. But death nearly caught up with the contestants when a school of sharks following a drifting lifeboat came within feeding range.

Two local boys, Jacob and Ray Williams, age fourteen and fifteen, used a device of their own invention they call a Shark Thrasher — that creates a disturbance in the water simulating a mass feeding-frenzy — to draw the sharks away from surfers competing in the event, allowing them to escape the water safely.

Waves eventually pushed the lifeboat onto the beach where it was found to contain the radiated body of Ahmad Hashim, the Pakistani nuclear engineer cited by President Wall as reason for the U.S. nuclear weapons seizure in Pakistan. Hashim’s hands and arms, dragging in the water, had been gnawed by the sharks that were following his boat.

The Williams boys, who some are calling kid geniuses, and everyone at the Surf Classic has called heroes, are apparently home schooled.

“Hey,” Jacob said softly, “they left out the expired Paki ID.”

Ray looked again. “Yeah, little brother — you’re sharper than me today. I didn’t notice that.”

“I’m always sharper than you. I’d still like to find out what ship that lifeboat came from.”

“What?” Ray stared at his brother. “After what happened last time? Are you nuts?”

“I know, I know —” Jacob held up the printout with Ahmad Hashim’s face on it. “But we found out who he was, didn’t we? We didn’t get in any trouble.”

“Well, yeah, maybe — those letters on the lifeboat — Sar Of Ankar, what kind of a name is that?”

Jacob typed in the three-word phrase. Half of what Google returned was in foreign languages.

“Bunch of gook.” Ray’s eyes opened wider. “Hey, check it out!” he pointed at the bottom of the screen. “University of Ankara?”

Jacob entered “Ankara.”

“The capital of Turkey.” Ray said.

Jacob tapped his forehead. “I thought the capital was Istanbul. Maybe it came from a Turkish ship. So we crack into ship records around ports in Turkey —”

“I don’t know.” Ray crossed his arms. “Besides — Sar? What’s Sar? Maybe we’re better off not —”

“No way, Bro! Failure is not an option!”

The doorbell rang upstairs.

Jacob looked at his brother. “Somebody for you?”

“Nope.” Ray frowned at the clock. “Not at one in the afternoon.” Their friends were still in school. He shrugged. “Must be someone for Mom.”

Truancy

When the doorbell rang, Mary Williams blew out a sigh and put down her pen at a desk topped by neat stacks of paper. She crossed the living room, passed a den with shelves packed floor to ceiling with books.

Two people stood outside the front screen in the sunshine of another beautiful Florida day. The man, bent like a balding, dark-haired ape, held a brown leather briefcase. The woman had the sharply erect posture and tilt of head — without actually standing on one foot — of a heron Mary had seen on a recent trip to the Everglades. Her cakey makeup reminded Mary of her mother’s face at her funeral ten years ago.

“Hello?” Mary said through the screen.

“Mrs. Williams?” said the heron.

“I’m Mary Williams.”

“We are from the Jacksonville District School Board Truancy Office. I am Miss Clapham and this is Mr. Zackson. We’ve come to see about your sons, I believe their names are Ray and Jacob?”

“What is it you wish to discuss?”

“We have been informed by a newspaper article that your sons are ages fourteen and fifteen? Apparently they are not registered for school. If this is true you are in violation of several local ordinances. All children between the ages of six and sixteen must attend school. May we come in?”

“I doubt that we have very much to discuss, but if you have something to say, please do so,” Mary answered through the screen.

“It seems so uncivilized to talk this way,” Clapham replied.

Mary stood motionless for a moment, then slowly reached up and unlatched the screen door. Always the same. Don’t these people have anything better to do than come calling about my sons? She gave them seats at the kitchen table and glasses of water and listened.

“. . . so, we want to make our position perfectly clear,” Miss Clapham continued, “on the issue of your sons attending school like all the other children their age . . .” Mary’s mind drifted. Wasn’t there a former U.S. President who used that phrase? People who make things perfectly clear don’t need to tell you they want to make them perfectly clear. Is it worth taking part of my life to discuss the boys with people who say things like that?

“Mrs. Williams? Mrs. Williams!”

Zackson and Clapham looked at each other. Mary had let her lack of interest show.

When Clapham’s mouth parted slightly, about to speak, Mary asked, “What exactly is it my sons would do in your school?”

“That’s not —”

“When Jacob was seven, my partner and I had him reading the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. His older brother, Ray, was reading about Nero and the fall of Rome. Can your students understand the philosophical differences between Shakespeare and Aristotle? Never mind your students, can your teachers? At ten, Jacob was learning Aristotle’s logic, and Ray could not only quote Shakespearean passages from Macbeth, but could point out many of the Bard’s errors in his death-oriented philosophy. Can your students do integral calculus? Do they study the Christian Bible? The Rig Veda, the Upanishads, the Qur’an?”

“Ms. Williams —” Zackson tried to break in. But Mary was just getting warmed up.

“Supposedly Christ taught it was preferable to teach a man to fish. Ray and Jacob run C programs of their own design utilizing basic calculitic algorithms that can not only tell you what the heaviest weight line you can put on your fishing rod is before it breaks, but where the best place to catch a certain type of fish might be according to the latest weather patterns. Some people would argue my sons are geniuses. They’re not. They’re simply aggressive, knowledge-curious boys, who’ve been encouraged and properly motivated by love instead of fear — the love of a desire to control their own environment based on values they are beginning to build.”

Zackson looked as though he wasn’t sure what to think, but the heron replied, “Mrs. Williams, that’s all very fine, but don’t you think the social interaction of school is important? What about learning to get along with others?”

“Miss Clapham is it?”

The heron nodded.

“Miss Clapham, all knowledge has the attribute of specificity. When you speak of social interaction, what specifically will my boys learn in your school? Do you mean learning to accept as normal the neurotic tendencies their classmates inherited from their parents? How to insult each other better? How to fight? My boys have learned to have nothing but contempt for the sort of psychological problems most of those kids have.”

“Look,” Clapham responded, “We didn’t come here to argue, it’s the law. We are merely here to see it enforced.”

“The law?” Mary Williams repeated disgustedly. “Do you know how many times in human history people have hidden behind that phrase? Hitler had a law: all Jews were to be sent to concentration camps. King Herod had a law: all male children under the age of two were to be put to death. Just because it’s the law, doesn’t make it right. If you have no reasons to back yourselves up with — if you can not tell me specifically what benefits will be gained by my sons attending your school, what things they will be taught they don’t already know — I will ask you to kindly leave. I really cannot allow this discussion to interfere with my own work time or my sons’ education time.”

Zackson said, “You have a scheduled education time?”

“We were never notified of your intent to establish a home education program,” Clapham stated. “Nor have your sons been properly evaluated according to state law.”

Zackson added with more enthusiasm, “If this is true you may qualify for a home study program. Not that it’s required, but do you or the boys’ father hold a degree?” He turned to Clapham, “We could start them out on a probationary two year period —” He looked at Mary. “As long as you maintain logs of your educational activities, samples of their test scores, writings, worksheets, workbooks —”

“— and submit to annual evaluations,” Clapham added. “Of course, if the boys don’t demonstrate adequate progress, your program could be terminated, but I doubt if that would be a problem for you,” she added dryly. “Of course your curriculum would have to be approved by the state —”

“Periodic home visits by state officials —”

Mary held up a stern hand. “My partner is dead. I am self-educated. I am not interested in qualifying for your probation program. I do not desire to let the way I raise my sons become your concern.”

Miss Clapham looked to Mr. Zackson.

He lifted his briefcase across his knees and flipped the catches. “Ms. Williams, we have the power to compel you to appear in court to show cause as to why your sons have not been in school. We would prefer to keep this on a friendly basis. We are prepared, however, to force the issue.” He held forth a subpoena, the names: “Jacob Williams,” “Ray Williams,” “Legal Guardians,” all neatly typed in. The order was not yet signed by a Justice of the Court. “Please do not force us to use this.”

“Excuse me.” Jacob stood in the doorway. “Does anyone know who owns the blue Ford that was parked out front?”

“Was parked out front?” Zackson asked.

“Yes,” Jacob answered. “It’s rolling down the street but there’s no one inside.”

Zackson and Clapham ran to the door in time to see their car moving slowly beyond the Williams property line. Miss Clapham moved quickly out the door after their car, wobbly heels clacking on the pavement. Zackson tried to latch his briefcase and keep up.

As they ran across the corner of the lawn they nearly caught the car, but it sped up slightly, staying just ahead. The blue Ford, Clapham, and Zackson continued down the street past two houses, a row of tall palms, and out of Mary’s field of vision. She turned suspiciously on her son.

Jacob shrugged. “Ray wanted to test out a new set of remote control servos he put together last week. I wanted to see how my new short wave monitor hookup would work.”

“You were listening on the intercom.” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Where is Ray?”

“In our bedroom. At the controls of their car.”

One corner of Mary’s mouth rose to match the humorous look on her son’s face.

“How did you plan on getting your gear back?”

“We thought you’d drive me over to the shopping center at Miller’s Crossing. Ray’s going to slide their car into a parking space. I grab everything before they get there.”

“Oh, you did, did you?”

Mary paused only a moment. She smiled. They both knew she found it as amusing as the boys did. “Lets go.”

When Clapham and Zackson finally caught up to their car in Miller’s lot, they found a ticket on the window. The car had been illegally parked in a handicapped spot. When they got back to the Williams house, no one was home.

Two days later when Zackson and Clapham would return with the police, arrest warrant in hand, the empty house at 1414 Baker Street would have a For Rent sign in the front yard.

On The Edge Of Reason

Another wasted day, Franklin thought as he lay there on Victoria’s big bed, head propped on one elbow, watching her sleep. They’d made love too many times to count. Watched an old movie. Gone out for seafood at a jazz club he’d enjoyed. Then slept the night away, and the morning — to make up for lack of sleep the previous night. He was no closer to figuring out what he should do or where he should be.

He rolled onto his back and put his head on the pillow. He pushed up, got out of bed. From the eleventh floor he looked down on the traffic moving up Michigan Avenue.

His head felt messy inside, sadness mutating from pain to anger. He saw flashes of Cyn hammering pitons into red rock — climbing Tom’s Thumb with him, a particularly tough spire in the Valley; Cyn’s hug when he left the military and joined the seminary; Cyn and Steve in the big black raft, lazing down a sunny Youghiogheny River with him one Saturday two years ago. “There’s only one thing I want to know,” he whispered, “Who the hell did this?” He shook his head, breathing out a bitter laugh. “Isn’t that what everyone wants to know?”

He had nothing to focus on, now he’d left the church, nothing important to do. Everon has that huge job back east, his company to run. There’s got to be some purpose for me. In the past he would have prayed about it; part of him wanted to now. Was resigning from the church really the right thing? Dammit! He stared out across the lake to the horizon. A few rough patches of wind out there today . . . if only life were so smooth.

He found his phone on the nightstand. Took it to the living room and dialed information. This time he’d try the Chicago FBI.

It took thirty minutes being shuttled around their system to reach a live person. They already knew who he was; he was in a national database. “Why aren’t you looking for Zhou’s body?” he asked. “Isn’t he on a wanted list? Don’t you call someone like him a suspect? How did he get into the country?”

“Sir — Please!” The agent’s attempt at keeping a reasonable tone hardly masked her irritation. “The government has to give each lead the resources it deserves.”

“So you’re doing nothing about this?” Franklin shouted.

“We’re looking into it! Thank you for calling.” The line went dead. Seven times now! He would call again and again and again, until he got an answer! What else am I supposed to do?

He knew obsession when he felt it. What had he been thinking — leaving the church, the people who depended on him? He pictured Ralph in his bulging maroon robes, Bible in the air, mouthing: “No more hypnosis!” All the while something fishy going on with the church’s finances — and Ralph, claiming to know nothing about it! Franklin tried to push the welling anger aside.

As Victoria’s big wall clock touched two p.m., a sunbeam slashed the window. She cried out in a troubled, child-like sob; mumbled words he didn’t understand; something dark. Being trapped in that subway bothers her more than she lets on. There are probably a lot of people like us out there.

He sat down next to her on the bed, smoothed a hand across her cheek. She cried out again, eyelids flickering, face fearful. He leaned in, put his lips against hers — until she smiled and reached around his neck and pulled him in. They didn’t make love. They simply held each other, rocking back and forth. He didn’t know what to do. If I could just find out where Zhou’s damn body went to!

Watching him, Victoria nodded. She got up, turned on the clock radio, not very loud, and left the room.

Like at Del’s, talk radio seemed to be all the rage in Chicago. Franklin listened to the crazies rant. He checked the time: 2:24 p.m. His stomach growled.

“I heard that!”

Victoria came back still naked, carrying a bowl of something. “Try this while I cook you an omelet.”

He tried a bite. “Bananas and yogurt? Dried apricots?” He smiled at her. “Thanks!”

A female caller cut through, reflecting Franklin’s own opinion:

“What is President Wall doing about New York? I’ll tell you what he’s doing. Nothing!”

Franklin took another bite, Turned it up a little. The host wasn’t interrupting, just putting them on one after another, rapid fire. A deep voice said:

“The caller you had on a few minutes ago was almost right, but they’re Islamic militants, a combination of Hamas, and remnants of El Queda —”

“Bull!” said the next caller, a hard male voice. “El Queda is nothing more than the Big Taco. Go down to Mexico sometime. You’ll see. El Queda’s a word hijacked by the U.S. government. It means Big Taco —”

“New York was destroyed by the Klu Klux Klan! They’ve always hated Himeytown —”

“Anything interesting?” Victoria gave the radio a chin point, as she returned with his omelet.

He ran a hand softly down her spine as she sat next to him on the bed. Gave her a wide grimace as she lowered her head against his. “No,” he said.

“Aliens may have been involved,” a female voice screeched.

Franklin shook his head, making hers move with him. “Are we all crazy?”

“It was a government missile from a base on Long Island . . .”

Still stroking her back, Franklin looked into her eyes. “When I’m deep inside you, when you’re here inside my head filling my thoughts with all the wonderful things you are —”

She smiled and moved to kiss him —

“What?” He turned away from her.

“There was no bomb. I don’t believe a single word of it,” a whiny male voice said. “This thing’s a big lie; a trumped-up government plot. No one’s been on Manhattan since this so-called attack, and the government won’t even let us in there to check it out. It’s one — big — con! I’ll bet they’ll have the stock market reopened in a month —”

Franklin’s exhales grew sharp and short.

“What about the pictures on television?” the talk host asked reasonably, “And on the Internet?”

“Ever see that movie where the government puts commercials together to create a war? Wag The Dog? It’s fake! That’s what this is: Wag The Dog!”

Franklin wasn’t alone; he could feel Victoria breath freight-training hard next to him.

“And all the people who have a friend who died in the blast?” the host asked. “Everybody knows someone who was killed. What about the people who were crushed or unable to escape the fire? Are they all part of your fake plot?”

The host hung up on the caller and gave the station’s number, inviting more people to call in.

Without thinking, Franklin reached over, dragged his jacket off the bedroom chair, fished out his phone, and dialed.

Beyond The Edge

The number rang. Franklin jerked as it connected. Victoria was watching him. There was an echo. The clock radio was delayed. He turned it off. He was on hold, listening to the repulsive words of other callers, some of whom had angered him to the point of dialing this inane show.

“It’s those damn kike usurers — that’s who caused the attack. Them and all them godless niggers up in Harlem.”

I should hang up, Franklin thought. The host was keeping the caller on the air. Maybe that’s the real purpose, to stir people up. Maybe he’s a plant, a friend of the host. Franklin huffed. That’s ridiculous! But the things he’s saying —

The show stopped as someone interrupted to ask Franklin his first name and what he wanted to talk about. Then he was back on hold, listening to more crazy callers.

“They got just what they deserved, too, and I —”

The talk host finally cut the caller off:

“Thank you, sir, for your opinion. All are welcome here, though we really don’t need to listen to any more of that.”

Franklin felt a twinge of apprehension. How long would he be on hold? He felt like a newly hired preacher about to give his first sermon.

“You’re listening to Red Milton’s Radio Hours, broadcast from beautiful downtown Chicago. Let’s take a call on —”

Franklin heard a moment of static. “— line two, from Franklin who says he was in the New York area at the time of the blast,” Milton’s voice, coming through bigger now.

Silence. Franklin felt uncertain where to start. He felt a sudden combination of things: slightly nervous, but with the possibility of getting this nagging pain out of his chest.

“Franklin? You’re on the air.”

“I, uh, disagree — with your caller’s statement about New York being fake. I assure you, the destruction was far worse than you’ve heard and absolutely as bad as you can possibly imagine.”

On the other end of the line, Milton experienced an intense sensation. It was actually physical. Milton couldn’t help himself. He tried to identify it. His first thought was simply trust. The caller’s voice was so unusual, the sound so smooth and strong. And subtly dominating — even over the telephone.

But Milton’s job was to create conflict. Conflict sold, it paid his bills. He pressed in sarcastically. “What makes you think you know so much about it?”

A pause. Then, the voice again: “I was there.”

“Where?” Milton asked, “New Jersey? Connecticut?”

Silence.

“What?” Milton was all over it. “You were one of the lucky one’s who got out of Manhattan?”

“No.” Silence again.

“Well, speak up, caller.”

“I was part of a rescue mission out of Teterboro — New Jersey. My sister, her husband, and daughter were living on the Upper East Side at the time of the blast. My brother and I, and a medic, flew a helicopter in to find them. We’ve seen it. Let me assure everyone, what happened in New York is absolutely real, the destruction severe in south Manhattan. The pictures you’ve seen aren’t fake! The whole area was flattened. So if another of your callers tries to claim New York wasn’t destroyed, that the bomb wasn’t real, let me tell you, it was as real as it gets.”

Milton was blown away. “Who is this?” He looked at his computer screen. “What’s your last name, Franklin?”

“Reveal.”

“This is Doctor Franklin Reveal? The guy on the cover of Time last week? The guy who opened the George Washington Bridge?”

Silence.

“Yes.”

Milton’s Surprise

Milton was thrown. To have such a caller purely by accident. Everybody wanted to talk to this guy. He was on the phone, on his show! And the voice! Low, smooth, comforting — it made Milton think of his family, his home growing up in Wisconsin — Milton found himself staring into space. He blinked, brought his eyes back into focus.

“I read an article about you and your brother,” Milton said, “Those pictures — holding your sister’s baby daughter — and that owl! What’s your brother’s name?”

Franklin took a breath. “Everon.” This wasn’t what he’d intended.

“The reason I called in was to disagree with your caller. Instead of denying what happened, or speculating, we ought to be trying to find out who’s really behind these mass murders.”

The air went dead for a moment as Milton considered. He shook his head to get himself back on track. He rarely stopped talking. He was not a big listener.

“Franklin, what have you and your brother been doing since that day?”

“Well, some family related things. We had to bury our sister and her husband, and take care of our niece, Melissa. Everon’s been running power crews in Pennsylvania, doing repairs to the East Coast grid.”

“Yes, I heard about that. And you, Franklin? You’re the minister of a church.”

Franklin blew out a long breath. “I’ve resigned. I’m taking some time to think about things.”

“Resigned? That I didn’t know. Why?”

“I’d rather not go into it right now.”

Very interesting, thought Milton. Probably to do with the loss of his sister. Wasn’t there something about his secretary? But there was no way to push it. “Well, I just want to thank you for the wonderful things you and your brother did that day in New York, and for taking the time to call us.”

Through the studio window, Milton noticed his producer waving his arms. He was standing next to the station manager. There was a message Milton hadn’t read on the computer screen.

They’re right! What a great guest this guy would make!

“Um, Franklin, could you hold on a moment? The station manager would like a word with you.”

“Uh, okay . . .”

“You’re listening to Red Milton’s Radio Hours, *QBAS, Chicago. We’ll be back right after the news.”

*One of the Q radio call signs established by the FCC’s recent mid-country K/Q/W boundary split.

Milton’s Guest

Red Milton gave Franklin a rickety blue secretary chair, pushed a microphone encased in black foam up to his face, and told him to relax. In the aftermath of his call-in yesterday, Franklin had allowed Milton’s producer to convince him to come in to the studio as a live guest today. With Victoria’s encouragement he’d agreed.

Two minutes later Milton welcomed Franklin to his show.

Franklin felt uncomfortable, so he took the easiest path: expressing his dissatisfaction with the FBI. He told Milton about the many times he’d called them, and the Bureau’s lack of interest. Then he dropped a bomb of his own: “I tried to tell them, the plutonium was Russian.”

Milton sighed. He’d heard it all. “Why would you think that?” he asked, voice dripping with skepticism.

“Because I scraped some residue off one of the military helicopters coming back to Teterboro, some of the gray fallout dust from Manhattan. The military didn’t want me to have it — in fact they tried to stop me from leaving with it.”

“So you have some dust. So what?”

“I gave it to the lab specialist at our family mine in Nevada. Once in a while we find a little uranium along with the gypsum.”

“Uranium?”

“Our lab guy ran it on our mass spec — that’s a mass spectrometer —”

“I know what a mass spec is. So?”

“Chip gave the numbers to a friend who used to work at Rocky Flats, an old government lab north of Denver. His friend had a list, said he knew right off where it came from, the exact reactor. It’s Russian; or more precisely, Georgian.”

“Maybe the Russians sold it to Pakistan?”

“Maybe. I’m sure that’s what the government will say.”

“We’re on the Internet now. This program can be heard anywhere in the world. The Internet connections in Washington are supposed to be working reasonably well again, so they probably will have something to say about it,” Milton said doubtfully.

But by the time Franklin got to the murder of his friend and secretary, talking about his near death fight with Zhou, and how Zhou’s ambulance, and even his car, had gone missing, the call lines were lit solid.

All down Duval Street, in Key West, people partied like there was no tomorrow, a popular possibility. There were few escapes from doomsday better than tequila and pina coladas, half-naked women and men, and Jimmy Buffet tribute bands featuring modified verses of Buffet’s end-of-the-world volcano song. Key West had been jammed with tourists since the New York bomb.

But a block over on Whitehead Street, within sight of the giant red, yellow, and black concrete bullet that marked the southernmost spot in the U.S., Johnny Johnstone stood on his beach house balcony irritated that a gray sedan was still parked in his spot. Two days it had been there, taking the space where he normally parked his little red Mazda Miata.

Johnny didn’t recognize the car. Nobody on the street had a gray Taurus. It could be a tourist, he supposed. It pissed him off. Tourists didn’t usually stay parked in one spot this long.

He picked up the phone and called a buddy with the island police. Johnny’s timing couldn’t have been better. His friend said he’d be right over. Of course, Island Time is a laid-back concept.

While he waited, Johnny tuned in an Internet talk program he enjoyed on his phone. The host usually had a lot of nut-jobs on, but they were mostly hometown nut-jobs. Johnny was from Chicago.

He pulled a Corona from the fridge and popped the top. Today the host had some minister as a guest, talking about the New York bomb.

The flashing red lights brought Johnny back out on the balcony.

“Lenny!” he called to the cop.

“Johnny!” the cop called back.

Something good was going down already; Lenny was writing a ticket! Johnny ambled downstairs, not really listening to the show on his phone. Something about a missing car.

A tow truck was pulling up. Johnny grinned. “What’s up, Officer Lenkowski?”

Over Johnny’s phone came the words, “gray Taurus.”

“Good call, Johnny! I think this puppy might be stolen, out of Ontario. Canada, can you believe it?”

And right then, almost like an echo, someone on his iPhone said, “Ontario, Canada.”

“Why do you say he’s Chinese?” Milton asked. “They look an awful lot like someone who’s Japanese or Korean, don’t they?”

“Because,” Franklin said, “I swore at him in Chinese, and Zhou reacted. Violently. He went nuts. Completely lost it.”

“And you called the FBI?”

“Seven times!”

Out in the control room, the producer typed GRAY TAURUS onto the computer screen he used to communicate with Milton. A caller had demanded he be allowed, TO TALK TO FRANKLIN RIGHT NOW!

Milton put him on the air.

“I’m in Key West,” the caller said, “looking at a gray Taurus that’s parked in my usual spot. The plate’s from Ontario — Canada! The license plate is 6FR CA3.”

“6FR!” Franklin said. “That’s the same as the first half of the plate I saw through the Adlans’ front window!”

“Hold on! The cop who’s writing it up is a friend of mine. He’s coming back from the car.”

The caller’s phone went staticky for a second. “Yup, looks like it’s stolen,” a voice said. “We’ll have it towed.”

“Did you hear that?” the caller said.

“I did.”

“What do you think?”

“I doubt the FBI will want to hear it,” Franklin said.

“From what you’ve told us, they’ll probably say it’s already logged into their system,” Milton threw in, no longer disparaging.

“That’s been my experience,” Franklin agreed.

Nevertheless, when it was over, Milton was impressed.

And Franklin had to admit, after days of FBI stonewalling, being on Red Milton’s show had actually given him his first tiny bit of fresh information. A clue. What the heck was Zhou’s car — if it was Zhou’s car — doing in Key West?

You Should Do This!

Franklin drove them home in Victoria’s white Audi Convertible, a far cry from his old jeep. The dark gray leather seats were a lot more comfortable for one thing. He didn’t want to put any miles on Everon’s rental he didn’t have to, but he wasn’t ready to turn it in either.

“I could get used to this,” he said, turning smoothly onto Michigan. “I do still miss my jeep though.”

“So?” Victoria asked. “Don’t keep it to yourself. What do you think?”

“Just what I told her. I don’t know.” He didn’t know whether to grin or frown. Both felt like they were competing for real estate on his face. “Two hours a day, starting tomorrow?”

He checked the car’s clock. Twenty to five, Toni’s deadline: “We have to have a night to start promoting you,” she’d told him, “to run some ads. I need to know by five o’clock. No later.”

“Think of it as therapy,” Victoria said, as if she could sense the pain in his heart.

She’s right. These damned dreams. They’re my real motivation: Cyn and Steve, that damn metal shaft piercing their bodies . . . holding her head in my lap there on top of her building, that last rasping death-rattle from her throat. He nodded grimly. I have to find out if anyone knows anything more about Zhou. To connect the dots.

But he wasn’t some government agency with the power of subpoena and arrest in his back pocket. Then again, is it necessary? Hell, the FBI never solved that anthrax mail thing, did they? The Government doesn’t seem know what’s really going on. Blaming Pakistan? White separatists? I can’t be the only person unwilling to let it slide.

Victoria’s phone rang. She frowned at the number. “Hello?”

“People want to know why Franklin quit his church!” a voice said in her ear, then identified itself.

“How did you get this number?” she asked.

The voice told her.

“Well, Franklin’s not discussing that. Please don’t call this number again.”

She put down the phone. “Thanks, mom!” she muttered sarcastically. She turned to Franklin and gave him a rueful smile.

“I take it that wasn’t your mom,” he said.

“No, he was with the Sun-Times. My mother doesn’t always know who should have my number.” She shrugged. “Reporters can be very tricky. Everybody at CNN has my number too. Somehow he found out we’re together.”

“We’ll end up with a lot of that, you know.”

“The Sun-Times is running a story about you tomorrow. You’re famous. A lot of people admire you.”

Oh boy, Franklin thought. It was coming. He could feel it. They were on him already.

She smiled. “But what else do you have to do?”

“That’s true.” Another thing she’s right about. I need a job. My savings won’t last forever. The money isn’t a lot, he chuffed a little air through his nose. ’Course, neither was the salary of a junior minister.

He spun the wheel and the Audi turned smoothly into Victoria’s parking garage.

“Good show, Red,” Toni Weil said. “You hit twenty-two thousand! That’s the most listeners your show ever pulled!”

“Thanks Tone. It was pretty good, wasn’t it?” he laughed.

Weil didn’t. She was studying Milton, her lips pursed.

“What?” Milton frowned. His eyebrows rose. “No, Toni, dammit! It’s my slot!”

“We’re only talking about your second hour — if it happens. We’ll be pulling his second hour out of the national Adam Carolla feed. Don’t get too worried. He hasn’t even said he’ll do it.”

“It’s so obvious, I should have thought of it,” Victoria said, one leg curled underneath her on the white couch, face tilted up to him. Even her eyes smiled. “You’re perfect for it. You’re a natural.” She was in one of his white buttondown shirts and that was all.

He stood sideways to her, arms crossed, looking out the window at the traffic on the slush-filled street below. “They say they’ve got people who can show me how to get started.”

Something in his voice, she thought. There’s something holding him back. She nodded. She knew what it was, what to do about it.

Was it what she wanted?

Her position at CNN’s Chicago Bureau had gone from exciting and fun, to completely dissatisfying. They kept trying to push her in front of the camera. She didn’t want to be a personality. She liked working behind the scenes. Timing and pressure: the right production values, the right people, the right story — all working together. She’d finally gotten the network’s management to fly her to New York to discuss moving there — and nailed down the job. Now there was no job — and no New York.

They could still use her in Chicago, or Atlanta if she preferred. But she didn’t want to go back to CNN. The bomb was an end to a lot of things, including the guy she’d had a first date with in the City. Hell, it almost ended my life!

Here she was, back in Chicago, involved with this man she barely knew, nothing like the guys she usually went for. Her last boyfriend, a popular anchorman, had moved to Los Angeles four months ago. She didn’t follow him out. She submitted to a moment of self-analysis. Why is it I feel so attracted to Franklin? The brace on my leg hardly slowed me down. Part of it has to be leftover crisis fear; trapped in that subway car, rescued by him and his brother.

But clearly there was more to it than that. If there was one single thing got under her skin — hell, under her skirt — it was a voice like his. Except there were no voices like his. It was like listening to dark chocolate and . . . irresistible! She wondered, Am I that shallow?

No, there was something tremendous behind the voice: the intense way ideas flowed from his brain and his tongue, as if they were nothing — while she had to think on a whole new level to keep up. She watched his deep, sparkling cobalt-blue eyes stare out at the lake, considering whether to do the show; the face of an ancient Jesuit priest, surrounded by that mane of dark hair. His looks certainly weren’t increasing her resistance — as if she wanted to resist!

It’s all an experiment, isn’t it? Or is it something more? It was too difficult to figure out by herself; it was time for her to make a phone call, one that was overdue.

“It’s more than just finding Zhou, isn’t it?” she asked.

He looked at her, his head nodding slightly.

“It’s whoever’s behind Zhou,” she said. “Whoever financed him, where the bombs came from.” She grinned. “I think I know what’s holding you back.”

“The radio people,” he said. “I don’t know them and don’t necessarily trust them. If I did the program it would have to be on one condition.”

She was still smiling, “An extremely gorgeous producer watching your back. Someone with knowledge and experience to screen your calls; someone who could keep out the wackos and find the right people. No problem. I’ve got some time off.”

“You’d do that? You’d produce the show?”

The grin filled her whole face, “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes.”

“So I’ll do it.”

His eyes went from her face to the big wall clock, the second-hand sweeping around: One minute to five. He thought of what he’d learned today: Zhou’s car in Key West! There’s got to be more. Try it! a voice was telling him. Just try it!

He fished out his phone and smiled hesitantly as he waited for someone to answer.

“QBAS.”

“May I speak with Toni Weil? It’s Franklin Reveal calling.”

Not Exactly What We Expected

“Sorensen! Sorensen, that you?”

“Yes,” Mary Beth whispered.

“Get your lazy ass out of that rack. Get dressed. You’re going for a ride.”

Mary Beth pulled off the blanket, the sheet. She’d kept her underwear on at night, the bra too — it was disgusting — three days. But she was afraid someone might steal them.

She stepped into the only article of clothing the feds had provided, the hideous orange jumpsuit, and Velcroed its tabs together. She missed her red and white checks.

The cell door slid back. “Let’s go, Sorensen!” said her jailer, a real dike bitch nigger, twice the size Mary Beth was — and Mary Beth was no string bean, quite plump actually; roly-poly was the way most of The People described her. She didn’t mind.

She did mind the terrible food in here — she’d probably already lost five pounds — mystery meat and a cheese-like substance between two pieces of bread — they called it a sandwich; a piece of fruit that tasted like some kind of chemical spray. She missed the homemade pies and jams she made on the farm. She worried about Erik. He can’t be eating well either.

The darkie handcuffed her, then pointed the way with that heavy black stick they carried. Mary Beth didn’t even know what time it was. The place was a tomb.

And then the woman in the next cell said, “Where’s she going?”

That was all it took. All hell broke loose. Toilet paper, metal cups or something against the bars (Did they even have cups? Mary Beth didn’t have one), and screaming. The screaming was the worst. She couldn’t tell what they were saying — like animal sounds. That’s what they were, animals!

She moved ahead of the big female ape in the dark suit, down the concrete walkway out of the group of cells she’d been held in. Through several more barred gates and a long corridor.

They went through another gate and they were outside. It was daytime, which surprised Mary Beth. She’d thought it was night. Either it was early morning or evening, she couldn’t tell, the sun wasn’t out. It was cold.

Another darkie, a skinny one, put her in the back of one of those foreign station wagon things. Not a regular van. An SUV, that’s what it was.

They went out the main gates. The driver turned right onto the road, then, in no time, was turning back into another block of buildings that looked just like the one Mary Beth had left. Only bigger. With more lights. More rolls of sharp wire on top. What were they going to do to her here? Experiments probably.

Ten minutes later she was in a long concrete hall like the one she’d left.

“Here,” the darkie pointed to an open door off the hall. Mary Beth’s lower lip quivered. She didn’t want to go in there. She’d never get out. Not alive.

She felt herself shoved between the shoulders. She nearly fell through the door. And gasped. “Erik!”

“M. B.!”

Her big strong Viking husband rose to his feet behind a wide table. He was bent over. It was the best he could do. His hands were chained to the shiny metal bench. She was shoved over next to him. She put her handcuffed hands on his left shoulder. “Oh, Erik!” She was crying.

The guard left them alone without bothering to chain Mary Beth down.

Erik asked, “Are you okay, honey?”

“I’m fine,” Mary Beth said. “What are they going to do to us?”

“I’m not sure exactly.”

The door opened. A man in a cheap blue suit entered, carrying a slim brown briefcase.

“Lee!” Erik and Mary Beth cried together. “Oh, thank God!” added Mary Beth.

Lee was as tall as Erik but much thinner. He wore round, rimless glasses and his receding blond hair was slicked-back like an aging rock star.

Lee frowned at Erik. “What the — they’ve got you chained down? Have you caused any trouble, gotten in any fights with anyone? The guards?”

“No.”

Lee slapped his briefcase on the table, turned back and pounded an open hand on the metal door. “Guard! Guard!”

The door opened.

“Unlock this man from the bench. Unless you can tell me why you’re violating his Sixth Amendment Rights, I’ll have a court order down here so fast it’ll make your head spin. He’s done nothing to warrant this type of restriction. This is a private legal conference. This man’s got to be able to look at documents!”

“Just a minute.”

The door closed.

Lee nodded.

“Can you get us out of here, Lee?” Erik asked.

“We’ll see.”

The door opened. A male guard, Mary Beth thought was probably a Mex, came in with a key. He stepped around to Erik’s chains and removed the lock that connected them to the eye bolt between his legs.

“Okay,” Lee said, once the door was closed.

“Are they recording us?” Erik asked.

“Well, they aren’t supposed to. Legal conferences are off limits, except in cases of terrorism.” Lee opened his briefcase and pulled out a small electric fan. “Noise canceling,” he said as he turned it on. “Talk softly.”

They moved their heads together.

“So what’s going on out there, Lee?” Erik grinned. “What’s the word? How’s Philly?”

Lee sighed. “Not exactly what we expected.”

“Not — what do you mean?”

“It’s not crazy?” Mary Beth asked. “Aren’t all the niggers killing each other?”

Lee sighed again. “No. They’re not.”

“What?”

“There was more violence at first. Some drug dealers were killed. A couple of gangbangers tried to rob a 7-Eleven. The manager took them out with his own AK-47. One of ours, I’m sure. Now there’s almost nothing — even though the police are more afraid than ever to go into those neighborhoods.”

“No!” said Mary Beth.

“Shit,” said Erik.

“I know,” the lawyer sighed. “Philadelphia — at least for the moment — is the most peaceful city on the East Coast.”

“I don’t believe it,” Mary Beth said.

“Believe it,” Lee shot back. “Now, Baltimore, that’s another story. Crime’s up in Baltimore. Word is the bad guys are moving down there. Washington too. Philly’s too dangerous for them. In the bad areas we targeted, everybody’s got a gun.”

FBI Special Liaison Lance Bolini entered the monitoring room where Cheryl and Russ and three other agents were watching through the one-way glass. The Sorensens and their lawyer were quiet at the moment.

“Anything?”

“Nothing,” Cheryl said.

“You can’t hear them?”

“No, no, we can hear them fine,” Russ said, “after a little EQ adjustment to compensate for the lawyer’s stupid fan. Just nada on the nuclear weapons.”

“What can we hold them on?” Bolini asked.

“Accessory to conspire to litter, by leaving a bunch of empty garbage trucks on the street?”

Bolini grimaced. “Don’t be funny, Russ. It’s not helpful.”

“Sorry. But there just isn’t anything. There wasn’t a trace of radiation in any of the trucks. The worst thing we found was an old Colt forty-five stuck in one of the crusher linkages. The thing wouldn’t even fire.”

Cheryl said, “It would be too easy for their lawyer to claim it was somebody’s leftover trash. We can’t even prove they’re connected to these particular trucks. We still haven’t found any of the drivers.”

“Well at least we’ve got the Benoit Kalagi connection. The bank transfers should be enough to hold them.”

“I don’t see how,” Russ said. “These two people have no direct connection to the funds. The accounts weren’t in their names or associated with them in any way. The money was probably used to purchase the old guns we hear are flooding Philadelphia.”

“Dammit!” shouted Bolini. “Then who’s behind the New York and Virginia bombs? Could the President be right? Could it be Pakistan?”

Cheryl looked at Lance. “From what I’ve heard, the biggest thing our military found over there was 100 kilotons.”

“I’ve heard the same rumors.”

“Isn’t that small for the New York bomb?” Russ asked.

Bolini clenched his fists. “Then who’s behind these attacks?”

Hired Host

Franklin would have been lost on his own. He tied back his dark hair with a piece of climbing cord and slid the headphones Victoria handed him over his ears. She pulled his left one back a little so he could hear her.

She pointed at the mixer console. “This slider, here, controls your volume. The others on this side are for the callers.” She pushed a key on the computer keyboard and left the room. Some pop music he didn’t recognize started up.

A heavyset woman leaned in through the sound booth door. “Hi, Franklin! I’m Shirley! We’ve set up an email address for you: franklin@QBAS111.com. Feel free to give it out. We calculate your number of radio listeners by multiplying the number of Internet listeners you get, which we can track exactly — even what kind of phone or tablet they’re using. That gives us an idea whether they’re at home, in their cars, wherever. At the moment the total is just under twenty-nine thousand!”

She pulled her head back for a second to check something. Through the sound booth window, Red Milton stood watching from across the room, arms crossed, butt against a desk. He didn’t look thrilled. Shirley leaned back in and whispered, “That’s nearly three times what this slot normally generates! The station’s been running ads for your show all night!”

“Thank you, Shirley.”

She closed the door and left him alone. The phone lines were already lit up. All of them. As the music faded, a commercial-sounding male voice said, “Now! From our studio on the sixty-sixth floor of the Chicago Willis Building, the former minister who saved countless thousands in New York, Franklin, Reveal!”

Franklin’s hands shook a little as he moved to the microphone. He wouldn’t have Milton to lean on this time. Victoria had typed on the screen:

Victoria was right, numbers didn’t matter. One or one million. He would let his emotions be heard, but not enough to where they crippled him; this was too important.

Through the glass, Victoria shrugged.

He began the way she’d told him: “Hello, welcome. This is Franklin Reveal on QBAS, Chicago. I’m here to try to figure out what’s going on with these attacks on our country. If you have any information we might use to further this goal, please call me.” He gave the phone number. He sounded pretty lame compared with Red Milton. Across the production room Milton appeared to snicker.

Franklin glanced at his monitor.

As good a place to start as any, he thought, and pushed the button on the phone marked 3. “This is Franklin Reveal, you’re on the air.”

Nothing happened.

“Hello?”

Through the window, Victoria was pointing down to the side. He pushed up the corresponding slider for Line Three. “Connie? You’re on the air.”

“I think you owe us all an explanation!” said a woman’s strident voice. “Why you left your church!”

Damn. He’d told Victoria he didn’t want to discuss the church, or religion. He wanted to focus on what happened in New York and Virginia Beach.

“How could you do that to those people? Now, of all times?” the woman said.

Through the glass, Victoria’s eyebrows were raised, she shook her head. Words appeared on the screen:

Franklin took a breath and said, “I understand your interest, but I’m not getting into that, Connie. My goal here is to do a public investigation. I’m looking for anything related to what happened in New York.”

“But Reverend, I’m —”

He disconnected the call. He felt rude doing it. There was no other way.

Through the window Red Milton laughed. He turned and left.

“If you have information about New York, or Virginia Beach, please call me,” Franklin said to his audience. “Even if it’s vaguely related. Other topics, I’m not going to discuss.”

The woman he chose next on Line Two sounded tentative, the way he’d felt when he called in.

“Doctor Reveal, I think what you did in New York is remarkable. This show is a wonderful thing.” They should have been enthusiastic words. She said them like the saddest person on Earth.

“Thank you.”

“We were fortunate,” she went on. “My husband and I and our two sons survived, thank God. We caught a flight back to Chicago two hours before the bomb went off. My — my parents weren’t so lucky.”

Franklin winced, thinking of Cyn. “I’m very sorry for your loss.” He paused a moment. When she didn’t reply, he said, “Do you have anything to further our investigation?”

She didn’t answer right away; she was pretty upset. “Well — maybe. I don’t know if it means anything —”

“Yes?”

“Well, mmm, as we were driving to the airport, just before we crossed over the Verrazano Bridge, we turned on the radio. Every single station was covered up by — well, not static exactly — there was this, mmm, woo-woo sound.”

“Woo-woo?”

“A swirling kind of thing. Like a deranged flute or something.”

Radio interference? That’s interesting. He stopped himself. You don’t keep your thoughts to yourself on radio! “What did it sound like?”

“It went up and down, like woooo — oooo.” And another weird thing, my phone wasn’t working.

“Where was this? Where were you?”

“Leaving my . . . parent’s house on Staten Island. Belmont Place, a couple blocks from the bay.”

The woman’s call started something. There were three more with reports of dead friends or relatives, with that same swirling noise and cell phone interference; people leaving Brooklyn Heights, Wall Street — all centered around the bomb. No one had mentioned that anywhere.

At the end of the hour, commercials and news were pre-programmed. Victoria put up a message:

He nodded back, let out a long breath. He didn’t feel like he was accomplishing much. The reminders of death here were almost as bad as being at the church.

A news clip began, the President speaking about the small lifeboat that washed up on a Florida beach, the male corpse with an engineer’s ID from PINSTECH — the Pakistan Nuclear Commission. Wall explained again how it led to his decision to invade the country.

A military representative came on. She said they were still looking into why the missile exploded prematurely, but added that a self-destruct was fortunate because they’d been able to locate and capture all of Pakistan’s records and nuclear arsenal anyway.

That’s a pretty lame explanation, Franklin thought. U.S. Missiles don’t just blow themselves up.

As the news ended, he saw Victoria had typed:

He punched the button, brought up the slider.

“Hello, Jay — ?” Franklin said eagerly, “You’re on the air.”

“Hi! Good show. I was working the docks Monday — I got off at six that evening or I wouldn’t be telling you this — but there was a Paki ship, the Khan II, due-in Bomb Night. It never showed up.”

“Hmmm. That does support President Wall’s outlook on Pakistan,” Franklin agreed.

“Just thought you’d want to know.”

“Thank you, Jay.” He disconnected the call and wondered aloud, “Could the Khan II could have been Zhou’s ship?

“Zhou tracked me down in Pittsburgh because he thought the bird I found on top of my sister’s building in New York was his spirit guide, an owl named Ting. Ting died of radiation poisoning. I’ve been wondering if Ting could have been radiated on a ship — a ship that launched the New York bomb. Maybe it was the Khan II.”

There were a few more woo-woo cell-phone-interference calls. A few more people snuck past Victoria’s call-screening with no useful information, to congratulate him: “You’re a hero, Franklin! It’s great what you’re doing here!” A few callers got through by pretending to know something, but only wanted to ask him how bad New York really was. And his first show was over.

It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t that great either.

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