Hawkinsville, Georgia

Jim Sanderson walked through the hallways of Hawkinsville High School hand in hand with his third wife Jenny. The school looked a lot smaller than it did when he was younger. It was because he was bigger now. Bigger than this school, bigger than this whole goddamn town. He couldn't wait to leave this shithole behind and go back to D.C. as Senator Sanderson, elected in his own right.

Vote tallies were still coming in from the eastern part of the state, and the CSRA was Taliaferro's political base, but as it stood Sanderson had a comfortable eighty thousand vote lead over the governor. Former governor Jim reminded himself. Hamp Taliaferro resigned from the governorship two days after his arrest in Macon. He hadn't officially withdrawn from the senator race, it was too late to change the ballots, but he said he would not serve if elected. Even with that promise he still got a solid hundred thousand votes just based on name recognition alone.

He was elated when the news broke the morning after Taliferro's arrest. Everyone inside Georgia politics had known about Hamp's predilection for colored girls that were barely legal, but nobody ever really did anything about it. Jim's staff called it a lucky break, a huge misstep by Taliaferro and his people. But Jim knew the truth. The arrest and the sudden change of fortune for his campaign wasn't dumb luck or a slip-up by the governor. It was him who had done it. Jim rubbed the monkey's paw and made his wish, and it came true in the most horrible way imaginable.

The crowd gathered in the high school gym cheered loudly as Jim and Jenny stepped out on the stage. They waved and beamed at the crowd caught up in the moment. Jim held his arms up in an effort to call for silence. He finally got it after another solid minute of cheering.

"Thank you, Hawkinsville, for that warm welcome home. Y'all know how to make a hometown boy feel good!"

More cheers from the crowd. Jim smiled and played up the aww shucks angle. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked sheepish in the face of their applause.

"I have to admit, when it was getting down to the wire and I wasn't sure if I was gonna win... I was looking forward to coming back home for good. This is my hometown, and I am proud to tell the people in Washington that I come from Hawkinsville!"

They ate that up as was to be expected. He beamed and hid any signs of contempt as their cheers and whoops subsided into silence.

" I'd like to thank you and the voters of Georgia who have given me the awesome responsibility of representing them in Washington for the next six years. This is something I will not take lightly, this is something I will work hard at for six long years. Now, I'd like to speak a moment about my opponent, Governor Taliaferro--"

A score of boos filled with the gym, boos mixed in with a few racial slurs. Jim held his hands up and called for silence, doing his best to look solemn and serious instead of grinning widely as he spoke about the disgraced ex-governor.

"--Now we don't know what went on in Macon, and I chose to remain silent about it in the days leading up to the election. We still don't know the whole story and I did not want to comment on it without knowing the whole story. But I do know the former governor, and I will say that Hampton Taliaferro served the state of Georgia for over twenty years in the state legislature, in Washington as a congressman, and as governor. Both Jenny and I send our thoughts and prayers to both him and his family, including our new Governor McCall, as they go through this difficult time. God bless him and his family, God bless you all, God bless Georgia, and God bless the United States of America!"

An even louder round of applause mixed in with hoots and hollers. Jim walked to the edge of the stage and shook hands with people standing up and applauding him while Jenny blew kisses and awkwardly high-fived those near the stage with their hands out. They played it up with the crowd for a few minutes before retreating backstage.

"I can't wait to be back in Washington," Jim said once they were off the stage.

"Me too," a voice said from behind the Sandersons.

Russell and Robin Reed stood smiling behind them. Robin rushed over and kissed Jim on the cheek and hugged Jenny while Reed took Jim's hand and pumped it vigorously.

"We were watching results come in at home and decided to come down here to say congratulations."

"Thank you, Mr. Vice President," Jim mumbled.

"It was a well-earned victory, Senator."

Reed pulled Jim closer, his hands grabbing Jim's lapels on both sides. Reed was a half inch shorter than Jim, but the way he pushed people around and crowded personal space always made him seem much taller than he actually was. Reed reached out and adjusted Jim's necktie, speaking while he futzed with it.

"And let's not forget your promise to me, Jim," he whispered. "The price of getting elected was your loyalty. I lived up to my part of our deal, now you need to live up to yours."

"I will," Jim croaked out. "I promise, Russ."

"Good," Reed said as he let go of Jim's suit. "Robin and I are flying back to Washington tonight. Enjoy Hawkinsville, enjoy the fact that you're just visiting and not back to stay permanently. And then come on back to D.C. because we've got work to do."

Another round of congratulations from the Reeds. They took their leave and Jim watched them walk down the hallways of the school. Russell stopped just before they turned a corner and winked at him. Jim waved as they disappeared around the corner. He couldn't help but feeling like he'd made a deal with the devil. And like any deal with the devil, he got what he wanted at the price of his soul.

-----

Chicago

"Top of the third inning here in Rockford and the Mud Hens cycle back around to the top of the order. Left fielder Billy Carter comes back up to the plate. He drew a walk back in the first inning and parlayed that into a success by stealing second--"

The car radio crackled with static. Johnny Leggario adjusted the dial to make the signal clearer.

"--only batting around .200 since he was put in the Mud Hens' starting lineup two weeks ago, but the kid has made up for it with his legs. He's already snagged fifteen stolen bases in seventeen games. Todd sets and here's the first pitch... ball on the outside."

"What's with the bush league game, Johnny?" Mick Mahoney asked from the backseat. "Let's listen to the Cubbies or Sox."

"Cubbies are off today and I fucking hate the Sox," was all Johnny said.

Not listening to the conversation or the radio at all was Prussian Joe. He was in the front passenger seat looking across the street at the First National Bank of Chicago. The chubby little man held tightly to a notebook and pen, occasionally jotting down notes when he made an observation. The more Johnny worked with the German, the more and more he respected him. He was smart, but not like most crooks. Most guys were like Mahoney, idiots who kept trying and trying until they made a score. The smart ones were like Johnny and Bobby C., smart but their brains were more instinctual than any actual knowledge. It was street smarts more than anything. Prussian Joe with his constant notes and timing was some kind of criminal scientist.

"Two balls and no strikes. Here comes the pitch... it's popped up out into right field. Bradley gets under it and catches it for one out. That'll bring third baseman Matt Robinson up to the plate."

"If we do this, we do this at night," Prussian Joe said after a few more scribbles in his notebook. Johnny turned the radio down so they could talk.

"If we go in during the day we don't have to crack the safe," Mahoney said from the back.

"Too much exposure?" Johnny asked Prussian Joe.

"Ja. We'd need at least two men on crowd control, plus a day take means we still have a short window even with the alarm off. If we go in at night, say at eleven then we'd have over eight hours to crack the safe and cart all the money out."

"Taking the bank here would entail more than CPD," Johnny said with a finger pointed down the street. "Two blocks that way is the Murray Building and that's G-Man headquarters. If we go in during the day and it blows up in our face, we got half the goddamn FCB breathing down our necks."

Johnny reached into his jacket and pulled out a roll of bills. He thumbed through it before pulling off two hundred dollar bills and passing them back to Mahoney.

"Johnny? That's... I can't."

"It's not for you, dummkopf," Prussian Joe snapped. "Go in the bank and set up an account. Try and get a good look at the safe while you are in there and see the make and model."

Mahoney nodded and hurried out the car, crossing the street and disappearing inside the bank. Johnny lit up a cigarette and listened to the baseball game while Prussian Joe watched and timed how long Mahoney spent in the bank.

"Alarm system is inside," Johnny said as he blew smoke out the cracked window. "Day or night, how do we get in and overload it before it gets tripped?"

The tubby little man bummed a cigarette off Johnny and pondered his question while he smoked.

"There's a circuit breaker halfway down the block that controls this part of the power grid. We'd have to trip the circuit breaker and then get inside to overload the alarm before the power can come back on."

"What would be the timeframe on doing that?"

"Thirty seconds to a minute, I'd guarantee. That seems about the average response time from Chicago Power and Water when I tried something similar two days ago on the Northside. Whoever is monitoring the power grid, they can temporarily reroute power through another section of the grid until a worker gets out on site and fixes it."

Johnny grunted. "Not a lot of time."

"If we can do it right, we'll have all the time in the world."

Mahoney came out the bank and got back in Johnny's car.

"Safe looks doable. I'll need a few power tools to get into it right, but I can get into it without too much trouble."

"You better not be talking out your ass," Johnny said as he started the car. "Because I would hate to kill you, Mick."

Mahoney squirmed in his seat. Johnny traded looks with Prussian Joe and had to suppress a laugh as he pulled out into traffic.

-----

Blythe, California

"Fuck you, Redman!"

Jacob Tallchief resisted the urge to pound the drunk's face into the casino bar. Instead, he popped his knuckles and flexed his muscles.

"It's time for you to go, pal."

Jacob grabbed the drunk by the scruff of his neck with one hand and started pushing him through the casino with the other. Jacob had a full six inches on the man, causing him to walk on his tip toes as he was given the bum's rush. A few of the gamblers on the playing floor stopped to gawk at the big Indian manhandling the little white man with the big mouth.

Outside, Jacob tossed the drunk across the parking lot. He banged against the pavement and slid up against a parked car. Jacob brushed his hands off and looked down at the dazed drunk. "You're fucking banned, white boy. I see you in here again and I'll beat the shit out of you along with half my tribe."

He turned away from the prostrate man and headed back towards the casino. The bright neon lights of the Tomahawk Casino lit up the desert night for miles around Blythe. Jacob went back inside and back to work. The crowd tonight wasn't too bad, a few dozen gamblers out on the floor and giving their money to the Tribe. Most of the people at the Tomahawk went for slots over cards and dice. Nearly everyone who stopped in here were just passing through to Sun City forty miles to the east. They'd lose a bit of money here and move on down the road, try taking their chances in the big city. Standing Bear created with the Tomahawk for the reason to siphon off some of Sun City's profit before the chumps even got there.

"Jake!"

Web Tallchief came up to Jacob and put a hand on his shoulder. Web was Jacob's cousin on his mother's side and part of the Tribe, even though he was half white. Web was five years older than Jacob, but Jacob had always seemed to be the older of the two in a physical and mental sense. Web was twenty-five, going on fifteen.

"What do you want, Webasha?"

"Let me have some money, cuz."

"Get your own," Jacob said as he took Web's hand off his shoulder. "And what do you need it for?"

"Melanie," he said, nodding towards one of the chip girls on the floor. She was dressed in the stereotypical squaw outfit of leather, this outfit very revealing to show off her log legs and ample cleavage. Her blonde hair was put up and disguised by a black wig. "She said she'd fuck me if I gave her twenty dollars."

"Standing Bear told me not to let you fraternize with the girls anymore."

Web rolled his eyes and pushed Jake. He was too solid to budge. The force instead pushed Web back from Jacob. "That bastard. He knocked up that dealer Minnie last year and now I got a bastard half-brother. He can't control his dick, but I'm the one who gets in trouble."

"He's the chief," Jacob said with a shrug. "And being chief has its privileges. Now let me get back to work, cuz."

Web shook his head and stalked off through the casino. Jacob watched him walk away before his eyes drifted towards Melanie. She laughed a little too hard at whatever the fat man at the blackjack table was say. Jacob caught her eye and winked at her. She flushed and mouthed the word midnight. That was when her shift ended. Jacob knew her crack to Web was a joke. She liked to tease him and remind him that she was something he couldn't have. That was because she was reserved for Jacob.

He looked out across the casino floor and the goings on. He was only twenty-three, but the casino and the Tribe were his birthright. The Tribe was officially known as the Augustine Band within the larger Cahuilla Indian Tribe of California. Currently, the Augustine Band numbered twenty and that included Web's bastard half-brother. Jacob's grandfather Nanuq Tallchief broke away from the Cahuilla's years before Jacob was born and formed his own offshoot. The official members on the tribe roll today were Nanuq's three children and their children. The Tribe would only expand when Jacob's generation had children, the restrictions were such that it would never go outside the descendants of Nanuq. Even though Jacob's mother was pure-blooded Cahuilla she still wasn't considered part of the Tribe. The reason for the exclusion was because all members of the Tribe got a share of the Tomahawk's profits at year end with the biggest share always going to the chief. The Tomahawk had elevated the Tallchief family from common Indian trash to upper middle class overnight, and the influx of cash into the city of Blythe had turned the family into local royalty.

"Jacob to management," the PA system announced. "Jacob to management.'

Jacob cast one last long look at Melanie before he headed upstairs to the office. Standing Bear Tallchief, the head of the Augustine Tribe, looked down his large Roman nose at his nephew. If Jacob ever wanted to know what he would look like as a middle-aged man, he need not look any further than Standing Bear. His hair was still pitch black, but a shock of gray ran through the middle. His body was still muscular, but it was at the point where muscle started to become fat. He had a slight double chin that was becoming more prominent as the years passed. Jacob looked more like Standing Bear than he did his own father, which led to a lot of speculation as to Jacob's parentage.

Standing Bear had been more of a father to him than his own dad, and that was true of the entire Tribe. His grandfather's secession from the Cahuilla's was something to do with some petty feud between the old man and the tribal elders. His emotions got the best of him and he left with no plan or no inclination of what his family could accomplish. But Standing Bear had a vision. He fought and lobbied for years to get the Federal and State government to recognize the Augustines as its own band, and he and other tribal leaders from across the state worked non-stop to get the Indian Gaming Bill through the state legislature. To Jacob, Standing Bear was a true man because he provided. Not just for his immediate family, but the whole Tribe. When the old man died ten years ago, there was no question at all who would be chief. Who else but Standing Bear could be their chief?

"Jake, have a seat."

Jacob complied and sat down in one of the plush chairs facing Standing Bear's desk. He could see the far-off glow of Sun City's bright lights through the window just over his uncle's shoulder. Standing Bear pulled a cigar from the box on his desk and offered Jacob one. He politely declined as his uncle lit up.

"I know you're busy, but I needed to talk to you about something before I go home."

"Anything you need, chief. What's up?"

Standing Bear blew smoke rings above his head. "I need you to put together a small crew. Maybe four of your cousins or brothers. The meanest ones, just for show."

"What's going on?"

"We're having a sit-down meeting in Sun City in a few days with the casino guys. Their Board of Directors is going to be there, along with the Horde's officers."

The Horde. Fucking trailer trash on bikes. Jacob had a scar above his left eyebrow because of a pair of brass knuckles from one of those redneck assholes. That attack had put the Tribe on the precipice of war with the biker gang two years ago, but Standing Bear managed to negotiate a truce with their president. Now the Horde stayed away from Blythe, and the Tribe stuck to the casino and the city.

"What's the play, chief?"

"Negotiations" was all Standing Bear said.

"Anything else you feel the need to clue me in on?"

"No," Standing Bear said as he blew smoke rings towards Jacob. "Just do as your chief says, Jake. If you can't do it, I'll get Web. Little Web hanging out with those bikers and mobsters, he'll feel like a real gangster."

"I'll do it," Jacob replied with a sigh. He knew Standing Bear would never let Web handle anything so important, but he didn't want to put his cousin in the position to fuck it up. "I'll get Sammy and Gene's boys. They look mean enough."

Standing Bear stood and walked around his desk, motioning for Jacob to follow him out the door.

"If this comes out like I want it to, Jake, then you'll be my number two man here in the casino and everything we do outside of it."

He wrapped a big arm around his shoulder and held him close. Standing Bear guided them out the office and downstairs to the casino floor. They walked together closely across the floor while Standing Bear talked over the din from the action.

"Big things are in store for the Tribe. Just follow me and trust my wisdom and you'll see. You can you do that, can't you?"

"Why not?" Jacob asked with a smirk. He motioned towards the clang of slot machines and the clatter of the roulette wheel. "Look where it's gotten us so far."

----

Washington D.C.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we'll be making our approach into Andrews Field and will be landing in Washington in ten minutes."

Robin Reed stirred at the captain's announcement and looked around the cabin of the plane. Russell was given the use of a private US Army Airforce plane for flights around the country. It was a shabby thing with two prop engines and a dozen seats. Even with Russell's small staff and secret service detail managed to make fill the cabin up with ease. The small enclosure meant there wasn't much privacy for the two of them, but they managed to take the two seats furthest from the front and out of earshot from anyone else.

"Did you sleep?"

Russell was staring out the window, lost in thought. The look on his face was one she hadn't seen much, but she'd seen it enough to easily identify it. It was self-doubt. She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. He stirred at the touch and looked back at her.

"I've been weighing the cost."

Robin took Russell's hand and rubbed his knuckles with her thumb. The man beside her was someone nobody else ever saw. To the world at large, Russell Reed was a ruthless political animal who played legislatures the way a conductor played an orchestra. She was the one with the heart, the one who charmed and beguiled with her great compassion. The Washington wags called them Beauty and the Beast. The truth was that Russell's hardened image was partially an image. He condemned and belittled liberals and idealists along with the rest of the Southerners, but deep down his compassion and empathy was strong. So strong that he'd spent thirty years of his life keeping it down and keeping it hidden from everyone but her.

"What happened this week in Georgia is something that I can never undo," he said as he squeezed her hand. He made sure nobody was around before he softly said, "I ruined a man's life, and I did it simply because he stood in the way of something I wanted."

"And you got what you wanted. Do you want me to make you feel better by saying you did the right thing?"

"Yes," he said quickly. "I want to know I did the wrong thing for the right reasons."

Robin looked away from him and mulled that one over. This was another side of the Second Couple no one else saw. For all her warmth, Robin Reed was every bit as ambitious and pragmatic as her husband. Russell's yearning ambition was hard to maintain after forty years. She remembered him telling her the truth the first night they made love. Ever since his father's disgrace in local politics, young Russell was hellbent on being somebody and doing something. That constant, never-ending desire took its toll after decades. And every now and then she needed to feed that fire.

"Right and wrong they no longer exist at this level," she said as she gently rubbed the back of Russell's neck. "Hampton Taliaferro was a drunk and a pederast. The only thing you did was show the world what he really was. You got Jim Sanderson elected, and you showed the president you still have influence. What does this do for your plan?"

"It can go forward without any changes," he said as he took her hand from around his neck and held it in his. "And I've got a southern senator sworn to me. It's a start. With Jim on my side, I can create cracks in the Southern Caucus."

"Good. You'll need Jim and every bit of that presidential trust for what comes next. Was what you did right? No, it was not right. But it was necessary."

"'Things without all remedy should be without regard: what's done, is done'," Russell quoted with a raised eyebrow. "Is that the long and short of it, Lady Reed?"

Robin smiled as Russell pulled her close and kissed her cheek. She glanced out the window and saw the lights and skyline of Washington D.C. below. The city all lit up at night looked peaceful and still. From afar, it looked like a peaceful place and not the nest of vipers it really was.

"'By the pricking of my thumbs," she said as the plane began its descent over the city. "'Something wicked this way comes.'"

Sevan Armenia

"If you didn't hit the cow, then how did it get involved in the crash?" the nurse asked Sahle. She shined a tiny light in his eyes for some medical reason he didn't understand.

Sahle was still dazed. The crash on the north lake road had left him scratched up, and his head was still spinning from everything that happened the night before. The Doctors, in the company of Sahle's friends, had kept him awake into the morning with questions, asking about what had happened and why Sahle had let Marc drive when the later was so chemically incapacitated. Only a few questions before, Sahle had admitted to his time with the Chinese prostitute, and that had sent an angry Aaliyah storming out of the room and back home to the Dead Man's Drink.

"We bought it." Sahle answered deadpan about the cow. The nurse had big, brown eyes that gave him the feeling that she could see straight through his skull, so he avoided eye-contact.

"You bought a cow?" she asked, her expression going from a scowl of impatience to a scowl of perplexion. Thick oil-black hair hung limp across her cheeks.

"Yes."

"Why did you buy a cow."

"I am thinking a cow is a investment that is good to make." Vasily piped up in his typical facetious way. He was leaning against a steel locker in the corner of the room. "That is why farmers are into buying them."

"Were these men starting a farm then?" the nurse snapped. Vasily shrugged.

"There was a man." Sahle added. "He sold us the cow."

"I am thinking..." Vasily rubbed his chin. Before he could finish what he was going to say, the nurse interrupted.

"Why was this man selling you a cow?"

"I don't know."

"Your friend is very sick in there." she said sharply. "We don't know why you did what you did last night, but we want some answers. Are you are aware that you are facing criminal charges? Us Armenians take our country seriously."

"A friend of mine said to me that he saw a local man put his pecker in a rabbit's burrow." Vasily warbled. "So I know that your people love your country. But my friend here, he will not be facing the law."

"What gives you that authority?" The nurse argued, even more flustered than before.

Vasily shrugged. "I am having no authority, but you will see that what I said is also true. My friend and me have other friends, and your hospital is knowing this."

The nurse had reached her limit. She turned on her heels like a soldier on parade and blustered off into the conjoining room, leaving Sahle alone with Vasily.

"Vasily." Sahle said. "I have a confession."

"That you left your sperms in Vladmira's toilet and stole her sniff?" Vasily smiled. "I am already knowing this, and she was not happy. But you are not in trouble."

"I was angry." Sahle lazily tried to excuse himself.

"Vladmira makes many people angry. She is a beautiful woman, so she can do this thing even when she doesn't mean to. Better than other people." he paused for a moment, as if he was unsure whether or not to continue speaking. "I am wondering though... what did she talk to you about."

"Oh." Sahle struggled to put the day before into focus. "She offered... we didn't talk about much. Chess."

"That is strange. It is not the foreplay I would have been expecting." Vasily rubbed his chin. "But I am not knowing why she has shown so much interest in you."

"Interest?" Sahle was intrigued. Suddenly, he imagined being able to get with her all over again. In his mind, he pictured the perfect shape of her ass, and he felt his body stir just a little.

"She has been putting on the flirt for you. She has... eh... been around you and your friends a few times that were not expected." When Vasily said this, Sahle remembered how Vladmira had been with them when they met the doll maker, and he saw what Vasily was getting at.

"I am not knowing, and so I will not know." Vasily shrugged. "Come now, we need to get you home so you can sleep."

"No." Sahle shook his head. "I need to see Marc."

When Sahle stood, he felt his head go light. He reached out helplessly at nothing at all, and Vasily grabbed his shoulders to steady him. "You hit your noggin, that is what the doctors are saying. Be taking a breath now. It will pass."

The room had a sickly cream color to it, like a porcelain sink that had never been cleaned. It permeated the tile floor and most of the walls. The furniture, for the most part, was simple and utilitarian. Aside from the sterile steel locker that Vasily had been leaning against, there was a bed that was little more than a cot with a thin mattress on it, a cabinet with a sink, and a banana-yellow chair stuffed under a window.

"Marc is sleeping. You should be sleeping to, I am thinking." Vasily said. In the arms of the Russian, Sahle suddenly became aware that the back of his hospital gown failed to cover his ass, and the entire experience left him feeling both ridiculous and humble.

Sahle regrouped. "I can walk now." he told Vasily, waving him off. The Russian followed close alongside him anyway.

Sahle walked timidly through the halls. The hospital had the appearance of a place that was doing more business than it was used to. The staff looked stressed and overworked, and they moved as if they always had several other place's to be. The rooms were filled with the remnants of the drunken city-wide party from the night before. There were families too, walking the halls in search of the specific rooms that their loved ones occupied. Some spent a few seconds looking at Sahle before politely looking away, though the children often forgot that courtesy and just stared. Africans were not the norm in Armenia, and though they fit on the strip and in the slums just as much as any other expatriate, people from out of town were not used to seeing them. He did not care. He knew that racism against Africans existed, and he had seen it before, but it wasn't something that ever truly impacted his life. As an Emperor's son at university in Europe during his youth, racism had been represented by the pretensions of wealthy boys who still though of Africa as a place where monarchs lived in thatched huts and wore lion's pelts over their naked bodies. Their prejudice never did mean anything to Sahle back then; he even took a few of their sisters and mothers to bed. He had saw racism during his life in exile too, but it was a trifle compared to the life-or-death problems he so often faced.

So when these hospital visitors stared at him, or gave him lingering glances, he did not think about his skin color. He thought about his naked ass.

Once they had gone so far, Sahle knew that they would arrive at Marc's room at any minute, and an anxious tension began to build. What would he find? He felt partially responsible; it was his fault they had went out that night, after all. Sahle couldn't put out of his mind the look Marc had given him right before the crash. In that moment, with blood trickling out of his nose, Marc had looked like some sort of ghoul.

When Sahle sensed Vasily leading him toward a specific room, he felt his anxiety grow at an exponential pace. Time seemed to hinge on the approaching moment where they would turn the corner and look inside and Sahle would get his first look at his friend. And then, like taking a plunge into cold water, the moment happened.

Marc was asleep, and had been since the accident. His face was bruised up, and his hair was shaved where they had stitched up a wound. Yared was sitting in a yellow chair in the corner reading a newspaper. He looked up, and when he saw Sahle, he folded the paper and smiled.

"You should know better than to ride with Marc after a party, brother." the bearded musician said before embracing Sahle.

"How is he?" Sahle asked at once.

Yared looked over at the sleeping junkie. "He took an overdose, friend." He itched his head and stared for a moment, looking uncertain. "I don't know much about these things, brother, I do not know at all. But they told me that he would need fluid? They are giving him that."

Looking at Marc, Sahle felt the same feeling he had once reserved for Yaqob when they were children. It was not the comfortable love that he had for his mother, or the lust-laced fondness he had for Aaliyah. This brotherly love was a camaraderie: an absolutely complete trust in the other person, and one that came with an understanding that your brother trusted you just as much. It came with a burden of responsibility that had irked Sahle in his youth, and had caused some of the distance between Sahle and and his true brother Yaqob. But Sahle was older now. He had seen some shit during his time in the real world. Marc was an adult, and he was ultimately to blame for his problems. But had Sahle betrayed their brotherly trust by tempting him? It didn't seem like a sensible responsibility for Sahle to take - Marc found drugs, that was what he did, that was his specialty - but sensible or not, Sahle couldn't help but feel guilty.

The entire thing made his head hurt.

"I am thinking the doctors in Sevan have seen the drugs, eh? We might be saying that they are specialists!" Vasily said, chuckling through the last few words.

"Marc will be fine." Yared nodded. "I will watch him here, friend, and if anything changes, I will call you at the Drink. I think you need to go back there and talk to Aaliyah."

"Yes." Sahle nodded. "Aaliyah. How mad is she?"

Vasily laughed. "Your woman is full of anger now. I would be apologizing if I were being you, or else I am afraid she might be going down and shooting people, and I do not want to be put in the jail because I gifted her that gun."

"I need to get my clothes." Sahle said. "Then I can go back."

"I will drive you to that place." Vasily said. And with that, they were done. Sahle found his clothes in his room and, once dressed, he rejoined Vasily on the street.

--

Sevan cleaned up nicely. Only twelve hours earlier, the city had been drowning in booze and boozers, but there was no real sign of any of that left over now. The streets were clean and the dumpsters were empty, though Sahle couldn't imagine that the cleaners themselves had simply went to bed early to complete their tasks. They must have partied, and if they had drank as much as everyone else, they must have certainly worked through hangovers in the morning.

Vasily waited near the curb, steam rising from his beat up truck as it rumbled roughly in the crisp Armenian air. Even in the summer, Sevan seemed like a cold place to Sahle. He was used to the equatorial heat of Africa, but what Sevan delivered was cool summers and freezing winters. Was it how life was in the north? If this was the norm, and not simply due to the mountains, then how cold did Europe get? And Russia, for that matter? Sahle climbed into the truck and wrapped his legs in a blanket as soon as he was in.

As they pulled away from the hospital, Sahle noticed a thin plume of smoke rising in the north, and he pointed at it through the clouded windshield.

"What is that smoke?"

"The army games are finished, I am thinking." Vasily answered. "They have been doing the training exercises. Did you not go out to watch them? All of the other peoples in the city, they went out to watch them."

"No." Sahle answered simply.

"I went out." Vasily paused to shift a gear, and when he did, the transmission whined like a mouse with it's nuts in a vice. "There was nothing to be seeing from the shore. It was a waste of time for me."

They passed through the city slowly, and Sahle watched the familiar scenery go by with dull interest. They passed the theater that had been shot up in the night, and Sahle found it amusing that the broken light-bulbs had already been replaced. The streets were quiet. Though the street cleaners and hospital staff were still on duty, many of the town's employees had the day off. The day before had been Independence Day. For some less necessary employees, two days off of work could be afforded.

They arrived at the Dead Man's Drink. Sahle felt nervous about Aaliyah. It was odd to him that, after spending so much time worrying about his obsession with Vladmira, it was the pussy he paid for in the Chinese den that got him in trouble. He tried to think about what he would say when he did finally talk to her, but his brain was all mush now. He would have to improvise.

Vasily followed Sahle and they went inside. The familiar smell of mildew and stale alcohol filled his nose. They walked down into the bar, stepping as soft as they could to dampen the groan of the shitty wood in the floors.

"I need a drink." Sahle said. He was trying to stall, to avoid talking to Aaliyah as long as he could. He thought that, given some time, he would formulate the perfect excuse, and all of this would be over and they could go back to their lives. He sat at the bar as Vasily, taking the hint, went to find if there was anything easy that he could serve up for the both of them. As he waited, Sahle looked up at the corpse encased in glass above the bar. He stared into the leathery pits where it's eyes had once been and thought of nothing useful.

"Who are you?" he heard Vasily say, and when he saw his Russian friend staring across the room, Sahle followed his gaze and saw a middle aged African man in a grey trench coat entering from the back.

The man had dark grey hair that he kept trimmed close to his head, and he had the coffee-brown skin of an East African. Seeing somebody from his own part of the world made Sahle feel nervous. It was rare for Sahle to see people that looked so identifiably East African, and when he did, a paranoia of being recognized always seemed to take over his thoughts. The stranger stared at him, and just like that his paranoia was starting to become panic.

"Well. I did not expect this." the stranger said. Sahle's heart started to flutter. He felt like he was entering some nightmare, but was he? He was being ridiculous. This stranger greeted him, and he was responding by looking like a startled gazelle.

"Prince Sahle." the stranger grinned. And there, with those words, the nightmare became real for Sahle. He stood frozen. What could he say? He had been identified. For the first time in three years, he had been called by his real name.

"I am not knowing any princes or Sah-lays." Vasily answered for him.

The stranger looked wearily at the Russian. "He is. I know the face. Hid it under a beard? That was a clever move, my prince. Your brother is looking for you, you know?"

Sahle remained still. It was as if his mind had been cryogenically frozen. No matter how much he tried, he could no longer string a thought together.

The stranger moved forward. Before Sahle could shake himself out of his shock, Vasily pulled a gun. The stranger reached instinctively for his belt, but once his hand had found its holster, it stopped. Vasily had the advantage. He had the stranger pinned at gun-point

"What is it that is going on?" Vasily asked. "I do not understand this game that we are playing now. Let us just end this."

And then there was another voice. A girl's. "Vasily, it is okay, this man is with me." Sahle recognized it as Vladmira's. His head jolted to the side to see her walk in from another door. Vasily, completely baffled, holstered his gun.

"I am Assistant Director Amare Debir of the Ethiopian Walinzi." the stranger announced. "I was just as surprised as you, Vasily, when your associate Vladmira sent word that Sahle was living under an assumed name in Sevan. In all honesty, the Walinzi assumption was that he had died during a botched Spanish raid back in '77. But no, I see that he is alive now. And right here. Sahle, you are under arrest. Your brother would like to see you again. You have a lot to talk about."

Sahle struggled to come up with an answer. All he could formulate was an awkward "No!"

"I am not giving you a choice." Amare answered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a ziptie. He came up to Sahle and forced his arms behind his back.

"Vladmira. Is our boss knowing what you are doing with this bounty hunting?" Vasily asked the beautiful blonde that Sahle, up until this moment, had been obsessed with.

"This one fell into my lap." she answered. She was completely ignoring Sahle now. The time they had spent naked in bed hadn't even caused a polite interest in his existence for her. "But I read the bulletins, Vasily. How did you have a fugitive Emperor under your nose for so long and not even notice."

"I am not a bounty hunter." Vasily replied in a low, defeated tone.

"I'm Samel." Sahle finally managed to mumble the tired lie. "That is my name. I am Samel. You have the wrong man."

"Not a chance." Amare said as he tightened the tie around Sahle's wrists. "What type of name is that anyway? Samel? They both start with the same letter too. Not very creative, my prince."

"Don't call me that." Sahle blurted. "I am not a prince."

"Not anymore, you mean?" Amare replied. "You can't hide who you used to be. The past still exists, even if you don't want it to."

A sound like thunder filled the room just then, and it was so loud that Sahle lost his hearing for a few seconds. At first, sound came back to him in the form of a shrill ringing. He was still intact, but as he regained his bearings, he realized that he was covered in blood. His body was numb. Was the blood his? A new fear pulsed through his limbs then; a fear that he was going to die. But where was the blood coming from?

He heard Vladmira's voice cry out. "No!" she shouted, but thunder rung again, not as loud to him this time, and he whirled around in his stool to see what happened. The first thing he saw was the Walinzi Agent's ruined corpse on the ground. His head was bloody, and it had a deflated look to it. Next to him was the lifeless body of Vladmira. Her eyes were looking up toward the mummified corpse on the wall with an expression of horror. Sahle looked over to Vasily now, but the Russian did not have a weapon in hand, and he was looking up toward the stage with an expression of bewilderment.

There, on stage where a microphone usually stood, was Aaliyah, wearing a white dress and with a smoking gun in her hands.

--

Vasily freed Sahle's wrists. They spoke no words at first. What had happened had happened quickly, but it had been powerful enough to change everything about every relationship in the room. When Sahle's hand were free, the first thing he did was to check himself for any wounds, but he found nothing except for blood. None of it seemed to be his own.

Aaliyah had fallen down into a heap on the stage. She was crying now, and the ceramic mask that covered the ruined side of her face slipped so that her real eye was not even with the fake one.

"Are you a prince then? No, I am not asking. You are. You make the face that says that the dead man told the truth." Vasily broke the silence.

Sahle's throat was dry. "I... I still need that drink."

Vasily grabbed a beer and tossed it to Sahle. "We need to get rid of the bodies. This man was an important man from your country, I think he will be missing and people will be looking into him being missing. This is what we will be doing. I will be getting rid of the bodies, and I want you to both lock yourselves into your room. Aaliyah, please don't be shooting the prince."

"Why?" she moaned. Sahle felt that one word from Aaliyah strike him like a knife in his chest.

"Because I am having uses for him." Vasily said. "The bounty is not interesting me, but I know a man will want to meet our Emperor drummer. Do not be killing him, or I will be very upset. I will hide the bodies, and I will be coming back for Aaliyah. She will be needing to hide with the other band people. I know where. I am fond of you, so I will make sure that you are safe."

They followed his orders. He locked them in a room in the back, where they sat in the dark and Aaliyah continued to cry.

"I am sorry." were the only words that Sahle could produce, and so he produced them. It felt like he was pissing into the wind, as if everything he tried to do to make this better would just come back to hit him in the face. "I will make this right."

She kept crying.

"I don't know what to do now, but we will get better." he said.

She looked up at him with her misaligned eyes, one fake and one real. "I don't know who you are." she said. "I... I murdered those people! But... I don't know you!"

"I'm still the same person." Sahle tried to say.

"You lied to me! You always lied to me!" she cried.

"I couldn't say who I was." he tried to explain. "I always wanted to, I've always thought that maybe things would change and I could go back home and you could be my queen."

That did not help. She was still sobbing. "I murdered those people for Samel! But there is no Samel! You... I look at you, and I don't know you now!"

"Just give me some time to make it up..."

"You don't get it!" she yelled. "Samel is dead! You are a stranger!"

They didn't talk after that. Vasily returned an hour later and took Aaliyah away, leaving Sahle lost in the dark. He wondered if he would ever see Aaliyah again, or Marc and Yared for that matter. He also wondered, as if from nowhere, whether or not he would ever see his brother and sister again. He had came close when the Walinzi agent arrested him, and he had nearly been caught by Taytu when they almost crossed paths at the Suez. Was this his last chance?

Vasily returned again, this time to collect him. Sahle had every reason to be suspicious of Vasily's motives. If Aaliyah had rejected him because of his secret despite the fact that just months before they had talked about getting married, then how would a mercenary like Vasily react? Was he about to be sold to another buyer like royal cattle? But what other choice did he have? The Walinzi knew where he was now, and his life in Sevan was in shambles. Vasily was the last option he had left to him.

They went out to the Russian's car and drove. They left Sevan, taking the northern lake road. A strange sense of Deja Vu gripped him as they passed the very place where Sahle and Marc had been in an accident the night before. There were even skidmarks in the road where it had happened. If they were taking the northern road, that meant they were heading away from the major cities of Armenia. Where were they going? Where was he being taken?

"What now?" he asked Vasily.

"I am taking you to my boss. I am thinking he will be interested in meeting an Emperor."

"Where is he?" Sahle had a hunch, but he could not be sure about anything anymore.

"Home." Vasily smiled. "Russia."

Mitcham, London

In the car park of Vestry Hall were half a dozen white vans, each dirtier than the next one, and a few old, battered station wagons. Right by the entrance was a large coach whose driver snoozed in the seat. It was the Jaguar that had been parked across the street that caught Ray Newman’s eye as he walked towards Vestry Hall. Whoever owned that clearly didn’t come from Mitcham. Newman brushed down his navy Harrington jacket and took one last glance down at the burnt orange polo shirt beneath it to make sure it wasn’t creased. He’d bought it this afternoon in town and had ironed it using boiled water in a pot. Once upon a time Yvette had done all his ironing. Now he had to make do with what little household items he had lying about. Once he was satisfied he looked presentable he walked up to the heavy doors of Vestry Hall and pulled them apart.

A dozen heads turned in his direction as he entered. There were men Newman’s age, boys barely out of school, and a few older men sat up at the front. Newman noticed the man on the leaflet, Edgar Francis, stood by the table at the front of the hall. Francis was dressed in a pinstriped double-breasted suit that was charcoal in colour and looked more expensive than everything Newman was wearing. On one of the man’s lapels was a pin in the shape of the National Front logo and its bright reds, whites, and blues contrasted with Edgar’s pale blue tie. Francis was a tall man, in his sixties, with a sense of majesty and seriousness about him that was reflected in his craggy, grave face. He had a full head of gray hair and a goatee that retained a few flecks of black.

Francis glanced towards him and nodded. Newman nodded back and upon finding all the seats taken took to leaning against a wall towards the back. Stood next to him was a young shaven-headed man in a denim jacket and a thick black overcoat that seemed several sizes too big for him. He smiled at Newman and Newman smiled politely to him as Francis shuffled behind the table at the front. A local man introduced Francis, noting his distinguished service in the Armed Forces and the success he’d had as a businessman and an author, before inviting Francis to speak. There was rapturous applause as he rose to his feet.

“First and foremost I want to thank you all for coming,” Edgar said in a crisp, cutting voice that spoke the King’s English better than the King. “I understand that some of you have travelled across London to be here this evening and it means a lot to me that you’ve taken that effort to hear me speak.”

There was another bout of applause and Francis reached down for a pint of ale at the table in front of him. He took a large mouthful of ale, glugged it down, and then wiped the moisture it left on his moustache with the back of his hand.

“I’d like to tell you that there’s not more work ahead of us, men. I’d like to tell you that the National Front won’t ask more of each and everyone one of you but I’d be lying if I did. We’re all here this evening because we love this country of ours. Not the kind of love that’s hidden away and only brought out on special occasions. The love you wear on your sleeve, the love you flaunt, the kind of love you’d fight and die for if it came down to it. The kind of love this government and previous governments have tried their hardest to stamp out.”

There had been loud cheers when Francis had spoken of loving Britain. The young man next to Newman especially had become particularly animated and clapped so loudly that it had hurt Ray’s ears. When Francis had made reference to the government the crowd had burst into a spontaneous volley of boos and hisses. Francis took advantage of each of those moments and would take another mouthful of ale as he waited for them to pass. The crowd seemed to love it. They looked past the double-breasted suit and his accent because he drank ale like they did. It was only then that Newman figured the Jaguar parked across the road likely belonged to Francis.

“We told them when they introduced the guest worker program it would lead to anarchy on our streets but did they listen? No, they branded us racists and tried to silence our voices. Now, decades later, they’ve realised we were right all along and are trying to roll it back. Well, it’s too late, gentlemen, the coloureds are here and they are here to stay. No voluntary repatriation is going to change that. If we want to do something about them, about them murdering police officers in our streets, we’re going to have to do it by force.”

There was venom in Edgar’s voice as he spoke of the coloureds. It sent a chill down Newman’s spine. He’d found himself nodding along with Francis somewhere in the avalanche of applause the other men laid on for him. Francis was saying what Ray had been thinking for a long time, even before Oldfield had been murdered, and it was exciting to hear it said out loud in a room full of people that agreed. Though there was something else. As much as it excited Newman there was something in Edgar’s voice that scared him. Ray couldn’t work out whether Edgar Francis was brilliant or dangerous. All he knew was that he agreed with every word that was leaving his mouth.

“They want us to believe the apex of the Troubles was the day the anarchists murdered the Royal Family, God rest their souls, but I say it started the day they let hundreds of thousands of coloureds onto British shores,” Francis gesticulated wildly as he spoke. “Until Native Britons can walk the streets of their cities safely again how can the politicians say the Troubles are over with a straight face? How can that collaborator Fraser Campbell tell us that Britain is safe when we have coloreds running our streets like animals and murdering policemen?”

Campbell’s name invoked the most violent response. Men stood up from their chairs so forcefully that the chairs were flung to the ground behind them. The skinhead beside Newman had even spat a mouthful of phlegm on the ground next to them at the Prime Minister’s name. It had landed precariously close to Ray’s shoe and he glared at the young man and shuffled over half a metre or so.

“Force, gentlemen, force is all the coloureds understand,” Francis bellowed as he pushed a lock of grey hair out of his face. “The liberties that we enjoy in this great country of ours weren’t handed to us, they were won by men that were willing to fight for them against all comers, and unless we are willing to fight for them again we will lose them. Are we going to let that happen, men? Are we going to stand by and watch whilst it happens?”

The “no’s” the men screamed back were almost deafening. Feet in workmen’s boots, trainers, and shoes alike pounded the wooden floorboards of Vestry Hall in support of the man’s words. Finally Edgar Francis lifted one of his veiny, wrinkled hands into the air and the men fell silent in an instance.

“Then go forth from here and do whatever it takes to protect our country,” Francis said gravely as his eyes locked intensely on Ray Newman stood at the back of the hall. “Otherwise there won’t be a country to fight for in five years time.”


Albert Dock, Liverpool

A flood of pain across his face forced Sebastian Hedland into consciousness and his eyes forced themselves open. They shut within half a second as the bright light that hung over him shone into them. A sickening laugh from in front of the journalist assured him he wasn’t stuck in some nightmare and the forceful hand that clamped around his mouth confirmed it. Seb could feel breath against his face but was too frightened to open his eyes again. It wasn’t until he felt a cold blade pressed against his stomach that he opened them and confronted the gravity of his situation. Stood in front of him was the ginger-haired man that had lead the raid on Daley’s Sugar Refinery and knocked Seb unconscious. That was the last thing that he remembered. Now he was strapped to a chair without any clothes on and with no idea where he was.

The man smiled as he noticed Seb’s eyes had opened. “I hate to interrupt your sleep but we don’t have all night, sunshine.”

“What’s going on here?” Hedland said as he looked around. “Where am I?”

The room was perfectly dark but for the man stood in front of him. The lamp that illuminated him was directly behind him and depending on where the man stood Hedland would be plunged into complete blackness or blinding light. In the distance Seb could hear the sounds of other people crying out in pain and the dull thud of fists pounding human flesh. He gulped nervously as the ginger-haired man held the sharp knife for Hedland to inspect.

“I’ll be the one asking the questions, if you don’t mind.”

“I’m not one of them,” Sebastian stammered as he eyed the knife. “I work for the New Jerusalem.”

“You kept saying that,” the man laughed as he slid the knife over the journalist’s stomach. “Is that meant to mean something to me? You think working for some poxxy magazine is going to save you? The way I see it, working for a magazine got you into this little spot to begin with.”

There was that laugh again. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard. The man stepped into the darkness and returned several seconds later with a set of black and white photographs in his hands. He held the pictures in front of Seb’s face one by one.

Once he’d finished going through the pictures he picked up the knife again and slid it along Seb’s groin. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know who those people are,” Hedland said with a nervous shake of his head. “I’ve never seen them before.”

“Don’t lie to me,” the man said with an exasperated sigh as he reached for the photographs again. “Where are they and what are they planning?”

He went through them again, slower and more deliberately this time, and Seb tried desperately to look for something or someone he might recognise in them. Each was as alien to him on second viewing as they had been on the first one but he knew that wasn’t what the man wanted from him. There was a loud scream from somewhere and it made him jump in his seat. The ginger-haired man’s green eyes were boring into the journalist’s head and finally Hedland succumbed to the pressure.

“I swear I don’t know who they are.”

The man sighed and smashed the handle of the knife in his hand down on Seb’s fingers. There was a loud crunch and he screamed out in pain. The man asked again and Hedland could barely muster a whimper by way of an answer to it. Seb's captor shook his head and smashed at his fingers again. Seb’s mouth filled with blood as he accidentally chomped down on the inside of his mouth. It dribbled along his cheek as he glanced down at his broken fingers and whimpered in pain. Over the next ten minutes the ginger-haired man pounded on Seb’s slight frame with his fists. Each punch rattled Hedland’s body to its core. Once the barrage of blows had come to an end the man held Seb’s head aloft and breathlessly asked a final time time about the men and women in the photographs.

Through his swollen and bloodied face Seb muttered an answer that left his tormentor dissatisfied. He looked over his shoulder at someone and gestured to something in the corner of the room out of sight.

“Get the broom handle.”

Another man appeared and passed a broom handle to him. Through swollen eyes Seb spotted it and began to mutter barely comprehensible protestations. The ginger-haired man tipped Seb’s seat over and the journalist’s face clattered against the ground as his inquisitor disappeared behind him.

“Please,” Hedland muttered as he felt the broom handle’s searing pain. “Please… please no…”

It was a pain unlike any other Seb had ever felt before and it lasted so long that he had lost all sense of time. Once it was done he felt the blood trickle down his legs and the tears wash down his face. The man asked one last time and this time Seb managed but an exhausted head shake as the pain overcame him and he began to slip from consciousness. Even the searing light that shone in his direction dimmed as Hedland's world started to fade to black. He could make out the silhouette of his captor stood over him and the subordinate that had handed him the handle.

“It’s no good,” Seb's captor muttered dispassionately. “He doesn’t know anything.”

The other man tutted and reached for a weapon on his waist. “Should we kill him?”

“Don’t bother,” came the response as the ginger-haired man gestured to his colleague to holster his weapon. “He’s not worth the bullet.”


Chelmsley Wood, Birmingham

Conrad Murray stirred his tea gently and watched as the dark brown liquid began to lighten. He lifted the mug to his mouth and went to take a sip of the tea before catching himself at the last moment. It was piping hot. He blew on it a few times as he carried it over to the table that Neil Durham was sat at. The staff room of Chelmsley Wood High School was empty but for the two men. Conrad blew on his tea a little more and finally ventured to take a sip of it. Durham watched on amused as Murray drew his tongue back sharply and set the mug down on the table.

“Are you alright, Conrad? You look a little rough this morning.”

“Thanks,” Murray said sarcastically as he touched the burnt tip of his tongue. “I was up all night trying to get Honor out of that bloody police station.”

Durham made a face and then looked down to the lesson plan in front of him. “Yeah, I heard about that.”

“Don’t give me that look,” Conrad said with a sigh. “They trashed our house, Neil.”

The older teacher took a deep inhalation of breath. Conrad watched as he saw Durham trying to piece together a response. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea considering the… current climate. People might have turned a blind eye to all of that before but since that police officer was shot down in London… It’s changed, people have changed, Conrad, they’re not going to take kindly to what they see as rabble-rousing.”

Rabble-rousing. Conrad gritted his teeth at Durham’s choice of words. West Midlands Police had come into his home, where Conrad and Honor laid their hands at night, and broken, smashed, and destroyed everything they could get their hands on. They’d even broken the only picture Honor had of her father Errol. She didn’t talk about her father much, all Conrad knew was that they had fallen out a decade ago, but he knew that her father meant more to her than she let on. He’d seen her face when she’d found the ruined picture. Just thinking about it filled him with rage. Neil looked at him with sympathetic eyes and Conrad felt his rage fizzle away into nothing. He reached for his mug of tea and took a careful sip from it. He and Neil spoke for a while about the day they had ahead of them, the football the night before, and their plans after work. The sound of someone clearing their throat in the doorway to the staff room brought their conversation to an end.

“Conrad?” Daniel Noble, Chelmsley High’s headteacher said with a polite smile. “Are you busy? I need a word with you.”

Conrad got to his feet, emptied out what little tea remained in his mug, and followed Noble out of the staff room. As he passed through the doorway Durham mouthed the words “good luck” to him and Conrad smirked. Noble was renown around the school for being a hard nut. He was a short, fat man that looked more like a council official than a headteacher and he carried himself like one too. His too-tight suit clung to his rolls of fat and his shoes were old and battered. Noble had no teaching experience of his own. He’d been brought in by the government to turn Chelmsley Wood High around. No one knew what the headteacher had done before but he was definitely not popular amongst the staff there.

As he took a seat in Noble’s office Murray looked up at the headteacher and frowned. “What’s this about?”

The office was plain but for a few certificates along the school’s ways that spoke to Noble’s education. He was the only faculty member at Chelmsley High outside of Conrad that had studied past undergraduate level. Murray had counted three others that had even attended universities. Even his prestigious education didn’t seem to match up to Noble’s schooling. There were certificates from Cambridge and Harvard that had price of place. Murray was staring at those when the headteacher’s deep voice answered back.

“We’ve had some complaints from some of the parents, Conrad.”

Conrad sighed. “Is this about what happened yesterday?”

“Look, I understand that you aren’t responsible for the actions of your partner and I’m sure she believed her actions were justified but we can’t have her bringing the school’s name into disrepute. God knows that we have enough of a mountain to climb to salvage the school’s reputation without giving people even more reason not to send their children here.”

“What are you saying?” Murray said as he ran a nervous hand through his beard. “Are you letting me go?”

Noble smiled and shook his head. “Of course not, we can’t afford to lose a teacher like you over something like this, Conrad, but let’s consider this… an unofficial verbal warning, shall we? A very gentle slap on the wrists if you will.”

It was wrong. Everything was about this was wrong. Conrad and Honor had been targeted because of the colour of his girlfriend’s skin and now Conrad was being punished because Honor had refused to take it lying down. Worst of all was that Noble was smiling at Conrad as if he was doing him a favour in “only” giving him a slap on the wrists for it. Conrad wanted to give Noble what for but he knew the fat man held his career in his hands. Instead he nodded dutifully and pushed himself up from his seat with his hands. Conrad had made it to the door with his hand wrapped around the handle when he changed his mind.

He clutched onto it and mumbled without turning. “What kind of message is this sending the kids?”

Noble looked up from his desk at Conrad with a raised eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

The young history teacher turned to face his boss with his hand still wrapped around the handle. Noble stared at Conrad as if waiting for him to repeat his question and Murray stood silently and matched his gaze. After a few seconds Noble let out a sigh and shook his head. His stomach wobbled with it. Murray watched as the headteacher leant back in his chair and placed his feet up on his desk.

“I’m your best friend at this school, Conrad, though you might not believe it,” Noble shrugged with a smile. “Half of the Board of Governors wanted you gone the second your girlfriend’s little stunt got underway but I managed to talk them out of it. Making an enemy of me would be a very bad decision.”

Murray's shoulders slumped and a repentant look appeared on his face. Without a word he disappeared through the door of Noble's office. As he wandered through the halls of Chelmsley Wood High School he replayed the conversations he had with Neil Durham and Daniel Noble over and over ahead in his head. For the first time in years, Connor Murray started to wonder whether the righteous indignation he'd been carrying with him was misplaced.


Whitehall, London

Along the walls of the Ministry of Defence were portraits of Britain’s great military leaders over the years. Fraser Campbell sneered at the last, a portrait of Owen Pyke, as he passed through into the office of General Sir Jonathan Markham-Powell. As Fraser entered into the office he spotted Markham-Powell seated behind a large dark brown wooden desk. The title “Chief of Defence Staff” was engraved into a nameplate on the front of Markham-Powell’s desk. Upon spotting Fraser enter the room the general took to his feet and saluted. Markham-Powell was in his late sixties and his military uniform adorned with countless medals did little to disguise the still gym-fit body beneath it. The general had lost his hair young but had resisted the temptation to fashion what remained of his hair into a comb-over. There was an air of geniality to Markham-Powell that had always put Fraser Campbell at ease. Their meetings were one of the few duties that the Prime Minister looked forward to. Campbell gestured to the general to take his seat as he approached.

“Please, Jonathan, there’s no need for that.”

Markham-Powell flashed the Prime Minister a smile and sat back down. “You know what they say about old habits.”

Fraser took the seat opposite the general and loosened his tie with a relieved sigh. Ostensibly he was there to discuss the progress of the British campaign in South Africa but he was intent on taking this rare moment of privacy to relax. Once he was done with Markham-Powell there were another six meetings for the Prime Minister to get to and the events of the past few days had exhausted him enough as it was. He’d have to deal with aides, advisers, and disgruntled Cabinet members until late into the evening and that was just the things they had planned. Chances are with the luck that Fraser was having recently another police officer would be shot whilst he was talking to Markham-Powell.

Once he was comfortable the Prime Minister looked to the general and smiled. “How’s the new gazebo coming along?”

“Splendidly,” Markham-Powell said with an appreciate smirk. “It should be done within the week. As always with these things it has overrun a little and the estimates we were given were quite some way short but the wife seems happy enough with it. That’s all that matters at the end of the day.”

The general lived for his wife as much as Campbell and the pair had been married for nearly fifty years. Campbell hoped that he and Joyce would wear their love on their sleeves as proudly as Jonathan and Hortensia Markham-Powell wore theirs. On the general’s desk were several pictures of his wife and he on their travels and another of a young man that Campbell did not recognise.

“Whilst we’re on the topic of things that have overrun,” Fraser said glibly as he reluctantly veered back on topic. “How goes our campaign in South Africa? The last time we spoke you assured me that things were going well and yet I hear from my man Hobbs that there’s bad news out of Cape Town.”

Markham-Powell nodded. “I’m afraid so, sir, the whole thing has proved far more complicated than we’d imagined. We had hoped that with the support of the Dutch Afrikaaners that make up most of the country’s ruling elite we’d have taken South Africa in weeks. The natives have proven more resilient than we’d imagined, they seem to have a better understanding of the terrain than the Dutch, and have dug themselves in.”

“Any chance the Ethiopians involve themselves?”

“No, sir, I don’t see the natives holding out in South Africa long enough for that to be viable,” Markham-Powell said bluntly. “The Ethiopians have problems of their own at the moment and getting involved in South Africa would only increase those problems tenfold.”

The Great War had reduced Britain to a shadow of its former greatness and the Troubles had meant to world had left Britain behind. Once the British Empire laid claim to two-thirds of the world and now Britain was an afterthought. Decades of civil war and infighting had left the nation inwards looking, technologically backwards, and indifference to the goings on of the outside world at the best of times. King William had lobbied Campbell hard to invade South Africa and it was made clear to the Prime Minister by Moore’s faction that non-compliance with the order would result in his deposition. The King’s justification for the invasion was that it would restore some national pride to Britain. So far all it had done for Campbell was caused him innumerable headaches at great expense to the public purse. Plus the Prime Minister now lived in constant fear of the Africans turning their ire towards Britain.

“Well, that’s reassuring at least,” Campbell smiled as he pushed his thick lensed glasses up his nose. “The sooner this thing is over the better for everyone. We can’t afford to keep pouring money into South Africa if there’s no end in sight. God knows Britain has enough problems of its own too.”

“It’s interesting that you say that,” Jonathan muttered tentatively. “I had a discussion with some people from the Palace this morning,”

Fraser could feel his heart in his mouth as he gestured to the general to continue. “Go on.”

“Word seemed to have reached our King of a particularly troubling murder.”

“PC James Oldfield,” Campbell sighed as wave of relief flooded over him. “We’re doing everything we can.”

Markham-Powell shook his head. “No, no, not Oldfield, another one. A man by the name of Errol Clarke was murdered in Brixton the morning after Oldfield was shot.”

Campbell’s face flushed red. He had no idea who Errol Clarke was. There was nothing that the King and the Chief of Defence Staff knew that the Prime Minister shouldn’t be privy to already. He searched the recesses of his mind silently for some forgotten reference to Clarke or a murder in Brixton that morning. There was none. Campbell’s memory was second to none. If the Prime Minister had been told about it he’d know about it. Suddenly he became aware that he’d been silent for too long and smiled in Markham-Powell’s direction modestly as he searched for an excuse. He couldn’t find one.

“I’m afraid this is the first I’m hearing of it.”

Markham-Powell looked at him with eyes that betrayed a fatherly disappointment. “Yes, well, King William was very concerned when he heard about it. It’s one thing to send them home, sir, but another to have them murdered on our streets in the middle of the afternoon. I believe the King is concerned that if things like this keep happening that people might believe we don’t have a handle on the situation. He might be minded to make some changes were such a perception to become widespread.”

It wasn’t a threat. At least if it was a threat it definitely wasn’t coming from Markham-Powell. To the best of Fraser’s knowledge the general thought as highly of him as Campbell thought of Markham-Powell and their relationship had never been anything but cordial. There was concern in the general’s tone, real concern, like he was trying to warn the Prime Minister of the danger he was in. Changes. It was a diplomatic choice of word that belied the true nature of what the Palace had intimated to Markham-Powell. If Campbell didn’t get a hold of the situation he’d be ousted. King William would remove him as Prime Minister and appointed someone else. That would be the end of Fraser Campbell’s political career, the end of his time in public life, and most importantly the end of any hopes he might have at building the kind of Britain that the British people deserved. One where King’s didn’t discuss changing Prime Ministers as one might would changing their underpants.

“Who informed the Palace if you don’t mind my asking, General?”

“Who else? Thomas Moore,” Markham-Powell smiled knowingly. “I believe the Home Secretary lunches with the King at least once a week.”

Rain poured down on the roof of the tent. The patter of rain was a constant. A cruel nonstop that Sen Zhou watched with her arms wrapped underneath the raincoat draped over her shoulders. But even in the beating rain of the wet season the humidity had miraculously failed to let up, and with rain pouring in buckets just outside the flap door she still felt like she was swimming in a warm soup. Uncomfortably playing with the collar of her unbuttoned uniform under neath she tried to let herself breath just a little more as she watched similarly coated enlisted men dash through the mud. Along the runway just a hundred meters away a plane bearing the insignia of Ethiopia's military came to lumber down from flight among the mid-summer's rain. She could watch the plumes of running water erupt from underneath as the landing gear cut a swathe through the rain-drenched runway.

And somehow she found herself preferring the tropical consistency of the Philippines. At least during her service then the rain did not come down so hard for most of one month. And though it flew against her training and education, she found herself condemning whatever God had chose to throw the rain at them the day after the met with Yaqob.

She had had her hopes up then, but now they were drowning in the prospects of a pleasant, brief tour in Africa. “What a terrific July.” she groaned despondently as she cast a angry look to the thick storm clouds overhead. They hung so thick overhead it was like looking into a concrete wall, and there was no end nor beginning with them.

“Comrade.” her commanding officer called out. Zhou turned on her heels and sloshed across the even flooded floor of the tent. A heavy plastic sheet had not done much to make the impromptu command post any better. Though it had guarded against the mud the flow of rain had someone managed to find a way in and had caused wide shallow puddles to form.

Dezhi Cao was not in one of his better moods as he leaned over the flimsy aluminum table thrown down in the middle of the tent. It was placed even more skewed and precariously to dodge leaks in the roof of the tent. His round face glowered down at a map of the city and a notebook as rainwater dripped from his wide brow. With his hair and brow wet, it made Zhou think of his head as a water-downed boulder from a river; and it made her laugh.

Chen Wu stood nearby, his palms resting against the table as a drenched raincoat fell plastered to his black great coat. The IB uniform must have be incredibly uncomfortable in this condition, and for only a second Zhou found herself feeling bad for the bastard.

“I want to make preparations before it's too late.” Cao said. Zhou thought she could hear a little bit of worry in his voice. Some wavering tone that was as if he was trying to hold back his fear of the Spanish army beyond the highlands.

“The Ethiopians last I heard are setting up to hold Dire Dawa, if we're going to help them with their humanitarian problems then now would be a good time.” he continued, adapting a straight face, “So, uh- I think we should do this in a couple phases.”

Chen Wu looked up from the table. “What's your plan?” he asked.

“Right now, we move out groups that want to flea the country now. This will be our phase one lift. They'll refuge on Pemba for the time being in the even the Ethiopians do repel Sotelo's men in the highlands. But as soon as they break through and are making real progress we initiate a second phase lift. It'll be a second chance to move out anyone else who doesn't want to get caught in the cross fire. We'll begin forwarding who we have in our custody to China after.

“Our third phase is when the Spanish are here. It's the last chance and when we pull ourselves out and fallback to Pemba, pending support from Asia itself.

“So, doable?” he asked uncertainly. He looked between his two present commanding officers with a look of repressed anxiety. To Zhou, he almost looked like a private waiting to get flailed for something or other.

“Do we have preferences?” asked Chu.

“Ah- uh. No, not really.” Cao answered, shaking his head, “If we were really to target any groups I would recommend we move women, children, elderly, students from the city. We'll leave the city to the militia and the army if at all possible.

“I don't want to be under-prepared either, so if this is what we're going to do I'll radio back to Pemba for the rest of the transports to fly in so we don't become over-burdened. We're going to tell our target groups now and begin the lift tomorrow.”

“A regular North American airlift.” Wen Chu smiled, but there was a sarcasm in that voice of his, “Fine by me, I don't see any problems. But I'm not Huang Xianwu.” he admitted.

“Fair enough, Zhou?” he asked, turning to his second in command.

She traded him for a reserved look. Chewing on her lip she tugged at her undershirt from under her poncho and gave a unopinionated shrug, “Go ahead.”

“Two for, a great unanimous victory.” chuckled Cao, “Very well, if we are united in this we need to advertise it to our core groups. I'll see what I can do to speak with the university.”

“I don't have any particular qualms where.” Chu said, “But if it might not be any trouble I'll go to the hospitals and talk to the doctors. We might be able to withdraw some patients and free up beds for when the fighting starts.”

“Excellent, excellent. Comrade Zhou?”

Zhou looked up at Cao and thought. “Where do you need me?” she asked.

“Request that you can get on the radio?” her CO asked.

“If we can do that then why bother going to the people directly?” she asked. She was already confused.

“In the event it doesn't reach the widest range.” the commander assured. But he was trying, that much Zhou could see. Chu looked to be playing along, “If they didn't hear it in broadcast, then we'll be there. They'll talk.”

“I think I can see it.” Zhou was too used to being in a fight and drilling than she was trying to communicate. But if she was to be forced into it, so be it. And to her surprise she found herself wondering if there was something in lapse somewhere.

--------------------------



With rain dripping from his overcoat, Cao stepped into the student commons. By his side an attendant professor hovered nervously, closing a black umbrella up as the heavy wooden doors to the central commons shut with a loud bang. His face was gaunt, but not old. He gave the Chinese officer a great deal of caution, as if afraid. But even Cao had seen in his eyes something different: a sort of jealousy. To what reason it was there Dezhi Cao could not put his finger on it.

The young coffee-skinned African professor had introduced himself as Adom, and he worked for the university's aerospace department. Having called ahead of time he was the first – and only man – to great the officer at the great African baroque gates of the university. He had been the one forced to explain the situation to Dezhi Cao and the mood of the student body.

He had even tried to dissuade him. Cao had dismissed him wholly.

But now they were in the heart of the student commons. Outside the rain still fell and it came down in sheets against the tall glass windows of the lobby's outer wall. Interspaced with regularly distanced pillars inside and out, the entire structure had a classical air, speaking of some great connection to the Egyptian world with a more African heritage. The building, and the main body of the college had been built to look like it had stood in its present location for not just generations, but the greater part of the passed century and beyond and called from the past the mythical legacy of Ethiopia to be reborn in the modern age.

In its way, it reminded Cao of the officer's school in Nanjing.

Dezhi Cao breathed a deep sigh as he looked out onto the commons. Young men and women lounged across recliners. But much of the sense of academia had withdrawn from the grounds and was instead replaced by staunch national solidarity. The Ethiopian flag with its golden lion hung like royal and pride-filled curtains from the walls, there was music, and there was talk.

Walking alongside him, Adom asked: “Nervous?”

The Chinese officer looked about him, the handful of guards he had brought with him loitered a safe distance behind, with their arms crossed behind their backs. Their rifles hung from their shoulders as they looked out at the room. Already they were attracting the stares of the student body, and slowly after their arrival the voices died to a murmur as all attention was drawn to the foreign interlopers.

“Now would be your time.” Adom encourages, separating himself from Cao.

Dezhi Cao did the only thing he could think of to begin: he bowed. “Comrades,” he began, “I am shang hsiao Dezhi Cao, commander of the Pemba Training Group.

“Recently, as of command of Beijing and given the acceptance of your emperor, my unit is committed to the humanitarian and auxiliary support of your people's military in the capital city. In the wake of pressing threat by the Spanish military on Ethiopian shores we offer passage from the country and to China, where you will you be awarded residency by the People's Congress for the duration of the conflict. This offer extends to any individual who wishes to seize it.

“Starting tomorrow, we will execute the first flights from Ethiopia to Pemba, ferrying any parties unwilling to be caught in the middle of the conflict. In the future, should the Spanish threat grow more pressing you will be flown to China. To Lhasa, from there my people extend their hospitality and offer to relocate you within China for your peaceful tenure as guests of the Chinese state.

“Upon the war's conclusion, you may return. You have on this, our solemn promise that Africa will prevail, but you need not be caught in the middle of the inferno of conflict.” Dezhi Cao paused to catch his breath and collect himself. He could feel the weight of the room on his shoulders as he held the attention of much of the student body. They looked on at him, judging him as he stood at the edge of their world. He wondered if he should step deeper into it and to be more one with them. But the safety and security of being nearest to his countrymen along the wall behind him kept him sealed to the spot as he sweated through his speech.

“We demand no re-compensation, we place to expectations. Just that if those among you do not wish to be victims of conflict and to loose too much, that you see to our offer. We will be present to help and to assist until the final hour.” he felt the tug of his strings as he spoke those final hours. He became again acutely and morbidly aware of the most severe of situations.

He hoped the rain could hold up long enough that no one had to suffer if it got worse.

The air in the room hung silent. It tensed against Cao's nerves.

Standing, a student in the back rose to his feet: “We will die for the motherland!” he declared in a singing voice, “For the land that brought us into this world, we will persist for it! Long live Ethiopia!” he trumpeted. The room exploded into a triumphant chorus as martyrs stood and sang, in active defiance to the Chinese officer who could do naught but watch.

“I warned you.” Adom said, as he walked up to Cao's side.

“You're all a nation of martyrs.” Dezhi Cao gaped in awe, “A nation of insane, suicidal martyrs.”




The papers shuffled with mouse-like softness as a set of files were moved across the desk. At the bear desk, Angua poured over a stack of musty manila folders as he scanned the pages and the names within. A pad of paper at hand was swelling with the burgeoning waterfall of names he considered to be leads. The task it seemed was growing daunting and his diligence felt challenged.

The pain of it was growing duller over time. What had felt like the long road to tedium became slowly a resentful march to nowhere as the time ticked by. Outside the windows life went on in Novosibirsk. And beyond the Siberian capital the front was still moving. Last he checked, stalwart resistance had broken out on the road to Yekaterinburg and Huei Wen was held up at any number of villages.

The only break to the waspish ticking of his pen and the scratching of dry paper was the occasional breaks afforded to him by his intelligence subordinates seeking regular authorizations. Or as they crawled ahead the agents that had slept in the Russian Republic rejoining the main force. An Angua had become in that effect a pathway home and the nearest commanding officer to debrief to before reporting home. He had collected notes of those as well. A venerable richly loaded library was being constructed by Angua to serve in his hunts.

The main door to the room crept open, the pained moaning of the hinges brought Angua's eyes up to level at his guest. Turning through the door, the dragon-faced IB agent let himself in, a short stack of personnel files in his arms. He glowered down at the seated agent with a cold venomous look as he walked over.

“Comrade.” he greeted bluntly, pushing the files onto Angua's desk, “Found anyone?”

An Angua looked up at him, then down at the growing list by his wrist. “Yeah.” he shot directly.

The dragon man nodded, “May I sit?” he asked.

“Go ahead.” Angua waved.

The other bowed, and pulled up a metal chair. The room was bare and naked, very few effects – if anything – decorated the room. A thin snowy sort of dust drifted about in the fiery daylight. “I've perhaps found a few, I was wondering if there was any chance you got information on any affiliates we could corroborate on.” dragon face remarked. He narrowed his eyes to reptilian slits as he watched Angua scribble down another name.

“Sure.” shrugged Angua. He passed a cold look passed to his bald partner and withdrew it to his diligent work.

“Fyodor Trobesky.” the man said, “Does it turn up at all for you? He had a long list of supposed accomplices, but none that I could tell were officially investigated, but there were more names on his list of affiliates whose files I didn't have. Any turn up for you?”

“No.” replied Angua, “But who is this Fyodor?”

“Some former Cossack, grand father fought for the Emperor during the uprising. Was last registered to living out around Tyumen. Fought for the former Novosibirsk warlord before he was overthrown, he drops off the radar soon after when he was about to go on trial for some murder charge. He's believed to have had Ressurectionist affiliations and had a long list of family contacts, apparently his name is well affiliated with some old oligarchs.”

“If that's the case then I imagine he left the country a long time ago. He might be a dead end.” Angua suggested.

“Well you see: I would have thought so but he did stick around for some time when Russian went to hell and back. But he wasn't a man tied to Moscow or Saint Petersburg where a lot of his ilk lived, but they all left the country at the first whiff of trouble. His older brother is reported to be living in Spain off his family's copper wealth but he never did. Either he was too low on the family food chain, or he had something here in Russia still.”

Angua nodded, “Sounds like a theory.” he remarked.

“I rather like it myself, he's been occupying a part of my mind for a while.” smiled baldy, “Do you want to know another?”

Angua looked up, and hung his heavy gaze on the dragon-faced IB agent. Like a block of steel he anchored his eyes on him. There was a suspicious tone to his voice. He was ready to be dismissive, but then he felt the cold nip of jaded morbid curiosity he had something that he needed. There was a smug plastic look in his face as he leaned in his chair. “What is it?”

“This operation of yours: it isn't officially sanctioned is it?” he asked.

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, since you rounded us up personally and you've never left the operations center – even to be close to your commanding generals operational sphere, working on the edge – and there hasn't been any incoming messages from Beijing for the greater part of operations I get the suspicion that no one's said to do this. Does Huei Wen know you're doing this at all?”

Snakes coiled in Angua's gut, he had a pretty clear picture. Was this that transparent? “Fascinating idea. Suppose it isn't official, would it make it any less valid?”

The dragon tattoo slithered and twisted as he smiled, “No, it wouldn't.” he remarked, “Sometimes, you have to do it unofficially. Have you heard the allegations that it was the IB who murdered Kim Il-Sung? That was the right move, but of course no one knows. Even better.”

Angua nodded. “How much about any of us do you know?” the agents across the desk from him inquired.

“Huang Li Wong, age 41.” began Angua, reciting dry and direct from memory “Served in the Second Peoples Liberation brigade, service in Southern China. Engagements of commemoration: Luding Bridge engagement, siege of Nanjing.

“After service you transferred to the Municipal Police Force of Shanghai, your father's city of origin. After five years of exceptional service in the investigation squad you were identified by the IB as a choice candidate for the investigation of home-bound reactionary armies who had moved activities to south-central China.

“You investigated the Red Guard Gang before being reassigned to Russia during the VX incident, you investigated Russian industrial centers to confirm the Russian assertion that they actually did not possess VX. You instead brought home the recipe for a weaponized, flammable substance being developed in Russian labs; they called it Napalm.

“Your tattoo is an effect of investigative action against organized crime and was a result of a prolonged assignment against the Triad-3 group.”

Huang Li Wong laughed, a bright enamored chuckle, deep like a ravine. “I never understood why they called themselves the Triad-3 but that's right.” he cackled, “But why did I keep the mark?”

“No doubt you find it terrifying to people. It's prevented you from a lot of field work. You've mostly did scouting after because of it, or cases where subtly or having no distinguishable features is preferred, loud things that the IB considered public.”

Wong nodded along, playing up his wide toothy grin, “And I think it worries some of these Russians, or back then it did.” he joyously sang, “Made the superstitious ones afraid. I've been called a pagan demon at least several times shaking a few down. But I like it.

“Besides, our enemies use terror in some manner to enforce their authority. If we're going to break them then we need to do the same. I don't suppose that's why you chose to recruit me?” he inquired.

“It is.” Angua admitted.

“So it all falls into place. So how about Fyodor?”

“I had one file he came up in.” Angua finally conceded, digging through the stacks of Russian-titled files, “Isaak Girgorvich Alexandrov, apparently the Alexandrov family were close to his father. If he has a service record, then no doubt through that. There's not a lot on him, only a name and a city of residence.” he added, passing the incredibly thin file to Wong, “Not even a photo. You're going to have to pursue his name in Perm when the chance arises.”

“I'll set a date.” Wong crooned as he took the light manila folder in his hands. He weighed it gingerly. Despite the feathery emptiness to it, the value of leads was weighed in gold.



“Alright, here's plan comrade.” Vasiliy smiled, throwing down a map onto the dining table of the borrowed apartment. Ullanhu looked down at the crumpled sheet of scrap laid before him. Dashed about its face narrow purposeful lines constructed a rough map. The Mongol looked at it and recognized the shape of the Kremlin.

“I've located and explored escape tunnel under Kremlin.” Vasiliy remarked as he sat down. Excitedly and hurriedly rubbing his palms together. The frantic energy was enough that he could have started a fire from the excited giddy strokes his palms made between each other. “To final red-station line on the tracks. Is empty, but soon as president is moved there we move fast much.”

Ullanhu looked up to his partner and the paper. There was an empty spot in his enthusiasm that was quickly opening. He in the end did not know if he could be as excited as Vasiliy, or even terrified. He just felt an absolute nothing. “Ok.” he remarked, fingering into his mouth a small clump of corn flakes. The flavorless coins of cereal crunched between his teeth as he looked over at Vasiliy.

“Oh, is beautifully simple.” the Russian said, “I get president, take control of him, and we go on way through tunnels. There cart even by doors, still waiting for czar that'll never come.”

“This car, will it run?” Ullanhu asked.

“Da.” Vasiliy nodded excitedly, he wore the hope of a puppy in his eyes and his smile nearly broke his skinny squared-off face.

“Fine, but what about me?” he asked, “I don't know where I am in all of this.”

“Oh, is not to worry. You has of part. You will drive car.”

“Me, drive?”

“Da, you not know?” inquired Vasiliy, leaning over the table. For a brief second a morbid shadow of fear fell over him and his hope was dullened.

“No, I can drive.” Ullanhu assured, Vasiliy's hopes were again raised.

“Oh praise God!” he shouted, relieved, “I needs you at station, to wait for me.”

“What will you be doing?”

“Getting president, is best you not know.”

Ullanhu was stricken, as if slapped across the face he was being left out of something. “Well why not?” he shouted angrily. A tempest billowed in his gut, stewed by frustration in being denied this piece of information. This part of port.

“Please, please. Keep voice down.” urged Vasiliy, “We not wanting to wake neighbors, or call attention.

“Comrade, I have my reasons for not saying. You is having to trust me on this. Tomorrow, I give you keys. Be parked outside the north-western most station on red-line by three in the afternoon then. I comes with president, throw him into car, and you drive!

“Is plan clear?” he asked, searching for confirmation.

“Ah- yes. It is. But Vasiliy, this doesn't feel right if I don't know what it is you're doing.”

“Comrade, I have my reasons. I'll tell you when finished. Is my honorable promise.”

Ullanhu could hear he did not having a choice. Conceding with a lanquid rock-heavy sigh he admitted his defeat, “I won't ask. I'll be there.”

“Is good, I wake you in morning.” Vasiliy beamed.

Washington D.C.

Russell Reed glanced out the third-floor window of Blair House. The home's previous owner had been Washington legend Francis Preston Blair. Blair, a southerner and adviser to both Jackson and Lincoln, tried in vain several times to broker an early end to the Civil War to no avail. From the window facing out of Blair House, Russell had a clear view of the White House. The close proximity to the White House and West Wing eventually led to the government's purchase of the home. Today, it was used as a guest house for any heads of state who came to Washington. Two floors below in the parlor, Blair and a hodgepodge collection of Whig and Free Soil Party members formed the Republican Party. Russell thought it was an odd place for the current Democratic president to hold his weekly breakfast meeting with the Democratic vice-president.

The two men sat at the dining room table and ate a simple breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast with grapefruit and orange juice. The food was part of the president's effort to curb the weight gain that came with the transfer from military life to civilian life. By contrast, Russell always had a heavy breakfast of sausage, grits, and eggs with country gravy and a large mug of black coffee. He would always burn the calories in his day of constant motion, meeting and greeting and glad-handing nad never stopping until that night. The two men ate their meal in silence while they absorbed the news from that morning's east coast national papers. Russell handed Norman a copy of the Boston Herald as he handed Russell a copy of the Washington Post.

"Seems your tour is in all the papers," Russell said as he flipped open the paper.

"It's my first serious trip out of Washington since the inauguration," Norman replied. "It's bound to make at least passing news."

Russell reread the details that appeared in the papers of Boston and New York. While Russell was doing whatever it took in the election down south, the White House had announced the president was going on a western tour of the country. He'd be going through the midwest and stop in Wisconsin to witness the groundbreaking ceremony on the Eric Fernandez Presidential Library. After that, it was off to California and up the Pacific Coast. The highlight of the tour would be Norman's return to the Cascadia Territory, his first time back there since the war.

"And besides, Jim Sanderson's win is making news as well," the president said between bites of food. "I know you're glad to have him back in the Senate. I've heard that you and the former governor down there don't get along."

"Hampton Taliaferro is a son of a bitch," Russell stated flatly. "Always has been. We've clashed more than once over the years, but I can't say I'm too broken up over the scandal. I hate the way Jim won, but I'm glad everyone knows what kind of son of a bitch Taliaferro really is."

Russell did not show anything other than remorse at the circumstances surrounding the Senate race. Nobody had asked for a statement on it and he hadn't given one. As far as the public was concerned, he had stayed out of it leading up to the last week of the race. Nobody knew about Sledge's actions, Ash McCall's betrayal, and the relatively small amount of money it took to engineer the events in Macon. And nobody would ever know because everybody benefitted. McCall got the governor's chair, the members of the governor's security detail would quietly make rank in the Georgia State Patrol. Those that didn't get promotion got money. The two colored girls found with Taliaferro were now somewhere in Florida, laying low with a friend of Sledge's with a few hundred dollars in their pockets.

"What about the blowback from your meeting in Tennessee?" Norman asked, looking over his reading glasses at Russell. "How bad do you think that will hurt you and the administration?"

He tossed the Washington paper aside and picked at his food. "The people down south will rant and rave for a while, but they'll forget about it."

Norman put his paper down on the table and looked at Russell. "I want to apologize about that, Russ. I know you've been taking a beating on it in the papers."

"It's what the VP does, sir," Russell shrugged. "Sometimes I'm the hatchet man and sometimes I'm the fall guy. I was fully aware of the possibilities and limitations of the job when I accepted the nomination."

He kept his feelings about being hung out to dry to himself. He fully knew that on a risky prospect like meeting with leaders of the burgeoning civil rights movement, the president couldn't risk exposure like the VP could. But Russell still felt slighted by not receiving even private reassurance from the White House. That was why he kept his promise to Wolde and the Calhouns to himself. If the president knew he had promised to push a civil rights bill through Congress on his own accord, the wrath of the White House would be far worse than anything anybody in the south could do.

"I'm afraid this might rile up our southern friends in the Senate," said Norman. "I'm sorry I didn't take your advice sooner, Russell, but the fight over that NEWI bill showed me just how those old men can hijack legislation."

"They are sons of bitches when it comes to working the Senate towards their advantage. The Ethiopian foreign aid bill is going to a vote in the House today, right?" Rusell asked. "I've read that you're marshaling all the Democratic forces behind it."

"Your protegee, Clay, and the leadership team in the House are moving heaven and earth to make sure every House Democrat to vote for it."

"Not an easy feat, but that won't work in the Senate. That shuffling sack of phlegm Wilbur Helms has made it crystal clear the price for southern cooperation in the Senate. Those old bastards will not be moved until we let them know we won't push for civil rights legislation. My trip to Tennessee will make them that much more adamant to get assurances."

Norman flashed Russell a soft grin.

"Divide and conquer, Mr. Vice President. Reach out to Pete Kelly and Rod Marston. Talk to them about getting Republican support behind the Ethiopian bill. I'll deal with Senator Helms and the old bulls."

Russell chuckled and shook his head.

"Wilbur Helms has served in Congress for sixty years. He's seen twelve presidents come and go. For you to tame that old man, it would be a minor miracle."

"People said the same thing to me when I said I wanted Russell Reed as my vice-president," Norman said with a laugh. "'There is no way that man will ever step away from running the Senate to be vice-president.' But yet here we are. Give me some credit, Russ. I'm not the political neophyte you thought I was."

"I've slowly realized the truth of that," said Russell. "And I've come to grudgingly accept it."

"Thank you for your approval, however reluctant it may be."

The president stood and checked his suit for any signs of food on them. Russell also stood, brushing toast crumbs from his lapel.

"See about setting up a meeting with Kelly and Marston. Leave the southerners to me. You'll find my legislative strategy is just as effective as my military strategy."

"Let's hope not," Russell quipped as they shook hands. "Because if it is, we'll be annexing the Senate in two weeks."

-----

Capitol Hill

"Somebody find me that son of a bitch Rowe!"

Traci Lord struggled to keep up with Congresswoman Jen Armstrong as they raced through the long hallways of the Capitol building. Traci was glad she took Armstong's advice and wore sensible shoes to the Capitol. Armstrong still wore black pumps as she hauled ass down the corridor. Today the House was voting on Harlan Lewis' Pan-African foreign aid bill. The article Traci had in mind for this installment involved following Majority Whip Armstrong and her team of deputies. It was an amazing study in contrast to see Armstrong at work. In most things, she had a sunny disposition that never seemed to falter. She was polite and always considerate, that was part of her charm in Congress. That attitude fit perfectly with her being a forty-something midwestern mother of four.

But when there was a hint of weakness or dissent inside the Democratic ranks?

"I swear to god, I will shove my foot so far up Dave Rowe's ass that he'll have stiletto marks on his tongue."

The target of her discontent was David Rowe, a four-term congressman from Pennsylvania. Rowe was just one of two dozen Democrats the Whip team had drawn their sights on as the bill vote drew closer. Based on the vote counting and speculation, the vote was going to be landslide with both sides of the aisle voting but in favor of it. Even with the bi-partisan support there was no way it would be a unanimous vote. The large size of the House, along with the idiosyncrasies of its various members, would prevent that.

Republican Congressman Ben Barker from Maryland was a devout Quaker that voted against any military measure no matter how small, and Barker made it clear on the floor debate that this foreign aid would prolong war. Barker was one of the few pacifists in the House. They and other hard-line isolationist congressmen who would either vote nay or abstain from voting altogether. That was fine for the Republicans, but Clay Foulke wanted to send a message. The Speaker wanted every single Democrat in Congress, all two hundred and fifty-four of them, to vote aye on the bill. He wanted to show Washington, the country, and maybe even the world that Republicans could write and propose legislation, but only Democrats could get it through the House.

"Pursuant to the rules regarding House Appropriations Bill 2601, it is now in order to vote on the measure." The voice of the Speaker Pro Tempore filtered through the halls of the capitol thanks to speakers mounted on walls throughout the House of Representatives side of the building. "Voting will be opened up for a period of thirty minutes--"

"C'mon, Traci," Armstrong shouted over the droning voice of the Speaker. "Pick up the pace!"

The two women suddenly found themselves fighting against a current. As the voting on the measure opened up, congressmen and women began to head towards the House floor to vote. Traci stuck close to Armstrong as they navigated through the crowd.

"Anyone seen Rowe out of Pennsylvania," she asked people as they went through the crowd. "Chance!" She snapped at another passing representative. "Remember what we talked about the other day? Vote that way."

"You're very committed to your job," Traci said. "What do you think makes you work so well as Whip?"

"I'm a mom to four boys," she said with a look back at Traci. "And being Whip is like being a parent more than an enforcer -- Preston! Hey, Preston! Yes, you! Don't back out on me-- you have to wear many hats, as a nice guy or a bad guy. The tone I use on the members of Congress is the same tone I use when I catch my youngest sucking on his thumb. You have to bully, flatter, cajole, and even shame people to get them to vote how you want."

"And do you always get what you want?"

"No, but I win more than I lose that's for sure."

Armstrong took Traci by the wrist and they ducked into a side office. She caught the name on the plaque beside the door just as they went in. Congressman David Rowe, Pennsylvania 14th District. Armstrong walked past the secretary without a word and burst into the office of Rowe. They were greeted by a rail-thin man with a retreating hairline that would be non-existent within five years. He stood up, towering over both Armstrong and Traci, and gave them a puzzled look.

"David," Armstrong said, placing her palms flat on his desk. "Don't know if you know this, but there's a very important vote on the floor at the moment."

"I'm aware, Jennifer," Rowe said, stepping backward slightly. "I... don't think I'll vote."

Armstrong walked around the desk and started to slowly encroach into Rowe's personal space. Traci watched with rapt attention as the little woman who was easily six inches shorter than Rowe, even in her heels, made him squirm. Armstrong was small, but the way she moved made her seem ten feet tall.

"The Speaker passed word through all every caucus that the vote on this measure is to be unanimous on that front. Did you get the memo?"

"I... I did, but I still can't vote for it."

Armstrong placed a hand on the end of Rowe's tie and started to pull on it. Slowly, Rowe had to crouch forward and forward until he was hunched over and just inches away from Armstrong's face.

"Why, David? Why can't you vote for it?"

"This could lead to war, I don't want that. I fought in the last war we had and I don't want to send any other sons off to war."

"Very noble, Congressman."

Armstrong let the tie go. Rowe snapped back like his spine was a rubber band, bolting upright and again trying again to put some distance between him and her. Armstrong kept shuffling forward until Rowe was nearly backed into the far corner of the office.

"If there is a measure to declare war, feel free to vote against it. But for this bill? This foreign aid bill to help starving people, you need to vote yes."

"I'm voting my conscience," he stammered. "That's what you always tell us to do first, right?"

"Right, but that conscience conflicts with what the party wants. And you owe the party for your reelection. You won reelection last time by just ten points, right?"

"Twelve, actually."

"Twelve points," she clicked her tongue. "And that was with the DNC's funding and backing. It's a hard district, lots of Republican voters. Now imagine what happens the next time you run for reelection when there is no funding or backing. Not only that, but the DNC picks a dashing young liberal to step up and run for Congress against you. You'd be a lame duck by the summer and forced to watch the general election from the sidelines."

Even from across the room Traci could see the beads of sweat forming on Rowe's large forehead. He took a second to wipe them away with his sleeve and tried to find a response. None seemed to be forthcoming as he just stammered and tried to reply. Suddenly, a change came over Armstrong. The tough mask was gone. She reached out and placed a hand on Rowe's shoulder.

"Easy, David. Come on, have a seat."

Again despite their height difference, Armstrong seemed to lead Rowe towards his desk like the man was half her size. She helped him sit at his desk and took the seat from across it.

"You're a smart guy, David, very smart. That's why we want you to vote for this bill. The Speaker sees promise in you being part of the leadership here in the House, maybe let you join my staff of whips, but that only happens if you can show the Speaker you're a loyal member of the party. That advancement can only come if you remain in Congress. If you don't like voting for this, then I understand it, but you have to understand the leadership's position. We're getting White House pressure to shove the bill through the House. So by voting with us on this, you'll show the Speaker and President that you're a team player, and you'll have the appreciation of both and the Speaker will owe you one. He's a good one to have owe you a favor, believe me."

Rowe's face seemed to convey a half-dozen expressions all at once. Shock, amazement, concern, embarrassment, etc. The congressman ran his hands through his thinning hair and tried to come up with a response to all that had been thrown at him so quickly by Armstong.

"Okay," he finally said. "I'll help you out."

"Good," Armstrong said as she stood up. "You got twenty minutes to get down to the floor and vote. Move your ass, David."

And like that, she was racing back out the office with Traci in tow. She checked her watch and cursed when she realized how little time was left before the voting finished.

"Is that the usual force you apply in every situation?" Traci asked.

"Depends on the congressman and the measure. Something like this, we have to go full for--" she stopped talking as she eyed one of her deputies coming down the corridor. "Kevin! What's the vote look like?"

"So far it's two hundred and ten to ten," the deputy whip said as he rushed by. "All the nays have been Republicans. We've still got about a hundred Dems who have yet to vote."

"Stampede them to the floor if you have to!" She yelled as he disappeared around a corner. "Cattle drive."

Armstrong led Traci through the halls and out onto the House floor. The chamber was packed with members casting their votes with electronic signals, each one unique to the representative for accurate vote tallies. The big board on the wall read that Appropriations Bill 2601 had passed with a clear majority of House members, three hundred and sixty to fifteen. There were still sixty congressmen who had to vote, but it was mere formality at this point.

The word stampede was right, Traci said to herself. The White House backing gave the Democrats impetus to vote in mass for it, and general public opinion on the bill mixed with the Republican authorship of the bill gave Republicans reason to vote for it as well. Traci looked across the way and saw Harlan Lewis holding court with a group of seven or eight congressmen. The Republican congressman who nobody knew was suddenly popular among his peers. She caught the man's eye and nodded to him. He smiled and waved before turning his attention back to the other men around him.

"That's done," Armstrong said as she vote, sending the tally one more in favor of the bill's approval. "And here he comes..."

They watched David Rowe walk down the aisles towards his seat. He sat down on the bench and picked up his electronic voter. He pressed a button. Both Armstrong and Traci looked towards the big board. The yay vote increased by one. Rowe put his voter down and left the floor as quickly as he arrived.

"There you go," Armstrong said with a wink to Traci. "That's how the sausage gets made."

-----

Natchez, Mississippi

James Calhoun dipped his paintbrush into the can of paint and pulled the brush out with its bristles coated in primer gray. He gently applied the paint down the side of his trick to cover up the horrible words that had been scratched into it. Sarah and the boys saw it and were mad. James got them to calm down, something that would have been damn near impossible if they knew about his meeting with Alex Miller, how that money the family need to live on had been denied.

He told Whitney of course. She hadn't shown anger, just a slight sadness before it quickly disappeared and she nodded. She and James knew tough times, something that the kids never did. They were born during the Depression. Back then there was no times but hard ones, especially for the black people in the South. They'd survive, she knew it and he knew it as well. It'd be tough but they could do it.

The sound of a car rolling down the long dirt road driveway made him look up from the truck. A long, black car came to a stop in the driveway. James let a grin slip from his face. He knew the car well. He'd ridden in it, hell he'd even drove it. Out from the car stepped Isiah Wolde, looking immaculate as always in his crisp black suit, black tie and black-rimmed glasses. He hadn't seen him since Memphis a few weeks ago, the man had let his hair grow out. It was all kinky and poofy, not kept short or straightened with lye like a lot of negroes in America. It reminded James of how the people in Africa looked. A lot of Wolde's followers were starting to wear it out like that, men and women. They called it a natural. Luckily Sarah still insisted on keepng her hair long and straight.

"Isiah," James said as he put his paint brush down and approached the Ethiopian. "Nice hair, brother."

They shook hands, Wolde smiling. "You like it? You should grow it out too. Solidarity with each other and the folks over in Africa. You know they don't try to make their hair look like white people."

"That's a young man's game," James said, pulling his hat off and showing his short hair. "Y'all grow your hair out all you want, you got my solidarity in spirit."

James led Wolde towards the front porch. The Ethiopian nodded towards his truck as they walked by.

"Sarah told me," he said. "Scare tactics is all it is."

"I know," James said before lowering his voice. "But they're using other tactics, brother. The bank I use to get my loan from denied me, the white man who runs it said I need to know my place. We use that money to live on before the harvest comes in."

"Now Sarah did not tell me that."

"That's because she doesn't know."

James led them to a pair of rocking chairs on the front porch.

"What brings you here, Brother Wolde? I thought you had business up north."

"I did, and I met with some people who are firmly behind us. There are a lot of northern people, negroes and whites, who are sympathetic to our cause. We're planning something, James. A demonstration in Washington D.C. Russell Reed gave us a promise, but it's words. We have to show the entire federal government that we are here and we will not be ignored."

"It's a good plan," James said before he scowled. "And I would love to be there. I just don't know if I can. I've got my boys working around town earning money, and I'm gonna have to join them to make ends meet. I won't have the time or energy to take part in any protests or marches."

"What if I loan you that money?" Wolde asked, leaning forward in his rocker. "Whatever it was you were going to borrow, I can provide it."

"I don't want to impose or--"

"I have money, Brother James. Lots and lots of money."

Wolde reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills. Big bills, James saw. He'd never seen so much money in his entire life.

"Where did you get that?"

"Those sympathetic northerners?" Wolde asked with a sly grin. "Those that don't want to march like to contribute with money. I can provide you some money out of the general fund to skate by. Besides, I feel bad because these people are doing this because you're affiliated with the movement."

The two men looked as another car came down the dirt road. This one James also knew. It belonged to Mr. Birch from up the road. Behind the wheel was Birch's daughter Nadine, and in the passenger seat was Sarah. Sarah was out and running towards the porch before the car had stopped properly. She pounced on Wolde and hugged him fiercely, yelling in glee that he was here.

James watched the scene with a sense of amusement, but that amusement quickly faded when he saw the looks on both Wolde and Sarah's faces. It was quick, and in a flash they were back to being friendly. But James caught the look. There was no doubt to what it was, because Whitney had looked at him the same way for over twenty years.

It was a look of love.

-----

Vancouver

Silas Crystal felt the lock give under pressure. He pulled his lockpick out and turned the knob all the way before standing and slowly pushing the front door open. Crystal pocketed his lockpick and reached into his jacket to pull out a pistol with a suppressor attached to the end. He loaded a round into the chamber before stepping through the threshold into the apartment. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness inside, but slowly shapes came into view inside the home of Arthur Stewart.

The one room apartment was listed as the kid's address on his contact information at Simon Fraser University. The two CIA guys took Reg Boland's description of the two terrorists as college kids and ran with it. They made Boland sit in a chair and flip through photos of college students from all schools in the greater Vancouver area. The gun smuggler's eyes lit up when he came to the photo of Stewart, quickly pointing him out and declaring that was him. Unfortunately, Boland never saw anybody that looked like the Alex kid he said was running the Friends.

Crystal stepped further into the apartment once his eyes were fully adjusted to the dim lighting. It was a studio apartment where the bedroom/kitchen/bathroom were all in the same place. The place was sparsely decorated with only a coffee table, two cheap wooden chairs, and a mattress and box spring resting on the hardwood floor. There wasn't much to the place, but Crystal could tell almost right off the bat Stewart hadn't lived here in quite a while. He ran a gloved hand across the coffee table and came up with a thick layer of dust on his hand. The fridge contained only a spoiled quart of milk and moldy Chinese takeout. There was no radio, television, or phone and no books or other keepsakes that a person would have in a home.

He slid his gun back into its shoulder holster and did a quick search of the apartment. The few drawers the apartment had contained nothing but scratch sheets of paper and pens. Crystal flipped the box spring over and found a handful of pamphlets underneath the mattress. He picked them up and pulled out a flashlight from his jacket, clicking it on to browse the contents of the papers. They were political tracts calling for various things. One called for the withdrawal of US forces from the territory, another for an autonomous Cascadia that was under US protection, another the full blown return of the NWC, and even one that called for Canadian annexation of the territory.

Crystal killed the light and tucked it back into his jacket along with the tracts. He left the apartment, careful to lock it back as he left. The apartment was on the third floor of a four-story walk up a half mile away from Simon Fraser University. The rest of Crystal's A-Team were searching for any trace of Stewart through the university campus. The Green Beret slipped a snap brim hat on his head and hurried down the flight of stairs towards the building's exit. He came out onto the street and climbed into a waiting car.

The CIA field agent, the man Crystal knew only as Smith, pulled the car out into the street and glanced expectantly at Crystal. "So?"

He tossed the pamphlets on to the dash and sighed. Smith's eyes darted back and forth between the pamphlets and the road. "What's that?"

"That is the only trace we have of Arthur Stewart. Some crappy political tracts calling for all kinds of radical shit."

"That's a start," Smith said as he pulled a cigarette out of his jacket pocket. "Radical shit is the FCB's milieu. If someone in the territory is printing this, then they'll have a lead on it. My partner has a contact inside the Bureau that can maybe give us a lead."

-----

Hank Kelly sat in the rickety chair facing his desk, looking down at the two photos with a look on his face that could only be dread. The photos were the result of days worth of work. After Reg Boland identified Arthur Stewart, they went back to work on finding an identification for the man Boland knew as Alex. Hours and hours of searching through the rolls at local universities had come up with nothing, the same happened when Hank expanded the search to all higher learning institutes in the territory. Still nothing. He felt intuition gnawing at him, which was an odd feeling. It was Pat who was always the guy who acted on gut feelings, Hank always used facts and evidence and logic. Something was off about these people who called themselves the Friends of Northwest Sovereignty. Something that he couldn't quite place. And then that was when Hank remembered an operation Hank's Canada Section back in Alexandria worked on with the CIA's covert stations embedded throughout Canada.

Copies of the Agency's files had been couriered up north after Hank appealed to the Deputy Director of Intelligence for them. The DD/I was hesitant at first, but soon came off of it after the Friends murdered a prominent politician, the head of the territorial legislature. Close to two thousand pages of documentation were flown to Fort Norman from the Campus. He'd absconded with it back to the makeshift headquarters in the former slaughterhouse. Hank spent the next few days hard at work. He combed through the copious amount of paperwork the way only a seasoned Washington bureaucrat could. And then he found something. He found two somethings.

Operation Penalty Box was an intelligence-gathering mission that took place all throughout 1978 and '79. CIA operatives in Canada, Washington, and embassies across the world attempted to identify Canadian intelligence sources and operatives through electronic and human surveillance of Canadian embassies worldwide. The results managed to identify over a hundred men and women who were connected to the nation's Intelligence Branch in varying degrees. And there were still another three hundred suspected figures that could never be identified or tied to Intelligence Branch for sure. The results from Penalty Box were a closely guarded CIA secret, allowing the blown agents to work in the field oblivious of the fact they were known.

Hank and Boland sat at a metal table and went through every single bit of photo from Penalty Box to try and find anything that seemed familiar to Boland. The man with the bandaged face and swollen jaw silently acquiesced to the long hours pouring over grainy surveillance photos. It wasn't like he had a choice. And Pat had promised him immunity if he cooperated, Hank only vaguely going along with it. They were intelligence agents and not lawyers. A US attorney and judge would work that out, but he might put in a good word for him when the time came.

"That's them," Boland said after nearly nine hours of staring at the photos. "That's the guys. Both of them."

Hank slid the photo over and looked down at it. It was dated August of 1979, a long-range photo of two men huddled together in a back alley. Hank skimmed the report that went along with the photo. CIA's Toronto Station took the photo after tailing a suspected intelligence officer through the city. The picture showed a short, long-haired young man in a jean jacket talking to a tall, blonde man who wore his hair in a short crew cut.

"Who are these people?" Hank asked. "Tell me exactly."

"The little guy, that's Alex," Boland said, tapping the shorter man with his finger. "And the big guy, that's my contact in Canada. Jones, the one who smuggled that biohazard shit through the DMZ."

Hank grabbed the photo and quickly left Boland alone in the room. He felt like he was going to puke as he went back to the main files and found everything he could on the tall man. CIA files on him were incomplete, but every report confirmed he was a mid-level member of Intelligence Branch. The other man was an unknown person, believed to be the tall man's informant or agent working somewhere in Canada.

Alex, whoever he was, had been in contact with Jones for quite some time... It was Jones who gave them what Hank and Pat believed to be some kind of deadly weapon, it was Jones who funded their weapons and paid Boland to smuggle it across the DMZ. It was all Jones who backed the Friends of Northwest Sovereignty... and Jones was a Canadian intelligence officer.

Hank put his hands on his hip and looked down at the photo. Boland wasn't the most reliable source, but his implications would have major repercussions. Because if it were true, then that meant the Friends of Northwest Sovereignty were state-sponsored terrorists backed by Canada. Hank could see very clearly if it were true, where it would ultimately lead to, and that was the Third North American War.

Whitehall, London

Samuel Hobbs rolled his eyes as he listened to the Health Minister trotting out flimsy excuse after flimsy excuse as to why his department had overspent. The Department of Health’s overspend was twentieth on the list of concerns that Hobbs had. At the top of that list was the ill-advised phone call he’d held with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police yesterday afternoon. Hobbs had been up much of the night worrying that his using Dominic Hewitt’s name would come back to bite him in the backside. He’d come in extra early this morning so as to busy his mind with other things. Currently listening to the Health Minister stammering down the phone was failing to do that. Hobbs scrawled a hastily drawn penis on the notepad in front of him and held it up for Hewitt to see. The young Press Officer smiled and began to scribble an obscene drawing of his own.

Before he had a chance to lift it into view the doors to the Downing Street spin room burst open and Fraser Campbell appeared. Hobbs noticed the look on the Prime Minister’s face straight away and instantly cut the Health Minister off mid-sentence and set the phone down. The other press aides, Hewitt included, continued working completely unaware of Campbell’s rage. Hobbs stood up from the desk he was sat at and opened his mouth to alert the staffers to clear the room but was a second too late.

“Out,” The Prime Minister glowered in the doorway to the room. “I want everybody out.”

Hewitt looked to Hobbs with worried eyes and Hobbs gestured towards the exit. Along with five other Downing Street staffers he slowly made his way out of the room and past the Prime Minister as carefully as they could. They hadn’t seen Fraser Campbell angry before. Hobbs had seen it many times. Though the public considered the Prime Minister skittish and nervous at the best of times he was prone to the occasional bout of rage. Usually reserved only for the consumption of his wife Joyce and Hobbs. Once the door had shut behind the last of the staffers the Prime Minister paced towards the desk opposite Hobbs and leant against it in silence.

Hobbs looked to his old friend with a concerned smile. “What’s wrong?”

“At my meeting with General Markham-Powell I was asked about an Errol Clarke. Does the name Errol Clarke ring any bells to you, Hobbs?”

Hobbs felt the same knot in his throat he’d felt yesterday after lying to Hewitt. If Campbell knew who Errol Clarke was there was no way he hadn’t worked out what Hobbs had done. Samuel Hobbs was a dead man walking. His palms began to sweat and his pale hands began to shake as he considered confessing to his mistake before Campbell dragged it out of him. That had to be why the Prime Minister was here. There were meetings that he was meant to be this very minute but instead he was here talking to Hobbs about Errol Clarke instead. Hobbs was done. His career was finished. The second this conversation ended he’d be escorted out of Downing Street. The smart thing for the Geordie to do now would be to own up and go down with his dignity intact.

“None,” Hobbs lied. “Should it do?”

Campbell’s rage was magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses. “He was murdered in Brixton less than twelve hours after James Oldfield. Whilst I was on television calling for calm an old coloured man was being beaten to death less than two miles from where Oldfield was shot dead.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hobbs muttered unconvincingly as he stood up from his seat. “We need to get out ahead of this one.”

“Get out ahead of it? Everyone that matters already knows. The King himself knows about Clarke, Hobbs, but I had to find out about it by being blind-sided by the Chief of Defence Staff in a meeting that was meant to be about South Africa.”

Hobbs thrust his hands into his pockets to hide their shaking. “Have the press got hold of it? We need to make sure they don’t get hold of it.”

The Prime Minister nostrils flared slightly at the interruption. “I wasn’t done.”

Hobbs gulped at that. Campbell and Hobbs had been friends for the best part of ten years. They had met at a mutual friend’s wedding back when Campbell had been a lowly junior minister in the previous Prime Minister’s cabinet and Hobbs was a relative nobody at The Times. They had become fast friends. Hobbs and Joyce got on famously and the then-journalist’s ascension at The Times coincided with Campbell’s through the cabinet. When the King had unexpectedly appointed Fraser Prime Minister he had contacted Hobbs that same morning to come aboard. In all that time and in all the crises, personal and political, Campbell had never looked or spoken at Hobbs the way he was now. He stood in cowed silence as he waited for Fraser to speak the words he knew were coming.

“How did the Palace find out about Clarke’s murder you might ask? The Home Secretary told them about it. That’s right, even Thomas-fucking-Moore knew about it before I did, and instead of telling me he ran to the Palace. He even intimated to the King that we were “out of control” of the situation.”

Campbell removed his thick glasses, pulled a cloth from the inside pocket of his double-breasted jacket, and then rubbed at them with it. Once he was satisfied the lenses were sufficiently clean he placed them back on and continued recounting the events of that morning. His rage had receded somewhat. Though Hobbs knew that gauging the Prime Minister’s anger by the way he spoke or his facial expression was a fool’s game. Campbell would often seethe away in silence for hours after his rages had come to an end.

“On my way back from my meeting with Markham-Powell I asked myself whether Thomas Moore, as arrogant as he is, would have the balls to take something like that to the Palace if he thought I wasn’t aware of it. I mean, Moore is a bastard but not a brave one by any means otherwise he would have made his move a long time ago. So I called the Police Commissioner to check whether he’d spoken to anyone from Downing Street.”

Finally Hobbs had heard enough and he interjected “Fraser, I can explain.”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses,” The Prime Minister said forcefully. “He has to go, Hobbs.”

It took a few seconds for it to sink in but once it had the Director of Communication’s facial expression shifted. Gone was the dread and repentance to be replaced by a bemused smile that Hobbs did his best to disguise. “What?”

Fraser walked across the office and stood in front of Hobbs.

“Hewitt spoke to the Commissioner, he knew about Clarke’s murder and didn’t tell me, and worst of all he made assurances to the Commissioner without my consent.”

The relief that Hobbs felt was so complete he almost found it hard to stand. His stomach had been somersaults as he awaited the coup-de-grace from the Prime Minister but it seemed giving Hewitt’s name had worked up to this point. The tiny smirk on Sam’s face disappeared and he nodded solemnly in a way that was more befitting of the situation.

The Prime Minister let out a pained sigh. “I know you’re fond of the boy but I can’t have someone on my staff that I don’t trust, Hobbs.”

In a rather unconventional way Hobbs was fond of Hewitt but he was fonder of himself by a magnitude of a hundred. There was still a large part of him that couldn’t believe he’d actually managed to get away with it but he’d learned long ago not to look a gift horse in the mouth. He wouldn’t argue for Hewitt, not even for appearance’s sake, the longer he prolonged this the most chance there was at snatching defeat from the jaws of the unlikeliest victory of all time.

Instead he nodded his head dutifully as he stared down at the ground whilst trying to look begrudging. “I understand.”

“Pack up Hewitt’s things and tell him I want to speak to him,” Campbell said as he made his way towards the exit. “Oh, and let security know that Mr. Hewitt will need an escort out of Downing Street. I know how important this job is to him. I don’t want to chance the boy doing something drastic."


Shoreditch, London

Sebastian Hedland’s eyes crept open slowly and a relieved look washed over his face upon seeing the interior of his flat. It had been a nightmare. He’d never gone to Liverpool, Daley’s Sugar Refinery had never been raided, and what Seb had dreamt had happened hadn’t happened. He’d never been more relieved in his life. It was when the young New Jerusalem journalist tried to push himself up from the plush sofa that he felt the pain. His hands were red and swollen with welts on them where they’d been struck and Seb’s insides felt like they’d been torn apart. After the shock wore off he could barely sit up from the pain. It had been real. As he shut his eyes he saw the face of the ginger-haired man with the moustache that had subjected him to unspeakable horrors. He’d remember that face for the rest of his life. It was burnt into his memory. Every few seconds some small, seemingly insignificant detail flashed through his mind and Hedland had to fight back the tears.

A few metres away from him resting on the table beside him was a telephone. Seb dragged his body slowly towards it and tried to reach for it. His fingers hurt so badly that it hurt to stretch his hand out towards it. He tried to shut out the flashbacks, the smiling face of his tormentor as he stood over him, and reached towards the phone. He needed to speak to someone. He needed Lambert. Lambert would help him, Lambert would tell the world about what had happened, this would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. It had to be. As his fingers contacted the phone it slid off its holder and rattled along the floor even further out of reach. The exertion of the movement made the pain in Hedland’s insides intensify and he curled up in a ball on the sofa.

Then he noticed it. There on the floor next to him was a post card. Seb figured he’d knocked it to the ground as he’d woken. He reached down for it and lifted it in front of his face to inspect it. On the front of the postcard was the skyline of the Liverpool Docks with the words “come back soon” over it. Seb grimaced and turned the postcard over to inspect the back. It was blank but for an immaculately circular smiley face drawn in black pen. Hedland whimpered and let it slide from his fingers back onto the ground. It was him, he couldn’t explain how he knew it, but Seb knew that the ginger-haired man had written it.

Then the belated realization came to him. He was in Liverpool and now he was back in London. They had tortured him, violated him, and then to add to his mental anguish had transported him two hundreds miles back to London to prove they knew where he lived. They had been in his space, in his home, whilst he had lain there unconscious and vulnerable. They were trying to send him a message. They were watching him and could snatch him up again anytime they wanted to.

The young journalist buried his face in his broken hands and sobbed into them.


Whitehall, London

A bead of sweat crept down Dominic Hewitt’s forehead. His life was crashing down around him. He had been called into the Prime Minister’s office ten minutes ago only to be informed that Fraser Campbell was letting him go. He’d worked to the bone for five years to prove that he was more than his father’s son and now all of his work had been undone. Worst of all was that Campbell seemed determined to let him go for something he hadn’t done. According to the Prime Minister there had been a murder in Brixton the morning after James Oldfield was shot and Hewitt had spoken to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police about it. No matter how many times Hewitt protested his innocence the Prime Minister didn’t seem to want to hear it. In fact his protestations only seemed to make Fraser Campbell even less patient with him. Nothing Hewitt said seemed to make a difference.

For the fifteenth time Hewitt pleaded his innocence with Campbell. “I swear I never said a word to the Commissioner, Prime Minister, I would never do something like that.”

Campbell glared at Hewitt and then exhaled with frustration. He reached into one of the draws and pulled out a thin file. He looked Hewitt dead in the eye as he opened the file and slid it across his table to Hewitt.

“We pulled the records, Dominic.”

Hewitt’s eyes scanned the one page document as he tried to make sense of what he was reading. There circled in red pen was a phone call from Hewitt’s phone from the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police. Dominic screwed his face up as he spotted it. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

After five more minutes of pleading the Prime Minister finally lost his patience and called for the security officers waiting outside of his office. Hewitt fought back the tears as they escorted him out and to the small office where his things had already been carelessly dumped into a cardboard box. A few of the colleagues Hewitt was closest to stopped by to say their goodbyes but most kept their distance. Finally as Hewitt began the long march out of Downing Street he spotted Hobbs stood waiting for him with a sympathetic smile. Hobbs gestured to the security team to give them some privacy and they nodded in acknowledgement and left the two men alone.

“I heard about what happened.”

“I didn’t speak to the Police Commissioner,” Hewitt muttered despondently to his former boss. “I didn’t do it.”

Hobbs sighed heavily and placed a supportive hand on one of Hewitt’s shoulders. “I know, Dominic.”

Suddenly the pieces snapped into place and Hewitt’s red, bleary eyes came to life with recognition. He remembered leaving Hobbs alone in the office to go for a cigarette and returning to find the Director of Communication’s hand on his phone. He’d said it was Fat Pat from the Department of Health, he’d even made the stupid “tit wank” joke for the fifteenth time, but it was actually the Commissioner that Hobbs had been speaking to. Hobbs was the one that had taken that call, the one that given all the assurances, and worst of all he’d thrown Hewitt to the wolves by giving his name.

Hewitt was so angry he was nearly frothing at the mouth. “It was you.”

A derisive chuckle left Sam’s lips and he shook his head as if Hewitt was insane. “What? Don’t go getting ahead of yourself there, mate.”

“You used my phone that day,” Hewitt said, his voice slowly rising as he spoke. “It was you, you piece of shit.”

Suddenly the smile disappeared and Hobbs wrapped one of his pale hands around Hewitt’s arm and dragged him to the side. He pushed a bony finger into Dom’s cheek as he spoke. “You fucking listen to me, you preening cunt, I am the one that decides whether you spend the rest of your life writing the fucking horoscopes for an in-house magazine or whether you land on your fucking feet.”

Hewitt stared at Hobbs with dead eyes. Even now, even after Hewitt had found him out, Hobbs still couldn’t bring himself to apologise for what he’d done. Samuel Hobbs had been something of a mentor to Dominic ever since he’d arrived at Downing Street, even if he was a reluctant one, but now Hewitt understood the truth of it. The Director of Communications only cared about his own survival. He was a cockroach. He’d be here in Downing Street long after the rest of them because there wasn’t a soul that Hobbs wouldn’t screw over to stay at the top.

As if sensing he’d overstepped the mark Hobbs pulled his finger back and patted him on the shoulder with a smile. “If you keep your mouth shut, I’ll see to it that you’re back in this place within five years and this whole Commissioner snafu will seem like some half-forgotten nightmare. You want my job? In ten years you can fucking have it. But not if you go throwing baseless accusations like that. Do you hear me?”

In his periphery Hewitt made out the security team approaching the two of them. Hobbs had offered him a way back in. It would mean five more years of hard work. Five years of trying to piece back together his broken reputation. Hewitt wondered what his father would say when he found out that he’d been let go by Downing Street. Probably that he never should have bothered to begin with. His father never thought he was good enough. Nigel Hewitt only cared about one thing. Himself. He was like Hobbs in that sense.

“I want to hear you say it,” Hobbs whispered to Hewitt as the security team were within a few metres. “Say the words, Hewitt.”

For a second Hewitt considered it. He’d spent his whole life trying to earn the approval of men like his father and Samuel Hobbs. If he walked out of Downing Street today without agreeing he’d be considered a failure, even by his friends, but Hewitt would sooner fail on his own terms than give Hobbs the satisfaction. He spat in the Director of Communication’s face and smiled as he saw the pale man’s face sour with disgust as he realised what had happened. The security officers wrapped their heavy hands around Hewitt and dragged him away from Hobbs before the Geordie could lay a hand on him. As Hewitt was being dragged out of Downing Street he brandished a grin worthy of the Cheshire Cat at his old boss.

“Fuck you.”


Garret's Green, Birmingham

Honor Clarke and Conrad Murray sat round a plastic table in the centre of their living room. The table they usually sat around had been broken when the police had turned over their flat. It was fluorescent green and partially see-through. On the table were a selection of vegetarian dishes that Conrad and Honor made together that they ate from at their leisure. Whilst he ate Conrad’s mind thought back to the conversations he’d had with Neil Durham and Daniel Noble that morning. The feeling he’d felt after he’d left Noble’s office had played on his mind ever since. He told himself once he’d finished eating he would talk to Honor about it. In truth he was scared to share those feelings with his girlfriend. She had spent much of the meal fuming at Conrad’s boss for having given him a warning.

“Those bastards,” Honor muttered as she took a mouthful of butternut squash casserole. “I can’t believe they would put you in that position.”

It was now or never, Conrad though, as he cleared his throat. “Well, I’ve actually been thinking about it and I’m starting to think they might have a bit of a point.”

Honor stopped chewing and shot her boyfriend an incredulous look. “What? How can you say that?”

“You have to see it from their point of view,” Conrad said as he eyed his plate nervously in an attempt to avoid making eye contact. “My association with you brings the school negative attention, Honor, and that negative attention impacts my student’s education, my relationship with my colleagues, and the standing of the school in general.”

Honor threw her cutlery down and glared at Conrad. He could feel the weight of her stare boring into his skull but kept his eyes glued on his meal. This was the reason the teacher had been reluctant to talk to Honor about this. He knew she wouldn’t take it well. Some part of him hoped that they’d be able to have a grown-up discussion about it without resorting to argument. The look on Honor’s face said otherwise. They almost never argued but tonight seemed destined to be one of those rare nights. His girlfriend’s activism was so much a part of herself that she took any criticism of it as a criticism of her person.

There was more than a hint of annoyance Honor’s voice. “So what? You want to disassociate from me? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

Conrad sighed. “That’s not what I said. I just think maybe you should think about toning things down a little.”

“Toning things down? You knew who I was and what I believed in when you agreed to enter into this relationship, Conrad. Once upon a time you would have been out there with me too. It’s not fair of you to ask me to “tone things down” because it makes things a little uncomfortable for you at work.”

“It’s more than that,” Conrad said as he met Honor’s gaze for the first time. “I could lose my job over this. Noble said the board wanted me gone because of the protest yesterday and that he had to talk them round. I’ve barely been working there for five minutes and they already want me out because of your…”

His feelings had gotten the better of him. In his mind he’d taken his newfound reservations about the impact of Honor’s protesting to their natural conclusion and his mouth had followed. Luckily he’d managed to catch himself in time. At least he thought he’d managed to catch himself in time. Honor was glaring at him from across the table with her arms crossed. Even with fury emblazoned on her face she was still beautiful. Her thick black dreadlocks hung over one shoulder and her dark, deep eyes were locked on Conrad.

“Go ahead,” Honor muttered. “Say it.”

The teacher hesitated for a second and then finished his sentence tentatively. “Posturing.”

Those dark, deep eyes grew angrier still. “Posturing? Can you even hear yourself? Posturing? I was out there trying to make a difference, Conrad, trying to change things so that people like me, some of whom are your students, don’t have to live in fear of police brutality every second of their lives.”

“Sitting in a street isn’t helping them,” Conrad sighed as he finally set his own cutlery down. “I teach those children, Honor, and I treat them exactly the same as I do all of the other children. I try to equip them with the knowledge they’ll need so they can be more than a statistic when they grow up. That is helping them, that is making a tangible difference to their lives in the here and now, not inconveniencing some police officers whilst they go about trying to do their jobs.”

Honor sat in silence for nearly a minute after Conrad had finished speaking and the teacher grew slightly worried. When he decided to open his mouth to check whether his girlfriend was okay Honor stood up from the table and picked up her late. Conrad attempted to follow after her but she looked at him with a blank expression and shook her head.

“I’m done with this conversation.”

“Wait,” Conrad called out to her as she walked towards the bedroom. “Honor, I’m sorry.”

She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to face her boyfriend. “No, that’s the worst thing. You’re not.”

He wanted to deny it for her sake if nothing else but the words wouldn’t come. She waited for Conrad to say something, to tell her that she was wrong, but once it became clear it wasn’t going to happen she turned her back again and slammed the bedroom door shut behind her.


Sevenoaks, Kent

There was a stirring in Jonathan Markham-Powell’s home that woke him from his sleep. His wife murmured as Markham-Powell climbed out of bed and he placed a gentle kiss on her forehead and whispered to her to go back to sleep. The old general reached for a dressing gown that hung from the edge of a wardrobe and took a glance out of his bedroom towards the source of the noise. Any other man might have put it down to the floorboards creaking or the wind but Jonathan Markham-Powell knew better than that. He was old enough to remember the Troubles. He’d seen the violence that had torn Britain’s streets apart and he’d vowed then to always be prepared for the worst. He knelt down beside his bedside table and reached beneath it for a Great War-era pistol he kept in case of emergencies. Once he was certain it was loaded he stalked out of the bedroom and began to creep downstairs.

The general cleared each room one by one until he spotted a silhouette in his kitchen. He let out an exasperated sigh as he recognised the man sat at his kitchen table. To British intelligence the man was known only as “Marine B” but Markham-Powell knew him as Roger Black. They had a long history with one another that stretched back before the general’s appointment as Chief of the Defence Staff. Black was the most effective tool that Markham-Powell had against the closeted republicans, anarchists, and socialists that wanted to drag Britain back to the dark ages all over again.

The general could make out Black’s smile in the darkness. “Can’t sleep?”

Markham-Powell flicked the kitchens light on. Black was still wearing his black combat gear as he slurped from a can of uncooked bake beans. The sauce from the beans had caked itself in Black’s ginger moustache. He scratched at the sides of his slicked-back hair with the back of his hand as Markham-Powell watched on displeased.

He gestured towards the can of beans that Black was slurping nosily from. “You couldn’t have heated those up first?”

“They’re fine cold,” Black said between mouthfuls. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

The general would have shot any other man dead on sight for intruding into his home whilst he slept but Roger Black’s loyalty to him was absolute. He showed no regard for rank and rarely bothered with niceties but Markham-Powell knew that he would throw himself under a moving train if the general commanded it. That didn’t make him any more comfortable at the thought of the Marine skulking around in his house whilst he was sleeping but he knew better than to attempt to explain that to Black.

“How did the operation in Liverpool go?”

Black shrugged his shoulders. “We got nothing.”

The old general grumbled. The intelligence the general had received had indicated that Daley’s Sugar Refinery in Liverpool had been a front for a republican plot. It had long been said that the only reason the refinery had survived the Troubles was because its founder had been a renowned socialist. Whilst the other factories, refineries, and businesses burned to the ground Daley’s Sugar Refinery remained undamaged because it had stood shoulder to shoulder with those doing the burning. This latest move to become a “co-operative” had been nothing but an attempt to put the funds directly into the pockets of the plotters. At least that was what the intelligence had indicated.

“There was a journalist from some magazine called the New Jerusalem there,” Black said as he produced a business card from one of his pouches and took a glance at it. “His name was Sebastian Hedland.”

“Was?” Markham-Powell growled with a frown. “Did you kill him?”

Black chewed on a mouthful of beans, swallowed, and then shook his head. “No, it wasn’t worth the effort.”

“You know I don’t like loose ends.”

It was rare that Black left any witnesses. There was no crime Roger Black wasn’t willing to commit to keep Britain safe. Wanton murder and destruction was his calling card. He was a walking one-man Blitzkrieg that never failed to get results. He tortured, murdered, and maimed without hesitation if Markham-Powell asked it of him. If the general had a nation of men like Black he could restore Britain to its former glory within a fortnight. It was why it was so shocking that on this occasion Black had stayed his hand.

The Marine shot the general a confident smile. “Trust me, he won’t be talking to anyone.”

“Good,” Markham-Powell nodded. “We may have had some bad intelligence this time around but I know those Liverpudlians are hiding something. If there’s a place in Britain where the bastards that tore our country apart can rest their head without fear – it’s Liverpool. I’d sooner burn the entire city to the ground before I’d stop looking. They’re out there, Black, they’re still out there.”

A decade ago Markham-Powell had warned the government that the Troubles were not over and they had ignored him. The Prime Minister at the time, William Robert Jones, had even accused Markham-Powell of being paranoid. Then a republican cell had blown up an RAF barracks in Uxbridge that Jonathan’s son, Alexander Markham-Powell, had been stationed at. His son’s death had spurned the general into finally making his move. In secret he used the full weight of his influence to rally the Armed Forces behind him and deposed Jones. To the public, the King and the Prime Minister of the day were the most powerful men in Britain. To those in the know, General Sir Jonathan Markham-Powell was the man with his hands on the lever and both the King and the Prime Minister did his bidding. Even if they weren’t aware of it.

Black looked up from his beans with an inquisitive look. “The King?”

Markham-Powell sighed. “Yes, I met with William the Limp-Wristed this morning. He is as disinterested as ever when it comes to matters that do not regard clay pigeon shooting or water polo. The boy knows where his bread is buttered. He’ll do as I tell him because he knows what will happen to him if doesn't.”

Black smiled. “And the Prime Minister?”

“The least said about that sweaty buffoon the better,” Markham-Powell laughed. “The poor man still thinks he’s in charge even after the King forced his government into introducing the Voluntary Repatriations Bill. Can you believe that? I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the man doesn’t tie his own shoes in the morning.”

“Probably that pretty wife of his.”

The general picked up Sebastian Hedland’s business card and inspected it. His eyes weren’t what they once were and it took him a few seconds to make out its characters. After a few seconds of thought the general pieced together a plan of action that would explain away Black’s raid on Daley’s Refinery in Liverpool.

“We’ll tell the newspapers the refinery was the headquarters of a republican plot against King William and then sell it off to the highest bidder in a few weeks time.”

“What about the situation up in Birmingham? The protests?” Black said with a frown. “I could go up there with the boys and put a stop to those if need be.”

“It’s nothing the police can’t handle,” Markham-Powell said with a shake of his head. “We made a lot of noise on this thing in Liverpool, Black. It’s best you and your team lay low for a time until I have need of you again.”

The marine seemed disappointed at that. The general slid the business card back across the table and the marine stopped it beneath his fist. From upstairs Markham-Powell heard his wife stirring and the general took a look at the stairs with a sigh. He tucked the old pistol into the waistband of his pyjama bottoms, tied his dressing gown tight, and then walked towards the door of the kitchen.

As he reached it he looked back at Black still slurping from the can of beans. “Turn the light out after you when you leave.”

Addis Ababa: July, 1974

Emperor Sahle smelled like liquor and sex. He had spent the afternoon with a friend from his University years, who the Emperor entertained with expensive hookers, and with drinks that were even more expensive than the women. They didn't drink so much that they were wasted, but it had been enough to cause both of them to finger their women with their middle fingers and giggle about how they were flipping each other off. When the women got boring, Sahle tossed them out on a street corner, making sure to pay them well enough so that they had no reason to complain. When the afternoon waned into night, Sahle remembered that he had a Gala to attend.

And so the Emperor strode through the baroque halls of the Imperial residence. He wore a black suit-jacket over a dress shirt. His jacket was decorated with medals he had never really earned, and over that he wore a sash in the Ethiopian colors - green, yellow, and red. A white cape was draped over his shoulders to make him look more Imperial.

"Sahle, Sahle, Sahle." Baruti flew down the hall in a panicked tizzy. Baruti was a small, balding man with an unattractive, almost insect like face, and he was Sahle's personal assistant. He had once been a sort of tutor or mentor or something of that nature, though the Emperor never completely understood Baruti's place. He was useful, that was the important thing, and Sahle was so used to having him around to help and take care of him and his affairs that he never worried too much about what Baruti's actual function was.

"You are very late." Baruti finished saying.

"I'm an Emperor." Sahle moaned. "I can't be late. The guests are just early."

Baruti was tugging on the Emperor's clothes, making sure every crease was perfect. "These Europeans will decide your country's future. You mustn't offend them, or they may withdraw their offers."

"That is fine. I don't need them anyway. Ras Hassan says that this European move is a bad one. If the Europeans won't listen to me, we'll find another way to calm all the rebels."

Ever since the death of his father, Sahle's Empire had been wracked by traitors. People saw the change in monarchs as an opportunity to advanced all kinds of anarchist and republican ideas. They wanted a liberal nation, one where there was no Emperor, and that made Sahle feel like a target. All he wanted was to be left alone with the prestige and wealth of his title. He wanted the Europeans and the rebels to all disappear and stop being a threat to him. But it seemed like the Europeans were the lesser of the two evils. They would preserve him, and that was most important, even if it cost him some prestige in the process.

"Have you shaved? Baruti asked. Sahle felt his face. There was some stubble, but did it matter? He ignored his assistant and kept walking, through halls who's sparse decorations had not changed since his father's death, and toward a door behind which a small gathering of European and Ethiopian leaders waited for him.

"Let's get this over with." Sahle muttered under his breath. He went through the door and put on a smile.

(sahletiem music)

Sahle's gait lightened, and he seemed to flow into the room like on a cloud. Most of the people were older than him. There were Africans in western suites, and Africans in their traditional clothes. On the far side of the room, segregated by culture and the lack of racial familiarity, the nervous white Europeans mingled with each other.

The Emperor plucked a Mimosa from a server's tray as he strode by and, without missing a step, he came to the young sister of one of his Governors and kissed her hand. This part of being Emperor was something he enjoyed. He liked the feelings of glamour and power that came with these sorts of displays. He took a sip of his drink and approached the former Prime Minister, Dumaka Amiri, placing his hands delicately on the shoulders of the man's middle aged wife as the two men talked. Sahle didn't think so much about the words as he just said them, and he couldn't remember what exactly it was that he had said before, like a man carried by the wind, he moved on to the next person.

It felt like a dance. In his mind, he was recounting which of these women he had wooed, and which he had managed to bed, although so many were older women whose bodies he wouldn't even consider peaking at. He saw Adila Minkah, his Judicial Advisor, and a female one at that. But she was old and dried out like a corpse in the desert, and he shook her hand as if she was a man. He also saw the supremely dark-skinned Nassor Chitundu talking with the young Swahililander liaison between Parliament and the military. The Emperor raised his glass to them, and they bowed. Sahle felt a rush of power then, and he slammed down the remaining Mimosa, left the glass on a passing tray, and grabbed another drink from another server just as quickly.

Next came the Europeans. They looked less comfortable here, but Sahle strutted toward them with the same royal narcissism that he had showed his continental guests. There were Germans, and Belgians, and a number of Englishmen as well. Poland always had a few representatives in the African empire, and today was no different, though they were here to peddle weapons as was their practice. Sahle stopped by all of them, laughing at partial jokes and getting just friendly enough with their wives and daughters to make some of the men bristle. However, before anybody had the chance to think about what had happened, the Emperor had moved on.

He approached Vince Reynard now. Reynard was somehow tied to the British Consulate in Istanbul, but he spent a lot of his time lobbying for the interests of British Petroleum in the Middle East and Africa. He was a brooding, boring old man who always tried to talk business. Sahle was not interested in talking to him, but it was a necessity of the office, as he knew that the British Petroleum interests had the money to keep his government safe from its people. With Reynard was a slight, mousy haired young woman, and she was more interesting to the Emperor. He could not tell if she was an adult or still in her adolescence, but it did not matter so much to him. That was a Western idea. In the real world, a person was an adult as soon as they stopped looking like children. She was old enough to have hair where it counted. He guessed her age to be about fifteen.

"Your Imperial Majesty." Reynard bowed. He had the voice of an aging Shakespearean actor, which did not match his dour face or the robe of stringy grey hair that grew from the sides of his otherwise spectacularly bald head. The girl followed his lead and bowed.

"I just came back from Cairo..." Reynard added.

Sahle smiled. "With her?" he said as smoothly as he could. "Tell me, did you escape some sheikh? I bet you had to run out of town with a lady such as her." Sahle did not see how Reynard was reacting. His eyes were only for the girl, who herself looked uncertain how to act.

"This is my daughter, Emily." Reynard replied. Emily was flustered by Sahle's attention, but she was good at picking up cues from her father. She bowed again and confidently said "It is a pleasure to meet you, your Imperial Majesty."

"Ah, you won't know pleasure from meeting another person until you meet somebody like yourself, my lady. Tell me, I do not know how your England works, but are you a princess?"

"What? No, my father isn't the King." she answered. Her uncertainty had melted away and been replaced by a smile. He was beginning to amuse her, and that was a start.

"Ah. Your father is an important man though. He had dinner with a Sheikh."

"I did, actually. But not of the Egyptian kind." Reynard interrupted. "One of British Petroleum's largest investors lives in Cairo. I have him lined up in support of our venture, assuming your government is behind it as well."

"Rights? Right. Oil Rights. Of course, Mr. Reynard, you can have all of that."

"We need something from you, your Imperial Majesty." Reynard answered before Sahle had the chance to redirect the conversation back toward the girl. "There are disturbing reports about Ras Hassan. I notice he is not here tonight. We need your military on our side if you want to hold this country."

"Hassan doesn't want to be Emperor!" Sahle laughed. "He wants to be a soldier. He won't try to take my throne, do not worry about him."

"You will need him, so be sure of that." Reynard insisted.

"I have him."

"We will quell your rebels, though it may take some time. But a full-sized Civil War would attract attention. You know that China is not your friend. They want the metals that can be taken from the Congo. But the Spanish might be your enemy as well. The wells in Murzuq will go dry in a few years..."

"You will take care of it, and Hassan will take care of it. I have complete faith in the British Petroleum company." Sahle said. He turned to the girl.

"So, tell me about England...

--

The Border of Georgia, Present Day

Sahle woke up to the sound of haggling. His head was resting against the passenger's side window of Vasily's beat up truck, in a cab that smelled like grease, and he was wrapped up in a stained woolen blanket. Vasily was leaning out of the driver's side window, haggling with a man in a thick, grey-green greatcoat. At first, Sahle felt a jolt of fear at the thought that this guard was with the Armenian authorities, and that he had finally been caught. His eyes shot from one side of the road to the other. There was a military truck on the side of the road where another guard sat on the bumper and nursed a bottle of something. The guards had lit a fire in an old oil-drum, and the smoke curled straight into the crisp Caucasian air.

"Come on, brother. You are having a road here so people can drive on it. That is what it is here for, is this not being so?" he heard Vasily plead. Sahle said nothing. Instead, he inspected the strange flag painted on the side of the guard's truck. It was a horizontal tricolor in green, black, and red. Sahle had never seen it before in his life. These people weren't with the Armenian government.

"I will be sweetening up the pot of honey." he heard Vasily say to the guard. Sahle watched as the Russia produced a small wad of cash and handed it to the guard. And that was it. That was all it took. The guard nodded and backed away, and Vasily started driving again.

When they were far enough away that the truck was just a glint in the rear-view mirror, Sahle turned to Vasily.

"Those weren't Armenians. Who were they?"

"They were Armenians." Vasily warbled.

Sahle looked confused. "What? That flag..."

"The men were from Armenia, but they're taking money from the Dagestani. There is being more money in the soldier work than there is in the civilian work, or at least this is true for those men."

"What is Dagestan?" Sahle asked.

"Oh dear, your great majestyness. You have not been listening to the news."

"I pay attention to what goes on in Africa." Sahle replied.

Vasily nodded. "This is fine. Dagestan is a tiny little country that is invading Georgia. I am not knowing where they get the money for this thing, but they are doing it."

"This is a warzone?" Sahle sat up, alert. The countryside showed no signs of war. Rough, scrubby mountains flanked the roads on both sides. It reminded Sahle of the land near Sevan - no trees, and naked hills - but this place look wilder, less inhabited.

"You have been in the warzones, my excellent Emperor friend." Vasily smiled. "The worst of the trouble is being on the coast. There is Georgians there who want to have Georgia. Out here, the Dagestani sit on the roads and squeeze money out of the people who want to be on the road."

Georgia went on forever, but they did not stop except to refuel. The Russian kept several jerrycans full of gasoline in the back of the truck so that their refuel stops happened in hidden places well off of the main road. There was a jug of water in the truck-bed as well, and a burlap sack full of flat-bread crackers sat between the two men in the cab.

It was when they began to climb into the imposing Caucasian mountains that the sun started to set. Vasily pulled off of the road and found a place in a shadowy coniferous forest. The sun had disappeared over a mountain in the west, making the trees black for want of sunlight. Sahle remembered the story Vasily had told him the first time he visited Georgia, about the mustachioed highwayman named "Koba" that had hunted for victims in these mountains during the first half of the century. He also remembered the Armenian mercenaries on the border. These things made him feel uneasy.

They stopped and Vasily started a fire. Sahle told him how, in the movies, the smoke from fires attracted enemies, and Vasily laughed. The Russian told him that it was better to not freeze to death than it was to avoid having to shoot somebody, and that the chances of somebody seeing their camp fire and thinking it was worth their time to check out was slim. He took an old can of borscht and placed it over the fire to heat it. While the first can cooked, Sahle read the second can and became concerned when he noticed that it had expired in '72. He expressed his uncertainty

"Look at this thing that I am showing you." Vasily said, grabbing the can. He turned it over and tapped the surface of the top, and then turned it again to tap the bottom. "These are not bulging out. That means that there is no diseases eating at the foods that are in the cans. This borscht, it might not taste so good because it is old borscht, but that is okay, because borscht is not very good anyway."

They ate in silence. It hit Sahle just then that he had woke up that morning as Samel, in a hospital surrounded by friends. He was going to fall asleep as Sahle, an Emperor who was dead to the world, and his only companion was this Russian and his nasty soup. He did not know what his future was going to bring. The only conclusion that seemed to make sense was that he was going to be sold by whoever paid Vasily. What other use could he possibly be to them? And where were they going? He remembered Vladmira, and he remembered what she had told him about her part in the plot to assassinate the Tsar.

"Are we going to Finland?" he asked Vasily.

Vasily spat. "Finland? No. I told you Russia." he pronounced 'Russia' with an exaggerated growl. "Why would we go to Finland?"

"Vladmira told me that she was Finnish. She said that she helped to assassinated your Tsar."

Vasily laughed then. It was not his usual jolly laugh, but rather a dark, sinister grumble that seemed come from his gut. "She did not do this thing, and she is not Finnish. You were lied to."

"Who was she then?"

"She was born in Sankt-Peterburg, October 7th of 1952. Her father was a Vladimir, and he was in the navy if I am remembering right. Her mother was a Maria. I do not know if she did anything, and I am not knowing if they are alive anymore."

Sahle was surprised. "You know all of this from heart?" he asked.

"I was bedding her for a few years." Vasily admitted. "So it was important that I know these things. It would be a bad idea to ejaculate blind, I am thinking. You know this, do you not? You have learned this thing today."

Sahle couldn't say that he was wrong.

"You are not knowing the language of Russia." Vasily asked from out of nowhere. "I am thinking this will confuse you."

"I don't." Sahle agreed. He knew several languages, a symptom of his schooling and the time he spent in Europe, but Russian was not one of them. They had been speaking in Armenian this entire time. He had learned Armenian over the course of the first month he lived there, so he was eager to learn Russian and did not feel overwhelmed by the idea. "I need to know it. Can you teach me?"

Vasily agreed. They spent the next few hours practicing, and Sahle felt as if he had gotten the hang of a few basic phrases before they went to sleep.

The next day was a little brighter. It was not the weather, but something about a night's sleep that helped him to clear his head. They had flat-bread crackers and water for breakfast. With only that meager meal on their bellies, they were back on the road.

The Caucasus mountains made for a slow, winding drive. They had passed through a few small villages on their way through the valley, but now that they were in the mountains, there were nothing but irrelevant hamlets of two or three houses to be seen. The mountains themselves amazed Sahle. They reminded him of the Alps in Europe. Though the Ethiopia's African Empire boasted several impressive ranges, the only ones that Sahle had visited himself were backbone ranges of the Ethiopian highlands. But even the lofty Semian mountains, with their ambas and knifing spires of rock, did not have monumental presence that the Caucasus mountains possessed. If the Semian mountains were warriors - difficult, dangerous, and full of surprises - then the Caucasus were Kings, who's thrones spread wide and deep into the roots of the earth and who's crowns were made of snow.

They spent the morning practicing Sahle's Russian. When noon came, they stopped to top-off the fuel tank. Sahle pissed from the side of a cliff and watched his stream fall toward the distant rocks below. When their pit stop was over, they began to descend from the mountains, and Sahle practiced his Russian some more.

The villages became larger, and more frequent, but the people did not seem to pay much attention to them. "We are in Ossetia now." Vasily said, first in Armenian and then in Russian. He repeated each sentence this way, sometimes changing it up so that the Russian came first and the Armenian came second. "This means we are in Russia."

"Is Ossetia part of Russia?" Sahle asked.

"Russia is not a country right now, but it will be again, and when it is, Ossetia will be with us."

It was only a few hours later when they passed an single plywood guard-post along the highway. The man inside was wearing civilian clothes and a fur hat, and he had a rifle in his hands. Vasily slowed down, but when the man saw him, he waved them through.

"We are now in Russia." Vasily explained. "Not the Republic, but the Volga state."

"What is that?" Sahle asked.

"I think we are a... commonwealth? A gathering peoples who do not think that the Republic is Russia, and do not think that the Communists are Russia, and do not think that Poland is Russia. There are many independent groups in this land, and they all have their own agenda, but they all agree with what I just said. A confederation. Perhaps that is the term that I am looking for."

"And your employer?"

"We are one of those groups, yes."

Sahle felt the decision about his fate looming over him now. "Will your employer sell me to Ethiopia? My brother..."

"I doubt this will happen." Vasily said curtly. "But it is not my decision to make."

Sahle was conflicted. How else would he be of use to these Russians? At the same time, he couldn't help but trust Vasily. The Russian had saved his life from Barnham's goons. When everything went to shit in Sevan, it was Vasily who cleaned it up and hid Aaliyah. He had nowhere to run anyway, but he didn't really feel like running. Somehow, for no reasonable reason, Sahle felt safe.

This time when the sun began to set, they stopped at an Inn in one of the small towns. An older couple ran the place. They kept a garden on the side of the building where they gathered some of their food. The building had siding made from unpainted lumber, but the building was not scrappy like the guards post they had seen on the border. This place was quaint. They ate with the owners of the inn, sitting on the porch and watching the sun dip over the horizon. Vasily asked for the news.

"The Cossacks in Sochi drove the Mafiya out of the mountains east of the city." the old man grunted.

"What were the Mafiya doing up there?" Vasily asked.

"They were moving drugs into Sochi from the mountains." he explained. "A few months ago, a sailor came through and told me that the Cossacks bought a fishing trawler and sent some of their boys out to board Mafiya smuggling ships. They don't say they are at war, but they are at war."

"It's all out west of us." his wife chimed in, nervous. "It won't spill over here."

The old man nodded. "Gangs. Those two are just criminal gangs fighting over turf. We'll keep our heads down out here and nobody will notice."

"What about the Communists?" Vasily asked.

The old man sighed. "They took Tyumen. They are about to take Yekaterinburg. The Republic is done for."

Vasily looked grim, but he said nothing.

"Are the communists bad?" Sahle asked. He had mixed feelings about China. They had been a threat to him when he was Emperor, and they were part of the reason that his brother took his place, but now that they were helping Africa to defend itself, he couldn't help but feel a little grateful.

"They are not good. They are foreigners, and they are not Russian." Vasily answered.

The old man got up and walked to the edge of the porch. He looked out across the plain, north east toward nothing that could be seen. "Nothing good has ever came over the Urals." he brooded.

Sahle looked in the same direction that the old man's gaze fell. He realized, by looking at the faces of Vasily and the old woman, that their feelings were the same. They saw Siberia as the worse of all the evils Russia faced. It wasn't anarchy that loomed over Russia - the people here were used to that. The danger was in the east. Russia, like Africa, was being swallowed by an uncaring foreign force. It was being made into a colony.

Chicago

"Look alive, assholes."

Johnny Leggario glanced up from the plans on the table at the overweight figure strutting into the hideout. Chicago PD Lieutenant Stephen Bukowski wore a shit-eating grin that Johnny had come to hate over the past few days. Bukowski was one of Bobby C's pet cops and their inside man for the current bank job. He was here simply because Bobby demanded it before giving his consent to the job.

Johnny, Prussian Joe, Mick Mahoney, and Roger, the bank crew's wheelman were already waiting for Bukowski when he showed up. They had been waiting for nearly an hour before the cop finally arrived. The base of their operation was a gutted out building on the Southside. One of Johnny's guys torched it two months earlier for some white collar schmuck looking to collect insurance on the place.

"About time," Prussian Joe said coldly. Like Johnny, the little German did not want Bukowski on the job and his feelings on the matter grew as he learned more and more about him.

"I know types like you can't understand, but I have an actual job that I have to do."

Johnny could smell the booze on Bukowski's breath the second he opened his mouth. There was a prohibition on alcohol and drugs that Prussian Joe enforced in the days leading up to the job. He said booze and dope made guys sloppy and sloppiness on a job could get someone killed or put in stir. Johnny understood his outlook. He never fucked with drugs and only drank occasionally so agreeing to Joe's demand was easy enough. Bukowski it seemed hadn't got the memo.

"Whatever the excuse," Prussian Joe as impassively as he could. "We need to finish the final walkthrough before tonight. Gather around the table, please."

The five men stood around the cheap card table the German had set up in the middle of the room. On the table were two maps, one of the street that the First National Bank sat on, the other the floor plan for the bank. Joe had the maps marked with notes and pins to mark his observations.

"In twelve hours, we are going to rob the First National Bank of Chicago," Joe said to start the presentation off. "At exactly ten minutes past midnight, we will begin. With Lieutenant Bukowski back at the local precinct as night watch commander, the four of us will be on the ground here. Team 1 will be comprised of myself and Johnny. Team 2 will be Mick and Roger."

Joe pointed to a spot just down the street from the bank.

"Team 2 will trip the power breaker for the block. This will temporarily disable the local power grid, the bank's alarm system with it as well. Once the power is out, Johnny and I will break into the bank and overload the faulty alarm system. As soon as Chicago Power and Water reroute power back to the area, the alarm will fry itself out before it can activate. Once that is done, Roger will drop Mick off at the bank and drive to a lookout point further down the block and park. Once inside the bank, Mick will use his tools to break into the vault. By disabling the alarm and doing this at night, we will have a seven-hour window to break that vault open and walk out with all the cash inside. While Mick works, Johnny and I will serve as lookouts. A freak power outage will draw CPD's interest. Is that correct, Lieutenant?"

"Yeah," Bukowski belched. "The bank will definitely be on our list to check up on. It'll be just a pass by, maybe a wiggle of the front door. As long as you don't damage the door breaking in and stay out of sight after you're inside you'll be alright."

"What's the response time if we fuck it up?" Johnny asked Bukowski.

"If the alarm goes off, the nearest patrol car can be there in five minutes," the man said with a shrug. "The precinct won't roll out in force until a patrolman has identified that it's an actual robbery and not a false alarm."

Joe bent down with a pencil and scribbled the information on his plans. He stood back up and stared long and hard at the plans. Johnny knew he was debating the odds, about what would happen if he just walked away right now. But Johnny knew that the little German was just like him, trapped. They'd given Bobby C. their word that they could take the bank, and Bobby threw them a curveball with this fucking hump who seemed too drunk or too stupid to trust. Backing out now would piss Bobby C. off, and he was one of the worst people to piss off. Joe glanced towards him and Johnny knew exactly what he was thinking because Johnny had the same thought. If Joe backed out now, Bobby C. would have him killed and it would be Johnny that did the killing.

"Scheiss drauf," he said in his native tongue before nodding. "The four of us will meet back here at eight tonight and prepare for the job. Afterward, we meet up here to split the take. If things go bad, then we have the fallback spot. That's it."

The crew started to break up and go their separate ways. Johnny stayed back and offered Joe a cigarette. They smoked in silence until they were alone.

"Penny for your thoughts," Johnny said.

"I don't like it," Joe said, blowing smoke above his head. "But what choice do I have now? Bukowski is sloppy, Mahoney is jittery from abstaining from heroin over the last three days, and my wheelman is too quiet for my liking. That aside, it is the lieutenant that bothers me the most. At best he is a lush fuck-up that will not keep his mouth shut. We'll pull this off, but we may be forced to leave town for good."

"And at worse," Johnny asked, "What is Bukowski?"

"Greedy," Joe said as he tossed his cigarette butt on the ground. "And greedy people start to realize a heist splits better one way than it does five."

----

Nate Parker couldn't stop his hands from shaking.

He sat in the anteroom of SAC Shriver's office with a small collection of agents, all of them as nervous and on edge as he. The whole eighteenth floor had been on edge over the past three days. That was to be expected since Mr. Ford was in town on an inspection tour.

Carl Ford, director of the Federal Crime Bureau, had a very specific idea on how an FCB field office should be run. If anything wasn't to his liking, the offending party was given a stern rebuke if not outright dismissal. Nate checked and double checked that his suit was lint free and had no threads showing. Mr. Ford also had a very specific idea on how all FCB agents and support staff should dress. There were rumors around the Bureau that his obsession with order and neatness was because he was a homosexual. One particular nickname was Cocksucker Carl, but nobody in their right mind ever discussed those matters anywhere near the Murray Building. Despite drawing the ire of over 2/3rds of the Bureau, Mr. Ford had all the Bureau afraid of his cold wrath and cutting remarks.

"Special Agent Parker," Shriver's secretary called out. "Mr. Ford will see you now."

Nate stood and tried to hide his wobbling legs as best he could. The rest of the agents watched him impassively. While their faces were neutral, their eyes contained relief that their names hadn't been called. Nate adjusted his tie, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and followed the secretary inside to Shriver's office.

Ted Shriver, head of the Chicago regional office, sat behind his desk while Mr. Ford sat in a chair to Shriver's left. Shriver was fat and bald, the stereotypical idea of what a cop looked like right down to his triple chin. It surprised Nate to see how young Mr. Ford was. He was short, a few inches shorter than Nate, but rail thin. He'd gone gray prematurely, but that gray hair was combed into a boyish part on his left side. He looked to be around Nate's age somewhere in his early to mid 40's, but he may be even younger for all Nate knew. The director wore a baggy gray double-breasted suit and stared at Nate with cold blue eyes.

"Nate," Shriver said, neither he or Ford bothering to stand. "Welcome, take a seat."

Nate nodded to both Shriver and Ford as he sat in the chair facing Shriver's desk. The SAC shuffled papers around his desk until he came to what he was looking for. The paper was translucent enough so that he could see through it and tell what it was. It was a personnel file. His personnel file, he wagered.

"You've been with the Bureau a good many years," Shriver said as he passed the paper to Mr. Ford. Nate couldn't help but look at Ford's face as he looked it over. "How do you like the work?"

"It's the best in the world."

"Then how come you've requested assignment changes eight different times, Special Agent Parker?" Ford asked in a quick, clipped voice. Nate caught a hint of a Massachusetts accent. "Do you not have the stomach for it?"

Nate had to choose his next words very carefully. He knew what he wanted to say, that wiretapping Communist was a waste of the FCB's time, money, and energy. He wanted to say that there was nothing to be found with those people other than sob sisters. But he also knew the price for candidness could be the end of his career.

"I prefer more stimulating work, sir," Nate said. "Political surveillance is fine work, but people who don't want to be caught are much more harder to catch than people who advertise their 'subversive' meetings in the local newspaper."

"Make no mistake, Special Agent," said Ford. "There is no greater threat to our nation than radical, domestic terrorism. The work of those bomb-throwers in Vancouver will serve as an inspiration to both communists and negro supremacist moving forward. You may be enamored with the mafia, Special Agent Parker, but you should focus on the real dangerous ones. We must be vigilant at all times."

Ford paused, glancing down at Nate's file, before he looked up with a wicked grin.

"I wonder, Special Agent Parker, if your disdain for your current assignment comes from your leftist tendencies. Do you feel a kinship with the stalwart communist or the suffering negro?"

"No, sir," Nate said, realizing too late that he had responded too quickly.

"I find you fascinating, Special Agent Parker," Ford said with another grin. He passed the file back to Shriver and smirked. "You are a mess of contradictions. A devout Catholic, yet you support liberal causes that the church condemns. Top marks from law school, yet you shun practicing it to come to the Bureau. You yearn for field work despite being a coward who received poor field marks the last time you were in the field. I will not ask for a digression on your philosophical outlook, not just yet anyway. But I do have a question. Do you still seek a reassignment?"

"Yes, sir," Nate said softly. His hands were white from squeezing them together so hard.

"Then you will have the opportunity. There is a job the Bureau needs completed, a job that I think you call a 'black bag job' in the parlance of the trade."

Nate raised his eyebrows. He pushed his glasses up and looked surprised.

"Why me?"

"I told the director you are an ace bug man," Shriver spoke up. "Nobody better in the entire midwest."

"You are indeed a fine practitioner of the voyeuristic arts," said Ford. "Do you like to be privy to others private conversations, Special Agent Parker?"

"Only when they say something worth hearing, sir."

"Excellent. For what I have in mind, I need someone who can do the job and do it quietly. Nobody outside this room will know of it. Success will see you reassigned to the Mafia squad here in Chicago. Failure will see your outright termination. Furthermore, I will use the powers I have here at the FCB to see that you are unable to pass the bar exam in Illinois or anywhere else in the United States. I will let your brilliant legal mind atrophy purely out of spite. What do you say, Special Agent Parker?"

"I'm in," Nate said without hesitation.

"Nate," said Shriver. "Have you ever been to Arizona?"

-----

Sun City, Arizona

"You a Jew?"

"I am."

"I figured as much. With that nose, you're either a Jaw or a hawk."

Shecky Lemon, insult comic extraordinaire, walked through the smoke-filled lounge room while the audience laughed and applauded. His short and dumpy little frame was illuminated by the spotlight above the stage. He squinted through the dark and picked out his next target.

"This your wife?" Shecky asked a seated couple.

"Yes, sir," the man replied proudly.

"Yeesh," Lemon said into the mic. "Don't know if you know this, sir, but bestiality is against the law. I ain't saying she's a dog, but throw a stick on the floor and see if she brings it back."

From backstage, Barry Chambers watched Shecky warm up the crowd. He counted maybe two dozen watching Shecky's performance and felt a stab of disappointment at the small number. This was supposed to be his comeback. Two months into his year-long run at the Desert Rose and already the crowds were half of what they had started out as. The sight made him want a drink and a cigarette despite his swearing off of them. The cigarettes were bad for his voice and the booze nearly killed him ten years ago. Still, old habits were hard to kick.

"Folks," Shecky said as he climbed back onto the stage. "We've had a lot of fun here tonight... well, I've had a lot of fun I don't know about you all. I've kidded and had a lot of fun. Why? Because I can, because I have the microphone and you don't. You've all been great sports."

The piano kicked on, playing Shecky's close out number. Per his act, Shecky looked back at the piano player and scowled.

"That's the best you can do? Jesus. Four million piano players in this country and I got the one with palsy. Anyway, folks, I want to end my set on an uplifting note. I'll end tonight with a quote our great president Michael Norman said just the other night... 'What's going on?' I kid, but let me go ahead and bring out your headliner. You know him from thirty years of music making magic. Let me say this, because I know he's listening, Barry... I never liked you! Ladies and gentlemen, Boppin' Barry Chambers!"

Barry walked out on the stage amid the applause, smiling and waving at the crowd. He quickly shook hands with Shecky before the comedian darted off backstage. With a wink, Barry took the microphone into his hands and motioned for the orchestra behind him to kick up.

"Harbor lights," he crooned into the microphone.

The room broke out in light applause at the mention of Boppin' Barry's most famous tune. The band broke out into the slow, melodic jazz that he had sung along with for over thirty years.

"I saw the harbor lights. They only told me we were parting. The same old harbor lights that once brought you to me. I watched the harbor lights, how could I help if tears were starting? Goodbye to tender nights beside the silvery sea."

Some middle-aged housewife in the crowd swooned as Barry broke out his wolfish grin. She was probably in grade school when Barry recorded Harbor Lights. It reminded him of his age and what he once was. He'd packed clubs and gigs so full that they were fire hazards, most of the mob was beautiful girls that were young and supple. Now, those kinds of girls had no interest in his music. Even if he did attract that type, he couldn't keep up. The new music was shit, and Barry had no problem telling everyone that. No singing, just moaning and howling, and the actual music? Like nails on a chalkboard. His kids said he was being an old fogey, but even Barry's love of all things music couldn't help him love this "rocking music" everyone was going crazy over.

"I long to hold you, dear, and kiss you just once more," he sang, directing his charms towards the swooning woman. "But you were on the ship and I was on the shore. Now I know lonely nights for all the while my heart keeps praying that someday harbor lights will bring you back to me."

The song faded as the band finished. The crowd applauded loudly, or as loudly as a crowd this size could applaud. The small size and the lack of enthusiasm turned him off something fierce. He felt like telling this group of rubes and hicks to fuck off and go back to whatever shithole town they lived in. But Barry was a performer, and the show had to go on.

"Thank you so much, folks," he said with a smile. "You know how to make me feel welcomed. Thank you all for coming out tonight. It's an honor to be here at the Desert Rose and to have you all here with me. This next song we're about to play is a favorite of mine. It's called Huston. Here we go."

More light applause as the band started on an uptempo number. Clarence in the band stood up and launched into the mini sax solo that started the song. After he finished, Barry started to sing.

"I just met Huston, he was looking for your door. He said he'd like to buy a horse..."

-----

Little Walter led his pack of bikers down the brightly illuminated Sun City Strip. The seven choppers roared through traffic, past the flashing casino lights and gawking pedestrians. A fat man in a Hawaiian shirt stared at Walter. He smiled and flipped him off as he sped by. Walter wore his black Horde cut along with a flannel shirt, a pair of tattered blue jeans, and cowboy boots. His thick black beard blew in the wind. The rest of the Horde was just as scraggly as he was, some of them even more so. Out here in the Southwest, they were the lower class white. They weren't Mexicans or Indians, but they sure as shit got treated like they were by the people who mattered. Or at least the people who society said mattered.

Not giving a fuck was what the Horde was all about. They rejected society before society had a chance to do the same. They were outcasts on their own accord, a pack of misfits and rejects nobody gave a shit about before they put on the cut. Most of them were war vets, Walter included. The war fucked them up and they just couldn't fit in anymore. Walter knew that was true of himself. He'd served in the Northwest and saw what the NWC did to Seattle. How the fuck could someone see all that carnage and expect to go back to a normal life?

The Horde gave the guys a place in the world. They had someone who cared about him, for Little Walter cared about his guys. You didn't become president of the MC without caring about the guys and doing what it took to protect them. That's what tonight's meeting was about, protecting the club for the future. The pack raced down the Strip and out of town, heading east towards the airport on the city outskirts.

The motel a block away from the airport was their destination. The Board of Directors didn't want to meet in any of their casinos, and they sure as hell didn't want to come into California to talk to the Horde and the Tribe. They wanted to be on their own turf where the cops were on their payroll. Both the Horde and Tribe had cops they bought, but not like the Board. The Board had the entire Sun County Sheriff's Department in their back pocket, the entire local and state government too for that matter. The Horde and the Tribe both were small time compared to the mob and Walter knew it. He hoped one day that would change.

They pulled around to the back of a three-story motel where a couple of cops were waiting for them. A big guy with a blonde crewcut and a Marine Corp tattoo on his forearm was waiting with a shorter, lean guy wearing a fedora and smoking a cigarette. They flashed their deputy sheriff badges and motioned for Little Walter and his men to spread their arms and legs.

"Fuck you, Jarhead," Jerry spat, literally spitting at the big guy's feet and barely missing.

"Bet you fucks were a bunch of Army assholes," the big guy said. "Retards with guns is what we called you."

"My Ass Rides In Navy Equipment," said Walter. "MARINE."

The big guy was about to reply, but his partner put a hand on his shoulder and looked at Walter and the MC.

"Just do what he says," the cop said with a withered look. "And that's coming from former Army Airborne, motherfuckers. Now spread 'em and prepared to be frisked."

"What happened to the Second fucking Amendment?" Walter asked as the big guy roughly patted him down.

"It's been suspended," the guy in the hat replied. "This isn't America, asshole, it's Sun City."

The two cops didn't find any weapons on the Horde and led them inside. The motel's conference room had a professional feel about it despite its very unprofessional clientele. A large, circular conference table was set up in the middle with chairs all around it. Sitting at a third of the table was Frenchie Gallo, operator of the Lucky Gent Casino, and members of the Board of Directors. The three guys represented the American Mafia's ruling council in Sun City. They all were representatives for one of the large crime syndicates across the country. Frenchie spoke for the Fortunato Family out of New York, Benny D'Amico was Bobby C's guy in Sun City, and Sal Valestra was the youngest brother of the L.A. boss Carmine Valestra.

Filling the other third of the table was the Tribe. Standing Bear Tallchief and a gaggle of a half dozen Indians were talking amongst themselves, eating the finger food the Board provided for the meeting. The Tribe members that made eye contact when the Horde came in made sure it was a cold look. Standing Bear and Walter came to a peace agreement last year, but that didn't change the contempt both sides felt for the other. Jake Tallchief in particular looked at Walter like he wanted to crush his skull. Walter knew he probably could, the big motherfucker, if he tried hard enough. Walter would never give that bastard the satisfaction. He'd gouge his fucking eyes out if he ever got close enough to lay a hand on Walter.

"Now that the gangs all here," Frenchie said as he stood. His accent was French Canadian, not enough to be thick but it was enough to remind people where he came from. "Let's get this shit over with, huh? Everyone take your seat and we'll begin."

Walter and the rest of the Horde took their seats at the table, facing Standing Bear and the Tribe. While everyone else took a seat, Frenchie remained standing. The two cops took a spot near the far wall and watched it all go down with their arms crossed, looking bored at the scene.

"I'd like to start this meeting by giving my thanks to Standing Bear and Little Walter both for consenting to this meeting. We know when it comes to Sun City, the Board is very protective about its interest here and any outside influence."

No shit, thought Walter. After butting heads with the Board, the MC had been ruled persona non grata in Sun City for the past three years. Any biker caught on this side of the state line would get the shit beaten out of them or worse. The Horde respected the ruling because unlike the Tribe, the Board could actually back its threat with muscle. That was why they had two cops guarding the meeting. The weren't actually scared that either gang would pull something at the meeting. They just wanted to remind both the bikers and the Indians just how much of the town they owned.

"After several meetings with the members of the national syndicates, it has been decided to open up a new revenue scheme here in the Southwest. Where's that goddamn map?"

One of the young men that made up the Board's entourage passed Frenchie a map of America. The mobster eyed it and snapped at the boy to hold it up high enough for everyone to see. He pointed a fat forefinger at the west coast.

"We want to set up a pipeline here in the west. Law enforcement have been cracking down on our ports in the east, so we're in need of a new way to get shit into the country."

"My brother Carmine in L.A.," said Sal Valestra, "has given assurances that anything we wish to pass through the Los Angeles port will go through without any hassle. My brother is a man of his word."

"Where do we come in?" Standing Bear asked.

"Delivery service," replied Frenchie. "The Horde has chapters up and down the coast, yes? It wouldn't be uncommon for you guys to ride up to Washington or, fuck, even Vancouver one weekend with a little something-something in your saddle bags. A dozen of you on a long-haul ride could carry some serious weight."

"That makes sense," said Little Walter. "But what the fuck do the Tribe here have to do with it?"

"They're what gets the shit east," said Benny D'Amico. "The northern route of delivery is out of reach thanks to some disputes in the Dakotas. But if what we're smuggling can reach Sun City unharmed, we can send it on to Kansas City or New Orleans and have it in NYC in two days time. Now here in Arizona, we got everyone who matters sucking on the tit. But your part of California? That fucking desert, we don't know anyone and we don't know where to throw our money so it'll stick. But the Tribe does. The way we hear it, fucking Standing Bear has half the state legislature owing him favors and all the bigwigs in Riverside County have big tabs at the Tomahawk."

"More or less," said Standing Bear. "I've been in local politics a long time. I know where the bodies are buried, figuratively and literally."

"Shit, buying people off," spat Walter. "We could fucking do that."

"You can't do shit," snapped Standing Bear. "You don't have the money to buy anything other than that coke you're always snorting."

"Fuck you, redman!"

"Fuck you," Jake Tallchief said, standing. "Talking to my uncle like that, you motherfucker!"

Walter stood as well and yelled over Jake's threats. "We need another goddamn Wounded Knee for you savage assholes!"

"Shut the fuck up," Frenchie yelled, pounding his fist on the table. "If this shit is gonna work, we need full cooperation from both of you, you hear me? Full cooperation. We can all make a lot of money by getting along. If not, you pieces of shit can go back to jerking each other off in the California desert. Am I being clear?"

"What's the cut?" Standing Bear asked, still staring at Walter out the corner of his eye.

"The Board gets sixty percent profit, with the two of you equally splitting the remaining forty."

"Fuck that," said Walter. "We're taking all the risks in transport and we get the same shit as the fucking Indians who get to sit on their asses? Fuck no."

"That's the opening split," said Frenchie. "But if this gets humming and we make the type of profit we want, then you'll both get bumped to thirty-three percent. Three-way split between every party, we're talking tens of millions of dollars. Drugs, guns, and whatever else we want coming in from overseas and filling a demand that the consumers of America sorely need. I like to think of myself as a businessman, and this is an investment opportunity you have a chance to get into on the ground floor. But if you walk away, that's it. We will go ahead with our plans, regardless of what it does to your business. We gave you a chance, remember that."

"I'm in," Standing Bear said without hesitation. "That twenty percent is profit on top of profit."

All eyes fell on the Horde and Walter. He looked at his guys. He was president, but he still had rules to follow. He could not decide for the club, but he and the other members here represented a quorum of the club's voting members.

"All those in favor?"

Six hands shot up in the air. Walter followed suit, raising his hand to show his consent.

"The ayes have it. Frenchie, we're in business."

Shoreditch, London

There was something wrong. Fred Lambert had known that much when he’d set his head down to sleep last night. Sebastian Hedland had been sent to Liverpool yesterday morning to investigate the co-operative being set up at Daley’s Sugar Refinery and had not returned. None of his colleagues at the New Jerusalem had heard from him since. He was due to return that evening. Lambert kidded himself that perhaps Hedland had checked into a hotel for a while before a few calls around Liverpool had shot that theory down. Lambert’s wife had convinced him that he was worrying over nothing and had lured him to bed. Yet even as he’d lain there he’d known something was wrong. When he arrived at the offices of the New Jerusalem this morning his fears had been confirmed.

On the front cover of the Times was a picture of Richard Short. The headline above the picture read “REPUBLICAN PLOTTERS UNCOVERED” and the short paragraph detailed the crimes Short and his colleagues were planning. Chief amongst them was conspiracy to commit regicide – an offence punishable by death. Short was the manager of the refinery that Hedland had been sent to. Lambert thumbed through the paper in search of Seb’s name and breathed a sigh of relief upon finding it absent from its pages. He’d spend the next two hours calling around hospitals in Liverpool and the surrounding area to see if anyone that fitted Seb’s description had been admitted. There was nothing.

At lunchtime Lambert left the office and headed to Shoreditch to visit Seb’s flat. He hoped he might find some clue as to his protégé’s whereabouts there. Hedland had given him a spare key six months ago upon moving in that Lambert had never used before. He hoped that Hedland would understand his rooting around inside his flat whilst he was away given the circumstances. In fact, Lambert wouldn’t mind if he didn’t understand so long as he was able to find out where he was. Hedland’s parents were close friends and he’d become a surrogate son to him of sorts. They’d never forgive him if something had happened to Seb and Lambert wasn’t convinced he’d ever be able to forgive himself.

It was a weight off his shoulders when he saw him curled up in a ball on the sofa sleeping. Lambert let him for a few moments as he reached down for the postcard on the floor beside him. His chubby face balled up with bemusement as he eyed it front to back and set it down on the table next to the sofa. With one hand he shook Seb awake and after a few seconds the young journalist rolled over to face Lambert. His face was covered with cuts and bruises, his hands were swollen and covered in welts, but he was alive. The initial shock of Lambert’s presence faded and Hedland seemed relieved that Fred was there.

He moved to sit up but groaned in pain and Lambert suggested he remained where he was. Over the next twenty-five minutes Seb explained what had happened in Liverpool, about the raid at the refinery, and what the ginger-haired man had asked of him and done to him. Lambert had found that particularly hard to listen to. He’d seen the pain in Seb’s eyes as he’d described it. It explained why he’d not been able to get a hold of him, why he’d not been checked into any hospital, and most of all how he’d come to be in the state he was in. Once he’d finished speaking the chubby Political Editor reached into his bag and pulled out a few newspapers he’d bagged from the morning. Each bore an account of what had happened at Daley’s Sugar Refinery with the picture of Richard Short on the front.

“I wasn’t sure whether to show you these or not,” Lambert muttered as he handed the newspapers to Hedland. “I figured you’d find out one way or another so I might as well.”

Hedland shook his head in disbelief as he sorted through them. “What? This is nonsense… none of this is true. I asked Short whether their co-operative was a form of socialism and he… he called me a twat, for God’s sake. There’s no way Short was a socialist. Absolutely no way.”

“Is there some way he could have lied to you? Could have hidden it?”

Seb shot Lambert a glare. “I know what I saw there, Fred, and it wasn’t some socialist conspiracy to assassinate the King. They were just decent people trying to make a living.”

It made the Political Editor sick to his stomach. British intelligence had to have been behind the raid in Liverpool and that meant whoever had tortured Seb had been too. Someone in the employ of the British government had beaten and violated an innocent man all because he happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. Hedland was a journalist too. If they’d so willingly snatch him up like they had and put him through those things there was nothing they wouldn’t do. They were out of control. Even if Short had been behind some kind of plot it wouldn’t excuse what they’d done to Hedland. The more Lambert thought about it the more queasy he felt.

Seb stared at short’s face on the front of the Times. “What will happen to Ricky?”

“If he’s lucky he’ll hang,” Lambert said with a sigh. “If he’s not so lucky he’ll spend the rest of his life in a prison cell. I imagine the Prime Minister will push for the first option given everything that's happened of late.”

Even through the bruises Fred could see Seb’s face growing angrier by the second. “We need t-”

“Stop. Don’t even say it, Sebastian, because it’s not going to happen. Whoever did this knows where you live. They brought you here to show you that. I hate to say it but there’s nothing we can do for Mr. Short. No one will believe a word of this if we publish it and worst of all they’ll come back for you and finish what they started. I’m not going to let that happen.”

“I want the people that did this to pay,” Hedland said as tears welled in his eyes. “I don’t care if they kill me.”

Lambert placed one of his chubby hands on the journalist’s shoulder with a sigh. “Well I do, Sebastian.”

Hedland sobbed quietly and Lambert bent down to hug him close. He could feel the young man’s tears seeping through his shirt and onto his chest. It turned Lambert’s stomach to know what they’d done to Seb and he doubted the guilt he felt at having sent him there would never leave him. He should have let him go to Brixton. He would have been safe there. He’d have wasted a day being given the run around by some Met press officer and been back within a few hours with nothing to show for it. Instead this had happened and Lambert had no idea how to deal with it. He hugged Seb tightly as his eyes met with the postcard on the table.

“Try to get some more sleep,” Lambert muttered in a soothing voice. “I’ll stop by again this evening.”


Chelmsley Wood, Birmingham

Conrad Murray stifled a yawn mid-sentence as he quizzed his students. His desk was on a raised platform at the front of the class that overlooked the eighteen desks he’d arranged in three rows beneath him. At each desk sat two students. Conrad had put together a strict seating plan and had disregarded his student’s attempts to plead with him to let them sit with their friends. Durham had told him he was wasting his time but Murray thought it was better to make the children integrate and work with people outside of their own social circles. So far it seemed to be working. Even though he was tired, having spent the night on the sofa in lieu of his argument with Honor, his students seemed receptive and willing to learn this afternoon. He was more than thankful for that.

Conrad pointed to a boy towards the back of the room. “Daniel, what can you tell me about the Troubles?”

Daniel was born to Pakistani parents that had moved to Birmingham decades ago as part of the guest worker program. There was a large contingent of British-Pakistanis in Birmingham due to the old factories that had been there before the Troubles. They kept to themselves for the most part. Daniel himself was an outgoing boy whose grades were good but not great. In any other town Daniel might go to university and get a degree. In Chelmsley Wood he’d be lucky to graduate. Conrad was determined to help him beat those odds.

After several seconds Daniel looked up at Conrad with a speculative smirk. “They killed the King… and Queen?”

‘Who killed them?”

Conrad could see from Daniel’s face he had no idea. The boy looked around the class room at the other students as if searching for an answer and a whisper sounded from beside him. Conrad pretended not to hear it as Daniel’s face suddenly became awash with confidence.

“Anarchists.”

“I want more than that,” Murray said as he ran a hand through his brown-red beard. “Give me some detail.”

Another hand shot up at the back. A boy by the name of Jason waved his hand around enthusiastically to catch Conrad’s attention. He lived on an estate not far from the school. His mother was black and father was white. He was one of Conrad’s worst students but never seemed short on enthusiasm. School was a respite for him from what waited for him out there.

Jason started speaking the second the young history teacher glanced in his direction. “After the Great War people didn’t really have much money and there was a lot of unemployment. People were really unhappy and thought it was unfair that the rich had nice things when most people didn’t even have jobs. So they killed the Royal Family to send a message.”

“That’s right,” Conrad said with a proud smile. "Though I’m not sure unhappy is the right word. It wasn’t unhappiness that started the Troubles, though people certainly were unhappy, it was rage. Society broke down and the state left people behind to fend for themselves. With no support people starved, committed acts of violence we would consider barbaric, and there are a few scholars that assert that some people resorted to cannibalism. Though there’s not much surviving evidence of that. Unhappiness can’t drive a person to that. Rage? Rage can make people do terrible things.”

From across the room Daniel’s voice sounded. “It doesn’t seem right. What those people did. The King and Queen didn’t choose to be born the King and Queen. It’s not like they had any choice. To kill them just because of that… It’s wrong.”

The teacher smiled wistfully at the comment. He’d never thought of it like that. He’d never imagined what the Royal Family must have felt that day when the masses were banging on the doors. The conditions of their birth were no more of their choosing than the starving poor that were braying for their blood.

“Yes, it is wrong.”

The bell sounded and the classroom burst into life. The students forced books into book bags, fastened their coats, and began to break towards the exit with lightning speed. Murray didn’t bother try to stop them and instead stood up from his seat and began to wipe the board behind his desk clean.

As they filtered past them he called out to them. “Remember, you have a mock exam tomorrow morning so make sure you’re prepared.”

One by one his students disappeared through the door to Conrad’s classroom and he watched as Jason disappeared through the door last. Unlike the rest of them there was no joy on his face. There would be no hot meals or open arms waiting for him at home. He sighed and set the board eraser down on his desk. The argument he’d had with Honor was still weighing heavily on his mind. Posturing. Maybe it had been too strong, Conrad thought, maybe he should have chosen his words more carefully than he had done. It was academic. The damage had been done. Like Jason, Conrad would find no open arms waiting for him when he got home tonight. Just another night on the sofa.


Morden, London

Raucous laughter filled the Morden Tavern. In an alcove sat Ray Newman, Paul Winters, and the four other members of their darts team. Ray had just finished telling the men about the wild night out he’d been on two days ago. Newman had actually spent his night indoors on his own but he daren’t tell them that. They were all married with children, like Newman had been once, and living vicariously through Ray seemed to brighten their moods somewhat. In truth he wondered sometimes whether his stories served to brighten his own mood more. He’d done little of worth with his time since attending the National Front meeting in Mitcham. The meeting had brightened his spirits some. Edgar Francis understood what was really going on out there on Britain’s streets. He’d told the guys about the meeting and they’d seemed disinterested so he’d left it at that. They left their homes every other Thursday to play darts, get drunk, and ogle at women half their age. Newman couldn’t blame them for not wanting to talk politics.

Ray glanced round at the empty pint glasses around the table and then drank what remained of his own drink. It was his round. A lifetime of drinking had made him a dab had at carrying three pints in two hands, sometimes even four, but five was too much for even the most seasoned veteran.

He gestured towards Winters to the bar as he stood up from his seat. “You want to give me a hand, Paul?”

Winters nodded and stood up from his seat to accompany Ray to the bar. Even when he wasn’t working it was clear from the way Winters dressed that he was moneyed. The other men wore boot cut jeans, checkered shirts, and trainers that would make their children wear but Winters was something else. He wore a crisp baby blue polo shirt, smart blue trousers, shiny black brogues, and a wristwatch that looked expensive. Combined with his well-groomed white beard Winters looked out of place in the working man’s pub. Especially stood next to Newman.

Ray gave Paul a knowing look as they waited to be served. “How are things going?”

“The bosses are pouring everything into Oldfield’s murder but they’ve got nothing. The coloureds aren’t giving us a goddamn thing and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. Ballistics gave us nothing on the bullets. It’s not looking good, Ray.”

Newman shook his head and muttered an obscenity under his breath. “What about the other thing? The coloured that got killed in Brixton?”

“It’s funny you mention that actually,” Winters said with a shit-eating grin. “Not longer after our little chat the world came down from upstairs to stonewall the thing. Even the bosses want me to fudge it.”

“What?” Newman frowned. “Are you being serious?”

Paul nodded. “It came as a shock to me too but I’m not about to question it. If the bosses want this thing fudged, I’ll fudge the shit out of it. I get paid at the end of the month either way.”

That was unusual. Giving the timing of the murder Newman figured they’d throw everything they had at it to get it to go away. It was why he’d lent on Winters to begin with. He hadn’t wanted resources that could have been spent finding Oldfield’s killer wasted on some coloured. If the bosses were sitting on it there had to be more going on that met the eye. Either that or someone up the chain was under a lot of pressure. It had to come from above Walsh. Walsh was many things but he’d never explicitly tell a detective to squash a case unless word had come from upstairs. Even then he wouldn’t like it.

Newman ordered five ales and waited until the bartender was out of earshot before he responded. “Maybe they’ve finally come to their senses.”

Across the pub the sound of a pint glass crashing to the ground was met with derisive laughter from all and Newman tittered. The bartender set each pint down in front of Newman and Winters one by one and Ray handed him a note and a handful of change. He made a pyramid out of the pint glasses and placed his hands around it and lifted them. Winters grabbed the other two.

“Are you coming to this thing for Oldfield?” Winters asked as they ambled back towards their seats. “The memorial service?”

Newman had almost forgotten. He nodded solemnly. “Yeah, I’ll be there, I owe his parents that much.”

It was to be held in Oldfield’s family home in Wallington. James had no girlfriend, no wife, and no children to survive him but his parents were still young. Newman couldn’t imagine the pain they felt at having to bury their only child. He’d been anxious when he heard about the private memorial they were holding if only because he feared they might ask him about that night. He didn’t want to have to tell them about what had happened or the emptiness he’d seen in their son’s eyes as he bled out. No one should ever have to hear that. Even now having been reminded of it for only half a second he couldn’t help but feel like whatever momentum the laughter and alcohol had given him had been stolen away.

Winters and Newman turned the corner to their seats where the other members of their darts team were waiting for them. They cheered as they appeared with the alcohol and Newman set the three pints he’d been carrying down on the table in front of them. Winters set his two down and shuffled back to his seat. Newman stayed standing, lifted his pint, and gestured to the other men to do the same.

“To getting wankered.”

The other men all clinked their glasses together with broad smiles. “To getting wankered.”

Ray titled his head back, opened his throat, and poured his pint of ale down his stomach in a few seconds. The other men cheered again in support and Newman slammed his empty pint back down on the table with a loud belch.


Embankment, London

Samuel Hobbs sat alone at a bar and ran his fingers along the edge of a glass of scotch. It was his fourth. At least he thought it was. He’d stopped counting. The bar he was sat in was a favourite of the Downing Street staffers and he’d sometime come here after work with Dominic Hewitt and some of the others after work. Today Hobbs was on his own. Hewitt was gone. He’d been dragged out of Downing Street yesterday for a misstep Hobbs had committed in his name. The first full day without Hewitt had taken its toll on Fraser Campbell’s Director of Communications. It wasn’t that he’d missed Hewitt so much as he’d spent the entire day waiting for the penny to drop and the Prime Minister to find him out. Hobbs imagined he’d carry that feeling around with him for a long time. Perhaps even long after Errol Clarke’s case file was closed. He sneered at the thought and knocked back what remained of his scotch. He spluttered a little as it crept down his throat. Hobbs hated scotch. Even the smell of it made him sick. It was why he was drinking it.

He looked up at the mirrored surface on the wall of the bar opposite him at the rail thin, pallid ghoul that sat in his grey suit. The bags under his eyes had deepened and there were deep blue veins along his eyelids. Hobbs felt like he’d aged a decade in the past week. God knows how much worse he’d look now he’d spend the next six months looking over his shoulder every morning. He ran one of his pale hands over his mouth and chin and let out a sigh. The bartender at the other end of the bar made eye contact with him and reached for a bottle of scotch.

He unscrewed it slowly as he looked towards Hobbs. “Another scotch?”

“Sure,” Hobbs said with an empty smile. “Why not?”


Whitehall, London

Joyce Campbell sat with her long legs wrapped around her husband’s waist. Fraser Campbell was more stressed than she’d ever seen him. The events of the past week or so had gotten to him. South Africa, the Voluntary Repatriation Bill, Oldfield’s murder, and now this mess with Thomas Moore and Hewitt had put him in a particularly bad mood. She’d known the second he’d appeared in the doorway to their Downing Street apartment that he needed her comfort that evening. She gave it to him freely and he devoured it and her more greedily than he had done in months. Now they sat entwined on their large bed. She could feel her husband’s heart beating loudly in his chest as he recounted for what seemed like the fifth time the conversation he’d had with Markham-Powell. Fraser seemed certain that Moore was on maneuvers and it wouldn’t be long before he tried to oust him. Joyce kissed her husband’s back gently as her husband spoke of the Home Secretary’s weekly luncheons with King William.

She groaned with displease at the thought of it. “Tom always was a toady at the best of times.”

“Yes, well if what Markham-Powell says is true it won’t be long before he’ll be toadying up to King William from Downing Street. He’s going to make his move, Joyce. He’s been everywhere on the Oldfield murder and now he’s leaking things to the Palace to get them onboard. Once they are convinced there’ll be nothing to stop him.”

Joyce sighed. It was difficult enough talking to her husband about Thomas Moore at the best of times. Their romance still rankled Fraser even though he tried his best to disguise it. He was a sensitive man, though he tried to disguise that too, especially given the attention his wife Joyce still received regarding her appearance and the not-so mocking Fraser was subjected to about his. She loved him far more than she had ever loved Thomas Moore. A few wild months in Oxford were as to nothing compared to the years she’d spent with her husband. Yet still Fraser needed reassuring. She knew that Hobbs would have been as well equipped to advise Fraser on this but Joyce understood her husband needed to hear the words from her mouth.

They were cold, ruthless even, and Joyce could see the satisfaction upon her husband’s face upon hearing them. “You need to deal with him.”

“And how do you suggest I do that? If Moore goes I lose half my cabinet.”

“You don’t need to sack him,” Joyce said as she planted another gentle kiss on her husband’s back. “You just need to wound him. You need to get something over him so that when he makes his move you’ll be prepared. He’s too popular with the public and the Palace for us to place this one straight. We need some dirt on him.”

Fraser shook his head. “Trust me, I’ve had Hobbs rooting around in Moore’s past for the past two years. There’s nothing there. He might be a prat but the man is squeaky clean.”

Joyce blew a lock of golden blonde hair from her face as she considered how to declaw the Home Secretary in time. Moore had married a few years out of Oxford to a Parisian woman he’d met whilst travelling. She was a rare beauty even by Moore’s standards. Daphne. She had passed away a few years ago leaving Moore to care for their daughter on his own. He had done a good job of it. Their daughter was studying at Oxford and would likely follow in her father’s footsteps into government. Joyce wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up the first female Prime Minister some day. Outside of his daughter Moore had little to make him vulnerable. He was a staunch monarchist, tough on crime, and did little in his spare time but read, visit fancy restaurants, and frequent the capital’s theatres. He really was squeaky clean.

And then it struck Joyce. Her piercing blue eyes eyed the picture of her two children on the table beside them as she thought the idea through. For the first time in years she found herself worried to put voice to an idea in front of her husband. She had found the courage to coach Fraser from an unambitious, unspectacular student that dreamt of becoming a musician into Prime Minister and had imparted in him her republicanism along the way but this might have been too much. She gritted her teeth as she recounted they promise they had made all those years ago. Whatever it takes.

Finally she found her voice as she planted a tentative kiss on her husband’s back. “There is one way we could hurt him.”

Fraser glanced over his shoulder towards his wife with an inquisitive look. “How?”

“There’s only one thing that Tom wants more than to be Prime Minister.”

Her husband stared at her through his thick-lensed glasses without a hint of recognition. She had hoped she wouldn’t have to say the words, that her husband might deduce her plan from the tone she was speaking in, but it was clear from his chubby face she would have to spell it out for him. Joyce cleared her throat nervously and pushed back another lock of her hair from her eyes. She stared her husband in the face and muttered the word that she knew he wanted to hear least.

“Me.”

Washington D.C.

"Mr. Vice President, how would you and the Second Lady like your steaks cooked?"

"Medium rare," Russell replied.

Peter Kelly, Senate Majority Leader, plopped two thick steaks on his charcoal grill. Russell, Kelly, and Senate Majority Whip Rod Marston stood huddled around the grill on the balcony of Kelly's Georgetown apartment. They were dressed in casual wear, khaki pants and simple button-up shirts. Marston wore cowboy boots with his outfit. All three men had beers in their hands.

"And the honorable junior Senator from Arizona?" Kelly asked.

"All questions and responses are to be directed to the President of the Senate," Russell cut in.

They all chuckled at Russell's joke. The archaic Senate rules stated that any and all comments on the Senate floor could not be directed at any colleague in particular, just through the presiding office. Like the formal rule that all senators must refer to themselves and each other in the third person it was one of the many old rules that hamstrung the institution.

"Mr. President," Marston said with his beer raised, "Inform the honorable senior Senator from Montana that the junior Senator from Arizona and his wife like their steaks at a nice medium."

"So, gentlemen," Russell said once their laughter subsided. "How are things in your home states?"

Kelly flashed a grin. Despite being from a sparsely populated western state, Kelly wasn't what you thought of when you thought of Montana or the west. He was a former political scientist and academic that was drafted into running for the Senate by the Republican Party in Montana. He was the only member of the congressional leadership who could quote the Constitution and Proust with equal aplomb.

"Same old same old," Kelly said with a shrug. "The beef industry is what anyone cares about out there. As long as the US keeps up its agricultural exports I'm golden."

"Cows? That's it?" Marston asked.

Kelly laughed. "Rod, you've got to remember that the people of Montana are just simple farmers, people of the land. The common clay of the West. You know... morons."

"I wish I had morons," Martson laughed. "Arizona is nothing but one giant handout. Everyone's looking to get paid."

"Including the state's junior senator," Kelly said with a wink.

While the Majority Leader turned his attention to the steaks, Russell glanced towards the balcony door. Just through the glass door was the kitchen and the wives of the three men. Russell caught Robin's eye and saw her bored expression lighten when she saw her husband. Henrietta Kelly was a pleasant enough lady who was devoted to her husband, but she was a bland woman who only talked about our family. Peggy Marston was the complete opposite. Twenty-five years Rod's junior, she was a former Sun City showgirl that the Senator had only recently married. She had bleached blonde hair and wore too tight dresses and talked about nothing but jewelry and all the things she liked to buy with the money "Roddy" doled out to her.

"I need to head out there someday," Russell said as he turned back to the men. "Never been to Sun City, but I'd like to see it for myself. I've never had much of a taste for gambling. A sure thing is much more reassuring."

"You're a gambler, Russ," Marston said with a short laugh. "If you weren't, you'd still be in the Senate with us."

"You got me there," Russell said with his hands raised. "I made a gamble on that one. Still not sure if it's going to pay off."

"In Sun City, we call that the long con."

"Speaking of that," said Kelly. "What's the reason for crashing our lovely steak dinner, Mr. Vice President? What's your game?"

"I'm here on presidential orders, I'm afraid," Russell said after sipping his beer. "The President is heading out of town next week. Aren't you going with him, Pete?"

"I'm flying back to Montana and touring with him when he goes through the state. But that's not for a few more weeks."

"And in that time, the president would like to see that Ethiopian foreign aid appropriations bill put on the legislative calendar at the very least."

Kelly grunted as he flipped the steaks. "I was planning on doing that, Russ, but the problems you'll have won't be with the Republicans. Your problem is with--"

Marston whistled a few bars of "Dixie."

"We like the bill," Kelly shrugged. "Hell, everyone is tripping over themselves to support this foreign aid stuff. But your pals are going to drag their feet like always. I'm going to recommend the bill be sent to Foreign Relations where Bill Dixon's the chairman. He's borderline Southern Caucus."

"What's Dixon's bloc of Senators look like?" Russell asked.

"He's got about a dozen in his back pocket," said Marston. "And that's just the ones we know for certain. He may have as many as twenty Republican senators. If they work in tandem with the Southern Caucasus, that's nearly half the Senate in alliance."

"Why don't you do something?" Russell asked Kelly. "You're Majority Leader, Pete. For god's sake, get them in line behind you."

"You don't understand," said Kelly. "I don't have the type of power you had. The second you left the Senate, Dixon and Helms and the others made sure to strip away all the powers the Majority Leader had. I can lead floor debates and schedule the legislative calendar, but that's about it. I can't control committee assignments like you could and the reelection steering committees are led by seniority now. Nobody needs to listens to me. I'm just... not you."

No shit, thought Russell. It didn't surprise Russell to find out that the Senate had made the Leader toothless once again. It had been like that eight years earlier when Russell took over the job. He'd found ways to abolish, temporarily at least, the rigid seniority system that decided committee assignments and had the Leader decide who served on which committee. He'd also set up a reelection steering committee that donated money and resources to incumbent senators, with the Majority Leader as chairman of that committee. Every Democrat was beholden to him for committee assignments and reelection help. No matter if a man served twenty years in the Senate, they had to come crawling on their hands and knees, quite literally in the case of poor Bob Osborne from Tennessee, for Russell's approval. For eight years he was the second most powerful man in the country, second only to President Fernandez. And now that power was gone, not just from him but from the Senate altogether.

Russell stayed silent as Kelly put the steaks on a plate and tossed two more on the grill.

"How's Dixon doing it?"

"Dixon Oil," said Marston. "Or at least that's what it looks like. He's going around the steering committees and Senate re-election funds and having his oil company donate straight to candidates. Of the Republicans that came into the Senate in the election, over two-thirds of them are caucusing with him. They ran campaigns above their means and requested very little money from the steering committee."

Power is where power goes.

Bill Dixon had said those very words to Russell the night of the presidential inauguration. They'd been huddled in a corner talking shop while everyone watched Norman and his wife glide across a ballroom floor. Dixon was so sure that he wouldn't need the Majority Leader role to accumulate power and he was right. Power is where power goes, and now the power Russell had once wielded was gone. It had been dismantled by vengeful and power hungry senators. The power vacuum they created was filled by Dixon's oil money.

Kelly finished off his beer and looked at Russell with an arched eyebrow. He'd noticed Russell's faraway look and scowling.

"Just reevaluating my roll of the dice," Russell said when he noticed Kelly's staring. "I may have pushed my luck too far."

"In Sun City parlance, we'd say you crapped out," said Marston.

"Crapped out," Russell grunted. "That sounds about right."

------

"Over fifty years ago, I had my first White House visit," Senator Wilbur Helms said through his oxygen mask. "President Wheeler was here then. He was a son of a bitch."

White House Chief of Staff Jeff Brewer pushed the decrepit old man down the halls of the West Wing in a wheelchair. He utterly detested Helms. The octogenarian represented all that was wrong with Washington and the American political system. The Southern minority that controlled the upper house of Congress did not speak for the majority of America. They were 19th century men, Helms quite literally, who had turned the once great deliberative body into a place of negation. Even with the Socialist paradigm shift across the country, they still held on firmly to their Senate power.

That power did not come from any particular set of skills. They weren't brilliant, Senator Matheson from Texas struggled through the speeches he read on the Senate floor. Nor were they great political operatives. Helms' colleague from South Carolina, Larry Beasley, was reputed to nap frequently at committee meetings. They were old, every single one of them. At forty-seven, Jim Sanderson was the youngest member of the Southern Caucus by nearly twenty years. The age was a major problem due to the seniority system. Senator Byrd from Alabama, the ranking Democratic member of the Armed Service Committee, often forgot where he was. When he was committee chairman, the senator in charge of congressional oversight of American defense would snap his head up suddenly and bang the gavel against the conference table to call to order a meeting that had already started an hour before.

Age and age alone was why they were in power. And their power derived from their constituents. Simply because the people in the states that elected them voted Democrat and nothing more, these hateful, ignorant men had the federal government at their mercy. These men with all the power could walk, or be pushed as in Helms' case, into the Oval Office and make demands.

Helms wheezing filled the quiet West Wing corridor Jeff pushed him down. It was late at night, most of the staff had gone home for the day. Those that were here still were like Jeff and did not leave until the president did. They were the most dedicated and loyal of the White House staff and would not feed the Washington rumor mill with talk about Helms' late night visit.

Jeff opened the door leading into the Oval Office and pushed Helms through the threshold. Leaning against the Resolute desk was President Norman. His suit jacket was off and tossed onto the sofa facing the desk and his shirt sleeves were rolled up to the elbow.

"Senator Helms," the president said with a soft smile. "Welcome."

Norman stepped forward and gently shook Helm's wrinkled, arthritis ridden hand. The old man smiled through his gas mask, showing the president a mouth of yellow teeth.

"I was beginning to wonder if you'd forgotten about me, Mr. President. I've had many a meetings in this office with a new president, but not this late into the start of their administration."

"Well, I apologize for that, Senator."

"It's not you fault," Helms said graciously enough before adding. "You're still new to how we do politics around here. You're just ignorant."

Jeff felt a flash of anger go through him. He was glad he was standing behind Helms so the old man couldn't see his face. The president could, however. Norman's eyes flashed a hint of amusement as he patted Helms' hand and smiled.

"You're right, Senator. I'm still learning the ropes here."

You're a better man than I, Jeff thought. President Norman stood and motioned for Jeff to park Helms next to the sofa. He sat while Jeff placed the aging senator next to the couch. Jeff took a seat on the sofa opposite the two men, something Helms noticed and scowled at.

"Now I thought it was just gonna be the two of us."

"Jeff is my chief of staff," said the president. "He's been serving in that capacity even when we were in the Army. He's my right-hand man. Whatever you can say to me, you can say to him."

"No, I believe it's you who has something to say," Helms wheezed. "You called this meeting, Mr. President. I'm waiting to hear what you want to talk about."

"The bill on foreign aid to Ethiopia is coming to the Senate, and I want assurances that the Southern Caucus will not try to kill or hijack the bill."

"I'm but one man," he said sheepishly. "There are twenty-one other senators who make up the Southern Caucus, each one their own man with their own principles and ideals."

"We both know that's not true. You tell those senators to jump and they say how high." Norman leaned forward, his finger pointing at the old man. "Senator, I'm already tired of having to scrap and fight for every piece of legislation that's important to the country."

"Checks and balances." Helms laced his pale and twisted fingers together and smiled at the president. "The Senate is the ultimate check against the power of the executive."

"No matter what public opinion has to say on the matter?" Jeff asked.

Helms' white faced showed a flash of red as he snarled at Jeff.

"You better mind your manners, boy! Mr. President, is how you train your staff? If this boy were on my staff I'd have him flogged for speaking out of turn."

"I apologize, Senator," the president said with a slightly annoyed look towards Jeff. "I'll see that he's punished adequately. But he does raise a point. Time and time again your body blocks legislation that the House, the president, and even the voters all want and approve of."

"That's horseshit," said Helms. "People are idiots, they don't know what they want. Our Founders thought the same thing. It's why they created the chamber I serve in. The whole reason the Senate exist is to fight against the tyranny of the majority. You want a bill passed through our chamber? Convince us of its merits, or at least give us something in return."

A silence settled in as both Jeff and the president took in the last bit of information from Helms.

"Vice President Reed said you'd try to pull something like this," said Norman.

"That man is a two-faced snake, but he's right on this matter."

The president looked towards Jeff before turning back to Helms.

"What is it you want?"

"The nigger bill," Helms hissed. His entire mouth seemed to twist as he said that word. "I do not want no goddamn bills passing Congress that support federal nigger rights."

Jeff felt his anger rising at the man's callous use of the racial slur. Like always, the president took it all in stride and ignored it.

"Like you reminded me, Senator, Congress is beyond my control. I can't stop a liberal Congressman or Senator from writing up a bill and bringing it to the floor."

"But you can stay neutral on the matter," Helms snapped. "You've said a lot of goddamn things about niggers that make us in the South worried. And then sending that sum bitch Reed to meet with those agitators only worsened matters. I understand you can't come out against civil rights, I know how politics works even though you think I don't. What I want is your solemn promise that you will not push for any type of civil rights bill for the next four years. Anything comes up on the House or Senate floor you stay silent on the matter. Civil rights is an issue for the states. Let us deal with our own niggers our own way."

Norman looked at Jeff again. Jeff nodded slowly.

"What do I get in return?" The president asked.

"This foreign aid bill will pass and you'll have full Southern support behind your legislative agenda, within reason. You try any of that socialist shit like Fernandez and I promise you we'll be filibustering day and night."

The president stood and walked away from Helms and Jeff. He walked around the Resolute desk and gazed out the Oval Office window at the rose garden outside. Jeff knew the deep deliberation the president was currently engaged in. He'd witnessed it many times over the years when the general stood at a crossroad on some important matter.

"Okay," he said after a long minute of silence.

The president turned around and leaned forward against the desk, staring at Helms while he spoke.

"In exchange for Southern Caucus support in the Senate, I promise you that I will not interfere in any civil rights legislative battles."

Helms smiled widely and wheezed out a laugh. It was a short, harsh little thing that sounded more like a death rattle than a joyful noise.

"Well, hot damn. I knew you'd come to your senses, Mr. President!"

-----

Natchez, Mississippi

The sound of gunshots woke Will Johnson from his sleep. He sprung up from the bed and was on the balls of his feet as he raced across the bedroom to his chest of drawers. His wife Shelby was still rubbing sleep from her eyes while Will pulled the rifle from the bottom drawer. It was his rifle from the war. It had served him well during that bitter fighting in the Midwest. He thought he'd never have to use it again after putting it in the bottom drawer three years ago. He still hoped that was the case.

"What's going on?" Shelby asked, still half asleep.

"Get the kids and get in the cellar. Lock yourself in from the inside."

"Will?"

He heard more gunshots on top of each other. They were shotgun blasts followed by loud whooping. It was a sound many black people in the South had come to fear. It was the Rebel Yell. There was a cold feeling in the pit of Will's stomach as he loaded a magazine of bullets into the semi-automatic rifle.

"Shelby, baby. Go get the children and get in the cell. Now."

It had finally dawned on Shelby what was going on. Without a word, she leapt from the bed and raced down the hallway to the two rooms where their four children slept. Will gripped the rifle tight and stood up. He padded through the halls of the house, ignoring his children's confused questions. Shelby raced by with six-month-old Samuel in her arms while seven-year-old Antwan came behind her holding the hands of five-year-old Lucas and three-year-old Ruth. Will followed them to the back porch where the entrance to their cellar lay. A gunshot made Ruth flinch and cry. Her biggest brother tried to console her as Shelby opened up the cellar door and ushered the children in.

"Come inside with us," Shelby said once the children were down inside.

"No, I'm gonna call for help and see what's going on outside. There's not enough room for me inside there."

"Will, don't be stupid," Shelby chided. "We can make it fit. Get inside now."

"I'll be back," he said as he kissed her on the cheek. "Now get in there, you hear?"

She hesitated before going down inside. He gave her a playful swat on the rump and closed the heavy wooden doors behind her. He waited until he heard her bolt the locks before he turned and headed towards their telephone on the kitchen wall. The line had no dial tone nor the voice of an operator asking for a connection. Will closed his eyes and sighed, replacing the phone back on the cradle with shaky hands. Help would not be coming, the ones outside had seen to that. He held the rifle up and walked front door. He could hear voices as he approached the door. It wasn't until he was almost there that he realized he was only wearing a pair of boxers.

"Come on out now, boy."

Standing in front of Will's front porch were a group of six men. They all wore burlap sack masks on their heads and two carried shotguns. He saw white flesh peeking out from their short shirt sleeves. Even from this far away he could smell the liquor on the six men.

"Help you gentlemen?" Will asked.

"We was hoping to help you, boy," one of them said, spitting a wad of tobacco juice from the mouth hole of his mask. "Help you and all your little nigger pals see the way of things."

"Boy," Will repeated. "My daddy is the only one who gets to call me boy. None of y'all are him."

"I might be your daddy," one of them hooted. "I had me a thing for nigger pussy back in the day. It's all pink on the inside, boy."

"That's a nice rifle you got, boy. What white man you steal that from?"

"I got it from the US Army," Will replied with a smirk. "Yessir, I got to shoot all kinds of white men during the war. I think I developed a taste for it. Now, I'm gonna give you fellas to the count of ten." He loaded a round into the rifle. "If y'all aren't off my property by the time I get to that number, I'm gonna start shooting."

"You can count to ten, boy?"

"Count higher than you peckerwoods."

"We ain't going anywhere," one of them said. "And the second you point that rifle at any of us, we open fire and kill your black ass. Then we go inside and rape your woman and kill your pickaninnies."

"Goddamn cowards," said Will, his anger pushing through his collected facade. "You fucking rednecks come to my home and threaten me and my family and wear masks and carry shotguns. You're a bunch of goddamn cowards, the whole lot of you. You can't handle a fucking black man one on one, and you all fucking know it."

"Watch your mouth, boy," one of the masked men said, racking a round into his shotgun.

"Y'all afraid to fight me," Will said with a bitter laugh. "That's what it is. I'll make you fine and upstanding white men a deal. One of you fight me one on one. I win, you all go back to fucking your sisters and cows. I lose, lynch me or whatever you want to do with me but it stops with me. Not my wife and not my children."

"Fuck you--"

"Do it," one of the men said with a giggle. "I wanna see this uppity nigger get his ass beat before we kill him."

It got quiet between the six masked men. They lowered their voices so Will couldn't hear them discuss whatever it was they were discussing.

"No guns," one of them said to Will after deliberation. "We'll put ours on the truck if you leave yours on the porch."

"I won't need a fucking gun to take care of you. Now, y'all pick which one of you that wants to get their ass whipped."

True to their word, the white men put their shotguns on the hood of one of the two pick-up trucks they rode in, parked in the driveway to block Will's own truck. Will left his rifle on the porch and stood facing the biggest of the six white men while his five comrades stood in a semi-circle watching. The white man was bigger than Will by at least three inches, putting him at six foot two, but he was also forty to fifty pounds heavier. The weight was all fat. He was some white man who had a soft job. He wasn't like Will. Twenty years of twelve and fourteen hour days out in the cotton fields had made him wiry and lean. He was the only man in basic training that had to actually put on weight in order to meet the Army's requirements.

(Mood Music)

The white man made the first swing. It was a slow and telegraphed thing that Will saw coming all the way. He dipped and dodged it with ease. Will wanted so bad to make the fist blow, but he knew he couldn't. He could mop the floor with this slow and fat redneck, but he had to act in defense. Being too aggressive would draw their ire, and these drunken white men held his life and the life of his family in their hands. In the back of his mind he knew they were just toying with him, but he held out hope that they would be true to their word and let them live if he won.

Will felt a growing sense of unease from the men after another slow punch he avoided. One of them muttered something about him being too fast, about how he and his whole kind were bred to be fast and vicious like animals. That flipped something inside of him. Will had always been rash when it came to matters of race. He was far bolder than other black men his age. Compared to James Calhoun down the road, he was a downright radical. The crack from the white man set off his old trigger.

A hard right hook knocked the white man backward into his friends. They shoved him forward and he stumbled right into Will's waiting right uppercut. He felt like Jack Johnson reincarnated as he hit the drunken white man with a three punch combo that sent him reeling. The fight was his and he knew it. And he hoped like hell these peckerwoods knew it too. His rage over years and years of forced subservience to white trash came boiling out as he fought this white man. One more slow punch got countered and a vicos right jab made something pop inside the burlap mask. It was his nose, Will knew right away that he had broken it with his fist. The white man yelled and started to grab it. Will was preparing to go in for the kill when he felt something hard crash against the back of his head. The blow sent him spinning to the ground. He looked up and saw one of the men standing above him with a revolver in his hands, the barrel dripping his blood. Five of the white men stomped on him while he was on the ground, the sixth nursing his broken nose. Their hard soled boots crashed against his body. Will screamed as he felt a bone in his leg snap. He bit his tongue and stopped screaming as blood filled his mouth. He felt his jaw snap at the same time the back of his skull fractured.

"Fucking cheating nigger," one of them said.

Will tried to talk, but his body was in too much pain to muster up a response. The left him there and went towards their trucks. He tried to move, but the pain that went through his body was too much to bear. Two of the men came back into view. They carried a pair of glass bottles with cloth stuck down the neck. Will tried to scream, but it came out as a muffled and bloody rasp. He forced his body to move, fighting through the pain to crawl towards the men with the bottles. The men lit the rags on fire with lighters and tossed them at the house. The gas-filled bottles exploded against the house and consumed the home in flames. Within seconds, it was a raging inferno.

Trying to muster every bit of his willpower, Will tried to force himself to get back up and get his rifle off the porch. One of the men stood over him with a shotgun. From somewhere far away, Will heard the sounds of his family screaming and he smelled the scent of burning flesh.

"This is what happens to niggers who don't know their place."

He brought the butt of the shotgun down on Will's face.

Ullanhu was stirred awake. He looked out the window to see that the sun was barely up over the horizon. A foggy, cloudy mist hung over Moscow, and Vasiliy hung over him. Unspeaking, the Chinese agent rolled out of bed and got dressed. Withdrawn, with his mouth taped shut, Vasiliy moved to the other-room to prepare. Though his head was still full of an early morning fuzz that eclipsed his proper thought, the Mongol knew well enough what was happening today.

He forced his arms through the heavy sleeves of his agent's black coat and walked into the main room fully dressed. With the straight expression of the ready surgeon, he looked up at Vasiliy sitting at the table, loading a semi-automatic pistol and counting his spare magazines. “Let's get this done.” Ullanhu said in a low voice.

Vasiliy nodded with full acknowledgment. He tucked the handgun under his suit as he rose to his feet, loading the spare rounds into hidden pockets underneath his western-style suit coat. In this moment, the young agent (for once) looked less like the boy Ullanhu had met and more like the soldier he was. His face was gaunt and solid, still and unwavering like a rock, as they walked out into the putrid gray halls of the apartment they had adopted. They left their safe-house behind and passed onto the foggy streets in the interior of Moscow.

Ullanhu had not gotten to see much of the city. It was from the safety of the window that the Chinese agent had beheld the large circular city, with its networks of ring roads and radiating main thoroughfares that gave the city the layout of a wagon wheel. Clusters of romantic church steeples rose up, among the blocks of late 19th century bricked buildings, or dwarfed in the midst of mid-century high-rises, who's taller apartments and offices were built to compliment the pride felt in Russia about its heritage.

It was from the safety of that apartment window that he had looked down at the edge of Europe. He realized what he saw was not the methodical planning of a nation trying to prove its own modernity in the most brash way possible, with as much steel as it could muster. It was a city that sat at the pivot of Russia, and epitomized its national identity. It richly straddled its old and new identity in defiance of Russia's new national character; teetering on the precipice towards anarchy, but failing to recognize that.

They slipped through a checkpoint manned by grueling, butcher-faced Polish paramilitaries. Ullanhu watched the graying stone of the once vibrant edifices of urban Moscow. He thought to himself that this would be the last time he might ever see a European city. When they rode out to establish themselves for their major plot, he might not return from beyond the Urals.

He managed a passing look at his unlikely partner. Vasiliy looked ahead with a deadened face. The Russian's features were pulled gaunt as he handled the steering wheel with the stiffness of a puppet. Ullanhu knew that look of finality; it told him that the two of them had dove over the edge. At any time up until now, they could have given up. Vasiliy, if he wished, could have fled to Novogorod and traded his allegiance to Radek. Ullanhu could have abandoned the mission all together, made his way back into China, and reported Jun dead; he had heard so little from his former partner that he could only assume much.

But both men's loyalty was proven now. Without threat of a gun to the head, they were to throw themselves upon the spears of the enemy, and to make off with the most powerful man in the Republic.

They passed over the Moskva river and headed north-east.

-----------------------

By the time they reached their destination, the sun had risen enough that the historic Russian capital was beginning to stir awake. The mist had dispersed and left behind only a glistening sheet of sweat on the concrete, rocks, timber, and glass.

Sitting in the middle of an empty parking lot, Vasiliy killed the engine, and it's deep rumble fell to a sharp sleepy silence. He sat with his hands held tight on the steering wheel, staring ahead. “This, I be back to.” he spoke stiffly.

Ullanhu looked out the car windows. The scene outside was little more but a empty car park with a concrete dome at its middle. He noted they were parked in just the right way so that the gaping maw of the concrete egg shell was directly facing the car. It was no more than perhaps fifteen meters away. All around their position, sleepy wooden apartments stood over narrow roads, their windows dark with curtains drawn shut.

“So, you think your plan will hold up?” Ullanhu asked. He couldn't claim that he wasn't nervous. In fact the whole of his being was knotted and he was sure that he sounded just as tense as he felt. His hands and arms hung heavy and numb at his sides, and he twiddled his thumbs on his lap.

“Da.” Vasiliy quivered. Ullanhu looked over at him and saw he was shivering, “I just need prepare.” he laughed nervously. Taking a deep inhaling breath he beat his hand on the the steering wheel.

“Keys.” he said briskly, throwing onto Ullanhu's lap the scratched brass ignition and door keys, and he jumped when they landed softly in his lap.

“If I is not back in hour half, then I is compromised. Leave city, mission is fail. Back to China you go, ok?”

Ullanhu scooped up the keys and nodded. Vasily looked like he had seen ghosts; his face was pale and stretched. He hoped dearly he could regain his composure as he opened the door to step out. “I be fine.” he managed to say, “I will be fine.” he repeated in his native Russian, reigning his confidence back to him.

He slammed the door shut and Ullanhu scooted over the bench seat into the driver's side, where he watched his Russian partner stroll to the nearby bus stop. With any luck, the buses wouldn't be late.

Sliding down into the seat and preparing to look as if he was napping, Ullanhu watched Vasiliy through the rear-view mirrors. The Russian looked something like a phantom. He barely seemed to exist among the old men who filed in alongside him, waiting for the bus.

Within moments the bus arrived. The hiss of its breaks was muffled from the glass and metal skin of the car. It stopped at the isolated bus-stop and let in the gathered small crowed. With a diesel roar, it puttered off down the road and disappeared.

And again, Ullanhu was utterly alone. He began counting down the minutes.

-----------------------

Vasiliy could feel the rumble of the bus under his feet. They tumbled through the narrow streets of Moscow, and he watched the city, where he had once grown up, pass by through the greasy, faded windows where the stains of weather, sun, and human use had baked a frosty layer of permanent filth into the glass. His gut turned in his belly. He drummed his fingers across his legs. His nerves had him.

Passing into the center of Moscow, the structure of the city began to take on a much older glow. There was a resilient regalia to the stone and stucco faces of the buildings and shops that remained after the Imperial decline. But all too often, the bus would saunter past windows that were boarded up. In a manner of thinking, the concept of stealing off with the president of the Republic and holding him as hostage was validated, considering how Russia's Third Rome had declined.

But for this, it didn't quite absolve him of his lingering anxieties. For all the infiltration he had done to get within the Republican congress enough to report their agenda to Makulov, and for all the efforts breaking into the ranks of the local military, and even Yekaterinburg's police, the mission against the president felt like pennies to the prize he and Ullanhu were to go after. His mind raced with the frenetic energy of a frantic dormouse as he chased past the doubts. He could use more men. He could have possibly spent more time. Perhaps he should have found a way to bring the president out of the city; to get him into the country and separate him from his guard.

But he couldn't have more men; he would lose subtlety and there would be more factors to failure. He couldn't get more time; the progress of the Chinese was cutting into that. As well, he wouldn't be able to get Alexander Belyakov away from the Kremlin.

All the evidence agreed that Belyakov had been elected on Polish funds and his guard was the same Polish-born para-military outfit that saw to the city's security. Belyakov's removal was not so much a means to end the war quickly, but a way to remove Polish influence and to force Krakow to severe ties with the Russian region. Vasiliy was certain that Makulov didn't tell Ullanhu this; the Chinese didn't need to know. Though Vasiliy had not been told either, he could clue himself in based on the intelligence that he knew, and the wider picture he had now.

It was now just a manner of reaching Belyakov before his Polish security detail could get too close for the routine office duties. Passing to the gates of the Kremlin, he began to concoct his lie. He needed a good one to move the president off the routine path so that he could take control.

The bus stopped, and he stepped out.

Vasiliy walked in the shadows along the edge of Red Square. He passed towering baroque buildings, the washed vanilla-white walls of the Upper Trading Rows building, and the darkened offices that flanked its impressive arched face and tall narrow windows. Immense and long in its dimensions, the square's dark bricks glowed a golden red in the rising sun as a clear overhead sky started to flourish. Flanking it either ends, the indomitable St.Basil's Cathedral stood at the head of the empty square, its round onion and turnip-shaped domes pointing up into the sky. Crooked golden crosses crowned each point and gave an air of the last and only remaining splendor in the city.

At the far end, the spiked red crown of the Imperial museum stood as if in solemn mourning to the statue of the emperor outside its front doors, powerfully suggesting the Tzar's equality to the bronze statue of the Rus warriors out front of Basil's. But even as far as Vasiliy was from it (he was approaching Spasskaya Tower), he knew that statue was the last to be erected for the late czar Nicholas.

Only a brief checking in of his credentials stood between Vasiliy and the Kremlin proper. The guards up front looked sleepy, leaning over scratched wooden tables in the vacant interior of the tower. Over cups of warm tea, they glanced at the badge Vasiliy had thrown to them before handing it back with as little energy as they could afford. He now had employee clearance.

Within the walls, the Kremlin became much more than a location. Guarded behind its towering red 15th century walls was something of a city within a city. A nest of over a dozen large offices, serving as not only the Moscow residence of the Czars, but also the functions of states when it was not in Sankt-Petersburg. Glowing private churches offered weight to the old regime's power being vested by God, and Russia's succession as the Empire of Rome. It was a village of God and of royalty at the heart of a city of God. A fortress that sat as the axle of the world guarded behind bloodied walls.

The inside of the Kremlin was just drearily awake while the rest of Moscow was only now waking up. There were no cars to drive its streets; those that did were clearly military. Public servants and attendees to the president's office and to the Republican command strolled along the side of the narrow roads under the protection of garden trees on one side or the imposing offices of the Republican state on the other.

Vasiliy had to make quick time, and he picked up his pace as he passed Ivanovskaya Square and the massive bell and cannon displayed there.

He slowed to a brisk jog and hugged up against the presidential palace. The door gave no protest as he bustled into its opulent interior.

Vasiliy's feet echoed in the towering cavern-halls of the palace, with its rich interior of frosted white and shimmering white marble, and its glossy reflective floors, the presidential palace was a structure of high decadence. It was filled with a still air where suited attendants and secretaries shuffled along the carpeted corridors under the buzzing yellow lights of crooked eagle-claw wall lamps. On his search for the president, he shifted between a world netted in gold leaf, ebony and pearl, and into the heavenly frosty corridors of its being and tall vaulted cathedral ceilings.

Ultimately, he found him. Alexander Belyakov was a well built man with a heavy frame, and a wrinkled balding head, which looked between officials and representatives of across the Republic. The company that held his attention looked sparse at its best; a few idle stragglers seeking his ear to finish the night's last drawn breath. Vasiliy slowed to a walk, and fought his breath to the ground. He calmed the fidgeting feeling at the back of his mind, trying with the effort of a bear to bring a reasonable collected air.

Vasiliy entered the loose group who sought his attention. And as the squabbling of hens subsided enough that he could speak, he grabbed his attention, settling on his lie. “President Belyakov.” he spoke up, speaking in a high voice as to catch his gaze, but not so much that he yelled his name.

The heavy slab of a man turned to Vasiliy's direction. A pair of frame-less bifocals rested at the tip of a heavy hooked nose. The president's gaze was long and unsympathetic, falling on Vasiliy with a surprising weight in his calm blue eyes. He folded his hands, waiting for the agent to speak.

“Sir, Gregoyovich to see you.” said Vasiliy.

The president's eyes exploded with a shocked light. All at once, he straightened his back and widened his shoulders. It put on him as much a weight as was on Vasiliy's shoulders, and he could see the sudden glint of uncertain anxiety deep in the President's gaze. He became less expectant, and almost more afraid.

“Pray tell, where?” he asked impatiently, walking in close to Vasiliy. He wasn't trying to impose on the young man, but to keep the words spoken as close to the two of them as possible. The officers that had so shortly ago crowded around him dispersed indignantly, grumbling under their breaths about how quickly they had been dismissed.

“In your office, President sir.” Vasiliy falsely reported. Gregoyovich was the President's Chief of Intelligence, at least in an unofficial capacity. Some said Belyakov had appointed the Czarist era army officer to keep an eye on the Congress' own spymaster. But there was an unspoken knowing – even to Vasiliy, the newest of aids – that there was something more dangerous going on.

“Of course...” Belyakov stuttered nervously, he turned on his heels and began walking down the marbled hall, “Tell, was there anything important he wished to discuss?” he asked, turning back. Gregoyovich's name had put the fear of God into the man's heart.

Vasiliy had to withhold his cards for now, but Belyakov's queen was easily becoming his pawn. He followed the president, “Only it was a matter of grave importance.” he said.

“Of course, of course.” Belyakov stammered. He began running. Vasiliy followed.

Either Belyakov did not care, or did not know Vasiliy was trailing after him. The two hastened through halls with high cathedral ceilings, and into galleries where the walls shone with fiery amber hues and brutal golds. The morning light weakly found its way through heavy tangerine-orange curtains, filling marbles halls with a rich warm glow. And though many of the lights flickered in the palatial splendor, there was a constant light from golden chandeliers and gilded niches of light.

Red carpet was like a road to where they needed to be. Quaint tea-tables, parked along the side of the hall, sat empty. They served less as functional pieces of furniture and more as artistic décor, with worn crimson velvet seats, and both gold and brass studded frames.

The hastened trip stopped at a set of heavy mahogany double doors. The deep earthly darkness of the doors contrasted so much with the gold and whites of the wall they almost glowed. Belyakov stopped, and adjusted the collar of his suit. If he had not known Vasiliy was with him, he found out when he turned. But the President did not seem angry. Instead, he gave him a knowing nod.

“I shan't be long, and then it will be the day as usual.” he told him, opening the door to the offices.

Vasiliy meant to follow, but with a thud, the doors closed in front of him. He stood with his hands held out, and the corner of his suit jacket tucked into the crack between the doors. He gave the president a second. Then he slowly put his hands on the handles and threw the lock. The coat, which had been jamming the mechanism, fell to his side, and he stepped into the private office. Belyakov stood in the middle of the room, stricken and confused by the absence of any mysterious cronies.

The door slammed shut behind Vasiliy, and the lock engaged. The noise clearly caught the Russian President's attention. His face dropped slack, and his mouth hung open as the blood rushed from his face. Gawping with the complexion of a ghost, he starred down the barrel of Vasiliy's handgun as it hung before his face.

“T-There was no one...” he stammered, choked with shock.

“Comrade President, get on the floor.” Vasiliy demanded.

“T-there was no one and you fooled me! Cyka blyatt!” he protested horrified, “Do you lack loyalty?” he decried.

“Comrade, president, just get on the floor and fold your hands behind your head.”

“Y-you...” Belyakov moaned, “I failed didn't I?”

“You will have failed if you don't get on the ground!” Vasiliy nearly shouted. His heart beat its head against his chest. It thrummed in his ears so loud he could barely hear the protesting and whimpering of the President, who had dropped to his knees. The firing of a hundred instincts told Vasiliy to do a hundred things at once. Kill the president now, check the room, hold his position.

Put the bag on his head.

Reaching into a coat pocket, Vasiliy pulled out a black bag. Folded, it would have looked like handkerchief for a dinner party. But as it masked the president's head, and as the ties were drawn tight around his fleshy neck, the hood it was became known.

So far, things were going too well. Grabbing the president by the shoulder, he pulled him to his feet and jammed the handgun into his sides. “You're going to follow my moves.” he whispered into his ears, “I do not mean to kill you, I have a use for you. But I may hurt you, I may hurt you a lot if I need to!” he promised, and his words hissed from his mouth like a snake as he watched the door, and pulled the incapacitated president across the room and into the bathroom.

“You don't know what you're doing.” the president pleaded as he was dragged, “You're going to ruin everything. You're going to ruin Russia! Our last chance for restoration, for salvation, for a true revolution.”

“Shut up.” Vasiliy hissed.

Outside, the tapping of passing feet echoed in through the door. Vasiliy froze. Belyakov seized the moment. “HELP! ASSASSIN!” he screamed.

The sound of footfalls stopped, Belyakov screamed more, fighting Vasiliy's grip. “HELP ME!” he roared. Panicked chattering and a worried ruckus trickled through the door. As Belyakov grunted and fought Vasiliy, the individuals outside grew louder. Someone began banging on the door and trying to throw open its locks. Vasiliy's hopes crashed at the sound, and he had to move fast. He had to move desperately.

Lifting the pistol from the president's side, he clubbed the man against the head. It knocked him cold. Vasiliy pulled the heavy set man further into the ivory and glossy bone-white bathroom. He hit the hidden button, and the sink slid away, revealing a dark, damp passage into the escape tunnel below.

Vasiliy wasn't about to give the President comfort as he pulled him down the steps. Concrete stairs nipped and bit at the man's fat ass and lumpy legs as they descended into the darkened, red-lit tunnels.

As alarms blared above, Vasiliy negotiated the president into the private escape car.

The muffled distant alarms and the frantic anxiety that crashed through his body blurred into a single nauseating symphony as he scrambled through the darkened cab for the train car's controls. In the dim red light, Vasiliy could hardly read anything, and a new demon of doubt reared its head over him in the darkness of the train car. He didn't know how to start this thing.

“Shit shit shit,” he panicked over the control modules. Darkened buttons and switches filled the metal panel, their purpose and meaning hidden from him in the clear shadows of the softly blinking and fading emergency lights. He could hear more energy from upstairs as the banging on the door became a heavy ramming.

He had to do something, so started to hit buttons. At first nothing happened but lights soon illuminated the car with their dull amber glow. And he could read and see. He had hit the electrical start, and the stagnant batteries of the car were groaning to life.

“Ignition, ignition!” Vasiliy shouted to himself. Belyakov groaned on the ground behind him. Time was running out for him and the last grains of sand were becoming countable in the hour glass.

Stabbing blindly, Vasiliy found it. An enormous hum filled the cathedral tube of the underground escape rail when the engines started. A cloud of acrid ozone spewed into the air from behind them, and Vasiliy hit the acceleration lever. The train car was lurching down the tracks.

With the slow rhythmic tapping of the wheels over the tracks, they thundered off into the darkness under the blare of frantic sirens. It was a full storm that he had to sail out of, and holding onto the dusty brass interior of the car, he rode it like a pirate villain.

-----------------------

Ullanhu was shook awake by the low, distant whine of sirens and alarms. Grumbling, he sat up in the driver's seat of Vasily's car. As the morning drew later, the interior had grown warmer, and he had woken several times from naps to lower the windows.

Outside his seat, Moscow had moved on around him as if he wasn't really there. But when he watched, he noticed that no one was using the metros. Maybe at times, small crowds of people would hang around the terminal, or in the shade of the egg-shell canopy. But these weary looking people did not seem to actually use the terminal. The idea that no one was putting the city's underground rail system to use was a surprise. But he supposed if they were going to use it for their plot, Vasiliy must have known these rails wouldn't be in use, for whatever the reason.

But now these sirens were a change, and obviously from the reactions of the people in the streets, it was not expected. Though clearly not in a panic, the civilians were startled, and they turned to the source of the alarms that were blaring across the city. Then, tearing through the streets, came the armored trucks and police cars.

Something sank in Ullanhu's heart as he looked on and saw the armed response to some great happening. And he knew that there shouldn't be anything else going on besides their presidential abduction. Someone had to of caught on to Vasiliy. A grave worrying came washing into his heart, and he slid forward, pulling the car seat into an upright position.

The panic and concern that was storming the city soon lapped at his toes. He put the keys in the car's ignition and fired up the engine. With a devilish roar, it spurned to life immediately and snarled idle while they keys were still between the Mongol's fingers. He had never noticed how rough and powerful this bulbous twisted model of a car was until his panicked hands grabbed hold of it's steering wheel.

His heavy gaze fixed itself on the bowels of the metro terminal. He was consumed by a trembling panic. Was he to break away now? Would that be abandoning his comrade? The thoughts, as racing as they were, became the anchor that strapped him to that spot, watching the grumbling shadow of the pie under that sheltering dome. It kept him there until Vasiliy pulled himself from those steps. There was a heavy-set, hooded Russian restrained in his arms. Vasiliy was shouting and waving a handgun in the air.

“Open the doors!”

Those words unglued him, and he lunged over the bench-seat and threw open the passenger door. It swung out on energetic springs. Vasiliy shoved the captured president inside and dived in after. By then, the civilians on the street had already seen what was happening, and they were making noise.

“What happened?” Ullanhu shouted in Russian as Vasiliy slammed the door shut.

“Unexpected guests. Gun it!” his partner responded in Russian. His voice rattled and his tongue jumped and jangled in his mouth like loose bolts. He was in no mind to try and flex his Chinese muscle.

With a gather crowd of spectators (and possible martyrs), Ullanhu wasn't willing to stay. With a heavy groan, the car's engine drank the gas Ullanhu poured for it when he slammed down the gas pedal. A volcanic scream erupted from under the hood as it thundered forward and shuddered over the meridian between parking and road. Screams from the crowd sounded. He burned through the thin circle. A dull thump suggested he had hit at least one bystander with the corner of the car, but he was too transfixed on the road ahead to worry about that now.

“North! North along the main road!” Vasiliy screamed as Ullanhu tore across the plaza. He pointed out across to a wide-set of lanes.

The adrenaline that coursed through Ullanhu's veins numbed him as he rocketed the car over the gutters, side-walks, and polite dividers that had once before created a sense of order. But it was an order widely defied by the Mongolian, and he drove with a central focus as he crashed through bushes and breezed past cars. A part of him felt left behind, and it chased after them, flailing its arms and screaming. Then, with a thunderous bump, they spun out onto the road.

(Action teim)

The tires squealed with the horrendous note of slaughtered pigs. The car swung to the side, and the force pulled the agent sharply to the side and buried his shoulder into the ancient fat of the whimpering president.

“You're doing good!” Vasiliy shouted encouragingly. His Russian rose to a sharp croak against his lips as he turned in his seat to watch out the back window.

Down the narrow road, the lights of pursuing police cars flashed against the depressed wood paneling of low apartment buildings, and the sirens whisked through the bowing boughs of road-side trees.

Ullanhu looked up and saw them in the rear mirror. A feeling of dread laid itself down over him. Its weight felt so heavy that his foot slammed further into the floor, and the car engine gave such a roar that it sounded as if it were on the brink of exploding. He could imagine flames shooting out of the exhaust and from under the hood. They charged ahead, without fear of or respect for the doldrum traffic already occupying the narrow roads.

Racing over the road with the cry of sirens and lights in his eyes and ears, the world blurred to a constant goal. The desperation to evade pursuit became the only thing to him. It was pure blurring survival that became his person at that moment. It went with him as he sped over ridges, over railways, and into the medieval outer fringe of northern Moscow. The sounds of the sirens and the lights became so blurred that they were nothing, Vasiliy's voice was the only whispering truth.

“Turn right!” he ordered. He snapped the steering wheel to the side and, with a loud bang and a bump, it rocketed off the road, skating suddenly down a long gravel trail. Trees along the road-side hung their branches thick over the road. Through the tunnel of trees, light was filtered in broken shards. He bumped along. His jaw jittered.

“They dare not shoot us! We have president!” Vasiliy cackled at his side, he sounded ravenous and enraged with the hilarity of the moment. But, to Ullanhu, he was demented, and his voice rose and fell with the rhythm and rise of sirens.

“Break to the left, comrade! Hurry!” Vasiliy pleaded, “This beast can take it!”

Possessed by the Russian's command, Ullanhu did as he willed. He spun the steering wheel sharply to the side. The car broke into a sharp sliding drift as it struggled to find purchase in the loose sand and dirt of the road. Through the windshield, he watched the road turn to woods, and the intersection Vasiliy had intended them to take pass them by. Suddenly, they were facing back to Moscow, and toward the procession of police and armored cars that had followed them. Far above the dancing boughs of the forest branches, he saw the shine of a helicopter hovering overhead. He wondered if they had machine guns.

Vasiliy threw open the window, shouting orders to drive. The tires spun in the rocks, and they pounced forward as the Russian agent fired off a staccato barrage of gunfire from his handgun. The report was answered by a barrage of heavy fire that shattered the rear windows of the car, the shards of glass exploding behind them and the sheering screams of metal piercing even above the roar of the engine. As Ullanhu turned onto and sped through the intersection, the roar of sirens came back to the agent's reality as a rogue car struck the rear-bumper of their getaway vehicle.

Vasiliy loaded another magazine into his pistol, slamming it in with a sharp click. “We do good!” he laughed, continuing his barrage of rabid encouragement. The President whimpered, crying in shock and fear between them. Ullanhu looked to the side and saw him clutching the back of his lowered head as faint signs of blood trickled between his hands.

They again were racing down the narrow tracks of a forested road that ran true and straight, like an arrow, into the far distance. The engine roar mixed and danced with the gusts of wind that whipped through the inside via the gaping holes where the windows had been. Unseating himself and turning to face the rear, Vasiliy rose his handgun and fired shots down the road.

The pace of the fire was neither as erratic nor as fast as it had been before. The timely, slow shots rang above the engine with the force of a clanging bell as the mechanism rose and fell on each bullet casing, sending a new round down the road. With each freshly exhausted magazine, he reached for a new one and renewed the process, taking shots at the Russian pursuit when they came too close.

Between tense glances down the road and into the mirror, Ullanhu had little time to absorb where their enemies were coming from or how close they were. It must have come with the ring of the pistol, where metal twisted on metal. A whipping crashing, like a bursting mortar shell, happened behind them.

“We are hardly out of the woods yet!” Vasiliy cheered when their pursuers crashed together in a smoldering pile of metal. Ullanhu stole a look through the rear view and, horrified, beheld the monumental pile of debris behind them. As they sped away, rifle fire popped and clanged. None found a mark, and they sped out of range of the shooters.

Ullanhu's heart chased his breath through his chest, and his knuckles glowed bone-white against the black steering wheel. Glistening shards of glass lay haphazardly across the dashboard, blown back when someone opened fire on them. And by the tickle on his cheek, he was sure a bolt of upholstery and been torn loose and was brushing the side of his face.

But he was stunned and numbed. His hands rattled on the steering wheel. He could do nothing but look forward, crashing through the overgrown dirt road.

“We're going to breach the outer Moscow ring-road, be careful.” Vasiliy noted. This wasn't the end of the chase, only a reprieve. His Russian partner took the time to check his magazine.

“I have four bullet left.” he reported, “Let's not get in any more shootouts.”

“Ah-a-ah... o-o-ok.” stuttered Ullanhu. He wasn't in any position or ability to speak as they came up over a short hill.

Then suddenly they were airborne.

Alexander Belyakov screamed like a child, and Vasiliy roared in protest. They became weightless. Reaching for the steering wheel, the Russian borrowed control from across the lap of the president and yanked it to the side.

The dark hull of a armored car grew in the side windows with the long barrel of a machine gun pointed up at them. With a metal-rending crash, the wheels came down over the cab, and the still-spinning wheels gripped and screamed off the thick hull of the armored vehicle as it turned and regained pace. Ullanhu was thrown against the wheel, and Vasiliy had been slammed against the dash. His hands still gripping the wheel, he snapped it to the other side and the car. turned immediately away from an oncoming tank, and rammed across the meridian of the highway. They shot through the pastel wooden barricades that had been thrown up in a desperate attempt to contain the kidnappers.

Splinters of wood clouded the windshield as riot police dove to the side of the suicidal car. The Mongolian was in a lost daze when they crossed the highway and onto another forested service drive. By now, the engine was screaming in pain. Silver metallic smoke streamed from under the hood and bulbous vent.

Branches and bushes brushed and scratched against the side. With eyes covered in the blood trickling from his cut brow, Vasiliy blindly kept the car straight through blurred vision. Ullanhu himself felt blood trickling from his nose as he pushed himself off the wheel. He felt too numb to feel the pain, or the fear anymore. Everything felt as if it were a dream.

Drowsily he asked: “Vasiliy?”

“Da?”

“Why are we slowly driving off the road?”

The scratching and grinding of branches and overgrowth dragging against the doors became heavier, and the bumping over rough terrain became even more dramatic. From under the hood, the silver veil of smoke was growing hotter and heavier.

“We're going to go by foot I think.” Vasiliy said in Russian, “Get ready to jump.”

Ullanhu wasn't about to protest. The seat belt released from his chest and stomach with a sleepy click. Vasiliy grabbed the president by the shoulders as Ullanhu slowed the car to full stop.

“Do not turn it off, keep it running.” Vasiliy ordered, throwing open the doors.

He stepped out onto the wooded trail. Not too distant, the sounds of sirens and confused shouts echoed through the trees. Belyakov blubbered and murmured, childlike all the way, crying with every slight push against his shoulders. The man was clearly shaken, and it reduced his masculinity to a pile of smoldering ashes. Ullanhu would not be surprised if he had pissed himself as he limped out of the door.

Vasiliy threw the president to the ground as he began pulling gas canisters and an ammo box from the trunk.

“Take him and start making distance.” he grumbled. He looked nervously down the road as he began throwing the contents of the trunk through the broken windows.

Ullanhu hobbled over and dragged the president up off the mossy ground. Throwing an arm over his shoulders, he hurried off into the bush. He looked back behind him as the Russian slammed the trunk shut. There was a hand grenade in his hands. Turning and nodding to Ullanhu, he threw it into the window and raced away from the car.

Ullanhu's vision was filled with blinding fire as the car exploded into a ball of flame and twisted metal. Vasiliy dove at him, pulling him to the ground just before a spear of metal pierced the forested air. Smoldering ashes rose into the branches. A massive column of flame erupted from the busted and dented remnants of the imperial sports car, scorching and lapping against the foliage.

“And now we run.” said Vasiliy, pulling Ullanhu and the President up to their feet.

Gondar, Ethiopia

Akanni sat with Ita Thabiti on the shaded terrace of their hotel, underneath a turbulent sky. The city had been inundated with a monsoon rain that morning. Rainwater still dripped from the thatched awning overhead, which had managed to keep the terrace mostly dry, though the balusters and everything near them were soaked.

The Hotel was built in the mixed style of the African Colonial period. European design presented itself in iron balusters and bright blue shudders, while the Arab and Indian influence came out in the boxy shape of the building, the rounded doors and windows, and the adobe walls.

Thabiti, a balding man with the face of a bird, was Princess Taytu's assistant, and with the Princess captive in Dar es Salaam, he had taken on her duties in government. Akanni did not know Thabiti very well, though he knew the rumors about him and Taytu, and he could not help but view the man through the lens of that gossip. But they did not talk about Taytu just then, or about her personal life. They talked about the death of the Walinzi director Amare Debir in Armenia.

"The Armenians are sending us a copy of their investigative work." Thabiti said. He was an anxious man, Akanni could see that by the way he sat, and by the way he fidgeted with his wine glass when he wasn't speaking.

Akanni stared across the city, lost in his own thoughts. Gondar wasn't much compared to Addis Ababa, and though it had the modern amenities that Akanni expected in a city, he could see quite clearly where the edge of town blended into the rough Ethiopian highlands surrounding it on all sides. The city orbited a wooded patch near its center, where the grounds of the late-medieval Imperial Castle stood silent and unoccupied. The Castle, built in an Hispanic style, was a compact construction of grey-stone. It had suggestively phallic towers, and crenels that reminded Akanni of crocodile's teeth. The rest of the city was a colorful mixed-bag of simple African-style buildings made from cheap wood and recycled metal, ancient stone structures, and the sleeker, resort-like buildings such as the hotel.

"Do we know what this was yet, that killed Amare?" Akanni finally spoke.

"I haven't heard a reason. We don't even know what his mission was, or if he had a mission at all. If the Walinzi know, they haven't told us."

That was strange enough to give Akanni a slight chill. Amare wasn't some field agent, he was the Director of that entire region's Walinzi activity. Amare Debir had also been Ethiopia's Ambassador to Armenia for some time. How could a man like that disappear for no reason? "I'd like to see a copy of their report when it gets sent. What can we possibly be losing agents to in Armenia anyway? Their war is already over."

"Perhaps Spain has some interests in the area?" Thabiti suggested.

Akanni said nothing, but the idea that Thabiti was so willing to jump to Spain as a culprit annoyed him. Sure, they were at war, but it seemed foolish to blame everything that ever happened to them on the Spanish. Doing so made the world feel right perhaps, and it justified a feeling that their enemy was the only thing they needed to worry about, but it made them more prone to being wrong, and being wrong was the worst thing. If they failed to catch the threat and opted to presume instead, then whatever had killed Amare could cause them more troubles later on.

"I doubt it. Could there be anything else?"

"We do not know. I will send you the reports when I get them, but I wanted to keep you updated even now. If it is big, it will be an important case going forward, and the Emperor's Government should be prepared."

Akanni longed for the days when things happened that he could prepare for. Nowadays, everything they were faced with seemed much too large for them. "You are a friend to the government. I know this. We will always look out for you."

At that moment, it almost felt as if the conversation was done. But Thabiti did not look finished. He held himself like a man who had yet to start talking. His eyes were fixed; he was stirring a word with his lips. And then he spoke.

"There is another thing you might find interesting." Thabiti said, and a nervous grin spread across his face. When Akanni agreed to have lunch with the Assistant Foreign Affairs Ad visor, he had done so with Agent Amare Debir in mind. He did not know what else Thabiti could possibly have to bring up aside from the typical small-talk. "I was told to bring you this information when I checked in with the Walinzi about the Amare case." Thabiti produced a colored photograph and slid it across the table to Akanni. When the Prime Minister saw what it was, his eyes went as wide as a bug's, and he felt rage broil in the lining of his stomach.

It was a photograph of James Lutalo, the leader of the Wakomunisti, standing in front of a settlement that he had apparently founded. Lutalo had snuck out of Gondar several weeks before, taking the melodramatic route through an irrigation canal in order to avoid questioning by the Walinzi, who were supposed to be keeping a watch on him.

"Look at these walls." Akanni hissed, slamming the photo onto the table. The communist bastard had completely surrounded his settlement with red-painted metal walls, on which his followers had made childish two-dimensional portraits of Marx, Hou, and several other men that Akanni couldn't identify, but assumed to be important figures within the Communist movement.

"Where is this?"

"Just a mile away from Lake Victoria, somewhere near Masaka in Swahililand. He had his followers built it. They call it 'Revolution-Town'. It is supposed to be an autonomous commune. He wants it to be the capital of his communist vision in Africa."

"Revolution-Town? In English?"

Thabiti nodded. "For the international attention, I guess. He likes attention."

Akanni had a more reasons to dislike Lutalo than he had reasons to pretend to like him. The Wakomunisti leader was a rabble rouser who's letters to China had threatened to destabilize their vital alliance. He had spent his Senate career egging on all and any dissenting opinions, allying himself with Fitawrari Iregi, and pulling ridiculous stunts like wearing an armored leather brigandine in public most of the time, or singing The Internationale while the Senate was in session. This move was just as bad. In leaving Gondar and creating his own commune, he opened the door for the further splintering of the African Empire.

Thabiti produced another photo. It showed a grey-haired Lutalo, in his signature brigandine, wrestling young men in the heart of his new Communist compound. For Akanni, it felt like the entire nation was being mocked by the Wakomunisti.

"I want to shut him down." Akanni whined.

"What would that look like? The Chinese wouldn't like it if we went hunting for communists."

"Could we ask them to do it? Or maybe explain the situation."

Thabiti shook his head. "No."

"I know." Akanni waved his hand as if he were shooing the idea away. "I know, they won't go hunting for communists either. I am being foolish."

"Is Lutalo a problem, really? His 'Revolution-Town' might help us, even if it is just a place to dump people fleeing from the war."

Akanni was incredulous. "He's making the Emperor's government look weak. When the war ends, do you see him abandoning his project? He is doing what the Rouge General did in Katanga. He is trying to make a new country within our borders. That is insurrection. We cannot abide by it!"

"At least it is not an armed insurrection. Lutalo is doing whatever he really is doing peacefully."

"Do you not know who James Lutalo is? Even if he is not shooting at us, I can promise you that he is collecting arms, and that is an easy thing to do in our country."

"That is true." Thabiti conceded. He looked at his watched and, without looking up, he sprung out of his chair as if his watch had just told him where to find one million in Spanish Pesetas. "I have to get back to work. Our lobbyists in America have been keeping us busy."

"God will see it done." Akanni encouraged. And then, once Thabiti slid away from the table, the Prime Minister was alone.

He had finished his wine, but a half-eaten bowl of fit-fit - shredded injera fried in butter and spices - was going cold on the table, sitting like a gravestone dedicated to the Prime Minister's nerve-wracked appetite. He had accepted to go to lunch with Thabiti because he needed to eat, and because so much of his job came down to cultivating political relationships. But the De-Facto Foreign Minister had only given him more to worry about.

He stood up and went to pay for his food, passing by only a few other diners eating their meals on a terrace that felt eerily abandoned. The war meant higher prices. The war also meant people were preparing for lean times. He settled his account and went down into the streets.

Gondar, so far north of the action, had yet to completely put on the appearance of war, but like the cold wind before a rain storm, the first signs of the coming conflict were starting to appear. Flags were ever-present. Young people could often be seen growing their hair out, or carrying rifles on their backs at all times. Bomb shelters were being constructed near government buildings, and gas-masks were being bought up by a population of people who had never heard of such a thing until only a few weeks earlier. The fear of bombing loomed over the Ethiopian consciousness here. If the Spanish were to launch bombing raids, Gondar would be a target, and the people here knew that. Worse then bombing was the dread that, like Seattle in America, Gondar would be wiped out by the terrifying weaponized gas that the Europeans now had in their arsenal. Akanni had been given a rubber suit to protect him in case of a gas bombing, but hadn't yet got into the habit of wearing it, and he was rarely in reach of it's protection. It was hot and uncomfortable; the wet-season humidity made it even worse. Besides that, it caused his clothes to clump awkwardly in places, and that made the rubber-suit difficult to grow used to. He had gotten used to cultivating a certain look - his hair trimmed like a French topiary, and his clothing consisting of tailor made shirts and pants under luxuriously decorated open-front kaftan robes. It was a vanity he allowed himself to pursue as a supplement to his power. To hold his office correctly, he had to be able to feel like his office.

Gas was not on his mind anyway. His concern was holding the country together while Hassan and the military handled the war, and that meant Lutalo was a meaningful complication. As he walked down the road, passing the ancient Imperial castle, he entertained a thought about what Yaqob would have done in his position. Yaqob would have went after Lutalo's legitimacy as a communist. That wouldn't have been very difficult; Lutalo was an adventurer, not a philosopher, and he could not defend himself against the scrutiny of a Yaqob-styled scholarly critique. But that was not Akanni's style. Akanni wanted to close Lutalo away from the process of government, to prune him like the dead branch of a tree, so that he was left in the dark to wither and disappear. He didn't want to see Lutalo in jail. He wanted to see him destitute and abandoned.

Despite the war, people still came from the surrounding countryside to participate in the market. Here, wiry men crouched near carts filled with bundles of drying khat. Others sold food of all kinds; bananas, gourds, dates, tomatoes, lettuce, chickpeas, pomegranates, and many other kinds that Akanni did not take specific notice to today. His favorite was the spices, which filled burlap sacks placed on the ground. The wet tarps that had covered them during the rainfall were crumpled and tossed aside, allowing the sacks of beautiful, earth-toned spices to breath in the open air. The smell was rich; like the blend of a dozen suppers with his grandma in the countryside, synthesized into the concentrated smell of her favorite spices. It mixed with the wafting scent of injera frying in the local shops. It smelled like the best memories of home.

--

Akanni returned home - or at least to the home-in-exile that he had made in an apartment near the center of town. He came home to a smell he had smelled in the market - frying injera - and he suddenly felt bad that he was not hungry.

"I have returned." he called out. His boots tapped loud against the creaking wooden floor, and he sat down on a loose-cushioned chair before pulling them off of his feet.

Akanni's wife, Werkenesh, came out to greet him. She was in her thirties, with common height and weight, but a bony thin-featured face and a somewhat toothy smile. She wore a wrap around her wiry hair, and a white dress with gilded borders. There was something simple about the way she carried herself - a common girl from an important family in the capital, who had married Akanni looking for something resembling stability in the unstable African Empire. Akanni, having been caught up in the violent eddies of Imperial politics, had wanted the same thing. This wasn't to say either them were remotely stupid, but rather that both of them had desperately wanted something that seemed traditional. So for them, that was each other.

"You have brought mud into the house." Werkenesh pointed. "Why would you want to do that?"

"I didn't want to bring it. It just followed me." Akanni smiled. His wife accepted that answer. She had never been so worried about the mud. Both of them knew that something like mud in the house bothered Akanni much more than it bothered her.

He kissed her on the cheek, and tasted the teff flour against her flesh. Akanni went to his office with Werkenesh following him.

Akanni's office was a desk and a chair near the window of a small room in their apartment. He had a detailed political map of Africa on one wall, and a traditional painting of vividly colored, cartoon-like musicians playing their instruments against a plain leather background on the other. His book shelf was loaded with books, and he had several filing cabinets stocked full of paperwork.

"Was the meeting with Ita fruitful?" his wife asked.

"I discovered where James Lutalo went." Akanni replied, sitting down. "He's building a commune in Swahililand."

"Like the Rouge General? What is he thinking that he would see that lasting long?"

"Exactly. He is a target to everyone. That is what he wants, but he is still a headache to me."

"People like him are headaches to everyone. He gets in everyone's business and puts thoughts in people's heads. Are you worried?"

"About Lutalo? I have to be some. But..." Akanni rubbed his eyes. "Well, I do have bigger problems. He is just another problem, and I do not need more."

"You know the Chinese." Werkenesh said. She rested her hip on the arm of his chair and leaned over him. "Would they intervene? Would they want to make Lutalo into something like an African Hou?"

Akanni snorted. "They would be in for a surprise if they did. Lutalo wouldn't have the ability to sit down like an adult and handle a position like 'Chairman of Africa'. He would be about the world, starting fires so that he has something to do. Hou knows this I think. But... the Chinese are difficult to understand in things like these. On paper, they would have to support Lutalo, but in the real world, they are not so stupid as to do this."

Werkenesh nodded slowly. "You know these people. I have faith in what you say about them. I am making dinner, are you going to be hungry?"

"I will be later." Akanni smiled. He watched his wife slip out of the room, and when she was gone, he felt all of the pressure of his office come to rest on his shoulders.

The worst thing was that he had nothing much to do but wait. As Prime Minister, his job had been to manage the Senate, but the legislature in Gondar was an embarrassing rump body that struggled to meet at all. This war had exposed cracks in Yaqob's constitutional government, and Akanni was trying to patch those cracks with correspondence. He sent messages to the Emperor, and to individual members of the legislature, in an attempt to organize something resembling a working body.

And so he worked into the night. He read reports from the entrenched army at Dire Dawa, and dozens of begging requests from all of the administrative districts across the Empire. He read about how the son of an exiled Ras was gathering together his own militia band near Lalibela, and his personal request for tanks and cannons to help his glorified shifta band take the fight to the Spanish. He realized that his people saw the war as an reason to scramble for money, and not a reason to give. But where to get money? That was Akanni's problem. Aid was trickling in from all over the world, and flooding in from China. But that was not enough. He could not raise taxes, for doing so would cause more Lutalo's to see this war as an opportunity for their independence. But what else could he do? Sell the few meager government properties? The grain stores? The absentee offices in the legislature? These were all awful ideas.

In his frustration, he drafted a bill that he hoped to give to any willing senator so that it could be forced through the rump-legislature he was sitting on now. It was a desperate attempt to bring back the fleeing legislators, including that bastard Lutalo. The way it worked was simple; the government would begin to charge absent legislators for all of the time that they stayed away.

Arizona

Nate Parker sipped Jack and Coke from a plastic cup. Stewardesses in tight polyester dresses walked down the aisles of the airplane with trays loaded down with food and drinks. Their color scheme was navy blue on the left side and burnt orange on the right with a bright white line serving as a divide between the two colors. The pilot announced that they were making their final approach into Sun City and flashed the fasten seatbelt sign. Nate buckled up and finished off his drink. He opened up the manila file folder on his lap and looked down at the official Federal Crime Bureau seal stamped across the front of the document. This was his third time reading it since boarding the flight in Chicago.

--

Internally circulated FCB intelligence report. Marked: "Classified Confidential 2-A: Restricted Agent Access"/"Pertinent Facts & Observations on Major Sun City Hotel-Casino Ownerships & Related Topics." Note: Officially logged at FCB Central Arizona Office, 1/8/80.

The major Sun City hotel-casinos are situated in two locales: The downtown (Anderson Street/"Twilight Ridge") area and "The Strip" (Sun City Boulevard, the city's main north-south artery). The downtown establishments are older, less gaudy & cater to local residents & less affluent tourists who come to gamble, enjoy low-quality entertainment & engage the services of prostitutes. Junket groups (Elks, Kiwanis, Rotary, Shriners, etc.) are frequent downtown hotel-casino visitors. The downtown establishments are largely owned by "Pioneer" groups (e.g., native Arizonans & general non-organized crime groups). The dispute between the Mafia and Pioneer factions came to a head in a brief conflict in the early 1960's (See FCB File #210189701233 for further details) but the conflict was settled after some minor bloodshed from both sides and peace has reigned in the city for nearly twenty years. Some of the Pioneer owners have been forced to sell small (5%-8%) interests to organized-crime groups and local politicians in exchange for continued "Preferential Treatment" (on-site "protection," a "service" to ensure the absence of labor trouble & untoward on-site incidents). Organized-crime associates frequently serve as casino "Pit Bosses" & thus act as enforcers and on-site informants for their organized-crime patrons.

The downtown area is jurisdictionally covered by the Sun County Sheriff's Department (SCSD). The Sun City Police Department (SCPD) was absorbed by the SCSD in 1968 in order for a more streamlined police service. FCB considers the agency widely influenced and corrupted by factions of organized crime. This corruption is of the type most identified with "Company Towns" (e.g., casino revenue forms the financial base of Sun City and Western Arizona and thus influences the political base and law-enforcement policy). Numerous officers benefit from organized-crime bestowed "Gratuities" (free hotel stays, free casino gambling chips, the services of prostitutes, "police discounts" at various businesses owned by organized-crime associates) and outright bribery. The Sheriff's Dept enforces organized-crime policies with the implicit consent of the Sun County political hierarchy and by extension the consent of the Arizona State Legislature. (Negroes are strongly discouraged from entering certain "Strip" hotel-casinos and on-site casino personnel are allowed to see to their expulsion. Crimes against organized-crime-connected casino employees are frequently avenged by SCSD officers, acting on orders from the Casino Operators Board, an organized-crime front group. Sheriff's deputies are often used to track down casino card cheats, "discourage" them & run them out of town.)

The best-known hotel-casinos are situated on the "Strip." Many of them have been infiltrated by organized crime, with percentage "Points" divvied up among the overlords of organized-crime cartels. (The Chicago Crime Cartel controls the Desert Rose Hotel-Casino and boss Robert Colosimo aka "Bobby C." has a 15-20% personal interest. Chicago mobster Benjamin "Benny" D'Amico (the Chicago Cartel's Sun City overseer) has a 3% interest and Chicago Mob enforcer Jonathan Leggario aka "Johnny Legs" has a 1% interest.)

Smaller percentage points are traded between organized crime factions as part of an ongoing effort to ensure that all factions have a stake in the expanding Sun City casino economy. The profit base is thus shared & faction-to-faction rivalry is averted. Thus, organized crime presents a unified face in Sun City. The man responsible for developing & maintaining this policy is Franco "Frenchie" Gallo (b. 1923), former Montreal mobster, caporegime in the Fortunato Crime family, and Sun City's all around crime boss. Gallo owns points in the Lucky Gent Hotel Casino, which he operates, and is rumored to have points in several others. Gallo is known as "Mr. Sun City," because of his numerous philanthropic endeavors and his convincing non-gangster image. Gallo founded the Casino Operators Board, dictates their enforcement policies and is largely responsible for the "Clean Town" policy that organized crime factions believe will help promote tourism and increase hotel-casino revenue. This policy is informally enforced & has the implicit approval of the Sun City political machine and SCSD. One goal is to enforce ad hoc segregation in the "Strip" hotel-casinos (admit Negro celebrities or perceived "High Class" Negroes & refuse admittance to all others) and to isolate Negro housing in the slum area of North Sun City. (Restrictive real-estate covenants are widely observed by Arizona-based realtors.)

A key policy dictate is the "No Narcotics" rule. This rule applies specifically to heroin and marijuana and cocaine to a lesser extent. The selling of heroin is forbidden and is punishable by death. The rule is enforced to limit the number of narcotics addicts, specifically those who might support their addiction by means of robbery, burglary, fraud, or other criminal activities that would sully the reputation of Sun City and thus discourage tourism. Numerous heroin pushers have been the victims of unsolved homicides and numerous others have disappeared and are presumed to have been killed per the aforementioned policy (see Addendum File #B-3 for partial list).

The last homicide occurred on 12/22/79 and there appears to be no heroin traffic in Sun City as of this date. It is fair to conclude that the aforementioned deaths have served as a deterrent. Gallo is a close associate of International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) President Mitchell Riddle (b. 1929) and is rumored to have secured large loans from the Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund that have covered the cost of hotel-casino building and improvements. The fund (estimated assets 2 billion dollars) gets its money from the dues and pension payments made by IBT locals in thirteen Midwestern states. It serves as a watering hole that organized crime factions borrow from routinely. Dubious organized-crime-connected businessmen also borrow from the fund at high interest rates that often result in the forfeiture of their businesses. It is rumored that a second set of Pension Fund financial books exists (one that is hidden from government subpoena & thus official audit). These books allegedly list a more accurate accounting of Pension Fund assets & detail the illegal & quasi-legal loans & repayment schedules.

Many of the "Strip" hotel-casinos routinely hide a large portion of their assets. These reported accountings are generally considered to be only 70-80% accurate. (It is very difficult to detect sustained underestimation of taxable income in large cash base businesses.) Underestimated table profits are estimated to amount to untaxed revenue of over $150,000,000 per year ('79 fiscal estimate). This practice is called "skim."

Cash receipts are taken directly from casino counting rooms and dispersed to couriers who messenger the money to pre-arranged spots. Large-denomination bills are substituted for slot-machine coins & daily accountings are fraudulently tallied inside the counting rooms proper. Casino "skim" is virtually impossible to detect. Most hotel-casino employees subsist on low wages and untaxed cash gratuities and would never report irregularities. This endemic corruption extends to the labor unions who supply the major hotel-casinos with workers.

The Dealers and Croupiers Local #117 is a Chicago Crime Cartel front. Its members are paid a low hourly wage and are given play chips and (presumably stolen) merchandise as bonuses. All chapters of this union are rigidly segregated. The Lounge Entertainers Local #41 is a Detroit Crime Cartel front. Its members are well paid, but pay weekly kickbacks to crew stewards. This union is nominally integrated. Negro lounge entertainers are "discouraged" from patronizing the hotel-casinos they work in & from fraternizing with white patrons. The four building and building-supply locals who service the "Strip" hotels are Kansas City Crime Cartel fronts & work exclusively with organized-crime-connected contracting firms. The all-female Chambermaids Local #16 is a Los Angeles Crime Cartel front. Many of its members have been suborned into prostitution. The work crews for the above-mentioned locals are run by organized crime associates who report to the Casino Operators Board. The Kitchen Workers Union (Sun City-based only. There are no other chapters) is not organized-crime-connected & is allowed to operate as a favor to the Sun City "Pioneer" contingent and the largely non-ethnic political machine. The union is run by Thomas "Red" Mulligan (b. 1925), a conservative real-estate investor and chairman of the Arizona Gaming Commission. Mulligan is the covert owner of a bottom-rung casino, the "Pot o' Gold." The crew chiefs for the union are all white men and the workers (mostly illegal Mexican aliens) are paid substandard wages and are given bonuses of dented cans of food and play chips for the Pot o' Gold. The workers live in slum hotels in a Mexican enclave on the West-North Sun City border. (Note: Mulligan and frequent business partner Senator Roderick "Rod" Marston are rumored to have hidden points in over seven Pioneer casinos and two dozen liquor store/slot machine arcades around the state. If true, these ownerships would constitute infractions of the Arizona Gaming Commission charter.)

The Arizona Gaming Commission oversees and regulates the granting of casino licenses and the hiring of casino personnel. The Commission and its subcommittees, the Arizona Gaming Control Board and the Sun County Liquor & Control Board, are the most powerful political force in the state. The same five men (Appointed "civilian" members named by the state legislature) serve on all three boards. Thus, the power to approve liquor and casino license applicants for the entire state rests solely in Sun City. Mulligan's connections aside, none of the five board members are overtly organized-crime-connected and it is difficult to assess the level of collusion the boards engage in. There are no dossiers available on members of the above organizations. The SCSD Intelligence Unit keeps detailed files on the Gaming Control and Liquor Board men, but has consistently refused to grant the FCB & U.S. Attorney's Office access to them. (As previously stated, the Sheriff's Dept. is strongly organized-crime-influenced.) The SCSD Intelligence Unit operates city & countywide and is the sole such unit in Arizona. It is a 3-man operation. The commanding officer is Captain Byron A. Randall (the adjutant of the SCSD Detective Bureau & strongly connected to the Casino Operators Board) and his only assigned officers are Sergeant Bartholomew "Bart" Marston (Sgt. Marston is the son of the aforementioned Senator Marston) and Deputy Charles "Chuck" Waters. Waters is arguably one of the most intimidating men in Sun County. The work of the Intelligence Unit is secretive and speculation abounds on if they are as corrupted as the rest of the Sheriff's Dept.

---

Nate closed the folder and pushed his glasses up onto his forehead. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. It was a lot of information to take in. The long and short of it was that Sun City, and Arizona by extension, was without a doubt the most corrupt place in the country. Even more so than Chicago or even Washington. Everything in Sun City was for sale, except narcotics apparently. Drugs were off the table, but people were very much still for sale.

One of the stewardesses leaned in close and slipped a piece of paper to a man sitting two rows ahead of Nate. She winked and walked off, sashaying her hips as she went. The man pocketed the slip into his jacket. Nate had to suppress a laugh. The guy would be in for a rude awakening once he got on the ground and the flirty stewardess would name her price. Of the four women serving as flight attendants, Nate saw three of them flirting and slipping notes to five of the men in first class. The men they targeted all had the same traveling scumbag businessmen look. Even sitting in first class Nate didn't give off that vibe. His cheap suit and hangdog demeanor made it clear that he was flying first class on someone else's dime. That someone was Director Ford. FCB headquarters in Washington bought the ticket under the name Nathan Jameson, the same name his hotel reservation was in. Officially he was on paid vacation from the FCB Chicago office.

The terminal of the Wasserman Airport played up the casino aesthetic. Flashing neon lights were wrapped around the boards announcing arrivals and departures. Slot machines flanked both sides of the corridors and were shoved into every nook and cranny. Nate walked through the terminal with his suitcase in one hand, the briefcase containing his work in the other. He paused at a slot machine and set his bags down. Twenty-five years ago he'd visited Hot Springs, Arkansas honeymooning with his now ex-wife Edith. Back then Hot Springs was the gaming hub of the Southeast. Nate tried to go to one of the little backroom poker rooms that the city was filled with but Edith wouldn't let him. She didn't approve of gambling, she said. He fished out a quarter and fed it into the slot machine. The number spun after he slammed the lever down. The first stopped on a bright green 7, the second on a bright yellow lemon, the third on a blood red cherry. No winner and no payout.

Nate's glasses fogged up the second he stepped out of the air-conditioned terminal. He stopped in his tracks and let the condensation pass. The heat was oppressive. It topped out at 98 degrees easily and he was still dressed in a thicker suit made for the Chicago climate. Nate felt sweat already beading on his forehead and neck by the time he got a cab.

His cab driver as certifiably insane. He was a Chinese man that jabbered in some weird mix of Mandarin and English that had a thick accent to it. Nate only caught every third word. He caught snippets like "cocksucker" and "pigs" and "Norman" and "Cocksucker Norman" and "Pigfucker President." The driver hauled ass down the boulevard towards town, oblivious to traffic signs and other drivers. Two big ass pictures were taped to the dashboard: A miniature version of the world famous poster of Hou Sai Tang was one, a portrait of Eric Fernandez was the other.

Nate tuned out the driver's ranting as they cruised through the Strip. It was early afternoon but the people were out in droves on the street, heading to and from the huge casinos that loomed over the streets. The Lucky Gent had their billboard displaying an advertisement for the next Jackie Bradley fight while a large billboard in front of the Desert Rose Casino announced "Boppin' Barry Chambers Preforms Nightly!" just underneath it in smaller print read "King of the Insult Shecky Lemon." Seeing the name Barry Chambers brought Nate back to his late teens. He and Edith parked on a hill overlooking Iowa, necking while Boppin' Barry crooned "Harbor Lights." The memory brought a soft smile on to his lips.

The loud roar of an engine snapped him out of his memory. A pack of six motorcycles roared down the Strip and blew past the cab. The driver cursed in his mixed tongue and flipped the bikers off as they sped wherever they were going. Nate saw the six men were wearing cut off leather jackets with a motorcycle-riding warrior on the back.

"Fucking bikers," the driver rolled down the window and spat at them even though they were long gone. "White trash piece of shit!"

Another five minutes and Nate was at his destination and paying the driver, who roared off at breakneck speed to find his next fare. The entire Pot O' Gold Casino was done up in a cheesy Leprechaun, luck of the Irish motif. Lots of green and gold and shamrocks with a staff dressed up in green suits and green hats that had four leaf clovers in them. He checked in at the front desk with his alias and got a hotel key. His third floor room was what you expected of the place. Green curtains reeked of cigarette smoke and his emerald bedspread was severely faded due to repeat bleachings. Nate made a mental note not to sleep under the covers.

He laid his bags on the bed and took his jacket off, undoing his tie and wiping the sweat from his face. His room had a clear view of the Pot O' Gold's pool. Women in bikinis sunned themselves and walked around the water. Nate ignored the action poolside and instead focused on a row of six ranch bungalows two hundred yards away from the pool. The small bungalows were pricey and for long-term guests at the Pot O' Gold. Bungalow 4 was the one that drew Nate's gaze. His assignment from Ford concerned the bungalow and the equipment inside his briefcase.

Somehow, he had to break into that small bungalow and wire every inch of it up for surveillance. The bungalow's sole occupant was one Ms. Arleen Rhodes, a twenty-five-year-old redhead from Homa, Louisiana. She had no Arizona or Louisiana rap sheet, but the LA County Sheriff's Vice Unit had a blue sheet on her a mile long. The blue sheet was part of his briefing back in Chicago. Five years of Arleen's hooking on the streets of LA were documented through routine hooker sweeps and undercover pops. Her last arrest in LA was five years earlier. Nothing on her since. The bungalow meant a higher class of clientele. It also made Nate wonder why the FCB wanted it wired. Regardless, it sure as hell beat wiretapping Commies.

-----

Los Angeles

"From Hollywood, it's The Jack Welsh Show!"

The band kicked up the show's theme song as the opening credits played. A montage of clips showed the highlights of Jack Welsh's fifteen years as the king of talk shows. Included in the montage was the incident with the baboon, the time the little kid karate chopped Jack in the balls, and Jack's interview with President Fernandez.

"Tonight's guest: King of the Insult Shecky Lemon and Mr. Cool Boppin' Barry Chambers! Ladies and gentlemen, your host... Jack Welsh!"

The golden curtain opened up and Jack Welsh walked out to a standing ovation from the crowd. Barry Chambers watched it all on a television in the show's green room. To his immediate left, Shecky Lemon snorted lines of cocaine off the green room's coffee table.

"Thank you," Welsh said as the applause died off. "And I have to say, that applause is undeserved because you have clearly not heard my monologue."

The band's drummer fired off a rimshot as the crowd laughed. Shecky came up for air and rubbed his nose, looking at Barry.

"Want some of this, Barry? It's good shit."

"I stopped with the coke ten years ago."

"Jesus, you don't do drugs, you don't smoke or drink. The fuck do you do?"

"Women," Barry said, turning back to the television. "They're my one vice."

Welsh went through his monologue. It was a lot of tepid jokes about the weather and current events. Jack's jokes were always shitty, bombing was part of his shtick. A particularly bad joke got little applause, prompting Jack to pull at his necktie and feign discomfort. Nobody could bomb like Jack. Jack kept going with his monologue while Shecky's coke high started coming on. He sprung up from the green room couch and started pacing around.

Shecky was only about ten years younger than Barry, but he was still new to this level of show business. Shecky had only made it big five years ago while Barry had been a star ever since he was twenty years old. It was still all shiny and new to Shecky, the coke and the girls and the mob guys who liked to pal around with the entertainers. It would lose its luster in a few years and Shecky would probably end up in rehab or hitting rock bottom in some skid row flophouse. But for now he was living it up.

"There they are!"

Barry cursed inside his head as the fat man waddled through the door. Phil "Fat Phil" Patriarca oozed sleaze from every sweaty pore. The fucker always showed up every time Barry came to LA, always pestering Barry about some scheme or another. He was a made guy, a shylock and bookie for Carmine Valestra. He glommed on to the celebrities like all the mid-level mob boys did. They thought having guys like Barry and Shecky partying with them made them somebody.

"Jesus, you've gotten fatter," Shecky quipped as he shook Phil's pudgy hand. "I didn't think that was possible."

Phil laughed. Shecky was the one guy on the face of the earth that could get away with insulting the Boys to their faces. Despite the nickname, Patriarca was sensitive about his weight. Some pawnshop owner once called Phil a fat fuck to his face. The man disappeared for two weeks until they started to find him, piece by piece, in storm drains around Los Angeles.

"Why you always gotta bust my balls, Shecky?"

"I don't bust your balls, Phil. To bust your balls, I'd have to find the tiny fucking things first!"

Phil roared and slapped Shecky's back. Barry glanced back to the TV. Jack was in the middle of some sketch where he was talking to a man in a bear suit while holding a pot of honey.

"I'm glad I got you both here," Phil said. "I got something I want to run by you."

"Come on, Phil," said Barry. "We're just here to promote the show in Sun City, that's all. I don't want to get mixed up in anything."

"Let's hear him out," Shecky said quickly. His eyeballs were pinned and he was in the middle of a coke high. Phil could propose Shecky overthrowing the King of England and he'd go along with it.

Barry sighed and shrugged, motioning for Phil to take a seat. The leather chair creaked and groaned as Phil sat down in it. A PA popped his head into the green room and told Shecky he had five minutes before he was due on stage.

"I'll make it quick," said Phil. "I got approval from Carmine to set up a gambling tour that goes through California and into Arizona. A group of about thirty to eighty guys, like some union local or some shit, sign up together for the tour and pay for travelling expenses up front. We start here in LA and head to the racetrack in Ventura for a day, then to that fucking Indian casino out near the Arizona border for day, then we hit Sun City and go through all the big casinos over the course of two days. It'd be a four-day tour designed to rob these fucking guys of whatever cash they got left over after paying for the trip. Any of them run low, then I'm there waiting to front them the money at my usual interest rates. I worked out deals with the Boys and the Indians who run that casino in Blythe and they all get a cut."

"Where do we come in?" Barry asked.

"I want you two part of the tour. Shecky keeps 'em laughing and Barry keeps 'em boppin' with the sounds of their youth. That keeps 'em happy and they love it so much they don't fucking care about losing their life savings. You each get ten percent."

"I like it," Shecky said. "If Phil cares about money as much as he cares about food, we'll be fucking millionaires off the percent. Excuse me, gentlemen..."

Phil roared while the PA came back in and collected Shecky.

"We'll discuss it more after the show," Phil said, wiping tears from his eyes. "I got Shecky interested, Barry. What do you say?"

Barry leaned back on the couch and looked at the television. Shecky came onto the stage like a fucking hurricane. He was doing some bit with Jack, holding his necktie in his hands and playfully slapping his face. The hicks in the seats ate it up. They were going wild as Shecky started pointing out people in the crowd to insult.

"We got the gig at the Desert Rose," Barry said with a shrug. "That's seven shows a week, Phil. We won't have time for any tours, much less a four day one."

"I talked to Benny and he's agreed to let you out of your gig at the Rose if you sign on to this thing. He says this is more of a money maker than what you're doing now."

Barry felt anger rising inside of him. The Desert Rose, his comeback, was a goddamn flop and now he was being asked, told more like it, to escort a bunch of KofC members and Shiners and Teamsters around the country and butter them up while they lost everything to the mob.

"This is beneath me," said Barry. "I can still pack 'em in, Phil. I don't want to go on some fucking pissant tour playing to nickel and dimers."

"Beneath you?" Phil asked, color coming into his face. "Let me tell you what's not beneath you, you jewboy fuck. It's not beneath you to help out people who have looked out for you your entire fucking life. It's not beneath you to bite the fucking hand that feeds you. Didn't Frenchie get you out of fucking New York all those years ago and send you out here to become a star?"

"And I've paid him back for that many times over," Barry spat. "And the jewboy crack sure as fuck isn't bringing me around to your side."

Barry glanced at the TV. Shecky was in the middle of the audience, berating some sap for his ugly bowl haircut. From there, he moved on to a fat man and got a solid minute out of making fun of him and his skinny wife. "I'm sorry," he told the wife. "I'm sure when he rolls off of you, you need to get pumped back up." The crowd went wild. The camera cut to Jack, sitting at his desk with his feet up and laughing along with the crowd.

"I'll do it for twenty percent," said Barry. "Shecky stays at ten, but I get twenty. That's my price for working with anti-Semites."

"You goddamn jew bastard." Phil tried to get up, but he was wedged into the chair so tightly it was hard for him to pull himself up. Barry resisted the urge to laugh outright.

"Do it or I walk," Barry said. "And I'll take Shecky with me. He's a jew too, Phil. I'm sure he'll love to hear your kind words about our people."

Fat Phil pulled himself out the chair with a plop. The exertion left beads of sweat on his forehead. He was a deep shade of red that looked almost coronary purple.

"Fine!" He said as he stormed out. "Tell fucking Shecky that I had to go somewhere, I'll be in touch with you goddamn heb thieves.'

Barry laughed quietly to himself once Phil was gone. On the TV, Shecky was on a political kick. He was doing Alfonso Sotelo with a limp wrist, sashaying around the studio while the audience went apeshit. Shecky put on a fay voice when he said "Oh, I just have to have Africa! It goes to well with all my other colonial possessions, don't you think? If I don't get Africa, I'll just scream!" He suddenly became an Ethiopian warrior, thumping his chest and spouting out gibberish that sounded like some African language. The crowd was on the verge of mania as Shecky acted out Sotelo bending over for the Ethiopian warrior. Barry roared laughter and clapped his hands.

Airspace over North Africa

They had warned him about everything but this.

Alfonso Sotelo’s staff and bodyguards had practically begged him not to step aboard the airplane. Should he go through with joining the pilots of the 35th bomber wing for the first major bombing campaigns of the Spanish-Ethiopian war, the Prime Minister would be placing himself in great peril. Miles and miles above the ground, away from his squads of crack bodyguards and the might of the Ejercito, there would be no help for the Prime Minister should disaster strike. And disaster was a very distinct possibility on this mission, as expressed by concerned bomber pilots.

“If your Excellency’s aircraft happens to be shot down over hostile airspace, you will be captured. Imagine that: the Prime Minister captured by the socialists. It would be the end of the war,” Captain Estevez said as his prime minister affixed the bombardier helmet’s chinstraps to his face. That was a sobering possibility to be sure; how delighted Emperor Yaqob and his Chairman puppetmaster would be to have the nemesis himself in chains. Not even Spanish-occupied Africa in its entirety would be a sufficient ransom for the life of Alfonso Sotelo. But as horrible as that thought was, Sotelo knew it to be an impossibility. Ras Hassan’s phantom airforce, whose surprise attack at Djibouti nearly ended the Spanish invasion before it even began, was still at large, but was certainly concentrated around Addis Ababa and the core of the Ethiopian homeland – a land far removed from the target of tonight’s sorties.

What Sotelo wished they had warned him of was the sheer monotony.

The Prime Minister twiddled his thumbs in clasped hands as his eyes wandered about the cabin - a surprisingly claustrophobic space given the airplane's massive size. This was a Gargola, the workhorse aircraft of the Spanish military. These impressive machines could fly great distances while carrying up to twelve tons of cargo; Sotelo himself had seen such an airplanes take off with a halftrack strapped down within its cavernous fuselage, but this particular Gargola was a different beast. The Ejercito and the Armada used cargo variants extensively to maneuver and mobilize across Spanish Africa, where the Spanish-built railroads never strayed very far from the Mediterranean coast. But while the ground forces and navy used the cargo variant, the Spanish air forces possessed Gargolas built for the aircraft's original purpose: carrying heavy bomb loads deep into enemy territory. Tonight's mission entailed precisely that.

Sotelo was therefore surprised that such a mission could be so boring. Two hours had passed since their takeoff that afternoon, and absolutely nothing of interest had happened. If those pilots had not extolled him on the dangers of their mission, but instead told him the flight would be dreadfully boring, Sotelo would have never stepped aboard. Sotelo was no coward, but neither was he a patient man. Having been asked to remain buckled in and seated, he could do nothing but look about at his cramped surroundings.

The world beyond the aircraft seemed no more interesting. Beyond the nearest porthole window, an azure Mediterranean Sea crawled past. A cottony smattering of clouds drifting by over the sea was the only indication that the plane was moving past them at all. Not much in the way of a view. Back inside the airplane, plastic panels covered the walls and ceiling of the cabin, all of which were riddled with instrument dials. At least a hundred black, glassy dials could be seen from Sotelo's seat behind the cockpit, each one giving the viewer the exact value of some arcane measurement. The hands of some were perfectly stationary or quivered slightly while others spun wildly around their centers. He couldn't begin to guess what any of them meant. First aid kits and a small fire extinguisher were the only other objects that adorned the walls of the cabin, save for the only mark of decoration inside the airplane. Affixed just above the portal to the bomber's cockpit was a framed portrait of an angelic woman with a golden halo crowning her head. She could be none other than Saint Barbara: the patron saint of all those who earn their living with explosives.

Beneath Saint Barbara's stoic gaze, one of the airmen emerged from the bomber's cockpit and approached the Prime Minister.

"Your Excellency, my copilot has relieved me from the yoke. Feel free to unbuckle yourself and move around if you wish," the pilot offered as he unstrapped his chinstraps and pulled the helmet off of his head. "Oh, and you can take your helmet off now," the pilot added, who Sotelo row recognized as Captain Estevez. "We're at cruising altitude now - this is the quiet part of the mission."

"This is the quiet part of the mission?" Sotelo sighed, yanking his own helmet off of his head before trying to comb his pompadour back into some semblance of order with his hands. "I am beginning to suspect your exhortations of peril were all for not, Captain."

"I wouldn't speak so soon, Excellency," the pilot cautioned. "We're still in transit to the target. Because of your... decision to join us tonight, we've made some alterations to the mission. Our squadron's original target was traded with a sister squadron for a somewhat safer destination. Even so, there is still potential for danger. Now is not the time for danger, Excellency - that comes later. In any case, come with me. I'd like to give you the grand tour while we're leveled out."

With that, Sotelo unbuckled himself from his seat and stretched his arms out. After two satisfying pops sounded from each elbow, the Prime Minister followed his host deeper into the aircraft. Captain Estevez led him down a narrow aisle through the fuselage. Where the aisle terminated, two tiny cubicles opened up on either side. Fold-out desks were surrounded by instrumentation and still more dials, and seated at each were airmen busy with their respective roles - but not too busy to offer Sotelo a brief salute.

"This is the communications suite." Captain Estevez reported, gesturing to an airman busy turning knobs on a large radio console, listening intently to some transmission through a mic-affixed headset. "Our communications officer is our contact with our squadron, fighter support, friendly aircraft, and any Republic military assets within range. He is our link with Madrid and the outside world and is in constant contact with the chain of command until we reach enemy airspace and go quiet." Sotelo regarded the communications officer with a nod before he and his host turned moved on.

"And here is the bombardier's suite. The bombardier is charged with assisting the pilot and copilot in navigation until we approach the target site. At that point, his role is -as you might imagine- is the destruction of all assigned targets, and he has the most sophisticated technology at his disposal to ensure he succeeds at that role."

"You've got check this out, Excellency." An eager bombardier showed Sotelo what appeared to be a periscope sight emanating from his console, inviting him to peer through the lens. The Prime Minister stooped over to peer through the binocular sight, and found himself staring through a crosshaired bomb sight aimed directly downward into the waves miles below. The bombardier flipped a knob on his console and with an audible click, the sea became an intensely bright green.

"Active and passive infrared lens," The bombardier declared proudly.

"Night-vision bomb sights," The captain translated for Sotelo. "The advent of this technology has allowed us to conduct bombing missions in absolute darkness as easily and accurately as those carried out at midday. The enemy can no longer rely on the cover of night to save them, while the same darkness offers us enough protection from hostiles that we can fly without fighter escort in most situations." That reminded Sotelo that Ras Hassan's pilots had apparently been trained to fly at night - presumably without the use of night vision goggles or any of the balance-tipping technology that the Spanish Fuerzas Aereas enjoyed. He thought momentarily about reminding Captain Estevez of that detail, but thought better of it.

"Most impressive," Sotelo instead concluded, pulling himself away from the bombardier's post.

The aisle hooked to the right behind the comms station and became a short, narrow corridor that wound around the bomb bay. Sotelo followed Captain Estevez through the tunnel-like corridor, hunching down just to squeeze through. Through a porthole window, one of the bomber's great, black wings could be seen reaching out over the Mediterranean Sea. Hanging underneath the Gargola's ebony wing were two fat engine nacelles, each one holding a propeller rotating at supersonic speed and generating the rhythmic hum that reverberated through the aircraft.

"That nearest engine pod is actually quite the marvel of modern engineering," the pilot noted as he saw Sotelo's glance out the window. "A Gargola's two inner engines use what's called a contra-rotating propeller - two propeller fans rotating in opposite directions on the same shaft. They're substantially more efficient than a standard propeller."

"Is that so?" Sotelo asked with feigned interest.

"Absolutely. These propellers allow the aircraft to travel farther and with less fuel. If we were to get into a bind, we can even shut off the outer engines and coast on fumes with just the contra-rotating props going and extend our range by about 1,500 miles. Even one of those engines going would allow the aircraft to limp away to safety." The pilot pressed on with the tour, but -to Sotelo's irritation- not the topic of conversation.

"Contra-rotating propellers are poised to revolutionize the role and capability of the strategic bomber just as the jet engine is currently revolutionizing fighter aircraft. Unfortunately, we'll probably never see a jet-powered bomber in our lifetimes, but for now, these contra-rotary propellers are the cutting edge of bomber technology," Captain Estevez continued on. Sotelo suppressed the urge to say his host was wrong about jet bombers being an impossibility. Alfonso Sotelo himself had pressed the military to discretely request bids to create a bomb-carrying aircraft capable speeds at least as fast as a fighter jet: a vehicle capable of delivering VX weaponry anywhere on the globe within hours. Preliminary reports from the Motores Magdalena research department, the skunkworks responsible for the Fantasma, showed incredible potential.

After navigating the narrow corridor all the way through the bomber, stooped over so as to not bonk one's head on the low overhead girders, Sotelo and his host reached the tail end of the tour - literally. The plane-spanning corridor terminated in a dome of pleixglass that extended just beneath the tailfins of the bomber. Scrunched up within the dome was yet another crewmember seated within a metal armature behind a pintle mounted machine gun. He curled around within the contraption and offered the prime minister a salute.

"Why hello there, Excellency! You snuck up on me."

"This is our ball gunner," the captain explained. "His duty is to ensure enemy fighters do not approach from behind and get the drop on us. That said, I'm somewhat alarmed that we were able to catch him unawares." Captain Estevez teased.

"If there are are hostiles sneaking up on me from inside the plane, then we've got problems even I can't solve!" the gunner retorted in jest.

"Redoubtable, to be sure," Sotelo concluded after studying the machine.

"And a good thing too. Especially on missions like this one where we have to keep a low profile and fighter escort isn't an option, having some defensive capa-"

"We lack fighter support?" Sotelo interrupted.

"That's right. The Black Panthers fly under cover of night, not escorts. We go in flying on the deck to avoid radar detection, destroy our targets, and head home before we get intercepted." Captain Estevez added. That seemed a needlessly risky strategem, even by Sotelo's standards. And though it grated Sotelo to defer to anyone else's judgement, he understood that in the skies, Estevez was the expert and Sotelo knew essentially nothing.

"Care to try the ball out?" The gunner asked, extricating himself from the turret and offering the seat within to the Prime Minister. Sotelo agreed, lowering himself into the seat gingerly. The skies opened up around him, and he came to appreciate the fact that he was truly flying in a way that could never be experienced by simply sitting within the cabin. The ocean and the clouds rolled by right beneath his feet, the curvature of the very Earth was laid out before him. Sitting in the Gargola's turret was like sitting upon a cloud.

Sotelo's attention quickly turned to the machine gun. Between his knees, he found a huge firearm resting upon a pintle armature pointed out of the turret through a rubber diaphragm. Two drums laden with 50-caliber shells rested against his knees while his finger gravitated toward an enticing trigger. He couldn't resist.

A succession of thunderous reports resounded through the airframe as a forked tongue of fire spewed through the muzzle and vents along the barrel. Sotelo's face wrung itself into a grin as he watched white-hot tracers arc through the clouds and down into the sea. Captain Estevez and the gunner could not help but give a hearty laugh upon seeing his Excellency's unstifled smile. Sotelo soon discovered the pedals under his seat were used to control the rotation and pitch of the ball. He spun down and fired a series of rounds straight down into the sea.

//Getting some target practice in, I see,// the co-pilot's voice came in over the turret's intercom speaker.

"Sure are," Captain Estevez replied. "If his Excellency loses the election come September, I think he'd like to become a ball gunner!"

Sotelo's smile evaporated upon hearing that remark. Sotelo had made assurances that there would be no real competition for him in the Republic's fast-approaching election - the Partido Conservador's "opposition" candidates had been selected as regime stooges in return for Sotelo's promises of choice Sudanese mineral rights and reconstruction contracts in the soon-to-be Ethiopian Republic. But there was still a chance, however infinitesimal, that Sotelo would lose. The past four years were only the beginning. With the ultimate victory nearly in his grasp, he could not falter now.

//I'd be glad to have him on our crew! But I have to tell you, Captain, the outer right engine light just came on. I have a good idea what the issue is, but I'd like your assistance with troubleshooting it.//

"A restart will likely sort it out. I'll be back right away, regardless." As the Captain made his way back to the cockpit, Sotelo began to pull himself out of the turret.

"Oh don't worry about that, Excellency," said the gunner. "They'll want me up there as well to keep an eye on the gauges. Sit tight, you've got the best seat in the house!"

"In that case, I will remain where I am, thank you." With that, Sotelo was left on his own, watching the ocean and the clouds pass by far below. Even with this magnificent view, ennui soon set in once more. The shimmering wavecrests miles below were a soothing sight for the idle Prime Minister. A teeming agenda every single day, with scores of aides and advisers talking in his ears, with decisions to make and briefings to digest, typically gave Alfonso Sotelo very little idle time. This, coupled with a voracious appetite for cocaina, effected a very severe sleep deficit. The wavecrests lapping upon the Mediterranean far below him were quite soothing to behold. So relaxing to weary eyes.

His eyes snapped wide open. Sotelo had no intention of sleeping no matter how boring the flight might be; Spain's cultural shift from a nation of indolent siesta-takers to ambitious investors and workmen fueling the most powerful economy in the world had been hard won over several generations. Catching the Prime Minister asleep during the flight could have severe ramifications.

Nevertheless, his eyelids became heavier and heavier with each blink. Sotelo fought to keep his eyelids open, but fought in vain. His eyelids fell at last, and sleep overtook him.

THWUMP

That sound galvanized the Prime Minister from his sleep. He was trapped within an inky fishbowl. What was this place? It took a moment for Sotelo to recall where he was and how he got here. He must have fallen asleep in the turret. The blackness of night surrounded him; he had been fast asleep for several hours. He realized that they were likely very close to Ethiopian airspace now.

THWUMP

Another percussive burst that shuddered the airframe. A globe of fire materialized in the blackness beneath Sotelo's feet for a fleeting moment before disappearing. The frequency of these plane-rattling bursts increased dramatically over a matter of seconds. The nocturnal void surrounding Sotelo lit up with dozens of momentary flashes; like fireflies in a midsummer field. It dawned upon him that this was a flak barrage. He found himself in the midst of the war he had created.

A flash of hateful orange banished the night from the Earth below, giving the Prime Minister a glimpse of the world he was flying over. A countryside of arid scrubland could be seen, all illuminated by the fireball of a Spanish bomb. A dense cluster of buildings cast long shadows as the fireball rose and dimmed into a smoldering red and disappeared into the night as ember-infused smoke. It was a city - an Ethiopian city - but where?

Over the incessant rumbling of anti-aircraft shells exploding around the airplane, he heard a much more powerful blast. If the flak shells were drums of this martial beat, this sound was a gong. Curious to see where this second blast had come from, Sotelo used his foot pedals to swivel the turret around. A provincial Ethiopian city, illuminated by another infernal blast, came into view. A city center of squat buildings no higher than four or five storys situated itself on the banks of a braided river, which was surrounded by a disorganized network of slums. A single trestle bridge spanned the river - or at least it did until it was engulfed by yet another brilliant explosion. From his plexiglass-enclosed perch, Sotelo watched in awe as the blast sent steel beams that had to have weighed several tons each into the air as easily as straw in the wind. Concrete support pillars crumbled under the force as the roadway itself collapsed into the river channel in a maelstrom of dust and embers.

"Excellency!" Sotelo heard the gunner call out from behind him. "The flak is too heavy, get out of there!" As irritated as he was by such a command, Sotelo had no intention of dying to airborne shrapnel. He pulled himself out of the turret and back into the relative safety of the Gargola's aluminum skin. The gunner slid into the turret with practiced efficiency and swiveled about in every direction, scanning the night for any sign of enemy aircraft. Evicted from his seat, Sotelo made his way back toward the cockpit to see the rest of the crew in action.

Through a corridor illuminated only by dimmed red overhead lighting, Sotelo hobbled through the bomber, pressing against the walls as the plane shuddered from a tireless flak volley. Outside, he could hear a loud pitter-patter that sounded like fat raindrops crashing against the bomber's hull. A chill ran up his spine when he realized that the sound was, in fact, particles of shrapnel falling upon the fuselage.

Through the portholes, Sotelo watched the part of the bombing run unfold. Against a city illuminated by fireballs and flak muzzle-fire, the silhouetted forms of two Gargolas could be distinguished. Against the blackness of the night, their black paint scheme made them all but invisible. From the nearest shadow, a quartet of small bombs fell away toward the Earth from its underside hatch. A spotlight flickered on from the city below and pointed itself at the farther of the two bombers. The shadowy bomber was bathed in cornea-searing white light, galvanizing it to veer away sharply from the impending flak barrage.

"All aircraft must take evasive action!" Sotelo heard the communications officer speak into his headset as he made for the cockpit. "I say again, all aircraft must take evasive action! Panther Queen out!"

"Fucking worthless Oficina! Their intelligence report was a crock of shit!" Captain Estevez's copilot fumed. "N'djamena was only supposed to have minimal anti-air defense!"

"This is what I was hoping to see, Captain!" Sotelo declared, clutching the back of the co-pilot's seat for support as Estevez banked hard to the left to confuse the Ethiopian flak gunners. Just then, in view of of the cockpit windshield, a flak shell burst alongside another bomber. A trail of sparks manifested in the exhaust wake of the sister plane. One of its contra-rotating engines - the type that Estevez had blathered on about that afternoon - suddenly went ablaze. The Ethiopians had seen it too, because within a matter of seconds the flak around that plane intensified. Another well-placed shell hit the beleaguered plane squarely in its burning wing, blasting it apart in a burst of shredded metal and fire. It in a trail of embers, the doomed Gargola careened to Earth in a flaming death spiral.

"You've seen nothing yet, Excellency." Estevez snarled through gritted teeth. "We're hitting the deck - hold on!"

The pilot pulled the yoke to its absolute limit, sending the bomber in a pirouetting dive toward the Earth. Sotelo hugged the back of the co-pilot's seat as he watched the slums of N'djamena race up toward them through the windshield. Estevez chose the precise moment to push back on the yoke - a difficult feat for a relatively cumbersome Gargola - and leveled out just above the rude rooftops of the city's outskirts. Tin roofs and radio antennae flew past the cockpit at a dizzying speed. Just ahead, the muzzle flare of an anti-aircraft cannon could be seen flashing in and out of existence at roughly eye level.

"Point the turret dead ahead." Captain Estevez spoke into his intercom speaker.

//Looking to show them some payback for our squadmates, Captain?// Sotelo heard the gunner reply over rumble of bombs and shells.

"You know it."

Nestled in a vacant lot between two plaster tenements was a pickup truck with a cannon mounted on bed, Armenian-style. They were getting so close now that Sotelo could see the gun turning to face toward them. In the firelight of distant bombs, Sotelo could even distinguish the individual gunners.

"Dales plomo!"

With that command, the underside turret thundered to life. White tracers streamed out from under the cockpit and tore into the truck; a shower of sparks and a plume of ignited gasoline assured that gun would pose never pose a threat to any airplane again.

"We will now proceed to the main target." Captain Estevez announced into his microphone. "We are making our way to the radar facility, beneath the operational ceiling for their guns, but too low for the bomb sights. Therefore, you will release the entire bomb load on my mark."

//Understood,// acknowledged the bombardier.

The pilot banked and turned about, giving them all an excellent view of the bombs exploding throughout the riverfront center of the city. From this vantage, Alfonso Sotelo could truly appreciate the scale of this conflict. All throughout the northern hinterland of the Pan-African Empire, Ethiopian cities, fortifications, and outposts were being razed in this exact manner. Tonight, it was N'djamena. Next week, it would be Khartoum, and then Kinshasa and Malabo. And then Kampala, Dessie, Nekemte, Gondar and so on and so forth until Yaqob Yohannes was Emperor of nothing but rubble and cinders.

"I have a visual on the radar masts! Arm the bombs and standby to release!"

And when Addis Ababa was in ruins, and the secret weapons Sotelo had amassed over the past four years shown to the world in all their horrific splendor, the nations of the Earth would understand that resistance would accomplish nothing.

"Bombs away!" Estevez ordered as the plane swooped above the enemy radar dishes.

From Beijing to Berlin, from Washington to London, there would be no one left in all the world to oppose Spain.

"That's a hit!" the co-pilot exclaimed as a brilliant flash underneath the plane banished the night throughout the land.

For a day was fast approaching where the Spanish would be ready to make war on all the Earth and triumph.

"Then we've destroyed all our intended targets. Get the rest of the squadron up to cruising altitude, we're out of here."

And on that day, by conquest or capitulation, all the Earth would submit to Alfonso Sotelo.

Belyakov was thrown to the ground as the two agents crawled up to a low wooden fence, dividing the suburban yard beyond it from the forest around it. In the distance sirens continued to blare and somewhere out of sight a helicopter was flying overhead. But it was far from the three now as they checked over the fence. Belyakov, still hooded and masked coughed and gasped for air as he lay crumpled in the dirt. He was as exhausted as he was dirty, with the work of thorns and prying sticks having torn is fine expensive suit in many places. Mud as well caked much of his body. In short, he looked less a man and more of a scarecrow than anything.

Over the low wall a squat house paneled in brightly-colored wood siding stood sleepily surrounded by an overgrown garden. A weathered wooden play structure found itself a home in a corner of the property and a forgotten tricycle had managed to find a home half-stuck in the weeds along the fence to the right. The two agents examined the scene with calculating eyes.

“What is of thinkings?” Vasiliy asked in a low voice, he had control of himself enough to try speaking in his shaky Chinese.

Ullanhu was hesitant as he looked over everything again, “Probably a small family.” he said, “Young kids, probably several. I don't imagine anything over six years of age.”

“I is of agreeing to that.” Vasiliy nodded, “And garden is messy. Has to be of one parent.”

“Mother perhaps, no time between kids and work to tend to a garden.” Ullanhu agreed, adding to their profile, “What are you thinking?”

“We need car still, one they is of not looking for. We take their car.”

Ullanhu nodded, he felt a tinge of guilt in his stomach. He nibbled at him at tugged at the strings of his conscious. Were they going to steal from a family? One having a hard-time even?

“I don't see sign of dog.” Vasiliy pointed out.

“I don't either.” concurred Ullanhu, “How are we going to get Belyakov over?”

Vasiliy looked down at the president curled into a ball at the bottom of the fence. He was gasping for breath through a rapidly inflating and deflating bag. “We throw him over fence.” he affirmed, “Drag him the rest of the way.”

“Are you sure? I don't want us to kill him before we can get to Makulov.”

“Is of alrights.” Vasilisy comforted, “He is of man who can take much abuse, he has dished out much already. Is of no change from the norm. Know what to do when we get to the house?”

Vasiliy looked back to the squat single-story home with its shallow roof with wooden shingles. “We can control the mother if we control the kids, threaten them.” he said. The worm in his stomach bit down harder and he felt almost sick he was recommending it, “We don't need to kill them, but pretend we will. She'll give us what we want if we want to get their car.”

“Is good plan, but I think we should destroy phones too. Take them of prisoners as well, at least until we get clear of Moscow. Then they can't tell anyone we is leaving.”

“If you insist, I'm up to anything.” Ullanhu agreed.

“Good, good.” Vasiliy smiled, “Now help me with old bear.”

Reaching down they picked up the president. His heavy body was rolled over the fence to where he landed with a muffled thump on the other-side. Vasiliy and Ullanhu jumped over after him, and taking him by the collar of his once rich suit pulled him up to his feet and across the lawn.

Vasiliy threw his weight into the door, and it swung open as if held by match-sticks. With a crash he and Ullanhu had broken in with the exhausted president in close tow. Immediately they were greeted by a child seated at a high table, picking through a simple sandwich. The kid look up at them with a look of surprise frozen in his face, his sharp blue eyes looking out from under dirty-brown hair. That look of innocent wonder soon exploded into that of young terror as his mother walked into the kitchen and saw as Vasiliy tore the gun out on her son.

She opened her mouth to scream, but Vasiliy cut in with a silencing order, “No sounds or I put your son down!” he screamed threateningly. The child began to whimper and cry. Ullanhu hung back awkward and unarmed. He searched the kitchen frantically looking for something, and found the block of kitchen knives at the corner of the counter. He pulled one from the wood, and threw the rest aside into the sink.

“W-w-what do you want!?” the woman whimpered looking from Vasiliy to Ullanhu, and the bagged president in Vasiliy's arms, “I-is this...”

“Just stop talking!” Vasiliy shouted, shaking the handgun at her child. In his terror the young boy began to sob and cry. The weight of the situation finally dawning on him, “You're going to do what we want!”

The woman looked at Belyakov, trying to figure out where he added in. Or who he was. “Hands up first.” Vasiliy ordered.

The woman obliged, cautiously raising her hands to her head.

“M-mama!” the young boy cried.

“It's alright Ivan, just be good.” his mother counciled. She starred Vasiliy down with a frozen look on her face. If she was going to die she was going to make sure Vasiliy watched her life leave her eyes.

“Do you have a car?” Vasiliy demanded. The situation was falling out of its initial madness and into some semblance of control. But there was still a frantic nature to it. It was still tense. And it still made Ullanhu absolutely ill.

“Y-yes.” the woman nodded, “I-in the garage.” she nodded off to the far-side of the kitchen to the far door.

“Where are the keys?” Vasiliy demanded.

She looked between he and Ullanhu. “Hanging on the icebox.” she responded, looking over at the faded ivory-white metal box perched up on a low shelf, “Right-hand side.” her voice was low and shaky. She was nervous, and afraid. But complacent at least. If things went on as they did, neither of them would have to kill anyone.

Vasiliy gestured to Ullanhu to fetch the key. He worked his way to the side towards it, and reached over to the set of keys hanging on small metal hooks attached to the side.

“Alright, you two are going to come with us.” Vasiliy demanded, waving the gun, “Out of your chair!”

Sobbing, the boy jumped from the chair and ran over to his mother. She wrapped her arms around him and looked up at Vasiliy with cold hazy eyes. Tears were beginning to well in the corners. But Vasiliy wasn't going to have it, not yet.

“To the garage!” he ordered.

Complacently, she obliged. Dragging her son with them. “We're going for a ride.” Vasiliy sneered, “Ullanhu, you're driving. I'll look after these three.”




There was an almost unbearable heat that beat down from the clear open skies. A clear summery heat that was oppressive in how unshaded it was. Clear outside the center of Volgograd and heading south, Jun strolled along the edge of an eerily rural highway, itself spookily empty save for the odd truck or car that idled its way down the long empty stretch of road-way.

By some strange, perhaps frivolous urban design long open fields stretched on along one side of the road, disappearing below the bases of distant high-rises. While on the other-side the distinct blues and azure cyans of Russian country housing dotted the opposite side with low darkened wood and wire fencing. Solemn street lights stood in meditative prayer as they leaned over the road. The metal posts sprouting out from and curling over banks of short leafy saplings.

Now mid-way along the road, the long path to Old Sarepta was becoming long. Even though the pain that would be in his legs did not gnaw at him like it would have a normal man, he felt the dawning torture of absolute boredom lay its sheet across his head. It was a time where as he walked down the long straight world he wondered why he was here, or why he was doing this. Would simply walking into the Volga delta have been more effective at finding that distant, rumored Chinese community?

But it was hardly time to think about it. Alongside of him a battered and scarred green van pulled up slow alongside of him. Looking aside to the van Jun and the driver's eyes met. With a loud purr the van's engines kicked into a higher gear and slowly accelerated away. Jun stopped, watching with an apprehensive look as the van pulled to the side. He became tense as his hand wandered to his gun as the gravel of the road-side popped under his tire. His cold heavy hands were wrapping around the handle of the revolver tucked close to his breast as the driver door swung open and a man jumped out into the grass.

If he was going to get caught in a shootout, now would be a good time for it to happen. Under the Russian summer sun the two men starred each other down in a setting more fitting for American film. An uncomfortable tense air blew between the two as each stood measuring the other up.

“I'm unarmed, comrade.” the other man declared, holding up his hands. He was a tall figure, with a body built like an ancient oak. Short curly hair whipped down against his brow as he walked over to Jun, hands raised. His eyes hidden behind a pair of glossy, mirror-reflective aviators.

Jun still wasn't sure. His sudden appearance only added to his already tense unease from wandering the lawless southern reaches of Russia. He still kept his fingers hanging on the wooden handle of the nickle-plated gun in his pocket. An urgent feeling warmed his hands to simply dive for the gun and pull it on this man. The other wanted to dash for a sword that wasn't there, only reminding him to how naked he felt in the wild open.

Still, the man kept walking to him. “Jun, am I right?” he asked suddenly. Hearing his name spoken by a Russian sent a paralyzing spear through his spine and Jun froze.

“I'm an agent of Makulov. I received a report months ago to keep an eye out for someone fitting your description. We were supposed to help?”

Jun could vaguely remember the general's offer to back him up. But so far he had not taken him up on it. Nor had he had the opportunity. But still a creeping disdain and repressive paranoia about the man kept Jun's fingers hovering over his gun.

The Russian man looked Jun up and down, studying the torn jacket and his tense posture. But behind those wide glasses the man could have been a camera. He was lifeless in his calculating. “You look like a man whose been through a lot. Did someone shoot you through the lung?” he wondered, looking down at the patched hole hovering over Jun's left breast.

He looked down at it, “This isn't my coat.” he said back, breaking that heavy anticipating silence. The other man nodded.

“Well get your hand off your gun and let me take you for a drive. Where to?”

“Sarepta.” replied Jun. The Russian nodded, lowering his hands.

“Come on, before we're seen.” he beckoned, walking to his battered pale-green van. Jumping into the driver's seat, the Russian threw open the passenger-side door letting in Jun. The agent threw his pack of supplies down between the seats as he slid in.

As he seated Makulov's agent reignited the engine. With a gasping groan it choked itself to life. A muffled metallic ringing pounded from the engine block as it turned back onto the road and was again puttering along.

“When I hadn't had any confirmation on you in a month I was sure you were dead, I didn't expect to see a Chinaman wandering around Tsaritsyn until you showed up.” he began casually, “But I suppose if you're alive still Makulov's offer still stands. What do you need?”

Jun was hesitant to answer, “I could use my sword back.” he lamented, he had been without his Miao Dao for a long time.

“I'm afraid that's not on my inventory list.” the Russian confirmed with a distraught sigh, “I can get grenades, guns. Need a rifle? I got plenty! Polish manufactured too, nothing better except for Spanish guns.”

“I don't need any of those.” Jun responded.

“Right, well it was worth a shot.” the Russian sighed. “What are you going to do in Old Sarepta?” he inquired.

“I'm acting on a lead.” Jun answered flatly. He wasn't in a mood nor did he believe he was in a position to be honest and flat. And though he was not lying he wasn't going to divulge the entire truth.

“You need any back up on this?” Makulov pressed, “Sure, I imagine getting through all these miles to get to this little gem on the Volga doesn't mean your a pussy piece of shit. But come on, what are you doing solo?” he demanded. His tone was somewhere between being belittling and casual in its matter-of-fact teasing. Whatever the case of the banter, it wasn't particularly inviting to the agent.

“That's all, really. I'm acting on a lead.” he insisted.

“Mhm, I see.” nodded the driver, “So what are you going to do after? Go kidnap the president?”

Jun scoffed, “Where ever this goes next.” he answered.

The agent laughed. It was a deep earthly laugh. “Do you want to know what Makulov is up to?” he asked.

Jun considered. “What is he doing?” he asked.

“Word through the grapevines is that he's moved the army to Yekaterinburg and his holding the city to siege. Already they downed an airplane that was supposedly carrying some ten members of the Republican congress and their aids. They've been boasting about that over the radio for days!” he boasted, “Why are you here though and not there? Wouldn't Beijing want somewhere there next to Makulov? For, you know: coordination?”

Jun thought. Makulov's sudden change in priority was a sure surprise. And the dawning realization of what was going on suddenly put his current mission in a new light. What was his purpose out here if not to impress Makulov enough to assist the Chinese directly? “My partner is still with him.” he said, or hoped.

“Ah, I see!” the agent exclaimed, “So the Chairman and Makulov are within each other's light. I suppose that's a good thing.”

Jun didn't see the need to respond. He held a silence as he felt himself lose the entire point in all of this. What was he doing trying to kill Mafiya heads? Why now go after the Horse Lord? He had watched Gabriel kill him. But, The Wraith had assumed command, he guessed.

“Where you going in Old Sarepta?” the agent asked.

“Do you know The Italian?”

“I do, I was just going to visit him. You're not going to kill my contact, are you?”

“Not if I don't have to.” responded Jun.

The Russian shrugged indifferent, “Probably wouldn't matter to me. There are plenty of Gopniks I can extort for intelligence. But The Italian has had much broader contacts. Would be a shame to lose that fat fuck.”

“I'll try not to spoil your merchandise then.”

“Fair enough.”




Through glistening windows of the train Chu Sun watched as the city of Nanking came into view as they rounded the bend. Obscured by concrete walls and grassy berms separating the farmland from the tracks what had moments ago been a suggestion drawn by blurred pencil-drawn lines of smoke became a strong fact in the afternoon sunlight.

Nanjing, nestled between two stony mountains peeled into view across farmland and fields of wild flowers and alfalfa. Groves of trees in the distance covered the low cityscape only to break apart and show it again where development had demanded. Even miles away where only the stalks of textile factories, refineries, and the region's manufacturing were thin twigs jutting from the ground there seemed to glow a gentle blue light under the clear sky above.

Trembling into the city's edge the farmland began to dissipate as the train entered into town, guided by high walls as it coasted through its shallow trench. With a whistle blaring, it pulled into the central station.

Picking himself off up the seat Chu Sun grabbed his bags under his arms. He tipped his cap onto his head and nodding his fair wells to the conductor exited into Nanjing. Shuffling down from the train he bounded down onto the platform.

All around him people walked crisscross along the open-air pavilion of Nanjing's northern train-station. In the warm sun of summer it was all but comfortable. A hot oppressive humid heat lay across the platform, compounded only more by the smell of the acrid smoke from the trains and the hot sweat and bodies of passengers disembarking their trains, or shuffling to meet theirs.

Strategically placed across the platform large fans buzzed over the crowd, desperately trying to turn the air into a comfortable breeze but did little more than help suppress the smell of exhaust and people against the packed platform. The only natural comfort that swept the train terminal was that of a summery breeze that swept over their heads.

Chu Sun held onto the brim of his hat as he looked to the sky. It wasn't set to rain, though the ground under his feet glistened with the drying remnants of a storm that had just passed through. Birds gathered over-head on the lethargic half-arch that swung over most of the platform. They clustered together along steel beams and watched the flocks of humans wander below. Pulling the visor of his cap down low, Sun marched on.

The terminal structure itself was a much more comfortable affair than outside. Here the fans did not push the stifling air down and the people much more thinned. Marked halls and offices kept the flow in an organized manner as overhead music from speakers played. Some soft classical orchestra swung the old languid strings of folk compositions inter-spaced by morsels of news through a choked tin-can. The tinny wavering of the reader's voice hummed above the chatter and background noise of the terminal building as he squeezed through the checkpoint to the city outside.

Standing at the top of a bank of steps Sun faced the sun again, this time glistening off the rolling green of the Yangtze river. From the far side of a paved plaza decorated with trees and shrubs around a towering statue of a rifle-armed revolutionary the mighty Yangtze shimmered in the sunlight with sliver ferocity. Boats both modern and ancient skirted across the waves as the life of the city moved and turned between its banks. And below him the traffic of the road moved with as much intensity.

At the bottom of the stairs buses waiting, departing, or arriving gathered at the side-walk farming from or delivering to the station the masses only to tremble off into the flow of the traffic spewing a thin cloud of smokey-blue exhaust. Sun Chu stood at the top of those steps, looking down to the side-walk below searching for the man who was to pick him up. Scanning the road-side he adjusted the lapel pins on his slate-gray uniform.

The road was awash with motor traffic and the unhurried pace of the remnants of an older China. Horse or bike drawn carts galloped or rolled down the far-side of the street. These wagons laden with produce or raw-materials moved the commerce of the smaller unregulated markets of China. The artisan's world, an industry too meager to approach or too hobbyist to bother. Or if not for them, it was from the out-skirting farms and destined to market.

Through the course of the traffic he saw cutting a course through the cars, trucks, and buses what he assumed to be his ride. A police car, white with sharp-corners and a single button flasher perched atop its hood swerved across the lanes, and parked itself in a recently vacated spot. He used the vacancy greedily, using it to its highest advantage as the officer within pulled over to the side. The man inside looked around and looked up at the station, Sun Chu rose a hand to hail him as he looked up towards him.

The Nanjing officer's face lit up as he saw him and he swung open the door and stepped out onto the side-walk. “Comrade!” he shouted over the roar of engines as the loud rumble of cars and the chatter of people.

Sun Chu rose a hand to him and walked down the steps, holding his briefcase close to his side as he came down from the station.

“Jeingguan Sun Chu, brother.” Chu bowed, introducing himself.

“Hua Rui.” the other officer introduced himself as, returning the favor, “Is it just you?” he asked, looking behind him expecting more.

“For right now.” Chu answered, “I came alone, I gave the others extra time to prepare so I could come ahead of time and do some preliminary work.” he explained, “They should be in town later today.”

“Oh, right right.” Rui acknowledged uncomfortably, “I was expecting I would be driving a few more is all.” he added, smiling stiffly. Walking around the police car he added as he opened the passenger door: “Please, take a seat. I'll explain what's happening on the way in.”

“Thank you.” Chu sighed, moving to claim his seat. As he sat down Rui slammed the door closed and ran to take the wheel. As the car started with a strained groan they were off into Nanjing's streets.

As Rui pulled through the traffic, he began his briefing, “Things are going to moving fast for Dong Wu's body.” he began, “So I think the first thing you'll need to ask to do is get morgue access and follow up on the examiner's autopsy of the body. But the Dong family is demanding we send it to them for his cremation and funeral so you can't have it long.”

“You're running out of time on him then?” inquired Chu.

“We're reaching that threshold. He's not an unknown corpse so we can't keep him indefinite.” Rui quipped sarcastically, “They've been loud petitioning the department for us to hand his body over so they can perform the last rights and put his ashes to rest.”

“This has to be hard on them.”

Hua Rui shook his head and laughed, “Fuck if it hasn't been on us. Mrs. Dong has been storming into the department wailing for us to surrender the body and we're holding off for as long as we can for you and your staff to arrive.”

“My condolences on you.” Chu quipped without particular remorse.

“Yea well, whatever.” sighed Rui, “Beyond that the original crime-scene has been cleaned up now. You're not going to find any uncontaminated forensic evidence but we got a long list of witnesses we need to have followed up on. None of us in the department has the time to go through them head for head and keep up on the city's own drama. Our detectives are working several cases of their own, we're understandably stressed.”

“Mayor reacted?”

“He has, but said nothing that sounds at all original. A lot of promises to clamp down but we don't know how much he or the city commune can or will do to involve themselves. It might stink of political favoritism to them.

“Or is this why you're here?”

“I try not to ask.” answered Chu, “Scene aside, do you have anything else? A remains of a bomb?”

“Plenty of that. We're trying to put it together but maybe when the rest of you get here you'll get it done faster.”

“I plan to.” Sun Chu asserted.

[/h2]Taklamakan desert, South of Korla, Xianjing[/h2]

A pair of riders crested the rolling sand dunes of the Taklamakan atop chestnut horses. They rode atop their mounts high and majestic as they trotted through the gently shifting desert sands. The soft muffled beat of hooves in the winding wind-trails on the desert floor the only sound that broke the gently puffing air. From the south a lethargic sigh of cold dry air rolled down from the Himalayas into the desert basin. The riders rode right into it.

“Your back is still rigid, you grip the reigns too tight!” Han Hue called as he came over the hill, just behind the youthful rider who took the lead. Ma Gang looked back awkwardly at his uncle as he shifted in his saddle.

“When I was a youth your age I knew damn well how to ride a horse!” Hue continued to berate as he trotted alongside his nephew, “Though the times are changing tradition should not.” he reminded the boy as he came to match his nephew's pace down the hill. Han Hue's voice was solid and scolding, it held a promise of a whip behind it. Even though he was long retired, that long general that had decades ago shepherded men across the field still commanded his soul and spirit. It possessed him when he needed it, keeping him genial when it needed to be.

But staring down at his nephew as he looked up at him that past had come forward. He was a critical teacher.

Ma Gang could not argue with his uncle's certainty, and adjusted to his expectations. Softly as if he was riding on clouds Hue commanded his horses to circle to the other-side of his nephew as they reached the low valley of the dunes.

“You may know how to ride a motorbike, but what happens when it fails you and all you have is a horse? Its comfort relies on you being just as comfortable. Are you comfortable?” inquired Hua.

“I-I am now.” Gang responded nervously. He snapped his head forward as he leaned his weight back off of the incline the two had been on.

“The people of these lands and our family have been riding and raising horses for generations beyond memory.” Hua He preached, “It is in our blood. Unless my sister lost that blood when she married that man from Wuhan.

“But feel the beast between your legs. Know the way its muscles turn and flex as it walks. Know its weight and what it wants. Know it like a friend so you can command it to go where you need it to. Its and your wills should be one.”

“Can I ask a question?” Gang approached carefully as they came to trot through the bottom of a sandy trough.

“Ask and receive.” He bid openly.

“China has aeroplanes and tanks. Why bother with something as antiquated as horses?”

Hua He scoffed. “On some fundamental level all society need some beast of burden.” he answered, “Even China, we still need our horses and our oxen and the mules. Not all peoples in the great nation can have mechanical tractors and crop dusters. They may not be capable of running such machines. Or the opportunity may not be afforded on them. And should the opportunity or capability be out of your reach to use a truck or a motor-bike: would you take the horse as your vehicle or your feet?

“And even to a small extent our army must use horses. And I have heard of Russian militaries in the west who in their desperation turn again to the horse as their sacred vehicle. It is preparation and readiness for a certain possibility that you must learn. Should you find yourself in the mounted patrol units or by some cruelty you are incapable of driving: learning how to ride will pay in spades.

“And even more Gang,” He continued, pausing, “it is part of my legacy.” he added.

“I was the premier cavalry commander in the west loyal to the old communist party. I commanded the Hui-People's Lancer Corp. Many of those men have died or faded away, and I'm not waiting for that legacy to pass. It falls upon each man to teach the next generation the same skills bestowed upon him by his father and father's father, and his own brothers and comrades. Each successive generation is owed by the previous to be bestowed upon with the wisdom of the collective experience of their father's and mother's. It may take a child-hood, or it will take a life-time. But you will learn from me: and the holy Quran.”

The desert continued shifting endlessly as the pair continued their ride under the clear never-ending skies above them. As the afternoon sun began to wane and arc low into the sky the two stopped in the shade of a sand-dune. Hua He tossed onto the ground a light pouch. He produced from it several loaves of flat naan bread. Handing over a dish-pan size wheel of flat-bread to his nephew he took a seat in the dry sand and the two ate.

“It was too far from Korla that I was sitting with my men having a meal much like this.” Hua He said, breaking a gentle silence that had hung between the two. A glossy look of reflection shone in his eyes. Ma Gang looked at his uncle with an enraptured stare. He liked the war stories, “We were half a day from the city after the party officials requested we put down a perspective attempt at Uyghur separatism. It was hardly much. Small, almost irrelevant. Distant from the virtuous energy that was the first East Turkestan Republic. But we were tasked at quelling them.

“They broke from the city as soon as me and my men arrived and surrendered themselves to the desert and disappeared. Our simple presence was enough to remind them of the hostilities their people faced if they acted reactionary to The Party. But soon after we caught wind of a Russian column that was maneuvering further west. We suspected they were some part of a Russian mission to bolster separatists and maybe build a Russian satellite in China; we had heard rumors like that, they were looking for a new Mongolia in China.

“So not several hours after arriving in Korla I ordered the men to remount and ride west. We stopped for an hour during an evening like this: still, quiet. You could hear the horses breath as the sun lay down to rest. We ate simply, looking west to where our target rested. We expected an actual fight, we were looking for one.”

“What happened?” Ma Gang asked.

“We got there and the Russians were tired and wounded, they had fled into China from Turkestan having been chased out but Kazakhs angry at them. They were hoping to go home but we rode half of them down, injured and captured nearly a hundred. The rest scattered and ran north. Back home I think, I hope.”

Hua He's voice fell silent as he looked to the dark northern sky. His face gaunt as he drifted through the memory. “Home was their peace and now Russia is on fire. Sometimes when I think about it I wonder if those men are proud now. I wonder even if they decided to pursue asylum in Siberia, or if they're in Outer Manchuria. It's unlikely, I know.”

“If China were to be like Russia, would you flee?” Gang asked.

Hua He stopped to consider the question. It came with its own complicated answer. For all his prison sentences and personal insecurity with the state he had to ponder it. “I would die here.” he answered.

Wallington, London

Ray Newman’s head pounded and his temples dampened as he passed through into the small living room of James Oldfield’s childhood home. Newman had really tied it on last night. He’d spent most of the morning throwing up and had made little time to iron out the several sizes too small suit that clung to his body. It was a wonder he’d managed to make it to the memorial service that morning at all. Even seeing people move intensified his nausea and he stood with his back against the wall of the room to steady himself for a moment. Paul Winters nodded to him with a knowing smile from across the room. Unlike Ray he’d known when to call it a night and looked in far better shape than Newman this morning. As Ray moved to place a hand on his face he saw the form of a slight, grey-haired woman moving towards him. It was Oldfield’s mum. She placed a gentle hand on Ray’s side and smiled at him.

“Thank you for coming, Raymond. It means a lot to me.”

Alice Oldfield was young, far too young to be the mother of a dead son, and despite her grey hair there was still a youthfulness to her features. It was unnerving how much she looked like Oldfield. As far as Ray knew Oldfield’s parents had divorced when James was in his teens and his father lived off in Spain with a pretty young wife. Newman had thought he might have been here this morning. He’d thought wrong.

Ray smiled back at Alice feebly as he felt another wave of nausea sweep over him. “There’s no need to thank me. James was my partner, ma’am. It’s the least I could do in the circumstances.”

“Still, I’m sure what happened hasn’t been easy on you,” Alice said as she pushed a strand of grey hair behind her small ears. “Do you have family about you? A wife, children, things like that?”

Ray felt his cheeks redden with embarrassment and he shook his head as he stared down at the ground. “I’m afraid my wife and I separated some time ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Alice sighed. “A man should have people around him in times like these. It’s not good to be on your own. You know, James spoke of you often. He said you were a good man, Raymond, and that he learned a lot from you. You’re always welcome here. Don’t hesitate to stop by if you ever need someone to talk to or a cup of tea.”

Even through his nausea and embarrassment Newman felt his chest swell with pride at the thought Oldfield had thought him a good man. Ray wasn’t even sure whether he thought he was a good man or not. He’d lost his wife, his children wanted nothing to do with him, and he’d never seen a suspect he didn’t think he could punch the truth out of. James Oldfield had been natural police, the kind of guy the used tell stories about, over-prepared and always informed. He put Newman to shame. It was why Ray felt so guilty at the fact he was the one still left standing and not James. If Oldfield were stood in a room full of Ray’s loved ones, few and far between as they were, he’d be consoling them instead of them consoling him, he’d have found the words to make this seem alright. Yet here Ray was still steaming and sweating through his cheap suit from the night before.

Newman looked to Alice and was taken aback by the strength the mousy woman was showing. He cleared his throat and tried to put his feelings into words as best he could. “I feel like this conversation should be happening the other way around.”

“Nonsense,” Alice said with a gentle smile. “That person that pulled that trigger may have robbed my son from me but I refuse to let them take the happy memories I have of James. He was an inquisitive child, an excellent, diligent student, and a better man. If he were here he wouldn’t want me to cry or weep for him. He’d want me to keep living my life and that’s what I intend to do. What better way to get back at the people that took him from me?”

Newman stared at the picture of James Oldfield in his uniform at the front of the room. Scattered around it were flowers and other pictures of him. It mad Ray sick to his stomach that whoever had gunned James down was still walking around on the streets somewhere. They’d killed a policeman and gotten away with it. What was happening to this country that such a thing could happen? That the police, the government, that everyone wasn’t tearing the whole damn country apart looking for his killers. It was because they were coloureds. Ray knew that. Campbell was too soft on them and it trickled down into every home, every police station, and every school in the entire country.

Ray shook his head grimly as his silent vow found voice. “I’ll find the coloureds that did this, I promise you that much, and when I do I’ll make them hurt for it.”

He had expected a smile from Alice Oldfield, perhaps even a hug, but the second his sentence had left his mouth Alice’s face had contorted into a look of disgust that cut Newman to the quick.

“I am not comfortable with that word, Raymond, and neither was my son,” Alice said with a scornful shake of the head. “James did not believe in “us and them” and I won’t have you profaning his memory by speaking like that in my home. If you have any respect for what James stood for you’ll remove that word from your vernacular this second.”

Around the room heads had begun to turn in their direction and Ray could feel eyes boring into him as he took Alice’s words in. She was wrong. At least, Ray thought she was wrong. He thought back to that night in Brixton and remembered his discussion with James. A burnt out car on a council estate, probably burnt out to draw them there, and still Oldfield wouldn’t finger the coloureds until he had them bang to rights. If he’d listened to Ray and not trusted those animals to act civilly maybe he’d still be alive. Yet there was something there, a nagging thought at the back of Ray’s mind, as he thought about Oldfield. He thought highly of James. More so than he did Winters or any of his other colleagues. Maybe even more so than anyone else he’d known. How could someone right about everything else be wrong on this? What if… what if James wasn’t wrong?

Ray shook his head slightly and banished the thought from his mind as he glanced towards Alice. “I’m sorry… I spoke out of turn, I should have known better than to… I just… The person that killed James is still out there and there’s nothing I can do about it. They’ve put me on administrative leave and… I don’t know what to do with myself at the moment. I can’t remember a time before I was just… the uniform.”

After several seconds of silence Alice looked at Newman as if she could see through. At once Ray felt like she saw him, the real him, beneath all of this. She sighed sympathetically and stood against the wall with him. “Why did you become a police officer?”

“To help people.”

Alice gestured to the people around the room. “You don’t need a uniform to do that, Raymond. James helped people long before he put that uniform on and I’m certain he would have continued to long after he’d taken it off too. You can still help people.”

Given that Ray could barely look after himself the notion of his being able to help other people seemed alien to him. He looked to Oldfield’s mother tentatively as he asked. “Where do I start?”

“Why don’t you start with yourself?” Alice said with a gentle smile. “I’d hoped this service might grant the people closest to James some closure, that it might help them move on, but I can see that it’s not enough for you.”

Again it felt like Alice’s frosty blue eyes saw into him. Newman felt like they were the only two people in the room as she spoke to him in a tone so gentle, so tender that it was almost hypnotic. He was a grown man, the best part of a decade older than Alice, but he could feel her mothering him as she might have mothered James once. He wanted to be strong enough not to need her support and guidance but in truth he needed it more than anything. He felt his nausea clearing as she spoke and his shaking hands felt stilled by words.

“Go back there, Raymond, go back to where they took my son from me and make your peace. Don’t let my son’s death be in vain.”


Brixton, London

Keenan Gayle climbed the final few stairs of Moorlands Estate with Simone’s small hand clutched tightly to his. Keenan was covered in dried paint and dust from the afternoon’s work and his muscles ached but he sensed relief but a few paces away as they reached the top of the stairs. His daughter swung a lunchbox bearing a unicorn around by her side and it smacked her father’s legs with each step they took but Keenan was too tired to complain. All he wanted to do was rest. As they turned the final corner to their home Keenan stopped dead in his tracks as he spotted a portly middle-aged man in his doorway adjusting the locks on the door to their flat. He tugged his daughter behind him and approached the man cautiously whilst trying not to alert his attention.

When he was within a metre of him Gayle barked at him in a voice that forced the portly man to jump. “What the fuck’s going on?”

From beside him Simone looked up at him with disapproving eyes. “Dad.”

“Sorry,” Keenan sighed. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”

The man shouted into the flat and another man appeared. He was tall, standing six foot four at the very least, but impossibly thin. He wore a grey suit and a long black trench coat over it that reached almost halfway down his calves. His short black hair formed a quiff at the front of his head and his sharp features and inquisitorial eyes put Keenan ill at ease.

The skinny man reached for a clipboard and scanned it whilst cliking his tongue as he took in the details. “Mr. Gayle, I presume?”

Keenan nodded. “Yes, now tell me what you’re doing to my house?”

The man shook his pointed head without looking up from the clipboard. “This is not your house, Mr. Gayle, this house belongs to Lambeth Council and now that Mr. Clarke is deceased it will go to another tenant that needs it.”

It was unnerving to hear Errol referred to as Mr. Clarke. Errol had never been Mr. Clarke to Keenan or Simone, he’d never even been Mr. Clarke to his postman, he’d been “Uncle Errol” to everyone. The police had still yet to visit Keenan about Errol’s murder and he’d not heard a peep about any investigation into it. Yet here the council were trying to take their home away from them. If he wasn’t so exhausted he would have been inclined to lay hands on the man in the trench coat for his condescension.

“We need it,” Keenan mumbled as he tried to get his head around what was happening. “This is our home.”

“Was your name on the tenant’s agreement, Mr. Gayle?”

Keenan didn’t even know what a tenant’s agreement was and he was too tired to pretend. Instead he shook his head and tried to appeal to the man’s sense of fairness. “We’ve lived here for years and where I could I gave money to Errol here and there, he was like a grandfather to my daughter and a father to me. You can’t just come and take our home away from us. That’s not right.”

The tall man sighed as he placed the clipboard beneath the armpit of his trench coat and signaled to the locksmith to begin working again. “This home ceased to belong to Mr. Clarke the moment he illegally sublet the property to you, Mr. Gayle, so I’d be thankful for the time you did have in it if I were you.”

“What are you talking about?” Keenan spluttered as his eyes widened. He placed his hand in the doorway to Errol’s flat to stop the locksmith from resuming his work. “Where are we meant to live?”

The tall man frowned and placed one of his pale hands on Keenan’s arm to remove it. “Go to the housing office at the council building and they’ll place you on a waiting list for social housing. Given your daughter’s age I can’t imagine you’ll have to wait very long for a home. Six months, seven perhaps, eight or nine at the very worst.”

“This isn’t right,” Keenan said as he stood his ground. “This is our home.”

The tall man’s grip was vice-like as he pried Keenan’s arm away from the doorway with ease. Despite his slender frame there was a strength to the man that made Keenan seem like a gnat. “No, Mr. Gayle, it’s not. The sooner you get your head around that, the better for both you and your daughter, I’m afraid. As of this morning this home belongs to Lambeth Council again. Am I understood?”

He wanted to fight it. He wanted to throw down with the tall man, the locksmith, and whoever else they sent to take their home away from them but he knew this was the beginning of the end. There was no way back. The home was gone. No matter how many times he pleaded with him, no matter how he begged, the flat Errol Clarke had lived in since the day he’d arrived from Jamaica was gone. Losing his temper would only make things worse. Keenan had Simone to think about. The last thing she needed was to lose him too.

Keenan stepped back, shot his daughter an unconvincing smile, and then looked towards the council official with eyes like an open wound.

“What are we meant to do, man? Where are we meant to go? This is all we have.”

A heavy sigh escaped from the tall man’s lips and he rubbed his brow with one of his pale hands. He gestured towards the locksmith to stop working again and scribbled something on his clipboard impatiently before looking up at Keenan with a sympathetic expression that sat uncomfortable amongst his pointed features.

“Look, I’ll give you a night, okay? That should give you enough time to get your things together and find somewhere to stay for the time being. This time tomorrow I’m going to come back and I expect both you and your daughter to be long gone. Alright?”

Keenan nodded by way of thanks and the man took a glance towards the watch on his wrist. He gathered his things in silence and then moved from the doorway of Errol Clarke and Keenan Gayle’s flat. As he passed Keenan he glanced down at Simone and stopped in his tracks.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he muttered before nodding curtly and disappearing down the stairway of Moorlands Estate.


Cape Town, South Africa

Lieutenant Woolgar Donovan knelt for a moment to catch his breath. He was thirty-seven years of age and despite being in exceptional physical shape his insides were that of a man twice his age. He’d smoked heavily as a boy growing up in Sheffield. Eight generations of Donovans had worked in the steel industry in Sheffield but the Troubles had put an end to that. Woolgar was the last of them. He had taken no wife, fathered no children, and had resigned himself to that fact. If his blackened lungs didn’t kill him he was sure stepping on a mine would do. He’d volunteered for the Army at thirty-two, much older than the average volunteer, because he’d hoped in what few years he had left he’d find adventure. He’d found more adventure than he could handle in South Africa. They all had.

Donovan’s once pale white face was tanned brown and caked in dirt. His once platinum blonde hair was thick with the dirt too and looked more brown than blonde in this light. He was strong, stronger than he had any right to be given the state of his insides, and to his surprise he’d taken to leadership more naturally than he’d ever imagined he might do. His platoon looked to him for instruction at all times and did so without grumbling. Woolgar was almost ten years older than the eldest man in his platoon and at times he found it hard to relate to them. Some had wives back at home, some children, and all of them wanted to see Britain’s shores again. There were times when the Lieutenant wasn’t sure whether he did. Yet here he was helming a platoon of home-sick men, responsible each of their wellbeing, and returning them home to their families in one piece.

A familiar voice called out to Woolgar from amidst a row of shacks.

“Lieutenant.”

Nick Marsh, a young corporal from Norfolk, stood in the doorway of one of the shacks and gestured to Woolgar to take a look inside. Donovan stood up, brushed his hands clean off dust, and approached the shack whilst gesturing to the rest of his men to stay there.

The first thing Woolgar noticed as Marsh pulled the shack door aside was the stench. It almost was strong enough to knock him from his feet. Death. It was a smell he’d been familiar with even before coming to South Africa. An old man on Woolgar’s childhood road had died and been left unfound to rot in his home for weeks. When the ambulance had finally come the whole street had stunk of death for days. This was far worse than that. Whatever died inside had been able to roast in the South African sun all day long. Tears brought on by the smell trickled down Donovan’s cheeks and he wiped them away with the sleeve of his uniform. The dirt cake on them parted to reveal the pale skin beneath.

He muttered to Marsh to follow him inside and shut the door behind them. There were flies everywhere. The men covered their mouths with their sleeves and waved their hands in front of them to clear a way through until the source of the smell came into sight.

“Fuck,” Donovan muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Dangling from hooks in the corner of the shack were bodies. Their hands and feet had been cut off and the skin had been flayed from their flesh but they definitely were bodies. It was almost hard to tell from looking at them. The way they hung together made it hard to count them but Donovan made out at least six of them. From behind him Woolgar heard Marsh retching and felt the splatter of his sick splash against the back of his boots.

On the wall of the shack smeared in blood with a phrase that made Woolgar’s blood run cold.

Marsh wiped his mouth and then pointed up at it. “What is that?”

“Mulungus out.”

Marsh fought back another retch and then looked to Woolgar with a confused look. “Mulungus?”

“Whites,” Donovan muttered despondently as he prepared to call it in. “Whites out.”


The Strand, London

A nervous smile appeared on Joyce Campbell’s face as she spotted Thomas Moore waiting in the Savoy’s restaurant. He was handsome, even more than he’d been during their time at Oxford, and as well-turned out as any man Joyce had ever seen. He’d always been vain. His grey-flecked blonde hair was coifed to the side in such a way as to make him devil may care but Joyce knew better than that. Tom would have taken hours preparing for this. She imagined him stood in front of a mirror combing his hair back and forth and her smile grew somewhat. It was then that Moore spotted her and beamed in her direction as he stood up from his seat. Joyce returned his smile and approached the table timidly before taking the seat that Moore had pulled out. As she did so Moore had rested his hand familiarly on the small of her back to guide her into her seat. Once they were seated Moore poured glasses of champagne for the both of them.

“I must say, I was shocked when I received your call this afternoon. You have been less than receptive to my representations over the years.”

Tom had written Joyce more letters than she could count in the years after their tryst at Oxford. She had never returned them. They had come fewer and further between once Moore had married but on occasion they would still arrive. Once Fraser had come Prime Minister they had come to a halt. She thought of husband and the true reason she was with Thomas tonight as she gulped down a mouthful of champagne.

“Things have been very complicated, Tom. Between Fraser’s career and the children I didn’t have much time in my life for much else. Even if I did yearn for something more… There was no way I could have acted on those feelings.”

One of Moore’s eyebrows lifted with intrigued. “What changed?”

For all his vanity the Home Secretary was still a sharp, incisive man. Joyce couldn’t tell whether Moore really wanted to know or whether he was mining for information. It wasn’t enough that Joyce had agreed to meet him after all these years. He had to hear her ram the knife into Fraser’s back time and time again, to rub his adversary’s face in the mud even without his knowing, before he could be content. She took another mouthful of champagne and shrugged her shoulders.

“The children are off at boarding school and Fraser is more interested in his work than he is me. He hasn’t so much as looked in my direction in months. He’s been distant since he entered Downing Street and at first I put that down to the pressure’s that came with the job. Recently though I’ve started to wonder if… if the whole thing, everything we’ve built together, has been one big lie. If he sought me out because I was pretty and from a respectable family. If he knew even then that he’d need a piece of arm candy for him to drag with him to the top.”

Moore sneered.

“I hope you’ll forgive my saying so, Joyce, but the man is a fool. He’s always been a fool. He was a fool at Oxford and is even more of one in Downing Street. That he would have such a beauty in his life and neglect it speaks to that. You deserve better than him. You always have done.”

The Home Secretary reached across the table and laid his hand on top of Joyce’s with a smile. Joyce felt a flicker of guilt as he rubbed his thumb against the side of her hand and pulled her hand back with a coy look.

“You know I can’t leave him. The children… I couldn’t put them through that in front of the entire country.”

“You don’t need to. Fraser won’t be Prime Minister forever, Joyce. Eventually he’ll be summoned to the Palace and be given his marching orders by King William. All political careers are doomed to fail in the end. You know that better than I do. When that day comes you and the children can be free of him. You can have what you really want.”

Moore had no idea what she really wanted. He’d never had any idea what she wanted. More than anything Joyce wanted a Britain free from of all forms of tyranny and she’d do whatever it took to get that – even if that meant defiling her body and her marriage in doing so. Moore could never understand that, he came from old money and was chummy with the Palace, and if he did know he’d have turned Joyce in without a second’s thought. He was a monarchist, he’d been one since before their days at Oxford, and to him the King was Britain. Joyce had made Fraser in her image, made him everything that Moore could never be, and together they would tear the Palace down. Together they’d create the Britain they wanted.

First she needed to get through the night. Moore ordered food for the pair of them and they reminisced about their time at Oxford, spoke very briefly about Moore’s wife Daphne, before things quieted somewhat whilst they ate.

“The food is exquisite.”

“I knew you’d like it. You remember when I tried to make duck l’Orange for us all those years ago?”

“How could I forget? You burned the poor bird to cinders.”

A nostalgic smile crossed Moore’s face. “Those were good times, were they not?”

In truth Joyce could barely remember them. They felt so long ago that she had to strain to remember the months she’d spent with Moore. She had been a different person then, a girl, and sat before Moore this evening was a woman. She’d married, had children, and built a life for herself since then. She thought of them as she glanced down at her emptied plate with a despondent look. She knew what was coming, what this night was building too, and try as she might she couldn’t withstand this farce much longer.

Again Moore smiled at her from across the table. “Is something wrong?”

“Take me upstairs,” Joyce muttered as she reached across the table and placed her hand on top of his. “Take me upstairs and make me feel wanted again, Tom.”

September 27th, 1917, Dire Dawa. 'The Battle of Meskel'

Emperor Iyasu V looked out from the hills south of Dire Dawa, across the smoky remains of the battlefield. Only the shadow of the railroad town at Dire Dawa stood out on the horizon; a city in a bowl made of mountains, with the Dechatu river valley flowing parallel to it in the north. A hand-rolled cigarette dangled from his lip. The pleasant scent of the tobacco helped to nullify the smell of sulfur and ash rising from the battlefield. This had not been his first fight, but it was most spectacular he had ever witnessed.

The truth of the matter was that the real battle, the one that decided the war, had been fought and won eleven months ago at Segale by Iyasu's father, the Negus of the North Mikael Ali of Wollo. The enemy that he had just witnessed being decimated in front of him was the remnants of those defeated rebels, and this battle had been more of an excuse for the victors to show off for their newly confirmed Emperor than a tactical necessity. The Germans and Turks, eager to keep Ethiopia fighting in the Great War, wooed him by demonstrating the use of aeroplanes on the battlefield. The planes were simple double-winged constructs of wood and canvas, with powerful rotary engines that turned propellers on the nose. As simple as they looked, they were delightful, and Iyasu had trembled with giddiness when he watched the men in the rear seats of the crafts toss grenades and bombs on top of the rebels from the safety of the sky. He also had the Europeans to thank for the supplying the ammunition that powered his army's machine guns and rifles.

The Central Powers were not the only force to perform for the Emperor that day. Mansuur ibn Ra'd, Iyasu's ally in Somalia, had sent him a regiment of his Dervishes. They were wild-haired Somali warriors who, wielding more swords and spears than they did rifles, led charge after charge alongside other Somali, Harari, and Afar Muslims while Iyasu's own Ethiopian troops held back and exchanged gunfire with the enemy.

This had all happened in the trenches that the rebels had hastily dug around the edges of the city; an attempt to buy themselves time with European tactics. That had been a desperate move. They no longer had the support that they once did, and isolated in the Muslim-leaning eastern half of the country, they were cut-off from what little natural support they still had in the highlands. The rebelling nobility, having lost their homeland, had fled south-east, hoping to link up with the British and French Askari forces along the coasts. Ras Tefari had managed to escape, alongside a handful of lesser nobles, but the rest had been caught and surrounded at Dire Dawa.

To Iyasu, he felt like he was looking at his truest victory, even if it had been inevitable this time. He was standing above it all, surrounded by the reserve cavalry in their full battle array, with lances and guns, and war horses draped in colorful armor. European spectators, under the lead of his German adviser Johan Bruno Freiherr von Schnitzler, kept to themselves just behind the Emperor and his entourage. The Baron Schnitzler himself stood out the most among them. He was a middle age man with the thick-built body of a warrior. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, an unbuttoned khaki uniform-shirt, and Prussian cavalry boots. One thing that nobody could ignore about von Schnitzler was that he had lost an eye. He told people he had lost it during the war, and that was partially true, except that he had lost it in a fight at a tea house in Werder while visiting the town as part of an Ethiopian delegation to the Dervishes. Except for on formal occasions, he refused to wear an eye-patch, and the scarred hole was most often out in the open for all to see. Today was no exception.

Iyasu himself wore the padded robes of a cavalryman, with a full lion's mane crown, a thick embroidered cape with arms that draped down over his shoulders and to his waist, and a smaller lion's fur cape on his shoulders. A curved shotel hung at his left side, and the German Luger that Baron von Schnitzler had given to him as a gift was holstered at his right. The young Emperor held his two year old son Yohannes in his arms, taking care to keep him a safe distance from the smouldering remnant of the cigarette in his mouth. The young prince was wrapped in a white cloth, which was pinned to his body with a Lion-of-Judah brooch.

Yohannes' mother was Faaiso, one of Iyasu's favorite concubines, and she followed next to the Emperor, timidly waiting for the moment that Iyasu needed to pass their child to her. Faaiso was not a naturally timid girl; she was the daughter of a merchant from Harar, with a taste for western jewelry and food, but she was supremely uncomfortable on the battlefield. She was not like his grandfather's queen Taytu, who had followed his grandfather when he was on campaign, commanded troops at Adwa, and had made full use of her power in politics. For Faaiso, her place in court was about luxury and prestige, and that was fine for Iyasu. Taytu had been a meddler. She had not known her place in the world.

The rest of the Imperial party was made up of guards and loyal nobles. They wore loose fitting battle robes, lion's mane caps and turbans, and held fast to traditional spears, swords, and connicle shields, though many also had rifles strapped to their backs or pistols holstered at their sides.

That was how things stood when Iyasu's father and his Oromo cavalrymen came whooping up the hillside. The men, with lions-mane headdresses and bushy goat's skin capes, looked like warriors riding straight from the time of Zara Yaqob. Their flags were three banners in Ethiopian colors. The sound of their horses climbing the hill all at once reminded the Emperor of what it was like to stand on a rock next to the crashing waves of a sea stirred by a monsoon. It wasn't just a sound - it was pure power, and like war-drums before a battle, it moved him. It made him feel as if he was a lion waking up to a fresh kill.

Mikael of Wollo dismounted his horse. He was an old man now, and a thick layer of dust covered him so that he looked almost like an Egyptian mummy. Beneath his headdress, he wore a silk rag wrapped around his head, and he wore a shamma over his riding clothes. When the old man saw his Imperial son, he bowed.

"You have cleared the field?" Iyasu asked.

"It is your majesty's field now." Mikael rose. "Your enemies are beaten."

"We would very much like to tour the battlefield, and we wish for your to accompany us."

His father responded with a curt nod. Iyasu's attendants understood what was being said, and they did not hesitate to bring the Emperor and his favorite companions their horses. The Emperor handed his son off to Faaiso and mounted a bay Dongola stallion. Faaiso, after passing Yohannes to a servant, climbed onto a small mare. The servant passed her son back to her. A number of nobles rode with them, as did a couple of Europeans and the Baron von Schnitzler. It was Iyasu, von Schnitzler, and Mikael who led the procession down the hill and toward the field, underneath the green, yellow, and red banners of the nation.

"This war is over now, friend Schnitzler." Iyasu said to the gruff German. "Will you still be staying in Abysinnia?"

"Yes." the Baron replied. "I haven't received new orders, and I have no reason to want to leave. There is more fighting to be done here anyway." he hesitated for a moment. "If it pleases your majesty to say, what is Ethiopia's plan?"

"We will ride east, to lend our aid to Mansuur ibn Ra'd."

"Ethiopia will crush them, I am sure of it." the Baron replied. They were passing onto the battlefield now. The battle stink was stronger here, and sulfur was joined by the reek of blood and rot. They were at the edge of the battle, where the first corpses lay. A few royalist men lingered here at the edge of the field, where they pillaged corpses and generally loitered about, having nothing to do for the moment but to wait until they were accounted for by their commanders.

"Very quickly I expect." The Baron continued. "Has your majesty decided what Ethiopia shall do next, when the countries of him and his allies are subdued? The King of the Germans humbly petitions that your majesty come to the aid of his servants laying siege to Kenya."

"We have many issues to balance." Iyasu replied.

"I have opinions about this." Mikael of Wollo spoke. The three of them were ahead of the rest now, and Iyasu's father felt less conscious about royal manners. He spoke respectively, since they were still in the presence of the German, but he did not speak ceremoniously now. "Britain is a powerful kingdom. It would be unwise to disturb her when we are still healing from our war."

"Your majesty." the German interjected. He spoke curtly - perhaps he dared to act too familiar, but both Iyasu and Mikael liked him, so they let the matter go. "Britain is a powerful kingdom, but so is the Kingdom of Germany, and the Kingdom of Austria. And your people know how powerful are the Turks. These are the friends who will stand beside you in this war."

Mikeal of Wollo did not responded, but he did not look pleased either. It was clear he still had reservations.

Mikael's uncertainty was not unwarranted. It was just as Mikael had been coming to adulthood that Emperor Tewodros infamously imprisoned a handful of Europeans, which had provoked the invasion of a small British force. It was in the camp of Queen Worqitu, an enemy of Tewodros who had helped the British in their campaign, that Mikael had saw how effective British power could be when it was unleashed.

But when the German Baron compared him to the monarchs of Europe, it made Iyasu feel like a giant on top of his horse. He imagined himself marching proudly down the streets of London - a city he had never seen, and had no understanding of what it looked like, though he imagined it to look much like a lithograph of New York City that he had once seen on a cookie-tin for sale in Djibouti - at the head of one hundred thousand well-armed African soldiers. Adwa had been Menelik's victory, and Segale had been his father's. What great thing would he accomplish now that he reigned shoulder to shoulder among the mighty Kings of the Earth?

They passed by the trenches now. They were pitiful things, so shallow that a tall man would have to bend down to avoid being shot. Along their edges were scraps of wood and metal placed haphazardly in an attempt to slow down attackers. Perhaps they had done so, and perhaps some of Iyasu's dead would have been alive if not for that half-measure, but it hadn't been enough. The rebels had lost anyway.

Their corpses scattered a bloody field, mingled with the Royalist and Somali dead. He saw where a royalist body was tangled around an Islamic version of the Ethiopian flag - the green, yellow, and red, with a crescent in its center, and the shadada written in black across the bottom. It was one of several Islamic renditions of the national flag that Iyasu tacitly approved, though he was not yet bold enough to change the national flag to one of their designs.

Some of the royalist Ethiopians were searching the field for wounded enemies, and when they found them, they made their agony worse with forced castrations. The howls of these wounded men, castrated or not, struck out from the silence and the smoke.

To his credit, the German did not flinch at the castrations being performed nearby them. It was known that Europeans looked down on the behavior of Abyssinian warriors, but none of it seemed to effect von Schnitzler, who rode as firmly and comfortably on the battlefield as any of Iyasu's best nobles. That endeared the man to the Emperor.

They entered the city slowly, passing by the humble shacks and mud-huts that made up Dire Dawa. The town had taken minimal damage, though holes from stray bullets and the ashen pock-marks of misplaced bombs scarred a few parts of the otherwise pristine town.

It was where they entered the town that they met up with the small company of German ferengi soldiers that had participated in the battle. There were ten white men, with dusty mustaches and a tired look about their eyes, and they were accompanied by several dozen ink-black soldiers from the German colonies. All of them were dressed in khaki military uniforms, and they wore scrappy pith helmets with no pomp or decoration. They had been milling around nervously, watching their Ethiopian and Somali comrades as they went about their grisly work. When the Germans saw the Emperor ride in, they quickly came to attention.

The Baron von Schnitzler hopped down from his horse to inspect the men. They spoke in German for a period of time, and though Iyasu listened carefully, he did not understand what was being said. One of the white soldiers pointed to the sky above the town, where plumes of black smoke were rising. The Baron looked perplexed.

"Your people are gathering the wood from the rebel barricades and heaping them into bonfires." he told the Emperor.

"It is Meskel." Mikael of Wollo said, leaning on the horn of his saddle. "The day of the finding of the true cross. They just wish to celebrate." The holiday was an ancient Christian one, coinciding with the end of the rainy season and the beginning of planting. It was more important than the European 'Christmas' in Ethiopia, and was celebrated with great bonfires, which reenacted the bonfires used by Saint Helena to find the burial place of the True Cross.

The Baron looked toward the smoke uncertainly. "It is dry. If they start too many fires, they might burn the town down."

"Yes." Iyasu nodded. "We would like to keep our city unburned. Let us stop them." And so the German baron hopped back on top of his horse, and they rode off toward the city center. The Emperor felt his head swim with excitement at the thought of getting to shut down a Christian ritual.

The town orbited a small European-styled train station, in front of which was a large square with a single tree surrounded by a couple of acres of paving stones. The body of a lynched man hung from the tree. As they came closer, Iyasu recognized him as the customs-master Ydlibi - a Syrian merchant that Iyasu had befriended and given the lucrative position of Customs-Master despite the protests of his greedy nobles. This had been the work of the rebels, he knew, and his hatred for his enemies reached for new heights.

"Ho! Stop!" the German Baron shouted, leaping from his horse again. He rushed at a number of Ethiopian warriors who were, as the German soldiers had said, piling wood scraps and flammable battlefield debris into growing bonfires. Iyasu and his party rode after the German.

To the surprise of everybody - the Emperor, his entourage, and the soldiers in the square - the German Baron grabbed one of the Ethiopians by his shamma, spun him around, and slapped him as if he was a misbehaving child. He than began shouting in a volatile mix of German and Amharic, about how the soldier needed discipline, and how he needed honor, and how they might burn down the very town they had fought so hard to take. The soldier reached instinctively for his weapon, but was bewildered by the presence of the Emperor, and the confusion of his entire circumstance.

Iyasu loved the spectacle, and he began to laugh. His laugh was contagious. It spread to his entourage, and then slowly among the soldiers that had gathered around. The laughing cooled the anger of von Schnitzler, and it caused the confused soldier whom he had slapped to become even more confused.

"Men, take these ridiculous piles of trash down, and put out these fires before they grow to strong." Iyasu ordered. "We cannot burn this town. This town is where the trains come in, and if it burns down, we will no longer get the sugar and tobacco that our ferengi friends like to sell to us."

The spectacle had calmed any religious tensions that might have erupted then, and the men obeyed their Emperor's order without complaint. For Iyasu, it felt like he had scored a victory against Ethiopian Christianity. He felt confident of the future.

And then the Emperor remembered. He pointed to the hanging body of Ydlibi and shouted. "Somebody cut that man down. He has been a friend to us. He should not hang like that."

--

The Emperor and his father were led to a shed where vegetables were typically stored, but which now stored a captive rebel noble waiting for Imperial judgement. Most had ran, or had made sure to die in battle, while some had killed themselves. This meant that having even one captive was a personal victory for Iyasu. He was holding his son Yohannes now, parading the young child among the men so that they would know him as his heir. The boy did not make a noise. The sun was setting in the west, filling the lingering gunpowder haze with a thick red light. It was in this atmosphere that Iyasu entered the vegetable shed.

There were two men inside. The first was a dead man - Ras Gugsa Welle, who had once been married to the rebels chosen 'Queen' Zewditu, Iyasu's aunt. Now Gugsa was a corpse. He had committed suicide with a pistol shot to the head, leaving behind an ugly body. The top of his head was now a gaping hole of skull and flesh. His eyes protruded out from his face like swollen grapes drooping on the vine. All of his life's blood had drained from the hole in his skull, and from the bullet wound in his mouth, and it covered his clothes and left his skin an inhuman grey.

It was his son who sat in chains nearby him. Eba Gugsa was a pitiful captive. His clothes were torn, and he no longer had shoes. Both his wrists and his ankles were in chains. Who knows what he might have been thinking, sitting next to the ruined carcass of his own father. He did not betray those thoughts, but instead kept his head cast down, and his eyes focused on exactly nothing, with nothing but spilled vegetables for comfort. The room smelled like onions and blood.

Iyasu felt triumphant, standing with his heir in his arms above two defeated enemies. "Have you anything to say in your defense?" The Emperor asked the living prisoner.

"I ask for a pistol, so I may go the way of Tewodros, and my father. They are my heroes." Eba replied. He did not look up.

Iyasu squatted so that him and Yohannes' faces were square with the beaten prisoner.

"You are a betrayer." the Emperor hissed

"You are a betrayer." Eba spat Iyasu's words back at him. The two men were eye to eye, with only a foot of space between their faces. Iyasu can smell the rancid breath of the prisoner, like a week-old stew baked in a dry-season sun.

"Kings cannot betray anyone but other kings." Iyasu retorted.

Eba began to speak before Iyasu had finished his final word. "You betrayed God." The rebel said. "That is why I am not a betrayer. Any man who follows you is a betrayer of God."

"God has given me the victories." Iyasu felt anger throbbing in his chest. He wanted to take the rebel by the head and smash it into the ground again and again until his skull shattered in a million bloodied pieces.

"That is the work of an evil." Eba replied. "There was an evil wind that day, at Segale. You know it. I do not know what witchcraft you used, but it will leave its mark on our country."

Iyasu's anger was abated for a moment when he remembered the old 'Evil Wind' story. It was said that, as the rebel forces of Ras Tefari prepared to meet the royalist forces of Negus Mikael of Wollo at Segale, the wind shifted so fiercely that it caused superstitious men to blame the devil. Some even reported that the wind was powerful enough to cause canons to shift.

"That is debtera vomit. Smart men do not believe it." Iyasu smiled. He felt vindictive now, and he pointed to the bloodied corpse of Eba's father. "Did that man believe it? Was he so stupid."

"He knew that you were up to evil things. He was a good man, and a better one than you!" Eba thrust forward as far as his chains would allow, and for a moment Iyasu thought that he was lunging forward to bite at him, so he pulled back and stood up. Eba was still in chains, and he made a pathetic show of wallowing on the floor, but Iyasu still felt a burning nugget of shame for having been made stand up.

"That man?" Iyasu thrust his finger like a spear, pointing angrily at the corpse. "That man is nothing! That man is a dead man!"

Iyasu looked up the corpse and hunched back for a moment. War-like anger burned in his eyes. He thrust himself forward, like a viper preparing to strike, and he spat on the corpse with as much rage as he could muster. He heard chains rattle, and saw from the corner of his eye how Eba was fighting to break free.

"That is the man that he is." the satisfied Emperor said.

-

Dire Dawa: Modern Day.

The distant sound of heavy guns echoed from the Danakil. The war was coming.

Hassan's staff car stopped at the edge of Von Schnitzler Square, looking out at the old train station and the withered tree that was in front of it. The square was as busy as a bazaar on market day. However, it was not sellers and buyers who busied the square, but rather the logistical staff that kept the Ethiopian military in the field. Trucks were being unloaded, where staff officers paid the locals who had not fled to carry and organize boxes so that they could be inventoried, counted, and prepared for transit to wherever they were needed. Tents had been set up throughout the courtyard, housing the logistical staff, reserve officers, civilian aides, and even a few foreign war correspondents. All of the chaos orbited the silent, stoic statue of the historic German officer Von Schnitzler.

Von Schnitzler had fought with the Ethiopians during Iyasu's first civil war, and then in the African theatre of the Great War. Hassan knew that Von Schnitzler was partially responsible for the modernization of the Ethiopian military, but he had not survived to finish the project, having died by the bayonet of a British Askari during the Kenyan campaign in 1921. Now his bronze likeness stood like a planet, orbited by all of the tiny rocks of Ethiopia's military support. Hassan did not feel like just another tiny rock in the mix, however. He felt like a great moon; ascendant, and with a gravity all his own.

He stepped off the vehicle and squeaked through the square - or at least, it felt like squeaking, as the stuffy rubber bodysuit he wore under his uniform to protect himself from VX attack always seemed to rub together in awkward ways that made him hate it. The personnel made way for their commander, standing at attention as he walked by, and saluting whenever he was near to them. Hassan carried himself with as much pomp as he could muster, though the trip back from Harar had left him tired.

"Ras Hassan." he heard a strange voice come from the crowd. The accent was foreign, but hard to place. A well-tanned ferengi journalist approached him; clean shaved, red-headed, and with an Italian flag pin on his lapel to distinguish him from other ferengi. "Can I have a moment of your time."

"You cannot. My time is with the war." Hassan grunted.

The Italian didn't pay any mind. He followed Hassan cautiously, keep just out of immediate reach from Hassan's Palestinian guards. "If you could say anything to Alfonso Sotelo, what would you say?"

"I would tell him that he will some day be made to eat shit, and he will feel shit ooze between his teeth. That day will come sooner than he expects."

Hassan cut through a crowded part of the square, where he lost the ferengi journalist. He wanted no more distractions. He went inside the train station, and when the doors closed, the sound faded so quickly that it felt like depressurization on his skin.

The station was mostly empty. There were benches, and signs advertising the price of fare. The lights were off, but had been replaced by battery-operated lamps. Still, except for a few choice men, the room was entirely empty.

"Ras Hassan." the familiar gravel voice of General Idrissa sounded in the awkward light. Where he stood, Idrissa eclipsed one of the lamps, but Hassan could recall the Hero of Ta'if's scar-pocked face and worn-down eyepatch in his memory. Those scars had mostly been bestowed by a distant shot-gun blast to the face during the Congo War. Idrissa was most well known for having held back a Saudi army with just a single regiment during the initial occupation of Hejaz, giving the rest of the overextended Ethiopian military time to organize themselves. Idrissa wasn't a great tactician, but he was an especially competent leader of men, and he had a reputation for leading from the front.

"How are you? How are your friends?" Hassan greeted Idrissa like an equal.

"I have been preparing our defenses here. Though, I am told that you have something else in mind?"

It was then that Ras Rais, Hassan's commander in the highlands, joined them. Rais wore a well-starched uniform, and an expression that was just as starched. Though Hassan was above all of them according to the rules of the modernized officer corp, Rais took his Ras title as the suggestion that they were social equals, and he did not defer to Hassan unless he felt especially formal.

"You have read the reports about the bombing raids in the north?" Hassan asked. All three men found seats among the simple one-plank benches. Hassan looked around at the mostly dark, empty station, and his mind shifted before the others had time to answer his first question. "Didn't I order this building brought down?"

"It is on the list of things to do, but they are still tearing apart the tracks, and I took your orders to imply that the tracks were more important than the station." Idrissa said.

Hassan nodded. "The reports?"

"N'djamena isn't a tactically pertinent location. The Spanish bombing of the town does not matter." Rais said simply.

"There were forces posted there." Idrissa retorted. "The reports said that the raid managed to destroy an ammunition dump being used by the Second Sefari, and a radar facility, which means we will not be able to detect future raids until Spanish bombers are much further into our territory."

"There will be more bombing raids to come then." Hassan nodded. "Well, I have made up my mind already, before I walked into this building. We cannot have our forces in the west just sitting and waiting to be bombed. It is time we launch an invasion of our own. Idrissa, I want you to lead an invasion of the Ivory Coast."

Idrissa blinked. "My army is here. I don't think the western commanders will like that decision."

"I have been commanding your army for some time now. All of the leaders out west have been angling for a promotion. They hate each other now. You have a reputation that will make it difficult for them to complain."

"They will complain, but I will do what I am ordered." Idrissa replied. "When will I leave?"

"As soon as you can. I want this moving quickly."

"This is a wise decision." Rais added his opinion, though at this point it seemed unnecessary.

The far-off buzz of prop-fighters was heard overhead. The sound was faint, muted by the walls and roof of the old train station, but it was clear to all of them what it was. They stopped and listened for a moment, waiting for the pound of Anti-Aircraft guns, and when that sound never came, it told them that the aircraft was their own.

"If this war does not go our way, it is possible that this will be the last time the three of us are ever in a room together again." Hassan said, uncomfortable words piercing a silence that seemed to grow once after he spoke them.

"That is for God to decide." Rais replied.

"Communication will not be simple." Hassan explained, turning to Rais now. "I will try to convey orders, but if the Spanish break us here, we will have to consent to be split so that no half of the country simply falls into Spanish hands. We all have our place in this war. Ras Rais, if you have no orders from me, then it will be your job to preserve your army and keep the fight going in the highlands. That is your priority. Do not risk your forces if you do not see a golden opportunity. Survive. If you are subdued, that will mean leaving the highlands to their own defense, but so long as you are not subdued, the ferengi will be forced to stretch themselves over the countryside. That will mean more casualties for them, and it will mean that our people learn how to hate them."

He turned to Idrissa. "I am giving you written orders that confer to you command of the western theatre. Your place in this war will be to drive at the enemy's West African holdings. Do not play defensively. If Spain defeats you and gains control of the Congo, they will have won only a shallow victory. They will be divided by miles of rough terrain where loyalists can replay the old war with Belgium. On the other hand, any victory you win on Spanish territory will be a rusted nail driven straight into Sotelo's eye. If you find an oil well, do not try to hold it, do not try to extract from it. Burn it. Destroy all of their equipment. If you can, raise up the native peoples to fight for you."

"And what will you do?" Rais asked.

"Should Dire Dawa break, I will move south into Somalia and regroup. When I feel that it is time, I will try to relieve Ras Rais the best I can, unless the Spanish open another front in the south. In that case, I will fight them there."

There was nothing else to say. The three men sat for a moment in silence, preparing their thoughts. The war hung over them like a sword tied to a string. But in the darkness, surrounded by the cavernous shell of the station, it seemed to Hassan that the war was somehow paused outside the doors, and that leaving would be to resume it. It was still out there, waiting. It was unavoidable.

Hassan stood up. "Go in strength." he said, shaking both commander's hands like a proud father farewelling his sons. Idrissa would take his command in the West, and Rais would prepare the armies of the highlands for their plunge into the war. Lonely footsteps echoed as they left.

Hassan went outside. The noise of war preparations washed over him again. He watched a wing of Ethiopian aircraft flying in a V toward the north, where Spain was advancing over the Danakil. In the days directly following Djibouti, the Ethiopian airforce had held the sky, outnumbering the unprepared Spanish fighters, but now time was working for the enemy. At first, with the help of their naval forces, the Spaniards had established air superiority over the Red Sea. With their landing zone secure, that aerial influence was spreading outward across the Danakil like a net, and the newer Spanish technology was turning the tide of the air war.

The same was true of the rolling skirmishes between Ethiopian and Spanish armor that had taken place on the salty desert flats. Hassan had deployed some of the precious Ethiopian armor to slow down the Spanish advance and buy him time. But again, only the few newer Chinese tanks in the Ethiopian arsenal could hold their ground, and the aging machines that made up the majority of his armored battalions were out-ranged, and generally outclassed, and their dueling had bought them very little but death.

"Take me to the tank grounds." Hassan ordered his driver as he climbed into his boxy Polish staff car. The drive through Dire Dawa was slow. They were forced to wait for sluggish military trucks, and for the personnel that buzzed all around the town. There were civilians and soldiers alike lingering under the French iron-latice verandas of the shops that clung near to the road, and near the adobe walls of Dire Dawa's mostly abandoned homes. There were some houses that did not seem to be abandoned, from who's windows nervous faces peaked out and waited for the feared battle.

The activity did not die off once they were outside of the city. Here, north of town, was where the Spanish hammer would fall. His front line had reoccupied and re-dug old furrows that had once been the rebel trenches used during the Battle of Meskel almost seventy years earlier. These soldiers were his Somali regulars - men from Somalia, where military careers were the most sought after, and who were the most professional of his troops. They wore khaki fatigues and steel helmets, and were armed with the best assault rifles available to the Ethiopian military. He had them placed in front because he knew that, when they were forced to fall back into the mountains, they were the troops most likely to keep themselves together while doing so. The rest of his army were volunteers from all over Imperial Africa; men who had been trained, but who's training and weapons had been bought cheaply by the strained nation.

Hassan looked north, where the sound of distant artillery and reports of far away rifles told him how near the Spanish advance was. They had cleared the dreaded Danakil, through the horrible heat, harassed by not only Ethiopian tanks and aircraft, but also by angry Afari shiftas. Though the Afar were most often herdsmen and salt traders by profession, they lived a hard life, and it was an open secret that they were known to fight small tribal wars amongst each other from time to time. Now, one by one, the tribes of the Afar wastes were declaring their own individual wars against the ferengi invasion. The Spaniards had came down hard on the Afari. That was a mistake that would play into Ethiopian hands. For the people of the desert, this war was no longer a mere obligation. It was a blood feud, and Spain was going to pay its fair share.

Hassan thought of his own artillery, nestled in the mountains between Dire Dawa and Harar. The rest of the war would be a game of hide-and-seek for his guns. They would be a tool in his plan to force Spain to fight for every mountain, and every river, and every amba in the rough Ethiopian nation. Wherever his artillerymen could move their guns, that would be a new place from which to punish Spain, and the more creative they got about it the more effective they could be. Hassan hoped it would be a war of one thousand Tewodroses, moving one thousand Sevastpools up one thousand Magdalas.

The car came to a halt beneath the shadow of a small mountain. He had put the bulk of his armored divisions here, placing the mountain between them and the Spanish as to shield them from enemy artillery until the time was right to deploy them. This would be the best time in the war for him to deploy the haphazard armored units of the Ethiopian military, before the war took to the rough terrain of the highlands.

Ethiopia's armor was a mixed bag. There were the shiny Chinese Tei Gui's, who would be the sharp edge of the blade for his armored division. They were sturdy built, with no exposed creases despite the three hundred sixty degree turret mounted on the top. Their turrets had long-barreled cannons, and anti-personnel guns mounted on the top of their turrets.

But these only made up a minority of the Ethiopian tanks. They were joined by ugly Polish beasts from the earlier part of the century, with rough asymmetrical outlines and sharp-cornered turrets. There were also a few that had no turrets at all, and instead relied on the ability to fire forward. The older models had rivets on the outside of solid steel plates. These were supplemented by a small number of stubby french models from just after the Great War.

Alongside the heavy tanks were a number of armored cars. Some were nothing more than "Armenian Tanks"; a term that had come to designate civilian trucks with armor awkwardly welded onto them. Others were half-tracks, or manufactured armored trucks. Together, alongside the battle tanks, the Ethiopian armor in the field numbered near to 600 vehicle. Hassan felt powerful surrounded by so many great monsters of battle. But he was not confident of victory.

“The honorable congressman is this way.” mumbled the mortuary technician as he lead Sun Chu and another man across the frosty floor of the morgue, his briefcase bounced against his legs as he walked.. The smell of refrigerant hung like an incense that lingered in the cooled air. On the far-side of the wall stood an entire bank of old, worn wooden boxes stacked and arranged into drawers. The technician grumbled low to himself as he reached out for the handle of one the drawers and yanked it open. The tearing roar of wood grinding on wood exploded in the still air of the room as Dong Wu's body was pulled from where it rested.

Sun Chu took up a position alongside the other man, a younger lean individual. His dishpan of a face immediately drained of blood as he looked down at the mangled corpse of Dong Wu.

“There's maybe over a half-dozen causes of death on his body.” the technician grumbled, “I didn't really need to take an effort.”

“I can tell.” Sun Chu commented, he himself was feeling a little ghastly looking down at the corpse.

Laying sprawled in the tiny confines of the wooden drawer box Dong Wu lay unexposed, his eyes shut. But it wasn't the simply pale nature of being dead that had sapped either men's vigor looking down at him. But rather the totality of the devastation raked across his body.

Clear burns and lacerations scarred his chest in a massive web-pattern. Deep cuts in the burned flesh tore clear through into the rib-cage where pearly white bone shone through in the dim incandescent lighting. His face was half peeled back by something, revealing the formless remains of the underlying muscle structure and bone. A sunken socket suggested that he had perhaps lost an eye. Further, there was a wide hole in his stomach only exacerbated by the tight skin from where it had been sewn up by the autopsy cuts, the stitching only just barely held it close. An entire leg was almost entirely torn off.

“You listened to the chief's briefing.” the mortician said, “So I'll let you two at him.” he turned and walked out. His deep dry tone held that he wasn't particularly pleased. As he left through the door it left Chu thinking that the man wanted to let the entire thing rest. But as the door shut he let it be.

“You seen anything like this?” Chu asked his partner.

“Only in pictures from the books about U731.” the younger man remarked full of ghastly terror, “I don't think there's been anything nearly this severe in a long time.”

Chu nodded. The young man was Wu Jing-Shen, an academic boy the national command recruited in for forensic duty. A quick peak into his background and nothing more was enough for Chu to surmise that though he performed well academically, he had little actual field experience. This was them breaking him in. Perhaps in the worse way possible.

He looked up at him, he was as pale as paper.

“So let's get a look at him so we have something to write back.” Chu remarked coldly, putting his case over top the casket and cracking it open. He pulled out from the neatly organized papers a clipboard and a stack of notepapers. “Go on.” he ordered, clicking out the tip of his pen.

Jing-Shen shot an apprehensive look up at him. He knew how to approach, but the repulsed sickly look on his face spoke all the words needed. He simply did not want to. Chu glowered at him from over the ready notepad, impatiently waving his hand. “Go on.” he croaked.

Jing-Shen sandwiched his lips together and leaned over the box. Sighing he looked back up in a low voice, “Hold on.” he requested, “I need to get a gurney.”

“That would be a good idea.” chuckled Chu as Jing-Shen went to the gurneys. The wheels of one rattled across the porcelain tiles of the floor as he pulled it aside and swung it into position. And with a pop he pulled the face off the drawer and had the body pulled out onto the table. He moved it over into the light with a disdainful robotic swing.

“Ok...” he sighed, “Our subject is clearly male. Mid to late forties.” he began.

“We know who our subject is.” Chu remarked bitterly, “We can skip those details.”

“Right, right.” Jing-Shen shook, “Well, Dong Wu has suffered considerable burns across seventy-five percent of his body. I am counting...” he paused as he leaned over the corpse and with a pen pulled from his pocket began counting the individual open wounds across his body, “eighty individual and unique penetration wounds. This is consistent I guess to municipal reports and pieces of shrapnel extracted from his body. Many on the right-side.”

“Face?” Chu asked, as he scribbled the last notes down.

“A large avulsion injury covers much of his lower face between cheek and chin on the right-side. Victim has suffered severe trauma to the eye comparable to a bomb blast or bullet-related injury. I can also see indications of burns.”

“The limbs?”

“Hand and arms on the right side are burned. The left leg is mostly severed.” he cringed, looking away.

“How much so?” Chu chided.

“I- uh... Seventy-five percent.”

Chu nodded and he added them to his notes.

“I'd say that these are all consistent to a bomb-related injury.” Jing-Shen concluded, “It's a.. clear cut case of one.” he added uncomfortably, “The burns suggest that the device may have perhaps even been filled with an accelerant or incendiary compound. But the severity of the open wounds would have meant the explosive was not a fire-bomb but that the nature of its explosion did produce a fire-ball.”

Sun Chu nodded. “If possible do you think any of the accelerant's residue remains on his skin?”

“Most likely, why?”

“Because I want a swab off his chest, a skin sample, and a cut of hair. We're going to send these to Beijing to be analyzed and get an idea on what was used in the explosion.”

“Right.” conceded Jing-Shen conceded, looking for anything he could use to take and package the samples, “Can I ask a question though, sir?”

“What is it?” Chu looked up.

“Why is it we're doing this investigation? Is Nanjing's department that bad?” he asked.

“No, hardly. We're just hear because Beijing cares. That's all.” responded Sun Chu, “If Beijing cares then it doesn't blow up in our faces. Pardon the pun.”

Hesitating, Jing-Shen looked down at the corpse on the table, “Should we open him up?” he asked nauseously.

“To confirm their reports, yes. Get the scissors.” Chu ordered.



Walls covered in wood paneling, angled and twisted so as to not great a flat surface, then again hung over in rugs and throw-away carpeting it was not the most impressive of radio studios. An office no bigger than a closet with microphones and equipment packed tight. A darkened window on one wall shone the silhouettes of waiting engineers as they hung over the broadcasting controls for China' national radio system. They with the broadcaster sat waiting, and bored out of their skulls. In an ashtray on the table a cigarette lay smoldering with over two dozen of its deflated counterparts. Drumming his fingers, the broadcaster turned his wrist to check his watch. 12:32, Auyi was late.

In the course of campaigns he had interviewed over a dozen of the candidates vying for Hou Sai Tang's office. The good Grand Secretary had already abandoned Beijing, muting his presence from the political talk box of the country. Now what had once been either direct meetings with him or a liaison had turned into a more difficult sprawl of finding people to fill the mid-afternoon time-clock. And with a national campaign under-way the establishment of the NPN was not particularly impressed with interviews with governors and congressmen, even if for ten minutes.

But Auyi was still late, and they need material to be ready at the end of the hour. He Kang was no friend to patience either.

With an otherwise dismissive appearance, Kang looked like something of a younger and heavier imperial Mandarin, down to the untidy beard on his chin. Smoke stained fingers tapped and traced the lines in the wood of the table as he licked his yellowing teeth. And restless from the night before he rung his amber red eyes with a subtle dark bags. He wasn't a face for the camera, ever. But his voice was vanilla-bean radio.

His inattentive waiting was soon however snapped alert when the studio doors opened and in stepped Auyi. Kang quickly threw aside his impatience like a snake and shot to his feet and politely bowed to his visitor. “Comrade Zhang!” he said with a smile, “A pleasure to see you.”

“Comrade He.” cordially greeted Auyi as he returned the favor. The minister-going-for-grand-secretary wasn't far from his pampered campaign trail appearance. His face glowed with a fatherly health and his black hair combed back and delicately brushed. His cloud-white suit shone in a more bleached white than anything else in the room then.

“I'm afraid we may not have so much time on introductions and formalities.” Kang noted uncomfortably, “So, please: take a seat and we can begin.”

“I wouldn't worry much,” smiled Auyi as he pulled back his chair from the center table, “this isn't my first radio interview appereance.”

“As I'm sure.” Kang He noted, as he gave a thumbs up to the engineers to being. A soft hum and static crackling filled the room, summoning with it the sound of a sudden orchestral sting marking the beginning of Kang He's personal radio dominion.

“Good afternoon comrades!” He cheered into the recording microphone, “Today is July 16th, 1980, and we have for today's slot an interview with popular contender for the office of Grand Secretary Zhang Auyi.”

The recordings being all prerecorded would no doubt be cleaned up later. If He or his engineers felt that he had flubbed or drew an error at any point that it would be no surprise magic if they made a scrubbing fix to the tapes before being passed to editing and final airing. Auyi was acquainted with the process, and he nodded and smiled along as Kang He went through the formalities with the same sort of tacky vigor as a back-street hawker.

“Comrade.” He Kang said, pointing to Auyi and making the signal he was now addressing him, “Throughout your campaign you have made promises and indications to commit to a nationalized reformation of the economic structure to China. Through 'liberalizing the direction and flow of manufacture and growth' you have campaigned on a social principle of opening the doors of the Chinese economy. Your rivals have at many times opposed your sentiments, decrying it as an opposition to the classless society. You of course defend your spot, how come?”

“Well, brother He,” Auyi started, “it's simply that the claims of these individuals is a false and invalid fear. The programs I have called for on the road is not the lowering the barriers to social and economic equality as exist in the present society. Nor will they strip our people of their liberties and freedoms. Verily, it will perhaps give many of our workers the opportunity to be much more. Not only within the nation but the international community as a whole.”

“Fellow minister Mang Xhu has cited your proposals as being opening the gates to the western evils of corporate greed and megalomaniac materialism that will come at the expense of the people's freedom and identity. But clearly you two don't see the same risks?”

“Of course.” Auyi laughed, smiling wide. It would have been a humored and honest beaming grin for the cameras. But there were none of those present in the tiny room. “The conditions that enabled the west to abuse the Chinese people was the weakness of the Qing imperialists. They failed to hold the West accountable for its greed and even itself benefited greatly from western abuses, so were unwilling to act.

“In the modern era, while I would be open to working and coordinating with the wider global economy it will not be throwing the gates so wide they can make off with our homes and our monuments. They will not strip the nation clean for only their benefit. My government will still be tough on western abuses. Those who wish to do business in China should only recruit and use Chinese resources and persons. They will undergo the same principles of the Chinese: taxes, tariffs.

“The foreign cooperative will be that: cooperation. Not favoring western forces and creating an unfair competition as Mang Xhu so fears. We Chinese will still benefit to better the national quality of our independence and equality.”

“What then will be done with the rewards from the work with the outside world?”

“Namely, we shall use the resources and revenues they will make for China to boost the development and inequities suffered in inland China. While we as a nation have healed over the scars of our war for liberation the sores remain. The treatment of these sores should be attended to.

“As something to physically observe, I promise to electrify inner China. The provinces of the interior are still today mostly without electrical power as enjoyed here in the east. And while we can not blame Hou Sai Tang as being a poor or inadequate uncle to all Chinese, we must admit that we have only had so much resources for ourselves as we exert ourselves to strive for our own prolonged liberation: the equalizing and negating of Japanese oppression, the removal of European influence in Asia. Now these missions are done, we are at a crossroads.

“As I've warned, we can falter in darkness, or step ahead in the light and claim the world torch for the Chinese people. Light the true path through our enlightenment and bounty.”

“With the war in Africa however, some are perhaps questioning this outlook. Saying: if we open up, we could become as the pan-African Empire: invaded and abused by some other greedy nation.”

“Impossible.” Auyi denounced, “While I am adverse to war, the actions of the Spanish are damnable and the international community will make a stern lesson of the Spanish. As we would any invader who attacks us.”




“Mail call.” Wi Hui declared in that low apathetic tone of voice of his. Tsung was startled from his nap as a brick of bound letters smacked the table ahead of him. The cloth of sleep was pulled aside with the dusty puff of dusty air when the bound stack hit the dusty cafe table. It had been so long since anything happened to them that he was beginning to forget he was supposed to be doing anything. He had almost grown accustomed to the slothful laziness that came with waiting for logistics to deliver anything.

“It looks like you got plenty of fans.” Hui remarked stiffly as he thumbed through the letters in his hands and separated the few for him and the few for Lin. The gunner gave Hui an enamored and humored smile before she started dragging her thumb across the envelope's mouth, tearing it open.

For the best several hours the crew had hold up in a cafe in the center of town, keeping out of the way of the daily Russian life and the military police that patrolled the streets. The windows had been clean, like the rest of the city all the light damage from the battle that had torn the locals' homes upside down were cleaned aside and electricity was restored, if only in brief spurts.

Alongside the door of the establishment several sheets of plywood had been lain up against the wall to patch where a rocket had entered; the remains of its crater still scarred the twisted wooden floors where several two-by-fours had been thrown down to build a bridge over the sharp short gap in the floorboards there. The activity of the street and the work of the masons outside rolled through the cracks and windows and walls with a muffled hum.

At the bar several Chinese Military Policemen and their Siberian counterparts shared counter-space in their off-hours with a handful of local seniors who congregated themselves at the far side. They bided their anxiety through cups of tea and bowls of okroshka. Their military dining counterparts were probably for the most part avoiding tasteless rations with whatever they could get their hands on.

Tsung simply sat and looked down at the letters. From the stack it looked as if there was a significant backlog of material that had failed to reach him. He picked it up and turned the canvas-rope bound lump in his hands and found out way. The entire thing was stamped to have had jumped between areas of operation across the front. Someone got them lost before they figured it out.

“Someone must really miss you back home.” Lin commented as she unfolded a yellowed piece of paper.

“Or someone got them lost.” he corrected stunned. He wondered where to start and just decided to surrender to choosing a side and starting there. He fumbled numbly with the tight knot in the string that bound them together.

“Oh how adorable, my brother's getting married.” cheered Lin as she read over her letter from home, “They're sad I can't be there, wish me well, but it's still the bitch from the other side of town so I don't care.”

“Sounds like an exciting relationship.” Hui commented as he leaned against a wall and held up his own letter.

“Yea, she thought she was better than me because her tits were bigger when we were sixteen. But now I shoot a big gun.”

“Never expected to hear a woman ever say that.” Hui laughed.

“Well you did.”

With a thump Tsung had released the knot and the string shot open, spilling its contents onto the table. A dozen letters fluttered onto the scratch wood surface along with a small wooden box. “A gift!” Lin exclaimed, excitedly.

Somehow it left a part of him disheartened that he didn't have nearly so many letters. But on the other hands he was relieved that he didn't. So it wasn't all garbage. “So what'd you get?” Hui asked.

Tsung looked up at him, confused. “The box, what'd you get?” he repeated.

“I don't know.” replied Tsung.

Hui rolled his eyes. “Well, you got to open it first.” he chided.

“I -uh...” he started. He wondered what it was. But also wondered what it could be. He reached out for the wooden gift box and held it in his hands. What weight there was in it wasn't much, mostly in the rough dry wood. He searched it with his fingers, looking for somewhere to start, but all corners were nailed shut.

But it hardly mattered the moment sirens started screaming outside. All heads turned tensely for the windows. The old men sat up from their stools knowingly and with shaky arms clung to the counter. The cafe owner ran around the counter and started shuffling them to a back room.

“Air raid!” an MP shouted as he pounced from his stool. He ran for the door with half a loaf of flat bread clenched between his teeth and his partners ran out with him. In the distance as the doors opened the sounds of gun fire echoed off of the street. The masons repairing the wall also squeezed in with pale faces passed the police.

“Shit, what's going on?” Hui complained as he went for the door to peak. What there was left in the moment of expectation had burned up as Tsung's companions forgot the gift that had came from the mail and looked out the door. Tsung's weight fell off his body as he numbly scooped up what had come to him and stuffed them into the pockets of his uniform until they bulged awkwardly from his chest. A beating hurrying worry swam in his veins, during blood to cold iodine.

There were shouts. Some confused, some scarred, others obviously angry. The military police that had dashed out into the street were swinging their batons, ushering the few on the streets back inside as they searched the skies. Tsung couldn't see the skies, he didn't know what to expect. It made him anxious. But there was little comfort no doubt in knowing that the men outside had any idea what they were looking for either; because they probably didn't.

So he sat at that cafe table, afraid of the unseen as he looked out the window. The early afternoon light was soft. A deception of what was happening now. He waited, wondering, fearing some great cataclysm. For bombs to drop from the skies and the city leveled to dust.

But they were behind the lines? How could some great bomber wing reach so far beyond where Huei Wen commanded from? Perhaps it was a Russian version of those fabled aircraft that could move at blistering speeds never before felt.

Or perhaps it had just gone unseen.

The asphalt and cement popped skyward as fire from aerial cannons strafed down the street. He watched with sudden frozen emotion as the dust and dirt shot into the air like spikes driven through the earth until they struck one of the Chinese policemen hurrying civilians from the street. Ribbons of blood and bone tore themselves from his body as bullets speared is torso and gut and forced him to the ground. He fell from view in the window, sprawling against the street as the ribbon of gunfire continued to tear downwards.

Tsung could hear it now. The groaning moan of a propeller engine strafing the warm summers air. He shuddered and recoiled back as he heard the distant sound of one coming in on the distance, and froze at the tearing reports of gunfire as men on the ground fired up at the offending airplane. There was a crashing noise, and then an explosion in the street as a plume of fire and smoke burst down the road and punched the yet remaining glass in the cafe inward. Tsung felt the puff of hot expanding air shove itself into him as the dark fiery explosion flowered open. His ears went silent, and he fell to the floor at the force of the explosion. He must have only been half sitting, he wondered as he fell: but he didn't know anymore.

He hit the dusty ground but was not knocked out cold. Instead a shooting pain exploded across his chest as the box he had slid into his uniform coat bumped into his ribs and cracked on impact. He grimaced against the sudden shooting pain on his left breast and recoiled against it. He wondered if it had cut him, he panicked over whether or not he was bleeding. There was a sudden intense fear that a piece of wood had thrust itself between his ribs, and it was as powerful as the light of the sun in his eyes. The worry was ever present.

Hearing returned to his ears, and the greater wider world was reopened to him. There was immediate shouting. The city had gone silent except for that. Orders and cries for status could be heard through the door and broken window.

“TSUNG!?” he heard Lin cry out.

“Dammit, are you alright?” Hui asked, leaning over him. Tsung turned over and saw his two crew mates leaning over him, eyes wide. They were safe for all but a few minor scratches and soot and dirt on their skin.

“I-” he started, but turning over to meet them shot a spike of pain into his side. He cringed against it and said no more.

“Help me get him up.” a concerned Tsung called out, wrapping his arms under his shoulders and hoisting him up. Lin did the same with his legs and carried him out into the street. The smell of burning petrol was strong, and the sky was clear. He lay stunned in their arms staring up into the sky.

“We need an ambulan-” Lin started.

“It's on its way!” one of the policemen responded.

_______________________

The hospital was probably the last place Tsung thought he'd find himself again. Leaning in a metal frame chair he found himself propped against Hui's shoulders as he nursed the side of his body that had landed on the box. It was sore, burning, and all manners of pain all at once. But he wasn't unconscious or in shock at the least. And he counted those stars as he waited for one of the bustling medics of field surgeons to turn to him.

In the wake of the bombing raid the field hospital had exploded and injuries more immediately serious than his were being turned and shuffled around in the lobby of the re-purposed hotel at the edge of the city. Evidently in the course of the brief assault the airplanes that had sought to skirmish with Huei Wen's rear van managed to destroy the logical roads, and by happenstance the ambulance – more a truck – had been routed to the far outskirts with a load of the seriously wounded.

There were others too, from other places. The one had managed to raid on the streets with its machine guns to disrupt and disorient. But the other in dropping its bombs had injured close to a dozen and a house in its crash.

Lin hovered nearby, somewhere in the chaos having been Shanghai'd into helping move things around. Tsung would make fleeting glimpses of her as she ran with a team of medics across the lobby to carry boxes of medical supplies.

As the initial startled hustling died down, and the most severe patients were established in their beds did a doctor approach Tsung. “Comrade.” he greeted with a polite nod, “Sorry for the weight.” he apologized.

Tsung nodded and sat up, flinching at the sharp pain in his side. “I fell on something.” he commented grimly.

“Well you haven't lost a limb so I'm not afraid for you. Just raise your uniform for a moment.” he asked with a dismissive raise of his hand. Stiffly, he pulled his uniform coat from his belt.

The side of his chest was a mess of a bruise. Dark purple splotches mired his pale yellow skin. There was a small cut.

The doctor mumbled to himself as he knelt down in front of Tsung and put his cold hands on his ribs, which flexed reflexively at his icy touch. Gently he pushed around his bruised side and searched the wound. Nodding as he prodded along.

“You probably didn't break anything.” he commented finally, “Are you having problems breathing?”

“Ah... Not really.” mumbled Tsung, lowering his uniform.

“Then for sure you didn't break any ribs. You're not going to win any metals for it but if you're going to be in the field for the next couple days I'd try to keep it bandaged up.” he grunted with a apathetic pass of his hands, “Maybe you cracked a rib, but it shouldn't be a problem unless it starts hurting to breath. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fine, my prescription is to take a few shots of vodka at night. That's all for now.” began the doctor as he turned away. Stopping he turned and asked: “What'd you fall on, by the way?”

“His mail.” Hui laughed, pulling the now crumpled wooden package from his own pockets and holding it out, “I guess he slipped it in his jacket when the plane came in.”

The doctor snorted out a dry laugh, “I've seen soldiers sprain their ankles to get out of patrol, but I don't think anyone's thrown themselves on their mail.” he let slip a flickering bully smile that disappeared as soon as it came in, “Well your box is open now kid, you can head back to quarters.” he laughed, waving Tsung away and off his chair, “Good bye.”

Without a word of additional ceremony, the doctor disappeared into the hotel-turned hospital. The lobby hung in a still silence. By now outside the light had dimmed and shifted into the late evening oranges and golden yellows. “You want your gift back?” Hui asked, handing the cracked box to Tsung.

“Ah- yeah...” Tsung replied uncomfortably, taking the cracked wooden box in his hands.

“I'm going to go and try and find something to eat. Lin will catch up later. You want to join me?” the loader asked.

“N- oh, ah. I'll just catch up with you in a bit.” uncomfortably replied Tsung as he brushed his hand across the package. Tufts of straw and dry grass were sticking out from the cracks and gaps left in the corners of the package. The corners of another letter was sticking out through one.

“Fine by me.” Hui shrugged, turning to the doors, “I'll see you later.”

“Ya... You too.” Tsung said back to him, watching him head out the doors. The barred glass swung closed behind him as he walked off into the street.

Tsung hung back waiting. The lobby was quiet, save for distant murmurs down the hall. Evidently Lin's shanghai'd service was going to last longer than expected. But still he waited, holding that little box in his lap.

When the deadened silence continued and the light darkened, he concluded nothing was going to change. Sitting up he left for the door. The glass doors swung open softly, and slammed with an echo as he stepped out onto the street.

A cool summer's night's air had come to fall over Tyumen as he walked ahead. Flickering lights illuminated the street, whether it be from weakly connected street-lights or a few scattered lanterns lighting still occupied houses. There was too a peaceful silence that held a gentle grip over the city. The only sounds the distant noises of engines and airplanes that leaked through the fingers like water from a slow faucet.

And in his hands the box was still.

It hurt his side to think about it. But it wasn't without reason, the fall onto it had bruised and cut him. Though not seriously. All the same it was a thought that kept a wound open. Yet he couldn't throw it away. Walking down the street the least he could do with it was open it.

In the darkening light of late evening he searched the cracks and broken edges with his fingers, looking for purchase which to dig his fingers into. Upon finding it, he pulled the small wooden panels apart. What didn't break was pried from the brads that held it together until packing straw fell out. With the package pried open enough, he stuck his hand in and produced a small letter, and a small white cotton goat.

He look down at the small pillow doll in his hand. It was no bigger than his palm, and simple in its design. Two pairs of beady black eyes starred out from the sides of its head and two flaps of cut rag became its ears. It warmed him, and he felt he knew it was from. As he walked he opened the folded letter. Holding it close to his face he squinted to make out the dashed, chicken-scratch writing on it.

“Dear, cousin.” it began with shaky almost child-like sweeps of a pen, “None of us have heard much from you since you left from Russia. We worry a lot for you. Things are well at home and I hear your brother is heading to the coast! Something about working at a factory.

“Nothing much has changed. We keep reading the news, looking for where you might be. Maybe you'll turn up in an interview. We keep looking.

“Auntie's worried that you haven't responded. But uncle thinks you just haven't gotten the letters. He says delivery can be messy. Do write back when you get our letters.

“I also made you this goat. It was your favorite: Po.

“Write back,
Ju.”

It lit a candle in his heart. Feeling a little bit of humanity in him he turned his attention back to the goat as he kept moving, cutting through the empty yard of an abandoned house. Holding the soft feathery doll in the palm of his hand brought him back to home. And the devilish goat Po that'd stand at his open window and at times try to eat the curtains.

In Russia he realized he had been afraid. Afraid for so long it had become normal. And with a piece of home in his hand a little bit of that fear had subsided. It had washed away and there was a feeling of comfort. For what it meant by the thoughtfulness, the goat was a symbol of home.

However, past the goat he did not see the open cellar door ahead of him, and everything stopped as he felt the comforting safety of nothing underfoot rush up to him. With a preemptive shout his breath left him before he could hit the stares. Clumsily he reached for the edge but only just barely wrapped his fingers around rough stone that briefly stopped his drop before he dropped the rest of the way. With a loud 'thump' his drop ended with a shot of lightning through his ass as he came to a stop on wooden stairs. The goat doll tumbled down after him, bouncing off of his shoulders and landed softly on the dust floor below.

Cursing and hissing through clenched teeth he rolled off his rump, rubbing the burning sore left on his tail bone. With a groan he leaned up, and reached down for the doll as foot steps approached him.

He froze as they stopped just shy of him, fingers just above the body of the goal doll, and hand gingerly nursing where he had fell. He looked up to see a pair of black boots before his nose and worn over-patched pants. Leaning up he found the holstered weapon and the crossed arms. A ghostly light of a lantern lit the room and threw long shadows across the man's heavy and cavernous face.

“You, I remember you.” he grumbled with a deep Russian voice. His accent rolled thick across his tongue, as heavy as his face was broad.

“I... Ah- I don't remember you.” Tsung replied meekly. The comfort was gone now and there was fear again. To have it back was like being plunged into a cold pond.

The man nodded. Heavy blue eyes checked Tsung up and down, then finally looked down at the goat on the ground. He bent over, and picked it up off the wet stone. “This is yours.” he said with a gruff forceful voice.

Tsung's fear turned into puzzlement. Where had he seen him before? Apprehensively he reached for the gift from home. He tucked it protectively into his uniform pockets. Nervously and fidgeting he turned to the stares, “I'll... Just ah- go...”

“Don't you want a drink?” the man asked.

Tsung froze, bewildered. He stammered. “Ah...”

Gesturing, the man invited him into the house's cellar. Tsung approached reproachfully, feeling utterly naked without any sort of weapon on him. Pushing aside a rough wooden door, the man opened up a room lit warmly by the glow of electrical lanterns, and the familiar smells of booze. He recognized immediately what was going on as he smelled the smells of yeast and malted hops.

“Oh... Omsk...” he quivered. It had been the only time he had ever been in a bar.

“Now do you remember?” the guard spoke. He had been the muscle the German had escort Tsung out when he went on his way. He nodded.

“Friend, we have a guest here!” he called out, in the far corner of the room stacks of wooden crates had created a low lying bar. Behind which stood the overweight bear of a proprietor. He thickly whiskered face looked up from packing bottles of alcohol into wooden milk-crates, cosigning the stock away to be moved.

The German looked annoyed at first, he looked up at the two with thick sausage hands wringing tight over deep green bottles of vodka or gin. But seemed to soften as he saw Tsung. “Ah! A return customer!” her cheered happily. The speed of which his emotions melted from one to another was astounding, and to watch his fat rolling face move from one to another was like beholding a ghost.

“Um, good evening.” he bowed, “I was just walking by...” he started.

“Were you injured?” the German asked, reversing his packing as he started laying bottles out on the make-shift bar counter.

“Excuse me?” Tsung recoiled, a little at a loss for polite words or response.

“I know full well there's a Chinese hospital just two blocks down the street,” the German responded, “So: were you hurt at all?”

“I- no.” he replied nervously, “But I did take a fall...” he admitted.

“Then that is no surprise, it is how you found me the last time!” laughed The German, “It seems Russians can smell me out, and some Chinese just stumble on me. Come, sit down. Don't look like a nervous school boy. You're as much a man as he or my guard.” he invited. “So do you have money commie-boy?”

Tsung gave the man behind the counter a blank stare. “No I do not.” he said in a droning voice, that paycheck was left behind in his quarters. But he had hardly a use for using it.

The barman shrugged indifferently, “We can settle in the future, I am feeling generous.” he smiled, “Can I have a name?”

“A name?”

“For a tab.”

“A tab?” he asked him, lost in communication.

“So I know how much you paid and when, when you find my next time you can clear that tab.” the barman explained, “Do you understand?”

Tsung gave the German a dull, misty eyes expression. He shrugged and nodded like a schoolchild not knowing the answer, but simply wanting to move along. “I do.”

The German nodded patiently, “So, that name?”

Tsung looked at him, pausing to consider. The pull of his conscious tore him. He wondered, would telling him his name be a danger to himself? Anxious uncertainty spun a wary thread across his tongue, holding it down. “Tsung.” he replied finally, in a low croaking voice. The bartender nodded with a polite smile.

“Very well!” he exclaimed, with a wide smile, “So Tsung, what would it be?”

“I don't know... What do you have?” he asked.

“Well it all depends on your tastes. Egor, what sort of fare do you think this man would be good for?” he called out, looking up at the guard who loomed in the distant corner.

Egor turned his head up and looked between he and his boss, “Kitayoza looks like a light-weight. I save kvass!”

The bartender nodded, “A good starting choice,” he replied with a smile. Shuffling in the crates at his feet he pulled out an indistinguishable bottle of a foggy, yellowing brown drink and passed it to Tsung. Hesitantly, he took the drink. The glass was warm in his hands.

“Uh, thank you...” said Tsung, eyeing the bottle with meek skepticsm and wariness. Somehow the bottle with its light cloud of floating debris seemed suspicious. And its heavy piss color didn't hardly help, “What is it?”

“It is kvass, friend. Greatest drink here in Russia!” he laughed, “People talk of vodka, but vodka is too strong for daily drink. So they drink Kvass instead, it's made with bread.

“Go ahead, drink it; but you might find it a little bitter.” he beckoned.

Tsung looked at the bottle with a reproachful sneer, weakly thumbing the cap with his finger nails until with a carbonated pop it snapped off. Nervously, he swilled it around in the bottle, watching the drifting, saturated crumbs slosh around in the foggy, bubbling drink. The German and Egor laughed over the expense of the hesitant and apprehensive Tsung.

Finally, after much delay he resigned to try the drink. It felt at the moment he upended the bottle the warm rush of tangy bitterness. Overwhelmingly there was the sensation of eating soggy bread, summoning a sort of strange mint flavor. Confused or reviled, he choked down his first swig of kvass and starred quizzically at the confusing beverage. Egor and the German roared with laughter.

“I think he likes it!” Egor exclaimed with a enthusiastic chuckle.

“Do you see what makes Russians tick now?” the German crooned, between dry giggles, “Everyone drinks it! And I don't need to worry about under-serving, if there was any reason to fear undeserving.” he cackled.

“What is this?” Tsung grimaced. He felt an almost beet after-taste crawl across his tongue as the remnants of the kvass trickled down his throat.

“Kvass!” the bartender repeated with a jovial roar, “It's maybe one of the things I can make on the road, so long as I got bread and plenty of yeast on hand.

“You see: what you do is you take some stale bread, soak it in water and add yeast. Let it ferment. You can do it in jugs, you can do it in a spare water bottle, you can make it in a barrel, a cask, or a crate! It's the universal bootleg.

“I add the mint for my own flare. I feel straight kvass is too unsophisticated for my tastes.”

“I prefer honey myself.” Egor commented.

“No wonder Russians are insane.” Tsung groaned, as he took another sip on the unlikely off-chance it would wash away the bitter taste.

“It's come to my attention too through rumors that your commander is fond of kvass himself. So he and us have many things in common.” the German crooned.

“'Us'?” Tsung asked, “I thought you were German.”

“Oh, I am!” the bartender laughed, “But I was born in Russia. Old Sarepa, if it matters to you. My father's father and on down the line moved to the Volga valley on the old czar's Catherine's invitation.”

“You don't sound Russian.” Tsung commented, referring to the differently accented Russian of the bartender.

“I also lived in Germany for a time. I learned my trade there.” he explained, “My brother learned to brew, and together we came back to Russia.

“You know, he handles my supply of the harder tonics and liquor. Maybe someday when your army “liberates” Volgagrad you can send him my regards. I may have moved to Moscow then at that time.”

“And interesting profession.” commented Tsung, between dry lappings of the tongue to remove the beverage's strange aftertaste.

“We are all interesting people, Mr. Tsung.” smiled the German, “And there are interesting times ahead. That much is sure. I can smell it in the air. I can hear it in the conversation. And to the end all I dream is to serve them!” he cheered with a wide smile.

“You have respectable dreams.”



It had a snub-nose, it was rusty and brown, and the inside smelled like stale fruit-juice. Packed behind the windshield was a thin line of garbage and notes, but none of them were on interest. Strapped to lay down in the backseat president Belyakov lay with his head still covered by the black hood. There was still fear from him and his deep breaths punctuated the low steady rumble of the engine.

Some miles back Ullanhu and Vasiliy both had thrown out the true owners of the van, the widow mother and her child were left behind at the edge of the road as both men worked on trying to loose themselves in the winding country roads of Russia, passing with tentative caution through isolated villages or by prowling police cruisers. So far none of them had made an alarm. But both of them were beginning to feel they had to change vehicles at some point. Those two would be picked up at some point and would no doubt report them. This van needed to be ditched.

“Do we know where we're going?” Ullanhu asked as they drove through the middle of another idyllic Russian village. The names of these small towns were becoming meaningless as the daylight fell below the horizon and the world was becoming cast in purple and orange lights. It was also the fifth time the question had been asked.

It wasn't so much an establishment of a plan but more the deep seated need for some comfort in knowing what's going on. Even if the answer had not changed.

“East we go.” Vasiliy answered the question. He kept his eyes peeled on the main road as he scanned up and down it.

Under normal circumstances the small restaurants, store-fronts, and second floor apartments would have been comfortable lit up in their gold light of soft orange candle lighting. But for two men who had become high-profile fugitives that was hardly the matter. They had just barely escaped Moscow and neither knew how far the Poles would go to try and get the president back. But there had been no sign of them so far and it could only be assumed that they were still disorganized in the chaos in Moscow and searching for what went wrong.

Maybe they thought they were still in the city?

“We've been doing that for a while.” Ullanhu replied, resting his chin on his hand as he starred out the window, “And when are we going to change out vehicles?”

“When we find one.”

When they find one, that was a promising proposal. There was many along the side of the road but they were either too in the open or there was a real fear that they had been abandoned for some reason. And to refuel one wasn't looking promising as they passed refueling stations advertising the abhorrent price of gas in the region. It was no wonder that in the country they found so many horse-drawn carts. Some enterprising farmers had even figured out how to chop up an old car to hitch it to their horses or mules.

Neither at least needed gasoline.

As quietly as they came the two left the rural town and crawled back through the forest on the highway. Guarded by towering looming spruces that seemed to bough over the road, concealing the incandescent beams of street-lights they had the road to themselves. The filtered lights of the road lights cast broken shadows on the road.

“Hungry you?” Vasiliy asked, turning to Ullanhu.

He looked up and to Vasiliy. Stopping to think about it he felt his stomach turn. “Yea, you didn't happen to hide anything in your coat did you?” he asked.

Vasiliy smiled and shook his head, “No, comrade.” he admitted, “ Money I do have.”

Up ahead through the trees a road-side dinner drifted into view. Warm, white incandescent lighting spilled out across a dirt parking lot from an outside bar. A few dark shadows loitered around outside of it. “I think I found it.” Vasiliy nodded to the stand.

“We won't get caught, will we?” Ullanhu asked.

“Hopefully no...” Vasiliy said, “But we both soldiers, right? We can get way out.”

“I'm hoping you know what you're doing.” Ullanhu moaned as they pulled across the road onto the gravel. There wasn't much space, just more than enough for them to park the van so the rear-bumper was a foot from the road's shoulder. Killing the engine the two men sat looking out at the situation.

A manufactured metal hut stood out by the road, where windows had been cut away to form a bar for travelers to eat outside. Behind it a house built from logs, clumps of moss and mildew grew in thick patches across the bark and exposed wood of the cut and shaved logs that built it. Though a sign hung out front bearing a restaurant's name, none of the lights were on save for the road-side bar.

“We have a new car.” Ullanhu pointed out nervously, nodding to a beat up boxy truck parked not far away, an empty bead carried only a sagging tarp cover.

“Mhmm,” Vasiliy nodded, “But two at bar. If re-act, you take them da?”

“I was never good at fighting,” said Ullanhu. There were nervous butterflies in his stomach. A heavy wayward caution hung over him. He felt almost defeated already.

“Yet, you be better than these hicks.” Vasiliy said, he was putting him to a promise. It didn't make Ullanhu very comfortable.

“No one knows what we look like, do we?” asked Ullanhu.

“Sooner or later will.” Vasiliy said cautiously, “We may go up, patrons know. We must put them down.”

“I don't know if I like this.”

“It what necessary.” Ullanhu scowled, “Listen if they try be hero hit man next you. Put them on side of fighting hand. Order something with silverware.

“I jump counter and take out barman. You do whatever. Hear?”

The Mongol nodded nervously, “We really need to kill them?”

“Do what must be done. Search for keys to truck. We take it.”

Ullanhu gave him a dry uncomfortable sigh. “If you insist.” he conceded. Both nodded and stepped outside.

The Russian July night was comfortably cool. The fresh cool smell of spruce and waxy pine was heavy on the air. In the distant woods the sounds of crickets played a muted symphony as the birds flocked to safety in the trees. A long purple light was cast down the road as the sun set well below the horizon, giving its last dying light before the moonlight finally put the day to bed.

From the distant dinner a radio played Russian folk. The two patrons looked up at their new guests walking over to them.

There was disconnected silence as Ullanhu and Vasiliy took their seats. The chairs little more than rain-washed and element faded bar-stools made of flaking whitening aluminum and torn upholstery. The air at the window was thick with the smell of onions and frying vegetables.

“We're about ready to close up.” the man behind the counter told them with a bitter frown. He leaned over a sink filled with soapy utensils. The two late patrons looked at the new guests as they sat down next to them. Ullanhu averted his eyes, afraid and suspicious of the scruffy laborers he found himself with. He kept his eyes down on the counter, nervously starring at the tar-stained knuckles of the man next to him, a nearly smoked cigarette smoldered between his fingers.

“Perhaps you can make a exception?” Vasiliy asked in Russia, “We've had a long road trip and we're a little hungry. I didn't plan on stopping for the night so I could use a pick-me up for the long-road.”

The clerk looked at them both through a critical sneer. Perhaps he could see the smudged dirt on them? Can he see and smell the blood and the gunpowder they had tried to wipe off still? He was critical, but did he know.

“Fine, but I'm charging you both double.” he said, “What will it be?”

“Some Shashlyk would be nice.”

The clerk nodded. “And what about your friend?” he asked, nodding to the submissive Ullanhu.

“T-the same thing.” he said in a low voice.

One of the men at the counter laughed, it was a low dry voice that crackled and coughed, “Why do you sound so afraid?” he asked, “Are you wanted for something?”

Ullanhu's heart skipped a nervous beat and he could feel his face run cold. He leaned his head up on his hand and covered his face with his fingers.

“He is nervous,” Vasiliy explained for him, “He's been afraid that we're going to be late for a project. He's been moaning about it for the entire drive!”

The Russian chuckled, “And what is it you two do? You're too well dressed for these parts. And your friend: he's a little strange.”

“We both work for the president I'm afraid.” Vasiliy explained through lying teeth. A cold sweat dripped down Ullanhu's spine as he talked. The mongol wondered how much of it he was making it up as he went, “We were on our way east for important business. But I heard there was a terrible back-up on the main high-way. I thought we could get around it and make up for lost time waiting for it to be cleared!”

Ullanhu restrained his breathing. Each work he felt was making it worse. He was going too far to explain himself. Ullanhu could hear that. He could hear the forced smile in his voice too. He looked up through his fingers and watched the barman work over a griddle as he coaxed it back up to heat. The minced pieces of meat on the grill was beginning to sizzle as the man prepared metal skewers.

“That's interesting, I haven't heard anything about that.” the patron observed, “When did this happen?”

“Earlier this evening.”

“Volya, did you hear anything about a highway back up?”

“I haven't been paying attention.” the patron next to Ullanhu replied.

There was a brief silence. “Perhaps it'll come on the radio?” Vasiliy suggested.

There was more audible silence between the four. “What will you two drink?” their host asked.

“Kvass.” Vasiliy said, “For the two of us.”

“Right, coming up.” said the host.

Again, there was a conversation-less void. Ullanhu waited for the food, listening to it cook on the grill as the sounds of the night chirped away. A car on the highway passed by, dragging along the watery hush of air as it cut by.

With a light tap they were both passed a plate of several skewers of darkened red meat. “There you go.” the hose said, annoyed, “fifty rubles for the both of you.” he added, putting down two glasses of a foggy brown drink.

“Thank you, friend.” Vasiliy smiled.

Ullanhu reached out tentatively for the skewered meat and began tensely nibbling the spiced chunks of beef and vegetables. He looked over at his bar mate who was thumbing idly through a bowl of a half-eaten stew.

“Well, I should be leaving.” Ullanhu's partner said, “The wife will probably wonder where I am. Pyotr, how much do I owe you?”

“I'll put it on your tab.” the man behind the counter replied.

“Thanks.” the older man said, standing up. But he stopped as the radio switched over to a radio story. He froze at the mention of Belyakov.

“... Kidnapping agents are still suspected to be on the run.” a newsreader said through a crackling microphone, “Current police intelligence suggests that the perpetrators for the abduction of president Belykov are a working pair, likely working for communist forces operating from occupied Sankt Petersburg or the Chinese military. Citizens are advised to be on the lookout for two men acting suspiciously, known currently to be driving a stolen van. All individuals are advised to not engage and reports all sightings of these criminals to their local police jurisdictions...”

There was a tense, nervous silence as the radio echoed on. Silverware clinked against a plate. Ullanhu looked up for once. The man who was just getting up to leave stood looking down at him, deeply puzzled. But also deeply worried. Through worn eyes he was clearly measuring up the Chinese agent sitting before him.

“Who did you two say you were working for?” asked Vasiliy's bar-side partner.

“The president.” Vasiliy explained, tense. There was an uncomfortable pause. Ullanhu turned to look over at him and found he was trying to hold it together. Was he trying to talk his way out? But it was failing, in his eyes Ullanhu could tell he was beginning to calculate how to kill the man next to him. His fingers wrapped around the end of his skewer as he lowered it.

“I think these two might be the ones!” the elder man shouted, Volya.

“Comrade, now!” Vasiliy shouted in Chinese. Ullanhu jumped up as Vasiliy sprung to his feet. Swinging the half-eaten skewer in a low arc into his partner's gut. There was a piercing squelch as it pierced his gut and as the man cried out in pain.

Without thinking about it Ullanhu did what he could. He threw himself at Volya as he turned to run. He screamed as the agent wrapped his fingers through the collar of his shirt and tossed him against the side of the outside dinner. His head connected with the aluminum siding with a crashing clang and he fell back into the dirt with a heavy umph. He groaned as he held his hands to his face, blood rushing from a broken nose. His head cracked against the ground as Ullanhu delivered a swift kick to the side of his head and it rolled to the side stunned and still as it snapped to the side.

Ullanhu breathed heavily as his stomach rolled sickly in his belly. A slimy chill enveloped his skin and his shivered as he leaned against the side of the building.

There was wet fearful screams from inside as Vasiliy threw himself on the server. There wasn't much to put to the imagination as Ullanhu shut his eyes at the sound of the repeated falling stabs of Vasiliy's bloodied skewer into the poor man. And as soon as it happened it fell completely silent with only the chorus of the crickets. Vasiliy's breath rose and fell harsh as he leaned over the counter and looked up at Ullanhu.

“Did you find the keys?” he asked, exhausted. The front of his suit was covered in dish-pan size stains of blood and drops had splattered against his face.

Ullanhu felt and looked and felt as if he felt a ghost. He was shocked for words. It occurred to him he hadn't quiet seen something like this since Jun had cut down a station's worth of grungy gangsters. Shaking he shook his head.

Vasiliy nodded, “Go do that, move the president. I'll try to clean up here.”




The brakes wheezed as the van pulled up in-front of a boarded-up store-front. The sign hanging up from read in massive block letters “The Fourth Rome Laundromat”. A tipped over trashcan sat beside the front door. Dust covered the glass of the door. On the corner a small group of sloppily dressed, skinny youths leaned over a dice-game.

“Welcome to the kingdom of The Italian.” Makulov's agent said with a faux prideful smile. Jun looked out at it unimpressed.

“That's all?” he said.

The other agent nodded. “It's garbage, I know. I think we all know. But it still works actually.”

“Impressive, to say the least.” Jun said. He wasn't at all impressed. In all his apathy he could squeeze out only a little sarcasm as he went to open the door.

“Before you step out and we both meet the man there's a few things you should know,” the agent started, placing a hard hand on Jun's shoulder and stopping him, “about The Italian.

“The first and foremost thing you should know and may recognize before you go on is that he's Aurelio Batista.”

“Batista? The old Italian dictator?” Jun was surprised, he lifted his hands from the door.

“The very same. He still like to be recognized as such. So be sure to title him as 'Your Honor' or even 'Prime Minister Sir'. If you don't you'll probably offend him and fuck us both up. I don't know how he's managed it but he's been able to lay low here ever since he was ousted from Italy. The monarchy had interest in finding him to bring him in for justice but they never succeeded.”

“So are they still looking for him?” Jun asked

The Russian nodded, “It's my own little chip. It's in fact a lot of people's chip against him and is what's held him in check among Mafiya regulars. He's too afraid of having the Italians sweep back in and pick him up or assassinate him so he bides by their rules. The Mafiya doesn't trust him because he's foreign, but they don't exclude him. He's become a beneficiary to mid-level bosses so it's how I get my information.

“That's why he's important.” he added with emphasis, “That's why I don't want him killed. And it's why I don't want this fucked up. I'm sharing this very important card with you because I find it necessary. If we're sharing the same city and we're both working for the same man then I want us both on the same page.

“So, why do you need to contact him?”

Jun considered his answer. Was it relevant anymore, he wondered? Fair enough that politics had moved as they did and that perhaps his mission was irrelevant. But he was so far lost and without support. He would need to get what he could to find if he should report home. He looked out at the dilapidated laundromat.

The surrounding neighborhood didn't look much better than it. And out of place in Russia he noticed that there was not only prevalent Russian but prevalent German as well. He took a heavy sigh, “There's a brewer in central Volgograd that needs Batista to lay off him.” he admitted flatly, “His workers are scarred off, and he can't produce anymore alcohol. I think he's afraid he's going to fall apart.”

“That sounds usual in Batista's alley.” Makulov's local agent acknowledged, “He's trying to pass off the image he's some Sicilian crime-boss now or something. He's been harassing business owners across the city for protection money. That and gambling dens, those are his fields. He lacks the resources and capital to do anything else. He can launder money but he can't launder people: so he doesn't do human trafficking, he doesn't have anyone smart enough to do drugs, but the Alan Company does that already and has a monopoly over the area for that.”

“Alan Company?”

“Mafiya affiliates. Someone I would like to infiltrate to get a higher view of the area but never can. But don't worry about them, you'll probably never see them.”

Jun nodded.

“The next thing you should know is that Batista wants his outfit to be called The Cosa Nostra,” the agent moved to explain, “But he has so little respect and so few care that it's become practice to simply call it Cocka Hocktpa. He's resigned himself to it, but he would be flattered if you recognized the actual name. He may not have you killed then.”

“That's good to know.”

“Excellent.” the Russian smiled, banging his hand on the steering wheel. “You can step out now.”

With a twin set of dull pops the two opened the van's doors and stepped out. The air was still and quiet. The gang of youths on the corner stopped their game and glared up at the two men as they entered the laundromat. Before he disappeared inside, Jun shot them a cold look in warning.

Inside, if it weren't for the boarded windows there was a certain semblance of normality in the laundromat, beyond which was shown on the outside. Though the sunlight was non-existent or streamed in through dirty glass the place was at least cleaned. Stacks and rows of bone-white laundry machines created organized aisles, where at this time of day a few of Sarepta's oldest sat reading paperbacks as their laundry was ran through still-working machines.

Walking passed them there was the stale smell of cheap laundry detergent that mingled with chemical floor cleaner. Dull mechanical thumping joined in tandem the grainy sounds of music played in the backroom. Over what sounded to be a gramaphone that sung in better days the distant words of a melodramatic Italian opera sang in a dearth of lively sound.

The Russian agent lead Jun up to the counter at the far end of the laundromat. There a middle-aged man stood leaning over the counter with a book in his hands. Tapping on the counter he summoned the man's attention.

“Ah! Artyom, how are you?” the attendant asked. His face was disheveled, covered in a patchwork beard and mustache that was only half shaved in spots and fully shaved in others. Blue eyes were quickly turning gray, but it hardly mattered as his brow slowly sank closer into his field of view.

“I'm here to see the boss.” Artyom said, “He is available, is he?”

“That he is. But whose the uzkoglazy?” the man sneered, looking at Jun. His face reflected a certain public bitterness. Jun returned the favor.

“He's a friend of mine.” Artyom explained, “He too needs to speak to the boss.”

The clerk looked between the two of him. Reserved, he asked: “What for?”

“I need work.” Jun spoke up.

“Right,” the clerk sneered, “And I need a wife who'll fuck me. What is it you do?”

“Anything.” said Jun.

The clerk grunted, “Alright, but let me go check with the boss.” He pushed himself away from the counter and headed to the back, shooting a distasteful look at him.

As he left, Jun turned over to Artyom. “Cover name?” he asked in a low voice.

“It is, don't worry about it.” he explained. Jun nodded.

“Anything I should know last minute about this?” he prodded, gesturing off to where the man disappeared.

“I think it's self evident.” Artyom began in a lowered voice, “Your people invade Russia, makes the locals mad. Once more, there's a community of Chinese living in the delta who have kept the Mafiya out of their affairs. Batista included. They're the bastards everyone doesn't like.

“Sort of like the Jews.”

Jun nodded along. Folding up his arms he waited for the man to come back. Seconds soon passed with the two waiting. Seconds turned to minutes. And soon it felt as if they were waiting for the better part of an hour.

Eventually, he returned.

“He'll see you two now.” he invited with a cold voice. He stepped aside as the two walked through the office door, the clerk giving them a distrustful glare as they slipped into the back.

The hallways in the back were sterile and austere. No direction hung from the plaster-white walls and nothing on the slate gray carpet. Several plainly built wooden doors hung from dark, sharply contrasting frames. But the two ignored them, continuing along to the end of the hall where the sound of music was the strongest. Stopping at the door Artyom rose his hand and rapped his knuckles against the door.

“Come in.” a voice beckoned from inside. Artyom swung the door open and stepped in, hands folded in front of him.

The office inside was a far-cry from the sterility just outside its door. And though it was cheap it was as brashly decorated as a cheap criminal overlord with the ego of a world leader could afford. A dark red Persian rug adorned the floor of the office and a wooden desk took the middle of the room, clearly carved without expertise to resemble a much finer piece of furniture; but lost out with the hard straight lines it held in the curves. A golden-yellow lamp stood on the corner, bathing the room in a flickering yellow light that shone from the dented brass horn of a hard-wood gramophone in the corner, placed in a niche formed by flanking empty bookshelves and filing cabinets.

And sitting at the center of the room was the lord dejure. A pale faced man with slacking skin, who may have been fatter in happier days. But though he was still a large man the clothes he wore and the loose jowls of his face spoke a hundred words to the weight he had lost.

He was as well not a reserved man in his appearance, his hair was well groomed and presidential, combed and oiled back from where it receded from his brow. Even his eyebrows were waxed to the side. Dark green eyes looked up at Artyom with warm welcome, and then to Jun with cold suspicion. He held in sausage fingers a black pen which he tapped against golden rings on the other hand. He wore cuff links still adorned with the flag of his Italian regime.

Looking at him was like looking down at a by-gone ghost. Aurelio Batista was still as much of the classicist looking man as he was in Italy, and he clung to what little style he could find to retain his dissolved position while still grabbing for what respect he could muster.

“When I thought I was going to have a nice afternoon coffee break with my good friend, I did not think I would have to do so in the presence of a chink.” he rused spitefully. He scratched the bulbous end of his round spot-pocked nose, “Do you have an explanation for his presence?” he asked.

“He is a capable man, and he's looking for work.” Artyom explained.

“I'm sure he is, as with everyone in this town.” Batista sneered. He looked up at Jun, scowling, “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded.

“Piàn Qi.” Jun answered.

Batista snorted, “Mr. Qi, why are you here?” he demanded.

“On a request, actually.” Jun told him, “I want to settle a debt between you and someone who you think needs your service.”

“There are many people who require my services. You're going to need to be specific you slant-eyed prick.”

“A brewer in Volgograd proper, he says you scarred off his workers. I'm here to see they come back and you stop harassing him. You realize that on this strategy he'll never get you anything at this rate, Mr. Batista.”

Batista's eyes widened and he sat up in his chair, “No one calls me by that name!” he snarled, “Do you understand that?” he turned to Artyom, “How did he know!?” he demanded, “None of the trash here in Russia have gotten this.”

“Mr. Batista, I guess he's smart.” he shrugged, “Perhaps he recognized you. I have come to known him in our brief acquaintance as being a very sharp man.”

“Sharp man or not, do you know what I can have my men do to you?” Batista hissed, “I'll have you tossed into the Volga, with a whole cement suit.”

“Do you realize what I can do to your men before they try that.” Jun answered back in a low voice.

“Are you threatening me?” Batista growled.

“I'm not threatening, I'm giving you a promise. I also have an offer.”

“No, I will not leave that cripple alone. Not until he pays me back what he owes to me!”

“Your honor, let me explain,” Jun began. The title reference froze Batista's angry look for a moment that his eyes glossed over with a spark of pride, “I realize the Cosa Nostra here in Russia could use money. But not everyone is willing to offer it.

“But prime-minister, I am willing to deal on it. What could be done that lets you leave him alone?” Jun felt slimy dealing with him. A itchy hand begged him to gun the man down there. But the pressure of Artyom kept him steady. True as it might he could grill the city's underclass, having an informant former dictator was a unique opportunity to hold. For now, he would stay his hand and bite the bullet of working with the enemy.

Even if that enemy was no longer anything.

Batista leaned over the desk as he rose from his chair. Walking around the crudely carved piece of furniture he stepped up to Jun. The former dictator easily stood over him.

He seemed at a crossroads. At a moment he would want him dead. But to properly addressed, his organization recognized for what it was complicated that. “Alright.” he said, “You enter my employ and I will leave the cripple brew master alone.” he offered, “You will not be paid until I feel that his debt has been fully repaid by your work.”

“I can agree to that.” Jun nodded.

“Good.” Batista said with a cold tone, “But I want you to know that outside these doors you will not refer to me by my real name. I am either The Boss, or The Italian. You will never say my name in public. Only between me and Artyom may you say who I am.

“Or I'll fucking feed you to the fishes, understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good.” Batista sighed, “We'll initiate the chink in the next couple days. For now you gook: you can wait outside for Artyom and I to finish. You're dismissed.”

Abandoned Mosque, Batumi

The doors to the abandoned mosque came away under Captain Bakradze's boot. No doubt the local Muslim units would have a fit - but luckily, Bakradze was a Christian.

"Come on" he murmured to his subordinates, who took up positions on either side of the door. Bakradze picked his way through the long splinters of rotten wood that poked out of the sides of the doorway like stalactites. The privates followed, their eyes darting wildly across the street. "Where to, sir?" whispered one. "The Minarets. We can take a position up there and take out a few Turks behind their barricade" replied the Captain, clutching his rifle tightly. It was slick with sweat from where he had been holding it so hard. The other half of the unit were going up the shopfronts to draw fire away from the Main Street and into the shop windows.

The mosque had been abandoned years ago by its Shiite inhabitants, who had found their position between a Sunni and Orthodox plurality uncomfortable and had left for Persia. The building had been impressive in its day and had served the dwindling Shia sect well - the exquisite yet compact architecture spoke wonders for their ancient culture. But Bakradze was no fan of Muslims, especially ones who prayed in such glamorous buildings. He would of kicked a piece of furniture over, if there had been one. He instead contented himself with spitting on the soft, marble floors.

"Dirty bastards" he spat, rubbing his boot in it. Bakradze hated Muslims and Muslims hated Bakradze. At least, in his head, they did.

It didn't take long to find the steps that led to the bell tower, where the Imam had once called Shiites to prayer five times a day. The stairs were rickety and wooden. Dust puffed out of each step as the snipers stamped their way to the top, all silent in their resolution. Bakradze was rather proud of his military career and his heart had swollen with pride upon hearing his unit had been chosen for this job. He'd been fighting Turks with guerilla tactics for years.

"Stop" murmured Bakradze, turning to his companions. "One of you stay downstairs, make sure no fucking Turks get up here". The man at the back of the queue nodded and stamped down the steps back into the mosque.

Bakradze gave himself a private pat on the back. He'd almost fucked up.

The belltower, if it could even be called a belltower, was a tiny room, open to the warm, summer air. It was pitch black and it took the men a few minutes to gain their bearings. The occasional flash of gunfire came on the street and square below, as the Guards and the Turks fired pot-shots into the dark, hoping to make a lucky shot hit.

"Right" murmured Bakradze. "We can't do much in the dark, so we're only going to get a few shots in before they notice where we are and set that machine gun going. Make your shots count, lad". The private, a pale young Georgian, nodded. He'd been trained well. He wasn't even shaking as he lifted his rifle over the side of the small wooden guard and took aim. His superior copied him and they both stared down their iron sights, fingers twitching at the trigger.

"Soon, lad" murmured the Captain. "Be patient. Wait for the flank".

Sahle was in the dark, in a version of the Dead Man's Drink that went on forever in every direction. The lights were off, leaving little visible, but Sahle couldn't escape the feeling that he was totally alone.

Then he heard singing. The voice was that of Aaliyah: the girlfriend he thought he had lost.

"It's no good."

He recognized that line. It was from a simple cabaret bit they often did at the beginning of any given night in Sevan, usually as an introduction.

"Doing as you should." the spotlight appeared on her then. She looked like a ghost, with grey-tan skin and a flowing robe that seemed to melt into the stage.

"It's no fun. Being on the run." her voice was high and sweet. It made him feel a pain in his chest for the better times.

"It's not nice. Living vice to vice." At the abrupt sound of a cymbal crash, and the rise of a ghostly band, she became many. The stage stretched into forever on either side, and infinite versions of singing Aaliyahs were lined along it like chorus girls. Sahle felt drunk on the chaos. He sunk into his chair and tried to fathom what was happening.

"But we're alive!" her voice leapt to hold a note that Sahle never knew Aaliyah to hold. "We always survive. We are grand. We are the baaand."

And then Sahle was not alone. Swanky music filled the room. Though he was the only person at his table, the other tables were occupied by skeletal bands as infinite as the Aaliyahs. There were skeletons wrapped in shammas, with wiry beards and bushy afros growing from bleached bones. There were skeletons in loose fitting Armenian clothes, and some with military uniforms. And there were some dressed in the warms clothes he had seen in Russia. All of them played instruments. They played hard and violent, like bones driven by devils. And they were good. Holy shit could they play. The music was perfect. They did not miss a beat. Sahle felt an urge to jam with them, but they were still skeletons, and the whole scene was just too bizarre for him to do anything but stay freaked out and glued to his chair.

Until a hand grabbed his shoulder. He jumped.

"Emperor friend" he heard Vasily's voice "What is wrong with you?"

-

Astrakhan, The Volgograd Confederation

Sahle woke up in the passenger's seat of Vasily's dented old truck surrounded by an unfamiliar city. He felt cold and slimy from his own sweat. He wanted something - anything - and he had a compulsion to seek out Marc for a fix.

"I think you are not well." Vasily told him, looking at him like a mother worrying over a feverish child.

He wasn't well. His skin felt unnatural, as if it were rejecting his body, and he had a compulsion to itch. His mind was gone - lost in a fog, somewhere between the windshield and the city. He shivered like a corpse on a frozen block. Everything outside seemed to leer at him unwelcoming.

There were some houses with rotten roofs, and scraps of wood siding hanging from the walls. Others had crisp paint-jobs and lively windows. Though the occasional person outdoors showed that these neighborhoods were inhabited, there was something static and unhappy about those houses. They stared lifelessly across the cracks and potholes of the beaten street like tombs waiting for bodies. Clammy fear slithered over Sahle's skin. Were the houses waiting for his corpse? What did those walls hide? He crumpled up like an old newspaper in his seat.

"What is this place?" Sahle muttered. He glared at the Russian, catching his uncertain glances. Did Vasily know something Sahle didn't?

"Astrakhan" Vasily replied. "We are still in the Volgograd territories. The commander of the military garrison here is my boss."

"Military? You belong to the military? I thought... you are a gangster or something?"

Vasily smiled. "I think that these rules are not as important as you Emperors think, my oh Imperial Magistrate. Armies, gangs, and governments, and businesses, it's all just words until you find out who has control"

"Who's that?" Sahle asked. He felt like there was some overwhelming secret in Vasily's words, like the Russian was hinting at something that would put him in grave danger.

Vasily shrugged. "Who knows."

What was going on here? Sahle did not know why, by he was certain that something evil was hanging over him, like a gun strung up by its trigger. He looked at his right hand and held it to his face. He was trembling. Was he sick? Had he been poisoned? He wanted to flee, but he didn't have the strength. He wanted to puke. What was this place really? The truth was somewhere out there, hiding in the unholy corners of Astrakhan.

A tower loomed above, several blocks in front of them. It wasn't evil or dark in any way, or even warlike. Like a church spire, it climbed white and beautiful into the sky. At first, he thought it was the bell tower to the bulging, curving white-walled church that stood nearby it, which had several stunted towers constructed in a similar style. But, as they got closer, he saw that the tallest tower was a gate, with wings that stretched so far from either side that they seemed to be walls. It was as if a priest had designed a castle.

Sahle, feeling like an ice-cube frying on a pan, watched helplessly while the truck crept through the gate. They were stopped by a man in pine-green fatigues and a stiff pine-green cap. In the middle of the cap was a gawdy eagle insignia. The guard's approach was passionless at first, with all the rigidity of a man doing his job, but when the guard recognized Vasily, the mood changed. They talked like old friends.

"Vasily, why do you have a black person in your car?" the guard said. His voice was deep as a trumpet, and it sounded as if it were coming from some fleshy pocket at the bottom of his throat.

"This is a person that Colonel Sorokin will want to meet." Vasily looked over at Sahle, and the worried look came back. "But I think he is coming down from all of the chemicals."

"Chemicals?" the guard peeked in uncertain. "Oh, the chemicals. Drive on to the infirmary."

"Yes. It is good to see you again." Vasily said. The guard went back to his post. Vasily slid the shift-knob forward, and they rolled into the central plaza.

It was here Sahle realized that the wings spreading from the tower were, in fact, a wall enclosing the entire space. It was strange to Sahle that they would build their walls with shingled roofs. But, upon seeing them, it struck him that he was enclosed by these walls, and the only way out was guarded by one of Vasily's friends. He was helpless, and he began to despair completely.

They came to a stop in front of a brick building. Sahle was weak, and when he realized that he was going to have to walk, he felt like he was rapidly deflating. When his mind wandered, he blinked in a vain attempt to focus.

"Will you be fine to walk?" Vasily asked. Sahle attempted an anemic nod. The Russian's door opened with a rusty groan. Vasily came around and opened the passenger's side.

Nausea wriggled worm-like from Sahle's stomach, reaching into the rest of his body and biting at his skin. He put his feet on the pavement. His joints felt like jelly, and his torso was as heavy as lead. He took one step, and then another. Vasily placed an arm around Sahle to keep him steady. But it was no use. As if the pressure in the air had doubled, his limbs gave out and he fell into the darkness.

--

Consciousness and dreams melted into a chain of images that meant absolutely nothing. He saw himself suspended in a cardboard tree above an Armenian burlesque, where all of the actors and actresses read the lines of Shakespearean plays completely in the nude. The next moment, it was the nurse from the hospital where he and Marc had recovered from their crash, only she was clothed, and in a blue woolen dress. Each dream gave way to another, and every one degraded rapidly from his memory as soon as he moved to the next, so that his experience was a series of mismatched memories and outright hallucinations. He saw the cockless statue in Barnham's club, and the garden of the Wollo estate where he had grown up. He remembered his mother's whitest dress, the smell of gunpowder, and the night he made love to Aaliyah in the place where Jesus was born. His dreams, the pleasant and the sad, where interspersed by unnatural visions of demons, and ghosts, and colors that did not exist.

There was a place his dreams kept bringing him back to; a cold brick room with an unfinished wooden floor, and cots along all the walls. These were the simplest dreams. He remembered drinking cold water, and being fed bland gruel. He remembered being asked to take pills from a nurse in a blue dress. But, as innocent as it all seemed, there were monsters behind the doors. He could sense them. Something sinister slithered under the floorboards. Sahle was afraid to look out the windows, because he knew that there was always something ready to stare back.

And then the room would go away. He would be somewhere else again, carried away by the cold. He always seemed to be in danger of being sucked into some sort of hell hidden in the corner of his vision, and he fought it by swimming toward the best memories he could remember. He wanted the warmth of childhood, or the meaningfulness he felt in the arms of women. Those things were there, and he sometimes managed to take hold of them, but they always slipped from his grasp when the demons fingered at his heals.

Time marched on, and the cold brick room became his most common destination. He came to realize that the room was reality. The face of the nurse became solid enough that he was beginning to remember it. She was a chubby woman in her middle years, with blue eyes and mousy brown hair, and a blue woolen dress that was impressed into his memory now. He had many short conversations with her that he couldn't remember a minute after the words were said.

But the time he spent in reality grew longer, and with that came his memory. The nurse became more than a face he could remember. She became a person.

The nurse brought him porridge, and sat the bowl next to him before she spoke. "When a child is born in China, there is an ancient tradition: a silver spoon is dropped onto the jade floor. The sound the spoon makes will be the name of the newborn." When she finished her joke, she giggled with a smile as big as her belly.

Sahle grinned. "Where did you hear that?"

"I hear these things when I am in town." she said joyfully. "Oh, from the travelers, and the cossacks drinking in the streets. I try to remember every one of them when I can. Here is another one. A Chukcha comes into a shop and asks: 'Do you have color TVs?' 'Yes, we do.' says the shopkeeper, so the Chukcha says 'Give me a green one.'" When she was done with the second joke, she giggled just as much as with the first.

Sahle made an effort to look entertained, but he did not understand what Chukcha meant, so he didn't know what the joke was about at all, though the idea of a green-colored TV was funny enough.

"Well... where am I?" he asked.

"Ohhh" her mouth and eyes took the shape of three O's. "You have asked that many times already. You are in the Kremlin of Astrakhan. Your friend brought you here because you were sick."

"Where is Vasily?" Sahle asked.

"He has work." the Nurse said.

Sahle had gained his composure enough to realize he might have made more trouble for himself. Would this Colonel of Vasily's be willing to take him in now it was known that Sahle had a 'Chemical' problem? Had he made an irredeemable ass of himself?

Then a third voice joined in the conversation, spoken from the doorway. "I think his work has found his friend." Vasily said. He appeared from the darkness beyond the room, as if summoned by the conversation. He was the same Vasily, with the grin that had carried him in Armenia, but his clothes were different now. He was wearing the same military uniform that the guard at the gate had been wearing, with the gaudy eagle on his cap.

"Do you think you can walk now?" Vasily entered the room as he spoke, and his boots echoed on the raw wood planks that made up the floor.

"I haven't tried." Sahle looked down where his legs were covered by a blanket. "But I think so. I still feel wrong though... I feel cold."

The nurse spoke up. "That will linger, but you should walk. You will get better if you get your blood moving."

Sahle nodded. He tried to stand up, but his legs felt wet and weak, and his flesh stung as if pricked by needles. The effort made him suddenly tired, and he wanted to lay down and sleep.

"You are better!" Vasily patted Sahle on the back. "See, it is the Russian weather. This is good weather to be alive in!"

"I got sick in Russian weather." Sahle retorted. With Vasily encouraging him, Sahle felt like the time to lay back down was passed. He would have to face whatever was here, though the world outside the infirmary walls made him feel persecuted and unwanted. Vasily led the way.

He had grown comfortable with the cot in the infirmary, but when they left that familiar room, all of the anxiety that had been haunting Sahle came back, as if emanated from the old walls that closed in on him from either side.

"I have told Colonel Sorokin who you are. He is the only one that knows." Vasily said.

"Are you going to sell me?" Sahle asked.

"No! He has a very interesting place for you. I do not think you will believe it, but I know you will like it."

Sahle was trying to work out what place he might have among the Russians, but he could not imagine it. The only skill a foreign ex-Emperor brought to the table was the ability to be sold, or maybe play some part in some intrigue. But the Russians had no reason to get tangled up in Ethiopian politics. What else was he but a piece of valuable property?

The corridor was rounded off at the top like a bullet. They passed by doors which opened up into larger rooms, and closed doors guarded by soldiers in the same outfit as Vasily. Sahle felt like a captive in the bowels of an old sailing ship, being brought to the deck to be tossed overboard into an ocean grave. Everything around him was foreign, and all of it made him unhappy.

"This is it." Vasily said when they came to another guarded door. "The Colonel is on the other side. When we go in there, do not have any freak outs. I think you want the colonel to like you."

Sahle did not have any time to reply before the door opened.

The bricks in the office had been painted with one thin layer of white. There was an oak desk standing dominant on one side, joined by no other furniture aside from humble wooden chairs. Several figures dominated the room; three men in military fatigues, and a little girl wearing a starched dress uniform. There was in the air a hint of alcohol stench.

"Ah!" the shortest of the three men snapped his fingers rapidly six or seven times, and the other two men left. The small man wore a short brown beard with a shaggy mustache, and he was balding on top.

"I am immensely happy to know you, Emperor Sahle." the Russian said with a short bow. Sahle's eyes immediately shot toward the little girl, who was still playing in the corner. He reckoned that she must be nine or ten; old enough to know what she was hearing.

And it was at that moment that something struck him. In the girl's arms was a stuffed horse doll, with a head that was just as big as the body. But that was not what struck him. The head of the horse - a ragged thing, with evil empty eyes - looked like those horrible horse-headed men he had seen on the Georgian border, when he had still been Samel so many eons ago. The specter of the horse-headed men had hung over him for some time, and the return of that specter revived all the horror he had felt after arriving in Astrakhan.

"Your majesty." the short man said again. "Do not worry about Regina. She is my daughter, and an honest girl."

"I think that is what he is afraid of." Vasily giggled.

The girl looked up from the terrifying horse doll. She was a pale girl, with smooth brown hair that hung over her shoulder in a thick braid, and blue eyes that seemed older than her body. "I am pleased to meet an Emperor." she said, echoing her father. "Don't worry about me, I will keep your secrets."

The short man looked at her with a sense of glowing pride that almost surpassed typical fatherhood. "I am Colonel Sorokin, Volgograd Confederational Guard. Vasily has been telling me about your exploits in Sevan." he paused to glower, and shook his head. "It is too bad you have been driven to that."

"My choices... I did not have many of those." Sahle answered. His head was swimming. He did not know what to trust, or what he should say.

"When the stars fall to the earth, they cannot traipse into town and get a job." Sorokin chuckled. "Sit down. Can I get you a drink? We have much to talk about." Sahle was struck offguard. This man, this stern army officer, didn't care that Sahle had arrived suffering some serious withdrawal?

Before Sahle could answer, Sorokin was already finding glasses and pouring the vodka. Sahle and Vasily found places to sit.

"I am sure you have many questions." Sorokin said. He passed the glasses across the table and took a quick, greedy quaff for himself.

Sahle was afraid to ask the single question on his mind. He was distracted by the ugly vibe, and completely convinced that something horrible was on the horizon. He wanted to ask what would happen to him, but he imagined Sorokin giving him one thousand different horrifying answers, and he didn't want to say anything that might earn him one of those answers.

"Who is Vasily?" Sahle finally choked. He turned to his friend, who seemed amused to be his first question. "Are you... uh... a soldier?"

"An old soldier." Sorokin answered. "I trust my oldest soldiers."

"Not that old." Vasily rose in his seat, grinning wide.

"Oh no... not that old." Sorokin bristled uncomfortably. A weak smile came over his face. "We have known each other a long time. Difficult times. The people who fought and survived the Five Year Chaos are heroes in my reckoning." The Colonel had already finished his vodka, leaving his hands with nothing to do. He fidgeted with the half-empty bottle resting on his desk.

"Why would you want to know these things?" Vasily looked quizzical. "You want to know other things. I know this."

Sahle nodded slowly, trying to stall for as much time as he could. He felt an urge to run; to run far away and find a womb where he could crawl in and hide. At least until he did not feel so... unnatural.

"What.." he stuttered, hoping to think of something else to say. "What... what happens now?"

Sorokin stopped fingering at the bottle and leaned back in his chair. "Vasily told me that you have concerns, and I understand. You must take my word for it that I have no interest in hurting you. I cannot tell you what is happening right now, but you will know when you need to know."

"Why won't I know now? It does not seem right here. I want to know why."

There was a pause, just long enough for Sahle's anxiety to rise to the point of popping. The other two men didn't make a sound. They just sort of... stared.

"Yes. I have things I must tell you, but I cannot tell you now because I do not know you."

"You know who I am. Nobody else does."

"I know a story." Sorokin said. "I believe the story, but that does not mean that I know you. I have survived in this command through the worst times in Russia because I do not jump into the fire until the ashes are cold. You must understand that I cannot do things so quickly that it puts my responsibility in danger."

"Well, I have no other questions." Sahle was exhausted from the pressure. He wanted to sleep.

"Right." Sorokin leaned forward. His hand went straight to fondle the bottle. "So, your majesty, do you know how to shoot a gun?"

"Vasily taught me."

Sorokin smiled. "Yes, yes. He is good with weapons. That is why I have kept him around so long."

"I know some secrets too." Vasily added.

Sorokin's smile faded. It was slight, something Sahle wouldn't have noticed if he wasn't on his guard. "Yes, yes. We all have secrets, don't we." the Colonel said. He fidgeted for a moment before continuing. "Ah! ah! We have been teaching Regina how to shoot."

"I shot a tank cannon a week ago." the little girl jumped into the conversation. Sahle had nearly forgotten about her. Now he remembered; the girl, and that creepy fucking horse.

"It is one of the perks of my command. When I want to use the equipment, who is here to stop me, eh?"

"Save that ammo for China." Vasily said.

"China." Sahle grabbed on to that word. He thought of the innkeepers he had met on their way from Georgia. "Why are you here? I thought there was a war."

"The Russian Republic is at war. Volgograd does not accept the Republic."

"China is trying to take all of Russia, isn't it? That is what I have been hearing. Aren't you worried?"

Sorokin's face became grave. "Yes. We are worried. If the Chinese cross the Volga, the Republic will disintegrate over night. But the Republic will not accept the Confederation as an ally, only as a supplicant, so we do nothing to help them."

"Then what do you do?"

"We protect our assets. We sit on what we have, the precious things that we have, and we preserve them."

The rest of the meeting was a dull affair. Sorokin insisted that Sahle stay and watch his daughter recite music on the violin. The little girl was good, but her song was low and slow, like the wailing of a lonely old woman in the quiet of her hut. It seemed so out of place here - not only the music, but the girl herself. She was like the idealized child: wide eyed, and truly happy. Happiness has no place in this desperate country, where no happiness had been reported since the death of the Tsar. But there it was, playing the violin, a braid hanging across it's shoulder.

While she played, a woman came in and served them dinner. They had veal cutlets covered in a smooth cheese sauce, served with pickled cabbage. The Colonel eagerly poured everybody another round of vodka. Sahle was starting to feel calm now, but he was not hungry. He nibbled at his food to be polite. He hardly ate half before it was time to go back to the infirmary and sleep.

--

Sahle was back in the Dead Man's drink again, in the version where the stage and the room extended infinitely into the dark. The stage-lights turned on, with the sound of the switch echoing heavy in the long emptiness. Three harsh circles of yellow light landed at the center of the stage.

Colonel Sorokin and his daughter materialized in the light. Both wore ruffled military fatigues and polished top hats, and they had the psychotic smiles of greenhorn showmen. A jazz band mocked the sound of a calliope from somewhere off stage, among the black that consumed the rest of the world.

"Friends, Brothers, Mother's Uncles!" Sorokin chimed. His voice was his own, but his words recalled all of the half-baked performances Sahle had seen choke it out at the real Dead Man's Drink. "We have a show for you tonight like a candied dessert! I am The Colonelious Sorokin, master of twelve million African mysteries, and this is my resplendent assistant, the regal Regina!" The little girl smiled wider than should be possible and waved to a nonexistent crowd. Both of them paused for an applause that was not there.

"For our first act of fearful fantasy, we will make a man disappear!"

It was weird to watch the next part go on without a crowd to react. Regina pulled a squeaking man-sized cabinet across the stage, while the jazzy calliope played just low enough to make the entire thing seem awkward.

"To provide this entertaining entertainment, we will need a volunteer." Sorokin acted like he was scanning the non-existent audience, and for a moment Sahle was afraid he would be the only option, seeing as he was the only figure actually present in the audience. But, as Sorokin held his hand above his eyes in another overacted performance, a platform was being slowly lowered from somewhere above the stage. Sahle saw this mysterious volunteer emerge gradually from the darkness, starting with their feet, and crawling up so they were like a body slowly falling from a ceiling of viscous pitch. Anxiety grew in Sahle's heart as the person descended. His heart throbbed so loud he could hear it in his ears. When the face was revealed, a fearful confusion struck Sahle. The volunteer was himself - a doppelganger, or an out-of-body apparition. He was watching himself become part of this nightmarish performance.

"What is your name, fine-faced friend?" Sorokin asked.

"Samel." the doppelganger said in Sahle's own voice.

"Samel, friends and gentlefriends. Samel is our man."

"It rhymes with camel." the doppelganger added, sounding like a fool. There was a drum roll, and a pause for laughter that never came.

"Well then, Samel Camel, if you would be so kind as to follow Regina's lead into the mystical box of disappearance, I will tell a story. Many many years ago, when I traveled to the mysterious islands of Hawaii to learn the secret art of their volcano gods, an old and clever coconut carver stopped me along the road. He told me 'The Gods of the old fires what that are in the earth, they commune in spaces unseen, and a wise man can learn to travel into their netherworld if he is willing to know the way.' So I spent a year living in the old man's coconut hut, and he taught me how to make a box that would allow a man to transport to and from the netherspace." Sorokin leaned against the box, in which the uncaring doppelganger stood like a dope. "This is the very box which I constructed. Since those days in the old jungles of Ukulele, I have learned how to transport the unlearned into the netherworld and back using this very same box. I will demonstrate now."

Regina closed the curtain to the box so suddenly that it made the real Sahle jump. He watched as Sorokin circled the box, tapping at it from time to time.

"Moodle poodle boodle boo, chooger, hooger, googer goo. Open up and take him too!" After Sorokin was done chanting, he knocked once on the side of the cabinet, and a puff of pink smoke came up behind the cabinet.

In a dramatic swoop, Regina reached for the curtain and pulled it. What was standing there wasn't Sahle's doppelganger any longer, and it was not the emptiness that was promised by the magician Sorokin. It was one of the horse-headed men, with the time-worn face of the horse doll. Sahle tried to scream, but nothing came out.

--

Sahle woke up in a frenzy, and the frenzy was not his own. Vasily was standing over him, with a thick-shouldered blonde woman just behind. He could hear a clatter in the hallways. It sounded like dozens of footsteps, and boxes being thrown about, and metal clanging against metal.

"Get out of that bed, my Imperial friend. We are moving."

"What?"

"Moving." Vasily pulled him by the arm. "Follow."

He hardly had time to get dressed before he was nudged into the hustle in the hall. The barrack was full of armed soldiers moving with a casual haste. All of the paranoia Sahle had been suppressing started to come back. He was like a prisoner on his way to execution.

"Where are you taking me?" he choked on the words as he said them.

"Do not be a dramatic Emperor. We are going on a journey."

"Where?"

"You will know. You will know when you are told."

"Why won't you tell me?"

Vasily's only reply was an ornery chuckle.

They left the building into the morning air, where the courtyard was as active as the halls of the barracks. The summer sun was beginning to warm the humidity. A grey, wet mist obscured the horizon, and made the walls of the Kremlin a hazy line on the edge of vision.

There was an armored truck, like a half-track tank. It had an open auto-cannon turret on top that was just large enough for one person to sit in it. A couple of unarmored trucks accompanied it. It was the kick of their engines, and the rugged chatter of motorcycles, that overwhelmed all other sounds in that morning courtyard. But sound was not what caught Sahle's attention. He was most interested in the ten-something men on horseback. The men looked like soldiers, with pine-green fatigues and a mixture of similar colored caps, fur ushkanka's, and hats like furry cakes. Most grew facial hair, so that there were great wiry beards, and stubbly beards with thick mustaches, and the poor facial growth of youth, all represented by the group.

The blonde woman climbed into the top of the truck and manned the turret. From out of a nearby door, Colonel Sorokin and his daughter left the barracks with a formidable guard surrounding them. Sorokin and Regina both wore starched pine-green dress uniforms.

"Colonel." Vasily saluted. "It smells like horse shit and petrol, sir."

Sorokin did not look pleased. He had something on his mind; Sahle could see it in his eyes, and in the creases on his forehead. "The smell is uncomfortable. So is this visit. I do not like it."

"I think you have to get out more. Astrakhan is a hot place. It has made you lethargic, sir."

"It is not that." Sorokin sniffed. He looked at Sahle and smiled weakly. "I am sorry for waking you."

"What is happening?" Sahle strained to maintain his decorum.

"We are going to the city of Volgograd, a council has been called."

"About me?"

Sorokin shook his head. "No. Nobody will know about you. Only a trifling number of people here know your identity, so do not go blurting it out. I have no interest in returning you to your brother, but not everybody in Russia is so honorable. Now come, ride with me. We will go in the big truck."

And so they climbed in. The door screeched, heavy metal struggling at its hinges. Sahle sat in front with Vasily, while Sorokin and Regina found a place in the bowel of the truck along with their guards. A windshield of fat glass protected them in the front.

They started to move. Their convoy plodded out of the gates, flanked by the horses and the motorcycles, and they crossed through silent Astrakhan with its worn-out wooden houses and churches like brooding watchtowers above crumbled streets. They crossed the Volga, as thick as a lake, and entered into the flatland on the western end. They were heading northwest. Sahle tried to memorize this land, but there were no landmarks for him to focus on. It was as flat as the Danakil in his homeland. With nothing to keep his attention, and the sun coming out from the mists, Sahle became drowsy. His eyes grew heavy. Somewhere, between one forgettable expanse of dry nothingness and another flat expanse of dry nothingness, Sahle began to nap.