Greg Ahlgren - Prologue

He listened for a few seconds but didn’t hear a steady beeping. No tracking of his GPS. Good.

There wasn’t any particular reason it would be tracked, except that Paul deVere was one of the top astrophysicists in the Northeast District, and hence of general interest to the Party leaders in Vodkaville. Vodkaville was slang for Yeltsengrad, the Soviets’ new name for Minneapolis. It had been designated the new capital of the American S.S.R. Nobody in the Northeast District called it anything but Vodkaville, of course. Nobody who’d been alive in America before the Second Revolution called it anything but Vodkaville either.

Sometimes he was tracked, and on those days he was careful to follow his routine until the tracking stopped. There was no rhyme or reason to it. He was rarely tracked heading west toward his home. Once though, when he had left early to pick Grace up from crew practice, the sensor had beeped all the way.

His position at MIT afforded him time to pursue his own research. The work he and Lewis had been doing fell under the general area of his expertise, so nobody raised an eyebrow when they talked about mechanized phase shift adjusters and chronologically precise altimeters.

He left Route 2 at exit 56 and steered the Phaser toward the Hanscom Housing Project—formerly Hanscom Air Force Base when the United States had had an air force, heck when there had been a United States—and headed up Route 4. Route 2 was more direct, but he often took this detour and assumed it would cause no untoward suspicion. Besides, he was early and wanted to kill enough time to let the summer sun dip further.

All in all, deVere felt he’d been almost divinely placed for Project Intervention. If he believed in God he would have, that is. His grandfather had believed in God, but that was before the Second Revolution. Gramps had tried to explain why he believed in God to young Paul, who listened out of respect. But even as a middle school student he couldn’t bring himself to believe in anything so unscientific.

“What proof do you have?” the thirteen year old had defiantly challenged his grandfather. “What proof is there of God?”

It had been a cold, drizzly November afternoon. Paul and his grandfather stood in the family’s wood frame dairy barn while sleet pelted the sheet-metal roof. Paul’s grandfather had just finished locking their small herd of Jerseys into the milking stations. The animals stood patiently munching feed.

“Proof?” Alphonse deVere asked, pausing in his work of attaching the milking machine. He studied his grandson with a kind gaze before indicating the waiting bovines. “What proof is there of a cow?” he asked.

Paul smirked, suddenly confident that he had won the day. Obviously, his grandfather had no logical response, and so spat out the first thing that had come to mind. From that day forward Paul had remained triumphantly atheistic, secure in his scientific beliefs. Besides, he often told himself, under the new regime it didn’t pay to be religious.

Paul consulted the tracker again a mile before the critical turnoff to Lexington. No tracking. He eased up to allow a truck to pass. He hugged the truck around the bend, obscuring his license plate from any roadside cameras.

At The Patriot’s Coffee Shop he pulled off the road and into the gravel parking lot. The diner was located at the site of the former Museum of Our National Heritage, within sight of the Munroe Tavern. The parking lot was empty save for one rusting Volvo, which he assumed belonged to the proprietor. The shop was ostensibly named after the region’s professional football team, but deVere knew better.

As he swung in through the glass doors the shop appeared devoid of customers. The attendant was wiping the Formica counter and barely looked up. DeVere grabbed a Boston Globe from the stand next to the door before draping one leg over a stool and settling down.

“Coffee, regular.”

The man nodded and retreated to the coffee machine at the end of the counter.

“Where’s Ralph tonight?” deVere asked.

“Sox game.”

DeVere flipped past the front page headline exposing more fraud on Vodkaville’s contribution to the Big Dig and unfolded the sports section. He didn’t know this counter guy, and there was no benefit in reading the article in front of him. He would read it later.

The man returned with the coffee. “Good article on the Big Dig,” the clerk said, nonchalantly indicating the front page lying open on the counter. “Vodkaville is really screwing this one up.”

DeVere glanced at the sports section headline, “Sox Home for Eight Game Stand,” and ignored the bait.

“So many people think this is their year,” deVere said neutrally.

The man scoffed and moved back, grabbed a burger from the freezer, and threw it down on the grill. It began sizzling immediately.

“If that paper didn’t have the best damn sports department in the District it would have been shut down years ago,” he said loudly.

“Everyone talks about how good it is but they’re always way too optimistic on the Sox,” deVere answered.

“It’s only a matter of time before Vodkaville shuts down the Globe. The way they discourage it only makes it more popular.”

The man flipped the burger before strolling out from behind the counter to the booths along the outside wall.

“You decided, ma’am?” he asked.

DeVere swiveled quickly. A lone elderly woman sat hunched low in one of the booths, sideways to the counter.

DeVere swore softly. He had been certain when he had walked in that no one was in the shop. Of course, she was sitting so damn low.

The woman kept her head down and hesitated before answering flatly, “Cheese steak sandwich. No onions.”

DeVere turned back. She seemed so… familiar. And the voice. He shrugged and flipped to the inside page on the Sox story. Late June and only two games behind the Yankees whose aging ball club was beset with a rash of injuries. Maybe this WAS the year.

The attendant threw shaved meat on the grill and began pushing it around with a spatula. As if reading deVere’s mind he said, “People are saying this might be their year but I don’t know. It still hurts thinking about what happened back in ’10.”

DeVere cringed at the mention of that World Series game seven in Boston. He had been there, right behind third base. In the bottom of the ninth Polito had been what, thirty feet from home plate? From his seat he had seen the Sox players erupting from their dugout and pouring onto the field to welcome home the winning run as the ball rolled to the left field wall.

DeVere shuddered and changed the subject. “Aren’t there usually more customers this time of day?”

The man shrugged. “Search me. I usually work in Boston but Ralph called me this morning when he got tix. Asked me to fill in.” He gestured out to the parking lot.

“Didn’t even know if the old bird would make it,” he said. “I’ve only filled in here once before.”

“Didn’t realize he was a Sox fan.”

“Isn’t everyone?”

DeVere grunted. “You have trouble getting parts for that?” he asked, indicating the Volvo.

“Naw,” the man said. “There’s a junkyard in upstate New York that has everything for old Volvos. It’s the newer ones where you can’t get parts. Not like the old days.”

DeVere turned back to the Arts section and began reading movie reviews. He checked his watch, and ordered more coffee. If he ate, Valerie would wonder why he wasn’t hungry when he got home. Telling her he had stopped at a coffee shop would be like telling her he had gone to a bar with Ginter. He didn’t want another fight, not tonight.

DeVere stayed at the coffee shop until dusk. Lewis had told him that near sunset, at the end of a long summer workday, the roadside eyes were at their weakest and their human monitors less attentive. At night the monitors would change shifts and be at their highest vigilance. Vodkaville boasted 24-hour vigilant surveillance, but Lewis had assured him that was to scare people.