John Barnes - Directive 51

“Fuck you. It’s not ‘like’ anything , anywhere, at any time, till we decide what it’s like, and you were the one who decided to turn Norcross into presidential material when he couldn’t have done it for himself with a blender and a saw. So fuck you, asshole.”

“Am I fired?” Maybe Chris would have another rum and cola, and just get up whenever he felt like it, before starting his cross-country drive. Blow a little severance on getting a convertible, go more southerly, enjoy some sun. Since Cletus had mentioned Frank Capra, perhaps he’d watch an old Capra film tonight, toasting the master and celebrating.

The other side of the line was strangely quiet. A choking sound? Cletus… crying? “No, you’re not fired. I’m fired. They made me call you up to apologize, but I’m not apologizing, and they can’t make me—”

The line was dead just long enough for Chris to check to see if anyone was still on it; it looked like only Cletus had dropped.

Anne said, “Well, thank God that’s over with, Chris. Do you have any idea how good your work was tonight? We don’t think it could have happened by accident.”

Hunh. Funny, me either.

“Till this happened to go out live, and Cletus threw a hissy fit, we hadn’t realized just how much of your superb work he’d been sitting on, but once we hit the archive files and saw it—well, my dear god, Chris, why didn’t you just murder Cletus, and figure any jury that saw your work would acquit? I mean oh my god. You know?

“We want you to stay out there and cover the Norcross campaign the way you want to cover it, and then, after that, we were thinking that if you’d like, after the election, we could do a documentary. Call it The Norcross Factor , just as a working title, and maybe you could take all your short pieces that Cletus spiked, and put them together with some longer interviews with key players, and it might make a nice ninety minutes, like serious journalism we could all be proud of. Serious stuff. You know?”

Chris took a deep breath. “This sounds like, um, you are asking me to make a network documentary. After giving me free rein with the coverage on the campaign. Is that right?”

“That’s right, and no, you are not hallucinating.” The smile in her voice was evident. Why hadn’t Chris ever noticed before what a pleasant person Anne could be? “Look,” she said, “this is only partly politics, all right? If you’d been doing routine, ordinary work, it wouldn’t have mattered. The thing is, oh my dear god, a lot of what you’ve been shooting is great, really great, video. You are so going places. Okay?”

“Totally okay.” Sounds like Anne just barely managed to throw Cletus under the bus fast enough. Well, it couldn’t possibly have happened to a more deserving little turd with feet. “I was always kind of hoping you’d take a more active hand.”

“Exactly. Oh my dear god, we’re going to do good work together, you know?”

“Yeah.” Mmm, Chris thought. Ass. I love ass. Kiss it when you’re in a good position, and you’ll never be in a bad one.

“Cool,” Anne said. “Well, then, this was productive, but it’s late; any questions before I let you go?”

“Just keep my paycheck coming, and we’re good.”

“You got it, Chris!” Brilliantly decisive. Completely committed to him. “Till I hire a new editor, just send direct to me. Stay on it, and good night!”

“Thanks, Anne. Looking forward to it—good night!” Click off. Hope I sounded like a brilliant guy giving his brilliant boss her props.

Chris stretched, considered another rum and cola to celebrate, and decided to just go straight to bed; no predicting what he’d have to do tomorrow or how soon it would start. Might as well be ready. In this weird world, you never knew what might be your lucky day.

To Heather, Bambi Castro sounded nervous on the phone. “Arnie’s friend Reynolds at FBI just called. The FBI office in San Diego expects delivery of Ysabel Roth from AFI—”

“AFI?”

“Mexican Federal police, the federales you hear about in movies. Good outfit. They’ll hand her over at the border tomorrow by ten, sooner if they can, and the FBI will take her straight to their office in San Diego. Reynolds was calling because he thought we ought to have someone there, but I guess he’s not in a position to issue the invitation, but if we asked—”

“Ask. Right away.” Heather’s biggest problem with Bambi Castro—and it wasn’t much of one—was that her chief field investigator, who seemed to have no fear and complete control in the field, was afraid of every minor bureaucratic hassle.

“Well, I could go out, and I think it would be a good idea,” Bambi said, “I know the budget is tight but—”

“Ha. It’ll never be that tight. We need someone at the interrogation. Take that next flight, and I’ll make sure we pay, and they expect you. Be there when they interrogate Roth.”

“On my way, thanks.” Bambi hung up, and Heather let herself have a moment of pure envy; maybe when Bambi flew back, she’d have a couple good stories. I can listen to them over tea while I adjust my shawl. Heather turned back to her work.

“Do you always look so mournful when you have to spend emergency budget?” Lenny asked, from beside her.

“Mourning my lost youth,” she said. “Biggest crisis since I was born, and I’ve got an office job.”

Kai-Anne had wanted to live a long way from the base if she could, and Greg had been his usual agreeable self, even though all the extra driving fell on him. She’d sometimes worried that it was one more of her eccentricities that might mark him as a dead-ender for promotions, but he’d just laughed at her and said that compared to wanting to fly a Hog in the first place, living far from the base and marrying a tattooed lady was nothing.

Still, this was one night when she wished she’d thought about how long the drive was before locating the family; it hadn’t been easy to find an emergency sitter, when she found out he was coming home that night, and she’d owe Mrs. Grawirth a lot of favors. And it had been a long haul down to Davis-Monthan, and now it had been a long haul back.

She knew what he’d been referring to when, just out of the base, he’d said, “Hon, the A-10 that did the job was me. Maybe talk about it later?” So it had been no surprise that he’d slumped in the passenger seat beside her, not asleep but not really there, just resting his eyes on the distant hills.

Kai-Anne had known something about this; she’d seen residual bits of it when he’d come back from Pakistan, from Iran, from Eritrea. She’d just never seen it so fresh and raw before. After driving about three miles, she’d asked, as gently as she could, “Want to hear about the kids and my day and all that?”

“Yeah.”

So she’d told him, more or less as if dictating an e-mail into her iScribe, the way she did every day when he was overseas, so that he could have the news but not necessarily the catch in her throat or the tears in her eyes; she felt that dealing with her loneliness and missing him should be at his option.

Nearly always he’d call after he finished the letter, and they’d talk, and it would be company, but now and then after a bad day, or pulling extra duty, he’d drop her a note that said only, Sorry, can’t tonight.