Грэм Мастертон - Famine

Pasadena had been a ghost town, a white mirage that shimmered under the sandy peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains. They had stopped on the freeway overlooking the town for a twenty-minute rest, and a scrappy meal of processed meat, canned raspberries, and tepid water. They had seen nobody in the streets anywhere, and heard nothing but the persistent whistling of the warm wind. It was as if the whole population of America had eerily vanished.

As the sun glowered at them from up ahead, as crimson and sorcerous as a witch’s fire, they drove slowly westwards along the Ventura Freeway, weaving their way in between wrecked and abandoned cars, until they reached the intersection with the Hollywood Freeway. Ed had ordered that every car in the convoy should have at least one gun at the ready, but the freeways were deserted, and they saw nobody.

‘The first thing I want to do is check with the FBI office,’ said Della.

‘Where’s that?’ asked Ed.

‘On Hollywood Boulevard, between Ivar and Vine.’

The sun had gone by the time they reached Hollywood Boulevard turnoff. As they came up the ramp to street level, they saw the heavy palls of smoke hanging over Los Angeles, and they could smell burning and death on the wind. A police car sped past them along Hollywood Boulevard, heading east, with its lights Hashing and its siren warbling.

‘Just about the first sign of life since Victorville,’ remarked Della.

The convoy drove at ten mph along Hollywood boulevard, between the stores and the movie theatres and the parking lots, until Ed pulled the Chevy wagon in at the curb by Hollywood and Vine.

‘It’s here?’ he asked Della.

In the back seat, Shearson Jones was asleep, and snoring heavily, with his nose in the air like a Walt Disney beaver.

‘A little further, I guess,’ said Della. ‘There – where that office entrance is. Let me take a look at the shingles.’

Ed nudged the wagon forward, and leaned over to see the signs outside of the office building. It wasn’t much of an office building – a three-story, beige-tiled walk-up in that particular architectural style which you could only define as ‘Hollywood Boulevard east of Cahuenga.’ A little bit Spanish, a little bit 1930s, a little bit H.G. Wells.

The signs outside read: Super AA1 Detective Agency, Inc.; Walston Retreat Tyres; BK Investments Ltd.; and YSS (Photographic) Inc.

‘That’s it,’ said Della.

‘What’s what?’ asked Ed. ‘I don’t see any sign saying “FBI”.’

‘You think we advertise ourselves? This is supposed to be a safe house – somewhere where agents can conceal themselves.’

She opened the door of the wagon and stepped down. ‘I won’t be more than a couple of minutes,’ she said, ‘I’m just going to check if there’s anybody still there.’

Although it was still quite light, Ed found it difficult to make out her face in the shadows. Maybe it was the way her hair was falling. Maybe it was simply the fact that there were no streetlights, no fluorescent display tubes in the derelict storefronts; not even a blazing vehicle to see by. Yet the names on the wall were clear enough.

Ed said, ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘You don’t have to,’ Della told him. ‘And it’s really better if you don’t. They’re going to be pretty jumpy, and they might decide to shoot first and talk about the weather afterwards if they don’t know who you are.’

‘In that case, you go in first, and tell them that I’m bona fide. But I’d like to stay with you, all right?’

‘Who’s going to take care of Shearson?’

‘Shearson can take care of himself. What do you think he’s going to do – drive all the way back to Washington?’ Della hesitated, and then she said, ‘All right. I’ll call you when it’s clear.’

Taking the pump-gun with her, she disappeared into the entrance of the office building. Ed waited on the sidewalk for what seemed like a half-hour, watched by a tired and pale-faced Karen, and by an indifferent Peter Kaiser. Shearson was still sleeping, and his rumbles sounded like minor eruptions of Mount St Helens.

In the distance, towards Beverly Hills, Ed could hear firetrucks howling, and a quick rattling sound that was repeated again and again. It could have been machine-gun fire.

At last, an upstairs window opened, and Della leaned out. ‘There’s nobody here,’ she said. ‘You can come on up if you like.’

Ed walked back to the next car in the patient line of vehicles which were drawn up to the curb behind the Chevy. It was a tan Malibu wagon, driven by Jim Rutgers, Ed’s farm accountant.

Jim asked, ‘Are we going to be stopped here long, Ed? I think everybody’s anxious about where they’re going to spend the night.’

‘Give us fifteen minutes,’ said Ed. ‘Mrs McIntosh has to try to make contact with the FBI, just to tell them that we’ve reached Los Angeles, and that we’re holding Shearson Jones. After that, it’s their problem. But they won’t be able to say that we didn’t do our duty as publicly-spirited citizens.’

Jim turned around to his wife, and the four children sleeping in the back seat. ‘I just wish the public were as publicly-spirited as we are,’ he said. ‘I think about these kids, and what their future’s going to be, and I can tell you something, Ed, it makes me frightened.’

‘Me too, Jim,’ said Ed, as comfortingly as he could. ‘Just give me five minutes, and then we’ll find a place to stay for the night.’

He walked back to the office building and climbed the stairs. It was so dark inside that he had to feel his way up by the handrail. There was a smell of burned paper and urine. He reached the second-storey landing, and he was just about to climb up to the third when Della appeared from a doorway beside him.

‘They’re in here,’ she said. ‘Or, at least, they were in here.’

Ed stepped into a small reception area, divided off with reeded glass. On the wall was a calendar supplied by Mitsubishi Aircraft, with a picture of the Diamond I executive jet flying over San Francisco Bay. There was a grey filing-cabinet, with all its drawers open and empty, and an IBM typewriter with its keys jammed together, and a blank piece of note-paper still protruding from the carriage.

‘They didn’t even leave a telephone,’ said Della. ‘But I’m going to write a message and pin it to the wall. Maybe one of their agents will come by and contact us.’

‘And meanwhile we have to keep Shearson Jones captive?’

‘What else do you suggest we do with him?’

Ed looked around the deserted, shadowy office. ‘I suggest we let him go. Both him and Peter Kaiser. There’s no chance at all that we can bring either of them to trial. Not now. And, really, what does it. matter any more?’

‘You were the one who thought it was so important to expose Shearson on coast-to-coast television,’ said Della. ‘Now you want to let him go?’

Ed sat down at the receptionist’s desk, and tugged the piece of notepaper out of the typewriter. He read the letterhead carefully, and then laid the paper on the desk beside him. When he spoke, his voice was quite changed – distant and unfriendly.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I want to let him go because none of this famine crisis has turned out to be what it seemed to be.’

‘You’re not making sense.’

‘I know. But neither is anything else. If this is a safe house for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as you claim it is, then why were they using notepaper for Your Spread From The Sky, Inc.?’

Della frowned. ‘That was their cover. An aerial photography outfit. That’s all. You don’t expect them to put “J. Edgar Hoover” on their paper do you?’

Ed said, ‘Your Spread From The Sky, Inc., was responsible for spraying my crops with Vorar-D. As well as most of the other wheat farms in Kansas. And you want me to believe that it was a cover name for the FBI? And that you’re a legitimate FBI agent?’