Most Revolutionary - Chapter Ten
Sabia Besieged
Previously: Sabia and Avery get intimate. Kingsley and Lamont puzzle over the bombing and kidnapping of President Silver. Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez fires FBI Director Castelan, Navy Chief Bentcan, NSA Director Alspi, and suspends Secret Service Director Kingsley. Citing legal precedent, Alecta orders free universal health care nationwide. Sabia begins to understand and to feel the kidnapping as a permanent state of affairs.
MOST REVOLUTIONARY - A SERIALIZED NOVEL
FBI Director Maximilian Castelan is not going to sit around and psychoanalyze himself. It's a little late for that. He is basically fucked anyway you slice it. If you take a swing at the King, you had better not miss.
Well, he missed. It was not all his doing. It was not mostly his doing. Personally and professionally he held no grudge against President Silver as she gave him free reign to go after the bad guys and the good guys in equal measure – the white collar criminals and the activists, the greedy and the fraudulent as well as the do-gooders and the idealists. Castelan happily fucked them all for attempting to disorder his world, the world of property and privilege, the world of who owns what, and how, and why.
The real problem for Castelan has always been his original sin. His Texas secessionist friends from childhood know that he raped Mary Ann McCarver as a teen, on their dare, and they will never let him forget it. As Mary Ann continues to attempt to discover her assailant, Castelan's childhood pals hold him hostage to their knowledge, for life.
So when they gave Castelan a special GPS beacon to put on Ground Force One, he needed to do it. His old pals were shrewd enough not to tell him that the beacon would be used to guide Tomahawk land attack missiles from a Navy submarine, and Castelan allowed himself to believe they simply wanted to play games with the President and her whereabouts.
Castelan through the course of the years allowed himself to believe a lot of things. No reason to stop now. His immediate problem is that all the assassins are not dead. They will be caught, and soon, and some will talk, both to save their necks and to boast, to revel in the crazy pride of what they did, or thought they achieved, or attempted. Even though they failed entirely. Except to create another bloody mess.
Castelan can estimate nearly to the hour when his office will capture surviving perpetrators and extract at least one confession in exchange for life, an escape from the first federal execution for treason since the Civil War. No matter how fitting that might be.
Truth be told, Castelan's safe role in the coup depended on its treacherous success rather than its gory failure, though all is not lost for America's top cop. Not yet anyway. He is not going down without a battle, especially since there's one wild card, one card at all that he might play, if only he can figure it out: how to trump Sabia Perez. To save his life. And in his own tortuous way, Castelan is correct. It's his hunch that through Sabia lies his survival if not salvation. This hunch he must pursue, and now nothing can be allowed to stop him – the stakes are life or death. Castelan has always valued his own life far above that of anything or anyone else. And there is every reason not to change now.
Castelan is not ready to go at Sabia directly, and he cannot know how soon he might be. There's work to be done. Preparations for fight and flight, and for first finding out.
It's a new world now, post would-be coup, post bombing, it should be a new world, which Acting President Alecta O'Roura-Chavez refuses to admit. She refuses to declare martial law and hand Castelan more power. She refuses to reinforce the police state to protect and expand the capitalist state with its myriad mechanisms of command and constraint. The Acting President, the Peoples' President, thinks that capitalism is the world's most successful form of tyranny of the rich against the democracy of the poor. She hates that an ever-expanding police state has long since mushroomed to protect and to grow capitalism against democracy, and she's right about how that works. Castelan knows. She's in wholesale opposition to the capitalist shit show, to moneyocracy, to the rule of the wealthy. In this way, she's too smart to be President, to be allowed to be President, and too honest. Too principled. Senility better fits the office. And fraudulence. Or both, ideally. And, of course, brutality. And propaganda. What better to uphold white Empire but brutality and propaganda. Unfortunately, from Castelan's point of view, Alecta O'Roura-Chavez in no way fits the bill for the office or the country. However, he would not mind seeing her perky, smiling, socialist face printed on the archaic form of coin that is the pathetic penny. That would strike him as both fitting and funny.
It's not cynical to understand power and the state, the reality that has long existed. Part of the job. The stronger the democratic forces grow, the bigger the police state must become to prevail in combat against it. Castelan and many others have seen the dire writing on the wall through years of burgeoning democracy. It's written all over the world, including the web. It's written in people's bones. And so the police states – near and far – act greatly against it. Castelan's job is to contain, to control, to cut back against the democratic impulses and acts of people like Alecta O'Roura-Chavez, and the peoples she follows, and those who in reciprocating cycle follow her. And now here she strides unrestrained into office, kicking him out on his ass.
He told you. Castelan told anyone who would listen what was happening. Many listened, many did not, many knew long before he did.
There need be a second reckoning, Castelan vows. And he need do it all this time. At least he must act alone at first. He does not mind, assuming he survives, for success will position him even more strongly as the top cop of America, and from America the world.
If only he can find more competent accomplices. And ones who cannot blackmail him from childhood.
First he must survive. That means one thing, as far as he can tell: Get Sabia. Track and attack. Then pit her and her life and hopefully the President's whereabouts, which Sabia must know something about, against his own life, his own freedom. Even if Sabia truly knows nothing, Castelan can pretend she does, at least for awhile, but hopefully she knows something of great value ultimately to give Castelan the best chance going forward. Though he knows nothing, the investigation is over in Castelan's mind: Sabia must be found guilty to be his potential savior. She will pay the price either way.
Castelan has a good idea where to start – with Sabia's friend and possible accomplice Jenna Ryzcek.
Give Castelan liberty, or he will give you death – Sabia's death or that of anyone else who stands in his way. Power and pillaging is better than psychoanalysis any day of the governing calendar, to Castelan, not least in the ballooning madness of the world post coup. Post failed coup. Everything is on the table now for the masters of money, including from decades gone by: genocide, covert control, overt intimidation, and all the special privilege for themselves and the desecration for others that white Empire can buy. Hopefully, Castelan thinks, it won't come to genocide to save his sorry ass, not personally at least, but he won't rule it out. It's been done before.
Speaker of the US House of Representatives Barry Bombarill wants to tear the TV off his Capitol Building office wall. Instead, he watches with mute fury and disgust the coverage of the bombing and failed coup and the Acting President's speech ordering free health care for the country. Bombarill is Constitutionally third in line to the Presidency – now second in line, absent a Vice President. Bombarill thinks he should be first in line, the President himself.
Unlike the canned FBI Director Maximilian Castelan, Bombarill is confident that he is insulated from the plot to kill the President and the Vice President, which was the very much spoken condition for his involvement in the first place. He did not get into this suite-level business of governing for the rush and thrill of risk like a lot of cops go into their street-level jobs, to juice their adrenals and dopamine. He's in it for the money, and the money alone. Well that and the stroking of his ever-ravenous ego.
Nevertheless, safe though he may be from implication in the coup, and rich as he remains, Barry Bombarill is royally pissed at the fuck-up and near miss of his would-be ascension to the Presidency.
Speaker Bombarill calls FBI Director Castelan on a personal cell phone.
Director Castelan answers also on a personal phone still in his office at FBI headquarters where he continues the strategic leveraging of Sabia in his mind as he stares at his own damn TV. One thing he knows, the blood-letting is not over, can't be. It's either going to be his own blood spilled next, or the blood of others, and he intends to dictate, per usual, whose blood it will and will not be. Castelan mutes the TV. He feels he can see how it will go with Sabia and anyone else who gets in his way.
“Director Castelan,” says Speaker Bombarill.
Castelan does not respond.
“Max.”
No response.
“Max? This is Speaker Barry Bombarill. Director Castelan?”
Castelan can scarcely believe the stupidity of this clown who has probably cost him his life already.
“House Speaker Bombarill. Do not – call me.”
“Max. Director. A lot of people have a lot of questions. We're looking for any leads on the kidnappers. I'm sorry you were fired this morning. We'll fix that. We can’t have this flaming leftist in the highest office doing whatever she likes. This is not her country, no matter how much she might like to think it is. At this point, we would be glad to have Silver back in power. Temporarily. Somebody fucked up. Somebody fucked up bad.”
Castelan powers off his phone and pops out the sim card. He cuts the sim card in half with scissors, drops it in the trash.
“What an idiot.”
Castelan unmutes the news of the bombing and its aftermath. He walks to a window and looks outside. He hears another report of his firing. The sky is gray and darkening. He thinks ahead.
Bombarill stares at his phone. “That old prick,” he says. “Too bad he wasn't on the bus when the missiles hit.” Bombarill watches the news report of Castelan's firing, and he smiles.
So much depends on popularity and public perception. Acting President Alecta O'Roura-Chavez, her Chief of Staff Shakeeta Glazier, Press Secretary Tisha Noori, and other top staff watch the news in the Oval Office. The dominant media sometimes convey a sense of what people are thinking, while more often they do not. Corporate media typically show wealthy peoples’ values and activities, the peoples' views and actions be damned, misrepresented or ignored entirely. The best of social media, the peoples' media is the far better place to know the world for what it is and might be. So Alecta and staff watch corporate news on TV while following the peoples' news on their handhelds.
The day has been hectic. The backlash to the health care speech has been immense, and Alecta's firing of key figures in the insecurity state, the so-called security state, has been predictably controversial. The Department of Defense – formerly the Department of War – issues a statement criticizing the humane health care directive as a potential security threat. The real threat is to the war budget. The DOD and everyone else can see what could come, what the ransom demands spell out. Benefits to the people, cuts to the systems of destruction. Alecta feels unexpectedly grim. She needs a Department of Defense to protect her from the Department of Defense.
Alecta and staff try to take a break by watching visuals of Sabia Perez both online and on TV, most clips taken from Billy the Moto Kid's video streams. Sabia, like Alecta, has begun to star infamously in dominant media, where she is disparaged and castigated. Sabia appears in a mixed way on social media where she is more-often lauded than denigrated.
TV news moderators portray Alecta's health care order as dead on arrival and are otherwise obsessive in their coverage of all things bombing and hostage: “Sabia Perez, having lost her grandfather Roca Perez in the terror strike that claimed the President’s campaign team, has become a lightning rod of controversy for her provocative statements and actions at her high school. We would bring Sabia live to you our viewers but she is turning down all increasingly lucrative offers for interviews.”
Another moderator: “That was one nasty snowball fight! Let’s hope Sabia comes to her senses, and speaks to the media soon!”
“Who cares about the opinions of these overpaid fluff monsters?” says Shakeeta.
“It's the creeping bosses in their ears pushing them,” says Tisha. “The owners' boys.”
“Creepy as fuck. Corporate news,” says Shakeeta. “They're always coming at us like we're slaves to their money. Do I look like a slave you?”
“A big chunk of this country fought a war to preserve slavery,” says Tisha.
“To this day not a single state has apologized for that war. And damn few for slavery,” says Alecta. “Just like the federal government does not apologize for, or even admit to, its many invasions and coups in countries around the globe.”
“This country hasn't even rewritten its slave-owners', slavery-enshrining Constitution. It's an abomination,” says Shakeeta.
“And masses of people defend the toxic thing,” says Tisha. “They hold it sacred, and want to keep it exactly the way it is. Barbaric. All the propaganda, hard and soft, makes people Supremacist from the day they were born. Totally deforms them. You see and hear the hard racists, especially the older ones, and you know that some of the poison can't be extracted, it can only die off. Problem is, the sick culture keeps rebreeding it.”
“The culture we live in and die in,” says Alecta. “It’s beyond gross.”
“Supremacy is sheer Evil,” says Shakeeta.
“We can remake it,” says Alecta. “We must. Poverty is a policy decision. More people get that now. And Universal Basic Income would go a long way toward finally ending poverty and the endless damage it does. Not to mention Universal Health Care, Living Wages, Rent Control, a lot more. Funny how the President needs to be taken hostage to get these basic human rights front and center as demands.”
“It's like that old movie 9 to 5 with Dolly Parton where the workers kidnap their abusive and criminal boss,” says Shakeeta.
“This is no comedy,” says Tisha.
“It's even more crazy,” says Shakeeta.
“It's a crazy, mixed-up, shook-up world,” says Tisha.
“I know that quote,” says Alecta.
“Cat Stevens – Yusuf Islam – Peace Train?” says Shakeeta.
“Not quite. It's Lola – by the Kinks. More or less,” says Tisha.
They watch viral video of Sabia demonstrating on the snow pile, chanting demands.
“Winter fun,” says Tisha.
Sabia is interviewed by Billy the Moto Kid before being attacked to start the wild snow fight.
“She’s a tough one,” says Shakeeta
“We need to talk to that girl,” says Alecta.
“Sabia Tornado,” says Shakeeta.
“Sabia could do my job with the press,” says Tisha. “Except for the slapping the camera part.”
Constitutional Law Advisor Iris Aetos is escorted into the Oval Office by Presidential Aide Malcolm Xavier.
“Ms. President, your Constitutional Law Advisor, Iris Aetos.”
“Thank you, Malcolm.”
Malcolm sees Sabia on TV. “Go Sabia!” he says, before returning to his office.
Iris Aetos nods at Sabia on the TV screen. “She wants to blow the roof off. ”
“In a good way,” says Tisha.
“We could use the light,” says Shakeeta.
“Thank you for coming, Iris,” says Alecta. “Let me introduce, or re-introduce. Chief of Staff Shakeeta Glazier, Press Secretary Tisha Noori — our new Constitutional Law Advisor Iris Aetos.”
“Very glad to be onboard,” says Iris.
Alecta points at the TV. “We need to visit the blast site and greet the victims’ families, including Sabia. We’ll have the memorial, the greeting, and then I want to go to Sabia’s home by the site. I want to stay overnight there. Schedule a three day trip.”
“That's a long time,” says Shakeeta.
“We need to show we’re not afraid. Let’s arrive at the ceremony in a rental bus for the symbolism and the solidarity but nothing big like Ground Force One. Sabia is fearless. We should be too.”
“Let’s do it,” says Tisha.
“Shakeeta, please get Sabia on the phone. Now, if at all possible. We need to divert the crazy media from attacking health care, as best we can.”
“I’ll ring the girl myself.”
“And let’s visit Billy the Moto Kid and his family at their farm.”
“He could interview you by the barn. Or in the barn,” says Tisha.
Yikes,” says Shakeeta. “Will do.”
Shakeeta goes into the adjacent kitchenette to call.
“Tisha, please stay for this. Ms. Aetos, what more can you tell me about Presidential Orders and what the Constitution allows, disallows, and” – big smile – “has nothing whatsoever to say about my possibly doing.”
The FBI completes rapid winter construction of their onsite temporary headquarters in the snowy field across the road, midway between the bomb crater and the Perez farmhouse. Built of sheet metal roof and walls, it holds offices lined with computers, and a large warehouse space with strikingly few bits of evidence salvaged from the incinerated bus and security vehicles. The overturned snowplow remains in the orchard.
Secret Service Director William Kingsley and Deputy Director Grace Lamont check-in at the headquarters, then drive the short distance to Sabia’s farmhouse.
“Federal Bureau of Ignorance,” says Lamont. “Why did we even bother?”
“Castelan’s people are the worst,” says Kingsley. “No way Alecta does not clean house.”
They park on the farmhouse gravel drive.
“Grace, don’t take offense to anything Sabia says, even though she will probably mean it. She was close to her grandfather. She’s angry. She's angry on the heels of his death.”
“We're all angry, Boss.”
Kingsley nods. “And surrounded by death.”
Kingsley rings the doorbell. “She's expecting us,” he says, as if to reassure himself.
Sabia opens the door. “I was afraid I would see you again.”
Kingsley forgot how short she is. Somehow this stature, he feels, makes it far easier for her to conceal things. That’s absurd, he tells himself. “Sabia, please meet Secret Service Deputy Director Grace Lamont, Lead Investigator.”
“Hello, Sabia.”
Sabia ignores Lamont, keeps her eyes on Director Kingsley.
“You got canned.”
“Suspended. This is an unofficial visit.”
“So you say. Everything's a lie, Kingsley.”
“Thanks for agreeing to meet, Sabia. Really.”
“I’m a mild-mannered diplomat, what can I say.”
“On the snow pile at your school you sounded like a revolutionary,” says Lamont.
“You can't be a revolutionary and a diplomat at the same time,” says Sabia.
“So you are a revolutionary, no diplomat,” Lamont pretends to clarify.
“Why did you bring her, Kingsley? For muscle? Not for looks. Or brains.”
“Sabia-”
“We need both, okay? Diplomats and revolutionaries. But to be a revolutionary is to be most alive,” says Sabia. “Sorry, diplomats.”
“You don’t sound sorry. And as a revolutionary, you might do what?” says Lamont. “Kidnap the President?”
“Good one, Agent. Let's see. I built my greenhouse below ground. Not commonly done. There I grow figs and oranges in the Iowa winter. That's kind of radical. Even revolutionary. Being a revolutionary doesn't need to involve guns.”
“Anything else you've done, as a revolutionary?”
“You have my file,” says Sabia. “You, the FBI, the NSA, everyone. You can read, right?”
“May we come in, Sabia?” says Kingsley.
“Not here,” she says. “Let’s go around.”
Sabia leads Kingsley and Lamont across and along the porch, to the workshop, then to the sunken greenhouse, stepping down at the end. Steep drop to Earth.
Alone in the kitchenette by the Oval Office, Shakeeta Glazier taps her phone.
“Okay, Sabia Volcano. Be there.”
President Kristen Silver stands inches from a painted rock wall in the bunker, staring into it.
“I’m hostage for ransom,” says Silver. “How can it be possible that I was elected President of the United States of America, the strongest country in the world, with the biggest military by far, most guns and bombs by millions, and now I’m trapped in an abandoned coal mine? In Iowa. In the middle of the country! How?”
“Sabia,” says Campaign Manger Ellen Lin. “We owe it all to her.”
President Silver yells at the wall: “It was a rhetorical question, Ellen! Like – why couldn't I be hidden on some remote tropical island?”
“I kind of like Iowa,” says Ellen.
“Oh, for Christ's sake,” says Silver.
“Sabia,” says Roca. “That's my girl. Sabia. Sabia.”
“That name!” says Silver.
“Bella hermosa,” says Roca. “Sabia, Sabia.”
“Roca, will you quit singing!” says Silver.
“I do like Iowa,” says Lin, as she writes her book.
Home ground. At the north end of the greenhouse, Sabia sits on a bench by the huge mass of a solar thermal sink with a frog pond built upon it. A solar-powered waterfall chatters into the frog pond, its rhythmic merry noise washing through the many plants and trees in the greenhouse. Sabia is immediately more relaxed. Kingsley and Lamont sit on a bench opposite.
“This place I like so much in winter especially. Oranges, frogs, green life, blue sky, waterfall. Fucking depressing otherwise. Every neighborhood should have big green spaces like this because winter sucks sometimes, no mercy. My abuelo and I built this all by hand, from scraps.”
Sabia’s phone rings. She doesn’t recognize the number.
“Everyone wants my story. They tell me it’s worth a million, ten million. I want a hundred million.”
Sabia answers the call.
“You mean you won’t talk,” says Lamont.
“One hundred million. I’ll blab.”
Sabia speaks to the phone. “Spill it.”
“Sabia Perez, please,” says Shakeeta Glazier, standing alone in the White House kitchenette.
“You got me. The one and only.”
“This is not a prank call, Sabia. This is Shakeeta Glazier. Do you know who that is?”
Sabia looks at Kingsley and says loudly: “Shakeeta Glazier.”
Kingsley and Lamont exchange worried looks.
“Secret Service Director Kingsley seems to know who you are, Shakeeta Glazier. Kingsley’s here in my greenhouse with Deputy Director somebody or other. Looks like he’s seen a ghost, hearing your name.”
“No kidding? Thought he was on leave. I’ll pass that along to the President. Sabia, I’m the Chief of Staff for Acting President O’Roura-Chavez. The President would like to speak with you. Could you take a break from Director Kingsley to speak with President Alecta?”
Sabia jumps up from the bench.
“I would speak with Alecta any minute of any day of any year!”
“Great! One moment, please, Sabia. I’ll see if the President is available.”
Director Kingsley and Agent Lamont both stand.
“Would you like us to-”
Sabia blocks their exit, keeps them by the waterfall.
Then she moves away, a few feet, between orange trees.
“Sabia?”
“Madame President!”
“No, sorry,” says Shakeeta. “Here’s the President.”
“Sabia, this is President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez-”
“Alecta!”
The President laughs. “Please, call me Alecta.”
“I just did!”
“I know! Sabia I want to offer my condolences for the loss of your abuelo.”
“Thanks. It’s not what – it’s not something I recommend.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I really appreciate your calling. It means a lot. I think of you all the time. Well, not ALL the time. I’m not like a stalker or anything. Not really.”
Alecta laughs. “I saw your viral video with Billy the Moto Kid.”
“It wasn’t me who threw the first snowball!”
“That looked like so much fun! The blowout of school, your making it so public. That sort of thing is inspiring to see. Really good. So important.”
“We need to meet those demands, Alecta.”
“We’re working on it. Big time.”
“If only there was a bomb you could drop to make it all better. Then everyone would cheer. All the moneybags with their expensive guns would totally applaud. They love to blow shit up.”
“That’s a hard fact, Sabia. But there are better ways to change the world.”
“I can think of a few.”
“Violence can’t be the answer.”
“Self-defense, though.”
“Sure, self-defense is perfectly legit. Listen, Sabia, I’m going to travel there soon for a memorial. I would like an invite to your home, and for you to show me everything that you and your abuelo grew, and made, and did together.”
“Awe-some! Door’s open! There’s so much to show! Well, there’s more to see in summer. If only my abuelo hadn’t lost his nerve – I mean – his life.”
“What do you mean, his nerve?”
“I don’t mean anything. I’m so excited to talk to you is all. Too excited. I may be losing my nerves.”
“We’ll talk about your abuelo as much as you want, Sabia.”
“I could learn so much from you.”
“Let’s do it. You’re the goddess of fierce, you know that? My staff and I are so impressed by you. And grateful for your voice. They will be in touch. It’s good to talk with you, Sabia. You’re an inspiration. See you soon.”
“I love you, Alecta. I can’t wait.”
“Bye now.”
“Bye.”
Sabia is stunned. She pumps a left power fist as she moves back to the officials by waterfall.
Lamont has picked an orange, and shared with Kingsley.
“Thieves! I knew it. Both of you. The whole agency. Okay, Director, wrap up your investigation. I need to get ready for the arrival of President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez. She’s coming to meet me.”
“Not here.”
“Right where you stand. This little Iowa farm is the center of the universe these days. I’m going to tell the President what you’re doing, investigating me. How dare you.”
“Deputy Director Lamont and I are not investigating you, Sabia.”
“Actually, we think you’re hiding President Silver,” says Lamont.
Sabia freezes.
“Here in the greenhouse. In the middle of the oranges. And frogs,” Lamont continues.
“Look around, Deputy Director. Check the figs. If I really were hiding Silver-Ass, you would be the last to know, the very last to find her.” Sabia scowls at Lamont. “Also, my tits are bigger than yours, Agent Lamont.”
“Okay, this is not what we came to-”
Sabia cuts off Kingsley. “Cops love tits. They think tits hold magic clues and good times.”
“I think you want to be investigated, Sabia Perez,” says Lamont. “Gives you something to stand up to.”
“That's the hole in your head talking. I’m the one who investigates. Me and my abuelo. We worked and researched and we put this whole way of life into being, together.”
Agent Lamont holds up the remaining part of an orange.
“Amazing what you’ve done here. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I grow lots of lemons too. Lemon is my favorite flavor. Most people can't take the sour. Not only in lemons. I love it. I like people who like the sour. I mean, that's life, right?”
“But you're The Fig Girl, according to your Youtube channel. So you know sweet fruit and you like the sweet too. Haven't see you posting videos there lately. When was the last time?”
“I've been sort of busy since my world was blown up, Investigator.”
“Doing what?”
Sabia's look is venomous. “Surviving.”
Kingsley tries to salvage something from the visit. “Sabia – you and Billy Yonkin. Did he ever mention a snowplow going past his house not long before the blast?”
Sabia looks at Kingsley like he's a total idiot. “A rogue snowplow hauling away Silver-Toes? Ask Billy. I’m sure you did. Or go look in his barn. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“We checked the barn. Like we did yours. And the Yonkin silos. Farmhouse. Storage sheds. Outhouse. Henhouse. Pigsty. The same on hundreds of other farms.”
“You looked in the outhouse? You fucking creep, Kingsley.”
“Sabia, how do you think the President was taken?” says Lamont. “You know the area, the people, the roads, the weather, the farms, fields, and woods, the terrain, maybe as well as anyone. The ways to get around.”
“There’s no accounting for crazy, Investigator. Look at you, eating my orange.”
“That’s the thing,” says Lamont. “The kidnapper’s demands don’t sound crazy. Bold, not crazy. They sort of sound like you.”
“I take that as a great compliment, thank you. Meanwhile, the Secret Service, the FBI, you got burned.”
“The entire nation got burned. The people on that bus especially.”
“Look,” says Sabia. “It wasn’t my day to watch Silver-Ass, okay. Oh wait, that was your job. Oops. Time’s up.”
Sabia leads Kingsley and Lamont out of the greenhouse. She escorts them directly to the front porch.
And there stands fired FBI Director Maximilian Castelan, knocking at the farmhouse front door.
“A convention of ex-cops on my front porch,” says Sabia. “Desperate much?”
“Sabia Perez,” says Castelan. “You throw a mean snowball.”
“You can’t detain me, Copper. I know your ass is toast. And these two will be next to get chopped. I’ll be sure to tell President Alecta all about this little visit. She gets me.”
“We need to talk, Sabia,” says Castelan.
Sabia stands her ground in face of the three security directors on her front porch. Down by her side, she tightens the fingers of her left hand into a fist. “You can't afford my fee, Castelan.” She wishes she were inside the house and the directors were locked out.
“Look, Sabia,” says Kingsley. “It's all new now that President Silver is known to be alive. Try to remember any detail you might have thought too insignificant to mention that first terrible day.”
Instead, Sabia fixates on Secret Service officer Grace Lamont. She rips the remains of the orange out of Lamont’s hands. “I’ll take that, Goldilocks.”
Sabia goes inside the house, slams the door in their faces. She locks the door.
Back to the door, Sabia slides to the floor. “Fucking criminals,” she whispers. “They’ll never catch me.”
Sabia strides to the stairs, then runs up. In her bedroom, she blasts one of her favorite hard-hitting grunge songs, Them Bones, by Alice in Chains. From a window, she watches Kingsley, Lamont, and Castelan talk near the porch.
Lamont studies the farmhouse. She examines the foundation. She gazes toward the roof. She looks around the corners. She takes photos with her camera. She wags her finger at the house. She thinks the well-kept but worn old Victorian structure looks somehow sleepy and – for some intangible reason – deceptive.
But she also knows that must be just her imagination.
Lamont glances around the terrain, in a complete circle, slowly. Snow everywhere, forest and field.
Finally, Lamont looks up directly at the window from which Sabia watches. Eye to eye, they meet briefly.
Sabia does not look away. Agent Lamont eventually does. Sabia remains in the window.
The three Directors walk to their vehicles parked in the Perez farmhouse drive.
“Didn't know you were in the area, Max,” says Kingsley.
“I see you ruined Sabia for talking to,” says Castelan.
“That's just Sabia,” says Kingsley. “You know that.”
“Don't tell me what I know, Bill. As a matter of fact, I'll tell you what you can know of what I know.”
Same old Castelan, Kingsley thinks. Not remotely fazed by being fired.
Deputy Direct Lamont speaks up. “Okay, Max. What is it? Bureau got a new lead here?”
“O'Roura-Chavez squeezed me out, Officer Lamont, so you need to ask the Bureau about any new leads. What's left of it.”
“And yet here you are,” says Kingsley.
Castelan smiles as if he knows many secrets. “Not anymore.” He walks to his SUV, then drives north toward Des Moines.
Kingsley and Lamont take a last wander and look around farmstead. Then they too get into their SUV and drive away. Sabia watches them the whole while from the upstairs windows. She is glad to see them go.
She kills the music. She lies down on her back on her bed. She stares at the ceiling. “Fucking criminals,” she says.
Castelan drives to the address where Jenna Ryzcek is housesitting in the countryside southwest of Des Moines. He picks the lock and enters carrying a bag of surveillance equipment. He knows where Jenna is – the only other place she is allowed to be with her ankle monitor – working as a nurse and teacher's aide in a private progressive school near the city.
He installs hidden audio-video recording devices in the kitchen, living room, and in Jenna’s bedroom.
“Okay, Jenna,” he says, pushing a tiny camera the size of a headless flooring nail into a corner crack of molding near the ceiling above her bed. “Tell me all your secrets. Show and tell, Girl.”
Bedside, Castelan takes a photo off the nightstand: Jenna, Jasmine, and Sabia sit shoulder to shoulder to shoulder on old tires stacked as a blockade at a pipeline construction site. All smiles. Jenna and Jasmine with thumbs up. Sabia in the middle, holding onto each.
“Three fucking cliches.”
Partisans in the field tend to be sticky. Pry them apart as much as you will and they typically clump back together again, sooner or later.
Castelan takes a closer look at Sabia in the photo. She sits on a tire between Jenna and Jasmine with her hands on their thighs. Like a single organism.
This photo on the nightstand suggests to Castelan that the Bureau should have pushed harder to find pipeline bombing accomplices beyond Jenna and Jasmine. Might have turned up Sabia. Might have taken care of his problem in advance. Might not.
Maybe it's not too late, Castelan thinks. He shakes the photo as if to knock some secret out of it.
Castelan's trip to the Perez farmhouse was mainly a decoy. He wants no other security officials to know his strategy. It's fucking Jenna Ryzcek, he thinks. If anyone knows who swiped and hid President Silver, it's likely to be the pipeline-bombing mastermind of Iowa: Jenna. Maybe Jasmine Maldonado but probably Jenna.
Castelan is not aware of any racism on his part in thinking first and foremost that the blonde hair and blue eyes of Jenna Ryzcek indicate her to be most likely the brains behind the hijacking of the president rather than the black hair and brown eyes of Jasmine Maldonado. Let alone Sabia Perez.
Who would do it? Someone like Jasmine Maldonado, he's certain, but who could actually pull it off, someone like Jenna Ryzcek, he's even more certain. Castelan thinks much like some of the 9-11 truthers, unaware that racism might lead them to believe the 9-11 bombings of the World Trade Center must be a very white Vice President Dick-Cheney-led inside job rather than be within the capacity of people of color overseas to get a big one over on all those clever, ostensibly brilliant, white people.
Turns out it was the bombers from oversees who wanted the US to remove its military base from Saudi Arabia (very quietly subsequently withdrawn) and to stop propping up the tyrannical regimes in their region. Couldn't be them. Had to be the super-smart, impossibly smart, homegrown white guys – those responsible for no end of much greater terror, longstanding – grotesquely exemplified yet again in the invasion and destruction of Afghanistan. And Iraq – that criminal and bloody conquest that handed regional power to Iran, much to the despair of the oh-so-clever white invaders.
But Castelan is of the type, as his official position in the Empire more or less requires, so his calculations are always missing key facts and imposing mistaken assumptions, of what kinds are known only too well: race, class, gender, age, and much more.
Castelan flicks the photo of the three water protectors with his fingers. “Fucking criminals,” he says.
All the while, Jenna, Jasmine, and Sabia smile back.
