The Deluge, page 60
Tony crossed his arms against his chest and kept his eyes steady on the table. A feeling had risen as though these two had packed him into a suitcase and were smuggling him across the border of reality itself. None of this made sense. This was so irregular, so against the protocol of how disciplined federal law enforcement was supposed to function, that he still wondered if it was all an enormous bluff.
“This third option.” Her fingernail moved to tap it twice. “These are charges of criminal conspiracy against Holly Pietrus.”
“Fuck you,” Tony snarled.
“A web of communications via text and email tie her directly to you, and by association to Clay Ro and the Weathermen.”
“Yeah, no shit, she’s my fucking daughter, you cunt.”
Novotny smirked. Tony had delivered the reaction she wanted, and he immediately scolded himself. He needed to not panic. He needed to show that their intimidation wouldn’t work.
“We leave you alone for five minutes, and you run to call her. She’s worked closely with Kate Morris and has ties to numerous other environmental activists, many of whom have expressed sympathy for the Weathermen on social media. Would you like me to read some of these activists’ reactions to the destruction of pipelines, coal plants, and refineries in the past ten years? We have files and files of their cheerleading.”
“This is all horseshit,” said Tony.
“We can build a case against her brick by brick,” Novotny continued. “If we get a terrorism enhancement, I’m talking upward of thirty-five years. She’ll be an old woman when she gets out.”
“Get fucked.”
“All you have to do is cooperate and the rest of this goes away.” She pushed the first piece of paper toward him.
“There’s nothing to cooperate about because I didn’t do anything, and I don’t know anything.”
Novotny and Wallflower looked like they more or less expected this.
“This first option is going once, going twice,” said Novotny as Wallflower stood. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone, you understand? And believe me, things will only get harder from here. We are going to find these people one way or the other. President Love and AG Greenstreet are taking the gloves off.”
“So am I under arrest? If so, I want a goddamn lawyer!” He smashed his fist against the table.
“It doesn’t work that way anymore,” said Wallflower, and then they both left and locked the door behind them.
Tony sat in the plush conference room chair for a long time as dusk descended. In the parking lot, government employees and contractors were filtering out, heading home after a long day. The window was sealed shut into the wall. He wondered what they would do if he banged his fists against the glass and screamed for help. His only living company, the mother-in-law’s tongue, respirated silently. He checked the dusty clock above the television, and only now did he realize it was the wrong hour. Had to be.
He tried not to watch the time, but he couldn’t help it. He was starving and needed to pee again. He sat in silence as the sky darkened. In an hour he would be in a windowless truck, in two more on a plane. In a day he’d be somewhere hot, a desert where they tried to compensate by filling the facility with bone-chilling AC. Then he would be in a room with nothing but a bunk, a toilet, and a sink. It would be a week before fear turned to panic, a month before panic turned to despair. Though he didn’t know it then, it would be almost a year and a half before he saw a sunset again.
THE YEARS OF RAIN AND THUNDER: PART IV
2034
The train lurched to a stop at Fiftieth Street, and I was dragged from the unsettling headlines of the day back to the immediate moment. Having lied to Kate, I’d been on edge since arriving in New York and on the subway made the mistake of turning to the news for distraction. Two children shot dead in Dallas, and the city had exploded. Jason Mollier and Lamarr Daniels were stuffing candy in their pants at a convenience store and the security guard pulled a gun. This wasn’t 2020 or 2024. People weren’t asking for justice anymore, they would go get it themselves, and within days, Dallas was on fire. The police and Texas National Guard cleared the city block by block, guarded by low-hovering drones with obsidian-black panels for faces, firing tear gas and rubber bullets while shielding police from bricks, rocks, and bottles hurled by the city’s enraged residents. Torched supermarkets and police barricades had left whole neighborhoods without anything to eat. I’d seen protests throughout New York City that morning, but the NYPD was taking no chances, kettling protestors. Everything had remained peaceful so far, but cities around the country were in the same tense standoff. Just another spasm in a never-ending American saga. I spotted a lone Black man on the street corner holding a cardboard sign: MY FUCKS BUDGET ALL FULL UP. I CAN GIVE NO MORE. KILL NYPD.
I emerged from New York’s intestines into the seventy-degree February day, the air sweating. People carried jackets under their arms while mopping their brows, still expecting the humidity to turn to rain. In the back of the Midtown restaurant, there was a room away from the other diners, walls scattered with images of Big Apple history—Boss Tweed political cartoons and workers dancing on beams of the soon-to-be Empire State Building. And there were my old friends.
Rekia Reynolds, Coral Sloane, and Tom Levine stood to greet me, and I could feel the wave of nervous energy in my gut surge into my face. Holly Pietrus stood behind them, waiting for whatever drama to play out. We all had this moment of tension, combat veterans reuniting in a bar with the anticipation of war stories. It was the first time I’d seen any of them since Kate’s firing. That was almost three years ago.
We all laughed, and the room deflated. Rekia was the closest and came to me first.
“Matty, oh God.” She took me in her arms and held me, twisting my body back and forth. I’d spent so many nights staring at the ceiling, hating her for what had happened, swearing I would avenge Kate. But the years went by, and my anger melted, and as soon as I saw her, there was nothing but bottomless love for this powerful and brilliant woman. “It’s so good to see you, babe. I love this.” She put her hand on my beard, which was old to me but new to her. No one would mistake me for a lumberjack, but it mitigated some of the boyishness I’d never been able to shake. Rek wiped a tear from her eye. She wore a bright red dress and her hair in long braids, twisted into a spiral atop her skull with the sides shaved. Enormous earrings like rectilinear city grids hung from each ear. She had an engagement ring on her finger. “Sorry, sorry! I missed you.”
“You too. Don’t—” I laughed as my eyes misted. “Rek, don’t. You’re going to make me cry.” We both laughed. “You know I’m so sorry for how we left every—”
“Matty…” She held up her hand. “Stop. I’m sorry too. Everyone’s sorry. I love you, and I always will, okay?” Then I did have tears coming out and quickly wiped them away, nodding furiously and pulling her into an embrace again.
Coral was of course dressed like a surly teenager in baggy khakis and a plain blue button-up. They’d removed the lip ring, but their hair was still a messy bowl, bangs curling on their forehead, a FREE THE CLIMATE HEROES electronic bracelet glittered on one wrist as the small, curved screen cycled through this proclamation along with JUSTICE FOR JASON AND LAMARR. Coral held my shoulder first, and in their froggy voice said, “I almost brought my VR in case you wanted to get in a quick game of Avenging Angel?”
“You and me just skip lunch and sit in a corner?”
“Missed you, buddy,” they said.
Tom was next, and we faked our greeting. “It’s been too long,” was all he said, slapping me on the back before sitting down. He adjusted the new Apple ARs, with their bold, thick-rimmed frames and took a seat, resting a hand on the back of Rekia’s chair.
I’d never met Holly Pietrus, so we shook hands. Dressed in a sheer rose-colored blouse and a black pencil skirt, she looked young and bony. She’d been director of the New York office for a couple years but had the anxious bearing of an undergrad trying to pull an all-nighter before a final. Of course, her father was one of those climate heroes Coral’s bracelet was advocating for, and I knew this was likely causing her sleepless nights. In addition to being biracial, she didn’t look much like him, which was undoubtedly a good thing, but I could see his humorless scowl in her face now, like his DNA shimmered through her in moments of upset.
Coral held up their phone and a signal-blocking bag. “Can we all agree?”
We slid our phones across the table, Tom adding his glasses and Coral their bracelet.
“So when’s the wedding?” I asked.
“Next year,” said Tom. “Black women plan weddings like NASA and SpaceX plan contingencies for going to Mars.”
“It’s. My. Sisters,” said Rekia, clapping her hands with each word. “I’m the baby, so they’ll be up our asses the rest of our lives—just deal with it.”
“Sorry for the paranoia,” Coral said, setting the Faraday bag aside.
“What’s paranoia when you got robots shooting people in the streets of Dallas,” said Rekia. “I swear every day and want to start fucking screaming.”
“Weird how you wake up and you’re living in a bad movie about the future,” said Tom.
“The original RoboCop was a classic for a reason,” Coral said grimly. Even under the circumstances, it was hard not to smile at Coral and recall our Verhoeven film fests. I’d been planning a trip home to Carolina when Coral asked if I’d come to New York to meet with the old crew—and not tell Kate. One of Rekia’s first decisions as ED was to move the core operations to New York City, mostly to be closer to the financial capital. It was the markets, after all, that were now doing much of the heavy lifting on renewables deployment and adaptation. In a few weeks, they would sponsor the Conference on Climate Mitigation, a multiday event with over three hundred speakers on dozens of panels meant to “bring together all stakeholders, from activists to government to business, to discuss and facilitate solutions, transformations, and ameliorations for climate change.” It would even include members of the Sustainable Future Coalition. A gala was to follow.
“There’s a hedge fund dropping a million dollars on the cocktails with this vodka made from carbon-sequestering potatoes,” said Tom.
“And Love is not speaking, correct?”
“No. There’s no way,” said Coral. “There would be boycotts.”
“We said we’d walk out.” These were the first words Holly had spoken since we sat down.
“So what do we know?” I asked. “Your dad’s case is working its way through the courts, right?”
“Not fast enough,” she said. The detention of left-wing organizers, Islamic leaders, and climate activists held at undisclosed locations had yet to let up. Headlines trumpeted the outrage, but the arrests continued a drip at a time anyway.
“Banana republic oppression,” said Tom. “They’re testing the legal limits of PRIRA.”
I asked, “And how many people are we talking?”
“They don’t have to show the evidence for national security concerns—quote, unquote,” said Coral. “So all our lawyers are in the dark in a box built by Kafka. And as for how many?” They looked to Rekia, who returned their troubled expression. “We think somewhere between thirty to forty people have been detained under the statute, but it could be many more. Maybe more have disappeared. Journalists are looking. We’re looking.”
“What happened with you and Kate?” Rekia asked.
The waiter chose that moment to come take our orders, which gave me time to think. I had to be careful.
“We sat for an interview,” I said when he left. “Our lawyers were there. That’s it. Nothing came of it.”
We’d driven up to the Portland field office the month before and spent most of the time sitting in colorless rooms like we were in a doctor’s office. When they interviewed us together, Kate did her best to bore them with drivel.
“ ‘The whole point of Climate X is to build an antidote to the alienation and desperation people sometimes don’t even know they’re feeling,” she told the agents. “That you guys are probably feeling. Politics has become entirely about individual self-expression instead of collective revolution, and I’ve been trying to push back against self-referentialism and sanctimony and dead-end radicalism. We want to reorient people around a shared vision.’ ”
“ ‘Right,’ ” said a supremely uninterested special agent named Chen.
“ ‘But that’s why it’s so utterly unreasonable that I or anyone in FBF ever worked with 6Degrees. Our missions are entirely dissimilar. They want insurrection against the state. Like the stupid children they are.’ ”
“ ‘They’re awfully crafty for children,’ ” said Agent Chen. To which Kate just shrugged.
“ ‘It’s your surveillance state, dude.’ ”
In the end, it was less Kate’s mesmerizingly abstruse blather that got us out of there after only six hours than the fact that none of the captured operatives linked to the Weathermen had any connection to A Fierce Blue Fire. According to a New Yorker exposé by my old friend Moniza, the guy caught trying to get back into the States from Canada, Clay Ro, had never so much as visited the FBF website.
Rekia slid her arms over her breasts now, watching me. “The FBI’s interviewed everyone on staff. They’ve subpoenaed emails, audited our financials. They’re tracing every last dollar we’ve ever spent.”
“What do your lawyers say?”
“They say cooperate.”
I breathed slowly through my nostrils and nodded.
“According to my contacts, Love is trying to merge his own security empire with the normative functions of the DOJ, FBI, Homeland, CIA,” said Tom. “Moving quick but not too quick.”
“It seems like, for the most part, they’re sticking to low-profile activists,” said Rekia. “No one who’ll command too much outrage—with the exception of Holly’s dad. We think he’s a test case. They put out that picture of him with the Weathermen op Ro to sell it.”
“Is there any other evidence against him?” I asked.
“Of course there’s not,” Holly snapped, and I didn’t blame her. “This guy Ro had a picture taken with him at a speech back when my dad was touring campuses with his book.”
“Right. Obviously.” It had fallen out of my mouth, and I regretted it. In Moniza’s article, she’d described how Clay Alvin Ro had tried to erase the young activist version of himself before getting his plumbing license and slipping into a life of anonymity. This gave ample clue as to how the Weathermen operated, while also clarifying just how blindly and illegally the government was pursuing them. From my brief interaction with Pietrus in VR, he seemed about as likely a terrorist operative as my mother. I asked Holly, “How are you doing? You and your family?”
“We’re freaking out is what we’re doing. I’ve never— None of us have any experience with this, and it’s been a total hall of mirrors. My uncle hired serious criminal lawyers, and even they seem unnerved.”
“And you still don’t know where he’s being held?”
“No.” Her brow furrowed in anguish. I was afraid she would burst into tears. “I got this call from him, and he said he was in Bridgeport, and that’s the last I’ve heard about him or from him.”
“Matt, that’s why we wanted to talk to you,” said Coral. “We’re cooperating, and you guys should too. Our aim is to fight this in the daylight. We don’t want to give them an excuse right now.”
I forced myself not to look at Tom. He’d promised he wouldn’t say a word, and I still believed he hadn’t. “What other choice do we have?”
Coral exchanged another look with Rekia.
“Matt, what are you, Kate, and Liza up to with the concert?” they asked.
I laughed as if it was as silly as it sounded. “Who even knows? This thing has been a logistical nightmare. Pop-star egos—Jesus.”
“Oh right,” said Holly, coming back to the conversation. Her lips were tight with anger. “Your concert. We’re out here getting death threats, getting harassed by every Jen Braden fanatic, harassed by the FBI, my dad’s in some black-site prison.” Her voice rose. “And you and Kate are hanging out with Zeden, planning a singalong on the National Mall like it’s 2007. Concert for the Climate? Gosh, why didn’t anyone think of that before?”
Our food came, and we all sat awkwardly while the waiter set the plates in front of us. No one touched their meals after he left.
“Kate is trying to keep the pressure on for actual binding emissions reductions,” I said as evenly as I could manage.
“Good luck,” said Holly. “Aamanzaihou is on her own island now. All our other allies have lost elections or are lining up behind the new so-called climate security czar, Dahms.”
“What’s your read on him?” I asked, trying to calm the conversation because she was so upset.
Coral answered instead. “He’s an albedo modification advocate. Geoengineer our way out of this.”
“Ready the monster, Igor.”
“Exactly.”
Coral nodded to Holly. “I am interested in your answer, Matt. The concert. Why is Kate doing this?”
Carefully, I said, “I’m not sure what you guys mean.”
Coral shook their head. “It’s out of character. It’s the kind of thing she would’ve mocked when I first met her. Pointless performative politics.”
I hated lying. I’d never been good at it. I tried to make my dread sound like exasperation. “She’s just working with what she’s got at hand.”
Coral nodded, but clearly this did not satisfy. Holly had picked up her fork but had not taken a bite. Now she set it back down.
“I’m sorry, I know we just met, but— Kate spends ten years building this groundbreaking political movement, then embarrasses herself beyond all reason, and her major idea is to get a few pop stars and rock-and-roll skeletons to play a concert? I can’t even tell you— I idolized Kate Morris. Kate Morris was the reason I came to work here. And now this is all so, so— I don’t know, so mortifying! Everything everyone said about her—that she’s toxic, a starfucker, a phony—it’s like she’s admitting it was all true.”
