Good-looking and rich is nice, but ideally one should be intelligent and hardworking. Being a schoolteacher is a lousy job. Management iswhat everyone should aspire to, even the workers; however, everyone knows that financial matters are complicated. Naturally this requires legions of specialists who actually run the economy, and that’s probably best—that the actual running of things should be left to the experts. Mathematically challenged need not apply.
America’s ego was protected by a shell of case-hardened bullshit. The myths and the propaganda were its armor. Here was the battle for the hearts and minds—in these towers above her. Up there, ambitious boys and girls her age stoked the fires of the mythmaking apparatus. Here the news was spun, stars were born, deals were cut, reputations were polished, and America tended her face. Once it was all gone her citizenry would be revealed for the cowering, naked dogs they were.
She finds herself standing at a corner, lost amid the rush of the city.
Suddenly … she needs to hide, to get away. Her stomach swirls. She changes course and abruptly goes into Macy’s, forces herself to walk along the aisles.
Panic, that’s what it is. Sudden, irrational panic. She is convinced that somebody is watching via the cameras in the ceiling, somebody is following her on a parallel aisle. She is careful not to break into a run, keeps to an easy stride, pretends to look at the merchandise as she goes, and once she gets across the great floor she pushes her way outside again and discovers she is next to the entrance to the subway. She turns, walking back the way she’s come, searching for the face of her pursuer …
But there is no one. Is it an omen, this unheard message from Creighton? At the very least she will have to change hotels. How long will her identity hold? She has no security. How long before the virus is discovered? Soon in Berlin, surely. The computer says a classic case of smallpox has a seven-day incubation period, but what if it’s “on steroids”? A few days? A few days at most. By then people will start to sicken and CIA agents will be searching for Patient Zero from among recent arrivals.
She goes down to the subway, puzzles out the fare machines, buys a MetroCard and pushes her way through the turnstiles. Thesubway map confronts her—looking like nothing so much as one of those diagrams of the reproductive system. She finds her place on a mustard-colored vein.
As in any big city, it helps if you know where you’re going. New York has managed to confuse her. She is running out of time, and realizes that she will never be able to visit all the high-priority targets.
She edits her list down to a handful, but right away, at the Israeli consulate, she strikes out and is reduced to breathing on the glass that separates her from a stiff-faced guard. She attempts to give him a
Klic!
card but he waves it away and all she can do is lamely agree that, yes, it’s reasonable enough that people should phone for an appointment if they hope to book a publicity interview with the consular office. She offers to come back. Is there a more convenient time?
“This is not a tourist stop,” the guard says, stone-faced.
She smiles and promises she will do as he has suggested, then leaves, thinking that even if she were to follow the procedures, it would be just like the Israelis to run some kind of a computerized check on her and, upon turning up a big fat zero at
Klic!
’s offices in Rome, arrest her as she waits in the embassy foyer.
She walks down Second Avenue, frustrated, head down to avoid the hidden cameras on the roofs, thinking that it was probably stupid to even dream of taking on the hyper-paranoid Israelis, and that she’s moving way too fast and overreaching whatever plans her handlers had made for her.
But … that’s part of the problem. It’s something she should have at least asked about in Berlin. They never gave her any … any training,
America’s ego was protected by a shell of case-hardened bullshit. The myths and the propaganda were its armor. Here was the battle for the hearts and minds—in these towers above her. Up there, ambitious boys and girls her age stoked the fires of the mythmaking apparatus. Here the news was spun, stars were born, deals were cut, reputations were polished, and America tended her face. Once it was all gone her citizenry would be revealed for the cowering, naked dogs they were.
She finds herself standing at a corner, lost amid the rush of the city.
Suddenly … she needs to hide, to get away. Her stomach swirls. She changes course and abruptly goes into Macy’s, forces herself to walk along the aisles.
Panic, that’s what it is. Sudden, irrational panic. She is convinced that somebody is watching via the cameras in the ceiling, somebody is following her on a parallel aisle. She is careful not to break into a run, keeps to an easy stride, pretends to look at the merchandise as she goes, and once she gets across the great floor she pushes her way outside again and discovers she is next to the entrance to the subway. She turns, walking back the way she’s come, searching for the face of her pursuer …
But there is no one. Is it an omen, this unheard message from Creighton? At the very least she will have to change hotels. How long will her identity hold? She has no security. How long before the virus is discovered? Soon in Berlin, surely. The computer says a classic case of smallpox has a seven-day incubation period, but what if it’s “on steroids”? A few days? A few days at most. By then people will start to sicken and CIA agents will be searching for Patient Zero from among recent arrivals.
She goes down to the subway, puzzles out the fare machines, buys a MetroCard and pushes her way through the turnstiles. Thesubway map confronts her—looking like nothing so much as one of those diagrams of the reproductive system. She finds her place on a mustard-colored vein.
As in any big city, it helps if you know where you’re going. New York has managed to confuse her. She is running out of time, and realizes that she will never be able to visit all the high-priority targets.
She edits her list down to a handful, but right away, at the Israeli consulate, she strikes out and is reduced to breathing on the glass that separates her from a stiff-faced guard. She attempts to give him a
Klic!
card but he waves it away and all she can do is lamely agree that, yes, it’s reasonable enough that people should phone for an appointment if they hope to book a publicity interview with the consular office. She offers to come back. Is there a more convenient time?
“This is not a tourist stop,” the guard says, stone-faced.
She smiles and promises she will do as he has suggested, then leaves, thinking that even if she were to follow the procedures, it would be just like the Israelis to run some kind of a computerized check on her and, upon turning up a big fat zero at
Klic!
’s offices in Rome, arrest her as she waits in the embassy foyer.
She walks down Second Avenue, frustrated, head down to avoid the hidden cameras on the roofs, thinking that it was probably stupid to even dream of taking on the hyper-paranoid Israelis, and that she’s moving way too fast and overreaching whatever plans her handlers had made for her.
But … that’s part of the problem. It’s something she should have at least asked about in Berlin. They never gave her any … any training,
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