Amerika (26 page)

“Still twisting the news?” Clay quipped.

“Night and day.” Jeffrey grinned. “I am the Dan Rather of disinformation.” He turned to Devin and extended his hand. “Glad to meet you, man. Been an admirer—you know. Come and meet the group.” Jeffrey led them into what had once been a conference room, where highly paid actuaries had discussed mortality rates and term-insurance options. All that remained now was a magnificent view of the Chicago skyline—no one could steal that. Eight men and women awaited them, and they soon gathered around Devin, greeting him with handshakes and warm words. They greeted Clayton with affection, too, and in time they settled in a circle on the floor.

“Well, this is it, the movement in Chicago,” Jeffrey said. “Each of us represents a group, cells you might say; some are a part of the establishment, others underground. We don’t interact much, except on very special occasions, like greeting Devin Milford.” “There’s no leaders,” declared a man named Quinlan, a tough-looking fellow in workclothes. “We do our own stuff. That way we don’t get hooked into nothin’ that don’t measure up. Leaders screw things up.”

His outburst was greeted with an awkward silence. Devin guessed he was being reminded that he had been one of those leaders who failed.

“Look, let’s get something out in the open,” Jeffrey said. “Nobody blames you for what happened when you ran for president. You got our hopes up and then the bubble burst, but that wasn’t your fault. Maybe we were all unrealistic. The thing you may not know is that while you were gone you became a hero, kind of a folk hero, to a lot of people. I don’t think the Russians understand it or you wouldn’t be here now. But whether you like it or not, you’ve got it.”

Devin nodded but didn’t reply. He didn’t want to be a hero. He wanted their help, but he knew to let things unfold in their own way.

“But listen,” Jeffrey continued, “I’m a journalist, and I’ve got this pesky habit of wanting to know how the pieces of a story fit together. You don’t owe us any explanations, and if you want to skip the whole business, that’s fine. But I confess to being curious as hell about how you and Marion Andrews ever got together, and about how it happened that the two of you turned out as wildly different as you did.”

It was not a question, exactly, but it hung heavy in the silence that followed, and Devin, surrounded by people he instantly trusted, found himself thinking back over long-distant events he hadn’t let himself reflect on in years.

He laughed. “Well,” he began, talking more to himself than to the others, “we met at Harvard. How’s that for an elitist backdrop? I was in law school, Marion was still an undergraduate. We met at a party and . . . well, let me be candid. I wanted to go to bed with her because of the way she could argue politics. She was a fireball—incisive, committed, smart as hell. And beautiful. She moved in with me. We got married. And eventually we both practiced law. Viewed from the outside, we were the perfect young American professional couple.

“The problem,” Devin went on, “was competitiveness, and politics turned out to be what the competition focused on. I’d been active for years. I was radicalized by Vietnam, I was disgusted by the Nixon scandals, I was depressed by the apathy and nest-feathering indifference that came after. I made my feelings known, and in 1982 I was drafted to run for the state legislature. This was Cambridge, remember, liberal land, and a guy like me could win without a major party machine behind me.” He broke off and gave a rueful laugh. “It never dawned on me that Marion wanted to run herself.”

“Well, I ran and I won. In eighty-six, a congressional seat opened up, and I was asked to go for it. By then I’d realized that my marriage was being corroded and that Marion was furious. I would have gladly stepped aside and let her run—she would have made the better politician, as later events have shown. But by then the whole machinery of the system was cranked up: I was the one with two terms’ experience, not her; I was the one who could win and get to Washington to represent what I believed in. So what was I to do: make the gallant gesture and let the conservatives win the seat, or win the seat and jeopardize my marriage?

“I went to Congress. Chalk that up as mistake number four-twenty-three. Then in D.C. as a freshman rep, I made errors four-twenty-four through ten thousand. Jesus, I was green! Protocol, lobbies—it was Greek to me, but by God I said what was on my mind, and my constituents sent me back for more in eighty-eight. I went, along with one of the most frustrated political wives in a city full of them.

“Then World War III came and went practically without anybody noticing. Even now, I’m staggered by how it happened. Remember air raids in grade school? The nuke freeze movement? The nightmares of mushroom clouds and radioactive milk? Those unspeakable horrors at least made a certain kind of sense: something cataclysmic would happen, and the whole world would be changed. But now
nothing
had happened—some magnetism in the sky!—and America was gone.

“Congress, like everyone else, was dumbfounded, paralyzed. Resolutions were passed. Speeches were made. No one would face up to what the surrender terms to the Soviets really meant.
I
faced up to it, for better or worse. I knew that America was no more. The United States was occupied territory, as pathetic as any newsreel you ever saw of Czechoslovakia or Poland.

“Marion was smarter than I was—as she’d been all along. Sh6 was among the very first to see the writing on the wall and to grasp how to turn it to her advantage. I’d been the star under the old system of American democracy. Okay.
She’d
be the star under the New Understanding. She joined the PPP practically before the PPP was instated. She was on her way.

“That’s about the time I decided to run for president,” Devin said, shaking his head at what seemed now to have been an act of pure quixotic folly. “I didn’t have a chance, you understand. The Democrats and the Republicans had put up party-approved stooges, who were well financed and who had access to the media. Even if by some miracle I could win the balloting, there was nothing to stop the authorities from diddling with the vote count. But I wanted a forum. I wanted to tell my fellow Americans that the country was being raped,
that the idea of cooperation was a sham, that the thought that the Soviets would ever leave was a grotesque illusion.

“If no one believed me, everything would have been fine. But of course I was just the mouthpiece for what everyone already knew but lacked the gumption to acknowledge. I spoke people’s own thoughts back to them—and that, I guess, is what made them think of me as dangerous. You see, I wasn’t brilliant, I wasn’t intellectual. And God knows I wasn’t subtle.

“Marion used to taunt me about that, in fact.” He gave a wistful laugh. “ ‘Be a little subtle,’ she used to tell me. And watch your blind side.’ Well, the blind side is exactly where they hit me. One day I was the dark-horse contender for president; next day, according to the official dispatch, I was a lunatic who had cracked under the pressures of campaigning and needed to be hospitalized. Going by the record, I’ve spent the last five years recuperating from a nervous breakdown that I never had. And I guess that brings you up to date.”

Devin broke off his narration with a self-effacing shrug, as if denying the import of his personal travail. His listeners sighed and rearranged themselves on their aluminum chairs.

“The thing I still don’t understand, though,” Jeffrey said, “is when the real rift came, when your wife turned against you.”

Devin blinked, paused, looked down at Ms fingernails. Absently, he shook his head no as he spoke. “She didn’t turn against me. She wasn’t there. I. . . I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

Jeffrey retreated from his aggressive interviewer stance. He glanced quickly at the others in the room and silenced them with his eyes. Then he forced a smile and threw an arm around Devin Milford’s shoulders. “But tell me, brother, what can we do for you while you’re here?”

Devin hesitated, as if he needed to rid himself of the taste of something rotten before he could speak again. “I’m here to see my sons,” he said. “It’s a personal matter. Maybe it doesn’t concern you at all.”

“No, we’ll help you,” said one of the policemen. “We owe that much to Devin Milford. It won’t be easy, believe me, but we’ll give it a shot. Then, maybe once you’ve got your personal affairs in order, you’ll care about politics again.”

Chapter 10

It had been
the worst time of Amanda’s life. The carnage at the exile camp, the confrontation with Major Gurtman, the burial of the dead Exiles, the forced evacuation of the survivors to Omaha, the new curfew—to endure all this, and without Peter, was almost more than she could bear.

Yet she had survived. She had made the decisions that otherwise would have been Peter’s. She and others had defied the curfew to attend the mass funeral service at the exile camp and the SSU had backed down. She kept trying to reach Peter, kept expecting him to call, but it was as if Milford had been isolated from the rest of the universe.

On the second morning after the funerals, she and the children were in their kitchen when several military vehicles stopped in front of the house.

“What’s going on?” Scott demanded.

Amanda hurried to the door, expecting to confront armed soldiers, but instead she found a pert, darkhaired young woman on her front porch.

“Mrs. Bradford, I’m Margaret Sawyer, your new aide.”

“Aide?” Amanda said, quite bewildered.

“Actually, I’m on the governor-general’s staff, but I’ve been detailed to help you with the move and all your new responsibilities.”

“Move? What move are you talking about?”

“To Omaha. His headquarters are there, and we were sent to help you move.”

“I’ve got to talk to my husband,” Amanda said, looking out into the yard, where soldiers were taking up defensive positions. She wondered: against what? “He’s been in Washington,” she added. “I haven’t talked to him in several days.”

“But didn’t you see his speech to Congress on TV?” “Yes, we saw him,” Amanda said wearily.

“I thought he was wonderful.”

“Yes, he was.” Amanda sighed. She thought that if her husband was speaking to Congress and yet could not get through to his wife on the phone, then something was very wrong, something that neither of them understood; all she wanted was Peter safe at home with her, and for their lives to return to where they had been before all this political madness began.

“If you’re my aide,” she said, “please get my husband on the phone.”

The rusted step-van said
A&A Plumbing
on its side in faded red letters. It was parked in a deserted warehouse on Chicago’s south side just a few blocks from Comiskey Park. Devin and Clayton were standing beside the truck, along with two of their Chicago allies, Quinlan and a man named Miller.

“We followed your boys for two days,” Quinlan said. “So the driver knows the routes.”

“You’ve got to decide if you make your move at school or at home,” Miller said. “You have to realize they may not recognize you. They may panic at first. But don’t wait too long. Once their mother gets back in town, it’ll just be harder.” He extended his hand. “Good luck.”

Devin shook Miller’s hand, then Quinlan’s. “I appreciate it more than I can say,” he told them.

Devin opened the back of the truck and climbed in amid a jumble of pipes and plumbers’ tools. He held out his hand to Clayton, who did not take it.

“I think I’ll tag along,” Clayton said, and jumped into the truck with Devin.

“What about your other work?” Devin asked.

“Close it up and let’s go,” Clayton yelled to the driver.

Quinlan slammed the door shut and the truck eased out of the warehouse.

As they pulled away, Clayton said, “You asked about my other work. You know what, I don’t really know what I’ve been doing. Since I left the church I’ve been helping people to escape. To where? It’s like shuffling beads. The truth is, we’ve reached the first time in history where there’s no place left to escape to. America, England, Israel, Canada, there was always a beacon of hope somewhere. Now there’s just one world and it’s all bad. So it’s time to build a better one. Maybe helping you is as good a first step as any.”

Just enough light filtered into the back of the truck for Clay to see Devin’s grin.

“Now I’ll shake your hand,” Clayton said.

“Now I’m not sure I want to,” Devin said.

They laughed, shaking hands warmly. Comrades.

It was Andrei who finally got the call through on the air-to-ground telephone on the flight back from Washington.

“You don’t know my wife,” Peter had told him. “She won’t budge. At least not until she talks to me.” Andrei had shrugged and picked up the telephone. In a moment he was talking to Mikel. “I don’t care how complicated it is,” Peter heard him say, “do it. Have Major Gurtman send a communications truck to the Bradford home. Patch it through. Just get Mrs. Bradford on the phone. Oh Mikel, also, get me some flowers and champagne, for Kimberly.”

He put down the phone and smiled at Peter. “Such is the way of the world,” he said. “Flowers and champagne for a mistress—the movers for a wife.”

“How long should the call take?” Peter asked.

“Not long. As long as it takes to drive a truck from our barracks to your house at top speed. Mikel can be efficient when you put the fear of God into him. Or should I say the fear of the KGB?”