Angels of Vengeance: The Disappearance Novel 3 (38 page)

Sunday night was pork chop night. The President of the United States of America said so. On Sunday nights, there were to be no formal state dinners, no working suppers shared with staff, no late-night pizzas, no Chinese takeaways scarfed down at the desk. Because Sunday night was pork chop night. And President James Kipper was working the grill, because on pork chop night he got to be a regular guy again. The staff were excused. Suzie was packed off to bed with a book, for lights out at 1930 hours. And the First Lady was banished to a hot, deep tub with a glass of wine, while Kip worked his barbecue magic.

Manning the grill during the wintertime didn’t normally faze Seattle’s former chief engineer in the least. He actually enjoyed standing in the cold with a brew in one hand, tongs in the other. The smoky flavour of brats, burgers and (every so often) strip steak seemed that much more intense in the brisk cold air. Unfortunately, this evening, the blizzard conditions outside meant he was restricted to using a little hibachi unit on the kitchen bench, rather than being able to work the tongs on the big, honking eight-burner beast that sat, forlorn and neglected now, under a huge loaf of snow.

Not to worry. His thick boneless pork chops had been marinated to within an inch of their lives in a generous measure of Arthur Bryant’s special KC barbecue rub. During his last visit to Kansas City, he’d managed to slip away long enough to visit the site of the famous restaurant, at 1727 Brooklyn, near the city’s old Jazz District. The meat in the pit had long since turned to dust, yet the smell – that delicious, greasy smell of well-prepared pork, burnt rinds, ham and turkey – it was still there.

Although it was getting harder and harder to find these days, the wonder-rub had survived the years of neglect well enough. The sauce, that special vinegary creation that old Arthur himself used to mix up in five-gallon glass bottles, not so well. A small clique comprising expatriate KC folk and other barbecue aficionados from the South and the Midwest had been trying to reformulate the sauce. The President had a bottle of their concoction in the cabinet, but it never tasted quite right. On the other hand, it didn’t taste like curry either, and for that he was grateful.

Someone’s gonna get that sauce right someday
, he thought.
Maybe after I get out of this job, it’ll be me
.

Barbara once accused him of resettling Kansas City simply so he could get production restarted on this old favourite, which he’d first discovered during an engineering convention back in the pre-Wave years. Not that she didn’t have her own personal indulgences – such as raiding the stocks of Williams-Sonoma and the Pottery Barn to refurbish Dearborn House.

Looking around the well-equipped, painfully clean and modern kitchen, Kip marvelled at the tongs in his hands. They cost enough to buy a whole set of utensils from Walmart back in his college days. He was still getting used to the amount of space here, since he only used the kitchen on Sundays. It smelled of coffee, baked sweet potato and, now, slow-cooking pork.

He was halfway through his first growler of the local Elliott Bay Demolition Ale, although, it had to be said, the main reason he drunk the stuff was because no one could reproduce a decent Boulevard Pale Ale. Another of KC’s former delicacies. A fridge dedicated to his favourite beers stood in the kitchen’s small anteroom – not that he ever had enough time to really sample them. Tonight was different, though. Tonight the President of the United States would make time for beer. It was an executive decision.

The country was not at war, he had a late start tomorrow and he was gonna get absolutely shit-faced tonight. Perhaps, if Barb had another glass of pinot noir, he might be getting lucky too. And if not, he was going to attack the beer fridge and soak in the tub while reading a growing backlog of L.L. Bean catalogues. He had a post-presidential canoe trip to plan, after all.

It was at that very moment, as the first chop began to sizzle and smoke and fill up the kitchen with its heady smell of porktastic goodness, that Jed Culver appeared at the kitchen door to put the zap on his mellow.

‘If I could, Mr President – just a minute before I head out home?’

Oh, fuck this for a joke . . .

‘Really, Jed? Working late on a Sunday? You sure you wouldn’t like to forget about it and have a beer instead? I just tapped a new keg.’

The Chief of Staff looked as though he was tempted, although it could have been the smell of the pork chops, of course. Culver was a fool for the barbecue arts, and definitely more of a Texas man than Kipper. In fact, they’d had many debates over the relative merits of Kansas City barbecue versus Texas or Memphis style. Seattle had a barbecue culture of its own but Kip didn’t take it very seriously. General Murphy, a reluctant Missourian himself, had remarked at his retirement ceremony the previous month: ‘My boots should stick to the grease on the floors of a good barbecue joint. I never get that feeling here in Eeyore-land; it feels too squeaky clean, like eating in a surgical suite.’

Jed cocked his head one way, looking at the beer keg, then another as he checked his watch. Satisfied, he bobbed his head in a nod. He seemed grim, more so than usual. It had been days since he’d even mentioned the looming election campaign. Kip wondered what was bugging him. So he could make a note to do it more often. He loved not thinking about electoral bullshit.

‘Well, maybe just one beer,’ Jed muttered. ‘But I’ll still need a minute of your time.’

‘Pork chop night, Jed,’ said Kipper, as if that might save him.

Culver fetched a glass from the draining rack over the sink and poured himself an ale with a practised hand. Kip remembered him saying once that he tended bar while at college. It seemed there was very little that the Louisianan didn’t have some working knowledge of.

‘I’d offer you dinner, Jed,’ he said. ‘But Barbara only picked up enough for two. And I’m not good at sharing.’

Culver set his glass down on the galaxy-black granite benchtop and held up both hands. ‘I wouldn’t want to interrupt pork chop night, Mr President.’

Kipper resisted the temptation to start turning the meat. In his humble opinion, too-frequent turning made the meat tough and dry and was a crime against humanity. There should probably be a law against it. He’d have to look into that. After another beer.

‘So, what was it you wanted to bug me about? Your minute starts now.’

‘Just an update, Mr President. Secretary Humboldt just sent over a briefing note from her department on how we might handle dispersing the women and children out of the camps in the east. I’ve read the executive summary, and I’ll try to digest the whole thing later tonight. But from a practical point of view, it looks okay. We’re going to keep the families together, but break up the tribal groups and scatter them like chaff. Most will be going out to the frontier, to work on government farms, so they’ll be under supervision. And working plenty hard with it.’

Kip found he could work his spatula under the chops without having to push too hard. A sure sign they were ready to flip. He was about to call Barb down when she appeared at the door in her dressing gown and slippers, looking rested and even a little flushed from the hot water and the alcohol.

‘Hi Jed,’ she said. ‘You staying for dinner?’

‘No,’ both men answered at the same time. Culver found a weary smile somewhere and added, ‘I’m picking up Marilyn at the apartment and we’re going out to dinner. Although I have to say, my mouth is watering right now and I could be talked out of it – except that your husband and my wife wouldn’t approve.’

He emptied his beer in two long pulls before rinsing out the glass and replacing it on the draining rack. ‘And anyway, I really was just dropping in on my way through. We can discuss how we handle Sarah’s plan tomorrow,’ he added, turning back to his boss. ‘And I’ll need to have a word with you about Texas as well.’

‘Okay then,’ agreed Kip. ‘Right now I have perfectly cooked pork, cold beer and a smoking-hot wife. I’m afraid I don’t intend to be distracted from that by affairs of state.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. But I did speak to the Bureau, as you instructed, about the Texas matter. They’re going to do what they can, but it will take time. I just –’

Kipper held up his free hand like a nightclub doorman. ‘Nope, Jed. Not tonight. There’s nothing I can do about it tonight. And even if there was, I wouldn’t. Because it’s pork chop night. You want me to ring Director Naoum first thing in the morning and lean on him, that’s fine. But it’s not happening tonight.’

He expected a fight, and was preparing himself for one, getting a rein on his temper before it got away from him, but the Chief of Staff merely sighed and shook his head. Almost as if he was trying to shake off a wearisome thought or mood.

‘No, sir. That won’t be necessary. You said you wanted the FBI on this. They’re on it, in their own methodical, dilatory fashion. I’m sure they’ll do a thorough job. But I just want you to know it will take
time
. And there are alternatives that I could set in play before I have my first martini tonight.’

‘Only if you really want to go to jail, Jed,’ the President said, half in jest. But with a tone to his voice that, he hoped, implied he was serious also.

‘Fair enough,’ replied Culver, finally seeming to accept that he’d lost. ‘Tomorrow morning then. Barb.’ He dipped his head to say goodbye and left to locate his driver.

‘Not a happy customer,’ said Barb once he’d gone. ‘Can I help there?’

‘Sweet potato bake and trees are in the oven. They’ll be good to go by now,’ Kipper told her, trying to recover his good mood from earlier on. He was relieved that Jed hadn’t pressed the point about Blackstone and, he presumed, that damned Echelon woman, but he was still pissed off he’d even had to think about it this evening. That was the problem with living where you worked: there was no escaping the office.

Barbara busied herself with removing the two porcelain baking trays from the oven, one heavily burdened with a large sweet potato done au gratin, the smaller one holding the obligatory greens, namely broccoli baked with lemon wedges. ‘Trees’, as Kip still called them. A term from his childhood. Broccoli he wouldn’t eat, but ‘trees’ he would. Just like their daughter now. There were times it drove Barbara batshit, right up there with the fart jokes when Barney Tench was around.

He lifted down two white, square dinner plates from the crockery cupboard and wondered why they had to be square. What was wrong with round, normal-looking plates, for chrissakes? American dinner plates.
Fucking Seattle, sometimes they just push things too far here.
He definitely needed more beer.

Once he’d drained his beer and handed the glass to Barbara, he found he was too hungry to give a damn anyway, but that his mood had improved. The beer, of course. And the prospect of another one. Barb returned with a refill, giving him a kiss.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Good to know the President still has some supporters.’

He pulled down a tray, loaded the plates on top and followed his wife into the media room – a techie’s wet dream of entertainment equipment, most of it Korean or Japanese these days. A sixty-inch Samsung LCD came to life as Barb settled down on the leather couch that dominated the centre of the room.

She smiled. ‘Snuggle time, Mr President.’

James Kipper had never been much of a TV-dinner guy before falling ass backward into the presidential rumble seat. But he found nowadays that once he was free of the office, all he wanted to do at night was smash down a beer or two, have a nice dinner and put his feet up in front of the tube. It was a pity there was never anything on but reruns and imports, especially from Britain. Local Seattle television had started to offer a sitcom called
Forever Wild
that Barbara seemed drawn to. It followed a bunch of ‘econauts’ around various protests and coffee shops while they made lame jokes about the military-industrial complex.
Econuts, more likely
, thought Kip. He preferred his comedy delivered stand-up and low brow. Frankly, he missed Jeff Foxworthy.

And he really missed wall-to-wall sports broadcasting on ESPN, ESPN-2 and ESPN Classic. Granted, he had never had time to watch much, but it’d been nice to have the choice in theory. Now, with the economy only just grinding its way out of the subsistence years, there simply wasn’t the money for professional sport like before. The reconstituted National Football League and Major League Baseball were filled with wannabes and a few broken-down retirees who could-a been outplayed by any decent high school team. Paul McAuley assured him it would come back. Even New Zealand, with a population still many times smaller than America’s, managed to support a service-driven, consumption-based economy. But then they hadn’t had to rebuild themselves from the ruins of the Wave.

‘Damn, I forgot to kiss Suzie goodnight,’ said Kipper just after sitting down. ‘Is she still awake, reading?’

‘Worst. Father. Ever,’ said Barb. ‘She’s been down for about half an hour. Fell asleep reading Harry Potter.’

Neither of them wanted to watch the news. Or the woeful Christmas specials. Kipper couldn’t handle yet another dose of Jane Austen on PBS’s
Masterpiece Theatre
either. English costume dramas just didn’t do it for him at all. And the First Lady had banned any consideration of repeats of pre-Disappearance sports highlights shows. They couldn’t understand the accents on the Australian soap operas. It was too early for any of the cooking shows, so they settled on
Grand Designs
, an English program that followed couples – for some reason, it was always couples – as they built or renovated their dream homes. Every week it was the same thing: the couples always underestimated the budget; the dreams always ran ahead of their resources and the available time; and it was as if nobody had ever heard of employing a project manager. Barb enjoyed the aesthetics of some of the old houses being brought back to life, while Kip, who’d had to be ordered to keep his nose out of the Dearborn House restoration efforts, enjoyed shaking his head and muttering ‘assholes’ under his breath as these idiots made the same basic engineering errors and project management mistakes week after week.