'Sure,' he said flatly, and she knew he was lying.
In the end it didn't matter. Understanding wasn't essential. Just acceptance. And she was surrounded by disciples now, ones who didn't question this course they'd chosen. The world was waking up, and in the places she looked, the places that found her too, there was no shortage of followers.
'I need to join them,' she said.
He said nothing, picked her up in his arms, carried her into the bathroom, ran the water, tested the heat while she sat in a wicker chair, watching him fondly. When it was full, he lifted her into the bath, joined her, washed her all over, let her do as much for him too as she could.
'So sweet,' she said, stroking his damp hair. 'None of this could have happened without you, Joe.'
'You got inspiration, I got contacts,' he said, a brief smile there.
'A leader needs lieutenants,' she said. 'A vision without a means to its completion is just a dream.'
And such dreams, she thought.
He nodded, lifted her from the bath, towelled her dry, dressed her in the clothes she wanted, a plain cotton shirt, comfortable linen slacks. Then took her in his arms and placed her in the wheelchair.
As he bent over her, she kissed him.
'I know this isn't love,' she said. 'I know it's something else, Joe. Sympathy?'
The dark hooded eyes betrayed no expression. She felt guilty for pushing him this far. He was happier when he didn't have to think. He liked a role, a challenge. He didn't want to have to work out why, just how.
'I don't know what love is, Charley,' he said, and seemed genuinely puzzled. 'I'd do anything for you. I'd die. Is that love?'
'Yes,' she replied, and knew that evened up the lies. Such strength, she thought. There really was nothing he wouldn't do if it was needed.
'I want you to be happy as you go through this, Charley,' he said. 'It's important for all of us.'
'I know,' she said, and thought: He still doesn't understand. This is the fire from heaven, this is nature reclaiming its place in the order of things. Her own happiness was irrelevant.
A smile came on her face as he pushed her into the big control room, filled with the whir of the workstations, the quiet low hum of excitement. In her wheelchair, dressed in white, Charley Pascal looked radiant. There were eleven men and women there, all in clean white shirts and pale slacks, applauding as she came in. Tina Blackshire pulled herself away from the screen, grinned at her, acknowledged Charley's smile in return.
'Well?' Charley asked.
'It's down. It was them,' she said. 'We monitored the first message.'
'Good.' Charley nodded.
She looked at the clock on the wall, wondered about the zenith, how best to calculate its precise arrival.
'Let's not get overexcited. We've work to do. This is only the beginning.'
Tina Blackshire bent back into the computer. The rest of them moved over to charts and other monitors.
Charley pushed the wheelchair over to the window, measuring the strength in her arms (diminishing, she thought). They had everything they needed. Food. Information. The high-speed data links that were, to all intents and purposes, a virtual world, one they could enter and leave at will, with no one seeing their footprints. One they could, when the time was right, remake, forever. This place had no need of fixed geographical boundaries. You could touch a button in Hong Kong and make it flip a switch in Rio. There was a harsh, electronic oneness to it that was its own unmaking, and it removed the need for a physical presence when a virtual one served the purpose better.
Besides, Charley thought as she stared out the window, there were other reasons for staying under this single roof (not hiding, she thought, it couldn't be called that).
Outside the day looked as if it were aflame.
CHAPTER 12
The White House
Helen Wagner was rushed through the security entrance of the White House in a matter of seconds, then greeted by a smartly dressed middle-aged woman in a grey suit.
'Your colleagues are waiting for you in the Vice President's office, Miss Wagner,' the woman said quietly. 'He will be joining you once he gets back from the Attorney General.'
The woman wouldn't look directly at her. Helen was sure she'd been crying.
'I'll take you there.'
'Thank you.'
Her head spinning, she followed into a large lobby where a group of people bustled around, papers in hand, none looking at each other, no one saying much at all, and Helen thought she just might be dreaming all this. The scene had some surreal, inconsequential atmosphere to it.
She was beckoned into a larger office. Levine and Barnside sat there, with two other men, one she recognized as Dan Fogerty, the head of the FBI.
Levine nodded at her.
'Helen Wagner. Acting head of S&T. As of this morning. You're going to have to pick up on this one as we go along, Wagner. Hell, we all are. This is Dan Fogerty. I guess you know that. And Graeme Burnley. Right now the closest we've got to a White House Chief of Staff.'
Burnley was thin, with the kind of tidily manicured haircut she always associated with Washington lobbyists. He looked no more than twenty-five. His eyes were pink and watery.
'Hi,' Fogerty said, and waved her to a seat. She looked out the window. The White House lawn was still green, the kind of bright, artificial green you got when you watered things in a drought. In the distance a crowd seemed to be assembling: shorts and T-shirts, standard-issue uniform for the searing weather that seemed to be locked in for the duration of the summer.
The door opened and Tim Clarke walked in, shooed them to stay in their seats, and said, 'Let's cut to the quick, gentlemen. I know the outline. And I know I'm breaking the rules here. Right after this I go into a meeting of the National Security Council and doubtless you think I should have gone there first, let you brief them, and do things by the book. Well, to hell with the book. If what I think has happened, I'm mad and I'm looking for answers. So who's going to start giving me them?'
Helen couldn't help but stare at him. Clarke had been a sensation in American politics. Lionized for his role in the field in the Gulf War, a successful businessman after leaving the Army, then a fast-rising conservative force among Republicans as his wealth and ambitions grew. It was a classic rise from a working-class American childhood, and the only thing that set Clarke apart was his race. He was black, the son of emigrant Jamaicans, and the West Indies twang still surfaced in his voice from time to time.
All the same, had the Republicans stood a chance in the election, Clarke would never have made it onto the ticket with Bill Rollinson. But everyone — everyone — knew the Republicans were non-starters from the outset. Until the scandal machine resurfaced one final, fatal time. The Rollinson-Clarke team went from laughingstock to racing certainties in the space of two months, and swept the board when November came. She'd watched Clarke on TV, feeling so proud that a black American had finally reached so far, then checked herself. It was obvious why a black man was there. The white guys had screwed up so badly they were unelectable, so no one cared who the running mate was. And as she watched Clarke move uncomfortably into office — and, according to newspaper reports, get sidelined into speech-making — she guessed the same thought was going through his head too. There was something too pure, almost to the point of naivete about the man. He didn't push his family to the fore. She couldn't even remember the name of his wife, a pretty, slim black woman, who was always pictured slightly in front of their one child, a boy, as if she didn't want him to step into the limelight and risk getting burned. Clarke somehow didn't fit, and it wasn't just his colour. He lacked the sophistication, the guile that everyone took for granted in Washington.