“If at all possible.”
“Now it is merely possible,” said Chakra. “My banishment was not merely possible.”
“You brought that on yourself.”
“Bah!” said Chakra.
“What other options do you have? Seriously.”
Chakra turned on his heel and walked toward the doorway. Sir Derek noted that the years had added a rockiness to his smooth gait.
“You know,” Sir Derek called, “Mumsy—that is, Lady Elizabeth— encouraged me to become an economist.”
Chakra froze at the doorway.
“It was after you declared your intention to become a scientist. Her reasoning was that economics was far enough removed from science that our egos would not clash. Wouldn’t she be gratified to see us cooperating so swimmingly.”
Chakra walked out the door without turning around. Sir Derek knew the words had stung.
“I’ll wait to hear from you, Chakra,” he muttered.
17 AUGUST 1998
FLORIDA
DRUG SWEEP NETS 1,000 ARRESTS
A task force consisting of Drug Enforcement Administration agents and the Los Angeles police conducted massive sweeps in three drug-infested Los Angeles neighborhoods early this morning.
“It looked like D-Day,” said one witness to the operation.
The three sweeps were coordinated to occur simultaneously. Police and DEA agents arrested virtually everyone they found on the streets and hustled them off to school buses waiting at strategically positioned staging areas. People found exiting tenements and houses during the commotion were arrested as well.
The school buses, each manned by six armed guards in addition to a driver and equipped with reinforced metal screens covering the windows, transported the suspects to the Los Angeles Coliseum. There, in the eerie glow of the stadium’s floodlights, the suspects were arraigned in six open-air courtrooms hastily constructed on the playing field.
The sweeps, the largest in the history of Los Angeles in terms of arrests, followed a blueprint established in similar operations in New York and Washington, D.C. The American Civil Liberties Union, which has challenged the outdoor detention centers in New York and Washington on constitutional grounds, has filed suit against Los Angeles County on behalf of the detainees.
The day felt and looked exactly like the aftermath of a storm. The sky was a brilliant clean blue, the highway was littered with debris left by Caroline— branches, palm fronds, Spanish moss, even a mailbox still attached to its post. The rented Rover sped south, its balloon tires whining on the macadam. The thick palm and mangrove forest that swept past in a blur plunged the highway into complete shadow. The air was cool, almost frigid.
Aaron Weiss gripped the dashboard with one hand and pressed his Donegal walking hat to his head with the other. He hated open cars, hated convertibles of any sort. If he ruled the world, or at least that portion of the world responsible for overland travel, every motor vehicle would have a roof reinforced with a roll bar and a governor to prevent it from exceeding fifty-five miles an hour. But there was a story beyond that mangrove forest, and he knew that speed was essential.
“Can’t you go any faster?” he screamed over the rush of wind.
Zeke Tucker glanced at him, then looked back at the littered highway. He said nothing, but nudged the accelerator slightly. He smiled enough to reveal the gap in his front teeth. He was amused by Weiss’s consternation.
Tucker and Weiss had worked as a team for seventeen years, since the Reagan assassination attempt. He had seen the reporter annoy thousands of people, from headwaiters to heads of state. When it came to aggravation, Aaron Weiss was a true egalitarian. And Zeke Tucker was the ideal cameraman to team with him: lanky, slow-drawling, absolutely unflappable.
Tucker slowed and squinted at the hand-drawn map Weiss had taped to the dashboard. He swerved off the highway and punched the Rover through a screen of brush and young palmetto, engine growling, camera gear jouncing on the back seat. Beyond the brush, two slender trails of sand curved through the trees. The makeshift roadway was not exactly wide enough for the Rover; Weiss was stuck several times by overhanging palmetto spines. He grumbled curses each time. Eventually the trees and bushes thinned enough to reveal the glare of the sun reflecting off the ocean. The Rover broke out onto a beach. Tucker let it roll to a stop on the white sand.
“Great,” Weiss snapped. “Now where the hell are we?” All he could see was a ridge of sand and, beyond that, the glittering water stretching to the horizon.
“Not far now,” said Tucker, a long bony finger tapping the map. “If you want to, Aaron, we can sit here and watch the shuttle launch.” The gap-toothed grin came back to his long-jawed face.
“Fuck the shuttle. Nobody wants to hear about shuttles anymore, only when they blow up. The big news is right here.” Weiss pounded the dashboard to signify the surface of Planet Earth.
Nodding, Tucker released the clutch and the Rover churned through the loose sand. Weiss leaned over the windshield and shaded his eyes against the sun. As the Rover crested the ridge, he saw them. They were about half a mile to the north, several huge gray slabs lying in pools left by the outgoing tide.
“There they are,” said Weiss, pointing.
“My God,” Tucker whispered. “My God.”
“I count twelve,” Weiss said.
“Yeah,” said Tucker. “Looks like nine adults and three calves.”
The Rover descended the ridge, then sped along the hardpan close to the water. No one except the police seemed to be there. A group of sheriffs deputies were pounding stakes and stringing bright orange tape between them.
“They’re treating this like a crime scene,” said Tucker.
Weiss noticed a van marked Sea World of Orlando approaching from the opposite direction.
“Maybe it is,” he said.
They stopped the Rover at the police line. Weiss and Tucker showed their press badges to a deputy and swung under the tape.
“Christ, you boys are here before the gawkers,” said the deputy.
“It pays to pay your sources,” Weiss answered. He signaled for Tucker to follow.
“Damn,” said Tucker, fanning his free hand in front of his face. The other held a Mini-cam.
“Here.”
“Suntan lotion?”
“Smear it on your nose. Shit, Zeke, after all this time I still have to mother you. The ozone layer’s shot to hell. Remember? We did a story on it last year.”
The first carcass they inspected was a calf. It lay on its side, its one visible eye the color of milk, its skin sunk between its ribs in deep troughs. Seaweed clogged the strips of baleen in its open mouth.
Weiss paced it off, ignoring the ankle-deep water that sloshed over his Hush Puppies. Eight paces, plus. Twenty-five feet.
“Make sure I’m in the frame for perspective,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Tucker. Weiss constantly harped at him, but rarely about something as elementary as perspective. This whale beaching bothered him.
“These are the same kind we saw in San Diego last week,” said Weiss. “Right whales. You can tell by the curving mouth and the callosities on the adults’ faces. The old Nantucket whalers used to call them right whales because they didn’t sink when you harpooned them; they were the right whales to go after.”
“Since when did you become an expert on whales?”
“Since last week.”
Weiss waved Tucker over to a full-grown bull. This one was fifty feet long and, flat on its belly, was twice as tall as Weiss. Its baleen plates splayed out from its mouth like the bristles of a worn-out broom. Weiss pressed between two ribs. The rubbery skin yielded easily and did not bounce back when he released his hand.