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"What a coward." Sarah adjusted Spider's pillows, noted his shallow breathing. A short, paunchy gnome and brilliant mathematician, Spider had led the Jewish resistance during the early years of Muslim rule, hiding in the tu
"The people?" Spider's voice cracked. "You're a historian, you should know better."
"Have you heard from Rikki?" asked Spider. "I wanted to ask him-"
Sarah shook her head.
"Do you know where he is?"
"Yes." The word left a bad taste in her mouth. "Honoring a request from General Kidd."
Spider patted her hand. "No wonder you look worried."
Sarah and Rakkim had argued before he left. They were doing a lot of that lately.
Let General Kidd send someone else, she had said.
There is no one else.
There's always someone else.
I'm the one he asked.
No, said Sarah, you're the one who said yes.
There had barely been time to make up before he left early that morning, and the making up was just a prelude to the next argument. Terrible thing to be in love with someone as hardheaded as herself. Better she had married a weakling from a good family, a foppish modern who did as he was told. Still…there was something to be said for making up with Rakkim as dawn streaked the sky.
"It's good to see you smile," said Spider. "You've been too serious lately."
"Can you blame me?"
"Surviving dangerous times requires a sense of humor," said Spider. "That's why I love Rikki. I wish he was here now."
"Me too," said Leo.
Sarah blinked back tears, a
Leo rummaged in his ear with a fingertip. "Where are we?"
"Washington, D.C.," said Sarah.
Leo involuntarily curled into his chair.
The camera pa
For an instant the cameraman's image was reflected in a sheet of cracked glass, a wiry man in a decontamination suit, his sunken cheeks visible through the plexi-hood, hair plastered against his scalp. The dirty bomb had done more than incinerate D.C.; it had started a chain reaction in the covert facilities that ringed the capital, the very sites whose wall of directed gamma radiation was intended to protect the city. Forty years later the capital was still a hot zone.
"This footage is from Eldon Harrison, one of the scavengers working the D.C. site," said Sarah. "You'd be surprised what they find, and there's an international clientele of collectors and historians eager to buy. I purchased a White House license plate from this particular man for the university a few years ago. Encased in leaded acrylic, of course-"
"D.C.'s a deathtrap," said Leo. "Don't they know that?"
"They know it better than anyone," Sarah said, "but the locals have to feed their families. They gear up in surplus decon suits and homemade adaptations when they go on salvage runs…and they die young. The lucky ones, anyway. They call themselves zombies, proud of the risks they take."
"They should call themselves dumbasses," said Leo. "Why don't they move?"
"Because their people have lived there for three hundred years and it's home," Sarah said. "And sometimes they find things that can make them rich overnight. Last year, a piece of the Declaration of Independence sold to a private collector in Capetown for seventeen million Mandelas." She shrugged. "It was fake, but even so…"
More interference onscreen, then the image stabilized on a brass plaque etched with the words Watergate Hotel, the plaque dented where it had been pried off a wall. All kinds of sex scandals at the Watergate, politicians grinding away like millstones. Cut to the front page of a newspaper…yellowed and brittle but real paper, The Washington Post…children pictured frolicking in a fountain…the date was July 18, 2015, the day the dirty bomb went off. I got a few of these babies, one to a customer. Put your bid in fast.
Sarah leaned forward. "Pay attention."
Static onscreen for at least ten seconds, then the image returned to a completely different location, the image flipping, more static. Julia, put this up on the restricted section of the Web site. Eyes only, client BK-271. She has the access code. The light bounced off the walls of a half-collapsed tu
The wallscreen went dark, then came back on, a ragged cut around the hatch now. The zombie beat on the hatch with a small hammer until it fell into the space beyond with a crash. He scooted forward. Dust shimmered in the camera beam, reflected off the inside of a larger room, the image jumping wildly. The steel hatch had fallen beside an antique desk. Oil paintings on the walls…men in high ruffled collars and clerical garb, serious faces, most of them in profile, their eyes fixed on something unseen. The beam touched the slightly ajar door of the secure room…heavily reinforced, touchpad locks, DNA encryption, all useless now. This is it. I knew…I knew I'd find it if I just kept…kept searching. Sound of the zombie trying to squirm through the tight opening.
The light moved across the room. A pair of flintlock dueling pistols rested in an open case against the far wall. Another case showed parchment under armored glass. The light beam swept the room, the zombie looking for something. A large painted wooden globe, the continents wrong somehow. On the floor…something white, a skeleton hand emerging from the sleeve of a dark blue suit, the rest of the man hidden behind the desk. A gold wedding band gleamed among the finger bones. Near the hand…a small chunk of wood on the floor. A bud vase lay on the desk, directly in the zombie's line of vision; any water had long since evaporated, but the red rose was intact. Yes, yes, yes, there it is.
"What's with the flower?" said Leo. "I didn't think there was anything alive in D.C."
"There's not," said Sarah. "I've seen cherry trees from the tidal basin offered for sale, some even with blossoms intact. They look perfect, but the whole tree disintegrates as soon as someone tries to move them."
"Then why's he so excited?" said Leo.
"It's not the flower he's excited about," said Sarah.
Spider looked over at her, then back to the wallscreen.
The zombie tried again to get a shoulder through the narrow opening, camera jiggling on the raw metal. Go