Nancy Kress - Stinger

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STINGER

Nancy Kress

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and

events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or

are used fictitiously.

A Forge Book Published by Tom Doherty

Associates, Inc.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.” ISBN

0-312-86536-8

First Edition: October 1998

New kinds of evil threaten democratic

institutions in these closing days of the

twentieth century. They must be

addressed quickly and comprehensively.

—Louis J. Freeh, Director, Federal

Bureau of Investigation, 1996

PROLOGUE

MAY 2

The green Chevy Lumina sped through the

darkness. For several miles the two men inside said

nothing, until the driver yawned and the other said,

“Tired?”

“It’s three in the goddamn morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we’re almost to Virginia. Bridge is just a

few miles away.”

“Pretty heavy woods.”

“The ass end of nowhere.”

The passenger didn’t reply. He stared at the road

ahead. The car’s headlights carved a narrow lighted

path down the highway, itself a gray slash through

the black silhouettes of oak, hickory, southern pine.

Once the driver reached for the radio, glanced at

the other man’s face, and drew back his hand.

Another car, the first in several minutes,

approached in the other lane, and both drivers

switched from high beams to low.

The huge buck in full spring antlers dashed from

the woods so fast it seemed to materialize directly

in front of the Lumina. The driver cried, “Son of a

bitch!” and wrenched the wheel to the left,

fruitlessly. The Lumina slammed into the buck,

flinging its body to the left onto the narrow, grassy

median. The Lumina spun ninety degrees while

skidding sideways. The rear crashed into a hickory

at the edge of the woods. Metal shrieked as the

trunk flew open, the rear body crumpled, and the

backseat thrust forward, hard. With a final shudder

the Lumina came to rest backward against the tree,

engine stopped and headlights still shining.

The driver’s face was moonlight white. “You

okay?”

“Yeah. You? Oh, God—the locals.”

The second car had skidded to a stop. A man

jumped out and ran toward the crash. In the beam

of the Lumina’s headlights his deputy sheriff’s

uniform was clearly visible.

“Anybody hurt? Are you people all right?” His

voice was young and excited.

“We’re fine,” the driver called. He gave his

companion a look that said shit shit shit. The

passenger tried to open his door, but it had been

mangled too badly when the rear of the car caved

forward. Finally he climbed awkwardly over the

gear shift and followed the driver out the left front

door.

By that time the driver stood with the deputy at

the front of the car, away from the gaping trunk.

The passenger walked toward the back and peered

inside. The metal cage sat as twisted and crushed as

the back end of the car, a cage no longer. Empty.

“Can I see your license and registration?” the

deputy said. The passenger walked to the front of

the car to join the driver, so both of them could talk

to the deputy. Could persuade him of what had

really happened here. How the scene had actually

gone down.

They had fucking better make it A-one.

MAY 28

“… and now, ladies and gentlemen,” the local

chairwoman finished in her strong Brooklyn accent,

“join with me in welcoming the United States

senator from Pennsylvania, Malcolm Peter

Reading.”

Not too bad, Larson thought as he watched the

senator mount the steps of the school auditorium. A

fairly short introduction, dignified but not starchy,

and no “proud to present to you the next president

of the United States” in that too-insistent,

too-confident way that some supporters had. That

wouldn’t have played well, not in this particular

section of Manhattan. Premature. Larson had an

ear for these things.

Although maybe, he thought, as he watched

Reading launch into his speech, it wouldn’t have

mattered after all. Damn, but Reading was good.

The candidate stood on the wooden grade-school

stage, under that faded school assembly flag, as if

the place were the Oval Office. He had the facts, he

had the grasp, he had the vision, and none of that

would have mattered if he hadn’t also had the

touch. Which he did. Able to touch any

group—black, white, rich, poor, gay, straight,

conservative, liberal, men, women. Furthermore, it

was sincere. Larson had watched a lot of politicians

over the years. This one meant what he said, and he

didn’t say what he didn’t mean, and he was able to

say it in ways that different audiences could

actually hear.

Maybe Reading really could go all the way.

It was the first time Larson had really let himself

believe it. A handler, after all, was paid to

manufacture images, not to be seduced by

substance. And the skeptic in Larson didn’t actually

believe the United States was ready for a black

president. But listening to Reading in this too-old

school with its echoing wooden halls and

permanent smell of chalk, Larson suddenly wasn’t

so sure.

Reading had it all. Intelligent, educated, born in

the racial disaster of North Philadelphia but now

comfortably upper-middle-class, war hero (only in a

“minor” war, although they never were minor to the

guys who had to fight them). Solid-gold

middle-of-the-road voting record. Faithful husband

to the pretty-but-not-too-pretty wife listening to

him with her intelligent eyes alight. High-achieving

kids, no other women ever, no financial scandals. A

capable and decent human being. And Reading had

the touch, without which the rest of it wouldn’t

have mattered for shit.

The audience, mostly left-of-center middle-aged

New York types, laughed at something Reading

said. Larson could feel them warming. A few more

minutes, and Reading would have them eating from

his hand. Which was just the right color: clearly

black, but not too black. A rich chocolate. Malcolm

Peter Reading, he of the racially provocative first

name and reassuringly capitalist last one, was a

handsome man. On top of everything else.

The audience laughed again. Beside Larson, an

elderly white man in preppy khaki trousers nodded

thoughtfully. A young black couple in the row

ahead—she wore one of those African headscarf

things, he had on a Grateful Dead T-shirt—grinned

at each other delightedly. Even the cop stationed at

the door looked impressed.

Jesus. If Reading could do this equally well in

New Hampshire, the primary would be a walk.

Larson’s head whirled. In a flash—it felt like that,

a brilliant flash of Technicolor light—he pictured

himself at the White House, still advising long after

the campaign was over, still necessary… to the

president of the United States. In the Oval Office, at

a press conference in the Rose Garden, on Air Force

One…

Rein it in, Larson.

He did. From long habit, from innate skepticism.

Keep grounded, keep focused. Listen to what the

candidate is saying here and now, not at some

hypothetical moment in some hypothetically

glorious future. More important, listen to the

audience. How is the candidate playing now?

From his wooden folding chair on the far left side

of the auditorium, Larson bent forward, hands on

his knees, intent gaze scanning the audience

overflowing the small room and craning necks in

the hall outside. Thus it was that he missed the

beginning of Reading’s trouble. He didn’t notice it

until the audience began to frown, to twitch, to

glance at each other in concern. Larsons eyes

snapped to the stage.

“… policies that… embrace all of… that

embrace…”

Reading stopped speaking. He seemed dazed,

uncertain. Sweat glistened on his forehead. His eyes

unfocused, then focused again with what looked to

Larson like a supreme act of will.

“… policies embrace… our diversity… policies…”

Suddenly the left side of Reading’s body jerked.

His left hand fell from the lectern, dangled

helplessly by his side. He swayed and crashed to the

floor, thrashing to the left of the lectern and coming

to rest at the very edge of the wooden stage.

Anita Reading screamed. People rose to their

feet, calling out. A few tried to climb onto the stage.

Larson stood immobile. He knew what he was

seeing.

“Please let me through, I’m a doctor. Let me

through please, I’m a doctor—” A tall woman in

jeans, pushing her way determinedly down the

center aisle from the back of the room. She leapt

onto the stage and bent over Reading.

No. Larson refused to believe it. Malcolm

Reading was only forty-nine, healthy as an ox.

Never smoked, ate right, exercised. How could he

be having a stroke?

Still Larson didn’t move forward. The doctor

looked up from Reading and said briskly to the

people clustered behind her, “Ambulance, please.

Tell nine-one-one you need it for a thrombosis—a

serious stroke. Go now.”

Someone—Larson couldn’t see who—went now.

Anita Reading had stopped screaming and seemed

to be quickly following whatever instructions the

doctor was giving her. The crowd changed subtly

from startled hysteria to the kind of half-guilty

excitement that meant somebody else was the

victim. A few people talked excitedly into cell

phones. Reporters.

“Bill?” Anita Reading called, her voice high with

strain. “Where’s Bill?”

“Here,” Larson said, and finally moved forward.

His body felt thick, clumsy, as if he were moving

through something sticky and clotted. And he was.

Disappointment could be as retarding as mud, slow

you down as much as sewage.

Malcolm Peter Reading would never be president

of the United States. Bill Larson would never stand

in the Rose Garden, advising the president about

the world.

JUNE 3

The small Maryland city of La Plata steamed in

the humid heat, even at night, even though it was

barely June. Over ninety in the day, only marginally

below eighty at night. Rain every afternoon, a

choking hot drizzle that passed in an hour and left

nothing cooler than before.

“Gonna be a wild night,” the nurse said, coming

back into the Emergency Room from the parking

lot. Smoking was forbidden anywhere inside the

community hospital, a one-hundred-bed,

well-staffed facility that was the pride of two

counties. “Lots of violent trauma. I can smell it.”

The younger nurse smiled nervously. It was her

first night ever in Emergency.

“They’ll all be outside, escaping the heat.

Drinking and fighting and shooting each other. Like

they do every hot summer night. You mark my

words, Rachel.”

Rachel turned away. There was something in the

older woman’s use of “they” and “them” that the

young girl didn’t like. Something… well, a little

racist?

She told herself not to judge too hastily. Manners

in the East were just different from the small town

in Ohio where she’d grown up and gone to nursing

school. People here just talked rougher, didn’t

consider as much what they said. Just a regional

difference. That was probably all it was.

By nine o’clock, two hours after her shift had

begun, Rachel still hadn’t seen any trauma due to

violence. A car accident, minor abrasions only. An

infected compound femoral fracture. An elderly

phlebitis, a woman in labor, a little kid who had

fallen off a fence and needed six stitches. A man

brought in falling-down drunk, his speech slurred.

An average night.

Just after nine, the ambulance shrieked up. The

charge nurse got off the phone. “All right, people,

resident’s on his way down. Two strokes— not one

but two, count ‘em—within a few minutes of each

other at an AA meeting. Both severe.” She talked

rapidly, organizing the response duties. The

resident rushed in from the corridor.

For the rest of her life, the next half hour

remained a blur to Rachel. No matter how hard she

tried, she couldn’t recall any details. Apparently she

did everything she was told to, and did it right,

because nobody yelled at her afterward. She must

have assisted with the CT scans to determine if the

strokes were ischemic or hemorrhagic, must have

administered the tPA, must have hooked the

patients to acute-care monitors. But she couldn’t

remember what she had done, or how, or in what

order.

She only remembered the patients. A young

woman in her twenties, with a ring in her nose and

corn-rowed braids. A man in a clerical collar. He

died; she slipped into a deep coma. And the

falling-down drunk, it turned out later, had no

alcohol at all in his blood. They’d just assumed he

had, from his behavior and his stinking clothing

and the plastic garbage bag full of all his

possessions. But he, too, had had a thrombotic

stroke. And so had another patient, on toward

midnight. A young, active mother of three, her

husband said, who had never been sick a day in her

life. And then, at 3:17 A.M., a vacationing professor

from Howard University, a healthy man in his

thirties, who died at 4:30.

The resident frowned constantly, lost in thought.

The charge nurse was subdued, not looking directly

at anyone. The older nurse said, too loudly,

“Coincidence. Bound to happen someplace,

sometime. If all the apes in the British museum…”

“Shut up,” the charge nurse said.

Rachel said nothing. There was a tight mass in

her stomach, as if she were constipated in the

wrong place. I’m scared, she thought clearly. I don’t

know why, but I’m scared.

All five patients had nearly identical thrombotic

cerebral strokes. All five were black.

ONE

I do solemnly swear that I will support

and defend the Constitution of the

United States against all enemies,

foreign and domestic…

—Swearing-in oath, Federal Bureau of

Investigation

“Starting over is always more difficult than doing

something the first time,” Judy Kozinski said from

the sofa, where she was knitting something in

bright purple wool. “It’s the lost innocence.

Different expectations.”

In his comfortable wing chair across the room,

Cavanaugh looked up, alert as a mouse scenting

feline. Were they talking now about the FBI or

about the marriage thing? Lately, with Judy, he

never knew.

He really didn’t want to talk tonight again about

the marriage thing. Not tonight. Not again.

“I mean, any change of that

magnitude—naturally it turns everything in your

mind upside down for a while.”

No clue there. Cavanaugh made his

noncommittal noise, “Ehhrrrmmm.”

“I understand how you feel, Robert, even though

you think I don’t.”

Still no clue. He tried a vaguely thoughtful frown.

“Once you get used to the new assignment, you’ll

probably be as happy there as you were in

Organized Crime,” Judy said, and Cavanaugh

relaxed.

He had been transferred from the Bureau’s

Organized Crime and Racketeering Section at

headquarters to its Resident Agent program only

four months ago. No, “transferred” wasn’t the word;

it had been a goddamn heist.

The FBI regs were clear: “Upon completion of

four years in his/her first office of assignment, and

until reaching ten years in the same office, a

Special Agent can be considered for a

nonvoluntary rotational transfer to a second field

office depending on the staffing needs of the FBI.”

Fair enough. Cavanaugh was able to concede the

staffing needs of the FBI. Cavanaugh had been in

Washington for over four years—barely—and less

than ten. Cavanaugh was willing to learn new roles,

new skills, new procedures.

But as a resident agent for southern Maryland?

“You’re assistant special agent in charge,” Judy

said soothingly.

“Out of two people! And Donald Seton is an idiot.

I’m the only real, functioning FBI agent in a place

where the biggest federal crime is the condition of

the roads.”

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STINGERNancyKressThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisnovelareeitherfictitiousorareusedfictitiously.Copyright©1998byNancyKressAForgeBookPublishedbyTomDohertyAssociates,Inc.“ATomDohertyAssociatesbook.”ISBN0-312-86536-8FirstEdition:October1998Newkindsofevilthreatendemocraticins...

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Nancy Kress - Stinger

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