The Revisionists (57 page)

By the time I left, they’d dispatched teams to keep watch around Mr. Sentrick and Enhanced Awareness’s other senior staff and were also monitoring Hyun Ki Shim, who was due to meet with Sentrick to close a deal that afternoon. Westerberg shook my hand before I went, telling me to stay in touch and assuring me that they’d be calling for me shortly.

“Are you in trouble?” Tasha asks.

“Not anymore. And neither are you. I wasn’t following you before, I was… trying to protect you. The people I was protecting you from, you won’t need to worry about them anymore.”

I’m staring ahead, at the tree that dominates her tiny plot, this massive motionless thing that will be so rare one day soon. Or maybe not. Maybe everything that I take for granted about my Perfect Present has been uprooted; maybe I would never recognize the new world to come. The world I’ve helped remake.

Her head seems the slightest bit closer, her voice quieter. “Do you want to tell me about your family? Your job? What you
used to
do?”

“I do. But later.” I try not to wonder about the Department and whether they have the ability to send more Protectors back, whether they’ll try to undo what I’ve done. Maybe I’ll have to spend the rest of my life fending off their attempts to resteer history in their favored direction. And maybe that’s exactly what it’s like to simply live through the present like everyone else does, something I’ve nearly forgotten how to do.

I realize that she’s been looking at me with sympathy. It took a while to recognize because I’m not used to it.

Her voice is a whisper. “What did they do to you, Troy?”

“Nothing. I did it to myself.”

She puts her hand on my face, trying to trace the outline of something she can’t fathom. I hold it there and we watch each other.

And I know this is bad timing, but my sense of timing is perhaps permanently off, so I say, “I need a favor. I made a promise that I don’t think I can keep on my own.”

“Which is?”

I ask her again what kind of law she practices.

Leo told me there was a coded knock, but I can’t remember what it is. Too much has happened since then.

“Open, please,” I tell whoever’s behind the door after I knock. If she’s really there. “We’re with Leo.” I say his name again, in case it’s the only word of English she knows.

Tasha says the same thing, hoping a feminine voice might make us less threatening.

The door opens, slowly, and by only a few inches. Sari is young, and scared. I try to look kind and accommodating—not one of my skills. She waits a moment, then backs up and lets us in.

Her room has been invaded by crumpled food wrappers and empty juice bottles. Her expression and stance are tense, like she’s trying to choose the best time to bolt past us, out the door. Her sleeves are rolled up and she has a large bandage on one of her forearms. Behind her, the made-up faces on the morning talk show are mute in horror.

“What the hell did he do to her?” Tasha says, quietly.

I close the door behind us. I’ve already tried to make sense of what Leo told me that night, and what he’d told me a few nights earlier when I surprised him in his car. Still, this woman doesn’t look like someone who belongs on a cross-country train, with or without a fake ID and lots of cash.

Tasha asks her if she speaks English; Sari’s eyes betray nothing but fear. Then Tasha takes her phone out of her purse—just the act of opening that purse makes Sari flinch, as if she’s expecting a gun—and opens the Internet. I see a tiny map of the world.

Tasha uses her fingers to show her how it works.

“Where?” Tasha asks, as if keeping it to one word makes it comprehensible.

Sari hesitantly touches two fingers to the tiny screen, opening and closing them, dragging her fingertips until she’s found her country of origin. I see mostly blue water and some islands.

“Indonesia,” Tasha says to me, then switches to another Web site. “These translator sites aren’t very good, but they’re better than nothing.”

She types a question, the site renders it into another language, and Sari can’t resist the tiniest smile of recognition. This black American woman’s phone “talking” to her in Indonesian. Then Sari demonstrates that she is no stranger to cell phones or texting. Her fingers madly dance over the keypad.

She and Tasha trade questions and answers, writing her story in slow motion. During this exchange, Tasha looks up at me. “It’s not my specialty, but I know some international affairs people, and they owe me a favor. Could take a while, though.”

Sari offers her the phone again, another secret conveyed. Tasha reads it, thinks for a moment, starts typing. I hear cars on the highways that surround us, anxiously careening headlong toward their next appointments and trysts, betrayals and rescues.

I assure her that we have plenty of time.

About the Author

Thomas Mullen is the author of
The Last Town on Earth,
which was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by
USA Today
and was awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize, and
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers.
His books have been named Best of the Year by such publications as the
Chicago Tribune, USA Today,
the
Atlanta-Journal Constitution, The Onion,
and Amazon.com. He lives with his wife and sons in Atlanta.

Acknowledgments

The song that the nameless activist listens in
chapter 32
is “Weapon of Choice” by The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

Thanks to Col. George Reynolds (Ret.), USA, for military guidance; Laurel Hatt for cultural pointers; and Dave Ricksecker Esq. for legal advice not followed.

My unofficial D.C. and Atlanta writers groups allowed for needed venting and idea vetting: Louis Bayard, Keith Donohue, Susan Coll, Charles McNair, Marc Fitten, and Jon Fasman.

My agent, Susan Golomb, remains indispensible. My editor, John Schoenfelder, poured fuel on the dying spark of a crazy idea.

All past, present, and future accomplishments are due to my wife, Jenny, and my family.

ALSO BY THOMAS MULLEN

The Last Town on Earth

The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One: Present Shock

Z.

2.

Z.

4.

5.

Z.

7.

8.

Z.

Part Two: Revisionism

10.

11.

Z.

13.

Z.

15.

16.

Z.

18.

Z.

Part Three: Green-Tags

20.

Z.

22.

23.

24.

25.

Z.

27.

Part Four: Human-Asset Protection

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

Z.

34.

35.

Z.

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Also by Thomas Mullen

Copyright

Copyright © 2011 by Thomas Mullen

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
www.hachettebookgroup.com
www.twitter.com/mulhollandbooks

First eBook Edition: September 2011

Mulholland Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Mulholland Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Past events are described in a fictitious manner, future events are described as they will indeed occur, unless they are disrupted by historical agitators, which is beyond the author’s control. For now.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. 

ISBN: 978-0-316-19332-0