The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [156]
“I don’t know. But whoever is helping us insisted the DHS must make positive identification for the plan to work at all.”
She’d been balking at the thought of being under tons of sewage, but suddenly the prospect didn’t seem as harrowing as facing the DHS agents, who would undoubtedly shoot on sight. “Where are we going?” I know where we are going: to our deaths.
“The Senate.”
A few inches over her head, a sharp intake of breath exploded. “Hang on a minute. We’ll never get within a mile of the Capitol in that,” Floyd blurted, his eyes on the truck.
“Oh, but we will.” Henry jumped down from the tank, landing with a sonorous thump. “We’ve got a job to do: a major sewage-pipe blockage needing our expert attention. The urgent request came a while ago, with a job number and the head of maintenance’s signature.”
“But you said the tank would be full of shit,” Floyd said.
“No, I didn’t. Half full, just enough to cover the drums.”
“Sloshing every time you brake?”
“Nope. These panels will go back in place across the tank once everyone is cocooned. No sloshing.”
Floyd’s eyes continued to dart all over the truck. “Forgive me, but I can’t figure out how you can justify going to a job with a tank already full.”
“Only half full, remember. We’ve made an earlier call.”
Antonio smiled. “We were drowning in pig shit—” He bit his lip and seemed to wither under Henry’s caustic stare.
“But to open the drums, you have to empty the tank …” Floyd insisted.
Henry opened his arms wide, an expression of fatalism on his face. “Well, shit is shoveled around Congress all the time. Another cartload won’t make any difference.”
chapter 54
08:45
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Senator Palmer bit his lower lip before reaching for his snifter. “Is this a condemned man’s last wish?” He swilled the liqueur.
Bernard Robilliard, the senator from Maine and secretary of the Senate, shook his head once and waited.
“I have covered every possible angle, every eventuality, trying to predict anything Vinson or Odelle might have up their sleeves. Nothing, I hope, but there’s a chance my scheme will collapse,” he conceded. “Too many unknowns.”
“Your witnesses?”
Palmer nodded. “Their fate rests elsewhere, in seemingly puny details and in the hands of a man who seems to have switched sides but who is, in the end, playing for himself, and that makes for a dangerous ally. You know about illumination; it strikes at the unlikeliest of moments. He might back out yet.”
“And then you will have?” Robilliard asked.
“Nothing.”
“And I will be forced to stand aside while Odelle Marino flushes the bilges,” Robilliard said.
“Nice analogy. And one I’ve heard recently.”
“Problem is, she would be reborn with awesome power. She would have this nation by the balls.”
“She already has.”
“But she’s not squeezing,” Robilliard pointed out.
“Yet.” If I fail, I, my family, and everybody else will be fucked.
Robilliard nodded and wet his lips on the liqueur. “Now it all hinges on your ability to convince Caesar to do something unthinkable. In my opinion, he won’t. You’re asking too much.”
“To save one’s country from dictatorship is asking too much?” Palmer asked.
“No. But to ask someone to wager his or her hide on the strength of your word is. For the best part of two hundred years, we’ve never been a democracy, at least not a real one. Too many powerful cartels: oil, weapons, and, above all, the security agencies. They, not the current White House resident, have dictated this country’s policies. Why do you think I know that paper is a fake?” He nodded to the single page with the presidential crest and seal resting on his desk. “Because no president would have the balls to tackle this country’s rulers and survive. They learned their lesson from Kennedy.”
“So the answer is to do nothing? Fiddle while Rome burns?”
Robilliard shook his head. “The eternal romantic. Within the past couple of centuries, no fewer than four empires have disappeared: the Nazis, the British, the Japanese,