part0012

He had been instructed to wear civilian clothes to the gathering. He hadn’t worn the suit in months and the jacket felt tight in all the wrong places—another sign he needed to spend more time at the gym and less time at the chow hall. Graves paused in the doorway of the ballroom, acutely aware he was mingling with some of the top political leaders of the day.

He spied the President of Russia across the room, a jowly man with carefully combed gray hair, speaking with the leader of Brazil. Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia, leaders and diplomats stood ready to attack him from all sides.

“May I buy you a drink, General?” The woman who spoke to him was tall and elegant, with exquisitely knotted hair and red-lacquered fingernails. Graves knew he should recognize her, but his memory failed him. Putting on his data glasses for facial rec would be too obvious.

“Adriana Rabh,” she said in a low voice, extending her hand.

Graves smiled back as he shook her hand. “I think a drink might be a good idea, Ms. Rabh.”

She took arm. “Please, call me Adriana.”

Adriana Rabh … Graves was escorting the richest woman in the known universe and a member of Anthony Taulke’s Council of Corporations. People peeled away to leave a clear path as he led her through the crowd.

“You know how to make an entrance, Adriana,” he said in a low voice.

“I’m sure they’re looking at you,” she whispered back with a giggle.

At the bar, he secured drinks for them both—vodka tonic for her and a whiskey for him—and started to move away. She put a hand on his arm.

“Please, General, stay a moment. I want your opinion on something.”

Graves awkwardly sipped his drink and tried to ignore the stares of the other people at the reception. Surely there were more interesting people in this room to talk to than him?

“What do you think of President Teller’s plan, General?”

Graves reflected on the back-to-back briefings he’d received throughout the day along with a group of assorted NGOs and other disaster mitigation professionals. The Marshall Plan for the twenty-first century, it was being called after the plan of the same name put into action after World War Two. A more apt description might be a Marshall Plan to ensure they’d be here for a twenty-second century. Graves wondered if she realized she was asking him to critique the signature project of the commander in chief and Graves’s boss.

“Ambitious,” was all he said. In truth, Teller’s plan was too little, too late. Graves would have set up the logistics completely differently. They were being arranged by country of origin, not by need. Africa needed far more support than South America, but they had the same number of supply depots and transport ships for each country. Political considerations, no doubt.

“Oh, come now, General,” Adriana chided him. “A man of your experience can certainly offer a less diplomatic answer. Since I’m paying for it, I think I have a right to know if my money’s being spent wisely.”

“I think there are some opportunities for improvement.” Graves explained the differences in need between the two southern continents.

Adriana nodded. “I see. You know, he wants to name the plan after himself?”

Graves suppressed a grimace. “I didn’t know that.”

She dropped her empty glass off with a passing waiter. “Absolutely. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you that.”

“I haven’t met with the president in some time, Adriana.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Really? Then this should be an interesting evening.” She walked away before Graves could say anything else.

He moved back to the bar and ordered another whiskey, nodding to a woman he vaguely recognized as one of the attendees from the Marshall Plan briefing earlier that day. When she made a move to speak with him, he pretended he was meeting someone else and walked away.

Graves moved like a slow-motion pinball through the crowd, careening off various clusters of talking people, never stopping, never engaging, just walking as if he had someplace to go.

He gauged the wisdom of trying to sneak out early. There was a presentation after the cocktail party by President Teller, probably an empty thank-you-for-coming speech. Graves glared at the glass in his hand, frustrated by the inanity of it all. Millions, maybe billions of refugees in the world tonight were going to bed hungry, or maybe not even going to sleep at all because it wasn’t safe to close their eyes. Yet all around him in this room, their leaders and diplomats and people of power laughed and made witty remarks about the weather.

A stirring in the crowd made him turn. President Teller had arrived with his entourage. The man of the hour. The brains behind the Twenty-First Century Marshall Plan—some wag on YourVoice had already dubbed it the Martial Plan because it relied so heavily on the military.

He hadn’t seen Teller in person in nearly a year. The man had changed his look, opting for a statesman gray. Graves had a strange flash of compassion. Whatever his motives, at least Teller was talking about the problem, which was more than the rest of this room was doing. He needed better advisers to be sure. The mismatch in aid to Africa was the kind of mistake a politician made, not a real expert in disaster mitigation.

Graves craned his neck to see if H was with him. She stepped from behind the president and swept her gaze across the room. Helena Telemachus’s vivid green eyes found his and her face twisted into a smile, at least her version of one. That woman made him more than a little uncomfortable. Teller he could figure out. The man wanted the kind of power that made other men fear him and envy him. The kind of power that made legacies. Teller was a history junkie, he wanted nothing more than to be remembered for eons as a great man.

But H … what she wanted was a mystery to Graves. She seemed content to be the woman behind the man, but somehow that simple explanation never satisfied Graves. She had power and lots of it, but a different kind of power than her boss. The kind of power that wasn’t written about but changed the world all the same. The kind of power that lived in the shadows.

A woman’s carefully modulated voice came over the speaker. “Ladies and gentlemen, please join our host, President Teller, in the De Gaulle Room for a short presentation.”

The wall opposite Graves slid apart and the crowd shuffled in that direction. Graves dropped his drink on a passing waiter’s tray. If he wanted to duck out, now was his chance.

“General.” Adriana Rabh appeared between him and the exit, taking his arm. “I saved a place for you in the front row.”

Graves plastered a tight smile on his lips. “How kind of you, Ms. Rabh.”

She patted his arm. “Adriana, dear, please call me Adriana.”

The second whiskey had been a mistake, Graves realized as they moved to the front of the presentation room. He felt a lightness in his head and a looseness in his bearing that made him extra careful as he walked. The room was set up with a lectern on a dais and three chairs behind it. Teller was on the stage, chatting with the secretary-general, a dour Brazilian woman with raven-black hair that made her look young next to Teller’s new gray look. To his surprise, Adriana left Graves in the center of the front row and made her way to the dais.

He did his best to put the alcoholic buzz behind him by focusing on the details of the room. They were on a high floor and the windows overlooked the brilliant lights of New York City at night. The room was set with well-cushioned chairs for a hundred people or so from the cocktail party, but what caught Graves’s eye was the overly large press pool. There had to be almost as many press as there were attendees, and clouds of tiny newsfeed drones, each the size of his thumbnail, buzzed overhead, held back by an EM barrier. A quartet of string instruments provided a melodic backdrop to the white noise of the crowd.

The music ramped up to a crescendo, then stopped, the signal to the crowd that they were about to get started.

Teller took the podium and waited for silence. He had his serious face on, Graves noted. The one that usually delivered portentous news. Not the usual trust-me face of a politician in full persuasion mode.

He took his time thanking the delegates for their attention and the secretary-general for her cooperation. Teller’s deep voice had a hypnotic effect on Graves’s mood. He felt his breathing evening out as he relaxed.

“More than one hundred fifty years ago, when our planet was devastated by a world war, the United States had a choice. We could retreat behind the safety of our borders and let the rest of the world recover, or we could take a leadership role in that rebuilding. Make the world a safer, stronger, more robust place for all people. We chose the latter. The Marshall Plan poured millions of dollars and countless resources into rebuilding a shattered world. In my mind, the Marshall Plan goes down as the single greatest achievement in US history.” He paused.

Graves wasn’t sure he agreed with Teller’s historical ranking, but he certainly had the attention of his audience.

“Today,” Teller continued, “we face an even greater challenge: a world devastated by weather. Weaponized weather has destroyed our cities, gnawed at our borders, and made millions of people homeless.” Graves gauged the mood in the room. Teller—and Graves, for that matter—had been at least partially responsible for some of those events, but the room seemed to be buying what Teller was selling.

“We have tried to solve these problems as individual countries with mixed success. Weather recognizes no borders and it threatens the very livelihood of every person and every country represented in this room. We need a better solution, a more comprehensive solution, a Marshall Plan for our time. The briefings you received today are just the beginning. The Council of Corporations, represented here by Ms. Rabh, has agreed to match every dollar raised by your governments. Tonight, I am announcing a three-trillion-dollar commitment by the United States to the new Marshall Plan.”

The room erupted in applause and the news drone cloud shifted as their handlers angled for the best shot of whoever they were following. Graves stood dutifully with the rest of the audience, clapping along as Teller smiled for the cameras. He waited for the noise to die off before he continued.

“But the Marshall Plan had a leader, former US Army General George C. Marshall, a hero of World War Two and revered by his country. Under his leadership, the plan was a resounding success. We need that same kind of leadership today, which is why I am naming General William Graves as the leader of this Twenty-First Century Marshall Plan!”

Graves imagined he’d misheard the last part. It was the second whiskey, he told himself. Teller had not just named him to run this entire operation, that hadn’t happened.

But it had. H appeared by his side as if by magic and pulled him to a standing position, pushing him toward the dais where Teller and Adriana Rabh and the secretary-general were all standing, applauding.

Teller reached down and hauled him up to the dais, then he pumped his hand.

Graves stood slack-jawed, still numb to the announcement. He didn’t want this, didn’t need this. He already had a job.

Then he looked at Teller and he saw the reason: Graves was being set up.

Teller’s lips were smiling but his eyes were cold. He pulled Graves close and whispered in his ear. “You screwed me over on the Havens, Graves, but let’s see you wriggle your way out of this one. When you go down in flames, I’ll be right there to pick up the pieces.”

He stepped back and Graves was alone next to the lectern.

Adriana took his hand, squeezing gently. “Congratulations, General.” Her eyes flicked to Teller, then back to Graves. “I just want you to know you have my full support.”

Graves mumbled his thanks.

She gestured at the lectern. “I think you should say a few words.”

Then Graves stood all by himself.