the battle rages
Davos’ history was the shifting desires of wealth. Before skiing, the town’s industry had been recovery. The resort had been sanatorium central, with twenty-nine institutions. Tuberculosis became passé, gave way to the lure of the ski runs. The hotel took over. Then came the WEF, born to Davos thanks to esthetic inaccessibility. The Congress Center, at the midpoint of the town, was a sprawling collision of disparate wings, half warm wood siding, half institutional concrete. It bridged the slope between the Promenade and the Talstrasse, the two parallel arteries that stretched the length of Davos. Without the forum, the Center would have been a middle-of nowhere aberration, grotesque for a town this size.
Thanks to the forum, it had a glove-fit perfection.
Blaylock reached the Center. She showed her pass, went through the fine-tooth security check. She was unarmed.
This was becoming a habit. She strolled through the main lobby, and flipped through a program. There were over three hundred sessions during the forum’s weekend. They were deeply Serious, deeply Worthy. There were quite a few self-consciously progressive panels, well-meaning hand-wringing over the developing world. One was titled HIV–AIDS: Is Attention Being Paid? Blaylock wondered if the presenters had delivered the same talk for the last ten years. She counted at least a dozen sessions that worried the bone of the Ember Lake fire. Most of them plotted out the ongoing economic meltdown. There was one, though, that asked, Are Leaders Expendable? The big keynote was at one. President Sam Not on My Watch Reed was promising to storm the barn.
Blaylock arrived at the lecture theater early, and it was already stuffed to standing room and beyond. Reed was a hot ticket these days. Threats of hellfire and crackdown could do that for a guy. Then there were the leaks. His staff had been busy, hints of big policy pronouncements falling like pigeon droppings. Everything from internment camps to war on France was suggested. Lots of selling going on, but Blaylock wasn’t buying. Reed’s talk was a good place to track the scent of a big show, though. Better yet, Reed wasn’t just delivering a speech. He was also going to have a debate. With Lawrence Dunn. Welcome to superstardom, Mr. Dunn, Blaylock thought as she looked for a vantage point of the stage. She found a perch behind the last row of seats. When Reed walked onto the stage, he looked grave. He gripped the lectern, and looked at the audience for fifteen solid seconds before he said a word. The silence was so pregnant, Blaylock began to choke on a suppressed laughing fit. “We are at a critical juncture,” Reed said, and Blaylock thought, Is that the best opening you can come up with? Reed began a catalog of the world’s hell-in-a-handbasket condition.
Blaylock’s attention went AWOL Her eyes wandered over the audience. She spotted Joe Chapel. He was sitting in the middle of the back row.
Blaylock shuffled her way left until she was standing behind Chapel’s seat. She crouched and whispered into his ear. “Bang, he’s dead.” Chapel jumped, whirled his head around. She made a gun with thumb and index finger, blew smoke from the barrel. She winked. Chapel glared.
“These are our challenges,” Reed said, and Blaylock listened again. She rested her chin on Chapel’s shoulder, which went neurosis-rigid. Malice warmed her. She tickled the back of his neck with her fingernails. “We face them, not as individual nations, but as a world. So how do we, the world, respond? Not, I am afraid, through the United Nations. That body has failed all of us one too many times. Our nation, for one, will no longer be held hostage to its whims. True, the UN was founded with the noblest of dreams. So was the League of Nations. Dreams fade. So where do we turn? Is there a concrete, practical alternative to the UN?” Blaylock’s fingers froze. “There is. Sometimes, when we set dreams aside, we find that reality has already provided us with what we need. There is no more effective means of bringing countries together in stability, mutual interest, and peace, than trade. And there is no more effective a body for bringing nations together in trade than the World Trade Organization. It is time for the WTO to realize the full potential of its name.”
Bang, Blaylock thought. You’re dead.
David Annandale presents Blaylock as a female Jason Bourne, a war machine crusading for the truth as she sees it. … Kornukopia is a perfect winter vacation read.
—Winnipeg Free Press
ISBN: 9780888013033
Price: $11.99