Chapter 28

“So you’re just going to stroll into the Colonel’s camp?” said Leo. “That’s your big plan?”

Far in the distance, Rakkim could see the Atlanta skyline in his rearview. They had left Getty’s suite after breakfast, driven away in the vehicle he had secured for them-a battered four-by-four Mao safari wagon with rusted door panels and a solid suspension. Reliable, built for the back-country, but not worth enough to attract hijackers or the authorities. Sarah would have liked it, a car they could use to explore for dinosaur bones in Utah or to take Michael to Mount Rushmore, let him see the dynamited faces of the old presidents, maybe buy him a replica of the original from one of the street hawkers.

“What, I don’t deserve an answer?” Leo waited. Little fucker was patient. “Well?”

“Yes, I plan to just stroll into the Colonel’s camp. Trying to infiltrate didn’t work out so well for the other three shadow warriors sent in.”

“I hate to break it to you,” said Leo, “but in terms of game theory, the opposite of a failed tactic is not necessarily success.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

“Would you at least tell me why you want Dad to bury your identity in the KGB files? How does that help?”

Rakkim watched the road. “Because no one believes what they’re told. They believe what they uncover. What they dig up on their own. And the harder it is to find, the more they believe it when they do find it.”

Leo thought it over. “So you want the Colonel to crack your KGB file?”

Rakkim smiled. “If he doesn’t, I’m dead.”

Leo yawned.

Rakkim kept driving. Traffic had thinned out after their leaving the vicinity of the capital, the roads getting progressively more run down, the ditches overgrown with weeds. A stake-body truck loaded with pianos raced past, changing lanes erratically-battered uprights and grand pianos shifted from side to side, sounding like thunder. Rakkim tailed the truck, moving when it moved. Sometimes outlaws mined the main roads, looting the wreckage. He imagined ivory keys scattered across the asphalt like teeth, wondered what they would be worth.

Carefully cultivated fields of peanuts and soybeans gave way to pine forests and dense underbrush as the miles passed. Rakkim spotted an abandoned car nearly swallowed up by the greenery, creepers twined through broken windows, upholstery furry with moss and mildew. He took an unmarked road toward North Carolina, the car bumping over potholes.

“Could I see the shekel again?” said Leo. “I’ll be careful.”

Rakkim handed it over. He knew how Leo felt. He found himself fingering it at odd moments, or just touching the pocket he kept it in, reassuring himself that it was still there. Crazy to rely on an old silver coin to win over Malcolm Crews, but they needed Crews and his ragtag army, and faith was the most powerful force in the universe.

Leo cupped the coin in the palm of his hand. “You ever wonder if maybe it’s real?”

“’Course it’s real.”

“No, I mean…what if it really was one of the thirty pieces of silver paid out to Judas?”

“You’re the math whiz, you figure the odds of that.”

Leo rubbed the profiled face on the coin with his thumb, caressed the pitted surface. “Probability’s one thing…but there’s no such thing as zero possibility.”

Rakkim took the coin back. It felt warm. He likely wasn’t going to have it much longer. Judas probably felt the same way. You could buy anything with money; that hadn’t changed in two thousand years. Problem was, what you bought didn’t last.

“I liked Getty,” said Leo. “He said I could visit him in Atlanta anytime.”

“Getty’s a politician. You’re supposed to like him. Doesn’t mean you turn the country over to him and trust that he’s going to do right.”

“Dad trusts him. So does Sarah.”

“If Sarah trusted him she would have told me about him before we left Seattle. She thinks she needs Getty. Doesn’t mean she trusts him.”

Leo stretched out his legs. “I still don’t know why we don’t just go see this Malcolm Crews guy now, instead of taking another detour.”

“It’s not a detour. I told you, I have business in Addington.”

“We got the shekel, what more-”

“The shekel’s not enough,” said Rakkim. “Every big lie needs at least three parts to be convincing. Three…aspects. They don’t even have to be mutually reinforcing, they just have to fill in the landscape of the lie.”

Leo yawned.

“The shekel’s one part. Addington…the Church of the Mists, that’s the second.”

Leo closed his eyes. “What…what’s the third?”

Rakkim glanced over at him. Leo looked like a big baby, sprawled against the door, mouth hanging open, already snoring. “Me,” he said softly. “I’m the third part.”

A large wooden cross stood beside the road, jesus saves spelled out in white boulders behind it. Another mile, another cross, this one made from flattened metal cans edged with rust. Another mile, another cross. And another. Rakkim relaxed as the narrow road led him deeper into the foothills of the Appalachians, past small towns cut off from change even before the war, towns given up to ruin and poverty, and their faith all the stronger for it. God’s country, that’s what the locals called it, disparaging the city Christians for their backsliding and arrogance. During the war, all of the Belt had been God’s country, fiercely devout, unified, fighting to the death for what they believed in. The armistice had been in effect for almost thirty years now, time enough for the rot to set in. The same rot he saw in the republic.

Leo sighed, pillowed his head with his arm.

A little after noon, Rakkim stopped for gas at a tiny two-pump station all alone in the woods. No credit chips accepted, just cold cash. The attendant sidled out, a scrawny young guy with a bad complexion and a pistol on his hip-he watched Rakkim fill the tank with a gas-kerosene mixture, the only fuel available. Probably cut with paint thinner as well, from the smell of it. Moonshine even. Rakkim had seen all of them used in this part of the Belt. The attendant lit a cigarette, seemed to enjoy Rakkim’s discomfort at the open flame. Rakkim returned the favor, struck a match on the back of his front teeth, and tossed it at the attendant’s feet, right next to a splash of spilled gas. The man grinned, ground the match out, then asked Rakkim if he wanted to buy some traveler’s insurance.

“Why?” said Rakkim, wary.

“Man like you got a need for some extra protection. Anybody with eyes can see that.”

“I’m just another traveler on the road to glory,” said Rakkim.

“Yeah, and I’m Willie Jefferson Clinton.” The attendant hitched up his trousers, beckoned, walked inside the station.

Rakkim looked around. Followed.

An old desk rested against one wall, under an Osama bin Laden dart-board. The attendant pushed aside an overflowing ashtray, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a tray of jagged-edged silvery medallions. The medallions were cut out from oil cans, brightly colored geometric shapes-stars and crosses, eagles and rockets and knives, each with a tiny hole at the top strung with clear fishing line. “Hang one of these from your rearview, keep you safe.”

“From what?”

“From whatever means to harm you,” said the attendant. “You believe in Jesus Christ?”

“Hell, yes.”

The attendant peered at him and there was blood in the whites of his eyes. “You believe he’s coming again, bringing fire and brimstone this time, to smite the wicked and destroy the unrighteous?”

“Who could blame him?” said Rakkim.

The attendant stared. Nodded. “For you…ten dollars.”

Rakkim paid him, chose a shiny pyramid with an eye at the apex, like from the old money.

The attendant acted surprised. “Drive careful.”

“I shouldn’t have to drive carefully. Not now. Strictly pedal to the metal.” Rakkim spun the pyramid with a flick of his finger. “This thing’s guaranteed, isn’t it?”