2.a.ii
“Wait. How long was I gone?” asked Mr. Jones.
“No one’s seen
you since the turn of the century. Ten
years at least,” said Tanya Jefferson.
They were speeding along the interstate, Tanya glancing back and forth
in the rearview mirrors. “What’s the
last thing you remember?”
“Election
night. Al asked me to check out a
situation in Florida . I was working side by side with him and the
Clintons. They had plans to continue
building up the economy. I try not to
take sides, but that imbecile the Republicans were running encouraged my
participation.”
Tanya cut
across three lanes of traffic, barely making the exit. In her mirrors she saw two brown sedans
attempt the same maneuver. They didn’t
make it. Tanya smiled.
“So what
happened in Florida ?” she asked.
“It’s
hazy. I think they were trying to rig
the election, but I’m not sure if that was simply bait to lure me into their
trap or what.”
“Oh they
rigged the election alright. And that
moron somehow managed to get a second term in office. Coincidentally, the country is now a financial
ruin.”
“I failed,”
Mr. Jones said.
“Hey don’t–”
“No. No. I
went down there to stop that sort of thing and they outsmarted me,” Mr. Jones
said, shaking his head. “How?”
Tanya banked
the car into a dark alley and parked it in a shadowy spot.
“Quick. Follow me.”
They fled the
vehicle, scurried up the fire escape of an adjacent building, climbed through
an unlocked window into a vacant apartment, ran out into the adjoining hallway,
dashed down the corridor, then down a stairwell to the basement garage, crept
over to a nondescript minivan, got in, and drove back out onto the street.
They drove in
silence for some time and it wasn’t until they had traded the minivan for a
pickup truck in a similar series of preplanned steps that Mr. Jones asked the
question that had been burning in the back of his brain.
“Didn’t
anybody else stand up to this? Did
nobody fight back?”