The Oracle Year(97)
“One last thing,” Leuchten said. “The situation in Central Asia. I have an update.”
“Qandustan?” the president asked. “I saw something about it in the security briefing this morning. It’s still developing, right?”
Leuchten nodded.
“Yes. I’ll briefly summarize for you, sir. We have a warlord—T?r?kul,” he said, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar pronunciation. “He’s the leader of a tribe, an ethnic minority that has a history of squabbling with anyone and everyone in the area over the past several hundred years. He’s apparently managed to organize his people, and he’s come out from the hills with a small army and invaded the capital—a place called Uth.
“It’s street-fighting. Ugly, bloody stuff. T?r?kul says he just wants control over a mosque with some historical significance to his tribe, but based on what the CIA pulled together on this guy, he’s probably planning to slaughter everyone he can.”
The pen started tapping again.
“But as I said, I have an update,” Leuchten said. “Good news, potentially.”
“I’ll be damned,” Green answered. “I think I’ve forgotten what good news sounds like. Do tell.”
“Representatives from the two sides have brokered a temporary peace—apparently there is a cultural system in place in the region for resolving disputes. It’s called a council of biys. Elders from both sides convene in some hidden spot in the mountains and try to work it out. This particular council has thirty-five people in total—seventeen from each side plus a neutral party acceptable to both who can vote to break a deadlock. If things go well with the process, then that’s that. The fighting stops and they all get on with their lives.”
“Huh,” the president said. “Wouldn’t that be nice? Nice enough that I can’t imagine it will ever happen. I’ll give you two-to-one odds the old guys all kill one another and things get even worse.”
Leuchten nodded.
“Certainly possible, sir.”
“Should we step in before it gets out of hand? Maybe send some troops to make sure this truce sticks no matter what the biys decide?” Green said.
Leuchten shrugged.
“I don’t see how. I’ve spoken to the joint chiefs. Before Niger, maybe we could have done something, but now . . . We’re stretched damn thin.” Leuchten began ticking off items on his fingers. “Beyond Africa, there’s the Iran occupation, plus the peacekeeping forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. General Blackman says we’re on the edge of not being able to properly defend the country from an attack, and the rest of the Joint Chiefs agree.”
Leuchten lowered his hand.
“We just don’t have anyone to send.”
The president frowned, thinking. The pen started moving again, then froze before it reached the desk.
“That’s not true,” Green said. He looked at Leuchten and smiled. “I can send you.”
Chapter 38
Leigh was a desert.
Any movement would split her, broad cracks opening in her skin. Her eyes were full of grit—she wouldn’t, couldn’t open them, but she could feel the particles moving behind her eyelids, scratching against the lens. Her mouth was a gulch, parched and dead.
She was baked dry, and hyperaware: the weight of the sheet and the heavy hotel-bed blanket, pushed down to around her knees; her clothes from the night before still on her body; the air conditioner’s hiss; the sound of running water from the bathroom, tantalizing, soothing . . . but out of reach, as getting to it would require leaving the bed.
So, she lay there, eyes closed, still, waiting for her body to give her a signal that she could move without shattering, pain cradling her skull like a mother’s hands around her newborn.
Flashes from the previous night ran through her mind. Staring at the prediction in Will’s notebook, trying to understand what it meant. Pulling back onto the highway, driving in silence until they reached the outskirts of Toledo, exiting, pulling up at a Hampton Inn.
“I feel like this is my last stop,” she’d said. “Convince me I’m wrong.”
“How?” Will answered.
She’d seen the fear in his face and knew she wasn’t being fair, or kind. Will needed her desperately, and she was about to use that need to force him to tell her the things he’d been holding back. She wanted the story, and up to this point she’d been willing to be patient. No longer, apparently.
Leigh didn’t mind being involved in something huge—in many ways, that’s all she’d ever wanted—but she needed the narrative, so she could place herself within it. Helping the Oracle escape angry mobs out for his blood—that was one story, sure. But that prediction—A Man Reveals Himself . . . just those few words had made it clear that the story she’d been telling herself was tiny, just the smallest part of what was actually happening.
“Tell me the rest. The pieces you’ve left out. Otherwise you’re on your own.”
This was a bluff. But Will didn’t know that, and so he started to talk.
He showed her the notebook, the lists, the color-coded calamities, the scribbled, scratched-out efforts to make sense of the Site’s slowly tightening grip on world events.
Will told her about the billions of dollars, money that he had come to feel was essentially a bribe from the Site, a prize for being its agent in the world. He told her about fifteen thousand people dead in Uruguay, about the blackouts, about Niger, and how those things and everything else were locking together bit by bit, more each day. He told her about his last prediction—the numbers 23–12–4.