“But do you understand what you did wrong?”

She struggled to look him instantly within the eye. Her gaze as a substitute fell over his shoulder, the place the information was streaming dwell on his laptop display. Hendrickson was acquainted with this posture of avoidance. Since Julia’s adoption at 9 by his previous buddy Sarah Hunt, Hendrickson had been a mainstay, the particular person Sarah referred to as when Julia broke curfew, mouthed off to a trainer, or, on one event, accused her adoptive mom of being the one chargeable for her mother and father’ deaths twenty years earlier than, in San Diego, the place they—together with hundreds of different migrant staff—had vanished in a flash of nuclear gentle, leaving no hint.

Hendrickson repeated his query. He wished an assurance that Julia understood what she had carried out flawed. Except that Julia knew she’d carried out nothing flawed. Senator Nat Shriver was vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, or SSCI, which everybody in DC pronounced “sissy.” Shriver had a proper to learn the report.

12:16 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)

The Ritz‑Carlton, Tysons Corner

Lily Bao sat on the sting of the mattress, buttoning her white silk shirt. One at a time, she picked the scattered pillows off the ground. She made the mattress, retucking the swirl of mussed sheets into neat hospital corners, flattening out the cover. She’d discovered to do that as a woman in Newport, serving to her mom, who’d labored as a maid in dingy lodges once they’d first immigrated to the US. No matter how rich Lily grew to become, she all the time made the mattress herself.

He had simply left—she so not often mentioned his identify; it was as if he existed in her life solely as a pronoun. They’d gotten lower than an hour collectively, a working lunch, as he’d referred to it in his textual content the evening earlier than. It had been, admittedly, one in every of many such “lunches,” all the time in a lodge room that she booked. She didn’t thoughts. She understood his constraints, regardless that he was single. Like a sailor married to the ocean, he was married to his occupation, which was politics, and simply as a sailor each loves and fears the ocean, he beloved and feared the individuals he served, and so saved his relationships out of view. Because who knew how his enemies might use her in opposition to him?

Nat Shriver had loads of enemies. She’d identified this about him earlier than she’d identified the rest. An excellent-grandnephew of Maria Shriver, he was equal components Shriver, Schwarzenegger, and Kennedy … additionally equal components California and Massachusetts. He was all the things to everybody, a greatest buddy, a worst enemy. The solely factor he wasn’t was boring, impartial; it didn’t matter who you had been, you had an opinion about Nat Shriver. This senator who a rising variety of Americans believed would possibly remove the tyranny of one-party rule.

He was additionally, to Lily Bao’s nice shock, her lover.

12:17 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)

São Paulo to JFK

As Chowdhury gazed vacantly out the window, the flight attendant, a middle-aged, closely lipsticked brunette who gave the impression to be from one other period of air journey, positioned her hand on his arm, startling him, in order that he felt a slight tremor in his chest. “My apologies,” she mentioned. “Is there anything I can get you before we land?” He requested for some water. Beads of sweat had begun to assemble on his brow, and earlier than he might calm himself with a sip, he felt a minor and never totally disagreeable vibration in his left wrist, the work of a heart specialist in New Delhi who had put in a serotonin dispenser close to his radial artery. Chowdhury took a few deep breaths, sipped his water, and turned on the information.

The US president, Ángel Castro, appeared onscreen earlier than a crowd. Square-jawed, with a pompadour of thick black hair, which had hardly grayed in his 10 years in workplace, Castro stood at a dais with a flotilla of gray-hulled warships behind him at anchor. The chyron learn: Twentieth Anniversary of Wén Rui Incident Commemorated in San Diego. It was no coincidence that Chowdhury had chosen as we speak to return to the United States. What stunned him was that the president had determined to mark the anniversary as effectively. Castro had by no means earlier than, within the three phrases of his administration, wrapped himself within the occasions of that disastrous struggle.