Angels of Vengeance: The Disappearance Novel 3 by John Birmingham Page A

for them and a boon for us. I dunno, maybe you could find a genuine turncoat in there. Somebody who thought they had permission to wander into New York and take it over. And having been led astray by the devious Emir, he now burns with holy fire to wreak his vengeance and prove his loyalty to the country that gave him a chance and took him in, yada yada yada. You’ll work it out, I’m sure.’
    ‘But why , Kip?’ he said, perplexed that they would put themselves to so much trouble for no observable benefit. ‘Why help these bastards to get what they wanted in the first place? And after we spilled so much blood to deny them . . .’
    Now the President favoured him with an almost indulgent smile.
    ‘I’m not going to patronise you by telling you it’s the right thing to do, Jed. By many folks’ way of figuring these things, it’s not. But I believe it is, not for the sake of those women and children, but for us. We have fallen , Jed. We have fallen far and hard, and we are hurting. It would be tempting – even more than tempting, it would be a terrible pleasure – to try to soften that hurt by laying it off on someone else. Particularly someone as deserving as a man who was trying to kill us not so long ago. But that way lies desolation, my friend. The madness of revenge-seeking is seductive, but it’s still madness. We can only think of ourselves as better than them if we really are better than them.
    ‘I’m not a child. I know a lot of those women hate us with a passion. Even before we took their men from them, they hated us. Or at least the idea of us. What they’d been raised to think of us, and, if truth be known, what they’re raising their children to think of us in the very camps where we hold them captive at the moment. But we can change that. Because we are better than their low opinion of us.’
    Kipper’s words gave the impression of him becoming more intense as he spoke, but in fact he seemed to relax and grow almost abstracted. It was as if he was examining an engineering challenge, and because it interested him, rather than because some vital outcome rested upon his solving it.
    ‘Revenge is the pleasure of a small and feeble mind – I read that somewhere back in college. It rang true then, and even more now. Nothing good ever comes of it. How many of the true believers, the real holy warriors, who came here and died, did so to revenge themselves on an America that doesn’t even exist anymore? Where are they now? Are they an example worth following, do you think? No, let’s take these people in, the ones we have some hope of saving. And let’s have our revenge on them by turning them into something they once hated. Into us. Because we are better than them.’
    Jed Culver found himself in an unusual position. He was lost for words.

4
     
FORMER URUGUAYAN–ARGENTINIAN BORDER REGION, SOUTH AMERICAN FEDERATION
     
    She had logged four guards now. Her two indolent latte drinkers still lounged under the thick portico of the former police station. They had switched from caffeine to cigarillos and appeared to be engaged in an argument about soccer. Every few minutes one of them would stand and laboriously work through a pantomime of some disputed passage of play, while the other theatrically dismissed his efforts with glorious excess, smacking hands over eyes, throwing arms into the air, and calling out ‘ ¡No no no! ’ so loudly she had no trouble hearing them. Two other guards wandered out at random intervals, the first to bum smokes, the second to watch the theatrics and add a few dismissive words of his own. None of them looked like A-listers, but she worried about the unseen men.
    Her briefing notes were clear. This was a small detention facility, run by the local Federation militia. It was more of a way station, where prisoners were often held before transfer to the fleet base for interrogation by the Oficina Seguridad, Roberto’s personal gestapo.
    The jail was staffed by a militia