Adventures of the Cosmic Woman

Chapter Twelve

 Director Vincent Caver's cell rang after he heard the helicopter's blades through the otherwise silent sky. His sweaty finger slipped on the screen without answering the call. He quickly dabbed his fingers on his sweaty blazer and tried again - answered.

'Director Caver?' the familiar female voice said. Caver's heart tensed inside his chest. Brittany or Skylar or something was her name.

'Yes.'

'The President is on the line.'

'Alright, I'm ready.'

'Hello Vance,' the low, monotonous drawl of the third President Trump came through his earpiece. Just like his grandfather.

'Mister President.'

'I hope I've got you in time. The President there... what's his name?'

'Sutton,' Caver said. He'd given up trying to explain that in Australia, it's not President. It's Prime Minister. At least in a way that didn't feel like Caver was correcting the young leader. 'Prime Minister Sutton.'

'He's on his way,' Trump said.

'I think I can hear him.' The helicopter's din hovered somewhere not far. In the desert, though, sound carried over vast distances.

'Good. He thinks he's under special orders from me to relay orders to you. Danny thinks we ought to do things that way. Let him think he's something in this, you know?'

'Yes, sir. I can see that,' Caver said. Danny was Daniel Edwards, United States Secretary of Defense.

The helicopter had fallen silent.

'Good. Listen, he's gonna tell you something China did, okay? He knows who it was but he doesn't know you know who it was. You know the deal. Right?'

'Right,' Caver stroked his brow.

'You're gonna do what he says. Because China. Right?'

'Yes.'

'Listen... okay, good. Listen, I gotta go. You're doing great. Great job okay? Great job Vance.'

The line went dead. Caver put his phone down on the desk and stared at it for a moment, then he got up. Crossed to his door. Walked down the hallway, across the catwalk and out into the midday desert heat. The car had already come through the gates. The entourage that followed Bryce Sutton around like a black-suited swarm was clustered around the artificial lake in the middle of their AstroTurf garden setting. All their cameras and phones had already been confiscated. That made Caver smile. He looked around at the desolate land that surrounded them with a faint smirk the way he always did when he thought about such things.

The leader.

The very air around Sutton always dulled his mood. That cocksureness. Like a pathetic uncle hitting on a young bridesmaid at a weeding without a drop of alcohol in his system. Or some religious camp councilor in the Midwest who thought they had all the answers. There it was. That weird, upside down smile of his as he greeted a few people on their break. He showed his teeth, but nothing else on his completely hairless head suggested a smile at all. Not the shape of his mouth, or those glassy, expressionless brown eyes or even the tone of his voice. There was nothing warm about him. He was born in a suit. There was nothing underneath it.

'Welcome, Prime Minister Sutton,' Caver said when he got close enough. The two men in black that flanked Sutton were Secret Service. Sutton's own people were back at the car that had driven him from the helipad or bustling around in the mildly amused looking group by the water where they pointed at its glossy surface and talked in short, pointless observations.