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.The airport was not air-conditioned, despite the heat of the crowd.Air conditioning was a luxury reserved for the summer, and even then only if the electricity-rationing board permitted it.The customs officer’s cheap-looking uniform was stained through with perspiration.He looked about fifty, bald, bored, irritable.Barely glancing at the passport, he asked Dan:“Where is your place of residence, Mr.McKinley?”“Minneapolis.Just coming back from vacation,” Dan lied.“Been to see Havana.Terrific town.Just terrific.You oughtta see what they’ve been able to do since Castro died.”The man nodded glumly and handed the passport back to Dan.He stepped past the booth, overnight bag slung over one shoulder, garment bag in the other hand, and stood for a moment to get his bearings.Someone bumped into him from behind.“Hey, move it, willya?”Dan laughed and got out of the man’s way.He hadn’t heard an angry, impatient bleat like that in years.He was home again.The President of the United States was scheduled to make a speech in the New Orleans Civic Auditorium that evening.Rumors were that she had more bad news to break; this time it was the expected drop in prices for American grain and livestock.On the commercial airliner from Havana-where Dan had flown by chartered jet from Caracas-he had overheard grumbling conversations among the American tourists on their way home, complaining that their dollars bought practically nothing, that the best hotels and best restaurants were filled with Russians and East Europeans, that Jane Scanwell had gotten into the White House on a fluke and she will never win an election in her own right.For years Dan had seen reports on all these matters and many more, every morning in his daily session with the computer that digested all the intelligence reports his corporate hirelings gathered for him.But to hear the people themselves griping, to feel the intensity of their complaints, to touch the reality of it with his own hands-that was far different from reading neatly typed impersonal reports on a computer screen.He took the airport bus into the city.On this trip he was moving with the people, no longer the wealthy industrialist who traveled by limo and private jet.He was an ordinary guy again, taking the cheapest means of transportation available.Just one common man in the midst of a sea of common folk; they were his disguise and his protection.And his source of information.Dan listened to their conversations as the bus lumbered toward downtown New Orleans.Most of the homeward-bound Americans had either gone on to other flights at the airport or taken some other mode of ground transportation.This bus, heading for the major tourist hotels in and around the Vieux Carre, was filled mostly with European and South American visitors, chatting in Spanish, German, French, Russian and other Slavic languages.And, of course, the inevitable Japanese.“You must be very careful of drinking the water,” a Russian voice said in the seat behind Dan.“I have no intention of drinking water,” said his companion, a bored-sounding woman.“No, seriously, they have such toxic wastes here that even bottled water can be dangerous.”“Who cares? It’s the air that I’m worried about.”“Not as bad as the air in Smolensk.”“Bad enough.”Looking out the untinted glass of the bus window, Dan could see the dirty brown haze that hung in the air, the product of burning coal to generate electricity.Without nuclear power, and with oil and natural gas prices set higher by Moscow each year, the United States had returned to its most abundant fuel.But the price for using coal was paid by degrading the quality of the air.And by the people who died of lung cancer, asthma and the resurgence of tuberculosis of a new and deadly virulent strain.Dan got off the bus at the downtown transportation terminal.Most of the foreign tourists stayed on, heading for the fancy hotels.The bus terminal was seedy, filthy.It stank of urine and vomit.Panhandlers shuffled around, dressed mostly in rags.Bag ladies huddled in every comer.Helmeted police marched through the terminal in pairs, short-snouted shotguns clipped to their thighs, German shepherds walking unleashed between them.They skirted the sleeping or unconscious figures sprawled on the worn, littered tile floor.Poverty, Dan saw.The kind of poverty that once was confined to the worst ghettos of the biggest cities.It was spreading all across the country.“Everett McKinley?”Dan wheeled to see a short, scruffy man with graying hair and a two-day growth of beard looking at him.Remembering the identification phrase, he said, “Well, I ain’t the pope.”The man grinned at him, showing bad teeth.“Okay, you’re the one.Let’s go.”Instead of taking the risk of renting a car that could ultimately be traced to him, Dan had arranged for a local driver.The man, who knew nothing except Dan’s alias, the identification phrase and his destination, took Dan’s garment bag and led him through the reeking bus terminal to the parking lot [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]