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even a kennel for the bomb sniffers and guard dogs. Only the food court is still more or less recognizable; if anything, it is a little more interesting, thanks to cases displaying unit histories, photographs, and citations. And some of the hardy palms planted inside by the builders have survived the mall’s looting, deterioration, and restoration.
    Most of the exterior doors have been welded shut, of course, and netting and silent antiaircraft guns dot the roof. Barbed wire encircles the parking lots scattered with buses, trucks, and staff four-wheelers and motorcycles ready for use and dispatch.
    Of course, the polished floors are patched and the ceilings are being rebuilt in some areas to repair minor earthquake damage the mall received in 2022.
    David Valentine, having passed through the security station and visitors’ lobby taking up the old bookstore, idles with a yellowed copy of French military history on an upholstered chair that smells like cigars and mildew and body odor, his thumb smeared with ink for an ID record and his bad leg stretched out where it won’t interfere with passersby. He had enough pocket money for a bagel and a glass of sweet tea at the little café for visitors waiting to be met.
    He fights off a yawn as he waits.
    On the other side of the old store, security staff search and inspect those passing in and out of the headquarters, not a yawn to be seen. The Kurians have their own versions of Cats.

    The ink had dried and the last crumbs of the bagel disappeared by the time General Lehman’s adjutant appeared. The staffer might have been a living mannequin of crisp cotton and twill. Valentine felt scruffy shaking hands with him. All Valentine had managed in the washroom was to comb his hair out and wash his face and hands.
    Perhaps it wasn’t the chair that was so odiferous after all.
    “You can just take that book if you like,” the adjutant suggested. “It’s all Southern Command library. I’m sure you know where to drop it.”
    “Thanks for the tip,” Valentine said. Not that he needed it. He’d visited the quiet library and reading room in one of the mall’s old stores to unwind after the quick debriefing he’d undergone on his arrival yesterday afternoon. Three paperbacks, one with a duct-tape spine—the illustration of the dripping-wet bikini girl on the cover reaching up to undo her top did wonders for circulation—were already stuffed into his duty bag beneath the reports and Javelin correspondence.
    They’d talked about Javelin, good and bad. When Valentine gave them his assessment for the addition of Kentucky to the United Free Republics, his interviewers had exchanged a look that didn’t strike Valentine as promising.
    And he hadn’t even begun to describe what he had in mind for his Quisling recruits.
    He saved that for the end, and they told him to take it up with General Lehman the next day.
    There was another wait outside Lehman’s office, and Valentine switched to American history, a biography of Theodore Roosevelt. He was experiencing the Badlands with Roosevelt after the nearly simultaneous deaths of his mother and wife when Lehman’s staffer summoned him.
    When Valentine finally stood before the general in command of the eastern defenses, he was surprised to see a pair of arm-brace crutches leaning against the desk and the general’s right leg encased in plaster and a Velcro ankle brace on the left.
    “Bomb beneath my command truck,” Lehman said. “Flipped us like a flapjack.”
    He looked paler than Valentine remembered, thin and strained.
    “Let’s hear it, Valentine,” Lehman said. “Don’t spare me; I know I sent you out there.”
    Lehman dipped his little silver comb in the water glass and commenced cleaning his drooping mustache in the methodical fashion a cat might use to clean its face. It was whiter and less bushy than it had been a year ago at the planning sessions for Javelin. Cover Lehman in dust and denim, and he’d pass for a cowhand