I eased the bag down onto the asphalt while Martha waited. I pulled out the handle of the suitcase. She started, and I followed. I was in charge of the bag. This was the South. She glanced back and I looked up and we looked at each other, just for a second, one last human look to go in on.
The plantation had not been hard to find. Coming off State Route 4, we saw a big green sign, a dedicated exit, as for a university or military base or theme park. The exit sign went so far as to proclaim the company motto—AMERICAN GROWN, SOUTHERN SEWN!—along with the logo I had seen previously on Jackdaw’s collarbone, the proud uppercase G with the other letters tucked safely inside. The logo that was supposedly waiting for me somewhere, somewhere in the endless South, emblazoned on that envelope, the needle in the haystack I was going to find.
That same logo was on each of the three buildings that together formed GGSI headquarters, three glass-walled skyscrapers standing lordly above the parking lot, blinking back the sun. The logo was on one of the flags flapping above the concrete plaza in front of the buildings. There were three altogether—one flag for the company, one for the state, and one for the United States of America. Flags and recessed concrete and a handsome fountain. There was a statue, a giant abstract bronze, rounded and swooping, which as you got closer turned out not to be abstract at all: it was a boll, a simple boll made heroic, a cotton boll like a triumphal arch.
I had seen corporate plazas. Corporate plazas in Manhattan, in Boston, in Washington, DC. This was no different. Exactly the same.
I held tightly to the grip of the rolling suitcase. I came up alongside Martha, but her sunglasses were on. Her human eyes were hidden now. She stopped just outside the door of the center building, and I rushed past her to open it. She walked past me and did not say thank you. Deep in her character, ready to go.
The lobby was vaultlike and chilly after the early-autumn warmth of the parking lot. The words GARMENTS OF THE GREATER SOUTH, INCORPORATED were six feet high on the back wall, cotton-white letters on a wall of blue-sky blue, alongside a gigantic photomontage of happy Asian children kicking soccer balls, turning cartwheels, shouldering their sturdy backpacks in their brightly colored cotton clothes.
“Yes?” The receptionist was waiting at a desk big as a spaceship between two banks of elevators. Red lipstick, blond hair, blue eyes, a tasteful gold necklace. “How can I help y’all?”
I ducked my head while Martha smiled.
“How are you this morning? My name is Ms. Jane Reynolds, from Peach Tree Management Systems. I am here to see Mr. Matthew Newell.”
“O-kay,” said the woman behind the big semicircular desk, lingering on the kay, teasing the word out into a question while she typed, pulling up a calendar. “And did you have an appointment?”
“Well, yes and no,” said Martha, and my head was still down, eyes down, but I could hear in her voice that she winked as she said it. “We met down at the CSO, back in June? And Matty—I’m sorry: Matthew; Mr. Newell—he was sweet enough to say that if I was ever in the area I should feel free to stop by.”
“Oh,” said the blonde. “I see.”
CSO was the Conference of Slaveholding Organizations. It was a safe bet that a plantation the size of GGSI would have sent a sizable contingent; it was an open question whether Matthew R. Newell, assistant vice president of transport operations, would have been among them. We were out on the wire here, me and Martha. Out there together.
“So would you mind just ringing up, see if he’s around? Of course I should have called first—I just had an appointment right down in Blessing, and I thought…”
The blonde was already in motion, offering Martha an empty smile and a wait-just-amoment forefinger. She tucked the telephone receiver under her ear and pressed a button on her console. The elevator doors opened on the far side of the lobby, but no one got out. We had gone over everything on the way, discussed every detail, various contingencies and possibilities, but Martha was in charge now—she would have to be. My job was to walk with my eyes pointed downward at about forty-five degrees. My job was to smile and keep smiling.
There was no security in the lobby. No powerfully built men with keen eyes and bulges at their hips. Probably a panic button under the woman’s desk or a panic switch at her feet. Maybe a gun down there, too. And there were cameras, unhidden: one above the reception desk, angled down; one above each bank of elevators. Cameras in the public spaces, Ada had said, but not in the private areas. Not in the executive offices. That was as far as she knew; that was according to the latest reckoning. We were counting on it, but we didn’t know.
The receptionist cupped one palm over the mouthpiece. “Excuse me? Hi. Where did you say you were from again?”
“Peach Tree, ma’am,” I said. “Peach Tree Management Systems.”