NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

The America Diaspora is a sequel to The Chinese Century.

All I had done was let her sleep in.

I woke up at 6:30 AM, bundled up against the winter cold with a jacket, sweat pants and a cap, then took a long walk through the Virgin Maverick section of downtown, showered at the Centre and hit my desk by 8.

I’d checked the work on the community blog and was answering a question from Mma Ramosawa on WiMax and when Always-On Technologies should support it, when the explosion happened.

I felt it first. It was like an earthquake, the whole building shaking. Then I heard it, a sound like two cars colliding head-on, very fast. Then the terminal screen I was on went black. I noticed the low whoosh of the heating system was gone, and when I looked out the window I saw smoke.

I walked over and looked down. A cloud was rising from the ground, centered on the new building. The skin had gone halfway up, nearly to my floor, the cement-and-steel superstructure rising well over my head, and workers at various floors were putting in plumbing, electrical, and sheetrocking. Now I saw that thick black smoke was billowing from the bottom of the building, and when a gust of wind hit I could see a dark hole in what would be the garage but was now a construction staging area.

I was standing there, still in shock, when the heater came on again and the phone rang. It was Lee Hall in the main PR office upstairs.

“What was it?” he asked.

An explosion of some kind, I answered.

“How big?”

Pretty big, centered on the staging area of WTC 1, our code word for the first of the two new towers. (The press still hadn’t been told the full plan.)

“Anybody hurt, killed?”

Possibly, I said.

Then Lee’s instincts took over. “Someone has to get down there and shepherd the press, and someone else has to stay up here and deal with the world.”

I’ve got some warm clothes, I’ll go down, I said.

So it was that all that day I stood, in my warm-ups and Atlanta Braves hat, answering the same questions over-and-over from the same clutch of local media who set up shop opposite the scene and proudly relayed their pictures, and faces, back to offices in New York, London and Tokyo. I even got interviewed on CNN, probably because of the cap, and explained to the overnight anchors that, yes, this was an Atlanta Braves hat, and yes, I was from the city – the Kirkwood neighborhood to be exact – and yes I missed all my friends there. This made my day go by easier.

Lee came down to spell me in the late afternoon. I didn’t consider, and didn’t care, that he would get all the morning shows, that he would become the face of the disaster in America, on Today, on Good Morning America, on Fox and Friends. I really didn’t care.

Because when I finally trudged home the apartment was empty. I hadn’t thought of Jenni all day. John was at school and Robin was working at Kruger. But I felt lonely and popped open a Castle, wondering how late she might come in given how late she’d probably left for work.

Before the beer reached my mouth it hit me. She probably woke up at 8. She might have been coming in for 9. That might leave her in danger when the explosion happened.

Thinking little of it I called her office. Her secretary answered. She was crying. My heart stopped.

What is it?

“Mrs. B, Mrs. B,” Phumzile cried.

What about Mrs. B?

“I got a call. Downstairs. She hurt. She hurt bad.” Everyone’s diction reverts to childhood when they’re under enough stress, I think. Usually Phumzile sounds like a smart London secretary with only a slightly exotic accent.

Slow down. When did you get the call. Where is she? What were you told?

“Infirmary. She in building. Hurt bad. Head, arm, surgery. Come quick.”

The beer was never drunk. I slammed down the phone and ran back toward the Carlton Centre.

By this time most of the ambulances were gone. They had been taking out dead and injured workers all day. The toll was now 23 dead, 60 injured, all but three of them black construction workers who were just starting shifts when the explosion occurred. This is what I had been reporting from my station, the numbers coming to my ear directly from Lee upstairs.

The explosion was centered, as I’d suspected, in what would be the building’s parking garage, and all I’d been told, all I’d reported, was that it didn’t appear to be accidental, but we had no firm conclusions. Beyond that, Chief Williams would say nothing, even to me, something I appreciated because, as a principle in Virgin Maverick myself I wasn’t anxious to jump at conclusions.

As I returned to the building I saw, out of the corner of one eye, Lee and the little camera village set up around him, the TV trucks with their generators humming, workers now setting up lights around him. As I ran toward the Centre I also saw, perhaps for the first time, the extent of what had happened there. The ground floor windows had all been blown inward. A guard station had been set up outside, the revolving glass door replaced by a simple sheet of plywood.

The guard gave me a scan with a wand, found my Verichip which identified me by name. He smiled and nodded as his wand did a brief database look-up to show him who I was. Then he looked at me gravely and sadly as he saw what the wand was telling him.

“Mr. Blankenhorn, you need to go to 3, sir,” he said. “Ask for Dr. Saleh.”

I nodded, taking all that technology for granted, and did what I was asked.

The building infirmary was a mini-hospital, set-up for treating minor scrapes and the contingency of something happening to one of our VIPs, like Mr. Branson. I’d only seen the area when it was first going in, nearly six months before. Now it was a crush of activity, doctors and nurses in greens all looking grim, and tired.

Most of the casualties from the explosion had been taken to local hospitals, but a chosen few had been brought right in here. A foreman had died here, I was told. A secretary was in intensive care, her neck broken.

What about my wife? Where is Dr. Saleh?

A small, very tired looking Indian in greens was pointed out to me from behind the desk. He slumped in a seat in what was supposed to be our waiting room.

Dr. Saleh? I’m Dana Blankenhorn.

“Oh, thank God!” But he smiled when he said it.

How is she? How is Jenni?

He stood up, and held my arms, looked me right in the eye. “I think she’ll make it,” he said, smiling again. “I’ve been with her nearly all day and I think she’ll make it.” He seemed overjoyed. I felt crestfallen.

We both sat down heavily.

What happened? How badly was she hurt?

“I thought at first we had serious brain injury,” Saleh began, his eyes very distant. “Turned out to be a concussion crack to the skull, from when her head hit a post. Then I worried about paralysis, you do in such cases, and it took time to get a proper reaction, because we had to sedate against the pain from the concussion you know. The spine was fine, just a little bruising on some of the lower vertabrae. We feared a broken hip, you know. And there was the left arm, about here,” he touched my arm near the shoulder, “we set that. She’s resting now, heavy sedation, there will still be a headache. But I think she’ll make it.” The doctor seemed quite proud of this.

When can I see her?

“I will take you to her,” he said, and we both stood up. “You will have a slight shock, but please be aware that’s mostly superficial, and the bruising will take a few days to come out, then fade. We would like to keep her here at least until the weekend, barring another accident it would be safer than transferring her.”

She had been given a private room, one of just three on the floor, Dr. Saleh said gently. He opened the door.

Have you ever seen a loved one, in a hospital, after an accident? Her left arm was extended outward, the cast set up to her underarm. Oxygen came in through a hose that went into her nose, the top of her head was nothing but bandages, and I noticed, on the night table beside her, what remained of her beautiful long hair, or most of it, lieing in a Zip-Lock bag – brown, reddish, a few strands of white.

That was when I lost it. Dr. Saleh expected this, and sat me down. He pulled up a second chair and laid my head on his shoulder. I cried like a baby, I’m not sure for how long.

Jenni, Jenni. After 30 years it comes to this. How could I take you away from your home, take you halfway around the world, take you to someplace you didn’t want to be, to this? How could I? Damn me to hell….

When my tears were exhausted, I lifted my head and looked at the smiling face of the doctor. “I think we allow her to awake briefly tomorrow morning, Mr. Blankenhorn. You can be here. If her pain is intolerable we can let her sleep some more, but I think she’ll be fine. You need to contact your children, and tell them their mother will live. That is what you must tell them.”

I nodded, and as I did I felt a buzzing in my pants. My cell phone. It hadn’t rung all day. Saleh gave me a tissue. I smiled, dabbed at my eyes, and opened up the phone.

Yes? Dana Blankenhorn here, I said quietly.

“Dana? Chief Williams. Do you have a moment to see me?”

Yes, chief, I said. Certainly. I closed the phone, put it back in my pocket.

“It’s best if you’re busy tonight,” said Dr. Saleh quietly. “I will have someone call if there is any change, and we will call you tomorrow morning before we wake her. I understand you have a son at home.” I nodded. “Hold him close. His mother will live. OK?”

OK, I nodded. He patted me on the back. We walked out together, and as we returned to the waiting room he loosened his greens. “I haven’t spent so much time in these at one stretch in many years,” he said, not for my benefit. “I’m glad to see I still have it.”

I’m glad to see that, too, I said, trying to smile. We shook hands. I left an open Castle in my apartment, I noted.

“I’ll get a cold one,” the doctor said.

Chief Williams’ office hadn’t changed much in six months. It was still a small room in the middle of a rabbit warren, filled with computers and communications gear. The people there all knew me by sight, and just pointed toward his door.

He seemed anxious to see me. “Close the door, Dana,” he said. “You look terrible.”

You should see my wife, I said, smiling.

He suddenly got the connection. “Oh,” he said. “She going to be all right?”

Dr. Saleh thinks so. She’s in a controlled coma with head trauma. They’re going to bring her out tomorrow morning.

“Good luck” he said. Then the smile vanished from his face. “You can’t release this until we decide what to say about it, but the explosion this morning was not an accident.”

I didn’t think it was, I said. But I had been hoping.

“I’ve had all my men poring on every visual record we could find,” he added. “Several cameras were fried in the explosion, and we looked through their records first.” Williams pointed to his screen. “This was taken near what we now know to be the center of the explosion, about three minutes prior.” He forwarded through the images one-by-one, the time stamp in the corner showing they were taken at one-second intervals. “Notice anything?”

It was a rental car, a Toyota Corolla. A man got out of the driver’s side, closed the door gently, and patted the car on the hood, smiling. On the 10th shot I got a look at his face.

White, is all I said.

“That’s right.”

Have you ID’ed him? I asked.

“He’s not with us,” he said. “He’s not South African. I’ve been sending that digitized image through every database I could find, all day.” His face looked grim. He looked me in the eye. “Dana, he’s American.”

So are we. I tried to smile again.

Williams shook his head, grimmer than I’d ever seen him before.

“No, I mean I think he’s CIA.”