Empire

dying to say it. If they can paint this whole thing as a vast right-wing conspiracy, you think they’ll hold back because it makes no sense?”

Phillips got control of himself. Dabbed at his eyes with a Kleenex from a little packet in his pocket. “So what does this mean, if your paranoid fantasies turn out to be true? That this was all a blue-state conspiracy? That’s just as ridiculous.”

“I agree,” said Malich. “But these terrorists had to have somebody inside the White House to tell them which window to shoot their missile through. They got my plans that were turned in to the U.S. Army. Don’t tell me that Al Qaeda had moles planted so long ago that now a bunch of dedicated Muslim fanatics somehow made it through security clearances into positions where they could provide all that.”

“I’ll get you what I can,” said Phillips. “I’ll talk to the NSA.”

“And when you do,” said Malich, “give the information to Cole here, as well as emailing it to me.”

Cole tried not to show his surprise. Malich trusted him that much?

No, it wasn’t that. Malich expected to be arrested. Held where he couldn’t get to his email, where he couldn’t be contacted by anybody. He expected Cole to keep on digging to find out the truth. That wasn’t something you assign to a newly appointed subordinate. That’s something you assign to a friend.

Cole repeated his cellphone number and email address to Phillips until the man could recite them back cold, because Malich forbade him to write anything down. “You think I want somebody to be able to get the information from your dead body that will allow them to track down Cole?” asked Malich. Which terrified Phillips—perhaps not the most tactically sound idea, Cole supposed, since Phillips could decide just to go to ground rather than keep investigating. But he had to assume that Malich knew his man. Sort of, anyway.

They made their way back through the southwest gate, past the same MPs, past the emergency vehicles and military vehicles and the cordon of soldiers that were now completely surrounding the White House. Cole finally asked, “Even if you’re arrested, you know they can’t convict you of anything.”

“I’m not afraid of being convicted,” said Malich.

“What, then?”

“I’m afraid of Jack Ruby.”

The guy who assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald before he could be tried. The guy who made sure that the tough questions about the Kennedy assassination could never be answered.

Yeah, Cole understood that. In fact, it seemed the most likely thing to happen. That, or an unexplained “suicide” in a park somewhere. “Boy, I’m sure glad I got this assignment,” said Cole.

Malich stopped and spoke to him earnestly. “You can get out right now if you want. It’s dangerous and I had no right to assume you’d help me.”

“I wasn’t joking. I’m glad I got this assignment. What if you got some desk jockey? What if you got somebody who didn’t know how to shoot to kill?”

“Right now I need somebody who can help me find out the truth.”

“Oh,” said Cole. “You mean you want a desk jockey.”

“I want you.”

Then, because the Metro was shut down at the moment and automobile traffic in the District was at a standstill, they headed for the Roosevelt Bridge to walk over into Virginia. Fortunately, it was a cool day for June in DC. They wouldn’t quite die of the heat.

Cole thought wistfully of his air-conditioned car in the parking lot near the FDR Memorial—but it was evidence, so even if traffic had been moving, he couldn’t have taken it. And thinking of evidence reminded him of those two borrowed rifles with both their fingerprints all over them. Cole figured he could pretty much rule out denying that he was there.

There were a lot of other pedestrians streaming onto the Roosevelt Bridge. Usually pedestrians wore jogging clothes. Now they were in suits, or women walking miserably on high heels.

At times like these, people rethought their dependence on cars. Started wishing they could live in an apartment in the city and walk to work. Then, when the crisis passed, they’d see how far those apartments were from grocery stores and movie theaters, and how old and rundown they were, and even those who went to the trouble of looking at rentals were stunned at how little you got for the money, and pretty soon they were back behind the wheel again.

But these pedestrians staggering across a bridge devoid of automobile traffic except for the occasional military vehicle meant something else, too. They were a victory for the terrorists.

Weirdly, though, it was a defeat for them as well, Cole realized. All the oil money that funded them—if we no longer burned oil for transportation, if we really became a pedestrian world, then what would the whole Middle East be but a waterless wasteland with way too many people to feed themselves?

But that’s what these diehard Islamists wanted. For the whole world to be as poor and miserable as the Middle East. For us all to live the way the Muslims did in the good old days, when the Sultan ruled in Istanbul. Or earlier, when the Caliph ruled from Baghdad, fantastically wealthy while the common people sweated and starved and clung to their faith. And if it meant reducing the population of the world from six billion to half a billion, well, let eleven-twelfths of the human population die and Allah would sort them out in heaven.

What the terrorists aren’t counting on, thought Cole, is that America isn’t a completely decadent country yet. When you stab us, we don’t roll over and ask what we did wrong and would you please forgive us. Instead we turn around and take the knife out of your hand. Even though the whole world, insanely, condemns us for it.

Cole could imagine the way this was getting covered by the media in the rest of the world. Oh, tragic that the President was dead. Official condolences. Somber faces. But they’d be dancing in the streets in Paris and Berlin, not to mention Moscow and Beijing. After all, those were the places where America was blamed for all the trouble in the world. What a laugh—capitals that had once tried to conquer vast empires, damning America for behaving far better than they did when they were in the ascendancy.

“You look pissed off,” said Malich.

“Yeah,” said Cole. “The terrorists are crazy and scary, but what really pisses me off is knowing that this will make a whole bunch of European intellectuals very happy.”

“They won’t be so happy when they see where it leads. They’ve already forgotten Sarajevo and the killing fields of Flanders.”

“I bet they’re already ‘advising’ Americans that this is where our military ‘aggression’ inevitably leads, so we should take this as a sign that we need to change our policies and retreat from the world.”

“And maybe we will,” said Malich. “A lot of Americans would love to slam the doors shut and let the rest of the world go hang.”

“And if we did,” said Cole, “who would save Europe then? How long before they find out that negotiations only work if the other guy is scared of the consequences of not negotiating? Everybody hates America till they need us to liberate them.”

“You’re forgetting that nobody cares what Europeans think except a handful of American intellectuals who are every bit as anti-American as the French,” said Malich.

“You think we’ll do it?” said Cole. “Bottle ourselves up and let the world go to hell?”

“Would it be any better for us to get really pissed off and declare war on all of Islam?” said Malich. “Because we’ve got plenty of Americans who want to do that, too, and we don’t have the President anymore to hold them back.”

“I have a terrible feeling,” said Cole, “that some turban-wearing Sikhs are going to die today in America, and they’ve got nothing to do with this.”

They reached the end of the bridge.

“It’s weird,” said Cole. “I always feel like when I get to Virginia, I’m back in the United States. Like DC is a separate country. And not just DC. Maryland along with it. Like the Potomac is the boundary line between the country I love and a foreign country where they hate me because of this uniform.”

“Plenty of patriots in Maryland and points north,” Reuben reminded him. “Plenty of good soldiers come from there.”

“Can’t help how I feel about crossing this river. I know it’s crazy.”

They headed uphill into Arlington.

“You know who I hate today?” said Malich. “This isn’t like 9/11, when they exploited the loopholes in our open society, and we didn’t see it because of pure clumsiness. These terrorists today couldn’t have done what they