Empire

“Here’s the funny thing,” said Reuben. “That’s not an old saying. Where I first heard it was at Princeton. Averell Torrent said it.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot he was your professor there.”

“He’s a brilliant man, and a constant devil’s advocate. I thought he had it in for me, and then he… ”

“Recruits you.”

“I’m not sure he got me the contacts that I’ve been working with. They never mentioned his name.”

“But you assumed.”

“Anyway, he said it twice in class—and it was in one of his books. You know me, that guaranteed I’d memorize it. ‘All the common people want is to be left alone. All the ordinary soldier wants is to collect his pay and not get killed. That’s why the great forces of history can be manipulated by astonishingly small groups of determined people.’ ”

“That’s not exactly what Alton said to Cole. If Cole remembered it right.”

“Cole’s a memorizer,” said Reuben.

“Like you.”

“Word for word,” said Reuben. “I think Alton has met Torrent. Or at least read his books.”

“Of course he’s met him,” said Cecily. “Torrent is NSA.”

“As of this morning,” said Reuben.

“But he’s been in the NSA’s office for a couple of years.”

“This may shock you, my dear, but the NSA staff and the top brass at the Pentagon don’t get together every night and schmooze.”

“But you think Torrent and Alton did?”

“I think Alton heard Torrent speak. About how America can’t become an empire during its democratic phase. About how we’ve outgrown our democratic institutions. They need to be revised, drastically, but everybody has so much invested in the old system that nobody can build the consensus to change it. A Gordian knot. Time to slice through it if America is ever going to achieve its greatness.”

“Not manifest destiny, manifest dictatorship?”

“I always took it as Torrent warning us about the movement of history. What lies ahead if we’re not careful. But it’s possible to hear him the wrong way—to hear what he’s saying and think, Oh, good idea, let’s do that.”

“So you think Alton’s been planning to move America away from democratic institutions for a while now, and this is just a pretext?”

“You don’t build a coup overnight,” said Reuben. “Here’s the thing. Cole asked him outright if his group stole my plans and gave them to the assassins. Of course he said no. But Cole believes him. He thinks Alton isn’t a good enough actor to sound so genuinely appalled at the thought.”

“Do you know this General Alton?”

“I know of him,” said Reuben. “I never actually served under him. Well, I guess technically I did, but never under his direct command. Layers, you know?”

“So you just have to take Cole’s word for it?”

“Cole’s a smart guy,” said Reuben.

“But you still can’t do anything about it.”

“No,” said Reuben. “But what I’m thinking is, Torrent is smart, he’s charismatic. What if, by writing about the great forces of history, he’s accidentally changed them? Like he said, they can be manipulated by astonishingly small groups of determined people.”

“Like Alton’s coup.”

“Like whoever gave my plans to the terrorists. I don’t think it was Alton. But that still leaves us trying to figure out who it is.”

“What we need is the computer guy,” said Cecily.

“Who’s that?”

“In every mystery novel these days, it seems like the detective has some friend who can work miracles on the computer and find information nobody else can find. We need that guy. You call him up, tell him what you need to know, and in a little while he comes back with exactly the facts you need.”

“When you say it like that, it sounds like a wizard from one of Nick’s novels.”

“I was thinking it sounded more like God,” she said. “You pray, you get answers.”

“Yeah,” said Reuben. “You’re right. We need that guy.”

“Don’t have him, though, do we?”

“All you got is me, and all I got is you.”

“And Cole,” said Cecily. “And DeeNee. And Load and Mingo and Babe and Arty and… ”

“And not one of them can grant a miracle.”

“But I know the President, and he promised we’ll have one.”

“That’s why I was so smart to marry you.”

Nothing was actually any better. But Cecily felt like it was better, sitting there on the glider with Reuben. When they were apart, she was perfectly competent and confident, but… there was something always at risk. Things could go wrong. When Reuben was there, she simply felt safer. He wouldn’t let things get hopelessly out of hand. He’d put it all in perspective for her. The problems would all be somehow outside the walls of the castle, and inside, as long as Reuben was there, she was safe. The children were safe.

“Retire right now,” said Cecily. “Come home and be with us always.”

“Think Aunt Margaret will let us stay here?”

“I can’t think why not. We’re excellent company, and thanks to J. P. she’s going to get a free carpet shampooing.”

“I don’t want to hear the story of that one,” said Reuben.

“I don’t want to tell it,” said Cecily. “But Nick is involved.”

“Has he taken to the dark side?”

“J. P. does whatever Nick suggests.”

“I wonder,” said Reuben. “Is that how J. P. got toilet trained so young?”

That had never occurred to Cecily before, but it was possible, wasn’t it? Nick says something and J. P. uses the toilet forever afterward. “So he can use his powers for good as well as evil.”

“We all can,” said Reuben. “It’s telling the difference that gets so hard.”

Fair and balanced

If you always behave rationally, then reason becomes the leash by which your enemy pulls you. Yet if you knowingly make irrational decisions, have you not betrayed your own ability? the battlefield is not a place for actors, playing the role of this or that style of commander, for you can always imitate a worse commander, but never a better one. You must be yourself, even if your enemy comes to know your weaknesses, for you cannot pretend to have personal abilities and traits that you do not have.

As a soldier, Cole had forced himself to learn to wait until an order was given. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his commander to make the right decision. It’s that he couldn’t stand to do nothing.

As a boy growing up, he couldn’t hold still, not even in church. It wasn’t ADHD—he didn’t fidget, and he could easily concentrate on the task at hand for hours and hours. It’s that he couldn’t stand not to accomplish something. Why shouldn’t he clip his fingernails during a sermon? That way he’d hear the sermon and accomplish a job that needed doing.

His mother listened to his argument and answered with her typical “Interesting thought.” But she heard him—she always heard him. That night at dinner she brought in a roll of toilet paper and, after taking her first bite,