Empire

talk, she would leave the room in order to be able to think, and then he wouldn’t be there to hear whatever it was she thought of as soon as she thought of it.

“It’s like what LaMonte said about how he could make this thing go away. It just didn’t sound like him. There’s something wrong.”

“Maybe,” said Reuben, “just maybe. It’s not a coup. It’s a grab.”

“I’m sorry, your high-level military jargon just defeated me.”

“A coup is where they arrest the President and replace him. But a grab is where the President is actually in charge of the coup, and he uses the Army to arrest everybody he thinks is a threat.”

“No,” said Cessy. “No, no, and no.”

“Not possible?”

“Not LaMonte Nielson. Truly, Reuben. I know the man.”

“Knew him. Back then.”

“Core character. He’s a very deft and ruthless politician, but he stays inside the lines. He loves the Constitution. He would never.”

“Unless he thinks he’s Abraham Lincoln and the country needs to have some of the lines crossed a little.”

“He’s President for barely a day and he’s planning a military dictatorship?”

A new thought occurred to Reuben. “I hate to say what I’m thinking.”

“I know what you’re thinking and you may consider that this time I screamed ‘no no no.’ He had nothing to do with the assassination.”

“Well somebody had something to do with it.”

“Not him.”

“Somebody really wanted LaMonte Nielson to be President.”

“Or maybe somebody really wanted the President and Vice President dead and they didn’t care who was next in line.”

“LaMonte only became Speaker about three months ago, right?”

“There’s been a lot of turnover at that job.”

“How long do you think this assassination was planned?” said Reuben. “They had to drill those guys. They did not stop to think about anything. They had practiced hauling up the watertight cases and opening them and assembling everything. They knew down to the footstep where to place those launchers, exactly what angle to point them at. They did it like machines. How many months do you think they’ve been practicing that?”

“I don’t know,” said Cessy. “How long ago did you finish your plan?”

Reuben thought and couldn’t remember. He opened his PDA and she scoffed. “Oh, come on, you can’t be that paranoid.”

“President’s dead using my plan,” said Reuben. “It’s not paranoia.”

“All right, I’ll look up the exact date when the previous Speaker stepped down.”

Reuben followed her to the computer. “March fourth is when I started showing around a draft that had the Tidal Basin plan in it.”

“March tenth,” said Cessy. “That’s when the job came open. March thirteenth LaMonte got the nod.”

“So he wasn’t put in as Speaker of the House until they had the plan they’d use to make him President.”

“No,” said Cessy. “No.”

“How do you know?”

She looked at him with defiance. “The same way I know that you had nothing to do with the assassination plot, even though you wrote the plan they used, even though you’re always gone on mysterious trips and late-night meetings and you can never even hint what you’re doing. Do you want me to trust that instinct or not, Reuben?”

It took him aback. It hadn’t occurred to him that it might actually be hard for her to be certain of him. He knew he had nothing to do with the assassination—not deliberately, anyway—but when he thought of how all his activities must look to her, it said something that she believed him. Why should she believe him?

Would I believe me, if I didn’t know what I know?

He put his hand on her cheek. “Trust it,” he said. “And I’ll trust your instinct about LaMonte Nielson, President from Idaho.” He forced something like a laugh. “It’s really kind of like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Farm boy makes good.”

“No,” said Cessy. “LaMonte is the consummate insider. He’s no Jimmy Stewart. But he doesn’t cheat. And he doesn’t kill. And he liked the President. Liked him before he was elected. LaMonte is solid.”

“And yet it was you, not me, that made the connection between Alton’s attitude and what Nielson said to you on the phone.”

“You haven’t yet thanked me for turning down the coolest job I will ever have offered to me.”

“I thought you already had the coolest job.”

She pursed her lips.

“You mean doing meals and dishes and errands isn’t cool?”

“It’s the most important job in the world. That’s why I turned down the coolest job in order to keep doing this one.”

Reuben’s cellphone rang. One of the new ones. “Cole,” he said to Cessy. And then into the phone he said it again. “Cole.”

“Please tell me I didn’t completely screw up,” said Cole.

“No, you did great,” said Reuben. “Kept your cool. Just enough fervency to show you care. Guys out there who might be wavering about joining this coup, I think you might have persuaded some of them not to do it. Maybe a lot of them.”

“Or maybe I started some mutinies. Maybe people will die.”

“People do what they do,” said Reuben. “What you did was remind them of honor.”

“Yeah,” breathed Cole. “I didn’t know for sure they were going to have General Alton on until right before.”

“Well, if you’d bothered to call me first, I could have told you, of course they’d offer him a chance to answer you. Talking heads are bad television, nose to nose is good television.”

“Sure, but I didn’t think he’d do it. If you could have seen him yesterday! It’s like he’s a different guy. What a liar.”

“Yeah,” said Reuben. “But which one was the lie?”

Silence for a long time.

“You think I was being set up?”

“Why should I be the only one?”

“Now that I think about it,” said Cole. “He was so over the top. It’s like he studied the right-wing fanatic playbook. He even said ‘faggots.’ ”

“And dykes?”

“No. I guess he drew the line somewhere. He played me? You really think so? But why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if he played you, and if he did I don’t know why. But one thing’s for sure. The assassination of the President was a terrible thing, but it is not causing so much confusion that there’s any excuse for the military to seize power. If there is a coup, it’s just a naked grab for power. In fact, if there’s a coup, then we can almost count on it that whoever carries it out, that’s who gave my plans to the terrorists. That’s who tipped them off about the President’s location.”

“So it was a right-wing thing,” said Cole. “Like Oklahoma City.”

“Yeah, well, the Left had the Unabomber, though nobody ever seems to remember that his logic sounded just like Al Gore preaching about the environment—crazy as a loon, but full of all kinds of internal politically correct logic.”

“Wackos on both sides.”

“One man’s wacko is another man’s prophet.”

“Meaning one man’s Hitler is another man’s Churchill.”

“Except Churchill never thought up death camps.”