Empire

“Shut up, boys,” said Reuben. “I mean that in the nicest possible way.” He turned back to the table. Cole had his hand over his mouth. What a time for him to be sucking up to the boys. But then, maybe that was precisely what was needed. Some reassuring humor. An adult ally. Maybe Cole was helping.

“May I interject a comment from the cook and landlady?” asked Aunt Margaret as she set out dishes of raspberry ice cream. There were two extras. She snapped her fingers at the boys and they took seats at the table.

“You may,” said Cessy, “since everybody else’s mouth is going to be full.”

“Mine already is,” mumbled Cole, barely intelligible with his spoon held between his teeth.

Mark started to hold his spoon between his teeth. Nick pulled it out and put it into Mark’s ice cream. Again Mark peacefully accepted an action that would normally have caused a fight.

“My observation is,” said Aunt Margaret, “that you can’t figure out a single thing from this point on until you hear from Sandy and DeeNee, whoever they are, and they can’t find anything out until the start of the business day tomorrow. Reuben has had only a short nap since the night before the assassination, and Cole has just given a speech to twenty million people.”

“In O’Reilly’s dreams,” said Cessy.

“Go to bed,” said Aunt Margaret. “Go to sleep. I’ll tuck you in. Things will be just as bleak and hopeless in the morning. Isn’t this good ice cream? My secret is lots of hydrogenated fat. I buy it in large lots from doctors who do liposuction.”

“Delicious,” said Nick.

“Gross!” said Mark.

Five in the morning, still dark, Reuben woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Quietly, so he wouldn’t waken Cessy, he got up and looked for whatever Cessy had thrown into a suitcase for him to wear. There wasn’t a lot of choice. Fatigues or civvies. It was Sunday. He should wear a suit and go to Mass with Cessy and the kids. But that would entail a lot more noise. He could change clothes later. For now, he put on fatigues.

Downstairs in the kitchen, he found that Cole had made the same choice. “I see you decided you wanted to be in uniform today.”

“A choice I made years ago,” said Cole. “You caught me. I was prowling for leftover ice cream.”

“There’s never leftover ice cream in Aunt Margaret’s house,” said Reuben. “Can’t sleep?”

“I woke up thinking I heard something. I had visions of a team of ninjas surrounding the house and climbing up the walls onto the roof like in Crouching Tiger.”

“Were there any?”

“I did a circuit of the house. No alarm system—I checked before I opened the door.”

“Any ninja footprints on the walls?”

“Nothing. But there was a newspaper wrapped in plastic sitting in your driveway. And there I was in my jockeys, holding the paper, wondering if the door had locked automatically behind me.”

“Had it?”

“Yes, but it was incredibly easy to pick,” said Cole.

“I shudder to ask, but with what?”

“It was still partly open,” said Cole. “I was joking.”

“Not much to do in West Windsor, New Jersey, at 0515 on a Sunday.”

“You know what I want?” said Cole.

“For Christmas?”

“For this moment. I want to get in a car and drive to the city and look at Ground Zero. It’s Sunday, it’s five in the morning, there won’t be traffic. We can be there and back before church, right?”

“Easily,” said Reuben. “But I don’t think you’ll see what you want to see. It’s not a rubble heap or even an excavation anymore. They’re building something appalling on the site, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know how far they’ve gotten,” said Cole. “But even if it’s a Starbucks now, I want to tread that ground. Or at least look at it. Imagine the towers. Remember them. The media has forbidden us to remember the falling towers—they don’t allow us to see the footage. It’s like their slogan is, Forget the Alamo. I’m tired of being obedient to their decision to keep us blind.”

“Let me get the keys to Mingo’s SUV.”

“Not my trophy car?” asked Cole. “Oh, wait—Mingo’s has been mod-oh-fied.”

“Mingo’s isn’t registered to you or me,” said Reuben. “For all we know, there’s an APB out on our vehicles.”

“It has nothing to do with his arsenal?”

“If we hadn’t had to scrounge up weapons at Hain’s Point,” said Reuben, “the President would still be alive. So maybe yeah, maybe I want to have the weapons with me. But if somebody does try to arrest us, I’m not fighting. I didn’t train as a soldier so I could kill Americans.”

The Holland Tunnel took them into the city not far north of where the World Trade Center used to be. The traffic was heavier than Cole had expected, and the city was already full of life.

“How does anybody sleep here?” asked Cole.

“Air-conditioning,” said Rube. “It lets them close their windows and it makes white noise to help them not to hear the street. Plus, you get used to it.”

“So you’ve lived in the big city?” asked Cole.

“Not this big city, but I’ve spent a lot of time here, and a lot of other big cities, too.”

“In your real life, or on that secret assignment from the White House?”

“Which I now doubt had anything to do with the White House,” said Rube. “I think they’ve been playing me all along. I don’t know why I set off their use-this-guy alarms, but I think they marked me years ago.”

“And probably had a GPS on your car already, eh? So they didn’t have to tail you to find out if you went to Hain’s Point?”

“I’m more paranoid than that,” said Rube. “You think I didn’t scan my car regularly? I was doing weird stuff. Weapons systems. Parts delivery. Working out financial transactions in remote locations.”

“Laundering money?”

“I didn’t think of it that way, but probably, yes.”

“But you’re not going to tell me anything specific.”

“There’s still a chance I was working for the good guys, and this stuff is so classified it can’t be classified.”

“They trusted you.”

“To be a world-class fool,” said Rube. “But it’s nice to be trusted.”

There was actually on-street parking here and there. Rube took a spot and parallel-parked forward. “NASCAR trained,” said Cole.

“NASCAR drivers always double park. For quick getaways.” He locked the car using the remote. But Cole noticed that Rube still checked the locks visually. “I figured maybe there are closer parking places, but maybe not, and we’re extremely physically fit so walking won’t hurt us.”

“We do have government-issue shoes,” said Cole. “So we’re using up taxpayer money.”

“They pay for your shoes?” asked Rube.

“At Defense Department rates. So the left shoe is two hundred bucks, and the right shoe, which has to be separately requisitioned, is five hundred.”

Cole appreciated the fact that Rube chuckled. Cole knew it wasn’t really a good time to be making stupid jokes, but they also couldn’t brood about the assassination and the worries ahead of them—they had to keep their minds clear. Concentration was important, but so was distance. Maybe if they could laugh a little, they’d see more clearly.

And maybe Cole was so nervous himself that he couldn’t keep from cracking wise even when it was completely inappropriate. Especially then.

They didn’t make it to Ground Zero. They were still walking on Barclay Street when they heard an explosion. Then a siren. Then small-arms fire. Single shots. Then automatic weapons fire. Not a set of sounds you’d expect