Empire

“Well, so is the Left,” he continued. “The wackos on both sides have controlled the rhetoric for so long that the Left really thinks they’re right when they call simple mistakes ‘lies’ and openly-arrived-at decisions ‘conspiracies.’ That city council in New York, if you said to them, ‘Will you secede from the United States and bring the full wrath of the U.S. military down on your city?’ they’d say no. They’d say hell no.”

“Actually,” said Reuben, “this is New York you’re talking about. They’d say—”

“I know what words they’d use,” said Nielson, smiling tightly. “But I don’t use them. Look, these Progressives, they’re playing it smart. Keeping the tempo up. They undoubtedly already had people on the council, ready to drive things forward. It’s not a coincidence that there are legislators and city councilors in all the blue states, calling for their city or state to get on the bandwagon. I think they’ve already counted the votes while we were napping. I think tomorrow morning we’ll find that Washington or Oregon, maybe even California, officially ceases to recognize me as President of the United States. If I had declared martial law last night, I think it would be a dead certainty that they all would. Because I would be out in the open as a tool of the insane faction of the extreme right wing.”

“Are you saying,” said Reuben, “that you intend to do nothing?”

“I intend to proceed carefully,” said Nielson. “The New York City Council has declared that their borders are peaceful—and open. Everyone who works in the city is invited to come to work tomorrow, and apart from some reconstruction work and traffic problems because of the damage caused by… ”

He picked up a paper on his desk and read from it. “’Caused by the illegal resistance of reactionary forces’… apart from that, it should be business as usual. But any attempt to restrict access to New York City will result in sudden, harsh retaliation. ‘We will defend ourselves.’ ”

Reuben shook his head. “You can’t let this stand. If you let people go to work, if you let trucks in with food and fuel—”

“If I don’t, then I’m starving perfectly good Americans as part of my fascist conspiracy to force theocratic antienvironmental—I can’t do their rhetoric very well, but you know what I mean. Remember the propaganda that Saddam got from the embargo, even after we were supposedly letting humanitarian aid get into Iraq.”

“You’re going to let public relations determine the course of this war?” asked Reuben.

“Spoken like a soldier,” said Nielson, not unfavorably. “But as my advisers—my advisers now—point out, it’s already a public relations war. It’s about winning the hearts and minds of the people. If we leap in with guns blazing, we might win—and we might not, because those jets they knocked down yesterday have the Air Force generals wetting their pants—but what do we have? A huge portion of our population will believe that they are now an oppressed and conquered people. We will prove that the Progressives were right, and guess who wins the election this fall?”

“You think people would vote for the very people who tried to break this country apart?”

“But they aren’t breaking it apart,” said Nielson, smiling sarcastically. “They’re simply restoring government by the principles that the American people voted for in 2000, and which have been suppressed for all these years by the evil right-wing conspiracy. This is not the American Civil War. It isn’t one region against the other. There are no boundaries. What kind of war can we wage if we have no secure areas? How can we tell, looking at the local populations, who is for us and who is against us? Who is a supporter and who is a saboteur? And then consider collateral damage. And then consider the way most of the media is playing this. Oh, they cluck their tongues about those bad people who took over New York, but their stories are full of admiration for the chutzpah of it—and for the high technology, and for the ‘peaceful approach’ they’re taking now. Naturally, everybody is calling for negotiations. I’ve had so many messages from European governments begging me to negotiate I could paper these walls with them.”

“Now we know how the Israelis feel,” said Cole.

“Except we’d have to build about a hundred fences to separate the red from the blue,” said Reuben.

“Not to mention,” Cole added, “sorting out which soldiers are actually from the cities in rebellion.”

“Now you understand,” said Nielson.

“So why did you bring us here?” asked Cecily. “Surely not for more advice.”

“What I need,” said Nielson. “What the country needs. Is proof. Proof of this conspiracy. And I think you have it. Major Malich, I think you were set up. But I hear you can identify who leaked your assassination plans if you have the copy the FBI found in the terrorists’ apartment.”

“I think I can, yes sir,” said Reuben.

President Nielson lifted a file folder from his desk. “This is a copy of the one we found. The original had your fingerprints all over it.”

“Anyone else’s?”

“Your secretary’s. But no others. Which is one of the reasons the FBI is suspicious of it. Did the terrorists wear gloves when they handled the paper?”

“It should have the prints of the leaker, too, and everyone who handled it before him,” said Reuben.

“From this we conclude that it went to the leaker first,” said Nielson. “And the leaker didn’t want to risk smearing or covering your prints. So he wore gloves as he copied it, and then bagged the original so no new fingerprints would get on it.”

“I wish I could tell you just by looking at it,” said Reuben. “But it’s DeeNee who knows which version is which and where they went first.”

“I urge you to call her.”

“The last time I did, she was closely supervised by people who thought it was urgent that I be arrested.”

“Arrested? Who gave that order? I specifically told them not to arrest you.”

They all knew what that meant.

“It’s a strange time to be President,” said Nielson. “Nobody knows who’s on which team. It will sort itself out eventually, but right now I need proof of who it was in the Pentagon who conspired to kill the President and lay the groundwork for this Progressive Restoration nonsense.”

Cecily laughed harshly. “This gets worse and worse. Because if you do start laying off people just on suspicion of being Progressive sympathizers, your opponents in Congress and the press will screech that you’re imposing an ideological test on government employees.”

“It’s why we need proof. Even if you have to go to the Pentagon to get it, Major Malich.”

“Can I choose and arm a team of my own choosing?” asked Reuben. “I’ll also need a letter of authorization from you. Giving me supreme authority over all personnel whose obedience I require in pursuing my assignment. Because I have to be able to tell any general who stands in my way to get lost.”

“I’ll also detail two Secret Service agents to accompany you,” said Nielson. “The Secret Service has always prided themselves on protecting even people they despise.”

“Do you have any idea yet who it was inside the White House?”

“One of the household staff,” said Nielson. “She hasn’t shown up for work. We believe she’s in hiding. But fellow staff members say she was bitter about her son’s injury in Iraq three years ago. He lost a hand. She blamed the President. I suspect if we do find her, she’ll be dead before we arrive. Maybe she didn’t know she was triggering an assassination. But maybe she did. The people who can hurt us are the ones that we trust.”

“Why did you need me?” asked Cecily.

“You mean apart from the fact that I need somebody who can speak the language of the Left and help me translate my statements into neutral rhetoric?”

“I already turned you down for that job.”

“I was hoping you could do some clerical work for me,” said Nielson. “Immediately after his arrest, Steven Phillips, an aid to the NSA, provided us with his few scraps of notes about illegal arms trading that was being run out of the White House. Since some of this work was done by your husband, I thought you might have a vested interest in finding who was sending what to whom. Especially since Phillips was happy to tell us that he knew nothing much at all, it was completely Reuben Malich’s operation.”

“So, was Phillips part of the conspiracy?” asked Cole.

“No, he’s just a bureaucratic weasel,” said Reuben.

“Actually, the jury’s still out on that question,” said Nielson. “Not about whether he’s a weasel—his