swear it. If it'll make you give me your support, I'll make you a promise-I won't ever be president. Or dictator, or whatever. When our reforms succeed, when PFC takes power, it'll be with someone else in charge. I'm not doing this to put myself in charge.”
“You're serious?”
“Absolutely.”
And he was.
The Spartacus File required him to overthrow the present government and replace it with a more democratic one; it never specified that he, personally, had to have any role in the new one.
In fact, the idea of actually having to run a country as big and complicated as the U.S. was terrifying. He didn't want to do anything of the kind. They'd find a figurehead somewhere. Maybe Colby-he would clean up better than Ed. Much better than Ed-in fact, Ed could be a problem in the long run, a problem that might need to be eliminated.
Or maybe instead of Colby or any of the other long-time PFC people they could use Cecelia, or even Mirim herself.
Of course, Casper might still be running things behind the scenes. He wouldn't be president, he'd be chief of staff, or just an advisor with no official title. And it wouldn't be permanent.
Just until everything was settled.
Chapter Twenty
No one gave any names, and while many Americans would have thought the tall man's face was familiar they wouldn't have been able to say who he was.
Smith knew, though. As part of his job he had to be able to instantly identify any high government official, just in case he happened to see one somewhere he shouldn't, and he knew who he was facing. He straightened a little further.
This was the White House Chief of Staff-the current administration's hatchet man.
The two men stared at each other, Smith stiff and nervous, the other relaxed but angry.
“So,” the tall man said at last, “you're the asshole who started a riot in New York.”
“Sir,” Smith protested, “I don't feel that's a fair description.”
“You don't.”
“No, sir.”
“You're the one who ordered a bunch of hit men to shoot someone who was giving a speech in Washington Square, right? Right out there in front of the crowd, like something from a goddamned Hollywood movie?”
“I…” Smith caught himself. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“And you didn't think that would start a riot?”
“I… Perhaps I hadn't thought out the consequences,” Smith admitted.
“And why hadn't you?”
“Sir, I considered it essential that we dispose of Casper Beech as soon as possible. I was too concerned with that to worry about collateral damage.”
“Collateral damage,” the other man said. “An anti-government riot in the middle of New York-you call that collateral damage?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I seem to recall that collateral damage is a euphemism for what we used to call ‘overkill.'”
“Ah, well… I don't know, sir.”
“You ought to. If you're going to use a term like that, you ought to know just what the hell you're saying. And if you're going to do something like shoot people in front of a crowd in the middle of New York, you ought to know what the hell you're doing.”
“I was trying to prevent a catastrophe, sir!”
“By killing this Casper Beech.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And did you kill him?”
“No, sir.”
The chief of staff stared at Smith for a long moment, then asked, “Did you ever read Macchiavelli?”
Smith blinked. “No, sir.”
“You should. Anyone in government should. If you had, you might've remembered that he said, ‘if you strike at a king, you must kill him.’ Well, you've struck at this son of a bitch, and you haven't killed him, and you're in deep shit.”
Smith swallowed, then said, “I gathered that, sir.”
“That all you've got to say?”
“No, sir.” Smith swallowed again. This was his chance to present a defense, and he didn't want to blow it; he hadn't been sure he was even going to get one, and he was pretty damn sure he wouldn't get another. “Sir,” he said, “Casper Beech has been programmed with the Spartacus File. That's considered the most dangerous of all our imprint weapons; we put everything into it, everything we knew how to do. A man who's been optimized with the Spartacus File is driven to overthrow the government of his homeland-it's an irresistible compulsion, and nothing short of death will stop it.”
“There are probably thousands of people in this country who are obsessed with overthrowing the government, Mr. Smith,” the chief of staff said drily.
“Yes, but the Spartacus File also gives him the knowledge and skills necessary to do it. He had to be stopped, by any means available.”
The chief of staff sighed, and seated himself on the edge of the desk. “So you've been trying to kill him.”
“Yes, sir-of course. That's the only way to stop him.”
“And you didn't worry about who or what might get caught in the overkill.”
“No, sir. You can't make an omelet, and all that.”
“Smith, you're an idiot. You and your guns and bombs and computers
… look, if we seriously had wanted to take out this Beech, if you'd brought this up to my level to begin with, we could have done it. We could have fucking nuked New York if we thought it was important enough. If you really don't care about the overkill you can take out anybody, any time you want. If this Beech ever gets to be that much of a menace, we can goddamn well do that. But we haven't. You know why?”
He waited for a reply, but Smith simply looked blank.
“Because we do care about the overkill, goddammit!” He slammed his fist on the desk. “A lot of good it does to take out one revolutionary if the political damage creates a hundred more! So this Beech is dangerous, he's a goddamn Spartacus who's going to turn the whole goddamn underclass into a slave army, he's going to turn every city in the country into a war zone if we let him, until someday he and a bunch of ghetto punks come riding into Washington on a hijacked Greyhound and string us all up on the Mall and declare the People's Libertarian Republic or some such crap-that's what you're worried about?”
“Ah… yes, sir.”
“Fine. Let's say he gets every single American who's living below the poverty line to sign up in his army and pick up a gun. You know what he's got, then, out of three hundred million Americans?”
“No, sir.”
“He's got a hundred million troops-most of ‘em women and children. They've probably got handguns and homemade explosives at most and they aren't trained for shit. And you know what we've got?”
Smith didn't bother to answer.
“We've got two hundred million loyal Americans, including the whole goddamn army, and against a bunch of kids with rifles we've got 3,000 nuclear warheads. We put one of those warheads on Beech's headquarters, and his army falls apart overnight. They don't come marching down the Mall. We don't negotiate with them. We don't need to. We just blow ‘em away.”
“Yes, sir.”
