Re: Con$piracy around murder of DAR director
LadyKiller87
“You are all sheeple”
User ID: 123021
Smells like BS. Covering up the murder of a DAR director would take crazy clout.
Re: Con$piracy around murder of DAR director
Benito the Mighty
“Be still and know that I am God”
User ID: 784321
You’re right, that would take, like, the president of the United States.
Oh wait—he was in on it. Dipshit.
Re: Con$piracy around murder of DAR director
El Chupacabra
“Why is it called ‘common sense’ when it’s so rare?”
User ID: 493324
So how far does this rabbit hole go? Walker was president; who else is in his cabal? President Clay? SecDef Leahy?
Re: Con$piracy around murder of DAR director
Benito the Mighty
“Be still and know that I am God”
User ID: 784321
Could be. All I know is that my go-bag is packed and my cabin is prepped. Two pallets of canned goods, 200 gallons of water, and the hardware to defend it.
When the shit goes down, I’m going to ride it out in style. And woe betide any numb nuts who crosses my fence line.
Re: Con$piracy around murder of DAR director
BananaGirl
“Worry is a misuse of the imagination”
User ID: 897236
Dude, you don’t need all that water. Just build a catch basin and a purification system. Here, check out the schematics.
CHAPTER 5
“Big-girl pants? He really said that?”
“And smiled like he was being cute.” Marla Keevers sipped her coffee.
“It’s quick, at least.” Owen Leahy shook his head. As the secretary of defense, there weren’t many people around whom he dared show his hand. But Marla was a friend, or as close to one as politics at this level allowed. They’d worked together under President Walker, and he’d quickly learned that she was one of those rare people who got the job done, whatever it took. He liked those people. He was one of them. “The president seems smitten.”
“Cooper won him over right away. You know how? When Clay offered him the job, he refused.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. You believe that? Sitting in the limo, after a show-of-force pickup with twenty Secret Service agents, and the guy says no.”
They were in her office, the doors closed, and Leahy had his foot up on his knee, the chair rocked back on two legs. These informal conferences had started as a way to keep the train on the rails during the transition from Walker to Clay, but they’d become chatty. “Was it a performance?”
“No. That’s the weird thing. He honestly didn’t want the job.”
That was unnerving. This was Washington, DC. Everyone wanted the job. “So Cooper is the new fair-haired boy.”
Marla nodded. They stared at each other, then broke into laughter. It felt good, absurd as the situation was.
“What a world, huh? Throw your boss off a roof, end up serving the president,” Leahy said. “I guess we could always use that as leverage to control him.”
“Cooper won’t be a puppet. Plus, do we really want to open that particular can of worms?” Marla shook her head. “If the truth about that night came out, people would start asking who else was involved.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with the Monocle.”
“Neither did I. But there are plenty of other things we have been . . . aware of.” She left it at that, a gesture he appreciated. Deft.
“I don’t know, Marla. Is it just me, or is the world going crazy? We’re facing maybe the greatest crisis in American history, and the president is getting his advice from a Boy Scout.”
“You know how many people Nick Cooper has killed?”
“Okay,” Leahy said, “a dangerous Boy Scout.”
She shrugged. A message pinged in on her system, and she glanced at it, typed a quick response. Leahy laced his fingers behind his head, stared at the ceiling.
“In 1986, when Bryce published his study on the gifted, I was just starting at the CIA. Done my four years in army intel, transferred over. I was the FNG on the Middle East desk, a junior analyst getting all the junk assignments. But when I read that study, I got up from my cubicle, walked straight to the deputy’s office, and asked for five minutes.”
“You didn’t.”
“I was young.”
“Did he see you?”
“Yeah.” Leahy smiled, remembering that day. January, and cold; his shoes had salt stains on them, and while he’d waited outside Mitchum’s office, he’d licked his fingers to wipe the leather clean. He could still taste the tang of salt and dirt. “The deputy looked at me like I might be mentally challenged.” He shrugged. “No way out at that point, so I figured, screw it, today you either make your name or lose your job.”
“What did you say?”
“I dropped the study on his desk, and I said, ‘Sir, you can forget about the sheiks, and Berlin, and the Soviets. This is going to be the conflict that defines the next fifty years of American intelligence.’ ”
“No.” Marla was smiling broadly. “No.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He laughed me out of his office, and I spent an extra year as a junior analyst. But I was right. I knew it then, and I know it now.” And Mitchum does too. It had taken five years before the deputy saw the truth, but when he had, he’d remembered who told him first. Deputy Mitchum had taken a personal interest from then on, and Leahy’s climb up the ladder had accelerated dramatically. “Nothing in our history presents the same threat that the gifted do.”
“Easy. The New York Times would pay a fortune to quote you saying that.”
“The Times can bite me. I’ve got three children and five grandchildren, and none of them are gifted. How do you like their odds? Think in twenty years they’re going to be running the world? Or serving fries?”
Marla didn’t respond, just typed another message on her system. Leahy said, “What do you think of him?”
“Cooper?”
“Clay. He’s been president for two months. The grace period is over. What do you think?”
She took her hands from the keyboard. Picked up her coffee and took a thoughtful sip. Finally, she said, “I think he would make an exceptional history professor.”
Their eyes locked.
There really wasn’t any point in saying more.
CHAPTER 6
It was the kind of crisp blue day that made a man proud to own his house, to be out in scrub clothes working in his yard. A beer on the edge of the porch, radio voices talking in the background. Ethan was partaking in that greatest of white-collar lies, “working from home,” and not feeling at all bad about it. He put in plenty of hours at the lab. Besides, what the news had termed the “Crisis in Cleveland” had been going on for three days now. People would be running out of supplies, starting to get hungry. Hungry people did stupid things, and he wasn’t leaving his wife and child alone.
“—expected to address the nation this evening. In advance of that press conference, the White House has reiterated that the National Guard is in the process of setting up aid stations to distribute food and supplies in each of the affected cities—”
One thing he’d discovered about owning a house, the damn leaves just kept falling. But he found a kind of Zen to stuffing the bags, soaking up the small details, the smell, the way each armful sent splinters to float in the air, lit by golden autumn sun.