“Ah.” A tiny smile at that; Cooper had noticed people here put a lot of stock in the location of their office. Leahy continued, “And how are you enjoying working here? All these meetings must seem dull after the DAR.”
“Oh, it’s not that different,” Cooper said. “Less gunplay, but still plenty of fatalities.”
Leahy gave an aren’t-you-droll chuckle. Cooper could see the SecDef preparing another veiled insult, but before he could fire it, a curved door in the southwest wall opened. President Lionel Clay stuck his head out, said to his assistant, “Push everything nonessential,” then turned and walked back inside, gesturing over his shoulder for them to follow.
In the flood of morning sun, the Oval Office glowed, light bouncing off every polished surface. Keevers, Leahy, and Archer walked in comfortably, like it was any other room. Cooper squared his shoulders and tried to do the same, still hearing the same gentle roar in his ears he experienced every time.
“Owen, what’s our status on the Children of Darwin?”
“We’re getting a more complete picture, sir, but slowly.” The secretary of defense began to brief the president, but it was clear that there had been no significant progress made.
Cooper had become something of an expert on the terrorist organization since joining Clay’s administration. He’d devoured every memo on the Children, met with the DAR and the FBI and the NSA, spent hours staring at photographs of truckers burned alive. Yet for all the time he’d spent, he still didn’t know very much. The terrorist organization seemed to have sprung to life full-formed. No one knew how large it was, where it was based, how it was funded, if it had centralized leadership or was just a loose network of terror cells.
“What it comes down to, sir,” Leahy continued, “is that we’ve learned a lot in the last days—the bombs at the food depots illustrate their technical knowledge and chemical access, surveillance video shows that they used stolen police cruisers when attacking the trucks, our analysts are gaining insight through data-mining patterns—but none of it is giving us actionable answers.”
“Maybe that’s because they’re fanatics. Lunatics,” Keevers said. “They burned people alive. Why are we talking about the COD like a foreign regime instead of a cult?”
The president rubbed at his chin. “Nick? What do you think?”
Only his ex-wife Natalie and Shannon used his first name, but somehow he didn’t feel comfortable asking the president of the United States to call him Cooper. He cleared his throat, took a moment to weigh his words. “Think how furious the whole nation was at what they saw on the Monocle video. Their own president planning to kill them.”
Clay maintained a mild expression, but the three staffers exchanged glances, shuffled papers. He could feel them edging away. Let ’em. As long as you’re here, you may as well tell the truth. “Well, now consider the brilliants’ point of view. Tier-one children are forcibly taken from their parents and sent to academies. Without due process or a jury, the DAR terminates abnorms it deems a threat to society. Thanks to the Monitoring Oversight Initiative, every American gifted will be forced to get a microchip implanted in their neck—”
“We’ll see about that one,” Clay said. “I’m not a fan.”
“That’s great to hear, Mr. President. But even if you are able to get the law repealed—and you should—it won’t change the fact that gifted are treated like second-class citizens.”
“I’m not sure,” Leahy said, “that I’m seeing the tactical value to this analysis.”
“It’s this,” Cooper said. “Fanatics they may be, but they’re not lunatics, and they have cause to be pissed off. I’ve spent my life hunting terrorists. I hate everything they stand for. But let’s not pretend that they haven’t been provoked.”
“And let’s not forget,” Leahy said, “that they’ve killed thousands, burned innocent men and women alive, and are trying to starve three American cities. What do you propose, we sit around a table and chat about our differences?”
“No,” Cooper said. “We can’t negotiate with terrorists.”
“So then—”
“But we could get someone to negotiate on our behalf.”
President Clay looked thoughtful. “Who are you thinking, Nick?”
“Erik Epstein.” The world’s richest man had earned more than $300 billion using his gift to find patterns in the stock market. When the global markets were finally shuttered to protect against people like him, he’d turned his attention to a new project: building a home for brilliants. He’d leveraged his fortune to create an abnorm Israel in the heart of the Wyoming desert. “As the leader of the New Canaan Holdfast, he’s got connections to the gifted community at all levels. And he doesn’t condone terrorism, so . . .” Cooper trailed off. A look was passing between the other staffers. “What?”
“Of course, you don’t know,” Marla Keevers said. “You’re new to this world, how could you? But you see, there is no Erik Epstein.”
He stared at her, bemused. Remembering standing in a subterranean wonderland of computers beneath the New Canaan Holdfast, talking to Epstein. A strange and intelligent man with a gift of enormous power, the ability to correlate seemingly unrelated sources of data and draw patterns from them.
Of course, the same gift had made him a recluse, barely able to communicate with other people. Which was why his brother had served as the public “Erik Epstein,” the one who did talk shows and met presidents. It was a secret known to only a handful of people.
“You see,” Keevers continued, “it’s clear that the man pretending to be Epstein is not the same man responsible for bringing down the stock market.”
“Which makes diplomacy with him impossible,” the president said. “We could never be sure who we were dealing with.”
“But—” Cooper caught himself. He knew a truth these people did not, a truth that might matter. And yet, these were some of the most powerful people on the planet. If Epstein had chosen to keep them in the dark, there was a reason.
Last time you met Epstein, you promised him you’d kill John Smith. Instead, you spared Smith’s life. Do you really want to screw the world’s richest man twice? “I see.”
“For now,” Leahy said, picking up as if uninterrupted, “we’re focusing on the situation on the ground. We’re hoping to begin distributing food and critical supplies tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” The president frowned. “The supermarkets were empty two days ago. What’s the delay?”
Keevers said, “We’d actually consider that a win, sir. The National Guard doesn’t maintain food reserves. In Tulsa and Fresno, we’re negotiating with the grocery distributors, but the largest food depot in the Cleveland area was destroyed. We’re having to coordinate with others across northeast Ohio.”
“What about FEMA?”
“FEMA can’t act until Governor Timmons declares a state of emergency and formally requests help.”
“Why hasn’t he?”
“He’s a Democrat,” she said. “If he comes to a Republican president for help, it’ll make him look weak come reelection.”
“Fix that. People are hungry.”
“Yes, sir.” Marla Keevers uncrumpled her d-pad and made a note. “In the meantime, the National Guard is trying to set up food distribution centers, but they’re having trouble. There have been incidents at most of the grocery stores. Broken glass, fistfights, looting. The National Guard is trying to keep the peace, but while they’re doing crowd control and defending stores, they can’t build aid stations. And the longer the delays in delivering food, the more people are taking to the streets.”
President Clay turned his back on them and paced to the window. He stared out at the Rose Garden, the morning sun neatly bisecting him. “Any fatalities?”