“What exactly are you saying, Mustafa?”
Al-Hassani leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I am saying that a world without the United States — or at least a world in which the U.S. is, for all intents and purposes, militarily and financially neutralized — creates an enormous global leadership vacuum that you and I could battle to fill, or…”
“Or what?”
“Or a vacuum you and I could work together to fill.”
“Toward what end?” Lucente asked.
“Toward whatever end we wish,” Al-Hassani whispered in reply. “But as for me, I don’t dream in black and white.”
“You apparently have given this some thought,” Lucente said.
“Tell me you haven’t, Salvador,” Al-Hassani challenged. “Look me in the eye and tell me you haven’t thought about a world without America, a world without a superpower, a world where the United Nations secretary-general is the king of kings and the lord of lords?”
Lucente refused to take the bait.
“Perhaps we should spend some time brainstorming this together, Mr. Secretary-General,” Al-Hassani continued. “I have a feeling you and I could be very creative in crafting a new world order, and very effective in bringing it about. But make no mistake: if you try to pin these attacks on me, you’ll be facing five-hundred-dollar-a-barrel oil by Christmas. I don’t care how many troops you send to stop us. My people would rather set our oil wells on fire than give away our national treasures while you let the bloody Jews build a Temple and emerge as a financial and military superpower unchecked and unhindered.”
Lucente sat back in his chair and sipped his tea. “Mustafa, you are telling me without qualification that you had absolutely nothing to do with these attacks?”
“That is exactly what I am telling you,” Al-Hassani said.
“But you are also telling me that you don’t mind taking advantage of the moment to further your own expansionist ambitions?”
“I’m telling you everything has just changed, Salvador,” Al-Hassani said. “I’m saying the whole world is in our hands. For better or for worse, we have been handed a gift. I have no earthly idea who is responsible for what has happened and honestly, I don’t very much care. My interest is not the past. It’s the future, and ‘the future belongs to those who prepare for it today.’”
Lucente raised his eyebrows. “Malcolm X?”
Al-Hassani nodded.
“Odd,” the secretary-general observed, “you don’t strike me as being prone to quoting African-American revolutionaries, Mustafa.”
Al-Hassani smiled. “A little revolution is a good thing every now and then; don’t you think?”
“It depends,” Lucente said.
“On what?” the Iraqi asked.
Lucente took his last sip of tea. “On who’s being revolted against, and who’s doing the revolting.”
The two men sat in silence for a few minutes, each contemplating the enormity of what the other was proposing, as Khalid Tariq wrote quietly in his notebook. They had come at last to the moment of truth, Al-Hassani believed. It was time for Lucente to decide just what kind of world leader he was destined to be: caretaker or game changer?
With James MacPherson dead and the American people reeling from the loss of four major cities — including their political, financial, technological, and entertainment capitals — Al-Hassani was convinced that a charismatic European like Salvador Lucente and an intellectual Arab like himself could emerge as historic figures. Al-Hassani, after all, had the vision, the oil, and half a billion sheep eager to follow his lead. Lucente had decades of experience uniting a deeply divided continent into one political entity, one military command, and the strongest currency on the planet. Imagine, Al-Hassani thought, if they worked together. Imagine if as one voice they moved quickly and decisively to offer a chaotic and confused world the way forward into a new era of peace and prosperity. The leadership of the entire globe was ripe for the picking. It was time for the harvest. The question was, could they work together?
For his part, Al-Hassani was still furious at Lucente for a host of reasons — for barely lifting a finger to stop the Zionists from building the Temple in Jerusalem, for threatening to send E.U. forces to seize his oil fields, for all but accusing him of attacking the U.S. with nuclear weapons, to name just a few. Lucente surely had his own list. The secretary-general, Al-Hassani knew firsthand, was a deeply ambitious man. Moreover, he was short-tempered and — how to put this? — an occasional stranger to the truth. Theirs would not be an easy partnership.
But Al-Hassani had no doubt this was the moment, and he had the leverage. A new world order could not be fashioned without Babylon and her oil. Nor could a new world order emerge if there was continued chaos and bloodshed in the Middle East. If Lucente truly wanted the unprecedented global power of which Al-Hassani spoke — and of which Al-Hassani was sure he privately fantasized — he would have to strike a grand bargain, and he would have to strike it fast.
32
President Oaks was surprised to see Briggs alive.
The last he had heard, the NORAD commander had been rushed to the medical unit after collapsing from an apparent heart attack. Fortunately for both men, it was not a heart attack, just a sudden decrease in blood pressure, brought on by stress and the fact that in all the chaos, Briggs had forgotten to take his pills.
When Oaks asked about his condition, Briggs waved off his concern and said he was under careful medical supervision. He was back on his feet now and insisting he felt fine. The president was in no mood to argue. He needed the general’s expertise, and he was grateful the man was still functioning. So that was that. There was too much more to be done, and too little time to do it.
The two men moved immediately into a secure conference room known as “the Tank,” which was quickly sealed off by an entourage of Secret Service agents. Joining Oaks and Briggs by secure videoconference was Secretary of Defense Burt Trainor, who had arrived at Site R, and Homeland Security Secretary Lee James, now at Mount Weather in a hardened communications bunker eighty feet underground.
“Where are the Joint Chiefs?” the president asked as they began.
“I’m sorry to report to you that they are all dead, sir,” Trainor said bluntly.
“All of them?” Oaks asked in shock.
“Yes, sir, I’m afraid so.”
The president felt shell-shocked. “What about Congress?”
“We’ve confirmed that the Speaker of the House was in Manhattan at the time of the attacks,” James said. “We’re listing him as missing and presumed dead. The Senate majority leader was at his daughter’s wedding in D.C. and was killed in the attack. So far, we’ve only been able to track down a dozen members of the House and five members of the Senate. But we’re still looking.”
“And the ones you’ve found?” the president asked.
“All Democrats, mostly from the Midwest, sir,” James said. “I wired you the names.”
The president picked up a piece of paper marked “EYES ONLY” and glanced down the list. Nearly all were relatively junior members. None were committee chairs. None were on the Foreign Relations or Armed Services committee. How exactly was he supposed to rebuild the American government with this?