The president turned to General Frank Ballard, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the ranking general of the U.S. Air Force. “Frank, I want to ask you a very important question. There was a program that was canceled by my predecessor. Majestic Three. M3, I believe it was called.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” said Ballard. “Majestic Three was shut down and all of its resources confiscated and assets reallotted.”
“Tell me something, General, did the Majestic Three program do us any good?”
“Good?” The general shook his head. “Hardly, sir. The governors of Majestic Three very nearly caused World War Three.”
“That isn’t the question I asked, is it? Is it, General? No. I asked if the M3 project did us any measurable good over the years.”
“Well, sir,” said the general, clearly uncomfortable. He fidgeted and cut looks at the other officers around the table, but no one was willing to meet his eye.
“Do I need to phrase it in smaller words, General?” asked the president. “Or do I need to ask the next person to sit in your chair?”
“It is, um, fair to say that we have benefitted greatly from the various M3 projects,” said the general. “New or improved metallurgy, polymers, fiber optics, aircraft design—”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the entire stealth aircraft project come out of what they were doing?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“And isn’t the stealth program what’s put us ahead in the arms race and kept us there?”
“To an, ah, degree, sir, but—”
“Then I’d say that the good it’s done pretty well outweighs the bad, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not sure I can agree with that, sir. One of the T-craft developed by Howard Shelton very nearly destroyed Beijing. Others were being launched to destroy Shanghai, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang…”
“Which might have been a good damn thing,” said the president, and every face around the table went pale. “No, don’t look at me like that. Sure, it would have been a tragic loss of life, but overall, we’d have accomplished world peace. A lasting peace. We would have insured that American values were instituted around the globe.”
The room was utterly silent. The president smiled as if all of the gaping officers and advisors had nodded in agreement.
Jennifer VanOwen spoke into the silence. Over the last few years the science advisor had hitched her star to the president’s, even when he was only a candidate, and — even through staff cuts and public controversy — VanOwen had managed to stay out of the news and out of the limelight. A lot of the people in the president’s inner circle were afraid of her because she always seemed to know something about them; things that no one else knew. She did; but because she seldom used her knowledge as anything other than an implied threat to support the president, they simply either deferred to her or steered clear. A surprising number of power players around her knelt to put their heads on the chopping block, but among the survivors it was generally believed VanOwen was the one keeping that blade sharp. When she spoke, the president listened.
“Mr. President,” she said quietly, “the Majestic program, like all advanced and highly classified defense projects, was always potentially dangerous. The Manhattan Project was dangerous, and yet that ended World War Two and transformed the United States from a powerful nation into this world’s first true global superpower. Howard Shelton had his faults, no doubt, but he and the other governors of M3 were working toward a goal of an unbeatable and indisputably powerful America. One that took the concept of ‘superpower’ to a new and unmatchable level. With firmer and more courageous guidance from your predecessor, we might now have ended all wars forever. Instead, he was killed. Perhaps ‘executed’ is not too strong a word.”
“Now wait a minute, Jennifer,” cried the general. “That’s a pretty dangerous word to throw around. You weren’t even here when the Department of Military Sciences went up against M3.”
“No, General,” she replied coldly. “ You were. And now Howard Shelton is dead. He can neither explain his actions nor speak to his motives. There was no due process. There was not even the slightest attempt to allow him to offer any other version of what happened. Instead we have an after-action report written by the man who killed him. With other reports filed by that man’s team. All biased, all of them in lockstep with an agreed-upon agenda.”
“That’s hardly—”
The president cut him off. “There were three people running Majestic Three?”
“Yes, Mr. President. Three governors,” said VanOwen. “The second man, Alfred Bonetti, was also executed by Captain Ledger and his DMS goon squad. The third is a woman, Yuina Hoshino, and she’s in prison serving thirty to life.”
“Okay, okay,” said the president, “so maybe the bad apples are out of the basket. That’s fine, that’s okay. We can discuss them another time. Let’s see about putting some people we trust in charge of the program. We have people we can trust, right? We have the best people working for us. Get me a list of names, General. I want it on my desk this afternoon.”
“In charge…?” echoed the general, aghast. “Are you seriously considering restarting the Majestic program after everything that’s happened?”
“It’s my program now, General, or is someone else’s name on my door? You know the door I mean, right? Nice big office, kind of oval shaped? That’s mine. That’s where I work. That means I get to do whatever I want to do. That means I have the power to do what I want. Me. My power.” He placed his palms flat on the table and looked around, clearly quite happy with himself. “Ladies and gentlemen, to be perfectly clear, yes… we are going to restart the Majestic program. Only this time the president will be kept in the loop. This time the Majestic Three program will be my program. I am going to save this country. That’s what the history books are going to say. Do I hear any arguments?”
No one spoke. No one dared.
The president leaned back in his chair and smiled. It was good to be the king.
INTERLUDE TWO
Gadyuka smoked, held, considered the curling wisp coming off the end of the joint, then exhaled with a smile. “In your file, there is a notation about a man you knew when you went to college in America. A Greek.”
“Aristotle Kostas,” Valen said. “Ari. Sure. What about him?”
“His family is involved with the Mediterranean black market?”
Valen grunted. “The Kostas family is the Mediterranean black market. And they are a big chunk of the Middle East and North African black markets. Actually, last time I spoke with Ari he had big plans on taking the family business global.”
“Bigger than the Turk… what’s his name? Ohan?”
“Parallel. They each have their specialties and they do some business together, but as Ari told me, it’s a big world, and so far Ohan hasn’t tried to take the wrong piece of it.”
Gadyuka nodded as if she already knew it and was confirming that he did. “When’s the last time you spoke with him?”
“Maybe eight years ago. There was a college reunion thing and we went to it. Kind of an ironic appearance because neither of us give much of a shit about Caltech. It was a school.”
“He read business and archaeology, and you read geology and seismology,” she said, amused. “What on earth inspired you to read those subjects?”