hate
us?" the weeping one moaned during a break in her crying jag. "Why won't they leave us alone?"
"Think Chemical Ali did it?" Three months ago it would have been Saddam, before his cousin's palace coup on the eve of the invasion.
"Who cares?"
Mike had disentangled himself, carefully trying not to think too hard about the scenes on the TV. But once he got to his room, it hit him.
I tried to do something. But I failed.
A vast, seething sense of numbness threatened to swallow him.
This can't be happening, there must be some way out of here, some way to get to where this didn't happen.
But it
had
happened; for better or worse—almost certainly for worse Miriam's enemies had lashed out at the Family Trade Organization in the most brutal way imaginable. Not one, but two bombs had gone off in D.C. Atomic bombs, the all-time nightmare the DHS had been warning about, the things Mike had been having nightmares about for the year since Matthias walked into a DEA office in downtown Boston with a stolen ingot of plutonium in his pocket.
No way of knowing if Schroeder had taken him seriously. He'd felt the argument slipping away, Schroeder's impatience visibly growing as he tried to explain about the Clan, and about the FTO project to wrap them up and then to infiltrate and attack their home bases. He hadn't even gotten as far as his contact with Miriam's mother, Olga the ice princess, the business about negotiation. He could see Schroeder's attention drifting. And if he couldn't convince one man who'd known Miriam and wondered where she'd gotten to, what hope was there?
Maybe if I hadn't asked the colonel, weeks ago,
he speculated. Colonel Smith was Air Force, on secondment to FTO by way of a posting with NSA. He understood chains of command and accountability and what to do about illegal orders. Not like that shadowy spook-fucker, Dr. James.
But they blew up my car.
They'd
expected
him to run somewhere. Smith might already be dead.
If I'd smuggled some of the tapes
out—tapes of conversations in hochsprache, recorded by someone with access to the Clan's innermost counsels—but that was nuts, too. The whole setup in that office was designed to prevent classified materials from going AWOL.
Where do I go, now?
Tired and sweaty and stressed and just a little bit numb from the bourbon, Mike sank back against the headboard and stared at the TV screen. Two diagonal columns of smoke, one of them almost forming the classic mushroom, the other bent and twisted out of recognizable shape. Again and again, the Washington Monument's base blasted sideways out from under it, the peak falling. Helicopter footage of the rubble, now, eight- and nine-story office blocks stomped flat as if by a giant's foot. Preliminary estimates of the death toll already saying it was worse than 9/11, much worse. Anchormen and women looking shocked and almost human under their makeup, idiotically repeating questions and answers, hunting for meaning in the meaningless. Interviews with a survivor on a gurney, bandaged around one side of their head, medevac'd to a hospital in Baltimore.
What's left that I can do?
The vice president, somber in a black suit—someone had found a mourning armband for him somewhere—mounting a stage and standing behind a lectern. Balding, jowly, face like thunder as he answered questions in a near-constant waterfall of flashbulb flickering. Promising to find the culprits and punish them. Make them pay. This man whom the Clan's consigliere had named as their West Coast connection. A whey-faced Justice Scalia stepping forward to administer the oath of office. President WARBUCKS. Dire warnings about the Middle East. Appeals for national unity in the face of this terrorist threat. Promises of further legislation to secure the border. State of emergency. State of complicity.
Where can I run?
Mike lifted his glass and took another mouthful. Knowing too much about the Family Trade Operation was bad enough; knowing too much about the new president's darker secrets was a one-way ticket to an unmarked roadside grave, sure enough. And the hell of it was, there was probably no price he could pay that would buy his way back in, even if he
wanted
in on what looked like the most monstrously cynical false-flag job since Hitler faked a Polish army attack on his own troops in order to justify the kickoff for the Second World War.
I need to be out of this game,
he realized blearily. Preferably in some way that would defuse the whole thing, reduce the risk of escalation.
Stop them killing each other, somehow.
It seemed absurdly, impossibly utopian, as far beyond his grasp as a mission to Mars. So he took another sip of bourbon. He had a lot of driving to do tomorrow, and he needed a good night's sleep beforehand, and after what he'd seen today . . . it was almost enough to make him wish he smoked marijuana.
Even revolutions need administration: And so the cabinet meeting rooms in the Brunswick Palace in New London played host to a very different committee from the nest of landowning aristocrats and deadwood who'd cluttered John Frederick's court just three months earlier. They'd replaced the long, polished mahogany table in the Green Receiving Room with a circular one, the better to disguise any irregularities of status, and they'd done away with the ornate seat with the royal coat of arms; but it was still a committee. Sir Adam Burroughs presided, in his role as First Citizen and Pastor of the Revolution; as for the rest of them . . .
Erasmus arrived late, nearly stepping on the heels of Jean-Paul Dax, the maritime and fisheries commissioner. "My apologies," he wheezed. "Is there a holdup?"
"Not really." Dax stepped aside, giving him a sharp glance. "I see your place has moved."
"Hmm." Burgeson had headed towards his place at the right of Sir Adam's hand, but now that he noticed, the engraved nameplates on the table had been shuffled, moving him three seats farther to the right. "A mere protocol lapse, nothing important." He shook his head, stepping over towards his new neighbors: Maurits Blanc, commissioner of forestry, and David McLellan, first industrial whip. "Hello, David, and good day to you."
"Not such a good day. . . ." McLellan seemed slightly subdued as Erasmus sat down. He directed his gaze at the opposite side of the round table, and Erasmus followed:
Not much chivalry on display there,
he noticed. A tight clump of uniforms sat to the left of Sir Adam: Reynolds, along with Jennings from the Justice Directorate, Fowler from Prisons and Reeducation, and a thin-faced fellow he didn't recognize—who, from his attitude, looked to be a crony of Reynolds's. A murder of crows, seated shoulder-to-shoulder: What kind of message was
that?
"Is Stephen feeling his oats?" Erasmus murmured, for McLellan's ears only.
"I have no idea." Burgeson glanced at him sharply: McLellan's expression was fixed, almost ghostly. Erasmus would have said more, but at that precise moment Sir Adam cleared his throat.
"Good morning, and welcome. I declare this session open. I would like to note apologies for absence from the following commissioners: John Wilson, Electricity, Daniel Graves, Munitions—" The list went on. Erasmus glanced around the table. There were, indeed, fewer seats than usual—a surprise, but not necessarily an unwelcome one: the cumbersome size of the revolutionary cabinet had sometimes driven him to despair.