The Divide

by J. L. Brown

  “This is a pleasant surprise,” she said to the president of the People’s Republic of China.

  “You may not think so once I’ve told you why I’ve called,” he said, his voice clipped. His English was flawless.

  “Oh?”

  “I want to forewarn you—or, as you Americans say, give you a heads-up.”

  A pressure in her chest, a foreboding.

  “About what?” she said.

  “My country signed a deal today,” he said. “With Russia. The Sino-Russian Partnership Trade Agreement, or SRPTA.”

  Whitney almost gasped. This was bad. Why hadn’t her team warned her?

  Focused on domestic issues during her first year in office, her secretary of state, Charles Staunton, had kept a low profile, making only a few obligatory overseas trips. Except for a brief skirmish with Russia in the Middle East, things had been quiet on the international front. Whitney had encouraged Staunton to resign after the announcement of the income inequality summit.

  And she hadn’t replaced him yet.

  Into the phone, she said, “Is it too late for the United States to come to the table?”

  “That ship has sailed,” he said. “We will shift some of our exports from the US to our friends in Russia. My staff will send over the details. I thought you should hear it from me. Goodbye.”

  As opposed to your new BFF leaking it to the media?

  Pressing the intercom button on the telephone, she said, “Sean, ring Tamirov immediately.”

  As she waited for the call to go through, she spun her chair around to gaze out the window at the Rose Garden. The foliage was dusted with snow.

  The goods trade deficit with China had grown to $500 billion; US companies liked employing cheap labor and materials to manufacture their products, and US consumers liked cheap Chinese imports—“Buy American” notwithstanding.

  The US and China shared a strong relationship, an entangled one, based on trade. A trade war could result in their mutual economic destruction.

  Russia and China supplied petroleum to the global economy. Perhaps this deal was about staving off the green-energy revolution for a while longer?

  Both countries funded antidemocratic and anti-US countries with arms and currency while playing the peacemaker on the world stage. Whitney—and her foreign policy advisors—had considered them an “axis of convenience.” An opportunistic relationship tainted with mistrust. It seemed to be something more now.

  Apparently, Tamirov had forgotten his envy of China’s sustained economic growth, or he was using Min in some way. Whitney would bet on the latter.

  Recently, Russia had stepped up its government-sanctioned cybermeddling in US and European commerce and political elections, weakening the public’s perception of institutions and democracy itself on both sides of the Atlantic. The Cold War of the eighties hadn’t been resurrected; rather, a new one had been born: a cyberwar. No, this wasn’t the same Russia, but this wasn’t the same United States either. The US was more polarized. More fractured.

  Divided.

  Most of Tamirov’s moves had heretofore been behind the scenes, but now he’d emerged from behind the Iron Curtain. With one ambition.

  To be the only star on the world stage.

  “Madam President,” the Russian president’s smooth, confident voice came over the line, with only a trace of an accent, “what a coincidence. I was just talking about you to our mutual friend, President Lei Min.”

  “What’s going on?” she said, her voice hard.

  “Ah,” he said, “you heard.”

  “Tell me about the deal.”

  “China and Russia have a long history of mutual respect. An alignment of shared interests. Some might call it love.”

  “Love, Andrei?”

  “I love the Chinese people. This Russian-Sino agreement will greatly benefit the citizens of both our great countries.”

  “I thought it was Sino-Russian.”

  “Semantics,” he said dismissively.

  “Oil for consumer products,” she said.

  “And natural gas and military hardware.”

  She thought for a moment. “Infrastructure.”

  He chuckled. “I don’t care what your American press says. You are much smarter than your predecessor.”

  Whitney ignored the compliment, or the dig at former president Richard Ellison. “The United States—”

  Tamirov cut her off. “The deal is done. Perhaps next time. Good day, Madam President.”

  She didn’t care for being hung up on twice in the span of thirty minutes. This deal weakened her position. Weakened the United States. The entire premise of international trade was for countries to leverage each other’s strengths and support each other’s weaknesses, creating greater economic growth for all. Successful trade agreements were essential to the healthy functioning of the US economy. After listening to the dial tone for a few moments, she slowly replaced the receiver.

  This would not stand.

  She leaned back in her chair, the index finger of her left hand rising to her lips. Her thinking position.

  After several minutes, she sat up and called Sean. “Hold my calls for the rest of the day and cancel all my meetings.”

  “Your afternoon is booked. At noon, you’re meeting with the Joint Chiefs—”

  “I don’t care.”

  Whitney pressed the End button.

  She opened a folio with a pad of paper inside and reached for a pen.

  And she started to write.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  New York City, New York

  Jade paced as she waited.

  Dante stood by the one-way observation window, watching her, a bemused smile on his face. Detective Elaine Katz of the New York Police Department stood next to him.

  “Picked him up on 40th, between 7th and 8th,” Katz said. “He’d been wearing the coat for a while.”

  “Anything back on it?” Jade asked.

  The detective shook her head. “Still working on it. A lot of fingerprints. Bodily fluids. Probably his.” She pointed at the window as a uniformed officer brought the man into the interview room. “It was exposed to the elements for a while. Sorting it all out might take some time. We found blood on the coat.”

  Jade stopped pacing. “Scofield’s?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  “Let’s see if he can help us,” Jade said. “Shall we?”

  She and Dante had taken a shuttle flight to LaGuardia and come straight to the Manhattan precinct from the airport. Detective Katz—short and solid, with a square face, dark eyes, and dark brown hair—led them into the room.

  The pungent smell of body odor hit Jade as soon as she entered. She stilled her face and resisted the urge to cover her nose and mouth with her hand. Behind her, Dante gulped.

  The man wore a tattered brown shirt and faded black pants. The toes of his black shoes were scuffed gray.

  Jade sat in the chair between Dante and Katz. Thinking the witness might find Jade less threatening, Katz had suggested earlier that Jade conduct the interview.

  Dante had leaned in to Jade, whispering, “If she only knew.”

  Sitting across from them, the man trembled.

  Jade relaxed and tried to appear docile and nonthreatening. It was hard. She clasped her hands together on the table.

  “You’ve met Detective Katz. My name is Special Agent in Charge Jade Harrington, and this is Assistant Special Agent in Charge Dante Carlucci. We’re from the FBI, and we’re here to ask you some questions. That’s all, okay?”

  He hesitated, then dipped his head.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ben.”

  “Ben what?”

  “It’s just Ben.”

  “What’s your last name?” Dante asked.

  “If Oprah’s allowed to have only one name, why can’t I?”

  The two agents and the detective looked at each other. Dante shrugged.

  “My mother named me after a dam
n mouse,” Ben said. “Her favorite song.”

  Jade recognized the song, of course. She fought back memories of her parents slow dancing in the living room of their California home.

  “When the police found you,” she said, “you were wearing an attractive coat. Where did you get it?”

  Ben fingered the frayed cuff of a shirtsleeve. “May I have some water?”

  Katz stood and went to the door. She opened it and said something to someone on the other side. The observers watching through the window had heard Ben’s request.

  Soon after she was reseated, a police officer entered, placed a cup in front of Ben, and left.

  Jade waited for Ben to take a sip. After he’d chugged the contents, she tried again. “Tell us about the coat.”

  A grin split Ben’s gritty, grimy face. Some of his teeth were missing. The remaining ones were a dull brown. He’d been handsome once.

  “Did you see it?” he said. “Wasn’t it nice?”

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “Some guy.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Ben shrugged. “Like all those guys, I suppose.”

  “Those guys?”

  “A suit. Slicked hair. White guy. Money.”

  A faraway look in his eyes.

  “What did you do before?” Jade said.

  “Before what?”

  “Before—” She faltered. “For work.”

  “I was a head trader at Lehman. Until 2008. Used to be one of them. One of those slick-haired guys in a suit.”

  “You haven’t worked since?”

  Ben shook his head and looked at the cup, as if debating whether to ask for something stronger. “There weren’t any jobs after that. Lost the apartment on Park Avenue. Then the Porsche. The house upstate. My wife. Kids. Everything. Now these guys walk around like they’re too good for me. Don’t even see me.”

  “Why don’t you get back in the game?”

  He shook his head, more vigorously this time. “Too old.”

  “How old are you, Ben?”

  Ben thought about it. “What’s today?”

  Jade told him.

  “Thirty-nine.”

  Jade gasped. She couldn’t help it. He looked fifty-nine. Or older. She recovered quickly. “Where were you when the guy gave you the coat?”

  “My usual spot. The same place they found me today.”

  “They?”

  “The police.”

  “Why do you think he gave it to you?”

  “I caught him staring at me. Most people look through me, if they notice me at all. He just took it off and gave it to me. The nicest gift I’ve received in a long time.”

  “Then where did he go?”

  “He kept going down 40th.”

  She made a mental note to ask Katz about cameras in the area. “Would you do something for me?”

  The skin around Ben’s eyes tightened, his suspicion returning. “What?”

  “If you worked with a sketch artist, do you think you could describe the man?”

  Ben considered her, calculating. “As long as you’ll do something for me.”

  Jade was prepared to give him food, drink, and a warm shower, even help him find a place to stay for a short time. It wasn’t much or a long-term solution, but it was the least she could do.

  “Sure,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “May I have my coat back?” he asked.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Air Force One

  “Come in, Sasha.”

  As they soared above the clouds, Sasha crossed the spacious office of the presidential suite and sat in the chair next to the desk.

  “Have a seat,” Whitney said dryly. “Be with you in a moment.”

  Sasha waited while Whitney continued to write.

  The Boeing 747-200B airplane was en route to the Midwest on a two-day trip to Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Illinois, to sell the slimmed-down version of the New New Deal. Mo was headed to the South, and Jo to the West, to accomplish the same thing. Whitney would be visiting manufacturing plants, colleges, and town halls.

  She finally set down her pen. “I’ve been working on something.”

  Sasha cocked her head, as she was wont to do. “You sure look proud of yourself.”

  “I guess I am.”

  Whitney perused the papers one more time before handing them over to Sasha.

  “What’s this?” asked Sasha.

  Whitney settled back in her chair. “Reagan established the Reagan Doctrine. Truman, the Truman Doctrine. Nixon, the Nixon Doctrine. I can’t sit by and watch Min and Tamirov divide up the world like seventeenth-century colonial powers. It’s time the United States got back in the game.”

  “I agree. What are we going to do?”

  “In your hands is our approach to foreign policy.”

  “We don’t have a secretary of state,” Sasha reminded her.

  Waving off this detail as if it were insignificant, Whitney said, “Staunton’s departure gives me the opportunity to appoint the best person to carry this out.” She pointed at the document. “Someone who supports and shares my beliefs about our place in the world.”

  “Who?”

  Whitney hesitated. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  The two women laughed.

  “And what is this”? Sasha asked.

  “You hold in your hands the Fairchild Doctrine.”

  Sasha’s mouth fell open. “Really!”

  Whitney didn’t blame Sasha for being surprised. She’d kept her foreign policy views private for the majority of her political career; most people thought Whitney was a pacifist.

  For more than a century, the world had been in awe of America’s military might. In recent times, public sentiment leaned toward the US focusing on its own problems and letting other countries deal with theirs. The difficulty with that approach was that other countries’ problems eventually became America’s problems.

  Her problems.

  While Sasha read through the document, Whitney watched the flat-screen TV on the opposite wall, red and green numbers crawling across the bottom of the screen. The Dow was down one hundred points.

  Sasha looked up. “I noticed you didn’t mention Russia or China by name.”

  Whitney returned her gaze to Sasha. “No need. Tamirov and Min will know.”

  “I love how it’s based on precedent,” Sasha said, “and presidents. Everyone’s represented.” She flipped through the pages. “Truman. Eisenhower. Kennedy. Nixon. Clinton.”

  “That’s the whole idea,” Whitney said. “My policy incorporates their legacies, honors tradition, shows continuity, and builds on them for the future.”

  Sasha handed the document back to her. “I like it.”

  “Wonderful. I’m going to run it by Jo and Mo.”

  Sasha cocked her head. “Mo?”

  “Yes, Mo.”

  Affecting a pronounced Southern drawl, the former Texas congresswoman said, “Didn’t realize y’all were so close.”

  Whitney pursed her own lips, imitating Sasha. “As if your accent is any better.” She turned her attention to the briefing books on her desk.

  Sasha started to rise. “What’s next?”

  “I need you to find a secretary of state.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Washington, DC

  In her office the next morning, Jade stared at the sketch of the nondescript white man with medium-length brown hair. Pat had sent the image to FACE—Facial Analysis, Comparison, and Evaluation Services—which managed over thirty million mugshots and four hundred million images in its face-recognition database. Many of those images weren’t of people who’d committed a crime, but citizens who’d applied for a passport or a driver’s license and unwittingly provided law enforcement access to their likeness at any time.

  Jade and Dante had reviewed the footage from the camera in front of the New York Public Library. Katz was right. The perp’s face was not only obsc
ured by the hat, but it was tilted away from the camera, as if he knew the facial recognition software didn’t need much: the width between the eyes, the shape of a nose, the curvature of the lips.

  Katz had gotten back to her on the coat. NYPD Forensics found Scofield’s blood on it and lots of smudged fingerprints.

  Ben had encouraged anyone he encountered to touch his new coat.

  After vigorous reassurance, NYPD had obtained Ben’s fingerprints. Although he’d already been ruled out as a suspect, his fingerprints would be on file if they showed up later in connection with the case. His name came back as Ben Havenstein. Arrested twice for trespassing. His address of record, a high-end apartment on Park Avenue.

  The week of the murder, NYPD had gone door to door within a six-block radius of the library, but no one claimed to have seen the perpetrator/coat-giving Samaritan. After the interview yesterday, Jade and Dante canvassed the Meatpacking District neighborhood. They stopped by a Men’s Wearhouse. She selected the item over Dante’s protestations.

  “I’m choosing it,” she said. “I’ve seen the way you dress.”

  Later, they found Ben in his regular spot on 40th Street. She handed him his new coat. It wasn’t the same one the police had confiscated, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  After struggling to his feet, Ben modeled it for her and Dante.

  Stroking the sleeve, he said, “This coat fits even better.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Washington, DC

  Dante popped his head into Jade’s office. “We’re having a task force meeting. Wanna join us?”

  She needed to prepare for afternoon meetings, take care of some bureaucratic details, and go over witness testimonies for other cases. Without answering him, she locked her computer and accompanied him to the major-case room.

  It now resembled a war room, with maps, sketches, diagrams, and photographs plastering the walls. Dante had blown up pictures of the victims, in life and in death, and affixed them to the wall. As Jade did for her major cases.

  The agents were assembled. Jade stood near the door again. Dante moved to the front of the room.