“Then there’s how this impacts us out here. This shit’s all by design, brother. America can stay at war as long as it doesn’t have to confront the consequences. A warfighter with a face of brain is that. Send him to a colony. A warfighter raped by her commander is that. Send her to a colony. An immigrant grunt who’ll speak truth about the rules of engagement?” He meant himself, of course. “Send him to a colony.
“We’re fighting history here. Institutional power. It’s not just the money behind the colonies. It’s the idea of them. I’ve read the colony plans drafted by the original Council of Victors, way back when. As cynical as it was genius. ‘Americans value comfort above all else,’ it said. Our job now—no matter fucking what—is to tear into that. Whatever it takes. Shock and awe.”
Speeches, Jean-Jacques thought. Always more speeches, everywhere I go. Pierre was good at them, at least. The fact that he looked normal and sounded reasonable made him all the more dangerous. Jean-Jacques was practical, though. He didn’t argue theory. He didn’t argue history. He just asked what any of that had to do with him doing chores the past three weeks when he could be sent back to the Mediterranean at a moment’s notice.
“Not trying to be special,” he said, eyes fixed on the dark rings in Pierre’s eyes. “But I am.”
Again, Pierre didn’t get angry. He seemed a reservoir of understanding. His face twitched as he briefly slipped into kreyol.
“Yes, mon ami,” Pierre said. “Committed egalitarian here. But you speak truth.”
Pierre had received orders: the Saint-Preux cousins were to be assigned a new mission. V-V Day was fast approaching, which meant the V-V Day Parade was, too. The one event for which the entire star-spangled nation turned its eyes toward the Victors. To praise them, to hail them. The parade was run by the Council of Victors, though, which meant only a certain type of Victor marched. The clean kind. The quiet kind. The kind that came home from Vietnam and got a nice job, a nice family, the kind that put the business of killing red gooks behind them for the business of contributing to society. No veterans with troubles, essentially, because they remembered what they did, what they saw, how America had triumphed in Vietnam and the messy slaughter it entailed. It’d been thirty years since the Liberation of Hanoi, which meant this year’s parade fell on the pearl anniversary, which meant the Council would be pulling out all the stops. Praise, praise, praise: Praise to the Victors. Which also meant: Praise to Themselves.
Mayday intended on crashing the party. To show America the real faces of the great victory in Vietnam. To remind America what war really looked like. A group of Vietnam warfighters, the broken, the scarred, the fucking enlisted, would be massed to infiltrate the parade and march up Fifth Avenue. Jean-Jacques and Emmanuel were to figure out how. And where. And when.
“And the veterans?” Emmanuel asked.
“We’ll get the bodies there,” Pierre said.
“Cool.” Emmanuel’s voice turned rapt. “Another vet-break from a colony.”
Pierre just winked.
The parade was always a tightly run affair, covered by state television and the major networks, police and private security smothering the route like whale blubber. Mayday needed the cousins to find a soft opening along that route. If Emmanuel used his conceptual brain for that, great. If Jean-Jacques used his star power for the same, that’d also be great.
How many?
“ ’Bout a hundred,” Pierre said. “No small thing, I know. But one hundred angry, dirty warfighters on Fifth Avenue? Can’t ignore that.”
It was a hell of an idea. The kind that could open minds. The kind that could mainline the ambitions of Mayday into the veins of the general population. There might be a renegade speech by the Chaplain involved, too. Pierre wasn’t sure.
“Big pressure on you two,” the large man continued. “Tell me now if you’re up for it.”
Emmanuel nodded straightaway, but Jean-Jacques stroked at his chin and tightened his eyes into little raisins. He’d been ordered to leave the war to make a propaganda film about the Abu Abdallah raid for the government. Now he needed to help hijack a national parade for the antigovernment to get back to the war. It all seemed a cruel irony. He just wanted to soldier again.
“If I agree, you mean,” he finally said. “I ain’t hearing an ask here.”
“I don’t want this.” Pierre leaned forward and clasped his hands, his voice unmoved as ever. “We have tiers for a reason. I’d have you hammering nails for a year. That’s the process. Lot of war widows and soldier moms out there doing good work. People who need help. But orders are orders.” Jean-Jacques held off from asking who’d given those orders. He knew. “You don’t want this, go with God. Mayday marches on. The fight is bigger than us all.”
Jean-Jacques sorted through the possibilities, each choice a tripwire certain to set off new, myriad choices he couldn’t see from the here and now. Infil a parade with veterans with troubles? No way that was all they had planned. Something else was going on. He wanted no part of Mayday. The government had used him, too, but at least it’d been stylish about it. A Hollywood suite had been involved. But walking away meant no chance at finding Jonah Gray. Walking away meant no chance at the Legion. The Legion was his only way out. And sometimes, he remembered, a lot of times: the only way out is through.
“What the hell,” he said, louder than necessary. His voice shot through the firehouse. “For my fellow warfighters.”
CHAPTER 16
MONTHS AFTER SEBASTIAN had first moved to Empire City, his grandfather passed away. Sebastian flew home to California to help his family with dead people things. He’d found the visitation and the funeral the easy parts. Just nod and smile at the old people still alive, maybe help guide them to the platters of free food. One kept making jokes about the Found Generation being the beginning of the end. Sebastian laughed to be polite.
Born in Cardiff, his grandfather had crossed the Atlantic as a baby and lived the much-vaunted, ever-elusive American dream. A shipbuilder’s son turned admiral. A war veteran, part of the Greatest Generation that rescued the world from fascism, he became the CEO of a regional steak house chain after leaving the military. Self-made money accumulated through diligent, prudent investments over the course of fifty years. He only drank socially, limiting himself to two drinks per occasion. He rarely missed church and never missed his early morning walk.
He also distrusted Japanese people, but that was beside the point. We all have our faults, Sebastian thought, and at least he had justification for his. The rest of us just kind of make up reasons as we go along.
His grandfather’s heart had given out on mile two at the age of ninety-three. The old ladies who found him in the backwoods of the retirement community swore they discovered him laid out across the path, chin raised and back straight as ever.
He looked like an angel, one said.
He looked like a popsicle, the other said.
He’d maintained his posture, either way.
Sebastian stayed in California for a month. When he wasn’t packing up boxes or reading paperwork he couldn’t make sense of, he was drinking at bars with old friends from high school. They told stories, the same stories they’d been telling each other for a decade. It was fun for a bit, but after that, even the beer tasted stale.
The money was split between Sebastian’s mom and her sister, but Sebastian inherited his grandfather’s military memorabilia. In the boxes Sebastian found a long naval sword, issued for ceremonial purposes sometime during his grandfather’s thirty-year career. One of the family’s favorite stories involved their patriarch grabbing the sword during an earthquake. After ensuring his wife was safe beneath a door frame, the story went, Sebastian’s grandfather raised his head skyward, toward the Lord Almighty. He then directed up the sword in salute.
Before Sebastian left for the Near East, he’d asked his grandfather about that. He would’ve felt ridiculous, but didn’t say that part out loud.
His grandfather had thou
ght over the matter. “Well,” he eventually said. “What else could I do?”
Sebastian thought about shipping the sword to Empire City and mounting it above his bed, but he ended up putting it in storage instead. Maybe I’ll need it someday for something, he thought. Even if just in pretend.
* * *
Sebastian was hungover again. The world slipped and slid as he found verticality. Organs throbbed from somewhere between his ribs and heart. A thousand little drills bored into his brain, the construction project of sobriety under way. A bruise shaped like Missouri splattered across a thigh, its origins mysterious. His mouth seemed full of cotton balls and his thoughts began grappling for regrets it couldn’t quite identify. They were there, though, lost and drifting.
He was working from home today, which meant an afternoon conference call in his boxers. Pete wasn’t on the couch, which surprised. It was nice to be alone again, even like this. Aspirin, bacon-egg-and-cheese, shower, he put together. In that order. He found his way to the bathroom, then to the couch. Beer only next time, he told himself. No more liquor. You’re not indestructible like he is. He turned on the television. General Collins blinked to life, grave and severe against a backdrop of droopy flags and muffin-faced onlookers. A placard with a silver tree hung in front of her podium. Despite himself, Sebastian raised the volume.
“My fellow citizens: I stand before you today with grief in my heart and resolve in my blood. The evil of terrorism has taken one of our great civil servants. Governor Harrah was a leader, a father, a friend. He was a champion of service, a living embodiment of the ideals that make America special. He loved his family and he loved the West. He spoke of both often in our conversations. He was also a man of profound faith. I’ve no doubt he’s now with God above.”
No doubt? Sebastian thought. Not even a little pinch? As a burnt-out idealist, belief without scrutiny struck him as juvenile.
“Who are these Mayday extremists? Why did they target Governor Harrah? How did they gain access to the campaign event? These questions must be answered. And they will be. Right now, America’s best and brightest are working tirelessly to find those responsible. Justice will be served. I’m as certain of that as I am of the sound of freedom’s ring in the American dawn.”
Now that, Sebastian thought, is terrible speechwriting.
“Terrorism can feel very far away and vague, something that happens somewhere else, to other people, until it’s right in front of us. For nearly two decades now, more and more Americans have been forced to reckon with this brutal truth. It’s not the way life should be. It’s not the life we dream of for our children. But still—it’s the way life is, here, now.
“Does it have to be? I’m here to say that it does not.”
Better, Sebastian thought. Truth and reckoning and kids always land.
“It’s not American Service the political party or American Service the campaign that threatens these wicked fanatics so much, though. It’s something much more important. It’s American Service the idea. They hate it. It’s the promise, it’s the dream of American Service they loathe. It’s democracy itself they attack.
“They fear American Service because we will transform this country for the better. We will have a safer America. A more free America. A new America.”
Here it comes, Sebastian thought. The big enchilada.
“Governor Harrah believed in this dream. He should be the one standing before you, ready to see it through. He’s been taken from us too soon. By cowards who seek to defy and destroy rather than build and sustain. In his stead, I believe it’s my sacred duty to serve for him. It’s what he would’ve done had our roles been reversed.
“This is why today I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.
“The center can hold. The center will hold. Because it must. While the political left whines, while the political right raves, American Service stands in the breach of the radical middle. We stand in the breach ready to lead, ready to sift through the dirty work of governance.
“My name is General Jackie Collins. And I can’t wait to get to work for your vote.”
* * *
Sebastian vomited in the shower. He’d been thinking about the general’s speech and trying to figure out why it bothered him, so he blamed the purge on that. He wished he’d paid more attention to history assignments in college and read more closely; he’d received a first-rate education and not retained enough from it. If I had, he thought, before trailing off. His mind was unable to cohere. Something something, he finished. Rome and Athens and the colonialism.
Mandatory national service? What would people like him do? Write dispatches about forest fires from Montana? It sure is hot here, citizens. Hot and burning. Be glad you served out your time singing at retirement homes!
As he toweled off, he heard someone knocking. “Come in!” he shouted. He figured it was Pete, returned from whatever sex den he’d spent the night in, but instead he found Dorsett on his couch, watching a replay of General Collins’s speech.
“She’s got a real chance,” Dorsett said, pointing at the television. “Early, I know. But people seem tired of the same ol’ same ol’.”
Sebastian didn’t say anything to that.
“A lady general centrist who talks openly about drawdowns and bringing home warfighters. This is quite a country, Rios.”
Sebastian just grunted. He’d already given the general and American Service too much thought this morning.
They watched the rest of the replay together, then a segment about the growing colony protests happening across the nation. There were clips from Berkeley, Chicago, Seattle, even Texas. Unlike General Collins’s call for gradual change abroad, the protestors demanded an immediate closure of all rehabilitation colonies. Sebastian admired their spirit. Takes stones to do that, he thought. They have to know it’s futile. Dorsett turned off the television.
“Enough politics. Rots the brain.”
“What’s new?” Sebastian hadn’t seen much of his handler recently. The war memorial bombings, he figured, though Dorsett hadn’t said. Terrorism took precedence over much, to include superpowered bureaucrats living upstairs.
“Nothing for me.” Dorsett leaned back into the couch. “You, though? You famous now. What you pulled with those militants. Even my boss thought it was cool.”
Sebastian liked that, and smiled through his hangover. “It was kind of a blur, honestly.”
“Hey, man.” Dorsett’s voice turned, the Carolina gust falling from his words. This was his serious-business tone, Sebastian knew. He usually heard it when he forgot to not go invisible. “I need to talk to you about Justice. Know you been spending some time together.”
“You mean Pete.”
“Same guy.”
Sebastian didn’t like the way Dorsett was looking at him from the tops of his eyes, like he was staring down a weapon sight.
“Okay,” he said.
“What’s he like. What he wants from you. That sort of thing.”
“We’re just…” Sebastian wasn’t sure what to say. “Drinking buddies. He’s crashed here a few times. What’s he like? I don’t know. Tall.”
Dorsett leaned forward on the couch and crossed his arms, the same position Sebastian was in. This made Sebastian self-conscious, so he leaned back into the couch, copying the relaxed position Dorsett had just abandoned.
“The Chaplain. That mean anything to you?”
“ ’Course,” Sebastian said. “Jonah Gray. Leader of the Maydays you all are hot and frothy over. Same assholes who took over the ballroom.”
“Has Swenson ever said anything weird about them? To you? Around you?”
“No. Definitely not. Other than being pissed about them putting guns on him.”
“He ever say anything weird in general?”
“Huh? You’re freaking me out.” Sebastian rubbed underneath his sunglasses. Weird in general? Like saying the cythrax vaccine was a dud? Or suggesting he’d hidden away some of
the shah’s missing gold? What about that cryptic phone call at the port? Dorsett had been good to him, always. Probably should answer his question, Sebastian thought. But he didn’t. Pete had enough to deal with. He didn’t need overzealous Bureau agents bugging him, too.
“Nothing like that. We wander around and he talks war stories. He’s killed more people than cancer, sure. But here? Here he’s just bored and confused. Can’t figure out the rhythm of anything.”
Dorsett nodded and cracked his knuckles. Sebastian wanted his apartment back to himself again. “We’re getting a bunch of crazy-ass tips. Be careful with him, that’s all I’m saying. He has a reputation for using people.”
Sebastian wasn’t sure what to make of that. He thought again about the vaccine conversation and his drunken pledge to himself to figure out what happened in Tripoli. He’d thought of one way to pursue some truth. He told Dorsett he wanted to see a government doctor for a checkup.
“ ’Bout time. You’ve been putting it off long enough.”
“Like the kids say,” Sebastian said with a shrug. “Abide to Thrive.”
Dorsett didn’t respond, rising from the couch with a groan. Only now did Sebastian realize how tired the agent looked, his face wan and his eyes bloodshot, stubble splaying across his face. He asked his handler if he was doing okay.
“Long week,” Dorsett said. “Longer month. Now I get to crash.” Then he was gone, forgetting to close the door behind him.
* * *
Sebastian’s conference call went well, which meant he made his presence known by using terms like “omni-channel” and “granular” and “messaging optics.” He’d never get promoted but he’d never get fired, either, especially now that he’d been on TV. That had capital at Homeland Authority. Sebastian intended on using it for more working from home.
“You’re famous now!” his colleagues said to him. It wasn’t totally true, he knew. But it wasn’t totally untrue, either. He played the ironic aw-shucks routine, which conveyed to them, as intended, he was anything but.
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