In 1952, General Eisenhower’s administration, fearing a Soviet attack, devised the elaborate labyrinth of subterranean tunnels beneath the Capitol, including one from beneath the West Wing to an underwater port in the Potomac, where a Polaris submarine manned by the Naval Administrative Unit would whisk Eisenhower out to the relative safety of the Atlantic and chart a course for London. In the event that the Potomac might be blockaded by Soviet warships, the CIA’s Plan B involved burrowing a tunnel beneath the Lincoln Memorial, underneath the Potomac, and linking to one of General Lee’s original tunnels underneath Arlington House, where Eisenhower could theoretically escape into the Virginian suburbs. Speers had himself written Lee’s tunnel system into the current administration’s evacuation plans, receiving in return a budget of two hundred thousand dollars to install the new retina scanners on each of the twenty-two tunnel entrances in D.C., Arlington and Silver Springs.
Now the drone of a low-flying helicopter cut through the otherwise silent evening. The memory of Dobb’s final moments in West Virginia was all too recent. Speers crouched behind a hedgerow.
He could hardly believe his eyes when the ghost ship flew directly overhead. The VH-71 Kestrel skimmed the Arlington Hills at about 90 miles per hour, and Speers, who had often been a Marine One passenger, recognized the helicopter’s unmistakable profile against the night sky.
His hands balled up into fists as he watched the Kestrel land between the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool. The thought of someone other than the President requisitioning Marine One for personal use was maddening.
A fleet of vehicles pulled around the National Mall. They looked like Ulysses Bradleys, but it was hard to tell from this distance. Soldiers scrambled from the vehicles and began setting up a security perimeter.
Speers got to his feet again. His exhaustion was all-consuming, but so too was his curiosity. He would have to take a closer look.
*
A homeless couple munched potato chips and leaned against one of the Lincoln Memorial’s 38 fluted columns. Behind them, the nineteen-foot, 175-ton white marble statue that deified Abraham Lincoln was surrounded by dozens of homeless families. The luckiest of them were in tents that had been supplied by the National Park Service. The less lucky squatted on blankets donated by a local shelter.
On the mall below, the convoy of Bradley personnel carriers four-wheeled across the grass. In the middle of the 2000-foot long Reflecting Pool, Ulysses contractors erected enormous scaffolding.
The VH-71 Kestrel came in low and loud over the Lincoln Memorial and touched down in the narrow strip between the steps and the Reflecting Pool, sending miniature tidal waves across the shallow water. Ulysses troops scrambled out of the Bradleys and formed two receiving lines. The soldiers saluted as General Wainewright, General Farrell, Dex Jackson and his son LeBron exited the chopper.
The entourage made its way to the base of the Memorial, where two Secret Service agents escorted Dex and LeBron into a waiting car. Wainewright and Farrell, with soldiers in tow, marched up the ninety-eight steps to the top. The cadence of stomping boots gradually woke the hordes sleeping near Lincoln’s throne.
As he finally reached the top, Wainewright found himself winded and grumpier than usual. There he came face-to-face with a Forest Service employee who failed to salute. “What’s all this?” Wainewright snarled.
“This is what martial law looks like,” the Forest Service employee said as he gestured at the dozens of families behind him. “Last night your mercenaries shot a homeless family of four right over there on Pennsylvania Avenue. They’re all dead. Even the two kids.”
“The eight o’ clock curfew is not complicated,” Wainewright said. “We broadcast the rules in seven languages.”
“The shelters were full,” the Forest Service employee explained. He gestured toward the people gathered around Lincoln’s statue. “We had to put these people somewhere.”
“Cram ‘em into Roosevelt’s memorial,” Wainewright said, nodding in the direction of the far humbler monument to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the distance. “This one is reserved.”
*
A black armored SUV pulled up to 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, where two Ulysses MPs stood with loaded M4s at the front entrance to the Willard Hotel. The taller of the two MPs stepped forward to open the rear door. Dex and LeBron Jackson exited the SUV as the soldiers all but shouted, “Good evening, Mister Secretary, sir!” Dex put his hand in the small of LeBron’s back and ushered him past the MPs without so much as looking them in the face. They had no bags except for a single military issue duffel.
For the past 150 years, it had often been said that the Willard Hotel was the nation’s actual seat of power. An easy walk to the White House, the hotel had long been the de facto lodging for visiting heads of state. Abraham Lincoln himself stayed there — under tight security — in the days before his inauguration, as death threats poured in from pro-slavery Southerners.
The Willard’s lobby, with its high ceilings and gilded crown moldings, was one of Dex’s regular haunts. He had taken to meeting foreign dignitaries in its lounge, where Ulysses Grant had enjoyed cigars and cognac.
But there was no time for leisurely pleasures tonight. The Secret Service agents hurried him and LeBron through the lounge and past the bar, where a large flat screen TV broadcasted CNN. Dex broke away and entered the lounge to see what was on television. It’d been three days since he’d seen any news that wasn’t filtered by Wainewright’s screeners.
A crowd of tense-looking hotel guests stood around with cocktails as the CNN anchor remarked, “Next we’ll show you how local volunteers are pitching in to save animals displaced by the Monroe bombing.”
“What is this Mickey Mouse feel good crap?” someone said. “Turn on the BBC.”
The barman switched to the BBC, where the screen filled with images of the war zone developing in Eastern Galilee. The anchor read from a teleprompter: “Our correspondents in Jerusalem are seeing a heavy barrage of incoming Iranian artillery. The Israeli government is calling for the U.S. to honor the terms of its NATO alliance, but the American government has yet to respond.”
The Secret Service Agent tapped Dex on the shoulder. “Mister Secretary.” Dex didn’t budge. “Mister Secretary, we need to move.”
The TV suddenly reverted to CNN’s feel-good animal story. The crowd glared at the barman, who threw up his hands. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I didn’t even change the channel.”
“Mister Secretary,” the guard intoned. “For your sake, sir, let’s go.”
Dex and LeBron followed the security detail to the elevators. Inside, the senior agent pushed the fourth floor button.
“Top floor,” Dex corrected him. “The Presidential Suite’s on the top floor.”
”You are correct, Mister Secretary, sir. But General Wainewright has reserved the Presidential Suite for himself, sir.”
Dex swallowed his pride and adjourned to the fourth floor hallway, where another member of the detail held the room door open. It was a junior executive suite with a single bedroom and a small kitchenette. “You still have time to catch a few winks before the inauguration, sir. We’ll be outside if you need anything.”
The door closed. Dex and LeBron were alone together for the first time in months. Neither one looked at the other. LeBron went straight to the TV and flipped it on, searching for the BBC. It was nowhere to be found. The CNN broadcast was on every channel.
“What’s going on?” LeBron asked his father.
“It’s one of the little improvements General Wainewright has in mind for the country,” Dex said. “It’s called state-run TV.”
*
All was clear at the Jefferson Memorial, where two National Guardsmen reclined near a Patriot missile battery, smoking unfiltered cigarettes and listening to club remixes of mariachi classics. Every fifteen minutes, their unit commander would check in over the radio — speaking only in Spanish — to make sure they were still awake.
Speers crept up the back steps of the neo-classical monument toward a row of public telescopes with views overlooking the National Mall. He popped a quarter into one of the telescopes and focused in on several hundred people leaving the Lincoln Memorial. It would have been an odd sight on any night, but it was especially curious during martial law. The telescope’s magnification told the story — Ulysses was marching a horde of homeless people toward the Roosevelt Memorial.
The Chief turned the scope back to the Mall, where two Ulysses units were unfurling massive rolls of temporary fencing. Behind them, more Ulysses soldiers propped up the eight-foot fencing and sledge-hammered posts into the ground. It looked as if they were attempting to seal off an area stretching from the Lincoln Memorial halfway to the Washington Monument and the World War II Memorial.
Further up the Mall, Speers made out four Ulysses soldiers carrying what looked like a hefty wooden box across the mall toward the Lincoln Memorial. It appeared to be made of dark wood and resembled a casket, only shorter. He watched patiently as the soldiers made their way along the footpath that skirted the Korean War monument, near the edge of the Reflecting Pool, and stood the wooden cabinet on its end at the foot of the Lincoln steps. He knew he’d seen it before, but couldn’t place it. He wracked his exhausted brain for the memory.
He sat down and took several deep breaths. He rubbed the top of his ears between his fingertips, an exercise that his mother had taught him as a child to improve concentration. Three minutes later, he felt the memory returning like the distant smell of home cooking. He hopped back up to the telescope and watched as the soldiers struggled to get the cabinet up the memorial steps. Speers himself had stood not ten feet from the big hunk of wood. But that had been at congress, not at the Lincoln Memorial. Of course! It was the podium. The Inaugural Podium.
The Joint Chiefs were not only going to swear in their new puppet, they would wrap him in Lincoln’s legacy and broadcast it on live TV.
He powered up his phone. He had to talk to Agent Carver. There had to be some way to stop this.
Over Rural Pennsylvania
The Gulfstream flew just above the treetops without running lights or radio. The plane let out a violent shudder. Eva grabbed Carver’s forearm.
Agent Carver and Eva sat in the cabin behind the pilots as they headed due north. The others were in the main cabin. They had not decided where they were going, only that they needed to get as far from Rapture Run as possible and land in a safe location far from Wainewright’s reach.
“Your nails,” Carver said as Eva’s grip on his arm began to hurt. She pulled away.
Carver imagined for a moment that it was O’Keefe sitting next to him. He would welcome her nails digging into his arms, he decided. To the point of bleeding. He wanted to feel her presence. Even if it hurt.
As for Eva, he did not even know how to address her. Madam Secretary no longer seemed to fit. Less than three days ago he had regarded her as a merely competent Treasury Secretary whose real power was in her private relationship with the President. He still found it hard to fathom that she, by all rights, should now be the Commander-in-Chief. But there was no doubt in Carver’s mind that she was the right choice. Better an underprepared Treasury Secretary than some puppet appointed by the military.
Carver turned on his phone for exactly ten seconds, just long enough to download seventeen new messages. Sixteen were from former CIA colleagues, whom he automatically ignored — anyone at the agency could be compromised. But the last message was from Julian Speers. It read: IF YOU LOVE YOUR COUNTRY MEET ME IN SECTION 26 @ 0500.
Carver understood the second part of the thinly coded message perfectly — that Speers would be waiting for them in Section 26, the area of Arlington Cemetery where Union soldiers were buried near Arlington House, at 5 a.m. It was one of the few places in the Capitol that wasn’t teeming with surveillance videos. As for the first part of the message, Carver could only guess that the window to save the country from military rule was closing fast.
He turned to Eva as the turbulence abated. “It’s time to make a decision. Do we want to survive? Or do we want to retake control of the country?”
“I want both.”
“Unlikely.”
“I don’t see it that way,” Eva said. “We could get to Canada. Go to the media. Use international pressure to force the Joint Chiefs to relinquish power.”
Carver smiled condescendingly. “The Joint Chiefs will never own up to it. They’ll control Dex quietly. He’ll be the face. They’ll be the brains.”
“I’ll go to the media and tell my story.”
“You won’t live long enough to collect the advance on your autobiography. The Canadians will never be able to protect you from Ulysses.”
“Your pessimism isn’t helping.”
“It’s realism. Wake up. Even if they can’t get to you physically, you’ve made it easy for them to completely discredit you.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Your inappropriate relationship with President Hatch makes you an easy target.”
Eva turned red. Her voice quivered. “You’re over the line, Agent Carver.”
“They’ll take every opportunity to depict you as the dead President’s power-hungry mistress who would say anything to get back into the White House. They’ll leak rumors that you ordered his assassination. They’ll hire some hack to make a movie about it. And they’ll stay on message until the entire world believes it.”
Tears streamed down. “Okay, asshole. So we’re doomed? Is that it?”
“No. We have one chance.”
“And what would that be?”
“Join up with Dex Jackson.”
Eva laughed darkly. “Dex and I hardly look at each other at NSA meetings. What makes you think he’d even take my call?”
“We have his wife.”
Washington D.C.
4:10 a.m.
Speers arose from the tunnels beneath the Eisenhower Building, scurried across Pennsylvania Avenue and into the alley behind the Willard Hotel. He ducked behind a garbage dumpster that smelled like two-day-old shellfish. Soon a man in a cook’s uniform popped out the service entrance. He was yammering on a cell phone. “If Linda doesn’t like the fact that we’re seeing each other, then she can move out as far as I’m concerned.” He propped open the door with an empty wine bottle, then ambled down the alley as he talked.
Once the man was out of earshot, Speers slipped behind him and into the open Willard Hotel kitchen. A startled chef looked up and yelled “Security! Security!”
“Calm down!” Speers cried. “I’m with the Administration!” He flashed his White House credentials, but with his hair cut and beard shaved, and dressed in Mr. Tenningclaus’ ill-fitting clothes, he looked nothing like the man in his Federal ID photo. The chef screamed again and banged a large pot with a soup ladle.
A Secret Service agent in a black suit entered with his weapon drawn. Speers closed his eyes and waited for the bullet to come.
“It’s okay,” Speers heard a familiar voice tell the cook. “Calm down. This guy is who he says he is. I got this handled.”
The mountainous Special Agent Hector Rios took Speers by the arm and pulled him roughly into a walk-in freezer. As usual, Rios was immaculately put together. His uniform was tailored to a tee, he was freshly shaved and his hair was slicked back tight atop his scalp. The circles under his eyes told another story. That and his hands. They were trembling.
“Julian,” he said, “I’ve got orders to use deadly force on your ass.”
Speers broke away from Rios’ grip and smoothed his shirt sleeve. “And you think that’s reasonable?”
Rios shook his head. “I get orders, not explanations.”
“You don’t want to hear them.”
“Don’t feed me that line, Chief! I haven’t heard from First Team in three days. Went up to Camp David myself but Ulysses won’t let anyone near it. I’m taking orders from some assistant to the Joint
Chiefs now. What the hell is going on?”
“The President is dead.”
Rios spun around once on his heels and punched a side of frozen beef hanging from the ceiling. “I knew it! I knew it, man!”
“We don’t have much time. Trust me when I say that more people will die unless you get me in to see Dex Jackson.”
Rios, still reeling from the news, shook his massive head. “Doesn’t make any sense.” His thoughts turned to the men he gunned down on Martha’s Vineyard. The smell of gunpowder was still fresh in his senses.
“Hector, did you hear me? I need to see Dex.”
The frozen beef swung into the freezer sidewall as Rios pummeled it once more. “There’s a half dozen agents between the kitchen and his room.”
“Then you’ll have to bring Dex to me.”
*
Jack McClellan, the graying agent who stood on watch outside Dex’s Willard Hotel suite, was less than a year from retirement. He had survived four administrations. He had also survived a gunshot from a would-be assailant during George W. Bush’s presidency. The failed assassination attempt never made the press, thanks to media suppression from the CIA.
For a while after the incident, McClellan had been taken off security detail because there were questions about his ability to shake symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. He’d only made it back to the POTUS rotation this year. Even so, it was more of a retirement present. The other agents were careful never to leave him alone on duty.
Over the past three days, Agent McClellan’s worst fears were all coming back to him. First, the high-level assassinations. Then that sketchy pre-recorded video of the President. Then the rumor that First Team hadn’t reported in. A buddy guarding some high value targets at the Raven Rock bunker had told him off the record that POTUS had never showed there. Beyond spooky.
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