It took him aback. It hadn’t occurred to him that it might actually be hard for her to be certain of him. He knew he had nothing to do with the assassination—not deliberately, anyway—but when he thought of how all his activities must look to her, it said something that she believed him. Why should she believe him?
Would I believe me, if I didn’t know what I know?
He put his hand on her cheek. “Trust it,” he said. “And I’ll trust your instinct about LaMonte Nielson, President from Idaho.” He forced something like a laugh. “It’s really kind of like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Farm boy makes good.”
“No,” said Cessy. “LaMonte is the consummate insider. He’s no Jimmy Stewart. But he doesn’t cheat. And he doesn’t kill. And he liked the President. Liked him before he was elected. LaMonte is solid.”
“And yet it was you, not me, that made the connection between Alton’s attitude and what Nielson said to you on the phone.”
“You haven’t yet thanked me for turning down the coolest job I will ever have offered to me.”
“I thought you already had the coolest job.”
She pursed her lips.
“You mean doing meals and dishes and errands isn’t cool?”
“It’s the most important job in the world. That’s why I turned down the coolest job in order to keep doing this one.”
Reuben’s cellphone rang. One of the new ones. “Cole,” he said to Cessy. And then into the phone he said it again. “Cole.”
“Please tell me I didn’t completely screw up,” said Cole.
“No, you did great,” said Reuben. “Kept your cool. Just enough fervency to show you care. Guys out there who might be wavering about joining this coup, I think you might have persuaded some of them not to do it. Maybe a lot of them.”
“Or maybe I started some mutinies. Maybe people will die.”
“People do what they do,” said Reuben. “What you did was remind them of honor.”
“Yeah,” breathed Cole. “I didn’t know for sure they were going to have General Alton on until right before.”
“Well, if you’d bothered to call me first, I could have told you, of course they’d offer him a chance to answer you. Talking heads are bad television, nose to nose is good television.”
“Sure, but I didn’t think he’d do it. If you could have seen him yesterday! It’s like he’s a different guy. What a liar.”
“Yeah,” said Reuben. “But which one was the lie?”
Silence for a long time.
“You think I was being set up?”
“Why should I be the only one?”
“Now that I think about it,” said Cole. “He was so over the top. It’s like he studied the right-wing fanatic playbook. He even said ‘faggots.’ ”
“And dykes?”
“No. I guess he drew the line somewhere. He played me? You really think so? But why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if he played you, and if he did I don’t know why. But one thing’s for sure. The assassination of the President was a terrible thing, but it is not causing so much confusion that there’s any excuse for the military to seize power. If there is a coup, it’s just a naked grab for power. In fact, if there’s a coup, then we can almost count on it that whoever carries it out, that’s who gave my plans to the terrorists. That’s who tipped them off about the President’s location.”
“So it was a right-wing thing,” said Cole. “Like Oklahoma City.”
“Yeah, well, the Left had the Unabomber, though nobody ever seems to remember that his logic sounded just like Al Gore preaching about the environment—crazy as a loon, but full of all kinds of internal politically correct logic.”
“Wackos on both sides.”
“One man’s wacko is another man’s prophet.”
“Meaning one man’s Hitler is another man’s Churchill.”
“Except Churchill never thought up death camps.”
“You know what I meant. There really are good guys and bad guys. But before they have a chance to show you what they do with power, it can be hard to tell them apart.”
“Cole,” said Reuben. “Where are you staying tonight?”
“I haven’t even thought about it.”
“Unless you’re independently wealthy, you can’t afford to stay in Manhattan on a captain’s pay.”
“Hell, I can’t even afford to park my car.”
“So come on out to West Windsor. I’m handing the phone to Cessy to give you directions from the city—she’s been coming here all her life, she knows the route better.”
Cessy took the phone. “He’s just lazy,” she told Cole.
As she gave him the directions, Reuben walked back into the living room. He had paused the program on Alton’s face.
“What’s your game, General Alton?” he said. “Are you that dumb? Or are we?”
Ground Zero
The great breakthrough in human evolution, the one that made civilization possible, was the discovery that two alpha males could form intense bonds of ur-brotherhood instead of the normal pattern of fighting till one is dead or driven away. It is the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu—a man will plunge into hell for his friend. Thus the male DNA is tricked into sacrificing itself to the benefit of unrelated DNA; story triumphs over instinct; the monogamous civitas triumphs over the patriarchal tribe. Instead of one alpha male reproducing his superior genes over and over again, a far higher proportion of males reproduce, even though some die in war. All because human males learned how to trick themselves into loving each other to the point of suicidal madness.
When Cole got to Aunt Margaret’s house, with Cessy guiding him in on his cellphone like an instrument landing in the fog, it was after nine o’clock and all the news channels were full of stories of rumors of a coup, or stories of rumors that the rumors of a coup were a smokescreen to justify a right-wing—or, depending on the station, left-wing—takeover.
“I think,” said Aunt Margaret to Cole, “that you managed to upstage the funerals of the President and Vice President. And the Secretary of Defense might as well not have bothered dying, for all the attention they’re paying to him.”
Cole was eating leftover pasta salad—Aunt Margaret specialized in main-dish salads in which she substituted fresh mozzarella cheese for whatever meat the salad called for. Cole was eating it like he had just discovered food. Still, he took a moment to swallow and then answer. “I’m sure if he’d had it to do over, he’d have skipped that White House meeting.”
Mark and Nick were still up, sitting at the entrance of the hall, where they probably hoped not to be noticed by the adults in the kitchen, because if they were noticed they would doubtless be sent to bed. But Mark couldn’t help laughing, as much because of the way Cole said it right after swallowing and with a forkful of salad still in midair.
Cessy turned on them. “Bed,” she said.
“I didn’t laugh,” said Nick.
“I’m not sending you to bed for laughing,” said Cessy.
“She’s sending you to bed because you’re young,” said Cole. “Being young is an eighteen-year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.”
Nick did laugh at that—Mark just looked at him like he was weird. But they obeyed and left the room.
“Thanks for subverting our parental discipline,” said Reuben to Cole.
“They’re just going to listen from the door of their room,” said Cole.
“They’re obedient children,” said Cessy.
“Big and terrible things are happening in the world,” said Cole. “If you were a kid, would you really be so obedient you wouldn’t sneak a way to listen to what the grownups are trying to protect you from knowing about?”
“No,” said Cessy. “But I’m not a kid, I’m a mother, and I don’t want them to know.”
“You don’t think it’ll scare them worse not to know what’s going on?” asked Cole.
“People without
children always know how to raise them better than their parents do,” said Aunt Margaret. “I speak from experience. I never had kids of my own.”
“None of my business,” said Cole. “Really good salad.”
Reuben looked at Cessy. “We trust Mark not to tell his friends I’m here, and that’s the only secret that has bad consequences if they tell it.”
“I don’t want them to be frightened,” said Cessy.
“I don’t want them to be frightened either,” said Reuben. “So let’s let them come back in.”
“You’re not the one who wakes up with their nightmares.”
“Is that a no?”
“That’s a vote. You have the other vote.”
“Is that permission?” asked Reuben.
“Grudging permission, full of possible I-told-you-sos.”
“Good enough for me.” Then, without raising his voice even a bit, he said, “All right, boys, you can come back.”
The scampering of feet began instantly.
Cole grinned, with flecks of basil on his teeth and lips. Cessy handed him a napkin.
“See,” said Cole, “when I go home, my parents still send me out of the room when they discuss things.”
“You’re the baby of the family?”
“Yep,” said Cole. “They still call me Barty.” And before Reuben could call him by that name, Cole raised a hand. “They’re the only people alive who call me that.”
With the boys back in the hallway and Aunt Margaret stirring fresh raspberries into the soft homemade ice cream she had in the freezer, they got down to business.
It seemed perfectly natural for Cessy to take charge, because she was the one who had more experience inside the Washington bureaucracy. Not that Reuben and Cole hadn’t dealt with bureaucracy for years in the military, but that was on the Pentagon side, where people actually did what they were told, more or less.
Cessy laid it out on paper. A chart showing:
The terrorists, the unknown person who gave Reuben’s plans to them, the unknown White House staffer who told them when the President would be in that room, the unknown person or persons who suppressed cellphones and cut landlines at Hain’s Point and who fired at Reuben and Cole from the trees.
General Alton and his coup conspiracy—represented by a dotted line, because it might exist and it might not, and if it did exist it might be connected with the assassination and it might not.
President Nielson, who might or might not be connected in some way to Alton and his perhaps nonexistent conspiracy.
And, of course, Reuben, Cole, and Reuben’s jeesh.
“Who benefits?” asked Cessy.
“Define ‘benefit,’ ” said Reuben. “I mean, usually you think money or power or sex or vengeance. Plenty of people hated the President. The media aren’t covering it, but the Internet is full of blogs and pictures talking about people openly celebrating the assassination—like fireworks and signs and riding around honking horns.”
“Yes, but those idiots didn’t have access,” said Cessy.
“But there might be people who feel the way they feel who did have access.”
“Working in a Republican White House?” asked Cessy.
“A housekeeper. A clerk. It didn’t have to be somebody who agreed with the President’s politics. There’s no ideological test for White House custodial staff. Or the Secret Service, for that matter.”
“It was Clinton the Secret Service guys hated,” said Cole.
“Some Secret Service guys,” said Reuben.
“You’re not seriously suggesting this, are you?” asked Cessy.
“I just think there are too many people who think a dead President is, in this case, a good idea. They might be people who think they just saved America from the death of freedom. I mean, think of the rhetoric that’s been flying around Washington for the past years. Hate hate hate. Most dangerous President ever. Constitution crumbling. All our sacred rights and values being thrown away.”
“Or being restored,” said Cole.
“Exactly,” said Reuben. “I think we have to look at this in the context of the run-up to a civil war. There are two sides that see the world so radically differently that they truly believe that anyone who disagrees with them is evil or stupid or both. In that context, you really do find people who are willing to kill. Or help those who want to kill. I can imagine somebody telling himself—or herself, because we’re keeping an open mind here—telling herself that yes, she’s helping terrorists, but this time it won’t be innocent office workers and firemen and cops in the twin towers, this time it’ll be the one who’s causing all the trouble, it’ll be the source of evil himself.”
“So what you’re saying is that we can’t look at motive,” said Cessy.
“There are too many motives. Too many reasons why someone would want to help kill the President.”
“Then how do we find them?” asked Cessy. “The conspiracy is real enough.”
Cole raised his hand off the table. Just a little wave, since he felt like something of an interloper, interrupting these two. After all, he’d only just met them yesterday. Though it had been a pretty full thirty-six hours. “Um,” said Cole, “why is this our job? I mean, isn’t the FBI working on this?”
“Are you sure the FBI has no elements within it that were part of the conspiracy?” asked Cessy. “Nothing to conceal?”
“Hey, I’m just saying,” said Cole, “this isn’t what we know how to do. There are hundreds of people, thousands of them, who are all trained at this.”
“We have an extra motive,” said Reuben. “All those people are being fed a lot of evidence that points at me. And after your performance on TV tonight, I’m betting there’s a lot of evidence pointing at you, now, too.”
“If General Alton is for real,” said Cessy.
“So if we leave it up to those investigators, who are under enormous pressure to come up with answers now,” said Reuben, “then the answer they’re going to come up with is me. And maybe us.”
“And don’t forget,” said Aunt Margaret cheerfully, “that your wife was once a well-beloved member of the new President’s team.”
“She’s right,” said Cessy. “People who are looking for conspiracy seize on every single coincidence and make something of it.”
“Yeah,” said Cole, “but isn’t that exactly what we’re doing?”
“Sure,” said Reuben, “with the difference being that we don’t consider ourselves possible suspects.”
“So our guesses will be better than theirs,” said Cessy.
“So why are you letting people interrupt you?” said Cole. “Go on. Go ahead.”
Cessy patted his hand. “It was a good question,” she said. Then she turned back to Reuben across the table from her. “If we can’t use motive to narrow the list of suspects, then what do we use?”
“Means,” said Reuben. “Opportunity. Connections.”
“A whole lot of people in the White House could have known where the President was.”
“But they would have to have been alone, out of earshot of anybody else for at least a few minutes during the time between the decision to hold the meeting in that particular room and the time the rockets hit.”
“The decision?” asked Cole. “Do they issue a go order right then? What about timing it so you’re on Hain’s Point? Was that part of the choice?”
“Meeting rooms change unpredictably,” said Cessy. “I think that’s standard policy in the Secret Service. Ever since they tried to kill the first President Bush in Kuwait back in… whenever.”
“But the meeting was expected to be a long one, right?” said Cole. “I mean, you don’t bring that group together for a meeting and then adjourn in fifteen minutes. You have a long agenda.”
“So the terrorists could have gotten the go from their White House contact when the meeting actually started,” said Cessy.
“How far from the point where the scuba tanks went into the water till they got
to the Tidal Basin?” asked Reuben.
“We don’t know where that point was,” said Cole.
“Couldn’t have been in the channel. That’s right in front of Fort McNair and Anacostia Naval Base and Boiling Air Force Base, for pete’s sake,” said Reuben.
“So we need to find out the capacity of those scuba tanks and how much air was left in them,” said Cessy, “in order to find out how much time elapsed between their going into the water and reaching the Tidal Basin.”
“And that tells us the timeframe in which the White House contact had to be alone to make his call,” said Reuben.
Again Cole raised his hand a little. “I don’t mean to cause trouble here.”
“Which means ‘I don’t want you to be mad at me for causing trouble,’ ” said Aunt Margaret. But her smile was encouraging. It seemed she had taken it upon herself to encourage Cole to contribute and stop apologizing for it.
“Somebody’s already figuring this out and we don’t have the resources to do it ourselves,” said Cole. “Who do we have inside the White House?”
“Yesterday, we had nobody,” said Cessy. “Today we have… oh, nobody much… only the President.”
Mark laughed at that. Reuben almost said something sharp to him, but he saw that Nick had already clapped a hand over Mark’s mouth and Mark was letting him, which meant Mark agreed that Nick was right that he should shut up, and anyway, it was Reuben who had insisted the boys should be able to listen.
“More to the point,” said Cessy, “we have Sandy Woodruff.”
“Whose role is completely undefined,” said Reuben. “Which means that the existing White House staff is going to circle the wagons to freeze her out.”
“Or suck up to her outrageously because she has the President’s ear and can help them stay,” said Cessy.
“Oh. That’s right. Different rules from the Pentagon.”
“And then the other question—who had opportunity to get your plans,” said Cessy.
“It all depends on finding out which version was planted—which DeeNee is working on—and then she’ll know who had their hands on it and can start finding out where it got before it vanished,” said Reuben.
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