Chapel met Meredith Leadbetter in Pratella’s old Senate office. It hadn’t been reassigned yet. She hadn’t been spending a lot of time at the State building lately. Especially since he’d told her to stand by. “Your nation’s going to be calling on you,” he’d said. He’d been smiling, so she hadn’t been able to tell if his phrasing was genuine or a put-on. He was unreadable, yet open. His every word was either sincere or cynical, depending on what the listener wanted. Brilliant. Christ, the man was good. She pitied the politicians who tried to fight him.
Now, he asked, “Ready for your close-up?”
Leadbetter flipped through the hard copy of her speech. The sheaf of papers was a prop. She had the thing memorized. The sheaf was a crutch. She feared a memory blank during the performance of her life. “I’m ready,” she said, and knew she was. The nerves were there, but the resolve was, too. There were also some doubts. Not about the cause, not about the ends. The means and methods were another story. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“A bit late to be asking me that.” He wasn’t smiling. He was judging.
“Maybe. But I’m asking. Is all this necessary?”
Chapel checked his watch. He opened the office door and invited her through. She stepped into the corridor. At the far end, she saw a man in military fatigues. He was cradling an assault rifle. He was not one of the security guards she knew. Chapel began walking so aggressively and so close to her that he forced her to fall into step as effectively as if he had grabbed her by the arm. “Yes,” he hissed. “Yes, it’s fucking necessary.” Each consonant was a dagger thrust. “Why are you so concerned, now? You swallowed the Hamptons being nuked just fine. Don’t answer. I’ll tell you why. You have to play for real, now. No plausible deniability. No hiding behind me. This fails, and I go down, then you go down, too.”
The blows struck home. She didn’t answer.
Chapel continued. “Think carefully. If we fail, do you really believe that the country can survive?”
Silence. He was waiting. The corridor stretched endless, echoed hollow, ended in a gun. Her heart pounded. “No,” she answered, frightened but honest. “It can’t.”
“So grow a pair,” Chapel snapped. “Because if you’re not up what has to be done, I’ll find someone who is.”
“Get out of my space and let me do my job,” she said. Resolve and conviction were ascendant.
Blaylock moved through black, found light again, followed it until she reached the outlet pipe’s opening. She looked toward the bridge. It was still shrouded in smoke. It was becoming indistinct as dusk fell. Media and police helicopters were flies buzzing a corpse. She read confusion in the movements. This was all reactive. There was no direction. Chapel still had the advantage of chaos and surprise. His hand was free.
She dropped from the pipe and let the current carry her downriver. She pulled herself ashore on the Mall near the Fourteenth Street bridges. She was a sodden, filthy mess. She was a sight. Two middle-aged tourists were staring at her. After a moment, the woman asked, “Are you all right?”
“Fell out of my boat,” Blaylock explained.
“Are there rapids near here?” the man asked. He was taking in her cuts and bruises.
“Got a phone I can borrow?” she replied.
Chapel stood in the Public Gallery, watching the Senate Chamber fill for its emergency session. He was trying to temper his elation. It was an exalted mix of triumph, vindication, pride, and love. The love was what opened the door to the necessary humility. Love for his country, for the beautiful dream it represented. He looked over the Chamber. He saw history and tradition made concrete. The classical lines of the architecture were the bedrock of history and the grandeur of the American Experiment. This was the majesty of democracy. The mahogany desks, arranged in a close-packed semicircle around the dais, were tactile tradition. The names of senators were carved inside drawers, but the desks had indentities that transcended the individual politicians who sat at them. If one became the Chamber’s storehouse of candy, no senator would dare break the pattern. That was the force of tradition. That was what Chapel was saving. The surgery was radical. The patient was on life support. But Chapel was cutting the cancer out, once and for all.
He had no illusions about what he was doing. He was staging a coup. He was dealing his country a harsh blow. But America had survived a civil war. It would survive this. It wouldn’t survive without the coup. The Turkish army had preserved that country’s secular state by force. This was the same principle. He hoped Leadbetter appreciated the importance of her moment. It was far more than the installation of a sensible president. She would be providing constitutional sanctification to his extra-constitutional manoeuvre. Her speech would be the seal on the event. The coup would enter the mythology of the nation as the necessary evil that preserved its institutions. The message from the centre of power would be one of stability. From the heart of the nation, the news would course along the arteries of the media, and the bodies politic and public would know that the right measures had been taken, and that the dark crisis had passed.
It was hard not to feel proud.
Then his phone vibrated, and it was Quintero on the line, and Chapel knew he was calling to spoil things. “What is it?” he asked.
“Something happened to the snatch team.”
Chapel closed his eyes for a moment, breathed heavily through his nose. You mean someone happened to them, he thought. The bitch was immortal. “How bad is it?” he asked, and hoped that their scrambler was up to the job.
“I lost contact with Maldonado shortly after they entered. When I couldn’t raise him, I sent another team back for a look. There had been a firefight. The tunnel collapsed.”
“Survivors?”
“None that could be found.”
“What about Hallam?”
“I don’t know. He’s either under the rock, or on the other side of it somewhere in the sewers.”
“The woman?”
“No sign of her.”
Too much to hope that she’d been crushed. She might have Hallam. Act on the worst-case scenario. “Is the perimeter secure?”
“Soon.”
“Send whoever you can spare to Pennsylvania Avenue. And no one gets in here. Kill anyone who tries.”
“Anyone.” The word wasn’t a question. It was an anticipation.
“That’s right.”
“And anyone includes…”
“It’s getting dark. Tragic mistakes happen.”
“Yes, they do.”
The dark was tangible. It pushed back against Flanagan. It slowed him. It confused him. Each step was a frightened prayer. He kept one hand against the tunnel wall and shuffled along like an old man, moving his feet no more than a few inches at a time. If the ground was going to vanish, he didn’t want it to be a surprise. He and Hallam took their awkward parade down the tunnel for a hundred yards, and then Flanagan’s hand lost the wall. He fumbled in air.
“What is it?” Hallam asked.
“Just a second.” He found concrete again. He held on to the corner of the wall. They were at a branch. He felt around with his foot. He couldn’t tell if the path continued on as well or not. “We have to make a decision,” he said.
“Do you have any idea where we are?”
“Do you?”
“That’s what I thought. Any suggestions?”
“Well, I don’t know what’s ahead. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stick to where I can feel a wall.”
“No argument there.”
They followed the wall left. This path lasted a few hundred yards. They hit another intersection. “If we go left again, we’re going to be doubling back,” Flanagan said.
“We’ll have to risk getting wet.”
“Yeah.”
They formed a short human chain. Hallam kept one hand on the wall, and stretched the other out to hold Flanagan’s. Flanagan shuffled out into void. His toes curled as he found the end of the walkway. He used the president as a pivot point and edged from left to right. His feet touched metal. He reached down, found a railing. “Here,” he said. They crossed, and carried on forward. So far so good.
“We could be down here a long time,” Hallam commented, bringing down the mood.
“We’d better not be,” Flanagan answered, thinking of the train wreck going on upstairs.
“No,” Hallam agreed.
Half an hour later, they found rungs leading up. Flanagan climbed first. The ladder ended at an access cover. The first light he had seen since the explosion came through the holes. It was dim, little more than a dirty grey. He thought it was about right for the state of hope. He heard foot and vehicular traffic. The sounds broke the wall of darkness. He reached up and pushed against the metal. It gave him nothing. He braced his feet, leaned against the wall, and heaved with both arms. Nothing. Implacable. “Shit,” he muttered.
“Is there room for us both?” Hallam asked.
Flanagan moved to the left. It was a squeeze, and he only had one foot firmly on a rung. But the pipe narrowed, and he was able to lean against it. Hallam clambered up next to him, and the two began pounding the cover. It took them a few tries to get their blows synchronized, but then they had the rhythm. After the first dozen hits, Flanagan heard the first scrape of shifting metal. They hit harder. The cover jerked. They pushed. It groaned. They heaved it out of the way and climbed out onto the pavement. They were on a sidewalk. People looked at them, gave them a wide berth. The president was unrecognized and anonymous. For the moment, that was a good thing. Flanagan looked around. “Where are we?”
“Constitution Avenue, I think.”
There was a what now? moment. Then Hallam said, “I have to get back to the White House.”
Flanagan tried to think like Blaylock. She would see the strategic angles. She would play at being the enemy, decide what she would do if she were Chapel. “I wonder if that’s a good idea,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“That ambush was very, very public.” He worked through the implications. “The people doing this aren’t afraid of being seen, which means they feel strong. They want you badly, or at least they want you out of the picture. If they’re looking for you, what’s the first place they would expect you to head for?”
“How would they stop me? The Secret Service—”
“—thinks you’re either dead or abducted. Your people sure aren’t expecting you to come strolling home.”
“The army—”
“—isn’t here yet. Assuming it’s going to be.”
“You think it won’t?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how far the conspiracy goes. Given some of what’s gone down, the roots must run pretty deep. There must be a lot of players out there, even if many of them aren’t directly involved. But they can do you a lot of harm just by doing nothing, or by acting slowly.”
“Well, fuck,” said the president. He turned on his heel and took a couple of angry strides towards the street. “This goddamn well can’t be happening here.”
“You have no idea how long I’ve been saying the same thing to myself.”
Hallam stood, fists to hips, head down. After a few moments, without raising his head or looking back at Flanagan, he said, “All right. The first thing we need to do is find a TV, see what the story is.”
Good, Flanagan thought. That made a lot of sense. Learn the narrative. See how they could work with it. If they could.
They started down the sidewalk, two men in ragged, toilet-reeking clothes. “I doubt anyone’s going to put out the welcome mat for us,” Flanagan said.
“No,” Hallam answered. He pointed. “But they won’t yank it away.” A block down, neon beer ads blinked in a bar window. Blake’s, the bar was called. The sign would have been an antique if it weren’t so thuggish in its decrepitude. The bar was the sort of establishment that hadn’t been typical of Foggy Bottom for decades. Somehow, it had withstood a half-century of revitalization. It crouched with misanthropic pride on its corner. It wasn’t going anywhere, and would take on any comer who thought otherwise. As they approached, Flanagan caught the blue flicker of a screen.
“Think they’ll turn off ESPN for our sakes?” he asked.
“Ten dollars says they’re watching the news. It’s been a big kind of day, wouldn’t you say?”
Flanagan would. And Hallam was right. The box was tuned to CNN. The clientele was a good match for the bar, as if hand-picked by the building. There was no boasting, brawling or pool going on. There was very little drinking. All eyes were on the screen. The volume was up loud and the chatter was down. Flanagan could hear the TV from the doorway. The tone of the anchors and reporters had a comrades-in-arms urgency. There was genuine fear. They were freaked. They didn’t know what was happening. They needed reassurance just as much as their audience. The hairs on the back of Flanagan’s neck stirred. The psychology was worrying. It was the need that alarmed him more than the fear. He wasn’t sure why. Then the scene shifted to the Capitol and the Senate Chamber, and his alarm took on definition. An emergency session of the Senate was in progress. Secretary of State Meredith Leadbetter was expected to make a speech very shortly. The anchor reminded his audience three times in two minutes what the rules of succession were, and what that meant about Leadbetter. Flanagan heard the desperate hope in the man’s voice, and his skin prickled cold. He saw the same frightened-child hope in the faces of the bar’s patrons. The TV was going to comfort them. It was going to tell them that things were under control. It was going to tell them that everything would be all right. There were people in charge. They were going to end the nightmare.
And that was all that mattered. Who the people were, what their goals were, and what responsibility they might have for the nightmare were irrelevant issues. Don’t think about them, and you’ll be warm and cozy in your bed tonight.
Flanagan saw a maw open wide to swallow the last traces of the American Experiment. It took an effort not to scream. He looked at Hallam, and saw the same horror etched on the man’s face.
“We have to stop this,” the president said. There was a payphone beside the entrance. He and Flanagan had enough change between them for a couple of calls. “I’ll damn well get straight through to the Senate,” Hallam said. “Get George Lind to raise hell and sound the trumpet that I’m safe.” He punched the numbers. Flanagan watched him listen, frown, hang up and try again. And again. And again. “I can’t get through,” he said. “To anyone. All their cell phones are off.”
A coincidence Flanagan didn’t buy. “We should find the nearest television station,” he offered.
Hallam shook his head. “That wouldn’t be enough.”
“You don’t think your being alive after all would prompt a cutaway or three?”
“Assuming they can in the first place.” Flanagan hadn’t thought of that. “Even if they could, no, it wouldn’t be enough. A single network wouldn’t be. Didn’t you notice what station that box is set to?”
“CNN.”
“Look again.”
Flanagan did. “Oh, no.” The feed was CNN, but the logo at the bottom right of the screen was ESPN. Everybody was airing this.
“If their little game plays out, I’m finished. It won’t matter if I’m alive or not. There will be an official story, and no one is going to want to see it changed.”
“What are you saying?”
“I have to be there. In the Senate. I have to stop this thing myself, and I have to be seen to do so.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
Sweat ran rivulets through the grime on the man’s forehead. He was caked in filth. His eyes were red. He looked ready to drop. His face was a mask of grief and fear. And to Flanagan he suddenly looked ten feet tall. “You know,” Flanagan said, impressed, “I think my girlfriend would really like you.”
“That’s nice. Would she have a plan to get me into the Senate?”
“She just might,” Flanagan said to Hallam’s surprised face.
Luzhkov picked Blayock up on Fourteenth Street. “Anything good?” he asked.
“More casualties on their side. Everything else is bad. What can you tell me?” When she heard about the safe house, she asked, “How badly are we hurting?”
“It was a strong hit. We still have a good strike force in the city.”
“You’re gathering them?”
“That’s where I’m taking you.”
“Good.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I’m not sure. Stop that somehow.” She pointed at the radio. Luzhkov had it on, and the airwaves were singing with Leadbetter’s approaching coronation.
“How?”
“I’m working on that.” Meaning she didn’t have a clue. She felt like a blunt instrument. A hammer obsessively turning the world into nails. She refused to acknowledge Chapel’s tactical superiority. War was hers. No one else could have it. But her imagination was stymied.
And then her phone rang, and it was Flanagan, and everything changed. Inspiration blossomed. The energy surged back. War embraced her.
Leadbetter was taking her time. Chapel watched the senators becoming restless. When he had left her to head for the Public Gallery, he thought she was going to march right in. That had been twenty minutes ago. If she was having cold feet, he would kill her and work his way down the line of succession until the job was his, if he had to. He stroked the cell phone jammer on the bench beside him. The Senate would be getting no information that he didn’t control. No more phone calls for anyone. Beside him was the field radio he would use to communicate with Quintero.
He saw George Lind, senior senator for Mississippi, make a show of shifting his bulk to his feet, and just as loudly begin stuffing papers into his briefcase. Matin Poole, his Junior, leaned over and said something Chapel didn’t catch. “I don’t care,” Lind declaimed. “I surely don’t. I’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow, and then maybe we can rise from our cushy asses and actually do something for the suffering nation.”
Cute speech, Chapel thought, as he thundered down the stairs. Always play to the cameras. They’re always on. You should be, too. Good, good, good, but time to spoil the grand exit. Lind was just stepping out of the chambers when Chapel reached the door. The senator stopped when he saw Quintero’s men. Chapel walked up to him. “I’m sorry, Senator,” he said. “But I’m going to have to insist that you remain at your desk.”
Lind tried to bluster. “By whose authority?”
“Senator, there has already been one terrorist strike today. We have credible information that suggests all of you would be targets as well should you leave at this time.” He wasn’t lying. Quintero’s shoot-to-kill orders applied not just to anyone approaching the Capitol.
“Oh,” Lind said, at a loss. “I see.” Pale, he turned around and went back inside. Good little lamb. Chapel watched him through the doorway. Lind had just settled down, his bulging briefcase a forgotten pet at his feet, when Leadbetter entered. As she approached the podium, Chapel saw that he was stupid to have worried. Her face was set, driven. She’d been creating anticipation through delay. Good move. Everyone would really be listening now. Chapel ran in his limping hop back to the Public Gallery. Leadbetter was still staring at her notes when he arrived, as if this speech were the last one she would ever want to make. Oh, you’re good, Chapel thought. This was someone he could work with.
She began to speak.
They didn’t have long for their moment, but at least they had it. What Blaylock saw in Flanagan’s face was complete absolution for her clumsy rescue attempt. It was a forgiveness she wasn’t sure she wanted. She didn’t like the excitement that radiated from him. “Are you all right?”
“Good to go.” He sounded almost cocky.
“Did you enjoy what happened?” she asked, stern.
He calmed down. “Of course not.”
“Good.” She touched his face. “I need you to be okay.”
“I am. I’m getting the hang of this thing, wouldn’t you say?”
A wrench in her heart. “I wish I couldn’t.”
Flanagan spread his hands. “It’s what you promised, Jen.”
Blood and fire. All I can promise you is blood and fire. “I guess it is.” He was fine. He was swimming in the element. He was alive. They were together. Where was the problem? She kissed him.
The problem was in what he might become, and what she would miss if that happened.
But for now, there was more blood and fire to be had.
Hallam knew he should be beyond surprise. He was doing his best. The day had thrown enough at him to jade him into catatonia. So when he and Flanagan were picked up by the woman who had passed herself off as a journalist and, he was sure, killed Patrick Pratella, he had only been half-surprised. His current surroundings were harder to take. He’d been taken to a warehouse. It was an arsenal and a mustering hall. He saw automatic rifles and RPG launchers, Claymores and machine guns. He saw many objects he didn’t recognize, but whose black metal was enough to mark them as killers. The air was filled with the clash of a global village of accents. Men stripped weapons, applied camouflage, loaded up for battle. He was surrounded by the United Nations of professional warriors. In every face, he saw the same passion, the same joy. It was the fierce love of battle for its own sake. There was something else, too, that he couldn’t identify.
“What do you think?” The woman had appeared at his shoulder.
“About what?”
“About the army that’s going to save you and your country.”
Hallam weighed his answer. He decided on honesty. “It’s not what I’m used to,” he said. He thought about the troop reviews he had attended over the years. He thought about the faces there, and realized what was missing from the faces here. “These men aren’t what I’d call patriots.”
“I should damn well hope not.”
“Then what are they fighting for?”
“It’s what they do, and they do it well.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“Isn’t it? You prefer your soldiers to be ideologically driven? You prefer a level of fanaticism? Isn’t that exactly what you’re dealing with now?”
“You might be right.” He was deliberately noncommittal. He didn’t want to get into an argument with her. He didn’t agree, though. These were more than just soldiers for hire. They might have been at some point, but he didn’t smell a profit motive now. There was just as much belief here as in any national force. He didn’t know what the belief was, and that disturbed him.
“Excuse me,” the woman said. She made her way forward, to a raised platform at one end of the warehouse. The room fell silent as she mounted it. Preparations ceased. She started to speak. The address was no St. Crispin’s Day oration. She didn’t promise glory. She laid out the situation. She called the odds as she saw them. The only thing she offered was slaughter, and she wasn’t guaranteeing whose. Hallam didn’t hear a single phrase of boosterism. Yet his skin prickled. His pulse quickened. He felt a stirring excitement at the prospect of battle and blood. His vision tunnelled, the woman and her words becoming his only focus. She presented the facts calmly, clearly, and each datum was another promise of gigantic war. In Hallam’s chest, an awful joy ignited.
He blinked, shook off the spell. His skin prickled even more, this time from fear. He looked around at the faces again, and this time put his finger on what he hadn’t understood earlier. These men weren’t fighting for God or country. They weren’t fighting for an idea. They weren’t even fighting for money. Despite what the woman had said, he thought those might be the less frightening alternatives. No, they were fighting for her, and for the thing she incarnated. They might not think so. He suspected some quite honestly were touched by some form of idealism, a desire to do the right thing. He saw that in Flanagan. He saw it in Luzhkov. But it wasn’t all, and it wasn’t enough. It was a veneer, a lure that pulled them over the woman’s event horizon. He felt the tug, was struggling against it. He didn’t doubt that he needed her. He wanted to believe that she knew right and wrong. It was the core that terrified him, her singularity. If he reached it, if he stripped away the framework of morality, he didn’t know if he would find anything other than pure war. Then, even through his fear, the undertow took him. He watched her pace. He listened to her speak. He saw shadows gather around her, making her grow in stature until she filled the room. He saw her transformed into an angular demon, a patchwork of movement and sharp edges that stalked the parapet of hell. He saw the war machine, and her quiet words were the clanking roar of a juggernaut.