“Talk to you when I get in place,” said Cole.
Well, now here he was on Down River Road in Lewiston. He’d picked a wide spot to pull off and pretend he needed to take a quick nap. Then he walked like he just needed to stretch his legs. Got to a place where he could see the crossing. Not bad. Two National Guard guys stopping everybody, but they were mostly just looking inside cars and passing people through.
Of course, that might just be people they knew. But this was the road that became Wawawai River Road at the border. There were a couple of trucks, too. And those got looked at more carefully. Backs got opened up. Anyplace big enough to hold—well, to hold the kind of stuff that Cole was carrying
Still, nobody was unpacking anything.
He should go north. That’s what Drew and Load both told him. But last thing before he left, Mingo just said, “Barney Fife,” and grinned.
I’m not the U.S. Army invading Iran. I’m not a terrorist with a truck full of explosives to blow up a building or a city. I’m an American citizen crossing through a weird new security checkpoint where there didn’t used to be one. What have I got to be afraid of?
It was too far to see the faces of the guards. If he showed binoculars, that would make him look suspicious. The crossing on Highway 12, right in town, that was a bad one. Lots of guys with guns, lots of traffic, six cars at a time, no way could he cross there. And from here, not too late to turn around, go north; if somebody noticed him, he could say he just pulled off to reset, decide whether to stop by his mother-in-law’s house or not.
He sighed. Stretched. Sauntered back to the truck.
Hot hot day. That was the good thing about going in civvies. He could wear shorts and a T-shirt, sandals.
He got in the truck. It had done okay, crossing over the Rockies, driving more than twenty-five hundred miles. Good truck. Only three hundred miles to go.
He called Drew. This close to the border, they might be eavesdropping. So the call was circumspect. “Mom there?” asked Cole.
“Napping,” said Drew.
“Well tell her I’m on the way.”
Cole turned the key. Started up again. The air-conditioning kicked in. But he turned it off, rolled down the windows.
There was only one car ahead of him. The two guardsmen were looking in the windows. They waved the car on.
Cole pulled up to the portable stop sign. “I really got to do this to get to Washington now?”
“How it is,” said the guardsman. “Air-conditioning broken?”
“Trying to save on gas,” said Cole. “Moving is expensive enough.”
“From where to where?”
“Heading for Pasco.”
“Address there?”
Cole rattled it off. He was tempted to add chatty comments but decided against it. This guy looked serious. Young, but definitely Barney Fife-ish. Full of his authority, like a rookie cop. Didn’t have to go the northern route to get that, after all.
“And where you from?”
“Genesee.” He gave the address, but the guy wasn’t listening.
“Open up the back, please.”
Well, that was routine, he’d seen that from the top of the hill. He got out and headed for the back. Meanwhile, another car pulled up behind him.
The guardsman waved the other car around. “You take this one, Jeff.”
So now it was just Cole and the man in charge. No use wishing it were the other way around. They couldn’t have fit what they needed to carry inside a car trunk. Or even eight car trunks.
“Saw you up on the hill,” said the guardsman.
Shit, thought Cole. “Yep,” he said.
“Deciding whether or not you wanted to come through here?” asked the guardsman.
“I shut my eyes for a few minutes. Then I took a walk to stretch my legs.” Cole let himself sound just a little bit defensive, because he figured a regular citizen probably would. But he didn’t like the way this was going.
“Already tired of driving, just from Genesee?”
“I got up tired this morning,” said Cole. “I loaded the truck yesterday and I’m still sore.”
“Don’t look like the kind of guy gets sore just from loading a truck,” said the guardsman. “In fact, you look like you’re in top physical condition.”
“I used to work out,” said Cole with a smile. But his heart was sinking. The one thing they hadn’t taken into account was that even in civilian clothes, Cole looked military. And in shorts and a T-shirt, his utter lack of body fat was way too easy to see.
The guardsman leaned against the open back of the truck. “What am I going to find when you and I unload this truck?”
“Crappy furniture,” said Cole. “Crappy stuff in nice new boxes. The story of my life.”
The guardsman just kept looking at him.
“Why are you doing this to me, man?” said Cole. “I served my time in Iraq. Do I have to have uniforms hassling me now?”
“Am I hassling you?” asked the guardsman.
Cole sat up on the tail of the truck. “Do what you’ve got to do.”
Another car pulled past them. So Jeff would be busy again for a minute.
The guardsman pulled out the ramp at the back of the truck and walked up, started untying the ropes that were holding the load in place.
And Cole remembered Charlie O’Brien, the guardsman at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. That had been so much easier, soldier to soldier. They each had respect for what the other one was doing.
“You know,” said Cole, “it’s not like Washington is at war with the rest of the United States.”
“I know,” said the guardsman. A rope end dropped down across Cole’s shoulders. “Sorry.”
“It was the President and Vice President and Secretary of Defense of the whole United States that got murdered on Friday the Thirteenth. No matter what your politics were.”
“I know that, too,” said the guardsman.
“So . . . what if the guys who set the whole thing up—the assassinations—fed the information to the terrorists and then invaded New York. What if the U.S. Army had hard information that those guys were inside the state of Washington? What do you think they’d do?”
The guardsman stopped what he was doing. “I think they’d go in and get them.”
“But the state of Washington says they aren’t letting any military in. Which means, if the bad guys are already in the state, the only people being kept out are the good guys. Assuming that you think the assassins are the bad guys.”
“And the U.S. Army doesn’t want to launch a big invasion,” said the guardsman. “They just want something quiet. Something . . . Special Ops.”
“Like that,” said Cole.
The guardsman stood there awhile. “It’d make a difference, though, if those guys were gonna start shooting at guys like me.”
“They’d be crazy to do that, wouldn’t they? I mean, you’re part of the U.S. Army, aren’t you? What is this, a civil war?”
“I hope to God not,” said the guardsman. “We’d get creamed.”
“Nobody’s going to be shooting at the Washington National Guard, I’d bet my life on that.”
“Yeah, but can I bet my life on it?”
The question hung there.
“Man, think about it,” said Cole. “If Special Ops sent a guy in, and he wanted you dead, you think you wouldn’t be dead already?”
The guardsman’s hand strayed to his sidearm. But then his hand went on. To reach for the rope end. Cole got it and handed it to him.
The guardsman started retying the knot.
“Thanks,” said Cole.
“All that bullshit you told me, it was pretty good,” said the guardsman. “But I saw you reconnoitering up there. I knew what I was looking at.”
“And you made sure you were alone when you inspected my truck.”
“Had to know how things were,” said the guardsman. “But there was a guy on the news a month ago. He said, If somebody tells you
to point your gun at a guy just doing his job, then you point it at the guy gave the order.”
Cole felt himself blushing. Damn. Had the guy recognized him? A month later? With a stubbly beard and darker hair and in civilian clothes? Or did it just happen that Cole’s words on O’Reilly made an impression that stuck with the guy, and he didn’t recognize him now at all?
“Glad you watched that program,” said Cole.
The knot was tied.
“Long way to go?” said the guardsman. “I’m betting it isn’t downtown Pasco.”
“A little farther than that,” said Cole.
They pushed the ramp back up under the truck together. Then the guardsman held out his hand. “Appreciate your cooperation, sir.”
“Thanks,” said Cole. “Pleasure to know you.”
Cole walked back to the cab as the guardsman went back to Jeff, who had just waved on a third car. “So you’re not unloading it?” asked Jeff.
“I could see clear to the front,” said the guardsman. “No reason to ruin this guy’s day.”
Cole started the engine and closed the door. He gave a little wave to the guardsman.
The guardsman returned a little hint of a salute and said, “Godspeed.”
EIGHTEEN
APPOINTMENT
The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it, either. Government office should be received like a child’s Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.
It was a surprise press conference—only an hour’s notice—and nobody in the President’s staff knew what it was even about. He hadn’t even told Sandy—or if he did, her slightly irritated shrug when Cecily shot her a questioning glace was a very convincing cover-up.
As President Nielson approached the lectern, Cecily remembered ruefully that one thing LaMonte had always been good at was keeping a secret. He subscribed to the old adage that once you tell somebody—anybody—it’s not a secret anymore. She tried to guess what was going on by seeing who shared the stage with him in the auditorium, but since it consisted of all the cabinet members who were in Gettysburg at the time, plus the House and Senate majority and minority leaders, it was clearly a big deal. They, at least, must know what was going on.
Oh. There was Donald Porter. They must have reached an agreement on letting him be confirmed.
“Thank you for coming on short notice,” said President Nielson. “Yesterday my good friend Donald Porter came to me and we had a good long conversation. At the end of the hour, it seemed clear that I could not dissuade him from his decision to withdraw his name from nomination to be the Vice President of the United States.”
LaMonte went on about Porter’s years of service, but Cecily knew positive spin when she heard it. It was clear that the impasse with Congress over Porter’s confirmation had become a serious barrier to getting anything done, not to mention a hazard to the country, since the United States was currently without either a Vice President or a Speaker of the House, making the eighty-four-year old Senator Stevens the next in line. Nobody liked that situation, least of all Stevens himself, who had even less interest in acquiring the presidency than LaMonte Nielson had had.
So there had been a compromise, and it involved Porter walking away. From everything—since his successor at State, Sarkissian, had already been confirmed, and no SecDef nominee could get past Congress, there was no government job open to Porter at the moment, and little likelihood that he would be confirmed even if there were. So he had suddenly acquired a strong wish to retire from public life, possibly to write and teach.
The real question, though, was whom President Nielson would tap as his new Vice Presidential nominee. He must have discussed it with the leaders of both parties, and they must have agreed, or they would not be sharing the podium right now. Was it somebody on stage, or someone waiting in the wings? It was hard to imagine any of the cabinet officers being acceptable. Was it one of the majority leaders?
“As you know, this office was thrust upon me by the Constitution and the action of enemies of this country. I did not seek it. I had spent my public career as a strong partisan, willing to compromise with members of the opposition party, but always aware of which side I was on.
“What America needs right now is not to take sides. Not a Republican or a Democrat, but a Vice President who can symbolize and represent national unity—America at its best, without division, without rancor, and with the full support of both parties in Congress.
“That naturally means reaching outside the two-party system, outside of the ranks of those who have sought public office. Over the past three years, starting as a frequent consultant to the National Security Adviser, then a full-time aide, and finally for the past month as the National Security Adviser, Averell Torrent has established a brilliant record of public service in a time of national crisis.
“I have never asked him if he was a Republican or a Democrat. I have never needed to. He is a loyal servant of the Constitution and of all the people of this country. I have come to rely on his wise counsel. It is no disrespect to the others who have held the office of the Vice President of the United States to say that it is my firm belief that it has never been held by a person of such wisdom, such intellect, and such a vast breadth and depth of knowledge.
“In some ways, the vice-presidency is a thankless office. But under recent Presidents, the Vice President has been relied on more and more to oversee ever-more-important aspects of government. It is with the full and, dare I say, enthusiastic approval of the leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress that I assure you that I will continue that practice and expand upon it. When he is confirmed, Averell Torrent will be a part of every decision I make as President in fact, he already is—and he will have far-reaching authority of his own, under my direction of course—in fact, he already does.”
With that, President Nielson beckoned Torrent up to the lectern to make a short statement of acceptance—he said almost nothing, keeping his demeanor grave and managing to wear an expression of benign puzzlement, rather like someone who has been given a very lavish gift but didn’t really need it and has no idea where to put it.
Then the party leaders in Congress came forward and they started taking questions. Torrent was deferent—his answers were brief and almost invariably referred the questioner to the President or to the Congressmen.
But to Cecily, it looked like a tour-de-force performance. He wasn’t playing to the room, he was playing to the camera. His voice was quiet and steady, his face calm, his expression pleasant enough, but full of dignity.
He’s running for President already, thought Cecily. He’s creating an image that the voters want to see. He could not have placed himself better. The consensus choice of both parties in Congress. Appointed in order to bring all factions of the country together. Young but not too young. Attractive, intelligent, but not bookish or aloof. Look at him laugh at LaMonte’s little jest. Natural, easy laughter, his whole face involved in the smile. The twinkle in the eyes. But not so handsome he doesn’t look real. Not so brilliant he doesn’t look approachable. He’s never run for office but he knows how to create an image and he’s creating it.
Was it even possible for him to run? Of course it was. It was nearly August, but both political conventions had been postponed in the wake of Friday the Thirteenth. The Democratic convention would be first, in mid-August; the Republican convention right before Labor Day. The Democrats had their likely candidate, who had been about to announce her choice for vice-presidential nominee when the assassinations happened; she had held off since then because it was hard to know, until things settled down, how people would perceive candidates who were strongly identified with the progressive movement within the Democratic Party. She might need to reach for a more mo
derate running mate than she would otherwise have chosen.
No one had locked up the Republican nomination. And now there was a real chance that the nomination might go to Averell Torrent. Everyone in that room knew it. President Nielson had practically said it—what the country needs right now is someone to bring people together. A moderate, a nonpartisan. If that was so good a trait for the Vice President, it would be ten times more important for the President who would be chosen in November.
No one knew what the political fallout of Friday the Thirteenth and the Progressive Restoration’s takeover of New York would be. Up till this moment, President Nielson had looked confused and powerless—because, up till this moment, there had been no good choices available and no power he could exercise without potentially devastating consequences. At a stroke, his nomination of Torrent, and its acceptance by both parties in Congress, made Nielson look far more effective and struck a blow to the heart of the Progressive Restoration’s charge that the Republican administration was a bunch of fanatics who had trashed the Constitution.
In short, if Torrent was the new face of the Republican Party, would state legislatures be so eager to follow along with the push to join with the Progressive Restoration?
Of course, everything depended on how well Torrent stood up to the scrutiny the media would now put him through. His life would be researched and dissected. It helped that he was married to a shy but lovely woman and had two attractive sons and a pretty daughter, all in their teens—the family would be splendid as an image of stability. Even though Torrent had long traveled the country lecturing and giving seminars, there had never been a breath of scandal about sexual peccadilloes. He had inherited a little family money but lived rather simply and while his speaking and teaching fees were respectable, they were not exorbitant. He was not, by any modern standard, rich. It would take fifty Torrents to make an Oprah, by Cecily’s rough estimate.
Cecily liked LaMonte, and felt a great loyalty to him. So she was also a little sad. This appointment made it absolutely clear that LaMonte had no desire to run for President himself. He would go down in history as a caretaker President. And Cecily knew that was exactly what he hoped for—he would want to be remembered as a man who executed the office faithfully, and walked away from it as soon as he had done his job.