2030

by Albert Brooks

  When Li finished his speech he received another standing ovation. Laura was backstage and felt as though it was her accomplishment, too. Her idea of getting him in front of this crowd had turned out perfectly.

  Later that night Paul Prescott and Robert Golden held a small dinner for the Lis at one of Miami’s most exclusive restaurants. At the dinner was the governor of Florida, the mayor of Miami, Laura’s father, and another senator from Illinois.

  It was Christopher Martin, Florida’s governor, who said something in jest that planted the seed that evening. After a few drinks he toasted Shen Li and said, “If Congress can finally amend the Constitution and let this guy run for president, he’ll win!” Everyone laughed and drank to the toast. But Laura Li had one of those moments that people dream about, a moment when the future is clearly laid out and all one has to do is follow it. She looked at her father, and it seemed from his expression that he had the same exact moment.

  * * *

  Watching Betsy Bernstein go through her daily duties as First Lady of the United States, one would never suspect that her marriage was ending. She had made a decision that she would not leave during the first term, even if it meant staying in separate bedrooms or spending more time away from the White House. But she knew she could not do this again.

  She had to ask herself if it would change the way she felt about her husband if he did not choose to run for a second term. The answer was no. It wasn’t about his job or her job, it was about the feelings that had disappeared from their marriage years ago, and Betsy wanted those feelings back, even if it meant finding another person.

  No one on the President’s team wanted this separation to happen, including Susanna Colbert. Susanna knew that Bernstein relied on her for emotional support and she knew that they probably were in love with each other, but she was practical. She loved her job, more than she had thought she would, and she wanted another four years. She was smart enough to know that if Betsy left her husband, everything would change, most of all her relationship with the President. And the fact was, she had no real desire to share the President’s bed.

  Susanna liked the arrangement she had with her husband and did not want to leave him. She rather enjoyed the sneaking around, having moments with the President of the United States that no one else was having. It was enough for her. But unfortunately, she did not get to choose.

  And there was still the Nate Cass problem. John Van Dyke had chosen to do nothing. Susanna was on the receiving end of what were becoming more frequent and more threatening calls. Finally, Nate Cass came to Washington and insisted on one last meeting. This time he asked to come to the White House.

  Susanna agreed to see him, and when he walked into her office he was blunt and quick. “I am not used to being ignored. Especially after doing a favor as big as this. I don’t know what is going on, but the investigation is continuing. I will make it as difficult as possible for the President to have another term if something is not done immediately. That’s all I can say.”

  “Nate, I’m doing what I can. I have to go through channels; this is not something I can bring directly to the Oval Office, and you know that. I’m doing what I can.”

  Nate Cass had no more sympathy and no more tolerance for excuses. “I want the favor returned and I want it returned now. That’s it. You won’t hear from me again. But I will be there when it’s time to get this man reelected, and believe me, Susanna, you will want me on your side.” Then he left her office.

  Susanna thought for a long time. Could he really use his money to keep the President from being reelected? After all, he wasn’t a big Democratic supporter to begin with, so what would the loss really amount to? Then again, she never wanted that kind of man as an adversary. So the problem was clear. Get his brother off the hook or endure his wrath. Either one seemed unpleasant, but if the Treasury Department was ever caught stifling an ongoing investigation, wouldn’t that be worse than having Nate Cass as an enemy? That was a question that had to be answered immediately.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  They were in the middle of dinner when Jack Willman looked at his wrist. He spoke to someone but Paul Prescott couldn’t tell who it was. The way Jack was whispering, Paul jokingly accused him of having an affair. “Can I see?” Paul asked. “Share with the whole class.”

  Jack motioned for him to be quiet. Whatever this was, it was serious. As Jack looked at the person on his watch and spoke softly, Paul could make out only a few words. Words like “When?” and “How?” and “How reliable is this?” When Jack disconnected he was white as a sheet. He said he had to go back to Justice, even though it was nine o’clock in the evening.

  “What is it?”

  “You know I tell you everything, but I can’t talk about this until we’re sure.”

  “It’s me. Don’t do that. Sure of what?”

  “There could be an attack in the next twenty-four hours. Somewhere in Miami.”

  “Old people?”

  “What else?”

  “Jesus. I was just there!”

  “The people we’re tracking came to the AARP event.”

  “Come on! And you didn’t tell me?”

  “We didn’t know it beforehand. They were seen leaving and going to a motel. If I’d known they were going to be there, I would have told you.”

  “Well, they didn’t cause any trouble at the event. How do you know they’re planning something?”

  “Listen, this might be nothing, but they don’t ask me to come back at this hour for the fun of it. If there’s something planned that I can warn you about I will, but they’re trying to catch these guys. If too many people know it too early it can ruin the sting.”

  “Jack, I’m not too many people. I’m in charge of the largest senior group in the world. I have to protect my membership.”

  Jack got up.

  “I wouldn’t even know what to tell you now if I did know something. The target isn’t clear and nothing seems set in stone, it’s just what we’re hearing. Let me go to my office, and I swear to God if there’s anything that can help you, you’ll know first.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Paul, I don’t know. This is early information. It may be minor.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  “You know you can’t.”

  “I’ll be home,” Paul said. “Anything, anything at all, you have to contact me immediately.” Jack gave him a kiss on the top of the head and left the restaurant. Paul wanted to call Robert Golden—he wanted to be a hero with some secret information—but he didn’t have anything concrete and he didn’t want to be responsible for a sting going badly.

  * * *

  Max Leonard and Louie were in one van driving toward the port of Miami. Behind them were the four other associates. All of them were wearing uniforms that could help them pass for the retirement ship’s personnel, the same generic white uniforms that everyone from the waiters to assistant captains wore. What made the uniforms look official were the pins.

  The pins had a small holographic model of The Sunset that, when first made years earlier, had been hard to duplicate. But they had never been changed and Andre, one of the men on Max’s team who was good at everything technical, easily made fakes that couldn’t be distinguished from the original.

  Each night in port, from eleven P.M. to four A.M., maintenance was performed on the ship. Garbage was removed and food supplies were loaded for the next day. Twenty-five people came and went, and some of them had uniforms and others didn’t, but all had identification, which Max and his associates had also successfully duplicated.

  They knew that if all six of them went on board together it would cause suspicion, but if two went with the garbage team, two went with the kitchen staff, and another two walked on board as if they belonged on the bridge, they could pull this off.

  Andre, the one who built the model that Kathy Bernard had seen, knew these ships inside and out. He had the plans, he knew the nooks and crannies, and he had also w
orked on one for four months. He knew there were several easily opened storage rooms that people rarely used. One room, on the same floor as the infirmary, held extra medical supplies, everything from oxygen and spare beds to canned food and batteries. During the entire time Andre worked on board he never saw anyone go in that room. He even set up little traps, like leaving toilet paper on the floor just inside the door, something people would disturb if they walked in. After a week, the toilet paper was still there. So not only was this particular room viewed as safe, but it was large enough for the six of them and had food and bottled water to boot. Their plan was to board the ship in small groups and meet in this room at exactly three-thirty A.M.

  The next morning at eight o’clock the ship was scheduled to move out of port and go three miles north to the berth where it would stay for the next two months. The retirement ships always overlapped each other. One would pull in while the other was nearby, ready to depart. That would allow people a day or two to mingle with their friends from other ships. The retirees always liked to see how the other groups were living—who had the cleaner pools, the better deck chairs, and the prettier women.

  Max and his associates knew if the ship was tied up in port it would be difficult to accomplish their goal, but as soon as it was at sea, even if it was only going a few miles north to the permanent dock, they could execute their plan.

  They were shocked at how easy it was to board. They had gone to all the trouble of trying to look like the real crew and no one, not one person, asked them for ID or anything. People who saw them smiled and walked right by. Jesus, we wasted ten grand on these pins for nothing, thought Max.

  By four A.M., all six of them were safely ensconced in the storage room. Max congratulated Andre on his precise information. Max had never believed those movies about heists and bank robberies where there was always one guy who knew everything about the technical stuff, but that’s exactly who Andre was. Born in France, Andre moved to America when he was sixteen, and was still a teenager when he watched his father lose everything. His father was so broke he just split, too embarrassed at being a failure.

  Andre and his brother had to work instead of going to school just to keep their mother and sister from being thrown out of their crummy apartment. But Andre didn’t need school; he was a genius at mechanical stuff. From the very first video game he ever played, it was as if he saw how things worked from the inside out. He was short and wiry and not very attractive, and girls didn’t really take to him, which gave him even more time to bond with the machines. And when he first met Max at one of the early meetings, he felt like his purpose on earth was clear. He didn’t want to make the big statements—he would let Max do the talking—but he loved being the technical guy, and he was perfect at it.

  Max passed out speed patches. An hour before the takeover they would place them on the insides of their thighs. The concept was simple, but highly effective. Snorting methamphetamine was too much of a rush; it was too fast and then too steep of a drop. The speed patch, as it was known, delivered a steady amount of the drug for twelve hours. Then they could either sleep or put on another one. They felt the rush, but it was even, and sometimes it was mixed with newer steroids, which made them feel almost like Superman.

  Without the drugs none of this would ever happen. It was a simple fact that nobody ever hijacked anything on the natch. Something was always used to pump up these kinds of people, even if it was just booze, and Max and his group loved the patches. Earlier in the year, when they first bought them, they used them far too frequently; it was just so much fun. Andre built the model of the boat on his first patch and did it in ten hours. “Jesus Christ,” he said in his French-Belgian accent, “this would have taken me a week!”

  Kathy Bernard had known that something was in Max Leonard’s system when she came to the house that day, and then a week later when he took her to dinner. It was more than Max being jittery. It was a look. A look of abandon. He didn’t even have that look when he climaxed; only the drug could produce it. But Kathy had no idea that these patches even existed. Then again, why would she? She wasn’t the one who was trying to make history.

  * * *

  Senator Markum took a late flight from Miami to Washington after his son-in-law’s triumph in front of AARP. His office was already deluged with communications regarding the appearance. When someone could arouse such large groups of people the way Shen Li did, everyone in politics knew about it instantly. The same way that political convention speeches used to make stars overnight, now the omnipresent delivery systems made it happen anywhere and anytime, providing the moment warranted it. And Shen Li’s speech did. With countless millions of viral videos always in the air, only one currently showed a five-minute standing ovation given by thousands of older people. And Li’s was it. People watched it over and over, only adding to his growing legend.

  Markum was good friends with the Speaker of the House, a slight man named Henry Roman. Roman was from Oregon, and Markum had helped him get elected a decade earlier and was a big booster in his rise to Speaker.

  The ebb and flow between the two houses of Congress never changed. There were periods when they hated each other and periods when they worked closely together. If Shen Li had come to prominence ten years earlier, it would have been impossible to even raise the possibility that Markum had on his mind. But with everything that was going on, with Los Angeles rising higher each day, looking more modern and beautiful than any other American city, what Stanley Markum was thinking did not sound crazy at all.

  The two of them had a six-thirty A.M. breakfast in the Senate dining room. Markum simply told Roman that if the Constitution was changed, his son-in-law could be elected president. Roman didn’t act surprised. In fact, he agreed. “He’s a genius, that boy. And the people love him.”

  “So don’t you think it’s about time to amend the damn thing?” Markum asked him.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “There’s no ‘maybe’ about it. When the founding fathers wrote the thing, China was on another planet and every other country was a threat. Wasn’t the whole point of the United States to get away from the world?”

  “Yeah. It sure was.”

  “Fine. So that’s over. We’re partners now. You watch. Los Angeles is the first one but other cities are going to follow. Hell, if I were Michigan, I would beg the Chinese to fix Detroit. And if this is going to happen, what the hell’s wrong with letting a brilliant Chinese guy run things for a while? We still have Congress. We still can veto. We still have the Supreme Court. The whole country’s not going to turn into Chinese, it just finally might make sense to let a brilliant guy take charge.”

  Henry Roman did not disagree. Finally, after a moment, he jokingly said, “Would you feel this way if he wasn’t your son-in-law?”

  “Damn right I would. But he is my son-in-law, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to have the ear of the president of the United States.”

  “It’s an interesting idea, Stanley. And maybe the time is right. Maybe it’s exactly what we need.”

  Stanley Markum got up from the table. “Let’s do this, Henry. If it can’t happen now, it will never happen. The people love this guy; his country is saving our ass. Let’s do this.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The investigation of Charles Cass, Nate’s brother, continued. A grand jury determined there was enough evidence for a trial. When Susanna Colbert heard the news she expected a contact, but Nate Cass was a man of his word and he did not talk to her again. Hopefully the trial would not go badly and Nate would have other things to do in his life that were more important than getting back at Matthew Bernstein.

  What Susanna had not thought through was how much Nate Cass loved revenge. When someone has that much money, there are few things left that give real pleasure, and they usually involve either giving or taking. When giving gets boring, some of the very rich only get their rocks off by depriving others. One would think that after someone has
made enough money to last several lifetimes this would dissipate, but the individuals who love revenge love it even more when they can afford it.

  Susanna was tempted to contact Nate one last time to see if she could still smooth things over, but her days were too busy, so she let it go. She not only had the responsibility at Treasury, but the President wanted her to travel with him whenever possible.

  At the moment they were on their way to Denver for a fund-raising event. Normally this would be a function that John Van Dyke would attend, not her. But Van Dyke said he needed to stay in Washington, that there were some pressing issues, and the President didn’t really care. As long as Susanna was with him, he was happy.

  When Bernstein left town, Van Dyke knew it was the right moment to finally have a private conversation with the First Lady, something he felt was long overdue. Betsy invited him to the residence and they sat in her upstairs office. She was very friendly, feeling almost sorry that he had been put in a position of marriage counselor. She pretended she didn’t know why he wanted the meeting. “What’s the problem, John? Something wrong?”

  “Betsy, I haven’t said anything to you earlier because I didn’t know if it was my place, but I know how serious this is and I know that I would hate myself if I didn’t give it the college try.”

  “How serious what is?” Now Betsy was playing with him. She couldn’t help it, it was just too easy.

  “You and the President.”

  She smiled. She gave a little nod as if to say, “Oh, that.”

  “Do you mind if I give you my opinion?”

  “Of course not. I like you, John, and I respect you, and I respect what you have to say.”