Interface

by Neal Stephenson; J. Frederick George

  Cozzano finally paused for a moment, to draw a breath and to shuffle his notes around. Finally, the silence broke, and a murmur began to sweep through the crowd.

  People began to move. The in-crowd on the inaugural platform included a number of high-ranking military officers; several of them got to their feet and strode to the passageway leading back into the Capitol. As soon as they thought they were out of sight of the TV cameras, they broke into a run. A number of nonuniformed officials did the same thing.

  Members of the Justice Posse now entered the front row of chairs and converged on four men: the secretaries-designate of Defense, State, Commerce, and Treasury. Each of the four men was strongly encouraged to rise to his feet and then hustled out. Their family members were not allowed to come along; some of them were too stunned to move, some burst into tears, and some tried to get physical. An initial tremor of panic propagated down the Mall.

  Floyd Wayne Vishniak was watching Cozzano from the crowd below. Ogle’s special invitation had gotten him through several layers of security. But he had not actually climbed up onto the inaugural platform itself. His invite supposedly would have gotten him through the final cordon. But he had watched a few of the bigwigs and seen that the final layer of security was especially stringent. He didn’t want to take a chance on that, and it wasn’t even necessary. From down below, he had a clear view of the entire platform.

  He could have picked off any of the bigwigs sitting up there. Any of the people who were controlling Cozzano’s mind. It would have been easy. But it would have been pointless. Vishniak had come to an astonishing realization as he had listened to Cozzano’s speech: he was too late. Cozzano was lost.

  Vishniak had personally demolished the computer control room where Ogle and the other media manipulators were controlling Cozzano’s mind. He had set Cozzano free. But Cozzano had started his term as President by declaring martial law and threatening to execute people in the streets. Cozzano was staging a coup d’état. He was turning America’s great democratic system into a dictatorship. Right before Vishniak’s eyes.

  “My fellow Americans, I come to you at a moment of great peril,” Cozzano said, trying to use the authority of his voice to quiet the rising anxiety—the ugly fights going on behind him, the murmuring that had grown into a low roar. “We have narrowly averted a disaster. I am speaking to you, now, as a free man, for the first time in a year. Exactly one year ago, as you may know, I was struck down by a stroke. I have been away for a while. Today, I am here to tell you that I am back!”

  It was the first thing Cozzano had said, all day long, that sounded like what a triumphant new president should say. The crowd was enormously relieved. The shrill chattering and nervous buzzing was overwhelmed by a cheer that started in the throats of the Justice Posse and grew explosively until it rang up and down the length of the Mall.

  And it did not die down; it grew into an ovation. Those listening to Cozzano had experienced more anxiety during the last couple of minutes than they had since the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Kennedy assassination. Now, Cozzano was telling them that everything was going to be fine. He told them this, not just with his words, but with the deep resonant tone of his voice and with his posture, his facial expression.

  No one really knew what was going on. But hearing his words and watching his face, they came to know one thing beyond question: President Cozzano was doing what he had been elected to do. Finally, a leader was in the White House, and he was leading.

  The people on the inaugural platform were the last ones to rise to their feet and join in the ovation.

  Cozzano was about to resume his speech, but he realized that there was no way to talk over the voices of half a million people. He paused, smiled at the crowd, waited for a couple of moments. The cheering continued. He stepped back away from the lectern, now just a couple of paces in front of his daughter and Eleanor Richmond and her family, and raised both of his arms in the air as if he had just scored a touchdown.

  The first bullet did just what it was supposed to. Its teflon coating took it smoothly through the seven layers of bulletproof fabric making up President Cozzano’s bulletproof vest. After that, momentum and plain old-fashioned lead did the rest. It passed into his thorax a couple of inches below the right nipple and exploded against a rib, spraying fragments of lead, bone, and teflon through Cozzano’s chest cavity. Most of his right lung was turned into hash. Numerous holes were blown through the heart and a major vessel pierced in his left lung. Nothing emerged from the other side of Cozzano’s body; the bullet, which was specifically designed to kill human beings wearing bulletproof vests, had been totally efficient in transferring all of its energy into Cozzano’s flesh.

  Vishniak saw a jet of steam and blood spurt from the entrance wound and knew that Cozzano was dead. He angled the weapon a couple of degrees to the right and took aim at Eleanor Richmond. But just as he was pulling the trigger, a bulky man in a black T-shirt jumped in front of her.

  Darryl Garfield, an offensive lineman for the ’Skins, took the second bullet in his massive upper arm, which was nearly as big as Eleanor’s waist. The bullet ricocheted off his humerus and ended up shattering a window in the Rayburn Building, a thousand feet due south, whence it was later recovered. As the bullet exited Garfield’s arm it drove before it a shock wave of blood and pulverized muscle tissue that burst out of his body in a crudely hemispherical pattern, spraying Eleanor Richmond with blood.

  Vishniak lowered his weapon a bit, surprised by Garfield’s sudden intervention, and did not see the precipitous approach of Rufus Bell. Bell threw all of his momentum behind the heel of his right hand, which impacted on the bridge of Vishniak’s nose and collapsed the bone structure of his entire face, driving a number of small bone fragments all the way into Vishniak’s brain. Vishniak was a vegetable before he hit the ground. Ten minutes later he was dead.

  Most of the people on the platform knew only that Darryl Garfield had been shot, because his wound had been so spectacular. In the ensuing confusion, Mary Catherine was the first person to notice that President Cozzano was sitting down behind the lectern, looking stunned and pale.

  At first they thought he was just stunned by the near miss. But a look at his face proved otherwise. Pink foam had collected at the corners of his mouth. Mary Catherine, James Cozzano, and Mel all converged on Cozzano at the same moment and helped him to lie on his back. Within a few moments they were surrounded by the Posse.

  A few moments after the shooting, Eleanor Richmond had vanished, completely surrounded by huge Posse members who practically encased her in bulletproof vests. The guests on the inaugural platform drained back into the Capitol as though a plug had been pulled and they were being sucked back into the building. Eleanor and her escort were swept along.

  Mary Catherine ripped Cozzano’s shirt open down the middle and discovered the entrance wound on his thorax. Her eyes met his.

  “I’ll be okay,” Cozzano said.

  “One of the guys has called for a chopper,” Mel said. “Hang in there, buddy.”

  Cozzano didn’t pay any attention to Mel. He was looking at James and Mary Catherine, kneeling next to him side by side.

  “Listen, peanut,” the President said. “James will stay with me. You stay with Eleanor.”

  “No!” Mary Catherine said.

  “They have no choice but to kill Eleanor,” Cozzano said. “They’ll try to do it now. Natural causes. Go! By order of the President.”

  Tears burst over the rims of Mary Catherine’s eyes and cascaded down her face. “I love you more than anything, peanut,” Cozzano said.

  “I love you too, Dad,” Mary Catherine said.

  “Now go and do your job,” Cozzano said.

  Mary Catherine bent down and kissed her father’s cheek. Then she stood up, turned, and ran into the Capitol.

  The Rotunda had gone nuts. Several dozen Capitol Police had been herded into one corner and were being guarded by a couple of Posse members carrying M-16s with
fixed bayonets. More Justice men, and several men wearing FBI windbreakers, were stationing themselves around the entrances, trying to establish some control over who came in and who left. A couple of media crews were here, unable to make up their minds what they should be pointing their cameras at; several radio and television reporters were running around seemingly at random, shouting a stream-of-consciousness narration into their microphones. It didn’t matter what they said as long as they said it with authority.

  But most of the people in the Rotunda were invited guests who had been seated in the rows of chairs on the inaugural platform. It was easy to tell them apart. The men were all wearing intensely formal garb, and the women were dressed, coiffed, and bejeweled to the nines. These people had gathered into knots scattered around the floor of the Rotunda. Each knot consisted of a few people turned inward, slack-faced with shock, jabbering at one another, and a few people, mostly men, constantly craning their necks in all directions, eyes wide and staring, trying to get some sense of what was going on. One or two men were jabbing at cellular phones with stiff index fingers, screaming into them, getting nothing but static. A man in black tie and morning coat slammed his cellular phone onto the floor in frustration and it slid across the polished stone like a hockey puck.

  Mary Catherine couldn’t see Eleanor anywhere. A Posse member walked in front of her in his black Justice shirt. Mary Catherine jumped forward and put her hand on his shoulder. “Where’s Eleanor?” she said.

  As soon as he recognized her, he told her: “She went to the ladies’ room to clean up. She’s got blood on her.”

  “Who’s with her?”

  “I dunno,” the man said, “we don’t have any female deputies in this outfit.”

  “Where’s that bathroom?” Mary Catherine said, kicking off her shoes.

  The man pointed. Mary Catherine headed across the floor of the Rotunda, building up to a full sprint.

  It wasn’t hard to find the bathroom where Eleanor was holed up: the entrance was almost obscured by a knot of black-shirted Posse members. Mary Catherine just aimed at the door and relied on them to recognize her, and to get out of the way.

  They did, but she had to slow down to a brisk walk. She entered the women’s lounge. The first thing she saw was Eleanor’s dress spread out across a couch near the entrance, spattered with blood.

  She rounded a corner and saw a row of sinks. Eleanor was bent over one of the sinks, hot water blasting. She had stripped down to a camisole and panties. Her arms were wet up to the shoulder and she was bent over the sink splashing water on her face; flecks of blood were still visible in her hair.

  One other woman was in the bathroom: from her appearance, obviously one of the invited guests. Mary Catherine had spent enough time with people of the advanced upper crust to know one when she saw one.

  She even recognized this woman. It was Althea Coover. DeWayne Coover’s granddaughter. She and Mary Catherine had gone to Stanford together and attended a lot of the same parties. Because of Coover’s support of the Radhakrishnan Institute, his family had gotten several invitations to the Inauguration.

  Althea Coover was standing at the sink next to Eleanor’s. She had put a few small cosmetics containers out on the shelf beneath the mirror, as though she were here to fix her face. But just as Mary Catherine was rounding the corner, Althea was pulling something else out of her bag: a capped hypodermic needle.

  Mary Catherine headed straight for her.

  Althea saw Mary Catherine and startled. Her eyes jumped to the hypodermic needle, then Eleanor, then up to Mary Catherine’s face. She pulled the cap off, exposing the hair-thin needle, and raised it like a dart, aiming it at Eleanor’s exposed shoulder.

  Then Mary Catherine shoved her stun gun into the side of Althea Coover’s neck and pulled the trigger.

  Althea dropped the needle, collapsed, and smacked her head into the marble floor with a shocking thud. Eleanor straightened up, blinked water out of her eyes, and jumped to see Mary Catherine suddenly standing there with lightning in her hand, and Althea Coover gone.

  When Mary Catherine and Eleanor returned to the Rotunda, now surrounded by very nervous and trigger-happy men in black T-shirts, they discovered that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had not been as lucky. He was collapsed on the marble floor, unconscious and unresponsive. Immediately before his collapse he had been seen talking to another invited guest who had made a hasty exit; later, an empty hypodermic syringe was found in an ashtray by the door. The Chief Justice was being attended to by a couple of old and distinguished doctors who had made it onto the guest list. A few Posse members picked him up and carried him into the Capitol infirmary.

  Anyone wearing white tie or a formal gown was now being viewed with intense suspicion by the Posse. Mary Catherine and Eleanor found themselves dead center in the Rotunda, surrounded by Posse members facing outward, as the remaining guests were herded toward the outside of the room.

  Between the knot in the center and the people crowded to the edges, there was a broad, doughnut-shaped, empty space, now occupied by a grand total of three people: a minicam operator from CNN, his sound man, and a bald, middle-aged man in a long black robe. The robe was a flimsy thing made of synthetic fibers and looked as though it had been wadded up into a ball and then sat on for a few days. It was unzipped to reveal a bulletproof vest underneath; beneath the vest, a black T-shirt could be seen. This guy was a member of the Posse.

  In his right hand he was carrying a thick black book with the words HOLY BIBLE printed on the cover in gold letters. A single sheet of typing paper was clasped in the front cover.

  “Excuse me,” said the man in the black robe, standing up on tiptoes trying to see over the shoulders of the bodyguards, “but I could not help but notice that the Chief Justice has been incapacitated. Can I be of some assistance here?”

  “Who are you?” Mary Catherine said, peering at him between a couple of Posse members.

  “Stanley Kotlarski, Fifth Circuit Court Judge, Cook County, Illinois,” the man said. “Mel asked me to hang around in case something happened to the Chief Justice. Are you ready to do the honors, or are we going to stand around here all day?”

  The circle of bodyguards opened up to admit Judge Kotlarski and the camera crew. Judge Kotlarski pulled the sheet of paper out of the Bible and then handed the Bible to Mary Catherine. “You know the drill,” he said.

  She did know it. She had just done it about fifteen minutes before. Now, tear-streaked, blood-stained, barefoot, and disheveled, she did it again: held the Bible out in front of the President-to-be. Eleanor Richmond didn’t hesitate. She put one hand on the Bible and held up the other one.

  Judge Kotlarski looked at the cameraman. “You ready?”

  “We’re live to planet Earth,” the cameraman said.

  Judge Kotlarski began to read from the sheet of paper. “Repeat after me . . .”

  In the middle of the oath of office, Eleanor and the Judge had to raise their voices; they were nearly drowned out by the sound of a medevac chopper setting down out front, then, within a few seconds, lifting off again.

  Mary Catherine didn’t pay much attention to the oath. She was looking out the windows, watching the chopper carry her father away. The first thing she really heard was the voice of the President issuing her first order: “Evacuate and seal the Rotunda.”

  Then President Richmond bent down, pulled a thick black envelope out of her bag, and ripped it open.

  William A. Cozzano arrived at the Lady Wilburdon Gunshot Wound Institute via helicopter, roughly fifteen minutes after the bullet had entered his body. By that point, he had lost roughly half of his blood supply. He was trucked straight into a trauma room, where his chest was split open by Dr. Cornelius Gary. The President was in good hands: between his service in the Gulf War and in the trauma centers of D.C., Dr. Gary had personally treated more gunshot wounds than any other physician in the United States.

  Before going under anaesthesia, Cozzano’s last wor
ds to his son, James, were: “You’re free now, son. Go out and be a good man.”

  Dr. Gary worked to mend Cozzano’s shattered organs for thirty minutes. William A. Cozzano died on the operating table at 12:58 P.M., having been President for just under one hour.

  sixty-two

  THE FIRST document in the black envelope was a one-sentence executive order that continued in force all of the orders made by Cozzano from the inaugural platform.

  President Richmond moved her temporary headquarters to the Senate Press Room, which was easier to secure than the Rotunda, and well equipped with communications gear. She ordered a confirmation from all elements affected by Cozzano’s orders that they had received, understood, and would obey. She faxed a message to the ops center on the seventh floor of the State Department and told them to send a copy to every other country in the world. The message stated that today’s violence was strictly a domestic affair, things were in order, and full disclosure would be made soon.

  She called in the Senate and House leadership. Each was examined by a physician. The Speaker of the House, who had suffered a stroke in November and been rehabilitated at the Radhakrishnan Institute in California, was declared to be medically incapacitated—the document stating so was already drawn up inside the black envelope; the senior whip of the majority party took over as acting House Speaker.

  She sent out messages to all four network anchors requesting their presence in the Rotunda. They and their crew members were all carefully frisked and then ushered up to the Senate Press Room, where they interviewed President Richmond, who was flanked by the Senate majority leader and the acting Speaker. The most senior Justice on the Supreme Court had by now been rustled up and brought into the room.