“Kamalia,” someone said. “Who would have guessed?”
“Voters were looking for a reason to go one way or another,” someone else said. “No one really believes that the government can do anything.”
“Anything right, you mean.”
“Exactly. So when a candidate actually gets something right, like Lightstone with Kamalia, they all jump on board. Maybe, finally, someone who can do something.”
“Scary thought, the government doing something.”
Widespread laughter as a third network called the election for Lightstone.
“Looks like you pulled it off, Julian,” someone whispered behind him.
“What?” He turned quickly and realized with huge relief it was Caroline, looking straight at him, wearing a beautifully tailored Chanel suit and diamond earrings, holding a glass of Chardonnay that would remain nearly full all night. He hadn’t shared a single fact about his involvement in the election with her, and never would. It was almost gratifying to see the hurt in her face at being excluded: she always seemed to expect or need so little from him, but perhaps she wasn’t as self-contained as she liked to appear.
“Lightstone will lower our taxes,” he said, trying to sound cheerful and ironic. “Perhaps now we’ll be able to afford that new car.”
“I still don’t understand what you’re doing,” she said. “Lightstone carrying on about Kamalia. I got the connection to Matthew. But I read this morning in the Times that Sophie is being held in jail. How has that helped, Julian? Would Matthew approve of what you’ve done?”
“What makes you think I had anything to do with—”
“Don’t patronize me.”
A few heads turned their way. Caroline managed a wan smile and touched his arm with her free hand.
“I’m not through yet,” he said, once attention returned to the televisions.
“Oh, no.”
He surveyed the room, anxious faces calculating the impact of the returns on their businesses, their influence, their incomes. It wasn’t true that all politics is local. All politics is venal.
“Has it been worth it, Julian? Is it helping? I’ve never seen you anxious before, distracted. I’ve never known you to risk so much. Has it brought any peace? Is it helping?”
“Not yet.”
“Will it?”
He continued to look around the room.
“Will it?”
“I’ve had enough,” he said at last. “Let’s go home.”
“I want to stay.”
• • •
He left the party without thanking the hosts. He’d be invited to their next soiree anyway. On the sidewalk he headed west, toward Fifth Avenue, trying to concentrate. Focus. Left foot, right foot. Ignore the returns. Ignore Caroline. Ignore everything.
Left foot, right foot.
The moment would pass if only he could clear his mind.
Left foot, right foot.
Three blocks to go. Control, focus, discipline, rigor.
Left foot. Right foot. Faster, now.
Crossing Madison. Almost home. Fifth Avenue in sight. Almost running.
Leftfootrightfoot. Halfway to Fifth.
Leftfoot—
He ducked into an alcove between the front steps of two townhouses, leaned face forward into one of the stoops and began to sob, fists pounding the concrete. He felt his entire body vibrate and half expected the building to tremble.
It wasn’t helping.
“Matthew,” he whispered between sobs. “Matthew.”
It wasn’t helping.
Not yet.
PART IV
FRIDAY, JANUARY 22
Chapter 77
The black Town Car pulled up to the northwest gate of the White House. Julian opened the back window. A Secret Service officer inside a small guardhouse spoke into a microphone. “May I help you?”
“I have an appointment with the president,” Julian said, then added, “President Lightstone. My name is Julian Mellow.”
“Just one minute, sir.”
As the guard made a phone call from the booth, Julian considered with some satisfaction the ease with which his assistant had arranged the interview. The inauguration had taken place only two days earlier, and while Lightstone had spent the months since the election assembling a cabinet, it was a safe bet that he was still a very busy public servant. Not too busy, apparently, to make room in the third day of his presidency for Julian Mellow. Julian had considered calling for an appointment on the first day, just to demonstrate that he could, but he worried that doing so would draw too much attention to him. The new president was being closely watched by the press. So he’d waited.
“Everything is in order, sir.”
A gate slowly swung open and the driver eased the car into a small fenced holding area, stopping just in front of a second, inner gate. Here, another guard approached the car and asked Julian for photo ID. He handed him his driver’s license. The guard went into another, larger security booth, then returned to the car. He handed Julian his license and a plastic-encased badge, with Julian’s photo imprinted, attached to a thin lanyard.
“Please wear this at all times, Mr. Mellow. Your driver will wait here for you.”
Julian got out of the car. Inside the security house he emptied his pockets, walked through a scanner, collected his cell phone and keys, and walked through the now opened gate toward the West Wing.
It had been an anxious eight weeks, waiting for this day, unable to share his expectations and plans with anyone. At first his anxiety had focused on being connected to the deaths in the Catskills and Miami Beach. That hadn’t happened. Then his focus shifted to executing the final phase of his plan. The election of Lightstone had brought no more satisfaction than the closing of a large deal. He was accustomed to the deflating emptiness that followed each success, the need to fill it with the next thing, and the next thing after that. It was time for the next thing.
A door was opened by another uniformed guard. “Welcome to the White House, Mr. Mellow. Please follow me.”
He’d been there many times, for state dinners and with small groups to meet with whoever was occupying the Oval Office at the time to lobby for a bill or policy change. Access had long since ceased to be an issue, a source of satisfaction. But this was his first solo visit, and he wasn’t immune to a sense of awe as he was led up a short flight of stairs and down a long, wide, red-carpeted hallway. He remembered the peculiar smell of the place from earlier visits, the reassuringly disinfected odor of a first-class hotel room. He remembered the buoyant spring in the thick carpet that seemed to impart a spirit of all-American optimism. He remembered the hushed aura, the sense that he was heading into the silent center of a vast storm.
They entered a large, windowed office. Behind an oversized wooden desk sat an attractive woman in her thirties or early forties.
“Good morning, Mr. Mellow, right on time! I’m Eleanor Forsythe. The president will see you.”
Of course he will, Julian almost said. She circled the desk and opened a door.
“Mr. President, Julian Mellow to see you.”
He entered the Oval Office.
“Julian,” the president said with so little enthusiasm the last syllable faded to a sigh. He stood up from behind the famous desk and walked slowly toward the seating area.
“Mr. President,” Julian said, not without a touch of irony. They shook hands. Lightstone had lost even more weight, adding new shadows to his already craggy face and causing his suit jacket to hang limply from his famously broad shoulders. The press was full of reports of the president putting in long hours, a fact that made the public nervous; voters never liked to see their leaders sweat. Still, there was no denying that Lightstone looked the part of commander-in-chief; he may have lost weight during the transition, but he’d acquired gravitas—though perhaps it was only the setting that made it seem so.
“Are we being recorded?” Julian asked. He sat opposite the president on one of two faci
ng sofas.
“No, we are not being recorded.”
“Good, then I’ll get to the point. I’d like to discuss your policy toward Kamalia.”
Lightstone crossed his legs and clasped his hands behind his head, as if relaxing into a discussion of baseball or movies—a power display. “You’re not one for small talk, are you Julian?”
“You’re a busy man. So am I.”
Lightstone winced at the comparison. “Frankly, I was surprised you hadn’t contacted me earlier. I expected your call every day since November third.”
“I wasn’t even invited to the inauguration, or any of the parties.”
“Would you have come?”
“No. I think Caroline was disappointed, though. Now, about Kamalia. Your policy of negotiation with the Boymond regime is not going to work.”
“It’s only been three days. We are sending a special envoy to negotiate the release of American prisoners. The UN is considering sending a delegation to investigate human rights abuses. This ex-model, Sophie DuVal, there are rumors that her treatment has not exactly been ethical, and there are hundreds like her.”
“That’s not enough.”
Lightstone unclasped his hands and let them fall to his side. His face turned rigid. “I find nothing in your background that qualifies you to lecture me on foreign policy. If you want to talk about interest rates, we can do that, but please leave the subject of—”
“Here is what must happen. You will issue a direct ultimatum to Le Père Boymond, demanding that he step down. The murder of the Knapps, his human rights violations, and his ongoing threat to the stability of the region make it unacceptable that he remain in power. When he refuses to obey, which he will, you will send in troops to remove him. Most likely he will capitulate without a struggle. Even so, he will be killed. He cannot survive the invasion, and neither can his generals or ministers. Not one of them. You will see to that.”
“Good God,” Lightstone said. “Is that what this has been about?”
From the moment he learned that Matthew had been killed, exacting revenge on Le Père and his henchmen had supplanted every dream and ambition he’d ever possessed. It had been what kept him alive, the one thing that enabled him to lift his head from his pillow each morning and the only thing that allowed him to close his eyes at night. He wanted them all dead, not merely deposed or exiled. Dead. They had to be wiped out, dozens of them. Swept clean. If he could have arranged for the annihilation of every citizen of that jerk-water country he would have done so, but an invasion would have to do. Unfortunately, even the richest, most influential man in the world couldn’t invade a sovereign state. Not on his own, at any rate. And thus, in a hotel room in San Francisco, had his plan begun.
“I want this to unfold soon. Immediately. There is a great deal of animosity toward the Kamalian government right now. The memory of those two children gunned down is still fresh.”
“Of course it is. Your television stations continue to run that awful footage, night after night. Interviews with every relative you can dig up, schoolchildren who knew them, former nannies. A two-hour special in prime time. It’s shameless.”
“The public wants revenge. A successful invasion, democratic elections…you will give them what they want. You’ll demonstrate, after Iraq, that we can still have our way.”
“It remains unclear to me what you did or didn’t do to affect the outcome of the election, but there is absolutely no way that—”
“Shall I tell you what I did? About a plane crash in Maine? A bogus drug sale in Washington? A phony request for a stock trade inside a blind trust? A deliberately unsuccessful insurrection in West Africa? The gunning down of two children in Kamalia, American children? Would you like the details? Because I have them all written down, with evidence. And there are videos, too, one shot in a hotel room in San Francisco, the other at an elite boarding school in Connecticut.”
Lightstone sat silently, eyes fixed on the famous rug, the edges of his mouth turned down. Could he really be contemplating the extraordinary nature of his ascension for the first time? Was his hubris really so great that he thought that the chain of unlikely events that had catapulted him to the White House was somehow the result of fate, his fate, his destiny?
When he finally spoke it was in a faint and trembling voice. “Releasing that information would destroy you.”
“And you. If the invasion of Kamalia does not happen, it won’t matter what happens to me. I won’t care.”
“This is about your son.”
“About Matthew, yes.” Now it was Julian’s voice that trembled.
“I can’t do it,” Lightstone said. “I can’t pervert our foreign policy to satisfy the revenge fantasies of a murderer.”
“Then you will not survive your first year in office. You’ll be forced to resign; there may be criminal charges.”
Julian stood up. Lightstone remained seated, and didn’t look up from his lap.
“Le Père deserves death. His country deserves freedom.”
“And our soldiers, do they deserve to die in the streets of Villeneuve?”
Did Matthew deserve to die, after fighting to improve the lot of the people of Kamalia? The death of a thousand soldiers, ten thousand, would not come close to redressing what had happened to him.
“If you act quickly the government can be brought down with minimal casualties, a handful at most.”
“Even one life…”
“I expect to see the ultimatum issued in your State of the Union address next week. Then you will move quickly. The longer you wait, the more prepared Le Père will be.”
Lightstone said nothing.
“Goodbye, Mr. President. You will not hear from me again, ever, assuming this goes as planned. No one must survive, remember that. There is nothing more I want from you. Not a thing.”
Julian crossed the room and opened the door through which he’d entered. A guard snapped to attention as he stepped into the antechamber.
“Your meeting ended earlier than expected,” said Eleanor Forsythe, standing up from behind her desk.
“I didn’t want to keep the president longer than necessary,” Julian said. “He’s a very busy man.”
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15
PRESIDENTS’ DAY
Chapter 78
On television, the streets of Villeneuve look almost familiar. Every network has had a makeshift bureau there since the failed insurgency in November, and though there hasn’t been much to report, they’ve made a point of running at least a handful of stories each week in order to amortize their investments. Masters Broadcasting, the largest owner of network outlets, has taken the lead in running Kamalia stories. Most of them focus on the two Knapp children, the pieces growing increasingly pointless as hard news becomes increasingly rare. Anyone who ever worked in the US embassy, even to serve drinks at a party, is interviewed, and they all attest to the little girls’ intelligence, generosity, affinity for the locals. So now, with actual news coming from Kamalia, the country feels oddly recognizable: the traffic circle ringing the president’s palace, the broad, faux-Parisian boulevards fanning out from it, the dusty, half-paved street lined with dilapidated huts where the “real” Kamalians live—always, somehow, the same street, the same colorful laundry hanging out to dry, the same mangy dog sniffing the same overflowing can of trash.
But now, instead of tiny French cars hurtling along these boulevards and streets there are US Jeeps and tanks, and the sidewalks are strangely deserted. Occasional glimpses of local citizens show them to be less frightened or relieved or grateful than vaguely embarrassed, their country having fallen to the invaders in a single afternoon. The only bloodshed appears to have occurred in the palace itself, where Le Père and most of his closest aides, perhaps as many as two dozen, have been shot to death along with the two or three guards who didn’t desert them the moment the first tank appeared at the south gate. Already there is talk of multiple assassinations. One Kamalian, his face blurred by the
networks to maintain his anonymity, claims that the leader had already surrendered when he was shot. Other ministers were similarly executed. In Washington, President Harry Lightstone declares the near-bloodless (American blood) takeover a great victory for democracy, an event that will liberate all of western Africa from the threat of Kamalian tyranny and serve as a beacon of hope for other tyrannized people. The shadow of Iraq has been lifted. Images of the Knapp girls being gunned down are replaced by footage of Sophie DuVal, hardly able to stand on her own, emaciated even by supermodel standards, being escorted by Marines from prison. “Le Père est mort,” she manages to say when a microphone is thrust in her face, her voice not only weak but flat. “Vive Kamalia.” She almost lacks the energy to get out the last syllable of her country’s name, and when asked if she will play a role in the new government she shakes her head with a faint grin that reveals two missing teeth, but no pleasure.
At the Dade County Correctional Center, a maximum security prison hospital, the television is always on in the physical therapy room. There are only two PTs for the thirty or so patient/inmates who need them, and they all have very different disabilities, so there is a lot more TV watching than therapy in the physical therapy room. Some patients are in wheelchairs, others use walkers. Some can’t seem to stop speaking, though they never make much sense. Others never speak at all but stare up at the television screen, faces blank, waiting for their five minutes of therapy.
Zach Springer falls into this last category. He doesn’t speak, though it is suspected by the doctors assigned to his case that he is able to. He walks with the use of a cane, because his right side is nearly paralyzed: he can move the fingers and wrist of his right hand but not the arm itself, and his leg hangs limp, useless. His right eyelid droops, as does the right corner of his mouth; in fact, the right side of his face, where the bullet entered, seems perpetually exhausted, while the left, if not exactly energetic, is at least firmer, taut. The doctors at Dade pretty much ignore him, as do the PTs, but every few weeks he is visited by a court-appointed physician who asks him a few questions, requests this or that movement in order to determine if he is fit to appear in court for indictment. So far, the answer has been no.
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