Empire e-1 Read online

  “So I’m on vacation for a few days,” said Reuben. “Maybe longer.”

  “Two words,” said Mark. “Atlantic City!”

  “You are way too young to scope out babes, Mark,” said Reuben.

  “I said that once, Dad. As a joke.”

  “I don’t care what you said. I know how I’ve seen you look.”

  “Yeah, well, have you seen how they dress?”

  “You’re ten. That’s way too young for you even to care.”

  And on they went. The war talk was over. But the kids lingered. Dad-time was precious. And it wasn’t often he actually told them about what he did as a soldier. They didn’t need that knowledge. It would only frighten them when he was away. This time, though, Cecily knew that he had to tell them, because they were going to hear the negative stuff, and they had to know the story the way it really happened.

  After a while, the girls dragged their father upstairs to look at whatever insane project they were working on together—Lettie always had a project, and Annie always ended up being chief assistant who never, ever got her way on anything, and they ended up yelling and crying and then going right back to the same project because Annie would rather be miserable and oppressed with Lettie than free but alone.

  Mark went with them because he was Mark and had to be with people who were doing something. J. R went with them because Reuben was holding him. Which left Cecily alone at the kitchen table with Nick.

  “What are you thinking?” she said. “If it involves ice cream, I think the answer is there are still two fudgesicles that J. P. didn’t smear all over his body.”

  Nick ignored the offered ice cream—not a surprise. He was mostly indifferent to food. “The king is dead,” he said. “Long live the king.”

  “What?”

  “You asked what I was thinking,” said Nick. “Somebody killed the President, and all anybody can think about is, How does this benefit me?”

  “I’m not thinking that way,” said Cecily.

  “No, ’cause you and Dad are thinking about how it’s going to hurt you. They’re saying things that make Dad look like he was maybe part of the assassination instead of the guy who tried to stop it.”

  “It’s how they sell papers.”

  “That’s what I meant,” said Nick. “See? The President is dead—how can we sell papers? The President is dead—how can I take advantage of it?”

  “And you’re nine years old, right?” asked Cecily.

  “I know you think I read too much fantasy,” said Nick, “but this is what it’s all about. Power. Somebody dies, somebody leaves, everybody comes in and tries to take over. And you just have to hope that the good guys are strong enough and smart enough and brave enough to win.”

  “Are they?”

  “In the fantasy novels,” said Nick. “But in the real world, the bad guys win all the time. Genghis Khan tore up the world. Hitler lost in the end, but he killed millions of people first. Really bad stuff happens. Evil people get away with it. You think I don’t know that?”

  Our children are way too smart for their own good, thought Cecily. “Nick, you’re absolutely right. So do you know what we do? We make an island. We make a castle. We dig a moat around it and we put up walls that are strong, made of stone.”

  “I guess you’re not talking about Aunt Margaret’s house,” said Nick.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” said Cecily. “I’m talking about family, and faith. Here in this house, we’re not trying to take advantage. Our family doesn’t try to profit from the death of the king. Our family always has enough to share, even if we don’t have enough to eat. Do you understand?”

  “Sure,” said Nick. “That’s church talk. Because Dad has a weapon and goes out and kills the bad guys. He doesn’t just hide in a castle inside a moat and help the poor and the sick.”

  “Your dad,” said Cecily, “does not go out and kill the bad guys. He goes out and does what he’s ordered to do, and the goal is to persuade the bad guys that they won’t get their way by killing people, so they’d better stop.”

  “Mom,” said Nick, “all you’re saying is that our Army persuades them to stop killing people by being better at killing people than they are.”

  She slumped back in her chair. “Hard to reconcile that with Christianity, isn’t it?”

  “No it’s not,” said Nick. “’Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.’ ”

  “You listen?”

  “I read.”

  “I just turned down an offer from the President. LaMonte Niel-son. I used to work for him. I must have done a good job, because he wants me to come work in the White House.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “No, I’m not. And do you know why?”

  “Because of us?” said Nick.

  “Because the best thing I can do to make this world a better place is to do a really brilliant job of raising you kids. And I can’t if I’m not home to do it.”

  “If you worked in the White House,” said Nick, “you might have been one of the ones they blew up.”

  “But I wasn’t. And I won’t be.”

  “They’ve got to be mad at Dad,” said Nick.

  “Who?”

  “The boss terrorists. He shot their guys. He stopped one of their rockets. He almost stopped them from killing the President.”

  “I suppose they’re a little bit mad at him. But they didn’t expect us not to shoot back.”

  “They’re not going to come here to kill us, are they?”

  “No,” said Cecily.

  “In the movies, they always go after the hero’s family.”

  “They do that because it’s a Hollywood formula. To make the movie scarier so you’ll keep watching for the whole two hours. In the real world, these terrorists don’t care about regular people like us. They strike at big targets—like the World Trade Center and the President.”

  “And the Pentagon,” said Nick.

  “And soldiers in the field. We’ve always known that was Dad’s job. But our house? Like I said—it’s a castle.”

  Nick nodded. Then he got up and went to the fridge and opened the freezer compartment and took out a fudgesicle. “Want one?” he said.

  “I don’t like chocolate,” Cecily answered.

  “A creamsicle?” said Nick.

  “Bring me one, you monster of temptation,” she said.

  He tossed her a creamsicle and kept the fudgesicle for himself. “Do you ever wonder,” he said as he unwrapped it, “what it would feel like to smear this all over your body?”

  Cecily made the connection. “You didn’t happen to say that to J. P., did you?”

  “His fudgesicle was dripping all over his hand and he was getting all frantic about it.”

  “He was in the back yard?”

  “He turns doorknobs just fine, Mom. Didn’t you know that?”

  “So you said, ‘Wonder what it would feel like to smear this all over?’ ”

  “I told him he was already halfway covered in fudgesicle, he might as well take his clothes off and finish the job.”

  “And you didn’t think to watch him to make sure he didn’t?”

  Nick looked at her like she was crazy. “Why would I do that? It was funny watching him wipe his butt with a fudgesicle.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Cecily nastily. “You read comic fantasies.”

  “What’s the point of having a little brother if you can’t talk him into doing stupid things?”

  “Nick, please don’t do that again. J. P. is not your toy.”

  “He’s your toy. But aren’t you supposed to share?”

  “You know I’m very angry with you.”

  “Not very” he said, reverting to their old game.

  “Very very” she said.

  “Not very very very.”

  “Very very very very very very very verivervy. Very,” she said.

  “You did that on purpose.”

  “I
cannot say ‘very’ that many times in a row without stumbling.”

  “Come on, Mom, you speak a language that has no vowels.”

  “Croatian has vowels. We just don’t need them in every syllable.”

  Then everybody trooped down from upstairs and the private conversation was over.

  Cecily didn’t get a chance to be alone with Reuben until dusk, when they went out and sat on the glider on the patio. Cecily told him about talking to the President and declining his job offer. Reuben told her about talking to Leighton Fuller at The Post. “And Cole telephoned me,” said Reuben. “General Alton is planning a coup. Keep Nielson as a figurehead. Maybe it’ll happen. Alton’s always been a big talker. But there are people who see the world his way. Maybe he has support. Maybe people will go along with him.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?” asked Cecily.

  “Keep my head down,” said Reuben. “There are things that a major in the United States Army doesn’t have the power to do. If they really do it, though, I’m resigning my commission. I signed on to serve the United States of America, not some committee of generals who think they have the right to decide how the country should go.”

  “It won’t happen,” she said. “It can’t happen. That’s… it’s so Latin American. So Turkish. It doesn’t happen here.”

  “Until it does,” said Reuben. “Something else Cole said.”

  “What?”

  “He quoted something General Alton said to him. Quoted to him. What he remembers Alton saying is, ‘Soldiers want to get paid and not die. Civilians want to be left alone. We’ll pay the soldiers and we won’t ask them to die. We’ll leave the civilians alone.’ ”

  “That’s pretty cynical. Does he really think people will give up freedom that easily?”

  “Here’s the funny thing,” said Reuben. “That’s not an old saying. Where I first heard it was at Princeton. Averell Torrent said it.”

  “Oh, yes, I forgot he was your professor there.”

  “He’s a brilliant man, and a constant devil’s advocate. I thought he had it in for me, and then he… ”

  “Recruits you.”

  “I’m not sure he got me the contacts that I’ve been working with. They never mentioned his name.”

  “But you assumed.”

  “Anyway, he said it twice in class—and it was in one of his books. You know me, that guaranteed I’d memorize it. ‘All the common people want is to be left alone. All the ordinary soldier wants is to collect his pay and not get killed. That’s why the great forces of history can be manipulated by astonishingly small groups of determined people.’ ”

  “That’s not exactly what Alton said to Cole. If Cole remembered it right.”

  “Cole’s a memorizer,” said Reuben.

  “Like you.”

  “Word for word,” said Reuben. “I think Alton has met Torrent. Or at least read his books.”

  “Of course he’s met him,” said Cecily. “Torrent is NSA.”

  “As of this morning,” said Reuben.

  “But he’s been in the NSA’s office for a couple of years.”

  “This may shock you, my dear, but the NSA staff and the top brass at the Pentagon don’t get together every night and schmooze.”

  “But you think Torrent and Alton did?”

  “I think Alton heard Torrent speak. About how America can’t become an empire during its democratic phase. About how we’ve outgrown our democratic institutions. They need to be revised, drastically, but everybody has so much invested in the old system that nobody can build the consensus to change it. A Gordian knot. Time to slice through it if America is ever going to achieve its greatness.”

  “Not manifest destiny, manifest dictatorship?”

  “I always took it as Torrent warning us about the movement of history. What lies ahead if we’re not careful. But it’s possible to hear him the wrong way—to hear what he’s saying and think, Oh, good idea, let’s do that.”

  “So you think Alton’s been planning to move America away from democratic institutions for a while now, and this is just a pretext?”

  “You don’t build a coup overnight,” said Reuben. “Here’s the thing. Cole asked him outright if his group stole my plans and gave them to the assassins. Of course he said no. But Cole believes him. He thinks Alton isn’t a good enough actor to sound so genuinely appalled at the thought.”

  “Do you know this General Alton?”

  “I know of him,” said Reuben. “I never actually served under him. Well, I guess technically I did, but never under his direct command. Layers, you know?”

  “So you just have to take Cole’s word for it?”

  “Cole’s a smart guy,” said Reuben.

  “But you still can’t do anything about it.”

  “No,” said Reuben. “But what I’m thinking is, Torrent is smart, he’s charismatic. What if, by writing about the great forces of history, he’s accidentally changed them? Like he said, they can be manipulated by astonishingly small groups of determined people.”

  “Like Alton’s coup.”

  “Like whoever gave my plans to the terrorists. I don’t think it was Alton. But that still leaves us trying to figure out who it is.”

  “What we need is the computer guy,” said Cecily.

  “Who’s that?”

  “In every mystery novel these days, it seems like the detective has some friend who can work miracles on the computer and find information nobody else can find. We need that guy. You call him up, tell him what you need to know, and in a little while he comes back with exactly the facts you need.”

  “When you say it like that, it sounds like a wizard from one of Nick’s novels.”

  “I was thinking it sounded more like God,” she said. “You pray, you get answers.”

  “Yeah,” said Reuben. “You’re right. We need that guy.”

  “Don’t have him, though, do we?”

  “All you got is me, and all I got is you.”

  “And Cole,” said Cecily. “And DeeNee. And Load and Mingo and Babe and Arty and… ”

  “And not one of them can grant a miracle.”

  “But I know the President, and he promised we’ll have one.”

  “That’s why I was so smart to marry you.”

  Nothing was actually any better. But Cecily felt like it was better, sitting there on the glider with Reuben. When they were apart, she was perfectly competent and confident, but… there was something always at risk. Things could go wrong. When Reuben was there, she simply felt safer. He wouldn’t let things get hopelessly out of hand. He’d put it all in perspective for her. The problems would all be somehow outside the walls of the castle, and inside, as long as Reuben was there, she was safe. The children were safe.

  “Retire right now,” said Cecily. “Come home and be with us always.”

  “Think Aunt Margaret will let us stay here?”

  “I can’t think why not. We’re excellent company, and thanks to J. P. she’s going to get a free carpet shampooing.”

  “I don’t want to hear the story of that one,” said Reuben.

  “I don’t want to tell it,” said Cecily. “But Nick is involved.”

  “Has he taken to the dark side?”

  “J. P. does whatever Nick suggests.”

  “I wonder,” said Reuben. “Is that how J. P. got toilet trained so young?”

  That had never occurred to Cecily before, but it was possible, wasn’t it? Nick says something and J. P. uses the toilet forever afterward. “So he can use his powers for good as well as evil.”

  “We all can,” said Reuben. “It’s telling the difference that gets so hard.”

  Fair and balanced

  If you always behave rationally, then reason becomes the leash by which your enemy pulls you. Yet if you knowingly make irrational decisions, have you not betrayed your own ability? the battlefield is not a place for actors, playing the role of this or that style of commander, for you can always imitate a worse
commander, but never a better one. You must be yourself, even if your enemy comes to know your weaknesses, for you cannot pretend to have personal abilities and traits that you do not have.

  As a soldier, Cole had forced himself to learn to wait until an order was given. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his commander to make the right decision. It’s that he couldn’t stand to do nothing.

  As a boy growing up, he couldn’t hold still, not even in church. It wasn’t ADHD—he didn’t fidget, and he could easily concentrate on the task at hand for hours and hours. It’s that he couldn’t stand not to accomplish something. Why shouldn’t he clip his fingernails during a sermon? That way he’d hear the sermon and accomplish a job that needed doing.

  His mother listened to his argument and answered with her typical “Interesting thought.” But she heard him—she always heard him. That night at dinner she brought in a roll of toilet paper and, after taking her first bite, spooled off a section of toilet paper, lifted the back of her dress, and made as if to use the paper. Cole yelled at her to stop, to which she replied, “But this way I can chew my food and accomplish a job that needs doing.”

  “Not in front of me?” Cole said.

  Out of his own mouth, he made her point for her.

  So he learned to wait. And in the Army, he learned again. Nothing like live-fire exercises to concentrate the mind. He schooled himself to wait for many hours, for days. He learned to hide even the fact that he was waiting.

  But that was war. He knew as soon as General Alton brought him back to the Pentagon that he couldn’t do nothing.

  He didn’t even go back to the office. There was too much danger that Alton’s reassurances about how nothing would happen to him were a scam. So easy to detain him—soldiers didn’t have the rights of civilians against phony arrests. They could say he needed to be interrogated again. Then he’d disappear. When Congress subpoenaed him, the Army would tell them that Cole was on duty somewhere. And then his family would get word that he had been killed in action. His body would be produced with all the appropriate wounds.