They walked along the halls of the West Wing toward the Oval Office. Their heels clacked on the marble floor. Susan felt better than she had in a while – well rested from a long night’s sleep. She had eaten breakfast in the Family Kitchen without checking the news once. She was beginning to believe that events were taking a turn for the positive. Until a minute ago.

Kat shrugged. “I wanted you to get some sleep. There was nothing you could do about it in the middle of the night, and I figured today was going to be another hell of a day. Kurt agreed with me.”

“Okay,” Susan said. She supposed she meant it.

A Secret Service man opened the doors for them and they passed into the Oval Office. Kurt Kimball stood there, sleeves rolled up, ready to go. Luke Stone sat in one of the armchairs, in almost the same position he was in the night before.

Stone wore a plain black T-shirt with a leather jacket, jeans, and fancy leather boots. He looked fresher, less distant, more in the here and now than yesterday. His eyes were alive. Stone was a space cowboy, Susan decided. Sometimes he was just gone, out in the ether. That’s where he went when he disappeared. But now he was back.

“Hi, Kurt,” Susan said.

Kurt turned to her. “Susan. Good morning.”

“Nice boots, Agent Stone.”

Stone pulled his jeans leg up a couple of inches to reveal more of the boot for her. “Ferragamo,” he said. “My wife gave them to me once upon a time. They have sentimental value.”

“I’m sorry about your wife.”

Stone nodded. “Thank you.”

An awkward pause settled in. If she could, part of Susan – the emotional part, you might even call it the female part – would spend the next twenty minutes asking Stone about his wife, his relationship with her, how he had processed her death, and what he was doing to take care of himself. But Susan didn’t have that kind of time right now. The hard-headed, practical part of her – would she call that her masculine part? – pushed on with today’s agenda.

“Okay, Kurt, what do you have for me?”

Kurt indicated the TV screen. “Events have been moving fast. No surprise there. We had a mass shooting in New York City’s Chinatown last night. A large group of operatives from Gathering Storm emerged out of a convoy of black vans at around eight thirty p.m., and went on a march south from Canal Street. It was a provocation, of course. Within minutes, they were engaged in fistfights with neighborhood residents.”

“Gathering Storm, huh?” Gathering Storm was one of the Monroe-funded organizations that made Susan sick to her stomach. She often wondered exactly what it was these people thought they were doing. Of course, up until now the violence had been almost entirely threats made over the internet. Now it was real.

Kurt nodded. “Yes. They seem to recruit their activists based on size. The fist fights were completely one-sided for several minutes, until two contract killers from the Hong Kong Triads – apparently in New York on a murder assignment – opened up with Uzi submachine guns. The latest tally is thirty-six wounded, including a dozen Chinese, likely shot by accident, and seven dead, all of whom were members of Gathering Storm. Another three members are expected to die.”

Susan wasn’t sure what to say to all this. Good? That came to mind.

“The Triad members?”

“In NYPD custody, on multiple murder, attempted murder, and weapons charges. They have court-appointed translators, and last I heard a legal team is en route from Hong Kong. The Triads are well funded, to put it mildly, and the expectation is the lawyers will try to build a case for self-defense on the murders, and plead out the weapons.”

“What do you think of that approach?” Susan said.

Kurt smiled and shook his head. “New York doesn’t have the death penalty. That’s about the only thing those guys have going for them right now.”

“How about if I pardon them and send them home with medals?”

“I think we’ve got enough problems.”

“Tell me more,” she said.

“Well, once the news came out about New York, it seems the gloves came off. Groups of young men started entering Boston’s Chinatown around ten p.m. and attacking people on the street. They seemed to be men who were drinking in nearby bars, as the four men arrested were all drunk.”

“Four men were arrested? You said groups – ”

“Yes. It appears the Boston police were somewhat more lenient than one might hope, and let the majority of the offenders go with a simple warning.”

“What else?”

“A group from the Oakland branch of the motorcycle gang Nazi Lowriders entered the Chinatown in San Francisco and attacked people on the streets with sawed off pool cues and billy clubs. More than forty of them were arrested. Two of the victims in those attacks are in critical condition at area hospitals.”

Susan sighed and shook her head. “Great. Anything else?”

“Yes. Probably the most exciting news. Jefferson Monroe is scheduled to speak at a rally of his followers this morning, perhaps to address the violence last night, perhaps to call for you to concede again. No one is quite sure what his script is going to be. The best part is where the rally is going to take place.”

Susan didn’t enjoy it when Kurt was being coy.

“Okay, Kurt. Out with it. Where is that?”

“Lafayette Park. Directly across the street from us.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

9:21 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

Lafayette Park, Washington DC

It was a beautiful thing to witness.

They called it the People’s Park, and today the people were all here.

Not the ordinary denizens of this park, where generation after generation of the rabble, the rabble-rousers, and the radicals – the unwashed, the losers of life – would camp out and protest the policies of one President after another.

No. Not those people.

These people were his people. A sea of people – thousands of them, tens of thousands – who last night had passed the word across social media that their man was speaking here today. It was a stealth move, a knife in the back, the kind of move Gerry O’Brien excelled at. He had obtained the permit for this gathering from the city just before close of business yesterday afternoon, and the news of it had spread like wildfire overnight, the flames fanned by hurricane-force winds.

Now the people were all here, wearing their giant Abe Lincoln hats and carrying their signs – handmade signs, official signs from the campaign, professionally made signs from the dozens of organizations that had supported the campaign. Most of the people were dressed warmly in heavy coats and hats against the unseasonable chill.

Jefferson Monroe gazed out from the makeshift stage at that teeming mass of humanity – it was like a rock and roll festival out there – and knew he was born for just this moment. Seventy-four years, and many, many victories: from his earliest days as a teenage moonshiner in the backwoods of Appalachia, through his time as an angry young strikebreaker, an ambitious company executive, and eventually a major shareholder and captain of the coal industry.

Later, he became a senator from West Virginia and conservative political kingmaker heavily funded by the same coal companies he once worked for. And now… President-elect of the United States. A lifetime of striving, long decades of climbing up from the bottom, clawing his way, and suddenly, quite by surprise (an outcome no one expected, not even him), he was the most powerful man on Earth.

He was here to force the sitting President to leave the White House early, and allow him to enter. It was as audacious as anything he had ever attempted. Past the crowds and across the wide thoroughfare, he could see the White House in the distance, rising on a green knoll. Could she see him from there? Was she watching?

God, he hoped so.

He turned away from the crowd, just for a moment. Behind him on the stage was a crowd of people. O’Brien was there, the mastermind of this campaign, the dark lord of the white supremacists, a man at least as driven as Monroe was himself. Even now, he was barking something into a cell phone.

“I want that bird,” Gerry the Shark seemed to be saying. But how could that be right? I want that bird? What a strange thing to say! At a moment like this?

“I want it, okay? I want it to land just like we talked about. Tell me you can do that. Okay? Good. When?”

Monroe shrugged it off. Dealing with Gerry was more than just a wild ride – it was a lesson in surrealism. The President-elect decided to ignore his closest advisor for the time being. Instead, he spoke to the other people on stage.

“Are you seeing this?” he said, as he covered the microphone with his hand and indicated the massive crowd. “Are you seeing this?”

“It is the best thing I’ve ever seen,” a young aide said.

Behind him, clapping began in the crowd – not random, but rhythmic, thousands of hands clapping at once – CLAP, CLAP, CLAP, CLAP…

A chant was about to go up. This is how it started, with clapping, and in some cases stomping. And here it came, the voices rising.

“U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”

It was a good one, a good one to start on.

Monroe took his hand from the microphone and gripped the stand instead. He raised a hand, quieting the chant within seconds. It was like he simply turned down the sound on a machine – a TV, or a radio. But it wasn’t a machine, it was thousands and thousands of people, and he controlled them, effortlessly, with a gesture. Not for the first time, he marveled at that power, a power that he had. Like a superhero.

Or a god.

“How’s that global warming treating you?” he said, his voice echoing over the multitudes. Laughter and cheers rippled through the crowd. Personally, Monroe knew from climate scientists employed by his companies that global warming was a fact of life, and would be a serious issue a century from now, or sooner, perhaps even a threat to civilization itself. As President, he might quietly look for ways to implement policies that lessened the threat somewhat, without harming industry profits. In the meantime, his companies were gradually increasing investment in the renewable energy fields – the solar, wind, and geothermal technologies that were the future.

But his people didn’t want to hear any of that. They wanted to hear that global warming was a hoax, perpetrated in large part by the Chinese. So that’s what Monroe would tell them. Give the people what they want. And anyway, it was cold out today, an unseasonably cold day in early November, and that was evidence enough – there couldn’t be any such thing as global warming.

“Today is our day, did you know that?”

The crowd greeted that idea with a roar of approval.

“We came from nothing, you and I did. Okay? And we came from nowhere. We didn’t grow up in fancy upscale Manhattan or San Francisco or Boston penthouses. We didn’t go to special private schools for special people. We don’t sip lattes and read the New York Times. We don’t know that world. We don’t want to know that world. You and I, we’ve worked hard all our lives, and we’ve earned everything we have, and everything we will ever have. And today is our day.”

Their cheering was an eruption – an earthquake – of sound. It seemed like some great beast was beneath the surface of the Earth, sleeping dormant for centuries, and now it would rend the ground and burst forth in a frenzy of violence.

“Today is the day we are going to remove one of the most corrupt administrations in American history. Yes, I know, I know. She said she’s not leaving, but I tell you what. It’s not going to last. She’s leaving, all right, and a lot sooner than anyone thinks. It’s going to happen a lot sooner than she thinks, that’s for sure.”

The cheering went on and on. He waited for the crowd to die down. Monroe’s people hated Susan Hopkins. They hated her, and everything she stood for. She was rich, she was beautiful, she was spoiled – she had never lacked for anything in her life. She was a woman in a job always done by men.

She was a friend to immigrants, and to the Chinese, whose cheap labor practices had destroyed the American way of life. She was a hedonist, a former jet-setter, and she seemed to confirm everything heartland people suspected about the celebrity class. Her husband was gay, for the love of God! He had been born in France. Could there be anything more un-American than a gay Frenchman?

Susan Hopkins was a monster to these people. In the far reaches of internet conspiracy websites, there were even those who claimed that she and her husband were murderers, and worse than murderers. They were devil worshippers. They belonged to a Satanic cult of the mega-wealthy who stole and sacrificed children.

Well, today Monroe would give his people the murderer part. He wished he could be there inside the Oval Office and see her face when this news broke.

The crowd had quieted again. They were waiting for him now.

“I want you to listen to me for a minute,” he said. “Because what I’m about to tell you is a little bit complicated, and it’s not easy on the ears. But I’m going to tell it because you have to know it. You, the American people, the true patriots, deserve to know. It’s very important. Our future is at stake.”

He had them. They were ready now. Here it came. The Hail Mary pass. The bomb. Jefferson Monroe geared himself up and launched it.

“Five days before election day, a man turned up dead near the Tidal Basin right here in Washington, DC.”

His people had gone silent. A dead man? This was something new. It was not the typical Jefferson Monroe rally topic. It seemed that thousands of pairs of eyes were riveted to him. In fact, that was indeed the case. Give us something, those big hollow eyes seemed to say. Give us the meat.

“At first glance, it seemed like the man had committed suicide. He was shot in the head, the gun was found near his body, and his fingerprints were on the gun. It didn’t make much impact in the news at the time – people die every day, and often enough, they take their own lives. But I knew, okay, folks? I knew that this man didn’t kill himself.”

The eyes watched him. Thousands and thousands of eyes.

“How did I know that?”

No one said a word. Jefferson Monroe had never seen such a large group of people so quiet in his entire life. They sensed something big was coming, and that he was the one bringing it.

“I knew he didn’t commit suicide because I knew this man personally. I’d almost say he was a friend of mine. His name was Patrick Norman.”

Jefferson was no stranger to telling big lies. Even so, and unlike many politicians, he felt a certain twinge when he did it. It wasn’t guilt. It was the sense that somewhere out there, someone knew the truth, and that person would work tirelessly to bring the truth to light. In fact, it wasn’t even somewhere out there – at least three people standing behind him on the stage knew the facts. There were probably a dozen others in the organization. They knew that Jeff Monroe had never once spoken to Patrick Norman.

He pressed on.

“Patrick Norman was not suicidal – far from it. On the contrary, he was one of the best and most successful private investigators in the United States, and he made a lot of money. I know what he made because I was paying him. He was working for my campaign at the time of his death.

“Campaigning is a dirty business, folks. I’ll be the first to tell you that. Sometimes you do things you’re not proud of to get a leg up on your opponent. And I hired Patrick to look into corruption in the Hopkins administration, and in the business dealings of the soon-to-be former President’s husband, Pierre Michaud. Okay? Do you see where this is going?”

A ripple of assent, a loud murmur, went through the crowd like a rolling wave.

“Patrick called me on the phone a couple of days before he died, and he said, ‘Jeff, I’ve got the dirt you’re looking for. I just need to follow up on a couple of last leads. But this thing I have – the bad things she’s done – is going to blow this election wide open.’”

This was a lie stacked on top of a lie. Norman never called him. He never called him Jeff – he never called him at all. He had no dirt on Susan Hopkins, even after nearly a year of looking. He had determined that she was probably squeaky clean, or if not, the dirt was buried so deep that no one would ever find it.

“What Patrick suggested to me was that Hopkins and her husband accepted bribes from foreign leaders, including Third World dictators, in exchange for favorable treatment from the United States government. He also suggested that there was a quid pro quo going on in support of Pierre Michaud’s sham charities. If the dictators would make Michaud look good by letting him build his fake water systems – water systems that help no one, folks! – the USA would sell them weapon systems. This is shocking stuff. And folks, that was the last I ever heard from Patrick Norman. He had the dirt on Susan Hopkins. Then he died, apparently by his own hand.”

Now a ripple of boos went through the crowd.

“But it wasn’t by his own hand, right? Yesterday afternoon, the Washington, DC, medical examiner’s office released their findings. Patrick Norman did not fire the gun that killed him. And he had marks on his body consistent with a struggle. All indications are that someone killed him and made it look like a suicide.”

He paused and let the moment draw its breath. These were the true parts, and the parts that were especially damning.

“Five days before the election, Patrick Norman, the man with the dirt on Susan Hopkins, was murdered.”

The crowd exploded into a fit of ecstasy. This was what they wanted, all they had ever wanted – something that seemed to confirm everything that they just knew about Susan Hopkins. She was corrupt to her core, and she would have someone killed to cover her trail of deception.

As the crowd cheered, the cheer began to morph into something, the chant that had emerged late in the campaign. It was the most dangerous chant of all, one that Gerry the Shark had released into the public sphere through his Gathering Storm goon squad.

“KICK…HER…OUT!.. KICK…HER…OUT!”

Then a strange and wonderful thing happened.

Even as his people chanted violence, a white dove flew down from the sky, hovered about Jefferson Monroe for a moment, then alighted onto the right shoulder of his wool coat. It flapped its wings a couple of times, then settled down and relaxed. Now he had a dove on his shoulder. The crowd erupted.

It was magic. More than that, it was a sign. A sign from God.

He moved carefully, trying not to alarm the bird.

I want that bird, Gerry the Shark had shouted into the telephone.

Monroe raised his left arm, trying to quiet the crowd. It worked, sort of.

“This is a dove of peace,” he said. “And this is how we’re going to do it, folks. Peacefully, through the rule of law. Through the enforcement of the laws of the United States. Through the peaceful transfer of power which has been one of our great traditions since the earliest days of the Republic.

“Because we are a nation of laws, Susan Hopkins must vacate the office of President this very day, and leave the White House. The Washington, DC, metro police and the medical examiner have done their jobs – they have determined that Patrick Norman did not kill himself. And now I call on the Justice Department and the FBI to do their jobs – and investigate President Hopkins for murder.”

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