In all likelihood, he would probably return to the House. The new laws of presidential succession did not necessarily require that he resign his House seat, and Cecily tried to remember if he had or not. She didn’t think so. In such a time of crisis, nobody was agitating for a by-election in Idaho yet. Or maybe he had already quietly let it be known that his name would be on the ballot in November—running again for Congress. Nobody would dare to run against him or try to replace him.
So everybody was happy, really. The country was better off. LaMonte had quite possibly changed the momentum and the direction of the national mood.
Now all that was needed was for Rube’s jeesh to find the smoking gun—the place where all these Progressive Restoration weapons had been made, where their soldiers had been trained. And maybe, just maybe, proof that the rebels had been ready to take advantage of Friday the Thirteenth because they had planned it. Right now that charge was a staple of the far-right pundits, but it was dismissed as absurd by nearly everyone else. Cecily knew that because the traitors obviously had to have contacts inside the White House and the Pentagon, it was easy to assume that the treason came from the Right, not the Left—the opposite camp from the Progressive Restoration.
But she knew better. The lurid details of Reuben’s murder by his secretary had gone through the normal media nonsense—claims that his secretary had probably killed him because they were having an affair, or because he had backed out of their treasonous conspiracy at the last moment and tried to save the late President. Cecily did her best to ignore such things because they would only make her crazy and she could do nothing to stop them.
She knew that the FBI had turned up the fact that while DeeNee had never done anything illegal or even questionable—or she could never have been cleared to work where she did in the Pentagon her friends from college remembered her as being a fervent radical of the Left, even by the standards of American university English departments. The FBI found no links to any particular movements—DeeNee had not been a joiner—but there was no way to pretend that there was much chance that whatever conspiracy she had been a part of was of the Right. But since the report on Reuben’s murder was now tied up in the report on the Friday the Thirteenth assassinations, nothing had been made public. She had found out only because LaMonte told her.
“I’m not going to make it public and I hope you’ll respect that decision,” LaMonte had said. “If it leaks that she was a campus leftist, it will be interpreted as an attempt by my administration to blame the Left, which means the Democrats, for Friday the Thirteenth. It would only be more divisive. When we get the full answer, then we’ll publish it and damn the consequences. But until then, Cecily, let them babble on the television and don’t let the nonsense bother you. The truth will come out in due time, and your husband will be recognized as the hero and patriot and martyr that he was.”
But LaMonte would probably not be in office when the final report was ready. Someone else would be. If it was the Democratic candidate, Cecily had little faith in her letting a report that implicated anyone from the Left ever see the light of day. Maybe it would be Torrent. But would he allow a divisive report to be issued, given that he would be trying to hold the factions together?
Then again, he was bold enough to use Reuben’s jeesh as a fighting force to make surgical strikes to work against the rebels wherever one of their minor strongholds had been found. Maybe he would be wise enough to regard the provable truth as the best road toward reconciliation.
Cecily pinned her hopes on Cole and Reuben’s friends. If Torrent was right, and these lakes in Washington were the stronghold of the rebels, maybe they would find there the proof that would reveal who was responsible for Friday the Thirteenth—and for Reuben’s murder. Reuben would be completely exonerated. Their children could grow up without a taint of treason attached to their father, but could take pride in him.
The press conference was over. But Cecily’s thoughts had taken her down an emotional road she usually stayed away from. All she could think about was Reuben.
Sandy came up to her after the reporters rushed out to file their stories or do their standups in front of the “Gettysburg White House.” She saw Cecily’s attempt to hold back tears and said, “My dear, I know you aren’t moved by Torrent’s appointment.”
“No, no,” Cecily said. “It’s Reuben, that’s all.”
“You’ve hardly given yourself a chance to grieve.”
“Work is the cure,” said Cecily. “I was just thinking about our kids and how the world would view their father as they grew up.”
“The world will honor him, or the world can go hang,” said Sandy. “Meanwhile, give yourself a break. Nobody’s going to get any serious work done today anyway, it will all be buzz and whisper and speculate. It’s a field day for the pundits, in and out of the President’s staff. Go home and come back tomorrow.”
It was good advice. But when Sandy said to go home she meant one thing. To Cecily it meant another.
She could hardly go “home” to the little house where Aunt Margaret was looking after the kids—the last thing they needed was to see their mother as an emotional wreck.
So she got in her car and drove out of the secured area and drove down U.S. highway 15 to Leesburg, and then down Route 7 through the familiar sights of Loudoun County. She had been so immersed in the war they were fighting that she had almost forgotten that most of America didn’t know they were fighting a war. People might be keenly aware of and troubled by the fact that New York City and the state of Vermont were not under the active authority of the U.S. government, that Washington State was neutral at best, that other states might join the rebellion—or the “restoration”—and they no doubt had strong feelings about it. But they were still going to work and doing their jobs, shopping at the malls, eating at the restaurants, watching the phony reality shows of summer, or going to the summer blockbuster movies. Cecily wondered briefly whether current events had helped or hurt one of her and Reuben’s favorite series, 24. Did it now seem too close to painful reality for people to enjoy it? Or was its sometimes far-fetched plotting now completely vindicated by events that were even less probable than the conspiracies on the show?
By the time 24 went back on the air, people would no doubt have calmed down about Friday the Thirteenth. The show would still be a hit. American Idol would still find hordes of people waiting to humiliate themselves for a chance to be on television. The World Series would still be more important to a lot of Americans than the presidential election. One of the great things about democracy was that you were also free to ignore government if you wanted to.
The house was locked. Undisturbed. She had arranged for her mail to be forwarded to her office in Gettysburg and she had paid all the bills—the air-conditioning was running and the water was still connected.
No, not undisturbed after all. The bedroom had been entered by someone who—no, she knew why the closet and several drawers were open. Cole told her that the Secret Service agents had sent people here and to Cole’s apartment to get uniforms and underwear and toiletries for him and Reuben that last night of Reuben’s life. The Secret Service agents who had been willing to die to protect her husband, and who nearly had—both severely injured in the fighting, but both now out of the hospital and, presumably, back on the job, at a desk no doubt until their recovery was complete. She had visited them in the hospital once and thanked them for trying to save her husband, and for saving Cole, but she could see that they were still ashamed of having been caught flat-footed by DeeNee and her .22.
Cecily pulled down the covers of the bed, took off her shoes, and crawled between the sheets. She had heard that sometimes the scent of a loved one would linger in their sheets, their clothing, but either time had erased any smells or they were simply too normal for her to recognize them. She had a good cry over that. But she would have had a good long cry if the smells had still lingered there, too. It was about time she cried, she told herself even as she wept.
And then she was done with weeping, for the moment, anyway. She got up and went downstairs to the kitchen and began cleaning out the dead food in the fridge. Here there was no shortage of odors, and she got the garbage bags out of the house and into the big plastic cans behind the garage. She expected the cans to be full of reeking garbage, too, but some neighbor must have taken them to the curb on garbage day and brought them back. She hesitated to put these bags in the cans because she had no intention of being here on garbage day—but maybe the neighbor would check. Or maybe not. Better to leave the garbage here than stinking up the kitchen.
Hadn’t the children’s bikes been out on the lawn? No, she made them put them away in the garage before they left. Didn’t she? She checked, and they were there, so she must have—the neighbors didn’t have keys to get in and put things away. It wasn’t that kind of neighborhood. Cecily had been one of the few mothers who was home during the day.
I want to be home with my children again, she thought. And then whispered it. “I want to be home again.”
But not yet. Not until she had finished with the work she was doing. There was still more evidence to gather. More pieces to fit into the mosaic.
Which made her think of the “office”—a room in the finished half of the basement where they kept their financial records and all of Reuben’s books and papers from school. Nothing classified or secret, not in print and not on the family computers. The laptop in the office was more hers than his. It’s where she kept track of the family finances and paid bills online.
She walked into the room and switched on the light. Someone had been in here, too. The laptop was gone.
Well, that was hardly a surprise. They wouldn’t have pursued Cole so relentlessly for the PDA without also looking for any other place where Reuben might have kept his data. But she had to commend the thieves for their tidiness. If they had gone through the rest of the papers or searched through the whole house, they had put everything back neatly enough that she couldn’t tell.
And maybe it was the Secret Service that took the computer. Maybe they had it and would give it back to her so she could update her financials.
She opened the file cabinet that contained Reuben’s papers. Not many in recent years—everything was so secret there was no chance he’d keep things at home. But his student work was all here. The papers he had written for classes. His dissertation, of course. And all his notes from all his classes, written in Farsi and neatly filed.
His notes had always looked both beautiful and forbidding. Because Farsi used the Arabic alphabet, it was written from right to left, with words that looked virtually the same—it was a script-only language, so each letter flowed into the next one, and many important distinctions consisted entirely of the dots and marks surrounding the letters. To someone who didn’t know the alphabet, it looked more like art than language. But now Cecily had learned the Arabic alphabet and knew many words of Farsi on sight.
Enough, in fact, that she could identify which class each folder of notes was from. They were headed by subject and teacher name. The teachers’ names were often written in roman letters, but sometimes not. She quickly realized that those written in Farsi were the names that were also words that could be translated. No doubt Reuben got a kick out of thinking of professors by the Farsi translations of their names.
“Torrent” was a word. Which of these was Torrent’s class? She had no way of knowing—the word “torrent” wouldn’t have come up much in Reuben’s records on his PDA. She didn’t actually speak Farsi. What she had mastered was more like a graduate student’s version of a foreign language—exactly what was needed to read a particular set of documents and not a speck more.
But she wanted to know what Reuben had written about Torrent’s class. And when the boys got back from Chinnereth and Genesseret, they could help her by translating it.
If they got back.
She couldn’t think that way. They were soldiers like Reuben had been. They were careful, highly trained, and very hard to beat. They could only be killed by treachery, the way Reuben had been.
“Treachery.” A strange word, she thought. What is a treacher? How do you treach? Of course the real words were “traitor” and “betray,” but what an odd word, that looked like it ought to function like “teacher.” Those who teach are committing teachery, she thought. While those who commit treachery are treachers. Do they go to college to get their treaching certificate? Do they belong to the treaching profession? She chuckled at her own humor, then realized that with Reuben gone there was no one to tell it to. He would have laughed and probably would have reversed the joke, dropping the r in treason words to refer to teaching. “Our kids have got some mighty fine taitors in school this year. They’ll be carrying out their teason in our children’s classrooms. They plan to betay our kids.”
It would have become a family joke word. “What did they betay you in school today?” “None of my teachers would be convicted of teason, Dad. Lack of evidence.” And on and on for years.
But not now.
Her eyes again filled with tears, she pulled out all the folders that didn’t have the professors’ names written in roman letters and took them with her out to the car. She’d find out what Reuben learned from Torrent. And, knowing Reuben, he would have written his opinions of his professor as well.
Only as she drove back out toward the Leesburg bridge did the connection of treachery with Torrent emerge to the level of consciousness.
At first she dismissed it. And then she didn’t.
Wasn’t it because of Torrent that Reuben was first recruited to work on his clandestine projects with Phillips? Torrent was already well connected in Washington, even then. She remembered Reuben talking to her about how the guys recruiting him were probably the ones Torrent had hinted about. But she distinctly remembered the “probably” in what Reuben said. Nobody had actually identified themselves as coming from him. Reuben talked about that because Torrent had told him that they would mention his name. He even said that he meant to check with Torrent to see if these guys were the ones he had been talking about.
Did he? Or did he decide not to bother the Great Man? Or did he try, but Torrent didn’t bother to answer?
Even if Reuben’s contact with Phillips originated with Torrent, that didn’t mean that Torrent had anything to do with their activities. Somebody might have said, we’re looking for a good man who can be trusted to do this and this and this, and Torrent simply recommended Reuben.
Treachery, though. Treachery was on her mind. DeeNee was on her mind. Working with Reuben for years, knowing his secrets, helping him keep his clandestine work secret. How far did this conspiracy reach?
The information on the PDA had been part of the data that Torrent used when he deduced where Aldo Verus’s secret garrison had to be. But what if it wasn’t mere deduction. What if Torrent was part of it all along?
How could he be? He had been sending the jeesh out on missions that involved taking out guys on hovercycles and taking down mechs and trying to find EMP weapons. Working against the rebels.
Or was that part of Torrent’s game plan? Make it plain that he’s definitely on the side of the Constitution, so that he can get exactly where he is—Vice-President-to-be, with a strong possibility of being nominated for President?
No, no. That’s too twisted and deep a game. Torrent showed them the reasoning that led him to those lakes in Washington.
Showed it to them. Demonstrated it. Made the trail clear. He knew where it was all along, but couldn’t tell them until they had gathered enough information that he could show them a rational path leading to the conclusion.
No proof. Probably not true. Probably.
But if it was true, then what mission were Cole and Load and Benny and Mingo and all the rest on, what were they really doing? Was it a wild goose chase? If Torrent was honest and he really had deduced the location the way he showed them, then in all likelihood it was simply wrong and they’d find no
thing there.
If it was real, though, and Aldo Verus—or somebody—had an arsenal and a garrison underground in those mountains, then was he sending the jeesh into a trap? Had he used them for his purposes and now no longer needed them? Was he planning to have them killed and the incident made public to discredit President Nielson and swing more of the country toward the Progressive Restoration?
No, it couldn’t be that. Because Torrent had just thrown in his lot with President Nielson. Not that he’d become a Republican, necessarily—he was still noncommittal about that—but he had declared for the Constitution and against the rebels. Plus, if the mission to Chinnereth led to a public relations disaster, it would be a disaster for Torrent, too. His fingerprints were all over the mission.
Her mind leapt to another connection. Was it possible that both Torrent and General Alton were agents provocateurs, secretly part of the rebel conspiracy, with a mission to destroy the constitutional government by embarrassing it and providing justification for the Progressive Restoration?
It put everything in a new light. Or perhaps into a new darkness. It was too convoluted. So many things could go wrong with such a plan. You don’t pin your revolution on the actions of people who are, essentially, actors.
Not actors. Moles. Espionage services do it all the time.
Still, she could not believe Torrent was some sacrificial lamb playing a part. As Cole told about it, General Alton had been so obvious that he was almost certainly putting on an act—that’s what they all assumed now. His mission was to try to get LaMonte to commit the folly of imposing martial law, without the support of the Army but thinking that he had that support. Was Torrent also putting on an act?
Was he so self-sacrificing that he would bring himself into a position to play for the presidency exactly at the time that he was launching the incident that would bring this government to disaster?