Empire (Empire 1)

“It’s public perception. They’ve played this beautifully. I have to admire it, even as it makes me want to weep for my country. They provided arms, plans, and information to terrorists so they could behead the country. Our strongest leadership wiped out in a stroke. Then they set up a right-wing coup to establish martial law and abrogate the Constitution during this time of emergency.” Nielson sighed and looked down at his shoes.

“A phony coup,” said Cole.

“Oh, yes,” said Nielson. “General Alton came into my office and told me that he and a large number of officers were ready to implement my order to establish martial law. He didn’t call it a coup. He was handing it to me. But I was so naive and so—what’s the word I want?—yes, so stupid . . . that I didn’t even recognize the veiled threat—that martial law would be declared anyway, with or without me. I was new at this. I was frightened. I was not well advised.” Nielson walked around behind his desk and finally sat in the president’s chair. “If it had not been for your broadcast, Captain Coleman, I would have announced martial law at nine P.M. yesterday. The President’s writers—oh, they would be mine now, wouldn’t they—were scrambling to write an appropriate speech. I was just about to read the final draft when Sandy came in and told me to switch to O’Reilly and listen to one of the soldiers who tried to prevent the assassinations.

“You reminded the soldiers of their duty. You reminded me of mine. I finally saw what Alton was doing. As God is my witness, it was never my intent to throw out the Constitution. I thought it was hanging by a thread, and I could save it.” He chuckled bitterly. “You don’t save it by cutting that thread.”

“You didn’t make the announcement,” said Cecily. “That’s what matters.”

“It’s more than that,” said Nielson. “I remembered how Alton talked. Thinking back on it, it was crazy. A paranoid version of conservative principles. It should have been obvious. It was like a parody, the Left’s version of the Right. But you see, I was a Congressman from Idaho. The people who fund my campaigns talk like that. It’s the looniest ones who pony up the most, sometimes ideology opens the pocketbook. I’d been hearing their lunacy for so long that it didn’t sound irrational to me anymore. I was used to madness.

“Well, so is the Left,” he continued. “The wackos on both sides have controlled the rhetoric for so long that the Left really thinks they’re right when they call simple mistakes ‘lies’ and openly arrived-at decisions ‘conspiracies.’ That city council in New York, if you said to them, ‘Will you secede from the United States and bring the full wrath of the U.S. military down on your city?’ they’d say no. They’d say hell no.”

“Actually,” said Reuben, “this is New York you’re talking about. They’d say—”

“I know what words they’d use,” said Nielson, smiling tightly. “But I don’t use them. Look, these Progressives, they’re playing it smart. Keeping the tempo up. They undoubtedly already had people on the council, ready to drive things forward. It’s not a coincidence that there are legislators and city councilors in all the blue states, calling for their city or state to get on the bandwagon. I think they’ve already counted the votes while we were napping. I think tomorrow morning we’ll find that Washington or Oregon, maybe even California, officially ceases to recognize me as President of the United States. If I had declared martial law last night, I think it would be a dead certainty that they all would. Because I would be out in the open as a tool of the insane faction of the extreme right wing.”

“Are you saying,” said Reuben, “that you intend to do nothing?”

“I intend to proceed carefully,” said Nielson. “The New York City Council has declared that their borders are peaceful—and open. Everyone who works in the city is invited to come to work tomorrow, and apart from some reconstruction work and traffic problems because of the damage caused by . . .”

He picked up a paper on his desk and read from it.” ‘Caused by the illegal resistance of reactionary forces’ . . . apart from that, it should be business as usual. But any attempt to restrict access to New York City will result in sudden, harsh retaliation. ‘We will defend ourselves.’ ”

Reuben shook his head. “You can’t let this stand. If you let people go to work, if you let trucks in with food and fuel—”

“If I don’t, then I’m starving perfectly good Americans as part of my fascist conspiracy to force theocratic antienvironmental—I can’t do their rhetoric very well, but you know what I mean. Remember the propaganda that Saddam got from the embargo, even after we were supposedly letting humanitarian aid get into Iraq.”

“You’re going to let public relations determine the course of this war?” asked Reuben.

“Spoken like a soldier,” said Nielson, not unfavorably. “But as my advisers—my advisers now—point out, it’s already a public relations war. It’s about winning the hearts and minds of the people. If we leap in with guns blazing, we might win—and we might not, because those jets they knocked down yesterday have the Air Force generals wetting their pants—but what do we have? A huge portion of our population will believe that they are now an oppressed and conquered people. We will prove that the Progressives were right, and guess who wins the election this fall?”

“You think people would vote for the very people who tried to break this country apart?”

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??But they aren’t breaking it apart,” said Nielson, smiling sarcastically. “They’re simply restoring government by the principles that the American people voted for in 2000, and which have been suppressed for all these years by the evil right-wing conspiracy. This is not the American Civil War. It isn’t one region against the other. There are no boundaries. What kind of war can we wage if we have no secure areas? How can we tell, looking at the local populations, who is for us and who is against us? Who is a supporter and who is a saboteur? And then consider collateral damage. And then consider the way most of the media is playing this. Oh, they cluck their tongues about those bad people who took over New York, but their stories are full of admiration for the chutzpah of it—and for the high technology, and for the ‘peaceful approach’ they’re taking now. Naturally, everybody is calling for negotiations. I’ve had so many messages from European governments begging me to negotiate I could paper these walls with them.”

“Now we know how the Israelis feel,” said Cole.

“Except we’d have to build about a hundred fences to separate the red from the blue,” said Reuben.

“Not to mention,” Cole added, “sorting out which soldiers are actually from the cities in rebellion.”

“Now you understand,” said Nielson.

“So why did you bring us here?” asked Cecily. “Surely not for more advice.”

“What I need,” said Nielson. “What the country needs. Is proof. Proof of this conspiracy. And I think you have it. Major Malich, I think you were set up. But I hear you can identify who leaked your assassination plans if you have the copy the FBI found in the terrorists’ apartment.”

“I think I can, yes sir,” said Reuben.

President Nielson lifted a file folder from his desk. “This is a copy of the one we found. The original had your fingerprints all over it.”

“Anyone else’s?”

“Your secretary’s. But no others. Which is one of the reasons the FBI is suspicious of it. Did the terrorists wear gloves when they handled the paper?”

“It should have the prints of the leaker, too, and everyone who handled it before him,” said Reuben.