Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

Somehow Nick had gotten the idea that being Christian was something you did at Mass, and the rest of the time you lived in the "real world." That was not what she and Reuben believed, not what they wanted their kids to learn.

And yet the President's quarantine policy was not very Christian. Or was it? Jesus healed lepers, but he didn't say that whealed lepers should be allowed to roam freely through society. He ate with the publicans, but not with the lepers. He healed the sick, he didn't let them run around infecting people.

Still, though, she felt there was something de

eply wrong with blowing up boats full of people desperate to escape from a plague-ridden land. And it would certainly come to that. Maybe the President would find a way to keep footage of it from ending up on YouTube, but it would certainly happen. Or some refugees would rig their boat with explosives, and if the U.S. Navy refused to let them pass, they'd blow themselves up—as close to the American ship as they could. And they'd make sure there was another boat nearby, shooting video so everybody could see.

A public relations nightmare, but if she were African, especially if she were in a country where the nictovirus hadn't come yet—which was most of Africa so far—she'd be plotting provocative acts to get America to change policy.

Or would she? Quarantine was sound practice in a deadly epidemic, and Africa had a long tradition of it. She remembered reading about it when ebola first surfaced and somebody wrote about it in The New Yorker. African villagers would seal up your house and leave food at the door. When you got so sick you couldn't get up to take the food anymore, they'd figure you were dead and burn the house down. It's how a village survived in an epidemic. How was President Torrent's policy any more ruthless? Was it just a matter of scale?

I have to think about this, she told herself. I haven't found the right answer yet. There has to be a middle way.

GEni. cileimm

The right of a government to rule over the citizens of a nation is not absolute. It's like the right of parents over their children. As long as the parents take reasonable care of their children, they rule supreme in their home. But when they neglect them or beat them or misuse them to a degree that outrages the sensibilities of their neighbors, the children are taken away and given to someone who will protect and provide for them.

The standards for governments are much lower. They may arouse the disgust of their neighbors, but some truly vile governments have been able to abuse their citizens for many years without interference from outside. Nevertheless, there is a time when a government can go too far. When a government wages open war and conducts genocide against a portion of their populace, then any nation that has the power to intervene to protect the people from their government has a moral responsibility and a legal right to do so.

At this time in history, America is the nation most likely to have the means to intervene, if any nation does. This does not make us the policeman of the world. It's not our job to save people from every bad government. The question really is: Can we live with ourselves, as a people, if we have the power to prevent unspeakable evil, and yet we choose to do nothing?

We answered that question when we failed to intervene to save the lives of countless thousands in Bosnia and Rwanda; we answered it a different way when we intervened in Kosovo and Iraq. To intervene will almost certainly cost American lives; but to refuse to intervene deeply injures the American soul. Who are we as a people? When we decide that we're the good guys, the world will see that America does not lack for soldiers willing to risk their lives to help—no, to save—people in faraway lands.

Cole assumed that he was called in to the White House because of something to do with the epidemic. Estonia and Latvia had both passed "honored visitors" legislation but they, like everyone else in the world, were watching the plague in Africa and following the news stories about reactions to President Torrent's declaration of a blockade of Africa.

It felt to Cole as if history were on hold. As if history were a game and he had been a professional player on one of the teams, but now the game had been called on account of plague. He had no expertise in any African language south of the Sahara, had no idea about the culture, and had even less of an idea about how to deal with an epidemic.

At the same time, the whole continent was in an uproar. Cameroon and Benin had both tried to stop the flood of Nigerian refugees, knowing perfectly well that many of those fleeing the nictovirus were already infected and would spread it wherever they went. But what good was it to guard the roads? People could take to the bush at any point and there was no stopping them. Nor was there time to build an Israeli-style fence. There were now reports that refugees had gone beyond Benin and were creating a refugee problem—and spreading the disease—in Togo, Ghana, and Burkina Faso.

With all this going on, why had Cole's name even crossed President Torrent's mind?

No use speculating when he was going to find out in a few minutes. Cole submitted to being scanned and searched—he understood the need for security, but couldn't help remembering that the last man elected to this office before Torrent had had all the same security in place, and somebody punched a rocket through a window where he was having a meeting with the Joint Chiefs, SecDef, and the National Security Adviser, killing all of them.

But just because the last successful assassination could not have been stopped by these security methods did not mean that they weren't still stopping other potential assassinations. Political murders could come from foreign powers, domestic revolutionaries, and nut jobs. White House security was primarily for stopping the nut jobs.

Of course, if I wanted to kill the President, I could do it with my bare hands before anyone in the room could stop me—unless there was another guy with special ops training, and even then, he'd have to be markedly better than me, if I had a head start.

Not that I would kill the President, thought Cole. But there's no guarantee that you won't get a nut job someday with genuine security clearances and superb military training.

If this president dies, thought Cole, it will probably be from this sneezing flu epidemic. Wasn't it an epidemic that struck down the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and his co-emperor Lucius Verus? Political and military power did not immunize you against viruses.

Thinking of Lucius Verus made Cole think of another Verus—Aldo Verus, who was still in prison for having led the conspiracy that seized New York City and tried to launch a civil war. Wouldn't it be ironic if this sneezing flu killed President Torrent, but left Aldo Verus unscathed? American prisons were probably as safe a place as any in the world right now. Certainly safer than shopping malls, movie theaters, or hospitals.

Cole found himself cooling his heels in a waiting room. He expected to wait a long time, since he had glimpsed the Joint Chiefs standing together in a much nicer waiting room. No way would Torrent keep them waiting in order to take a meeting with Cole!

So Cole's first surprise of the day was when he was called almost at once to a conference room and shown to a seat at the large conference table. Only a moment later, the Joint Chiefs were brought in—and seated at the same table. They looked even more surprised to see him than he was to see them. They were thinking, What are we doing at a meeting with him?

It was almost anticlimactic when the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, NSA, and Surgeon General came in. This was an African epidemic meeting, all right, and this group must have had many such meetings during the month since the sneezeborne version of the nictovirus first appeared. So what was Cole doing at this one?

President Torrent came in and didn't introduce anybody to anybody. He picked up as if they were in the middle of an unfinished meeting—which, in all likelihood, they were.

They began with reports from the Navy and Air Force about the blockade of Africa. SecDef pointed out that American forces in the rest of the world were stretched too thin—this would be the logical time for China to invade Taiwan, for instance. But now that the Chinese had pulled all their people out of Africa, they would watch what happened with the epidemic there just like everybody else. They'd hardly commit to a major war if they could expect to be savaged by an epidemic in midcampaign.

"What worries me," said the President, "is North Africa. We made the decision to treat the Sahara as a better barrier than the Mediterranean, and Morocco, Algeria, and Libya insisted they'd take responsibility for blocking any traffic coming north. Which makes sense, since they don't want to have the epidemic reach their population, and they have no problem being ruthless with refugees. But how capable are they? How much can they detect at night or out in the desert?"

"The Horn of Africa concerns us more than the Sahara," said one of the Air Force generals. "Can Egypt and Sudan really keep their border sealed?"

"My concern is small boats in the Red Sea," said Torrent. "It's such a short distance to cross over into Arabia."