Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

He was grinning at her.

"What's so funny?"

"Torrent knows how to fix the world, Cecily. He knows how to fix it. All he needs is the power to do it. And that power requires public support in America and international cooperation outside it. And to achieve those, he needs a few little things here and there—a Sudanese incursion to destroy an American base right when they're sick with the sneezing flu. An itsy little civil war in the United States."

Cecily raised a hand. "Be careful now. You're coming perilously close to saying that President Torrent had Reuben killed."

"I'm saying that Torrent sets things in motion and then takes advantage of however they play out. I'm betting that if the other side had won that civil war, Torrent was all set to become, in short order, the consensus president in the new Progressive Restoration."

"He can't possibly be that cynical."

"Look at him! He's a Democrat and a Republican. Why not a Progressive? Or a Green? Just so it gets him into position to save the world."

"He did not kill my husband," said Cecily. "He could not have sat with me, week after week, talking to me, listening to me, befriending me, if he had killed my husband. I would have seen it in him."

"Would you?" said Cole. "What if the reason he's consulting with you, seeing you constantly, is because he knows that he's ultimately responsible for Reuben's death. He didn't give the order, but he set things in motion that eventually put DeeDee in Reuben's office when your husband became the key figure in the assassination of a president?"

Cecily's head hurt already. She didn't need this argument. "I'm done," she said. "I can't go through any more of this. Whatever I say, you have yet another conspiracy to throw at me."

"Here's the last one, then. And for once it isn't one of Torrent's. I'm going to give you a quotation, and you tell me what it means. 'Torrent thinks he's Octavian, but if he is, who's Julius?'"

Octavian—the man who became Augustus Caesar, the one who united the empire under his leadership after the civil wars, when a grateful public accepted the de facto end of the republic even though he kept the forms of it alive.

But whoever said that was denying that Torrent was the great peacemaker who created empire out of the ashes of other men's broken ambition. Because there was Julius Caesar, the consummate politician from an old but poor family, who parlayed his way to power through borrowed money, sucking up to the public, and at the same time forging alliances and winning military victories that made him the greatest Roman of his age.

And then he was killed for it by people who feared that he would destroy the republic.

Of course, he already had. Killing him didn't bring it back, it just changed who would be at the head of the new empire.

"Do you really think they're planning to kill him?" asked Cecily.

"I don't know. They're coy about that. But they joked about using the Bones to get past the White House defenses—and that was the first night I ever saw the Bones and Noodle in use. From the start they've been thinking of that as a possible use of this equipment."

"God help us all if that's what they have in mind."

"Why do you say that?"

"Even if they're right. Even if Torrent is the death of democracy in America and the beginning of a new world empire, if he gets killed, what takes his place?"

"The old messy chaos?" asked Cole.

"We already have a Pax Americana. Not complete peace, but enough of it that we have this whole vast world economy that absolutely depends on safe transportation and communications from every place to every other place. But it requires us to keep putting out fires. So let's say Torrent really is trying to get the whole thing so well organized that there are no more fires to put out. A system that can last a thousand years, like the Roman Empire. So he's gathering all this power into the center, and then somebody kills him. Do we go right back to where we were before? Or do we break through the floor and go back to the way it was before the global economy? We're in the middle of a huge epidemic. Torrent is the only reason it hasn't already spread throughout the world. If he's suddenly gone, does the quarantine hold? Does American support for the changes in Africa continue? And what do the Chinese do? And the Koreans, and the Iranians, and the Russians?"

"So you're against assassinating him," said Cole.

"On practical as well as moral grounds, Cole," said Cecily.

"What if we had proof that he caused both sides of the civil war a few years ago? What if we had proof that he set in motion this Sudanese raid with the handheld EMPs? The first one killed your husband. The second one took your son. If he set those in motion, Cecily, would he deserve to die?"

Cecily turned away from him. "Don't play that card, Cole. It's wrong of you."

"I'm telling you what they're going to say when they talk to you in the States. You're the only person they'll still listen to. They think they know that Torrent set in motion the plans that killed Reuben, and now Mark. They think he has exploited their deaths in order to gather really incredible amounts of power to himself. They believe his empire is built on the bodies of people that they love—people you love. They hate him, Cecily. They want him dead. And they want your blessing."

"They won't have it."

"Good," said Cole. He stood up.

"You really came here for this? To drag me through this?"