"The adoption isn't final yet, but thank you, I'm grateful to have him in my life."
"I'm curious," said Verus, "about the arrangements, though. I understand he's living with Mrs. Malich, even though you're adopting him. What do you do, take him on weekends? It sounds like shared custody after a divorce, without your actually having been married."
Cecily laughed. "My, but you've been keeping tabs on us."
"Not at all," said Verus. "When your request to visit me came in, I had my staff research everything about you. No, Colonel Coleman, I have not been obsessively tracking you since you apprehended me. You were doing your job, I was doing mine."
Cole refrained from askin
g him what "job" it was that required Verus to order the deaths of American cops and soldiers and then try to dismantle the Constitution.
"So why are we having this meeting?" asked Verus. "If Averell wanted to talk to me, he'd come himself."
"The President?"
"He has before," said Verus. "Well, technically, he wasn't President yet. But I was already traitor-in-chief. Didn't he tell you? Oh, yes, Averell and I are great friends."
"Mr. Verus," said Cecily.
"Call me Aldo, please."
"That is not likely," said Cecily.
"Why, because your husband was killed by some nutcase? Whatever you might think, that had nothing to do with our attempt to set to rights the stolen election of 2000 and get the country back on track."
"We're not here because of my husband's murder," said Cecily. "We're here in pursuit of the makers of the EMP device."
"Oh, yes, of course," said Verus. "My people had a really big one that brought down airplanes bent on assaulting the sovereign city of New York, so if somebody has one the size of a submachine gun it must be from the same source."
"Well, was it?" asked Cecily.
"My people developed our EMP device, in-house. We invented it, we built it, we used the only one we ever shipped out of our factory, and no one else got anything from us. We didn't sell the plans, we didn't sell the EMPs. And do you know why? Because it would inevitably be used against soldiers of the United States, and contrary to the lies that have been told about me, I am a patriot and would never do anything to harm American soldiers going about their lawful business." He grinned at Cole. "What you and your boys were doing was not, of course, legal, which made you war criminals and therefore fair game. You see how these things work? It's always lawful to kill the people you want dead—but only if you win the war."
"Since leaving your employ, do you know where the engineers and scientists who worked on your EMP device went?" asked Cecily.
"What makes you think they've left my employ?"
"You're in here," said Cole.
"But they weren't my valet or my barber, thrown out of work because I'm 'inside,' as they say. They worked for one of my corporations—a dummy corporation then, but we undummied it when the need for concealment vanished."
"When was that?" asked Cecily.
"When I was arrested."
"Actually, secrecy was the hallmark of your trial, Mr. Verus," said Cecily. "You told nothing about your operations."
"Well, nobody likes a tattletale."
"So they still work for you?"
"I said they might," said Verus. "Who's asking?"
"Not President Torrent," said Cecily.
"Ah," said Verus. He closed his eyes for a few moments. Then, eyes still closed, he started talking. "You come to me for information. Yet you could ask Averell for all the information about all my interrogations. Why don't you ask him? Because you don't want him to know you're prying into my past actions. And why wouldn't you want him to know?"
"Of course he knows," said Cecily.