A Better World

CHAPTER 17

On the monitor, Cleveland was burning.

Cooper watched the president watch it. Lionel Clay’s face was drawn, his shoulders tight beneath his dress shirt. He stood like a man caught in a spotlight.

“The situation’s getting worse.” Owen Leahy pressed a button, and the image shifted, an overhead view of a government building. Cold stone and columns, it was a gray island encircled by a sea of people, thousands of them, a mass of rough currents that formed no pattern. The secretary of defense continued, “City hall is surrounded. The national guardsmen who were already on scene have secured the building, but they’re having trouble getting reinforcements in. Cleveland PD has a riot team en route, but the mob is making it slow going.”

“Where did the fire start?” The president spoke without looking from the screen.

“The east side, 55th and Scoville. A tenement building, but it’s spreading fast. There are twelve square blocks burning, another twenty at risk in the next hour.”

“Fire crews?”

“They’re spread thin, and they’re tired. There have been multiple fires every day for the last two weeks. This is the first that’s gotten out of control. Crews are focusing on containment, with every station sending men, but the mob is—”

“Making it slow going.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get the mayor on the phone.”

“We’ve been trying.” Leahy left the rest unsaid.

“The Children of Darwin are behind this?”

“They’re certainly involved. But there are thousands of rioters. It’s out of control.” Leahy pressed another button, and the angle shifted, zooming in.

A camera drone, Cooper figured, unmanned and circling a mile above the scene. The video showed the front line of a pitched battle, men and women screaming at each other, whirling, spinning. A man in a leather jacket swung a baseball bat. A teenage girl, her face a bloody mess, leaned between two people pushing to get out of the fray. A white guy stood over a black man, kicking him savagely. A group rocked a car, bouncing and shoving and bouncing until it tilted up on one side, held for a moment, and toppled.

“The whole city is like this?”

“A lot of people are out protecting their property; others are just watching. But everything within half a mile of Public Square is a mess. Intelligence estimates there are as many as ten thousand rioters in the downtown area. And the power is still out. It will get worse when night falls.”

“Why didn’t the mayor call in more police right away?”

“We don’t know, sir. But at this point, even if riot squads make it to city hall, they won’t be able do much more than protect the staff. The mob is just too big.”

“The Democrats are going to have a field day with this,” Marla Keevers said. The chief of staff had a way of turning the word Democrats into an obscenity. “You’re going to take a huge—”

“I don’t care about politics right now, Marla. One of my cities is on fire. Is this part of a larger attack?”

“We don’t know, sir.”

“Why not?”

“It’s chaos down there, Mr. President.” The secretary of defense paused, then said, “Sir, it’s time to take aggressive action. We should assume that this is the first step in an attack, maybe a national one.”

The president said nothing.

“Sir, we need to act.”

Clay stared at the screen.

“Mr. President?”

And as Nick Cooper stood beside a glowing Christmas tree in the Oval Office of the White House, watching the world begin to fall apart, he found himself thinking of something his old boss had said just before Cooper threw him off a twelve-story building.

“Sir? What do you want us to do?”

His one-time mentor had said, If you do this, the world will burn.

“Mr. President?”

The monitor had shifted back to a wide aerial view. The fire had spread, and thick smoke blotted out half the city.

“Sir?”

President Clay just stared at the monitor. Cooper could sense the tension in him, the fear. The man was staring like everything was a dream and if he concentrated hard enough he might wake up.

“All right.” Owen Leahy turned to Marla Keevers. “The National Guard isn’t enough. I’m ordering all military forces to active alert, and pulling secondary divisions from overseas to reinforce positions across the country. We need to be prepared to apply overwhelming force.”

Keevers nodded.

“We should immediately arrest John Smith, Erik Epstein, and any other known leaders. Also, detain all tier-one abnorms who are under surveillance by the DAR—”

“I’m all for arresting Smith,” Cooper said. “But you’re talking about thousands of people.”

“There are protocols in place to establish regional internment camps.” Leahy turned back to Keevers. “In addition, effective immediately, we’re activating the Monitoring Oversight Initiative. We can’t wait until next summer. If we had done it when the measure passed, these cities might not be under attack. Begin with tier ones and move down the ladder. I want a tracker in the neck of every abnorm by Christmas.”

Cooper couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Not just the content, but the fact that Leahy was making these decisions on his own. “You can’t do that.”

“It’s already law, Mr. Cooper. We’re just moving up the timetable.”

“No, I mean you can’t do that.” Cooper stepped forward, purposefully too close. “Unless you’re launching a coup d’état.”

The secretary bristled. “Watch your tone.”

“Watch your own.” He stared the man down. Knew he was being insubordinate and offensive and didn’t give a shit. Some moments a person had to stand up. “I haven’t heard the president give any of these orders.”

“This nation needs strong leadership right now. Any more delay and things are going to get worse.”

“I agree. But you’re not the president.” He turned to Clay. “Sir, if you think things are bad now, just wait. Rounding up citizens and activating the MOI means declaring war on our own people.”

“We’re already at war.” Leahy gestured to the screen.

“That’s a riot, not a war. And you can’t save America by imprisoning all the Americans.” He wanted to yell, to slap the desk, to grab them by the shoulders and shake them and make them wake up. “This will galvanize the terrorist cause. It will turn everyone against each other. This is what will lead to war.”

Leahy said, “I’ve had enough. We appreciate your service, Mr. Cooper, but it’s no longer necessary. You can go.”

“I don’t work for you.”

As if on cue, Clay coughed and stirred to life. He tore himself from the monitor. His eyes darted back and forth between them. “Nick—”

Cooper cut him off. “Sir, this is a bad idea, and I think you know it, and I think that’s why you recruited me in the first place. You knew that someone would be standing here telling you to start a civil war. And you weren’t sure you’d be strong enough to say no.”

“Hey.” Keevers’s voice cracked like a whip. “Enough.”

“It’s all right.” Clay’s voice was weak. “Go ahead, Nick. Say what’s on your mind.”

“Sir, we all agree something has to be done. But not this. I’m not being idealistic, I’m being practical. We’ll lose. We’ll lose everything.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“We shift our focus. Instead of dealing with the terrorists, we deal with the gifted.” He’d been wrestling with the problem ever since he and Quinn left John Smith in the burnout. If he couldn’t just kill Smith—and he was starting to regret that he hadn’t—they needed a way to cut him off at the knees. To change the game so that it wasn’t Smith against the repressive government, but Smith against Americans. That meant bringing in another player. Someone with clout and influence and money. “We go to Erik Epstein.”

Marla Keevers scoffed. Leahy said, “Are you serious? The man doesn’t even exist. He’s just an actor. John Smith and the Children of Darwin might be pulling his strings. There is no Erik Epstein.”

“Yes,” Cooper said. “There is. I’ve met him.”

All of a sudden, the room was very quiet. Clay and Leahy and Keevers all stared.

Cooper said, “In the New Canaan Holdfast in Wyoming three months ago. Erik Epstein is very real, and very much in charge. He’s just private. The man you called an actor is actually his brother Jakob. The two of them faked Jakob’s death a decade ago so that he could become Erik’s public face.”

President Clay sat down on the edge of his desk. He rubbed at his chin. “Well, Nick. You are full of surprises.”

“He trusts me.” That was a lie of epic proportions; he’d betrayed Epstein. Cooper had agreed to kill John Smith, and instead he’d not only spared him, he’d unwittingly served Smith’s agenda. Because of Cooper’s decisions, the New Canaan Holdfast was in greater danger than ever before, and there was nothing in the world that Epstein cared about more than his little realm in the desert.

Still, not much mileage in them knowing the world’s richest man is pissed at you. “Let’s reach out to him. Ask him to join us in calming the nation.”

Leahy said, “What possible good would that—”

“It would reframe the discussion. In the 1960s, the government legitimized Dr. King’s movement by bringing him into the discussion. That put radicals like Malcolm X and Huey Newton on the outside. Suddenly it wasn’t blacks against whites, it was pacifism against violence. You were a history professor, sir. You know that this has to be the way.”

Clay stared at the Christmas tree, a Victorian mess of bows and baubles.

Marla Keevers said, “Something else it does.” She turned to the president. “It gives us a target.”

Cooper said, “What?”

“We don’t have any way to reach the Children of Darwin. But if we were to work with Epstein and the NCH, to offer them support on the condition that terrorism cease . . .” She shrugged. “It’s a win-win. Either they get the situation under control, or we have legitimate reason to strike the stronghold of abnorm power.”

“Wait, that’s not what I—”

Clay stood up. “All right. Nick, pack your bags. You’re going to New Canaan as our ambassador. Convince Epstein to join us, help stop these attacks, and return our cities to us.”

“Sir, I’m not a diplomat. I don’t know the first thing—”

“You know Erik Epstein. He trusts you.”

“I—yes, sir.” Cooper felt dizzy.

Clay moved around the other side of the desk. “Meanwhile, Owen, make the troop deployments. Bring nonessential military home, and reinforce all domestic bases. And just in case, prepare a plan for concerted military action against New Canaan Holdfast.”

“Sir, what about the Monitoring Oversight Initiative? We should still move that—”

“We’re going to try this way first.”

Leahy started to argue, caught himself, and swallowed the words with a visible effort. He shot a look of purest poison in Cooper’s direction. “Yes, sir.”

Clay turned to him. “It’s on you now, Nick. You had better succeed.”

The president was too gentle a man to add the unspoken next sentence, but in Cooper’s head, Drew Peters’s voice finished it for him.

Because if you don’t, the world will burn.