Empire

Fair and balanced

As a soldier, Cole had forced himself to learn to wait until an order was given. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his commander to make the right decision. It’s that he couldn’t stand to do nothing.

As a boy growing up, he couldn’t hold still, not even in church. It wasn’t ADHD—he didn’t fidget, and he could easily concentrate on the task at hand for hours and hours. It’s that he couldn’t stand not to accomplish something. Why shouldn’t he clip his fingernails during a sermon? That way he’d hear the sermon and accomplish a job that needed doing.

His mother listened to his argument and answered with her typical “Interesting thought.” But she heard him—she always heard him. That night at dinner she brought in a roll of toilet paper and, after taking her first bite, spooled off a section of toilet paper, lifted the back of her dress, and made as if to use the paper. Cole yelled at her to stop, to which she replied, “But this way I can chew my food and accomplish a job that needs doing.”

“Not in front of me?” Cole said.

Out of his own mouth, he made her point for her.

So he learned to wait. And in the Army, he learned again. Nothing like live-fire exercises to concentrate the mind. He schooled himself to wait for many hours, for days. He learned to hide even the fact that he was waiting.

But that was war. He knew as soon as General Alton brought him back to the Pentagon that he couldn’t do nothing.

He didn’t even go back to the office. There was too much danger that Alton’s reassurances about how nothing would happen to him were a scam. So easy to detain him—soldiers didn’t have the rights of civilians against phony arrests. They could say he needed to be interrogated again. Then he’d disappear. When Congress subpoenaed him, the Army would tell them that Cole was on duty somewhere. And then his family would get word that he had been killed in action. His body would be produced with all the appropriate wounds.

How could he consider this kind of thinking paranoid? There was a general openly plotting a military coup. Cole’s inclination and his sworn duty as a soldier and a citizen required that he do whatever was within his power to stop it from happening.

So he got in his car and started driving. CNN or Fox News? Atlanta or New York? On the one hand, CNN would be all too eager to hear about a right-wing coup-in-progress. On the other hand, Cole’s purpose wasn’t to inflame people against conservatives, it was to be heard by soldiers who might be tempted to cooperate with Alton’s coup. And those soldiers regarded CNN as being almost as much of an enemy to the America they loved as NPR. They’d be watching Fox.

When he called Rube from the car to tell him about Alton, he couldn’t quite bring himself to report where he was going and what he intended to do. He knew that was wrong. That it was stupid. Why did I hide that information? he asked himself. The answer was obvious—you didn’t have to have a psych degree to figure out that he didn’t tell Rube what he was doing because he fully expected Rube to order him not to do it. Or to talk him out of it by persuasion alone.

He thought of all the reasons why he shouldn’t do it.

They won’t believe it. So they won’t broadcast it.

If they do believe it, they still won’t broadcast it because Alton’s people have already gotten to them.

If they believe it and broadcast it, I’ll come across as a complete wacko. Especially if everyone denies everything I’m saying and the coup doesn’t actually take place.

If they believe it and broadcast it and the coup happens, at best I’ll be out of a job. At worst I’ll be dead.

And it won’t make a bit of difference to history whether I do this or not. It’s a completely futile campaign. I’m wasting myself for nothing. I’m pulling the pin on a grenade just so I can fall on it. Either the coup happens or it doesn’t, regardless of what I say now.

Yet he kept driving north, up I-95 to Delaware and then across the river into New Jersey and its ugly toll road that funneled you to New York City as if you were being flushed down a toilet.

He found public parking, mortgaged his firstborn child to pay for it, and then walked to 1211 Sixth Avenue—no, “Avenue of the Americas,” as if the fancy name changed where it was located—and threw himself on the mercy of Fox News.

Army interrogators were trained never to reveal any reaction to what the person they were questioning might tell them. The reporters and producers who interviewed him tried to do the same, but they couldn’t hide their skepticism. Until it finally dawned on somebody that he was one of the two guys in that Tidal Basin video they’d been running for the past twenty-four hours.

Then they loved him. Only they didn’t know what to make of his story. “We can’t corroborate,” said one of the producers, finally. “Nobody backs up your story.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Cole.

“The thing is, we can’t run it as news unless we know we can stand behind it.”

So it was all for nothing.

“What we can do, Captain Coleman, is interview you on the air. You’re newsworthy because of what you and Major Malich did yesterday, trying to save the President and nearly succeeding. In that interview, you can tell the story of your meeting with General Alton. Then the news is not that there’s going to be a coup, the news is that you said there was going to be a coup. We don’t have to stand behind the truthfulness of what you say, we only have to stand behind the fact that you said it on the air.”

“Okay.” Cole knew that their interview shows were largely during the primetime hours. Who would he get? Greta Van Susteren? Hannity and Colmes?

“Bill O’Reilly wants you,” said the producer. “It’s the most-watched show on cable TV, so that’s a good thing, right?”

“Right.”

“Captain Coleman,” she said. “I don’t think you’re lying. But I sure hope you’re wrong.”

“I hope so, too,” he said. “Though if I am, I’ll look pretty silly, won’t I?”

“You got a lot of hero points yesterday. Even if you get a bunch of nut points tonight, they’ll probably balance out.”

“Am I going to be one of the guys O’Reilly goes after? Or one of the ones he treats sympathetically?”

“What, you think Bill tells us what he’s going to say?”

“Come on,” said Cole. “He talks from a script just like everybody else.”

“Actually,” said the producer, “that’s just the talking points. Everything else, he makes up as he goes along. The thing is, Bill likes soldiers. He likes heroes. At the same time, he’s going to be pretty skeptical of a claim that the Army’s going to stage a coup.”

“A small element within the Army is going to attempt it,” said Cole.

“Like I said, you just stick to your story and tell the truth. I don’t think Bill’s going to hurt you. But he’s going to give you plenty of chances to hurt yourself.” She leaned closer to him. “Captain Coleman, here’s the main law of TV interviews. Whoever gets mad, loses. Don’t get mad. Don’t even show anger.”

Cole smiled at her. “Ma’am, you don’t survive in the U.S. Army without being able to listen to stupidity for hours on end without showing the slightest reaction.”

“Good,” she said. “Because we’re trying to get General Alton onto the program via a hookup in the Washington studio.”

“He’ll just deny everything.”

“That’s right,” she said. “And he should have a chance to do it. Fair and balanced, remember?”

It was Mark who told them that Cole was going to be on O’Reilly that night. He came home from a friend’s house and charged into the living room, where Reuben was taking something like a nap on the couch. “The other guy’s going to be on Fox tonight.”

Still a little groggy, Reuben was sure he must have missed something. “Who’s the first guy?”

“You are. The other guy, the guy who was shooting terrorists with you. He’s going to be on The O’Reilly Factor.

Reuben made himself alert at once. “Okay. Thanks, Mark. You heard this at a friend’s house?”

“His dad was watching Fox News when he got off work.”

“But you aren’t supposed to tell people—”

“Dad, I’m not supposed to tell them that you’re here. They already know that you’re my dad. It’s too late for me to deny that.”

They kept the TV on while they ate dinner—usually against the rules—but the promos for O’Reilly were neutral enough. Tonight Bill talks with one of the heroes of the fight at the Tidal Basin. Only as they got closer to the actual show did the promos start talking about “astonishing revelations” and then, in the last promo, “serious charges” against “high-ranking officers.”

“Sounds like they got some corroboration,” said Reuben.

“Sounds like they’re hyping a TV show,” said Cessy.

When Cole’s segment came on, Reuben felt like leaving the room. He liked this soldier, he trusted him, but military people were notoriously bad on television. They kept their cool, yes, but they didn’t let anything show. They usually came across wooden. Scripted, even.

Cole, though, looked like a real guy. With normal human emotions. At first O’Reilly got him talking about the fight at the Tidal Basin. And Cole told it clearly but humanly—it didn’t sound memorized. He skipped around a little. And when he talked about how they didn’t get the other launcher in time, he choked up and it looked genuine. “People call us heroes but it doesn’t feel like that,” said Cole. “It feels like mission failure.”

“But it wasn’t your mission,” said O’Reilly.

“My mission is to defend the United States of America and its Constitution, sir,” said Cole. “It was being attacked, and there was nobody else close enough to make a difference. Rube and I—Major Malich and I, we both keep thinking, what if we’d chosen a different target. Driven a little faster. Run harder. Shot sooner. One second, and maybe we could have stopped it.”

“In my book you are a hero, Captain Coleman,” said O’Reilly. “Heroes don’t always succeed. They’re the ones that try.” Then he took a commercial break with the promise that there’d be more with Captain Cole after the ads.

“So far so good,” said Cecily.

“He didn’t go to Fox News to talk about the Tidal Basin,” said Reuben.

When the show came back on, it wasn’t just Cole on the screen. There was also an inset showing General Alton. “Joining us from our Washington studio is General Chapel Alton. Thanks for joining us, General.”

“It’s an honor to be on the program with Captain Coleman, sir,” said Alton.

“Oh, right, like he doesn’t know what Cole’s going to talk about,” said Reuben.

“It’s television,” said Cessy. “War by other means.”

When O’Reilly turned to him, Cole briefly told about his lunch meeting with General Alton. Reuben liked the way he told it without anger, though a little bit of outrage did creep into his voice.

But then it was Alton’s turn, and this guy was a pro. He showed no anger, either. In fact, he immediately apologized. “Captain Coleman is a great soldier. I took him to lunch because I wanted to get to know him better. I knew his service record, which is excellent. I’d seen the video that everybody else has seen.”

“Did you say the things Captain Coleman tells us you said,” O’Reilly asked him.

“I warned him about what the media was going to do to him. We’ve already seen some of it on several news programs. Things that certain members of Congress are saying. Why were these two soldiers there in the first place, armed, in a city park? And of course Major Malich had already broken protocol and told The Post about his having designed a similar contingency plan, so that was hitting the fan, too. I warned him about the turmoil he was going to face.”

“Nothing about a coup? Stopping the media from casting aspersions on Captain Coleman and Major Malich?”

“In my effort to express sympathy with his predicament, sir, I’m sure I must have said things that Captain Coleman misconstrued. I’m sorry if I led him to a false impression about just how much support he was going to get. We believe in civilian leadership of the military in this country, period. I took it for granted that he would know that our support for him would stop at that line.”

O’Reilly turned to Cole. “Well, Captain Coleman? What do you say to that?”

“Don’t get mad,” whispered Cessy.

“First,” said Cole, “I have to correct one thing—Major Malich and I were not armed. After we realized what was happening, we obtained arms from the ranger station in the park.”

“Don’t digress, don’t digress,” murmured Reuben.

“No, it’s okay,” said Cessy. “He’s establishing credibility.”

“I’m glad to hear that General Alton now disavows any of the plans he described to me at lunch today. I urged him to do so at the time. But I can assure you, Mr. O’Reilly, that there was no mistake. General Alton was quite specific. He regarded the assassination of the President and Vice President and Secretary of Defense as a pretext for a left-wing assault on the Constitution. His plans were all designed to forestall that, he said. But they were quite specific.”

While Cole was talking, Alton made the mistake of doing some eye-rolling. “Bad form, General,” said Cessy. “Makes people dislike you. Makes people think you’re lying.”

There was a little more back and forth, with Alton showing a little anger—not much, just enough to weaken him.

“This is a guy who does congressional hearings,” said Cessy. “I’m surprised he’s letting it get under his skin.”

“It’s because he’s lying,” said Reuben.

“Oh, come on. Like they don’t lie to Congress.”

“They spin to Congress.”

“Well, he’s spinning this, too, isn’t he? ‘I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.’ That’s fartspeak for ‘I said it, you jerk, but you weren’t supposed to tell.’ ”

“’Fartspeak’?”

“That’s what we called it on the hill,” said Cessy.

But now Cole was speaking again. O’Reilly had just given his famous “I’ll give you the last word” line, even though he usually said something after them so it wasn’t last after all.

“I’m talking to all the soldiers who watch your show, Mr. O’Reilly. Remember, you’re citizens first. Citizens of a country where the military doesn’t decide things, the elected people do. If we break that rule they’ll never trust us again. The country might be screwed up, but if you get an order to point your weapon at Americans who are just doing their job, don’t obey that order. Point your weapon at the guy who gave it.”

For a moment, O’Reilly was speechless. Maybe even breathless. “I pray to God nobody ever needs that advice in this country, Captain Coleman.”

“Me too,” said Cole.

And then they were off to more ads.

“Think Cole’s gonna get his own TV show now?” said Reuben. “Like Ollie North?”

“He was great. Gave me chills.”

“Yeah, but I got chills for another reason.” Reuben pressed the rewind button on the DVR. “Watch Alton while Cole is making that last speech.”

He waited for Cessy to see it, but she didn’t. So he showed it again. “Look. He’s enjoying it. See?”

“No, that’s a supercilious smile. He’s mocking it.”

“Right, at the start. But now—see how it changed?”

“He was just tired of holding the expression.”

“He’s happy about something,” said Reuben. “He just lost this interview. Cole owned it. Not that everybody believes Cole, but they believe him enough and dislike Alton enough that they’re going to want to know about it—and Alton’s happy.”

“Because he thinks he won.”

“You’re probably right,” said Reuben. “But like you said, he testifies in front of Congress and shows nothing. But here he rolls his eyes, he smirks. And then, when it’s over, and he damaged himself, he’s satisfied.”

“What would that mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Reuben. “But I think we’ve been played.”

“For suckers?”

“Like a violin.”

“Why would somebody possibly want you to announce that they’re planning a coup against the United States government?”

“It makes no sense,” said Reuben. “But still. It’s like when you’re face to face with a guy who might or might not have a gun under his robes or a bomb strapped to his body and you look him in the eye. You got to be able to read him. Alton reads wrong. That’s all.”

Cessy thought about it in silence for a while. Reuben had long since learned that if he filled such silences with talk, she would leave the room in order to be able to think, and then he wouldn’t be there to hear whatever it was she thought of as soon as she thought of it.

“It’s like what LaMonte said about how he could make this thing go away. It just didn’t sound like him. There’s something wrong.”

“Maybe,” said Reuben, “just maybe. It’s not a coup. It’s a grab.”

“I’m sorry, your high-level military jargon just defeated me.”

“A coup is where they arrest the President and replace him. But a grab is where the President is actually in charge of the coup, and he uses the Army to arrest everybody he thinks is a threat.”

“No,” said Cessy. “No, no, and no.”

“Not possible?”

“Not LaMonte Nielson. Truly, Reuben. I know the man.”

“Knew him. Back then.”

“Core character. He’s a very deft and ruthless politician, but he stays inside the lines. He loves the Constitution. He would never.”

“Unless he thinks he’s Abraham Lincoln and the country needs to have some of the lines crossed a little.”

“He’s President for barely a day and he’s planning a military dictatorship?”

A new thought occurred to Reuben. “I hate to say what I’m thinking.”

“I know what you’re thinking and you may consider that this time I screamed ‘no no no.’ He had nothing to do with the assassination.”

“Well somebody had something to do with it.”

“Not him.”

“Somebody really wanted LaMonte Nielson to be President.”

“Or maybe somebody really wanted the President and Vice President dead and they didn’t care who was next in line.”

“LaMonte only became Speaker about three months ago, right?”

“There’s been a lot of turnover at that job.”

“How long do you think this assassination was planned?” said Reuben. “They had to drill those guys. They did not stop to think about anything. They had practiced hauling up the watertight cases and opening them and assembling everything. They knew down to the footstep where to place those launchers, exactly what angle to point them at. They did it like machines. How many months do you think they’ve been practicing that?”

“I don’t know,” said Cessy. “How long ago did you finish your plan?”

Reuben thought and couldn’t remember. He opened his PDA and she scoffed. “Oh, come on, you can’t be that paranoid.”

“President’s dead using my plan,” said Reuben. “It’s not paranoia.”

“All right, I’ll look up the exact date when the previous Speaker stepped down.”

Reuben followed her to the computer. “March fourth is when I started showing around a draft that had the Tidal Basin plan in it.”

“March tenth,” said Cessy. “That’s when the job came open. March thirteenth LaMonte got the nod.”

“So he wasn’t put in as Speaker of the House until they had the plan they’d use to make him President.”

“No,” said Cessy. “No.”

“How do you know?”

She looked at him with defiance. “The same way I know that you had nothing to do with the assassination plot, even though you wrote the plan they used, even though you’re always gone on mysterious trips and late-night meetings and you can never even hint what you’re doing. Do you want me to trust that instinct or not, Reuben?”

It took him aback. It hadn’t occurred to him that it might actually be hard for her to be certain of him. He knew he had nothing to do with the assassination—not deliberately, anyway—but when he thought of how all his activities must look to her, it said something that she believed him. Why should she believe him?

Would I believe me, if I didn’t know what I know?

He put his hand on her cheek. “Trust it,” he said. “And I’ll trust your instinct about LaMonte Nielson, President from Idaho.” He forced something like a laugh. “It’s really kind of like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Farm boy makes good.”

“No,” said Cessy. “LaMonte is the consummate insider. He’s no Jimmy Stewart. But he doesn’t cheat. And he doesn’t kill. And he liked the President. Liked him before he was elected. LaMonte is solid.”

“And yet it was you, not me, that made the connection between Alton’s attitude and what Nielson said to you on the phone.”

“You haven’t yet thanked me for turning down the coolest job I will ever have offered to me.”

“I thought you already had the coolest job.”

She pursed her lips.

“You mean doing meals and dishes and errands isn’t cool?”

“It’s the most important job in the world. That’s why I turned down the coolest job in order to keep doing this one.”

Reuben’s cellphone rang. One of the new ones. “Cole,” he said to Cessy. And then into the phone he said it again. “Cole.”

“Please tell me I didn’t completely screw up,” said Cole.

“No, you did great,” said Reuben. “Kept your cool. Just enough fervency to show you care. Guys out there who might be wavering about joining this coup, I think you might have persuaded some of them not to do it. Maybe a lot of them.”

“Or maybe I started some mutinies. Maybe people will die.”

“People do what they do,” said Reuben. “What you did was remind them of honor.”

“Yeah,” breathed Cole. “I didn’t know for sure they were going to have General Alton on until right before.”

“Well, if you’d bothered to call me first, I could have told you, of course they’d offer him a chance to answer you. Talking heads are bad television, nose to nose is good television.”

“Sure, but I didn’t think he’d do it. If you could have seen him yesterday! It’s like he’s a different guy. What a liar.”

“Yeah,” said Reuben. “But which one was the lie?”

Silence for a long time.

“You think I was being set up?”

“Why should I be the only one?”

“Now that I think about it,” said Cole. “He was so over the top. It’s like he studied the right-wing fanatic playbook. He even said ‘faggots.’ ”

“And dykes?”

“No. I guess he drew the line somewhere. He played me? You really think so? But why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if he played you, and if he did I don’t know why. But one thing’s for sure. The assassination of the President was a terrible thing, but it is not causing so much confusion that there’s any excuse for the military to seize power. If there is a coup, it’s just a naked grab for power. In fact, if there’s a coup, then we can almost count on it that whoever carries it out, that’s who gave my plans to the terrorists. That’s who tipped them off about the President’s location.”

“So it was a right-wing thing,” said Cole. “Like Oklahoma City.”

“Yeah, well, the Left had the Unabomber, though nobody ever seems to remember that his logic sounded just like Al Gore preaching about the environment—crazy as a loon, but full of all kinds of internal politically correct logic.”

“Wackos on both sides.”

“One man’s wacko is another man’s prophet.”

“Meaning one man’s Hitler is another man’s Churchill.”

“Except Churchill never thought up death camps.”

“You know what I meant. There really are good guys and bad guys. But before they have a chance to show you what they do with power, it can be hard to tell them apart.”

“Cole,” said Reuben. “Where are you staying tonight?”

“I haven’t even thought about it.”

“Unless you’re independently wealthy, you can’t afford to stay in Manhattan on a captain’s pay.”

“Hell, I can’t even afford to park my car.”

“So come on out to West Windsor. I’m handing the phone to Cessy to give you directions from the city—she’s been coming here all her life, she knows the route better.”

Cessy took the phone. “He’s just lazy,” she told Cole.

As she gave him the directions, Reuben walked back into the living room. He had paused the program on Alton’s face.

“What’s your game, General Alton?” he said. “Are you that dumb? Or are we?”