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CHAPTER TWELVE

Colleen Kinsella clutched her coat around her as she stepped out onto the top level of the Company parking garage—she hadn't buttoned it, forgetting the weather forecast. That forecast had proven out, as they often did (the Lokaron allowed weather satellites, any hidden capabilities of which they were quite able to detect); and in defiance of the lights of Washington a multitude of stars blazed in a sky whose crystal clarity, this time of year, portended unseasonable chill.

She recalled reading that, a century ago, before the advent of air conditioning, the British Foreign Service had classed Washington as a tropical post. That brought a smile on a night like this, although she could fully understand it in the summer. What she couldn't understand was how people had managed to survive the Washington summer in those days.

Of course, the summers weren't quite as hot then, she recalled as she walked briskly toward her car. The "global warming" of which the EFP's immediate forerunners had made so much was a fact, and had been since the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1750 had ended. The average person hadn't known that, of course. When the opinion makers had unanimously told him it was the fault of recent industrial emissions, and that the free-market economy—and free speech on the subject—must die that Earth's biosphere might live, who was he to question it? After the media-induced hysteria had served its political purpose, it had been quietly dropped, and nowadays the facts were no longer suppressed. What would be the point? thought Kinsella. Now that disagreement is outlawed, not merely demonized, there is no point. The rabble can be allowed to know how they've been manipulated. Why not? They're too stupid to understand it, and too slavish to resent it.

She smiled with the wry self-knowledge of which she was sometimes capable. Who am I to be looking down my snoot at "media-induced hysteria?" In an earlier generation, a certain imaginary "missile gap" got my family's first President elected—with the help of the Chicago machine's graveyard constituency! Who was it who said there really is an afterlife in Cook County? The smile faded into a scowl of annoyance at the uninvited flash of irreverence, and she proceeded in a jerky quickstep. There was her car. . . .

Shock froze her larynx as the black hood went over her head, pulled down from behind. By the time she regained the ability to scream, and was gathering herself to do so, she smelled an odor she recognized all too well, and her voice refused to function as unconsciousness gathered her in.

Just before blackness closed over her, a panicky thought stabbed into her waning awareness—the fear government officials had been living with since the Wainwright assassination. Oh my God . . . the Eaglemen!  

 

"She's coming around," Rivera observed dispassionately.

"Did you really have to do it this way?" They'd been over it repeatedly, but Katy still didn't like it.

"We maybe should have sent her an engraved invitation?" Major Andrew Kovac, USAF, leader of the Eaglemen's command cell to which Rivera belonged, still wasn't happy with the conclusions to which the evidence had forced him, and his voice dripped his unhappiness. It wasn't that he was ambivalent—there'd been no ambivalence to his reaction on learning of Havelock's triple-dealing. But Havelock didn't happen to be present to take it out on, so the non-Eaglemen who were present would have to do.

"I only meant, Major, that these tactics aren't exactly going to predispose her to open-mindedness."

"Open-mindedness? Her? That—"

"Cut the goddamned bickering," Roark snapped. "She's awake."

Kinsella blinked away the cobwebs of unconsciousness as the stimulant they'd given her took hold. She straightened in the armchair where she sat unrestrained, and looked around the nondescript little room, distinguished only by its Lokaron holo equipment. Completing their survey, her eyes finally settled on the four people present. Roark hadn't known just what kind of reaction to expect, but the Director's coolness impressed him.

"I'm alive," she said, unnecessarily. "I suppose that must mean I'm to be held for ransom, or as a hostage, or something. Odd: I always thought the Eaglemen specialized in murder, not kidnaping."

Roark cleared his throat. "Actually, Director, we're not all Eaglemen. I'm Ben Roark—you've probably heard of me."

Kinsella stared, openmouthed. Before she could speak, Katy stepped forward. "I also used to work for you, Director. But you probably don't remember me, as it's been a while. The name's Katy Doyle."

Kinsella looked blank at first, then her eyes grew even wider than they had at Roark's name. "Doyle! Yes, I remember now. But you were reported killed a long time ago."

"The rumor of my death was—"

"Yes, yes," Kinsella muttered impatiently. "But Havelock never said anything about you still being alive."

"You're going to be amazed at some of the things Havelock hasn't told you. Learning about them is, you might say, the reason you're here. But to continue . . . in addition to being a former Company agent I'm also a former member of the Eaglemen." Kinsella's face went absolutely expressionless. Katy continued as though she hadn't noticed. "I let that membership lapse some time ago. But the Eaglemen are, in fact, part of the alliance of which you're currently a . . . guest." She introduced Kovac and Rivera. Kinsella's stoniness cracked at Rivera's name, and Katy smiled. "Yes, that's right: the same Captain Rivera who is the Company's on-scene control inside the Enclave. That will make sense when you've learned more."

Kinsella addressed her through lips that barely moved. "So. Terrorists. A renegade." She jerked her chin in Roark's direction. "And . . . whatever it is you consider yourself to be. Does this `alliance' have any other members?"

"Yes: Hov-Korth, a corporation—that term is close enough, and will have to do for now—belonging to the Lokaron nation, another convenience-label, of Gev-Harath. Mr. Roark and I are here as its representatives."

Kinsella's jaw sagged. Katy continued before she could regain the power of speech. "Yes, I know. The notion of the Eaglemen allying themselves with the Lokaron seems incredible. It will become less so when you've heard me out." She drew a deep breath and commenced.

It wasn't the same presentation she'd given Rivera, for this time it was necessary to establish Havelock's secret life as leader of the Eaglemen before even reaching the matter of his involvement with Gev-Rogov. So it took longer, and the Director interrupted with varying mixtures of incredulity, scorn and outrage more often than the Special Forces captain had. But she was easier to shut up; for all her self-possession, she couldn't forget where she was and who she was among. She'd never faced actual physical danger, nor received the kind of training that prepared one for it.

The pièce de résistance was the same, though: the holo projection of Havelock's interview with his Rogovon master.

After it was over, Katy resumed in a quiet voice that only seemed loud in the silence. "Now you can perhaps begin to see why we're all here. Havelock has betrayed the Eaglemen just as he's betrayed you—just as he's in the process of betraying the entire human race. And the Lokaron we represent—Hov-Korth, and by extension all of Gev-Harath—have no desire to see Gev-Rogov strengthened. They, too, are threatened by Havelock's treachery."

It wasn't certain how well—if at all—Katy's words were registering on Kinsella. But the Director was definitely emerging from shock. It started as an aguelike trembling, as though her rage was a seismic event. Then it climaxed with an eruption of extended profanity and obscenity that impressed even the military people present, finally subsiding as her breath ran out and her vocabulary settled into relative mildness—but only relative. "That lying, double-timing motherfucker! By the time I'm through with him he'll wish he'd been formally charged and brought to trial! He'll never see the outside of the Company's subcellar for the rest of what little remains of his miserable life! I'll—"

"No, Director! For the time being, it is very important that you not reveal any knowledge of Havelock's treason. You must continue to behave normally toward him."

"Why?" Kinsella's expression was ugly. "What exactly is you people's agenda, anyway? And why should I go along with it?"

Roark and Katy exchanged a brief eye contact. This was the crucial moment. They'd been over it before with the Eaglemen, but now push had come to shove and they could only hope Kovac and Rivera would be able to exercise the self-control the moment demanded of them. Without daring to glance at them, Katy spoke levelly to Kinsella.

"Our `agenda' coincides with yours, Director. Gev-Harath cannot act openly against Gev-Rogov, backed by a Lokaron consensus, until there has been an overt act by the Rogovon. Therefore it is necessary that Havelock and his masters be strung along for now . . . until they go too far. Nor does this conflict with the Eaglemen's objectives. We've persuaded them that America's interests lie in getting a better deal out of Hov-Korth than the present treaties. But those treaties benefit the present American power structure. So before there can be any change we need a new leadership in the Central Committee. And you are the logical choice to supply that leadership."

Silence fell, and they watched carefully as Kinsella went poker-faced. Their analysis of her motivations was unambiguous. She had no interest in overthrowing the present regime; she only wanted to stop being its servant and become its master. She turned to the two Eaglemen. "Well, well," she sneered. "So much for all the idealistic slogans about kicking out the Lokaron and restoring the comedy show that passed for a government in this goddamned country back when it was pretending to take the Constitution seriously. Turns out that's just pablum for your constituency . . . just as phony as the bleeding-heart crap the EFP and its predecessors used to con the rubes. Why don't you admit it? You're no better than the rest of us!"

Roark and Katy held their breath and watched Rivera. But she kept silent under the provocation—hotheaded she might be, but she understood discipline. So she let Kovac respond. "We mean every word we've ever said. But we have to accommodate the political realities. Change is going to have to come gradually. And we're not going to get any change at all out of a Central Committee run by lard-assed bureaucrats like Morris and ideological necrophiliacs like Ziegler! We don't like you any better than you like us. But we're both opposed to the status quo. And we each hate Havelock even more than we do each other."

They watched carefully as Kinsella's head gave a small, unconscious nod. They'd agreed in advance on the response Kovac had just delivered. The Director would have laughed at a claim that the Eaglemen held her in any deep affection, and a seeming confession to her charge of power-seeking hypocrisy would have aroused her suspicions. But this contained just enough grains of truth to carry conviction.

"All right," Kinsella said, nodding more firmly. "So you're saying we can help each other. You're willing to help put me onto a new, reshuffled Central Committee if I'll go along with your plan to counter Havelock and the Rogovon, and then make the kind of deal you want with Hov-Korth afterwards, when I'm in power. Is that it?"

"An able summation, Director," Katy affirmed. "Except that there's one other thing we need from you: access to other highly placed people who, for whatever reason, want a change. We need all the allies we can get, especially strategically positioned ones. You must know such people . . . maybe even somebody on the Central Committee itself." From the dossiers the Eaglemen kept, they had a pretty good idea of who that somebody was. But they wanted Kinsella to think it was her own idea.

She didn't disappoint. "Hmm . . . Yes. I can think of one possibility. Earl Drummond."

"The President's cousin?" Roark hoped he was achieving the right tone of feigned surprise.

"Yes. He and I go back a long way. And he's the only one on the Central Committee who's had an original thought in the last thirty years. Hell, most of them never have!" Kinsella's face fell. "But he's always been a voice for the President's position: absolute opposition to all alien contact. Hell, Morrison thinks we should never have signed the treaties, although he's never explained how he thinks we could have avoided it!"

"Let that be our concern, Director," Katy soothed her. "If you can get us in to see him, we'll worry about convincing him of the necessity and rightness of what we're proposing."

"Well . . . I'll see what I can do."

 

"This wasn't exactly what I had in mind for a meeting place." Katy sounded jittery. Gazing out the car window at their destination, Roark sympathized.

"As I told you, he insisted on it." Kinsella was understandably defensive. "He said it was the only place he felt secure. Being family, he's practically at home here—everyone knows he's in and out a lot, so his presence won't even be noticed. And your faces aren't widely known . . . unlike mine, which is why he insisted that I not accompany you any further than this."

"I suppose," Roark drawled, "the same security concerns are why he only agreed to talk to Katy and me, with no Eaglemen present."

"Can you blame him? Ever since the Wainwright assassination . . . Well, it's time now. Go!"

Roark opened the car door, letting out the heated air and admitting a blast of midnight in which their breath frosted. He and Katy stepped out under the stars and proceeded southeast along Pennsylvania avenue, toward Seventeenth Street, where it simply stopped. The stretch of the avenue which had once separated Lafayette Square from the White House grounds had been obliterated a generation ago, lest someone park the same kind of cargo at the President's doorstep as had once been left outside the Oklahoma City federal building. They crossed Seventeenth Street and stood on the deserted sidewalk beside a wrought-iron fence, with the hideous old Executive Office Building to the right and their well-lit destination visible beyond.

An overcoated figure stepped from the shadows between the streetlights. They tensed as he brought up a hand, but it held only a Company ID card whose lettering—luminous in the dark by virtue of Lokaron imprinted circuitry—spelled the name Kinsella had told them to expect. They produced their own identification in turn. Without comment, he gave them both a quick, impersonal frisking.

"This way," he said, and led the way a short distance south along Seventeenth, to a small gateway. A White House security cop opened it for them wordlessly. Following instructions received through proper channels, or simply bribed? wondered Roark. Their taciturn guide led them around the north end of the Executive Office Building and, abruptly, the White House stood before them in all its enlarged grandeur.

The enlargement had replaced the old Executive Wing with one of the two harmonious extensions Grover Cleveland had planned for James Hoban's original mansion. Now the President's ceremonial office—the only sort of office he needed anymore—was located on the second floor, in the old Yellow Oval Room. The First Family's private living quarters were beyond that, in the new East Wing. They approached an inconspicuous ground-floor door in the new West Wing, which was devoted to whatever business the President had to conduct under modern conditions. A low, indirectly lit corridor with groined arches overhead led to a double door. The Company man gestured them inside, remaining on guard in the corridor.

The room, low-ceilinged like everything else on the ground floor, was like a very handsome traditional library, with rich blond-mahogany paneling and a blaze going in the fireplace. A man, dressed casually in slacks and sweater, was tending the fire with a poker. He turned as they entered, put away the poker and extended a hand. His face, somewhat darker than the paneling, formed a smile in his neat white beard. "Ms. Doyle. Mr. Roark. I'm Earl Drummond. Take off your coats, please. I've been looking forward to meeting you, having followed your . . . exploits with great interest for some time."

They shook hands with him, mumbling pleasantries. Katy was uncharacteristically tongue-tied, and Roark felt the same way. "It's a pleasure to meet you too, sir," he ventured. "Although it's hard not to feel a little intimidated by the, uh, venue you've chosen." Could that possibly be intentional? he didn't add.

Drummond smiled again and chuckled. His voice was a deeper shade than his skin. "Well, you know, there's something to be said for having a place to stay for free in Washington. Especially a place I'm pretty sure isn't bugged—not even by my old friend Colleen Kinsella."

Katy cleared her throat and stepped into the conversational opening. "Speaking of Director Kinsella, sir, I believe she has apprised you of what we want to discuss . . . and who we represent."

"She has," Drummond acknowledged, still affable but with an air of getting down to business. He indicated a semicircle of armchairs in front of the fireplace, and grew still more businesslike as they settled in. "Colleen has described Havelock's treason, in terms that—coming from her—compel my belief. She's also explained that you and the . . . shall we say unexpected combination of parties you speak for think we should let him continue undisturbed for now. I must say, that last part sticks in my craw."

"Nevertheless, sir, it's necessary. The Company could squash Havelock now, but he's merely a creature of the Rogovon, who are beyond the reach of any U.S. government sanctions. They'd just try something else . . . something that might work. In order for Gev-Harath to move decisively against them—"

"Yes, yes, Colleen has explained all this to me. I'm prepared to agree, provisionally."

"Thank you, sir." Katy let her relief show. "I understand why you find this course of action unpalatable."

"No, I don't think you do. It's not stringing Havelock along that bothers me. I'm quite familiar with the `enough rope' approach to criminal investigation—which is really what we're doing here, on a rather grand scale. No, what bothers me is the fact that we're doing it this way because it's convenient for the Lokaron. The good Lokaron, of course . . . or so Colleen has assured me, although I'm damned if I can understand all the Gev-this and Gev-that business. But they're still aliens, and it's their show, and we're just supporting players." Drummond held up a hand as Katy started to speak. "But for now, let's move on to the other half of you people's agreement with Colleen: a shake-up in this country."

Roark and Katy glanced at each other. Not certain how much of the truth Drummond should be told at this stage, they had decided to give him the same version Kinsella had heard. Roark proceeded to do so. "Uh, yes, sir. It's our understanding that you would be agreeable to a new Central Committee, with Director Kinsella and yourself as the dominant figures."

"Well, you understand wrong!"

The same accelerated time sense that took hold of him in a firefight descended on Roark. He began a quick motion, stopped as he remembered he was unarmed . . . and then realized that Drummond was smiling again. "Better hear me out before you do anything drastic, Mr. Roark."

Roark made himself appear to relax. "So you were joking just now? Not funny."

"No, I wasn't joking. I have no intention of getting involved in this just to bring about a power realignment in the upper echelons of the EFP. No, sir. If I'm going to risk my hide, it'll have to be for something worth the risk: doing away with the EFP altogether! Not just changing its leadership or redirecting its priorities or otherwise `reforming' it. I mean right between the eyes!"

Roark kept his mouth shut because he knew that if he opened it he would only blither.

Drummond smiled again, turned his head toward a recessed doorway, and put slightly more volume into his voice. "I don't think they believe me, John."

"No, I don't think they do." The owner of the new—and very familiar—voice emerged from the door.

Paralysis was no longer one of Roark's problems. He shot to his feet as though the armchair had been an ejector seat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Katy had kept pace with him. And her vocal apparatus was a little ahead of his, though all it could do was stammer. "Ah . . . er . . . that is . . . Mr. President . . . "

John Morrison indulgently waved them back to their seats as he took one himself. He was even lighter in coloring than his cousin, with iron-gray hair cut too short to reveal its texture. He could easily have "passed" back in the last century when Americans of inconspicuously African descent had been wont to do so. The EFP had been noisily proud of itself for placing the first person of such background in the White House . . . long after it had ceased to matter much to everyone else. He'd outraged Vera Ziegler and others of her ilk by letting himself be overheard characterizing his ancestry as "pure house servant." That bit of taboo violation had been far from the last of his politically awkward public utterances.

"Sorry I didn't introduce myself earlier," he said, smiling, as Roark and Katy stiffly resumed their seats. "But you must admit this entire meeting is a little irregular, and I thought I ought to use Earl here as a sounding board first. Oh, don't worry," he added, seeing Roark's rapid eye-coverage of every corner of the room. "We really are alone. You can speak freely . . . as can Earl and I."

"Well, Mr. President," Roark temporized, "surely you can see how it's a little disconcerting for us. We've just heard Mr. Drummond—a member in good standing of the Earth First Party's Central Committee—declare himself, in effect, an Eagleman."

"Of course Earl's a Party member, as am I. Everybody in public life in this country is . . . by definition. Just as Boris Yeltsin was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, before he drove a stake into its heart." Roark understood the reference, though he'd been a preschooler when the polity to which Morrison referred had dissolved. "So now you know. If wanting to do away with the self-perpetuating, brain-dead oligarchy that's been killing this country the way ivy kills a tree makes one an Eagleman, then, yes, Earl is one, and so am I. But I thought the Eaglemen's agenda also included getting the aliens off Earth. From what you've said tonight, I gather it no longer does."

"We've explained to Director Kinsella that—"

"Yes, and she's explained it to Earl, and he's explained it to me." Morrison sat back, hands resting on the arms of his chair, and his face took on a brooding expression. Where have I seen that exact look before? Roark wondered. Then, with a small shock, he remembered a giant stone figure that sat behind classical columns, in a monument within walking distance of this place.

Finally the President looked up and met his guests' eyes. "I may have been living a lie ever since I let the Party put me in this house to serve as its figurehead. But one thing hasn't been a lie: my opposition to the Lokaron treaties. That, at least, I could get away with saying publicly. What I couldn't say out loud was my real reason, which was the same as my reason for wanting to smash the EFP. I want America to be what it was before—what it was meant to be. In the last third of the last century it began to go tragically wrong. When the EFP gang came to power, they didn't kill freedom, they merely buried its corpse. We did that to ourselves. But then the Lokaron came. And now we have two alien entities controlling our lives and distorting our development—one a mutant birth from within our own national body, the other an interloper from outside. We've got to free ourselves from both of them if we want to reclaim our identity and realize our unique potential."

Gazing into those troubled dark eyes, Roark didn't trust himself to speak. Katy spoke for them, at first hesitantly, then with greater assurance. "I understand, Mr. President. Up to a point, I even agree. We can get rid of the EFP—in fact, that's been our real intent all along. And that's not all. We want you to take the lead in dismantling the American world hegemony and creating a global federal structure to replace it. Hov-Korth, the Lokaron faction we represent, wants to deal with this planet as a whole."

"This goes well beyond what you just told Mr. Drummond."

"Yes, sir. Out of caution, we told him what we'd previously told Director Kinsella, who isn't ready for the truth."

"No," Drummond put in with a smile. "I don't think she is."

Morrison wasn't smiling. "So America must submerge its identity in a world federation, which must then submerge its identity in a Lokaron galaxy."

"We can't return to what existed before, Mr. President. That's gone now. It's passed into memory, carrying all its good and evil with it. No, restoring political pluralism to this country won't recreate the past; it will enable us to adapt to the future—the future that the EFP has closed out."

Morrison looked stubborn. "America can only make a worthwhile contribution to that future by being itself."

"But what is `itself,' Mr. President? Has the U.S. ever been a `nation' in the traditional sense of one particular sort of people inhabiting, and being molded by, one particular landscape? You should know better than Ben and I that we've never been that. No, I like to think of America as a different kind of human association: a bridge from the past to the future, for the whole human race to cross freely. That's what we always were, before the EFP turned us into a museum of stale slogans. And it's what we can be again."

"What kind of future?" challenged Morrison. "A wholly owned subsidiary of this Lokaron corporation, Hov-Korth? Is the U.S. to be like some Caribbean island a century ago, run by United Fruit?"

"No. Our future is to take our own place among the stars. Hov-Korth wants to see us do that, not out of altruism but because they're farsighted enough to see us as a counterweight to Gev-Rogov—which wants to see us permanently primitive and exploitable. If we don't modernize ourselves, we'll always be vulnerable to somebody like the Rogovon. Do you really want our fate to depend on the ethics of aliens?"

Morrison's eyes ceased to meet hers, and he smiled a sad little smile. "No. Of course I don't. What I want is . . . I want the old United States back. And yet I've always known, deep down, what you're telling me now. We can't turn back. We have to join the universe that we now know exists out there. And America can't do it alone." He paused and looked around him. Funny, Roark thought, puzzled. He's not focusing on anything in the room. It's as though he's watching something recede into the distance and vanish, and silently bidding it farewell. Finally, the President met their eyes again, and spoke matter-of-factly. "All right. What are you people proposing in the way of a concrete plan?"

Roark spoke for them in his turn. "As Mr. Drummond has doubtless told you, Havelock's plans hinge on an attack upon the Enclave. The Central Committee authorized the Company to mount such an attack, but in fact the attacking force—like the group on the inside, of which I was a member—were heavily infiltrated by Eaglemen, put there by Havelock. His real objective was to provide his Rogovon employers with a casus belli. The attack was aborted—"

"Yes, I understand you had something to do with that."

"—but they haven't given up on the idea. By keeping Havelock in the dark about the fact that the Eaglemen—and now Director Kinsella—are on to him, we're encouraging him to try again. This time, we'll let it go just far enough to give Gev-Harath proof of Gev-Rogov's scheming, to place before the other Lokaron. Then we'll apprehend Havelock. At the same time, the Eaglemen will be in position to seize control of the nerve centers of the U.S. military. At that point, you'll make a broadcast to the nation and the world, laying bare what's been going on and declaring the restoration of the old constitutional system, abrogating everything that's been done since the EFP imposed its one-party regime."

"Including my own election as President?"

Roark's expression matched Morrison's wryness. "That is sort of awkward, isn't it? You'll just have to gloss over it, saying you're going to have to serve out your term as caretaker, after which real elections will be held. One of the things you'll declare null and void is the Lokaron trade treaties. Simultaneously, Gev-Harath, with Hov-Korth in the lead, will announce a willingness to negotiate new treaties. They'll also go public with their desire to do so with the new world federation you'll have just proposed."

Morrison was silent for a moment. "Well," he finally said, then paused as though letting it go at that. Then he straightened up. "I think we have some details to work out. Earl, would you order up some coffee for us? It looks like we're going to be pulling late hours."

 

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